Chapter 4
Steve holds Bucky close and Bucky takes comfort in his close presence, pressing his forehead to Steve’s as they gently move to the beat of whatever music Steve picked. Bucky had looked through Steve’s collection but Steve insisted on picking something special himself so Bucky let him, curious to see what he’d come up with. He chose some classical music that sounded beautiful though Bucky wasn’t entirely fond. He doesn’t tell Steve that though, intent on just appreciating the moment like he was supposed to be doing rather than nitpicking the music of all things.
“We should get married,” Steve says softly, pressing a light kiss to his lips. Bucky allows himself to sink into it for a moment, letting that warm, tingly feeling settle into his stomach before he pulls back.
“Married?” he asks, head tilted to the side a little.
Steve grins, eyes lighting up, “yeah, that’s legal now, can you believe that? I was actually around when that happened,” he says, pride shining through his tone and on his face.
It was hard for Bucky to imagine given how people like him were viewed outside his community in the forties, and sometimes within his community too, but the change in how gay men were perceived was palatable. “Yeah, I know. Saw something about it on the news the other day, and that there was a black president. That’s pretty cool,” he says, deliberately avoiding answering Steve’s question.
“Well, what do you say?” Steve asks. He gazes down at Bucky softly, just a touch taller than him and Bucky ducks his head, unused to having to look up at Steve and also unused to such open, honest affection. It made what he was about to say that much harder for him.
“I… I don’t know. Hey, its not like that Steve, its just that my mind is all muddled still,” he says softly, carefully running his fingers along Steve’s jaw. He leans into the touch, catching Bucky’s hand and pressing a kiss to his palm.
“Is you mind muddled about me?” he asks and Bucky shakes his head right away.
“No, of course not,” he tells him. He opens his mouth to continue but Steve cuts him off.
“Than what’s the problem?” he asks. He looks hurt and Bucky’s gut squeezes in guilt because that wasn’t what he intended and he couldn’t put his feelings to words. It was hard to describe what was going on in his head but he couldn’t shake the gnawing feeling in his gut so he sighs.
“I don’t know,” he says honestly, “but I think I need more time.”
“How much more time?” Steve asks, frowning. “You’ve been free for over two years,” he points out.
“And on the run for most of it,” he adds, clamping his mouth shut after the unintentional words slip out. “Its not you Steve-” he starts but Steve cuts him off.
“If you seriously pull the ‘its not you its me’ line I will not be impressed,” he says.
Bucky’s jaw clenches, trying to figure out how to word his feelings in a way Steve would understand but doesn’t come up with anything useful so instead he blurts out the first thing that sounds just as good. “I keep losing time- like hours at a time with no memory of what happened. Mostly when Tony’s working on my arm, but-” Steve cuts him off again, grabbing his chin and tilting his head up.
“He isn’t doing anything to you, is he?” Steve asks in a fierce, protective tone.
He tries to shake his head but Steve’s grip is a touch too tight for that so he speaks instead. “No, I don’t think so. My arm always works better when I leave so I think its anxiety or something,” he says honestly. It almost always happened when his emotions were running high so the anxiety theory made sense.
“Are you sure?” Steve asks, hand moving from his chin to brushing his fingers along his jaw and into his hair, drawing Bucky in for a kiss. He lingers on the touch for a moment, feeling the way Steve grips his hair, the way his other hand has moved to his waist so pull him closer. The way Steve’s body heat sinks into his skin is pleasant, almost unfamiliar, and comforting.
“Yeah,” he breaths out, “yeah I’m sure.” He pulls back a little and Steve starts to look upset but Bucky leans in, kissing him softly, letting the touch barely linger before he pulls back some, teasing Steve.
Steve doesn’t let him get far as he tightens his grip on Bucky’s hair; tilting his head into the position Steve wants. He kisses Bucky again, hand on his hip drawing him closer almost possessively and Bucky lets out a small moan as Steve nips at his bottom lip. “You are fucking gorgeous,” he tells Bucky, voice deep and husky as he kisses his way down Bucky’s jaw. He tilts his head back to give Steve better access to his throat as his lips brush over the skin there. “Bedroom?” he asks and Bucky huffs out a laugh.
“Whatever surface we land on first,” he compromises.
*
Sometimes it was easy to forget how lonely he was on any given day with all his bots to distract him, or the Avengers, but since retirement he hasn’t had much to do. There was still plenty of work for SI of course, but he was used to balancing that on top of everything else he did and that ease of getting his work done fast left him with a surprising amount of free time. Most of the time he took that free time to try and find JARVIS, managing to pull small scraps of code from all sorts of unlikely places but today he just wasn’t able to concentrate on it.
“Sir?” FRIDAY asks and Tony sighs.
