Who: Bucky Barnes jbuchananbarnes & Rebekah Mikaelson crazyauntbex What: Drinking can't hurt even if it doesn't help. When: Friday, May 8, late night Where: Test City Bar & Grill Rating: Audience Discretion is Advised Warnings: Drunk maudlin people being drunk and maudlin. They're both tragic figures. I may also let Bucky be vampire food so if blood bothers you? Look not here. Status: Closed/Complete
~*~
Booze had been less of an issue in the late 30's to early 40's. It hadn't been something people had really been pressured over. No one was carded. ID was something people had to prove citizenship. They weren't flashing it around because they wanted to have a drink. Most bars had catered to whoever could afford to pull up a seat inside. Money was the only thing which talked in that time since very few people had any of it to spare. Times had been hard in a way people in modern America could not understand.
Modern conveniences made it too easy to go soft. People complained when their air-conditioning went out in the city these days. When Bucky Barnes had been growing up, no one had "air-conditioning," but they had gotten to attend more than one funeral for more than one person who would die from heat or cold one. He'd held his mother while she'd cried over the body of a child not much older than his sister who had died from heat one summer. It was one of the few memories he had of his mother's touch. She'd clung to him with fingers nearly skeletal from hard work, her body had been spare with little padding on it anywhere in spite of her age, and her sobs had shook her so badly if he closed his eyes to call up the memory, it made his teeth ache in sympathy for the rattling.
Test City Bar and Grill hadn't asked him for ID which was funny since he had it. This place had seen fit to put his actual birthdate on it, too. He almost wanted to offer it to the bartender to see what kind of response he'd get. It probably wouldn't be funny, but he could use the thought of a laugh all the same.
Sometimes a thought was as good as it got for him.
He swirled a stir stick in his Jack & coke while he tried to remember why he'd ordered it. The drink wasn't a particular favorite of his. It wasn't going to get him drunk. The best it would do would be to make his head a little fuzzier than normal for a few seconds while his body metabolized it. On the whole, drinking was a waste of time for him. It did beat going back to the apartment he was sharing with his supposed best friend to try to avoid talking to him. Again.
Hiding got old after a while.
A woman had taken a seat at the bar down from him with a look on her face which said she wasn't too pleased to be in the place either. She was pretty. Blonde and leggy. In another life, he'd have asked her name, tried to get her to laugh. Bucky Barnes had been a notorious charmer. It was even in the brochure. He smiled at the irony of seeing a woman his type show up in a place anything but when he was too far from who he had been to even offer a decent greeting to her.
"Let me guess: you just like the taste, too?"
It wasn't a pick-up line. It was an offer of conversation. He considered it progress.
~*~
Rebekah had lived long enough that she was honestly just tired of it now. She was exhausted by her brother’s antics, and of always being forced to watch the thing she wanted and needed go up in flames. Countless lovers, men with whom she’d thought to share a life, had been torn from her by her brother’s hand. Oftentimes brutally murdered right in front of her eyes and, shortly thereafter, a mystical dagger in her heart so that she would sleep for however long Niklaus deemed necessary. He babied her, belittled her, and lorded over her life as if he had the right.
She almost wished she’d been taken from home after being implanted in the witch, the way Elijah and the harvest witch seemed to recall. At least then, she’d have a chance at bloody happiness and an end to all the suffering she’d been dealt by those she shared blood with, by those she knew as family. Her mother and father were monsters in their own right. Rebekah knew she could be a monster when it suited her, but she was what her parents made her into. She hadn’t been born a monster, nor did she want to die as one. That, at least, wasn’t often a possibility, unless her mother and father had found a new way to haunt them from beyond the grave. Perhaps, one of these days, she’d finally have her peace.
Drinking at Test City Bar and Grill seemed as good a way as any to pass the time and stew in her frustrations. Elijah had promised to deal with the matter of the freshly turned vampire, but not in a way that was satisfactory to Rebekah’s standards. She stood by the notion that ripping the girl’s heart out and being done with it would be the best course of action. To top off the rest of the things that was driving her angry was the fact that she was hungry. Drinking alcohol would not make that better, but she could pretend for long enough to decide it might be a good idea to raid the hospital instead of compelling some random inhabitant.
