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sarahowritesostucky · 10 months ago

Text

📖"Temporary Custody"

Rating: Explicit

Pairing: Steve x ofc x Bucky; Steve x Bucky

Word Count: 4042

Tags: Dom/sub, bdsm au, dom Bucky, sub reader, hurt/comfort, enemies to lovers, gay sex'n'stuff, straight sex'n'stuff, Steve being a literal Golden Retriever, mental health issues, dub-con, forced submission, referenced childhood abuse and resultant mental health issues, bakery au, m/f/m, gentle domination, total power exchange

Summary: The stigma and shame of being a submissive has kept Mary unfulfilled and in the closet her whole life, until an inciting incident leads to Bucky and Steve taking her in and giving her everything she was always too afraid to ask for.

Trigger warnings: This story contains themes of eating disordered behavior, body image issues, childhood abuse, self-harm, and alcohol abuse.

Wait! I haven't read an earlier chapter of this fic! Story Masterpost

5. Jiggly Soufflé Cake

Steve

“I should be in there,” Bucky says again, making Steve roll his eyes.

They’re sitting next to each other, out in the waiting room at the Center. It’s been over an hour, but Steve remembers how the intake worker had told them that Mary’s evaluation wouldn’t be short. Already, he’s read through half the crappy magazine selection. He lets the edge of an outdated issue of Dominant Monthly flop down to his lap. “Babe …”

“It’s taking too long. What if they’re harassing her or—”

“You know that’s not true. The people here are good. You’re just trying to control everything,” he reminds Bucky.

“If I was in there I could—”

“Get in the way. She needs to feel like she can express herself.”

“What if she’s not honest? What if Linda’s not asking her the right—”

“Buck, stop,” Steve says, injecting some command into his voice. Bucky might be the Dom, but Steve can put his foot down with his husband when needed. “The therapist knows what she’s doing. All the people here do. This is what they do.”

They’re at the Center for Designated Peoples, the place where people like Bucky go for … well, anything related to their dominance or submission needs. That’s all Steve really knows. He knows that Bucky has been in and out of CDPs since he was a kid. “It took almost a week to get her this appointment, alright? You want to mess that up?”

Bucky grumbles. “No.”

“Good. Cause they don’t need you in there, interfering in her assessment. So sit tight.”

Bucky shuts up after that, satisfying Steve that he’s made his point.

“Well, what do you think?” Bucky eventually says, when another ten minutes have passed and the door to the therapist’s office is still closed. “Of her?”

Steve glances over. “You mean in general?”

“Sure. Whatever.”

Steve can tell when Bucky’s being defensive. “You like her,” he says. “And not just cause of her lemon tarts.” He’d seen him looking at weighted blankets on Amazon, yesterday. “Admit it,” he prods, nudging Bucky’s shoe with his. “You can tell me how you feel. Why d’you need me to qualify it for you, first?

“Because I’m married to you, not her,” Bucky snaps. “Jesus, Rogers. Never met a man with less self-preservation instincts than you.”

“Mmhm. Aand?”

“... Okay I’m drawn to her,” Bucky says. “But I can’t tell how much of that is instinct and how much is normal people stuff.”

“‘Normal people stuff’,” Steve echoes, amused.

“I want to know what you think of her.” Bucky kicks his shoe back. “Tell me.”

“I like her too,” Steve concedes. “It’s not just you.” He can see as Bucky’s shoulders relaxing a little bit, knows that his opinion matters to his husband. “She’s different. Plain, but …” Steve searches for the right word. ‘Cute’ doesn’t seem right. She’s too prickly for that and too old besides. She’s a woman, not a girl, and he’s not just trying to describe her physical appearance. “I don’t know,” he says. “Editorial?”

“Editorial?” Bucky scowls. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“I dunno, just, not off the rack. Different.” Bucky snatches the magazine out of his lap and chucks it back to the coffee table. Steve rolls his eyes. “Wish she wasn’t so defensive, though. And I wish we could’ve met her … you know, like on a date or at the gym or something.”

Bucky snorts. “Yeah.”

“She grows on you,” Steve decides. Like an angry, stray cat. That’s dirty and scraggy a little.

