#who refuses to let go of the past. i like how his codeword is 'remember' | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

occasionalfics · 6 years

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Human, p. 2 (Bucky X Reader)

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For @sunigyrl: Mask-wearing/Winter Soldier smut (post Human)

A/N: I woke up at like 7:30 this morning and started thinking about this, so I had to immediately get out of bed and start writing. I’ve been working at it all day. Normally it takes like 18 hours to get a piece out but this one took like 10.

I mean there was supposed to be smut in here. If you look closely, it’s there! But also he’s not wearing the mask during it so really I fulfilled none of the prompt guidelines! :D

Warnings: Hint at smut but it’s super vague. Lots of anxiety, lots of trauma, lots of angst with just a smidgen of language!

Words: 4,198

PRAGUE -- 10PM -- UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

You’re on the run. It’s the only option, now that you’ve been outed as a Traitor. They’ll brand you or kill you if they ever find you. And you know it’s only a matter of time.

But you’re not worried about that right now. You sit on the dusty bed and think about James. You haven’t stopped thinking about James since he’d saved you. He tried going with you, but you refused. He was a new person, with friends and a team. And that was all your fault.

You wouldn’t take away from him what you’d worked to give him in the first place. What you’d risked your life to give back to him.

You have neutral allies - a few of them scattered all over, but allies that keep secrets and give you what you need in exchange for promises, more secrets, or inside jobs. Sometimes they pay you, sometimes they give you room and board, sometimes they give you nothing and turn you away.

And then, once a month, James finds you. Tonight is one of those meetings. He knocks softly on the door, uses the codeword you’ve given him - [redacted] - and you let him in. Neither of you smile or greet one another. It’s not protocol, whatever that means now.

He stomps into the room in heavy boots and tattered tactical gear. He’s always right off of missions, sneaking away from the team to come find you before flying solo back to New York. His hair is tied tight into a bun at the base of his neck, and you think you can smell the faint scent of hairspray keeping most of it in tact. Whatever mission this was, it wasn’t too difficult. Still, he’s rather stoic and unwavering as he puts a backpack on the edge of your bed.

“What’d they say this time?” you ask him.

He doesn’t answer at first. He never does. Sometimes he reminds you of the Asset, but then his face will soften and he’ll give you what you’re asking for - most of it, anyway - and you remember. His file, his life before HYDRA, your role in helping him remember who he was. Who he could be. Who he’s becoming again.

This time, he chuckles first. “They still want me to bring you in,” he tells you without turning to you. He’s digging in the backpack, and when you move closer to the bed, you see the stacks of various currencies all wrapped together he’s pulling out. “They don’t trust you.”

“They shouldn’t,” you say, crossing your arms before looking at the cracked floor.

It’s always the same. His team - the Avengers - want him to bring you back with him. They want to lock you up, to interrogate you for HYDRA secrets. And you know plenty, but you’ll only talk to James about them anyway. You’d thought about turning yourself in because just maybe it would mean not having to run anymore, but you can’t. James won’t do it, and you’d rather not be a prisoner. You’d rather his friends not trust you from afar.

He starts to pull out plastic wrapped food from his bag before he even recognizes you’ve said anything. “Stark’s really not happy that I won’t do it. He’s already got it out for me…” His hands slow for a second, but when you move to stand next to him, he goes back to pulling things out of the bag and placing them on the bed.

“Can you imagine if he had me in his Iron Clutches?” you ask, attempting a joke.

He actually gets it. Enjoys it, even. He shoots you a small smile and shakes his head. “I’d rather not.” When his bag is empty, he goes to shut it, but you stay his flesh hand with one of yours.

“I have something for you this time,” you say softly, and before he can protest, you go across the room to your own bag. It’s a small leather messenger pack with huge buckles that make it difficult to get into, so you crouch down and undo everything, then reach in. You pull out a black satin pouch, then go back to him with it.

