Work Text:
It wasn't fair.
Bucky, his favorite bodyguard yet, was getting along a bit too well with that woman.
Tony thought they had gotten into some sort of silent agreement slash partnership in which Bucky stalked him around while glaring at anybody who eyed Tony the wrong way for whatever reason. Which was surprisingly helpful when dealing with paparazzi who forgot their boundaries, shareholders who forgot their manners and business competitors who forgot their insignificance. They all cowed in submission after one murderous look from Tony's admittedly scary shadow.
In return Tony had been making a conscious effort to ignore the many incongruous details missing from Bucky's spotty background and some of his more baffling personality quirks, like his propensity for hiding random weapons around Tony's suite or his obsessive hoarding of Stark branded pens and cups and who knows what else. Tony had started branding the most random stuff around his house just to see how fast it would take them to disappear.
He was never going to get that Starkfork back.
Their agreement, however, definitely didn't include Bucky smiling at some random model in legal and being so damn charming with her. Where was the sullen soldier or the silent ninja that he had gotten used to these past months? Where did the murderous intent and the menacing aura go? Tony was seeing freaking smile dimples from his vantage point standing in the boxing ring and he couldn't believe he was just now discovering they even existed.
"So how about I show you around? A nice girl like you could do with a tour around the offices. It wouldn't do for you to get lost inside the building and never find your way out again, right?" Bucky grinned sunnily, showing his frankly perfect white teeth, "Mr. Stark's security can be a bit much when you are a newbie."
Tony had half a mind to stop the disgusting flirting with a quip about professionalism in the workplace but he couldn't find an excuse that didn't make him sound like a hypocrite fast enough. Then Bucky smoothly settled an arm around the woman's shoulders leading her out of the gym and out of sight, and Tony lost the opportunity altogether when they disappeared around the corner.
The redhead had looked so starstruck too, frozen with wide eyes, probably dazzled by all the charm thrown her way.
Tony sulked.
It really wasn't fair.
She had looked awfully pale though.
***
There was a dismembered arm on his sofa.
Tony had sat down at 4 am after a night of binge-engineering to watch the early morning news. He sat down onto something much harder than his cushions, and then a flailing metal hand had suddenly shot up into the air out of nowhere and slumped limply on his shoulder.
It had given him an honest-to-god heart attack.
He will forever deny letting out a frankly undignified yelp let alone running across the room immediately yelling for Jarvis.
Jarvis had most probably kept a recording of it all anyways, expert blackmailer that he was.
Afterwards, however, with all the lights inside the house turned to the max as some kind of irrational precaution against zombies, Tony could finally see there was only a broken prosthetic arm laying half disassembled on his sofa. And maybe Tony had no idea how or why or when it had gotten there but its broken plates and disconnected circuitry were drawing his under-caffeinated mind in, his hands desperately itching to fix it.
Which he did, methodically soldering and rewiring connections vital to the arm's function. Tony wasn't exactly familiar with the design so he just made some quality of life adjustments, small bug fixes and coding updates to enhance dexterity and lower any discomfort to the user that they may have been experiencing. It was intuitive and fun, a much-needed break from the life-threatening task awaiting him down in his lab.
Hours later Tony had started to nod off as he was wondering whether he should repaint the star. Later still, he woke up with a start, gold spray paint plastered on one side of his face as he squinted at the empty space on his desk as if he could make his latest project reappear out of sheer will.
"Mr. Stark."
Tony blinked owlishly at his stalker of a bodyguard, who had apparently been sent from heaven bearing a strong cup of coffee in his left hand.
His metallic left hand.
Oh.
"Mr. Stark, well, Tony," Bucky hesitated, he had a soft and tentative smile on his face, "You sure know how to make a fella feel special."
There was a swag to his body language and a drawl to his accent that were extremely distracting and so Tony was entirely unprepared when Bucky closed the distance, wrapped his arms around Tony and gave him a long hug which, after a few seconds of does not compute, Tony sleepily tried to reciprocate with a couple of awkward pats.
"Thank you, sweetheart," Bucky let go with one last squeeze and put the cup of coffee on Tony's desk like some kind of godly offering on an altar.
