Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Steve has always had two names, one on his right wrist and one on his left. It's not unheard of, or even uncommon – soulmates die, after all, and sometimes people move on.

Steve is five when he meets Bucky and sixteen when it really sinks in. He curls up against Bucky's back and prays that Peggy – whoever, wherever she is – had died young. He hates himself for it a little bit, but the alternative is that he's going to lose Bucky and he can't. He can't. Better the soulmate he's never met than the friend and lover who's been by his side for a decade.

But then he meets Peggy, and he hates himself even more.

“You can go to her,” Bucky tells him once, and only once, because Bucky is a good person but he's not completely selfless. “She already loves you, you idiot, you could go have disturbingly pretty babies with her.”

Steve had actually invited her to come back to his tent and talk to him and Bucky, but she had demurred. “Maybe soon,” she had said, tangling her fingers in his. “I didn't expect to have to share you, Steve. Let me think about how this would work, and how I would feel about it. I'm not going to do this if I can't be fair to Bucky. After all, you've been his far longer than you've been mine.”

She'd kissed his wrist, both of them, so he knew she wasn't mad. But she also hadn't come in all the nights since, and Steve had stopped asking because he didn't want to push her into it. It hurts a little, a quiet ache in his chest, when he sees her and knows she won't be with him, but he can deal. And Bucky is safe and alive and already everything Steve has ever needed.

And then Bucky falls. And Steve, for just a minute, considers falling with him.

He finishes his mission, returns to base, tries his best to get drunk. Peggy finds him eventually and takes him back to her tent, bundles him up in her bed. She doesn't touch him or kiss him and Steve understands that she's giving him a place to rest that won't be filled with memories of Bucky. She's giving him one night where he can let himself think of something else.

Bucky's name doesn't fade from his wrist. It happens like that sometimes, for soulmates who never move on. Steve doesn't know what that means when he still has Peggy's name on his other wrist. And he never gets to find out, because he only outlives Bucky by a few days.

When he wakes up a lifetime in the future, Peggy's name is still there.

Peggy is still there. He tracks her down, even though SHIELD not-so-subtly discourages him. And she's still beautiful even though she's a grandmother and living in a nursing home. Her eyes are still so bright, and her smile is still infectious. She can still put him in his place.

The third time he comes to visit, she takes his hand in his and turns it so she can see Bucky's name, still dark against Steve's skin. “I have to tell you something,” she says.

Her wrists are tiny in his hands, the flesh thin and delicate. On her right wrist, the name “Gabe” is spelled out in precise print. Her left wrist is blank.

“I never stopped loving you,” she tells him, holding his hand in both of hers. “I never did. But I thought you were lost to me and I moved on.”

Steve kisses her wrists, both of them, and pats the back of her hand. “It's okay,” he tells her, and it mostly is. She's had a long and happy life and he wouldn't have wanted her to waste seventy years waiting for a man she'd barely had the chance to know. “You were his a lot longer than you were mine, anyway.”

She remembers the words, he can tell and she cries, but she's smiling through it.

After that she shows him pictures of her children and grandchildren and two tiny little great-grandbabies. Steve doesn't regret his name being gone, not if her Gabe had given her such a good life.

He goes to visit her in between missions. Her memory gets worse and worse and he can feel her slipping away from him sometimes.

He doesn't know when it happened. Only that one day she takes his hand and runs her fingers over his pulsepoint and the skin is clear and pale as if it had never been marked at all.

“Good boy,” she says firmly. “Now go find someone who's name will last another ninety years. You deserve that chance.”

(It takes a year, another invasion, three near-death experiences and some of the best sex Steve has ever had. But one morning he's reaching for the orange juice and he sees it. Tony's name is scrawled across his skin. And he knows that will never fade.)

Chapter Text

Tony has never had a name, not until Steve's messy scrawl imprinted itself on his skin. He rarely talks about what it felt like, growing up without a name, but sometimes he talks about Pepper and Rhodey and how much they loved him and he loved them and how he figures if he found that kind of love without a name, then he hadn't done half bad.

