Chapter Text
A gunshot sends a ricocheting crack through the warehouse; a body falls somewhere behind Jason.
He goes still, silent, scanning the shadows, trying to catch his breath. Bucky is doing the same somewhere overhead. When they’re both satisfied there won’t be any surprises, Jason relaxes, although not by much. He bends over one of the not-so-dearly departed and wipes his knife clean on the guy’s jacket. Bucky drops from his perch on the catwalk overhead, landing silently.
“Get the cargo in the van, I’ll check the bodies,” Jason says quietly.
Bucky nods. His eyes glitter, standing out in their smudged black makeup. He lifts the crate of guns like it’s nothing, setting it lightly on his shoulder.
“Hold up,” Jason says abruptly. “One sec.” He disengages his helmet’s lock and takes it off, shaking out his hair as he strolls over. Bucky puts the crate down, raising an eyebrow in a silent question. Jason yanks the mask out of the way and pulls him into a kiss, shivering with the rush of heat on top of the familiar thrill of adrenaline. Bucky lets out a growl and bends to hook his hands under Jason’s thighs, lifting him bodily and setting him on top of the crate, swallowing Jason’s low hum of approval.
Bucky’s reaching for his belt when he pauses, and Jason protests, until he realizes Bucky’s listening to something — something too soft for unenhanced hearing.
“We got company,” he murmurs, ducking his head to scrape his teeth along Jason’s jaw. “My nine o’clock.”
Jason tilts his head back with a sigh, sneaking a glance through half-closed eyes, and he reaches for the gun at Bucky’s side, where the movement will be hidden by the angle of his body. Then he recognizes the figure who’s leaning lazily against a steel pillar with his arms crossed. Slade Wilson is pretty damn distinctive, even half-hidden in the shadows.
He’s just watching them. Jason’s breath catches at the realization.
“Gonna creep around in the shadows all night, or d’you have somethin’ to say?” Jason snaps, and tucks Bucky’s gun back in its holster. He leans back on his hands, tilting his chin up arrogantly to stare.
Slade smirks, and he inclines his head in greeting as he steps forward. Bucky doesn’t take his hands off Jason’s thighs, turning nothing but his head as he looks. If anything, he holds on tighter, and a bolt of heat goes through Jason’s stomach at the possessiveness of it.
Slade isn’t wearing his helmet, and Jason doesn’t miss the way his eye flickers down to note the placement of Bucky’s hands before he says, “Barnes.”
“Wilson,” Bucky says coolly.
“You’re looking… healthier.”
Bucky raises one shoulder in a tiny, noncommittal shrug. He’s wearing the careful blankness he affects when there’s anybody other than Jason around.
“And this must be the infamous Red Hood.” Slade pauses, tilting his head as he examines Jason. His eye narrows. “Do I know you?”
Jason tries to hide his surprise at that, not to mention the pleased flush that starts to crawl down his neck.
“What are you doing here?” Bucky interrupts brusquely. “Didn’t take you for the voyeuristic type, gotta say.”
“Had a job.” He kicks the prone body that’s on the ground next to him. “Apparently you did my job for me, but I’ll be taking credit anyway, if it’s all the same to you.” He’s still staring at Jason, oddly intense. “I do know you.”
“You used to,” Jason admits.
He can see the moment Slade puts it together. “Ah. Didn't see that one coming. Little bird came home, after all this time… ”
“No,” Jason snaps.
“No, guess not. Not so little any more, are you?” Jason can’t tell whether there’s something suggestive in the lilt of his voice, or if that’s just wishful thinking on his part. Slade gives him a sly smile and a nod, and then he says, “Be seeing you.”
He melts away into the shadows again, leaving them alone.
“We should, uh. Get going,” Jason says, clearing his throat awkwardly.
“What was that all about?”
“No idea what you’re talking about,” Jason says nonchalantly.
Bucky scoffs, like the insubordinate bastard he is, and leans in close to whisper right up against his ear, “I know what it looks like when you’re thinking about getting fucked.”
Jason swallows hard, mouth dry. His pulse is faster than it should be; he knows Bucky can tell.
