Fic: Unwritten postcards
Title: Unwritten postcards
Fandoms: Captain America (movies), The Avengers (2012)
Pairing (ot3): Clint Barton/Natasha Romanoff/James "Bucky" Barnes
Rating: explicit
Genre: introspection, drama, romance, threesome
Warnings: NSFW explicit content, canon compliant violence (implied), implied child abuse.
Disclaimer: I don't own them, but it seems like they own me. I get nothing out of this, but fun.
Summary: Bucky wonders if the real purpose of scars is to remind you that you survived, no matter how you got them, or if you can remember.
Author's notes: written for avngrsrarepair makeout fest, for the prompt "scars". A huge thank you to my beta shenshen77 and to frea_o and ashen_key for awesome brainstorming.
*
There is a long thin line starting at the base of Natasha's neck and ending near her shoulder blade. It's visible only up close, and Bucky needs to be very near to see it - near enough to hear her breathing and smell her hair. ( The first time he traces it with his finger she smiles enigmatically, almost like she's trying to tell him something. She looks so pretty, her hair wet and her eyes tentatively hopeful, and it's one of those moments when he thinks everything could be well at the end.)
Trying to remember things sucks, because it's happening too slowly for his liking. Natasha is still a spider web of mysteries, and if he grasps too tightly, he might break it. Bucky watches her as she unzips her dress and lets it fall down her body, instead of carefully gathering it, a certain sign that she's tired. (This conclusion is based on observation, but Bucky also feels it's something he knows. There's a possibility that it's a memory. He's not sure but calls it a win in his mind and works his way out of the dress shirt he was wearing for the occasion. He kind of likes these missions that allow him to dress nicely, even if he spends most of the time observing.)
“That was a pretty boring party,” Bucky says, pausing before he gets rid of his shirt. Natasha's half smile in the mirror feels like muscle memory. He has no idea where he'd seen it first or how and when it became a backdrop to his mind, but it did. He takes off his shirt and a faded cut low on his abdomen catches his eye. It's a striking mark on him, but he has no idea how it got there.
“Luckily for us,” Natasha adds, unceremoniously tossing her bra away. That provides a nice distraction from staring at his scar, but then he remembers there's a small cut just under Natasha's left breast. He has no idea how she got it, he just knows it's there. Each time he kisses her he finds it, stretching her skin like an unnatural smile. “I'm very okay with a boring party and no need to run from people pointing guns at me. Or you,” she says and moves to pick up her clothes.
(Natasha was always tidy. He remembers.)
Clint shows up from the bathroom then, stripped to boxer briefs and smelling of Natasha’s soap.
“I prefer guns to suits,” he says.
“We know you have weird tastes,” Natasha says, carefully folding her dress and leaving it on the armchair.
“And you think bugging offices is exciting,” Clint says and drops to the bed. Bucky watches how he moves, smooth and seemingly without an effort. He always takes the left side. His chest is crisscrossed with faint lines, and some are deep, but most are barely visible. Clint looks comfortable wearing that kind of skin, and Bucky wonders why Clint's scars don't bother him as much as Natasha's or his own do.
“Bugging offices while people who work in them are having a party in a fancy hall two stories below is like having sex in a storage room during working hours,” Natasha says. Bucky laughs and Clint smirks. Natasha bends to pick up her shoes and Bucky stares at her right hip. He knows that another scar is there.
“What a kinky person you are,” Clint says. Natasha gives him a peck on the lips and goes to the bathroom.
Bucky doesn't really need the bathroom but he follows her, coming near and staring at the thin scar running along her shoulder blade. She doesn't say anything at first, but when he just stands there, staring at the patch of her skin, she gives him a pointed look.
“Something wrong?” she asks.
Bucky frowns.
When he really thinks about it, something is wrong.
Because she didn't have scars. She never had any scars.
They didn't let her have scars.
“That's correct,” Natasha says and Bucky realizes he said the last thought aloud. She's standing there, patting her face dry with a towel. Now her eyes are slightly wide and focused on his face.