Still, the first day Steve's name appears on his skin they don't get out of bed for two days.

Tony's name appeared on Steve's wrist at more or less the same time - neither one of them really looked, they were a bit distracted - but after they finally pry themselves out of bed and stumble into the kitchen for breakfast, that's when Steve notices it, bold and black on his skin as he reaches for the carafe of OJ in the center of the table. He just stares for a long minute until everyone else is staring too. Tony's eyes are wide and stunned, but Bruce and Thor are smiling and Natasha even quirks an eyebrow in apparent congratulations. Clint bursts out with a loud laugh and claps him on the back. “Shit, Tasha, Coulson owes me fifty bucks.”

Tony is still staring, sitting so still beside Steve that he's almost not breathing. Steve can't stop the smile that threatens to split his face in two and just looks at him, this beautiful, brilliant, kind, loving, infuriating man who has become the other half of his soul.

He waits till Tony finishes eating before dragging him out of his chair and back to bed.

And it's not perfect, because nothing worth having is ever perfect, but for the first time in three years, Steve is happy, content. He feels settled in a way he hasn't since Bucky died. He and Tony clash and bicker and occasionally wake up half the Tower with their shouting matches but there's a level of trust and commitment beneath it that makes it easy for them to be themselves with each other. Steve had never thought he'd have this again after losing it twice and he spoils Tony, with sex, with compliments, with affection. He's lost everything and he knows exactly how easy it would be to lose it again.

Tony, for his part, has never had this before. It's not so different from his friendship with Rhodey, which Steve thinks is as strong as any soulbond could be (Rhodey is straight, but Steve thinks if Tony had had Jim's name they'd have made it work anyway), but the soulmate bond offers Tony a sense of security that Steve doesn't think he's ever had before. Some part of Tony is reveling in the knowledge that Steve isn't going to walk away as soon as things get rough, even as the rest of him braces for exactly that.

And then Bucky comes back.

His name is still on Steve's other wrist, his name just as dark and clear as the day Steve had been born. Steve had thought it was because he still loved him, hadn't really moved past his death – it happened that way sometimes. Peggy's had taken a year or two to fade once he'd made peace with her moving on – but he'd never imagined it was because Bucky was still alive.

The reality of that hits him and leaves him sick and guilt-ridden.

It's Tony who gets him through it, who lets Steve be weak and angry and scared for exactly as long as he needs before propping him up and forcing him to move on. “He's out there and we have the resources to find him,” he says. “But so does what's left of SHIELD and HYDRA and he's in the wind with no backup. So we have to get moving.”

Tony wraps his hand around Steve's wrist, covers Bucky's name with his palm. “He needs you to protect him now. Find him and bring him home.”

Steve takes Tony's other hand, wraps it around the wrist with Tony's name. “When I do, promise me my name will still be on your skin. Promise me. I'm not leaving you unless you promise I can come back.”

Tony sighs, tired and a little resigned, but Steve can see a spark of humor in his eyes. “Baby, we both know I'm neither strong enough or good enough to give you up. I'll share you but if Barnes wants you to himself we're going to have to fight.”

It's not true, Tony's exactly good enough to let Steve go if it was what Steve wanted. Which is why Steve spends the next few months going to great pains to make sure Tony never gets such a ridiculous idea into his head. He texts and emails, and when the trail goes cold for a few days he comes home, to Tony, to his soulmate. To the man who had given him back everything. He makes sure that Tony can see his name on Steve's skin and he kisses the inside of Tony's wrist, traces the letters of his name with lips and tongue.

“I love you,” he says into Tony's skin while his soulmate is gasping and shaking beneath him. “I love you and I am never giving you up. Not for anyone.”

Not even for Bucky. He would die for either of them, but he won't give them up.

****

Steve's name had been written on the inside of Bucky's left wrist, and it's been gone for most of a century.

