Trash Party Dumpster #1

[trashmod]

(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 greenkirtle. If you fill a prompt, drop a link at the fill post. Discussion threads now have a chatter post.

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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.

Comments

The Winter Soldier doesn't understand his arousal

[(Anonymous)]

Between wipes he doesn't really remember how being turned on feels, or even what it is. Sometimes he tries to deal with it by himself, successfully or unsuccessfully. Sometimes he goes to an authority figure for help.

Basically what I want is buckets of shame and confusion, squirming, "what is this funny feeling", the whole thing played out in a few different scenarios (because mind wipes!). Massive bonus if the same authority-figure-of-your-choice shows up multiple times but acts very differently. I also like dirty talk.

Where am I going and why am I in this hand basket.

Re: The Winter Soldier doesn't understand his arousal

[(Anonymous)]

OH YES. Yessssssssssss.

Up Close Ache 5.1/5+1

[(Anonymous)]

Guess who's back, back again? A hundred apologies for the lapse and a thousand thanks for all the wonderful comments. This and the final part have been outlined for more than a year, delayed but never abandoned. Welcome to part 5: the extreme trash and cognitive dissonance train.

#####
5. United Arab Emirates, 2012
When you’ve clocked as many hours in the field as Brock Rumlow, the ragged cough of chopper blades sounds natural as your mama’s own heart beat in the womb. Whuk-whuk-whuk: a rhythm you feel in your chest more than the tiny bones of the ear. Powerful, soothing. He lets the rhythm drag him down into the Naugahyde of his seat.

Kildare, however, looks a little green around the gills.

“S’matter, kid?” Rumlow elbows him. “You bad with heights?”

“Nah. It’s just.” Kildare glances out the window and fidgets for the thousandth fucking time. “What if somebody finds them?”

A cut-off huff of laughter from the cockpit. Agent Rollins.

Rumlow follows the kid’s view to where they’d disposed of the helicopter’s original crew: rolling red dunes, taller than tsunami. Hell’s own ocean. “That’s the Empty Quarter, rook. Buzzards would be lucky to find ‘em. We might as well have dumped them on the fuckin’ moon.”

Nothing more than blood on the floor. It really was that easy sometimes; hallelujah for the Arabian Peninsula. Whuk-whuk-whuk.

Out the other window, he can already see the road uglying the desertscape, looking awkward as a hair on a microscope slide. The ants crawling along it are a convoy of South American mercenaries posing as construction workers. This is a milk run.

“Comin’ up on time,” says Rollins. He tilts the chopper towards the convoy. They won’t blink at its presence – it’s their equipment, they’ll be expecting the fly-over.

Rumlow shifts his attention to the asset, black-clad and straight-backed on the other side of the cabin. “You ready?”

The asset nods. Its face is completely concealed behind the mask and goggles. Rollins refers to this fondly as the killer automaton look. Brock calls it murder-bot mode.

“You gotta piss or shit?”

The asset shakes a no.

“Anything else?”

A pause. The asset cocks its head toward the plastic bottle by Brock’s thigh.

“Nuh-uh. No water until after.” The mask is a bitch to do and undo again, plus water intake will compromise the pissing situation. And he has orders to keep the asset wanting. “Remember: rendezvous with Team Bravo only after all objectives have been confirmed.”

The asset croaks, “Confirmed. All objectives.” Then it turns the weight of its glassy focus to its body for a weapons check. Brock already knows everything is in order, but the asset moves through its arsenal with quiet efficiency.

Rumlow knows Kildare is staring. He smirks at the kid. “Not what you were expecting?”

New guy tries to keep the disappointment out of his voice. “...the arm is cool.”

“Oh, yeah. Real cool.” Because Rumlow has seen this a dozen times at least, agents with a brand-new high clearance, thrilled to confront a legend – the Winter Soldier. They’re all assets, technically, but this is the asset, the ultimate cyborg assassin bogeymonster. Then what they think they get is half idiot-savant, half neglected pet. Wide-shouldered and docile as an ox.

“It’s wired right up to the asset’s brain, the arm is,” Brock says. “That thing goes through metal like it’s meat, and through meat like it’s butter. One time-”

The asset whips its head north.

Rumlow follows its line of sight just in time to see a plume of fire and debris unfolding in front of the line of vehicles. He watches the blast wave bloom across the sand, rippling through the atmosphere and arriving as a dull boom a few seconds after the explosion, a wall of hot wind that stinks of ammonium. The shock slaps through his ribs harder than the rhythm of the helicopter blades.

The convoy brakes to a jagged queue behind the pillar of smoke as a second explosion belches skyward and collapses the asphalt to a crater. Agent Cross.

All eyes are on the inferno, on charred metal twirling down like autumn leaves. The mercs ignore Rollins dipping across the back of their line. Kildare fumbles to shoulder his rifle. The asset is already crouched by the door.

“Soldat.” Brock has to yell over the chop and billowing air. The asset’s gaze drags across Rumlow, heavy as lead, and Rumlow feels the familiar weight of it settle on him even from behind the goggles. Only its wind-tangled hair moves. Rumlow claps a palm against its metal shoulder, says, “Rip ‘em up.”

The Winter Soldier turns to the open fuselage, then steps into the void. It drops forty feet and crumples the hood of a jeep under its boots. The chopper feels more buoyant in its absence.

Time slows. Mercenaries swarm to the asset like ants to honey, like moths.

The asset rips them up.

The asset doesn’t need the prosthetic to collapse throats or cave-in chests. Men drop, their strings cut under the fist or the bullet or the blade. A few mercs try to take cover and snipe the Soldier from around wheel-wells and across roll bars. Rumlow picks them off. A few even fall under Kildare’s rifle, and spent shells rattle through the cabin. The enemy’s numbers are staggered, strung out and thinned along the line of vehicles, their weapon caches hidden under construction equipment.

When Rollins buzzes over the lead cars, Brock can see men dragging equipment away from the flames, still unaware of the slaughterhouse behind them. The chopper sweeps back toward the Winter Soldier, and Brock squeezes off a few more rounds.

“Team Alpha is on active close air support,” he barks into his headset. “C’mon, Gutierrez. C’mon.”

“On the way, man,” Gutierrez crackles over the comm. “Munitions, out.”

Rollins turns the bird around and hovers above the asset, matching the Winter Soldier’s measured strides. The asset just moseys along the heat-shivering asphalt. The asset scythes right through.

A clump of them rush in together. They come at the asset like it’s a man, but the Soldier rips off an armored car door to collect their pistol fire, until they empty their magazines and the asset flips the sheet of dented steel horizontal to take out three men in a swipe of rupturing organs and shattering ribs. Its right boot propels up a dislodged bumper, striking two more at hip-level to crush their pelvises. The metal hand collapses a rifle barrel and slams it into its owner’s trachea – he’ll drown in his own blood. The flesh hand perforates the chest of another man with knife strikes landing faster than Brock can count.

The asset does not defend. When a merc comes at it with a machete, the asset throws its arm up in what would be a block for anyone else, and the attacker’s humerus snaps into a clean fold on impact. Brock can see the ruined limb flopping from the sky. A hook kick sends one man ragdolling over a hood, broken spine. Without breaking the spin, the cybernetic elbow drives another body into the pavement with the force of car crash, pavement buckling under his corpse. The asset strips a Beretta from the dead man and drops the last merc trying to ambush it from behind. Dispatching the coordinated assault takes less than thirty seconds.

It’s beautiful, every time. A bloody Midas whose every touch brings death. Rumlow glances over at Kildare, finds the young agent is slack-jawed, rifle half off his shoulder. Brock allows himself a curl of satisfaction. How do you like my dog now?

And the asset just moseys along. Rumlow’s getting impatient, though. “The hell you at, Team Bravo?”

Gutierrez: “Right behind you.”

A black armored van hurtles into view below the helicopter. It weaves through the downed cars, thumps over two corpses before pulling alongside the asset. Agent Dragomirov doesn’t wait for the vehicle to stop before he leaps from the passenger side and trots to the Soldier, wordlessly handing the asset fresh weapons, then doubling back to put a bullet in the screamer with the ruined arm.

At Brock’s command, Agent Cross pops up from a camouflaged trench. The blind is buried in a ditch beside the road, all but invisible even from the air, good as any magic trick. Cross sprints toward the van with the detonation equipment strapped across her back. She dumps it with Gutierrez, then drops back with Dragomirov to flank the asset from a distance. They search through the cars with handheld infrared scanners, search the dead, exterminate the merely injured. They stay out of the way.

The formation is deeply satisfying to Brock. As is the panicked response of the enemy. Looks like they’ve finally realized the chopper isn’t a friendly, but it’s too late. Far too late. The helicopter’s shadow trails the Winter Soldier like a carrion crow.

The remaining mercenaries scatter like Rumlow’s seen a hundred times on missions and tactical sims and nature docs when wolves cleave through the herd. Brock knows the rush of worthy prey pursued. He also knows the cold satisfaction of perfectly designed entrapment: an air-tight killzone, no survivors. It was over before it started.

Re: The Winter Soldier doesn't understand his arousal

[(Anonymous)]

I wants it!!!

Re: The Winter Soldier doesn't understand his arousal

[(Anonymous)]

I may not be able to get to this until after the weekend, but if anon doesn't mind waiting, I'm already taking notes for this fill.

Re: The Winter Soldier doesn't understand his arousal

[(Anonymous)]

Anon does not mind waiting in the slightest.

Up Close Ache 1/5

[(Anonymous)]

1. Belfast, 1969.
A ribbon of smoke twines from the safe house chimney, pushed northwest by erratic October gusts. Two kilometers away, the soldier calculates the difference in crosswinds at the target's location against the eddies of his rooftop sniper's nest. It changes often. He recalculates every few minutes, adjusts the rifle. Recalculates.

