Summery of fic: Reader/Jess Harper has already survived abuse and sexual assault by stepbrother Nate Millers, but the reward was a prison sentence for murder at Litchfield penitentiary…
What happens when you/Jess come face to face with Nate’s old colleagues and friends, Correctional Officers Steve Rogers and James ‘Bucky’ Barnes, who both seem set on making you pay for your mistakes. Will you be able to survive it all over again?
Pairing (kinda): Steve Rogers x Reader, Bucky Barnes x Reader, Nate Millers (OMC) x Reader
Words: 2251
Warnings: DARK AU, dubcon/noncon elements, Dark!Bucky, Dark!Steve, implied sexual acts, sexual acts, mention of murder, mentions of death, mentions of violence, mentions of NC/SA and death
You have been warned.
Chapter 14
-
A box. A box with grimy walls and sticky floor. A 10 by 10-foot cement box with nothing more than a toilet with a sink and a bed. And a blanket. At least you had a blanket.
People were screaming in the adjacent cells, shouting obscenities and damning the guards for putting them in this hellhole. The lonely florescent light in the ceiling was flickering endlessly, zapping like it was killing bugs with each flit. Cold, bright and loud. That’s what SHU is like.
Hours must have passed since that solid red door was shut, locking in place behind you. The guards taking you down to your new very humble abode hadn’t even commented on the cuts or bruises you had yet to clean, assuming you must have done something to deserve them. Maybe you had. Maybe you deserved everything that happened to you, and everything yet to come. After all, a man was dead at the hands of you. That couldn’t be changed, no matter how much you wished that it could. And apparently the circumstances of his death were trivial in the scheme of things.
You sat huddled in the corner, holding your knees as tightly as the ache in your ribs would allow, your constant crying making it no easier to try and breathe. You couldn’t find a single calm thought to grasp or hold onto for dear life, instead quickly drowning in the abyss of darkness of your own mind, haunted by the ghost that inhabited it.
FLASHBACK
“No, n-no, please. Nate, please,” you begged, your voice carrying pain and fear as you gulped in air.
He was stalking towards you, savoring every sweet, innocent plea falling from your mouth. No matter how much he hurt you, you never stopped begging. Never stopped pleading for him to have mercy, to, just please, don’t hurt you.
Sharp spikes of searing pain shot through your belly as you tried to move away from him, one hand firmly pressing down on the wound he had already caused. Warm blood was seeping through your fingers and slicking the floor beneath you, flowing out across the floorboards.
You moaned and cried. Even just the thought of any movement sent another sharp twang through your body.
Nate laughed, and kicked your leg to the side, drawing yet another whimper from you.
“Oh, dear,” he mocked, a grin plastered on his lips as he looked down. “Does it hurt?”
“Mmmph,” was all that came out in a shuddering breath. He laughed at you.
“What’s the matter? Cat’s got your tongue?” he said with a wink. “I think I can find a way to get you to speak. You might not like it, though.”
Nate took a step back, before hurling a hard foot right in your belly. Right at the blood.
“Agh!” you screamed, spitting blood as you fought to draw breath.
Mind-numbing pain blossomed in your abdomen, your ears ringing with the sound of white noise.
“Please…” you wheezed, shaking and shuddering.
The pain was burning you up from the inside, like a raging inferno. A raging inferno burning everything it came to touch.
But again, Nate just laughed. Amused by the pain, your pain, and the noises you made.
“Told you.”
END OF FLASHBACK
No, please, don’t go there. Not now. Not here. Not when there’s no place to run to, nothing to keep your attention or distract you. You needed to derail the train before you rammed yourself straight into that wall of crippling agony that was far too familiar. You were left with no alternative, fearing the mental and emotional pain more than the one you would subject yourself to in order to escape the others.
You lowered a leg down to the ground with an echoing groan, the pain horribly familiar to the one of getting kicked in the stomach after just being stabbed. As if the memory itself wasn’t bad enough, you just had to relive the physical pain as well, but it did what it was supposed to do, and grounded you in the now. The memory of Nate faded back into the blackness once more, when curious fingers caressed the sharp line of ribs underneath your shirt, testing what pressure they could take.
“Ugh… hah…” you rasped at the light touches.
Not a lot apparently. They must be mere millimeters from being broken.
Longing eyes watched the door in a silent pray for it to be opened again. To reveal salvation. To reveal anything. Anything but the dub grey or spotted metallic showering the room. At least there was the bright, sharp contrast of the door.
The red paint was flaked all over. Scratched. Flawed. The top was kept bright red, fading as it went down to the bottom where the underlying metal was bared, the upper part probably saved by its height. You couldn’t reach it. You doubted many of the inmates could. Even if they did, they probably wouldn’t hold the strength to scratch at the paint at that height.
There were inscriptions. Calls for help etched in the coating. Help. Save me. Kill me.
How long would it take for your mind to start spurring out ideas on how to save yourself? How to escape. A month? A week? A day perhaps? There’s no telling of just how dark your mind could get with so little. It’s like tapping on a broken window, or a cracked mirror, just waiting for the pieces to shatter apart. How hard would someone have to tap for your pieces to shatter? How long?
Tap, tap.
O.o.O.o.O
The rev of a motorcycle engine roared outside the window of their shared house. Bucky was stood leaning against the kitchen sink with his bare back to the window, a bowl of bran flakes in his hands. He had just gotten up, and Steve had apparently just gotten home. They both had the day off. Well, Steve had worked for several hours already, but he wasn’t due back to work for another couple of days, back on the dayshift again.
Steve parked his bike on the driveway next to Bucky’s and killed the engine. He didn’t take his bike that often, neither did Bucky, but when the weather was nice and he didn’t have to make a pitstop at Micky D’s or the local Wendy’s, he seized the opportunity.
“Mornin’,” Bucky mumbled through a mouthful as Steve walked in to the kitchen, throwing his jacket on the back of the nearest chair.
“Didn’t think you’d be up,” Steve said, and sat down at the round table with a loud sigh.
He hated nightshifts when you weren’t there for him to tease and occupy his time with. It had been their fault that you weren’t in fact in the dorm where he roamed the nights, but still. He could nonetheless complain that it wasn’t any fun when you weren’t there. He’d had a taste of the thrills the shift could offer, but this? This plain, quiet, working in the dim lighting and trying to stay awake thing? That was just boring.
“Yeah, well,” Bucky said and spooned in another mouthful. “Restless night. Couldn’t get my mind off dear little Jessie, and what you might have gotten into bringing her down to SHU.”
Steve scoffed with a grin. Bucky waited a second before adding;
“Care to tell me? Does she look worse than when I last saw her?” Bucky asked with an equally wide smile.
“That she does,” Steve said drawn out.
“Oh, yeah? What you do?”
He shovelled another spoon into his mouth as he listened, curious to know what Steve had gotten up to.
Steve bit his lip, trying to contain his widening smile as he reminisced of your glorious downfall. Literally.
“She might have taken a tumble down the stairs.”
Bucky burst into laughter, almost spitting the milk out of his mouth. He dried his mouth with the back of his hand, and set down the almost empty bowl on the counter beside him.
“No shit! You didn’t?”
“I did,” Steve said proudly.
Bucky clapped his hands together in an impressed applaud.
“You’re worse than me, Steve.”
“Nah, it was a spur of the moment kind of thing. She was pissing me off with her excuses and all that.”
Steve got up to open the fridge and grabbed the prepared shake waiting for him, drinking straight from the jug. With the door still open as he did, which annoyed Bucky who was just in his underwear still, and not liking the cool breeze sweeping across the room. Luckily for Steve, he shut it quick enough not to earn a remark.
“Really?” Bucky said. “Still don’t know when to shut up, huh? Did you make her cry, too? ‘Cause all I got was begging. Not that I’m complaining, it’s so much hotter than I thought. Hearing her plead, and beg, and fucking whine like that. Fuck!” he exclaimed at the memory.
He hadn’t anticipated how good it would feel to be so hands on and in control. He was in control of all the inmates all the time, sure, but it wasn’t the same as it was with you. With you, there were no limits on what he could get up to, knowing Steve had his back and wanted the same things as he did; to get Nate some justice. With the other inmates there were more risks involved, and an honour code to uphold. With you, the risks were minimal, seeing no inmate was particular close to you (anymore), and most of them wanted nothing to do with you and frankly wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if something were to happen to you. The plans were unravelling splendidly.
“Oh, yeah? You should’ve heard her weeping and begging when she was lying on the bottom of the stairs. Hands still cuffed, completely helpless. Talk about a whining mess,” Steve snorted where he stood resting an arm over the Philco fridge and drink in his free hand, hearing every sound you had made echoing in his head.
How helpless you had been, how scared. And the look on your face when realization hit that you couldn’t do anything to stop him from doing what he wanted with you was beautiful in its sadness. No, not sadness. Submission. Nothing else.
Bucky scoffed at the remark and gratefully interrupted Steve’s thoughts, pouring himself a fresh cup of coffee from the pot, taking the first steaming sip. He knew Steve wouldn’t want one so he didn’t offer. He never drank coffee before bed, and it was his bedtime after all.
“What?” he said surprised. “Still handcuffed? Damn, Rogers. You’re a meanie,” he said with a laugh into the cup.
“Don’t worry, it was like five steps left,” Steve said, and chucked the now empty container into the sink for Bucky to deal with whenever he decided to do the dishes. “She just did a nose-dive and landed awkwardly. All she got was a cut on her cheekbone, and probably some bruises here and there. She’ll live.”
Steve walked out of the kitchen with Bucky on his tail and into his bedroom to get out of his work clothes, and maybe take a shower and get the stench of prison off. He unbuckled his belt and stripped of his shirt and the tee underneath, throwing them both in the bin to be washed.
Bucky leaned against the doorframe to Steve’s room. Privacy wasn’t an issue in their house. There just wasn’t any.
“How do you think she’ll handle the SHU?” he asked and took a sip of the mug in his hand, equally unbothered by his friend’s upcoming nakedness as much as he was his own.
“Don’t know,” Steve said, and tossed his socks in the bin with the other items, left with just his pants on, the belt buckle clanking as he moved. “She seems... fragile. Might crack her.”
He didn’t linger on the thought though, instead opting for a more joyous approach, and finding your discomfort enjoyable more than anything else.
Bucky nodded at the thought. You were indeed very reserved already. Then add a few days, if not weeks, in a cement box with almost constant yelling and screaming going on around. It might do a number on your head, which didn’t seem like a foreign idea when it came to you.
He forced the thought away with a big gulp of hot coffee swimming in his mouth, drawing all the attention. All the while Steve stepped out of his pants, and made ready for the shower, and then the very tempting bed. He would only get a few hours of sleep if he was going to turn back his circadian rhythm, but he wanted them sooner rather than later.
“Well,” Bucky said, just as Steve made to pass him in the doorway. “If the alone time doesn’t crack her, we sure will.”
Steve snorted at the remark. They were both planning on grinding you down to the fucking bone, but Bucky’s confidence in the ordeal was amusing to say the least. The man could come up with the most ingenious ideas sometimes.
“Oh, yeah? Got big plans to achieve that?” he asked, and opened the door to the bathroom.
“I have a few ideas,” Bucky said cheerfully with a wink, then turned towards his bedroom to get ready for the day.
“You always do,” Steve agreed, before shutting the door to finally let the hot water wash away the last lingering doubts.
Summery of fic: Reader/Jess Harper has already survived abuse and sexual assault by stepbrother Nate Millers, but the reward was a prison sentence for murder at Litchfield penitentiary…
What happens when you/Jess come face to face with Nate’s old colleagues and friends, Correctional Officers Steve Rogers and James ‘Bucky’ Barnes, who both seem set on making you pay for your mistakes. Will you be able to survive it all over again?
Pairing (kinda): Steve Rogers x Reader, Bucky Barnes x Reader, Nate Millers (OMC) x Reader
Words: 4794
Warnings: DARK AU, dubcon/noncon elements, Dark!Bucky, Dark!Steve, implied sexual acts, sexual acts, mention of murder, mentions of death, mentions of violence, mentions of NC/SA and death
You have been warned.
Chapter 13
-
Blood splattered onto the porcelain, staining the cracked ivory with a blushing red. You rinsed the cut out in the sink in the somewhat quiet bathroom, dabbing it with damp pieces of paper to clean it. It stopped bleeding after a while, but the headache remained. The gash wasn’t too wide, you wouldn’t need stitches at least, so that was a relief. No way were you going to go down to medical for a small cut and a growing bruise, which was undoubtedly going to go through the entire Pride flag in colour before healing.
You met your reflection. Nothing you hadn’t seen before, but still, the haunting look of pain in your eyes was always a tough pill to swallow. You hated seeing yourself like this; hurt, bruised and broken. ‘We haven’t even begun’. His words echoed in your mind, occupying all the space, hollowing you of anything other than fear and pain. There was no room left for anything else, just the comfort of familiar darkness. You knew how to live in this, how to survive in the drowning flood of suffering. You’d thought the death of your stepbrother had saved you from its swallowing depths, but now you were right back in it. Right. Fucking. In. It.
