Hey everyone! I'm so glad people are continuing to enjoy this! Here's the (hopefully) thrilling conclusion!
*************
“Don’t worry about it,” says Steve, his voice steady in a way that indicates self-control more than calm. “I just thought—nothing. I thought wrong. Tell me what you need.”
Bucky suspects Steve read that phrase in a book, which would be charming if it didn’t feel like so many other things as well. “I need you to tell me,” says Bucky. The words have the feel of a snappy comeback, but the tone he delivers them in is the kind of flat that makes Steve worry. He should care about that, probably. His ears ring like the aftermath of an explosion.
Steve sighs. They are both sitting up on the bed, now. Steve twists his fingers together. He takes a deep breath. “You told me once,” he says, “before...everything, that you liked to think about being...forced. So I thought for a minute just now—but I’m sorry. I’m sure things are different now. I didn’t mean to…” He trails off.
Bucky is stuck on “before everything.” “You mean when I first came back?” he asks.
“No, I mean before,” says Steve. “When we were—it was the year after my mother died. We were lying in bed together, we’d only just started being with each other like that. It was late at night, and we were whispering so the sound wouldn’t travel through the airshaft, and we were confessing things. It’s always stuck with me because—well, it doesn’t matter. Because that’s not what happened now, is it? I hurt you somehow. Tell me how so I don’t do it again.”
“What’s your angle here?” says Bucky, the last of his affect seeping from his voice like a beloved possession sold to make rent.
“My angle?”
“Yeah. Why would you say that? What are you—is this some kind of joke?” Bucky rises from the bed. The panic from before threatens to boil over once again, and the jolt of it sets his limbs into motion. He paces to the window and back again.
“Buck, I’m not—I’m sorry. It was a dumb thing to bring up right now. We don’t have to talk about it. We can do whatever you want.”
“No,” says Bucky. “Tell me. Tell me about my rape fantasies.” The word slices just as sharp as before, the “p” sound popping past his lips, but the slicing feels different, this time. Less clean.
“How about we get up and make some breakfast?” tries Steve.
“Tell me,” says Bucky. He has stopped pacing. “You asked if I wanted to play them out again.” He would remember, wouldn’t he, if they’d played them out before?
Steve lays his hands on his knees, palms down, a gesture of quiet resolve. “I’m telling you because you asked me to, OK? But I’m still sorry I brought it up.”
Bucky nods, and Steve continues, “You just told me the once. You said sometimes you’d read adventure stories or watch westerns at the pictures and there would be kidnappings and you would—feel things. That’s all.”
Bucky starts to pace again. That can’t be true. HYDRA put the broken place inside him, twisted his desires into a form they never took before and carved out a spot in his gut to hold the thick mess of want that resulted. He wasn’t this way before. He was something simpler, more open, something worth trying to restore.
Steve continues, “I asked if you wanted to try any of that out together, and you said maybe, and I think you meant yes, but I couldn’t see myself doing it. And you never brought it up again, so I never asked you, and then after you were gone, sometimes I felt sad that I could have made you happy that way and I didn’t, but it’s all different now. I’m just happy to have you back.”
“No,” says Bucky. “You must be remembering it wrong.”
Steve’s mouth twists into something apologetic. “I’ve thought about that conversation a lot,” he says.
“I didn’t used want that,” says Bucky. “I never wanted it before.”
“We don’t have to talk about this,” says Steve.
“I wasn’t like that before,” says Bucky. “I didn’t want it when they did it to me. Only afterwards. It’s because of what they did, that’s why I’m like this.”
It’s only once he says this that he realizes he has made a confession. A memory stirs inside of him, the dark of a long-ago bedroom, the clanks and mutters and snores from apartments above and below and to either side. The soft sound of Brooklyn asleep. And in the not-silence, whispers in the dark, from his lips and Steve’s, their words and their clouds of cold breath both dissipating as they pressed secrets into each other’s palms.
