Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s the picture that finally makes him (hah) snap. Yori’s son. His shrine. Evidence of a daily practice in mourning the beautiful future that had been so violently stolen from him.

By the Winter Soldier.

By James Bucky Barnes.

He’s kept tabs on (Commander) Rumlow’s movement ever since the Triskelion fell and the man got out of the hospital and disappeared. Hasn’t told anyone about it, and why would he? The Soldier already failed his handler once—

Not failed you saved the world you saved Steve so he could leave you because you weren’t worth any of it not even close, he saved you to fight in another war, that’s all. An asset. A soldier. Not a man.

—the least he can do is leave Rumlow in peace. 

But Rumlow’s going to give him this. He already knows it.

When he gets back to his apartment, he runs to the bathroom. Gets to the toilet just in time to vomit. 

kid had been so scared he couldn’t even run. RJ Nakajima. Name to a face. So young and scared and he didn’t want to die didn’t deserve to die

must be surrounded by people whose lives I don’t even know I’ve ruined

even Steve had to check out why wouldn’t he I killed his friend’s parents too

He sits with his forehead against the cool porcelain, only until the nausea subsides. He can’t stay here anymore. No more. 

He gets up to pack a travel bag.

Maybe Rumlow won’t let him walk away this time. Maybe he’ll put (Soldat) Bucky out of his misery.

Hah. 

No. He was never so kind.

His phone buzzes while he’s packing. He glances at it, another kind of fear in his chest, but it’s only a text from Sam. Kind, good Sam who still somehow thinks (Soldat) Bucky is capable of being his friend.

Going out of town for a few days, he texts back. Research. Talk soon.

K man, Sam texts back. My phone’s always on.

Something hot and vicious as a storm of vipers twists up Bucky’s throat. Sense of being strangled from the inside. He blinks the stinging wet out of his eyes and throws toothbrush and razor into the bag. Partially-remembered screams and pleas keep him company on the way to his car. Image of a young Japanese man in a hallway, so scared he couldn’t even fit a key into his damn door lock. Watching the twisted monster that was (is) Bucky Barnes walk up to him to end his bright, hopeful future. To strand his father in a world of lonely pain.

By the time he reaches the highway, a sort of throbbing silence has descended over his thoughts. It’s not peace, but it’ll do.

***

A three day drive, accompanied by all his usual demons and a couple of new ones, and Bucky lands at 

Komandir

Rumlow’s property. A whole ass country estate with a serious looking gate that blocks the driveway; he must be doing well for himself lately. Bucky drives up to the card reader, rolling his window down. As soon as he pulls up next to the reader, a familiar voice comes out of a speaker right next to it.

“The fuck do you want.”

That voice. A hundred, thousand dreams. Bucky’s lower half turns to water and he forgets how to speak for a minute.

“What, jaw ain’t workin’ after you been suckin’ off Wilson all this time?” Rumlow asks in a flat tone. “Fuck off, cyborg. Go back to your new handler.”

Bucky feels the blood drain from his face. His voice, when it comes out, doesn’t sound like him. Not the house-of-cards “him” that he’s been trying and failing to construct all these years. No, this is the voice of someone years younger. Someone whose handler was named Rumlow. Someone who had no name of his own.

“I need you,” Bucky says, voice far away. Something disconnects inside him as he speaks those words out loud. They’d been with him the entire three day drive and now they’re out in the open, out where Rumlow can hear them.

Silence from the comm.

Silence.

He sits with hands in his lap. Car running in park. He can wait here all night. Rumlow might make him do that.

But he doesn’t. Not five minutes later, there’s a sound of gears working and the gate glides open.

What he feels isn’t relief, but it is what he came here for.

***

Rumlow doesn’t meet him at the door, but it’s unlocked. He opens it and walks in.

Wood floors. High ceiling. Stark black furniture and a full bar, huge TV screen along one wall. The place is nothing like Bucky would’ve imagined. It takes a second look to notice the shadow leaning against a doorframe across the room.

The door shutting behind him has a very final sound to it.

Komandir

Rumlow walks out of the dark doorway and 

Soldat

Bucky’s body comes to attention without him meaning to. His eyes widen as he takes in the scars down the left side of Rumlow’s face, down his left arm below that short, black shirtsleeve. Last time he’d seen a picture of Rumlow after his release from the hospital, the scars had been hideous, lumpy things. Obscured features. Skin like melted candle wax. Half his ear had been putty on the left side.

But now his eyes are clear, eyelids and brows intact. A melted trail of scars still runs down his left temple and cheek, but it’s nothing like that picture had displayed. It’s not even ugly, just startling. There’s a slight sneer scarred into his upper lip, maybe an old jagged cut from a piece of glass, but his left ear is whole again. His neck is clear of those hideous lumps, and just— how? Can surgery do this now? Has Bucky been that out of touch?

Rumlow walks within arm’s reach and looks down at Bucky—

Down. He looks down. But Bucky used to be a little bit taller than him. Has he not woken from the last bout of nightmares? He looks at Rumlow’s shoes—no, he’s wearing boots, but they still don’t look thick enough.

What is happening?

“Your boyfriend know where you are?” Rumlow asks, and Bucky can’t tell if the sneer now is deliberate or just from the scar on his lip.

“Sam’s not my—”

Rumlow’s arm jerks like he’s going to draw it back, but he doesn’t. He gets what he was apparently looking for, though. Bucky flinches back, shoulders curling inwards. Now it’s definitely a sneer.

“He doesn’t know,” Bucky says quietly, lowering his gaze to somewhere around Rumlow’s chest. “No one does.”

“Why the fuck’re you here then?”

Yori’s sad little shrine scrolls through his mind. Dimly lit like a faded hope the old man can’t release. No, he can’t give Yori’s pain to Rumlow. It’s not his to give. Too honest, too pure.

“I fucked up.” 

Well. The words are out now. Hadn’t meant to say them. Hadn’t meant much of anything beyond getting here and— (everything after that is just blank space, black as pure unconsciousness)

“Hear ya helped ‘save the world,’” Rumlow says, waving his hands in a mockery of excitement. “Don’t that help ya sleep at night?”

Bucky shakes his head. No. It hasn’t done shit for his insomnia or his nightmares. He helped “save the world” (little hand wave), Steve left, he tried to fix things on his own, and ever since he just keeps sinking deeper and deeper into that monster-mirror that reflects back at him from everyone who knows what he is. The fear. The horror. The disgust.

“Y’look stupid with short hair,” Rumlow says after a minute’s silence.

Bucky snorts, a weak smile pulling the side of his mouth. “You look like a waxwork somebody left out in the sun.”

Rumlow laughs at that. He laughs. His voice is still brash as it ever was. That sense of being in a dream returns.

“The dog learned to speak,” Rumlow says, soft and amused, and the tiny smile drops from Bucky’s face. Maybe transfers to Rumlow, because it makes his smile widen into almost a grimace of loathing.  “That’s cute. An obsolete weapon that can give ya lip, who wouldn’t want it?” He snaps his fingers. “Oh right. The old Cap. Cuz he just left you alone with all your victims so he could go fuck some slut from the forties, didn't he? Guess your pussy wasn’t tight enough.” 

Bucky feels like his limbs have all been replaced with wet noodles. Heat has flooded up his neck, into his cheeks and forehead. Made his tongue stupid and his eyes sting with unshed tears.

Rumlow’s weird smile vanishes. His eyes take in the effect of his words but they’re dead somehow, like they often used to be; like he’s hurting Bucky as part of some scientific experiment but he’s disgusted by it all: by Bucky, by the pain, the sex, the blood and screams, and not for the first time Bucky wonders what they’ve been to each other all this time.

“What, then. Why does Captain America’s cocksleeve need some ex-Hydra fuck like me?”

Bucky’s mouth opens. Closes. No words come to him, not even in his thoughts; it’s just a jumbled mess of images and need and pain and need and pain and pain and pain and

“Y’know what? I ain’t got time for this shit. Get the fuck out.”

No. Please.

Bucky stands frozen. He’s here, he’s actually here after dreaming of it, stifling the urge day after day after day since Steve

—threw me away because I was too much too broken too—

left to follow through on his own dreams, to track down someone he loved more and—

Rumlow grabs him by the flesh arm. Shoves him back against the door so that his head slams into it, then swings him around and throws him into the door face-first. Bucky turns his face to the side just in time to avoid a broken nose. Rumlow’s hard grip jerks him back from the wood and he reaches past Bucky to open it, about to shove him out on the porch, out alone, nowhere to go but back to New York, to Dr. Raynor, to his empty apartment, to

inevitable bullet in the brain because I can’t do this anymore

“Hurt me! Please, I need you to hurt me! Commander, please!” His voice breaks in his desperation. “Please don’t—I need you—don’t leave me, please, please—”

But Rumlow is already dragging him back into the house. The door slams. Rumlow spins him around and shoves him so his back hits it hard, so hard his breath huffs out.

“Don’t leave you?” Rumlow asks in a quiet, curious voice. Bucky thinks back, realizes that’s exactly what he’d said and he sinks back against the door. Rumlow looks down at him, opaque gaze that gives no thought away. He’s always been good at that.

“Please,” Bucky begs, gaze locked on Rumlow’s belt.

“What. You think I’m just gonna let you stay here? You fuck up that bad, Bucky?”

Bucky’s shoulders flinch inward. His head lowers, as if to hide from a blow. “Don’t call me that,” he snarls through his teeth. 

“‘S whatcha call yourself now though, isn’t it? Steve’s little Bucky that he left on the side of the road like a dog he didn’t want anymore.”

Bucky 

(Soldat) 

(Asset)

(Soldier!)

can hardly breathe through the knot in his throat. It hurts, it fucking hurts so much but it’s not the right pain, it’s not what he needs.

Maybe it’s what you deserve.

He shakes his head, unable to look Rumlow in his impossibly healed face, unable to say “that’s not me” or “I don’t want that name in your mouth” or anything else because all he knows is he needs physical pain to drown out what’s been tearing his insides to shreds since Steve disappeared and he’s terrified he’ll piss Rumlow off enough to really kick him out.

“Just—fucking hurt me,” he says, not meaning his voice to come out so throttled, not meaning to let out the warm liquid that spills down his cheek from one leaking eye. 

“What. Wilson don’t spank you the way your ex used to?” 

He’s just standing there. One hand on Buc—on the—on, on James…? Yes, on James’ shoulder, the other limp at his side, tight black shirt just like he always used to wear and arms thicker around than ever before, not a shred of fitness lost as he’s gotten older. 

Heart pounding a roar in his chest like a forest fire. Hot, so hot, face and chest and everything else, the

(James)Soldat

lifts his hands to his jacket and pulls it open, dislodging Rumlow’s hand. He lets the jacket slide down his arms and hit the floor behind him.

(Commander) Rumlow says nothing. Does nothing. Just watches. Stands there and watches him humiliate himself in the hopes of being kicked more.

James’ hands go to the hem of his shirts, Henley layered over a t-shirt. Covered, always covered from the world but he pulls it off now, lets the two shirts fall from lax metal fingers and stands there with the dog tags he’d had remade sitting warm and very obvious against his chest. Rumlow takes the tags in his fingertips and turns them up to the light while James curses himself for not leaving them in the car. 

Rumlow snorts. Lifts the tags up in front of Buc—James’ eyes, and says, “This ain’t you.” 

His voice is…it’s compassionate. Or at least, that’s what James hears in it: understanding.

You knew it wasn’t you when you had them made. You were just hoping that if you wore that name around your neck long enough it’d start to feel real. And it did, a bit, but

Tony

Zemo

Steve

Yori 

life reminded you there’s no going back from what you’ve done.

Sting against the back of his neck; bright pain as Rumlow fists the chain and tears it off of him. It feels more like being stripped naked than taking off his actual shirt had and Rumlow tosses the tags aside, steps in close, hot breath on his cheekbone (taller, how can he seem so much taller unless I forgot…the machine…things got so hazy at the end) and Rumlow tells him what he’s been struggling with since he’d pulled Steve out of the Potomac as the Triskelion crumbled.

“Those names belong to a dead man. Do you understand?”

Dry swallow. Nod. They’re close enough it makes his nose brush Rumlow’s stubble.

“So what do you want from me, soldat?”

That.

Soldat.

Relief.

Bliss.

Floating.

Eyes slip closed. The other man’s scent washes over him. Cigarettes, whiskey, whatever he puts in his hair, and him, Commander, handler, heat and spice, the voice that moves him from the inside out, voice in his head so the pain of what he’s done can’t touch him.

Then a backhanded blow across his cheek. Hard. Harder than he’d expected, really, but he remembers he’s been asked a question and Rumlow’s doing it, he’s actually playing along with whatever sick fantasy this is that (the soldier) James is trying to act out and he could cry from relief.

“Hurt—hurt me,” he stutters. His jaw is throbbing. “Please, Sir. Please hurt me. Please tell me what to do.”

Rumlow snorts. “Y’know what?” He pulls something

(gun)

no, it’s not a gun, something shiny and black from the back of his belt.

“You talk too much now,” Rumlow says, holding the thing out.

Mask. It’s a—

It’s a mask, it’s a—

Leave.

Walk out. Now. Leave. 

James, leave, get out. Bucky! Get out!! Sam can get you help. Steve wouldn’t want this! 

But Steve left, didn’t he, knew you’d go back to him eventually, knew just the tip of the iceberg of what you’ve done and he said no, there’s no fixing this, no point, no hope, no idea all the things you’ve really done so why not just

“Put it on.” Indifferent. Why not? Rumlow isn’t the one begging at James’ doorstep, is he?

He starts to reach for the mask with his flesh hand, but Rumlow slaps it down.

“Uh-uh. Other hand.”

(sharp crystal and glass cutting through his chest)

He obediently reaches up with his vibranium hand. The hand which was a gift of the Wakandan people. A gift from sweet, brilliant young Shuri. From King T’Challa who’d forgiven him not just for what he hadn’t done but for what he had done. With that gift, the soldier takes hold of the mask of the Winter Soldier.

It’s…

The same. Same size, same shape, same tooling on the outside, same slits for breathing, it’s—

He looks up into opaque amber eyes, shocked. Questioning. 

Why did you? How could you? Did you know? Were you waiting for me? How long—?

Rumlow’s scarred lip pulls back. “Are you here to waste my entire fucking night?”

The soldier averts his gaze. Settles the mask onto the lower half of his face

ButICan’tBreathe I can’t breathe Ican’tbreathecan’tbreathecan’tbreathecan’tbreathe

No, there’s air, there’s air and he’s able, he’s, he’s able to breathe, to, to pull the straps around the back of his head and fasten the top one but his right hand is shaking wildly and he can’t, the air is so—it tastes like plastic breath blood pain fear why is he why is he

Grip on his hands, jerking them away from his head and spinning him sideways. The Komandir fastens the second clasp of the mask so it sits snug over the asset’s face, tucking him away, not a person, just a thing. A tool. A toy. 

Commander Rumlow pushes him into place again, steps back and looks him up and down. Drinks in the panic in his too wide eyes, the sweat coating his face, the hovering tears and begging expression please don’t—

—do this? Don’t stop? He doesn’t know—

Quiet. The only sound the asset’s gasping breaths. Weight on his chest, trying to get his ribs to expand so he can get enough air because he can’t get, can’t, it’s so stale

“Soldat, follow me.”

The Commander turns and walks out of the room.

The asset follows, still fighting with himself not to reach up and rip the mask from his face. A whimper escapes him between heaving breaths, but if the Commander hears it through the mask, he gives no indication.

***

He has to wonder. The “asset” mindset recedes slightly, tiny flicker of James as surprise finds its way through the fog. What kind of games has Rumlow been playing out here in his country mansion? 

The basement isn’t huge but it’s big enough, and he hadn’t missed the coded lock on either side of the door, the snick of the bolt falling into place. Two of the four walls are made of concrete, two made of seamless steel, a giant metal cabinet up against one of the concrete walls and a utilitarian sink and spigot for a hose. There’s a drain in the center of the floor. The smell of bleach burns his nose through the mask.

Bleach to clean what?

There are no shackles on the wall, no table covered in knives and pliers, but no doubt that this room was made exclusively for torture.

At the bottom of the stairs, Rumlow stops and looks him up and down.

“You bring a phone?”

Impossible not to be aware of the mask on his face as he answers. “Yes, Commander.”

The sound of it, sound of his own voice muffled as if by a hand as if to hold in the screams he can’t voice

“Give it to me.”

He obeys. No choice but to obey, and even if there was a choice he would have done the same because what Rumlow is offering him by showing him this room is something more important than any connection to a world that’s long past his time.

Rumlow takes it from him. Checks the screen, maybe looking for a photo of Sam or Steve on it, (James?) thinks with just a flicker of mockery, then Rumlow lets it fall to the floor and stomps the heel of his boot onto it. Once. Twice. Three times. Pieces of glass encircle the corpse of the device in a halo when he steps back from it. Here lies a piece of twenty-first century technology. I still hadn’t figured out how to turn off sound notifications.

“Soldat, go stand against that wall,” Rumlow points to one of the pristine steel walls, “and brace your hands on it.”

“Da, Komandir,” the asset says, automatic lapse into Russian received with raised eyebrows but no punishment. The fucking mask. The sound of his voice muffled, stifled, no voice, no self, he can’t do this, James Barnes can’t do this, so he shoves those clinging tendrils of James away. Immerses himself in obeying his Commander’s instructions. Vibranium and flesh hands meeting the metal wall, automatically spreading his legs, back on display and he knows with the stark overhead light Rumlow can see the ancient whip scars that cut a grid down his back. Not that he cares. Not that it matters. He’s seen it all before.

He falls into his hollow-sounding breaths while he waits. Listens to Rumlow open that metal cabinet and move things around inside. Smells plastic and bleach, and faintly under all of that the offensive tang of the steel he’s braced against. Imagines he can smell old blood, but beneath everything else he can’t be sure.

Rumlow’s footsteps prowl back to him, too silent for his big frame. 

“Why are you here?” Rumlow asks.

(James) the asset frowns. What, does he want to hear it again?

“I need you t—”

His forehead and the masked bridge of his nose slam against the wall. Reflexive shout of pain. Only in retrospect does he realize Rumlow had grabbed the back of his head and shoved him. It had seemed so fast.

“Fuckin’ give me that bullshit, I’ll send you out the door naked and you can walk back to New York. And did I tell you to bend over with your ass out like you’re tryina get fucked? Back into position.”  

The asset obeys. 

“Why are you here?”

Why? So I can stop being me.

Disappear. Obey orders. Be a machine. A thing. Be yours again.

“To obey you, Sir,” the asset says finally, and it feels like the right answer. Feels like the only answer.

“That’s right.”

Rumlow’s hand settles in his hair. Petting him. It shouldn’t have resulted in such a flood of ecstasy. No reason he should have become hard in his pants, flesh arm in goosebumps of pure pleasure at the touch and the praise. 

No one has treated him like this since the Commander.

No one.

“You’ve been trying to be a person, but you’re not, are you? You’re a weapon. A tool. And you need a handler—” his left hand slides around the asset’s chest as he says this, callused palm dragging down his skin and god, to be touched, he can barely stop from whining in ecstasy. “—who knows how to work an old relic like you.”

Rumlow’s hips thrust against his ass, hard cock rubbing him through their clothing and his mouth falls open, silent gratitude for being touched, used, wanted at all before Rumlow’s right hand comes up to press something hard and cold against his nipple.

Click. 

Sense of being punched; a cramp seizes every muscle in his chest. The asset curls around the seizure with a garbled shout, bucks backwards against Rumlow from the force of the spasm through his body. It’s gone as quickly as it had come, just throbbing pain left where the shock stick had burned his skin. Rumlow holds it just in front of the asset and turns it on. Ungrounded from his skin it makes a loud, electric crackling noise and

FIRE IN HIS SKULL

The asset jerks back, hits Rumlow’s solid chest and keeps pushing. Need to escape get away get away NOT AGAIN

“Soldat, vernut'sya na pozitsiyu.”

Return to position. Clear order, the asset obeys immediately, his handler’s voice a knife through the panic still trying to claim his limbs. He’s shaking, more from fear than pain, physical memory of the fire in his head that took everything away, left him with nothing but this, to crawl back to Rumlow like a whipped dog coming again and again to its master’s hand—

The stick touches his right nipple again. Hard punch, spasm and scream but the asset keeps his hands on the wall this time.

“Khoroshiy soldat,” Rumlow says, good soldier, voice indifferent but it doesn’t matter; he was the only one besides Pierce who ever praised the asset for a job well done and he clings to that, his only lifeline in an ocean of too much.

Rumlow hits him in the same spot, again and again and for longer periods of time, until he feels lightheaded from trying to shriek through the cramps in his chest. The reactive terror whenever Rumlow discharges the shock stick away from his skin has become a background beat to the throb of physical pain. The next time he does it, he touches the stick to the steel wall and every single muscle in the asset’s flesh hand cramps up viciously, stuck to the wall like it’s being gripped. As soon as the current releases him he falls backward, is caught against Rumlow’s chest and the man’s left arm curls around him, holding him up. He drinks in the contact. His skin is so thirsty.

Everything is falling into place. Those pieces of his soul that have laid empty since he left Hydra. A ghost limb that keeps reminding him of its absence in phantom sensations of this is what you used to have. All his missing pieces, Rumlow had kept them safe for him after all.

Back into position. Shock to the same spot, just over his right nipple which has gone half numb, cramp and scream and paniccan’tbreathe, mask wet and cloying, again and again and again before Rumlow finally holds the stick on him long enough to make his legs go out. The asset slams face-first into the steel wall and takes a graceless tumble that leaves him trembling on cold concrete. He feels like he’s been running for three days straight. Wrung out, breathless, limbs like jelly. His right hand twitches spasmodically. The mask is disgusting, hot and full of drool.

But Rumlow’s hands are on the back of his head, unbuckling the mask and he can’t—he doesn’t—he’s not allowed to want, he doesn’t want, he takes what’s given but the cool air on his lower face is—it’s fucking heaven and he sucks in deep breaths gratefully, scrubs drool and snot off his face with his flesh hand and wipes it on his jeans.

Rumlow pokes the shock stick at his chest again. The asset flinches, but he doesn’t click it on.

“If I uncover your mouth, it’s so you can use it. On your knees.”

Some strange mixture of self-loathing and hunger twists through the asset’s belly as he pushes unsteadily onto hands and knees, finds his balance and raises his hands to Rumlow’s belt, looking up at him for visual cues to make sure he’s doing this right. At a small nod he unbuckles the belt, the top button, opens the zipper and pulls Rumlow’s pants and underwear down enough to free his thick, heavy cock, already hard, the tip wet with precum.

“Eyes on me,” Rumlow says and he obeys, knowing just how pathetic he must look with marks from the mask imprinted on his sweaty face, sees the mild disgust tugging Rumlow’s scarred lip into a sneer. Rumlow is huge, big like Steve—

stop, stop stop don’t think of him now not here please

—big enough that the asset could hold him in both fists stacked over each other and still suck the tip. But Rumlow says, “Hands behind your back” and he obeys, clasping his flesh wrist in his vibranium hand. Eyes still locked on Rumlow’s, he moves to take the head into his mouth but Rumlow catches him by the hair and jerks his head back cruelly. He makes no sound of protest. This is what he came for.

“I didn’t say suck,” Rumlow says, bored, slaps him across the face and it hits hard, jarring his jaw in its socket. He loses eye contact for only a second. This is what he’s here for. To be used. To follow orders. He keeps his eyes on his Commander’s scarred face as the man grips his hair in one hand, his own cock in the other and rubs the leaking tip across the asset’s lips. Rubs it over his stubbled cheek, his cheekbone, paints slick wetness across his left eye and when he’s done, the asset forces that eye open to hold eye contact as he does the same with the right side. The Commander’s expression has turned oddly soft, mouth open as he watches his own cock painting the asset’s face in slick.

“What do you say?” The Commander prompts.

“Thank you, Sir!” The asset’s voice is thick and wet, torn from screaming and the Commander smirks. He drags the asset’s head farther back, forcing his spine into an arch, leans down and spits violently, spraying his face from inches away. The asset blinks rapidly, maintaining eye contact.

“Thank you, Sir!” he says again, but this time receives a hard jerk on his hair for it and realizes he’d spoken without an order.

“You’ve really forgotten how to be good, haven’t you?” The Commander sneers, and that—that hurts. Because it’s true. He hasn’t been able to do a single fucking thing right since he left Hydra.

Without waiting for a reply, the Commander guides his cock to the asset’s lips and plunges into his mouth, down his throat, flared head tearing past his vocal cords. Balls deep in one thrust and it’s been so fucking long since he’s done this, years, his throat isn’t trained anymore and his chest heaves, air forced out in a wet expulsion around the Commander’s thick length by the sudden plunge into his throat. Both hands behind the asset’s head now, he holds him there, nose pressed into his pubic hair, unable to get any air in or out. The asset struggles to relax his throat. To keep from pulling back, from fighting for the air his body quickly demands, to keep from retching around the intrusion. He only needs what his Commander gives him. These signals from his body are just white noise.

His ears start to hum with a thick rush-rush-rush, blood pounding weightless/too heavy feeling all at once and a vague thought that this wouldn’t be a bad way to die, all things considered, before all his thoughts fade into the thump of his heartbeat. His hands try to come around, to fight, ancient lizard-brain reflex and he grips himself harder. Flex in his stomach. Stay. Be good.

Air. Air. Breathe. NOW!

No, be good, stay, STAY—

Hard tug on his hair, the entire length pulls out of him except for the tip in his mouth, stretching his jaw wide. Reflexive violent cough spraying spit all over the Commander’s dick and pants, wet desperate gasp, retching and coughing in between. Tears down his cheeks. Drool down his chin. Filthy.

“Stay there, whore. Don’t you dare spit that out.”

He obeys, fighting the panic in his body that demands he clear his mouth and running nose so he can breathe properly, wet phlegm that won’t get out of his throat because the cock in his mouth keeps leaking and it feels like being waterboarded but this is his purpose, his body’s demands are wrong, the Komandir is right, obey, obey, he only needs air if the Komandir tells him so.

Rush of leather against denim, clack of a metal buckle as the Commander pulls his belt off. He loops it around the asset’s neck, cool leather on hot skin, threads the end through the buckle and gives it three quick, rough tugs until it’s so tight it’s cutting off his air from the outside. A disgusting, wet sound bubbles out of the asset’s throat.

“That throat pussy’s so much tighter than it used to be. Is Wilson really that small?” The Commander laughs, then uses his grip on the belt to drag the asset in, mouth and jaw and throat stretching around his cock again. It’s stopped halfway down by the belt and he has to loosen it to give himself enough room to shove in all the way to the hilt this time. The combination of the belt choking him from the outside and the cock stretching him from the inside is perfect agony. The Commander cinches the belt as tight as it’ll go once he’s fully seated inside the asset’s throat, squeezing down on himself, his very own adjustable fuck toy and he starts moving the asset with just his grip on the belt, forcing him back and forth just a few inches, nauseating pain every time the flared head of his cock catches the asset’s vocal cords and tugs them forward and back, cruel pinch of some skin at the side of his neck that’s been trapped between leather and belt buckle. His body tries again and again to heave but the Commander doesn’t allow it, just keeps throat-fucking him until the bile goes back down, nowhere else for it to go. When the Commander feels the spasms in the asset’s chest give up he pulls back just enough for the asset to gasp in a few breaths then he starts it again. 