“Looks like someone got what was coming to them.”
Startled back into the present, you looked behind you through the reflection of the mirror and found Grease Hair looking at you from the doorway with a smirk, revealing her snaggly Gargamel teeth. You looked down, not wanting to be bothered, hearing how she snorted at your lack of response.
“What?” she said. “You only talk to COs?”
She came up and put her toilet paper and whatnot by the sink, checking her own reflection. How the mirror didn’t break was a mystery.
“I don’t talk to COs,” you said.
It came out slightly aggressive but you couldn’t care less.
She scoffed. “Yeah, right. Like we all don’t know how you let officer Rogers fuck you for treats. What? You some kind of pornstar or something?”
“What? No.”
“Oh, so you just manage to get one of the most handsome guards to fuck you, and risking his own, just because you’re, what? So fuckable? Please.”
Anger flared up, you couldn’t help it. You were almost vibrating with overrunning emotions, something was bound to surface. You turned to face her.
“Look, I don’t know what kind of twisted stories everyone’s been spreading about me, but I haven’t had sex with, or sucked off, or let any of the guards finger me for shit. I’m not that kind of girl, okay? It’s all bullshit.”
It came out a little meek but the anger persevered through your tone at least. You weren’t used to standing your ground, it never served you any good so you had very little practice in actually biting back.
Grease Hair turned her body towards you, amused by your outburst.
“So what? You’re a dyke?”
“Are those the options? Fuck a guard or an inmate? People can get through life, and prison, without the need to hump the first person they see, you know. It’s called self-restraint, look it up. If you can read.”
You forcefully shut off the faucet, grabbed the remainder of the toilet roll, and turned to leave. She didn’t say anything else, only snorting at your irate state, letting you storm out with what little power you had gained.
God, you hated being seen as a slut, or like the very haunting reminder on your body read; a whore. You weren’t interested in any man, and would never let another man touch you in your life if you could help it. So to be ridiculed and shamed like that just pushed you one step too far.
It had felt good to let off some of the steam that had been building up underneath, but whether it was wise or not was still unclear. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to piss off other inmates when they already had plenty of ‘reason’ so hate you, and you weren’t the only two in the bathroom. But, like they say; in for a penny, in for a pound. It didn’t matter that it hadn’t been you who put that penny in the pot in the first place. Officer Rogers, Steve you’d learned, had gladly thrown that penny in there. Whether you wanted to or not, you were stuck in the game now. And like officer Barnes had so kindly pointed out; the inmates weren’t your biggest problem.
O.o.O.o.O
“Can’t I do it?” Bucky asked Steve with a gleam, as they patrolled the yard in the afternoon.
Bucky had been assigned to watch the yard along with CO Bennet since lunch, before Steve replaced him and joined his friend in the early afternoon, so he hadn’t seen you since the morning. He had zero doubts of your attendance in the cafeteria though, not after his little reminder in the laundry room earlier. He relived the moment in his head over and over.
“That’s not fair, and you know it,” Steve said.
Bucky shouldn’t complain. Steve had yet to see you at all today, the only juicy thing he’d gotten was Bucky telling him every single detail of his own encounter with you. It made Steve feel like he should have been rougher with you last night, and not just given you a nudge. This was his time to get his hands dirty.
“You’ve already had your chance, now it’s my turn,” he said, earning what could only be described as a pout from Bucky.
“What? I thought we were gonna share. Not in a sharing mood, huh, Stevie?”
Bucky nudged his friend with his shoulder as they continued walking the perimeter, managing to get at least a huff of a smile out of the man.
“We are sharing, but you grabbed a hell of a big piece already. I only pushed her, you drew blood. This is my time.”
Bucky laughed loudly. “Someone’s pouting. Alright, how ‘bout this? We both do the search, but you get to rough her up a bit? Come on, Steve. You know we have to hand her over, we’re not gonna see her for a while. And you had all night to mess with her, it’s not my fault you didn’t do more. You can’t shut me out on this.”
Steve contemplated what he said, knowing deep down that Bucky was right. It wasn’t fair of him to try and hog you when it was the last chance to get to you for a while. Bucky was still working for a few days before Steve was coming back to the dayshift, and he had been nice enough to promise not to pay you a visit in the meantime.
“Alright, we’ll see how it plays out,” Steve said after a while with a sigh. “But I cuff her.”
Bucky grinned. Apparently not even having you all to himself during the entire night had quenched Steve’s thirst. He had the chance to mess with you all he wanted, it wasn’t Bucky’s fault that he hadn’t seized the opportunity. But he could give him this win. It was only fair.
“Fair enough,” he said, knowing he might not even get the chance to mess up your bunk, but it was better to live off of hope than nothing at all. “Go easy on her though. Can’t get too rough in front of the entire gen pop.”
Steve gave an irritated sigh. He hated when Bucky spoke to him like he was a child.
“I know, Buck. I’m not gonna bash her head in right then and there. I’m not you,” he added jokingly.
“I’m just saying, you’re built like a brickhouse. I know what you plan on doing, and the takedown alone could fucking shatter her.”
He couldn’t finish the sentence without bursting into laughter. Steve no better, chuckling as he spoke.
“If that’s the case, the future does not look bright for our dear Jessabelle Jane Harper.”
O.o.O.o.O
A few hours were left until dinner, another meal you doubted you would get to enjoy, your stomach growling in agreement. And your commissary hadn’t come in yet so you were left to endure. You spent the time like you always did; sitting on your bed with the hyperawareness of a ninja. Just without the whole ninja-y part. So, more like a scared little puppy ready to tuck tail and run should an altercation come your way.
Luckily, most inmates spent this quite nice day outside or in the common room playing music and having neck to neck scrabble battles, leaving the dorm as quiet as you’d expect it ever could be during the day. You leaned your head back against the wall and closed your eyes, eyelids heavy with exhaustion, your head throbbing like it had been stomped on by a horse. Or a hundred horses, hard to tell. Your ears were still vigilant but no one stepped foot inside your cube, thankfully. It provided some rest, but not nearly enough.
An hour or so passed before the inhabitants of the dorm came back in time for count, followed by officer Barnes and Rogers. Great. You suspected your cube would once again look like an earthquake had gotten to it.
You went to stand outside your cube as always, getting side-eyed by several of the inmates. Some, if not most, smiled when they saw the angry cut and bruise spreading across your forehead. In their mind you had gotten what you deserved, assumingly by some rouge inmate daring to step up in a corner somewhere, none suspecting it to be dealt by the hands of a guard. No, you got cozy with them, they had no reason to hurt you. If only that were true.
“Stand for search,” officer Rogers said, his voice resonating through the room where he stood just by the bubble at the front of the dorm, officer Barnes at his side.
The inmates stood obediently where they should, waiting for the checks to be done so they could head over to the cafeteria for dinner.
“Search time, ladies” officer Barnes said joyfully.
He stepped up to the first cube on the opposite side of you, looking at the inmates there. Only a few even bothered to look like they were even listening to what the officer was saying, having heard it all more than a few times already.
“This is a mandatory bunk inspection. I need to thoroughly search your cubicle for contraband.” He then turned to speak to the rest of the room. “That goes for all of you. I’m not gonna repeat myself for every fucking cube. You know the drill.”
With that said, both COs started trashing and messing up the bunks like it was a demolition site where no rules applied, items and clothing flying all over the place. They spared no mind for the clean-up afterwards. Their mess, sure, just not their problem.
The clanking and banging made your head hurt even worse, making you cringe at every sound. You should have taken an aspirin or something, if you could find one. They sold them at commissary so... that didn’t help. You were, once again, stuck between a rock and a hard place. Might as well take up residency.
CO Rogers stepped out from the cube next to yours, the inmates there going back inside to clean it up. He went over to you, eyeing the cut above your brow with a brow of his own raised in wonder. You figured he already knew who had put it there. The officers didn’t seem to be late to share any news on you. He was most likely just impressed by it.
Officer Rogers didn’t spare you a second look before he started demolishing your bunk. Clothes were torn from the hooks, your locker was emptied with a crash of everything scattering across the floor, your bedding turned upright. You looked away. You already knew the awaiting mess he would undoubtedly cause, you didn’t need to see it done.
“What have we here?” you heard the officer say.
You looked back, finding him standing by the small windowsill where the toilet paper was kept, with a lighter in his hands. What? That wasn’t yours! Did––Did he plant that?
“Wh––That’s not––” you started to defend yourself, but the officer ignored you.
“Hey, Bucky! Come here.”
Your head shot over to the approaching officer (apparently Barnes’ first name was Bucky, despite the J stitched on his shirt), a shiver running down your spine at the sight of his smirk. Shit! Shit, shit, shit.
“What you find?” he asked when he stepped into the cube, walking all over your pillow and kicking things around.
You payed close attention to their conversation.
“A lighter.”
“Oh, shit,” Barnes said. “That’s illegal contraband, isn’t it, Steve?” he said mockingly.
“Sure is,” Rogers said, handing it over to his fellow officer.
You didn’t miss the way they smiled at each other, both knowing that it wasn’t your lighter, and that you hadn’t brought it in there in the first place. They were setting you up again. For what? Another shot? More hate from the inmates?
Officer Rogers looked over at you where you stood shaking like a leaf, eyes wide like a deer caught in headlights when he met your gaze. Oh, how precious.
“Hands behind your back, Harper,” he said, and started walking towards you.
“What? But... But I haven’t––” Oh, how he hoped you would say that.
“Get down on the ground, inmate,” he said sternly, steps eating up the floor as he stalked towards you.
You couldn’t help but take a flinching step back, fearing the anger radiating off of him. Your body was screaming for you to run. But he was faster than you.
Steve took one final step to reach you, and with a bruising grip on your upper arm, shoved you to the floor with more force than necessary. You managed to turn your head just in time to not let the already injured side connect with the floor, but you couldn’t avoid the pain shooting through your body at the harsh impact, for the second time that day.
“Ugh!”
The officer was on you before you could bat an eye, a hard knee burrowing into your back to keep you down as he removed the cuffs from his belt. He was surprisingly agile for his size, easily keeping you pinned beneath him.
“I said, hands behind your fucking back,” he barked, as he grabbed your hands to move them where he wanted, pulling and twisting despite you not struggling.
He made sure to purposely grip your wrists harder than he needed to, making your skin burn like his fingers were needles, as he tightened the cold steel more than enough to secure them.
The other inmates smiled and cheered quietly at the rough takedown, almost rejoicing as pained grunts left you when the officer manhandled you. You didn't acknowledge their joy, knowing their presence wouldn't change a thing in the officer's handling, as predicted.
“Ah! Please, sir! It’s not mine,” you pleaded, being ignored per usual.
Instead, he grabbed your shoulder with yet another bruising grip and hauled you up on your feet, roughly turning you towards the door, a firm hand leading you by the arm.
You spared the other officer, Bucky, a look, finding him ripping pages from the few books you had, raising an expecting eyebrow at you when he noticed you watching, almost daring you to speak up or complain. He smirked at the sight of you being pushed and shoved forward by Steve, enjoying the sweet sounds escaping your lips in pained grunts.
With his free hand, he grabbed the intercom resting on his shoulder and spoke into it.
“This is Rogers, requesting backup for a search in B-dorm. Escorting inmate Harper to seg, confiscated contraband left with Barnes. Copy?”
What? Seg? As in segregated housing? As in solitary? No! No, no, no. This couldn’t be happening. This isn’t happening! You haven’t done anything wrong, the officers knew that. Surely they can’t treat you this way, they can’t just lock you up in solitary confinement as a ruse. Right?
A voice came through the radio, affirming the call and added a ‘good job’ for measure. Yeah, the officer had done an awesome job...
Officer Rogers walked out of the dorm and left his partner with the remaining inmates until backup showed, leading you down the maze of corridors going god-knows-where. His grip was growing unforgiving at this point, fingers digging into your skin and muscles, undoubtedly leaving bruises in their wake.
“Sir, please,” you begged. “Please don’t do this. That’s not my lighter, you know that.” He tugged your arm roughly at the mention. “Ah!”
You whimpered and cried, his grip becoming too much to bear. The cuffs were digging into your skin, cutting off the circulation.
“I’m sure they’ll believe an inmate over an officer,” Steve said scornfully. “Especially one with several shots already, proving her insubordinate attitude.”
You knew why they were doing it, why they were so set on punishing you. Though you didn’t know what Nate had told them, or what details he had twisted to fit his story, you did know they believed it, without a doubt. Maybe if they knew the real truth they’d think differently.
“Please, I haven’t done the things you think I have, you’ve got it all wrong. You don’t know what Nate did to me. You didn’t know him!”
The officer stopped in the middle of the vacant stairs you had begun to descend, pushing you hard up against the wall. He was looming over you, a whole head taller. You tried pulling at your cuffs to raise your hands but they wouldn’t budge. You were left feeling exposed and defenceless with nothing to shield your body from harm should he try to hurt you.
“Tell me again how wrong I am, Harper,” he spat out in an tense voice, making you recoil as much as his strong hold would allow, which wasn’t much.
