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If you were killed and replaced with a pod person I would be sad, but I would try to make the best of it. (Are pod people more flexible, you think?)
A Softer World #628
//
"You know, I'm not going to be Bucky," Bucky had said, about two months in.
He didn't want Steve to be upset about it, which was a crapshoot anyway because even saying that name in that way was enough to make Steve's eyes harden. He also didn't want to lead Steve on, which was kind of inevitable if they continued the way they were headed. Really it was best to get this sort of thing out of the way sooner rather than later, so that Steve wouldn't be even angrier later, when the truth inevitably came out. He'd fucked it up once already towards the beginning, when Steve had said I love you and Bucky had almost responded with what he was supposed to say, which was nothing, but thankfully he'd caught ahold of himself and said something about Steve's dumbshit tendencies, which had been close enough to the truth that Steve hadn't noticed.
"Okay," Steve said. "Could you explain that?"
Steve was kind of slow, sometimes. "You said I'm not the Soldier, right? That was just what they called me. Well, I'm not him either. That was just what they called me."
"They?" Steve sounded amiable enough, but there was a muscle twitching in his jaw.
"Who do you think, the Red Guard? HYDRA. Whatever you want to call 'em. You were nicer'n most, but—still. The guy you want me to be, he's dead. He's made up. I don't know, maybe he never existed."
"Bucky definitely existed," Steve said. "I would know."
"Well, so did the Soldier. Existed, I mean. More or less. Sometimes civilians could interact with an operative for months, even years, without becoming suspicious."
"And you think you were a—a deep cover operative in the nineteen thirties?"
"See, when you say it like that, it just sounds stupid."
"That's because it is," said Steve impatiently. "Obviously Bucky existed! You're Bucky."
"Well," Bucky said. "If that's what you want, then of course I am. See?"
Steve still didn't look convinced. Bucky added, "Look, you knew this wasn't gonna be easy, or you wouldn't have signed on for it. You're not getting your friend back. I'm sorry—I miss him too—but he's dead, see? You saw the museum exhibit. But you've got me, which is the next best thing, and I've got all his memories."
"All of 'em, huh," Steve said.
"Sure," said Bucky. "I remember when you were eleven and you skinned your knee tryna climb over the wall out behind Woolworth's on account of how some putz was throwing eggshells at the girls coming out the store, and you were planning on giving him a piece of your mind."
That made Steve's face do something funny, where it almost looked like he was going to cry, or maybe break something. It wasn't a good look, really—Steve's face got all blotchy when he cried, the way it always had, which was comforting in a weird sort of way, that this aspect of him hadn't changed—but luckily he didn't cry or break anything, not even Bucky. He just said, "Well," like it settled things, and excused himself to go walk around in the other room.
Bucky couldn't really blame him, of course. And it was kind of nice, to hear the sound of Steve's footsteps, and know exactly who was there making those sounds.
//
So things hadn't always been easy, especially not at the start. But it was easy enough to be Bucky Barnes, in no small part because Steve wouldn't shut up about him. It was easy to prompt him, too; all Bucky really had to say was, Did we do this, or Was I like that, and Steve would be off to the races with some new story about that person. Some of the stories he told were probably made up, or at least not like Steve remembered them. Bucky didn't remember much, and certainly not as much as he'd told Steve he did, but he knew when Steve was bullshitting him. It was always pretty easy to figure it out, because Steve couldn't keep a straight face if his life depended on it unless he was in Captain America mode, which he didn't like to do at home. They were in the apartment in New York, instead of in DC, because Natasha had said it wasn't safe.
Obviously Steve wasn't too keen on the idea of Bucky not being a person, but even Steve couldn't change things by dint of being earnest and hopeful. He wasn't naïve, he was just Steve. It was difficult to explain. Bucky figured it was probably because he got all squeamish at the idea of doing anything to Bucky that HYDRA had done, which made sense, but also it was about sex, which didn't.
Steve had always been weird about sex, and he didn't have the excuse of having to hide on account of being queer anymore, but he did have the excuse of Bucky. It wasn't the same, but even if it was only some inchoate bullshit, Steve had a way of making things seem confusing.
