Author's Note: TRIGGER WARNING FOR RAPE.
Night has already fallen when the asset finally works up the courage to escape solitary confinement by opening the door to break out of his room's inadequate security. He walks down the short hallway and steps out into the main space of the floor. He is not alone. The asset freezes, watching the broad silhouette on the sofa shift in the dim light filtering in from the window across the room. From here, the asset cannot see the man's face or front, but the shoulders move, shift with purpose, and he can smell gun oil. He can hear metal clicking against metal, the sound of bullets being loaded by hand and a magazine being placed on the small table in front of the sofa.
The asset knows that man. He would know that man anywhere, on a bridge or in the ice or even here, half-dressed with his service pistol in hand. He moves silently to stand at the end of the sofa, careful not to interrupt. The weapon is compact and gleaming and familiar in a way that makes the asset ache. His commander –
(presses the barrel into the asset's navel, tells him he's a dirty American and pulls the trigger)
– pulls apart its components to clean them. The asset's skin at once feels too hot and too cold, stretched too tightly across his bones. He can't calm his breathing down, can't make his hand stop shaking as he watches the captain separate the slide from the receiver. The recoil spring and barrel are removed, gone over with a cleaning rag he picks up off the table. He watches the city lights play across the captain's somber profile, over the twists and turns of his bare arms.
The captain is seated on the edge of the sofa, feet apart as he works, as he places the handgun's components down on the table when he is done with them. His fingers do not linger on this weapon the way they lingered on the asset. The captain's head is down but he is not looking at the gun as he slams pieces back together and goes through a functions check. He is staring forward, eyes unseeing at the floor, as he pushes the full magazine back into the weapon.
The asset knows that he deserves to be punished for making the captain chase him through the city streets, and for falling from the –
(train)
(bridge)
(helicarrier)
He swallows a whimper. This isn't anything like the anxiety he usually gets before a brutal punishment, but he can still feel Kombrig Lukin's pistol in his gut. He tries to blink back the insistent memory because it doesn't sit right with the buzzing in his code and the trembling in his hand and the warmth curling up at the bottom of his spine. He doesn't feel scared.
He feels fucking hungry.
The captain drops the magazine, racks the slide back, lets the chambered round pop out and fall to the floor at his feet. It bounces on the carpet, rolls against the captain's boot. He thumbs the slide release and pulls it from the body of the gun to set on the table with the magazine and the gun oil and the cleaning rag.
He puts the pistol back together.
He pulls it apart, ejecting another round this way. Disassembles the weapon.
Reassembles. Functions check. Slaps the magazine back in and lets the slide slam forward. Drops the magazine. Yanks the slide back. Ejects the round.
The asset wants to be the weapon in his hands. He wants to be touched, even like that, even if it means pain. Even if it means he's not the favorite anymore. The pistol is not treated like the asset or even the shield; the captain is rough and careless with it, taking his anger out on the metal.
He takes the gun apart. The asset is metal, too. He could handle that anger. If it meant the captain would touch him again, he could handle anything.
The asset makes a sound, a choked, desperate needy sound in the back of his throat, at last alerting the captain to his presence. The captain lifts his head slowly to look. He puts the pistol back together, presses the magazine into it, and chambers another round while they maintain eye contact. The captain drops the magazine, sets it next to him on the sofa this time before pulling the slide back to pop the bullet out. He pulls the gun apart.
"Sergeant Barnes," the captain says, his voice hoarse from crying or screaming or maybe both. It makes the asset shiver, makes him stare at the man's hands and the weapon he is holding.
"Captain," he breathes the title, lets his teeth sink into his bottom lip to keep himself quiet because he doesn't trust his own mouth or the words caught there. He's going to ask for it, he knows, but he's not supposed to, because there is a system. There is a hierarchy. There is a chain –
(hanging from the officer's hand and the asset licks his blood off the lower links before it drips onto the concrete)
– of command, of responsibility. The Army has customs and traditions and he's supposed to get his squad leader in here with him what is he doing talking to a captain alone but they're not a squad they're a team he doesn't even have a squad leader and his platoon sergeant has been dead since they crossed into Italy and. . . and. . .
