garbage all the way down (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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hydratrashmeme2015-09-09 07:23 pm
trashmod) wrote in hydratrashmeme2015-09-09 07:23 pm
Dumpster #3: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Holy shitballs, look at us go. Welcome to Captain America fandom's resident wretched hive of scum and villainy: ROUND THREE. AKA Bad Guys Do Dirtybadwrong Things To Your Faves, AKA the Hydra Trash Party kinkmeme. As usual, BLANKET NON-CON AND NSFW WARNINGS apply: just assume going in that everything in this landfill is unfit for human consumption.
Rules in brief: don't be a jerk except to fictional characters, warnings for particularly fucked-up garbage are nice but not required, thou shalt not judge the trashiness of thy neighbor's kinks unless thy neighbor is trying to pass off their rotting banana peels and half-eaten pizza crusts as a healthy romantic dinner for two, off-topic comments may be chucked out of the dumpster at management's discretion, management's discretion decrees that omegaverse, soulbond AUs, D/s-verse, non-superpowered AUs, and dark!good guys AUs are off-topic.
[Round 1] [Round 2] [Fill post] [Chatter post] [hydratrashmeme Pinboard archive (maintained bygreenkirtle)] [Round 3 in flat view (comments in non-threaded chronological order, most recent last)]
Round 3 is closed; comments and fills in existing threads are still welcome, but all new prompts go to Round 4.
Rules in brief: don't be a jerk except to fictional characters, warnings for particularly fucked-up garbage are nice but not required, thou shalt not judge the trashiness of thy neighbor's kinks unless thy neighbor is trying to pass off their rotting banana peels and half-eaten pizza crusts as a healthy romantic dinner for two, off-topic comments may be chucked out of the dumpster at management's discretion, management's discretion decrees that omegaverse, soulbond AUs, D/s-verse, non-superpowered AUs, and dark!good guys AUs are off-topic.
[Round 1] [Round 2] [Fill post] [Chatter post] [hydratrashmeme Pinboard archive (maintained by
greenkirtle)] [Round 3 in flat view (comments in non-threaded chronological order, most recent last)]Round 3 is closed; comments and fills in existing threads are still welcome, but all new prompts go to Round 4.
more for less, 8/~10
(Anonymous) 2017-11-11 03:36 pm (UTC)(link)A/N 2: Happy birthday, trash friend. <3
He wakes to David's anxious tugging at his shoulder, his too-loud voice. "Hey. Hey. James? Can you hear me?" David sits back as James surfaces, scrubs his hand over a grimace of agitation and relief. "Jesus." James coughs, winces. His throat feels clogged with shattered glass. David shakes his head, folds his arms over his bare chest. "I didn't mean for it - fuck. I didn't mean it." James draws another tortured breath. "You're okay, yeah? Come on." He hears the whining, wheedling note, and doesn't take his eyes from David's face. David looks away first. "You should've - said something, anyway. What the fuck is wrong with you."
He asks for water, and David brings him a cup. It hurts to swallow. It hurts to lift his wasted body, finally, out of David's bed. He makes it to the shower, where the hastily downed liquor stages a revolt, forcing him to his knees under the hot spray to vomit bile. He retches, acid searing his throat, but there's nothing else to bring up.
His clothes are in the living room, and he wraps a towel around his waist to retrieve them, knowing what might happen now. He remembers a young Hydra soldier who kissed Bucky like it was forbidden, and recoiled from the pliant body beneath him when his urgent, ignorant attentions drew blood. The boy slammed his face into the corner of a table afterward, anger more comfortable and comforting than shame. Faggot. Look what you made me do. The danger has not passed. He pulls his jeans on while David watches, reaches for his shirt, flinches when David gets up to pour himself another drink. "We're done," James says, unnecessarily, when the doorknob is in his hand. David nods. He takes the stairs down, skin crawling as he listens for a second set of footsteps, and escapes onto the dark street.
