For Science

by CluckU, Mumble_Bee

Summary:

Bucky lifts his head as much as the metal strap around his neck allows. His face is the same familiar scowly mask as always, but Sam knows him well enough by now to see something off in his eyes. Something so damn unfamiliar there it takes Sam too long to realize.

Fear.

--OR--

In which Bucky is medically tortured in front of Sam, and then they cuddle.

Notes:

New tags/warnings will be added as appropriate with future chapters.

Chapter 1

“Barnes,” he says conversationally. “Why am I in a dungeon?”

There’s a grunt from behind him. “It’s a lab.”

Given that he went to sleep in his own fucking bed and has woken up in his not fucking bed, Sam thinks the distinction is unwarranted.

“I dunno if you remember your dungeon theory training, but we have no windows, a single overhead light, and stainless steel drains. Ergo, dungeon.”

There’s another grunt and Sam cranes his neck past the chair he’s tied to. Barnes is laid out on some kind of table, except it doesn’t look like the kind of table anyone’s going to be dining on any time soon. Unless Barnes is the meal, maybe. He kind of looks like one, laid out flat with metal buckles over his shoulders and thighs and ankles.

And wrists.

And, fuck, neck.

And, Jesus, do they really need that much metal to keep him down?

Bucky’s not struggling, but he’s the last out of anyone Sam knows to take things, ha. Lying down. Which means he already tried while Sam was still out. Probably a whole hell of a lot. And apparently that was the right amount of metal to keep him down. Vibranium, then. Black market, almost certainly. Because friends of Wakanda wouldn’t ever host the White Wolf like this.

Bucky lifts his head as much as the metal strap around his neck allows. His face is the same familiar scowly mask as always, but Sam knows him well enough by now to see something off in his eyes. Something so damn unfamiliar there it takes Sam too long to realize.

Fear.

Bucky’s afraid. 

Shit. 

Shit shit shit. What the hell kind of mess could they possibly have stepped in to spook Mr. Robot?

The wall in front of Sam cracks open to reveal a door through which a lady in a grey jacket and pencil-skirt walks. The door closes behind her without a sound. “Nice of you to join us, Mr. Wilson,” she says, and he flexes his hands against the rope around his wrists. “We were about to start without you.”

Oh, that does not sound good. But he manages to plaster on his most charming smile. “I mean, I’m happy to take my partner and leave if you don’t need me.”

The woman stops by Bucky’s side, runs her index finger down the length of his metal arm. Sam shudders; Bucky doesn’t. Can he feel that? “I never said we didn’t need you, Mr. Wilson. See, rumor has it that the Winter Soldier here has made a friend.”

“That’s not his name,” Sam snaps, then curses himself for walking right into confirming her statement. Bucky, as ever, says nothing. Shows nothing. Sam envies it, but also hates it, hates how little it took to send happy smiling Bucky right back to the skulking ghost of an ex-assassin.

“Well,” the woman says. She’s still stroking Bucky’s metal arm. “No matter. He’ll serve his purpose for us regardless of what he calls himself these days. And as for you? You’ll keep him tame, or neither of you will like what happens.”

Bucky’s still doing the silent brooding act, so Sam asks, “Tame for what?”

“For science, Mr. Wilson. For science.”

She nods up at a security camera mounted over the table, and the door opens again. Four goons stroll in with wheeled carts--and sure, they’re in lab coats and latex gloves, but they’re damn well goons. Two of them spin his chair so he’s facing Bucky dead-on. 

His eyes are drawn to the contents of the carts: tools and equipment big and small, some he recognizes (the scalpels are kind of hard to mistake) and a whole lot he doesn’t. Either way, he instantly knows what--who--it’s for, and that makes it impossible to keep looking at. So he looks at Bucky instead. 

Bucky’s staring resolutely at the ceiling, jaw locked. How he’s resisted eying the carts too, Sam doesn’t know. Maybe it doesn’t even matter. Whatever’s there, it’s bad, and he’s willing to bet Bucky knows that better than, well. Pretty much anyone.

Which is why he’s shocked when they finally start, because despite the woman’s claims of “science,” he was expecting...torture. Physical violence, at least. Kicks to the ribs and poison in the veins, maybe. But instead they rummage through the trays of medical equipment and then just… test him. Start simple, using a scissor to cut his clothes off. Bucky reacts so little he might as well be unconscious, and Sam can’t help but wonder if Hydra had… if Bucky was just… used to being stripped naked in front of strangers. 

Those strangers use their new access to draw vial after vial after vial of blood. Cups of it. Pints, probably. Just like they’d done to Issiah, he thinks. 

They’re trying to recreate the serum.

But that’s not enough for them. They clearly want to test the serum’s limits, too, or maybe figure out why it worked so well on Bucky, just like his own damn government had done with Issiah.

And ah, yes, here comes the torture. They use the scalpels first, draw big lines down the outside of Bucky’s thighs and time how long they take to clot while blood pools and drips over the edge of the table. Bucky stares flatly up at the ceiling through it all; the only indication that he even notices what’s going on is the whirr of his arm recalibrating with every new slice. The goons call out numbers: lengths, depths, minutes, seconds. The woman calls numbers back: length and depth for the next slice, ever increasing.

Despite all the minutes passing by announcement, Sam has no idea how long this goes on. An hour at least, he thinks. Maybe two. A deep slice to Bucky’s calf--15 cm long, 6 cm deep--pulls the first real reaction from him. He stiffens, taut against the restraints, sucks in air too fast through his nose for five seconds, maybe ten, and then relaxes again, silent as ever. The bleeding stops at 57 seconds, but the wound is still there, angry and red, right where Sam can see it.

Then they put the bloody scalpels back on a tray, and Sam has half a second to be grateful before they pick up an honest-to-god drill and he thinks--oh, wow, okay, that’s going to fucking hurt. He says Bucky, real low, as the goons plug the drill into a power outlet on the far wall. A warning maybe, or commiseration, or some sad attempt at comfort, but Bucky doesn’t even blink when the drill goes on and the sound is--so loud, in their shitty dungeon cell. 

Bucky’s smart, lies still, saves his strength, while Sam yanks again on his ropes as the lady says something, points to Bucky’s right arm. The tip of the drill goes into the crook of Bucky’s elbow and Sam gets a second to think--no, seriously, they can’t be about to--

And then they do.

The sound kicks up too loud in the quiet, but not quite loud enough to cover the wet-awful crunch of flesh and bone parting under metal.

Bucky screams, because of course he does, his whole body convulsing upwards, maybe trying to follow the geyser of blood that sprays up as the goon keeps pushing down, the drill making a sound like it’s surely--god please--surely about to break. There’s a metal screech and a ricocheting clang and a flash of movement and thank fucking christ, it really has broken, Barnes’s stupid supersoldier body broke it. Except then there’s a knife at Sam’s throat which doesn’t make any sense at all and he has to blink the sweat out of his eyes to figure out that it wasn’t the drill that broke, after all. It was the restraints. The metal cuff on Bucky’s metal arm is now an expensive bracelet, dangling off his wrist while he shoves the end of a scalpel further into the belly of one of the goons.

“Soldier,” the lady says calmly, and there’s just a small sting under Sam’s adam’s apple to accompany the word. The tiniest cut. Bucky sniffs the air like he can actually smell Sam’s blood, which is ridiculous given that the entire other half of the room has been redecorated by Bucky’s fucking arteries.

“Don’t--” Sam starts to say, but Bucky’s already dropped the scalpel.

It stays lodged in the goon’s belly as he slumps to the floor, and the lady waves at the camera again and two men burst through the door with a stretcher, haul the moaning goon up onto it and wheel him away. Another of her men moves over to take his place, and the woman stands next to him, bloody scalpel now in her hand, and before Sam can even process her intent, she drives the blade hard through Bucky’s. 

Bucky screams again, metal fist curling tight, but somehow he keeps that vibranium arm pinned beside him on the table, right where Psycho Boss Lady clearly wants it. She leaves the scalpel sticking straight out of the back of his human hand while fresh cuffs go around Bucky’s metal arm.

“Well,” the lady says. There’s a small spray of blood on her cheek, four little drops from Bucky’s hand. “At least we know how useful you’ll be then, don’t we, Mr. Wilson?”

“Fuck you,” Sam snarls, trying and failing to catch Bucky’s eye as extra cuffs get put in place. The cut on Sam’s neck isn’t going to heal like Bucky’s cuts did, but it hardly compares. Is this what they did for 70 years while Bucky was in Hydra’s “care”?

She turns her attention back to Bucky, grabs him by the chin and yanks his head until he meets her eyes. He’s panting, chest heaving, teeth clenched, but Sam can feel the burn of Bucky’s glare all the way from his front row seat to this horror show. 

“Are you listening, Soldier?” the woman demands. Bucky gives her nothing, but it’s clear she has his attention. “Next time you pull a stunt like that, it isn’t you who’ll be punished. And your friend here doesn’t heal like you do. You understand?”

Again Bucky gives her nothing. She stares him down for several seconds, but even in their current positions, that’s a fight she can’t win. She shoves his face away, turns to one of her goons. “The osteo stress test is spoiled. Start again.”

A goon retrieves the drill from the floor where the last goon--I hope he’s fucking dead--dropped it. Steps in close, and Sam can’t, he just, he can’t. “You could at least knock him out,” he shouts, way too desperate but he can’t help it, he isn’t like Buck, he’s not strong enough.

“I can’t, actually,” the woman says. So blase, like Sam is stupid. “He metabolizes drugs so quickly that we’d just as likely kill him as numb him for a minute or two. And if you don’t believe me, there are a number of toxin metabolism tests on our to-do list; you can see for yourself. Besides…” She reaches over the table to touch the inside of Bucky’s elbow. The bleeding has stopped, but she pushes until Bucky winces and makes it start again. “He can take it. Isn’t that right, Soldier?”

There’s a long pause then, like she’s actually expecting a response. Sam’s desperately searching for one that won’t result in more bloodshed when Bucky drawls, “I’m sorry,” somehow, amazingly, just as blase as she was. “Was that a rhetorical question, or is this gonna turn into a ‘next time’ kinda thing?”

She snorts, steps back. Waves at the goon with the drill, and then tosses Bucky a look that very clearly says Snark this, you sarcastic asshole--Sam knows because he’s made that face at Bucky like a million times himself--and then the drill drives down into Bucky’s arm and no question about it, he’s sure as shit not snarking anymore.

The...what did she call it, osteo something something test? Goes on forever. Bucky’s supersoldier bones are much denser than the average human’s, and for once that fact is really working against him. 

Sam learns the sound a drill bit makes when it hits bone. Learns the sound it makes when it punches into the soft marrow cavity and the sound it makes when it punches back out the other side. Learns the sound Bucky makes when he can’t take it anymore, can’t hold anything back, and he knows sure as the sun sets in the west that he’s gonna be hearing those grunts and screams and whimpers in his dreams for the rest of his damn life. Which might be very, very short if he can’t figure out a way to get them out of here, but how’s he supposed to think when Bucky’s making those noises, when the ever-increasing sizes of the drill bits are making their noises, when he’s never wanted to kill a person slow as badly, as desperately as he does right now.

Eventually, Sam realizes the room’s gone silent. Or mostly, anyway; Bucky’s too-fast breathing, raspy and wet with blood or tears--Sam’s not sure which would be worse--fills in the spaces where all that crunching and splatting and screaming used to be. He’s alarmed to note that he doesn’t know when the change happened. One goon is staring at a stopwatch he’s holding over Bucky’s gore-covered shoulder. Waiting for the bleeding to stop. It’s a long, miserable silence (not silence he can hear Bucky making sounds like he’s dying please god don’t let him be dying) until the goon says “Four minutes and thirty-two seconds.” 

“That would appear to confirm it, then,” the woman says, and Sam wonders what’s been confirmed until she adds, “He needs to rest. And fuel up.” She looks at her own watch, says admiringly, “Three hours fourteen minutes of continuous stress before extended clotting times.” That’s it? It’s felt like days. She looks at Bucky. Touches his face with a gentle concern that can’t possibly be real, wipes sweat from his forehead with her thumb. Says, “Don’t worry, Soldier. I won’t let you die,” and Sam can’t tell if that’s supposed to be a comfort or a threat.

“His clotting times are still well within human standard,” one of the goons says, “And his pressure’s holding. We could keep pushing, see how much his system can take before it gets dangerous.”

Sam wants to murder him. To fucking peel his face off with one of those scalpels and shove the drill bit into his brain through his fucking eye--

“We have plenty of time for that. For now, just get the x-rays for the osteo stress test and get some calories into him. I’ll be curious to see if that changes things.”

The goons all nod like they’re real fucking curious too. One wheels up a cart full of machinery that turns out to be a portable x-ray. Checking to see how the fucking drill holes in his bones are healing. Another starts an IV--Bucky’s arm is shot to shit so they put it in his ankle instead; the scalpel wounds from forever ago (three hours and fourteen minutes ago, his brain fucking uselessly reminds him) have already sealed over. They attach an absolutely massive bag full of yellow fluid to the line, like, a fucking gallon or some shit, which Sam figures is how they’re gonna feed the poor guy. And replace all that blood he splattered all over the floor and walls and ceiling.

There’s some fuss and a clatter as the drill gets unplugged from the wall, things packed up and put away, what a tidy little operation, ha. One of those things is the scalpel Psycho Boss Lady drove through Bucky’s right hand, which comes out with an actual ripping sound that doesn’t quite manage to cover Bucky’s gut-wrenching cry.

One of the goons uses a pair of gloves to put the blood-spattered medical equipment into a yellow biohazard bag, and another one sprays the floor with disinfectant and starts mopping the mess toward the drain, and Sam deliriously thinks of Occupational Safety and Health classes for villains in dungeons. 

“Until next time,” the lady says, and then the stupid hidden door opens again and everyone files out and it’s just Sam and Bucky and the swimming pool of nutrients hanging above him.

“Buck,” he says, hoarse, and Bucky lifts a single finger on his metal hand without opening his eyes. “I--” he tries, and then doesn’t know where to go with it.

There’s a click and a faint whirr, and the cuffs covering Bucky’s body spring open. Sam gets half a second to think, “Well that’s no good to us if Bucky can’t even move,” before Bucky starts fucking moving.

“Don’t you--” Sam tells him, but Bucky’s already swinging his legs off the side of the table, like he thinks he’s about to waltz out of here or some shit. “Do not try and stand, Barnes, I swear to--”

Bucky tries to stand.

God, the idiots Sam has to work with these days.

Fortunately the IV line is long enough that it doesn’t just rip out as soon as Bucky acquaints himself with the concrete. He makes another one of those awful noises that Sam is absolutely not cool with hearing from Mr. Strong and Stoic, and then there’s a full minute of silence while whatever blood is left in Bucky’s body tries to go uphill towards his idiot fucking brain.

“Just lay where you are,” Sam tells him. “You’re gonna pass out.”

Bucky levers himself up on the arm that isn’t still doubling as an image from an anatomy textbook.

“If you’re trying to stand just to untie me you can fucking quit it, Buck.”

“You quit it,” Bucky slurs, and then collapses. Again.

Sam grits his teeth. Well, at least when he’s exasperated he’s not quite as worried. “When this is over, remind me to tell you about the role the circulatory system plays in keeping you fucking upright. Jesus christ, Barnes, just stay where you are until you’re not a walking carcass, it’s not like I’m going anywhere.”

Bucky curls some of his metal fingers, leaving the middle one up, though the gesture is dulled somewhat by the fact that he’s face-down on the cell floor. It hits Sam like a fist between the eyes that Barnes is still totally naked, and neither one of them seems to have noticed for hours.

His next sudden, unpleasant realization is that he really, really has to piss. Shit. Now he kinda wants Bucky to hurry the fuck up so he doesn’t wet himself in this fucking chair.

“You know,” Bucky tells the floor, “my therapist has been teaching me about silver linings.”

“Silver--” Sam splutters. “Silver linings? What’s the silver lining here, Buck?”

Bucky coughs wetly, and his fingers curl into the concrete as he starts to push himself back up onto his hands and knees. “Dunno,” he says. “I was hoping you’d have one.”

He sort of… crawls the rest of the way over. On one hand and both knees, the IV line trailing behind him and Sam swearing bloody murder the whole way. But Bucky keeps going anyway. Pale and sweating and half-dead, blood under his nails and on his knees, just to get to Sam’s chair. Sam gets a good--by which he means bad--view of Bucky’s back, the tremble of his muscular frame and the hang of his head and the claw of scars radiating out from his left shoulder as he makes his slow, awful way over.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” he says, but it comes out far too soft.

“Yeah, well.” Bucky reaches Sam’s feet and then levers himself more or less upright via Sam’s knee, metal fingers digging into the meat of his thigh with a bruising pressure that belies the careful neutrality of his expression. “One of us needs to break us outta here, and while it kills me to admit it, it’s not gonna be me.” His metal arm rips through Sam’s ropes like they’re tissue paper, and when he’s done he slumps back, ass to heels, and props his good hand against the ground to stop from tipping over. His flesh-and-blood hand he’s nursing carefully against his chest. “So it’s all you, Cap.” 

Sam flexes his hands and feet before attempting to stand; he doesn’t know how long he’s been tied to that chair, but he’s stiff and sore enough to know not to take things too fast or he’ll end up face to concrete like a certain someone, Bucky. “Yeah. I’ll get right on that. Right after I find a corner to piss in.” He stands carefully, holds on to the arm of the chair until the blood stops rushing from his head. “I’m sure they totally didn’t design this cell to withstand a cyborg supersoldier, or anything.”

Bucky doesn’t even give him grief at that, which is worrying, to say the least. He’s still just sitting there, head hanging, body trembling, weight propped on his metal arm, breathing a little too fast and loud. At which point Sam figures it doesn’t matter what they built this cell to withstand; if he doesn’t find a way to get them out of here pdq...well, Bucky might not have much time.

He hunkers down in front of Bucky, reaches out, pauses before making contact. Even in his current condition, Bucky could snap his arm like a damn twig. “S’it ok if I check you out, man?”

Bucky chuffs. “What for? Nothin’ you can do.”

He’s… got a point. A shitty point, but a point nonetheless. “I’ll have you know I’m an expert at kissing it and making it better--AJ and Cass used to swear by it when they were younger.”

At that Bucky manages to lift his head and toss Sam the Patented Broody Stare. Sam’s grateful for it; it means he’s still fighting. 

Still, Sam’s audibly exasperated when he asks, “Will you at least lie down?”

Bucky concedes that much, thank christ. Lets Sam grip him by the shoulders and guide him gently to the floor. He clamps his metal hand around his flesh-and-bone wrist and grimaces the whole time, but at least he’s stopped making those awful, awful sounds. He doesn’t even argue when Sam takes careful hold of his legs and props them up on the seat of the chair.

“You better not have peed on that,” Bucky grumbles.

“I’ll pee on you,” Sam grumbles right back, not realizing what he’s implying until Bucky murmurs, “Ooh. Kinky.”

Sam would hit him if he weren’t full of drill holes. “Shut up and lemme see your hand.”

“You can’t do anything,” Bucky reminds him. Like Sam needs to be reminded of how fucking helpless he’s been all damn day. How helpless he is now. And maybe he lets that particular hurt show on his face, because Bucky adds, softer, “I’m fine. I’ll heal.”

If Bucky dies, Sam’s gonna find a way to resurrect him just so he can murder him again. “You’re not fine. You’re an idiot.”

Bucky sighs, and his metal hand, still clamped around his other wrist, goes slack and falls away.

Sam takes the invitation to lean in closer. He doesn’t touch, not yet--the wound in Bucky’s hand is still fresh and raw, but at least it’s stopped bleeding, which means Sam doesn’t have to hurt him some more by pushing on it.

“They break your arm with all that ventilation?” he asks. "Other than the, you know, drill-hole?"

“Don’t think so,” Bucky grunts.

Sam peers in close. All the wounds have sealed over on the surface, but he’d bet money those bones still resemble swiss cheese. “How’s it feel?”

Bucky sighs again. “How d’you think it feels.”

Right. “You dizzy? Lightheaded?”

“I said I’m fine, Dr. West.”

“Doct-- who?”

Bucky squints up at Sam as Sam squints down at Bucky. “Herbert West?” Bucky asks, incredulous, like Sam is some uncultured swine. “Reanimator?” Sam shakes his head. “HP Lovecra--” Bucky stops. Hacks out a stupidly painful-sounding cough.

Sam can’t offer anything but comfort, so he rests a hand on Bucky’s shoulder until the coughing jag stops. Says, while pretending not to notice the tear being squeezed from one of Bucky’s clenched eyes, “I cannot believe you just wasted like half your remaining life force to literacy-shame me. Wait. No. Yes I can.” 

“Worth it,” Bucky grits out. Asshole. “Now stop hovering and check the damn door.”

Sam figures he’s right. Bucky’s not dying right this second, and Sam couldn’t stop it even if he were. He gets up. Tries not to think too hard about the fact that his hands are tacky with Bucky’s blood. He wipes them on his pants, turns slowly in place to take in parts of the dungeon that’ve been behind him all day.

“Hey Buck?”

At his feet, Bucky grunts a soft, weary affirmative.

“Silver lining: there’s a toilet.”

He’s suddenly so thirsty he can practically feel the water on his tongue, running down his parched throat, doesn’t even care that it’s from a dungeon commode. 

Until he gets over there and realizes it’s a fucking composting toilet, no water at all to be found.

He wants to shout. Kick something. But then he remembers that he’s just kind of a little thirsty while poor Bucky spent hours being tortured with a fucking electric drill and he has no damn right to get upset over this. Besides, at least he doesn’t have to piss in a corner of their cell.

He takes care of business, sighing his relief as his bladder empties, and then, well, takes care of business. Scours the cell left to right and top to bottom, looking for a weakness, for a potential weapon, for anything he might exploit.

He keeps looking for a solution long after it becomes clear that there isn’t one. Bucky tracks him listlessly, curled slightly in around the right arm, eyes half closed. 

“You hangin’ in?” he asks as he passes by Bucky for what must be the hundredth time.

“Mmm,” Bucky hums, not moving.

That is so not a hangin’-in sound. He tiptoes back to Bucky’s side, feeling like he’s failed. Hasn’t kept up his side of the bargain. He looks down at that big lump of muscle and metal that somehow adds up to Bucky Barnes, and he has absolutely no idea what to do next.

“I’m giving this airbnb two stars,” Bucky tells him without moving. Well, at least not moving voluntarily; he’s shivering, though.

Sam tries to crack a smile and fails. He gets to his knees next to Bucky’s hip and shrugs off his shirt. “What’s the second star for?”

“Great location,” Bucky tells him drily. He closes his eyes when Sam lays his shirt out on top of him. He’ll probably have to move it later, anyway. The cold leeching up from the floor will be more dangerous than the cold from the air. 

“I’m gonna--” he says, and then decides it’ll probably be better for everyone if he doesn’t say cuddle you out loud, so he opts instead for “--try to keep you warm.”

“Back to one star,” Bucky slurs, sounding like he’s either almost asleep or almost. Well. Dead.

Sam gingerly lays down along Bucky’s right side, curling protectively around his savaged arm and tucking his knees under Bucky’s raised thighs where his legs are still propped on the chair.

“This okay?” he checks, but whatever Bucky thinks about the situation gets lost as a disembodied voice calls out from above, making him jump about three feet. 

“Don’t cover the healing wounds,” says the voice.

“Don’t cover the--” Sam repeats, stupidly, because he’s still running the adrenaline high and he’d be clinging to the ceiling right now if he’d jumped any higher.

“Maintain line-of-sight between the regeneration area and the camera,” the voice tells him, and Sam looks down at Bucky’s fucked-up arm, which he’d sort of been covering with his body.

“Or what?” he says, incredulous. Bucky still has his eyes closed, looking for all the world like he’s napping on the super comfortable concrete floor. Sam’s not about to deprive the guy of much-needed body heat just because some psychopaths with a drill want to get all voyeur on him.

“If the regeneration process cannot be monitored, we’ll have to repeat the experiment,” the voice tells him, sounding bored.

Oh. Well, okay then. Maybe he is about to move just because some psychopaths with a drill want to get all voyeur on him.

He relocates to Bucky’s other side, and tries not to think about whatever yahoo is sitting on the other end of the video feed watching him trying to get comfortable around the mountain of human heaped on the floor. He puts an arm around Bucky’s waist and crowds in as close as he can without risking bumping anything important. He’s not about to go to sleep or anything, but he tucks his head in anyway so it feels like he’s offering something private when he says, “Sorry, Buck.”

Bucky snorts, coughs. From here Sam can hear the way his breath shakes a bit as it goes in. Shakes even more when it comes back out. 

“Not your fault,” he says. “I’ve had worse, anyway.”

Sam carefully imagines putting knitting needles through the eyeballs of every Hydra goon in the world. “You get how that doesn’t make this better, right?”

Bucky’s lips lift a little, but he doesn’t respond.

That’s okay, though. He’s starting to look a little less pale; Sam glances back at the table and sees that a quarter of the IV fluids have already dripped into Bucky’s veins. He’s gonna be okay. Well. He might need an assload more therapy, but. At least Sam’s pretty sure now he’ll live to sulk through it. 

Just as soon as he busts them outta here. 

Chapter 2: Interlude

Summary:

In which Bucky is actually as funny as he thinks he is, even if Sam can't quite bring himself to agree.

Notes:

So all those amazing comments on the first chapter made us so excited that we un-completed the fic and wrote this next bit :D I cannot believe we had to add a "fluff" tag because of this ridiculous chapter.

Bucky has nightmares. Of course he does. Sam thinks he’d be more worried if he didn’t. 

He doesn’t wake Bucky, though; even bad rest seems better than no rest, considering what he’s been through. Not to mention the fact that if Sam startles the guy right now, he might be dead before Bucky even opens his eyes.

So he lies there on the overlit concrete floor, legs tucked under Bucky’s, arm curled over Bucky’s waist, and takes what solace he can in the (mostly) steady rise and fall of Bucky’s muscled chest.

He’s hungry, exhausted, so thirsty it hurts. But he’s trained for this. And anyway, between the two of them, he definitely drew the long straw. So he stands watch. Well… lies down on watch. Eyes on the hidden door. There are no markers of time passing, but every so often--who’s he kidding, probably more like every three or four minutes--he studies Bucky’s wounds. The puncture through the hand isn’t swollen anymore. Even the drill holes are starting to disappear, at least from the surface. Sam checks the IV bag, nearly gone now. Licks his lips. He’d never, but… Damn it’s tempting.

“You should finish it,” Bucky murmurs, and for a moment Sam’s sure he fell asleep, he’s dreaming, but then he feels the rumble of vibration through Bucky’s chest as the idiot adds, “I don’t need it anymore. You do.”

“Will you shut your stupid face,” Sam says, not bothering to lift his head from Bucky’s very uncomfortable shoulder.

“My face is awesome.” 

Sam’s gotta admit, dude’s got a point. 

Bucky turns said face toward Sam’s, so he can whisper in his ear, though whether or not the cameras can still pick it up is anyone’s guess. “And I could use that needle.”

Sam sighs. Doesn’t bother to whisper back. “There is no needle, Buck.” Why does everyone always think that? “S’just a catheter.” And anyway, like Bucky could manage jack shit right now, needle or no. “How you feeling?”

“Totally not thirsty.”

Ha ha, funny guy. 

“Little self-conscious, maybe. You should buy a guy dinner before you touch him like that, you know?”

Sam realizes his hand is resting on Bucky’s naked pelvis, just south enough of his belly button to give him an excuse to make it awkward. Sam holds still out of spite. “Old-fashioned much?”

Bucky shifts a bit beneath him, groans low and full of feeling. “Just plain old.” He shifts again, grimaces. The metal arm groans as well, like it’s as fatigued as Bucky is, which definitely shouldn’t be possible. And Sam’s too busy thinking about idiot supersoldiers and their idiot audible arms that he doesn’t pay attention as Bucky lifts one foot off the chair and pulls his knee to his chest, so before Sam can cotton on, Bucky’s already yanked the IV out.

“Are you serious?” he demands as a runnel of blood splurts from Bucky’s ankle. Sam grabs the wound, and for one instinctive moment he’s reaching for the bandage he keeps on his belt before he remembers--oh, yeah. Torture dungeon. So he digs his fingers in instead (maybe just a smidge harder than necessary).

“Ow!” Bucky complains, which is just…fucking ridiculous, like, seriously, Sam only doesn’t laugh because he knows how absolutely fucking hysterical he’d sound. 

Bucky plugs the end of the thin plastic tubing with his metal thumb and lifts it to his eyes. He sounds disappointed when he says, “Huh. There really is no needle.” Then, like he’s puzzling through a magic trick instead of lying naked and tortured on a dungeon floor, “How do they get the needle out but leave the tube in?” 

Sam sighs so aggressively he ruffles Bucky’s hair. 

Bucky shoves the bloody tubing at Sam’s face, which. Gross. “Don’t give me that cranky-old-man sigh. I’m fine. Drink.”

Well. It’s not like Bucky can put it back now, and anyway, at least one of them needs to be strong enough to fight when the time comes. Sam reaches for the line. Pauses. “You’re not gonna give me herpes or some shit, right? Heard you were quite the ladies’ man back in the day.”

Bucky snorts. “Supersoldier, remember?”

Sam puts the bloodied line to his lips.

“So I have supersoldier herpes,” Bucky finishes.

Sam splutters, sounding a bit like an ancient tap being turned on for the first time. He’s so parched even the bit of blood on his lips stings.

Bucky’s joking.

He’s pretty sure Bucky’s joking.

He drinks.

It’s. Nasty. Salty and metallic and bitter and cloying sweet and he swallows every drop because it’s wet, so fucking good, he can practically feel each desiccated cell in his gut swelling back to life and--

And then it’s gone. Half a cup, maybe. Which, now that his brain’s firing a little clearer, he supposes makes sense; if there’d been enough to make any real difference to either of them--aside from maybe giving him some supersoldier cold sores--he’s pretty sure the eye in the sky would’ve put a stop to it.

Sam sighs again. Drops the tubing. Says, reluctantly, “Thanks, Buck.”

Bucky nods his head against the cold concrete. “You should get some sleep.”

Sam wants, but… “Gotta keep watch.”

“For what?” Bucky asks, and the tone is teasing, but the point is very much not. 

Sam hates how right he probably is. “Face. Stupid. Shut.”

“Is that like one of those, uh. Memes or whatever?” The tone is deadpan, but the faintest mischievous smile is curling Bucky’s lips.

“Yoda?” Sam asks. Then, incredulous, when Bucky shakes his head: “Star Wars? No? Come on, man!”

Bucky turns to him with great big puppy eyes and, god, no wonder Sarah gets all mushy every time he flirts with her, that shit’s a weapon. “Did you really just use like half your remaining energy to movie-shame me?”

Sam snorts. “Damn straight I did; you’re not the only one who gets to make that joke. Now shut up and go back to sleep.”

He shuts up, even closes his eyes, but he doesn’t sleep again. 

Sam doesn’t blame him one bit.

Notes:

Pls keep feeding ur authors!

Chapter 3

Summary:

In which it turns out Bucky can feel with that arm after all, and Office Depot has a run on wheeled carts.

Notes:

Pay no attention to the slowly-enlarging number of chapters :-p All these lovely comments keep feeding the beast!

Also, warning for a quick bit of sexual assault in this chapter.

Their respite is far too short-lived. Sam’s still got his eyeballs glued to the hidden door when Psycho Boss Lady’s voice rings over the speaker: “Well isn’t that sweet; I never took you two for cuddlers.”

Bucky doesn’t even open his eyes, but he waves at himself with his metal hand and says, “Like you could resist this either.”

The lady laughs. “Fortunately I don’t have to.” Which is. Wow, what the fuck, lady. “But cuddle time’s over. Be a good soldier now and tie Mr. Wilson back to his chair. Nice and tight, if you will.”

Bucky blinks his eyes open, but otherwise, he doesn’t move. Just drawls, “Doesn’t sound like something I’d do.”

“No,” the woman agrees. “The Winter Soldier doesn’t take prisoners, does he?”

Sam feels Bucky stiffen beneath him. He bets it shows on camera, too, but he can’t figure the strategy in scoring a point like that--it’s only gonna make Bucky more dangerous.

But. Just in case Bucky gets stupid when he’s mad, Sam extricates himself from around the guy and stands. Stares into the camera above them. “You want me on that chair, why don’t you come put me in it yourself.”

Silence, except for the scrape of vibranium on concrete as Bucky pushes himself to his feet. He looks damn good considering--well, everything. He’s strong, sure, deadly.

Sam jabs a finger at the camera. “Yeah, that’s what I thought, you psycho fucking--”

“Sam.”

Bucky’s soft warning cuts him off, and he follows Bucky’s gaze to his own chest, where four red dots from a laser sight are dancing over center mass.

“Yeah, okay,” he concedes, following the track of the lasers back up to the ceiling, where four quarter-sized holes have appeared. “Yeah, imma sit, but only cos my legs are tired, not because you told me to.”

He takes his damn time about it. They’re not gonna waste him for being slow, and the more time he spends not in the chair is more time Bucky spends not at their mercy.

Once he’s back in that miserable metal chair, Bucky walks over to him--huge improvement over him stumbling on his hands and knees, Sam’ll take it--and retrieves the tangle of rope from the floor. 

“Sorry, Sam,” he murmurs, with a level of sincerity that makes Sam’s heart ache; the last thing Bucky needs is more guilt.

Sam nods. “S’all good.”

As Bucky kneels to tie his legs, Psycho Boss Lady warns through the speaker, “We’re going to check those knots. Don’t make us hurt your friend. Or regret our decision to let you wander at night.”

Bucky says nothing, surprise surprise, but he takes one last look at the little red dots still dancing on Sam’s torso and then trusses Sam up as thoroughly as the baddies had yesterday. Sam doesn’t blame him, but… Well. So much for that escape plan.

“There’s a good boy,” she says, like Bucky’s some pet dog performing a trick. Bucky’s face barely twitches, but Sam can read him pretty well now, and he hates how it makes him think again of the way Hydra must’ve treated him, the things they must’ve done to him and, worse, the things they made him do.

He’s desperately trying not to picture it all, but here’s Bucky in his birthday suit, tying Sam’s wrists at the order of an evil power, expressionless, emotionless, movements so precise and efficient it’s downright robotic. 

When Bucky’s done, he stands straight, hands loose at his sides, and says to the camera, in a voice as flat as his expression, “What now?”

“On the table, Soldier.”

He goes, and Sam despairs. This is the Winter Soldier. 

“Cuff yourself back down. I’m sure you remember where they all go.”

He does. He locks himself down with the same silent, emotionless efficiency he tied Sam. When he’s done, the only part of him left free is his right arm.

“Can’t close the last cuff on my own,” he says to the ceiling.

The hidden door opens, and there’s Psycho Boss Lady with an automatic rifle in her hands, flanked by three heavily armed baddies. Overkill, Sam thinks, but then Bucky does still have one arm free, even if it’s his human one, and what if he really hadn’t tied Sam as tightly as it seemed he did. “That’s all right, Soldier. You just be good and lie nice and still, and my colleague here will finish for you.”

She melts back, lets the goons enter the room first. Of course. Nothing says “leadership” like leading from behind. 

Now that those little red dots are gone from his chest, Sam half-hopes Bucky might still have a trick up his sleeve. It’s damn improbable, though, considering how tightly they’re both strapped down, so he doesn’t really feel disappointment when one of the goons puts the last mag-cuff in place over Bucky’s right wrist. Just… resignation. 

It’s going to be a long, ugly fucking day.

Two goons approach Sam to check the ropes, as promised. They must be satisfied, because they nod at the boss and leave. She passes her rifle off to them as they go, and then she and three more goons--scientist edition this time, you can tell by the white lab coats, natch--enter with loaded carts.

Thank fuck, Sam doesn’t see a drill. In fact, all they do is take vitals, examine the spots where his wounds used to be, and wheel over the portable x-ray. One of the goons enters data into a tablet while the boss lady tuts over the imaging. 

“What do you think?” she asks, showing the x-ray screen to Goon The Second: Too Fast Too Gooniest. “Sixty percent? Sixty-five?”

Healed, they must mean. It’s been less than a day and his bones are already two-thirds back to normal? Must be nice to have that serum.

“Sixty-five,” the goon agrees. 

“Disappointing.” 

In what fucking world…?

“So that’s a no on the organ regeneration test. We’ll have to wait another day. Shame.” They’re all standing over Bucky talking about organ fucking regeneration like he can’t even hear them. Jesus fucking fuck. “Why don’t you go back to the lab and run the samples. And send in the engineers. They can have the day with his arm.”

The goons leave, taking their carts with them. Psycho Boss Lady stays. 

She runs her index finger down the length of Bucky’s metal arm, creepy and possessive just like yesterday, and once again it’s Sam who shudders, not Bucky.

“Will you be a good little soldier and let my men study your fancy new Wakandan toy?” she asks, still touching him, tracing the maze of gold accents with her finger.

Bucky rolls his head to meet her eyes and says, calm as could be, “Touch me again and I will kill you.”

Boss Lady laughs like she’s delighted by his spunk, or some condescending bullshit. Then she very deliberately slides her hand up his arm, across his collarbone, and over his throat. Not pressing, just… resting there, fingers curled with the promise of power. “You can certainly try.”

Bucky glowers but says nothing. The hand leaves his throat, takes a leisurely, winding path down his chest, his abs, his pelvis. Maybe she’s trying to pull a real reaction out of him--no dice there, which, wow, Sam can’t even fathom having the discipline to lie still and silent through that--or maybe she really is a gross fucking creep. 

Sam’s not waiting to find out. Her fingers are just brushing Bucky’s pubic hair when Sam blurts, “Why all y’all gotta turn out to be rapists too, huh? S’not enough to experiment on a guy against his will?”

She lifts her hand away and turns her attention from Bucky to Sam. Good.

“I might be inclined to agree with you,” she says, “except we both know that he’s not ‘a guy,’ don’t we?”

She puts her hand on Bucky’s thigh. The inside of Bucky’s thigh. Without taking her eyes off Sam. One corner of her lip pulls up as she creeps her fingers northward.

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes fell off a train in 1945,” she says as she reaches the top of Bucky’s thigh. She twists her wrist a bit and Sam doesn’t look--he doesn’t--but he doesn’t have to. He imagines Bucky’s balls cradled in her slender, psychotic fingers. “Sergeant Barnes died that day, and something else took his place, isn’t that right, Soldier?” 

Her arm flexes, and this time Bucky twitches, just a little. Sam can’t help but flick a glance down, see her hand curled tight between his legs. He watches as she pulls her hand back, just an inch, and the muscles in Bucky’s thighs jump at the same time Sam’s own balls make a strategic retreat into his gut. 

“The Winter Soldier is a weapon,” she declares. “A precision tool. Maybe even an expensive toy. But not a man.” She watches Sam watch her pull a bit harder, Bucky’s breath coming in short little pants and his hips straining against the metal as he tries to follow her hand down.

Sam sees the intent on her face a moment before she moves. “--Don’t!” he yells, but really, what’s he going to do, tied up in his stupid chair with Bucky over there like that.

She yanks, her fingers going white as they squeeze. Bucky lurches up under her, a sound Sam never wants to hear again escaping out of his wide-open mouth, animal and instinctive, and Sam wants to crawl into his own head so he doesn’t have to see because she holds for the longest moment, watching his reaction before looking back down at Bucky, the long tight strain of him, every muscle stark against the cuffs. The smile she gives him is--inhuman. Feral. And Sam thinks--oh god, she’s going to do it. He’s going to watch her do it. She’s going to rip them right off.

But then just like that she lets go, steps back. Bucky shudders from his toes to the tips of his hair, stomach muscles flexing as he tries to curl inward around himself. Sam--looks, can’t help it. But everything’s still there. Angry red, but no blood. 

She catches him staring. “He is pretty, though, isn’t he.”

Like Sam would be caught dead admitting that, even if it were just Sarah teasing him.

She smears her thumb across Bucky’s parted lips, moist from his panting breaths. Sam votes for biting her thumb off, but Bucky just turns his head away. “The body I suppose we could credit to the serum, but the face is all him.”

“I’ll be sure to congratulate his parents on the bang-up job after we kill you.” 

He realizes a second too late that Bucky’s parents have been dead for almost a century, so he’s not sure how to feel when the engineers show up before he can stick his foot in his mouth again. 

Like their biology counterparts, they enter wheeling carts full of equipment. At least this time it’s for the fake arm, not the real one, which he hopes means Bucky won’t suffer today.

He knows he might, though. Bucky’s sure as shit not gonna volunteer Wakandan state secrets to these assholes; Sam won’t let him.

The three new lab-coated baddies spend a few quiet minutes attaching little electrode-like pads all over Bucky’s metal shoulder, arm, and hand. The silence feels pretty damn tense to Sam, but Bucky’s lying there calmly, and the baddies look downright excited.

When he’s all hooked up, Psycho Boss Lady steps forward and taps his metal forearm with her fingernail. “Tell me everything you know about your prosthesis, Soldier.”

Bucky stares at the ceiling, silent.

“Last chance before I get impolite.”

Bucky rolls his head toward her, an expression of utter unconcern on his face. “It’s very shiny,” he offers.

She slaps him so hard the other side of his face bangs into the table. So she does her own dirty work; Sam hates that he respects that, but also, fuck her sideways.

“Try again, Soldier.”

Bucky spits a wad of blood off the side of the table and turns his face back to her. She’s split his supersoldier lip--it selfishly reminds Sam how much his own cracked lips sting--but Bucky kinda smirks anyway. “Sometimes it makes this kind of, like, whirring sound, you kno--”

This time she piledrives her elbow into his solar plexus. 

Sam winces as Bucky shouts and heaves, a desperate choking noise wheezing out of him as his lungs try to reinflate. 

“Your friend’s next,” she warns as Bucky gasps in air. 

Sam has just enough time to say, “Don’t tell her shit, Buck,” before she moves to his chair and smashes her fist into his own cheek. 

Damn , that woman can throw a punch.

He straightens up, jaw working, and meets Bucky’s eyes. Bucky gives him a little nod, then shifts his gaze to the boss lady. “I hope you have a Plan B,” he says, and his eyes and his voice have gone so cold and lethal it gives even Sam chills. “Cos you can’t kill me, and you can’t kill him or I’ll kill you all. And there’s nothing you can do to me that Hydra didn’t for seventy years.”

“What he said,” Sam snarls, trying very, very hard to, well. Not think of the last thing he said. “And I’m Captain Fucking America--you think I’ll let you break him with me?”

Psycho Boss Lady crosses her arms. Studies Bucky, then Sam, then Bucky again. Then nods. “All right. I believe you.” Sam quietly exhales, but then she turns to one of her goons and adds, “Plan B it is.”

The goon looks like ten Christmases came at once.

Ah, fuck. That can’t bode well. 

“Yes, ma’am. Starting the field generator.”

Sam knows enough about his shield--or rather, the vibranium it and Bucky’s new arm are made of--to know exactly what that generator’s gonna do: an electromagnetic field of proper frequency and sufficient strength will deactivate the metal’s ability to absorb kinetic energy, and once that’s done, they can crack it open with the right tools.

Judging by the way Bucky’s human fist curls ever so slightly, he knows too.

But they’ve both chosen to make this bed, so. Time to fucking sleep in it.

A goon wheels a cart next to Bucky, tucks some kind of metallic blanket over Bucky’s torso, then plugs all those electrode-like pads into a device he clicks on with a faint hum. 

Bucky jolts. Sucks in a deep breath and blows it out through pursed lips. Any EM field strong enough to inactivate vibranium is gonna fuck with the human nervous system, metallic shielding or no; he’s gotta be dizzy, nauseous. As close as that generator is to him, it could even be heating the uncovered parts of him like a damn microwave.

A second goon holds a tablet over Bucky’s arm. “Adjust frequency 10 Hz,” he says to the first one.

“10 Hz,” Generator Goon confirms.

A small noise escapes Bucky’s clenched teeth. He blinks furiously at the ceiling, jerks his arm against the mag cuffs. The strip of skin that joins with the metal shoulder is turning bright red. So is his exposed left thigh, near his clenched metal fingers. He’s breathing fast and audible, struggling in earnest, and Sam is. Fucking. Useless. Can’t help him. Can’t stop any of this.

“You’re cooking him,” Boss Lady notes.

The goon tuning the EMF generator darts his eyes to Bucky’s fevered skin, then back to the machine. “Can’t be helped.”

“Well let’s at least get Franklin back in here to take some readings.”

The unoccupied goon nods, speaks into a walkie. Tablet Goon says to Generator Goon, “Good. Right there. Increase field strength six percent.”

“Six percent,” Generator Goon says. Turns a dial. Bucky moans, swallows, sucks in several shaky breaths like he’s desperately trying not to vomit.

“You’re gonna kill him,” Sam blurts.

Boss Lady doesn’t even deign to look at Sam when she replies. “The damage is localized; he’ll heal. Besides, he knows exactly how to stop this.”

“Uh huh,” Sam says, flat. Then, to Bucky, “Stop fighting it, Buck--just let it go and puke all over her smug face.”

Psycho Boss Lady actually takes a step back as Bucky coughs out a pained laugh, but alas, his stomach’s as empty as Sam’s. Still, Sam counts it as a win.

The hidden door opens again, and in walks one of the goons from yesterday, wheeling another damn cart. Franklin, presumably. The local Office Depot is gonna be all out of carts because of a torture dungeon, of all things. 

Franklin takes momentary stock of the situation, then says, “Interesting. Let me get him hooked up right quick.”

Several dozen electrodes later, he finishes with a BP cuff, a pulse ox, and stick-on temperature monitors on Bucky’s bright red shoulder and thigh, and then steps back to monitor his screens. Frowns. Says to Boss Lady, “That’s a lot of stress on his heart.”

No shit, Sherlock.

Boss Lady shrugs. Says like it’s fucking funny to her, “Try not to kill the asset, Miller.”

Miller tosses her an absent thumbs up.