Inevitability is descending onto him, but there are still moments, surely, before it presses around him completely, so when Steve starts to say his name again, his tone soothing, Bucky says, “Get out.”
And, of course, Steve does.
***
Alone, Bucky considers the crowd of his fantasies.
They are not, he has to admit, HYDRA. Sure, with some trick of the imagination they could be, but they could just as easily coalesce into the men he remembers watching down at the docks when he was seventeen, or the mixed-gender crowd he sees at the gym he goes to now, or their default, a kind of faceless mass of cruelty, affiliated with no time, no place, no people. They are, in short, more primordial than Bucky would prefer. The deeper he digs, the more he remembers them making a home in him for as long as he has known.
Bucky sits back down on the bed. He turns this over, this new hypothesis: the broken place has been in him all along. Maybe not as intense, not as all-consuming, but it was with him before, and it is with him now. It is not a result of any kind of breaking.
The timeline is all wrong. His fantasies (clench up, we’re not done with you, we’re paying good money for this) should only have come after the horrors he knew later (he can take anything you give him—why? Because he doesn’t have a choice). If they came before—if he used to think about all that to get off, even just to get off sometimes, if he told Steve about it once, if he maybe wanted to act it out together—what does that mean for what was done to him? Where does the blame fall now?
Look at him, he’s practically begging for it.
Bucky feels sick. He lies down on the bed. Will Steve walk in on him like this, bearing pancakes and practiced words and his same kind smile? What do you need? What does Bucky need? What does he need to hear? What can he hear that will feel true?
Sometimes I felt sad that I could have made you happy that way and I didn’t.
Would Steve really do it? Would he hold Bucky down, slap the defiance out of his eyes? Would Bucky want him to?
Freedom is overwhelming, and all the words he can see spooling out ahead of him are an endless dull rasp against his skin, but there is something bubbling up inside Bucky, past the dread, something like possibility. He gets up. He is still naked. He runs his hand through his hair.
FILL: Secrets [3/3]
*************
“Don’t worry about it,” says Steve, his voice steady in a way that indicates self-control more than calm. “I just thought—nothing. I thought wrong. Tell me what you need.”
Bucky suspects Steve read that phrase in a book, which would be charming if it didn’t feel like so many other things as well. “I need you to tell me,” says Bucky. The words have the feel of a snappy comeback, but the tone he delivers them in is the kind of flat that makes Steve worry. He should care about that, probably. His ears ring like the aftermath of an explosion.
Steve sighs. They are both sitting up on the bed, now. Steve twists his fingers together. He takes a deep breath. “You told me once,” he says, “before...everything, that you liked to think about being...forced. So I thought for a minute just now—but I’m sorry. I’m sure things are different now. I didn’t mean to…” He trails off.
Bucky is stuck on “before everything.” “You mean when I first came back?” he asks.
“No, I mean before,” says Steve. “When we were—it was the year after my mother died. We were lying in bed together, we’d only just started being with each other like that. It was late at night, and we were whispering so the sound wouldn’t travel through the airshaft, and we were confessing things. It’s always stuck with me because—well, it doesn’t matter. Because that’s not what happened now, is it? I hurt you somehow. Tell me how so I don’t do it again.”
“What’s your angle here?” says Bucky, the last of his affect seeping from his voice like a beloved possession sold to make rent.
“My angle?”
“Yeah. Why would you say that? What are you—is this some kind of joke?” Bucky rises from the bed. The panic from before threatens to boil over once again, and the jolt of it sets his limbs into motion. He paces to the window and back again.
“Buck, I’m not—I’m sorry. It was a dumb thing to bring up right now. We don’t have to talk about it. We can do whatever you want.”
“No,” says Bucky. “Tell me. Tell me about my rape fantasies.” The word slices just as sharp as before, the “p” sound popping past his lips, but the slicing feels different, this time. Less clean.
“How about we get up and make some breakfast?” tries Steve.