You tried to find your words, but your tongue felt foreign in your mouth, sticking to the roof of it, catching on teeth. Your jaw trembled as you found your voice, barely more than a whisper, shaky and quivering, but better than silence. You knew it was stupid to push, but you had to try.
“I didn’t mean to kill him, I swear. It was an accident.” Steve sighed, irritated at your lack of judgment. “He hurt me, he tried to–– Ah!”
Not wanting to hear another word come out of your mouth, Steve pushed you down the rest of the remaining steps, watching you tumble and sag at the bottom. It wasn’t a fall long or hard enough to do any real or lasting damage, he wasn’t homicidal after all, he just wanted you to hurt. And with no chance of breaking your fall, he knew you’d be battered and bruised at the end of it.
Your body shuddered with sobs, whimpers and whines echoing through the stairwell as you cried. Your shoulder hurt, your ribs hurt, your hip, everything. And your head had been a soft, fluffy pillow before compared to now.
“Ugh...”
Breathing hurt as you tried to get a knee underneath you and maybe be able to stand, but found that you couldn’t raise it high enough without a sharp pang rushing up through your side. Your ribs had definitely taken a beating.
Steve beheld the sight before him, shamelessly basking in the whimpers and groans flying freely. His jaw ticked, his brows furrowed. God, how he hoped he’d drawn blood. He unhurriedly walked down the rest of the way and stepped over your timid frame, eyeing the snug cuffs keeping your hands tied together. He crouched down before you, resting his elbows on his knees. You slowly lifted your head with a pained whimper to look up at him, blood dripping from both the old cut, and a new one on the opposite cheek.
Steve exhaled slowly through his nose.
“Tell me again how wrong I am.”
Tears streamed down your face as you crumpled under his gaze. You cried shamelessly, breath hissing at the strain. You reckoned at least a few ribs were cracked, if not broken.
How could this happen? How could you be in this mess? How could you be lying face first at the bottom of a staircase, with blood dripping from your face and bruises forming on your skin, again? Nate was dead! This wasn’t supposed to ever happen again, this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. You didn’t deserve any of this. Did you?
Whenever you tried to defend yourself, they hurt you. Whenever you said nothing at all, they hurt you. It seemed no matter what you did, no matter what choices you made, trying to make the right one, they hurt you. If only they knew. If only they would listen.
Steve waited for a response, anything besides the pathetic cries and sobs coming from you, but none came. You just shook, trembled. Probably from both pain and fear. As you should.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” Steve said, and hauled you up.
He slammed you not so carefully against the wall to keep you on your feet, holding you there, your knees threatening to give out at any second should he let you go. You coughed and moaned, trying to find your breath again, but yet another hard slam to your back made it more difficult than finding a drink of water in the Sahara.
"Uh!"
You met the officer’s cold, steely eyes, finding them surprisingly patient. You looked down almost immediately, fearing that might change any second if you didn’t.
Steve followed a trickle of blood slowly making its way from your cheek down your throat, staining the neck of the white undershirt you had on, fading to a soft crimson. He noticed the rapid flutter of your pulse at the side of your neck, beating like it was trying to burst free. He could almost hear your heartbeat drumming in your chest.
“Now,” he said, startling you. “Are we clear on the power dynamic here, or do I have to make myself even clearer?”
“Please...” you begged weakly, sniffling, but you were rewarded with another shove into the wall. “Uh!”
Steve bared his teeth, leaning in close. “Do I?”
“No! No, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ll do whatever you say, sir, just, please...” your voice broke, shattering like glass. “Please, don’t hurt me...”
Sobs shook your body again, tears like rain on your cheeks, hitting the floor as you lowered your head in a silent pray for the man to show mercy. You wanted nothing more than to cover your face and cry in the corner, but you couldn’t. Instead you were trapped against the wall, held there by the same man who had just purposely pushed you down half a flight of stairs, just because he wanted to.
Steve observed your crying, cowering form, wanting so bad to get away, to get somewhere safe. Away from him. His fingers sunk deeper into your arms, drawing more gasps and whines from you.
“But hurting you is half the fun,” he said as his smiled widened. “The other half is watching you whimper, and whine, and beg for me not to. So you see, it makes no sense not to hurt you. If anything, I should hurt you even more.”
He moved back, just a little, enough to make you think he might take a swing at you, or shove you down the upcoming flight of stairs.
“No! Please, no,” you begged.
Steve furrowed his brows in makeshift wonder.
“But I thought you said you’d do anything?”
You didn’t know what to say. Sure, you had said that, but you didn’t want to give in. You didn’t want to hurt anymore. But it was becoming evident that there was no stopping it, no stopping them from causing you pain. Not if they wanted to. And they did.
So you leaned your head back, practically offering your face as a canvas for him to paint with your own blood. You submitted.
He watched you close your eyes for a second, preparing yourself for the whatever might come next. He watched a solemn tear leave your eye and mingle with the trail of blood already running down your face, before slowly reopening your eyes again, only to turn them away.
Steve felt a tinge of sadness mixed with the joy of victory, or dominance perhaps, but he shoved that so far down he doubted he would ever feel it again. He had you cornered, right where he wanted. His to do what he pleases with. And that was enough. Just the triumphant glory of knowing he was the one to beat you into that corner. Now you could wallow in it.
You were shocked when instead of being punched, or kicked, or shoved, you were dragged away by the arm yet again, staggeringly descending the remainder of steps, relying just a little too much on Steve to keep you from falling. But you suspected that if he wanted you to fall, you would, no matter how steady your feet were.
You arrived at the back of the prison, a loading dock of some sort. A van was parked on the other side of one of the many fences, motor already running and inmate Morello sitting in the driver’s seat. There was another guard, officer Bennett, standing by the side door awaiting you. Steve walked you over with bigger steps than he knew you could comfortably follow.
Steve nodded his head at the other guard.
“Bennett,” he said and halted, keeping you close to his side.
CO Bennett opened the van door, allowing Rogers to all but lift you up by your arm and shoving you in. You just managed to catch yourself from falling embarrassingly on your side. Morello gave you a worried look when you noticed her, but you looked away. You’d had enough of people being on your case for one day. Thankfully, she didn’t say anything. She just upped the volume on whatever station she was listening to, ignoring the tension.
“What happened?” Bennett asked, and motioned to his own face while nodding his head to the side at you.
“Oh,” Steve said and flailed his hands like he couldn’t believe your clumsiness. “She took a nasty fall down the stairs. Don’t worry, though. She won’t need a medic. She can just... wash off when she gets to the SHU.”
You blinked away tears. Not only at the reminder of where you were going, whatever kind of hellhole it might be, but at the clear disregard of your wellbeing. Your ribs hurt enough to tell-tale of at least cracks and bruising, your cheek was still seeping some blood, and your head hurt enough it made your ears ring. But no, sure, you didn’t need medical. Though, even if the offer was to be on the table, you doubted you would accept it. Sometimes trying to heal injuries just resulted in more and worse injuries. No one liked a snitch, right?
"Sure she's not concussed?" Bennett asked, looking worringly at the wound on your forehead.
"She's fine, it's just a small scrape," Steve said, smiling tensly.
“If you say so,” Bennett said, dragging the door to a close.
You looked at officer Rogers through the barred window, catching a glimpse of his smile, distorted through the glass. You swallowed down a clot of bloody saliva.
CO Bennet got in the van, closing his door without another word to his fellow officer, or another look back at you where you sat, still cuffed and no seatbelt on. Not like it mattered. A car crash sounded almost inviting at this point. You just hoped Morello would gain enough momentum to have you crash through the windshield and splatter like a bug on the pavement.
The van drove off and through the labyrinth of roads leading down the hill. You had no idea what awaited you. Would it be dark? Light? Cold and damp? Would you still be able to hear people talk, exist, even if there was a hundred feet of concrete separating you? Cuts and bruises weren’t the worst thing imaginable. Pain, physical pain, you could handle. But the mental, emotional pain was unbearable when left to its own device. And you were about to be locked in a box, with no way of escaping yourself.
Summery of fic: Reader/Jess Harper has already survived abuse and sexual assault by stepbrother Nate Millers, but the reward was a prison sentence for murder at Litchfield penitentiary…
What happens when you/Jess come face to face with Nate’s old colleagues and friends, Correctional Officers Steve Rogers and James ‘Bucky’ Barnes, who both seem set on making you pay for your mistakes. Will you be able to survive it all over again?
Pairing (kinda): Steve Rogers x Reader, Bucky Barnes x Reader, Nate Millers (OMC) x Reader
Words: 3405
Warnings: DARK AU, dubcon/noncon elements, Dark!Bucky, Dark!Steve, implied sexual acts, sexual acts, mention of murder, mentions of death, mentions of violence, mentions of NC/SA and death, mentions of blood
You have been warned.
THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM
Chapter 18
-
The officers had gone AWOL. You’d kept an eye out for them all day and you hadn’t seen either of them, and it was closing in on lights out. They had been in the bubble, looking pissed when seeing you, and now they were gone. This couldn’t be good. This really couldn’t be good. You were slightly eased by their absence because, well, they were absent, but it felt like the calm before the storm for some reason. You tried to shake the feeling, and focus on the threats that were present instead, but in the back of your mind, things were growing crazy with questions.
Everyone around was making ready for bed, but you hadn’t moved from your perked position on the bed, unless you had to. You kept a keen eye out for any hunters trying to get to the rabbit, but none had come. There were still looks being shot your way, but the shooting ended at that. You hadn’t even tried for dinner when the time came, pretty sure you weren’t going to get any. Hope was still burning that the involuntary hunger strike would end soon, but you weren’t about to press your luck on the first day back in gen pop.
Gina came walking in from a neighbouring cube, looking uncaring when spotting you.
“You’re back?” she asked, probably out of courtesy more than anything else, and started digging out her toiletries from her locker.
“Yeah,” you said. Kinda obvious, wasn’t it?
“That was short,” she said into her locker, her voice bouncing off the metallic walls.
“Yeah, guess I got lucky.”
She stood up with her things in hand and grabbed her towel hanging from one of the hooks.
“So I’ve heard,” she added, and walked out with a pep in her step, scurrying like only she could.
Wrong thing to say, Jess. Fricking foot-in-mouth disease. You really should choose your words more carefully. You’d only just gotten back from the sunny vacation from down the hill, one piss-smelling traumatic experience richer, and already you’re adding fuel to the fire. Though, you suspected a lot of the inmates had been adding both fuel and gasoline and possibly a whole damn forest of logs to that fire in your absence. It must be burning like a witch’s stake by now. Now all they needed was the witch.
But CO Rogers was back on the dayshift so... there’s that! Now you just had your fellow roommates to worry about stabbing you should you try and sleep. Your body felt heavy with stress, but the exhaustion was eased from getting several good nights, even days, down in the SHU. At least something good had come out of it. You hoped that the treatment officer Rogers had given you when cuffing you after he searched your cube had done something to ease back the rumours of any favours being done in either direction. But people usually only saw what they wanted to see.
Another count, then the lights were dimmed to the lowest setting, covering the whole dorm in a comfortable gloaming light for the night. Everyone quieted down. Silence lay steadily against the cold concrete, only soft snores and mumbles being heard from a corner here and there.
CO Bennett was on duty tonight, checking the dorms and counting sleeping heads. Whenever he passed you, he gave you a concerned look, a corner of his mouth twitching up to show his sympathy for the lack of sleep. He had seen the state of you when Peeve had brought you to the van after the tumble you’d taken down the stairs, even verbally uttering his concern to the fellow officer, who of course shut it down dismissively. By the look he gave you, he seemed to assume those injuries had been dealt by the hands of your fellow inmates, and also assumed it was the most likely reason for your still awake state.
The officer stopped not far from the doorway to your cube, looking around to see if any of the other inmates were listening before he whispered to you.
“Trouble sleeping?” His tone was kept light and inviting, not a string of intimidation in it.
The sound was still loud in the quiet room, quickening your heart rate just enough to feel it thumping in your chest. You looked over at the officer, noticing his insecure smile and bouncing gaze, not sure whether to look straight at you or around. But he made no move towards you, nor did he seem to be angered or upset.
“Yes, sir,” you said in a hushed tone, looking down at the floor by your bed rather than keeping his gaze. It was never a good idea to tempt fate like that.
Bennett nodded to himself, fiddling with his belt to occupy the silence that fell between you.
“Well,” he said lowly. “Hope you get some rest soon.”
The officer walked on with the steady clicking of his counter, before disappearing out into the hallway to check the other dorms. And on like that it went, like a merry-go-round; he came in, counted, looked at you with the tug of an apologetic smile, and walked out. He didn’t speak to you again, and you had never moved an inch from where you were sat when he came around the next time. It was like an endless loop of uncertain tension where neither of you knew what to make of the other, so instead just opted for uncomfortable silence. It was going to be a long night.
And it was a long night. Every hour passed by so slowly it was a miracle the clocks didn’t stop altogether. But when morning came and CO Bennett was replaced by CO Donaldson, another thorough, but more closed-off officer, time started ticking by. Inmates started stirring in their bunks, some hurrying off to the bathroom before it was occupied by everyone else.