Sam’s gonna… he’s gonna fucking kill them all.

Goon #3 pulls on a pair of kevlar gloves and picks up a rotary drill saw, the blade no bigger than a quarter and almost certainly adamantium, if it’s really gonna cut through Bucky’s arm. “Ready?” he asks, and Psycho Boss Lady nods. 

“Full thickness through the plate above the antecubital fossa. No deeper; we don’t know what’s under there yet.”

“Don’t burn yourself,” Generator Goon warns. That arm must be blazing hot right now.

Goon #3 nods. Pops on a pair of safety glasses. Turns on the rotary drill. Presses it, slow and careful, to the plate right above the inside of Bucky’s elbow.

Bucky screams.

Drill Goon pulls back immediately. Shuts the drill off. The board-stiff tension leaves Bucky’s body and he slumps, panting, eyes and fists clenched tight. 

Boss Lady pulls on a protective glove, leans in close and touches the partial slice cut into Bucky’s arm. “You felt that, Soldier?”

Bucky makes no indication that he heard her, but given his reaction, Sam’s pretty sure the question was rhetorical anyway.

“Interesting.” She’s still looking at him like they’re having a nice genial conversation. “I fully expected artificial mechanoreceptors and thermoreceptors, but why nociceptors? Why would the Wakandans do that to you, Soldier? Make you feel pain when they didn’t have to?”

Bucky glares at her, chest heaving. Says nothing. Sam thinks maybe that question hits a little too close to home, after having learned the hard way that they made the arm detachable, too.

“Was your Hydra arm like that?”

Bucky rolls his head away, moans softly and closes his eyes like just that little movement gave him vertigo. He’s still breathing like he’s run a damn marathon, looks downright green around the gills.

“It was!” she crows, like she’s just fucking fascinated by all this.

“Biologically speaking, pain is the primary indicator of damage,” Franklin suggests, and Sam hopes Bucky’s listening because the fucker is actually making perfect sense. The Wakandans didn’t do this to punish or control Bucky, they did it to help him.

Saw Goon nods. “And presumably, pain is the best indicator for a prosthesis with multiple failsafes. It almost instantly triggers the nervous system to move away from the source of the stimuli.” He turns on the saw again, starts pushing it through the plate. Every muscle in Bucky’s body strains to yank his arm back. “See?”

“Interesting,” Psycho Boss Lady says again. 

“If there were a better way to do it,” Franklin says, “I’m sure the Wakandans would’ve found it.”

Boss Lady agrees. “All right, then. Keep going--get that plate off.”

“Hey!” Sam shouts before they can hurt him again. “How you think Wakanda’s gonna feel when they find out you wrecked a billion-dollar gift from the king himself, huh?”

“I managed to kidnap Captain America and the Winter Soldier. You really think I’m afraid of Wakanda?” She doesn’t give Sam a chance to warn You fucking should be, just says to Saw Goon, “Proceed.”

Sam wants to fucking scream.

Bucky does it for them both.

Chapter 4

Summary:

In which Bucky's arm is even cooler than we realized, and Sam gets downright sappy.

Notes:

TW (and vague spoiler) for a quick bit of not-too-explicit, not-our-boys gore.

It turns out that what’s under that plate is… another plate. Or rather, one immediately slides into place to protect the newly-exposed insides of Bucky’s arm. Boss Lady curses, then says, “Cut that one off too,” and Bucky’s eyes go wide with heartbreaking fear and his chest heaves and his body tenses against the cuffs like they’ve already started hurting him again. Or maybe that’s just the EM field. 

At least the plates are pretty thin, and Drill Goon is through the second one after a few minutes of careful cutting, the high whine of the drill and Bucky’s screams and the hum of the EMF generator all crashing together in a way that makes Sam wish he could rip his fucking eardrums out.

But then the drill stops. Bucky’s screams fade to a kind of exhausted whimper that actually might be worse than all the yelling, but at least the awful tension has drained from him. Drill Goon removes the plate, still glowing hot at the edges, with a pair of forceps, and when no third plate takes its place, he peers into the hole he made and says, awestruck, “Cool.”

Sam imagines ripping the guy’s throat out with his teeth.

“Get the camera in there,” Boss Lady says, in a tone that suggests she’s imagining the same thing, if for entirely different reasons. “And get those plates packaged for the lab. Do we need the EMF anymore?”

“Probably not,” Tablet Goon says. “It’s likely a number of the internal mechanisms are vibranium, but we’re not up to dissecting those yet.”

Dissecting… Sam’s teeth grind together so hard his jaw creaks.

Drill Goon, who Sam renames Camera Goon as he shoves his fingers and some kind of endoscopic camera inside Bucky’s arm, feeds the camera just… fucking… right up in there . 

“Got a nice clear feed,” Tablet Goon says, showing it to Psycho Boss Lady, who nods in approval and takes it from him. Hands freed, Tablet Goon flicks off the EMF. 

The scream that follows is so loud that, for a moment, Sam’s sure they’ve somehow done something irreparable to Bucky.

Until he realizes that it’s not Bucky who’s screaming--it’s Camera Goon, clasping what’s left of his right hand to his chest as arterial blood spurts from the stumps of three fingers.

“Fuck yeah!” Sam shouts, and a laugh bubbles out of him that may or may not be entirely too manic. “Still got it, Buck!”

But Bucky looks as confused as everyone else. 

“Where did his fingers--” Boss Lady says, and the goons all look down at the place where a shimmering electric glow is covering the hole in Bucky’s arm. “Camera feed’s gone too.” She turns to Franklin. “Write that down.” Then she turns to Camera Goon, white as a sheet and tragically not passing out or screaming anymore. “Go to medical.”

“But my fingers…” he pants.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “Rude. Also disgusting. Get your trash outta me, will you?”

Well, at least they haven’t tortured the sense of humor out of him yet.

Boss Lady throws him a look like she actually respects that, then turns back to Camera Goon. “We’ll send them along in a bit. Go on, before you bleed to death.”

“Or stay,” Sam suggests. “Bleed to death.”

For a second, he thinks Camera Goon is gonna hit him with his good hand, but then the guy just turns around and leaves.

In the wake of the ensuing silence--no screaming, no EMF hum--Sam feels a weird sort of pressure in his ears, like the quiet has weight. No sounds now but Bucky’s panting, which has slowed and settled a bit as the field stopped bombarding his nervous system, stopped burning new flesh. It’s such a pathetic thing to feel grateful for, but here Sam is. And he suspects Bucky does, too, the way his eyes have slid closed, the way his fists and jaw have finally unclenched, just a little.

Which is why he almost starts crying when Psycho Boss Lady says to Bucky, “Well. Looks like it’s back in the microwave for you.” She points to the force field covering the hole in his arm. “Unless you want to shut that off?”

“Wasn’t me,” Bucky says. Sam’s kind of surprised he gave her that, but then it occurs to him that she might be inclined to punish someone if she believes he did it on purpose. She seems the type.

Thankfully, she believes him, because she nods at Camera Goon 2.0, who looks way more nervous than his predecessor, which is understandable given the amount of Camera Goon blood splattered up Bucky’s left side. 

“So I’ll just,” he says, tapping the arm gingerly while the other goon fiddles with the EMF generator. Bucky levels them both with the best I’m going to take your fingers too face Sam’s ever seen, and then closes his eyes against the coming wave of getting-cooked-alive nausea.

“Hang in there, Buck,” Sam says.

“There are fingers in my arm, asshole.”

“Hang on to them too.”

Bucky barks a laugh and then grits his teeth. The glowy de-fingering shield blinks off under the hum of the EMF. Sam has to work his jaw to make his ears pop.

After that, things are pretty calm for a while, all things considered. Camera Goon 2.0 tragically does not lose any limbs as he removes the finger stumps from Bucky’s arm.

“Take them to medical,” Boss Lady says, barely even looking at the bloody lumps. “Make sure they get tested before they’re reattached.”

“Yeah,” Bucky manages. “I know where they’ve been.”

Franklin hands CG 2.0 a squirt bottle of saline to wash the blood from Bucky’s mechanical insides, which has the fantastic side effect of turning into steam upon contact with Bucky’s overheated metal arm, fogging up CG’s glasses and momentarily turning Bucky into an oversized sauna heater. Sam lets himself laugh--it’s funny because it doesn’t seem to hurt Bucky, and sure that’s a low bar, but Sam’ll take it.

They get a new camera up in there, and that doesn’t hurt either, as far as Sam can tell, even when they start shoving it all the way up into his shoulder and then down to his fingers. Bucky makes the occasional face like something really fucking weird is going on inside him and he wishes it weren’t, but again, Sam’ll take it. S’probably like how when you get really overheated and drink some iced sweet tea, and you can feel it going all the way down your esophagus and spreading out into your stomach--a strange awareness of parts of you you usually can’t feel. At least he hopes that’s all it is.

God, he could really use some iced sweet tea himself.

They record a ton of data. After mapping the visible interior of the arm, they start sending other probes up there. Unfortunately, not all of them are benign. They run current through all of Bucky’s various bits and pieces, making the plates shift, making his fingers curl, too often making him shout and jolt against his restraints. Which at least makes the new Camera Goon flinch hard enough to be almost funny.

Until they find the artificial brachial nerve. It doesn’t… go well. The first time they zap it, Bucky’s eyes fly open and his whole body lurches hard enough to make Sam doubt the integrity of the cuffs. He’s pretty sure the only reason Bucky doesn’t scream is because he’s as surprised as the goons are. He’s never heard Bucky beg before, but the second time they zap it, Bucky unmistakably shouts, “Stop!”

They don’t. Data’s only valid if it’s repeatable, after all.

Ain’t nothin funny after that.

They prod, zap, and measure every piece of the arm, record their findings, and then do it again in reverse. Sam learns what vibranium sounds like when it’s forced to bend inward and outward at the same time. Just like yesterday, he learns what Bucky sounds like when he’s forced to endure it.

Finally, Franklin puts up a hand. Too much stress. Too much EMF. Wouldn’t want to accidentally kill the asset. Bucky’s shining with sweat, his mouth slack around each panting breath. His eyes don’t track when Franklin waves in front of them. Franklin starts setting up to pump Bucky full of fluids, electrolytes, dextrose. To finally, thank fuck, let him rest. It’s been… hours. A whole entire fucking day, Sam thinks.

“Hey, can I have some too?” he can’t help but ask. He’s mostly been too distracted to think about his own thirst and hunger, but now that the screaming seems to be over, it all comes rushing back as swift and hard as a super-soldier punch to his very parched mouth.

“I suppose we’re not ready to kill you yet, either,” Psycho Boss Lady says without looking at him. It’s not exactly an answer, but Sam’s hopeful.

His reward for making it through another day of watching Bucky turn into swiss cheese--cooked swiss cheese this time (God I could really go for some grilled cheese right now, he thinks, followed immediately by absolutely fucking existential horror, and then by a flashback to childhood Saturday Morning cartoons where Bugs Bunny, stranded on a desert island with Donald Duck, starts seeing him as a giant walking hot dog and okay he is definitely starting to lose his goddamn mind)--is a paper cup with a single fizzing tablet of what he hopes to god is actually an entire burger in disguise but which is much more likely an oral rehydration tab. Or poison. Ha. Maybe they’re gonna poison him.

He’d drink it anyway, probably. He’d drink it and thank them.

Boss Lady takes the paper cup from the goon who brings it in. For a moment Sam thinks--jealously--that she’s about to drink it. Classic villain move, after all.

Instead she spits into it--another classic villain move, he supposes--hands it back to the goon, and cuts a painfully sweet smile over at where Sam isn’t even pretending that he’s still not gonna drink it.

“Whatever,” he croaks, and for once in this whole shit sandwich of a kidnapping he actually feels as unfazed as he sounds. “I ain’t too proud.”

He’s so intent on the paper cup--his paper cup, that’s his water, thank christ--that he’s not really paying attention to what’s going on at the table. The cup gets put on the floor next to the door, which probably means they’re going to get let out again tonight. Or else they’re going to stay where they are and he gets to stare at the cup all night. He actually might turn into Bugs Bunny if that happens.

But it doesn’t. Bucky gets his suspended swimming pool, and then Franklin takes another x-ray of his flesh-and-blood arm (80% healed despite a bazillion hours of EMF bombardment, how the hell). And then the door closes behind the hundredth villain cart, and a minute later Bucky’s cuffs pop open. 

Sam releases a breath. They get the night to themselves again. He could kiss Boss Lady.

With a machete, but still.

Bucky doesn’t move for a few long minutes, and Sam resolutely does not look at the little paper cup fizzing gently next to the door. The guy’s been brutally tortured for two solid days. Sam can give him a few minutes. 

A few minutes turns into a few more minutes, and eventually, guiltily, he clears his throat, which, ooh, he sounds like sawdust. That’s fun. 

“Buck?” he checks.

Bucky rolls his head, but stays quiet so long Sam’s not sure he heard him. Until, finally, he slurs, “S’it still there?”

“Huh?”

“The… arm. Hurts like s’there, but that d’sn’t… mean much.”

Oh god, Sam hadn’t even considered the idea that Bucky might’ve had phantom pains back in the day. Or that he might be too afraid to open his eyes and look. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had ripped that piece of him away. Wouldn’t even be the second.

“Yeah, Buck,” he says, shoving as much gentleness and compassion into his sawdust voice as he can. “It’s still there.”

There’s a tiny whirr that lasts less than a second. A whirr in the singular. A whirrling. Like even the arm is too tired to exist right now. Sam can relate. Oh good. He’s fucked up enough to relate to an arm.

“Fffuck…” Bucky moans. And then, equally heartfelt, “Ow.”

Shuri’s gonna be pissed.

The metal arm goes from horizontal to vertical without appearing to calibrate at all. It stays there for a second, pointing straight up from Bucky’s body as he peers at it.

“Huh,” he says. And then the arm drops back down, right off the edge of the table. The momentum pulls the left side of Bucky’s body a little bit over as well. He hangs there for a second, and then claws halfheartedly at the floor, like he’s trying to drag himself off.

“There’s no rush,” Sam lies. “Give yourself a few minutes, man, seriously.”

Bucky’s lips twitch in the ghost of a smile. “No one’s given me that option since 1944,” he says. “I’ve forgotten how.”

It’s such an unexpected gut punch of a reminder, and Sam’s so fucking fragile right now, that he’s pretty sure he’d cry if he had the water to spare.

“You’re an idiot,” he whispers instead. 

“Learned from a master,” Bucky agrees, and heaves himself off the edge of the table.

His body crumples into the concrete like. Well. Like a human’s body would. Which is not what Bucky’s body usually resembles. And it’s not until he’s down there that Sam can see what the rush really is. Fine tremors shake Bucky from top to toe. The irony of radiation burns as extensive and serious as the ones the EMF caused is that you get shocky, and then you get cold. He needs Sam. Or any warm body, really, but right now Sam’s the only game in town.

And also, Sam realizes as Bucky inches forward on unsteady hands and knees, the paper cup is sweating. Badly. It’s losing water in big fat drops that Sam can almost taste on his tongue, and he straight-up hates himself for feeling the same degree of dismay at that as he does at watching Bucky struggle.

You’re dying of dehydration, asshole. Cut yourself a fucking break.

Despite nearly tipping sideways or just plain collapsing about a hundred times, Bucky makes it to the water eventually. Then to Sam. He never stands up, never stops shaking, just crawls his vertiginous way over (on his still-twenty-percent-broken arm, no less), shivering violently, carefully nursing the paper cup in his metal hand because it’s steadier than his natural one. He doesn’t spill a single drop, but little runnels soak through the paper and drip down his fingers, the back of his hand, his wrist. Sam runs his parched tongue over his equally parched lips and wonders how weird it’d be to ask Bucky if he can lick them up.

He’s thirsty enough to find out. Before Bucky can even untie him, he says, “Hey, man…” eyes glued to the little pool of water in Bucky’s wrist plates. “Can I. Uh.”

In a feat of never-before-seen-or-heard-of magnanimity, Bucky both understands and doesn’t make him say it out loud. Just puts the cup on the floor and holds his metal hand up to Sam’s mouth while he unties Sam with the other hand.

And okay, yeah, sure, maybe Sam’s, like, once or twice in his entire life okay at least considered the hint of the possibility of maybe what those metal fingers might taste like. Not like this, obviously. But. Hey. Turns out almost dying has all sorts of perks.

The water is so fucking amazing that the metal arm is probably going to feature in every damn fantasy he ever has for the rest of his fucking life. He maybe moans a little as he licks the moisture off Bucky’s fingers, and, look, this is totally not weird at all, okay?

Bucky goes immediately back to his old asshole self by kinda smirking at Sam and saying, “I get that response a lot.”

“Fuck you,” Sam mumbles around Bucky’s fingers. Bucky’s just freed Sam’s right hand, so he adds, “Gimme the damn cup.”

Bucky doesn’t. The fucking bastard.

He holds it up to Sam’s lips instead, tips it back maddeningly slow with his licked-dry metal hand. “Easy,” Bucky murmurs, as he starts working on the ropes at Sam’s left wrist. “You’ll hate yourself if you puke it right back up.”

Why does this fucking asshole always make so goddamn much sense?

So Sam takes the little tiny sips Bucky gives him, and his hands actually are shaking too hard to take the cup even if Bucky had let him.

A couple minutes later, he’s free of his ropes and half a pint heavier, give or take. It feels like a fucking glow-up, just that tiny little bit of salt and potassium and sugar and water. And Boss-Lady spit. Enough for him to stop being so goddamn selfish and focus on Bucky again, who still hasn’t stood up, whose everything-that-isn’t-metal is still shivering so hard Sam can hear his damn teeth clacking.

“Come on,” he says, making to stand from his chair and then thinking the better of it--he slides to his knees instead, on the floor right next to Bucky. “Let’s get you warm.”

He reaches out to wrap his arms around Bucky, but Bucky flinches, hard, makes a little noise that breaks Sam’s heart.

Okay. Fair. 

“Sorry,” he murmurs. He keeps his arms at his sides and just sort of… leans into Bucky’s space. Curls himself round as best as he can while they’re both sort of sitting against the chair legs. 

“S’ok.” Bucky looks right at him, which he takes as a good sign. “It’s not… what you’re thinking. Everything’s just.” He looks down at himself, about a fifth of which is beet red from radiation burns Sam’s sure go bone deep, then gestures vaguely with his metal hand. “Sensitive.” Which in Bucky-speak loosely translates to Literally on fire and also covered with angry hornets. Bucky pauses. “You can--” he says, but doesn’t finish the sentence, so Sam lifts his arm again and lets Bucky position himself how he wants. 

They end up in a not a cuddle kind of cuddle. Bucky’s right shoulder fits under Sam’s chin after Bucky slides down the floor a bit. Sam props his right foot on the floor next to Bucky’s hip so Bucky can lean into his leg. Nothing on Bucky’s practically-glowing-red left side is anywhere near touching Sam, but he can feel the heat radiating off the flesh nonetheless. 

Just as they finish settling into a stable tangle, Bucky almost elbows him in the nuts via a particularly violent shiver, swallows hard and covers his clenched-shut eyes with his metal hand.

“Promise you won’t puke on me,” Sam says.

Bucky coughs out a weird sort of shaky laugh, then moans, bares his teeth. His fingers squeeze his temples--poor guy’s probably trying to physically keep his brain from exploding. 

Finally he says, like the little shit he absolutely is, “I never make a promise I can’t keep.”

Sam smiles, but of course the lightness of the moment can’t last, not here, not like this. “Is it really bad?” he asks softly. The urge to stroke the skin under his hands is so powerful he almost, like a fucking moron, gives in to it.

“Shh,” Bucky doesn’t-answer. “Sleep time.”

Sam’s not sure if he wants to hit Bucky in his evasive mouth or press a sympathetic kiss to the top of his head. 

Hmm. This is a lot of sweet thoughts to have about someone he’s definitely one hundred percent not sweet on. And sure he’s holding the guy like he does his nephews when they’re sick and need rocking to sleep, but. Just sharing body heat, that’s all. 

“I can hear you thinking,” Bucky grumbles against his chest. He’s not shivering quite so hard anymore, though his breath still catches far too often. 

“Yeah, thinking of how to save your sorry ass,” he says, stupid soft. 

“I have a great ass,” Bucky mumbles, already half unconscious.

Sam smiles again--can’t argue with him there. And maybe it’s just the exhaustion, or the dehydration, but he drops his head, lets his cheek rest on Bucky’s sweat-damp hair. 

Just sharing body heat. That’s all.

Notes:

Oh my lovelies your comments have S U S T A I N E D U S. We'll do our best to respond to everyone eventually to let you know how much we love each and every one of you (especially you multi-chapter commenter gods and goddesses and nonbinary deities!), but we figured it best to prioritize actually finishing this unexpected monster first :D

Chapter 5

Summary:

In which the HYDRA Trash Party truly begins.

Notes:

Please note the new tags and warnings. This chapter's a doozy.

Sexual assault, injury, psychological torture, all the fun stuff for the next bit angels 💛

Also our Russian came from Google Translate so pls be kind ;-) Translations in the end notes.

Bucky lurches awake with a shout, his head banging into the underside of Sam’s chin so hard Sam bites his tongue. Which lurches him awake, too. Not that he’d been sleeping sleeping, but the mental drifting had been… well, if not restorative, at least not unpleasant. His head is throbbing like he’s had the kind of night that ends in a three day hangover, but Bucky’s probably faring at least as bad.

“Easy, easy, s’okay,” Sam says, and it takes him a moment to realize that one of his hands is stroking Bucky’s right shoulder blade, and the other one has crept up to cup the side of Bucky’s head.

It takes him another moment to realize that Bucky’s letting him. Just. Curled up small and sideways between his legs, pressing hot and heavy into his chest.

“Fuck,” Bucky mumbles once his panicked breaths begin to settle. 

Sam agrees. His throat hurts and his stomach is one massive cramp, and he barely has the energy to keep holding his arms up. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since Bucky conked out, but the IV bags are heading toward empty, so he figures at least a few hours. Hopefully long enough for some real healing.

“How you feeling?” he lets himself ask, even though he knows damn well Bucky won’t really tell him.

Bucky’s non-answer is a weary hum.

Sam sighs. “Nightmares or pain?”

Bucky hums again, this time in the affirmative, which is honestly more than Sam was expecting but still kinda pisses him off. If they’re given an opening, he needs to know if Bucky can take it. 

“Buck…” Warning tone. His hand stills on Bucky’s shoulder.

Bucky’s massive chest heaves with a sigh, but otherwise he doesn’t move. “My head’s pounding, and those burns hurt so bad the only reason I’m not screaming is because I’m too damn tired.” He sucks in a shaky breath, blows it out slowly. Sam lets his hand start stroking again. “But the nausea and the chills are gone, and so is the vertigo.” 

Bucky sits up a tiny bit straighter and tips his head back, so his lips brush the shell of Sam’s ear. Sam’s sure it looks to the cameras exactly how it feels: like an intimate nuzzle that sends a guilty little thrill down his spine. “Arm’s better, too,” Bucky barely whispers. “Nanotech; self-repairs.” 

Translation: It’ll suck, but I can fight.

As if to prove it, he slowly extricates himself from Sam’s arms.

“Whoa whoa, where you going?”

“Gotta piss,” Bucky says tightly, wincing as he levers to his feet.

It was super considerate of their captors to give Bucky enough IV tubing to reach the toilet, where he stands and urinates for so damn long that Sam passes from jealousy to irrational anger to wondering if maybe he can drink some of it. But by then Bucky’s finishing up and shaking off, and Sam somehow realizes all over again--Oh yeah. He’s naked.

Which he’s completely unselfconscious about as he turns around and walks back to Sam. He re-settles into Sam’s lap with an equal lack of self consciousness that, frankly, Sam’s not sure how to interpret. Bucky’s been pretty damn touch-starved since Sam’s known him, and their recent friendship has been full of back-pats and shoulder clasps, but… this is next level. Didn’t Bucky say he wasn’t cold anymore? Maybe Sam’s just more comfortable than the concrete floor. 

Or maybe Bucky’s more willing to be vulnerable with Sam than he ever could’ve guessed.

Bucky falls back to sleep like a true soldier, out in seconds after his eyes close despite the bright lights and the misery. Sam knows he should too, and he can, he’s done it plenty, but something’s stopping him now. He can’t decide if he’s grateful or resentful that he doesn’t have a clock to watch, can only measure the seconds dragging past by the mostly-steady rise and fall of Bucky’s chest and the gentle puffs of warm air against his sternum. 

Eventually, he drifts. Unconsciousness almost lets him forget how much his everything hurts.

Which makes the bang of the stupid secret door just that much worse when it comes. 

Bucky’s already halfway upright by the time Sam even opens his eyes, but the chance of escape immediately takes a left turn toward Oh Shit when Boss Lady levels a taser at center mass. She’s snarling something Sam can’t even hear over the sound of someone screaming, and the someone is him because she’s fired it at Bucky and Bucky’s careened backward into him and everywhere they touch is fucking ouch.

Sam’s only ever been tased before in training, and clearly he’d blocked the whole experience from his mind because this is nothing like he remembers. Once they get out of here, he plans on never getting tased again because jesus, oh my god, oh my fucking god. And even through the electric hum of make it stop he’s hoping that supersoldier serum is tase-proof because his muscles have locked tight and the door is open and neither of them is tied up and freedom is only 50,000 volts away.

Bucky peels himself far enough off Sam for the electricity to stop arcing between them, and Sam gets like three milliseconds of excitement that this is actually going to work before the three goons behind Boss Lady hold up their tasers and, ah, fuck, there goes that crumb of hope. Maybe they’re extra electricky, or maybe Bucky’s already too weak from the, well, everything. Because he goes down shaking, already-burnt skin singeing at the taser’s contact points. Sam can smell it.

“Turn it off!” Boss Lady screams at them, spitting fury. And every muscle in Sam’s body is clenched so tight he can’t even open his jaw to say You first, shitface!

Bucky starts crawling toward her and she snarls again, shifts her taser to her left hand and draws a weapon with the right. 

Which is how Sam ends up at the end of yet another gun. Not the good end, either.

Man, he probably needs to think about a career change. Train drivers probably don’t get this many guns pointed at them. He’d be a good train driver.

“Turn. It. Fucking. Off,” Getting-More-Psycho-By-The-Second Boss Lady yells. She’s practically purple with fury. This is more emotion than Sam honestly thought her capable of. She looks crazy enough to actually pull the trigger.

Bucky lurches back, putting himself in front of Sam while very considerately not touching him. Sam will thank him as soon as his nervous system regains control of his jaw.

“I will shoot you,” Boss Lady says to Bucky.

Bucky gets a foot under himself, presses both hands to the floor, like a sprinter ready to explode from the block. “Do it,” he grits, and Sam can’t see his face but he’d bet his family’s boat it’s saying I fucking dare you.

Welp. Bluff called. Boss Lady shouts wordlessly and lowers her weapon, but before Bucky can pounce, or whatever the fuck he was hoping to be able to do, two of the goons fire second tasers, and Bucky goes down screaming between his teeth. Which gives Boss Lady the perfect opening to point her gun at Sam’s head. 

“Get in the chair, Mr. Wilson,” she growls. 

“But I was just getting comfy,” Sam manages. 

Boss Lady’s clearly lost her sense of humor, because instead of another order or quip, she pulls the trigger.

Over the boom of the gun echoing through the room, he hears Bucky shout, “Nnnnn!” hears himself shout at the impact. He falls on his ass, left arm burning, so it takes him a moment to realize it’s just a flesh wound, some torn shirtsleeve and torn skin but not much else. 

Boss Lady’s either a terrific shot and that was a warning, or she’s a bad shot and he just got luckier than he’s ever been in his life. 

Boss Lady levels him with a vicious glare and says, “Try again, Mr. Wilson.” 

Bucky’s still writhing and screaming at his feet. They haven’t let up on the electricity for a second. 

Sam sits.

The goon not tasing Bucky ties him up, way rougher and tighter than Bucky did. When he’s done, Boss Lady hands her still-running taser to one of her goons, then moves to stand beside Sam and presses the gun to his temple.

“Let the asset escort himself to his table.”

The tasers go off. The room goes profoundly quiet after all that noise. Bucky moans. Twitches. Flops into a curl on his right side.

“Ahem,” Boss Lady says, clearly not intending to give Bucky even five seconds to recover. 

Bucky’s eyes track to the sound, and Sam can see the exact moment when Bucky realizes his idiot friend has found himself tied to a chair and under a gun again.

Without a word, Bucky drags himself to his feet and lays shakily on the table. He doesn’t fight as a goon cuffs him down.

No. Fucking no. Sam can’t… Bucky can’t. They can’t go through this again.

Sam sucks in a breath, holds it. Gives himself the luxury of closing his eyes, counting to five. He’s letting her get to him. Can’t give her that power, not when she holds every other card.

The muzzle of the gun stops trying to burrow through his skull. He opens his eyes to see Boss Lady stalking over to Bucky, holstering her weapon as she goes. She grabs him, rough, by the chin, jerks his head around until he’s staring right at her. She wants him to see how deadly fucking serious she is.

“I know you’ve sent a signal,” she snarls, “and if you don’t tell me who you called and how you did it, a couple of extra holes will be the least of your friend’s worries.”

Bucky cuts a glance at Sam--just his eyes; he doesn’t try to fight for control of his head--who honestly has no idea what’s showing on his face. I’ve been fucking shot would probably be pretty high up the list, to be fair. He hopes like hell Bucky actually did get a message out, but he can’t imagine how. 

“Fine,” she says, top lip curling back like she’s some kind of fucking animal. Not the fluffy-puppy kind, either. The kind that eats fluffy puppies for breakfast. 

She bangs on the hidden door, and there’s a long, silent moment of tension as they wait to see what’s coming next. 

A goon with a cart. Of fucking course.

And on that cart, Boss Lady reaches right for… a scalpel (of fucking course), and Sam half expects her to jam it into Bucky’s hand like last time but she turns and stalks over to him instead and, god damn, this isn’t going to be fun. 

“No thanks,” he says weakly, and cringes away as she grabs his left ear and yanks his head to the side. His heart’s pounding so hard his jugular’s probably standing straight out like a target, but she bypasses his neck and puts the blade against the place he’s already bleeding from the gunshot wound, right beneath the sleeve of his grimy t-shirt. He shakes his head, instinctive, and she grips tighter, nails digging into the sensitive skin behind his ear. He’s left panting under her, chest heaving as the fight-or-flight response comes up hard against the tied-to-a-chair situation and he can’t do anything but let her.

“Don’t you fucking touch him,” Bucky snarls, low and dangerous and instinctively terrifying, like a tiger’s growl, even cuffed to a table as he is. “You need to hurt someone, you hurt me.”

“Don’t worry,” she says to him, “I plan to. Now. Who did you contact? How did you do it?” she asks, coldly, and Bucky grits his teeth but doesn’t respond. “Fine,” she says, and her wrist flicks, almost casual.

Sam sucks air through his teeth, body hot-then-cold like it knows she’s about to kill him proper this time, like it knows she’s about to-- 

But it’s not. It’s. it’s not like what happened to Bucky. It’s a shallow cut, just a sting. Just a sting, and he can take it. He’s okay, he’s okay, he’s--

She cuts again, another delicate inch added to the first, extending the gunshot wound out toward his chest in a neat little line.

His lungs are heaving for breath anyway, his exhausted body kicking into high gear as she cuts away at him past his line of sight. Any moment now she could go just a little too deep, or a little too far, or nick something a little too important, or--

But she puts the scalpel down, and his arm’s hot with the pain but it’s manageable, this is completely manageable, she’s not going to take the arm off. It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s--

“Who did you contact, and how did you do it?” she asks again, and Bucky catches Sam’s eye but doesn’t say anything and Sam thinks, okay, this is okay, before Boss Lady replaces the fingers gripping his ear for an elbow jammed against his cheek, shoving his head too far to the side so he can’t see Bucky anymore, only his own tensed knuckles gripping the armrest on his right side, his neck creaking dangerously as she pokes viciously at the little cut, scratching at it with her awful fucking nails, scratching again, readjusting her grip and it fucking stings, ow, and he watches his hand flex around the arm of the chair as she readjusts again, again, and--jesus, is she just trying to get an infection in there? Sam’s heard fingernails are dirtier than toilet seats and she’s really getting in there, like she’s trying to--

The pain, when it finally, really comes, is so white-hot all-over consuming that there’s nothing even left of him to wonder what she’s done. Like the souped-up taser. Like ten tasers at once. Like ten tasers and molten lava and barbed wire rolled into a man-eating shark. Like she’s split him open at the seam to pour literal fire straight inside him, burn him from the inside out, and he can’t even hear himself screaming over it, though he knows he is because he runs out of oxygen and keeps screaming anyway, lungs choked up on it, can’t get air in past the weight of his whole body trying to get out, claw straight free from his skin.

She has to pause, and her elbow slips where it’s jammed against his cheek, and he thinks Don’t look even as he’s already looking, knows there must just be a stump of his arm left, smoking skin left in its place. 

The world lurches as what he sees fails to line up with what he can feel. His whole arm--what’s left of his arm--is on fire. He can’t feel anything below the wound past the intensity of it.

And yet.

And yet, there’s his arm. There’s blood pooling on the inside of his elbow, but it’s not even… It’s not even that much blood. She’s peeled the skin back, away from the bullet wound, so a wet flap of his flesh is hanging below it. It’s not even that deep. She’s gotten maybe an inch down his arm, the skin at the sides tearing. Blood oozes out of the wound but it’s not… It’s not really anything. He’s had worse. He’s genuinely had way worse.

He’s a… Jesus, he’s a fucking wuss. They’ve been taking Bucky to pieces for two days and the guy has barely made a face, and meanwhile here’s Sam wishing he were dead over a one inch patch of missing skin.

But even knowing that it’s nothing doesn’t stop him from crying out, voice hoarse and too wet as she digs her fingers back in the cut and he can’t, he fucking can’t, he fucking--

“Don’t,” he says, but she elbows him to the side again, puts one foot on the seat of the chair next to his thigh for fucking--for leverage and he squeezes his eyes shut and reminds himself it’s nothing, it’s really nothing, it’s all in his head, but the pain comes back as bad as before, worse, and he screams through it again, not sure he’s going to make it out the other side.

The second inch is worse than the first, the third even worse than that, like the universe is manifesting new planes of agony just for him. His voice fucks off into nothing, screamed right past the point of sound, and it’s just as he feels whatever’s left of his throat tearing that she finally lets go.

“Stop it,” Bucky begs, and for some reason his voice is nearly as shaky and wet as Sam’s. He might’ve been begging for a while. Might’ve--Sam can’t remember. Sam can’t--he’s not. Working. Bucky doesn’t sound like he’s in the same room when he says, “We didn’t send a signal, I swear. I swear, okay?”

“You stop it,” Boss Lady tells him. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying!” Bucky shouts, somehow loud enough Sam can hear him over the sound of his brain trying to escape the mortal plane. “There’s no signal! Nobody sent anything, listen to me, we don’t know what you’re talking about!”

A fine distinction Sam somehow doubts she’ll care about. He wonders, vaguely, if she’ll let him bleed to death if he bites through his own tongue. That would be nice. Peaceful.

“There’s no signal,” Bucky says again, and when did he get on a boat? Or maybe it’s Sam who’s on the boat. The world is rocking. Maybe he’s drowning after all. 

He blinks down at his hand. The other one. The. Whole one. Water on the back of his wrist that maybe he put there himself. Face feels a little wet too. Didn’t know he had it in him. Literally. Ha. 

He laughs stupid. Comes out sounding. Wet as well. Sandpaper wet. Animal wet. Comes out sounding like lung. A bit of his insides clawing up to his outsides. 

“Please.” Cracked. Begging. For a second Sam thinks it’s him, isn’t even ashamed of it. But no. It’s Bucky. “Please. I don’t know.”

Sam’s head lolls against the back of the chair. Boss Lady is glaring at Bucky. The tips of her fingers are stained red, like a child caught picking strawberries from the neighbor’s garden. Sam wants to laugh. He does, kind of. A manic giggle that’s more chainsaw than air. Makes Bucky look at him wide-eyed. Sam laughs again, hiccups. Why are Bucky’s eyes so stupid pretty. So fucking soft. Did he ever tell Bucky that? 

“Well,” Boss-Lady-Child-Stealing-Strawberries says. There’s a little splatter of blood on one cheek. Right across her cheekbone. Like art. Like she’s put it there on purpose. She leans over Bucky. “Clearly you don’t care about him as much as I thought you did.”

“There’s. No. Signal,” Bucky insists again.

Except. What if there is? What if Bucky did manage to get something out somehow, notify someone, call for help. What if he did that and didn’t tell Sam and now he won’t tell Boss Lady either because he really doesn’t care enough--

No. No. That’s. That’s bullshit. He and Buck are besties. And if help really is coming, he wouldn’t want Bucky to tip their hand anyway. No matter what it costs him. Bucky would know that. He’d know that. 

Sam sways in his seat. Blinks fast. Tries to wrestle his brain back out from under the tidal wave of pain it’s been stuck in. He’s fine. He’s fine. Arm’s still attached and everything. He’s dizzy like he really is being tossed on a storm-sieged boat, but he’s pretty sure it’s some mix of dehydration and adrenaline. He’s fine. 

“Well,” Boss Lady says, lips pulled back from her teeth. “If you don’t care about him, maybe you’ll care about this.” She breathes deep, like she’s centering herself. Looks Bucky dead in the eye. “Rumor has it this is how your HYDRA handlers punished you when you were a very, very bad boy.

The fire in Sam’s arm has cooled just enough for him to take in Bucky’s response to that--the sudden fully-body tension, the wary glare, the hint of fear in his eyes. Sam… doesn’t want to know. He just. He doesn’t. HYDRA tortured Bucky with that mind-wipe device even when he wasn’t fighting them. What could possibly be worse?

“Padeniye,” Boss Lady intones, but no, fuck no, whatever she’s trying it ain’t gonna work, Wakanda freed Bucky, the Winter Soldier is gone, right? Right?

So then why does Bucky look so fucking scared?

Boss Lady reads the fear right off his face. Triumphantly, she says, “Zabyvat.”

“No,” Bucky whispers, so soft Sam barely hears him. He rolls his head against the table, strains against the cuffs. “No. Don’t.”

Shit damn fucking hell that cannot be good.

“Pustoy.”

Bucky thrashes in place, opens his eyes to see Sam staring back and immediately throws his head the other way. “Not--” he chokes. “Not with him here, I can’t, I ca-- Please. Don’t--”

“Tikhiy,” she says, unrelenting, unfeeling, completely unmoved by Bucky’s panic.

Bucky lurches, moans, shakes his head. “No! No!” He lurches again, muscles popping in places Sam didn’t even know people had muscles. The table shudders, but the restraints hold. Bucky shouts, panicked and breathless and Sam had never even conceived of the possibility that Bucky could feel this kind of fear. “Stop this! Stop this, I don’t know about a signal, please, don’t do this don’t--!”

“Igra,” Boss Lady says around a vicious grin, and just like that, Bucky falls still.

“Don’t,” he begs as Boss Lady reaches down to stroke his cheek. “Don’t.”

“Soldat, otkryto.”

Bucky’s mouth falls open on a whimper, and Boss Lady just. Fucking. Shoves three fingers right up in there, until her knuckles get stuck against his teeth.

“Bite em off, Buck,” Sam growls, but Bucky just gags and whimpers. Doesn’t even shake his head, try to dislodge her. Just… heaves and chokes and takes it.

“Sosat’.”

Sam goggles as Bucky’s lips seal around those gagging fingers. What. The. Fuck.

This. No. This cannot be happening.

“Dostatochno,” she says, and Bucky’s mouth goes slack again, just like the rest of him. Like he can’t move, no matter how much he wants to. 

Boss Lady pulls her hand free, wipes spit against Bucky’s heaving chest. “How did you send that signal, and to whom?”

“I didn’t,” Bucky whispers, brow furrowed and lower lip trembling like he’s gonna… like… “Please…” 

This cannot be happening. James Buchanan Barnes doesn’t beg, and he certainly doesn’t cry. Sam didn’t even think he knew how to.

He’s always wished Bucky would let his hair down, show a little more human emotion. Just. God. Not like this.

Boss lady fists his hair, makes him look at her. “Do you understand what’s about to happen to you?” she asks, brusque but sincere, like she wants his fucking informed consent or something before they start in with whatever fucked up bullshit they have planned.

“Yes,” Bucky whispers, so breathless and shaky it’s barely a word. His gaze flicks from Boss Lady, to each of the three Taser Goons in turn, and then back to her. He very deliberately avoids looking at Sam at all. He swallows hard, blinks against the moisture in his eyes. Says, downright desperate, “We didn’t send a signal. Please. At least--” he chokes a bit, almost-but-not-quite glancing Sam’s way “--At least another room, I, I can’t-- There was no signal. This… This won’t change that.”

“Maybe not,” Boss Lady says, and in one quick athletic move she hikes up her pencil skirt, hops onto the table, and straddles Bucky’s head. “But it sure will make me feel better. Soldat, obsluzhivay menya.”

And then she sits down right on his face, and Bucky-- Sam can-- He can hear-- 

Oh god. Oh christ. Sam’s never been so glad in his life to not be able to see up a woman’s skirt. What the fucking fuck?

Bucky’s face is out of sight, but Sam doesn’t need to see to know what’s going on. He’s never wanted the use of his hands so badly in his life, he can’t block his ears, can’t stop himself from hearing, god, from hearing--

Slurping.

“My engineers are making this place invisible as we speak,” she says to Bucky, cool as you please, like she isn’t fucking riding his fucking face against his fucking will. And Sam can’t even-- He can’t stop it, no way for him to even fucking, to even turn away, he doesn’t even get to give Bucky that. She leans back with one hand braced on Bucky’s sternum, all that fury from before leeched out of her now that she’s back in charge and back--quite literally--on top. “Whoever you sent that signal to, they won’t be able to find you. So there’s no-- Yes, just like that, soldat, yes.” She moans softly, grinds down extra hard and Bucky makes a sound too, somehow the exact same yet complete opposite of hers. A low, miserable groan of protest and oh god can the poor guy even breathe down there? How is he lying so still while she… while she does… that. While she rapes him? “There’s no point in not telling me. You’re doing this to yourself. For nothing.”

Bucky can’t answer her right now, and it doesn’t seem like she wants one anyway. She’s busy, after all. So what, she’s just… Taunting him?

The goons are leaning against the far wall, watching interestedly. One of them is taking notes, like watching his boss ride prisoners is one of the options in their Villain Torture Bingo.

“Soldat, sil’neye…” She’s panting now, riding him like a goddamn pro, but it’s all so coldly mechanical. Sam can’t see her face, thank christ, but he bets she isn’t even smiling. “Didn’t occur to me,” she says between awful, filthy little noises, “that the serum would make your tongue so much stronger too. But--” She has to stop, catch her breath. “I suppose a muscle’s a muscle. God, what an asset. Bystreye, soldat,” she orders, and then arches back, plants her palms on the ridges of Bucky’s six-pack and uses the leverage to shove against him at a new angle. Bucky’s still… slurping, whimpering, gasping in air in the rare few moments she lets him and it’s...

Torture. This is fucking torture. Sam’s gonna be hearing this in his nightmares until the day he dies.

Boss Lady’s hips start twitching, and her breathing gets more erratic, and she digs her nails so hard into Bucky’s abs Sam’s waiting for the blood to run. “Bystreye,” she says again, this time on a moan, and the slurping noises speed up and Sam’s gonna--he’s fucking dry-heaving right here in his stupid fucking chair and there’s a small aborted shout and more wet squishing sounds and Boss Lady pants, “Dostatochno, dostatochno,” and everything just… 

Stops.

Sam only realizes he’s shaking when the throb in his left arm goes from hey hello ouch to amputate me already and be done with it, you’ll get a badass replacement from Wakanda, you and Bucky can be twinsies. He forces himself to relax out of sheer self-preservation. And a selfish kind of hatred. He’s gonna need his stupid skinless oversensitive arm to stab Boss Lady in the fucking face later. 

Boss Lady sighs contentedly while Bucky thrashes under her, suffocating a little longer.

He’s gonna need his stupid arm for so much stabbing.

Boss Lady takes her sweet time getting off of Bucky, stands and straightens her skirt with the kind of dignity and control he’d expect from a queen, not an evil torturer rapist who’s just had some very public forced sex. Figures even torture-rape in her torture-rape dungeon wouldn’t put her in a good mood. 

Bucky’s gasping in air now he’s been given the chance, and when he’s caught up on the oxygen deprivation, he screws his face up like a little kid who’s just licked their first lemon, and spits. Spits again. He can’t even turn his head, so his saliva just kind of dribbles down his chin, mixing with the... other mess there. His stomach muscles lurch and his breath catches hard in his throat, and then he’s joining the dry-heave club too. Fortunately, his stomach’s empty.

When the cramping and the gagging end, Boss Lady strokes Bucky’s sweat-slick hair from his forehead (it’s just sweat it’s just sweat it’s nothing else but sweat), like she’s comforting a sick kid or some bullshit. Sam half expects her to say There there, but she goes the other way instead, trails a finger down his cheek and to his chest, gives his nipple a hard tweak.

“You sick motherfucker,” Sam snarls. “You don’t get to touch him like that.”

“The facts would seem to contradict you, Mr. Wilson,” and god what he wouldn’t do to rip that smug smile right from her smug face. “But if it makes you feel any better, I do know how to share.”

She turns her attention back to Bucky, and if the horror on his face is anything to go by, he knows what’s about to happen before Sam can puzzle it out. “Soldat, pervaya pozitsiya,” she orders, and then she throws a thumbs-up at the camera above her and Bucky’s restraints spring open and this is it, come on Buck, kill her, kill her now--

But Bucky just rolls over onto his elbows and knees, legs spread, ass in the air, saying as he goes, “I will kill. You. All.”

“You know what?” she muses, like he hadn’t even spoken. “I think Mr. Wilson deserves the best possible view, here, don’t you? Povernut', Soldat.”

