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The first time Bucky left food in Tony’s workshop and come back to find it untouched, he’d figured it was a fluke. Tony had probably been caught up in a zone—like Steve had warned him about when Bucky had decided he was going to woo Tony with food—and hadn’t noticed the food was even there.
The second time, he made sure to catch Tony’s attention as he was dropping off the plate—lasagna because Natalia had said Tony’s mother was Italian and Bucky made a pretty decent lasagna if he did say so. Tony had glanced at him and then at the plate before turning away with a slightly bewildered frown. Bucky had taken the frown to mean that no one else had ever bothered before to take care of Tony, which was a fact that had just about broken his heart, and left the plate there. He’d gone back later that night to find the lasagna untouched. That had been a little harder to explain away, but he’d eventually decided that maybe Tony was one of those food snobs who only liked Italian food made by actual Italians.
The third time he made oatmeal with a little bit of honey and cream, perfect for someone with as much of a sweet tooth as Tony had, and brought it into the workshop for Tony, who had spent the entire night working on new arrows for Clint.
“Tony?” he called softly, not wanting to startle him. Tony was uncomfortable enough with all the new people moving into the tower after everything with SHIELD and Hydra; being Hydra’s pet assassin, he didn’t want to make it worse by sneaking up on him. “I brought you some breakfast.”
Tony popped up from underneath a table, visibly brightening. “Oh good,” he said cheerfully, making grabby hands at the bowl. “I was just starting to get hungry.” His hair was mussed, two perfect rings of black smeared around his eyes, likely where the goggles currently perched on top of his head had been resting earlier.
Bucky smiled at the adorable display and held out the bowl. Tony eagerly grabbed it, only to blink at it as soon as he saw what was in it.
“Oatmeal?” he asked delicately.
“I thought you’d appreciate having something a little more delicate after not eating for a while,” Bucky explained.
“…Oh.” After another awkward moment, Tony said carefully, “Thanks.”
Satisfied, Bucky left him to his work. This time—this time—Tony would eat it all and then he’d see what an amazing cook Bucky was and how he would absolutely be able to provide for Tony and then he’d swoon into Bucky’s arms and demand that Bucky take him right there.
Okay maybe not right there—the workshop didn’t seem like the best location for amorous activities—but that was why they called it a fantasy, right?
Too bad Tony punctured that fantasy like a balloon.
Bucky went back downstairs long to pick up the bowl after Tony had come up to the common areas, yawning widely and telling everyone he was heading to bed for the next twenty-four hours so don’t bother him unless New York was on fire. It had been a bit of a disappointment that he’d just nodded at Bucky without saying anything about the breakfast or about his everlasting feelings for him, but not nearly as much of a disappointment to walk into the workshop to find the bowl as untouched as all the other meals he’d so painstakingly prepared.
“I don’t get it,” he whined to Sam later that day. “I’m a good cook.”
Sam gave him an unimpressed look. “Are you sure? It’s been, what, seventy years since the last time you made anything. Maybe you’re not as good as you used to be.”
Bucky gasped dramatically. “You take that back!”
“No. You promised me you’d offer dating advice with Natasha and instead you’re sitting here mooning over Tony’s ass again so I’ll say whatever I like about your cooking.”
“Sorry,” he muttered guiltily. Sam was right. He had promised that. Or, rather, Steve had promised advice and Bucky had taken one look at him still pining over Peggy and feeling weird about his current interest being Peggy’s niece (a valid way to feel) and declared him hopeless before telling Sam that he would help him out instead. After all, he remembered Natalia from the years she’d spent training with him during her childhood. Who else would be more qualified to teach Sam how to woo her? Well, besides Clint obviously, but he was taking some personal time away from the team.
“She likes the ballet,” he said. “She wanted to be a ballerina when she was younger, said they were as graceful as any Widow only they didn’t have to kill.”
“And you’re sure that won’t just make her sad?” Sam asked dubiously.