It’s a small token, but it’s what you managed to get. He takes the pouch without looking away from you. You step back a few paces, allowing him space to open the pouch and look in. You think you see his breathing stop for a second, and you imagine reaching out to him, to bring him back to reality. Almost like you used to.

Almost.

But then he pulls the item from inside the pouch and drops the black satin to the ground. He stares at the harsh metal and broken plastic, fingering the mouthpiece as you watch his eyes. Post-HYDRA, his eyes are so aware, so bright and open, especially as he stares at the muzzle he used to be forced to wear, to keep him quiet and hide his identity.

“How did you get this?” he asks, turning it over to examine the parts that touched his skin.

“I...have friends on the inside.”

His eyes switch to you, linger, then move back to the muzzle. “Do they know?” he asks.

You shake your head, knowing he’s asking if your friends know you’ve been meeting with him in secret for months. They know you’ve defected and deserted, but nothing more. No one tells anyone the full story in HYDRA.

Even James doesn’t tell you the whole story. You know, from his question, that he doesn’t fully trust you. You don’t entirely blame him, but you wish that, after doing this for so long, that he’d have more faith in you. You want him to trust you. You want him to look at you and want to protect you. Sometimes he does, but sometimes he still just sees someone who was sent to play with him in his darkest days.

“Why this?” he asks, wrapping his metal fingers around the muzzle as his eyes meet yours again.

You knew the answer to that question long before he’d shown up. “I want you to remember who they forced you to be, James. So you can be anything but that. Anyone but him. Never forget.”

ZAGREB -- 3AM -- UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

He knocks, offers the code word, and is invited in. He’s in plain clothes today, and freshly showered. A delicate scent of pine needles and eucalyptus follows him into the dingy hole you’ve found yourself in now.

You nod at one another before he goes to the bed to begin removing the items he’s brought. More money, you can see as you lock the door. A decent amount of food. Even a few water bottles, just for good measure. You pull your long cardigan around you, despite not being cold, and move to sit on the bed behind the things he’s leaving you.

“Anything new?” you ask casually, as if this situation is totally normal.

James freezes, his cool eyes stuck on you automatically. He most definitely has something new, but you’re not sure you’re going to like it.

“Gimme a sec,” he says, and then he fishes in the backpack for something. He pulls out a few more wrapped packages of food before finding a manila folder. He sighs and hands it to you. “I have friends, too.”

You squint at him, because you know better than most that he does not have friends at HYDRA. Even you were far from a friend while he was there. You were barely his ally. They called you a companion, but that wasn’t accurate, either.

Still, you’re curious. You slowly look from him to the folder, then place it on the bed and open it. All that’s inside is about you. It’s your file - information about you, your life, anything that HYDRA knows. There are pictures, just like in his file that they’d given you.

But the thing is, you don’t recognize any of what you’re looking at. There’s a whole life before you that you don’t know. You don’t even recognize the last name that’s printed on the birth certificate. The pictures are of people you’ve never met and a small girl you don’t know. Your heart races when you realize what this means.

HYDRA created you. You were just another Asset to them. You were never a spy or a handler; you’d been molded to do a specific job for them, and to do it well. They’d just never accounted for humanity.

GENEVA -- 12AM -- UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

With the cash James had brought before, you’re able to book yourself a nice hotel room without leaving a trail. So you do it, because you’re tired of creaky beds and dusty floors.

And you need a bath. Not necessarily to clean, but because something about being in the water has been calling to you for weeks. You sit in the steam and moisture for too long, your fingers wrinkling far too quickly. You sigh and think about the file in your bag - the manila folder with information about a life long gone, a life HYDRA took from you.

James hadn’t fabricated it. Your allies in Geneva confirmed that yesterday. You trust him, yes, but you needed to be 100% positive that the information in the folder was true.

