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He waited in a room that was mostly empty, steel walls and steel floors, entirely featureless and entirely soundproof. He wore nothing. His hair was still damp from when they’d washed him off, thrusting him into a cubicle and turning the water on him, viciously hot to sluice away dirt and blood. He had scrubbed himself with the bar of soap they’d tossed in after him, so that his skin and hair now radiated a slight detergent scent. Apart from him, the only thing in the room was an old battered mattress in the corner.
The door opened. Heavy footfalls announced his arrival but the Soldier did not look up. As in all things, he obeyed his training. Some of the men had liked it when he acknowledged them. Some of them had wanted him to crawl across the floor to them, or to be defiant so that they could pretend to subdue him. For a long time now, though, there had only been one man and that man was Rumlow and his tastes were so ingrained in the Soldier’s mind that they might as well have been his own.
“You did well today, boy,” he murmured. Six paces in and then he stopped as the Soldier sank to his knees on the cold metal floor. Fingers worked his zipper and Rumlow drew out his cock, already thick and hard.
“Thank you, sir,” the Soldier answered mechanically. Always this little resistance, these tiny rebellions. They were all he had left and he clung to them. Rumlow’s hand descended, striking the side of his face so hard that it rattled his teeth. He licked his lips and opened his mouth and the tip of Rumlow’s cock came to rest on his tongue.
“Such a little bitch,” Rumlow purred, stroking thick fingers through the Soldier’s damp, tangled hair. “Such a smart-mouth little cunt. Did you talk to Pierce that way?”
Memories, then, of another time and another man. Alex, with his calm voice and his handsome face and his hands that knew just how to hurt. Alex, who had trained him for this and who had used him as a reward for the men quickest to do his bidding. He had worshipped Alex wholly, body and mind, but the times between cryostasis were long and Alex was an old man now, and so the Soldier belonged to Rumlow.
Who cupped his face as he fucked it, big hands holding his jaw, pulling him forward. He didn’t gag or choke (though he had pretended to, for some of them) and his tongue worked with an even rhythm, stroking the shaft to pull it deeper into his throat, swirling around the head when Rumlow pulled back. It was as instinctive as killing, muscles moving in a predetermined dance, the next technique decided not by deflection or counter-attack but by the tenor and strength of Rumlow’s moans and growls of pleasure.
“Enough,” Rumlow said, pushing him back, gripping his cock and squeezing. The color was high in his cheeks. His pupils were dilated. Sometimes when he came in, it was out of habit, because Alex had insisted on routine.
“That’s how you train animals,” he said. “Routine. Reinforce his actions with repetition.” And so Rumlow had come because it was expected, and he had turned the Soldier on his face on the old mattress and he had fucked him, hard and rough and quick. The Soldier had learned to recognize those visits, the shortness in Rumlow’s voice, the boredom on his face. On those days it was over quickly, the hierarchy established and the Soldier reminded of his position as a tool, a creature, a receptacle.
But tonight Rumlow was breathing hard, his eyes flickering, devouring. “Go,” he grated, and the Soldier went, slinking across the floor to crawl up onto the mattress. He knew what Rumlow wanted and knew that he would provide it, but gears clashed in his head and he resisted. For a moment, he resisted, remembering…
No. Not remembering. There were no pictures in his head, no lost loves to mourn save Alex only, and he was less a love than a habit. It was not aversion to humiliation, for he had grown accustomed to the singularness of that sensation and it no longer troubled him. It was not dislike of the physical act itself, for when he was allowed he took great pleasure in it.
It was only a resistance, buried deep enough in his mind that it could not be entirely erased. Easy enough to make him pull the trigger. Easy enough to send him out killing night after night. He accepted pain as part of his existence, accepted fear as his punishment for inflicting pain on others. He had shot children, sabotaged trains and planes and ships which took with them hundreds of lives. They had ground every last ounce of remorse out of him, but they could not rid him of the shame of crouching on a mattress and lifting his ass up in the air like a bitch in heat.
Which he did now, moaning softly, hand slipping back and between his legs. The cold of his metal hand shocked pleasure out of him and he moaned louder, hips rolling, cock slowly hardening as Rumlow stood across the room and watched. This was all part of it, this little display, dispensed with sometimes when Rumlow was bored with him and wanted only to fuck and run, but essential when he had that avid light in his eyes, as he did now.