They'd tried to have sex a couple of times already—well, two, to be exact. The first time, before Bucky had decided to stop pretending to be Bucky, Steve hadn't figured anything out yet. It had been pretty obvious that Steve didn't want things to be the way they'd been before, but that left the question of what he did want. Mostly the answer was just Bucky, which wasn't helpful—not really. But it did sort of make things easier, since there weren't any limits. It was a simple solution to a complex problem, which was almost nice. Or at the very least, it was a relief, which was close enough to the same thing. He could just pretend, going off the memories he did have, and Steve would be none the wiser.
//
"Hey, Buck," Steve said. "Come over here and sit down for a minute, won't you?"
Bucky did, of course. He sat down on the edge of the bed and stuck his hands in between his knees—both of them, even the metal one—and waited.
He thought that Steve probably hadn't even intended to use the Captain America voice, the one that made everyone want to listen to him. Sometimes Steve didn't even notice which voice he was using. Bucky wasn't going to correct him—he liked it, even if Steve would have been uncomfortable. Steve hadn't told him to do anything else, so Bucky just stayed there. He was still shivering a bit, but he thought that was probably because he hadn't been able to keep down any food, not because it was cold. Steve kept the temperature on high most of the time, for no discernible reason.
"Tell me what you were dreaming about," Steve said.
Bucky tried to roll his eyes, to say What the hell do you want me to do that for, but his face wasn't responding properly, so instead he made an unintelligible noise. Steve sighed.
"I told you to do something," he said. "You know what you're supposed to do. What, you worried I won't be able to stomach it? I wasn't the one throwing up in the bathroom because I had a bad dream."
"It was about you," Bucky said, which wasn't completely false, "sucking me off," which was.
"Shouldn't I be the one puking, then?" Steve said. "You've got it all backwards. Maybe the brain damage's worse than I thought. Come on, you're not going to scare me, you know I read the file."
And had seen the pictures too. He'd actually destroyed the file, and then destroyed one of the punching bags in the downstairs gym, which had been hilarious to witness once Steve had calmed down and gone to apologize to the building's owner.
Bucky worked his jaw for a moment, trying to get it back into the right position—his tongue felt like a piece of rubber, or like a cut of meat, limp and pliable. If he opened his mouth, it might just fall out of his throat, like a dead fish.
"Well," he said. "You had me—you were on top of me, kind of pushing me down into the bed, so I couldn't move, and you were trying to get the arm off, because you didn't like it, you wanted me to be him again." It didn't come off—his whole left shoulder was more or less a fleshy tinderbox sewn into the muscle, meat and wire all twisted together with electricity, but of course Steve didn't know that. "But it wouldn't—you were trying to unscrew it, like the lid off a jar, but it wouldn't move, so you got a knife and started trying to peel the skin off so you could see how it worked."
"Sounds painful," Steve said. "Did it hurt? Was that it?"
"I've had worse," said Bucky. "And I kinda liked it. You could do that, if you wanted. I wouldn't mind." That's why he'd been sick, he thought. Not because of the dream itself—it had already happened, except with somebody else. But he wouldn't mind, if Steve wanted to carve him up and feel around inside.
"I don't want to go all the way to the kitchen to get a knife," Steve said. They had a rule about keeping weapons in the bedroom, other than Steve's shield, which was under the bed. Bucky had hidden a Sig Sauer under the mattress, which he thought Steve probably knew about, but Steve hadn't said anything.
Bucky made an agreeable noise instead of shrugging. He didn't particularly want to move his shoulder. "You could use your fingers," he said. "You'd come up with something."
Steve looked pleased to hear that. "I could do better than that," he said. "Was that it?"
"You think I'd be all shook up over something that small? Don't be stupid," Bucky said. "Why d'you want to know, anyway? You hate hearing about what HYDRA did."
"You're not going to scare me off," Steve said.
"That's what you're worried about? Pal, I haven't even told you about half of the worst parts. This is like—only looking at the Cyclone."
"Well, you know how much I appreciate a good ride," Steve said. He even managed to sound demure about it, the asshole.
Bucky snorted. "Even you can't fuck a rollercoaster."
"That's not the point," Steve said. "Just tell me, unless you're chicken."
