could you please write steve breaking into pierce's house to look for bucky, and not finding him (because bucky needs to suffer more), but finding a photo album of bucky's torture/training. and it shows how he's breaking. and pierce wakes or something so he has to leave. with the knowledge that bucky is there somewhere, being tortured
ah yes, my torture speciality: found footage. you got it, boss.
trigger warnings: captivity, bruises, blood
Steve can't stop thinking about that lock of brown hair. It clings to his thoughts. Torments him. The image of it arrives out of nowhere, jarring him.
He can't figure out why...until he finds an old picture of Pierce with his wife at a holiday party. She has blonde hair.
Not brown.
Pierce's house is empty when Steve arrives. No one is home. Steve tears through each room. No sign of Bucky. Even the wooden box with the lock of hair is missing.
Steve is beginning to feel like he concocted the whole conspiracy, when he finds it. The photo album.
It's leather. Innocuous. Steve might not have opened it if he hadn't seen the same buck and doe design that was on the box. The pictures pasted inside are mostly of Pierce's family. His wife. Two children, now grown. Beach days. Trips to the county fair.
But when Steve flips open the third page, a loose photograph falls out. He only gets a flash of the image before it flutters to the floor. What he does see makes his heart leap.
The photograph lands face down on the floor. With trembling fingers, Steve stoops and flips it over.
It's Bucky. He was right. It's Bucky.
He faces the camera, head held up by a fist in his hair. His eyes are glazed, heavily lidded as if drugged. A bruise creeps over the bridge of his nose, darkening both eyes. His nose bleeds.
Steve's stomach churns.
Steve upends the book, shaking out three other loose photographs. The next is similar to the first. Bucky is standing in this one, turning out his wrists to show the camera his ligature bruises. His face is tilted away, as if in shame.
Steve flips through these quickly now, looking for evidence of where Pierce is keeping Bucky. The second is much more graphic. Bucky's face isn't in this one. Just his back, knobby and gaunt with starvation. A crosshatch of whip marks.
The background is dark. There's a corner of some bit of furniture, maybe a bed, but not the bed in Pierce's master suite.
Steve doesn't have a chance to look at the third photograph. The garage door rumbles downstairs, shaking the entire upper floor. Though it sickens him, Steve is forced to jam the photographs back into the album. To leave it where he found it, on Pierce's desk.
He darts downstairs and out the backdoor. Not hearing the faint pounding from the hidden basement below.
Whenever you're writing again, could I request non-shock-collar collared Bucky? Maybe in that modern au with pierce&steve and the hair strand
GOD YES. I've been meaning to follow up on Bucky in Pierce's basement.
trigger warnings: captivity, collars, suffocation
Bucky knows when Pierce is going to come down. The room is soundproofed, but the ceiling rattles whenever someone walks directly overhead.
Bucky can feel the vibrations through the chain that connects his collar to the ceiling. He clenches his fists and takes deep breaths. Reminds himself to be brave.
To be good.
PThe trapdoor lifts. Light and fresh air fills the room. Then darkness again. Bucky breathes. Be brave. Be good.
"Have you thought about what we talked about?" Pierce says, kindly. Like a grandfather. It's that gentle voice that lured Bucky into his house. That voice that entrapped Bucky here.
"I have," he rasps.
"And next time I have guests over?"
Bucky swallows thickly. The metal band around his throat is too tight. He's been hanging by it, suspended on his tiptoes, for hours now. Every bob of his Adam's apple grinds against the collar. It feels like he's been punched in the throat.
Pierce seizes the chain connected to the ceiling. He doesn't lift Bucky any higher, but the threat is enough to have Bucky closing his eyes. Tense with fear.
As Bucky flinches away, Pierce leans in. Intent on Bucky. On his fear.
"I asked you a question, Bucky." Pierce's tone is calm, but his eyes are bright. Riveted. "What will you do the next time I have guests over?"