The question being directed at her drew a disgruntled look. Who was this man to bother her?
“Yes well, it’s not exactly blood fresh from the vein, now is it? That is what a monster like myself enjoys more than the finest whiskey this place has to offer,” Rebekah bit out, swirling the amber liquid in her glass. It hardly mattered if she drank away her money. She could compel her way for a few paychecks, or else simply stay in the habit of compelling them.
“You’re human. Surely you can at least enjoy the benefits of this?”
~*~
Blood fresh from the vein? That was a new one on Bucky. He'd seen a little bit of everything in HYDRA's labs -from what he remembered of his experiences in them- but he didn't recall anything or anyone who drank blood. If he stretched his imagination a bit, he could go ahead and imagine the blonde was a vampire. If he were smart, he'd recognize it wasn't entirely impossible for her to be some kind of immortal monster. Test City had brought in everything from the likes of him to aliens. Why not vampires?
Raising a brow at her, he tipped up one corner of his mouth to match, "I was human. Sure. Back when I was born in 1917. I stopped being just some human when I was 29. Winter of '45 during World War II I fell from a train trestle. I'd been experimented on as a POW beforehand. Fall so far it was as if I'd fallen from the face of the Earth into space. Didn't kill me. Nothing seems likely to now. I got a shiny new arm and more experimentation."
He raised his metallic hand to open the fingers, expose the metal palm to her before lowering it into a fist on the bar once more. The alcohol wouldn't intoxicate him no matter how much of it he drank. It was unlikely he could get a buzz from any drug known come down to the wire on it. Bucky had never been one for drugs or liquor truthfully. It was only now he was his own kind of monster he wished he could get a break to enjoy a little peace.
There was no peace to be had for him in amnesia. He knew that much for a fact. No matter how much or how little he remembered, his hands would always be covered in blood. No one could wash away the sins he'd committed. There was no going back from what he'd become. All he could do was hope he could make amends as best he could with all he had in him and try not to betray anyone else ever again. Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff both thought he could do more.
They were both wrong in his eyes.
"So, no, drinking this isn't going to help me. I just like the taste and the memories. Reminds me of what I was like before I became a monster. You remember a time like that yourself or were you born a vampire? I don't know anything about that. I figure if you're drinking blood? That makes you a vampire. Yeah?"
~*~
Rebekah arched an eyebrow at the human, who was slightly more interesting after admitting he’d been born in 1917. He wasn’t nearly as old as she was, but he was older than a normal human and alcohol didn’t affect him. After a moment’s consideration, she moved to the seat next to his and clinked her glass against his. “One of the first vampires, actually. My mother was a witch and when one of my brothers died, she used her magic to ensure that she would never have to feel that grief again. Of course, then our father decided we were unnatural and forged a way to kill us.” Really, her family was such a bloody mess.
“My brothers and I have been alive since the 10th century, and hunted for the better part of it, though my brother has a nasty habit of daggering me.” She drained her glass and gestured for the bartender to refill them both. “He has yet to really want to kill me, but he is a control freak. A witch cursed daggers to put the rest of us into what humans would call a coma. Because Niklaus has a twisted sense of humor, he has coffins for each of us.” The scoff of disgust explained exactly how she felt about her brother’s practices.
She considered what she remembered from her life prior to being a vampire. “I remember how cruel my father was, and how much I hated the way he spoke to my brothers. I was going to kill him, once. With his own sword. All to protect the same brother who is so careless, he’s turned a vampire here.” Rebekah was furious at Niklaus and how selfish he was. “Do you have any siblings?” She realized then that she hadn’t introduced herself. “Rebekah, by the way. I work at the Animal Clinic here.”
~*~
"Good to meet you, Rebekah. Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky or so they tell me."
He clinked his glass against hers to drink to the name he'd been given at birth even though he had so few memories of it he hardly felt it was his own any longer. Being called The Soldier was easier for him than being addressed as "Bucky." James was a possibility. It was a solid name. Normal. Would Steve like calling him James? Would he even be able to after all his years worth of memories of him as simply 'Bucky'? He almost didn't know why he cared about Steve Rogers' opinion on the matter, but he didn't like lying to himself.
Even inside his own head.
Especially inside his own head.
