Chapter 4
He rounds the corner and pulls up Steve’s number, hoping Steve wouldn’t hate him for keeping Bucky a secret for almost two weeks. Maybe he’d understand, he was a lot more forgiving than Tony ever was, ever could be, but he had a healthy amount of doubts. Steve answers on the second ring, “hey, what’s up?” he asks. Tony smiles, he remembered the first time he had seen Steve use a phone, shortly after Tony had brought him home, he needed a way to contact him in case of emergencies or whatever. Steve had picked up how to use the phone within minutes and he had been so surprised, Steve, or course, was offended by this.
“I’m not a moron, Tony,” Steve says, frowning at him.
“I know that, but come on, you’re from the forties, Steve, I have no reason to believe that you would pick up how to use modern technology so fast,” Tony says logically. Honestly, why would he think Steve would be good at technology? People in the forties barely had radio.
Steve stares at the phone in horror, “what the hell is this? A magical light box? What does it do, can it cure polio?” he asks, eyes wide. God damn melodramatic asshole, apparently it was okay when he did it, god forbid Tony is melodramatic, then it’s ‘calm down Tony, there is no need to cry over a clam’. That clam tasted fucking delicious and he was just savouring it, okay?
“Actually they found a cure to polio,” Tony says.
Steve blushes, “oh… well this is embarrassing,” he says, running his fingers through his short hair.
“Just a little,” Tony agrees, grinning.
“Still,” Steve says, “I’ve always been pretty good at figuring tech out, I’m sure you’ve read the files,” he says, raising an eyebrow and walking past Tony, brushing his shoulder on his way by. Tony casually ignores his attraction to Steve because really, just because he was open minded didn’t mean he was interested.
“Hey…” he says and trails off, not knowing exactly where to go with this. So it turns out your best friend isn’t dead and I’ve purposefully kept it from you for almost two weeks didn’t really sound right.
“Are you okay? Did something go wrong with your cyborg again? Those bruises around your neck were pretty nasty last time…” Steve says sounding worried. Tony sighs, well, here goes nothing.
“No nothing is… wrong, not exactly. But I’m going to need you to come here and help me jailbreak my guy,” he says, deciding not to mention Bucky’s name if he could help it. Finding out your best friend and ex-lover was actually alive and had been used as a HYDRA pawn for the last seventy years was something that someone wouldn’t want to find out over the phone.
“Tony I’m not so sure that’s a good idea,” Steve says, worried, “you’ve told me quite a bit about this guy and it’s pretty obvious that your guy is volatile, antisocial, has severe PTSD, trust issues… and that’s just the tip of the iceberg, really,” Steve says.
Tony rubs his eyes, “I know, I know, but you’re going to have to trust me, S.H.I.E.L.D isn’t going to do anything but irritate this guy’s problems and he probably doesn’t have any information anyways and… and trust me, when you get here you’ll be interested. Just… just give me the benefit of the doubt, yeah?” he asks, wincing. He knew he’d be able to jail break Bucky, he was more than ambitious when he set his mind to it; he always got what he wanted. Always. Except for healthy friendships and relationships, with the exception of Rhodey. Pep cared, he knew, but she also got paid to put up with his shit so it was kind of difficult to tell why she stuck around.
Steve sighs, “alright, but I hope you know what you’re doing,” he says.
Tony snorts, “I have no idea what I’m doing, it’ll be fine though, my whole life has been ‘wait, what?’ followed by mass success,” he says lightly.
“Tony,” Steve says in a stern tone that he has come to recognize as Steve’s Mom Voice, or the one he uses when he wants you to know that you need to stop right now or else. Except ‘or else’ was usually manhandling followed by awesome sex and Tony wasn’t about to tell Steve he was conditioning Tony to associate what Steve would consider bad behaviours with orgasms. He would stick to irritating Steve into trying to physically stop Tony from continuing to do whatever he was doing and sit back to let what was sure to be a glorious orgasm follow.
“It’s fine, I’m fine, your fine, he’s… well he’s not fine at all but we’ll work on that,” he says, “just get here so we can team up and stick it to S.H.I.E.L.D,” he tells Steve and hangs up.
