fossilised | military mistletoe

Bucky hadn't particularly wanted this mission, none of the men had wanted to babysit the rich guy who hadn't got a clue what it was really like on the front line and who clearly saw them as inferior if the way his nose wrinkled as he got in the plane with the rest of them was any indication. But it was this, or undergo mandatory psych evaluation, and this was by far the lesser of two evils.

Sure, he had been captured for a while, but he was fine. Really. Honestly.

He had come straight from the medical bay, where he was pronounced mostly fit for duty with just a mild case of malnutrition, and volunteered for this mission. His CO hadn't wanted to approve it, but there weren't that many men available and he didn't have much of a choice.

"Problem?" His tone was dry and mildly amused as he watched Stark try and fasten his belt.

“In multiples,” Tony grumbled, slipping the metal into the catch only to have it tug loose again. What was he getting wrong here? Buckle technology, even in the military, shouldn’t be this involved. He flicked up the release to find it perilously attached by bearing pins, snapped it down again and watched it unbuckle once more. “I thought you guys were better funded.”

He could already picturing himself being flung around inside the fuselage like a little plastic soldier toy in a blender, and while that might be exciting to experience safely, nothing about the inside of military craft was meant to be safe.

And Tony should know. He’d developed several alternative transports for the Navy and the Air Force without any of their upper brass biting on the contracts.

Giving up, Tony’s glance upward at the man across from him left him smirking. Damn. He hated it when hecklers were attractive. He always ended up sleeping with them.

Bucky rolled his eyes and unbuckled himself so that he could lean over and clip Stark's belt into place, with one smug and effortless movement, before shifting back to buckle himself in again.

"It's okay, lots of people have trouble with such high tech stuff."

He smirked.

He was already composing the letter about this to Steve in his head. He wrote to his best friend almost every day, except that brief three week period of captivity, to which he got about 1000000 worried letters that he was still wading through. Hopefully some funny stories about the CEO who couldn't even fasten a seatbelt would amuse him.

Although if Steve were there, he'd probably already be grilling Tony Stark about making his company more green, or the wage gap, or making weapons, or literally everything else that Steve protested against. Come to think of it, he was fairly sure Steve had been arrested last year for protesting outside Stark tower.

The simplicity of the belt had actually thrown Tony off. He gave it a mighty tug but the straps all stayed in place, much to his equal parts amusement and dismay. “I usually have someone along to buckle me in,” he said, partly because it was expected of him to be glib and partly because he didn’t mind an errant joke or two made at his expense.

When Tony Stark walked into a room, it was usually to mostly distain with a healthy bit of desire to suck up among those gathered. He didn’t care, he wasn’t a man constantly trying to find friends. He was on a different level from everyone else, rich enough to buy his way out of his social idiocies, smarter than most people he met, and living in the shadow of his father so far that everyone believed he was just a smile and a suit-covered sack of money.

He’s sure that this guy here has him figured out, the same way everyone oh so wrongly has him figured out. They’ll pose for pictures. It will be a brief topic of conversation with friends: “did I ever tell you that I met Tony Stark once?” And that will be the end of that.

They didn’t stay in his life long enough to make impressions.

The charming, attractive ones didn’t do more than leave their scents on his sheets for a few hours until he had them cleaned.

“I’ll make sure they put you in for a commendation, Soldier. And I’ll request you on all of my future details.” He knew that was probably a threat. It’s why he said it.

Tony might be dismayed to know that Bucky hadn't given him nearly that much thought. He didn't think of him with disdain beyond showing up and obviously not being happy to get in a plane with a bunch of military guys, and definitely didn't consider his money. Having Steve for a best friend kind of sucked all superficiality out of things, he made friends for friends and enemies for enemies.

"James Barnes, actually."

He didn't like to be referred to as just Soldier, it was dehumanising, and he argued back even when his CO did it. The people fighting for their country should all have names, not be faceless ranks and numbers, that's what kept people from doing right by their veterans in wars past. They could ignore the suffering, because the people were buried in the faceless mass.