He’s not sure there’s any good way to say I used to jerk off thinking about him.
Jason still remembers it vividly. He was thirteen at the time; he’d read the file, he knew Deathstroke didn’t hurt minors, so instead of following the order to wait for backup, he charged in, hoping to distract the mercenary long enough to interfere with the shot.
“You must be the new model,” Slade said flatly, and all but swatted him away. “Fly home, little bird.”
“Nah, don’t think I will,” Jason laughed, jumping to his feet.
“Christ, you’re even worse than the old one.” Slade growled. “Too damn young to be — stay down, kid.”
“Not a kid. Anyway, thought you didn’t hurt kids?”
“I don’t kill kids, but if you keep this up, better believe I’m gonna put you over my knee. Somebody’s gotta teach you a lesson.”
Jason choked on air, stumbling as he ducked away, but luckily Bruce arrived before Slade could notice how red he’d gone under the domino.
“Let’s just say he starred in a few of my teenage fantasies,” Jason mutters.
“Teenage fantasies?” Bucky asks, entirely too knowing and smug.
Jason scowls. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You wanna fuck him.”
He says it so calmly, the same way he’s said so many filthy things since they started this… whatever this is.
“I don’t —“ Jason stutters a few times, wrong-footed and awkward. He pulls himself together and scowls. “Can we not? It doesn’t matter. Let’s go.”
“Sure thing, boss,” Bucky says flatly. “Just as soon as you get your ass off the goods.”
“Right,” Jason mumbles. He’s too aware of his limbs as he slides from the crate back to the ground.
Fuck. He shouldn’t be so flustered right now.
The desire to get spanked raw by an age-inappropriate assassin (another age-inappropriate assassin) barely ranks on the list of fucked-up fantasies Bucky has coaxed and cajoled out of Jason in the last six months.
No matter what nasty thing comes crawling out of Jason’s imagination, no matter what twisted urge he admits to, Bucky meets them all with the same cool indifference. He’s never so much as blinked.
It started with, “I want you to train me so I can kill the Batman.” Bucky tilted his head and thought about it for a few seconds and then just nodded, like it wasn’t a completely insane idea.
A few months later: “I want you to fuck me.” Another head tilt. Another easy nod.
I want you to hit me — to choke me — to make me cry — bleed — beg —
— and so on.
The plan to kill Bruce got put on the back burner after that. Maybe Jason just needed some sort of outlet for his anger, for all his restless fury and his violent energy. Bucky just so happened to make a perfect target. He always met Jason’s fiery rage with ice-cold indifference; he always shrugged off Jason’s attempts to pick a fight. Instead he’d roll his eyes and pin Jason to the nearest flat surface and fuck him until he forgot what he was trying to be angry about in the first place.
No matter how hard Jason fights, no matter whether he draws blood or leaves bruises, Bucky heals by morning. If he didn’t, Jason would’ve clawed him to shreds by now.
Jason’s always had a tendency to say fuck off when he means don’t leave me — to say I’m fine when he means I’m terrified, or I don’t care when he means I care so much I’m afraid it’s going to rip me open. Bucky caught on faster than anybody else has. He knows exactly when to ignore Jason’s words and read his body.
He also learned exactly how to press Jason’s buttons. Bucky knows how to play him like a goddamn instrument. He knows exactly how to read his little tells. He has a habit of dragging the truth out of him when he’s hard and begging, when they’re naked, whispering filthy things that Jason would never admit to in a million years… when it’s impossible to lie, because Bucky can feel his reactions from the inside.
No matter what nasty truths come out in those moments of reluctant honesty, Bucky just accepts them… accepts him . But Jason can’t help but wonder what it’s going to take — what will finally make Bucky curl his lip and turn away in disgust, what will make him walk away.
He knows it’ll happen eventually. Jason’s wildly, spectacularly, undeniably fucked up, especially when it comes to sex.
Everybody walks away, eventually.
Most of the time, when Bucky can’t sleep, he goes out — hits the streets, finds somebody to punch. He doesn’t sleep much. Sometimes he cat-naps in the big armchair while Jason starfishes out on the bed. Jason’s never surprised when he wakes up and Bucky’s gone.