His right hand is shaking. He is grateful that his left does not betray him. The captain looks away, sets the rest of the component parts on the table.
The asset steps closer, because he's so hungry he can't not, walking into the space between sofa and table until he is standing in front of his captain. It puts the man's face at waist height and fuck, he knows what that makes him think of, makes him want to do. The captain's feet are spread and the asset is standing between his knees, not quite bracketed by the captain's body, and all he wants to do is grab the man by the hair and pull him forward that last bit of distance.
It is easy to imagine. He thinks of how the captain would look, mouth open and breath rough, tonguing at the asset's cock through the loose sleep pants he was given. The captain would put his hands on the asset's hips, tuck his fingers into the waistband and pull the fabric out of the way so he could –
The captain is looking up at the asset's face with a dark, searching expression. He wonders if the captain can see his hunger like this, if his pupils are blown wide. The asset is vaguely aware that he has left his lips parted, and that the captain can probably hear the rasp of his labored breath. He likes this position, he thinks. The captain always looks good under him.
"Is everything okay?" the captain asks. The asset doesn't know how to answer that question, so he doesn't reply. But he does notice something else at roughly the same time: the captain's gaze has dropped to the asset's crotch.
Everything gets a lot less complicated in the four seconds that follow. The captain has made it very simple. He knows exactly what he wants to do and the asset doesn't care if he gets in trouble because whatever the punishment is, it will be worth it to not feel hungry for a moment.
He puts his foot on the table to push it back so that he can lower himself to a kneeling position between the captain's legs. The captain leans back quickly once the asset starts to move, letting his shoulders fall into the back of the sofa. A soft groan escapes the asset at that, because the captain looks like he's on display now, all easy lines of access to his body. He rests his hands too high on the captain's thighs as he settles down on the floor. It makes the captain inhale harshly, slow and deep and causing his chest to expand and his blue eyes to go just a little wide.
The asset is very aware of how close his hands are to the captain's cock. He digs his thumbs in, pressing hard on the inseam of the man's jeans.
"Bucky?" the captain asks, voice wavering at the end. He wants to undo the captain's pants, reach inside and take his big pretty dick in hand until the captain is gasping and straining, pulling at the asset's mismatched shoulders and begging him. He wants to force the captain to fire, to shoot hot and sticky over his fist and the man's own stomach. His eyes drag down from the captain's worried face, crawl hungrily over his torso to the front of his pants. He could make him, he thinks. If he wanted to. He could make the captain fire. "S-sergeant–. . ."
There is a bullet under his knee. It is digging into his skin, pulling him from his thoughts. The asset frowns. He knows better. He doesn't get bullets when he isn't on mission.
(the gunshots are loud in the general's office)
(he pulls them from his body with shaky fingers and has to dig the others from the floorboards to give them back)
But he can fix this. It won't be hard. It won't even hurt this time.
The asset slides his hands down the captain's muscular legs, aware of the way the captain is staring at his face, at the roll of his shoulders. He scoots back to give himself room to ghost his mouth past the captain's knee and over his calf, following the path his hands are taking, and curls his fingers around the captain's ankles. His lips catch briefly on the laces of the captain's boot on the way to the floor.
There is a bullet next to the captain's foot. The asset licks it up into his mouth, tastes the gun oil the captain must have smeared on it when he had loaded the magazine after cleaning the pistol. There is dirt on the captain's boot, gritty on his tongue where he brushes it over the leather. The bullet feels heavy in his mouth, hollow-point and .45-caliber, metal clicking against the back of his teeth.
"Sergeant Barnes. What are you doing?"
The asset lifts his head, leaning toward the captain again. He wants to be close. He wants to be surrounded by this man, by the sight and smell and feel of him, wants the captain's fucking taste all down his throat. The captain's expression is too complex for him, would have been unreadable even if they weren't in the dark with only the distant glow of the city to illuminate them.
"Open your mouth," the captain commands, but his voice is quiet, whispered. It sounds like a secret when he says it like that. The asset rolls the bullet under his tongue, only aware of his own smirk because he feels it pull across his features. He tilts his head down to watch the captain through his lashes as he lets his jaw hang open.
