Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first time that Bucky notices that there is something off about Tony Stark, he’s watching him on TV. Tony Stark has plenty of press conferences and Bucky swears he can’t flip through his channels without seeing his face plastered everywhere.

It’s been even more frequent lately with his three month disappearance, and then reappearance that coincided with the Iron Man, as the media had taken to calling the new superhero. Sure enough the particular press conference seems to be about the new superhero himself. Bucky had always thought it was suspicious that he only appeared when Stark escaped and was back, and it seems from the turnout of reporters in the room, he’s not the only one that has had his suspicions.

The things that Bucky knows about Tony Stark are few. He knows that owns and is CEO of Stark Industries, is apparently a genius from what Bucky is told, and has a reputation for being charming and an asshole.

Bucky doesn’t see the charming part watching him deliver the prepared statement. If anything the press conference is awkward and the way that Tony talks is stilted. Bucky had thought that the Tony Stark would be better with a crowd, and maybe to anyone else the words would seem natural. But Bucky notices that his movements are stiff and his face isn’t as expressive as Bucky is used to from the passing times that he’s seen him. Minor details that wouldn’t stand out to anyone else, but Bucky’s been trained to pick up on these things and the words coming out of Tony’s mouth don’t quite meet his eyes and he’s so obviously uncomfortable with the situation while trying to pretend that he’s okay with it.

“The Iron Man, as you know him, is a suit of armor that I built. I do not know the identity of the Iron Man nor was I involved in any of the decisions apart from building the suit. Iron Man will continue to perform his duties as needed.” There’s a pause as Tony reads over his notecards, like he’s considering not saying the rest of his prepared speech, but then he looks up into the crowd, puts on a face and says, “I will continue supplying the technology but my involvement will end there.”

He’s lying. Bucky isn’t sure about what, but he knows that he’s lying. That there is something else that they’re not telling the public, and it’s something that Tony doesn’t seem happy having to lie about either.

Bucky forgets about the press conference in the weeks that follow.   The times that he does think about is from the gossip magazines, as the press conference has created quite a stir. There’s plenty of conspiracy theories behind it asking what Tony Stark is hiding about the Iron Man. But others focuses on other things like “Tony Stark has three balls,” which Bucky actually laughs at.

It’s been two weeks since the press conference and he’s had more pressing things to worry about then Tony Stark, no matter how obvious it was that Tony was lying. Bucky has spent his last two weeks training new security guards. Some of them have needed more help than others and he’s put in a lot of extra time towards some of them.

In particular there’s a kid named Peter,  who Bucky just can’t get to be observant. They have plenty of training exercises where Bucky runs them through scenarios and what everyone should focus on and notice, and Peter seems to always miss a lot of the details. Details that would seem small to anyone else, but Bucky knows that missing details is sometimes what gets you killed. As a result he ends up spending a lot of time with the kid, who seems dejected that he keeps missing things. Bucky feels sorry for him and genuinely wants to help, so a lot of his free time goes to him until he is finally on the right track in their exercises. Bucky is proud of him when they have a training exercise and he catches a detail that no one else does. It makes it feel like his hard work paid off and Bucky has become fond of the kid after spending so much time with him.

It’s his first day in weeks that he has off, that he has nothing planned. And he plans to use it just to rest and do absolutely nothing, because he’s just so damn tired.

But of course he doesn’t get what he wants, because his phone starts ringing far too early for his liking. He tries to ignore it, to sleep right through it, but it rings again, and it’s a number he definitely doesn’t recognize but he answers anyway.

“Hello?”

“Is this James Barnes?”

“It is.”

“My name is Pepper Potts and I am calling to hire you as a bodyguard on behalf of Tony Stark.”

Bucky laughs and hangs up. Billionaires do not casually call him up to be hired. The phone rings again, same number. He ignores it because he just wants to rest and not deal with prank calls, but then it just keeps ringing.

“Look, I have to say this is the strangest telemarketer call I have received and I’ll give you points but I’m not sure what you’re expecting to accomplish.”

“Mr. Barnes, my name is Pepper Potts and I assure you that this phone call is very real. Say hi, Tony.”

Bucky hears the unmistakable voice of Tony Stark in the background going, “What? Say hi to who? Who are you on the phone with? Tell them I’m not here.”

“And you want to hire me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“You come very highly recommended.”

Bucky’s surprised at that because he didn’t think that people still recommended him for anything. He’s amazed that anyone would actually want to hire him with what is out on his record. He can’t help but be curious about it--what has Pepper heard, and from who that he comes highly recommended?

Bucky sighs and asks for the details. Pepper offers him a very nice six figure salary, potential bonuses, full insurance and she guarantees him that they’ll pay for all his relocation expenses. That’s how Bucky’s lazy day off leads to him getting onto a private jet to Malibu. One that was sent specifically for him (he had assumed that he’d be flying regularly with other people until he got to the airport). Bucky had considered not taking the job, he really had. He had thought that he was just fine living his life as he was, training people. But if he’s being honest with himself, the job gives him an opportunity to do something new. Plus he’s curious about the whole thing, and it doesn’t seem like there’s much of a financial risk for him involved considering how much money Pepper seems willing to throw at him.

Bucky spends the entire plane ride trying not to talk himself out of it and trying to convince himself that it’s not an awful idea. A part of him thinks that he’ll show up at Tony Stark’s house and it won’t actually be Tony but instead a knockoff that has won a Tony Stark lookalike contest. Stranger things have happened to him, and the more that he thinks about it the more that he finds himself thinking of ways this could go wrong, even though he is sitting in a private jet with Stark painted across the outside of it in big obnoxious letters as though Tony was afraid that someone would be confused who it belonged to if it were in even a slightly smaller font. In the end he decides that it’s not worth worrying about and tries to sleep, which had been his original plan for the day anyway.

Tony Stark in person is a lot to handle. Bucky is picked up and taken to his house, greeted by Pepper at the door who ushers him in yet Bucky still doesn’t see Tony anywhere. What he is greeted with is blaring rock music somewhere in the distance. He’s amazed that he didn’t hear it from the airport.

Pepper smiles at him and says, “Excuse me for a moment, I have to grab Tony.”

Bucky stands in the overly large living room of Tony Stark’s house and wonders how this is his life. The living room itself is sleek and exactly what he’d expect from Tony but it doesn’t look like anyone has ever actually done any living in it.  Everything looks too clean, not a bit of dust or anything left in it anywhere, the couch still stiff, no imprints left to signify actual use, and all the surfaces in the place are granite, far too smooth for Bucky’s liking. The place feels more like a model that is shown off to potential buyers than a home that someone actually lives in on a day to day basis. After a moment he hears the music turn off and Pepper comes into view with an exasperated looking Tony Stark behind her.

“Pepper listen, I’ve signed everything you need to me sign, do you need anything more from me? I haven’t made the stocks drop in a whole week! Honestly you should be proud of me, I think that’s a new record.”  

Tony talks a mile a minute but Bucky can already tell that this is a lot more comfortable for him than the press conference. That now he isn’t being fed words and that he is comfortable with Pepper Potts, he can tell from his body language towards her in general. It’s more relaxed. When talking to Pepper he’s at ease, completely unlike the tense shoulders that Bucky noticed on TV.

Pepper smiles a tight smile at him and goes through a list of things that Tony has to take care of. Tony doesn’t look like he’s listening and looks over at Bucky questioningly before blatantly dragging his eyes up and down Bucky’s entire body. Bucky isn’t sure if he should actually be flattered or not; he’s mostly still just tired from having his day disrupted and can’t put too much thought into Tony Stark checking him out as the entire experience still doesn’t feel real.

“Okay Pep, listen, that’s great, but I really have to get back to work so did you need anything else?”

“Yes. This is James Buchanan Barnes, he is to be your personal bodyguard. I have already worked out compensation and everything else with him, but he will be living here.”

“Sorry don’t think I quite heard you there, funny actually, but it sounded like you said bodyguard and that just can’t be right.”

“Tony. I did say that.”

Tony smiles his stupid smug grin and kind of goes, “Okay, well, James is it? Can I call you James? I don’t need anyone guarding me or any part of my body, so while it was nice to meet you, or at least have you be eye candy while Pepper talked at me, I can fully assure you that I do not need your services. Bye-bye now.”

Tony actually shoos him like he’s a stray cat that has walked in and Bucky doesn’t move, half curious to see what happens when Tony doesn’t get his way, when people don’t do what he asks of them. Tony instead just frowns and says, “Really, I don’t need your service here. I know the place is large, I can walk you back to the door so you don’t get lost.”

Bucky smirks and notes Tony’s babble as a character trait, with him not talking and Tony talking a lot he’s able to observe plenty of things on how Tony interacts with new people, like himself, versus people he’s comfortable with, like Pepper. With Pepper he’s relaxed, with him there’s a subtle change, body language again becoming more rigid, like Tony is more on guard, like he doesn’t trust him yet. All important things to know when he is interacting with a new client.

Then he realizes that’s been so absorbed in observing Tony and the way that he acts that he’s simply been staring him down for a while without talking. Tony is looking at him with a smug smirk plastered on his face that Bucky really doesn’t want to deal with currently no matter how attractive Tony might be.

“That’s not necessary, I remember where the door is,” he says, even though he has no desire to walk back out the door and get on a plane once again. The flight to Malibu was exhausting enough and he is in no hurry to do the flight again less than an hour after landing.

Tony throws up his hands in an exaggerated motion and says, “Fine. Pepper can walk you out then.”

With that he turns and starts walking away from them, back towards where he and Pepper came in. Bucky’s amused because he still hasn’t gotten to say a damn word and he’s beginning to wonder how anyone gets a word in around Tony. It seems that Pepper mostly ignores whatever he says and continues on about her business.

She smiles at him again and says, “Excuse me for a just moment, again.”

Then she disappears to go track down Tony for the second time in the ten minutes that Bucky has been inside of Tony’s Malibu house.

Pepper comes back moments later without Tony, smiles at him again, and then goes, “Follow me, I can show you a room that you can stay in.”

Bucky just nods and follows her. She shows him to a room, one of many he guesses, and much like the living room it doesn’t look like anyone has ever stayed in it.

“Thanks,” he mumbles out as he sets his stuff in there. The room itself is far too large for him. It’s extravagant like the rest of the house, king bed in the middle that Bucky is sure no one has ever slept in. He’s sure that the room would take up at least of half of his apartment in Brooklyn. The woodwork on the bed frame suggests that it’s custom made, which Bucky thinks is incredible considering that it probably just sits in the room without use, but someone definitely paid for a custom design.

“Tony should come out of his lab to greet you properly and actually get things in order. I have to go back but please call me if there is anything that you need.”

“I will. Thanks again,” he says. He’s not exactly sure how he’s supposed to go about the rest of the day trying to protect someone that hasn’t even spoken to him, but he guesses he’ll figure it out whether Pepper is there or not.

Tony does come up a while later, once Bucky has started walking around the house looking for weak points. Tony corners him as he’s going through the kitchen.

“So how does this work exactly?” Tony asks.

“I was told that you were the one that knew how things work. I mean don’t get me wrong, I like playing around with some things but you’re probably the one to ask if you’re trying to get things to function.”

Tony rolls his eyes at him, “The bodyguard thing, like you don’t need to watch me sleep or anything do you? I mean if that’s your thing I won’t judge but it’ll take some adjusting.”

“I absolutely do. Your sleep patterns are absolutely vital information to my job. In fact I also need to know what you wear to bed, this is very important.”

Tony blinks at him, and then a grin spreads across his face. “Actually I don’t wear anything to bed,” Tony laughs  and then he winks at Bucky.

“Well I’m sure I’ll be able to confirm that when I watch you sleep,” Bucky deadpans.

Tony raises an eyebrow. “Okay, I can’t actually tell if you’re fucking with me now. I’m normally pretty good at picking that sort of thing up. I’m sort of impressed.”

“Only partially. I don’t need to watch you sleep, but knowing when you sleep along with your day to day schedule is helpful.”

“I don’t have a consistent sleep schedule. Or a consistent anything really.” Bucky notes that. He’s used to sporadic behavior, has a few behaviors of his own that aren’t consistent, he can handle it. He’s glad that Tony is actually giving him information freely; it helps him mark the quirks and character traits that he’ll need to take into consideration as he works.  

“Aside from that, there are a couple of things that I’ll need, like access to your security system.”

“That’s not happening.”

Bucky just stares at him. “Okay, I can set up my own security system then. I think I can include one that requires me to put a GPS tracker on you.”

Tony looks at Bucky like he’s grown a second head. “Absolutely not.”

“Well those are your two options. Either way I need a security system in place that I have access to.”

“Fine. Install your own but I’m removing it if it’s not secure. And I don’t believe for a second that you actually need a GPS tracker.” Tony says, like he’s challenging him.

Bucky rolls his eyes, “That is not at all efficient.I don’t need a GPS tracker but it’d make my job easier.”

“Well I don’t think it’s efficient for me to have a bodyguard either and yet here you are, so let’s see what you got. I always like having new tech to play with.” Tony almost looks excited about it, and that’s something that Bucky has noticed quickly--the way that Tony’s face lights up when he’s talking about tech.

Bucky doesn’t argue it. “Okay. There’s a few things I need to know right away as well.”

“Go ahead.”

“What’s security around here look like currently?”

“Happy takes care of a lot of that stuff. You might be better off asking him.”

“Fine. What about cameras? Mics?”

Tony stares at him for a moment like Bucky is missing something very obvious and then, “Jarvis handles all of that.”

“Should I talk to him too?”

“What? Oh! Jarvis, say hi buddy.” Tony says and Bucky looks around wondering who the hell Tony is talking to because he is still looking at Bucky instead of anywhere else.

“Hello Mr. Barnes,” comes a voice from the ceiling.

“Hi. You monitor everything around here?” Bucky asks because he might as well roll with the fact that Tony has an AI as his security. 

“Yes. I have access to all of the cameras among other things in the house.”

Bucky looks at Tony. “Is this why you don’t want me having access to your security system?”

“Jarvis is part of my security system. Absolutely no one gets access to him other than me. Though he might answer your questions regardless of how much I tell him not to, unfortunately. Most rebellious AI I’ve ever had. Yeah I know you hear me, you traitor.” Tony scowls.

“Can I make my own AI security system to compete with that?” Bucky asks seriously.

“Do you know how to do that?” Tony asks, looking impressed. Like Bucky suspected, he’s not good at reading people. Seems to be plenty good at tech and electronics, but doesn’t seems to have a good grasp on people.

“No. But if I did I bet it’d give Jarvis a run for his money.”

Tony looks affronted. “Don’t you talk about Jarvis like that. Jarvis, he didn’t mean it. There’s no one better than you.”

“I will take your word for it, sir.” Bucky didn’t think it was possible for an AI to be sarcastic but he can hear the eyeroll in Jarvis’s tone alone.

“Electronic locks?”

“Yes. Jarvis’ll have access to those as well.”

“What’s your schedule like?”

“Like I said, it’s mostly sporadic. I spend most of my time in the lab unless Pepper drags me to a board meeting which happens at least once a month, sometimes more frequently if I’m feeling particularly generous.”

“Any high traffic areas here?”

“Told you, I spend most of my time in the lab, so that’s where all the foot traffic will be.”

“Fine. Last thing. We need to set up a communication system between us,” Bucky takes out the ear pieces that he has for this, ones that he has used with other clients. He hands it over to Tony, when Tony just stares at it he sets it down on the counter next to them. He’s used to clients with odd ticks and this isn’t any different, he makes a note of it so he knows how to interact with Tony in the future.

Tony grabs it and looks down at it like the particular technology has personally insulted him. “No.”

“It’s non negotiable.”

“No, I mean. If we need a line of communication. I’ll make us something, “ Tony examines it in his hand, “Yeah I can definitely do better than this. I’ll use it, unhappily, for the day or two that it takes for me to make something better and it will be better.”

Bucky shrugs, “I’m not going to complain about you giving me improved equipment.”

Tony smiles at him. “You and I might get along better than I thought. But yeah like I said, talk to Happy or Jarvis about all the security stuff. I don’t actually know much about it. Tell me, how much is Pepper paying you to be a glorified babysitter?”

“You don’t know?”  Bucky asks, because he assumed that Pepper would have at least told him that much, but Tony didn’t even seem to know that he was being hired a bodyguard so it shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise.

“Not really. I assume it’s a lot. But I don’t really handle my money much.”

Bucky can’t fathom being rich enough that you could have a six figure salary go missing from your account and not even be aware of it, but Tony shrugs it off like it’s something that happens on a daily basis. He tells Tony the amount anyway since he feels like he should still know, even if it’s nothing to him.

Tony lets out a whistle, “Very nicely then. You should be proud. Are you very known in your field or something?” Bucky wants to laugh at the questions because Tony has no idea, he hasn’t bothered to look Bucky up yet but he’s sure that it’ll happen.

He ignores the question even though it alone sends off warning bells in Bucky’s head, because Tony is acting like he’s being paid well just for being Bucky and not because something is posing a threat to him. And Bucky is certain that something is posing a threat because there wouldn’t be a need for him otherwise and it doesn’t make any sense to pay him this much to actually babysit.

So Bucky gives him a level stare and shrugs, “I assumed that there’s people after you. Generally don’t get that amount unless someone is in serious danger.”

There’s a slight tick in which Tony’s body language becomes more rigid. Most people wouldn’t notice it, but Bucky is all too aware of it as it happens. He’s seen it in enough people before.

“What? I’m not in any danger. Not legitimate danger, like I said I barely even leave the lab. And yeah DUM-E can be bit of a safety concern, but he’s not a serious danger. Besides, what billionaire doesn’t have at least some people after them?”

Bucky has quickly realized something about Tony Stark; the babbling is normal and so is the joking, but sometimes when they’re both combined it’s a defense mechanism and he is definitely hiding something.  He noticed it when he first arrived, the way that Tony talks when he’s completely comfortable, the way he talked to him instead of Pepper.

“Are you sure? DUM-E might not be a threat but have you made any sentient AI wandering around that would pose a threat?”

Tony actually takes a moment to seriously consider it, which speaks volumes on its own. “No. Only thing I have that’s close to being sentient is Jarvis and I really don’t think he’s a threat. Jarvis you planning on killing me?”

“I do not think it is on my schedule for the day,” comes the response.

Tony grins at him, and Bucky makes a note of the way that Tony interacts with Jarvis, always with an air of pride.

“Pepper thought there was reason for concern. Might want to ask her why she thought that was. I’m just here to keep you safe from any threats.”

“Well it should be an easy job. Like I said, you’re being paid to babysit.” Tony turns over the ear piece in his hand again. “I’ll have something better than this soon. Let Jarvis know if you need me, he knows where I am at all times. I’ll be in the lab.”

With that Tony leaves Bucky standing alone in the overly large house, that feels more and more vacant the more time that Bucky spends in it. He sighs and goes to find Happy to see if he can get anymore information out of him than what Tony provided.

The rest of the day is quiet, and Bucky orders his security system, frowning at the amount of time that it will take to arrive. He makes himself busy. The house is large and he needs to map out the perimeter and note anything that could be a concern in case anyone decides to attack Tony in his home.

Since Tony spends the majority of his time in his lab, he assumes the attack would be focused there. He walks down the stairs that he’s now seen Tony and Pepper use multiple times when mentioning the lab. When he walks down he’s surprised to find the entire wall is made out of glass . Bucky is already thinking of the many ways that could break and how easy it would be to shatter if he were a threat.

He steps out and touches it. Normal glass. Nothing more than aesthetic purposes, and that isn’t secure at all. It leaves Tony visible and easy to get to if there is someone already in the house. He can already imagine the glass shattering, leaving broken shards on the floor covered in a trail of red leading to the target. Bucky thinks that it’s a pretty easy way to lose a game of hide and seek.

He goes for the door out of curiosity, and it’s locked.

“Jarvis?”

“Sir has requested that no one be allowed in at this time.”

He can see Tony hunched over a workbench welding something, in a tank top, and Bucky thinks that Tony Stark is a threat to himself. He doesn’t think, however, that protecting Tony from Tony is covered in his job description.

“Will he be coming out anytime soon?” Bucky asks because it has been a few hours and it’s well past a normal time for dinner.

“Previous records indicate that sir will be in the lab for another 2 to 4 hours.”

Bucky feels like Tony has been in the lab for much longer than that already, and then thinks to ask a more specific question, “Will he come out for a substantial amount of time?”

“Records indicate that there is a 93% chance that he will emerge for less than 20 minutes.”

