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“I know about you.”
The holding cell is dingy as all hell. They both gleam off the globe-style lightbulb, long discolored with the burning of the filament—fucking fire hazard, as Stark’s armor glitters and Bucky’s own arm catches a few dull-yellowed rays.
“I read the dossiers,” Bucky continues, rolling his shoulders back and settling against the cinderblock wall. He doesn’t know what the Wakandans want, exactly, just that regardless of what side they take in the fight for or against the Accords—and largely for or against Bucky’s own freedom, by proxy—doesn’t mean shit to the people who’ve thrown them both to await the wolves.
Presumably. Bucky’s extrapolating, of course. Based on previous experience.
“I didn’t make the hit,” Bucky says, idle chatter as he cracks his neck and lolls it back against cold cement. “I remember that, now. They threw me at a bigger fish than your family in '91.”
Stark doesn’t say a word, but there’s a shift in his breathing that Bucky picks up, because that’s part of what Bucky was trained for: the little tells. And breathing.
Breathing was always a part of what it meant to look through a scope and apply pressure just right.
“Sorry.” Bucky says; he’s not sure if he sounds it, or if he feels it. “That was,” he pauses, sighs; “insensitive.”
Stevie’d be proud of him, for saying so. That makes it worth the effort.
“But I know about you.”
“You don’t know shit about me.” Stark snarls it, absolutely unbridled, and Bucky can see he regrets the show of feeling, show of weakness, as soon as it comes out; never mind with how it echoes long and cavernous in the small space, somehow made infinite with that much hate.
Bucky doesn’t mind a lick. It’s small dice, to him. Don’t matter.
“I don’t know you,” Bucky concedes, because, well, duh. “But I know about you. It’s an argument of semantics, maybe. Nuance,” Bucky’s lips quirk. “But an important one.”
He lets his eyes slide closed for a moment as he breathes, long and deep. Teases human blood on the air, torn skin: urine, feces, the stench of what it means to be tormented and perhaps to win in death, or lose in life. It still feels a little like home.
Steve tells him that will pass. Bucky’s starting to finally believe him.
“Point is, I know how you work,” Bucky exhales, eyes open again; leans in. “How your mind works.”
He props elbows on bended knees and points slyly in Stark’s direction, then taps his own temples indicatively.
“They might’ve fried mine,” Bucky admits with a verbal shrug, if not a physical one; “but I had to know how to read my targets, top to bottom.” Bucky leans back again; relaxes into the unforgiving wall as itself a comfort; another thing Steve says will fade, will give in time toward real comfort, Buck, the softness of the sheets on a marshmallow of a bed, hot chocolate on your tongue when I kiss you, when I kiss your skin against those sheets.
Until then, though: the wall.
“They couldn’t keep me out long, before things started filtering back in, the serum putting little pieces back together, enough to throw me off, and,” Bucky huffs, remembering now that DC wasn’t the first time; wasn’t even the worst.
“I wasn’t any use to anyone if I was even slightly ‘off’.”
Stark isn’t giving him the time of day, but Bucky doesn’t much care. He can tell it’s filtering through.
“Anyway,” Bucky twines his fingers, stretches his arms—cracks his knuckles loud and hard. “If I couldn’t make a read on a mark within ten minutes? Well, fuck,” he chuckles, and it’s not even just a dark thing, not all twisted and sardonic—mostly, maybe, but not all.
“Well, that was nine minutes too damn long.”
Stark’s expression doesn’t betray him, doesn’t betray anything, but they’ve been here far more than ten minutes. Not to mention that Bucky’d had a head-start.
He sees the reaction that’s not to be seen.
“And the data I got on you, before and since,” Bucky smirks, though he doesn’t think it’s unkind. If it is, he doesn’t mean it that way, which is a luxury in itself. To mean a thing, or not to mean it.
“You’re not so complicated, Stark.” And really, he doesn’t mean to be unkind; he means to state the facts. To speak the truth. It’s something he’s been deprived of too goddamn long to forfeit the opportunity when it comes knocking.
“Hate to break that one to you. I know you value that about yourself. Your infinite complexity.”
Without enhanced hearing, Bucky probably wouldn’t hear the furious gnashing of teeth across the way, but he does have enhanced hearing. So.
“Thing I want you to know, though,” Bucky forges on, because there’s a point he’s trying to make here, and he’s zeroing in on it, finally; “is that I know about you. And what it means to be your friend. What it means for you to consider other people your,” he pauses, and his expression sours—and it’s a true thing, and a factual thing, what makes it sour, but there’s maybe an intention to be unkind there, too. Though not without merit, not without earning it, and that, Bucky thinks, might be okay: “friends.”
Tony doesn’t bother hiding the way his jaw’s working, now; the fire in his eyes that near-matches the red of his suit. A blind man’d notice.
Bucky’s not surprised. He does know about Tony Stark, after all.
“And because I know you’re not nearly as lacking in the introspection department as you let on, I’m not gonna bore you with running down what friendship means to you. You know that shit well enough,” Bucky bites his lip; considers—and he remembers how he used to do that before they burned it away, lets himself revel in the instinct as it returns in the now. “Or else, maybe as well as your ever gonna, with or without my intervention in the thing.”
Bucky’s eyes flick up, and meet Stark’s, now, steel for steel, because this is the heart of it, this is where Bucky won’t stand to see Steve made out to be a villain, made out to do some wrong he ain’t guilty of: no.
Fuck no.
“But I will tell you what being your friend isn’t.”
And maybe Bucky’s imagining things—if ‘maybe’ means ‘not even possible anymore’, because Bucky doesn’t see things that aren’t there when he’s sizing up a threat. Never has. Never will.
