Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

And I am aware now of how everything’s gonna be fine
One day, too late, I’m in Hell
I am prepared now, seems everyone’s gonna be fine
One day, too late, just as well

  — “Fine Again,” Seether

--

I stood outside when the roof gave in
You crawled from the wreckage you were lying in
You were out of reach, and we’re out of time
But I took it all and toed that line
You held my hand and pulled me down with you

  — “Torture,” Les Friction

-- -- --

November 2015

Rumlow loathed going to the Supr Savr by the shitty apartment he'd landed courtesy of the government’s free handouts. The A/C was always either blowing too hard or had shut off altogether, leaving the whole store stale and stagnant with sluggish heat and the sharp sour odor of sweat. The floor was sticky and half the containers had peeled-away labels or else the tops were cracked along their edges. But it was also the only store he could go to where the cashiers didn’t try to overcharge him — seriously, fifteen dollars for a dozen eggs — or other customers didn’t trip him up, or treat him like shit. He’d tried going a few times to the Circle-K adjacent to the gas station a block from his place but the cashiers there put their handguns on the fucking counter when he walked in: Can I help you, sir? The name overemphasized and dripping with sarcasm. Once he’d walked to the cash register with a fucking blue Gatorade and a bag of Funyuns and the cashier had looked him up and down, turned, unlocked the display case behind her, and said,

“You want Marlboro reds or Camels with that, sugar?”

The other stockers had laughed overloud and obnoxious. A woman in line behind Rumlow had said “you really shouldn’t be smoking in your condition, you know” and a policeman walking in — gun on display in its holster — said “honey, you know better’n to reason with Hydra Nazi scum.” By that point Rumlow had entirely lost what little appetite he’d managed to scrounge up and walked out, leaving his items on the counter, ignoring the cashier calling after him wait baby, you forgot your smokes! Since then he’d stuck with the Supr Savr no matter how shitty every single other damn thing about it was. Besides it was pretty rare he needed much of anything anymore: painkillers he got from the pharmacy, half-hoping the doctors had decided finally to lace the contents with cyanide; a case of water (he couldn’t drink sodas anymore, the carbonation irritated his throat too much); a couple packs of ramen. Most of the time he stayed in his stupid government-sanctioned house knocking back Ambien so he could stay asleep more than ten minutes. His physical therapists — the nicer ones — had told him several times he should go out, try walking, keep his muscles from stiffening up. Rumlow had tried it all of once before some little kids had started screaming at the scars on his face and hands and neck, and a woman walking her dog (a fucking Doberman that came up to Rumlow’s hip) had “accidentally” let it off leash, so that Rumlow ended up looking like a fucking idiot jumping onto a nearby bench and kicking his feet at the dog frantically:

Get the fuck away from me, mutt!

while its owner and every fucking passerby laughed at him. Rumlow saw a policeman that time, too, standing at a far corner, watching them through his sunglasses. He took an inordinate amount of time to straighten from where he was slouched against a street sign, and then to shuffle unhurriedly towards the scene. “Ma’am,” he’d drawled, laconic and uncaring, “I’m gonna have to ask you to restrain that dog.” Then he’d looked up at Rumlow who was still trembling on top of the bench, tilted his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose just slightly, and added, “Get off this fuckin’ park bench before I decide to arrest you for damaging public property.”

The woman didn’t exactly restrain her dog. As Rumlow got down it lunged at him and he tripped over the bench leg trying to get away from it again. He caught himself on the heels of his hands and a little on one knee; he could only partially feel it in his right hand, but he was still picking gravel out by the following morning, flushing the cuts again and again with warm water and isopropyl alcohol.

So yeah. He didn’t fucking leave his apartment unless he had to. But he’d run out of dishwashing soap and he was pretty low on instant coffee (for the other eighty-five percent of the time when not even Ambien would knock out the nightmares and he had to drink cup after cup to stay awake staring with strained burning eyes at the television). So he pulled on a sweatshirt and jeans and headed down the street.

It was relatively early. The few people out in the pre-dawn nascent light were either commuting to or just getting off work, and didn’t pay Rumlow much attention. By the time he got to the Supr Savr he was still drenched in sweat, heart knocking erratically against his throat, but that was usual, even for November in Manhattan. He’d left D.C. around this same time last year and had spent a while assuming he was sweating his way through forty-five degree weather because he’d been bedridden for so long. By the third dizzying encounter with yet another Concerned Citizen (“hey, aren’t you that Hydra guy…?”) he understood the truth of what was going on.

It was amusing, kind of, in a sickening dark way, to understand that even after a year and seven months, Pierce was still fucking winning.

Rumlow opened the door to the Supr Savr; the little bell overhead jingled. The sound was bright and too friendly. As he walked in one of the janitors glanced over at him and then away again, shuffling a little towards the wall.

Sometimes Rumlow thought he might have been able to get away with it, to blend in, if it wasn’t for the fucking scars. Even after all the skin grafts and filler injections he’d had done in the hospital. In another life Rumlow might have thought some of them looked badass. Right now he just wanted to rip his fucking skin off.

He grabbed one of the little hand-held shopping baskets, ignoring the look the cashier gave him. His hands shaking slightly he started down the aisles. The plastic was rough and irritating against the sensitive flesh on his fingertips.

Coffee was first, second aisle. Most of Rumlow’s sense of smell had been eradicated in the fire but coffee was so fucking strong it managed to burst through anyway. Rumlow debated for a while with himself whether to get orange juice or not, but ultimately decided against it; citrus was too acidic most of the time, and Rumlow didn’t want it just sitting in his fucking fridge while he waited for a rare good day, taunting him from the bottom shelf, reminding him how permanently he’d been fucked up.

He had to go to the back of the store for the soap. It was quiet enough in the front with just the janitor and the lone cashier, and an older woman buying birthday cards who hadn’t seemed to notice Rumlow at all. But in the back there was nothing. No sound, aside from the soft overhead buzzing of the lights. The fluorescent glare of them was too bright and seemed badly out of place with the dawn barely broken outside. It gave Rumlow the surreal lurching feeling of being in a gas station at two a.m., trying to choose between Pringles and Doritos, wedged up in the narrow aisle against toothbrushes and Junior Mints.

(Summer 1982. His second stepfather had gotten drunk, started coming after him with cigarettes to put out on his skin. Rumlow had mocked the way he walked and his stepfather had pulled a fucking gun on him in response so Rumlow got the fuck out of the house for the night while his mom did whatever unspeakable acts to calm his stepfather down.

He’d ended up at the gas station half a mile from his stepdad’s house. The little shop was open twenty-four hours and Rumlow slouched in, heart still panicking trapped in his ribs, and took his time shuffling along the aisles pretending he was there to buy something. He could see the cashier sneaking bored, half-hearted glances at him while she smoked down her cigarettes and watched late-night reruns on the mini cathode-ray set up in the wall behind the desk.

He ended up spaced out in the chip aisle for maybe ten minutes. He hadn’t realized it until he’d gotten inside the store but he was only wearing one shoe, and it was actually a slipper. His bare toes were on the smooth tile floor and the nails of them were filthy, and there was a little blood on one of them where he must have cut himself without realizing while on his trek from hell. He stood there staring intermittently between his bloodied toe and the bags of chips until at last the cashier — now snapping a piece of gum — called, “You gonna buy something or what, ‘cause there’s a ‘no loitering’ sign on the door and I’m supposed to enforce it or whatever.”

It is two in the fucking morning, sweetheart, he wanted to say, I don’t think anyone gives a shit, but he walked back up the aisle and out the door instead. It was the middle of the summer and the air was crushingly humid but his bare toes felt oddly chilled as he walked back to the house. His stepdad and his mom had disappeared and he made his quiet, unobtrusive way down the hall and into his own room. He shut the door, debated locking it, decided it wasn’t worth the inevitable fight. His mind, for whatever reason, stayed stuck in the chip aisle, circling back to it again and again over the next few hours until he was at last able to force himself to sleep — )

— and it seemed to have gotten stuck there again, at least temporarily. The slow-coming dawn was lighting up the east-facing windows and the floor, looking mutedly gray against the glare of the overhead bulbs. In the kitchen aisle Rumlow was staring at the same bottle of Dawn soap he’d been staring at five (ten? fifteen?) minutes ago. The Supr Savr store brand was right next to it and Rumlow’s mind kept ramming pointlessly against how if he bought the store brand he’d save sixty-three cents, and how just a year and a half ago he’d been in Europe spending thousands on hookers and blow and liquor and not giving a shit that none of it was what he really wanted —

His mind was floating on static, drifting absently through the years, the silence of the store, the chill of the overrun A/C on the back of his neck, the constant warped hum of the lights. His eyes felt burnt out with exhaustion and he was starting to wonder if he should lie down for a second in the aisle, use the soap dispenser as a pillow, when a footfall sounded beside him.

The fire had fucked up something in his brain. His reflexes weren’t great anymore. Technically he wasn’t even supposed to drive a car, but he was holding onto his license until they fucking took it from him, he could still control one fucking thing —

— anyway his response times were kind of shit and as such between the second he heard the footfall and the second he thought to set his own feet and center himself in preparation for a fight he’d already had his wrist grabbed and body shoved backwards against the opposite shelves. His head collided ungently with a package of one-ply toilet paper. He couldn’t feel the force of the hand bearing down on his wrist because it was right over the worst of the scarring but there was absolutely nothing stopping him from seeing that Steve fucking Rogers had somehow managed to ambush him at ass o’clock in the morning in a fucking discount store.

“Whoa, Cap,” Rumlow said. “Didn’t remember it being like that.” His eyes flicked down to Steve’s hand around his wrist, then back up to his face. He was ignoring — perhaps idiotically — the way his heartrate had tripled in speed. It had already been beating too quickly and now was making such erratic leaps and pulses he thought it might burst from his chest.

Steve’s mouth was so thin it was nearly bloodless. “Shut the fuck up,” he snarled, voice so soft he was nearly whispering.

Rumlow’s eyes darted over Steve’s shoulder. He didn’t have the shield visibly on his person, but Rumlow knew that didn’t mean shit. He twisted his hand a little in Steve’s grasp but Steve didn’t let go. Rumlow was pretty sure he felt his hand tighten.

“You’re going to listen to me,” Steve said, “and we’re never going to fucking speak again after this.”

His voice was beyond fury. It was not even the flat businesslike command tone he’d adopted in the field when Rumlow had worked with him on STRIKE missions. He sounded very much like someone was sitting inside his brain pulling wires on his — whatever the section was that controlled anger, or rage, or the instinct to punch someone in the mouth. He was talking and Rumlow’s brain was zoning out again because he hadn’t spoken to Steve nor seen him in person since April of last year. The last time he’d heard anything about him outside of generic Captain America surprises pediatric cancer ward type stories had been in October of last year. IN A STUNNING MOVE FROM THE JUSTICE SYSTEM —

“ — and if you fucking set foot over either border — ”

“Hang on a sec, Cap,” Rumlow said, and this time Steve dug his nails into his wrist so hard Rumlow could actually feel it. “Sorry, my hearing’s not as good as it — ”

Steve’s nostrils flared out. Impossibly, his jaw clenched even tighter. Rumlow rolled his eyes. Against the back of his neck the A/C abruptly cut out. He could see where the sunlight was crawling steadily over the grime-coated floor. It combined with the artificial overhead lights washed out Steve’s skin and hair until it was as though he’d been smudged into the store, pale furious imitation of himself.

“You gonna make a big fuckin’ deal about disabled vets needing special accommodations now, Cap?” Rumlow asked nastily. “I thought you were supposed to be all righteous or some — ”

“You aren’t deaf,” Steve snapped, “and you’re barely a fucking vet.” He jerked on Rumlow’s wrist for no reason. Rumlow refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing him wince. He just leveled him with his best Hydra glare — shut the agents up every damn time — and said,

“Whatever the hell I am I didn’t fucking hear anything you said, so fucking say it again.”

Steve looked like he wanted to press some secret device in his ear and order his stupid friends to come crashing through the walls or the windows and open fire. He was holding tightly to an envelope in the hand not currently occupied with cutting off Rumlow’s fucking circulation and Rumlow watched him suppress several emotions before finally handing it over. Rumlow had to set down his shopping basket in order to take it because Steve still refused to let him go.

“There’s an address in there,” Steve said. “You’re gonna go to it, and you’re gonna stay there. You’re not coming back to New York. You’re not going back to D.C. If you ever cross either state border again no one is going to grant you immunity.”

Rumlow’s eyebrows furrowed. “The fuck, Rogers?” He was looking at the envelope; its exterior was blank, and Rumlow was (pretty sure) Steve wouldn’t hand him an anthrax-laced envelope in public, but still. Lately he’d been feeling a little wary about opening mail, more so when it didn’t come with a return address. At least the letters in his P.O. box last week hadn’t been covered in dried shit.

“No one wants you here,” Steve said. Rumlow remembered the way he’d smiled at him when they worked out together in the SHIELD gym. Best damn sparring partner I’ve had this century, he’d said once, and Rumlow had made some crack about how Steve didn’t have to flatter him; he knew he was a cut above whatever pickings he got in his nursing home. “SHIELD is willing to — ”

“Wait,” Rumlow said, “aren’t you supposed to pretend like SHIELD doesn’t exist or something? Doesn’t it automatically deduct you a thousand humanitarian points if you remind anyone how you and your friends got fucked over for years by Hydr— ”

“What was good in SHIELD is still out there,” Steve snapped, interrupting. “And there are still safehouses, and support systems for people who need them, and — ”

“Hell of an assumption to make about a guy you haven’t talked to in — ”

“We know about the death threats,” Steve said. His voice had changed, gone tighter, like he was forcing the words out.

Rumlow stiffened without meaning to. He looked again at the envelope. Then at Steve’s face.

“You fuckin’ with me, Rogers?”

“Why on earth would I — no. You know what?” Abruptly Steve let Rumlow’s wrist drop. Rumlow felt the blood try to rush back into it; he thought he could feel where the skin had gone clammy under Steve’s tight grasp. Steve reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You know what?” he said again. “I don’t actually care. Look at the address or not. Go there or not. My job here is done. I don’t have to justify or explain anything else to you.” He turned to go back the way he’d come, then paused. His back was so tense.

“You leave Manhattan,” he said, still like he was having to pull the words up from some long-buried place inside him, “and all the shit’s gonna stop. I’m never fucking talking to you again, but that’s the one thing I can promise you.”

Over his shoulder Rumlow could hear some more customers whispering; he heard Captain America and he heard isn’t that — ? and he thought, for some reason, of how easy it would be for this conversation to end up on the national news. CAPTAIN AMERICA CAUGHT TALKING WITH EX-HYDRA TOP AGENT IN CORNER STORE AT SIX IN THE MORNING. It didn’t make sense for Steve to risk his career over a lie, although in fairness if he was sending Rumlow to his death then Steve’s name would get cleared again pretty damn quick.

He looked back, opening his mouth; he had no idea what he was going to say. But Steve had already disappeared.

--

Back at the apartment Rumlow stretched out on the filthy mattress that served as his bed when he could manage to lay flat. He’d dropped the envelope into the Supr Savr bag and now as he fished it out it felt faintly damp from the soap, and had a gritty texture to it where the coffee grounds had spilled a little. But when he opened it the type inside was still legible:

BROCK H. RUMLOW
NEW RESIDENCE: 1261 ESPLANADE AVE.
NEW ORLEANS, LA 70116
EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY

Then, below it, in slightly smaller type:

Mr. Rumlow:

Enclosed are two sets of keys: one for the house, one for your new P.O. box (location below). Also enclosed is a SHIELD-issued debit card, courtesy of Anthony E. Stark. Your monthly budget will be to the sum of $3000. Emergency use of funds can be requested (with no guarantee of acceptance) at the number listed below.

The debit card is encrypted. It is advised you do not inform anyone of your new location. It is also advised you leave your house as little as possible, except to get groceries. Wearing a disguise (such as sunglasses, a hat, etc.) is preferable to most, though you may also choose to have your food and other supplies delivered.

You are on record as receiving 300 mg monthly of fentanyl and 500 mg monthly of prednisone. Your primary care physician in Manhattan can continue to forward the drugs to you through a local New Orleans pharmacy, or you can arrange for a new physician once in Louisiana. If no action is taken within a month of your move-in date, we will assume you are staying with your New York-based doctor, and no further action will be required on your part.

It was stamped with the SHIELD emblem, and there were multiple printed signatures, none of which Rumlow gave enough of a shit to look at. Below all of it, including the P.O. box address and the number for emergency funds, there was a single line, handwritten, hurriedly scrawled:

You don’t fucking deserve any of this. At all.

Rumlow scoffed. He thought about crumpling it up, throwing it in the trash. Fuck Steve and his fucking humanitarian spiel of bullshit. Rumlow could fucking live through this shit; he’d been dealing with it now since last April, and the death threats had only started what, four, five months ago? He’d be fucking fine. He didn’t need SHIELD standing over his shoulder, wiping his ass, cutting up his meat and checking his temperature, making sure he was okay.

Outside his apartment door there was a loud, obnoxious laugh; someone said, “This where the fuckin’ Nazi lives?” and Rumlow heard a series of bangs, followed by something wet and solid thunking against the wood. He wasn’t in the mood, but he’d gotten shit from the landlady for not cleaning up the last five times it had happened, so he got up, waited until he heard their footsteps receding in the distance, and opened the door a crack.

A three pound bag of raw meat, still covered in blood, the plastic wrap burst open, contents spilled across the hall.

Well. Rumlow had seen worse.

He hesitated, then slammed the door shut again, twisting the lock so violently it almost snapped off in his hand. Fuck this. Fuck it. He walked back to the letter, snatched it up off his mattress. He’d never been to Louisiana; his first stepdad, the one he could barely remember, had been from there, or had been in prison there, or something.

He looked at the address. Esplanade. It sounded… well, it sounded like a name that wouldn’t fit in Rumlow’s mouth, or in his life. Too ethereal and exotic. Mysterious. It was the sort of shit that made Rumlow’s skin tighten uncomfortably.

A fuck-awful stench rose in the air. When Rumlow looked over at his door, he was (mostly) unsurprised to see some of the blood had begun seeping under the crack of it. Overhead he could hear his upstairs neighbors starting their fuckin’ loud-ass day. He was pretty sure they didn’t know who lived beneath them, but they were still absolutely fucking awful, stomping around their floor all day in what sounded like five-inch army boots, constantly rearranging furniture, yelling at each other in some foreign language.

Rumlow dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. His fingers scraped the edge of one of his scars. He thought of the months after the Triskelion fell, how even though he’d never recovered his memories of the actual day, he hadn’t quite been able to get the smells of fire and ash out of his nose, not until well after the trial. How for a long time he couldn’t even run the heater in his apartment, despite the temperature dropping steadily into the twenties, because the sound and the warmth of it triggered some ugly nauseated feeling he couldn’t chase down and couldn’t sleep off.

New Orleans.

At least it was in the south.

At least it would be on water.

--

June 2014

He learns that his failed mission is named Steve.

He learns that the new name Steve wants to call him is ‘Bucky’.

He learns that he has done many things wrong, and lots of people blame him, but other people don’t. Steve is one of the latter, and so are Steve’s other friends. Steve wants to help him, and he can’t say no, so he doesn’t.

He learns that there will be a trial. It won’t be for a while, because they have to gather evidence, but Steve and his friends say it’s okay. It means there’s more time to prepare. He isn’t entirely sure what the objective of preparing for the trial is, since he has done all the crimes he’s accused of, and there is only one form of punishment he knows. But when he mentions this punishment in front of Steve, Steve gets very quiet and frowns a lot. So he learns to keep his mouth shut about the trial, too.

He lives on a high floor of the building some people call Stark Tower and some people call Avengers Tower. He has the whole floor to himself, and he doesn’t know what to do with that much space, so he spends most of his time in the front room. Stark has a friend who lives in the walls and talks to him sometimes. His name is Jarvis. Jarvis asks very simple questions and calls him ‘Master Barnes’, because ‘Barnes’ is the other half of the new name Steve has given him.

(He doesn’t think it’s really his name. But it’s not his place to question Stark’s friend, or Steve, or Steve’s friends. So he keeps this thought to himself.)

The man who is not Bucky Barnes likes Stark’s friend. Jarvis is a robot, and therefore the most relatable being he’s met since crawling out of the Potomac.

Sometimes, late at night, he walks to the window. He feels like he’s waiting for something, but he doesn’t know what it could be. He can see down over a good bit of the city, and Jarvis can make the window zoom in on certain parts if he asks him to.

He doesn’t know what he’s looking for.

But he looks anyway.

Chapter Text

November 2015

Two things immediately discovered about New Orleans, in order:

One: It smelled fucking awful. There was such a strong stench of sewer water mixed with the river mixed with — what the fuck, seafood, fried dough, sweat — it managed to push its way past Rumlow’s fucked nasal cavities. As soon as he exited the car which had taken him from the airport the smell assaulted his nose and he was momentarily furious — why the fuck had SHIELD sent him to a fucking garbage dump, who the hell lived here; more importantly why would anyone live here, why was this such a huge fucking tourist trap city? He turned to snap at the driver to just take him back; he’d already had enough, he’d take the fucking raw meat at his door and the snide commentary from minimum wage workers. But the car was already pulling away from the curb and Rumlow’s bags — the little he’d been allowed to bring — were at his feet, and it was going to be hard enough to get them up the three concrete steps to his new front door. So he gave up.

He’d been doing a lot of giving up recently. Upon receiving his flight information from SHIELD he’d found out that he was giving up his name (now legally he was known as Harlan St. James; Harlan being his actual middle name, St. James because he guessed some fuck’s job was to sit and run a finger down some list all day picking names in alphabetical order). He gave up most of the stuff he’d accumulated since moving to Manhattan: all of his furniture, most of his clothes, the shitty cathode ray set that worked a quarter of the time and the flatscreen that worked all the time, the soap and coffee he’d just bought at the Supr Savr. Bizarrely, he was allowed to bring his ninety-nine cent collection of cassette tapes, half of which didn’t even play music anymore. He brought anything that could fit into the two carry-ons he was allowed — nothing that would need to be checked in, reducing the risk that he might stay too long in one airport or another and be seen, or that his baggage would get rerouted and he’d have to send out for it (risking more attention). Summarily as he stood at the foot of his new stairs and hated his fucked up legs and his fucked up arms and his fucked up depth perception and Steve Rogers (in that order) all he had in the world was:

The SHIELD-issued debit card, its logo screened onto the back, and his new legal name at the bottom in small silver capitals. His two new keys, which he’d almost lost five times both at JFK and at Louis Armstrong, because his hands weren’t always great at holding things. The clothes he’d been able to fold army-neat and pack into his duffels: five shirts, four pairs of pants, four rolled-up socks, two belts, and five pairs of underwear. His toothbrush, hairbrush (not that he could use it much; the bristles irritated his scalp and sometimes his fucking hair came out if he tugged too hard but it was the same as with his driver’s license; he wasn’t fucking giving it up until he had to), and two three-point-four ounce bottles of his specially formulated shampoo and conditioner (GUARANTEED TO REDUCE HAIR LOSS AND SCALP IRRITATION EVEN IN THE MOST SEVERE OF CASES!). Everything else — things too large to fit in a carry-on like his furniture; things the TSA would’ve hated like razors or his burn cream or, bizarrely, his fucking prescription pills; things he just didn’t fucking need anymore, like his tac gear or his fake SHIELD card —

— he had no fucking idea why he’d even held onto it; it had really been for Hydra, but naturally since he and the rest of the STRIKE team were undercover they’d placed the SHIELD emblem in the upper right corner. In any case it wasn’t like it had been any use since April of last year, and it wasn’t like he’d used it all that much while in the organization. It said his name in white and had a black background. It had his identification number in case shit happened while he was in the field. The names of both his immediate supervisor (Alexander G. Pierce, Sec. of Defense) and his emergency unit contact (Jack T. Rollins, Spec. Agent) on the back. Sometimes when Rumlow needed them to like him he’d joked with the other Hydra STRIKE guys about the cards, getting everyone to set them out and doing his best imitation of Patrick Bateman (“Let’s see Louis Hauer’s card. Look at the subtle off-black coloring. The tasteful thickness of it. Oh my God. It even has a watermark.”) so that they’d laugh —

— all of it went into a garbage bag, which he tried desperately to set on fire for about seven minutes before realizing — hands shaking, the smell searing his throat, rushing him back screaming to the unmemory of the helicarrier smashing through the window and the glass flying and the soft voice in his head which must have whispered this is what you wanted anyway —

— that it just wasn’t going to fucking happen. In the end he just dropped it all into the dumpster behind his apartment complex the day before he left for the airport.

He was used to traveling light from his days in Hydra and he wasn’t sure why this sudden lack of things was even bothering him. Hell, he was used to it from before Hydra; he had to leave his mom’s house fast the first time, his grandparents coming at one in the morning to get him after a phone call he didn’t entirely remember making in which he’d sat hunched over in the hall closet with the receiver clutched tightly in his hands, the cord nearly cutting his circulation, whispering please please please come get me granma while in the adjacent room his mom and her friends screamed at each other and hit the walls over and over. Then the eighth (and final) time he’d run away after his second stepfather again threatened to shoot him, and he hadn’t had time to grab more than a few things: toothbrush, shirt, pants, enough to walk down the road without getting arrested for public indecency. He’d holed up at a friend’s house for the rest of his senior year and until he went to college, and his mom and stepdad hadn’t dared say anything because they didn’t want to get busted by CPS again. So in short he was used to it and it didn’t make sense that he should be standing here in the relative cool of the morning, all his life in two bags at his feet, staring at the insurmountable issue of fucking steps.

He didn’t know how long he stood there trying to talk himself into just going up. It wasn’t like he hadn’t ever gone up stairs in Manhattan. Comparatively this was literally nothing, just three short, shallow steps, and then he’d be on the porch (cypress wood) and then he could get out his key and maybe hold onto it long enough to turn it in the lock, and then he’d be inside, and he never had to leave again. But it just — fuck. It was the bags; the not-much of them was heavy, and the material was rough and uncomfortable against his skin. Experimentally after a time he reached down to pick one up but he’d waited too long and something caught in his chest and he started coughing. He had to sit, therefore; just fold his fucking legs under him and sit on the steps in the dampish air smelling that awful fucking sewer smell and watching at the sunlight as it streaked golden honey-dripped lines across the median.

Eventually he realized he needed a piss, so he forced himself up, forced himself to grab both bags, and forced his knees to get him up the stairs. Once he was on the porch it was okay. He tried not to notice how his heart was banging against his ribs just from that little bit of exertion. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the keys; his right elbow was shooting pain down into his hand, so he forced his left hand to wrap around the key and stick it in the lock.

It opened.

He stepped inside.

He pulled his bags along in after him.

He shut the door. Locked it. Found the bathroom. As he stood in front of the mirror staring at his fuckawful reflection, waiting for his arm to wake back up — the pain was usually a precursor to it going numb — he thought maybe this could’ve been worse. Maybe it could’ve been a lot worse. The house was furnished; there was food in the fridge, courtesy of SHIELD, and it had air-conditioning and cable and Internet and one floor. Rumlow’s pain medication was supposed to be delivered to his P.O. box by this afternoon, and he didn’t have shitty upstairs neighbors anymore and in spite of it being New Orleans he hadn’t seen a single fucking person on Esplanade just now. Not one.

Really aside from his diminished set of belongings he was only missing one thing. But he shut that thought right the fuck down before it could grow. He shook his arm out a little — the feeling was returning, crawling along shoulder-to-wrist, experimentally rubbing against his skin. When he flicked the lights off he could no longer see his fucking stupid fucking scars, or the dark bruised circles beneath his eyes.

He limped out of the bathroom. The bedroom was down the hall. He didn’t even get his shoes off before he was falling onto the unmade mattress.

--

Two: It really wasn’t anything at all like Manhattan.

Rumlow first discovered this later in the afternoon, when he woke up disoriented and gritty-eyed, mouth foul and sticky, sort of shocked he’d slept at all. The sun was low on the horizon and his bedroom faced east so it was already mostly dark, and still so fucking quiet. He edged his way off the bed — his muscles were screaming — and limped down the hall and into the kitchen where he discovered several nonperishable pre-made dinners in a cabinet, and a list of numbers to call in case of emergency, and a landline phone which (according to the note) connected two ways when used, going both to wherever Rumlow was calling or being called from, and to SHIELD headquarters. (As if he didn’t already know they were fucking monitoring every time he so much as blinked.) His hands felt thick and clumsy with sleep and by now roughly twelve hours without medication and as such it was an effort to lift the receiver and punch in the number for the post office. The desk clerk sounded a little confused when he asked for delivery but assured him it was possible, and indeed half an hour later he was sitting in the increasing dark of his kitchen with a warmish bowl of noodles, an empty bottle of water, and his fucking pills, prescribed under his new name. When he’d gone to the door to get the package the delivery guy had smiled at him and his eyes had not wavered from Rumlow’s even when he trembled trying to sign the electronic pad. They hadn’t traveled to his scars or his dumb fucked-up hands and he hadn’t said anything nasty about Rumlow looking familiar. So that was nothing close to what he’d experienced since waking up from his medically-induced coma last spring.

Then in the morning he walked outside for a second just to see the city — hat pulled low over his face, as ordered, hands shoved into the pockets of his sweatshirt — and no one even looked at him. As he walked up Esplanade towards Decatur — SHIELD had given him a map of the Quarter which he’d memorized and summarily tossed in the trash, used as he was to absorbing tactical maps and other such sensitive information — he passed a multitude of people absolutely none of whom gave a single solitary fuck that Rumlow was there. Several of them were in no better condition than he was, and their gazes skittered onto him and then away again. His limp cleared a little by the time he got to Jackson Square but he was tired so he sat on one of the benches and watched at the people — mostly families. The sewer smell was still everywhere, but not as noticeable. Maybe he’d already gotten used to it, or maybe it was just dulled through the ruined passages of his nose, but either way, it was bearable. The doughy undertone to it was more prominent here and he thought it was weirdly almost pleasant.

He sat for a long time watching the wind and the sunlight move through the trees and the short grass. The brightly colored paintings which lined the wrought-iron fences. The mules lined with their carriages along Decatur. The fortune tellers, the street performers covered in silver body paint, the caricature artists, the clock tower on the cathedral spire. Behind him diagonally he knew there was a coffee place; hell, he’d heard of it, tangentially, and as the hours went on and the day grew marginally warmer he could almost smell it, but he didn’t go. He just sat in the shade and the damp coolish heat listening to the chatter of people with his eyes closed, head thrown back against the bench, feeling the wind as it drifted off the river and soothed over his tight ruined skin. He sat there until long after noon, until he felt faint nudges of hunger and forced himself to stand and start back for the house —

— and no one bothered him at all.

--

He walked around. He got used to the city. The smell never went away, but neither did the fact that it was absolutely nothing at all like Manhattan. Or D.C., for that matter. Perhaps it was only because he stayed strictly within the limits of the Quarter but instead of a throbbing metropolis he found New Orleans to be almost out of its own time, as though it had frozen somewhere in the late 1800s and never quite pulled itself out. The locals had odd accents, they sounded like they were from New York, but the dialect was wholly different. The streets were narrow and kind of filthy. There was usually mule shit by Jackson Square and water collecting in the cobblestones and around the sewer grates. The houses were all shoved in nearly on top of each other, their colors strangely muted against the vibrant backdrop of the city, and a good bit of them were on top of businesses: tourist trap stores shoved full of Mardi Gras beads and t-shirts (CAME FOR THE GUMBO; STAYED FOR THE TITTIES); cool dark stores with dimly lit interiors and paintings on the walls, or else full of antiques, weird carvings in glass of alligators or chandeliers or huge wooden depictions of the Virgin Mary. Bookshops and restaurants out of which poured an array of scents which again were powerful enough Rumlow could smell them, however temporarily, and eclectic shops for voodoo shit, real or imagined.

People hung flags off their balconies; the Louisiana state flag, or else rainbow flags, or flags striped in purple and yellow and green. Beads hung over the power lines and in the tree branches and wrapped around fences. There were jazz musicians and street performers who stayed shoved up under the awnings playing and dancing for hours; the everflowing stream of people simply parted itself to move around them, though equally as often they’d stop to watch, and Rumlow found himself caught once or twice in a crowd surrounding a group of people with trumpets and horns and a couple plastic buckets for drums and for collecting money. He was gently jostled and everything was close and tight and smelled like the river and like seafood and like weed, but no one cared who he was, or that he was there at all.

He would have thought it would be this way in Manhattan. Its size and its splendor were infinite and it housed thousands of fuckups, creeps, drug addicts, homeless, straight-laced businessmen and women who went home to their spouses tied up in ropes to the bed. But his face had superseded all possibilities of anonymity there and in Virginia and he was hated, as though he’d tattooed the Hydra emblem onto his forehead. Here it was as though he had shed it all; another thing he’d left behind, along with his clothes and his money and his life. But he didn’t miss it. He didn’t miss it for one fucking second.

At the house on Esplanade he looked in the bathroom mirror after washing up for the evening — he couldn’t really shower or bathe most nights, the water was too hard on his skin, so he had to settle for wiping himself down with a damp rag. The scars had still not faded even after a year and nearly eight months — the two long, jagged ones which ran from his temple to just above the corner of his mouth, one partially bisecting his eyebrow, so that his smile was always tilted slightly off (not that he smiled much anymore), and his eyebrow was always just a little bit pulled up at its corner.

They’d had to reconstruct his eyelid there. He vaguely remembered his doctor coming in to check the healing process and grunting, “You’re lucky you didn’t lose your vision,” voice full of obvious regret. The vicious ugly bruised scars on his wrists, where the skin had flaked and healed over badly, resembling road rash more than anything else. The nebula-shaped scar on his cheek where a piece of glass had struck him when he was diving for the window — he didn’t remember it, but the nurses had found it still embedded in his skin when they’d recovered his body.

His arms, torso, and legs had gotten the worst of the burn scars; they’d done a lot to his face so he didn’t look so much like a fucking can of Spam, and his forearms were covered in slashes that criss-crossed and looked more like his mom’s arm when she’d punched her hand through a window while tripping badly on acid and too much coke. But his upper arms, his shoulders, his thighs — even the inside of his left wrist looked as though the skin had been torn apart, and then twisted badly when they’d sewn him back together. His shoulders and his back were shiny, bright red. Where he’d scratched himself in desperation when the skin was healing there were ugly narrow ridges. The nurses had come in when he was sitting in bed crying frustratedly, blood under his nails, dead skin on his sheets, and they’d rolled their eyes.

Mr. Rumlow, didn’t we tell you? You can’t scratch wounds like this.

Of course you didn’t fucking tell me, Rumlow had snarled, the pain blistering, rushing and spiking through the still-living nerve ends. I’m fucking in agony, get me some fucking morphine.

You know you’ve already maxed out your dosage for the hour, one of them said, though Rumlow hadn’t received anything, morphine or otherwise, since the night previous. He’d lain there stewing in dark hatred and sweat and his fucking skin, hating them, hating Pierce, hating Steve —

— but now as he stood looking at his shoulder in the bathroom with the drugs pushing their way through his veins he thought — well, he wasn’t sure what the hell he thought. But it had been a good day. He’d finally gone to Café du Monde and ordered some coffee, desperate for it. It had a different taste than the shit he’d gotten at the Supr Savr; dirtier, richer. It smelled fucking incredible. He leaned over the table breathing it in for a long time, letting it wash out the river smell, half-listening to the guitarist on Decatur playing an acoustic rendition of Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters”. He’d wandered the streets until he got tired, and no one had noticed him, even when he’d taken his sunglasses off for a second to better read the little sign on someone’s door: ON THIS SITE IN 1897, NOTHING HAPPENED.

It had been a good day, and if as he stood here in the bathroom looking at his scars listening to the low strains of someone’s radio outside he felt a momentary tiny ache in the center of his chest, that was no one’s fucking business.

--

The dream started off the same way: him and the asset in a Jeep in Afghanistan. The asset’s arm had some kind of metal detector in it that enabled it to sense bombs and Rumlow was driving with one hand on the steering wheel, swerving erratically to avoid the landmines, and the other on the asset’s wrist, keeping it pointed at the ground. When they reached their destination and Rumlow shut the engine off he moved to unbuckle his seatbelt and the asset moved too, hand reaching further, settling between Rumlow’s legs.

Hey, what — soldat, what’re you doing?

The asset smirked up at him from beneath those damn hooded eyes. Relax, commander, he breathed out, but as his hand closed down around Rumlow’s cock he heard from behind him the click of a rifle, and then Pierce’s voice:

Get out of this car right now.

Rumlow backed out of the car. The desert — which was also the forty-first floor of the Triskelion — swam under his feet. He could feel the hard edge of the gun against the back of his skull.

Please don’t hurt him, he said as Pierce kicked his knees to force him down. Please, he — it was my idea, I made him —

I know, sweetheart, Pierce said. Rumlow felt his hand in his hair. I know. Then he pulled the trigger; Rumlow felt the heat of the bullet as it streaked by his head, and then it was something else, glass raining on him, fire in his nose, filling his lungs —

— and he woke, slick with sweat, chest heaving. He was nauseous and he thought he would be sick as he sat there shivering tangled in his sheets but after a moment it passed and he collapsed back, skin aching, muscles aching, every part of him fucking aching, the way he’d ached every single day for twenty months. He closed his eyes — it was easier — and breathed out, trying to center himself. He tried blanking his mind out the way he would in the field, before a mission, when he needed nothing distracting him, but inevitably he kept seeing the asset. Over and over, the look in his eyes from the dream, the way he’d lowered himself, the way his hand had twitched over Rumlow’s lap. The purposeful desire and intent in his smile.

Rumlow sighed. Slowly, he slid his hand down over the rough scars on his stomach, beneath his waistband. He could feel the ragged edges of his wrists catching in his pubic hairs as he wrapped his fingers slowly around his cock. He held it for a moment, limp, impersonal, and when no pain spiked down into his hand he began to move it.

It didn’t last long. The skin on his palm chafed against his cock, but even when he spit it didn’t help. He thought about the asset, the searing blue eyes, the curve of his arm in battle, the alert ready way he’d come to follow Rumlow’s orders —

— the rare flashes of soft recognition on his face during good missions —

— but nothing happened. Nothing had been fucking happening since the Triskelion. Rumlow wasn’t sure why he even cared; in theory this was his dream life. No more sex. No more arousal. Just him and his focus and freedom to think about whatever he wanted, to do whatever he wanted —

— except of course it wasn’t really that way. Not now. There were no more battles. No more guns. No more knives. He could barely open his own fucking fridge door some days and though he appreciated the walks through the French Quarter there were times he couldn’t even make it down his fucking front steps. He was living on someone else’s money, someone who hated him, a whole group of people who hated him, and he was hiding effectively in the fucking swamp because everyone else fucking hated him too. The only person left from his life was living a thousand miles away wrapped in someone else’s arms and never sparing a single fucking thought for his former commander. It was exactly what Rumlow had known would happen. The latent Barnes was out there with Steve. The latent Barnes was somewhere in New York laughing about what a pathetic mess Hydra’s top agent had turned into.

Rumlow jerked his hand out of his shorts. His cock lay still soft between his legs. They’d managed to take all of his shit, even sex. The one thing he hadn’t even wanted in the first place.

Congratulations, Pierce, he thought, and rolled over, burying his face in his pillow, waiting to suffocate.

--

June 2014

There is a doctor that Steve wants him to see.

The man who is not Bucky Barnes waits in the office where Steve has placed him. When the doctor walks in, he is smiling. He sits behind a desk. He takes off his glasses. (Both of these actions are briefly familiar, though the man who is not Bucky Barnes is unsure why.)

“Sorry I’m late,” the doctor says. “Traffic’s hell today. Promise I won’t charge you extra.”

It is quiet. Eventually the man who is not Bucky Barnes realizes that a response was required of him, but he doesn’t know what that response could be. It occurs to him that this is a test. The doctor is still smiling, but that doesn’t mean anything. The man who is not Bucky Barnes understands. Steve has not punished him yet. The doctor has asked a confusing question. Steve and the doctor are friends. If the man who is not Bucky Barnes answers the question insufficiently, the doctor will tell Steve. There will be a punishment.

Perhaps the doctor will administer a punishment first. He seems to be higher ranking than Steve.

The man who is not Bucky Barnes knows that there is a default answer, when no other answer seems to fit. If he performs well enough it is possible the punishment won’t be as severe, or it won’t be doled out at all.

The doctor is clearing his throat. He is saying, “So, which do you prefer? James, Sergeant, or Bucky?” None of these sound familiar — except Bucky, which the doctor must be using to remind him that he is affiliated with Steve — so the man who is not Bucky Barnes ignores the question. When being tested, it is permitted to ignore questions. Questions can often be sources of confusion and used as a distraction. Ignoring questions asked during testing is often part of the test itself.

Therefore, he ignores the question when it is asked again.

He gets on his knees, and ignores the question, “What are you doing?” (That one is more familiar. It is definitely a test question.)

He walks forward on his knees to the desk. The doctor asks what he is doing again, but the man who is not Bucky Barnes does not pay attention. The doctor is sitting in the proper position: behind his desk, legs slightly open.

The man who is not Bucky Barnes gets closer.

“James?” says the doctor.

The man who is not Bucky Barnes reaches out with his metal hand towards the doctor’s crotch.

The doctor springs backwards, so fast his chair skids across the floor and lands with a crash on its side. His cheeks are bright red and he’s saying things which the man who is not Bucky Barnes doesn’t hear because he’s trying to process what he’s done wrong. Perhaps he should have offered to open the doctor’s zipper with his teeth. He opens his mouth to apologize, then stops. The punishment will already be greater because he has failed this test. If he speaks out of turn they may just forego punishment altogether and place him in cryo. (He hasn’t seen the cryo tubes at the tower, but he also isn’t granted access to every floor.)