This is not the longest shot he has ever made. (Leningrad. 1954. 27 mission days ago.) He knows because he is allowed to retain pertinent information from past operations. Maybe. Sometimes. The soldier does not know what he has been allowed to keep until the knowledge surfaces fully-formed from the smooth black lake of his mind: a different language, a killing blow, coordinates.

For five hours he settles into the hypnotic focus of the stakeout. But. Sometimes images move through him, sensations move through him that are blurry around the edges, and he does not understand how they are relevant to this mission.

When the wind whips the smell of bread over his roof, the Soldier thinks someone is baking nearby, but also far away and a long time ago. Stimulus layers over stimulus. No context comes.

He glances again at the nearby lot where a group of young males are kicking a ball. They are not a threat, low likelihood of interference. They play rough. The roughest one is also the smallest; he bounces back hard after every spill, always rising harder than he falls. (Late teens, early twenties. 160 centimeters. 49 kilograms. Scrappy. His hair is the wrong color -- too dark.) The soldier blinks.

Pebbles click together under his body: beads on a rosary. No context. This neighborhood's industrious squalor. This crisp autumn air poured over the warmth of afternoon sun. Snatches of conversation. The scent of apples. The boy. In a different moment the soldier is stretched out on a different sunny rooftop, and he's wrestling, but not to the death. In a different moment he's laying on his back and a hand is pressing against his belly. Charcoal and graphite fingerprints dapple his skin like bruises.

The soldier sprawls lower in the gravel to reorient himself, but he can still feel those long fingers heavy against his lower body, sinking into a fist. A stone. Hot and coiling in his gut. Something inside him tightens. He moistens his lips behind the mask and presses harder against the roof.

The fluttering itch doesn't go away. It doesn't hurt. It isn't pain, not exactly. Pain he understands, pain he can ignore. If he could just...

The soldier scrubs his hips down against the tar paper and pebbles. Stimulus, response. A bolt up his spine has his toes curling in his boots, he's huffing in a startled breath. Not pain. Like. When his handlers allow him to empty his bladder after waiting all day in the cargo hold. Or when his lips are cracked and his eyes ache from dehydration, as soon as the canteen is put to his mouth and he swallows the first gulp, he can't stop himself from taking a second, and another, and another before they yank it away from him.

He drags a knee forward until the canvas of his tactical trousers pulls taut across his inner thighs, shifts his hips again. Stutters on the exhale. He wants to reach beneath his body and feel there, at the source of his ailment, but the soldier doesn't dare take his hands off the rifle, so he just rolls his pelvis forward to scratch the itch. Friction blooms with every rhythmic scrape against the tar paper. He sweats and grinds into the rooftop until little noises escape him and he has to chew his lip to keep them in check.

Recalculate, he thinks as he forces his scope back to the twisting threads of smoke. Recalculate the shot now. But the numbers are all buzzing into static, and he's keening through a bite-swollen mouth and rocking desperately.

The door below the smokestack cracks open. (Visual confirmation of target achieved.) A bullet rips across two two kilometers.

When a corner of the threshold explodes into plaster, the target and her known associate (Acceptable collateral.) have time to duck and scramble back three steps before both their chests dissolve to red mist.

First shot missed. Missed. Missed the first shot. His weak hand shakes. Mind jumbles. He can hear himself keening to a different tune.

Cold white shame burns through him so fiercely that by the time he remembers the needy-tickling distraction, it is long since gone.

Re: Up Close Ache 1/5

[(Anonymous)]

Oooh wow yesyesyes

Re: Up Close Ache 1/5

[(Anonymous)]

This is glorious.

Re: Up Close Ache 1/5

[(Anonymous)]

Oh my god, this is glorious. I can't wait to read the next parts!

Up Close Ache 2/5

[(Anonymous)]

2. Guatemala, 1978.
Everything drips. Water and blood, but mostly water -- sweat, condensation, rain. Rivulets trickle from every leaf and building, from the tips of his hair and down his back. Blood drips from his hands and his uniform.

His mission is complete, but jungle conditions mean extraction won't be expected for several hours. The weapon begins peeling off his tattered leather jacket. Shrapnel ripped through his armor, and his skin will close over the wounds in the time it takes him to be recovered. His body may or may not push out the shards. Infection is not a concern, but the technicians will use an electromagnet to extract the embedded metal. He doesn't like the magnet.

Has been alone in the forest for a week with no backup. The swath of devastation he cut through the green still smokes in the downpour: the acrid burn of wood, the greasy billow of piled bodies. He doesn't like leaving corpses to rot where they fall if he has to camp among them. He's been out for a week, and he knows he doesn't like this, knows he can act accordingly.

What he likes is the hunt. This is his territory, his natural habitat. The hunt is what the weapon is made for, and he's good at it. The mission is effortless and nothing is confusing, he is useful and he is good, he has executed his mission to satisfaction. The high of victory still courses through his veins and his heart rate is elevated. The weapon is made for the hunt, but now the hunt is over, and he almost wishes
(no he doesn't).

There's a hut he crouches beneath, inside. The dead occupants have been removed, two walls are blasted off -- architecture exploded outwards in a frozen bristle of cane and thatching -- but it has a card table and a couple folding chairs and it is shelter. His jacket is draped over one of the chairs, he sits in the other and digs shards of metal from his chest. The last scrap plinks to the floor, a crooked nail fished from his hip.

He looks at his red-stained hands. Most of it comes from him, he estimates.

The weapon knows the touch of others: dead meat going still under his blade, preludes of thrashing and the panicked cling to life, resistance. The cold grip of technicians maneuvering him into position. Utensils, needles, knives. He knows. He knows ripping and impacts, punctures, cuts.

Tendons dance under his weaker wrist with each motion. Sever them to incapacitate the hand without resulting in death, he knows.

Instead he traces two metal fingers down the inside of his forearm, palm to pale crook of elbow. Soft. Does it again because of the way it feels, because he can. He cocks his head.

How strange that this body is capable of touching -- and being touched -- without hurting. He touches his mouth, the vulnerable line of his carotid arteries. But no pain comes, he doesn't destroy anything. The weapon been out for a week and he can make something besides destruction if he wants. He can.

He explores the curve of his collar bone and the scar tissue casing his shoulder, watches with remote interest as a nipple hardens of its own volition under his colder, stronger hand. His torso is a series of repetitions, he observes, fingers trailing the arc of each rib and cut abdominal, the twin furrows along his hips where muscle attaches to iliac crest. His attention keep wandering here, lower, where a few veins make themselves visible.

A sigh gusts out of him, and he sprawls deeper in the chair, stroking the line of damp skin along his waistband. Benign skin to skin. Closes his eyes. The oppressive heat of the jungle wraps around the hut and crawls inside, air so thick it might as well be liquid. Breathing in is a struggle against drowning. Everything drips.

His thumb runs compulsively over the trail of fine hair below his navel. It feels. It feels strange -- an agitating sort of drowsiness that leaves his lower body tender and hyper-sensitive, especially between his legs. He sighs again and shifts around in the chair.

Then freezes. It suddenly occurs to the weapon that he may have missed a piece of shrapnel lodged in his pelvis or an inner thigh. And he feels drugged.

Explosives spiked with psychotropic compounds? Rare, but not unheard of. Several native species produce likely toxins, though his metabolism should have taken care of any poison. Throbbing suggests a nicked artery: pulse beating too hard in his crotch, internal bleeding. The memory of a punctured liver spilling in time with his heart, but that had been far more unpleasant. This ache brushes close to agony while being completely different.

His pants are tight, and when he looks down it's no wonder. His cock is swollen enough the outline pressed along his thigh is obvious even through the canvas material. For a moment all he can do is stare at the inexplicable bulge in his fatigues.

Also unexpected: when he touches himself there, he sucks in a ragged breath and one knee jumps hard enough to knock over the card table. The swelling is almost too sensitive to bear. Almost. He sucks in more humid air and makes himself rest a palm against the tent in his pants. Then squeezes. A sound forces its way out of him like he's been wounded, badly.

The weapon doubles over and slips from the chair to his knees, then to his knees and elbows with his forehead against the cane floor.

He's flushed with feedback and hormones, struggling to sort out the unfamiliar ones from his usual stress responses, but it’s... His skull and skin are full to bursting, and he doesn't know where it comes from. From outside himself, from another time, a softer world of brownstone where a brick hides the key to a cramped bedroom, to holding hands. Or a world of gunfire and trenches, and chemicals pouring from glands instead of needles, making his heart thump instead of slowing his brain. Either way, these reactions don't belong to him here and now.

And yet. His right hand is already back working -- kneading and rubbing through the fabric -- while he whimpers into the metal of his left wrist. He didn't tell his hand to do this but all his confusion is secondary to the need to stroke himself, and he can't not, and more wound-sounds are coming out of him.

He flips onto his back. The new position feels better, but his pants are still in the way. Boots get shucked off. Mud- and blood-soaked trousers get kicked to the corner in a tangle, and his dick lurches free from his clothes like it's trying to escape. The organ is so engorged it stands erect from the rest of him, flushed and leaking at the tip, foreign.

The weapon splays his fingers in the dark thatch of hair at the base and wills his breath to even out. Squeezes his eyes shut and swallows hard. His other hand is on his chest holding himself down, is still. He holds himself. That he can do this gives him pause.

Then his fingers venture back down in feathery, experimental touches. Slow, slowness takes effort. The length of him is stiff and feverish, slick with fluid, but it doesn't hurt. He tilts his head back. More than anything it doesn't hurt. He makes a fist around his hardness.

The wanting in him is the shape of a dendrite, a nerve. It is a complex arbor of firing signals connected at a single junction. Heat travels down to the root of his shaft and branches into his belly; tingling explosions blossom in his gut in slow motion, they swell and break in waves, travel back down until his cock is twitching in his grip.