“No,” Bucky growls, but he shuffles ninety degrees to the right, anyway. It leaves him facing Sam side-on, and Bucky can’t even turn his head away so he’s not looking right at Sam while they debase him. “And if either of you close your eyes, I’ll cut Mr. Wilson’s right out of his skull, you understand?”

I’m so sorry, Buck. It’s okay. It’s not your fault. Sam thinks it as hard as he can, like maybe he can beam it straight into Bucky’s brain, or at least make it show on his face. Bucky blinks back at him, or at least in his direction; he’s focused somewhere in the middle distance. His cheeks and ears are flushed almost as red as his irradiated skin. His eyes are wet, his lips pressed together and trapped hard between his teeth. The whole lower half of his face is still shiny from--

Oh god. Sam wants to retch again.

“What an asset,” Boss Lady muses again, stroking his cheek, and. Yep. Retch o’clock. There’s nothing to bring up except bile and air, but she looks at him like he’s a particularly unpleasant sort of worm. Like he’s the disgusting one here. 

The three goons don’t look at him at all. They’re focused on the spread of James Buchanan Barnes on his elbows and knees, spitting mad but perfectly still. The one with the notepad has set his clipboard aside and is leaning forward on his toes, eyes on Bucky but body oriented toward Boss Lady like he knows it’s her word he needs before he can--

Oh christ, Sam can’t even think it.

“So!” Boss Lady claps her hands together once, chipper. “Who wants to go first?”

All three of the Taser Goons raise their hands at lightning speed.

Boss Lady chuckles because apparently gang rape is funny now?

“New question. Who has the largest cock? I want this to hurt.” She pauses, shoots a glance back at Bucky. “Unless you want to start answering me.”

“You can’t just,” Sam splutters, and has no clue how to vocalize the sheer Nope of the situation, or why the only argument he can think of is how a question like that is probably, he’s pretty sure, several kinds of employee violations all rolled into one.

Bucky glares at her, but if he was going for I’m going to kill you, it gets a bit lost in the, you know. Naked in a dungeon with his ass in the air and psychopath schmooz on his chin.

Meanwhile, behind her, the Taser Goons are doing some comparing. It only takes a few seconds; apparently, there’s a clear winner.

“That’d be me, Ma’am.” A goon about six inches taller than Bucky and at least as broad steps forward and drops his pants. Just. Straight-up fucking… What bizarro-world kind of workplace is this? Sam wonders on that as hard as he can because it’s way easier than looking at the guy’s package, which is-- Look, Sam’s no slouch in that department, but this guy should swap careers from Nameless Villain to Porn Star because. Wow.

And he’s gonna… He’s… 

Yeah, it’s gonna hurt, all right. There’s still a patch of molten fire burning through Sam’s upper arm, but he’s pretty sure that’s nothing compared to what’s coming for Bucky.

“Show him what’s about to be forced up inside him, Davis. Maybe it’ll change his mind.”

Davis, who Sam immediately renames Dickwad, gives his boss a cheery little salute, then kicks out of his pants and shoes so he can walk around the table, monster cock bobbing up against his shirt hem. 

“Come on,” Bucky tries. He sounds panicked, desperate, and Sam doesn’t blame him after getting an eyeful of Not-So-Little Dickwad. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know, okay? I don’t know!”

“We’ll see,” Boss Lady says, and Dickwad takes his cock in hand and slaps Bucky’s cheek with it. Bucky squinches his eyes and mouth closed, but doesn’t turn away. Can’t turn away.

“How do I tell him to suck me?” he asks, and before the boss can answer, Bucky says, with surprisingly passable bravado, “You stick that thing in my mouth, I’m gonna bite it off, asshole.”

Dickwad laughs. 

“Soldat, otkryto,” Boss Lady says, and like a damn robot, Bucky’s mouth falls open wide--wide enough to accommodate even Dickwad’s cock. 

Which Dickwad promptly feeds straight down Bucky’s throat with a sigh and a moan and a “Yeah, that’s right, take it, bitch.” 

Sam flinches hard, so hard his arm stabs pain right down to his fingertips, which makes him flinch again, in the other direction, and the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes is Boss Lady, watching him, and he remembers he’s the one who’s supposed to be watching. Bucky, specifically. Getting choked to death on the python that apparently passes for Dickwad’s dick.

“Fuck,” he says weakly, trying to do like Bucky did and look out at the middle distance, but failing miserably because that’s-- that’s Bucky. That’s his-- his Bucky, forced to accommodate something a fucking plane hanger would have trouble accomodating. 

Dickwad laughs shakily. “Oh,” he says. “He is good.” He shoves in further.

Bucky chokes around it, that same awful gagging sound he made when Boss Lady had jammed her fingers in his mouth. He swallows hard, again, again, tries to cough and fails, and when Dickwad’s balls tap Bucky’s chin, Sam can’t help but picture that giant cock halfway down Bucky’s esophagus, his body desperately trying to dislodge it and utterly failing. Sam can only see one side of Bucky’s face, but that eye is squeezed tightly closed, and a single tear is running down his cheek. His jaw is slack despite the convulsions in his throat, until Boss Lady issues another order in Russian, and Bucky’s lips seal shut around that massive intrusion and his cheeks hollow and Dickwad moans, fists Bucky’s hair and uses it as leverage to start pumping in and out.

“Don’t blow too fast, Davis,” Boss Lady warns. “I need you on the other end.”

Dickwad gives her a thumbs up, yanks his cock out and slaps Bucky so hard across the face he leaves a handprint. Bucky-- Oh god, Bucky chases after Dickwad’s dick with his mouth, like he’s been given an order he’ll die first before failing to fulfill, until Boss Lady says, “Soldat, dostatochno,” and he instantly stops. Gasps. Coughs. Spits again.

Dickwad slaps him on the other cheek and says, “Spitting’s uncouth.” 

Bucky glares at him, but again, the effect kind of falters what with the way he’s got his legs spread and his ass in the air.

“Uncouth,” Sam says for him, voice coming out about an octave too high. “He’s uncouth?”

Dickwad ignores Sam, walks back around the table, hops up and kneels between Bucky’s spread legs. He grabs Bucky’s ass cheeks with both hands, pulls them apart. Spits in the center.

Bucky’s face flinches, but the rest of him is eerily still. Somehow he’s worked up the brass balls to snap, “Yeah, Davis, spitting’s uncouth,” and Sam wants to laugh, Sam could kiss him, because if he’s throwing quips they haven’t broken him yet. 

Hang on, Buck, he thinks, and only realizes he’s said it out loud when Bucky shoots him a look and says, “Can’t exactly do anything else right now, can I.”

And then his quipping is put to an abrupt and violent end as Dickwad lines up between those spread cheeks and rams inside.

Notes:

Padeniye: Falling
Zabyvat: Forget
Pustoy: Empty
Tikhiy: Quiet
Igra: Game
Soldat: Soldier
Otkryto: Open
Sosat’: Suck
Dostatochno: Enough
Obsluzhivay menya: Service me
Sil’neye: Harder
Bystreye: Faster
Pervaya pozitsiya: First position
Oovernut': Turn
Ostat'sya: Stay

Chapter 6

Summary:

In which we make this chapter super EXTRA graphic in honor of the Morality Police jackass in the last chapter's comments.

Notes:

OOPS DID WE SAY 7 CHAPTERS WE MEANT 8 (MAYBE). The tag list grew too :-p No betas we post like men--pls let us know if we missed any tags or typos.

Sam’s heard Bucky scream way, way too much these last few days, but this one… This one’s different. Bucky screams up high, grits his teeth so it comes out keening and so, so wrong. The force of Dickwad’s first thrust throws him too far forward, unbalanced, and his eyes go wide as his body automatically returns to its position, inadvertently pressing back against the monstrosity Dickwad is shoving in.

“Oh yeah?” Dickwad pants. “You like it, huh?” Dickwad doesn’t even look like he’s enjoying it. His brows are furrowed, knuckles white around Bucky’s hips as he tries to get leverage to cram himself inside. Eventually, he figures out that he doesn’t need leverage--he just shoves, and Bucky’s programming forces him to shove back.

Something--gives. In Sam’s head, maybe. In Bucky’s abused body. Something gives and Dickwad lurches further in and Bucky screams on an inhale, chest going tight. He can’t even drop his head or turn away; he just presses back into it and screams and screams some more. 

It’s not even the pain, Sam thinks, although he doesn’t doubt there’s plenty of it. It’s… God. He can’t even begin to wrap his brain around the terror of losing control in such an intimate, visceral way--and clearly, this isn’t the first time it’s happened. Being not just brutally violated, but forced to actively participate. The… god. The existential fucking horror of it.

There’s a pause as Dickwad catches his breath, and Bucky blinks hard. Maybe Dickwad’s bottomed out at last. At least… at least it can’t get worse, right? 

“Halfway there, Davis,” Boss Lady notes--no, encourages--from her vantage point.

Sam loses his grip on his last tiny thread of control. “Halfway?” he yells. “Halfway? You’re gonna kill him!” He meant to stay quiet, try to let Bucky forget he was there. But he just. He’s not as strong as Bucky. He can’t.

“Soldat,” Boss Lady says, sly. “Otkryto.”

Bucky’s jaw drops open just as Dickwad starts shoving again, and this time he can’t even cut off the sounds he makes. He screams hard, unmuffled, and Sam hears every animal inhale that follows, the little broken whimpers that sound like they’re clawing out of Bucky’s soul, taking vital pieces of him right along with them. This… this is how HYDRA made the Winter Soldier--Sam’s suddenly, horribly certain of it. Take enough pieces, and eventually, there’s nothing left to fight with, nothing left but what HYDRA puts in there themselves.

He has to stop this. Bucky’s body heals quick but his mind, he’s… There’s too much trauma, too much loss and he-- No one could survive this.

“I sent the signal,” Sam blurts. 

Every eye in the room cuts toward him, even Bucky’s, shining with tears and wide with… Not betrayal, but… something dark, maybe a warning for him to shut his stupid face, or an accusatory demand to know why he waited until now to speak up, or… He doesn’t know. It doesn’t matter. They’ll work their shit out later, after they’re free.

“Stop this,” he demands. “You send everyone outta here, and I’ll tell you how I did it.” Hopefully, the time it takes for Dickwad to put himself back together will buy Sam enough time to craft a believable lie. 

Except Dickwad doesn’t stop pressing into Bucky--no, making Bucky press back onto him. Nobody else moves either. Boss Lady just grins and says, “That’s not how this works, Mr. Wilson.”

Dickwad gives Bucky a particularly hard shove, and Bucky’s yell as his body counters is-- Awful, too wet, too weak, like he’s already checking out, fucking off to a place Sam’s terrified he won’t be able to come back from.

“All right,” Sam concedes. “You tell me how it works, then.”

“Tell me how you sent the signal, and to whom, and when I confirm your story, I’ll have my men stand down.”

Shit. “Uh uh. No. No deal. I don’t talk while you’re raping my friend.” Bite, motherfucker, come on come on…

Boss Lady shrugs, casual as you please. “Then no deal.” She turns to Dickwad, making it very clear she’s done entertaining Sam’s bluff. “You need a hand, there, Davis? You’re taking your sweet time.”

“I got this,” he grunts. And then proves it by planting a hand on the back of Bucky’s neck, shoving his face and shoulders flat onto the table and using the new angle to throw the bulk of his massive body weight into his next thrust.

Bucky’s scream this time is raw, animal pain, and Sam’s got a front-row, head-on view of his smooshed-sideways face as his lips peel back from his teeth and reflexive tears spill from his eyes. He still can’t close his mouth, still can’t move away, but his fingers dig into the table so hard the left ones leave dents. Another full-body shove, and above Bucky’s shout, Sam is treated to the nightmare-inducing sound of Dickwad’s balls slapping against his best friend’s ass. 

Sam doesn’t mean to look. He doesn’t. But Bucky’s gaze has gone middle-distance again and his face is-- His expression is horrible, and Sam can’t keep looking at that so his eyes shift and he just…

Dickwad is pulling out, torturously slow, and the whole massive length of his shaft is smeared with Bucky’s blood.

Dickwad shoves all the way back in with a single, powerful stroke, throws his head back and sighs, “Yeah, that’s more like it. Bitch got wet for me.”

Sam wants to puke again.

He half expects--more like hopes, really--that Bucky’ll shoot back with some clever, angry quip. But Bucky just squeezes his eyes shut, and a fresh tear streaks down his cheek.

“Seems a shame to waste that open mouth,” Boss Lady says. “Such plush, pouty lips for a tough guy.” She walks around the table to lean down into Bucky’s field of vision. “Unless you plan to use them for answering me?”

His eyes flick to hers, just for a second. No glare, no defiant stare, no artifice at all--she’s finally found the way to strip it all from him, baring every single one of the soft spots and fears and miseries he’s fought so hard to wrestle under.

She reaches out, thumbs a tear from his cheek. He can’t even turn away. “Oh, you are pretty like this, aren’t you. All that strength, all that power, all those skills and smarts, and this is what you’re good for.” 

Bullshit. “Don’t let her get in your head, Buck,” Sam tries, but it’s too late, he knows it’s too late. 

Boss Lady knows too; she doesn’t even deign to glance at Sam, just leans in closer and slides her thumb past Bucky’s slack lips, rubs it against his tongue as her fingers curl under his chin. He moans, eyes clenching, body rocking as Dickwad slams into him again and again. “I was going to sell you when we were done here, but I think I might just keep you.” He makes an aborted little sound, half protest, half abject misery. “This is a big operation. Lots of people who could use a little stress relief.”

Another low, terrible sound escapes Bucky’s open mouth. His eyes are still clamped shut, like he’s hoping that if he can’t see the horrors, they’ll go away. 

Boss Lady pulls her hand from Bucky’s mouth, curls it in his hair instead, uses her grip to lift his head. “Or you can stop this. All of it. Right now. Tell me what I want to know.”

He stares up at her, face flushed, eyes huge and shining with tears, brows drawn and lip quivering. He’d tell her if he knew; Sam can read that clear as day on his face, and doesn’t blame him one bit. 

She doesn’t care. “All right then. Weber, you’re up.”

Weber wastes zero time unzipping his pants and shoving his cock down Bucky’s throat. He’s not nearly as big as Dickwad, but it hardly matters--Bucky still gags on him, still can’t breathe until Weber deigns to let him. Boss Lady gives the command for Bucky to suck, and he’s as helpless to resist that as everything else.

Goon #3 looks decidedly left out, but Sam has no doubt he’ll get his turn. And then the hidden door opens, and he holds his breath in terror of half the complex streaming in to have their turns too, but it’s just Franklin with his cart full of equipment.

Franklin takes two absent steps into the room, looks up as the door shuts behind him, and says, “Um.”

The goons spearing Bucky on each end pause just long enough to glance his way, then get right back to it like they fuck in front of audiences all the goddamn time.

“Is it 9 already?” Boss Lady asks.

Franklin nods, clears his throat, fusses with the lapel of his lab coat. His eyes drift over Bucky and then away--he personally tortured the guy, but apparently rape is his line? “But I can come back if. I mean. If the asset is--” He swallows. “Busy.”

“He can multitask.” Boss Lady waves expansively in Bucky’s direction. He’s full-body flushed and trembling, drenched in sweat, smeared with blood from his hips to the backs of his knees. He looks checked out, and Sam desperately wishes he were, but knows better. One, you can’t check out when you’re gagging for air. And two, HYDRA trained Bucky far too well to stop paying attention in a crisis if he has even one single ounce of consciousness remaining.

Franklin wheels his cart up to the head of Bucky’s table. Manages to get a blood pressure cuff and a pulse ox on him despite the pounding he’s taking from both sides. But when he tries to hook up the ECG leads, things go pretty sideways. 

Franklin pitches a long-suffering sigh at Bucky’s rapists. As if he has any fucking idea what real suffering even is. “Yeah, so, uh. Could you two maybe chill for, like, five minutes?”

They look back at him like he’s nuts, but then Boss Lady says, “Dostatochno, soldat,” and Bucky immediately stops rocking and sucking. “Take a breather, gentlemen,” she adds. “You’ll last longer.”

Sam’s gotta hand it to her--she has her men’s obedience. They pull out of Bucky without pause, and he collapses to the table, gasping and coughing and sucking in air. Once he’s down he stays down; dostatochno seems to mean stop or something like it, but it doesn’t appear to free him to move of his own accord. Or maybe he’s just too exhausted.

“How do you want him?” Boss lady asks.

“On his back.”

“Soldat, chetvertaya pozitsiya.”

And just like that, Bucky rolls onto his back, legs spread wide and bent at the knees, hands resting right above his head--just waiting for someone to pin them down, Sam realizes on a fresh wave of horror. 

“Eh, close enough,” Franklin says, and starts sticking leads to Bucky’s skin. 

“Why didn’t we do this before?” The third-wheel goon asks under his breath.

“To be fair,” Boss Lady says without looking at him. “I didn’t think those trigger words would still work.” 

Franklin ignores them all as he connects the ECG leads to the monitor and flicks it on. Watches it for several long moments. Frowns. “I thought the taser tolerance test wasn’t scheduled until Thursday.” 

Boss Lady shrugs. “We had a little… incident late last night.”

“And how many tasers were involved in this incident?”

She has to think back, but not Sam. Six. It was six.

“Five, I think? Six, maybe?”

Franklin sighs. “The regular ones, or the take-down-an-elephant ones?”

“Elephant,” she snaps. “What’s your point, Franklin?”

He turns the monitor toward her, points at a readout Sam desperately wishes he could see from where he’s sitting. “He’s developed an arrhythmia.”

“And?” she asks, impatient.

“And maybe try to lay off the tasers until it resolves so you don’t give him a heart attack.” 

Huh. That’s the first time one of her goons has spoken to her like that. Pissy. Disrespectful. In front of others, no less. Sam files that away, just in case they can use it later.

“Fine. Are you finished?”

He’s not, which. Great. Sam hopes he never leaves. As long as he’s here, they’re not… hurting Bucky. Dickwad is idly stroking his cock in the corner, but it’s better than shoving it in Bucky again. 

Franklin spends a minute recording more data, draws some blood, pokes at the radiation burns, then finishes up with an x-ray of Bucky’s arm. 

“The bone's all healed,” he declares, showing his screen to Boss Lady once more. “It’s pretty amazing, actually--you can’t even tell the bore holes were there. No soft tissue scarring, either.”

Boss Lady seems equally impressed by that, but still asks again, “Are you finished?” When Franklin nods, she invites him to stay for a round or two, like she’s serving up drinks instead of a fiercely unwilling human being, but thank fuck Franklin stutters his way through a no-thanks and then rolls his cart on out of their cell.

Of course, that still leaves four sick motherfuckers in the room. And they waste zero seconds turning their attention back to Bucky.

“Pervaya pozitsiya,” Boss Lady says coolly, and Sam can see the tremble in Bucky’s arm as he turns back onto his elbows and knees. The Franklin reprieve is over, and Sam’s still got zero clue how to get them out of this.

“Wait,” he calls. “Don’t you need a--another blood sample, or, or a--”

Franklin’s already gone.

Dickwad gives Bucky a smile so evil that half a dozen kittens have probably just dropped dead somewhere. “My turn,” he says.

He makes Bucky suck him again first. The blood--Bucky’s blood--smears all over his chin. It makes the tear-streaks stand out stark when Bucky chokes so hard his eyes well up.

At last Dickwad leaves Bucky’s mouth for greener pastures at the other side of the table, and Goon #2 steps back up.

Sam doesn’t know if it’s better or worse this time. For Bucky, he means. Does the blood make it easier, or is that just fresh hurt for Dickwad to inflict on every pass?

It’s… it’s faster, is one thing. Dickwad doesn’t spend as long just trying to get in. He makes awful comments about Bucky’s ass, body, eyes, lips (Sam didn’t think it was possible to objectify him any more than they already were; clearly that was a failure of imagination on his part), calls him an easy whore, threatens to sell him each night on some street corner, and Bucky doesn’t bite back at any of that even when his mouth isn’t stuffed full of villain cock.

Sam watches. He has to. Every time he flinches away, Boss Lady tsks air between her teeth and taps a knife on her belt. Bucky doesn’t look back at him, even when Sam calls his name, low and suffering. Sometimes their eyes meet by chance, as Bucky’s face gets slapped to the side or he’s dragged into a new position, but there’s nothing behind them. Sam doesn’t know what to do in the face of--this.

They violate him for what feels like forever, as painfully and humiliatingly as possible. Goon #3 gets his turn, and then Dickwad comes back for seconds. So does Boss Lady. The goons discover a favorite trick: warterboarding Bucky with their dicks. They shove down his throat and hold there until his lips start turning blue, until he’s clenching whole-body hard and whoever’s at the other end is howling in pleasure, then let him gasp in a single, desperate, agonized breath before starting back in again. And if it’s this bad for Sam just watching… Well. 

Just when it seems like they’ve all finally worn themselves out, the other two goons hop in for a second go. By the time the last of them climbs off of him, Bucky’s a sweaty, sticky, come-smeared, bloody mess, screamed out and so exhausted he’s barely even blinking.

The metal table is full of gouges from Bucky’s left hand. Bucky is full of gouges from the goons’ hands. And Sam. Well. Sam is…

It doesn’t even matter. He thinks about the searing burn in his arm for the first time in hours, the equally searing burns in his throat and head and gut, then immediately ignores it all. Nothing matters but making sure Bucky is… Well. Still there is the best he dares to let himself hope for.

Boss Lady pats Bucky on the cheek a few times, almost but not quite hard enough to be a slap. It takes his eyes a long moment to track to hers. He sniffs, swallows, blinks at her slow and wet.

“Are you ready to talk now, Soldier?”

He heaves a weary sigh, and his eyes drift closed. 

She pats him again, and this time it’s definitely a slap. But he says nothing. Doesn’t even open his eyes.

So she hits him again, backhand, full-force. He doesn’t respond at all; he’s endured so much today Sam doubts he even feels it, really. “Round three, then? Is that what you want?”

He sniffles, wet and shaky. His eyes clench tight; a single tear leaks out and tracks down his temple. 

Sam didn’t think his heart had any pieces left to break, but boy was he wrong. He closes his own eyes, turns his head away. He’s not abandoning Bucky, he just--he just needs a second. One second. That’s all.

“Uh uh,” Boss Lady says. “I’m not done with you yet,” and for a moment Sam thinks--hopes--she’s talking to him. But then he opens his eyes and sees her focused squarely on Bucky and oh god, what now.

Bucky coughs, sucks in a breath that seems to hurt his abraded throat as it grates its way by. “Why don’t you just kill me,” he rasps.

Pain stabs through Sam’s chest, throat going tight and eyes stinging. No. No. Come on, Buck. Hang on. Please.

Boss Lady tsks again, cups his face, strokes his bruised cheek with her thumb like a lover. “Come now, Soldier. You and I both know you’ve never been that lucky. How did you send that signal?”

“Go to hell,” Bucky grits through his teeth, and Sam could cheer, Sam could cry, that’s his boy in there, thank every god that ever lived in every galaxy in the universe.

But then Boss Lady says, “Round three it is then,” and every precious drop of euphoria, of hope, floods right out of Sam’s aching head. 

Notes:

Thank you all for proper care and feeding of your authors! Every time we get a comment, a little fairy makes this fic 100 words longer than we'd intended ;-p

Chapter 7

Summary:

In which things get much, much worse before they even think about getting better.

Notes:

*cries in expanding chapters*

We've added a new relationship tag.

And we promise the comfort's coming. Just... not quite yet. In part because we cut this chapter in half so we could post something this week, because there's a Huge Looming Work Deadline and we will probably not be able to post again until after this upcoming weekend. But hang tight--comfort is on the way...ish ;-p

Before Boss Lady starts in on whatever fresh horrors she’s got in mind, one of the goons says, “It’s almost 1, ma’am.”

Sam hasn’t eaten in so long he doesn’t realize why that matters--beyond the fact that they started in on Bucky well before 9, which means it’s been at least four hours of nonstop torture--until she says, “All right, let’s break for lunch. Give the asset some time to consider how he’d like his afternoon to go, and give all of us some time to recover.” Yeah, those two orgasms the bad guys all had must’ve been so taxing, jesus fucking christ. “Besides.” She taps Bucky’s cheek, gets no reaction. “He’ll be much more fun to play with once he wakes up a little.”

Fun? Like this is some fucking-- some-- Some game to her? It’s one thing to interrogate a man, but you’re not-- You’re not fucking supposed to enjoy it.

Sam realizes he’s straining so hard against his bonds that he’s cut off circulation to his hands and feet. He didn’t think he still had that much strength left in him. His arm’s on fire. Every muscle burns with lactic acid that his body can no longer clear away.

He forces himself to unclench as Boss Lady orders Bucky in Russian onto his back, and the goons reposition his arms and legs so they can mag-cuff him back to the grimy table. He goes so easily where they put him that Sam’s pretty sure he has to, that under the programming of these particular trigger words he’s basically a posable doll.

Sam holds his breath as the hidden door opens, as Boss Lady and her Merry Band of Rapists file out. He blows it out slow as the door shuts behind them, and then tries, low and cautious, “Bucky?”

No answer. He’d hoped, but he hadn’t really expected one.

“It’s okay, Bucky, they’re gone for a little while.” He doesn’t know why he just said that; it’s not like Bucky wouldn’t realize… is it?

Maybe he was hoping Bucky would toss out a No shit, Sherlock or something, but. No. Nothing but the raspy sound of his breathing, too loud and too wet.

Somehow, time passes, way too fast and way too slow all at once. Bucky sleeps, maybe, he thinks. Or at least the noisy breathing eventually steadies. Maybe he’s unconscious. Either way, Sam lets himself believe it’s a reprieve from the pain. Somehow, amazingly, despite all the abuse Bucky’s taken today, the radiation burns don’t look as angry as they did this morning. That’s… something, right?

Sam doesn’t… sleep, exactly. He thinks. Everything feels like fog, but not the kind of fog that begets sleeping. He keeps his eyes open, mostly, but only because it doesn’t actually feel any better when they’re closed.

Now that he isn’t being forced to watch Bucky, he finds he can’t look away. His eyes track every bruise, every burn, every fingernail gouge, every smear of blood and splotch of dried jizz. The way Bucky’s powerful chest rises and falls, mostly steady now. The way his face flickers with pain or nightmares or flashbacks, just for a moment, every now and then. The way the rest of him is so unnaturally still. 

Sam’s not sure when or how it happens, but at some point he falls into an absolutely surreal fantasy, like drifting into a dream without ever having gone to sleep. Bucky’s sitting on his table, head hanging, hands in his lap, feet dangling over the edge. And Sam’s in front of him, warm washcloth and a big bowl of hot water, gently wiping the horrors of the day from his skin. Bucky lets him--not because of some sick-fuck HYDRA programming, but because he trusts him. Knows that when Sam touches gentle fingertips to his wrist, it’s not to pin him down or force his hand somewhere it doesn’t want to be--it’s just to wipe the grime away. Bucky lifts his arm, lays it in Sam’s open hand, watches him with quiet intensity as he dips the washcloth in the water and then runs it over Bucky’s skin--

He blinks blearily back to reality at the sound of the door opening and Boss Lady announcing, “Break time’s over, gentlemen.” Bucky’s awake too--he hasn’t moved or made a sound, but his eyes are open, tracking Boss Lady as she approaches him. “Have you decided how you’d like to proceed, Soldier?”

“Not proceeding,” Sam slurs at her, and blinks several times, hard, while the porridge inside his skull tries to congeal into coherent thoughts. “I mean,” he says, but whatever he means--whatever he means to mean--isn’t really important here, is it?

“Shut up,” Boss Lady says, bored. She doesn’t even look at him. She takes Bucky’s chin between her thumb and finger and shakes it. “Hm?” she asks him, like she’s talking to a dog. “How did you send the signal?”

Bucky closes his eyes, and she makes a disgusted sound and throws his head to the side like he’s said the “No” out loud.

“Fine, but don’t say I didn’t give you the chance.” She threads her fingers through Bucky’s hair, gentle, then fists not-so-gentle. She looks up at the camera. “Go on,” she says, smug already. The mag cuffs pop open and she uses her grip to drag Bucky head-first off the side of the table. He can’t even put up a hand to take the pressure off, makes a miserable sound as he flops to his knees beside her, and Sam’s pretty sure the only reason he’s upright is because of the grip she has on him. He’s half-dragged across the room, knees unable to shuffle fast enough, and for some reason Sam can see the tear-tracks clear down both of Bucky’s cheeks, which he couldn’t do before. Why is that?

Oh, yeah. Because Bucky was over there on the table, and now he’s… here? Like, right here. At his feet. Wide-eyed and wary and weary. Huh.

“Mr. Wilson,” Boss Lady says, and Sam tunes out before she’s halfway through his name. He watches her lips. Her lipstick is wrong on one side. Or maybe he’s the one who’s wrong. He feels a little wrong. Bucky watches him watching her.

“S’ gonna be okay,” Sam tells Bucky’s nose, which is the easiest part of him to focus on, despite the crust of blood on one nostril. Something maybe happens behind Bucky’s eyes, but Sam doesn’t catch it. Pretty eyes.

“Is that clear, Mr. Wilson?”

“Sure,” Sam says. She drops her hold on Bucky’s hair to grab his head instead. Ha ha. No hair here, lady. 

“I said,” she snarls, and presses the heels of her hands into his temples like he’s a particularly stubborn tube of toothpaste she’s trying to pop open. He actually might pop open, too. Maybe then his head will finally stop hurting. “It’s your turn to help out here, Wilson.”

“No thank you,” Sam tells her. His head feels very… heavy. Even though she’s holding it up. It feels like there’s too much head. In his head. She squeezes harder and then there’s even less room. It hurts so bad. He groans and squeezes his eyes shut, and hears the slap she gives him more than he feels it.

“Don’t disappear on me now,” she snaps, and shakes him. He feels like his fucking skeleton shakes with it, and when he opens his eyes again everything’s a bit closer to reality.

“What,” he asks, exhausted already. “What what what do you want.”

“It’s not a matter of what I want,” she says, pulling his eyelids back to peer at him from two inches away. “It’s what you want. And I promise you’re going to want to be awake for this.” She releases his head, apparently satisfied that he’s once again more-or-less alive. Or awake. Whatever. “I have a present for you.”

“Oh. Great.” Like molasses on a hot day, his thoughts start to trickle, one slow drip by drip, from his brain. The situation starts to percolate and Bucky is… right here. Bucky is right here. That is… that can’t be good. “Wait--” he says.

“The asset,” she purrs, “is going to choke himself on your cock until--”

“Fuck no!” Sam yells, consciousness slingshotting itself back into his skull despite this being the worst possible time to be conscious.

“Until,” she continues pointedly, “one of you tells me who you contacted.”

“We didn’t fucking contact--” Sam bellows, eyes feeling like they’re popping right out of his head with the force of it.

“See if you’re so committed to your lie after the asset asphyxiates on your cock.”

Asphyxiates on his--jesus fucking christ who are these people.

“We don’t know anything,” he urges.

“I think you’ll find the asset is quite persuasive,” she counters. “And besides, this isn’t for your…” she glances at his lap, “...benefit. This is to show your friend that you’re not worth protecting. Perhaps he’ll remember that when you’re halfway down his throat.”

Sam chokes on his repulsion and hopes it comes out as a scoff--it’s either that or scream. “I would never hurt him. Besides, you really think I’m gonna get hard at your sick games?” Even if he wanted to, he probably couldn’t--it feels like there’s so little blood left in his body that if any of it went to his dick he’d pass out.

“I think,” she says, sly, “that the asset is very, very talented. Decades of practice, you understand.” She holds out a hand, snaps her fingers, and one of the goons unholsters something from his belt and places it in her open palm. She grabs it, snaps her wrist--a thin metal baton telescopes open. “And that anything is possible with proper motivation.” She taps Bucky on the back with the tip of the baton. “Soldat, obsluzhivay yego.”

“’m sorry, Sam,” Bucky murmurs, barely audible and without even a hint of eye contact, as he leans forward to unzip Sam’s pants. 

It’s okay, Sam means to say, but Bucky’s hot human hand wraps around his soft dick and he forgets how to words for a minute. Besides, it’s not okay. Nothing’s okay. And it’s not either of their faults.

Bucky works Sam’s dick out of his pants.

This can’t be--

Jesus, this can’t be happening.

The waistband of his pants gets in the way and Bucky carefully peels it back a little further. He swaps grips so Sam’s dick is in the metal hand and Sam maybe--loses it. For a moment. The metal is cool, and he tries to let that be the thing that he feels. It’s just… metal. It isn’t Bucky.

Except it is, it is. That’s his friend. This can’t be--surely this can’t be something they can make him do.

Bucky’s metal fingers curl down lower, wrap around him at the base of his cock and he maybe whimpers. Maybe wishes to die. Bucky’s face flinches up, like he’s going to look at him, but Boss Lady jabs the heel of her hand into the back of his head and instead of looking up he stoops down lower. 

There’s warm… air. On Sam’s cock. That’s. That’s Bucky’s breath. Bucky’s so close Sam can feel his--

“Don’t,” he says, and regrets it immediately. Bucky’s going to remember all of this, the least he can do is not make it… worse. 

“Sam,” Bucky says, quiet, and this time it’s Sam’s turn to flinch. He feels his name on the skin of his--

Bucky leans down further. He can’t--stop. Sam knows that. He does, he does know that. This isn’t Bucky. His breath stutters in his chest and he jerks in the chair. He tips his head back, pleads with his entire being.

“This won’t work,” he says again. “We don’t--”

Which is the exact moment Bucky’s lips make contact with the head of his cock.

Boss Lady watches, gleeful, and Sam drops his head again just so he doesn’t have to see her enjoying his reaction. 

“Bucky,” Sam says, miserable, and watches the top of Bucky’s head shift relentless towards his belly. Sam can feel his--tongue. God. His tongue is. Things. It’s soft against the underside of his dick. His mouth is so warm. His human hand comes up to take the place of the metal fingers and everything is warm and Sam hurts, everything hurts, and Bucky’s metal hand massages his balls and his mouth goes gentle-tight as he sucks at the head of Sam’s cock. It’s--

Awful, is what it is. It’s awful.

But at least if it’s awful, it’s not good.

And it isn’t. Good, that is.

It’s good. But this is… Bucky. And it’s awful.

He tips his head back up and glares at Boss Lady again. “Beat me all you want,” he rasps. “I won’t give in.”

“Oh this?” She holds up the baton. “This isn’t for you.” And then she drives it full force against Bucky’s bare back, and he jerks hard but his mouth and hands never tighten, never leave Sam’s soft cock. “Which body do you think will give first?” she asks, and strikes Bucky again. Another jerk, and this time a swallowed shout, muffled by Bucky’s-- by his-- By his full mouth. The low vibration slithers straight through Sam, and it… it feels… God, how could he? How could his body enjoy that? Not just Bucky’s rape but Bucky’s pain.

“Stop,” he begs. He’s not above it, not at all. He’s been hit by those batons before. He knows how painful they are, even through several layers of tactical gear. “Haven’t you hurt him enough?”

She stares Sam dead in the eye as she strikes Bucky again, clean across the shoulder blades. Another lurch, another shout. Bucky’s eyes squeeze closed tight, but his hands stay gentle on Sam’s dick and balls, and his mouth stays soft, firm, skilled in ways it makes Sam sick to think about Bucky learning.

One of the fingers cradling his balls slides back to his perineum, presses warm and firm as Bucky's tongue curls with shocking strength around the underside of his cockhead. Sam flinches, but not as hard as Bucky when the next strike goes low across his ribs.

He can’t-- He can’t. 

Another strike. Another. Bucky’s working hard, but Sam stays soft in his mouth. Another, and this time Bucky screams, vibrations zinging up Sam’s sensitive skin and he could almost, almost… 

No. No.

“The faster you get hard, the faster his pain ends.” She hits Bucky again. There’s blood on the baton. Bucky groans, shocky and awful. She's gone too low--his kidney, maybe. Something vital. Something that could kill a lesser human but Bucky's tongue doesn't stop for a second. He suckles gently at the head of Sam's cock as she hits him again. Another moan--the sound is all pain but if Sam tries hard enough, maybe he can imagine it's... something else. Bucky certainly seems to be trying to push him that way, deploying his super-strong super-soldier tongue again, this time across his slit and then down the back of his shaft. 

Sam’s making it worse, he knows he is. Even if he weren’t the reason Bucky was enduring yet another round of brutality, it’s not like Bucky wants to kneel here sucking Sam’s cock forever, any more than Sam wants it. 

...Unless he does? Would Bucky rather take the beating than choke on yet another dick? On Sam’s dick? Fuck. He can’t-- his brain’s barely working as it is, and Bucky’s-- God, Bucky’s mouth isn’t helping.

Neither are his shouts, which grow more intense as the baton keeps lashing down across his back.

“Bucky,” he moans, miserable, as his dick begins to think about chubbing under all that expert attention. “Bucky-- Buck, look at me, man, please, I-- I need--” 

Tell me what’s the least bad option here, please. 

Bucky can’t speak, can’t even lift his mouth from Sam’s dick, but Sam stares down at him and Bucky looks up from under those too-long lashes and their eyes meet. Bucky’s are red with strain, wet with tears--real tears this time, not just the handful that leaked down his face before. He’s haggard. Exhausted. Tired of hurting.

Just do it, his eyes say. It’s okay. End this.

Or maybe… maybe that’s just what Sam wants to believe. What he needs to believe.

But he gives Bucky a little nod, and Bucky gives him one in return, and then the baton drives across his lower back, right over the kidneys again, and this time the vibrations of his shout actually chub Sam a little--a chub he clings to even as his overtaxed, over-exhausted body immediately tries to lose it. Bucky’s eyes clench shut and he... he must be able to feel it too.

Sam's getting hard while he hurts. Because he hurts.

Oop, there goes the chub, fuck.

Thank Christ that by the time Bucky works far enough through his pain to pry his eyes back open, they’re fixed firmly on Sam’s lap. No way he’ll ever get hard if he has to keep staring at the agony on his friend’s face.

And getting hard is the only way to make this stop. He accepts that in his head. Now if only his stupid body and his even stupider heart could get with the fucking program.

And that's just it, isn't it. He's going to do it. He's going to get hard for his friend--he's going to get fucking hard in his friend. He has to. 

He tugs fitfully at his ropes, closes his eyes, and tries to pretend he's literally anywhere other than here.

Chapter 8

Summary:

In which Sam takes a little vacation while Bucky works.

Notes:

SCREAM-DUMPS 8,000 WORDS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

He meets Isabelle Montaigne the same year he joins the Airforce. She’s a recruit as well. They go out on dates whenever their leave matches up, but mostly they sneak out after hours to hold hands under the stars like giddy teenagers. The first time they kiss, she tastes like the rat-pack spaghetti he tried to cook for her. Not his best moment. But she likes it well enough, maybe. Might be lying, maybe. Being young is like that sometimes.

On July 4th she takes him to their favorite spot above the harbor, where you can park a car beneath the trees and watch the fireworks between the leaves and get the closest thing to privacy recruits ever get. They kiss while the colors pop overhead and they drink warm beer and they trade jokes and they pretend neither of them are getting shipped off within the month. The passenger seat creaks something awful when it goes all the way back, but she shoves it flat anyway and kisses down his chest, and he laughs when her fingers tickle stupid along his ribs. That’s why--yeah. That’s why she’s smiling when she presses her lips to the tent in his pants. She unzips him clumsy, they’re both a little more than drunk and the angle is bad and the only light is the last few fireworks sizzling above the trees. But she’s still laughing when she gets her hands around him. 

Good--that’s. Yeah, that’s what it is. A good night. The lights and the warm beer getting even warmer there on the back seat, forgotten as soon as she touches him. Light fingers. A little unsure. He puts his hand on her shoulder and feels the muscle move as she sways down low, still laughing, and licks a stripe up the side of him. The sound he makes only leaves her laughing harder, something pitched and wanting that he can’t regret because it gets her mouth on him. And maybe he imagined the clumsiness because she isn’t, actually. Unsure. Her tongue goes flat against the head of his cock and her fingers roll steady toward the base, a slow drag that feels like sheathing himself without ever moving. She laughs again but that’s--no, that can’t be right. Her mouth is on him. He was imagining the laugh and she--ducks, low. Takes the head of him in and sucks gentle-hard-gentle with her teeth tucked out of the way and her fingers clever against his skin and her other hand--fuck, her other hand a little cold, there, rolling his balls real slow. 

He wants to buck up but--no, not, he won’t buck he can’t--that’s not.

He wants to jerk up but doesn’t. Okay, that’s okay. His spine goes liquid-hot beneath her fingers, her tongue. The urge to shove deeper in is strong but she’s laughing again and he clenches his eyes shut to feel her better, feel the way she takes another inch of him, corkscrews her lips off him with a pop and then ducks back in to take him again so there’s cold air on the wet tip of him for only a second, a quick jolt of sensation before it’s warm, warm, warm again. Her mouth is so warm. 

“You’re so good at this,” he tells her, but his voice is all rough-crackle shot and she’s laughing again, overhead, and his hand isn’t on her shoulder after all because his fingers clench on air. “Don’t stop,” he says in that same awful voice, and she says--He can’t, which is… an odd thing. To say. But there’s a pressure mounting in his head and he thinks if he can just stay here a little longer maybe it will go away. The pop-pop-popping of the fireworks are so loud and everything’s a little. Foggy. But her mouth is warm and her fingers are clever and sure and it’ll be better, he thinks, if she just keeps doing what she’s doing.

There’s a particularly loud firework and she moans at the same time, the sound caught up on his cock so he feels it straight to his toes and yeah, that’s, yeah.

“Bucky,” he maybe whimpers, except no that’s not-- she’s-- “Bella,” he must say instead, because she’s laughing again above him but also there in his lap, her dark hair splayed across his thigh and the fireworks so so loud and she sucks hard, sucks soft, does that corkscrew pop again and her fingers squeeze one-by-one up the side of him so it feels like--amazing, it feels like amazing, he doesn’t have to be anywhere else but here with his girl in the trees, the warm beer behind him. 

He tries to--touch her. She likes it when he combs fingers through her hair, he remembers that, but he doesn’t. Reach. Can’t make his hands move and the fireworks go pop-pop but maybe they sound different, maybe more like thud-thud, but wet, and she moans again and he wants to comb his fingers through her hair and tell her to--stop, please, take a break, Bella, it’s okay, but he still can’t reach and she doesn’t have enough hair to do it properly anyway and the world goes. Sideways. For a moment. And she’s kneeling between his feet instead of across the center console of her old shitty car and he has to close his eyes and shake his head again and thud-thud-thud the fireworks are still going and he clenches his eyes tight and she doesn’t laugh this time, just grabs his chin and twists his head to the side and says--

“Eyes open, Mr. Wilson.”

And he snaps awake and there’s no car, there are no trees, Isabelle got shipped off the week before he did, he knows that, he does. And he makes a sound that hurts like swallowing glass but he can’t--stop. His whole face is swollen up, feels like his brain is too big, and Bucky’s shoulders are tucked between his knees and the fireworks aren’t as colorful as he remembered, mostly red, great big splotches of it, sticky strings that fling out as the baton slices down across the mess of Bucky’s back thud-thud-thud and that’s not even--that’s not even the worst part.

“I’m sorry,” he chokes, more sound than word.

He’s sorry, he’s sorry, he’s sorry.

Because Bucky Barnes has his lips stretched tight around Sam’s cock, and Sam is hard. Sam is… he’s more than hard. He’s close.

It happens then, he thinks. For real. A little piece of him gone forever. A fractured part of his brain just--dies, seeing Bucky like that. Red raw on one side and gentle-soft everywhere he’s touching Sam and he--this is how they made the Soldier, this is what they had to do, chip away at Bucky’s humanity until nothing was left and Sam’s only been--it’s only been days and he fucking, he’s going to--he’s losing it and he’s going to die.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, eyes stinging hot because the tears are all salt and no water and he can’t even--it hurts, but he’s still hard in Bucky’s mouth.

Boss Lady runs out of skin before she runs out of malice. Bucky’s whole back is a mess and she drops the baton where she’s standing to wrench Bucky’s head back, holding him by the short hairs above his forehead. Sam’s cock springs free and he’s--god, he is hard. Properly hard. His dick must be co-opting every drop of blood in his body because it’s curving up toward his belly full and thick and Bucky strains against Boss Lady’s grip open-mouthed and panting, trying to get back to the--mission, the mission she gave him, that’s all, and Sam shakes his head again and coughs rattle-dry but Bucky doesn’t look at him, his eyes are averted sideways, a thousand miles away and so at odds with the eager tug of him against where he’s held back. His unrestrained hands continue to work Sam over, jerking his cock and teasing his balls like there’s nothing he’d rather be doing.

Boss Lady uses her other hand to flick the wet head of Sam’s cock, just once, which makes him flinch and curl over as much as the rope will allow. His cock bobs, and she smiles in a way that may just be lethal.

“Good,” she purrs, and she throws Bucky back down, face first, and Bucky doesn’t even take… he doesn’t even need a second to reorient, he’s sucking and bobbing eagerly from the moment his lips touch Sam’s cock, and Sam thinks maybe he can--maybe he can go back to where he was, to that place beneath the trees where getting this done was… was easy. He thinks it wouldn’t take long, maybe. If he could go there. He thinks he could be close. He could make this work if his poor desiccated body can get him there.