There is a tense moment of silence where nothing happens. The captain swallows hard, brows drawn together. He is considering something. The asset isn't sure what, exactly, isn't sure if this is part of the original programming or the result of the new conditioning. The moment lasts for fifteen seconds, for days and years and stretches out into madness as he waits for the captain to decide on the correct course of action.
He is rewarded for his patience.
The captain's hands are warm where he touches the asset's face, where his palms scrape over the asset's stubble and hold him steady by the chin. It feels better than the asset thought it would, better than the accidental contact on the technician's table or the brief embraces in the hallways. The captain straightens, sitting up and pulling the asset forward. He moves willingly, obediently, gliding his own hands back up the captain's legs to grip his thighs, then the waistband of his jeans. After a moment, he slips his right hand under the thin undershirt the captain is wearing to feel the skin and muscle and heat of his body.
It feels so good it makes the breath hitch and stutter in the asset's lungs. He stares up into the blue of the captain's eyes, reverent, as the captain rubs his thumb over the asset's lower lip, pulling it down to expose teeth and the wet gleam of the bullet where it peeks out from under his tongue.
"Augh. . ."
"Give it to me," the captain murmurs, words as soft and gentle as the caress. It hums through the asset's being, stoking the fire beneath all the ice they filled him with and leaving him burning, hot and hungry all over. The asset nods, wide-eyed and breathless as two fingers dip into his mouth to retrieve the round.
The asset knows these hands, he thinks. He would always know these hands. They taste like gun metal and graphite, like the summer in Brooklyn before he moved in with Steve Rogers. He can taste spilled whiskey and leather when he closes his eyes and lips and starts to suck. From the other room, he can hear the team's drunken laughter at their table in the back of the bar.
The fingers press down on his tongue, a heavy, pleasant pressure. It makes the bullet dig into the soft lining of his mouth. The captain's grip on his chin tightens, and the asset leans into it with a soft moan. The edge of the sofa presses against his hips, and he is aching when the captain orders him to, "Open. Your. Mouth."
The sound the asset makes in reply is not a laugh. It is something else, something low and dirty and breathy. It feels like a challenge in his throat, like a dare. He blinks up at the captain, slow and hazy, vision smearing like charcoal, a fragile memory sketched in blood.
He does not comply, and so the captain pries his lips apart, forcing the asset to open to him. His gaze is dark and unreadable, never straying from the asset's mouth and heated in a way that makes the asset want to push him until he stumbles over the edge.
The captain drops the bullet back to the carpet. The asset grins against the tight vise of the man's fingers.
"Kiss me," he says, as though he is in any position to make demands. The captain scowls.
"Why?" the captain asks. "Because you've been good?"
The absurdity of the question is not lost on either of them. James Barnes was never a good man, was never going to be a good man, and they had long since passed the point of needing to lie or pretend that he was. "No," the asset says. "Kiss me anyway, because you want to."
And the captain does, because he is sweet and good and kind. Because he is soft where the asset is made of hard edges and sharp blades. He kisses the asset's mouth like it is fragile, like the asset is precious to him.
The asset surges forward and pushes him back into the sofa, turning the kiss into something harder, deeper. He makes it something dirty and hungry with the wet slide of his tongue into the captain's mouth. The captain goes easily, gives ground, and it is simple, so simple, to let himself get caught up in the wave of his own arousal and the way the captain lets the asset touch him.
He is climbing up onto the sofa before he quite realizes why he wants to be there, aware only that he needs to be closer. The asset balances above the captain, his knees on either side of the captain's hips so that he is above and looking down.
The captain used to be smaller, he thinks. Is that why he likes having the man beneath him so much? Did it used to be that way?
His metal fingers catch in the captain's short hair, pressing the captain's head back into the sofa cushion, and the gasp that escapes the captain then is loud in the quiet space between them. The asset growls down at him, rocks up against the captain's torso to grinds into the captain's ribcage.
Captain America's mouth is swollen, pink and kiss bruised. With the way the captain has fallen back it is easy for the asset to rest one of his knees on the captain's shoulder, to grip the back of the sofa with his flesh and blood hand to leverage himself up.
