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The Soldier watched through the scope of his rifle as the target moved along the street, patiently waiting for the perfect moment to pull the trigger. That was bound to be one of the easiest missions ever assigned to him: the target was only a civilian, some kind of activist that accidentally got in Hydra’s way without even realizing it. The old Director wouldn’t have bothered with someone so unimportant, but the new one was stupidly paranoid and wanted him gone.
And not in a discreet, tasteful way, of course not. No poison, no pillow over the face as he slept, nothing like that.
No, the death of Steven Grant Roger had to be an execution. A public one, of course. So that everyone would know that Hydra was sending a message. Completely unnecessary, in his opinion, but no one ever bothered to ask him.
(Sometimes the Soldier felt the strong impulse to strangle his superiors.)
And it was thanks to that series of stupid, nonsensical decisions that now the Soldier was lying on the roof of an apartment complex in Brooklyn, ready to hit a moving target in the middle of the street. His black uniform wasn’t exactly comfortable under the burning sun and coupled with his metal arm he was pretty sure he was practically baking in there.
Finally – finally! – the target reached the position and the Soldier pulled the trigger.
It was supposed to be a perfect headshot, clean through the center of the forehead. The Soldier never missed. Instead, the bullet flew so high it didn’t even ruffle the target’s hair and buried itself in the side of a building. No one noticed it.
The Soldier’s eyes widened. He checked the rifle, but it was fine, it hadn’t been tampered with. And he knew his aim was perfect. The heat must have gone to his head. But he wouldn’t miss again.
Hidden from sight on the fire escape, the Soldier watched as the target left his home. He was almost prickling with trepidation. He smiled from behind his mask as the target climbed on his bike and started the engine.
The bomb didn’t go off. The smile fell from the Soldier’s lips.
He followed the target, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, keeping pace easily thanks to New York’s ever-present traffic. He expected the bomb to go off any moment now, delayed by some malfunction in the primer or something like that – and, to be fair, it went off, but only when the target had already parked and was several feet away, enough to get out totally unscathed.
The Soldier gritted his teeth. Coincidence. Blind luck. The mission was taking longer than expected.
Since bullets and bombs didn’t have the desired effect, the Soldier decided it was time for a more direct approach and slipped in the target’s home in the middle of the night, a knife in each hand. A man butchered in his own house was message enough, in his practical opinion. Maybe he was even going to draw Hydra’s symbol on the wall with blood, just to avoid miscommunications.
The target was sleeping in the bed, lying on his back, calm and unaware. The Soldier was going to kill him before cutting him up in pieces, of course, he wasn’t a monster. He held no love for torture.
He raised one of his knives and slit the target’s throat. Or at least, that had been his intention – but the blade glided over the man’s skin, leaving no marks. He tried the other knife: same outcome. And yet he had sharpened them himself just that afternoon.
Giving up on the blades he wrapped his left hand around the target’s neck with the intention of snapping it. The mechanisms froze up. Frowning, the Soldier moved away his hand and effortlessly made a fist. But when he tried to grab and squeeze the target’s neck it froze again, fingers suddenly rigid and unable to move.
He was getting frustrated and it was only thanks to a miracle that the target hadn’t woken up yet.
He switched hands, used his right. What should’ve been an inescapable deadly grip became, against his will, a gentle caress. The Soldier grabbed with that same hand the nearest object: a pencil abandoned on the nightstand. The wood splintered between his fingers, the noise muffled by his glove. He let the pieces fall to the floor and went back to grasping the pale, fragile neck of his target. But his hand refused to tighten its grip. Instead, he found himself tracing the man’s jawline with his thumb.
The Soldier jerked back like he got burned and glared at his hand, feeling betrayed. What was wrong with him? Why was he unable to complete such a simple mission?
He raised his left fist, but when he was about to smash it into the target’s face moving became impossible. He grabbed a gun, not caring anymore about the noise it would’ve made. He pulled the trigger and it jammed.
A frustrated growl escaped his lips; the target’s eyes flew open, bright blue in the darkness, confusion melting into shock. The Soldier swore at him in Romanian and jumped out of the window.
