Dumpster #4: I Don't See How That's a Party

[trashmod]

Okay, kids, you know the drill. Don't be a jerk except to fictional characters. Warn if you want, but read at your own risk, because hydratrashmeme is about as far from a safe space as you can get. Garbage we like: noncon, whump, aftermath, violence, mind control, inappropriate uses of Bucky Barnes' metal arm, bad guys doing dirtybadwrong things to your faves. Garbage you should find a different trashcan for: a/b/o, D/s-verse, soulbonds, mundane AUs, OOC evil!good guys doing dirtybadwrong things to your faves, rotting leftovers dressed up as a romantic gourmet meal. Nothing wrong with 'em, but this isn't the crowd you should be pitching to if you're trying to sell Brock Rumlow as anything but a human dumpster fire.

Link your fills on the fill post, post unprompted fills as replies to a header comment so the wall o' text is collapsible, and let me know if you're interested in helping out with the Pinboard archive.

[Rules in full] [Round 1] [Round 2] [Round 3] [Fill post] [Chatter post] [hydratrashmeme Pinboard archive (maintained by greenkirtle)] [Round 4 in flat view (comments in non-threaded chronological order, most recent last)]

All prompts or fills that contain Infinity War spoilers must go on the Infinity War spoiler post until May 26th. Spoilers in the main dumpsters will be deleted.

Round 4 is closed; comments and fills in existing threads are still welcome, but all new prompts go to Round 5.

Comments

Re: Bucky abuses Steve

[(Anonymous)]

I'm so into this. Bucky not really having a normal set of social protocol, but trying so hard. Knowing he wants to do this with Steve, but being sort of afraid because of conflicting memories of sex. Maybe being a little like a startled horse the first time Steve kisses his cheek, but slowly realizing Steve is letting him be the "aggressor" and in the - in Bucky's mind: how kind is Steve that he'll deal with Bucky's stupid hang ups over sex and give him the less scary role all because he's so freaked out?

You know how he reacted with a punch to a tech touching his arm in WS? I bet the WS knew he sometimes reacted out of the norm to necessary interactions. I bet sometimes he thought he was overreacting when he tried to get away from the guy pounding his ass raw with a stun baton. :D

Just having thoughts, heh, don't mind me XD
I so hope this gets filled, hahaha!

Re: Bucky abuses Steve

[(Anonymous)]

(OP) yesyesyesyesyesyes exactly! *tosses eight rotten pears your way for the amazing idea*

Steve could maybe find out that Bucky gets startled when others touch him, but that he's fine when he's in command of when he can touch someone and where and for what reason. Steve being Steve would of course prefer Bucky feeling comfortable with touches, so he's just "go ahead, Buck." and Bucky, with his alienated standards, is just... "okay!"

OH AND MAYBE EXTRA EXPIRED FRIes if Bucky gets a flashback/hallucination during sex with Steve, making shit just worse! Like, really, if he mistakes Steve for a Hydra goon he might just be out to kill him or go back to his submissive pet dog role.

Communication Methodology 2/?

[(Anonymous)]

Memories are difficult.

Some days, he can’t handle the way they bleed into each other, confusing and ever-changing. He had had left DC a wounded animal. He had thought distance would help him establish the next step.

(Hoping he’d either be able to dump the memories of the man he’d been on the roadside like unwanted furniture, or finally understand enough about the guy to feel like maybe he could be him.)

That had been a bit of a bust.

Bucky would like it if all his memories were neat, crisp puzzle pieces that fit into each other as soon as they came trickling in.

More realistically, he’ll be going about his incredibly normal on-the-lam-from-all-sorts day and get hit sideways with the memory of the smell of laundry starch and spend 5 minutes gesticulating to Steve, trying to explain what the fuck is going through his head - the strange memory of burying his fingers in crisp cotton and his mothers skirts swishing beside his head. As if Steve can fill in the blanks anymore than Bucky, most of the time.

More realistically, he’ll be going about his assassin of the century life, get that feeling like he’s left the oven on, realize the face he’s pummeling means more to him than his own fucking bones and want to vomit. It’s only happened the once, but it leaves a bit of a mark on a guy.

Like the ones he’d left on Steve. Ha.

Memories. He can remember the exact feeling of Steve’s bony shoulder digging into the arm he’d slung around it, the taste of his family’s apartment - but yesterday he had to ask Steve which of his sisters had curly hair.

Steve likes to try to comfort him and tell him that no memories are entirely easy and crisp and clean. That even before Bucky lost an arm and a century, they used to disagree on the basic facts of their shared history all the time.