“Eyes on me. There you go. Oh, fuck! That’s it.” 

The Commander’s lips are parted, concentration furrowing his brows. Eyes dilated and hungry. The asset’s entire face is wet now, runny nose and tears and drool, pathetic. The Commander jerks upward on the leash while buried hip-deep inside the asset, starburst of pressure heart pounding in his temples and the skin caught in the buckle finally rips open, spilling a ticklish line of blood down his neck. The Commander scoops it up on his finger and touches it to the asset’s cheekbone. Paints it down his cheek like a claim to him.

Yours. Your whore. Your dog. 

It’s as if his Commander can hear those thoughts, maybe read them in his eyes because he moans, fists his free hand in the asset’s hair and pulls him back enough so he can breathe while the Commander stirs his cock around inside his mouth.

“Lick it. Suck on the tip. Come on, you pathetic fuckin’ whore, show me what you remember.”

The asset obeys, fights the need to cough, to gag, to vomit, to breathe, fights everything to give pleasure to his handler as the belt draws tighter, the fist in his hair pulls harder, then both jerk his head back and throw him so that he overbalances and lands hard on his back, head smacking into the metal wall so that black starbursts fill his vision. He falls with his vibranium arm beneath his hips, flesh hand splayed out to the side, limp.

He feels more than sees the Commander crouch over him. Rough hands rip his belt open, his pants, expose the asset’s own rigid cock to the cool basement air, but the Commander doesn’t remark on it; the asset’s pleasure is a matter of indifference to him. He tears the asset’s pants down to his ankles and uses his grip on them to drag him away from the wall, skin of his shoulderblades grinding against the concrete floor, just another brushstroke on the canvas of pain. Those hands throw him onto his belly, thrust his metal arm out of the way and drag his hips into the air; new scrapes across his chest, jaw, and nose to join the rest of the throbbing. He spits just once onto the asset’s hole, unused for so long now and not at all ready when the Commander’s huge, blunt cock shoves inside by the sheer weight of his body and guiding hand. The sound that comes out of the asset’s mouth isn’t human. Something an animal would let out, a cry of absolute wreckage as all his awareness is drawn to the knife blade plunging inside of him.

“Fuck, so tight,” the Commander groans, pushing harder, harder, skin tearing, razor blade pain, full, so full, deep inside until there’s nothing but this, no world or self; he’s fulfilling his purpose right here. The Commander’s hips start slamming in and out, long, merciless thrusts and a string of curses the asset only half-hears. He’s lost inside red, black, pressure, gone.  

He floats beneath his own skin, aware somehow of every sensation. Cruel thrusts knocking the air out of his lungs and past his torn vocal cords in gargling screams. Cold concrete on his cheek, chest, knees, only his Commander’s hands keeping him upright. Wet down his inner thighs, dripping from his balls. Spit or precum or blood, it doesn’t matter. Whole body pushed back and forth. This is what he’s good for. And it’s so good. To have a purpose again. To have his choices stripped away. To be gutted and put back together (or not) by someone who knows exactly what he needs.

Cheek wet with his own drool. Taste of blood; his lip has split. Irresistible pull on the belt around his neck forces him to brace his arms under himself as he’s lifted, then his hands leave the floor and his back is against the Commander’s chest, arm around his waist holding him upright on his knees, leaned back and strangled, sweat slick between their bodies, not sure when the Commander took his shirt off but his hairy chest feels blissful against the asset’s backside.

Growl in his ear: “Tell me you love this.”

“I—” he begins, but as soon as he starts speaking the belt jerks tighter, cutting off his air and his voice.

“You love it because I say you do,” the voice grunts. “And I say this is what you were built for. A fuck doll made just for me. This is your only purpose. Do you understand?”

Throat shut. Can’t speak. Manages a shallow nod. The pain in his lower half has eased into heat and sparks, any damage to his body overwhelmed by asphyxiation and endorphins. Each thrust forces pleasure through his body in waves. His skin is dancing with it. His own cock dripping like a faucet. He was made for this. His body knows.

And then a rough hand wraps around his shaft, starts jerking him but he’s already there; tries to shout that he can’t stop it but the leash jerks tight again, balls drawn up, pleasure cresting, overwhelming him. Everything blanks out as his body takes over, fear and failure side by side with the ecstasy; he wasn’t told to cum, didn’t deserve to cum, this is supposed to be punishment and if he had any slack in the leash around his neck he would cry out his self-hatred.

The Commander releases his still-jerking cock. Throws him forward by the leash and he doesn’t react in time, barely turns his face aside as he hits the floor, crack through his skull and the Commander’s hands digging bruises into his hips, throwing him forward and back on his cock, nothing more than a sleeve, an object to be enjoyed and discarded. Deep moans from above, louder and more animalistic as the Commander’s orgasm approaches; his thrusts get somehow deeper, bruising new places inside the asset as he swells and starts to pulse. So fucking deep the asset finally finds a scream; it comes out a weak, strangled sound, dribbling pitifully from blood stained lips.

The Commander stays buried inside of him, the asset’s face down and ass in the air, hot breath against his back as the Commander curls over him, panting. Finally he pulls out (wet slick gush down the asset’s thighs) and walks away, leaving him like that, exposed and pathetic and without the energy to move into another position. He’ll move when his handler tells him to move. Rustle of fabric, clatter of something on the floor, then the footsteps return and something hard and cold touches the asset’s balls.

“I never said you could cum,” the Commander says hoarsely. The asset realizes what’s happening in the split-second before the stun baton activates, seizing his entire body in a cramp, more liquid gushing out of him, another pathetic mewl out of his mouth and white hot agony in his balls. When the current stops he falls onto his side, too wrecked to weep, just basking in the lesser pain of his other injuries. He stays there for a few labored breaths before the Commander kicks his flesh shoulder.

“I just disciplined you, you stupid fucking slut. You say, ‘thank you, Sir’ when your handler teaches you manners.”

The asset coughs wetly. “Th-hank you, Sir,” he gurgles, thick watery words but he looks up and sees his Commander smile and he is so grateful, intense burning thankfulness that fills him up from inside like warm water. He flops out his flesh arm, scrape of fingernails across the concrete as he rolls himself back onto his belly, slithers gracelessly to his handler’s feet and looks a question up at him, lips next to his boot. The Commander nods in return.

“Get ‘em clean,” he orders, and pleasure erupts through the asset’s entire being, better than the orgasm, better than anything. He sets his whole tongue to the leather and starts licking. His body still isn’t responding to him properly so he stays on his belly, squirming to angle his head around each boot as he works his tongue across every inch of the leather. The Commander leans down to take hold of the end of the belt around his neck. Wraps it around his fist and lifts, tugging the asset a few inches off the ground by that makeshift noose before dropping him. The asset’s chin hits the floor, teeth click together hard but he immediately gets back to licking his handler’s boots clean and a hand ruffles his hair.

“Khoroshiy soldat. Khoroshiy mal’chik,” his handler murmurs. Good soldier. Good boy. The asset’s chest glows and now the real tears come, not from pain but from gratitude. Everything outside of this is confusion and emptiness. But here, he has a purpose. Clear direction; punishment and reward. His tears wet the Commander’s boot as he kisses and licks, getting every last inch of it clean. Only when a hand curls around the front of his throat, lifting him away from the boot, does he realize he’s been whispering “Thank you, Sir…thank you, Sir…” over and over.

The Commander pushes him onto his back. Takes his jaw in hand and holds him there, looking down at him, some unfathomable thought hidden behind his amber eyes. Then he gets up and walks back to the cabinet. Shuffle of things being moved around. The asset gets lost in the rush-swish of blood moving through his head, his neck. He thinks the Commander may have left for a while and come back; he can no longer keep track of anything. 

Khoroshiy soldat. Khoroshiy mal’chik.

That. His purpose fulfilled. 

His traitorous mind tries to bring back something to disrupt the peace: a hazy image of a little shrine and a candle, but he’s able to push it away with his Komandir’s rare words of praise. He followed orders. And if now he’s nothing but the whore of the last remnant of Hydra, that’s fine. It doesn’t matter. An object exists for its handler to use.

Clank of metal nearby. Hands on his shoulders, pulling him up and onto his knees. His head hangs, but he tries to hold himself up for his handler.

“Crawl.”

He does, one shaking limb after another sliding forward, led by his Commander’s grip on the leash around his throat until he hears the command, “Stop.”

“Drink all of it,” his Commander says and lets the belt fall. The asset looks down at the metal dog bowl between his mismatched hands. It’s full of water.

He gets onto his elbows and drinks. It’s awkward and messy, and the water turns pink from blood from his split lip, but he drinks it all and licks the blood off the bowl when he’s finished. When the Commander returns to find him done, he throws a damp towel onto the floor and says “Clean yourself. Then pull up your pants.”

The asset obeys. The towel comes away bloody from his inner thighs. His mind stays quiet; he’s fulfilling his purpose. Obeying his handler. When he’s as clean as he can get, he rolls onto his back and wriggles his pants up over his hips. Doesn’t fasten them until his Commander flashes him a look of borderline disgust and says “Do the button and zipper, too. And the belt.” 

He obeys.

The Commander snaps his fingers and points to the floor at his left side. 

“Come.”

The asset rolls back onto hands and knees. Crawls to his handler’s left side, keeping his head turned so he can see any unspoken gesture of command. The Commander reaches down and ruffles his hair.

“Good dog. Follow.” He picks up the dangling end of the belt and holds it as he turns to walk up the basement stairs. The asset follows on hands and knees, through doorways and hallways until they reach a spacious room with drawn curtains, a huge bed with black sheets in a simple wood frame, hardwood floor and a blood-red rug at the foot of the bed. The Commander guides him to that rug and orders him to lie down. Bends and slips the belt off of his neck. The asset gazes up at his Commander’s perfect face, mind full of static, nothing but worship in his thoughts. The expression on the man’s face is strangely soft. Thoughtful. He traces fingertips over a stinging wound on the asset’s throat.

“You’re all kinds of fucked up now,” he says, then a little smile tugs the side of his mouth. “Physically, I mean. Y’were always fucked in the head.” He reaches down and flicks the asset’s right nipple. The electricity-seared flesh screams beneath that touch and the asset gasps in a shocked breath.

“If you need to piss, bathroom’s over there. Do. Not. Leave. This. Room. If you do, I will know, and I’ll drive your ass to the highway and dump you out naked so you can suck dick to hitchhike back to New York. Understood?”

“Da, Komandir,” the asset says. He won’t leave the room. He’s staying as long as his Commander will have him.

Faint buzz. The Commander frowns. Reaches into a side pocket and withdraws his phone, scowls at the screen. The asset lays his head down on the carpet. Watches with disinterest as the Commander puts the phone to his ear and stands up, walks away in long strides as he answers: “It’s two fuckin’ thirty A.M.” He goes quiet. Rush-hush of blood through the asset’s ears. 

“If this is a fuckin’ joke—”

Silence. The Commander turns halfway, looks at the asset with brow furrowed, like he’s trying to decide something.

“Then bring ‘em both tomorrow. I got somethin’ he’s gonna want to see. And if you’re fuckin’ with me I’ll put a bullet in your dumbfuck head.” He lowers the phone, slides it back into his pocket, still looking at the asset in a way that maybe should be disturbing. If people are coming here, he’ll probably be shared. They used to do that a lot in Hydra.

The thought might have bothered him yesterday, but he isn’t feeling much of anything right now. It’s blissful. Maybe, eventually, he can figure out how to stay in this space of no-pain.

“Go to sleep,” the Commander says. Shuts off the overhead light. He goes to the bathroom, where the sound of water running from a showerhead joins the white noise of the pulse in the asset’s ears.

Go to sleep. It’s the only order he’s had trouble obeying all night.

Chapter Text

Bucky wakes up choking on a scream. That same old nightmare of gunning down Yori’s kid, but this time Rumlow steps up behind him. Breathes against his neck: “Good job, Soldat,” and the resulting chill is enough to rocket him out of sleep.

Everything from the last few days comes back in a flash. He sits up on Rumlow’s carpet with a wince of pain and looks down at himself. The night before almost seems like a dream. But there are black scorch marks on his chest where the shock stick had hit him and burned flesh away, and the sticky sensation between his ass cheeks feels absolutely disgusting. 

No escaping what he’s done. What he asked (begged) Rumlow to do. No going back.

What’re you doin’, Buck? Steve’s disappointed voice, but it morphs into Sam’s: Man, I needed you and you just bailed. And Dr. Raynor, not to be left out: Pathetic. This is just pathetic.

He covers his face and groans. The door clicks.

Rumlow enters the room, already in his black BDUs and boots, with his typical tight black shirt. He gives Bucky only the briefest of glances before he walks to the dresser to rummage around in the drawers. 

“Go take a shower,” he says without looking at Bucky. “You stink.”

Bucky checks his pocket.

Then his other pocket.

Back pockets.

“Did you take my keys?”

“You got somewhere to go?” Rumlow retorts.

“Maybe.” Bucky stands up, faces him. Rumlow’s expression goes utterly blank.

“Get out, then.”

Bucky bites his lip. Feels it split back open and releases it but too late; it’s already bleeding again. Rumlow’s eyes drop to the blood like he can’t help it. Like a jungle cat watching a wounded animal limp along beside a stream.

“You heard me,” Rumlow says, stalking toward him. “Get the fuck out. Go back to playin’ pretend if you can’t hack this anymore.”

Bucky stands his ground and Rumlow comes up into his space, looking down from inches away, his scent bringing back the entire previous night with a visceral, hollow longing. Rumlow’s left hand raises to circle Bucky’s throat, squeezing down on still-bruised flesh, harder and harder until Bucky’s breath comes in stuttering rasps. Rumlow leans in so their mouths are lined up side by side and breathes:

“This how it felt whenever you’d strangle ‘em to death? Get to feel their breath on your face one last time before they finally just give up? Sol-dat.” He bites out the last word in two sharp syllables.

Flash of Maria Stark, choked to death in her car next to her dead husband. Just one of dozens that he can remember, maybe hundreds that the machine has blasted out of him. Maybe they’ll come back to him, the way RJ came back to him. An endless parade of his sins.

Rumlow watches his eyes. Sneers at whatever he sees there and releases his throat with a little push. Buc—James steps back, shoulders hunched. Eyes on Rumlow’s chest.

“Go clean up,” Rumlow says again.

James goes to the bathroom.

Doesn’t even try to lock the door.

***

He sees Rumlow’s shadow through the shower stall just as he’s about to get out. Considers hiding there for a few minutes longer, but all that will do is work up his own nerves and piss Rumlow off. He shuts off the water and steps out, dripping. He feels like a man who’s come across a predator in the wild. Unsure what move might set it off. Rumlow’s eyes are on his face, reading his expression, and suddenly his heart is pounding as if this is indeed a life or death situation.

He reaches for the towel. Rumlow steps in smoothly. Grabs his outstretched right wrist and turns it, graceful takedown and James doesn’t resist; he lets Rumlow take him to the floor in an arm bar until he’s on his knees with his left hand against the tile. Rumlow pulls his right wrist to the small of his back, then knees his legs apart. Hand on his neck shoving his face into the tile.

James closes his eyes tightly. Breath quick and shallow, trying not to tense up as Rumlow’s spit-slicked fingers stroke his hole, awakening sharp pain where he’d been torn the night before.

“Still swollen,” Rumlow purrs, sounding pleased with himself. And why not? He’d worked hard to injure James badly enough that he’d still show evidence of it the next day. He spits into his hand and pushes two fingers into James’ ass. His shoulders bind into tense knots as he fights to keep his lower half relaxed, to allow the painful intrusion. Tensing will only make it hurt more.

Please just use lube. Vaseline. Anything, he thinks, but he grits his teeth over the plea; it will only make this worse if he tries to suggest Rumlow do anything other than what Rumlow wants. A third finger enters him, too fast, too deep and he lets out a strangled scream. 

“Mmm, all puffy and tight,” Rumlow murmurs to himself. He spreads his fingers apart and gets another scream for his trouble. His other hand comes around the front of James’ neck and squeezes. “You ever fuck one of ‘em when you choked ‘em to death, Soldat? Ever came right when they stopped breathin’ for good?”

Sensation of the world turning upside down. RJ Nakajima’s brain splattering against the hotel wall. Rumlow in his ear, Good job, Soldat. The space of the asset yawns open for him, gateway to oblivion and he falls into it with gratitude. Lets go of his sad, fake attempt at humanity so he can exist in the same space as Commander Brock Rumlow.

When the Commander’s fingers leave him and his cock replaces them, shoving inside with brutal force and not nearly enough lube, the asset screams through his teeth and takes it. His fingers scrabble for purchase on the slick floor, wet knees sliding as the Commander thrusts into him, already hard and fast, already tearing him apart, bloom of fire in his lower body and down his thighs as whatever was injured last night comes back open. The asset’s screams echo through the room like the wails of the damned. In no realm of headspace can his body make pleasure out of this. It just hurts, a punch through his center over and over and over. 

The Commander’s hand goes to grab his hair. Jerks his head back, but his fingers slip out of the short strands. He smacks the asset on the ear and growls, “You’re growin’ your fuckin’ hair out from now on. Need a goddamn handle on you.” Then he plunges three fingers into the asset’s mouth and grips the inside of his cheek to jerk his head backwards. Adds a few fingers on the other side as well, pulls his mouth wide, hands and knees, split open and humiliated, just a hole to be used. Drool slides down his chin. His lip splits further from the stretch. He vanishes into the pull and pound of flesh using flesh, a tool being taken apart, scrubbed and remade, an object, the Commander’s to use as he sees fit. All he can do is hold on and try not to let his hands slip away on the wet floor. His screams echo like the wails of a damned creature off the bathroom walls. One hand releases his mouth and the other plunges in deep, fingers into his throat, unexpected. He gags and his chest heaves; too much pain, too much tension, liquid rushes up his throat as those fingers withdraw and he vomits bile and water onto the floor. Whenever he’d done that in Hydra, they had made him lick it up.

The Commander takes the back of his neck and shoves his face down, warm liquid and cool tile pressed against his cheek, the angle of his thrusts ten times more painful. Deeper. Harder. Screams through his teeth, please just finish please please, relieved and strangely disappointed when the Commander’s groans get that raw edge and his thrusts speed up, then he’s grinding in hard and the asset can only let out those wounded howls, over and over and over until it’s done.

He collapses onto the tile as soon as the Commander stops holding his hips up. Sobbing breaths cut his chest open. It feels right. This is where he’s meant to be. This is what he was made for.

His breath hitches as something wet touches his leg, but it’s only a warm towel. The Commander cleans his thighs, crotch and ass with mechanical efficiency. Using a washcloth, wipes the sick off his face and off the floor. Leaves him for a while, then comes back to crouch beside him with a small mug of water. He helps the asset rise enough to put his lips to the edge of the mug. The Commander cradles his chin, fingers gently stroking his throat as he swallows. He basks in his handler’s touch. He was used, he did well, he gets cared for. It’s simple. Everything was so much simpler in Hydra.

His Commander cleans the blood from his mouth and chin, checks his ass one more time and wipes off whatever has managed to leak out, then sets a folded piece of clothing in front of him.

“Put this on,” he says, and walks out.

The asset struggles to sit up on one thigh. Checks the clothing; it’s a pair of black cotton drawstring pants.

Quick, easy access.

He puts them on. Looks around for his boots, but they’re gone.

It’s not really a surprise.

***

The asset waits in the bedroom for a long time. He stands at parade rest just outside the bathroom door, out of the way but still where his handler can quickly find him. All the while, he fights to maintain the empty headspace. His stomach gurgles. He ignores it. His ass aches miserably and he focuses on that: such a specific pain, well-remembered by his body despite the years that have passed. This pain means he’s not alone anymore. 

He’s owned. For as long as his Commander will keep him. And if the Commander gets tired of him…

If he reaches the end of his service life, he’ll just decommission himself. Should have enough of his own will left to do that much.

He scrunches his eyes shut. Too many thoughts. Never used to think this much. Never has gotten the hang of it since leaving Hydra.

Footsteps outside the bedroom door. His back straightens. The Commander enters, walks right over to him while looking at his phone. He only puts it away when he’s standing in front of the asset. He feels bizarrely small now that he’s barefoot; he’s at eye level with the Commander’s nose. He should be curious, but all of that is far away, on the other side of what happened in the bathroom.

The man reaches into one of his large side pockets. Something metal clinks restlessly in his hand as he pulls it out: a length of thick, heavy chain. He loops it around the asset’s neck and secures it, then trails his fingers down the leash, knuckles and the cold chain brushing his naked chest. He grabs the chain and gives it a firm tug. The collar cinches tight all the way around the asset’s throat.

A choke collar. He’s familiar with these—very familiar. The Commander had used them on him frequently during recreation, back in Hydra. A nostalgic wave raises the hair on his right arm in gooseflesh. The Commander notices and strokes down his arm, scarred lip tilting upward with something that might have been satisfaction.

Suddenly the asset doesn’t have so many thoughts. 

The Commander snaps his fingers and points to the floor. The asset drops to his knees. Tug on the leash and the command, “Come,” crystal clear direction like water in a desert. He crawls behind his handler, out of the bedroom, along the way back to the basement—he memorized the path through the house automatically the night before. 

He senses the other presence before the man comes into view. Looks up, alert: remnant of his old programming. No matter the situation, he must always be ready to defend his handler.

The emptiness kicks up into a whirl of (terror) confusion and squeezes his chest. His eyes go wide. That faded voice again, screaming as if from another room: 

Run, (name spoken but it’s muffled, incomprehensible), RUN while you can still move at all.

Former Hydra agent Jack Rollins closes the last few steps to meet them, dressed all in black, gun and stun baton in the familiar holster on his belt. He nods to the Commander, but his eyes are fastened on the asset.

“It’s a goddamn family reunion,” Rollins says with an undisguised hungry grin.

Get out get out GET OUT, there’s still something left to save, you can get help, PLEASE—

The Commander bends down and grabs the asset by the chin, claiming his gaze. His face is utterly expressionless. “Obey him. Understood?”

The asset fights the urge to glance at Rollins. To see his reaction. “Da, Komandir.”

The Commander snorts, lip curling in mild disgust. He straightens and hands the leash to Rollins. They exchange some silent communication, then the Commander walks away. As the basement door opens the asset spots yet another familiar face: a Black man with shaved head and alert, empty eyes. He was also from the old STRIKE team. Quiet and reserved, but he knew how to cause pain. Enjoyed doing it, too. Though not nearly as much as the man holding his leash right now.

His view is cut off by the Commander’s broad shoulders and the door shuts. He’s alone. With Rollins.

Rollins’ hand comes to rest on his head. He suppresses a shiver as the man’s long fingers explore his skull, then dip under his chin to force him to look up. Eyes like murky creek water devour his face. His grin is a crooked slash. A promise of things to come.

“The Commander wants you nice and prepped for the reunion today.” His voice is disconcertingly gentle. He keeps pulling up on the asset’s chin until he has to sit back on his heels. 

“We all still owe you one for the way you fucked us over in DC. Rumlow thinks your brains were just too scrambled to do your fuckin’ job, but I know better. You fucked us on purpose. Got some of my buddies killed.” The more he talks, the softer his voice gets. The asset swallows. He’d failed miserably that day. He remembers. 

And Rollins has been nursing this grudge ever since. If he weren’t half immersed in that empty space that had been carved out in his head over so many years, he would be terrified right now. Instead, a sort of quiet resignation fills him. After the Triskelion fell, he’d waited months for Hydra’s revenge. It never came.

He just hadn’t waited long enough.

This isn’t what I came here for. Faded voice at the back of his mind. Almost a question. One he can reassure with a confident absence of hope:

Yes. It is.

Why not let all his old demons finish what they’d started.

Why not.

Rollins twists his grip into the collar and uses it to pull him forward. Slow, steady pull until his face is right up against the man’s crotch.

“Take it out and choke on it, dog.”

The asset obeys.

***

Blackness. Nausea. Rolling. Floor is…rolling. A ship? Is he on…a ship? At night?

The man opens his eyes. Only in the act of opening, realizes they had been closed. His head hangs forward, drool hanging from his mouth to drench his shirt. Blurry. Tries to focus. Arms not moving…chains? Chained to a chair? What—?

Hand in his hair. Pulls his head up. He squints at bright overhead light. Concrete walls and beams on the ceiling. Ship? No…basement.

Zemo. Where the hell is Zemo?

Hard crack against the side of his face. He lets out a surprised breath as his head snaps to the side, then is dragged by the hair back to face front and his eyes focus just enough to see a man with scars all the way down the right side of his face.

“Unfuckinbelievable,” the man murmurs. Familiar New York accent.

“Y-yyyou,” Steve Rogers slurs, thick tongue uncooperative. Can’t remember the guy’s name. Knew him from…DC…

Drugged. He’s…drugged. Zemo…

“How in fuck’d this happen? Huh, pasty boy? How’d this fuck show up after he died of old age just a few months ago?” The nameless man’s hand leaves Steve’s hair and his head flops forward again, boneless. From somewhere off to his left he hears a smooth, conciliatory male voice answer.

“I have no idea and I really don’t care. You have him; surely that pleases you.”

Zemo. Slimy weasel. Traitor. He fights against the lethargy, manages to roll his head back—too far, dammit, has to fight again to bring it forward. It wobbles in place like one of those bobble-head dolls, making the whole room spin.

“Yeah and I have you, too. So what’re you worth to me?”

Rumlow. That’s his name. Hydra…bastard…

“Information,” Zemo says smoothly.

“Heard you been in prison. What the fuck d’you know?”

Steve manages to turn his eyes, to focus them enough to see Zemo’s face clearly. He’s handcuffed to a chair, a dark bruise purpling his temple, but his eyes are calculating and cool. “I was able to glean quite a bit from Sam Wilson and other informants. I have the current location of the Flag Smashers, as well as the supplier of their serum. If you’re not interested…”

Rumlow snorts out a cynical laugh. “Nothin’ I can’t get outta ya sooner or later.”

“You would think,” Zemo says. The total lack of concern in his voice makes Rumlow’s sneer drop. Zemo responds with a tight little smile. Psychopath. 

Sam. Is he here? Steve tries to look around without moving his head, without pitching the room further out of balance. But no, Sam had been in another building when Steve and Zemo were captured. He’s free. He’ll find them, surely…

“Buuut, maybe I don’t wanna waste my time,” Rumlow fills in. “What if I wanted to get this done quick? You tell me where those dickweasels’re gettin’ their serum, we get it verified, you walk away.”

Zemo huffs. “And him?”

Rumlow grins. With the new scars on his face, it’s an unsettling expression. “Oh, I’ll take care of him. We got a lot to catch up on.”