Bucky glared at him. “I might not like you very much—” Sam rolled his eyes—"But I like Natalia a whole lot. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt her. Take her to the ballet and take Steve and Sharon while you’re at it. A double date will help her feel less trapped and maybe Steve will stop moping and ask Sharon out.”
“It’s a little weird, you know.”
“Sure, but he kissed Peggy once and it’s not like he’s ever gonna go back to the war and live out the rest of his time there, so he might as well move on.”
Sam laughed. “Guess that’s true.” He sighed, smile fading away. “I don’t know why Tony’s ignoring your meals. Sorry about that though. It sucks.”
“If I may,” JARVIS cut in. Both of them jumped, though Bucky would deny to his dying day that he yelped. Sam, on the other hand, shrieked like a kid and Bucky reminded himself to go back and access the audio footage so he would have blackmail.
“Sorry, JARVIS,” he apologized. “Keep forgetting you’re up there. Didn’t exactly have AI back during the war.”
“Or even in other houses,” Sam added.
“My apologies,” JARVIS said, and he’ll be damned if JARVIS didn’t sound extremely apologetic. It was incredible, really, how much life Tony imbued in his creations. “I only wanted to offer my advice about Sergeant Barnes’ attempts at wooing Sir.”
“Oh yeah?” Bucky asked. “Go right ahead. Can’t be any worse than any of the other advice I’ve gotten.” Seriously, Clint had even suggested truth serum, like that wasn’t the worst idea ever suggested.
“Sir is an extremely picky eater,” JARVIS explained. “He does not enjoy cooked tomatoes, ricotta cheese, or the texture of oatmeal.”
…All of which had been in at least one of the meals he’d prepared for Tony.
“Fuck.”
JARVIS wryly said, “Indeed.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”
“You requested that I remain inactive on your floor while you were recovering. But you’re in Sergeant Wilson’s quarters at the moment so I may share my expertise.”
He had said that, hadn’t he? It had been in the early days when he was still having trouble remembering what he’d said moments earlier, but he had a vague recollection of being overwhelmed by the idea of constant monitoring and asking if JARVIS could be turned off.
“Wow, way to go, Barnes,” Sam commented, hiding a grin behind his hand.
“Fuck,” he said again, more emphatically. “Best tool at my disposal and I’m not even using it. JARVIS, I bet you could tell me all sorts of things about Tony.”
He got the impression that if the AI could sniff, he would have. “I would not dare to air Sir’s ‘dirty laundry’ so to speak.”
“No, no,” Bucky said, waving his metal hand. The hand made a concerning grinding sound and he frowned. That wasn’t supposed to happen. He’d probably need to ask someone to take a look at it. Sam was capable of performing basic maintenance, and Bucky trusted him not to sabotage the arm, but anything worse and he’d have to go ask Tony about it.
“Not what I meant,” he continued. “Just that you could tell me what Tony likes and doesn’t like. Uh, how do I turn you back on in my floor?”
“Your request is sufficient,” JARVIS said.
“Great. I’ll meet you up there in a bit. We’re gonna make something so incredible Tony will have to fall in love with me.”
“Yeah, good luck with that,” Sam said, kicking his feet up onto the newly vacated spot on the couch now that Bucky was standing. “I’m going to see if I can find reasonably priced tickets to the ballet.”
Bucky blinked. “I think you’re gonna have worse luck than me.”
Sam threw a shoe at him.
On JARVIS’ advice, he baked blueberry muffins because those were apparently Tony’s favorite fruit. Bucky didn’t really understand it. Frankly, he thought blueberries were almost as bad as bananas—nasty, taste-changing fruit that they were—but if Tony loved them, then he would be willing to have them in his kitchen for as long as it took to bake the muffins. Fortunately, he was just as good a baker as he was a cook, so it was a breeze to whip up a delicious batch that had him grateful he couldn’t get salmonella from the mix.
Unfortunately, Tony hated the muffins. Or that’s what Bucky gathered when he went to pick the plate up, hoping that it would be empty for the first time, and found it just as untouched as everything else had been.