The skin there is so velvety he can't believe it's a part of him. Velvet and warmth over iron. He brings his other hand to his lips in wonder -- so many soft places of himself he had forgotten. Feels his lips part to release soft sounds from his throat. The sounds make him harder.

He should stay silent, he knows. Stay silent so he doesn’t bother anyone, doesn’t draw attention. This could be a test. A trick? The weapon isn’t allowed to make unnecessary noise, but the storm outside blows thunderous through the hut, and no one is here to give punishment and more pain.

He moans openly. His spine curves up when he cups the tender swelling of his balls, now pulled taut, and his weak hand pumps his shaft. The weapon cries out when he circles the weeping tip, but he can’t stop jerking himself. The warm and cold hand alternate; the hand with no pulse can still feel the isolated flutter of his own life blood rushing through his flesh. He rocks into the metal fist, whimpering.

Something is building faster than it can escape. The little explosions in his belly and thighs are too much, they’re going to crack him open and spill him everywhere. He’s afraid, that’s familiar. But this is unfamiliar and whatever control he had earlier is gone, and he's bucking and moaning on the floor while lightning rips across the darkening sky. His gasps are erratic sobs, then he stops breathing altogether.

The world goes white behind his eyes. He arches off the floor, teeth bared in a silent scream, then he's spilling and spilling and spilling in convulsions. Ejaculate ropes over his chest and belly, releasing again and again with each snap of his hips. Release turns him inside out.

It tastes bitter. The weapon sinks into the thrum of the storm and drowses for a while.

When he rolls blearily to his side after an unknown time, the hungry little creature between his legs has gone back to sleep. Satisfied for now, he thinks. The mess on his chest and abdominals is half-dry and starting to itch.

A huge yawn stretches his jaw. The rest of him stretches in a lazy, luxurious arc. He crawls upright and one leg almost buckles and he has to catch himself. Logically he knows he should be more concerned about his body’s unexpected behavior, but he’s too loose-limbed and floppy to put much effort into the analysis. Neither does he register the overturned furniture and strewn battle gear littering his shelter. Thunder rumbles from the sky, through the village, carries across the valley and forest.

He steps off the edge of the hut's broken platform and walks naked into the jungle.

Rain sluices over him. Gore, sweat, semen, and mud are washed away. Even his wounds melt to nothing in the water: delicate new skin, pink and unbroken, appears under the dissolving crust of dry blood. Clean. He stands barefoot on wet leaves, and the roar of bird and frog songs and a million caressing drops is near deafening. Green life smells rise from the earth to drown out the reek of char, carry away the stink of gunpowder and smoke. The world reorients to feel-taste-sound-smell more like itself.

None of these details are mission-relevant. It's all going to be taken away from him. He knows. The weapon tilts his face up into the warm rain and closes his eyes, and everything rushes through him and out of him and he is here for at least right now. Right here.

This is how the extraction team finds him two hours later.

Re: Up Close Ache 2/5

[(Anonymous)]

This made me squirm and rub my legs together with delight

This is just so sensual. The WS's explorations are so vividly described. So so good!

Re: Up Close Ache 2/5

[(Anonymous)]

Gosh, I love your writing!

Re: Up Close Ache 2/5

[(Anonymous)]

I can't get over how incredible this is.

Re: Up Close Ache 2/5

[(Anonymous)]

Holy fuck this is amazing

Re: Up Close Ache 2/5

[(Anonymous)]

OP

This is magnificent, oh my god.

Re: Up Close Ache 2/5

[(Anonymous)]

that was SO beautifully written, gah.

Up Close Ache 3/5.1

[(Anonymous)]

3. Albania, 1983.
The reek of chloramines is pungent and constant. It occurs whenever chlorine reacts with organic substances, and billions of single-celled organisms have made their graves in the walls and floors of the base. They embed their stink permanently in its pores: in the tiles, in the smooth, organic curves of concrete.

There are no corners to hide in at the bottom of the abandoned municipal pool where they keep him, but the asset scans for them anyway. He shows no other signs of apprehension. Eyes moving always, nothing else. He is still. He knows the guards are afraid of him, most of the operatives are. The asset is afraid almost all the time.

One of the guards keeps shifting his weight in a distracting non-pattern. Berisha. “Swear, I’m going to have to cut these boots off, my feet are so swollen.”

Dyatlov rolls his eyes. “Stop being a pussy and get some fucking gel insoles like I told you.”

“You’re still not supposed to stand on concrete for eight hours straight without a mat or something.” Berisha shifts around more, marches in place a few steps. “I can’t wait for this transfer to be done.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not the only one excited about it.” They both snicker. Neither steals a glance toward the asset. He knows they want to.

The asset does not understand the significance except that it is bad and he is probably in trouble, and punishment will happen soon. This is an observable pattern. He does not move.

Dyatlov scuffs his boot against the pool drain. “This might come in handy.” More giggling.

The level of anxiety the asset always experiences around non-targets burbles higher. He’s in full battle dress but not wearing the goggles because he is inside and it is night. There is no tactical advantage, but he wants the goggles. If he had the goggles there would be another layer separating him from the guards. He grips the edge of the examination table where he is sitting. He doesn’t move his hands to cover his lap. He does not. He sits and ancient buzzing sodium lights bathe the chamber in shades of bile.

Today is important. He will not be coming back to the pool after this. Probably. They are sending him to another base, at another branch of HYDRA. He will stay there and not come back, and this mission was a mission but also a test. The asset understands tests. He always completes missions and this one was flawless until the very end. He was good, he knows, everything was so good, but then he thinks he made a mistake..

Dyatlov: "Ready to go, huh?"

This question is addressed to him but the asset knows he is not meant to answer. The words mean a different thing from what Dyatlov said. It is a joke, he can tell from the sound. It is about him. The guards can see his lap and they know he's done a wrong thing. He still doesn't understand what it is or why, doesn’t dare ask, but he must have done wrong. He must have.

And: "Might want to check that nonconformity," says Berisha. His voice is laced with the same laughter. "I don't think that's regulation."

Anxiety increases and the asset crumples a little on the inside where no one will see. He fixes his gaze harder on the floor to stop his fingers from indenting the exam table. He won't let himself make another mistake, compound his failure with more irregularities. Is it a failure? He doesn't...

Maybe the Americans will not want him now. For a certainty the Soviet branch will be angry. They will hurt him. Maybe they will kill him, maybe something worse. He has yet to discover the limits of their displeasure. The lights buzz and buzz and buzz. The asset wants to crawl into a corner, but there are none. He wants to cringe, but doesn't move. He wants to sink through the floor.

He studies the drain and imagines escaping that way. It is a small drain (40.8 centimeter circumference). He would have to be cut apart to fit, going down piecemeal until he disappears into the darkness forever. Okay. That's okay. The asset considers the logistics of such an operation. His skull, ribcage and pelvis would require disarticulation to reduce diameter. Split in halves, thirds. Intestines would be easiest, like cables slithering through the plumbing.

Footsteps in the hallway interrupt the fantasy, and 15 seconds later Berisha says, “I hear the cryo-techs coming."

"About damn time.”

They are wrong, it is not the cryo-technicians. The asset knows their gait and this is not their gait. It is a light swift person moving efficiently in low heels, clipped strides. (Confident. Likely female.) Larger shoes move with her, just behind. (Leisurely. Longer gait. Mid-sized male.) Two only. Both are alert but the smaller shoes are more likely to engage in active offense. He tears his attention from the drain and focuses on the door.

When it opens, both guards go rigid. The asset goes rigid.

Madam Director herself stalks in, all icy professionalism in a tailored suit, a no-nonsense stripe of silver in her ink-black hair. There is a man with her, younger than the Director by a decade and ruggedly handsome. (Early 40s. Still powerful, carries himself well. 183 centimeters. Approximately 77 kilograms.) The presence of a non-target stranger triggers hyper-alertness in the asset.

The Director was talking before but now she is silent. The asset feels her eyes rake over him slowly, is relieved when she turns away to skewer the guards with a wordless glance.

The older guard, Dyatlov, holds up his hands in submission. "We had nothing to do with it. He was already in this condition when he came in from being hosed down."

The exchange is about the asset. His shoulders hunch as Madam Director's gaze slides back across his body. He can hear the elevated heart rate of the guards. "Return to position," she snaps, and they retreat to the walls with guns raised: a triangle formation with the asset on one of the points.

The Director's attention stays focused on him. Attention is always bad. Her face makes a tight smile that doesn't reach her eyes, then she turns to the strange man, the unknown factor. In English, she says, "You are, of course, welcome to a closer examination if you wish."

The man leans, actually leans, against a piece of cryogenic equipment. A rakish half-grin flits over the man’s features and prompts a moment of confused recognition in the asset. He feels outside of himself, or: he is a different self wearing this same expression long ago and more than once. It doesn’t belong here.

Then the man says, also in English, "I've heard so much about the Winter Soldier from our Soviet cousins. But I confess, I was a skeptic -- we all have a habit of making legends for ourselves -- you know how tall tales get around. Yet his prowess in the field has surpassed all my expectations, a rare pleasure these days." The American’s eyes also drop down below the asset’s waist.

The American. THE American. Of course. The asset blanches behind his leather and rubber gear. He should have noticed the indicators, maybe would have if he wasn't compromised. No comrade would wear an open face and brown suit so casually. The American has all the tell-tale signifiers of easy wealth and WASP arrogance that should have been obvious from the start.

"Yes, the asset is a unique tool," Madam Director says. "Unparalleled when deployed correctly. And entirely obedient. The power of an army, yet more compliant than any soldier. Observe." She turns away from the American and orders in English, "Strip down, Soldier. But keep the muzzle."

(Aside, in Russian: "And keep silent. Your new master doesn't need to hear you mewling like a whore. Yet.")