“Just a — ” The doctor swallows. “Just a minute, please, James — I’m, I’ll be right — ”

He exits the room very quickly.

The man who is not Bucky Barnes sits back on his heels. He awaits his punishment. His skin tightens a little in anticipation of the cold.

When the door opens again two minutes and seventeen seconds later, it is not the doctor. It is Steve. Steve must rank higher after all, and is going to punish the man who is not Bucky Barnes in the doctor’s territory.

Steve walks around. He looks down at the man who is not Bucky Barnes, and the man who is not Bucky Barnes looks back up at Steve. He awaits his punishment.

After a moment, Steve sighs. He puts one hand over his face. Then he says, “Let’s just go home, Buck. We can try again next week.”

The man who is not Bucky Barnes likes having direct orders, so he stands. He follows Steve out of the doctor’s office. They walk out of the building. They get in a car. They drive back to the tower.

The man who is not Bucky Barnes waits, looking out of his window until long after the sun has gone down, but there is no punishment.

He wishes he knew what he had done wrong.

--

The second doctor is a woman. The man who is not Bucky Barnes doesn’t know why Steve has sent a female doctor to punish him when she doesn’t have the correct physical parts for it, but it is not his place to question Steve’s decisions. She may have some other form of punishment in mind.

She walks into her office, which is in a separate building from the first doctor’s. She smiles at him. “Hello,” she says. “Where would you like to sit?”

The objective for asking this is unclear. The man who is not Bucky Barnes is sitting on the couch, where Steve put him. He begins to think this is another test, one which he will inevitably fail, because she doesn’t have the right parts. He doesn’t answer her; sometimes silence is acceptable during a test. After a moment she nods, still smiling, and walks to her desk. Instead of sitting behind it, she pulls her chair out and drags it across the floor. When she is back beside the sofa, she says,

“May I sit here?”

The objective for asking this is also unclear. It is not his place to give or deny permission. But perhaps this is another part of the test. She is smiling, and Steve says smiles are positive. Therefore she must want a positive answer.

The man who is not Bucky Barnes says, “Yes,” and the female doctor nods at him a second time, then sits.

It is quiet for the next fifty-six minutes and forty-seven seconds.

When Steve comes to get him, the female doctor excuses herself so as to talk to Steve outside in the hallway for a while. The man who is not Bucky Barnes tries not to listen, but he can’t help overhearing snatches of their conversation: “Compliant… erratic eye-contact… otherwise totally still…” and finally:

“Good progress today. I’d like to see him next week. Same time.”

Steve walks into the room. The man who is not Bucky Barnes stands up. Steve’s eyes are wet. He says,

“Ready to go, Buck?”

The man who is not Bucky Barnes does not say no. He does not express his confusion. He has sat through missions

(what missions?)

in total silence before.

(When?)

There is no punishment again that night. He supposes he passed the test. He doesn’t know how he could have passed two completely contradictory tests. He should report to maintenance for a system malfunction, but he cannot report Steve as malfunctioning.

He wakes with the oncoming dawn. His shirt is damp where he wept in his sleep.

Chapter Text

November 2015 – January 2016

When he’d been laid up in the hospital he’d assumed he’d go straight from there to whatever hellish jail they reserved for Nazis and Nazi-adjacent types. The morphine had kept him asleep a good bit of the time and had also introduced him to not a few unsettling nightmares which all had the same recurring theme: he was placed in a cell somewhere on the edge of the world. He was the only prisoner and the guards all took turns brutalizing him in whatever various ways: stun batons, holding his head underwater, setting fire to his skin. There were pictures hanging on all four walls of his various former Hydra team, only their heads had been decapitated, and sometimes the pictures weren’t pictures at all but statues which inevitably turned real, and then one of the guards would drag forward the body of Rollins or Carter and force the stump of the neck to Rumlow’s mouth and he’d wake with his chest so tight he couldn’t breathe and had to grab at the railings of his bed so as to brace himself while he fought against the imagined constriction of his own ribs.

He never told anyone about these dreams. There wasn’t any fucking point. He’d seen a court-appointed psychiatrist the requisite three times before telling her to fuck off — she spent every visit twitching her foot and staring at him with unconcealed hatred, and the first session after she’d bitten out some standard question about how was he feeling, and he’d said (high, half-asleep, not thinking) that he wished they’d change the sheets more often because it felt fucking disgusting to lay in his own dead skin and sweat for days, she pursed her lips and said, They’re just following standard protocol for this hospital, Mr. Rumlow. If you’d just followed standard protocol for most burn victims and died in the Triskelion like all your shitty friends, this bed would be free for someone who really deserves it. Thereafter he hadn’t spoken to her, about the sheets or anything else.

But he’d kept having the dreams, right up until he was released. The press had been there to cover it; the flash of their cameras had hurt his eyes, which were much more photosensitive in those days, and though the police had been there none of them had bothered keeping various reporters from rushing up to Rumlow, sticking their microphones in his face, and saying stupid shit like how’s it feel to know that your whole life’s work is sitting at the bottom of the Potomac? or you know, Halloween’s only in a couple weeks; do you think that’s enough time for Party City to make replicas of your new fucked-up face?

He’d ignored them, because what the hell, and gotten into the squad car which was waiting for him at the curb. A familiar friend crawled its insidious cold way into his heart and burrowed itself back inside. His throat still hurt too much most of the time to talk so he hadn’t bothered asking, but he’d assumed they were taking him to jail right up until they pulled up outside a dilapidated apartment complex. Rumlow blinked — his new eyelid catching a little — and said,

“Is this, uh — ”

“You’re gonna stay here for now,” grunted the policeman who was driving. His partner got out of the car and opened Rumlow’s door before handing him a sheet of paper. It had the number of the unit he supposed he’d be staying in, as well as various other things, though his head was hurting too much to bother looking at them. He stood staring at the paper for a long time, feeling the sun beat down unpleasantly on the raw back of his neck, mind drifting, until he became aware that both policemen were staring at him. The one who had opened his door had a look of mocking amusement in his eyes.

“Did you hear what the captain said?” he asked.

Rumlow was beginning to feel a little bit dizzy from being upright for so long, also from the sun, also from the lack of morphine. He didn’t have the energy or even really the desire to get into it with this fucking asshole so he just shook his head, and inside the squad car the captain sighed audibly before repeating,

“You’re on house arrest until the Winter Soldier has his trial. We need you to verbally give consent to placing the ankle bracelet on, even though frankly who gives a fuck what you’re consenting to or not — ” He went on talking, detailing things that washed through Rumlow’s head like clear water. He was aware on one level of nodding his affirmation for the other policeman to attach and alarm the ankle bracelet, but most of his mind was stuck on the first sentence. The singular phrase contained within.

Until the Winter Soldier has his trial.

The Winter Soldier. The asset.

The morphine had made friends with Rumlow’s memories of and fears about the asset, too. When he wasn’t dreaming about the jail cell at the end of the world, he was dreaming about the asset vanishing from beneath his hands in the desert, and Pierce finding him alone, kicking his ribs, screaming at him for fucking up the mission. Or he was dreaming that the asset turned on him; that they went out alone and Rumlow gradually became aware that things were getting increasingly quiet, and finally when he thought to turn and say,

Mission report, soldat,

the asset was already raising his arm (which was also a gun) to Rumlow’s head, and saying,

Primary objective: assassinate Brock Rumlow.

Most of the time, Rumlow would have the dream-omniscient awareness that the asset was malfunctioning, and the last thing he’d feel before the gun went off and he startled awake was absolute nauseating panic, like diving into the pool and never touching bottom, the deep swooping terror and complete lack of control he’d felt the day Pierce had called him into his office to discuss Project Insight — his mouth would sometimes still be forming the words wait soldat no don’t shoot as he came back into consciousness in the hospital bed. But in one memorable version of the dream, as Rumlow turned and found the asset’s gunhand pointing at his face, he realized the asset was not malfunctioning. The asset was going to kill him on Pierce’s orders. And as Rumlow realized it Pierce appeared over the asset’s shoulder, and then the asset was naked, and Pierce wrapped a hand around his cock and kissed the asset’s cheek and said,

You see, Commander, this is what happens to little boys who step out of line and have feelings.

He’d seen the asset sneering at him in the seconds before the dream ended. It had taken a long time to burn that image from his brain.

Or he’d dream that Project Insight had been a success, and the asset was passed around from one Hydra agent to another like a fucking party favor. In those dreams Rumlow had to stand and watch the asset being pumped full of come, or choking on a dick while someone else fucked his asshole raw, or having his hair pulled and his cock electrocuted repeatedly by one of the stun batons. Eventually Pierce would show up and say,

You certainly did prep him fine for us all those years, Commander, and Rumlow would just smile and nod and swallow back nausea.

Or that Pierce had taken the asset for his own personal private use, as Rumlow had assumed he would, and Rumlow would show up at his house sometimes with various Hydra things to sign and Pierce would be watching television and drinking wine and the asset would be on his knees, collar and leash around his neck, Pierce’s cock in his mouth, hands held neatly behind his back.

— in any case this was his first time hearing anything about the asset since before the fall of the Triskelion. He remembered in the bleak first month in the hospital the news which the nurses had brought him and how all they’d said about the asset was he was missing, but he needed to be found for a trial.

Well, here was his fucking trial. Rumlow hoped whoever was in charge was fucking happy. He couldn’t really imagine the asset sitting trial, the way he’d tilt his head at the prosecution, the desperate confusion in his eyes, struggling against his conditioning to say that he didn’t understand, or that he didn’t remember —

“When do I get to call my lawyer?” he asked, just to pull himself out of that fucking annoying and pointless headspace. The asset would be fine. Steve Rogers wasn’t weaponizing him and neither were any of his self-righteous fuckass friends. The asset probably knew his stupid other name now and did forties shit like play jacks or whatever the fuck and was likely looking forward to testifying in court, just so he could detail explicitly all the horrors Pierce and Rumlow and everyone else had put him through.

Rumlow couldn’t expect a weapon to stay loyal once it changed owners.

He couldn’t expect a weapon to stay loyal once it realized it wasn’t even a weapon.

The policemen were looking at each other, eyebrows raised. “Your lawyer?” the captain said finally. He’d never moved from inside the car.

“Yeah,” Rumlow said. “For my defen— ”

The policeman who had attached his ankle bracelet laughed so loud a bird erupted from a nearby tree and took off screaming. Inside the squad car the captain looked simultaneously annoyed and also like he was fighting back his own smile.

“You fuckin’ deaf or what,” he said. “I just fuckin’ told you. The Winter Soldier trial’s gonna determine your fate. You ain’t getting a separate defense.”

Something detached and very small in his chest began to shiver uncontrollably. “I — what?”

“Since you’re the only Hydra fuck left, they didn’t wanna bother with giving you a fair trial or whatever the fuck,” the captain explained. “They’re gonna put you away for life after the trial — ”

“ — or they’re gonna kill you on death row,” finished his partner. “Either way, you’re screwed, buddy.” Then, leaning into the window of the squad car: “Hey, Alan, that reminds me, we gotta start putting bets on how they’re gonna kill him. I want twenty on the electric chair. We could make a fuckin’ bonfire party out of it like they did with Bundy back in ’89.”

“Seems to me like a bonfire party’s gonna be fitting no matter how they off him,” the captain said, eyes dropping over the burns and scars littering Rumlow’s skin. The detached small thing in his chest fell and exploded in his stomach. His sweat glands were still fucked up but he could feel the edge of the paper growing damp where he was clenching it in his fist. He asked if they needed anything else from him and they’d barely started to shake their heads when he was turning and heading inside. Thankfully no one else was on the elevator and he headed up to his unit and spent a half hour vomiting into the toilet, shivering violently, body braced against the cool porcelain.

On the paper it said his phone line was tapped. There were security cameras everywhere except the bathroom, and there were supposed to be twenty-four hour police units posted outside the complex until the trial. When at last the nausea passed he sank back against the side of the tub, every fucking inch of his skin too tight, every muscle throbbing in vicious tandem with his heart.

He hoped the outcome of the asset’s trial put him on death row. It wasn’t like being executed was going to make all that much difference at this point.

--

He wasn’t allowed access to outside news. No papers, no Internet, no television. He had MREs delivered to his room every three days (nine meals per package) and choked them down in bed staring out the window at the abysmal mid-fall setting. Relatively quickly he lost the ability to sleep. It was too much of a gamble for him to risk the nightmares from which he’d wake soaked in sweat. Without the morphine holding his hand he was unable to fall back asleep after, anyway. By the time he’d been there a week most nights he was sitting knees jackknifed to his chest scared out of his fucking mind in the bathtub at two in the morning because he thought he heard footsteps outside his room, or voices beneath his window. Never mind that he was on the third floor. If someone knew where he was staying and wanted him dead, they’d figure out a way to get to him.

They had a physical therapist visit him twice a week. He was the least unpleasant person Rumlow had interacted with since all this shit started, so Rumlow bit the bullet and complained to him about his constant pain, and the stiffness in his muscles and skin that never went away. The therapist got in touch with the hospital where the doctor who had overseen most of Rumlow’s care admitted he was supposed to be on several different pain medications. From there the therapist got in touch with a pharmacist who filled out the doctor’s prescriptions and had the first doses of Rumlow’s fentanyl and prednisone delivered to the apartment. It didn’t do much for his sleep, or for his fear, or for anything really except the pain. But as the pain consumed about ninety-seven percent of his conscious life he supposed he was grateful for its alleviation.

(Of course, without the pain taking all his focus he more and more often found himself staring blankly at his ceiling thinking about the asset, or about Pierce, or about Sitwell, or about that fucking jail cell at the edge of the world. But whatever.)

On the first day of the trial Rumlow’s MRE came with a newspaper clipping attached: WINTER SOLDIER HEARING TO START. CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THE FALCON AMONG THOSE TESTIFYING IN HIS FAVOR.

The Falcon. Rumlow had no actual memories of him, because he’d really only seen and spoken to him the day the Triskelion fell. But the nurses had made sure to let him know that it was the Falcon who had emerged from the forty-first floor, when Rumlow hadn’t been able to get out in time. The Falcon got to walk away from the whole fuck-show of a mess and was still walking around now with smooth skin and a full smile and no limp.

Rumlow looked at the accompanying picture. Whoever had attached the clipping had gotten rid of the article, so that only the headline and photograph remained. But the picture was —

Well. It wasn’t a great photograph, and Rumlow guessed the reporter who took it had been unable to get past some police barrier and had to work with what they were given. But it was decent enough; Rumlow could see exactly what he was looking at. Walking up the steps of some Manhattan courthouse: Steve Rogers, the Falcon guy, Romanov, a few other people he didn’t recognize or give a shit about… and the asset. The asset, at the far end of the picture, surrounded by Steve and a few policemen. His metal arm had caught the sunlight as the photo was being taken. Someone had tied his hair back from his face.

Slowly, Rumlow stroked his thumb over the picture. Eventually he realized his hands were shaking; they crumpled the picture, ripped it a little in one corner. He threw it in the trash, scraped a hand down his face. He lay on his bed and scratched violently at the worst of the healing scars on his arm until the skin turned blistering hot, until it broke and bled into his nails and on his sheets, until the pain was enough he could lean into it, and force the tightness from his throat.

--

The verdict for the Winter Soldier: not guilty.

The verdict for Brock Rumlow: life in prison.

“Someone will come to pick you up and take you to the station,” one of the guards told him. Except then one day, and then two, and then a week went by, and nothing happened. Rumlow stayed holed up in his apartment, the ankle bracelet a familiar, unpleasant weight against his foot. He stared at the ceiling and out the window at the bleak November sky and he thought about how maybe if he hadn’t started running when the helicarrier crashed into the window he might’ve been crushed to death. He did his P.T. when the therapist came and swallowed back pills and didn’t sleep except when he dropped off unexpectedly sometimes in the middle of the afternoon, exhaustion dragging him under, and managed maybe two broken hours, jerking awake every ten minutes with his heart slamming against his throat, looking around the room for the threats that were never really there.

--

Earlyish in December, Rumlow opened the door for his physical therapist and instead found himself facing a SHIELD agent. He didn’t recognize her; she must have come along after everything, or else worked in a different department. She looked young and a little frightened and Rumlow couldn’t help thinking it was pretty fucking hilarious for her to be scared when he was high out of his fucking mind and wrapped up in a bathrobe, his hands shaking so hard he’d had to fold his arms so he could balance himself relatively upright against the doorframe.

“Brock Rumlow,” she said, looking down at the tablet she was holding, “you are hereby ordered to pack all possessions and leave the state of Virginia, effective immediately — ”

He felt like he’d just been thrown from a plane. “What,” he said, and he must’ve said it louder than he meant because she flinched, just a little, before clearing her throat:

“ — you will from here on out reside in the state of New York, in the city of Manhattan, at the address enclosed within — ” She held out a slip of paper which belatedly he realized he was supposed to take. His hand wasn’t working at all and the paper fell to the floor between them. Rumlow’s nostrils flared, but the girl didn’t say anything, just looked back down at her tablet:

“ — by order of SHIELD,” she finished after a moment.

Rumlow was pretty sure he wasn’t hallucinating or dreaming (though he couldn’t be positive as he hadn’t slept at all in three days). Then again this might be one of those dreams that started out decently enough (him and the asset huddling naked for warmth in some isolated northern camp) but turned shitty once they reached a certain point (the asset holding Rumlow’s face into the snow with his metal arm until his neck burned with frostbite and he choked to death, Pierce barking out laughter somewhere above him). Still, the girl was just standing there, evidently waiting for Rumlow to do — something — so he said,

“Someone was supposed to come take me to jail a few weeks ago.” Then he wondered why the fuck he’d said that. Although if this was a dream it really wouldn’t matter, and anyway if he went to jail the other prisoners would do his job for him and kill him themselves.

The girl turned her tablet off and slipped it into the pack she was carrying. “Look,” she said, and now she was starting to sound slightly more confident, “I just deliver the messages I’m given. If you wanna go to jail instead of an apartment in New York, you be my guest. But they told me to bring you this paper and they told me to tell you that — what I just told you, and so I did.”

Rumlow frowned. This was going on an awfully long time for a dream. “Who gave you — ”

“Classified,” the girl said promptly.

“I — why am I not — ” He trailed off. After a few seconds she sighed. She stepped back and gave him an obvious once-over.

“Again,” she said, “I’m just delivering the message as it was relayed to me by my superiors. I’m not like, a huge fan of letting you walk free, if we’re all gonna be honest here. But it’s not my decision and like, you’re not allowed to come back to D.C. anyway, so I guess it’s kind of a win? Whatever.” She pursed her lips, hesitated, then added, “There’s gonna be a car out front in a couple hours to pick you up and take you to the airport. You probably oughta dress warm; it’s starting to snow.”

It didn’t take him long to pack. He’d had virtually everything taken while he’d been in the hospital, and what hadn’t been taken had been lost to the fire. According to the paper the girl had given him, the apartment in Manhattan was furnished and his prescriptions would be continued via a pharmacy up there. They were also putting him on welfare, which was fucking humiliating, but whatever. He took a last look around the shitty awful apartment he’d been living in since mid-October. He shot his middle finger at one of the security cameras. Then he limped out, and down the hall.

--

New Orleans continued to be nothing less than a small miracle. Though they’d instructed him to stay inside as much as possible Rumlow couldn’t help walking out nearly every day, even if the farthest he could get was the levee. It was warm most of the time, at least warm compared to what he was used to; he wasn’t uncomfortable in a sweatshirt and his hat, but if he wasn’t scarred, if he wasn’t on the run, he might have gone out sometimes in a t-shirt.

He settled into something resembling a routine. Café du Monde was open twenty-four hours a day and he spent a good bit of time there in the broken lurching hours between three and five a.m., surprised at the number of people haunting it with him even then (though of course it was never as crowded as it got in the middle of the day). He drank his coffee staring at the green and white-striped awning, the powdered sugar crusted into the ground. If it was actually cold he sat inside, but he preferred to sit outdoors, back facing the wall against the river, looking out at Decatur and the slow-waking stretch of the city. He was still a little wary and tense; he wanted to be prepared to run if he had to. But mostly he just… needed the air. He hadn’t realized how much time he’d spent inside both in D.C. and Manhattan since the Incident. He tried beignets; the powder was a little much on his throat, a little too dry, and the taste reminded him weirdly of the doughy sewer smell that seeped into everything. But they were okay.

During the day he walked. Up and down the levee, up and down Decatur, up and down Royal. He liked Royal a lot for how quiet it was compared to the rest of the Quarter, and the dark glittering stores, but it was easier to go into shops on Decatur or Dauphin, where there were more tourists and he was less likely to be the only one in a store, the employees’ eyes on him as he browsed. Once or twice he thought someone stared at him a little too long, sharp and suspicious, but no one approached him. As the days bled into weeks no one ever approached him, and he couldn’t quite let his guard down, but it was a near thing.

From time to time, he walked past the cathedral. Vaguely he recalled his mom’s attempt at Catholicism when he was a child; it had been during and a little after his first stepfather, so it wasn’t a very strong memory, but it was there. Once, in Europe, when he and Rollins and Hauer were heading back to the hotel after a long night out getting steadily drunker, inviting girls into the bathroom with them to snort coke off the sinks and suck their dicks in the stalls, they’d passed a church. It was cold; the snow was ankle-high, falling steadily, and Rumlow could see beyond the steeple the glint of the moon behind the clouds. As they passed the front doors he caught the faint strains of a hymn inside; it was close to Christmas, and he recognized it, sort of, enough to hum a few bars. If he hadn’t been drunk he would’ve known better, but he was, so he didn’t, and as they passed the church Hauer heard him humming. He jabbed Rollins in the ribs and both of them stopped to stare at Rumlow. They stared until Rumlow realized what the fuck he was doing and cleared his throat, glaring at the snow beneath his feet. Then Rollins burst out laughing. Hauer asked how he’d enjoyed being a choir boy or some dumb shit like that. It had been in the early days, either just before or just after he’d first met the asset, and Rumlow had spent a while sick with the fear that they’d tell Pierce, and he’d receive some kind of demotion.

But now without Rollins or Hauer or anyone else there when he walked past the cathedral sometimes he paused. He looked up at it, the clock and the architecture. Sometimes there were signs on the door saying ‘please be quiet; Mass in progress’, and people were weirdly both respectful and not respectful of this; no one went inside when the signs were up, but the fortune tellers and the drunks and the general public were just as loud as ever. Rumlow wondered if the people inside the church found it distracting, or if they were just used to it. If over the years the parishioners and the priest and whoever else had learned to tune out the city, focused and quiet, praying and singing and pretending the world wasn’t falling apart around them —

Christmas and New Year’s came and went and Rumlow decided he wasn’t lonely. The only time he ever used his phone was to call the pharmacy: this is Harlan St. James, is my prescription in, or else to call the post office: this is Harlan St. James, do I have anyth— yeah, could someone bring it over? He imagined the SHIELD agents wired into his line waiting with disappointed bored faces for him to try and call — whoever the hell they imagined him to still be in contact with, as if there was anyone left. He hoped they were going out of their fucking minds up in D.C. or Manhattan or wherever the hell they were stationed.

When he’d been living in the house on Esplanade just over two months, he went out for his usual coffee and long, not-lonely walk down Decatur. It was a decently okay day for his legs and as such he made the turn onto Canal. They were starting to set up for Mardi Gras; the first parades would roll in the week following. Rumlow didn’t know if he’d be able to handle the massive press of crowds; thought he might have to hole up indoors for a while, so he stood for a while soaking in the warmish mid-morning air. He listened to a group of men discussing whether or not the new Star Wars trilogy was going to go anywhere; another man reciting Bible verses at top volume into a microphone while people dropped change into his plastic cup. Eventually Rumlow stopped in the McDonald’s for lunch — the food sat heavily on his stomach, but it was cheap, and better than the fucking MREs — and then he headed back to Esplanade. The walk was long, and as at last he rounded the corner and crossed the street he was drenched in sweat. He unzipped his sweatshirt as he got closer to his front door. He lifted one hand to take his sunglasses off, but his wrist jerked, hard, and the sunglasses fell to the sidewalk with a soft clatter.

“Shit,” Rumlow muttered, bending down to pick them up. He had to go slow — now his muscles were screaming at him — and then even slower on the way up. He shoved the sunglasses into his sweatshirt pocket, took three steps towards the front walk of his house —

— and stopped.

There was a figure standing on his front porch.

A bolt of something sharper and more urgent than fear lanced down Rumlow’s spine. His hands were shaking more violently now, not with nerve-pain but with residual energy creeping in from wherever his fucked body stored it, adrenaline spiking, rushing forward, his heart starting up, giraffe-kicking against his ribs. His stomach was churning and he was afraid he’d be sick, but he had to run; his legs weren’t going to get him far enough fast enough and his stupid, stupid reflexes were still too delayed and he couldn’t fucking move —

Then the figure took a step forward, and every thought left Rumlow’s brain at once. The panic did a sharp twisting nosedive as though unsure whether to continue spiking or to recede. Without his permission Rumlow’s feet carried him forward too, one step, then another, until he was standing on his own lawn. The dead grass sharp beneath his feet. The barren trees swaying above his head. The river smell drifting over, and Rumlow’s fucked-up eyebrow lifting of its own accord, his mouth falling slightly open, and the figure on the porch coming closer, until he was on the bottom step, until the sunlight caught a little in his metal arm.

--

August 2014

What Steve wants from the man who is not Bucky Barnes, what he’s trying to accomplish with the female doctor, is memory recovery.

The man who is not Bucky Barnes was not aware there were memories to be recovered. He knows what memories are, and he knows he has some. Wilson, Romanov, Stark, and several of Steve’s attorneys encourage him to write things down as he remembers them, or to say them out loud if he’s comfortable. Mostly he remembers the Potomac, or the Triskelion burning, or his failed mission. Other things it takes him longer to register as memories, because they are facts:

He knows the rules. He knows not to speak out of turn, he knows what punishment entails, he knows sometimes there are different forms of punishment, he knows not to question or to say no.

He knows he worked for Hydra, and that Hydra was a bad organization, and that it’s why many people don’t trust or like him now. (What he remembers about Hydra is not all bad, necessarily. But when he tries to tell Steve, Steve says he’s confused. Steve says something about Stockholm, and that he shouldn’t tell people he has good memories from that time, because it might invalidate the defense attorney’s arguments.

He isn’t even sure they’re memories. The longer he’s out of cryo, the more he sleeps, and the more he sleeps, the more he dreams. He hasn’t dreamed before, though Wilson and the female doctor have told him it’s normal. Steve is probably correct; he’s confusing his dreams with what really happened. But still, it makes Steve upset to hear about his okay memories of Hydra, so he stops trying to talk about them. And because it upsets Steve, he also doesn’t tell the female doctor. No one has punished him in a long time, but that doesn’t mean anything.)

He knows it’s hard for him to eat, or to lie down, or to be spoken to by a large number of people, or to feel cold. But all of those things are good, according to Steve. Even if he can’t remember the reasoning behind those things, Steve wants him to just remember that they’re there. The female doctor also says he may remember more things in time.

One session, the female doctor asks him why he always flinches when Steve calls him ‘Bucky’ or ‘Buck’. He hadn’t realized he was flinching, and it strikes him as counterproductive, and contradictory. Flinching causes punishment (showing weakness) but Steve hasn’t punished him. Apparently he’s been flinching at the name Steve designated for him, which means he’s subconsciously rejecting a gift, which is a very high transgression. But there still hasn't been punishment.

The man who is not Bucky Barnes frowns down at his hands. One with pale, reddish undertones; the other shiny and silver. After a moment he says,

“It is not my name.”

(Since his first session, he has learned that the female doctor doesn’t mind if he speaks out of turn. But she usually guides him into conversations, because she’s also learned that it’s difficult for him to think of topics himself.)

The female doctor smiles at him encouragingly. “Do you know what your name is, then?”

It’s a nice question, he thinks. She hasn’t asked him the way Steve or Sam Wilson might have: ‘what would you like to be called’, as if he could make decisions. It always feels like a test when Steve or Sam asks him a question that way.

This is much more straightforward.

He starts to say he doesn’t know. Maybe he doesn’t have a name. But that isn’t true, any more than it is true that his name is ‘Bucky Barnes’.

He had two titles when he was with Hydra. Neither title makes him feel bad, especially, but he knows better than to mention that to the doctor. He was called ‘asset’ when he was fulfilling his secondary function, but no one ever called him that to his face. When he was on missions, he was called something else. This whole ordeal has felt similar to a mission. There have been multiple tests, and Steve is here, and Steve was his mission. It is possible (though it seems unlikely, given the fallen Triskelion) that Hydra has simply set him up with Steve and his friends as a test to see if perhaps he can complete his mission successfully.

It is also possible (and seems more likely) that he has not remembered everything that Steve and the others want him to remember. Sometimes at night he still goes to the window and looks out. He still feels as though he’s forgotten something. It hovers just on the edge of his mind, below the flashes from the memory of the machine, and comes up frequently when he remembers the Triskelion, and the wreckage of the helicarriers, and the okay times with Hydra which Steve says aren’t real.

But they don’t go away. And neither do the dreams. And he is supposed to remember.

Therefore, he is on a mission.

Therefore, there is only one name that can possibly fit him.

The man who is not Bucky Barnes says, “I am the Winter Soldier.”

Chapter Text

January 2016

For several seconds neither of them moved. Then the asset said,

“Commander,”

and his voice was — fuck, just as soft as it had been, hoarse and quiet and uncertain and with the faintest thread of desperation underlying every syllable. For a moment the years fell away; it could have been 2004 again, stationed in Lithuania, scoping out the targets from the attic room of an abandoned house. The asset had lain on dusty faded window cushions with the sniper rifle tucked neatly against his body and Rumlow had faked his way through multiple conversations with Landry and Harker and Cole about how fucking great they all were, the Hydra equivalents of pro football players, and kept his ear open for the asset’s voice, his solitary fucking relief — Commander, target spotted, and Rumlow would say,

Go on, you know what to do,

and the asset would shoot a clean line through the window, glass shattering in the still night air, the silencer exhaling with a barely-audible pop. Landry or Cole or Harker would pause to glance up from where they were drinking their shitty beers and playing — whatever the fuck card game, poker or whatever (if it had been Sitwell he would’ve guessed go fish) — and they’d say, Can’t he just blast ‘em all now and we can get started on recreation early? and Rumlow would fucking sprain his eyes with the effort of not rolling them:

Sure, but you can call Pierce in the morning, tell him which rule you broke. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to hear all about how tight the asset felt.

Frankly he was shocked he’d managed to get away with — whatever the hell he’d done for nearly twenty years, protection or defense or just not being as shitty as everyone else. It had been such a fine line to walk between lying about what he and the asset did during post-mission prep and preventing actual unnecessary sexual encounters between his weapon and his fuckawful coworkers. He could remember sometimes feeling like he was still in that fucking swimming pool, dragged under, held down, unable to breathe or move or blink or do anything except hold very, very still, because if he moved even a fraction the wrong way a bomb would go off and the asset would be killed —

— anyway it was his voice, the asset’s voice, the cadence the same, the tone, the way he stood as he had on good missions, hesitant, wary, but not cringing as he did around Pierce. Not subservient. Just —

His metal fingers were twisting in the hem of his shirt. Rumlow realized for the first time he was wearing civilian clothes — a soft green short-sleeved top, and jeans, and his hair was tied back like he’d had it in that picture, the first day of his trial, and Rumlow could hear the soft familiar calibration noises of his arm and fuck, he wanted —

“Commander,” the asset said again, still in that same voice, and then he said, “I — it’s me, um. You — I mean, I don’t think… I… is this a bad time?”

Rumlow had to swallow down a sharp, hysterical sound. He couldn’t think. He was dizzy from the walk and from the humidity and he felt sick from his adrenaline spike and from the burger and fries. The asset was staring at his face, the scars, the fucking scars, and he could see them, the ones Rumlow normally hid behind his sunglasses. He had to fight back the urge to zip up his sweatshirt again. Even shoved into his pockets his hands still trembled violently.

“I can go,” the asset was saying, “and come back lat— ”

“What the fuck are you doing here,” Rumlow asked. His voice was wrecked; ruined. He sounded worse than he had right after the Triskelion fell, when his throat was seared and damaged by smoke and ash and hadn’t had a chance to heal properly. Distantly something — the cold thing in his ribs, maybe — was screaming at him: that’s the first fucking thing you say to him? really? but he ignored it. Back when the asset thought he was a good person he only thought it because he had to, he didn’t know any better. He wasn’t

(Rumlow’s)

a weapon anymore, and Rumlow didn’t have to be nice now, not now when he’d fucking carved out the one space for himself where people didn’t trip him up on the sidewalks or send him shit in the mail or make cracks about whether he wanted Pall Malls or Winstons. Yes, ex-Hydra agent, yes, no better than a fucking Nazi, blah blah blah, fuck it, he’d heard all of it, he’d heard it for almost two years. He didn’t want or need the fucking asset coming here and sneering at him, at his life, his ruined skin and the fact that he could barely make it up the stairs. The asset —

— hell, this wasn’t even the fucking asset, was it. This was —

“Probably here to kill me, huh,” Rumlow said, when the asset didn’t answer him. “What’d Steve tell you; he tell you all about how fucked up I treated you, how I fucked you over with Pierce? He put you through a couple rounds of therapy and you decided to come out here and put me down?” He couldn’t spread his arms out; they hurt too much from how tense he was holding himself, but he lifted his chin. “You gonna kill me here in the street, soldat? No one’s gonna arrest you for it. Hell, could use your metal arm and choke me out; probably they’d give you some kinda commendation, special services to the country.”

The asset’s eyebrows were furrowed tightly over his nose. He still didn’t speak, and Rumlow made a noise — he wasn’t sure if it was exasperated or frightened or angry — and clenched his fist hard in his sweatshirt. He thought he could feel the edges of his nails digging into his palm.

“Or did Steve maybe send you down here to do it for him?” he asked. “Steve couldn’t get the balls to come off me? Or he wanted you to do it, show you how much fuckin’ agency you have now? Huh?” He could hear his voice getting louder but it was being pulled on a thread, he couldn’t stop it from happening. In front of him the asset was blinking rapidly.

“I’m not going to kill you,” he said, and Rumlow scoffed again.

“The fuck’s Steve want from me, then? The fuck’s he want he couldn’t just fuckin’ call me on the fuckin’ phone, he knows it’s fuckin’ rigged to go straight through SHIELD, he knows I don’t have a fuckin’ shard of privacy. He made damn sure of that. If he wanted to keep fucking laughing at me and rubbing it in my face how I have jack shit left he could’ve just — ”

“I, I don’t — ”

“Quit fucking jerking me around,” Rumlow said. He was almost shouting, shattering the quiet afternoon. He’d gotten closer to the asset without realizing; he could have reached out and touched him, shoved his fingers in his chest. “You’re here for Steve, huh? He couldn’t risk the press catching him talking to me a second time so he fucking sent his attack dog — or wait, that’s right, sorry — ” He made a horrible sound; it was meant to be a laugh, but it just dredged up sour phlegm and he had to suppress a cough — “sorry, forgot, you’re not a dog anymore, huh. You don’t do anyone’s bidding. You’re fucking free now, you can do whatever the hell you want, go wherever the hell you want, no one’s gonna say shit even if they see that fucking arm, all so fucking scared, so sad, oh, poor, poor James fucking Barnes, what shit he’s gone through, everyone better shelter the poor fucking hundred year old vet — ”

“That’s not my name,” the asset interrupted, quietly. It was so quiet it was barely audible over Rumlow’s voice — he really was shouting now — and Rumlow could have pretended he didn’t hear, he could’ve plowed right over him, kept going, but the sentence tripped him up, tangled in his own words, wrapped around his throat and squeezed. He felt like the asset had just hauled off and slapped him with the metal hand. The last time he could remember the asset interrupting him he’d immediately fallen into a total panic, attempting to suck Rumlow off in apology. Now he was just standing there on Rumlow’s front walk with his tied-back hair and his civilian clothes and —

“The hell do you mean that’s not your name,” Rumlow snarled. “Everyone fucking knows who you are. Pretty sure the only people who didn’t tune in to watch your fucking trial were senile old fucks and babies. James Buchan— ”

“I said,” the asset repeated, and his voice was even softer now, but it railed a chill up Rumlow’s spine, like someone was wringing his bones out, “that isn’t my name. Commander.”

Something that may have been fifth or sixth cousins with arousal attempted to light a match in his groin, but it was blown out too quickly for him to investigate. He couldn’t hold himself up straight, not as well as he used to; he couldn’t remember the asset being that much taller than him, though he knew he’d always had about an inch on Rumlow, however furtively he’d tried to hide the fact.

They were both quiet for the space of three heartbeats. I am not going to fucking play this game with you, Rumlow wanted to say, you tell me what the hell you’re doing here, get whatever shit off your chest, humiliate me, hurt me, whatever, and leave me the fuck alone. Instead when he opened his mouth what came out was:

“What’s your name, then?”

The corner of the asset’s mouth did something like a smile. “Winter,” he said.

Rumlow’s very first, deep-rooted, cruel streak instinct was to laugh. The fuck kinda name, he wanted to say, because really, it was a stupid fucking name, ‘Winter’, like some fuckin’ hipster. ‘Winter’, the name of a season, and a shitty one at that. The epitome of every single thing that the asset should hate about himself. He’d been shoved in and out of cryo for seventy years. He’d been forced to lay for hours completely still in the snow in various countries while Rumlow, Rollins, and the others got to sit in a warm back room and watch him through the windows to make sure he didn’t fuck up the mission.

The first time Rumlow could remember the asset seeing snow he had actually paused, his boot sinking a little into the ground as it gave under him. In the complete still darkness of night the soft crunch of the snow had been audible even to Rumlow, and he’d snuck a look at the asset’s face, because he couldn’t help himself. The asset had been — well, not really smiling, because it was in the early days, but his head was tilted. There was something almost relaxed in the corners of his eyes. He’d pushed a little harder with his foot, and the ice crystals broke up beneath the pressure. A few of them got on his boot. As they walked into the safehouse the snow melted against the thick leather and dripped gently onto the stone floor.

Winter. It was too gentle a name for him, for the shit he’d been through. The shit he was probably still going through; Rumlow knew now how long trauma fucking stayed in the brain, how between one breath and the next the day could turn rotten and hollow with whatever shit. It was a name like the soft crunch of the snow under his boot. It was a name like the expression on his face three years later at another safehouse, in another country, when he’d looked out at the ice storm which would end up delaying their mission by half a day. The ice had clung to the trees and the power lines and rendered everything unusable. When the sun came up it filtered through the clear glass shapes the ice made and sparked off the half-buried Hydra van and the frozen birdbath in the front yard.

— the ice storm which had caused a six-car pileup, the victims of which included one of their five targets. Rumlow had directed the asset to check every single car and make sure, and he had, the grips on his boots keeping him steady on the road as he walked from window to window looking in at the bloody mangled messes inside. Sometimes if they were holed up in some town that was too far north to receive adequate electricity they had to improvise and live like it was still Barnes’ original time, setting up tents in the forest, using kerosene lamps to keep themselves from freezing to death. The asset never shivered. He never complained. He just lay where they told him, beneath the dark bare lines of the trees, the snow tight-packed beneath them. They slept and hunted and did warfare in bleak ugly temperatures with the wind slicing bitterly at their faces and the snow piling up, hiding the strips of black ice that formed on the sides of the paths. Rumlow stared out at the pale endless world watching the moon move through the dark trees, his breath crystalizing in front of his face, and he wondered if any of it was triggering war memories for the asset, and how different things were now, and whether he’d ever be warm again —

‘Winter’. The name had two sides. In various ways, they both fit: the softness of his face when he’d brushed snow out of his hair, and the harsh punishing anger of the brutal northern winds.

Okay. Okay.

“Huh,” Rumlow said. He became aware he was still digging his nails into his palm; he forced his hand to relax, though of course it didn’t do much for his pain. “I — well, then, Winter, what the fuck are you doing here?”

Winter’s eyes dropped to Rumlow’s mouth. Then back up to his eyes. “Commander, if this is — ”

“Stop fucking calling me that,” Rumlow snapped, without realizing he was going to. For whatever reason it was this sentence, or perhaps his tone, which made the asset — which made Winter flinch back. Not Rumlow shouting at him and accusing him of doing Steve’s bidding. Not him asking if Winter was there to kill him. But him saying don’t call me ‘commander’. Don’t call me a title I haven’t gone by in almost two years. Don’t call me the name you called me when you had no other fucking choice, and why aren’t you fucking angry at me, why are you just standing there —

“ — why don’t you fucking hit me,” Rumlow was yelling again, he hadn’t even realized he’d started talking out loud but once he realized he couldn’t stop — “if you ain’t here to kill me then at least fucking knock me out, what in the hell kinda bullshit is this?” Now he did reach out; he shoved Winter’s chest, but his arm strength was for shit, and Winter didn’t even move. Anyway he was shaking again, he could barely think straight. Somewhere a few blocks away someone was playing the horn. “All that shit, you know I fucked up your life just as much as Pierce did, you know I hurt you, I — ”

“You didn’t hurt me,” Winter said, still in that hoarse, quiet voice, and Rumlow barked out a laugh.

