Work Text:
It starts slowly. It usually does.
He doesn’t know what exactly they have injected into him this time, but it doesn’t hurt at first. Through the murmuring and quiet talking of the scientists around him, he overhears something about a “new-age prototype for rapid, long-lasting epinephrine injection”. Adrenaline, for dummies.
He wants to ask what the goal here is, but doesn’t. His only job is to stay quiet and let them observe the effects on his vitals.
Mission parameters unclear.
“Stay awake for as long as you can and stay quiet unless someone tells you otherwise. If this test goes well, we might be able to start in-field testing already next week.”, somebody finally tells him, and the soldier nods, silently, because he still hasn’t been instructed to speak.
He understands that it is both his performance as well as the new serum being tested on him. He is the ideal lab rat, after all. Heals fast, doesn’t fight back and until now, hasn’t died from it.
Dimly, he wonders whether Hydra has ever even tested on something like apes or mice before trying it on him, or if that would be too expensive as well. With someone like him around, they can cut back costs for testing on animals and humans, by one hundred percent.
He knows that they have done such tests on him for a very long time and so often that he lost count over the years. Still, he remembers some of the most… drastic one of them.
One time, about six years ago, he got Ebola. Another time, rabies. Hell of a trip. Oh, and one time in the seventies he went through the full AIDS and HIV spectrum, including tuberculosis and all. There had been a certain demand at that time for those diseases. Maybe that was the thing that had kicked off everything that followed after.
Butterfly effect.
The soldier blinks as the cold needle syringe is being removed from his inner elbow, the soft tissue of his skin already scabbing over after a couple of moments. They put something onto his wrist, clip something to his thumb and stick some type of electrodes to his chest, to monitor his vital signs, blood pressure, pulse, temperature and God knows what else.
He feels the rush of the strange serum coursing through his veins and he involuntarily flexes his normal hand, balling it to a fist, before opening it again. But the sensation lasts only for approximately four minutes before he feels completely normal again.
He wants to ask the doctors whether that has been it, but doesn’t. Instead, he just exhales.
And so, the waiting begins.
Ten hours in and the soldier starts to get bored, like he usually does when he is instructed to stand for hours on end.
The doctors let him sit down for a change, and he even gets some water to drink, but that’s it. He isn’t hungry, he never is, or at least he doesn’t realize the feeling as ‘hunger’ and he knows that anything other than water that would contain carbohydrates or sugar could mess with the results, so he just accepts the plastic bottle, drinking in long gulps.
Twenty-four hours in and the soldier starts to get a bit uncomfortable sitting, standing, sitting, standing, but it is nothing he cannot manage. He gets to drink another bottle of water and is allowed to stretch his legs, walking a couple rounds around the room, which is a pleasant change for once, rolling his head to either side.
He notices some light itching of his wrist but ignores it again, as he looks over to the doctors, who keep quietly talking to themselves. They enter and leave every other hour, so he knows that there are change in shifts between them.
The guards at the door will soon change as well, when other members of the Strike Team will replace them and every time the door opens he looks up, waiting for a certain man to come in. He doesn’t, so asset simply has to wait some more.
He has to piss, and they take some urine samples while he’s at it.
Huges seems absolutely bored out of his mind by the time Marlon, a Rookie, comes to replace his post, staring at the soldier while he relieves himself into the plastic cup.
“Jesus.”, he whispers and Huges just shrugs with indifference, the heavy gun in both of his hands in front of his chest.
The soldier thinks Huges doesn’t really deserve his name. He is more so on the smaller side, almost a head shorter than the soldier himself and has an undefinable face, as if he were stuck between being a child and a thirty-eight-year-old man. His features are too soft and eyes of a pale, undistinguishable colour.
Marlon on the other side… He is taller and skinnier than the other man, buzzed, black hair and striking green eyes, pale skin and lean hands. The soldier knows that the men in Rumlow’s Strike Team joke about him being eye candy and if he could have had an own opinion, he’d probably agree with them.
A few days ago, the soldier had to suck him off, still in full gear himself, and the lewd, soft, surprised notes that spilled from Marlon's lips as he fucked his throat told him everything he needed to know. Marlon is a pretty boy with a cold heart.
“Anything interesting that’s happened until now?”, Marlon asks and Huges just grunts in disagreement.