“They amputated it not long after I got captured,” Bucky tells him one night, not long after he finally agrees to let himself be caught and returns with Steve to the Tower. “I... I don't know if it would have lasted, Steve. I wasn't – I wasn't the guy who had Steve Rogers for a soulmate. I haven't been in a long time.”

“It's fine,” Steve says, and he means it. If he feels a pang at having both of his first soulmates lose his name, it pales in comparison to the relief and the joy and having Bucky back in his life. “I'm not expecting anything, Buck. You've been through a lot.”

“You still have mine, though. It was in your file.”

Steve holds up his wrist a little self-consciously. “I do. It hasn't been as long for me, you know. And I think, whoever you're making yourself into is still going to be Bucky to me. Does that bother you?”

“No.” Bucky says it so matter-of-factly that Steve can't doubt his sincerity. “But does it bother him?” Bucky asks, tapping Steve's other wrist.

“A little,” Steve says. “He's got issues. We're working on it.”

Bucky laughs and it seems to startle him as much as Steve. “Well, he can't be all bad if he was enough to hook you. Bring him down here, let him look at my wrist. Maybe it'll make him feel better.”

Steve tells Tony what Bucky says and Tony storms down to the medbay. He yells at Bucky for five minutes while Bucky grins at him and when it's over they're friends. Steve has no idea how it happened. He suspects it's because they're so alike it was either best friends or they would kill each other.

“Smart assed brunettes who puff up like peacocks and don't know what to quit,” Bucky says. “Honestly, even Peggy was kind of like us, except she was more of a smartass and didn't need to quit.”

Sometimes Steve remembers the taste of Bucky's mouth, or how his body felt, pressing Steve against a wall or into a mattress. He misses it, in a way, but it's more of a fond remembrance than anything like lingering desire. Bucky is still recovering, and even if he were inclined to want Steve back, Steve wouldn't do that to Tony. Tony had offered to share, but Steve is smart enough to know how that would have hurt him. This, what they have now, works. Nothing makes him happier than watching Bucky and Tony bicker like kids and knowing that they're both safe and there with him. It's all Steve needs. It's more than Steve needs.

It takes most of a year for his name to appear on Bucky's right wrist.

“Well, shit,” Bucky says with philosophical resignation. “I guess you were right about me, huh?”

Tony is tense and unhappy at Steve's side, but he hasn't said anything stupidly self-sacrificing and he hasn't tried to leave, so Steve is counting this like a victory. “We should talk about this,” Steve says.

Bucky shakes his head. “Hey, no. You've got a fella, Steve and I couldn't have picked a better one for you. I'm not breaking that up.”

“You wouldn't. Break it up.” Tony's voice is tight and Steve can hear the stress in it. “Steve and I talked about this when he first went after you and – I already told him it's okay.”

“Yeah, you look like it's okay,” Bucky says dryly. “Look, I think you and me are friends too these days, right? What do you think is going to happen to that if I start demanding conjugal visits with your soulmate?”

“He's your soulmate, too.”

“And me and him had two decades to be together,” Bucky says. “I'm not hurting either one of you over this. Sex isn't everything. Steve's not going to be any less important to me if we don't bump uglies. Look,” he says when Tony tries to object again. “It doesn't bother me to know he's with you. I am so fucking happy he had you while I was gone, okay? I can't even – fuck, Stark, look, just take the fucking out I'm giving you.”

“And in a year?” Tony asks heatedly. “Or five or ten, when Steve starts to resent me for keeping his soulmate from him? What's that going to do to any of our friendships?”

“I am never going to resent you,” Steve says flatly.

“Don't even pretend it wouldn't kill you to see him slip out of your bed to come to mine.” Bucky's metal hand is curled in a fist on his thigh. “I can see it on your face, Stark. We'd kill you doing that. We'd break your fucking heart.”