Bucky wonders if Tony plans on sleeping in the lab, he thinks of  of Tony’s comment on his sleep schedule being sporadic, and it makes more sense now as he starts to realize Tony’s workaholic tendencies.  

“Jarvis, do you have files that are accessible to me on Tony?”

“Yes, there are some that I can give you that are not restricted. I will send them to you.”

“Thank you, Jarvis,” Bucky says and continues to go look through the rest of the house, leaving Tony to work.

The obnoxious windows continue throughout the rest of the house. Bucky had noticed it from the outside, but now it seems like every room that he steps in there are large floor to ceiling windows. Effectively giving anyone easy entry into the house and also an easy way just to watch them.

It’s modern and sleek and Bucky hates it. He hates the windows, they’re a nightmare for him. He wonders how much bulletproofing all of them would cost, and makes a note to look into it.

Bucky grabs a vest from his room and walks back down to the lab.

“Jarvis could you have Tony come talk to me?”

It takes a mere moment for Tony to come out, he stares at the bulletproof vest in Bucky’s hand.

“Are you planning on shooting me? Because I don’t think that’s what you were hired for. I mean I think that would make you fail at your job. Can I leave you a yelp review so others know what they’re getting into?”

Bucky ignores the babble, “I’m going to go through the house and run diagnostics since you won’t give me access to the security system and mine will take a couple of days to arrive. I figure that giving you this will help you be prepared.”

“So you are going to shoot me?”

Bucky smiles at him but doesn’t answer. He hangs the vest on the door handle to the lab knowing that Tony won’t take it if he hands it to him directly, and then he walks away leaving Tony staring at the vest.

By the time Bucky finishes looking through the inside of the house, he has a list a mile long of things that need to be changed and things that are a safety hazard. There’s extravagant things all over the place and some that Bucky doesn’t even know how to categorize. In one room there’s even a giant rabbit plushie--it takes up at least a fourth of the room and he’s sure that there’s a story behind it, but it’s not something that he wants to deal with at the moment. The rest of the house has various projects of Tony’s that it seems like he’s abandoned; Bucky grows concerned with how many open wires and bits of circuitry he finds that seems like they aren’t connected to anything. On top of the various things that he finds there are just so many rooms that it makes Bucky uneasy. There are too many places for someone to hide. If he had to find someone before they found Tony it would take him more time than he would like, purely because of how many rooms he would have to go through.

He moves outside because he has to do a run through and see how easy it is to actually break in. He stands on top of the roof of Tony’s house (which is remarkably easy to walk around on considering the design on the place; yet another thing that is concerning). He doesn’t expect to find anything on the roof, not really, but then he comes across a hole. One large enough for a person to fall through, and he can’t help but wonder how long that’s been there. Looking through it, he sees the cars below, the garage that he knows is attached to Tony’s lab, and he’ll have to ask about that later.

After his run of the exterior, Bucky stands outside of Tony’s house, looking up at it and trying to think of the best way to climb the building. He’s not sure where Tony is inside the house (his lab, probably, as Tony seems to spend the vast majority of his time in the lab), but he knows that a potential threat wouldn’t know where Tony is expected to be so he can’t use that information. Not this time.

Bucky running in blind this time. To not know where Tony is. He knows that others might have watched him for a while and would know his schedule, but he has to be prepared for everything and that means being prepared for the unprepared threats as well. It’s as good a place to start as any, so he looks up at the house in his gear with a paintball gun strapped to his back and starts climbing.

He takes a moment to look for any movement inside of the house, looking at the windows to see if there is a shadow of Tony’s anywhere. He doesn’t see anything so he climbs higher. It’s then that he sees the slightest movement coming from the kitchen window.

Once he’s next to the window he waits for movement until he can tell his target is walking away from him, exactly what he wants.. He takes that moment to crash in through the window, doing a full roll inside after the crash.

It’s as he’s standing up reaching for his paintball gun that DUM-E sprays him with a fire extinguisher.

Tony just stares at him, coffee mug in hand, oversized sweatpants hanging low on his hips and Metallica shirt, looking nothing like he does in any press conference that Bucky has ever seen, and even now Bucky can tell that this is more comfortable for him, that he’s more at ease.

Tony tenses up a little, startled by the crash from his window, but then he can see him relax as he notices Bucky. Then he looks down at the gun and his eyes widen for a moment as he tries to work out if it’s real. He seems to figure out that it’s fake quickly;Bucky’s not surprised, Tony worked in making weapons for years. He’d be more concerned if Tony couldn’t tell a paintball gun apart from a real gun.

Tony calmly takes a sip of his coffee and then says, “You look ridiculous. I thought Dummy had grown out of that habit though. He hasn’t sprayed anything in awhile. I’ll have to check his algorithm for that particular behavior.”

Because of course even when Tony Stark has a gun (fake as it may be) pointed at him, he rambles.

Bucky doesn’t say anything, just shoots him square in the stomach and watches paint drip down his shirt and says, “You look dead.”

Tony isn’t wearing the vest like Bucky had told him to. He doesn’t feel guilty for shooting him as he did warn him, gave him proper gear and everything.

“You did shoot me! I am leaving you the most scathing yelp review possible.”

“Can dead men leave reviews?”

Tony, of course, takes that as a challenge, Bucky has learned plenty of things about Tony, but the fact that he can’t resist a challenge is one of the most obvious. “I would find a way. I would create special tech for ghosts to interact with so I could make things difficult for you after you murdered me.”

Bucky rolls his eyes, “And here I thought you had more important projects to work on.”

“Nope. This is priority number one now. It is apparent it might be tech I might actually need sometime soon with you around.”

“Wear your vest when I tell you to and it shouldn’t be an issue.”

“Be less vague about it.”

“Yes because people after you are going to give you specific instructions on how to protect yourself before they attack.”

Tony grumbles at that and says, “Fine. Next time I’ll be ready for you.”

All Bucky really wants at this point is for Tony to be more aware of things so he takes it as a win.

The security system that Bucky ordered comes two days later. It’s the third day that Bucky has been living in Tony’s house and so far he has not noticed any reason why Pepper would have hired him and especially not a reason that warrants him being paid as much as he is. He knows there’s something suspicious, and it’s at the back of his mind every day.

He asks Tony a couple of questions over the days when he sees him. “So you make the iron man armor?”

Tony glances at him like he doesn’t trust where Bucky is going with the conversation topic. “I do.”

“It’s very impressive. Seems like it changed a bit recently?” Bucky asks, because he’s been observing that more since he’s come to live with Tony. And he’s noticed the minor changes on the suit, small things in the way that it moves.

“Yeah just a few upgrades. Iron Man has his people tell my people how the suit is working and what could be upgraded or improved, or any potential defects.” The answer is practiced. Like it’s something that Tony has answered before, like he’s had to think about the answer and the way to word it carefully without arousing suspicion.

He installs the system, sets it up in every room that he can. Then it’s time for him to place it in the lab. He had been waiting to do that part last because he has a feeling that Tony won’t be fond of him poking and prodding around in there. It does nothing to sate his curiosity; he wants to poke and prod in the lab, he wants to know what’s in there. The more that he’s kept out of it the more that he wants entry. He briefly considers his options and wonders if there is a time when he could break in, but Jarvis poses an issue to him because Jarvis would know if he were to do so and Bucky hasn’t worked out a way to work around that yet.

He still hasn’t been in the lab, in the days that he’s been there. He left it alone the first day because he knew that Tony wouldn’t like it, and he didn’t want to press the issue twice. Instead he’s made due with asking Jarvis occasionally where Tony is, and walking down and looking into the lab seeing Tony through the glass. As much as he hates those damn windows it’s made his job easier, since he’s able to have eyes on Tony easily simply by walking down the stairs.

The door, of course, is locked. Instead of asking Jarvis this time Bucky knocks. Tony doesn’t lift his head from what he’s working on, Bucky’s not even sure if he can be heard over the music.

“Jarvis? Do me a favor and let him know that I am standing here?”

It’s a moment before Tony glances over at him, the music shuts off and Tony comes to the door.

Tony steps outside instead of letting Bucky in, something he can tell is very deliberate.

“I need to install the security system in your lab.”

“No.”

Bucky focuses on his breathing for a moment so he doesn’t get irritated, “You spend the most time in your lab and it is the most important place for you to have a security system in place.”

Tony grins, “I do have one, remember?”

“One that I have access to.”

“Sounds like a personal problem.” Tony says and then turns and walks into his lab without saying anything else.

Bucky sets up the system on the outside of the lab so he can have access to at least that much. He also configures the system to tell him when Tony enters and exits the lab. Due to the windows, he can monitor Tony’s movements from the outside effectively enough. He didn’t think they’d come in useful to him, but even still Bucky hates them and the safety threat that they pose. He’ll have to figure out how to get Tony to agree to the inside of the lab later. Tony has started blasting music yet once again, tuned out to everything around him, and Bucky resists the urge to break the stupid windows anyways.

Bucky isn’t able to sleep that night. He tosses and turns for a couple of hours before he gets bored and decides to give up. He drags himself out of the room needing to not be in it for a while, instead goes down to the living room, figures someone might as well actually do some living in it for once.

He pulls open the files on Tony that Jarvis sent him. A good a time as any to read them. It’s a short history on Tony’s life, his childhood, boarding school, MIT, running Stark Industries when they were still a weapons manufacturer, Afghanistan, and the state of things now. Most of it is things that Bucky already knew, he knew all of the major things, but there are smaller details in there that he assumes Jarvis noted, like Tony’s relationship with his father, and when Bucky’s done reading he comes away with a newfound hatred for Howard Stark. The section on Afghanistan is vague, doesn’t mention how Tony escaped, not really, mentions that Rhodey found him, but doesn’t specify where, or exactly what happened to Tony while he was held captive for three months but Bucky can make some pretty good guesses.

It’s nearing 3AM when he finishes reading everything and he hears Tony coming up the stairs from his lab. Tony looks at him when he steps into the living room.

He doesn’t ask why Bucky is awake. Tony looks tired, Bucky can see the bags under his eyes but he always recognizes the wired look and he knows that Tony probably won’t be sleeping any time soon.

“I looked you up.” Tony says.

Bucky snorts. “I just finished reading your files.”

“You want to save the tragic backstories talk for some other day?” Tony asks, and honestly it’s the best thing that he’s suggested in the few days that Bucky has been there.

“That’d be preferable. Schedule it for a few centuries from now.”

“You got it.”

Bucky tries to push down his nerves. He hasn’t read anything on himself, not in a few years. He doesn’t need to know what they’ve been saying. He didn’t like how he was painted after his military time and he doubts that he’ll like it any better now. He’s curious what Tony thinks, but he knows that he’s better off not knowing, he doesn’t want to know. It’s easier not to think about it, not to know what people think. It’s all behind him and he’s moved on with his life, he’s been doing okay for himself, and it doesn’t seem like Tony is about to fire him or kick him out for it so he allows himself to relax.

“You want coffee?” Tony asks as he starts walking past him.

“No. I’m actually going to try and sleep,” Bucky says instead because he does need to get some rest. He resists the urge to tell Tony to do the same.

Instead he walks back up to his room, and then after a moment he says, “Jarvis?”

“Yes, Mr. Barnes?”

“Are you able to inform me if Tony sleeps?”

“Yes. Currently sir has walked back into the lab. I estimate that he will rest in four hours.”

“Thank you, Jarvis.”

Bucky rests knowing that Tony is in the lab and he will be informed if anything happens.

When he wakes the next morning he asks Jarvis about it.

“Did Tony sleep?”

“No.”

“Did he leave the lab?”

There’s a pause and then “I am not authorized to say.”

That’s suspicious so Bucky goes to check his security system. There’s a log of Tony entering the lab but none of him leaving. Instead there’s just two logs of entrances back to back, which makes no sense, and he wonders if the program is bugged.

“Where is Tony currently?”

“In the kitchen.” Jarvis answers.

Bucky makes his way down there to see if he can question Tony himself.

Instead what he sees is Tony making toast, but that’s not what concerns him, even though he hasn’t seen Tony eat or make any sort of food before this. What concerns him is the cut under Tony’s eye and the definite swelling around it.

“What happened to you?”

Tony waves a hand, not looking at him instead very focused on his toast, “Just an incident with DUM-E, ran full force into him and ended up hitting me. My robots are abusing me, it’s tragic really. I could have sworn I programmed them better than this.”

Bucky frowns, “My logs show you entering your lab twice but no exit in between.”

“That’s strange. I don’t know what to tell you, you might have bought some faulty tech. I can take a look at it.”  Bucky doesn’t believe him for a second. Tony still won’t meet his eyes as he talks instead moving around the kitchen trying to keep busy, he keeps fidgeting and Bucky can tell that he’s anxious, continuing to move in his attempt to lie.

“Go for it. While you’re at it, want to add a couple of things for me?”

“Sure. Give me a challenge.”

“I’m still waiting on that GPS. And potentially something that tracks your heat signature.”

“Okay you’re fucking with me. I’m not doing any of that. How about I take a look at it and put in whatever improvements I see fit?”

Bucky nods, “Like I said, I’m not going to complain about you upgrading my tech for me.”

Tony turns to look at him excitedly, “I almost forgot! I should be done with the communication devices I promised you. They’re beautiful, I’m quite proud of it actually. It’ll be later today, I should have finished it sooner but I got distracted with some other things and honestly I got carried away in some of the features on them.”

Bucky watches the way that Tony gets excited talking about his tech, gets more comfortable immediately, stops hiding, and all of it is so genuine. Bucky likes him like this, it’s easy to feel at ease with Tony when Tony actually feels comfortable and it’s not something that happens too often around Bucky yet, Tony still too on edge around him, but there are these rare moments when he slips into comfort and Bucky enjoys every moment of it when it happens.

“Take your time.” Bucky says.

Tony’s hand hits the side of the toaster as he goes to take out his toast and he flinches. Bucky is all too aware of it and he suspects that there are more injuries than the visible one on Tony’s face.

“Did DUM-E hit your hand too?” Bucky asks because he’s not going to just let it slide no matter how easily he could ignore it. He’s here to protect Tony and so far Tony is lying enough that Bucky is failing at his job.

“Yes. I’m telling you that robot is a menace, I was hoping that Butterfingers and U would be a better influence on him but it doesn’t seem to be working. Takes after his dad a little too much I’m afraid.”

“Maybe you should try getting Jarvis to babysit.” Bucky says.

“That’s not a bad idea. How about it, Jarvis? You up to babysitting a robot that is going rogue?” Tony asks like he’s genuinely considering it.

Tony sits down to eat as he waits for a response. It takes a moment but there’s nothing from Jarvis.

“Is something wrong with Jarvis?” Bucky asks because it feels strange not to hear a snarky quip in response to Tony.

“Nope. He’s programmed to shut down every now and then so I can work on some upgrades. He’ll be back up and running later today. I always forget when it’s supposed to happen.”

Bucky nods. He immediately thinks that now would be a good time for him to check out the lab, if he doesn’t have Jarvis monitoring him he’s able to move about freely without worrying about Tony discovering. He wouldn’t consider doing it, not if Tony wasn’t obviously injured and hiding something from him, but the more that he thinks about it the more that it seems necessary since it doesn’t seem like Tony will let him in there of his own volition anytime soon. Only problem is that if he were to leave right then Tony would notice when he started walking in the direction of the lab.

He busies himself making coffee for himself and then lucks out. Tony stands and instead of going for the lab like Bucky expects, he heads up the stairs. A quick glance on his systems shows Tony in the bathroom attached to his room, in the shower. Bucky figures he has some time, but he’ll have to be quick about it so he sets his system to tell him when Tony exits his room and makes for the lab.

Bucky is half way down the stairs when he remembers the electronic lock, he knows that it’s been made and programmed by Tony and as much as he knows about locks he doubts that he’ll have enough time to figure it out or even be able to get past it. So instead he runs back up to his room, grabs a rope and then runs outside.

He remembers the hole that he found on the roof, large enough for him to lower himself down. It’s on a portion of the house where the roof is low, first level and it doesn’t take long for Bucky to climb. He checks his system, looks at the time and figures he still has enough time to get in and out with Tony noticing.

He knows that using just a rope isn’t the safest option but he’s looking for quick not safe. So he lowers it and shimmies on down. He walks past the cars and into the lab. There’s much in there that he doesn’t expect to see. A lot of tech strewn across the place with bits of materials laying over the place. The lab appears to be the only place in Tony’s entire house that looks like someone actually occupies it on a daily basis.

He sees all three of Tony’s robots in the lab, one of them whirs a bit and turns in his direction and Bucky wonders if they have anything on them that would let Tony know that he’s here, but he doesn’t have time to worry about that. He walks over to Tony’s workbench, he can see the unmistakable red and gold of the iron man iron on it. Not abnormal if he were to believe Tony’s story of only working on the armor and nothing else.

But on closer inspection he notices the dent in under the right eye on the helmet, the same place where Tony had a cut on his face, and the gauntlet had a few of the fingers bent as well and Bucky’s all too aware of the way that Tony had flinched just from his hand brushing against something.

They’re minor details, nothing anyone would concern themselves with if they weren’t living with Tony and weren’t aware of his injuries. But Bucky knows how to put the details together, thinks of all the times that Tony has lied, remembers the press conference, how he tensed up when Bucky asked about Iron Man, his protectiveness over the lab, and his insistence that he wasn’t in any danger. There is no doubt in his mind.

Tony Stark was Iron Man.

Chapter Text

Bucky shuffles out of the lab quickly after he’s made his conclusion. He ensures that nothing is out of place and then runs out of there before Tony can come down to the lab. He doesn’t see Tony on his way up. He checks his system once, to show that Tony is still in his room, but he probably won’t be for much longer.

Once he’s in his room, he pulls open every video he can find of Iron Man. Takes his time to watch the footage. To watch the way that Iron Man moves, the way that he fights.  If there had been a doubt in his mind that he was wrong, they disappeared; the actions in each video that are undeniably Tony. The way that Tony moves, the mannerisms when he talks to his enemies, all the same.

Tony fights the way he does everything else, quickly and sporadically. It’s the same as his babbles--whatever thought comes to his mind comes out of his mouth and whatever move comes to his mind is the one that he uses in battle. It should be a lot more disorganized than it is. Honestly, it’s probably not the first thing that pops into Tony’s head, but just the first one that he thinks is a good idea (but not the best idea, because he has to think fast).

Bucky knows better. Bucky’s more observant, has more training for it; he can tell that Tony is new, still learning.

He continues to watch each video on repeat. He’s been hired to do a job. He’s been hired to protect Tony, but he can’t protect a superhero out on the field. He briefly considers talking to Tony about it, and dismisses the thought just as quickly. He knows that Tony wouldn’t take well to the open confrontation. Talking about it also leaves the possibility of him getting fired and him getting fired means someone less qualified getting the job, someone that is much more likely to get Tony killed.

He can’t run out following Iron Man as himself either. Tony would recognize him and know that he knows immediately. Then he remembers that he has all of his stealth equipment with him, he has everything he needs for his own secret identity. He can reconstruct the goggles and the mask easily enough. It would be enough to throw off any facial recognition software that Tony might have in the suit, and Bucky is certain that Jarvis is with him. He figures it’s the best course of action and starts to construct what he needs as he continues to the let the videos play in the background.

The shrill alarm tells him before he’s opened his eyes that there’s been a security breach. It goes off, just once, loud enough to disturb him but not enough to echo. Immediately he’s swung his feet over the side of the bed, shoving on his boots and checking to make sure his knife is still securely strapped to his thigh.

The phone screen fills out with data slowly, each line details what had triggered the alarm. Someone has breached the northwest side of the house. The readings made it sound like demolition--there wasn’t an entrance on that side. Not one that could be opened from the outside at least. And the steep drop off kind of ensured a lack of baseballs coming through windows. But there wasn’t a damage reading. Nothing that suggested any sort of impact. The camera feed data turned up an ominous [ERROR] reading, too.

“Jarvis. You there?” He asks barely breathing the words, “You with me?”

“I am here, sir.”

“What do you have for me?”

“There appear to be two intruders. Your security system should have a read on where they are currently. I will continue to send information to your phone.”

His hand hovers over the gun on the nightstand. He hadn’t thought to attach a muffler. It’s too sloppy. Not that one would quiet a gunshot enough anyway--the whole place was designed like an echo chamber. The knife would have to do.

He hugged the wall, moving slow and keeping an eye on windows around him as best he could. At least he’d been right in that prediction--the floor to ceiling windows were definitely a nightmare to work with. Too much fucking glass .

He has his knife drawn and ready for the first flicker of movement. When it happens it’s not much movement. At least it’s not enough for anyone that had arrived with purpose. The two intruders are decked out in tac-gear, but neither appear to be in that much of a rush. Bucky watches as they move towards the lab silently, almost as an afterthought instead of something that was planned.

