In the Rain--a Dawson/Jared fanfic

More con stories tomorrow, if I can remember them. In the meantime, this is for a friend, who might need it:

In the Rain--a Behind the Curtain Ficlet

A funeral, on any day, was the worst day ever.

The rain and the mud didn't even made it worse--it just reassured everybody that the small coffin was just as painful, just as tragic, as any onlooker could imagine.

Dawson stood next to Jared in the pouring rain and held the umbrella over their heads, while Jared clutched his cane and scowled into the gray muddle of somber faces. Dawson had no idea what he was thinking.

The child had been in Jared's special night class--her heart had given out suddenly, and her parents were devastated. Dawson hadn't known her--he volunteered with another class--but Darian had, and she was sobbing in Benji's arms next to them.

But Jared wasn't crying. Just that impassive scowl into the rain.

For the last week, he'd been like that. A ghost dancer in their apartment. He'd made dinner when it was his night, he'd done the dishes, paid the bills--even come to a show Dawson and Benji had been running.

But there had been no sudden smiles, no quiet laughter.

It was like the heart of him had always been meant to be here. In the rain. And Dawson wanted to scream.  He didn't though--just held the umbrella over his head and shivered.

The graveside service ended, and people trudged back to their cars, Dawson keeping the umbrella steady as Jared concentrated on not slipping in the mud. When they got to Dawson's car--a Chevy Impala as an upgrade to the Toyota that had pretty much rolled over and died--Jared got in silently and Dawson closed the door behind him before moving around to the driver's side. Once he sat down and started the car, he asked, "Whereto?"

He expected to hear, "Home!" but Jared surprised him.

"The zoo," he said.

"Really? In this--"

"Please?"

"Alrighty then."  Dawson didn't mention they were both in their best wool suits, or that their overcoats had soaked through. He didn't mention the umbrella still sopping wet in the back of the car. He just drove to the freeway and then the fifteen minutes to the zoo.

Of course it was practically empty, and Dawson had no idea what the person at the entrance thought of two grown men in funeral suits buying tickets, but he followed Jared as he walked to the giant bird pond near the front. After a moment of trying to figure out what his boyfriend was thinking, Dawson looked out at the birds.

And was surprised.

"This is the best day in the world for them," he said, surprised a little. Flamingos, it turned out, gave zero fucks about the rain. The ducks loved it. The other birds were fairly amused.

"Glad it's good for somebody," Jared said, also sounding surprised. He turned then and walked, to ignoring the reptile cage--thank God, although there was a giant gorilla in a sweatshirt and jeans with a teeny excited girl heading that way, because apparently Dawson and Jared weren't the only nut jobs in the rain.  Instead, though, they went to the red panda enclosure--and the pandas were draped about in the rain, seemingly oblivious.

The monkeys didn't mind it either.

In fact, nobody seemed to mind the rain, not even the two dumb humans trying desperately to stay under the umbrella.

At the end of the walk, Jared turned toward the bonobo cages and smiled a little. "She always wanted to dance like animals," he said randomly--maybe the second thing he'd said all day.

"Yeah? Which ones?"

"Depended on the day. Some days she wanted to dance like flamingos. Some days it was leopards. Some days it was zebras. And she'd tell me and Darian stories about why she was making her body go like the leopard or the zebra or the flamingo. And we'd look forward to it, you know?"

"I bet," Dawson said, heart aching. He'd heard them talking about this kid, Megan. But he hadn't heard this.

"And that last day, she wanted to dance like a turtle. Slow. and she wobbled her body back and forth. And she might not have felt s good, because she was slow all day, but we said it was okay, everybody got a turtle day."

Oh Jared. "You couldn't have known," Dawson said softly.

"I know. I mean, me and Darian, we were one part of her life, all week. But... but I like to think we were a part she looked forward to."

"Of course you were."  All the kids loved their studio. They had enough students that Jared was hiring another former dancer to come in on the nights he couldn't. Elena was a nice lady, with an orthopedist husband and a new daughter and an impossibly big Italian family--but she hadn't been there for this.

Jared let out a sigh, and wrapped his free hand around Dawson's waist, leaning his head on his shoulder. Dawson wrapped his arm around his shoulders and nuzzled his hair.

"I'm going to miss her," Jared said, voice breaking.

"I know, baby. I'm so sorry."

"Thanks for coming," Jared whispered.

"Where else would I be?"

There was nowhere else to be.  They stood there until Jared started to shiver, watching the monkeys play in the rain.

"Come on, baby," Dawson said, tugging gently. "Someday you'll see a kid dancing and it'll be a monkey day or a flamingo day, and you'll be okay again. And you'll remember Megan and it won't hurt."