“What the fuck, JARVIS?” he complained. “You said he liked blueberries.”
“I don’t know, Sergeant Barnes,” JARVIS said, sounding as baffled as Bucky felt. “Sir has always appreciated them.”
That, Bucky reflected later that night, was possibly to be expected. For all that JARVIS had the inhuman ability to remember literally everything he’d ever seen or heard, he was still just a program. He couldn’t necessarily extrapolate about preferences or tastes. For all either of them knew, Tony did like blueberries but didn’t like muffins or something. It didn’t really explain why JARVIS knew that Tony didn’t like cooked tomatoes, but maybe that could be explained by Tony mentioning it out loud and the other stuff, JARVIS had had to figure out on his own.
He sat up in bed, thinking about it. Maybe that was it: Tony didn’t like muffins. But there had to be other recipes out there that used blueberries that Tony would like. In fact, he was pretty sure he’d come across a blueberry cupcake with brown butter frosting recipe earlier that day. And Bucky didn’t know anyone who could say no to his brown butter. He was incredible at it, and that was being modest. Just the other day, Thor had declared the brown butter sauce he’d made for their chicken to be worthy of an Asgardian feast. Thor was a god. He probably knew things like that.
“JARVIS, you up?” he asked into the dark room.
“Always, Sergeant Barnes.”
“You don’t gotta keep callin’ me that. Bucky’s my name. I’d rather answer to that.”
“Very well, Bucky.”
“Could you pull up some other recipes with blueberries in the flavor profile please? Filter out anything that has something Tony doesn’t like and recipes similar enough to each other that they could be repeats, uh, let’s say anything with a higher than 85% similarity.”
When JARVIS was finished compiling his list, there was a lot less than what Bucky had hoped for, but it was still something he could work with. He looked through the list: cupcakes, pancakes, cookies, more than a few salads, something called a Panzanella. He starred the ones he thought would catch Tony’s interest the most, putting the others aside to possibly try later down the road. Content with his plan, he laid back down, falling asleep within seconds of his head hitting the pillow.
None of it worked. Despite his supposed love for blueberries, Tony continued to turn away everything Bucky made for him. So he branched out, trying other foods that JARVIS said Tony was fond of. Nothing came back with more than a couple bites taken out of it and Tony had taken to giving him worried looks every time he appeared at the workshop door with another plate. Bucky was starting to lose hope that he was ever going to woo Tony with food and that was… not great.
Traditional dates were pretty close to impossible. Despite his rapid recovery in the tower, going outside was still too frightening with the crowds of New York, the inability to pick out threats around him, and the lack of sightlines all driving Bucky back inside and to the highest floors of the tower where he could look out over everything.
And as for anything else, well, Bucky was an ex-brainwashed assassin with no money to his name and only half the social skills he used to have (Sam said he had more than he thought but arguing with Sam wasn’t like trying to get someone to like him). He didn’t have much else to offer other than making food and giving Tony a project to work on. The first wasn’t going well and the second made Bucky feel too much like he was taking advantage of Tony to use more than once or twice.
Disheartened, he made his way up to Natalia’s floor to ask her for advice. She and Tony got along almost as well as she got along with Clint. Maybe she would have insights that JARVIS wasn’t able to offer. As he neared her room, though, he realized that she wasn’t alone.
“—to kill me,” someone—Tony, Bucky realized almost immediately—was saying. He stiffened. Who was trying to kill Tony? Bucky would kill them first! Was murder a good way to woo Tony?
“котенок,” Natalia said patiently, “he’s not trying to kill you.”
“You don’t know that!” Tony exclaimed wildly. He sounded like he was pacing. “He could be! He keeps bringing me things everyone knows I won’t eat.”
And now Natalia sounded amused as she said, “Antoshka, I don’t think he’d be trying to feed you if he wanted to kill you. It’s more likely an honest mistake.”
