trashmod: (Default)
garbage all the way down ([personal profile] trashmod) wrote in [community profile] hydratrashmeme2014-05-30 05:23 pm

Trash Party Dumpster #1

(Will be continued in a Dumpster #2 post if by some unholy hell-miracle this post hits the 5000-comment limit.)

Filthy anon dumpster for sad hobos to fling moldy pizza crusts, raccoon eye makeup tips, and garbage about their sad trash kinks at each other.

AKA the Hydra Trash Party kinkmeme. One hundred percent Hydra Party Favor Bucky Barnes, Is It Sexy Violence Or Violent Sex?, and Bad Guys Do Bad Things To Your Faves: Winter Soldier Edition. BLANKET NON-CON/DUB-CON WARNING, not safe for work, not safe for life, not safe for anyone, read at your own risk of becoming one of us.

Rules in brief: don't be a jerk except to fictional characters, warnings for particularly fucked-up garbage are nice but not required, thou shalt not judge the trashiness of thy neighbor's kinks unless thy neighbor is trying to pass off their rotting banana peels and half-eaten pizza crusts as a healthy romantic dinner for two, off-topic comments may be chucked out of the dumpster at management's discretion, management's discretion decrees that omegaverse, soulbond AUs, D/s-verse, non-superpowered AUs, etc. are off-topic.

Organization: hydratrashmeme Pinboard archive maintained by [personal profile] greenkirtle. If you fill a prompt, drop a link at the fill post. Discussion threads now have a chatter post.

If you want email notifications for new comments here, sign up for a Dreamwidth account and click the little bell icon at the top of this post. To read new comments chronologically rather than in threads, use flat view.

GO TO TOWN, TRASHBABIES.

Unholy hell-miracle achieved! Round 1 is closed; comments and fills in existing threads are still welcome, but all new prompts go to Round 2.

Re: Fill: Pedigree (5/?)

(Anonymous) 2014-11-23 06:53 am (UTC)(link)
Harper is still staring at the Soldier like he’s the boogeyman and Jesus Christ all wrapped up in one; he looks one stop short of wetting his pants. Not that Brock blames the guy. Harper’s only had one other mission with the Soldier in close proximity, and that had been that shitshow standoff in Belize. The Soldier had wound up storming the compound to drag the target wrong way through a plate glass window because the fucker’s counter snipers had damaged his favorite tripod. Whatever people like to say about cyborg emotions, Brock is pretty sure the Soldier adequately expresses ‘pissed off’.

He pulls out the dossier ‘Charlene’ had handed him on the way out. Photocopies, embossed with ‘Eyes Only’ on every page. The ‘overview’ is entirely too wordy, footnotes on operant conditioning and every other academic detail you do not need in an operating manual, but he’s used to skimming R&D bullshit.

“Regulations are he eats in the cage, sleeps in the cage. As long as he behaves, we leave him to it. And don’t stick anything through the sides. He’s supposed to see this as his personal space. I see your dick through those bars, I’m telling him to cut it off.”

He scans through a few more pages, charts and graphs and extraneous tables, but it seems like he’s got the jist. The Soldier’s supposed to want the cage, feel like it’s his den or docking station or whatever. And from what he’s seen, it works, but…Christ, the implications.

Order comes through discipline, and correction, if necessary. And he’s seen what happens in that chair, when the Soldier needs correction. He not sure he wants to know what it means that they still have to resort to mind games to keep the Asset controlled.

“Hey uh, can he at least take the mask off?” Harper asks.

“Why?”

“Cause that’s creepy as shit?”

Brock’s hand jumps immediately to his baton. He twists sideways in his seat so he can see into the back, but the Soldier hasn’t moved an inch.

“What’d he do?”

“Nothing, I just…” At least Harper has the decency to look embarrassed. “Hate the way he stares at you. You know? Fuckin’ bug eyes.”

He cups his hands around his eyes like the Soldier’s impassive goggles. Mitchell looks up from his iPhone, snorts.

