Therapy

Bucky and Steve sit curled on the couch watching House Hunters because they’re secretly HGTV trash. “Remember the first apartment we got together? The one with the roaches?” Steve says in far too fond of a tone.

“Yeah, mostly because I had to sweep out the tub regularly,” Bucky says. God that apartment was a totally rat hole and with Steve’s health issues they hadn’t lasted long. Then they moved somewhere else and Steve hit a growth spurt, outgrew his health issues, and gained a bunch of weight in muscle.

“That was disgusting, but it was nice to be away from home.” Nice to be with him, Steve means, but neither of them say it. They knew each other so well that they almost didn’t need to speak at all and Bucky really did wonder how Steve could love him the way he did after all that. For a long time they had no space outside of each other, they lived together, went everywhere together, had friends together. They spent so much time together people stared referring to them as SteveandBucky, one word, like they were only one person.

“You ever wonder if we were too close?” he asks after a moment of silence.

Steve frowns, “what do you mean?” Steve knows damn well what he means, he just doesn’t want to say it out loud.

“I mean that we spent way too much time with each other, be honest, did we even have an identity outside of each other before Brock?” he asks. Abuser 101 dictated that Brock made an effort to cut him off from his friends, which only ever half worked because Steve refused to go away. In the end that had ended up being a good thing, at least in that moment, but before and after? He wasn’t so sure. After Brock Bucky had been so suspicious of everyone, even Steve, so he was all but forced to develop his own identity because he learned an unfortunate lesson in putting too much faith in any one person. For a long time he floundered before he found some footing, and therapy, and then he slowly started rediscovering things about himself. Then that whole thing with Steve shook him up all over again and he was shoved straight out of all of his comfort zones and forced to adapt to something new again.

He was far better friends with Phil now, and Natasha invited him to lunch so that was something. Actually she was pretty awesome and she always found a mix of the most hilarious and most horrifying memes to send to everyone. So far Bucky has rediscovered that weird Minion phase that stormed Facebook for an unreasonable amount of time, and those awful rage quit memes. Actually Natasha managed to find the worst of the worst of the memes back in the meme beginning. If he saw one more Sponge Bob meme he would be very, very tempted to throw himself out a window. But then Natasha would call it a fucking rage quit and she’d win so no.

“Oh course we did,” Steve says in an offended tone, drawing Bucky’s attention back to him. “What makes you think we didn’t?”

“Gee, everything? Come on, Steve, we’ve never done anything without the other since we were like seven. Don’t you think we should have our own separate lives outside of each other, because frankly I’ve been enjoying mine,” he says. It isn’t until Steve looks like Bucky just slapped him that he realizes what the implications of that were. “Not… not like that, I still care about you and want you in my life, but I don’t want you to be all I have. And I don’t want that for you either so maybe it’s best that we sort of remain a little separated until we both have a solid footing outside of each other. Go make friends, date, Netflix and chill with yourself,” Bucky says.

Steve looks pained and he got it, he’d miss Steve too, he has missed Steve, but they needed the time. He isn’t totally convinced that Steve is over his creepy pining and Steve was pretty good at not noticing things like that until they all but beat him over the head so. Some time where they spent minimal time together might do them both some good and their relationship would be better for it. Suddenly Steve starts laughing, “did you just tell me to watch a movie and jerk off?” he asks.

For a moment Bucky is horrified but then he makes the connection, “no Steve, I meant Netflix and actual chill. But by all means if you want to jerk off to Netflix be my guest,” he says, putting his hands in the air in mock surrender. It breaks the ice a little, making Bucky’s previous statement slightly less harsh even if the awkwardness is still there a little. They go back to watching T.V and complaining about people claiming wall color was a reason not to buy a house. The bonding isn’t as easy as it used to be but Bucky thinks that maybe that’s a good thing because it means that they’re both rethinking their positions with each other.

*

Tony is sort f freaking out and maybe this wasn’t the best place to do this but he needed to talk to someone and even if Rhodey was staring at Sam’s ass the whole time Tony knew he was there for him. In his defense Sam did have a nice ass. “But is it too soon?” he asks, “what if he like secretly hates me?”

At that Rhodey turns from watching Sam do… something to him, making a face, “why would he hate you? He wouldn’t be with you if he hated you,” he points out.

“Okay but like what if this is some long standing joke to make me make a fool out of myself this whole time?” It was a legit question, okay; there was no need for Rhodey to make those faces.

