Get Along
“Tony don’t touch that,” Steve says, gesturing to some papers he was shuffling though.
“Ten bucks says Tony touches the papers,” May says, grinning at her.
Natasha snorts, “you underestimate him, he’s going to shuffle them around for no reason at all except that Steve told him not to,” she says. Sure enough Tony looks back and forth between Steve and the papers and back again and shuffles them around, sticking a few papers in the garbage and taking off with a few more.
May shakes her head, “god that has got to be annoying,” she says.
Natasha shrugs, “he doesn’t do that with me, he knows better,” she says, smiling. May smiles back and Natasha gets the distinct impression that they just bonded though she isn’t quite sure over what. Maybe that they could both terrify people by smiling at them, it was a very useful talent especially when people found you beautiful.
“Sam’s making bets on hate sex,” she says, “I think he’s over estimating how much the two dislike each other, and how determined Tony is to annoy Steve. He does a very good job,” May tells her.
Natasha nods, “he seems to think they would make a good couple, and somehow Bucky factors into that? I’m not certain what dynamic he’s trying to promote but if he wants them all to get together he needs to deal with Steve and Tony thinking that the other one is a generally shitty person,” she says.
May nods in agreement, “we could probably get them together faster than Sam can with your knowledge of Tony and my knowledge of Steve and Bucky. We should make a bet” she says and smiles again, inviting Natasha into some sort of game that she assumed was something that May and her team frequently engaged in considering how invested they had all become in Clint and Coulson’s relationship, and now Steve, Tony, and Bucky.
“I bet we could,” she says, taking May up on it, “Tony is shockingly easy to manipulate if you know what you’re doing. They’ll be together by the end of the week,” she says confidently.
*
Tony has seen a lot of weird things in his life time but that still didn’t prepare him for the strangeness of finding Bucky Barnes stuck to one of his projects, “free me,” Bucky says, deadpan, sitting on the ground with his arm magnetized to the side of whatever it was Tony had built.
For a second Tony doesn’t know how to handle the situation before he bursts out laughing and examines what Bucky had gotten himself stuck to. Right, he was toying with magnetic fields to see if he could mimic Wanda’s abilities without blowing up everything in his path the way he did now but he had yet to manage to apply his discoveries to his suit. Also the effects only worked if something had metal in it so it was a less than desirable solution to his current issue. He hits the button that Bucky must have accidentally pressed to engage the magnetic fields and de-sticks the poor guy. “Bucky,” he says and hits the button that turned on the magnetic fields again, “stucky,” he says as Bucky’s arm sticks to the machine again.
Bucky looks so fucking done and Tony laughs harder, releasing Bucky again but leaving him free this time. “Sorry,” he says, “I saw an opportunity and I had to take it. How are you? You know, after that whole disassociation thing. Sorry about that by the way, I’m shit with mental health, want some strawberries?” he asks and wanders over to his fridge to get said berries.
Bucky frowns, “you worked through a lot of topics there. One, that stucky thing was not as funny as you thought it was, two, I’m fine. Mostly. Three, you and Steve are both terrible at dealing with things but mostly you suck at dealing with each other, and no, I don’t like strawberries,” he says.
“Fine, I didn’t want to share the berries anyways. Seriously though, are you alright? Because that situation went from bad, to worse, to even worse than worse and you were the one stuck in the middle. That wasn’t really fair,” he says.
Bucky considers his words for a moment and nods, “I’m fine, but thanks for apologizing. It kind of helped, in a way; Steve always treads so lightly, like I’m glass. Like I’m a weapon that could go off at any moment. You don’t do that, you never do that. It’s so refreshing to me that someone finally sees me as a person instead of HYDRA’s weapon, even when I am that weapon.”
Tony shrugs, “I know weapons, I make them. They’re machine, predictable, a sum of their parts. People aren’t weapons Bucky, no matter how hard others may try to make them that way. People are always more than the sum of their training.” They stare at each other for enough time that Tony feels kind of awkward but he can’t look away now for no real reason other than he thinks that Bucky will win. At what, exactly, Tony didn’t know but being entered into a competition meant he had to win it even if it only existed in his own mind.
Bucky picks himself up off the ground and walks over to Tony, pulling him in to a hug, “thank you,” he says and Tony feels kind of bad for silently competing with Bucky for nothing but Bucky doesn’t know so it’s fine.
“Um,” he says for lack of a better expression of emotion. God, no wonder he only has two friends and one fail of a relationship.
Bucky steps away, “um. Sorry,” he says, looking awkward.
“Ehh, I’ve had shittier hugs. One time Rhodey almost threw me off a balcony he hugged me so enthusiastically and now there are no more drunk hugs for my safety,” he says. Rhodey had felt so bad but Tony was also drunk so he thought it was hilarious despite almost being tossed off a second story balcony with nothing but a concrete patio to break his fall. In hind sight he was a bit of a fucking idiot. Ten out of ten, he would do again.