“What the hell are you talking about, Winter, ‘course I fucking hurt you, I kept you doped up and complacent for twenty fucking years — ” Something caught in his throat; this time when he started coughing he found he couldn’t stop, and he doubled up, hacking spit onto the sidewalk, chest burning, legs burning, stomach burning, and he could fucking see Winter’s metal arm in the corner of his eye reaching, trying to steady him, steady him, Brock Rumlow, what a fucking joke — He reached up in spite of the pain and the coughing and the uncontrolled trembling and he shoved Winter’s hand away. He sank down onto his lawn. From overhead the soft rustle of clothing, and then Winter was crouching in front of him. Winter’s hand was still fucking reaching for his face, and Rumlow couldn’t bear the expression in his eyes, hurt banked back beneath years and years of conditioning, no emotions allowed, and tangled within it sadness, and something like pity. His eyes were snagged on Rumlow’s scars, the awful ones that bisected half his face, and Rumlow jerked back before Winter could touch him, because he was fucking terrified if Winter made contact Rumlow would never be able to move again.

“Commander — ” Winter began, and suddenly all the energy ran out of Rumlow’s body at once. He could hardly hold his own weight up. Even shutting his eyes and turning from Winter felt like a terrible effort he wasn’t fully capable of making.

“I told you not to call me that,” Rumlow whispered. His throat felt coated in ash. He should have asphyxiated in the Triskelion. He should have been crushed to death by falling steel.

Winter made a little noise in his throat Rumlow refused to dissect. He felt his hand hovering in the air over his scars still, and it made him angry, both that Winter was sitting here seeing him like this, broken and burnt and destroyed, and that Winter no longer had to obey with absolute precision his commands.

And further: angry that he was angry over Winter having free will. After so many years of wishing —

— but then he’d never wished for Winter to be autonomous, had he. Only that Winter would belong solely to him.

“I’m fucked up,” he said. He hadn’t realized he was going to say it out loud until he heard his own voice in the soft river wind. “I’m fucked up and I’m not gonna do any favors for you and you’re gonna ruin yourself if you keep sitting here. I’m staying in this city and I’m surviving, whatever the hell that’s worth, so go back to Steve now, you don’t need me. You’ve seen I’m here. That’s fucking enough. Okay?”

It was quiet for a long time. Rumlow thought Winter was still sitting there, defying his orders because he could do that now, waiting to touch Rumlow’s face because Rumlow didn’t want him to; prove to both of them that Rumlow was no longer in charge, just one more person to show Rumlow how low he was on the food chain, that he was perhaps one inch above living in the fucking gutters —

— but when at last he forced his eyes back open, turning his head, he found he was alone.

--

He held it together all the way inside. All the way through forcing himself to his feet, forcing himself up his porch steps, forcing the lock open and then shut again, forcing himself to fully shed his sweatshirt, drop his sunglasses and his keys on the soft pile of it at his front door. He limped into the bathroom to wash his hands and had to take a fucking second to grip the cool sides of the sink, but it was fine, it was going to be fine, he just needed to breathe, to steady himself, to —

— to remember Winter, the asset, the last time Rumlow had been close to him like that, and how he’d leaned his body into him even though it had been a bad mission, even though he didn’t know who the hell Rumlow was, had no reason to trust him, no reason to think he’d be any different to Pierce or Sitwell —

— the soft, secret place behind his left ear, and how with two years of being a human and sliding out of Hydra’s grasp it was likely that place no longer smelled of saltwater and vanilla —

His throat caught again, harder than it had outside. He tried to hold it back, because there were constant tiny cracks in his face, and saline stung badly when it got inside. But the tears came anyway.

--

August 2014

Someone is screaming. Something heavy is holding him down and he is soaked in sweat and someone is screaming. His throat hurts and his ears hurt and there is screaming. Hands cover his temples hold his head down screaming screaming screaming. He waits for the blinding flash of the machine the pain the volts the sick rubber taste in his mouth and he screams and he screams and he screams.

Then there is light and the weight is off his legs. The room warps in and out his vision tunnels. The hands at his temples pressing in harder someone saying Buck, Buck, Bucky, please Buck, please wake up —

Faces flicker by. Some have names, most slip in and out like water. Pierce. He knows Pierce. He knows Pierce like he knows he is called Winter Soldier not Bucky not Master Barnes.

Rollins. Hauer. Anderson. Series of faces one after the other and all the while the hands on his temples the voice in his ear begging pleading Buck Buck Bucky you’re here you’re safe it’s all right just please —

Sitwell. Crunch of broken glass scream highway flash of silver scream —

The Hydra logo. Cut off one head and two — and two will —

Two will what?

He doesn’t know.

His eyes open all the way. He is on his floor in the tower. The hands on his temples are Steve’s. The light is coming from overhead. Jarvis has dimmed it considerably. His throat is aching. When he shuts his mouth the screaming stops.

Steve is panting behind him. He is reaching out for PierceSitwellRollins, reaching to stop, to pull closer — but there is no one. There is only him. Him and Steve and the light and the echo of his screams in the air.

Steve comes around to face him. “Buck…” he breathes out. His hands hover. He wants to touch.

The Winter Soldier flinches back. Steve has already been touching him; he knows he must allow it. But his skin is crawling crawling burning and there’s sweat on his neck and his spine and irritating the skin where it joins to the metal arm.

Steve’s face crumples. He says, “Buck, do you want me to get Dr. Haskins?”

The Winter Soldier shakes his head.

“Do you want — I mean, can you talk about what, whatever it was you were dreaming about?”

He shakes his head. It is already receding into the distance.

Steve hesitates. He says, “What can I do for you, Bucky? Please tell me… what do you need?”

The Winter Soldier closes his eyes. The faces are disintegrating into his mind, into the flashes of the machine. The names are burned into his skull, and he thinks if he tries hard enough he will be able to recall the faces. Pierce, if no one else. Pierce and —

And —

“I want the Commander,” the Winter Soldier whispers. He doesn’t know what makes him say it. The name is foreign to him until it leaves his tongue, but as soon as it’s out in the air he knows it; he wants to say it again, and again, and again.

The Commander. Not Pierce. Not Sitwell.

He looks up at Steve. Steve’s face is white. It occurs to the Winter Soldier distantly that the Commander’s name is one of those forbidden things he isn’t supposed to mention because it will hurt his case in the trial. He has talked about the Commander before, but it was so long ago he’d forgotten until now.

The first time Steve mentioned Stockholm, it was because the Winter Soldier brought up the Commander. (At the time Steve was showing the Winter Soldier various books in the tower and asking if he wanted to read any of them. ‘Catch you up on the last half-century,’ he’d said, with a crooked smile. When the Winter Soldier looked at the shelves, he recognized one book in particular right away, though he wasn’t sure why, nor what made him point to it and say,

‘Commander — ’

except that it made Steve wince. It made Steve sit him down and talk about Stockholm. The Winter Soldier is still not sure what the relation is between Stockholm, a city in Sweden, and Harry Potter, a children’s fantasy series in English, but of course he didn’t question Steve.)

Now, Steve closes his eyes. He draws in a breath. For a moment he looks like Pierce, the way the Winter Soldier remembers he looked before punishment. For a moment the Winter Soldier thinks at last he is going to be punished. He has mentioned the Commander and his nice memories of Hydra.

He waits. But when Steve moves again, it is away from him. He says, “Just try to rest, Buck.”

He says, “I’ll see you in a couple hours. It’s almost morning.”

He says, “Jarv, play him some Gershwin, okay?”

“Yes, Captain Rogers,” says Jarvis.

The music Jarvis plays is soft. Quiet. The Winter Soldier doesn’t sleep again, but he sits on the couch and listens to Gershwin. When he sees flashes of memory through the music it’s different; black and white movies, slicked-back hair, girls in long skirts.

Three hours and twenty-four minutes later, Steve comes back with Sam Wilson. They talk about his dream. They talk a little about Pierce. About Sitwell. About Rollins. The faceless nameless agents. The stun batons. The chair. The ice.

Steve stays perched on the edge of the couch, waiting, tense, but the Winter Soldier doesn’t mention the Commander at all.

Chapter Text

January 2016

Eventually Rumlow walked into his living room where he collapsed on the couch and stared at the blank wall to his right. In whatever shitty afterlife was reserved for ex-Hydra agents and old nymphomaniac fucks he supposed Pierce was laughing at him. You see, Commander, if you had just obeyed my orders and kept tighter control over the asset, that helicarrier would’ve never crashed, and we’d all be enjoying the pleasures of his mouth right now. Even you. Sometimes. If I felt like allowing it.

It wasn’t hard to figure how the asset — Winter — had found him. If SHIELD had the safehouse address in their databanks and Winter was part of SHIELD now all he’d have to do was call up access to it on some encrypted computer. Or else maybe he’d coerced it out of Steve with some kind of sex thing. Knowing what Winter looked like when aroused made it very easy indeed for Rumlow to imagine how he might have distracted Steve and convinced him into giving over the information, just this once, please, please, I just want to know where he is so I can go make sure he’s as fucked up as everyone says. Please, after everything else you’ve given me like my autonomy and the realization that everything about Hydra was so, so terrible and Rumlow was nothing but a piece of shit —

— except he’d called him ‘Commander’ outside. He’d been pretty fucking insistent about it, and Rumlow really didn’t know what the hell all that was about. Maybe Winter was just really good at manipulation tactics still. After all he’d learned them well enough in Hydra. And now that he could think for himself and feel whatever the hell he wanted and understand all of those feelings it would stand to reason that he’d want very much to manipulate and break down the one guy left who had fucked him over, again and again, for seventeen years.

Seventeen out of seventy. It wasn’t much of a consolation prize. But Rumlow figured to a guy like Bucky Barnes it would be better than nothing —

— except he didn’t want to be called Bucky Barnes. Rumlow didn’t know what that was about, either. ‘Buck’, Steve had called him, in every single fuckawful annoying Getting Weepy About My Long-Dead Ex session. It was such a shitty nickname. Winter would’ve had to have been pretty fucked up over the guy to allow him to call him that. Rumlow couldn’t really imagine why he didn’t want to go back to all that, the second he remembered who he was, what his name was, who Steve was — why wouldn’t he jump at the chance to shed every single aspect of his life in Hydra? Why the hell was he insisting on keeping the ‘Winter’ part of his fucking title?

— but then, the name thing might’ve been part of the manipulation, too.

Rumlow lifted his arms to fold across his chest and gritted his teeth. His wrists and parts of his hands were totally asleep, the dead nerves exhausted from his pushing them so hard all day, and moving them at all felt like he’d wrapped them in exposed electrical wire. But he forced his hands together, and then he forced himself to roll onto his side. His brain was still a little stuck on the idea of the asset, of Winter using his arousal to get what he wanted. Maybe he’d dragged Steve’s zipper down with his teeth. The soft rose plush of his lips against the rough denim of Steve’s jeans. Or maybe if Steve was still all self-righteous about this kind of shit and insisted on just kissing until they could figure out how to get Winter hard —

— which was a whole other thought in and of itself; Rumlow had no idea if Winter’s conditioning regarding his own arousal was still in place, or if Pierce had truly zapped it out of him at some unknown juncture as he’d threatened. Rumlow wasn’t really sure if he would’ve had time to do it, but it wasn’t impossible, and if Winter could get hard on his own again —

— well, anyway, if Steve still insisted on just kissing, Winter could’ve licked inside his mouth, slid his metal hand between Steve’s legs. Rumlow knew some of the guys had really, really liked that, and maybe Winter did it to Steve now out of habit. And maybe Steve felt fucked up over it but also just angry enough at Rumlow to agree, to say, yeah, of course, Buck; go down there and see him. Here’s where we stuffed him. Go scope him out, and Winter would say,

What if it doesn’t work, though? What if I don’t feel any better after I see him all broken? and Steve would smile a little, and kiss Winter’s temple, and say,

Then you come back and tell me, and we can all go down there and kill the son of a bitch together.

Rumlow closed his eyes. Something in his head was beginning to throb. He hadn’t allowed himself to think about Winter since the trial. And he hadn’t remembered why, exactly, until now, until the images began flashing through his mind, one after the other, faster and faster like microfilm on speed: Winter hugging Steve. Winter whispering his thanks into Steve’s neck at night. Thanks for getting me out of there. Thanks for not giving up on me. Thanks for saving me from those horrible people, and especially from Brock Rumlow. Every one of Rumlow’s deepest, subconscious fears coalesced and brought to life. The latent Barnes had finally returned, just like Rumlow had predicted, and he could call himself whatever he wanted to try and trick Rumlow, but Rumlow knew better. Barnes had done just what Rumlow thought; he’d compiled seventy years of hurt after hurt, one on top of the other, and now he was down here, sanctioned by his long-lost best friend, to show Rumlow exactly how shitty he’d made him feel, every single day he was awake, since 1997.

--

Close to five-thirty the following morning he gave up on trying to sleep. He’d downed two fentanyl at dinner instead of one but his body’s responses to drugs must have been all fucked up because instead of dragging him under or causing an overdose or any other of the more anticipated (and preferred) reactions he just spent most of the evening and night shivering on the couch, wrapped in a blanket because he fucking refused to put on the heater; there was no point in risking some dumb panic response in his brain when it was somewhere around fifty degrees outside. He stared at the television with burning strained eyes, watching reruns of Roseanne and Full House, too lazy to try and find anything better. Around four they started playing infomercials and he snapped it off, but even lying there in the complete darkness, the only sound the occasional underwater rush of a passing car, he still couldn’t shut his fucking brain off. He kept remembering the way Winter had reached for him on the lawn, and how he’d just — shoved him to the side. So by five-thirty his chest was a nauseating swirl of guilt (he shouldn’t have pushed Winter away; he wouldn’t have done that before) and anger (why the fuck was he beating himself up over this; he’d already decided he no longer had to pretend to Winter that he was a good person because he fucking wasn’t, and the sooner Winter understood that Rumlow was no longer keeping up the pretense the sooner Winter would drop his own pretense, and tell Rumlow just how much he hated him now, and get the fuck out of Louisiana). So he could no longer lie still on his couch and so he forced himself to his feet, stiff, aching, wrists and hands sharp with pain as the blood ran its sluggish reluctant way back down his arms. Once he was sure he wasn’t going to keel over as soon as he took a step he walked back into the hallway, carefully bent down to take up his discarded sweatshirt and keys, and headed out into the cool air.

The walk down Decatur in the surreal pale wash of dawn was by now as familiar to him as it had once been to swim the length of the pool at headquarters in New York, or to go running in the gym with Steve in D.C. New Orleans was not a city which thrived on the early morning; most shops didn’t open until ten or eleven, and Rumlow walked past a number of still-dark windows as the sky slowly lightened, watching as damp fog curled back towards the river. Someone had posted a sign at the front of one of the alleyways: IF YOU WANNA PISS DURING THE PARADES, DO NOT DO IT HERE. Early preparations, Rumlow thought, almost smiling. Because there were less people he was able to move slower, and so by the time he reached Café Du Monde the cathedral clock showed it was nearly six, and the sun was sending hesitant rays through the clouds to the east.

Rumlow maneuvered himself around the tables beneath the green and white awning, past night shift workers getting ready to head home and sleep, or else businessmen blinking half-awake at copies of the Times-Picayune, or else guys like Rumlow, guys with nowhere to go, using the café to hide, to pretend they had a purpose, to pretend their lives were anything other than empty —

— or guys who looked a fuck of a lot like Winter.

Rumlow had to take a fucking second. The light was still grainy, filtered, and his brain was wrapped as usual in its fentanyl-haze — but that was Winter. That was Winter sitting at a table on the far side of the outdoor seating patio, Winter in a dark sweatshirt, metal hand tucked into one of his pockets, flesh hand resting on the table. Winter staring unfocused at the to-go window where customers were starting to line up for their Styrofoam coffee cups and little bags of beignets.

Rumlow’s first instinct was to turn and walk back down Decatur. He could go to the French Market, or hell, he could go and spend Stark’s money at Brennan’s, fuck knew there’d be more than enough. But when his feet moved they moved forward, and then suddenly he was at Winter’s table, and Winter was looking up at him, something

(relief)

not-quite-surprise on his face, in his eyes. He’d been chewing a raw spot into his lower lip and Rumlow’s gaze got stuck helplessly on it in the minutes before the serum faded it out. He didn’t even notice at first that Winter had kicked the other chair out for him. There was a quiet tidal rush in his head, every burning unslept second of the last night collapsing on him, chest a tangled mess of anger and exhaustion and frantic frantic pulsing anxiety desperation the cold thing wrapping its fingers around his throat screaming please please please don’t push him away again winter don’t leave don’t make him leave —

“Thought I told you to fuck off,” Rumlow said, without sitting.

“Commander — ”

“And I fucking told you to not call me that, what the fuck.” Stop being such a shit to him, the cold thing shouted, while the voice from the day previous hissed, who fucking cares, maybe it’ll get him to drop the act and fuck us over faster, and then he’ll fucking leave and we’ll be alone and he’ll be better —

Winter’s eyes dropped to the powdered sugar-mess of the table. His jaw had tightened infinitesimally, as had the knuckles of his flesh hand, but when he spoke it was in the same hoarse, quiet voice:

“I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t — ” Rumlow felt like he was swallowing nails. Behind him he heard the clock tower chime as it hit six. “Don’t fuckin’ apologize, just — ” His hands were shaking as always; he shoved them into the pockets of his own sweatshirt. The tangled mess behind his ribs was trying marginally to calm itself down, and Rumlow was having trouble dissecting what he was feeling, except that there was a lot of it. He thought again of the day before, how he’d shoved Winter’s hand away when he’d tried to help. And he thought of how easy he was making it on Winter to fully ruin his (Rumlow’s) life, if indeed his goals tended in that direction.

He should turn and walk away. Go home, kid. Go home, I said. I told you there’s nothing here for you — hell, nothing here for me, either, but at least you got a life up east. Long fuckin’ future ahead. Don’t waste your time trying whatever the hell it is you’re trying here. Tell me I’m an asshole and that you’re doing fine, and leave me alone.

He should turn and go. After all he’d made it damn clear to Winter yesterday that he wanted nothing to do with him and yet Winter sat here, same damn face Rumlow remembered from nineteen years ago, not a fucking second older, and yet everything so different, his ability to think and move and breathe on his own, no direction, no orders — hell, his ability to defy orders, Rumlow’s orders no less; Rumlow had told him to fuck off, and he’d stayed anyway —

Nothing good could come of this. He should go. Winter was just going to ruin his own life over Rumlow, some fucked up half-burnt scarred piece of shit who had screwed him over time and again, sending him into the fucking death chamber, standing by while he was raped and tortured and screamed his way through thirty thousand volts of electricity being pumped into his brain over and over, wiping his identity, wiping every fucking part of him except the parts Pierce wanted to keep —

— Winter was going to be seen talking to Rumlow. WINTER SOLDIER SEEN TALKING TO EX-HYDRA AGENT. Hell, Rumlow knew a little of the trial; not much, because he hadn’t wanted to read about it, but he knew they’d explained his role in Winter’s life as his primary handler. WINTER SOLDIER SEEN TALKING TO FORMER HYDRA HANDLER. Rumlow had no idea why Winter would risk that kind of publicity just to make a point, just to — to what, trick him, lead him on, make him think the asset was still buried in there somewhere, the same quiet docile patient weapon Rumlow had trained and honed and held again and again —

It was like in Manhattan. Rumlow felt something twist knife-sharp between his lungs. Steve at the Supr Savr, risking his whole career just to hand Rumlow an envelope. And now Winter, sitting at a very public café, in a very well-known city, talking to the guy who had been revealed over and over as Pierce’s right-hand man.

Rumlow couldn’t let his guard down. He didn’t want to; it wasn’t in his nature. Long after Hydra had burned every other instinct and thread of humanity from him it had allowed him to keep his wariness, and his mistrust, and his watchfulness. He wasn’t going to stand here and shake Winter’s hand and say okay, yes, it’s fine, I’m sure you have no ill intentions, I’m sure whatever you’re doing here is completely fine. But he couldn’t — he couldn’t keep fighting against himself. The desires and the aches and the dreams he’d had, despite refusing to acknowledge them, despite shoving them down, knocking them back with pills and his bitter animosity. If Winter was here to ruin Rumlow’s life and trip him up, and if Rumlow engaging him in conversation was the equivalent of handing him the knife blade first… Rumlow would pay the consequences when they came. Fuck knew he was used to it by now.

He reached out with his own foot, hooking it around one leg of the chair. He dragged it a little further out.

He sat down.

Slowly, Winter raised his eyes back up from the table. There was no mistaking his expression this time, no way for Rumlow to try and trick himself and pretend it was anything other than relief. He saw Winter’s shoulders relax. Something that was almost a smile crossed his face.

He was relieved. He was surprised Rumlow had taken the seat, but he was relieved, too. And Rumlow could’ve been suspicious of his motivations and wondered dumb paranoid shit about if his relief had nefarious undertones, but mostly he was just —

He was just —

Well. He could feel parts of his body relaxing, too. What fucking ever. He was tired; his muscles hurt; he was sitting down. He was resting. So what.

A waitress walked up to their table with a tray on which sat a cup of coffee and a small glass of water. She set it in front of Winter and turned expectantly to Rumlow.

“You’ll be ordering too, sir?” she asked.

What the hell. He needed the caffeine if he was going to make it through the whole day without fucking collapsing. “Yeah, all right,” he said, “a café au lait, please, hon,” and she smiled at him — it was still kind of jarring, even after all these months — and walked back towards the kitchen.

Winter was raising his eyebrows just slightly over the rim of his mug when Rumlow turned back to face him. “What,” Rumlow said, flat, but Winter didn’t answer. He looked like he was maybe hiding a smile into his coffee, and Rumlow rolled his eyes.

“I ain’t a fuckin’ asshole,” he said. “Don’t like treating waitstaff like shit, ‘s fuckin’ pointless.” He didn’t bother adding that Sitwell had made almost a second career out of it, sending his plate back five or six times for absolutely no reason; or that Hauer would hit their waitresses up, plastering his stupid fucking grin on and flirting in fucking terrible French or Dutch. The asset would be holed up in whatever kitchen freezer in whatever European country, locked in, awaiting his orders, while Rumlow sat with his dickhead colleagues and ate decent, overpriced food and ground his teeth through story after story about Rollins’ wild parties in college, or the girl in Idaho who Christiansen claimed had no gag reflex.

So she’s like a shittier version of the asset, huh? Rollins had said, and everyone had laughed. Christiansen snorted, shaking his head:

Not unless Pierce had the techs give him a pussy, and they all laughed harder. Rumlow stared at his beer and pictured himself stripping down a gun, which of course inevitably led to the idea of stripping down a more responsive weapon, and how fucking stupid all these guys were, not knowing what the fuck they had at their command.

“Fuck’re you doing here, anyway,” Rumlow asked, shaking off this unproductive train of thought. “How’d you find me again, huh? You stalking me or something?”

Winter set his coffee down and frowned at it. “No,” he said, quietly. “No, it’s… I just…” He trailed off, hand flexing again just slightly on the table. Rumlow exhaled. Fuck, but he was good at fucking things up.

“Hey,” he said, and was shocked at how — soft his voice came out. He hadn’t thought he could hit that particular pitch anymore, between the smoke damage in his throat and the months and months of constantly defending himself against assholes. He waited until Winter’s eyes had flicked back up to his. “I was kidding,” he said. “It’s okay.”

After a few seconds the line between Winter’s eyebrows disappeared. He took another careful sip of coffee and said,

“I’ve been down here a while; I — you go the same route a lot. That’s all.”

The waitress came back with Rumlow’s coffee. He picked it up, as ever grateful for the warmth of the ceramic, the way it eased the tension in his hands, made it possible to drink without spilling it everywhere. The sludgy bitter flavor of the coffee as it scorched his throat made a nice contrast to the cool damp wind coming off the Mississippi.

“Long time?” Rumlow asked, when it was clear Winter wasn’t going to volunteer anything else.

Winter shrugged. Shook his head. “Couple weeks,” he mumbled. His brow creased again; he looked momentarily as though he was going to say something, but changed his mind, took another long drink of coffee.

“Still never told me what you’re doing here in the first place,” Rumlow said, feeling the coffee starting to shoot into his bloodstream, behind his burning tired eyes. Across the table Winter had resumed chewing his lower lip; again, Rumlow’s gaze got stuck on it, and he was still staring when Winter looked over his shoulder towards the cathedral.

“It’s almost six-fifteen,” he said, still in that rough, soft voice. Rumlow remembered it used to drive the junior agents up the fucking walls. Terrence had complained how he always sounded like he was on the verge of apologizing for something.

“Yeah?” Rumlow said, without looking. He wanted so bad to push, to force Winter to tell him what he was doing here, why he was stalking him, shoving his way into Rumlow’s life despite clear orders otherwise. But he just —

— he couldn’t.

“Think the church is open now,” Winter said, which was absolutely the last thing Rumlow had expected him to say, or anyway until he said the next thing: “Wanna go sit in there for a minute?”

Hauer mocking him in the snow. Any subsequent missions that went near a church, Rumlow kept his head up and his mind clear enough he wouldn’t make the same mistake. They’d gone kind of close to Vatican City once and Rollins had asked him did he want the mission to be postponed so he could go talk to the pope. Rumlow had let some of his gelato melt and drip onto Rollins’ laptop later when they were stationed outside their target’s house.

“Uh,” Rumlow said, reaching up to rub at his eyes, wincing slightly when his hands protested the movement. “Yeah, all right,” he said, and watched that surprised look cross Winter’s face again. They each set five dollars on the table — Rumlow had learned through trial and error you always had to pay with cash at the café — and walked out together into the nascent sunlight. No one paid any attention to them as they crossed Decatur and walked down the short stone path which ran alongside Jackson Square. No one paid any attention as they walked around the area where later in the day the fortune tellers would set up their booths. No one paid attention to Rumlow pushing open the cathedral doors, nor to him walking inside, holding the door for a second so Winter could catch it with his metal arm. It was reflex to reach for the holy water fount, but Rumlow couldn’t remember how to make the sign of the cross, so he let his hand fall.

It was a beautiful church. This early in the morning hardly anyone was inside, and Rumlow and Winter walked through the foyer into the cathedral proper, sliding into one of the pews in the back. The air felt different; cleaner. Rumlow stared at the tiled floor, black and white squares patterned up the aisle, and at the murals on the walls, the giant seashell-like backings to the podiums for the lectors. The stations by the stained glass windows. The low arches and the pillars holding up the second floor balcony. The flags hanging off the upstairs railings. Behind them the blue-glass votive candles, and overhead the high ceiling, and the dips in the floor where centuries of feet had worn the marble down.

Beside him Winter was breathing quietly. He’d always been so good at sitting still, waiting through their missions. It was Rumlow who couldn’t bear the silence. Rumlow who would grow restless and impatient the longer things took. He remembered the rooftop in Poland, and the hot gravel beneath his stomach, and the way Winter had looked curling his hair through the metal plates of his finger —

“I gotta get out of here,” Rumlow muttered. He could see altar boys at the front setting up for the first mass of the day; parishioners were shuffling in, mostly old ladies, their heads bent, rosaries clasped between gnarled hands, mantillas pinned to their hair. He glanced over at Winter, half-expecting him to say no, that he wanted to stay, and Rumlow had to do what he wanted, enough years of him doing whatever Rumlow wanted, after all —

— but Winter was nodding, pushing himself to his feet. “Okay,” he said, still quiet, still indulgent. They shifted back out of the pew and headed out into the square again. They moved aside so they wouldn’t block the entrance, and then Rumlow said,

“I, uh.” He cleared his throat. His mind was still stuck partially in the church, the half-remembered hymns and the smell of incense. His mom had quit trying at Catholicism shortly after his first stepdad had left; she must have figured she couldn’t get in good with God if she was spending the rest of her week shooting up while Rumlow watched Looney Tunes sitting about two inches from the television screen. “I need to go home,” he said, finally, though that wasn’t what he wanted to say. In truth he had no idea what the hell he wanted to say. But Winter took it in stride, as he took everything.

“Sure, Commander,” he said, and Rumlow opened his mouth to correct him, paused, and shut it again. What was the fucking point. It wasn’t his title anymore, but he doubted Winter was gonna stick around much longer, anyway. Let him call him whatever he wanted. Probably it was part of whatever weird power trip Winter was on.

“Quit fuckin’ stalking me,” Rumlow said instead. This earned him an unexpected eye roll, and yeah, Rumlow had to take a fucking second to picture Winter giving that to Pierce, just fucking rolling his eyes when Pierce asked for a mission report or a blowjob or whatever the fuck else he’d demanded and taken over the years. He was mildly surprised afterwards to discover he was almost smiling, or something. He could feel the fucked side of his face pulling up. Winter was almost smiling too, head tilted.

You’ve done this before, he’d said, during post-mission prep after Poland. Because you’re my handler, and he’d arched into Rumlow’s hand, mouth falling open, so fucking eager, starved for it, and Rumlow had pressed his nose into that soft secret place and thought —

“All right, Commander,” Winter said, still not-quite smiling. Then he said, “See you around, maybe,” and he turned and walked off before Rumlow could protest.

If Rumlow ordered two extra cans of soup with his groceries when he got home, that was his fucking business.

--

October 2014

The Winter Soldier is having a breakfast shake when Jarvis tells him Natasha Romanov is coming up in the elevator to see him. This is unusual, as normally people don’t visit the Winter Soldier without Steve, but he can’t say no, and besides, he kind of likes Romanov. She speaks Russian and he thinks he remembers her from a mission a long time ago. It’s a good memory for him to have, because it’s a time when he hurt people against his will for Hydra, and Romanov can back up his memories with her own adjacent ones of the same day. Steve encourages him to remember Odessa a lot.

He sets his shake to the side and waits. Thirty-seven seconds later, Romanov walks in.

“Dobroe utro, soldat,” she says. (No one else will call him this, which is another reason he likes her. It sparks another one of those not-unpleasant Hydra memories; it makes him feel the same way as when he thinks of the Commander. Sometimes when he hears ‘soldat’ enough he can almost see the Commander’s face before it’s lost to the flash of the machine.)

“Dobroe utro, Natalia,” he says.

Her mouth twitches. He has called her that since their first meeting. It makes Steve unhappy, but Romanov — Natalia — doesn’t seem to mind, or if she minds, she keeps it to herself.

“I have to tell you something,” she says, switching to English as she walks up to the table. She’s holding a newspaper folded up under one arm.

The Winter Soldier looks at her. Natalia sits across from him. She spreads the paper out on the table. There is a banner headline across the front, with a grainy photograph underneath:

EX-HYDRA AGENT BROCK RUMLOW TO BE RELEASED FROM HOSPITAL OCTOBER 14, 2014.

The photograph is not very good. The Winter Soldier has learned the word ‘pixelated’ from being around Stark and Banner, and that is certainly what this photograph is. A fuzzy, pixelated mess of a person. The Winter Soldier doesn’t know why his heart has started racing, nor why his eyes keep snapping back to the headline, over and over.

BROCK RUMLOW

BROCK RUMLOW

BROCK RUMLOW

The article says Brock Rumlow will leave the hospital where he has been staying in Washington, D.C., since the fall of the Triskelion in April. He will be kept voluntarily under house arrest in an apartment until the time of the Winter Soldier trial later in the month. The article says the outcome of the trial will determine whether or not he is put on death row or sentenced to life in prison.

The Winter Soldier looks at the article. At the grainy picture above it. It is CCTV footage; a man crossing a street. There’s something about his posture, or maybe about the set of his mouth, which the Winter Soldier can just make out as a blurred dark line. Something —

The machine flashes. But almost instantly, he thinks of the window. Of looking out. Of the name. Brock Rumlow. Ex-Hydra agent Brock Rumlow.

He smells ice so cold it burns. He hears the hiss of pressure releasing from a chamber. His metal hand comes up to touch his hair.

“Do you recognize him?” Natalia asks. Her voice is soft.

The Winter Soldier looks at her. At the picture. The headline. The article.

“Brock Rumlow, former top agent of Hydra, served under Alexander Pierce from 1995 until the fall of the Triskelion in April. He worked as a sleeper agent for SHIELD from 2011, serving on a STRIKE team with fellow Hydra agents Jack Rollins, Louis Hauer, and Avengers team member Steve Rogers, alias Captain America.”

The Winter Soldier doesn’t know — he doesn’t —

He remembers a bridge. He remembers a feeling, caught in the machine, torn apart. He remembers Pierce and his arm recalibrating and that name, that name ‘Bucky’, and it had been Steve, and the Winter Soldier had recognized him, like seeing a familiar actor in a movie, and he’d called him ‘Bucky’, and the Winter Soldier had known him, and he knows Brock Rumlow, the smell of ice, someone’s hand on his side, a voice, gentler than what he’s used to, Brock Rumlow — synonymous with those forbidden memories, the ones he can’t tell Steve about anymore, the ones he’s never mentioned to Dr. Haskins, the Comman—

“He’s the Commander,” the Winter Soldier whispers. He looks at the picture. The familiar set of the shoulders and the familiar sweep of hair. The name. The face.

Brock Rumlow. Something is falling inside him, but he doesn’t know what. He remembers the dreams he has sometimes, Pierce and the chair and Sitwell and the chamber. He remembers coming out of them aching for more than just relief, chest tense, full of tears. When he reaches out from his dreams sobbing it is not for Steve. He thinks of how he is always biting back a name when he is coming into consciousness. Sometimes his instinct wants him to call out ‘Commander’. Sometimes it wants him to call something else, but that name is always gone by the time he’s fully awake.

This is that name. He puts his hand over his mouth.

“‘Of course, strictly speaking, in America, everyone gets a chance at a fair trial,’ said Thomas Hudson, who served as primary prosecution attorney during the Soviet trials in the early nineties. ‘But Nuremburg was in a different time, and Hydra isn’t the Nazi Party. It’s not worth it to waste resources and time trying to find some poor sucker who’ll agree to defend one leftover domestic terrorist. Especially not in the wake of al-Qaeda. The public isn’t ready for that. And they shouldn’t have to endure it, either.’”

The Winter Soldier doesn’t understand why he gets a trial, then. He remembers the early days, when he’d thought how odd it was that they didn’t just punish him for his crimes, crimes he’d clearly, irrefutably committed. Clearly Thomas Hudson feels the same way. And if the entire American public feels the same —

Natalia puts her hand on the paper. “Tebe nuzhno, chtoby ya dostal Stiva, soldat?”

He shakes his head.

“I wanted you to hear it from me first,” she says in English. “I can ask Stark to put extra security on the tower, or I can — ”

He shakes his head again. He doesn’t trust himself to look up. He sees her hand pat the paper a few times, as though in solidarity. She always knows when to keep quiet. After a few minutes he hears her chair scrape back, and her footsteps depart. He hears the elevator door open and shut.

Natalia is a good person. She speaks Russian, she calls him soldat. She doesn’t ask him why he flinches or why he doesn’t leave his front room or why even after six months he has never tried to switch from protein shakes to solid foods. Natalia understands things and the Winter Soldier doesn’t know why, but it’s enough that she understands.

But even she won’t want to hear this. Good Hydra memories, good Commander memories. He will have to keep all of it shoved down. Away in the dark place for lying which he has carved out for himself since he discovered that sometimes he can lie now, as long as he never says no while he’s doing it.

He throws the newspaper in the garbage chute, but not before he tears out the picture of Brock Rumlow. (He isn’t allowed scissors, so he has to fold the paper along the picture’s edges, then pull. His metal fingers are well-suited to this task.) He slips the picture beneath the mattress in his bedroom. Jarvis suggests that if he wishes to begin sleeping in the bed, he should change the sheets, because the ones currently there are musty and need to be washed.

The sheets don’t dry in time, and the Winter Soldier sleeps on the bare mattress for the first time that night. In the morning when he wakes his flesh hand is curved towards the box springs.

Chapter Text

January 2016

Two days later he needed a refill on his prednisone but the pharmacy wasn’t doing deliveries this close to the first parades, so Rumlow — feeling inconvenienced and vaguely irritated — shrugged into his sweatshirt and a pair of shoes which he was kind of embarrassed to own because they were specially manufactured for his stupid fucked-up feet. But they also made it easier to walk and when he’d woken that morning his legs had been stiff and uncooperative, so whatever.

He walked out to the drugstore. He was beginning to regret wearing the sweatshirt; it was in the high sixties, but the humidity made it feel more like seventy-five. He knew he couldn’t take it off because of his wrists and his arms, but the soft cotton on the inside was clinging to his skin, so that by the time he got to the drugstore he was drenched in sweat and had to take a fucking second to lean against the cool interior wall by the refrigerated drinks they sold. His eyes were shut behind his sunglasses and when the door opened he didn’t look up. He was listening to the low hum of the cooling motor and thinking a little about straightening up so he could walk to the counter and get his meds when he heard a voice, very quiet, very familiar, from across the room:

“Yeah, it’s okay here… they’re gonna start Mardi Gras soon… no, no, I haven’t — ”

Rumlow’s eyes snapped open. What the fuck, this could not actually really be happening —

— yeah, okay, it could. Winter was at the opposite end of the store and Rumlow couldn’t tell if he genuinely hadn’t noticed him when he’d walked in or if he was pretending, but he was standing with his back to him, shoulders kind of hunched in, familiar old gesture Rumlow remembered from the field, from the asset trying to hide his stature around the other agents, afraid of what penalties he might incur for being taller than Stuart or Fairbanks. It had always struck Rumlow as counterproductive to belittle the asset for his height, when that same height worked quite well to their advantage when they were in the middle of a mission. The asset as the Soldier was terrifying enough by himself, the way he walked, the strident purposeful forward march, and the glint of the metal arm with its Soviet star, and the cold unkind nothing in his eyes. When he got close enough for his full height to be obvious many of their targets would just break down. It was another one of those nice mathematical equation-type things Rumlow had always appreciated about the asset. The inevitability of his frightening people with his physical form alone. It was like watching a familiar favorite movie again and again, reciting lines with the actors, anticipating the next scene —

— but now in the store there was nothing threatening about the asset — about Winter at all. He was holding a cell phone to one ear, wedged in the crook of his shoulder, and Rumlow felt a spike of — something — flare out in his chest, warning signal, sharp possessive heat. Winter was looking at the shelves of snacks along the opposite wall and Rumlow decided whether Winter had come in here on purpose to corner him or not he wasn’t going to wait around and see. Winter was on the phone with whoever the fuck (probably Steve, good old fucking Captain fucking America, red white and blue fucking asshole) and Rumlow was going to get his meds and slip out while Winter was distracted. He told his body to push off the fridge door, and it did, but in stages, too slow. The sweat was cooling and drying inside his sweatshirt and in his jeans and he could feel his joints starting to stiffen further. Pain stabbed in bursts along his wrists, up into his elbows. Fuck.

He walked up to the counter, but even with his stupid supportive shoes he was limping, dragging his feet, and in the time it took him to get to the pharmacist and fumble out his SHIELD-issued credit card and Harlan St. James’ I.D. Winter had made his own selection and turned. Rumlow could fucking feel Winter’s eyes on him without even looking over. He heard Winter say,

“I gotta go,” and then, “Yeah, I’ll call you in a couple weeks,” and then the familiar soft thud of his shoes against the tile floor. Fuck. Rumlow knew the particular sound of his footsteps. How had he not registered it was Winter when he’d walked inside?

“It’ll be a minute, Mr. St. James,” the pharmacist was saying. “You can have a seat over there,” gesturing to some uncomfortable-looking plastic chairs which lined the wall to the left. Rumlow grunted something like a response and began attempting to drag himself over. But then he heard the sound of Winter’s metal arm softly whirring in his right ear, and he found he couldn’t move. He could hardly even breathe.

“Just this, thanks,” Winter said to the pharmacist, and Rumlow looked back over to see him sliding a box of Junior Mints over the counter. Then Winter looked at Rumlow. He was watching Rumlow’s face with the same measure of care and attention he used to watch targets through the scope on his sniper rifle. It took Rumlow several painful seconds to realize Winter was waiting to see Rumlow’s reaction before offering his own. Winter wasn’t going to show what he was feeling — or not feeling — until he knew Rumlow’s opinion on the situation.

Every inch of him hurt. He was going to kill whoever came up with the shitty fucking idea that pharmacies didn’t have to deliver around Mardi Gras. Wasn’t it supposed to be, like, seven weeks long or some shit? The fuck was Rumlow gonna do when he had another bad day like this?

— but the pain was taking all his focus, narrowing his ability to think straight, and he found he was unable to summon up anything like annoyance at Winter’s presence, or anger, or frustration, or anything else along those lines. He was just tired. He was so fucking tired and Winter had just been on the phone with Steve, probably plotting Rumlow’s destruction, laughing about whatever they’d planned, whatever reason Steve had sent Winter down here, and Rumlow didn’t have the energy to fight it or to care. All he could do was stand here and allow Winter to twist the knife in even further.

“Told you to quit fuckin’ stalking me,” Rumlow muttered, and Winter’s mouth twitched. He took back his card and his candy from the pharmacist. He put the box into the inside of his own sweatshirt — the arm recalibrating quietly, familiar gentle sound, like hearing someone’s voice in a recording from years ago.

“I’m not stalking you,” he said.

Rumlow grunted, tilting his head to indicate the store as a whole. “Hell of a coincidence.”

“Yes,” Winter said, and then didn’t elaborate further. If Rumlow had had more energy it probably would’ve driven him batshit insane. Instead he made another noise in his throat, kind of resigned, and then dragged his stupid unworking legs over to the terrible plastic chair. He sat gingerly — knees screaming — and tilted his head back a little. Closed his eyes again.

After a few seconds he felt the air in front of him shift slightly and looked up to see Winter still fucking standing there, holding his phone gingerly in his metal hand, fiddling with the zipper of his sweatshirt with the other. He was looking down at Rumlow with that same expression from earlier, waiting to see Rumlow’s reaction, how Rumlow was feeling, hand over Rumlow’s on the knife handle pushing in carefully as the blade slid beneath his ribs and gutted him open —

“Can I help you?” Rumlow asked.

