routine
Your first time, you were terrified. Terrified that it was going to hurt. Hurt you, hurt him, you weren’t sure, but you were scared.
After that first time, though, you were hooked. Addicted. Fuck, if it didn’t feel amazing. You never thought you’d love using your hands as much as you love using them on him. God, it felt so good.
You weren’t told anything more about the Asset’s history before getting put into a room with him eight days after the massacre. All you knew is that he had been at HYDRA for around 50 years.
When you first met him, if you could call it that, you thought he looked… familiar?
But you couldn’t place him in your memories.
His head was down. He had long, dark brown hair that just brushed his shoulders and fell over his face, effectively covering most of it. He was sitting in a chair not unlike the one you were strapped into when Rumlow interrogated you, arms and hands resting on both armrests, feet planted firmly on the floor. He was not strapped in. Surprising.
He was dressed in all black; tactical boots, tactical pants, and a leather jacket. Vest? No, jacket, with the left sleeve taken off. To expose thearm. The one that you were there to fix. It was a bright, shiny titanium like you were told, but a red star was emblazoned right below the shoulder. It seemed like a brand, of sorts.
Once you felt like you had taken enough deep breaths to slow your racing, anxious heartbeat, you turned from the viewing bay window of Lab Three to face the agents standing behind the chairs, patiently waiting for you.
You took one more deep breath before giving them a curt nod. They opened the door of the viewing bay and opened the door to the right- the door to the lab- and ushered you to go in. First. They ushered you to go in first . You gave them all extremely questioning looks , but they all returned blank faces and nods. So, you went in first.
You descended the steep steps into the lab, never taking your eyes off of the Asset.
He didn’t move.
He didn’t move until you reached the final step, and your right foot touched the lab floor. Then, eerily, robotically, his head lifted as if to examine whoever had entered the lab. But his eyes never moved.
His eyes, a piercing blue (gray?) so intense that you recall it sending a shiver down your spine, never stopped looking straight ahead of his body.
Even as you made your approach to the area of the lab that housed control panels and tables covered with miscellaneous science gadgets, his gaze never wavered.
Even as you approached the chair he was sitting in, his gaze never faltered. His body never moved.
Even as you placed a hand on the metal arm, lifted it, examined it, his gaze never shifted. His body was still.
Even as you tinkered and drilled and re-wired and welded, he remained stoic. A shell of a person.
The second time, when you placed your hand on his arm, you noticed some of the agents in the room turning and heading to the stairs. You shifted and hurriedly yelled out “Where the fuck are you guys going??” To which Rumlow simply replied; “He doesn’t like it when there’s people in here who aren’t the ones working on his arm. It’ll be just you from here on out.”
You were speechless, just standing there, frozen, gaping at him when the words hit you.
“Oh, almost forgot,” he quips, turning back around and moving back towards you, digging around in that stupid backpack he always carried.
“Found what you asked for as one of your conditions to work with him.”
He pulled out your thigh holster, your throwing knives, and Patsy.
“It took a little while to find them and we basically had to tear the evidence room apart, but we found them.” He said when he passed the items to you.
You held them in your hands for a moment with tears in your eyes, looking up and sending him a quick smile and a nod. He turned to the door and motioned for the rest of the agents to head out as he climbed up the stairs behind them.
You had lost track of time and had no idea how long you stood there in awe with tears quietly rolling down your face, but you eventually remembered that you weren’t alone. When you turned to look at the Asset, he was still just as emotionless and still as you had left him.
You let out a content sigh, placed the knives on a table, buckled and tightened the straps of the holster, and then slowly slipped the knives into their respective sheaths.
You reveled for a bit longer at the feeling of the added weight, the light pressure of the straps on your thigh, the feeling of safety, and the reminder of home.
Once you wiped the tears from your face, you muttered a quick “Let’s get to work,” and walked up to the super soldier for the second time that day.
You gathered the materials you expected to use and started working on the repairs.
That became your routine.
Each time he came back from a mission, you were called to the lab to inspect the arm and manage any damages that were done while he was away. He never moved. He always blankly stared forward.
His demeanor only changed twice in the nearly three years now that you had been doing work on his arm.
The first was after a particularly intense mission that brought a week’s worth of repairs. The bulk of the damage was on the upper part of the arm and at the socket where it connected to the Asset’s body. On the third day of repairs, a small wire had gotten caught in between two of the metal plates that helped the arm move, and it had to have caused an immense amount of discomfort, because his entire body tensed up and his flesh hand balled into a fist. He was back to normal within a minute.
The second was when HYDRA was “gathering information on the mission report.” Or, at least that’s the bullshit version that they gave you. It was the first and only time you saw him strapped into the chair. The metal, mechanical restraints clamped around his arms and legs at the same time that a machine came down and clamped around both sides of his face. His breathing quickened and every muscle in his body was flexed, rigid.
And then he screamed.
It was pained. Deep. Agonizing. Human.
The experience had caught you off guard. You’d never seen any type of emotion from him, let alone something that was so human, so scared. It was over in thirty seconds. A man you didn’t recognize spoke some things in Russian, the Asset replied back. From what you could hear through the glass windows, his voice was smooth and baritone, and it was gone before you could even take in and translate what was being said. He was back to normal within a minute.
Your routine carried on, though.
Every morning, you strapped on your holster and went to see if he was out on a mission or needed repairs. If he didn’t, he was in cryo. You would check to make sure his vitals were stable and that the chamber’s systems were running properly before heading to your lab to work on other projects.
The “other projects” you went to work on always ended up having something to do with the arm.
With the Asset.