“At this rate, I’d rather watch paint dry.”, he says and rolls his eyes.
He leaves soon after and the soldier is left alone with a handful of technicians and Marlon, who keeps looking at him with that usual expression, somewhere between awe and lust, as he settles back in the chair.
The soldier is only wearing loose sweatpants, sitting barefooted and with a naked chest on the chair, looking onto his own hands, clasped in his lap.
Marlon keeps staring with that hard expression and something about him reminds him a lot of Agent Rollins. Maybe it is the sharpness in his posture or the way he palms his gun, if not his cock.
Eager, almost as if he were waiting for his opportunity to use it.
The opportunity doesn’t come, because the asset has no reason to step out of line, and twelve hours later, Marlon is replaced by Jenkins.
They are thirty-six hours in and the asset is feeling fine, even if bored. His wrist itches, but he tunes it out most of the time. He gets his water every once in a while, may walk around for an hour or two before he sits back down in his chair.
Things could have been worse.
He doesn’t know what exactly the doctors had expected, but they seem to grow bored too.
Jenkins turns jumpy, already five hours into his shift, and orders everyone to leave for a quick smoke break or trip to the canteen, and the doctors, unsurprisingly, oblige gladly. He then locks the door behind them and turns back to the soldier, with his left hand already reaching for the zipper of his pants.
The soldier just stands up and sinks down to his knees soundlessly, opening his mouth for him.
The salty taste and heavy weight of Jenkins is a welcomed change.
Forty-eight hours in, he notices a rash on his wrist forming. The doctors notice it too and note it down before checking over his vital signs, that haven’t changed since they started with the experiment.
His mouth is dry, and they give him some more water, but for the first time, it doesn’t really help. His tongue feels heavy. The itch is getting worse, and he keeps on licking over his chapped, pale lips.
Still, anytime he’s asked, he answers with the usual cool voice:
“Functional.”
It seems to satisfy the doctors.
Marlon is back, and he looks rougher than the last time he’s seen him. He has a black eye, one he didn’t have earlier, and a split lip.
The soldier secretly asks himself what happened to him, but his thoughts are interrupted when the Rookie shoos out the doctors all at once, his hand, dressed in fingerless gloves, resting on the holster of his gun.
The soldier hasn’t slept in sixty hours and gets bent over his own chair for the first time without a warning, with Marlon forcing himself into him.
Jumbled words come out of the younger man’s mouth, rough and hurt and fuelled with so much anger. He holds the soldier’s head down, with his hand tangled in his greasy hair, fucking into him with harsh, unforgiving thrusts.
He comes after a very short time and just shoves his face again into the lean of his chair, before stepping back and pulling his pants back up.
The soldier exhales shakily and sits back up, meeting his eyes.
Marlon keeps watching him as the doctors come back in one by one, checking him over.
No change in vital signs.
At the seventy-two-hour mark, things slowly start to turn funny.
Rationally, the soldier knows that he should be tired, if not utterly exhausted at this point in time, but he is just… not.
His eyes don’t feel heavy, but his heart does. He feels like as if it is pumping louder than usual in his chest and shares his concerns with the doctors. They ignore him at first, but then check him over. They do little else.
He needs to drink some more water, but he doesn’t get any, because he had apparently just gotten it two hours ago. It doesn’t feel like two hours. He licks his lips and nods silently and again, his metal fingertips search for his wrist of his hand.
He gets cuffed down to his chair, and that was it with walking around and standing up. He will have to sit, until…
Something happens.
The doors open to the lab and a man dressed in black enters. The soldier’s eyes shoot up, and there he is; his Commander.
Rumlow walks over to the techs, asking them in a low voice how the asset is doing. He nods, and then walks over to him, stopping by his chair.
“Soldat.”
“Da, Kommandir.”, he rasps, voice a bit rough. His mouth feels dry.
“Status Report.”, he says, his dark eyes travelling over the mag cuffs, holding him down and immovable.
“Functional.”, he says again, not mentioning his stupid, loudly hammering heart or the headache that is starting to creep up his temples and down to his nose or how he had already been used by several men from the Strike team and that someone should maybe go check on Marlon, because he feels like something might have happened to him and that the boy doesn’t seem to have his issues under control.
Rumlow looks at him.
“You’re not feeling tired?”, he asks softly, and his hand palm finds the forehead of the soldier, gently feeling the temperature.
