fossilised | military mistletoe

“I live in California,” Tony replied, amused. “Born in New York but it’s never felt like home.” Tony wasn’t quite feeling all woah is me just yet, mainly because he was half asleep. “Can fly you out to happy hour every once in awhile. Left coast is the best coast.”

If Bucky had any retort to that it was met with silence. The man would sleep, as he had been doing for months, partially under Bucky’s watchful eye.

And all without any visitors, despite evidently living fairly nearby. Tony didn’t want to be seen as weak. It would be different if Bucky wasn’t there. Maybe. Then again, he’d always gone through his hardest trials alone. This didn’t have to be any different.

Whenever Tony next woke up, it would be to the sight of four extra people in the room, all of who were crowded around Bucky's bedside. Not that the man himself was aware, because he was still fast asleep. The youngest of the two girls, who looked about ten, was outright crying. The one older than that, mid-teens, was desperately biting her lip, and the oldest who looked almost like a female version of Bucky was glaring angrily down. The three of them were joined by a very short, very skinny, blond haired man who came over to Tony's bedside when he saw the other man was awake.

He held out his hand, because his Ma raised him right, but he also glared because this was Tony Stark and he had a lot of FEELINGS regarding his company and business practises.

"Steve Rogers. Thank you for flying us out here and putting us up, we all appreciate it. However, you should still know that I think your business practises are abhorrent and I wish it had been anyone but you who rescued my best friend."

Tony just barely registered what Steve was saying and blinked tired, blood shot, pain filled eyes up at the young man. He looked twelve, maybe thirteen. He was probably in his twenties though. Sickly. Tony got a lot from cold reads of people. He got a lot from first impressions. And he had to say that Steve Rogers measured up to everything Bucky had ever mentioned about him.

“As much as I’d love to discuss international business practices with an undergrad, I’m going to have to refrain,” Tony said, painfully trying to sit up and call for a nurse.

He didn’t need to be in the room for the reunion. He ought to have moved to a separate wing for it.

“But for the record, I didn’t do much. He saved my life.”

A bit of fierce pride lit up Steve's eyes at that. He suspected as much, but Tony would learn pretty quickly that the people who orbited Bucky tended to think he hung the moon and were only smugly justified when anything happened that backed that up.

"Then it seems to me you owe him, and since he owes me about fifty million for making me think he was dead, you can owe me instead. And I'm calling that in for a chat about your company when you're out of hospital."

Even he's not jackass enough to keep harassing a man clearly in pain.

A nurse poked her head in on seeing one of her patients awake and gave him a smile. "Everything okay, Mr. Stark? Looks nice and lively in here."

Wow. Annoying. Tony didn’t see what Bucky saw in that little ankle biter. He almost retorted that they’d speak as soon as Steve earned a degree in anything at all. Instead, he was saved by the nurse who he flagged over immediately.

He didn’t want to be in this room. He was already feeling some sort of way about losing Bucky but to lose him to these angry criers? Nah. He didn’t want to experience it. He was fortunate that beds could be moved, and so he had himself wheeled out fairly unceremoniously into the adjoining room.

Steve frowned at that. He assumed the other man was escaping him. Not that it would stop him later.

But all of that commotion was sure to bring Bucky awake. The moment he opened his eyes, he’d get an arm full of little sisters. As it should be. Steve just watched from the corner.

Bucky was barely awake when all of a sudden he was engulfed in three familiar people who made his chest feel tight. He couldn't see past them, and so he didn't know that Tony had been wheeled out, or that Steve was stood slightly off to one side watching. He just endured the mingled sounds of his sisters telling him they loved him, telling him it would be okay, telling him everything and nothing.

It felt like hours later when they slightly backed off and he got to see the other person he had missed, offering Steve a smile that had slightly more hard edges to it than it had before he'd gone overseas.

"Jesus, you can't be Steve Rogers, you look like you've grown a whole damn inch."

“And all of it is in fist form,” Steve said, because he wasn’t going to lay off of Bucky even if he promised to take out all retribution on Stark. There was no way that Bucky was getting out of this without a hit. It was how men showed their emotions and proved their affections.