As soon as they reach one of the connecting hallways, Bucky darts out. He wraps an arm around the throat of the closest and yanks back hard. The man lets out a loud wet choking sound and his partnery whirls around. Bucky’s leg snaps out, catching the barrel of the second guy’s gun from underneath before the flash and bang of the bullet ricochet off the ceiling. The gun falters in his grip, and Bucky wraps his free hand around the middle of it, twisting his captive sharply to the side. The man with gun braces for a tug of war, Bucky snaps the weapon forward, knocking against his skull with a satisfying crack, pleased when the gun comes free without issue.

The man still struggling against his hold was growing limper, but he didn’t need two unconscious intruders. Especially in unmarked uniforms. He releases him, and takes a moment to unload the clip of his partner’s gun, dropping the empty magazine to the floor and kicking away the bulk of the weapon. The man in front of him seems to be getting his bearings when Bucky yanks the weapons away from his holsters. He tries to reach out and stop the attack, but Bucky digs in the flesh of his palm with his nails and twists until the man drops to his knees.

He follows him down, one hand hovering over the handle of his knife and the other keeping the man’s arm twisted painfully behind his back.

He hears Tony’s voice drift from behind him, “Whoa! Okay, ease up. They’re not an actual threat.”

Bucky doesn’t let go of the guy or lower his knife. “They broke in!”

“Yeah. I hired them to. Promise they weren’t actually going to hurt you, or me,” Tony says casually, like it’s the most normal thing in the world to hire people to break into homes on purpose.

He looks at the two, who have relaxed and are no longer looking like they’re ready to fight with Tony around. The guy whose shirt he is still holding onto seems afraid, but not like he’s going to fight back. Bucky releases the guy’s shirt and watches him drop to the floor.

“You hired them.” Bucky repeats because he needs a moment to make sure that he’s hearing this correctly. He just ran out of bed, he didn’t even bother putting on a shirt , and only has the knife strapped to his thigh on him as a weapon and Tony’s telling him that these people were hired by Tony himself.

“Yeah, well, I had to make sure that you could do your job, you know?” Tony says once Bucky turns to him.

Bucky watches as Tony’s eyes dart down to his prosthetic. He’s too aware of it now. He’s worn long sleeves around Tony. He knows that Tony would have seen the hand, but wouldn’t have known that it goes all the way up to his shoulder. He waits for the inevitable question, or for Tony to comment on it at all, but it doesn’t happen. Tony ignores it completely, and Bucky relaxes.

Bucky doesn’t even know what to say. Aside from the initial irritation, he’s impressed that Tony thought about verifying Bucky’s abilities. Tony wasn’t the one that looked him up and hired him, so aside from Tony’s reading he probably doesn’t know much about Bucky. So instead he took the matter into his own hands and did a run of a scenario himself.

He takes a deep breath to calm himself, glad that Tony stopped him when he did.

“Tony. I could have seriously hurt someone. You should tell me next time. If you want to do a run that’s fine, but I need to know.”

Tony waves a hand, “Won’t happen again. But I couldn’t tell you. I needed a realistic run. If you knew the data wouldn’t be accurate.”

Bucky takes another breath, because he knows that Tony is right, but he just doesn’t like the way that he went about it. Tony looks behind him then.

“Gentlemen. Thank you for your service. I’ll make sure to transfer the funds. You can leave now. Shoo.”

Bucky can hear the scattering behind him as the two run back up the stairs and presumably out of the house.

“You angry? You look angry. Your face is doing that pouty thing, except you have a variety of different pouts and I haven’t figured out how to categorize them all yet.”

“Yes,” Bucky says and then frowns. “No.”

“Well that’s conflicting.” Tony says instead.

“It was a smart thing to do. I mean trial runs are important and I’m surprised you thought of it, but you shouldn’t put other people in danger.”

“You didn’t harm them though.”

“I could have.” Bucky says and he knows that he could have, all too easily if Tony hadn’t stopped him when he did.

“Well you didn’t. Everything’s fine. I’m thoroughly confident you can protect me, and you gave me quite a show while you were at it. Everything I wanted from a knight in shining armor. Well, there’s not much armor on you, or much of anything really. Might want to put on more clothes next time. Or don’t. I can’t say that I’m complaining.”

“I’m not waking up to save you next time.” Bucky says.

Tony gasps, “You wound me, Bucky.”

“No. But I could. Easily. ”

“Yes. You have demonstrated that already. I told you, it was very impressive.”

“I’m going back to bed. Let me know if you plan on hiring some hitmen instead of petty robbers later. I like a challenge.” Bucky says, resigning himself to Tony’s antics.

“Sure. You have a preferred type of assassin?”

“Surprise me,” Bucky says with a wink as he drags himself up the stairs back to his room.

“We’re going out,” Tony says as he walks up from the lab and into the living room.

“Are we?” Bucky asks, looking up at him. He’s not going to oppose getting out of the house. For the past week he hasn’t done much aside from laze around, since Tony seems to leave the house very little and his lab even less. It doesn’t leave Bucky with much to do.

“Well I am. I assume that you’ll follow me like a lost puppy since that seems to be your job, and I doubt I can convince you otherwise. So, do you have a suit?”

Bucky rolls his eyes at him and says, “I left the lost puppy suits at home, Cruella. But I think I can muster something up.”

Tony does an over exaggerated gasp. “You made the wrong call not bringing those. Honestly, do you have a suit? You’re gonna need one. Not that I don’t dig the casual hobo look, it works for you, but I don’t think the people at this event will, since it’s black tie formal, so unless you have an outfit that-”

“Tony,” Bucky says because the babbling has gone on for too long and he’s discovered that he can make it stop sometimes just by saying Tony’s name. “I have a suit.”

Tony’s eyes light up for a brief moment. “Great! Go put it on.”

“Right now?”

“Well the thing is tomorrow and I need to know if I’ll have to take you to my tailor.”

Bucky lost count of how many times he’s started to regret taking this job, but he adds another tally onto his mental list anyway as he forces himself up from off the couch and into his room to dig for his suit. He sees the scraps of his Winter Soldier outfit laid out still and takes a moment to stuff that into his suitcase so it’s not out in the open. Then he digs out his suit.

He hadn’t expected to be trying on clothes for Tony Stark when he first accepted the job, but it’s one of the tamer things that has happened so he goes along with it. The moment that he throws on the suit he knows that Tony won’t approve of it. It’s not that it fits poorly, it fits perfectly fine in Bucky’s opinion, but his standards of fine and Tony’s appear to be very different. He resigns himself to being scrutinized and walks back down.

If there’s an initial reaction that Tony has to it, it doesn’t show. He doesn’t even say anything, which is amazing as Bucky didn’t believe that Tony knew how to be quiet for this long. It’s a little distressing as it goes against Tony’s natural behaviors that Bucky has observed for the past week but then once he he’s standing in the middle of the living room Tony glances at him and frowns.

“I have never seen someone look so upset in a suit. Well that’s a lie, there’s plenty of board meetings that I am forced to go to and I’m sure then I look like you. Well, sort of. I don’t think I can pull off the pout as well, that’s impressive. Do you practice that look in the morning?”

Bucky has no idea how his expression has anything to do with the suit that he’s wearing but he lets Tony ramble for a bit. “I practice at night too.”

Tony ignores him and then moves closer, and he’s across the room so quickly that even Bucky notices. Then he’s pulling at the sleeves of Bucky’s suit jacket and frowning at it. He looks up at Bucky as he does so, like he’s completely unaware of how much he’s in Bucky’s personal space at the moment. Bucky is all too aware of the swelling under his eye now that Tony’s close to him, he resists the urge to brush his thumb against Tony’s cheekbone in the surge of protectiveness that suddenly hits him.  

“Not bad. But I’m buying you a new one. Have you seen you? You could fill one out much better than this, and you don’t even fill this one out poorly.” Bucky’s not sure if that’s a compliment, but he just takes it at face value as he’s increasingly had to do whenever Tony speaks. Although this time it’s because he’s partially distracted by Tony running his hands down Bucky’s arms as though that is something that he needs to do in order to judge the suit adequately.

“I’ll just go in my normal clothes. I’ll put on a black tie so it’s formal,” he says, just so he can distract himself from how much Tony is touching him. His suit feels more stuffy by the second as Tony continues prodding him and he's not in the mood to analyze the reaction he’s having at the moment.

Tony waves him off, which thankfully gets his hands off of Bucky, “I would pay to see the reactions of the guests at that, but I think Pepper would kill us both. And while you’ve proven that your skills are great, Pepper is terrifying so let’s just avoid that. We can leave for New York in a couple of hours so we can meet with my tailor and have a suit ready by tomorrow morning.”

“New York?” Bucky asks as he goes back through the conversation, sure that he would have remembered Tony mentioning that.

“Did I not mention that? It’s where the thing is. I think I mentioned it, you should keep up. Aren’t people in your line of work supposed to be observant?”

“You didn’t mention it.” Bucky says firmly.

“I think I did. Now go get undressed, you’re making me sad.”

“How?” Bucky asks before he can think better of it.

“I miss your normal look. This is causing me emotional distress.”

Bucky decides not to dignify that with a response and instead leaves to change. When he comes back down Tony, amazingly, is still there.

“That’s much better. My emotional state is at ease.”

“Glad to be of service,” Bucky deadpans.

“Plane is in two hours. That should give you enough time to pack, right?” Tony asks.

“I still haven’t really unpacked completely.”

“Great. I’ll meet you back up here in two hours.” Tony says, and then he’s going back down the stairs to the lab before Bucky can even think to respond.

Bucky didn’t think that he could hate something more than Tony’s Malibu house in terms of security. The moment that he steps into Tony’s tower in NYC, that’s still under construction, he realizes that he was wrong. Aside from it still being under construction, which leaves a lot of areas exposed, there are even more obnoxious windows. Bucky tries not to spend a good while glaring at them the moment that he walks in but isn’t sure that he succeeds.

“If you were going to hire assassins, you’re making yourself the easiest kill possible in this place,” is what he says instead of announcing his hatred for the windows.

“Isn’t that what I have you for? To prevent that sort of thing?”

“I can’t protect you from your own architecture.” Bucky says as he continues glaring. He’s not sure how he would even begin to prevent against an attack in here. The height advantage isn’t even a comfort since all of the buildings surrounding it are equally as tall. Bucky has a quick image of someone climbing into any of the other buildings and getting an easy vantage point inside of Tony’s penthouse.

“You're going to have to work on that. Maybe they can send you back to bodyguard boot camp. Do a special class on the dangers of buildings.”

“I know about the safety of hazards of buildings. The problem is that all of yours are very dramatic.”

Tony looks at him and raises an eyebrow that Bucky assumes is supposed to signify that he’s talking to Tony Stark , of course he’s dramatic. He resists the urge to sigh in response and goes to scope out the rest of the area in the limited time that he has before Tony drags him to his tailor.

By the time that he’s done looking around, he actually misses the Malibu house.

Tony’s waiting for him in the foyer.

“I forgot about this yesterday. But I finished the comm devices that I told you I’d make,” Tony holds up a small piece of tech that Bucky is surprised is able to do anything.

“Completely wireless. Has access to Jarvis as well so you can ask him about me when you need to. Easily voice activated. You can set it up just by talking into it. Jarvis will recognize your voice so only you’ll be able to use yours. It’s on the table over there,” Tony explains, like it’s the simplest piece of tech that he’s done.

Bucky tries not to get too excited about it, or tries to contain his excitement. Having something that is only activated by his voice and having access to an AI as well is more than he could have dreamed for in any of his security tech.

He puts it in his ear. “Jarvis?”

“Yes, Mr. Barnes?”

Bucky can’t help the grin that spreads across his face. “Tony, this is amazing. Thank you.”

Tony smiles at him quickly and then waves a hand and turns away. “Simple enough tech. I figure I might as well make one aspect of your job easy. Well kind of easy. Sorry to break it you but nothing is ever all that easy with me.”

Bucky knows that it’s supposed to be a joke, a small jab that Tony makes at himself but it doesn’t come out light enough, and he can hear the bit of hurt that comes through anyway. He again feels a surge of protectiveness run through him for reasons unrelated to being Tony’s bodyguard, but knows that it isn’t the time to push the matter.

“Let’s go. I believe you wanted to play dress up or something. Isn’t that why you brought me to New York a day early?” He says just to change the topic.

Tony grins at him, a genuine smile like Bucky just made his day. “It sure is. Maybe next time we can come a few days early and I’ll just have you try on different things for me.”

Bucky resists the urge to roll his eyes as they walk out of the tower, something that he’s been eager to do from the moment he set foot in it.

The event itself has too many people for Bucky’s liking. Too easy for them to get separated in the crowd from each other, too difficult for him to keep an eye on Tony even though Tony is easy to spot, being at the center of a crowd normally. The only problem with it is the more people that crowd around him the more that Bucky can’t get eyes on him. If he didn’t have the comms that Tony designed, the night would be going much worse.

Instead Bucky is keeping his distance and letting Tony mingle, since he seems to be the honored guest.

Tony occasionally pipes up over the comms with something that Bucky laughs at even though it doesn’t make much sense to him, but it’s enough to assure him that Tony isn’t in danger every time he does so.

“You can hear me, right? I’m assuming you can. That guy just suggested that Stark Industries does design on electric blankets with AI. How pissed do you think the board would be if I hired him? Could send him right to R&D.”

“She once got sued for eating raw fish. Well not even really raw. They were still alive. Kept buying them from a local pet shop and I guess they frown on that sort of thing. Who knew?”

“Ugh Hammer is here. Who even invites this guy? I swear it’s just to spite me.”

Tony gives a quick speech, which makes Bucky’s job easier because he’s easier to keep an eye on when he’s addressing the entire room. He donates a large amount of money to a charity. Shortly after he steps down from the stage, he’s approached by someone that makes Tony’s entire body go stiff. Bucky moves closer just in case. Though he’s sure that it’s just someone that Tony doesn’t like, the way his body language changes makes him wary.

Tony excuses himself quickly from the man and into the comm says, “Make it look like you have something important to discuss with me and let’s get out of here. I really don’t want to keep talking to Hammer, and I think I’ve been here for the expected amount of time for it to be deemed appropriate for me to leave.”

Bucky frowns but does as he says, walks behind Tony doing his best to keep his face serious like they need to go do something important.

“How does a pet shop find out that you’re eating their fish?” He asks, trying to find anything to get Tony to relax.

It works because Tony lets out a laugh and slips back into his normal self, the one that’s more at ease and ready to joke with him, “I have no idea. Not sure who won that court case either, but it’s an interesting reputation to have. I’m a little jealous of it.”

“I don’t think you need to add anything else onto your reputation.”

“I think there’s room for a thing or two on there still. Can’t let the press get bored. Have to keep them on their toes.”

“I doubt they’re getting bored.” Bucky says as he opens the door to their car, Happy greeting them easily as they step inside.

They’ve barely gone a block when Tony tenses up again.

“Something wrong?” Bucky asks as he looks around. There’s nothing that he can see that would be causing it.

“Nope. Just a little drained, nothing to concern yourself with. You can let your guard dog senses rest. I can tell when you do that, you know.”

Bucky doesn’t believe him. Tony has lied one too many times around him and picking up when he is lying is second nature, but he lets the matter drop anyway.

Sure enough the moment that they step into the penthouse Tony bolts away from him towards the lab that he has here as well. Bucky already knows that it’s going to be related to Iron Man.

It isn’t long until he gets an alert for an Iron Man sighting. He curses the fact that he can’t fly so it’ll take him longer to get where he needs to be, but a quick glance shows that it isn’t too far. So he runs to suit up and follow wherever Tony is.

Bucky manages to get there as the guy that Tony is fighting starts to run away. He darts between a narrow passage that isn’t wide enough for the armor, and Tony flies above trying to keep an eye on him. Bucky follows the guy on foot. He manages to catch up with him just as they exit the passage again. He can’t see Tony above them, but knows that he won’t be far behind.

Bucky manages to tackle the guy. Has him pinned and his gun pulled out by the time that Iron Man flies up behind him. He hears the repulsors of the boots landing as he sees the panic on the guy’s face. His eyes dart around, looking for an escape. Then he stares back at Bucky, having resigned to his faith, Bucky watches as his jaw moves but nothing else. In the next moment the guy bites down on something and lets out a “Heil Hydra.”

“Dammit!” Tony says from behind him, crouching down scanning some things as far as Bucky can tell.

Bucky knows Hydra. He’s heard of them during his time with the Howling Commandos, had a run in with them once or twice himself, but he can’t piece together what they would be doing in New York. The thought leaves him unsettled. It’s the same as he’s experienced before, the cyanide tooth, the catchphrase that Bucky hates but sends chills down his spine, and he hates not knowing why they’re here.

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing on him. You got any ideas there, mysterious stranger? Or is this going to be like a Tuxedo Mask thing where you pop in help momentarily and then disappear now that I’ve seemingly got the handle on things?”

Bucky starts to answer and then abruptly stops because he can’t talk, he can’t talk or Tony will recognize his voice and he can’t have him know. So he closes his mouth and just stares at Tony and then shrugs.

“Okay not much a talker? Just going to run in and help me save the day and then have no commentary on it. That’s fine, I can run with that. I’m told that I talk enough for multiple people.”

Bucky is all too aware of that fact, having spent the past week with Tony and having spent the better part of the night with Tony’s voice in his ear telling him odd things without Bucky responding much at all.

“Okay well fine, thanks for the help. Let me give you some pointers since you seem to be new to this superhero thing, and I have some experience now.”

Bucky makes a face because there is a lot that Tony needs to work on on the field and he can’t believe that he’s the one getting tips, but he can’t help but be amused anyway.

“What’s that face? I can tell you’re making a face. Think you know more than me huh?”

Bucky has to hold in laughter. He gestures for Tony to hit him, holds up a finger.

“You want me to hit you?”

He holds up one finger again.

“You want me to hit you just once?”

Bucky nods.

“I can do that. But like I said I’m not that new to the superhero game anymore. Or at least that’s what they’re calling me, a superhero, has a certain ring to it doesn’t? So I guess I can show you a few tricks.”

Tony goes straight for him as he talks. Bucky dodges the hit easily and watches Tony fumble. He isn’t using any of the weapons built into the suit, not this time. Bucky has noticed that he relies on them, relies on his tech instead of being able to fight. Tony swings for him again, Bucky dodges it easily again.

“Alright, so I guess I have to admit that you know a thing or two,” Tony says and tries to hit him again. It’s another thing that he does, tries to distract his opponent by speaking, and Bucky supposes that sometimes that might work for him, but it won’t with Bucky.

It’s the same as he saw on the videos, Tony attacks first and thinks about it later, he doesn’t plan it out, isn’t observant about it, doesn’t pay that extra attention to what his opponent is doing. Bucky keeps dodging each hit as Tony continues to try and hit him.

He holds up a hand to get Tony to stop.

“Okay fine. I guess you’ve proven your point. This has been fun. We should do this again sometime.” Bucky can practically hear the wink that he’s sure Tony does as he says that.

Then he nods back down to the Hydra agent, “Right. Don’t worry, I’ll figure something out about him. I’ll tell you all about it on our second date.”

Bucky somehow manages to make it back to the penthouse before Tony. He has no idea how, considering that he can’t fly, but he’s thankful for it just so he can avoid any questions that Tony might ask him.

Jarvis tells him when Tony is back in the lab. He doesn’t have his security system installed in the tower, so he has to rely more heavily on Jarvis. Bucky sends a message to Happy and then proceeds to sleep. The events of the night tired him out much earlier than he expected; being Tony’s bodyguard so far hasn’t required a lot of physical activity, but running after him while he’s Iron Man puts Bucky’s body under more strain than he anticipated.  

He wakes around 3AM. Covered in cold sweat and afraid, can’t remember his dreams other than the small flashes that come back to him, but he already knows what they were. He swings his legs over the side of the bed, needing to move for a while, and goes to get himself some water.

What he isn’t expecting is for Tony to be in the kitchen at the same time. Even less he isn’t expecting the lights to be off and the only light coming from Tony’s chest. Bucky blinks to make sure that he is awake.

Tony turns, and Bucky can see the circular light coming radiating through Tony’s tank top. Tony must see him staring as well, because his eyes widen and he abruptly turns on his heel to face the opposite direction from Bucky. As though if Bucky isn’t able to see it, he won’t be able to know that it’s there.

It’s eerily quiet and neither of them are moving. Finally Tony says, “Are you going to ask about it?”

