Work Text:
Touch and Go
Tony let out a ‘whuf’ of air as a leg slammed into his stomach, knocking him off his feet. He hit the ground on his back, knocking what little remaining air he had in his lungs out.
“Tony, you can do better than this,” Bucky said, frowning, as he leaned over him. “Come on. Up on your feet.”
“I can’t do this anymore,” Tony whispered, still trying to wheeze in some delicious oxygen.
“What?” Bucky asked. He sighed when the other man didn’t answer, just focused on the in-and-out of much-needed air, and reached out to grab his hands to pull him to his feet. “Tony, come on.”
“I said I can’t do this anymore!” Tony snapped, yanking his hands free, and laid back down, one hand over his stomach as he continued to try and catch his breath.
Bucky frowned, feeling vaguely irritated. It’s not like going to the gym was his idea of a good time either. “Listen, we just need to do twenty more minutes of this–”
“I don’t want to do twenty more minutes of this!” Tony snapped, finally sitting up, if only to glare at him. “I don’t want to do two more minutes of this! I hate working out, and I hate the choreography, and I especially hate working out with you!”
Bucky took a step back, shocked, but then a moment later, the hurt came. “What?!”
“I hate coming in and watching you flirt with everyone else but me,” Tony said, tears filling his eyes that he angrily brushed away. “You always smile at everyone else but then I come in and it’s like I ruined your day or something. And I know you work me harder than everyone else. Natasha and Steve never complain about bruises or being constantly knocked on their asses. Steve even says you give him tips on how to defend himself better. You never do that for me.”
“I–Tony, I–” Bucky began helplessly, and backed off further when Tony scrambled to his feet.
“I know not everyone’s going to like me, and I like to think that I can work with that, or get past it, but–but–I don’t know why you’re being so mean to me!” Tony exclaimed. “I’m trying really hard and you don’t even tell me ‘good job’ or anything when I do something right-!” He tried to choke back a sob. It didn’t really work. “I thought Howard wanted you to be tough on me at first but even he couldn’t be this mean to me,” he whispered, then turned and ran from the gym.
Bucky stared after him, feeling cold down to his bones. He hadn’t been trying to–he hadn’t mean to come across as–
“Great going, Romeo,” Steve scoffed, wiping some sweat from his face. “Juliet thinks you hate him.”
“But I don’t!” Bucky sputtered helplessly.
“I mean, you can’t really blame him for thinking that,” Natasha pointed out. “You are much harder on him than you are on us, and you definitely don’t smile at him much.”
“That’s just his resting bitch face. He smiles at me because he knows if he doesn’t I’ll be obnoxious,” Steve replied, shrugging.
Natasha raised her eyebrows. “So why does he smile at me?”
Steve smirked. “Because you scare him.”
“Okay first of all–yes, I am absolutely scared of you,” Bucky told Natasha. Then he turned to Steve. “Second of all fucking help me you dick.”
“No,” Steve replied immediately. “Tony was excited to work with you and you made him hate it.”
“YOU KNOW I’M AN IDIOT STEVE PLEASE HELP ME I WILL DO LITERALLY ANYTHING.”
“THEN PERISH.”
Natasha held her phone up to take a snap story, making sure the camera could pick up Steve and Bucky wrestling in the background. “Alexa this is so sad. Play Despacito.”
Eventually Natasha took pity on him and told him what to do in tiny steps so he couldn’t fuck them up. Bucky was good at one-night-stands. He… wasn’t great at actually dating. He thought he’d done a good job showing his interest by trying to make sure that Tony’s fight choreography was perfect, but… he could see now why it wasn’t. (Even Fury and Coulson had shook their heads at him when they found out, and they tried to be as uninvolved with their employees’ personal lives as possible.)
Bucky showed up to Tony’s trailer with what was perhaps the most ostentatiously large bouquet he could afford. He could barely see around it. Natasha had told him that that was the point, because Tony loved flowers and Bucky would have a chance if Tony didn’t see him at first. The only problem was he couldn’t knock on the door because it took both hands to hold up the flowers. Finally he got an intern to knock.
“Oh,” Tony said when he opened the door, sounding genuinely surprised and delighted. “These are lovely! Who are they from?”
