Archive of Our Own ^beta

“I knew he should have taken the private jet,” Tony murmured as he paced the floor. “Or even an airline more reliable than Delta.”

“Will you calm down?” Steve sighed, a patient, if exasperated foil to Tony’s nervous energy. “He told us the flight was delayed on his end, so it figures it would be delayed in getting here.”

“Which is absolutely why he shouldn’t have flown Delta. Maybe Southwest, they’re always really good at being on time.”

“How would you know? You’ve never flown on anything even remotely commercial.”

Tony turned to Steve, frowning. “Aren’t you supposed to be reassuring me?”

“What use is there in reassuring you that Southwest is better?” Steve shrugged, folding his arms. “I wouldn’t know anything about Southwest, anyway. Commercial flights are a little after my time.” Tony was sure Steve was giving him a sarcastic grin, but he didn’t bother to look, because a new crowd of commuters were coming down the escalator, and damn it, if James wasn’t among them, Tony was going to get into his suit and find that plane.

Seriously, what made him think letting James travel back from his charity function (visiting kids in hospitals, because if anyone was even remotely as purely good as Steve, it was James) on a plane rather than a Stark Industries private jet was a good idea? All the stressing out and potential threats that could happen because of who James was and his arm- oh god, his arm. How was TSA letting him get away with that?

If Tony hazarded a guess, it was because James was a charismatic bastard who probably pulled a Captain America and gave a rousing speech about how he would protect the whole airline with his life because they deserved such safety. And it was probably James being a charismatic bastard that convinced Tony he didn’t need to waste a private jet on James, especially when they weren’t sure what to make of their relationship.

Or, at least James didn’t know what to make of the relationship. If Tony had his way, he would shout it from the rooftops, amplified with gigantic speakers, that he was sleeping with James Buchanan Barnes, best friend to Captain America and HYDRA’s doom. There were many other titles that could be applied to James, of course. Sharpest sniper in America, probably the world. Irresistible charmer, innocently used to make kids smile, not-so-innocently used to make men and women alike fluster and giggle. Fantastic in bed, but Tony preferred to keep that title from the public. What they didn’t know… kept James firmly with him.

Tony absolutely didn’t mind that James didn’t feel the same way. The guy was willing to give him the time of day, so Tony was definitely not going to push things by asking James to join him on his charity functions (more adults and liquor, but also more cameras and wagging tongues). It was enough to see James smile when they looked at each other, that kind of smile that no one dared to hope for just a few months ago, that kind of smile that always made Tony’s heart race and his head feel just a bit lighter, that kind of smile that meant Tony would do anything to keep it there. So long as James kept smiling like that when they were together, when they chatted in the workshop, shared a dinner, watched movies, relaxed in bed, any of that… so long as that smile stayed, Tony would keep crazy thoughts like, “I love you so much it hurts sometimes, but more often makes me feel like I could do anything,” to himself.

“Damn it,” he muttered under his breath as the crowd tapered out. “It’s been a half hour. Half hour! He said it was only ten minutes late. Something must have happened.”

“Perhaps,” Steve stepped in front of Tony, probably thinking he was about to go out to the car and step into the briefcase armor. He'd be right, but it would have been nice to be a little unpredictable. “But maybe not the way you’re thinking. Maybe he got on the plane and they were delayed further. Maybe he went to the wrong gate.”

“But what if something bad happened, Steve? He can pilot a lot of things, but a Boeing 757 seems a bit of a stretch, even for him.”

“Tony.” Steve gripped his shoulders, stopping him in his tracks. “Everything is okay. Sometimes things don’t go the way we plan, but that doesn’t mean the world is going to fall apart. It just means we have to roll with it. And we’re Avengers. We know how to roll with the unexpected.” Steve smiled crookedly. “And you seem to love reminding us how easily you roll with the unexpected.”

“Hey, I can roll with it. I can roll with it so well it’ll make your head spin.” The nervous energy that was put into his pacing now turned into tapping his fingers against his legs and tapping his toes against the tiles. “But it just… it feels wrong. Something must be wrong.”

“Does something feel wrong because something is actually wrong,” Steve raised a knowing brow, “or does it feel wrong because you haven’t seen him in a whole week?”

Curse Steve and his super-human perception. “Shut up.” Tony pulled out of Steve’s grip and returned to pacing. “I’ll have you know he called me every other day. And we’ve been texting almost all the time.”

Tony didn’t fully understand it all, either. Texting every now and then, with maybe a weekly call? That sounded like something James should be doing. Calling every other day? Texting during every spare moment they had? James trying to keep up appearances didn’t make that much sense. Unless he was doing it to keep from getting Steve’s Look of Disappointment. That Look was an intense Look. Natasha even buckled under the Look of Disappointment. No one messed with Steve when they did something to bring that Look on. And James knew it better than anyone, so yeah. Keep up appearances, don’t disappoint Steve. Made perfect sense.