But then Boss Lady puts a knee between Bucky’s ruined shoulders and presses until Bucky’s chest is against the edge of the chair, and she smiles cruelly at Sam and uses the heel of her hand to shove Bucky down. Sam jerks in place as he actually feels the moment he goes past Bucky’s gag reflex, the practiced motions of his tongue and lips going suddenly panic-tight as the head of Sam’s cock wedges too far back. He can feel--fuck, fuck, fuck--he can feel Bucky’s throat, the clench of him swallowing, the tight heat of it against the head of his dick. Bucky’s fingers get crushed between Sam’s stomach and the inexorable press of Boss Lady’s hand until she drags his arm out of the way so she can shove Bucky’s head tighter against Sam’s crotch. Bucky makes an awful wet cough that Sam feels the whole way up his dick and quite possibly right up into his nervous system where it will stay for the rest of time, but then there’s no more sound and Sam’s--Sam’s so deep Bucky can’t even--Bucky can’t breathe like this, no way. Sam’s so deep Bucky can’t scream. So deep he can feel the reflexive peristalsis from his nuts right down to where the head of his dick must be stretching Bucky’s throat from the inside out. 

“You’re going to kill him,” he rasps, twitching feebly as she leans her full weight against the back of Bucky’s head.

“No, you’re going to kill him,” she says calmly, then, “Glubzhe, soldat.”

She takes her hand off the back of Bucky’s head but Bucky doesn’t--christ, he doesn’t move away. His nose is crushed against Sam’s skin and there’s a deep-awful pressure that feels like he’s sucking but he’s not, he’s not, that’s--that’s his lungs, straining for air around Sam’s cock and Sam can’t-- he’s close, but not that close, he can’t make himself come within the next two minutes--three minutes, if he’s lucky--if super soldiers can even hold their breath while they're being tortured.

“I can’t,” he croaks, desperate. He claws at the arms of the chair. Everything... Hurts. Everything hurts and he can’t.

“Shame,” is all she says, and then she picks up the baton and god, no, Bucky’s going to die with a cock down his throat and fire raining down his back.

Except she doesn’t go for his back. She pulls at the baton until she has the thin telescopic end stretched as far as possible, and then she whips it down toward the floor. Sam can’t… he can’t see what she’s aiming for but something thrums in Bucky’s throat and that’s--he’s screaming without air, that’s the not-sound of Bucky screaming and she whips down again and she must be--she’s aiming for Bucky’s feet. The soft exposed soles of his feet and Sam thinks maybe that’s another piece of himself gone forever, his own toes curling in useless sympathy as she whips down again and he feels the vibrations against the head of his cock and he has to do something. He can make this stop if he can just figure out how to push himself over this cliff.

Bucky’s turning red, Sam can’t see his face but the back of his neck is starting to resemble the radiation burns on his left side. His throat convulses around Sam’s dick in time with his chest and it’s. It’d be so good if either of them wanted this, if he wasn’t literally suffocating Bucky to death, and his stupid brain can’t get past that, can’t let his body ride the wave, so Bucky chokes and convulses some more while Sam tries to force his dick to think of this as yayfun instead of makeitstop. Bucky’s tongue is pressing so hard against the underside of his cock and it takes Sam long long moments to realize that Bucky’s trying to shove back. His tongue is pressing against Sam’s cock in the other direction like it’s the only part of him that can actually fight for oxygen, and Sam tries to make his mind go somewhere where he forgets he ever realized that piece of information. He would like to forget he knows what Bucky’s tongue fighting for air feels like.

“He’s dying,” Boss Lady muses from the side. “Better hurry up there, Mr. Wilson.”

“I’m--” Sam croaks. Trying. He’s fucking trying but he can’t separate what’s happening to him from what’s happening to Bucky, and he--he can’t.

She lashes down against Bucky’s feet again and this time Bucky doesn’t even scream and that’s… that’s so much worse. 

“Come on,” Sam tells him, voice like sandpaper. “Stay with me, I’m--I’m trying, Buck, just stay awake for me.”

It’s not going to happen. He’s not going to be able to make this happen. Bucky’s throat is making hard convulsive pulls against his cock and his lips are moving but not… not like before. His lips aren’t tight and sure and tempting, they’re moving mindlessly like his muscles are pulling for air on autopilot. The metal hand flops limp to the floor and the flesh-and-blood hand is motionless on his left thigh. The fingernails are blue and Sam--Sam did this, Sam’s doing this, he can’t, he can’t, but he already has, he’s killed his best friend and he--

The sucking stops and then even the compulsive rippling of Bucky’s throat ceases and-- Oh god. Oh no. No. No. 

“Bucky,” Sam pants. “Buck. Come on, man, get up, get-- you gotta breathe, Bucky, you gotta--”

Cold air hits his wet groin so suddenly that Sam forgets how to breathe. If Bucky is-- if he’s-- 

Oh god oh god oh god, he’s slumped on the floor, eyes shut, skin pale, lips blue, and he’s not-- 

He’s not moving. At all.

“You are such a disappointment.”

He can’t even look at her. Bucky’s still not--he’s not moving. 

“Buck,” he mouths, voice past sound, and Boss Lady snorts and kicks the metal arm out of the way so she can press the pointed heel of her shoe into Bucky’s abdomen. She shoves down like she’s trying to pierce straight into his guts and Sam makes an animal sound of protest but then Bucky’s lips move a fraction, and his chest rises just… just a bit when she takes her shoe off and god please, god let him not be dead, let him not be--

Bucky lurches, gasps in air long and desperate and noisy and this time Sam’s the one who might be dying. Alive, he thinks, he’s fucking alive he’s-- Bucky gasps again, whole-body flops, mouth working mindlessly around the unobstructed air. Sam’s leaning so far forward he’s at risk of losing what little circulation he has left in his hands. Bucky doesn’t seem to be conscious yet, but as long as his lungs are working, that’s good, that’s... that means he’s alive. Sam loses his fight against the ropes and falls back into the chair, his cock slapping wetly against his thigh as it starts to lose its fight against gravity as well. How… how is he still hard?

Something about excitation and hyper-arousal and fear response flashes through his mind, but he lets it go. Bucky isn’t dead. That’s all that matters.

“You didn’t really think I’d let him die that easy, did you?”

She’s standing over Bucky’s-- over Bucky like a hunter with a trophy. That… that easy? Forced-choked on a fucking cock in a fucking torture dungeon while a villain right out of central casting fucking whipped him bloody? That’s easy?

Sam had thought it, though, hadn’t he. That Bucky had… that he’d…

So fucking stupid. Letting himself fall into that fear. Boss Lady isn’t done with them yet, she’d never let Bucky die, no doubt she pulled him off Sam’s cock herself and yet Sam had been so sure, so afraid--

At least Bucky’s unconscious now. Ha. There’s a silver lining after all. 

As long as he’s out, she can’t make him… do things.

“Want to tell me about that signal yet?” Signal. What… weren’t they talking about Bucky? “Or maybe you want him to finish what he started.” She kicks Bucky between the shoulder blades, and Bucky lurches again, eyes flying open, mouth dropping wide like he wants to scream but can’t spare the air. There’s-- there’s blood all over her shoe. “You hear that, soldier? Your friend here wants you to finish what you started.” 

“No,” Sam grits, because Bucky’s maybe almost conscious now and he’s struggling to his hands and knees, pale and shaky and horrified and Sam wants to tell him to stay where he is, what’s the fucking point of getting back up when she’s going to make him get back down. But Bucky starts crawling towards him and--oh god. 

“Don’t!” Sam says again, but Bucky is coming to him because no one told him not to and “Dostatochno, soldat!” he tries but he wasn’t the one who gave the first order so of course he doesn’t get to call this one off but no please no this can’t be how it goes, this can’t be what she does to them. Bucky’s still gulping air, his body so determined even as his face reads raw terror and he doesn’t even get a minute? He’s crawling back between Sam’s legs, gulping air because he knows he needs to oxygen load even though he’s working with a throat bruised and swollen from the inside, from Sam’s-- from his cock, which is-- god, fuck, help him, still somehow hard and he can’t he can’t he can’t let Bucky touch him again, can’t do that to Bucky again, tries to just… shrivel up and die before Bucky can get those dry, cracked lips around him for even one more second. His feet strain backward automatically and his toes press into Bucky’s knees like that could possibly hold him off, but nothing stops Bucky’s arms from creeping back up Sam’s calves. His metal hand lands on Sam’s thigh and the flesh hand scoops into place around Sam’s balls and Bucky’s mouth opens wide and no, no, don’t, no please--

“Ostat’sya, soldat,” Boss Lady says, and Bucky-- Bucky freezes less than an inch from Sam’s dick, his mouth wide and each labored breath hot on the head of Sam’s cock and Sam doesn’t want to be grateful to this monstrous woman, but he is, he is, even though he knows she’s only stopped this because she’s planning something worse, he’s sure of it.

“Tell me, soldier. The signal. How did you send it.”

Bucky’s so close that when he responds Sam can feel each individual word against his cock. The “I didn’t” only comes out raspy-soft, but Sam twitches against Bucky’s lips at each word. 

Sam’s been so horrified by everything else going on that he’s somehow forgotten about the telescoping baton in her hand. She taps it--actually just a tap--against the soles of Bucky's feet, but he shudders like she’s struck full-force. Harsh air puffs over the sensitized head of Sam’s cock as Bucky breathes through it. It’s-- it’s awful and it’s good and he hates it, he hates her more than he’s ever hated anyone or anything in his entire life.

“You sure that’s the story you want to stick with?”

“I’m sure,” Bucky says, too rough and barely audible and so, so resigned.

The pause that follows is cruelly long. Theatrical, almost. She taps Bucky’s soles with the baton again, and Sam squeezes his eyes shut and tries to will his cock away from Bucky’s brushing lips, Bucky’s hot, quietly panicked breaths.

Boss Lady gazes down at Bucky, panting and bloody on the floor at Sam’s feet, with surprising dispassion, considering the anger with which she started the day and the abject cruelty with which she’s finished it. At least, Sam hopes it’s finished. Where can they even go from here? Doesn’t she realize by now that they’ve been telling the truth all along?

Boss Lady nods. “You know what? I actually believe you.” Sam almost dry-weeps in relief until she adds, “And since you don’t know about the transmitter, tomorrow we take that arm apart piece by piece until we find it.”

Sam’s sure his horror is written across his own face, but what he can see of Bucky’s remains carefully neutral. 

They have to get out of here. They have to.

She taps his foot again, a little harder this time. “But in the meanwhile, you’ve left poor Mr. Wilson here deeply unsatisfied.” 

No. No no no no no. “I’m good,” Sam says. Insists. “Really.”

She eyes his cock, still hard and held aloft in Bucky’s hand. “I beg to differ,” she says, one corner of her mouth going up. “I would hate if people learned I didn’t entertain my guests while they were here. Soldier, why don’t you--”

“Don’t!” Sam yelps, and his eyes actually water as his poor throat works around the word. 

She pauses again, eyes him dispassionately. Then she glances down at her watch. “Fine,” she says. “It’s no skin off my back if--” She laughs suddenly and taps the baton against the mess of Bucky’s back like she accidentally made some hilarious fucking joke. “If you’re not interested in eating and drinking tonight.”

That gets-- Yeah, he can admit it, that gets everyone’s attention. Even Bucky’s eyes flick up, like he’s trying to look at her without being able to turn his head. His fingers twitch minutely around Sam’s dick.

Sam’s busy debating the merits of admitting she’s caught his interest when Bucky says, “What’s it gonna cost.”

“Just a quick little ride for your friend here.”

“Done,” Bucky says. Adds, “Give the order,” before Sam’s even managed to parse what she means.

“Wait,” he starts to say, but she’s already saying something in Russian, and Bucky needs to grip the chair legs in both hands to leverage himself to his feet and why is he-- Wait, wait, no, why is he standing, his feet are cut to ribbons and the pain on his face is eclipsed only by grim determination and he starts to turn around but Boss Lady grabs him by the arm and says, “Nyet, soldat,” and then Bucky’s… Bucky is…

He’s fucking-- He’s straddling the entire fucking chair, slinging his legs over the chair arms so his thighs are pressing hard and heavy against Sam’s forearms where they’re tied to steel, and he tucks his metal arm around Sam’s neck for balance and reaches between his legs with the other hand and-- and--

Sam… shorts out for a minute. Full-on. Just. Gone.

And when he comes back, when the world comes back, Bucky’s sinking down slowly onto his dick, both arms wrapped around Sam’s neck like they’re… like they’re fucking lovers, face just inches from Sam’s, moist breath puffing short and fast through clenched teeth as Sam feels the moment the head of his cock pops past that first resistance and he--no, no, this is--

Bucky’s eyes flick up for a moment and Sam has no idea what’s on his face, no idea what he’s going to say but he opens his mouth and just--he screams, for a moment simply incapable of dealing with this one extra horror on the entire steaming pile of awful that today has been. Bucky’s face blanches and his fingers curl against the back of Sam’s neck and the scream doesn’t stop even though it isn’t--he hasn’t even got the air for it to even be a proper scream, it sounds like someone’s dying and he can’t stop it and Bucky doesn’t stop either and then the scream turns into words without actually becoming something other than a scream, and, “No,” he’s saying, and “Stop,” he’s saying, and “Don’t, fucking, don’t,” he’s saying, and Bucky avoids his eyes and slides down another inch and Sam shakes his head and revolts with his whole body, flinching hard in every direction. But he’s weak as a fish in the sun, drying out with Bucky’s weight holding him together even while he pulls him apart and he’s making that awful sound still but Bucky won’t stop even when he begs him, says, “It’s my choice,” like that means anything here, and the lady is laughing somewhere in the distance but Sam says it again, screams it dry and quiet, “My choice if it's worth it,” and Bucky still isn’t looking at him but he says, “I won’t let you kill yourself,” as his ass meets the top of Sam’s thighs and everything goes hot-slick-wet against his dick and that’s, that’s blood, that’s Bucky’s blood, from inside him--

“Stop,” Sam demands. 

And Bucky doesn’t.

It goes. Quiet. In Sam’s head. At that. Like with Isabelle. In the car beneath the trees. Except. He doesn’t actually. Go. And Bucky rides him like that, Sam staring dumbstruck at his chest, at his dirty blood-skin-blood chest. And Bucky goes up and Sam doesn’t. Leave. He thinks maybe Bucky says something. He thinks maybe he can’t. He thinks nothing at all, and Bucky goes down, and Bucky goes up and it’s warm and then cold and then warm again and Sam maybe screamed out the last of his brain. Maybe screamed out the last of his soul. And Bucky goes down and he’s squeezing the back of Sam’s neck and Sam. Does not leave. But he also doesn’t stay. Bucky’s chest is heaving as he sucks in each breath and Sam is not here and Sam, Bucky says. And Bucky goes up and he is looking at the ceiling and his thighs are trembling and his arms are trembling and his everything is trembling but actually it isn’t him, it’s Sam. Sam is shaking so hard and Bucky is. Not looking at him. And Bucky goes down and Sam shakes apart beneath him and the lady laughs and Bucky is wet. Between his legs and on his face like he’s crying from everywhere, except everywhere else is just blood. 

“Is he close?” Boss Lady asks from across an ocean. Bucky grunts an affirmative and Sam takes long moments to connect that this means that he is about to come, and maybe that’s the urgent signal his body is sending but he is. Not home to receive. He doesn’t. Can’t. But Bucky’s going to take him to that peak too, throw him off it, maybe.

He doesn’t want to, he doesn’t want to. But Bucky grips the back of his neck and shakes him, just shy of gentle. And it’s like the radio was set to seek and has just found a station--he feels the metal fingers on the back of his shoulder. His hands twitching beneath Bucky’s powerful thighs. The wet-awful sound. And Bucky--Bucky’s ass, shoving down around him again and again and again and oh god, oh god he really is close, he doesn’t want to-- but Bucky is soft and wet and it doesn’t matter that he’s soft from other people raping him open or that he’s wet from blood because Sam is broken and wanting and he’s going to do it, he’s going to tip right over and there’s nothing left to stop him.

“I--” he says, hiccups the next word into oblivion. Mouth so dry he could flint a fire into being. And Bucky slams down and the world lurches and his whole body crumples up like last week’s newspaper gone brittle in the sun and Sam can feel his body staggering toward a finish line he doesn’t even know if he’s capable of crossing, doesn’t know if there’s enough left of him, but Bucky goes up-down one last time and clenches so tight around him and he feels it happening in the base of his spine, sucking everything out of him as it goes and he can’t, he can’t, but Bucky moves again, and he will, it’s happening, and someone says, from very far away, Dostatochno, Soldat, and the weight lifts off his arms and off his lap and off his shoulders and he loses the surge but it’s happening anyway, a shock of it so awful he might break apart but all that happens is his cock spits weakly into his lap and it’s--

Done.

“There’s really nothing you wouldn’t do for him, is there,” someone says, and Sam blinks up to find that it wasn’t the world that fractured apart, just him. And Boss Lady is standing there with something like awe and frustration and anger on her face all at once. At him? No. Bucky. At Bucky. Who is. On the floor. Bucky doesn’t answer. Just lies where he fell, panting and bleeding and looking at no one. Sam is… Horrified. More horrified. Than before. Somehow that’s possible. She’s right. Bucky would do anything. And Sam… Sam hates it. For a moment, even hates him. How could he… How could he?

“Call Franklin,” she says, and Sam remembers for the first time in hours, in days, in years, that there are other people in the room, that the goons have been standing there the whole time, watching. Boss Lady pokes one heel into Bucky’s dirty thigh, makes a face like he disgusts her. He did this for Sam. Sam, whose come is drying sticky on his dick and balls and pants alongside far too much of Bucky’s blood. Sam disgusts himself. “Tell him to bring a hose. I’m tired of the stink.” 

“Bucky,” Sam’s mouth says. He didn’t mean to. But. But Bucky would do anything for Sam. He did do anything for Sam. And he’s… he’s bleeding and even Boss Lady sees he needs a doctor and Sam needs him to know-- “It’s okay.” His throat burns. His eyes sting. He’d be crying if he could. “It’s okay. We’re okay.”

Bucky’s eyes roll in Sam’s direction, but he doesn’t… they meet for an instant and then Bucky’s keep sliding by, like he can’t-- like Sam disgusts him too. But that’s not-- he knows it’s not true, knows the come staining his pants isn’t. Well. Isn’t entirely his fault, anyway.

No. Not my fault at all. Not his, either. Hers. Only hers.

His scrambled brain tries to hang on to that. Clings to it.

Which, regretfully, means clinging to consciousness, too. Awareness. To know, instead of just wallowing in feeling.

Still enough feeling to go around, though. He hurts. Everything hurts.

A goon gets on his walkie. Everyone just… waits. Painfully silent. The goons keep their eyes locked on Sam and Bucky like they’re worried one of them is gonna magically spring up somehow and try to escape. 

The door opens, and in walks Franklin with his rolling cart. No firehose, at least. Not that Sam can see, anyway.

Franklin freezes a few steps into the room when he sees that Bucky’s not restrained. “Is he, um.”

“Still under the triggers,” Boss Lady says. “Perfectly safe. He won’t move unless you move him.”

Franklin walks over, squats by Bucky’s side and gives him a long looking-over. “You guys are disgusting,” he says without heat. Reaches into the pocket of his lab coat and pulls on a pair of latex gloves before touching Bucky’s skin. Examines the layer upon layer of wounds on his back, his feet. Must somehow think they don’t merit concern, because he says, “Up you go, Soldier,” tugging on Bucky’s arm to pull him to his feet. 

Bucky goes on legs as shaky as a newborn colt’s. Follows as Franklin leads him by the elbow to the table, leaving--oh god--leaving bloody footprints in his wake. 

He stays perfectly still when Franklin pats the table, indicating he should hop up. Franklin sighs, looks to Boss Lady. She sighs back, says something in Russian, and Bucky climbs up, into that same awful position as before: on his back, knees up, legs spread, hands by his head.

Franklin scrubs an alcohol wipe over the side of Bucky’s wrist, and the poor guy’s so covered in filth that the clean patch is an entirely different color from the rest of him. Franklin inserts an IV with practiced ease, tapes it down securely. Hooks it to the daily swimming pool. Then repeats the morning routine--god, was that just this morning? It feels like years--takes vitals, draws blood, pokes at the burns, sets up an ECG. 

“How’s that arrhythmia?” Boss lady asks.

“Resolving,” Franklin says, eyes on his screen. Good, good. “Still, though. No electricity until I check him tomorrow. Probably no tolerance testing, either--the radiation burns are healing, but they’re still serious enough to skew results. So's his back. And he needs solid food--I can’t even come close to meeting his caloric needs through IV nutrition.”

Boss Lady nods. Sam tries to be relieved at that, but then remembers they still plan to dissect Bucky’s arm tomorrow.

“How bad did you guys tear him up? Do I need to check?”

“Pretty bad,” says Dickwad, like he’s proud.

I did that to him too. I hurt him. I made him bleed.

Franklin walks around the other end of the table, thankfully blocking Sam’s view of Bucky’s spread legs and blood-smeared ass. He leans in, and while Sam can’t see what he’s doing, it’s pretty clear by Bucky’s hiss that this is a hands-on exam.

“Probably could’ve used stitches a few hours ago, but. He’ll heal,” Franklin says as he straightens up. He pulls his gloves off and tosses them onto the cart. “He’s been on IV antibiotics every night anyway, just in case.” Franklin turns his attention to Sam and fishes another pair of gloves from his pocket. “I should take a look at Mr. Wilson.”

Don’t look at me. Please. Nobody fucking look at me.

“He’s fine,” Boss Lady snaps.

“He’s been flayed,” Franklin points out. Sam had--Jesus, Sam had forgotten. “Don’t want him dying of infection before you’re done with him.”

Boss Lady shrugs, waves at Sam. Franklin wheels his cart over. Fishes through a drawer, comes out with a vial and a syringe. Fills it and goes for the stabby-stab.

“Whoa whoa,” Sam says, lurching as far away from the needle as he can, which is, admittedly, about half an inch--turns out he doesn’t want to die, after all. He sounds like he’s been smoking three packs a day for eighty years, but when he tries to clear his throat, all he does is hurt himself. “What’s that?”

“Antibiotic,” Franklin says like he’s fucking stupid, as one of the goons kicks away from the wall he was leaning on to enjoy the Sam and Bucky Show, strolls over, and casually places Sam in a headlock so Franklin can jab him.

“Ow,” Sam complains when the goon lets him go. “Don’t suppose you got a swimming pool for me too?” Apparently this question confuses Franklin, though it takes Sam a few long seconds to realize why. “D5?” he clarifies. “Assuming you can even find a vein at this point.”

No answer, and no IV. Instead Franklin studies his skinned arm for a moment, then reaches for some saline to rinse it off. Sam braces for agony, but the cool wash of fluid actually feels good. The gauze pad Franklin uses to help clean the wound, not so much. Franklin goes through the entire bottle of saline, then pats it dry with fresh gauze and--fuck fuck fuck--carefully rolls the skin back into place.

Sam can’t really scream anymore, not properly anyway, but his body sure does try. 

By the time the urge is past, there’s a gauze wrap holding the skin flap back up where it belongs, and Franklin’s peeling his bloody gloves off. 

“He’s all set,” Franklin says. He pinches the skin on the back of Sam’s hand, watches how long it takes for the wrinkle to smooth. Too long. Way too long. “Though he needs a bare minimum half-liter of water today if you don’t want his kidneys to fail. A whole liter would be better.”

Might be too late, Sam thinks. His lower back’s already aching. And his brain has clearly taken more than one wander today. Still. Half a liter of water. Two whole cups. That’s… that’s not nothing.

And Bucky had… bartered for more. Who knows what he’ll get. If she’ll hold up her end of the bargain. If it’ll be worth it. If anything could be worth it.

Speaking of his brain taking a wander, he’s somehow missed the goons cuffing Bucky back to the table. Boss Lady’s standing over him. She stops Franklin as he wheels his cart on by, opens the top drawer, then the middle one, then the bottom one, then must find what she needs because she straightens up. She’s holding a box of alcohol wipes. Tosses them on Bucky’s stomach.

“Clean the fuck up, Soldier,” she says, like it’s his fault he’s covered in... gunge. Then she leans in close. Closer. Puts her lips right to the shell of his ear and whispers something Sam can’t hear. 

When she stands up and steps away, Bucky tilts his head to follow her with his eyes. That’s… that’s important, Sam knows it is, he’s just… not quite sure why until the last of the goons is almost out the hidden door and he finally puts the pieces together. It’s the first time all day Bucky’s moved under his own power. Whatever she whispered, it must’ve been the release trigger. Not just dostatochno, but the one to take him out of the programming altogether.

The hidden door closes. Opens again like ten seconds later and the blast of panic that slams into Sam nearly takes him out, but it’s just… it’s just a goon with a tray. A very, very full tray, with three red plastic Solo cups full of mystery liquid, a bowl the size of Sam’s head full of oatmeal or cream of wheat or, knowing Boss Lady, maybe Victorian orphan gruel made of actual Victorian orphans, and what Sam’s pretty sure is… Jell-O? Maybe applesauce? Fuck it, he’d eat the damn wrapper if he could reach it.

Then the smell hits him. Definitely oatmeal. He sniffs again, and despite his brain being three-quarters broken, he can distinctly identify each of the components in that bowl just by scent: Butter. Milk. Brown sugar. Raisins. (Who even knew raisins had a smell?) His mouth… well, it doesn’t water, exactly, but his tongue feels a little less dry and swollen, and his stomach makes a noise so loud and angry it startles him. 

He’s so focused on the tray that he almost fails to register the sound of Bucky’s mag-cuffs popping open.

The instant Bucky’s free, he flops onto his side with a moan, curls up tight and trembling and just… lies there. 

For a really long time. Sam sits quiet and still and breathes in the oatmeal and imagines what’s in those Solo cups coating his sore throat and tries not to cry.

Tries not to bother Bucky, either. To say the man’s just been through a serious trauma is the understatement of the fucking century. Can’t blame him for needing time. Or even for dissociating, if that’s what he’s doing right now. God knows Sam had done it too, had even tried to do it on purpose.

Sam doesn’t stare at the tray while he waits. He doesn’t.

Of course, when he’s not obsessing over the tray, he’s obsessing over the fact that he nearly came up Bucky’s ass today, that his body fucking liked it, and there’s his blood-smeared dick still hanging out of his crusty pants, staring at him accusingly. 

It wasn’t my fault, he thinks at it. He makes himself look at what’s exposed of Bucky’s back and feet, at the welts and the bruises and the blood from the relentless assault of that baton. He wanted me to make it stop. They forced me. I had to. 

Sam turns his attention back to the tray. 

It hurts less.

Time passes. A lot of time. So much time, in fact, that Sam starts to think Bucky’s passed out or fallen asleep again. Which he wants to be glad about, he really does, but there’s a tray with his name on it by the door and if Bucky doesn’t come untie him soon he might end up being the first human being on Earth to spontaneously manifest telekinesis by sheer force of desperation.

Finally he just-- he fucking breaks.

“...Bucky?” Soft. Careful. In case he’s asleep.

He’s not asleep. He doesn’t answer or move or even open his eyes, but his breathing hitches, just once.

“Look man, I know…” Fuck, he doesn’t know shit about what Bucky’s just gone through. Sure, he’s studied it, learned how to counsel folks through the aftermath, even got like a tiny little taste of it himself today, but he can’t seem to remember a single therapeutic technique or even a soothing phrase right now. “I mean, it’s okay to… you know, to not be here for a while, if you need to.”

Bucky doesn’t respond.

“And I don’t--” Sam has to stop, not-clear his throat. He swallows like five times before he manages to work up enough spit to continue. “I don’t mean to rush you, man, but I am literally dying.” The truth of that statement does nothing to make him feel even a drop less like a selfish, insensitive asshole. Like a fucking monster for using guilt to cajole Bucky from whatever less-painful space he’s managed to carve for himself. So he adds, “And I can’t-- I can’t help you until you help me,” but that truth makes no difference either. 

Fuck feelings anyway. Stupid, irrational, useless bullshit.

He’s almost relieved when Bucky still doesn’t move. 

Except then, like the absolute-most-stubborn-asshole-in-the-entire-world that he actually is, he does.

He’s slow at first, stiff, shaking, face locked into a grimace, and it hurts Sam just to watch. He almost blurts Never mind, just stay there, but of course he doesn’t because he can’t, he’s not strong enough to work up the will to let Bucky off the hook.

Bucky finally manages to roll onto his stomach, one arm and one leg slumped over the edge of the table. He’s trying to get to his feet, but ends up in what Sam generously thinks of as a controlled fall to the floor. He lands with a grunt that borders on a scream, stays down in a huddle for a solid thirty seconds, toes curled and face buried in his fists. Sam’s got a much clearer view of Bucky’s back like this, and it’s… jesus. A fucking mess. 

It’s my fault, is what it is.

It doesn’t stop Bucky, though. Sam’s starting to realize that nothing stops him. Ever. Mad respect, but also… what a sad way to have to live. 

Fuck, no wonder Steve stayed back in time.

Bucky gets himself turned around, and like some nightmare fucking Groundhog’s Day repeat of the last two nights, he crawls his slow, agonized way over to Sam’s chair to untie him, IV line trailing behind. Except this time he very carefully doesn’t look at Sam as he works. Very carefully doesn’t let his fingers touch Sam’s skin. Doesn’t say a single word.

And when he’s done, he doesn’t get the water for Sam. Just crawls into the corner furthest from the door and the table and the chair, and gingerly packs himself into it side-on, tilted onto one hip to put less weight on his ass. He pulls his knees to his chest--legs also tilted, so the sides of his feet hit the floor instead of the soles--and rests his chin on them and closes his eyes.

Yeah, that’s… that’s legit.

Sam tries to give him privacy. Stares down at his hands as he flexes them for the first time all day. They’re stiff. They hurt. The skin of his wrists is abraded so raw it’s weeping blood. Going by feel, his ankles are just as bad.

He doesn’t think he can stand. Doesn’t even plan to try. Just sort of… slithers out of the chair like he did yesterday, onto his own hands and knees. The floor is too hard but pleasantly cool beneath his heated skin. His arms shake and his head pounds as he crawls. He’s so dizzy he keeps pitching sideways. But somehow he makes it to the tray. He makes it.

And there he finds a little sticky note attached to each item on the tray, with his name or Bucky’s, and a final note that says, “Mr. Wilson, touch anything that’s not yours and I’ll cut your hands off.”

“Fucking lovely,” he sighs. But, another silver lining: two of the Solo cups and that big bowl of Jell-o belong to him. A whole-- God, he could cry. A whole fucking liter of fluids and then some.

One is water with oral rehydration salts, and the other is apple juice. 

Bless.

He starts with the water. Doesn’t even try to pick it up at first, just leans down and puts his lips to it and sucks. Slowly, because he remembers Bucky’s warning, and if he pukes this up he knows damn well he’ll be down on all fours licking his own regurgitated water off the floor and he’s not quite ready to face that much of his own desperation.

He spends a full sixty-count slurping off the top inch or two of fluid before he can’t reach any more without lifting the cup. He’s so sure it’s gonna end bad, the way his hands are shaking and his muscles are burning and his fingers don’t quite seem to work, but he manages it somehow--like a toddler, palming the cup in two barely-coordinated hands. His next swallow is too big because see two uncoordinated hands, and his stomach roils instantly, but he clenches his teeth and swallows and swallows and swallows until he’s sure the water’s gonna stay put. 

Breathe. Sip. Swallow. Pause. Repeat. He swears he can feel his fucking soul rehydrating as he makes his slow, measured way through the water, then the apple juice, then the Jell-o. Like one of those tightly packed little dinosaur sponges he once bought AJ and Cass from a museum gift shop, growing slowly to four times its shriveled size, turning soft and supple and lifelike for the first time in forever. His headache dials back from an eleven to a five or a six. The burn in his muscles fades. Even his kidneys stop aching so much. It’s not enough--he’s still desperately thirsty, half starved--but at least now when he glances longingly at Bucky’s giant bowl of oatmeal with all the fixings, his mouth actually waters like it should.

Shit. Bucky. How long has Sam been hunched like the fucking golem over his Solo cups while Bucky’s been huddled in the corner, shocky and bleeding and catatonic or, worse, stuck in an unending loop of his trauma? Twenty minutes? Thirty? More?

Whatever the answer, it’s been too damn long. Bucky needs… Well. Maybe not Sam, not after how he hurt Bucky--it wasn’t my fault he knows that he knows that and so do I--but. Something. And Sam’s gotta try.

Notes:

Well, this got... longer than we were expecting. Again. There will PROBABLY be two chapters left but for now we've kept it at one just in case.

And we know we've fallen behind on responding to comments, but each and every one of them feeeeeeeeeds usssssssss, so thank you, our lovelies, for continuing to leave them!

Chapter 9

Summary:

In which the comfort side of the H/C tag arrives at long, long last.

Notes:

*weeps in this-was-supposed-to-be-a-one-shot*
*sobs in extra-sad Bucky headcanons*

Bucky doesn’t seem much up for talking right now--every time Sam so much as thinks of glancing in his direction, everything about Bucky, from his posture to his expression to the way he’s breathing, recalls that strangely on-point meme: I do not wish to be perceived . And even in Sam’s current state, he can take a hint that unsubtle. Frankly, he’s not sure he’s ready yet to carry the kind of conversation they need to have anyway. But he’s been trained to fix brains and bodies, so if the brain thing is failing him, well...

The box of alcohol wipes lies forgotten on the floor and Sam knee-walks over to it, not yet trusting his legs to do the whole gravity-resistance thing. Especially with Bucky’s dinner tray in his unsteady hands. He remembers suddenly that his dick is just flapping in the fucking breeze while he goes, which maybe is part of the reason Bucky’s giving off such a powerful stay away vibe. He can’t wait to tuck back in, but first…

The wipes are in individual foil packets, and even though there’s a little tab for him to rip, he finds that the task is almost too much for his dumb weak limbs. The wound on his left bicep stings aggressively as he tugs, but at least that’s one injury he can be fairly sure is clean.

He wipes at the don’t think about it mess at his crotch. Then scrubs at it when it doesn’t immediately lift. Touching himself there, now, is strangely repulsive, but he’s not about to go deliver Bucky’s oatmeal with the evidence of their don’t think about it still sticky on his skin. He tries to clean the dribble on his pant leg, too, but it’s not going anywhere. Neither is the-- is Bucky’s blood. At least the alcohol masks the smell. At least he can finally tuck his damn dick back into his damn pants and zip the damn hell back up.

According to the usually-accurate clock in his head, it takes almost ten awful horrible no-good very bad minutes just to get his limbs into some semblance of usefulness so he can clean up. The result is… well, he’s not fresh, but at least he’s put a bit of distance between himself and the compost heap behind Sarah’s house. He feels… well, better is a strong word, but at least maybe a little less bad.

Now for the hard part.

“Buck?” he tries.

Ha, nice try. Like Bucky’s going to respond to anything short of a platoon of therapists at this point.

Shame all he’s got is a Wilson with stubborn for brains.

He inches toward Bucky with the alcohol wipes out in front like a peace offering, dragging the tray of food behind him. Bucky looks at him without looking at him. Huddles tighter, somehow, without appearing to move.

Sam freezes. “You wanna. Um.” His arm trembles from the strain of holding out the eight-ounce box of wipes. How exactly does one say You might feel better if you wipe off all that rapist jizz but, like, without the word jizz. Or rapist. Or any of the rest of the sentence, actually.

Bucky turns his face away, toward the wall.

Okay. Maybe later, then. Sam tries instead, “There’s a nice-lookin’ vat of oatmeal here with your name on it.”

Bucky’s still staring at the wall. But that’s… that’s okay. Plus, Sam ain’t afraid to play dirty if it means helping Bucky heal.

“Look man, Boss Lady left us a note.” He holds it up so Bucky can see, but of course, in order to read it he first needs to, you know, look at it. Which he decidedly does not. So Sam reads it for him. Then says, “And it’s your name on this bowl. Also this cup of juice. And if you don’t eat ‘em, I swear to god I will. I will. And then when she cuts my hands off, I’ll eat those too. So. If you could… you know.” He makes himself sound extra-pathetic (no work at all, really) when he adds, “Please?”

He puts the box of alcohol wipes on the tray and then slides it forward ahead of him, like a shield for Bucky to hide behind if he needs to. When Bucky doesn’t tense or curl any smaller, Sam knee-walks after it, then slides it forward again, watches for a reaction, and knee-walks some more when none comes. 

He ends up barely two feet from Bucky before he finally gets a response. Bucky makes a low growl like some kind of alley cat, still without moving toward Sam or--more importantly--the food.

“It’s me,” Sam says, stupidly. Yeah, just your buddy whose dick you were choking on an hour ago, remember that? Remember that, pal? Great.

He pushes the tray a tiny bit further and tries to words better.

“There’s no one else here anymore,” he goes with. “Just this delicious old-folks breakfast I think they got off a nursing home buffet. Then again, you are over a hundred.” Another inch closer. “They even snuck some raisins in there, but you gotta put your dentures in first if you want to eat them.”

Not even a hint of a smile. He knows he’s trying too hard, but he doesn’t know what else to do. 

“Just eat the damn oatmeal, please.”

Whoops. Too far in the other direction. 

But Bucky unfolds just a little, reaches out with his metal hand, and takes the bowl. Balances it on his knees and against his chest. He’s still tipped over a little on his side so the balance is off but it doesn’t look like any precious nutrients are about to end up on the ground, so. That’s a win.

But, oops. Another roadblock.

“Right,” Sam says. “Your, ah. Hand.”

By which he means, Oh shit, we don’t have a spoon and I forgot for half a second that you were covered head to toe in blood and goon jizz and other men’s ball sweat and I just realised that this poses an impediment to your breakfast plans.

He holds out the box of wipes again but Bucky doesn’t take them. In fact what happens is that Bucky begins to shake.

And not like… Not like before, when he was in shock and his muscles were locking up, or when he was cold and trying to generate heat. This is… 

This is Bucky crying. Except without tears, or, or even a frown. His chest is clutching up on every inhale but he hasn’t even got the energy to cry properly, so he’s just.

Shaking.

“Hey,” Sam says, soft. So soft. “Hey, it’s okay, I get it, man.” Picking up those wipes means facing the fact that he needs them, means facing the reason why he needs them, means making that unspeakable trauma real all over again. “You don’t have to cope with this yourself.” He puts down the box of wipes, opens one up and holds it out between them. “Let me help?”

For the first time in hours and hours, Bucky looks at him. It’s a cautious look, shy, hesitating--barely a glance up to the side, in fact--but Sam feels the blood pump through his dessicated heart and it’s… it’s good, it’s… hope.

He holds his other hand out, palm open in invitation. Bucky’s eyes slide toward it, wary, but then something shakes loose inside him and his lips quiver and he bites them still and sucks in a noisy breath through his nose and--

And places his hand in Sam’s.

“Thank you,” Sam says, so sincere he almost winces at his own tone. Way to sound desperate, man. But Bucky responds with a tiny nod, so maybe that’s exactly what he needs right now. Someone to make it clear they value his trust--and his consent--beyond all measure. 

“I’m just gonna…” Huh. Sam’s throat’s a little clogged. He clears it, holds up the alcohol wipe. “I’m gonna try not to hurt you, okay? If I do, you tell me, and I’ll stop right away.”

No nod this time, but Sam will take what he can get.

He’s oh-so-gentle as he starts with the back of Bucky’s hand. He tries not to think about how he’s going to need another of his own alcohol-baths after this, just from touching Bucky. 

“You have,” he says into the silence, “the ugliest fucking hands.”

No reaction.

“Seriously, look at these cuticles.” He uses his thumbnail to dig blessedly unidentified muck from around said cuticles. “It’s like you’ve never even had a manicure.”

Bucky blinks, slowly. His chest is still stuttering on the inhale but--

“No,” Sam says, “don’t tell me you’ve never?” He tosses the wipe over his shoulder and opens a fresh packet with one hand and his teeth, so he doesn’t have to let go of Bucky. His arm burns, but he ignores it. “Dude you have no idea what you’re missing out on.” He uses the tips of his fingers to make circles over the back of Bucky’s hand and knuckles. “They put these heated stones on your arms and they soak your hands in like, lilac-water or some shit.” Toss wipe. Open new packet. “It takes like 30 minutes it’s a whole thing. Man, the place down the road has little mini champagnes and everything.” He flips Bucky’s hand over and starts in on the gunge that’s caked in lines across his palm, great big lay-lines like someone’s about to come in and start telling Bucky’s fortune. Here be dirt.

The curl of Bucky’s fingers flattens a bit, and it’s such a small gesture but it feels so huge, Bucky opening himself up to Sam like that, exposing the sensitive pads of his fingers alongside the callouses on his hand. Like a… like an underbelly, almost, sweet and trusting, letting Sam touch this part of him that’d been forced to touch so many others.

Or maybe Bucky just wants clean hands to eat with and Sam’s reading way too much into this.

But.

Maybe not.

He tries to read the truth in Bucky’s expression, but the moment he looks up from that powerful, vulnerable hand, Bucky averts his eyes.

Yeah, okay. Message received. 

He holds Bucky’s hand in both of his and uses his thumbs to dig into the meat of Bucky’s palm. Bucky’s breath hitches, but he doesn’t say stop, doesn’t pull his hand back. “Did I hurt you?” Sam checks, even though he’s like 99% sure that little gasp was the opposite of hurt.

Bucky shakes his head minutely, and his hand is still resting so sweetly in Sam’s, so Sam takes the invitation to do it again, massaging in firm, sure little strokes. He’s no expert, but he’s experienced this often enough, done it for more than one lover, which is--okay, brain. That’s not what this is. But Bucky does seem to be enjoying it. Even his supersoldier hand muscles must be so sore after-- Well. After.

He presses his fingertips into the back of Bucky’s hand and uses his thumbs to push Bucky’s thumb and pinky back, stretching the muscle in between. Bucky makes that soft grunt again. 

“Just you wait til May does this for you,” Sam tells him. “She could probably even get the other arm all soft.” He flicks the metal and it rings dully. “Yeah, you’re one good manicure away from bliss, I’m telling you, Buck.”

He moves to massage Bucky’s already-clean wrist, careful of the IV line, then moves back to scrub each finger and the skin between, massaging as he goes. He gets through half a dozen wipes just like that, getting Bucky’s hand as clean as he can make it with what he’s got, and doing everything he can to ease the pain along the way. 

Bucky looks asleep when Sam finally finishes, which Sam takes as a high compliment. “All clean now,” he murmurs, so as not to break this fragile, meditative silence that’s fallen between them. “Go on. Eat.”

“Thank you,” Bucky murmurs back, and Sam’s never been so happy in his whole goddamn life to hear someone speak. 

He tries to play it cool, but the last few days have kind of impaired his mojo. “Any time,” he says with that same painful sincerity from before. Yuck, Wilson. Keep it together. He clears his throat. “So you, uh… You still got a little somethin’ on your…” He points vaguely over his own shoulder. “You want me to get that for you?”

Bucky makes a soft little sound that’s maybe a scoff, maybe a laugh if Sam’s being generous. Sticks two fingers into the bowl of oatmeal and ducks his head so he can scoop some into his mouth. He chews mechanically. If he likes or dislikes it, Sam can’t tell.

That’s… not an answer. And like hell Sam will ever touch Bucky again without clear consent. Preferably in writing and signed by witnesses. In triplicate.

Bucky scoops up some more oatmeal. Chews. Swallows. Breathes for ten seconds. Repeats. He’s making eating look like a chore. He’s making eating spiced oatmeal with butter and brown sugar look like a chore. And Sam figures you can’t really blame a guy for wanting to throttle Bucky for that.

He reins it in; it’s not Bucky’s fault.

“Bucky?” he checks. Still so gentle. Bucky deserves that. Kindness. He holds up the box of wipes. “You’ll feel better,” he tries. Bucky shoots him a halfhearted glare, and Sam kicks himself for being spectacularly stupid in two unique and creative ways: One, rubbing alcohol has literally never in the history of human existence made open wounds feel better. Two, he’s basically just suggested the solution to Bucky’s problems is a rape sponge-bath. 

Smooth, Wilson. Real fucking smooth.

“Uh,” he tries. Even smoother. “That’s not what I-- I mean--”

Bucky shovels more oatmeal into his mouth and watches Sam squirm as he chews. Chews some more. Jesus how much does a guy need to chew fucking oatmeal just swallow it already and say something...

“My throat hurts,” Bucky says.

Which is. So not at all what Sam was expecting that all he manages is another, “Uh.”

“You were looking at me like I was crazy for chewing my oatmeal. My throat hurts.”

“Oh.” Yeah. Sam tries to rearrange his face into an expression that doesn’t make it obvious that he’s thinking about how Bucky’s throat hurts from all those dicks crammed in there. From Sam’s dick. Well. At least he’s talking? “I’m sorry,” Sam says. Picks up the cup from the tray and holds it out. “Apple juice?”

“Is it mine or yours?” Bucky asks, and Sam wants to slap his stupid selfless face.

“Shut up. It’s yours. Drink.”

That gets a laugh out of him. Which Sam wants to be relieved at but can’t help being a little worried about, considering. Plus, it sets something off and Bucky starts coughing straight after and Sam has to rescue the juice before it ends up on the floor.

“Just a heads up,” he says, “but I will be licking the concrete if you spill any of this and that’s not something either of us needs to know about me, so--” He puts the cup back in Bucky’s hand. “Do me a favour and don’t vomit this up or anything, okay? And also, seriously, how the fuck are you laughing right now.”

Bucky shrugs one-shouldered. Winces. Sips his juice. Sucks oatmeal off his fingers contemplatively, like maybe he actually plans to answer Sam’s question. Which. Sam hadn’t even fathomed when he’d asked. 

Bucky takes another sip of juice, then opens his mouth to speak. Doesn’t look at Sam at all, but that’s okay; Sam’ll take honesty from Bucky any way it comes. “When, uh. After I fell from that train, and HYDRA found me, they kept me alive because they knew I’d survived Zola’s serum. But also, they, well.” 

Another sip, and, god, what Sam wouldn’t give to have a cup to hide behind himself right now. This… this isn’t where he thought Bucky was gonna go. He’s not ready to hear this. Isn’t sure he can handle the weight of it. But Bucky’s trusting him with something precious, he knows that, he knows that all too well. So like hell he’ll let Bucky down.