Zemo hums. Thinking. Rumlow watches him for a minute, grin fading to impatience and raised eyebrows. Zemo returns the gaze with the tiniest flicker at the side of his mouth. I will not be rushed, that look says. Finally Rumlow scoffs, shakes his head and turns back to Steve.

“Hey, when’s the last time you saw your little Bucky, Cap? Or guess I should just call ya ‘Rogers’ now, since ya gave up the shield.”

Steve glares at him, the expression undermined by how badly his head is wobbling on his neck. Sam had told him that Bucky had disappeared the same day Steve had tracked down Sam. Said he’d stopped checking his messages, never knew that Steve had found his way back through endless time loops, through quantum space. Told him they’ve spent all this time thinking Steve had left to live out a life without them. 

After mourning Bucky’s death a second time during the blip, how could he ever stand to lose him again? How could he leave Sam to fight without him? 

“See, the reason I ask is cuz I had this soldier, back in Hydra,” Rumlow says, walking away from them. Steve’s focus goes in and out. Glosses over the three other men in the room, their rifles and military stances. Looks up at a gleam in the corner of his eye to see an IV bag hanging next to his chair. 

That. That’s how they’ve kept him out even with his advanced metabolism. They’ve got him on a constant drip.

Rumlow walking back to him now. Blur into focus as he gets closer. Something in his hand.

“This soldier, right, had him twenty years. Best little cocksucker you ever seen. Snap your fingers and he’d bend over and spread ‘em. You better believe,” he chuckles, “every single fuckin’ guy in Hydra had a turn ridin’ that ass. We’d leave him spread on the floor, covered in jizz every time the techs came back to prep him for cryo. Think some of ‘em got their dicks wet with him, too.”

Bucky. He’s talking about Bucky, Steve realizes. 

He means to snarl. To jolt out of his chair.

What actually happens is he lets out a wet cough and jerks forward, loses control of his neck again and his chin hits his chest. Rumlow laughs above him, grabs his hair and jerks his head back. Shoves something between his teeth before he realizes it’s happening. He tries to spit it out, but he’s too late. The ball gag is already in place and Rumlow’s strapping it around the back of his head. Once he’s done, Rumlow leans in close and practically hugs Steve to his chest, hand tight on the back of his head, lips lowering so his breath gusts hot over his ear.

“I spent six fuckin’ months in the hospital cuz of you,” he whispers. “You don’t know what pain is. But I”m gonna teach you.”

He straightens up, turns and gestures toward the man closest to a staircase—an exit! If Steve can ever get out of this chair—he tries to move his left leg, but something’s holding it in place. Right leg…same story. Of course.

Unbelievable. Helped save the universe, got thrown across space and time, only to wind up here with a Sokovian psychopath and a Hydra terrorist who…really is looking better than he should be. And that seems like it should mean something, but he can’t catch hold of it.

Sound of movement, out of sight. Steve tries to twist his wrists, but there’s no give at all in the chains. When he tries to force his wrist sideways it feels like his entire body is pitching over and he has to spend another minute staring at the floor, trying to make it stop moving.

Striking sound of metal scraping against stone; heavy thud and a choked scream. Steve tilts his head up slowly, fighting the spin of the room, to see another of Rumlow’s gang at the bottom of the stairs with a shirtless man splayed out on the ground beside him, body sprawled face-first down the last few steps.

“Get up, cunt,” the agent snarls. He kicks the man on the floor, then drags him forward by a chain that’s leashed to the man’s throat. The man struggles to follow quickly enough to keep from being strangled, pulling himself along the ground with his arms as he tries to get his legs under him. Except something’s wrong with one of his arms; it’s wrapped in some kind of sleeve—

No, not a sleeve, it’s—

His arm, it’s—

“No,” Steve breathes, but with the gag in his mouth it’s just a wordless grunt. Rumlow glances at him; no telling if that’s a sneer or just the way his lip is now. 

God, Bucky, what the ever loving FUCK are you doing here, half-naked? Was this the “research” Sam said you were going to do?

Bucky’s face has gone purple, yet he hasn’t wrested the chain back from the agent, despite both his arms being free—not to mention the fact that he could throw the man across the room with ease. Instead, he’s trying to keep slack in the chain by

obedience

keeping up with the agent’s long strides. The agent turns when they’ve reached the middle of the room, kicks Bucky’s arms out from under him and stomps between his shoulderblades, flattening him to the floor.

I know him, too, Steve realizes. The man holding Bucky’s leash was one of the undercover Hydra agents from the old STRIKE team. He searches for the name, but it’s lost somewhere in the soup of drugs coursing through his system. 

“How long’s it been since you got your brains scrambled? Huh?” The agent pulls a stun baton from its holster at his hip and shoves it against the side of Bucky’s head. Clicks it on. 

Steve and Bucky scream at the same time.

As soon as the baton clicks off a couple of seconds later, Bucky rears up and tries to lunge away. His cry of absolute, bone-deep terror is choked off as he hits the end of his leash and falls onto his knees. The agent hauls him back a couple of feet by the choke-chain. 

He doesn’t try to run again. Doesn’t even seem to be aware of the collar. He curls into a ball on the floor, yelping and whimpering, beating wildly at his own head as though it’s covered in fireants. The agent laughs at this display of utter panic.

He laughs.

Rollins, Steve remembers suddenly. Jack Rollins. You’re a walking dead man, you piece of shit.

“You enjoyin’ the show, Rogers?” Rumlow asks him quietly. Neither of them take their eyes off Bucky, who is still having a complete meltdown, much to the amusement of Rollins and one of the other gunmen; the two of them swap jokes about how Hydra cooked out everything in Bucky’s brains except how to suck dick.

Steve is going to murder.

Every.

One of them.

“A’right, a’right,” Rumlow says indulgently, raising a hand as Rollins starts bringing the shock stick back to Bucky’ s head. Rollins gives him a glare. Rumlow strides up to him and says, “Give it here. The leash, dumbfuck,” he adds when Rollins tries to hand him the baton. He takes the chain, squats beside Bucky, and gives the collar a sharp tug. That horrible sound Bucky’s been making cuts off in a gurgle. Rumlow jerks the collar again, lifting Bucky’s shoulders from the floor, then slaps him, hard.

“Eyes front, soldier,” he says. 

Bucky grabs onto Rumlow’s legs like they’re the only thing keeping him grounded. Raises his eyes to Rumlow’s, and Steve can see his whole face now. The expression on it. Drowning. Begging.

“Enough, Soldat,” Rumlow says. He slaps Bucky again, though not as hard. Just getting his attention. “Hands and knees.”

Bucky gets his limbs underneath him and rises to hands and knees. His eyes show white all around, staring into nothing. He flinches and shudders every few seconds, as if anticipating another shock. Rumlow fists his hair (when did he cut it so short?) and tilts his head up.

“Do you know why you’re not wearing your mask?”

Steve’s jaw tightens as he thinks of the Winter Soldier mask. Bucky gives a shaky nod and Rumlow lets out a mocking huff of air. “Tell me why.”

Bucky’s voice, when it comes out, sounds rusted. Broken. “So I can use my mouth, Sir.”

…What?

“That’s right.”

No. No, nonono no that is not right at all. Oh fuck, oh fuck oh Jesus fucking god, no.

Steve’s body is trying, trying very hard to summon up the appropriate level of panic and rage, but the drugs let him do nothing more than furrow his eyebrows and flex his fingers. Steve glances at Zemo, who is holding very still, taking in the scene with glittering interest. Rumlow takes hold of the back of the collar and pulls Bucky onto his knees. 

Bucky’s face had been the only thing Steve could think about as he returned the infinity stones. Just getting back to him and seeing his beautiful face. Kissing the last remnants of darkness out of his eyes. Finally making a life together. They could help Sam now and then with Avengers stuff, sure, but—he wanted to retire. Wanted to be with Buck.

Bucky’s skin is sickly pale, with high spots of color on his cheeks. Red eyelids. Bottom lip cut open, beaded with blood. His eyes look the way they’ve done on his very worst days since Steve found him in Bucharest: a million miles away, watching some horrific atrocity he can’t prevent.

He doesn’t look around the room at all. Doesn’t even know Steve is there.

Rumlow, though, he looks directly at Steve. Takes in whatever’s on his face right then 

Murder

and his teeth bare in a grin of pure hatred. “Who wants to fuck him first?” he asks the room at large.

Zemo clears his throat.

Rumlow goes very still. Slowly, slowly, he turns to look at Zemo. Gives him a long once-over before he raises his eyebrows and says, “Excuse me?”

“You said you wanted this done quickly, Mr…” Zemo pauses. Bucky’s head tilts at the sound of his voice, but his eyes remain fixed on something miles away.

“You can call me Sir, too, ya sleazy fuck. What’re you offering?”

Another tight-lipped look. As if Rumlow is disappointing Zemo with his childishness. “I will give you all the information you desire in exchange for my freedom, and for him.”

Rumlow scoffs. “Seriously? You’ll deal just so we let ‘im go?”

“You misunderstand me. Sir.”   It isn’t mocking…not quite. More like he’s utterly disconnected from any deference that should go into the title. Zemo tilts his head with a little smile that makes him look inhuman. More like a praying mantis. “A trade. I give you the Flag Smashers and the maker of their serum, you free me, and you give me him.”

What the hell game are you playing? Steve tries to read Zemo’s face, but it’s just that placid, mild interest he wears all the time like a mask. Rumlow scrutinizes him.

“Sorry, pal,” Rumlow says at last, a twisted smirk curling his mouth, “but I can’t make that deal.”

Zemo blinks twice, elegantly expressing his displeasure with that small movement. “Why not?”

That drags a bark of laughter from Rumlow. “Couldn’t get the fuckin’ mutt to leave if I wanted him to. Huh, boy?” He ruffles Bucky’s hair. Pulls Bucky’s cheek against his thigh and slaps his face a few times. “See?” He shoves Bucky’s shoulders, pushing him in the direction of the stairs. Tosses the leash after him and follows it up with a kick to his thigh. “Go on. Get out! Go back to New York.”

Get out. Buck, RUN! There’s only one guy near the stairs, and Bucky could get past him easily if he ran.

But Bucky doesn’t move.

“I see,” Zemo says. “Then they weren’t able to remove the trigger sequence after all?”

Rumlow snorts. Takes two strides to Bucky and picks up the leash. “Far as I know, they got it out. But he knows who owns him, doesn’t he?” He cups Bucky’s cheek, and Bucky—

—he leans into the touch. Eyelids fluttering shut. A sigh easing out of his chest. Rumlow strokes his jawline, under his chin, and Bucky arches into it like a cat getting its chin scratched and it’s…it’s sick, it is so fucking twisted and sick and Steve is going to SLAUGHTER THEM ALL—

“Ah,” Zemo breathes, nodding. “Of course. I would not think to pry a willing slave from such a generous master.”

Rumlow’s eyes snap up from Bucky, dark and dangerous. “You bein’ smart with me?”

Zemo smiles. “I wouldn’t think of it.” He purses his lips in mock thoughtfulness. “A lesser trade, then. And a fair one. I give you the location of the Flag Smashers in return for a turn with him.” His lips quirk, as if pleased with his own little word play. “And my freedom, of course. I’m hardly the one you want.” He glances at Bucky, whose face is still tucked against Rumlow’s leg, and purses his lips. “First turn, mind you. No offense meant to your hygiene.” His eyes drift to the floor, to a particular stain in the corner that’s almost certainly old blood.

This gets a laugh out of Rumlow. “Late to the game, pal. Best you can get today is third,” Rumlow says. 

Today. Third. Steve bites down on the gag, trying to grind his hatred into the silicone. Grimaces at the feeling of drool sliding down either side of his mouth. It’s actually going to happen. Zemo gets the remnants of Hydra to go after his supersoldier enemies, gets laid, gets out, and Bucky and Steve will be left behind to die or…or worse.

Rumlow’s words came off like banter, but he isn’t smiling. His eyes are cold and calculating and there’s something deeply possessive about the way he keeps stroking Bucky’s hair and jaw. His thumb presses against Bucky’s lower lip and Bucky’s mouth opens, eyes closed as he accepts the probing digit. Pink flash as his tongue licks over it. Steve jerks his gaze back to Zemo, but that’s no better. The sleazy bastard is watching Bucky’s mouth like a snake watching a rabbit.

“You can fuck him for the intel, but you’re stayin’ here til I know where you been. I know you been hangin’ out with Wilson, and he’s gonna have his tits in a twist tryin’a figure out where his buddies got off to.”

Zemo’s eyes flick up to Rumlow’s face, hardening. “And what would I tell him? That I was blindfolded in a car and taken to a basement? No names have been spoken. Your secret is safe, as I’m sure you know.”

Rumlow’s mouth twists. “Well then maybe I just like seein’ ya squirm cuz ya fuckin’ irritate me. We got a deal or what?”

Zemo’s eyes drop back to the thumb in Bucky’s mouth. He’s sucking it now, eyes half-lidded. His vibranium arm is wrapped around Rumlow’s leg in some sick parody of affection.

“A bottle of your finest vodka, and a cot to sleep on if I’ll be spending the night,” Zemo says, never lifting his eyes from Bucky’s lips.

Rumlow’s lip curls. “Deal. Talk.” He turns to Rollins and nods. Rollins pulls out his phone. Takes notes as Zemo details his knowledge of the Flag Smashers’ whereabouts. It doesn’t take long, and when he finishes Rollins looks up from the screen with an anticipatory grin.

Rumlow pulls his thumb from Bucky’s mouth, hooks his fingers into the back of the choke chain and walks him forward. Zemo spreads his knees as they get close and Rumlow guides Bucky between them. He moves with Rumlow’s touch, perfectly compliant.

So close. He’s so close to Steve.

“Bucky!” Steve says, just barely able to enunciate the name around the gag. Rumlow glares at him. Bucky flinches and turns his head away.

“Bucky, run! Get out!” The “Bucky” part comes clear, but the rest is slobbering mush. Rumlow sneers. Zemo ignores him entirely.

“If I might have the use of my hands. Sir.” Even trying for cooperative, Zemo manages to sound condescending. Steve is going to kick his teeth in when he gets free.

Rumlow gives a signal, and one of the unnamed guards comes up to uncuff Zemo. He brings his arms to the front and rubs each wrist in turn, but his eyes never leave Bucky. His laser-focused attention is disconcerting. How long had he studied Bucky before staging the attack on the embassy? He’d come to understand the Avengers with a singular intensity that crossed the line into madness. How deep is his obsession with the former Winter Soldier?

Zemo’s hands come down to cup Bucky’s cheeks. Thumbs stroking the stubble. With the studious expression of a painter examining his work, he tilts his head and runs his fingers up into Bucky’s hair.

“I am going to kill you,” Steve says, none of the words intelligible through the gag but he’s dead certain that Zemo understands him anyway. The man quirks a distant smile and trails his touch back down to Bucky’s chin. Cups his jaw with one hand while he strokes Bucky’s lips with the other. He says something in another language and Bucky’s eyelids flutter, as though finally registering that he’s with someone new. His eyes roll up to Zemo’s face and widen; his brow creases. Finally, an expression other than numb compliance.

Zemo speaks again. Soothing. From the far end of the room, one of the other men grumbles, “Just fuck ‘im, already,” but Rumlow holds up a silencing hand and he shuts up.

“Bucky,” Steve says again, but Bucky’s eyes don’t even flicker toward him.

“‘F you don’t shut up, I’mma turn up the drip on that IV til you can’t talk,” Rumlow says quietly.

Steve shuts up.

Zemo murmurs something to Bucky in that other language. Still with that troubled crease in his brow Bucky leans forward, opens his mouth over Zemo’s crotch and sucks at him through the fabric of his pants. The room twists sideways and Steve has to look away. He’s going to throw up.

They did something to him. Drugged him, too. Except he doesn’t believe that.

Bucky hadn’t told him much about his time in Hydra, but the pieces were there to put together. The scars on his body. The way he would freeze up or have a panic attack during sex, then try to keep going like everything was fine, like he wasn’t in pieces, like he was afraid Steve would punish him if he failed—

He looks back to see Bucky easing Zemo’s cock out of his pants. Lets out a sound of protest that everyone ignores. Zemo keeps talking in that other language, holding Bucky’s gaze, guiding his head down and Bucky’s beautiful pink lips open to suck the head of Zemo’s cock into his mouth, still looking up at him like a—like a lover, like—but Rumlow said he could leave any time, why—he hasn’t looked once at Steve, doesn’t even know he’s there, it has to be drugs, or some other kind of trigger words, or—

We thought you left us, man. It messed him up. Real bad. Sam’s words, that compassionate tone but there’s a ghost of old resentment in his eyes and Steve knows, he knows that he’s had a part in this, that his disappearance, however unintentional, led Bucky back to this place, to these people, to this—

The sound of Zemo moaning snaps him out of his spiraling thoughts. He looks over to see Bucky’s face buried in Zemo’s crotch, head bobbing back and forth and Zemo’s eyes are soft, mouth open, hand on the back of Bucky’s neck and fingers tracing the imprint of black bruises in his skin from the choke collar. Bucky’s vibranium hand is between Zemo’s legs, cupping his balls and Steve knows exactly how that feels, how he uses the cool metal fingers to trace every secret pleasure spot. He almost screams Bucky’s name, but remembers Rumlow’s threat and stops himself; the last thing he wants is to be unconscious for whatever comes next.

——

The asset knows this man. As if from a dream of another life. The man who exposed him to the world. Who orchestrated his downfall, and the Avengers’. Almost had him executed for his crimes by Tony Stark.

It feels right somehow to kneel before him, to choke down his cock, upward curve scraping his throat raw, oddly gentle hands in his hair driving home the awareness that he is here of his own free will, servicing the man who’d gotten his metal arm ripped from his body. Months of torture as nerve signals kept screaming through ripped wires.

It feels right, and he breathes in the man’s scent as he pulls back, holds his breath as he plunges in, moves with the man’s hands as he turns the asset’s head to force his curved cock painfully into the side of his throat, making his chest heave.

<“There it is,”> Zemo says in Sokovian, just one of the asset’s many programmed languages. <“I always knew you were made for this.”> He strokes the asset’s jaw, the curve of his ear, and the touch makes his skin crawl even as he drinks it up. <“I have imagined you like this a thousand times. It’s what you are, is it not? It’s in your bones. To serve your masters.”> He thrusts balls-deep with that, grinds his hips to stir his cock inside the asset’s throat. It hurts; it sends a heave through him as his body tries to reject the intrusion. <“With no mind or will of your own,”> Zemo purrs, still holding him in close. The asset reaches up to Zemo’s chest, grasping but not pushing away. Pleading without words. Chest sucking on itself. Spots behind his eyes.

Stop. Keep going. Anything you want.

No mind or will of your own.

Yes.

The suffocation is its own kind of bliss.

Zemo pulls him up just enough to let him cough and choke around a few inches of cock. Wet slide of drool down his chin. Hand in his hair and that soft, commanding voice: <“Look at me.”>

He rolls his eyes up, blinking away tears. Oak brown eyes, cold as a polished tabletop, intense as a forest fire, watching. Studying. Learning what he looks like, undone.

<“Be polite, soldier. Say ‘thank you for using me, Baron Zemo’.”>

He doesn’t move to withdraw his cock from the asset’s mouth. This is a familiar game. The asset gargles the words unintelligibly, cut off as Zemo pushes his head back down into his crotch.

<“Say it again,”> Zemo whispers, hips rising to grind against him.

He tries. Manages to flutter his throat and Zemo moans.

<“Perfection,”> Zemo murmurs, pulling him off completely. His fingers glide into the asset’s mouth, tracing his tongue as if mapping it. He rubs his spit-slick cock across the asset’s face. His own mark of ownership to join the others’.

“You’re takin’ forever,” the Commander warns. Zemo’s mouth tightens. He barely spares a glance upward.

“I’ve waited many years for this. Surely your men can wait another few minutes.”

The Commander snorts, but doesn’t respond. Zemo tilts the asset’s face up and surveys his work. Thumbs his lower lip. 

Then slaps him. Hard. The asset rocks to the side with the blow, almost losing his balance and falling. When he comes back up, Zemo hits him again. Laughter from one of the other men. A spitting, garbled sound from the chair beside them.

<“How your Captain weeps to see you laid so low,”> Zemo says conversationally, tapping his cock against the stinging handprint on the asset’s cheek. <“How jealous he must be, knowing he could never give you what you need.”>

<“The ‘Captain’ is dead,”> the (James) growls.

Malfunction. Crossed wires. Spoken outside of protocol. Zemo backhands him with a closed fist and lights burst in front of his eyes, jarring him back into his place.

<“So mouthy,”> Zemo chides. <“And wrong. He is right next to us. Watching us.”> He smiles with only his mouth, eyes dead as cured firewood as he pushes his cock back into the asset’s mouth, stretching his bruised jaw. <“I think he is very sad to see you like this. He still doesn’t understand what you are. What you were made for.”> His hands turn the asset’s head the other way this time, toward a muffled groan, toward a prisoner chained thoroughly to a chair so thick it’s almost a solid block of steel.

Red ball gag in his mouth. Short beard. Rumpled blond hair, longish, touching his cheekbones.

Eyes

Blue eyes

Steve

He stares in blank shock as Zemo pushes his cock into the side of his throat. The loathing in Steve’s eyes, the hatred, it’s—

A Hydra trick, just like all the other games his traitorous memory has unfurled to him over the last few years. How many times had they made him think Steve was coming for him? He could never know where they found all the lookalikes, or maybe he’d been so out of it he’d made up the similarity in their features. Longing for the savior who never came. An artifact of his old, pre-Hydra programming, never perfectly erased.

He takes in the man’s gaze, the disgust in it, very aware now of the wet slurping sounds he’s making, of the way his cheek and throat distend when Zemo pushes against them as if trying to rip him open, and even knowing it’s part of the game, he breaks. 

That feeling of sinking dread as he followed his (lover, guide, compass, anchor) friend to the platform. Watched him disappear and then return, old, so old, life lived without him, happy, fulfilled

(discarded)

Yori. Tony. Zemo.

Steve.

—-

Steve had thought the torture was watching Bucky debased. Used like a street whore, that faraway expression in his eyes, lip split open by the blows to his face, leaving streaks of blood along Zemo’s shaft.

He thought that was the torture.

Until those eyes finally turn to him.

They widen at first. Shock. Then something else: anger, or maybe

Betrayal 

grief. His mouth never stops working around Zemo’s cock but he keeps his eyes on Steve, and he—

Just—

Crumbles.

His forehead bunches up. Eyes redden, filling with tears. Still locked in their shared gaze, Steve watches Bucky shatter. Zemo pulls out of his mouth to let his sob ring through the room, murmuring softly in that other language. He pets Bucky’s hair in a parody of affection then wipes his cock through the tears on his cheeks, through the blood on his chin, before pushing it back into his mouth, muffling the sound of his weeping.

“Oh my fuck this is so hot,” a voice murmurs and Rollins’ arm comes between them, holding his phone, and he’s taking video of Bucky crying around Zemo’s cock; the fucking screen is facing Steve so he’s watching it twice and he wants to scream. He twists again at his bonds, is immediately stopped by vertigo and has to settle his focus back on the floor—but no, he’s a coward not to watch, so he returns his eyes to Bucky who is still staring at him. Still crying openly as Zemo (rapes?) uses him. Zemo looks at the phone but he doesn’t seem terribly upset by it. In fact, he angles Bucky’s face to it more fully and slicks his cock across his cheeks again before plunging back into his mouth.

“This is gonna rake in a fuckin’ fortune on the darkweb,” Rollins murmurs. “Never seen ‘im cry like that, fuck. The Winter Soldier, everyone.” 

Zemo ignores him; all his focus is on Bucky, as if his suffering is the most arousing thing Zemo has ever seen. His grip tightens and he starts plunging in and out of Bucky’s throat, using his hair and the choke collar as handles, turning Bucky’s sobs into wet gasps and gurgles until it’s Zemo who’s making soft, urgent sounds and then a single loud groan: he pulls out suddenly, holds his spurting cock against Bucky’s cheek, hand flying over the shaft. He angles Bucky with the grip in his hair, wets his entire face with cum until the orgasm passes and Zemo is left panting and how can he sound so fucking satisfied? Eyes still on Bucky, he paints the head of his cock through the cum and tears and blood from his busted lip, a little smile playing across his face, then presses the tip back into Bucky’s mouth. His lips close over it immediately, slurping up the mess. Once it’s sucked clean, Zemo repeats the process. When he finally 

(fucking FINALLY)  

stops, Rollins withdraws his phone and strokes it with one finger like he’s just been given a goddamn birthday present.

Steve wills Bucky to look at him again. To see that Steve is here with him. That he’s not alone. That it’ll be

(not okay, can never be okay)

better, that they’ll get through it together.

But Bucky’s eyes are almost shut now, still weeping softly. Zemo cradles his head, basking in his despair, while Rollins croons over his video. Steve looks up and realizes that Rumlow is staring at him with his arms crossed, eyes practically burning holes in his head, and that’s when he further realizes that the reason it’s gotten harder to breathe through his nose is because he’s crying, too.

Rumlow smiles at whatever he sees on Steve’s face. That smile makes his blood run cold. This is only the beginning, it says. I am going to take you apart and burn every single piece to ash until there’s nothing left.

He’d been ready for physical torture. Broken bones, pulled fingernails, flaying—but Rumlow is in this for the long haul.

You don’t know what pain is. But I’m gonna teach you.

He could live his whole life trying to heal what’s been done here and it wouldn’t be enough. And they’ve barely even started.

Chapter Text

Rumlow puts his hands under Bucky’s arms and pulls him up with ease, as if he doesn’t weigh more than two-fifty with his metal arm. Drags him backward from Zemo, who looks put out at losing his prize, but covers it by wiping his hands off on the lower leg of his pants. They don’t even bother cuffing him again. Don’t see him as a threat.

But he could take out the IV, Steve realizes sluggishly. He turns his eyes to Zemo, but he’s still glaring at Rumlow, who’s crouched on the ground holding Bucky from behind in almost a lover’s embrace, lips pressed against his ear, speaking quietly while wiping the residual cum and blood off his face with a cloth. The parody of affection is sickening. Like watching a priceless work of art slowly scorched over hot coals. Steve can’t pull his eyes away. The lines smooth out of Bucky’s forehead as Rumlow speaks to him. His breathing grows steady and slow. He turns into Rumlow’s hand, his body, his voice, as if drawn by a magnet. 

Always desperate for touch. Touch and pain. Bucky hasn’t managed to orgasm since Hydra without Steve hurting him in some way. Which—it’s fine; they adjusted. He doesn’t mind leaving bruises or welts. Never minded doing anything “cruel” as long as Bucky felt safe and loved, but this…this is…

torture

…not the same thing at all.

Bucky please, wake up, Steve begs silently. He’s gonna keep breaking you til there’s nothing left.

“He always did spoil that thing,” Rollins says in a loud aside to the man next to him. Rumlow shoots a dispassionate look up at him.

“You couldn’t keep a fuckin’ cactus alive, dipshit. There’s a reason Pierce never made you his handler. But since you’re gettin’ bored, you can prep our special guest.” He raises his eyebrows and jerks his chin toward Steve.