“Fuck off, Mitchell,” Harper snaps. Brock knows how he feels.

“Soldier, remove your face mask and goggles,” Brock orders in Russian. Personally, he doesn’t think it matters much. The Soldier stares whether he’s suited up or not; the difference is whether you can tell he’s doing it. But if Harper feels better seeing those spooky eyes, more power to him.

He’s also pleased to see how quickly the Soldier obeys. The dossier says that if the Soldier doesn’t comply with orders in ‘an acceptable time frame’ (defined as fifteen to sixty seconds), he loses cage privileges immediately. The Soldier must know it, because he practically rips the gear off his face. The cage wobbles alarmingly as he shifts to get the goggle straps, some bars flexing out as his arm draws against them. Not a fancy scifi metal then. Regular aluminum, no heavier than fence wire. It should hold the Soldier about as well as a paperclip.

The Soldier doesn’t stretch outside his boundary though, not even to put the gear away. Instead, he fits his goggles into the curve of his tactical mask, snugs the whole bundle up against his chest. It looks for all the world like a kid hugging a teddy.

His blue, blue eyes stare straight ahead.

“I don’t know if that’s better or worse,” Harper admits.

“We could put a towel over him,” Mitchell suggests.

“What,” Rollins says.

“Like with parrots. Maybe he’ll think it’s bedtime.”

Fucking newbies.

“The Soldier is smarter than a parrot,” Brock says, despite his own suspicions to the contrary.

Mitchell tips his iPhone at the kennel.

“He’s literally hanging out in a cage.”

“I am going to put you in a cage,” Rollins offers. “Agent Rumlow said, don’t stick stuff in there.”

“I meant over the cage! So he’ll think it’s night.”

Brock is starting to wonder when he lost control of this conversation.

“No one is putting anything anywhere,” he snaps.

Rollins mutters something suspiciously like ‘that’s what she said’. Brock ignores the shit out of him.

“Just shut it and leave him alone. I’ll write up what you can do - later.”

Once he gets through this metric fuckload of documentation and makes a few important changes. He’s under no illusions why they gave this entire stack to him. R&D is crap at writing for a field audience; they like it when he “adds his perspective”.

“You got screwed into editing again?” Rollins asks, so pointedly neutral that it’s clear he’s judging the hell out of that.

“Yeah. They want to use this in the field, they need to step up their technical writing,” Brock grunts, and refuses to engage. He’s not going to get into it about whether he should be ‘pushing back’. His role is to keep things in order, and if that means sometimes he gets volunteered for shit not in his job description, whatever. SHIELD’s job descriptions never covered murder-gimps in dog crates, either.

He takes one last look through the back before settling in for the long haul. Mitchell and Harper are mutually sulking at their phones, both turned away from the creepiness of the kennel. The Soldier’s eyes are glued to him, seemingly tracking his every breath. He pulls his gear closer, up under his chin.

“I’m not taking it from you,” Brock mutters. “Not as long as you behave. Please don’t make me have to take it.”

He wonders if he imagines that tiny nod the Soldier gives him before he closes his eyes. The next time he looks back, the Soldier’s breathing is slow and steady.

To Mitchell’s disappointment, the Soldier does not kick his legs in his sleep.

----

Re: Fill: Pedigree (5/?)

(Anonymous) 2014-11-23 11:00 am (UTC)(link)
putting a towel over the cage lol lol

Re: Fill: Pedigree (5/?)

(Anonymous) 2014-11-23 01:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Seeing how protective the soldier is of his few "belongings" is devastating to my heart.

Re: Fill: Pedigree (5/?)

(Anonymous) 2014-11-24 06:57 am (UTC)(link)
Yes :( Bucky has so little that he hoards anything he gets. In my sad trash version of recovery, Steve has to check his pockets for dangerous and/or disgusting items, because he holds onto anything he thinks belongs to him - random paperclips, gross greasy sandwich wrappers, used razor blades.

Re: Fill: Pedigree (5/?)