The same thing I did before, Bucky thinks. I'll make as much noise as I can.
But that's not what Bucky says. He swallows with his bruised throat and grits out, "I'll be good."
please please please could you do more basement bucky
only because you begged so nicely.
trigger warnings: captivity
Even in the midst of a dead sleep, Bucky knows when Pierce is home from work. He jolts out of his cot and gets straight to it. Straight to preparing for Pierce.
Pierce will need to shower. Change into his house clothes. So Bucky has about thirty minutes to get everything ready.
First, he sets the needle on the turn table. Bucky begged for a radio. But Pierce was suspicious that he'd use it to communicate with the outside world. The compromise was a record player.
The music soothes Bucky. Gets him calm enough to be good.
Humming along to the tune, Bucky strips out of his clothes--a t-shirt and boxers, dank with sweat--and rubs soap into his skin so he smells fresher. He keeps the clothes he wears with Pierce in a clean pillow case, laid in the mostly empty chest of drawers at the foot of his cot. Even sealed away like this, the clothes have a mildewy scent.
Everything in this room reeks of despair.
Next, Bucky takes out Pierce's slippers. Lays those by the door. Then the handle of whiskey and glass to fix Pierce a drink.
He's allowed his own glass. Pierce likes Bucky a little drunk. Says he's sweeter. But Bucky only swills the whisky through his teeth. Enough to wet his mouth. To give Pierce the illusion that he's drinking.
When the slippers are laid out, the whisky ready, the turntable crooning. Bucky kneels near the door. It's easier this way.
Pierce doesn't make him wait long. The ceiling vibrates with his steps and then the trapdoor lifts.
Pierces first goes for his slippers and whisky. As he passes Bucky, he ruffles his hair. Absently. Like Bucky is just an obedient dog.
"Smells in here," Pierce notes.
Against his volition, Bucky's head jerks up. He grits his teeth. Of course it smells in here. Bucky never leaves. There's no shower in here. Sink baths are fine, but he can never get really clean.
From Pierce's amused expression, he was purposefully baiting Bucky. In the mood to hurt tonight. Bucky won't give him the satisfaction.
"How was your day?"
"Busy." Pierce settles on the end of the Bucky's cot. He promised to bring him a chair, but there's not much room left in here. "We had a call out, so I needed to compensate."
There's a wrinkle in Bucky's rug, next to his knee. He smooths it out. "Who called out?"
Pierce waits for Bucky to look up again. Eyes sharp on his, Pierce says, "Steve Rogers, again."
Bucky tenses. At every mention of Steve his heart leaps with hope. It's always battered back down. It's killing him. Slowly.
"He's doing better these days, though. Getting over you."
The song ends and the needle slides over static. Bucky stands to flip it over.
"Wait," Pierce commands and Bucky stops mid-step. "Come here."
Bucky hates the sound of the needle scaping over blank vinyl. But he does as he's told. Kneels at Pierce's feet because that's Pierce wants.
Pierce lays his hand in Bucky's hair, guiding his head to rest against his knee.
In a murmur so soft it could be gentle, Pierce reminds Bucky, "No one is looking for you."
Pierce has a locket or smth like that with a lock of dark hair in it. And Steve sees it and's like 'aw that's his wife, that's cute'
But it's actually a trophy
ANON, I gasped. This is so great.
I ended up making a new AU for this one. This is a no powers modern au.
trigger warnings: captivity
"Rogers, can I level with you?"
Pierce has been refilling Steve's glass with top shelf whisky all night. He's feeling overly warm and convivial. "Please do."
"It's been six months. You can't let this rule your life anymore."
Steve inhales sharply through his teeth. Exhales again. "Bucky is still out there. Alive. I know it. We just have to find him--"
Something thuds in Pierce's basement. Loud enough that it shakes the floorboards beneath Steve's feet.
"What was--" Steve looks down, but then Pierce's hand is on his knee.
