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The day Bucky shows up at the Compound—two weeks after the Avengers drop a city out of the sky—is memorable and not just because Natalia tries to stab him when he drops out of the vent in the kitchen. Or because Steve hugs him so tight that the Asset hiding in the back of his mind thinks he’s being attacked. Or because the other man from the Helicarrier—the one with wings, the one whose steering wheel Bucky ripped out of his car—eyes him suspiciously until Steve leads him down the hall to what will apparently be his new room.
No, he remembers it mostly because, as Steve is showing him to his room, a female voice with a lilting Irish accent pipes out of nowhere, “Boss wants to know if he needs to make a new ID.”
Bucky ducks, half-expecting to be attacked, but no one pops out of a hidden panel in the ceiling and he doesn’t see anything other than a small hole in the wall, no bigger than a pinprick. Even that would be enough to attack someone but Steve just glances at the hole unconcernedly and says, “Thanks, FRIDAY. Tell Tony that would be great.”
“What was that?” he asks as they keep walking.
“Tony’s—Tony Stark, you’ll meet him in a couple days, he’s finishing some work in New York—his AI.”
Bucky stops dead in the hallway, frowning.
“Bucky?” Steve asks, turning too. He looks worried, the sort of look that makes people feel like they’ve kicked a puppy.
“What happened—” He stops, unsure if he should really say what’s going on in his mind.
Steve raises his eyebrows, prompting him to finish.
He shakes his head. “Never mind.”
Twenty-four years ago, after Howard Stark wraps his car around a tree before the Winter Soldier can get to him, Hydra realizes that young Anthony Stark has morals that his father never had. Spies in SI report back that Stark has plans to shut down the weapons division, stopping the flow of black market weapons to authoritarian countries, even if he has no idea that that’s what his company is doing.
It’s unacceptable.
Hydra sends their best operative to wipe out the last of the Stark line, leaving the way clear for Obadiah Stane to take the reins. Bucky doesn’t remember much about that night—his time as the Asset has always been marked with periods of blank stretches in his memory—but he does remember a pulsing blue light in the corner of a vent and a cool British voice asking, “Who are you?”
It had been an electronic voice but he’d still gotten the sense of curiosity before it had suddenly said, “You’re not authorized to be here.” The light had turned red, an alarm had sounded, and Bucky had scrambled out of the vents, the mission incomplete.
The next day, Stark announces a new guided missile system and Hydra calls Bucky back to Siberia.
Stark—or Tony, as the rest of the team calls him—doesn’t live at the Compound the way the others do. He works there during the day but he always flies back to the city in the evenings and he never stays for the bonding activities that the rest of the team does. It’s an odd choice for a team member and Bucky wonders why Steve lets it stand instead of forcing him to spend time with the rest of the team.
“Tony isn’t a team member,” Steve says one night. “Not anymore. He retired after Sokovia.”
That’s all Steve says about it though Bucky gets the sense that there’s more to it. He goes to Natalia. He remembers her from the Red Room, even if it’s only in flashes, and he suspects that she has more answers. He thinks he remembers her with her questions and her way of sneaking about so that she had more answers than any one of her sisters.
She gives him the answers he’s looking for but only after he agrees to spar with her. It goes against every fiber of his being. The Asset is an assassin, just as a Black Widow is; he shouldn’t be fighting her. He should be hiding. But he wants the answers so he follows her to the gym.
“He blames himself,” she says after Bucky has her pinned to the mats. She squirms out of his grip, neatly flipping over his shoulder. “For Ultron and I think he thinks we blame him too.”
“Do you?” he asks, pivoting to face her.
“No more than we blame Bruce,” she says, which isn’t really an answer but he’s gotten the impression that Bruce means something to her so maybe it is an answer, just not the one that he’s looking for.
“And,” she continues after they’re done and heading for the showers. He follows her gaze through the open door of the gym to where Sam is talking to Vision, Vision the android with the same voice Bucky remembers from his ill-fated attempt at ending the Stark line. “I think he misses JARVIS.”
Oh.
Tony eats. Bucky knows this but he knows also that Tony eats at odd hours. When Bucky had been Bucky and not an agglomeration of Bucky and James and the Asset and choosing to go by Bucky because he doesn’t know what else to call himself, meals had been at a set time. Breakfast was at six, lunch was at noon, and dinner was at seven. He knows it’s different now. Doctors say you should eat when you’re hungry, not because you’re supposed to. Of course, if he held to that, he would never eat and that’s just ridiculous. The Asset needs more food than even Steve but he’s never hungry.