Bucky continues to be weird and awkward so Tony decides he was going to do his own thing, ignoring Bucky’s presence for the most part. He toys with the magnetic fields on the invention he had been trying to make into a workable… thing of some sort; it was rather useless in his opinion. A late night adventure that had no practical uses presently. “That stucky Bucky thing was hilarious,” he says after some time of silence because Bucky needed to understand his hilarious comedy genius.
“We’ll see. There will be revenge,” Bucky tells him, giving him an appraising look.
“Uh huh, sure. I look forward to it,” he says and grins at Bucky, who narrows his eyes at him. The guy could have killed him like five hundred times over, Tony was convinced Bucky was actually thirty bunnies in a human suit.
“You are very irresponsible,” Bucky tells him.
“Oh but in the best ways,” he says and winks. Bucky looks traumatized and rude, most people would be flattered that Tony winked at them. He wrinkles his nose at Bucky and turns to his strawberries for some sort of inspiration in invention, finding nothing but a pile of fruit though that was unsurprising. People liked to attribute muse to the artist but the scientist needed muse too, and Tony currently had none of that thanks to his rather emotionally exhausting twenty four hours.
“Something wrong?” Bucky asks after he starts playing basketball with strawberry heads and the trash can.
Tony shrugs, “no, I’m just out of ideas for now,” he says.
Bucky’s eyebrows draw together, “that’s not at all in your usual behavior, usually you’re working like you’re running out of time. You are not okay,” he says with enough certainty that for a second Tony believes him.
“I’m fine,” he insists, “I’m probably just hungry or something,” he says.
“Then eat,” Bucky tells him. Tony wrinkles his nose but Bucky doesn’t let it go, irritating him continuously until Tony finally agrees to go eat something other than strawberries.
*
Natasha runs into him on the way to the kitchen and raises an eyebrow, “Bucky irritated you into eating?” she asks when he tells her what he was doing.
“Yes, and he’s surprisingly annoying,” Tony says. He was surprised too, really, most people weren’t irritating enough to make him do things but Bucky managed through judgmental looks and sad comments.
“Hmm. Have you seen Steve around? Usually Steve is wherever Bucky is,” she says.
“No, why would I have seen Steve? Or cared if I did?” he asks.
“Right, you don’t get along with Steve, why would you have information on him? I’ll go asks Coulson,” she says.
“Well I don’t not have information on him,” he says.
She tilts her head to the side, “do you though?” she asks and walks off before he can tell her that yes, he knew things about Steve. Like… Steve was friends with Bucky, that was a thing that he knew, and also Steve was a good fighter and a considerably good teacher if a little easy to fool. Tony liked to fake being hurt to get out of things frequently and Steve fell for it every time.
Ignoring Nat he walks off in the opposite direction she left in before he realizes that the kitchen was in the direction that Nat had walked off in and he needed to at least convince Bucky he ate. Next time Bucky started harassing him about food he was going to ask for the last time Bucky ate because he could guarantee that the time Bucky ate was just as long ago as the last time he ate. Then Bucky couldn’t bitch because it would be hypocritical to do so. He’d probably still complain but Tony would ignore him.
“Great,” he mumbles when he gets to the kitchen, finding Steve there cooking. If it wasn’t Bucky who harassed him into going to the kitchen he would have assumed Sam was behind this. Frankly Tony had no idea how Sam always seemed to throw him, Steve, and Bucky together so successfully without any of them knowing until they were suddenly stuck in the same room with each other. He wanted some tips, Pepper had terrible taste in men and he thought she’d be cute with Happy but despite his efforts the two always seemed to miss each other and when they did run in to one another it was always business. Maybe he’d get Sam invested in them instead, Pep deserved some time off from her work life, hell, at this point the woman needed some platonic set ups too.
Steve turns and sighs, “Sam?” he guesses and now Tony was wondering if Bucky was in on Sam’s plan, it was possible.
“Bucky actually. He’s mad that I haven’t eaten in… I don’t know, couple of days maybe? I’m fine,” he says, waving his hand around. He goes to leave but a noodle goes whizzing past his head into the wall opposite to him, “it that noodle-sticking-to-the-wall means it’s done thing true?” he asks because he didn’t know. He had yet to learn how to cook and the one time Bruce tried four people nearly died, they discovered a bee hive, and the stove ended up a block away but according to Clint the pizza tasted great.
Steve, if Tony actually liked him, would have looked hilariously done with Tony’s shit. “No, Tony, do not throw noodles at walls,” he says in a slightly irritated tone.
“Oh so you can throw noodles at walls but I can’t? What kind of bullshit is this? Give me one of those noodles,” he says, eyeing the pot of bubbling pasta.