You had already been, just after 5 am when inmates were allowed to leave their dorms. You had even dared a shower, surprise, surprise. Even though you had made quick work of it, you had made sure to wash your private parts extremely thoroughly, the ghosting trace of CO Peeve’s fingers still haunting your flesh. You wanted to be rid of every memory of his touches. Usually you let at least a day pass between showering, not wanting to see or feel the state of your body, but after an invasion like that, you’d rather live under a steady stream of boiling water and soap than pass up an opportunity to get clean.
Before the food line got too long, you thought you’d try your luck for something to eat. You kept a close eye out for both officer Peeve and Fucky, but they were still AWOL. Did they have the day off perhaps? The hairs at the back of your neck stood at attention, foreboding something else besides a ‘yes’ to that question. But you forced yourself to focus on the now, and the problems at hand. Like eating for example. Cross that bridge when you get to it.
When you got to the cafeteria Gina was there. She was standing behind the glass, serving, still not noticing you. Most of Red’s family were there, some worked in the kitchen along with her, but the others were sat at a table talking. Even Nicky had made an early appearance. You felt a pinch of sadness in your chest at the sight of her, laughing and joking with her friends. Her family. And you weren’t there. You wanted to, you really did, but you also didn’t want to get her, or anyone else, in trouble should the officers find out. That was a risk you were not willing to take. Collateral damage Nate had called it. Collateral damage to get what you want. Not if you could help it.
You walked up to the counter, a few inmates ahead of you and behind you, all waiting patiently for their turn. Gina raised her gaze, only to find you standing in front of her, with an apologetic and hopeful look painted across your face. She looked back down, scooping some extra eggs onto the tray, and held it out for you to take. She still didn’t look at you, just waiting for you to take it and walk away. You gratefully took it, smiling dearly at her when you did, despite the slight twitch of pain to the cut on your cheek.
“Thank you,” you said to her, but made sure Red heard you as well from where she stood overlooking the exchange.
She didn’t look mad, or upset in anyway, but she also didn’t look all buddy-buddy. She was a tough woman to read, but you remembered Nicky saying you weren’t on bad terms with anyone in the family. You just hoped it had stayed that way even after those pesky rumours started going around.
You ate your breakfast in peace and quiet at your own table. No one sat down with you, which you were kind of grateful for anyway. It didn’t ease the awareness of everyone’s whereabouts, or the feeling of having everyone’s eyes on you (with not so kind looks), but it did give you the space you needed. If someone got too close, goose bumps rose like an armour on your skin. You were on constant alert, which was tiresome as hell. And you severally doubted that the day would bring anything else but more hyperawareness and aching muscles, and a very sore butt from sitting like a perched hawk on that thin matrass. You could only hope the clocks kept on ticking.
O.o.O.o.O
The tv was loud in their shared living room, a rerun of the past Friday’s football game on. Bucky sat reclined on the couch with nothing but a pair of sweatpants on, the hem darkened by the few droplets of water remaining after his shower, and resting a bare foot up against the coffee table before him. In his hand he held a cold light beer, trying to calm his nerves. Usually he never drank before work, light beer or no light beer, but today he really needed it.
Steve came walking in to the living room from the bathroom down the hall, freshly showered and with a towel around his waist, glistening droplets of water traveling down his toned chest and abdomen. Both had been to the gym earlier in the day, like always, despite neither having gotten that much sleep, but they really needed to keep busy. Unruly nerves tingled in them both, and nothing kept their minds as busy as a good session in the gym.
Steve walked up to one of the armchairs beside the table, effectively knocking Bucky’s leg down on purpose when he walked straight through. Bucky gave him an annoyed look, and put his foot back up on the table with a bit more force than needed.
“I’m sitting here!”
“So I see,” Steve said and sat down with a loud sigh, taking a swig from his own bottle that Bucky had so kindly placed on the table for him, which he was kind of starting to regret.
Bucky rolled his eyes and tangled a hand into his still drying hair, letting it get stuck in the strands comfortably. He watched the screen, but paid no attention to the game being played, his mind elsewhere, lost deep in thought. Pleasant, happy thoughts.
Steve wasn’t any better. Despite the few hours of actual sleep, harsh workout and almost half-hour long shower, he still couldn’t get his mind to focus on anything other than his favourite inmate and impending night. His mind was reeling with emotion and thought, scenarios and fantasies blending together in a mishmash of reality.
They had talked it over so many times that it was slowly waring them both down if they didn’t get to it soon. Fantasies were no longer enough for either of them. Their patience was wearing thin, the wants and must-haves becoming almost too much to bear. Butterflies raced like fighter jets in their bellies, adrenaline was ready to be expelled into their bloodstream. They were nervous, excited. And, oh, so ready.
“Did you jerk off?” Bucky asked out of the blue.
“Bucky!”
Steve wiped his mouth clean of the beer that had barely made it into his mouth, looking horrified and embarrassed by the question. Bucky was never one to shy away, he’d give him that. Always straight to the point.
Bucky snickered into his bottle, and took a sip.
“What? It’s a fair question,” he defended, noticing the rising blush of Steve’s cheeks. “So, did ya?”
Steve gave him a look that would make anyone back the hell up if it was fired their way, but then it morphed into an even worse blush than the one prior, and he hid his face behind the bottle.
“That’s a yes,” Bucky said triumphantly and chuckled.
“You’re an asshole, you know that, right?”
Bucky just nodded with a wide grin on his face.
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “There’s no shame in it, Stevie. We all do it.”
Steve looked up at his friend, searching his face.
“You did it, too,” he stated, not surprised when Bucky gave a short nod in affirmative.
“Sure did. Had to let off some steam. It was either that, or go another round on the punching bag, and I’m not sure my knuckles could take it.”
He looked down at his hands, noting the still red skin covering the area around his knuckles where he had hit the bag, no wrap to protect his hands. Which Steve had been quick to comment on, even in the gym.
“That’s cause you don’t wrap your hands,” he said, yet again. “If you wrap your hands, you protect your hands. It’s simple.”
“Yeah, but there wasn’t time for that,” Bucky said nonchalantly. “I saw the bag, and I just had to hit it. You know how it is when you get an idea into your head, and that idea has a face, and you would much rather punch that face, but that face is still behind bars at work where you are not, but the bag is right in front of you, and then there’s no time to wrap your hands.”
Steve just smiled and nodded during Bucky’s whole rambling session, which ended with a loud grunting sigh when he leaned his head back.
“Fuuuuck,” Bucky groaned and pinched his eyes. “What time is it, anyway?”
Time was moving so slow, too slow, for either men’s liking. They wanted to get to work, and the lack of sleep kept them both slightly agitated when time seemed to fuck with them on purpose. What made it all even worse was the fact that they had the late nightshift, which continued on into the morning, and didn’t start until six.
“It’s 4,30,” Steve said when looking at the small clock sitting on the bookshelf beside his chair. “Or, 4,33 to be exact.”
An hour to go before they could leave for work without being suspiciously eager. Hell, they worked at a prison, no one was eager to voluntarily lock themselves behind bars. And even when they got to work it would be hours before anything good were to happen, so in reality, they were more comfortable right where they were. At home. Where time didn’t go by.
“Okay, okay, okay,” Bucky said and leaned forward on his knees, his abs contracting at the slow movement, the burn of his muscles still prominent after the workout. “How ‘bout a pitstop at Wendy’s on the way? Then we get to leave here, feel like we’re doin' somethin' and maybe get time to move its fucking ass, and we get to enjoy some delicious food.”
Bucky felt like a kid where he sat all tense and excited. Or like he was back in Iraq. Like he was back in the war, ready to face the enemy head on and blow shit up. Yeah, that’s what he felt like. He looked over at Steve, who too looked like he used to when back in the desert lands. He was on high alert, eager and ready but still controlled. It was a thrilling feeling, and they didn’t even need to risk their own lives in the process.
“Sounds like a plan,” Steve said, and chugged back the last of his beer, as did Bucky.
Both got dressed in an eager haste, with fingers fumbling with belt buckles and buttons as they tried not to rush. It was hard though. Both knew what awaited them tonight, what new things they would get to experience, to dish out. They had mixed emotions about the whole ordeal, like a horror filled excitement pumping through their veins. Like when you take your driver’s test; one part is rambling on about everything that could go wrong, weighing the risk with the reward, while the other is too keen on the freedom and excitement to come that it’s blocks out any negativity and heighten the nerves, blending with the anxiety. Like war. Something they were both very familiar with.
Bucky stood by the door, flipping the car keys round and round in his hand as he patiently waited for Steve to get ready. His uniform was freshly washed, his shoes had undergone a scrub down and his black leather jacket was brand new. Overall, it was a good day. And it was about to be a very good night.
Steve came through the doorway from the living room, fixing the cuffs on his uniform before grabbing his favourite brown leather jacket from one of the hooks.
“You ready?” Bucky asked with assertion, and stopped jingling the keys.
Steve drew a deep breath, only to let it out with a loud huff. He fixed the collar of his jacket, setting it in place and collected himself like the assertive correctional officer that he was. Like they both were.
“Yes,” he said with a nod. “Let’s go.”
For once, Bucky drove. It was his idea to go to Wendy’s, and a damn good idea it was, so he drove. He drove to keep his hands busy, he drove to keep his attention on something besides you, and he drove slower than usual to get time to pass. It all worked. They were kept busy, time passed and they got to enjoy some good food.
Barbara at the diner, a middle-aged, brown-haired woman with freckles on her nose and crow’s-feet around her eyes, and who had taken quite the liking to the two handsome officers, treated them both to some of her freshly baked lemon meringue pie, free of charge. The young men were always so polite whenever they came in for a meal, or just for a coffee, and their bright smiles and handsome, rugged looks didn’t hurt the eye. They deserved some pie.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Bucky said when he rose from his seat and picked up a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet and put it on the counter. “But we really have to get going now.”
Barbara held up a hand and shushed him.
“You don’t need to do that, young man,” she said in her southern drawl and slid the money back towards him on the counter. “It’s on the house.”
Steve gave a soft chuckle as he too got up from his seat at the bar counter.
“Really, Barbara,” he said and gave her one of his kind smiles, the kind that would make a woman go weak at the knees. “We do. You are too kind, and if you keep this up, you’re gonna have to roll us both out of here.”
“Oh,” she said through a laugh, as a blush worked its way up her cheeks. “I don’t see that happening anytime soon, officer. Now you just take your coffee to go, and I’ll see ya both some other time. Don’t mind about the check. I got you covered, sugar.”
Both Bucky and Steve felt some heat rise at the kindness shown and said, politely bidding their goodbyes. And when Barbara turned her back for just a short second, Bucky made sure to slide the money back to her across the counter, before they both walked out and headed towards new, unfamiliar territory. These nightshifts just keep getting better and better.
Summery of fic: Reader/Jess Harper has already survived abuse and sexual assault by stepbrother Nate Millers, but the reward was a prison sentence for murder at Litchfield penitentiary…
What happens when you/Jess come face to face with Nate’s old colleagues and friends, Correctional Officers Steve Rogers and James ‘Bucky’ Barnes, who both seem set on making you pay for your mistakes. Will you be able to survive it all over again?
Pairing (kinda): Steve Rogers x Reader, Bucky Barnes x Reader, Nate Millers (OMC) x Reader
Words: 4572
Warnings: DARK AU, dubcon/noncon elements, Dark!Bucky, Dark!Steve, implied sexual acts, sexual acts, mention of murder, mentions of death, mentions of violence, mentions of NC/SA and death
You have been warned.
Chapter 12
-
The panic hadn’t left your body, not really, but your tears had dried and your body was drained, so nothing else would come out. Once you could physically control your body again, and actually move your limbs, you had made your way back to the dorm and to your awaiting bed beckoning another sleepless night. Inmates had glared at you, shoulder-checked you once or twice in passing with a scoff to follow, but other than that you had been left alone. Your shoulder was starting to bruise though, but that was nothing new. You could handle pain, you could mask it and make it seem like it had never infested your body in the first place. You were good at that. You’d done it before.
As you sat in your bunk, you couldn’t help but feel everyone’s eyes on you whenever they passed the doorway. You were too afraid to even lie back and get that much needed rest that you so desperately craved. Everyone seemed to be gunning for you. Threats of shivs, smothering, beatings or other torments seemed as real as ever. You no longer had the luxury (yes, luxury) of just having the officers to look out for. Now it was every single inmate in the prison as far as you knew. Gina still hadn’t shown, but you doubted she would be kind minded towards you. She certainly didn’t seem it in the cafeteria.
You had seen several prison shows and documentaries on tv, and knew more than you wanted about what could happen to a snitch, despite not even being one. The way these inmates could treat you was rough. And they could be surprisingly resourceful.
How could you prove your innocence to them? How do you prove that something didn’t happen? It was hard enough when people saw only what they wanted to see, but even more so when it was all setup by the guards, set in place to keep you safe and protected. They wanted you to suffer, they wanted you to be scared. Well, they got what they wanted, because you were terrified.
“Count time!” was yelled from the door to the dorm, the voice familiar.
You drew a big, deep breath to prepare yourself. Officer Rogers.