(Anonymous) 2014-11-25 12:20 am (UTC)(link)
Aghgggggh suddenly I want a fic of this so bad! The small not-overtly-trashy ways in which Bucky is screwed up post-hydra hurt just as good as the trashy ways imo

Re: Fill: Pedigree (5/?)

(Anonymous) 2014-11-23 03:29 pm (UTC)(link)
Murder-gimp.

My gifts to you: two packages of Hubba Bubba gum--one unopened, the other missing only piece; fished from a hallway trash can in the ER.

Re: Fill: Pedigree (5/?)

(Anonymous) 2014-11-23 03:38 pm (UTC)(link)
This is so well done that I am actually finding it entertaining and "haha, man, wouldn't it suck to have to go to work with the murder gimp" and then I remember that's BUCKY and I feel complicit in the awful dehumanization. So, really, anon, just lovely. I can't wait for more.

Re: Fill: Pedigree (5/?)

(Anonymous) 2014-11-23 08:43 pm (UTC)(link)
Long-suffering Brock is the best Brock.

Re: Fill: Pedigree (5/?)

(Anonymous) 2014-11-24 05:15 am (UTC)(link)
Oh man, anon, I am loving the fuck out of this.

One of the things you've nailed really wonderfully is the Winter Soldier having a sort of... precarious position within Hydra that defies easy hierarchical classification.

Re: Fill: Pedigree (6/?)

(Anonymous) 2014-11-24 06:50 am (UTC)(link)
----

They pull off for fuel at a truck stop just outside of Roanoke. It’s one of the larger travel plazas, scales on one side of the frontage road and a convenience store/fuel station/Subway/showers on the other. Rollins parks them toward the back, under cover of an oversize Weyerhauser rig.

“We got time to take a five?” Harper calls from the back.

Brock takes a peek at the time and their GPS location, compares it to the timetable in his phone.

“Yeah,” he says. They have more than enough cushion to take a stretch, even pick up Subway, because Rollins is driving. “Actually, make it fifteen. I want everyone in plain clothes. Except the Soldier.”

He switches to Russian. “You, stay.”

The Soldier makes no move at all, aside from the rhythmic cadence of his breath. He’s still asleep, or faking it well enough.

Harper and Mitchell hop up like two kids on Christmas, eager to piss or buy peanuts or maybe just get the hell out of the Soldier’s sight for a while. They pull out the stack of pre-distressed coveralls, shuffle for the monograms that match the names on their credit cards. The truck’s masquerading as ‘AA Drywall & Paint’, so nobody’s gonna comment when they all walk in with hats and paper ventilators.

“I’ll watch the gear if you get me a sub,” Rollins says. He arches back and cracks his neck against the driver’s seat.

“Deal,” Brock says, with no small amount of relief. He gets sore as hell sitting on his ass all day.

“I want a six inch meatball. With cheddar.”

“What kind of bread?”

“The cheese one. And a Coke.”

“Got it.”

Brock unhooks his seatbelt and squeezes through the center console to the back. Harper and Mitchell are already off, which is just as well. Better they go a few at a time, so it won’t look like they’re hopping out of a clown car.

“We need to feed the Soldier?” Rollins asks.

“Probably,” Brock says, halfway into his own coveralls. Something about the Soldier’s Frankenstein metabolism means he needs intake like six times a day. Originally, he’d thought that would be a liability, but in practice it’s not as bad as it seems. The Soldier doesn’t actually eat food in the field, just these weird powdered protein shakes and vacuum packed therapeutic MREs. Brock sometimes wonders what happens if you’re starving and had a nut allergy. Near as he can tell, pretty much all these things are made of solid peanut butter.

“I’ll get his shake.”

The Soldier’s eyes snap open the second Brock picks up a Camelbak, giving lie to the idea that he was asleep in the first place. He tracks the water bottle with open yearning, even puts one hand outside the cage, and - shit. Brock supposes he ought to follow the protocol, even though. Fuck.

“You be a good boy,” he says stiffly. Christ, this is awkward as hell. “And I’ll bring you a treat.”