HYDRA had lied to him enough for a hundred human lifetimes. They had made him kill. Their programming had made him believe he was helping the world when all he'd been doing was murdering people who might have actually made a difference in the grand scheme of things. His hands were red all over courtesy of their lies yet he couldn't even blame them because he'd gone along with it. They had programmed him, sure, but he'd been strong, skilled, more powerful than any other asset in their arsenal. HYDRA wouldn't have been able to stop him if he'd truly wanted to escape.
He'd just never realized he had anywhere to go if he did escape.
"I had---a sister. I think. They took my memories. A lot. When I got to be their guinea pig? They put me through a machine which erased everything so they could rewrite my mind with their own version of history. It's hit or miss on what I remember. Do you remember your life all the way through? 10th Century means over a thousand years. That's a lot of living. Sounds like a lot of hard living, too."
Rebekah spoke about her family with a strange mix of emotions in play. It was as if she loved and hated them simultaneously. He couldn't imagine trying to murder his own parent or stabbing his sister even if it wouldn't kill her. Given she was a vampire, her family situation might have been different though which he didn't discount. People came from all different kinds of cultures. Could be vampires used violence as a way of saying 'I love you' to each other. What did he know?
"I'm maintenance for Hope Springs. I volunteer over at Copperstone when Xavier needs help. I like it better than most things since I can be outside, set my own hours, have less of a chance of hurting someone else when I'm not entirely in possession of my mind."
~*~
She made a face at the nickname ‘Bucky’. Childish. James was much more appropriate, so that was what she’d call him. His metal arm was intriguing, far more advanced than anything she’d ever seen. Being as old as she was, Bex had seen the turns of the centuries and all the advancements in medicine, technology, and just sheer knowledge. How much of the 1900s had he seen after all the experimentations and memory wipes he’d dealt with? She remembered much of the early 1900s, seeing as she’d been daggered for most of it.
“I was daggered for all but the first few decades of the 1900s, and the world changed quite a bit during that time. I’ve long since learned to adapt after I’ve angered my brother.” Rebekah finished her glass in only a few swallows over the course of their conversation, and it did nothing to sate her thirst. What she really desired was quite distractingly pulsing in James’ veins. As a courtesy, she did her best to ignore it as she signalled for yet another refill.
“It was not always pleasant or easy, but life is what you make of it. My brothers and I made a home for ourselves and other supernaturals in New Orleans’ French Quarter, but our father found us. Even killing him does little, save for giving us a small break to run as fast as we can and build a life somewhere else again.” She sighed and took a sip of her whiskey. “I will never have a normal life, or normal siblings. I will never find love and be allowed to keep it, though that hardly seems to matter, as I’ll never be able to bear children. Yet my brother, Niklaus? He is half-werewolf because of his father’s bloodline. On top of finding every lover I’ve had wholly inadequate and oftentimes killing them right in front of me, my brother has a child.”
Rebekah was still so bitter about the unfairness of it all, even though she knew she should know better after a millenia. She finished off her whiskey, disgusted at it’s lack of satisfaction. The glass was pushed forward, signalling that she didn’t want anymore, before she angled herself toward James.
“You would not be able to kill me. Only one thing in the world can, and it is not here.” Her look turned slightly predatory. “I have a proposition for you, James. I’m hungry. I can go a very long time without drinking blood, but my aggravation with Niklaus makes me want to murder someone or feed. I’ve no intention of killing you, and though I could compel you, I find it much more enjoyable when my source of choice is aware of what I’m doing.” Bex let her hand trail along his flesh and blood forearm flirtatiously. “Men usually find it to be quite enjoyable.” The look in her eyes said she’d have no problem enjoying his flesh the same as she intended to enjoy his blood.
~*~
No woman had ever asked to drink his blood.
"You know, I've been around a long time and I have been asked to do a lot of things for a lot of women. This would be the only time I've had one ask me to let her drink my blood for my enjoyment."
Some had asked him to shed his blood for their enjoyment. Bucky had allowed women to cut him, beat him, hurt him in ways he'd never imagined anyone would want to hurt another person. Men were not the only villains out in the world. Some women were worse. He had seen some terrible things done at the request of a woman. Bucky even remembered some terrible things done at the hands of a woman. It had taken him years to get over what some of the girls trained in The Red Room were capable of doing.
