"Because Bucky Barnes hates sleeping almost as much as he hates Steven Grant Rogers."
Present Day: 2023
Bucky has to fight back tears as he wakes with a gasp, his feet tangled at the too soft sheet he’d settled on the floor, the soccer game he’d put on last night, still playing, and he sits up, wiping at his tears, a silent martyr.
Those dreams were worse than the Winter Soldier ones, more sickening than the Asset’s memories. God- they were goddamn heartbreaking and Bucky’s shoulders shake, and he clenches his fists so hard, he feels the bones of one of his fingers break.
The pain distracts him, and he leans back, careful of his twisted ring finger, and he sighs, as he waits for it to heal. It takes a while, perhaps minutes or hours, as Bucky lies back, staring up at the ceiling, the physical pain a nice conduit to the emotional, as he waits and waits in the dark living room.
Finally, it stops hurting, and he frowns, because that was far too quick. The soccer game on the TV throws green and white and yellow flashes over everything, and he stares at his healed hand in despair.
The crushing weight on his chest comes back, and his right hand, now healed, reaches up to scratch at the skin near his right shoulder and chest, where his old metal arm had been fused. They’d fixed it, the arm, Shuri had made it so every time it moved it didn’t cause his nerve endings to feel like they were on fire. But the scars? They remained, and he scratches and scratches and claws at some unbearable itch.
He wants to damn arm off.
It’s an old thought, and he feels his skin break and bleed, as he claws and claws, and reminds himself that Shuri had spent hours, that Wakanda had spent so much time and energy and research into helping him, even though he didn’t deserve it.
So he deserves to keep it on, even though it’s not the Hydra arm, but his mind still thinks it is. He stops scratching because his wounds aren’t quite superficial anymore, and the pain is nice. He knows pain, like guilt-they’re old fuck buddies.
Pain and Bucky go together like peanut butter and jelly, and he wouldn’t be able to explain himself if he didn’t mention pain.
He needs more of it too, and he has a disturbing thought-
He needs to be punished.
He knows this is the stuff Raynor mentions when she brings up awkward topics like “Self-destructive behaviours or self-harm.”
Hell, even saying those terms the way she had in her office would have gotten her thrown to the Mad House, and yet Bucky can’t help but think if anyone’s mad, it’s him. He’d been mad for 100 years, and he sure as hell isn’t going to stop now because some shrink who probably hates him, as much as he does her, told him that he had “agreed to those terms.”
Bucky’s angry, and he focuses on that anger, he feels white hot rage, at himself, at Raynor, at Steve for fucking loving him, and then leaving him, and then finding him again, and pretending like Peggy Carter was the goddamn love of his life, when Bucky had been the punk’s fucking dance partner first!
He hates, and hatred is much safer than emotional pain, so he slicks back his hair, and yanks on the cleanest pair of jeans he has, and finds his newest, tightest, dark henley, and scowls at his reflection as he douses himself in perfume.
He yanks on his new shoes, grabs his phone and a wad of cash, and his phone tells him it’s not even past 1 am yet, which is perfect because Bucky Barnes hates sleeping almost as much as he hates Steven Grant Rogers.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Bucky a couple hours later, finds himself in deep shit.
So the story goes something like this;
1. He’d woken up angry at the world, and Steve.
2. He wants to be hurt, and maybe wants to feel punishment for hating Steve, not because Steve is his Handler, but because he’s the best guy Bucky knows-or had known, because he fucking left-
3. Bucky’s bi, which given his track history, shouldn’t be all that surprising, because what about Bucky following Steve everywhere screamed, “best of pals”, to people he'll never know. Hell, even Bucky’s Da had known, and that violent, drunk asshole didn’t even see Bucky past twelve, because he’d gone and gotten himself shot, doing something stupid to get more booze.
4. There’s a lot about Hydra he’ll never admit, a lot he’s grateful Steve never found out about, because even despite the several thousand files and documents they have out there. Details of the extensive medical torture and brainwashing abuse he underwent for 70 years. There were some methods of torture that even the men committing those acts hadn’t wanted to admit.
5. Attempting to sleep with some rugged, blond asshole at some random shitty bar, in some awful alley in Brooklyn, which makes his place look like he’s the goddamn white prince of Wakanda-is not good for someone who underwent the certain abuse methods he has.
6. He feels, afterwards, probably the worst he’d ever felt. Because the whole time, despite Bucky laughing and grinning, and pushing against the man’s broad shoulders, saying, “Alright pal-calm down-’, as the man who’d been tearing aggressively into his skin with his teeth and lips, had suddenly gotten meaner. Who acted like he wanted to go a lot farther than Bucky had initially thought, when he’d flirted shamelessly with him.
7. The man is mean, and something about his gait reminds him of Rumlow- he kisses like the man, too. Like he’s having the shittest day on Earth, even though Bucky can promise he’s having it worse, and he takes it out on Bucky, hitting him, and calling him names, as he takes and takes and takes.
8. Bucky Barnes is a super soldier, at six feet, with a heavy metal arm made of vibranium, with decades worth of knowledge of martial arts, and he knows the fastest ways to kill a man. Yet when he gets grabbed, it's not hands that bruise and punch, and break that scare him, that ruin him, and prove he’s rotten. But hands that claw, and tea, and take. He goes still, he goes silent. Because Bucky Barnes is a wretched human being, because if he’s strong enough to fight an army of aliens, twice, and fight war after war, and yet still manage to cry and cower as he’s being raped-well perhaps his father was right, and he was fucked up inside.