His new master. The asset systematically removes and arranges his gear on the floor. Master, the man they’ve all been waiting for. Maybe he hasn't ruined everything yet? The American's praise is a candle lit in his chest ("a rare pleasure"), but the man may still change his mind at any moment. He has reason to, the asset thinks, hesitating a second before pulling off his cotton underclothes. Not that any of his masters ever needed a concrete reason to be disappointed in him. Their wrath falls from the sky even on clear days, and it is not for the asset to question, ever.

The HYDRA executives turn their discussion to the cryogenic equipment while he undresses. He is also equipment. Malfunctioning equipment.

The disobedient organ juts out from the rest of him like a flag, flushed and appalling and impossible to ignore. After a nearly-perfect mission his body has called attention to its betrayal in the crudest way possible. The asset waits naked in a room that stinks of chemicals and sweat, and the rush of humiliation indicates this is no more than he deserves, even if he doesn't yet understand why.

Shame is familiar. They let him keep this, along with memories of discipline reinforced through conditioning, pain. He knows it is: a tightness in his throat that can't be swallowed, a choke that goes on and on through his chest and tangles in organs. Sour urine stench. The anticipation of punishment that dumps rotten adrenaline into the cavern behind his ribs. Nausea, panic. He feels like he's going to be ill, but he isn't, he won't. He will be in worse trouble if he gets sick, and worse pain will happen.

The weight of his masters' scrutiny returns, and he goes away inside himself.

"Up." The Director taps the low exam table. "On your knees." And the asset hops up into position with a single fluid motion. He is determined not to fail.

"All sophisticated tools require maintenance," she continues in English for the American, snapping on a pair of latex gloves. "This one is no different. Codename Winter Soldier can be wielded as a hammer, a blunt object, but it is capable of so much more."

(In Russian she hisses: "Hold the overhead restraints. Maintain grip for stabilization.")

Leather cuffs hang from chains above the table. The asset swallows down a flash of dread as he reaches up and loops his his wrists through the restraints, lets them take some of his weight as he balances on the examination surface. He closes his fists around the chains to remind himself that he isn't actually trapped, he is the one holding, not being held down. The American watches the maneuver in amused silence.

Madam Director says, "You've seen the documents. Our wiping and implantation programs allow for increasingly complex skill-sets to be inserted." She runs her gloved hands over the asset's calves, the corded muscle in his thighs. "Multiple languages, coordinates, weapon specs, anatomy." She tests the curve of his spine, his ass; fingers probing the ticklish expanse of his intercostals. Clear fluid drools from his cock to the table. "Logistics. Over three dozen unique target dossiers, simultaneously. Complex geometry. Trigonometry." His shoulders and chest. Throat. His abdomen and solar plexus. He knows the Director would have checked his teeth too if not for the mask. He has already endured this examination immediately post-mission.

Nothing is amiss except for his aching groin. Ligaments attached to his pubis constrict tighter, and the asset watches in horror as his erection twitches up slowly, involuntarily, like a metronome on the slowest speed possible. He huffs behind the muzzle, but is quiet.

"Inversely, is also necessary to prune or entirely remove certain knowledge sets to maintain control. Basic self-sufficient behaviors such as body-care and autonomy are greatly reduced in the process. Some of this is a natural result of rerouting the brain’s finite resources." The Director swats his knees farther apart on the exam table. "As you can see, the asset still experiences physical states, but the lack of context makes it entirely dependant on its handlers."

"Fascinating," the American murmurs, circling around for a better view.

The asset avoids the new master's eyes. Looks instead at the weapons pointed at him from across the room. Behind the rifle, Dyatlov's face is the face he made when there was laughter in his voice earlier. The asset's face feels like burning, like the throbbing between his legs. He grips the chains tighter and looks at the guards' shoes instead.

As an exercise, he runs through all the ways he might kill everyone in the room. He has long since tallied the guards’ strengths, weaknesses, variables. The asset creates a hypothetical scenario in which all the occupants are replaced by hostiles, busies himself constructing logic trees applicable to different behaviors they might present. Doesn't move. He is a ghost, he does not exist for real people.

But he is flesh, and he flinches when the Director grabs him roughly by the testicles. She massages them, feels the weight of him. "Of course," she says, "we considered neutering it for convenience's sake, but didn't want to rule out the possibility of a breeding program." She gives his balls another squeeze before releasing him, the asset doesn't breath, then the Director is rubbing something from a tube over her gloved hands. It makes a wet noise.

Up Close Ache 3/5.2

[(Anonymous)]

He does more than flinch when cold slickness wraps around his cock. His entire body lurches forward until his grasp on the chain is the only thing keeping him upright. The asset braces himself, huge-eyed and trembling in the Director's grip, and his heart is very loud. Her hand is steady around him. His legs shake, his lungs shake: weakness. Stop it.

"I'm not going to do all the work for you," she says.

This is directed at him. He is meant to perform a task. The asset knits his brows together.

Madam Director sighs and presses her free hand against the small of his back, shoves him forward. She doesn't have the power to shift him by force, none of them do, but the gesture is instructive so he lets himself be moved until the length of him is sliding through her lubricated fingers.

He slips, shuddering, forward and then back through the tight circle of her fist, and swallows the request for more. The sway of his hips is the answer he didn't know there was a question for. It's the closest thing he's felt to relief all morning.

The Director guides him again, and he moves and she doesn’t, and he’s so hard. He wants to sob with gratitude but she said (she said, "And keep silent.") and the best way to repay his masters is through obedience. (“The power of an army, yet more compliant than any soldier.”) He's already arching before the next push comes. She doesn't correct him, and the asset can feel this is right without needing to think. He's passing the test, he's being good. He doesn't stop. He experiments by undulating his body, threading into the friction over and over again, establishing a careful rhythm. He mimics the many oscillations of a sound wave until his toes curl on the plastic exam table, and that's it that's the right shape, the right sound.

The only sounds in the room: buzzing lights and the asset -- gasps and the wet tempo of flesh pumping into a slippery fist. A cheap sound, he thinks from nowhere. Animal sound, desperation sound. Unspoken “please” echoing loud against the drained pool walls.

The other occupants watch this performance dispassionately, watch him rocking on the platform of the examination table while new sweat beads on his skin and is dislodged by him taking his pleasure. The weight of four sets of eyes make him feel like burning again. He shuts his own eyes and hides his face against a bicep of metal. And he wants to stop but also he doesn’t, and he, he.

He hitches off rhythm and makes himself smaller, less to look at. Legs starting to drift closer together and, and maybe he's curling one knee into himself, okay. But that's not okay. He knows it's not okay when the Madam Director gives his cock a vicious pull that sends more pain firing to the root of him than it does pleasure. Hurting is a clear directive. He spreads his legs and tilts his head back, throat bared.

The Director puts her hand on his back again to correct his cadence. "This procedure,” she says, “is less necessary for function compared to providing regular hydration or nutrients, though a prolonged state of priapism has been shown to be a distraction. To other operatives as well as the asset." The Director doesn't glance at the guards, but an acid note creeps into her voice. "The asset has been trained to withstand extreme physical stressors and remain operational, but I prefer to avoid unnecessary liabilities when possible." She pauses to dispense more lubrication, and the asset barely prevents himself from whimpering at the loss of the Director's hand.

He grinds against the air helplessly. Would beg, wants to beg. (Remember, remember: "Keep silent. Your new master doesn't need to hear you mewling like a whore. Yet.")

The need to continue this task registers at priority levels approaching his need for caloric intake, which is absurd. He isn't more hungry or thirsty than usual. The absence of contact reads as physical distress, but he hasn't taken damage and can't identify a source of pain. He can’t trust himself. He is afraid to be touched, but he wants it, but he never wants to be touched -- wanting at all is rare enough to be suspicious. The asset grimaces, keeps grinding through contradictory drives. His head hurts. Touching always hurts, except for this new, confusing flavor of pain.

-- that comes back even worse before, and he hisses and his cock dribbles on the table through gloved fingers. A whine is cut off before it can escape: please, please, please. ("Keep silent.")

When it’s almost too much, which is immediately, he goes away. Just a little. Enough to remember the directive, the protocols. The protocol is: to steady himself, whatever it takes, even if he has to squeeze his eyes shut again. He does. Focuses on exhaling sharply into the muzzle every two thrusts. This seems to be allowed. His voice is not in the desperate huffs, so it's okay. Just harsh, muffled breaths.

His flesh knows what it wants. He’s pushing (fucking) into the slickness, alternating between shallow strokes that keep all the friction on his swollen head, then long sweeps that envelop all of him until his hips collide against the bar of the Director’s wrist. The asset surrenders himself to sensation until he doesn’t care that the handlers are all staring. He pounds in deep thrusts that he feels from tip to base to his balls. Muscles clench. His feet flex and curl by themselves. Building tension makes his thrusts erratic, he’s on the cusp of something. Something urgent.

Then it’s gone. There’s a palm bearing down on his shoulders instead of his dick.

“Bend your back. Further,” barked in Russian, not for the American’s ears. Her hands rearrange him. He is pliant like the equipment he is. “Before you make a mess on the floor. Or the Secretary.”

Sweat running down his belly and thighs makes him slippery, mobile on the table when the Director positions him to her liking. He sprawls lower so the leather and chains take almost all of his weight, and the muscles of his back and shoulders bunch together. Hips angled in lordosis. Presenting like a cat in heat.

A lube-coated digit slips inside of him. His traitorous flesh yips and almost tumbles from the table, which earns him a slap behind the ear. The asset hangs his head. Makes himself be still, even when one wet glove wraps back around his cock and strokes him down toward the table. The Director rotates her wrist in efficient little twists at the end of each pull like she's milking livestock. She looks bored as she slides a finger back into him, then a second.