Winter bit his lower lip. Rumlow couldn’t fight the way his eyes dropped automatically to watch the tender pink flesh as it disappeared behind his teeth and turned white. “Um,” he said.

Momentarily Rumlow was struck with the odd impression that the asset — Winter — wanted him to give him permission to speak. Like they were still in the field, in rooms full of strangers, in Iraq, the hot sluggish Hydra office in the American embassy, meeting with al-Qaeda, sun beating down through the bulletproof windows, and Winter’s only job to translate, waiting patiently for Rumlow’s terse, businesslike nods before he murmured the leader’s words in English, or repeated back what Rumlow — or Rollins, or Christiansen, or whoever — said in Arabic.

Rumlow remembered how very rarely Winter had made any kind of noise during post-mission prep. He wondered if it had been hard for him to get used to this new life. Steve probably encouraged him to talk whenever the hell he felt like it, and Rumlow couldn’t really wrap his mind around the image of Winter — when he was still shedding the asset — learning to navigate his way through conversations, having to pick up on social cues himself rather than rely on someone else to do it for him, having to figure out the call-and-response pattern of dialogue; the imprecise, unpredictable rhythm of speech.

Winter seemed good at talking now. But it had been almost two years since Rumlow had last seen him. Himself he knew just how fucking much could change in that amount of time. He wondered how long it had taken Winter to construct the human image he now presented to the world.

Deciding to take pity on him, Rumlow said, “Yeah?” and there was no mistaking the flash of relief in Winter’s eyes. It was like at the café two days ago. It was stark and uncomplicated and there was nothing hidden beneath it, no ulterior motives, no buried anger. Or if there was Rumlow was unable to see it, and he had no idea if it was his brain playing tricks on him, the terrible fucked reflexes he had left, the feverish distracting wash of pain, or if Winter’s sincerity was — well, sincere.

Beneath the distrust and the confusion and the wariness Rumlow felt something unpleasant and vitriolic stir behind his ribs. But he blocked it off for now.

“I, uh,” Winter said, metal hand clenching tighter around his phone, to the point Rumlow thought it would crack. Then he saw the Stark Industries symbol beneath his palm and something tightened softly in his jaw. Of course Stark had fucking designed Winter a special phone that could withstand serum-powered strength.

“I wanted to know if you — ” he hesitated again, glancing at Rumlow’s legs, the tense way he was forced to sprawl them out — “if you wanted to go somewhere, but, um, if it’s a bad day — ”

“It’s a pretty fuckin’ bad day, yeah,” Rumlow said, more sharply than he’d meant. Winter only flinched a little, and mostly in his shoulders, but Rumlow felt guilt lance down his spine anyway, and tangled up in it that unpleasant sensation again. “Wouldn’t have come out at all if they were doing fuckin’ deliveries today — ”

The pharmacist emerged at that exact moment with the prednisone in its paper bag. She slid it across the counter and gave Rumlow a dry look.

“Sir,” she said, and Rumlow gritted his teeth.

“Thanks,” he mumbled. It took him a few seconds to stand up, but she didn’t stand there staring at him the way he’d kind of expected. Small favors, he supposed.

He got his fingers around the bag and took it off the shelf and his arm pretty much instantly stopped working. Something in his wrist spasmed badly. His hand opened reflexively. Winter’s flesh hand left off where it had been fiddling with the zipper of his sweatshirt. He caught the bag mid-fall. Same instantaneous reaction. Same snake-quick speed. The inside of Rumlow’s mouth was suddenly completely dry. Beneath his sweatshirt his skin was growing uncomfortably warm again.

(In Florence, on the botched mission when Rumlow had had to start up the secondary function twice, what had initially caused the mission to go bad was their newest junior agent getting killed. Young kid, dropped out of high school, lied about his age to join the military. Got kicked out when they realized he was barely seventeen. He was related to Hauer in some overly complicated way; second stepcousin once removed or some shit. Hauer had talked to Pierce, and Pierce had put the kid on Rumlow’s team on probation. Landry had given the kid oxys to try and calm him down before the mission but the pills were bad, laced with meth or something, and the kid had gone fucking off the walls once they were in the field. Someone shot him from the enemy side. He fucking walked forward with the slug buried in his stomach and killed three people they’d been explicitly instructed not to kill, and when the second shot was fired, it shattered his skull.

Rumlow wasn’t really sure what happened immediately after that. He guessed whoever had fired the killing shot wanted to make sure the kid was really dead. But the kid dropped as soon as his skull busted open and the third shot went wild, and Rumlow didn’t even realize what the fuck was going on until the Soldier slammed him into a brick wall with his flesh arm pressed to his throat, metal arm shooting out lightning fast. He caught the fucking bullet in the plates. The techs had to set up a special operating station at the hotel and fix the damaged wiring. Rumlow was badly shaken up for a while, a lot longer than he let anyone realize. He’d been standing behind a pillar and he’d thought he was covered from the obvious line of fire but if the Soldier hadn’t been there watching him, watching those bullets fly, armed and dangerous, chemically reactive, explosion imminent —

— in any case it had been something of a relief when Pierce announced that the secondary function would be used for temporary entertainment. Rumlow remembered crowding the asset against a wall in some sun-soaked outdoor space, pressing his mouth down the hot, racing line of the asset’s pulse in his neck. Saved my life, he kept thinking, over and over, as he tensed his hand around the asset’s bare ribs, pushing his crotch up, forcing the asset’s hips to rock against his palm where it was shoved between the asset’s cock and the tile. Listening to the soft catch of his breath in his throat, the quiet whirring of the new mechanisms in his arm. You didn’t have to. But you saved my fucking life.)

Watching Winter now in this New Orleans pharmacy as he stood with the caught bag in his hand, holding it out tentatively — this was not the same as that day, really, nowhere near the same level of fear or threat or urgency. Certainly it was not going to end in the same way, because Winter no longer had a secondary function — or any function at all. People didn’t, they didn’t have functions. They just — acted. Of their own free will.

So it wasn’t the same — but it was, too. Winter could’ve let the bag fall, forced Rumlow to humiliate himself in leaning over to pick it up, pain shooting down his legs, lancing through his hips. Instead he’d shoved the knife in all the way to the hilt, and then a little past it just to be sure. Rumlow could feel it sitting there, the blade searing hot in his flesh, as he took the pills — other hand this time — and put them inside his own sweatshirt.

Winter had been holding that knife for a long fucking time. Rumlow wondered how good it felt to finally shove it where it belonged.

That unpleasant thing behind his ribs wrapped tighter, and tensed up more in his jaw. He couldn’t quite identify what it was but it felt nasty and vindictive, like anger, but not the right kind. Winter was standing here catching Rumlow’s prescription meds for him and talking to him and fucking stalking him, whatever he said to the contrary, and he said he wasn’t here to kill Rumlow but he hadn’t said much else. He was holding his stupid Stark Industries phone because Stark liked him enough to have made it special for him and he was holding the phone because he’d been talking to Steve. He was still in contact with Steve despite they were a thousand miles away from each other and Rumlow had no idea why the fuck Winter had come here alone and set up house wherever the fuck he was living and found him and called himself by a name which he would’ve never even had if he hadn’t been in Hydra. Winter’s motives were unclear and his sincerity was unclear and yet it wasn’t; the relief in his eyes both in the café and here had been real, and Rumlow didn’t think Winter could act that well, but that left him even more stranded, because if Winter was truly actually relieved to have direction (and attention, and the veneer of kindness) from Rumlow —

— well, it just didn’t make fucking sense. Winter had no reason to like Rumlow or to remember him fondly. Whatever Rumlow had thought or felt about their post-mission prep sessions, surely Winter had memories of his own by now, untainted by the years of filth and lies poured into him by Pierce or Rollins, yes baby you really want this, your mouth was made for it, go to the Commander, let him take care of you —

“I gotta get home,” Rumlow said, and was unsurprised to hear the same level of unintended sharpness in his voice from before. “Get the fuck outta my way, I’m going home.”

Winter moved automatically; it tightened further in his chest, a bolt screwed in too hard, ready to break open the wall. You like orders still, huh? he wanted to say, to spit. You sure as shit ain’t good at takin’ them no more, dumbass. Except when it suits you, apparently. Except when the orders come from your fucking star-spangled fuck boyfriend and he’s telling you to go down and fake like you still give a shit about Brock Rumlow, get him all compliant, show him how it fucking feels —

He shoved past Winter. His hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t move them into his pockets and had to push the door open with his shoulder. His head was overloud, static, white and seething with anger and

(fearterrorhurt)

aggravation; this is what you get when you let weapons go, when you let them think for themselves, when you unclip the leash and set them out on their own —

He was walking down Canal, shoulders hunched in so tight they were cramping his neck. He heard the footsteps behind him even through his fucked ears, even through the rush of people, and at the corner of Magazine he turned, sharply, so that Winter nearly ran into him. He shoved his finger into his chest. His hands and his strength were still for absolute shit but this time Winter stumbled; perhaps he was doing it on purpose. Like he thought Rumlow needed some kind of fucking placation. Oh, so sorry your whole body and life are completely fucked, here, I’ll pretend you’re still in charge. Is that better? Poor baby.

“Why the fuck are you here?” he snarled. Somewhere in the distance he heard thunder. “What the hell are you doing here? You’ve never fucking told me, not any of the times we’ve just so happened to see each other. You’re fucking hiding something from me and I don’t fucking like it so open your fucking mouth and start talking.”

Winter’s eyebrows furrowed over his nose. He was fiddling with his zipper again, metal hand this time. Rumlow could see the outline of his box of Junior Mints through the soft fabric.

“I’m not hiding anything,” he whispered to the dirty spit-stained sidewalk. They were standing right in the middle of everything, huge fucking crowds everywhere, but they could’ve been completely isolated. They could’ve been buried in the jungle, camouflaged, radios turned off because Sitwell wouldn’t fucking quit buzzing Rumlow’s frequency to whine about how upset he was he hadn’t been picked: just ‘cause I wear glasses doesn’t mean I’m a liability, Brock —

“No?” Rumlow asked. His jaw was gritted so tightly he was having trouble forcing the words out. “What the fuck are you doing here, then? Don’t fucking make me ask again, soldat. I’m sick of this shit. Whatever game you and Rogers are — ”

“This has nothing to do with Steve,” Winter said, and his voice was — not quite sharp, but there was something in there, long-buried. A blunted bruised exhaustion. Rumlow couldn’t tell who it was directed at, or why, which of course made him angrier. “Steve and I — we made an agreement.”

“Oh,” Rumlow scoffed. “An agreement.”

“That I’d come here by myself, that I could come alone and see you.”

Rumlow felt his eyebrow pulling up. “I’m surprised he let you off the fuckin’ leash — ”

“He’s not holding my leash,” Winter snapped. The exhaustion in his voice had risen further, putting an edge to his tone Rumlow had never heard before. He could see Winter retreating instantly away from it both in his eyes and in the way he pulled his shoulders tighter towards himself and as such it was perhaps four or five seconds before he fully registered the sentence.

“So you do have a leash,” he said. He had no fucking idea what the hell he was feeling. It was all so tangled up. He wanted to drown. He should have drowned himself in the Triskelion pool. He should have dived in once he realized the helicarrier was going down and let the water boil him alive. “You’re still just as fucked as you were.”

Winter’s mouth thinned at its corners, but he didn’t really react otherwise. Rumlow had thought perhaps it was a trigger spot for him, or something; if he taunted him enough maybe he’d get Winter to explode on him faster, get this fucking over with, get the knife to pierce a lung, his liver, something, since it was already sunk in so deep, just one twist and Rumlow would bleed out and Winter could drop this charade and go the fuck home. Instead Winter was just fucking standing there with that bruised bone-deep hurt in his eyes and his arms folded across his chest and Rumlow’s heart was so fucking loud —

“So what in the hell’d you need Steve’s permission for — ” spitting the word out like it had burned his tongue — “if he’s not controlling you? If you’re all fucking on your own now and getting to decide whatever the hell you want — ”

“And this is what I’ve decided,” Winter interrupted. His voice was quiet again, and hoarse, and strangely sad. Rumlow kept feeling little parts of himself falling away. “This is what I decided, Commander. All on my own. Steve didn’t have to like it, and he doesn’t, but I’m here. I’m here.”

He’s still tricking you, whispered the tiny Alexander Pierce in Rumlow’s head.

“Why the hell would you decide to come here?” Rumlow asked. Someone was boiling some kind of seafood somewhere, the smell so strong it broke through his fucked nose. “Of all the fucking things you could — ”

“I needed to see you,” Winter said.

“Oh.” Rumlow scoffed again; he couldn’t help it. His hands were still trembling; he could move them a little now, and he shoved them into his sweatshirt, feeling the pills roll around in their canister. “You needed to see me here? Wanted to make sure that I’m in my place now? Wanted to see me half-gone, fucked up, huh?” He stepped back a little, pressing up against the street sign. “Well, this is fucking enough. You’ve seen enough. Why don’t you fucking go home?”

Winter’s throat flexed as he swallowed. “Manhattan isn’t home, Commander.”

For no fucking reason at all Rumlow’s chest tightened like he was going to cry or some dumb shit. Fuck, but he was so tired. He was even more tired now than he had been when he’d first walked into the drugstore.

“You really wanna be here with me that bad?” he asked. “You do remember who I am? Ex-Hydra Nazi piece of shit? The piece of shit that fucked you over — and don’t fucking give me that shit again about how you think I never hurt you — ” when he saw Winter drawing breath to speak — “‘cause that’s bullshit. You know I heard they used to scare little Russian kids with stories about you. ‘Don’t go out late or the Winter Soldier’ll get you.’ ‘Careful which branch of the KGB you’re in; they might not let you live if you’re on a team that pisses off the Soldier.’ But now it’s me. I get to be the horror story parents tell their kids to keep ‘em in line. ‘Stay in school or you’ll end up like Brock Rumlow.’ And you’re back to war hero status. James Barnes. Hundred and seventh fuckin’ infantry.” His voice was getting louder; he couldn’t seem to stop it. “I always knew. Pierce fuckin’ told me years ago, and I just didn’t bother letting you in on it. I hid your whole life from you so I could use you as a fucking weapon and get you hard for my own fucking enjoyment. There is nothing fucking here that could benefit you. Okay? Nothing.” He felt a tear leak out of the corner of his eye, slip — saline stinging — down the line of his nose. He couldn’t move his hands to wipe it off. He didn’t care.

“Steve already told me that,” Winter said. He was almost whispering again. “He told me a long time ago. I know you lied, and I don’t c— ”

“Shut the fuck up,” Rumlow snarled. “Just stop fucking talking.” He felt his mouth pulling up into a sneer at the expression on Winter’s face. He was so angry

(and sad, and scared, and lost; completely fucking unmoored)

he couldn’t think. He straightened up from where he’d been leaning against the pole and shoved his fingers into Winter’s chest again. Numb pain blistered through the tips. “Leave me alone,” he said, and forced his legs to move. He forced them to go, to push past the sharp searing pain, until he was limping along Decatur, going faster, nearly jogging, or something like it, everything boiling over inside him. He made it all the way back to Esplanade without slowing down and looked over his shoulder and Winter hadn’t followed him. Winter hadn’t followed him and he should have been grateful. This was what he’d wanted; this was exactly what he’d asked Winter to do. Now Winter had no more excuses, nothing to hold him here, nothing to prevent his understanding that Rumlow was just a shitty fucking person. He could go back to New York; back to his real life and his humanity; back to people who wouldn’t treat him like shit, who wouldn’t use him, see him as a weapon —

He should have been grateful, but he couldn’t stop crying. He tried getting his keys out but his hands still weren’t working so he limped into his backyard. He was almost overwhelmingly nauseated and he doubled up ready to vomit but when the searing white pulses of it had passed he found he was slamming his fist into the brick wall beside his back porch instead. He couldn’t fucking feel where it was hitting, even when he saw the skin split open, even when the blood ran down his knuckles and gathered in the lines. He punched the wall again and again and again, again again again again over and over until his hand and his elbow and his head and every fucking inch of him was throbbing, until his knuckles were raw and scraped to hell, until they were swollen and bruised viciously. He hit the wall until the nausea and the anger and every fucking scrap of emotion had faded out and there was nothing left inside —

— and he never felt a single fucking thing at all.

--

It was much later, when he’d wrapped his hand and popped a fentanyl and lain in his bed to sleep or to die, whichever came first, that he found himself snaking his left hand — the uninjured one — down beneath the waistline of his shorts. He knew it was pointless and he knew it wasn’t going to do shit but he took himself in his hand anyway. He braced his right hand flat on the mattress to keep it from cramping too much and stroked himself in brutal punishing jerks, the harsh dry scrape of his skin. His cock was flaccid and useless in his hand and he felt nothing, he felt nothing, not even the barest spark of arousal in his gut.

He closed his eyes. He thought of Winter. Winter standing there with his teeth sunk into his lower lip. Winter’s quiet unmovable presence beside him in the church. Winter catching the bullet, the bag, for him. Winter trapped between his arms and the wall in Florence. Winter’s small, surprised smile over his cup of coffee.

— the look in Winter’s eyes when Rumlow stood on Magazine St. and screamed in his face —

He pulled his hand out of his shorts. It wasn’t going to fucking happen. It was never going to happen again and he had no idea why he was even bothering to try. He lay there staring at the ceiling until the fentanyl eased the pain in his knuckles. Then he rolled himself out of bed and limped down the hall to watch television.

--

October 2014

The Winter Soldier knows that he and Steve slept together before. He remembers it in broken fragments, the way he remembers most things: their first time together on cheap, threadbare sheets. Perry Como, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin spilling out from the radio in their apartment as they danced and swayed and laughed and kissed. Overcooking a cake for Steve’s birthday. Going to the movies to see The Wizard of Oz just for the thrill of seeing Technicolor, squeezing Steve’s hand hard in the dark when Munchkinland bloomed vividly in blues and reds and greens and yellows. The furtive, heated touches in their shared sleeping bag on the front, breathlessly fumbling at each other, desperate sloppy kisses to try and keep each other quiet.

He knows that Steve wants it again now. He can see it in his eyes, in his body language. He knows what arousal looks like; he recognizes it the same way he recognizes orders or anger or sudden movements that mean it’s time to flinch and apologize.

By the time the Winter Soldier realizes what Steve wants from him, he’s smart enough to understand it wouldn’t go over well at all for him to say Steve isn’t subtle; he looks exactly like Pierce when Pierce forced the Winter Soldier to roleplay as his prom date, or when he went to Pierce’s house while Rose and Ashley were out of town visiting Pierce’s mother-in-law, and Renata had been given the weekend off, and Pierce told the Winter Soldier things like:

“Just for the next two days, you’re my wife. You understand?” and the Winter Soldier would say yes, because he couldn’t say no, and he would wear makeup and tie back his hair and sometimes Pierce would put him in a dress or a nightgown and it would all feel okay until Pierce stopped eating from the Winter Soldier’s hand and told him to go upstairs.

— anyway he knows Steve wants it because he looks like Pierce, but he knows better than to say that, so he doesn’t bring it up. He does manage to ask Dr. Haskins if he should offer something, a kiss or a blowjob or to jerk Steve off, but Dr. Haskins just says,

“Is that what you want?” and the Winter Soldier doesn’t know, so he shakes his head. She always says that’s answer enough, but it doesn’t feel like it.

Late at night sometimes when the moon comes out the Winter Soldier pulls out his picture of Brock Rumlow. The trial is getting closer and closer, and Rumlow is out of the hospital. He looks at the smudged grainy face and he thinks about the snatches of memories he has of Rumlow, the ones he’s not allowed to mention in front of the attorneys or the judge.

Rumlow wanted sex from him too — at least, the Winter Soldier thinks he did. But he’s not always positive. When Pierce or Sitwell wanted sex they demanded it and took it. The Winter Soldier never enjoyed himself with them, but then he wasn’t built to enjoy things, he was built to take and follow orders. The only time he remembers enjoying it even remotely is when he was with Rumlow, but he wasn’t with Rumlow most of the time.

There was something about Rumlow, some function he was supposed to fill. It sounds a little like blasphemy, because handlers didn’t have functions, but after sitting on it a few days the Winter Soldier decides it must be true. He remembers once, when pretending to be Pierce’s wife, Pierce had gotten him on the mattress upstairs, hiked the skirt up around his waist, and glared at the space between his legs.

“Fuck, I always forget about this shit,” he’d grumbled, dragging a hand through his hair. “This was so much fucking easier before ’91.” He’d looked up at the Winter Soldier. “You sure I can’t make you hard?”

The Winter Soldier couldn’t say no. But this was a bad question. It was a test. So instead of answering he reached between them, unzipped Pierce’s trousers. He pulled Pierce out and began stroking him. Pierce snorted; he said,

“That’s what I fuckin’ thought,” and then he said, “Well, all right, I suppose this is still acceptable.”

Now the Winter Soldier thinks perhaps Rumlow’s job was to get him hard. Something wavers in the back of his mind, handler… Kar… Karp-something. He doesn’t know. But he does know that if he was hard, which he always was at the Triskelion, or at the New York Hydra headquarters, it was after he’d spent time with Rumlow. Rumlow had been different from Sitwell or Pierce or Rollins or any of the others. Rumlow had only focused on the Winter Soldier, and on making him feel good. Rumlow had had a quiet voice and the Winter Soldier thinks he remembers him more and more lately, still unable to talk about him to Steve or Dr. Haskins or Sam Wilson or Natalia, confused and flustered, remembering multiple missions he’d been on with Rumlow, Rumlow looking at him differently from everyone else, talking to him differently —

When he looks at his picture, it tightens something in his chest. It’s slightly unpleasant, but mostly it just makes him want to look at the picture longer. So he does. Nights when he can’t sleep, nights when the dreams wake him, he goes to the window. He looks at Rumlow in the pale moon, or in the wash of streetlights from below.

He doesn’t want to do those things again with Steve, because he doesn’t think Steve really wants him, not the way he is now, not the Winter Soldier. He thinks Steve wants Bucky Barnes, and he is not Bucky Barnes, no matter how often everyone calls him that, or variations of it. He thinks Bucky Barnes had loved Steve, had wanted him, but the Winter Soldier —

— the Winter Soldier isn’t sure he’s capable of love, not in that same way. But if he is, it isn’t with Steve.

--

January 2016

When the knock came at the door Rumlow was sure it was Steve come at last to beat the living shit out of him. Winter would’ve called him after their fight. It’s not working. He’s not letting me in. He’s being such an asshole and I need you to come take care of it because I can’t keep doing this.

But when Rumlow went to the door it wasn’t Steve. It wasn’t Romanov or Wilson or any of Winter’s new do-gooder pals. It was Winter himself, and he looked annoyed, also tired, bruised circles beneath his eyes. He was twisting his metal fingers in his shirt. He hadn’t worn a jacket. It had been three days since their fight and Mardi Gras was supposed to start tomorrow.

“What the hell are you — ”

“Please stop asking me that.” Winter was glaring at Rumlow, or anyway at his chest. “I just — I want to come inside. Can I come inside?”

The ‘no’ Rumlow wanted to say lodged in his throat. He pictured himself slamming the door in the asset’s — in Winter’s face, locking the deadbolt, perhaps calling SHIELD and requesting a different house. He couldn’t fucking do it. His hand was still pretty sore from everything he’d done to it and he hadn’t really slept much and he was feeling anxious from the anticipation of the parades and how fucking loud and overcrowded he was sure the city would get. He’d already twisted the knife well past the breaking point and it was starting to make less and less sense to Rumlow that Winter was here solely to trick him and put him down. He was going through a fuck of a lot of effort just to trap Rumlow and trip him up and Rumlow knew from past experience that Winter was very, very precise and efficient. He never wasted resources. He never worked outside parameters. He never added on unnecessary fluff.

Rumlow twisted the knob harder in his hand. And he opened the door wider to let Winter in.

They walked together into the living room. Rumlow had to tell Winter he could sit on the couch, but maybe he was a shittier person than he’d been just three days prior because it didn’t bother him as much. It seemed to make Winter happy to have Rumlow direct him into certain positions and what the hell, it wasn’t like it was hurting anything. It wasn’t like Rumlow was forcing Winter to his knees.

“I need to tell you some things,” Winter said, before Rumlow could open his mouth. He was alternating between looking at Rumlow’s face and at his hands where they were clasped tightly around his thighs. Rumlow’s own hands were in his lap because he couldn’t get them comfortable anywhere else and Winter was looking at the wine-dark spread of his bruises. There was a quiet sort-of familiar focus in his eyes, an almost animal curiosity.

“All right,” Rumlow said, and couldn’t suppress his smile at the brief flash of surprise on Winter’s face. Winter’s eyes came up to meet his and stayed there, steady, a little uncertain. Fuck but his eyes were blue as hell. Rumlow forgot sometimes just how fucking searing the color was. Certainly his dreams had done a pisspoor job of recreating it.

“I — ” Winter started, then faltered. His mouth pressed in a frustrated line. After a moment: “You — I’ve told you I’m not here to hurt you. I don’t know if you believe me. But I’m not. What I said the other day is true; I decided to come here. I wanted to see you. And I want you to understand why.”

He stopped again, a little tense, clearly expecting Rumlow to interrupt him or snap at him or something. When Rumlow didn’t speak Winter breathed out. His hands untensed slightly around his legs.

And the thing was of course Rumlow could’ve interrupted. He could’ve kicked Winter out. Called Steve himself and told him to come get Barnes and get him out of his life. Every fucking waking second of the last year and a half was swirling around in Rumlow’s head on pretty much eternal loop and baked into each memory was an increasingly thick layer of mistrust and paranoia and anger and fear and it wasn’t something he could just sit here and get over or will away in one exhale. Beneath it all the years of mistrust and paranoia and fear from working for Hydra, and the anger at himself, and the guilt over what he’d done with Winter, the shit he’d put him through just to keep his position, just because he (Rumlow) got something out of it —

— but it was like he’d told Winter the first day he’d shown up on Esplanade. He was no longer pretending to be a good decent human being with decent morals and real feelings. He no longer had to. And if that meant he could be selfish enough to let Winter stay here on his couch in his living room and talk about whatever shit had led him to make this crazy, fucked-up decision —

— what the hell. It wasn’t like the knife could be twisted in any deeper, anyway.

Chapter Text

October 2014

Everyone asks him how he’s feeling before the trial. He says he’s fine, because he’s gotten better and better at lying. Natalia says he’s not fine, but she says it in Russian, and she says it very quietly.

Steve looks at him like he always does, like he’s just announced his true allegiance is still (always, forever) to Hydra. “You sure, Buck?” he asks, and when the Winter Soldier nods, he just sighs. “Yeah, okay,” he says, and starts to turn away, but at the last second, like he can’t help it: “But you know if you’re not okay you can come to me, huh? You can always talk to me, Bucky. About anything.”

The Winter Soldier smiles at him. Steve likes it when he smiles. The Winter Soldier knows it’s because he looks more like Bucky Barnes when he smiles, but that’s okay. He remembers doing a lot of things to get through every day when he was with Hydra. Those are some of the acceptable memories; the attorneys are really aiming to play it up to the jury, and to the crowd at large. ‘He would’ve done anything to keep from being hurt. Anything at all. He just wanted to survive. His animal instincts had taken over.’

If Steve needs to pretend that the Winter Soldier is Bucky Barnes every time he smiles, then the Winter Soldier can’t begrudge him. No one ever took away his ability to fake his way through enjoying choking down Sitwell’s cock while Rollins shoved his stun baton in from behind, after all.

Only Sam Wilson and Dr. Haskins call him out on his lies. It’s when they’re standing outside the courtroom in their neat-pressed clothes. Dr. Haskins is going to testify at some point; the Winter Soldier has given her permission to refer to specific notes from their sessions for her testimony. Steve, Natalia, Stark, and the others have already gone in. Dr. Haskins puts her hand on the Winter Soldier’s flesh arm, and he realizes he’s trembling.

“It’s all right to be frightened of this,” she says.

“Yeah, man, it’s a huge step,” Sam Wilson says. “You know you can always look at me or Nat or Steve though. Pretend you’re just going over the notes again like we do at home.”

The Winter Soldier nods. “Yes,” he says, quietly. “Thank you, Sam. Thank you, doctor.”

He doesn’t know what he’s frightened of. It’s just memories. Memories he’s talked over a hundred times now with Dr. Haskins, with the attorneys, with Steve, with Sam Wilson, with Natalia. They’re not even whole memories, and he knows everything now, even if he can’t keep it all in his head all the time just yet: Pierce, Rollins, Sitwell, Hauer, Anderson — everyone who hurt him is dead. Everyone that made him into what he is now (pathetic broken mess) is gone, and it’s only his imagination that they still live in.

It’s just his imagination is so fucking vivid.

--

His thoughts drift towards Rumlow again when he’s sitting in the courtroom proper, trying not to look at the journalists or the jury or the prosecuting team. He wonders what Rumlow is doing right now, though he supposes it’s pointless to wonder that because he knows what house arrest means: Rumlow can’t leave the place where he lives.

He wonders if Rumlow is thinking about him. It seems doubtful, but Rumlow —

— whatever Steve wants to say, Rumlow was very kind. Thoughtful. The Winter Soldier remembers — or thinks he remembers — that Rumlow had been sad the last few times they’d seen each other. It doesn’t quite seem right, because all his memories of the last few weeks are pretty tangled up in each other, but he supposes it’s possible.

Perhaps Rumlow is happier now knowing that the Winter Soldier is being put on trial. The Winter Soldier knows his face is on television and on the front page of every newspaper and a lot of articles online. So Rumlow must know that he’s alive.

It’s strange to think of Rumlow seeing him associated with Steve’s name for him, though. When he and Rumlow were together he called him ‘soldat’, the way Natalia does, and the Winter Soldier wonders if that’s why he’s always instinctively liked the sound of it.

Perhaps if Rumlow sees him in the papers, he will see the name ‘Winter Soldier’ instead of ‘James Barnes’. Lots of people call him that still, though he’s noticed it’s always the people that don’t like him. But Rumlow had known him as the Winter Soldier. He’d called him ‘soldat’. He might feel better if he sees it written that way.

…Or perhaps he wouldn’t. Perhaps he knows that the Winter Soldier name holds a lot of negative context. It flusters him to think that Rumlow won’t have the right name to think of him by. He’s struggled with it long enough to know how disorienting it can be. And he doesn’t like the idea of referring to himself by a name that might upset his former commander.

Natalia calls him ‘soldat’ still. But she calls him that because it’s Russian. It’s not his title anymore. He’s not a soldier. He will never again be a soldier. He —

“All rise.”

— if he is not the Winter Soldier… but it is the only name Rumlow can have of him…

He dislikes the cold. He thinks he always will. But the name ‘Winter’ feels more alive and fresh to him than his first clear memory of the harsh summer day when he’d stumbled off the Greyhound bus in Manhattan to try and find Steve.

--

The trial moves slowly. Winter read up on trials and watched fake trials on television before coming here; he doesn’t know why he assumed this trial would be like those. Short. Easy. Exciting. This one is long; a week into it, and it’s still not over. There are a lot of witnesses and a lot of testimonies and a lot of things for the jury to think about.

It’s also pretty boring, for the most part. Winter spends most of his time sitting, hands shaking, listening as Dr. Haskins goes over his session reports, detailing the things he told her about Pierce, the things he said and the things he did to keep Winter quiet, subdued, and obedient. He listens to Steve talk about Bucky Barnes and what a good man he was, how he kept all of them alive once when they were snowed in for two days during some freak storm in Berlin. Steve says Bucky Barnes is sitting in the courtroom; he says Bucky Barnes is still a good man, and Steve saw firsthand the effects of PTSD (though it wasn’t called that back then) in a lot of his soldiers, and in soldiers from the first World War. Steve says he’s done his research on the Vietnam War, too, and if the men who still need to lock themselves inside closets on the Fourth of July so they don’t hurt their neighbors and wives when fireworks go off, if the men who buried themselves in the jungle so they didn’t have to feel a single thing when they pulled bayonets on kids holding bombs in their diapers —

— if those men get a pass from the States, then Bucky Barnes should, too.

Sam Wilson says similar things, but about Afghanistan. (Winter has figured out all on his own never, ever to bring up Afghanistan around Sam Wilson. He doesn’t remember the details, but he knows he was part of the reason men like Sam Wilson and his friend Riley had to go to the Middle East in the first place. He doesn’t think any jury would bother acquitting him if they knew that part, even with Steve’s testimony.) Sam Wilson talks vaguely about certain stories he’s heard in the VA, not mentioning names or details but just general things. He talks about what he and Riley went through together. They get a doctor in — Winter vaguely recognizes him from the early days when he was really only conscious of his surroundings about half the time — who shows scans he took at some point of Winter’s brain. He points to various spots and talks about severe tissue damage. He says it was caused in part by the PTSD wearing down the cells, exhausting the brain, but also by the repeated, constant barrage of upwards of thirty thousand volts of electricity coursing into his skull over a period of approximately sixty-five years, give or take depending on how often he was brought out of cryo each decade.

He says anyone not on the serum would not have survived such an assault. That’s the word he uses. Assault. It makes Winter flinch, and Natalia looks over at him, though they’re on opposite sides of the room. She gives him one of her sympathetic smiles. He feels the wood of his chair bending a little under his metal fingers.

When the prosecuting team asks questions, they talk a lot about sanity. Was he aware of what he was doing? Did he fully consent to everything Pierce asked of him? Somehow they have unearthed a wealth of pictures that Winter had no idea even existed: mostly from his time in Russia, which he has never remembered any details of at all, despite he can still speak the language perfectly. There are even a few of him and the man named Karpov, the man who did something to his brain he can’t remember, the man he associates with Rumlow for reasons he can’t explain.

One sparks the machine flashes up up up in his brain and he can’t keep his mouth shut, despite his attorney repeatedly writing ‘don’t speak’ on a Post-it note. “That’s me,” he says, and the judge has to bang his gavel a few times before the room goes silent again. The prosecutor looks triumphant and he understands he’s fucked up but it’s the picture, he —

He knows this picture —

He’s seen it before. CCTV footage. He can hear Pierce saying that in the back of his mind, in the quiet calm voice he used when he wanted Winter to shut up. ‘CCTV footage we had to obtain and destroy… wipe all traces of you and anyone who works directly with you.’ It’s him, and it’s Rumlow. The Commander. The Commander who is currently sitting in an apartment in the city somewhere waiting to know if he’ll live or die.

Winter knows he isn’t supposed to talk about this part. Steve is going to be so angry at him. But the words keep coming, flustered and broken because he hasn’t rehearsed any of this, he never talked about this with the attorneys, with Sam Wilson, with Natalia —

“Alexander Pierce had this made,” he says to the prosecutor. It’s remarkable how he can say the name without feeling like he’s being kicked in the throat. “It’s proof he wanted to hide my existence. Mine and Rumlow’s.”

More murmurs. They skitter around the courtroom like torn paper caught in the wind. He looks out at Steve and Natalia. Steve is staring back at him like he’s never seen him before. Natalia looks — he’s not great at reading expressions sometimes, still, but he thinks that’s pity.

“Your honor,” says the defense attorney, voice tight, “permission to approach the bench?”

The judge says yes. For the first time in a while Winter wonders if he’s about to be punished. Indeed when the defense attorney comes to the front of the courtroom he is almost spitting.

Winter could get on his knees for him. His mouth was not made for talking. He can show the attorney what he’s really good for, and good at. Perhaps he’ll get a reduced sentence if he can just prove in front of the jury, the live broadcast television cameras, Steve and his friends — if he can just prove where his talents lie. If he can prove that Pierce really did spend all those years molding him and crafting him and harnessing his —

“ — discuss big things like this before we come to court,” the attorney is hissing, and Winter realizes he’s been talking for a while. “If you spring shit like this on me I cannot make a case for you, do you underst— ”

“Hey.” That’s Steve’s voice. Winter recognizes the specific tone from when he was Bucky Barnes. It brooks no argument. It’s Steve’s business tone. Bucky Barnes always thought it sounded impressive even before Steve gained a hundred pounds.

The attorney turns. Steve and Stark are both approaching the bench. The attorney doesn’t protest because Stark is the one paying him. Instead he says, “Can I help you, Captain?” and Steve rolls his eyes.

“You’re harassing Bucky,” he says, and he doesn’t keep his voice down. Natalia sinks a little into her chair, and several members of the jury crane their necks.

The attorney’s nostrils flare. He says, “None of that shit about the CCTV footage was briefed with — ”

“Yeah, so, take it out on him,” Steve says, pointing with his thumb at the prosecutor. “It’s not Bucky’s fault.”

Winter doesn’t understand the incongruity of this statement, because Steve was looking at him not even five minutes ago like he’d just pulled out a machine gun and mowed down half the courtroom without blinking. But Steve is still glaring at the defense attorney, and Stark says,

“Look, not that I think his honor doesn’t appreciate a good little Judge Judy-type drama scene here or anything, but my good friend Steve-o is probably going to decapitate you with his shield if you keep doing things that piss him off. And I don’t think his honor is going to let that fly, are you, your honor?”

The judge has his eyes closed. He says, “I’m going to allow the prosecution to show the pictures, and I’m going to allow Mr. Barnes to speak about the one pertaining to him and Brock Rumlow.” He looks at the defense attorney. “If you don’t feel qualified to do your job, Mr. Stahl, I’ll have to ask you to step — ”

“I can do my job,” the defense attorney says. He looks irritated still, though, and Winter wonders if he shouldn’t just corner him in the bathroom after four. It’s a nice bathroom; he’s sucked dick in worse. It’s got pretty emerald and ivory tile and air fresheners and the stalls are all really wide. It’s the sort of bathroom Pierce probably would have designed for the Triskelion of the future, the one he talked about sometimes with Winter, where every single room in the building was designed special to allow for ease of accessing the secondary function.

“You fucking better,” Steve snaps at him.

But he doesn’t look at Winter again as he, Stark, and Stahl walk back to their places.

--

“So, this picture,” the prosecutor says. He’s holding up what they’re now terming Exhibit A, though there have been plenty of exhibits before now: the pictures of Winter in Russia, pictures of the chair, photocopies of the tickets they all had for their flights to and from Europe or Asia. Exhibit A is the CCTV footage still of Winter and Brock Rumlow.

Exhibit A is the reason Steve hasn’t looked up in twenty minutes.

“Yes,” Winter says, looking at the picture instead of at Steve or Natalia or Sam Wilson. The longer he’s spent looking at it the more he’s remembered: Pierce showing it to him in an office somewhere, hand on his shoulder, kind gentle voice, the same one he’d used the first time he’d forced Winter’s head into his lap: don’t tell me you’ve never sucked cock before, sweetheart; your mouth was manufactured for it. Blurred with the memory of Pierce showing him the picture is a (possibly false) memory of the actual event: he and Rumlow walking into a KFC to find their target, a fry cook whose great-uncle had been involved in the KGB or something. He remembers Rumlow making some crack about KFC and KGB. He can’t remember what it was specifically because he didn’t understand humor at the time.

He figures that part of it probably falls under ‘things you really shouldn’t bring up in the courtroom because saying you remember anything fondly about Hydra is going to get you thrown in jail, Buck’.

“This is you?” the prosecutor asks.

“Yes,” Winter says again.

“And this is — ”

“Brock Rumlow.”

“Can you explain your exact relationship with Mr. Rumlow?”

He wonders if lying by omission is the same as perjury. It must not be, since it’s all Steve and the others have encouraged him to do from the beginning. Still, it’s difficult to squeeze down all the memories he’s had of Rumlow in the last few weeks into a cohesive statement:

“He was my primary field handler.”

“What does that entail, exactly?”

“He worked with me on all my missions from…” Winter has to pause; he doesn’t know exact dates, even after all this time. He just knows things that happened. Thankfully Dr. Haskins has records which she hastily pulls out, holding up to the judge, who nods for the bailiff to take them. The bailiff hands them to Winter. His eyes flick down.

“ — from 1997,” he says, feeling an odd tug in his lower stomach, “until this April, when the Triskelion fell. He… supervised my work, he made sure…” He swallows. In the seats Natalia and Sam Wilson are both watching him. ‘Just look at us,’ Sam Wilson had said, but he hadn’t told Winter he’d feel this dizzy. This disoriented. Steve still hasn’t looked at him. “He ensured I did everything the mission required of me,” he says, “and he — took care of me — ”

The prosecutor raises his eyebrows. “Took care of you, Mr. Barnes?” he asks, over a low rattling murmur in the crowd.

Winter clenches his hands in his lap. “You know,” he says, “like how you have to polish guns and clean them out to keep them working right — ”

In his seat, Steve flinches.

“He made sure that I had enough nutrition — ”

“Oh, yes,” the prosecutor says, dryly, “because I’ve heard nothing but excellent things about your eating habits while you were working as the fist of — ”

“Objection,” Stahl says, standing momentarily, and the judge nods at him while glaring at the prosecutor.

“Strike that last statement from the record,” he says to the stenographer. “Go on, Mr. Barnes.”

Winter closes his eyes. He can’t keep looking at Steve, and Dr. Haskins, and the combined weight of their disappointment. “He made sure I had enough nutrition,” he says again, softly. “He regulated my water intake. And we — we — ”

“You fucked,” the prosecutor says, flatly, and the judge has to bang his gavel for a full minute and twelve seconds before the courtroom will quiet down. Stahl is on his feet again, snapping that the prosecutor is leading the witness, and the judge, when he’s regained control, tells the prosecutor to rephrase the statement into an actual question.

“Did Brock Rumlow use you in the same way as Alexander Pierce?”

“No,” Winter says, but he says it so low the microphone doesn’t pick it up. The prosecutor has to ask him to repeat himself. His eyebrows lift when Winter says no the second time.