“I feel like I should. Considering that if it’s something that is putting you at risk, or if it’s something that makes you easier to target, then I should know. But I don’t think you want to talk about it.”

Bucky means every word of it. He does think that he should know about it, but he has enough things that he doesn’t want to talk about himself and he isn’t going to push anyone else to talk about their demons. He’s more concerned about Tony’s wellbeing. He may not know what it is, but he knows that having anything glowing from your chest can’t be good. He feels his protectiveness take over with  force for a brief moment but he knows that he can’t do anything about it. Not if Tony won’t let him, and especially not if Tony doesn’t even want to explain it to him or talk about it all.

“Only Pepper and Rhodey know. No one that would be targeting me. I don’t want to talk about it.” Tony says, still not turning back towards Bucky.

“That’s fine. You haven’t asked about my arm either and that’s not something I want to talk about.”

Tony turns to him and offers a slight smile, “I have been reliably informed that it is rude to ask people about their missing limbs.”

“Probably rude to ask people about...” Bucky trails off, because he doesn’t actually know what is causing Tony’s chest to glow, “...whatever that is as well.”

“Might be. I’m not exactly someone to look up to when it comes to what’s socially acceptable though,” Tony says.

Bucky can tell that Tony is relieved that he isn’t asking about it, even though he continues to talk about it. He can tell the moment that Tony relaxes, when he realizes that Bucky really won’t push on the issue.

“Besides,” Bucky says, “I think our plans to exchange tragic back stories are still a few millennia away.”

“I think it was centuries but I am fine with postponing it.” Tony says picks up the plate with a sad looking sandwich on it and heads back towards his lab. Bucky should have guessed that he’d eat down there too. The lab appears to be the only place that is completed in the tower and fully furnished, and of course Bucky hasn’t been allowed into this one either.

Bucky is relieved the moment he walks back into the Malibu house. He never thought that he’d be happy to see the obnoxious windows and modern design, but being in New York with Tony has shown him just how much he could. He’s stretched out on the couch, the T.V. on in the background, barely paying attention to it as he browses for more information on Hydra on his phone. Then the news segment changes, and that’s when Bucky starts paying attention because they’re talking about him.

“Now to our next story. There appears to be a new hero in town. Last seen fighting in New York with Iron Man, and then shortly after attacking him.” Bucky watches dumbfounded as they show the footage of Tony trying to land hits on him. Bucky doesn’t attack even once.

“It’s hard to tell at this time if he is on Iron Man’s side, or a new nemesis for him.”

Bucky looks at the scrolling text underneath that simply says, “The Winter Soldier: Friend or Foe?”

Tony comes up behind him and reads the title out loud and laughs. The reporters are now going on about his guns and how many he has, using that as evidence of him being a villain.

Tony laughs again, “Plenty of weapons in the Iron Man too, you just don’t see them because it’s all integrated in the armor. He must be a villain too.”

“I’m sure they’ll get along splendidly.”

Bucky turns his attention back to the footage, it’s a slow motion of Tony trying to hit him and failing miserably.

“Looks like Iron Man could use some practice.” Bucky says only to watch the way that corner of Tony’s mouth twitches as he tries to conceal his slight offense. Bucky is certain that’d there be a snarky remark about if he was aware that Bucky knew.

“Maybe. But I think he’s going easy on him. You gotta be nice to the newbies. I hear it’s good for their self esteem.”

“I don’t think that guy has that issue. He practically looks like he’s laughing. Seems plenty confident to me.”

“I’m sure the guns aren’t compensating for anything.” Tony says as the segment pauses on a closeup clip of Bucky, circling each gun.

Bucky grins at him, “Have I hit a nerve? The armor seems to be fine. I think you just need a better pilot.”

The twitch is back again and Bucky is sure that he has a hit a nerve this time. He does his best not to laugh.

Then he turns off the T.V., deciding that he’s had enough of that.

“This does remind me though. Been meaning to ask you: do you have much hand to hand combat experience?”

“I know a few things,” Tony says shrugging,  “Probably not as much as you, but isn’t that what I have you for?”

Bucky frowns at him, he doesn’t want Tony relying on him heavily, “I’m not always going to be around, it’s good if you can defend yourself in case I can’t get to you as quickly as needed.”

“I think I can manage.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it. Tomorrow, you’ll show me what you got.”

Tony smirks at him, “Sounds like a challenge.”

“It is. No hiring anyone else to fight for you either. This is not the time for assassins.”

“Fine.” Tony says, agreeing a little too easily.

“No tech either. Just hand to hand combat.”

Tony frowns and Bucky knows that he found what he had been planning.

“I can’t believe you think I would do that. I am offended! This is a defamation of my character.”

Bucky rolls his eyes, “You can defend your character tomorrow. Hand to hand.”

“You’re on.”

Bucky never stated that he’d be the one fighting Tony, so he calls up Peter. The kid has come far since Bucky first started training him, and he knows that he could use the ego boost and that Tony could be taken down a peg or two.

“Bucky! I haven’t heard from you in a while.”

Bucky laughs, “Sorry ‘bout that kid. I got hired for a new job.”

“I heard.”

“Yeah, speaking of. How would you like to meet Tony Stark?”

There’s silence on the line. Bucky can imagine the shocked face that Peter is making, so he continues, “And punch him in the face?”

There’s some nervous laughter in response to that.

Bucky presses on anyway, sing-songing, “I’ll fly you over on his private jet.”

More nervous laughter to the point that Bucky is a little concerned, and then Peter hangs up.

Bucky stares at his phone for a moment. Starts to count down from three. Sure enough it doesn’t take Peter long to call back.

“You’re not joking.” Peter says instead of any sort of greeting when Bucky answers.

“I’m really not. I can have the plane ready for you in a couple of hours. When you do want to leave?”

Peter has a completely different reaction  from Bucky’s upon walking into the Malibu house. Instead of disdain, he just looks completely awed.

“You’re actually working for Tony Stark.”

“Didn’t believe me until you were actually here?”

“Not really.”

Bucky smiles at him, and then figures he should have some fun. “Want to see something cool? Jarvis?”

Peter frowns at him momentarily, looks like he’s about to ask who Jarvis is, and then “Yes, Mr. Barnes?”

Peter jumps a little from where he’s standing, looking around the room.

“Could you tell Tony to come up from his lab? Tell him it’s time for our training session.”

Peter keeps looking up at the ceiling like Jarvis will materialize if he stares at it for long enough.

Tony walks up the stairs, and then glances at Peter.

“Who’s he?”

“He will be your opponent today.”

Tony looks at Peter again, and then back at Bucky, raising an eyebrow at though to say, ‘ really? ’

“Are you 18? Because you don’t look it, and I don’t feel like getting charges for child abuse today, or really any day, but most other days I don’t have someone ordering me around to fight a kid.”

Peter stares at him completely starstruck for a moment, “Yes. I’m over 18.”

“So what? Were you scared of fighting me?” Tony asks Bucky.

“Not even slightly. If you can defeat Peter then maybe I’ll begin to be a little scared.”

The Malibu house, of course, has a gym. Bucky lets both Tony and Peter get ready and then sits down to watch. Bucky already knows what to expect from both of them.

And he absolutely expects Peter to wipe the floor with Tony.

Tony has already made the mistake of underestimating him, so it doesn’t take long for Peter to full out flip him. Tony lets out a wheeze as his back hits the mat. Bucky thinks of his chest and wonders if it impacts his breathing at all, if he should have told Peter some things were off limits. But then Tony stands back up and looks more determined, doesn’t seem like he’s underestimating him anymore. Which is progress; he needs to stop doing that if he’s going to keep fighting as Iron Man.

Tony isn’t able to land on a hit on Peter. Bucky is smiling by the time that they’re done and Tony looks exhausted.

“Okay Peter, I think that’s enough for today. I don’t think Mr. Stark can keep up with you in his old age.”

Tony scowls at him, and Bucky smirks.

Peter runs out of the room excitedly. Bucky smiles after him, knowing that this was exactly the ego boost the kid needed. Bucky just wants him to be more confident in himself. He struggled a lot at the start, but now he’s one of the best in Bucky’s class and he wants Peter to believe that as well.

“That kid is a force of nature. Where did you even find him?” Tony asks.

“I trained him back in New York.”

“Trained him? You sure you didn’t inject him with anything? I feel like he was cheating. I can’t prove it, but that was not normal.”

“You might just be getting old.”

Tony glares at him, “Okay, come here. You said it’d be us. So let me try with you.”

Bucky frowns. It isn’t a good idea. Tony is exhausted already and he knows that he won’t be on his best form. Bucky also knows that Tony won’t drop the topic until he does as he says.

“Fine. All you have to do is land a hit once.”

Tony nods and swings a fist. Bucky catches it easily and twirls Tony like they’re dancing, spins him right back out. Tony looks at him indignantly afterwards.

“I thought we were fighting, not dancing.”

Bucky shrugs, “The two are very similar. Each movement should flow to the other. Knowing one will help you with the other. Try again.”

Tony takes a moment to watch him this time, doesn’t run in immediately, and Bucky’s just glad that he’s taking a moment to think about what he’s up against instead of running in recklessly. The way that he hits is still too sloppy. Bucky’s able to catch his fist again, and this time he dips Tony just to watch his expression. Which goes from surprise to a grin very quickly.

“Did you just dip me? This is all very romantic, you know. Put a sunset behind us and I’ll put on my best dress, you’ll kiss me and the credits will roll.”

Bucky rolls his eyes at him, lets go and then before he can think better of it says, “You can kiss me when you land a hit.”

It’s the first time that Bucky has responded to any of Tony’s flirting. He’d been doing well not to, and is a little annoyed at the slip-up. Tony is his client and he’s sure that it would probably violate a part of his contract, regardless of Bucky’s own personal issues for trying to ignore it.

Tony smiles at him, breaking Bucky out of his own thoughts, “I’m going to hold you to that.”

Bucky is able to bite down his response to that, and instead says, “I think that’s enough fighting for today.”

“Barely any fighting with you. You kept twirling me.”

“Like I said, dancing would help.”

“Sure, and next time we can dance and I’ll be sure to leave a shoe behind as the clock strikes midnight.”

Bucky snorts, “I think you’re more of the prince type.”

“Well put on your best dress and we can do this again.”

Bucky shrugs. “Sure. In a few days. You should let your body rest.”

Bucky can tell how much Tony relies on the armor having watched how quickly he got tired fighting with Peter. He can tell that Tony will be sore the next day and will need time off before starting anything like this again. Tony looks like he wants to argue with him, but then he twists his back slightly in the wrong way and winces. Bucky assures him that Peter will be around for a few days still if he wants to continue after a day of rest. Tony, miraculously, doesn’t fight him on it any further and agrees to stop there for the day.

It’s a week after Peter leaves and Bucky is starting to feel the boredom sink in. Tony hasn’t had any Iron Man duties either, and he’s slowly starting to feel himself go stir crazy. He’s looking up companies that can bullet proof the house when Tony finds him.

“Great. Come help me with something,” Tony says and then walks back down the stairs before Bucky can even agree.

Instead he stands and looks after him because Tony is walking back down to the lab, where he has adamantly been denying Bucky access for the entire time that he’s been there. Except now Tony is asking him to go there willingly. Bucky decides not to focus on it too hard and follows.

“You know I thought I’d sooner die on the job than you let me in here.”

Tony rolls his eyes. “Don’t get used to it. I just need your muscles. DUM-E normally does the heavy lifting for me but he’s in a bit of a mood today.”

There’s some whirring from DUM-E that sounds offended, and Tony scowls at him.

“Here, hold this up for me. I need to take it apart, and I can’t get a good angle on it with it laying flat.” Tony says, pointing at a bunch of metal on his workbench. It seems to mostly have been taken apart already, since Bucky can’t make sense of what it is.

He does as he’s told and holds it out in front of him anyway. Tony picks up a screwdriver and gets to work soon after that. Bucky watches him work for a while, watching the way that Tony’s brow furrows as he concentrates, content to be able just to watch and actually observe him in the lab for once.

“It’s an arc reactor.” Tony says after they’ve been working in silence for a while.

“What?”

“This.” Tony says, tapping on his chest. A soft metallic noise echos in the room.

Bucky recognizes the admission as the invitation that it is. “Why,” he says, and then he stops, because he doesn’t know what to ask first. Why is it there? What does it do? Why are you hiding it?

Tony seems to understand anyway because he says, “It’s a small battery, keeps me alive. If you were to take it out there’s some shrapnel that would go into my heart within a matter of minutes.”

He screws something in, frowns at it for a moment before taking it apart again, and then he keeps talking. He’s not looking at Bucky, instead focusing on his task, like it’s easier for him to talk about it if he doesn’t actually have to think about the conversation topic.

“It happened in Afghanistan. Woke up and it was there. Well not exactly this, this was of my own design, but something similar. So yeah, that’s the short story of how I became battery powered.”

Bucky knows that there’s more to the story, that there’s plenty there that Tony isn’t willing to tell him still, but he’ll take what he can get. Instead of asking any other questions, he nods. There’s still plenty that he wants to know about it, how it works, if it’s safe, how vulnerable it is, but instead he finds himself feeling relieved that Tony is safe and that he doesn’t appear to be in any immediate danger from it.

Bucky nods, takes a breath and then, “I lost a team while I was deployed.”

Tony still doesn’t look at him, “That how you got the arm?”

“They’re related.”

Tony doesn’t ask any other questions, he continues to work for a while, and Bucky is left surprised at how easy it was to open up to Tony about that much, even after Tony gave him as much information as he did. He had expected it to be more difficult, and he definitely didn’t expect himself to want to share as easily as he did.

“I’ve given you an access code to the lab. Ask Jarvis about it, he’ll be able to tell you more. I mean I’ll probably not give you access a lot of the time anyway, but it’s there for those rare times that I’m okay with having people around here, or it slips my mind.”

Bucky’s more surprised by that than he is from the arc reactor confession.

“I’m guessing you won’t let me install security systems in here?”

“No. Don’t push your luck, I’m being very generous here. I have to live up to that philanthropist title they give me, so consider this my philanthropy work for the day.”

Just like that it’s back to normal between them. The heaviness of the previous conversation is no longer hanging in the air and Bucky’s left feeling closer to Tony and most protective he’s felt so far.

Chapter Text

Bucky wakes up to the smell of food drifting up from the kitchen. Then he has to blink a few times and wonder why there’s the smell of food coming up. He’s never seen Tony make anything more complex than toast, and he starts to wonder if there was a cook hired without him being informed. He drowsily forces himself out of bed after checking the time, almost 7AM and far too early in Bucky’s opinion. He throws on clothes quickly and walks down to the kitchen.

He has to pause in the doorway because sure enough, Tony is cooking.

“Morning!” Tony says, looking over at him quickly before going back to the stove.

“Good morning?” Bucky replies, questioning it like if he speaks he will wake from this bizarre dream that he’s having in which Tony Stark cooks in the early hours of the morning.

Tony then glances at him again, his eyes drifting to Bucky’s prosthetic. Bucky hadn’t thought to put on more than a t-shirt, didn’t bother with his usual layers, but he’s started to feel comfortable with Tony and doesn’t feel the need to try to hide it constantly.

“What are you doing?” Bucky asks because he needs confirmation that he’s seeing the right thing.

“I’m making you breakfast. Well, I’m making us breakfast. It’s not going to be much, just omelettes. I honestly can’t cook anything fancy and my expertise ends here, although many have tried to educate me. Doesn’t work out well for them,” Tony says and grins at him.

Bucky blinks, and then he sits down at the kitchen island to watch. “Why?”

“Couldn’t sleep, was stuck on something and I needed to keep my hands busy. And, well, the sun started to come up and I figured you might want breakfast so here I am, making breakfast.”

Tony’s doing the thing where his speech picks up slightly when he’s nervous, although Bucky can’t figure out why.

“You haven’t slept?”

Tony shrugs him off. “Slept when? Ever? Hate to break it to you but sleep is a human necessity and I would be dead if I hadn’t so I think you can come to the conclusion that I have at some point, slept.”

“Tony.”

Tony lets out a sigh. “Fine, fine. I haven’t, but don’t worry the exhaustion will catch up soon and you’ll get your wish.”

Bucky continues to watch Tony move around the kitchen. He feels the morning sun start to creep in through the window and make him lethargic all over again, but he thinks that he could get used to mornings like this.

Tony finally drops a plate down in front of him before sitting down across from him with his own. Bucky stares down at it, fully expecting it to look more like scrambled eggs than an omelette, but it’s folded perfectly.

“Huh. It looks edible,” Bucky says, smiling up at Tony.

“Yeah, well, looks can be deceiving. I’ll have you know that is laced with some poison I concocted specially for you this morning. It targets you specifically, everyone else is immune to it.”  

Bucky takes a bite, and looks straight at Tony. “I think I’ll take my chances.”

“Risky.” Tony responds.

Bucky shrugs. “I think you like me more than you let on.”

Tony doesn’t have a response to that and avoids Bucky’s eyes for a while, instead very focused on his food in front of him, giving it the same focus that Bucky has only seen Tony give tech.

Bucky watches him as he eats. Tony looks exhausted, but Tony always looks exhausted, and Bucky worries about him flying the suit in his state but there isn’t much that he can do about it except encourage Tony to get more sleep.

“Thank you,” Bucky says after they’ve been eating in silence for a while.

Tony looks up at him, surprised, as though he’s someone that doesn’t hear genuine thanks often.

“Sure. Figure I could do something to make being employed by me easier. I would’ve made Jarvis make it for you, but he’s slacking. Can’t find decent help these days, I tell you.”

“Sir, if you would like better service, might I suggest you change my programming? That is entirely in your control.”

Tony scowls. “See what I mean?”

Bucky laughs. “He’s right.”

“I can’t believe I’m being ganged up on like this.”

Bucky shrugs at him. “Make me breakfast more often and I’ll consider taking your side.”

“No can do. Afraid that’s a once a month only thing. I have suddenly forgotten everything about it for the next 30 days.”

“I’ll consider it in 30 days then.”

“You’re a cruel man, Barnes,” Tony says, but there’s no bite to it and they way that he’s looking at Bucky seems to be fond.

Bucky insists on doing the dishes when they finish: he was raised to be polite and cleanup after someone makes you food. Tony doesn’t fight him too hard on it and leaves him alone, when Bucky checks later his system says that Tony is in his room and there isn’t much movement. He feels himself relax at the thought that Tony is getting some rest.

Miraculously, Tony has to go to Stark Industries later in the day for once. Pepper insists that there is a board meeting that he cannot miss, which leaves Tony looking annoyed and begrudgingly dragging Bucky along to the meeting. It turns out that Bucky cannot go into the room during the meeting so he’s left standing outside waiting for it to finish.

“They have you playing guard dog?” An employee that’s walking past asks him.

“Guess so,” Bucky says.

The woman stops and looks at him for a moment, like she’s trying to place his face and the way she does it leaves Bucky feeling uneasy.

“You look familiar.”

Bucky smiles. “Do I?”

“Yeah, someone I met couple years ago.”

“Well ma’am, I was deployed a couple years ago. So unless you were overseas, I don’t think we’ve met.”

She breaks away eye contact too quickly and her smiles is fake as she says, “Guess it was someone else. You have a good day.”

“You too,” Bucky says watching her turn the corner. She was lying. She was lying about not knowing him and Bucky doesn’t know why but the whole thing leaves him unsettled and thinking that it might be a good thing that Tony doesn’t spend much time at Stark Industries after all. By the time that Tony is done with his meeting Bucky is as eager to leave as Tony is.

Bucky gets an alert as he’s getting ready for bed. He’s stayed up later than usual for him but he was finally getting tired, and of course that would be when Tony has Iron Man business. He groans as he checks his phone.

“Hey Tony,” he says into their comm.

“Yeah?” Tony says and Bucky’s surprised at how quiet it is, considering he’s sure that Tony is already in the armor.

“Could you come upstairs for a moment? I need your help with something,” Bucky asks with a grin.

There’s a pause for a moment in which he can tell that Tony is trying to think of some sort of excuse.

“No can do. Working with something very sensitive here. If I leave it might cause a small explosion. Would you believe me if I said that I have been told to avoid explosions? I can’t believe it either, really unfortunate all things considered. Puts a damper on my progress. I’ll come up and help when I can, but it might be a while.  I have to go, potential explosion situation happening.”

And then the comm cuts out. Bucky snorts disbelievingly and gets ready to chase after Tony.