There was a soft hush of fabric, Rumlow shedding his clothes, and the Soldier slipped his hand up further, the tip of one metal digit penetrating his own tight ass. There was no lube on it - that came later - but the metal was smooth enough that it stung only a little. Rumlow growled, settling himself on the mattress in front of the Soldier, legs spread, cock hard. The Soldier’s obedient mouth opened wide and Rumlow fed his cock back into it, stroking his cheeks and murmuring.
“That’s my little slut. They’re all so scared of you, baby, but do you think they still would be if they could see you like this?”
The Soldier was programmed to answer any question posed to him, but he had come to understand that anything Rumlow asked him when his mouth was full was rhetorical, meant to be answered only with a pleading whimper. Still, he answered mentally, yes. Most of them had seen him in similar situations, bent over a table or kneeling on the floor. Rumlow broke in strike teams on him, bound them together with the shared experience of having fucked the mouth or ass of the deadliest weapon in Hydra’s possession. There had been women the last time, two of them; one had ridden him, moaning and laughing and backhanding his face, and the other had held his face between her legs while he used the metal arm to finger her. He remembered it all dimly. They were like ghosts to him, like nothing. He was switched off when the strike team shared him around, free of sensation and reaction, like an elaborate sex toy. He did not fuck, he was only fucked.
Not so now, with Rumlow alone. He liked the Soldier to react, to beg, to move and squirm and suck. He wanted to hear screaming, to feel this living weapon clench around him, and so the Soldier gave him what he wanted because he had no choice, and because Rumlow felt good inside him and that was better, sometimes, than the vast nothingness to which he had grown accustomed.
Rumlow pressed lube into his hand and he reached back, slicking his metal fingers, thrusting them deep inside himself. They were cold and smooth and strong, and he crooked them, teasing himself as his lips and tongue worked Rumlow’s cock. He moaned and whimpered and twitched his hips. Two fingers, then three, then when Rumlow pushed his head all the way down, the tip of his cock sliding into the Soldier’s throat, four fingers and a muffled scream of pain.
“You’ll keep going if I don’t tell you to stop, won’t you?” Rumlow murmured, stroking the back of his neck, holding him still lazily. “You’ll shove your entire hand in.”
He didn’t want to, but Rumlow was right, he would. It had been impressed upon him early that if he did the things that he was required to do, it would not necessitate extra trips to the chair and further programming. Deep down at the core of him, he feared that chair. The pain, yes, was awful, very nearly unbearable, but it was the emptiness that he despised, that blankness that longed to be filled. It was like a toothache, that nothingness. Better to do as he was bid without it than be forced to endure the chair every time he was handed over to a new person.
He started to fold his hand, to twist his hips, but Rumlow laughed and slapped the side of his face. “Don’t do that, you stupid little whore,” he growled and the Soldier immediately stopped. “Christ, you’re pathetic. Get up here.”
He pulled away from Rumlow’s cock, wiped his chin. His fingers were slick with lube and he wiped them clean on the mattress. Later, the techs that take care of his arm would mutter to themselves about Rumlow and his habits, Rumlow and his perversions but they were too scared of him to ever say anything. They would clean out the lube from his joints, like always, and he would ignore the pity in their eyes. It was a cycle, like most things in his life, the same thing, day in and day out. Repetition wore him down, eroded everything until there was only the Soldier and the Mission.
He climbed into Rumlow’s lap, held himself up while Rumlow pushed the head of his cock in. Just that, no more, an unpleasant tease that drew a genuine whimper from him. “Shhh…” Rumlow stroked his belly, fingers teasing at quivering muscles, tracing the swoop of his hip, the curve of his ass. He’d done this the first time, stroked him all over with Alex watched and drank whiskey and dared the Soldier with his eyes to reach for anyone but Rumlow.
“You want more, baby?” Rumlow murmured, his voice rough. “You gotta ask for it.”
“Please?” the Soldier mewled, rocking his hips back and forth, knowing that if he wanted, he could slam them down with enough force to shatter Rumlow’s pelvis. Possibly break his spine, the angle he was sitting at now. He thought about that a lot, all of the different ways he could kill every single person who touched him. Even Alex. Especially Alex.
“Please what?” Rumlow purred. The Soldier answered without hesitation but with the same twinge of shame that he felt when he displayed himself. Obedience was paramount. He didn’t have to like it, he only had to say it.
“Please Daddy?” he gasped and Rumlow slammed up into him, and that did feel good, that was worth it, because he was full now and he didn’t have to fake it.
“You really love it, don’t you?” Rumlow laughed as he arched and twisted, hips rolling to find the best angle.