After that, he studied his target a little better. Maybe he had some kind of power – the Soldier had heard of a mutant able to manipulate probability in their own favor, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if his target had a similar power considering his stupidly unbelievable luck.
But Steven Grant Rogers was nothing special. He was just some kid from Brooklyn. A thin, sickly guy with asthma and a faulty heart. A guy that, with his medical conditions and his tendency to fight everything that moved, should have been dead at least a dozen times – before the Soldier was ordered to eliminate him. But he was still alive. Somehow.
The working theory that Rogers had everything except good luck was confirmed when, a few days later, two guys armed with blades and high on who-knows-what tried to rob him.
Tried to, because the target didn’t do the smart thing and gave them what they wanted to save his own skin, but instead raised his fists and gritted his teeth and dared the men to come and get it.
The Soldier sighed. He watched the first five seconds of the scuffle, bored, then he caught a glimpse of metal and decided he’d had enough. He couldn’t let some random thug kill his target, now, could he? That would look really unprofessional, and no one would have taken him seriously anymore.
So he glided down the side of the building and landed gracefully – and stylishly, of course, he wasn’t an amateur – between the target and the two guys, who must have been either really stupid or really high. Probably both, because finding themselves face-to-face with the Winter Soldier they still didn’t figure out it was time to find another hobby. Instead, they laughed and tried to stab him. The Soldier threw them against the wall.
“Hey!” The target grabbed his arm, pulling so he would turn around. He didn’t look happy, not one bit – oh no, he was furious. Clearly he didn’t care much about living. “I was taking care of it!”
The Soldier pulled off his goggles just to glare skeptically at him.
The target reciprocated his glare. “I had them on the ropes,” he declared, irritated, crossing his scrawny arms against his chest. “And by the way, where did you came from?” He looked the Soldier up and down, frowning at his uniform. “Call of Duty?”
This was useless. Wasted time. And the target wasn’t supposed to see him, it wasn’t included in the mission’s parameters – but after all, that mission had been FUBAR since the start.
Dutifully, but half-heartedly, the Soldier raised one of his guns and tried to land a bullet between those baby blues, which for a single moment were clouded by a flash of fear. That fear evaporated like it’d never existed when the Soldier pulled the trigger and absolutely nothing happened.
The target raised his chin, almost a challenge: “Very scary,” was his comment, not scared at all.
When he turned it against the wall, the gun fired perfectly. But when he turned it back on the target… nada.
Frustrated, the Soldier threw the damned thing at his face – missing him by a mile. He had nothing left to do but retreat.
(He was pretty sure that Rogers had been struggling not to laugh at him, but he really didn’t want to think about that. How embarrassing.)
He needed to change tactics. What kind of professional assassin was he, that he couldn’t even kill some random asthmatic kid who had nothing special in his whole scrawny, sick body? But he wouldn’t give up, of course not. Clearly killing Rogers in a direct way couldn’t work, so he figured out a new plan while putting his shattered pride back together.
If he couldn’t kill Rogers, he would make it so that he killed himself – his body was surviving on pure stubbornness and probably spite, how hard could that be?
Harder than expected.
Scaring him to death wasn’t an option, because Rogers was a complete idiot and didn’t fear him; his threats didn’t make him tremble and a gun to the face barely made him blink – almost as if he could sense that there was no real danger.
Feeling cornered, the Soldier made a strategic choice that could have possibly ruined everything but also helped him finally complete his mission: he went undercover.
He adopted the identity of James Barnes, American, twenty-eight, freelance translator for publishing companies so small and obscure that no one would have bothered to check, gay, attracted to blonde twinks with blue eyes and a feisty personality that were too stubborn to die. Oddly specific, maybe, but functional.
Rogers had never seen his face and could’ve never recognized him in civilian’s clothes. And that was how the operation take the target to bed and get him so excited his heart gives out began. Seduction, to be a little briefer.
Approaching Rogers was laughably easy, and so was starting a conversation. The Soldier used all his arsenal: he put on hipster glasses and looked at the target with hooded eyes, licked and bit his bottom lip to appear shy but seductive at the same time, played with a lock of hair as he smiled at Rogers and subtly flexed his muscles. Skinny jeans that hugged his thighs and ass and a shirt so tight it was almost bursting – his left arm was disguised as a normal arm thanks to a special synthetic cover.