The tandem sensations of being penetrated and stroked are overwhelming. The fingers inside him hook upwards, brush against something impossibly tender that makes him clench and stop breathing. They press again and all his organs turn to liquid, and he's rutting backward into the Director's fingers instead of down into her fist. The new position gives him less traction, every movement is awkward, but he's rolling his hips into her hand, dripping steadily while she stretches him from inside. The asset cants his pelvis to open himself for the Director. He wants to take everything his master can give him.

A few strands of black hair have come loose from the Director’s pins. Even she starts to look flushed from the effort of working both arms. He doesn’t want to hurt her. He’s afraid that maybe he hurts people enough already. He’s afraid that’s maybe an understatement.

“Hurry up, slut,” she orders in Russian. She twists a third finger inside him, presses hard against that impossible, tight bundle of nerves and commands, “Finish it. Now.”

The order confuses his mind, but his body, his body. It is. He’s obedient.

Muscles in his stomach seize, his spine wants to curl in but he is arched the wrong way so he spasms in inelegant jerks, saved from tumbling to the floor by the leather cuffs on the chain. Metal links squeal and deform in his grip. His eyes screw shut. His body is finishing, just like he was told, he’s making a mess on the table, just like he was warned against. But he’s good. He’s good and he’s not making any noise because he can taste the warm salt of his bitten lip behind the mask. And, and -- fingers curl deep in him again and he’s, more is coming out of him. He feels it coming out of him in soft bursts. A few more shudders before he finally stops spilling into the puddle between his knees.

The Director pulls out when the objective is complete. Sudden emptiness followed by more involuntary contractions. The asset receives a smack on one buttock that doesn’t feel like punishment. Again, the idea of livestock surfaces in his mind.

He droops from the chains he hasn't yet been allowed to let go. The asset feels ... strange. Light but tired. He assesses his body and doesn't think the discharge has damaged him. If anything, the convulsions released enough pressure so that his erection can shrink back to a more recognizable state. Normality. No wonder he feels relief.

To sleep now would not be such a bad thing, he thinks. Even, maybe, cryo, but--

"On that note," says the Director, "I believe our tour has also reached its conclusion."

This earns a polite clap from the American. “How thematic. It’s been a pleasure as always, Director Gagarin." The American's eyes crinkle. Flirtatious. His expression seems to say he is always flirtatious with older women, and the Director's expression says she knows. "Though I hope,” he adds, "you’ll excuse me if we don’t shake hands.”

The Director snaps her latex gloves into the trash. “I’ll try to contain my disappointment, Pierce." A shadow of his smirk plays over her features as she smooths her hair back into place. "Before we depart for the evening, do you have any questions?”

Secretary Pierce cocks his head, mock-studying the tableaux: piss-yellow lights over concrete and metal and the wilting wet flesh of the asset that will soon be his to command. His expression of smug irony falls for a moment. “Can I remove the mask?”

The Director shrugs. “If you want.”

The asset can hear the man's pulse kick up as the distance between them closes. His own adrenal glands respond any time a non-target approaches. They respond now.

The American -- no, Pierce -- slides a hand around the asset’s cheek, then to the back of his head, and the strap clicks free. The asset tucks his face to his shoulder, but Pierce's large hand molds firmly around his jaw and forces his gaze back as the muzzle clatters to the table. He swallows reflexively but doesn't dare look away from the man who doesn't belong in this yellow, ammonia-reeking room with his Western suit and his confidence and tasteful cologne. Not from the man whose fingers are pressing against the lines of his skull (against the trigger of a weapon).

Pierce looks back with hugely dilated pupils, and the asset is flooded with terror and relief. The new master is pleased.

Re: The Winter Soldier doesn't understand his arousal

[(Anonymous)]

>>Where am I going and why am I in this hand basket.

Oh god that's the funniest thing I've read today.

Love the prompt as well!

Up Close Ache 4.1/5

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for your patience and encouragement, anons! So sorry for the delay; this one does get pretty trashy, though.

4. Washington DC, 1994.

Alexander Pierce remembers touching the jaguar.

He remembers it was stretched across a tailgate on a Colombian plantation, flies buzzing in the fields and the morning air already clogged with heat. He'd imagined something vaguely like a leopard, but up close he could see the difference. It was built like a tank. The glossy black pelt rose and fell under his fingertips slow as the minute hand of a clock.

"Dark morph," said the head trapper. "Melanistic. A dominant gene." The fellow seemed intelligent and fairly educated, for a local. "The jaguar is not like other cats. It does not kill like other cats." He explained that its jaws were second only to the hyena, that where the lion or tiger killed by strangulation, the jaguar simply crushed the skull of its prey. Punctured through sea turtle shells, hauled cattle up trees, pulled horses across rivers. It is not like other cats. Its strength is monstrous.

"Magnificent beast," Alexander said. "Seems a shame to put it down."

The tracker shrugged. "He's a man-eater. Very rare for the jaguar, but too dangerous to let live now that he's got a taste."

"Why sedate it, then? Why not put it down right away?"

"We’ll send him in for study first. Unusual animal like this, he may have much to teach us. Samples will be taken." The trapper glanced down. The shredded corpses of four of his hounds were piled under the truck bed. They had screamed like children in the end. Alexander hadn't known dogs could sound like that. "But what must be done must be done."

Pierce nodded. What must be done. He felt the slab of the jaguar's dark skull, its muscular flank. So much power lying dormant under his hands. He wished Nick was here to appreciate the moment -- Fury would understand.

Michelle, however, wouldn't even touch it. She stood apart and silent in the tall grass, could barely look at the cat. He tried not to be disappointed.