"Yeah."

But Jared didn't move until Dawson cupped his wet cheek and pulled him in for a salty kiss. Dawson pulled back. "Someday, we'll come back here in the sunshine, and we'll teach your other kids how to dance like a turtle."

Jared nodded. "Promise?"

And Dawson heard it, the need to know that not all days would be this sad. Dawson had always been the one who could see sunshine in their future. He hadn't ever realized that was a gift, that it would define him, as an adult, as a lover, but here, now, looking at Jared's mercury blue eyes pleading for solace, he realized that it was his most precious commodity. His professor had once said he'd "earned his charmed life"--he hadn't ever known what that meant until now.

He found optimism and hope on this shitty day, and breathed it into Jared's tired heart.

He pulled back and smiled. "I promise. Let's go get warm, baby. Let's watch Animal Planet videos and make up dances for all your kids, okay? Your friend doesn't have to be gone forever, not when she's bringing you joy in your heart, right?"

Jared nodded, shaking a little. "Right."

Dawson guided him back to the car and when they got home, he set water heating for hot chocolate before he joined Jared in the shower.

Warmth seeped into their bones gradually, and soon the two of them were on the couch, cradling their chocolate, doing what Dawson had promised. Amber joined them, having spent the time after the funeral with Darian and Benji, and as they watched bonobos gambol across the screen, she looked up at Jared. "Why don't you ever make a dance like that?" she asked.

"Planning on it," Jared told her, leaning his head against Dawson's chest. Later, they would make love, very quietly, and Dawson would remember those moments, looking at the animals in the rain. The world sucked sometimes, in the cruelest ways. The fact that the human heart could be patched together again and again and again every time it was broken was one of the only reasons Dawson's lover was still walking around.

Dawson was grateful that he was the one with the duct tape and the glue to help Jared patch things up again. He didn't trust anybody else with the job.

Fanfic Friday--Stucky: Some... Day....

Okay-- so I wonder sometimes when I'm doing the Fanfic Friday-- OMG-- what if I love that bit? What if I decide to use it someday in my published writing? Will my readers hold that against me?  And, for those of you who are interested, I also wonder what would happen if I ever wrote a story about two older law enforcement types getting together when they had adult children at home. Because, the more I write Cartinski, the more fun a story like that seems like it would be.

Anyway--so, given that I have no ideas how readers will react to that, I think it's only fair to tell you: I DO plan to use the "Some... Day..." idea someday. Because one of my favorite movies of ALL THE DAMN TIMES has been LadyHawke. And when Rutger Hauer said this line in that movie, ALL THE THINGS IN THE WORLD just... stopped. Held their breath. And we all wanted to know what could cause Navarre so much pain.

So, probably not in an easily recognizable form... but, you know... some... day...

(Also... I apologize for it being so short--I may have mentioned "Drabble" in the labels?)

*  *  *

Steve watched dispassionately as the cybernetics-enhanced body thrashed against the vibranium-reinforced hospital bed. His own wounds--wrenched shoulder, broken nose, bruised internal organs, broken ribs, cracked hip-- were all healing ahead of schedule, because hey! Those were just the Captain America perks!

The Winter Soldier had the same perks it seemed--except, while Steve had come out of his anesthetic well ahead of schedule, the same way he healed...

Bucky-- or the man left inside his shell--was struggling. Going deeper and deeper inside his head each day.

"Maybe," Fury said, during one of his quiet periods where he'd only lain there, twitching, "he just needs to realize that what's out here isn't going to beat him, drug him, and destroy what's left of the man inside."

"That's very wise," Steve said, so dryly he couldn't differentiate his despair form his sarcasm. "I'll let you know if we find a way to tell him."

His response had been a hard squeeze of his shoulder, and then Fury had left.

And Sam had taken his place.

Steve had given him a sideways glance, wondering how he felt about this. He'd helped Steve take Bucky down--he'd heard their final words, screamed just before Sam had fired the vibranium-fiber snare.

Why can't you just let me go!

Because I loved you--I loved you with all that was inside me. I can't let ME go--and you never gave up on me, Bucky-- not once! 

He'd been falling down, in pain--just like their previous encounter, only this time, he had the teeniest bit of hope that he wouldn't die.

And that's when Sam had fired the snare.  One of the weights had gone awry, almost smashing Bucky's head--and another had shattered Steve's femur.

But the fight was over. Bucky was anesthetized, Steve was healing.

Sam was... quiet.

"What?" Steve said after an hour of just sitting there, watching Bucky twitch.

"I can't let you go either," Sam said.

Steve looked at him in surprise. "I'm sorry?"