When Bucky gets there, Tony is fighting two people at once. Bucky allows himself to be a little smug that Tony’s hand to hand combat has improved a little since his fight with Peter. Then as he approaches, one of them looks at him, then back at Tony, and the two take off running in different directions. Tony turns and looks at him, and then runs after the woman, leaving Bucky to run after the other guy.

The thing is, Bucky can run fast. He’s not fond of the reasons why, or how he got his speed, but he knows that it’s above the normal rate for humans and this guy is still outrunning him. Bucky does manage to catch him, just barely. Pulls his arm and it’s enough to pull the guy back and stop him in his tracks. He twists out of Bucky’s grip and grabs onto Bucky’s arm instead, trying to get a hold on him.

The guy twists Bucky's left arm. He presses into it enough that Bucky can actually feel it. Bucky knows that it's another Hydra agent, but no normal amount of human strength would be able to press into his hand enough to damage it. Bucky twists out of his grip, and kicks his feet out from underneath him. Sure enough there's a dent in his metal arm, but that's something to think about later. Bucky goes to throw a punch, but he can't bend all his fingers properly, he can't make a fist with his arm and he knows that this guy really fucked it over just by applying some pressure.

Bucky's not focusing. He's not focusing the way he should, because he's thinking of being overseas in Hydra base and being experimented on. Bucky's strength comes from whatever they injected him back then and this seems similar. His thoughts are a jumble as he tries to think if there were more replicas of the serum somewhere. He can't think straight, he's fighting sloppily as the guy lands a hit on him and then Tony lands and blasts him away from Bucky in an instant. The guy looks towards the two of them together and he bolts.

Tony doesn't even look at Bucky before he goes flying after him. Bucky doesn't follow. He tries to control his breathing and not think about the past. He needs to focus on the battle and then his feet kick in and he's running in the direction the guy sprinted off in. But he's gone, Bucky doesn't have eyes on him, can't figure out where he went and all he can do is hope that Tony has a better view of him from the skies.

He looks at his arm. Grips it, moves his fingers and glares when only two of them move as intended. He feels the frustration swell up in him again and he pushes it down stubbornly. Tries to gather his thoughts, because this is what he's known for isn't it? Making tactical calls in tough situations. Hoarse hysterical laughter threatens to come up and Bucky breathes out heavy to control it.

He needs Tony to know about Hydra. He needs to be able to tell him what he knows. Possibly what happened to him. He needs Tony to know that it's a threat to take seriously. He needs Tony to be safe from Hydra. He needs Tony to not end up in the same situation he did, he can’t have another person go through that because of him. He and Steve got lucky and Bucky doesn’t think it’ll work out the second time around and the first time didn’t go that well to begin with. He had thought that it was over once he came back home. But now he might end up in a situation with another person that he can’t protect, can’t keep safe, and he’s lost enough of them because Bucky couldn’t do what he wanted already.

The sound of the Tony landing in front of him breaks him out of his thoughts.

"Lost him," Tony says.

Bucky remains silent, even though the words threaten to pour out. He's a moment away from telling Tony exactly what he knows, secret identity be damned, but he can't. He can't have Tony know at this point, Tony's keeping his identity secret for a reason and Bucky doubts that he'd take kindly to him knowing, regardless of his reasons. He'll have to find another way to tell him.

"Another Hydra agent. They both were," Tony says.

Bucky nods.

"You knew that, did you?"

Bucky nods again.

"Looked into them some. They've mostly been active overseas currently. Interesting that I keep running into them. More interesting is that they keep outrunning me. What are they doing, that I can’t find them from an aerial viewpoint? Any ideas on what they might be after?"

Yes, Bucky thinks. He's almost certain that they're after Tony, or at least the armor. It's tech that they could use. But suddenly the threat is very real that they'll realize who he is and they'll be after him as well.

Bucky points at Tony instead.

"Me?"

He gives another nod, suddenly thinking that he should probably find a way to explain. But then again Tony's a genius, he should be able to figure it out.

“You know that actually explains some things. She fought me like she was studying me. Not like she actually wanted to win. So probably after the armor? Trying to see how it functions? I’d want to know too. I mean how could you not? This thing is a work of art, if I’m being completely honest.”

Tony can’t see his eyes but he gives an eyeroll behind the goggles anyway and Tony apparently seems to sense it based off the smug grin that he gets in return.

“I can figure that out. So you want me to drop you off somewhere? Can probably fly you to wherever you need to be.” The way Tony says it makes Bucky feel like he’s being offered a ride on the back of a motorcycle from the school’s resident bad boy.  

Bucky wants to laugh. Where he needs to be is exactly where Tony needs to be, but there isn’t any way to convey that. So he just shakes his head no and bolts before Tony can ask him any other questions, like why are you out late at night or how did you know where to find me or why are you in Malibu when our last meeting was in New York.

As it turns out, you need all of your fingers functioning on both of your hands to do a lot of things. Bucky’s struggling to do basic tasks, like picking anything up at all, and he knows that he won’t be able to keep it up for long.

He sits down on his bed and turns his wrist up and opens up the plating. He can’t see anything immediately wrong with the wires. He can’t see what’s wrong at all. Bucky knows basic care for his prosthetic, but he is not a prosthetist so he’s unsure on how to go about fixing it. His prosthetist didn’t give him instructions for it getting damaged in a battle with an enhanced human .

Bucky surprisingly falls asleep faster than he expects considering the events of the night. He’s worn out and he’s not entirely sure if it’s from the battle or from the panic he has over Hydra still posing a real threat to him and others.

His hand is still not working when he wakes. It’s not working a few hours later either, and he’s getting increasingly frustrated. He knows the obvious person to ask for help with his robotic arm would be the robotics expert that he lives with but he hasn’t reached that point and he’s stubbornly trying not to. There’s more important things on his mind anyway. Such as how he  can tell Tony what he knows about Hydra without revealing to him that’s he’s the Winter Soldier.

That’s his priority: taking care of the threat, not his hand.

He looks up a few things online about them to see if there’s anything suspicious in the news, but he gets quickly frustrated at that as well. Not having two functioning thumbs means he ends up pecking at the screen to type which slows down his entire process. He bites his lip and considers calling Steve, but Steve’s still overseas and probably has other things to concern himself with and Bucky doesn’t want to worry him so he pushes the idea out of his head as quickly as it comes.

It’s early in the afternoon when Tony comes up from his lab. He sees Bucky and goes, “Great. Come on. We’re getting dinner.”

Bucky stares at him for a moment. He hadn’t actually expected Tony to make an effort to acknowledge Bucky much outside of the breakfast incident, but he doesn’t argue it. He needs to take his mind off of Hydra and he skipped lunch. And Tony doesn’t give him much of a chance to say no because he’s already turned his back and is walking towards the garage.

“Have you slept?” Bucky asks as they walk to the cars because his log doesn’t show Tony leaving the lab last night and he’s suddenly concerned about Tony getting behind the wheel of a moving vehicle.

“Hmm. Sure I did. Haven’t even been awake for a full 24 hours. Doing just peachy,” Tony says and then drops into his Audi before Bucky can say anything else.

The place they end up at is a pizzeria that is mostly deserted. Bucky doesn’t recognize it nor does he recognize the area of Malibu that it’s in. The people inside don’t even turn their heads as they walk in, which surprises him mildly as Tony seems to turn heads everywhere he goes.

They’re seated quickly and there’s an air of familiarity with Tony and staff which explains the lack of surprise. Although Bucky’s unsure of how Tony becomes familiar with anyone considering that Bucky has rarely seen him leave the lab unless it’s for Iron Man related purposes.

Their food arrives quickly and they eat mostly in silence. Bucky’s mind is still running a mile a minute as he looks for a solution to his Hydra problem, and Tony looks like he’s about to fall asleep on his plate.

Then Tony looks at Bucky’s left hand. Which he has pointedly not moved the entire dinner. Then, without breaking eye contact, Tony drops a fork that he was not using onto the floor. Bucky’s left side. Which would be something that he’d normally pick up with his left hand.

Tony smiles sweetly at him. “Could you get that for me?”

Bucky glares and picks it up with his right hand. “Here you go,” he says smiling just as sweetly back as he puts it back down on the table.

“Thanks, you’re a peach.” Then Tony holds up a hand to fist bump him like it’s the most normal reaction for someone picking up something you’ve dropped.

Bucky rolls his eyes at him and doesn’t return it, because he very well cannot make a fist and he’s eating with his other hand. He’s certain that Tony won’t flat out ask about it anyway, even if he has caught onto something being wrong. And of course Tony would notice when something goes wrong with the bionic part of his body.

Tony doesn’t continue to try to get Bucky to admit to it, but there is a look of concern that crosses his face that makes Bucky’s heart stutter for a moment. He hasn’t had many people concerned about his wellbeing other than Steve lately and he’s constantly amazed at how much Tony seems to care and how different it is from the image that is portrayed of him.

He mulls it over the entire ride home and then before he can think better of it, as they park, he says, "I need your help with something."

Tony looks at him questioningly, waiting for Bucky to elaborate.

Bucky wants to back out. Surely he can think of how to fix it on his own, watch a few quick youtube videos on repairs. But he doesn't, he has no idea how to make it operate properly again and he doubts that anything online will cover the inner workings of a prosthetic like his. He can't fly to New York on a whim to have his regular guy fix it either. He bites his lip for a moment as he decides that yeah, Tony probably is the best person for this and that he'll have to trust him. And he does trust him, he trusts that Tony will know what he's doing and won't fuck it up any more than it already is.

"A couple of my fingers aren't working. Can't move 'em as well as I would like. Seem to have done somethin' to it. Would you mind...?"

Tony's eyes light up, and Bucky feels himself start to regret asking instantly. God, he's going to have a flamethrower for an arm at the end of this. "Nothing fancy. I don't need any improvements. I just need it to be fixed and back to the way it was. Understood?"

Tony smirks at him. "Now, I don't know why you would think I would do something like that. Not like I ever make improvements to technology without being prompted."

Bucky glares at him for a moment. "You can do whatever you like with the Iron Man armor, but I don't need to be shooting knives from my fingertips."

Actually Bucky thinks that might be convenient, but at the same time it'd be difficult to explain when he's living his day to day life and trying to do something like getting through airport security. Besides, what if he triggers it accidentally as he's walking down the street?

"What about little missiles? Can just have the tips of your fingers pop off and shoot out little rockets and they'll pop right back on."

"No," Bucky says firmly, while thinking that it would really be useful if he's going to continue running around Tony as Iron Man.

"Fine, fine. Go ahead and ruin all my fun. Come on in and I'll take a look at it."

"Right now?" Bucky asks because it's well past midnight and he knows that he shouldn't expect

Tony to sleep at normal times but he figured maybe he'd have something else to work on and Bucky wouldn't mind getting some sleep himself.

"Yeah, why not? Did you have plans?"

"Besides attempting a normal sleep schedule?"

Tony pauses for a minute, frowning momentarily, like he completely forgot the time again, and Bucky supposes that he did. "Right. Well, I could look in the morning."

Bucky can hear the disappointment in his voice, because Tony is actually excited to get his hands on the prosthetic. Bucky sighs as he says, "No, right now is fine. Let's go."

Tony grins and practically bounces out of the car back to his lab.

Tony's lab looks the same as always, from the few times that Bucky has been in there now. Tony's letting him in more freely but he still refuses to have Bucky install any sort of security in the lab, telling him that the camera pointed in outside of his doors is already enough. Bucky decides not to press it even though he really wants to. He looks around and not much has changed; there's portions of the Iron Man armor strewn around, but that much is too be expected. Tony hasn't received any injuries that would give away the fact that's actually Iron Man himself on the armor this time. It does, in fact, look like he's nothing more than Iron Man's mechanic.

Bucky ignores the fact that that continues to be the worst excuse ever. For one, Iron Man has kept fighting and Bucky can see improvements on videos and in battle but Tony has never actually left the lab to go send the armor out. He doubts that Tony even considered that, and it's not like anyone would notice if they weren't living with Tony but Bucky is and it wouldn't have taken him long to figure it out even if he hadn't broken into the lab the first week that he was here.

"Take a seat," Tony says gesturing towards his workbench.

Bucky does as he's told.

Tony comes closer to him and then takes a look at Bucky, and looks at his arm. Bucky's wearing a long sleeved shirt, as he always does when he's out in public. He's stopped doing so in Tony's home but he doesn't want people staring at the prosthetic when he's out and about.

"Need you to take off your shirt."

Bucky does as he's told, throws it somewhere back behind him carelessly and then raises an eyebrow as Tony opens his mouth to comment on the move. "Right. Move your fingers for me."

"You need my shirt off so you could ask me to move my fingers?" Bucky says as he moves his fingers, glaring at them in frustration when only his pinky and ring finger move properly.

"No. But the view isn't bad." Tony says, grinning at him.

"Tony."

"Relax. I need to see how all the joints move together, not just your fingers, and if you want me tinkering with it I doubt the hand comes off separately from the rest. Does it?"

"No."

"There you go then."

Bucky lets out a sigh and watches as Tony looks at it.

"I have to ask, are you able to feel with it?"

Bucky remembers why he had been hesitant to ask Tony to do this. He knows that he has to answer the questions, that telling Tony will only help him fix it. But he knows the more questions that he answers the more it'll lead to the one he doesn't want to talk about, the How did you get it? question.

He keeps his face neutral. "Some. I can feel with it, but it's a lot more muted than my real hand. It's not as sensitive, takes more pressure for me to actually feel anything."

"That must be a little odd."

"It took some getting used to."

Tony bites his lip, like he's thinking something over. "Make a fist for me."

Bucky does.

"Can you feel your fingers press into each other when you do that?"

Bucky shrugs. "Yes, but like I said, it's a very muted feeling."

Tony nods, lets out a breath and then, "Do you want to be able to feel as much as your other hand?"

Bucky stares at him for a good moment. Tony could do that? His normal guy couldn't even do that. Bucky hadn't let him know that he was disappointed at the fact. He should have been grateful that he had any feeling at all, but it didn't feel right. Every time that he had to use a little more force to feel something it was a reminder that something wasn't right, on top of the fact that the arm is metal. That much was enough without him going to reach out to touch something with that hand and forgetting that he couldn't use his normal touch. The balance felt off, and he hated it but he had accustomed to it.

"You could do that?" He asks quietly, trying to think if it's something he even wants at this point.

"Sure. I'd have to see how it works currently so you'd have to let me fiddle with it a lot more than you asked for but I think I could figure it out. But you have to tell me if that's what you want," Tony says, and the offer is sincere. It's sincere enough to take Bucky aback a bit because Tony's not joking with him, instead he's seriously offering and he sounds confident that he could do it.

"I don't know," Bucky says, and it's the truth. He's not sure, he's gotten used to it. He doesn't even know why he's hesitating, having the same amount of feeling in both arms would give him some sort of normalcy again so he shouldn't hesitate but it feels strange to give it up now. To have it change on him again when he's spent the last two years adjusting to it.

Tony shrugs. "You just have to let me know. It's impressive tech that you can feel anything at all. Not the standard for most prosthetics nowadays."

Bucky can hear the comment in the statement, the comment on how abnormal his prosthetic is, the curiosity in Tony's tone as he talks, but he continues not to ask. Continues to wait for Bucky to tell him himself and it's a display of patience and understanding that Bucky wouldn't have thought Tony Stark capable of from his media coverage.

"It isn't, no."

Tony hums, and has Bucky move his fingers a couple more times as he watches the way the arm works, then he nods, "Okay. So how do you want to do this? Is there a way for you to take it off? It'd be easier if it's not still on your person, but I mean it's up to you."

Bucky snorts. "I can take it off. But it also opens."

Bucky turns his wrist upwards and opensup the metal plating to reveal the wires underneath.

Tony lets out a low whistle as he glances into it. “So they replicated your nerves with wires. Clever tech. Not as clever as mine, but still impressive.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t want to compliment the thing. All it does is serve as a reminder of his past, and not a part of it that he’s fond of.

“Okay, I’m gonna have you move your fingers for me the same way I did before. Just so I can look at what the wires are doing.”

Bucky does as he’s told, and watches as Tony mumbles something to himself. After a bit he goes,

“Great. I can fix this, might take be a little bit however, so I don’t know if you want to take it off or if you want to sit there for an hour or two, but I figure it might be uncomfortable for me to tinker with it and make you sit still for that long.”  

Bucky reaches around with his good hand to pop off the shoulder joint, and then holds it after it comes off. "I'm going to need your help with the wires."

Tony nods and comes around to look into the inside of it. Bucky controls his breathing, and doesn't think about the fact that Tony is the only other person outside of Steve and his regular prosthetist to look at his arm like this.

"The wiring is responsible for the receptors that make you feel then?" Tony asks, looking at it.

"Yeah."

"Right. I'm going to start disconnecting them now, okay?"

Bucky nods, appreciating the warning.

He sits in silence while Tony messes with the wires, trusting that he won't fuck anything up there. If Tony has the confidence that he could give Bucky more feeling, Bucky feels like he could probably fix it if he does something with the wires.

"Interesting system in here," Tony says, and it sounds a little disapproving.

"Not up to your standards?"

"Nothing is ever up to my standards," Tony says dismissively, like it's something that he got used to long ago.

"My standards would be a real arm, so this really isn't up to par."

Tony actually laughs at that. "Pretty high standard to meet. You can't just go around asking for real arms."

Bucky feels himself relax as Tony jokes back with him. Bucky remembers the arc reactor in Tony's chest, can see the faint glow of it even now under Tony's shirt, and he supposes that out of all the people to get stuck body guarding, Tony is someone that's going to empathize with him the most.

"Yet most of the population has real arms. I feel like I've been robbed."

"Well when you get a real arm for yourself, make sure to grab the bits I need for the hole in my chest too."

"I'll put up a craigslist ad," Bucky says.

He feels Tony pull his arm away, all that's left on his shoulder is the bits of wires hanging out, no longer connected to anything.

"There we go," Tony says as it comes off.

"How long?"

"Let me get in here properly and I can give you an estimated time." Tony says, already putting it down on his workbench and turning away from Bucky. “It’ll take me a couple hours at most. Any other thoughts on the sense? I could do that while I’m already in here.”

Bucky hesitates. He’s still not entirely comfortable with the idea. “No. That’s fine. I need to think about it more.”

Tony pauses for a moment and then asks, "How would you feel about me making you a detachable hand? It might be a little easier for repairs. The way that this is currently, I can’t exactly do much without asking you lend me an entire arm and that doesn’t sound as good as lending me a hand."

"Is that going to take a lot of time?"

"A few hours. You could go to bed and I'd have it done by tomorrow."

Bucky hesitates again. But the likelihood of him damaging his arm has gone up since becoming Tony's bodyguard.

"Okay," he says.

Tony looks a little surprised. "Great. I can do it now?"

Bucky hasn't had to go for more than an hour without the arm before. He's grown used to it being a permanent fixture of his body and it feels weird to have the limb completely missing for an extended period of time.

"Are you comfortable without it?"

Bucky laughs. "No, but I'll be less comfortable going around with dysfunctional fingers, so go ahead and do your magic."

“Sure. Just come find me in the morning and it should be ready for you.” Tony says and promptly turns back to his workbench to start disassembling it.

Bucky leaves him to it since it appears that Tony forgets that he’s there the moment he begins working on it and Bucky feels strange watching his arm be torn apart. He does his best to trust that Tony won’t do anything crazy with it and tries to get some sleep instead of worrying about it.

Tony is miraculously not in his lab the next morning. Bucky doesn’t even check; he just heads down but he can’t see him moving around in the lab and when he asks Jarvis he gets confirmation that Tony is still asleep. Bucky can see his arm on the workbench, ready to go but he can’t get to it, and doing simple everyday things when you’re missing a limb is actually rather difficult.

He briefly entertains the idea of making Tony breakfast like Tony had done for him but that’s something that you need two hands for, so he doesn’t even attempt it. He can’t wake Tony up either, since Tony’s sleep schedule is unpredictable enough already without Bucky making it worse.

Bucky is about to head back up and maybe try to get more sleep when Tony comes down the stairs. He looks tired and like he didn’t get enough sleep. It’s enough for Bucky to want to tell him he can wait and insist on Tony getting enough sleep, but Tony just waves him in without saying a word so he follows and takes the same seat at the workbench as he had yesterday.

Tony gets out the arm and Bucky takes in a breath. He still hasn’t told Tony about Hydra. But he needs to if Tony is going to continue fighting them. Tony needs all the information he can get.  He’s not going to remain safe without it and Bucky can only provide so much protection and he’s not even sure how to handle this threat. Not if they’re targeting Tony actively.

Bucky starts to talk before he can talk himself out of it.

