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Bucky wakes before dawn, like always.
To the sky outside Stark Manor still navy blue, the horizon barely softened with pink —the soft, familiar hush of a house at rest. And beside him, the steady, gentle exhale of the man who never ceases to amaze him.
Tony is sprawled on his stomach, one arm pinned beneath the pillow, the other reaching blindly towards where Bucky had been before he shifted. His hair’s a silver-streaked mess, flattened on one side, wild on the other. His face, for once, is relaxed —none of the sharp lines he wears in the daylight, none of the sternness he carries like old armour. Just dark lashes, parted lips, and soft snores.
God, he loves the man.
With a yawn, he sits up, removing the hair tie around his wrist to put his hair into a loose bun, a few rogue strands sticking out stubbornly.
Tony hums in his sleep, grabbing Bucky’s pillow to stuff it under his head.
Bucky smiles, shifting closer, careful not to jostle the mattress too much. He leans in, presses a slow kiss to Tony’s temple where the silver hair shines in the dawn lighting, then one to the curve of his jaw, and then finally brushes his mouth softly over Tony’s. Just enough pressure to linger.
Tony stirs, brow twitching, but doesn’t open his eyes. A soft sigh escapes his pretty mouth.
“I know,” Bucky murmurs, brushing his thumb along Tony’s hairline. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
Tony hums. “’S warm.”
Bucky huffs a quiet laugh, leans in for one more kiss —this one to Tony’s shoulder, exposed where the sheets have slipped.
Tony mumbles something unintelligible, already asleep again. Bucky watches him for another moment, just to have it —the weight of it, the peace. Then he slips out of bed.
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The hallway is dim, the motion lights staying low to keep the house in sleep-mode. Bucky’s steps are silent against the hardwood as he moves towards the kitchen. The manor doesn’t need guards on rotation on the inside. Not with JARVIS watching every inch of the property, a silent sentry in the walls.
“Morning, JARVIS,” Bucky murmurs as he steps into the kitchen, lights turning off gradually to a brightness he prefers in the early mornings.
“Good morning, Sergeant Barnes,” comes the AI’s familiar voice, warm and precise. “All systems are operating normally. External perimeter is clear. Interior motion logs note only yourself, and the two young engineers, who are still in the workshop.”
“Still?” Bucky raises an eyebrow as he crosses to the kettle, filling it with water from the filtered tap. “Not again.”
“They have not left since you and Mr Stark bid them goodnight in the workshop last night.”
Bucky makes a quiet sound of disapproval and sets the kettle on the stove. “I’ll handle it.”
“Of course. Shall I prepare an intervention?”
Bucky smirks. “Not yet.”
As the water heats, he moves through the kitchen, checking on everything with practiced ease. The sourdough starter on the counter is bubbling contentedly in its jar. He feeds it and sets it aside to rest before drifting toward the window.
“JARVIS,” he murmurs, brushing a hand over the basil plants on the sill. “How’s the pantry looking?”
“We are low on eggs, oat milk, and the lemon hand soap you prefer. Also, Lucky seems to have lost his last sponge ball.”
Bucky snorts. “Add it to the list.”
“Already done, Sergeant.”
He pours the water over his tea —a loose leaf blend from Darjeeling that Bruce brought him back last month— and lets it steep. The scent of jasmine and mountain earth fills the room, His eyes flick to the long kitchen table, still scattered with traces of yesterday. Bread basket almost empty. The fruit bowl half-full. Someone’s hoodie draped over a chair. A stray screwdriver Harley must’ve left near the back door yesterday when he sat there, chatting with Bucky as he did something on a circuit board.
“Meetings today?” he asks, already knowing Tony’s calendar is usually a nightmare on Tuesdays.
“Mr. Stark has a design review with R&D at nine, a board call at eleven, and a secure meeting with Don Rumlow at two. The latter may require discretion.”
Bucky hums. “That’s my middle name.”
“Your legal records suggest otherwise.”
He grins and shakes his head, settling deeper into the moment. The steam from the tea curls around him like a blessing.
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“JARVIS,” Bucky says ten minutes later, as he opens the pantry, pulling out a plate and a half-full tin of cookies. “Are they still working, or just… pretending to?”
“The young men are currently engaged in what Mr. Parker has referred to, on multiple occasions, as ‘rage-debugging,’” JARVIS replies evenly. “Mr. Keener has just declared the baby AI he’s developing ‘a menace to God and science.’”