"You, I guess, you're welcome?" Tony coughed and sipped the coffee just to do something with his hands. It tasted exactly how he liked it, one hundred percent black caffeinated perfection.
Bucky had one definitely dazed expression on his face in the meanwhile as he kept his eyes on Tony from the first sip to the last.
All in all, while Tony had gotten used during these past months to Bucky staring at things and people for no apparent reason. The fact that he was staring so adoringly at Tony though, well.
He resisted the irrational urge to preen.
***
Again. It was fair to say that Tony had found Bucky staring blankly at random stuff a few dozen times already. He just had that kind of a resting face, the kind that felt like he wanted to terminate someone with extreme prejudice.
It was strangely endearing if a bit disturbing. Like someone had hit pause to life and the poor guy got stuck with dead eyes open looking vacantly into the ether.
The latest stare-off that Tony had the dubious fortune to witness had been against a prototype roomba that was on the way to becoming the first generation of limited-edition Stark lawnmowers. Alright so Tony had been brainstorming ideas to somehow reuse the leftover knives from the bladed weapons subdivision. It had been a slow week and it had felt extremely wasteful to just melt their stock of perfectly fine damascus steel daggers okay?
Tony will admit, recycling was still a work in progress.
So, finding Bucky staring fixedly at things was normal, relatively speaking. Finding Bucky staring at Justin Hammer with such an intense expression was a bit perplexing.
Also, what did Hammer have in common with a lawnmower?
"Anthony! So good seeing you here, my man! Come, come, let's get a drink and let me talk you through some ideas I've had about a collaboration between the both of us for that Stark Expo of yours." Hammer drawled with a loud fake guffaw, "You also need to tell me all about that new energy business of yours, how did you even come up with that insane idea?"
Tony stepped sideways from Hammer trying to dodge an uncomfortably forward handshake when he stumbled against Bucky, who had in one damn smooth movement inserted himself between him and Hammer and taken the handshake for him. He had a sugar sweet smile on his face that in combination with his expressionless eyes made for an alarmingly creepy effect.
"Justin Hammer, what a great day this is. I have always wanted to meet you." Bucky greeted with good cheer too.
What, seriously? But why?
"Oh really? Well, that's new, good new of course," Even Hammer looked confused though he recovered fast, glancing at Tony with a boastful tilt of the head that made him look like a cobra rearing up for the bite, "Come on, tell me everything good man. Maybe we can talk about working for Hammer Industries, it'd certainly be an upgrade from whatever you are doing right now."
"Yeah, whatever," Bucky said, "Just let me get some things out of the way. I have a list of things I have wanted years to tell you."
"That's good, great, fantastic even," Hammer was honestly jumping in excitement at that point, "Go ahead, my man."
Tony silently shook his head in disbelief. If Bucky started complimenting Hammer, he would just have to leave the country. Monaco was not worth this.
Bucky took a deep breath, "Your weapons suck."
Tony's jaw dropped. Hammer took a step back as if he had taken a punch to the face but Bucky just kept going like a dam had been opened and he couldn't stop even if he wanted to.
"Your Claridge Hi-Tech doesn't have enough force half the time and gets bullets lodged inside the barrel the other half, the pump of that M24 shotgun of yours is so flimsy I could swear it's made of plastic, the scope of the FN-2000 makes it so you need to aim to the ground in order to hit a headshot which makes absolutely no sense and don't ask me how long it took me to figure it out, your 40mm grenade launcher could have been fine if only the rounds didn't get mislabeled during fabrication and now nobody even knows if they are tear gassing an empty building or exploding an angry mob so thanks for that I guess, your M1347.62 machine gun is as big in size as advertised, sure, but it really doesn't last very long and overheats in under a minute so size is not all that matters if you know what I mean. And on top of all that, your Ex-Wife is a dude."
Tony's jaw snapped shut.
"Oh, sorry, I meant a dud. That's a ridiculous name for a missile by the way." Bucky corrected with a careless shrug, "Ah, this felt good, like lifting a weight off my shoulders. Thank you, Mr. Hammer, for taking the time to hear your customer complaints unlike your actual customer service. Now, excuse us for taking so much of your valuable time. We'll see you at Stark Expo. Not."
