It started out innocent enough. A joking wink here, a not-so-serious comment there. Tony was known for things like this. But he had no idea it would end up with him getting to this point in his life, lying down on a couch in his workshop with a dark and mysterious supersoldier on top of him. It turns out that just because someone knows you’re a joker doesn’t mean they don’t know when you mean something. Good to know. Of course, this recent turn of events isn’t unwelcome, just a surprise. For many reasons, of course.
⧫ Three months ago ⧫
When James Buchanan Barnes walked into the communal living room after his workout, Tony really couldn’t help himself. It wasn’t his fault, really. The whistle that left his lips was purely accidental, only able to come out by instinct. If it were his choice, he really would have stopped it.
His accidental flirtation was met by a weird look from the man it was directed at, and snickers from everyone else. They were all used to this, but this was the first time Tony was hitting on the super soldier. Usually, his favorite target was Steve.
“Can I help you with something?” Bucky asked, looking at Tony with that same unreadable glint in his eyes as before. Confusing, but Tony wasn’t going to let his joke get away from him that easily, even if the soldier took everything even more seriously than Rogers at times.
“Yes, you can.” Tony was smirking, leaning forward in his chair with his head resting on his palm, visibly checking Bucky out. “You should just keep walking away, please.”
“Why? How would that help?” Bucky asked, before a look of realization passed quickly over his face before being quickly covered with a smirk of his own. “Oh, I get it.” He shook his head laughing a bit. “You pervert.”
“Hey, you can’t blame me. When there’s such a hot piece of ass walking around, it’s hard not to stare!” Tony smiled, glad his little scene was being reciprocated. The banter was way more fun than when he flirted with captain tight- ass.
“Sure, Tony, I’ll keep walking,” Bucky said, his smile clear in his voice. And he did keep walking, but everyone in the room swore there was a bit more swing to his hips. Tony giggled internally- wait, not giggled, he was a grown man. Chuckled. He chuckled.
“This will be fun,” Tony muttered aloud, and everyone knew that this new game that would be going on could either be nothing, end well, or end very, very badly.
Well, everyone except Tony knew. For a genius, he didn’t really care about details like that very often.
⠂⠂⠂⠂
Over the course of the next few weeks, their flirting got to the point where everyone just assumed they were actually dating.
“I hate to see you go, but I love watching you leave,” Bucky would call to Tony as he was getting ready to fly home after a battle was finished.
“Going for a classic are we?” Tony would smile back and throw up a peace sign, “well, bite my shiny metal ass.”
“Maybe later, sweetcheeks!” And then Tony would take off and Bucky would smile all the way back to the tower.
“Did you even understand the reference he made?” Clint asked after he got bored going over his after mission report on the helicarrier.
“No, that was a reference?” Bucky asked, and Clint just blinked, smiled, and said: “yeah, I’ll show you later.”
It went on like that, with Bucky and Tony flirting and making Steve really uncomfortable, for a long time.
“Really, Buck, I could just take you right here,” Tony said sweetly while cuddling during a team movie.
“Please, don’t say that. You guys are my friends. I’ve known Bucky forever. I don’t need these images in my mind,” Steve would plead, before leaving the room to possibly bleach his mind.
“God, guys, I’d say you're sweet, but I think you’re breaking the captain. Maybe you should chill it with the innuendos that are more like blatant promises for sex for a bit?” Bruce asked.
“What? Come one, we’re just joking around,” Tony turned to his friends in the room, not noticing Bucky tense ever so slightly at the admission.
“Of course,” Natasha muttered just loud enough to be heard by everyone in the room, her eyes narrowing a bit as she realized what the minuscule tense meant. Bucky meant it. “We’re just saying that you’re making the captain uncomfortable, and maybe that means you should take it down a notch.”
“Fine,” Tony groaned and snuggled in closer to Bucky. “Sugar Muffin, our love is forbidden. What do we do?”