Tonight, though, it’s pissing down rain. Not Gotham’s usual drizzle, but a torrential downpour, thunder and lightning and lashing winds that send fat drops sideways against the windows like they want to batter down the doors. It’s colder than it should be for July. If the local drug dealers and muggers have any goddamn sense, they’ll be indoors.
Bucky takes a few more hasty drags of his cigarette, pressing himself back against the wall under the relative cover of the eaves. He’ll have to find another way to burn off the restless energy.
He looks over his shoulder, to where Jason’s sprawled face-down with the blanket pushed down around his waist. Thunder rumbles overhead. Jason stirs, but he doesn’t wake up.
Fuck this; if Bucky finishes his cigarette he’ll be soaked to the skin. He slips back through the sliding door, closes and locks it behind himself, just as Jason lets out a low, throaty noise that’s barely audible under the steady sound of the rain. Bucky pads over silently, stripping off his wet hoodie, stepping out of his sweatpants, staring down at him.
A flash of lightning throws the room into stark contrast for a split-second, illuminating the muscled slopes of Jason’s back, the bruises in the shape of Bucky’s teeth on the ball of his shoulder, the bruises in the shape of Bucky’s fingers on his hips. The small of his back bears scratches, perfect sets of livid red lines that trail down and disappear under the sheet. Bucky wants to follow them with his tongue.
Jason’s breath keeps catching in his throat, nothing loud enough to be considered a moan, just tiny sounds that Bucky probably couldn’t hear without his enhanced senses. Then he shifts restlessly in his sleep, hips rocking down against the mattress.
Most of the time it’s easy to forget how young Jason is. He’s a hell of a lot smarter and savvier than Bucky was at twenty, and in all too many ways, he grew up faster than he should’ve had to. But his sex drive is unmistakably that of a twenty-year-old.
Until Jason came around, Bucky would’ve said that his own sex drive was nonexistent, since he came out of the ice; that’s changed, along with so many other things in his life. But it’s different. He thinks he used to feel the drive first, and a focus for it second. He wanted sex, so he wanted a person. Now it’s just Jason. He can’t imagine wanting anyone else.
But everything Jason does, whether he has a gun in his hand or a snarl on his face, whether he’s smiling or fighting or just fucking sleeping, seems to turn Bucky on. It goes beyond sex; it doesn’t just turn him on, it lights him up inside, thrills him in ways he can’t explain and doesn’t understand. It’s infuriating. Jason is the most infuriating person he’s ever met — infuriating and fascinating and brilliant.
Bucky slides into the bed as carefully as he can. Jason doesn’t wake up. He sleeps soundly these days, aside from the nightmares; he didn’t when they first met. It wasn’t until he started to really trust Bucky that he let go of some of his ever-present hyperalertness. Bucky feels a funny ache in his chest when he thinks about that trust — the trust, and the certainty that Bucky doesn’t deserve it. He’s not sure he’ll ever really be worthy of that trust.
There’s an ache in his chest and a swooping, panicky sensation in his gut and a low pooling heat in his groin, and Bucky knows how to deal with exactly one of those things. Emotions are complicated. This isn’t.
He shifts closer. Jason’s on his belly, but he’s tilted onto his left side, right knee hitched up slightly; Bucky rests his own weight on the metal arm as he slowly, inch by inch, tugs the sheet down, exposing the curve of Jason’s ass in the low light that filters in through the rainy windows, tracing the crease of his thigh with a feather-light touch before dragging a careful fingertip up to where he’s all fucked-open and slick from earlier. It’s enough that he doesn’t reach for the lube. Jason likes when it hurts a little bit. They both do.
Well, Bucky likes when it hurts a lot, but that’s not the point right now.
He starts with a finger, slow and easy, teasing at the spot that makes Jason moan softly. Bucky can see enough of his face to watch the way his mouth opens wider, plush and swollen, as he starts to breathe heavier. This is easier when he’s on his back, when Bucky can get to his dick as it fattens up, when he can lick the barbells in Jason’s nipples and the sensitive slice of skin under his hipbone, but this works. He likes how vulnerable Jason is like this, trapped face-down.