You did what you knew to do; stood by the wall to your cube and waited to be counted. Your eyes were down the entire time. You didn’t look at anyone, guard or inmate. Though you were painfully aware of every little movement close to you.
Steve spotted your hunched form standing obediently by the wall. You looked tired, drained. He couldn’t help but smile to himself, just a little, before going about his duty of counting heads. When he closed in on you, he made sure to walk just a little slower, just a little closer.
The officer almost came to a stop before you. You suspected that he was looking down at you with some sort of twisted expression on his face, but you couldn’t bring yourself to confirm it. Instead, you turned your head to the side, hoping he would just pass. He did, eventually, but his steps seemed awfully slow.
You felt several sets of eyes on you, staring at you, considering the officer seemed pretty interested in you when making the count. You just hoped no one would say anything, but of course not.
“Maybe you should pat her down.”
You didn’t see who said it, but it sounded like and came from Tricia’s direction. The other inmates snickered at the comment, and Tricia herself raised a brow at you, smirking as she did. You just closed your eyes, willing that growing lump in your throat not to choke you, and waited to see what happened.
Officer Rogers stopped in his tracks, looking over at Tricia standing just a few feet from him. So it was her that said it.
“Need help shutting that mouth?” he threatened.
She immediately averted her eyes.
“No, sir,” she said, looking at the floor and scuffing her foot.
The officer walked on, ignoring her remark any further.
The officers checked their numbers at the door, and this time Rogers looked back over to you before leaving with a smile. His attention was very much unwanted, and he knew it. But he enjoyed your pain too much not to gloat.
You hurried back to your bunk, sitting on top of the blanket with your legs criss-crossed. Everyone else were getting ready for bed, but you had no desire to share the very secluded bathroom with other inmates at this point in time. Nor where you planning on getting any sleep so you could simply wait and go do your business when everyone else were gone. You were allowed in the bathroom until midnight, so you had a few hours.
Steve took his place in the CO bubble in the B-dorm, overlooking the room through the windows. He wished that you didn’t reside on the side with the high divider, but hey, can’t have everything here in life. Instead he patiently waited for the time when you would eventually take your turn to go to the bathroom, and unquestionably noticing him sitting there in the bubble, watching you. It made the hours spent just sitting there in solitude a lot more bearable.
Nightshifts weren’t all that fun to begin with. There were only a few COs present, and only a few inmates awake, most of which were stuck with janitorial duty and spent their time cleaning the hallways and whatnot. It was real grunt work, and the D.O.C used it as a punishment for bad behaviour. Few inmates actually liked the cleaning crew, so most knew to keep in check, lest be stuck with mopping the corridors up and down all night.
Steve was in charge of the dorms and the connecting hallways during the night, which was the most stimulating of the options. CO Donaldson minded the intake and entryway, and CO Bell walked the perimeter and surrounding buildings. The areas were restricted during the night to help the COs keep an eye on the working inmates, so all Steve had to do was go about his normal rounds when the time came. Right now, it was a waiting game.
The dorm quieted down. You couldn’t see anyone moving so you figured they had all gone to bed. Gina had come in late, not even sparing you a look when she did. She’d simply gone about her business and gone to bed, her back turned defiantly towards you.
You stood up from the bed and tiptoed your way to your locker, careful not to make too much noise and aggravate someone. You grabbed your toiletries and toilet paper and headed for the door. And there he was, just a layer of glass between you. He sat leaning back comfortably in his chair, gently biting his lip, with his eyes narrowed like he was stalking pray. Which, in some way, he was.
You stopped in your tracks, like mesmerized by the Adonis of a man looking at you like you were a meal to be consumed. The corner of his mouth twitched upwards. He was waiting for you. You didn’t know what to do, it was like your body had lost all its bones and its ability to move. But slowly your feet started to shuffle past, only his eyes following you as you did.
It was worth it. That startled look on your face was worth every second of it. Steve chuckled lowly to himself where he sat, his chest vibrating against the back of his worn chair. He could see the wetness of your eyes forming, almost mirroring his own gleam, but without the clear joy that he felt. He just wanted to twist that knife as much as he could, no pun intended. Well, maybe a little intended.
Your footsteps echoed in the hallway like a haunting shadow following you. You turned around several times, expecting to see the officer following you, but he never came. There was the slightest risk that he would be checking the bathroom whilst you were in it, seeing no female COs were around and that was allowed, so you went about your business at lightning speed. He never showed.
Sadly, the same couldn’t be said on the way back. You turned a corner and there he was. He was standing by the door to your dorm, feet planted shoulder width apart and strong hands resting just a little too close to the weapons secured on his belt. He spotted you and smiled. You only gulped in response. Your feet were carrying you closer by the second, no matter how much you wanted to fight it. Damn you, feet! Why must you work right now?
Steve gave you a smile of all teeth when you drew near. You tried to keep your eyes down, but you feared missing an incoming swing should you avert your eyes too much. It was hard to find a comfortable medium between ‘not staring’ and ‘closing your eyes for dear life and hope for the best’.
“Last one in?” Steve asked, causing you to flinch when he spoke out of nowhere.
You heard him snort at your reaction. You hated how easily he made you jump.
“Y-yes, sir,” you said, figuring he was talking about the bathroom.
If the officers hadn’t set you up with all the other inmates, you’d almost have him pegged as just being in a chatty mood. But this man never had any cordial intentions, that you had learned by now.
Steve watched you intently, still smiling down at your dodging figure where you stood all but rooted to the spot before him, eyes darting towards the door in a silent request. He hadn’t said anything else, but your obedience never faltered it would seem. One remark, one demand and you were jumping like you were asked to, like a good little show horse.
“C-can I––” you started, but the question was left hanging in the air as he abruptly interrupted you.
“No,” he said firmly, making you recoil another inch or so before scolding yourself for the slip.
So you stood there. Waiting. Waiting for the officer to look away from you, to get that stupid smile off his face and just let you pass. But he didn’t. He just stood there, comfortably, beside you.
He kind of wanted to see how this would play out, how long you would stay standing there in silence before daring to ask again. He watched you squirm under his gaze, your eyes becoming wetter and glazing over whilst his own smile just spread wider and wider.
“Go on,” he said lightly, nodding his head towards the door.
You looked up at him, as if to reassure yourself that he had in fact granted you permission to leave, before a shaky hand reached for the doorknob. Every movement was slow and sluggish, as you willed your body to do what it was told; to get the fuck out of there while you had the chance.
As you went to step through, officer Rogers followed on your tail, staying close enough that you could feel the heat radiating off of him. You drew a shaky breath to steady yourself, but your feet were still moving slow, too slow. The officer took a big, rapid step into your space, his chest ramming into your back and almost sending you flying with the force of it.
“Ugh!”
You caught yourself before you fell, tightly hugging the toiletries to your body to keep them from falling as well.
You heard him snicker behind your back, laughing at your fumbling.
“Move along, inmate,” he said and passed you to go back to the bubble, making sure his arm hit your shoulder painfully hard as he did.
You hissed at the harsh contact, and his time the items slipped from your hands and fell to the ground with a clatter. You knelt down quickly, as if trying to hush everything and not waking any of the sleeping inmates.
“Shut the fuck up!” someone yelled.
“Quiet!” someone else spat out.
You looked up at the mountain of a man standing in front of you with his hands on his hips, and a ghosting smile on his lips. You blinked away tears threatening to fall from the bubbling anxiety in your chest, quickly picking up your things again and holding them safely to your chest in disorder and stood back up. The officer just watched you in silence, but his eyes spoke loudly of entertainment. He enjoyed watching you squirm under his gaze and presence, it was thrilling.
“Back in your bunk, inmate,” he said strictly. “Inmates aren’t allowed out of their bunks between midnight and 5 am. That’s a shot, Harper.”
What? But you weren’t–– Oh shoot. You looked up at the clock above the bubble and saw that it was now two minutes past midnight, and that you were, in fact, not allowed out of your bunk at this hour.
You swallowed the words of argument down, he knew damn good and well that he had intentionally made you late, and looked apologetically at the officer, as expected.
“Yes, sir.”
This time he let you pass without any fuss. You went back to your bed, and he went back inside the bubble to keep watch before he once again had to go about his checks.
You tucked your things away in your locker again, and changed into the sweats you’d been given to get some relief from the stale khakis. You kept an ear out for any signs or tells of the officer coming back for a check, as you quickly changed and sat on the bed to await his next visit. Every time he came through, he just looked at you adoringly with a smile on his face, but nothing more. He just counted heads, made sure no one was out of their bed or out of bounds, and repeated. Never once did he say a word to you, never once did he linger like you’d thought. And never once did you relax.
The morning seemed to move in rapid speed within a slow-motion sequence. Whenever you thought you were ahead of time you were in fact slacking. And whenever you thought you were slacking, you were early. Everything passed in a haze of some kind. The sleepy kind, you gathered from your, you guessed it, lack of sleep. Being sleep deprived was its own kind of hell.
Officer Rogers had left sometime before breakfast, being replaced by CO Maxwell who went about the checks just before the sun rose. Sadly, it didn’t leave you enough time to get any sleep before the radio started playing its slow tunes, and the other inmates began to stir. Instead you had gotten up, gotten cleaned up as best as the sink would allow and gone about your business before all the stalls were taken, which was a small window. You changed back into the not so inviting khakis, putting layer on layer before removing the first ones, and headed for the cafeteria, hoping to be early and maybe be given a tray of food this time. But alas, no such luck found you today. What found you was burning eyes and resting bitchfaces, telling you to ‘fuck off’.
Officer Barnes wasn’t guarding the cafeteria, so you skipped the sitting down and being humiliated part as well, opting for an early start in electrical instead.
Luscheck wasn’t there yet, nor had you thought that he would be. Still, you grabbed your book and your lamp and began what work could be done without the tools locked away. Not much you would learn. But hey, it was better than being stared at in the cafeteria, risking food being thrown at you, or someone tripping you up. At least here you were alone. Alone with your thoughts that desperately scratched away at the inside of your mind, begging for attention. You knew better than to open that door. Not today, panic. Not today.
The door opened, and Luscheck was the first in, followed by a few inmates, none of which gave you the time of day, but just sat down at their assigned seats and waited for the day to start. Luscheck raised his brows when he saw you.
“You’re early,” he stated.
Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. But you opted for something more polite.
“I was up,” you said instead..
“Okay,” he said drawn out, and walked up to you. “Since you’re so eager to work, you can go down to the laundry, there’s a machine broken. Martha, Maddy, or whatever, I can’t keep track of all the weird-ass names. Here’s the workorder, take it with you.”
He handed you a piece of paper, then grabbed a utility belt from a hook on the wall and pushed it at you.
“W-what do I have to do?” you asked and took the belt with hesitant hands.
Electrical work wasn’t your forte you had learned early on. He was basically asking you to climb Everest in flip-flops.
Luscheck sighed. “Make it not broken.”
You went down to the laundry, with the oversized belt hanging from your waist and the form in hand, silence greeting you when you got there. The inmates already there did not acknowledge your presence, and they had yet to start up any of the machines so it was dead like the grave. One inmate looked up at you, you recognized her as the girl who was standing behind Tricia when she got all up in your face. You’d named her Grease Hair in your head. She gave you a dirty look and walked out, the other two following suit, making sure to bump into you when passing. Hard. Apparently, they didn’t even want to be in the same room as you. You rubbed your shoulder to ease the pain. Well, no one was getting their laundry today, that much was certain. Because there was no way you would actually be able to fix a washing machine, and if they refused to work with you there? Well, tough luck to anyone needing a change of pants today.
You found the broken appliance, the control panel was hanging off of it so it was a no-brainer. You opened the instruction manual that was laying on top of it (handy), finding the right page after a few flicks. It made zero sense. It might as well have been Chinese for all you cared, there was nothing sane about any of the instructions. And you couldn’t figure out if the machine was correctly earthed or not to save your life, which was the first thing on the checklist.
You decided to start checking wires instead, carefully, finding one not attached. Could that be it? You placed it where it looked like it belonged, and that did... nothing. Okay, problem not fixed.
You were too caught up in your own head to hear anyone come into the room. You didn’t see or hear him, but you felt him, when you went to take a step back and finding that you couldn’t. With a startled gasp, you turned around, coming face to face with officer Barnes, standing way too close for comfort. You gripped the opening of the washer behind you to keep yourself steady, almost tripping when you turned.
“Morning, Harper,” he said cheerily, smiling at you, arms crossed over his chest.
You swallowed the lump that seemed to have taken up residency in your throat, trying to calm your stuttering heart.
“G-good morning, sir,” you said, but it came out more like a question than anything else.
“Can I see your work form?”
“Oh,” escaped you before you could stop it, swiftly shutting your mouth with a click to keep anything else from blurting out.
You reached for the piece of paper laying on the table closest where you had discarded it so you wouldn’t lose it, and handed it to the officer. His eyes skimmed over it, seemingly reading absolutely every word written on there, and not just the parts written in pen. The silence was growing heavy, and you fidgety.
He put it back on the table, then crossing his arms again with a sigh.
