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Clint’s a real nice guy for lettin’ Bucky stay in the log cabin, even if he is a little bit of a piece of work. He gets the PTSD stuff, and keeps the cabin out here for his boyfriend, Bruce, but he offered to let Bucky stay for a spell because of his own brain case. All he has to do in a day is walk to the store, pick up a few things for the day because the structure of routine is better for him than stockpiling things for the week, and coming home, eating, wandering the forest surrounding the cabin for a while, come back home. Everything is quiet, peaceful, so quiet that Bucky doesn’t even feel the need to evacuate the inside of his own head. He’s coming back when he hears someone speak.
“Hey, it looks like we’ve got a new one!” it says, the excitement so obvious that it’s palpable, though Bucky hasn’t seen a single other soul in half a mile. Town is only a mile away, but it falls directly into woodland soon thereafter. He gives a 360 turn, checking around himself, before stopping. There’s no one in the woods. He’s just hearing things again, even if it’s a voice that he’s never heard before saying things that don’t even really make sense. He breathes out through his nose as he walks up onto the porch.
“Don’t go leavin’ us now!” the voice says, but Bucky just ignores it this time. He sets the bag of groceries down on the entryway table for a second to kick off his boots, bending down to do untie them with a sigh.
“I swear this house is fucking haunted,” Bucky mutters to himself, leaning against the closed door. He’s only just settled with himself when he startles all over again, whipping around. He swears he can feel someone in the house.
“Faeries, not ghosts,” the voice from before clarifies, now accompanied by a body sitting on his counter, legs swinging. The… being? has wings and golden skin, laying credence to the faerie theory, but Bucky doesn’t know. He’s never encountered something like a faerie, and he could swear he didn’t walk into any circles of mushrooms, so all of the stories from Steve’s mam tell him he hasn’t done anything to have of them following him around. He tries to keep his anxiety off his face, though he does begin to slip one of his hands down the side of his thigh, grateful for the full iron blade that he keeps. It feels strangely appropriate.
“You’re freaking him out, Tony. There were a hundred subtler ways to do this,” another voice complains, making Bucky jolt. He sees another man with wings, the same fine kind of features a bit wider, and on darker, deeper skin. His wings fan out behind him in a dark green that Bucky immediately wants to touch, but he clears his throat instead, sending the impulse away.
“What’s happening?” he asks, unable to put more words together for his needs than that simple little bit. The one called Tony sends him a grin.
“Well, I’m Tony, and this is Rhodey, and these are our woods. Figured it’d be fair to come in your house since you came in ours,” Tony says, half threatening and half lascivious in a way that makes Bucky want to turn around and leave his own vacationing home. Rhodey groans, a hand covering his face in something like a face palm.
“I’m sorry for him. I mostly came to make sure he would be less like this. Seriously, are you okay? No questions about the wings, about the faerie stuff? Because, I have to be honest, most people are asking if we’re myths by now,” Rhodey explains, soft laughter crinkling his eyes even while worry keeps his mouth turned down. Bucky shakes his head, clearing his throat before he looks between them again.
“I’m fine,” he says, swallowing before he tries again. “My best friend’s mam told me all about faeries. The Irish, you know? But, um. Anyway. Why are you here? Do you guys eat? I’m about to make lunch,” he explains, too awkward to stop himself from offering. He used to be quite the smooth drink of water from what everyone tells him, but ever since he came back, it feels like he can’t get any of that back at all. Rhodey’s face splits into a grin while Tony keeps kicking his legs, looking pleased as punch.
“We eat. Whatcha cookin, good lookin?” Tony asks, making Bucky blush a deep red that he can feel. He rolls his eyes as a form of self preservation before getting the groceries off of the side table he set them on, crossing into the kitchen. He chooses to work on the counter opposite of where Tony is, too awkward to be closer and frankly still a bit too freaked out. He doesn’t want to make things… dangerous, if he asked. According to the Irish, faeries are famously bad tempered, and Bucky wouldn’t like to try that, even when they just seem flirtatious, mischievous and kind.
“Shrimp and grits. Favorite of my mom’s,” he says as a short explanation, not looking at Tony. He doesn’t look at Rhodey either, instead getting out the vegetables he’s adding to the grits to prepare. He’s chopped a red onion into fine pieces and started working on doing the same to garlic before someone speaks again.
“You never did tell us your name,” Rhodey reminds him from his place across the bar, seated on one of the stools so that it gives his wings open room to spread out. Bucky gives him a small smile.