Bucky lets out a shaky exhale at that thought, stroking himself a few times before he shifts into place and starts to press in, torturously slowly.
Jason squirms into semi-wakefulness with a dreamy sigh. He rocks back instinctively before he’s fully awake, spearing himself on Bucky’s dick and then jolting abruptly, a convulsive twitch of movement.
Bucky whispers, “Shh, s’me.”
“Bucky,” Jason slurs, a long exhale that turns into a low, eager groan, and there it is again — that trust. Regardless of whether he deserves it, Jason melts under him, tilts his hips up with a shameless moan. That trust is what makes Bucky shudder down to his toes, even more so than the impossibly tight heat of Jason’s body or the hand he reaches back to twist into Bucky’s hair.
There’s another flash of lightning and a sharp crack of thunder. Jason trembles, clutching at the sheets, trying to stifle a groan by hiding his face in the pillow. Bucky grinds in deep, biting down on the meat of Jason’s shoulder to muffle his own obscene moan.
“What were you dreamin’ about, anyway?” Bucky whispers. “I was wondering if you were gonna sleep through this whole thing.”
“None of your fuckin’ business,” Jason gasps, rocking back to meet Bucky’s grinding thrusts, rubbing himself against the mattress.
“What would you do if it wasn’t me, huh?” Bucky wonders out loud. “Shit, you wouldn’t care, I bet. As long as you’re getting fucked.” He’s driving in harder now, feeling Jason tense and clench around him like a vise grip as his body really wakes up. “Not like there’s anything you could do about it. If I tied you to the bed and opened the door… shit, you like that idea, don’t you?”
Jason’s squirming in a way he can’t even try to disguise as protest, but he gasps out, “You’re a fuckin’ asshole sometimes, you know that? Jesus.”
“Should try that sometime. Fuck you open and leave you here for whoever wants to go next. Shit, maybe I’ll give Wilson a call.”
“Fuck off,” Jason chokes out, gulping in air and letting it out again as a sob.
“Oh, please, you really gonna try and pretend like you’re not getting off on the idea?” Bucky teases, and hitches Jason’s hips up roughly, lifting him off the bed while he whimpers out a protest. When Bucky gets a hand on him he shouts , jerking and twitching in the circle of Bucky’s fist.
“Uh-huh,” Bucky breathes. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.” Bucky gives him a slow, too-tight stroke, still buried to the hilt inside him. “That’s it. Come for me.” He twists his wrist, and Jason trembles under him, hips thrusting into his grip once, twice, three more times before he comes with a shout. Bucky has to grit his teeth to hold back at the sensation of Jason’s body tightening and releasing, rippling around him.
He can feel the moment Jason’s orgasm ebbs and the discomfort begins.
“Stop,” Jason grunts. “Too much, hang on.”
“You can take it,” Bucky says dismissively. He shoves Jason back down again, pinning him to the mattress and fucking into him harder, short vicious thrusts that nail his prostate. If he gets the angle right, Jason won’t have a chance to come down before Bucky works him up again. Bucky leans forward, pressing in deep, getting his mouth close to Jason’s ear when he whispers, “Gonna be good?”
“Am I ever?” Jason retorts, but his voice breaks on a whimper. “Stop, c’mon, I can’t — can’t, I can’t, I —”
“Not my problem you’re so easy you couldn’t last five minutes,” Bucky says, low and sharp, without slowing. “Not done with you yet.”
A ragged noise rips from his throat, and then he protests, “Too sensitive, fuck off.”
“You’re gonna shut up and take it for me, or I’m gonna hold a knife to your throat and make you shut up. Up to you.”
“Holy fuck,” Jason gasps, half-whine and half-laugh. “Why the fuck is that so hot?”