He thinks Tony is different though. Tony doesn’t have a schedule that tells him to eat and he doesn’t come up often enough for Bucky to think that he’s eating when he’s hungry and when he does come up from his lab, it’s with this vague air of irritation that makes Bucky wonder if FRIDAY turns off his electronics until he agrees to eat something.
It’s easy enough to confirm with the AI and once she does, he asks her to let him know when Tony has gone more than eight hours without eating. Tony arrives at the Compound early in the morning and leaves late at night. If Bucky times it right, he can make sure that he gets at least two meals a day. He isn’t sure why it matters to him except that maybe he feels a little guilty. Howard Stark might have destroyed his family but if it hadn’t been Howard, it would have been Bucky and he feels somewhat responsible for that.
And Tony deserves to know that someone is looking out for him. The team might not blame him for what happened with Ultron but they’re not making much of an effort to tell him that, too wrapped up in becoming a team themselves to think about how one of their own is slipping away from them. Bucky isn’t worried about that. He thinks he might never pick up a gun again so why should he be worried about bonding with the rest of the team? He’s got plenty of time to look after Tony.
He’s making French toast that first morning, preparing a plate big enough that it would fuel a normal person for an entire day. It’ll fuel the Asset for about six hours.
“Sergeant Barnes?” FRIDAY asks.
“Just Bucky, doll,” he says. In the back of his mind, he wonders where the endearment came from. It happens sometimes when he’s not thinking about it, little pieces of his past slipping out, littering his speech and his actions.
“Boss is arriving at the Compound in twenty minutes. He hasn’t eaten since last night.”
“And what did he have then?” Bucky asks, already plating a few slices before turning to cut up an apple.
“A granola bar.”
Bucky winces and heads out to Tony’s lab with two plates in his hand, situated in another building a couple hundred yards from the main complex. The door is unlocked when he gets there, sliding open with a soft hiss.
“Is it always unlocked?” he asks, looking around for a light switch.
“No,” FRIDAY says cheerfully. “But I knew you were coming so I unlocked it for you.”
The lights switch on without him having to press anything and Bucky nearly drops the plates he’s so surprised. “Warn me next…” he trails off as he gets a glimpse at Tony’s workshop—at the collection of classic cars lined up along one wall, the Iron Man suits on display, the cool blue holograms that spark to life, proof of what Tony’s been working, and the three robots trundling up to take a look at them.
Automatically, he takes a step back, expecting that they’ll attack him for setting foot in Tony’s space. He only knows one other person allowed in here: Colonel Rhodes. Everyone else has to ask FRIDAY to ask Tony to come to the main complex. There’s no way that Bucky of all people is allowed in.
But one of the robots beeps at him and one of the others tilts its claw like it’s looking at him and none of them seem offended.
“FRIDAY, where can I put this for Tony to find?” he asks, holding up one of the plates.
“You can leave it on any of the workbenches,” she says, “but Dum-E might knock it over.”
“Dummy?”
One of the robots chirrups. When Bucky turns to look at it, it turns around and this time, he sees the word Dum-E etched into its base. “Is that your name?” he asks.
Dum-E beeps at him.
“He named you Dum-E?” he asks, outraged on the adorable robot’s behalf.
“Because he doesn’t do what he’s told,” Tony says from behind him.
Bucky whirls, the French toast almost flying off the plate he spins so fast. “FRIDAY let me in,” he blurts out.
Tony quirks a smile, a little bemused but definitely not upset. “Yeah,” he says, “she told me.” He walks in, leaving the latest Iron Man suit parked outside like a car—or a sentinel, the Asset reminds him. “So, freezer pop, what brings you to my part of the world?”
He holds out one of the plates, the apple starting to turn a little brown as it oxidizes but on the whole, still appealing. So, of course, Tony just stares at it. He shakes the plate. “Breakfast,” he says insistently.
“Why?”
His eyebrows scrunch together. “Because breakfast is important.”
“Not that important.”
Okay so clearly, this isn’t going to work. He sighs, admitting defeat. There could be any number of reasons why Tony doesn’t want to accept the plate. Him being the world’s greatest assassin is only the most likely of them.
Bucky is halfway to the door when Tony abruptly says, “Just—leave it on one of the tables.”
