Work Text:
1.
“I don’t understand,” the asset says. His voice is soft, tentative. “Why does it have to be… have to be…”
He trails off, looks up at Rumlow and at the other men that are crowding the small, bright cell of a room. There’s a metal table in one corner, bolted down, two guys sitting on it. Three others standing around in the cramped space, not counting Rumlow, not counting the asset and the blond man sitting next to him on the bed.
A small crowd tonight, comparatively, but the asset looks overwhelmed by it. He is curled up on himself on the narrow bed—the bed he sleeps on when he’s not on ice, although he probably doesn’t remember that yet—his knees up close to his chest. He’s still in his full tactical gear and he should be terrifying, but curled up like that he looks small, vulnerable. Almost childlike.
“With the others here?” the blond man, Greene, finishes for him.
The asset nods, looks relieved that the sentence has been finished for him, that he doesn’t need to articulate further. Rumlow would have expected him to be less tentative around the best friend that he hasn’t seen in many long, nightmarish decades, and yet the asset has been acting like this around Greene since he “recognized” him. Tentative. Shy.
Rumlow hadn’t even noticed the resemblance, up until now. Yes, Greene was tall, and blond, and generally had that all-American good-guy look about him (ironic, in his case, obviously). But Rumlow didn’t spend much time comparing random coworkers’ faces to people he’d only seen in short clips and in pictures in history books—it just wasn’t something that came up, not unless you happened to run into one of those historical figures’ brainwashed best buddies. Plus, while the resemblance was there, it wasn’t startling. It just seemed that way to people whose brains had been getting fried with electricity since the Eisenhower administration.
Greene is doing an amazing job, though, he’ll give it to the kid. He smiles at the asset, a real good big friendly Captain America smile, and moves closer to the asset on the bed. The asset doesn’t flinch. He’s not intimidated, or scared, exactly; it’s… something else. Rumlow can’t tell. The asset’s looking at Greene with something close to happiness on his face (and that is fucking weird; Rumlow has never seen anything like happiness on that face before, the closest he’s seen is relief or lack of anger), and he looks like he wants to say or do a lot more, but… his knees stayed pulled up close to his chest on the bed, and he doesn’t move.
“Well, uh, see,” Greene says, faltering a little, and someone in the room giggles, and the asset looks over at them and narrows his eyes and glares protectively like they’d been laughing at Captain America instead of at him, and next to him Greene almost loses his shit as well.
“See,” he starts again, face flushed a little as he suppresses the laughter. “It’s just something I’ve always wanted, all right?”
“With… all of them?” The asset’s voice is so quiet.
“They’re not going to hurt you. Not going to do anything I don’t let them do. And I’ll go first and they’re just gonna watch that, is all.”
“Stevie,” he says, and his voice is even quieter, and Rumlow almost can’t hear it. “Stevie, I can’t…”
Greene huffs out a little sigh. “Look,” he says, and he doesn’t use the asset’s former name, because they’re not stupid, but Rumlow can tell that he wants to. “Do you want me to be here or not?”
The asset nods. His mouth moves, working on forming words, but he stops like he can’t trust himself to talk. He nods again then, head moving up and down too eagerly, like one of those little dolls people put on their dashboards.
“And you want to do this?” Greene prompts.
The asset’s eyes flicker to the other men in the room, sliding over Rumlow in the process, then move back to the blond man sitting next to him. He clutches his knees tighter, the leather he is wearing creaking, but then nods again.
Greene grins, reaches out to brush the asset’s dirty hair back from his face.
“Good,” he says. “Then take off your clothes.”
2.
“Told you I’d be gentle, right?” Greene is cooing, tender. “Told you it’d be fine. Our first time.” He smiles, close to the back of the asset’s head.
The asset nods, a convulsive movement of his head. “Stevie,” he forces out. His teeth are clenched together. His whole body is flushed deep bloody red, his hands gripping the bed so hard the left one has warped the metal frame.
“Good, isn’t it?” Greene says.
The asset doesn’t seem to be able to talk any more, and Greene grabs a chunk of his hair in one large hand and yanks hard, forcing his head back. The asset whimpers, but even when he thinks it’s his best friend that's on top of him, he’s still trained to respond to questions.
“’s good,” the asset croaks, and when Greene releases the handful of hair, pets instead along his head and the back of his neck and over the scars on his shoulder, the asset keeps talking. “Stevie.”
“Yeah?”