That…cannot be good.

Rollins’ face goes flat for a second, but his eyes turn to Steve and something malicious lights up behind them, like the spark that starts a house fire. An ugly smile tugs the side of his mouth and he stalks up to Steve’s chair. Only in that moment does Steve realize he'd been staring at Rumlow and Bucky for a long while. That he completely squandered the opportunity to get Zemo’s attention.

Rollins gets on one knee and starts loosening the chains from one of Steve’s legs, making his heart lurch drunkenly. Maybe he won’t need Zemo at all. No matter if the world is spinning, if he’s weak, if he falls over; all he needs to do is rip out the IV and he’ll be able to fight back.

—

“Good job, Soldat,” the Commander murmurs against his ear. Wet towel on his face, wiping away the mess. Cooling his overheated flesh. 

“You’re doin’ so good. Never stopped bein’ my asset, didya? No, there’s my good boy. Stay in the game, now. Got a lot for you to do today.”

He thinks he nods; not sure at the moment. Everything’s muted. Scrub of damp cloth over his stinging mouth. His cheeks. 

The asset is trembling. Nerves firing. Bad input. Needs to report a malfunction; the wipe didn’t work.

But he can’t, not now; they’re in the field and his Commander is here and the asset has to fulfill his orders. These pain signals from his chest are irrelevant. Anything he feels is irrelevant. 

but his eyes…just like…

can’t be…

Gaze drawn back to the lookalike. That godfuckingawful fire in his chest. The Commander takes his jaw and turns his head forcibly away from the man with those haunting blue eyes. 

Relief. 

He relaxes back against his handler's chest. He’s not in the field, he realizes. He forgot. Circuits crossed. Misfire. They just took him out of the chair; he doesn’t remember seeing it, but he’d felt it seize up his brain, flash of white and distant sound of his own screams before he was thrown into recreation.

The wipe and reset were incomplete. He remembers things, and he’s been dreaming so much lately. Dreams of living like the rest of them. Trying to be human, to live without orders. It’s messed with his programming.

“Gonna use you for what you were made for,” the Commander is murmuring to him, words like a lullaby, easing the tangle of thoughts out of his uncertain grasp. “Gonna take you apart, Soldat.” Stroking him. Lean into the touch. His 

favorite

handler. Trust. The Commander will take care of him. Knows how to work him. It’s almost as good as a hard wipe for quieting his mind.

“Pozhaluysta,” the asset whispers. Please.

Please.

But he doesn’t know what he’s asking for.

“I know. I know.” Voice intimate. Soothing. He was always like that on missions. The asset remembers. “Pierce never knew how to fuckin’ work you right. But I do,” his handler murmurs, almost echoing own thoughts. Or maybe the Commander had put those thoughts there in the first place. Maybe the asset has never had thoughts of his own. 

“You were always mine,” that voice murmurs.

Yes.

He releases into that promise. Click and shuffle inside his head. Pieces slotting into place. The shaking subsides. His breath grows steady.

When the Commander finally stands up and tugs on the leash, he rolls gracefully to hands and knees and follows.

—

Rollins only loosens the chains over one leg, not even enough for Steve to get in a decent kick. He tries twisting his wrist again, but it doesn’t budge; those chains aren’t connected to the ones at his leg. Rollins pulls a knife from his leg holster and brings it to Steve’s thigh. Steve’s breath catches; Rollins notices and grins up at him as he pinches the fabric of Steve’s pants. His blade parts the fabric with the ease of a shark fin slicing through water, splitting them open from thigh to knee. He slides his hand under the fabric, uses the knife to cut upward this time and opens them all the way to Steve’s crotch. His heart has finally gotten the memo and picked up into a galloping beat as he feels Rollins’ hand slide between his legs. He shakes his head. Useless motion, just makes him want to throw up again, but he can’t help it. Rollins chuckles and coos as he strokes Steve’s cock with the backs of his fingers, sending sensations of crawling insects up and down his skin.

“No!” Steve grunts. Stupid. Pointless. It just earns him a laugh.

“Poor princess,” Rollins smirks. “Gonna take us awhile to teach you your place, huh? Your boyfriend remembered his quick enough.” He goes back to cutting Steve’s pant leg away as he talks, careless strokes of his knife as he cuts the fabric entirely away from Steve’s lower leg. Steve bites back a shout as the blade slashes down his shin. “Wups, clumsy,” Rollins says. “Hold still, pretty girl. Don’t wanna make you too red just yet.” Which, of course, is bullshit. Steve hadn’t moved and Rollins knows how to use a fucking blade. 

“Hey, maybe the asset can give you lessons on sucking dick. He hasn’t lost his touch—oh, but you prob’ly know that,” he adds, as if only just thinking of it. Steve’s heart is slamming harder and harder against his chest. Rage finally overpowering the drugs. “He can suck a load outta ya without comin’ up for air better’n any hooker I ever banged. ‘Course, we gave him plenty of practice. Guess it’s like muscle memory now.”

And he knows, knows he’s being baited, but his mind fills in the blank between Bucky and Rollins being upstairs and Bucky being thrown down the stairs and then shocked in the head and he kicks out, absolutely useless, leg caught on the chains still loosely wrapped around him and Rollins laughs.

“Don’t worry, baby. We’ll train you up, too. We got a lot of catching up to do.” He slides his fingers back into the crotch of Steve’s pants as he says it, eyes hot on his face, not even looking down as he puts knife to fabric and slashes through it. Steve holds his breath, waiting for the pain, but it doesn’t come. Rollins just pulls the fabric away, exposing him to the room.

“Oh hey,” he calls over his shoulder. “Captain America’s not circumcised. Isn’t that kinda like, unamerican?” Two of the others laugh. Steve looks up at them, realizes what they’re doing, and part of his brain just…shuts down.

One gunman remains alert at the bottom of the stairs. The other two stand close to each other with their cocks out and Bucky kneeling before them. One has hold of Bucky’s leash and is using it to force his head up and down on his dick. Then he pulls Bucky off and pushes him onto the other man, hands at his throat and the back of his head, face-fucking him onto his friend’s cock before he rips him off and pulls Bucky back to himself. Bucky’s choked, gurgling gasps, the sound of wet flesh slapping in and out of his mouth, are all too loud as he’s traded back and forth between them. He could easily grab one of their sidearms from his current position. But he doesn’t.

He doesn’t.

He stays pliant, even when the two men force their cocks into his mouth at once. Doesn’t try to protect himself when one of them grabs his shoulders and knees him in the ribs, knocking his breath out. The man throws him down on his back and pulls Bucky’s pants off while the other one kneels over his face to plunge his cock down Bucky’s throat from above. Rumlow kneels alongside the man who’s spreading Bucky’s legs, takes one of Bucky’s ankles in hand and pushes it out to make room for both of them.

“Hold up,” he says, pushing the man to the side so Bucky is spread directly toward Steve, open and vulnerable, face hidden as the man at his head keeps fucking his throat. Rumlow looks back, catches Steve’s eye and his mouth twists in a joyless smirk. He spits on his fingers, shoves two of them up into Bucky’s hole and starts digging into him like he’s going to push his whole hand inside. Bucky manages a muffled shout; his back arches. Rumlow and the other man hold each of his legs in place as he tries to bring them together. The guy fucking his mouth catches his flailing arms and pins them to the ground. Bucky squirms, but doesn’t fight back. Rumlow withdraws his fingers, rubs them around his rim and plunges them in again, again and again and again until Bucky’s hole is wet and shining, as if with—

“Left a nice big load in ‘im earlier, just for this,” Rumlow says, looking directly at Steve. “Bitch keeps bleedin’ when we fuck ‘im dry.” He shoves three fingers into Bucky’s ass and grinds them in deep, hooks them upward, makes Bucky shriek but he still doesn’t fight back.  

“Hey!” He pinches Bucky’s nipple with his free hand, drawing out another muffled cry. “Say ‘thank you’ when I let you have lube, whore.”

Bucky makes some kind of gurgling sound that might have been words, if his mouth wasn’t full. Rumlow slaps the inside of his thigh and stands up, leaving the other man to reclaim his place between Bucky’s legs. He shoves his cock in hard and fast, starting up a merciless pace with his hips. Bucky is almost completely hidden now by the two men’s bodies. He manages occasional muffled gasps and cries of pain, but they barely let him breathe enough even for that.

While all this has happened, Steve’s been vaguely aware of Rollins tightening the chains back up on his right leg, which is now bleeding from several gashes. He goes to the left leg and starts the same process, loosening the chains, slicing through fabric and flesh with equal relish. Steve’s eyes flick to Zemo at his left. His face gives nothing away. He’s sitting very, very still, gaze shifting between everyone in the room. His hands are tucked slightly behind him, as if hoping not to remind anyone that he isn’t cuffed down.

Rumlow strides directly toward Steve. Putting a hand on the back of the chair behind him, he shoves one knee between Steve’s now completely naked thighs and wedges it right up against his cock. Stands over him like that, looking down at him in silent thought. He tangles his hand into Steve’s hair and jerks his head back, then settles the fingers he’d shoved inside of Bucky against Steve’s mouth. Slides them between his teeth. Rubs them against the inside of his cheek. Taste of blood and musk. Steve’s mouth waters uncontrollably. He’s about to throw up.

“Y’like that?” Rumlow murmurs. “He came to me beggin’ for this, y’know. ‘Please hurt me, oh please Commander, I need it.’” He says it in almost a singsong, voice mocking, before he frowns thoughtfully. “Then he says, ‘please don’t leave me.’ Why d’ya think he’d say somethin’ like that to me? Huh?” He shoves his middle finger deeper into Steve’s mouth, digging between his back teeth to prod at his tongue behind the ball gag.

Steve jerks at the sound of a loud scream from behind Rumlow and an answering moan from one of the men. 

“Oh fuck! Just clenched all over my dick, fuck, fuck! Hit ‘im again with it.”

Another ragged scream from Bucky and a moan from the agent. They’re using the shock stick on him; Steve’s almost sure of it. Rumlow watches his face, intense like he’s trying to read Steve’s thoughts. He takes those wet fingers and traces them down the left side of Steve’s face, painting him with cum, blood, and spit like a mark of guilt.

“You did this,” Rumlow murmurs against his cheek. “Guess I should be thankin’ you.” Soft like a lover, hand tangled in his hair, twisted flashback to a time Bucky had been sitting in a chair with Steve half kneeling over him in Rumlow’s position, taking control of him because Bucky liked it, he 

(needed it, begged for it…)

“Pull out. Hey, pull out real quick.”

Rumlow takes his leg off the chair and turns to watch, giving Steve a full view of the horror show on the floor. The man fucking Bucky’s mouth does indeed have a shock stick in his hand. He pulls out; Bucky coughs wetly, drool and blood sliding down his cheeks. The agent kneeling between his legs, jerks on the choke collar and growls, “Beg me to breed you, cunt.”

“Pl-uhh,” Bucky moans. The man slaps him. Jerks the collar again, making him gag.

“‘Please breed me, daddy.’ Say it!” His voice is rough with his impending orgasm. He thrusts harder, drawing out a scream.

Berlin, six months into their work against Hydra. A male prostitute had solicited Steve, called him “Daddy” in English with his thick German accent and Bucky had made the most ridiculous face, delight and disbelief combined. That night, curled up together under a wool blanket Bucky had waggled his eyebrows and said “how tired you feelin’…Daddy?” And they had smothered hysterical laughter into each other’s necks, laughing turned to kissing turned to lovemaking—

“Pll—lease—breed—AH! Breed me! Daddy, pLEASE!” Bucky chokes out the words, his following scream of pain cut off by a hand around his throat. The agent’s own grunts fill the room for a minute before he pulls out unceremoniously, leaving Bucky spread open and gasping, Steve gasping too, the pain of that memory a thousand times worse than the cuts bleeding on his legs; it’ll always be shadowed by this, now. And if this is indicative of Bucky’s time with Hydra, then he’s been living with these stains for much longer than Steve ever will. 

And he’s hard.

Jesus Christ, Bucky is hard, thick cock pointed straight toward his belly button. He can’t—doesn’t know what to—what to think about that, except—except he knows how much Bucky needs to be hurt during sex—and the touch thing, how hard it’s been for him to accept anyone’s touch, but how badly he craves it, how the slightest brush of fingers can make him lose himself, and—

It all hits home.

What Hydra has done to him. Had been doing to him all the time Steve was under ice. Then under his nose while he was working with SHIELD. And now right in front of him, proudly on display, look at what (you’ve) we’ve made of the man you love.

He can’t breathe. It’s so hot, the gag is choking him, and he can’t breathe.

The man who’d been fucking Bucky’s mouth takes the spot between his legs, jabbing the shock stick into Bucky’s side as he thrusts in. 

“Oh fuck, that is good,” the man moans over Bucky’s wet screams. Steve’s mouth sucks tight over the gag on his next shuddery inhale. Can hardly breathe at all through his nose anymore. Still tastes Bucky and Rumlow mixed together on the back of his tongue. Oh god.

Rumlow snorts, turning back to Steve. “Hurry it up,” he says and jerks his chin at Rollins, who had also stopped to watch the show, hand stroking a cut on Steve’s inner thigh almost absently. 

“You gonna make him bleed, first?” Rollins asks. His hand replaces Rumlow’s in Steve’s hair, pulling his head this way and that. Enjoying his control. Ice cold insect legs skitter down Steve’s arms. No idea which of them he’s talking about or what “first” means (well, maybe one idea) and it doesn’t really matter. It’s all fucked sideways and just keeps getting worse.

“You said we could whip him,” Rollins says. “I haven’t seen that thing bloody since Egypt. God, that was a good fuckin’ night.” 

Bucky, then. Steve shakes his head in silent denial (no more, you’ve hurt him enough, please STOP) —tries to, anyway, but Rollins just doubles down the grip in his hair and ignores him.

Please, god, Sam please find us.

“I said I’d whip ‘im cuz I’m the only one that can fuckin’ control himself, ya sick fuck,” Rumlow says, expression borderline between irritation and indulgence. “Fine.” He tilts his head at Steve. “Get ‘is shirt off.”

Rollins tugs Steve’s head back, forcing eye contact. He’s grinning ear to ear, manic. High on the torture. Some men are like that. Steve had seen it plenty in WWII.

When Rumlow walks away, Steve has an insane urge to call him back. Rumlow may be evil, sadistic, but there’s something about Rollins that feels…

crazy, he’s fucking psychotic, rabid dog on Rumlow’s leash but he might slip it at any moment

“You’re not gonna wanna miss this,” Rollin grins. “That robot bleeds so damn pretty.” He looks Steve up and down and adds, “you’re not bad, though.” 

He looks demonic with the light behind him, face thrown into shadows. There’s blood on his mouth and Steve wonders wildly if he traced it over his own lips like 

an appetizer

war paint. He brings the knife to Steve’s neck. Runs it along his skin, gaze flicking between the blade and Steve’s eyes, making him sweat and loving it. Finally he dips the blade under the collar of his shirt and starts cutting away the layers of fabric and tactical gear, slashing skin along the way with a savage grin.

—

“He’s fuckin’ hard, look at this shit!”

“You just noticed? You fucked it plenty during the STRIKE mission.”

“Yeah, yeah, I just thought that was somethin’ Pierce did to him, y’know? Like gave him pills or somethin’. Creepy old fucker woulda done it, too.”

The Commander’s voice interrupts. “Nah, he didn’t.” 

The asset’s vision comes back into focus. His Commander is leaning over him. Checking him for deficiencies. He knows that searching look. When their eyes meet, the Commander gets a small, secretive smile. <“Always my good boy, no?”> he says in his stilted Russian. Words meant only for the asset to understand. It turns the pain in his throat, his mouth and ribs and ass and guts into a warm, throbbing glow. 

“Da, Komandir,” he rasps, even though he doesn’t think it was a question that required an answer. The Commander’s expression closes off again, but he’d seen the approval underneath and that’s all he needs. He can take whatever they throw at him. He’s done it before. Done it without someone like the Commander to make it okay. This, by comparison, is bliss.

It’s all about perspective.

“C’mon. Hands and knees,” the Commander orders. 

The asset rolls onto his side. Gets the vibranium arm, unshaken by adrenaline, propped underneath his chest and puts most of his weight on it as he hefts himself into position. Blood drips in a long stream from his mouth. He’s bitten his tongue, as well as his lip. Thinks his uvula might be ripped, too, based on the stinging pain when he swallows. Minor injuries. He could still fight if needed.

For some reason, that thought makes him want to glance at Rumlow’s prisoner. He forces his eyes to stay on the floor between his hands. Let it go. It’s not him. He’s gone. Shudders. Spits another mouthful of blood. Parts of the “other” personality rolling around in his brain, confusing the mechanisms with a stream of consciousness whispering:

he left you just let it go that’s not him you weren’t worth it not after what you’ve done

but he’s in chains and you could stop it, you’re not stopping it, what if they kill him

why would Zemo be here with a lookalike and not the real Steve

It’s that moment of waking up from sleep, waking up into a nightmare as he’d done so many times in the early Hydra days. Awareness of where he is, how he got here, like a beast rising up out of deep water. 

He doesn’t move out of position but he’s suddenly in a panic, heart racing, not the asset at all but a man lost between identities without a single fucking clue of how to hold onto sanity, the world slipping away between his fingers and he’s kneeling here, fucked bloody by a bunch of Hydra agents and the man who had split up the Avengers and there’s an actual prisoner chained to a chair, what is he DOING—

Muffled cries from across the room. “Nn! Nn! Nn!” and who knows better than him what “no” sounds like shouted from behind a gag? Familiar swish and whisper against the floor. His spine knots up before he consciously identifies it: whip.

For just a moment, he thinks about running. He could just leave. Go anywhere but here. 

And do what?

Nothing out there for you, cyborg. This is what you have left. Rumlow always took care of you. Just trust him. Stop trying to play human. You haven’t been human since Zola got his hands on you.

Thinks of the Commander’s dark eyes. The way they look straight into him. See what’s really in there.

He knows how to work you. 

You don’t. 

Just let go.

He clenches his jaw so it won’t click down onto his tongue again when the blow falls. Lets out his breath. In the corner of his vision, sees the Commander’s arm go up and back, swing down again and—

FIRE!!!

Fire fire screaming pain on the floor writhing, back split open howling, writhes in agony through breathless shrieks before he starts to fade back into himself. He gags on his breath, rolls his forehead on the cold concrete. Hot, body burning up all coming from his back, diagonal slash and wet streaming down his side, pooling underneath him.

“Hands and knees,” the voice says, the voice that moves him and he moves, obedience of a machine, no thought of his own. Head hanging, tucks his tongue back just in time for the next—

Rush. Rush. Rush.

Pulse. Blood. Blood pulse in his ears.

He’s…

Hazy light through eyelashes

On his side. Floor.

Someone's boot in front of him. 

(fear)

Hand on his cheek. Pulls his eyelid open. 

Water trickles over his face. Stings, but it feels so good. Cold. He opens his mouth to it. Heavenly slide across his tongue, washing the blood away.

“Swallow some of it,” says the voice and he obeys.

<“Good boy.”> 

Handler. Familiar. Touch in his hair. He consciously regains control of his breathing. Earns another stroke to his head for the effort. “Just breathe. Ya did good.”

The praise is so genuine he could wrap it around himself like a blanket. It dulls the fire from his back into a lazy, warm throb.

Hand on his. Wraps his fingers around a plastic water bottle. 

“Drink some. Slow,” his handler says.

He starts to nod, but stops as the pull of his neck awakens the line of fire down his back. He’s coming back to himself. The Commander assesses him, pats his cheek then stands up.

The (good boy) asset pulls the water bottle to his lips and takes a small sip. The Commander’s small act of compassion in giving him this takes the pain down another few degrees. It’s just a couple of lashes. He’ll probably need stitches. No big deal.

He strokes the bottle in between sips, cementing this tangible evidence of the Commander’s kindness into his memory. No one else takes such good care of him.

(His memory tries to tell him about someone who maybe had, but it’s easy to let that thought glide past unrecognized.)

—

Steve is sobbing.

Can’t stop it. Can hardly breathe. Head light and buzzing. 

Rumlow’s whip hasn’t just left welts. It’s unzipped Bucky’s skin like a sword strike. Two long gashes spanning his entire back. Left shoulderblade to right hip. Right shoulder to left hip. An X, a giant X like those unforgettable custom crossed straps Rumlow always used to wear with his tac gear, X like a fucking mark of ownership carved into Bucky’s flesh.

Supersoldier serum won’t keep this from scarring. His back has been slashed wide open. Bone visible. The dip between Bucky’s back muscles had kept the intersection of whip lines from crossing as deeply, or he might’ve had spinal damage. 

There’s blood everywhere. The second blow had knocked him flat unconscious, and Steve’s seen him get bashed across the skull repeatedly by Iron Man without losing steam.

He’s just vaguely aware of Rollins’ hands on him. He’s got his chin on Steve’s shoulder from behind, like a lover cuddled up to watch a show with him. One hand on his shoulder, the other between his legs, fingering the belly of a cut in his upper thigh in a manner so sexual it’s bringing back the nausea full-force.

“God, can’t wait to stick my dick in that,” he breathes, hot and wet against Steve’s ear.

They’re fucking insane! All of them! Oh god, Buck—

And Rumlow makes it worse. He brings Bucky water. Washes the blood from his mouth, coaxes him into drinking, then tucks the bottle into his flesh hand with gentle strokes against his skin. Steve has read up enough on brainwashing techniques since the Triskelion to recognize the manipulation in that act. The look of grateful acceptance on Bucky's face says it’s working perfectly.

“Gonna tighten these up now, Soldat. Just stay down,” Rumlow says. One of his men sets down a medical kit beside him. Rumlow pulls on a pair of gloves and picks up a pre-threaded stitching needle, and—

He can’t. He has to look away, because he’s choking down bile and he doesn’t think they’ll take the gag off if he vomits. Turns his head to the left since Rollins is on his right, which leaves him looking at Zemo.

The baron’s face is an impassive mask. He’s watching it all, but doesn’t appear affected in the slightest.

Kill you, Steve promises silently. Kill you all.

Zemo glances at him, as if in response to the thought, then goes right back to watching Rumlow stitch Bucky’s wounds without anesthetic or any basic regard for hygiene. Steve knows exactly when it begins without looking, because Bucky starts making choked sounds, vibranium fingers clawing against the floor with a sound like metal shearing through stone.

“I know. I gotcha, pal. Hang tight. Just gonna get the worst part zipped up. Hang tight buddy, you got this.”

The “worst part,” though, isn’t even the wound. It’s Bucky’s response. A sobbing, grateful, “Yes, Sir.”

Rollins’ hand creeps up Steve’s thigh. He tries to squeeze his legs together without success. The attempted movement, at least, doesn’t make him want to puke. The touch, though—that’s another story. Fingers sliding up against his groin. Between dick and balls, as if mapping out his genitals by touch. Zemo’s eyes flicker back to Steve, to his lap, and away again with no acknowledgment that anything out of the ordinary is happening.

“Fuck,” Rollins murmurs in his ear. His hand wraps around Steve’s cock and he can’t stop it. Starts stroking up and down and he can’t stop it. He tightens his abdomen, grunts in protest, and Rollins just keeps stroking him to the scene of his lover being brutally tortured and he can’t stop any of it from happening.

“Fuck, that is so hot. Didn’t know he was gonna claim the fuckin’ Winter Soldier as his bitch like that, god-dAMN,” Rollins murmurs, and laughs. He laughs, while Bucky cries out in pain, while he scratches the floor kkkh—kkkh—kkkh with his metal fingers, while Rumlow murmurs encouragement as if he’s a comrade binding his wounds in the field.

Please. Please, please. Just stop. Please, stop. Please, oh god please.

That hand on him. Squeezing. Pulling. Shattering electric sparks of sensation. Rollins spits in his palm to get it wet. Slick slide of skin on skin. Hypersensitive always, side effect of the serum that he can get off to a stiff breeze but he’s never hated it more than he does in this moment. He’s not turned on at all; he’s horrified, sick, afraid, miserable, but as that hand keeps working him his dick fills with blood and even that feels like he’s assaulted Bucky somehow. 

—-

Blind with agony. The only thing holding the asset into himself is his handler’s voice. Familiar, reassuring, safe. He’s safe.

“All done, pal. Ya did great. Khoroshiy mal’chik, good job.” He strokes the asset’s hair, cool hand against hot skin, and gets up. The asset breathes a relieved sigh. Blanks out into the rhythm of his own breathing until a tug around his throat makes him jerk back into full consciousness.

“Up,” the Commander orders. “Crawl.”

The asset takes three quick, shallow breaths, grits his teeth, then pushes onto hands and knees.

Scream through clenched teeth. PAIN, so much pain. But he keeps moving, just one hand, one knee, other hand, other knee, one task at a time, Hydra taking away all the unbearable shades of gray, turning everything into simple binary: obey or suffer. Then he’s between someone’s knees and the leash pulls him up. He opens his mouth automatically to receive the cock that’s guided into it.

__

Bucky isn’t even looking. Eyes zoned out, distant, thousand yard stare as Rumlow pulls him by the collar so he’s kneeling between Steve’s legs, mouth falling open as if on reflex and Rollins’ hand guides Steve’s dick between his lips and there is nothing he can do to stop it. Steve sobs as Bucky’s mouth fastens onto his cockhead and starts sucking, bobbing up and down, opening around it to let out little mewls of pain because every movement is pulling the wounds in his back but he doesn’t stop.

“Thaaat’s my good boy,” Rumlow growls. He ruffles Bucky’s hair. Wipes sweat from his brow. Bucky doubles down his effort, taking Steve’s cock down his throat, not even choking because he’s probably jacked completely with pain endorphins; what’s a little asphyxiation compared to that? And Steve is…he’s hard. So hard; Bucky’s mouth is expert at this, the way he works his throat and tongue, it doesn’t feel good it doesn’t it doesn’t it doesn’t —

—except it fucking does, it feels amazing and that just makes the horror of it all the more acute. 

From the corner of his eye he can see Rollins with his fucking phone out, hatred shatters through his brain like lightning and his breath does something so dizzying his vision blacks out for a second. His head rocks back; he has to consciously get control of his breathing before he can lift it again. It’s the—it’s the fucking blowjob, he can’t—he can’t think straight, can’t— everyone is watching them. If that video gets out, the entire fucking world could be watching them and he’s hyperventilating, he’s—oh god, Bucky, please baby please stop—

“Stop, baby, holy shit,” Steve laughs, pulling Bucky’s long hair to get him to back off. Glacier blue eyes turn up to him, fuck-me bedroom eyes right there and his lips still stretched pink around Steve’s cock and his grin dies a little at the flicker of fear in Bucky’s eyes before he shuts down all expression and pulls off.

“What’s wrong, S-uh-Steve?”

Knows he was about to say “Sir,” but they both ignore it.

“You’re too good at this is what’s wrong,” Steve says, a soft smile on his face as he strokes Bucky’s stubbled cheek. “I wanna take my time. Don’t wanna lose any more time with you, baby. Hey.” Cups the back of Bucky’s head. Brushes hair out of his face with his other hand. “I love you, Buck.”