Bucky snorts, placing the almond cookies on the plate. He adds a few more —just in case one of them hasn’t eaten anything since yesterday— and pops the whole thing into the microwave for a few seconds. While the cookies warm, he grabs two tall glasses from the cupboard and fills them with oat milk from the fridge.
“Definitely time to intervene,” he murmurs, mostly to himself.
When the microwave chimes, he slides the plate onto a tray alongside the milk and heads down the hall toward the private elevator that leads directly to the workshop. The tray is steady in his hands, years of quiet morning rituals making the movements second nature.
A small smile tugs at his mouth, unhurried.
They may be brilliant —and too smart for their own good, but they’re still kids in a lot of ways. No matter how many circuit boards they fry or sentient code strings they try to wrangle, they forget the basics. Sleep. Food. Water.
Good thing they’ve got him for that.
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The workshop doors slide open with a soft hiss and a gust of warm, metallic air —the scent of soldering fumes, and the faint, unmistakable tang of synthetic grease. The overhead lights are dimmed to night-mode, but a few auxiliary lamps cast sharp white pools across the chaos below.
Bucky steps inside.
It’s a disorganised chaos, as it always is.
Peter is half-curled on a stool, squinting into a holographic readout with his curls sticking out in every direction. His hoodie is on backwards, shoes untied, and there’s a smear of something that might be chocolate —or possibly motor oil— on his jaw.
Harley is on the floor, legs sprawled, half under a table that has three different laptops stacked haphazardly on top. He’s got a soldering tool clenched between his teeth, a pencil behind one ear. His T-shirt says EAT SLEEP INVENT REPEAT, and it looks like he’s done none of those things in the right order for at least twenty-four hours.
“Hey, boys,” Bucky says, voice easy and warm as he steps further in. “What’s the damage?”
Both heads snap up, and they look wrecked. Red-eyed. Overstimulated. A little unhinged. Exhausted in that way only true overachievers can manage —strung out on brilliance and stubbornness.
Peter blinks. “Mr. Barnes! Uh. Hi. It’s, uh— it’s under control. Totally.”
Harley spits the soldering tool into a tray. “Define ‘control.’” He swipes at his face and ends up with grease across his cheek. “Because I’m pretty sure that thing just fried its own logic board out of spite.”
“It did not,” Peter says defensively, slumping in his chair. “It was trying to balance the new microflight stabilizer with the compensator relay and the output voltage just— got stupid.”
“It got stupid?” Harley mocks.
Peter opens his mouth like he’s ready to throw down, right there at six in the morning, sleep be damned.
Bucky sets the tray down between them. “Milk. Cookies. And then bed.”
Harley adds quickly, “We were gonna take a break. Soon.”
Bucky raises one eyebrow, not unkindly. “You said that yesterday after dinner.”
“That was a different project,” Harley mutters.
Peter drags a hand through his hair, clearly trying to do math in his head. “Wait— what time is it?”
“Almost six,” Bucky answers. “In the morning.”
“Oh, crap,” Peter freezes where he’s reaching for a cookie. “JARVIS, please tell me you informed Aunt May, she’s gonna kill me otherwise.”
“Of course I did, Mr Parker,” JARVIS replies a little offended, and everyone could imagine he would be rolling his eyes.
Peter deflates, dunking the cookie in the milk. “Thank you, you’re the best.”
Bucky looks between the two of them —wired and bleary. The cluttered desks. The notes scrawled in the margins of Tony’s old designs. The mess of half-tested theories and stubborn pride. He feels something soft curl in his chest.
God, they’re so… Tony.
Clever minds moving too fast, hearts too big, no sense of when to stop unless someone calls them back to earth.
“Now,” he says, tone warm but brooking no argument. “You’re going to finish those, shut down the lab, and go upstairs. Shower. Sleep.”
Peter opens his mouth, clearly about to protest.
Bucky holds up a hand. “You can pick it all back up later. The code’s not going anywhere. The bots are paused. And neither of you are much of a use to your own brains when you’ve been up all night hallucinating logic gates.”
Harley groans. “He is turning into Stark.”
Bucky smiles faintly, eyes flicking between them. “Funny. I was just thinking how much the both of you remind me of him.”
They look up at that, obviously expecting more.
“When he gets like this,” Bucky says softly. “Tangled up in projects after projects, and forgets how to blink… I always have to remind him, too. To eat. To sleep. To breathe.” He pauses. “Sometimes I think you two got it from him.”
Peter shrugs, finishing his milk. “He is super cool.”
“He is not,” Harley retorts.