“She’s pretty,” Bucky offers, but the words fall flat. They can both see that she’s attractive, that isn’t news. Bucky and Steve are attractive people themselves. They aren’t hurting for opportunities to be with attractive women (or men), if they want to. And it’s been a while since they invited another person into their bed. But …

“I haven’t been with a woman since my twenties,” Steve mumbles, thinking about it. He glances at Bucky. “You have.”

They both know Bucky was dating women casually when he met Steve, years ago. “Yeah,” he says simply.

“You ever miss ‘em? Women?” Steve kind of does sometimes. He likes how soft they are; the contrast. It had taken him a couple of dates and a few glasses of wine, back when they’d first gotten together, to admit to Bucky that he was bi. Steve had told him that, and then Bucky had disclosed his designation status. “We used to talk about the whole poly thing a lot more.”

“Hm, yeah I guess.” Bucky shrugs and reaches to take his hand. Steve gives it a squeeze. “I dunno babe. Kind of hard to think about anybody else when I’ve got you around.” He gives him a lecherous look that makes Steve glad they’re the only ones in the waiting room. “Your hot body’s been enough to keep my attention.” His eyes drag up and down Steve, mentally undressing him.

Steve feels heat creep up his neck and he chuckles, pushing Bucky’s hand away. “Stoppit. Jerk. I’m a person.”

“Punk,” Buck smirks. “You like it.”

“Shuddup. Not here. God, you’re such a creep.” They’re both grinning—probably like complete, horny letches—when the door to the therapist’s office opens.

The professionally dressed woman offers them a friendly smile. “Bucky, Steve.”

“Hey Linda,” Bucky greets.

“How’d it go, Doctor?” Steve asks, not on as informal terms with the CDP staff as his husband is. “Is she …”

“Mary is fine. Would you like to come in and talk with us?”

Bucky is immediately standing from his chair. “Yep.”

Steve has to refrain from rolling his eyes. He grabs Bucky’s wrist. “Hang on now, Buck. Maybe she doesn’t want us in there. We should try and give her choices where we can.”

Doctor Linda surprises him by saying, “Actually, Mary says she’s fine with discussing this all together.”

Bucky shoots him a smug look and tugs his wrist back. “See?”

This time Steve does roll his eyes, but he nods at Linda and gets up to follow her back into the office.

Bucky

Bucky can recall very clearly the first time he’d been told he had a mental illness. He’d been ten, had been sent to the school shrink for misbehavior. He remembers how his mom had come in, harried about being called off from work when her kid wasn’t even sick. Bucky had felt bad about that, had felt like he’d done something wrong (well, he had scrubbed Trixie Wallace’s face into a mud puddle at recess).

But still, even at ten years old he’d been smart enough to know that this meeting with his mom and the counselor was more serious than another simple admonition or in-school suspension.

Long story short, His mom wound up reacting with something like embarrassment, and Bucky had wound up internalizing that for a long time, feeling like his “condition” was something to be kept private and not discussed.

Now, he sits in Linda’s office and makes sure to exude an air of calm and acceptance. He doesn’t want Mary to be embarrassed about this like he was. It helps that times have changed a bit since Bucky was a kid, and he knows this particular Center very well. They do good work with the designated community. Bucky knows that no one here is going to announce to Mary that she’s a deviant.

Mary’s sitting in her own chair, separate from where Bucky and Steve share the couch. Even though Bucky’s instinct is to tell her to come sit with them, he holds back. He knows that the seating arrangement is likely purposeful on Linda’s part. He tries to remember Steve’s words about giving Mary choices where they can. Domination may be what she needs, but too much of a good thing, administered too fast, can still be harmful.

“High needs,” Steve is saying, echoing what Linda’s just told them. “... So, she’s like Bucky, but submissive?”

“Yes,” Linda confirms. “We did the assessment twice, and both times Mary tested at the far end of the spectrum.”

“Fantastic,” Mary mutters.

“We’ve been discussing what this might mean for her care plan, going forward. Mary has several other issues that I believe tie into her unfulfilled needs as a submissive.”

“I don’t understand how it went undiagnosed for so long,” Bucky says, feeling vaguely upset about it. “Doc?”

She shrugs. “Mary’s from a part of the country where mental health awareness isn’t so advanced. They didn’t test in the public school system where she grew up.” Mary makes a quiet noise of discontent and Linda adds, “So we’ve been talking about the physiology of it, the role of neurotransmitters and how important it is for her to be dropped regularly. And we’ve discussed what that might look like, different options she has.”