“What's correct?” Clint asks from his spot on the bed.
“He remembered something,” Natasha says and moves away from the mirror, but Bucky still notices the quick shadow crossing her face. He paces after her, wanting an explanation.
“They didn't let you have scars,” he says when she sits next to Clint's feet. Clint gives him a measured look and Natasha's looking at her hands. Bucky frowns. “How can you have scars now?”
She looks at him. “The serum is wearing off,” she says. “That's what we think at least.”
He feels confused with the sudden onslaught of questions popping up in his mind. Why can't he remember gaining his scars? He seems to regain all kinds of memories, but not this. He's been given serum as well, but he still has marks all over him. Does that mean his serum didn't work to heal his skin? Or was it due to people deciding that Natasha's skin was more important than his?
Clint sits up in bed with a serious but interested look in his eyes. “You don't remember how you got yours?” It's somehow relieving being looked at like that, even if Bucky can't explain. He sits next to them and shakes his head.
“No.," he tries to keep his tone enutral. "Not a single one.”
Here's what sucks, he thinks. You can't erase scars. They're like permanent postcards you've got from close calls and fights and bad things you've been through (and lived to tell). They're like your own personal history, documenting how you fucked up, or maybe how you were brave and did something good (he hoped), but he couldn't remember any of it.
His scars are like fucking postcards without the writing on the back.
Bucky moves away from them and claims the middle of the bed. He rubs his face and contemplates taking off the artificial skin glove he wears over his left arm. Stark made it to help him blend in, and Bucky wonders if it makes him more or less human.
Natasha gets up and walks around the bed. Bucky doesn't look at her when the right side of the mattress dips.
“You've got this one in 1956,” Natasha's fingers touch the ugly scar on his stomach and the muscles there jump. Bucky looks at her. “You thought you could fight four guys with really sharp knives.”
Bucky searches her face for a few long moments, but her eyes don't waver.
“Well,” he sighs and feels something akin to relief. “Steve always said I carry all the stupid with me.”
Natasha's smile is small, but it makes her eyes light up.
“This one is from Moscow,” Natasha points to his collar bone and what seems to be a remnant of a shallow cut there. Then she moves to his right bicep. “This one is from a bullet. You were in Eastern Germany, alone.”
Clint turns to them and watches, as Natasha lists all of Bucky's injuries. She counts them all but one.
“This one,” she says, touching the high edge of his left cheek bone. There's a tiny dent there, like a snowflake on his cheek. “This one I don't know. You had it when I met you.”
Bucky pushes himself up to a sitting position then. He would like to kiss her, but the moment feels too heavy and not right.
“How about yours?” he asks her instead and next to them Barton shifts.
“The one running down her shoulder is from Bratislava,” he says.
“What happened?” Bucky asks.
“Barbed wire,” she says and smiles darkly. “It ruined my dress. Hate when that happens.”
Bucky grins. If he remembers well, she loves her dresses.
Clint smirks. “She was more upset about the dress than the cut.”
“I realized I had a scar a month later,” Natasha says and another smile appears. “And after this one, I've gained a few more,” her eye twinkles and Bucky thinks he understands.
She keeps counting and showing her scars. Clint is mostly quite, with a few comments here and there. Bucky learns. There was a human trafficker in Bangkok who cut Natasha under her left breast, but didn't get to draw another breath after he did it. Clint's arrow saw to that. There was a little girl in Mumbai whom Natasha carried a girl out of a burning building while blood stained her right hip and thigh. She doesn't have many scars but it seems she cherishes everything about them. She lets Bucky inspect them, touch them, and he realizes she's wearing them like a badge of honor, or a banner saying her body is hers alone. It heals imperfectly, it scars and bears marks because she chose it.
That is when he kisses her. She leans in and it feels just right, and her eyes gleam wickedly when he's done.
They both turn to Clint then. Natasha shifts closer to him, and her hands on his body look like they belong there. She counts the scars on his chest first and later on his back when he stretches across the mattress, face down. It's a trip around the world made of blood and bruises and near calls. Bucky notices how Natasha skips the faint scars on Clint's right shoulder. They look faded and very, very old.