Because seriously. Twenty five pages into that packet, and he’s just about sure that somewhere, someone’s keeping those files in a repository called “Pet Project” and thinks that they’re being clever.

Re: Fill: Pedigree (6/?)

[personal profile] trashbaby1918 2014-11-24 07:08 am (UTC)(link)
ROLLINS NO

by which i mean oh god yes all the sad trashy destruction of the soldier's remaining boundaries is going to make me cry forever. also i adore your rumlow voice! it's perfect.

i offer you an entire park bin full of bagged dog leavings. and half a hamburger.

Re: Fill: Pedigree (6/?)

(Anonymous) 2014-11-26 08:06 am (UTC)(link)
Thank you - god yes this fic got away from me. Apparently instead of doggy style porn my life choices involve systematic dehumanization and intense psychological horror.

Re: Fill: Pedigree (6/?)

(Anonymous) 2014-11-24 07:08 am (UTC)(link)
I love this fill with a fierce passion of burning tampons and smoldering Easter Grass. I am SO WORRIED about what will happen in the next part(s). The idea that the soldier has somewhere safe at all is breaking me. Please take these busted open tennis balls and chicken bones as payment for your amazing talent.

Re: Fill: Pedigree (6/?)

(Anonymous) 2014-11-24 12:57 pm (UTC)(link)
This is fantastic...

Re: Fill: Pedigree (6/?)

(Anonymous) 2014-11-24 03:56 pm (UTC)(link)
the trash nobel, the garbage pultizer, the rubbish booker prize

Re: Fill: Pedigree (6/?)

(Anonymous) 2014-11-25 12:29 am (UTC)(link)
Aw he's hungry :(

Author!anon you are killing me with how good this is. I love seeing the normalcy with which the agents act, like actual workers on their lunch break, contrasted with the surreal dehumanization of the soldier.

Re: Fill: Pedigree (6/?)

(Anonymous) 2014-11-26 08:08 am (UTC)(link)
Thank you - yes, poor thing has the worst luck. Everyone else gets adequately prepared sandwiches; he gets to look forward to crushed up vitamins packed with peanut butter.

Re: Fill: Pedigree (6/?)

(Anonymous) 2014-11-25 01:31 pm (UTC)(link)
I love everything about this. The Soldier's heartbreaking reactions, the team being weirded out as all hell, the humor ("The Soldier is smarter than a parrot" killed me), the ever-present uneasy feeling...it's so good.

Fill: Pedigree (7/?)

(Anonymous) 2014-11-26 08:02 am (UTC)(link)
Brock takes the Camelbak and a drink mix packet with him into the truck stop, makes a beeline for the bathroom. No sense breaking into their potable water until it’s strictly necessary. Brock takes a quick leak, then heads to the sink to mix the Soldier’s lunch. He dumps the packet into the bottle, fills it with cold water, and screws the lid on to give it a hard shake.

The resultant creamy drink looks almost like a Muscle Milk. Some similar kind of gainer shake, maybe. It smells a little like vanilla, but mostly chalk and powdered vitamins and concentrated gym rat tears. This, this is what they have an entire case of in the back of the van.

That poor son of a bitch. Brock shakes his head and tucks the empty packet into the pocket of his coveralls for secure disposal later.

The Subway is to the right once he comes out of the bathroom, built into the back wall of a grungy convenience store. Mitchell is perusing a nearby rack of ‘VIrginia Wines!!’ as if they’re not goddamn on duty. Brock gives him a look and brushes past to put in his sandwich order. The kid behind the counter looks barely old enough to shave, let alone be shaving meat.

“Hey, man.”

Harper is in line behind him all of a sudden, fidgeting with a bag of Fritos.

“Yeah?”

Brock adopts a similarly casual stance, gives the agent a working-bros nod. To an outside observer, they should look like two Joes at lunch.

“Since we stopped already,” Harper asks. “Who’s driving next?”

“I am,” Brock frowns. “Why do you need to know?”

Harper’s eyes flick briefly to the sandwich artist. The Subway kid isn’t even paying attention, messing with the oven for Rollin’s sandwich.

