Chapter 4
“So how’s the new apartment?” Ace asks.
Bucky snorts into his morning coffee because yet again he had one of Those Moments. “This morning I found out that Clint has been living with me for a week and this place is so big that we haven’t run into each other and Clint went looking for me the last three days. Is this seriously an apartment to you?” he asks, curious. Did rich people live in houses bigger than this? Why? Unless they were housing a freaking colony they didn’t need this much space.
“I’ve lived in various mansions all my life so yeah, that’s actually really small. I guess assuming you lived in a closet is more because of my own perceptions than um… normal people perceptions, huh?” Ace says, sounding somewhat embarrassed.
“Nah. I really did live in a closet. My friends and I nicknamed it the Harry Potter house. It made the nasty roach infestation that I had there for the first year marginally less horrible. I think the only reason the landlord every fixed that was because someone released the roaches into his house or that’s what I heard anyways.” That guy was a total prick and he was curious as to how Ace managed to get him out of his lease. Probably a lot of money an bribery. He hoped Zola got stung by five very angry wasps in the near future.
“Oh. Well that’s horrible. I guess you must like the space you have now,” Ace says.
Yeah, he would if his house didn’t feel so damn empty all the time. He was half tempted to tell Sam and Steve to take one of the other rooms so that he felt less lonely with only Clint around. “It’s nice, but way bigger than I’m used to. Seriously, I lost a whole person in here for a week. Love that porch though, last night I was enjoying the sun when someone’s parrot got loose and I got the pleasure of talking to it before it flew away.” The owner was doing a lot of screaming and Bucky hoped that he got the parrot back, but talking to the bird had been nice and more than entertaining.
“You had a conversation with a parrot last night? Seriously?” Ace asks.
“You’ve known me long enough to know that this is not unusual to me. Accept it.”
*
Bucky’s research has told him that Ace is likely between the age of thirty and forty according to Hope Van Dyne’s age. He’d narrow it down further but that was difficult with the lack of detail that he had. He also learned that a sad number of people lost their parents to car crashes young, ‘Rhodey’ is a common name, and most of the other information was generic. And looking up AES as initials instead of an acronym left way too many possibilities. And AES lead to a bunch of company bullshit and some other stuff that was irrelevant.
“We’re going to Romania the day after tomorrow, thought I should let you know,” Clint says, casually eating some M&Ms. Bucky gives him a look and Clint shrugs, “what? I want to visit Pietro and you can go visit old crotchety Ethyl.”
“If you told Aunt Ethyl that I’ll be in Romania this week I sincerely hope that Pietro has left you for another man,” he says very seriously.
Clint snorts, “chill Barnes, I didn’t tell Ethyl. I did book us a spot in some swanky hotel though, that little black card of yours is useful,” he says, grinning.
“How long have you had that?” he asks.
“Long enough to know you’re a shit employee. I’ll happily take your place.” Bucky rolls his eyes and gives Clint a playful shove, instructing him to give that card back.
*
Watching Clint and Pietro try to communicate was fucking hilarious. Pietro had an accent all the time but after spending so much time in Romania his accent was way thicker than normal and Clint was hard of hearing to begin with. Bucky, of course, understood all of what poor Pietro was trying to communicate- including the frustrated Romanian swear words- while Clint looked like a confused puppy.
Bucky wanders off right as Pietro gives up and switches to sign language, which Clint seems considerably more comfortable with. Wanda was off somewhere entertaining herself and Bucky makes his way to a nearby coffee shop to try and figure out who the hell AES was. He had a few more search combinations to try and he was damn determined to figure it out. In the meantime, though, he learned that his employer didn’t sleep very well because the time zone difference hasn’t made his response times any slower.
Wanda shows up some time later looking a lot more relaxed than she has in some time, probably because she worried too much about Pietro. He has always been the more responsible one though so Bucky didn’t see why she would be worried. Pietro, on the other hand, seemed content to be worried from a distance. Maybe because Wanda didn’t take being worried up close well.
“How goes your search?” she asks, her accent heavier than it normally is.
“Fine,” he answers in English, not sure why she chose the language given that he also knew Romanian. “Actually I still haven’t found anything useful so maybe not so fine. But I’m working on it!” he kept coming across stuff for Tony Stark, but that didn’t account for the E and there was no way he was working for Tony Stark.
Wanda nods and presses her hands to her coffee cup. “You seem… attached to your boss. Be careful, Bucky. Feelings are messy,” she says softly.
“You’re telling me, Sam called me in tears the other day trying to find a fucking ring for Steve. I told him to buy a ring pop,” he says, grinning. Sam had cussed him out something fierce and then hung up but Bucky knew he’d pick something out that Steve would like anyways. And it was funny to watch him flounder.
“Bucky,” Wanda says seriously, “I’m trying to look out for you here. You talk to this guy pretty much every day and about some personal things too. Things I don’t think you’ve told any of us and that worries me. This isn’t a relationship, it’s a business transaction.”