He checks his phone, and feels the brief flutter of some half-formed thought go still again when he sees that none of the texts or missed calls are from Sam or Steve. In its wake comes a wave of exhaustion so complete he nearly stumbles. Habit keeps him moving. It's a long walk, but he doesn't want to take the subway, to sit among the faces of the other riders with his bruises garish in the sickly light. He doesn't want to get in a cab with a stranger. He passes the black windows and chained doors of shops, restaurants with chairs stacked clear of their clean floors, the occasional bar spilling laughter and conversation into the night. On a residential block, between the streetlamps, he sees a girl approach, long-legged and wary as a deer. She crosses the street to avoid him. The wind picks up, blowing through his thin shirt, stirring trash in the gutter. In the distance, a car alarm wails. Slowly, painfully, he makes his way home.
He is halfway down the hall to his door before he registers the seated figure slumped against it. He is not functioning properly. He nearly turns around, but stops himself, because he has nowhere else to go. Instead, he nudges her outstretched foot with his.
Roused from sleep, Katie blinks up at him. "Oh - you're back." She rolls her shoulders, makes a face as cramped muscles protest. "What time is it?" Her eyes widen as she takes him in. "Whoa. Are you - " She scrambles to her feet as he steps forward to offer her a hand, so that he ends up too close, trapping her against the door. He reaches around her to get at the locks. "You weren't answering your phone. I texted, I tried calling. Just to - talk, you know? To see if, um. You were okay." She steps back as the door opens, and he follows her into the apartment. "But I couldn't reach you, and - you, you've been so - "
"I'm fine," he says, because she wants it to be true. What is she doing here? He's too tired to think. "Sorry to worry you."
She turns on a lamp in the living room, and he stands still while she looks at him. She touches her own throat, wincing in sympathy. "What happened?"
He shrugs. "Just another - bad date. You know." But she doesn't know, he can see the shock in her face, and he can't. He can't do this again. She'll ask the same thing they all have, one way or another: what the fuck is wrong with you. And he has no answer that will not disgust her, the same way he disgusts them all. He turns away from her, dumb instinct taking over, putting the metal arm between their bodies. He'd laugh at himself, if he had the strength: if only it were that easy. If only he could stop this like a knife.
She breathes out softly. "Is that what's going on? Someone's been hurting you? Oh, James." He hears the compassion in her voice, and the suppressed anger, directed not at him but at whoever has dared to use him without kindness. "You've been so sad. We didn't know what to do."
He does laugh, then, and she draws back from the sound. He gestures at himself, meaning the bruises, meaning the other injuries she can't see. "This, what he did - " He needs to get his voice under control. "This is nothing. It's not important."
Too vehement: he's startled her. But she stands her ground. "Not important?"
He shakes his head, helpless. She's his friend, and she wants to understand, but he is sick to death of explanations. Every time, he condemns himself. Every time, he wounds. He is struck by the dizzy image of a forest between them, tangled undergrowth: whatever words he sends into that darkness will be lost, or else will come out strange, clawed, misshapen as shadows. Delirium beckons, his thoughts dissolving into dream. She's too late anyway.
We didn't know what to do. He thinks of the laundered sheets, the neatly labeled containers in the fridge. The tea and toast and gossip, the simple closeness: the care they'd shown him without knowing what was wrong, just that something was. Ben on the couch beside him, their arms brushing; Marisol reaching up to hug him. Katie asleep on his doorstep, loyal as a dog. Witnessing the marks of violence on his body and not looking away. His friend, letting him shout at her in the middle of the night.
He feels his shoulders slump with weariness. "Ah, fuck. I'm sorry." He forces himself to face her, to keep his voice quiet as her own. "I know I've been - kind of fucked up." How could she possibly begin to understand? The years of horror, the unmaking of him. "After this - " He lifts the weapon Hydra grafted to the dying ruin of Bucky Barnes, lets it fall. "The war, all of it - when I got back, my best friend was waiting for me. My head was - not so good, for a while. But he looked after me, him and another friend of his, they helped me get my shit together." Maybe it's not that complicated after all. "They - loved me, actually. Though god knows I didn't deserve it."
He waits out the pain of the admission, loss aching in his chest like the first breath of water. "But I betrayed them. I came back wrong." He thinks of Sam's whole body flinching away from him, Steve wrenching free of his embrace. "They didn't see it at first, but then they did. I make them sick. And without them - " He gestures mutely at his stupid, broken head. "Everything fell apart."
