Steve seemed to like the idea of armed guards much more than Bucky did, but then again, he hadn’t told him everything Mandlakhe had said. Only that he’d discovered the patrol at night and that T’challa had sent them for their protection...
Right now, the guards were nowhere to be seen but that didn’t necessarily mean that the two supersoldiers were alone. Mandlakhe and his guys weren’t gone, just staying out of sight as best as they could. If it was for stealth or because they thought it would make Bucky more comfortable with their presence - he couldn’t say. Considering Mandlakhe’s personal dislike for him though, which he’d most likely shared amongst the others by now, the first option seemed to be a much safer bet.
Bucky was under no illusions that his alleged ‘complicity’ in the rape hadn’t made the rounds yet. T’challa’s warriors were forced to guard someone they probably considered lower than human. Given the indisputable fact that Bucky had repeatedly spread his legs for Hydra, knowing exactly what he was in for, he wasn’t sure that he disagreed with them.
He still heard the children’s cries from time to time, in his memory and his dreams, wishing he could save them from the horror, to make them look away and forget. The details of what had happened with Ward and his crew came back to Bucky in flashes. Their cruel, unwelcome hands on his body, their filthy dicks, and weapons inside of him, tearing him apart... It left him feeling dirty in a way he couldn’t ever scrub off.
Some days, the mere thought that another person could touch him again after all this, much less by their own free will, went beyond his head but Bucky could always count on Steve to reassure him. Nothing said continued sexual interest better than an importune supersoldier boner, pocking at your backside after a good late night cry, to make you feel lovable.
Steve (the horny bastard) wasn’t even slightly deterred by the things that Bucky’s body had been through. Any normal person would have been put out of the mood forever but not him. No, come to think of it, Steve would probably let his boyfriend roll in stinking garbage as long as they could still fool around after. It was sweet and a little embarrassing - mostly in a good way. They could beat anything together, and it helped to be down there in the thick of it as a team.
Bucky wasn’t keeping it together so well after Mandlakhe’s taunt. He really wished the warrior would just quit his job if he hated it so much, so they didn’t have to see each other again. The shock still sat deeply in his bones, but he had no such luck. All of the guardsmen treated the assignment seriously, taking great pride in the trust the king placed in them. The situation wouldn’t magically work itself out unless Bucky reported it to T’challa directly. That was the only way to get rid of the problem but it posed a big risk for them, too.
To repeat the hurtful words to the king and hope that he wouldn’t take his own people’s side... What if he didn’t and they had to leave? Bucky was neither a snitch nor a liar. Most of all, he wasn’t ready to explain where Mandlakhe had gotten his ideas from. Maybe he’d just read some of the leaked Winter Soldier files online and made an educated guess but if Amwoni had told his brother what he’d seen that day... Bucky couldn’t deny that he’d gone along with Hydra’s demands without a fight and that it wasn’t his first time either.
To an outsider, keeping the children hostage might look like an idle threat on Hydra’s part, like Bucky was too weak and cowardly to risk his life to get help, but he knew better. It wasn’t about physical strength. It was about being smart enough not to use it. If he’d tried anything, the Wakandans would have had a massacre on their hands instead of the sex scandal that Bucky’s suffering shaped up to be.
How could he explain his insight to T’challa? Make him understand that fighting back was never worth it in the end with guys like Ward? Not unless you knew how to killed them all and fast. Not even Steve fully got that and he knew what Bucky had been through. It hadn’t been easy but at the time, Bucky had no other choice... Steve was his partner. He had seen the cracks and asked the right questions.
So yeah, Bucky didn’t make a hobby out of telling his new friends about his history of sexual violence at the hands of Hydra, and he wasn’t about to start now. If he did they’d have to consider him an expert, a professional rape victim. Bucky didn’t like the way that changed his whole narrative, so he would have to get used to the guards eventually and adapt.
Bucky tried hard not to notice them patrolling around him from time to time, making their rounds as they’d been instructed but it put his frayed nerves on edge. Trampled grass and a trail of fresh footprints in the backyard, the lingering smell of testosterone and strange men in the air, a flash of the red and gold colored uniform in his peripheral vision...
Just the feeling of being watched (and judged) was enough to make the hair at the back of his neck stand up constantly. It kept him from going for a leisurely stroll through the hills or chasing after the promise of a relaxing bath whenever he felt like it. As long as there were eyes on him, undressing didn’t feel safe anyhow. Bucky was too uncomfortable to let his guard down like that. He wasn’t a prude, but he craved privacy more than ever now, feeling like people could tell there was something wrong with him even when they didn’t get a good look at his scars.
Steve claimed that it didn’t bother him, that Bucky was still beautiful inside and out, but the damage was done.