"You think I don't know what's at stake, you tracking him across the known universe. Risking your life--again--to come up against him. You think I'm fooled? YOu're just here for your 'friend'?"

He had no answer to that, so he studied his hands instead.

"You're here for him in the same way I"m here for you," Sam said, and that--that came as a shock when it shouldn't have.  Steve almost broke something twisting around in his chair, and Sam's defiant, tortured eyes met his.

They were red-rimmed, and Sam's mouth trembled.

"Sam..."

"Shut up," Sam muttered. "I'm just here."

"But what if--"

"I don't care if he wakes up and wants you right here and now."  Sam's voice shook. "You are not the same person. He may have known you then, but I know you now. And now is what you need."

Steve couldn't seem to get a handle on his jaw--it wobbled up and down, and his breathing started coming in short pants, hurting his side.

"What if I can't?" he asked finally, but his voice was weak, and he had to stare at Bucky to make sure he remembered every detail of that dear, alien face.

"You will," Sam said, the confidence inches voice giving Steve something to cling to. "Someday."

*  *  *  *

Bucky Barnes remembered the first time he looked at Steve Rogers and thought he was beautiful.

Steve had gotten the shit kicked out of him--again--for defending somebody who didn't need defending--again.  Bucky pulled him out of the trash pile, wiping blood from his nose and shaking blond hair from enormous eyes, glaring at Bucky and daring him to say anything, anything at all, about his fifty-billionth fight.

Bucky hadn't been able to. "Jesus, kid. Do you even remember how to hold up your left?"

Steve held his fists up, just like Bucky had showed him. A righteous bruise was blooming along the outside of Steve's arm. Yeah-- he'd held up his left, and it had gotten battered to hell.  Bucky had taken him home then--Bucky's home, where his mom let him use the bathtub, and then given him some of Bucky's little brother's clothes to wear.

Bucky had walked into the bathroom just as Steve had stood up, water sluicing from his scrawny chest and delicate waist and flanks, and it should have been no big deal.  Skinny naked guy-- they'd seen each other without clothes since they'd been first graders, fighting back to back in PS 12.

But this time, he'd stood up, and Bucky had seen his bruises first, beauties, all of them, from his shoulders to his jutting hipbone.

Then he'd seen the milk-pale skin, and then he'd seen his graceful, almost dancelike movements, and then he'd seen...

Those enormous eyes, staring at him in confusion.

"Buck? You got clothes for me?"

Bucky had cleared his throat and ignored the flush took over his body, and thrust his armload of clothes into Steve's arms and then turned to exit the bathroom like the fiends of hell were after him.

And now, locked into the horrible, recursive hell of doctors, probes, brainwashes, rinsing away Bucky and leaving only Soldier, it felt like every atom of his being was running through the molasses of time go get back that moment. that moment, when Steve's body was new and beautiful to him, and the possibilities of them touching had seemed... endless.

So when the anesthesia threatened to wear off, and consciousness threatened to overwhelm him, with a new world, a new directive, a new Steve, one in a perfect body and a new uniform and a deep, bitter anger against the powers that forged them both--that was what he struggled against.

He wanted to go back, back... to that moment in the hotel room in France, when they'd both forgotten who they were supposed to be and were only hands on bodies, aching pleasure, the subsumation of each of their strong, dominant personalities into the well-being of the other.

He arched off the hospital bed, fighting the newness, the present age, the reality he would wake up to.  He fought for that perfect moment, that exact pitch in time, when he touched Steve Roger's skin, and all of that sweetness, that strength and innocence, had been his for the taking.

Some... day...

What Things Do You Know

Okay all-- here we go. Thanks to Jules Who Loves Books and Mary-my-Mary, today's choice is STUCKY!

For those who don't know, this is Captain America (Steve Rogers) and Bucky Buchanan (The Winter Soldier.)

I don't know any more of the canon than we've seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so that's what I stuck with here.

Did I say it was angsty?

Yeah-- bring tissues:

*  *  *

Bucky knew three things were true:

He was a soldier of the United States Government.

He loved his country, his mother, and Brooklyn.

He'd gone down on Steve Rogers before the guy had become a freakshow of muscles, and as the slender, fragile body had arched in his arms, spattering semen down Bucky's throat in Steve's virgin cum, he had fallen so deeply in love with another human being that to yank that out was to destroy the best part of who he was.

The hydra officer looked into his eyes and clamped the final binding into place before checking all of the sinister red lights on his control panel.

"So," the officer said, mask in place and only eyes made bulbous and frog like by spectacles giving him any semblance of humanity, "You seem to have a strong sense of self."

Bucky laughed.  Yeah, they'd managed the vibranium horror show of an arm--he'd taken out the first three doctors to try to make him test it, though, hadn't he?