He turns around and finds Coulson standing behind him with his arms crossed, feet shoulder width apart, probably some sad attempt at displaying dominance. The guy looked too much like a harassed dad to pull that off ever. “This is never going to work, I don’t care what your lawyers say,” Coulson says.
Tony laughs, “Oh it’s cute that you think I called a lawyer,” he tells him, patting his shoulder in what was meant to be a condescending manner before heading back to Bucky’s room.
*
“You did what?” Selene yells.
“I looked up Howard Stark, why is that a problem exactly?” he asks, confused by Selene’s overreaction, “I mean other than the weird coincidences I don’t see why this is a big deal,” he says.
“They aren’t weird coincidences,” Selene snaps, “The names mean nothing.”
“Ugh, I think this is a little odd,” Grant says, “but I don’t mind being named after Captain America, he’s cool,” Grant says, grinning.
“Oh shut up, Grant,” Selene says, rolling her eyes at him.
“Hey,” Howard says, offended on Grant’s behalf, “I don’t know why you’re so pissed off but there’s no need to take it out on Grant, he’s a lonely nerd who wears that poncho you made him on a regular basis, hasn’t he suffered enough?” Howard says.
“Hey!” Grant says and throws a men at him, “I like that poncho!”
“Then you’re the only one, kid, because that it the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen and I was once subjected to Grey’s bear ass,” he says, making a face. Maria makes a gagging noise and leaves the room, having been there on the unfortunate day in question and witnessed the horror of Grey unclothed from the waist down.
Selene smacks his arm, “my poncho is not uglier than Grey’s ass! There is nothing uglier than Grey’s ass,” she says, offended that her knitting was in question.
“Well, maybe Grant’s head when he was born, it was freakishly large,” Howard says, poking Grant in the side.
He yips and jumps away, “my head was not that big!” he says, frowning.
“Oh yes it was, honey, I heard the doctors talking about you once and they thought you were an alien,” Selene says, laughing. Well, at least her mood changed, pissing Selene off meant he’d be miserable.
“Don’t look so upset Grant,” Howard says, “you grew into your big head, your sister wasn’t so lucky,” he tells him. Grant giggles, “and when the does that thing with her hair?” he says, gesturing to the crown of his head, “it’s like she’s trying to make an organic bird house.”
“It’s called teasing you savage, and I’m not trying to house birds in my hair, I’m giving my hair volume,” she says.
“Well sweetie, the pigeons don’t seem to be aware of that,” Selene says, patting Maria’s shoulder and walking away.
Maria looks scandalized, “you people have no style! And by the way Grant, you did not grow into your big head, that’s why everyone at school calls you E.T,” she snaps and stomps off. Teenagers, they were a mystery to him.
“People at school call you E.T?” Howard asks Grant, “that doesn’t even make sense, you’re much taller than E.T,” Howard says.
Grant shoves at his shoulder playfully, “thanks a lot for your support,” he says but he’s smiling so he obviously felt a little better.
“It’ll get better,” he tells Grant sincerely, squeezing his shoulder.
Grant snorts, “You can’t even remember what it was like as a kid,” he says.
Howard shrugs, “doesn’t really matter what I was like then, what I know is that things turned out great for me, I love my wife, and although one kid looks like she has a bird’s nest on her head and the other may or may not be of the human race but I love you guys too,” he says, ruffling Grant’s dark hair. Thank god both kids got his hair texture; they would have looked terrible with Selene’s thick curly hair, especially poor Grant.
Grant smacks his hand away, “I’m so a human!” he complains.
“Yeah, yeah, that’s what an alien would say,” Howard says, grinning. Something was off, he could feel it, but it was easier to set aside his worries and make a joke than it was to confront his problems. It was a bad habit, he knew, but it was one he couldn’t seem to break himself of.
*
Tony figures he’ll sit with Bucky until Steve get there to fuck shit up with him. This was going to be fucking glorious; S.H.I.E.L.D could suck a field of dicks. Had they listened to him to begin with they wouldn’t have had to deal with Steve, but no, they had to have rules they were supposed to adhere to and whatnot. Rules were stupid and unnecessary, at least S.H.I.E.L.D’s stupid ‘don’t release Bucky’ rules. “Are you sure whatever you have planned will work?” Bucky asks, looking nervous.