Steve looked on Tony with sympathy, which didn’t make much sense until he remembered what they were talking about. “Doesn’t mean you can’t miss him, Tony. You guys haven’t really been apart for long since you started going out. It makes sense that you would get twitchy about his being gone.”

Tony clenched his jaw to keep from spewing all of the “it’s okay that he doesn’t love me” crap, because the last thing he needed was Steve being all earnest and “I’m sure he loves you very much”, which was not only a platitude but one that actually hurt. Tony could feel his nerves sob whenever he was reminded that no, James didn’t love him like that, James was just being charming and having a good time. He reminded himself of this all the time. He didn’t need to hear it from Steve, who knew what was really up.

“Just ready to go back to the workshop,” Tony said instead. “I’ve got a time-sensitive project I need to go back to.”

“Ah, don’t be like that, babe,” a familiar voice drew Tony’s attention, and something within Tony settled down, letting him revel in relief and euphoria, despite all the gloom that had occupied his mind just a second ago. He turned and sure enough, there was James, holding his bags like they were nothing, that heart-stopping smirk stretched across his lips. He looked happy. Tired, but happy. And that was rare enough to enjoy when it happened. “Didn’t they ever tell ya patience is a virtue?”

Tony smiled, full and genuine. “Maybe, but I’ve never been very virtuous.”

James snorted, a sly smile crossing his lips. “Ain’t that the truth? You been keeping this punk out of trouble?” He jerked his chin to Steve, who rolled his eyes as he moved forward.

“I’m pretty sure I can take care of myself, jerk.” He pulled James into a brief hug, before taking the bags right out of his hands. “Good to have you back. You can help me keep him out of trouble.”

“Sure, blame it all on him.”

Steve chuckled, and just like that, walked to the exit without another word. Tony blinked in confusion, but he shrugged it off soon enough. He was probably giving them space to do their usual thing, where they danced around the topic of relationship and flirted shamelessly. Like Tony was trying to win James over for another night together as if the night before never happened. So Tony just went with it, turned back to James, who had this odd look on his face, and waggled his brows. “Alone at last,” he said, sauntering up close to James, feeling the body heat radiating from him. And oh, how glorious that felt.

James smiled, but like the look, it was odd. Not something that usually made an appearance in their flirting-dance-thing. “Yeah. Alone. In a crowd of people.”

“Hmm, yes, sounds like the perfect time to scorch the image of us making out in their brains. They’ll never know what hit them.”

Only, as Tony moved in to press his lips against James’, James took him by the shoulders and put a bit of distance between them. “First, I think we need to talk about some things.”

Oh. Hello, gloom. Long time, no see, right? Tony put on a tight smile, then dropped it after not liking how he felt with it on. “Sure, talking. Let’s talk. We’re adults. We can do the talk thing.”

James winced, probably at the tone in Tony’s voice, and cupped Tony’s cheek. “Hey, just listen, alright? I’m pretty sure we’ll come out of it better once you hear what I have to say.”

“Sure, of course, whatever, lay it on me, Barnes.” Tony hadn’t called James by his last name since they shared that kiss in the workshop. Since Tony fell in love with the guy, really. Even though they were about to end this thing, it felt wrong to say. Probably because despite knowing they were through, some part of Tony was desperately clinging to the notion that they were together. Some part of Tony was calling for him to bargain, make this conversation go away by renegotiating the terms of their… thing. He’d stop trying to keep James longer in the workshop after arm maintenance. He wouldn’t try to engage in eye sex during any meals they shared. Basically, and it was an alarming realization for Tony, he would do anything to keep James with him, to keep up some semblance of a relationship. But he was willing to do more to keep James happy, so he’d have to get used to the end of this (and he’d celebrate first by starting a new armor upgrade as soon as they got home, and not setting foot out of the room until it stopped hurting to think about the empty bed waiting for him up in his penthouse).

It looked like James was catching on that something was wrong, more wrong than whatever he heard in Tony’s voice. His jaw clenched, his brow furrowed. Why he looked so confused, Tony had no idea. Didn’t he realize that this was what happened when a couple were about to break up? Could they even call it “breaking up” if one of them didn’t even think of it as a relationship? Before Tony’s thoughts could get anymore manic, James closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then looked at Tony with concentrated determination. “You offered to have your private jet come to Iowa to pick me up. It surprised me.”

Tony heaved a sigh. “Is this going to be about going overboard with the gestures and the gifts? Pepper already had that conversation with me after the rabbit for Christmas.”