He doesn’t turn around, not wanting Tony to see his pleased smile and take offense, and leaves the plate by the front door.
Tony leaves for a meeting in New York before they reach the timeline Bucky had set for himself so he doesn’t get to make him dinner but the next morning, Tony is twenty minutes away from the Compound when FRIDAY alerts him that he only had an appetizer at his business dinner last night.
Natalia is in the kitchen with him, putting together the ingredients for team breakfast, when he gets the alert.
“Why is FRIDAY telling you when Tony ate?” she asks curiously.
He shouldn’t feel defensive about it. There’s no censure in her voice, just honest curiosity, but his shoulders hunch anyway. “Just want to make sure he’s eating is all,” he says gruffly. “Ain’t like anyone else is.”
“You know, he has other friends,” she points out.
“Yeah and they’re busy.” He’d wondered, before he had started doing this, why Colonel Rhodes wasn’t taking care of him but he figures that the colonel has a lot on his plate what with War Machine and the Air Force and apparently his upcoming wedding to Miss Potts. Bucky doesn’t have any of that. His main focus is on putting his brain back together, which gives him more than enough time to take care of a neglectful genius. Honestly, it’s not much different than how it was when he was growing up with Steve, except that Steve pushed back a lot more.
Natalia is being a little too quiet, even for her, so he glances in her direction. To his surprise, she’s smiling at him, soft and a little fond. “Good for you,” she says quietly. “He needs someone on his side.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She doesn’t answer, not really anyway. But she says, “It used to be Steve but I think he always had a problem figuring out how to be Tony’s friend and team leader at the same time,” and that’s almost enough of an answer for him to completely understand. She passes him the box of blueberries she’d originally grabbed from the fridge for Wanda. “Fruit’s his favorite.”
Tony never really…accepts the food Bucky makes for him but he also never sends him away with a full plate, just tells him to leave it on a table, and when he comes back in the evenings, he always finds the plates empty. Tony could be throwing the food away but that seems wasteful and Bucky doesn’t get that sort of impression from him. He seems more like the type to shovel food down his throat in case it gets taken away from him. Bucky doesn’t really like thinking about what could have happened in his life to make him like that.
Otherwise, they settle into a pattern: Bucky brings breakfast in the mornings, sometimes before Tony arrives but usually right as he’s landing, and leaves the plate on a table by the front door. Sometimes, when Tony’s doing active work or has a bad day, he brings lunch too, a few hours later, but for the most part, he doesn’t see him again until he’s bringing an early dinner into the workshop. Tony doesn’t usually acknowledge him during the evening visits, too involved in whatever he’s working on to even realize that Bucky is there, let alone talk to him.
He doesn’t mind. The fact that Tony is eating at all is more than enough thanks for him. He grew up in a family where cleaning your plate was the greatest of compliments for the chef and while he’d never been a bad cook, he’d definitely never had Becca’s way with a kitchen either. It hadn’t been until he’d gone on his first long mission as the Asset that he’d really started cooking regularly and they had always been protein-rich meals to keep him going. He hadn’t expanded his repertoire until Hydra had fallen so it’s nice to get confirmation that he’s not as bad a cook as he’d always thought.
Sure he wishes sometimes that Tony would tell him his favorite meals so he could make those more often. Sure he wishes sometimes that Tony would even just smile at him. Sure he wishes that Rhodes didn’t give him a pitying look on the times that they’re both there at the same time but it’s enough.
It’s a bad night followed by a bad morning, the kind of night filled with nightmares and screaming and the kind of morning that’s cold and rainy, reminding him of a mission in Oregon back in 1967. He dashes across the Compound’s grounds, huddled over Tony’s plate to protect the eggs from getting soggy. The eggs are fine but he’s drenched and shivering by the time he gets inside the workshop.
As per usual, Tony isn’t paying much attention to him when he drops the plate off on the table and he sighs, resigning himself to leaving the warm workshop to go back out into the rain.
“Fuck,” he mutters, rubbing his hands briskly up and down his arms, trying to bring some warmth back, especially to the metal arm. Someone in the main complex likes the building kept colder than either he or apparently Tony likes it and he’s not looking forward to a day spent with an aching shoulder because the arm gets too cold.
“Does it hurt?”
He stops, almost to the door, and turns slowly. Tony is looking at him or, well, not really at him but at his shoulder, forehead creased in concern.
Tony’s gaze darts up to his eyes and then back down to the shoulder. “Does it hurt?” he repeats.