"Back when I was deployed I was held prisoner for a while. Not for long, but long enough for them to do what they needed to do," Bucky says as Tony starts connecting the wires again. He waits for a response. There isn’t one. Tony’s focused on the wires but he’s quiet and Tony isn’t normally quiet for long so he must be listening. He can't talk to him as the Winter Soldier and this will be the only way to tell Tony what he knows about Hydra as is currently.

"The group that captured me called themselves Hydra," he waits for another response, searches Tony's face for any sort of recognition but for once Tony's poker face doesn't betray him.

Instead all that Tony says is, "The terrorist group?"

"Yeah."

Tony nods and goes back to connecting the wires.

"It's how I got the arm. I won't go into too many of the details, but they injected me with something. I was an experiment to them along with my friend, Steve. Anyway, this thing was supposed to make us stronger, supposed to make us heal faster and they did some testing for that but they needed to know the limitations of it, so they took my arm and waited for it to grow back."

Tony lets out a breath and pulls back from connecting the wires. "You should be able to put it back on now."

Bucky nods and does so but doesn't look away from Tony. "It didn't grow back. They must have known that there was a large chance that it wouldn't because they had this built already."

Tony looks away for a moment, bites his bottom lip and then turns back towards him.

"You can ask about it," Bucky says because he can sense the hesitation. It's unlikely that he'll want to talk about it again and he'd rather just have the conversation over with but he trusts Tony with the information so it seems as good a time as any to actually talk about it.

"What happened to your friend?"

"Stevie? He's still overseas. They didn't cut off any of his limbs. Seems to be doing just fine from what I know when I hear from him."

"Is the arm why...?"

"Why I'm not there with him still? No. It's related to that mission but it's not because I'm an amputee. Hell, I can do a lot more with the arm than I could with a flesh one in battle so it's not like they would've sent me packin' for that."

Bucky hesitates. Tony doesn't need to know the next part, he doesn't need to know the rest of it to understand about Hydra. It isn't relevant, but he said that Tony could ask.

"Stevie and I were the only ones that got out of that mission alive. I was the one that made the call that led the rest of them to their deaths."

He doesn't mention Peggy. It still hurts to think about her more than the rest of them, and he's not used to dealing with that guilt as intensely unless he's around Steve. He doesn't mention that he's been regaled as a war hero for the call, as the thought makes him sick. He led everyone to their deaths and he and Steve wouldn't have survived if it weren't for Hydra's experimentation either.

Bucky waits for it. He waits for the inevitable apology, the condolences, but Tony just stares at him and then, "I was held captive in a cave for three months in Afghanistan."

He taps his chest, "It's how I got this. We were attacked after a demo back when I still did weapons manufacturing. Woke up and there was a literal car battery in my chest that another prisoner made to keep me alive. I made the arc reactor afterwards. The attack struck me in the chest and this prevents the shrapnel from getting to my heart."

Bucky fends off his protective urges once again, tells himself that it's in the past and he can't do anything about it now. "We sharing tragic back stories now?"

Tony lets out a puff of laughter, "Suppose so. How'd you get out of your imprisonment?"

"Blew the place up." Bucky says. It was a little more complicated than that but it was the end result. "You?"

Tony grins at him. "Blew the place up."

Bucky laughs. "Thanks for fixing my arm."

Tony waves a hand. "Sure. Want to tell me how you managed to damage it like that? Would have taken quite a bit of force for that to happen. You doing bodyguard work on the side?"

"No." Bucky says since it's true, the only bodyguard work he's doing for is also for Tony.

“No you won’t tell me? Or no you’re not doing bodyguard work? I’m mostly just curious about how the dent got there, because your arm is made of a very impressive alloy and it would have taken a lot of force to do that.”

“You going to let me install security cameras in the lab?” Bucky says with a grin as he moves his fingers and tests out the hand.

“No.”

He smirks. “Then no.”

Tony shrugs like he accepts the answer and doesn’t press on it anymore.

When Tony had found him in the morning Bucky had anticipated being taken to some small breakfast place, as has become Tony’s routine; finding Bucky and then taking him somewhere to eat whenever Tony decides that it’s a good time, which is sporadic at best. He did not, however, expect to end up in Hawaii after Tony drove to his private plane.

Bucky, against his better judgement when they get to the hotel they’re staying at, expects two normal hotel rooms. What he gets instead is Tony winking at the receptionist and asking if his usual is available. She smiles and nods, hands him over the keycards quickly and then they are on the elevator and Tony is selecting the top floor that is obnoxiously labeled with a P instead of any numbers.

The elevator does not open to a hallway like he is expecting. Instead it opens to a very large living room area.

Bucky blinks at it and then steps out. “There’s 3 rooms, so pick whichever one you want,” Tony says like it’s nothing.

Bucky takes in a breath, does his best not to focus on the windows, (really, what is it with Tony and windows) and goes to set his bag in a room.

When he steps back out Tony frowns at him. “Go ahead and do your check. I can tell it’s bothering you not knowing everything about this place, so go on, be a guard dog, you’re bumming me out with your effort not to be paranoid about this.”

Bucky glares at him for a quick moment and then does as he’s told. The place is unnecessarily large, there are three rooms just as Tony stated, and Bucky feels each one is oversized. Each one has a bathroom attached that is also too much for him. He keeps expecting to walk into a room and find nothing other than a pool. The kitchen has a full sized bar that is stocked with alcohol he’s sure costs more than his apartment back in New York. The whole place is so unnecessary but he’s beginning to get used to that with Tony. Once he’s satisfied that there isn’t a threat to them, he does feel more at ease.

“Tony?” he asks when he’s done.

“Yes?”

“What are we doing here?”

“I told you, we were going out to dinner.”

Bucky takes in a breath, “Normally people go to dinner at a place down the street, not somewhere that is a six hour plane ride away.”

“Did you not get the memo? I’m not exactly people, think you would have figured that, you’ve been around me for long enough now.”

Bucky frowns as he watches Tony pace. “You’re people. A little eccentric, but you’re not any less of a person than anyone else.”

Tony looks away from him then, outside the stupidly large windows, and becomes a little more closed off. Like Bucky has said something that he’s either not used to hearing or he doesn’t like.

Then within the next moment he turns back to him and goes, “So where would you like to go? I think there’s a brochure around here somewhere of the food nearby. Your choice.”

“Tony.”

“Hmm?” Tony asks as he picks up a brochure and starts to flip through it.

“You didn’t answer me.”

“Well you haven’t answered me on where we are going either, so I think we’re even.”

Bucky sighs. “You’d tell me if you were here because you were hiding from someone, right? Because if you believe that there is any reason you are in more danger than normal, I would need to know.”

Tony rolls his eyes. “I promise you there is only the usual people after me. Look, this is a thing I do, not hiding from anyone. If I were I would choose to go to one of private islands I own, much more secluded, not as easy to find me. This is because I haven’t been out in a while and I like it here, okay?”

It’s the longest that Bucky has heard Tony speaking without making a joke, which leaves him feeling uneasy but Tony isn’t lying so Bucky says, “Okay.”

Tony grins at him. “Great! How do you feel about seafood? There’s a place near here known for their lobster.”

They walk to dinner. It’s a short walk and Tony insists. Bucky agrees because he doubts that he’ll get to walk around here ever again, and it gives him more time to spend with Tony, which is something that he finds himself wanting to do more of lately.  

Bucky asks where they’re going and Tony just shrugs and says it’s a surprise.

They end up at a hole in the wall diner with authentic Hawaiian food.

Bucky stares at it for a while.

“Not what you expected?” Tony says as he takes a seat at one of the tables on the patio.

“I expected something more upscale.”

“Didn’t think I knew places with regularly priced food?”

“I assumed you’d have people that found those places for you,” Bucky says honestly, because Tony seems like the kind of guy to have a person for everything.

“I’m sure I could have gotten a guy. But I’ve been coming here for years.”

Then as though the universe is working with Tony for timing, a guy that Bucky would guess is nearing 60 comes out whose face lights up upon seeing Tony. “Tony!” he says holding his arms out.

Tony stands up and hugs the guy.

“You don’t come by nearly often enough,” The man scolds him, as though he is scolding one of his children for only visiting once a year.

Tony laughs, “I know, I would visit every day if I could.”

Bucky watches the scene unfold. He had expected Tony to know the owner of any place they went, so that’s not abnormal. But he hadn’t expected it to be a diner where tourists don’t frequent. And he definitely hadn’t anticipated Tony talking to the owner like an old friend. What he had pictured was a polite but brief conversation with an upscale restaurant owner. What he gets instead is Tony briefly catching up the man on what he has done since the last time he has come by, and then Tony proceeds to ask him about his kids.

“Who is the gentleman with you tonight?”

“This is James Barnes, he’s a friend.”

“You must be a very special friend, if Tony is flying you all the way out here just to eat at my diner.”

Bucky smiles. “I suppose I am.”

Tony gives him a look that Bucky can’t place but then looks away just as quickly to address the owner. “What do you have today?”

“I will make whatever you want.”

“I don’t want you going out of your way.”

“Tony, you know I’m always happy to cook for you. I’ll make something for you, okay? You just relax and enjoy.”

“I trust you to take care of me,” Tony says grinning at the man, who simply nods and walks back into the diner.

Tony sits down again and looks out onto the street. Bucky has to admit that it’s beautiful, right by the seaside. They can see the sun as it starts to set. The diner has string lights that have already come on, and Bucky supposes that it looks very quaint when it’s nighttime.

“It’s not what you were expecting,” Tony says.

“It isn’t. But I’m not complaining,” Bucky admits.

“Good. I like it here. Stumbled across it years ago when I didn’t want to go to a tourist destination where someone would surely recognize me. Kimo had no idea who I was the first time that I walked in. Just demanded to know what I wanted to eat and then left me alone. I was sold on the place immediately.”

“I can see why. He seems to care about you,” Bucky says. He thinks that Tony is lucky to have people like that in his life, even if he doesn’t get to see them often. He wants Tony to have people like Kimo around.

Tony laughs. “I think he hated me the first couple of times. Thought I was just another tourist that was going to sit in here and demand a different type of atmosphere or be rude to him, which I suppose wouldn’t be out of character. I think he warmed up once I came three times in a row and never took out an overly large camera and asked to get pictures with the staff as a novelty.”

“People do that?”

“Sure. There’s places around here that do a whole show, so it’s very standard to get your picture taken with the workers. Even the cooks dress up. It’s kind of like those staged dinners on pirate ships, except not as entertaining. At least on pirate ships you can throw on the accent and watch as the staff gets frustrated when they realize you’re making up pirate slang but they can’t break character,” Tony says, grinning at him.

Bucky laughs. The comment is so characteristically Tony. “I’d like to see that.”

Tony grins at him, bright and hopeful. “I’ll take you on one on our next trip.”

Tony says it with a certainty, like there will be a next trip and then many more after that, and Bucky can’t find a reason why there wouldn’t be.

The rest of the dinner passes without incident. Kimo brings out their food. He places a dish in front of Bucky that Bucky is certain is much larger than his regular portions but Tony doesn’t even bat an eye at his plate, just says thank you and digs in without even asking what the dish is. Bucky shrugs and follows suit.

Tony walks inside when they’re done eating and promises the owner that he will come by more often.

“I’ll try to make it twice a year instead of once.”

“Bring your friend.”

“I don’t think he’d let me go without him,” Tony says, smiling. Bucky hides his laughter since it is true, there is no way that he’d be okay with Tony coming here without him, or at the very least without someone watching him while Bucky is his bodyguard.

Kimo packs their food, as they have plenty of leftovers. Tony gives him a hug and they begin to stroll back to their hotel.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” Tony asks once they walk back into the suite.

“Surprise me,” Bucky says with a wink.

What Tony grabs is one of the bottles that Bucky is sure are worth more than his apartment. A scotch that is dated 1962. Bucky almost feels guilty for drinking it but he doesn’t get the opportunity that often, so he doesn’t protest as Tony fills his glass.

Tony sits down next to him and turns on the TV. There’s something on that Bucky can only recognize as a Dancing With the Stars ripoff. He settles in to watch anyway as he sips his drink, because he’s always liked dancing.

“Where’d you learn to dance?” Tony asks after a bit.

“Who says I know how to?” Bucky smirks.

“You seemed pretty adamant on it after you had me fight your protegé. Figured you might have known a thing or two after that. Or did you simply look up dance routines to screw with me?”

Bucky laughs. “I told you, knowing how to dance will help you fight.”

“I know how to dance. I’m a rich socialite, of course I know how to dance,” Tony scoffs.

“I think you could use some practice then,” Bucky says, grinning at him.

He thinks he sees Tony blush for a quick moment before his attention is firmly back on the couple dancing on the screen.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I took a few ballroom dancing classes.” Bucky responds.

On the screen the guy lifts up his partner effortlessly, she flips over his shoulder as he spins her, and watching it makes Bucky miss dancing.

“Okay, teach me,” Tony says, standing up.

“I thought you knew how to dance?” Bucky says.

“And I thought you said that I could improve. Help me improve.”

“Tony stark admitting he needs help with something? I never thought I’d see the day. I can retire now,” Bucky says, grinning up at him.

Tony throws a pillow at him. Bucky laughs but stands up and holds out a hand for Tony to take.

Tony does take his hand, and Bucky bows because he is a gentleman. It makes Tony laugh.

The song playing from the TV is enough for them to dance to.

“Let’s start with what you know,” Bucky says.

Tony shrugs and they start dancing. The song is perfect for a waltz and that is what Tony goes with. Bucky’s not surprised as it is probably what he does the most for social functions. In the two minutes they get before the song ends, he notices that Tony’s just a little on the side of too stiff, his movements falter between flowing naturally and not.

“Do you know how to swing dance?”

“Barely, haven’t had to do that as often.”

“It should help you, it’s a little more loose, and you’re stiff.”

Tony smirks at him like there’s a remark that he wants to make but then surprises Bucky when he doesn’t say anything and just nods.

Luckily the next couple on the screen picks a song that is more upbeat for them and works perfectly. It shows that Tony doesn’t know swing as well as he knows how to waltz, but Bucky can tell that he becomes more comfortable with it much more quickly. Loosens up a bit. Bucky smiles at him, Tony returns it and it seems like the remaining tension he had in his body leaves, Bucky spins him outwards, and Tony actually seems to expect it, which is something that he should be doing when he’s fighting, anticipating his opponent’s next move.

Bucky watches Tony as they dance, then he forgets to keep analyzing his moves, and just dances for the fun of it. Tony looks more at ease and relaxed than he ever does back in Malibu and Bucky briefly thinks that if it all it takes for that to happen is a plane ride to Hawaii then he would happily make the trip every day.

The couple on the screen does a lift, and Tony lifts an eyebrow at him, challenging. Bucky shrugs, and then goes to lift him.

It goes well. Mostly.

But then Tony fumbles just a little bit as Bucky starts to put him down and it throws off their balance, and they fall onto the couch.

Bucky’s laughing about it until they land, because he lands directly on top of Tony, close enough to count each individual eyelash. Suddenly things don’t seem as funny anymore, and he’s still on top of someone that is his employer, but he can’t find the willpower to move.

Under him, Tony licks his lips. Bucky watches as his eyes dart down to his lips and then back up to his eyes. Bucky is frozen still even though everything is screaming at him to move. Instead he’s looking at Tony’s eyes and watching the way his pupils dilate and his eyes start to close a little. Bucky is doing his best not to panic in the moment. He suddenly realizes that he really wouldn’t actually mind kissing Tony, and Tony’s been flirting with him since he took the job so he should have seen this coming. Tony’s waiting for him to make the decision, he can read the signs and he knows that it’s in his hands, and he finds that he wants to, but god, is it a bad idea.

Tony is his employer, and Iron Man. A bad idea stacked on top of a bad idea. And he’s been lying to Tony for a while now and that doesn’t seem like the best time to start anything. And Bucky’s still a mess. He hasn’t made his peace with his past, he still thinks he’s a little too fucked up for anybody at all. He can’t do that to anyone, much less Tony. He’s not going to burden him with Bucky. Bucky can deal with his own messes without pulling other people into it.

He’s hesitated too long, because Tony’s head drops back onto the couch instead of leaning up into him and that’s enough for Bucky to snap out of his thoughts and sit up so he’s no longer touching any part of Tony.

“Sorry about that. I think maybe we should save the lifts for when we’re a little more practiced,” Bucky says with a smile.

Tony gives him a laugh, but it’s hollow and doesn’t quite reach his eyes and that hurts but Bucky can’t do anything about it. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure we’ll get better at it.”

Tony then picks up their glasses and walks them towards the kitchen. Bucky watches after him, focusing on Tony and trying to ignore the pounding of his heart.

“Good night,” he calls out as he heads to his room.

“Good night. Breakfast tomorrow?” Tony calls out before he reaches his room. The tone in his voice is off, it doesn’t feel right and Bucky hates it, but the question is genuine.

“Sure,” Bucky says and the closes the door to his room before he can do something stupid like rethink his decision entirely and go for it.

Chapter Text

Tony’s gone when Bucky wakes up. The hotel suite feels unbearably empty without Tony’s presence in it. Bucky lets out a sigh and ignores that he’s already so used having Tony around that not having him by his side feels wrong. There’s not a note or anything, but Tony’s things are still in the hotel so Bucky’s sure that Tony didn’t leave without him. He glances at Tony’s door. It being left open and letting him peer into the unmade bed and reminding him that Tony is very much not there.

There’s no Iron Man alert on his phone either, and Tony is still adamant about not allowing Bucky to install any sort of GPS system, not even on the comms. Bucky tries the comms, once, twice, and doesn’t get a response and then he sees Tony’s laying on his bedside table and feels the worry flood through him.

That’s when he does get the alert. Comes in blaring on his phone, tells him the recent sighting and where Tony is. But it’s on a different island and there’s no way that Bucky can get there in time. Instead he turns on the TV and changes it into a new station which of course is already getting live coverage of the battle.

Tony’s fighting some sort of sea monster that should probably surprise Bucky more than it actually does, but he can’t focus on it because he’s focused on the way that Tony is flying and trying to get it away from any people and further into the sea. It lunges for Tony and Bucky has a million thoughts fly through his head of how this could end poorly. He’s always worried about Tony, but now it’s tenfold, because he suddenly can’t bear the thought of Tony not coming back, of Tony not returning to him, and having the empty feeling that Tony’s absence in the hotel brings be permanent. He continues to watch with his heart feeling like it’s stuck in his throat, and hating that even if he were there he wouldn’t be able to help.

Bucky has no idea what Tony does in the end, but he manages to pacify the creature enough for it to sink back down under the water and not return. Bucky thinks that Tony may have just talked at it enough until it gave up, and catches himself smiling fondly at the thought. Yeah, he probably should have noticed his feelings for Tony sooner. But now that he has he wishes he could go back to not knowing them. It felt easier when he was unaware.

By the time that Tony returns to the suite, Bucky wants to chew him out for the whole thing, wants to tell him to be more careful but he can’t. Tony still doesn’t know that Bucky knows and it turns out that keeping Tony’s secret from Tony is a lot more difficult when Bucky genuinely cares about him. Instead he tells him not to leave his comm behind, which Tony rolls his eyes at but agrees to do with minimal complaining.

Bucky does not get to talk to Tony much by the time they get back to Malibu. Tony has apparently made it his mission to handle crimes that Bucky is certain could be managed by regular law enforcement and Iron Man is not needed for. When he isn’t off handling crimes, he locks himself up in his lab even more than usual, something that Bucky previously hadn’t thought possible. Even though Bucky knows he can enter the lab now, he doesn’t feel right going in there without Tony inviting him in. So he does his best to give him his space and do his job even though it aches not to be around Tony.

Bucky arrives at a crime scene once the villains are already captured and being loaded into a cop car. Again, it’s something that Bucky is certain Iron Man was not required for. A robbery done by a couple that was a little too enthusiastic with the way they tried to complete the crime. It was handled so quickly that it’s done by the time that Bucky actually shows up.

“You’re a little late,” Tony says as he spots him.

Bucky wants to make a retort about how not everyone can fly but he bites his tongue so he doesn’t give himself away. He can’t figure out how to mime that either so he just shrugs in the end.

“Figures even the villains can figure out a relationship.” Tony mentions as he watches the couple be put into the car. Bucky can already sense where this is going but he cocks his head to the side anyway, waiting for Tony to elaborate.

He can hear the sigh that comes out of the armor. “I’m attractive,” Tony says. “I know you can’t see it because of all the armor, so I figured I’d let you know.”

Bucky nods. He knows how attractive Tony is, he can’t help but notice it daily, he doesn’t need to be told.

