Ride On

It was six months after the Battle of Earth and three months after the movie marathon ‘fell asleep on Bucky’s chest’ night when Tony finally found time to process everything that had happened in the time from then to now. He was spending the week of Thanksgiving out at the cabin with Morgan, Pepper, Coulson, Clint, Nat, Bucky and Steve.

The first night they all just caught up on sleep. Despite not having many battles to fight, they were all still exhausted. Politics took a lot out of people.

The second morning Tony spent outside with Steve and Bucky. He had intended to help them chop wood, but the super soldiers were having none of that. Tony was, after all, technically still recovering.

“He loses an arm and gets a cool cybernetic vibranium replacement. I hurt my arm and I spent a few months in a sling and can’t even chop wood at full strength.” Tony grumbled quietly as he sat on a stump nearby, pouting.

“You took on the power of six infinity stones, Tones. What do you expect?” Bucky asked, bringing the axe down on the wood in front of him a bit harder than he anticipated, lodging the axe in the stump underneath. “Dammit.”

“Aggression, Buck?” Steve teased as he walked over, dislodging the axe with ease.

“I could’ve done that too, show off.” Bucky clenched his jaw for a moment before shrugging and looking towards Tony. “I just… Want to know why. Why’d you snap? We could’a defeated Thanos and you wouldn’t have nearly died.”

“According to Loki, he was supposed to die.” Steve added, which made Bucky bristle.

“I know what Loki said.” Bucky hissed, then turned to Tony. “So why, Tony?”

There was a long time that Tony had never thought about what Wanda had shown him years prior. A long time where he had assumed the vision just hadn’t come true because they had defeated Ultron. And then - the snap. A war on time and space. The world, and universe, fell in a way that Tony could never describe in full detail. But still, some of his friends had lived and the vision had not come true.

Yet.

Not until Strange met his eye across a raging battlefield and reminded him: ‘one’.

Not until they were being overrun, out powered, and they were about to waste everything they had worked so hard for.

Not until the thought that Morgan, Steve and Bucky could be wiped out of existence. In the battlefield he didn’t have time to think about why he added Steve and Bucky to his thoughts, but now he was starting to understand his feelings had been bubbling for a long time.

“Wanda, the witch-” Tony felt a lump in his throat, the memories flashing clear as day in his mind. “I called it a vision, but now I guess maybe it’s just a different universe. Everyone around me dead. Everyone. Steve, Nat, Clint, Fury - But the worst part, the fucking worst part…”

He still couldn’t say it, the words got lost on his tongue. This time it was Steve who finished the thought, “The worst part was you weren’t dead. Wasn’t it?”

Nodding, Tony found himself sitting on the stump, his knees having weakened in a moment. His eyes glazed over the wood piles before him - and he found it in himself to laugh. For a minute, Bucky and Steve both just stared at him in complete confusion before Tony finally got it under control enough to talk.

“It’s funny, that vision? It was right before we did this, Steve and I. Before everything. Back then it was just the six of us.” Tony shook his head, “Steve ripped a log in half.”

“With - with your bare hands?” Bucky asked, turning towards the logs. “I have to try this.”

“I was upset.” Steve defended, then pinched the bridge of his nose. “Buck, you’re going to hurt yourself. Don’t.”

Bucky was already working on getting a good grip on a log, cursing softly under his breath. Steve rolled his eyes and moved to sit on the edge of the stump with Tony, their sides pressed together. Tony just shifted but didn’t move, refusing to give up his spot and also not minding the closeness. A lot had happened - and a lot had changed.

“It’s called survivor's guilt, you know?” Steve said to Tony, his voice low. “I had it when I watched Bucky… When I watched him fall. I wished it was anyone but him. I would’ve given up the world for him. Peggy tried to… Step in. Tried to be there for me. But we - we both missed him.”

“Wait back up, were you three-”

“Fuck, how did you do this?” Bucky interjected, then finally got a good grip with his metal arm and, with a literal growl, managed to rip the log in half.

Next to Tony, Steve muttered quietly, “Holy-”

Oh how both men suddenly wanted Bucky to open them up like that.

“Fuck.” Tony finished, his eyes wide.

“Woo!” Bucky hollered excitedly, laughing as he clapped his hands together, then frowned as he held up the metal hand. “Aw man. Tones?”

“Hm? Oh, uh, what? Break a nail?” Tony forced his thoughts to come back together before he held his hand up to take a look at Bucky’s metal hand, which was stuck in a flat position. Tony chuckled, “Let’s go to the garage. Could use some time to warm up anyway. I can’t believe it’s snowing, this isn’t Ohio.”

