people like you must be the world's loneliest creatures

“Bran thought about it. 'Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?'

'That is the only time a man can be brave,' his father told him.”

― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

27.

The next day, Tony sits next to Bruce in AP Physics. "Hi, Brucie Bear," he whispers cheerily, as if nothing has changed between them in the past month.

"Hey, Tony," Bruce replies tentatively, scanning Tony's face. "You okay?"

"Yeah, course." Tony flicks his robotics notebook open and spins a pencil around his thumb. "Why wouldn't I be?"

There's a pause, then Bruce shrugs and opens his own notebook, conveniently filled with equations completely unrelated to the lesson at hand. It never fails to amuse Tony how Bruce Banner, of all people, pays just as little attention to what's happening in class. 

"Just a question of common courtesy."

"Ah." Tony pokes him in the side. "So you don't actually care."

"What—no, of course I care," Bruce says, looking up. "But it's also common courtesy."

"Which means you don't care!" Tony protests, but he makes it clear that he's joking. "You're clearly one of those people who asks 'how are you' but wants you to say 'I'm good, and you?'"

Bruce turns to him and rolls his eyes, dropping his voice to a whisper when Richards glances at them. "I'm not sure whether to be happy about how you're back to your normal chatterbox self. Plus, I need to focus on this lesson."

"I'll lend you my credit card for the day if you give me one example of you needing to focus," Tony whispers back. He taps the eraser head of his pencil on Bruce's notebook. "That's not looking a lot like physics to me, big guy."

"I'll have you know that this is quantum physics, Tony."

"This class only covers Newtonian mechanics."

"Well." Bruce pushes his glasses up his nose and sniffs as haughtily as he can, which is to say, not very haughtily. "Then I'm studying for the potential extra credit."

Tony stifles a snort and then turns back to his own notes, which consist of scribbled equations and rough sketches of inventions he's been thinking up. He flips past a few pages, trying to find a blank sheet, and ends up halfway through the notebook before he bumps into a very familiar series of drawings. Bucky's arm.

For a moment he sits there staring at it. It feels like it's been so long—and yet like it's been no time at all—since he broke Bucky's arm and went home with Steve. So much has happened since then...and there's a part of him that wonders what it would be like to go back. It only took a moment for everything to change, and it's so strange to realize that there are some people who saw the fight in the hallway and never thought of it again...

After class, everyone packs up for lunch. Bruce fidgets a little beside Tony, shifting the strap on his back as he waits for Tony to finish zipping up his bag. "Do you want to sit with us?"

"What?" Tony blinks at him in surprise. "You mean…like, eat with you guys? Your friend group?"

Bruce shrugs, nods. "Yeah, I mean, uh, we consider you a friend now. I know you have your own group, but, the offer's on the table. We would be happy to have you."

"And everyone is okay with this…," Tony trails off. "Not just you."

"It was Steve's idea. Everyone wants you there, Tony. Not just me."

"Huh." Tony tilts his head, watching as some pretty brunette girl named Gloria or Mora or something exits the classroom, pathetic-looking Pedro Quill tripping over his shoes to follow her. "Huh."

Bruce smiles gently. "The offer's always open, you know. You can stop by to say hi anytime. If you want."

"Yeah. Um." Tony shakes his head, forces himself back into reality. "Maybe. I'll, uh, I'll think about it."

"Okay." Bruce's face brightens. "I'll see you later then, Tony."

"See you, Bruce."

As soon as Bruce has up and left the classroom, Tony bites his lip and then hoists his bag up and onto his shoulder. This is it. If he eats with them today, or even any day, he's going to be sucked in and he won't be able to pull himself out. He's never been able to resist those little kindnesses, not even when he knows full well what kind of place they come from. Plus, in a way, knowing their true motives almost makes everything easier.

But just like yesterday with Clint, he already knows what his heart wants before he's even said it. He doesn't want to stop being their friend. He doesn't want to let go of what he can have. And maybe, just maybe, if he proves himself to them—if he proves he can do what it takes to be a good friend—then the friendships can become reality and Howard's promises of money will fall away.

Whatever Bruce said he'd do obviously worked, because here's the evidence in front of Bucky's very eyes.

A little while after the start of lunch, Bucky looks up to see Tony coming over to their table before anyone else does; the guy is wearing this adorably shy expression that brightens a little when he sees the welcoming smiles of everyone at the table.