“You're a fucking encyclopedia of weapons,” Bucky says when Clint rolls onto his back. Clint grins and Bucky is about to lean in and kiss him as well, but something catches his eye. Marks on Clint's side he's seen before but for some reason never looked at closely.
He notices how Clint's grin fades.
“That one was bad,” is all he says and Bucky knows he shouldn't ask.
He can make an educated guess. They're whip marks. There are more on Clint, he realizes, on his back and legs. The worst thing about being whipped, apart from the pain, is probably the fact that you can't predict where the next blow is going to land.
Natasha kisses Clint to resolve the uncomfortable tension and draw his mind away. Bucky can see his muscles uncoil, but the look in his eyes is still not right when Natasha parts from him.
How ironic, Bucky thinks. He would like to remember how he got his scars. He kisses Clint with apology on his lips, but the kiss morphs into something intense and desperate. He feels Natasha's lips skimming his shoulders and neck. Kissing in threes is somewhat like an art form in itself, but with them it's easy. Bucky loses himself in it quickly, and somehow he's naked behind Clint's back, rubbing himself against his ass, hand wrapped around Clint's dick while Natasha kisses them both. The foreplay is quick and short, and Bucky watches how Natasha rides Clint, how she makes him forget whatever he was reminded of. When he comes he groans almost like he's in pain, and Natasha lingers over him to soothe it all away.
She straddles Bucky's hips then and he drowns in her heat. It's strange how she helps him remember and makes Clint forget. She whispers to Bucky in Russian, she calls him James and he holds her hips as he fucks her. He watches how her breasts bounce, how Clint sits up to kiss her and rub her between her legs and soon she's shouting at the ceiling. She comes, her body like a crescent moon above him, and then falls forward, her sweaty skin against his. He holds her ass and fucks her hard, and lets Clint kiss him until he loses himself in both of them. Things explode behind his eyelids, voices and words and names, everything losing sense and shape and expanding in blinding colors. Then he slowly catches his breath, with Natasha draped over him, and Clint wrapped around them.
They don't fall asleep right away. The heaviness of the conversation before is still there, but considerably reduced. They shift and Clint ends up in the middle and just when Bucky is about to drift off, Clint's voice calls him back.
“It was an arms dealer,” he whispers. Bucky can feel how Natasha slightly stiffens on her side of the bed. “Bastard liked whips,” Clint says more loudly.
“I'm sorry,” Bucky replies, his hand skimming over Clint's chest. It's dark, but he knows the scars are there, and he knows now what they mean. “You don't have to -”
“It's fine,” Clint's voice is slightly strained. “It hurt like a bitch, but that wasn't the bad part. It was -,” he pauses and rubs his face. Natasha takes his hand. “My old man liked us to do what he said the moment he said it. He used... his belt when we didn't.”
Bucky doesn't know what to say to that. There's no self pity in Clint's words, just a factual account of events, which makes it somehow even worse. Natasha just sneaks a hand around Clint's middle and Bucky tries not to think about similarities of whipping and being beat by someone who had absolute power over you. He thinks he can imagine very easily how that feels.
“I'm fine now,” Clint says.
“That doesn't mean it shouldn't hurt any more,” Natasha soothes, propping her chin on Clint's chest.
“Yeah,” Clint says and slowly rolls onto his stomach. “But that doesn't mean you can't be fine.”
“You can,” Bucky says, because if Clint can, then he can as well, Because Clint deserves it, because Natasha deserves it, they all do. He relies on his memory and touches Clint's right shoulder, feels carefully for lines of old, never forgotten pain, and seals his lips right there there. Clint sighs under him. Bucky lingers for a moment and then settles back into his spot on the bed. He touches Clint's arm then, very gently. “You can,” he repeats softly, “because you know you survived.”
Clint hums and nods and then yawns and Bucky wonders in the darkness if the real purpose of scars is just that. To remind you that you survived.