“It’d be easier for me to date you. We’d be like some odd crime fighting couple. Well, sort of, a lot of people still believe you’re causing some of the crime. But you’d date me, right?” Tony sounds more confident now than he does when he’s talking with Bucky out of the armor.

Bucky feels his heart twist in a way that reminds him exactly why dating Tony would be a bad idea. But Tony has no idea who he is as the Winter Soldier so he can indulge just a little. He knows that he shouldn’t, but he doesn’t want Tony thinking that he’s entirely unwanted.

He walks up to him slowly. Tony doesn’t move away but he notices the way the armor goes a little more rigid. Bucky ignores it until he’s close enough to Tony to kiss him. Except there’s the faceplate in the way and Bucky’s own mask, and the identities are the only thing giving him the confidence to do this currently.

He runs his fingertips down the side of Tony’s faceplate. He imagines that Tony’s breath hitches for a moment, the way that it did after they danced, he can still hear it perfectly in his mind. He taps his fingers against where Tony’s lips would be, thinks about how his fingers would touch if there was nothing in the way, can imagine how Tony’s lips would feel against his fingertips and ignores how much he wishes that there was nothing separating them.

Tony’s not saying anything, but he’s not pulling away. It’s difficult when Bucky can’t see his face, can’t see the way that he’s reacting, he has to fly blind without any sort of feedback and that makes him a little anxious but not enough to stop. He trails his hand down Tony’s arm, until he reaches his hand, pulls up Tony’s hand to his fingertips can come up to where Bucky’s lips are beneath the mask. Then just as quickly he lets Tony’s hand drop enough just to Bucky can imitate pressing a kiss to the back of it, and he’s pretty sure that he does hear something come from Tony then but he can’t discern what it is. It doesn’t matter.

Bucky drops Tony’s hand then leaves before he does something like taking off his mask and revealing exactly who he is.

Bucky lets out a snort as the headline Iron Man and The Winter Solider, Secret Affair? shows up on Tony’s obnoxiously large tv. He probably should have expected the media reaction to his stunt the other day, but he hadn’t been thinking about how it would be perceived, he hadn’t been thinking about anything other than Tony. He realizes that’s dangerous. Tony is becoming a distraction, and Bucky can’t do his job properly if he’s too focused on Tony to pay attention to his surroundings. He hadn’t even seen the cameras this time, or anyone filming. But the video of him walking up to Iron Man and running his fingers across the faceplate remains on the screen as proof that someone recorded it.

A laugh breaks him out of his thoughts. Tony’s standing behind the couch but he quickly comes around and sits down next to him. Bucky watches as Tony continues to grin at the screen, and makes a note of the way that the corner of his eyes crinkle as he does, and watches the curve of his mouth as he smiles. Bucky holds in a sigh. This is going to be a much bigger problem than he expected. He was so caught up in thinking about Tony that he didn’t even hear Tony enter the room, and now he’s focusing on Tony’s face and how he looks when he smiles instead of listening to what the newscast is saying.

“They’re still going on about that?”

Bucky blinks at him, then turns back to the tv. The reporters are now going on about how it doesn’t seem appropriate for Iron Man to date a villain, and if people should be concerned that he’ll switch to villainy as well.

Bucky shrugs. “Seems so. Guns tend to scare people.”

“That’s not enough to mark someone a villain.” He pauses. “What do you think? Should I have a talk with my boy about not dating the other side?”

Bucky snorts. “I thought you didn’t know who he was?”

“I don’t. But I’m sure I could send a disapproving memo with my next upgrade to him.”

“Are you disapproving? Going to buy into the villain story?”

Tony’s silent for a while as he watches the video, which now zoomed in on their faces so it can show in slow motion the way that Bucky’s hand caresses the faceplate.  

“No,” Tony breathes out still watching the video. There’s a light flush on his cheeks, and Bucky suddenly feels a surge of jealousy shoot through him. He realizes how ridiculous that is immediately after he feels it, as it’s himself he’s jealous of. But it could be anyone for all that Tony knows and it’s still enough to upset Bucky, because it wouldn’t have to be Bucky at all under the Winter Solider uniform to bring the current flush to Tony’s face and he can’t shake that thought.

“I think Iron Man has good taste,” Tony says.

“I dunno, seems awfully villainous to me,” Bucky responds.

“Yes, all the villains I see pick a superhero to follow around and fight crime with and then caress them,” Tony responds dryly.

“Could be a ruse to get Iron Man to trust him first,” Bucky says. Honestly it’s good that Iron Man trusts him, he wants Tony to trust the Winter Soldier, but he still thinks it’s a little too trusting and if it were anyone other than him in the uniform he’d be concerned. He doesn’t have a reason for actively arguing against himself, he knows that he’s being petty but now that’s he’s started he can’t stop.

“Do you always assume everyone has an ulterior motive?”

“Yes.” Bucky deadpans and then he turns off the tv, he’s seen enough. “Come on. You still need work on your hand to hand combat, so I figure if you have time to sit here and watch celebrity gossip you have the time to spar with me.”

“Are we actually going to spar this time or are you just going to use this place as your personal ballroom again?” Tony asks once they get into the gym.

Bucky wants to make a remark about how dancing with Tony last time didn’t exactly end well, but it doesn’t seem like something they’re talking about. So he doesn’t give Tony a response at all, he just waits for him to step onto the mat and then lunges for him before Tony can even prepare.

Bucky’s impressed for a moment because Tony manages to move out of the way and is on the defensive immediately, even though he looks surprised that Bucky didn’t give him anytime.

“Okay so we’re just going to go straight into it then? You know, most people like a little bit of foreplay first.”

Most people would cut the flirting entirely after what had happened between them in Hawaii, but Tony acts like it never happened and continues his normal flirtations and remarks at Bucky. Bucky’s not sure if he’s relieved at it or not. He’s glad that Tony is still acting like himself, but every time that Tony flirts with him, it reminds him of what he cannot have and what he turned down. Starts a slow ache of longing that he can feel in his bones no matter how hard he tries to ignore it.

“You can’t just talk at your opponent you know,” Bucky replies instead of reacting to the flirting or saying anything that is on his mind.

Tony smirks at him. “It works sometimes, have to distract them enough and if you babble fast and often enough it confuses them.” As though to prove a point, Tony steps into his space as he talks and Bucky’s not sure if it’s because Tony’s talking or because Bucky is focusing on the curve of his lips as he smirks that he lets Tony get closer into his space than he wants.

“You speaking from experience?” Bucky asks as he moves away because he can’t help but subtly point out when Tony is being awful at hiding his secret identity.

“I’ve gotten in a few fights. I’m sure you can find the videos of them on youtube.”

Bucky shakes his head at him and he moves into his space and manages to get Tony in a lock that’s difficult to break out from. Unfortunately it has Tony pressed against his chest while Bucky holds his arms around him. He’s all too aware of every inch of his skin that is touching Tony or pressed against him. Tony looks up at him and licks his lips, slowly enough that Bucky is certain he did it intentionally.

“You gonna tell me how to get out of this or are you just going to keep holding me?” Tony asks after a while, looking far too smug for Bucky’s liking.

Bucky manages to explain it even as he continues to stare at Tony’s eyes, while Tony continues to look at him just as intently. He doesn’t break eye contact even as he follows Bucky’s instructions to breakout and squirms in his arms. Once he gets it he grins at Bucky triumphantly, wide and beautiful and Bucky’s certain that he’s never going to get tired of Tony’s smiles.

“Let’s go again,” he says, forcing himself to stop thinking about the different parts of Tony that he likes.

Tony doesn’t talk at him this time, instead he focuses on meeting Bucky’s moves and trying to get his own hits in. They go for a while longer before Bucky gets Tony in the same hold, but Tony doesn’t hesitate and breaks out of it easily, though he fumbles at the end. When Bucky moves forward and gets into Tony’s space a lot closer than he needs to be, he freezes for a moment. It’s enough for Bucky to throw him back a few feet.

“Something distracting you?” Bucky asks with a smug smile.

Tony gives him a look as if to say he’s not the only one getting distracted. Bucky ignores it and gestures for Tony to get up so they can go again.

This time when Tony breaks out of the grip, he doesn’t get startled by Bucky moving forward. Bucky goes for a high kick at Tony’s head but he freezes right before actually landing it. It’s simple enough to block it, all Tony has to  do is push down on Bucky’s thigh and spin away but he needs to know that Tony knows how before going and kicking him. “Do you know how to block this one?”

Tony smirks at him again and then way more slowly than necessary runs his hand down Bucky’s thigh and spins out. He moves his fingers slowly and if it were a real battle his attacker would take the slow speed as an opening to continue attacking, as it leaves Tony vulnerable. But this isn’t a real battle and Bucky’s finding it harder to make tactical decisions on top of his own dumb longing so instead it ends up working in Tony’s favor because it distracts Bucky.

“Did I do that right?” Tony asks, tone dripping with feigned innocence.

“I know what you’re doing. It won’t help you in a real fight.”

Tony tilts his head to the side just slightly like he doesn’t know what Bucky means. “Rule 13, read your opponent. That’s something you taught me. I think it’s definitely helping me in this fight.”

Bucky knows a challenge when he hears one and that is definitely Tony challenging him to fight harder so he doesn’t say anything. He lets Tony swing at him and then Bucky deflects it, he spins them so he can slam Tony against the wall. He presses himself flat against Tony, puts a leg in between Tony’s, enough so that Tony can’t move, can’t break out from between Bucky and the wall. Tony looks entirely distracted so Bucky drops his voice low and says, “It’s not helping you if you can’t even get one win in.”

Tony’s eyes light up and a determined look crosses his face in a way that Bucky probably shouldn’t find hot but does anyway and then in the next moment Tony gets a hand into Bucky’s hair, yanks it and spins them around so Bucky is pressed face first into the wall. Bucky makes a noise as Tony pulls on his hair and presses against him that he refuses to categorize as either a moan or a whimper but something definitely comes out and he knows that Tony hears it based on the way that his breath hitches and the grip in Bucky’s hair loosens.

“Rule 26,” Tony says but he sounds breathless, “Make sure you don’t have anything your opponent can grab.”

Bucky knows that Tony doesn’t know how to block any of what he does next. He knows that Tony has had basic hand to hand combat training, but this is beyond anything that he’s been taught and Bucky can only blame it on his own competitiveness as he does a series of moves that he knows Tony won’t be able to do anything against and then tosses Tony to the ground and pins him under him.

Bucky is actually amazed that he managed to get himself in this situation twice within a week. This is exactly the kind of things he was hoping to avoid, because his willpower is only so strong. Tony looks up at him, licks his lips without breaking eye contact. Honestly Bucky should just get off of him already. Tony then manages to get closer to him, which is something that Bucky marvels at because he’s pretty sure their bodies are entirely pressed against one another’s. Tony leans in to Bucky’s neck, and slowly trails his nose up it, setting Bucky’s skin alight as he goes. Bucky still has no idea why he isn’t putting a stop to it.

“What are you waiting for?” Tony says, low and husky and Bucky knows an invitation when he hears one.

He honestly doesn’t know what he’s waiting for. Bucky thinks in the back of his mind that it’s a good question. He knows he has reasons for not giving in but he’s finding them difficult to remember. Tony’s moved away from his neck and his looking up at him, waiting, but not making any further moves. Bucky kisses him before he can think better of it. He feels Tony’s arms wrap around him instantly, one around his waist and the other in his hair, just a little too tight but Bucky can’t find himself to care about that at all.  

He’s more focused on the feel of Tony’s lips under his, and the way that his goatee scratches against his face as he kisses Bucky back in an increasingly needy way. He focuses on the way that Tony takes his bottom lip in between his teeth for just a moment before going back to kissing him and sliding his tongue in. He focuses on the way that their breathing becomes uneven and the moan that Tony makes as Bucky tries, desperately, to pull them even closer together.

He’s determined to make sure that Tony doesn’t think about anything other than him. He doesn’t want him thinking about the Winter Soldier or anyone else. The jealousy is still there and Bucky hates it. Hates that he can’t do anything about it, can’t push it down the way that he wants to, but he’s the one that’s kissing Tony, not anyone else and he thinks that he’s doing a pretty good job of making Tony forget anyone that isn’t him as Tony’s hands trail down to the hem of his shirt and then under it to touch his bare skin and trail down his spine.

The sound of the phone ringing is like a bucket of ice that causes Bucky to jerk back from the kiss abruptly. He’s entranced for a moment, glances at Tony who is staring up at him with hooded eyes and his breathing is coming out hard and uneven.

“I can’t,” Bucky croaks out, “I just can’t. ”

Then he rolls off of Tony and makes sure not to look at him because he doesn’t want to see his expression. He knows that if he even spares a glance at Tony now he’ll say that he actually can. That Bucky had just been talking out of his ass and he should be entirely ignored and he can’t have that. So he doesn’t look at Tony and instead he reaches for his phone.

The screen displays Steve, along with a picture that Bucky took of him when they were much younger. Before either of them were deployed and Steve still hadn’t grown into himself. It’s one that Steve hates and it’s precisely why Bucky keeps it as the contact photo for him.

“Hey Stevie,” Bucky says as he answers the phone.

“Hey, guess where I’ll be tomorrow?” Bucky can’t help the grin that breaks out on his face as he hears Steve’s voice.

“Where?”

“Brooklyn. Think your fancy new job will let you get away for a few days?”

Bucky turns around to face Tony, still grinning. Tony’s sitting on the mat, his hair a mess from where Bucky was running his fingers through it and his clothes rumpled, he feels his mouth go dry at the sight of him as he stops smiling.

“I can always make time for you,” Bucky says into the phone trying not to look anywhere but Tony. He does end up looking at Tony though, because even if Tony isn’t saying something, his presence seems to always demand Bucky’s attention. Tony’s flatout frowning at him now, he actually looks upset. He glances at Bucky like he’s trying to figure something out, as though if he continues to stare at him, Tony’ll have all the answers he ever needs.

“Can you pick me up tomorrow then?”

Bucky’s pretty certain that he can leave tonight and get to the airport for Steve tomorrow. “I wouldn’t miss it,” Bucky says and Tony’s frown deepens as he finally looks away from Bucky and instead picks himself off the mat.

Steve quickly tells Bucky what time he’ll be at the airport as he says his goodbyes, Bucky tries to pay attention to it, but all he can focus on is Tony pointedly not looking at him. He hesitates after the call ends.

“That was Steve.”

“Your friend?” Tony says finally looking back at him, but he says friend in a tone that Bucky can’t quite place, like he’s accusing Bucky of something but he can’t place what it would be.

Bucky nods instead of trying to analyze it. “Yeah. He’s going to be in Brooklyn tomorrow,” he pauses as he searches Tony’s face, but Tony gives nothing away as he waits for Bucky to keep talking. “Could I have a few days off? To see him?”

Tony becomes completely shut off to him then. “Sure. Take the jet. You can leave tonight. I’ll be the lab.” He says as he begins walking out of the gym, not sparing Bucky another glance.

Bucky sighs as he stands in the now empty room. He’s pretty sure he could have handled that better.

Bucky turns on the TV just for background noise the moment that he and Steve walk into his apartment from the airport. It’s still on the news channel, the same one from before he left. The same one that he saw Tony on before Pepper called him the following day for the job. Bucky wants to laugh at the coincidence of Tony being the first thing that he sees on the screen the moment that it turns on. Laughter threatens to come out, but in a way that’s painful, the kind that he can’t control but it comes up because he doesn’t know what else to do. Instead he schools his face into a neutral expression and looks away from it turning back towards Steve. Steve who is frowning at him, telling Bucky that he hasn’t done well at schooling his face and the emotions displayed on it at all. He could never really hide them from Steve, the punk has known him for too long.

“You gonna tell me what’s bothering you or do I have to get you to talk about it?” Steve asks.

“Nothing,” Bucky says, but even as it comes out he knows that he’s said it too fast, he’s tried too hard for casual and Steve doesn’t believe it for a second.

“I’ve been friends with you for as long as I can remember and this is not nothing. You’re moping. I could tell the moment you picked me up, but I figured the airport ain’t the place for the convo. You gonna tell me why looking at your employer makes you make that face?”

“What face?” Bucky says scowling at him. Then he mentally kicks himself because he doesn’t deny anything that Steve said.

Steve smirks at him. “Your mopey lovesick face.”

“I do not mope.”

“Yes you do,” Steve says rolling his eyes.

The news segment is talking about the new suit that Iron Man was seen wearing. The colors are slightly different so it was quick to pick up on it. The news reporter shows paparazzi going up to Tony and asking what new features are in the suit.

Tony smiles at the camera. “Can’t tell you that. Can’t give away my man’s secrets for the world to know. I’ve been told that surprise is very useful in battle, and one of Iron Man’s enemies might be watching this and he might replace me as his mechanic if I go around giving out all his tricks on public television.”

Bucky’s heart races as he realizes that Tony is quoting him, that Tony actually listens to what he says when they’re sparring. God, it’s been a day and Bucky already misses him. Seeing a video of him isn’t the same. Steve frowns at the TV for a moment, then glances at Bucky before glancing back at the TV.

“What’s it like working for him?”

“Fine,” Bucky says, because he actually really does not want to talk about it regardless of how mopey he’s appearing.

“Just fine?” Steve persists.

“Yep,” Bucky says. “Just fine.”

“So he is the reason you’re moping, then?”

“Didn’t deny it, did I?” Bucky says, scowling at him again.

Steve rolls his eyes at him again. “Like I said. You can either talk ‘bout it or not, but I intend on getting it out of you anyway. You know you mope a lot more when you’re lovesick?”

Bucky glares at him. “I don’t mope.” On the screen Tony laughs at something and his face lights up. Bucky has to look away from it because of the way it continues to make his heart ache. “At all. Lovesick or not.” He says but it comes out a lot less biting than he wants and instead it just sounds miserable even to his own ears.

Steve grins at him. A wide grin that stretches from ear to ear that Bucky recognizes as the grin he gives when he thinks he’s winning. “But you are admitting that you’re lovesick?”

“No,” Bucky says immediately.

Steve scoffs at him but drops it. “Fine. You wanna talk ‘bout the other thing and tell me why you’re running around in your combat gear chasing after Iron Man then?”

Bucky should’ve known that Steve was going to recognize him. Hell, he expected Steve to recognize him. “How come I don’t have anything to interrogate you with?” Bucky says instead of answering the question.

“Because I haven’t decided that I can go head to head with a superhero lately.”

“What, no new super heroes popping up overseas?”

“Don’t think there’d be a need for me if there was.”

“You could always just be the first one.”

“I don’t think I’ll be making myself into an impromptu superhero anytime soon. Unlike some people I know.” Steve deadpans and stares at him, in a way that let’s Bucky know that he’s not getting out of the conversation anytime soon.

“You’re not going to drop this are you?” Bucky asks even though he knows the answer.

“We either talk about this or the fact that you’re gone on Tony Stark.”

“Neither.”

Steve shrugs at him and ignores his response. “You know who he is then?”

Bucky doesn’t answer him but instead turns back to the TV, Steve follows his eyes and then continues talking, “I get that you’re employed and probably in love with the guy that makes his suits but that doesn’t up why you’d be willing to run onto the battlefield after him.” Steve pauses and continues watching the TV and then Bucky notices when the realization hits Steve.

Bucky groans before Steve even says it. “Oh.”

“Shut up,” Bucky replies because even though he’s a grown adult he can’t help but act like a child at times when Steve is around.

“Lemme get this straight. You are moping,” Bucky scowls at him which Steve ignores and continues on “because of Iron Man and Tony Stark, who are the same person. Only thing I can’t figure out now is why you’re moping.”

Bucky pauses for a moment, looking anywhere but Steve. The news segment has moved on from Tony, and Bucky already misses just being able to see his face. Instead of answering he grips his throw pillow that’s laying beside him on the couch, takes a moment, closes his eyes and then quietly says, “I kissed him.”

Steve doesn’t laugh at him. Bucky wouldn’t blame him if he did. He knows that if he could look at the situation objectively he would think that he’s being ridiculous. He’s a grown man, and he feels like he’s back in highschool and terrified to ask someone to prom. Steve just looks at him, thinks for a bit and then says, “And he turned you down?”

“No.” Bucky lets out a long sigh and then winces at himself because he’s sure of Steve’s reaction to the rest of this. “I kissed him and then you called so I told him that I couldn’t do...whatever that was. Then I asked him for some time off and I got on a plane and left a few hours later.”

“You’re an idiot,” Steve says without hesitating and yep, that’s exactly the reaction he expected.

“Okay run me through this whole thing so I can see how bad it is this time.”