“No?”

“No.”

“You’re sure, now. Brock Rumlow didn’t use you — ”

“Your honor, for fuck’s sake,” Stahl says.

“Language,” the judge says, “but also sustained. Mr. Fleming, if you cannot find a more neutral way of phrasing your questions — ”

“I’m very sorry,” Fleming says, not sounding sorry at all. “Mr. Barnes, could you please elaborate on the nature of your relationship to Brock Rumlow outside of his being your primary field handler?”

Winter stares down at his twisted hands, checkerboard pattern of silver-flesh-silver. “He — took care of me,” he says; he doesn’t know how else to phrase it. It’s not untrue, anyway. “Before the Secretary used my secondary function — ”

Dr. Haskins has already established what that means; Winter sees Steve flinch again —

“ — Rumlow would, um, he would — ” Fuck, his face is hot. “I wasn’t, I’m still — ” He doesn’t know; he hasn’t tried since April — “I’m unable to arouse myself. So Rumlow had to do it for me.”

The judge calls a recess. He says he’s not letting anyone back in the courtroom who doesn’t need to be in there. Thankfully, for whatever reason, this includes Steve, Natalia, and Sam Wilson. Also Stark, though Winter thinks that’s because Stark just came back in after the recess was over.

For his own part, Winter spent the recess doubled over one of the sinks in the Pierce-friendly bathroom. Both arms shaking, the metal banging against the chrome. When Stahl came in and stood at a urinal Winter considered his plan, but Stahl had called objections against Fleming twice now, so maybe he didn’t have to.

He edged out of the bathroom while Stahl was still standing there. In the hallway Natalia caught his arm:

“Uspokaivat’, soldat,” she whispered. Then, in English: “You all right? Pretty heavy stuff in — ”

“I’m fine,” Winter lied. A small handful of people were filing back into the courtroom, so he hurried to join the line before she could say anything else. And now —

“Please elaborate on how exactly Brock Rumlow arousing you on Pierce’s orders is not the same thing as Alexander Pierce using you for sexual pleasure,” Fleming says. The expression on his face says he’s very much holding himself back from saying more things.

“He was my primary handler,” Winter says. “I told you he cared for me. He didn’t want to hurt me.”

Steve flinches a third time.

“He didn’t want to hurt you, so he got you hard and let Pierce fuck you — ”

“Fleming,” the judge snaps, before Stahl can open his mouth.

“Brock Rumlow had ample opportunities to escort you from Hydra,” Fleming says, and his voice hasn’t changed pitch; Winter wonders if perhaps he’s ignoring the judge outright now. “Yet he continued to prime you — ”

“Mr. Fleming — ”

“ — like a fucking lawnmower — ”

“I will ask you to leave my courtroom — ”

“You have sat here and compared yourself to a gun he needed to clean from time to time to keep it functioning yet you are trying to tell me that he cared for you?” Fleming’s voice is sharp. Sarcastic. Winter isn’t great at reading emotions, but he can hear that loud and clear. “Mr. Barnes, I don’t know if you’re trying to help or hurt your case, but — ”

“I put up with enough shit from Pierce and Sitwell to know the fucking difference between when it meant something and when it didn’t,” yells a voice. It’s Winter’s, it must be, because he’s said the names, the correct Hydra names, but he can’t feel his own mouth moving. He’s on his feet and he doesn’t know when that happened. His metal fingers are digging into the wooden surface of the witness stand. “If you had to pick between someone sticking an electrically charged piece of metal up your ass five times in an hour or someone wrapping their hand around your dick for three minutes and moving their fingers a little which would you fucking pick?”

Court is adjourned not long after that, in part because the judge wants to put a new prosecutor on the case to try and tone things down, in part because even with the room bereft of people nonessential to the case it’s still impossible to keep under control after Winter’s outburst. No one looks happy as they file out, not Fleming or his associates, not the judge, not Stahl. Winter can’t catch Steve’s eyes at all, and when he tries to follow him out Sam Wilson and Natalia smoothly, obviously redirect him to a different exit.

He doesn’t start shaking until they’re outside. But then he can’t stop.

“I fucked up,” he whispers. “I fucked up.”

“No,” Natalia says, softly, but he can tell she’s looking at Sam Wilson over his head.

“Steve will punish m— ”

“Steve’s going to do no such thing,” Sam Wilson says. “And neither is anyone else.”

Winter wants to throw up. He can feel his metal arm recalibrating. All the wrong memories are surfacing — Rumlow at his back in Pierce’s office in the cryochamber in a tiled outdoor room in Florence. Rumlow’s mouth on his neck — he can even point out the exact place where he’d kiss him, every single time. Rumlow at his desk, or at a computer, or sweat-soaked in the gym, running his hands through his hair, turning to look as Anderson and Thompson brought

(the asset)

Winter in from post-cryo prep. “Here’s our savior,” Anderson would say, angry, mocking, shoving Winter forward a little. Rumlow would walk over. Even unable to read expressions Winter could tell he was repressing some choice phrases. After a moment he’d say,

“Status report, soldat.” The same every time, same cadence, same lack of inflection, same pitch. Even when he couldn’t remember who Rumlow was he remembered that voice. It soaked into his skin and it grounded him and it made his jaw unstick so he could say,

“Functional. Ready to comply,”

and then Rumlow would hand over his mission briefing and explain things and then, when Winter was done nodding through it, he’d say,

“And my name is Commander Rumlow. You’ll answer to me first on the field. Understand?”

That was the same every time, too. He didn’t know it then, but he knows it now. Just like he knows it was always only Rumlow’s hand on him he didn’t loathe, Rumlow’s hand the only one between his legs that didn’t grip and squeeze and pull. Rumlow’s touch the only one that didn’t make him cringe and flinch and wish the machine would kill him next time they sat him in the chair. Rumlow’s touch the only thing he didn’t want the chair to take.

Good memories of Hydra are bad and should be discarded and disregarded. But Winter cannot remember a single thing Rumlow did that caused him pain. And he’s so, so tired of lying.

--

“Dobroe utro, soldat,” Natalia says the following morning, after Jarvis has let her in. “We’re not going into court the rest of the week, apparently.”

Winter’s brain is too tired to comprehend this statement. When he shut his eyes last night it was to images of Pierce and Rollins and Sitwell and Hauer all rolling around over and over. Below them all Steve’s face, again and again, angry and disappointed and confused. How could you do this to me, Buck? How could you bring him up when I asked you not to?

Pierce, slapping him: You really have forgotten how to be obedient, haven’t you, soldat.

He’d given up on sleep around two; dragged his blanket and pillow to the couch. Jarvis put on a late-night talk show and Winter lay in a half-conscious state, staring half at the television, half at the newspaper clipping of Rumlow.

Now as he looks at Natalia across the table with his breakfast shake she slides another newspaper to him. The headline:

WINTER SOLDIER LOSES CONTROL IN COURTROOM

probably maybe wouldn’t have been so bad in and of itself if it wasn’t accompanied by a picture of Winter screaming at Fleming. He doesn’t even know who took it; he’d thought all the reporters had been banned, though if he thinks about it he realizes how pointless that would be, since the nation is desperate for any information on this trial.

He looks at the picture. His hair is coming out of its tail and flying around his face. He’s got the metal hand clenched so hard around the witness stand the cracks in the wood are visible even from a distance.

The article quotes him directly. On a night of broken, fitful sleep, it sounds even worse than it did in the courtroom.

“Steve must hate me,” he whispers. He never used to feel shame, even when the junior agents would put him in a leash and collar and parade him naked around the recreation room, everyone laughing as he crawled on his hands and knees from one corner to the other. He feels shame now; the receptors in his brain are no longer blocked, and it makes his whole body hot and cold in dizzying simultaneity. He longs for the chair. He aches for it. It’s not something he can tell anyone, not even Natalia or Dr. Haskins. But one good wipe is all it takes —

“Steve doesn’t hate you,” Natalia murmurs. “Steve’s just confused. But he doesn’t hate you.”

Winter looks up at her. His eyes are damp in the corners. He never used to cry, either.

“I’m confused too,” he says, quietly, and she smiles at him, crooked and sad. She reaches slowly across the table, projecting intent; at last her hand closes over his. She squeezes down, then withdraws. The contact stays burnt into Winter’s skin for a long time after.

“We’ll take the rest of the week to figure it out,” she says. “We have four whole days before our next court date. Stahl is coming to meet us. We’re going to get through this, soldat. I promise you.”

Natalia never lies. Winter thinks it’s because she’s like him; she can’t lie, or at least she can’t say no. She never lies —

— but right now, he’s having a little trouble believing her.

Chapter Text

October 2014

The defense doesn’t take long. Stahl asks Winter a few simple, rote questions about his relationship with Rumlow. They’re almost the same as the questions Fleming had asked, but framed in a more positive way: Did Brock Rumlow harm you?

No.

Did Brock Rumlow cause you physical pain, such as strapping you into the machine, beating you, forcing his stun baton on you, any of the things you have already listed as common practice among the other agents?

No.

How did you feel when you were serving under Brock Rumlow?

(He isn’t quite able to look at Steve for that part. But he says it anyway.) Safe. I felt safe.

Stahl asks Dr. Haskins up on the stand. In her experience, had she found it common for victims of sixty-five years of constant physical and sexual abuse to feel safe when they were around their abusers?

No.

Sitting in the audience again, Winter notices Steve’s hand gripping serum-tight against the back of his chair.

So would you say it’s likely that Mr. Barnes felt safe around, say, Alexander Pierce?

Fleming’s replacement objects. Leading the witness. The judge sustains. Stahl says,

After observing Mr. Barnes steadily for four months in biweekly, sometimes daily therapy sessions, is it your professional opinion that he felt safe around any of his other handlers?

No.

And when abuse victims feel unsafe around their abusers, and are constantly exposed to them, how do they act?

Self-preservation usually kicks in, Dr. Haskins says. Someone in Mr. Barnes’ situation… even without the extensive brain damage he suffered, it would be — highly unlikely that person wouldn’t have done anything, absolutely anything, to keep their abusers happy.

Stahl asks Winter back up to the stand. One more question, he says, and Winter hopes none of the reporters’ microphones pick up the faint rattling of his metal arm against the underside of the wooden barrier.

Mr. Barnes, in seventeen years, do you remember how often Brock Rumlow sexually assaulted you?

The prosecution objects again. The judge asks Stahl to rephrase.

Mr. Barnes, in seventeen years, when did Brock Rumlow sexually assault you?

(Again, he can’t quite look at Steve.) Never.

And in those same seventeen years, when did Alexander Pierce, Jasper Sitwell, Jack Rollins, Louis Hauer, and any other members of Hydra sexually assault you?

Between 1997 and 2014 he’d come out of cryo eleven times. He repeats the number back to Stahl. It’s such a little number. It’s barely in the double digits. It feels stupid to complain about it; it was eleven times Rumlow had his hand on Winter as well, after all. But it’s the answer Stahl, Dr. Haskins, and Sam Wilson had practiced with him, and it’s the answer they want, and it’s the truth.

Thank you, Stahl says, no further questions, and he goes to sit again beside Dr. Haskins and Natalia and Steve. Winter follows. His throat is tight, for some reason. When he sits, Natalia squeezes his hand. He squeezes back, then looks at Steve.

Natalia must have talked to Steve over the weekend, because he looks back, though he’s still evidently unhappy. Stahl insisted that only Dr. Haskins and Sam Wilson be present when they went over Winter’s testimony in Rumlow’s favor. So Steve didn’t know the things Winter was going to say in court before he said them.

Now, he offers Winter a strained, tight smile. Sam Wilson and Natalia had said he wouldn’t be angry. Winter wonders if Steve would loosen up if he offered him recreation in the bathroom. He thinks maybe it would go over better with Steve than it would have last week with Stahl.

One minute and four seconds later, the prosecution begins. Fleming’s replacement is a man named Erikson. He’s smiling the way Dr. Haskins does sometimes before difficult sessions. He asks her to come to the stand.

“You mentioned that victims of sexual or physical trauma don’t usually feel safe around their abusers,” he says.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Are you familiar with the condition known as Stockholm syndrome?”

Winter tenses. Stockholm. He glances at Steve sideways, but this time Steve won’t look back.

“Yes,” Dr. Haskins says.

“Can you explain it for the court?”

“It is a psychological response to abuse,” she says. “It refers to the bonding between a captive and their captor or captors.”

“Bonding?”

“A victim held hostage such as in Mr. Barnes’ case will sometimes form a close emotional connection with their abusers. It’s the mind rationalizing what’s going on. The abusers are often the victim’s only source of companionship, food, drink, shelter, and even physical comfort.”

“Uh-huh. So would someone struggling with Stockholm syndrome potentially feel safe around their abusers, then? Since there’s this false feeling of companionship due to extreme circumstances?”

Dr. Haskins’ mouth thins at the corners. “Yes,” she says. “But — ”

“You’ll have to excuse me as I wasn’t here, but last week, didn’t Mr. Barnes admit that the way Brock Rumlow attended to his needs both on and off the field was comparative to how he would handle a weapon?”

“Yes, he did — ”

“And in what way precisely is that different to how Alexander Pierce or any other Hydra agents handled Mr. Barnes, on or off the field?”

“Objection,” Stahl says, angrily. “Erikson’s supposed to be questioning Dr. Haskins, not my client — ”

“I’m trying to get a clearer sense of the whole picture,” Erikson says. Winter can see silver in his temples. “I want to hear Dr. Haskins explain Stockholm syndrome’s effects and I don’t think your client is capable of — ”

“Mr. Erikson, I’m allowing you to finish your line of questioning,” the judge interrupts. He’s pinching the bridge of his nose. “But please wrap it up in a timely fashion.”

Erikson looks like he wants to roll his eyes. But he says, “Just to clarify, then, doctor: Mr. Barnes has stated that Brock Rumlow didn’t physically hurt him. Last week, according to the stenographer’s transcription, he stated that Brock Rumlow touched him sexually. He even insinuated that Rumlow was, if you’ll pardon my use of an old phrase, the lesser of two evils.

“So if I understand it correctly, the only Hydra member to whom Mr. Barnes feels any type of loyalty is the man who didn’t cause him physical pain. And according to your definition which you just gave the court, that is one of the criteria for Stockholm syndrome.”

“As I established already earlier in this trial, Mr. Barnes’ mind has been severely damaged by the repeated inflections of the memory-wiping machine — ”

“If Brock Rumlow never caused James Barnes physical pain, never put him in the chair, and never threatened him with sexual abuse, when exactly would he have been able to damage his brain?”

In his seat, Winter is trembling all over. Something’s wrong, he’s done something wrong, and he doesn’t know what. He can smell punishment, the onslaught of it familiar and weighted in his nostrils.

“If Barnes remembers Rumlow positively, and if he was never physically harmed during their interactions, and if — ”

“His mind was continuously wiped throughout — ”

“I have here a record stating that the longest James Barnes was out of cryo while under Brock Rumlow’s care was six months, from March to September 2001. There are no reports of any machine use during that time. Yet he still killed for Brock Rumlow, under his direction. And as I said, in all that time, to my understanding, Rumlow never once saw him as anything other than another gun.”

“Wrap it up, please, counselor,” the judge says tiredly, almost in tandem with Stahl’s sharp protesting inhale.

“James Barnes would only have had to bond with Brock Rumlow for it to count as Stockholm syndrome, correct? Even if he felt no connection to Alexander Pierce or Jack Rollins?”

“Yes,” Dr. Haskins says. Her mouth is pinched tightly.

Winter has been very bad. This is what happens when you’re allowed to make your own decisions, Pierce’s voice whispers from somewhere far off. This is what happens when you break the rules.

“And if Rumlow was the only person to treat him with what he perceived as kindness for seventeen years, would it not have inspired a degree of loyalty beyond this fear-based obedience you’ve been talking about?”

“Objection,” Stahl snarls, “you’re fucking speculating now — ”

“Language,” the judge says, “but also sustained.”

Erikson holds up his hands, but Winter can read the triumph in his face loud and clear. “Is it possible, Dr. Haskins, that when James Barnes obeyed the commands of Brock Rumlow and killed his innocent targets in cold blood, he was not doing so from a place of influence and fear, but from a place of true desire to gain Rumlow’s approval?”

“That would still be consistent with the effects of Stockholm syndr— ”

“But is it possible, doctor?”

She closes her eyes, momentarily. “Yes,” she says, after a long time — twenty-two seconds. “It’s possible.”

Erikson smiles. Now it doesn’t look like Dr. Haskins’ smile at all. It looks like the nasty curling smile Rollins used sometimes. C’mere, soldat. Isn’t that what Brocky calls you? We’re gonna play a little game.

“Thank you,” Erikson says. “No further questions.”

--

They’re telling him he’s doing great but he knows he isn’t. He can feel parts of him trying to slip away like before when he’d shut down if Pierce was taking a long time. He got good at fighting it back then because Pierce would get so, so angry if the

(asset)

Winter Soldier was unresponsive during sex. But it’s harder to fight it now after so long out of practice. There’s a low constant throbbing in his ears and it’s echoing down his whole body. Dimly he’s aware that the throbbing is separating itself into voices and there are hands on his shoulders, Natalia and Steve, steering him back into the courtroom (when had they left?) and to his seat. All rise for the judge. Winter wants to go back into cryo. He wants that so much. He hated coming out and he hated going in but once he was in he didn’t feel anything. He wasn’t aware of time passing. He never dreamed.

“ — and nothing but the truth, so help you God,” says a voice and it’s the judge and Winter is on the witness stand again. His metal hand is on a Bible. He feels his mouth moving mechanically in response, and then he feels his legs folding so he can sit. Across from him to the right Steve, Natalia, Sam Wilson, Stark, and Stahl are all watching; Steve is smiling, though it’s a lie, and Natalia is smiling, and it’s real, if fragile.

Across from him to the left Erikson is smiling too. He still looks like Rollins.

(Jack, what the fuck are you doing to him?

It’s a costume, dumbass.

I mean I’m not fucking retarded, I can see it’s a costume. I’m asking why you’re dressing him up like a nurse; he’s gotta go down to medical in like half — oh.

Yep.

It’s supposed to be funny.

Yep.

It’s not fucking funny.

You’re just jealous because you can’t get the arm to fit inside those fucking weird-ass animal suits you want him to —

Jack, I will fucking pay you so much money to keep your mouth shut about —

I will admit he’d make a cute koala.

Fuck off.)

“Mr. Barnes,” Erikson says. “Last week things in here got pretty heated for you, didn’t they.”

It sounds like a test. Winter has to forcefully hold down the part of his stupid, stupid brain that wants to get on his knees and take Erikson’s zipper between his teeth. He still remembers the rules, after all: sometimes it’s okay to ignore questions.

“Yes,” he says instead, pushing the word out.

“Can you explain what happened? Just in your own words.”

“Uh.” Winter looks down at his hands. Metal-flesh-metal.

(you don’t have a human hand, do you)

“Mr. Barnes?”

“I — ” He swallows. It’s impossibly hot in the courtroom, despite the temperature outside being in maybe the mid-fifties. “Mr., um, Mr. Fleming was asking — asking me about Rumlow, about what he did for me as my primary handler. And I told him that he used to, um, that he had to prep me before Pierce would, would hav— would use me, um.”

(because you’re not human, are you)

Winter looks at Steve. Steve’s face is doing complicated things, but when he smiles, it’s the firmest one Winter’s seen in a while. You’re doing great, pal, that smile says. Keep going.

“I told him how Rumlow used to prep me before my secondary function and he said that it was just the same as Pierce using me, and I told him it wasn’t.”

“You yelled at him.”

“Objection,” Stahl says.

“Sustained,” the judge says.

“I’m just repeating back what the court transcript — ”

“You asked my client for his own explanation of last week’s events,” Stahl snaps, “so unless you want to retract this entire conversation — ”

“Fine.” Erikson’s looking more and more annoyed. “So, Mr. Barnes, you said it wasn’t the same — ”

“Yes,” Winter says. “Because it wasn’t.”

“And how exactly do you figure that?”

‘It hurt when Pierce did it and it didn’t hurt with Rumlow’ sounds trite and too simplistic even in his own head. He’s fucked up enough things already in this trial. So he says,

“He took his time. And um. And he paid attention to me. I mean, I — he needed to, for, for what Pierce wanted, but it — he made it feel good. He didn’t need to.”

“How do you know he didn’t need to?”

“Because later when Pierce would do it he was really, really rough and he didn’t care even if I bled — ”

“Wait a moment, Mr. Barnes,” Erikson is saying over the rising drone hum of the jury. “I thought you established that only Brock Rumlow was able to bring you to sustained arousal.”

Winter shakes his head. Steve’s not smiling anymore. “Just the first time,” he says. He’s almost whispering. “Once I got started, um. He didn’t need to touch me again.”

“Well.” Erikson folds his arms. “And in all seventeen years of being under Rumlow’s care, he never once treated you roughly during these sessions?”

“No.”

“He never asked you to repay him for all the kindness he’d shown you — ”

“Objection!” Stahl shouts.

“No, I told, I told Mr. Fleming last week, it wasn’t like that — ”

“You heard Dr. Haskins’ testimony about Stockholm syndrome, Mr. Barnes. Don’t you think it’s possible your judgment of what Brock Rumlow did or didn’t want to gain from these sessions was a little bit clouded?”

“Your honor, for fuck’s sake, he’s leading the witness so hard I can see the rope — ”

“This courtroom is not a creative writing seminar, Mr. Stahl — ”

“When Brock Rumlow was in the field with you,” Erikson says, loudly, “and he asked you to do things, and he didn’t hurt you to make you do them, did you feel more or less inclined to do them because it was Rumlow who was asking?”

“This is all speculation and I move it be stricken from the record — ”

“Maybe you thought that Rumlow would be extra gentle with you if you killed all the targets he — ”

“Mr. Erikson, I will have you forcibly removed from my courtroom if you do not stop conducting your line of inquiry in this heinously unprofessional manner.”

Winter is shaking all over. He looks at his hands. At Steve. Sam Wilson. Natalia. Erikson. He can’t breathe.

“ — enough in your right mind to understand the difference between good sex and rape, it’s possible the court can come to the conclusion that you were also enough in your right mind to plan the destruction of our great nation through Hydra — ”

“He never fucked me,” Winter blurts. He feels like he’s going to be sick. His heart is ramming itself against the inside of his throat and his face feels ice frozen and fever-hot all at once. “We never made plans. He took care of me, he made it feel okay — ”

“It has been established in this trial that you lost your memories every time you were subjected to the chair, correct?” Erikson asks, and Winter blinks. Swallows.

“Yes.”

“And would you say it’s likely that in the six months since the fall of the Triskelion, you have recovered every single memory which you lost?”

“Objection,” Stahl starts, “how on earth could he possibly — ”

“This has a point, your honor, I promise.”

The judge sighs. “Overruled. The witness may answer.”

Winter does not want to answer. “No,” he says, quietly. He knows it’s the wrong answer even before he sees Erikson’s Rollins-smile widen.

(You think maybe you could ask Brock to put a plug in your ass next time he’s got you down for post-mission prep?

The fuck difference would that make, Jack? He’s not gonna remember Brock next time he’s —

Hey, listen. I just wanna know if there’s any way of expediting the process here. I want my hands on this tight little asshole as soon as — )

“No,” Erikson repeats, softly. “So if you don’t remember every single moment with Brock Rumlow, you can’t really say with complete certainty that you didn’t plan anything Hydra-related with him. Can you.”

Test questions are sometimes designed to confuse and usually result from the asset’s own stupidity and mistakes. If you didn’t say the wrong thing so often, soldat, the Alexander Pierce in his head whispers, we wouldn’t have to correct you so often.

“In fact,” Erikson continues, before Winter can respond, “you can’t say with complete certainty that he never hurt you. Or that he never had penetrative sex with you, rape or otherw— ”

“I believe the witness and Dr. Haskins have both already established that they don’t believe Brock Rumlow was the cause of any severe sexual assault based off his reactions to — ”

“If you are going to object to one of Mr. Erikson’s statements, Mr. Stahl, may I remind you there is a particular way to go about it in my court?”

Stahl’s nostrils flare out. But before he can correct himself Erikson (still smiling) says,

“It’s all right, I’ll rephrase. Mr. Barnes, do you remember all of your interactions with Brock Rumlow?”

“I don’t know,” Winter whispers. His hands are squeezing together tighter and tighter; he can feel the bite of metal against his flesh.

“So it’s possible, isn’t it, that you may have lost some memory, or even multiple memories, of Mr. Rumlow mistreating you?”

“No,” Winter blurts, as sharp cold fingers wrap around his throat and pull. “I mean, I — I don’t kn— ”

“Just like you can’t say for certain that Alexander Pierce mistreated you every single time you came out of cryo. Can you.”

(smooth unlined face, soft red hair hanging — )

“I don’t know.” He’s whimpering. Crying isn’t allowed. He’s going to be punished.

“And I’m going to assume that you interacted with the former secretary more than just eleven times, did you not?”

“I don’t — ”

“You are on record as having served under Alexander Pierce seventeen times from 1978 to 2014, with a single two-year break in the early ‘90s when you were again placed in the care of the Soviet Union.”

Winter doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t understand why Erikson has asked him a question he already knew the answer to. It must be more of the test. He’s going to be punished.

“Is it possible that in at least one of those seventeen interactions Alexander Pierce treated you with the same tenderness you claim Brock Rumlow was so famous for?”

(Sweetheart, you look so beautiful. Look in the mirror. Doesn’t this dress bring out your eyes? Don’t I always choose the best for my soldier?)

“N— I don’t…”

“Brock Rumlow often called you a weapon, did he not?”

“Counselor, we’ve already established — ”

“Did Alexander Pierce ever refer to you in a similar way?”

(You were created for this. Made for this. The reward for your work will be unending — )

Winter whispers an affirmative. Tears are gathering in the ends of his hair where it’s come undone from its tail. To the right, none of the defense team is breathing.

“So if Rumlow and Pierce both called you a weapon, both used you sexually, both were your field handlers, and you cannot say with certainty that you remember every interaction you had with either of them, would it or would it not be fair to say that it’s possible Brock Rumlow is not the saint you have made him out to be, and that you and he conspired to destroy society while he was raping you with — ”

There’s a broken keening wail. It takes a long time for Winter to realize where it’s coming from because he’s shaking so hard his hands have both split the wood and he’s on his feet banging his metal fist against the podium screaming mixed Russian and English, the words bleeding together, the smells of iron and lightning in his nose, sobbing, the same phrase over and over:

“I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know please don’t hurt me I don’t know I’m sorry I don’t know — ”

When he feels the hands on his shoulders he lurches; he doesn’t know if he’s hitting or collapsing but it turns out to be both. It’s Steve gathering him into his arms and leading him away, out of the courtroom, away from the hollow frantic black buzz of the reporters and the bystanders and the sharp insistent ring of the judge’s voice over them all. It’s Steve with him in the hall saying his fake name over and over in a panicked thread and it’s Natalia behind him soothing him in Russian, and he hides his face against the soft fabric of Steve’s shirt so that neither of them will see his mouth moving, uncontrolled, damply crying out for the Commander.

--

When they go back in ten minutes later Winter sits with Steve and Natalia and Sam Wilson. They’ve removed Erikson now too. Someone else on the prosecuting team says they have no further questions, but the judge hasn’t quite looked over at Stahl before he’s saying,

“I just have one more thing to say, your honor.” He turns towards the defense. He looks at Winter.

“To remind the court: during your seventeen years serving under Brock Rumlow, how many times did Alexander Pierce assault you?”

Steve’s hand is still on his shoulder. It has never left. He takes a deep breath. “Eleven.”

“And how many times was Brock Rumlow asked to perform maintenance on you prior to the sexual assaults performed by Pierce and the other Hydra team members?”

“Eleven.”

“You said earlier that Brock Rumlow never assaulted you?”

“No.”

“But the maintenance was sexual in nature all eleven times?”

“Yes.”

Stahl looks at the jury. At the prosecuting team.

“The defense rests, your honor,” he says.

--

In the end, the jury votes him not guilty.

He doesn’t understand why.

--

Stahl makes a big deal about how thrilled he is to have won the case. He talks to the reporters like he was sure they’d win all along, even though Winter remembers not a full week ago how he’d been so violently furious at him for openly recognizing the CCTV picture. Still, Winter knows that Stahl made a valiant effort to recover the case after that setback, and that he’d done his job of defending him despite whatever his personal feelings were, so he doesn’t say anything.

Steve and Stark both make a lot of noise about how huge a deal this is. Stark keeps suggesting they all go out and get schwarma, whatever that is, and Steve keeps saying no and actually laughing a little bit (though he’s clearly trying to hide it). He’s giving smiles to Winter that almost don’t look forced and he reaches out, puts his hand on his shoulder.

Winter notices it’s the flesh one. He doesn’t think about whether that’s a deliberate move.

“Buck,” he says, softly, under the chatter. “Buck, you did so well. I’m so, we’re all so proud of you.”

“Thank you,” Winter says. He keeps thinking about his outbursts — two, there were two, he’s malfunctioning, he should’ve been put in cryo. The way he’d reacted to Erikson’s words. Like a child. He doesn’t know why Steve thinks he did well. He doesn’t know why he’s been acquitted.

Sam Wilson is smiling at him too, and so is Dr. Haskins, but he can’t look at them. If he looks they’ll see; they’re not like Steve. Steve tries so hard to only see what he wants to see, and Winter remembers (or thinks he remembers) that Steve was like that before the war, too. He’s not sure if it’s because Steve grew up hard and sick and needed to distance himself from pain as much as he could; he’s not sure if he ever knew why Steve has always chosen to deliberately martyr himself and look at the world as he wants it to be even when it’s clearly showing him signs of being otherwise. But Steve’s stubborn, and he can be kind of an ass, and he’s so determined for Winter to be Bucky Barnes. He’s not sure that Steve has acknowledged to himself that he talked about Rumlow during the trial. If the outcome had been different, if Winter had been found guilty, Steve might have cited his defense of Rumlow as the reason why the jury turned against him. But now he gets to just ignore it. Sweep it under the rug.

Sam Wilson and Dr. Haskins aren’t going to be like that; if Winter lets them see his face, they’ll know he’s a fraud, and that he’s miserable, so he just plasters on his smile and he keeps it on until they’ve left the courtroom.

Natalia sees, but Natalia sees everything, and Winter wasn’t expecting to hide it from her. She touches his arm on the way out. She asks in Russian if he’s okay. He says he is, and that’s the end of that conversation.

--

The following morning, Natalia brings him the paper, like always.

IN A STUNNING MOVE FROM THE JUSTICE SYSTEM, the headline says, JAMES BUCHANAN BARNES, FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE WINTER SOLDIER, HAS BEEN CLEARED OF ALL CHARGES. Below it is a picture of him and Steve when they’d announced the verdict. Steve is gripping his flesh shoulder so tightly that even in the black and white photograph the strain on his knuckles is clear. Winter looks drained. It’s not a very flattering picture.

Mostly the article covers the trial. But Natalia is still sitting across from him and he thinks that means she wants him to read it, so he does, skimming over the parts he already knows until he reaches the end:

“Due to Mr. Barnes’ testimony in his favor, the court has decided that it will move forward with the decision to imprison Mr. Rumlow for life without the possibility of parole. The controversial — and, many would argue, un-American — choice to place Mr. Rumlow in jail without a trial has certainly been met with a degree of backlash, but for the most part, the public is staying silent. In a recently published online poll, 46% of Americans* voted in favor of not giving Brock Rumlow a trial, while only 27% voted in favor of allowing him due process.

“‘It’s what I told you last time,’ said Thomas Hudson, from the Soviet trials. ‘No one wants to see some ex-Hydra scumbag get a fair trial. No one’s gonna say that, of course, but they wouldn’t be able to find an impartial judge or jury willing to listen to whatever bull**** he spewed out. Frankly I’m shocked that they acquitted the Soldier, but that’s just my own personal bias. Can’t do nothing about it now. What I can say is Brock Rumlow doesn’t deserve a single thing. Not one single — ’”

Reflexively, Winter looks at the bottom of the article to see the footnote:

*out of a selection of 200 interviewed

His hands are shaking. His mouth tastes slick, too warm. He thinks he’s going to be sick, but after a moment he registers he’s crying.

Natalia’s hand comes out to cover his wrist.

“I don’t understand,” he says, softly. It feels like that’s all he’s ever going to say again.

Natalia is quiet. She’s quiet for a very long time, and then she says, “You know, I defected to this country from the Russian Black Widow program.”

Winter looks at her. He can’t remember if he already knew that. He thinks he’s not surprised, but he’s not sure.

“When I came here,” she says, “everyone knew what I was. What I had done. The fact that my nationality has always been American didn’t make it any better. People wanted to send me back to Russia, to put me in a Siberian work camp.” She lets out a sharp, brittle laugh. “I don’t even know if they have those anymore. But no one was interested in forgiving a Russian spy. Until SHIELD found me. Nick Fury took me in. He didn’t ask questions. — Well, he asked one question. He asked if I was ready to stop. And I said yes. And that was it.

“I never had a trial. SHIELD cleared my name quietly, off the record, and I’ve spent the last decade or so making up for what I did, proving that I’m not a liar, keeping my promise to Fury. But I was in the same boat as your friend here. I was looking at a really, really long time behind bars without any say in it at all.”

Winter flexes his metal hand without meaning to. The gears inside shift. The sound knocks some memory loose, formless nonspecific avalanche of times he heard that sound in the field, under cover, right arm pressed to Rumlow’s, Rumlow’s low growl in his ear: Take ‘em down, soldat.

“What are you — ”

“SHIELD is pretty much dead to the public,” Natalia says. “But I think if you ask — Tony has a big mouth, but he’s a good person. Most of the time. And Steve — ” She sighs. She takes her hand off his wrist. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”

Winter feels his mouth tense in the corners at the same time that his heart is trying to jolt in his chest. “Steve’s not going to help Rumlow.”

“No,” Natalia agrees, standing. “But he’ll help you.”

Chapter Text

November 2014

The first time he asks, Steve says no.

Or well, he says haha, very funny, Buck. Then he looks at Winter’s face and the furrow over his nose deepens. “Wait — Buck. Bucky, you c- you can’t be serious.”

Winter frowns at him. Steve’s expression turns despairing. “Bucky, come on. I — he — you’re joking, right? You must be kidding.”

Winter is quite proud of his new ability to roll his eyes. He shows it to Steve now. Steve’s mouth thins in the corners.

“Buck, I’m not saving Rumlow’s ass,” he says. “He’s a fucking liar. He, he lied to me for three years about you. He stood there and, and let me talk all about you, how we grew up together, how, what you meant to — what we were to each other, he just stood there while I fucking grieved over you and then he, he turned around and fucking, and went back and let Pierce rape you — ”

He reaches out; Winter flinches without meaning to, and Steve goes totally still. Neither of them speaks for thirty-seven seconds. Finally Steve chokes out,

“Buck, I… I can’t let him back in your life. He didn’t get the death penalty. He’ll be incarcerated for the rest of his life. Isn’t that enough?” His voice is quiet and, in spite of the irritation still lingering in his eyes beneath the guilt, extremely small.

Winter sighs. Steve’s still doing it, looking for the parts of the conversation he wants to hear and dragging them to the forefront whether they exist or not. Any second, he thinks Winter is going to turn around, start calling himself Bucky, start pressing little kisses to Steve’s hair, moving up to his floor. The trial is over. The verdict has been passed. Winter understands enough about human thoughts and feelings now — or more specifically, Steve’s thoughts and feelings — to know Steve has spent the last six months waiting for this part. Steve thinks things will settle down now. Things will go back to how they were — at least roughly — back in the thirties and forties.

He still can’t say no. He can’t say it, and he doesn’t have the energy. He tilts his head. He offers Steve a smile.

“Yeah, Stevie,” he says, because he’s noticed when he uses that nickname Steve’s eyes go soft in the corners. “Yeah, it’s enough. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“Nah, Buck,” Steve says. He reaches out again, more slowly this time, and Winter deliberately holds himself still as his hand gently comes to rest on his cheek. Steve strokes down with his thumb. He looks sad and ecstatic at the same time. “You don’t have to apologize.”

Winter nods. When he nods his face moves up and down in Steve’s hand, and Steve makes a little noise he probably thinks Winter doesn’t hear. But Winter deliberately presses his cheek just slightly into Steve’s hand, just enough it could seem unintentional, before he steps away.

He feels Steve’s eyes on him all the way to the elevator.

If it’s manipulation, he knows it’ll work. After all, he learned from the best.

--

The second time he asks is right after Thanksgiving.

Banner, Stark, Barton, and Pepper cook a huge meal (menu designed by Jarvis). Steve goes out with Sam Wilson to buy drinks, and Natalia brings Winter up to the roof so they can watch the Macy’s Day Parade in Times Square. This high up, the crowds resemble blurs of colored static. Winter remembers (or thinks he remembers) seeing it a few times as a child. It was much smaller then.

They eat in the massive dining room in the common area. After, Stark and Barton put on ESPN, though apparently they’re prohibited from taking bets after an incident where Banner got a little too upset over his team losing. Winter makes sure to sit close to Steve. He figures now is as good a time as any. They’re all warm and full and sleepy, and Steve’s happy; Winter can see it in the way his smile never fully slips. He waits until they’re all sufficiently distracted, then turns to Steve.

“Steve.”

Steve smiles at him. “Yeah, Buck.”

“I wanna say what else I’m thankful for this year.”

He had held back when they’d gone around the table. He knew (and thought he remembered) when they were growing up and had dinner at each other’s houses (usually at the Barnes’ house, to take the pressure off Sarah), they’d traditionally said the stupidest possible things to each other so that everyone would laugh. (“I’m thankful the power got knocked out right before The Shadow came on last week so Buck couldn’t listen without me.” “I’m thankful Steve finally okay’d my plan to have fireworks bursting out of his cake next year. Hit two celebrations at once.”)

This year Steve had said, predictably, that he was thankful to have Bucky sitting across the table from him, free and safe and alive. Winter had parroted the words back — he was thankful to be away from Hydra. Thankful to be with Steve, and all of Steve’s friends. Thankful the trial was over.

It wasn’t even that he didn’t mean them. He just wasn’t sure he meant them the way Steve wanted him to.

Now he looks at Steve expectantly, and Steve looks back, eyebrows lifted. “Oh? What else you gotta be thankful for, huh?” He’s smiling with half his mouth. Winter smiles back. Then he says,

“I’m glad the trial turned out like it did.”

For the first time all evening, Steve’s smile slips just a little. There it is, Winter thinks, but he doesn’t let his expression change.

After a second, Steve says, “You did mention that at supper, bud. Want me to call someone? See if your memory’s getting fucked up again?”

“Shut up,” Winter says, shoving Steve’s shoulder with his own. He makes sure he’s still smiling when he says it, and Steve snorts. Shoves him back. On the television one of the teams makes a touchdown, and Banner makes a noise that has Stark holding his hands out and saying,

“Walk it off, big guy, walk it off.”

Winter waits twenty-six seconds. Then he says, “I meant all the parts of the trial. Not just… my verdict. I mean that Ru— ”

Steve’s smile shuts down entirely. “Buck — ”

“I’m glad he’s not on death row, is what I’m saying.”

A muscle jumps in Steve’s jaw. Natalia is sitting opposite them, her feet under one of Barton’s thighs; she’s watching them, though she’s making it look like she’s watching the game.

“Yeah,” Steve says finally, after a long time. “I know you are.”

“It’s just I want — ”

“Bucky.” Steve says it louder than Winter thinks he meant to, because everyone looks over at them, and Steve winces, apologizes, and waits until the attention has again been diverted before he says, “Look, I can’t — I don’t want to talk about this right now. Okay?”

“Oh. Okay.” Winter swallows; he can feel his leg wanting to shake. “Okay, Steve. When can we talk about it? When will it be more convenient to talk about it? I want to talk about it. When can — ”

Steve’s nostrils flare. Winter recognizes the annoyance and irritation in his face. He thinks back to when Steve had been irritated during the trial, how he’d considered getting him into the bathroom and sucking him off.

“Can’t we just — ” Steve looks out at his friends; they’re all still engrossed in the television. It’s playing commercials now; a very well-dressed man is flipping burgers on a grill and telling the audience they’ll be happier if they drink Coke. “I just wanna sit here with you, huh? I just wanna enjoy the evening.”

“I’m enjoying the evening,” Winter lies. Natalia is still pretending not to listen to him. “I’m just asking — ”

“I already said no, Buck.” Steve’s expression is caught between one easily read emotion and one that isn’t. The easy one is irritation. The subtle one makes his eyes sad. It makes him look like he must have when Bucky Barnes fell off the train in 1945. “I don’t want Rumlow back in your life. Or in mine. He’s in prison and he should fucking stay there.”

Something nascent and just-born in Winter’s brain says, You don’t actually get to fucking dictate what I do or don’t have in my life. But it doesn’t have the strength to stand on its own and it’s gone again before he can fully grasp it to try and get it out. So he says,

“He was good to — ”

“He used you,” Steve snaps, and everyone looks at them again, but this time Steve is too agitated to notice. He’s evidently run out of patience. Winter thinks about cool tile under his knees and a hand gripping his hair.

“He — ”

“No.” Steve stands up. He’s shaking, for some reason. “I already had to hear enough about the shit you think he did in court.”

Winter is mildly surprised to find that he’s shaking, too. When he stands someone turns the volume of the television down. Stark says, “I can’t decide if I should grab popcorn or a tranquilizer,” and Steve glares at him.