Funny enough, Hydra had reversed their own hard work by putting them there. Back in his Winter Soldier days they had stripped Bucky and hosed him down on the regular. At least once after every thawing and after the wipes to get rid of the stench of body excretions and sweat that came as a side effect of too much electricity on defenseless skin.
Weirdly, they never cut his hair or dressed him up in anything but the asset’s uniform (it was either this or nothing) but they were pretty big on hygiene. After the Soviets, he never smelled again unless it served a purpose. By the time they stopped forcefully removing his clothes and started ordering him to do it himself, the whole routine had rid Bucky of his modesty quite effectively. Being exposed in any state (no matter how undignified) had become a non-issue.
Bucky used to have a lot of these “non-issues” back in the day and kept struggling with some of them long after Project Inside had failed. He tried not to dwell on it for too long. Thinking about how odd his behavior must have seemed to Steve in the beginning, the way he’d crossed over pretty much every healthy boundary known to man, still made his skin crawl with second-hand embarrassment. Steve guessed what Bucky had been through after the first time that he—
Anyways. The things Hydra did to him were bound to screw with his sense of shame, and considering all the other things he’d lost, reclaiming that part of his humanity hadn’t been Bucky’s top priority. Now the shame and the need for bodily autonomy were back in full scale, and being naked and looked at by anyone that wasn’t Steve seemed impossible to stomach.
Hell, even then it took a lot of coaxing and gentle reassurance on his boyfriend’s part before Bucky would even consider taking his clothes off. They hadn’t tried to do more than cuddle for a while now, laying off the sex for good. It was more than a little unusual for them, to say the least. They had barely managed to wait an entire day without fooling around at most before Hydra’s gruesome attack put a damp on things. Now, Steve seemed to sense Bucky’s reluctance, his complete inability to relax when he heard even the slightest sound or saw a shadow on the wall that so much as hinted that they might have company.
When Steve stopped trying eventually, they both become more frustrated by the day. Bucky loathed himself for it. Why couldn’t he get over it? Well... The answer was rather simple. He’d moved out here, up in the hills, for a reason and that sure as shit wasn’t the idea of 24/7 surveillance and giving his new prison guards a free peepshow. Losing what was left of his safe space, and his sex life with Steve, after Hydra had taken so much from him already, felt like a punishment that even he didn’t deserve...
“Hey, you with me?” Steve murmured under his breath. He nudged Bucky with the handle of the pruning shears gently, effectively pulling him from his spiraling thoughts.
Fill: The Quiet Game (11.1/?)
Steve seemed to like the idea of armed guards much more than Bucky did, but then again, he hadn’t told him everything Mandlakhe had said. Only that he’d discovered the patrol at night and that T’challa had sent them for their protection...
Right now, the guards were nowhere to be seen but that didn’t necessarily mean that the two supersoldiers were alone. Mandlakhe and his guys weren’t gone, just staying out of sight as best as they could. If it was for stealth or because they thought it would make Bucky more comfortable with their presence - he couldn’t say. Considering Mandlakhe’s personal dislike for him though, which he’d most likely shared amongst the others by now, the first option seemed to be a much safer bet.
Bucky was under no illusions that his alleged ‘complicity’ in the rape hadn’t made the rounds yet. T’challa’s warriors were forced to guard someone they probably considered lower than human. Given the indisputable fact that Bucky had repeatedly spread his legs for Hydra, knowing exactly what he was in for, he wasn’t sure that he disagreed with them.
He still heard the children’s cries from time to time, in his memory and his dreams, wishing he could save them from the horror, to make them look away and forget. The details of what had happened with Ward and his crew came back to Bucky in flashes. Their cruel, unwelcome hands on his body, their filthy dicks, and weapons inside of him, tearing him apart... It left him feeling dirty in a way he couldn’t ever scrub off.
Some days, the mere thought that another person could touch him again after all this, much less by their own free will, went beyond his head but Bucky could always count on Steve to reassure him. Nothing said continued sexual interest better than an importune supersoldier boner, pocking at your backside after a good late night cry, to make you feel lovable.
Steve (the horny bastard) wasn’t even slightly deterred by the things that Bucky’s body had been through. Any normal person would have been put out of the mood forever but not him. No, come to think of it, Steve would probably let his boyfriend roll in stinking garbage as long as they could still fool around after. It was sweet and a little embarrassing - mostly in a good way. They could beat anything together, and it helped to be down there in the thick of it as a team.
Bucky wasn’t keeping it together so well after Mandlakhe’s taunt. He really wished the warrior would just quit his job if he hated it so much, so they didn’t have to see each other again. The shock still sat deeply in his bones, but he had no such luck. All of the guardsmen treated the assignment seriously, taking great pride in the trust the king placed in them. The situation wouldn’t magically work itself out unless Bucky reported it to T’challa directly. That was the only way to get rid of the problem but it posed a big risk for them, too.