Bucky grabs Jason’s wrists, one and then the other, pinning them to the pillow over his head. He’s not thrusting so much as grinding himself into Jason, deep and deeper, punishing rolls of his hips that keep him buried in that heat, blanketing Jason with his entire body. Sweat slicks every inch of naked skin where they’re pressed together. Bucky can feel him rutting against the mattress, choking on little moans…
“Is that what you were dreaming about?” Bucky croons. “Imagining Wilson pinning you like this, splitting you open?”
A head-to-toe shiver tells Bucky he might not be too far from the truth. Jason snarls, “Asshole.”
“You do have a type, don’t you?” he murmurs. “Older men who could snap your neck with one hand…” He puts the metal hand to Jason’s throat — doesn’t even squeeze, just holds it there, and Jason lets out an incoherent sound, clenching almost painfully around him.
“I —”
“Shh-sh-sh,” Bucky whispers. “None of that.” Bucky tightens the grip on his throat until Jason can’t get enough air to finish whatever he was about to say. All that comes out is a thin, wheezing gasp. “Can’t do shit about it, can you? And you love it.”
Jason’s actually putting up a fight now, thrashing back and forth with a sudden urgency that makes Bucky hesitate — concerned he pushed too far, somehow hit one of those emotional landmines that litter Jason’s psyche — until he feels the way Jason’s shaking as he ruts against the mattress.
“Jesus,” he breathes. “You’re already close again, aren’t you? God, you’re easy.”
Bucky releases Jason’s throat just long enough for him to suck in a deep, desperate gulp of air.
“M’not,” Jason bites out. “Hurts.”
Bucky shudders and cuts him off with another squeeze. “Bullshit. Is that what you like about Wilson? You like knowing that he could hold you down?”
Jason lets out a keening, broken moan.
“You’d have to lie here and take it.” Bucky closes his eyes, seeing fireworks behind his lids, sparks flying under his skin with every searing-hot thrust. Jason’s writhing under him, struggling hard enough to make it feel real. “If it was both of us — you wouldn’t have a chance in hell of fighting us off. Is that what you want? Both of us at once?”
“No,” Jason chokes out.
Bucky knows him too well at this point to take him at his word. His body is telling a different story, humping the bed with straining, desperate movements.
“Guess we’re just not gonna give you a choice,” Bucky breathes. “We could take turns with you. Hell, we could literally pass you back and forth. Bounce you on my lap like a toy, fill you up, sit you on his dick so he can feel me leaking out of you —”
“Oh,” Jason gasps, a single gust of air as he spasms, every muscle tensing, seizing up, sudden and unexpected.
“Did you just —” Bucky pants.
Jason clenches down again, impossibly tight as he shakes, and then he lets out the most obscene, mangled groan Bucky’s ever heard. Bucky’s eyes roll back in his head as he follows Jason over the edge.
“You’re such a fuckin’ bastard sometimes,” is the first thing Jason says, panting so hard he can barely get the words out. He whimpers when Bucky pulls out, curling his arms over his head as if that could hide the way he’s shaking, or the telltale thickness of tears in his voice.
“So I’ve heard,” Bucky mumbles.
If he wasn’t a bastard sometimes, he’s not sure Jason would’ve ever admitted to most of the fantasies they’ve acted out together.
“Move,” Jason grumbles, twisting and wriggling and blinking away tears. “Gonna have to change the sheets again, ugh.”
“Aw, did you make a mess?” Bucky asks, mock-sympathetic. He gets an arm around Jason, rolling onto his back to pull Jason on top of him.
Jason stares down at him with shiny, heavy-lidded eyes before kissing him, all teeth, uncomfortably rough. Bucky hums his appreciation, cupping Jason’s ass and running his fingers down the hot raised lines of the scratches he was admiring earlier before sliding two fingers into his own mess. Jason hisses out a protest, but Bucky’s got the metal arm tight around his waist.
“Fuck, you’re filthy,” he murmurs. “You’re fucking dripping. All used and dirty. All mine. After I let Wilson fuck you, I’m gonna make him lick you clean before I take my turn.”
Jason makes a pained, overwhelmed sound, panting into the sweaty curve of Bucky’s neck. “Shit, you’re — you’re not kidding, are you? About… him.”
Bucky closes his eyes as Jason goes still, holding his breath for a moment.
