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

FILL: Daybreak part 11d Re: Identity Porn in captivity

[(Anonymous)]

He closed his eyes again. The jarring sensation in his skull, crawling up his skin, wasn’t as bad when he didn’t look at him. “It won’t be forever.”

A croaking, crackling sound made him squint one eye open again. Rogers was chuckling.

“Nothing’s forever,” he mumbled. “Never wanted forever…”

He was delirious. The Soldier could ride it out, was pretty sure Rogers would remember nothing of this later regardless of what he did, but he was struck by the urge to do … do the right thing. Whatever that was. One less thing to remember uncomfortably when he looked at Rogers. Whatever he could do that would make this easier, or at least not make it worse.

But Rogers was picking up steam, eyes unnervingly bright and hazy. “Never expected much at all. You know that, Bucky.”

He itched. A low throbbing at the base of his skull was starting. If it kept up, he was supposed to report it to maintenance.

He gritted his teeth.

Rogers shifted, pulling himself further into the Soldier’s lap. “Remember when I had scarlet fever?”

He wanted to look away. He wanted to close his eyes again. He couldn’t. He couldn’t move with the way Rogers was staring at him, staring through him.

Rogers finally broke the contact, blinking and tipping his face down to rest between the Soldier’s legs. “Everyone thought I was gone … Everyone … Not you, though … Not you.”

He wrapped himself around the Soldier in lethargic movements, all awkwardness and none of the grace and sharpness the Soldier had been both cataloging and admiring all this time. While Rogers was busy, the Soldier was lost in thought. Rogers was confused, sure, deeply so, but there was a kernel of awareness there. He could see it in his eyes. Beneath the exhaustion and pain, there was something familiar. He thought he’d seen it before, buried deeply, kept tightly private where Rogers knew he couldn’t reach it. Like a creature on the basin floor of shallow, murky water, he could see it move, but he couldn’t know what it was until it broke the surface.

Rogers was remembering this Buck person. This friend. Maybe the one with the voice. They’d been close. He hadn’t been wrong, then, back at the beginning: they had picked him for a reason.They had counted on his appearance to mean something to Rogers.

“What would Ma say, she were here,” he breathed. “What would she think if she saw me … ‘Get up, Steve. The ground’s for the dead. You’re not due yet.’” He sniffed harshly. “’I won’t allow it.’”

He was quiet for a long time after, shifting in restless, pained movements that brought him into contact with the Soldier’s groin more than once. But that didn’t matter, because he’d learned that Captain Rogers’ name was Steve. It wasn’t really important. He still didn’t recognize it, so it effectively changed nothing.

Still, the man in his lap was Steve Rogers, and he thought, at least for the moment, that the Soldier was his old friend. Maybe it brought him some comfort.

“All the doctors I saw growing up,” he started again. “Always telling me to undress, putting their hands on me without saying why or warning me, always ordering me around. Putting.” He sucked loudly on his tongue like the words made him choke. “Putting things in my mouth or talking about … things I needed put in me, like I wasn’t even there. Treating me like a thing, like a chore. It drove her crazy. Lit her up like a firecracker. She said, ‘You don’t do that to people. You treat them better than that.’ And she told me, always, she said, ‘If something feels wrong, believe yourself.’”

He flopped onto his back, dropping his head heavily into the Soldier’s crotch again with no notice and looking up. He was wholly exposed, the length of him completely vulnerable from his upturned face and bared neck to his naked genitals and all the way down to his feet, and it was jarringly at odds with his story. “Remember O’Leary? That guy lived ‘cross the hall from me and Ma? He was always offering to watch me while she was working. Ma always turned him down. Didn’t trust him.” He swallowed loudly, closing his eyes. “Told me one day, she said she didn’t like how he looked at me. Told me not to go near him. So I didn’t, mostly. Only I came home one day with a bloody nose, getting it everywhere, no way into the apartment, and the landlord hated that, remember? Used to make hell every time. I was afraid of getting us in trouble again. He found me on the stairs, gave me a handkerchief. Said I could wait for the bleeding to stop at his place. Wash my face in his kitchen.”

