Dumpster #5: We didn't start the trashfire

[trashmod]

Welcome to the latest, greatest, scummiest iteration of hydratrashmeme. Come on in and please check your sense of shame at the door.

Rules in brief: Don't be a jerk except to fictional characters. Warn if you want, but read at your own risk, because this is emphatically not a safe space. Link your fills on the fill post. Unprompted fills: make a prompt or a header comment and reply to it with the full text. Continuations of fills from earlier rounds: just make sure you link in both places.

What's on-topic: Filthy and perverted twists on all the quality whump served up by Cap: Winter Soldier. Noncon, aftermath, uncomfortably sexualized violence, mind control, inappropriate uses of Bucky Barnes' metal arm, bad guys doing dirtybadwrong things to your faves.
What's off-topic: a/b/o, D/s-verse, soulbonds, mundane AUs, shippy/romanticized noncon, MCU heroes repurposed into OOC or edgydark delivery vehicles for your fave's suffering. If you've got a prompt for one of those burning a hole in your brain, head on over to mcu_trash.

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Fill: The Quiet Game (10.1/?)

[devildears]

Bucky jostled awake. He couldn’t tell what had alerted him this time, only that he couldn’t get his stupid brain to shut up and sleep more than a couple of hours a night.

Maybe it had been another nightmare. Maybe not.

Bucky squinted and tried to make out the familiar shape of their room in the dark. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary but he wasn't fully convinced yet. Twisting his head to the side, he listened carefully, and...

Still nothing. It was all peaceful and quiet inside the hut - apart from the reliable sound of Steve’s deep breathing in the night. In and out. The blanket moved with the even rise and fall of his chest.

Back in the day, when Steve was still little, Bucky used to worry that he might just up and die in his sleep, stop breathing altogether. He used to wake up in the middle of the night like this, listening to every little intake of air, and when Steve didn’t seem to get enough by Bucky’s standards, or the rhythm became too irregular, he shook him awake, uncaring that it made the little guy raging mad.

It was always worth it in the end and frankly, Bucky was too invested to stop. He even got hit for his troubles once or twice - and not just purely out of reflex as Steve later claimed - until the serum finally took away the transience of their life together. Now that Steve’s imminent death no longer hung over their heads like Damocles’s sword, the world was brighter for it.

Bucky listened again. Still quiet except for his partner’s steady breathing. There was no threat. He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed loudly. Thank god.

As expected, instead of waking from the noise, Steve turned over on his other side and snored.

“Wouldn’t become you to get up for anything short of a gunfire, would it, pal?” Bucky whispered.

Steve drooled on the blanket in response, entirely unconscious.

Bucky shook his head at him fondly, watching what he could see of his lover’s blissful face in the dark for a while. He was glad that Steve was starting to sleep through the night again - even if Bucky himself couldn’t.

Continuing the search for Ward in a more reasonable manner, and at a more fitting time of the day, was good for both of them but Steve’s improvement was much more apparent. It made him act like less of an angry zombie and more like the person Bucky loved again. Things were finally starting to look up.

Bucky had been terrified of getting too close to his boyfriend at first, of seeing his reaction to the injuries Hydra had inflicted on him but something had changed when Steve had looked at the scars down there. He hadn't left, hadn't been disgusted - at least not with Bucky.

Maybe they were stronger for it now.

Bucky rolled off the mattress in defeat, knowing that he wasn’t going to fall asleep again any time soon. He stood up almost silently, and went over to the stove to make his beloved Marula tea.

The nutrients in the tree’s bark relieved the constant ache in his shoulder where Zola had drilled screws into his spine to support the metal arm. It often helped with that and other pains.

Bucky could push through almost anything when he had to. He could ignore the unpleasantness of pain, especially when he didn’t want his oblivious partner to notice what was going on because things were finally fun again, but in truth, Bucky’s ass still wasn't right. After the brutal treatment Ward and his men had given him, no careful fingering or enthusiastic rimming on Steve’s side could change that. Not for the lack of trying though.

Bucky had even attempted it solo that one time after Steve’s unsuccessful effort to get him off with his fingers but there was nothing to gain, only an unpleasant buzz from the dead nerves (like the sickening tingle of a numb limb that you couldn’t touch directly without it getting weird) and the unusual tightness that made it tricky to reach his goal on the pleasure front. 

Lately, Bucky wondered if the serum had stitched him up so badly that it had twisted him on the inside. It did that sometimes with bone fractures and other more grueling injuries, just growing things back the wrong way.

The only practical solution in that case was to break what had healed wrong and reset it. Simple as that. They’d done it for each other countless times, only it wasn’t an option in this case.

Even if Steve could technically help him with the problem (because he had the equipment to do some real damage if he went in dry and he loved Bucky enough to offer his left leg for a normal sex life), Bucky wasn’t gonna ask him, or Hydra, or anyone really, to do that to his poor body. Not this, not even with a certified doctor at hand and enough horse tranquilizer to knock him out cold for it. He couldn’t even stomach the thought.

Careful not to spill anything on the floor, Bucky scooped some water from the cauldron with a trowel, and poured it into a cup on the stove to heat it. When everything was ready, he checked the little wooden box which he stored the sweet-scented bark in.

