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.

[Rules in full] [Round 1] [Round 2] [Round 3] [Round 4] [Fill post] [Chatter post] [hydratrashmeme Pinboard archive] [Round 5 in flat view (comments in non-threaded chronological order, most recent last)]

Comments

Fill: The Quiet Game (13.2/?)

[devildears]

The game went well for a good 30 minutes. Tamia had found the last hidden kid behind a rock when Bucky heard an additional step of footsteps and rose, alarmed. The person was light on their feet. The small body was breaking through the tree line without breaking any branches, so it was unlikely to be a soldier but Bucky ran over there to investigate anyways.

When he arrived, the children were standing in a circle, arguing and shoving each other. 

“Everything all right over here?”

The little group startled and parted, revealing a scared-looking kid in their midst who hadn’t been with them earlier. Bucky recognized him at once. 

“Oh... Hey, Amwoni. How’s it going?”

Bucky waved at him with what he hoped was a friendly smile but otherwise he kept his distance. As long as Amwoni’s parents didn’t want him near their child, Bucky was going to respect their wishes.

Meeting the boy here was no surprise. Between the clans of the Mining tribe, Amwoni’s family, the Melele, lived closest to the border. Bucky worried about them every day. 

Amwoni’s little face looked haunted. He glanced at the other kids nervously who Bucky couldn’t help but notice were regarding him with an uncharacteristic hostility. He didn’t say a word.

Bucky decided to ignore the lingering awkwardness and tried again. 

“Umm... What’s up, buddy? You lost? Need any help?”

Amwoni looked away. “No, I—”

Behind the boy’s back, the others started talking amongst each other, whispering low. Whatever they said made Amwoni wince and avert his eyes. They were using lots of abbreviated words Bucky wasn’t familiar with, speaking fast, clearly trying to keep him out of the conversation. Usually it meant that they were up to no good, scheming in some way Bucky wouldn’t approve of or setting up a surprise for him, but this time, the tension seemed thick enough to cut with a knife.

“What’s wrong?” Bucky asked no one in particular. “Guys?”

The little group stayed silent, standing before Bucky with nervous glances.

“Seriously. Come on...” 

Finally, N’boku stepped forward, chin raised.

“Ingcuka? Ndinombuzo,” he announced, voice hard. He was trying to sound older, to put some authority behind it. I have a question.

“Ewe.” Yes, Bucky replied. “What is it?” They were starting to make him sweat with nerves. 

“Would you ever... Lie to us?” N’boku asked haltingly. 

Bucky frowned. “I don’t know...” he answered evasively and twisted a loose strand of hair at the back of his neck. “Lie about what exactly?”

“He said... But you told us... Well, Amwoni’s brother says— He says men can’t get raped.”

Bucky couldn’t help it. He flinched violently and turned towards Amwoni with a stormy expression.

“What?!”

Amwoni blushed all the way up to his dark curls and ducked his little head. Bucky instantly regretted his harsh tone but he found it nearly impossible to control his emotions and reassure the kid at the same time.

What the actual fuck?!

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to ease the queasy feeling in his stomach. His skin felt clammy, hot and cold from anger and humiliation at the same time. 

“Hey— It’s just... No, it’s ok. It’s fine. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have yelled...” Bucky sighed, pressing his index and ring finger to his closed eyes to relief some of the pressure there. “But it’s just... That’s not... It’s not true. OK? It’s not.”

When Bucky noticed his hand shake, he stuffed it inside his side pocket immediately, hoping they hadn’t noticed how much the whole thing threw him off.

He was grateful suddenly, for the weeks he got to spent online and at the library in Bucharest, reading through all the material on male rape he could get his hands on. Otherwise he might have been entirely out of his depth here.