“Deeper,” he gasped instead of answering. This was where he started to lose it, forgot the rules. You always answered every question, obeyed every command, but Rumlow was thick and heavy and it was like there was an itch deep inside him that he was struggling to scratch. “Deeper!!”
Rumlow’s hand met the side of his face in a hard open-handed slap that turned into a death grip on his jaw. He snarled wordlessly, kept fucking his hips up and down. “You’ll get what I give you,” Rumlow muttered, dragging his face close, pronouncing every word distinctly. “Tell me you love it.”
“I love it,” the Soldier answered, his voice grating. He could put a hand around Rumlow’s throat right now, choke the life out of him as he rode him to orgasm. His lips twisted around the thought, savored it, and he added, “Daddy.”
Rumlow spit in his face, slapped him again. His fingers slid lower this time, wrapping hard around the Soldier’s throat. The echoes of his own thoughts did not escape him and he moaned louder, pressing forward against the steel bars of Rumlow’s fingers. Now came the threats, the pleading, the final frenzied rush with his back on the mattress and his knees on his shoulders and Rumlow pounding into him from above. He licked his teeth, drew breath in sobbing gasps as Rumlow’s hips snapped up again and again, driving his cock deep inside and sending bright blossoms of pleasure flowing through the Soldier’s torso.
“Now tell me you love me,” Rumlow whispered and something stopped in the Soldier’s brain and he froze.
Love. He didn’t know anything about love. He was a machine, a thing, an animal at best, who needed to be fed and trained and minded, but animals did not love. He received affection, of a sort, from Alex and from Rumlow. They gave him food, real food, when he had been out of stasis long enough for his body to process it. Rumlow had given him chocolate once and it had melted in the heat of his mouth and he had cried without knowing why or even that he was doing it at all until Rumlow had cupped his face and licked the tears from his cheeks. Was that love? Perhaps of a sort, he wasn’t programmed to identify things of that nature. Death was his function, animal pleasure his reward. Love did not enter into the equation at all. Love was a taste on the tip of his tongue that he could not swallow down. Love was a word that meant nothing.
So he would say it. If it was nothing, then it didn’t matter if he said it to Rumlow. He opened his mouth, stopped, choked. “No,” he said.
Rumlow’s face transformed, twisting with fury, and he shoved the Soldier off of him, flipped him onto his stomach. A broad hand came to rest on the back of his head, shoving his face into the mattress so that he could barely breathe. He could have fought back, broken Rumlow’s arm, kicked him in the gut and knocked the air out of him. But he had disobeyed and he accepted Rumlow’s anger as his due.
And it was good anger, actual and vicious. He could feel the trembling in Rumlow’s arm as it held him against the mattress, the soft hiss of breath between teeth as Rumlow guided his cock back inside and slammed his hips forward. The new angle made it feel bigger, more painful, but the Soldier did not cry out. This wasn’t about him anymore, this was about Rumlow and some failure of his. Even when he wanted to fuck, he was never so emotional, never so careless, and now he pounded into the Soldier like he had something to prove and it was sublime.
He could barely breathe, his nose and mouth mostly smothered by the mattress. It reeked of sex and desperation, words that had been forced out of him, sweat that had been unfairly taken instead of won. Like now, as he screamed into that record of past humiliations, his head swimming as he struggled for air, and then Rumlow’s hand tangled in his long hair and yanked his head up, bowing his back and holding him aloft.
“Say it,” he grated. Every movement of his hips sent pleasure like broken glass up the Soldier’s spine. It was the deepest Rumlow had ever fucked him, the deepest anyone had ever fucked him. He could only sob and scream, forced past the point of his limited articulation by the steady punishment of Rumlow’s cock. “Say it or I’ll fucking kill you.”
The Soldier laughed at that, a wet, humorless noise as the pain from his scalp melted into the pleasure from deep inside him. The one was sharp, the other liquid, and together with Rumlow’s anger, they were a force of nature, stripping him bare. He shook like he was having a seizure, tears leaking down his cheeks, as pressure built inside him. All he had to do was say that one thing, that meaningless thing, and Rumlow would let him come. His teeth chattered and he clenched his jaw, shaking his head against Rumlow’s grip.
“No,” he gasped. “No.”
“You know you’re going to the chair for this,” Rumlow whispered, his face so close, his body pressed heavily against the Soldier’s back. His arm shifted, fingers untangling from hair as his forearm became a bar across the Soldier’s neck, choking the air out of him. His hips slowed, grinding now, and each stroke pushed explosions up the Soldier’s throat that emerged as breathless whimpers.