“Me,” Bucky admitted, lowering his arms as much as he could so he could see over them. He was just in time to watch Tony’s face fall before he turned and stomped back into his trailer. “Oh, c’mon…”
Tony didn’t open the door again, though, so Bucky hunted the intern back down. His name tag said ‘Peter.’ He looked like a Peter.
“I don’t want Mr. Stark to get mad at me,” Peter said.
“If you don’t do this, I will eat you,” Bucky informed him.
“MR. STARK I AM KNOCKING UNDER DURESS,” Peter shouted, pounding on the door. “PLEASE HELP ME. HE SAID HE’D EAT ME AND HE KIND OF LOOKS LIKE HE WILL.”
“Oh my God!” Tony shouted, opening the door, and Peter bolted while he had the chance. “Have you been talking to Quill’s agent?! He threatens to eat people too!”
“These are for you,” Bucky said instead of answering, and shoved the flowers into his arms.
Tony squawked and nearly fell over. “These weigh a ton!”
“It’s the hydrangeas.”
“You asshole, hydrangeas aren’t this heavy!” Tony exclaimed.
Bucky shrugged. “I’m not even entirely sure which one is a hydrangea.”
Tony opened his mouth, then closed it again with a huff and looked the flowers over. “…There aren’t even any hydrangeas in here!”
“Literally the only flower I can identify on sight is a dandelion.”
Tony clutched the vase to his chest protectively, looking mortally offended. “You don’t deserve these!”
Bucky raised an eyebrow. “Well I got ‘em for you, so…”
“Well-!” Tony continued scowling at him, but couldn’t really find anything to complain about with that, particularly, so he just hugged the flowers tighter. “Thanks. I guess.”
Bucky mentally went through the checklist Natasha had given him. Flowers. (Big ones.) Check. Intern distraction. (Tony liked the interns.) Check. Apologize. Explain. Do better.
“I’m… sorry,” he said after gathering his courage again. He did feel really badly that he had hurt Tony, made him feel like he was worth less than his costars. “I know I was… very hard on you. I just wanted to make sure your choreography was perfect. You haven’t really done any action movies before and I didn’t want you to be outshined by Steve and Natasha, who have. I didn’t realize how… mean I had been about it,” he said haltingly. “Also I’m sorry for not smiling. This is just my face.”
Tony huffed and turned to stomp back into his trailer, then stopped. “…I guess the only other real adventure film I’ve made was that really kitschy one at the beginning of my career.”
“Yeah, but you were the adorable, quirky sidekick then. Now you’re playing a serious adventurer. I just wanted to make sure you looked cool,” Bucky admitted, rubbing the back of his head.
“I guess I can appreciate that,” Tony said softly. “All I’ve really been doing is comedies and romances lately, and–wait. You… you watched that shitty Journey to the Center of the Earth knockoff?”
“I–like sci-fi,” Bucky said defensively. Which was true. Even though he’d only watched it because he watched every movie with Tony in it. The movie really had been shitty. The special effects had been awful and the science had made him cringe. But Tony had had great energy. He’d single-handedly saved the movie, at least for Bucky.
“You watched my shittiest movie,” Tony breathed. “You must really like me.”
“It wasn’t that–” Bucky began, then sighed when Tony raised his eyebrows at him in disbelief. “Okay yeah it was horrible. I wanted to help you be great in this movie the only way I knew I could, and I blew it. I’m sorry.”
“Well,” Tony said after a moment. “I guess I forgive you. It’s… nice, that you wanted me to do well. You could have at least told me that, thought,” he added accusingly.
“Have you seen the snap story Natasha posted yet?” Bucky asked, knowing that he was shown prominently in the background trying to strangle Steve and shouting ‘you have to help me Steve you know I’m an idiot when it comes to real people!’
“No,” Tony admitted, and then went into his trailer to set down the flower arrangement and grab his phone.
Bucky sighed when he heard Tony start screeching with laughter. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up.”
“She actually played Despacito, I’m gonna cry, I knew she really did like memes!”
Bucky figured he could get used to Tony laughing at him, especially if it meant that Tony would throw his arms around him in glee at his humiliation. It took the sting out of it, surprisingly enough.
It helped that Tony shyly agreed to a date with him once he was finished shooting his fight scenes, too.