“They knew I was Cap’s right-hand man,” Bucky says, “and the Howling Commandos were tearing through their bases, so they wanted… intel. And I know other fellas had it worse, there were plenty of POWs, but. This wasn’t…”  Sip. He clears his throat. “I didn’t, uh.” Sip. “When they had me, I mean. They weren’t--” his voice breaks on the last syllable and he coughs again. Blinks a few times. Sam burns with the urge to take Bucky’s hand again, stroke soothing fingers across his palm, but Bucky wouldn’t tolerate that now, he knows that. “Nice,” Bucky manages. “They weren’t… nice.”

Bucky goes silent, and Sam doesn’t mean to intrude, he really doesn’t, but Bucky’s got that look in his eye Sam’s seen in POWs before, the one that tells him Bucky’s thinking of the weren’t nice in a little too much detail. So he says, “I’m so sorry, Bucky, that you had to go through that. That you’re going through it again now.”

Bucky nods once. Blinks. “And I… I mean, I don’t know exactly how long they had me, but they’d toss me a paper sometimes, you know, like. When they’d won a big battle. When…” He bites his lip, pokes a finger in his oatmeal. “When Steve’s plane went down.” He sucks the oatmeal off his finger, clears his throat. “Anyway, I was there at least two years before they launched the Winter Soldier program, and because of the-- because of the serum, my body could take so much, you know?” Sam knows. Sam wishes he didn’t know. “And they just. It was… And I was healing so fast, even with all the-- And I was useless to them if they couldn’t make me talk, so…”

Another long pause and thousand-yard stare. Except this time Sam’s completely lost for words. He’s too close to this. Too close to Bucky to be objective, to be a good therapist. “I’m so sorry,” he says again. Useless. He’s beyond inadequate in the face of… of this. 

Bucky huffs--Yeah, Sam, me too. “And I used to-- When they’d finished for the day, they’d throw me back in my cell and I’d just… I’d let myself lose it, you know? Just. Completely lose it. Scream, cry, disappear in my head, whatever… But. But not for long, because I knew if I couldn’t find a way out, I was gonna die there, or worse, tell them something that’d get other people killed. And the guards, their patrols were so precise, every ten minutes one would stop at my door and peek inside and make sure I was still alive. So.” He lifts his chin a fraction. “Three peeks. I gave myself three peeks and then it was time to get my shit together and get back to trying to escape. Which never worked out. Obviously. But. I knew, you know? I knew that if I ever missed that third peek, if I ever let myself… stay gone like that? I’d be gone forever. After all that time, I didn’t have hope anymore. I just had… routine.”

The plastic cup crunches in Bucky’s metal fist and it’s empty, thank christ, but thinking about something other than the years of Bucky torture snaps Sam back for a moment. 

“So this… You. Now. This was your three peeks.”

Bucky nods. “Well, maybe more like six or eight, I dunno, no patrols here. But.” He shoots a sideways glance at Sam. “But I knew it was okay; I knew you wouldn’t let me get lost.”

Oh. Oh. Wow. How is… how is he supposed to respond to that? Asking for a friend. And also for himself. He feels… warm. Fuzzy. Brain-blocked. But somehow, he manages a “Damn straight I wouldn’t.” And then, quietly, “You ever talk to Dr. Raynor about this?”

Bucky snorts, hangs his head. “What do you think?” There’s a beat of silence, and then he picks up an alcohol wipe, puts the packet in Sam’s hand. Tips his shoulder forward, just a fraction. Baring the edge of his back for Sam to get at.

Sam rips open the wipe and steels himself. Ha. Like he’s the one who’s going to need to force himself through this.

“Of course,” Bucky says, “the irony is that none of it mattered anyway.” Sam presses the wipe against the trailing end of a welt that doesn’t look like it’s broken the skin. Bucky grits his teeth and hisses, so. Sam’s bad.

“None of it mattered anyway,” Bucky repeats, with the air of a man who intends to get through the next twenty minutes with his teeth clenched. “The serum made me the first pick for the Winter Soldier program, and that got me gone for decades.” Sam dabs painstakingly at the edges of a deep slice that’s still trickling plasma. Bucky snarls at mid air. “Fuck,” he says, then shakes his head. “The program, uh. It wasn’t… like before. They’d been torturing me for two years; they knew it wouldn’t get the job done by itself. So they, uh. They got… creative.” Shit, Sam thinks he knows where this is going. He focuses resolutely on Bucky’s back--wounds he can fix. “Uh. What you… what you saw, today, except there were no--fuck, easy, there--there were no trigger words then, just… drugs and restraints and too many men for me to fight at once.”

“Christ,” Sam murmurs. Bucky grunts and turns his head to the side when Sam tries to catch his eye. It exposes more of his back, though, so Sam rips open another packet and keeps working.

There’s a few moments of silence. Sam wonders if that’s all Bucky has to share right now, but then-- “So after, uh, after god knows how many months of that, combined with the…” his fingers flex, “the uh. Brain machine. The thing that mushed my memories. After enough rides through that… it was getting. Hard.” Sam works at the dried blood beneath a deep slice and does his damndest to not let the scream in his chest loose. He’s seen the schematics for the chair. That thing was designed to turn a person into a vegetable and Bucky found it hard? Hard? Doing a flip on a skateboard was hard. Fuck, getting his pararescue cert was hard. Fighting decades of torture and mind-control was something else entirely. Fucking christ on a pancake he’s going to have words with Raynor after this.

“Mm,” he hums carefully, instead of letting his actual thoughts loose. He reaches for a cut over Bucky’s ribs and waits for whatever horror-bomb Bucky’s going to drop next. 

“So after god knows how many rides through that, it was… it was getting so hard to hold on to anything. But the one thing I could remember was that they were just gonna keep… hurting me until I gave in. And even after all the wipes that followed, after all those decades, I still remember this moment so clear: I was in my cell, two peeks into a screaming jag so intense I knew i was gonna lose my voice for days, and it hit me. One way or another, they were gonna keep hurting me--and god, Sam, that machine, you have no idea, and it wasn’t even the worst of it, not when they… When they’d all gang up like they did today, a dozen guys, sometimes two. And by the end of each one of those sessions, I always ended up doing what they wanted. So the only real choice I had was to remember all that suffering, or not.” Sam only realizes his hand’s stopped moving when Bucky swings a sideways look at him, face carefully blank. “I gave in,” he says. So quiet. Sam could just. Sam could just break. “I chose it,” Bucky tells him. “I chose to not remember.”

There’s just silence for a few minutes after that.

Sam is. Doing something complicated. Internally. Bucky is so. Is so. Fuck. To go through that and still be human on the other side. More than human. 

He very much does not like the way his chest is squeezing his ribcage into tiny little bite-sized pieces. 

“Bucky,” he says, and he means more than that. He means more than Bucky’s name except for all the ways he doesn’t. All the ways he just means…

Bucky .

He takes Bucky’s hand, freshly spruced and back from it’s sojourn at the Wilson Manicure Bar. Bucky-- Bucky doesn’t quite pull away, but he doesn’t relax, either. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean--” Sam says, and lets go, but Bucky reaches after him with his metal arm, circles cold fingers around Sam’s wrist and pulls his hand back until they’re touching flesh to flesh again.

“I’m sorry too,” says Bucky. He looks down at their joined hands, lets go of Sam’s raw wrist like he’s been caught in the cookie jar. “I just. It’s been, uh. A long time since someone’s touched me without… wanting something.” Ah, shit. Sam’s starting to realise that maybe he wants something, too. Terrible timing. He keeps it to himself. “It’s just, uh.” Bucky’s eyes slide away, to the congealed remains of his oatmeal, forgotten on the floor at his feet. “Nice.” He breathes in deep. Shaky. Fortifying. “I could, um… use that right now, maybe.”

Sam gives Bucky’s fingers a little squeeze. Ducks his head to chase Bucky’s elusive gaze, until he finally sighs and says, still so gentle, “Will you look at me, please?”

He’s frankly a little shocked that it works. Bucky’s eyes are wide, wet, lower lip trembling again and Sam is… no longer equipped to handle that kind of pain on this man’s face. 

“Hey,” he whispers. Reaches up with his free hand and, slowly, so slowly in case Bucky doesn’t want it, touches his thumb to Bucky’s cheek. Catches the tear as it falls. Bucky tilts into the touch and Sam rests his palm against Bucky’s temple, curls his fingers into Bucky’s hair. His wounded arm burns, but Sam thinks pain has never been more worth it. 

“I need you to listen to me real close right now, Bucky, you get me? Real close.”

Bucky sniffs. Nods. Looks exactly like Cass and AJ when they’ve screwed up and they’re so sure he’s gonna hate them, which-- shit. “No, no, listen, I’m not mad, okay? This wasn’t your fault. What happened today? What happened with HYDRA? Hell, what’s happened for the last seventy years. None of it is your fault.” 

Bucky’s face starts to close up and Sam has to get down low to stay in his line of sight because he is not going to let this go unspoken for even one more second. “And I know you think you gotta make amends, and that Dr. Raynor’s supported that instead of explaining to you the billion and one ways in which you have literally nothing to make amends for. And I know even the damn government thinks you needed to be pardoned, which is bullshit because you can’t pardon someone for something they didn’t fucking do. But I’m Captain Fucking America so my opinion is the only one that matters here and-- You know what, no, it’s not opinion, it’s fucking fact, and the fact is that there isn’t a single person in all of history who could’ve gone through what you went through and not break.”

Bucky scoffs, pulls away from Sam’s hand, and the urge to grab him by the chin, make him hear Sam, is so strong but he won’t do that to Bucky, he won’t. So he talks to Bucky’s forehead instead. “That’s one of the first things they teach us in SERE school, you know that? That everyone breaks eventually. Always. No exceptions.” 

That gets Bucky’s attention, and he hates that he’s the first person with enough sense to see that Bucky needs this. He hates that it’s taken him this long. “And you… god, Bucky, you lasted years. Years. Do you get that? Most folks don’t last days. And even after the drugs and the brainwashing and the torture and that… that machine, after seventy years of all that, you still found the strength to break free. You did that.”

“Steve did that,” Bucky says to his knees. “He never quit. He saved me.”

“You saved your damn self,” Sam snaps. “And Steve? He left us; don’t tell me he never quit.”

Bucky jerks back like Sam struck him, and fuck, maybe he might as well have. 

“Sorry, I’m sorry, I…” He reaches for Bucky’s hand again, and Bucky hesitates but lets him touch. “Listen, that’s. That’s exactly my point, though! Even Steve needed the fight to stop. And your fight was so much harder and longer and uglier than his ever was. And yet you’re still here. And you never--” He lets go of Bucky’s hand, slips two fingers under his chin instead. Not pushing, just… “Buck, look at me, please.”

It takes Bucky a long moment to lift his head. He’s crying. Silent. Still. But the tears are running down his cheeks. Sam wipes at them again, cups Bucky’s face. “You never let anything that’s happened to you turn you hard, you don’t hate the world, you’re not out for revenge; you just wanna help people. You’re…” He grits his teeth, can’t believe how difficult it is to find words for something that’s so fucking true. “You’re the strongest man I know, Bucky. You have such a good heart. You’re not… him, you’re not what they forced you to be. And I know you’re stuck with those memories, you gotta carry that with you, but it wasn’t you. You are not responsible for what your captors made you do.”

Bucky’s gaze slices away. “But I still did it.”

Is he for real right now? “You know your problem, Buck? You’re so terrified of feeling weak that you’d rather take the blame for everything than admit to yourself that you were a victim. And I get it, Buck, I do, things were different back in your time. Things like this didn’t happen to real men, is that right? Is that what HYDRA hammered into that thick skull?”

Bucky’s damn lower lip is trembling again. “Sam--”

“No. No. Shut up. Listen to me. You know what, Buck? Real men lose control all the fucking time. Real men get attacked. Kidnapped. Tortured. Raped. It doesn’t make you any less of a man, or a person, or a soldier, or a friend, or anything else. It just makes you human. These are just… shitty things that happen in a shitty world and you just happened to win the fucking shit lottery, okay? It’s not your fault.”

“It’s not the same,” Bucky hisses quietly, mulish, even.

“Look. Do you think I’m weak?”

Bucky’s head snaps up. “What? No, of course not! What she did to you…” Bucky grimaces. “Ripping thousands of nerves in half like that, I know it seems like just some stupid little wound but that is one of the worst things you could ever inflict on someone. You handled that. You handle everything. You’re not weak.”

Wow. Okay. That was… a lot more than he needed to make his point, but he’d take it. Sure does make him feel better about how he reacted to the flaying, too. “Thanks, Bucky, that… that was actually really helpful to hear.”

Bucky nods like he was just doing his duty.

“So you don’t think I’m weak. But do you blame me for--” he knows he’s not going to get through the next bit if he thinks on it for too long, so just blazes through as fast as he can. “For choking you on my dick?”

Bucky winces. “I-- no. No, you had no choice.”

“Exactly.”

“That’s not-- You did it to make her stop hurting me.”

“ Ex. Act. Ly.”

“Sam, it’s not--”

“Yes, it is! It’s exactly the same. You realize I’m a victim right now, right? Attacked. Kidnapped. Tortured.” He stumbles over the last one, not because he’s ashamed but because Bucky already feels way too guilty as it is. But. He needs to hear it. Needs to. “Raped. That I did what I did to make the pain stop. That I did exactly what our captors wanted me to do. Because I had no choice. And I’m stuck here, just like you. Can’t escape. No control. They could bust right in here and do to me what they did to you and you know what? I wouldn’t last two years, Buck. Not even close. But you don’t think I’m weak. And I wouldn’t be weak even if I only made it ’til next Tuesday. Now shut up and finish your damn oatmeal while I stop your back and feet from turning into a petri dish.”

Sam snatches up the box of alcohol wipes. Rips one open with entirely too much force. His arm is burning and he’s wasting precious energy and he knows it, but this… this has all been way too long in coming and now that he’s unleashed it, he can’t rein it back. Oof. A single liter of fluids and he’s ready to rock and roll, apparently. 

Bucky looks… cowed. Maybe he gets it, maybe he doesn’t, but Sam’s said all he can say. He calms a little when Bucky picks up his bowl. Bucky doesn’t prop it back on his knees, just leans over them instead so his raw back is exposed to Sam. A showing of understanding? Or just capitulation? Sam doesn’t know and right now he’s not sure he has the energy to care. He’s got a job to do.

He eyes Bucky’s ravaged skin like he’s about to lead a mission. Tactical locations to get the best result with minimum resources. He doesn’t actually crack his knuckles, because he’s feeling brittle enough that they might do more than crack. But he mentally cracks his knuckles, and then gets to work.

Bucky, for the most part, stays silent, except for when Sam hurts him too much to swallow back the gasp. Which is… way too often. Sam tries to ignore that as Bucky scoops oatmeal one slow mouthful at a time and chews just about every single oat half a hundred times.

“I’m not saying you’re right,” Bucky says eventually, as Sam rips open a new wipe. “But you know I don’t… I don’t blame you. About. Any of it. And I don’t think you’re weak. I just. It’s different. For me.”

Sam sighs, and finishes the last awful welt. “That’s stupid,” he says tiredly, and gives Bucky a weary smile when Bucky looks over his shoulder at him. “But man, I’ll keep telling you the truth every day until it sticks.” 

Bucky turns away at that, and Sam looks down Bucky’s legs. There are trails of blood that end in dried pools at the back of his knees, and start somewhere Sam can’t see from this angle. Bucky’s insides must be… fuck. Agony. But they’re both going to have to rely on Franklin’s expertise for that one. It’s not… it’s not that Sam wouldn’t help Bucky like that. It’s that he knows he can’t even ask without… Well. Without making everything… weird.

Really, Wilson. Weird? That’s what you’re calling it now?

Besides, there’s only so many alcohol wipes and Sam’s saving the last half a dozen for the next bit. “Better to get it all done in one go,” he says lightly. “You wanna lie down or stay sitting up?”

“I wanna pass out,” Bucky says tiredly, and Sam… Sam’s dying of dehydration, his heart can’t take this kind of stress right now.

“Sleep, yes.” He says. “Pass out? Please no.”

Bucky slowly pitches sideways. “Sleep it is, then.” He lies where he falls, and Sam peels off his ripped and bloodied shirt and shoves it under his hips and legs.

“That fucking stinks,” Bucky complains without opening his eyes.

“You fucking stink, asshole. And you need something under you so you don’t freeze tonight.”

Bucky’s eyes slit open. “You’re not getting out of human space-blanket duty just because we played hide the pickle earlier.” His eyes shut again, so he misses Sam straight-up goggling. Dude really wasn’t kidding when he said three peeks and then back to normal, was he. “Now hurry up with the ouchy-ouch.”

Sam’s not sure he’s ready for sex jokes like an hour after they’ve… after they’ve… But maybe he’s got something to learn from Bucky, here. God knows Bucky’s had enough experience coping. So he tries on an annoyed smile and says, “You’re crabby when you’ve been tortured, has anyone ever told you that.”

“More than once,” Bucky replies, and suddenly Sam’s joke isn’t so funny anymore.

Bucky’s feet aren’t as bad as he imagined, though they’re certainly worse than he’d hoped. He goes as fast as he can, and though some of the larger wounds make Bucky’s legs jerk and toes curl when Sam cleans around them, he doesn’t make a noise the whole time.

“All done,” Sam says after. 

“Thanks, Doc. I give the bedside manner three stars.”

“A new PB,” Sam tells him, then eases his body to the floor ’til he’s lying kind of… adjacent to him. He has to shuffle the empty tray out of the way. “Just quickly,” he says, “before I get too comfortable, I should check if you can MacGyver some kind of bomb out of--” he does a quick count “--three plastic cups, a box of empty foil packets, and a plastic tray.”

“Yeah lemme just get my bomb-making kit out and--” Bucky snarks. “Wait. What’s a MacGyver?”

Sam maybe goes gray a little. “What’s a-- Jesus, we are going to binge so much TV when we get out of here.” He scootches in a little closer until he’s as close as he can get without physically touching Bucky. The floor is cold against his bare skin.

“Stop drawing it out,” Bucky says with his jaw tight. “Pretty sure we’re way past the coquettish stage, what with me having had your dick up my ass and all, so. Get in here.”

Sam’s hit with the awful realization that Bucky’s maybe handling this better than could be expected even of a super-brave supersoldier because it’s… christ, it’s familiar territory. It’s… Bucky’s lived this life longer than he ever lived a regular one.

Fuck .

“Tell me if I get too--”

“I know, I know.” Bucky reaches out with his flesh-and-blood hand and throws it over Sam’s waist, dragging him in the final few inches. It puts Sam’s chin somewhere in the vicinity of Bucky’s throat, their knees knocking awkwardly. Bucky’s as tense as Sam is, like maybe the three-peeks rule doesn’t actually make him magically calm, cool, and collected. It’s all bluster. But hey, fake it ’til you make it, right? 

They’re squished up into each other’s space and it’s--yeah, this is where they were gonna have to get if they want to stay warm. But it’s. A lot. Sam doesn’t know what to do with his limbs until Bucky sort of tips his thigh over Sam’s and he’s--he’s in the chair again, and there’s nothing he can do to stop Bucky from settling on his lap, thighs wide over the arms of the chair with no space left between them and he can’t he can’t he--

Bucky freezes, pulls away. “Shit, sorry,” he says, all the bluster and sarcasm instantly gone. It takes Sam a second to realize that Bucky can pull away, that he can too, that he’s not in that chair anymore. “Sorry, you’re-- I hurt you. Today. I should’ve asked. I’m sorry.”

Sam nods because Bucky’s not wrong, but also because he needs a second to catch his breath. “Yes, but. I repeat: not your fault.”

Bucky surprises him with, “Fine, okay. But this, here,” he wiggles his leg, “was.”

Fair enough. “S’okay, Buck. Really.”

“It’s not, though. I mean. I just… I thought all this was behind me, you know? The… the pain and the violence and the… the hurting people.” He squeezes his eyes shut, and a tear leaks out that Sam desperately wants to wipe away. But that feels… too intimate now. “Or at least I hoped it was, I wanted to believe it was. I was stupid. And now you’re all tangled up in it too and I--”

“Bucky. Bucky, hey.” This time it’s Sam who lifts a leg, except in slow motion, in case Bucky doesn’t want it anymore. In case he himself can’t handle it. But now that he’s not caught by surprise, it’s fine. Better than fine, even--it’s comfort sought, comfort given. He’s beyond grateful when Bucky accepts, melting against him. “Hope is never stupid, Buck.”

Bucky scoffs, but it’s more in self-defense than disbelief, Sam thinks. 

Sam’s leg rests warm and comfortable over Bucky’s. They lie there for a while, companionably quiet. Bucky’s eyes stay closed. His breathing evens out. Sam’s convinced he’s sleeping until he murmurs, “Sam?”

“Yeah, Buck.”

“Do you remember, before, when I. Uh. About how long it’s been since anyone’s just…” Bucky shifts his leg beneath Sam’s, rearranges his head where it’s pillowed on Sam’s arm. “...touched me for no reason.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, trying and failing to not sound so fucking sad about it.

“I mean I know we’re…” Bucky’s hand curls into a fist against Sam’s flank. He’s turning red. It’d be cute if it weren’t so awkward and depressing. “I know we’re sharing body heat and all that, but.” He swallows, licks his lips. Fortifying himself. 

Sam’s pretty sure he knows where Bucky’s going, but he’s terrified to jump to the wrong conclusions, so he’s gotta make the poor guy finish his thought. “S’ok, Bucky, go on.”

Bucky’s eyes open and meet Sam’s dead-on from just inches away. He holds the gaze for two or three seconds--reading Sam, maybe--before looking away. “But maybe you could just… Kinda. Hold me?”

Sam’s so thrilled (and proud and honored and, and, and) that Bucky even asked that he’s practically hugging him before the question is even fully out. He can’t actually bear-hug him the way he wants to because of the, well, because of the whole Picasso replica that Bucky is calling his back right now. But he makes up for it by totally not teasing Bucky even a tiny little bit as he clutches at his shoulders and basically tries to wriggle their bodies into the same space.

Bucky goes just… completely boneless against him. More even than when he was sleeping the other night. More even than when he fucking asphyxiated. Sam feels kind of like he did when he was losing pieces of himself, but in reverse. Like maybe he’s putting pieces back together, or Bucky is.

“Yeah,” he says belatedly. He curls an arm around Bucky’s neck and cups the back of his head, nudges gently until his forehead bumps Sam’s chin. “I can do that.”

They tuck themselves together just like that. Two overgrown men way too big to be tucked anywhere, but they make it work. Sam’s lips are near Bucky’s temple. Bucky’s nose is crushed into Sam’s shoulder. The metal arm whirrs softly beneath them, like the loudest and least-comfortable mattress the world has to offer. 

He thinks he could sleep, just like this. 

Screw that, he knows he could sleep like this. There’s only so far that adrenaline and a cup of Jell-o can take him, and who knows what they’re going to have to deal with tomorrow.

Which reminds him...

Ah, shit. 

“Buck,” he says, so quiet he can barely hear himself, though he knows Bucky will have no such problem.

He feels more than hears Bucky’s answering hum. 

“I know you don’t wanna… talk. About it. But I, uh. I gotta know, man.” He pauses to choose his next words carefully. “Is there, um. Anything else?”

“Hm?”

“Anything else they can. Do. That they can make you do.”

He feels the exact moment Bucky gets the question. His shoulders go tight. Christ. Sam feels awful. Bucky shouldn’t--he shouldn’t have to talk about something like this if he doesn’t want to. But they’re both still in enemy territory and he. He needs to know. He genuinely does need to know if something can get in the way of a, well, an escape attempt, or anything.

“Buck. I, uh. I need to know what that could mean. I need to--”

“You pretty much saw it all,” Bucky says tightly, then doesn’t say anything else for so long that Sam thinks maybe that’s it.

“Okay,” he says evenly, then--

“The trigger words just set the… the play mode,” Bucky forces out. “They stop me moving, let the other words work. Those are for. Are to.” He grunts like he’s literally yanking each word from his lungs. “They tell me where to go. What to. Uh. Do.”

The play mode. Jesus H Christ on a Johnny cake. That’s so messed up he doesn’t even know where to begin.

“Skimming right past the that is so fucked up and also so profoundly not in any way your fault portion of my response, I really do need to know if they can, uh. Make you do that. Again.”

Bucky winces. “It kind of is, though. My fault, I mean.”

Sam sucks in a huge breath, all the better to yell For fuck’s sake with, but before he can get it out, Bucky says, “Look, no, I mean it this time.” He starts to pull away, but Sam tightens his grip--not enough to keep him there against his will, but enough to let him know that no matter what he’s about to say, Sam still cares about him. “When I was in Wakanda, and Shuri was working on how to deprogram me? I never. Um. Told her.”

“Bucky--”

“She’s a kid, Sam. I wasn’t about to drop that in the lap of some teenager just so I could sleep better at night! And she said she got rid of all of them, the whole--the place in my brain that responded at all. I didn’t know she literally needed every single word!”

Sam’s flare of anger is almost deep enough for him to call Bucky on his bullshit. He didn’t hide this to protect Shuri, he hid it to protect himself. He was ashamed. 

But Sam’s not that cruel, no matter how stupid Bucky was. Besides, they’ve got bigger problems to deal with right now than Bucky’s 1940s brand of toxic masculinity.

“Fine, all right. It’s all right. Really, Buck, I understand.” He squeezes Bucky’s neck, tries to rearrange his face into some semblance of calm. “Can they make you do that again?”

“They can initiate the sequence whenever they want. But it usually ends after I uh. Pass out a few times.”

“Well,” Sam chokes. “Let’s keep knocking you out as a last resort, okay? Can you tell me the end phrase?”

Bucky opens his mouth. His face goes red and his lips move, but no sound comes out.

“Figured as much,” Sam says. “S’all good. We’ll… think of something. But uh. Were there any other. Um. Actions? That they could force you into?”

Bucky squints. “The play mode--”

“--Please stop calling it that.” This is such a bizarre conversation to be having while spooning face-on with one pair of pants between them.

“It’s from back in the forties. I didn’t think--I mean, I genuinely didn’t even know the codes still existed. Only two people ever even knew them, as far as I could tell. But no, they can’t make me violent or anything.” He pauses, and Sam can feel the weight of it, of the memories Bucky’s struggling to cope with. “Mostly they just used them to punish me, and it’d… been a while since they’d needed that. The uh… the asset was eager to obey any order, so. No point in the archaic ones if I was already defrosted for a mission.”

“What, and I mean this in the worst way possible, the fuck was wrong with those people.”

“Well,” Bucky says. “It’s not just them, is it.”

Given that they’re currently in a literal torture dungeon, Sam’s willing to concede the point. “For future record,” he says. “If she gives you the option between my dinner and an end to the torture party, I’ll take Option B next time.”

Sam kicks himself as Bucky’s face falls. 

“You’re gonna need your strength,” Bucky says quietly. And then, even quieter, “Trust me.”

Sam does. Bucky knows he does. Which means this… is about something else. Something he can’t say in front of the cameras. Something, maybe, like escape?

“I do,” he confirms: message received. And if Bucky is planning an escape tomorrow, then they need their rest, too. “Enough talking for today, I think. Sleep?”

Bucky shuffles just a little bit closer, hugs Sam tight with the arm wrapped around his waist. “Yeah,” he murmurs into Sam’s neck. And then, “Thank you, Sam. Really. For everything.”

Sam feels a great big bubble of something terrible climb up his throat. Something world-ruining. He holds Bucky’s shoulders and thinks of Bucky surviving this for decades, thinks of Bucky losing control for three peeks at a time and then, like a force of fucking nature, clawing it back. Thinks of Bucky all alone in his cell for seventy fucking years, of Bucky all alone breaking free, of Bucky desperate to fix mistakes he never even made, and the terrible words in his throat burn like acid because they don’t feel like You’re welcome. They feel bigger. They feel smaller. They feel useless and huge and awful and they feel like I love you and swallowing them back down into the pit they came from feels even worse, somehow. But he can handle that pain if it means giving Bucky even a single moment of peace.

“Anytime, Buck,” he says instead, and closes his eyes.

Notes:

Nearly every beautiful comment on the last chapter begged for some comfort, so here we are :D We think the chapter count is final now, though the last one may be a long one, and a week or so in coming. But it shall come. And as always, we thank thank THANK YOU for all the lovely care and feeding of your authors you've provided throughout this fic!

Chapter 10

Summary:

In which the authors discover how hard it is to write fight scenes.

Notes:

Yeah so this turned into like 11K and we weren't even done yet so we found a decent stopping point and the chapter count has gone up once again. But the next chapter's completed except for an edit (we'll post soon!), and hopefully the last chapter will not turn into two. The happy ending is coming, we promise!

Sam doesn’t sleep the night--or whatever passes for the night in this place--but for once he wakes up feeling like warmed-over death instead of straight-up-cold death. Bucky’s hot against him, sound asleep and, by the look and feel of it, actually peaceful. But is he feverish, or is this just normal supersoldier metabolism burning high?

Nothing Sam can do about it either way, except maybe mention it to Boss Lady so she can put it on the goon to-do list in between rounds of torture or whatever. So he lies there beneath the bright lights and watches Bucky sleep, face smooth and breathing even for the first time since they got here. Sam’s arm is numb beneath Bucky’s head, and his leg is cramped where it’s tossed over Bucky’s, and it slowly dawns on him that he--holy shit thank Christ on a cornbread--has to pee. Oh wow. What inconvenient timing to discover his kidneys still work. He wants to get up and confirm the rest of the plumbing still works too, but wild horses couldn’t drag him away from Bucky right now. So. He lies there and watches.

Okay. Stares maybe. Gazes. Maybe. Maybe a little too much. Even here, even now, it strikes him how beautiful Bucky is. Especially with all those lines of stress and pain smoothed away.

He takes stock  as best as he can without moving. He can see part of Bucky’s shoulder with Bucky pitched forward into his chest, and there doesn’t seem to be anything bleeding. The right side of his body is still pink, though, which means the radiation burns haven’t healed all the way yet. Which might be why Bucky’s doing his best impression of a furnace right now. Still, it’s better than yesterday. Better even than this morning. 

He can’t see Bucky’s feet from this angle, but he assumes they’re in the same condition as Bucky’s back. 

He wants to hope that that’s it. That the injuries he can see are the only ones he needs to worry about, but he knows there’s got to be internal damage as well. Boss Lady hadn’t been picky about where she landed that baton. And those goons ripped Bucky up bad. Sam’s got field training for medical emergencies, but this… he doesn’t know what he’ll do if there’s something seriously wrong. If there’s something wrong on the inside. 

At least. At least in sleep he looks peaceful. At least like this Sam can let himself believe that Bucky’s fine, inside and out.

No one should be allowed to… to do this. To take that from someone. And yes, Sam hurts, and yes, this sucks, but for a moment it’s the unfairness that hits him hardest. This isn’t fair. Bucky shouldn’t have to deal with this again. Deal with this still.

He resists the urge to do something stupid. Like press his lips to Bucky’s forehead. Or pee his pants.

The second option almost gets decided for him when a voice blares out and makes him jump right through his skin. 

“Wakey wakey cuddle-bugs!”

Sam’s about to say something snarky in return, but he’s stopped by an elbow in the gut and then a metal elbow in the gut and, okay, yeah, he’s not about to be saying anything anytime soon.

Bucky goes absolutely feral in his arms, shoving back so hard his head hits the wall. Sam reaches out to stop him from going any further, which has the opposite effect because Bucky flinches away from that hand too, and then his back hits the wall and, ah shit.

“Don’t, don’t,” Sam says as Bucky cringes away from the wall, then cringes away from Sam again and ends up right back where he started. Fuck’s sake.

“It’s me,” Sam says, but there’s no way Bucky hears him over the sound of the speakers blaring again.

“Kindly stop panicking and tie Mr. Wilson to the chair, Soldier!”

Yeah, like yelling at someone in the grips of a panic attack through a speaker dialed to 11 has ever helped. 

Bucky opens his eyes at least, and Sam keeps his hands near his face with his palms out and Bucky doesn’t--relax, really. But he stops looking like he’s about to throttle Sam or throw his ravaged back against the wall again, so. Small wins.

“Buck?” Sam tries.

“The chair, Soldier,” the voice says, sounding bored.

Bucky breathes heavily for a moment and locks eyes with Sam. Barely five seconds pass, and then there’s a series of clicks, and red dots appear on Sam’s chest.

“Yeah, okay,” Bucky says, and starts to get to his feet. He’s slow about it, stiff, clearly still in pain, but at least he’s not leaving bloody footprints on the floor anymore. Sam follows suit. Bucky puts his hand on the small of Sam’s back, which is a nice gesture, considering they’re about to go through another day of learning the vocal range of Bucky’s screams. 

“Forget it, Buck,” Sam blurts. His feet freeze so suddenly he almost trips over himself, and he grabs Bucky’s metal arm half for balance and half to stop him. “Let them put me out of my misery. You gotta... you gotta get outta here. We both know the only reason you haven’t is me.”

Sam finds himself at the receiving end of what he imagines was the last thing every victim of the Winter Soldier ever saw. It’s… Well. Sam almost pisses his pants again.

“Shut up,” Bucky snaps. He peels Sam’s hand off his arm, holding him by the forearm and staring him down so hard Sam wants to melt right through the damn floor. His fingers flex lightning fast against Sam’s skin. Flex again. Again--

Wait. Is this… holy shit, is he using Morse Code? That shit’s so old-school he might as well be using fucking semaphore. Or signal fires.

Squeeze-squeeze-squeeze. Squeeeeeeze. Bucky’s eyebrows flick for just a second as he holds Sam’s gaze. Squeeeeeeze-squeeeeeeze. Squeeze.“You done being stupid?” Bucky demands, and then repeats the sequence, so fast Sam’s brain can barely process. It takes him a too-long moment to dredge up the translations from the depths of his Academy-days memories, but then it all mercifully slots into place and--

t-r-u-s-t-m-e

“Yeah.” Sam nods. “Yeah, of course, sorry. Yeah.” Whatever Bucky’s planned, this is it. Now that Sam’s paying attention, he feels it. So he lets Bucky lead him to the chair. Sits down. Watches as Bucky stoops to pick up the gunge-caked ropes. There’s enough blood and sweat and god knows what else on them that they’ve completely changed color.

“That shit’s a bioweapon at this point,” he says. “Maybe you shouldn’t touch it.”

“Well unless they wanna come in here and give me fresh ones,” Bucky says. He situates himself directly in front of Sam--right between Sam’s chest and the laser sights, Sam can’t help but notice. “Besides, you’re a bioweapon at this point too.”

He’s coiling the rope while he speaks. Back to the camera. Hunches down in front of Sam’s right leg and pushes the rope against the chair with one hand for show while--god, is there anything this guy can’t do--tying a fat knot in the end with his other hand.

And then, instead of actually tying Sam up, Bucky turns around to face the camera, still holding the coiled rope, and says, “You want him tied down, you come in here and do it yourself.”

Sam can’t see the little red dots dancing on Bucky’s chest, but he’s sure they’re there. They’re not on Sam, of course, because Bucky’s fucking massive and he’s standing right in front of him. Like a-- like a fucking martyr idiot.

“Bucky!” Sam whisper-shouts.

“Shut up, Sam.” He reaches behind him, squeezes his hand around Sam’s knee: stay put.

“Are we really doing this again?” Boss Lady, bored, over the speaker. At least she’s turned the volume down.

“We’ve already established you won’t shoot me,” Bucky says. “Trigger words only work in person, and I’m pretty sure I can kill you before you can get them all out. You can’t bust in here and tase me, either. Heart murmur, remember? So I gotta say, I’m not seeing a lot of options for you.” The pause that follows is downright dramatic. “Unless your men think they can take me hand to hand?”

This is his plan? Fight some unknown number of goons armed with batons and god knows what else while beat half to hell at the jump? Fucking idiot. Sam’s too damn mad to even feel insulted that Bucky said “take me” instead of “take us,” like Sam doesn’t even count here.

Which, to be fair, maybe he doesn’t. He’s consumed a single bowl of Jell-o and a liter and a half of fluids in four days. Not exactly in peak form right now.

Still, he’ll fight like a fucking wildcat if given a chance.

“I don’t like it when my boys get smart with me,” Boss Lady says, which, wow, isn’t condescending at all. “Last chance to do as you’re told now, Soldier, before things get ugly.”

“You’re gonna take my arm apart. That’s not ugly?”

“Uglier,” Boss Lady says.

Bucky flips a bird at the camera with said arm.

And then collapses to one knee with a grunt so loud that--

No. Wait. Shit. No. That wasn’t a grunt, or at least not just a grunt--that was a gunshot. Still fucking echoing in their small concrete space and she…

She fucking. She fucking shot him. Bucky’s hand tightens on Sam’s leg as he goes down. Pulls. Pulls so hard Sam comes right out of the chair, going to the ground himself and still, he realizes, tucked entirely behind Bucky.

“Just because I chose not to shoot you before didn’t mean I wouldn’t shoot you now,” she says, smug.

“Ow,” Bucky bitches--actually bitches, there’s no other word for that kind of drama and sarcasm and utter lack of fucks--as his hand leaves Sam’s thigh to clutch at his own. “Still not tying him up, though.”

“Bucky!” Sam whisper-shouts a little harder, in case he missed the first one. Because this? Losing even more blood? Is not a good plan.

“Better check on your friend, there, soldier. That round’s a vest-buster.”

So she’d meant to shoot him right through Bucky, then. Thank god supersoldiers are so dense. In more ways than one. “Nice try, psycho,” Sam says. “Ain’t even an exit wound.”

Another deafening explosion of noise, and Bucky’s upper body lurches back and to the right, and suddenly Sam’s not feeling so smug anymore.

“For fuck’s sake!” he shouts--at Bucky, at Boss Lady, at this whole crazy violent fucking mess.

But Bucky’s still blocking Sam’s entire body from the ceiling guns, and there’s still no exit wounds--it’s real fucking obviouos what with how Bucky’s still naked and all. Bucky reaches back with his now-bloody metal hand, makes sure Sam’s still tucked tight behind him. Sam doesn’t think he could be tucked much tighter. Bucky’s bare ass is practically in his lap and Sam is… Sam is not terribly okay with that given their recent history.

“S’ok, Sam. I got this.” There’s an odd tone to Bucky’s voice, and it’s not anger, and it’s not agony, it’s… Jesus, is that crazy motherfucker smiling?

Has. Has everyone lost their shit today? “You do not ‘got this,’ Bucky, you are full of bullet holes!”

“Two is not ‘full,’” Bucky grits, even as he falls from one knee to both, slumps back so his weight’s pressing into Sam. Sam can’t see the bleeding but he’s terrified it’s bad. Prays it isn’t, that the slugs left inside him are stopping him up like a cork in a bottle. They should, right? Vest busters are made to hold their shape, not mushroom or shatter. Way less damage that way if they didn’t actually have to punch through kevlar first. Way more likely to plug the hole they made--at least in this lucky supersoldier-induced circumstance where they failed to exit out the other side.

Sam holds on to that kernel of hope. Fuck, Sam clings to it.

“Tie Mr. Wilson to his chair, Soldier,” Boss Lady demands.

“How bout you go fuck yourself,” Bucky suggests.

“You can’t protect him forever,” she says, ominous, and then another ear-shattering rapport echoes off the walls and Bucky cries out as a bullet rips into his right biceps. Sam sees the blood spray and can’t figure if it’s a cruelty or a miracle that the bullet didn’t overpenetrate, even through this smaller target, and punch into his own body. It’s probably lodged in Bucky’s humerus, which means on top of the myriad other issues, his arm’s broken.

“‘S’it a fair fight now?” Bucky slurs at the camera. He’s getting heavier against Sam. Like all-his-weight kind of heavy. Like Sam can barely breathe kind of heavy. So it’s no surprise when Bucky tips sideways and goes down hard with an awful grunt, taking Sam right along with him.

How. How is this a plan? Unless-- No. No.

Unless he plans to get himself killed.

But Bucky’s metal hand is clamped around Sam’s arm and Sam feels him squeeze again, long and short in perfect sequence and this time he’s looking for it so he catches every letter: 

b-e-r-e-a-d-y

This motherfucker. This absolute goddamn self-sacrificing crazy stupid motherfucker. He’s… he’s faking it. 

In that case. Yeah. Sam’s ready all right. Ready to fucking kill him for being so goddamn fucking reckless and dumb. Assuming all these bullets don’t get the job done first.

“You should help your friend, Mr. Wilson,” Boss Lady says through the speaker.

“Nuh uh,” Sam replies from half beneath, half behind Bucky’s bulk. “I’m good right here, thanks.”

“If you could see what I’m seeing, you’d change your mind. All that blood…”

She’s lying. She’s gotta be lying. Those slugs are stemming the tide, damn it, they are. Must be, because Bucky’s hand squeezes rapid-fire on Sam’s arm again: n-o.

Besides, if she’s so fucking worried about her asset bleeding out, she can come in here and patch him up herself.

“Yeah, uh. Thanks for your concern and all? But we’re good. Really.”

“First you choke him unconscious on your erection, and now you won’t even put pressure on a bullet wound? Great friend you got there, Soldier.”

Bucky says nothing, which makes sense because he’s playing dead, but Sam can admit it to himself--that hurts anyway. Like. A whole fucking lot.

So. He’s done talking to a speaker. Next thing she says to him she can say to his face. So he can rearrange her face like a goddamn Mr. Potato Head. Except, you know, with his fists. 

Well, okay, one more thing: “You’re the one who shot him. Why don’t you come in here and clean up your own damn mess.”

No reply. But. There’s no way she’ll let Bucky bleed out. Not until she’s done with him, anyway, and that day hasn’t come yet. But. Just in case. Without moving in a way the camera can see, Sam taps a finger against a small patch of unmarred skin on Bucky’s back: y-o-u-o-k

He’s so sure Bucky’s gonna squeeze back y-e-s and nothing else that he’s gearing up his annoyance in advance, but it seems the guy’s learned the importance of honesty in the last few days: n-o-t-l-e-a-k-i-n-g-m-u-c-h, he begins. Then pauses, like he’s bracing himself. Squeezes extra-hard: f-u-c-k-i-n-g-h-u-r-t-s

Sympathy and anger stir uncomfortably in Sam’s chest, alongside a hefty dose of worry. This was… so fucking dumb of Bucky. But on the other hand? It might… actually work? Assuming that Bucky can keep focused--and conscious.

“Well?” Sam asks the camera. “You coming or what?”

“No rush,” she answers back, like her asset isn’t maybe dying in his cell, like she’s got all the time in the world. If there really isn’t too much blood, she can no doubt see that for herself. Then again, if that’s the case, they might never open that door. They’ve gotta be convinced Bucky’s out, or at least too far gone to fight, before they’ll take the risk. And Sam doesn’t know how to help that along without making them shoot the poor guy a fourth time.

“Yeah, uh. Kinda can’t breathe here,” he tries. “Dude’s heavy.”

“So roll him off.” She sounds amused. Like she’s schoolyard daring him to lose his human shield. 

“Already tried.” Still, Sam makes a play at it for the camera, shoving halfheartedly at Bucky’s hip. Bucky moans, low and incoherent like he’s three-quarters unconscious, but doesn’t move at all. “Dunno if you noticed, but he’s massive, and I’m kinda dying.”

“Mmhmm. Tell you what. How about you two lie there and suffer for a while, and then I’ll think of sending in the cavalry.” 

y-e-s Bucky squeezes before Sam can snipe back at her. Sam’s not actually suffocating, so if waiting works for Bucky, it works for him. “Fine. But it’s on you if we die.” He closes his eyes, play-shoves at Bucky again. Mutters, “Not that you care, probably.”

The room goes quiet after that, so Sam takes the opportunity to rest as best he can on the cold concrete floor with the hot heavy weight of his bleeding best friend pressed against him. Bucky shifts or groans or shudders on occasion, but he too gradually settles into near-perfect stillness, like he’s asleep or unconscious. Sam’s pretty sure he’s faking either way, but he’s too scared to check. One, what if the camera somehow picks up Bucky’s reply. Two, what if Bucky doesn’t reply.

She makes them lie there so long it’s basically a whole new kind of torture. Thirty minutes? Maybe forty? Sam’s stuck wondering the whole time if Bucky really is out cold, or if he actually deserves a damn Oscar for a masterfully controlled fake-out despite how ridiculously much pain he must be in. It fucking kills Sam that he literally has no idea if he’s gonna end up spending the day killing bad guys, or tied to a chair while they dissect Bucky’s arm. And, he still has to piss. Like. Really bad.

Finally, finally, Sam thinks he maybe detects a faint rustling outside the cell. Sam tenses, at the ready, but. Nothing happens.

“Mr. Wilson.”

He’s so wound up he literally lurches at Boss Lady’s voice through the speaker. Can’t let her see that, though.

“What. Can’t you see we’re napping here?”

“Or faking. How about you thump your fist against the asset’s right shoulder, nice and hard.”

“How about you thump your fist against your face, nice and hard.”

God, she’s so fucking smug he can hear her damn smile in her reply. “Or I could just shoot him again, see if he reacts to that.”

For fuck’s… “No! No. No need for that, okay? He’s out cold. Look.” Sam mutters Sorry Buck under his breath as he snakes his arm around Bucky’s torso--don’t shoot me don’t shoot me don’t shoot me--balls his fist, and brings it down hard against the bullet wound.

Somehow, miraculously, Bucky doesn’t react. Or he’s really out, idiot. But. But no. Even while unconscious, people respond to pain like that. He’s fine. He’s just. He’s holding it back. He’s that much of a badass.

“See?” Sam calls to the camera. He barely gets the word out; his lungs are being all. Weird. Shaky. His hand is wet with Bucky’s blood. “Out cold.”

She must be satisfied because, at long last, the hidden door busts open.

Bucky’s hearing is eerie sharp, and his tactical processing is even sharper. Of course his eyes are closed--playing dead still, just… just playing--but Sam’s sure Bucky knows exactly how many men are spilling through the door, and exactly where each of them is. Heck, he probably knows how big each of them are by the falls of their damn footsteps.         