“Uh, yeah,” he says, surprised that Tony is actually acknowledging his presence today. “Always does when it’s cold.”
“And you decided to live in New York?”
“I don’t think Stevie would have let me live anywhere else.”
To his further surprise, Tony laughs and wow the way his face lights up when he’s laughing, all bright and happy. Bucky’s known for a long time that he’s attracted to just about anyone pretty enough, regardless of what’s between their legs, but he hasn’t been attracted to much of anything since he became Hydra’s Asset and the way something warms in his chest when Tony’s face grows bright surprises him still further. Must be a day for surprises.
“You could stay here if you like,” Tony offers.
Oh yeah, it’s definitely a day for surprises.
“I could?” he asks.
Tony shrugs, almost too casually like it matters but he doesn’t want to make it look like it does. “It’s warmer here than Hill keeps it in the Compound,” he says.
“Oh so it’s her fault it’s colder than the Arctic?” Bucky says, deciding that the best course of action is to act as casual as Tony is.
Tony’s nose crinkles amusedly. “FRIDAY, where do we keep towels in here?” he asks.
“In the bathroom, boss.”
“Right.” He points his pencil in the direction of a room Bucky hadn’t noticed before. “Towels are in there. So’s a shower if you decide you want to warm up.”
He decides against the shower since he’ll just have to get back into his sodden clothes afterwards. Instead, he towels himself off as best he can, finds a musty blanket in the back of the linen closet and pulls that out to wrap around himself when he goes back out into the workshop.
He spends most of the day in there, in silence at first as he plays around on his phone and Tony works but then sometime around noon, Tony hits a roadblock and starts talking to FRIDAY about his problem. It’s probably meant to just talk out his problem but Bucky has always been able to see things that other people can’t so when he figures out what happened, he speaks up. Tony gives him a surprised look before swiveling his chair around so he can keep talking and eventually, Bucky just gets up and joins him so that they’re not shouting at each other from across the workshop.
It’s nice. He wouldn’t have figured out how funny Tony is when he’d just been bringing him food without talking to him and that’s—yeah, that’s nice.
“Boss says he’s in the mood for burgers,” FRIDAY says a month later, startling Bucky from where he’s finishing up the sauce for the noodles.
He glances up toward the ceiling, a habit which everybody seems to do with the exception of Tony and Colonel Rhodes. Tony laughs at him every time he does it but he can’t seem to break that habit, even after spending nearly everyday with Tony. “Tell Tony that he’s too late. If he wants me to make burgers, he should have told me when I was in the workshop this afternoon.”
She’s quiet for a moment. Then—“He says he’ll drive.”
Startled, Bucky almost drops the pot. “He’ll what?”
“I’ll drive,” Tony’s voice says. Automatically, he turns, expecting to see Tony in the kitchen door but it’s empty. Tony must be using FRIDAY’s speakers. “Best burgers in the state are in that town ten minutes away from here. Jarvis used to take me sometimes after Howard—”
He cuts off and Bucky abruptly realizes that today is December 16th. Most of the team is in California at the moment, helping with cleanup after an earthquake. Colonel Rhodes is on vacation with Miss Potts. Tony doesn’t have anyone else. He doesn’t even hesitate, just starts shoveling pasta into Tupperware. “Give me a few minutes to pull on something nicer,” he says as he stuffs the pasta into the fridge. It’ll keep for leftovers.
“What, you don’t think sweatpants are acceptable for a hole-in-the-wall burger joint?” Tony chuckles.
Bucky glances down at the stains in the sweatpants and the raggedy hole near the hem. He got these at a thrift shop two years ago and wears them exclusively to lounge around the Compound in. Tony might not be taking him out on an actual date but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t look nicer than this for dinner.
“Five minutes, baby doll,” he says, the endearment slipping out without even thinking about it. He misses the hitch in Tony’s breath before the line cuts out, too distracted by the thought of which shirts he’s going to grab from his closet.
He’s thinking the grey and blue flannel—the one that Natalia says brings out his eyes.
The thing is, Tony is an attractive man. Bucky can admit that. He doesn’t even feel ashamed about admitting it. Tony is attractive and that’s just a simple fact like the sky is blue or that pasta is God’s gift to man.
So it’s not that Tony is attractive that is the problem. No, it’s everything else. Because Tony isn’t just attractive. He’s smart and he’s funny and he cares so damn much that sometimes it amazes Bucky that he ever put the armor down. A couple days ago, he’d even asked Bucky if he wanted him to design a new metal arm for him.