"Fine," Bucky said. "You want to hear it? You can hear it. So you're on top of me, pinning me down, and you've already peeled back most of the skin on my shoulder. It's bleeding even though it shouldn't be, since it's mostly metal plating in there, but I guess you're a bit sloppy and you nicked a couple arteries or something, shitty trigger discipline with a knife—" He ignored Steve's indignant squawk. "But of course it won't come off, so you end up twisting the arm around behind me, and you pull the bone out of the socket. That part hurts—it always does, because it's bone on bone, there's nothing to pad it. It's worse than if the bone just breaks, but of course the bone breaks too, and it's splintered because of the angle. So the bone's sticking out, but—you're real careful about it now, you don't want to tear the sheets—"
"But I'm not sore about the blood all over 'em?"
"Stick it under some vinegar," Bucky said. "I know you know that trick, as long as it hasn't dried up yet." Steve had nearly ruined enough collars and cuffs with nosebleeds not to know how get blood stains out of fabric.
Steve shifted a little. "Keep going," he said.
"What, you really want to hear it?"
"Course I want to hear it," Steve said.
Bucky narrowed his eyes. "You don't have to pretend to be fine with this shit," he said. "I know it's fucked up."
"It's you," Steve said. "I'm fine with everything about you."
"Right, of course," said Bucky. "You wouldn't want to do this for real though."
"Doesn't matter if I don't want it," Steve said.
"Steve! Shut the fuck up. That's what they said," Bucky snapped. "It's fucked up. You don't have to like it. I don't even fucking like it. I know you think one day things'll just fall into place and be normal again, but—"
"The hell I do," Steve said. "When were things ever normal? The hell does normal mean, huh? Just keep fucking talking."
Bucky shook his head. "You've got the weirdest fuckin' idea of what constitutes dirty talk," he said. It had been a joke, but Steve was blushing. "Steve, what the fuck. You gonna jerk off to this shit?"
"If it'd help you figure out it doesn't bother me," Steve said stubbornly. He was wearing the drawstring sweatpants he usually wore to sleep in, and he rested one hand over his groin like he was really going to do it.
"It should fucking bother you!"
"Well, it doesn't!"
"Fine," Bucky said. "Whatever. Jerk off. I don't care."
Steve cracked up. "You're one to talk about what's sexy," he said, in between gulps of laughter. "You gonna give me something to think about?"
"Yeah, all right," Bucky said. It was kind of distracting, when Steve tugged down his sweatpants and got his dick out, because he'd never been able to back down from a challenge, but—it hadn't gone well the first two times, even though those had been astronomically different. "You want me to keep going?"
"Uh huh."
"Well," Bucky said. Now that he actually had to, he wasn't sure what to say. "It wasn't just about—the arm, there were other parts too—I mentioned you were holding me down?"
Steve nodded. He'd licked his fingers, which was kind of gross—it struck Bucky as insanely funny, then, that his instinctual reaction to Steve slobbering all over his own hand was gross, given what he was talking about. With the light off, the room wasn't entirely dark—it was New York, and the city never went fully dark—so he could see well enough, and he could see that Steve wasn't all the way hard. Bucky had seen his dick before, of course, but it felt different, like this. He didn't know why. It was just something that felt different.
"So you were holding me down," he said. "You'd got bored with trying to get the arm off that way—you probably could've pulled it off if you'd tried hard enough, but I guess the angle was wrong, and you'd probably end up ripping the whole body in half, which wouldn't be helpful. So you just took the knife and started cutting up my back, along the spine, to kind of open everything up from a different angle. They did that, actually, to figure out how long it took me to heal. Cut the vertebrae, I mean. It never lasted longer than a week, so you didn't have to worry you were doing any real damage."
"What's the point then," Steve said.
Bucky couldn't help but look at his cock, the tip poking out from Steve's grip. "I guess just for fun," he said. "I don't know, it's a dream, dreams don't make sense. It—you thought it was real pretty, though, once you cut the skin all up and peeled everything off—so you could get at the ribcage from the back, sort of, you said it looked kind of like wings."
"Cause you're an angel?"
"Nah," Bucky said. "More like, cause you didn't put the klaf in properly. But it was—and I remember this was the strange part—you were on top of me, although I guess there wasn't much solid left to be on top of, and you were pressing down on the back of my neck, since you hadn't cut there yet, and I remember thinking, it felt—well, it was nice," he said, which wasn't a lie, only an understatement. "It felt like you were all around me, covering me—"
"Fuck," Steve said. His voice sounded choked, like he was going to cry, so Bucky stopped talking.