“No, Tony. And I threw the noodle to get your attention, just eat whatever’s left of my food, I always make too much pasta because gauging how much you need is basically witch craft,” he says, eyeing the pot suspiciously.
Tony makes a face, “I can do without,” he says.
“Fine,” Steve says, “go back to your lab and tell Bucky you didn’t eat and make his anxiety worse,” he says and okay, rude. It was blatant manipulation but Tony already felt back for fucking with Bucky’s mental health and he didn’t want to make things even worse for the poor guy. Again. Steve must see that he’s going to stick around and frowns, “why do you care more about Bucky’s mental health than yourself in all respects? That makes no sense, you don’t even like Bucky,” he says.
“I do so!” he says, offended, “it’s you I don’t like. And even you aren’t as shitty as I thought you were, you just sort of suck,” he says and wanders a little further into the room. Steve gives him a look but doesn’t argue with him.
They sit in silence for a few minutes somewhat awkwardly because apparently neither of them were willing to break the silence first. “Stonehenge,” Steve says finally, breaking the silence.
“What?” Tony asks, frowning.
“Bucky was telling me about your racist alien theories; Stonehenge is in a predominantly white area. Other than cursory mentions of a few other places across Europe I couldn’t really find anything else, and nothing as in depth as all those pyramid theories. The Egyptians were interested in astrology, it’s been proven over and over again, obviously they chose to stick their pyramids in those positions not aliens,” he says, rolling his eyes.
“Right? Alien theories piss me off, but illuminati theories are fucking hilarious. Once I watched a three hour video about this guy ranting about me being a lizard person who was basically running the world. Rhodey and I have never laughed so hard in our entire lives,” he says. The gay agenda had been mentioned in that video too, and anything that suggested that the gays had an ‘agenda’ was something Tony would watch just to make fun of. As far as he knew the gay agenda was to be treated like people and equals but other people had different ideas.
“I love illuminati theories because the lizard-person theory is so close to Skrull invasions but it’s clear that they actually have no idea what Skrulls are and that makes the theories so much more amusing,” Steve says, snickering.
“Skrulls are assholes, I met one once, didn’t go well,” he says, wrinkling his nose. Shape shifters or not they weren’t very good at imitation and Loki was involved in that too, maybe Loki was an alien. He did do that ice thing.
Steve hums, “yeah, I’ve had a few be me for a while, but none have ever lasted more than three seconds in Bucky’s presence before he figures them out. I think they might have given up and left the planet, I haven’t seen any in like a year. Actually none since New York, that was a fucking disaster,” he mumbles. Something must occur to Steve because it looks like a light bulb went off in his head, “wait, you were there, in New York,” he specifies, “you saved them all from being bombed, we all thought you died because your suit wasn’t working when you fell out of that hole. You’re Iron Man,” he says.
Tony squints, “you just figured that out? And I was almost dead when Bruce hulked out and caught me and then fucking scared me back to life. It was an experience,” he says. One that left him with a shocking amount of anxiety issues.
Steve frowns, “hulked out?” he asks.
Right, in giving away all their secrets he didn’t mention the hulk bit of Bruce’s experimentation. “Yeah, don’t piss Bruce off, you won’t like him when he’s angry,” he says. His heart rate couldn’t exceed a certain rate otherwise he’d hulk out and that never ended well, mostly because Tony always got blamed for it. It was not his fault that Bruce got really upset with one of his experiments thank you. The fact that Tony altered the data had nothing to do with Bruce’s heart rate, and thankfully JARVIS had kept his opinions off the speaker system.
Steve looks curious but goes back to his food and thankfully he doesn’t feel the need to continue the small talk. Tony usually didn’t like silence and that was part of the reason he spent so much time in his lab but with Steve he preferred it. He preferred conversation that flowed freely, that wasn’t forced, and with Steve both of their actions often felt wooden, hollow. Bucky was generally silent in his presence too, but for different reasons and the silence was generally comfortable. Steve hands him a bowl of pasta after another few minutes of silence and this results in some weird staring contest between them, “ugh, thanks?” he says after the eye contact starts to get a little weird. Steve doesn’t break eye contact, “what?” he says finally because he couldn’t just look away, Steve would win.
“Are you going to eat that?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Did you poison it?” Tony asks.
Steve frowns, “why the hell would I poison your food, you’re friends with Black Widow and I value my life. Also I wouldn’t do that to the food,” he says.
Tony wrinkles his nose at the pasta, “the fact that you just quoted Hannibal Lector does not make me feel better, nor does your other reason. I mean having scary friends and you maybe being a cannibal are not acceptable reasons for not poisoning me. Not wanting to poison me because murder is wrong was the answer I was looking for,” he says.
“Eat the fucking pasta, Stark,” Steve tells him and walks back over to his own food, taking a meaningful bite while looking at Tony.