“I… love you, Stevie. I love you.”
Someone bursts out into loud laughter, and Rumlow turns and shushes them. The asset doesn’t seem to notice, lost in his brain-damaged haze, or perhaps just too preoccupied with the pain. It doesn’t seem to be related to the laughter or to anything other than the pain when, soon after that, the asset begins to cry.
“Shhhh,” Greene says. “Shh. It’s our first time. We gotta do all sorts of special things.”
3.
It’s a nice change from usual, the asset lying on his bed placid as a lamb without so much as a threat or a burst of electricity needed to get him in line. All the asset wants now is to be able to hold on to Greene’s hand, continuously, while the others on the team work on him. Hand-holding is more dangerous than it sounds where the asset is concerned, even when it’s his right hand, and Greene ends up doing a lot of stoic wincing: the asset squeezes down whenever it’s concerned about something or when it's in pain.
And that’s not good news for Greene, because the asset’s extra docility has the effect of encouraging some of the men to get more creative. But even with his metacarpals on the verge of being pulverized, Greene plays the part beautifully: he pets the asset’s hair, wipes away tears, touches him soothingly on the cheek afterwards whenever someone slaps him. Doesn’t go as far as humming patriotic tunes into his ear, but almost. The asset, in turn, keeps his eyes on Greene whenever he is able to, hopeful and faintly dazed like the blond hair is a protective aura.
The asset does close his eyes for a bit during Rumlow’s own session: leader of the team or not, Rumlow can’t help but be curious about how far the asset will let Captain America walk him through hell. So he gets creative, like the others, a particular bit of creativity involving the end of the asset’s dick and whatever he can find in his own pockets, and the asset screams and Greene goes red and looks like he’s lost feeling in his fingers. Rumlow wonders if he’s maybe pushed it too far, after, but when the asset calms down he just goes back to looking the same way at the man he thinks is his friend, quiet and trusting.
But apart from that look, the asset’s behavior is still not what you’d expect, Rumlow thinks as he’s doing his belt back up. The asset doesn’t ask for this to stop, doesn’t ask for any kind of comfort or further affection. He doesn’t look angry or betrayed, either—nothing has penetrated that trust, maybe nothing can—but there’s a distance there, like the asset is holding something back, and whatever that something is, it’s affecting him more than all the depraved shit the team is doing to him tonight.
After the last man finishes, the asset just lies there with his eyes still on Greene, still grasping his hand. No one else is paying much attention anymore except Greene and Rumlow. The asset tries to talk and stops, and tries to talk and stops.
“Stevie,” he says finally, and his voice is quiet still but urgent, something desperate in there that he can’t hold in anymore.
“Yeah?” Greene says. He’s looking annoyed now: his hand must hurt like a bitch, and he’s probably getting bored.
“I…” He stops, swallows, licks his lips. His voice is barely more than a whisper. “Stevie, I’ve done something wrong. I… I’ve done something so wrong. I screwed up, Stevie, I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”
The asset turns over, still gripping Greene’s hand, and buries his face into the filthy, blood-splattered pillow.
He’s ashamed. That’s what has him acting like this around his friend. He is face to face with Steve Rogers, and he is ashamed.
When Rumlow realizes this, his hand is already at the stun baton at his side, because seeing the asset fake-recognize Captain America is funny, but if the asset really remembers, if he really has started to get his fucked-up brain sorted out enough to figure out what’s been going on all these years, then they’re all completely fucked and Rumlow is in serious trouble.
Greene appears to realize this as well: he keeps hold of the asset’s hand, but he goes white. “What is it?” he asks. He’s trying to sit up and get a little distance between himself and the asset without raising any alarm. “Why are you sorry? What—what did you do?”
The asset turns his head enough to look at him from the pillow, his face pale, twisted with effort. “I don’t remember,” he says weakly.
Someone in the room laughs again, and this time Rumlow laughs too, his hand moving away from the baton.
“I don’t remember,” the asset says again, and he pulls the hand he’s still clutching at closer, nuzzles it with his bruised face. “I don’t remember but I’m sorry, Stevie, I’m so sorry.”
Greene looks up at Rumlow and smiles. Rumlow smiles back, and Greene tilts his head toward the asset and does a little eyeroll, but he doesn’t look bored anymore.
“You can make it up to me,” he says sweetly to the asset, who’s still pressing his face against the back of his hand, kissing it now. “Don’t worry. You can make it up to all of us.”