"Hi," he says hesitantly, and darts a glance over at Bucky. "Sorry I didn't reply to your texts...I've been really distracted the past week or so, I read the messages but…"

"Don't worry about it," Bucky says. He's secretly relieved that Natasha was right after all—Tony doesn't appear to harbor any resentment towards him, even after what he'd seen yesterday (Stone's hands on Tony, the way they'd sprung apart). "I'm glad to see you, Tony. We all are."

"You too," Tony replies softly. He takes the open seat next to Bucky, placing his lunch tray onto the table and dropping his backpack to the floor. 

"So how was your break, Tony?" Steve asks, a look of friendly curiosity on his face. "It's a shame you didn't get to spend the rest of it with us." His gaze shifts to Bucky and he smirks, the little punk. "Some of us missed you a real lot."

Tony studies Steve searchingly for a moment before shrugging. "Um, it was alright. I mostly just worked on some projects. I've been really caught up with work lately."

Natasha gives a pointed look to Bucky from where she's seated next to Steve across the table.

"That's great. What kind of projects?" Steve inquires. 

Tony twists his fork through the mush on his plate. (It's unidentifiable; and Bucky can personally confirm that so is the taste.) "Well, I'm done building Dum-E, I'm just working on fixing his code, there are a couple of kinks. And I've started developing JARV, I mean, not that I'm going to call him that yet. I don't know what I'll name him. But he's an AI. Self-learning."

Bruce leans forward. "I don't know much about programming, I'll give you that, but what are you writing him in? Aren't we decades away from that kind of artificial intelligence?"

"I mean, sure," Tony says, and a shy little grin appears on his face. "But Starks are made to defy the status quo. To answer your question, I'm writing him in Python, PHP, and Objective C. His interface needs a lot of work, obviously, and I also wrote his own augmentation scheme, which causes some difficulties because I'm essentially starting everything from scratch."

"Oh, yes." Bruce nods seriously. "But I'd assume you've been evaluating him on real-world datasets."

Tony hums in response. "I've tried to incorporate some Dirichlet allocation and Bayesian logistic regression, but even that I've been straying from a bit in order to create my own variational algorithm. It's meant to be essentially unrecognizable except for bits of code here and there."

"You're writing him to be impenetrable," Bruce interrupts. His eyes spark with awe. "Tony, do you realize how revolutionary this could be?"

"Well, yeah." Tony grins and bites his lower lip. "I don't know if I plan to share JARVIS with the world yet though. Maybe I'll create some rudimentary AIs based off of his mainframe. Don't want the technological world to be completely overturned."

Bruce's face is absolutely shining. It's an expression that Bucky rarely sees on him, an expression that Tony seems to evoke so easily.

"Hey, Stark!" someone yells all of a sudden. Tony's head snaps up, and Bucky looks over to see Justin Hammer gaping at them from a nearby table. 

Tony frowns, gesturing as if to say, what do you want?

"Why aren't you sitting with us?" Hammer hollers instead of coming over to their table like a normal human being. 

Tony sighs and stands.

"Are you going to sit with them?" Bucky asks, and Tony startles as if he's just remembered everyone else at the table. 

"No, no.... Um, I just have to go talk to them." He tugs his sweatshirt sleeves down and shrugs helplessly. "I don't really want to draw attention to our conversation."

"We could defeat the foul beast for you," Thor offers, but Tony just returns the proposition with a wan smile.

"Thanks, big guy, but it's just Hammer being annoying. This won't take long."

"You think he's comin' back?" Bucky says quietly to Natasha as he watches Tony cross over to where Hammer awaits.

Natasha just gives him a gentle but slightly exasperated look. "You know he wouldn't have left his tray and bag here if he weren't."

Bucky picks up his sandwich again, pretending to be invested in the food and conversation happening at his own table, but out of the corner of his eye he watches Tony. The tightness in those shoulders, the crease between those brows. He gets vicious satisfaction watching as Tony says something and Hammer's preening, nosy expression morphs into sharp surprise and then disgruntlement. Finally, Tony shakes his head and says something with a half-grin that doesn't reach his eyes before returning to the table.

To their credit, no one says anything about Tony choosing to stay, although it feels like a big moment to Bucky. He's always pretty much hated Tony's friends, Zemo and Schmidt and the lot. He polishes off the last of his sandwich and, noticing the expression on Tony's face—distant, a little bit like a lost puppy's—he bumps elbows with him and grins. "You have a last period today?" 

Tony glances upward and shakes his head. "Nah, got lucky. Faustus called in sick today."

