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When the Soldier moved into the Avenger’s tower at Steve Rogers’s request, he had one goal: remain unnoticed. His presence, of course, could be noticed, but not his motives, not his thoughts, not the inner workings of his mind or his secrets that were secrets for a reason.
Tony Stark, it seemed, had a similar goal inside his own home.
Unfortunately for Tony Stark, the Soldier figured him out relatively quickly. Fortunately for Tony Stark, the Soldier had no intention of telling anyone. After all, who was he going to tell?
The Soldier didn’t know when he started watching Tony Stark so intently, watching him more than he should. He rationaled that he was doing threat analysis, but at this point the Soldier knew that Tony Stark was more a threat to himself than to anyone else.
It hadn’t been intentional, because the Soldier knew that it really was none of his business, but he couldn’t help if he was in the common area late at night or early in the morning and saw Tony Stark stumble into the kitchen, half awake and thinking that no one was in the room simply because the Soldier was exceptionally good at blending into the background. So he saw the man’s scars, criss-crossing over his arms, and watched him break down at the kitchen counter.
Again, who was the Soldier going to tell?
Telling anyone would not benefit him, that was for certain. Besides, he had scars of his own. The one across the bridge of his nose, from years of HYDRA’s muzzle digging into his skin. The ones across his left shoulder, from the loss of his left arm and the replacement of the metal one. The pin-prick dots of scars along his arm from all the serums and fluids forced into his body. The sides of his head, from the chair. Countless others, from every mission he had been on.
So the Soldier had scars, and Tony Stark had scars. The Soldier just knew that Tony Stark did not want anyone else to be seeing his scars.
Another easy thing to notice. Tony Stark was always covering himself up, as much as possible; with a new persona, loud and confident and cocky; with his sleeves, pulled far down over his arms so that only his hands peaked through; with his sunglasses covering his face, even inside, so that he could cover any emotion in his eyes.
It could have been impressive, maybe, if the Soldier didn’t see through it so easily.
It wasn’t until his arm was malfunctioning beyond the Soldier’s skill levels of repair and Steve Rogers forced the Soldier to do something about it that the Soldier actually spoke to Tony Stark.
When the Soldier got to Tony Stark’s lab, Tony Stark’s head shot up in surprise. He had been humming some song that the Soldier didn’t know, wearing short sleeves and soldering what the Soldier thought could be a helmet.
“Oh!” he said in surprise. Maybe he didn’t hear the Soldier come in. “You need something? One sec.” He reached for a long sleeved shirt, but the Soldier stopped him.
“I’ve seen your scars,” he said plainly. “Hiding them would be useless.”
Tony Stark seemed to freeze and he set down the shirt. “O…kay then. Did you need something?”
“Steve said that you would fix my arm.”
Tony Stark raised an eyebrow. The Soldier got the feeling that he hadn’t expected the Soldier to say that. “Okay. Sure. Yeah. Come sit over here.”
He nodded. The Soldier knew the drill with this sort of thing; it wasn’t like the arm could have any maintenance done with a sleeve covering it, after all. He pulled off his shirt then sat down with the shirt still in his hand. Tony Stark whistled.
“Seems like you've got some scars yourself, Soldier.”
“I don’t hide mine.”
Because it didn’t matter if he did or not, no one would care, no one would fix them or stop them from scarring in the first place. He was a soldier, a weapon, a tool, and tools got a little banged up sometimes. That didn’t mean that anyone was going to shine them clean.
“Maybe not,” Tony Stark hummed. “You don’t need to. There’s no shame in them.”
Tony Stark was right. There was no shame in them, because there was no emotion at all.
It didn’t take that long for the arm to be fixed, just a couple hours. The Soldier noticed things about Tony Stark, whether he realized that the Soldier was paying attention or not. But the Soldier was always paying attention, even if it was just the certain way that Tony Stark stood or stuck his tongue out when doing something challenging or if he would laugh lightly every once and a while, just to himself, and sometimes the Soldier caught Tony Stark staring a bit too long at him, but it wasn’t like the Soldier wasn’t doing the exact same thing.
Maybe it only took them that two minute conversation to form a bond. Maybe, distantly, a bond had always been there. That was one thing that the Soldier wasn’t certain of, but he knew that there was something there as Tony Stark gently handled his arm.
“You hurt yourself,” the Soldier said when he had been looking at Tony Stark’s scars for far too long. The Soldier understood it; HYDRA had hurt him, and then the Soldier had followed by example and hurt himself. That much was easy to understand. It was the why that was always more difficult.
For the Soldier, it had been a sense of control. HYDRA couldn’t be hurting him if the Soldier willingly did the same thing to himself. That just wasn’t how it worked.
Tony Stark spared a glance down at his scarred arms again. “It was easy,” he said finally. “And it wasn’t always on purpose.”
No, the Soldier believed that.
“Was this all from HYDRA?” Tony Stark asked him a minute later. The Soldier knew what he was referring to.
“It was from me,” he lied. The more that he did to himself, the more control that he had. He wasn’t weak, and HYDRA didn’t control him. Besides, some of it actually was from him. “And I don’t remember before HYDRA.”
Because as much as Steve Rogers wanted him to be, the Soldier was not James Barnes.
Tony Stark hummed again. “I didn’t think so. You’re not him, are you? Barnes.”
“No.”
Tony Stark didn’t say anything for a long time after that, and neither did the Soldier. Then Tony Stark lightly caressed his arm, closed the plates, and declared that he was done. The Soldier stood up, only to be face to face with Tony Stark.
If Tony Stark were half a foot taller, that was.
“You’re standing really close,” he murmured, looking into Tony Stark’s eyes. They were brown, nothing special, but almost inviting. The Soldier wanted to know the why in them. He wanted to know the secrets.
“Yeah? You gonna move?” Tony Stark smirked, his lips pulled up, his eyes searching.
The Soldier noticed that he had a scar across the bridge of his nose as well and wondered if it was from those sunglasses he wore to hide himself. He wasn’t hiding himself now, though, that was for sure.
And neither was the Soldier. Tony Stark was someone he didn’t have to hide from.
Who would he tell, after all?
“No,” he told Tony Stark. He leaned his head over until their foreheads were touching. And then, when Tony didn’t pull away, he angled his chin forward and kissed his lips lightly, so that their scars were right across from each other.
“You said you’ve seen my scars, but you haven’t seen anything yet, Soldier,” Tony said when the Soldier pulled back a moment later. The Soldier’s lips quirked upwards.
“Then why don’t you show me?”
And then maybe, finally, the Soldier would know the why.