Chapter Text
He slept, the kind of sleep that happens, when the world falls away and everything disappears and is so far in between spaces of reality and non-reality.
And he vaguely remembered Friday asking him something, telling him the quinjet had arrived to take Rogers back to base. He thought it was strange, in his dream, that Friday didn’t mention Barnes, too. But then he had fallen asleep again, after mumbling something wishing them well and platitudes about not being strangers. It was all too much, too hard to think about any longer.
It didn’t matter, now. Cho had come and gone, if the dusk outside his window was anything to go by. He thought about getting up, but that seemed like too much work, so he rolled over again.
And when he woke again later that night, his mouth tasting like cotton and so thirsty he couldn’t breath, he’d dragged himself to the workshop, looking for something, anything to do now that he was alone again.
The floor was a mess just like he’d left it, scattered bits of wire and metal everywhere, from the days when he spent hours sitting at his desk, assembling the joists of the arm piece by piece in a process so delicate the fabricator couldn’t be trusted to preserve the dimensions of the elbow and wrist joints. He was surprised, a little bit at least, that Cho hadn’t left a message about the install. But then again, Tony had cowardly sent the hardware up the chute like a project returned at a science fare, without a face or name. He turned to start his coffee pot, and froze.
There, sitting shirtless on the couch watching TV, in his workshop, of all goddamn people, was James. He’d brought the bionic arm with him, and Tony spied the tablet he’d sent up the elevator too, sitting beside the arm on the couch cushion.
Tony blinked, before closing his eyes again. Nope. This wasn’t possible. “I’m dreaming,” he protested.
Barnes huffed a laugh. “Yankees still suck. Seems real enough to me.”
Tony managed to fall into his chair, rubbing his eyes. It was late, the moon dipped below the horizon outside his windows; Friday hadn’t managed to dim the windows for nighttime, like J.A.R.V.I.S. would’ve, hiding away the night sky that Tony sometimes still had nightmares about. The thought made the hollow point in Tony’s chest ache.
“James,” he muttered finally, reaching for the water bottle on his desk instead of his still-brewing coffee. “What are you doing here?”
“Where else would I be?” Barnes looked nervous, as though he’d miscalculated and just now realized it, as he idly scratched at a raised scar across his left shoulder.
“But Steve already left,” Tony muttered, perplexed. He knew he sounded like a petulant child, but he couldn’t help himself. “I finished the arm,” he gestured at the metal artwork cradled now against Barnes’s chest in his good arm. “You didn’t like it?
“Who said I didn’t like it? I just wanted you to install it.” Barnes tried for a carefree grin.
Tony blinked, his mind drawing a blank. “Why?”
“Because I trust you, punk.”
“Oh. But it’s really easy to install now,” Tony muttered, perplexed, as he rubbed sleep from his eyes and scooted his chair forward to take the arm from James’s grasp. He didn’t understand why Friday had let Barnes into the workshop, or why Barnes hadn’t let Cho connect the arm in the first place, but maybe, just maybe, it meant that Barnes would stay a bit longer before he followed Steve?
He almost dared to hope, as he glided the metal contraption into the perfectly formed socket, twisting gently to the right until the tell-tale click sounded, indicating it was set perfectly into its connectors. “Gimme a sec for the diagnostics to run and get the electric impulses going. That should connect up the nerves, then. It should feel lighter than your old arm, shouldn’t pull at the scars. I know Cho was able to regenerate a lot of that, but there’s still some aggravated tissue here. This one’s waterproof, depth certified to 500 meters. That’s better than most watches, you know. You’ll set off the airport’s metal detectors though, will have to get you some certificate or whatever, not much I can do about that—” He looked up, confused by the gentle smile on James’s face. “What?”
“Nothing,” James denied.
“Um,” Tony looked back to the arm, keying the tablet. The initialization sequence was almost complete, just a few more minutes. “Okay.”
“It’s just—”
“It should—” Tony interrupts, before gesturing at Barnes to continue. “You first. Just what?”
“Never mind,” Barnes looked down. “It’s probably stupid.”
“C’mon, James,” Tony prodded, heart racing against his throat. “We have a whole minute until this is done. Just what?”
Barnes sighed. “Just that yer cute when you’re rambling about your tech.”
“Oh,” Tony squeaked, his face was warm. He keyed in the last boot sequence, watching as the power meter on the arm echoed the display on the tablet. “Oh,” he managed again. What did that mean, anyway? What did that mean? Tony cleared his throat. “Um. So. I thought you were going to go back with Steve?”
“Why would I do that?” James protested, looking hurt.
And fuck that was not what he intended, not okay. Tony dropped the table to the table. “Because he’s your friend? Because they’re hunting down Hydra? I mean, that’s what I meant. That’s why I thought, you know, that you might have—Not that you have to, but I thought you would—because Steve.” He shrugged, grimacing. “Everyone likes Steve.”
James’s answering grin was small, reserved. “Thought I might stick around here for a while, you know?”