“Options?”

Here, Linda hesitates. “Well … Mary has expressed an interest in taking advantage of the Center’s social programs.”

“No,” Bucky says right away. “Absolutely not.”

“She said you do it,” Mary counters, and when Bucky looks over he finds her glaring at him. “Apparently, I don’t need you after all. I can just come here and hook up with any old body.”

“I’m your legal guardian right now,” Bucky reminds her. “And the clubs are for people who know what they’re doing. It’s too unstructured for you. You need more stability than that.”

Mary scoffs and crosses her arms, but Dr. Linda is already nodding in agreement. “I think Bucky’s right, Mary,” she says gently. “A reliable, dominant partner and regular drops in a safe space are what you need right now.”

“Why can’t you just write me a prescription or something?” Mary complains. “You said it was a brain chemistry thing, so why not?”

Linda looks uncomfortable as she explains, “Medication is usually only considered as a last ditch treatment option … and with your substance use disorder and other issues I'd rather not —”

“I am not an alcoholic!”

“No meds,” Bucky says, hating that idea. “Come on, Mary. You don’t want to be drugged up, do you?”

She glares at him. “You just want to control me.”

He fights very, very hard not to roll his eyes. “Yeah,” he quips. “That’s kind of the whole point.”

Mary groans and slumps back into the cushions of her chair, looking put out. “This sucks.”

“It’s manageable,” Linda reminds gently.

"I don't want to be this way," she mumbles. "'High needs'. It's embarrassing."

“It's no different than needing air, or food or sleep,” Steve supplies. “You guys just have this extra thing.”

Mary makes a face, probably at being lumped into the ‘you guys’ category with Bucky. “So, what’s the plan then?” she asks mulishly, crossing her arms. “We go back to your place and you break out the whips and chains?”

Bucky barks out a laugh before he can stop himself. “Oh, honey. I promise there aren’t any chains.” He winks at her. “I prefer leather.”

Mary

After the therapist, it gets a little easier to be around Steve and Bucky. Mary’s still quick to anger, thinking about the situation that she's managed to get herself into, but there are some ameliorating factors to the situation.

Having an official diagnosis—no matter how much she doesn’t want this diagnosis—is at least a starting point. Mary doesn’t have to keep exhausting herself, arguing with Bucky that she’s not a sub. She is. That’s that.

And when he takes it upon himself to speak with Mary’s boss about her situation (effectively getting him to unfire her for the multiple days of work she’s missed) some more of Mary’s contempt for Bucky slips away.

“Thank you,” she says quietly once they leave the café, her next shift already scheduled for that upcoming Monday. “ I … this job, it means a lot to me.”

“I know.” Bucky says simply, though Mary can see the self-satisfaction in his posture. He takes her hand as they walk together down the sidewalk, and to Mary it feels like some sort of test, like he’s waiting for her to pull away.

So she forces herself to curl her fingers around his and keep holding his hand.

Again, she can practically feel the reaction coming off of him. He’s pleased with her. Mary’s cheeks flush from the domineering squeeze he gives her hand from time to time as they walk, and she’s grateful that she can blame it on the day’s chilly air.

Doctor Linda had explained everything, of course, when Mary went in for the assessment. The testing hadn’t been what she was expecting, hadn’t been embarrassing or invasive. And, perhaps most disappointing of all, it hadn’t been predictable. Mary hadn’t felt like she knew which way to fake her responses, to get the test to declare her mentally fit. So she’d answered honestly.

And where had that gotten her? Lumped into the same group of deviants as James Bucky Barnes. “High needs”—God it sounds awful.

“It’s not necessarily sexual,” Linda tells her at her second appointment. “Or, well … it doesn’t have to be, at least. There are ways around it, if you really need an asexual dynamic.”

Mary nods along, but inside she thinks about the last time Bucky scolded her or praised her or held her hand on the sidewalk. She thinks about when he’d put his hand on her throat and applied pressure. Thinking about those things doesn’t make her feel asexual at all.