The Soldier knew he had a good face, a muscled and athletic body. He knew how to make himself look irresistible.
In the beginning Rogers seemed confused. Not excited, or intrigued, not even curious – just confused. The Soldier’s confidence faded a bit: a straight man was more difficult to seduce, he could do it, but he didn’t like that kind of mission.
But then Rogers began to smile back. He began to blush, and to bite his inner cheek, and to stare for a second too long at the Soldier’s plush lips. He didn’t protest when the Soldier offered to walk him home, and even asked him to come up with him, and as soon as the door was closed behind them he grabbed him and made him lean down so they could enthusiastically kiss.
The Soldier smiled, pleased: finally that damned mission would end.
He didn’t really enjoy the sex, too busy monitoring Rogers’ body. He always kept a hand on a major vein or artery – on the neck while they were kissing, on the thigh as he lowered his head between the other man’s legs, around the wrist as Rogers rode him – and always listened to his breathing, waiting for a hitch.
Beneath his fingers, Rogers’ heartbeat was faster than a bird’s, but strong. When Rogers came he stopped breathing – and the Soldier too held his breath, hopeful – but started back up after a moment. It felt really disheartening. Was he starting to lose his touch?
“How do you feel?” he asked when they were finished, and instead of answering Rogers got comfortable against his side and hugged him, laying his head on the Soldier’s chest.
“Never been better,” he eventually declared with a happy little smile, deciding to settle down and take a nap on the Soldier. Maybe he would have died in his sleep. It could happen.
But just to make sure… “We should do it again,” the Soldier said, brushing his fingers through the other man’s hair. “Often. Passionately.”
Rogers smiled and pressed a small kiss to the Soldier’s chin. “You’ll end up killing me.”
Well, one could always hope.
And that was how the Winter Soldier accidentally found himself a boyfriend.
It would have been funny, except it wasn’t. The Soldier wasn’t amused at all.
It didn’t matter where they had sex, how often or how intense, for how long or in which position, vertical or horizontal or suspended, how acrobatic or creative, kinky or vanilla – Rogers refused to die from it.
And the Soldier was still unable to harm him: his weapons stopped working if pointed at Rogers and his muscles became so weak his every touch turned into a caress.
He turned to the internet for answers but the only possible explanations he found were old fairy tales about Soulmates and stupid stories like that.
He was getting desperate.
He had tried pushing Rogers under a train and ended up hugging him; he’d tried to drown him while they were bathing together in the tub and found himself receiving a very nice massage; he’d tried to trip him in the shower so he would crack his head open on the tiles and Rogers had taken it as an invite to kneel between his legs and take the situation in his lovely and capable hands. The Soldier was running out of ideas – both inside and outside the bedroom.
As if all those misfortunes weren’t enough, he was pretty sure Rogers was falling in love with him.
(Hydra sent some agents to check what was taking him so long. The Soldier took care of them: he had a mission to complete and couldn’t afford any distractions of any kind.)
On the last days of June, they went to Coney Island for a… date. They went on the rides and bought unhealthy food from the stands and, in the afternoon, they walked down to the beach to swim.
He distracted Rogers with chit-chats and kisses and smiles while they swam farther and farther from the shore, where the water was deep and the waves rippled the surface and the currents pulled toward the open sea. He always kept himself just a few inches out of reach, pretending to play, feeling like a siren luring its prey to their inevitable doom with sweet words and a song full of promises.
Rogers suddenly pushed forward and the Soldier slid away just in time, slipping from his fingers. “Are you running from me, Buck?” Rogers asked, eyes bright and full of trust, a bit breathless. “I’m gonna catch you.”
The Soldier laughed, heart beating in his throat. “You can try,” he challenged, then frowned and put on a concerned expression, pitching his voice accordingly: “Maybe we should go back to the beach, you look tired-”
As expected, he’d barely managed to finish the sentence and Rogers was already cutting him off: “I’m okay.” Too proud to live.
