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

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

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.

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They waited longer to send him back in. He tried to lose himself in the routine and distract himself. He’d heard people pray in the moments preceding their deaths, usually at his hand, and while he didn’t know if some scrap of him between wipes had ever believed, he considered giving it a shot. In the end he didn’t, but it was a narrow thing.

When they finally led him to the round room, he could have wept in relief. They trusted him. They believed he could do this. No one else would touch Steve for the time being.

He watched Steve carefully. He was sitting up, but the Soldier recognized, from the handful of other prisoners he’d been ordered to punish in that way, the look of sickly pain churning through his gut every time he moved, that type of hurt that sent messages up to the brain that something was very wrong.

He’d live. That was all that mattered at the moment.

The way Steve was looking at him … All the anxiety and uncertainty and the guilt came to a head. The coldness and precision the Winter Soldier was infamous for melted away in the inferno of his racing thoughts.

“Who the hell is Bucky?” burst out of him before he could contain it.

Steve made a sound like he might be laughing, but it was choked out of him. “What?”

“You keep talking about this friend, this Bucky guy. You talk about him a lot for a guy you were just friends with. My old friend this, my old friend that.” When Steve stayed silent, he elaborated. “When you were … When you were going on, you called him Bucky.”

Called me Bucky.

Steve blinked.

“Were you sleeping with him?”

“Jesus,” Steve muttered, shaking his head. He looked heavenward like a solution would reveal itself. “The hell kind of question is that?”

He didn’t even blame him, really. Here he was making demands of him again. This was ridiculous. A ridiculous line of questioning, ridiculous timing. He knew what he sounded like. He sounded like a jealous lover. They weren’t lovers. What the fuck was wrong with him?

Still …

“An honest one,” he said.

Steve’s expression darkened, his posture closed. “No.”

He didn’t know why he couldn’t stop himself, but his mouth kept running just as surely as muscle memory carried him through his missions, and it had very little to do with what his brain was telling him to do. He wasn’t even sure if Steve was answering his question or refusing to participate altogether, but he plowed ahead anyway. “You sure about that? Maybe you just wanted to. You never watched him and wondered?”

“Knock it off.”

“You remember his voice so damn well, you never touched yourself thinking about your name on his tongue?” He laughed wildly. “My tongue. You said if you close your eyes, I’m him. Why don’tcha close ‘em, Steve. Go ahead.”

Steve’s eyes flashed. “I’m not gonna tell you again.”

He could feel himself pulling away, as though a drawbridge between them was going up, as though the room were lengthening until Steve was just a dot on the horizon. A corona of righteous, indignant fury and hurt. Miles of chasm stretching between them. “Maybe you were afraid to take it that far. You didn’t touch yourself. You’d wrap your hand around your pencils and channel that hard-on into your sketches, wouldn’t you?”

He was charged up, ready to keep going, out for blood with no idea why, but the air changed and knocked the wind out of his sails.

Steve’s mouth opened in a way that would have been comical if the whole situation weren’t so goddamn fucked up. There was no power being it when he spoke, breathless with astonishment. “I didn’t tell you I’m an artist.”

The Soldier froze. “Of course you did,” he forced out. “Sure you did. You -- you told me.”

“No, I didn’t,” Steve said firmly. “I don’t know what I told you while I was delirious, but I can tell you it wasn’t that.”

“How would you know? You have no idea the shit you told me. You poured your pulsing, bleeding heart out all over me.”

“I just know,” he whispered. His voice strengthened. “I haven’t picked up a sketchbook in almost two years. I’ve had a lot of thoughts the past few weeks, lot of thoughts, but I can promise you that that has not been one of them.”

“So what difference does it make?”

Steve was silent for a stretch of seconds so long, the Soldier prickled with doubt. Steve was clearly deliberating with all the gravity of a man who knew his next determination would carry weight. Finally, when he spoke, his tone had changed. He sounded like he had that first day, calm in that measured way like when he’d asked the Soldier if he needed help. “They messed with your head, didn’t they. Jimmy’s a made-up name. You picked it because you don’t know who you are.”

He scoffed in anger, barely listening even as a chill slashed across him. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know who you are.”

“You don’t even know how to escape,” he spat. “You’ve schemed for weeks, and nothing, nothing’s come of it. You’re just a broken shell of a prisoner, trapped and doomed and losing his damn mind. Imagining things. Desperate for some fragile human connection to take the pain away.”

“I know who you are,” he repeated, voice rising, building up momentum.

There was a sound in the Soldier’s ears like steam hissing out of a kettle. Rogers couldn’t be stopped any more than he could have.

“You have gaps, you said. But you’re Sergeant James Barnes of the one-oh-seventh. Of the Howling Commandos. My second-in-command.” His voice broke. “My friend--”

“Stop it--”

“They think sending you in here will rattle me--”

“I said shut up---”

“They want you to get me to tell you things, information I wouldn’t normally give up. Information that would hurt people I care about, probably countless others. I can’t do that. But I can give you information, Buck. There are things I can tell you.”

“They broke you. Fuck, they really broke you.”

“Bucky Barnes from Flatbush. Your dad was a photographer. Your ma worked at her family’s print shop.”