Bucky lets out another long sigh before he does. He tells Steve about receiving the call, he tells him about meeting Tony, he tells him about the flirting. He pointedly ignores it when Steve tells him that he had been flirting with Tony in return so he shouldn’t be surprised about this development. Then he goes into the decision to help Tony out as the Winter Soldier, tells him about fixing his arm, and about the trip to Hawaii and the almost kiss that happened there. He tells Steve everything up until Bucky’s resolve actually breaking during their spar yesterday.

Steve regards him with a long analyzing look when he’s finally done talking. “Let me just reiterate that you’re an idiot.”

“Yes, we already covered that.”

“How did it take you this long to realize your feelings?”

Bucky just stares at him questioningly. “I think it’s a pretty normal time.”

“Buck, you actually asked him for help,” Steve says, like that should explain everything.

“So? I ask you for help all the time.”

Steve shakes his head. “No, you don’t. I can’t remember the last time you asked me to help you with anything. That should have been your first clue. And that was weeks ago.”

“Just because I ask someone for help doesn’t mean I want to date them.”

“Fine. Let’s ignore that. He takes you on dates, that you agree to and have fun on. You find out that he’s Iron Man and you decide to go way outside of your job description to protect him. He whisks you away to away and you indulge him every step of the way with minimum questions asked. The last time I suggested we go somewhere you had demanded to know the place and the entire layout well ahead of time. But apparently when Tony says you’re going to Hawaii you decide that all of that stuff is something that can be taken care of when you get there.” Steve lets out a breath, he looks completely exasperated with Bucky. “My point is, none of this is normal behavior for you. To me it sounds like you were gone on him the first time you met.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything. Instead he just stares at Steve, and tries to come up with a counter to it, tries to come up with anything that would prove Steve wrong. But he can’t, he can’t even find anything in his actions that would dictate that Steve is just reading into things, so he stops trying to fight it. “It doesn’t matter if I was or not, anyway,” he murmurs out and he can feel the way that his heart protests at that, the way that it aches and tries to turn over in his chest as he admits out loud that whatever he feels for Tony doesn’t matter.

Steve frowns at him. “Why?”

Bucky’s gone over it in his head multiple times, he knows his reasons, he’s repeated them to himself enough. But every time that he thinks through them it’s sounding less and less convincing to himself, and he doesn’t know how to say all of that to Steve without it not sounding like enough so what he ends up going with is, “He deserves better.”

“Better?”

“Just--not this,” Bucky says as he makes a vague gestures towards himself. “I’m not who I want to be, Stevie. Not for myself, not for him, not for anyone.”

That gets Steve’s frown to worsen, and that is the opposite of what Bucky wanted. But then he smiles a sad sort of smile, that’s actually worse. “You know why I proposed to Peggy even though we weren’t sure if either of us were gonna make it?”

Bucky doesn’t want to think about Peggy. He doesn’t want to be reminded of her, as much as he doesn’t want to forget her. But he thinks of her every time that he looks at Steve and remembers that Bucky is the reason why they won’t be getting married. Bucky’s the reason why she’s gone, and he can’t make up for that, there’s nothing that he can do that’ll bring her back or make it okay. He doesn’t say anything, so Steve glances at him for a moment before continuing anyway.

“It’s because we weren’t sure. I didn’t want to keep putting it off and never get a chance with her. Every moment that I had was worth it. The only thing I’d do different is ask her sooner,” Steve sighs. “My point, Buck, is that you’re going to make yourself wait a long time. You can’t keep blaming yourself for everything, and you shouldn’t risk losing Tony before you even have him.”

Bucky knows that Steve is right. He can’t figure out how to argue with him, and it’s just like Steve to know exactly what to say to get to Bucky instantly. But he can’t fight the feeling that it might be a mistake anyway, that he shouldn’t do anything about it still. Bucky lets out a puff of air. “He’s going to realize that I’m a mess and run away.”

Steve laughs. “Nah. Guy like that? Running around as Iron Man? I think the two of you are probably well suited to each other. Might have a couple of messes of his own.”

Bucky thinks of the arc reactor, glowing in the center of Tony’s chest and the way he seemed distant when he talked about Afghanistan. “Yeah, something like that.”

“You gon’ talk to him then?”

Bucky closes his eyes, feels himself relax as he realizes that he wants to talk to Tony, and smiles as he says, “Yeah, I think I am.”

Steve returns his smile. “Good. I want you to be happy, Buck.”

Bucky’s silent for a while before he murmurs out, “I’m trying.”

Bucky and Steve are the middle of eating a pizza that Bucky ordered for him when Bucky’s phone starts going off. He recognizes the tone as what he’s set up for Iron Man alerts immediately. He’s been trying not to think of Tony too much, he figures he should enjoy his time with Steve and that he’ll have plenty of time later to come to a final decision regarding what he wants to do. So he tries his best to ignore the alert, even though worry threatens to swallow up his body whole the longer that he ignores it. But he knows that he can’t get back to Malibu, so looking at it wouldn’t do anything.

Steve stares at his phone, looking away from the awful movie they settled on for the night. “You gonna get that?”

Bucky shrugs. Steve rolls his eyes and grabs Bucky’s phone before he can stop him. He reads the screen, and then shuts off the movie that they’re watching to switch to the news. Bucky’s never watched the news so much in his life as he has since meeting Tony, and sure enough Iron Man is shown on the screen the moment that Steve switches it. The first thing that catches Bucky’s attention is that Tony’s in New York. He can’t even begin to question why, he knows that he should, he should question it, he should question why he didn’t know and why no one told him, but he’s distracted with the fight that Tony is currently engaged in and the gnawing knowledge that he’s not out there fighting by his side. Steve shoots him a knowing look.

“Just go help him out. I’ll be here when you get back,” Steve says.

Bucky begins to shake his head. “No, it’s fine. He can handle it. He was doing just fine before I came into the picture, wasn’t he?” The words sound hollow to his own ears, they don’t sound like the truth.

Steve rolls his eyes, a motion that is becoming increasingly common for him when he’s in Bucky’s presence. “Just go, Buck.”

Bucky hesitates for a moment. He wants to say that he doesn’t need to again, but he knows that Steve won’t buy it and Bucky has learned over the years that arguing with Steve doesn’t get anywhere. So he drops it, and gets up to go put on his Winter Soldier gear.

“You should probably get something that isn’t so tight!” Steve yells around a mouthful of pizza as Bucky runs out the door.

Tony sees him almost immediately when he gets there. He gives him a quick nod and then continues flying around the giant beetle. Bucky wants to know how the hell Tony attracts these crazy things. He still can’t get over the damn horn, but he figures there are other things that are important than the horn. He runs closer to Tony and the beetle, gets out one his guns to fire a shot at it, but all it does is buzz at him, glaring a bit, a sort of trumpeting sound that, okay, yeah, is definitely coming from the horn. Bucky didn’t think that would actually be functional.

He turns to Tony, tries to point at the beetle and plays his best imitation of an air trumpet, but Tony ignores him. The beetle is able to swoop in towards him while Bucky is frowning at being ignored. He manages to duck just in time, and it goes for Tony instead, who manages to fly out of it’s way. Bucky fires another shot but it doesn’t even acknowledge him.

He fires a few more and it buzzes irritably and louder than last time. Before it flies up far above either of them. Tony hesitates hovering in the air, looking up at the beetle that is now circling in the sky above them, and looking back down at Bucky. He lowers himself down, and hands a grappling hook to Bucky that Bucky hadn’t noticed him carrying and has no idea where he produced it from.

He looks up, questioning look on his face, that he hopes is conveyed behind his goggles and mask.

“Made this for you. Might help,” he says and then he uses his boot repulsors to leave before Bucky can even acknowledge what he’s said or try to gesture out a thank you.

Bucky frowns, staring down at the grappling hook before attaching it and then throwing himself back into the fight. Tony’s upset. He can tell that he’s upset even through the armor, can notice it easily. He’s far too focused on the fight, he didn’t even offer Bucky any of his usual banter and that’s the most concerning part yet.

The beetle flies back down and Bucky tries to once again get Tony’s attention, but the beetle lets out a loud trumpeting noise at that exact moment and Bucky’s going to burn every damn trumpet on the face of the earth after this.

Tony ignores him and the beetle as he flies in and fires his repulsors at it which seems to just make it trumpet even louder. But it’s finally close enough to Bucky, and he suddenly has an idea. He swings the grappling hook and it lands right on the beetle’s back, he tugs a couple of times to make sure that it’s secure and then climbs up, planting himself firmly on the back of it.

Bucky certainly had never imagined fighting a beetle while on it’s back as it tries to compose the world’s worst concerto but here he is. He wants to laugh at the absurdity of it. He looks at where Tony is hovering in front of him, and shoots a grin. Bucky blows a kiss towards him for good measure but the beetle seems to have finally noticed that Bucky is on it’s back as it starts spinning in a circle frantically so Bucky’s not sure if Tony sees him blowing the kiss or not. It starts letting out a series of panicked toots as it spins.

Tony’s shooting at it from below and Bucky’s still trying to gain his balance as it spins. Bucky knows that he should be more focused on the fight itself, but Tony being upset is weighing more heavily on his mind and he doesn’t know how to fix that. Which might be what leads him to do what he does next.

“I show up practically on horseback and this is the warm welcome I receive?” he says into the comms. The comms that Tony made for him. it’s enough for Tony to realize that it’s him. And Bucky expects any sort of reaction from it, he really does, but Tony keeps fighting, completely ignoring him.

Bucky wondering if Tony left his comm behind as he tries to figure out a way to get the beetle to just stop making noise. He tries again. “Okay, so it’s not an actual horse, but it plays music and I’m told that that’s romantic.”

Tony shoots him a look that he can feel through the armor at that one, but again doesn’t really say anything to him. Okay, so he can hear Bucky apparently but is just not putting it together. Funny, Bucky thought that Tony was supposed to be a genius but apparently he can’t figure out the Winter Soldier’s identity even when it’s staring him in the face. Or, well, talking at him in the ear.

The beetle continues trying to play something, a song that sounds desperate but is repetitive. “Okay, Tony, listen. We need to figure out how to take care of this thing, but I also just really need to tell you something.”

“I have an idea,” Tony responds as he continues to fly around the beetle. He stops attacking it, instead listening to the song it’s playing. There’s nothing in Tony’s tone that acknowledges that he knows that it’s Bucky talking to him, and he doesn’t acknowledge that Bucky said he wanted to tell him something either.

Bucky nods dumbly instead of saying anything else. He might as well focus on just finishing this out, and then he can talk to Tony properly. Maybe Tony will let him when he’s not distracted by a giant beetle.

Tony stops flying around the beetle and then starts playing back the song that it’s been repeating, loudly. Bucky wasn’t even aware that the suit had speakers. But the beetle calms down and then starts playing in tandem with Tony. The music coming out of Tony’s speakers sounds better but it creates a melody as both of them do it, and then in front of them a portal opens and the beetle starts buzzing and flying towards it.

Tony rushes in quickly and grabs Bucky by the waist off the beetle’s back and flies him back to the ground as the beetle goes into the portal and it closes behind it.

Bucky blinks up dumbly at where the portal was. He suddenly feels silly for coming out here as it turns out that this is definitely something that Tony could have done on his own. He’s pretty sure that he didn’t actually contribute much overall.

He turns towards Tony to actually talk to him, ready to start with how it’s rude to ignore your battle partners when they’re talking to you. But he decides that he has more pressing matters and he really needs Tony to understand who he is.

“Tony, I-” But Tony’s already flying away from him. Leaving Bucky on the ground to glance up at him as he becomes nothing but a blur of red and gold in the sky.

Steve’s on the couch where Bucky left him by the time that he gets back. Bucky strips off his guns and the mask and goggles before plopping down next to him.

“So,” Steve starts, “That went well.”

Bucky lets out an over dramatic groan. “I actually talked to him, Stevie, and he still has no idea that it’s me.”

“How?”

“That’s what I want to know,” Bucky says as he grabs the final piece of pizza left in the box, he might as well take comfort in something since Tony won’t give him the time of day.

“What are you going to do?”

“Wait until I get back and talk to him properly, I guess,” Bucky responds because he’s not exactly sure what else to do at this point.

Steve nods. “Sure, or since he’s in New York you could just go and talk to him tomorrow.”

“What?” Bucky didn’t think of that. He didn’t think that he could just go to the tower and talk to Tony sooner rather than making himself wait even longer.

“Yeah. You know where he is, right?”

Bucky nods.

“You can talk to him tomorrow then. The sooner you stop being a mopey lovesick mess, the better.” Steve says and then turns back on the shitty movie that they had been watching.

Bucky tries to focus on it. He does his best but his thoughts keep turning to Tony anyway. Now that he doesn’t have to wait days like he had been anticipating he can feel the anxiety building up. What if Tony had recognized him on the comms and had already decided that he had wanted nothing to do with Bucky and that’s why he ignored him? He doesn’t want to seek Tony out tomorrow just to get rejected in person if Tony was already rejecting him today.

Steve’s asleep by the end of the movie, so Bucky throws a blanket over him before going to his room to try and sleep. He crawls into his bed for the first time in weeks and it’s strange but he no longer feels like he belongs there. A lot of his things are missing from his room, instead they’re probably spread across his room in Tony’s malibu house. That room probably looks more lived in than Bucky’s actual apartment. A quiet ache spreads through his body at that thought, that Tony’s house is slowly becoming home for him and that his own apartment is starting to feel less like home. Even now it feels strange not to be sleeping in the same building as Tony.

He thought that at night in the Malibu house if he listened close enough he could hear the music and machinery carrying up from the lab but now his apartment seems too quiet, with nothing but the sounds of the passing cars and occasional sirens slipping in from the streets below. It doesn’t feel right. He wants to be able to hear Tony working at night. Hell, he likes being able to hear him at times, it’s comforting to know where Tony is. But now he has no idea and he finds that he hates it.

Bucky lets his thoughts wander, he tries to force them away from Tony, but they keep going back to him. By the time that Bucky is remembering how Tony’s lips felt against his, he decides that he probably won’t be sleeping anytime soon and he climbs back out of bed. He sits on the edge for a second and rubs at his face and looks at his Winter Soldier gear spread across the floor. Maybe if he just tires himself out he can get some sleep.

Bucky throws the uniform back on. He’s certain that he can find something happening in the streets of New York that could use his assistance.

It turns out that even walking on the streets does nothing for him. He used to love walking around here, made him feel comfortable, was something that was familiar when he came back from overseas. But now all he’s doing is comparing it to walking around various places with Tony. He’s all too aware that Tony isn’t next to him, isn’t by his side joking about something and trying to take Bucky to yet another hole in the wall diner. Bucky sighs. This is pathetic. He wants to understand how he got to this point on Tony without even realizing it.

He climbs a fire escape on one of the buildings a block down from his apartment. It should get him a good enough vantage point while he continues to look for anything or anyone that might need some help.

He takes a seat at the top, dangles his feet over the ledge as he scans the streets below him. Everything is mostly quiet, he can see some people walking around, but he can’t hear their voices carrying, and the wind that nips at his face is louder than they are.

Bucky’s starting to get tired by the time that he hears footsteps behind him. He tries to keep himself calm. He stands up and turns around to see who else is up here at this hour. Except when he turns around he finds it more difficult to remain calm. He’s met with the guy that was able to damage his arm.

The guy smirks at him like he’s won something, although Bucky’s not exactly sure what.

“Well, well, the Winter Soldier. All alone.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have time for people talking at him. Instead he runs at him, knows a fight when he sees one. But the guy is prepared for him. Manages to dodge Bucky’s attack easily.

“You know, didn’t know who you were at first,” the guy says as he throws punches.

Bucky doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to make conversation. He doesn’t appreciate his opponent trying to talk around him either.

“We’ve been looking for you, you know. Ever since you and your buddy managed to escape a couple of years ago.”

Bucky’s stomach sinks. He’s Hydra. The guy is Hydra. But he knew that, he knew that from last time. But he’s talking about Bucky like he knows about him. Like he was there when Bucky was captured by Hydra.

It’s enough to make Bucky falter and for the guy to get a hit in on him. Bucky faintly thinks that it’s harder than a human should be able to hit. It’s not a normal punch but his consciousness starts fading fast and he feels himself be picked up and thrown over the guy’s shoulder before he fades entirely.

Chapter Text

Chapter 5 & 6 Notes

-Many, many people have predicted that Tony has already known that Bucky is the Winter Soldier, and yeah I get that it would make sense for me to do that, but he doesn’t because I’m all for dramatics.

-I ended the last chapter with the Hydra agent--Rumlow in case you were wondering--telling Bucky that they had been looking for him. The reason for this being that back when he and Steve were first captured, the Hydra agents had used some of the serum on him before he and Steve escaped. Bucky in his getaway, blows the place up, so he effectively destroys whatever is left of the serum.

Bucky’s Past in detail

-This was going to be explained at some point too. So the full story of Bucky’s background. He and Steve and other Commandos were invading the HYDRA base with the purpose of scouting it out and getting intel so they could do a proper attack in the future.

-But they get captured. One of the commandos dies. Bucky volunteers to be next, they give him some of the serum, he doesn’t die, they decide to test the serum’s healing aspect but cutting off his arm. They install the arm with the intent of turning him into a weapon.

-Bucky with the arm is able to busy free and stealth his way back to where the others are being held. He helps them escape with the help of steve.

-There’s a firefight with the escape, so he decides to be sacrificial and runs in headfirst to fight so the others can have a chance to escape. Some people die here of course.

-They get on a train to safety but it gets ambushed, Bucky suggests sending it back to the base with Hydra on it, and have it blow up and the base. The train having explosives on it.

-Bucky essentially makes all of the calls during this escape mission. Who to send to do what etc. Most of the people he’s commanding die. Including Peggy, which is why he blames himself for her Death.

Back to Present time

-This is where the ransom video comes in. HYDRA is after Tony because of his tech, and they very much want to use things like the suit as a weapon. Tony was right about the prediction earlier. Anyway, HYDRA knows who Bucky is, realizes that he has some of the serum in him, they have none of it left, but they never finished with their experiments, so they decide to use this time to actually test exactly what the serum did for Bucky. So doing these experiments, and knowing they have someone that’s important to Tony, they send a ransom video, and for maximum dramatic effect, it’s sent to news stations etc. It’s only really addressed to Iron Man, because in this AU Tony’s identity as Iron Man isn’t revealed.

-In the video, at first it isn’t super clear, but it shows Bucky’s face, without the mask, so the Winter Soldier’s identity is revealed to the entire world via a ransom video. This is why I didn’t have Tony figuring it out sooner, because I wanted the unmasking to be as dramatic as possible, because what’s the point of secret identities if the reveal isn’t going to be dramatic?

-Bucky during this, is just warning Iron Man to stay away, that it’s a trap all that shit.

-Tony, understandably, has a crisis about this, knowing about Bucky’s past roughly, thinking that he handed Bucky to Hydra on a silver platter.

-Anyway, Tony goes and rescues him, naturally. There’s a bunch of fighting etc, they blow the place up, because why not. And then afterwards, Tony fires Bucky as his bodyguard to basically protect Bucky from himself since Tony is still blaming himself for Bucky getting kidnapped, so in his dense head he thinks it’s better if he just gets rid of Bucky as an employee and has him going back to being safe. And refuses to really talk to Bucky about it, and Bucky doesn’t really fight it, instead hee just packs and goes back to Steve’s. Again, just moping.

-Steve tries to talk sense into Bucky, while worrying over him post kidnapping, and Pepper tries to get Tony to stop being an idiot, with not much lucky, since they’re both very stubborn.

-The resolution happens, when Bucky gets an Iron Man alert on his phone, something he hasn’t turned off, a while after he’s recovered. He turns on the news to watch the live coverage of it, knowing he shouldn’t, because it still hurts and Tony got by just fine before he came into the picture, so Tony will be fine this time too. But Tony seems to be struggling with this battle, and Bucky’s antsy watching him, he knows that the Winter Soldier suit is packed in his suitcase still, and he could be there helping quickly, but he’s doing his best to hold off, but then he decides *fuck it* and suits up and goes and helps. Tony’s surprised to see him etc etc. They win the battle.

-One of them says something stupid, Bucky or Tony making a dumb comment about chasing the other one away, some self deprecating thing about ruining shit. Which leads to a “Wait what? No, I was the one that fucked things up” and then they both laugh awkwardly. Tony being an impulsive idiot, takes off the helmet, and kisses Bucky right in the open, they haven’t left the battle scene yet and this is probably still being broadcast and that’s how everyone finds out that he’s Iron Man. And that’s basically the end.