“Can I call shotgun, at least? Kind of sick of hanging out with Bingo.”

“Bingo,” Brock says flatly because what the hell. That is an absolutely terrible fucking dog name.

Harper must mistake his blankness for rage, because the agent starts back pedaling like a politician.

“It’s cool if I can’t! Just thought we could change up. Or trade.”

“Sorry man, no can do,” Brock says as sweetly as possible, because he’s itching to snarl ‘permission denied’ instead. He suspects Harper’s only springing this now because they’re with civilians, and there’s no way Brock can chew him out properly without blowing their cover. And he’s willing to tolerate a transfer being freaked out (especially given the bizarre kinky dog pound), but at some point, Harper is going to have to deal with the Soldier’s improbable existence. He doesn’t have much of a life expectancy if he can’t.

“Hit up Big Jay, maybe he’ll trade?” Brock adds. ‘Jay Romero’ is Rollins’ fake name for the road; they stick with initials that match their real ones so nobody gets confused.

“Okay, cool.”

Harper’s expression is indiscernible behind his paper mask, but his nod is amicable enough. Rollins will probably tell him to fuck off too, probably in graphic detail, but that will be a good life lesson in not being a little bitch. Brock swings up to the register to pay for his sandwiches. By the time he gets Rollins’ Coke from the fountain, Harper has taken off like his ass is on fire.

Whatever. His funeral. Brock does a quick time check and is pleased to see he’s got more than enough time to grab some canned lightning for the road. The way the rotation goes, he and Rollins get the ass-crack of dawn shift. He picks up a few Monsters and those bottled Frappuccinos no one admits they like, and juggles the whole mess out to the diesel pumps where the van is pulled up and fueling.

Rollins is standing by the van with his baseball cap pulled low, watching the gallons tick slowly up. The mobile strike unit is a beast that takes forever to fill.

“Sandwich,” Brock grunts and waves the bag at him. It’s dangling from his left fist, but his arms are too full of drinks to hand it over.

“Thanks.” Rollins relieves him of the Subway bag and fishes his Coke out from the crook of Brock’s right elbow.


“Get the door, I gotta feed the Soldier.”

Rollins takes point at an angle to the back bumper so his bulk can block the pump security cam. He waits until the Volvo at the next pump pulls away before tugging the left door just far enough for Brock to barrell inside.

Brock dumps his strategic reserve of caffeine into the open case of nasty Soldier shake mixes, but hangs on to the Camelbak. He’s so focused on stashing the drinks that it takes him a second to realize what’s going on.

Harper and Mitchell are frozen by the Soldier’s cage, staring intensely at something just in front of them. A yellow-and-red Subway napkin is sitting just in front of the open cage door, bearing a small pile of potato chips.

The Soldier is stretching metal fingers toward them with the same caution you’d use to defuse a bomb.

“Who the shit,” Brock begins, and stops himself. It doesn’t matter, he realizes with rising alarm, who thought it was a good idea to give unapproved food to the Soldier. What matters is the Soldier hasn’t even looked at him. Normally, it’s impossible to make him stop canvassing his mission commander.

“Sir,” Mitchell and Harper squeak in unison.

“Pick that shit up! He’s not allowed regular food,” Brock orders.

It’s not the agents who answer him, though.

“Treat,” the Soldier says in his accented Russian. And he can’t tell if it’s the Soldier’s creeptastic flat affect or actually intentional, but there’s no rising intonation to make that a question.

A single eye peeks up through the Soldier’s wild matt of hair, piercing and cold.

Treat,” the Soldier repeats in English, and picks up a single chip, hard enough to crush it.

Re: Fill: Pedigree (7/?)

(Anonymous) 2014-11-26 08:41 am (UTC)(link)
Oh. OH. OHHHHH. I am equal parts turned on, creeped out, and heart broken by this. You have achieved the trash trifecta, you wonderful garbage creature. Please accept this gift of toe nail clippings, cat hair, and an empty bottle of antidepressants.