“So don't leave.” Tony turns to Steve, licks his lips. He is pale and Steve thinks there's more fear in Tony's eyes than he ever wants to see because of him. But he faces Steve head on. “Don't leave. Bring Bucky with you.”

“What?” Steve says.

“Oh and that's not going to ruin our friendship just as fast?”

“Shut up,” Tony says. “Look, you're not hard on the eyes. Before Steve I'd have tried to get into your pants the first time we met – well, assuming you weren't an assassin at the time. I like you. I think – I'm not in love with you, but we could get a friends with bennies thing going. And – and it would be easier. For both of us, I think.”

“You think it would be easier to watch me fuck the man you love?” Bucky says harshly. “You think you want to watch him suck my cock and scream my name while I take him?”

“Bucky-” Steve says.

“You can't handle the thought of it happening behind closed doors,” Bucky says. “How is this better?”

“Because this way he's not leaving me.” Tony's voice is shaking, but his eyes are hard. “You're right. If he left me to go to you I'd always wonder if it was because he wanted to leave me. But if he stays with me and brings you in... Maybe it won't work. I don't know. But I can't let you have him and I won't let him give you up. This is my best idea. What have we got to lose here? Worst case scenario, some truly awkward sex and then you can be as noble and sacrificing as you want. Maybe this time next year Steve hates me for taking you away from him and it's not a problem anymore. But I want to at least try.” He's breathing quickly and his eyes are too bright. “I want to try.”

“I would never hate you,” Steve says in a low voice, and Tony turns into his body, buries his face in Steve's shoulder.

“All right,” Bucky says. “All right.”

****

The sex is actually not that awkward, when they get around to having it. Bucky is still healing and it's months before he feels ready for their arrangement to begin. By then Tony seems calmer, more sure of himself and his decision. And Steve is... Steve has been trying to wait till they were ready, but from the moment Tony proposed his compromise, Steve has been fighting off the image of the two of them together and it's become a startlingly effective fantasy of his. By the time it happens his hands are almost shaking and he nearly salivates at the thought of it. Bucky notices first and laughs in his face, then turns and pulls Tony down onto the bed. “Rogers wants a show,” Bucky says into Tony's ear, eyes on Steve as he rolls his hips into Tony's. “Shall we oblige?” And Steve's stomach flutters at the heat and promise in his eyes. They take turns fucking Tony, both of them trying to make it good for him, to make him know that they're not leaving him out of this, and Tony shakes and falls apart in their arms.

In the morning Tony fucks him raw while Bucky sucks him off and Steve holds them both afterwards, their heads on his chest as they slip back to sleep, and doesn't let either of them go.

****

Steve's not surprised when Bucky shows him his wrist and Tony's name is written below Steve's on Bucky's arm. “He's pretty hard to resist, isn't he?” Steve says fondly, stroking his fingers through Tony's hair.

Bucky's name doesn't appear on Tony's skin until most of a year later and it happens so casually that Tony almost misses it. One minute they're at a ballgame – just the two of them because Steve won't root for anyone but the Dodgers because he is an actual Old Man – and Bucky is yelling verbal abuse at the umpire. Tony looks at him and is struck by what his life would have been like if Bucky and Steve hadn't somehow found their way to him through the better part of a century.

He cups Bucky's face in his hand and kisses him. For a moment Bucky's lips keep moving but then he returns the kiss with interest. “What,” Bucky asks when they part, “don't tell me yelling turns you on. Although actually I probably should have seen that coming, now I think about it.”

“Dumbass,” Tony says fondly and Bucky grins at him.

And then Bucky's eyes are drawn to Tony's hand, still cupping his jaw. He reaches up and takes Tony's hand in his, pulls it down so he can see.

Bucky's name is written there in bold, block letters (not the careless scrawl his name had been when he was young, the signature Steve has on his hand, this is the way Bucky signs his name now). Bucky wraps his fingers around Tony's wrist to keep his hand from shaking.

Tony is staring at his own wrist as if he'd never seen it before, but he's smiling.

“Take me home,” Bucky says.