One of the other soldiers leaned over to look at Bucky, grin on his face. His voice had a French twang to it, he was on loan from one of the Canadian units.

"Quit chatting up the mission, Buck."

"Go fuck yourself, Dernier."

James Barnes.

Tony didn’t bother to offer his hand (he didn’t shake) and he didn’t repeat the name out loud or ask for a rank either. He was much more interested in the way Barnes dealt with his unit. Hostile, under the surface. Playful, yes, but on edge. He language didn’t bother or offend him, but that Barnes didn’t keep it clean was more relief than anything else. Tony did lean as far forward as the restraints would allow to get a better look at the guy sitting beside Barnes.

Well. They hadn’t given him the photo op team, that was for sure. Barnes was the only one of the group with a symmetrical face.

Good. Muscles and squirrelly, back water guys on his detail meant that he was going to be taken seriously. There wouldn’t be cameras. None of this was for show.

He’d either gotten lucky with Barnes happening to be on this team... or something else. When Tony applied himself, he tended to be a good judge of character. You have to be in the board room. Before he could make a comment or do much more thinking, the plane took off much less gracefully than he was used to and Tony instead addressed the handsome young man with the Brooklyn accent instead of his fellow soldier.

“Want to hold me hand in case I get scared too?”

Bucky kind of wanted to swallow his tongue as soon as he spoke. These guys were his unit, like his family, and so he never watched his language around them because they all knew each other inside out. But he probably should have watched himself around the company, it could have offended Stark and then he'd have been in hot water back at the base.

Thankfully, it doesn't look like that's the case.

He raises his eyebrows at the offer and snorts, not a very dignified sound, and shakes his head.

"Thanks for the offer, but you're not really my type."

Actually, he could be Bucky's type, he liked them dark haired and dark eyed. Probably because after the fifteenth date with a blond guy, he had come to realise the reason he didn't like it was because they reminded him too much of Steve, who was like a brother to him.

Tony’s no one’s type long term and everyone’s type for a few hours. He didn’t take what Barnes said personally. He might still be considering a messy encounter later (he had plenty of hand sanitizer too), but if it didn’t happen, he wouldn’t be all that disappointed. He’d find someone else if he really wanted to relief he felt from skin to skin contact. And if not, there were always a thousand things to sign from corporate.

He’d be busy tonight either way.

Tony just laughed, curled his fingers around his palm, both calloused because he did actually get his hands dirty sometimes when it came to prototypes, or weekend projects, and focused his attention on the introduction of more sky than arid, rocky land.

It wouldn’t be a long flight and once they really got going, the thrillist in Stark got into the experience. He still managed to look polished when they landed, but he stayed in his seat as the unit unbuckled and headed down to line the path he would take to the demonstration zone.

He couldn’t help but he cheeky when Barnes stood.

“Uh. Little help?” He glanced at the buckle, having not even tried to open it.

The rest of the guys had already filed out and were taking up position, leaving their Sergeant to deal with Tony Stark. To that end, Bucky glanced back when the question came and a sudden grin lit up his face, lop-sided and genuine, before he shook his head and just hopped out of the plane himself.

Idiot.

As soon as his boots hit the sandy ground, he no longer had a smile, all business now that the demonstration was so close by. The higher ups were all gathered, the large weapon was in place, and all that remained was to guard everything until this was over and done with and they could go back to the base.

Nothing could go wrong, right?

"Mr. Stark?" That was one the generals, an administrative type who dealt with financial matters. "Can we get started?"

Barnes wasn't a hard person to like. His charm had probably gotten him a lot of places in life, which was why it was so surprising that he was in fatigues. Tony didn't want to dismiss Army grunts by any means, they were the backbone and life blood of their armed forces, but Barnes had to have been going places. Those looks, that easy smile, and the sass...