"Great." Bucky pushes out from the table. "Wanna head somewhere?"

"Sure…" Tony sounds uncertain. "Where, exactly?"

"It'll be like a surprise." Bucky holds back a laugh at the look on Tony's face. "Nothin' freaky. I promise."

"I wasn't afraid about that before, but now I'm beginning to have second thoughts," Tony says suspiciously.

"Trust me," Bucky says, and holds their eye contact as he tries to will all of his honesty, all of his genuineness, out into the open.

Something flashes in Tony's eyes for a split second before disappearing.

"Okay. I trust you," he says. 

"So," Tony remarks as they step off the edge of SHIELD's campus lot. He squints through a faceful of sunlight. "Not at SHIELD, then?"

"Not at SHIELD."

"And...do you normally do this during free periods?"

Bucky laughs. "No. Well, yes, but I don't actually have a free period right now."

"Wait." Tony stops. "No, wait, you should be in class then. I don't want to stop you from, like, learning." 

Bucky honest-to-God snorts before composing himself. "Trust me when I say I've been planning this for ages. I normally take a couple days off every year just for, y'know, self-care."

"Self-care? Is that what you call it?"

"Better than saying I want to monopolize my sick days, right?"

They stop at the edge of the woods. SHIELD is pretty much isolated, at least half an hour from any moderately-sized cities and right at the border of New Hampshire, so the drive up to campus is always populated by forest.

"Uh," Tony says. "We're going...in there? No offense, Bucky, but I'm not sure if following you into the woods is the wisest thing to do."

Bucky holds his hands up. "You're right. That would be pretty stupid. So instead, I'm gonna give you this, and I'm gonna walk a couple meters ahead so you know where I am at all times, okay?" He proffers the knife he normally keeps strapped inside his pants to Tony.

Tony stares at him, slack-jawed. "Why do you have a knife?"

"Precautionary measures. I'm always a bit on edge nowadays." Bucky's smile takes a slightly bitter twist. "Better safe than sorry."

"...Okay." Tony tentatively takes the knife. "I'm gonna trust you on this one, and I'm really hoping you don't have a cult waiting to jump me in there."

"No cults. Cross my heart." Bucky throws a smile over his shoulder as he steps off the road. "Just somethin' I think you'll enjoy seeing."

After a minute or so, a well-worn path emerges in the undergrowth. Bucky follows it like he's done a million times, and Tony trails him, knife clenched in one fist but the tension in his body slowly easing. Finally, as they near the end of the path, Bucky stops and points to a greenhouse in the distance, all glass panels shining bright with sunlight. "We're goin' t' go in there."

"This is...not what I was expecting," Tony says slowly, but his eyes shine. "So you're a plant connoisseur?" 

"You could say that." Bucky smiles a little. "Or just a botanist. After my parents died...this SHIELD professor, Professor Pines, he took me out here one night. Pines, he passed away soon after, but not before he taught me about...about taking care of things. After that first time, I kind of just kept going, and I've been tending to the plants there ever since."

"Were they okay? Over break?"

"Oh, yeah." Bucky waves a hand. "This guy was a genius, let me tell you—SHIELD hires the best and brightest, even if some of them kinda lack a moral compass. He rigged a system to deliver water and protect the plants from the cold and lack of sunlight. I just like comin' out here. It's nice thinking they need me, in a sense."

Tony's silent beside him. Maybe coming to the greenhouse was a weird idea, or—even worse—Tony still thinks he's a serial killer who's gonna bury him in the woods or harvest his organs in the greenhouse or something.

"Give me a signal here?" Bucky says weakly. "If you don't like this, we can always turn back. No funny stuff."

"Huh?" Tony jolts. "No, no, I—I just—I think it's really cool, Bucky. I'm just not sure if I'm the right person to show… Because it seems like this means a lot to you. And I don't want to get in the way. I'd love to go look inside, but only if you're sure."

Oh. "I'm sure," Bucky says firmly. "I want to show you." Gently, he takes Tony by the hand—he has to hide a smile at the resulting little eep! —and he leads him down the path and to the greenhouse. Up close, he feels the same familiar bliss wash over him. The sunlight reflects off the glass roof just right, and everything is just so pretty and green.

Inside has Tony's eyes going wide. "It's beautiful," he breathes. "You've been taking care of all these plants by yourself?"