To repeat the hurtful words to the king and hope that he wouldn’t take his own people’s side... What if he didn’t and they had to leave? Bucky was neither a snitch nor a liar. Most of all, he wasn’t ready to explain where Mandlakhe had gotten his ideas from. Maybe he’d just read some of the leaked Winter Soldier files online and made an educated guess but if Amwoni had told his brother what he’d seen that day... Bucky couldn’t deny that he’d gone along with Hydra’s demands without a fight and that it wasn’t his first time either.
To an outsider, keeping the children hostage might look like an idle threat on Hydra’s part, like Bucky was too weak and cowardly to risk his life to get help, but he knew better. It wasn’t about physical strength. It was about being smart enough not to use it. If he’d tried anything, the Wakandans would have had a massacre on their hands instead of the sex scandal that Bucky’s suffering shaped up to be.
How could he explain his insight to T’challa? Make him understand that fighting back was never worth it in the end with guys like Ward? Not unless you knew how to killed them all and fast. Not even Steve fully got that and he knew what Bucky had been through. It hadn’t been easy but at the time, Bucky had no other choice... Steve was his partner. He had seen the cracks and asked the right questions.
So yeah, Bucky didn’t make a hobby out of telling his new friends about his history of sexual violence at the hands of Hydra, and he wasn’t about to start now. If he did they’d have to consider him an expert, a professional rape victim. Bucky didn’t like the way that changed his whole narrative, so he would have to get used to the guards eventually and adapt.
Bucky tried hard not to notice them patrolling around him from time to time, making their rounds as they’d been instructed but it put his frayed nerves on edge. Trampled grass and a trail of fresh footprints in the backyard, the lingering smell of testosterone and strange men in the air, a flash of the red and gold colored uniform in his peripheral vision...
Just the feeling of being watched (and judged) was enough to make the hair at the back of his neck stand up constantly. It kept him from going for a leisurely stroll through the hills or chasing after the promise of a relaxing bath whenever he felt like it. As long as there were eyes on him, undressing didn’t feel safe anyhow. Bucky was too uncomfortable to let his guard down like that. He wasn’t a prude, but he craved privacy more than ever now, feeling like people could tell there was something wrong with him even when they didn’t get a good look at his scars.
Steve claimed that it didn’t bother him, that Bucky was still beautiful inside and out, but the damage was done.
Funny enough, Hydra had reversed their own hard work by putting them there. Back in his Winter Soldier days they had stripped Bucky and hosed him down on the regular. At least once after every thawing and after the wipes to get rid of the stench of body excretions and sweat that came as a side effect of too much electricity on defenseless skin.
Weirdly, they never cut his hair or dressed him up in anything but the asset’s uniform (it was either this or nothing) but they were pretty big on hygiene. After the Soviets, he never smelled again unless it served a purpose. By the time they stopped forcefully removing his clothes and started ordering him to do it himself, the whole routine had rid Bucky of his modesty quite effectively. Being exposed in any state (no matter how undignified) had become a non-issue.
Bucky used to have a lot of these “non-issues” back in the day and kept struggling with some of them long after Project Inside had failed. He tried not to dwell on it for too long. Thinking about how odd his behavior must have seemed to Steve in the beginning, the way he’d crossed over pretty much every healthy boundary known to man, still made his skin crawl with second-hand embarrassment. Steve guessed what Bucky had been through after the first time that he—
Anyways. The things Hydra did to him were bound to screw with his sense of shame, and considering all the other things he’d lost, reclaiming that part of his humanity hadn’t been Bucky’s top priority. Now the shame and the need for bodily autonomy were back in full scale, and being naked and looked at by anyone that wasn’t Steve seemed impossible to stomach.
Hell, even then it took a lot of coaxing and gentle reassurance on his boyfriend’s part before Bucky would even consider taking his clothes off. They hadn’t tried to do more than cuddle for a while now, laying off the sex for good. It was more than a little unusual for them, to say the least. They had barely managed to wait an entire day without fooling around at most before Hydra’s gruesome attack put a damp on things. Now, Steve seemed to sense Bucky’s reluctance, his complete inability to relax when he heard even the slightest sound or saw a shadow on the wall that so much as hinted that they might have company.
When Steve stopped trying eventually, they both become more frustrated by the day. Bucky loathed himself for it. Why couldn’t he get over it? Well... The answer was rather simple. He’d moved out here, up in the hills, for a reason and that sure as shit wasn’t the idea of 24/7 surveillance and giving his new prison guards a free peepshow. Losing what was left of his safe space, and his sex life with Steve, after Hydra had taken so much from him already, felt like a punishment that even he didn’t deserve...
“Hey, you with me?” Steve murmured under his breath. He nudged Bucky with the handle of the pruning shears gently, effectively pulling him from his spiraling thoughts.