Steve's face had gone all pink, the way it did when he was embarrassed—or, Bucky was remembering, turned on. "No," he said, "keep—"
"You fucking creep," Bucky said, almost admiring. "You do like this."
"I told you," Steve said. "I—"
Bucky leaned closer. "You close, sweetheart? Huh?"
"Shut up," Steve said.
"Thought you wanted me to keep talking."
Steve made a little noise in the back of his throat. He wasn't even moving his hand, just squeezing his cock, tight enough that it had to hurt. "Just," he said. "You're so—"
"This really does it for you, huh?" Bucky said. He looked up so he could make eye contact with Steve. "Me telling you about this shit, it's not about the arm, is it, it's about owning me—"
"Fffuck," Steve said, and came.
Bucky watched him—he was more fascinated than anything else, and besides, Steve looked pretty stupid when he was coming, which was delightful ammunition. Steve tensed up when he came, and he didn't quite catch all of the mess in his hand, so some of it ended up on his sweatpants. Bucky thought, at least it was nothing compared to the amount of laundry they'd have had to do if Steve had really cut him up into pieces on the bed and ruined all the sheets, and then he almost wanted to laugh, except for how it probably wouldn't be funny to Steve.
There were paper tissues next to the bed, even though they were hardly ever used, but Steve grabbed one and cleaned himself off. He kicked off the sweatpants and hurled them into the corner of the room, over by the door to the hallway, which meant that Steve would inevitably forget they were there and trip over them in the morning. Bucky watched all of this happen—he was sort of fascinated by the whole process, partially because it wasn't something he could really do anymore, and partially just because it was Steve.
"So," Steve said. "That's something."
Bucky snorted. "Yeah," he said. "I guess you proved your point."
"Dunno what you're talking about," Steve said, but he looked like the cat that ate the canary, so Bucky wasn't exactly fooled.
He shuffled around a bit until he could get his legs back under the sheet, then looked back up at Bucky, who was still seated on the edge of the bed. "You gonna come back to bed?"
It probably wouldn't be a good idea, but—it could hardly be worse. "Sure," Bucky said. He wasn't going to sleep either way, so it didn't really matter. He crawled up the bed until he was positioned next to Steve. It was only then that he realized he was cold, even with the heat turned up because of Steve's weird temperature issues. It was always strange, to be in the bed with Steve. Not because he didn't remember it, or because he'd been told not to do it, but mostly because Bucky wasn't exactly the sort of thing that had much use for beds. Steve's shield was underneath the bed, and the hidden Sig Sauer was stuffed under the mattress, but other than that, objects weren't really supposed to be in beds. It would have been as though Steve had brought a lamp into the bed—it wouldn't have been a crime or anything, just a bit strange. It wasn't like the lamp didn't have a place. It had a place—the place just didn't happen to be in bed, with Steve.
//
They didn't talk about it for the next couple of weeks, because Steve had some charity thing he was determined to do, and Bucky had very important skulking around the apartment to do, so the whole topic was left alone. Steve finally finished up with the charity project—it had been something about Captain America representing children's hospitals, or something equally schmaltzy. The whole Captain America gig was kind of stupid, even Steve thought that. They'd made a rule, after all: Captain America wasn't allowed in the door. Usually Steve even changed out of his uniform before he came in, which was overkill really, but Bucky thought it was kind of sweet. Steve didn't have to do anything like that, but of course he did it anyway. So Steve finally finished up with the charity project, and he'd brought home coffee.
Bucky usually couldn't stomach swallowing anything unless he was sufficiently distracted, or unless Steve explicitly ordered him to do it, but coffee was one of the exceptions. It worked about a fifth of the time, which was enough to be considered an exception, at least. He thought it was probably the bitter taste—most things tasted more or less the same, for some reason, he didn't know why, probably it had just been a side effect of something else. But he was a thing that could detect poisons, and coffee fell under that category, which Steve thought was the funniest thing.
"Hey, you," Steve said. He was doing that little shuffling thing that meant he wanted a kiss, so Bucky went over and kissed him, very carefully.