"Yeah." Bucky runs his finger along the curling leaves that brush his shoulder, and shivers at the sensations the metal arm manages to capture. "Well, it's mostly the professor's contraptions. But I like to think that even bein' here does something that technology can't."

Tony stops in front of a cluster of pots full of red and yellow leaves. The plants reach just below the top of his head. "What are these?"

"Crotons. They're often grown as houseplants, but when taken care of properly, they can be surprisingly resilient and hard to kill." Bucky's relieved to see that there aren't any greening leaves anywhere. "The leaves turn green when they don't get enough sunlight."

"Huh," Tony says thoughtfully. He gently prods a leaf. 

"I actually have somethin' better to show you though," Bucky says after awhile. "Not just the greenhouse."

Tony grins at him, open, easy. "Let me guess—you have a dumpster full of corpses out back and you use them for soil."

Bucky frowns and crosses his arms. "Hold on now, doll—how'd you find out about that?" He shakes his head and notices Tony trying to stop a smile as well. "Nah, that's for next time. I actually wanted to show you…" He goes over to a peculiar group of pots that are almost tucked away from all of the other plants. "This."

"What are they?" Tony asks. They're a bruised reddish purple at the stems, with outer petals that almost resemble tendrils. 

"Night-blooming cereus," Bucky says. "They're still buds right now, but they're fascinating. They bloom only once a year, and only for a night."

"Really?" Tony seems awestruck. "Bruce would have a field day."

Bucky chuckles a little. "Yeah."

"What if they'd bloomed when you were gone?"

"Now that would've been disappointin'." Bucky gazes down at the cereus buds. "Nah, they're set to bloom in about a month, I think. There are ways to tell. But I can't know for sure—I've been comin' in almost every night, since they start bloomin' around eight pm."

Tony looks at him. "Um, I once had to take care of Rhodey's houseplant and it died because it drowned in tap water, so I'm not really good at taking care of things...but this is. You are. Thank you."

Bucky glances over amusedly. "It drowned in tap water, or you drowned it in tap water?"

"Well." Tony blushes a little. "I didn't know soil had to stay that dry, it made me thirsty just looking at it."

For the next hour, Bucky assigns Tony small tasks while watering all of the plants by hand and making sure Professor Pines's system is still working properly. The sunlight cast through the glass roof turns their skin golden, and lights up the plants and soil with rich honey browns and vivid colors. There's a peace here that the greenhouse holds, and it makes everything soft. Beautiful. Home. 

Finally, Bucky's done, and he turns around to see Tony's head jerk in the direction of some Peruvian lilies. "You about ready to go back?" 

"Back?" Tony blinks owlishly at him. "I mean, yes."

"The cereus plants bloom throughout the night," Bucky begins as he fishes for the keys to the greenhouse. "If I catch them bloomin', I can let you know, if you'd like."

"You'll text me?" Tony glances at him. 

"Or," Bucky says. He clenches his fingers around the cold metal of his wrist. "You could come by. In person. I know you stay up late."

Tony opens his mouth, then shuts it, then says softly, "I'd love that."

After one last run-through to make sure everything will be okay in their absence, they step back out into the unfiltered sunlight and walk along the path back out through the forest. It's quiet, and they don't talk as much as they maybe should, but Bucky enjoys the silence. It's nice. Silence feels more comfortable with Tony than it ever really has with anyone else, even if that's just because Tony's a surprisingly quiet person. The only thing that serves to break up the peace on their walk back is Tony's phone, which starts to ring once they leave the path and continues to do so incessantly by the time they've hit the road.

Once they've reached SHIELD, Tony's cell has already pinged several times with alerts and notifications. Another call comes in, piercingly loud, and Tony flinches. "I'm sorry, I forgot to send in this blueprint my dad needs, and...it's important, I'm sorry." He looks up, and his eyes are bigger and browner than ever in the warm afternoon light even though he's wincing and his mind already seems to be somewhere else. "Um, I'll see you tomorrow? At lunch, maybe?"

Bucky shrugs, overly casual. "'Course. Seat's always open." 

"Okay." Tony seems to relax into himself, just for a second, before his phone chimes again and the moment is gone. "Okay. Bye, Bucky. Thank you. For today."

Bucky waves as Tony darts off—and notices with some startlement that this is the first time he's ever used his metal hand to wave.

Huh. His normal carefulness must be slipping after such a long day.

Self-consciously, Bucky shoves the hand into his pocket so nobody can see the way it glints in the light. He flips his hood up and scans the parking lot one last time before walking away.