“Don’t care,” he managed. His fingers were claws, tearing at the mattress. The metal ones punctured its fabric covering easily and he hooked them in deep, desperate for an anchor as he battled the need to come. “Worth it.”
“Say it.” Rumlow pulled almost all the way out and then was still. The cessation of sensation was too much and the Soldier screamed, trying to push back against him, trying to force his cock back in, good and deep. Rumlow laughed, tightened his arm. The Soldier began to strangle and, gagging, he forced himself to be still. This was his fault, his disobedience.
“You’ve been off ice for too long,” Rumlow purred, licking the curve of his ear. His voice was rough and low and satisfied. He knew he would get what he wanted, the same way the Soldier could tell that his defiance was waning. “You think you can do whatever you want, you think you can disobey me. We don’t need you. I don’t need you.” His hips jerked forward, his cock pressing in and out, in and out, just enough to make the Soldier howl for more before Rumlow stilled again.
“Please,” he whimpered, reduced to a pathetic mess, a thing. He had been very bad, very disobedient and Rumlow was right, this would get him the chair again. They said too much of that would damage him permanently, ruin his brain’s ability to function, and so Alex was sparing with it. The threat alone was usually enough to bring him in line. He didn’t think there was any coming back from this, though. Open defiance was not tolerated.
“Say it,” Rumlow answered. Simple, stating a fact. Say it and you get what you want. Say it and you can come. Say it and maybe, maybe you won’t get the chair, we’ll pretend it was just a game. Say it and go back to being nothing but a trigger to pull and a hole to fuck.
“No,” he said, desperate. But why? Rumlow’s hips moved, agonizingly slow now, and the Soldier’s flesh arm trembled. The metal one was steady as a pillar, elbow locked to hold him up under the weight of Rumlow’s body. He concentrated on it, the lack of distracting sensory input, the obscene strength of it. He willed himself to be like it, to take the punishment without reaction. They were only three words. “Please, I don’t want to…”
“Why not?” Rumlow murmured. His breath was hot, his arm choking. The Soldier struggled to breathe, struggled to think. He hadn’t the capacity for reason; oh, there was cleverness, there was survival instinct. He knew how to restrategize if he lost his quarry or if the plan turned out to be unfeasible. But this was nothing that he could accurately process and he whined like a dog, frightened and confused.
“I don’t know,” he babbled, “just don’t make me, please Daddy…” And that usually worked, the begging, the display of pathetic need. This time, Rumlow only laughed, his hips working back up to a steady rhythm, rebuilding the pressure that threatened to undo the Soldier’s mind entirely.
“Say. It.” Each word punctuated by a sharp thrust, so deep that he felt he might scream for mercy. His toes curled, his chest heaved. He would come soon, no matter what Rumlow said, no matter what he did. It was past the point of no return. His hand inched along the mattress, fingers itching to circle his own cock, to drag out an orgasm before Rumlow could invent some new torture.
“But I don’t,” he gasped. “I don’t.”
“I don’t care,” Rumlow purred, hammering into him now, his arm loosening, his fingers feeding into the Soldier’s ready mouth. He sucked at them, laved them with his tongue. With fingers in his mouth, he couldn’t say the evil words that Rumlow was trying to force out of him. “I just want to hear it. One word at a time, boy. Say it.”
The Soldier whimpered, faltered, the way he had been programmed to never do. No hesitation, no regret, no questions. Those were the rules and he had obeyed them so well. He killed when they said kill. He sat in the chair and let them dismantle his mind. He spread his legs and opened his mouth whether he wanted to or not. And now, desperate, he could not bring himself to say three simple words. Every time he tried, it was like something rose up and clogged his throat.
Something like the sun, warm and lazy, like dust motes and soft hands and bony knees. Like a laugh, barely remembered, something buried down in the depths of his mind, covered up perhaps but not entirely excised. A person? A face? No, but blue eyes and a smile and nights of turning, turning restlessness, worry and fear. Skinny arms and legs. All wrapped up somehow with the man on the bridge, the man who had named him as though he were a person. The Soldier sobbed, strangling on half formed flashes, mangled little things that wanted to be memories.
Who was Bucky? Was it him?
Rumlow’s fist was around his cock and he twisted his head, freeing his mouth from the intrusive fingers. Before Rumlow could move his hand, the Soldier had buried his face in it, screaming out a pain that had nothing to do with the punishing rhythm of Rumlow’s hips. There was a wildness in him now, a confusion of thoughts that would not be quieted, and so he said the words to make them stop, to choke these fragmentary truths on the lies that he had lived for so long.