"Just the cat," Pierce explains. "I'm glad you still have hope. You should never lose that. But, son, I can tell this is consuming you."
Steve scrubs a hand over his face. "I haven't been sleeping," he admits. "Every time I close my eyes, I see his missing posters."
"A sure sign you're spending too much time with those posters," Pierce says with a sage nod. Maybe he's right. Between posting flyers and haranguing the detectives on Bucky's missing person case, Steve hasn't had time for much else.
"I just--" The alcohol is making Steve emotional. His eyes are streaming and he has to take a moment to breathe. "I never told him--Never told him I--"
Another thud from the basement, this time it rattles the knick-knacks on Pierce's coffee table and the whisky in Steve's glass.
Pierce's jaw twitches. "I should look into that. Excuse me."
He abruptly sets down his own glass, shoving over a small wooden box on his coffee table in his haste to get downstairs. He leaves without picking it up, so Steve plays the good guest and tidies it for him.
It's a wooden box carved with deer and bucks. The contents of the box have been upturned and Steve puts them back inside. There's a scrap of cotton fabric, a movie ticket stub, and--Steve pauses. A lock of hair, knotted in the middle.
It's the exact same shade and texture as Bucky's curls. Steve has been able to keep his welling tears at bay, but now finds himself unable to stop.
"Sorry, about that, my cat--" Pierce pauses when he sees Steve, crying over an open box. "What's this?"
"You knocked it over." Steve straightens. He wipes his face dry, and puts on a good face. "I was just putting this away, and--"
It's too hard to explain. He just extends his palm to show Pierce the lock of hair curled in his palm.
"Ah," Pierce says. He takes it from Steve, brushing the ends against his lips in a kiss. "My wife's, before she died."
A fresh wave of tears breaks over Steve. He has to turn his head to hide from Pierce. Doesn't want his employer to see him like this, especially when he's been so kind as to let him into his house.
"I should go," he says. "Thank you for having me over. I'll--I'll consider what you've said."
Once Pierce has seen him out and the door is closed behind him, Steve thinks he hears a muffled cry from inside the house. But he's sure it's just his imagination; the cry sounded just like Bucky.
could you do a failed escape attempt for basement bucky?
Celebrating another kofi kindness. A reminder that you're welcome to send in a request if you donate. If not, I'll just party by filling whatever catches my eye.
trigger warnings: captivity
Bucky can't do this much longer. Most days, he lies listlessly in his cot. Waiting for Pierce to show up. He can feel his mind slipping away from him. And it's torture.
So he forms a plan.
When Pierce gets home, it's time. He takes the handle of whisky--it's the heaviest thing in the room--and waits behind the trapdoor's ladder.
Pierce's footsteps shake the ceiling and Bucky's heart catches by his throat. He tries to calm himself by counting. By taking deep breaths.
The trapdoor opens and Pierce descends.
Bucky waits until Pierce has one foot on the ground. Pierce turns, questioning where Bucky is. Bucky swings. Bludgeons Pierce right over the temple. He drops like a stone, but Bucky doesn't have time to enjoy it.
This next part is tricky.
He has six seconds to scale the ladder before the heavy door closes, locking them inside. Bucky skips the first two rungs. Four seconds left. Hauls his body up to the top of the ladder. The door is midway to slamming shut. Two seconds left.
Moments before it clicks closed, Bucky gets his palm flat against the trapdoor. His heart soars. He pushes up.
He's weak from spending so much time malnourished underground. The door is heavy. He pushes harder. Balances on the rung to leverage both hands against the door.
Something grasps him by the ankle. Pierce. Without his hands to brace him, Bucky is pulled directly off.
No.
He topples to the ground. The trapdoor slams shut. Bucky tucks his face into the concrete. Overwhelmed with loss.
Pierce grips him by the hair, stooping to face him. The bottle shattered when it collided with his head. He's bleeding from the temple and smells like alcohol.