“It could be poison.”
“It’s not poison.”
“You don’t know that. You haven’t tried any of it.”
“It’s not poison because that’s more my style than it is James’.”
Oh, they were talking about him. Tony thought Bucky was trying to kill him. “Fuck,” he said mournfully, leaning up against the wall. No wonder Tony wouldn’t touch any of the food he made for him.
“Well, I don’t see why else he’s bringing me food!” Tony said.
“Really? Not a single reason?”
“It’s food I won’t eat! He clearly doesn’t like me or he’d be bringing me actual food I like.”
“Does he know why you won’t eat it?”
“No, but why does that matter?”
“Tony, darling, have you ever once informed him that you have a sensory processing disorder and you won’t eat a lot of cooked foods because you can’t handle the texture?”
Bucky straightened back up. Tony has a what? He’d never even heard of that before. Why didn’t JARVIS say something? He thought back to when he’d been building the list of blueberry foods and how he’d wondered if JARVIS didn’t necessarily know about the pattern for Tony’s likes and dislikes in his food. Maybe JARVIS hadn’t known about Tony’s disorder, so he hadn’t known to tell Bucky about it. That made the most amount of sense to him though he couldn’t imagine why Tony had never told his AI about his disorder.
“Why would I tell him that?” Tony asks, sounding confused.
He could just picture Natalia shaking her head as she said, “Oh, Antoshka.”
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
Armed with his new knowledge, Bucky crept away from the door, already planning out new meals to bring to Tony.
That very night, he went downstairs with a bowl of salad. It had nuts to provide a small amount of protein, though he’d also put some baked chicken in a Tupperware as well, in case that was something Tony could eat. Tony’s music was playing at a manageable volume by the time he got to the workshop, likely because he was drafting plans for some sort of irrigation system, rather than any sort of consideration for Bucky.
Tony caught sight of him before he got the doors open. Bucky watched as his face fell for a moment before he plastered on a bright, fake smile. Hydra’s programming was still too ingrained in him to do anything as obvious as wince, but he still felt a twinge of shame. Why hadn’t he thought to ask Tony what he would like to eat instead of relying on his own preferences?
“Uh,” he said, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck. In his other hand, he held up the Tupperware with the salad bowl on top of it. “I brought you some dinner. It’s just a salad, but I included some baked chicken on the side if you want that. I hope it’s something you like.”
Tony blinked at him. “What?”
“I—okay, I’m just gonna come right out and say it. I overheard you and Natalia earlier. I didn’t know you couldn’t eat anything I was making for you. I wasn’t trying to poison you or anything, just thought you might like some food since you’re down here all the time. Sorry for, you know, eavesdropping and making you think I didn’t like you.”
A cautious smile spread across Tony’s face. “You could have asked JARVIS,” he pointed out.
“Yeah, I did, but I guess he didn’t know you don’t like cooked foods.”
“What?” Tony cocked his head to the side. “No, he should know that.” He spun around in his chair, waving the glowing blue drafts of the irrigation system aside in favor of pulling up JARVIS’ bright golden code. It was a beautiful display, and Bucky found himself moving closer, mesmerized by the sight. He had no idea JARVIS’ code was so complex.
“J, buddy, what happened to your code?” Tony murmured. He reached out a hand, groping for Bucky’s shirt to tug him closer. “Gimme food.”
“So you like salad?” Bucky asked, relieved that he’d finally found something.
“And baked chicken,” Tony added. “But it has to be baked. Otherwise, the texture’s too rubbery for me.”
“I can do that,” he promised. “Do you like breading or marinade with the baked chicken?”
“Marinade, yes. Breading, no.”
“Okay. I’ll remember that.”
Tony paused in tearing through JARVIS’ code to give him a small, genuine smile that made Bucky’s heart light up. He returned the smile, which grew bigger when Tony’s gaze darted down to his lips, snagging there as though caught by the sight. He knew he had a nice mouth; he’d been told that plenty of times back in the forties.