Sam’s not quite as sharp, no matter how much he tries to focus, but he counts six in a standard wedge formation, which is about all they can fit in here and still have room to maneuver. Especially since the table’s in the way. They part to flow around it, and then keep flowing, and--shit. The two pointmen flank around behind him, and suddenly Sam finds himself--and a still unmoving Bucky--at the center of a closing ring of soldiers. 

At least they’re only armed with batons, which means Boss Lady’s serious about keeping him and Bucky alive for now. Of course, there’s still the ceiling snipers, but. Well. One fucking problem at a time.

The two guards nearest Bucky approach him with so much caution it’s almost comical. It’s not fear, Sam doesn’t think, as much as an awareness of what Bucky’s capable of. God knows he wouldn’t want to be in their shoes right now either.

They stay well out of grabbing range, sidling up near Bucky’s legs, batons at the ready. Bucky stays deathly still, even as one of them draws his foot back and kicks so hard at the bullet wound on Bucky’s thigh that even Sam is jarred by it.

“Hey! Was that really necessary?” he shouts, because now or later or both, Bucky’s gonna feel that.

“Stuff it, Wilson,” the guard says, then nods at his compatriots. The two flanking them move in to grab Sam, and the two in front move in to grab Bucky.

“Padeniye,” one of them says.

And then shit gets crazy.

Bucky lashes out with both arms, fast and deadly as a damn water moccasin. He smashes the two guards’ faces into each other with such force that Sam hears bones snap, and before he can even think of reacting, Bucky dumps both bodies on top of him.

Which is really, truly, excellent thinking, because two of the ceiling guns go off and even through two bulky men in tactical gear, Sam can feel the impacts. He doesn’t wait around for the bullets to hollow out his human shields, just shoves them off him as best he can in his too-weak state, grabs one’s baton along the way, and grapples with the guards who grabbed him from behind. 

That puts the ceiling guns out of commission--too high a risk of hitting their own men now--and Bucky’s already on his feet and dealing with guards #3 and 4, one of whom is fighting for control of the knotted rope Bucky must’ve whipped around his neck. Sam’s too busy with his own fight to pay much more attention to Bucky’s, but neither of them seem to be pulling off clean wins--or any wins--now that they’ve lost the element of surprise. Sam’s still stuck on his damn back, and Bucky’s doing his best impression of the Black Knight, right arm and left leg virtually useless but still swinging like a fucking champ.

Sam gets a leg up around guard #5’s neck, and somehow manages to smash the handle of the baton into #6’s temple. 6 goes down hard, but 5 gets a fist around Sam’s bandaged wound and Sam howls, drops the baton, the whole damn world graying away beneath agony so slick he can’t even begin to wrestle it down. 

But then 5’s hand slips in all that fresh blood, and Sam’s brain screams squeeze, even if he can’t quite puzzle out why, and he locks every muscle in his legs and hips and torso as tight as he can and someone’s grappling at his leg and making terrible choking sounds and he remembers 5’s head is locked between his thighs and he throws his last ounces of energy into wrenching his hip and hears the unmistakable snap of bone and then--

“Sam!”

Bucky. It’s. That’s Bucky. In trouble. He… Sam rolls to his hands and knees, panting hard, acid eating into his arm and his elbow buckles, he nearly face-plants onto the guard whose neck he just snapped, spots a holstered weapon and grabs for it. Doesn’t budge. Holster’s locked. Sam grabs for the guard’s hand instead and mashes the thumb against the sensor and the lock pops free, he’s got the gun and the safety’s off and Boom! Boom! But it’s not him who fired, it’s-- 

He looks up at Bucky, bloody and teetering and fucking relentless, left arm out in front of him as the last standing guard fires, fires as Bucky limps directly at him, bullets pinging harmlessly to the ground as vibranium absorbs their force. Sam takes aim at the guard but before he can fire, the ceiling guns go off again and he dives for cover behind a dead guard, shards of concrete slicing across his cheek as the vest-busters crater into the floor a mere inch from his chest. He fires back wild at the ceiling, fires wild at the guard emptying his clip at Bucky, lands flat on his back and doesn’t know how or why until fire sears through his flank and fuck, he’s been shot, right through the the torso of the dead guard but it’s not-- It’s just a flesh wound (the real kind, not the Black Knight kind), and he fires again, again as Bucky rushes the guard, goes wide but Bucky takes the distraction to literally smash the guard’s face in with his vibranium elbow and as the man goes down, Bucky actually fucking vaults off his shoulders, flies out and up, leading with that vicious vibranium fist, until he crashes right through the ceiling where the guns are firing.

And then drops right back down, dragging a sniper with him by the shirt-front, and slams him dead into the concrete in time to cushion his own fall with the body.

Bucky lands with a harsh shout, and Sam realizes they’ve both been yelling this whole time, half battle cry, half screaming through the pain, but clearly it’s working because Bucky doesn’t even pause for a second before rolling off the body and into a perfect crouch with the sniper’s rifle in his hands, and then he’s firing up into the hole he punched through the ceiling and there’s yelling and blood and a second body falls through the hole and then--

Everything goes suddenly, blindingly quiet.

Bucky slumps onto his ass, takes half a dozen deep breaths, and asks, “You okay?”

He’s not looking at Sam; he’s too busy guarding the door and the ceiling hole.

“Am I--” Sam laughs. Fucking. Laughs. “M’fine.” He peers at the wound on his side, presses hard to ease the burn. “Flesh wound.” It’s not even bleeding much, but he figures that has more to do with dehydration-related circulation issues than the seriousness of the wound. “Are you okay?”

Bucky laughs right back. Or. Wheezes, more like. Sam’s like… 95% sure the wheeze came from his mouth rather than a sucking chest wound. He sounds like a normal 106-year-old, one foot and four toes in the grave. Fucking terrifying, and for a second Sam’s eyes and throat burn and he’s sure he’s gonna--

“I thought you were dead, asshole.”

“Sorry.” Sounds like he means it, too. 

Sam tips forward until he’s on his hands and knees again, crawls over to the body of the second sniper and relieves it of its automatic rifle. Heavy. Either he’s weaker than he realizes, or the magazine’s nearly full. Or both. “How the fuck did you stay so fucking quiet when he kicked you?”

Bucky lets his eyes close for like, two whole seconds, which Sam figures is straight-up indulgence in his world. “Years and years of practice,” he says quietly, and fuck if that isn’t the most ominous shit Sam’s ever heard. “Takes a lot out of you, so I don’t bother much, but this kind of situation? Was literally what HYDRA put me through all that training for. So.” He shrugs with his left shoulder. 

Sam decides he never, ever, ever wants to know. Asks instead, “How’d you know the ceiling would be so thin there?”

“Can’t aim a gun through an eight-inch-thick floor. Had to be a cut-out.”

Fuck, Sam misses having a working brain. They’ve gotta… they’ve gotta get moving. Get out of here before the boss sends in a whole damn army. He can’t trust himself not to miss, well. Everything.

He does notice Bucky’s left hand clamped around his thigh, though, blood oozing between those metal fingers. Blood literally dripping down the other hand, from the holes in his biceps and shoulder. He’s got that arm curled in around his stomach like he’s done using it for the foreseeable future. Shit. 

“Buck, man, can you even stand?”

“Can you?” he shoots back, but it’s not mean, not really. He’s just. Hurting. Pissy. Whatever. It’s fine. 

It takes Sam a few seconds, but he stumbles to his feet. Touches a hand to the wall for balance until the world stops fading in and out and the buzzing in his ears goes away. “I’m good,” he insists--to Bucky, to himself. He hoists the rifle. Takes a step toward Bucky. Another. Steadier as he goes. Reaches Bucky’s side and offers him his free hand. “Come on. Upsy-daisy. I’ve got eyes on the door.”

Which is when he realizes that the door is in fact closed, and there’s no handle or hinges or anything on this side, so they’re still fucking stuck here.

“They won’t come for us in here,” Bucky grits as he lets Sam pull him to his feet. He taps a metal finger against his stolen rifle. “Too dangerous now for a head-on clash. Better to use their knowledge of the layout here against us.”

Fucking fantastic. Almost as fantastic as the way Bucky’s swaying, the way he’s putting absolutely no weight on his left leg, the way his right arm is still tucked in tight against his stomach and his skin has gone nearly gray with the effort of getting vertical.

They’re… they’re gonna fucking die here.

“Pull your shit together,” Bucky snaps. And, wow. Dickish. 

But also fair, Sam supposes. Bucky’s right. They can’t afford despair, not now. Besides, if Bucky can keep moving with bullet holes and torn-up feet, Sam can damn well keep moving while thirsty.

And having to piss. Still.

“We gotta go up,” Bucky says, nodding at the hole in the ceiling. Which Sam totally would’ve realized if he had two hydrated brain cells left to rub together.

“Fun,” Sam deadpans, and staggers over to the part of the floor directly beneath the new skylight Bucky installed. “I always said you should be an architect.” Bucky doesn’t even have the energy to glare at him, which is kind of depressing. “We gotta patch you up before we go anywhere. You’re leaking.”

He really is. Even his back and feet are bleeding again. Bucky looks down at himself and shrugs. But then surprises Sam with a quiet, “Okay.”

They don’t have much to work with, just the bloody messes of the dead guards' clothes. He tries to rip some strips off where they're cleanest, and is mortified to realize he can’t. Isn’t strong enough anymore. Bucky doesn’t judge or tease as he moves in to do it for Sam. Looks downright soft about it, in fact.

Gross. 

Bucky rips a pant leg into strips and hands them meekly back to Sam, then props his left shoulder against the wall and slumps there, unmoving, to let Sam do what he will.

“Listen Buck. Ain’t neither of us got a drop of energy to spare, so don’t be pulling your macho bullshit here. You need to squirm, squirm. You need to scream, scream. Cos with those bullets still in there, this is really gonna hurt, and we both already know you’re the toughest son of a bitch I ever met so you ain’t got nothin’ to prove to either of us, okay?”

Bucky meets his eyes for a moment, then nods. 

Sam starts with the thigh wound, which is bleeding the worst. No need to risk a tourniquet, not with how fast Bucky clots, but a pressure bandage is absolutely necessary, so Sam torques the cloth strip down hard over the wound.

Bucky almost kicks him in the head.

“Sorry!” Bucky hisses through clenched teeth, metal hand clamped so hard above the bullet wound that Sam’s genuinely concerned he’s gonna break his own leg. 

“S’all good,” Sam reassures him. “Lemme see that arm.”

It takes a few seconds, but Bucky straightens up for him, holds his arm a couple inches from his body. 

“Ready?” Sam asks as he wends the next strip of cloth around Bucky’s biceps.

Bucky huffs. “No. Do it anyway.” And then screams “Fuck!” at the top of his lungs when Sam does. 

The shoulder’s the hardest wound to plug, but he makes it work. Bucky looks green by the time it’s finished, but he pushes from the wall with a grunt and staggers over to the ceiling hole, and at least now he’s not leaving a trail of gore behind him like some stupid white frat boy in a damn horror movie.

Bucky stares up, studies the hole. Normally he’d just… jump, probably. Wouldn’t even need to do a pull-up. But this situation isn’t exactly normal.

“Here,” Sam says, then cups his hands beside his knee and braces to give Bucky a leg up. Which earns him a look so unimpressed it’s almost comical. 

“I’m 260 pounds, Sam.”

Sam braces harder.

Bucky rolls his eyes and goes to collect the chair. Right. Yes. The chair.

Wow, is it possible for brains to go backward? This doesn’t bode well for their escape.

Sam balances on the back of the chair while Bucky holds it still, and then only screams a little when he uses both arms to haul himself up into the dark crawlspace that’d served as the snipers’ nest. Okay, maybe he screams a lot, but chin-ups while dying was never his specialty. 

He scans the room to confirm they’re alone and then turns back to get his gun and give Bucky a hand up, only to find Bucky squinting at the ceiling from the other side of the room.

“Don’t,” Sam says, but Bucky’s already taking a running start toward the chair, which he vaults off of to land half-in half-out of the hole. Putting Sam’s shoddy field bandages to the test right off the bat, then. Great.

“Move,” Bucky grunts, and Sam wriggles backward until he’s in the larger room around the crawlspace. Bucky army-crawls after and only leaves, like, a little smear of blood behind him. Probably fine?

He gets two whole seconds to check that the bandages are still holding before Bucky’s hustling him on. They’ve had almost ten minutes’ grace so far, but no way have they killed everyone in this base, which means they’re still in enemy territory and probably minutes away from finding out just how many goons this place has been hiding.

Plus, Boss Lady wasn’t one of the bodies back in that cell. And they’re not leaving here until Bucky gets to put some bullet holes in her stupid face. Hopefully leaving enough stupid face for Sam to fit a few of his own bullet holes.

The room opens onto a hallway, and they go left for no reason other than it’s a shorter distance to the end of the hall. They move like a well-oiled machine that’s been left in the scrapyard for a few decades. Which means they stagger in semi-formation until they hit a staircase.

“Rock paper scissors for which way we go?” Sam asks.

“Up,” Bucky grunts. “We’re underground.”

That’s a. Piece of information Sam probably also should have known. The air pressure or the striking lack of windows or… Something should’ve given it away.

They take the first flight relatively well, and then Sam has to pause to lean against the railing and catch his breath while Bucky keeps his gun up to cover him. And maybe he’ll find some time to be embarrassed about that later, but he doesn’t really get a chance because no sooner does he get back upright than a door opens and then slams closed somewhere below them. 

“Soldier,” Boss Lady snarls, and Sam aims his gun down the center of the stairwell and pulls the trigger, kind of hoping it’ll scare her back to wherever she came from. Hell, hopefully. 

The gun cracks so loudly in the stairwell that even Bucky flinches, and the ringing echoes for so long Sam stops being able to tell if it’s in his head or not. Bucky has his hands clapped over his ears. 

“Sorry,” he mutters, but Bucky doesn’t take his hands away, and Sam realises the ringing has stopped, and the only sound left is--

“Zabyvat.”

“Oh you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.” She’s yelling the words from three flights down where neither of them can shoot her.

“Pustoy.”

“Sam,” Bucky groans, hands still clamped to his ears.

“Fuck you!” Sam bellows down the stairwell, then whips his head back just as something pings past his ear. There’s more than one person down there. At least two goons with Boss Lady. Cool cool cool cool. He holds Bucky’s elbow with one hand and aims his gun down the stairs with his other, then begins staggering up the stairs again. “La la la la fuck you!” he yells as he goes. “Fuck you so much, you fucking wrinkled asshole, shut your fucking face!”

“What are you doing,” Bucky grunts, then flattens back against the wall as a door opens on the top floor and two more goons spill into the stairwell.

“Swearing reduces pain, hasn’t anyone ever told you that?” Sam fires up at the new guys while Bucky peels one hand from his ear to fire down. Sam actually manages to hit one, and the body tips right over the railing. Score. Maybe it’ll hit Boss Lady on the way down.

“Tikhiy,” Boss lady shouts as the crossfire continues. 

“La la la fuck you still! And it also drowns out horrible stupid monster ladies and their fucking trigger words la la la laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

Bucky slams his hand back over his ear, which. Okay then, this is just gonna be the Sam Show, that’s fine. He’s got this.

Bullets scream past him in two directions and he does not got this. Shit.

“La la fuck la fuck!” he yells in lieu of any better ideas.

He’s pretty sure she’s trying to shout over him but he keeps his mouth next to Bucky’s covered ears and relies on the proximity to cancel her out. He’s breathless within thirty seconds and they’ve still got at least two flights to go before they reach the top. 

“Fuck!” he howls as another bullet pings through the air where his head just was. Oh, sure. She can aim a gun and yell words while going up a staircase. Showoff. Two more bullets zing past, one from above and one from below and, fuck fuck fuck. He can’t keep this up. They’re hemmed in. He’s not going to be able to keep yelling if this turns into a proper fight. 

“Igra,” Sam hears from below, but he shouts wordlessly over her, which seems to do the trick because Bucky doesn’t go awful-still like last time, even though that’s, fuck, that’s the last word. Igra is the last word.

“Fuck!” he yells again as she yells back, even closer this time. It’s only a matter of seconds before she’s close enough to make Bucky hear her.

“Sam,” Bucky says, desperate, urgent, and--

“Fuck you!,” Sam yells, and--

“Igra!” and--

“Sam!” and--

Fuck, fuckety fucketing fuck!

He can’t stop it. Bucky’s staring at him from between white-knuckled hands clamped down hard over his ears and Sam can’t stop this. Bucky’s going to turn into a sex doll and they’re both going to be hauled back to the cell and there won’t be a second chance unless… 

Unless Sam takes control.

“Fuck!” he yells again, even more vehement than before, and he waves a hand in front of Bucky’s face to get his attention. Everything about Bucky is white. His pale sweaty skin and the whites of his eyes and he must… he must know they’re about to be taken because he looks at Sam like he’s about to say goodbye and, no, nope. This is not how they end. In some shitty torture dungeon stairwell in some shitty underground torture dungeon lair.

“Sorry,” he mouths, then grabs Bucky’s wrist, leans in, and tugs Bucky’s hand away from his head. Bucky lets him, which is. Too much. Because Sam whispers straight in his ear, “Igra.”

“Igra!” Boss Lady crows half a second behind, sounding like she’s only a few steps away from the nearest landing. Then, “Obsluzhivay yego.”

Bucky falls to his knees with a wince and his mouth opens and his eyes are so wide when he looks up at Sam and Sam prays to whatever God oversees underground torture dungeons that this is going to work.

“Dostatochno,” he tries, and this time Bucky’s programming must recognize Sam as a handler because his mouth snaps closed and he draws in a sharp breath and Sam swings his gun up to shoot over Bucky’s shoulder, then grabs him by the arm and hauls him through the door and out of the stairwell.

They’ve still got to climb, but three very healthy and well-armed baddies make for terrible odds in their current state, so it’s off to find a quieter stairwell. Maybe even an elevator. Nice and enclosed. No surprises.

Sam takes three steps down the hall before he realizes that Bucky isn’t following him because he can’t. Aside from the stop command, Sam doesn’t know the triggers that work in-- in play mode, and if Sam’s horrible, terrible, gut-wrenching, too-vivid memories serve, the only other way to make Bucky move right now is to physically move him. 

He circles back, takes Bucky by the metal wrist, and tugs.

“Okay?” he asks, even as Bucky starts following along behind him, because this is fucked up and nothing’s okay right now and probably never will be again, and he’s Bucky’s fucking HYDRA handler and he’s gonna be fucking sick if Bucky doesn’t reassure him.

“Oh yeah this is totally on the beam here,” Bucky half grits, half drawls, which really is a fucking trick all by itself. “Fucking swell.”

Okay, now he’s just being an asshole. “I’m sorry, whose idea was it to let these fuckers empty half a clip into you?”

“Three bullets is not half a--”

The stairwell door bursts open and Sam drags Bucky around the corner before three bullets turns into four. 

“Is there a command for Run Away From Bad Guys Until We Find An Exit And Escape?” Sam pants, sprinting as fast as his poor decrepit body will allow. Which is… not very.

Bucky doesn’t grace that with an answer. He’s too busy trying to keep up--with normal human starved dehydrated Sam--on his busted leg. 

They burst through a fire door and Sam slams it shut behind them, then doubles over gasping for air. Bucky’s breathing just as desperately, but he’s stuck on his feet. Foot. Whatever. Sam peers through the tempered glass of the fire door, and his heart sinks at the trail of bloody footprints Bucky’s left behind. They have absolutely no way to hide. And he made Bucky run. On that leg. On those feet. 

A bullet cracks into the glass and spider-webs but doesn’t break it. Sam ducks behind the door, pulling Bucky down with him, and prays it’s as bulletproof as it is fireproof. “Can you shoot a gun?” 

“No,” he growls. Sounds beyond disgusted with himself when he adds, “I’m good for one thing right now, Sam, and it isn’t fighting.”

“Obsluzhivay menya!” Boss Lady shouts from down the hall, and Bucky spins around, reaches for the door handle--

“Dostatochno!” Sam yells, grabbing Bucky by the metal shoulder and tugging him back. Bucky stumbles, hits the floor--shit. Astronouts on the fucking ISS could spot the pain on his face, but he can’t even move a hand to grab at what hurts. 

“See?” Bucky hisses.

“Yeah, look.” Sam cracks the door open and sticks the muzzle of his rifle through. He can’t really aim like this, but it sends two goons and Boss Lady scattering for cover before she can shout another command. “When we get outta here, we’re gonna have a nice long talk about all this misplaced self-blame of yours, okay?”

He recalibrates, fires three more rounds. One thumps into a goon’s leg and Sam whoops as he goes down.

“Obsluzhivay menya,” Boss Lady yells again from her cover behind her wounded guard, and Bucky struggles halfway to his feet before Sam can shout Dostatochno again. 

This is. Getting old real fucking fast. He fires three more rounds into the hallway, acutely aware of his limited ammo. 

“Think that’s another stairwell?” Bucky asks, squinting at a nondescript double door past Sam’s shoulder in lieu of pointing because, right. He can’t. The doors could be just doors. Bucky’s guess is as good as Sam’s. Why aren’t torture lairs signposted jesus christ.

Sam fires a spray of bullets down the hall and hopes that maybe they’ll get lucky and a fragment will ricochet into Boss Lady’s eyeball or something, and then uses the distraction to grab Bucky’s arm and go for the door. 

“Obsluzhivay yego,” Boss Lady yells.

Bucky falls to his knees again but this time he’s reaching for Sam and Sam splutters “D-Dostatochno!” as Bucky gets his fingers beneath the waistband of his pants.

The doors do not lead to a stairwell, but they do lead to another hallway with even more doors. Sam drops Bucky’s hand to go to each door in turn. Computer room, bathroom, locked, locked, office, and-- bingo! Mess hall with another door at the other end. He grabs Bucky again and hauls him through, firing at the goon who darts into the hallway behind them. 

“Chair!” Bucky yells, and then has to stand helplessly and watch as Sam manhandles a stupidly unwieldy chair beneath the door handle.

“You’re going to regret being born when I’m done with you,” Boss Lady hollers from the other side.

“Fuck you, psychopath!”

“Potseluy yego!”

“That’s a new one,” Sam says as he reaches for Bucky to drag him out the other side of the mess. “Dosta--”

It’s easy to reach for Bucky because Bucky is reaching back. And Sam doesn’t get the stop command out because… because.

“What the hell, Barnes?”

But he doesn’t say that, either. Because. Holy shit.

Because he can’t speak when someone else’s mouth is covering his own.

When James Buchanan Barnes is kissing the everloving bejeezus out of him.

Notes:

As always, we are behind on responding to comments, but as always, we read and cherish every single one of them and THANK YOU ALL PROFUSELY for the proper care and feeding of your authors WE LOVE U ALL.

Chapter 11

Summary:

In which Bucky and Sam argue over baseball and how many bullets constitute half a clip.

“Mmmpphllmm!” Sam yells, and Bucky’s response is to shove his tongue even further into Sam’s mouth.

Sam instinctively grabs Bucky’s head in both hands and pushes, then shoves when Bucky doesn’t--can’t--move. Bucky’s own hands come up to Sam’s face in a perfect, gentle mirror, and he moans, not the kind of moan Sam likes to hear when he’s being kissed but a miserable, wordless apology.

Sam grabs at Bucky’s wrists and tugs, but the guy’s a statue. A statue with an incredibly talented tongue and ridiculously plush lips and Sam’s dick starts getting ideas that are so not okay under any circumstance but he’s stuck, they’re both stuck, and Boss Lady’s gonna bust through that door soon and recapture them both and he needs to think, think, come on Wilson…

A round rips through the mess hall door, shattering glass and thunking deep into a cinderblock wall. Sam ducks instinctively and Bucky ducks with, hands still on Sam’s face and tongue still vigorously exploring Sam’s mouth. Another round. Sam can’t see through or over Bucky, so he fires blindly and prays.

“Having fun?” Boss Lady snarls between rounds. “Enjoy it while it lasts, Mr. Wilson.” Welp. Only one choice left, then. He spins them around and starts walking a still-fervently-kissing Bucky backward, toward the door on the other end of the mess hall.

More gunfire, and Sam’s feet get tangled in Bucky’s and they almost go down. Shit. He must’ve accidentally bitten as they stumbled because there’s a tang of blood in his mouth, but even that doesn’t stop Bucky from sucking gently on Sam’s tongue, lazy and fucking effective, like they’ve got all the time in the world.

Okay. Okay. He can do this. He can. Come on, body. One last burst of strength.

He loops his rifle over his elbow, then bends at the knees and reaches for the backs of Bucky’s. Bucky grunts his protest but it doesn’t matter--as long as it doesn’t involve breaking the kiss, his body goes where Sam puts it, and right now that’s up, in a koala carry, legs locking around Sam’s waist.

Oof. Bucky makes another loud groan that Sam’s pretty sure means Are you fucking crazy? while his tongue licks across the roof of Sam’s mouth, and Sam would tell him to shut up, but. Tongue. Mouth. Besides, dude wasn’t kidding about two hundred and sixty pounds. Sam stumbles. Almost collapses. Which is fucking stupid because he’s fireman-carried guys three quarters this weight at a dead run up a fucking hill while being shot at.

Of course, those times he’d at least been watered and fed and, you know. Not tortured.

And also not being kissed to within an inch of his life by a guy he’s pretty sure he’s hopelessly in love with.

He readjusts Bucky’s arms so they’re wrapped around his neck instead of his face, and then has to trust Bucky to hang on tight because Sam needs his own hands to fire his weapon. He’s facing in the wrong direction now, and firing an automatic rifle over two big shoulders isn’t exactly easy, but it gives them enough cover for him to make a… well, run is a strong word, more like zombie shuffle across the mess hall. The door behind them is rattling hard, but so far, the chair is holding. Sam staggers under Bucky’s weight, overburdened and off-balance and fuck it’s hard to breathe or focus or even think while being french kissed with this much skill and fervor, but somehow he makes it across the mess hall without getting shot and then bursts into a mercifully empty hallway.

And across the way not twenty feet to the left, bless all the gods that ever lived on every planet in every damn universe in the multiverse, Sam spots an exit sign above what has to be a stairwell door.

And then realizes: There is… no way he can carry Bucky up two more flights of stairs.

Fortunately, two goons pick that exact moment to spill out the door of a--yes, thank fuck--freight elevator at the other end of the hall. Sam hears the ding before he sees the movement, so he’s got his gun up at the ready before they do and mows them both down as the door opens.

Suckers .

Of course, he might be the next sucker, cos as dangerous as it is to box themselves in like that, the elevator’s the only functional choice. Assuming he can even make it all the way over there while hauling the world’s largest, heaviest, arguably sexiest lamprey.

He steps over the still-floundering bodies of the goons and into the lift, and fumbles blindly behind Bucky’s ass for the close-door button and then the G, which he prays means the elevator will  open on actual real ground with real sky above them, preferably with a getaway vehicle right next to the exit and a pile of medical supplies already inside.

Ha, right.

He props Bucky against the far wall and tries putting a knee in between them to shove him back by force. Bucky responds by gripping the sides of his head and clinging harder, making a wordless sound of apology while his tongue does something Sam’s pretty sure is illegal in at least forty states. He puts his leg back on the floor and Bucky hauls him closer until they’re touching again from chest to thigh.

Which is an unfortunate time to realise that his dick has managed to accumulate enough blood to make itself the most embarrassing sort of nuisance it possibly can.

This time it’s Sam’s turn to make a wordless sound of apology, and he renews his attempts to get Bucky off. Fuck, fuck, fuck, so not the time.

We will be having words, he tells his stupid artless dick.

He jams his hand in between his face and Bucky’s, and tries to literally pry their mouths apart like he’s got a crowbar instead of fingers. Bucky sucks at his fingers instead and Sam might actually squeak before he manages to free his hand.

The light above the door indicates they’re almost at the top, and he needs to get Bucky off before they get outside into whatever shitstorm awaits them.

“Sorry,” he doesn’t-say again, and then uses the side of his fist to wallop Bucky in the face. Bucky gets jerked away for just a fraction of a second, and Sam manages “Dostat--” before Bucky claims his mouth again. 

“Mmmpphh!” Sam says, which roughly translates to “Oh, come on.” 

He balls up his fist and Bucky squinches his eyes shut like he’s bracing for it, and Sam feels like shit but what else is new? And it’s not like he has any other choice, he can’t run forever with a 260 pound supersoldier backpack. Er. Frontpack?

The justification doesn’t make it feel any better when he slams his fist into the side of Bucky’s face, already yelling Dostatochno as he goes. Bucky’s ripped free and Sam yells the stop word twice more just to be safe, but Bucky’s fallen boneless to the floor and is he… 

Shit, Sam hit him so hard he knocked him out cold.

“Bucky!” he calls, entirely too urgent. Nudges him with his foot because they do not have time for this. The elevator is slowing and dinging to announce its arrival and finally Bucky groans and opens his eyes and Sam spins with his gun up and flattens himself to the side wall, dragging Bucky along with him, and sticks just enough of his weapon out the widening crack to spray-fire at who or whatever might be in his way.

The rifle clicks empty two seconds later, and Sam reaches for Bucky’s with a loud curse, but. Everything’s quiet. No return fire. 

He grabs Bucky’s vibranium arm, thrusts it out in front of the open door. Still no shots. Sam squints at the vague, distorted image of the hallway in front of them that’s reflecting off the plates of Bucky’s arm, and is… pretty sure he spots two dead bodies across the way.

Well. Dead or faking. Only one way to find out. 

“Ready?” he asks.

“Push me in front,” Bucky replies, like the idiot he is.

Bucky may be more durable, but he’s also taken way more damage. And, he can’t duck out of the way on his own if he needs to. Fucking idiot. “You want me to punch you again? Is that it?”

“I think you broke my orbital, so maybe don’t?” He shuts the one eye, already turning colors around the side. “Then again, if you knock me out one more time, it might cancel play mode.”

“I’m not gonna--!” Sam shouts, because Bucky’s dead fucking serious, (emphasis on the dead), but then Bucky shushes him and yeah, he’s right, they’re in the middle of a fucking warzone and he probably shouldn’t be announcing their location at the top of his lungs. “Just. Stay here,” he says, and only realizes how dickish that actually was when Bucky throws him a glare. He flattens himself to the ground and inches forward until he can see down one side of the hall. Empty. Now for the hard part. He sucks in a breath and inches just a tiny bit more, leading with his arm instead of his head in case someone’s in his blindspot waiting to shoot.

There isn’t. Sam’s not sure if they’ve finally gotten the tiniest bit lucky, or if this facility just isn’t particularly crowded. They’ve already killed fifteen, maybe twenty guys--that’s actually a pretty damn large security force if Sam and Bucky are the only, er, guests here.

Or maybe Boss Lady’s got another entire squadron of disposable goons waiting for them outside. Or maybe they’re on an island in the middle of a volcano full of fucking lava sharks and it doesn’t actually matter if they get outside. 

No way of guessing until they’re out.

He makes sure the hall is clear, then goes back for Bucky. He tries to be gentle but there’s really no way of gentling six feet of bullet-ridden muscle from horizontal to vertical.

“Almost done,” he promises, hoping like hell it’s true.

He jams his empty gun into the lift door to force it to stay open so no one else can use it to get out. Then he claims Bucky’s gun--not like Bucky’s about to use it anytime soon--and takes Bucky’s hand to lead him towards the exit.

“First base and now holding hands?” Bucky gives him a lopsided smile that was maybe supposed to be a smirk if he had the use of both eyes.

Fine. Bucky’s not the only one who can deal with trauma via shitty humor. “It was fifth base yesterday, so at least we’re going backward.” Sam tugs Bucky across the hall and to the door, prays for no alarm or unopenable lock as he turns the handle. Except this door just leads to another stairwell, which leads up to… another door. Fucking christ, is this place just a staircase matrioshka doll?

“There is no fifth base,” Bucky says as Sam drags him up these stairs as well, and the second door isn’t locked either so Sam throws it open and--

Shit. He knew their luck had to run out eventually. A blast of arctic air blows in through the open door along with a flurry of snow and for a second Sam just stares because that’s fucking Narnia out there or some shit and they are in the middle of a goddamn old-growth forest in the middle of a snowstorm in the middle of what he can only assume is upper fucking Siberia.

“Yes there is,” he says instead of So. Bad news.

“No there isn’t. Four bases, Sam. I’m 106 years old, I was there when they invented baseball.”

“No you weren’t.” He shuts the door. Drags Bucky back down the stairwell and into the hallway by the elevator, then eyes the two dead bodies slumped a few yards away. There aren’t… too many bullet holes in their clothes. And Bucky is currently literally naked. A fact his dick is doing its damndest to keep reminding him about. Bucky needs socks at the very least. And boots. And fifty years of therapy, but Sam doubts he’ll find any of that in a torture dungeon exit hall.

“Yes I was.”

Sam tugs him over to the bigger of the two corpses, then crouches down to start stripping it. “Baseball was invented in 1839, shut up.” He gets off the overshirt and the undershirt, holds them out to Bucky. “Put these on. Anyway, it’s a metaphor, not an exact fucking science. So. Five bases. Okay?”

“You do remember I can’t move, right?”

“Thank you, Sherlock. Sit.” He tugs Bucky to the floor, then grapples the undershirt onto him by shoving each arm individually through the sleeves. The snarking stops when he gets to the right arm, which features not one but two bullet holes, and Bucky grits his teeth and breaks out in a cold sweat but doesn’t let himself get loud enough to give them away. Sam works on the overshirt the same way, then buttons it up, acutely aware of how much time this is taking. Trusting Bucky to be his eyes and ears in case someone sneaks up behind him.

“I’m guessing,” Bucky chokes out, “that this is one of the bases in your fantasy baseball metaphor?” His teeth are clenched, but he’s trying to smile.

“There is literally no metaphor in existence where dressing you is a fantasy. Also, my fantasies usually involve fewer gunshot wounds.”

“Good, because you put this on backwards.”

“I’ll put you on backwards,” Sam mutters, and goes for the pants.

“I’m not a freeball kind of guy,” Bucky says while Sam struggles with his stupid tree-trunk thighs. He tries to be careful with the left one, where his field bandage is soaked with blood, but it’s not… really possible. Bucky’s metal fingers fist tight, and Sam has to slam his hand over Bucky’s mouth to muffle his cry.

“You wanna wear dead man underwear, you can get them yourself.” Bucky’s eyes shift wearily to Sam’s, then close. He’s panting so hard against Sam’s palm it’s fucking damp. Ew. “Okay?” he asks, and Bucky blinks at him, a nod without nodding. Sam slowly pulls his hand away. “Socks and boots. It’s snowing out there.” He adds, as lightly as he can, like he’s teasing, “You gonna make it?” But they both know he’s not teasing at all.

“No other choice,” Bucky says, voice tight and hitching.

Sam strips the boots and socks off both bodies. Gets both pairs of socks onto Bucky’s feet without too much swearing from either of them. One pair of boots is too small, and the other’s too big, so he opts for too big and jacks the laces down tight. Bucky’s squeezing tears from clenched-shut eyes by the time Sam’s done, but he’s gotten his control back, stays mostly quiet.

“I need you to look out for a sec,” Sam says, and Bucky opens his eyes without question or hesitation, which Sam will find time to be gooey about later. 

“I’m facing the wrong way,” he says wearily, and Sam forces his expression carefully neutral as he holds Bucky’s chin to turn him toward the door, leaving Sam free to strip the shirts off the second body. They’re way too small for him, but they’re better than topless so he makes them work, even as the constriction around his skinned biceps makes him want to cut the whole arm off. Then he and Bucky could match.

The last thing Sam takes off the bodies is one automatic rifle (just in case Bucky regains his ability to shoot), the cartridge off the other one, and both of their sidearms.

Bucky’s sagging against the wall by the time Sam’s done, but his eyes are still open and he’s glaring at the door like he’s daring a goon to come through it. Neither of them has much fuel in the tank--Bucky must be running on fumes by this point. But they’re so close to getting out of here. They can’t stop now. It might be the fucking Arctic out there but he’ll take polar bears and flesh-eating penguins over even one more second in the cell with Boss Lady and her goons.

Sam takes Bucky’s hand again and levers him to his feet, and winces in sympathy as Bucky swears hard enough to skin a sailor. 

Then he leads him up the stairs to the exit, steels himself for the cold, and opens the door.

Notes:

Okay, so. The last chapter might... be two chapters again. We're writing it now, so we'll see? Thank you for continuing to feed us with all your tasty, delicious comments WE LOVE U ALL! :D

Chapter 12

Summary:

In which the authors gag (affectionate) their way through a pile of comfort (derogatory). Of course, the boys DO have to earn it first...

Notes:

Ayup, one more chapter added on. This chapter is already over 10K and we're... not finished. We blame u :-p

It is. Balls fucking cold out. One step and his feet sink into the snow up to nearly his knees. It soaks through his pants and sneaks into the tops of his boots, wet and freezing and he’s exhausted already just thinking about trying to trudge through all this drift. Still, he sets his back to the door and heads away --it’s forest in all directions but he can kind of maybe spot the sun through the treetops and the haze of stormclouds, so at least he can keep them going straight. Unfortunately, there’s no way they can hide their tracks, so surely it’s only a matter of (not very much) time before some nice healthy untortured bullet-holeless goons overtake them.

Bucky must be thinking the same thing; Sam can practically feel his mind spinning as he trudges along behind him, stumbling and panting and just generally looking and sounding as miserable as Sam feels. The place where their bare hands are joined is the only spot of warmth Sam can ever even remember feeling. He squeezes gently, for support maybe, he doesn’t know. Bucky can’t squeeze back, but Sam likes to think he would’ve, given the option.

“How far,” Bucky says through ragged breaths, “do you think the signal jammer goes?”

“Dunno.” At least their minds are in sync on this one. If the signal’s real and still sending--and he’s sure it is, given Boss Lady’s intensity trying to stop it--then someone’s out there, somewhere, waiting for a second ping so they can swoop in to the rescue. Wakandans, probably. The Dora Milaje, hopefully. Hopefully not too far out there. “Gonna make it?”

“Dunno,” Bucky echoes. It’s not a joke, either. Sam hates it. “You?”

Dunno. But he says, “Yes.” And then, because this is kind of a key factor in the whole making it or not thing, “Why aren’t they chasing us?”

Bucky needs to gather air before he can reply. Or maybe his thoughts. Maybe both. “Don’t think there’s enough…” Three more knee-lifts through the snow, ten or twelve desperate breaths. “...of them left to risk a firefight. Better to…” Okay, now it’s just sad. “...let the cold and the exhaustion take us down first. Then…” Sam stops walking for a second so the poor guy can finish his damn sentence. It’s as good a time as any to finally, finally take that piss he’s been holding for the last three thousand years, so he unzips as Bucky adds, “...follow our tracks, swoop in, and retake us without losses.”

Well. He’s not wrong. Sam drops his hand just long enough to take a step off the not-path and let loose against a tree. It’s hot, and it kinda burns, and his kidneys ache, and a whole two seconds later he’s done and shaking off and tucking back in before he can get frostbite in a really inconvenient place. 

He takes Bucky by the hand and starts pulling him along again. “Not if we get out of jammer range first.”

They trudge along for what feels like forever. Wind-driven snow scours Sam’s face. He wishes his damn shirt was big enough to be buttoned up, but it hardly matters. Meltwater has soaked through his pants and socks. He’s so desperate to drink it that he considers sucking it right out of the fabric, but he’s already so frozen he knows the icy water would just kill him faster. The only part of him he can still feel is his right hand, tucked into Bucky’s, and even that is so cold now it hurts.

Bucky’s worse, Sam knows it without even looking. He’s having to pull harder and harder on Bucky’s hand. Having to listen to the desperate little noises Bucky’s stopped bothering to hold back. And he feels like an asshole but he doesn’t stop yanking him along. They can’t stop. They can’t. 

They don’t. Somehow, they keep going. They have to. He makes it a mantra in his head. Like that stupid train with its stupid face. The Little Wilson Who Could. I think I can I think I can I think I-- 

Thirty minutes. Sixty. Sam walks with a pistol in his free hand because the rifles slung over his shoulder are too heavy to keep holding at the ready. The sun is doing it’s best interpretation of a snail on an opium poppy. Sam too, actually. A snail on an opium poppy with a 260-pound shell. Ninety minutes. Sam’s guessing, of course, and time doesn’t exactly fly when you’re literally dying slow and miserable, but noting its accurate passage is very much one of his useless superpowers. One he could frankly do without right now.

At two hours in, give or take a little, Bucky just… collapses. Sam gets pulled down with him, already turning to check on him and he’s awake, he’s still alive, but not even play mode can make him do what Sam wants until Sam gets an arm around his waist and a shoulder up under his armpit and a hand around his freezing metal wrist and hauls them both to their feet with a roar he smothers behind clenched teeth.

They can’t…

They can’t keep going like this. 

They can.

They have to.

...They can’t. Sam can barely keep hauling himself through the snow, let alone his billion pound friend. All this time, all this effort, and they’ve made it… what, four klicks, maybe five? 

He hoists Bucky up a little higher, rearranging the grip on his belt and wrist. Bucky moans but does his best to keep his feet under him. They need to rest. Desperately.

Except the instant Sam thinks about maybe stopping for five minutes, Bucky murmurs, “Engines.”

Sam stops anyway, because he can barely hear the guy and they need air to communicate. “What?”

“I hear…” Bucky swallows hard. Doesn’t seem to realize he hasn’t finished his sentence.

“What? Hear what?”

“Snowmobiles, I think.” Great, now he’s slurring. “Five? Six?”

Shit . Okay, okay, keep cool (hah) Wilson. Plan. Think.

He spots a mostly-dry log a few meters to their left, drags their sorry asses to it and lowers Bucky down as gently as he can. His palm sticks to Bucky’s frozen metal arm like his tongue to a damn flag pole--ow. He’d literally murder right now to sit down too, but he needs a plan. Needs…

He turns in a slow circle, observing their surroundings. It’s a little warmer out than it was before. The sun has finally climbed high enough to do more than blearily get in his eyes, and some of the snow sticking to the trees has started to melt. Still nothing around but trees as far as the eye can see, but…

Something’s niggling at the edges of his mind. Trees… Snowmelt… Might hide their tracks? No. Not enough. But… 

Up. Yes. Fuck yes.

“I got an idea,” he blurts. He sits down next to Bucky, gently turns his head with numb fingers so their eyes meet. Bucky’s skin is frozen. Frostnip has turned his nose and cheeks and ears bright red. “But you gotta… How do we make you move on your own?”

“Move how?” Bucky asks, barely audible.

“Up.” The sound that rattles out of Bucky’s throat at that is maybe supposed to be an incredulous laugh, but, “No. I mean it. How?”

“Hit me. Knock me out.” He’s speaking so slow but somehow the words are all mushed together. He’s. He’s dying, and Sam’s supposed to clock him in the head again?

“Bucky, I can’t… I can’t do that, man, I’m sorry.”

Bucky blinks, slow and exhausted. “S’like. Cryo.” He’s looking down. At the snow, Sam realizes, and feels suddenly sick on top of every fucking thing else. “Reset me.”

“I’m not gonna punch you in the head, Bucky!” Sam whisper-shouts, because even he can hear the engines of the snowmobiles off in the distance now.

Bucky’s eyes slide up to his. He’s starting to breathe a little steadier now that he’s been sitting a minute. Talking’s getting easier. Which is too bad because he starts to say some really stupid shit: “Chokehold. Only be out for… for a minute. No damage. Easy.”

Easy? Easy? Going out like that is fucking slow and agonizing and scary as shit. Not. Easy.

Bucky must mistake the look on Sam’s face because he adds, “Can’t even fight you by accident in play mode.”

“Bucky--”

“Sam.”

“You even got the strength left to climb a damn tree right now? Let alone after I-- After I choke you out?”

He lets his eyes slide back to his lap, but gives what Sam supposes in an answer: “Help’s coming. Gotta stay alive.”

God, they’d been slogging through the damn frozen snow for so long Sam had actually forgotten about clearing the signal-blocking field. They must’ve by now, right? Wakanda’s surely on the way? 

Still… Sam stares at his own lap. At the two frozen, unfeeling lumps that are apparently his hands now. His fingers have turned a dusty blue-gray. If they survive this, he thinks absently, he might lose them. “I can’t… I can’t hurt you, Buck.”

“Just pretend I’m Miss Fifty Shades of Gross.”

Sam blinks. Blinks again. Did he just…? “You mean Boss Lady?”

Bucky’s chapped lips curl into the tiniest little smile. “Is that what you call her? So boring.”

“At least it’s not freaky. How’d you know about Fifty Shades anyway?”

Bucky side-eyes him. “I was in cryo, Sam, not dead.”

Sam laughs for the first time in… god, it feels like years. 

Of course, then Bucky ruins it by adding, blithely, like it’s no big fucking deal at all, “I used to get lent out sometimes to HYDRA’s biggest donors. Bosses. Political supporters, that sort of thing. As a reward, I guess, you know?”

“Oh, yeah, sure, sounds totally sane and normal,” Sam can’t help but snipe. “Like a fruit basket, but it’s a sex slave.”

He regrets it immediately. Bucky looks… sobered. Sad. Maybe even ashamed. “Anyway, those books were all the rage with that crowd for like a good five years.”

Sam means to let it go, he really does, but apparently he can’t because he finds himself saying, just as bitter and angry and disgusted as before, “I’m guessing they didn’t let you be Christian.”

“Oh no. Definitely Anastasia.” 

Well. This moment isn’t awkward at all. Sam almost makes light of it with some joke about Bucky looking hot in lingerie, but… not at all appropriate. Or funny. Or even a joke, probably. 

“All right,” he says instead. The engines are getting louder, and he’s wasting precious time. He can do this. 

He stands. Stumbles around the log; he’d prefer to do this face to face so Bucky won’t be so afraid, but alas, it doesn’t work that way. “I’ll try to be. Uh.” Gentle, he wishes he could say. Settles instead for, “Quick.”

