Seven

The star belongs to Bucky, Tony learns.

Natasha and Steve disappear to Washington DC for a few months, and by the time they get back SHIELD has been stripped to its bones and suddenly – and Tony really didn’t see this one coming, genius be damned – there’s a war hero cum ex assassin cyborg living in the penthouse.

Funny how just when you think things are settling down, life throws you a curveball.

Tony actually likes Bucky. He makes Steve smile in a way he’s never seen the super-soldier, and Tony feels a deep connection to his dry, sarcastic humor. They get along fantastically, which is good because Tony spends the first several months after Steve and Natasha return building a brand-new robotic arm for his favorite amputee.

Natasha looks like she’s going to murder him the first time he says the phrase in Bucky’s presence, but the ex-Hydra agent just laughs joyously and proceeds to give Tony a few suggestions on extra features to build into the arm.

It’s beautiful, and Tony is damn proud. He’s just finished the very last of the software for the arm – a program that will allow the arm to mimic the muscle growth of Bucky’s organic arm, so that the soldier doesn’t end up with one super buff arm and another that’s as firm as a cooked noodle. It sure as hell beats the terribly outdated, heavy as fuck piece of disgraceful prosthetic weapon Hydra had given Bucky.

When Bucky sees the new arm for the first time, he cries in Tony’s arms.

“Just one thing,” Bucky murmurs when he’s calmed down, reverently running his fingers over the linked metal of his new arm, shining brightly in the blue lights of the lab. “And I don’t want to sound greedy, because this is amazing… but can you put one more thing on it?” asks Bucky with big wide eyes, biting his lip worriedly.

Tony’s heart melts and he spins around in his chair. “’Course, Buckaroo,” he promises, leaning back in his chair. “What do you need?”

Bucky taps the shoulder of the metal. “You’ve seen the others soulmarks, right?” asks Bucky, and Tony nods. He’s seen Bucky’s as well, when the other’s shirt was off and Tony was taking measurements of the organic arm, and he knows Bucky has a green neutron on his hip and a red, white, and blue shield on his side. He knows he has the other’s mark as well, sees it in the stolen kisses Bucky gives Clint when he thinks no ones looking, and the way Thor wraps an arm around Bucky’s shoulders after battles.

“And the red star?” asks Bucky, teeth biting harder into his lip. Tony nods silently. “It’s mine,” Bucky tells him, looking away. “I’m their sixth.”

“Called it!” Tony had hollered with a whoop. He jumps up and motions for JARVIS to open one of the closed files he’s got hanging around on his holograms. He smirks at Bucky’s shocked look. “’S already fabricating, buttercup,” Tony says, gesturing to the image of the arm complete with small red metal star at the top.

Bucky hugs Tony again, and then they get to work fastening the arm. It’s no longer fastened to his flesh as Hydra’s was, but is now attacked to a metal plate on Bucky’s stump with a magnetic lock. The arm and the lock use the same anti-EMP technology as the suit, and the Avenger’s are the only ones who are able to detach it from Bucky’s body. It makes for quicker cleaning, easier maneuverability, and much more logical ways to update it.

Tony is fucking proud of it, and he doesn’t try to hide it.

After the initial gushing and praise he receives from the others over the feat of technology, they more or less sink back into their honeymooning and Tony goes back to being invisible.

Except for Bucky.

Tony thinks it’s odd, because Bucky is the reason the rest of them are back to being utter dopes, but he certainly doesn’t mind the company. Bucky hangs out in his lab all the time, talking to Tony or playing with the ‘bots, sometimes asking the genius what he’s doing or how something works. Tony gleefully tells Bucky all that he knows – which is quite a lot – about any subject Bucky shows even the slightest bit of interest in, and in return Bucky doesn’t get fed up with his constant blabbering or his really terrible mood swings when he hasn’t had his mandatory twelve cups of coffee yet.

It’s easy, the give and take of his friendship with Bucky. Tony likes it, relaxes in it, and he thinks that when they get close it brings Tony back into the fold of the team. He’d started to slip away as they got together, like the penguin left out in the cold. It feels good to be back with them, though, and even if it still hurts – hurts like a deep, constant ache in his chest, makes it harder to breathe than the reactor already does – when he looks at them and sees them happy, Tony is okay. The least he can do is give the others space to be happy, and if he can do that by keeping his distance, then that’s what he’ll do. Happily.

Bucky doesn’t seem to agree.

Tony starts to notice it a few weeks before the tipping point. Bucky begins to watch him a little closer, look a little longer, and sometimes when they’re both in the lab and Bucky thinks Tony is too involved in his work to pay attention, Bucky will just stare at him, eyes scanning every bit of Tony with his smoldering gaze.

He doesn’t say anything until a month has passed. The team is out at the park, and Tony’s climbed up Thor’s shoulders and is dangling an apple in front of the god’s mouth. They’re all laughing as Thor obligingly tries to grab it with his teeth, when suddenly Bucky blurts out,

“What’s your soulmark, Tony?”

It’s rather abrupt and shocking to say the least, and Thor nearly knocks Tony off a good seven-foot drop in his double take. Tony isn’t prepared for it. But he was raised to be an improvisational actor so Tony grins at Bucky and taps his chest.

“It was under the reactor,” he says. “Guess it was foreboding it and all. Same pattern, grey, with the triangles and all,” he lies. “Didn’t realize that I’d mimicked it until after the thing was built.” This is mostly incorrect, although the diameter of his soulmark did match the diameter of the arc reactor. He’d measured it down to tenths of a millimeter. Same edge.

The lot of them throw him sympathetic looks, but it’s all part of the script Tony had planned out. To lose a soulmark – yours or your partner’s – is a terrible loss. Some say it aches like there’s a shard of glass buried under your skin. If the information is not freely given, it’s considered incredibly rude to ask someone why or how they lost a mark. The socially acceptable rule is to change the subject.

Steve immediately starts up a new conversation, something about the difference between the music of his time and current stuff, and Bruce and Clint immediately jump in, Thor adding details about Asgardian music. But Bucky’s still watching him, and now Natasha has joined him.

The second time Nat is the one to ask. “And your soulmate’s mark?” she asks.

Tony turns to face her, meeting her gaze head on. The other lapse into silence as they all wait for him to answer. Tony gracefully pulls his legs off of Thor’s shoulders and slides to the ground in front of Natasha, his hand casually in his pockets and his gaze sure. His face remains impassive when he says, simply, “Gone.”

With that he turns on his heel and walks out of the park.

And maybe it’s playing dirty to lie about the death of his supposed soulmate – if anything goes against social convention, it’s that – but Tony has never been particularly concerned about social convention, and this is the best way to assure that they never ask him again.

(This is what Tony tells himself. He certainly doesn’t say it because it feels true. That even if his soulmates – all six – are technically still alive and not even out of reach, they are never going to be Tony’s. They won’t ever be his soulmates, no matter what the universe declares. But that’s not what he means, so why even pay attention to that?)

Tony if fine alone. He doesn’t want their pity, but their pity will silence the questions. He’ll take what he can get.