“I have another confession to make,” he said once Tony’s attention returned to the code.
“Uh-huh,” Tony said distractedly.
“I was—”
“There you are!” Tony exclaimed. “J, who made those changes to lines 894 through 1036 in your code?”
JARVIS immediately said, “The last time those lines were accessed was in 2008 by Obadiah Stane.”
Tony’s face fell. “Oh.”
It took Bucky a moment remember who Obadiah Stane was. He’d appeared in one of Bucky’s mission files as the Winter Soldier. Back during the nineties, following Tony’s parents deaths, Tony had been planning on shutting down SI’s weapons manufacturing division. Hydra, who’d been buying black market weapons from Stane for years by that time, had ordered the Winter Soldier to assassinate Tony to give Stane complete control of the company. But before he’d been able to complete his mission, Stane had convinced Tony to see “reason” and Bucky had been put back in cryo. That unfulfilled mission had been one of the reasons he’d been so hesitant to move into the tower before his programming had been completely removed. Steve had tried to push for the move anyway, but before either of them could successfully argue the point, Tony had put out a call to the world’s top experts on brainwashing and three whirlwind weeks later, Bucky’s mind was programming-free. And just like that, without even meeting the guy, Bucky had developed a crush on one Tony Stark.
“Sorry, doll,” he said, dropping a hand to Tony’s shoulder and squeezing it gently.
Tony sighed frustratedly. “Every time I think I’ve taken care of everything Obie fucked up, I find something else he’s done. He was probably hoping I’d starve to death or something without anyone making food to my exacting specifications, that asshole.”
“He sounds pretty terrible,” Bucky agreed.
“J, are you able to access the last backup on those lines to restore them?” Tony asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay, let’s get those fixed, and uh—”
“And we’ll go out for dinner,” Bucky interrupted.
“Huh?” Tony asked, turning to look at him.
“Seems I owe you an apology and I figure taking you out for dinner is a little nicer than a salad. ‘Sides, if I take you out, I’ll have a better understanding of what you like to eat.”
“Careful there, Buckaroo, or I’ll start thinking this is supposed to be a date.”
Bucky would probably never know what possessed him to firmly say, “Yeah, that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be.” He certainly hadn’t planned to. He really had been planning on their dinner being a way to figure out what Tony liked so he could make it himself and continue with his wooing process from there, hopefully slowly easing Tony into believing that Bucky really did like him and wasn’t trying to poison him.
“Sorry,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “That wasn’t supposed to come out like that.”
Tony stared at him, then abruptly said, “Did you mean it?”
“Mean what?”
“That this is supposed to be a date.”
He could deny it and go back to his original plan. He’d probably even be able to pull off a lie like that. But there was a hopeful look in Tony’s eyes that stopped him from denying anything.
“You didn’t even know that I liked you until five minutes ago,” he pointed out cautiously.
Tony scoffed. “What, like you’ve never liked someone who hated you.”
“Uh, no. I’ve never done that.”
“Really?”
“Never.”
“Huh.”
“Are you… are you saying that you do like me?” Bucky asked.
“Well, yeah. You never mind that half of my engineering babble goes over your head and you bring me food even if you didn’t know it wasn’t something I could eat and you’re really fucking gorgeous when you’ve showered and your hair isn’t falling in greasy clumps around your face.”
“Look who’s talking,” Bucky said amusedly, reaching out to run his fingers through Tony’s hair, matted down with machine oil. Even filthy, he could feel how soft it would be when it was clean. Tony leaned into his hand, humming happily.
“So is that a yes on this being a date, Bucky babe?” Tony asked. “Cause I’ll be honest, I’m not usually left hanging.”
“Yeah,” Bucky said, nodding. “It’s a date.”
Tony grinned and turned his head just enough to kiss the inside of Bucky’s wrist, making Bucky shiver. “Let me get cleaned up.”
“You want me to join you?”
Tony winked at him. “Next time, honey.”