“Trust me,” Tony says, “I assure you that come tomorrow morning you will not be here,” he says, “I am not the type of guy to let things go until I get what I want and I can promise you, I will get what I want.” Besides the obvious benefit of getting Bucky out of a shit environment so he could at least make an attempt at finding a good mental health status this was a challenge and he loved a challenge.
Sometimes took on projects or funded things or tried to get close to people just to see if he could do it, the answer was almost always yes no matter how impossible it had been previous to his attempts. Aside from people almost all his endeavours went well, people usually ended in him getting attached and them leaving so he gave up on those a long time ago to save himself the heartache. At least until Steve and now he was attached and he was going to leave Tony for Bucky and Tony couldn’t even blame the guy. He and Bucky had a bond, he and Steve bickered a lot and had a great sex life, he couldn’t even compare but that was okay. He was used to this kind of thing and he would suck it up and get over himself. If he learned nothing else from Howard he learned to bury his emotions in his work until he didn’t feel much of anything afterwards.
“But how?” Bucky asks, “They don’t seem keen on the idea of giving me up,” he says.
Tony snorts, “that doesn’t matter, I am very persuasive and they will be unable to resist my logic and knowledge,” he says confidently. If he could get physics to bend to his will he can get S.H.I.E.L.D to do what he wanted. Physics knew better, he was Tony Stark, and S.H.I.E.L.D was about to learn too.
“So you’re basically going to bully them into handing me over,” Bucky states bluntly.
“Yeah, pretty much,” he says, not bothering to sugar coat it. He figured honestly was the best policy here, particularly because Bucky picked up on even the slightest of lies and if he wanted Bucky to trust him he had to tell the truth as much as possible. Plus it was basically impossible for him to lie no matter how hard Obi had tried to teach him. He just wasn’t good at being anything but painfully honest like ninety percent of the time because his lies had a tendency to be outrageous and not at all believable. The number of media scandals he had caused because of that irritated the hell out of Pepper, who was the second person to try and teach him to lie in an attempt to make her job easier. The poor woman really did deserve a raise for cleaning up all is messes. He supposed the only one who enjoyed his inability to lie was Rhodey’s mom, who had always given him those Looks as a child that scared the hell out of him and he always ended up ratting himself and Rhodey out.
Bucky doesn’t acknowledge his words, just sits there for a few minutes looking lost and confused. Poor guy, Tony thought, he escaped one hell to get stuffed into another. He had read some of the files, the ones he could stomach, that had said he was in cryostasis in between his missions so he wouldn’t recover memories and that he was regularly wiped of his memories when he was out via electrical shock. This wasn’t the same level of shitty Tony supposed, but it wasn’t exactly an improvement.
“What will you do with me?” Bucky asks.
Tony frowns, “what do you mean, exactly?” he wasn’t exactly sure he wanted clarification on that but Bucky needed security more than he needed his last meal.
“HYDRA wanted an assassin among other things, S.H.I.E.L.D wants HYDRA’s weapon and the information that comes with it, so what do you want?” Bucky asks.
Tony shifts in his seat and sighs, “first of all you are not HYDRA’s, nor are you S.H.I.E.L.D’s, people aren’t objects nor are they weapons, you are not a thing to be owned and used as some faceless figurehead pleases. You’re a person and you should have the freedom to choose what happens to you, also some of the wires in your arm need to be replaced and I can fix that,” he says.
Bucky looks confused, “I don’t understand. You gain nothing from this,” he says, “your actions make no logical sense.”
“I do benefit from taking you in, I love technology and you have an entire mystery arm of it that I’d love to look at. Besides, this isn’t about whether or not I benefit from getting you out of here, this is about you benefiting from being out of here,” he says. He was still confused on who would have had access to the tech that was in the arm, especially for the period of time they did. Both he and Howard made things that went in there and that wasn’t quite right.
“It doesn’t matter what benefits me, I’m not important,” Bucky says, his confusion seemingly sending him into a panic, unable to process himself as a person rather than an asset.