“Is that something you can even do?” Bucky had asked.
“Don’t know,” Tony had replied. “But I won’t know until I try.”
And even though Bucky had told him that that was okay, he didn’t need to expend his considerable brain power on fixing something that isn’t broke, Tony had gone ahead and started working on it anyway because “I see the way you look at it, Bucky babe. Let me try?”
He can’t refuse Tony anything, especially when he’s looking up at him with those big Bambi eyes. So now he’s got a brand new arm in the works, already finished with the preliminary designs, and that’s a problem because—because Tony is too good for him and Bucky can’t afford to get used to this. Eventually, Tony’s gonna figure out that Bucky isn’t worth his attention and he’s going to leave and what is Bucky going to do then?
“Sergeant Barnes?” FRIDAY asks hesitantly, cutting into his thoughts.
He sighs and shakes his head a little, trying to clear out his mind. The sauce on his stirring spoon is dripping down onto the stove. He’ll need to clean it later tonight, which he’s definitely not looking forward to since no one else on the team seems capable of wiping it down.
“Yeah, I know,” he mutters. “Tell Tony I’ll be there in a couple minutes with dinner.”
“No, it’s—” She hesitates and not for the first time, Bucky is astounded by the amount of personality Tony encodes in his AIs. “Boss fell asleep.”
“Oh.” He’s not sure what to do with that actually. On the one hand, he could leave him in the workshop. On the other hand, speaking from personal experience, that couch isn’t the most comfortable. “Does Tony have a room here?”
“He never got it set up.”
Of course he didn’t. Tony probably never thought that he would be staying at the Compound and if Bucky hadn’t started coming to the workshop, he probably wouldn’t have so really, in a way, Bucky brought this on himself. He packages away the chicken, figuring he’ll just cook it tomorrow, no reason it can’t marinate overnight, and then heads out to the workshop.
Tony is curled up on the couch, knees tucked to his chest, hands covering the arc reactor. Bucky bends down beside him, gently shaking his shoulder. “Doll, ya gotta wake up,” he murmurs.
Tony’s nose scrunches adorably before he slowly blinks his eyes open. “Bucky?” he asks quietly.
“Yeah, it’s me. Come on, ya gotta get up.”
“No I don’t.”
“You do if you don’t want a stiff back. Come on, either you’re gonna walk or I’m gonna carry you but you’re not sleeping in here.”
“Carry me where?” Tony asks sleepily, rubbing his eyes and yawning. Bucky glances away, telling himself it’s not adorable. It definitely doesn’t remind him of a kitten, no sir, and that definitely doesn’t lead to thoughts about other instances of Tony yawning with his hair tousled the way it is, maybe his pretty skin glowing with the morning light filtering in through Bucky’s windows…
Oh yeah, he’s definitely not thinking about that at all.
“My room,” he says and suddenly Tony’s awake.
“You don’t have to do that,” Tony says immediately, running his hand through his hair. “I’ll drive back.”
Bucky tries not to be offended by that. Natalia had warned him that Tony pulls away easily, especially after how badly wrong Ultron had gone. “Tony, don’t be ridiculous,” he says instead. “You can barely keep your eyes open.”
“I don’t want to take your bed from you!” Tony insists.
“Who says I won’t be right there with you?”
Tony stops.
Bucky stops.
Probably the whole world stops.
Okay, maybe not the whole world but what else is he supposed to think when Tony looks like a deer frozen in the headlights? “Tony,” he begins cautiously and then stops because what else is he going to say? There’s not much he can do to make this situation better.
Abruptly, Tony glances away from him. “Yeah. Okay. This is fine.”
It doesn’t sound like it’s fine.
“Are you—are you sure?”
Tony glares at him. “Would I have said it was if it wasn’t?”
Yes, actually. But Bucky doesn’t know how to say that without sounding offensive so instead he just holds up his hands placatingly and lets Tony stand on his own.
“Do you want dinner first?” he asks, hoping to stave off Tony in his bed for a little longer. It’s not that he doesn’t want Tony there. It’s just that…he doesn’t want Tony there. He doesn’t want his bed to smell like Tony for weeks, doesn’t want to know what it feels like to wake up beside him and roll over and see him maybe smiling in his sleep, doesn’t want to know what it means to have what he’s pining for only to have that snatched away from him tomorrow morning.