“Who the hell even thinks stuff like that? Seriously, do you actually think that? Because that’s a little fucked up, man,” Rhodey says, giving him a very serious if confused look.

“Uh, to be honest I thought that was normal until just now when you informed me that this is not, in fact, normal. Doesn’t everyone have a crippling that everyone in their life secretly hates them and gathers like twice a week to talk about how shitty they are but they stick around for kicks?” Rhodey’s face tells him that no, that was obviously not the case.

“That’s pretty fucked up man, you should get that looked at by someone who won’t give up on you in five minutes like everyone else,” Rhodey says and ouch okay. Technically he’s right, every therapist minus Riley has given up on him but still. He didn’t need to lay it out like that.

“That’s a bit harsh,” someone new, Sam, says. He’s giving Rhodey a judge-y look and damnit, time to be a good bro and save his ass.

“Terrible insensitivity to mental health aside, he’s a great person,” Tony says in what he realizes in hindsight is a terrible attempt at making Rhodey look good.

“What do you mean ‘terrible insensitivity to mental health’? When am I terrible about your mental health?” Rhodey asks, giving him a look.

“Always, you never have been good at realizing that I have issues and then you make really insensitive jokes about it. Its hurtful,” Tony says.

“I do not!”

“You just called him fucked up and then implied no one was willing to stick around long enough to help him fix himself, that’s pretty insensitive,” Sam points out.

“That… what, no, that’s just a statistical fact,” Rhodey says.

“In his defense that’s true,” Tony throws in.

“Well don’t defend the behavior, you just said it was hurtful. Is this like a regular thing or…?” Sam asks, raising an eyebrow at them.

“Yes,” Tony says at the same time Rhodey says, “no.”

They look at each other for a moment before Rhodey speaks, “okay you know what, I worry about you sometimes. You whip out some real worrying shit semi-regularly, like the other day when I asked you what you wanted for Christmas and you told me a reason to live. That’s scary man, are you okay?” Rhodey asks and he looks genuinely worried.

Tony is floored for a moment because what the hell? “What do you mean you’re worried about me? I find that really weird when you follow that with some tactless joke about how I’ve been through like every therapist in New York and they’ve all given up on me because I’m so fucked up even the people trained to deal with this shit think I’m an unlovable freak. I really don’t see it,” he says in a tone that was maybe a bit too blasé for the situation but this was how he dealt, okay? So it was weird and made no sense but it worked for him.

Rhodey’s face scrunches up, “what? That is not even close to- you make jokes like that all the time, I thought it was some sort of fucked up coping mechanism, don’t look at me like that Sam he told he wanted a reason to live for Christmas. He thought it was the funniest joke he’d ever told, that’s a little fucked up. Anyways, I figured you know what, it’s fucked up but it obviously helps because you do it so I figured I’d like… I don’t know, help you out?” Rhodey says but he sounds unsure and looks even more confused.

They stare at each other for a moment, “so this whole time I thought you were being an insensitive prick you were actually just trying to help me out? Fucking seriously? Well stop it, it’s okay when I make joke about my mental health but when you do it its just insensitive and rude.”

“See, this is why open communication is very important in relationships,” Sam tells them, reminding them that he’s there.

“Oh no, no,” Rhodey says, shaking his head, “we are not together. Absolutely not except that one time in college but that is a time for experimentation so it doesn’t count because we would never work ever.” Sam’s eyes flick back and forth between them and he frowns a little when Tony doesn’t react.

“We’re strictly platonic, no benefits, it’s all good. Plus I’m with someone and sine this one has been useless to me I have a question…”

*

A few months too late the media finally catches wind of their relationship and Bucky finds himself plastered all over everything right next to Tony’s orientation. Thankfully he’s only been mobbed like ten times in the last few days as opposed to Tony’s six times a day but it was still annoying. His facial expression when he was asked about Tony’s orientation was a meme now though and Natasha was having a blast with his scrunched nose and pinched expression. His short, “no, now shut the fuck up about it,” was also now a hit and Tony resolved to train him in media relations.

“Sorry about this,” Tony tells him, running his fingers through his hair. Bucky lifts a shoulder and drops it because there was nothing he could do about it.

“They were bound to find out eventually,” he says. Steve had sent him like seven text message pages of question marks followed by seven pages of exclamation points. Bucky sent back a slant-y face emoji back because what the fuck else was he supposed to say? It took Steve two full hours, and Bucky commended him for waiting that long, before he finally called and asked a flurry of questions.