Biting his lip, the Soldier smiled sweetly and said: “You know, I’ve already planned what we’re gonna do once we’re home.”
“Yeah?” Rogers lost his focus for a moment and the current dragged him down, pushing a wave over his head. He resurfaced right away, coughing and giggling at the same time, completely oblivious to the danger he was in, and jokingly glared at the Soldier: “Don’t distract me!”
“Ooops.” The Soldier swam a little farther, inviting Rogers – who was having trouble keeping water out of his mouth – to chase after him. His movements had considerably slowed down, lips thinning with the effort of staying afloat. The Soldier reached him with a single stroke, grabbed his hips and kissed him, taking his breath away. “Let’s go back to shore, I’m exhausted.” He smiled at him and turned, starting to swim towards the beach.
He’d barely covered a dozen feet before a “Bucky, wait!” made him turn around: just in time to see the target’s head slip under the surface. A few seconds passed and the target resurfaced for barely enough time to take one desperate lungful of salty air, eyes wide, just to be dragged back down by the invisible force of sea currents and his own fatigue.
The Soldier counted each second, and waited. Finally his mission would be over. He struggled to remember why he wanted to complete it, but after all remembering had never been his thing – killing was his thing. He’d drowned people before, so he knew what to expect: with that particular target five minutes would’ve been enough, maybe even less. And he didn’t even have to keep him down.
Finally he could go back to his usual life. That mission had lasted so long that he barely remembered how things were before Rogers, before dates and dinners and long walks hand-in-hand, before kisses and caresses and nights spent together…
For some stupid, useless, inane reason he too was feeling breathless.
He glimpsed a hand just under the surface and without thinking he pushed forward, grabbed it with his own and pulled. A thin body rose into his arms, face even paler than usual, eyes and lips tightly shut. The Soldier held him close to himself, keeping the both of them afloat with just his leg’s work, and patted his back as he coughed out the water he had breathed.
“For a second-” Steve coughed again; his whole body was shaking, thanks to the fright and the shock. He was gripping the Soldier’s shoulders like the anchor they were. “For a second I thought you would’ve let me drown.”
“I thought you were faking,” the Soldier replied, making his voice small and shaky. “I thought it was just a joke.”
Steve seemed about to say something. But then he shook his head and sighed: “Let’s go home.”
That night the Soldier stayed awake for a long time, lying in his target’s bed and listening as he breathed.
He needed to end that mission, one way or another. No. The mission could end only in one way. He was the Winter Soldier. Missions were his everything, were his life, the reason for his existence. He couldn’t forget that.
And failing a mission meant… No. It could only end in one way.
“You’re distracted,” Rogers murmured. He pressed a kiss against his bare chest, just above the heart. “Penny for your thoughts?”
The Soldier wrapped his fingers around the other’s nape. After all that time things hadn’t changed: he was still physically unable to tighten his hold, to break or snap. “We should go to the river tomorrow night, to see the fireworks,” he said, turning the umpteenth failed try into a caress. “It’s your birthday. We should celebrate.”
“Yeah?” Rogers didn’t sound convinced. “The river will be packed, everyone’s gonna go there.”
A crowd, people crammed together. The perfect place to get overwhelmed, especially if you had a weak heart like Rogers. Or get hurt somehow.
The Soldier pulled Rogers’ mouth against his own. “I’m sure I can persuade you,” he promised. “It will be fun, Stevie, come on. I’ll take you to dinner in this hipster place you’ll surely like, and we can share a dessert or five…”
“I don’t need big things,” Rogers replied, smiling. “I’ll be happy to have my boyfriend with me for the whole day.”
The Soldier rolled his eyes. “You’re such a sap. Alright, I’ll even bring you breakfast in bed…”
Laughing, Rogers hit him in the face with a pillow: “Dumbass.”
Fireworks went off over their heads, red white and blue, a shower of sparks that made the crowd point and smile.
Rogers tightened his hold on the Soldier’s hand, face turned up to look at the sky, blue eyes shimmering from the colorful lights. It’d been a hot day, and the Soldier had distracted him from drinking enough – only alcoholic beverages, and Rogers was a lightweight – so he was paler than usual, except for his flushed cheeks.