And Bucky sees Tony recoil, just a little: wasn’t expecting that tactic. Wasn’t blocking for that blow.
Bucky nods, more to himself than anything else: good.
“Being your friend isn’t a given. Being your friend isn’t something that holds against the waxes and wanes, based on how well someone fits into your definition of the world. How well someone goes along with what you want, or how much the way they push against your will ends up being more for show than anything else.”
Tony’s mouth opens, but nothing comes out, because he’s right—Bucky is right. He’s read extensively on the good Colonel. He knows that description rings true.
“Being your friend isn’t about a loyalty that’s unconditional, or,” Bucky expands when the squeak of protest starts to gather in Tony’s gullet; “if not unconditional, then at the very least not about much that's far above the superficial. About something more than life and death at its core.” Bucky drifts a little, back to cold Brooklyn nights and his own shivering body after he’d taken all the blankets and piled them on Steve, wrapped his body up against that tiny frame and breathed himself only for the sake of praying, of begging they’d both see tomorrow.
“Being your friend isn’t about laying down on the wire—”
“Oh you’re fucking joking with that shit again—”
Bucky shakes his head, lifts a hand to cut Tony off; knows his eyes are enough to silence the protest, whatever it is; wherever it comes from.
“Being your friend,” Bucky starts once more, unbothered at the repetition, or the interruption. There are worse things in the world. “Being your friend isn’t about laying down on the wire for something bigger than being a hero, than taking on some cosmic responsibility, some dumbfuck weight of the world no one asked of you, some soldierly sense of duty you didn’t sign up for—no. Being your friend isn’t about laying down on the wire for being a good person, or for proving anything to anyone else, or even to yourself.”
“It’s not about being selfish beyond all reason, because fuck, above all other things, above the safety of humanity or the survival of the world, you need to make sure that person survives. That’s not what being your friend means.”
And maybe he means to protest—Bucky’s also read up on Virginia Potts—but whatever Stark means to say, it peters out quick. Which is fine.
Words are usually insufficient, Bucky’s found. He spent so much energy, in the beginning, finding them again; remember how to wield them with the ease he once knew, only to realize they were inadequate, really. As he remembered how to feel, too, the words just grew less and less worth what he needed to make known.
“You’re not a bad man, Tony.”
“Don’t call me that.” Stark’s tone is deadly. Or else, Bucky suspects that Tony thinks it’s deadly.
“Whatever.” Bucky rolls his eyes, and shrugs—he knows a name only has the power you give it: doesn’t define you, not really.
If he believed anything less, he wouldn’t be here now.
“You’re not a bad man,” Bucky says again, because he does believe it. “And maybe what friendship means to you is just different, and that’s fucking fine. Different strokes and that shit.”
And that’s the god’s-honest truth of it, too. Bucky doesn’t have time for fucking around that kind of shit. Never did, really. Certainly doesn’t, now. To each their own, so long as it don’t fuck with him.
And this, well. This fuck’s with him.
“But what friendship meant to Steve, and still means to Steve, because despite everything, some things never change. And even if this one thing was gonna, was gonna fly out the window and bend over time, it’d need a hell of a lot more time, you understand?”
And that’s why this fucks with him, see. Because it fucks with Steve, and Bucky’s never been anything but Steve, Steve, Steve’s.
Always.
“What friendship means to Steve?” Bucky raises an eyebrow, makes sure he’s got Stark’s attention when he says it, not possessive or competitive, only true and real and right: “Is what I have with Steve.”
“So, what, if I fucked him, then we’d be best pals?” Stark spits with real fucking bile in it, real goddamn venom, but Bucky couldn’t give a shit less. He doesn’t bother to acknowledge the barb. Ain’t worth his breath or the space in his brain.
“So,” Bucky shoots right back, same tone and everything so that he makes his meaning plain as fucking day, so even someone as shoved up his own ass as Stark pretends to be can hear it clear: “you don’t get to try and fucking guilt him, try and make him waver or think twice about what he’s doing. The man makes his own choices,” Bucky breathes in deep, at that, because yeah. That’s Steve, and it’s never been anything different.
He’s never been anything different.
“Am I worth it? Fuck no,” Bucky flicks dried mud from the grooves of his arm. “But to him, I am. And I didn’t get it then. I sure as hell don’t get it now.” Bucky shrugs, like it doesn’t bother him, not understanding it. That’s less-than-wholly-true, but he thinks it bothers him less, now, than it ever has before, and that’s a good thing. He thinks.
Probably a good thing. Or a crazy thing. Maybe both.
Yeah, probably both.
“But I respect him.” And that’s the key, here; that’s what Stark’s gotta understand. “I trust him. And if he makes up his mind against my better judgement, well, I back his stupid ass, because I love him something fierce.” he narrows his eyes, and speaks with particular intent.
“Beyond romance or sharing his bed,” Bucky vows with a ferocity that draws a perceptible shiver from his cellmate; “I will go down loyal to Steven Grant Rogers, and he will go down loyal to me.”
Bucky lets that truth ring out for a second or two, because he figures it deserves that much. Deserves much more, really, but they may or may not have the time for it. Prisoners behind enemy lines and all that.
“But that is what it means, to be his friend, Stark,” Bucky says with a certain finality that brooks no debate. “So don’t go squawking about what you ain’t got a claim to. His friend, ha,” Bucky snorts, kicks out his legs and cross them at the ankles, then leans back into the wall again, and it’s less comfortable than it was before; that’s a good sign.
“His friend,” Bucky shakes his head, and doesn’t bother to spare Stark a glance as he proclaims the only apt response to that bullshit:
“Cold day in Hell.”