Bit-slice references and containers serialize as sequences with additional metadata.
Serde only provides a deserializer for &[u8]; wider integers and interior-mutability wrappers are not able to view a transport buffer without potentially modifying it, and the buffer is not modifiable while being used for deserialization. As such, only &BitSlice<u8, O> has a no-copy deserialization implementation.
If you need other storage types, you will need to deserialize into a BitBox or BitVec. If you do not have an allocator, you must serialize from and deserialize into a BitArray.