She lets the silence stretch, inviting, but he has nothing left to give her. His body is a stubborn old ally, but without food, without sleep, it can't repair itself. Visions again, the pathless dark grown over him. He needs to rest, and though his bed is only steps away, he's starting to think the floor will do.
"That sounds really hard." It's so forgivably inadequate that he smiles despite himself. Unfair, to toss her the bones of the story and expect her to formulate a response. "I guess - I didn't know you. Um, before. But you don't seem wrong to me." Cautiously, watching his face for permission, she reaches out to rest a small hand on the clever plates of his wrist. "I'm sorry about what happened with your friends. I won't pretend to understand, but - they're not the only people who care about you. You know that, right?"
He looks down, distantly astonished by the touch. It shouldn't be possible to reach him here, in the woods at night. To find him. He shakes his head to clear it, and thinks of her tucked up beside him in what should have been the wreckage of this room, where Steve had torn him open; her confidence in the restorative powers of hot soup and blankets and her own patient demand to be held. The gratitude so fierce he could have cried. He grasps her shoulders on unthinking impulse and pulls her into a hug, pressing close against the animal comfort of her body. Hell, he does know. It just hadn't seemed to matter.
She freezes, going rigid in his arms. He lets her go and steps back fast.
"Sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean - " She's staring at him wide-eyed. "Aw Christ, sweetheart." He hears the raw thing in his own voice, and can't help it. "Please don't be scared of me."
"What? No, I - I'm sorry - " She swallows, her gaze losing focus, as though she is looking through him at a memory. "You just - you felt - god, James, you're so thin." She folds an arm across her stomach to rub at the opposite elbow, a girl's gesture of anxiety contained. "We knew you weren't eating - I mean, anyone could see - and we knew it was bad - but you feel like, like you're - "
It takes a long moment for his mind to supply the word she won't say, and he rejects it as exaggeration. He has punished his body to the limits of endurance, perhaps, but experience has taught him well: his surrender is immaterial. Even when he begs for it, even when he's ready, he is not allowed to die.
Looking at her stricken face, the flaw in this reasoning occurs to him with some force. There are no handlers anymore, to break or repair him. Whatever else he is, however lost, he's free. And if he starves himself, if he shuts his eyes in pathetic acquiescence while a playground bully strangles his neck, he will lose his chance to repay a fraction of the debt he owes.
No. He might be alone, and more tired than he can bear, but he is responsible to his ghosts.
"I'm okay," he says, which remains to be seen, but he doesn't want her scared for him either. "I'm - you're right, I need to - I'll be okay." He thinks of his paralysis, in David's bed, and feels a wave of shame. People use him or they don't: but that was more than sex. That was unacceptable. He'd said as much already, to David, even if he hadn't known why. He touches his throat. "And - no more. All right?"
She ducks her head, rueful. "Sorry. I didn't mean to get upset. Tell me to shut up, okay, but please don't - don't just say what you think I want to hear. That's not fair."
He takes a breath against the exhausted, wild-edged laughter that wants to escape. "No. It's not." When he knows the right response, he doesn't even think of it as lying. For once, though: "I'm not."
Her look tells him not to expect her to take this on faith. But even she is getting tired. "Well, whoever did that - I didn't even know you were seeing anyone - but if you're really done with him - which, good - will you go to the police? Because you know he'll do it to the next guy too. We could take some pictures now, and maybe in the morning - "
"No." He shakes his head to forestall her. David wasn't dangerous to other people; it was James who turned him ugly, who drew from him the same old song. You're so desperate for it. James and his endless capitulation. "He wouldn't, with someone else. No."
She wants to argue, he can tell, but she doesn't. "Okay. That's - of course, it's your choice."
He loses the battle with gravity, and manages a controlled collapse into the desk chair. "I should probably - I could use some sleep." She looks uncertain, left standing alone, and his heart goes out to her. "I really didn't mean to make you worry. Any of you." It's only three stops on the 1 from his place to hers, but he doesn't want her walking to the train, standing on the deserted platform. He'll call her a car, and when she's gone he can close his eyes.
She takes a seat herself, on the couch, and pulls her knees up to wrap her arms around them. Shyly: "Can I stay?"
That's - a bad idea, he knows, though he can't think why. He can't think at all. He is past the end of his resistance.