Smile. Shadowed. Darkness still in there, but it’s a smile nonetheless so he’ll take it.

“Love you too, Steve.”

“Bucky.” The name takes all his breath. Leaves him gasping for air. “BUCKY!” The one single word he can still say coherently with the ball gag in his mouth.

His face is buried in Steve’s crotch, forehead and nose pressed to his skin. Rumlow has a possessive hand on the back of his neck, stroking him as if in reward for a job well done

Kill him, going to KILL HIM

and when Bucky pulls back he has blood streaked down his forehead and nose from the cuts Rollins has left all over Steve’s body. He moans around Steve’s cock—not sexual, it’s a sound of pain, and Steve says his name again.

“Bucky.”

Those eyes turn up to him. Miserable. Exhausted. Screaming somewhere deep inside, or maybe that’s just Steve, trying to find Bucky wherever he’s gone in his head. To keep from losing him permanently.

Again.

__

“Bucky.”

No.

“BUCKY”

He focuses on the stretch in his throat. Working his tongue. Stays in deep until he’s about to pass out before he finally pulls back—passing out during a blowjob means punishment and he just wants to make them cum so he can rest for a while—but as soon as he pulls back there’s that sound again.

“Bucky.”

Please stop.

His eyes come into focus. Blond pubic hair and blood. Chains. Why—? 

Why chains?

He looks up. This can’t…he can’t. No more. He just wants it to be over.

Steve

No, Steve is dead, he’s DEAD, he left and died, it’s just another,

just

another

it’s

Why can’t he just let go

He can’t

Can’t do this, he

Looks in the direction of his handler’s voice. Needs

I need you please

orders, he can’t—

guy’s chained to a chair, this isn’t what—he isn’t like that, doesn’t rape people, he’s not

(Hydra)

help me please please tell me what to do

The Commander’s voice. “Make him cum.” Impatience. “Go on.”

Cool breeze through his insides, opening him where he got stuck. He goes back to fulfilling his handler’s orders. Gets his hands into it, too. Moans every time he pulls back. Sometimes if they think he’s really into it they’ll cum faster. And the guy is making sounds, too, moans or

crying

something

Bucky

He comes up gasping, mouth empty, against orders, desperate screaming in his chest and looks up at his handler

Tell me tell me TELL ME HELP ME PLEASE

who shoves a thumb into his mouth and grips his lower jaw like that, thumb pinching his tongue down, no shred of compromise in his eyes or voice when he says, “I gave you orders,” the words better than any threat because they both know what Hydra does with failure.

When the Commander releases his mouth he plunges back onto the man’s cock, hands working, eyes tight shut, doesn’t listen to that grunt that sounds like a name, a rhythm that sounds like I love you, it’s just 

noise 

it’s nothing, and

he is a machine, he was made to be used and to follow orders and nothing else nothing else nothing else Steve left and he’s dead now he’s DEAD he’s DEAD he’s—

—cumming, FINALLY cumming down his throat but rough hands pull the asset back and hold him so the cum hits his face and hair and 

he did it, sweet relief, punishment avoided, mission complete, hand under his jaw holding his face up, on display, it’s not that unusual for them to do that. He keeps his eyes closed. Doesn’t want to see the chains or the cuts in the man’s skin. They make him feel

like a monster

queasy.

___

Broken.

Something has broken. Just…shattered. In Steve, in Bucky, maybe in the universe overall.

Every time he said Bucky’s name, Bucky looked at Rumlow. Asking. And Rumlow always answered. Never leaving him to think for himself.

This is how they did it.  

Torture, brainwashing, drugs, surgery. None of this is new. Rumlow’s playing it by the book. The bastard has exploited an emptiness that only he would be fucked up enough to fill. Slotting himself right into the traumatized parts of Bucky’s past, ripping them wide open again.

And now he holds Bucky’s cum-and-blood-stained face up to Steve like he’s showing off a trophy. There’s no laughter in his eyes like there is in Rollins’. Just a dark, stern intensity.

“Take a good look. He answers to me. He belongs to me. He fucks who I say, when I say. Is that clear?”

Steve nods. There’s really no other choice.

Bucky’s eyes are tightly closed. Shutting out the world. Steve had only made this worse by trying to get through to him. There’s no getting through, not unless they get out, and no chance of that happening without Sam finding them.

I’m sorry, Buck. I can’t fix this.

He’s so tired of living with all the things he can’t fix.

Rumlow seems satisfied with whatever expression is on Steve’s face right then. He pulls on the leash, pulls Bucky away from Steve. Back on hands and knees

his back oh god oh god baby I’m sorry

crawling away and it feels like watching Bucky fall from the train, feels like watching him disintegrate into ash. 

Steve bows his head and starts to sob.

__

Steve loses track of time. It’s just an endless tide of grunts and screams—his own, and Bucky’s.

They keep shocking his chair. Some kind of electronic device hooked up to cables which they attach to the chains. Bucket of water poured over his head before they turn on the device and his entire body becomes lightning. They just let it run and run and run until his screams turn into breathless whimpers. His lungs feel like they’re going to explode. He can smell his own skin burning. Ozone and bacon.

You don’t know what pain is. But I’m gonna teach you.

When they finally switch the machine off and he returns to the room, he almost wishes for them to start it again. Send him anywhere but here.

Rollins and one of the unnamed men are double-fucking Bucky while standing. Rollins has Bucky in his arms, legs pulled up around his waist. The other man holds him from behind. Bucky’s head hangs loosely to the side, but he’s conscious and crying out weakly as they use him. Even as Steve watches, the man behind Bucky groans loudly and pulls out of him to paint his cum all over Bucky’s bloody back. As soon as he steps away Rollins walks Bucky to the steel wall. Steve recognizes the cuffs they’ve been using: the same impossibly strong magnetic cuffs that Hydra had once tried to use to subdue him. In an impressive display of strength, Rollins holds Bucky to himself with one arm while arranging his metal arm up above his head and pinning it to the wall with the cuff. 

He only secures Bucky’s left arm. Lets the other one dangle, lets Bucky’s head loll loosely as he hitches both legs up over his hips and starts pounding him against the wall. 

Bucky cries out in pain. Reaches up weakly with his flesh hand. Gropes at Rollins, then at his strained left side where his whole body is being hung from the implanted arm. Rollins buries his face in Bucky’s neck, chewing at him while he fucks him, grasping hands leaving dark prints in his flesh, until Bucky’s eyes fly wide and he screams, the sound echoing through the entire room.

Rumlow, who had been adjusting that electronic device, turns at the sound. He shoots to his feet and becomes a blur, flashing across the room to grab Rollins by the face and shoulder, physically tearing him off of Bucky. He throws Rollins across the entire room so that he lands with a thud against the wall nearly on top of Zemo, who jolts out of his chair just in time to avoid being kicked in the face. Zemo ducks behind Steve as Rollins hits the floor and springs back up like an angry jungle cat, blood spraying from his snarling mouth. His hand darts down for his gun, only to find the holster empty.

“Lookin’ for this?” Rumlow holds up the gun in his left hand; his right hand rests on the butt of his own sidearm. “You’re fucked, Jack. Go walk it off.”

Rollins growls. He growls. Like a fucking animal.

And it all clicks into place.

They’ve taken the serum. Everything enhanced. Speed, strength, healing, and personality. All those lovely little traits Hydra had recruited them for. Rumlow’s possessive, controlling, calculated behavior. So far beyond anything Steve remembered of him. His mysteriously healed scars. And Rollins…he had never interacted much with Rollins, just remembers noticing his edgy sense of humor and the way he put people off. Now all of that is dialed up to eleven, and Rumlow’s right; Rollins is fucked. Because he’s barely able to act human anymore. 

“Jack.” Rumlow’s voice is even softer. Deadlier. “Go upstairs. And walk. It. Off.”

Rollins’ hands clench and unclench at his sides. He grunts. Snarls. Licks blood from his lips. Finally, in a sudden movement that makes Steve’s heart jump, he spins on his heel and heads toward the stairs, tucking his cock back into his pants. Stalks up the stairs and out of the basement entirely.

Rumlow lets out a breath and shakes his head. “Get back in the chair,” he snaps at Zemo, but turns to Bucky without looking to see if Zemo obeys.

Bucky is bleeding from his throat. Rollins had bitten him. A fucking rabid dog on Rumlow’s leash, just like Steve had thought earlier. A rabid dog with exponentially amplified strength and speed.

This isn’t just the ex-Hydra crew.

This is Hydra. Still functional. Still active.

And enhanced.

Chapter Text

At first, Steve thinks he’s imagining the sound. His heart is pounding so hard in his ears. But when the door to the basement opens again, he’s sure.

Helicopters.

“Brock!” Rollins yells, running halfway down the stairs. “Three ‘copters, comin’ this way.”

Sam!!

Hope surges through him in a tsunami, kicks his heartbeat into a full gallop, and he notes as his eyes swing back to Rumlow that the sudden turn doesn’t make him feel dizzy at all.

Rumlow reacts immediately, asking questions and snapping out orders. 

“Didn’t you check them for trackers? Reynolds, get the launchers prepped. Rollins, you know what to do. Move out. Take ‘em down soon as they’re in range.”

A string of “Yes Sirs” meet him as all the Hydra agents run up the stairs. Rumlow pulls the second magnetic cuff from the wall, shoves Bucky’s flesh arm up over his head and fastens the cuff to it, pinning him to the wall with both arms stretched overhead. Without a single look back at him, Rumlow dashes up the stairs after his men.

Steve flexes his fists and pulls at the chains. 

The dizziness is gone. And the nausea. How—?

He looks down to his right, to the IV. It’s still in place in the back of his right hand, but something has changed. He feels clearer. Stronger.

In the end, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is getting out. Zemo is already up and moving, but he doesn’t come to free Steve.

He’s going toward Bucky.

_____

Zemo had known, of course.

The ease with which this group of men (Hydra, he can only presume) had subdued Rogers. The speed at which they’d wrestled him, unconscious, and Zemo himself, semi-conscious, into the back of the van which had brought them here. 

Humans do not run so fast. They certainly don’t knock out Steve Rogers with a single well aimed punch. And no matter how muscular, there’s no way an ordinary human could have carried the nearly solid steel chair that Rogers currently occupies down the stairs with one hand.

Thankfully, their prowess made them arrogant. It made them easy to exploit.

After all, what does a gang of supersoldiers have to fear from an unarmed, vanilla human?

Zemo made himself utterly unobtrusive after they freed his hands and let him have his fun. And it worked. He established rapport, then faded into anonymity. He stayed practically invisible as they continued their parade of atrocities. He only flinched once, during the whipping. Something turning over uneasy in his chest. James is a beautiful man, and to scar that glorious backside, it’s…

A shame. A terrible shame. But his priority at this moment must be survival.

Besides, after what he’d seen during the (excellent, sublime, utterly memorable) blowjob, James has completely given himself over to his old Hydra tormentors. A recidivist parolee returning to prison, the complexity of the outside world too much for him to bear.

As the room goes silent after the exit of their captors, Zemo stands from his chair and approaches James’ bound form. He is absolutely stunning, even streaked with blood, bruises, and the semen of various men. Arms stretched overhead, legs shaking as he tries to keep them under himself, to take some of the weight from his wrists and shoulders. His fine body flexes and writhes in its tortured position. Chin to his chest, he gasps in small, fitful breaths. Bloody drool drips down from his mouth. That choke chain circles a ring of black bruises around his neck, the leash dangling down his chest in invitation.

Feral. A shiver runs down Zemo’s spine. The one in charge of this night’s horrors (Brock?) had given his obedient slave no respite. It had been a lesson in brutality the likes of which Zemo hopes never to witness again. Blood still drips down James’ thighs, all the way to his ankles to pool around his feet on the stone floor.

“James.”

His voice is soft. Coaxing. But James gives no indication that he hears. Behind him, Rogers grunts something angry-sounding. Of course, he doesn’t know what Zemo has been doing all this time. (Not that he expects it to make Rogers hate him less at this point.) How he’d hoped that James would recognize him and give some indication that he wanted to join them in breaking free. He’d known better than to speak directly of escape—if James was truly back in his old mindset, then he would simply report to his superiors anything Zemo said to him. So, while James had been servicing him, Zemo had forced him to look at his old lover, to see if it would rouse him. 

It only seemed to push him further into himself. 

Looking now at that bloodstained and drooling mouth, he can’t deny how deeply he’d wanted it. Enjoyed it. For the second time in his life, he’d had the opportunity to utterly subjugate this magnificent living weapon. To feast on James’ obedience. Even his misery. And his tears—god, the vibration of his sobs around Zemo’s cock…

The complexity of their shared experience will need to be unpacked and categorized at a later date. For now, they need to escape. And he has a sense (why should it make him feel so hollow?) that “James” is gone, at least for now.

“Soldat,” he says this time, a distant coldness entering his voice.

A pause between breaths. That stubborn chin rises. Those ethereal blue eyes raise to meet his. Zemo lifts his chin, knowing full well he’s adopting the arrogant, derisive posture of James’ torturers. A calculated move and one that is received with a softening in James’ eyes.

With recognition and surrender.

“Hold still, soldat,” Zemo says. He strides forward, closer, closer, until James could easily crush his ribcage if he decided to kick out. Close up, he smells overwhelmingly of blood and sex. It does something disturbing to Zemo’s equilibrium, a strange lift through his body, like a wave passing under a boat at sea. He conceals his discomposure and reaches up to the cuffs at James’ wrists. SHIELD’s magnetic cuffs came up during his past research of the Avengers and it doesn’t take him long to figure out the mechanism of release on these.

He disengages both cuffs at once and James crashes to the ground bonelessly, skull cracking into the concrete. Zemo crouches beside him, pulling his head up. If he’s been knocked out now, of all times—but no, his eyelids flutter open, dazed but conscious.

Now in full view, his poorly stitched backside is…a horror. Zemo averts his eyes from it. He’s taken in enough nightmare fuel tonight. Remembering his role, he pats James’ cheek then stands up, taking the bloody leash in hand. He remembers how the ringleader had used it and mimics the movement. A sharp tug to choke that heinously bruised throat. A clipped command: “Come.” No room in his tone for disobedience.

Gasping, ribs heaving, James lifts himself onto hands and knees and starts to crawl. That incredible resilience Zemo had studied, watched, obsessed over for so many years, harnessed by a single syllable…

He takes no joy in this moment. To have this powerful, beautiful man, brutalized and crawling obediently at his side. To know that James would obey any command of his without question.

But that is a lie, and while he lies to others with ease, Zemo disdains self-deception. He may loathe James’ state of injury, but the submission? He could eat that with a spoon for a lifetime and be content.

Rogers has murder in his eyes as they approach. Zemo frowns, but brings James to heel at Rogers’ feet. He bends down and lifts James’ vibranium hand by the wrist, settling it over one of the chains that bind Rogers’ right leg. They’re locked together with some kind of key coded device. “Break this chain, soldat,” he orders.

His chest lurches as James’ fist closes over the chain, the sound of screeching metal sharp in the silent room. It comes apart immediately.

“Continue,” he says, steady voice hiding his jangled nerves. “Break them all.” Then he looks to Rogers, whose eyes still promise him a painful death, and speaks with a calm he doesn’t feel: “As soon as their eyes were off me and my hands were free, I activated an emergency signal hidden upon my person. It was received by my people and transmitted to Sam Wilson, informing him of our location. You may not believe this, but I did the only thing I could do to make them think little enough of me that they would leave me unbound.” Which—is technically true. That he’d enjoyed it immensely is beside the point.

Rogers snarls something that sounds a lot like “Bullshit,” despite the gag. Zemo sighs. 

“For all you’ve seen and done, you remain somehow innocent. I did exactly what was needed so that I could call for help. I’m trying to save both of your lives.” 

James has unbound Rogers’ right arm as well, now. The man pulls it out of the chains and immediately raises his arm to unfasten the buckle at the back of his head which holds the gag into place. Zemo takes a few steps back.

“I hope you’re feeling well enough to fight by now. I closed the clamp on your IV line when I had the opportunity to duck behind you.” He pauses while Rogers flexes his right fist, as if testing his ability to do so. “You’re welcome,” he adds, not quite able to resist.

Rogers hacks and spits to the side. “Fuck you, Zemo,” he snarls. He rips the IV out of the back of his hand with his teeth, then starts ripping chains off his left arm as if they’re made of plastic rather than welded steel. James, meanwhile, breaks the last of the chains on his left leg. Rogers lurches to his feet, wobbles in place, then falls into a crouch as balance evades him.

He takes advantage of the change in position to turn to James. The sickened rage in his expression immediately softens. He reaches out to cup James’ chin, turning his face up. Doesn’t seem to register the flinch through James’ shoulders, or the way his eyes turn to the side, avoiding contact.

“Baby,” he breathes. Strokes a gentle hand down James’ face, through blood and cum. Again, not seeming to notice the way the man shies away from his touch. “Hey. Hey, I know. It’s alright. It’s gonna be alright. Buck…oh Jesus, I know. I know. Hey. Look, I have to go help Sam fight these bastards. I’ll be right back for you, okay? I love you, Buck. I’ll be right back.”

Zemo’s mouth turns downward. He’d built a list of grievances against Steve Rogers since the destruction of his homeland, but his blind pigheadedness has always topped the list. He can’t quite pinpoint what in that little speech rubs him so thoroughly the wrong way, but his instinct screams “Wrong!” with every word out of Rogers’ mouth.

Rogers pushes to his feet, shoots one last look of loathing at Zemo, then heads for the stairs in a staggering run. Interesting as it might be to watch him battle while wearing only his boots and a lot of blood, Zemo utilizes the time while he kicks at the locked door to pick up James’ pants from where they had been thrown and bring them back to him. Between the two supersoldiers, he thinks, James is the one who would most want to be hidden from view.

He’s lying on his left side, partially turned onto his stomach. Zemo suppresses a shudder as his eyes scroll past the hideous whip wounds. “Soldat,” he says, “it is time for you to get dressed.” He’s not stupid enough to touch James unannounced in this situation, even if he appears unconscious.

He’s not. James’ eyes snap open. Instantly awake, like a predatory animal. He watches as Zemo eases his feet into the pants and works them up his blood-drenched legs. He makes it halfway up James’ thighs before he can’t get the fabric any higher beneath the weight of his body. “Finish pulling them up,” he orders. James obeys.

Behind Zemo, noise erupts into the room as the door bursts open and the former Captain America runs to join the battle.

He could have bothered to clothe his friend first, Zemo thinks, and is somewhat surprised at his own anger at the lack of consideration. As if he’s treated this pitiful, broken creature with any more respect. Ah, well. The heart is rarely rational. Still. Rogers would never be able to deliver this comfort:

He tilts James’ face up with a firm grip on his jaw. Takes his hair in his other hand for emphasis. James’ haunted eyes latch onto him. Miles upon miles of devastation barely hidden behind a sea of arctic blue.

“You did well, soldat,” Zemo tells him. “Your handlers are very pleased with you.”

James gasps, as if he’s just been delivered a fatal blow. Fresh tears well up in his eyes and spill down his face, leaving streaks of clean flesh amid the semen and blood. His lips twitch, a fragile smile trying to fit itself onto his lovely mouth. Zemo pets his hair, ignoring the filth.

“Good boy,” he murmurs. “Good boy.” Such little words, but they make this fearsome predator shake in his hands.

Gunshots from above wake him out of the strange spell James has cast over him. God, what is he doing? The man is already shattered and here is Zemo, making him bleed out the last of his soul onto the concrete while their fate is decided for them by the combatants upstairs. He lowers James’ head to the floor. Steels himself against the panic in the man’s eyes

don’t leave me don’t leave me

—No. He shakes his head at himself. Foolishness. 

“For what it’s worth, I enjoyed my time with you,” he says. Pets James’ scruffy cheek once more just to memorize the feel of it under his hand. 

Stands up.

Walks away.

Once he’s out of the basement, survival takes over his thoughts. Anything he may have felt toward James can come out later.

Much later.

___

Curled on the floor, the asset reels in the absence of touch. Everything throbs. Heart pounding a drumbeat of war through his entire body. Sounds of gunfire and shouts.

Injured on the field. Needs his handler. Needs…

(Take ‘em down soon as they’re in range.)

Enemy incoming, he remembers. Why…

Why is he lying here?

He pushes himself onto hands and knees. Can’t stop himself from screaming. Everything is fire. 

Lurches to his feet. Falls.

Tries again. 

He weaves toward the stairs in a drunken stagger, wheeling back and forth as he walks. Bloody footprints trail behind him.

Upstairs, a burst of sub machine gun fire.

Adrenaline spikes in him. Something in his head clicks into place.

He picks up speed on the stairs, the pain of his injuries falling away with every step. This is what he was built to do. This is his purpose.

___

“WILSON! Ten o’clock!”

Sam turns at the voice in his earbud, barely heard under the deafening beat of chopper wings. Aims and shoots from behind the shield at the man who’d been taking aim at him. Soft vibration through the vibranium shield as it catches the bullet. His target goes down with a perfect headshot. To the left of the enemy agent he catches sight of Steve, thank FUCK he’s alive, though he’s— naked, what the fuck?? —clearly been tortured, and is now engaged in hand-to-hand with someone who’s—

—actually matching him blow for blow, which is not good at all.

Not more supersoldiers. Fuck my life!

And not just a supersoldier: he remembers fighting that bastard years ago, during his very first op with Steve. The guy was Hydra. Which means Hydra is still active.

Which means Hydra has the serum.

“Ahhh, shit,” he says under his breath. He shoots at another hostile who pops around a corner with a rifle, but the man leaps forward in a near blur and heads towards the nearest helicopter. “Walker! Hoskins! You got incoming!”

The two men turn immediately at the sound of his voice in their earbuds and take the enemy down in a swift double-team move. Even with Walker enhanced, he and Hoskins work like one mind. Hoskins shouts and aims his gun, making the enemy agent take an evasive maneuver which puts him right into Walker’s line of fire. The good news is, they’re winning. Between the three of them and the cadre of operatives they’d brought along for the party, they’ve taken down two hostiles and Sam has only seen two others.

The bad news comes out of the house’s front door a moment later.

For a moment, the entire fight disappears.

Bucky, his brother in arms. Bucky, with whom he’d fought an interplanetary battle. Bucky, who had been a fucking dick to him, not to mention trying to kill him a few times in Winter Soldier mode, but nevertheless, they had forged a friendship.

Shirtless and barefoot, he’s even bloodier than Steve. His thin pants stick to his legs. And a chain, a fucking dog chain swings from his neck. Something about the way he moves, the liquid stalk, the way his eyes dart all around the battle scene, it sets off a howling, red alarm in Sam’s head.

Can’t be. They got the triggers out.

“BUCKY!” he shouts, but the helicopter blades eat his voice midair and throw it to the sky. Bucky’s attention has fastened on Steve and his attacker. Bucky runs to help, just as another hostile comes in from the other side to join the fight.

What happens next, Sam can only stand and watch. 

Bucky darts around to Steve’s back. Steve, clearly not seeing him as a threat, turns fully away from him. 

Bucky whips the chain attached to his neck around Steve’s throat and turns with it, taking Steve’s weight onto his back like he’s carrying a heavy sack by the tie at its top. Twisting the chain tighter, he throws Steve over his shoulder so that he crashes against the ground. Blood flies through the air between them. Bucky follows it up with two punches to Steve’s face with the metal arm, then releases the chain and stands with it still dangling from his own neck. 

The two Hydra guys take off toward the chopper, both firing with uncanny aim, forcing most of Sam’s team to take cover. One of the hostiles launches a grenade; it blows the spinning blade off their second chopper, forcing them all to duck as the blade flies wild. It hits the front of the house and slides right through the paneling, shattering glass and splitting siding before it stops, halfway buried in the outer wall. Bucky runs after the Hydra agents, blood trailing down every inch of his body like an extra in a fucking zombie apocalypse movie. 

Sam’s head feels hollow. It’s that same shocky, distant, unreal feeling he’s gotten during his worst moments in combat, when things go south so quickly the mind can’t process any of it.  He doesn’t want to believe it. Can’t believe it. There must have been some kind of extortion, or something to do with the trigger words. This can’t be—Bucky fought so hard to get free of Hydra—

But he shakes himself back into action; no time to think now. The three of them have gotten into the chopper, and as he looks toward the last functional helicopter he realizes that—it isn’t. The second half of the chopper blade flew directly into it, crushing the front end and burying itself into the control panel.

“I’m going after them,” Sam says, his voice dead with distant shock. He can’t take down three supersoldiers in hand to hand, which means he’ll have to damage the chopper enough to crash it. With Bucky inside.

He shoves all those thoughts into the same box where he’s keeping Steve’s fate, and Bucky’s return to Hydra. The same box where he’s stored all manner of trauma over the years so that he could get shit done.

He activates his wings and launches into the air as the chopper takes off.

They quickly cover half a mile at least before Sam is able to overtake them, shield blocking bullets as one of the agents hangs out of the doorway to fire back at him. A gunmetal gray arm comes out of the cabin beside that agent and knocks the rifle from his hands. It sails into the trees far below them and Sam’s heart leaps.

Bucky. He’s still himself.

He puts on a burst of speed and flies up under the helicopter’s right side skid. Sees Bucky just above, holding back a very pissed-off looking Hydra agent.

That’s my boy!!

His relief is a burst of gunfire in his chest, neatly taking his mind away from the expression in Bucky’s eyes. A soul-deep pain that doesn’t come from physical wounds.

The pain of a man with a shotgun under his chin, about to pull the trigger.

Bucky throws the other man back into the helicopter and jumps down himself, wraps his legs around the skid and swings upside down until he can grab hold of Sam’s wings. Frantic beep from his suit as damage is registered, some critical component ripped away by Bucky’s hands, then Sam is suddenly behind the helicopter, coasting without propulsion. Watching Bucky climb back into the cabin.

He hits buttons on his control panel, trying to bring the wings back online, but it’s no good. The flight system is dead. He can glide to the ground, but he’s never going to catch up to them now.

A few seconds later, a gunshot rings out and a body falls from the helicopter. At this distance, he can’t tell who it is.

“FUCK!!!!” Sam screams.

“Wilson? What’s going on?” Hoskins’ voice in his earbud.

“Gonna need you guys to pick me up,” he says, voice distant as he aims his coast in the direction of the fallen man. “Might have a body to bring with. How’s Steve?”

“Alive,” Hoskins says and Sam lets out a tense breath. At least one of them made it.

Bucky, if you’re not dead, I’m gonna kill you.

But there’s no conviction to the thought. 

It was that look in his eyes. Like he’d welcome oblivion.

___

Rumlow has always been known for his cool head on missions. It was why he’d ascended rank in Hydra. Why he’d garnered loyalty from his followers. That trait has only gotten more pronounced since he took the serum and started rebuilding Hydra from the ground up. No matter the situation, he is in control. 

The rest of his team who had dosed with him haven’t had the same result.