A few minutes later they were all inside the workshop garage, brushing snow off themselves before Tony would let them anywhere near the equipment. Steve helped brush off both Bucky and Tony, his hand pressing a bit intimately into Tony’s side, which made the man blush.

“Friday - run a scan on Bucky’s arm. Any servos disconnected?” Tony asked as he walked over to the computers, watching the screens come to life. He motioned for Bucky to step in front of a robot arm to get scanned, which made him look momentarily uncomfortable.

In the meantime, Steve wandered to the couch in the corner, thankful that Tony always had a couch in his workshop, no matter where he was at. On the walk over he scrounged up some paper, a pencil and a thick book to use as a flat surface to sketch. The first few lines started bringing together the shapes of Tony and Bucky’s faces, and he let himself get lost in the sketch.

“There is a servo disconnected in the back of the cybernetic hand. Servo B-3 controls the faux extensor tendons. Stuck in the open position causes the fingers to remain in an extended position.” Friday’s voice hummed.

Bucky looked down a bit, shifting on his feet. “You ever think about changing your AI again, Tones?”

“Why?” Tony asked, glancing over to Steve before looking back to Bucky. “Don’t like Friday? Better than Mondays, always.”

“Thank you, boss. That means so much to me.” Friday said with as much sarcasm as a disembodied AI could manage.

“Just brings us back.” Bucky shrugged as he sat down on a stool he was directed to, laying the metal arm flat on the table so Tony could work on it. “None of us will ever forget the moment she announced your life was slipping away.”

“Ah.” Tony managed as he worked to pop open the panels on Bucky’s hand, “Well, I like Friday. Only better AI was Jarvis, and I can't exactly use him anymore. Maybe consider it the moment that Capsicle came to his senses and realized how much he’d miss me if I were gone.”

“He did miss you.” Bucky said suddenly, his voice low now. “A lot, Tones. Talked about you a lot.”

Tony pinched around at the servo inside his arm, quiet for a long moment before he finally sighed. Saying anything else than what was on his mind would be a lie. “I missed him too. I missed everyone, but… I missed Steve.”

“You don’t have to miss him anymore. We’re here now.” Bucky responded, “He won’t leave you alone like that again. Not anymore. And I hope we never hear those words out of Friday again. I promised Steve this, I’ll promise you too: Until the end of the line, Tony.”

For a moment, hope flickered in the pit of Tony’s stomach. But he swallowed it down with a bitter smile. Not many years before ‘till death do us part’ was promised to him.

Then again, he had actually died for a minute on that battlefield.

“We’ll see about that, Buck.”

~~~

Morning came and Tony found himself back in the workshop with Morgan, who was content to go between sitting on the couch playing with toys and wandering over to watch Tony work on digital renderings of his newest suit design. She found the sketch Steve had done the night before and brought it over to Tony, a broad smile plastered to her face.

“Daddy! Did you do this?” She asked, climbing up onto his chair since he was standing.

Tony playfully spun the chair a couple times, eliciting a bright giggle from Morgan before he gently snatched the sketch from her hands. “Hmm. No, I bet your Uncle Steve did this.”

The sketch was of Tony and Bucky, facing each other, Tony working on Bucky’s hand. There was a look on both of their faces that Tony wondered if it was real or if Steve had just wanted the spark to be there. Something in the pit of his stomach told him that yes, Tony and Bucky had certainly been making bedroom eyes at each other last night.

The Winter Soldier was really growing on him.

“What do you think we should do with it?” Tony asked, holding the paper back out to Morgan.

“Can we put it on the fridge?” Morgan asked, being very careful when she took it back from Tony.

“On the fridge? Of course we can put it up on the fridge! When we go back inside you can even pick the magnets that’ll hold it. Sounds cool?” Tony asked, glancing back towards the new suit.

In the flick of his hand, he added a thick silver stripe down the left arm and a blue star on the shoulder. He shifted on the balls of his feet, unsure about announcing his feelings in that way. But it felt right, just a little nod to them both. A bit of wearing his heart on his sleeve.

~~~

That afternoon, Morgan was having a ball chasing Bucky around the woods in the snow, her cheeks and nose pink from the cold; unlike Bucky, who truly lived up to the Winter Soldier title in nothing heavier than a sweater.