Tony didn't bother to move just yet. He watched the armored soldier leave the plane before he snagged a thumb beneath the release and smoothed down his suit jacket.

Showtime.

Tony ignored all of the men as he walked down the gangplank towards the general, giving him a stern nod. Tony had many dealings with this man before, though he often did work for the Air Force and not the Army. Still, he had done his homework. Half assing it was for second and third rate contracts. Not for weapons tech.

This would be a big score.

"Gentlemen," he said, just as they were passing Barnes towards the set up. "I have to commend your Sergeant on his professionalism and hospitality. One of your finest," Tony said, glancing over his rose colored lenses at the stone faced Barnes.

The General grunted a little, looking hard at Barnes, and snorted. "Noted."

Whatever that meant, Tony thought to himself, hands in his pockets before the show got underway. It was all very impressive. Explosions as far as the eye could see. Tony was a bringer of death. He knew his moniker. But he was also a bringer of peace and safety. And he preferred that one.

Bucky had to fight to keep a straight face when Stark complimented him on things he definitely had not been showing, it actually made gave him a small appreciation for the asshole. At least he had a sense of humour.

That faded as the demonstration got underway. Sure, he used weapons all the time, he was a damn soldier, but it didn't mean that he liked the propensity to find more and better ways to kill large amounts of people. This wasn't a good day, even if the general was grinning so much that he was practically salivating, and it was about to get a whole lot worse.

The first grenade dropped into the centre of the company with a soft thud, and everyone froze for an elongated half second.

Bucky didn't even feel himself move, he just knew that one second he was standing to attention, and then the next second he was tackling Stark to the ground and an explosion was going off deafeningly close. He only had time to think a surprisingly mundane regret that Steve would be so pissed off at him for dying like this, before everything went black.

Tony didn't have the luxury of blacking out. He hadn't seen the grenade, he only felt a few aftershocks from the gully they had been demonstrating in when the whole company went wild. He'd never seen men jump so high.

Reality caught up with confusion pretty quickly. There was no such thing as slow motion for Tony Stark, not when he literally saw a piece of someone flying over his shoulder. He was pretty sure that piece used to be part of a leg.

Bucky tackled him after that and the fall was hard and rough. He groaned painfully, trying to shift the heavy mass of soldier from his chest when he felt a sting of pain in his side.

Around him, people were yelling, but Tony wasn't thinking straight. He touched his side and came away with blood all over his hand. "Brand new shirt," he muttered to himself before he felt his body give out a few seconds later, Barnes still a partial blanket over him.

It was hot and it was dark when he woke up, a sting of pain filling his consciousness every time he breathed. He was soaked with sweat and the stench of human filth caused him to open his eyes. He was very sorry he did, nausea hitting him all at once.

"Whatever they say I did, it wasn't me," he groaned.

It would not be a soft touch or a kind voice that greeted him, but the harsh tones of one of his captors speaking broken English.

"You live. Good. For now. You live long enough to make us weapon, yes?"

He tugged on something just out of sight, but Tony would feel it as if someone had reached into his chest and tugged, mostly because they sort of did. He was connected up to some weird car battery to keep him alive for now, though the rest of his wounds were bad enough even without taking in the shrapnel near his heart.

"You work."

The captor tried to haul Tony up to a sitting position, and if he managed without Stark passing out, then the man would be able to see two other men besides him on the ground. One was Barnes, covered in blood all over his left side and with the bloody stump of an arm visible, the bleached white of shattered bone bright against the blossoming red, with his eyes closed, and another soldier who might have simply looked as if he were sleeping if his lips weren't the blue of death.

Whatever sort of moan or shriek that left Tony's lips, it wasn't human. He was pretty sure that he never made that sound either. It was disembodied. It couldn't be from him. The man who had hauled him up turned immediately to a radio just after and though Tony did know a fair number of languages, this was not one of them. He tried to piece the syntax together but his reality was currently covered in black spots and fuzzy bits he couldn't see around.