Re: Fill: Pedigree (7/?)

(Anonymous) 2014-11-26 01:52 pm (UTC)(link)
This is so awful, and yet somehow endearing.

Re: Fill: Pedigree (7/?)

(Anonymous) 2014-11-26 02:33 pm (UTC)(link)
You make me hate and love these jackasses at the same time. You are wonderful.

Re: Fill: Pedigree (7/?)

(Anonymous) 2014-11-27 03:48 am (UTC)(link)
wellthatescalatedquickly.gif I can't wait to see what happens now. May I also note that your Rollins is amazing. The names detail was great and of course he'd be Big Jay. Rumlow wouldn't settle for less. Have some old packing and moldy bread

Fill: Pedigree (8/?)

(Anonymous) 2014-12-07 10:23 am (UTC)(link)
Fuck.

Brock’s palms go slippery on the curve of the Camelbak.

This is your treat,” he says firmly. He gives the bottle a hard shake. The Soldier’s visible eye rolls, focuses somewhere beyond his shoulder.

Fuck, fuck, triple-fuck.

The Camelbak hits the floor as his shock sticks leap into his hands, charging up to full in the second it takes to blink. A normal human’s in fibrillation at three hundred milliamps across the chest. He’s not sure what the Soldier’s built from, but he prays they don’t have to find out what kills him.

Brock steps forward with both batons ready, but the Soldier doesn’t even cringe at the promise of lightning. He makes a distant noise and glances back and forth between the bottle and the chips. He doesn’t ask again, but the question is clear in his eyes.

“He’s glitching out,” Brock snaps. “You confused him.”

“He was like this when we came in,” Harper hisses.

“Kept asking for a treat,” Mitchell says. “We thought maybe if we gave him something…”

The driver’s side door opens with a loud creak and Brock nearly bites off his own fucking tongue. Harper and Mitchell’s hands fly to their Glocks, unnerved by the interruption. The Soldier ignores all three of them and perks hopefully in that direction.

“Everything okay back there?”

Rollins leans over the center console, eyes narrowed in on Brock’s crackling batons, the comparative stillness inside the cage.

“Yeah,” Brock swallows. “Dealing with a situation. Get us out of here, we’ll switch drivers on the road.”

To his credit, Rollins doesn’t grumble, just shuts the hell up and kicks the engine.

“Two minutes behind,” he announces, which sounds like he’s bitching, but he looks for Brock’s face in the rearview.

Brock signals back with a tiny head shake. All options are bad when it comes to the Soldier malfunctioning, but given his pick he’d rather it happen far the fuck away from cameras. If they have to discipline him, they can pull off at a deserted exit.

The Soldier is staring at the chip pile again like he’s one stop short of pissing himself with excitement. He’s on his hands and knees, making the whole cage sway with anticipation, and there is no way they’re going to get this back on track without addressing the conflict in direction. There’s a reason they tell you the Soldier’s high-maintenance. All it takes is one misstep and he jams - or goes off. And after everything he’s read about this new conditioning...

Brock clicks off the juice and flips his batons back into their holsters.

“Eat your lunch first,” Brock says, bending down to pick up the shake. “Then you can have dessert. I mean, your ‘treat’.” Christ, it’s not even been five hours and he’s already sick of the puppy talk.

The magic word seems to have the desired effect, though. The Soldier crawls dutifully out of the cage, just far enough to reach for his disgusting shake. Brock tries not to fumble as that metal deathtrap hand brushes over his decidedly not-impervious human one. He has seen this fucker rip the hatch clean off a fucking tank; he has zero illusions about his knuckles’ chances.

Harper and Mitchell are still as death, still gripping their pieces like a lifeline. They all watch with bated breath as the Soldier draws the bottle close, clicks the spout up, sniffs it - then folds himself back into his cage, wrapped around the Camelbak like a baby with his binkie.

A cold wash of relief plunges down his back and Brock sways with the motion of the van. He catches himself against the gun rack, uses the momentum to round on the fucking shit-for-brains he has for operatives.