"Bucky?" The captain says, very quietly into the dark. His lips barely move with the question.
The asset grins, drunk on the realization that his captain isn't going to punish him at all. Not for what he does as the Winter Soldier, and not for what he does as Bucky Barnes. He frees his metal hand from the captain's hair and starts to pull the waistband of his sleep pants down.
"Open your mouth, sir," the asset tells him. The captain's confused expression goes stony and guarded. His mouth snaps shut into a thin, tight line.
There is a tense moment of silence where nothing happens, where the captain just stares at him and the asset waits for him to crack. To trip and stumble over that dark ledge and lash out. At some point, he thinks, Captain America has to stand his ground, because Steve Rogers never backed down from a fight.
But this, apparently, is not that point.
Captain America, slowly, mechanically, opens his mouth and lets the asset in.
He doesn't suck or bob his head, doesn't try to make the experience good for him. It doesn't matter. It is good anyway. The captain's mouth is warm and wet and even though his jaw has fallen open as far as it can, there's just enough pressure to make the asset stutter out a sigh of pleasure.
The asset rocks forward until he hits the back of his throat and the man starts to choke, coughing around his gag reflex. He eases back out. Captain America takes a deep breath in through his nose, his eyes narrowed into an unwavering glare as the asset does it again. This time, the asset stays for a moment longer, heart pounding, and doesn't pull out as far.
It's messy. Saliva escapes from the corners of the captain's mouth and coats his chin, drips down his neck. He still chokes on it. He chokes on it every time, and the room is filled with the sound of his muffled coughing and the asset's panting and the wet drag of skin. The involuntary motion of his mouth and throat, the way the captain instinctively tries to close up against the intrusion, feels good. The asset starts to thrust in a slow, measured rhythm to give the captain time to breathe so he doesn't asphyxiate.
For a second, he worries about Steve Rogers having an asthma attack. He worries about the angry, hurt way Steve Rogers is watching him, and the way his eyes water with the ongoing struggle. But no. If Steve Rogers didn't want this, he would push the asset away. The pistol is on the sofa cushion next to the captain's leg, still put together and loaded with a half full magazine. If the asset was overstepping boundaries, he would have been shot by now.
Captain America's shoulders are tight with restraint and his hands are still, clenched into fists on top of his thighs, deliberately not touching the asset anywhere that the asset isn't already touching him first.
Heat and desire pool at the base of his spine. The asset feels his orgasm coming a long ways off, a steady build that he matches pace with until it hits with the inevitability of any trigger pull.
He realizes, somewhat after the fact, that he is not supposed to fire off-mission.
Steve Rogers sputters, mouth full of come that he resolutely does not swallow, and finally reacts.
The asset feels strong hands on him in the moment before gravity reorients and he is sent airborne in a shove that has him falling back into the small table. It breaks under his weight, top splitting with a loud crack and the legs snapping off. Steve Rogers follows him down to the floor, surging over him in the wreckage and forcing him onto his stomach.
And then –
The captain, he spreads the asset and –
The asset has been spit on before. He knows this. It has happened many times, with many different people.
But not like this.
He tenses, freezing up at the feeling of Steve Rogers's saliva and his own come, warm from the captain's mouth, splattering down onto his skin. A sound escapes him, raw and gasping, and his face flushes with shame.
It feels dirty. He is dirty, but Captain America is kissing his way up the asset's spine anyway, biting his shoulder blade hard enough to leave an imprint of his perfect teeth in the asset's skin.
"You like this?" The captain tells him, must tell him, despite the uncertain tone, despite the rising intonation at the end of the statement. The asset feels tears prickle at the corners of his eyes. "This is what you wanted?"
''This is what I wanted." He doesn't know what he wants, but he nods his agreement and dutifully repeats: "I like this."
Because he does. He does? He can't be sure. The asset doesn't know what this is or is going to be.
He feels the captain's fingers sliding through the mess. It is not an unpleasant feeling, but it is unfamiliar, and the asset isn't sure if this is a punishment or a reward.
The asset presses his face into the splintery carpet and squeezes his eyes shut tight, willing the rest of his muscles to relax. "S-sir?"
