best and only friend? (tony age 11-17)
Tony thinks he has another friend at the summer camp his dad sends him to so he “won’t have to deal with the brat whining,”, other than Bucky of course, when he meets Melinda Warren she’s older than he is but she has nice blond hair and a pretty smile and she always gets cool colours on her braces. He helps her with her summer homework but when her friends laugh at her for being around him she calls him names and says she was just using him for the homework. Bucky is there for tony to press his face into in the sweltering hot cabin, as the tears run quietly down his cheeks.
Tony makes a real friend at M.I.T. James “call me Rhodey,” Rhodes is very smart and his first name is James like Bucky. Rhodey doesn’t call Tony a baby or say he’s only here because he’s a Stark. Tony tells Bucky about him the night after they meet his voice full of hope and wonder that somebody likes him that doesn’t have to, not like Ana and Jarvis who get paid to look after him, or Aunt Peggy who was made his god mother. Instead “Rhodey’s like you, he actually likes me! But don’t worry we’re still best friends Bucky.” He likes school he can’t talk to Bucky at home anymore, because his dad says he’s to old for toys. He doesn’t understand he’s only eleven.
Tony learns the difference quickly between people who like him and people who want something from him, Tony wouldn’t mind giving them what they want if they actually stayed around afterward. He still does what he can to help Rhodey out, but given his only other friend is a teddy bear he’s not very good at it yet. That’s when he builds dum-e he wants to know if dum-e will understand people better than he does. What actually ends up happing is that Tony has taken the making part of making a new friend very literally.
He does figure out that it’s okay to do things for Rhodey, not just because he likes doing things for Rhodey, everytime he fixes something for him like his laptop or his phone or the toaster, Rhodey’s mama sends him cookies as a thank you. Tony’s old enough to know that Rhodey’s family wouldn’t be able to afford new tech for him, and that Rhodey would never accept a laptop if it were a gift, but he doesn’t want his friend to have to worry. This solution is best for both of them. Rhodey likes him without him helping out, not that Rhodey isn’t still grateful on one notable occasion Rhodey lifted tony up when he hugged him, just like Jarvis does with his hugs, when Tony retrieved a 10,000 word document Rhodey forgot to save. Bucky agreed that anyone even a little bit like Jarvis has got to be a good person.
Tony meets Sunset Bain when he’s thirteen she manages to trick him into believing she’s his friend. His father has her kicked out of M.I.T. for stealing from him. Tony is shaking underneath his bed the hard floor making his shoulder ache as he tells Bucky about the other grown-up things she made him do. His eye’s are still red the next morning.
In the intervening years tony makes two more friends Hope Van Dyne, a biochemistry major with silky and soft brown hair, Tony knows because he’s the one who braids it for her. She says they have to be secret friends because their dads hate each other, which is fine because Bucky is a secret friend and tony loves Bucky. And Carol Danvers carol is two years older than Rhodey, and he’s smitten, tony worried she only talked to him because of Rhodey but she’s nice to tony for real and not just cause he’s Rhodey’s roommate. So tony thinks it’s fine for his sour patch to crush on her, cause she’s pretty, and nice, and she smells good. Bucky agrees when tony tells him this, so tony is able to stop worrying about carol.
Tony graduates MIT at sixteen with a doctorate, two master’s degrees, three bachelor’s degrees, and 5 friends. Which is four more than he started with, so he thinks he’s doing okay, three of them are even human.
As tony goes home from M.I.T he doesn’t worry that he’ll never see his people friend again. Hope and he are going for brunch next Saturday, in a little bakery that a friend of hers owns they let them eat while the store is closed for lunch, so nobody sees them. He and rhodey will see each other in three months when he gets his first bout of leave, and carol and he have set up a book swap, where he mails her a copy of a book and gets the same one for himself they both write in the margins then swap to read what the other thought. They’ve been doing this every couple of months since she deployed, and they both love it.
Tony tells aunt Peggy where he thinks Captain Americas plane should be when he finds her crying on the anniversary of its disappearance. Two weeks later Howard stark digs captain America out of the ice instead of attending his graduation. James Buchannan Barnes returns in the flesh (not the fur) seven months later. Tony’s Bucky is under his bed.