The first time Bucky doms her in a coordinated manner, she’s actually unaware of what he’s doing at first. It’s one of Mary’s three days off and she’s terribly bored, researching how to make grapefruit soda caviar and wondering if there’s a gym nearby that she could join. She hasn’t exercised in weeks, and honestly, if there’s even the slightest chance that she’s going to wind up being naked in front of Bucky or Steve (or, oh god, both of them), then she really feels like she needs to work out.

Scratching fingernails over the skin of her lower stomach, she googles nearby gyms, finds one that looks decent, and tells Steve that she’s headed out to go join. She’s tying one sneaker when Steve objects.

“Oh but wait,” he says. “Um, Bucky’s going to be home soon. And I think he uh, I think he had plans. … For us.”

Mary raises an eyebrow. She likes Steve—thinks he’s kind of a big, beefy sweetheart, actually—but sometimes his devotion to Bucky and what Bucky wants is annoying. “Fine, you stay here and tell him where I went. I’ve got to get out of this apartment.” And out from under you and your bossy husband’s constant supervision. “Got to … I dunno, burn off some steam.”

Bucky’s timing is impeccable. He comes through the door just as she’s bending over to lace up her other sneaker. His arms are full of plastic grocery bags, which he dumps onto the kitchen counter with fanfare. "Honey, I'm home."

“What happened to using the reusable bags?” Steve drawls, earning an eye roll from Bucky.

“Forgot 'em.”

“Mmhm.”

“Shut up.” Bucky’s grinning at his husband, until he catches sight of Mary crouched in her gym clothes. “Where do you think you’re going?” he asks her.

“None of your business,” she snips, standing back up and heading for the front door.

“Stop right there, Princess.”

Oh. Well that’s a new one. Mary turns back around with what she’s sure is an incredulous look. “‘Princess’?”

Bucky smiles warmly and drags her over to inspect the groceries that are in the bags. She’s quick to catalog: eggs, butter, flour, sugar, milk. “What?” she asks, looking up at him. “You think I’m going to cook for you?”

“Oh I know you’re going to cook for me,” he says calmly, taking dry goods out of one of the bags and arranging them in the pantry. “Bake, in fact.”

Mary might stare a little, maybe with her lips parted. She feels equal parts annoyed and intrigued by his audacity. Something vaguely squirmy and warm stirs in her. She's planning on throwing some haughty quip back at him, maybe casually threatening poisoning, but somehow what comes out of her mouth is a subservient, “Well … what do you want me to make?”

He turns back around with bright eyes. “Oh, I’m sure you can come up with something,” he practically purrs. He gets right up in her space and says, “Something … delectable.”

Mary has to avert her gaze and turn away. She says a quick prayer that he hadn’t been close enough to hear the little hitch in her breath, then tries to focus her attention on cataloging the ingredients the jerk has brought her. Eggs, butter, flour, sugar, milk …

Hadn’t she … hadn’t she been going out somewhere? Oh yeah, right. The gym.

She squeaks when Bucky claps a cheerful hand on her shoulder and gives her a squeeze. “Good girl,” he simpers, then walks over to the couch and flops down next to Steve, giving him a kiss hello. They proceed to chat with each other and chat about their days like Mary isn’t standing less than twenty feet away in the kitchen.

She suddenly feels like some 1950’s housewife. … One with damp panties, now that Bucky’s called her that right in her ear. Christ. Had Steve heard? She glances back over to them, but they’re not looking her way. Mary flushes and looks back down at the countertop. Eggs, butter, flour, sugar, milk. She tries to think if she has everything she might need for soufflé cakes.

“How can something so plain be so good?” Steve wonders at the dinner table, where he’s squinting closely at his third helping of dessert like he can glean answers from it. “And what is it?”

“Satisfying,” Bucky says sagely. “That’s the secret.”

“The secret is buttermilk. And it’s cake, Steve. Just eat it.”

“How’re those dishes coming, Doll?” Bucky calls back, shooting her a sly look from over his shoulder. Mary resists the urge to stick her tongue out at him and dunks her hands back into the soapy sink water.

Steve pokes the jiggly cake with his fork. “What are yooou?”

By the time they’re finished with dinner and dessert (and dishes), she’s figured it out. All the pet names, the casual touches and the confident demands? Bucky’s trying to dominate her. She thinks about calling him out on it, but promptly forgets to do that when they go into the living room to watch a movie and Bucky firmly suggests that she make herself comfortable on the floor instead of the couch. At his and Steve’s feet.