Fandoms: Captain America (movies), The Avengers (2012)
Pairing (ot3): Clint Barton/Natasha Romanoff/James "Bucky" Barnes
Rating: explicit
Genre: introspection, drama, romance, threesome
Warnings: NSFW explicit content, canon compliant violence (implied), implied child abuse.
Disclaimer: I don't own them, but it seems like they own me. I get nothing out of this, but fun.
Summary: Bucky wonders if the real purpose of scars is to remind you that you survived, no matter how you got them, or if you can remember.
Author's notes: written for avngrsrarepair makeout fest, for the prompt "scars". A huge thank you to my beta shenshen77 and to frea_o and ashen_key for awesome brainstorming.
*
There is a long thin line starting at the base of Natasha's neck and ending near her shoulder blade. It's visible only up close, and Bucky needs to be very near to see it - near enough to hear her breathing and smell her hair. ( The first time he traces it with his finger she smiles enigmatically, almost like she's trying to tell him something. She looks so pretty, her hair wet and her eyes tentatively hopeful, and it's one of those moments when he thinks everything could be well at the end.)
Trying to remember things sucks, because it's happening too slowly for his liking. Natasha is still a spider web of mysteries, and if he grasps too tightly, he might break it. Bucky watches her as she unzips her dress and lets it fall down her body, instead of carefully gathering it, a certain sign that she's tired. (This conclusion is based on observation, but Bucky also feels it's something he knows. There's a possibility that it's a memory. He's not sure but calls it a win in his mind and works his way out of the dress shirt he was wearing for the occasion. He kind of likes these missions that allow him to dress nicely, even if he spends most of the time observing.)
“That was a pretty boring party,” Bucky says, pausing before he gets rid of his shirt. Natasha's half smile in the mirror feels like muscle memory. He has no idea where he'd seen it first or how and when it became a backdrop to his mind, but it did. He takes off his shirt and a faded cut low on his abdomen catches his eye. It's a striking mark on him, but he has no idea how it got there.
“Luckily for us,” Natasha adds, unceremoniously tossing her bra away. That provides a nice distraction from staring at his scar, but then he remembers there's a small cut just under Natasha's left breast. He has no idea how she got it, he just knows it's there. Each time he kisses her he finds it, stretching her skin like an unnatural smile. “I'm very okay with a boring party and no need to run from people pointing guns at me. Or you,” she says and moves to pick up her clothes.
(Natasha was always tidy. He remembers.)
Clint shows up from the bathroom then, stripped to boxer briefs and smelling of Natasha’s soap.
“I prefer guns to suits,” he says.
“We know you have weird tastes,” Natasha says, carefully folding her dress and leaving it on the armchair.
“And you think bugging offices is exciting,” Clint says and drops to the bed. Bucky watches how he moves, smooth and seemingly without an effort. He always takes the left side. His chest is crisscrossed with faint lines, and some are deep, but most are barely visible. Clint looks comfortable wearing that kind of skin, and Bucky wonders why Clint's scars don't bother him as much as Natasha's or his own do.
“Bugging offices while people who work in them are having a party in a fancy hall two stories below is like having sex in a storage room during working hours,” Natasha says. Bucky laughs and Clint smirks. Natasha bends to pick up her shoes and Bucky stares at her right hip. He knows that another scar is there.
“What a kinky person you are,” Clint says. Natasha gives him a peck on the lips and goes to the bathroom.
Bucky doesn't really need the bathroom but he follows her, coming near and staring at the thin scar running along her shoulder blade. She doesn't say anything at first, but when he just stands there, staring at the patch of her skin, she gives him a pointed look.
“Something wrong?” she asks.
Bucky frowns.
When he really thinks about it, something is wrong.
Because she didn't have scars. She never had any scars.
They didn't let her have scars.
“That's correct,” Natasha says and Bucky realizes he said the last thought aloud. She's standing there, patting her face dry with a towel. Now her eyes are slightly wide and focused on his face.