“What’s up, FRI?” he asks.
“You seem… discontented,” the AI tells him. He smiles, pleased for the first time that day because FRIDAY was learning and at a far faster rate than JARVIS had. It had taken him a long, long time and several rewrites of code to get him to express some kind of emotion. Tony didn’t know how true it was but JARVIS faked it very well at least. So did FRIDAY in moments like this.
“I’m…” Tony sighs, unsure how to explain this to an AI. “I miss intimacy,” he says finally, knowing the AI wouldn’t understand. Why would she? She’s a bunch of code, not a human. Not for lack of trying either- he’d gone through a lot of trouble to make FRIDAY as human as possible. AIs don’t crave touch.
“Sending articles on touch starvation to your StarkPad now,” FRIDAY informs him and he frowns, looking up at the ceiling in that ridiculous way everyone else did for probably the first time ever.
“Touch starvation?” Tony asks the AI.
“Humans need touch and when they don’t get enough it can affect their mental health,” FRIDAY informs him. Tony raises an eyebrow, wondering when his AI got more educated on human physiology than he did.
*
Hiding when you were internationally wanted for murder wasn’t an easy task, Natasha knew. Especially not with Wakandan operatives on your ass. The country really knew their shit when it came to training how to hunt people down, Natasha would give them that, but it made her job a fucking pain in the ass. Things did get marginally easier though when Tony convinced the king that she didn’t kill his father. That didn’t make finding out who framed her easier though and she had a stupid amount of information to go through.
Tony had told her Bucky suggested going through HYDRA and Aim records to find any suspicious activity but she’d already done so. It was why she was in this building in Russia wearing an itchy blonde wig with blunt bangs and brown contacts. The slight switch up in features made it difficult to identify her and the sunglasses helped further obscure her features. There were things in her past she had ne desire to share, things no one needed to know about, and for that reason she didn’t tell Tony about her latest lead. She wanted some things to remain private to her.
Carefully Natasha sneaks into the building currently holding her interest, soundlessly dropping to the floor from a window and looking around. There was dust everywhere- not ideal for hiding that she’d been here- but she’ll deal with that later. For now she needed to find what she was looking for. Slowly she walks down the halls, trying not to let the feeling of familiarity sink into her bones as she does so. “Your past is your own, your past is your own,” she says softly to herself as she moves down the hallway to her desired destination. “Your past is your own,” she murmurs again when she passes the training room. “Your-” her words are cut short when she finds the operating room, a table still set up in the center of it like some fucking macabre reminder of what was done to her as a teen. She stares at it for a moment, remembering when she had been pulled from her room for her ‘graduating ceremony’ and she grits her teeth.
They wanted to take away every connection she could have ever developed with another human being and she guessed this was no different. They made her kill her parents. Her best friend. Her partner in the Black Widow program and that was only because Yelena got too comfortable in the skin she had been wearing in America. They made her kill every piece of emotion, every single connection one by one until all that remained was her own biological functions. It wasn’t that she wanted kids- she was no fool, a person like her should never be allowed near children- it was what the procedure represented that made it stick in her mind.
Years of conditioning, pain, suffering, and abject terror built to the final moment when the Red room took away the last remaining connection she could have developed- biological children. She was a monster long before graduation, but cutting off her final possible mode of connection ensured she’d never forget what she was. There was no way for her to connect, not even one she’d never in her right mind consider but that was the point, wasn’t it? They wanted her to be everyone and no one and she couldn’t do that if there was even the most remote possibility that she could find a connection elsewhere. They made her kill all her connections and when she was trough they took what little she had left. No, that wasn’t quite right. They took everything that wasn’t the Red Room and ultimately that was their mistake. If they really wanted cooperation they would have cut her off from that too. Otherwise she wouldn’t have had one final connection to break in a sting of blood, bodies, and bullets. They got less than what they earned.
Blowing out a deep breath she ignores it because monsters were fiction and she knew that now. Whatever the Red Room told her about that operation was bullshit designed to reinforce years of conditioning and torture. She’s met plenty of monsters that came back from the deep- Tony Stark was a good friend of hers, and Bucky shared an uncomfortable amount of history with her- whatever kind of fucked up she was coming out of the Black Widow Program she wasn’t that person anymore. Truth be told she wondered if she was ever that person. So she moves on from the room because dwelling on her past would do no one any good, least of all her.
The media didn’t know she wasn’t behind the king’s death and after all that happened in DC, the ensuing info dump, and the Accords people were suspicious and she didn’t blame them. She wasn’t the type to be trusted when she only ever served what was best for her and she’d change sides on a dime if it suited her right. It used to be Tony’s least favorite thing about her, at least until she sided with him and then he didn’t seem to take it so personally. Typical, but reasonable if you grew up normal. Natasha decidedly didn’t.