And this was before the incident in Bogotá (before the scales fell away and a light snuffed out), because the truth is Michelle had always been skittish, like her mother. Like her mother, she was beautiful but in need of guidance. Like so many, she stood in the field and had refused to look at what was right in front of her.

~~~

Two thousand miles and what feels like a thousand years away, snow is cleansing Pierce’s estate, killing precocious flowers in their sleep. The middle of March is a late snowfall for DC, probably the last of the winter. Nickel-sized flakes recast the bushes into sculptures of black and white, and ice clings to his blossoming fruit trees until the garden outside the wall-length windows is transformed into a scene from a kabuki.

He is not sulking. He's just sitting alone in his pool house. With the lights off.

Pierce taps up and down a mahogany armrest. Michelle isn't coming. He'd arranged a visit for her as a surprise, but she begged off with the excuse that she'd already made plans with her mother. If he'd been a little sharp over the phone, it was only because of how much trouble it had been to coordinate his schedule for the weekend. He'd taken care of everything, he always has to protect her. Now here he is, while she's in the Keys with his estranged wife. And Raúl. Pierce pinches the bridge of his nose. On that fucking yacht. Really, as brilliant as his daughter can be, some of Michelle's lapses in judgement are baffling.

But the weekend won't be a complete loss. There are benefits to a suddenly open calendar and lucky timing. He’s secured an appointment with a new guest, one far more difficult to arrange than his daughter, and much more expensive.

In the garden, a piece of darkness detaches itself from the night.

It is observable only as an absence: a hole in the latticework of swirling flakes, a missing tooth, a void. The darkness flows to a spot just beyond the reach of Pierce’s landscaping lights, waits. It waits.

Pierce curls one finger; that’s enough.

A glass door slides open, and the gust of equalizing air pressure makes more noise than the Winter Soldier.

Pierce points the same finger to the floor beside his chair, says, “Heel.”

The soldier stalks across the tile, cased in the soundless black of oiled leather. It halts over the spot where Pierce pointed. Ice crystals clumped in its hair and coat are already melting in the pool house steam, but for a moment the soldier looks dappled as the jaguar’s African cousin. The leopard, Pierce has read, may be leaner, but is more likely to take human prey. The soldier is easy to think of as an animal when it moves like one: all rolling hip joints and a silhouette that bleeds into the background. The animal is there in the flat stillness of its gaze, and in the red dust of Rwanda still clinging to its gear. Not all of the flecks are mud.

Rwanda, what a hellhole. It’s about to get worse. “I'm glad we could put this together on such short notice.”

The soldier's gaze locks onto him for a few seconds before moving on. Its stare is restless, touches every surface in the room. The constant sweeping of eyes above the mask is an uncanny contrast to its closed expression. The soldier doesn't move, but the air around it vibrates.

“Oh,” Pierce says, “I know what you’re thinking.” His voice refocuses the soldier’s attention. "Heating a pool this size in the winter, with only glass for insulation? Not very energy efficient. But I had solar panels installed to help offset the electricity use -- better for the environment. Thought you'd appreciate that."

Blank gray eyes bore into him.

Pierce makes one corner of his mouth quirk up in the bashful, artless half-smile that took hours to master in the mirror, practiced and perfected against old recordings. It begins in the dimpling of his left cheek, the downward look before his gaze draws up warm and slow, rising like the sun through the curtain of his lashes. Brows steepled with a touch of good-humored irony and uncertainty, humble but hungry for assurance. Weak, proud. He doesn't plan for a lock of sandy hair to come loose and fall across his face, but he appreciates the moment of serendipity.

The soldier, still looming black against blackness, melts a little.

"It's warm in here. You ought to get out of that heavy gear," Pierce says.

Body armor slams into the tile with surprising violence. Pierce guesses it weighs at least thirty pounds from the force of impact -- all drop, no bounce. Deft fingers fly over buckles, buttons, zippers as more gear plummets to the floor. The soldier's efficiency is always a pleasure to watch, but without a shell of armor and weaponry, it looks... vulnerable. Almost civilian, standing there in a black undershirt and trousers.

A surreal image. Pierce has half a mind to dress the soldier in pajamas, just to see.. What does a weapon look like in formal wear, rags, in stockings? These are the little experiments he enjoys.

"Why don't you take the rest off? Get rid of everything. And then," he surveys the room, "Something from the bar, I think."

The remaining uniform puddles around the soldier’s feet, and the shred of normality is gone. Most of its flesh hasn't seen the sun for half a century. It’s milky pale under its leathers, hard as marble and puckered around the ungraceful border where metal meets skin. The pool's underwater light casts up nets of turquoise that ripple over the canvas of its naked body and collect in its irises, lending them the illusion of life. It steps out of the piled equipment and moves toward the bar opposite the garden window.

The soldier glares at the dimly glittering wall of chrome and glass. Turns back to Pierce.

“The usual,” Pierce says. This is another one of his experiments.

It paces back and forth in front of the bar before leaping lightly up on the marble counter. The top shelf is in reach, where he keeps the best bourbon. Yes.

The slide of each muscle is on display under its skin. Pierce doesn't consider himself interested in men, not usually. There have been rare occasions, special individuals. But the soldier isn't a man, is it? It is less than a man, but also more perfect. Something existing on an entirely different axis than men can be measured by. Well made, well conditioned, always pleasing to look upon. It reaches for the set of Pappy Van Winkle bottles (yes, yes) with its entire body, until it’s standing on its toes, flexing up from the counter in a ballerino's arc. The motion sends angles and curves rippling up its calves to its thighs, bunching muscles in its ass, back, shoulders. The metal hand grips a shelf while the meat hand explores three bottles before closing around the neck of the Family Reserve. Yes.

Pierce feels himself throb. “Good boy.”

The soldier hops down quiet as a cat, covers half the floor between them in the time it takes Pierce to say, “Forgetting something?”

A single blink betrays its frustration. It snaps its head back to the bar, searching for The Usual with the same intensity Pierce imagines it devotes to any other mission. It passes right over the tumblers, and Pierce worries the snifters might be confusing -- it’s an easy mistake to make -- but the soldier goes straight for the delicate Glencairn whisky glass with the sound base and full, curving hips. This it offers to its master.

”Such a good boy,” Pierce purrs. Its mouth softens to a bow.

Pierce sets the bourbon and glass on his side table, then motions for the soldier to sit by his feet. All it takes is one tap to its side, and long legs fold under it obediently. Pierce doesn't need guns, restraints, or whips, doesn't need raised fists or raised voice. He's a better handler than that. The Fist of HYDRA anticipates the direction of his touch with the intuition of a dancer. The Fist of HYDRA, spiced with streaks of foreign soil and foreign blood, kneels. The accouterments of war decorate Pierce’s custom mosaic tiling, and all that concentrated, fluid might is his to conduct. He wants to feel it, itches to feel it seething under his hands. And he can, so he does.

Pierce traces two fingers along the soldier's jaw. "Smooth." Smooth as the rest of it. "Gas mask this time, huh?"

It leans into his hand. Its throat is a column of stone, but feverish hot with a pulse that flutters like a trapped hummingbird against his palm. Warm, corded meat, then the strange juncture where he can feel the titanium alloys shift and recede under its skin to anchor somewhere mysterious in the soldier’s core. Little deltas of scar tissue where the metal plates break through its surface -- cool. Its outer prosthetic is slick and cold as the dead blossoms buried in his garden, cold as Siberia. His fingernails click over a sloughing layer of ice.

He had ordered the soldier to bring ice for his drink the last time they met. That was part of the experiment. Then he had slipped a little white pill between its lips, because Alexander Pierce always takes his bourbon neat.

This little white pill. He keeps a crowd in his pocket, in a little white bottle with no markings. It has proved useful for agents and witnesses, but even the chemists in R&D don’t realize their little pills have been perfected on the Winter Soldier itself.

All Pierce’s instructions for “the usual” have been left perfectly intact, but the detail about the ice has been excised as if it had never existed. The gap holds true almost 18 months later. Excellent. The power and scope of the chair is a sledgehammer; the pill is a scalpel. Tomorrow the project leader will receive a note proclaiming the latest dosage has been the most effective yet. She is used to not knowing where the information comes from.

Up Close Ache 4.2/5

[(Anonymous)]

“A job well done deserves a reward, does it not?” Pierce slips a sheepskin moccasin between the soldier’s legs. He knows the soldier is only a few inches taller than him, yet aside from the tapering waist and fine-boned wrist, the impression it projects is massive, even kneeling like this. God, its thighs. Pierce hefts its soft, uncut cock with the toe of one moccasin. “Touch yourself here.”

It lays its flesh palm where it has been directed. Crescents of dried blood rim the soldier’s cuticles.

“No, keep moving your hand. Yes, that way. You’ll like it.”

The soldier awkwardly kneads its genitals. Close enough.

“The trick to these little indulgences is to keep them special.” He unplugs the stopper of the Family Reserve, and buttery notes of vanilla flood the damp air. Oak and caramel. “Can’t over-do it. Rarity is part of the appeal and, if luxury is unlimited, is some of its value not lost? Yeah, regular strokes, just like that. Harder. Good boy.”

The Glencairn glass concentrates the nose into a heady aroma of red delicious apples and desserty creams with a touch of linen floating over oil. Pierce gives the glass a swirl to appreciate the bourbon’s syrupy legs. His other hand tangles in the soldier’s hair. The dark locks are gritty. Its cheek rests against Pierce’s knee, and he can see its shoulder still working in the attempt to obey him.

“Isn’t that nice, sweetness?”

The soldier knows not to respond to these questions. A line of concentration creases its forehead, but its eyes stay unfocused and empty. Pierce smoothes the wrinkle away with his thumb, traces down the straight bridge of its nose, presses on the cleft of its chin. He could run his hands over everything and the soldier would still be untouchable. Whatever moves behind those huge pupils is as alien and unfathomable to Pierce as his own mind must be to the soldier.

Would the Winter Soldier even know itself in a mirror? Like a human? Michelle had been nearly a year and a half old before he saw the light of self-recognition flower in her eyes.

Nothing flowers in the soldier’s eyes. No lights, no innocence, yet he can’t deny there’s a certain beauty in its distance. The flatness of that jaguar gaze only makes the interruption of it, the flickers of something below, that much more satisfying. Pierce knows he can fish it out, just like he knows the soldier’s mouth will open soft and wet for him with no hint of the predator.

“You can have the first taste.” Pierce dips two fingers into the glass. “Here.”

The soldier blinks a few times when Pierce pushes between its lips, then laps cautiously at his fingers.

“Warms you right up, doesn’t it? But goes down smooth as you please. Pay attention to the finish: just the right length, woody with a hint of spice.” He works his hand deeper, slow pets through the heat of its mouth. Its tongue tickles long after it’s nursed the last film of bourbon from his skin.

When he pulls its face into his lap, the Winter Soldier moves for him as easily as his own body. The other handlers are fools to have so much trouble with it.