Winter calculates his face. When his Hydra handlers were this annoyed it was usually best to just go in without asking. Like the times he was tested, and the correct answers weren’t verbal at all, but involved his mouth in other, more pleasing ways. Steve will be doubly angry if Winter continues to push this point without attempting placation, and if Steve gets angrier than he is now he might finally decide to give the long-overdue punishment. Winter is ninety-eight percent sure there really aren’t any stun batons hidden in the tower, but Steve is very strong, stronger even than Pierce. He could probably do just as much damage with his bare hands.

Still: “I don’t ‘think’ he did anything, Steve. I kn— ”

“He let them rape you, Bucky,” Steve says, or snarls, or something. “He let them put their dicks in you and their filthy fucking hands all over you and he just stood back and did absolutely nothing about it. I hope he fucking rots in jail. I don’t want to see him. Don’t ever ask me for this again.”

It’s an order. It’s an order and Winter is very good at obeying orders. Steve is in charge and when people in charge give orders it’s expected that the orders will be followed. It is not Winter’s job to question the orders, or to feel anything about them.

He wonders if Steve will find the chair and put him in it. Possibly it is the only solution to this problem, because Winter is still malfunctioning. It is not his job to feel or to question anything Steve says —

— but he is feeling everything anyway.

On the couches Steve’s friends are still staring at them. Natalia looks like she wants to stand up and speak, but she doesn’t. After seven seconds Steve’s face shifts. That complicated subtle emotion is doing valiant battle with his irritation and it’s starting to win. His hand flexes like he wants to reach out, but he doesn’t. Perhaps he is remembering the way Winter flinched from him the last time.

Winter will not flinch this time. He knows how to keep very still, except when mission parameters require him to move. Depending on what Steve will end up wanting from him he may need to move or not, but he doesn’t think Steve will want him to flinch. The only one he remembers ever explicitly asking him to flinch was Pierce, and Steve is not like Pierce. Not like that, anyway.

Steve says “Bucky” very, very softly.

And he says, “I’m sorry.”

Winter says, “It’s all right, Steve. But may I speak with you privately?”

Natalia raises her eyebrows, but she still doesn’t say anything. Stark begins to make a noise which makes Banner kick him in the shin. Steve gives Winter a little head tilt, but he says,

“Yeah, Buck. Of course,”

and they walk out of the room together.

--

They go up to Steve’s floor. Winter expects to get right into it once they’re alone but when the elevator has dropped them off Steve walks into his kitchen.

“You want a drink, Buck?” he asks.

Perhaps he has forgotten that Winter cannot get intoxicated. Rollins used to give him glass after glass of champagne as an experiment to see whether it would affect him. Usually he would have someone else drinking the same amount at the same time. Winter always won these contests. At the end Rollins — a little bit drunk himself — would tell Winter to pull down whatever unconscious agent’s pants and suck him off while he (Rollins) fucked him (Winter) from behind. The agents usually came, even when they were not aware of it. Sitwell had once walked in on them and told Rollins to never give him shit over the animal costumes again.

Winter is pretty sure Steve won’t make him do any of that, though. So he takes the drink. It is better to please his target as much as possible before recreation. Sometimes it makes the act easier.

They walk to the couch and sit down. Steve is quiet for a while, and Winter is quiet too, watching him. At last Steve says,

“I shouldn’t have yelled at you, Bucky. I’m sorry.”

He has already apologized. Winter points this out. Steve lets out a jagged, wet laugh.

“Yeah, pal, I know.” He sighs; drags his hand through his hair. He takes another sip of his drink, then sets it on the coffee table. Winter does the same. The gears in his arm shift.

“I just — ” Steve bites his lower lip. “I’m scared. I don’t, uh — I don’t want to… I don’t want you to get hurt again. I don’t… I didn’t come get you. I didn’t look for you after you fell. I didn’t realize you were here. Three fucking years we were both here and I had no idea. And that shit, all that shit about Stockholm syndrome I’ve told you — I know you think you remember Rumlow as this nicer part of Hydra, but there weren’t any nice parts of Hydra. I didn’t want you to say anything about that during the trial ‘cause I was so fucking scared it would fuck up your case — ”

“Yes,” Winter says, “but then I did anyway. I disobeyed, Steve.”

Steve’s eyebrows furrow a little. “Wh- no, Buck. You didn’t — that’s not — ” His throat flexes as he swallows. “I wasn’t happy when you brought it up, but I also didn’t realize they were gonna bring that picture out. That’s not on you, bud. Stahl turned it in our favor anyway. I’m not mad. I — ” His hand flexes again, like he wants to reach out. This time, Winter completes the move for him, reaching out too, flesh hand. Steve gets a surprised little look in his eyes but he flattens it out pretty quick, and takes Winter’s hand in his own. He squeezes. His skin is warm and dry and the shape and weight of his hand is familiar. This will be easy, as long as Winter knows his place.

“I owe it to you to protect you now,” he says, after a while. “I didn’t protect you from Hydra for fifty years. But I’m gonna do it now. And one day I, I promise — you’re gonna understand about Rumlow. You’re gonna see — what he really was. What he did to you.” He looks down at their joined hands. He’s tracing his thumb over Winter’s knuckles. “You won’t be mad at me forever either, pal.”

“I’m not angry,” Winter says. He touches Steve’s chin with his metal hand and Steve’s head snaps up, bird startled into flight. Winter moves closer; Steve sucks in a sharp, desperate breath.

“Bucky — ”

“I’m not angry, Stevie,” Winter repeats, and then he kisses him. Steve’s lips are full and soft; they feel as familiar as his hand. Winter has definitely kissed this mouth before.

He gets four seconds of kissing in before Steve pulls back. He doesn’t go very far, but he puts a little distance between their mouths, and he lifts one hand — shaking — to rest on Winter’s jaw. “Buck…” he breathes out. He sounds like he’s been punched in the gut. “Are you — ”

“I understand your point of view,” Winter says. His metal hand is still on Steve’s face. The sensors on his palm and fingertips are not as strong as on his flesh hand but he can feel a little bit, enough to understand when he’s grabbed something or to register temperature shifts. “I know you’re just trying to look out for me.”

Steve is clearly trying to maintain eye contact, but his gaze keeps tripping down to Winter’s mouth. “I’m — yeah, that’s all I — ”

“Steve,” Winter says. He puts a little laugh behind it. “You never used to talk this much when I was trying to get my mouth on you before.” It sounds like something Bucky Barnes would’ve said; same cadence, same basic pattern of words. Winter has always been good at imitations; Pierce liked giving him lines from cheap pornos to parrot back. Let me suck your huge cock, Secretary. Oh, it’s so big, I don’t know if it’ll fit inside me.

Steve makes a strangled noise. His expression struggles with something; he starts to lean back in for another kiss and Winter thinks, finally, but then Steve pauses, their foreheads just touching, and he says,

“I know — I know I already said this so just bear with me, but you gotta know I really didn’t mean to yell at you, I should’ve thought about — ”

Winter slides his metal finger over Steve’s very pink lips. “Okay, Steve,” he says. He’s keeping his voice as quiet as he can. Knees on tile. Hand in hair. Relax the throat, and he doesn’t even have a gag reflex anymore, the serum took care of that, and so did fifty-six years of conditioning. If he can get Steve off he’ll relax all the way, he’ll think Winter wants him again, he’ll be more receptive to suggestion. When Steve is nearly asleep Winter will ask the question again, and perhaps Steve will say yes, sure, darling. Whatever you want.

If he thinks he owns Winter again, maybe he’ll stop holding onto him so hard.

Steve’s eyelids flutter shut. “…Okay,” he says, and when his mouth moves against the metal thumb it’s all too easy to slide it in. Steve makes another one of those shaky, pained noises. His tongue comes out to lick — the wet heat of it just registering — and then he reaches up. He curls his hand around Winter’s and pulls it down to rest between them. His other hand he wraps around the back of his skull, and draws him in the last half-inch. Then they’re really, really kissing, and Winter sighs into it, opening his mouth obediently, letting muscle memory take over.

(Pierce had kissed him a few times, but it hadn’t been high on his priority list. None of the senior agents had ever bothered, because they liked other parts of his anatomy a lot better. Only the juniors had tried with regularity: sloppy, overeager, rutting against him as their mouths pressed and pressed insistently against his. When Sitwell first joined Hydra and discovered the post-mission rewards system, he’d been a clumsy awkward kisser, his glasses bumping Winter’s nose. Finally some agent had wandered past and said, laughing, that Sitwell shouldn’t bother; the asset only knew one use for its mouth.)

Eventually they end up in the proper position: Steve flat on his back on the couch, Winter holding himself up over him. Steve is very hard and Winter is proud of himself; he hasn’t used his secondary function in so long, but he’s still capable. The trial might’ve been over more quickly if he’d just gone through with his plan in the bathroom, he thinks, and huffs a little bit as he begins to press kisses down the line of Steve’s neck.

Steve arches under him. He’s still wearing his shirt but it’s not important. Winter stops when he gets to the neckline, and trails his hands slowly down Steve’s chest. He’s watching Steve’s face and he sees his mouth part, and the flush that’s rising slowly over his cheeks. Winter stops with one hand flat on Steve’s stomach. With the other he pushes Steve’s knee a little to the side. Steve is breathing unsteadily under him.

“All right?” Winter asks, like he’s checking, and when Steve nods (frantic) Winter ducks his head down between his legs and closes his teeth very gently over the zipper of his pants.

Steve makes another one of those strangled, startled noises. His hand flies up pretty much immediately to sink into Winter’s hair and he sighs — fucking finally. Steve certainly does take his time. He pulls gently down — Pierce taught him how to get the zipper all the way undone without yanking or catching it in any fabric — and noses a little at the strip of Steve’s shorts, feeling the hard line of his cock beneath, before lifting his metal hand again to unsnap the button, and then to draw Steve’s pants down around his ankles. Steve’s hand has stayed in his hair, the fingers curled tightly through the strands of it, his nails scraping Winter’s scalp. As Winter gets closer to his feet Steve’s hand falls away but goes immediately to the waistband of his shorts to push them down too. He’s almost fully hard already. Winter rewards him with a pattern of slow kisses pressed back up the inside of his thigh.

“Fuck,” Steve gasps, his whole body tensing under Winter’s touch. Once he’s close enough Steve’s hand sinks right back into his hair, tightening, pulling — good. The results are the same.

He remembers like being shot that Rumlow used to pull his hair too. In fact Rumlow was the only one who pulled it without any meaning behind it other than ‘time to get hard now, soldat’. It’s a counterproductive thought to have right now but once it’s there it latches its talons into Winter’s brain and won’t let go. It makes him grind down automatically with his own crotch into the sofa, hips following some long-trained movement he half-remembers from Rumlow’s sessions.

It doesn’t do anything. Not that it matters; that’s not the end goal here. But still. He realizes with a wry twist to his mouth that his assumption during the trial had been correct. The holdover from 1991 is still in place.

He’s rubbing his nose against the searing hot flesh where Steve’s thigh joins his crotch. Steve’s hand is still tight in his hair, but when Winter’s hips begin to grind against the couch Steve notices — of course — and he loosens his grip a little, tugs gently up.

Winter lifts his head. He feels dizzily caught between the present moment (placating Steve into letting Rumlow walk free) and the past (Rumlow’s hand in his hair, his mouth on his neck). It occurs to him for some reason that if this works, he’ll have to stay here in Stark Tower with Steve and Steve’s friends and Jarvis. He won’t be able to go find Rumlow and be with him, because Steve won’t like it, and he probably won’t be able to fix that with a blowjob. Hell, even if he could get his hands on the chair and bring it to Steve he doubts that would work — and anyway, if Steve uses the chair on him it’ll be pointless to worry or wonder about Rumlow, because he won’t even remember Rumlow exists.

Steve is looking at him now with his lips still parted and his cheeks flushed bright red. He’s almost smiling. His fingers have turned gentle against Winter’s scalp.

“You can take your pants off too, Buck,” he says. His voice is soft, encouraging. Winter is moderately puzzled by this statement until he realizes: Steve noticed him moving his hips. Steve thinks he’s aroused. Steve thinks he wants to get off, too.

“Oh,” Winter says, aiming for a tone which says ‘you’re too sweet but really, no’. “It’s okay.”

Steve raises an eyebrow. “Getting shy on me all of a sudden, huh?”

Winter snorts. He leans down again and licks a stripe up the underside of Steve’s cock in what he hopes is an adequate response. (Test questions do not require verbal responses.) Steve’s hips jolt up and Winter moves his mouth accordingly, but he’s only just gotten his lips around the head when Steve says,

“Want you to — fuck — to get off too, Bucky.”

Winter pulls off, making sure to linger, letting the edge of his teeth scrape Steve’s skin: this is what you’re missing out on because you keep fucking running your mouth. He looks up through his lashes in what Pierce used to call his ‘Vivien Leigh impression’.

“It’s really all right,” he says. His tongue flicks out to lick at the slit. Steve’s cock twitches against his mouth. “Just wanna make you feel good, Stevie.”

Steve’s hand strokes gently through his hair. “You sure?”

Winter nods. His tongue flicks out again. He says the line Pierce always loved the most:

“My pleasure is secondary to yours,”

and he starts back down, opening his throat, ready to get this fucking over with —

— but then Steve’s hand leaves his hair. Steve’s pulling back. He can’t go far because the couch is only so big but his cock slips free from Winter’s mouth and he growls softly in frustration.

“Steve — ”

Steve shakes his head. He’s frowning. “Wait — Buck, what do you — did you just say your, your pleasure is secondary? To mine?”

“Yes,” Winter says. He hopes it sounds patient enough. It would kill him if he got this far and then fucked it up with insubordination.

Steve’s frown deepens. He pushes himself up on his elbows. His expression is shifting and his eyes are gaining an edge they shouldn’t have right now.

“That’s — ” Steve sounds confused, which is annoying, because he shouldn’t be sounding like anything, he shouldn’t even be talking, Winter’s mouth should be on his cock swallowing around the shaft letting the head brush the back of his throat (fuck how deep can he go?) —

“You know you can get off anytime you want,” Steve is saying, which — was he not paying attention during the trial? Of course Winter can’t get off any time he wants. But that’s not relevant right now. Or it wouldn’t be, except Steve’s still talking: “It has nothing to do with, with order or how fast or slow either of us get off. You enjoying yourself is what’s important, I — I don’t even like getting off with you if you’re not getting off too — ”

Oh, fuck. Hastily Winter backtracks. He leans back from Steve’s cock which by now has softened a bit and he says,

“You don’t have to take my mouth, you know. If it’s physical feelings you’re worried about you can fuck me, everything still works in — ”

“Oh, my God,” Steve says. His voice is uneven; he sounds like he’s going to be sick.

“I won’t come,” Winter says. He doesn’t think that’s what Steve’s worried about, but it doesn’t hurt to check. “I can’t. I’ll feel you hitting my prostate but it won’t — ”

“Bucky.” Steve’s voice comes out firm, tired. He sounds angry, but Winter doesn’t see anger in his face. That unrecognizable emotion is back in the set of his mouth. He’s sitting fully upright now, elbow on his knee, forehead in his palm. “Why are you offering me a blowjob?”

Winter tilts his head. This sounds like a test question, though not one with any immediately obvious answers. After a second he says,

“I want to rewa— to make you feel good — ” He catches himself on the word when he sees Steve’s face, but it’s too late, Steve’s heard it. Reward. It’s not the right word anymore and Winter wishes he knew what the fuck he was doing, what Steve wants from him. What would make Steve happy, compliant, amiable, willing to give Winter a treat, something to help soften the long, achingly lonely years ahead —

“Are you — do you want to suck me off because you think I’m angry at you? About what happened downstairs? Is, is that what — ”

Winter shakes his head. It’s not entirely a lie.

Steve bites his mouth. Hard. Winter sees the second it registers in his eyes.

Steve isn’t stupid. He likes to see what he wants to see, and to ignore anything that doesn’t fit with his preconceived notions of however the situation should be going. But he’s not stupid. Sometimes things are too obvious. Sometimes not even Steve can ignore what’s going on.

He opens his mouth. Draws in breath. “Bucky,” he says, and he sounds so defeated.

“Steve, please,” Winter says. (Rollins used to love when he begged. Bonus points if he did it while Rollins had him in that collar with the leash wrapped tightly in his fist.) “He’s — I know you hate him, I know he lied. But he — I don’t — ”

Something catches in his throat. His eyelashes are damp. Steve is looking at him with something worse than pity or anger and Winter is still pretty shitty at figuring out emotions but he can read this one loud and clear:

Resignation.

“I wouldn’t be here with you right now if Rumlow hadn’t been my primary handler,” Winter whispers. It’s a little bit manipulation, but it’s mostly just the truth. Rumlow had been vital to his functioning, which was why Pierce had put him at such a high station so early in his career. Rumlow had single-handedly kept the asset from losing his secondary function, which was really the only function anyone cared about, whatever they might have told anyone else. Rumlow had been kind, and he’d cared, and he’d been gentle, and if it meant Stockholm syndrome, then what the fuck ever. He hadn’t had to do things like pull Winter’s hair to get him hard, or kiss his shoulders, or talk to him on that rooftop in Poland

(what had they talked about?)

but he’d done them. They hadn’t been necessary, but he’d done them. Winter knows that the same way he knows how to strip a gun, or how to shoot a target from five hundred yards away, or how to throw a knife and have it hit the same spot in the wall twenty times.

Steve closes his eyes. He says,

“It’s this important to you,” and Winter says,

“Yes.”

Steve pinches the bridge of his nose. “I love you so much, Buck,” he whispers. It sounds like the last wish of a dying man. Winter swallows.

“I know,” he says. “I’m sorry, Steve.”

Steve makes a tiny, choked noise. He swings his legs over the side of the couch, tugging up his shorts, and then his pants. Without looking over again he says,

“Be patient, okay? It’s gonna take a while.”

Winter had forgotten how it feels to smile without having to think about it.

--

The following morning, when Natalia brings up the paper, Winter stands up and hugs her. She goes stiff in his arms, but just for a second. Then she’s relaxing, hugging him back.

“Blagodarnost’, Natalia,” he says.

She squeezes a little tighter. “Pozhaluysta, soldat.”

Chapter Text

January 2016

“ — so that’s, uh — that’s what happened.” Winter reached up and rubbed at the back of his neck with his metal hand and Rumlow spent a weird dizzying few seconds remembering how that hand felt on his skin the few times Winter had been lucid enough and comfortable enough to touch him during post-mission prep. His eyes were stuck on where the metal fingers dug into the soft space below his left ear, the soft space Rumlow fucking dreamed about, the space he ached for, and then his mind got stuck further on the image of what might happen if he just leaned across the couch and tugged Winter’s hand away and pressed his own mouth there instead —

Then he registered Winter had quit talking. Winter was sitting there quietly, watching Rumlow with his head tilted a little. Some of his hair was falling over the plated joints of his hand. Rumlow remembered like being shot through his throat the way the asset had twirled his hair around and around his finger on the roof in Poland —

“Commander?” Winter said, and it occurred to Rumlow he hadn’t actually said anything in a while. He forced his eyes to Winter’s, the sheer startling blue of them. He cleared his throat — it felt like scraping it with sandpaper — and said,

“You not gonna tell me the rest?”

Winter’s head tilted more. Fuck, Rumlow wanted to touch him. “The rest?”

“Yeah. Like, Steve said he’d help, okay. If it was at Thanksgiving then I was still in D.C. at the time. How’d he get — ”

But then he stopped. It clicked all at once. He felt like someone had just hit him in the face with a sledgehammer. He felt kind of stupid and kind of annoyed with himself and kind of annoyed with Winter and none of it was specific enough for him to pin down and analyze. He noticed his hands were shaking and he couldn’t tell if it was from the damaged nerve endings or if it was the adrenaline of this fucking unexpected conversation.

“You sent that SHIELD bitch — agent — you sent her to my, to where I was staying,” he said. “You got me the apartment in Manhattan.” And then, like being smacked again from the other side of his skull: “Fuck, you — Steve found me — I’m here now ‘cause you — ?” He was aware he was talking out of his fucking head, incoherent. Likely these were not exactly the hugest leaps to have made; Rumlow was pretty sure anyone without fucking brain damage and slowed reflexes would’ve figured it out a long time ago, or at least as soon as Winter started showing up again, hanging around Rumlow’s house

(fuck, of course he’d known where the hell Rumlow lived, he’d fucking picked it out)

and coming to him again and again, that quiet desperate sadness in his eyes, in the soft plush lower lip —

— Winter hadn’t been faking at all. This whole fucking time. He was here because he wanted to be. He was here because he’d already known Rumlow had come here. He’d ordered it. He’d risked his fucking relationship with his best friend for Rumlow — this — this was —

“ — talked to Tony, like Natalia suggested,” Winter was saying, still so, so soft. He’d lowered his metal arm and was staring at his hands folded gently in his lap. “So the form letter Steve gave you in Manhattan is something they print up for everyone who goes under SHIELD’s protection — they just change the obvious stuff, like the address and your name… Tony’s a billionaire, so he funds the credit cards, it’s not a big deal for him.”

Rumlow couldn’t hold back the rough scoffing sound which clawed its way up his throat. “Sure he’s fuckin’ thrilled about funding some ex-Hydra — ”

“I told you I talked to him,” Winter said, and Rumlow couldn’t stop the thrill that ran down his spine at the fact that Winter had interrupted him. Of course it was not the first time but the novelty had yet to wear off. “So did Steve, I think… he didn’t, um, he didn’t really want to discuss it much with me…” His mouth twisted wryly in one corner. He was still staring at his hands. The metal joints shifting over each other, clicking quietly against the carefully maintained nails on his right hand. “But Tony doesn’t mind.”

“Having my fuckin’ phone lines tapped probably helps,” Rumlow muttered. He regretted it almost immediately as Winter flinched. He felt the urge to reach out and take his hand and just as quickly shoved it down the stairs. Rumlow remembered how once he’d thought of all his old instincts burned out of him the way left-handed kids were forced to use their non-dominant hand for centuries. How even when they were grown and the right hand had long-since become the first resort, there were moments when the left arm would twitch deep down within itself, or something in the left wrist, and the impulse would still have to be physically suppressed.

Rumlow reaching out to Winter was his left hand. Pierce screaming in his ear about attachment and softness, the endless looping nightmares of Pierce taking the asset away, raping him again and again, leaving him a bloody fucked mess on the ground to die at Rumlow’s feet because Rumlow hadn’t been able to keep a certain look off his face or a tone from his voice —

— that was all the right hand. And it rose up again now and squeezed and pulled until Rumlow’s urge to touch and placate and apologize had passed. Pierce was still winning —

— but something in Rumlow had broken open during Winter’s story, and now it lay weak and helpless in the gutter, waving its naked limbs, whimpering softly, desperate, and Rumlow could no longer fully suppress his fucking left hand, the hand that Pierce had cut off years ago. It was growing back now, emerging from the ashes alongside the urges and feelings which had lain smoldering beneath years and years of training and frustration and the boiling slow-burn hatred which had choked and consumed him from ’97 on —

“I asked them not to tap your phone,” Winter said to his hands. “But Steve — I told you the other day. Steve wouldn’t let me come unless I made some agreements.”

Rumlow stared down at his own stupid, fucked, shaking hands. The scarring on his wrists. The skin was callus-hard and warped. The twist of burnt skin on his inner wrist. “What,” he tried; he found he couldn’t go on, but it worked as a complete sentence, at least for Winter:

“He said he wanted me to call every three weeks minimum. Just to check in and talk — and that he wanted your phone lines tapped so if you tried to, to sell me back, or — ” his cheeks were faintly pink — “or if you were gonna kidnap me, whatever, they’d be able to trace whatever calls you made and come find me.”

Rumlow snorted; he couldn’t help it. Winter’s eyes cut up to his, and Rumlow held out his wrists. His fucked eyebrow arched in its corner. “Think you’ll have to do most of the work on that kidnapping one, Win,” he said, and Winter laughed — actually laughed, the sound startled out of him. His smile looked not unsimilar to the one he’d had in the picture in his file. It made Rumlow smile too, feeling the stiff muscles pull up. His stupid unused broken crooked smile. But Winter wasn’t judging. He was just sitting there. He was sitting there because he’d fought to be sitting there, he’d sat in a courtroom and fought and pleaded and he’d gotten Rumlow out of going to jail, he’d gotten him out of —

“What about right at the beginning,” Rumlow asked. “Right after the trial, when I went to Manhattan.”

“Steve called a lot of people,” Winter said. “He called um, he called Nick Fury — ”

(won’t cap notice his long-dead best friend killing his boss?)

“ — and Natalia convinced him to make the case, to remind Nick what I told you, that she was in that Russian program and he got her out.” His mouth twisted again. “I don’t really know a lot of details because Steve didn’t want me in on that much, either. But between Nick’s position in SHIELD — what’s left of it, I guess — and Steve using his leverage as Captain America they managed to make a deal with the government.

“Once you were in New York Steve wanted me to drop it and I tried and — ” he was pulling a little on a hangnail on his flesh hand with the metal fingers; he didn’t seem aware of what he was doing. Rumlow didn’t think about it, just reached out like he’d wanted to before, like he’d ached to, like he should have all those years ago, reached out and taken Winter’s hand and run —

— he reached out and took Winter’s metal hand and pulled it away from the flesh one, and Winter went completely still beneath his touch. Rumlow went still too; looked at Winter’s face, ready to pull back —

— but then Winter curled his fingers inward. The tiny quiet mechanisms of them whirred softly; all the tiny delicate precise gears required to mimic the fine motor control in a human hand. Luke Skywalker at the end of Empire, and Rumlow remembered vaguely how the first time he’d seen the asset and his cryochamber he’d made a similar comparison to Han Solo, and he smiled a little —

— Winter was holding his hand so gently, and the metal palm felt warmish at its center, and Rumlow thought with a little thrill that maybe for the first time since April 2014 Pierce was going to lose.

Winter looked at Rumlow’s face. He tilted his head. “What was I — ”

“Once I was in New York,” Rumlow said gently. Winter’s cheeks went a little red. He dropped his eyes back to their joined hands.

“I tried to stay away,” he said. “I tried but I knew where they’d sent you and a couple times I, I saw… I saw what people, how they treated you.”

Rumlow tensed; he couldn’t help it, it was reflexive. A look of panic crossed Winter’s face and Rumlow consciously forced himself to relax, to squeeze down on Winter’s hand, to say,

“No, it’s all right, keep going, I just — sorry,”

and Winter swallowed, studying his face for a few seconds before continuing:

“I didn’t see much, ‘cause it was hard to get away from the tower. But I saw enough.” Something tightened a little in his jaw; defiance or anger, or both, something blistering and wholly unfamiliar to Rumlow on that face, the face where he was used to seeing only compliance and deference and submission.

“Someone wrote to Steve and said, Hey, Cap, tell your buddy with the missing arm he oughta thank me when he’s in Queens. I’m fixing his old friend right up. So Steve had Jarvis trace the letter and he said who it was from and Steve went and found him and asked what he meant. And he said he was sending you really bad things in the mail. Packages of shit. He was trying to get his hands on, on cyanide, and I was so scared, and, and I c- I couldn’t let it happen — ” His jaw was tightening further with the memory, and Rumlow squeezed down on his hand again. Winter’s eyes snapped up to his from where they’d drifted back down, and after a few seconds he said,

“I talked to Steve and Tony. Like I said. And we came up with the rules I had to follow so I could come here. But it — I’m not sorry. I know it was a big decision. Steve still doesn’t like it. But I’m not sorry I saved you and I’m not sorry I got you out of New York and I’m not sorry I’m here now and — ”

“Soldat,” Rumlow said, gently enough Winter could’ve kept going if he’d wanted, barreling over him, but he skidded to a halt like they were in the field. Like Rumlow had issued an order. It shot down his spine and up into his head in dizzying simultaneity. The rush of power he’d always felt around the asset. The idea he had this thing in his control, his complete control, this thing which was capable of such violence and lethality, the greatest weapon of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the most formidable and feared assassin in Hydra’s ranks, and all he had to do was say a word, just one little word, and that same weapon would be at his side, in his arms, ready to fire, to throw a knife, to strangle —

Something brief and hesitant bloomed warmth between his legs. But it was gone before he could focus enough to make it stay.

He remembered when Winter had first come back to him, how he’d felt the weight of so much crushing guilt over the fact that he wasn’t happy to see a more autonomous Winter because it meant the compliant submissive asset he’d known and worked with for seventeen years was gone. That all his years of wishing he could take the asset away from people like Pierce or Rollins had nothing to do with wanting the asset to be a whole person complete unto himself, but that he wanted the asset to be his, to be Rumlow’s alone. His own private personal weapon he could keep all the time and never have to share or pass around —

— not kept locked away in a glass case like Pierce would have, and not laid out on display in various graphically sexual positions for everyone to come over and enjoy looking at and touching like Rollins or Sitwell might have — but in his own home. Where he could do as he liked with him; where they could take their time and explore whatever feelings or desires as they came up. No pressure, no rush. No one standing outside the door banging on the wood and yelling for Rumlow to hurry up. Just the two of them, and Rumlow knew the asset was intelligent, Winter was intelligent, after all he’d discussed Harry Potter in depth with him on the rooftop in Poland, and now with nothing to interrupt them surely they could talk about more, they could do more —

— but he knew damn well it was only selfish. It was only because he wanted the Winter he remembered. The one that did his bidding and acted as his own weaponized extension, that acted upon Rumlow’s command, stopped when he said, killed when he said, got hard when he said —

— he’d felt guilt over wanting all that. But now it was starting to look like maybe Winter wanted it, too. Winter who had fought his way across half the country through unmoving obstacles like Steve Rogers and his self-righteous stubbornness just to be with Rumlow again. Not because Rumlow had ordered him to come back, or because Winter was being mistreated in New York, but of his own volition. He wanted to be here. He’d tracked Rumlow down. He’d taken him out of a shitty situation —

— which in and of itself was already more than what Rumlow had done for Winter —

“Why aren’t you angry with me?” Rumlow asked, and he hadn’t realized he was going to say it until he opened his mouth, but it felt like a good enough question.

Winter furrowed his eyebrows slightly. Rumlow sighed.

“Why don’t you hate me?” he said.

Winter almost rolled his eyes. Another thread of warmth teased its way between Rumlow’s legs. It probably could’ve been embarrassing, or something, but it felt fucking good. It had always come as a bit of a shock how good arousal felt around the asset.

“I just told you,” Winter said.

Rumlow made kind of a face, inasmuch as he was able to these days with his scars. “Right,” he said, “yeah, but that was testimony for the trial, and that was months ago, I just don’t get why — I mean, I never took you away. The… what the prosecutors said. It’s true, I didn’t — I left you with them. I could’ve helped you out and I just fucked you over for my own — ”

“It wasn’t perjury,” Winter said. “I wasn’t lying on the stand.” Their hands were still loosely clasped between them, and Rumlow felt Winter’s fingers flex along with the soft mechanical whirs of them. “I wouldn’t have defended you if you had been cruel to me, Commander.” He reached up with his right hand, then, and touched the side of Rumlow’s face. “You weren’t cruel to me.”

“But — ”

“I’m sitting on this couch with you ‘cause I want to be here,” Winter said. His thumb was stroking slowly over Rumlow’s scars, over the stubble which had grown erratically around the ruined skin. Rumlow wanted to lean into the touch and he wanted to close his eyes and he kind of wanted to cry a little bit. “I know it isn’t — conventional. But I don’t care. You never hurt me. I never wanted to forget who you were.” His eyes were shining. The sight of it made Rumlow’s chest tighten.

“No one else except Nat trusted that I know what I feel,” Winter said softly. “I need — ” He swallowed. He had a strangely familiar expression in his eyes, and it took Rumlow a long time to realize where he’d seen it before: it was the way he’d looked at him during post-mission prep after good missions, when he’d recognized Rumlow, when Rumlow hadn’t been another faceless horror. It was faintly pleading and desperate and aching for things that the asset hadn’t understood the source of or why he wanted/needed them —

— but Winter did. Or else he wouldn’t have come here. Or else he wouldn’t have risked his entire trial outcome to get here. His friendship with Steve, his already-fucked reputation —

“I need you in my corner,” Winter said. His voice was hoarse, a little broken at its edges. “Please, Commander, I — I just want — ”

His metal hand tightened in Rumlow’s; it still didn’t hurt, and maybe that was because of Rumlow’s dead nerves and maybe it was because Winter knew how to gentle his touch, but he felt the last of his resolve crash to the floor. He pushed deliberately into Winter’s hand on his face; he said,

“Win,”

and Winter made a rough, torn-open sound, and he leaned in a little, pulling Rumlow forward by the back of his head. Rumlow’s mouth was already falling open even before their lips touched, and he felt the soft catch of Winter’s skin — warm, a little dry — against his own. He slid his free hand up Winter’s right thigh and heard his breath catch in his throat; he pressed in harder, his own lips parting. Rumlow couldn’t remember the last time he’d kissed anyone — maybe the mid-nineties, maybe longer, when he was much younger and stupider, when he was still learning how to fake his way through sex in college and after. This was nothing like that, of course, because nothing he did with Winter was ever like anything else. He licked into Winter’s mouth, his tongue scraping his lower teeth, and Winter exhaled shakily, the sound ending in a whine. Rumlow could feel the tip of his nose brushing against his cheek and he squeezed down on Winter’s leg, using the leverage to drag himself forward a little more, sliding his hand up Winter’s side, feeling the heat of his skin through his shirt. The familiar curve of his ribs and the steady solid pounding of his heart.

Winter opened his mouth further. It felt like he was giving up a part of himself to Rumlow. An offering splayed out on some makeshift altar to a blood-hungry god, a god with nine arms and regenerating heads, and one of those heads had at last managed to chew off every other head until only it remained, and it could take its time with the sacrifice, maneuver it as it liked, lick over its body, over the sweat-soaked heaving chest, wrap one of its arms around its waist in support, holding it steady —

Warmth burst for a third time in his lower stomach, and he held onto it like a drowning man, biting Winter’s lower lip, eliciting another groan from his throat. He lifted his hand off Winter’s side and ran it up into his hair, tugging gently. Winter moaned, pressing helpfully and eagerly into it, and Rumlow kissed him and kissed him until his heart was threatening to burst from his ribs, until he had to draw away and press his face against the side of Winter’s neck, feeling overwhelmed, biting his own mouth to savor the taste —

— but the warmth was fading out, and went more rapidly the harder he clung to it, and he hid his embarrassment and frustration and anger neatly under the sheer, startling joy at having Winter where he fucking belonged, and kissed his neck, and then under his jaw, and then at last captured his mouth again, gentling his touch in Winter’s hair, soothing over his scalp as Winter let out a desperate, pleading sob.

--

It turned out that Rumlow wanted to kiss Winter a lot. Thankfully Winter was very much on board with this plan, and they settled into a routine like they were back in the field. Every morning, or nearly, Winter came over and they walked to Café du Monde together. Or if it was a bad day for Rumlow’s legs Winter picked the coffee up on his way. Either way generally before the sun rose — Winter slept about as much as Rumlow did — they ended up drinking coffee and eating beignets. Then they’d walk around for a while until Rumlow got tired, and then they’d go back to the house on Esplanade and make out like fucking teenagers. They went to a few stores as well, but Mardi Gras was a pretty constant looming presence and Rumlow didn’t really want to leave the house. Winter seemed happy with this arrangement as well, burrowing against Rumlow’s side on the couch, watching television, neither of them really talking, relaxing in the silence. It satisfied somewhat the raw burning ache which had been present in Rumlow’s chest now for nearly two years. He hadn’t realized how weighted down he was by his own anger and resignation until Winter slipped back into his life.

It turned out, too, that no amount of making out and touching could get Rumlow’s fucking broken dick back online. It was clear that Winter wanted it, and it was clearer still that he wasn’t going to push for anything — why would he — but Rumlow still felt fucking guilty and terrible every time they were pressed together on the couch and Winter made little desperate noises in his mouth and Rumlow had to ignore the hints and pretend he didn’t notice. I can’t, he’d said, the first time they’d spent the whole day together, when Winter’s hand started drifting further and further up Rumlow’s thigh. Winter had tilted his head and looked at him, evidently confused, but he hadn’t pressed. Rumlow wasn’t even sure why he couldn’t explain it; it wasn’t like he had anything to be ashamed of with Winter. It was Winter, for fuck’s sake. But he just — he couldn’t. He couldn’t, and he knew he could touch Winter, he knew he didn’t need to be hard himself for it to work. But he wanted —

— fuck. It was stupid. But he wanted to be able to have sex with Winter properly. Not like Pierce had demanded. He wanted to be able to get off with him, on him, in him; he wanted Winter to suck him off like he’d dreamed of for years, and he wanted to take them both in his hand at once and stroke, and he wanted to get Winter in his lap and thrust up into him until Winter was fucking wrecked and sobbing in his arms. He wanted to touch Winter like he always had, yes, but he also wanted Winter to know — to see — This is what you do to me. What you’ve always done to me. You didn’t fight for a year and a half to get here for nothing. I would have killed Pierce for you and I’m sorry I didn’t get you out sooner, but you still want me for whatever reason and it’s the same for me. I want you. I’ve always wanted you. So fucking badly.

Sometimes Winter stayed over, because the parades were rolling now and it was hard to get back to his hotel after a certain point in the evening. They’d lay in bed or on the couch and Winter would doze off against Rumlow’s chest, metal hand gently curved around Rumlow’s wrist, and Rumlow would stroke his hair and stare at the ceiling, listening to the faint shouts and music drifting over from Decatur or Bourbon, and he’d think of the terrible irony that Pierce had lost in so many ways —

— but he’d found a way to wedge himself back in and gain another victory, anyway.

Chapter Text

2005

The asset is in Secretary Pierce’s office holding still and not touching himself. The Commander has gotten him hard and he stands with his cock dripping and wet at its tip. Normally he is permitted to hold himself but ever since Agent Karpov’s rule was installed, the Secretary prefers him to keep his hands at his sides. It’s one of the things he remembers across missions because of how the Secretary has reminded him.

“Do you know what I want to give you, soldat?”

The asset swallows. Tests are often started with confusing questions. The Secretary has reminded him many times over the years that he (the asset) is not good at guessing things, because he lacks critical thinking skills. He hesitates; if he doesn’t answer, the Secretary might get angry. But if he answers wrong, he also risks that anger.

The Secretary watches him, not-quite smiling. “I asked you a question,” he says. Soft.

The asset bites his lip. The scenario is familiar; it’s one he’s gone through a thousand times, though he doesn’t remember most of them. Judging from the Secretary’s expression, and the asset’s nudity, and the Commander having done prep —

“You want to make me orgasm, sir,” the asset says, pulling hard on the end of the sentence so it won’t flip upwards into a question.

The Secretary does smile then. “Good job,” he says, and the asset leans into the praise. He soaks it in. It trails warmth down the sides of his skull. “My smart, smart boy,” the Secretary says, and the asset actually smiles. He flicks his eyes up to meet the Secretary’s — eye contact is permitted during recreational use — but the Secretary does not immediately move to use the asset for pleasure. Instead, after six seconds, he says,

“Do you want to play a game?”

“Yes, sir,” the asset says automatically, but the Secretary has already turned from him and walked to the door. He opens it and says something into the hall, and then Agent Rollins and Agent Sitwell are walking in. This is not standard protocol — normally the Secretary wants the asset to himself first — but Agent Rollins and Agent Sitwell are both also very fond of playing games with the asset, and anyway, it isn’t the asset’s place to express confusion. If the Secretary wishes to do things differently this time, that is his prerogative. The asset may be remembering things wrongly, anyway.

“I’d like Agent Rollins and Agent Sitwell to see what a good boy you can be for me,” the Secretary is saying, walking back to stand beside the asset and sliding his arm across his shoulders. This, too, is not the same as when the Commander does it. But the asset leans into it anyway. His cock twitches a little, and he sees Agent Rollins track the movement with his eyes.

“You want to be a good boy for me, don’t you,” the Secretary says, and the asset nods:

“Yes, sir.”

Agent Rollins’ and Agent Sitwell’s mouths twitch as though they are amused.

The Secretary puts his other hand on the asset’s cock. He tightens his grip on his shoulders a little bit. The asset does not make any noise. He does not roll his hips up into the Secretary’s hand. The Secretary has different rules than the Commander about recreational use, and the asset has misremembered them in the past. But he’s gotten better recently

(when?)

and he doesn’t slip up now, even with Agent Rollins and Agent Sitwell there. He stands there as still as he’s been from the beginning, and he waits.

The Secretary says, “Status report, soldat.”

“Functional,” the asset says. “Ready to comply,” and the phrase ends a little shakily as the Secretary strokes his hand down. The Secretary smiles at him.

“I’d like to test your obedience, soldat,” he says. “From this moment, until I say otherwise, you are not to come. This will prove to Agent Rollins and Agent Sitwell what a good boy you can be for me. Do you understand?”

The Secretary had told him he wanted to make him orgasm. What the Secretary is saying now does not deviate from that original statement.

Conclusion: The Secretary will take care of him. This session will be no different.

The asset nods his assent, and the Secretary leans in and kisses his cheek. “Good,” he says, and squeezes the base of his cock again before removing his hand. He steps back, and the asset waits for instructions.

Instead, the Secretary says to Agent Rollins, “Well? Get on with it. I’ve got to pick my wife up from JFK at six.”

“You didn’t say you were busy — ”

“I didn’t realize I had to share the intimate details of my private calendar with you, Agent,” the Secretary says, and the asset sees Agent Rollins’ nostrils flare. But he doesn’t say anything else. He just sheds his jacket, and then he walks forward. He tucks some of the asset’s hair behind his ear.

Then he goes down on his knees and takes the asset into his mouth.