Steve was good about keeping his hands to himself, but he stepped back a moment later. "You'll spill your coffee," he said. Bucky hadn't realized he was still holding it.
"You hungry?" Steve asked. It was mostly for show, since Bucky was never and always hungry, and it didn't matter if he couldn't eat anyway. Usually he'd endure a little while of Steve trying to feed him, and maybe some of it would even stay down for a bit, but it was just a fantasy and not something that really worked out that well.
"I want to try something," Bucky said, instead.
Steve's eyebrows jumped. "All right," he said. "What is it?"
"Go sit on the couch," Bucky said. "I'll be right in."
That got an apprehensive look from Steve, but Steve did it anyway. Bucky put the coffee cup down on the counter, thinking about how he wanted to do this. After a moment of deliberation, he shoved up his left sleeve so it was bunched up around his shoulder, but it kept slipping down. It wasn't like Steve hadn't seen it before, he thought, and took off the shirt entirely.
Steve's eyes went enormous when Bucky walked into the room. "Buck," he said, rushed, like he hadn't meant to say it.
"Don't talk," Bucky said. "You don't talk yet, okay?" He knew Steve was going to mouth yes sir even before Steve did it, which was reassuring.
He went down on his knees and got Steve's pants unfastened without saying anything either, which was almost too much. Not talking was infinitely worse than talking—he'd always been told not to talk, not to make any sound, or sometimes to make sound but only specific types of sound—and he didn't want to be slipping back into that sort of mindset while he was trying to focus on making this be about Steve.
"Okay," Bucky said. He squeezed Steve's hip with his left hand, and Steve clapped his own hand over his mouth so he wouldn't say anything, which was sweet. "See, there's something I was thinking about, that I didn't tell you before."
Steve almost said something, but caught himself and nodded instead.
"The thing is, I'm not really a person," Bucky said. He knew Steve probably wouldn't mind if he did, but he didn't trust the metal hand enough not to recalibrate automatically, and he didn't want to hurt Steve—least of all unintentionally—so he used his right hand to get Steve's dick out and run his fingers along the length a few times, just getting accustomed to it. "At least, not the way you are, I mean. It's more complicated than that. That's what I mean when I say I'm not Bucky—you could get a computer to run a program that would fool someone ninety-nine percent of the time, but it still wouldn't be a person. You wouldn't look at a grave and think there's a real living person buried in there, that'd be horrible. So think about it this way—if you cut off someone's arm, I mean, they cut off my arm, would I be me, or would the arm be me?"
"You," Steve said, muffled against his hand.
"Right, of course. And if they cut off my legs, would I be me, or would the legs be me? It's like that story of the clever soldier," Bucky said. He was warming up to the topic now. Steve still didn't look like he knew what was happening, but his dick was interested enough—Bucky wasn't even really touching it, just wiggling his hand around aimlessly. "He gets his legs chopped off in the Nazi camps, and he asks for the Krauts to drop 'em over the Allied troops when they do their next raid, then he does the same with one arm, and the next, until finally the Germans catch on that he's trying to escape. But he's still in the camp—not the legs or the arms. So they take off an arm, and a leg, and another arm, and another leg, and what's left? Is that still a person? Think about it like that. Or—they take little pieces of the brain. Slices. Like a cross-section. You know, before you destroyed the pictures, they did those scans, yeah? You take off little bits, one by one, until it's just—nothing."
"Not nothing," Steve mumbled.
Bucky made a noise in the back of his throat—he didn't think he had the energy to grin and wink the way he wanted, but Steve would understand anyway, of course. "Something different, then," he said. "Obviously I'm still something. But that's not even the point. I was gonna talk about losing the arm, actually."
Steve raised his eyebrows.
"Well, it was infected pretty quick," Bucky said. He dragged his fingers lightly along Steve's cock, and Steve's thighs tensed up. "I lost it from the elbow down sometime around when I fell, and the rest was rotting by the time they came in to get me—they put me in a cell, I don't know how long. Then they strapped me down to a table and started cutting it off, except—it was all full of gangrene, it just kind of—fell apart, when they got the bone saws. They had some sort of needle they stuck in the bone—it was all splintered and dry, I think they were testing the marrow or something, I was pretty out of it at that point. They took off the whole arm up to the shoulder. I guess they probably had to, really. Then they stuck this big hunking piece of metal in its place, really just jammed it into the empty space, and had it—dig in there, it was like a drill bit. I don't remember most of that," he said. "But I remember once they woke me up after they put this thing on."
