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289 Days.
289 days since Tony touched Steve.
289 days since Tony had been force fed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
289 days since Tony had …
289 days is when he broke.
“Are you sure we’re not getting him back?” Tony pleaded with Bruce. “I’m really supposed to just give up hope entirely? Like, he fucking crashed a plane and came out alive.”
Bruce’s eyes were filled with sympathetic tears. “Tony, this one exploded. And we have combed the wreckage and found enough pieces of his suit that…he’s not coming back. We can have a funeral.”
Tony shook his head back and forth violently. “No. That feels… no.”
“Okay, but the government is declaring him dead, Tony. They’ll lay him in State.”
And Tony threw up all over the table.
305 days since Tony touched Steve was a bad day. Not emotionally, necessarily, because that part of him had calcified over. But his heart medicine was making his hands shake really badly and he needed to shave. In the past, he’d asked Steve or Bruce, but Bruce was in Kathmandu and Steve…
So his option was Bucky.
Bucky, who’d come back just before Steve left. Bucky, who was bravely going through his memories to find a sense of self again. Bucky, who’d killed Tony’s parents.
Bucky, who he had fantasies about. Specific ones including pulling hair and metal against skin.
Bucky, who was his dead husband’s best friend from the 1930s because Tony’s life was a lot more normal before he was kidnapped.
Bucky, whose apartment he’d quietly moved into since he couldn’t stand being in Steve’s space without Steve.
“Hey, Buckaroo?”
Bucky looked up from the couch. “Yeah, Tone?”
“Can you use that super soldier focus and help an old man with a shave?”
Bucky huffed a laugh. “I’m at least forty years older than you, just my body ain’t.”
“And since I’m looking for body and not brain here, that suits me fine,” Tony said and handed Bucky the Gillette.
Bucky stared at it. “You can trust me with a real one, you know.”
“Oh, no, of course, I know,” Tony said with a laugh after a beat. “I don’t trust me with one.”
Bucky nodded, held up a finger, and then dug out his own proper razor.
Having his face shaved had never been a kink before that day, but Tony supposed even old dogs could learn new tricks.
Day 376 was the day the team assured him Steve would be fine. Steve would want both of them to be happy. Steve would want both of them to be free, and in love, and whatever they wanted.
Day 390 was when he believed it enough to go on a date with Bucky.
Day 424 was when he finally took his wedding ring off.
Day 450 was the day he and Bucky adopted a cat together.
Day 500 is when Steve came home.
Bucky blinked rapidly at the sight of his emaciated best friend. “But how?”
Steve looked so very tired as he answered. “Captive for most of it, they were trying to do something with the serum. Not HYDRA, some new group. Whenever they took blood, they drained me enough that it took a while to have the strength to…in the jungles of Rwanda, and my French is shit, and my Swahili is worse, and I got nothing of their native language, so that took a while once I did break out. Had to do field work to earn money to buy clothes. Anyway, you don’t want to hear all of that.”
“No,” Bucky croaked out. “I have missed you like a limb, punk. I want to know everything.”
Steve pointed to Bucky’s wedding ring. “I need to know about that first.”
And then, as if on some horrible cosmic cue, the elevator door pinged open and Tony came in – his voice coming ahead of him like normal. “Hey babe, I had JARVIS place and order for that grease we want for your elbow, I think it’s from Philly, so we can also fly down if we – holy shit.”
“Why –” Steve short circuits right in front of Bucky.
“You were gone,” Bucky said softly.
“I wasn’t gone forever,” Steve spat.
“It was for us,” Bucky replied.
Tony said nothing.
Steve’s head whipped between the two of them. “Congratulations.”
They both called after him, but day 500 was the day Steve disappeared again.
Day 520 was when they found out he was at the Barton’s farm.
Day 671 was when Steve called Bucky and asked to talk. Bucky dropped the phone, but thankfully JARVIS transferred the call to the speakerphone before it shattered on the ground. They talked about everything but Tony.
Day 690 was the eighteenth consecutive day that Bucky and Steve talked without mentioning Tony.
Day 702 was when Steve mentioned Tony.
“Do you want to know?”
“Yeah.”
Bucky sighed. “We’re basically a cliche, right? We got to know each other while we were looking for you, and looking for you brought up a lot about my days as a murder puppet, and there was a week where we were in a safehouse in Czechia because Nat had a lead, and, well, we got to talking. We needed a best friend, both of us, and when we lost you…I mean…I figured if you loved him, I’d probably like him. So I gave him a shot. Way better than Felderman behind the picture house, Stevie.”
Steve barked a laugh. “Clint’s kids would say the bar is the floor. When did you get married?”
“It was about a year after you went missing, after we had your funeral. The funeral was real…I mean, they didn’t do that for ya the first time, so this time it felt like the feds really thought you were gone. Felt real fucking final,” Bucky confessed.
There was a heavy silence and then Steve spoke. “I thought of the two of you every day. Every. Single. Day. You were the motivation to come home, and I guess…the shock…the shock of realizing that you two were all I thought about and I wasn’t all you thought about, but then Clint told me to pull my head out of my ass.”
“Sounds like Clint.”
“I should be grateful the two of you love each other, and I’m also allowed to be sad you both have a part of each other I don’t get.”
Bucky considered this. “But you have a part of me and a part of Tony we don’t get.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
The conversation tumbled on.
Day 702 was when Bucky began to wonder.
Day 705 was the day Bucky asked Tony if he missed having sex with Steve.
“I mean, wouldn't you?” Tony snorted.
Bucky shrugged a shoulder. “We ain’t ever done it with his new body. I kinda liked the old one.”
“Trust me,” Tony mused, “you’d like this one, too.”
Day 715 was the day Steve texted and asked Tony to talk.
“If I asked you to choose right now, who would you?” Steve pressed, anger biting in his tone.
“I don’t know,” Tony repeated softly. He’d been saying that for an hour.
“Why?!” Steve exploded. “We had years together –”
“Same question,” Tony spat. “I asked you the same question when he came back and you said Bucky was so different it wasn’t a question. Well, sweetheart, you’re pretty different.”
“Don’t use that tone.”
“Don’t use that tone.”
“This would all be easier if I didn’t fucking love you,” Steve yelled.
“I love you too, jackass!” Tony screamed. “That’s the problem! I love you both! You love different versions of each of you and it’s all a fucking mess, but I love you both.”
Chests heaving from exertion, they stared at each other for a few beats.
“What are we doing?” Tony asked.
“Fucking it up?”
“What if the solution is…”
Steve stepped towards him. “Forward thinking Tony, spit it out.”
“What if we figured this out together?”
Day 715 was when Steve, Tony, and Bucky started their lives together.
Day 716 was when every single one of their friends texted them to congratulate them on pulling their heads out of their asses.
Day 717 was when they remembered they had to get Steve legally declared alive.
Day 722 was the Battle of the Flying Toasters.
…and when their lives were truly over and JARVIS gave the record to their descendants, it reported that Day 802 was when they made their vows and sealed them with rings and stepped into their happily ever after.