“Tell me,” says Bucky. He has stopped pacing. “You asked if I wanted to play them out again.” He would remember, wouldn’t he, if they’d played them out before?
Steve lays his hands on his knees, palms down, a gesture of quiet resolve. “I’m telling you because you asked me to, OK? But I’m still sorry I brought it up.”
Bucky nods, and Steve continues, “You just told me the once. You said sometimes you’d read adventure stories or watch westerns at the pictures and there would be kidnappings and you would—feel things. That’s all.”
Bucky starts to pace again. That can’t be true. HYDRA put the broken place inside him, twisted his desires into a form they never took before and carved out a spot in his gut to hold the thick mess of want that resulted. He wasn’t this way before. He was something simpler, more open, something worth trying to restore.
Steve continues, “I asked if you wanted to try any of that out together, and you said maybe, and I think you meant yes, but I couldn’t see myself doing it. And you never brought it up again, so I never asked you, and then after you were gone, sometimes I felt sad that I could have made you happy that way and I didn’t, but it’s all different now. I’m just happy to have you back.”
“No,” says Bucky. “You must be remembering it wrong.”
Steve’s mouth twists into something apologetic. “I’ve thought about that conversation a lot,” he says.
“I didn’t used want that,” says Bucky. “I never wanted it before.”
“We don’t have to talk about this,” says Steve.
“I wasn’t like that before,” says Bucky. “I didn’t want it when they did it to me. Only afterwards. It’s because of what they did, that’s why I’m like this.”
It’s only once he says this that he realizes he has made a confession. A memory stirs inside of him, the dark of a long-ago bedroom, the clanks and mutters and snores from apartments above and below and to either side. The soft sound of Brooklyn asleep. And in the not-silence, whispers in the dark, from his lips and Steve’s, their words and their clouds of cold breath both dissipating as they pressed secrets into each other’s palms.
Inevitability is descending onto him, but there are still moments, surely, before it presses around him completely, so when Steve starts to say his name again, his tone soothing, Bucky says, “Get out.”
And, of course, Steve does.
***
Alone, Bucky considers the crowd of his fantasies.
They are not, he has to admit, HYDRA. Sure, with some trick of the imagination they could be, but they could just as easily coalesce into the men he remembers watching down at the docks when he was seventeen, or the mixed-gender crowd he sees at the gym he goes to now, or their default, a kind of faceless mass of cruelty, affiliated with no time, no place, no people. They are, in short, more primordial than Bucky would prefer. The deeper he digs, the more he remembers them making a home in him for as long as he has known.
Bucky sits back down on the bed. He turns this over, this new hypothesis: the broken place has been in him all along. Maybe not as intense, not as all-consuming, but it was with him before, and it is with him now. It is not a result of any kind of breaking.
The timeline is all wrong. His fantasies (clench up, we’re not done with you, we’re paying good money for this) should only have come after the horrors he knew later (he can take anything you give him—why? Because he doesn’t have a choice). If they came before—if he used to think about all that to get off, even just to get off sometimes, if he told Steve about it once, if he maybe wanted to act it out together—what does that mean for what was done to him? Where does the blame fall now?
Look at him, he’s practically begging for it.
Bucky feels sick. He lies down on the bed. Will Steve walk in on him like this, bearing pancakes and practiced words and his same kind smile? What do you need? What does Bucky need? What does he need to hear? What can he hear that will feel true?
Sometimes I felt sad that I could have made you happy that way and I didn’t.
Would Steve really do it? Would he hold Bucky down, slap the defiance out of his eyes? Would Bucky want him to?
Freedom is overwhelming, and all the words he can see spooling out ahead of him are an endless dull rasp against his skin, but there is something bubbling up inside Bucky, past the dread, something like possibility. He gets up. He is still naked. He runs his hand through his hair.
He walks. He reaches out. He grips the doorknob.
Turn. Open. Forward.