When they complete the mission (successfully, the asset glows with accomplishment), they return to the safehouse with several other agents. The asset usually eats in the kitchen at the sink, a rare moment of solitude that the asset sometimes craves during missions.

But this handler doesn’t let the asset eat alone. He has him kneel by his chair at the dinner table. The asset dislikes kneeling, finds that his thick thighs are an uncomfortable weight on his ankles and knees. 

He also dislikes the attention when he kneels.

The other agents laugh, call the asset the handler’s pet. The handler likes that, rubs his fingers through the asset’s hair. Says, “Good boy,” to the laughter of his peers.

Maybe the asset is a pet.

And like a particularly beloved pet, the asset sleeps in the handler’s bed. The handler waits until everyone else has ambled into their bunks, then, quietly, takes the asset to his room.

This is what plummeted dread through the asset when he saw the handler. This is what he remembers.

The bed is narrow, too narrow for two grown men to lie side by side. So, the asset tries to curl up at the end. (There was one handler, a Russian, who liked the asset there to warm his feet. But this handler is different.)

“Come sleep next to me,” he says. His smile is warm, welcoming. He is always happy to have the asset.

When the asset obeys the command, the handler pushes him onto his back and lies on top of him. The full weight of his body presses along the asset’s from shoulder to knee. His chest crushes into the asset’s lungs, hips flush against the asset’s.

The weight is suffocating. The asset cannot breathe or squirm under such a large man. Even after the handler’s breathing evens out in slumber, the asset is held immobile. Driven down into the mattress and held in place.

—

Steve stares at the single bed in the safehouse and sighs. “I told them there would be two of us,” he says to Bucky. “They promised there’d be enough room for both of us.”

Bucky shrugs. “I sleep better on the floor.”

Steve considers the moldy carpet, the rat he spotted in the kitchen when they entered. “Might not be clean.”

Bucky gestures to himself and the ashy filth that clings to his sweat streaked skin. He smells terrible, even from across the room.

Steve snorts. “Fair. Sure you don’t want to share?”

Any humor in Bucky’s expression drops out immediately. His eyes go cold and suspicious of Steve. 

“Buck, I–”

Bucky shakes his head and stalks out of the room towards the shower. Steve hears him drag a chair with him from the kitchen so he can barricade the bathroom door.

Steve sighs and holds his face in hands.

—

It’s only now that Steve is realizing how much of Bucky’s affectation of being alright is composed of gestures and half truths. A smile, a pat on the back, a casual dismissal. Steve has let these reassurances slide for months because he wanted to believe them. He wanted to see Bucky smile, he wanted to hear everything was alright.

But he can see in the tremor of Bucky’s hands--the hollows of his cheeks, the abandonment of his grooming, the emptiness in his eyes--that not everything is alright.

Steve tries to press harder, “You sure?” but that just drives Bucky away.

“Yeah,” he says with another hard smile, “I’m just going to hit the gym, I think. I’ll catch you after? We can have dinner?”

He tries to walk away, but Steve catches his arm. “Bucky,” he starts, then realizes there isn’t any way he can make Bucky talk. There’s no passphrase that will unmute him. He’s not a machine.

Bucky arches a brow at him, waiting. At least this gesture rings sincere.

Steve shakes his head. “We don’t have to talk about it. I love you all the same.”

As if wiped clean, Bucky’s face goes blank. Then it hardens, going tight around the eyes and mouth. The whites of his eyes sting pink with salt water as his tear ducts well and spill over. His face flushes, as if surprised by his own body’s reaction.

“Shit,” Bucky says, rubbing his eyes and turning away. “Shit, Steve. I’m sorry.”

He fingers the bony ridges, following the tight spiral. Like a goat or a ram. The horns erupt from his temples and end in a sharp point just behind Bucky’s ears.

Outraged, Bucky searches through the bars for someone he can blame. A guard is watching him, naked disgust on his face.

“What purpose do these possibly serve?”

The guard responds in Russian, a long string of bubbling consonants that Bucky can’t follow. Why did he focus so much on learning French when he should have been studying Russian?

Bucky lifts a hand, signaling that the guard can stop trying. He props himself up against the wall and focuses on his new appendages. The horns don’t seem to be simply attached to his forehead, but rather burst through the skin. 

Bucky takes a deep breath and seizes one with his metal hand--the prosthesis is stronger than his flesh arm. The guard seems to catch on, but can’t get the door open in time to stop him.

Bucky yanks the horn down. He doesn’t manage to rip it off his head, but the bone breaks a bare inch from the base. When the horn cracks open, blood gushes from the root.

The amount startles him. He didn’t expect there to be a large blood vessel inside. Still, he goes for the second one. As the guard is fumbling with the key, Bucky wrenches his left horn off. 

This, too, spouts blood.

The guard rushes to him, repeating something with all the harshness of a swear. He seizes Bucky’s blanket off the bed and crams the fabric against the stump of the horn to stem the bleeding.

“Stupid American,” the Russian mumbles in heavily accented English.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, feeling a little dazed. “I bet that just undid months of work.”

The door to the cell opens and Bucky straightens to standing. He’s learned he can stay still so long as he has an anchor and right now that anchor is the cot that presses against the back of his calf. He watches the Soviet approach with wary eyes, brow lowered. It’s how he deceives them into thinking he’s still sharp.

The Soviet presses a palm to Bucky’s chest. Just a palm, just a press. Not a shove or even a push. All the Soviet has to do is press and Bucky stumbles back, landing on the cot.

Shit.

The Soviet smiles. He calls out to his buddies in the hall. They swarm into the cell to crowd around Bucky. One of them grabs Bucky by the jaw, bites something out in Russian, and spits directly into Bucky’s eye. Another reaches out and rubs the saliva down Bucky’s face with the heel of his gloved palm.

There could be three of them. There could be thirty. Bucky’s head is filled to the brim with static. He can’t focus. They wanted him like this. They did something to him to make him like this.

Bucky can’t let them know how bad it is.

When a Soviet steps in close to tug at Bucky’s eyelids, Bucky kicks him directly in the diaphragm. Hard enough to knock the breath from him. Hard enough to send him staggering back as if shot.

That horrendous cramping is back in his gut. So, Bucky smiles, his easiest most natural grin, because that’s what he does when he’s in a tight spot.

Even as a Soviet rolls up his sleeve and drives a sucker punch directly into his stomach. It’s as if he punched the whole room into spinning. His head whirls. Vomit threatens his esophagus, but this, too, Bucky smothers down.