He gets her a pillow and a t-shirt to sleep in, a clean towel for the morning. Then he leaves her, and stumbles off to bed.
He sleeps through the sound of the shower, the toaster's chime, the complaint of the kettle, and wakes reluctantly to a gentle insistent patting at his shoulder. "Hey," Katie says. "Sorry. I let you sleep as long as I could. But we have class in an hour. If you don't get up now, we're going to be late."
He was right: he should have kicked her out. I can't, he thinks, experimentally, and sighs. He doesn't want to. It's not the same. He showers and dresses and eats what she puts in front of him. He's sore, and the bruises look worse, the way they would on anyone else. He won't heal fast this time. He tries not to ask himself what will happen if someone wants to use him, only that, without violence, when he is hurt already. He doesn't know. He's afraid to find out.
When they step out into sunlight, she reaches for his hand. She's afraid too, he thinks: that he'll change his mind, go back to bed and finish erasing himself. He squeezes her palm, giving and taking comfort. All the way there, side by side on the crowded train, not speaking, they hold on.
Re: more for less, 8/~10
(Anonymous) 2017-11-11 04:39 pm (UTC)(link)So thrilled to see this updated and 10x more thrilled to see James able to talk to someone who listens and wants to help and maybe even CAN help thanks to being (mostly) outside the incredible vortex of accidental non-con and guilt and horror and etc. <3333333333333333333333333333
Re: more for less, 8/~10
(Anonymous) 2017-11-13 12:07 am (UTC)(link)Re: more for less, 8/~10
(Anonymous) 2017-11-11 07:44 pm (UTC)(link)especially with david actually having to feel some fear about the consequences of his actions. he comes across as horribly cowardly and weaselly through your writing even though james seems incapable of thinking of him that way
and comparing that to katie! who loves him and worries about him! and makes him breakfast! i am so so so hopeful that this is how he will learn to navigate relationships without sex <3 <3
you are amazing and so is james ^_^
Re: more for less, 8/~10
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(Anonymous) 2017-11-12 12:10 am (UTC)(link)Re: more for less, 8/~10
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(Anonymous) 2017-11-12 07:39 am (UTC)(link)Re: more for less, 8/~10
(Anonymous) 2017-11-16 08:53 am (UTC)(link)Re: more for less, 8/~10
(Anonymous) 2017-11-18 12:56 pm (UTC)(link)Re: more for less, 8/~10
(Anonymous) 2017-11-20 08:59 pm (UTC)(link)Re: more for less, 8/~10
(Anonymous) 2017-11-28 06:51 am (UTC)(link)I also like the continued references to James being potentially scary to other people, from the girl crossing the street to avoid him to his fear that his hug might be threatening to Katie, after his nightmare about raping her in the last chapter. To me it lines up, somehow, with the fact that Katie’s one of the people he had secretly-noncon sex with, but also one of the people who helps him most...it’s very messy, and most of the suffering in the story isn’t caused by villainy, just trauma and misunderstandings and mistakes. Almost all the characters are sweet and well meaning, which is hopeful and horrible. Well, I’m not sure if I can fully articulate where I think you’re going with that, which I really wanted to be able to do; but I’ve sat on this long enough. Thank you so much, you’re both literally and figuratively the best.
Re: more for less, 8/~10
(Anonymous) 2018-01-15 12:27 pm (UTC)(link)Re: more for less, 8/~10
(Anonymous) 2018-08-10 02:25 am (UTC)(link)Re: more for less, 8/~10
(Anonymous) 2018-08-10 03:35 am (UTC)(link)It’s been so long, and I’m terrible with names, but it only took me a few seconds to recall who everyone was and be caught up. I only had to reread the last two paragraphs of the previous chapter! I usually need to do more after a week between updates. It’s stuck with me all this time, and touches me deeply.
Thank you so much for returning. I’ll read anything you add. I don’t want to pressure you though - this chapter was deeply satisfying, and is more than enough.
Re: more for less, 8/~10
(Anonymous) 2018-08-12 03:48 am (UTC)(link)Re: more for less, 8/~10
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(Anonymous) 2021-05-06 04:32 pm (UTC)(link)Re: more for less, 8/~10
Re: more for less, 8/~10
(Anonymous) 2022-01-31 11:22 pm (UTC)(link)