There was some shouting on the other end of the radio and the man pushed him back down, as if that might make the situation better.

"Bad customer service," Tony complained to no one in particular before he opened his eyes again. Time had passed. The blue lipped soldier was gone and James Stumpy Barnes was partially wrapped in a white sheet turned brown and bloody in places. He let his vision seep out again.

When he woke, Barnes was still there, and so was another man, this one looking a little more like he was in charge. His English was only slightly better than the first of their captors. "You will be allowed to heal. You will eat. And in a few days, you will begin to work for us."

Tony wished he couldn't smell himself. It was hard to negotiate when you could smell yourself. "What happened? What's this?"

"An accident. You were not meant to be injured. Shrapnel has penetrated your chest. We are using the battery to keep you alive."

Tony'd heard about this sort of thing before, using electromagnets to keep shrapnel from killing people. He just hadn't wanted to become that sort of statistic. "I don't really think I have manufacturing on my to do list for the next few months. I need a hospital. We both need hospitals."

"No hospital, you work or you die. We will give you food and time for one week. After week, you work or you not eat."

Having given his side of the negotiations, and not feeling the need to make a better position for himself as the person who held all the cards, the man retreated and left Stark alone with his thoughts. At least he had survived and was now capable of remaining conscious, it had been dicey for a few days and the boss would not have been pleased if he had died.

He hadn't been gone for more than a couple of minutes before Bucky opened his eyes a little. He had first regained consciousness days ago, and even though the pain was still enough to give him a continuous vertigo and nausea, he had been working through it since. He had been keeping Stark as warm, clean, and safe as possible, though he had been working with limited resources.

He swayed up to a sitting position and then blinked in surprise, the bloodied sheet stuck to his side and a softly sweet smell coming from beneath. He knew that meant the start of an infection, but somehow it was hard to care when all his focus was on keeping awake.

"Huh. You're awake this time."

"You're awake this time," Tony replied, not feeling as defensive as he made it sound. Having the other man to speak to, even if only for a moment, did wonders to calm his fraying nerves. He looks a mess, they both did really, but Tony was pretty sure he wasn't exuding All American Boy charm through his few days worth of facial hair growth and pallid skin. The younger man had lost an arm and he still managed to look...

Well, Tony didn't have a word for it. Refreshed just seemed all wrong, given the circumstances. Still, he'd like to bottle some of that up and use for himself for later.

Just that thought left the corner of his lips uplifted somewhat. "Just spoke to management. We have to pay for extra towels and they're fresh out of shampoo."

Bucky hesitated a moment to steel himself for how much he knew this was going to hurt, before he heaved himself up to his feet. He swayed for a second, pale as bone, and let out a noise that was halfway between a moan and a whine. But he was a stubborn man, he had to be in order to put up with Steve Rogers, and so he rode it out to a more manageable level so that he could stagger over to Stark's side.

"--you need some water?"

He had been doing his best to help, but it would be easier with the other man awake, even if he couldn't move far because of the car battery.

"Forget towels and shampoo, I'm gonna keep you alive."

Army of One had never meant more than it did now. Tony was powerless to stop Barnes from doing what he wanted to do, and he was too shocked to protest it at first either. It took the guy’s body heat on his clammy skin to finally cause him to blink, and that smell—

Shit.

“You need to keep yourself alive,” he snapped. He wasn’t being proud, though he was capable of caring for himself, thank you. He just was very well aware that if Barnes went septic, that was literally it for him. “Get yourself water.”

Tony wasn’t a selfless man but the guy had probably saved his life in the blast at a huge cost to himself. And that was why he needed to return the favor. If these assholes wanted weapons? Fine. But he wanted antibiotics. “Hey!” Sorry, Barnes. Hope you’re not deaf. “We need medicine in here. You cut open my chest. You’re going to kill me before I do anything for you. Antibiotics. Got it?!”