He held up the metal hand and wiggled his fingers. The whole thing felt kind of stupid, but lots of things that felt stupid were important—well—at least they were important to Steve, which was what really mattered.
Steve nodded, still with a hand over his mouth.
"The thing is," Bucky said. "This is the only part of me that's not yours. The rest of me, you can do whatever, I don't care. But this, it's different. It doesn't belong to anybody."
He wasn't quite sure why this was something Steve enjoyed—Steve was into all sorts of strange things that didn't make sense, or at least he was into Bucky, which was—well, it was the same thing, in the end.
"When you had me talking about—what was in the dream," said Bucky, "that was—" but he wasn't sure what he wanted to say. It hadn't made anything better, but it had made it different, which was—probably it was the same thing, actually—or at least as close as he was going to get.
So instead, he said, "It made me feel like something with a purpose that I would actually enjoy," and Steve made a strangled choking noise.
Bucky hadn't even been doing much of anything, just sort of petting his cock, but Steve was hard and leaking a little bit, anyway. Bucky switched hands—he hadn't been doing anything, really, but he brought up the metal hand and stroked the tips of his fingers along the line of Steve's cock, trying to be careful.
"Fuck," Steve said, "wait—if you don't stop, I, I'm gonna—"
"Already?" Bucky said, surprised, but he pulled his hands back.
Steve's face was flushed, and he looked a real mess. "Well," he said, squirming a little, "it's you."
Bucky ran the edge of one metal finger from the base of Steve's cock to the head, gentler this time. "Go on then," he said, "you can touch—"
He realized almost immediately that he hadn't been clear, but Steve understood—Steve took hold of his cock and started jerking himself off, fast and too rough; Bucky almost wanted to tell him to slow down, but that wasn't the point, so instead he said, "You don't even need a knife, that's the best part about it, everyone else would have needed a knife, but you can cut me open without even touching me," and Steve made another noise in his throat that sounded almost like a sob.
It was weirdly familiar, being down on his knees with someone above him, but it was also different in every possible way, because it was Steve. It was also just weird in general, the slippery little curl of something in his stomach, that felt hot and sour when he could help Steve get off—it wasn't like anything he'd felt before, which made it better, because it could be something he reserved only for Steve, so no one else could find it and touch it.
He watched Steve jerking off until the moment Steve started to come, then shifted so he could cover Steve's hand with the metal one—he still couldn't have things in his mouth, since Steve hadn't told him to, and he didn't want to ruin the whole thing by fucking it up for no good reason.
Bucky put his other hand on Steve's knee, which was shaking a little, and waited until Steve was done and had slid down onto the floor with him, not touching, just there. Steve was hot like a furnace, and Bucky was aware then, suddenly, of how much skin was exposed—he still wasn't wearing a shirt, and it wasn't like he didn't want it, but he didn't want to be touching anything except Steve.
Steve was looking down at him—Steve was on his knees, but Bucky was mostly just seated on the floor. "Bucky," Steve said, just it was a physical object instead of just a word.
"Yeah," Bucky agreed.
It was kind of funny, actually—Steve was kneeling like he was in church, and Bucky was—well, he was beneath Steve, just waiting. Steve did that thing where he tilted his head, wanting a kiss, so Bucky nodded and tipped his chin up so Steve could get his kiss.
Steve put his hands behind his back before he kissed Bucky. He looked kind of ridiculous, still blushing and with his pants open and his dick out, but—he was still Steve, which was what mattered, and Steve was kind of inherently ridiculous. Bucky felt, absurdly, like he'd been scraped clean with a strigil, all the top layer of skin peeled back like a healing burn, or like after a scab had come off. He felt, inanely, like a nestling chick, featherless and too delicate, cupped in Steve's hands—of course, he wasn't, he just felt—different.
"Bucky," Steve said, again. "You okay?"
It must have been a moment, since Steve had asked him: Steve's brow was furrowed. Bucky felt, abruptly, like laughing. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, Steve. What the fuck. I guess this is as good as it's gonna get."
//
When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.
The Outsiders