Signals
Sam lets out a loud peal of laughter he’d be embarrassed about if he didn’t live alone. HIs neighbor, some rich asshole who is unfairly attractive but sadly taken by what looks like a raccoon human mutation that also does not have any business pulling that off, has named his Wifi ‘Mothman Ate My Ass’. He calls Ororo because this is too damn good not to tell anyone about but she doesn’t find it nearly as amusing as him. Her husband, Thor, on the other hand almost dies laughing. Must be the cultural difference, Sam thinks, and also he pities Egypt for missing out on this comedy gold.
*
Tony knows he can’t refuse to rent to people who are ugly, that’s obviously stupid, but also Sam Wilson is the kind of hot you find in movies and he was not letting that one get away. It helped that he came with the best references a person could have, a stable high paying job, and a sense of humor even if he also has that fucking bird that squawks at six a.m for food like clockwork. It just made sense to rent out the apartment suite below to him even if he maybe has his own ulterior motives for it. That’s not like... discrimination to everyone else, right?
He’d ask Bucky but when he comes in he’s drooling so he obviously ran into Sam. “Where the hell did you find that new guy? A fucking action movie? Like with good actors and stuff,” he says.
“If you can believe it Natasha sent him our way,” he says. “Its not discrimination to take him because he’s hot, right?” he asks, stuck on his moral dilemma.
Bucky frowns, “I think its only discrimination if you don’t take him because he’s ugly.”
“Well I didn’t take anyone else because they were all uglier. Sam gets pretty privilege. Also he actually has great references,” he says in his defense.
“Then great, you would have taken him regardless. We need to get that guy into our bed stat, do you have a plan?” he asks.
Tony sighs, “no because every time I try this I get slapped, told off, and on one creative occasion my mother was called and then she called my aunt Peggy and I had to hide in Romania for three and a half months. Then she found me and thankfully was mostly forgiving when I explained myself. Anyways, point is I think you should deal with the approach,” he says. Less slapping and mom calling that way.
Bucky grins, “we met in Romania, were you hiding from your aunt then?” he asks and Tony nods.
“She’s the terrifying woman who broke up our date,” he tells Bucky.
He laughs, “I liked her. So okay I guess, I’m in charge of not making a fool of us both with Sam. Resign yourself to drooling from afar,” Bucky tells him, losing faith fast but Tony knows his husband well. His weird brand of charm will more than likely work.
*
The Wifi name changes regularly and this morning’s ‘These Joots Are Made For Walkin’ almost kills Sam at six in the damn morning. Redwing had been squawking for food like he starves her and he’d checked the Wifi just for fun and found that. He’s leaving for work still giggling to himself about it when he runs into Unfairly Hot But Resembles A Raccoon Neighbor. How is it that this guy can pull off the ‘I didn’t get enough sleep’ look when Sam would look like Satan’s taint warmed over?
“Hey,” he says, grinning. “Nice Wifi names.”
Raccoon nearly shorts out, looking kind of like a machine that’s glitching and supposedly his neighbor is some kind of hotshot inventor so hell, maybe Hot Raccoon really is glitching. “Um, yeah. Tony and I take tuns naming the Wifi,” he says when he regains his bearings.
“Who’s the one that chose Mothman?” he asks, curious.
Racoon grins, “that was me. I’m Bucky, by the way,” he says.
“Sam. Don’t think I met you at the showing,” he says even though they both damn well know they haven’t met.
“We didn’t, but my husband happens to have good instincts for this kind of thing. I mean you have a bird that’s more reliable than our alarms, but you know. Actually Tony is terrible at this, but the bird isn’t even in the top ten shit things we’ve dealt with thanks to his bad decisions so I’ll take it,” he says.
Shit, they can hear Redwing. She’s loud but someone has some damn thin walls. “In her defense she gets hungry and I can’t just starve her out,” he says. “If I do she gets louder, we had this battle years ago.”
*
Bucky looks unimpressed, “we have a twenty minute conversation about his bird, Tony. His fucking bird. I’m terrible at this, you do it,” he says.
If Bucky thinks he’s bad Tony is probably ten times worse. “Honey, I’m not kidding about being slapped. Seriously, I’m no good at people, you know that.”
“Can’t be worse than actual bird talk,” Bucky mumbles. It probably can, but in the interest of making things get a fucking move on he figures he’ll try it.
*
He finds Sam outside laughing by his car. “‘Ding Dong The Bitch (Margret Thatcher) Is Dead’?” he asks and Tony grins.
“That one was my brain child. Technically I had the joots one too but Bucky thought that was so funny he let me have his turn.” And all this out of a conversation about Tony’s rather strong dislike of the president. Unfortunately the current leader of the free world if fucking incompetent but the good news is that he’s old so Tony’s hoping for a death soon. Which resulted in his current houseguest that will not be invited back over whining about disrespect. Tony threw out a reminder of that the the British pushed Ding Dong The Witch is Dead back into the UKs singles charts after Thatcher died. Clearly they weren’t worried about disrespect assuming the person on the other end deserved it.
Hence the Wifi name that had Bucky busting a gut laughing. Sam smiles, “you’ve got a thing for humor, Bucky too,” he says.