"I can fuck up anything you throw at me," he dared.

But a part of him was afraid. God, what if he lost what he knew to be true?  He was proud to be a soldier, proud of his country, proud of his mother and Brooklyn--

Proud of those stolen moments, Steve's limpid eyes looking at him like he'd hung the sun and the moon and the stars. Proud of the moments in a flophouse in France, where Steve had put down the shield and Bucky had touched every new muscle in wonder.

I bet you think you should top now, doncha big guy?

No, Bucky. I want you inside me, always.

Steve's chest had felt hard and certain under Bucky's hands, his nipples pointed and oh-so-sensitive. Bucky had kneaded the thick muscles of his flank and ass before going down and tasting his asshole.  He'd thrown Steve around and back against the bed, hungering for his cock again, longer this time, thicker, but still Steve's. Bucky was a visceral guy, he needed to touch, needed to taste, needed to have Steve's hands on his skin, making the whole thing real.

But in the end, Bucky thrusting inside that perfect body, it had been Steve's blue eyes, gazing at him wide and full love wonder, because he, James Buchanan, had taken that body and made it sing, made it buck and heave and cum.  

Bucky's orgasm threw him forward, and when Steve spurted between them, Bucky had wanted to roll in it. He wanted Steve on his skin for always.

He wasn't giving that shit up, no way, no how-- he was from Brooklyn, dammit!

The Hydra Officer gave him a bored look and hit the big red button. The six stainless steel hypodermic needles all thrust into his skin at once and the plungers depressed.

Bucky began to scream.

*  *  *

Bucky knew three things…

Wait… he was from Brooklyn.  He was in the army.  Who's? The United States of Hydra.  Who's? The United Hydras.  Who's Army, Soldier, Who's army are you in? 

Hydra's Army, sir!

Bucky knew three things…

He was in Hydra's army.

Hydra was his mother.

Hydra was his home.

He didn't love to need anyone because--

Because those eyes, blue and limpid, looked at him like the sun and the moon and the stars.

"Who's army are you in, Soldier?"

"Hydra's."

"Who's army do you love, Soldier?"

"Hydra's?"

"Where is your home, Soldier?"

"Hydra!"

Don't ask me about my soul, because my soul is in the taste of cum in a flophouse in France. My soul is in my best friend's body as I climax and shatter into a million pieces, made whole again in his eyes. Don't ask me about my soul. You don't know me. 

"Is he completely ours, Doctor?"

"There is something in his eyes…"

"But you have taken all the measures, have you not?"

"Jawol! But there is something we don't know how to ask."

"If we don't know how to ask it, it must not exist. Now send him out…"

The taste of cum… a flophouse in France… my best friend's body, tender, fragile, a human tank… climax, light shattering in my head, made whole again in his eyes.

"Treat him again!"

cum… France… body, tender, fragile, human… climax… light… made whole again in his eyes.

"Again!"

cum… tender… fragile… human… climax…dark… made whole again in his eyes…

"Again!"

Oh please… let me just remember… I can remember Steve's eyes.

"Again!"

Steve's eyes, his cock in my throat… his body arching--

"Bucky? Is that you?"

Fight. Fight. Muscles bunching, vibranium arm flexing, eyes intent only on target. Kill target, Captain America, blond, beautiful, the symbol of all Hydra wanted to destroy, lines of fatigue and sadness in the corners of his eyes, bitterness around his full mouth.

This man knew the taste of betrayal, of trampled dreams, of despair.

Kill him.

"I won't fight you!"

Then die.

And the battle rages.  Don't look at me with those eyes. YOu don't know me. I am three things. I am a member of Hydra's army. I love my captors. Hydra is my home. 

"Then kill me."

And Soldier watches him hurtle out of the disintegrating ship, eyes limpid and betrayed, beggared of all faith.

STeve's eyes in a flophouse in France, the taste of his cum, that knowledge that Bucky Buchanan had owned his body, held his heart in soul in the palm of his hand.  

"Steve!"

*  *  *

His body was tender, fragile, made of muscles and bone.  Bucky was the monster, more machine than man. Bucky needed to rescue, needed to see him breathe.

You looked at me and owned my soul with your eyes. 

I need to see what you see.

I need to find my soul.

*  *  *

Steve Rogers coughed up water and turned over, vomiting more.

I saw him. I saw him. I know three things.

My name is Steve Rogers.  I love my country, Brooklyn, and the Avengers.
My best friend took my virginity when we were away at war. I gave him my soul in my eyes, in my body, in my cum. He holds it in the palm of his hand.

I need him to come back, because he holds my soul.