“We ignore the words of haters and don’t kill ourselves,” Bucky smirked down, and Tony smiled and yawned.
“Shakespeare references,” he muttered sleepily, “nice.” And then he fell asleep.
“Not a word,” Bucky growled dangerously to everyone in the room. They heeded his warning.
The day anything finally happened, it was because of conflict.
“You have to stop risking your life like that!” Bucky yelled, following a limping Tony to the workshop. Tony was trying desperately to tune him out, but was not doing great. Every word just made him angrier and angrier.
“I didn’t get more hurt than anyone else out there today,” Tony muttered, just trying to get to his workshop as fast as he could. He actually was in quite a bit of pain, but he wasn’t about to let Bucky know that.
“You wear a suit of armor. It’s ten times harder for you to get hurt than anyone else. And yet you still managed to walk away worse off today. And you know why? Because you were reckless and stupid-”
“Oh can it, Barnes-” Tony snarled violently. This was getting out of hand. “So what? I have a bad sprain and a couple of broken ribs. I’ll get over it.”
“I had to shove your arm back into its socket in the helicarrier!”
“But it’s in the right place now, so who cares.”
“I care!”
“Just shut up, please,” Tony finally snapped. He had a headache and he just wanted to lie down. They were at the door of his workshop. “It’s not my fault the suit fell apart. I know it was inconvenient, but I was in the best place to set off the bomb anyway-”
“You were completely unprotected,” Bucky interrupted him. “You could have died.”
“Which would have been better than any of you guys dying,” he snapped. After realizing what he said, he stomped into his workshop and had the door locked so quickly Bucky didn’t even have the time to process what Tony said before he was gone.
“Is that what you think?” He called through the door. “Tony, get your ass out here and talk to me dammit!” There was no response. “How would you dying be better than any of us? You’re just as important, and you do the same amount, if not more, work than any other Avenger.” Still, silence. “Just come back out.” Bucky waited another five minutes before he sighed and left. He didn’t know that Tony was in his workshop, angry and confused, and wishing he could go back to just mindless flirting.
After that, Tony started to avoid Bucky. He didn’t know why, he just wanted to stay as far away from Bucky as possible. But while he was away, he started to notice some pesky little feelings always getting in the way. Like how he felt every time JARVIS told him James was about to enter a room he was in, and he had to escape. How warm the image of Bucky’s smile made him, and how much the sparkle in his eyes made him just want to run into the kitchen while he was cooking and hug him. And then he missed his voice, and the words that voice said. It was weird to go from having Bucky’s constant presence to nothing.
He was lonely, and he hated it.
Bucky was in much the same place, though. He was hunting Tony down on a daily, always a second or two too slow. He noticed how every room seemed dimmer without the light glow of the reactor seeping through Tony’s t-shirts when he didn’t wear an extra layer to cover up. He missed the smile, smirk, and grin. He missed his face and how much he’d talk, even though Bucky only understood half of it sometimes.
So one day, when Bucky found Tony, Tony didn’t run.
“I missed you,” Bucky muttered awkwardly.
“I missed you too,” Tony replied.
“I’m sorry for getting angry at you.”
“I apologize for avoiding you.”
And then they suffered through agonizing silence until Bucky finally moved forward and kissed him. He pulled out every feeling of sadness and longing and hope from those days when he thought Tony hated him, and he poured all of it into what he was doing now. The most gratifying part was when Tony kissed him back, pulling him onto the couch so they could both sit down.
After, they both looked up. “Do you need help?” Bucky asked. “Before, what you said-”
“No, I didn’t mean it like that,” Tony answered quickly. “I meant it like ‘I care about all of you a lot and I want to protect you at all costs.’”
Bucky nodded and decided to keep an eye on it.
“Can I just kiss you again?” Tony asked, not very shyly at all. In fact, he was leaning on the arm of the couch, pulling Bucky on top of him.
“You don’t know how long I’ve wanted you to say something like that,” Bucky smirked, before meeting their lips once again.