It’s been a motherfuckin’ mission on its own, just keeping these crazy bastards in line during the last year. Covering up for the rapes and murders, the colleagues killed out of passion. Having to rein in their bloodlust every fuckin’ minute. Reynolds’ idiotic vanity; Hauer’s taste for coke (takes 3 ounces before he starts even feeling shit and so he’d switched to smoking crack, which resulted in several drug dealers turning up dead and Rumlow fixing it afterward); but worst of all, his second in command Jack Rollins, who turned from a competent sadist into a fucking wild dog that has to be constantly brought to heel.

He’s the only one of the fuckers that’s made it through the transition with enough of himself left to function without a handler. He doesn’t get it. Rogers had been fine. The asset had been fine. Rumlow himself had been fine. What was wrong with the rest of them?

It had been a mistake. He knows that now. He’s lost something by taking the serum, some aspect of himself that used to be there, eclipsed by his much stronger trait of methodical, calm cruelty. And he got off the easiest of the four of them. The others? They’re fucked. Rumlow’s nearly taken each of them out at some point in the last year for sheer efficiency’s sake. Easier to have two dozen men do the job of one of them so that Rumlow doesn’t have to spend all his energy covering for their excesses.

The new Cap and his crew, one of them enhanced, have luck on their side tonight. They take down Reynolds and Hauer within a span of minutes. No pulled punches; they aren’t going for prisoners. When Rogers comes after him, dick swingin’ in the wind, Rumlow makes a decision. He’s going to disable this moron—killing will come, but that needs to be later, when he can enjoy it—and get the fuck out. Rollins will find a way; he always does, and the dickbag is loyal to a fault. He’d never try and cause a stink for Rumlow abandoning him. As for his soldat …well. Rogers and his crew’ll probably shovel him back into therapy, but that cause is long-lost. The asset will track him down again; he’s sure of it.

Or maybe Rumlow won’t wait for the stupid whore to make up his mind a second time. Maybe he’ll just circle back to New York after things die down and collect his rightful property.

So the plan is to get out alone. Until the asset joins the fight.

When Rumlow sees his asset—not some pathetic little recovering victim, not Cap’s cockwarmer, but Rumlow’s personal weapon and whore—take down Steve-cocksucking-Rogers on his behalf, he immediately revises his plan to include a plus-one. He’s put the asset through his fucking paces in the last twenty-four hours. Testing his submission. His resolve. But this? For the man to cognizantly, consciously, choose Rumlow over his old butt-buddy? He could laugh in triumph. The whore still heeds his Master’s voice.

His real Master. Not Pierce, or Karpov, or any of the other handlers he’s had over the years.

So he guesses, looking back on it, that what happened next was a foregone conclusion. 

His soldat, not entirely a creature of Hydra anymore (but still MINE) stops Rollins from shooting down his buddy Wilson, tossing Rollins’ rifle out of the copter. The asset jumps out and for a breathless moment, Rumlow thinks he’s trying to hitch a ride away from them with Wilson. But then the asset pulls himself back up into the cabin, mouth contorted in a scream of pain that can’t be heard over the noise of the blade, and Rumlow looks back to see Wilson growing smaller in the distance behind them. Still flying, but apparently unable to keep up anymore. 

A crooked grin steals across his face as he realizes what that little whore must’ve done: saved Wilson’s life, but disabled his flight system. He can’t even be mad. Fine. If killing his old war buddies is the asset’s line in the sand, Rumlow can work with that. Sand is mutable, after all.

His smile drops as movement from the corner of his eye pulls his attention back into the cabin behind him. The asset is flat on his back, twitching in place with Rollins’ shock stick pressed into his chest. Even as Rumlow’s head turns, Rollins draws his gun and aims it at the asset’s head. He’s facing halfway toward Rumlow and he’s got that look again, the one that means only a superior show of violence will stop him.

It only takes a split second.

But it’s been building for a long-ass time.

Rumlow’s reflexes were always lightning fast. Now they’re otherworldly, and an unenhanced human wouldn’t have even seen Rumlow’s arm move. He swivels in place and shoots Rollins squarely in the forehead. He gets off a second shot before the body even starts to fall, mouth still twisted in a feral snarl despite the smear of brain matter on the ceiling and back wall of the cabin behind him. Rollins’ gun clatters to the floor. He topples backward, landing with his upper body hanging out of the cabin. The weight of it drags the rest of him out too and his body vanishes from sight.

Long time comin’, Jack. Rumlow’s smile is long gone and there’s a hollow spot in his head that he doubts will ever turn into grief. Rollins has been the single constant in his life for the last couple of decades and then some. 

Just as well Rumlow was the one to put him down after he went rabid. Better him than some self-righteous cocksucker like Wilson or Rogers.

Eyes front, he holds out his right hand so the asset will be able to see it and crooks his fingers. The asset crawls between the instrument panel and Rumlow’s seat a moment later, twisted to fit into the small space, face turned up toward him.

Rumlow reaches down and pets his hair, carding his fingers through the short strands. Nothing can be heard in the racket of the spinning blade, but they’ve spoken through touch enough times by now. His soldat understands the approval in that touch and Rumlow glances down to see a blissed-out expression on that deathly pale, blood-spattered face. He trails his fingers down the asset’s temple, down his stubbled cheek to stroke along his jawline, eyes to the front again but fully aware of how his asset’s breathing changes to match his touch, how the fine muscles shift beneath his fingers. He curls his hand around the back of the asset’s neck and draws him close, laying his head against Rumlow’s leg. The asset’s flesh hand comes up to hold Rumlow’s thigh, clinging to him.

He’s always enjoyed the way he’d earned the asset’s trust. Like calling a dangerous dog to heel. He pets his soldat’s cheek idly as he flies the chopper away from the Avengers’ leftovers and the compromised Hydra base. Away from the disaster of the serum experiment, finally resolved in blood and death like he’d always known it would be.

Somehow, having his asset in hand makes the sting of loss fade into a background noise.

__

The asset’s mind is a quiet hum through the rest of the flight. The pain of his body blots out any other thought. He’s too tired to scream, no matter how much his severed back muscles want him to. At this point, his handler’s touch is the only thing keeping him sane. The scent of his Commander’s BDUs infused with blood and sweat keeps him grounded until they land. Until a tug on his collar and a firm command rouse him from his stupor to follow his handler out of the helicopter and onto a manicured lawn. To walk obediently a few steps behind and to his left until two other men come running up to them, asking questions to the Commander and taking his orders while they shoot covert, stunned glances toward the asset.

He follows his Commander into a building more similar to their old Hydra safehouses than the last place: a single entry point above ground with an elevator to take them down, down into the belly of the earth, where the Commander meets more agents and gives them instructions. The asset’s mind blanks in and out. A damaged recording. Memories in stop-motion with huge chunks missing.

It’s familiar. So achingly familiar that he leans into it. No need to think, or plan, or play pretend. He follows the letter of his Commander’s word and winds up in a large open floored shower on hands and knees while his Commander washes the blood and cum from his body, scrubs his scalp, tenderly cleanses the shrieking bite wound on his neck and the whip wounds on his back. The asset’s clenched-teeth screams are met with soothing words that don’t quite register, but he bows to his handler’s touch and it gets him through the torturous flow of water over his open wounds. After the shower, the Commander uses a medical staple kit to close up more of the whip wounds (“some o’ these opened up, just hold still, kid”) then leads him, naked and clean and with the cold, heavy choke collar around his throat, down endless green-lit corridors, past agents whose eyes track him with curiosity and awe as they recognize the arm, until they reach a room with a queen-size bed, black sheets, and a Hydra emblem emblazoned into the concrete floor.

The asset is ready to curl up on the floor, but his Commander guides him into the bed. Arranges him on his stomach with legs spread and starts mapping his body out by touch. Metal and flesh arm. Sides and hips. The inflamed, sensitive skin around the whip wounds. Outer and inner thighs, then his ass cheeks, kneading them, pulling them apart, drenching him with spit and rubbing it into him again and again and again. All the while, he murmurs soothingly.

“Such a fuckin’ good boy. Never stopped bein’ my asset. Always belonged to me, baby. Fuck, you’re so beautiful. I’m gonna take care of you. Gonna treat you the way you always needed.” While he talks, he keeps spitting into the asset’s crack and exploring with his fingers, pushing the swollen tissue of his hole open to fuck two fingers into him, filling him with globs of saliva and pulling out the cum of all the Commander’s men to slick his opening again. His own breaths become heavy. Whimpering. Needy. He shifts his legs further open. He doesn’t remember the last time he had sex on a real bed. There is literally no memory of this at all. It’s so soft. The sheets smell like detergent and it makes it so easy to spread his legs and offer himself. A pillow to bite into as his Commander enters his swollen ass. Screams muffled into cotton as the thrusts begin, so very different from any of the Commander’s team; these are thoughtful. Rough and cruel, but it’s cruelty with a purpose. Each thrust settles the understanding between them deeper into his bones.

You are mine. I’ll hurt you and take care of you, and in return, you obey. In all things, you obey me.

Order through pain.

The asset screams into the pillow, again and again and again as his Commander claims him in the most primal way imaginable. Splits him open and fills him up, rearranging his insides with that massive cock. Bites down on his shoulder until the asset sees stars and his screams tear his throat, but they feel far away.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Everything else, his unfinished amends and his conditional pardon and his single, tenuous friendship and the memory of his ex lover, it all disappears behind a heavy veil of violence and submission. The Commander’s cock assails his swollen insides. Ravages against his prostate, punctuating his steady screams with even louder cries of erotic agony. Despite his torn back muscles, he arches his ass up to meet his Commander’s thrusts. Damned near whites out with a pleasure that’s purely psychological when his Commander’s hand settles over his head and the side of his face, shoving him down into the mattress. And even more when the man wraps an arm around his neck, cutting off his screams into strangled grunts. His cock is rigid, grinding against the sheets. The fire of his backside has morphed into a steady ache, just throbbing heat as the asset arches into his handler’s demanding thrusts.

Everything, he promises wordlessly, breath strangled over another moan/scream. Everything I am belongs to you.

__

Rumlow curls over his asset’s shoulder, hips grinding as hard as he can, drawing out ragged shrieks like a conductor directing the music. Fuck, he’d missed his asset’s sweet, pleading screams. No one else puts so much hunger into the sound; no one else wants it the way his boy does.

He mouths over the raggedly stitched whip wounds, running his tongue along stitches and swollen, torn flesh. Taste of copper and sweat. Ownership. The asset is HIS. Forever. No going back. Fuck, he’s wanted this ever since his first interaction with his soldat back in the nineties. Maybe he’d known, even tonight in the basement, that he was never gonna abandon his boy. 

Rumlow moans into his asset’s neck. His orgasm is coming close, his asset’s tight, swollen hole gripping every inch as he forces himself in and out. He reaches around the asset’s hips to grab his cock, finding it just the way he knew it would be: hard and leaking, already close to orgasm just from being used. Fucking slut. He grips it hard and starts stroking, picking up the pace of his hips. His boy has passed every test Rumlow set before him; he deserves a reward.

“Cum for me, whore,” he groans into the asset’s ear. “Cum on my dick, you filthy little slut. Show me how much you love it.”

The words and touch tip his boy over the edge and the asset clenches around him rhythmically, crying out into the pillow clenched between his teeth. His spasming body milks out Rumlow’s own orgasm and he straightens up to grab the asset’s hips and fuck him violently, forcing his screams to echo through the room, until his load is spent and he pulls out, rolling onto his back and panting heavily.

“Fuck,” he murmurs, running a hand back through his hair. Shooting Rollins is a distant memory, at this moment. And he’d barely given a shit about Hauer or Reynolds.

Besides. What he got in their place is so much better.

Maybe there’s such a thing as fate, because this feels somehow predetermined.

He coaxes the asset up against his side, face down, flesh arm slung across his chest. Gets him to lay his head on Rumlow’s shoulder, vanilla-spice scent of his hair tucked under his chin.

“My good boy,” he murmurs, barely aware of the words he’s speaking. It’s just noise. The idle affection he’d always had to hold back when he was lower in the ranks of Hydra than that paranoid-psychotic pervert, Pierce. “Sweet boy. Ya did good, kid. Proud of ya.”

The asset presses into him. Starved for praise, even after his years of supposed freedom. Rumlow had always suspected, when the asset crossed his mind over the last few years, that this would be the case. He’d been brutally conditioned to captivity. To follow orders. To be used. The rest of the world doesn’t know how to handle that. How to be a handler to someone so broken.

The only missing piece to the asset’s obedience, back when they’d both been in Hydra during the STRIKE years, was what men in power often forget: that a good handler takes care of his weapon. And in return, reaps years of faithful service.

Of course his weapon came home to him. Of course he did.

He kisses the top of the asset’s head. 

Losing Rollins hurt, but he’s gained something that takes the sting away. A supersoldier that he can control. A legendary figurehead of Hydra, already primed to take his orders. He just needed to remember who holds his leash. He’d wanted to remember. Had begged for it. The thought makes Rumlow smile. Had that only been yesterday? It feels like they’ve slotted back into each other, like they were never apart. Two pieces that were made to fit perfectly.

“My good boy,” he says again, toying with the chain around his asset’s throat, planting another kiss into his sweet-smelling hair. “You’re so good, baby. Sleep in the bed with me tonight. You’ve earned it.”

Chapter Text

When the hood comes off his head, Zemo first thinks it’s an aftereffect of total darkness that everything is tinged in green. Then he realizes the hall where he stands is lit with ghostly acid-fog green lights, casting the stark concrete in a haunted glow. Three armed soldiers form a semicircle around him. When they say move, he moves. Zemo keeps his expression empty and purposeful, striding between his three escorts and their guns with confident steps. 

These men, at least, haven’t been enhanced. They lack that monstrous grace that marks a supersoldier. Should he be relieved at this? Maybe Hydra doesn’t see him as enough of a threat to warrant whatever enhanced soldiers they’re keeping in reserve. Or possibly the three who had died during the rescue at that Hydra safe house ten months ago had been the only others besides the Commander himself. Rumlow would know better than to show his hand, especially now that the former and current Captain Americas know that he, and Hydra with him, is active.

The room they bring him to was arranged with a grandeur that Zemo wouldn’t have expected of Rumlow, now that he’s had time to do his research on the new spearhead of Hydra. The man had been a soldier with a soldier’s training, not that of a political leader. But the imposing decor of hanging black banners, the way the many seats in the room are all angled toward a single, high-backed chair, drawing the focus toward the man seated there as a throne room would to a king, or a church to the pulpit, makes him wonder if Rumlow hasn’t picked up a new set of pageantry skills since he went off record. This room is for making speeches. Emboldening troops to go out and die for the cause they’ve been trained to believe in. It is, frankly, a terrifying sight. Because he’s seen what the man in that chair is capable of.

There’s a massive, blood-red Hydra emblem painted on the wall behind Rumlow, tentacles curled around his chair as if in protection. The man himself is sprawled back in the chair with left ankle on right knee, a tablet balanced on that leg, fingers flicking across whatever he’s doing on the screen. He’s dressed in army boots, black BDUs and a tight black t-shirt, with those straps across his chest forming the giant “X” that Zemo has learned is his trademark: a callback to the skull and crossbones. Rumlow wears his own guns and a rifle sits beside his chair. He has no bodyguard, and why should he need one? He’s a one-man army in his own right. Zemo wonders if he one day hopes to edge out the Red Skull in Hydra’s flag with his own personal crossbones symbol. He seems like the type. 

Rumlow keeps working at his tablet for several minutes while the four of them stand in waiting. Finally he looks up from beneath his brows, flicks his eyes up and down Zemo’s body, and his mouth pulls in a smirk that somehow rockets Zemo back through time by ten months, into that steel-and-concrete basement room. Into James Barnes kneeling in a pool of his own blood, sucking Steve Rogers to an unwilling orgasm.

“You got—” Rumlow pauses to take an obvious look at his tablet screen, “—three minutes. Talk.”

No banter. No “see how I’ve defeated my enemies” speech. Rumlow is practical to his last breath. Zemo swallows with a click in his throat. He takes a step forward, but two rifles raise to block him moving any further. He greets the gesture with a thin smile and tilt of his head to acknowledge the point.

“Very well. You of course have the upper hand, considering my…delicate situation.” Since escaping from his handlers during a mission off the Raft he’s been in contact with a number of global affiliates, but coming here, offering himself to Hydra? It hadn’t been entirely his idea. His preference is to remain as far from any associate of Hydra as possible for the rest of his life.

Well.

Any, save for one. But James seems to have become the ultimate exception to Zemo’s rules.

“You slipped your leash,” Rumlow says, bored. “So what.”

“I rejoined the free market,” Zemo clarifies. “And I could give you a number of details on the current activities of certain enemies of Hydra. Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson—”

“So can Google,” Rumlow huffs, rolling his eyes. “They ain’t exactly subtle. Try again.”

Zemo’s smile grows thinner. “There are many others willing to deal with me as well. The REvil syndicate. The cartels—”

“Two minutes,” Rumlow cuts in, even though hardly fifteen seconds could have passed. “I don’t give a shit about any of that.”

Zemo stifles a scowl and skips to the end of his list.

“Then there’s Stark Industries,” he says, watching with satisfaction as a shadowed interest sparks in Rumlow’s dark eyes. “I have several contacts within the Research and Development department who are willing to leak IP in exchange for the kind of leverage that Hydra could provide.” He waits a beat, letting that sink in before he continues. “Or have you considered how it might benefit you to have your very own Dr. Strange at your beck and call? I’ve established a working relationship with a sorcerer who went rogue from his order a few years back. He would never deal with Hydra. But he’ll deal with me.” He has Rumlow’s full attention at last, though the man’s expression is unsettlingly empty. Taking that for a win, he continues. “There are more, Commander Rumlow. I am here to offer my services as your liaison.”

Rumlow looks him up and down and snorts. “In return for what?”

Zemo shoots a pointed look at the Hydra agent to his right. “There is someone I want to see. We haven’t visited in ten months. Do you know who I mean?”

Rumlow’s eyes narrow, then a carnivorous grin pulls his lips back from his teeth. “Is that so?” He looks behind Zemo and lifts his chin. “You three. Get out.”

The three agents turn without protest and march out of the room. Zemo remains where he is, posture relaxed, face empty. The hook is in Rumlow’s mouth, he just needs to move into it. 

Just a little bit.

Rumlow glides out of his chair with the very grace that was missing from his three henchmen. He approaches Zemo with the elegant prowl of a tiger. Beautiful and deadly. Just like the man he’s keeping—not prisoner; not from what intelligence Zemo has been able to gather, but…leashed.

“Since we’re alone,” Zemo says, “As a token of my goodwill, I should let you know that the DOD has opened an entire division with the sole purpose of acquiring you and our mutual friend for study.”

Rumlow’s grin had faded, but never quite dropped. Now it only widens once more, his eyelids lowering as if the thought of going up against the entire US military is arousing to him. “That’s cute.” He stops an arm’s length away from Zemo, forcing him to look up. “So tell me what you want from my boy in exchange for you playing middle-man. Sounds like a lot of risk for you just to get some pussy.”

Zemo hides his disgust at the deliberate crudeness with practiced ease and returns the baring of teeth. “Perhaps since taking the serum yourself, you’ve forgotten the thrill of having so much power harnessed to your every command. I can assure you that for me, it was the experience of a lifetime.”

“The second,” Rumlow says, scarred corner of his lip hiking upward. Zemo narrows his eyes and cocks his head in a question. Rumlow explains with a frigid edge to his smile, “He told me about you using the words on him. Those won’t work anymore.”

“Ah, but I don’t need them,” Zemo replies. “Not if you tell him to obey me.” He orchestrates his expression into a conspiratorial leer, every microexpression calculated to display the sort of monster Rumlow will find relatable enough to keep around. He’s modeled the look from his memories of Jack Rollins. “A visitation arrangement. His mouth was exquisite. I want to explore the rest.” He widens his smile. “I want to be the one to make him scream. A small cost for you, but I assure you it is more than enough for me. Prison was a lonely place, Commander. I had endless time to consider the men who’d put me there, and your boy was the lover of one of them. It pleases me to have Rogers’ lost love at my feet. To take what he can never have again. It is worth more to me than all the world’s riches. In that, I think, we may be similar.”

His words flow with the weight of truth. Because they are true. Regardless of any soft spot he holds for James, Zemo will take immense pleasure in using every hole in his body and returning to Rogers with the taste of James’ skin still fresh on his tongue.

The silence that follows should have made him tremble. Rumlow could easily decide he’d rather flay Zemo alive than bother with the potential pitfalls of an alliance with him. But when Rumlow’s response comes, he just seems amused.

“A’right, ya got my attention. Let’s talk business.”

__

It’s two more months before Zemo completes his first act as liaison for Brock Rumlow in order to earn an interlude with the (former?) Winter Soldier. He doesn’t feel guilt over the leak of Stark Tech to Hydra, but he is careful to conceal the aforementioned actions from Rogers and Wilson. Best they not know what methods it’s taking for him to get the results they wanted. 

He would have preferred to choose his own accommodations for the tryst, but he is taken again to a Hydra facility; the acid-fog lighting seems to be their theme. The bed in his room looks serviceable enough, with cotton sheets over a rubber undersheet and a sturdy steel frame. The thick manacles attached to the wall at the head of the mattress are more ominous than titillating. The multi-tiered metal tray rolled up next to the bed, similar to a tray in a dentist’s office except much bigger and littered with a far greater variety of pain-inducing implements, is about as appealing as frostbitten testicles. 

A test, then. But not necessarily one that he can fail. He suspects Rumlow just wants to map out his tastes. Get more of a read for what sort of a man Zemo is.

While he waits, he searches the room and the adjoining bathroom for hidden cameras. Finding none, he paces for a while, considering the dull gray walls. One wall sports four-point restraints. Next to these, an assortment of whips and shock bars are arranged like pool cues. They were more careful when searching him, this time. They found his tracker and his device for bypassing the chip-locked doors. If Rumlow decides to turn the game on him, there’s almost no chance of escape. 

Because he’s wrapped inside that thought, he jerks through the shoulders as the door clicks. Swings around a little too fast. Eyes a little too wide. But only one man enters the room, the only man he wants to see. He stifles the name on his tongue.

James comes to parade rest just inside the door, chin up, eyes averted. He looks less haggard than Zemo last saw him. The first thing he notices is the hair; it’s grown much longer since their time in the basement, curling inward to touch his jawline. It softens his face. Makes him look younger, more vulnerable. He looks almost like he had when they’d first met. Almost.

He’s put on weight and muscle; it suits him well. He wears a tight, sleeveless black shirt to flaunt his vibranium arm. Zemo wonders idly what the Wakandans think of James’ new affiliation. Black BDUs, black boots. His neck is encircled by a choke collar. The chain hangs down his chest. An invitation—and of course, Rumlow’s silent threat. Remember who you’re dealing with.

Zemo approaches with hands clasped behind his back, chin tilted up. Drinking in the sight of James Barnes for the first time since the basement. He’s overwhelmed by a visceral memory of James, drenched in blood and bodily fluids, crying on the filthy floor while Zemo strokes his face.

The man before him looks nowhere near tears. He stares straight ahead, not looking at Zemo. There’s a glazed look in his eyes, something not quite there.

Steve Rogers is afraid that Rumlow has reinitiated the memory suppression treatments, but Zemo doesn’t believe that for a second. Rumlow seems the type to want to earn the soldier’s submission through torture and manipulation rather than through mind wipes. Zemo suspects he would think of using the machine as “cheating.” He further suspects some kind of compromise surrounds James’ defection to Hydra, because in all of their exploits he’s investigated over the last year, the return of the Winter Soldier has been little more than a whispered rumor. The most credible accounts he’s been able to collect suggests that James remains close at Rumlow’s side most of the time and has only ever been spotted acting as bodyguard to one or another of Rumlow’s associates. He has many theories around this, but the top of his list is that James is attempting to control his relapse by confining his servitude to Rumlow’s bedroom as much as possible. He had, after all, tried so very hard to become “good,” to stop being the killer Hydra had created. 

How the guilt must be consuming him. 

That thought sends a not-unpleasant heat down Zemo’s spine.

“Soldat,” he says after the silence has stretched out for nearly two minutes. “It has been some time.”

James’ face twitches. Eyebrows drawing together. He glances at Zemo’s face and then quickly away. The muscles in his jaw flex and he looks suddenly trapped. Afraid.

He didn’t know it was going to be me, Zemo realizes, reading this as easily as any other thought James has ever had; his face is a clear screen, showing every inner working. Hydra taught him many things, but subterfuge wasn’t one of them.

So. Rumlow had not lied that James has returned to being “Hydra’s whore”—if only at Rumlow’s discretion. Perhaps that semblance of protection is a comfort to James. 

The Winter Soldier files had been… explicit wasn’t the word. They had reveled in that aspect of his enslavement. Bragged about their conditioned whore like glutted carrion birds cawing over a piece of roadkill. And the videos…

The man Zemo had been before the death of his family might not have been able to watch them all.

But the man whose family lay dead in the rubble of his homeland? He had watched. 

He had watched every single one.

Zemo steps in close. Closer than he would have dared under most circumstances, which this definitely is not. Almost loses his composure as James’ intoxicating scent, vanilla and sharp spice, hits the back of his throat. He drinks it in like a liqueur and exhales slowly. “What are your orders, soldat?” Zemo asks, voice as soft as the shirt he reaches out to stroke, fingers trailing over hills of muscle through thin cotton.

“To obey and service you, Sir,” James replies immediately. He hasn’t looked at Zemo again since that initial glance, but there’s a flinch around his eyes.

“Is that what you want?” Zemo cocks his head, trailing his touch down James’ chest and abdominal muscles until he finally wedges his fingertips into the top of his pants.

“Yes, Sir.”

“Why?”

Clearly, James is unused to so much talking during these encounters. His eyes flicker halfway toward Zemo before he catches himself and looks front again.

“Commander Rumlow ordered it, Sir.”

“No,” Zemo says firmly, catching James’ gaze with a hard look. “I asked why. You. Want. This. I paid a high price for my time with you, but you walked into this room to whore yourself to whatever man—or men—you found in here, did you not?” 

James’ expression is doing a strange dance, emotions flitting across his face too quickly to read. The silence stretches out until Zemo has to conclude James isn’t planning to answer him at all.

“I asked you a question. Answer it. Why do you want to do this?”

James’ eyes flinch toward him, not quite reaching his face before they dart away.

“Did you hope one day to find a familiar face behind one of these doors?” Zemo asks. Then, after a calculated pause, adds: “An old lover, perhaps? Maybe Stev—”

The reaction is instantaneous. James’ teeth bare like an angry dog and his vibranium hand shoots up to wrap around Zemo’s throat, choking off his words before he can move a muscle. Suddenly they are eye to eye, almost nose to nose as James crowds up against him and walks him backward, a literal growl rumbling from behind his teeth. His chin-length hair falls around them in a waterfall, caging their faces together.

Not completely broken in, then. Good to know. Preferable to know without losing his trachea in the process, but he doesn’t think James is truly going to hurt him. This is all performative; perhaps a show for himself, so he can sleep at night knowing he’s protected Mr. Rogers’ good memory from the likes of Helmut Zemo. 