The asset doesn’t mean to make a noise, but he can’t hold back the surprised shout. Agent Rollins smiles around his cock, sliding up to take him deeper in his throat. The asset is leaning back against the Secretary’s desk and trying not to move or say or do anything but Agent Rollins’ throat is hot and wet and so, so tight. The asset can already feel himself on the brink of climax and the Secretary said not to come without permission, the Secretary hasn’t given permission but oh, oh —

His cock jerks in Agent Rollins’ mouth and he tries so hard to hold it back but he comes shooting down his throat, toes curling on the floor, gasping, nose and eyes sharp with tears. Agent Rollins slides off his cock as he’s still coming. He spits semen on the asset’s foot. When he straightens up he looks annoyed.

“You stupid fuck,” he says, and tugs, hard, on the same hair he’d tucked behind the asset’s ear. “The Secretary didn’t fucking tell you to — ”

“I can discipline my own weapon,” the Secretary says, and the asset flinches involuntarily. His voice is so close to his ear. As Agent Rollins moves back the Secretary steps in front of the asset. He’s not smiling anymore. He slaps him so hard the asset’s ear starts ringing.

“What did I tell you, soldat? What were the rules for this mission?”

The asset is trembling all over. He can feel Agent Rollins’ spit cooling on his skin. “To — to not come without your permission, sir.”

“Uh-huh. And so I’m wondering when the hell I gave you permission to come, because I certainly don’t remember saying anything.”

He’s not allowed to cry. He won’t cry. He is a weapon, a good one, sometimes, when he hasn’t messed up. He is only here to do his handlers’ bidding. He is only here to satisfy the needs of the men in charge of him.

“I asked you a fucking question,” the Secretary says, and slaps the asset again.

The asset looks at the floor. “You didn’t give permission, sir,” he says.

“So you disobeyed me,” the Secretary says. The asset flinches again; he can’t help it, even when it makes the Secretary’s hand land on his shoulders, digging the blunt edges of his nails in.

“Yes, sir,” the asset whispers.

“I thought you wanted to show the agents what a good boy you can be for me.” The Secretary sighs; he looks at his watch. “If you don’t think you’re capable, though — ”

“I am,” the asset blurts. Interrupting is not allowed except occasionally during recreation. It is used as part of the more complicated tests the Secretary likes to give him. “I want to, I c- I can, I want to be good.”

“You want to?” the Secretary repeats. “Or you can?”

“I can,” the asset says, and his voice catches hard in his throat. “I can be good, Secretary. I can be good.”

The Secretary sighs again. He looks over his shoulder at Agent Sitwell and Agent Rollins. Then back to the asset.

“I want to believe you, sweetie,” he says. “But you’ve already disobeyed me once.”

“I won’t anymore,” the asset says. He’s aware he’s almost whining, which the Secretary has punished him for in the past, because it’s irritating and childish and the asset isn’t a child, is he, but if he’s going to act like a child then perhaps the Secretary should spank him like one — “I won’t I promise Secretary please I can be good please let me show you please — ”

The Secretary squeezes his shoulder. His eyes are almost kind again. “All right,” he says, gently. “All right, my little soldat. One more chance.” He strokes the asset into hardness again — the Commander never needs to re-prime the asset once he’s reached climax — and then steps back. “Remember,” he says, “you don’t come unless I say.”

The asset nods, frantically. He won’t come. He will be good. He will be so, so —

Agent Sitwell approaches him, folds down onto his knees. “Do you think I should take off my glasses?” he asks Agent Rollins. “‘cause last time I feel like they got in the way — ”

“Is that really, seriously what you’re prioritizing right now?” Agent Rollins asks, scoffing. “C’mon, Jas, if you’re not gonna fuckin’ use him let the big boys have another turn — ”

“Fuck off,” Agent Sitwell grumbles. He does not remove his glasses, but he does wrap his mouth around the asset’s cock. He is not as good at sucking as Agent Rollins, but it still has the same effect. The asset holds off as long as he can, but then Agent Sitwell flicks his tongue against his slit and the asset whines and braces his hips and tries and tries and fails and comes. Some of it lands on Agent Sitwell’s glasses because he pulls off while it’s still happening and Agent Sitwell makes a noise, outraged. Agent Rollins bursts out laughing behind him.

“Fuck, man, I shoulda told you to take ‘em off after all, huh — ”

The Secretary hits the asset with his closed fist this time, and the asset stumbles from the force of the blow. He can’t catch himself in time and goes down hard on the floor. Tears have sprung unbidden to his eyes. Now all three of them are standing over him and he draws his knees up closer to his chest, wrapping both arms around them. He’s shaking all over. He’s failed the mission twice. He is not a good boy.

“You’ve embarrassed me,” the Secretary says coldly. “Imagine how I feel right now, after I told Agent Rollins and Agent Sitwell how good you could be for me, and you’ve just made me out to be a liar.”

“No,” the asset sobs; he shouldn’t be crying it’ll make it worse but he can’t help it, he can’t stop the sharp hitches in his chest any more than he could stop his orgasms from barreling down his spine, “no, Secretary, I’m s- I’m sorr— ”

“‘No’?” the Secretary repeats, softly. “Are you telling me I’ve made a mistake, soldat?”

The asset’s eyes widen. “N- I mean — ” He’s stumbling over his words, confused. If he says ‘no’ he risks further punishment, but it is the answer. “You aren’t wrong,” he settles on, finally, struggling to push himself up on his elbow. “You aren’t wrong, Secretary — ” He’s staring at the Secretary’s crotch; at Agent Rollins’ and Agent Sitwell’s crotches. He can take care of them one after the other without pausing and he won’t come and he’ll be a good —

“Don’t lie to me,” the Secretary snaps, “you rude little shit,” and he kicks the asset in the ribs. The pain explodes outwards and he doubles up, gasping for air. Then the Secretary’s hand is in his hair, and he’s hauling the asset’s face up to his, hitting him once on the mouth, once on the nose. He’s stepping back, saying, “Get him on his feet,” and Agent Rollins and Agent Sitwell move forward and grab the asset’s shoulders, hauling him up. His ribs ache and he’s dizzy from the repeated blows to his head and from crying. Agent Rollins and Agent Sitwell are holding him upright between them and Agent Rollins hisses,

“Boy, you’re fuckin’ in for it now,”

and the asset knows he shouldn’t move or speak without permission, especially not now when he’s already done so much wrong, but he can’t help squirming in the dual tight grip, staring at the Secretary as he goes to his desk and opens a drawer at the bottom, begging,

“Please please please please please — ” and then he sees what the Secretary is pulling out and his whole body stiffens. He doesn’t want this at all it’s going to hurt it’s going to hurt so much and he doesn’t want it, he’s already going to the chair soon he doesn’t want it he doesn’t want it no no no no no no —

The Secretary walks back over to where the asset is balanced between Agent Rollins and Agent Sitwell, and he says, “Maybe this will teach you better than I can, since you’re obviously not up for following instructions today,” and he powers up his stun baton, and strikes it against the asset’s bruised ribs.

The asset’s body tries to twist away from the pain but Agent Rollins tightens his grip and holds him firm so he can’t. Agent Sitwell braces his shoulder from the other side and says, “Fuck, how much does he weigh?” and the asset is sobbing, keening, and the Secretary is lifting the baton and hitting the asset with it again and again, his ribs, his stomach, the insides of his thighs, his chest. The asset has never been able to tell which hurts worse: the machine or the batons, but he’s writhing to get away from this, this blistering pain, the heat, the overpowering awful stench of burning flesh, the terrible jagged sparks beneath his skin everywhere it makes contact. He can feel his mind trying to pull him away, odd thoughts completely removed from the situation popping up in his head: had he done well in the field? Perhaps he should have used a throwing knife instead of a gun; he’ll have to try really, really hard to remember for next time so he can tell the Commander —

Agent Rollins’ hand is sliding down his chest, down his trembling stomach. He’s managing somehow to hold the asset up and get his hand around him at the same time, and now Pierce isn’t striking him with the baton, he’s standing there with it in his hand, nostrils flared, eyes on Agent Rollins’ hand on the asset’s cock. The baton is humming and alive and Agent Rollins is stroking the asset, dragging the edge of his thumbnail up the underside of his cock, and the asset whines, he can’t pull away, they’re holding him too hard, and he’s not allowed to refuse this, he can’t refuse this, his body is betraying him, he can’t come, the Secretary hasn’t said, it’s building up between his legs no no no no no no please no he’s sobbing teeth gritted straining to hold it back and Agent Rollins strokes him harder and drags the leather of his tac glove over the asset and it’s too much, it’s too much, his body is hot and strung up on wires and he’s coming almost before he realizes it’s happening.

His hips jerk in Agent Rollins’ hand and the Secretary snarls something the asset doesn’t even hear through the horrible buzzing in his head and the stun baton is back on him, on his stomach, just above the head of his cock where it’s starting to soften. The feeling radiates over him through him in him thousands of hot rabid ants crawling crawling crawling under his skin the electricity jolting in his blood in his bones. He’s sobbing keening please please please I’ll do anything please and the Secretary strikes him with the baton on his upper thigh, just missing his cock, and he tries to collapse but they’re holding him up and his toes are curling on the carpet and he wants the Commander the Commander will fix it the —

Finally, the Secretary shuts the baton off. He’s breathing hard; they all are. The asset can also see he’s hard in his suit trousers. He knows exactly what he’s supposed to do with that; he’s seen it so many times it breaks through the memory wipes. He wonders if the Secretary will forgive him if he does that part of it correctly.

“Can you behave now, soldat?” the Secretary asks, and the asset opens his mouth to say yes and finds his throat won’t work, so he settles for nodding. It’s good enough for the Secretary, because he nods too, and tells Agent Rollins and Agent Sitwell they can leave.

“Sorry for the mistakes, gentlemen,” he says as he walks them to the office door. “Better luck next time, hmm?”

Agent Rollins looks amused again. “Sure, Secretary,” he says, and the asset sees the Secretary’s mouth twitch as he shuts the door behind them. He turns the deadbolt. He walks to his cassone and takes from its top a bottle of whiskey and a glass. He pours himself a drink. After a long time he looks over at the asset. His features have softened marginally.

“I really got you good, huh,” he says, in that soft tender voice the asset craves, because it means the Secretary isn’t angry. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I just had to punish you; you disobeyed, and disobedience can only be dealt with in one way. What do we always say here about creating and maintaining order?”

The asset doesn’t know. He’s having a little trouble holding himself upright. But the Secretary doesn’t seem to mind that he can’t answer. He just finishes his drink, and then he walks over to the asset. He wraps his arm around his shoulders again and eases him to the floor. He brushes his hair off his forehead where it’s been sticking with sweat to the skin. He kisses the asset’s ear.

“We say, ‘Order comes through pain,’” the Secretary says. “So you’ve done very, very well for me today, my little soldat. You can only become more obedient from here. All right?”

“Yes, sir,” the asset says. This earns him another kiss to his ear, and then the Secretary is walking into his secret room where he keeps first aid things for these sessions. He takes out a rag and some disinfectant and he cleans the asset up. He’s very gentle in his ministrations, and very slow. The asset sort of remembers him saying he had somewhere to be by six, but the clock only says three now, so perhaps it’s all right. He sits on the floor and the Secretary rubs at his wounds and murmurs softly to him, kissing his ear and his flesh shoulder again and again, and by four the asset’s advanced healing combined with the Secretary’s tender care has wiped away the worst of the hurts. He’s able to stand without trembling or feeling that awful ache in his side, and his face isn’t sore anymore, so he welcomes the kiss when it comes. The Secretary tells him he’s sorry again as he kisses him. He says he’s sorry he had to hurt the asset as his hand drifts lower and lower, over the faintly stinging cuts on his chest and stomach.

“Oh, how I hate to do that to you,” the Secretary murmurs, wrapping his hand around the asset, stroking slowly, root to tip. In spite of the residual flares of pain the asset finds himself twitching into the Secretary’s hand. His hips move up without his meaning them to, but the Secretary doesn’t say anything. He just kisses the asset’s ear again, and then his cheek, and then his shoulder. He’s stroking slowly, so slowly, and the light pressure is driving the asset crazy, making him whine, and how could the Secretary be the one who hurt him, the Secretary loves him so much, he’s doing this for him, the asset must have been very, very bad to make the Secretary hurt him, but the Secretary is making it okay now, the Secretary is, the Secretary is —

He feels a familiar sensation blossoming in his lower stomach and he whimpers, tensing. He’s not supposed to come without permission. He’s not supposed to come without the Secretary’s permission, but the Secretary is making soothing noises into his ear, still stroking his hair with his other hand:

“That’s all right, sweetie,” he says, “it’s okay now. You let go. Come for me. You’re gonna be such a good boy for me from now on, aren’t you,”

and the asset bucks his hips up, gasping yes, yes, yes, as he comes into the Secretary’s hand.

--

Three minutes later, they’re both leaning against the Secretary’s desk. The Secretary is rubbing the asset’s flesh arm. The aches in his body have dulled even further. The space between his legs is warm, and it aches, too, but much more pleasantly.

“See how good I make you feel, soldat?” the Secretary says.

“Yes, sir.”

“So now do you understand why I have to beat you when it happens too quickly?”

The asset hesitates. It feels like a test question, but the Secretary’s voice is still so soft. “Punishment?” he guesses, remembering the Secretary mentioning it earlier.

The Secretary smiles at him. “Because I want to be the only one who ever gets to make you feel like that. It makes me so sad when I don't get to give you that gift.”

Oh. The asset smiles too, pressing his body more into the Secretary’s hand. “Yes, sir.”

The Secretary lifts his hand; touches the asset on his cheek. The asset closes his eyes, momentarily. The Secretary’s hands are so gentle. Why would he have hurt him? There was a good reason. The Secretary would never hurt him without a good, good reason.

“It’s polite, though, to give something in return,” the Secretary says, and the asset looks up at him. He’s still smiling; his hand is still gentle, and the asset won’t give him any reason to change that. He can be good. He can be good.

“I think I deserve a very nice gift after all the hard work I’ve done for you today,” the Secretary says. “Don’t you agree, soldat?”

This is an easy question. The asset knows there is only one right answer, and it doesn’t even have to be verbalized. He smiles at the Secretary, folds himself down on his knees. The Secretary’s hand stays in his hair, guiding him down, until the asset is eye level with his cock. He’s still hard, and the asset bumps his nose against him as he goes in to unzip his trousers with his teeth. He crosses his hands behind his back as the Secretary’s other hand comes up to work open the snaps on his boxer shorts. He draws himself out, bumping the head (slick with precome) against the asset’s lower lip. The asset looks up at him through his eyelashes. Waiting.

“Go ahead,” the Secretary says, and the asset leans in, folding his lips over his teeth, and swallows the Secretary down.

--

February 2016

Rumlow was a light sleeper anyway, but the wail that woke him was sharp and keening and scared him out of his fucking mind. He jolted upright, whole body tensing, adrenaline heart breath racing all in tandem as the room warped around him in the surreal dizzying lurch of half-consciousness. He was halfway off the bed before he realized the thing that was blocking him from the edge of the mattress wasn’t a pillow or a bunched-up sheet or whatever the fuck his still-dreaming mind was trying to convince him. It was a person, and the person was Winter. It was Winter who had made the horrible noise and he was lying there now, whimpering and curled in on himself.

They’d been in the front of the house watching the Food Network and kind of lazily making out, and then Winter had stretched and yawned and pushed his head under Rumlow’s chin, and Rumlow pressed a kiss into his hair and slipped an arm around his shoulders. Maybe ten minutes later Winter’s body grew exponentially heavier as he started falling asleep and Rumlow had to nudge him awake and through his nighttime rituals before leading him into the bedroom. Lately Winter had taken to staying over even when there weren’t parades at night. The bed was bigger than the couch and Rumlow’s back hurt when he slept in the front too many nights anyway. It was logical they migrate to his room —

— hell, it was just something they both wanted fucking desperately, and now there was no one around to tell them no, and they were going to take it. There wasn’t any reason to deny that part of it to himself. Rumlow liked waking up with Winter right next to him and how sometimes Winter’s metal arm was slung across his ribs, even though it was a little heavy, and how other times he woke wrapped around Winter, and that Winter trusted him enough —

— in any case, they’d been doing it for about two weeks. Rumlow had kind of started to relax marginally, thinking, stupidly, that somehow his presence was keeping Winter from having nightmares, or else that Winter had no nightmares at all — what a fucking retarded assumption —

Winter whined again, a choked-off little sobbing noise. Rumlow reached out and stroked one finger slowly down his flesh arm. “Hey,” he said, quietly, but Winter didn’t hear him, so he said it again, and then, a little more firmly:

“Soldat,”

and Winter came awake all at once. He bolted upright the way Rumlow had, chest heaving, eyes wide and frantic as he looked around in the dark. His hands were clenching around the sheets and he was soaked in sweat. When he caught sight of Rumlow there was perhaps half a second where he clearly didn’t recognize him, and Rumlow wasn’t sure what he would do if Winter attacked, but then the fog passed from his eyes and he gasped out,

“Komandir,”

and flung himself into Rumlow’s arms. He was clinging to him, shaking all over, violently. He’d gotten a fistful of Rumlow’s shirt in his metal hand and Rumlow mentally said goodbye to the shirt before wrapping his own arm around Winter’s shoulders. Winter tensed for a second, then pushed even harder against him, as though he could bury himself inside Rumlow, reach inside his ribs and rearrange the organs to make space for himself. As though he’d have to try and fit into a place that had been carved out for him years ago.

“Okay,” Rumlow said after a while, stroking Winter’s back, feeling clumsy and incompetent. He had no idea what the fuck to do; Winter was still crying into his shirt, curled against him as tightly as he could get. He’d gotten his feet over Rumlow’s legs and was halfway in his lap, and it probably should have hurt but Winter was holding his weight off Rumlow. Even in this fractured state he was aware of what he was doing enough not to hurt him. The thought made him feel cavernous, infinitely present. He didn’t deserve a single fraction of this trust Winter had in him but he had all of it, held its fragile tender self in his hands, and he’d kill anything or anyone that attempted to ruin that.

“Okay,” he said again, more softly. His mouth was brushing Winter’s hair and it was easy to kiss the top of his head, and then his temple. “You’re okay.”

Winter shivered. His arm recalibrated, gears shifting against Rumlow’s shirt.

“Do you know what else you need?” Rumlow asked. “I can go get — ”

The metal hand clenched impossibly tighter. Rumlow heard the fabric rip. “Stay,” Winter said, voice broken in half, and how the hell was Rumlow supposed to respond to that except to pull him closer, maintaining the metronome-steady rubbing of his back, feeling the ribs expand beneath his palm. He could feel Winter trying to push his face further down and he shifted a little, tilting his chin up, offering more space. Winter slid down just slightly, so that he could relax more of his weight into the mattress, allowing his head to rest just over the hollow of Rumlow’s throat, over his pulse.

“Stay,” Winter whispered again, and Rumlow squeezed his shoulder. He kissed his temple again, and then the bone just above his eye.

“Not goin’ anywhere,” he murmured, and Winter let out a tiny, damp sigh into Rumlow’s skin.

--

Eventually he coaxed Winter into lying down again with him. Winter wrapped around him, burrowing his face into his neck. Gradually his breathing began to even out, coming in steady shuddering gasps as his metal hand slowly relaxed its death grip against Rumlow’s shirt. At last Winter lay a heavy, boneless, overwarm weight against him, arm softly recalibrating in the dark. Rumlow didn’t think he’d be able to go back to sleep —

— it was already past four, and Winter was kind of crushing him into the mattress —

— but he closed his eyes and eventually drifted, half-dreaming, half-aware he was still in bed. His brain supplied him with various tantalizing, borderline-cruel images of how he should have been able to comfort Winter: taking him in his hand, grinding against him on the rumpled sheets. Telling Winter to go down on him as a distraction, get your mouth full, and he could see the tiny eye roll at the bad porn dialogue, but he could hear the laugh Winter would huff out, too, and fuck, it would feel good to know he’d made Winter smile, gotten his mind off — whatever the hell he’d dreamed about. He could feel his dream-self getting hard, every part of him functioning as it was supposed to, and it felt like being punched in the fucking throat every time he’d briefly come into consciousness and feel the limp weight of his dick between his legs.

He woke again fully some hours later to the cool empty other side of the bed. Outside the sky was slate gray, heavy with rain. Rumlow stretched his fingers, feeling out the situation, testing what kind of day it would be. The pain was manageable enough, and even if it hadn’t been he still needed to get up and see if Winter wanted to talk about — whatever the hell had gone wrong in the night.

He swung his legs carefully over the side of the mattress and slid his feet into his slippers. The whole house was dark with the oncoming storm. As he shuffled down the hall he felt the wet electric charge in the air seeping through the walls, the way the pressure of it condensed around him and into his skin. It forced his mouth open and his jaw cracked on a yawn as he rounded the corner of the den.

Winter wasn’t sitting on the couch. Rumlow had a half second of visceral panic before he looked up and saw the front door open a crack. Outside he could hear the soft rush of wind in the dead trees. The sharp sweet smell of rain pushing through his fucked nose as he walked to the door and pulled it open further. Winter was sitting on the steps, still shirtless, in his soft flannel pajama pants, arms draped over his knees. The rush of relief was dizzying. Rumlow let it carry him over the threshold, though he made sure to clear his throat so Winter wouldn’t be startled.

“‘s gonna storm,” Rumlow said quietly, walking until he was at Winter's back. He could have touched him from where he was — his hair was almost directly under Rumlow’s hand. Instead he looked at the twisted scars radiating out from beneath where the metal was fused to the skin. The lines were knotted and white with age. Not for the first time Rumlow wondered what exactly had been done to attach the arm, what the internal mechanisms of it looked like, how Winter’s muscles and nerves responded to it and made it move like a regular arm.

Winter didn’t say anything, just sat staring out over Esplanade. Rumlow thought perhaps he was so in his head he hadn’t heard, or else that something in the pre-storm atmosphere was distracting him, but after a few seconds he shifted over a little on the step. Rumlow moved slowly — in part because his legs wouldn’t allow for anything else, in part because he wasn’t sure he was interpreting the movement correctly — but as he lowered himself he saw Winter’s muscles untense themselves, and then there was two hundred pounds of tired serum-enhanced soldier leaning against him. Winter’s head on Rumlow’s shoulder, the metal arm pressed tightly against Rumlow’s so that the grooves dug a little into his skin, over the rough scarred patches. Gently Rumlow dislodged his right arm so as to hook it around Winter’s shoulders, then draped the left over his own knees. They sat like that, staring out at the surreal glow of the streetlights against the heavy dark clouds, the branches moving in the wind. The still-strong smell of the gathering rain. Winter’s toes were bare, pressing gently against Rumlow’s slipper.

It was so different, Rumlow thought, from where he’d been this same time last year. It was like nothing he could’ve ever imagined. He remembered the crushing loneliness and the fear and the anger and how every morning had been a risk just to unlock his door and walk out because someone might be there waiting to put a bullet in his skull. And now he could sit openly on his own fucking front porch, half-asleep, not worried about anything, with Winter beside him, the fucking asset, who he thought he’d never see again, never lay eyes or hands on again —

He turned to press his lips to Winter’s ear, and then — he couldn’t help himself — he shifted lower so he could kiss his jaw, and then his neck. Winter exhaled softly, tilting his head to allow Rumlow easier access —

— the gesture looping in on itself back and back and back through the last two decades, every time Winter had trusted him and bared his throat, every second he’d spent in those rooms with the vulnerable heartbeat beneath his palm and tried not to think of how he had no fucking idea what he was doing, fumbling blind in the dark, and the staggering overwhelming massive surges of Feelings that would hit him all at once, sometimes, when he looked at the asset and saw the way he just stood there with his eyes shut, mouth open, allowing it, liking it —

— and Rumlow tugged his arm slightly off Winter’s shoulders so he could tuck his hair behind his ear, pushing it out of the way as he kissed the skin, the warm racing heartbeat beneath the sharp jawline and the night’s growth of stubble, and —

— yes, yes, yes, there, his mouth finding it, the secret place below his ear, on his throat, and Rumlow’s nostrils were fucked and his sense of touch wasn’t always the best but there was no mistaking the strange vulnerable softness there, nor the smell, the same smell as it had always been, buried eternally beneath the skin, saltwater and vanilla.

The storm crashed overhead nearly in tandem with the soft broken sound Winter made as Rumlow kissed him. The metal arm moved up from where it was caught between them so the hand could rest on Rumlow’s knee. He pressed the cool thumb against the round of bone there, tilting his head further. Rumlow scratched his nails slowly along the back of his neck —

— fuck, how many times had he done this, how long had it fucking been since he’d last done it —

— and

(the asset)

Winter made another nearly-inaudible noise, fingers flexing against Rumlow’s leg. Rain was hitting the pavement and Rumlow felt a few drops splash against his ankles. He could feel the electricity in the air, and the heavy damp of the clouds, and the way it sparked between them, too, as he kissed Winter’s neck, and Winter sighed and shifted his hand, toes curling against the cypress wood, against Rumlow’s feet —

He brushed his nose against Winter’s neck, kissed him one more time in his hairline, and drew back, not far, but enough he could fucking think. Winter’s cheeks and his mouth were flushed red as though he’d been biting his lips. Rumlow lifted his hand off his own left knee and passed his thumb slowly along Winter’s lower lip. His mouth fell open at the touch and he made a shocked low sound.

“Commander,” he said, softly.

The storm was picking up energy. Rumlow could hear the rain gathering in the sewers, the hollow haunted rush of it as it made its way down into the earth. “Let’s go inside,” he said, and Winter nodded instantly. He didn’t move until Rumlow did, though, and Rumlow felt something overheated, approving, and possessive clench in his stomach.

--

In the kitchen Rumlow paused to make a quick breakfast shake for Winter. As he stood cutting the bananas up to fit inside the blender, Winter wrapped around him from behind, ducking his face almost shyly against Rumlow’s back. Rumlow could feel the warmth of his bare chest, and his stomach did another slow appreciative roll. Winter rubbed his nose against Rumlow’s shirt, and Rumlow squeezed his flesh wrist where it had come to rest on his hip.

He sprinkled cinnamon and added milk, ice, and vanilla to the shake, then closed the blender and turned it on. They watched it process the food together, Winter’s chin now on Rumlow’s shoulder. When it was nearly done Rumlow said,

“You doin’ okay now?”

and Winter nodded, dropping his face to press a kiss to the join of Rumlow’s shoulder and neck. “Luchshe s toboy,” he mumbled, voice hoarse and soft, and Rumlow squeezed his wrist again before lifting his hand to shut the blender off.

“I’m gonna assume you didn’t just say actually fuck you,” he said, and Winter huffed against his neck.

“Said it’s better with you,” he murmured, and Rumlow swallowed, hands stilling where he’d been about to pour the shake into a glass. The same cavernous possessive feeling from earlier that morning was swelling up in his chest. I don’t deserve this, he thought, I don’t deserve any of it, but he was pressing back into Winter, unable to help himself, unable to care — if this made him selfish, so be it, let him be selfish. Hell, not like he hadn’t already been selfish with Winter his whole life, saying and doing whatever he could to keep his weapon at his side, in his arms… In any case, he thought, wry twist to his mouth as he poured the drink and turned to hand it to Winter, it wasn’t exactly like Winter was complaining. The little smile on his face as he took the shake and swallowed it down —

“Blagodarnost’, Komandir — ”

— was so fucking far from the manipulation tactics he’d used on Steve. It was clear Winter knew where he wanted to be and where he didn’t, and it was clear he was where he wanted to be now, standing in Rumlow’s kitchen in New Orleans while rain pelted the windows, little pale milk mustache on his upper lip. Rumlow reached out with his thumb to wipe it off. Winter’s tongue came out to touch Rumlow’s finger. The look in his eyes — deliberate, focused — was enough to knock Rumlow off balance, catch him across the back of the head like a blow. Winter’s metal arm was lightly caging Rumlow in against the sink and he didn’t at all resemble the frantic frightened version of himself Rumlow had held not five hours ago in an imperfect, desperate attempt to calm him down. He looked closer to the lucid versions of the asset Rumlow had seen on good missions. The asset Rumlow had sat with on the rooftop in Poland.

Rumlow reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind Winter’s ear, and Winter went totally still beneath his hand. He pressed into the touch, exhaling shakily. He leaned in to set the half-finished drink on the counter and from there it was natural for Rumlow to lean himself and capture Winter’s mouth in a kiss. His thumb was still resting lightly on Winter’s lip and he moved it enough to make room for his own mouth, but he felt Winter’s lips part around his thumb, felt the wet heat against his dry skin, and he shivered, full body, curving his hand more firmly around Winter’s jaw, holding him steady. His heart was definitely racing now where it was trapped between them. He felt like he was skidding out of control on a patch of black ice. He felt like he was falling into the sun.

They ended up stretched together on the bed with the rain pounding against the roof like gunfire in a war film. Thunder vibrated through the walls and the floor. They were laying side by side, Winter’s metal arm braced against the mattress, flesh hand on Rumlow’s left hip. He hadn’t allowed any time to pass wherein they weren’t touching at some part of themselves; Rumlow thought he was still trying to dislodge whatever his dream had been, and it was another cavernous shocking feeling to understand Winter trusted him enough to try and seek comfort with him. Rumlow had his hand on Winter’s ribs; he was stroking the skin with his thumb. He could feel the flesh beneath his hand break out in goose bumps despite its warmth, and the way Winter kept shivering under his touch. He was making soft desperate noises into Rumlow’s mouth and Rumlow shifted, trying to push closer. His hip twinged and he growled frustratedly, sinking his teeth into Winter’s lower lip as he braced against the pain. He wasn’t thinking about what he was doing until Winter gasped into his mouth. Rumlow started to pull back, to press an apologetic kiss to the sore bitten place, but Winter tensed his fingers against Rumlow’s hip, holding him in place. He hooked his leg over Rumlow’s.

Rumlow stilled momentarily. He drew back slightly so he could see Winter’s face: the overblown pupils, the ocean glass irises darkened to storm gray. His mouth was bright red and swollen and Rumlow lifted his hand off his ribs so he could touch it, just there, just in the place where it was still fever-hot and damp from his own teeth. Winter made a broken pleading noise, shifting his crotch against Rumlow’s tensed thigh. His face was flushed and he was trembling all over and the last of Rumlow’s resolve broke in half. He pushed at Winter’s flesh shoulder:

“Down, soldat,”

and Winter fell back against the mattress like he’d been shot. He bent his knees, spread his legs. Rumlow had to take a second to breathe, staring down at him, his heaving sweat-slick chest and his whole body open and waiting for Rumlow, ready, eager —

He slid his hand down Winter’s chest, slowly, thumb skating over the nipple, drawing an electric shock sound from his throat, tiny and caught between them. As his hand lowered Winter’s breathing sped up, his hips arching helpfully towards Rumlow, eyes skittering over Rumlow’s face again and again as though he had no idea where to keep them. He lifted his hand tentatively — their wrists touched — and when Rumlow nodded at him he placed it on his thigh. Rumlow couldn’t feel the skin there anymore but the sensation shocked through him anyway, and as his own hand slipped below Winter’s waistband he leaned in for another kiss. He pushed Winter’s pants down a little, sliding his hand through his pubes. He hadn’t touched him in so fucking long but it was still so familiar, the soft wiry hair and the weight of his cock. Winter gasped into his mouth as Rumlow’s hand closed around him and he pushed up into the touch, mouth going slack against Rumlow’s, panting out shocked little hurt noises. Rumlow barely had to stroke down and he felt him twitching into his hand. He was just as fucking responsive as he’d been. It was the exact fucking same.

Rumlow kissed a line down Winter’s jaw, down his neck, over the racing pulse in his throat. He pressed his tongue to the searing hot skin there, scraping his teeth over it, and then up to the familiar spot, saltwater and vanilla. The asset — Winter moaned, breathing unsteadily, growing harder in Rumlow’s palm, hand tensing on his leg. Rumlow could hear the metal hand tightening in the bedsheets, the soft recalibrations of it. He would probably have to replace the sheets because the hand was going to tear them and he didn’t give a fuck. He didn’t give a fuck about anything —

— except getting Winter to roll over onto his flesh arm. The metal hand, dislodged from its place between them, came to rest on Rumlow’s ass, holding him steady as Winter grinded back against him (this was going to become a problem, fuck, and more so because Rumlow still didn’t fucking care). The new angle gave Rumlow’s arm better purchase against Winter’s side, and he was able to jerk him in long, rough strokes, remembering the exact way Winter liked to be touched, as though they’d just done this yesterday —

— flicking his thumbnail over the slit and using his precome to slick his way back up, Winter already fully hard just from this. He had his face pressed into Rumlow’s arm and Rumlow could feel where his teeth were scraping his skin. He was holding Rumlow against him messily pushing his ass against Rumlow’s crotch, panting damply into his skin. The metal hand was going to bruise and Rumlow still did not give a fuck, this was —

— fuck, this was everything, everything he hadn’t allowed himself to miss or to think of since before the Triskelion fell. His mouth was pressed to the back of Winter’s neck, his long hair tickling Rumlow’s nose, and it was useless and stupid but he was pushing back against Winter, grinding helplessly on him, his hand picking up speed in Winter’s pants. Winter was making punched-out noises, mumbling komandir, komandir over and over; Rumlow felt his toes curling against his ankles, the hard scratch of his nails on the bare ruined skin, and he kissed Winter’s neck, closed his eyes, murmured,

“Yeah, yeah, that’s right, you knew I’d remember how to take care of you, huh,”

and Winter moaned again, nearly sobbing, and his head canted back a little against Rumlow’s (the way he used to rest his head on Rumlow’s shoulder when they stood back-to-chest in Pierce’s office). Rumlow could feel his cock jerking; he was rolling his hips in tighter choppier motions, bracing himself, and beneath Rumlow’s own right hand Winter’s hand twitched and tightened in the sheets and his metal hand tightened on Rumlow’s hip and he shuddered all over, violently, and came in Rumlow’s hand.

At first when he kept shaking Rumlow thought he was just oversensitized. He eased his hand out of Winter’s pants and wiped it on his stomach — just like he’d done the first time nineteen years ago, fuck — and curled their right hands loosely together on the bed, trying to even out his own breathing. The enormity of the moment was trying to catch up with him; he’d made the asset come. His face was still pressed to Winter’s neck, breath coming out jagged and off sync with his giraffe-kicked heartbeat. Winter’s metal hand was still tense on his hip and he was shivering and Rumlow kissed his neck again, murmured,

“Shh, ‘s all right, I’ve got you,”

but the shaking continued. After perhaps seven seconds Rumlow heard a tiny hitch in Winter’s breathing. He flexed his right hand, opened one eye.

“Soldat?”

Winter mumbled something into Rumlow’s arm. He was shaking harder and Rumlow didn’t really know what to do except to squeeze his hand —

— and then Winter let out a wet, choked sob, and Rumlow’s stomach dropped. He opened his mouth to ask if Winter was okay — stupid fucking question — but Winter was already turning in his arms, and it was almost an exact replica of what had happened between them earlier that morning: Winter clinging to him, eyelashes damp with tears, face pressed into his collarbone. He wasn’t quite as terrified as he’d been at four in the morning but it really wasn’t the response Rumlow had hoped for when he jerked the asset off for the first time since fucking 2013. He kissed the top of his forehead, soothing his hand down his spine. Winter didn’t seem upset by their proximity — he seemed, if anything, to be attempting to crawl inside Rumlow — so he stayed where he was. As he rubbed his back, he felt faint warmth stirring between his legs. He’d taken care of his weapon; he was still taking care of him now, but he ignored the soft flashes of arousal. They’d be gone soon enough, anyway.

“What is it,” he asked, after a long time, when Winter had stopped shuddering against him and was reduced mostly to snuffling and rubbing his face against Rumlow’s shoulder. Winter drew back slightly to look at him. His face was blotchy and a little swollen from crying and he shouldn’t have been so fucking attractive like this, but what the hell. Rumlow moved his hand up to stroke through Winter’s hair. His eyebrows raised a little in question.

“‘s the same as whatever you dreamed about?” he asked, when Winter didn’t volunteer any information.

Winter bit the corner of his mouth. His eyes cut down to Rumlow’s chest. Then back to his face.

“‘s okay if you don’t wanna tell me,” Rumlow said. “I’m not gonna be mad, though, whatever it — ”

“It’s Pierce,” Winter said quietly, wincing a little, so that Rumlow had to deliberately hold himself still so he wouldn’t wince as well, that name in his bed, in his house, in this moment —

— fuck you, you sadistic old fuck, you’re not fucking winning this one —

“He didn’t like when I came without his permission,” Winter said. “He — insisted on overseeing everything, and it didn’t matter if Rollins or Sitwell or anyone else had… had fun, but if I — if — ” His breathing was growing unsteady again, and Rumlow reached up, unthinking, and touched Winter’s lip with his thumb. Winter stilled against him and Rumlow hesitated, but then Winter was reaching up with his flesh hand. Taking Rumlow’s, curling his fingers around his palm.

“Vtorichnaya funktsiya soldata dolzhna zapuskat’sya tol’ko osnovnym obrabotchikom,” he said, in his hoarse gravelly unvoice. It had been years, but Rumlow still recognized the sounds of the words, and the particular flat cadence in which Winter spoke them. The second half of Karpov’s ancient order. The order that had started all this —

— the order that had, however indirectly, gotten them here, now, sharing Rumlow’s bed, holding onto each other, the last two people on earth, anchor and ship, wand and wizard. Rumlow’s whole body broken and torn and twisted and burnt and Winter just as broken and scarred and the only thing holding them together, the only thing that had ever held them together, was each other —

The Soldier’s secondary function must be triggered only by the primary handler. Rumlow was the primary handler. Again his chest dropping in zero gravity, the staggering soaring weight of responsibility, of trust —

“Pierce didn’t like that he couldn’t control that one part of me,” Winter said. He was nearly whispering. “So he made sure he could control everything else.”

Rumlow didn’t realize he was grinding his jaw until Winter moved their joined hands so he could stroke over the tense muscles there. He flicked his eyes up to Winter’s, the stunning blue of them.

“When I want to touch you,” he said, “I’m going to touch you. When you want to come, you’re going to come. Pierce is gone, but if he was here I’d fucking gut him alive before I’d let him ruin you like that again — ”

Winter made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob. He turned his face and kissed Rumlow’s hand.

“Commander,” he murmured, and Rumlow smiled. He couldn’t help it. The way Winter said it. He couldn’t believe less than a month ago he’d wanted him to stop.

“You’re mine,” Rumlow said. “You’re only ever going to be mine from now on. You understand, soldat?”

“Yes, sir,” Winter said, and yeah, yeah, that still sounded fucking good.

Rumlow leaned in; kissed the tip of Winter’s nose. Overhead he could hear the rain still pounding against the roof, and he drew Winter in further, somehow, and closed his eyes.

“Stay,” Rumlow murmured into his hair, echoing Winter’s plea from earlier, five hours and a lifetime ago, and he felt Winter smile against his neck.

“Yes, sir.”

Chapter Text

Closer to ten he woke to go piss and when he came back to the bed Winter was laying on his back sprawled out over the mattress. He’d woken a little and regarded Rumlow with a sleepy smile and his eyes half-lidded. He reached out with the metal hand and murmured,

“Komandir,”

and Rumlow walked to him and twined their fingers together. He let himself be guided down onto the mattress and when Winter reached out with the flesh hand to tug Rumlow’s thigh over his own legs Rumlow had neither the strength nor the desire to disobey. He planted his knee on the soft sheets for leverage and reached between them, resting his hand just above Winter’s pants on the warm stretch of his stomach. He leaned in to kiss Winter’s throat and Winter sighed, turning his head, pushing his hips up a little, making it clear what he was asking for. Rumlow huffed out a laugh, teasing his fingers along the elastic waistline:

“This what you want, soldat?” he asked, rubbing his thumb on the muscles there, feeling them jump beneath his hand. “Just want me to touch you like this, right here?”

Winter actually reached under Rumlow’s chin to tilt his head back up from where he had it on his neck. He glared at him with absolutely zero real heat. When Rumlow laughed again he saw the fine pink mouth twitch in its corner and he leaned in to reward him with a kiss before slipping his hand all the way under his pants:

“Well, all right, since you asked so pretty — ”

causing Winter to let out a shaky exhale, mouth falling open against Rumlow’s, hand turning gentle and soft on his jaw. It was even easier to get Winter going this second time, every inch of his body responsive and pliant under Rumlow’s touch. He was squirming in Rumlow’s hand and arching up, scraping Rumlow’s lower lip with his teeth, panting his name. At the crux of it he grabbed Rumlow’s free hand with his metal one, not quite hard enough to bruise, and gasped out pozhaluysta, komandir. Rumlow dragged his hand slowly, so slowly up the shaft, squeezing down at the base, and he said,

“Yeah, that’s all right, want you to finish, c’mon, baby,”

and Winter dug his flesh hand into the sheets and came all over Rumlow’s hand. Shuddering he dragged Rumlow down for a sloppy, heated kiss, face flushed, metal hand clicking and whirring in its death grip on Rumlow’s hand. He was nearly sobbing into Rumlow’s mouth as he stroked him through it.

“Yeah,” Rumlow said against the open wet heat of Winter’s mouth, “that’s right. Feels fuckin’ good, huh.”