Your parents are still alive. Your best friend is married now. She has three kids and a dog. You graduated from Yale; your diploma still hangs on your parents’ wall in the home you can’t remember. But that’s what the water’s for.

You take the deepest breath you’ve ever taken and dunk in, sliding and bending your legs until you’re lying along the bottom of the tub. You feel little bubbles lift from between your lips as you try to go back and remember.

You remember sterile halls lit with harsh fluorescents. You remember machines whirring all around you, and an undistinguishable man sitting in front of you, reciting things that you actually do have stored in your memory - your name, your age, your HYDRA-created identity, your HYDRA occupation. Once he’s gone, you remember intense pain all over - pain like period cramps in every inch of your body. Like electricity burning your muscles from the inside out. Pain that removes the past and leaves only the future.

GENEVA -- 3:30AM -- UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

You can’t bring yourself to change into real clothes, so you sit in the plush robe while James removes money and food from his bag. He stops halfway through and watches you shiver, clutching the top of the robe closed.

“Hey,” he calls softly. He sounds like a real person, like someone who remembers who he is or at least has reinvented what it means to be James Buchanan Barnes. It makes you fully shake, which makes him drop what he’s doing and come around the bed to sit beside you. “Hey, shh,” he coos, gripping your shoulders - one in each hand.

You sob. For the first time in...you can’t even say how long anymore, you openly weep. For the life that was stolen from you, and for the cycle that was repeated with you. You tell him, “I want to go home,” over and over again, and he repeats the same answer back:

“I know. I know.”

ZURICH -- 9PM -- UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

When he comes now, he waits until you lock the door to hug you. A hug. A real, human interaction that reminds you that he’s a person and you’re a person. He says it’s an affirmation, his way of validating your existence and emotionally thanking you for what you did for him.

But tonight, he comes wearing the mouthpiece. The muzzle. And you can’t figure out why. You’d be terrified if you couldn’t see his eyes - free from the smudges they used to make you place around them, clean, and bright. Human eyes stare at you, not the eyes of a machine. You’re surprised, but that’s it. You still let him in the room, still lock the door and accept a hug from him, which is affirmation enough that the muzzle is just an adornment now.

He pulls it off after disengaging from you, and before you can ask why he’s wearing it, he shatters it. All it takes is wrapping his metal fingers around its center and closing a fist and - SNAP! - the thing is dead. For a second, you wonder what that says about the fact that you gave it to him, but then you notice that his eyes are locked on you in a serious glare.

“Why the show, James?” you ask.

“My name is Bucky,” he says maybe a bit too passionately. You do your best not to cringe away from him yet. “No one called me James until the war, when my life ended. Now I’m Bucky. I’m an Avenger. I will never forget what HYDRA made me, and I will never forget that you were the one person that saw past the Asset. My name is Bucky Barnes, and I wear no masks.”

PARIS -- 11PM -- UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

He catches you off guard by kissing you after you’ve locked the door. You surprise yourself by not pushing him away - by, in fact, pulling him closer and kissing him deeper. He tastes like chocolate with a hint of whiskey and he smells like peppermint. He’s so fucking human it almost breaks your heart.

But you pull away and shake your head. You step back from him until you hit the door, breathing hard because he’s knocked the air out of your lungs.

“What?” he asks. When you don’t answer immediately, his eyes widen and he asks again, “(Y/N), what is it?”

Your eyes fill with tears and you almost cry in front of him again, but you keep shaking your head and tell him, “I’m not a good person, Bucky.” You can’t look him in the eye as you practically whisper, so you pick a spot on the floor and feel a shiver wrack your brain.

“What?” he asks again, but this time his voice is lined with confusion and disbelief. “Not a good… What a load of shit.”

You know he’s trying to get you to look at him, but you can’t. If you do, you’ll rush back to him just to feel something, just to have someone hold you and to have someone to lean into. Bucky doesn’t need that. You might have gone undetected this long, but you know they’re always watching. You can’t entangle him further than he already is, not if you want him to remain free from HYDRA.