”Shit.” Bourbon spreads across his throat, honey-sweet with a mouthfeel like velvet. The last time he indulged in a bottle of the Van Winkle Reserve was the last time he had his dick buried in the soldier. It’s a fine pairing. His legs slump apart and it crowds closer, his eagerly rooting pup. A good boy. Pierce lets his head fall back against the chair. He feels drunk already. He didn’t teach the soldier how to do this, doesn’t know who did, though he knows what the STRIKE teams get up to in the field. The soldier certainly doesn’t know. Most of the time it doesn’t even know what skill sets -- and it is very skilled -- it possesses until one is accessed directly.

He’s wondered, of course. Pierce has read the Soldier's file, one of the few who has. He knows what it is, who it is. He knows how long the sergeant kept screaming for Rogers in the hopes his dead friend would save him from the operation table one more time.

He also knows he’s not alone in his suspicions, and about the speculation that was silenced by HYDRA, the books and articles that never got published. The AIDS crisis has been going well, and HYDRA can't afford the image of Steve Rogers to be called into question right now, not when it’s been such a useful tool in driving moral panic.

The soldier does something so good with its mouth, Pierce doesn’t care where it learned to suck cock. That thing where its lips are sealed tight around his head while its tongue pushes upwards, swirling hard against the glans. The amount of friction, the slick friction, is obscene.

“Shit,” he croaks again.

One hand clenches in the soldier’s hair, the other idly roves over its nape and the pliant hot cartilage of an ear. Pierce stares at his ceiling. Hallucinogenic shifts of the pool lighting crowd the terracotta. It makes him dizzy, so he keeps looking. He’s got one of those new saltwater systems -- he can’t stand the odor of chlorine.

Snowfall muffles every noise beyond the gentle lapping of water and the soldier’s plush mouth swallowing him for another deep pull. And it pulls and it pulls so wet and so strong. Just the sound of it is straight from a locker room fantasy.

Pierce wobbles upright to take a sip from his glass, looks down at the weapon suckling with hollowed cheeks, bobbing head. Darting eyes. Its lips belong to Pierce, but when he isn’t speaking its gaze goes back to surveying the environment like a good little soldier. Its focus never rests for more than a second on any one thing. Doesn’t rest on him at all. Flicking, always flicking. It’s extremely off-putting.

“Stop.”

The soldier’s attention snaps back to Pierce as it jerks its head away. Hunched shoulders wait for punishment. Its mouth: shiny with spit and swollen red with use.

“No, I mean look at me.” He sighs. It looks but doesn’t see. This fucking thing. “Keep sucking. Keep sucking and look at me, and I’ll tell you a story.” He guides it back to its task.

“Once, there was a boy.”
The story of you is that you are a story. The mind is the story of a body. The self is an accumulated history of firing neurons -- a million individual cells that live and die and replace one another, yet still claim a single identity as constant. This is true for everyone except the Winter Soldier.

“The boy was made from ice and snow, and HYDRA gave him life. There were many other snow children, and they all lived together in a big red house.”
HYDRA learned the language the body speaks to itself, the language of the mind: electricity over architecture. Proteins forge new neural pathways as the brain reshapes itself into each memory. Easy enough to hijack. HYDRA teaches the soldier’s cells to tell it different stories, stolen blueprints. The soldier is a beautiful tapestry of action potentials with a body, but no history, no place, no time. No story. Its skull beats with intelligent cells flashing like fireflies trapped in a child’s jar, like abandoned lighthouses on distant shores.

“This snow boy was weaker than the others, with a crooked spine and bad lungs, but he had a strong heart. All he wanted, more than anything, was to serve HYDRA and make the world a better place. (Ah.) He wanted it even more than the bigger, tougher boys and girls. (Ahhn, fuck.)”
Before he was Pierce, before he was Alexander, Alex saw Captain America in Chicago. Hot lights, the taste of popcorn and euphoria, falling clouds of sharp silver confetti. Every memory of that day is an act of recreation: copies of copies, each diverging further from the truth. His memories of Cap are worn smooth as an old river stone.

The soldier's memories of the Captain, like everything captured by the immaculate architecture of its brain, are perfect -- incorruptible, sterile. Inaccessible.

Michelle’s memories had dug into deep ruts and grown huge. Nightmares set in the basement of the Colombian embassy, dreams filled with dirty gags and staccato gunfire. The mind cannot be separated from the body.

The soldier chokes. Its jaw is stretched around him and trembling with effort, but it keeps its dead gaze and clever mouth on task. It won’t dare pull away unless a touch from Pierce gives the command. Pierce releases his grasp on the soldier’s scalp and waits for its throat to stop spasming. The wet constriction is distracting.

“The boy’s dream was to give his mind, his body, his everything. He tried so hard. At first he lied, wanting to be accepted. But it wasn’t his lies HYDRA wanted, it was his true self and his strong heart. So HYDRA took him and flushed out his weakness with pain until, at last, his body could be obedient. And HYDRA gave him a powerful left hand, and he became their fist. He was grateful.”
It’s easy to make stories about Cap once you realize stories were all he ever was. Another cog in history’s propaganda machine. By the time Pierce was older than Rogers ever lived to be, he knew this. Now it feels absurd that he invested so much in a man young enough to be his son now, a child who thought he’d known what it meant to make hard choices.

Bogotá had gotten out of hand. The ELN rebels were only meant to kill the ambassador and two others -- a distraction from the real assassination: the programs coordinator, a double agent. The hostage bungle would have never happened with the Winter Soldier. Things had gotten out of hand, but it was Nick who showed him that he hadn’t gone too far. Rather, he hadn’t gone far enough. Pierce’s mistake was trying to play half of two games in a broken system. He had lacked the will to force his own rules. He would never lack again. And he would trust no one.

“The boy was cleansed. He grew so clean and so strong that he wasn't a little snow boy any more, but something greater. (Just like that, yeah. Mmh. Yeah.) He became a tool to change the world, like his arm, and like pain. He and pain were brothers.”
Human beings are flexible. They can bend in ways more complex and elegant than any metal. The limiting factor is the body’s frailty. Take that away, and the art is only limited by the artist, their vision, conviction. Time. Potential can be unlocked and distilled. With the right artist and an infallible body, a man may overcome his native weakness, especially after the man has been pared away and all that is left is the soldier. The soldier is capable of enduring pain that would kill a man a dozen-fold over or more, but, in failing to die, it becomes that much purer.

The Winter Soldier will strangle itself on his dick if he tells it to. Involuntary tears stream down its cheeks and bead in its lashes; its brow is creased with faint lines of distress. Pierce has seen the soldier run on broken limbs with less reaction. It's struggling for breath -- perhaps he’s been a bit rough -- yet when he taps under its chin, it clenches its eyes shut and obediently takes him in deeper. Beautiful.

“What you must understand: selfishness is a survival mechanism. It is innate because it has kept individuals alive over time, even while holding us back as a species. A lamentable waste, at first. But as our weaponry has evolved, our nature foretells a tragedy. Translate our selfishness to the macro-scale. We now have the power to destroy ourselves, and so we will. Realizing this, our job is to stop it at any cost.”
The fetor of extinction hangs over feudalism, slavery, the Cold War. It stinks of mustard gas and Vietnam. Watergate, Bogotá. Pierce swallows more bourbon to wash away the taste of bile.

Cap had preached: “‘Trust others to make the right decision.’
A hope disproved by the entire history of humanity. It never did last, not once. Millenia of suffering and chaos, for what? The self-centered desire to focus on the individual, the belief that you might be different in spite of all evidence to the contrary? Pride. This philosophy reinforces the status-quo, and the status-quo is shit, my friend. So nothing ever changes, because it feels better to follow your own desires and ignore the truth.

That way of thinking means well, and it will kill us all if we let it. This is weakness, and the weak must submit. The burden of survival is meant for the strong. It must be defended, and our price, our duty, is to see the world without flinching and make the hard decisions.”
For some this epiphany weighs too heavy. The yoke of grief drags them down. Michelle purged everything in a therapy session, then he gave her half a little white pill in a paper cup. A little white pill to melt it all away. Something for the pain, something to make the world less ugly if you close your eyes and pretend, if you want to. Most everyone does.

Close your eyes, close your eyes, close your eyes.

Pierce yanks on the soldier’s hair to get that coveted cringe, a flinch, that anything. He pulls all the way out before plunging back into its body again and again. Its metabolism burns hot in defiance of the winter, and this stupid thing will live longer than Pierce ever could. Brutalize its mouth, make it mean something. God, but he’s so close.

It pulls away. “That isn’t,” a soft voice rasps. “That is not what you have said…” Words lay clumsy on an idle tongue. Throat full of cobwebs, where English dental fricatives harden to Slavic stops. (Dat iss not vaat you haff sayd.)

“I beg your pardon?” Pierce stares down, incredulous. This talking gun with red cheeks and drool-slicked chin, this tool. Just some grimy POW on its knees, daring to say:

“But, but you said...”

Up Close Ache 4.3/5

[(Anonymous)]

“Uh. Protect,” it croaks. “You said.” Its swollen lips work to form sentences. “Strength is a gift, that we might shield the weak. Keep them safe, give them voice. Strong is for carrying.”

Fuck.

He hadn’t thought it was actually listening to him. That it even could, brain-damaged as it is. Fuck.

The first backhand whips its head around. Pierce knows to land under the cheekbone (could lay it open to the bone if he wears certain rings), and the soldier leans into the corrective blow, like this time it might finally take. Only one of them is allowed to make corrections. It crumples halfway to the tile before hauling itself back upright.

“I believe,” Pierce says, "that you’re mistaken.”

It looks at him. Seems to think about this. “No.”

The next slap is like hitting concrete. The soldier does not acknowledge the strike. For just a moment, the soldier is more unyielding than a wall. Pain lights up Pierce's knuckles and courses into his arm.

The weapon says, “No.”

What flits through Pierce’s mind is not a thought: a sound. The memory of a coughing roar just audible under the jungle’s squall, in the darkness before the sun rose and the dogs began to scream. An ugly moment when Pierce’s hindbrain reduced him to prey.

This is worse. The eyes turned on him do not belong to some big cat, but a creature that knows itself in a mirror.

Cold seconds pass. Pierce schools his features to pleasant blandness and chooses a tone very, very carefully.

"There, there. You know how you get when you’ve been awake too long." He makes his sigh sound like exasperation, though not unaffectionate. No big deal. Hints of that sunshine smile break through, always the Friend. "You know how you get."

Pierce folds one leg of his pajama bottoms and wipes the drool from its chin with merino wool. Its eyes track his face, not his hands. Gray-green, teetering. He clucks and whispers nonsense like he’s talking down a thoroughbred, big thoroughbred gone twitchy and dangerous when the power running through it swells too large for even its marvelous flesh to contain. And then.

Then it withers under his palm at last. Pierce has never been in a fire fight, but he can recognize a bullet dodged. There's not a moment to waste.

"Climb into papa's lap, hmm, silly kitten?"

When Pierce takes it by the throat, the soldier leans into his touch desperately. It’s huge-eyed and grimacing. A rare thing, for the soldier to wear fear, but it doesn’t pull away while Pierce leads it upward. It knows what it did. It knows, and it all but falls over itself to obey, clambering into the wide chair with none of its usual grace. Most of its weight stays propped awkwardly on one arm rather than on Pierce, and the rattan groans under two hundred extra pounds of assassin.