Bucky sucks in a few deep breaths, like he’s steadying himself. Sam’s glad he can’t see his face anymore, but he bets Bucky’s eyes are closed. “Put me in the snow when I’m out,” Bucky reminds him, because, oh, yeah. Cryo.

“Gonna touch you now,” he warns, because even though Bucky can’t physically startle, he sure can mentally. He slides his arm around Bucky’s neck and grabs his own wrist for leverage. At least in the frozen cold his flayed arm only burns like three-fourths Hades instead of jesus-fuck-let-me-die Hades. “Ready?”

“Yes,” Bucky says, fake-confident enough for the both of them, and Sam tightens down against Bucky’s carotids as quickly and firmly as he can. Bucky makes only a single, aborted sound, for which Sam is stupidly grateful, and then just… sits there quietly and lets Sam put him out. A normal man would be flailing by now, grabbing at Sam’s arms, gasping and choking and flopping like a fish on a hook, but poor Bucky doesn’t even have that luxury.

He’s tense, though, so tense that Sam can feel the moment when his brain goes from fight to flight, and he gets heavy in Sam’s arms but Sam knows it’s not over yet, he’s not out yet, so he keeps wrenching down, keeps hurting his best friend, and so sue him if he maybe leans in and presses his lips to the crown of Bucky’s head and lets himself have that comfort, lets Bucky have that comfort for his last few miserable moments of remaining consciousness. 

And then Bucky’s deadweight, and Sam eases up and cradles Bucky against his chest as he slowly slides him off the log and into the snowdrift behind it.

Which leaves him all alone to think about all the terrible things 50 Shades Boss Lady is going to do to them if Bucky doesn’t wake up in time to climb a tree. He can hear the engines properly now--they run briefly, then stop for a few minutes, then run again, which means they’re probably taking time to search on foot in case Sam and Bucky backtracked-- and guesses they probably have ten or fifteen minutes left to get out of sight. Twenty, if they’re lucky. 

He leaves Bucky frozen and unconscious in his DIY cryo tube, hefts an automatic rifle in both hands and leaves the other one over his shoulder for backup, and walk-runs as fast as he can in the opposite direction, then comes back, checks that Bucky’s still got a heartbeat (thank fuck), and runs in a totally different direction. Comes back. (Bucky’s still breathing.) New direction. The next time he comes back Bucky is twitching a bit, but his eyes don’t open when Sam snaps a finger next to his ear.

He runs toward the sound of the oncoming snowmobiles, which is terrifying, then runs back, and this time Bucky’s shakily getting to his feet to meet him. Getting to his feet of his own volition, oh thank Christ on a beignet. 

Sam checks and tightens Bucky’s makeshift bandages, because this whole scheme fails if there’s a blood trail, then points at one of the trees he hasn’t run toward yet. It’s big, and has some nice low-hanging branches to grab onto. There’s no snow stuck to its trunk, so they won’t leave tracks. Plus there’s enough foliage to keep them hidden if they can just get up there.

“That one,” he says, then presses a pistol into Bucky’s metal hand and leaves him to make some more false tracks. He watches out of the corner of his eye as Bucky stumbles to the trunk and squints at it for a long moment like he’s thinking of insulting it instead of climbing it. But then Bucky shoves the pistol in the waistband of his borrowed pants, and his metal arm creeps up and he grabs the lowest branch and with visible effort he hauls himself up to it. His body shakes and Sam can hear the noise he makes even from twenty feet away. But Bucky pulls himself up. 

Great. That’s five whole feet off the ground.

Only thirty to go. Or forty, or fifty if they can make it--the higher the better. At least Bucky’s robotic arm seems to have retained its strength. Normally Sam would call him a show-off for doing all those one-armed pull-ups, but right now he figures it’s the only part of Bucky that’s really working at all.

Bucky keeps climbing, and Sam keeps widening the debris field of his tracks, kicking and dragging and stomping so even the best trackers out there won’t be able to tell if one or two or ten of them came this way. He keeps an ear on the snowmobile engines, trying to find the right balance between making enough tracks to fool the baddies and leaving himself enough time to drag his own sorry ass up that tree.

By the time the goons are close enough for Sam to hear voices once the engines quiet, he’s stomped out a circle maybe 30 meters wide. Time to go.

Their tree is near what Sam’s pretty sure is the southwest edge of the circle. He only panics for like three minutes when he can’t find it, but Bucky makes a quiet sound like a--like a fucking falcon, the half-dead asshole, and Sam shoulders both rifles again and takes a running start and leaps like a whole entire foot off the ground and onto the lowest branch. 

He’s pretty sure he’s more pathetic going up the tree than Bucky was. “Wish I had a cool-ass bionic arm,” he mutters under his breath as his very human arm trembles and burns. His fingers slip--he can’t even feel them--and he almost takes a dive but manages somehow to wedge a foot (which he also can’t feel) into the crook of a branch and just ends up dangling upside down instead.

Fun.

The snowmobile engines restart, but he’s like… 99% sure he didn’t yell while he was falling. Okay. Like. 93%. Well. Pretty sure, anyway. Really pretty sure. The timing’s just a coincidence, that’s all.

He pulls every muscle in his stomach and also one in his groin trying to get his sorry ass vertical again. This sucks. And even worse, it’s only temporary. What are they gonna do when the goons move on? If the goons move on, since their tracks run out here.

Well. They can cross that bridge once the goons have burned it. But one thing at a time, and right now that’s him hauling his pathetic self up.

And up. And up some more. He’s encouraged by the fact that he can’t see Bucky until he’s a good thirty feet off the ground, and then he only spots him by chance, a glint of sunlight off a metal hand. He keeps climbing, fiercely (and not very successfully) ignoring the burn in his muscles and his frostbitten hands and feet. Can’t believe Past-Sam used to think climbing trees was fun. It’s bullshit is what it is. He’s downright sick with exhaustion and fear and it’s not fair that he’s sweating so much when it’s this damn cold out and he can’t even wipe the sweat from his eyes because his fingers are sticky with pine sap.

He’s about three seconds from jumping out of the tree in protest when Bucky nearly makes the decision for him by saying “Almost there,” from only one branch away, and Sam practically leaps out of his skin.

Bucky stretches a metal hand out to help him up the final few feet, but Sam bats it aside. He doubts Bucky’s stability is any better than his own right now, and he doesn’t want to undermine the whole Get Out Of Sight plan by pitching Bucky off the side of his branch and down to the waiting goons.

He sweats and trembles and heaves himself up one final branch, tucking himself in behind Bucky--for warmth, yes, dude’s a giant sentient hot water bottle, even in this weather, but also for safety, in case Bucky passes out. He locks his arms around his friend and the tree trunk. Bucky makes a quiet sound of disgust (or maybe Sam just thoughtlessly hurt his torn-up back), but even he must know it’s safer this way. And at least a little bit less bitterly cold.

And, while Sam’s not gonna mention it, if the goons do spot them and shoot, now it’s his turn to block the bullets for Bucky.

Sam’s just finished settling in as the first snowmobile appears between the leaves below them. He can barely make them out, thank Christ--it’s only the hint of movement that catches his eye--which means he and Bucky are safe. At least for now.

“Rifle,” Bucky grunts, and Sam moves glacially slow to unsling one of the rifles from his shoulder and then--equally slow--pass it to Bucky. They can’t risk giving away their hiding spot with a stray noise or movement.

“Got a sniper rifle in that arsenal back there?” Bucky whispers.

“Yeah, you want automatic or bolt-action?” Sam whispers--okay, hisses--back. “Let me just consult my inventory list.”  

Bucky shifts the automatic rifle to his left hand and points it very carefully at one of the goons who has dismounted and is apparently surveying Sam’s tracks. “What about a bazooka?”

Sam clicks the safety off of his own rifle. “Yeah, I keep one up my ass in case of emergencies.”

Bucky makes a soft sound like he’s trying to hold back a laugh. “Because,” he says.

Sam’s already rolling his eyes.

“Because it’s an ass-enal, right?”

Sam needs a few seconds to process a pun that bad, so he squints down his rifle scope, tracking the men on the ground. He counts eleven plus Boss Lady, and that’s just what he can see from here. “Terrible, Barnes. Aren’t you supposed to be almost dead right now?”

“Working up to it.”

Sam follows a goon as he goes up one track, then squints around at the end of it before coming back to the log where Bucky had passed out.

A big fat clump of slush splotches down on Bucky’s shoulder from the branch above them. Bucky flinches as the cold slithers down his back, and Sam… Sam...

“On a scale of one to ten,” he murmurs into Bucky’s ear, “how gross would it be if I ate that right now?”

“On a mission in Afghanistan once, I was so damn thirsty I drank camel piss from a muddy puddle in the sand.”

“Gonna take that as a go-ahead, thanks for the visual.”

He doesn’t take his gun off the goons below them, just leans forward and slurps up a mouthful of slushy gross awful awful divine snowmelt off the sweaty, salty skin where Bucky’s metal shoulder meets his neck. 

“Actually it might have been horse piss,” Bucky muses, and Sam almost chokes. “Maybe a mule?”

“Stop ruining my meal.”

“Send my apologies to the chef.”

Sam takes another disgusting-but-so-so-good slorp of ice water and uses the movement to glance at Bucky’s face. Bucky looks as haggard as Sam had feared, despite the banter, and his entire body is sagging between the tree trunk and Sam’s chest. But the tip of his gun stays unwaveringly directed toward the goons below.

“Yeah, yeah,” he mutters when he sees Sam looking. “I’m still here.”

“How long do you think before they think to look up?”

“About ten seconds.”

Sam follows the line of Bucky’s gun to where a goon is walking in circles around the base of a tree twenty yards to their left. He looks up at the trunk, and then keeps looking up into the branches. He points.

“Hey,” he calls to the other goons, loud enough that Sam can hear him from their vantage point. “Maybe they climbed up the--”

There’s a sharp crack and he drops to the ground. 

Bucky shrugs his left shoulder and whispers, “Weren’t going to get away with it forever.”

It’s sudden chaos on the ground, goons scattering in every direction, seeking cover as they desperately puzzle through where the shot came from. Bucky takes advantage by picking off another one, and finally Sam’s brain clicks online and he gets a shot in too. His isn’t as clean as Bucky’s, though, and while the goon hits the ground, he’s not dead.

“Up there!” someone shouts, pointing not quite at their tree but too close for comfort anyway, and then a spray of bullets rips through the canopy about ten feet to their left and Sam hunches around Bucky, as small as he can make them, and tries to logic through the merit of shooting back. 

“Hold,” Bucky whispers, and shudders beneath Sam, and yeah, Sam’s pretty sure he would’ve come to the same conclusion if his brain were firing on even half its cylinders. The goons fire again, this spray even further from them than the last. They haven’t spotted them yet and presumably don’t have unlimited ammo to waste. Sam counts nine still scouring the forest, all of them secure behind cover: hunkered down behind fallen trees, or their snowmobiles. Hard to hit now.

Hard, but not impossible. Bucky could make those shots if he had to. Just not Sam.

“Hey Buck,” Sam whispers into the shell of Bucky’s ear.

Bucky doesn’t respond. Too focused on the situation below?

“Bucky.” A little louder. “Buck!”

Except. He could fucking shout right now and still not get a response because Bucky is out cold. Just. Just unconscious, surely. It’s not like he’s falling from the tree or anything, right?

Yeah, because you’re squishing him against the damn trunk like a safety harness.

Sam needs to put two fingers to Bucky’s neck and make sure his stubborn asshole heart is still beating, but he’s got a gun in one hand and a death grip on a tree with the other and every one of his fingers is blue-gray anyway so it’s not like he’d be able to feel a pulse even if it were still there. Three goons are conferring on the ground with Boss Lady, and for the moment, at least, nobody’s shooting at the sky, so Sam lets himself take a second to think. Lets his eyes close. Lets himself rest his ear against Bucky’s back and wait for the lub-dub of Bucky’s heart resonating up through his too-still chest.

Sam holds his breath and squeezes his eyes closed tight and listens. His ear warms up a smidge. That’s a good sign, right? That Bucky’s still hot beneath him? Listens harder.

And. Finally. There it is. One beat. Sam has to breathe. A second beat. Slow. So fucking slow. Bucky’s heart should be manic with all the blood loss, racing like crazy to compensate. Not… this. What’s the normal resting heart rate of a supersoldier, anyway? Christ. How had Bucky stayed conscious as long as he did?

Okay. Okay. Cool. Okay. He can do this. He just has to… 

Fuck. He doesn’t know what he has to do. Wait? Fire?

Bucky, still unconscious, decides it for him by dropping his damn rifle.

Sam sees it go, makes a single desperate reach for it that almost sends him pitching right after it, then overcorrects because if I fall Bucky falls and then someone shouts and the rifle clatters from branch to branch to the ground, going off as it hits and the goons all scatter and Sam takes every shot he can before Bucky’s rifle clicks empty and down goes one goon, another, another, but there’s still so many left as he runs out of bullets and the goons take cover and start firing back.

Bullets strife across the tree just a few feet below them, then the next tree, then the next. Then the gunfire comes back their way, higher this time, and Sam barely manages to swing them both around in time to put the trunk between them and the spray of fire. Both their legs are still tangled on the first branch and now their torsos are propped on two more and Sam fires blindly for cover and he’s screaming, it doesn’t matter, they know exactly where he is and he’s gonna fucking die up here and Bucky’s gonna end up back in that horrible place and--

--and then there’s chaos and running and screaming on the ground, and a roar that Sam realizes isn’t just in his head, no, it’s an engine, it’s a fucking-- it’s a fucking aircraft, and the massive machine guns mounted on its underside are pocking equally massive holes in the snow cover on the forest floor, and god help whatever fleshy idiot goons get in the way of that carnage.

Fucking. Wakanda. It’s a fucking Wakandan Talon.

Sam whoops as the Talon swoops around, spraying another round of fire at the goons. He hears a second engine off in the distance somewhere, then sees a plume of steam kick up half a klick to their north--the second jet must’ve found a place to land. The first one swoops back, making sure the goons stay too busy running and hiding to fire up at Sam and Bucky again, and Sam takes the opportunity to try to straighten them both back into a more stable position.

Fortunately, the commotion seems to jar Bucky at least a little bit awake--he mumbles something in Russian, shudders, groans, then lurches so hard he nearly knocks them both out of the tree.

“Whoa, easy, easy, s’just me,” Sam says, and Bucky goes still, seems to take in his surroundings and remember where he is. 

“Ugh,” Bucky moans, and then, “Shit, my rifle.”

“Dropped it.” Sam doesn’t bother to whisper anymore. Doesn’t have to. Below them, he hears the battle cries of the Dora Milaje who must’ve come from the second jet, the gunfire and screams of the now-hopelessly outclassed and outgunned goons. It’s only a matter of minutes before every last one of those fuckers is dead or arrested, and Sam’s so beyond exhausted and worn down and sick and stressed that he doesn’t even feel anything about it. Not even relief, not really. Not yet, anyway.

All he knows right now is that it’s his job to keep him and Bucky from falling to their untimely deaths until the hot Wakandan rescue squad can come fetch the two mangy strays from their damn tree.

Which is… not as easy as it sounds. Bucky’s limp as a wet noodle and about four thousand times heavier, and Sam is… Sam is tired.

Bucky coughs, once, twice, then like five more times, deep and wet and hard enough to break a rib. Sam holds him firm to his chest and rattles right along with him. Bucky gasps in air when it ends, lets his head tip back onto Sam’s shoulder for a solid ten seconds, then straightens up and pulls his stolen pistol from his waistband. 

He peers down at the chaos through the trees, which seems to be calming now as the Dora Milaje secure the upper hand, and asks, “‘S’that… Ayo?”

Sam clicks his safety back on, then aims his gun scope at where Bucky’s pointing and, sure enough, “Think so.”

She’s clearly got some freaky Wakandan sixth sense or something, because a second later, she’s looking right back at Sam through the scope.

“Captain Wilson!” she shouts into the treetop. “James! It is safe now. Join us, please!”

“Boy you are a sight for sore eyes, Ayo,” Sam hollers back, “but, uh. I think we might be. Um.”

“Stuck,” Bucky offers.

“You are wounded?”

“Yeah uh, I think this mess of wounds up here has some Bucky on it,” Sam shouts. “Any chance you can pick us up?”

She sounds much more serious when she responds. “You must hold on. I’m coming to you now.”

She drops her weapon--must not need it anymore, which is super encouraging--and runs straight toward the tree. Sam loses sight of her for a bit as she works her way up, but she must be doing it in huge acrobatic leaps because suddenly she’s on the branch next to them and it’s been like sixty seconds and she’s barely even breathing hard. If anyone asks, that’s exactly how Sam got up here, too.

“Oh, James,” she says, and her voice and her face are as stern as ever but somehow she’s so damn… soft with him right now. “What have they done to you?”

Bucky very tiredly scoffs, but not at her. More likely at the absolute, horrifying enormity of the answer.

She looks like she wants to touch him, which, hey, Sam totally understands, he’s got both arms wrapped around Bucky himself right now, even if it is (mostly) to keep them from falling out of the tree. But she doesn’t reach out. Just taps a kimoyo bead around her wrist and says something in Xhosa Sam doesn’t understand. She doesn’t take her eyes off Bucky the whole time, even as Bucky lets his head fall back against Sam’s shoulder again and closes his own eyes. 

“And you, Captain Wilson?” Ayo asks, eyes still on Bucky. 

“Thirsty, mostly. Tired. Cold. Better now that you’re here.”

That earns him a faint but honest smile. “We can trade places, if you--”

“No. Uh. I mean, no, thank you, I’m good, I’ve got him.”

Bucky lifts his vibranium thumb a few inches without opening his eyes or taking his head off Sam’s shoulder. Slurs, “He’s got me.”

Ayo’s smile grows a touch larger, and she nods. “Indeed. And I you, Captain Wilson.” She punctuates that statement by ripping a long, wide strip of fabric from the skirtlike back of her uniform and wending it around Sam, Bucky, and the tree so that even if he does pass out or let go, they won’t fall.

After that, things go a little blurry for a while. He doesn’t need to hang on so tight anymore, and his body’s past ready for unconsciousness, so he lets his eyes close. Leans his cheek against Bucky’s temple. Floats.

Someone holds a bottle to his lips, lets him take two desperate mouthfuls of water that isn’t sweaty bloody snowmelt. Foil blankets go around his shoulders. Someone checks his pulse. Someone else checks Bucky’s. More water--the same careful, measured two sips. People come and go, blurs of red as they waltz up and down the trunk of the tree like it’s nothing more than a slight inconvenience on their path to the two soggy men at the top. They work under and around Sam’s arms, so he never once has to let Bucky go. He thinks if he could feel his fingers right now he would feel them squeezing. He thinks if he could feel his fingers right now it would feel like he’s trying to hold Bucky together himself.

“Can you climb?”

Ayo’s back. And maybe all this rescuing-from-certain-death business is playing with his head because it sounded like she just asked him to go further up. Surely there’s no more reason for up. Sam wants down. Sam very much wants down.

“Climb?” he slurs. But he follows where Ayo is pointing and there’s a big metal something above his head that he takes far too long to recognise as the underside of the Talon. Bless. They couldn’t get to the rescue, so the rescue got brought to them.

There’s still a good ten meters between them and the open Talon hatch, but Sam bets there’s a whole fucking hospital in that thing. Knowing the Wakandans, there’s probably two whole fucking hospitals in there. He just has to get Bucky across this final little gap. He just has to get a bleeding, semi-conscious, half-dead Bucky across this final little gap.

Someone drops the end of a rope down to them and Ayo catches it, then starts to loop it under Bucky’s arms and around his torso. Oh, christ. They’re going to hoist him up with that? All his weight against a few strands of rope digging into his ravaged back?

“Ayo,” Bucky rasps, downright pleading, and he doesn’t say anything else but Ayo clasps his metal shoulder.

“Is your spine injured? Your ribs?”

Bucky shakes his head. The effort looks like it costs him nearly everything he’s got left, and he doesn’t volunteer anything else that might be relevant here, so Sam adds, “He was whipped real fuckin’ bad.” Just saying those words takes him right back there to that cell, tied to that chair, Bucky screaming around Sam’s dick down his throat as she beats him beyond all reason--

“Sam.” Ayo. Master of that strangely soothing but effective mix of no-nonsense firmness and compassion. He’s instantly back in the tree with Bucky in his arms and rescue above their heads. Clears his throat. Maybe blinks some moisture from his eyes. “Also he’s got a huge-ass slug lodged in his right shoulder, and I think his arm’s broken, so. Be careful.” He sounds desperate even to himself but he doesn’t care, would beg again and again if it’d spare Bucky even a moment’s pain. “Please.”

Ayo nods, turns back to Bucky. Catches and holds his eyes. Says with that same no-nonsense compassion, “It will only take a minute. You will bear it.” Somehow, she’s made it a question instead of an order. It seems to be exactly what Bucky needs because he visibly steels himself and nods, and for reasons Sam doesn’t have the energy to examine right now, jealousy flares in his chest. He stomps it down because it’s stupid, because they need her, because she’s kind, because obviously she loves Bucky too and there aren’t--could never be--enough people in the world who love this man.

Bucky says nothing else as Ayo finishes securing him in the makeshift harness, but he’s back on his macho bullshit again, not letting anyone see how much she’s hurting him.

Well, if he’s got the energy for that, then he’s got the energy for teasing. “If you fall and die, I call dibs on your arm,” Sam says.

Bucky elbows him with said arm, but it’s so pathetic it’s more like a bump. A nudge. A gentle poke, maybe. Ayo gives the harness a final tug, says something into her kimoyo beads. The rope pulls taut from above, and Bucky gasps, goes somehow even paler than he already was.

“No but seriously, don’t die, asshole.” Sam releases his death grip on the tree, but lets his numb hands linger on Bucky as they start hoisting him upward. “I’ll meet you up there in a minute.”

It takes decidedly longer than a minute, but Ayo talks to Sam the whole time so he doesn’t think about Bucky dying halfway up, especially when he makes the mistake of following Bucky’s progress with his eyes and sees all that fresh blood staining through the back of his shirt where the rope digs in. How he has any more blood in his body is a mystery in itself. 

Eventually the rope gets thrown back down and it’s his turn to be turned into the world’s saddest pinata.

“Broken ribs?” Ayo asks.

“No thanks.”

That doesn’t even warrant a smile, apparently, or maybe she only smiles for James, not that he’s jealous or anything, and then the rope pulls tight and he doesn’t have the energy to think of anything else for a while.

He might lose time again, or maybe getting winched out of Narnia and into a nice climate-controlled jet from the future always makes things go blurry, but the next time he opens his eyes he’s being hauled onto the deck plates and somehow Ayo is already waiting for him, like she just jumped ten meters directly into the Talon’s open hatch, which honestly would not surprise him in the slightest.

“Where’s--” he starts, but Bucky’s not far away. They’ve got him on a thin mat on the floor, and he seems to be at least a little awake because he’s tracking Sam blearily.

“Sgt. Barnes,” one of the Dora Milaje is saying in that no-nonsense tone that might actually be a requirement of joining. “I need to see.”

“Whr’sam,” Bucky slurs. “Dn’t.” He bats weakly in the general direction of the medic’s hand. “Dn’tchme.”

Sam doesn’t roll his actual eyes, but he feels the urge with his entire body. It’s a spiritual eye roll. “Barnes,” he rasps. “If you’re getting in the way of medical fucking treatment after we went through all this to get it, I will literally jam that IV bag up your nostrils.”

“We don… s’no signal,” Bucky says, and then holy shit does Sam feel like an asshole for yelling at him because he wasn’t being stubborn, he was having flashbacks. Flashfronts? Flashdurings? Whatever the fuck it’s called when it’s been like two minutes since the bad shit’s stopped happening and everything’s still just pain.

“He’s been asking for you,” the medic says dryly, and as she places a second mat on the floor next to Bucky’s, Sam collects enough of his shit together to get to his knees, and then his feet, and then--whoops, back down, okay, on his knees it is then--and crawl-stumbles to Bucky’s stupid resisting body to take the hand batting at the medic.

“M’here,” he says as he settles onto the nice warm comfortable mat and the medic tucks an emergency blanket around his shoulders. “We’re free, Buck, we escaped, it’s okay, you’re safe.” Bucky’s eyes slide toward him, then past. Sam adds, forced light, “Thanks for not dying.”

“S’no signal,” Bucky tells him. His eyes slip half-shut and the medic leans in with an autoinjector but just as she’s about to go for the stabby-stab Bucky whips his eyes open again and shrinks back from her--shrinks towards Sam. 

I’m not supposed to be your safe harbor, Sam thinks painfully, but he takes the autoinjector from her and holds Bucky’s hand in one of his. 

“Please tell me this is a painkiller,” Sam says, and the medic nods and hands him a pair of trauma scissors and an alcohol wipe so he can cut down the back of Bucky’s pants and scrub a clean patch on his glutes. Bucky doesn’t shy away this time and the needle goes in just fine, liquid peace for as long as his stupid supersoldier metabolism will let it last.

The second he’s done, the medic approaches him with an IV kit. “Your arm please, Captain Wilson.”

Sam looks up at her. “Put on my oxygen mask first, huh?” She looks at him with what might be indifference but could just as likely be her face. Either way: “My arm’s busy right now,” he says. He points to the massive med kit stashed next to Bucky’s mat. 

She stares at him. “Two minutes, or a cut-down. The choice is yours.”

She’s got a point. Two minutes isn’t worth a scalpel to the ankle. “Fine,” he sighs, and holds out his left hand. The right one he keeps curled soft around Bucky’s wrist.

The needle goes in easy. She’s good at her job, and suddenly all he wants in the world is to let her do it. He wants to sleep. Badly. And the frostbite on his hands is visibly serious. But he doesn’t have time to soak his fingers in warm water like it’s manicure day, because there is no way in hell he’s gonna let someone else cut Bucky’s clothes off when Bucky’s like this. No way in hell he’s gonna let someone else touch his naked body, even if it’s just to clean him, to insert an IV, to tend his wounds--especially since it’s impossible to touch him pretty much anywhere without inflicting real pain, even through the narcotic haze. Not when Sam’s fit to do it himself.

Well, fit enough. Sort of. Mostly. His fucked-up fingers aren’t terribly nimble, and they’re really starting to hurt as they thaw, so the medic stands by his side and acts as his surgical nurse, cutting bandages and ripping strips of tape and tying suture knots and bringing nice warm bowls of water for Bucky’s frostbitten hands and doing all the other fine fiddly bits he doesn’t have the strength or motor control for. Bucky’s narcotics last a whole few minutes per dose--it’s painfully obvious (no terrible pun intended) by the way he starts twitching from Sam’s touch, the little noises he starts making. Sam asks for more, and the medic hands it to him without question, but warns they don’t have nearly enough to last him back to Wakanda--not at this rate.

Well, best to use it while he’s poking and prodding, then.

The medic feeds Sam ice chips one at a time as he cleans and packs and bandages Bucky’s wounds, splints Bucky’s broken arm, and now that his core temp is up they’re a little slice of absolute fucking heaven melting on his tongue. 

Sam’s halfway through his cup of ice chips and delivering his fourth narcotics injection to Bucky when the medic says, “Let me tend to you a moment, Captain Wilson. He will rest.”

He will for five or six minutes, anyway. Sam supposes he can spare that much. “Can we do it right here?”

“Of course.”

He peels his shirts off and eases his aching body to his mat and closes his eyes, lets himself drift while she pokes at him. She cleans and bandages the bullet graze on his flank and the ugly rope rash around both wrists and ankles, then rebandages his flayed arm and dips all ten of his frostbitten fingers and toes in a warm waxy substance that leaves a thin, soothing coating on his skin. Then she smears a layer of the same goop on his lips and the still-half-numb skin of his ears and face. The rest of his issues can only be fixed with time and IV fluids and nutrients and drugs, which are already infusing into his arm, so she lets him get back to Bucky before the latest dose of narcotics has even finished wearing off.

Bucky is, well, Bucky again when Sam forces himself back into the moment. Awake. Alert. Twenty minutes of rest and half a liter of pushed fluids and a nice warm plane and he’s three-quarters back to himself, heart beating fast and body running like the furnace it is. 

He murmurs, “Hi, Sam,” and musters up a weak little smile that shines on Sam like the fucking sun. 

“Hi yourself,” Sam says back, stupidly. But he doesn’t care. Bucky’s here and alive and awake and he’s smiling at Sam and nothing else will ever matter this much again.

Ayo appears on the other side of Bucky’s mat. “We have found a hospital a short flight away that is willing to admit--”

“No.” For a guy with three gunshot wounds, hypothermia, frostbite, and like four pints of blood on the outside instead of the inside, he’s awfully firm about that no. “Take me to Shuri. Please.”

“James, we are almost six thousand miles from Wakanda.”

“It’s been days,” he says. “One more won’t matter.”

“You weren’t full of bullet holes days ago,” Sam reminds him. Or tattles on him, maybe. He gets it, he does, he really really does, but this is fucking serious.

“Captain Wilson needs to rest. He cannot if he must care for you.” Bucky has the decency to look guilty because, whew. Low blow, but Sam respects it. Besides, it’s true. Ayo’s tone gentles considerably when she adds, “I understand, James. Truly I do. But you must be strong.”

Bucky closes his eyes, covers them with his metal hand and sighs. The emergency blankets crinkle as he shifts. “It’s not… It’s not that simple, Ayo.”

Ayo throws Sam an exasperated look--help, please? 

Sam lays a gentle hand over Bucky’s and tugs it away from his face so he can look him in the eye. “Okay. Then talk to us, Buck. Cos I can’t fix those bullet wounds in the field. You need surgery. Transfusions. IV pain management, antibiotics, diagnostic imaging, god knows what else. And you need it yesterday.”

Bucky holds Sam’s gaze--not at all a staredown, more like a silent plea for understanding, and it breaks Sam’s heart because he does understand, being in a hospital while strangers do painful things to him is gonna bring him right back to all that bleeding-fresh trauma, but he’s not out of the woods yet; he could still die on this fucking jet.

Bucky licks his cold-chapped lips, winces. The morphine’s wearing off. Again. “I just. I know me, Sam. And if I--” He’s staring now like Sam’s his entire world, and Sam’s a little dizzy at the weight of it all, the intensity of it. “Even HYDRA had trouble keeping me under during surgery, and if I… After this week? If I wake up on some cold metal table surrounded by strangers cutting into me, I will kill them all. I won’t think. I’ll react. And I can’t--” He stops, swallows. His eyes are wet, and Sam hates it, hates every single person who ever laid a hand on this man, who ever forced him to lay a hand on others. “I can’t hurt anyone else, Sam. I can’t.”

Sam throttles the immediate urge to wrap Bucky up in a hundred blankets and cover him in spikes so no one can ever get close enough to hurt him again. “What if I’m there?” he asks.

Bucky looks stricken. “That’s so much worse, what if I hurt you?”

Ayo clasps Bucky’s shoulder. “We will go to Wakanda,” she says, and then, in a tone that brooks no argument, “unless you require life support during our journey.”

“I’ll make it,” Bucky insists. Sam must have his thoughts written all over his face because Bucky steels his jaw and says again, “I’ll make it, Sam.”

Sam gets the urge to apologize to his gran, who would be rolling in her grave if she knew the kind of stupid stubborn martyr jackass Sam was crushing on. “You know we only got like twenty minutes of morphine left for you, right?”

“Didn’t have any in the cell,” Bucky says like a stupid stubborn martyr jackass. His voice cracks twice just getting those few words out; Sam’s heart breaks, but he also kinda wants to shove it in Bucky’s stupid stubborn martyr jackass face. 

Not that Bucky needs Sam to rub in how much he’s hurting. It’s not his fault HYDRA turned him into a reflexive killing machine slash pincushion.

Sam reaches for another autoinjector, but Bucky says, “Save it.”

“For what?”

“For when I really need it,” Bucky says, and fuck if that isn’t ominous. “Or better yet, for you. I get five minutes. You’ll get three hours.”

He’s… not wrong? Somehow Sam hadn’t even considered his own hurts, but as he gears up to argue them away, they all come crashing back. Sure, the headache has eased with the ice chips and IV fluids, but it’s still right on up there in full-blown migraine territory. Every muscle and joint and organ still burns from dehydration and starvation, and that strip of skin on (or rather, not on) his arm has basically transformed into a portal for the deepest fires of hell. There’s probably enough morphine left to ride him out all the way to Wakanda, but he’s such a goddamn loopy lightweight with narcotics that if he takes it, he’ll be too far gone to help Bucky.

So. “I’m good. Got my IV, got my ice chips, got a nice new bandage for my arm. And whatever this stuff is they put on my fingers and toes is amazing, look, it’s been like ten minutes and they’re already starting to turn the right color again.” He holds up his hands near Bucky’s face, wiggles his fingers a little. “I’m feelin’ a lot better, really.” It’s not… even a lie, not really. Just. Bucky doesn’t need to know how low the bar actually is. “How ‘bout we try to get some sleep, eh?”

He strips his damp pants off--but not his underpants, he can’t… he can’t let anyone see the remnants of the fucking blood on his crotch from Bucky’s ass and he can’t be naked next to Bucky who is also naked--and lowers himself to his mat. Moving hurts but he keeps his face meticulously neutral because Bucky’s eyes are crazy-glued to him, like maybe he’s looking to catch Sam out. Or maybe he’s just trying to remind himself that they’re both still alive, they’re free, they’re safe. Or maybe he’s worried Sam’s dick is gonna end up forcing its way inside him again.

Wow. Okay. Um. That was… That was uncalled for, brain.

Bucky’s stuck curled up loose on his left side--the radiation burns are still there, but they’re by far the least painful thing for him to lie on, and how fucking sad is that. His splinted arm is carefully propped on a box of ABD pads. Sam’s pretty sure his own body would be more comfortable than a flimsy cardboard box, so he tucks in carefully next to Bucky, on his back, pillowing his head on Bucky’s metal arm (eh, could be worse) and arranging Bucky’s broken arm across his stomach. Bucky adjusts with a noise that’s half restrained agony, half contented sigh, and by the time he’s done, he’s got a leg thrown over both of Sam’s and his head on Sam’s chest, right over his rapidly beating heart.

Sam had worried that this would be… that he’d be… not. Okay. At all. Not after-- Not after before. It’d be a lie to say that touching Bucky like this--Bucky touching him like this--doesn’t bring… things back. But they’re just memories. Bad ones, terrible ones, fucking certifiably awful ones. But the terror, the panic, the horror, the helplessness, the despair… he doesn’t feel that now. Just the echo of it, and that’s not strong enough to overtake the fondness, the need, the… the love he feels for this man in his arms. The desire to be as close as possible. To give what comfort he can, and accept every comfort Bucky’s offering.

Someone drapes a pile of blankets over them as Sam curls an arm up around Bucky’s neck and rests his hand atop Bucky’s head. The warmth of their surroundings robs them of even the slightest pretense of doing this to share body heat, but neither of them seems to mind. Bucky’s eyes are closed, and his breathing’s ragged and his face is tense, but even buck naked (hah), he’s not shy about snuggling as close to Sam as his injuries will allow. Sam’s maybe a little self-conscious with the Dora Milaje standing by watching them, well… cuddle. There’s no other word for it, really. But that’s a him problem, and one that he’s eager to get over, and practice makes perfect, after all. 

Curled up together warm and comfortable(ish), touching in so many places with such open abandon and affection, Sam feels… safe for the first time since this nightmare began. He maybe rubs his fingers against Bucky’s scalp once or twice. Or. You know. Like, five times. Ten. A couple dozen. Until he kind of… drifts off.

And wakes, sometime later, roasting beneath the blankets and a heat-blasting Bucktopus. It’s been almost a week since he’s had the warmth and the water to actually sweat, and it’s… actually kind of nice. So is the way Bucky’s plastered up against him, sound asleep and snuffling gently against his chest as Sam shifts, just a little, to stretch out a kink in his back. He lifts his free arm over his head and-- Whoa holy christ on a waffle, he stinks.

The medic, who’s sitting on a nearby jump seat with one eye on them and the other on the holographic display from her Kimoyo beads, clearly notices his reaction. “If you feel strong enough now, there is a shower in the bathroom.” 

Oh. Oh man. Yes please.

Also, he realizes he has to pee again. Which, honestly? He could cry. Never thought he’d find a full bladder so unbelievably fucking beautiful, yet here they are.

He eases himself out from under Bucky as carefully as he can, the medic helping to support Bucky’s splinted arm while he swaps out his stomach for the box of ABD pads. Bucky stirs, moans, mumbles something desperate and indecipherable, but doesn’t quite surface all the way. Good sign or bad? Probably bad--his odds of infection are crazy high right now, super-serum or no. Nothing more Sam can do about it, though--he doesn’t even know what Bucky’s normal body temperature is supposed to be.

When Sam’s mostly upright, he asks, “How long we been out?”

“About four hours, “ the medic says as she offers him a cup of… some kind of juice with a tiny little sippy straw that he assumes is meant to slow him down. Fortunately, he’s not so desperately thirsty anymore. Unfortunately, it’s crazy good--sweet and cold with hints of honey and pear and “Oh my god, what is this?” He sucks through the straw as hard as he can, works up a mouthful, swishes it around so he can revel in it before he swallows. 

His stomach rumbles loud enough to hear over the jet engines.

“Wild loquat juice. It is easy to digest, and will give you strength. Perhaps even enough strength to make it to the washroom.”

Alright, jesus. Subtly snarky comment about how they’d all feel better if Sam weren’t a walking swamp received.

“I’m going, I’m going, sheesh. Just gonna. Finish my juice.” He takes another long, hard pull on the straw as she rummages through the med kit to find some waterproof bandage wraps. “Did Bucky sleep through?”

“Mostly. The pain wakes him sometimes, but not for very long. I know it’s hard, but try not to worry; he’s not unconscious, just exhausted.” 

More juice. Sam’s stomach rumbles even louder than before, in case they didn’t hear it the first time, as she starts covering his bandages in the Wakandan equivalent of Tegaderm. “Don’t suppose you got, like, a burger and fries in that kit?”

It seems the medic has the same rip-roaring sense of humor as Ayo--she squints at him, and then sighs. “You may have more juice if you don’t vomit.”

“And then the burger and fries, right?”

She answers by pointing at the shower again, then unhooking his bag of saline from its pole and handing it to him. “Do you require assistance, Captain Wilson?”

Alright, alright. He’s never been one to turn down a gorgeous woman from a co-shower, but… yeah, he can’t even joke about this in his head right now, not with Bucky lying sweaty and miserable five feet away. So. “I’m good,” he says.

It doesn’t escape his notice that the Dora Milaje all manage to maintain a polite ten-foot radius around him as he makes his careful way across the Talon. Ha, another useless superpower. Worse than useless.

He feels decidedly less like a superhero when he gets to the tiny washroom and finds that someone has put a little plastic stool beneath the shower head, and he can’t even be mad about it because he’s definitely going to need some kind of assistance for the next part. He straight-up exhausted himself just walking from the back of the jet to the center. And it ain’t a big jet. 

It’s hard to resist the shower’s siren call for even one more second, but before he does anything else, he’s gotta piss. He’s unreasonably excited to see that this time his stream is steady, surprisingly long, doesn’t burn on the way out even though his urine is so nuclear yellow it puts Gatorade to shame. But it’s a huge relief to know his kidneys are full steam ahead now that he’s hydrated some.

He shakes off and flushes, then eases into the shower chair with a sound not previously heard outside retirement villages, like every bone in his body is creaking at once. Honestly? Mood.

“Please let there be hot water,” he says under his breath, and turns the taps.

The water is… hnnnnnnn.

He dips his head, lets it run over his scalp and down his back for a long, long time. Then tilts his head back, lets it cascade over his face and chest and legs. Opens his mouth and lets it run there too, swishes, spits, then gratefully swallows a bunch.

A few millennia later, there’s a polite knock at the door. “Captain Wilson?”

“No,” Sam calls back. “I live here now. Go away.”

“Do you require assistance, Captain Wilson?”

“I do not.” He rolls his head on his shoulders and lets the stream of pure bliss continue its heavenly cascade down his back. Forget the Wakandan gravity trains and the hospital pods, this, this, fucking this is their best invention yet. He’ll marry T’Challa and join the Dora Milaje if it means he gets one of these. Are there any male Dora Milaje? Do you have to marry into it? Christ, he’ll marry Ayo if that’s what it takes.

Still, he should get some cleaning going before they drag him out of here by force. He fumbles for the washcloth, and then he’s hit with a whole new wave of adoration when he smells the soap. It’s not like the hardy practical nuggets of concrete he remembers from the Air Force. It’s soft and rich with shea butter and smells kind of like the juice from earlier and he’s going to beg Bucky to steal him like, an entire forest of whatever grows these fruits because damn.

He gets the blood off his… everything. Well, everything not covered by bandages and Tegaderm and weird frostbite wax, anyway, which is not as large a percentage of him as he’d prefer. Still. Huge improvement.  Then he scrubs the bar of soap through his hair until the water runs clear down the drain.

And then he puts the soap down and sits there and revels some more, until another knock startles him out of his little wet bubble of bliss. “Captain?”

“No Captains here,” Sam calls back. 

“Sergeant Barnes is awake.”

Oh. Shit. Right. That’s. Yeah, that’s a thing that he’d completely forgotten about for a hot second.

“All right,” he says. Adds, under his breath, “Why’s he always gotta be such a pain in my sparkling-clean ass...”

He turns the taps off, and only spends a few minutes trying to figure out how to steal an entire shower out from under the noses of the world’s most vigilant warriors. At least he multitasks and dries off at the same time.

There’s a soft shirt and matching pants waiting for him, and that’s when he remembers that Talons are like Airforce One; they’re meant for the king and his family. Which means he’s probably putting on T’Challa’s pajamas right now. Nice. When he’s finished dressing, he feels human for the first time in… days.

“Phew,” he says as he opens the door. “Are there currently any states in which it’s legal to marry a shower? Asking for me. Cos whooooo boy was that some quality time we just spent together. Buck, listen, when you’re better you gotta try--”

Bucky isn’t over on his mat, doing what he’s supposed to be doing which is being horizontal and not moving. He’s in fact very much vertical, completely fucking naked but for eight million bandages, and Sam’s about to send him back to bed when he notices that Bucky’s… strange. His back is rigidly upright, and he hasn’t looked over at Sam even once. The Dora Milaje are eyeing him warily, and it takes Sam a moment to track where Bucky’s looking and figure out why. There’s a low alcove Sam hadn’t noticed before, and a few piles of bloody clothes inside it seem to have caught Bucky’s attention. 

Except they’re not a pile of bloody clothes, they’re… 

“What,” Sam says, “the fuck.”

50 Shades Boss Lady sneers back at him.

“Mr. Wilson,” she says, eerily calm. “Nice of you to join us.”

Notes:

We will catch up with comments some day, we swear. In the meanwhile, as always, every new one feeds a little fairy who magics 100 extra words onto this beast. Which explains why the last several chapters have all been so damn long, because YOU READERS ARE AMAZING!!! *weeps* (affectionate)

Chapter 13

Summary:

In which Bee, for some inexplicable reason, absolutely insisted we post this bit as its own tiny chapter, and Cluck agreed because she's hopelessly in love.

Notes:

Yeah okay so it's now totally Bee's fault that we have two more chapters to go. FWIW, I don't think the final word count is really changing, just the breaks we're putting in.

“What the fuck,” Sam says again, body going so suddenly numb that he drops his IV bag. Boss Lady smirks up at him, somehow looking completely at ease despite being in an enclosed space with a dozen of the world’s deadliest fighters. Three of her goons are in the little alcove with her, and now that Sam’s paying attention, he can see the manacles keeping them in place.

Christ, have they… have they been here the whole time? Just feet away while Sam was asleep? While Bucky was asleep?

“They are prisoners of Wakanda,” Ayo tells him, but Sam gets the feeling she’s actually talking to Bucky. 

“No.” Bucky. Low. Dangerous. He pulls a pistol from… somewhere? Holds it in his left hand, aimed square at Boss Lady’s face, finger already off the guard and curling back--must be a two-stage trigger. The rest of him is falling apart--he’s got zero weight on his left leg, his right arm’s curled tight to his stomach, and blood’s leaking through the bandages on his feet--but his aim, his two pounds of pressure on the trigger, and his well-earned murder-glare are rock steady.

Good.

Ayo takes a single step closer. She doesn’t touch him, but she’s very much in his space in a way almost no one else could get away with and still live. “James.” Her voice, like the rest of her, is powerful, firm, impossible to ignore. “This is not our way.”

Bucky’s aim doesn’t waver. He doesn’t take his eyes off Boss Lady, not even for a fraction of a second. If she’s scared of him, scared of dying, then she’s got the best poker face on the planet. If she isn’t, then she’s fucking stupid. 

“Yeah, well it’s my way,” Bucky snarls.

Ayo shakes her head sadly, like he’s disappointed her. “No, it’s not. Not anymore.” She adds, with an intensity and a heaviness that makes Sam think she’s not just talking about today, “You are free, remember? You are free.”

Bucky’s jaw clenches so tight the muscles pop beneath his skin. He’s glaring so fiercely at Boss Lady that if looks could kill, he wouldn’t need the gun. 

Sam steps up beside him, closer even than Ayo, because fuck her righteousness, that’s why. He nods at Bucky, who never takes his eyes off Boss Lady but surely sees Sam anyway, then turns to Ayo. “You weren’t there,” he grounds out. “You didn’t--” 

God, it’s still so raw. If it hurts Sam this much and he wasn’t even the target of all that ugly, how must Bucky feel? “You didn’t see what they did to him. What she did to him.” He has to stop, swallow back all those glass shards in his throat. “What she made him do.” 

Sam has to clench his jaw against the wave of hatred that boils up inside him. She hurt him. She hurt Bucky. She was cruel and sadistic for the… for the sheer joy of it. No one should get to do that and live.