But he takes a slow step toward you, and you can see his boots. You want him to go to the bed, put the money and food on the mattress and leave like he used to. When all this started, you hardly even spoke to one another. But now he’s kissing you and you’re shaking because you can’t strip away from him what you’ve risked your life to give. You won’t do it. You won’t put him in danger like that.

“You know exactly who I am,” you tell him, your brow furrowing as your bottom lip trembles.

“Yeah,” he says. “I do.” He takes another step forward. There’s nowhere for you to go except to the bed, but you don’t. You can’t make yourself move and you realize...you really don’t want to. Every logical cell in your brain is telling you to get the hell away and stay far from him, because falling into him now will only end in pain. But your heart is beating too fast, and its sending signals up your spinal cord that keep you stuck to the door, watching as he nears and bends in front of you until he’s caught your eyes with his. “You’re not what they made you.”

Those logical cells tell you he knows exactly what that’s like. If anyone has the right to say something like that, it’s James Buchanan Barnes. But there’s another voice in your head telling you that you are exactly what they made you because they threw out everything else. There is nothing but what they’ve put in your head. There’s nothing but cold rooms, excruciating pain, atrophy, exhaustion, and espionage.

“I am,” you say, and before he can argue, you shake out a sigh. “I am because they took everything else. I don’t know how. But I think...I think I was an experiment.”

“That wasn’t obvious?” he asks.

“Of course it was,” you tell him. “But not what for… The records in that file end right before Triskelion. Right before they brought you out…”

You’re grasping at straws that are falling between your fingers, and you know it. But there’s a difference between what they did to him and what they did to you, and you’ve been suspecting since he gave you the folder. Maybe it has to do with the preparation - they tortured him, where they inflicted pain on you but only so much to be able to brainwash you. Or maybe you’re right.

“When they wiped you, they weren’t really wiping. They were forcing you into your subconscious and creating a personality that they could shape and control. You could come back from that.” You thought of the pictures of the family in the file, the notes about the best friend with her family. “But they must’ve been using me to find a way to erase everything.” Your throat closes quickly, and you force a breath to keep going. “There’s nothing for me to go back to. I am literally what they’ve made me.”

Bucky stands down. His eyes widen and he watches as you double over on yourself. You crouch and bring a hand to your stomach and the other to your mouth. You can’t stop the fear and confusion and loss from surfacing. It all spills over and onto the floor. You can’t believe you’re crying in front of him again, but all he does is sigh, kneel next to you, and hold his arms out. Before you know what you’re doing, you lean into him. He gets one hand around your back and one under your knees and then he carries you to the bed.

HYDRA kept you from touching him. They told you he wouldn’t hurt you, but that you weren’t to put a finger on him. Ever. It took you years to figure out that was because they meant to deprive the both of you of human touch. So now, as he places you across his lap and puts your head on his shoulder, you hardly know what to do. But he doesn’t say anything, so maybe you’re not supposed to do anything.

“I don’t remember everything,” he says. “I spent most of the last century in and out of cryogenic naps, and between those, I was subjected to major amounts of brain damage.” His arm around your back is cool, a permanent reminder of what HYDRA did to him. He flexes his hand, and as his metal fingers graze your forearm, you shiver. “There are parts of my life before that I’ll never get back, except in stories Steve tells me. I’ll never be James again.” He lets the moment breathe between you, perhaps mulling over the very thing he’s told you. And then he takes a sharp inhale, and you feel his chest rise and fall beside you.

“You think they’ve made you a monster, but they didn’t force you to kill.” His voice shakes, though you know if he’s angry, it’s not at you. “You were a toy to them. I was the monster.” You lean away and shake your head, but Bucky’s not done. “I learned to be a human again. But I wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity if it weren’t for you. You read to me, showed me pictures of my family. You were the one risking your life to remind me of who I’d been, even if I couldn’t make sense of it.” He glares at you, and it’s intimidating, but you don’t dare look away. “(Y/N), you’re a good person. You always were. They stripped us both of what made us human, and because of who you always have been, we got that back.”