Tony shrugs, “well, when you get stuck in business meetings all day you have to get your soul back somehow.” God, he hates Board meetings but they’re a necessary evil.
Sam grins, “so you work in business, then?” he asks and wow, a person who doesn’t recognize him. That doesn’t happen often these days.
“Yeah, I own a business,” he says, curious to see how long it’ll take to click in.
“Anything I’ve heard of?” Sam asks, totally ruining his fun right away given that no one hasn’t heard of Stark Industries. When he tells Sam the name of the company he lets out a long sigh. “I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you. I’m the dumbest bitch alive,” he says dramatically and Tony laughs.
“I mean, could have been worse. If anyone genuinely mistook me for Justin Hammer I’d actually jump off a cliff. You could always make it up to me with dinner,” he says, giving Sam a winning smile even though that’s so fucking skeezy he debates on having a personal meeting with that cliff now.
Sam squints, than looks at his ring finger and squints some more. “Aren’t you married?” he asks like he doesn’t already know the answer.
“Yeah, he won’t care,” Tony says because its true but it sure as fuck doesn’t come out sounding good that way.
“Hmm, that’s sketchy,” Sam tells him and walks away, thankfully avoiding slaps.
Holy fuck was Bucky wrong when he thought birds were the worst that could happen.
*
Bucky is on his way back home when Sam calls for his attention. Tony already warned him that he managed to fuck up worse than Bucky so he’s sort of expecting it, but when Sam blatantly tells him Tony’s fucking around in like four seconds flat he has to laugh. Sam looks confused as hell and that makes this even better. “Yeah, its fine, we have an open relationship type agreement- works best for both of us. Its sweet that you’d tell me though,” he says.
It genuinely is- most people wouldn’t want to interfere, or they wouldn’t want to hurt the other person’s feelings or whatever so its nice to know Sam’s honest even if its a little brutally so.
“Oh what the hell. I snubbed him and he was right? No I feel like an ass,” Sam mumbles.
Bucky shrugs, “if your defense, he probably didn’t word whatever proposition he made well. He sucks at people.”
Sam laughs, “he’s not that bad. That actually works for you though, the open relationship thing?”
He nods, “more of less. We can’t be each other’s everything, its not possible so we both figured why even try to do something we know we’ll fail at? We both already have people to supplement in what we don’t get from the other anyways.” Bucky will never hold a flame to Rhodey’s sharp wit and ability to keep up with Tony’s intelligence, and Tony won’t be able to replicate that feeling of safety that Steve gives him. He can’t, not without having lived with Bucky by his side his entire life, and its not like Bucky can grow a higher IQ. What’s the difference if sometimes that means other partners? Most of the time they end up choosing someone together anyway.
“You’re not worried he’ll like... leave you?” Sam says and Bucky shrugs.
“If he does that person is obviously better suited to him. Its selfish to want to stand in the way of that. Like it’d suck obviously, but if he actually chose to leave than its because the other person does a lot of stuff I can’t. Don’t think that’ll happen though,” he says confidently. Tony is... not the average person, and most people are only happy to put up with that in small doses. People like Bucky, Rhodey, and Pepper are kind of rare in his life and he’s too suspicious of being hurt to venture out long enough to actually get attached. Of course once he is he’s like a damn barnacle but still.
“You seem pretty convinced,” Sam says and Bucky shrugs.
“We’ve been together for almost seven years, he hasn’t found anyone better yet.” To be fair he’s kind of a lot but still, he’s vastly underappreciated. Bucky thinks they get along so well due to both of their personalities being hard to handle. When Bucky is fine, he’s fine. But when he’s not he’s a disaster and people tend to be bad at handling his mood swings.
Sam shakes his head, “guess you have good reason for the confidence then.”
*
“You might be shit with people but I managed to use your faux pas to get a movie date,” Bucky tells him and Tony grins.
“See, you’re much more charming than me,” he says.
“I am not more charming, you accidentally did most of the work for me and also it took like five seconds for Sam to rat you out. Turns out he’s fond of being petty,” Bucky says.
*
What the hell does a person do when they’re invited to a threesome? Sam has never been in this situation and usually he’d call Riley but Riley is dead so now what the hell does he do? He stands in Tony and Bucky’s probably very expensive living room contemplating what he’s doing with his life before he decides to just ask. “So um. What are we doing?” he asks.
Tony and Bucky share a look and Sam sees the history there in the silent communication. They don’t even need to speak to have an entire conversation. Shit, no wonder Bucky had been so nonplussed in regards to the possibility that Tony would leave him. Its obvious they have a strong connection.
“Actually that’s mostly you. We already know each other, you’re the new element,” Tony tells him. “We find this works best if you set the pace.”
How many times did they experiment to figure that out? Though now that he says it it seems obvious. “No pressure,” Sam mumbles.
“Ideally, yeah,” Bucky says. “Popcorn?” he asks, holding out a bowl. Sam takes it because what else is he supposed to do here?