The asset feels hot and sighs into the gentle touch.
“Thirsty.”, he whispers, without thinking about it or before he can stop himself.
But Rumlow just nods, understanding.
“Get him some water.”
“He had just drunk some, a while ago.”, a doctor complains and Rumlow shoots him a hard look.
“Bring him some.”
They do.
The soldier drinks and sighs and Rumlow leans down, pressing a little kiss onto his hot, burning skin on his temple. The soldier is sweating and feels a little tremor go through his body, as he tries to concentrate on the feeling of Commander Rumlow so close next to him, trying to push the headache and the itching back into his subconsciousness.
Rumlow stays by his side for his entire shift, quietly talking to him, one hand going through his messed-up hair.
They keep on waiting.
It’s been close to ninety hours by the time the soldier has to tell them that he feels like as if his head is exploding and half of his body burning, as if swallowed by flames.
His brain seems to be cooking inside his skull, turning to gooey syrup, seeping through the bone and flesh, dripping down his spine. It is so hot that he is drenched from head to toe in sweat.
His eyes start to hurt. His head is killing him.
And he is still not tired.
“It hurts.”, he whispers and for the first time, the doctors seem to take him seriously.
They murmur something about a rise in blood pressure and pulse, as well as a drop in blood sugar levels.
The soldier would give anything for a sweet glass of grape juice with some ice in it right now. Or lemonade. He licks his lips and nearly whimpers at the thought.
He begs for water, and they give him some more, but it doesn’t fucking help. He feels as if his blood is drying out in his veins and the thirst doesn’t stop.
They take blood probes from him and he nearly moans when he feels the cold metal entering his skin. It is a brief relief and doesn’t last long.
They do tests on him.
He reads out some lines, his vision blurred and shaky, he answers some basic math equations, but that’s about it. It takes him longer than he would like to admit and then they just leave him like that, sitting in the chair for a few more hours.
At the one hundred hours mark the soldier starts to shake and shiver uncontrollably, pleading for Rumlow, for water, for it to stop, for sleep, for death.
He gets none of those things.
Jenkins returns. Rollins appears for the first time, visibly satisfied by God knows what, grinning in the corner of the room.
Marlon, does not. The soldier feels like he won’t, ever.
He hasn’t slept in one hundred twenty hours and he is not sure if he even want it to end that way by now.
What if he won’t be able to go to sleep at all anymore? What if they have done something permanent to him, robbing him of the skill of feeling tired and getting some rest the natural way ever again in his life?
There is a hand on his shoulder and he knows that someone is speaking to him, but he doesn’t hear them over the sound of his own blood pounding in his ears. He is shaking uncontrollably, practically convulsing on the chair.
His muscles burn and disintegrate inside him as his bones turn to needles. He cannot speak, but he wouldn’t know what to say anyway and cannot swallow, but there is nothing to swallow in the first place. His eyes hurt so much and if he could, he would claw them out with the cold metal of his hand.
He is pretty sure that his heart is no longer inside his chest, that he has been hollowed out sometime between then and now and later. He is empty inside, he cannot breathe, because there are no lungs he could use and his hands are balled into fists as the first real scream leaves his lips.
The soldier hasn’t slept in five days and wishes for a bullet in his head.
The person, thing, body, shadow, curses by his side and he hears them shouting at each other over his own body and the soldier’s eyes roll back, as he gasps for more air.
Louder shouts and then he can hear something or someone getting thrown to the ground, clattering.
Suddenly he is pulled out of his chair, the cuffs opening at once with a click, and he falls to the cold ground. Strong hands pull his upper body into a lap, letting him rest on strong thighs dressed in black TAC-pants and then, before anyone can stop the hands, they jab a needle into his carotid artery without a second of hesitation.
He gasps as a cool liquid flows through his veins and it feels glorious, lying on the cold ground as the numbness spreads through his whole body.
Maybe they have killed him after all. Thank God.
The soldier goes limp and weak and his eyes flutter closed and his breath starts to slow.
He knows that the man in whose lap he is lying in, is talking down onto him, reassuringly and softly, protecting him with his own body from the world and his lips on his temple is the last thing he remembers, before the world fades to black.
The soldier sleeps for two days.
A month later, they start the second round of testing on him. He feels like this time, it might be a success.
An hour into the process, his nose begins to bleed.