“I love you,” he sobbed, thrusting back, using his arms to push wholly into the brutal fucking. Rumlow laughed low in his chest, kissed the nape of the Soldier’s neck.
“That’s my boy,” he whispered. His fingers circled the Soldier’s cock, stroked twice and it was over. Climax gripped him with a suddenness that was as unfulfilling as it was sweet, all of his muscles trembling, his lungs freezing as it went on and on, as he poured himself onto the old mattress and across Rumlow’s scarred knuckles. He tasted blood in his mouth, wondered if he’d bitten down on his own flesh or on Rumlow’s hand. It didn’t matter. He clenched tight, twisted his hips, and Rumlow thrust in again, deep and hard, and trembled for a moment before exhaling and pulling away.
He curled up on the mattress as Rumlow stood, wiped himself down with a rag he’d brought in. He felt come leaking out of him, leaving his thighs sticky, and he watched with dead, dull eyes as Rumlow got dressed.
“It’s not so bad,” Rumlow offered, grinning crookedly as he fastened his belt. “It’ll be easier next time.”
“Who was he?” the Soldier asked. Rumlow’s expression melted into nothing, careful blankness hiding his shock.
“What are you talking about?” he snapped.
“The man on the bridge.” He sat up, drew his legs close against him. Rumlow looked like he wanted to strike him, kick him, shut him up by any means necessary. “I knew him.”
“Fuck.” Anger drained out of Rumlow. His shoulders slumped and he walked to the door, opening it and speaking a few words to the techs on the other side. “It didn’t work. Call Pierce and get the chair ready.”
The Soldier closed his eyes, weary and miserable, and gathered what strength he had left. Whatever they told him, whatever his truths were now, there had been sunlight once, and gentle hands, and the man on the bridge. He used the knowledge as a spur, slowly forcing himself to his feet. They would put him in the chair again, take it all away, but not before he took some of them with him.
He waited for Rumlow to get out of the way first. Even after everything, the Soldier did not want to hurt him. Yes, Rumlow hurt him sometimes, beat him until he couldn’t move, held his head still and his jaw open so other men could fuck his mouth. Sometimes Rumlow spit on him, called him a whore, pinned him to the floor with a boot on the back of his neck and his ass in the air while he begged in a broken voice for the privilege of being fucked. He was a cruel man, an amoral man, but he was also the only man who had ever showed any kindness to the Soldier. Every time he’d wiped blood out of the Soldier’s eyes, every scrap of real food he’d brought, every fond pat on the head for the dog that did its duty, all of those things bought him a reprieve this time.
He was out the door before they could close it behind him. One of the techs screamed, and kept right on screaming as his arm splintered in the relentless grip of the Soldier’s metal arm.
***
Later, much later, they helped him out of the chair and he shook as though he were cold, teeth chattering. It was a physical reaction, one that would calm over time as his brain stopped frantically firing nonsensical impulses to his muscles.
Alex was gone, but Rumlow was sitting next to the chair, watching him closely. He stood, his legs shaking and Rumlow reached out and caught his wrist, drew him close. Obedient, he curled in Rumlow’s lap like a child.
“There you go, baby,” he soothed, stroking big hands up and down the Soldier’s back. “There you go. How do you feel?”
“Better,” the Soldier answered. Blank. Emotionless. Empty. The confusion he’d experienced had been erased as easily as one would erase a chalkboard. “Ready.”
“Ready,” Rumlow laughed, kissing his throat. The techs looked away out of embarrassment or politeness. “I bet you’re ready. We’ll go clean you up and get your armor on and you can show me how ready you are.”
“Yes,” the Soldier answered, eager to prove himself. Eager to earn his reward.
“You do something for me first, though,” Rumlow ordered, catching his chin, shaking him like a dog worrying a bone. “Tell me you love me.”
The Soldier’s brow furrowed then cleared, then furrowed again. Love? What purpose did it serve to talk of love when he barely understood the concept? But Rumlow was good, Rumlow took care of him, so he parroted obediently, “I love you.”
“Good.” Rumlow sounded relieved as he stood, steering the Soldier towards the showers. “That’s real good, baby.”
And from a crack at the bottom of his empty mind, there came a distant voice, a single word, a memory of sunlight and dust and laughter. A misfire, his brain trying to make sense of the punishing rewriting it had undergone. Or perhaps something that had been asleep for years, stretching and waking and shoving back towards the surface. He kept his mouth shut, turned mechanically as Rumlow washed him, and whispered silently to himself, over and over like a chant or a prayer, that one word.
Bucky