It hadn’t been easy at first, to deal with certain aspects of his past and to categorize what Hydra had done to him properly. Back in the 40s, rape was something that happened to women exclusively, especially to the easy ones - or so he thought. The idea that it could happen to a person of the opposite sex was unthinkable. Of course there were queers, and actual fairies - dames looking like fellas, and prostitutes who sold every part of their bodies for money so they could eat. Hell, Bucky fell in at least one of those categories himself, having lost his own virginity to his best friend. Steve went with more guys than he did girls despite the fact that he happened to be one of them as well, but to think that there could be force involved... No man in his right mind would ever admit to that, to being so weak, a victim to something that was deemed unnatural, much less report it. Sodomy as they called it was forbidden by law and dangerous in many ways. So, either there was nothing to report or you went straight to jail. That was if the police didn’t feel the need to put the fear of god in you first and sent you home to the Lord a little early. No thanks.

The modern century was a lot more progressive but there was still a noticeable lack of information out there unless you knew exactly where to look. In the beginning, Bucky felt overwhelmed with shame, standing in front of some book shelf for hours like he didn’t have anything particular in mind. He had looked up and memorized the exact titles he came for but he waited to pick them up until he was absolutely certain that no one was watching him.

Jesus... He’d thought it was over then.

“That’s what you said though, isn’t it?” N’boku interrupted Bucky’s thoughts, grabbing Amwoni’s little arm and shaking him with it. “Tell him!”

“Hey!” Bucky said, not angry but clear and commanding. “Stop that. You let him go. Right now.”

N’boku released the other boy’s arm, with a scornful snort. “What? He said it.”

Amwoni shuffled around sheepishly and kept staring at his feet. “I’m... I’m sorry,” he mumbled meekly. “I didn’t...”

N’boku snorted. “Your brother is an idiot! Everybody knows that,” he announced confidently.

“No, he isn’t! That’s not true!” Amwoni retorted lowly, with tears glittering in his eyes.

“You’re so silly,” Arih inserted.

“What is rape?”

“Kids? Kids! Stop it! Stop.”

Bucky threw up his hand and then ground his knuckles against his eyes, hard.

Alright, this was happening. Whether he liked it or not.

“Everyone quiet, ok? Amwoni, can you tell me what he said exactly? I won’t be mad. I swear. Just... Tell me, alright? I think this is something we should all talk about.”

“Sorry, Ingcuka. He... he doesn’t think our parents should— Should let me come back. To play with you. He said... you’re a...”

N’boku glared at him and tried to cover Amwoni’s mouth with both hands.

“Hey, stop that!” Bucky ordered and broke it up. “Let him speak. It’s ok. I’m a what? What did he say?”

Amwoni didn’t answer, too intimidated for the moment. 

N’boku sighed. “Inguka, you don’t want to know.”

“I do actually. Just say it.”

N’boku shook his head. “Fine. He says that you’re a traitor, and that your people came here only to challenge you. He says that you didn’t want to fight them because... You are a coward, so you asked them to— to do those things to you, because you have a sick mind.”

Bucky blinked at him dumbly. “Oh. Wow... Umm... That’s a lot to unpack.”

He’d known that Mandlakhe wasn’t his biggest fan but spreading lies like that? That shit was as dangerous as it was vile. Despite the anger and the hurt Bucky felt about it now he could see that this wasn’t the time to get angry and retaliate. Amwoni had no way of knowing how wrong his brother was in all of this. Most kids only repeated what the adults taught them. It wasn’t his fault. Bucky had to be the bigger person at least for a little while and set things straight. 

He cleared his throat. 

“Guys...”

Bucky considered asking them if they had talked about this topic in sex education yet but then he realized that he wasn’t going to get a straight answer. They were either gonna giggle about it or have widely different levels of knowledge given their age difference, so he tried a different route.

“You know that Steve is my partner, right? Like a romantic partner?”

They all nodded eagerly.

“And remember when I told you what Steve and I do when we’re in bed together is private?”

The children nodded again, watching him with bright eyes.

Talking to them about sex had been a little awkward but necessary the first time around, too. It just came up when Bucky caught them peeping at him and his boyfriend in the act...