Becca cleated a spot for Steve, though he stood on the side where Bucky lost his arm so he wasn’t tempted to cling to his hand, like he was the one who had been through hell.

“You’ve looked better. What’s this hipster scruff on your face? And your hair? I’m getting you a knit cap for your birthday.”

Bucky huffed a small laugh and twisted so he could clap his hand to Steve's shoulder, wincing slightly at the movement and then flopping back onto the pillows. It felt good to be teased, good to be home, but it also felt like a dangerous dream that he shouldn't get too attached to.

"Let's see you get caught and come out with perfect hair and a clean shaven face. Because let me tell you, pal, it's not as easy as it sounds."

He felt a burning in his throat when he finished the sentence, and before he knew it he was crying out of goddamn nowhere, which was embarrassing. But it was like it had just hit him that he was finally safe again.

Shit. “Oh come on. Don’t cry. I won’t call you a hipster again. I promise.” Steve could feel the upset in the back of his throat too but he did his best to stifle it. He had so many questions and he knew he could never possibly get the answers. What it had been like for Bucky... asking him about it might just make him relive it. And wasn’t it bad enough that he’d lost an arm..?

Becca saw the tears, which set the two younger girls into sobs and so she hustled them outside to get something from the gift shop for their brother. Steve wasn’t too prepared to be alone with Bucky, though. He sat on the edge of a seat pulled up close to the wires and slowly crept his hand to the other man’s chest.

“Everyone has been okay. When we thought you were dead... uh. Those life insurance policies? Good move. I mean. We probably got to pay it all back but the girls have been doing real well, pal.”

He regretted that he had been back in their lives less than 24 hours and he was already upsetting his two younger sisters. There might come times in the future, when they were confronted by all the changes that had been wrought on him thanks to the captivity, when they might not all wonder if it would have been better if he'd stayed dead.

Stopping crying now that he'd started wasn't easy, in fact it was proving pretty much impossible, and he gave himself over to it when the girls were out of the room. Steve had seen him at his best and worst, this was just... worse than worst.

"--I'm so fucking sorry, Steve."

He'd been so scared, and it hurt so much, and everything was fucked up.

“You didn’t do anything wrong.” Steve could barely keep it together himself and he clenched his teeth to stop himself from going overboard. Tears always begot tears. He remembered having to do this for his mother when he was a child, just so she wouldn’t be upset to see him hurting for her. He curled his fingers in Bucky’s hospital gown and just felt him breathing. “You did something most people wouldn’t. You put your life on the line for someone else and you both survived. Never, ever be sorry for that. We only lost you for a few months, pal. And now here you are. So don’t be sorry.”

Steve had been playing dad for a long time now. He’d been big brother to those girls since Bucky enlisted and then graduated to the guy that helps with math homework and spelling when he was released from the medical ward after the last time he had gotten scooped up by insurgents.

“Just take the honorable discharge they told us you’d be getting. And don’t leave us again.”

It's not like he had the choice that he'd had last time, he couldn't refuse the discharge when he was down a fucking arm, not that he wanted to this time. He wanted out, he'd had enough of blood and pain and death. He wanted to put this behind him and go to school for something, support his family, have dumb movie nights with Steve, and take Tony out for a beer when he was in town.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna. They're gonna give me a pension and a medal and all sorts of shit that I don't deserve. I didn't do nothing in there, Steve, it was all Tony. He figured out how to make some weird thing that contacted the army and told them where we were, all I did was bleed a lot and stand around."

He wasn't a hero, not even close.

"...where is he? Did he get discharged?"

And left without even waking him up and saying goodbye?!

Bucky lost an arm protecting that man. Bucky was the reason that man even survived to get them out. In Steve’s book, that makes Bucky the hero and Stark— Well Stark just took advantage like Stark always did.

He didn’t have a lot of things to say about that so he shut his trap, right up until Bucky actually asked for him. Steve glanced over his shoulder. “He’s strapped to a bed with a thousand machines on him. I don’t think he was discharged. I think he ran away from me, to be honest. Didn’t want to have to listen to me tell him off for being a polluting, weapons mongering asshole.”

Steve pulled his hand back. He had lingered touching the other man long enough for it to maybe get a little weird.

“A nurse wheeled him out just a little bit ago.”