“What's correct?” Clint asks from his spot on the bed.
“He remembered something,” Natasha says and moves away from the mirror, but Bucky still notices the quick shadow crossing her face. He paces after her, wanting an explanation.
“They didn't let you have scars,” he says when she sits next to Clint's feet. Clint gives him a measured look and Natasha's looking at her hands. Bucky frowns. “How can you have scars now?”
She looks at him. “The serum is wearing off,” she says. “That's what we think at least.”
He feels confused with the sudden onslaught of questions popping up in his mind. Why can't he remember gaining his scars? He seems to regain all kinds of memories, but not this. He's been given serum as well, but he still has marks all over him. Does that mean his serum didn't work to heal his skin? Or was it due to people deciding that Natasha's skin was more important than his?
Clint sits up in bed with a serious but interested look in his eyes. “You don't remember how you got yours?” It's somehow relieving being looked at like that, even if Bucky can't explain. He sits next to them and shakes his head.
“No.," he tries to keep his tone enutral. "Not a single one.”
Here's what sucks, he thinks. You can't erase scars. They're like permanent postcards you've got from close calls and fights and bad things you've been through (and lived to tell). They're like your own personal history, documenting how you fucked up, or maybe how you were brave and did something good (he hoped), but he couldn't remember any of it.
His scars are like fucking postcards without the writing on the back.
Bucky moves away from them and claims the middle of the bed. He rubs his face and contemplates taking off the artificial skin glove he wears over his left arm. Stark made it to help him blend in, and Bucky wonders if it makes him more or less human.
Natasha gets up and walks around the bed. Bucky doesn't look at her when the right side of the mattress dips.
“You've got this one in 1956,” Natasha's fingers touch the ugly scar on his stomach and the muscles there jump. Bucky looks at her. “You thought you could fight four guys with really sharp knives.”
Bucky searches her face for a few long moments, but her eyes don't waver.
“Well,” he sighs and feels something akin to relief. “Steve always said I carry all the stupid with me.”
Natasha's smile is small, but it makes her eyes light up.
“This one is from Moscow,” Natasha points to his collar bone and what seems to be a remnant of a shallow cut there. Then she moves to his right bicep. “This one is from a bullet. You were in Eastern Germany, alone.”
Clint turns to them and watches, as Natasha lists all of Bucky's injuries. She counts them all but one.
“This one,” she says, touching the high edge of his left cheek bone. There's a tiny dent there, like a snowflake on his cheek. “This one I don't know. You had it when I met you.”
Bucky pushes himself up to a sitting position then. He would like to kiss her, but the moment feels too heavy and not right.
“How about yours?” he asks her instead and next to them Barton shifts.
“The one running down her shoulder is from Bratislava,” he says.
“What happened?” Bucky asks.
“Barbed wire,” she says and smiles darkly. “It ruined my dress. Hate when that happens.”
Bucky grins. If he remembers well, she loves her dresses.
Clint smirks. “She was more upset about the dress than the cut.”
“I realized I had a scar a month later,” Natasha says and another smile appears. “And after this one, I've gained a few more,” her eye twinkles and Bucky thinks he understands.
She keeps counting and showing her scars. Clint is mostly quite, with a few comments here and there. Bucky learns. There was a human trafficker in Bangkok who cut Natasha under her left breast, but didn't get to draw another breath after he did it. Clint's arrow saw to that. There was a little girl in Mumbai whom Natasha carried a girl out of a burning building while blood stained her right hip and thigh. She doesn't have many scars but it seems she cherishes everything about them. She lets Bucky inspect them, touch them, and he realizes she's wearing them like a badge of honor, or a banner saying her body is hers alone. It heals imperfectly, it scars and bears marks because she chose it.
That is when he kisses her. She leans in and it feels just right, and her eyes gleam wickedly when he's done.
They both turn to Clint then. Natasha shifts closer to him, and her hands on his body look like they belong there. She counts the scars on his chest first and later on his back when he stretches across the mattress, face down. It's a trip around the world made of blood and bruises and near calls. Bucky notices how Natasha skips the faint scars on Clint's right shoulder. They look faded and very, very old.