To her, yeah. But this has never been a business transaction to Ace, and it hasn’t been that way for him for a while too. “I understand what you’re saying Wanda, but you don’t know what you’re talking about,” he tells her honestly and without malice.
She looks at him for a long moment, “just be careful, Bucky.”
*
It had been a whim, something Tony had decided on last minute and now his stomach was fluttering uncomfortably and he was regretting this. Bucky probably wouldn’t even be past the jet leg yet and he was stupid and agreed to meet him and… And he should have just left this as a damn employer/ employee relationship but he even managed to fuck that up. It was nothing new he supposed, and he really did care about Bucky, but he’d never be able to hold a relationship. He’s never held a relationship in his whole damn life and because he had a few successfully phone calls from a guy he paid a pretty high amount of money to stick around. What if this was all some sort of… he didn’t know, some kind of joke or something to make him feel like shit? It’d hardly be the first time someone tried to take him down a peg.
So he waits outside nervously, fighting the urge to fidget expertly as he waits. The minutes tick by slowly and Tony starts to think that maybe he misread things when Bucky blows right past him, giving him a confused glance for a second before moving on. “Bucky,” Tony calls, confused for a moment but when Bucky spins around looking considerably freaked out he’s even more confused.
“How did you know my name?” he asks, shocked.
“Uh, technically you’ve been working for me for two months. I’m not that bad with names.” Especially not when he told Bucky about his parents’ funeral, which had been a total disaster though Tony couldn’t bring himself to regret it now. But for years afterwards he had felt guilty for telling thousands of people media and all that Howard was a sick sonofabitch who deserved what he got and then some. In his defense he did also say that he’d miss his mom with everything he had and he still did some days, when he thought too hard about her. Most of the time he tried to ignore that time in his life, and he certainly didn’t talk about it to anyone.
Bucky looks like he’s trying to do some really complicated math and Tony’s stomach flips again, making him curse his damn nerves. “But… what the hell does AES stand for? I’ve done a lot of googling,” Bucky says, brows drawing together.
“Anthony Edward Stark- you know, my name. Seriously? You need to up your googling game,” he says, flippant attitude and easy humor rolling off the tongue easily as ever.
“Oh my god,” Bucky says, smacking his palm to his forehead. “I am such an idiot, I even came across your name a few times too but I had no clue what your middle name was. It doesn’t suit you.” He walks closer as he speaks, stopping just a bit too close to be strictly friendly and Tony ducks his head for a moment, unsure what to do because this wasn’t the kind of situation he usually found himself in. Usually the closest he got to a relationship was sex and that hardly counted. Not on it’s own anyways.
“It’s a family name, Anthony too technically. Kind of always pissed me off that I didn’t get a name of my own,” he says because that’s how a person starts a fucking conversation. Sure, here’s all my daddy issues, have fun! This was why he stuck to sex; he was actually good at that.
“Well, to be fair when people think of your name they won’t be thinking of your relatives. You kind of made it your own with sheer awesomeness. And intelligence,” Bucky says and Tony’s stomach calms a little.
“Oh. Thanks,” he says awkwardly, giving into the urge to fidget just a bit. Usually he was god at hiding his feelings and portraying an air of confidence because he didn’t get much choice with everyone watching but this was different.
“Are you nervous?” Bucky asks, sounding surprised.
“Yeah… yeah a little. This isn’t exactly my style, which you know because everyone knows…” And everyone had assumptions too and he wasn’t looking forward to that conversation…
Bucky laughs a little and Tony thinks he had a pretty smile. That was what had drawn him to Bucky in the first pace, that and he actually looked good with a bun with a little hair escaping to frame his face, unlike the hipsters Tony has seen attempting the look. “Wow, my presence is making Tony Stark nervous and not because I only have one arm. Of all the weird shit that’s happened to me this has got to be the weirdest. Unless you are nervous because I only have one arm…?” Bucky says, apparently realizing that that was a possibility.
Tony looks towards the wrong arm first so clearly he didn’t notice. “Yeah, that’s not it. I… this is the first time I’ve done this and I don’t do relationships. I’m sure you’ve heard me say that at least a million times. But I like you and its freaking me out,” he says honestly.
“What, you’ve never liked someone before?” Bucky jokes, obviously trying to lighten the mood.
“Nope. Guess that makes you a special snowflake,” he says, grinning.
“Its so weird that you said that because on my way here I got chased down by some rando in a snowflake mascot costume yelling about money. I have no idea, I lost him in an ally,” Bucky says and Tony starts laughing.
“How do these things even happen to you?” he asks. He’s never met someone with a life more interesting than his own until Bucky came along.
“No clue. But I got to pet a three legged dog earlier too and the owner laughed at the joke about us matching,” he says, face lighting up in happiness. Tony decides it’s a good look for him.