Steve probably likes to explain this shit because Bucky once went silent for a day when Steve had corrected him on the name of his boss at some clerking job he’d had before everything. He hadn’t meant to worry Steve, but it was so easy to spend time turning over these memories, trying to understand which are real and which aren’t - sometimes he forgets the day to day process he has to upkeep.

Steve tries so hard to give Bucky all the space he needs. Tries so hard to be there when Bucky can swallow his distrust enough to let him. Bucky can see the way it strains at the guy, has no clue how to throw him a bone, to say, “good job on not giving up.” To do anything to indicate it’s not all worthless effort.

The messy memories make him doubt. When he starts chewing on the edge of a few memories and some things come tumbling out - he worries that he’s got it wrong, that Steve’s going to be very, very gentle when he corrects Bucky.

Sitting on a sofa in Beirut and listening to some young girl who thinks she’s Fairouz on the radio, he swallows his own initial reaction - his own need to flee - and he bites the fucking bullet.

“When we were younger,” Bucky starts slowly. He’s leant forward, arms propped on his knees, hair hiding his face futilely. He likes the warm pocket it creates. His right forearm prickles with the heat. He can feel plates shifting in the other, tellingly.

Steve looks back at him with that placid expression he spends so much time practicing on Bucky - trying so hard not to have any reaction, probably.

Bucky’s the one who reacts badly (metal digits wrapped around an arm or throat and - ) and yet Steve’s the one who keeps limiting his own response. Bucky can appreciate it, even as he sees the inefficiency of the gesture.

“We were - “ the thing is, he’s pretty sure even before his brain got scrambled the whole thing was a confusing mess. “- something.” His face pinches, because that’s nowhere near what he meant to say. Sounds so ridiculous, like a dramatic chord should play over it - some radio play with a longlost someone or other coming out of the woodwork to mess things up a little for a few weeks. The harder he thinks on this, the more his words seem to be drying up.

Heat makes Steve kind of a bastard in a fun way, Bucky’s noticed, and instead of calmly trying to help Bucky tease out the meaning in his thoughts like usual, he just smiles crookedly and says, “yeah, people were always saying that. ‘Steve and Bucky: they sure are something, alright.’” He says it with a faux-disapproving voice, making an exaggerated frown.

“I mean,” Bucky says, his own mouth twisting into a smile despite himself. It’s that heady mirror-expression response he’s still surprised by every time Steve inspires it in him. “We were more than friends. Or - we spent a lot of time trying not to be more than friends.”

He’d thought about just saying it smooth like he remembers being, sometimes - saying something like, ‘we were always two sly glances away from kissing, but we never were making them at the same time and I need to know whether this is my brain telling fibs again, or whether it was real.’ Or something blunt and harsh like, ‘I’ve put holes in your body but I’ve never filled one - and isn’t that a shame, after all this time?’

But Bucky doesn’t know from smooth these days, and he still has a hard time figuring out where the line is for blunt. Still doesn’t know the difference between a blue joke that’ll get a smirk from Steve and something terrible that’ll come slipping out of his mouth - ostensibly humorous - and get that horrified look going in Steve’s eyes.

( Steve had joked that they’d better not go through security if they didn’t want to get frisked, eyeing Bucky’s arm in a rare moment of candid joking. Bucky had been flying high on the camaraderie and joked back that he was used to invasive measures, and if they needed him to bend over he’d be able to oblige. It hadn’t seemed like a bad thing to say at the time, but Steve had looked uncomfortable afterwards and then they’d stopped joking. This often seemed to happen whenever Bucky opened his fucking mouth. )

So he intimates it, this time. Real fuckin’ subtle like. Just askin’ if they’d been more - nothing graphic or anything.

Steve gets solemn, the way he does when - well, all the fucking time if Bucky’s honest. He can’t ask about pigeons without risking a serious-eyed Steve telling him some new horrible truth about the world.

(Don’t ask about Steve’s opinions on pigeon-poisoning, it’s just - don’t. The guy finds a way to care too much about everything. Bucky suspects this might be becoming one of his favorite things about Steve, ‘cause he can’t stop asking him about things he’s just remembered or found out about, and always gets a little excited when Steve takes that deep breath and starts in on it. )

“Yeah,” Steve says, kind of quiet-like as he shifts his gaze down to Bucky’s hands, folded together between his knees. Bucky feels like he’s incapable of blinking in this moment, so intently is he watching Steve’s face. The expression is - conflicted to say the least. Bucky’s not always great at reading Steve’s emotions off his face, but he thinks this is somewhere between sad and fond.