Bucky loved Steve deeply, he had loved him since the moment they met as scrappy five year olds fighting over who should get the last good crayon pack, and he loved him now as he got arrested five times a year on average for protesting. But right now, he wished Steve could have backed off just once in this instance.

"C'mon, pal, he's had open heart surgery and he saved my life, you couldn't have left the lectures until after you'd got to know each other a bit? We're friends now, you know?"

He'd had friends Steve hadn't got on with in the past. For all that Steve had a heart of gold, a lot of people found him a bit much to handle, but never a friend that Steve had actively hated.

Bucky had a lot of friends growing up. He made friends everywhere he went. But that didn’t mean that Steve had those friends too. Steve almost always liked them but it wasn’t exactly mutually a good portion of the time. Usually it was because they found Steve threatening. He and Bucky had never hooked up but they both dated men (Steve more than Bucky), and they were almost always attached at the hip. And okay, yes, sometimes Bucky ignored other people for him but he didn’t get what the big deal was.

Steve wrinkled his nose at Bucky’s admonishment and leaned back in the chair.

“I didn’t tell him off or anything. I just said I wanted to talk with him when he’s feeling better.” And okay. He hadn’t said it as nicely— “If hes your friend, I’ll get an ear, right? Maybe he’ll change some of his employment practices and bring jobs back home. Maybe he’ll stop dumping and increase benefits. It’s worth a shot, Buck.”

And so Steve genuinely believed that.

“But hey. Let’s focus on you, for once.”

Bucky had a feeling that Tony might do things just to spite Steve if they really rubbed each other up the wrong way, but he didn't mention it now. He really hoped he'd be wrong and his two friends would work out how to get along for his sake, because he didn't think he had the temperament to deal with people bitching at one another any more.

"...do we have to?"

He'd really rather not.

He was putting in a very concentrated effort into not thinking about what had happened to him, the fucking mess his head was in, and the hard slog his future would likely be now that coming home was just the first step.

"I'd rather hear what you and the girls have been doing."

It was much easier talking up the girls. Becca especially. Steve could go on for hours about everything that had happened the last few months with some obvious omissions around the time that they’d gotten word about Bucky’s death and what it had been like burying only an arm.

The gab was consistent and upbeat, mostly praise with a few little amusing stories of woe. “So I think the verdict is that we aren’t keeping any more stray cats,” Steve said, after describing how they had to delouse the entire apartment and spent two nights at a cheap hotel in Hoboken across the river in New Jersey.

They hadn’t hurt for money after they lost Bucky. That had been the only saving grace in this whole ordeal. Not that Steve spent a dime more than needed.

“Can’t wait to show you the house. It’s two blocks away from the good side of the tracks. In like a year, it’s gonna be worth so much money. Becca found it— Oh.” He noted Bucky’s yawn with a laugh. “Am I boring you?”

Bucky might be tired as hell, but he was also relieved. One of the big things that he had been worrying about the whole time he was trapped was how his family would be coping, not just emotionally, but financially. He had suffered all these nightmares of Steve having to drop out of college and Becca having to drop out of high school, of homelessness and starvation and death.

It was almost amusing to know they had been better off when he was dead. Probably best not to go down that route.

"You always bore me, pal." Bucky offered a small smile and then pushed himself upright, ignoring the way he wanted to go to sleep. "But what I really want to do is get out of this damn bed and chase Tony down. He's kind of a moron, you know? I bet he's hiding out moping."

“Buck... uh. I don’t think millionaires mope.” Steve could be wrong about that, but if he had all of that money, even if he wasn’t using it for the greater good, he would have better things to do than be sad about what some kid from Brooklyn said to him.

Bucky had been consistently looking towards the space that Stark had occupied though, since he’d woken up, and Steve wondered if Bucky might not have a little bit of Stockholm syndrome when it came to his time in captivity. Not for his aggressor, but for this guy, the one who shared his ordeal with him.

“He’s probably surrounded by his own family and friends right now,” Steve said, trying not to be hurt that his audience with his bestie was being cut short. That never happened. Steve had always been number one. He wasn’t sure that he liked feeling a twinge of jealousy.