Having Rogers -- Steve -- squirming in his lap was incredibly inconvenient. That knock from his skull had been a blessing, unpleasant but centering. It was one thing to work himself up to perform for his mission despite the ugliness of his orders. This was different. Steve’s scattered ramblings weren’t arousing in the least, were disturbing and worrying, but after all of the ugliness of the Soldier’s life, he could reliably get it up in pretty awful circumstances. The last thing he wanted was for Steve to feel an erection poking him in the back of the head while he talked about how the Soldier might not have been the first to use him this way.

Every aspect of that thought sent flickers of rage curling and licking throughout the Soldier’s body. He tamped it down. Whatever Steve said next, it wouldn’t really change anything. He’d almost certainly done much worse to him than this neighbor ever could have, despite his creeping apprehension. But once again, the idea of anyone else hurting Steve, especially this way … the Soldier couldn’t even begin to parse his feelings on that one. He didn’t deserve the protective outrage that filled him. It was sick to think he had the right after what he’d done, what he’d continue to do in just a matter of hours and for who knew how long.

“It was okay at first. Then he started rubbing my back, which was fine, I guess. Barely noticed when he slipped under my shirt. I was just a kid, didn’t really think about it. And my face hurt.” He laughed again. “Remember that, when a broken nose felt like a big hurt? Like real pain? By the time Ma got home and went looking for me, his other hand was dipping into my pants. Didn’t make it very far.” He paused again, a strange smile pulling at his mouth, serene and just a little smug, just a little proud. “She about tore him to shreds. Scared him so bad, that’s why he moved.”

The Soldier smiled in return, not without a slightly ugly edge to it. Steve was smiling at the thought of his mother frightening the man who’d tried to hurt him while draped over the lap of the man hurting him now, systematically and successfully. But it was all the comfort he had in this place. After everything he’d been through, finally, privately, he just wanted his mother.

He was hoarse when he continued, all the strange lightness from before gone. “She said … said if someone, anyone, laid hands on me how I didn’t want, no matter what, even if I’d trusted them … said it wasn’t my fault. But I didn’t have to accept it. I could fight. I could say no. Even if I thought I knew them. And that if I saw it happening to someone else, I should stop it. Had to stop it. Always. ‘Gotta look after each other, baby, as if they’re one of yours. It’s what we do to be human.’”

He shifted again, and the Soldier took the opportunity to cross his legs and jostle Steve’s shoulder a little to encourage him back. It was slow-going, but he pulled himself back into the Soldier’s lap and, this time, wrapped his arms around his waist. They pressed together like that wisdom could be osmotically imparted, equalized between the two of them until they saw eye to eye and Steve could get him on the same page. Like he could make him understand if he just clung hard enough.

“That, uh, that Ellie girl you were sweet on, remember her? She all of a sudden disappeared, and I couldn’t tell you why? It was her old man, Buck. He was putting his hands on her. Everyone knew; no one did anything. No one ever says anything, that happens. People don’t talk. But Ma. Oh, Buck. She was the only thing standing between Ellie and her old man, and she didn’t back down. Let her stay with us until her cousin could scrounge up the money to get her out to the country and live with her. I was so proud.”

His arms tightened. “Ma didn’t ever want people to feel that pain. Didn’t want me to feel like this. God, I hope she never felt like this.” His shoulders jumped once, and then he relaxed again, but he wasn’t boneless anymore. There was tension running through him like current through a live wire. “’Don’t ever let them treat you like less than you are.’ S’what she said. ‘You are a person. Make them acknowledge you as one. And if they still want to do you evil, make them look you in the eye.’ That was her. S’what she made me. She gave me that.”

It was all too much to process. Rogers rested quietly again after his rushed, fever-drunk monologue, but the Soldier couldn’t stop the echoes that bounced around his brain.

Steve nuzzled his face into his thigh, yanking him from his murky thoughts. Eyes still closed, he said, “You smell like sex. Were they hurting you?”

He froze. He’d gone straight from his rounds, which had taken most of the night, to Steve’s cell, without being permitted to shower between. Steve’s filter at the moment was basically down to nothing, but when he recovered, it was hard to say what he’d remember. It was easier to focus on the tactical necessity of his answer than the ache in his chest at how quickly Steve assumed that those scents must mean pain. Of course he did. And he was right to. But it was the Soldier who had done that, had changed him. He had no recollection of sexual encounters outside of his orders, but the understanding was growing, deep in his bones, of how wrong this was. How it wasn’t supposed to be this way. Not for people like Steve, at least.