Maybe from the likes of both of them. 

James doesn’t say a word, just stops walking in the middle of the room, panting through clenched teeth, his expressive eyes screaming pain behind his rage. His hand flexes on Zemo’s throat. Okay—that hurt a bit. Zemo keeps his arms at his sides, reflecting calm back into the face of James’ heat. The choking grip still gives him just enough room to speak and he does, choosing his words with surgical care.

“Shall I tell the Commander you refused to honor his agreement with me, then?”

The effect hits James like a splash of cold water. He twitches backward like he’s been slapped, eyes going wide, hand dropping from Zemo’s throat as if it burned him.

“Don’t do that,” he says quickly. “I’m not—I’ll still—”

Zemo rearranges his shirt collar, resisting the urge to rub at his throat. He doesn’t look at James while he straightens out his cuffs. “Disobedient. Insubordinate. Frankly the opposite of what was promised—”

A loud thump brings his gaze snapping back to James. The man—god, he’s dropped to his knees; his face has gone white. He no longer looks directly at Zemo; his gaze hovers somewhere around Zemo’s throat. His mouth moves silently for a moment before he gets the words out. 

“I’m—sorry, I—I fucked up. I fucked up. I…f-fuck…” Another ream of emotions scrolls across his face, pain and rage and fear all choked together so hard it seems to have become lodged in his throat. He fumbles for the chain swinging at his throat and lifts it in his flesh hand like an offering, gaze on the floor. “I can be good.” Voice still shaky, but stabilizing. The mess of emotions has morphed into something between pleading and that strange blankness he’d worn when he first entered the room. 

“Please,” James begs when Zemo just watches him, his own face a careful mask, even though James won’t meet his eye. James holds the chain up farther from himself, extending his arm toward Zemo until the choke chain cinches down on his own throat, as if the extra distance is a promise that he now knows his place.

This is…disturbing. And arousing, in its own sick way. Zemo stands a few breaths longer, watching fear and frustration ebb and flow on James’ face while he keeps his arm extended, his entire self still on offer. It’s fascinating to see his expressive face telegraph the entire war that is raging inside of him.

“Why do you want this, James?” Zemo finally asks, voice soft and uncompromising.

James flinches, grimacing at the name, but his answer is immediate. “It’s what I was made for, Sir.”

He can’t help but wonder if James says this to degrade himself or if he means it in the literal sense. If he’s gone back to thinking he was built by Hydra.

“Do you enjoy it?”

James opens his mouth, then pauses, eyes darting to Zemo’s face and away again. Looking for something. Some prompt.

“My purpose is to serve you, Sir,” he says, then flinches again through the shoulders, as if expecting a blow.

“Were you ordered to tell the Commander if I spoke to you about anything other than sex?”

James’ eyebrows draw together; his gaze darts up, not quite meeting Zemo’s eyes. “…Yes, Sir,” he says slowly, as if only just realizing that had been a strange thing.

“Well, then.” Zemo smiles, genuinely pleased. “We can work with that.”

James doesn’t look up again. Doesn’t really react at all, except to keep looking vaguely confused, and still holding the leash up as if he’s been frozen in that position. But it’s not time to take it from him, not yet. And he is so beautiful, offering himself up like that. Zemo wants to burn this vision into his memory.

“I do wish to speak with you about other matters before we continue. And I want you to keep this to yourself, in return for my silence on your disobedience. This will be our little secret. Can you do that, James?”

“Don’t—” James starts, then bites his tongue, looking utterly miserable. Zemo smiles.

“Don’t what?” He asks, voice sweet as honey. James’ eyes do another of those careful flicks toward his face, trying to read where this is going.

“I don’t have a name, Sir,” he says, voice going flat, reminiscent of the voice in his old Hydra tapes. Almost. Until the facade cracks and in a much rougher tone he begs, “Please don’t use that name.”

Zemo lowers until he’s crouching on one knee at eye level with James, whose gaze moves to the side to avoid him. “Look at me,” Zemo orders. Those ocean-blue eyes reluctantly turn to meet his. The tiny twitches around his eyelids, the flex in his brow, all scream of fear and mistrust. Well. He’s not wrong. He shouldn’t trust Zemo. Nor anyone else with the will and cruelty it requires to make it so far into this stronghold of Hydra to reach him. 

Which is why Zemo was chosen to bear the message.

“I have something to say to James Barnes. And do you know what?” Zemo holds his hands palm up. “The Commander’s obedient soldat does not need to be a part of this at all. Let me speak to James. This will wash away any friction between us and you can go back to fulfilling your purpose.” It’s all bullshit, of course. James doesn’t have multiple personalities and he won’t be able to forget what they say to each other—unless an artifact of his damaged brain fortuitously scrubs the conversation away, which is unlikely—but Zemo is giving him an out. A way that he can let himself hear Zemo’s message without feeling the need to immediately report back to the Commander. It can’t be that much further of a leap than the mental gymnastics James has done just to make it this far.

James’ eyes move over Zemo’s face. Searching. Zemo keeps his expression sincere and watches it sink in: the understanding of the lovely lie he’s just been handed. 

The self loathing.

The resignation.

James’ mouth opens to speak, but then he just shuts it and nods curtly, looking guilty and angry—though Zemo suspects that anger is all directed at himself. He’s still holding out the leash, which is—amazing. Fantastic. It’s beautiful and Zemo wishes so much that he could capture this moment in a photograph. He has to struggle with himself not to say “good boy”; James is right where he wants him, now. No need to rile him up again. Yet.

“Good,” he says. “It has taken me a full year to find you and I am obligated to bring you a message. And an offer.” He holds out his hands placatingly and raises his eyebrows. “You must let me speak; don’t interrupt.”

Suspicion and curiosity flicker across James’ face. Eyebrows drawn together, he nods. 

“Steve Rogers has asked me—”

James’s hand clenches tight on the chain he’s holding and begins to lower. His mouth falls open as if to protest, eyes gone wide. Zemo directs a stern and meaningful look at James’ hand, then back at his face. James visibly remembers their agreement and stifles whatever had just boiled up in him. He extends the chain again (jerks it almost viciously, choking himself), before he settles back into guarded silence.

Perfection.

“He has asked me to bring you this message. He wants you back. By any means necessary. He says he understands why you did what you did and it can all be fixed. He promised that he and Sam would be able to keep you from going to prison.” As he speaks, James’ face goes through another interesting series of transitions. Horror, fury, something like disgust. But he remains still. He remains silent. “He wants you to know that he has no idea who the other Steve Rogers was who came back an old man, but that he never intended to leave you. He fought to get back to you and will do it again. He also insisted that I let you know, and I quote, ‘tell him I love him. Tell him I’ll stick with him til the end of the line, no matter what he’s done.’”

He can’t quite help the slight sarcasm that edges into his voice with that last sentence. He could have told Rogers that adding the “no matter what he’s done”— especially considering their last interaction—was inadvisable at best, actively damaging at worst.

He hadn’t, of course. But he could have.

Predictably, James begins to shake. Eyes reddening, filling with tears. He firms his jaw and asks, “Is that all?” Though his voice is husky, it doesn’t tremble. The words fall flat and dead in the silent air.

“No. Your friend Sam Wilson also wishes you to know that he would welcome you back,” (James practically scoffs at this, face twisting in disbelief) “and they can find you a different therapist,” (James’ lip curls in definite disgust) “and that he and Steve are there to help you through whatever happens next.” 

A moment of silence passes before Zemo spreads his hands and says, “That is all. They want me to come back with a reply.”

James’ jaw works. His flesh hand is trembling; it makes the end of the chain rattle. “It was really him?” His voice is soft. Barely a breath. “With you. Before.”

“Yes,” Zemo says, remembering James’ raw denial in the basement when Zemo had taunted him with the thought of his old lover. The “Captain” is dead.

James’ mouth contorts into something twisted. His chest expands on an attempted inhale that seems to stick in his throat; the dip above his collarbone sucks inward as air goes nowhere. The tears he’s been holding back spill out of his eyes. He doesn’t even seem aware of them, just lets them fall. After another set of convulsions—one, two—air finally rasps into his lungs and comes back out of his mouth in a single syllable.

“No.” The word is raw through and through, as if it was dragged out of his throat by a hook. 

Zemo raises his eyebrows. Waits. 

Waits some more.

“No to what?” Zemo asks finally, earning a sullen glare in the direction of his upper chest.

“I belong to the Commander. The person they want…doesn’t exist.” And again, softer: “I belong to him.” 

Zemo mulls this over. Much as he adores the idea of telling Rogers that his ex lover is happy in the care of Rumlow, he’d also been there in the basement. The torture had been…extreme, and he is genuinely disturbed by the idea that James may be receiving that treatment on a regular basis now. If James truly needs to be owned, to be subjugated, Zemo would be only too happy to be the one to do it. It would all depend on how attached James is to the physical torture. There is only so far Zemo is willing to go down that road.

“Do you truly see him as your only option?”

James’ wet eyes flicker up to Zemo’s. Tormented, but unyielding. “He takes care of me.”

“I would take care of you.”

That gets a reaction. Wide eyes, furrowed forehead. Confusion. And fear, something close to absolute terror in there, which only makes Zemo more determined to get the offer on the table…though he suspects it is too late. He has a sinking feeling that his window of opportunity had been back in Madripoor, back when James had been fresh from posing as Zemo’s own pet Winter Soldier as part of their cover. He is very aware of how likely it is that their little role play that night may have been a pivotal moment, how it may have led both of their steps to the very place they find themselves now. 

“If you wanted a safe harbor where you would not be judged,” he says. “If you want to follow orders, it would be my pleasure to give them to you. And to use you the way you need.” A lazy smile tugs at the corners of Zemo’s mouth. He cocks his head to the side, studying the small expressions (misery, unease, suspicion, hunger, and oh, so much confusion) as they scroll across James’ lovely face. “You were made for slavery, it is so obvious. There is no shame in this. I know everything Hydra ever wrote down or recorded about you. It’s all in here,” he taps his own temple. “You could have a Master who does not leave you bleeding out on the floor. You are the perfect soldier. The perfect pet.” His eyes flick to James’ hand, still holding out the leash in offering. “And I demand absolute submission from those who follow me.”

James’ gaze becomes more distant with every sentence, withdrawing into himself, and Zemo knows even as he speaks that it’s a lost cause. 

“Commander Rumlow owns me,” James says at last. “I belong to him.” His voice has taken on that flat detachment that Zemo associates with the Soldier. A defense, then. Or dissociation.

Ah well. The seed has been planted and James may think differently in the future. 

“Tell me if you change your mind. The offer stands indefinitely.”

“I won’t,” James says. A muscle jumps in his jaw, a twitch around his eye. Not so distant after all. He really is able to hide nothing. 

Zemo graces him with a mocking nod. “As you like. Well.” He pushes to his feet, enjoys the way James’ eyes don’t quite lift to follow him as he retakes the place of authority, standing over him. “Enough of all that. Give me the leash, soldat.”

The return to his Hydra moniker flows over James like a visible wash of cleansing warmth. His eyes, his forehead, shoulders, his entire body softens. Malleable. Relieved. He leans in, places his metal hand on the floor to crawl the distance between them and places the end of his leash into Zemo’s waiting hand. 

Zemo runs the links between his fingers, all the way to the loop of the choke-chain. He jerks it tight in a sudden upward pull. James starts to lift his hand from the floor, to raise onto his knees again, but Zemo slaps his cheek: not to hurt, but to get his attention. To remind him of his place. “Ah-ah,” he tuts. “Hands on the floor.”

James obeys quickly, a flash of anger quickly hidden by that same melting relief. It had been no lie; there is no question that he’d been made for this. He’d been tight as a tourniquet all through their last association. He may be broken now, but there’s an ease to his motions that Zemo has never seen in him except during the brief period he’d held sway over the Winter Soldier through the code words. James is so clearly miserable anywhere else but under the grip of a firm handler. How Rogers or Wilson could have thought otherwise can only be attributed to blind self-righteousness.

He almost orders James to lower his chest to the floor, then thinks better of it. James seems to crave physical instruction more than verbal. Zemo can give him that. He might almost consider it a charity, if he didn’t enjoy it so thoroughly.

He bends down, jerking the chain violently toward the floor. James holds in place against it, letting it choke him until he’s unable to breathe. His face contorts and turns red, but he doesn’t fight it.

Submission. So beautiful to see it.

“Lovely,” Zemo murmurs, and fancies he sees a hard grin steal into James’ grimace of effort. Oh, how he wishes to please. 

And he does please Zemo. He truly does.

Zemo stands up and lifts one booted foot, crashes it down between James’ shoulderblades. James could have resisted, but he doesn’t; he lets the blow flatten his chest to the floor, face turned sideways. A wet sound spits out of him before the collar chokes it off. 

“Good boy,” Zemo purrs. Keeping the chain pulled taut and his foot planted on the back of James’ neck, he bends to squeeze the man’s ass which remains arched up for him. “You know how to be the perfect whore, don’t you?”

“Yes, S—” the last of James’ strained agreement is cut off into a wet gurgle as Zemo jerks the chain tight. His hands flex on the floor. His ass arches up another few millimeters, perhaps unconsciously, forcing Zemo to adjust his own swiftly hardening cock in his pants. James’ reaction to abuse is nothing short of heavenly. Zemo has been angry at himself for some time now for not being more attuned to this vulnerability when he’d had full opportunity to exploit it. He should have known… had known, and had chosen to let this tortured supersoldier wallow in the Hydra-built prison that was his own mind rather than provide them both some much needed release.

Another regret to add to the pile.

Remorse doesn’t soften his hand as he pulls tight on the leash, grinds his boot heel into the dip between James’ shoulder blades and orders in an unaffected voice: “Take your pants down.”

James’ hands immediately go to his own belt. His breath grows strained in the contorted position as he unfastens his belt and zipper and wriggles his pants down over his hips, down to his thighs. His shirt slips up to his ribs with the movement, revealing two thick, ropy scars on his lower back that angle up and inward, starting at each hip.

The scars.

Of course.

“Stop,” Zemo orders.

James’ hands fall to the floor as if a switch has been flipped. Zemo owns James in this moment; he knows it. How can he simply walk away and allow this kind of power to remain in the grip of Hydra? This tool, this weapon, this whore, all wrapped in such a beautifully broken package…

Zemo bends, setting his elbow on his knee, most of his weight now pressing down into James’ upper back as he leans in to take a closer look at the scars on the man’s backside, free hand dipping down to pull the shirt higher.

The crossed lines of Rumlow’s “X” are clearly scarred into him, thicker and more apparent than any of the other old scars that crisscross his flesh. And yet, they’ve turned white already. They should have still been purple, raised and welted and furious. The preternatural healing is yet another reminder of exactly why Zemo should not care what happens to James or what’s been done to him. He’d wanted it, after all. He could have stopped it.

Except that Zemo had read the Winter Soldier files. And he’d watched the videos. 

All of them. 

He doesn’t really think James could have stopped any of it, not once it had been set into motion. He must have been Rumlow’s from the moment they first spoke. Trying to undo what Hydra had wrought in him had turned James Barnes into a rage-filled shadow of a man. His destiny had been raped out of his hands; there is no going back from such a thing. Perhaps that’s why Zemo holds this inexplicable soft spot for him; he knows what it is like to be consumed by that fire. He never fully came back either.

“Roll onto your back,” Zemo says, pushing his foot off of James’ upper back with enough force to wrench a sound from him. James rolls over, knees bent, fully exposed from ribs to thighs. His cock lays against his lower belly, already half-hard. “Lovely,” Zemo murmurs, admiring James’ half-exposed body and the despair hidden in the depths of his eyes, which are fixed on the ceiling. “Take your pants off the rest of the way. Leave the boots on.”

James begins to lift his upper body to take off his pants. Zemo shifts his weight. Enjoys the way James’ eyes flicker to his legs, then up toward (but not quite reaching) his face, before he lays back down. Zemo lifts one foot and settles it down onto James’ throat, nudging the chain aside so that the sole is fully pressed against flesh.

It doesn’t even take an order. James accepts the new position without a flicker of resistance. Curls his legs upward so that he can reach them and keeps pushing his pants down, working them over his boots an inch at a time. Zemo changes the pressure on his throat, pressing harder, then softer, then hard again, adjusting the angle to elicit new expressions of strain. James’ breaths are strained gargles by the time he finally gets his pants off. He throws them to the side almost angrily. Zemo steps back and assesses him. James’ cock is rigid now, leaking precum onto his belly. His face is flushed red, jaw working. The sullen expression could be fury, or humiliation, or self-hatred, or anything in between.

It’s beautiful. He’s beautiful, in all of his torment. 

“Pick those up and fold them, soldier,” Zemo orders softly. “You may crawl.”

The flash of defeated loathing that flits across James’ face is delightful. He sits up, finds the pants too far to reach and rolls onto hands and knees, hiding his face behind a fall of thick, mahogany hair. He crawls like that, head down, exposed, until he reaches his pants. He folds them in sharp, disordered movements. Zemo has clearly gotten under his skin, found some raw button that isn’t allowing James to slip fully into his Soldier persona. Probably the conversation they’d just held; Steve Rogers would be enough to ruin anyone’s fun. Zemo almost wants to press harder, to see what it will take for that button to shatter, but it’s not time yet. He wants to show James that there are other kinds of humiliation available to him. The man may find solace in kneeling at Rumlow’s feet, but how long will that be enough before the Commander or one of his associates takes it too far? An ordinary human would have died already or been permanently crippled after the violence James has suffered at his current Master’s hand.

“Take off your shirt,” Zemo says. Back still turned to him, James pulls it off and folds it without being told. Once his task is complete he stays there, sitting on his heels, spine attentively straight. Waiting for orders. The “X” that spans his entire backside glares white and merciless under the room’s fluorescent lights.

Commander Rumlow owns me. I belong to him.

Zemo’s lips tighten in a small, regretful smile. The man had been starving for a handler to take control of his life. He should have taken James for his own when he’d had the chance. Should never have allowed prejudice to outweigh pleasure. 

—

The asset had forgotten the way Zemo’s voice feels. The way it reaches into his head, touches things it shouldn’t be able to. His final handler before the code words had been removed: he’s learned that that kind of invasion can’t be erased by drugs or therapy. 

And now?

The asset is no longer the man who had last crossed paths with Zemo. Resurrecting his James identity to receive Zemo’s message had been like setting his insides on fire and now he can’t make it stop. All the memories he’s managed to hide from the last year now tumble through the asset’s mind, slice into him and leave his chest screaming. 

Steve was from a long time ago. Another life. A bad dream that keeps coming back, that’s all. You’re home now. Nothing matters outside of your orders.

When cool fingers settle onto the back of his neck, his eyelids flutter half-shut. Something inside him clicks on, releasing a burst of pleasure that dulls the riot in his mind telling him that he’s a traitor…a failure…weak.

Zemo’s voice reaches through the cacophony. The cadence of it used to rub him raw, but not any longer. He’d hated it back in his old life because of how much he’d wanted to obey. Now, obedience is his safe harbor. He looks up, meets Zemo’s eyes. Desperate.

Tell me what to do. Please.

Zemo studies his face like he’s mapping it out, then holds out a hand and flicks his fingers. The asset immediately lifts his leash and places it in Zemo’s hand.

“Good boy,” Zemo murmurs, and that voice praising him strikes something in his center, sends reverberations of pure dopamine bliss through his entire body. A tiny sound of pleasure rolls up his throat and makes the other man’s lips curl. 

Zemo gives the leash a sharp jerk, cinching it tight around his throat, and starts walking. He folds onto hands and knees and follows. Zemo leads him to the wall, just under the four-point restraints. He places a foot against the asset’s shoulder and pushes; the asset rolls with the motion so that he winds up on his back, shoulders propped against the wall next to an ankle restraint. Zemo kicks his legs apart in almost a languid motion and steps between them. The asset glances up. Is relieved to see Zemo’s lips have twisted into a self-satisfied smirk. As long as he’s pleased, that’s all that matters. Then Zemo’s foot presses down on the asset’s groin, careful pressure onto his balls and the asset freezes in place, hardly breathing. The slightest change in Zemo’s balance could leave him curled up and vomiting from pain. 

Hard jerk on the leash. Zemo snaps it tight like he’s going to bring the asset to his feet by his throat. He has to bunch up his abs to keep from lifting his groin further into the sole of that boot. Loud rush through his head as the collar chokes off blood flow. His breaths turn to harsh rasps and wet gasps. Zemo does it again, and again, and again, allowing only a shallow breath in between choking him. Tears spill from his eyes. The dangerous pressure of that boot is a constant reminder that he must hold perfectly still. It hurts, it all hurts and he’s afraid, but that same pain and fear have him hard as nails, flushed and hungry, and so, so grateful for the expression of smug pleasure on Zemo’s face. It feels good to serve. To obey. To be used. The asset’s next ragged breath comes out in a blissed-out moan of “Yeahh—”, cut off as the choke chain jerks tight.

<“Whore,”> Zemo remarks in Sokovian, smirking. He lets out a delighted laugh. <“Good to see you’ve come out of your denial.”> He lifts his foot from the asset’s crotch. Throws the heavy leash down onto his chest, making him flinch, then walks away from him. The asset gauges his actions and decides Zemo is still pleased with him. The man has gone to the table next to the bed. Looking over the tools there. Seeming to make up his mind, Zemo nods to himself, then shucks his long coat and sets it onto the bed. He selects a small container, a box of black nitrile gloves, and a knife from the cart and turns back with a secretive, dark smile, fixing the asset with glittering eyes.

Cold runs through the asset’s entire body. He doesn’t know if it feels good or terrifying, but it’s familiar and he leans into it.

“Spread your legs for me,” Zemo orders. The asset opens his legs wider and Zemo kneels between them, setting down his handful of items. He will know, of course, that he’s not allowed to cause permanent damage. The Commander is abundantly clear about this with everyone. Still the knife makes him nervous, a twisting sick energy that swirls around in his stomach with nowhere to go. He watches Zemo roll up the long sleeves of his shirt and don a pair of the black gloves. The little container is lubricant; Zemo adds a generous amount to his fingers then fixes the asset with that disturbing smile.

“Relax, soldat. This doesn’t have to hurt.” 

Zemo watches him avidly as his cold, slick fingers glide along his crack. As one finger penetrates him all the way to the last knuckle. He chokes back the sound that tries to come out of his chest. He doesn’t mind being opened up like this, but it makes him nervous that Zemo put gloves on both his hands instead of just one. Maybe he just likes the strange, clinical distance it puts between them. Another layer of disconnect. He is, after all, just an object to be used.

The second finger enters quickly after the first. The asset lets out a slow breath and relaxes into it. Makes a small sound as the third finger presses in close behind, but he isn’t punished for it. Some men like him to moan; others want him to be silent. Their last encounter is a blur in his unreliable memory, but he thinks that Zemo was one of the former. He tests the assumption involuntarily when an upward hook of those three long fingers makes him yelp, head knocking back against the wall.

“There it is,” Zemo hums, rubbing back and forth over that sensitive spot. The asset lets out a wrenching sound and bites his lip to stifle it.

“What will it take to make you beg, I wonder?” Zemo ponders—surely just to amuse himself, because he knows the asset would beg on command; Zemo isn’t stupid. The question sends another chill through him. It implies Zemo wants to try and make him truly beg, which implies this is going to become exquisitely painful. 

He turns his thoughts back to the Commander as those fingers twist, scissor, and prod inside him. Thinks with longing of the space at the foot of his bed, of lying down to rest, knowing he is safe and his purpose is fulfilled. 

Just get through this. Just be good. I can be good for you.

The pressure becomes almost painful as a fourth finger enters him. He clenches his teeth, fighting hard now to keep from tensing up his lower body. Zemo’s gloved right hand traces his stretched rim, but the man’s eyes are locked on his face. Studying him like an insect, a science project. He becomes acutely aware of the expressions he’s making, of how he is breathing, of the wracking sound that comes out of him as Zemo flexes his fingers apart like he’s going to fit his whole hand inside and then— god, why? It’s already so much bigger than a cock would be —adds a finger from his right hand as well. It hurts now—not dangerous, but incredibly uncomfortable and raw, and somehow repulsively sexual at the same time. He hasn’t lost an ounce of his erection; his cock waves like a flag of surrender, advertising just how much he loves being turned into a filthy piece of meat like this. He wishes Zemo would look anywhere but at his face; he’s sure the expression there is pathetic. When the next finger pushes in—how many now? Six? Seven?—he isn’t able to hold back the cry of pain and disgust.

“You’re almost there, soldat,” Zemo purrs. “What a good whore you are.”

Almost where? he wants to ask, but he’s too busy trying to breathe. The pressure is growing, more fingers being added and surely it’s going to stop soon because it’s—it feels not right. The “please” lurks just behind each exhale when Zemo hums in satisfaction and the pressure inside him slides. The asset cringes against the wall, thighs shaking, breaths whimpering. The pressure slides again, and again, slick drag on his rim and his insides and sweat breaks out on his neck. It takes him a minute to figure out what’s happening. Zemo has the fingers of both hands inside him and he’s alternating them, sliding one hand mostly out while the other presses in. 

He whimpers. Shudders. Closes his eyes, but Zemo orders him to open them and he does.

“Look at me. Keep looking at me. That’s a good boy.”

He hates how the praise affects him, even in this completely debauched position, spread open and dripping and overstuffed and revolting, just meat, just flesh, just a thing, he’s not, not a—a person, he doesn’t—he can’t—

A thready whimper keens out of him as Zemo’s entire forehand shoves past his rim, the thumb tucked in along with it, not quite making it past the knob of the thumb though. He pushes against the floor automatically, lifting his back along the wall and forcing Zemo to lean forward so his hand doesn’t slip out.

“Do you need me to chain your wrists?” Zemo asks. “I would prefer you to be obedient, but I will chain you if you ask.” His tone is almost kind, though the words seem like a trick somehow—he isn’t sure how. He isn’t sure of anything except that he wants to be good. He needs to be good so Zemo will speak well of him to the Commander. And it doesn’t hurt, not exactly. He almost wishes it did. Pain helps keep him grounded.

He lets off the pressure on his arms and slumps back against that wall. “No, Sir,” he manages in a choked voice.

“Good,” Zemo replies, granting him a thin smile. Twists his wrist (the asset tries to move his hips with it, but that just makes it feel worse and he slumps back down, hands clenched against the floor) and stuffs extra fingers from his other hand in there too.

“Open your eyes,” he orders, and again the asset has to wrench them open and see, and be present, and know what’s inevitably about to happen, all denial gone. He has vague, watery memories of this being done once or twice when he was the Winter Soldier, but it’s like a barely remembered nightmare. He’d been subjected to the chair many times since then. 

He won’t be able to forget it, if it happens now.

That hand keeps working. Twisting. Trying to push the rest of the thumb past his thinly stretched rim. Every exhale has become a whimper, pleading without words.

