Stuck On Stucky

Commission for @midnightfoxsinger

Bucky cradles her to his chest like the precious bundle of joy that she is, one hand carefully supporting her butt while the other bestows generous ear-scritches upon her. He tucks her in his jackets and hoodies, lets her curl up in the crook of his arm when she jumps up on the bed to claim her morning kissies, and he often puts her in one of those baby slings so he can keep her close and have her fuzzy little head within kissing distance all the time, while she purrs the day away in a state of perfect bliss. Alpine adores him. He calls her "baby" and "his best girl", and she regales him with her softest mrrrp's and mrrow's in return - and when she gently rubs her head to his cheek, Bucky's world instantly feels a little brighter.

Steve, on the other hand.

Steve wears her like a scarf, her long fluffy body slung around his neck, hands holding both ends so she won't fall off. Steve carries her under his arm like she's a baguette, her butt to the world, her head tucked just below his armpit, and she never even complains (not after the first ten times anyway).

Steve play-wrestles with her, winds her up good and then lets her swat her paws at him, all soft fur and righteous fury, and he plays up the punching sound effects when she hits his palms, all the while going "Come on girl, get in here, show me whatchu got," and "Pow pow, thwap boom fshhhhhh, oh no, oh no she got me, I'm going down, Sergeant Stinkass Fishbreath is too strong for me, nooo!". Steve likes to spin her in circles on the floor, and Alpine loves it - in fact, if Steve is around and failing to give her the required attentions, she screams at him with that blood-curdling yowl of hers until he finally gets the hint, grabs her with one hand and turbo-twirls her at maximum speed, like a feather duster in a salad spinner.

the op linked the study in the replies & i’ve been skimming it & it’s actually rlly rlly interesting to think abt

in the appendix (which you can find by scrolling down) CA:TWS is listed as having one torture scene, which immediately made me wonder because there are two that I can think of.

further on in the appendix when the authors are discussing the criteria for including torture, they give the vault scene in CA:TWS as an example of a scene that isn't torture, with the justification that Bucky seems to comply with his captors, and given the information shown on screen we can't conclude whether or not Bucky is a willing participant in the "wipe." Willing participants cannot be tortured, therefore the vault scene is not counted as torture

That is a WILD take on that scene. "doesn't fight back" does not equal "not being tortured" come on now

now, I could see disqualifying the vault scene as being a torture scene on the basis that the purpose of the "wipe" is not to inflict pain, it just happens to be an extremely painful process.

That's an interesting take. Is doing something incredibly painful or distressing to a person torture when there is ostensibly a secondary purpose to the painful thing, even though it also clearly doubles as a way of inflicting suffering and asserting power? This is a really important question to answer, since a lot of instances of torture and mistreatment in prisons and military situations etc. seem to fall under this. e.g. a strip search is nominally for "security" purposes, but it is also forced nudity which is a common form of sexual violence inflicted as part of torture.

But disqualifying the scene because there is not enough evidence that Bucky is being coerced to do it is nuts, since immediately prior Bucky gets slapped in the face for not answering a question and doesn't retaliate, and immediately before that Bucky gets a bunch of guns pointed at him when he acts up

That's another important question. Does being forced to comply with or participate in your own torture disqualify it from being torture?

The answer is, to me, obviously no, and in fact this seems like a relatively common feature of torture: e.g. forcing prisoners to dig their own graves requires a good amount of compliance from the victim and that's a major reason why it's so distressing