“I know but people are stalking you now, someone found a Facebook status you made like seven years ago, that’s fucking weird,” Tony says. It wasn’t anything that Tony was unaccustomed to anyways, plus he was half hoping people lost interest.

“Is it that vague one that says ‘it screams’, because people are trying to read really hard into that and I was talking about this really annoying bird that was outside my window at five a.m. that thing stayed there and squawked every damn day for like a month. I was glad when Steve’s cat ate it.” Steve had been so upset to find his cat munching on a dead bird but he had been downright horrified when Bucky did a victory dance.

“Is the matching ‘the screaming stops’ one after the bird got eaten? Because people are weirdly attached to those statuses. I meant to try and prepare you though, this isn’t going to be easy and I don’t really have much choice but to attach a security team to you now. I held off before because discretion and good security on my behalf seemed to keep people far enough away that no one got pictures but now… Now it would be flat out irresponsible for me to not have a security team for you,” Tony says. Yeah, he figured, but he did have Phil and if Wade was still around… well he wasn’t and no one has heard anything from him or even about him. Peter and Vanessa were devastated.

“Fair enough. Better than making me live of legumes,” he says, lamenting about his new diet again. And Tony didn’t even count pizza as a vegetable, which is a goddamn tragedy in Bucky’s opinion.

“First off you have a wide variety of veggies, not just legumes. It’s for your own health and before you starts claiming tacos are a food group they are not.” He shuffles around so he can look at Tony and narrows his eyes at him. “Stop looking at me like I slapped you with wet bread, veggies are good for you and they taste good.”

“You were willing to pay six dollars for fucking cauliflower.” He could not believe that, six fucking dollars for some cauliflower. They had spent ten minutes arguing, Bucky looking like a fucking idiot with the Bluetooth, over whether or not he was getting the damn cauliflower. He was not paying six dollars for a veggie. It wasn’t even a good veggie and finally Bucky won out by saying he could find it elsewhere for a better price, which was true, but that didn’t mean he was going to go get it. Either way he wasn’t paying six dollars for cauliflower, that’s absurd.

“It’s six dollars, I have no idea why you were freaking out about it. That isn’t even a lot of money,” Tony says.

Bucky snorts, “spoken like a person who’s had money his whole life. Trust me six dollars is a lot if you know how to spend it. Which is not on a fucking cauliflower, FYI. Also if you ever make me go into another health food store ever again I will straight up cry at the prices. You have no idea how much you are over paying. Except for those grapes, those are good.” He is never going back to poor people grapes and he was sad so many people were missing out.

“I just want the best for you,” Tony says earnestly.

“That’s nice, but I’m not paying fifty dollars extra for a fucking half a broccoli stalk. I’ve been eating non-organic foods my whole life and I haven’t grown a breast on my ass, I can do it for the rest of my life too,” Bucky says stubbornly.

Tony smiles down at him, grin wide and bright, lighting up all his facial features. “Give me a second,” he says and he runs off, ditching Bucky’s head on the couch. He makes sure to grumble about it when Tony comes back holding something. “We didn’t really cover it much but I was in the lab the other day and it just sort of happened and here,” Tony says, shoving something that thankfully was not a baby at him. God know what Tony did in his lab and if he accidentally made a child that was going to be a problem.

Instead what Bucky gets is a piece of metal and he frowns at it for a moment before he realizes what he’s holding. “I… are you serious?” he asks, looking up at Tony with wide eyes.

“Duh, I wouldn’t have given it to you otherwise, or made it for that matter,” Tony says.

“You made this? Like yourself?” Tony nods and Bucky examines the collar in his hand. It was simple but the red metal gleamed prettily, accented with two gold slanted lines in the front. The inside of the collar is soft black velvet that makes the red and gold that much brighter, “this is gorgeous,” he says honestly. He couldn’t believe Tony made it himself. He couldn’t believe that he somehow ended up one of those subs with a custom made collar, and better yet it was made by his Dom and not some random person with vague instructions.

“Yeah?” Tony asks, blowing out a breath Bucky didn’t realize he was holding. Instead of answering he slides to his knees at Tony’s feet, offering the collar to him. Tony takes in a sharp breath, “shit, I don’t know what I did in a past life but I must have like cured the plague or something because I must have done something damn significant to get a sub as amazing as you,” he says, gently pulling the collar from Bucky’s hand. He smiles as Tony secures the collar around his neck.