Bucky smirks. “Don’t tell him that. I’ll never hear the end of it.”
Harley exhales slowly, the exhaustion finally starting to set into his shoulders. “Okay. Okay, fine. You win.”
“I always do,” Bucky says, only a little smug.
They gather their laptops and tablets with less chaos than expected. Bucky lingers long enough to make sure nothing’s left powered on or set to explode —one time with the magnetic levitation test was enough— then walks them into the lift.
By the time they reach the floor, Peter is yawning so hard he nearly walks into the wall, and Harley has fallen silent in that I’m-too-tired-to-form-thoughts kind of way.
“Sleep,” Bucky says again as they peel off to their rooms. “Not just lying in bed and arguing on your phones. Sleep.”
“Sir, yes sir,” Harley salutes sleepily.
Peter lifts a hand in a lazy wave. “Night, Bucky. Thanks for the cookies.”
“Always,” Bucky says softly.
He waits until both of them disappear down the hallway and the lights in the hall dim again. Only then does he head back toward the kitchen.
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The sun’s cresting properly by the time Bucky heads back out, the quiet chill of morning fading into something warmer. He finds Steve already stretching by the path that loops the perimeter of the property —t-shirt clinging to his chest, blonde hair wild from sleep.
“You’re late,” Steve calls out as he bounces lightly on his heels, grinning.
Bucky rolls his eyes, “I’m exactly on time. You’re just early. Like always.”
“I live to be punctual,” Steve says, mock-offended.
“You live to lord your punctuality over everyone else.”
“I don’t lord—”
“You do. And you smirk while you do it.”
Steve laughs, light and warm, and the two of them fall into an easy rhythm.
They don’t speak for the first mile —enjoying the rhythm. The quiet thud of boots against gravel. The swing of arms. Breath syncing without trying. The comfort of someone who’s always known your stride. They set into an easy pace —skirting the inner gardens, looping around the north training yard, and cutting through a short woodland path behind the garage.
“How’s your arm?” Bucky asks casually as they round a corner.
Steve flexes his shoulder. “Still sore. Should’ve waited another week before sparring with Nat.”
Bucky snorts. “Rookie mistake.”
A short beat of silence. Then Steve exhales through his nose. “I’m not looking forward to Rumlow.”
“Yeah,” Bucky says quietly. “Didn’t think you would be.”
There’s a pause —birdsong in the trees, the wind moving through leaves.
“Think Tony’s gonna offer terms?” Steve finally asks.
“Depends on how hard Rumlow pushes,” Bucky replies. “He gets cocky when he thinks we’re soft.”
Steve hums.
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Back inside, the world is still quiet.
Tony’s exactly where Bucky left him —sprawled diagonally across the bed, all the pillows somehow made their way under his head and the sheets twisted around one leg. His mouth is slightly open, hair tousled.
Bucky stands in the doorway, hair still damp from the shower, towel slung around his neck.
He should go and start on breakfast.
Instead, he crosses the room in three soft steps.
He leans down slowly, his metal hand braced carefully on the edge of the mattress, and presses a kiss to Tony’s temple. Then one to the bridge of his nose. And one to the corner of his mouth, light but lingering, until Tony shifts slightly with a sleepy hum.
“I’ll bring you coffee,” Bucky whispers.
Tony mumbles something that might be “love you, baby”.
Bucky smiles, and he slips out, shutting the door behind him.
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The house is beginning to stir properly when Bucky steps into the kitchen again. The lights are brighter, the air thicker with the scent of coffee and toast and fresh fruit. Steve grumbles about running out of his fancy shampoo again, JARVIS informs him he already added it to the grocery list.
Maria’s already there —pressed slacks, loose blouse, a cup of black coffee in hand. She’s leaning against the counter, flipping through a slim folder of notes.
“Morning, boys,” she greets without looking up.
“You’re here early,” Bucky says, stepping around her to pull out the lunchbox stack from the drawer.
Maria arches an eyebrow. “I live here.”
“You sleep in the west wing,” Steve points out. “That’s practically another zip code.”
Maria shrugs, setting her folder aside. “Had intel reports to sort. Figured I’d do it over breakfast.”
“What’s the agenda?” Steve asks, rubbing his palms together.
“Bucky’s on lunchbox sorting,” she says. “You’re on sandwiches. I already laid out the bread.”
“You’re a tyrant,” Bucky says, and begins assembling lunchboxes with smooth, efficient movements..