“No, I didn’t. And I probably won’t. You’re faeries. You either know it or you won’t,” Bucky says, shrugging his good shoulder. Sarah told him enough horror stories about the thefts of faeries. Rhodey gives him a smile and a shrug of his own.
“You don’t have to tell us, Bucky. We only know the nickname anyway,” he says steadily, calmly, calmingly. He has the kind of voice that makes it easier to live inside of your own head and just listen. Tony huffs.
“But I wanna know,” Tony says petulantly, possibly accompanied by a pout that Bucky hasn’t turned around to see. Rhodey rolls his eyes.
“Come sit at the bar, little heathen, you’ll get dirt on Bucky’s counter,” Rhodey admonishes, sounding like the peak of maturity as he throws a balled up paper towel at Tony’s head.
“Kids,” Bucky warns before he can stop himself, blushing when they both turn to look at him.
“You’re cute, aren’t you?” Tony asks, though it doesn’t sound like much of a question. The faerie slips off of the counter and past Bucky, not close enough to touch but just close enough to feel the body heat coming off of the other, and Bucky nearly shivers. He shakes his head when he realises how small Tony is.
“I’m cute?” he asks, the barest hint of a smirk crossing his face, “You’re tiny. Adorable.” Rhodey laughs and Bucky laughs with him, a laugh that feels like the first one in months, if not years. Maybe it is. Tony frowns.
“The audacity,” he says, though he’s smiling too. Bucky moves the chopped onions and garlic into a pan he has already preheating with melted into it, smiling lightly at the way that it sizzles. He’s always liked cooking. It’s something that makes sense even when everything else goes to the wayside - like faeries invading his borrowed cabin, for example. Bucky focuses on the food instead.
“So, Bucky, what do you do for fun?” Tony asks, a cup of tea in front of him from God knows wear, the cup stirring itself as Tony waves a finger over it. Rhodey is making a face, something that communicates something along the lines of get a load of this guy, huh? Bucky holds back a smile.
“Not much, you know? Just nature walks while I’m out here,” he says, shrugging his shoulder again. Tony laughs lightly, looking at him like he’s a silly little thing, which Bucky doesn’t know how to react to at all.
“I know what you do out here, Buckaboo, I wanna know what you do where the people are,” Tony clarifies, gesturing widely with both hands in a way that sends the spoon that he was apparently guiding by hand flying across the room. Bucky holds it in for about an entire second before he’s wheezing, his laughter wracking his rib cage until he’s kneeling in his own kitchen floor, tears tracking down his face. When he stands, the faeries are a lot closer than they were before. Rhodey is standing over him, hovering really, and Tony looks so reverent that Bucky doesn’t know remotely what to do. He feels very self conscious all of the sudden, but when he tries to look down, Rhodey’s fingers catch his chin.
“You are… stunning,” Rhodey says, his eyes blown wide. They’re a rich, dark color that shines in the fading evening light that Bucky has been cooking by, and he has smile lines that just barely break up the theoretically perfection, but just make everything better. Bucky wants to reach back, but he doesn’t know how.
“Your laugh… it’s something else,” Tony agrees, and when Bucky looks at him, he seems just as enraptured. Bucky remembers something else about the myths of faeries, their birth of laughter, and wonders if they still love laughter in that way now. He doesn’t know how to ask.
“You know I can’t stay, right?” he asks. The subject needs to change or he’s going to spontaneously combust. Rhodey takes his fingers away from Bucky’s face and Bucky feels the loss, but he feels the loss of Tony’s eyes on him just as equally. Tony’s eyes sweep the floor instead, and he swallows.
“You could always come back,” Tony says, something that declares intentions much more clearly than all of this hinting and quietus has. Bucky smiles a helpless little thing, just barely stretching across his face, and he shrugs.
“I suppose I can.”
When he says that, Rhodey’s hand is back on his face, cupping his jaw, holding him close. The kiss doesn’t come as a surprise, but Bucky gasps anyway, Rhodey pressing into his mouth with a tongue that feels like fire, and Bucky is more than ready to burn for this. When Tony’s hands catch around Bucky’s waist, evidence that the faerie has moved to wrap around Bucky’s back, Bucky leans against his chest willingly. He has so many questions, he wants to know everything about faeries, everything about Rhodey, everything about Tony, but it suddenly feels as if he has a thousand years.
Maybe he’ll walk into the faerie circles. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.