“You're a fucking encyclopedia of weapons,” Bucky says when Clint rolls onto his back. Clint grins and Bucky is about to lean in and kiss him as well, but something catches his eye. Marks on Clint's side he's seen before but for some reason never looked at closely.
He notices how Clint's grin fades.
“That one was bad,” is all he says and Bucky knows he shouldn't ask.
He can make an educated guess. They're whip marks. There are more on Clint, he realizes, on his back and legs. The worst thing about being whipped, apart from the pain, is probably the fact that you can't predict where the next blow is going to land.
Natasha kisses Clint to resolve the uncomfortable tension and draw his mind away. Bucky can see his muscles uncoil, but the look in his eyes is still not right when Natasha parts from him.
How ironic, Bucky thinks. He would like to remember how he got his scars. He kisses Clint with apology on his lips, but the kiss morphs into something intense and desperate. He feels Natasha's lips skimming his shoulders and neck. Kissing in threes is somewhat like an art form in itself, but with them it's easy. Bucky loses himself in it quickly, and somehow he's naked behind Clint's back, rubbing himself against his ass, hand wrapped around Clint's dick while Natasha kisses them both. The foreplay is quick and short, and Bucky watches how Natasha rides Clint, how she makes him forget whatever he was reminded of. When he comes he groans almost like he's in pain, and Natasha lingers over him to soothe it all away.
She straddles Bucky's hips then and he drowns in her heat. It's strange how she helps him remember and makes Clint forget. She whispers to Bucky in Russian, she calls him James and he holds her hips as he fucks her. He watches how her breasts bounce, how Clint sits up to kiss her and rub her between her legs and soon she's shouting at the ceiling. She comes, her body like a crescent moon above him, and then falls forward, her sweaty skin against his. He holds her ass and fucks her hard, and lets Clint kiss him until he loses himself in both of them. Things explode behind his eyelids, voices and words and names, everything losing sense and shape and expanding in blinding colors. Then he slowly catches his breath, with Natasha draped over him, and Clint wrapped around them.
They don't fall asleep right away. The heaviness of the conversation before is still there, but considerably reduced. They shift and Clint ends up in the middle and just when Bucky is about to drift off, Clint's voice calls him back.
“It was an arms dealer,” he whispers. Bucky can feel how Natasha slightly stiffens on her side of the bed. “Bastard liked whips,” Clint says more loudly.
“I'm sorry,” Bucky replies, his hand skimming over Clint's chest. It's dark, but he knows the scars are there, and he knows now what they mean. “You don't have to -”
“It's fine,” Clint's voice is slightly strained. “It hurt like a bitch, but that wasn't the bad part. It was -,” he pauses and rubs his face. Natasha takes his hand. “My old man liked us to do what he said the moment he said it. He used... his belt when we didn't.”
Bucky doesn't know what to say to that. There's no self pity in Clint's words, just a factual account of events, which makes it somehow even worse. Natasha just sneaks a hand around Clint's middle and Bucky tries not to think about similarities of whipping and being beat by someone who had absolute power over you. He thinks he can imagine very easily how that feels.
“I'm fine now,” Clint says.
“That doesn't mean it shouldn't hurt any more,” Natasha soothes, propping her chin on Clint's chest.
“Yeah,” Clint says and slowly rolls onto his stomach. “But that doesn't mean you can't be fine.”
“You can,” Bucky says, because if Clint can, then he can as well, Because Clint deserves it, because Natasha deserves it, they all do. He relies on his memory and touches Clint's right shoulder, feels carefully for lines of old, never forgotten pain, and seals his lips right there there. Clint sighs under him. Bucky lingers for a moment and then settles back into his spot on the bed. He touches Clint's arm then, very gently. “You can,” he repeats softly, “because you know you survived.”
Clint hums and nods and then yawns and Bucky wonders in the darkness if the real purpose of scars is just that. To remind you that you survived.