Ayo dips her head. Seems to ponder for a moment, and then says, quietly, to Bucky, “The Talon’s hull is vibranium alloy.” Which certainly sounds like support, if not downright approval--Hey Buck, this entire jet is totes bulletproof BTDubs--but then she’s gotta go and ruin it by adding, “If you feel you must return to your old ways.”

That… hits Bucky visibly hard. He’s never wanted to kill. He’s spent the last few years desperately, painstakingly clawing himself away from who HYDRA made him. Yet here he is, pointing a gun at a prisoner in restraints, trigger already half pulled.

Bucky’s face wavers. 

Then his gun wavers. 

He looks downright disgusted when he spits--literally, at her feet--and says, “You’re right. She’s not worth it.”

He relaxes his finger. Lowers his arm. 

Something strange happens in Sam’s chest, watching Bucky face his demons and win.

“Wow, man,” Sam says, and it’s awe and it’s respect, every inch of it, not a hint of sarcasm. He grips Bucky’s shoulder and Bucky sways almost imperceptibly toward him. “You’ve come so far. That’s… wow.” He lets his hand stray down Bucky’s arm and gently takes the gun off him. Bucky doesn’t resist at all. 

“This proves that you are free,” Ayo says warmly.

“Sure does,” Sam agrees. The gun’s a 9mm Sig. This heavy in his hand, the clip is likely full, and he knows there’s already a round in the chamber.

“You are better than she is.”

“Damn straight,” Sam agrees some more. He checks the safety. “Look at you taking the high road and not killing unarmed prisoners. I’m really proud of you.”

Then he points the pistol at Boss Lady’s kneecap and pulls the trigger.

“I mean it,” he shouts over her screaming, free hand squeezing Bucky’s vibranium shoulder. “I really, really am insanely proud of you. That kind of restraint after everything is just… it’s huge.”

He lifts his arm a little. The gun goes off again, punching a bloody hole in her stomach. Stupid matchstick trigger--it might be a two-stage, but it fires at the slightest twitch. Yeah, totally the trigger’s fault.

“So proud,” he shouts again.

Every Dora Milaje on the jet is staring, some shocked, some wary, some with weapons at the ready. But Ayo’s the only one that matters, and she subtly shakes her head: Stand down. Let him proceed.

Bucky’s staring at him with his mouth hanging open and those huge blue eyes doing that wet-puppy gaze that makes Sam want to wrap him in blankets and take him somewhere safe. New Zealand, maybe. It’s almost exactly the same expression that’d frozen on his face when he’d discovered his arm could fall off. Except there’s no hurt or betrayal beneath the shock this time. There is maybe a little hint of a smile, though.

Sam smiles right back--no hint, nice and wide. It’s cheesy even to think it, but his heart is full. “You must feel amazing, proving to yourself that you’ve beaten what they did to you. I’m so happy for you, Buck.”

Boss Lady is making some kind of wheezing sound, maybe because that last bullet was a bit close to her lungs. 

“Beatrice is our responsibility,” Judgy McJudgerson says from across the room.

He looks over at Boss Lady, who’s bent in half and coughing up bubbly blood. 

“Beatrice?” he yells. Nuh uh. Can’t be. “Her name’s fucking Beatrice?” He pulls the trigger again out of sheer disgust. Now she’s got a hole in her shoulder, just like Bucky. At least she can’t scream anymore; it’s annoying. “Her name isn’t Beatrice.”

“Captain Wilson,” Ayo says.

“All right, all right. I’m done.” He looks over at Boss Lady. “You hurt the wrong man, you sick fuck.”

And then, just like he promised himself, he shoots her in her stupid face.

In the ringing silence that follows, Sam weighs the gun thoughtfully. There’s still a few bullets left.

The three goons practically osmose into the fuselage in their attempt to make themselves invisible. Lucky for them, Sam doesn’t recognize their faces; if any of them had laid a hand--or worse--on Bucky, they’d be just as dead as Beatrice.

Ugh.

Beatrice.

“That,” Bucky says, stupid pretty eyes still in full-on puppy mode, “was the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

And then he whole-body crumples to the deck.

Sam gets half a second to think Christ, his arm! and sort of instinctually reach out to catch him, but of course all that ends up doing is sending them both down. Bucky’s poor swiss cheese body jolts and jars the whole way, and he screams before they even hit the floor.

 

 

Chapter 14

Summary:

In which Sam goes on a picnic, and drags Bucky with him kicking and screaming.

Notes:

ONE MORE CHAPTER TO GO MY FRIENDS *and* it is *done* except for edits!

Ow. 

Ow, fucking ow.

But even as he takes stock of his own ows he knows it’s gotta be worse for the poor injured idiot who’s currently on top of him. Bucky’s making some kind of wheezy scream, and Sam doesn’t try to shove him off, even though he can’t fucking breathe, because he’s unwilling to risk further injury to the idiot and also because he’s pretty sure he’d fail spectacularly. 

Fortunately, someone rushes over with a field stretcher and several other someones drop down beside them to roll Bucky onto it and Sam shouts “Watch his arm!” and Bucky howls and screams and spits and fights so hard that Sam takes like twelve elbows to the face before they finally get Bucky strapped down tight enough to contain him and Bucky is undoing all of Sam’s hard work with his struggling and Sam’s chest must’ve taken an elbow or five too because his heart is fucking breaking.

Two women lift the stretcher, but Bucky’s still fighting so hard they need two more people to prevent him from tipping it over. He’s screaming nonstop, full-on fucking feral, as they carry him away from the blood puddling on the floor and back to his mat. 

Ayo offers Sam a hand. Her resting scowl face is scowlier than usual, but her eyes are liquid soft. Sad. “Did he injure you?”

Sam clasps her hand with his good arm and lets her tug him to his feet. His frostbitten fingers burn as he takes his IV bag from her. He doesn’t know how to answer her question. Settles for, “Just a few more bruises to add to the collection.”

Bucky goes abruptly, completely quiet. He’s panting hard as Sam rushes (well, shuffles. But like… hurriedly) to his side, but he’s stopped struggling. 

“Ya ne budu etogo delat',” he snarls at Sam. “Ty ne mozhesh' zastavit' menya.”

Ayo squats down beside Sam and touches fingertips to Bucky’s sweat-damp cheek. She’s got a great poker face, but even Sam, who barely knows her, can see she’s wrecked over this. “It is Ayo, James. You are safe, with me. With Sam.”

“What did he say?” Sam asks.

Ayo shakes her head. “You do not want to know.”

If he didn’t want to know, he wouldn’t’ve fucking asked, thank you very much. But he bites it back. Ayo’s just trying to spare him pain. “Hey Buck,” he tries as Bucky thrashes beneath Ayo’s touch. She pulls her hand away. 

Bucky screams.

The medic squats by his other side, uses a Kimoyo bead to scan him. He screams some more, thrashing in earnest now, not so much trying to escape, Sam doesn’t think, as just… panicking. Or maybe he hurts that much. Or maybe both.

“We need to untie him,” Sam shouts over the terrible sounds Bucky’s making. “He’s freaking out!” He’s not the only one. Sam reaches for a strap, but Ayo grabs his wrist. 

The look he throws her could best be described as a homicide threat. She meets his gaze, but then nods and lets him go. “Be ready,” she says to the warriors standing behind her.

“He is bleeding from both kidneys,” the medic says. She’s drawing up medication into a syringe.

Fuck if Sam’s gonna let them make it worse. He undoes the straps.

Nothing changes. Bucky’s still writhing on the mat, soft frantic Russian spilling from his lips. He brings his vibranium arm up to his chest in a clear defensive posture, turns huge eyes to Sam and says, “Pokonchi s etim. Pozhaluysta.”

Sam turns to Ayo, but she just shakes her head. Bucky groans, clenches his eyes and teeth. He looks… is there a stronger word than utterly exhausted? He looks… like a man who’s gone from one brutal war to the next for almost a century without even a nap in between.

“Bucky. Buck, come on, man.” At some point in all this struggling, he’s torn out his IV. The medic jabs a syringe into his right thigh and he lurches. “You know I don’t speak Russian. Help me out here.” Sam reaches out to steady him, but he flinches away. 

And then… stills. His eyes close. His breathing steadies.

“What’d you give him?” Sam demands. He regrets it immediately--she’s helping Bucky, he has no reason to be rude to her.

“Midazolam. A lot of it.” Sam prays it’ll last more than five fucking minutes. “He requires care. Do you wish to assist me?” 

She offers Sam a fresh IV kit, and he takes it from her. Finds a nice vein in seconds. Bucky’s fluid volume is fine and his blood pressure’s currently through the roof--the problem is there aren’t nearly enough red blood cells in there to keep up with his body’s hyperactive oxygenation or clotting needs. Also not enough white blood cells to keep up with all seven billion avenues of infection; they roll Bucky onto his side to get at his back, and as Sam had feared, the skin around some of the baton wounds is turning a particularly aggressive shade of red. The medic hands him cream to apply before he rebandages the wounds.

“How bad’s the kidney bleeds,” he asks as he works, knowing full well they can’t do a damn thing about it.

“Not bad enough for an emergency landing. Given his physiology, I am hopeful they’ll resolve on their own.”

Stupid stubborn martyr jackass.

Sam and the medic--he feels bad he hasn’t learned her name yet but also knows he has exactly zero space in his head for it right now--finish their work as quickly as possible. The damn benzo’s already wearing off, but at least it seems to have knocked Bucky out of his flashback. As he comes to, he blinks quietly at Sam, then starts to maybe smile a little, then gasps and clenches his whole body up.

“Fuck,” he breathes, eyes slamming shut. “Wha-- Aah, God, Sam-- Sam…” He gropes blindly for Sam with his metal hand, which Sam takes in his own.

“I got you, Buck. It’s okay.”

It’s very clearly not okay. Bucky’s teeth are bared, and he’s breathing in great big gusty huffs, and his hand is squeezing so tight around Sam’s that Sam’s bones are creaking.

“Easy, big guy.” He pats at Bucky’s clenching fingers. “Gonna need that hand to stay attached.”

“Sorry,” Bucky grits, and eases up. “Wha’did I… Fuck, why do I hurt so much?” 

“Cos you got up like an idiot and then collapsed on me. Rude, by the way. Also, you’re fully defrosted now, so no nice numbing cold.”

Bucky squints across the jet, to the alcove. Sam would bet his wings Bucky’s trying to decide if he dreamed the whole Boss Lady thing. “Was she-- Did I--” He turns his stupid big disbelieving eyes with their stupid ridiculously long eyelashes to Sam. “Did you--?”

“Sure did. I shot her like four times. Was fuckin’ beautiful, man.” That gets a little cough-laugh out of Bucky. “How ‘bout you take some of that morphine now, huh?”

Bucky shakes his head, but before Sam can get mad about it, he says, “It’ll only make it worse… later… when it wears off. Just.” He tugs on Sam’s hand, pulling him down to the mat. “Stay with me? I can… I can fight it if I…” His eyes squeeze shut again, and when he opens them this time, he looks far, far away. “HYDRA used to…” God, what a terrible way to start a sentence. Selfishly, Sam wishes he’d shut up. “...make me run days-long training courses with these…” He flops his hand without letting go of Sam’s. “Spike. Things. Belts?” He full-body shudders as he pulls the word, or maybe the visceral memory, from the depths of his brain. So does Sam. “Cilices. All over me. The pain was… stupid, god, every time I moved. Or didn’t. Learned to… focus on the mission through anything.”

Sam seriously considers taking the gun back from Ayo and shooting the other three goons, just to make himself feel better. But it won’t undo what HYDRA did to Bucky, and it won’t help him now, either. So. “Your mission is not dying on this damn jet.” 

“Allow me to assist with that,” the medic says. “May I tend your feet?”

Sam appreciates her asking. So, it seems, does Bucky, even though he just shrugs. “Can’t feel any worse than they already do,” he murmurs.

So Sam aims for something lighter: “Okay then. One distraction coming right up.” He settles in on his side, hand still in Bucky’s. Ayo’s hovering nearby, so he asks, “Isn’t this jet supersonic? Why aren’t we in Wakanda yet?”

“We are flying through unfriendly airspace, and cannot cloak effectively if we create a sonic boom.” Okay, fair. “We should arrive in approximately four hours.”

A four hour distraction, huh? Piece of cake for Uncle Sam. He once had to babysit Cass and AJ for two whole weeks while Sarah was away.

“I’m going on a picnic,” he says.

“Get fucked,” Bucky tells him.

“I’m going on a picnic,” he says louder. “And I’m taking sandwiches and some of that wakandan juice. What are you taking?”

Bucky eyes him. “Morphine drip?”

“There’s no pain at this picnic, Bucky, you don’t need that. But you can bring some benzos to go with, uh… ooh how about jelly donuts.”

Bucky stirs, futilely seeking relief. “Sam, what--”

“I’m also taking sausages and watermelon.”

“Those things don’t… go together at all.”

“Just play the game, dipshit. You have to solve the pattern. What are you bringing?”

Bucky squints at him and doesn’t say anything for a long moment. “Fruit?”

“What kind of fruit?”

“Jesus, Wilson.”

“Oh you actually can take Jesus.”

“Jesus isn’t--” He gasps, right foot lurching out of the medic’s hand. It takes him a damn long time to settle, catch his breath, and just as Sam’s starting to think this isn’t working, Bucky finishes: “Jesus isn’t a fruit.”

“Ehhhhhhh,” Sam teases, and holds his breath for a sec to see if lighting will strike the plane or something. 

Bucky looks like he’s waiting for the same thing. When nothing happens, he tries, “Plums?”

“Nope.”

Bucky closes his eyes, covers his face with his left hand. “How come you got to bring what you wanted?”  Sam might actually be annoying him into forgetting how much pain he’s in, which, hey, that totally counts as a win.

The medic does something a bit too rough and Bucky cries out, jerks his leg back again.

“Because I’m awesome. Come on, pick some more fruits.”

“Oranges? Apples? Pineapple? Bananas? Grapefru--”

He cuts off on a wince, so Sam declares, “You can bring bananas.”

Bucky’s face lights up. “Oh! I get it! I can bring, uh... blueberries?” I used to... when I was a kid, we'd go pick em every summer, me and ma and my sisters and Steve...”

“Aaaay!” Sam’s pretty sure that comes out way too cheerful, but Bucky’s little smile is fading and Sam has no intention of letting him get all maudlin about, you know, everyone he’s ever loved being dead. “What else?”

“Bagels.” He winces, licks his lips. “Haven’t had a good bagel since 1943.

“Well we’ll just have to fix that, won’t we.”

“Can’t get-- Aah.” The medic’s switched feet, started in with disinfectant on the other one. Bucky looks half-sick, but that’s a huge improvement over five minutes ago. “Can’t get good bagels outside the tri-state.”

“I have wings, Bucky. We can go to New York. Or, you know, Jersey if you really hate me.” That wins him a laugh, weak and wheezy but definitely there. “Anyway, back to our picnic. What can I bring?”

“STDs and woeful jokes.”

“I bet you think you’re funny, don’t you.”

“Charming, too.”

Bucky’s smile is more strain than charm, but Sam’s smitten by it anyway. God help him. “Mmmhmm. Okay, new picnic. This time I’m bringing, hmm, a hairdryer and a pack of cigarettes.”

“You don’t have any hair.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes you got enough for all of us.”

Bucky snorts. “Never doing that again.”

“That’s too bad; I liked it. Made you look… Softer.” His mouth adds, without consulting his brain first, “Kinda pretty.”

Bucky scowls, and Sam kicks himself. That was way too revealing. And also, he realizes, exactly what Boss Lady called him while he was being raped.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, dry and bitter. “So I’ve been told. Long hair’s aAah--!” His whole body folds abruptly in half, metal hand clutching at his left leg above the bullet wound. 

“Apologies,” the medic says, calm and staid. “The bullet in your thigh is pressing on a nerve.” She wraps gentle fingers around his ankle and tugs even more gently, trying to get him to straighten out. “I must finish packing the wound. Are you certain you don’t want morphine?”

Bucky nods tightly. His thigh is really leaking; he must’ve fucked it up when he fell. He’s not letting her anywhere near it. Even his toes are curled. 

“Hey,” Sam says, poking at Bucky’s metal shoulder in the most deliberately annoying way possible. He pokes some more when Bucky doesn’t look at him. “Bucky. Hey. Long hair’s a what?” 

“L-liability in a fight,” Bucky grits out. “Poke me one more time and I’ll rip your finger off.”

“Ahhh,” Sam says fondly, and pokes him again. “There he is.”

Bucky uncurls just to glare at him. Success. The medic takes advantage and stuffs some moist gauze into the bleeding hole in his thigh, and Bucky muffles a scream through clenched teeth but doesn’t pull away this time. She finishes quickly, and Sam holds Bucky’s hand as he breathes through the remnants of his shock. 

When Bucky finally opens his eyes again, Sam pokes him a few more times--better he be irritated than swallowed whole by pain. Bucky glares, but it quickly fades to a stare, then to a gaze, and then to something much less intense, much more… hesitant. “Besides,” he says, shy almost, like he thinks Sam might judge him, “I hate looking in the mirror and seeing him.”

Ouch. Sam forces a smile, squeezes Bucky’s hand. “Well. All the more reason to get you that manicure. The Winter Soldier would never.”

Bucky seems to take that as intended, smiling faintly. His hand is slack in Sam’s. His eyes fall closed again as the medic gives his ankle a gentle pat and says, “All done. You should sleep, if you can.”

“Thanks,” Bucky murmurs. But clearly sleep’s not on the table yet because he adds “We uh… we playing games at this picnic?”

“Obviously,” Sam says. “Gonna kick your ass at frisbee, old man.”

Bucky snorts, and his smile grows a little, even through the pain on his face. “How ‘bout… baseball. You’ll be so busy looking for fifth base you’ll run right off the field.”

Sam lays his other hand on top of the one he’s holding and--he can’t help it, he really can’t--lets his fingers stroke up and down Bucky’s forearm. “Yeah. Uh. Maybe we skip the sports. Chill on a blanket instead. ‘S been a long week, you know?”

“Yeah,” Bucky sighs. He shifts minutely toward Sam, swallows back a single high-pitched whimper. Sam’s stroking fingers get a little bolder, start tracing muscle and tendons and veins. “Wanna… lie in the sun. Find shapes in the clouds.” He’s silent a long moment, like he’s watching fluffy white elephants drift by behind his closed eyes. “Haven’t done that in… god, almost a hundred years.”

Would it… would it be too weird if Sam leaned in and kissed Bucky’s forehead? 

Probably, right?

“Well,” he says instead, “we can cloud-watch all you want. I promise I won’t draw a dick on your forehead with sunscreen while you’re tanning.”

“You gonna…” Bucky’s voice is so soft now Sam almost can’t hear him. “...lie down next to me?”

“You know it.” Sam scooches in a little closer, so his knee and shin are pressed to Bucky’s uninjured leg. Holds Bucky’s hand against his chest, so Bucky can feel his heartbeat, and tips his head until their foreheads touch. “I’m right here, Buck,” he murmurs. If he leaned in any closer, he could press his lips to Bucky’s slack mouth, but he resists. It’d be… wrong. Whispers instead, “I got you.”

Bucky whispers back, “I know,” and then slides, mercifully, into sleep.

 

 

Notes:

edit 13/7/21 to say APPARENTLY THE PICNIC GAME WASN'T OBVIOUS ENOUGH because ONE OF US *coughcluckcough* DIDN'T REALISE IT WAS A GAME AT ALL. It's a pattern recognition thing and I thought it was obvious but MY BAD SORRY EVERYONE. Check the comments if you need extra hints :p
Anyway It's a great game to play if you have a bunch of kids around a campfire. It's also a great game if you need to distract a traumatised assassin with bullet holes and flayed feet.
I've added some extra context in the text as well XD

OH MY GOD LISTEN I JUST RANDOMLY SUGGESTED BLUEBERRIES AND BAGELS FOR BUCKY BECAUSE THOSE ARE JUST THINGS PEOPLE FROM NEW YORK WOULD HAVE/WANT NO WONDER BEE THOUGHT PEOPLE WOULD GET THIS *HEADDESK*

Chapter 15

Summary:

In which two gigantic idiots FINALLY get their shit together.

Notes:

*collapses*

He’s on a moving bed, which means he got injured on the mission and they're taking him to the medical team. But there’s the stuffy nausea of painkillers so he must’ve at least completed the objective first. Someone’s speaking in his ear. They’ve put something in his--hand. The something in his hand is. Another hand. He bears down on it and maybe the mission didn’t go as well as he thought because the hand gets taken away and there’s a bright light and the drugs aren’t that strong after all because that hurts and it shouldn’t, that hurts and the hand is gone and he goes to sit up and

“Restrain him,” the director says over his head, and he is bad, he has been bad, the director is trying to help him but he makes everything so difficult, can’t stop from lashing out and

“Bolus 2 mg Versed, 20 mg morphine.” A different voice, and he opens his eyes against the light and

“Soldier,” the director snaps. “Be still.” And the medical team is. Everywhere. Swarming him. That awful sucking pull at the back of his brain that wants to take him back under but someone approaches with the, the tube that goes down his throat and he bares his teeth, fights the darkness, and

“Captain Wilson, he’s--”

And another voice, this time. Latex-gloved hand in his own and the voice is saying “Asset,” is saying “Soldier,” except it comes out more like “Bucky,” like “Hey, Buck, I’m here. You’re okay.” And he jolts because that’s--that’s not his director. That’s.

Sam, it’s Sam, it’s Sam it’s

“I neutralised the target,” he begs, because if Sam is here they have Sam too, and if the mission failed they’re going to. They’re going to put Sam on the table next. He’s not supposed to want things for himself, not allowed to care about anything but the mission, but Sam is here and they’re going to-- They’re going to

“You did great,” Sam says, hand squeezing, people talking overhead. “We’re in Wakanda, they’re patching you up. You

He didn’t fail. And Sam is here.

He sinks.

“Open your mouth,” the director tells him later, and he’s not in his chair so it’s not for a bite guard but maybe the director needs to relax, and that’s his job too, the director’s so important, so much more important than him, so of course this is a mission he’ll complete to the best of his elevated abilities. His jaw falls slack, and fingers go hard inside his mouth, check his molars, stretch out his lips, probe back as far as they can and his body doesn’t--object. He doesn’t object. And they go back further and stay there and his body flinches without flinching and he can’t… he can’t move he can’t--

“Blood pressure and heart rate are rising; I think he’s conscious.”

Of course he’s conscious. The director likes him to work for it. Some of his handlers don’t mind. But the director expects his full suite of skills. He tries to. Tries to suck. Tries to move. His body isn’t working. 

“Administering 50 mg bolus propofol,” a voice says.

“They’ve intubated you,” another voice says in his ear and he-- That voice means safety, means home, means

Means distraction, is what it means. 

There’s a searing tug in his thigh and bright lights overhead and maybe they’re letting him feel it this time so he’ll remember not to let it happen again, and the voice in his ear keeps talking and someone orders more propofol and the tugging gets further away and he

“Get on the table,” his handler says, which makes no sense because he’s already on the--

His knee gets shoved to his chest and his thigh--hurts, which is. Fine. He can navigate this task through pain. And people talk overhead and he tries to breathe deep in case he can’t later but even that doesn’t come like it should and there are hands between his thighs and someone spits, someone laughs, his body is weird and distant like it sometimes gets when they go for so long, when they use the words to make him stay and they go for hours and hours after a mission, but he feels them poking anyway, feels fingers dig in ahead of other parts of their bodies, hands on his throat, his… 

Fingers in his hand, squeezing tight. Which isn’t. It’s not.

He must react because he hears the plates shifting in his arm and 

“Captain Wilson!” someone says, alarmed, and

“You’re in Wakanda, you’re okay, you’re okay.”

His knee isn’t up around his chest but they’re touching him anyway, they’re hurting him, punishing him, maybe cutting themselves a new hole to fit into and 

“I’m here, we both got out, we--

His mission. Where is his mission. His

“Buck, you’re okay, buddy, I need you to--

His handler was just here, his director, his whole team, and he can’t move. How is he supposed to complete his

“You’re scaring the nice doctors, Buck, just cool it for a second, you’re safe here, just let the drugs do their thing and you’ll--

“Starting Isoflurane, 1%.”

The drugs, he’s been drugged he’s been-- The director will be furious will be

“Put that arm back, pal, you don’t need it right now, come on, we’re in Wakanda, you need to save your energy if we’re going for a picnic tomorrow, right? That’s

And like glass against a bullet he fractures, splinters right back into reality and that’s Sam and

“I hate that stupid picnic,” he doesn’t say around the endotracheal tube, but maybe Sam knows what he means because his voice is warm in his ear as he says, “Yeah, that’s right, Buck, you’re safe, go back down, I’ll be waiting on the other side.”

And so he does.

***

He wakes, and he’s in a ditch in the middle of a firefight with the rest of the Howling Commandos, and Steve’s hunkered down beside him except it’s not Steve from after, it’s Steve from before, little Steve, the helmet almost covering his eyes, and guns are pop-pop-popping overhead, people yelling from every direction, and there’s the whistle of something that could be a firework but this is the kind of firework that explodes on impact, and he grabs the back of Steve’s shirt and hauls him out and runs and runs and runs and

He wakes, and the frostbite is still raw on his fingertips and toes but they put him in the chair anyway, strap him down while he’s too ice-numb to fight back, and he thinks he recognizes the handler this time, thinks he remembers sucking his cock after yesterday’s mission, except maybe yesterday was a few years ago in the cryotube because his handler has new lines around his eyes, and the chair tilts backward as the electricity begins to surge and soon it won’t matter what he does and doesn’t remember, it won’t matter whose stains are still on his clothes. He bites down hard on the rubber between his teeth and

He wakes, and he’s stumbling through an unknown forest and his leg’s not supporting his weight because there’s an arrow through it, of all things, and there’s someone crashing through the undergrowth behind him and he turns to fight but it’s him again, dressed in black and wearing a mask and

He wakes, and he’s in a coffin, except there’s another body in there already and

He wakes, and he’s kneeling at the foot of an enormous bed, and his hips are hitting the mattress so hard that the headboard is leaving marks on the wall and

He wakes, and he’s in a bed, and it’s soft and it’s warm and he doesn’t. Remember. He hurts. Freshly. Intensely. A donor’s bedroom, then. Or a politician’s. They enjoy their cruelty more than most. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s a mission. He’ll complete it like always. Failure is not an option. He tries to roll over, get on his hands and knees, but his body doesn’t go and it sparks all new kinds of agony down his spine and he opens his eyes and it’s not a bedroom, it’s too white, he’s in a hospital, a civilian one, he thinks, which means something’s gone very wrong, properly wrong, and if he doesn’t report to his handler it’s only going to get worse.

He tries to sit. Can’t. Pain lances through his leg, his arm, his shoulder, his back and feet. He’s tied down, tight, like maybe he hurt the wrong person and they’re afraid of him again, and that’s never good, that never ends well. He forces himself still--fighting restraints never ends well either--and submits himself to whatever they have planned. 

“Ya gotov otvechet,” he offers, and hopes it’s enough.

But no one replies. No one gives him orders. No one comes to teach him a lesson.

He realizes his eyes have closed again, and opens them.

Bright lights above. Tiled ceiling. His focus is shot. He squints until it resolves, and sees

A white board. Large. Mounted to the ceiling directly above his head. Black writing in big blocky letters. Orders?

HEYA BUCK

That’s. Not Russian. It’s also not protocol. His eyes trip over Buck because that’s. That’s him. That’s. What? 

1. YOU’RE SAFE. WE ESCAPED. YOU’RE IN WAKANDA.
2. YOU’RE NOT TIED UP. YOUR LEG IS IN A CAST AND YOUR ARM IS STRAPPED TO YOUR CHEST SO YOU CAN HEAL.
3. YOU’RE ON A MORPHINE DRIP, BUT THERE’S A PUMP IN YOUR HAND IF YOU NEED MORE. USE IT, YOU STUPID STUBBORN MARTYR JACKASS.
4. ← I’M RIGHT HERE.

He rolls his head to the left, and there’s… Sam, he knows Sam, knows Wakanda, knows this very room, and everything slots abruptly into place. 

Sam’s sound asleep on his side, facing Bucky, one arm stretching across the narrow space between their beds. Only then does he realize that something’s touching his metal arm, that Sam’s touching it, fingers resting lightly there in his sleep. That’s also when he feels the pump in his hand, lets his fingers trace the shape of it, finds the button on the top, near his thumb. The remnants of the dream--the nightmare--fade away, and he doesn’t have to suffer anymore, he’s allowed to have this. He pushes the button, and relief floods in moments later, and he watches Sam sleep and smiles because they survived, they made it, they’re going to be okay, and Sam’s right here, watching over him even in his sleep. He’s safe. He’s safe. He closes his eyes.

He wakes, and this time there’s no awful transition, he knows exactly where he is but he looks up to read Sam’s ugly handwriting again anyway, see the words YOU’RE SAFE and the words I’M RIGHT HERE, and he follows the arrow again and this time Sam’s awake too, staring back at him with something that looks far too much like fondness, this wonky smile on his face from watching Bucky read his message.

He wants to push the button but he also wants to stay awake, at least for a little while, so he doesn’t. It’s reassuring enough to just feel it there in his hand. To know he can use it whenever he wants. To see Sam smiling at him like that. 

“You’ve got something on your face,” he says, voice sounding about as old as he feels. Which is to say: very.

“Oh, you mean handsomeness? You should try getting some yourself.” 

Bucky feels a slow smile curl his lips, and says, teasing, “I thought you said I was pretty.” 

But Sam’s reaction is… strange. He says, forced casual, “You remember that, huh?”

Bucky nods. Swallows. Meets Sam’s eyes. He might be a stupid stubborn marytr jackass, but he’s not a coward, and he’s not a bad friend--not when he can help it, anyway. So. He owes Sam the truth. All of it.

“I also remember you holding me together through all that pain,” he says, because he can’t think of how else to tell Sam how he feels. “Through all those memories blurring together with reality. And I remember your stupid picnic game with your stupid hairdryer. Which you never explained, by the way. And I remember you refusing to leave me alone in my head, even when you needed sleep as much as I did.”

Sam can’t seem to hold his gaze, drops his eyes to the space between their beds. “You’d’a done the same for me, Buck.”

Is he… is he trying to let Bucky down easy? To tell him that a foxhole’s a foxhole but they’re back in normal life now so it’s time to go back to normal friendship?

“Yeah,” he croaks. That morphine button’s looking better and better by the second. Sam’s still staring at the floor.

Maybe he’s ruined this. He ruins a lot of things, it seems. But their friendship’s too important to him to lose it over… over stupid feelings, so. “Sam,” he tries. “Uh. I know… things got a little. Hairy. Back there.” Sam nods without meeting his eyes. “And that I might’ve… asked for… or, or needed some things. From you.”

“‘S’okay, Buck, I get it.” Sam sounds like his damn dog just died. “I didn’t mean to… you know. Take advantage, or anything. And I won’t… I mean, I can’t change how I feel about you--believe me, I’ve tried--but I can promise you it won’t change how I act if you wanna keep working together.”

“How you,” Bucky says, inflectionless, “feel.” There are a lot of things happening at once inside him, but that’s nothing new. If there’s one thing HYDRA taught him, it was to find order through the pain and the chaos. But Sam isn’t order. He’s the opposite of order.

He’s also--and this point cannot be stressed enough--a fucking idiot.

“Are you saying you…” Love is too strong a word, too fragile, and he doesn’t think there’s an adjective for “did you let me use you like a personal heater slash hug machine for reasons other than brotherly camaraderie because maybe you feel the same way about me that I’ve started to feel about you,” so he goes instead with, “...like me?”

Sam actually blushes. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t mean to make things weird.”

Make things-- 

He’s sorry? 

“Come here,” Bucky says. And watches Sam creep out of his hospital bed like a kicked dog to come stand right next to Bucky’s. 

“Closer.”

There’s no more space between their beds, and Sam looks confused for a second, but then he tucks his figurative tail between his legs and perches his hip on the edge of Bucky’s mattress.

“Closer,” Bucky says, because Sam’s earned this particular fucking-with.

“Bucky…” Sam says his name like it hurts him, but he leans forward, until their faces are only about a foot apart. At which point Bucky snakes his left arm around Sam’s neck and tugs, and Sam nearly falls across his chest. It’s not the best angle and it wasn’t the wisest choice because ow, but Bucky ducks his chin and gets Sam’s mouth atop his own and this is a real kiss--no orders, no forcing, no fleeing from certain death--except for how Sam’s only half turned toward him. And not, you know, kissing back.

Sam rears back, gasps out, “Dostatochno!” then collides with his bed frame and somehow trips right onto the floor. 

Well. That explains the whole not-kissing-back thing. Bucky peers down at him from over the metal railing of his own bed. “Are you serious?” he says. 

“Dostatochno?” Sam tries again from the floor.

Bucky literally face-palms. “I can’t believe this is what I’m going to have to put up with.”

“Put…” Sam stutters. “Put up with?” He levers himself to his feet via Bucky’s bedframe. His entire face is… what’s the opposite of a wise and serene old man? “You mean…”

“I mean you’re really spectacularly dumb sometimes for a master tactician. Now get over here and kiss me proper so I can press this button and go back to sleep.”

And for what may be the first and last time in their entire lives, Sam gleefully obeys Bucky’s order.

Notes:

HUGE THANKS to all you lovelies who patiently followed along from the start, to all you lovelies who've just joined us for the first time, and ESPECIALLY to all of you lovelies who left comments on multiple chapters--you're the reason this went from a 7,500 word one-shot to an almost 70,000 word novel, and we're so delighted to have had the motivation to write something this fun and that you were all so generous about sharing your joy with us! We'll be back! *SMOOCHES!*

Chapter 16: Epilogue!

Summary:

Bucky's mouth is so warm.

Notes:

UPDATED AUGUST 2025 to add an epilogue, since we’ve always hated that chapter 16 was empty (but couldn’t delete it coz of all the nice comments). Please enjoy some extra torture, and then some extra fluff 😚

Bucky’s mouth is so warm, is the thing. And sure, yeah, everything in Wakanda is warm, but Bucky is warm warm. He drapes over Sam’s lap and kisses open-mouthed at his thigh, tongue leaving wet marks as he goes, fingers tracing idle patterns against Sam’s shins. He kisses up Sam’s leg, into the crease of his thigh, then over his iliac crest, stubble grazing gently. 

“Buck,” Sam says, quiet enough to be a whisper, and Bucky hums back and kisses just above his navel, then dips his tongue in, a wet squish, making all the muscles of Sam’s belly jump.

Bucky huffs a laugh at that, and Sam maybe swats at him a bit, but heat is pooling south fast enough that he doesn’t really mind, doesn’t think he’d ever mind anything that Bucky did to him in their bed. And so the swat turns into Sam’s hand on Bucky’s cheek, then his fingers in Bucky’s hair. Bucky’s eyes shut when Sam scratches at his scalp, and something tries to shake loose in Sam’s head—something about hair gripped in careless fingers, something about Bucky’s open mouth, something about—but then Bucky’s eyes blink back open and his kisses trail lower and Sam’s toes curl in anticipatory pleasure as Bucky gets in between his thighs, shoulders tucked low and head tipped to the side so his breath is warm on the sensitive skin between Sam’s legs.

“Yeah?” Sam asks, and Bucky doesn’t reply in words but his warm warm mouth is right there, and Sam feels his breath stutter in his lungs. 

Bucky closes the final inch, but instead of swallowing Sam down he slips his tongue out and kitten-licks just below the head of Sam’s cock, soft and wet and still so warm and Sam jolts with sensation, every nerve alight and redirecting into that one spot so that when Bucky licks again—still soft, wet, right in that same place, Sam twitching—it feels like his whole body lights up. Bucky pecks a kiss right there, close-lipped, almost chaste, which is somewhat laughable given the circumstances, and the muscles of Sam’s thighs tense and release, like they’re asking for a kiss too. Bucky puts his hands there instead, and the metal one isn’t cold, it’s… warm, that’s odd, that’s—but wasn’t he just thinking that everything is warm? And Bucky leans in again but still doesn’t take him into his mouth, just licks, and licks again, not a proper blowjob, really, and… That’s right, of course it’s not. They tried that once before, and Sam didn’t like it. Bucky’s mouth on him. Bucky’s lips going blue as his throat constricts hard around Sam’s—

“That’s good,” Beatrice whispers, right into his ear. “Don’t stop until he gives me what I want.”

Sam’s spine contracts instantly, like an accordion under pressure. A wrong-pitched wail, his whole body gone rigid. And his fingers aren’t in Bucky’s hair, they’re clawed into the armrest of the chair. Of course they are, he’s a fool. They’re not in bed, they’re somewhere made of concrete and blood, and Sam is warm because he’s been coated in it, a misting of viscera. 

“Yes, boss,” he says, and he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t want to, but he reaches for Bucky anyway, takes hold of his ears to angle his face just right, get his cock in him proper, make him hurt for it, but something in the—dream, this is a dream, this is a—in Bucky’s face shifts and he’s not open-mouthed after all, but tight-lipped, glaring back at him, angry and fearful and breaking and—

Beatrice passes him a drill from off one of the rolling carts, barely even looking at him as she does, because Sam was never her focus, was he. He’s just another one of her goons, just one of the tools used to get what she wants. Maybe at the end of this she’ll fold him up and store him in one of the carts, too. He’ll rattle around in there with the scalpels and the power saw and the broken edges of his own sanity.

“Open him up,” Beatrice tells him.

“Yes, boss,” Sam repeats, and watches, impotent, as he reaches for Bucky’s face, pries his jaw apart and then pinches at his tongue. Wasn’t that tongue doing something else just a moment ago? Wasn’t Sam lying down with his—

Bucky doesn’t fight back, just goes where he’s put. Goes where Sam puts him. Like a good little soldier. Chin pressed to the seat of the chair between Sam’s thighs. Sam yanks until Bucky’s tongue is stretched out, and he uses his thumb to hold it against the metal. And there are words to make him stay like this, words to make him stay like this. But Sam just grabs the drill with his other hand, whirrs it once and then angles it down, already knows the sound it’s going to make, already knows the sound Bucky’s going to make, already knows what his face will look like covered in his own blood but still forced open, tongue literally screwed to the seat of the chair so Sam has a warm wet landing pad and he can just slide on in, slotting down Bucky’s throat and staying there until Bucky’s face turns ashy and then blue. 

Bucky’s face scrunches up in an open-mouthed scream and Sam feels his organs try to escape into each other, feels Bucky’s agonised wail being imprinted onto the inside of his brain, and Beatrice makes a sound behind him in perfect counterpoint, pleased and powerful, her nails digging ten perfect crescents into his shoulders.

He jerks out of the chair, tosses the drill at the wall and reaches for the—he needs a gun, he’s gotta shoot her in her motherfucking face—but his legs get tangled in Bucky’s body and there’s nothing in his hands to throw and there’s moonlight coming in through the… why is there a window in a dungeon? And the hook of consciousness latches on to some half-functioning meat in his skull and it’s not Bucky tangled around his legs but his own bedsheets, too many blankets, no wonder he was so warm, and it’s not blood that’s covering him but sweat, the idly spinning ceiling fan doing nothing to cool it, and he’s not underground anymore, he’s in Wakanda, and Bucky is—

He shoots out of the room, his trembling legs sending him careening into the opposite wall, bouncing off it as his poor still-healing body does its best to go where he wants it to. He tries to run, staggers hard, staggers again, and ends up ricocheting wall-to-wall down the hall like he’s going for the high score on the arcade’s last pinball machine.

By the time he’s reached Bucky’s door he’s woken up a bit more, or more likely consciousness is just a side effect of colliding with fifteen solid objects in a row. But either way he’s awake enough to realise there’s no way Bucky is still asleep. Sometimes if Sam’s quiet about it he can prop himself on the wall next to Bucky’s door to stand guard until sunrise, but he’s probably not going to get away with that after his impromptu trampoline impression. Impromptoline. Ha. 

He eases Bucky’s door open, and as predicted, Bucky is awake and scowling at him from the bed, giving him the least impressed face Sam’s ever seen, which somehow does more to loosen the knot of worry in Sam’s chest than if he’d been fast asleep and snoring.

“Did the walls pass your midnight inspection, Captain?”

That makes him huff a laugh. He raps a knuckle on the doorframe. “Very sturdy,” he says.

He’s posturing and it’s ridiculous and he knows it and Bucky knows it and also knows that he knows it—calm people don’t reenact Flubber down a hallway in the middle of the night—but if anyone understands the urge to pretend everything is normal, it’s Bucky.

Bucky’s eying him, soft and quiet and completely non-judgmental. Without a word he lifts the sheets. “I think the bed could use some inspecting too,” he offers. The smooth motherfucker.

Sam clears his throat and resists the urge to wipe at his eyes, which feel a little hot suddenly. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. Thanks.”

Sam shuffles over and slides into the bed beside him. Bucky lets the sheet drop but doesn’t move. He’s leaving it to Sam to decide if he wants to be touched or not. Too bad Sam’s in no position to make that call.

Sam clears his throat again. “Bed could use a little work, sergeant. Couldn’t bounce a quarter off this even if you hurled it with your metal arm.”

Bucky’s quietly concerned frown morphs into a soft smirk. “Just gonna have to bounce it off your ass instead.” 

Sam huffs a little laugh, but he’s still lying there, stiff and tense.

They’re both quiet for long seconds. Sam gives in to the urge to toss the sheet off, but not to leave. It’s too hot, but that’s not the reason either. He props himself up on one elbow and lets himself just stare at Bucky. At his miraculously unscarred supersoldier skin. Reaches out with his free hand and runs his fingertips down the crook of Bucky’s elbow where the drill had done so much damage, across his chest where those horrible burns used to be, over his lips where his dream-self had almost just…

Bucky kisses Sam’s fingertips, sweet and chaste. “Had a doozy, huh?” he says against Sam’s exploring thumb. “Were you a 50 Shades goon again?”

Sam hums an acknowledgement and starts counting his breaths to match Bucky’s. 

Bucky’s hand finds Sam’s, and he tugs gently, pulling Sam over until Sam gets with the program and rolls, spooning up behind him. They won’t be able to stay like this for long, it’s too warm for skin-on-skin, but Bucky’s already reaching for the little device that controls their Wakandan-issued retreat, turning on the air con, and blessed cool air washes over them a moment later.

Sam opens his mouth, but Bucky beats him to it. “For the last time, Wilson, this country is so clean-energied, just enjoy the luxuries of modern living for once in your life. I swear, no fossils are being fueled just to keep you comfortable.”

“You’re a fossil,” Sam mutters at him, but Bucky just snorts, puts the device back, and then pulls Sam’s arm properly around his waist. Curling his spine to fit, so Sam can’t help but feel his heartbeat, his breathing, inhale, exhale, inhale, metronomic, steadfast. Sam kisses the back of his shoulder. They can’t always do this, when either or both of them are too skin-raw and snappy to stand another touch, but most of the time it’s the one touch they can stand. It’s not a conventional relationship by any stretch of the imagination, but neither are they.

“You gonna rewrite it?” Bucky asks in the quiet, and Sam breathes out, slow. 

“I guess.”

Bucky waits a beat, then nudges him. “Go on, then.”

Inhale, exhale, inhale. “I stand up from the chair,” Sam says. “I don’t stay sitting. I stand up, and I take you with me, and we walk out the door.” 

Bucky doesn’t ask what chair Sam was sitting on. Doesn’t need to. “The door was locked the whole time,” he says instead.

“It’s my dream,” Sam tells him. “I can rewrite it however I want.” Inhale. Exhale. “I stand up from the chair, I take you with me, and we walk out the door.” He pokes Bucky’s belly, just because he knows Bucky will curl the metal hand around his fingers to trap them against his body. The arm hums, familiar and steady.

They’re quiet again. Sam’s skin is finally cooling and he curls further around Bucky’s spine, his nose at the back of Bucky’s skull where his hair is stubbly and short, already growing back after Shuri had to shave it away for her deprogramming pads. Not long. Not clenched in someone’s fist. Sam files the information back where it belongs, in the world of the here and now, in the world where Bucky is Bucky and Sam is Sam and it’s messy but they’re getting help and the help is messy too, most days, but they’re getting it anyway.

“Hey Buck,” he says, hours later, when neither of them have fallen back to sleep but he feels rested anyway, curled there together. “We’re gonna be okay, right?”

He can just see the side of Bucky’s face, the curl of his smile. “You’re an idiot,” Bucky murmurs, not even mean about it, but like he’s reminding Sam of some law of the universe. But then he tugs at Sam’s hand, still curled against his belly, and brushes a kiss against his fingers. “Yeah, Sam. We’re gonna be fine.”

 

 

 

Notes:

AUGUST 2025 UPDATE: It’s been four years since we published the Torture Fluff and it’s still the most fun we’ve ever had. Thank you to everyone who has joined since then, we read your comments religiously, you’re all the absolute bomb 😚😚😚

Some further thoughts:

- Apparently if you google “sambucky” this is one of the first returns. Incredible. Thank you for loving us onto the front page, you cretins 🥰
- We now have rules about who gets to reply to what kind of comment, but you will literally never guess how we’ve divided them ;)
- Sorry to all the Beatrices out there. I’m sure you’re great people.
- Shockingly, for the amount of time Sam spends thinking about peeing, neither of us is into that.
- The comments that are just like “this broke me as a person” and then fifteen love hearts in a row. We see you.
- If you’re trying to figure out which of us wrote which bit, here is a handy guide: if there’s eye contact, Cluck wrote it. If there’s flaying, Bee wrote it.
- All the sentences that are like “what’s the word for xxx” aren’t Sam being witty and thesaurusy, that was literally us writing notes to each other trying to work out how to word something. And then it was so in-character we left it in.
- No one picked up on Sam’s “Christ on a [insert type of bread]” thing but we had so much fun thinking of different types of carbs.
- It’s been four years and the picnic game debacle STILL gets brought up. Blood has been spilt.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of For Science