“Do you know how to fix the machine?” he asked, sounding more annoyed now than cheery. You liked it better when he was cheery.
“Uhm... no,” you said, bowing your head down with a frown. “Not really.”
“Then why did Luscheck send you?”
You cringed at the harshness of his tone, wanting to move away but couldn’t because the stupid door of the machine was open and blocking your path.
“I-I don’t know, I was the first one in so––”
“Yeah, well, maybe he should have sent someone who was actually competent.”
You kept your head down, not meeting his gaze. You knew you couldn’t fix the dumb machine, but what did he expect? Was everyone an expert at their jobs around here? Like you were the only one not knowing how to do something.
The officer looked around the empty room, sighing.
“Where is everyone?” he asked.
“They left,” you said, voice low.
“Why? Did you tell them to leave?”
He sounded almost angry with you, something you hated hearing. Nothing good ever came of a man being angry with you.
“No, sir,” you said, voice still hushed. “T-they left when I came in. They didn’t w-want to be around me, I guess.”
Bucky couldn’t hold back the smile that was fighting to spread, smiling as he looked down at you, cowering, afraid. Weak.
“Yeah, I bet,” he said laughingly.
You cringed at his tone again, not wanting to be reminded of the fact that it had been the officers to set everything in motion in the first place. The officer smiled, looking at you like he was searching for details he might have missed, almost like he was examining your face.
“I didn’t see you in the cafeteria this morning.”
Oh, shit. Had he been there after all? Had he just come in late? Oh, no, not good.
“N-no, I-I... I went there, b-but...” You inhaled to calm yourself before speaking low. “They’re not letting me eat.”
You kept your eyes down, fingers fiddling with the hem of your shirt, hearing him snort at you.
“Really?” His voice was laced with amusement, before it turned serious again. “Well, still no reason to disobey a direct order, now, is it?” He bent his head down closer to you, invading your space. “Did I not tell you to come to the cafeteria no matter what?”
He waited as you searched for your words, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.
You didn’t get the chance to finish arguing your case, interrupted as a searing pain shot through your head. The officer had grabbed a hold of your hair and slammed you face first against the opening of the washer with a loud thud.
You fell to your knees hard, hands instantly coming up to cradle your hurting head, and coming back stained with blood. You felt a cut right above your eyebrow where the sharp edge had pierced it in an almost perfect vertical line. You hissed and groaned where you sat hunched over, disoriented from the impact.
Bucky breathed heavily, drawing mouthfuls of air just to calm himself down again. Boy, had it felt good to finally hurt you. To see you on your knees, whimpering in pain. The adrenaline was rushing through him, heartbeat thrumming loudly in his ears. He grabbed you by the collar of the shirt to pull you up on your feet again, and slammed you up against the side of the machine. Blood trickled down from your brow to your cheek, your eye twitching in pain.
Whimpers and whines left you uncontrollably as you were manhandled, quickly grabbing a hold of his arms and hands to try and pry him off, but he wouldn’t budge. It was like trying to move steel bars holding you in place. You stopped your efforts, submitting to pleas.
“Please, no, please! I-I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please––”
“Shut the fuck up!” he said harshly and slammed you back against the washer again,
He kept his voice somewhat down as to not draw attention from anyone who might be passing, but the anger was very much there. You were hidden behind the wall of machines, but still, it was better to be safe than sorry.
"I don’t wanna hear another goddamn word out of you, do you understand?”
The question was rhetorical but you nodded frantically none the less, hoping to appease the man, not caring about the drops of blood splattering on the floor.
“When I tell you to do something you better fucking do it, no question! I don’t care if any of the inmates give you shit about it. You better fucking fear us, ‘cause there is no way any of these inmates can do worse than me or Steve, you hear me?”
Again, you nodded, even though it was redundant in this situation. The man was clearly in a state of anger nothing could penetrate, pleas or replies alike.
Bucky snarled, drawing a tear from your eye as he did. His hands were almost cramping from their firm hold of your shirt, keeping you upright, but he couldn’t find the will to let go. He felt your trembling, heard your teeth rattling from the quiver of your jaw.
“Good girl,” he said as you stayed compliant.
The cut above your eye drew his attention, and he nodded to it. The ugly snarl slowly morphed into a smirk.
“That’s just the beginning of it, sweetheart. I can promise you that. Think we’ve been hard on you? We haven’t even begun.”
With that, he pushed off you, barely giving you a chance to catch yourself but you managed to stay upright.
"Ugh!"
Gasps were falling from your mouth uncontrollably, trying to calm yourself but finding it impossible still in his presence. You didn’t dare to move. He hadn’t told you that you could move.
The officer kept his sharp eyes set on you, just staring, not saying a word. You held his gaze for a moment, shuddering and shaking as you did, before realizing he was probably waiting for you to avert your eyes and... submit. So you did. He smiled triumphantly.
He started walking away from you, most likely busy with a primary engagement before detouring to the laundry to mess with you. But before he left, he turned back towards you, earning a flinch as you tried to gain some space, leaning against the washer for support. Your knees were threatening to give out at any moment, and you eagerly wanted to let them.
“And keep your mouth shut to Healy. You don’t wanna make things even worse for yourself, do you?”
You shook your head violently, stopping as the pain spiked again.
“N-no, sir,” you let out in a breath.
Bucky smiled even wider, if that was possible. “Atta girl.”
With that, he finally turned the corner and walked out. It didn't even take a second for you to collapse into a sobbing heap on the floor, shaking and crying.
Summery of fic: Reader/Jess Harper has already survived abuse and sexual assault by stepbrother Nate Millers, but the reward was a prison sentence for murder at Litchfield penitentiary…
What happens when you/Jess come face to face with Nate’s old colleagues and friends, Correctional Officers Steve Rogers and James ‘Bucky’ Barnes, who both seem set on making you pay for your mistakes. Will you be able to survive it all over again?
Pairing (kinda): Steve Rogers x Reader, Bucky Barnes x Reader, Nate Millers (OMC) x Reader
Words: 3645
Warnings: DARK AU, dubcon/noncon elements, Dark!Bucky, Dark!Steve, implied sexual acts, sexual acts, mention of murder, mentions of death, mentions of violence, mentions of NC/SA and death
You have been warned.
Chapter 10
-
Piles and piles of letters and mail covered the table of the mailroom. Papers and envelopes were scattered around, falling to the floor when the table was overcrowded. Bucky and Steve were put in charge of today’s mail check. It was supposed to be done before lunch, but for some reason officers Bell and O’Neill hadn’t done it, so it was left for the afternoon and some other available officers.
“This is bullshit,” Bucky said with a sigh, throwing another approved letter in the pile.
“Language,” Steve said, also tossing a letter in the pile for permitted letters.
Bucky gave an aggravated sigh to show his annoyance at not only the letters, but Steve as well.
“You know, we’re not in the army anymore. You’re not my captain here. So you can shove it.”
He kept his composure for a quick second, before laughter rumbled through him, and his mouth strained in a wide grin. Steve couldn’t help but join in, laughing along.
“Could have fooled me,” Steve said tenderly, reminiscing on their old glory days in the armed forces.
They’d had a few good runs, neither one of them too traumatized afterwards. War wasn’t for everybody, but they seemed equipped enough to handle it, and they had. But they were glad it was over, both enjoying their days as correctional officers where the risk of getting killed had severely lessened. Especially in women’s federal.
Bucky had already filled Steve in on his little talk with inmate Nichols, bringing him up to speed on everything before handing him the torch for the night. It was the routine now; anyone do or say anything involving or regarding their favourite inmate, they shared it, letting each other in on the current situation. Any planning or otherwise scheming fantasies were done at home, just to be on the safe side. Everything else was regular inmate observation, and included no risk in saying it out in the open. At least for the most part.
“God, I hate checking the mail,” Bucky said with a grunt. “There’s never anything interesting.”
“I second that,” Steve said after scanning over another letter. “I’m just hoping to find something for Harper.”
Bucky smiled, having had the same mission in mind.
“Yeah, me too. But I doubt we’ll find anything this soon. It’s only been a couple of days.”
Healy came walking in to get his mail from the slot with his name on it, a cup of coffee already in hand. He noted the other officers looking like two sourpusses stuck with the grunt work.
“Ah,” he said, and grabbed his mail and started flicking through it. “If it isn’t the boys in blue.”
Steve quirked an eyebrow.
“You know, we were in the army, not the police force,” he said.
Healy threw a glance at them, before walking over, bringing both the cup and mail with him.
“Yeah, well,” he said lightly. “You’re in blue now, though, aren’t ya?”
He took a sip of his coffee, coming to a halt at the front of the table.
Bucky simply forced a smile at the man, knowing how Healy worked. He didn’t like to be contradicted, and always looked like a kicked puppy whenever someone put him in his place. His was all bark and no bite, but he still loved to bark at the bigger dogs.
“How’s it coming along?” Healy asked, pointing at the mail with the pile of letters of his own.
Steve sighed, but smiled as politely as Bucky.
Steve had been offered the position as head of the guards after a few months of working at Litchfield, but turned it down since he wanted to be a foot soldier this time and not the man in charge. Plus, he had already earned the title of captain once. Had he taken it though, he would have been Healy’s superior. That perk he would not have minded, seeing the older man was as infuriating and ridiculous as they come.
“It’s coming,” he said. “Slow but steady.”
Healy nodded. “Good. That’s good.”
A few seconds passed of Healy just standing there silently as the other men kept on opening and reading letters for the inmates.
Bucky looked up at him.
“Anything else?” he asked, as respectfully as the growing aggravation would allow.
“No, I, uh,” Healy said. “I just... wanted to let you know that an inmate wanted to file an official complaint about the two of you, but, uh... I took care of it.”
Both Steve and Bucky put their letters down a bit too forcefully on the table, and faced Healy, who was looking somewhat uneasy where he stood.
“Who?” Bucky asked.
“Yeah,” Steve seconded. “About what?”
“Oh, it was... Harper said something about harassment and––”
“Harassment?” Steve interjected “We’ve been doing nothing but our job, I can assure you.”
“Yeah, I told her that, believe me,” Healy said with a soft chuckle, getting somewhat nervous of the provoked tone of Steve’s voice. “She’s just a bit spooked, is all. Prison can’t be easy.”
“Especially when you’ve murdered one of the guards, I bet,” Bucky said, face as set as stone.
Healy nodded.
“Yeah, well, that was... unfortunate.”
“Unfortunate?” Steve asked. “Healy, Millers is dead because of her.”
“Well, no matter the circumstances, she’s under our care now,” Healy said, trying to bring it back to the subject and calm the situation. “I let her down easy. You know, let her know that you’re the good guys, that she has nothing to worry about. That sort of thing.”
Steve nodded slowly, taking the information in.
“Good,” he said. “’Cause if I’m honest, I’ve been kinda worried about her behaviour.”
He gave Bucky a knowing look. If someone was going to look suspicious in Healy’s eyes, it wasn’t going to be them. You wanted to be tattletale? Well, three can play that game.
“Yeah,” Bucky agreed. “She’s been hanging around some bad people. I just hope she doesn’t get in with the wrong crowd.”
Healy furrowed his brows together, setting his cup of coffee down on some letters and leaned his hands on the tabletop.
“Who?” he asked.
Steve and Bucky shared another look. Healy’s lesbian witch-hunt was infamous amongst the other guards, and he always took the bait, no matter how small.
“Nichols,” Bucky said. “I’ve seen them getting friendly at lunch. Not too friendly, of course. Or else I would have intervened, but... Enough to make me think something might be going on when we’re not looking. I think it’s worth keeping an eye on her.”
Healy mulled it over in his head. Of course. That’s why you were complaining about Rogers and Barnes harassing you. You were trying to get frisky with Nichols and they shut you down. No wonder you were harbouring some hard feelings for the men, wanting to get some distance from them.
“Oh, well,” he started. “I guess that explains it. Good job, Barnes. And Rogers, of course,” he said with a nod to acknowledge the other man. “You can never be too careful with all these lesbians running around. They’ll sink their hooks into anyone, innocent or not.”
All men nodded in agreement. Although Bucky and Steve were just playing along.
“Can never be too careful,” Steve said. “We’ll keep an eye on Harper, Healy. Make sure she doesn’t get in too much trouble. If anything should happen, we’ll take care of it.”
Healy nodded with a smile, taking a calming sip of coffee, not caring about the stained circle left on the letters. He knew he had done right in defending his fellow officers against defamation from an inmate.
“That’s good,” Healy said, still nodding. “If you need me, you know where to find me.”
Both Bucky and Steve nodded, but said no more, letting Healy leave them in peace.
Well, that went well. Just not for you.
“So,” Steve said. “Little tattletale, isn’t she?”
Bucky hummed loudly, trying to get the annoyance out of his voice. And failing miserably.
“I told her to keep her mouth shut. Guess she just had to go running to Healy. What do you wanna do, Steve?” Bucky asked and looked over at Steve, who was absentmindedly running his fingers over his jaw.
“I thought I wasn’t your captain anymore?” he sassed back, earning a grin from Bucky.