Fortunately, Tony says yes to dinner and then surprisingly yes to movie night with the team, which goes so well he wonders if they’ve just been waiting for Tony to come join them, and it’s almost two hours before he notices Tony finally nodding off on the couch next to him.
Colonel Rhodes nods in his direction and says, low enough that no one else hears them, “I could take him off your hands.”
Something cold seizes in his heart. He doesn’t want to know what he could have but he doesn’t want to be wondering what if even less.
Rhodes sits back, shrugging easily. “Or not. Just warning you: Tony’s a limpet when he sleeps.”
Bucky doesn’t know how to respond to that so he doesn’t. He just picks Tony up, laughs awkwardly when Stevie says, “Gonna make sure he’s put to bed?” and carries him off toward his room. Behind him, he hears Wanda ask, “Doesn’t Stark have his own room?” and Natalia hush her. Well, at least one person is rooting for them. He’s not too sure how he feels that it’s Natalia though and not Stevie or Colonel Rhodes.
Tony rouses a little as Bucky gets him into his room, just enough to undress when Bucky tosses him an extra pair of sweatpants and a shirt.
“Uh,” Bucky says, turning around to give Tony some sort of modesty. He thinks he hears Tony huff behind him but he can’t be sure. “Thought you might like something other than what you’re wearing.”
A grease-stained shirt goes sailing by his head, landing neatly in his laundry basket. “Yeah probably,” Tony says sleepily. “Rhodey thinks my work clothes should be burned.”
By the time Bucky is dressed in his own sleep clothes, Tony has already crawled into the bed and is fast asleep, head resting on Bucky’s pillow, looking for all the world like he belongs there. “Aw fuck,” Bucky mutters, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck. He’s never gonna get this image out of his brain, is he?
“FRIDAY, what does Tony usually need to sleep?” he asks quietly, turning back the other side of the sheets so he can settle down next to him.
Silently, FRIDAY turns the temperature in the room down a couple degrees, darkens the shades over the windows, and starts piping in some sort of oceanic background noise. Honestly, it’ll probably keep Bucky up half the night since it’s not what he’s used to but one look at the deep circles under Tony’s eyes convinces him that he can put up with it for one night.
He turns onto his side, watching the way Tony’s chest moves up and down for a few deep breaths, and then closes his own eyes.
Bucky would like to say that he wakens warm and happy with his arms wrapped around Tony (or Tony’s wrapped around him, he’s not picky). That they get to awaken slowly, that Tony smiles at him fondly, sweetly, before telling him that he’s as enamored with Bucky as Bucky is with him.
That isn’t what happens.
What happens is that Bucky is jolted awake by the alarms blaring. He has half a moment to realize that Tony is indeed nestled up beside him before Tony too is sitting up, eyes wide and gasping.
“Assemble,” Tony explains, darting out of bed and for the door. It’s the first one the team has had since Bucky came to the Compound. He half-expects that it’ll be complete chaos in the halls—the team has never practiced an Assemble that he knows of—but when Tony throws open the door, he hears Steve barking orders and FRIDAY calmly announcing, “Wheels up in five.”
“Are you going with them?” he asks, grabbing for a pair of slippers. He doesn’t want to take the time to pull on shoes.
Tony hesitates in the door. “No,” he says, biting his lip uncertainly. Bucky sees it then, sees that he’s never really thought through what would happen when he chose to retire. He almost wants to tell him it’s okay, remind Tony that no one blames him, that the world would probably love to see Iron Man soaring with the Avengers again. But this isn’t the time. The team has one foot out the door already and Tony hasn’t practiced with them. He’d be a liability more than a help.
“Okay,” he agrees, deciding that he’ll talk to Tony about returning to the team later, “so…?”
“I’m going to the control room. I can’t—I have to know what’s going on.”
And that’s definitely something that Bucky can agree with. He doubts he’ll ever pick up a gun again but he can’t let Stevie run into danger without knowing what’s happening. He follows Tony down the hall, passed by Natalia and then Vision going in the opposite directions toward the hangars.
The control room is staffed by a skeleton crew at this time of night, only Hill and a few others already at work though more are trickling in as the alarms continue to sound before abruptly cutting out when the Quinjet takes off.
Hill glances at them and passes Tony two sets of earbuds. Tony hands one of the sets to Bucky. “What’ve we got?” he asks as he inserts the earbud.