Tony was so not equipped to deal with this, “you’re a person, that’s enough to make you important,” he says, frowning at Bucky’s words. Bucky clearly doesn’t know how to handle this and begins shaking his head, obviously taking a turn for the worst. Thankfully Tony’s phone rings and he dashes out of the room before he has to deal with things.
Tony intercepts Steve just after Coulson does and he practically shoves the guy out of the way, “pay attention to me,” he blurts, well aware of how that sounded.
Steve laughs, thankfully, “demanding,” he says playfully, grinning.
“As always,” Tony says, playing like this was his plan all along, “now I need you to not lose your shit, oka-” he’s shoved out of the way by Coulson.
“Tony Stark has never really been a stable, trustable person-” Coulson starts and Tony shoves him back out of the way.
“I don’t even know how to lie you asshole, I suck at it!” he snaps, irritated that he would be painted as an unstable liar to prevent Steve from finding out about Bucky.
Coulson shoves him back out of the way, “please, you lie to S.H.I.E.L.D all the time-” he starts and Tony shoves him back out of the way.
“I don’t lie, I selectively tell the truth, you people ask some intensely personal questions!” he protests, they didn’t need to know stuff about Yinsen. Coulson moves to shove him back out of the way but Steve lays a hand on his shoulder and one on Tony’s because he could probably sense Tony was going to shove Coulson out of spite, the little bastard, fuck him. But not literally.
“What is going on,” Steve says, using the Mom Voice. Oh, Coulson had done it now, what a dick.
“Nothing, I can assure you that-” Coulson starts and Tony cuts him off.
“Oh no you don’t, they totally found Bucky in a HYDRA facility frozen and he has been used as an assassin and probably a bunch of other really crappy stuff and he’s super traumatized and S.H.I.E.L.D has basically been low-key torturing him to get information and the only time they don’t do that is when I’m around,” Tony blurts and he takes a breath, “suck on that, Coulson,” he sticks out his tongue.
“Are you being serious right now or is this some sort of insensitive joke?” Steve asks, all emotion leaving his face. Well shit, that only happened when something was genuinely upsetting to him.
“Yes I’m serious, Jesus, I wanted to stick it to Coulson not tear out your fucking heart, though it appears I have successfully done both,” he says, joking because that was what he did when shit got real. It was easier to avoid his problems by telling a lame joke than it was to actually deal with stuff.
“What?” Steve says, obviously not processing what was going on.
Tony sighs, “Come with me,” he says and pulls himself from Steve’s grasp, gesturing for him to follow and walking towards Bucky’s room.
Coulson seems to get his shit together then and follows along, trying to deter Steve with no real success. Tony felt viciously vindicated that Coulson and his heartless S.H.I.E.L.D duchebags were going to have to deal with this and release poor Bucky. He’s almost at the door when he remembers the condition he left Bucky in and starts to panic a bit, “um, just let me make sure he’s okay, he’s a bit fragile. Yeah, um, be right back,” he says and ducks in the door in an attempt to avoid his issues only to walk into more issues. He really sucked at escape methods.
Bucky was staring blankly ahead, seemingly not seeing anything in front of him, “umm… are you okay?” Tony asks, wandering closer slowly.
Bucky blinks a couple times, coming back to reality, “I’m okay,” he says. Tony isn’t an expert but he’s fairly certain Bucky was not fine but he leaves it.
“Great, I, ugh, know a guy that you knew,” he says and Bucky snaps to attention then, “Before HYRDRA,” Tony specifies.
Bucky looks confused, “there was no time before HYDRA,” he says matter-of-factly.
Tony sighs, “I’m pretty sure HYDRA told you that and they aren’t exactly reliable,” he tells him, “trust me, he won’t hurt you,” he says and Bucky processes this, nodding after a minute or so.
Tony holds his breath and opens the door, revealing a still shocked looking Steve. Behind him Coulson looks pissed and Tony shrugs, they should have just given Bucky up if they didn’t want to deal with this mess. “Bucky?” Steve asks, breaking the silence.
Bucky frowns, “who the hell is Bucky?”