You let ugly, wet tears stream as he talks. Before you know what you’re doing, you fist his shirt, holding onto the one person in the entire universe who knows exactly what you’re feeling. He’s felt it before. He’s moved past it.

You realize then that he is a promise that you can, too.

PARIS -- 6AM -- UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

An alarm goes off in the room. You sit up straight and feel the cool air swirling around the room against your bare skin. One of your hands is hidden below something warm and heavy, and as the alarm blares, you blearily take in the room.

There’s a body next to you, and beside that, a phone is ringing. You don’t have a phone or an alarm, so for a moment, you panic. You think it’s a bomb or that someone planted it there, that they’ve found you and they’re coming for you. You move to spring from the bed, but your hand is below the body next to you and you can’t move it to get away.

Your heart beats in your chest erratically as the body next to you squirms. They reach for the phone with an arm that doesn’t match their torso, then they shut the alarm off and turn over, releasing your hand. You nearly fall off the bed, but their matching arm catches you before they shine the flashlight on their phone at you. You shield your eyes as they ask, “What’s wrong?”

They adjust the flashlight so you can see them, and once you take in the sight, you relax. Of course. Now you remember.

Bucky stayed. Bucky laid you down and showed you that you were not a monster. He asked for permission at every step, making open shows of requesting your trust. He kissed away your tears and made you feel the way his file had. Human, he made you feel human.

You catch your breath and tilt your upper body toward him, now that he’s sitting with you. He shuts the flashlight off, puts his phone on the bed, and places both of his arms all the way around you. His metal arm chills you, but the rest of him is warm and comforting. He feels like a cocoon, like he’ll envelope you, keep you inside for a while, and when you emerge, you’ll be something new.

You wish that were what was going to happen, but you had very few options. You’d already broken your rule about involving him in your search for freedom. You can’t keep putting him in danger...but you also can’t let go of him.

He’s the only one that knows what’s happening in your head. He knows how to stop it. He wants to help. You’re in no position to decline help.

“(Y/N)?” he asks, running his fingers down your jaw and neck, along your shoulder.

“Your friends will put me away,” you say quietly. “They won’t look at me like you do.”

“I don’t want them to.” He smiles gently, and for a moment, you let yourself believe all your problems can be solved with that smile. “And I won’t let them lock you up. They won’t be happy, but they’re Avengers. They protect people.”

“Not HYDRA.”

“You’re not HYDRA.” He kisses your jaw. “Not anymore. Not ever again.” He trails the kisses to your temple, and for once, you actually believe what he’s said.

You haven’t really been HYDRA since he escaped after Triskelion. You spent two years leading them astray, keeping them from finding him so that he might have a chance to live. You found him by surprise and ran with him at the first chance. All that was left after that was to let him in or to keep him safe, and to let him keep you safe, too.

“I’ll call Tony later. It’s, like, two in the morning in New York right now,” he says. “We’re not going to surprise them. Steve and I have a plan.” He kisses your forehead again. You almost can’t comprehend how healing that feels, but you shut your eyes and take it in all the same. “Do you trust me?” he asks.

Without hesitation, you nod. “Of course, Bucky.”

He sighs as you grip his flesh arm. “Good. Because I’m not leaving here without you, and I’m not going back without knowing you’re safe.” His metal hand comes up your side and turns you so you face one another. “You won’t have to run anymore.”

You nod and press forward, bringing your lips to his. It astonishes you, how soft he is. How easy it is to slip into his lap, your knees on either side of his hips. How touching him reminds you that your life is yours now. That, if you go with his plan, he’ll be giving you exactly what you gave him.

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#bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #winter solider x reader #bucky drabble #drabbles

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