When she finally reaches the room she wants she glances around for anything suspicious and finds nothing. Nodding more to herself than anything she steps into the space and walks directly to the filing cabinet, breaking into it easily. Too easily. What she finds inside tells her why. Inside sat two thick files that she snatches out fast, running from the building as fast as she can so she could disappear back into the harsh Russian landscape. Whatever this was she wasn’t taking risks- she needed to get out of here was fast as possible.
It takes time to get far enough away but when she does her eyes widen at what she finds. She covers her hand with her mouth but whether it’s out of surprise, shock, or disgust she has no idea but she needed to tell Tony about this right away.
*
Tony was acting weird but James appreciates the slow approach he was making to him. He’s currently perched on the couch; arms and legs spread wide taking up as much space as possible. Bucky hardly ever took up space but James preferred to tell everyone in the room that he’d take as much space as he wanted. HYDRA never afforded him the opportunity. Tony plucks the cup of water he had in his metal hand out and sets it on the end table to James’ left, gently pushing James back into the couch and examining him for a moment. He stays back against the couch, casually observing as Tony looked him over, wetting his lips a little but he doesn’t move.
James eventually loses his patience and leans forward, snaking his metal arm around Tony’s waist and pulling him into his lap. Tony falls forward with a small ‘oomph’, bracing a hand on James’ shoulder as he rebalances himself. James happily rearranges Tony in his lap, lifting him a little to do so and earning a surprised look from Tony that was undeserved. He’s a super soldier assassin- the ability to lift him dead weight shouldn’t be shocking. “What is it you want, Tony?” James asks in a tone that wasn’t intended to come out sultry but it does.
For a moment Tony considers this, trailing his fingers down James’ jaw and neck. “What are we doing here?” he asks eventually, looking up at James through his lashes. They were too pretty to be real but they were. James wasn’t a moron- he knew what mascara looked like.
“As far as I know we’re sitting on your couch. Or I am, you’re sitting on me,” he says, offering Tony a small smile. It’s clearly not the answer Tony wants but James doesn’t know what he’s looking for.
“No. I mean you have it good with Steve, he clearly loves you so why this?” he asks, gesturing between the two of them. Because he wasn’t Bucky, but Tony didn’t know that and James was content to let him think what he believed. It made things easier for him in the meantime.
“Why not?” he says, head tilted to the side. “I’ve known Steve my whole life,” technically not a lie considering he had all of Bucky’s memories plus his own, “maybe I want something new. Or maybe I want something of my own; I’m tired of living my life through the scope of being close to Steve fucking Rogers. For once I’d like to be my own person making my own damn choices,” he says, shocking himself with the words. He meant it all of course, but what he didn’t say was that he didn’t want to live his life through the scope of Bucky either. He itches, suddenly, to tell Tony the truth but he doesn’t want to risk it. Tony was his, this, whatever it was they had, it was his. Telling the truth meant he could lose Tony and he wasn’t anywhere near prepared to give that up.
It doesn’t help that Tony reacts to his words, relaxing slightly and smiling softly as he reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind James’ ear. “You think I can do that for you?” he murmurs, head tilted to the side.
He catches Tony’s hand as it retreats and brings it to his lips, pressing a light kiss to Tony’s knuckles. “You already have,” he tells him, turning his hand over and placing a soft kiss to the inside of Tony’s wrist. Tony shivers at the contact and James smiles, “so what else do you want?” he murmurs, lips tipping up just a little.
Tony sits back a little in James’ lap, considering the question for a moment while James slowly rubs circles into his palm with his thumb. “I thought I wanted to piss Steve off. Now I think I just want you,” he tells James softly, looking away for a moment out of clear guilt but James catches his jaw with his free hand and carefully tips Tony’s face up to his.
“I know you wanted to piss Steve off, how couldn’t I? It was obvious. I wanted to piss Steve off too,” he admits softly, unaware of that truth until he speaks it. “But now I want you. You’re smart, generous, and so, so courageous. You’re…” he pauses for a moment, the words sticking in this throat for a moment before he forces them into existence. “You’re everything I want.” Tony all but melts in his lap after that, pressing himself into James’ space as he leans in for a kiss. James allows it, pulling him back with him as he settles against the back of the couch with an arm wrapped around Tony’s waist. The hand that had previously held Tony’s hand was now settled on his hip and Tony circles an arm around James’ neck, the other hand setting over his on Tony’s hip.
“No what do you want?” he asks Tony, nipping at his bottom lip, his own lips turning up a bit at the corners.
Tony lets out a breathy laugh, “still you,” he whispers, gripping his metal hand and sliding it lower on his body.
James grins, “that I can do,” he murmurs.