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Bucky had a plan. He always did. It was how he stayed alive, how he did the job he was given, how he learned to look at himself in the mirror every day after. He needed a plan, an order of execution that could be followed to the latter to ensure maximum results and the desired endgame.
And this – this is not going to plan.
Bruce is judging him, and Bucky doesn’t appreciate it for a second.
He knows it’s fucked up. That’s not in question.
But in Bucky’s defense, at the time it seemed like a medical emergency. Which, according to Bruce, judgemental stares over his glasses aside, technically had been. If Bucky wasn’t technically a hundred years old and hadn’t already gone through puberty.
He huffs out an annoyed breath. Bucky didn’t survive getting drafted, sent to war, captured by the enemy, falling off a train and beating the odds to see a whole new millennium to go through random, awkward boners like some thirteen-year-old.
No fucking sir.
“Not without gratuitous consent, Mr. Barnes,” Friday intones with some amusement while Bruce looks constipated.
“Christ, it’s not like I can help it,” Bucky snaps at the doctor, rubbing a hand over his face. “Tony – Tony’s just…he’s Tony!” Despite his tone being bitter and defeated, he takes comfort in Friday’s understanding hum. Of course, if anyone would know what Tony is capable of – what he simply is snark and quip and smirks aside – unerringly kind, unashamedly caring, selfless and self-sacrificing – it would be one of the man’s children.
“Listen, I’m really not professionally equipped for dealing with sexual crises, I’m not that kind of doctor,” Bruce deadpans in a way that sounds like a warning as if Bucky would have a problem with the result of his awkward boner being a man, and not just Tony.
“God no," Bucky scoffs, "I’ve always been, you know. I swing all the ways with a bat. That’s not the issue.”
“Then I’m not understanding.”
Bucky resists the urge to flail because goddamn it, Barnes, you aren’t actually thirteen again, get a goddamn grip. The alternative isn’t much better, “You have seven Ph.Ds, Banner, how could you – ugh!” which helps his case by exactly negative twenty percent.
Bruce sighs again like he’s greatly aggrieved in lieu of any sort of smart retort to the contrary before turning back to the data he’d gathered. He sifts through them in an impressive show of feigned interest. There’s nothing in there that they don’t already know, that hadn’t been already confirmed.
Thanks to the lack of deep freeze and Hydra no longer having the Winter Soldier in their tentacles, Bucky’s hormones were finally leveling out and the results are decidedly Not Good.
Bruce and Tony both had been suspicious that Bucky’s defrost would come with consequences – what with his growing level of sulkiness over several days, mood swings, unwarranted aggression, hiding in what he’d come to accept was his room, and the like. All of which could be explained away by unresolved trauma, and being in the home of the man who’d tried to kill him as Steve was so fond of saying.
Despite the fact that if it hadn’t been for Tony, Bucky would’ve been far worse off and I killed his mom, Steve, what the fuck is wrong with you?
Though they two scientists had kept an eye on him regardless. Evidently, it wasn’t for nothing.
Thank god Bucky had found Bruce in the lab and not Tony because Bucky was not prepared for the kind of awkwardness that would come from admitting –
“Wet dreams happen to everyone,” Bruce says in an exhausted sort of way. Like he didn’t expect to be having this conversation with a certifiable killing machine in a body of thirty-year-old man. Right back at ya, Doc, I didn’t ask for this either, Bucky sulks, trying to rub the heated flush from his cheeks.
“That’s not – it isn’t – I know that.” He’d been as sexual as a potted plant for decades right until his liberation from Hydra. That’s when that started, Bucky supposed, but that still wasn’t the point –
“So?”The point was that it was Tony, and when the silence lapses, the pieces fall into place in the look on Bruce’s face, and he groans. “Oh god, don’t tell me – “
It wasn’t part of the plan, and now there's no denying it. Bucky admits, “I think I’m in love with Tony.”
With a groan, Bruce throws his hands up. “And you did, right then, when I told you not to -”
“I know it’s fucked up,” Bucky interjects. God, does he know.
After everything he put Tony through, Little Bucky having a thing for the man he left bleeding on the floor of a Siberian bunker was just plain cruel – for both of them. That Bucky's wet dream hadn’t even been a result of any amorous activity (not that Bucky was particularly lacking the imagination with those), but had simply been a dream of domesticated bliss does not help matters any.
That’s not even going into detail of the current situation in the Compound. What with both arguments to the Accords living in close quarters once more in preparation for the Titan, and with the efforts of the pro-Accords side doing the heavy lifting to get the Rogues exonerated in the eyes of the international councils, no one was particularly happy with their current situation. A Cold War in the Compound had been the most fitting headline Bucky had come across.
But that wasn’t even the worst part. Oh, no. See, after everything Tony had done for him, getting him off the hook, bringing him back to the United States, giving him a new home, helping him mentally recover from Hydra’s brainwashing and building him a new arm – Bucky had a plan – he was going to – to make it up to Tony.
He was going to keep the Rogues in line, shout Steve down like he deserved to be shouted down, and make sure Tony didn’t regret helping him.
And he did.
But this? Having daydreams of sliding up next to Tony and burrowing into the other man’s neck, of taking in a deep breath of his warm skin and his faded cologne, of being filled with the knowledge that Tony would only pull him closer, maybe press a kiss against his hair? That was not part of the plan.
“You’re an idiot,” Bruce deadpans.
Bucky hangs his head in shame because –
From the way Tony smirks at Barton’s outrage, at the politicians’ snarls, at aliens monologuing on their front lawn. How quickly he quips at their barbs, always has a cutting remark to aim at their throats, how his eyes will glint with something dangerous at every not-so-subtle threat thrown his family’s way.
How Tony, despite being the target of every campaign to ruin him both as a person and as a businessman and creator, and bearing the weight of supposed-allies who don’t appreciate him, on top of the bad guys that keep knocking on the door, Tony never lets anything stop him from being vulnerable.
From showing up at the kids’ schools during career days and showcases, lecturing at universities in his free time, dropping by at hospitals to hug babies when he has insomnia, singing in the kitchen while he cooks, playing with the bots. The way he looks a mixture of fond and soft and proud when Friday does something new, when the kids make good calls, when Rhodey out-snarks him, when Pepper finally takes a break from running his empire.
When Bucky smiles because he’s happy – Bucky had known his plan was destined for the shitter.
He realized it the second he arrived back to the United States, feeling lost and alone, a year ago.
After corresponding with Tony for weeks in light of Bucky’s pending pardon, Bucky was going to come face to face with the man he owed his life to – the one he’d do anything to make it up to, and Tony – Tony had peered over him from over his sunglasses, eyes bright, expression open and sincere as a smile curled at his mouth as he said, “Welcome home, Sarge.”
Bucky – Bucky had known, there was never going to be a plan where he didn’t fall in love with Tony.
But he could've at least tried harder to avoid it.
Looking down at his lap accusingly, Bucky accuses, “This is your fault.”