“Oil tanker exploded,” one of the techs says, pulling up a video feed of a ship on fire, listing badly. “It’s international waters.”
“Avengers territory,” Tony mutters. He distractedly glances at his watch. “Obviously not anywhere near us. We’re nowhere near dawn.” Bucky looks at the feed again, this time noting the faint light of day appearing over the eastern horizon.
“It was a few hundred miles off the coast of Ireland,” the tech says.
“What’s the team doing?” Bucky asks.
“Rescue mostly,” Hill cuts in. “The ship exploded before anyone could get to a lifeboat. It’s dangerous waters.”
“Cold too,” Tony says with a sympathetic shiver. “Any thoughts on containment?”
“None yet.”
Bucky doesn’t seem to be needed—Hill and Tony seem to have it well in hand and the team that he can hear over the comms doesn’t seem concerned—but he can’t bring himself to leave. Since no one’s making him, he takes a seat next to one of the techs. She glances at him, does a double take, and then leaves her and starts telling him what he’s seeing on the screens in front of him.
“If you’re in here,” she says, “you’re going to help.”
He likes her.
Almost three hours later, the team is coming up on the wreck site. The tanker hasn’t yet sunk, still spewing oil and fire into the atmosphere, but it’s clear that it’s on its last legs. Bucky checks the weather conditions again to make sure they won’t have any nasty surprises and then clears the Quinjet to land. For the most part, his job is done so he looks around, checking on the conditions of everyone else. A couple people have been switched out with the day shift but for the most part, he sees the same people in the room as he had when he got there. A lot of them are starting to look tired.
He catches Tony’s eye, currently deep in a conversation with Hill and Steve, mimes that he’s going to go get a drink and ducks out into the hallway. Once there, he leans against the wall and asks, “FRIDAY?”
“Sergeant Barnes?”
“Can we get delivery here?”
“Of course. Boss wouldn’t accept anything less.” He grins at her cheek. “What did you have in mind?”
“Coffee,” he says immediately. “Obviously. Then—who’s available for food right now?”
She rattles off a couple places—an all-night pizza place, which sounds good but not at the moment; donuts, which sounds amazing but he can already tell that this mission will be a marathon, not a sprint, and donuts won’t provide enough energy for that; and a breakfast taco food truck.
“Breakfast tacos?” he asks, thinking of a mission in Texas back in the 60s. He doesn’t remember much of the mission, other than it being some sort of assassination, but he does remember getting breakfast tacos from some place that looked like it should have been condemned ten years ago. He remembers also that he’d never really been able to find a concept like that in any state other than the southwest.
“Would you like me to place an order?” FRIDAY asks.
“Yeah, however many Tony usually gets. He likes those, right?”
“Yes, Sergeant Barnes,” she replies, sounding amused. He wonders if it’s a typical craving for Tony and how often he stops by the food truck on the way to the Compound, if he stops there at all. Then she adds, “But I think he’d like anything you got him.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks, a small thrill of hope going through him. But FRIDAY doesn’t answer.
He steps back inside, joining Hill and Tony. Hill is busy directing Search and Rescue so Bucky places a hand on the small of Tony’s back and quietly says, “I ordered food. Should be here in about thirty minutes.”
Tony’s heat seeps through the thin shirt and Bucky can’t quite resist absently rubbing his fingertips against the soft fabric. Tony turns his head, only inches away from Bucky’s face, and murmurs, “Thank you. I’m sure the kids will love them.”
He’ll probably never know what makes him brave enough to say, “I don’t really care what the kids think as long as you love them.”
Tony stills. For a moment, Bucky wonders if he’s made a mistake big enough to end not just what he’s hoping for but their burgeoning friendship as well. Then Tony smiles, his whole face softening.
“Bucky babe, are you asking me out?” Tony asks.
He nods, afraid to put the words out there. “If that sounds like something you want.”
“Is it what you want?”
He can be brave—for Tony. “Yes.”
Tony’s smile gets brighter until Bucky thinks it could power the entire room. “I’d like that a lot.”
“FRIDAY says you like burgers,” he says, thinking about one of the first conversations he’d ever had with the AI, back when he’d been trying to figure out what he could give Tony that he would eat. He doesn’t need to ask her anymore. He knows that Tony likes burgers and pizza and especially loves pasta but only from small authentic family-owned restaurants because they remind him of his mother.
Tony leans up on his toes and kisses his cheek. “FRIDAY’s right but really, babe, I’d like anything you gave me.”