“Punk. I was just askin’. Think we should just lay low and see what happens when word gets out about your little sidepiece, huh? Your little bootycall?” he teased.
Neither men could keep a straight face at the nicknames, grinning wide like it was a competition. And the picture it painted in their minds weren't that hard to enjoy.
“Yeah, she really fucking deserves it now, doesn’t she? I wonder what she had to do to get a free candy bar, huh? Maybe she opens her mouth for more than just shit-talking? Snitching on everybody? Or maybe, during all those long nights, she gets lonely... and you’re there, looking all hot and bothered, and she just had to help a kind officer out, right? Maybe you got her in the CO bubble, on her knees, choking on that fat dick of yours for a piece of candy. What ya think? Am I getting close?” Bucky asked with a shit-eating grin that only he could muster.
They had speculated on what kind of tales and rumours the inmates would spread about you, hoping for something juicy, and not just suspected connections. Steve hoped he achieved that with his comment on your looks and whatnot. And twitter has nothing on prison when it comes to coverage, so the place should be buzzing already.
“You’re an asshole, Buck,” Steve said, trying to sound authoritative, but the façade quickly crumbed into a grin yet again.
“Ooh, now who's got the potty mouth?” Bucky countered. “And here I thought you were like Private fucking Benjamin, handing out treats and all? Doing favours? And they call me the nice one.”
“Yeah, yeah. I can be nice–” Steve grabbed a letter from the pile and hit Bucky over the head with it. “–when I want to. And what the hell do you know about how big my dick is, anyway?” Steve asked, turning back to the still unread letters covering the table.
“Ha!” Bucky exclaimed, setting his hair back in place. “You forget how the army works already? You think a fella can keep his modesty in a room full of dudes, day in and day out, never being alone, never getting any privacy? Huh? Plus, did you forget we live together? Alright, I’ve seen your dick more times than I care to admit.”
Bucky threw an envelope teasingly at Steve’s head, convincing a strand of blond hair to leave its perfectly coiffed position as it passed.
Steve ducked and visibly blushed, his cheeks reddening like a boy caught with porn.
“Yeah?” Steve said. “Right back at ya, pal. And you don’t even try to hide it.”
Bucky chuckled at the comment, knowing how he was very much not a prude. Like he said, when being in the army you had little choice.
Bucky hummed smilingly, dropping the subject.
“Anyways, it’s not like we took this job because we’re so nice, now, did we?”
Steve returned the smile.
“I don’t think ‘nice’ is the first word that pops up for anyone when describing either one of us, do you?”
“No, no. That would be ‘beefcake’,” Bucky said with a chuckle, earning a side-eye and a smirk from his friend. “I think that’s what Luscheck said when we first got here. At least that’s what he led with.”
Steve scoffed.
“And he called us gay.”
Bucky also let out a puff of air. Luscheck was one to talk with a comment like that.
“Yeah, well,” he said. “Maybe he’s overcompensating, who knows. Besides, who can resist a nice, rugged beefcake of an army man?” Bucky said, giving Steve feign heart eyes, making him laugh, before he himself followed suit.
“Not Jess,” Steve said with sarcastically raised eyebrows, making Bucky laugh.
“Evidently.”
O.o.O.o.O
Great, so even your counsellor didn’t believe you. This was just dandy! You were stuck in a prison where the guards where on your ass, trying to make your life even more of a living hell, inmates weren’t allowed to be near you in any other way than proximity, and your counsellor told you that it was basically just your mind playing tricks on you, and that you were overreacting.
You were sitting on the bed in your bunk, feet resting on the frame, eating a Twix out of spite. Every bite was filled with rage, but the sweet taste of chocolate was comforting none the less. Too bad it was going too fast.
You were pissed at Mr. Healy for not even giving you the time of day, and you were honestly pissed at yourself for not leading with the bigger things. Maybe then he would have taken you seriously. But you severely doubted that.
The ache in your chest grew tighter, comforting chocolate be damned. It was so painful to be speaking the truth and not be believed. Even more so to be belittled, and almost shamed for your fears and concerns. It didn’t seem to matter how much experience you had with it, the pain was never lessened when you, yet again, were silenced.
People were talking and laughing and messing around in the dorm, making it impossible to lay down and get some shuteye, even though you very much needed it. Plus, your mind wasn’t really in a peaceful state so even if you could just take a time out of prison, you doubted it would be restful.
Dinner was coming up in an hour or so, and the plan had been to sleep until then, then come back to the bunk and sleep some more until lights-out. But, for now, just sitting on your bed would have to suffice. There wasn’t much else to do, but bide your time.
“Stand for count!” was shouted from a male guard entering the dorm.
You did as instructed, getting used to the rules and regiment of prison, and went to stand outside your cube along with all the other inmates.
It was officer Barnes and O’Neill, both checking a side each, Barnes unsurprisingly picking your side. You prepared yourself, expecting leering eyes, a snide smirk or at the very least just a simple up-down. But what you got was a stone-cold look of disdain shot down at you from a very superior height, as he held his head even higher when passing you. Jeez, both guards were towers of muscles compared to you. Made you wish you hadn’t skipped gym so much in school. You couldn’t help but cower back just a little in his company.
He passed with a click of the counter in his hand, making you jerk at the force of it. That earned you a lopsided smirk at least. Barnes walked on, passing to the other side of the dorm to continue his count in a much calmer manner. Both guards compared numbers before leaving. He didn’t look at you again, which was weird compared to all the other times when both officers tended to stare blatantly at you without shame, company be damned.
“Thank you, ladies,” officer O’Neill said with a kind smile, and followed officer Barnes out the door.
Strange, they usually lingered to throw another glance at you, but he didn’t.
You went back to your bed and lay down to rest, seeing the dorm quieted down significantly after the guards’ visit. Most of the other inmates would roam the halls or wait in the rec room until dinner was served, so the dorm would allow for some rest soon.
The look on officer Barnes’ face haunted you. It wouldn’t have worried you as much, if you hadn’t just talked to Healy about their behaviour. That weighing of the scales, on whether or not to tell Healy, may have tipped the wrong way in more ways than just not being taken seriously. Oh shit. This might come back to bite you in the ass with even sharper teeth than you had predicted.
You swallowed, hands coming up to lay on your stomach for comfort. Anything to calm down. It did little to help. What did they know? The officer had seemed more than a little ticked off during the count. What had Healy said to him? If anything?
A loud scoff was heard from just outside your cube, breaking your train of thought. You looked over, seeing two inmates nodding at you whilst talking amongst themselves. You couldn’t hear what they where saying though, but their eyes were leering as much as the officer’s tended to.
You didn’t recognize either of them in more than just passing, sharing a dorm and all. Both were blonde, lanky white girls. One had long cornrows and a very strange looking tattoo going down the length of her throat, the other one was paler looking, with long, greasy hair.
“Ey, yo,” Cornrows said, calling your attention.
You rose up on your elbows from the bed.
“W-what, me?” you asked.
“Yeah,” she said, taking a step closer to your cube. “Is it true you got free stuff from commissary?”
“Uhm, yeah?”
You sat up even more on the bed, ready should she try anything. So far only the guards had shown any aggression towards you, but that could easily change.
“Who are you?”
She took yet another step closer.
“Tricia Miller,” she said. “Yo, we were just wondering what, uh...” she leaned on the wall, speaking in a somewhat hushed tone. “What you had to do?”
“What?” you asked, dumbfounded.
Tricia sighed, annoyed. “Whose dick did you suck to get free stuff? I gotta spell that shit out for you?”
Before you knew it, you were on your feet, eyes jumping all over the place like a lunatic, trying to makes sense of it all.
Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. This was why officer Rogers had given you those things. This was what he wanted. What they wanted. Did people think––?
“No, I-I...” you started, but didn’t know what to continue with.
You walked up to her, causing her to lean back at the speed of your movement. You leaned a hand on the wall, crowding her where she stood on the other side.
“I didn’t do anything for that. He just... gave it to me.”
Tricia scoffed. “Yeah, right. I’m supposed to believe that? This is prison. Either you’re sucking his dick or fuckin’ him... or you’re selling us out.” She rose taller at the statement. “For what? A fucking bottle of shampoo and a candy bar?”
“What? No, no, no. It’s nothing like that,” you tried to convince her.
She scoffed at you again, taking a step closer and into your bunk.
“Oh, no? Then why the fuck would a guard give you free shit?”
You didn’t know what to say. You truly hadn’t done anything to get free stuff, no matter what she thought. And you definitely weren’t telling the guards anything about anyone.
She waited patiently for an answer, crossing her thin arms across her small chest, but still she managed to look menacing.
“I don’t know, I swear! I haven’t done anything to deserve any treats. M-maybe he was just being kind...?”
You held up your hands to show you were not interested in a fight of any kind.
She smiled mockingly at you.
“That’s not how it works in prison, sweet cheeks. What the fuck did you tell him? You a fucking snitch?”
Oh, shit, this was bad.
“No, no, no, I’m not a snitch, I swear. I haven’t said anything to them. I don’t even have anything to say.”
“Oh, really?” she asked sarcastically. “Then why the fuck do people say they’ve seen you talking to several of the guards? And now you’re getting free shit out of commissary? You think that’s all just a coincident, huh?”
More inmates started to gather outside of your cube, watching intently at the scene unfolding. None of them looked concerned about you, more hesitant about the outcome of the snowballing argument. A tremble coursed through your body, tears were beginning to form behind your eyes as you tried to catch your breath and find a way out of this mess. His mess.
“Please, I swear, I haven’t said anything to any guard about anyone. And I’m not messing around with any of them, I promise you that. I-I don’t know why... This is all a setup. Please, you gotta believe me. I don’t want any trouble.”
Of course, you knew why they were doing it, but mentioning anything about Nate at this moment might just escalate the situation even worse. You did not need to become even more of a target than you already were.
Several moments passed in silence from Tricia, though people behind were heard scoffing and sighing and mumbling amongst themselves. It seemed like no one believed you.
Tricia took a step closer, coming face to face with you. Her eyes were sharp, yours a watery mess. You wanted so bad to back away, to plead, to beg for them to believe you. Anything just to get out of this mile high pile of trouble.
“You better watch your back, Harper,” she said, her voice clear-cut and left no room for argument. “In here... no one likes a snitch. Or a daddy’s girl screwing around for treats and favours. You got eyes on you, Harper. Step out of line, and you bet your ass there’s gonna be someone ready to beat it.”
She took a step back, easing off. But everyone around the cube stayed put. All eyes were on you.
Summery of fic: Reader/Jess Harper has already survived abuse and sexual assault by stepbrother Nate Millers, but the reward was a prison sentence for murder at Litchfield penitentiary…
What happens when you/Jess come face to face with Nate’s old colleagues and friends, Correctional Officers Steve Rogers and James ‘Bucky’ Barnes, who both seem set on making you pay for your mistakes. Will you be able to survive it all over again?
Pairing (kinda): Steve Rogers x Reader, Bucky Barnes x Reader, Nate Millers (OMC) x Reader
Words: 2892
Warnings: DARK AU, dubcon/noncon elements, Dark!Bucky, Dark!Steve, implied sexual acts, sexual acts, mention of murder, mentions of death, mentions of violence, mentions of NC/SA and death
You have been warned.
Chapter 11
-
Looks. Dirty, hateful, searching looks. Around every corner, with every step you took, someone was there to give you a look. That I-know-what-you-did-look. But you didn’t do any of it. Of course, that didn’t seem to matter.
If your first day had you looking spooked, it was nothing compared to now. Your shoulders were up to your ears, your hands holding your elbows in a makeshift protection barrier from the outside. Every fibre of your being was on alert. Everyone was looking.
Some called you names. Slut, bitch, snitch. Anything they wanted based on whatever story they had heard. You had heard fragments of stories from people passing, not even realizing they were talking about you. Details here and there.
So far, you had ‘fucked officer Rogers in the broom closet for the prize of a Snickers’ (it had clearly been a Twix but whatever). You had also ‘let officer Rogers piss on you in the shower’ (hence needing the nice smelling stuff which he so courteously gave). ‘Officer Barnes had fingered you for any intel on...’ what was her name? well, some inmate they allegedly wanted intel on. And you had apparently given it all to them. And let’s not forget about ‘blowing officer Luscheck in electrical’ for some unnamed reason. You had really gotten around in the few days you’d been locked up...
The prison was buzzing worse than a scourge of mosquitos on a barbeque night. It was like you had a spotlight on you wherever you turned. And the cafeteria was no exception. You were glad the prison held such a dense population, otherwise the cafeteria might have actually gone quiet at your arrival, like in the movies. But it didn’t. People were chatting away, staring and nodding at you as they did. You suspected they were sharing even more stories of your ‘romps’.
You took your place in the food-line, keeping your distance from the inmates before you, hoping the ones behind you would show the same courtesy, which they did. No one wanted to be associated with a snitch and risk having all this shit come after them too.
Gina stood behind the glass counter, hairnet and apron on, looking you dead in the eye with disgust written across her face. She had heard the rumours. Your face however, was scrunched up in hurt and fear, yet she failed to acknowledge it.
“Next,” she said and handed the tray meant for you, to the inmate next in line.