Meanwhile, Pepper and Coulson were inside dancing in the living room, clinging to each other in a way that made Tony feel warm inside. They looked meant for one another, even if they had just started dating a few weeks before. Clint and Nat were sitting at the dining room table, talking over some work business and going over all they knew about Loki and the timelines. While Loki had said to keep some information under wraps, such as the mind stone, Tony had felt it best that they at least somewhat prepare for what could be waiting in the future - which meant spilling most of the beans about Loki, Nat, Coulson and himself.

Needless to say, there were a lot of mixed reactions.

“Strange really helped the team understand this timeline paradox.” Steve cut into Tony’s thoughts as he circled into the kitchen where Tony was preparing dinner. “I’ll admit… If someone had come up to me in 1940 and said ‘one day you’ll be able to lift 500+lbs, fight aliens and super villains, and you’ll time travel more than once’ I… probably would have laughed at them and told them to go see a doctor.”

“Sounds period appropriate.” Tony teased, focused on chopping vegetables. “Honestly, after our first run in with Loki, I wouldn’t have been able to believe he would have done all of this for us. Saving me, bringing us back Nat and Coulson, getting us a stone for Vision… It feels like a long play. But - you said you trust him. And the last time I didn’t trust your gut the world went to hell around us.”

“Yeah… Imagine telling your past self that you’d let Bucky play outside alone with your daughter.” Steve leaned on the counter, turning his head towards Tony to watch him.

Tony, in turn, glanced outside for a brief moment, very nearly lamenting out loud about Bucky cutting his beautiful hair short. He kept it to himself and looked back down.

A half laugh, half scoff came from Tony as he got back to chopping. “Yeah, that wouldn’t have happened… Though honestly, maybe it would have. I - well, I never really had a problem with Bucky, if we’re being honest. My problem was with you.”

Steve watched as Tony stopped for a moment, setting the knife aside. It was obvious he needed to finally say something, and Steve stayed quiet to let him. “My problem was never with him. He killed my parents, yeah, I know. But he was a sleeper agent being controlled by Hydra. And honestly my father really deserved it after the hell he put everyone through. Mom… was better off dead than alive after what she’d been through. But you… I trusted you and you lied to me. I cared for you, and you lied to me. You refused to hear me out… And then you only reached out when you needed me. And then you… Saved my life? Why? What the hell did Loki say to you to make you save my life in this timeline but not others?”

“He said… You can’t tell the dead how you feel.” Steve admitted, avoiding eye contact with Tony. “He said ‘you lost Peggy. You lost Bucky twice. Now you’ll lose Tony, permanently.’ And suddenly in that moment the only thing that mattered to me was saving your life… Because, speaking as someone who’s wasted a lot of time in their life - I didn’t really want to waste more.”

“This sounds an awful lot like a romantic confession.” Tony shifted on his feet, glancing towards the living room. “I was married, you’re practically married.”

“You’re not married anymore. And Bucky told me he was very grateful I stepped in to save you.” Steve followed his gaze to the living room, where Coulson and Pepper were smiling and probably flirting while dancing in slow circles. “But this might not be the conversation to have right now. But I do want to apologize, Tony. For everything. I tried my best not to hurt you and in the process I nearly destroyed everything. You didn’t deserve any of it. And quite frankly, I think you’re a better person than any one of us for stepping in to help anyway.”

Then Steve turned, his eyes falling on the fridge, where his sketch was hung by a magnet in the shape of Steve’s shield, which made him stop for a moment, his heart melting in his chest. “Tony, you put my sketch on your fridge?”

“To be fair, you left it in the workshop.” Tony turned, standing a bit closer to Steve to look at the sketch again. “I think it suits the fridge perfectly… And can I ask something? Did we - I mean - were we really looking at each other like that? Bedroom eyes?”

“I only drew what I saw, Tones.” Steve tilted his head towards Tony, and they both realized they were standing relatively close, but didn’t move away.

“And you don’t mind? What if a line was crossed?” Tony asked, narrowing his eyes slightly. “I have cuddled with your boyfriend on more than one movie night.”

“Yeah? You’ve done it to me too.”

“Touche.” Tony thought for a moment, hesitant. “I think we should-”

“Steve!” Bucky called from the doorway, where he was gently ushering Morgan inside. “Steve, did you see the message Sam sent over? Like 911 emergency, check your phone right the fuck now message.”

Tony furrowed his brow, “This sounds serious. We’ll pick up this conversation later, Cap. Buck, what’s up?”

“Super soldiers.” Bucky brought the hammer down with two words that made Steve scramble away from the fridge to go find his phone.

Sure enough, on the other side of the world - someone had cracked the serum.