"Don't call me that," the captain whispers, kisses the shell of his ear, then the side of his neck, and syrupy sparks flicker through the asset's body as the stretch goes from something strange to something good. "Bucky, who am I?"
"S-s-st–" the asset stutters on the name. The captain pauses, waiting for the correct response. The weight of him on top of the asset and in the asset is maddening, is emphatically not what he wants. He whines and starts to writhe because it's better when at least one of them is in motion, until the man's other hand lands on his hip and pets him into stillness.
"Who am I?" The captain repeats. "What's my name?"
The asset whimpers. Captain America starts to withdraw.
But that's not what he wants either. It's a no-win situation, a scenario designed for him to fail. He doesn't want this, but neither does he want it to stop.
"St-steve!" He finally manages to choke out around the terror that Captain America will withhold contact and force him back into solitary confinement. "You're Steve Rogers."
"That's right," Steve Rogers says, and it is so tender it makes the asset ache. But it's okay because he goes on, "That's it, that's me, you don't have to run, don't run from me, Bucky."
"'C-cause I know you."
"Yeah, you do." The words are warm and fond, and the kisses are soft and sweet. The captain's fingers are pulled out, leaving him feeling loose and oddly empty.
Something much bigger than Steve Rogers's fingers starts to press into him.
For a moment, the asset forgets how to breathe.
The intrusion is painful, despite the preparations. The spit and come acts as a lubricant, but not a particularly good one. His body is strong and it does not rip or tear or break, though his pulse skips and skitters under his skin like a wild thing. His mind races uselessly, and it feels like every synapse fires off a warning with each millimeter that enters him. He has no idea what he is supposed to do.
Steve Rogers settles onto him, into him in what feels like an impossible way. Like his body should be splitting, but it doesn't, and he isn't sure if he should feel impressed with his own adaptability or not. Steve Rogers's breath pants in short, hot gasps against his ear and cheek.
"I love you," he whispers, as if that's important.
"I love you," the asset repeats. He has no idea what it means.
And then Steve Rogers grabs the asset by the shoulders and starts to thrust.
The force and angle drive the asset down into the ruins of the coffee table, his knees and forearms sliding through the wreckage over the carpet until he is laying flat on his stomach again. Steve Rogers rides him the short distance down, his rhythm never faltering.
"St-steve!" he cries out. Because he can't run from this and Captain America wants him to remember his are easy orders. He can do this. He has survived so much worse.
Steve Rogers comes in him, pressing in deep, crushing the asset down into the floor. He makes a sound when he does, a breathy grunt that the asset knows he has heard before, though he isn't sure when or how.
Steve Rogers noses at the asset's hairline, kisses his skin wherever he can reach. Sucks a mark onto his neck that fades too quickly. The asset is trembling and sore, which strikes him as odd because he has used his body harder for worse and with fewer complaints in the past. His chest hurts, his lungs are struggling to remember how to breathe without hitching into sobs.
"Hey, hey," Steve Rogers murmurs, pulling out and nudging the asset to roll over onto his back. He complies. A piece of the broken table digs into his kidney. "Come here, it's okay, it's just me, you're okay, I've got you."
The asset's diaphragm spasms, making him hiccup pathetically. He squeezes his eyes shut, shakes his head. This isn't right. This doesn't feel right. Steve Rogers kisses his quivering mouth, and his guts twist with guilt and hurt and want. He shouldn't feel this way, he thinks. He's not sure how he is supposed to be feeling right now.
"Bucky?" Steve Rogers says, a confused, pained expression knitting his brows. His gaze flickers with concern over the asset's face, unable to land on any one feature for long.
The asset opens his eyes. He knows how to make it okay.
The asset snarls, pushing the captain away only to follow with a cloying desperation. He climbs on top of him and bites his mouth in a rough estimation of their earlier kisses, demanding, begging, for the captain to, "Make it simple again."
Author's Note: This chapter has been censored to comply with FFN's content and rating policies. The uncensored version is available on AO3. I'm not super active on Tumblr, but I do answer asks there sometime ( ). Mostly I'm a DW guy these days ( ).