“I’m efficient,” she corrects, spooning pre-cut fruit, sneaking a chocolate square into kids’ boxes. “And I don’t have the patience to deal with grown adults whining about toast while I’m chopping vegetables with a ten-inch knife.”
“She threatened me with it once,” Steve complains.
“I didn’t threaten,” Maria says sweetly. “I just held it in your direction.”
“Whatever you say,” Steve starts slicing bread. “Who’s going where today?”
“Riri and MJ have campus labs,” Maria lists off. “Peter and Harley have physics and a group project after that. The rest —work shifts as usual.”
“Harley’s actually shadowing Tony till three,” Bucky corrects, labeling the boxes in tidy handwriting while Steve wraps sandwiches.
It’s efficient chaos —half-chore, half ritual. Quiet music hums from the speakers. Maria steals one of the lemon muffins cooling on the tray.
The kitchen door swings open.
One by one, the security detail files in —all dressed in black, voices low and easy after a night of keeping watch. A few drop their overnight gear near the side table, a few make beelines for the coffee, and most make some kind of orbit toward the cooling rack on the counter.
“Morning, Sarge,” one of them greets as he snags a muffin.
“Morning, Reyes,” Bucky replies without turning.
“Smells like heaven in here,” another mutters.
“Don’t touch the shortbread,” Maria warns, mouth full of muffin. “Those are for Natasha.”
There’s laughter, a few slaps on backs. Bucky offers a few nods, passes out one of the pre-packed containers to someone who forgot their lunch again, and shoos one of the rookies away from the espresso machine.
When Natasha and Bruce join them in the kitchen, Bucky grabs a hot mug of coffee and heads upstairs to wake Tony up.
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The coffee is still hot when Bucky steps back into the bedroom, steam curling up from the rim. The door clicks softly behind him, and for a second, he just stands there. Watching.
Tony hasn’t moved much — still sprawled sideways, mouth open in the most undignified way possible for a man who once negotiated an arms deal in three languages without spilling his Scotch.
Bucky smiles, fond and quiet.
“Got your coffee,” he says gently, stepping close. He sets the mug on the nightstand and brushes his knuckles against Tony’s cheek. “Time to get up, boss man. You’ve got Rumlow at two and at least three people already calling JARVIS asking if you’re awake.”
Tony groans, deep and dramatic, and rolls halfway onto his back. “Mhm… ‘M not taking meetings today,” he mutters, cracking one eye open.
Bucky brushes a kiss over Tony’s temple.
Tony hums, half-smile forming. Then, without warning, he reaches up, hooks his fingers into Bucky’s belt loops, and pulls.
Bucky huffs in surprise, stumbling forward. “Tony—hey—”
But Tony’s already dragging him down, coffee forgotten, until Bucky’s braced over him on both elbows, pressed chest to chest and hip to hip. And right there, warm and insistent between them, Bucky can feel it —the hard line of Tony’s morning arousal, pressing hot against his abdomen.
Bucky exhales through his nose, amused, a little breathless.
“Seriously?”
Tony’s grin is lazy and sinful. “It’s not my fault you left me alone like this. All cold and unsupervised.”
“You were asleep.”
“And you were gone,” Tony says, mock-wounded. “Cruel, Barnes. Abandoning your helpless husband in his hour of need.”
“You’re many things, sweetheart. Helpless isn’t one of them.”
Tony arches up slightly and Bucky groans, head dropping to Tony’s shoulder with a quiet thud.
He huffs, a little breathless now, his hair falling loose around his face. “You’re insatiable.”
Tony grins, lazy and proud. “Married you, didn’t I?”
Bucky groans again —not in protest, but because God, some things really don’t change.
It’s been over a decade. A lifetime of morning meetings, midnight alarms, gala nights, bloodied hands and quiet kitchen routines. A thousand reasons to be exhausted. A hundred excuses not to.
But Tony still drags him into bed like he’s starved for touch. Still fits against Bucky like he was carved for it. Still wakes up hard and needy, reaching without hesitation.
And Bucky? He still melts for it. Every single time.
Tony lifts his head just enough to press a kiss to Bucky’s collarbone.
“You could stay,” he says, soft now —a request, a suggestion, an invitation.
Bucky shifts just enough to nose against Tony’s temple. “Five minutes.”
Tony smiles against his throat. “I can do a lot in five minutes.”
“I know,” Bucky says dryly, but there’s laughter in it. He leans down, presses his mouth to Tony’s in something slow and unrushed.
The coffee on the nightstand goes cold.
They don’t care.
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