Forget about damp panties, she just hopes it doesn’t start to show through her leggings.

Asexual dynamic her ass.

Mary had only held onto the illusion that the guys were gay gay for about two whole days, before it became very apparent that they actually like women, too. Steve’s comments alone about Daenerys while watching Game of Thrones are enough to broadcast that he swings both ways.

So that takes it from regrettable to just plain insulting when, as time goes by, Bucky doesn’t initiate anything sexual with her. He keeps doing his whole Dom thing, aided and abetted by Steve, and almost always in ways that take Mary off guard. He’s never mean, never does any of the intimidating things she’d imagined a dom would do to a submissive.

And Mary won’t admit it, but she’s starting to look forward to when Bucky gets home from work at the end of the day. She spends more time than she’ll ever admit planning out something new to make for dessert, all the while anticipating the beginning of Bucky’s early evening commands and how they elicit those first tendrils of effervescent, pink fizz giddiness.

It’s the later commands—the ones that come after dinner and during tv time, that tend to bring on the warm, sunken bathwater feelings. Marys pretty sure that Steve is a bit of a voyeur, because he seems fascinated by it all, watching every night as Bucky bosses her around, sometimes even joining in his own small ways, by petting her hair or telling her she’s sweet, or something like that.

Every evening, they play this strange game. And every evening Bucky and Steve each give her a kiss on the cheek and send her dazed little self off to bed, the two of them retiring to their own room. In the beginning, being left alone to go to bed is nice. She ignores the arousal between her legs in favor of floating in her syrupy sea of sweet feelings. Going to bed in subspace gives her the most solid sleep she’s ever had in her life. But after another week of it, and then another, the arousal starts to linger a little more at bedtime. She starts to fantasize about what it would be like to keep things going, to take Steve’s hand at the end of the night and let him guide her into his and Bucky’s bedroom, rather than her own; be held between their two big bodies while they whisper more sweet things to her and touch her in new places …

Maybe Steve and Bucky really do just want this to be platonic, she thinks, as another week of the same goes by and her dreams are getting dirtier by the minute. She’d surreptitiously stuffed her vibrator into a bag when they’d gone back to her apartment to retrieve her belongings, but she’s been too afraid to use it when Steve and Bucky are right across the hallway in their room, mortified to think that they might hear the buzzing and know what she’s doing.

Best not to add fuel to the fire, she thinks, when she ignores how increasingly horny she’s becoming and forces herself to lie still and count sheep and not fantasize about the two insanely hot, not-gay-gay men in the next room. They’re still a happily married couple, she tells herself. They’ve got no interest in her as of yet, and she’ll just be making herself into a homewrecker if she pushes for more.

… Or maybe they’re just not attracted to her that way, she eventually starts to think. Steve and Bucky are both in amazing shape, and they’re very good looking. They probably see her as like … maybe a solid five—with makeup and a blowout.

She gets a little down in the dumps about it, realizing that all the heavy drinking and crap diet of this past year and a half has taken its toll on her, and she’s just not physically their type. She convinces Bucky to start adding salmon to the grocery list, she researches the pros and cons of lip filler, and starts whitening her teeth with one of those nasty little gel kits.

She stands in front of her bathroom mirror each night and scrutinizes her naked body, dragging her nails absentmindedly against the skin of her lower stomach and cataloging everything that’s not as good as it could be. She considers the scars on her hip that have no new slices added to the roster, wonders if Bucky ever wound up telling Steve about how … how awful they are …

“Night, Mary!” Steve chirps from across the hall, making her inhale and flinch in surprise.

“N-night!” she calls back through the wall, feeling the pleasant effects of that night’s drop fading away faster than she’d like.

Maybe she should just be happy that she’s getting at least this much attention from them, that things have improved a little and she at least isn’t drinking herself into a stupor each night anymore. That’s a positive, even if she is still left pining after them like a fool every night. Steve and Bucky are okay guys, but they probably just don’t want anything more than this from her. They’re helping her because she shares this mental illness with Bucky, and that’s super nice of them, but it doesn’t mean they have to be attracted to her, too. Mary’s not entitled to anything.

She joins a 24 hour gym and takes to binge exercising in the middle of the night to push away the uncertainty.