“Damn it, Rogers--”

“You swept the floors on the weekends. They had you doing the books when you turned fourteen because you’ve always had a head for numbers.”

“Fuck--”

“You can do it now, can’t you? They can mess with your memory, but what’s eighty-six times thirty-five?” He paused. “You’ve got it already, don’t you? It’s three thousand ten. That’s an easy one. If you had a rifle in your hands, I bet you could calculate the shot with the wind and the trajectory no sweat. You remember that?”

He’d had a rifle in his hands just a few weeks ago. Part of him wanted to spit that at him, vicious and ugly. But he knew he couldn’t. He couldn’t. Why couldn’t he?

“You braided your sisters’ hair every Saturday, and you let them put makeup on you. You couldn’t draw worth a damn every time I stuck a pencil in your hand, but you could sing, and you loved music.”

“Just -- just stop it.” All the fight went out of him. “I’m not your Bucky. My name’s not--”

--James -- don’t call me James anymore, Ma, it’s Bucky.

He surged forward, burying his face between his knees and pressing until his ears throbbed. His head ached, his throat squeezing tight. Maintenance. He was supposed to tell maintenance. He was supposed to--

“We went to war together,” Steve was saying, his voice hazy and indistinct, like the Soldier was slipping underwater. Like the downy cotton feel in the last seconds before the ice pulled him down. “We went to school together. I slept on your floor. You sat at my mother’s kitchen table while she picked gravel out of your hands from when you got your ass kicked going after some creeps I’d lost a fight to.”

“You sure lose a lot of fights,” he pushed past chattering teeth. “Must be how you ended up here.”

“You had every mother charmed and every father spitting nails, and the hell of it is, you didn’t even try anything. You were a perfect gentleman. You kissed ‘em at the door and went home every time.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “Winter Soldier must’ve fucked you stupid. Pounded the sense right out of you.”

“I pulled you off a table in a slave-labor factory, and you marched by my side all the way out of a enemy territory and then right back into a warzone.”

“That’s not--”

“I loved you. And I love you now. You’re Bucky Barnes, damn it.” He huffed, loud and fierce. “You’re Bucky, and you deserve better than this. You’re better than this.”

“Stop,” he said weakly. “Just. You can tell me about your friend. But I’m not him. You have to accept that. Your mind’s just playing tricks on you.”

He didn’t know what kind of pathetic picture he presented, but Steve softened and pulled himself upright, pausing to lean against the wall and clutch his stomach before he caught his breath and walked over. The Soldier realized, as Steve ambled over with both hands on the wall for support, that he’d barely seen Steve stand at all in the last week. Maybe longer. He moved stiffly, careful and pained, silent and grim-lipped.

He sat heavily beside the Soldier, panting for a minute. It couldn’t be comfortable, but he didn’t acknowledge it. He leaned close, until their shoulders touched, and then he turned, nudging the Soldier until he reciprocated. In a way, once they were solidly pressed back to back, it was easier. He could listen, but he didn’t have to see. Rogers dropped his head back onto the Soldier’s shoulder, and after a few minutes, the Soldier did the same.

He didn’t know how long they sat that way, heads together, no space between them, Steve’s voice in his ear recounting a life he couldn’t have led with a man whose very presence set his mind into overdrive.

He only hoped, as the gas flooded the room, that it wouldn’t look too suspicious when they slumped over together.

every word is amazing and a gut punch

You are such an evil genius. My heart just aches for the two of them. Things are so terrible for both of them for completely different reasons and just... gah, this is so damn good.

Fuuuuckkkk
I just - God. Steve just barreling onward, relentless, trying to get Bucky to recognize himself. Every word was just a stab in the heart.

All the trash has been incredible but I'm really hoping they get rescued soon.

oh god.

I love the feeling of endgame here, that palpable feeling that everything is going to come to a head and it's not going to be pretty. And the Soldier, just clinging to the possibility of keeping Steve for a moment longer. I wonder if this is the first time he feared the Chair out of wanting to care for someone else rather than "just" losing his own memories. You have done such a good job of portraying that these are still good guys in bad circumstances. What makes the Soldier different from all the other HYDRA people, is that when he is shown even the tiniest bit of human decency, he repays it with humane actions of his own. The kindness has to be literally burned out of him with electricity, or dulled by drugs.

I am so afraid of what's going to happen. Does Steve already know that Bucky is WS? Will the Soldier get a last chance with Steve before they put him in the chair? How will Steve react when facing the chill of the Winter Soldier?

My heart is pre-emptively breaking.

On another note, I love that the things that Steve shares here, despite its honesty, is still so clearly different from the rawness of delirious!Steve. Delirious!Steve had no filter and shared things that he probably never told Bucky. Whereas here, Steve considers his every move. Hnnng I just love your character portrayals so much. <3 <3 <3

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

FILL: Daybreak part 13b Re: Identity Porn in captivity

Re: FILL: Daybreak part 13b Re: Identity Porn in captivity

Re: FILL: Daybreak part 13b Re: Identity Porn in captivity

Re: FILL: Daybreak part 13b Re: Identity Porn in captivity

Re: FILL: Daybreak part 13b Re: Identity Porn in captivity