He Just Likes The Band
The sound of a neck popping made Bucky cringe, bringing him out of his thoughts. He’d missed New York while they had been on tour. Hotel beds left him sore and grouchy in a way that made him question why they even kept him in the band. His voice wasn’t that special, he thought. Too bad they wouldn’t be staying long. “Hey man.” He pulled his knees in to make space for the neck-popper. Lucas or Mark. John didn’t pop his bones, he said it would give him arthritis.
The couch dipped near his feet as the visitor dropped down onto the couch with a grunt. “What’re you still doing here?” Lucas asked, leaning his torso against Bucky’s shins.
“Didn’t want to go back to my place.” He shrugged. They’d only had a three-hour break, and it wasn’t worth it schlep all the way back to Bushwick. “Just took a nap here.”
Lucas wrapped his arms around Bucky’s legs, humming against them. “You didn’t want to grab something to eat with Clint?”
Clint was god knows where getting shot at (by Nazis, or aliens, or the corrupt police force of some country somewhere, or the bratva), but Lucas didn’t know that. Couldn’t know that. He’d just told the band that Clint was a traveling salesman, but he didn’t think they really believed him. John and Mark had on two separate occasions seen Clint fall out of windows.
“He’s out of town on business.” He opened one of his eyes to look at Lucas. Who had used his three hours to get a terrible undercut. “What the fuck did you do to your hair?”
“It looks cool.”
“Someone lied to you, bro.” At least it didn’t look like a dicktip, Bucky thought. He would have had to forcibly shave his friend’s head if that had been the case. They couldn’t go on stage if his hair had looked that bad. “Did your niece do it for you?”
“My niece is three, Buck.” And probably could have done a better job cutting a straight line than the professional Lucas had given money to in exchange for that uneven monstrosity.
“Exactly.” He leaned forward to rub his hand against the uneven cut on the side of Lucas’ head. “Let me know where you went, so I can never go there.” Chances of Bucky actually letting someone cut his hair was next to zero, but he could pretend. Even fans of his were starting to comment on the length of his hair.
Maybe Stark had a hair cutting robot. Or Clint could probably do it.
Lucas looked up at the nest on top of Bucky’s head. Being extremely critical for someone who was very close to looking like a character from Dumb & Dumber. “You’ve been wearing your hair in the same bun for a week and a half, Yakov.”
“I’ve got one arm, Lucas.” He gestured at the empty space where his left arm should have been. “Are you going to do my hair every morning for me?” Lucas had never had long hair, he had no idea how difficult it was to tie it up with one arm.
Lucas shrugged, leaning in again to rest his chin against Bucky’s knees, “if you asked, then yeah.”
Bucky closed his eye, not wanting to deal with any sort of emotion. They did their best to avoid it. It worked for them. Repressed military men and all. “Your girl coming?” He asked, thinking it was the best way to change the topic. Lisa or Leslie or… Bucky didn’t really know, she wasn’t going to last. Whatever her name was, she thought it was cool to date a musician but didn’t really like the actual dating a touring musician bit.
Mark and John dated girls like that as well.
Only Bucky had it figured out. By dating a spy, so maybe he didn’t have it figured out.
“Yeah,” Lucas mused, “she’ll be here when she gets off of work.” It was Janine, she was an accountant. Lucas had picked her up after a show, she’d been there for the opening act. Bucky gave it until the end of the tour.
Bucky nodded to himself and dropped his head onto the arm of the couch. He wanted to slaughter whomever had put Manhattan and Brooklyn in the middle of their tour. It just made him want to go home even more. It was probably for the best that Clint wasn’t in town. Leaving Clint for tour the first time had been tough. Doing it a second time would have been nigh on impossible.
At least they could video chat when he wasn’t on missions.
The door to the green room opened and Lucas sat up. Bucky felt him get up off of the couch to greet the intruder, apparently not someone they knew or he’d have stayed sitting. “Letter for-“ the man paused and Bucky opened his eye, “for, uh, Buckaroo?” His voice lifted at the end in confusion.
Fuck. Bucky knew exactly what that was and who it was from.
Bucky sat up and eased himself off of the couch, his spine popping with every motion. He’d gotten old really fast. “Yeah.” He held his hand out, doing everything in his power not to make eye contact with Lucas as a red and gold envelope was placed in his hand. This had always been a possibility.
He dropped the envelope on the table, holding it down with his palm as he tried to pry it open. Clint and Natasha were out of town so there was no one to stop this nonsense. With extreme grace he managed to liberate the paper inside.
Barnes,
Send me a text if it’s okay for Pep and me to come to the show.
TS.
He narrowed his eyes. This was extremely out of character. It was a trap. At the bottom of the page Tony Stark’s (!) number was written on the bottom.
Against his better judgment he pulled his phone out of his pocket. “So Tony Stark might be coming to the show.” He told Lucas, feigning casual in a way that even Natasha would appreciate. She’d shown him a thing or two. Apparently dating a spy came with some dangers she thought he need be aware of before choosing to go forth.