*
Bucky is cackling as Sam tells them about that time he stole his superior’s left shoe laces for three months straight. Tony has to admit that one is good and he’s totally passing that one along to Rhodey. “The man was a goddamn asshole. He kept asking me for tech advice and then got mad when he didn’t listen to my advice and shit got messed up. So I stole the shoe laces off the man’s left shoe for three months. Every single left shoe that had a lace, actually.”
“How did you not get caught?” Tony asks.
Sam grins, “oh he checked the cameras, set up a bunch of his own too but I was the damn tech guy. Did he really think I didn’t know how to run a time loop long enough to erase my presence in his room? Or find and alter the footage on his cameras? Okay, he put me in charge of his cameras. Bad choice, in hindsight.”
“And he never figured out it was the guy in charge of the footage?” Bucky asks.
Sam shakes his head, “said I was ‘too polite’ to have done something like that. What an idiot,” he says, laughing.
Tony snorts, “wow. And I thought ‘accidentally’ forwarding all my father’s incriminating sex emails with all his mistresses to every single news outlet, my mother, and my aunt Peggy was petty. That’s like... such a minor problem that messes up so many things that it is a level of petty I aspire to be,” he says. Left shoe laces, he never would have thought.
“That’s not even the pettiest thing I’ve ever done. After I got home from Iraq I lived next to this crotchety old man that liked to bitch when I accidentally cut this small strip of land that was between our houses. Thing was this decrepit old geezer never cut the spot himself and I didn’t want the space between our yards to have a mohawk because the petty old man refused to mow it. So I snuck over to his house and took the hub caps off his car, stuffed a bunch of shrimp in there, stuck them back on, and left the shrimp to rot in the middle of the high summer heat. He spent weeks looking for the source of the stench before trying, and failing, to sell his car. And I cut the mohawk every week and found proof that it was on my property so I could cut it if I damn well pleased,” he says.
Start to finish, Tony decides, that was a wild ride. “Once, this kid was being a dickhead to Steve so I slashed his tires,” Bucky says.
Tony frowns, “that’s illegal,” he points out.
Bucky squints at him, “coming from the guy who hacked the Pentagon because Justin Hammer told him he couldn’t do it and landed himself on a terrorist watch list for almost two decades that’s a joke.”
Oh, right. He forgot about that. “In my defense Justin Hammer is a scourge on this earth and also I did it so all his laughing was for nothing. It took fifteen minutes, they aren’t smart. Also slightly in my defense but not really I hacked some other government agencies because the military refused to give Rhodey a vacation and that’s why Agent pays a visit every week. I was supposed to be on house arrest for like five years but aunt Peggy pulled some strings and threatened to kill me a time or ten for being dumb. Rhodey got the vacation though so I mean they’re still recovering from me scrambling their systems but I got what I wanted.”
Sam and Bucky exchange a look. “You married this?” he asks and Bucky shrugs.
“He had the best offer. I mean be rich in America? Hell yeah.”
Sam raises an eyebrow, “you’re not American?” he asks, probably because Bucky doesn’t have an accent. Well, he does, but its a Brooklyn accent.
“I have a dual citizenship with Romania. I grew up in Brooklyn but that’s where my family is from. Anyways I was poor here, then I was poor in Romania, and then I met Tony and now I’m rich in America. I don’t really mind being one step away from a mail order bride,” he says casually.
Sam snorts, “yeah, that’s not a bad deal.”
*
Okay he needs to tell someone and the best he’s got is Riley’s grave. “You need to give me a sign or something because all I wanted was a good laugh at the Wifi names- this mornings is ‘Tricky Dick Was In On It’. I don’t even know what ‘it’ is, but I laughed so hard when I read ‘Tricky Dick’ that for once I woke Redwing up. So like. Get your ghost ass up, get to a Ouija board that isn’t in my house because you know I don’t fuck with that shit, and tell me what to do.”
Obviously Riley does nothing, lazy bastard, so he leaves to go find some real friends to ask about his threesome problem.
*
Natasha rolls her eyes, “I am not giving you advice. I didn’t give Sam advice, I’m not giving you advice,” she tells Bucky and Tony. Damn useless boys, they all like each other, problem fucking solved. But when she tells them that they short circuit like the solution can’t be that easy. It totally is but they won’t listen to that.
“Wait,” Bucky says, “Sam asked your for advice?”
She rolls her eyes again, “yeah, so go talk to him about your feelings instead of me. Damn men,” she mumbles. Across the room Pepper gives her a pitying look and boy would she know given that she’s dealt with Tony for longer than any human should have to. The woman deserves a Nobel Prize.
*
They all sit confused because Natasha is useless, they’ve all agreed. “There hasn’t even been a threesome yet,” Sam says and Tony snorts.
“Shit, if that’s what you were waiting for take off your damn pants.”
Bucky laughs, “or you know, we could have a conversation.” Probably the best course of action, he figures. They didn’t really expect to get along with Sam so well but its not exactly a bad thing.
“I’m in favor of pants removal, who’s with me?” Sam asks. Tony raises his hand and Bucky sighs.
“You guys are assholes, we have to talk about it but I guess fine, have it your way.
“Keep that attitude up and I’ll start stealing the shoelaces to your left shoes,” Sam tells him and they all laugh.