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The first time it happened, Bucky didn’t know what to think. In fact, that was a feeling that persisted as the incident occurred again and again. It started out with a single magnet with a quote from Robocop on it that Tony slapped on after a check-up he’d done on the arm. Bucky had peeled it off and stuck it to his fridge instead. It wasn’t the first time to genius had done something that might be considered off, though, and Bucky let it slide. Tony, after all, was the only one who didn’t seem horribly freaked out by the arm in the first place.
Steve seemed nearly afraid to touch it, had actually flinched a couple times before covering it up when he’d accidentally come into contact with the arm. Bucky supposed it had some pretty bad connotations where Steve was concerned, but still. His level of discomfort wasn’t exactly making things any better for Bucky…and it certainly wasn’t subtle. The others seemed to shy away, too, even if they were better at hiding it. Bucky had taken to wearing long sleeves at all times just in an attempt to cover it up. He hated how everyone’s eyes seemed drawn to it like some sort of train wreck. There were times he felt like he’d look down to find the blood of all those people he’d killed still dripping from between metal fingers.
Tony was the only one who didn’t seem bothered by it. In stark contrast, he was damn near enthusiastic about anything that involved the arm. He’d started firing off questions about within minutes of them having met and regularly brought up ways to improve it. HYDRA had done a Hell of a job integrating the thing into Bucky’s body, enough that the genius had flat out said there probably wasn’t a way to remove it. Of course, he had no shortage of ideas on other things to do with it.
The first matter of course had been giving it a thorough check over down in Tony’s lab. The genius had spent truly more time than Bucky thought necessary caressing the metal and cooing over all the inner-workings. Bucky had actually been kind of irritated then, and through the check-ups and interactions after that, until he’d figured out that Tony was actually genuinely excited about the mechanics of the arm and not just messing around with him. Interestingly enough, that revelation had only come after accidently overhearing a fight between Tony and Steve on that very topic. After that, he’d been much more willing to listen to Tony ramble on about the mechanics and programming of his glorified prosthetic. As an apology for something Tony would never find out about, Bucky even let him upgrade the power source to an arc reactor. Well, a series of extremely small arc reactors.
The Robocop magnet showed up about three months into Bucky’s stay at the tower and Bucky couldn’t help but smile. After that, Tony seemed to always have a magnet on hand whenever he did work on the arm. Kids got lollipops when they went to the doctor, he explained, Bucky got magnets. They ranged from funny quotes to ridiculous pictures, some even souvenirs from the business trips Tony would take for Stark Industries. Bucky enjoyed them and it never failed to make him smile when he walked past his kitchen. His therapist said that was good, that he needed to find things he could smile about. Of course, his therapist also said he should be talking to Steve about the whole arm thing but that wasn’t happening.
The first time Bucky woke up to find magnets on his arm, he might have, possibly panicked a little bit. He’d never been a particularly heavy sleeper, but he felt like these days he slept on a hair trigger. There was one time he’d fallen asleep on the couch and woken up before Natasha had even made it down the hallway into the room. The thought that someone had managed to sneak up on him in his sleep and arrange magnets on his arm was…worrisome, at least. What if it hadn’t been Tony? (Because it obviously had to be Tony.) What if it had been an attacker? But it had been Tony, Bucky reminded himself, and either JARVIS had dosed him with a sedative to keep him asleep or he’d subconsciously registered Tony as not being a threat.
After a minute or so to calm down, Bucky had actually managed to look at the magnets now decorating his arm. Each magnet was a single black letter, made of cheap plastic in gaudy colors. There were five of them, that morning. Y, O, U, R, E. The morning after, the letters spelled out, “THE.” It took nine days in total, but finally Bucky had the whole of Tony’s message, “YOURE THE BEST SNIPER I KNOW DONT TELL CLINT” He would have put it up on his fridge with the others, but that’d blow the game the first time Clint came to visit and went for a beer. He arranged them only once, snapping a picture before taking them down again. He returned the letters to Tony’s lab while he was out. He left a message of his own with them, albeit a muddled one. “YOUR SECRET IS WITH I” The rest of the letters he left in a pile.
Tony must have taken that as permission to continue which, technically, it kind of was. After that, almost every time Bucky went to sleep, even if it was only for a quick nap, a word would appear on his arm. The messages varied widely in length and seriousness, but they never failed to make Bucky smile. When the final word of “YOU HAVE A GREAT ASS” came across, he’d even burst out laughing. Tony never said anything about the messages, though, and Bucky chose to follow his lead. There didn’t seem to be much of a need to, anyway. They shared words aplenty as it was.
The longer it went on, the more Bucky found his thoughts on the situation shifting. Well, to be a bit more accurate, his thoughts toward Tony. At first he’d been a mystery, then an amusement, a confidant, a friend. Now…he had morphed into something quite a bit more. It hadn’t been intentional, or even something Bucky had realized while it was happening, but the end results were undeniable. Bucky wanted Tony, in every way imaginable. There was no way he could not want him. Every time he saw the man, he just wanted to pull Tony into his arms and taste those lips against his own.
He wasn’t blind, either. He could tell that Tony felt at least something for him as well. There were the little glances that gave him away, the way the genius’s eyes would dart down to Bucky’s lips or hands or chest. His hands would reach out for Bucky only to pull back as soon as he realized what he was doing. All in all, Bucky just couldn’t allow it to continue. He was no masochist. He wasn’t going to let himself, much less Tony, suffer if there was no reason for it.
Raiding Tony’s stash of magnet letters, he headed back to his own quarters and arranged his message along his forearm. He couldn’t help but grin the entire time he brushed his teeth and went through the motions of getting ready for bed. In all honesty, he was a bit tightly wound to get to sleep easily, but that didn’t stop him from laying there for the hour it took for him to finally fall into a restless slumber. At least, he figured, that meant he’d wake up easily enough. He hoped Tony liked his message.
“JUST KISS ME ALREADY”