Don’t. Please don’t. It’s so gross, god please stop

Hard to breathe. Pressure. Wet. Dripping on the floor. Everything too much. Not allowed to demand something else. And that’s the point, isn’t it? Why would Zemo want to do this to him except to show him his place? To show him how base and awful he really is, nothing Steve would’ve wanted anyway, maybe not even good enough for Hydra.

Oh, no. That…that thought hurt. Hydra is the only family he has.

Commander please come get me, please make it stop, please don’t—

Then something shifts, the stretch becomes razor-sharp pain for an instant, and he’s full, he’s so full, it’s not right not right not right no no no no he can’t, he can’t—

The manacles had been made for his strength. He would have held still anyway, obedient to his handlers, but they lock him down to use him. He’s naked and sweating and it’s been hours and they’ve shoved something enormous inside of him and it feels wrong, it shouldn’t be there, his heart is a rapid drumbeat in his ears, skin feels cold and damp as his body tries to tell him this intrusion is not right and one of them laughs: “You realize you’re fisting the Fist of Hydra.” The rest of them laugh as well. He knows they’re mocking him. He feels nothing about that, but he is going to throw up; he needs to report this to them, to turn over, but he can’t get his tongue to work. Something has gone completely wrong, malfunctioned deep inside his guts—

<“Stunning,”> a voice murmurs in a language that isn’t the familiar Russian. Then, “Look at me, soldat. Stay with me.”

He wrenches his eyes open. Blinks shattering specks of light away until the water leaves his eyes and he can see his handler watching him.

Sir, reporting an injury, he means to say, but nothing comes out. Just a wet little sound that turns into a whine, then he can’t make any sound at all, can’t catch his breath—

—they hold his head sideways by the hair while he vomits; it trails down the side of his face and the pressure doesn’t stop, he’s breaking, broken, surely going to be decommissioned and that’s honestly a relief—

Impact on his cheek. He blinks, focuses. The handler had hit him with the back of his closed fist. Not hard. Just enough to wake him up.

<Wake up, soldier. Time to work.> Voice in Russian, but it’s not real. It’s not here.

He blinks away wetness again, disoriented. He’s not in the field. It’s not his handler, at least not anymore; Zemo doesn’t own him anymore. He needs—he needs—

Commander—pleasemakeitstop 

He whimpers as the thing inside him twists. Light bursts behind his eyes. He feels wet all over, sweaty and cold, especially between his legs where his handler is—oh god, he’s past the wrist inside of him

Oh god stop, please, please

“Nooo,” he whines, then his head slips sideways, boneless, goose flesh crawling up and down his neck, his arm, his thighs. Water keeps streaming down his face from his eyes, sweat everywhere, smell of musk in the room so strong to his oversensitive nose, Zemo, it’s Zemo with him, not Hydra, it’s—

“Stop,” he whimpers, pride not even a memory. “Please. Please.”

<“Good boy,”> Zemo says in Sokovian, arm moving in and back, in and back, no sign of hesitation. <“You are so lovely like this. Just falling apart for me.”>

He whimpers. Screws his eyes shut, but another backhanded tap brings them open again to look at Zemo, blurred through tears.

<“You are serving your purpose beautifully, soldier. You’re right where you’re meant to be: in the palm of my hand.”>

He does something inside, maybe opens his fingers; the pressure swells and the asset lets out a sound like his lungs are being dragged out of his chest. His skin feels like it’s going to slough right off of his body. He’s drenched in sweat, somehow too hot and too cold at the same time, unable to string together a single coherent thought.

Commander.

Twist. Pull. Press. Gasp.

Commander.

Please.

Please.

__

Zemo devours his prey with starved eyes as James lies limp beneath him, speared on his hand and half his forearm. Oh, how he wishes Steve Rogers could see this. Tears flow steadily from James’ eyes. His arms lay splayed out to either side of him, fingers twitching. Zemo keeps having to call him back as James disappears somewhere inside his head. Each time those winter blue eyes turn back to him, they’re more hazy and desperate. Drowning.

He pulls out to the wrist, watches the swollen flesh convulse around him, then slides the fingers of his other hand in alongside it. James chokes on his own moan, grimacing miserably and turning his head away.

<“Look at me,”> Zemo orders. <“Stay with me.”>

Unfocused, James’ eyes turn toward him. His mouth trembles over an unvoiced plea. His cock has gone soft, lying limp against his belly. And that isn’t terrible, but it’s hardly ideal. James should be invested in every moment of his undoing.

“Touch yourself, soldat. Bring yourself to completion with my hands inside of you.”

Eyes vague, mouth slack, James obeys. Only a confused line between his eyebrows shows any emotional reaction to the order. He takes his cock in his right hand and starts working it in languid motions like his bones have all turned to jelly.

“That’s it. Good boy. You are such a good little soldier.”

James has not stopped crying. He doesn’t even seem aware of it. Tears stream down both cheeks as his cock grows fully hard again. Zemo shifts one hand out and snakes the other in, making James’ head roll back, earning another helpless whimper. His lips move over an unintelligible word before his eyes fall shut again. It takes all his strength—James is so very tight—but Zemo turns his hand from a cone into a fist inside him, making James’ spine snap straight and his eyes fly wide, mouth opening in a silent scream.

“Keep your eyes on me,” he snaps. “I have told you this already.”

James returns eye contact through a visible effort of will, but his face has crumpled. A shallow sob wrenches out of him, then a hiccup, then silence. His hand flies over his own cock, keeping it hard. Zemo slowly relaxes his hand inside the other man, putting his fingers back into the cone shape before pulling out entirely.

James looks unbearably relieved when he’s left empty. His gaping hole tries to shut but it just pulses, still stretched wide. He’s red, puffy, swollen, covered in slick and just a little blood. Lube and sweat have puddled on the floor beneath him.

“You are filthy, soldat,” Zemo murmurs, gazing down on that ravaged hole. “Absolutely disgusting. What do you have to say for yourself?”

Surprise and fear twist James’ expression. His hand never falters in its rhythm, but he looks at a complete loss. And he must be. He’s been sweating profusely, fading in and out, and now Zemo demands that he form a thought and voice it? 

“Thank you for…using me, Sir,” James says finally, haunted eyes still locked on Zemo’s, and that? That is…

Sublime.

“You’re very welcome, soldier,” Zemo purrs. “Would you like some more?”

James’ eyes scream “No!” even as his mouth says, “Any—th, thing you…want, Sir.”

“I want you to cum while I hold you in my hand. Will you do that for me, soldat? Can you be obedient for me?”

James’ hand speeds over his own cock, almost vicious with his strokes.

“Yes, Sir,” he says, voice wavering with what Zemo is delightfully sure must be fear.

“Such a good boy,” he purrs and brings his hand back to James’ pulsing hole. He slips inside much more easily this time, earning a wretched sound as the heel of his thumb pushes past the resistance. “Keep looking at me. That’s right. Good boy. Cum for me. Cum on my hand, soldat. Let me feel you shudder around me. Yes… yes…”

James’ exhales come out in whimpers as Zemo keeps talking to him. His hand moves faster and faster, jerking his cock like he’ll take the skin off, mouth twisted into a miserable grimace. Zemo praises him constantly through it until milky ropes shoot from James’ cock, landing on his own mouth, his chest, his belly. His face goes from red to pale and fresh tears spill down his cheeks.

“There it is,” Zemo murmurs, pumping his hand in one more time before he folds in his thumb and pulls out. “What a good whore. You’ve done so well for me, soldat.”

James sniffs, still looking obediently back at Zemo, his eyes dazed. Lost. His right hand falls limp onto his lower belly, its task complete. He doesn’t even wipe his face.

Zemo pulls off the gloves and sets them aside. He tucks the knife he’d procured into his palm and steps around James’ spread legs, nudging them gently back together. James pulls his knees up, curling halfway onto his side but with his face still turned so he can watch Zemo for instruction. He is so perfect. 

Zemo’s left forearm is still wet; he finds James’ discarded shirt and wipes himself off, then settles into a seated position against the wall next to James and guides his head into his lap. He gently pets James’ jaw. Feels it shudder under his touch: a silent cry, that same trembling Zemo remembers from back when he’d spoken the trigger words and watched them overcome James’ self-will, all those years ago. That look of despair still haunts his fantasies. The one he sees now is fantasy fulfilled.

“Good boy,” he murmurs. He wipes the cum from James’ chin up into his mouth. James sucks his fingers automatically, cleaning them with his tongue. “Perfect soldat. I know that was very hard for you. You did so well. You are so obedient.” 

James’ eyes flick up to him and he sees gratitude there. His whimpering breaths ease slightly as Zemo pets him. The bunched tension in his neck loosens; the lines in his forehead smooth. His vibranium hand wraps into Zemo’s pant leg and holds onto it as if it gives him some security and as Zemo strokes over his forehead he sighs, his eyes falling shut. He is so sinfully beautiful. A ruined angel, utterly pliant and relaxed in Zemo’s lap. Still murmuring praise like a lullaby, he lifts the knife to the back of James’ neck. It would be so easy just to plunge it in. James is lost to the world in this moment, throat bared and trusting. Practically offering himself for slaughter, just as he’d offered himself for degradation.

 Zemo fingers the hair at the base of his skull apart, exposing a thin line of pink flesh. No permanent marks had been his promise, but Rumlow will be unlikely to find a scar hidden in this thick, long hair.

He holds the blade along that thin flesh, visualizing the open wound. He pictures James startling in his arms and then falling to pieces as he realizes what’s been done to him: that he bears a new mark, that his supposed protector had freely given him to the man who did it. That he’ll be tied to Zemo for the rest of his life. Imagines twisting James’ already fragile grip on reality enough that he will keep this a secret from Rumlow, a piece of him that only Zemo will own.

He sees it all clearly.

And in the end, he sets down the knife.

It’s already enough. He will remember James shattering for him in exquisite detail, and he’s sure he has made just as deep an impression. They don’t need a scar to prove what they've done.

Zemo pets James’ hair back into place and scratches his scalp gently, earning a sigh. James burrows his face into Zemo’s thigh. 

Perhaps he is a better man than Rumlow after all, he muses, then smirks at himself. He is well aware of a certain amount of hypocrisy in his own thoughts and actions toward this lovely, broken slave. But of course, he’s never been quite rational when it comes to James; he’s been indulging himself far too much. It’s a liability, but one he actively permits himself. Life without risk would be unbearably dull and in his line of work, every day could be the last.

He gives them another few minutes like that before he straightens from the wall and taps James’ cheek. <“Time to get up, soldier. I’m going to clean you now.”>

He removes the collar and leash from James’ throat and pushes himself up. Kneels at James’ feet to unlace his boots for him and pull them off, leaving him naked. James tries to rise, but his legs aren’t quite working so Zemo helps pull him to his feet. His legs shake, making him look so wonderfully helpless, like a newborn foal. Zemo takes James’ flesh arm around his own shoulder and helps him hobble to the bathroom, sits him down in the tub and runs the shower. He removes his own shirt and kneels by the tub. James sits motionless under the shower’s spray, staring vaguely into the distance. He lets Zemo position him. Doesn’t flinch as Zemo rinses between his legs, rubs soap around his still gaping hole, cleans the filth from his inner thighs. Every time Zemo settles a reassuring grasp onto his flesh shoulder he earns a puppydog-eyed glance upward, not quite meeting his eyes: pleading and thanks all wrapped in one. James is still ruined, still lost in what Zemo has done to him, and Zemo is very glad he decided not to cut him. James has been so very obedient for him. He deserves to be rewarded for that.

He takes James back to the bed and spreads him on his back. Slicks him again and fucks his sloppy hole, face to face, forcing eye contact as he brings James to orgasm twice more. James returns his kisses with tongue and teeth, pleasing him with the practiced eagerness of a well-trained whore. Zemo tells him so between kisses, still buried deep inside of him, then chokes James into near unconsciousness as he reaches his own orgasm. 

James is distant after he finishes, only responding to direct commands. None of Zemo’s questions seem to penetrate the haze in his eyes.

“Is there anything you would like me to say to Steve when I get back?” Zemo asks finally, hoping to pierce that fog. James’ eyes turn toward his cheek, not meeting his gaze.

“Whatever you think’s best,” he says after a moment’s thought. “I don’t—” 

Zemo waits, but James doesn’t finish the thought. “You don’t what?” he prompts.

A crease forms between James’ eyebrows, then softens back into blankness. “Don’t think he wants to…know.”

“As you like, soldat,” he concedes, and James’ gaze drifts past his shoulder again, empty as a porcelain doll.

When he sees Rogers to deliver James’ response, he’ll be thinking of this. Of how he shattered Captain America’s ex lover into a thousand pretty pieces, in part by the help of Rogers’ own blundering machinations.

He ends the encounter with a long kiss. James returns it expertly but he’s far gone, fled somewhere deep inside himself.

Zemo decides it was worth it. Everything he had to do to get to this point. He will cherish this memory for a lifetime.

—

The asset fades in and out. His hips rock into every thrust on instinct. The body on top of him is warm and comforting, the hand on his chin uncompromising, forcing him to keep his eyes open, not to fly away inside his head. The man skillfully uses the upward curve of his cock to make the asset cum in flinching bursts, body and mind teetering between the horror of what just happened and the ecstasy of what’s happening now. 

It’s…good? 

Yes. It feels good to be used.

His mouth closes automatically over the handler’s cock when it’s presented to him afterward. He sucks it clean, receives praise that washes through him like an opiate, pure bliss to dull the memories, to make it bearable. He doesn’t think of the Commander much now; doesn’t really think of anything. He’s just there. A living sex toy. But the praise and the petting feel very good. Even the kisses and the man’s satisfied moans. He likes pleasing his handlers and Zemo is very kind to him. It was nice of him to make the asset cum so many times.

When it’s over, he dresses with strangely uncoordinated hands. Zemo helps him. Asks him if he can make it on his own. Offers to find someone to look after him. 

Promises to come and use him again when he’s able.

The next thing he remembers, he’s walking down a long hallway. His steps are slow. Shaking. His breaths are so loud; he feels like they weren’t always this loud.

Fade in and out. His feet know where to go. At some point he looks up and realizes he’s back at the Commander’s quarters, but they’re empty. He stands in the doorway to the bedroom for a long time, swaying. 

The Commander isn’t here.

He should—

What?

He blinks at the floor. Vague memory of wanting to be at the foot of the bed, of knowing he would be okay if he could just be there. His tunnel vision zeroes in on his spot. He drops clumsily to hands and knees and crawls to it.

Safe here. 

He bows his head to his wrists, balled up on knees and elbows like he’s kneeling at someone’s

Zemo’s

feet.

It can all be fixed. 

No matter what you’ve done.

“No,” he moans out loud. Not that. He wants to stay in the distant place. He definitely doesn’t want to think about the message Zemo had relayed. But now Steve is there in the emptiness with him, standing over his bent form, eyes stricken with concern and horror—

—mostly horror.

What is WRONG with you?

He pushes up on his hands, trying to escape that mental image, but something slick leaks out of his ass with the movement and he’s right back there, trapped in manacles, vomit drying down the side of his face and in his ear and all of them laughing, sick wrenching twist inside of him, you were made for this— 

Steve’s eyes, Steve’s horror, mouth twisted in loathing, “What is WRONG with you, Buck? You love it, don’t you? That’s why I left, why Sam hated you, why we sent Zemo to show you what we always thought of you…”

There’s more, a lot more, but the words aren’t distinguishable. It all comes in flashes of sneering faces, hands on him, in him, all the way inside him, cold cell and sickness, can’t breathe, 

can’t, 

whore

dog

face wet, tracks through the 

dirt, he’s so dirty, 

so much blood and it never comes clean

Fingernails scratching at his own skin. The filthy feeling doesn’t go away, so he scratches harder. Breaths whistling, gagging on the phlegm in his throat. Takes a while to realize the sound he’s hearing is his teeth chattering. To realize the floor is wet underneath him from tears, that he doesn’t know what happened to his shirt, or if he was even wearing one to begin with. Then hands grab at him and he’s back in his cell, pumped full of drugs, he’s

on his knees in a circle of uniformed men, naked and wet, he’s

got Pierce’s cock down his throat, hands tangled in his hair, there you go, that wasn’t so hard, was it?

then those hands in his hair jerk his head back and he’s looking up into dark amber eyes and a scarred face and the Commander’s rough voice asks,

“The fuck happened, soldat?”

Disobedient. Opposite of what was promised.

He tries to apologize, vaguely thinks that Zemo must have told the Commander about him after all, but the only sounds he can get out are sobs. His pants feel wet from whatever’s been leaking out of him. He’s useless, revolting, can’t even function well enough to take himself out of the Commander’s presence until he can get his shit together. The shaking and the sobs just keep going; he can’t bring to mind a single thing that might get this under control and he hates himself, god, he hates himself so fucking much—

“Shit,” the Commander mutters, then stands up, tangles the fingers of one hand deeper into the

whore’s

asset’s hair and pulls him by it as he starts to walk, grip unrelenting so the asset has to get his hands underneath him and shuffle after on hands and knees. The Commander drags him to the main room, to the couch, sits down and pulls the asset’s head to his leg. Holds him there and picks up his tablet from the coffee table, flicking the screen on with one hand while he keeps the other around the asset’s head, holding his face against his thigh. The asset tries to pull back, to keep his runny nose

disgusting, what do you have to say for yourself?

from dripping onto the Commander’s pants, but that hand doesn’t let him move an inch. The fabric is quickly soaked despite his attempt to wipe his face with his flesh hand.

“Sorry,” he gets out between shuddering sobs.

“Shut the fuck up,” the Commander says, still focused on his tablet screen. He ignores the asset completely otherwise, just working with one hand and holding him in place with the other. Not a look, not a word. The asset cries until his head feels like it’ll float off his shoulders. Until his nose is plugged and his throat is so swollen he can hardly breathe at all. The heavy hand on his head becomes his anchor point and he isn’t reprimanded when he curls his metal arm around the Commander’s leg. After he’s been quiet for a little while, the Commander squeezes the side of his neck and nudges him with his leg.

“Go clean your face, then come back to me.”

The asset levers to his feet. His legs still feel like water. He stumbles to the bathroom and blows his nose, washes his face. He flicks a quick glance in the mirror to make sure he’s clean. Another jump in his chest as he realizes the choke collar is gone; he must have left it with Zemo. That’s probably where the shirt is, too.

Shoulders slumped, he returns to the main room. As soon as he’s in the doorway the Commander snaps his fingers, still not looking up from his tablet.

“Crawl,” he says disinterestedly.

The asset lowers to hands and knees and crawls to his handler. Receives a fist in his hair which draws him between the Commander’s legs. A large hand under his jaw, the other in his hair, and both tilt his head up. Amber eyes roam over his face, cataloguing everything. His red-rimmed, puffy eyes, swollen nose and lips. It’s okay. The Commander has seen every ugly part of him and still takes care of him.

“Were you a good whore for me?” he asks finally.

“Yes, Sir,” the asset says, thinking of how satisfied Zemo had been when he left. But then he remembers how the encounter had begun, how he’d threatened his Commander’s guest, and the Commander reads this off his face as easily as he always does. He cocks an eyebrow. 

“No, Sir,” the asset corrects himself. “I—he was happy at the end, Sir. But I fucked up.” 

“Tell me,” the Commander says, releasing his jaw so he can speak freely.

And he does. He tells everything. The Commander listens without interrupting, except for a crooked leer and a bark of laughter when the asset haltingly skims over what Zemo had done to him. The Commander looks away for a moment after he finishes, thoughtful. 

“Fuckin’ sleazebag. Knew he was gonna try somethin’.” He snorts, then turns his eyes back to the asset and crooks his scarred lip in a sneer. “That why y’were cryin’? Cuz Cap said he still loves ya?”

“No, Sir,” he says, truthfully.

The Commander lifts his chin toward the asset. “Why, then?”

A harder question. The asset frowns. Opens his mouth, unsure what’s going to come out. “It wasn’t the first time. What he did.” He lowers his eyes to the Commander’s chest. Can’t bear to see loathing on his face right now. “I remembered while he was doing it. And—it’s…it was…a lot. And it—I don’t—I’m not—good, he doesn’t want me, he doesn’t even know who I am!”

His last words come out with a force that shocks him, leave him shaking with 

(anger)

self-loathing and fear. He isn’t sure if it was clear he had switched from talking about Zemo to talking about (the one he doesn’t like to think about). He shrinks into himself, opens his mouth to apologize for raising his voice, but the Commander laughs in that harsh, raspy way he does, the hand in the asset’s hair releasing its grip to stroke his face.

“No shit he doesn’t. I’ve known that since I was workin’ with STRIKE. Glad ya finally caught up.” The smile drops off his face suddenly, plummeting the temperature in the room by twenty degrees. “Still don’t give you an excuse to fuck up like that. I sent you over there to pay for some real fuckin’ valuable StarkTech that we need to rebuild Hydra. You were my payment. And you almost fucked that up.”

The asset tries to swallow, but his mouth is too dry. He nods.

A long, long silence. The Commander looking at him. Thinking. He locks his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. He just wants it to be over, but that’s not how Hydra works. He has to take his pain so he can be better.

“Go to the training room. Pick up the long gloves on the way. And a lot o’ fuckin’ lube.”

“Yes, Sir,” the asset says. His voice feels very far away.

___

He can’t walk at all by the time it’s over. The Commander is so much rougher than Zemo had been, and his hand and forearm are a lot bigger. There’s blood on the table when the Commander wraps a towel around his hips and carries him away.

It feels good to be held. So, so good. The man carries him like he’s weightless, left side tucked against his chest like it’s not even uncomfortable to him, having that unforgiving vibranium arm shoved against his ribs. Hardly a word had been exchanged through it all. They both knew why they were there. Order had to be given and received. The Commander doesn’t need a memory suppression chair to keep him in line. The asset is certain he won’t show aggression to a business partner again, no matter what the circumstance. If Steve’s name ever comes up, he’ll remember how Commander Rumlow had opened him like a gutted fish and he’ll shut up and comply.

He wraps his flesh arm around the Commander’s neck while he’s carried. He isn’t punished for it. Winds up with his eyes closed and his lips pressed into the Commander’s soft black shirt. His insides fucking hurt and he feels loathsome, but he’s too hollowed out to cry. It’s like the Commander reached inside of him and pulled out his entire soul.

He fades back into himself in the shower, being petted and cleaned. Shampoo in his hair, strong fingers kneading his scalp. He presses a kiss onto one soapy hand as it glides over his face.

Fade in again as he’s lifted into bed, a towel spread underneath his hips; he’s still leaking. The Commander climbs on top of him and tucks his face into the asset’s neck, kisses his throat.

“Ya did good, kid,” he murmurs. “Took your lesson like a champ.”

The asset runs the fingers of his flesh hand over the pitted scars on his Commander’s chest. Thumbs his nipple because he knows the man likes that, then rests his hand on his hip. He wants to tell the Commander how grateful he is. For his patience. His protection. His care. Rumlow knows how fucked up he is and still wants him, wants to train him and control him and own him. He doesn’t feel like he deserves any of this, but at least he can be sure his Commander isn’t infatuated with some made-up version of him the way Steve is. And he’s been so good to him. Given him a home and a family again. Even killed his old friend Rollins just to keep the asset safe. Being away from his Commander for too long has begun to make the asset feel physically ill, a nausea that rides through every cell in his body. He used to question it. Before.

Now he just accepts that this is how life is. The Commander makes it bearable. And anything he needs to do in between, to keep him happy…

The Commander is good to him. Hard but fair. He’s had to kill again, but not wholesale slaughter the way Hydra used him in the past. He’s protected Rumlow’s men from Hydra traitors. Assassinated a couple of fucked up politicians.

But never children. Never innocent bystanders. 

Commander Rumlow is the best handler the asset has ever known.

When his cock plunges in the asset arches against the soft sheets, head thrown back for a deep, rusty moan. He’s so sore it burns, but the fire is cleansing. The Commander pins his wrists over his head and bites his neck. His collarbone. His lips. Fucks him in long, slow rolls of his hips, reclaiming him as he always does after the asset has whored for him. It feels so, so good. Washes away the ugliness of anything he’s had to do, every time, without fail. Reminds him of why he obeys. The Commander’s free hand grips the asset’s hip, holds him in place as his thrusts get harder, jarring him through the memories of everything that was done to him today, all the disjointed images, the nightmarish flashbacks, the foulness of how he’d been used and then punished, and he thinks of how perfect it all was. How it wouldn’t be, not if Brock Rumlow hadn’t been the one in charge of it all. Without him, the asset would be a worthless pile of scrap. He owes everything to this man.

“I love you,” he gasps raggedly as he hears his Commander’s moans take on the unmistakable tone of impending orgasm. “I love you. I love you. I love you. OH, FUCK!” He arches against the bed, mouth drawn open in a silent scream as the Commander’s violent thrusts become white-hot agony. They cum at the same time, pulse inside his ass and in his balls and cock, painting him inside and outside with their joining. The Commander lowers heavy on top of him, the asset’s cum sticking them together. He pants into the asset’s still-damp hair for a minute, then kisses his temple. Lifts onto his elbows to kiss down his face, tongue sweeping into his mouth and they’re making out—a rare and treasured reward, something he craves so desperately that it’s almost painful when he receives it. If he could, he would do this every day for hours on end. The man tastes like heaven, his stubble blissful as it scratches his lips raw, his tongue deft and skillful as it claims the asset’s mouth. Stars burst behind his eyes, through his skull and his chest and his fucking skin and he disappears into the pleasure.

“You’re such a good fuckin’ boy,” the Commander murmurs into his mouth before diving in for more kisses, more and more and more until his softened cock slips out of the asset’s ass and he finally pulls back, callused fingers tracing the asset’s face. He grins lazily. “And a dirty fuckin’ whore.” Another quick kiss. “And a beautiful weapon.”

He sucks the asset’s lower lip one more time, then gets up and fetches a wet towel to clean them both. He brings the asset water and sits him up to drink it. And even a snack, a small plate of baked chicken he’d reheated; he tucks the asset under his arm and brings each bite to his lips, then lets him suck his fingers clean afterward. When he turns off the light and climbs into bed, the asset starts to get up to go back to his place. But the Commander grabs his hair and tugs him back down.

“Lie down, slut,” he murmurs sleepily, wrapping an arm around the asset’s neck and drawing him back against his chest. “A good weapon gets taken care of. Thought I taught ya that.”

The asset leans back against him, blissing out on the warmth and protection of his perfect body. His skin is different now that he’s had the serum. Fuller, more youthful. The asset could touch his skin all day and never get bored.

Now that a lot of his memories have returned, he remembers Commander Rumlow when he was young and new with Hydra. Now the man is a good twenty five years older than him, thanks to him sticking around while the asset was blipped out. Easily old enough to be his father. Might as well be, the way he takes care of him. 

It’s a nice thought. All his other family is dead. But the Commander fits him like a missing piece. Or maybe it’s the other way around: the Commander is the larger puzzle and the asset is a small piece that’s useless alone, but the Commander is incomplete without him, too. That thought makes him smile.

“Whatchu smilin’ about,” the Commander murmurs against his cheek.

The asset hesitates, but he always has to tell the truth and he does it now. “’M happy, Sir.”

Soft snort against his skin. 

“Good.”