“Did you have fun today?” the Soldier asked him, watching a particularly rowdy group of men nearby. He tried to assess if they were drunk enough to be useful.
“Mmh.” Rogers raised their intertwined hands and kissed the Soldier’s knuckles. “Perfect. Thank you, Buck.”
They stayed quiet for a while, watching the fireworks, and then suddenly Rogers had grabbed both his hands and was looking up at him with some concern.
“I know we’ve been going out together only for a couple of months, and that it’s probably too soon, but…” He smiled, blushing. “Okay, so the alcohol made me bolder, but I swear I’m being one hundred percent honest right now.”
“Just say it, Stevie,” the Soldier cut him off. His heart was beating wildly and he felt… almost afraid. He wasn’t sure what was happening. “Whatever it is you want to tell me.”
Steve got on his tiptoes to kiss him, a chaste and sweet kiss that tasted of the chocolate cupcake they had had for dessert. “I love you,” he whispered. “Bucky Barnes, I’m pretty sure you’re the right one for me.”
Oh. He should’ve seen that coming, but those words surprised him anyway. The mission had gotten way out of his hands. He’d made a mess and his plan for the evening had just been thwarted – because he was not a monster.
All that could only end in one way, but… there would be a better time. A better chance. He didn’t have to end it that day. It was Steve’s birthday, after all. A good day. Planning his death on that very day had been arrogant of him.
“Bucky?” The target was still watching him, frowning, chewing his lip. “Say something. Please?”
The Soldier opened his mouth but words failed him, refusing to come out. He couldn’t bring himself to say I love you, too. He didn’t want to be cruel. It was such a stupid thing if compared to all the other lies he’d already told to maintain his cover but for some reason that one felt important.
Instead of speaking he grabbed Rogers by the sides and lifted him off the ground, pleased when the other man wrapped his thin legs around his waist, and brought their foreheads together. “The day is not over yet,” he said, with a voice that left unsaid the many pleasant things that would follow. “I’m planning a few more surprises for you, Stevie.”
Rogers looked away for a moment, his smile dimmed; but then he was raising an eyebrow and smirking playfully: “Yeah?”
“Hell yeah.” Without putting him down, the Soldier waved through the crowd to get away from the river and hid in an alley to have a little privacy – as much as one could have during the fourth of July in New York City, in the middle of the celebrations. He pushed Rogers up against a wall. “A little exhibitionism, mh? What do you think? Do you like the thrill?”
Instead of answering Steve grabbed a handful of his long hair and kissed him enthusiastically.
At some point during all that the Soldier’s left hand ended up wrapped around the target’s throat, almost a muscle reflex by now, but instead of withdrawing or batting him away Rogers looked him straight in the eyes and, pupils wide, face flushed, he said: “Harder, daddy.”
It was only thanks to a miracle that the Soldier’s heart didn’t explode out of his chest.
The summer flew past and Rogers was still alive, and happy.
They were living together now, him and the Soldier, ate together and slept together and went out together and in the evening they lay on the sofa to watch TV and kiss and cuddle. They spent a lot of time together, but despite that the mission was still incomplete.
It wasn’t as if the Soldier was ignoring his duty, it was just… he hadn’t found the right moment just yet.
(Hydra had sent more people. The Soldier had taken care of them. It felt so good to finally kill someone, after all that time.)
Autumn came around, and Rogers got ill.
“It’s nothing, really, every year it’s the same,” he reassured him, just a moment before bending over and beginning to violently cough. He blinked, surprised, at the blood now staining the palm of his hand. “Okay, maybe it’s a bit worse than usual.”
The Soldier was not happy. At all. He dragged Rogers to the hospital, ignoring his protests – the little punk still swore up and down that it was nothing serious, he was an expert in his own health, it was just a seasonal illness – where the doctors diagnosed him with pneumonia, and checked him in.
The night was full of noises in there: the machinery’s buzzing, the nurses’ steps down the hallways, sheets rustling as patients moved around, distant voices. Steve’s labored breaths.