The fact that Bucky felt the need to disguise the last word with a fake cough after that K.O. of a monologue was what finally broke Tony.
It took him an entire hour to stop laughing with tears in his eyes and another five to stop giggling like a demented schoolgirl at random moments during that day.
Holy moly, Hammer's face.
***
Tony won the Monaco Grand Prix.
Tony won first place and came back to the VIP area to be greeted by a bunch of people staring in awe at Bucky instead of at the footage of his triumph. Bucky himself was sitting by one of the tables sipping what looked like a martini like some kind of debonair bond spy with Pepper pacing next to him seemingly busy calling what appeared to be the head of security for the event. There was a wide berth of space around them and everybody else was skirting around the invisible line with great apprehension. And then they noticed Tony opening the door and like waking up from a nightmare, they all left the room in a hurry, passing him by like hostages escaping a bank heist.
The window was open, and all of Tony's attention went to the extremely familiar bolt-action sniper rifle propped on the windowsill.
Tony squinted at it for a minute.
Then he turned to squint at Bucky, "Why do you have my summer internship project? I thought it got sent to the vault after the trial tests. How do you even have it?"
Bucky flinched like a deer caught in the headlights and scurried away to take the rifle from its stand. He held it against his chest as he chewed his bottom lip nervously, "Tony please. Please let me keep it?"
"Uh, yeah, why not," Tony stared at Bucky's quickly reddening lower lip which was so unfairly distracting, "Isn't it too heavy though?"
"Did you just call my baby overweight? Tony!" Bucky sounded scandalized as he held the rifle even tighter like he was giving it a comforting hug. It was messed up, ridiculous and weirdly endearing at the same time.
"No, no, wait," Tony backtracked, which had probably more to do with those company brochures about inappropriate language in the workplace that Pepper kept sending him than anything else. The whole situation was surreal, "I meant, I remember designing it as a challenge to myself, how to make a rifle that could pierce almost everything and do it without sacrificing accuracy. But for the, uh, 'science' to work, I ended up using an extremely heavy alloy that made the gun impossible to carry around by, well, anyone really. So, the fact that you are carrying it in your hands right now is baffling me."
Bucky pouted, "I'm not just anyone. I can use it, it's great, more than great, it's the best rifle I've used in my life and the best gun too, and the best weapon too. Just. The. Best. This rifle chose me."
There was a blush made of pure engineering pride slowly ascending up Tony's neck that he could physically feel creeping upwards to his cheeks.
"I guess so?" For some reason Tony was also feeling second hand embarrassment for the rifle. Like, if the gun had an AI it'd probably be huffing something like 'see what I have to deal with every day?'. It was an interesting thought to say the least, "So, are we not gonna talk about why you brought a rifle to Monaco? To this VIP area? To that stand on the windowsill? Oh my god, did you actually use it?"
"Ah, yes?" Bucky didn't look even remotely remorseful, "There was a guy trying to kill you, maybe. I took care of it."
"What? Maybe?" Tony asked incredulously, "When? I finished the race and everything, and I didn't see anything down there."
"I didn't kill the guy." Bucky reassured with casual nonchalance, "I got in two shots that may or may not cripple him for life but I didn't actually kill him, well, unless emergency services screw up."
Morbid. But that was hardly the point. Tony needed to know why someone would want him dead now of all times.
Talk about karmic timing.
Although in hindsight the original driver of that F1 car was probably thinking about strangling Tony for stealing his spot. Whoops.
"So, I guess I should say good job and, not that I'm not grateful for the save, again," Tony frowned at himself, he was usually more eloquent but there's an imbalance here that needed to be addressed, again, "But seriously Bucky, let me know if you want a raise or, you know, anything at all."
It didn't take too long for Bucky to think of something he wanted this time.
"Now that you mention it," Bucky said with a serious nod, "I really need a lawnmower."
Tony threw his hands into the air in exasperation.
There was something very wrong about Bucky's priorities.
***
So, there was a pirate at his front door.