Winter’s flesh hand came up from the sheets and onto Rumlow’s thigh. At first Rumlow thought he was using him as leverage to support himself through coming. Indeed as he shuddered through the last of his orgasm his fingers flexed against Rumlow’s leg and he let out a near-inaudible sigh. But when Rumlow withdrew his hand from his pants Winter caught his wrist. He brought Rumlow’s hand up to his mouth. Rumlow felt all the air leave his lungs at once at near blackout force as Winter circled his lips around Rumlow’s come-stained fingers and sucked them into the tight wet heat of his mouth. His eyes blistering into Rumlow’s he licked slowly around the tips of his fingers, teasing the rough worn skin with his tongue. Momentarily he let go of Rumlow’s wrist so he could put his hand back on his thigh. The gentle command was clear in the light scrape of his teeth: keep your hand there. He was sucking and licking in slow tantalizing strokes as he moved his own hand at a similar pace on Rumlow’s leg. Rumlow spread his fingers a little in Winter’s mouth, feeling the crevices of his teeth — the knowledge further shocking through him that Winter (good trained dog) wouldn’t bite down, wouldn’t hurt him — and closing his eyes as Winter’s tongue slipped gently between his fingers.

His brain was stupid and slow with the warmth of the bed and with the touch of Winter’s mouth on his hand. So it was not until he felt Winter’s hand circle around to the inner part of his thigh that he realized where this was going. This wasn’t just some long-ingrained maintenance cleaning routine some Hydra fuck had taught him. This was —

“Win…” Rumlow began, hoarse, unsteady, but it came out more like a plea than a command. He looked up again. Winter’s eyes were still burning into his as he shifted his hand between his legs. Fuck. Fuck. He swallowed, fingers tensing a little in Winter’s mouth, which earned him an interesting little noise but no actual progress outside of Winter licking along the undersides of his fingers —

— as though it were Rumlow’s cock, oh fuck —

Then Winter drew back enough it was clear he wanted Rumlow to take his hand away. Distantly he noticed there was no come left as he pulled his hand out and trailed saliva-wet fingers down Winter’s chin, catching briefly in his lower lip. All clean, his brain said idiotically. He felt sick and dizzy the longer Winter’s hand moved over his broken cock, pressing on the base with the heel of it as he stroked down with the flat of his hand. Rumlow could feel little jolting sparks beneath his skin but they were just frustrating him. He’d lived with this long enough to know the difference between how it felt when it worked and how it felt when it didn’t. He wanted this, he wanted it so fucking badly and it was something, it was the first thing Winter had ever wanted to take, and Rumlow couldn’t even give it to him —

He was grabbing Winter’s wrist almost before he knew what he was doing. Winter’s eyes snapped down to their hands and the burning shame furthered as Rumlow realized Winter was waiting for direction, for orders —

He shoved Winter’s hand away. Then he shoved himself off the bed. He was shaking as he stood up, right hand aching where the metal hand had gripped it, left hand still damp from Winter’s mouth. The dizzy unreal sick feeling had eclipsed everything else and he was suddenly, blindingly furious at himself. Winter was staring up at him and Rumlow couldn’t meet his eyes. He couldn’t bear to see whatever expression — pity, or perhaps aggravation as Winter realized what kind of an old broken fuck he’d left Steve for —

“Commander…?” Winter began, soft, hesitant, and Rumlow shook his head.

“I can’t,” he said, voice harsh, rough. “Okay, Win? I c- fuck. I just can’t,” and then he turned on his heel and stormed out of the room, everything inside him burning burning burning boiling up to a peak. He was in the backyard and his fist wanted to make contact with the brick again, all he was fucking capable of anymore, violence and pain —

— there was some kind of fucked poetry in that, wasn’t there —

— but instead he slammed his open palm to the wall, and then he fell to his knees. The rain had stopped at some juncture while they’d been asleep and the grass soaked wet through his pants, shocking cold muddy feeling so different from the dry warmth of the bed —

He hit the ground with the hand which still stung a little from where he’d hit the wall. His head dropped down. His breath caught hard in his throat. He was on his knees in the dirt in the cold gritting his teeth

(praying)

begging wordlessly please, please —

He heard the door open. A footstep on the back porch. Moments later Winter’s metal hand against his neck. It should’ve been uncomfortable, maybe, probably; the metal was already chilled from the damp wet air. Instead Rumlow found himself leaning into the touch. He was shivering; he had no idea when that had started.

“Komandir,” Winter murmured. His metal fingers rubbed slowly over Rumlow’s neck, up into the short ends of his hair. There was some scarring back there Rumlow had never seen. He felt Winter’s hand catch against it.

Rumlow twisted his head in Winter’s grip. Winter dropped to his own knees. “My ispravim eto,” he said. “We’ll fix this.”

Rumlow snorted. He could hear the harsh roughness still in it, and beneath it the ugly, aching desperation. “Don’t think we can, soldat,” he said.

Winter nodded, slowly. There was a tiny line between his eyebrows. After a moment he reached out. He turned Rumlow’s face in his hand, and then he leaned in, and kissed the opposite side of Rumlow’s head, pressing his lips to the scar which bisected his eyebrow.

Rumlow closed his eyes again. He felt weightless, drifting in the pool at the Triskelion.

“Ya lyublyu vas,” Winter said, and his voice was so soft and so earnest there was no mistaking what that meant. But he said it in English anyway: “I love you,” and then he said, “I’m not going anywhere,” and Rumlow reached up and around to the back of his neck, curled his hand around the metal one, and, drawing it to his mouth, kissed the cold surface of the plating.

--

Eventually when Rumlow could stand without his stupid legs trying to give out from under him he walked with Winter back into the house where they changed into day clothes — Winter had taken to leaving his clothes around the house as well, which was just — really something — and headed out. The storm had passed entirely and the day was cool and kind of pearlescent. There were puddles on the street; water still clung to a few of the power lines. They walked slowly down Decatur to the café. Winter had his flesh arm hooked through Rumlow’s. He slid his hand down into the pocket of his sweatshirt, tangled their fingers together. They could’ve been any couple walking down the street. Winter was warm and solid and the curl of his hand inside Rumlow’s pocket felt possessive, as though —

— what, as though he owned Rumlow, too?

— well, hell, he could. He did. Rumlow squeezed gently on his hand as they walked, and saw the responding smile burst like a rocket flare across Winter’s face.

The coffee was good as usual. It seared Rumlow’s throat a little but he didn’t mind. Winter got some powdered sugar stuck between the metal plates of his hand and he and Rumlow spent several minutes dipping paper napkins in their water glasses to try and clean it out. When they thought they were done the plates shifted and sugar drifted onto the table. Rumlow snorted; Winter made an exaggeratedly exasperated face, and both of them laughed. Overhead at last the sun had emerged from behind the residual clouds and as they left the café and headed on the warmth of it settled in along the back of Rumlow’s neck.

Down Decatur a ways past where it branched off to N. Peters St. there was a bookshop. As with most things in the city it looked very much as though it had been plucked from its real time somewhere in the nineteenth century and simply dropped in among the businesses surrounding it. Rumlow had gone in once or twice during his early days in the city, but aside from one particular time in his life he’d never been much of a reader, so he quit bothering. Now, though, it seemed the most logical place for him to go with Winter. The scents inside — incense, rosemary, mothballs — were strong enough he could smell them. It was cool and dark and quiet; rich mahogany shelves, cypress paneling on the walls. Dim, deep amber lights in place of fluorescents. The books were stacked nearly to the ceiling and overwhelming in quantity.

“Y’all say if y’all need help,” the clerk called from behind the desk, and Rumlow and Winter both nodded to her and wound their way deeper into the store. They bypassed LOUISIANA CULTURE, RELIGION, and SELF-CARE. One of the covers depicted a smiling blonde woman on a pool chair with cucumbers over her eyes: FROM LOAFERS TO LOOFAHS: HOW I CHANGED THE WAY I CARE ABOUT MY BODY (AND HOW YOU CAN, TOO!). Rumlow was turning to tell Winter about the time he and Rollins had caught Sitwell in the communal showers with a hot pink loofah and watermelon-scented body wash when Winter went completely still beside him. Rumlow followed his gaze, heart kicking up slightly, assuming — what, he didn’t know, someone resurrected from Hydra, a deserter who had found them and come to finish the job, Pierce’s actual ghost (if anyone could fucking return from the dead, it would be that fucker). But a second later he caught sight of it, and something went off in his chest — a bomb, or glass breaking, or lightning, or else just the sudden release of years of tension he hadn’t even realized he was still carrying, a resolution he’d never thought he could have and so had forced himself to forget —

In the back corner: CHILDREN’S FICTION, and below that: BESTSELLERS, and then a short bookcase on which sat Lowry’s Number the Stars, and Spinelli’s Stargirl, and —

Winter had already reached it by the time Rumlow’s legs caught up with his brain. They had all seven books on display but Winter went straight for the seventh, of course, of fucking course he did, of course he fucking remembered this of all things, the sweltering stifling heat and the gravel beneath their bodies and how everything had slowed to a crawl in the long hours Winter had spent reading in Polish, Rumlow working to keep the plot straight in his head, clench of delight when they’d switch positions and Winter was both willing and able to discuss it with him —

“Chapter four, right?” Winter was saying, voice shockingly low, gravel-rough. His hands were shaking a little as he flipped through the pages. “The — Harry’s wand — ” He looked up as Rumlow approached, and Rumlow’s stomach swooped at the expression on his face. His eyes were overbright and liquid. Rumlow put his hand on his shoulder.

“Yeah — ”

“Wait.” Winter furrowed his brow. It was cute; there was no real way around that fact. He was staring at the book and his mouth was twisting in the corner and after a moment he said again,

“Wait,” and then: “You read this to me. When I was in cryo.”

For a second time Rumlow’s heart did something that was not so much explode as simply burst forth and begin to float away. “You remember?”

Another frown. “Kind of…? I remember… like being underwater.” He waved his hand vaguely off towards the wall. “Not much retention when I was out — ” wry smile — “but uh — yeah.” He huffed a little. They were both looking at the beginning of chapter five. The illustration of the figures silhouetted against the sky. “You read to me.”

Rumlow’s mouth twisted too. “I dismantled the security system so I could sneak in with my Kindle,” he said. This earned him a neat eyebrow raise he thought Winter must have learned from him.

“You have a Kindle?”

“Nah.” Rumlow crossed his arms. “‘s in some garbage dump in Manhattan now. Fucking up the ecosystem or whatever.”

Winter huffed again. “Still doing your part, huh,” he said, and jostled Rumlow gently with his shoulder. Rumlow nudged him back, then leaned in to kiss his temple. Then he said,

“You know, uh — I don’t remember much of the plot.”

Winter shook his head. “Me neither.”

They both looked down at the book. The orange-yellow cover.

“Have you read the rest of the series since you’ve been out?” Rumlow asked.

Another headshake. The corners of Winter’s mouth were starting to twitch again. Carefully, he closed the book, set it on its little shelf. Momentarily he was lifting off a much thinner one, purplish cover. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. He raised his eyebrows at Rumlow who took it. They walked to a quiet corner. They were the only ones in the store; they could’ve been the last people left on earth. Rumlow set the book on his lap and flipped it open. Winter put his head on Rumlow’s shoulder. His hair drifted down his back.

“Chapter One,” Rumlow read, while outside a little latent rain splattered the windows and the heater chugged on in the back of the store; the dark lamps glowing overhead, a ginger cat sliding past their legs on its way to find space to lie down. “The Boy Who Lived. Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of Number Four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much…”

--

Rumlow was sitting on the front porch glaring at the weeds which had begun to sprout up in his yard. Nothing in the letter from Stark specified whether SHIELD was in charge of lawn work or if Rumlow had to take care of that, which meant he’d have to fucking call the agency at some point, which meant he’d have to endure some kind of condescending self-righteous bullshit from some assfuck in Washington or New York who didn’t give a shit about him and would probably find some way to blame the weeds on Rumlow himself. He could fucking hear the nasty vindictive nurses he’d had in D.C. whispering about how the house was tainted, it would have to be condemned and then demolished, no wonder weeds were sprouting up everywhere — never mind that literally every fucking yard on the street had weeds now that they were heading into early March —

— anyway he was glaring at his weeds because he couldn’t go inside. He was sitting hunched up in his sweatshirt doing what could have been called ‘brooding’ if he was about thirty years younger. Or well, he wasn’t even really hunched up, because his knees were fucked, so he couldn’t hunch, but his shoulders were definitely drawn in tight and he’d been staring at the same fucking page of the same fucking book for the last fifteen minutes trying not to imagine how the conversation inside was going and failing kind of miserably.

He felt like absolute shit about it, too, which was interesting, and also inconvenient, but not really all that surprising considering the amount of emotions he’d always had regarding Winter. The thing was of course that he’d known when he’d broken down and asked Winter to move in with him —

— or well, told him; soldat, pack your shit, it’s ridiculous for you to walk all the fucking way back past Canal every other day when half your shit’s already here; fuck knows I’ve got the space —

— he’d known that Winter moving in would mean things like this. Steve’s phone calls. Winter hadn’t asked Rumlow to leave the house during, but this was the first one Rumlow had ever suffered through and he’d lasted two full minutes before realizing that this was absolutely not going to work. Even just hearing Winter’s end of the conversation felt like he was fucking pulling his own teeth out of his skull so he’d excused himself, grabbed the first book he saw (they had a lot of books laying around these days, because Winter loved the bookshop, and Rumlow was apparently genetically incapable of refusing him a single damn thing), and gone out to the porch. Where he was sitting now, kind of brooding, rubbing his scarred temple, feeling a headache coming on, wondering what the hell he was doing, what the fuck was wrong with him, Winter was here, he wasn’t in Manhattan, he wasn’t Steve’s, he wanted to be here, he —

— he was just fulfilling a promise, that was all. Rumlow had nothing to even be jealous over, this was fucking ridiculous, this was —

The front door creaked open. Winter stepped out, arm gleaming softly in the early afternoon sun. He was sans cell phone and Rumlow hated (felt vindictive over, knew he was deliberately stoking, was repulsed by) the tiny burning relief in the center of his chest. No cell phone meant no Steve. No Steve meant Winter hadn’t been made to change his mind and was only coming out here to tell Rumlow to fuck off.

Winter sank down to his knees just to Rumlow’s right, and Rumlow kind of forgot how to breathe. He reached out and set his flesh hand on Rumlow’s thigh. He tilted his head a little. Rumlow reached out, stroked his hair; the asset — Winter — pressed into the touch, his eyelids shivering halfway down. He kissed Rumlow’s knee and Rumlow’s hand slid with the movement of his head across his face, the backs of his fingers scratching gently along his jawline.

“Yours,” he murmured, after a while. His voice was blurred against Rumlow’s pant leg. His thumb stroked idly against his thigh, at neat counterpoint to the movement of Rumlow’s hand on his cheek. “Only yours, Commander. Promise.”

Rumlow swallowed. “Yeah,” he said, a little shakily. “That’s — I’m — that’s good, soldat. It’s good.”

Winter kissed his knee again, gently, then looked up. His eyelashes were long and dark, film noir-esque. He was so fucking beautiful. Rumlow couldn’t resist stroking his thumb slowly along the plush lower lip, and Winter hummed a pleased noise at the touch. Then, squeezing Rumlow’s thigh for purchase, he straightened up until his head was level with Rumlow’s own.

“Wanna go for a walk?” he asked, and Rumlow nodded, and held out his hand, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet. They headed out, Winter looping his arm through Rumlow’s, pressing his hand inside his pocket. If he could have Rumlow knew he’d rest his head on his shoulder as they went along.

It had been somewhere around three weeks since Rumlow broke down in the backyard. Mardi Gras was long over; it was Lent now. Rumlow had watched the line stretch out of the cathedral doors for the people waiting to receive ashes. Winter had watched too, chin propped in his flesh hand, stirring his coffee absently with his metal finger where it would catch in the grooves, giving the material a slick and coppery taste for hours after.

Winter. He was better to Rumlow than he thought he deserved. He never pushed or demanded or made Rumlow feel like he was anything less for what he could and couldn’t contribute to their relationship. He seemed happy to continue on in roughly the same vein as before; laying around on the couch, making out, Rumlow tugging on his hair to elicit those curious rough sounds from his throat. Walking up behind him sometimes if Winter was at the sink or at the window or — well, really, anywhere in the house — and wrapping his arms around his waist. Kissing the soft vanilla-sea space on his neck. Sliding his hand lower and lower on Winter’s stomach until the slow touches turned into something else. Winter usually wore soft sweatpants when they were lounging around and Rumlow knew it was for easier access. Not a demand, but a suggestion. An informal invitation. If Rumlow wanted it. And fuck, did he want it. Did they both want it.

He liked crowding Winter against the wall as soon as they walked into the door from a long day out. It was still harder to walk some days than others but he could always brace himself against Winter’s broad shoulders and tongue-fuck his mouth until Winter was whining and grinding their hips together, whimpering please please please Commander please over and over, holding Rumlow up by his hips so he didn’t have to take as much of his own weight. It was a heady rush of power every time when he’d acquiesce (“oh, you want me to touch you? you wanna get hard for me? well, I guess you deserve it — ”) and then spin Winter around right there in the foyer, or walk with him to the couch and cage him in with his legs, or go stretch out on the bed and invite Winter to sprawl out beside him, eager and flushed. The knowledge that Winter couldn’t get hard without him. That he still had this one thing left. Like his driver’s license, his hairbrush; the few things he’d hold onto tighter and tighter until they were forcibly taken from him. But he’d let the license and the brush go if it meant Winter could stay. He’d give up every piece of furniture SHIELD had furnished the house with if it meant he could keep Winter here in his arms, in his hand, the former most dangerous weapon of Hydra now only his, still loyal to him, still tense and poised beneath his finger, waiting until he pulled the trigger —

Sometimes he could feel himself stirring when things got particularly intense. He’d be pulling on Winter’s hair, sucking hickies into his neck, pressing one hand against his throat, dragging the other slowly, tantalizingly, up and down his cock, root to tip and back, slick with lube (or with spit if they were desperate for it, which they always were). He’d be mumbling feverishly about the shit he’d do to the asset — to Winter — if he could get it up, and the shit he wanted Winter to do to him, and the shit he was going to do to Winter now. Winter would be groaning and grinding back against him, and he’d feel a flare of arousal. Sometimes, cruelly, it would go further, his cock twitching against Winter’s ass, and he’d grab his hip and drag them together, but eventually even that would die down. The heat would fade out, the pleasant shivery ache reduced to a blurred warmth, and then nothing, and he’d close his eyes and bury his face in Winter’s hair and hide his fucking frustration and his annoyance in the expert twists of his hand, the flick of his thumbnail against the head of Winter’s cock. And when Winter came there was always a feeling of triumph, of I did this, and that was easier to acknowledge than the tangle of selfish irritation at his own inadequacies, and his ugly repressed desire to stop jerking Winter off —

(if I can’t have it, why should he?)

— But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t, ever. He knew how to take care of his weapon, how to treat it right and keep it polished and well cared-for. You didn’t take a weapon out of its casing just to let it gather dust in some corner.

Besides, Winter was never cruel about it. He gave Rumlow as much as he was able: the kisses, holding him, fixing him coffee on especially bad days when he couldn’t even leave the house. He read to him and talked a little about what he remembered of his life as Bucky Barnes and a little about what he remembered of his time in Hydra before Rumlow had come along, and it was enough. For both of them.

Now they walked down Esplanade, arms locked, the sun glinting off Winter’s arm through the tangled tree branches overhead. Winter was talking quietly about a vacation he kind of remembered taking with his mother when he was maybe four or five — they’d gone to Yellowstone, and Winter had seen a wolf at dusk, its fur ash-dark and blending with the oncoming night. His mother had always said it couldn’t have happened this way but Winter swore the wolf looked right at him for long seconds before turning and disappearing again into the underbrush. Rumlow was half-listening, half watching the side of Winter’s face, the pretty pink line of his mouth as he talked, and so at first when he heard the shouting it faded into the background static of his consciousness.

Then: “Hey! You’re Bucky Barnes, huh?” and Rumlow felt something frozen coalesce in his stomach. He stiffened, drawing his shoulders in, as he and Winter came to a halt on the sidewalk. Winter still had his arm hooked through Rumlow’s, which was probably good because Rumlow’s legs were suddenly very much not working. They both turned and saw a guy coming towards them, dressed in a suit like he’d just gotten off work. He crossed the street, not quite jogging, and Rumlow tried to back them both up and step in front of Winter at the same time and found that he couldn’t fucking move to do either.

The guy stopped half a house away. Winter was so tense next to Rumlow he was trembling.

“Can I help you,” he said, flat. The guy’s eyes were stuck on his gleaming arm.

“Shit, man,” he said. “You are Bucky. Fuck. My wife’s gonna be so pissed she didn’t get to meet you.” He was bouncing a little on his heels. “She followed your story, the trial and all, like a fucking soap — ”

“Can I help you,” Winter repeated, a little louder. Where his hand was still in Rumlow’s sweatshirt he was digging his nails into Rumlow’s wrist, hard enough Rumlow could actually feel it.

The guy frowned slightly. “Hey, look, man, I — ” he started, but then his gaze cut over to Rumlow, and his expression changed. “Wait,” he said, and Rumlow couldn’t decide if he was going to throw up or roundhouse kick the guy into the fucking sewer grate or what. His heart was lurching nauseously hard. White noise buzzing in his ears. Every fucking blistering panic response he’d honed from Manhattan barreling back, smell of raw meat in his nose, the fucking cashiers with their cigarettes —

“You’re that Hydra guy,” the guy said, and it was like he’d pushed Rumlow off a shelf. He couldn’t fucking breathe. He was dizzy, he —

— he was being knocked backwards by Winter’s flesh arm. Winter was stepping in front of him and snarling like a fucking rabid dog, bracing his body against Rumlow’s. He fought the panic back enough he could focus in time to hear Winter say,

“ — the fuck up. Now. Go back over there — ” waving his metal hand towards the intersection of Bourbon and Esplanade — “and get out of our — ”

“Dude, are you fucking kidding me,” the guy laughed, “no fucking way. I told Lisa you were a fucking idiot for testifying in his favor but you’re actually here with him defending — ”

“Hey, buddy,” Rumlow said, hearing his voice from miles off, jaw still so tense he could barely force the words out, “why don’t you just fuck off, huh?”

The guy was pulling his phone out of his pocket. “Don’t think I — ” he started, but then his sentence cut off. Because Winter was choking him. He’d lunged away from Rumlow and snatched the phone out of the guy’s hand, crushing it with his metal fingers and dropping the broken pieces to the sidewalk before wrapping those same fingers around his throat. He had a familiar deadened nothing look in his eyes, a look Rumlow remembered from the field, from years and years of watching him work in his element, wherever he went in his head while his body took over and did its job, weapon honed and made to kill, to protect, to serve —

The guy was grabbing at Winter’s arm fruitlessly. His face was turning kind of purple. Rumlow couldn’t hold back a short, sharp laugh as he finally got his own legs working again and stepped forward. He touched Winter’s flesh shoulder and murmured,

“Soldat,”

and Winter froze.

“Let him go,” Rumlow said, still quiet. “Let him go, c’mon. It’s not worth the lawsuit.”

He heard the mechanisms of the arm whirring softly as Winter relaxed his grip. But he didn’t let the guy’s throat go right away, so that Rumlow had to squeeze his shoulder and whisper his name again until at last finally, with perceptible reluctance, Winter released the man. He doubled up choking, hand flying up to grasp his already bruising throat. Rumlow gave him perhaps one second, then reached down. He hauled the guy into a somewhat-standing position by the back of his collar.

“Next time,” he said, “you keep walking.” Then he shoved the guy away from him and grabbed Winter’s flesh hand. He could still hear the guy wheezing out frantic pained breaths as he steered Winter around and headed back up the street.

The walk home was a blur. Rumlow’s adrenaline was still spiking and his body was confused as to whether it should be in panic or fight mode. He felt similar to the way he had when he and Hauer got their hands on a batch of coke which turned out to be tainted and nearly landed both of them in the hospital. His hands were shaking violently as they neared the house and he started trying to get his keys out. Beside him Winter’s mouth was thin, white at the corners. His jaw was visibly tense. At some juncture he had reclaimed Rumlow’s arm and was holding onto it, anchor at sea.

They were barely over the threshold with the door shut when Winter grabbed Rumlow by the shoulders and shoved him against the wall. It wasn’t often Rumlow noticed their height difference but he noticed it now; Winter kind of looming into his space, breathing unsteadily and too fast. He had a desperate, almost helpless look in his eyes and it clenched down hard on the Winter-space in Rumlow’s chest. Fix, his brain said, fix it fix it fix it, and he reached up, stroked his thumb slowly down Winter’s jawline. Winter went still, and then he pressed into the touch. His eyelids fluttered shut. He mumbled Rumlow’s name. Something in him was coming down from the fight and in its place was only fear, fear and perhaps disbelief that things had actually worked in their favor, that he (Winter) had come out on top, had won a victory —

— or perhaps that was only Rumlow projecting, remembering the shock and the terror on the guy’s face, how much more satisfying it was to see than the smug fucking looks on everyone’s faces from D.C. to New York, and how now that whatever inside him was coming down he could feel the jagged threads of something else stitching itself shut too, some debt paid off at last. He’d won. He’d won. He was standing here now, exactly where he wanted to be —

Winter was still kind of caging Rumlow in with his arms, leaning into his touch, his heart thudding against the heel of Rumlow’s hand. His eyes flickered slowly over Rumlow’s face, down to his mouth and then back up. He said,

“Commander, you — did he hurt you?”

and Rumlow huffed out a laugh, bringing his other hand up to rest on Winter’s hip. “He never laid a fuckin’ finger on me, sweetheart,” he said softly. “I’m fine, I’m safe. You did good, soldat.”

Winter’s mouth curved up into a smile. “Oh,” he murmured, pleased. He shifted the metal arm a little to cup Rumlow’s own jaw. The tenderness of the touch shocked through him — he was remembering how not quite ten minutes ago that same hand had nearly crushed a man’s windpipe in the street —

— it was the same feeling he’d had every year, every time they brought the asset out, every time they were in the field, every time he did post-mission prep. Fuck, he’d forgotten. The metal hand did such violence, it was strength and power and pain, and yet to Rumlow it had been nothing but gentle, the fingers curling around him, around his wrists or the back of his neck or his arm, holding his hand on the couch —

— lashing out unpremeditated to protect Rumlow, to protect his Commander from a threat —

“I’m safe,” Rumlow said again, and tugged gently down on Winter’s jaw so he’d lean in for a kiss. Winter responded as usual; the first touch of his mouth shocked through Rumlow as well, violent overheated electric feeling, and he couldn’t hold back the moan which broke from his throat as he surged up into the kiss, shifting both hands so he could grip Winter’s sweatshirt. The wet heat of Winter’s mouth was the fucking same as it had been but there was a new edge to it, something clawing and frantic to get out, the threads tying off at last, Rumlow licking the inside of Winter’s mouth and tightening his grip as Winter made a responding shaken jagged noise, dropping his hands from the wall to settle on Rumlow’s waist, pulling him closer, and —

— and oh, fuck, fuck, Rumlow was hard, he was fucking hard as nails. He grinded their crotches together and Winter made a shocked little sound into his mouth and pulled back, lips fucking wrecked, scratched up from Rumlow’s stubble, swollen red and bitten. Rumlow was shaking in his arms; he felt like he was about to fucking come apart. It was all racing inside him: the adrenaline from outside, the searing heat of their kisses, the mission directive for him to fix his weapon, reassure, comfort, protect him —

— and how his weapon had protected him, too, in the field (metaphorically), the seamless way he’d stepped in front of Rumlow, and too the seamless way he’d dropped his arm when Rumlow commanded it. His soldat, his asset, his weapon. His. Only his.

Winter’s eyes were wide and getting wider, the ocean blue of them darkening. He flicked them down to Rumlow’s crotch, the question in his face clear. Rumlow’s mouth was completely dry. He nodded, and Winter folded instantly to his knees. He crossed his hands behind his back and looked up at Rumlow through his eyelashes.

“Komandir?” he said, gravel-rough, and it lanced another sharp electric wire down his spine. Fuck, he thought he could come just from this. From looking down at Winter, the perfect obedient line of him at Rumlow’s feet, the way he was balancing himself there, waiting for instructions —

“Go on,” Rumlow said, hoarse, wrecked, and Winter’s mouth pulled into a smirk, dark and promising, and leaned in —

— took Rumlow’s zipper in his fucking teeth, tugged carefully down —

— fuck, fuck, how long had Rumlow been waiting for this? He could fucking remember the first time he’d imagined having it just this way, Winter on his knees, nuzzling at the straining line of Rumlow’s cock through his shorts.

Winter lifted his flesh hand to unsnap Rumlow’s pants and boxers. When he got his hand on Rumlow his hips bucked forward involuntarily and Winter moved in smoothly to press a kiss to the leaking head.

Rumlow’s whole body shuddered violently. Fuck, this was going to be over embarrassingly quickly.

Winter tugged Rumlow’s pants down a little further to grant him easier access. The metal hand came to rest on his right thigh in smooth, cool contrast to the dry heat of his flesh hand on his left hip, both holding him steady against the wall. He kissed the base of his cock and Rumlow groaned, hand rising up to slide into Winter’s hair. He felt Winter’s mouth twitch in a smile, and tightened his fingers against his scalp in response, the way Winter liked, the way Rumlow had always known he liked, tugging the hair as Winter licked a slow, hot stripe up Rumlow’s cock. His hips jolted again but Winter’s hands held him down, the dual pressure dizzying, the plates shifting on his thigh, the rough catch of his calluses on his hip. He kissed the head of his cock again. Rumlow’s hand clenched harder in Winter’s hair.

“Win — ”

A spurt of precome beaded out at the tip, and Winter licked it away. His tongue stayed on the head after, firm press of it as he licked again at the slit, and then he rose a little further on his knees, and took Rumlow in his mouth.

The sensation was overwhelming. The last time Rumlow had been sucked off he’d been in high school; his sophomore year crush, and they’d snuck into the drama bathroom during their lunch hour, locked the door, and the guy had gone down on him against one of the graffiti-covered sinks. He’d forgotten in the long interim between then and now how it felt to have all that tight, wet heat around his cock —

— but his classmate had been fumbling and inexperienced, and they’d never talked about it again after. In contrast Winter was a fucking cock-sucking veteran. Bracing himself with his hands still on Rumlow he slid his mouth slowly over the head, taking him in further before pulling back slightly, letting the delicate thin skin at the corners of his mouth move over him. Another drop of precome spurted out and Rumlow’s breath hitched as Winter slid nearly all the way off to take it on his tongue before moving back down, swallowing as he went further down the shaft. The sweet teasing friction of his mouth was nearly unbearable. Rumlow could already feel the hot tense pressure coiling down his spine, building in his lower stomach, and he groaned again, digging his fingers harder in Winter’s hair —

— his hips jerking up involuntarily again, so that his cock slid all the way down at once, hitting the back of Winter’s throat. Winter grunted, shifting a little, but he didn’t pull off. Rumlow felt him relax his throat, opening it wider to take him in, swallowing around him, and it was too much. Fuck. Rumlow braced his free hand against the wall for leverage and snapped his hips up again and again driving his cock down Winter’s throat, feeling the tight wet heat as Winter sucked and swallowed and slid back and then up again, metal hand tightening around Rumlow’s thigh, and Rumlow was shaking, sweat broken out on his forehead, fuck, he could hardly keep himself upright, he —

The dizzying overwhelming sensation building and building inside him was nearly too much, the blinding blackout intensity of it. Rumlow was rolling his hips up, Winter’s nose buried in his pubes, and he could come like this, fuck, the shattering heat, the pressure of it, fuck, fuck —

— but he found himself jerking up on Winter’s hair instead, harder than he had been, and Winter pulled off, slow tantalizing delicate slide of his lips against Rumlow’s cock. When his lips were just around the head he took in a deep, steadying breath through his nose, and flicked his eyes up. Rumlow stared back down at him breathing hard through his mouth. His balls were drawn up tight. He was holding himself so tense he thought he might fly apart. He didn’t trust himself to speak right away so he tugged again, and Winter pulled off completely.

He was a fucking wreck, mouth red and swollen, spit-slick, open, inviting. Slowly he slid his hands down Rumlow’s legs and then off as he relaxed back a little, not quite out of Rumlow’s grasp, still looking up at him, panting softly. His eyes were dark and dazed and Rumlow wanted — fuck, he wanted. He scratched his nails gently in Winter’s hair, trying to bring himself down a little so he wouldn’t fucking come as soon as he moved, and then he let Winter go. He made a gesture with one hand.

“Take off your pants,” he said, voice coming out shockingly used, wrecked like he’d been the one with the cock down his throat. “Get on the floor. Spread your legs.”

Winter moved instantly, shifting back on his ass and unzipping his pants while Rumlow tugged his the rest of the way off. For some bizarre reason they were both still wearing their sweatshirts and Rumlow wrenched his off, raising his eyebrows down at Winter so he’d do the same. The foyer had a wooden floor; it would be hard on Rumlow’s knees, but fuck it. His adrenaline and his arousal were both spiking so hard he could barely fucking feel where his skin was stretched and sore around the scars. He was shaking as he went down on the floor, kneeling between Winter’s legs. Winter was leaning back a little on the heels of his hands. His cock was soft.

Rumlow said, “Bend your knees up,” and then, “Lay flat,” and Winter went further down, until his back was on the floor, until he was laying there still like a fucking sacrifice, knees up and spread apart, showing his hole, the familiar soft thatch of pubic hair.

Rumlow crawled forward and set his left hand on the floor beside Winter’s hip. He brought his right hand up and wrapped it around Winter’s cock, and Winter jolted into his touch, startled and staring at him with his eyes and mouth wide, eager and pleading and full of such stark fucking devotion —

Rumlow spit into his hand and kept going, stroking Winter until he was hard — it didn’t take long — and then slipping his hand down further, pausing to cup his balls before crooking one finger inside his ass. Winter let out a sob, back arching up off the floor, hands digging into the wood.

“Commander — ” he gasped out. He pushed down on Rumlow’s finger, jaw tensing. “Please — ”

“Yeah, baby,” Rumlow said. “I’ve got you, don’t worry,” as he finished working him open before withdrawing his hand and spitting into it again to slick his cock further. It was already wet from Winter’s throat and the touch of his own hand on it was almost too much. Again he had to take a fucking second, sliding up Winter’s body to put his mouth on the long exposed line of his throat. He kissed the racing pulse and sank his teeth gently into the skin, nudging Winter’s knee up a little further before reaching down between them to take himself in hand again.

He guided his cock to Winter’s ass. The touch of the head against the tight, blistering hot skin made both of them shiver. Rumlow bit harder on Winter’s neck, Winter arching under him. He thrust slowly into him. Their skin caught, dragged together, the friction tight and sparking, and he could’ve pulled out and gone to get more lube or something but fuck it, fuck it, they’d waited long enough —

He licked Winter’s throat, the line of his neck where it joined his shoulder, vanilla and saltwater. He was working his hips, feeling Winter’s ass where it was tight and clenched around him. Winter’s metal hand on his ass pushing, begging wordlessly for him to get closer. When he was in down to the hilt, he kissed Winter’s neck over the reddish place where he’d bitten down. He lifted his head.

Winter’s eyes were shining, the pupils blown wide. He was panting, shaking. His insides were so fucking hot and Rumlow couldn’t hold still; he pulled out halfway, Winter’s ass gripping him, then thrust in again, shoving his cock deep inside, so that Winter threw his head back against the floor and keened, gorgeous surrendering sound. He was still pushing his hips up, his own cock hard and leaking between them, and Rumlow pressed down in response, dragging their bodies together, trapping Winter’s cock between them, fucking it through the precome slick and sweat which had started to accumulate on their stomachs.

His face was buried in Winter’s shoulder, his favorite place in the world. He was so deep inside him and he could fucking feel every private inch of him, every inch that now only belonged to Rumlow. His orgasm was building back up, tension and lightning heat gathering at the base of his spine. He lifted one hand off the ground and forced his own head off Winter’s shoulder so he could hold him steady by the hips and fucking plow into him, their flesh slapping together, obscene filthy erotic noise in the otherwise stillness. Winter was moaning and Rumlow got his other hand around him in the tight space between them, jerking him in messy rough counterpoint to his thrusts. It was barreling forward, fuck, the drag of Winter’s ass around him, the heat prickling in his face, the rabid surge of tension in his feet and his hands and fucking everywhere, his hips moving more and more erratically, teeth gritted —

— he flicked his thumb over the slit of Winter’s cock and Winter surged up to kiss him, muffling his cries into his mouth as he started coming, cock jerking in Rumlow’s hand, and the feeling of it, of his body spasming around Rumlow, every inch of him fever-hot and tense and so fucking eager, starved for it —

— all of it sent Rumlow over the edge too. He was coming almost before he realized it was happening, his orgasm exploding out in dizzying violent pulses, and he sank his teeth hard into Winter’s lower lip, hips moving uncontrollably as he rode out the blinding white-hot waves of it. He was hardly aware of it when he’d fully spent himself. Beneath him Winter was panting, flushed, cock starting to soften in Rumlow’s hand, and it took him a second but he gathered himself together enough to let go, pull out, and fall to Winter’s side. Their breathing echoed choppily in the silence.

When he felt like he could move Rumlow rolled onto his side. He stroked one finger slowly down Winter’s arm. Winter rolled too, reaching out with his flesh hand to touch Rumlow’s jaw. They were both trembling; the floor was uncomfortable beneath Rumlow’s ribs, but he didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world.

“So good for me,” he murmured, taking Winter’s hand and bringing it to his mouth, kissing the pad of his thumb. “So fuckin’ good, soldat.”

Winter gave him a lazy, beautiful smile. “Vsegda khorosho dlya tebya, Komandir,” he said softly. “‘m always good for you.”

Rumlow smiled back. He leaned in for a kiss. He knew they’d need to get up soon so his muscles wouldn’t stiffen up too much. He’d get a wet washcloth and clean them off, and they’d put on fresh sweats and sit on the couch and maybe do it all again later, or maybe just jerk each other off —

— or maybe nothing. Maybe they’d just make out for a while and cuddle and fall asleep watching the Nature Channel. Rumlow would be happy no matter what. He’d been a good handler, he’d treated his weapon (the asset, the Soldier, Winter) with care and attention, and this was his reward. A happy ending he was finally starting to think maybe he’d earned.

They could take their time about whatever they wanted, now. All they had left was the rest of their lives.

Chapter Text

Epilogue – April 2016

Winter wakes from the nightmare the way he’s trained himself to. He’s trembling — he’s never been able to help that part — but otherwise totally silent. He lies in bed completely still for two minutes and twelve seconds, listening to his heart slow its frantic pulse in his head, focusing on his surroundings the way Dr. Haskins taught him — flexing his toes, fingers; feeling the cool sheets against his metal hand, letting the arm recalibrate; running his tongue over his teeth. Echoes of images from the dream move faintly like gauze through his exhausted mind. For a second he remembers (or thinks he remembers) that it had involved Pierce. But the details have already passed into the ether, and only the physiological responses remain, the tight remnants of panic in his heart in his head in his lungs.

He registers the warm solidity of the body beside him. It would be easy to roll over, press his face to the stretch of spine, and shut his eyes. But he’s too awake now, so he moves out of bed — silent, and careful, and slow; never forgetting his training — and slips down the hall and into the kitchen.

There’s a percolator on the counter; beside it a half-empty can of Community Coffee. Winter knows how to use the machine — he’s a fast learner, and it’s a useful skill in this house. He’s watching the grounds drip when he hears behind him the soft shuffle of footsteps and then Rumlow’s hand is on his metal shoulder. He stands there perfectly still, waiting until Winter relaxes his shoulder beneath the familiar callused palm.

Then Rumlow moves closer. He slides his hand down Winter’s arm, over the plating, and rests his chin on Winter’s shoulder at the join of metal and flesh. He’s fully pressed against Winter’s back now, his other hand resting lightly on his hip. It’s such a familiar position. Winter feels it bone-deep, better than anything else. It echoes through the decades down to the very first time they met, the very first time Rumlow put his hand on Winter and Winter realized with a jolt all the things he’d been missing —

Rumlow presses his mouth to the side of Winter’s neck just below his ear. Winter tilts his head automatically. Both of them let out soft, shaky exhales. Rumlow is curling his fingers lightly over Winter’s hand and it makes it harder to use the percolator with just his right hand but like hell if Winter’s gonna move.

“Khoroshiy soldat,” Rumlow whispers softly into Winter’s skin, and Winter whines, eyes fluttering briefly shut. He’s taught Rumlow select Russian phrases; he likes the way they sound in Rumlow’s atrocious accent. He likes the careful way Rumlow says them, like he’s presenting them to Winter as a gift, a part of him eased out and offered up, gentle as a kiss. Gentle as the soft stroke of Rumlow’s thumb over Winter’s hip in their kitchen in the early morning.

Rumlow keeps his mouth pressed to Winter’s neck while the coffee percolates, and his hand on Winter’s side, but he doesn’t move otherwise. He’s breathing quietly out against Winter’s neck and Winter thinks he might be only half-awake. Their fingers are still tangled, Winter enjoying the way Rumlow can maneuver the metal hand as he likes, the way he’s able to make it gentle, a thing that won’t hurt unless Rumlow wants it to. Later, after they’ve had their coffee and gone back to bed, maybe the maneuvering will turn into something else. Or maybe it won’t, or maybe they’ll just kiss until they fall back to sleep, or Winter will tuck his face into Rumlow’s chest and Rumlow will hold onto him with their hearts beating nearly in tandem, trapped between them in the place they were always meant to be.

However this moment ends, it’ll be at their pace. Their choice. No one standing outside the door yelling at them to get a move on, no one demanding that Rumlow must do any one particular thing to Winter, or that Winter must do anything in particular to Rumlow. Just the two of them in their little house on Esplanade, the dawn still far off, the smell of coffee filling their nostrils, Rumlow’s mouth right where they both want it to be —

— and Winter where he belongs, held safe and tired and happy, in his Commander’s arms.