Bucky doesn’t love the mental image of Jason with someone else, let alone someone like Slade Wilson. Something inside him screams at the idea of sharing, every possessive instinct he’s got raging at once, but —
“If it makes you lose it the way you did just now, then yeah, I’m on board,” he says softly, twisting his knuckles and pumping his fingers in and out to hear the slick sound it makes.
Jason whines, trembling almost violently as his soft dick twitches against Bucky’s stomach. “Stop. Stop.”
“Tell me something, first,” Bucky says. “Why didn't you want to admit it?”
“Don’t,” Jason grunts. “Can we talk about this in the morning?”
“Anything you want,” Bucky promises, so quiet he can barely hear his own voice over the drumming of the rain on the windows.
It’s the truth.
This is not what Slade expected when the Winter Soldier said he wanted to talk.
“You want me to fuck your boyfriend,” Slade says, sitting back in the spindly cafe chair and crossing his arms.
“Not my boyfriend.” Barnes takes a sip of his tea and stares at him impassively from the other side of the small table.
“You work together, you live together, you sleep together…”
“I don’t sleep much.”
“Not what I meant and you know it.”
Barnes blinks. It might be the first time in this conversation that he’s done so; Slade wonders if he actually needs to blink, or if that’s the closest thing to a facial expression Barnes has got in his programming.
“What is he, then?” Slade prods.
“I don’t understand the question,” Barnes says, in his flat monotone.
“If he’s not your boyfriend… what is he to you?” He’s prying deliberately, partly because he’s curious but also partly because he just wants to see if he can get a rise out of Barnes, but it’s no use. Barnes remains just as blank and robotic as he’s been through this whole conversation, eerily emotionless.
Barnes just says, “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
Slade studies him. “What’s your part in this whole thing? I mean, are you part of the action?”
“I’d be there.”
“Uh-huh. You gonna do your creepy stare the entire time? Because, gotta say, seems like it’d be a bit of a mood killer.”
“I expect I’d get involved,” Barnes says, with a tiny twitch of his lips, a not-smile that doesn’t reach his icy eyes. “To what extent… I suppose that’s up to you. I don’t bottom, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“It wasn’t, but that’s good to know,” Slade says slowly.
“I do like watching. And I would be giving him orders.” His eyes cut to the side as he thinks for a moment.
“It’s like that, then.”
“Like what?”
“He likes being ordered around.”
“Is that a problem?”
Slade frowns. “I guess that depends what we’re talkin’ about here.”
“He mentioned something about wanting you to put him over your knee and spank him until he cries,” Barnes offers, blunt as ever, with that same neutral tone.
“Guess I shouldn’t be surprised he’s got some daddy issues to work through,” Slade mutters.
“Apparently you said something to that effect when he was younger, and he imprinted on it like a horny little teenage duckling. But in a general sense… he likes being held down. Being choked.”
“Huh,” Slade says. It comes out oddly strangled. That’s not his usual cup of tea, but fuck if the image isn’t getting to him — Barnes’s metal hand tight around the kid’s pale neck as he tries to get enough breath in his lungs to beg.
“Some degradation. Being hit, whether it’s hands or belts or whatever else. He likes when it’s a fight. He likes to struggle.”
Slade’s not one to get shy on the subject of sex, but Barnes takes it to another level, bored and bland like he’s discussing the weather.
“I take it there are… safewords, that sort of thing?”
“Yes. When Jason is good to go, he says green; when he needs to pause, slow down, check in, he says yellow; and —”
“Red for stop, I know the drill,” Slade says.
Barnes narrows his eyes. “No. When it comes to Jason, red means yes, please, harder. So does stop , no matter how much he sounds like he’s begging.”
Slade blinks a few times. “Ah.”
“If he actually wants to stop, he says crowbar.”
“Jesus,” Slade blurts out.
“But he won’t say it. He doesn’t like to admit that he has limits.”
“That’s not reassuring,” Slade tells him bluntly.
Slade’s sudden hesitation must show on his face, because Barnes frowns, examining his expression, before he says simply, “He’s intense.”