He seemed so much smaller, so frail, laid in that bed and surrounded with pillows and blankets. (At home their bedsheets were blue with small red stars. In there everything was so white and impersonal). As he was falling asleep he had taken the Soldier’s hand hostage and hadn’t released it yet. He was stuck there.
(He wasn’t sure he would’ve been capable of leaving, even if he’d been free to go.)
The doctors had told him that it was possible for Steve’s lungs to completely give out. To be ready. Just in case…
He had already killed in a hospital. Quietly, in his victim’s sleep, with that typical sterile smell surrounding him.
It wasn’t the way to die. Not for his small, fiery blondie, so stubborn and brave. Not for Steve.
No, Steve was meant to die by his hand. It was the only acceptable possibility. He couldn’t remember why, or the face of the man who had given him that mission. He didn’t know what he would have done after; but the need to complete it grew stronger and stronger each day.
For the moment, he couldn’t do a thing. Except raising Steve’s limp hand to his mouth, and wait.
That man was too stubborn to let a stupid pneumonia kill him. He wanted to go back home as soon as the doctors mentioned the possibility, and next thing the Soldier knew they were walking back into their apartment in Brooklyn.
“Finally!” Steve said, immediately skipping into the kitchen. He opened the fridge, glanced inside and shrugged, then turned to smile brightly at the Soldier: “Hey, looks like we’re out of food. Maybe we could order from that place you like, do you remember where you put the number?”
Without warning, without any rational reason, something in the Soldier snapped. That mission had gone on for far too long.
The target’s eyes got wide when the Soldier pushed him up against the wall, but he didn’t look scared. “Buck, slow down.” He coughed a little and smiled fondly. Oblivious. “I can’t do anything too tiring, but if you’re willing to do most of the work…” His mouth snapped shut when he noticed the knife in the Soldier’s left hand. He let out a breath: “Oh.”
“That’s right.” The Soldier bared his teeth in a merciless sneer. “Oh.” And he slit his throat.
He had thought that, now that the target knew, now that he was aware of what was happening, things would have gone differently.
But the blade slid on his skin without damaging it, without harming. Frustrated, the Soldier stabbed it into the wall just beside the head of his target – who was looking at him without moving, without speaking.
“Why don’t you die!” he shouted, and with immense mortification he realized that his eyes were flooding with furious tears. “I tried everything! But. You never. Die!” He took a step backwards, shaking his head.
He had failed. He couldn’t complete his mission.
And then he realized it: not only he couldn’t complete it, he didn’t want to. That realization shattered his every belief, everything he thought he knew, everything he believed was right.
He stumbled back, humiliated, weak, cheeks burning from those tears he hadn’t been able to stop.
The target walked towards him, knife in his hands. The Soldier tried to snap his wrist but his fingers went rigid, his grip was as weak as a newborn’s, and he was helpless before that revenge; he felt the cold blade sliding on his skin, but… pain didn’t follow.
“See?” the target- no, Rogers- no, Steve, Steve said. The knife was thrown away. “We can’t hurt each other. We’re Soulmates.”
“You knew.” The Soldier was having trouble speaking. He touched the skin that should’ve been cut and bleeding but wasn’t: it was whole and smooth. “You knew what my mission was.”
Steve shrugged. “I’m not stupid, I figured that out. Also, your left arm is harder than the right. Metallic.” He trailed his fingers up and down that arm – lightly, gently. “I can do the math.”
“And you stayed. Why?”
“You’re my Soulmate. It’s such a rare thing, I never thought it could happen to me.” The absolute lack of anger was the scariest thing. Steve’s clear eyes met the Soldier’s: “I wasn’t kidding when I said you’re the right one for me. The only one.”
The Winter Soldier had never failed a mission before. But maybe, just once…
“What an idiot,” he snapped, not quite knowing if he was talking about Steve or himself. “I had a perfect score, one hundred percent of pure successes… and then you come along and ruin it.”
“I’m sure you will survive,” Steve replied, rolling his eyes. He leaned forward and kissed the corner of his mouth.
“Yeah.” Bucky smiled. “I’m sure I will.”