Without looking back up he sent Stark the affirmative and tossed the phone against his couch. That would certainly get them a bunch of press. Maybe the second half of their tour would have more sold out shows if people thought Iron Man was a fan of the band. Or people were going to hounding them about the fact that they knew him.
“Excuse me?”
“Tony Stark.” He looked up, taking in the way Lucas’ brows were furrowed. He wasn’t exactly a fan of Stark Industries and Clint knew this would be a disaster. Way worse than the time Steve Rogers had shown up at practice looking for Clint. Bucky had no idea how Clint could even still be a spy. “He likes the band.”
Before Lucas could respond to that the messenger came back in and handed over another red and gold envelope. This one was at least unsealed – which meant Stark was probably outside, but it was still preferable. He pulled the page out and unfolded it.
Barnes,
And Wanda.
TS.
Bucky rolled his eyes. This was his life. He’d gone home with a cute guy from a show, fallen in love with him, and gotten sucked into Avenger’s nonsense because the cute guy was a cute spy.
“Tony Stark is most likely in the building.” He forced a smile, grabbing both envelopes before following the messenger out of the room.
Stood exactly three and a half feet from the green room door, in a jeans a dirty t-shirt was Tony Stark. Not looking in the least bit sheepish about being caught. “I would have left if you said no.” He shrugged one shoulder.
“Why the sudden interest?”
“Clint said you wouldn’t have any friends or family in the audience when he tried to get out of going to South Sudan.” He shrugged again, “Lame, for a lead singer.” And there it was.
Bucky looked over his shoulder to see the door to the green room was closed. He was not going to blow Clint’s cover because Tony Stark didn’t understand boundaries. “They don’t know.” He told Tony, hoping there were plenty of clues as to what he was talking about.
“Just a fan of the band, man.”
Bucky sighed, knowing defeat when he saw it. And, honest it was kind of Tony to bring some people for his ‘friends and family’ section since Clint couldn’t make it. He was trying. “Thank you for coming.”
“If Steve or Scott could maintain a cover for more than a minute one of them would have gone. Clint has never asked to be passed on a mission before.” He mumbled, glancing around the room as he spoke. There was a reason Stark had survived being a superhero this long. “But Steve and Scott are shitty spies.”
Bucky nodded. He could see that. Everyone knew Steve’s face – and he was kind of an idiot for a military genius – and Scott was… Scott had gotten fired from Baskin-Robbins. And hung out with a man called Luis who’d done prison time for stealing smoothie machines.
Bucky loved Luis.
“Everything’s still good?”
Tony nodded tapping his watch, “He’s made nine of the last ten check-ins. He missed one because he was eating.”
That sounded about right.
“Scott, Steve, Sam, Bruce, and Thor want to come as well.” He read the message on his watch casually. As though Bucky would think having the Avengers as his show was something completely normal. And like it wasn’t going to raise any sort of questions. “Can they?”
At least they were asking. “Yeah, sure.” They knew what was going to happen the second the lot of them showed up at one of his shows. They might start getting better venues though, and that meant better beds.
“Oh, and.” He dug into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a small purple box. “Clint sent this.”
Bucky snorted and took the box from Stark. He opened it and promptly choked. A purple tungsten ring. Of course, Clint would give him something like that when he was out of town. He was going to have to ask Tony Stark to ring him. “Gonna help me put it on?” He asked, looking back up at Tony.
Tony rolled his eyes, dropping his hand from his watch. “Why can’t you-” he cut himself off, and reached out for the box. Mumbling to himself about buying a ring for a one-armed man, he took the ring out of the box. “It’s got an arrow on it.”
“Of course it does. Clint is all about branding.”
Tony slid the ring onto Bucky’s index finger – for whatever reason – and closed the box. “The singer and the carnie. It’s ridiculous.”
“Clint’s a traveling salesman. He’s in Monaco right now with a client.”
“Right, of course.”
***
“So, um, the Avengers are going to be here tonight.” Bucky announced, dropping back onto the couch. It was probably better to give some warning rather than to let the guys be surprised.
“The cool ones or like the arrow one?” John asked and Bucky instantly wanted to strangle him. The Arrow One was the coolest one. He couldn’t have suddenly strong feelings about the Avengers though. That would be suspicious. He wasn’t about to blow Clint’s life up because his friends thought Hawkeye was lame.
“Ant-Man.” He offered, knowing none of them knew who Ant-Man was, he wasn’t going to give them Giant-Man though. Because they were normal people who didn’t text Avengers. “Whichever ones Stark can round-up I guess.”
Mark furrowed his brow, crossing his arms over his chest, “How do you know Tony Stark?”
“Clint knows him somehow.” He wasn’t involved in that world, he couldn’t come up with lies on the spot. “He likes the band.”