"He doesn't have any family, Steve, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't have any friends." Maybe Tony wouldn't appreciate his vulnerabilities being spelled out to someone he both didn't know and who obviously didn't have a high opinion of him. But Bucky shared everything with Steve, always had, and maybe if he understood a little better then it might help in them overcoming the initial dislike.

"He'll have moved himself out because he thinks I'll forget about him now I have you guys back. Told you, he's a moron. But the guy saved my life, Steve, I need to beat that into his head."

He had no idea that this sounded like Stockholm Syndrome to his friend, and probably more so now. They'd come to understand in time.

"C'mon, pal, help me up?"

Well great. Now he just felt bad. Even despot dictators had friends and family. Tony couldn’t be that bad... could he? That was just really sad. Maybe he was just so much of an asshole that no one wanted to be around him. Except for Bucky. But why? Because they shared that horrific experience...? Steve’s head was going in circles here, but he did manage to catch Bucky as he sat up.

“Are you crazy? You’re crazy. Can’t you just stay here?!” The answer? Nope. Bucky was too solidly built and Steve was still Steve. Without an arm he wasn’t all that much lighter. Steve wrapped his own around Bucky’s waist as he hoisted himself up, squeaking a little at his friend for being s dumb idiot. He said a few more choice words too as both of Bucky’s feet hit the floor.

“What have you been eating? Rocks?!”

Tony wasn’t alone. His assistant was there and so was the man that had brought Steve and his family by car and plane and car again. He was trying to look less goofy, more angry and intimidating. “Sorry. Mr Stark isn’t receiving visitors.”

From behind him, stack of papers on his lap, Tony snorted. “Stop kicking out my doctors, Happy.”

Jesus, being out of bed was draining as hell, he was sure he hadn't even been this tired when he had been battling an infection and his damn arm was still bleeding while they were trapped. But maybe that was because he'd had no choice but to carry on, to push everything else down, and now that was catching up on him.

He was leaning a bit more heavily on Steve than he might have wanted to, and probably both of them were panting by the time they got to the barrier in the form of the incongruously named Happy.

"The hell do you think you're doing running away from me, Stark?" He called out past the bodyguard in the doorway. "Let me in, or I'm gonna kick your ass."

He shouldn’t be so pleased but he was. Tony actually found himself smiling as he adjusted a pair of fat too expensive reading glasses. He didn’t bother to look up, but he did try to school his face into annoyance. It didn’t work. “Oh. Him. My nurse. Let him in too,” Tony said, flipping closed one of his documents to hand back to his assistant. No signature. There was going to be some squawking about that. Tony just didn’t want to be in the weapon’s game anymore.

Happy made some protest but Steve somehow managed to push around him and get Bucky his audience.

“Oh. And you brought a friend. Not out of the hospital yet so you can hold your criticism,” Tony said, smile still in place. He couldn’t help it. “Why are you out of bed? Just to kick my ass? I’m so honored.”

Bucky half flopped and half sat on the end of Tony's bed, giving him a look that was equal parts exasperation and fondness.

"Well, you ran away from me, it's not like I had much choice. You mind explaining why you moved yourself out while I was asleep? I was gonna introduce you to my family."

Steve rolled his eyes. "We've already met."

Bucky rolled his eyes right back. Twice as hard. "C'mon, Steve, lay off until we're both out of the hospital? I just want you to get along."

“I met your family. They were crying. Loudly.” Tony needed to be a dick. Especially in front of his help. And in front of Steve Rogers with his too big blue eyes. “I told you. I don’t do loud.”

It wasn’t true. It was part of his whole creative process. Loud music, loud metal grinding in metal. He loved loud. He just didn’t love the outpouring of sentiment. It seemed too weird to him. Not fake, exactly, but he barely even cried when his parents died. He didn’t cry when he was sent to boarding school or when his parents forgot to pick him up for holidays.

Tony didn’t do strong emotions. Or rather, he didn’t know how. His own feelings ended up getting buried, pooping in in small, strange ways. Like how his fingers left the folder in his lap to lightly grip Bucky’s soft white hospital t-shirt, right at the hem. Steve noticed. He pressed his lips together. “If you’re not in bed when the girls get back... let me go find them.”

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