Its dick is still at half-mast. Pierce takes a moment to marvel over the heat of it -- accelerated metabolism, he reminds himself -- and with a few strokes the soldier is fully hard again. Responsiveness has never been an issue.

“See,” Pierce purrs. “Isn’t that better, isn’t that nice?”

The bright spots over its cheekbones could be the product of shame or Pierce’s knuckles. It frowns down at its knees, shoulders hunched, unable to meet his face. The soldier grunts when he tightens a fist around its erection. He can feel its heartbeat accelerate.

No clear recordings of Steve Rogers’ voice remain on record, so Pierce is making a guess when he rumbles, “There ya go, buddy. This’ll set you right.” He slides its foreskin slowly over the swollen head, back down again, slower.

A whimper gets choked off before it can escape; the soldier holds its breath. He thumbs at the leaking tip, and the sinew of its belly flexes in a rising wave. So easy to imagine how it would feel -- being inside the soldier -- when he can see its torso ripple with the precision of perfect muscle definition. Pierce can admit he’s past his prime, though not by much, yet even when he’d been at home among the young golden gods, his body had never been like this. He still had his Olympus, but the soldier is a Titan.

He smooths his other palm over the white column of its thigh, tracing each of the three distinct outer muscles of its quadriceps. “Now you try. There, just like before.”

The cybernetic arm is a functional sculpture, but its limp hand takes some guidance. Its hunched posture is tiresome, so Pierce hauls its head back by the hair on its crown. "Nothing to be shy about," he purrs.

Better. Its throat is bared, spine curved, meat open to him. Bowed mouth gaped open in silence. It doesn't panic anymore, not for decades. It doesn’t flinch or pull away. What’s the point?

Pierce knows what goes on when he's not around. He knows some of its handlers don't see the point of lubrication, or simply prefer to go without, but really. He’s not a barbarian. A tube drawn from the pocket of his robe does the job quickly enough. He slicks himself while the soldier paws at his own dick a few inches away, trying to mimic Pierce's technique.

“Now, why don’t you tell me more about what I said. The first time. You remember that day, don’t you?”

The soldier nods at him stupidly while he adjusts its hips.

“Report.”

“I, I uh.” Its gaze turns inward and uncertain. “You said much, you--” It breaks off in a wordless cry when Pierce enters it.

The Winter Soldier is nothing if not durable. Its clenching is… intense. Combined with the thrill of a near miss still thumping in his chest, Pierce has to take a moment to steady himself. The molten core of it threatens to overwhelm.

The soldier is shaking all over even as its body sinks down to envelope Pierce like a glove. Dozens have died in the sights of its rifle, but how many have seen the sniper's eyes roll back like this? How sweet it is to throw those regimented breaths off time, make the scarred chest heave. The kid’s a natural. Knows how to be fucked even when it doesn’t. Especially then.

“I’m sorry, didn’t quite catch that. You were saying?”

Bruised lids flutter closed in concentration. “Then, you were--huhhh.”

Pierce thrusts up twice and is rewarded with a stifled sob. Each time, it rocks down to meet his hips. Pierce wonders if the soldier is aware of how it bares its teeth.

“So angry.” The Winter Soldier still has its eyes squeezed shut. Its head lolls back, and the grimace slackens closer to pleasure. "So angry that day. You seemed… it was you, but bigger. Not on outside, but you: the important parts. All of you huge and lit up, on fire. Beautiful,” the soldier gasps. “Mad as I’d ever seen you. Thought you were gonna sock me one right in the mouth, best day of my fuckin’ life.”

"Tell me."

Up Close Ache 4.4/5

[(Anonymous)]

"You’d gotten into it with the Ortsgruppen. Not for the first time, but never this bad. Ridgewood, Bushwick? I don't... Some kind of rally out in the square, I’d have have taken us a different way if I’d known. Freunde des Neuen Deutschland. Friends of the New Germany. Of course you had to wade right in like a reckless idiot." The tension in its wide shoulders relaxes, and the soldier melts against Pierce. "So prouda' you."

"Whole new level of mad," it continued. "Distilled to a higher plane of existence kind of mad. I think it went so far you circled back around to calm again. And you never did raise your voice, not even once. I couldn't get over that.

"The quiet way you got to talking, it was like something straight out of a book, or like you hear in church. Me, I was there to serve witness. I could see you, really see you: this one true thing moving through a sea of ugliness and hate. Not perfect, not pure, just... good. And I don't know how, but the worse the ugliness got, the brighter you burned. Nothing they did could stop you loving them. The rot couldn't touch you, and all you wanted was to help lift the rest of us out. It's always been like that with you, but for the first time I saw how impossible it was, that you could be this way. But it was real. Hit me like a truck. You were the realest thing I'd ever laid eyes on."

One flesh arm and one metal wrap around Pierce. The soldier burrows its forehead into his shoulder while it shudders in a few breaths. "I, I saw you were meant for something great. All the Freunde saw was a skinny little punk with a mouth on him, still limping from a tussle with Robbie Salzberg. They were stupid enough to think you were weak, and low enough to think that's something needs wiping out. Because you terrified them, those grown men. They were afraid, so they were gonna snuff you out. Now comes my job, besides witnessing.

"You hated me dragging you out of there. I had to throw you over my shoulder in the end, which pissed you off worse, but pride was gonna be the least of our wounds in another minute. So I hauled you out of there and made for Vinegar Hill like my ass was catching fire.

"You couldn't stop wheezing by then. We get out from the Ortsgruppen just in time for your own fucking body to start attacking. I had to cool you off, calm you down. Keep you safe. Would do anything for you.

“That’s why I brought you here.”

Pierce frowns. “Here?”

“Was supposed to be a surprise, hahh,” the soldier murmurs, “I was savin’ it, but I guess we can celebrate your birthday a week early if means you not blowing your top. Anything for you.” It presses its lips to the hinge of Pierce’s jaw.

The Winter Soldier never kisses without being prompted, but now it’s peppering the side of his face with them. The Winter Soldier always struggles to maintain composure -- the stoicism of a weapon -- but this thing is rutting itself on Pierce’s lap in earnest, and gusting moans against his skin between sentences.

Pierce finds he doesn't care for the change much. His gasps taken from the soldier are hard-won; these sighs are freely and cheaply given.

Pierce turns his mouth away from it and says, “Tell me more about this place.”

“It’s something, ain’t it? Who knew all this was hidden down under the Bridge anchorage? All the stone arches and vaults, feels like being in a castle almost. Real Count of Monte Cristo stuff. Thought you’d like that.” It ducks to hide a shy smile. “Nice and cool, too. It's always cool like this. I’ll sneak you in when the weather gets too boiling to stand, but we gotta keep it a secret. It’s ours, our blue grotto.” The soldier tips its head back; Pierce's pool house ceiling dances with light like an underwater cave. “See?”

"It's beautiful." He reaches between them to jerk the soldier a few times, and something close to laughter rasps against his ear.

"I've been so afraid to tell you." It offers him a wobbly grin. "I'm not-- I know you're better in a way I'll never be. I know I can't be like you, but I'm not such a fool I can't recognize a good thing when I see it. I'll try harder, I promise," it husks, nosing Pierce's hair. "I want to be good, too, I want. Ah, that. The way you feel in me."

When Pierce shivers, the smile flips to concern, and in a second its streamlined bulk is curling around him. Even now, it's careful to spare him most of its weight. "Are you cold? Let me keep you warm. Please." A titanium thumb ghosts over his cheek, and its expression crumples. "Just, let me keep you,” it begs.

He cups the soldier's face, does the smile: "Always."

It lights up for him with the untarnished bliss of ignorance. The soldier is so young in this memory, and Pierce realizes he must have looked the same way once, back when he was still Alex. Michelle had too, when they’d thought world had been something worth loving as well as protecting.

Pierce says, "You love me, don't you? It's okay."

And just like that, the soldier is weeping with broken joy. Its heartbeat thunders through the bare chest it presses against Pierce. Its grin is flushed, dizzy.

This time he lets it kiss him on the mouth, and Pierce can all but taste the salt blowing off the East River, see the clear sky of a long-dead June. He knows the soldier can. Its eyes are distant but alive, and the light they reflect is blue, blue, blue.

Pierce knows this is the original file: flawless as if the soldier is still living that moment, in mind if not in body. This is its perfect memory.

The Winter Soldier rides him -- tight and young and enthusiastic, with full parted lips and streaming eyes. Were he a younger man, Pierce would have lost control. "More," he gasps. He digs in the pocket of his robe. "Tell me more."

"Relieved. That's what I am, so relieved." It laughs again wetly. "Thank you, thank you." It won't stop clutching at him. Pierce fucks it harder. "All I ever wanted, to keep you safe and loved. I promise. You can be you, and do great things, and I'll stay out of the way. But please just let me have this. I'll do anything, Steve." It sobs around Pierce's fingers when they slip into its mouth, it trusts him completely.

"I know." Pierce places two little white pills on the soldier's tongue.

If it were in an MRI, its brain would be incandescent with the lacework of memory. The shape of this moment is paved in forks of lightning, in Christmas lights, it’s the Brooklyn Bridge on New Year's Eve.

The pills are less direct than the chair, but the language translates. Neural connections collapse in their wake, bridges burn in a storm of fire and ash and disordered proteins.

A line of confusion appears between the soldier's eyes. There’s a catastrophe unfolding in its skull -- the funeral pyre Pierce lit for James Barnes, for Michelle-that-was, for Alex. For Steve Rogers and the dream of a world that has no need for HYDRA. (Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.)

The soldier goes rigid. There’s a convulsion, then it releases Pierce to touch its own damp cheeks in bewilderment.

Pierce comes.

In the brief throes of orgasm, he clamps his fingers into a muzzle over its mouth. The hand gripping its face is marked by age in a way the soldier never will be, and this suddenly strikes Pierce as cruel. For whom, he couldn't say.

"I'll tell you a secret,” Pierce whispers. Its skin is clammy under his grasp, wheezing hot against his palm. Huge eyes lock on him, and confusion gives way to terror as Pierce pulls it in close as a lover. "I wish I was the man you think I am. I wish I could have been."

All falls away. This is how things must be: the soldier's brow smooths, mismatched hands drop to its sides, breath slows to an even rhythm. Its expression glazes over and withdraws. The visiting ghost drowns again in the cold black lake of the Winter Soldier.

When the soldier climbs off him, its erection has gone all but completely soft. It steps back and stands at attention among the islands of body armor scattered across the tile. Just another shadow, a drugged-up jungle cat laid out for his inspection. After a few moments it begins surveilling the room again, attention darting from corners to exits and back again. Restless again, battle-ready. It takes no notice of the spent semen trickling down its thighs.

A swill of bourbon remains in Pierce's glass. He's not sure he wants it. "Go clean off in the pool," he orders, finally.

The surface barely ripples as it wades up to its chest in turquoise. Outside, the snow turns to ice pellets. Pierce listens to them chiming against the glass wall facing his garden while the soldier scrubs itself mechanically. Streaks of old blood fan out from its skin, then dissolve into nothing. It disappears into water as warm and salty as tears.

Re: The Winter Soldier doesn't understand his arousal

[(Anonymous)]

I done goofed and responded to a comment instead of the prompt. UCA 5/5 fill here: https://hydratrashmeme.dreamwidth.org/587.html?thread=4597579#cmt4597579