“Next time he does anything remotely off message? You call me,” he growls at Harper and Mitchell. “I don’t give a shit what it is. Because believe me, that is one gun you do not want to see misfire.”

Even Mitchell has the decency to look cowed. They both fall all over each other to apologize, neither looking too hard at Brock, or each other.

“We weren’t sure what’s supposed to be standard,” Mitchell admits. “With the - cage thing and all.”

“I know,” Brock concedes. “I’m working on a cheatsheet.”

Again, that vague uneasy feeling. He’s starting to wonder if there’s a reason Pierce sent them out into the field without a complete operating manual, if there’s a reason they’re driving themselves. He wonders who he’s pissed off lately, and how.

The Soldier, on the other hand, seems to be having a religious experience balled up in his stupid kennel. He bolts his nasty shake in several long pulls, looking for all the world like God just came in his mouth. He even unscrews the top and deep throats the residue off the inside straw.

“Damn,” Mitchell whispers reverently. The Soldier blinks up at him with white froth still on his chin, which even elicits a snicker from Harper.

“Treat,” the Soldier says again, reaching for his pile of chips. He stops just shy of touching, though, and looks to Brock for confirmation. Completely back on target, looking to his mission commander for direction. As bizarre as this protocol is, it seems to be working. He just wishes it weren’t also creepy as shit.

“Yeah, go ahead,” Brock says, and see it’s all perfect, the way it should be, except for the part where he has to light R&D on fire. “Uh, ‘good boy’.”

The Soldier visibly shivers, which is just icing on this entire fucked up cake. The corners of his lips twitch up, and he inserts a chip between his lips where the curve of a smile should be. Brock wonders if this is the Soldier’s approximation of happiness.

“You get sick from those, it’s not my problem,” he tells the Soldier. “You puke, you clean it up.”

The Soldier seems to take his warning seriously. All traces of good humor disappear and he nods once, very solemnly, and pulls the chip out of his mouth to examine it. He proceeds to dissect them one at a time, licking each side of every chip one by one, breaking them apart to inspect for hidden poisons. By the time he gets around to actually eating any, they’ve been reduced to equal-sized soggy pieces arranged neatly on the top of a napkin, nothing like a potato chip ought to be.

Mitchell and Harper both look vaguely uncomfortable. They keep fiddling with their phones, periodically glancing at the ongoing Lays disaster. It almost makes Brock feel like an asshole.

“They’re safe,” he tells the Soldier gruffly. “You can eat them. You know? Swallow?”

He can feel Rollins opening his big yap and punches the back of the driver’s seat hard right before ‘that’s what she said’ happens again.

The Soldier freezes while Rollins is still cussing Brock out for being a humorless dick, then carefully takes the smallest bit of potato possible. He pops it all the way into his mouth and chews, slowly and thoughtfully. Another follows, and then another, and then - fuck. The Soldier is smiling, actually, honest-to-God smiling like a human being.

“Talk about the uncanny valley,” Mitchell mutters.

Brock just nods, momentarily speechless. He’s always thought the Soldier was attractive - in the way tigers are attractive, or a well made semi-automatic. Like a force of nature: you don’t fuck with it, or it will fuck with you.

Now, those hunter’s eyes are locked on him, aware in a way they usually aren’t. They glitter in the low light, closer to grey.

“Thank you,” the Soldier says softly, in lightly accented but understandable English. It might be the most terrifying thing he’s ever said.

The Soldier continues munching his way through his tiny pile of broken chips, making soft noises just this side of intelligible. When he’s done, he gently folds the napkin up and pulls it into the cage with him, tucks it beneath his head like the world’s tiniest, saddest pillow.

Nobody feels like commenting.

**

Re: Fill: Pedigree (8/?)

(Anonymous) 2014-12-07 12:24 pm (UTC)(link)
I never thought that the Winter Soldier eating potato chips could be heartbreaking. Well, that shows what I know. I love how you write him and how everyone responds to the poor thing. It's brilliant.

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