“We always kind of danced around it,” one of his hands runs through his hair. “But yeah. I mean - we never said anything, and I don’t know how you felt.” Steve seems careful not to leave any questioning in those words. Bucky isn’t sure he would be as strong. He wants to know the details of exactly how Steve felt back then right fucking now, feels suddenly impatient for it, now that it’s on the table. “But I always knew I felt like that for you, and I thought you might have felt the same.”

“Why not?” Bucky blurts. “I mean - why wouldn’t we?” He does technically realize that the more things he runs into about his past, the more he remembers stuff about those specific things - that the reason everything feels so wrapped up in Steve Rogers is probably more the fact that every emotional upheaval since getting his memory back has been intrinsically tied with Steve. But the thing is, it’s really hard to separate that knowledge from the fact that most of his feelings and memories are so laced through with Steve, he almost can’t imagine the kind of thing that would have kept him from just saying something at some point. Couldn’t imagine knowing Steve and not realizing Steve liked him a little, couldn’t imagine not liking him back. Couldn’t imagine wrapping himself in Steve the way everything else in his mind is wrapped in him.

Steve’s face that Bucky’s watching so hawkishly - well, his mouth twists a little. “Like I said, I don’t know how you felt. I just… knew it would be easier that way. I knew I wanted you anyway I could have you, and I wasn’t going to ask you to give up any more for our friendship. I never wanted you to feel like you had to make a decision that would affect you and your family that way.”

‘Give up any more’. Bucky remembers some things. Little flashes of anger and sulking. The way everyone knew about Steve Rogers, even if he’d never been caught doing nothing. Even if he’d never even said anything to Bucky about it. Some people didn’t believe it, sure, but Bucky remembered enough to remember the fucking helpless anger he’d felt that people seemed to think Steve Rogers could ever drag Bucky down. The way people acted like Steve was sapping away at the good parts of Bucky Barnes, when everything he remembers seems to point to the opposite.

Bucky feels a little sick. Wishes he could promise it wasn’t like that at all, wants to believe Bucky Barnes wasn’t that much of a selfish fuck. Doesn’t honestly know if he’d ever asked himself that tough question and decided it wasn’t worth turning over that stone.

“Nothing is easier right now,” Bucky says, and he doesn’t even realize he’s trying to imply a sequence of variables, that he’s apparently already decided the best course of action in his head.

Steve opens his mouth, but just shrugs helplessly. “Yeah,” he says after a second, “not really.” He laughs a little.

“All I have is you,” Bucky doesn’t realize he’s trying on persuasion for size until the words are out of his mouth, just this side of beseeching. “I don’t give a fuck if people don’t like it. I’ve done a hell of lot worse. Most things I do, people don’t like. Do you? Like it, I mean? Still?”

He’s so used to the homegrown narrative of Steve clinging to the past and Bucky being the one to awkwardly try to convince him everything’s changed - the sudden option of Steve having moved on while he still - or perhaps newly, he can’t really tell anymore - wants to bury himself in Steve’s skin for the rest of existence? It burns and coils in his stomach, horrible and maybe a little inevitable with the way he is now.

Steve’s face is distraught, but Bucky can’t unravel it past that information. He’s meeting Bucky’s eyes now. “I do. Always have. But I think it might be a bad idea.”

Despite the cautious, mournful tone, Bucky is suddenly elated. A bit of adrenaline shoots through him, makes him unable to keep his teeth from baring in a smile. Okay, yeah. Sure, they’re on the run from myriad dangerous forces. Sure, Bucky is several screws loose and Steve is barely any better, if the way he hangs around Bucky is any indication. Sure, Bucky has spent more of the last two years avoiding Steve out of cowardice and dread than wanting to drag Steve to some quiet corner of the universe where they could just listen to Faux-Fairouz or Bucky could pretend he still understands baseball more than half the time.

He can practically feel the soft, fleshy places in Steve’s resolve when he tells Bucky it’s probably not a good idea.

Bucky doesn’t remember much, but he knows you gotta cut Steve off before he can talk himself - and usually Bucky - into or out of something.

So he screws his courage to the sticking place and all that shit, and he leans in and kisses the corner of Steve’s mouth. And his skin prickles, but he doesn’t even feel like snapping Steve’s neck or nothing. In fact, when he thinks about how Steve’s positioned in relation to the door, the intrusive thoughts aren’t about how easily Bucky could take him down, they’re about how Bucky could move him to shield his body until another agent arrives to aid. Steve’s shifted from enemy target, to an important member of Bucky’s imaginary team.

Steve’s lip twists up under Bucky’s, probably against his own design. Steve smiles and so does Bucky and it’s real heartwarming, all around.

~ ~ ~