Same with the following one. You looked to the other people standing behind the glass serving the food, but no one gave you the time of day, if it wasn’t to mutely scold you.
You left the line without a tray, without food. You knew it was no point in arguing right then and there. If it didn’t work in your cube with only Tricia and the few other inmates around, it definetly wouldn’t work in a full cafeteria where volume was already a problem.
You remembered what CO Barnes had said about you coming to the cafeteria at all times, unless instructed not to. You didn’t want to anger the man, so you searched for an empty seat, food tray or no food tray. You didn’t want to give anyone any reason to hurt you.
No one allowed you to sit at their table. Whenever you got close to an empty seat, someone would come around and steal it. You were not wanted, that much was clear. You stood there in between the tables, lost and unsure. You didn’t know where to go, or what to do, all you knew was that your body and mind were screaming for you to get the heck out of there as fast as humanly possible. But your experience told you otherwise. Follow the rules and you won’t get hurt. But at this moment, you had half a mind to let the guards rain hellfire on you, rather than stand there in the cafeteria like a prized heifer in front of all the other inmates.
The few eyes that weren’t on you, were set on two officers in particular. Officer Barnes who was stood by the drink containers, watching the inmates as if he had no idea of what was causing such a fuss.
Officer Rogers paced between the tables in orderly fashion, keeping an eye out, but apparently he was oblivious of how gazes were shot his way. At least what he let show. The other officer, CO Wilson, a tall, black man with a goatee, was stood on the far side of the room overlooking the food-line, honest in truth, not noticing anything out of the ordinary, or the looks he got. The cafeteria was always buzzing, this was nothing new.
You looked over to CO Barnes where he stood, your eyes filled to the brim with tears that you begged wouldn’t fall right then and there. The fear and anxiety were slowly breaking you, seeping through your pores. He slowly met your gaze, a sly smile forming, as bright as day. You trembled, fighting to keep a whimper in just from a look.
This is what they wanted; everyone had turned against you. You were on everyone’s radar, everyone had it out for you in one way or another. And the officer’s response to the sight of you, only seemed to fuel any rumour of guards taking a liking to you.
Wolf whistles echoed through the room, startling you where you stood frozen in place in the middle of the cafeteria. But officer Barnes just smiled wider, chuckling lowly under his breath. You were so god damn easy.
Inmates were feigning moans and sex-noises at you, one even slapping your ass hard enough to hurt. You gasped and jumped from your spot with a squeal, making everyone shout and laugh at you.
“Hey!” CO Wilson, who stood closest, yelled. “No touching.”
The inmate in question, a shorthaired, tall, white woman, raised her eyebrows at him.
“What? You gotta be an officer to get a piece of that ass?”
The inmates laughed at her reply. You couldn’t help it; the first tear left its confinement. To hell with the officers.
You hurried past the closest tables, tears blurring your eyes but you didn’t care, you just wanted out of there. You failed to see the large chest coming up in front of you before it was too late, and you rammed straight into officer Rogers with an audible gasp at the impact. His hands were quick to come up and hold your upper arms, steadying you. But his grip wasn’t light, and it left no room for argument, or attempts to back away from him. The inmates immediately started ‘ooh-ing’ and ‘aah-ing’ at the sight.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he said to you softly. “Take it easy.”
You shivered from his touch, which had now turned into pretend-sweet caresses in a feigned attempt to calm you, but it only made you shudder with unease. Everyone was watching the officer touch you, comforting you. More fuel.
“I-I-I’m s-sorry, sir, I...” Your voice was pitched higher than you’d wanted to, stuttering all over the place.
You tried to step to the side, but the officer held on to you, keeping you in place. His grip was tight, making you feel even smaller than you already were. He knew he was holding on hard enough to hurt.
He shushed you, circling his thumbs on your shoulders. Everyone was still intently watching, boring holes in your back.
“It’s okay,” he said in his normal voice. “It’s okay, you’re not in trouble. You get out of here, and we’ll take care of it.”
His voice was almost laced with honey from the smoothness of it, speaking loud enough so everyone could hear. You didn’t want them to take care of anything, let alone have everyone hear him say that they were going to. But you did however want to take him up on the offer to go, sooner rather than later. If only he would let you go.
But before he did, he bent down to whisper closer to your ear so no one else could hear the words, but everyone could see the intimacy of it.
“Take that, you little tattletale.”
A broken whine fled past your lips at his crude words, your face scrunching up in an attempt to keep the sobbing down, just for a second longer.
Officer Rogers smiled dearly at your cowering, then let you go and sending you off to wherever you were running to, smiling as he watched you go.
You walked out of there as fast as you could, leaving the catcalling, name-calling and the array of food being thrown your way behind, hearing the guards telling the inmates off for messing up the place.
You knew you couldn’t keep this in, you knew it all wanted to come out, and there was no stopping it. It was like a tornado warping through your body and mind, crushing and tearing as it went.
You ran through the halls, not caring if a guard saw you or gave you a shot for it, you just wanted out. Needed out. Your body slammed into the backdoor leading to the yard, the cold gust of wind out in the open making your body cramp up even more, the stiffness almost crippling. Your chest was aching with the strain to just breathe, your throat was burning from holding back tears. You just had to get away.
Once behind a shed far, far away from where everyone else was, you crumpled. Falling to your knees in the cold, damp grass, you hugged yourself, nails digging into the skin of your arms, scratching through the fabric of your shirt. Your entire body wrecked with sobs and desperate cries, your mouth open to draw mouthfuls of air into your lungs, only to wail them out again.
“Fuck!” you screamed as loudly as your sore, burning throat would allow.
You fell to your side, gripping a handful of grass and ripping it from the soil, dirt working its way under your nails. Everything hurt.
How could this happen? How could any of this happen? It was a fucking Twix! Why had you taken it? Why had you done what he said? You wished you could go back, then you’d just walked away, consequences be damned. Whatever the officers did to you was nothing compared to having the entire prison population against you, hating you.
Everything came crumbling down, again. Every wall you had put up, every reassuring thought of making it out alive, unscathed, were gone. There was no way out, there was no way to hide from the pain. You were living in it. Right fucking in it. And no one knew the truth. No one would listen. You just wished someone would dare to listen.
O.o.O.o.O
“You seemed pretty familiar with that new inmate at lunch, Rogers,” officer Sam Wilson said.
The guards, Barnes included, were in the staffroom for a quick break after dinner, and before Bucky was due to end his shift. Steve was leaning against the sink with a shaker in his hand, this time salty caramel.
“I was just teasing her, Sam. Relax,” he said to the man standing by his locker, digging through his bag.
Bucky, who sat leaning back, balancing his chair on two legs with his own shaker of salty caramel in hand, smiled at the mentioning of you.
“It’s just a bit of fun,” he added to Steve’s statement. “No harm no foul, right? Besides, weren’t all the inmates laughing?”
“That’s not the point,” Sam said, somewhat annoyed.
Steve looked over at him, not too happy about his tone.
“What’s the big deal, Wilson?” he asked. “She deserves a lot more than that considering what she’s done.”
“What she’s done?” Sam questioned and turned towards his fellow officer. “We don’t know what she has done. I saw the news stories, okay? I followed the trial. There was not enough evidence to decide whether or not it was self-defence or a homicide. She had the entire police force against her, persuading the judge of her guilt, for all we know.”
Bucky scoffed, dumfounded at the silly statement, setting his chair down on all four legs again and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.
“They didn’t need to persuade shit, Wilson. Millers got stabbed seventeen fucking times. It’s clear as fucking day that she did it and meant to do it. And if Millers were here to speak his part, I’ll bet you he’d agree.”
Bucky knew it was a snarky comment, but he didn’t care. He was staring Wilson down, daring him to push.
“That’s your opinion,” Sam said to Bucky, before turning back to Steve, who was still standing firm by the sink, ankles crossed over one another, looking as relaxed as ever. “And my opinion is that you shouldn’t escalate shit with the inmates. It brings the rest of us nothing but trouble.”
Sam had half expected Steve to be the one to get agitated by that, but it was Bucky who stood from his chair and walked straight over to him, and placing both hands on his hips, effectively blocking Sam in between his body and the locker. Sam wasn’t much smaller than Bucky, but he held little to no experience in combat, other than what was provided by the D.O.C. He knew better than to piss of an army man with ten years under his belt.
“What are you saying, huh?” Bucky asked. “That we’re not good at our jobs?”
“Bucky...” Steve said, but whether it was said in warning or in an attempt to calm the man, Sam was unsure of.
Never the less, Bucky ignored him.
“Just because you’re shit at your job, doesn’t mean the rest of us are,” he continued, coming closer and closer to Sam’s face, which was starting to falter. “Just because you’re afraid of inmates getting out of control from a fucking joke, doesn’t mean we have to be. If you’d seen even half the shit we’ve seen, you wouldn’t get riled up from a joke in a fucking cafeteria. Alright? We can handle unruly inmates. They are federal inmates in a minimum-security unit, Wilson. Take it easy, alright? So just keep your mouth shut, and back. The fuck. Off.”
Bucky stayed where he was just a second or so longer, just to make sure Wilson got the point, before he eased back and sat back down in his chair, downing several huge gulps of his shake. He kept his eyes on Sam, who was looking somewhat apprehensive after the confrontation.
Steve, who had stood silently by during the whole ordeal, notice the tension in his friend’s shoulders from the altercation. He was like a bow being tightened, and whoever got hit with the arrow, would bleed for days.
“Alright,” Steve said, breaking the tension. “If we’ve all gotten that out of our system, we should all get back to work.”
Sam threw him a glance, a mix between grateful and uneasy.
“Yeah,” he said anyway, looking over at Bucky and getting the full heat of his temper shining through his eyes.
He said no more, slammed his locker shut, and walked out of the room to start his rounds.
“Fucking piece of shit,” Bucky muttered through gritted teeth under his breath once Sam had left.
He sighed heavily, looking up at Steve who was simply waiting for him to get a hold of himself again. Steve had seen every part of his friend, and knew the ins and outs of his entity. He’d seen this side of him many times, and knew to take his time.
“Better?” Steve asked when Bucky’s brows relaxed into his forehead again, lines smoothening out.
“Yeah,” Bucky said with another sigh, and got up to lean heavily on the sink right next to Steve, rinsing the shaker out. “Just fed up with people talking shit. First Harper, then Healy, and now Wilson. Can’t people just shut the fuck up for once?”
Steve chuckled at the comment, but he made sure to do it in an agreeing way, as to not set Bucky off again should he feel ridiculed.
“I hear ya, Buck,” he said. “But you gotta admit, it’s kinda fun to watch things unravel. Don’t you think?”
A second passed, then a puff of air fell from Bucky’s lips as they turned upwards in a smile.
“See the way she crumbled?” he asked, and Steve nodded.
“You should have heard the sound she made,” Steve said with a grunt. “Like a lost kitten. God, I can’t wait to hear it again.”
Bucky scoffed. “Oh, yeah? Any plans for tonight?”
Steve thought about it for a second, raising his eyebrows in contemplation.
“Nah, might let her rest tonight.”
“Yeah, like she’s gonna get a second’s rest with you hounding her and breathing down her neck.”
Steve faked a hurt look at his friend.
“When do I ever hound? I’m a gentleman, Bucky.”
Bucky burst into laughter, mockingly forcing his voice higher than it usually was, earning a friendly punch to the arm.
“Might be missing the gentle part, though,” Bucky said with a knowing smile and a gleam in his eyes. “Thin walls, my friend. Thin walls.”
Hello, my favorite author!😍I'm your fan who used to write long texts to you!
I'm so glad to see you're back. You've been through a lot, and I hope you're doing better right now. I'm also struggling a lot with my depression currently, trying to survive only each day. I've lost my home in a very bad accident and had to move in with two other people. I lost my connection with my only family members as well, and financially, I can't even afford a simple cup of coffee. Anyway...this is not about me!! This is about YOU!!❤️
Seeing you posting almost every day made a smile to bloom on my face. I really really hope you do better and better every day. I can't wait to read your new chapters, but I don't insist or want you to be under any pressure. Whatever makes you feel better...I'll be supportive!!❤️
Take care!
Helloooo @captainpretty!!❤️
I know well who you are, I haven't forgotten you at all!
Thank you ❤️ Yeah, it's been tough and still is but I'm finally able to read, so I wanted to re-read the fic and I'm loving it so far! I'm on chapter 23 I think and I wanted to keep posting the chapters on here with some collages, and share it with you guys. I'm so sorry to hear about your situation! I don't even have words for what's going on in your life, I'm so sorry for you, I wish there was something I could do. Hang in there and take it day by day, even if some days it's just about getting through and waiting for tomorrow ❤️
It makes me so happy to hear that, thank you so much! I'm not sure I'm able to write, my brain is still in survival mode and I'm going through a lot therapy wise and re-training my brain, but hopefully by the end of reading BMHB again, I'll get back to it. I really love the world, I love talking to you as my reader and I love Jess and her story, so here's hoping at least!
Thank you for being you, and thank you for writing me. Never hesitate to do that, I LOVE talking to you! ❤️