Volunteers weren't what came into play in The Red Room. They didn't ask for the girls' participation. All those girls were taken by the people who ran the program. Many were sold to the program runners. A few were stolen from their homes. No one was interested in what happened to them once they were taken in. No one asked questions about their fates. They were no more than ghosts the same as Bucky Barnes, also known as The Winter Soldier.
It wasn't really even something for him to consider.
"Sure. Drink my blood."
Bucky could do this one good thing for this woman. She was a vampire through what didn't sound like her own choice. Everything about her life sounded as if it were from someone else's decision. He had a feeling she really hadn't had a lot of choices she could make on her own since she had become something other than human. She wanted him though. Or at least she wanted his blood. Rebekah had chosen him to drink from when she said herself she have her pick, make them want it, compel them.
"You want to do it here or you want to wait until we're someplace more private? I'm not interested in sex. If it's all the same to you."
He didn't mean it to sound insulting. Bucky was simply tired of getting fucked for someone else's pleasure. Rape wasn't something which could happen only to women. It was something a man could experience and it wasn't any less humiliating or dehumanizing. Bucky Barnes was tired, very, very tired of getting raped in his life. He'd just as soon give her his blood than his body.
~*~
Rebekah was quite pleased with the prospect of having a taste of the man sitting next to her. He’d been through a lot, emotionally and physically, and he’d come out all the stronger for it. She could appreciate that strength, and found herself appreciating that they’d crossed paths. It wasn’t common for men to turn down her propositions, but she took no offense from James’ polite decline. She gave him a warm smile, to show that there were no hard feelings.
“Thank you for allowing me the taste,” Rebekah murmured, catching his gaze. “You’ll feel no pain from this,” she continued, using the weight of compulsion behind her words. She wouldn’t compel him to forget, not after he shared that his previous handlers had done so frequently. Bex stood, pressing her body against his in show as she lowered her mouth to his neck. She dropped her fangs and bit into him, relishing the gushing blood that soothed her parched throat. He tasted very good, in part because she was so hungry and in part because she quite liked him, even if he wouldn’t fuck her.
Very carefully, she disengaged from his throat and licked her lips as she pulled away. Bex let him see her fangs as she pricked her finger with them, using her blood to heal his neck instantly. Her fangs receded and she gave him another smile. “Mmmm, thank you James. I might inquire as to another taste next time.” Always so much better, fresh from the source. Rebekah pressed a kiss against his cheek before tossing some bills on the counter to cover her tab. “Sweet dreams,” she added with a wink, before disappearing out of the bar and into the night.
~*~
'You'll feel no pain from this.'
The words were antithetical to the fact she was about to bite into his throat. Bucky assumed that was how it was done. He'd seen vampire films as a younger man. Even he knew some of the old monster stories, HYDRA hadn't erased his knowledge banks the way they had erased his memories. Some things were motor memories, certainly, such as his ability to fire a weapon or drive a vehicle, but Bucky remembered words which he had no reason to know beyond having learned them somewhere.
No one was looking their direction as the woman leaned into him, but he raised his hand as if to cup the back of her head while they were kissing. Two people hooking up in a bar. They could be only that to one another in this moment as far as anyone else was concerned. Bucky Barnes had picked up more than his fair share of women in bars. In his day, they were the only kind of women who would come home with a man not expecting a ring on their finger afterwards.
How had things been for someone of Rebekah's age?
All thoughts were erased as her teeth sank into him. It wasn't painful. She had said he would feel no pain and he didn't. It was the first time someone hadn't lied to him before taking from him; it was also the first time he'd offered to give something of himself to someone else without expecting it to be his duty and knowing he could choose to say no.
More than anything, Bucky appreciated those things though he wouldn't mind if she drank from him again.
He didn't have the heart to tell her his dreams were never sweet as he waved her a farewell with his metal hand.
Rebekah had been the first pleasant exchange he'd had with a strange woman in years. Bucky wouldn't mind seeing her again.
James.
She'd called him James.
He smiled as he motioned for another drink.
James could have a drink at the bar with Rebekah where he offered her a drink. It was lovely and ironic. It was also all his, simply something of his own. He hadn't had anything of his own in---too long. He'd see Rebekah again. They could have something together only for themselves.