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Tony wakes up slowly.
He knows precisely what time it is. Early but not too early — not the insomnia-induced waking up before dawn. Not too late. He has woken up at exactly the same time for months now, maybe longer.
Retirement, he thinks, still half-asleep, warm and comfortable, is not so bad.
Not opening his eyes yet, Tony snuggles to a warm shape at his left, mind wandering, fickle, to the events of the starting day. It’s not much.
They have a plan.
It’s a simple plan. Spend all day inside the compound working on a new robot — although Tony’s sure they will be distracted by his gift to Bucky, a little mechanical cat that can fix herself, with a few adjustments waiting to be done to her. Bucky likes to tinker with stuff, even though he gets grumpy when fails. The gift is a perfect playground.
Play with it, then, be huge nerds, then cook together. Maybe the kids will call — Peter and Harley, for what they are annoying little shits, love Bucky dearly.
Not really kids anymore, Tony corrects himself, smiling. The word stopped being correct when they turned 21. God, he’s old.
It’s a little ridiculous. He never imagined himself old (content, happy). There was a certain emptiness inside of him during the early years, pre-Afghanistan years, that didn’t have much space for a future, personal future, and then, after, there was only a next mission, a next big fight.
It changed after the snap. After kids. After Bucky.
How glad he is that it did.
Now his perfect idea of a day is to spend some quiet time with his husband. No regrets.
(One year, though. One year. Fucking hell, it seems unreal, even now, that they made it.)
Bucky moves beside him, and Tony opens his eyes, moving up, ready to meet him with a smile and a kiss that has a danger of turning into more kisses. A lazy, long morning in bed. It’s okay. They have all the time in the world.
Bucky opens his eyes. He’s beautiful. Tony still gets lost in it, in his beauty; that must be the reason it doesn’t register with him immediately.
Bucky has the look.
Confused and scared.
Tony knows that look.
“Oh,” he says softly. “Morning.”
Bucky nods. It’s hard to notice — there are not many people alive who have the ability to do so — but he’s tense. Ready to run, to hide, to defend himself.
Tony shoves away the disappointment he feels and tries for a smile.
“You don’t remember. How much?”
Bucky’s look is too cautious. He’s silent. Looking for words.
It’s a big one, then.
It’s happened before. It actually happens rather regularly, small things that he loses, movements that he repeats absentmindedly, a confusion that flickers on his face at the recollections of past days. Rare panic attacks when it’s too much.
It is — by all scientific or magical means, any doctor that exists, any telepath, Tony made sure of it — untreatable. Sometimes things are not meant to be fixed.
Bucky’s brain is fragile, and his progress is already enormous — it’d be selfish to hope for more. His memory will never work again as it should. They made peace with it.
(They all had their own journeys to acceptance.
Tony will never forget the first moment he realized the enormity of the problem, years ago, when Bucky was a stranger to him, a stranger that brought anger and pain and hurt. Tony tried not to think of him, not to notice him, until that day — the day spent with Bucky in his arms, almost catatonic with panic. No recollections, just emptiness. Barely human. Trusting Tony’s voice, Tony’s hands — there was no place for blame and anger in Tony’s heart after seeing it.
He will never forget the last big one. It was different — they were different, and suddenly almost everything they fought for, they made together was lost. One moment they were happy, and the other Bucky opened his eyes and looked at him, afraid.
For all the animosity that Tony still harbors sometimes toward Rogers, he couldn’t have survived that without him.)
“It’s okay,” Tony murmurs, unthreatening, welcoming, hands up. “You’re safe. You forgot a lot, didn’t you? You do that, you have a shitty memory. We have a system for that. FRIDAY?”
She shows them the catalog. Good girl.
“Those are all your memories. Journals. Honestly, not sure how they look like— I don’t know, maybe you just draw doodles of pigeons being dicks or something,” a week ago Bucky started a fight with a pigeon and grumbled about it all weekend, “but my point is — I have one — you write your life, and you write it yourself. Privately. Your memories are there, somewhere, and you and FRIDAY came up with some way for you to have proof of it, if something happens.”
Bucky is still silent, but he nods and moves slightly toward the hologram. Looks at it as if it holds all the answers to the universe. For him, maybe it does.
Tony nods to himself.
“Alright. I’m going to leave you to it,” he says, goes away, to the kitchen, and starts to make breakfast.
He’s a little clumsy — Bucky usually claims all the cooking duties — but he’s okay. He ruins two cups but manages at the end the exact ratio of milk to coffee that Bucky likes, and his eggs are not only perfectly done but, he dares to say, artistic. He doesn’t rush.
For a second Tony stops, and thinks, and lets himself be upset, lets himself sigh and swear. Ridiculously, for the most part he’s annoyed and regretful that their plan is fucked.
Then he continues.
When the breakfast is ready, he goes back.
Bucky reads the journals with a look of utmost concentration. Tony knows that face. Tony knows that frown, knows the way Bucky bites his lip, the way he plays, absentmindedly, with a loose strand of his hair. He knows that man. He married that man. He loves that man.
Who cares about such a little thing as the fact that his memory is kept on an external drive?
Tony’s most significant relationships for years were with robots. He’s used to certain protocols.
He puts the tray on the desk. It rattles. Bucky moves, spooked, turns around— and his face lights up.
Tony feels like the air was punched out of his lungs.
“Hey,” Bucky says, quiet, uncertain, and there’re ounces of fear in his voice, but there’s wonder in his eyes. “It says we’re married.”
“We are.”
Tony smiles.
A part of him, small and unsure and paranoid, fears that the man in front of him is someone he doesn’t know, someone unpredictable, and the inability to predict means hurt and pain and failure. Another part, a bigger part, so much bigger and louder, says: this is a Bucky he knows, for he knows every version of him, every gesture, and every smile. Tony’s memory’s good. He knows.
Bucky looks at him as if he is an impossible dream, as if he’s Holy Grail, as if he’s a miracle.
“Oh,” he says quietly and comes closer, slowly.
He looks like he can’t believe what he’s seeing is true.
If Tony was a romantic— oh, fuck it, he’s old, and he’s sappy, and his husband looks at him like he’s the answer to the world hunger. His soul sings.
Bucky takes his hand in his own and brings it to his lips. Reverently. Tony hugs him and holds him close for a long, long time.
Their anniversary is quiet. They cook (Bucky remembers the recipes; strange, what stays and what goes). They sit on the couch, snuggled to each other, and Tony tells stories until his voice is hoarse. Bucky listens.
He holds Tony in a way they usually sit together, and he minds his allergies, subconsciously. He starts to give him a scalp massage, then freezes for a while, realizing just then what he did.
His body remembers more than he does. It’s both scary and comforting.
“I’m sorry,” Bucky whispers when the room gets dark, when they’re tired and silent after a long day. “It must be hard on you, to deal with it. My shitty brain.”
Tony kisses the next words from his mouth and thinks about the look of wonder, about the quiet, astonished happiness.
“I love you, and I know you love me,” he whispers back. “Anything else’s insignificant.”
Memories do not make the man, Tony thinks when they are readying for bed. They lay together, hand in hand.
There will be more stories tomorrow. Talking to Rogers and others. New discoveries, a not so short path back to their usual patterns. It’s okay. They have time.
Tony snuggles to a warm body beside him and falls asleep easily. There’s surety in his bones, an unbreakable truth: even when everything’s lost, Bucky never forgets to love him.
And that’s all he needs.