It was empty. The rest of his stash was outside in a hand-molded clay chest which functioned as a small outside-fridge for all kinds of dried food. Easy to get to, but Bucky hesitated. He didn’t feel like waking Steve in the middle of the night, but he also didn’t feel like going outside without telling him where he was going first...

Buying himself some time to think, Bucky sat down on top of the kitchen cabinet with the empty box in hand, letting his feet dangle, and ignored the way it creaked under his weight.

He looked at Steve’s sleeping form again and decided to do it anyways. What was the big risk? T’challa had sworn the border was well-guarded now and he knew that they were scanning for threats with Shuri’s state of the art technology, all day and night. She wasn’t going to let Hydra break in a second time. 

The princess, T’challa had let them know, felt responsible for what had happened. She hadn’t been to see them in person yet but she had sent Bucky a long message, saying how sorry she was for failing him. He’d written back immediately, assuring her that it wasn’t her fault but he knew that guilt wasn’t always rational. It wouldn’t just go away at his say so but at least, Shuri could focus on her work now and do better.

Nothing bad was going to happen here ever again and anyways, Bucky couldn’t treat Steve like a guardian any longer, clinging to him for safety, like a life line. He wasn’t a helpless child after all. He was a fighter. A survivor. He had no need for a body guard. 

Bucky jumped to his feet, pulled down the olalem from its place on the wall, and stuffed it into his belt. He got his old backpack from the closet quietly and slipped into his sandals.

Making sure Steve was asleep one last time, he left the hut in a fast stride before he could change his mind.

Nothing bad was going to happen. Nothing.

He didn't look back at the hut and walked straight past the dried-up foutain that held no water in the summer, one hand on his weapon, shaking in fear.

Bucky’s way was illuminated by the silvery light of the full moon, giving the scenery a dreamlike quality that he couldn’t quite enjoy. His heart was beating too fast, his wide eyes darted around, here and there, scanning his environment, like a hunted animal, afraid of its own vulnerability. Bucky knew that he’d be unable to make out any predators in the dark...

Pull yourself together, he told himself, the angry twist of his mouth a thin line. Hydra’s not gonna wait for you behind a fig tree in the dark at ass-o-clock in the morning!

When he had almost passed by the goat fence, not looking at the ground in his paranoia of missing an attack, he stumbled over a root and stubbed his toe. Bucky caught himself but twisted his ankle in the process.

“Fuck!” he cursed loudly, hobbling around on one leg.

He stopped to lean on a wooden post, taking deep breaths to calm his racing heart and mind, and ignored the pain. This was nothing. He could still do this. All he had to do was man-up and focus on something else.

Scrambling for some happy memories, Bucky thought of his goats which had pastered in the field in front of him during the colder seasons. For the remaining time of the year, as long as the grass was too dry and often burnt, they remained in a sheltered area further up in the mountains where food was plenty and they were protected from the exhaustion of the heat.

Bucky couldn’t wait to get them back. He’d never delivered any babies himself. He wasn’t even at the hospital when his ma gave birth to Rebecca, and Miss Maisy, the black cat they had rescued and hidden under the stairs in the Barnes home when they were 6 or 7 - more or less successfully - had done all the hard work herself one night. They cried for a week when they learned that weren’t allowed to keep the kiddens but anyways, some of Bucky’s pregnant sheep were due in the winter, so he had a new first to look forward to. The miracle of life.

With a clearer head and the ghost of a smile on his lips, Bucky took another deep breath and let go of his anchor. He felt much safer already. All he had to do was not think of the bad stuff again.

With that intent, he patted the fence post like it was an old friend and limbed over to his little storage bunker, rummaging through the contents. They had enough supplies to last them about 3 weeks on dried food and water alone, but if that failed, they could always count on the Wakandans. They were especially hospitable neighbors. When the harvest was meek and some poor schmock’s luck ran out, they always found a way to make sure that no one went hungry. That was just the kind of people they were.

Even if that wasn’t a matter of course with everyone anymore (Bucky wasn’t entirely sure where he stood with some of his old neighbors after ‘the incident’ and he was too afraid to ask), Steve and him were as rich as God now. Thanks to the army’s generous backpay - which Steve had earned and Bucky absolutely didn’t deserve - they had enough money to buy a small mansion. They’d just decided to stay here instead where they couldn’t get to a store without an hours march.

It wasn’t just an inconvenience though. The bustle of the city was miles away and Bucky preferred it like that. A simple life. Relying on his own hard work and skills, as it always had been.

Packing a load of dried meat, and fruit, and the restocked tea box into his backpack, Bucky stood up to make his retreat with a relaxed feeling, stupidly proud of himself for the little thing he’d achieved on his own, when suddenly, he heard a branch crack.

The Quiet Game (10.1/?) AUTHOR’S NOTE PLEASE READ

[devildears]

The author is an idiot sandwich and should not write several trash scenes at once.
I can’t believe I wrote “Rumlow” in the 10.2 chapter instead of Ward several times. That’s what I get for not having a beta.
Anyways, please read the rest of this over at AO3 where I fixed the issue:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/17200607/chapters/42130361