Tony had been wondering why Bucky had left a note on his calendar that said it was time to 'meet the fury' when the doorbell alerted him that he had a visitor. He had to check with Jarvis twice before being convinced that there wasn't a mob of furious villagers wielding pitchforks currently camping outside the Maison. Which, to be fair, would have still prompted Tony to open the door out of pure curiosity.
"Mr. Stark, I'm Fury from the goddamn Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division," A furious pirate grunted instead, the vein on his forehead looked like it would pop at any moment. It also looked like it was taking him considerable effort to be polite to Tony, "May I come inside?"
"Sure?" Tony opened the door wider. So yeah, curiosity won over self-preservation, what's new.
The Fury stomped into the house with quite literally furious purpose and slammed a metal case on Tony's poor glass coffee table.
"This here is a formula made of lithium dioxide that should delay palladium poisoning enough for you to formulate a permanent solution," The Fury then dropped some keys on top of the case, "And this here will open a storage unit that will provide you with your father's notes on some sort of new element that may or may not help. We will send further details through email and not by invading your workplace or home. That's it, that's all. Have a motherfucking good day, Mr. fucking Stark."
"Ah, thank you?" Tony stared confusedly as the Fury fumed and stomped out, black leather coat flaring dramatically behind him and almost getting caught as he smashed the door in Tony's face.
Tony had never met someone who was so helpfully hostile in his life, it was uncanny. He was about to get closer to inspect the case when he heard a screaming litany of major curses coming from the outside and paused to listen.
Something about a 'winter stark-fucking soldier pain in the ass' which made absolutely no sense at all.
Honestly, crazy people.
***
Tony stared blankly at the small holographic designs floating over his head like particularly sharp snowflakes of doom. The Japanese knew what they were doing when they designed their flying ninja stars of death and, though Tony had made some tweaks here and there, there was nothing innovative to be done that wouldn't compromise the integrity of the blade itself. He had half a mind to embed EMP bombs into them but that felt too much like a deviation of the word 'shuriken'. So, loath as he was to admit it, it was probably more practical to go with something simple in this case.
Adamantium it is.
When he later presented his final work, Bucky's face went through a myriad of different emotions before settling into 'vaguely glassy-eyed'.
Tony tried to explain himself, "It's not much, I know the design is nothing special but at least you can bet they're not going to get rusty or lose their sharpness anytime soon, uh, at all, or like, ever."
Bucky was staring at the stars with a sort of intense look that was making Tony fidget. Maybe they were too simple considering the resources Stark Industries had available to them but, to be fair, he still wasn't sure he wasn't being trolled or that Bucky wasn't going to request something more appropriately expensive in return for saving his life (twice now) the moment he realized just how far Tony was actually willing to go to return the favor.
"They have your signature engraved in gold." Bucky sort of deadpanned interrupting Tony's thoughts, "Gold autographs."
"Ah, yeah. Well not really, it's a gold titanium alloy I'm using for, uh, some other project. It's better to fill the engraved lines to keep the weight and aerodynamic balance on point," Tony shrugged then added, "I'd appreciate you not killing people literally in my name but have fun with them, I guess. Go, be a real ninja now."
Tony had set up a few targets at the other end of the garage, a boring one stuck on the wall with the usual accuracy markers and a bunch of image cutouts of caricature ninjas floating around held to the roof by strings as an in-joke reference he was kind of regretting now.
It was all very cheesy.
Swish.
"Holy sh-" Tony swallowed.
One second and eight loud thuds later found Tony blinking at seven floating decapitated ninja heads and a dead center bullseye. All the shurikens looked like they had been embedded a few inches into the concrete rather violently.
He hadn't even seen Bucky move.
Tony glanced wide eyed at his actual ninja of a security officer who was sort of looking at him with an expectant tilt of the head. There was something ridiculously hot about this violent show of competency and Tony was not going to think about that now. No, nope.
"Righto, you sure showed them who is the alpha." Tony clapped Bucky on the shoulder then immediately turned around and backpedaled out of the room.
Somehow the eight shurikens had made a shape on the wall not unlike that of a heart, he mused on his way to the elevator.
But that couldn't possibly have been on purpose, right?
Wait a minute.