“You could have only poisoned my food and before you tell me that I would have noticed we both know I’m only selectively observant,” he says.
Steve sighs and rolls his eyes at him, “how’s Bucky?” he asks, apparently switching gears to something he found less aggravating.
Well, if he hadn’t decided to give him attitude Tony might have answered that but no, instead he shrugs at Steve and walks off with his pasta, content to test it on Bucky before he ate any.
*
Natasha shows up in his lab and he fully expects her to pester him the same way she pesters Bruce but instead she hops up on a table and starts her creepy staring thing. Natasha was one of the few people he didn’t feel compelled to stare down, probably because he had somehow concluded that looking her directly in the eye for more than a few seconds would lead to his imminent death. He had no idea how those two things had come to correlate in his mind but he wasn’t going to question it by maybe dying. “Do you have a purpose, you’re traumatizing Bucky,” he says after poor Bucky makes the mistake of looking Natasha in the eye and holding her gaze for a few seconds too long.
“You remember that thingamabob you’ve been looking for for the last few months? That thing that will bring about the end of humanity as we know it?” she asks.
Bucky give him a frightened look and he sighs, “theoretically that particle accelerator could tear a hole in reality as we know it and allow for time travel at the cost of breaking the space-time continuum because someone would inevitably screw things up and alter some part of history forever but still. It was a low probability,” he says flippantly, “practically no risk.”
Bucky squints at him, “than why do you want it back if it isn’t a danger?” he asks suspiciously and points to Bucky for pointing out the flaws in Tony’s logic.
“Because, my fine one-armed friend, I had no idea that my business partner and supposed friend was in league with several terrorist groups, HYDRA included, and sold my shit to them. Now they all think they can do the theoretical things I’ve outlined in my notes, which they are also in possession of, and if they figure out how to do the things I’ve theorized are possible we’re all fucked. Also it’s mine, I don’t like when people take my things. They’re my things,” he says. Bucky rolls his eyes at him, smiling at the familiar behavior.
Natasha looks like she’s going to throw up and Tony was half tempted to be all the more friendly with Bucky just so she left faster with some snarky remark. “So you found the thing, I assume we’re going to go get the thing?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.
Natasha sighs, “and that’s the problem, we found it in a mall, no worries it appears to just be sitting there for experiments and whatnot. But we don’t know what kind of tech might be around it or whatever so we’re going to have to send a tech expert in. That tech expert is you. We’re going to practice your spy skills!” she says excitedly and wiggles around, “also we’re going to send you with Steve. May and I figured super soldier protection would be sufficient enough to cover you going in and out and obviously we’ll have a few escape methods planned. Coulson has graciously volunteered to help,” she says with far more enthusiasm than the situation warranted.
“Okay but Bucky got a variation of the serum Steve did and he has a metal arm, he looks cooler and he has all the same super solider protection Steve would have. Also I like him better,” he says, trying to counter Natasha’s plan with his own.
Nat hops of the counter and walks towards him with deadly grace, “you know all those cute Facebook pictures with two kids stuck in one ‘get along’ shirt?” she asks, stopping right in front of him with that look that she got sometimes. The one was slightly more terrifying than the rest. Tony nods at her question and she continues, taking another step forward, almost into Tony’s personal space. “Well this mission is your ‘get along’ shirt with Steve, so I suggest you get along,” she says and smiles at him. He resists the urge to breathe because he was fairly certain death was coming but Natasha decides to spare him and she walks off, going to do whatever it was Natasha did. Natasha things. Probably deadly Natasha things.
“Shit, that is one terrifying woman,” Bucky says once he was sure Nat was out of ear shot.
“You haven’t watched her cry her way into a HYDRA base pretending to be a sad, hurt omega only to flip a switch and take out a room full of men five times her size, trust me, that was Natasha Lite.” He was naturally inclined to do stupid shit that could result in his imminent death so of course he had tested his boundaries with Nat. One time. It ended terribly and he would never again question her authority because he did not have a strong desire to get tortured by a pretty red head that was far too good with a knife.
Bucky gets that traumatized look again and shudders, “note to self, do not piss off the red head,” he mumbles.
“That goes with Pepper too, if you ever meet her. People say I’m a force to be reckoned with but they’ve never met Pepper, or they’re stupid enough to not take her seriously. Also Clint, but only because Natasha will retaliate for him. Clint himself is generally pretty harmless unless motivated and most of the time you can defuse the situation with pizza,” he says.
“I think you might have to worry about Coulson now too, he’s rather attached and despite looking like the sweet domestic dad type he’s kind of terrifying,” Bucky says, “once he took out two guys with guns with a bag of flour.”
“Cool. When can I do that?” Tony asks, grinning.
Bucky gives him a look, “never. And don’t you dare go try it.”