“Yeah, that’s — a lot,” Slade says with a shrug.
“Too much?”
“Honestly? I’m not sure.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, wondering if he’s getting himself in over his head.
“Whatever your limits are, we can work with that,” Barnes says.
Slade shakes his head, exhaling slowly. He closes his eye for a moment, collecting himself. “Is it all whips and chains, or does he have any standard-issue turn-ons too?”
“He likes praise, but — it’s complicated.” Barnes stares off into the middle distance, lost in thought. “He wants to earn it. Doesn’t want… platitudes, but. If he feels like he’s earned it — he likes to work for it.”
Something occurs to Slade and he frowns. “Does he know we’re having this conversation?”
“No.”
“That’s — kinda fucked up, don’t you think?”
“No.”
Slade raises an expressive eyebrow. Barnes meets his gaze steadily, taking another sip of his tea. He swallows, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms. He’s mirroring Slade’s posture almost perfectly; Slade wonders if it’s deliberate, a way of trying to put him at ease, or if it’s just habit to parrot whatever human mannerisms he sees.
“Jason isn’t good at asking for what he wants,” Barnes says. “And he has wanted this — you – for a while now. So it doesn’t occur to him that he might get it.”
“What does that even mean?”
“He feels like he needs to earn all of it.”
“All of —?”
“Anything good,” Barnes says simply. “Affection. Pleasure. Praise. The more he wants something he can’t get for himself, the less likely he is to ask for it.”
Slade feels a strange tug in his chest. Sympathy, maybe. Next time he runs into the Bat they’re going to have words.
“This way, if you say no, he doesn’t have to hear it,” Barnes says. He tilts his head. “But you’re not going to say no, are you?”
Slade huffs out a sigh and doesn’t bother denying it. “Anything else I should know?
“If you hurt him in any way he doesn’t like, I’ll kill you,” Barnes says, calm and matter-of-fact.
Slade’s been on the receiving end of a lot of death threats in his time. He can’t ever remember believing them before.
If it came down to a fight with anybody else on this planet, Slade wouldn’t think twice about betting on himself. Hell, Barnes is almost a full foot shorter than him. Right now he seems so goddamn unflappable that it’s hard to imagine him attacking anyone . Shooting from a distance, maybe. He has the cool attitude of a sniper, someone who’s used to being removed from the fight. It takes a special something to kill a man who’s looking you in the eyes. If he didn't know better, Slade wouldn't guess Barnes has what it takes.
But he knows better.
“What is it about the kid?” he asks, curiosity getting the better of him.
Barnes blinks. His face softens as Slade watches, until he could almost pass for a real boy. There’s the ghost of a smile on his face when he says, “You’ll see.”
For the first time, he doesn’t look anything like the broken, vacant puppet Slade met back in Vietnam.
The Winter Soldier was propped up against a wall, sewing himself shut. They’d been on opposing sides when Slade cut him open, but the mission was over. That war had already claimed too much collateral damage, and he wasn't about to spill more blood than he had to. Besides, he had a feeling the professional courtesy would pay off in his new line of work.
But when Slade offered to help get him out, the Soldier said, “No. I have orders.”
“Hate to break it to you, but your extraction team is bleeding out a mile upriver.”
There was nothing in his eyes when he said, “I have orders. In 48 hours they’ll track me here.”
No food, no water, no backup, and no sign that he cared one way or another whether he lived or died.
Slade read the file in preparation. He knew what they did to the Soldier, to make him like this. But he never really understood what it meant. They scooped out everything that made him human, all the heart and soul, left nothing but a hollow shell.
He was struck by the sudden idea that this could’ve been him. If things had gone just a little differently, if Slade hadn't gotten lucky... he could've been this. Dull and lifeless and bleeding in the jungle, unable or unwilling to save himself because of a goddamn order. The idea terrified him like nothing had in a long goddamn time.
Barnes takes the last sip of his tea and pushes his chair back. “You know how to find us.”
He lifts a hand in a silent goodbye, and then he leaves, shoulders hunched, blending in easily with the crowd on the sidewalk until he’s out of sight.