James rested a finger, a metal finger (which did things to Tony’s stomach and heart that really needed to go away because he was getting dumped, damn it) against Tony’s lips to shush him. “I’m not finished, darlin’, hear me out. When I said no, I wanted to fly commercial, you didn’t try to push me out of what I wanted. You offered to pay so I could fly first class instead. And when I said no again, you still didn’t push. You let me do it all without any assistance, and just asked that I send you the flight details so you could be here when I got off the plane. So you could be here.”

The tone of James’ voice, the softness of it, it made Tony uncomfortable and confused. He batted James’ hand out of the way, felt himself getting defensive even as he began to say, “Well, yeah, so what? It’s not like… I… What are you looking for, Barnes? What do you want me to say? I’m really not sure what this is all about. Some play-by-play? What? What do you want?”

James’ smile was just as soft as the tone of his voice. He cupped Tony’s cheek again, wrapped an arm around his waist, and pulled him close, their foreheads resting against each other. “Just so you know,” James whispered, his breath fanning across Tony’s lips, “I love you, too.”

Tony stared in shocked silence, unable to fully process what just happened. “So… I’m not getting dumped?”

James kissed him tenderly, and of course Tony couldn’t hold back from returning it. His heart just about returned from nearly having a heart attack when James pulled away to nuzzle into his neck.  “’Course not,” James muttered into his skin. “Why would I do that after realizing that you love me?”

“By not sending the jet out to pick you up? That’s the thing that clued you in? And for the record, ‘we need to talk’ always means a relationship is about to end.” And looking back, Tony felt like an idiot. Of course they were in a relationship. Just because James hadn’t called it that didn’t mean that the relationship didn’t exist. In fact, now that Tony pulled his head out of his ass, all the signs were there. Tony woke up more times than not to James smiling sleepily at him, or still sleeping. James always reserved the love seat for them to cuddle on during movie nights. James would even sit with Tony and hold his hand if Avengers business put him in the hospital, concern making him tetchy.

James pulled back, apology apparent in his eyes. “I’ll keep that in mind. Sorry. But yeah, the fact that you didn’t try to push, that you were able to not go overboard and keep pushing about the jet, or meeting me at the Des Moines Airport yourself, or escorting the commercial flight to New York, all that made me realize that you cared ‘bout me as much as I care about you. I thought our relationship, all this was just you playing along because you thought it would help me with my recovery. Which is a stupid thought,” James raised his voice when Tony was just about to protest, “and it wasn’t fair to you. So, here’s me saying I’m sorry. And I love you.”

“But,” Tony stared back at James in confusion, “I thought you were just playing along because you didn’t want to disappoint Steve.”

James laughed, shaking his head. “What?”

“Well, okay, maybe not the first few times. Just thought you were wanting to have some fun. But then Steve caught wind of what we were doing, got all ‘Steve Rogers is so proud of you two’ on us, and I thought you kept with it because ‘Steve Rogers is disappointed in you’ is worse than ‘Captain America is disappointed in you’.” Tony cleared his throat and looked down at his shoes (which, wow, he’s really turned back into a teenager for James, hasn’t he?). “So I guess I’m an idiot.”

“We’re both idiots,” James said reassuringly, pulled Tony back into his arms. “Two idiots in love.”

Tony snorted, but didn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around James. “Wow, could you get any cheesier?”

“Gimme time, I can put something together.”

Tony chuckled, resting his head on James shoulder. James loved him. James knew he was loved. Those two things put together made the weight on his shoulders significantly lighter. Not gone, it would never be gone, he made too many mistakes to have the weight be gone. But he could be happy with this. He sighed. “Welcome home, James.”

James hummed, pressed a soft kiss to his temple. “I missed you. I meant to text you on the flight over, but they were charging ten bucks for me to use the WiFi. Apparently, it would have been a violation to use my network connection.”

“Cheapskates, that’s what they are. Now, if you were on the jet, you could have reclined in a nice bed, actually talking to me with your own voice.”

“Oh, I see how it is, you just want to have phone sex with me.”

“Well, it couldn’t hurt.”

James shook his head, but when they pulled away, Tony could see the smile spread wide on the man’s face. “You’re impossible.”

Tony smiled back. “So they tell me. C’mon, Steve’s probably ready to drag us out to the car.”

“It’s not a limo, is it?”

“No, Steve forbade it. Made me take the Audi.” Tony shuddered dramatically as he led the way to the exit, James’ hand wrapped around his.

“Oh, God forbid you drive something with more than two seats.”

"The limo has more than two seats."

"Something that doesn't require wide turns, Tony."

And on and on they bickered, even after they were seated in the car, even after they were back in the Tower, even after James showered off the airport smell, even after they settled into bed. But it turned less into bickering about cars and more into teasing about all sorts of things. The sort of things that wouldn’t have been touched because they didn’t know where they stood in the relationship. And as Tony lay there in the warmth of his own bed, James wrapped snugly around him, he finally conceded that yeah, this relationship was really happening. Apparently, it had been happening from the very beginning.