Bucky reeled backwards as Tony suddenly shouted and ended up having to grasp the edge of the table thing that Stark was laid out on to keep himself from falling over, though it make his eyes water with the pain to do so.

"Jesus, Stark, I've been keeping myself alive too. But I can move and you can't, besides, I was assigned your protection detail."

A lot of people would say that ended now that they were captured and it should be every man for himself, but Bucky wasn't that sort of guy. He was a good soldier through and through, no man left behind, and he'd damn well spit in the eye of death to make it so. Another lesson learned from Steve.

One of the captors put their head in and spat something in Pashto at the pair of them, before retreating again.

"--don't think they're gonna bring medicine, but I've been washing us both as best I can with what they give me for drinking."

It was easier to wash Stark, because as soon as he touched his own wounds he generally either passed out or vomited from the pain, which was why his smelled sweet and Stark's just smelled of dried blood and sweat.

“I thought I wasn’t your type,” Tony teased since there wasn’t much else to do in this particular situation. If he let this get to him, he’d be done for sure. His mind was his best asset here and it needed to be sharp. Putting the situation down was just something he had to do.

Bucky would understand that. He’d been a survivor before. He knew the drill.

He wasn’t missing an arm or in grave danger of being killed through shrapnel plunging into his heart, but at least he could call up past experience to get him through this one. All Stark had was memories of surviving boarding school.

Luckily, Tony was too valuable an asset, for now, to allow him to die. It meant that medication would, in fact, be delivered with the next meal and Tony was going to insist on Barnes taking most of them. They could argue about it, but Barnes would find that Stark could be as tenacious as his bestie back home.

The medication that Stark foisted on him would, without doubt, be one of the main reasons that he would survive this instead of dying of sepsis over the next few days, though he was still stubborn enough to make sure that Stark took some of them and insisted on continuing to move about to clean them both up as best he could.

It was on the fourth night since they had both woken up, when the fever from his infection had finally started to go down, that Bucky felt clear headed enough to start a conversation that wouldn't just end in silence and sleep as it had so often over the past few days.

"--people will be looking for you, we just have to hold out until then."

What Bucky said wasn’t wrong, but given the timeline, if anyone had been looking for him, they had likely given up by now. Tony didn’t know the full amount of time that passed but it had been at least a week. “They probably are planning my funeral,” he said. “Yours too.”

The Army has a no man left behind policy but they obviously weren’t here banging down the makeshift door now were they? No. Tony looked at Barnes with half lidded eyes. He was in pain but he was getting more lucid. More aware of the situation.

“We’re going to cooperate.” He needed to have access to parts. To metal. It was the only way.

"I'm not giving them any information, and I'm not leaving a weapon in their hands."

He might be down an arm, and likely considered dead, but he was still loyal to his country and he would go down as a man of honour if he had to go down. At least then he might have a chance to rest easy once he was dead.

"What exactly is this cooperation you intend?"

They had to be listening. They had to be watching. Tony couldn’t allow anyone to know what he was doing, even if it meant having Bucky’s cooperation. The older man gave the younger a hard look. “We don’t have a choice. I intend on living through this,” he said, trying to convey his plan in thought alone.

Of course it wouldn’t work. Bucky was too proud and too trained. He didn’t see Stark for anything more than a guy born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

“You don’t have to help me but I wish you would. I’m going to need it to get around.”

Bucky wasn't psychic, but the look Stark was giving him was hardly subtle. Okay, so he had a plan, though Bucky had no idea what this plan was, he just hoped that it didn't make a traitor out of either of them.

He moved as if to scrub a hand through greasy hair and winced, because there wasn't an arm left to do that with on the side he usually did that.

"You and me are a team in this Stark, I'll help you. I want to get home too, I have someone waiting for me."

That probably sounded more romantic than he intended it to be.

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