A mano E oso
James doesn’t normally come into Tony’s room and he certainly doesn’t go into Tony’s room without tony he may have a crush on the guy but come on privacy! He ain’t going around disrespecting the privacy of the guy he’s hoping will become his fella one day.
Problem is Edwin fell the other day and twisted his ankle, so everybody is helping out, except Tony who is fretting himself all the way back from tokyo. So, James has been tasked with putting everyone’s laundry away. He did himself and Stevie’s first cause well they’re closest to the delivery hatch for the laundry service. (which is still insane to him what the hell happened to soap and water) then it was Peggy and the Jarvis’s who all had few enough that he could carry them at the same time. Granted a normal person woulda needed more trips but hey hydras good for something.
But now... now it’s Tony eight suits Bucky’s hasn’t owned that many suits in his entire life and Tony goes though that many in one load of laundry there’s a bunch of band t-shirts and random patterns he doesn’t understand but thinks that they look awful swell on tony. And well unmentionables not that bucky looked but damn that’s a lot of silk. But he’s not bein’ weird about it he just noticed super solider senses or something.
The doors open so it’s not that weird and it’s not like Tony ever uses his room it’s just a bed and a closet only personal item bucky’s ever noticed are the photographs on the wall. So he’s only a little antsy at his feet sink into the plush carpeting besides he’s just gonna hang the suits set the clothes package on the bed and high tail it outta there. And that’s just what he does except there’s something in tony’s bed under the cover and what if it’s dangerous, nothing should be able to get past tony’s security but still... bucky gingerly lift’s back the covers to discover that tony has a teddy bear in his bed the tension ebbs from his lungs. Question is what the hell is it wearing and why does it look so familiar, not wanting to be any creepier James makes a tactical retreat.
Unfortunately his mind keeps wandering back to the bear and not just because of how cute the damn thing was, especially when he imagined tony wrapping himself around it. A few day’s later he’s walking round a vintage shop, something his therapist recommended to help him place all his memories in chronological order, and he sees it a vintage captain America comic with what’s supposed to be him in the exact same uniform that the bear was wearing. So, bucky follows the advice he’s given Steve over and over since awaking up in a century he doesn’t understand, he googles it. The search results for captain America teddy bear are insane and Bucky briefly takes a moment to appreciate the look on Stevies face when he finds out how many kids he’s gotta be protecting from bad dreams. Still he needs an answer so he searches his own name and sure enough twenty years ago the comic series was apparently pretty popular, popular enough to warrant merchandising one of the items was a very limited edition sergeant Barnes bear. Which is weird cause it doesn’t seem like that sort of thing Tony would buy vintage as he normally prefers band merchandise and he doesn’t own anything else captain America related. Bucky resolved to put his recon skills back into practice starting with a time line, what came first in Tony’s life him or the bear?
His search for answers takes him to family photo albums filled with professional portraits and press photos that make him wanna bring Howard Stark back from the dead so he can kick that smarmy asshole in the dick. He then tries with the Jarvis’s here he finds the sort of photos that a family should take of their son Tony’s graduation photos loving candids of ana and tony in the kitchen, and right there a faded photo of Peggy carter with a goofily smiling tony and a bear almost half his size on her lap the discription reads “Anthony 2nd birthday with Margret” in Jarvis’s neat caligraphy tacked on in much messier handwriting reads “and bucky” obviously written by tony at some point and that means tony’s kept this bear for 17 years. Suddenly bucky recalls sitting outside tony’s bedroom on one of the worst nights of his life and he realises, Tony wasn’t talking to him he was talking to Bucky the teddy bear.
This makes twice he’s cried because of that night because all he’s wished since that night is that he could have been there for tony in some small way and now he sees it he was sorta, tony’s been pouring his heart out to a teddy bear that bears his name for years. He's never been more grateful for an inanimate objects existence in his whole life.