“Um. Okay?” Tony gestured to the metal arm. “Give it a whirl, maybe?”
Bucky looked to the metal contraption, before he lifted it expertly and reached out to tuck a stray strand of Tony’s unkempt hair behind his ear. Then the metal fingers trailed further against Tony’s hair, running smoothly through the dark locks before gently scratching against his scalp.
“What—” Tony swallowed, willing his heartbeat to slow down. “What are you doing?”
“Testing the arm,” Barnes replied, a smirk present on his lips but his eyes were lit with curiosity and something else, something child-like. “Seems like it works. I can feel your hair, it feels like actual hair between my fingers.”
“Y-yeah—That’s the sensors, made them electro-magnetic to immit—imitate—” Tony stuttered as Barnes’s fingers encircled the back of his neck, the cool metal giving a quick, gentle massage to the tight muscles of Tony’s neck, before the metal hand trailed across the inventor’s jawline, thumb finally resting on Tony’s lower lip. “Listen,” he demanded, closing his eyes even as he leaned into the touch. “I can’t. I mean. I can’t do—this, whatever you’re doing—I want—It’s going to break me, James. If you’re just fucking with me right now, and you’re going to leave, please. Please. Just do it already.”
“What if I don’t wanna go anywhere?” Barnes muttered. “What if I wanted to stay here?”
“You—” Tony blinked. “What? Why?”
James huffed a frustrated sound, pulling away. He leaned back into the sofa, letting his metal hand fall to his knee. “Maybe I’m tired of being what everyone thinks. Steve, he keeps calling me Bucky. And yeah, I remember him now, remember the war and all, but it doesn’t feel like me. Doesn’t feel real. It’s like watching a movie, so long ago that it no longer feels right.”
Tony dropped to the sofa beside him, relishing how James (James!) leaned into his side, their shoulders touching, firm and warm. “Yeah.”
“He doesn’t even have any scars,” James exclaimed, exasperated. As though it explained everything. “And I—I look in the mirror and sometimes—sometimes—”
“It’s like you don’t recognize the reflection, even though you know it’s you?” Tony finished.
“Yeah. But here,” James gestured to the sofa, and beyond to the workshop, to where U and Dum-E were charging, and beyond, to the glass cases where the last of the Iron Man suits were stored. “Here my scars make sense. This makes sense. This makes sense. I know I’m in the future now, when I’m here.”
Tony chuckled. “And here I was planning on posting up a pride flag or something, to remind you that it’s the 21st century now, with marriage and all—” he trailed off, noticing Barnes’s metal hand tracing nervous patterns against his leg. Right. The guy’s from the 1940s. Tony grimaced. “But somehow I think that would make you uncomfortable. Never mind.”
“Would be kinda hypocritical if it did, punk,” Barnes muttered, before covering it with a cough. “Actually, I wanted to ask you something. Now that everyone’s gone.”
“Yeah sure, you can stay here,” Tony waved it off, eyes crinkling as though he’d been joking, earlier, and reached for his coffee mug.
“Good,” James’s fingers beat a steady rhythm against his leg. “But I wanted to ask if I could kiss you, you idiot.”
Tony sputtered, spitting coffee out across the floor. U beeped in displeasure, whistling a tune as he went for the mop.
“Damn it, Stark,” James muttered. “You coulda just said no, you don’t have to act so surprised—”
“Yes!” Tony blurted out, wiping the coffee from his chin. “Fuck’s sake, yes!”
“Yes?” the former assassin blinked, his own shock clear across his expression. “Really?”
“Really, really,” Tony plopped his coffee mug into U’s waiting claw.
“Okay,” James reached with his metal arm, wrapping it carefully around Tony’s shoulder as he pulled the shorter man closer, moments before touching his lips to Tony’s.
It was over almost immediately, a gentle brush of lips and tongue before Barnes pulled back, blue eyes twinkling anxiously as he studied Stark’s face. “Was that— are we—?”
Tony huffed a laugh, leaned into James, letting his forehead rest against the taller man’s cheek. “I admit,” he stuttered, his breath warm against James’s neck, “when you came down here today, I was not expecting that. I mean—don’t get me wrong—I’m really, really glad that just happened, but I might throw up right now, I’m so nervous. Don’t wanna fuck this up. I’m not good at—did I tell you about my last relationship? I sort of almost got her killed—it wasn’t—“
“Tony,” James interrupted.
“Hmm?” the engineer mumbled.
“Shut up.”
Tony exhaled, tucked against the metal arm; it radiated false heat,Tony’s design—his design and construction and sweat and blood and tears. And maybe some new scars on his fingers. But it didn’t matter, because Barnes had scars, too. “Make me,” Tony challenged, looking up to meet James’s eyes with a mischievous sparkle.
“Fine,” James said, grinning as he pulled Tony in again for another kiss.
And everything else—the lawyers and shrinks and pardons and everything else Tony had planned—nothing else mattered anymore, not when James was here, warm against his side and safe and here.
Finally home.