fossilised | it's a new plot!

Bucky could keep hold of his blankness for a little while. Tony was too busy writhing around trying to get the releases on his armor off so that he could see the mess his leg was in for himself. The whispers were too loud, the memory had clouded over reality, and it took a few moments even after that to see that he was fine. Beaten up and bruised, yes, but ultimately he was all right.

Tony heaved, laying on the roof in the remains of his armor, spread eagle, and glanced up at James, finally.

“James, are you in there?”. He had to settle his friend and then get back to HQ. Sometimes Tony wished he was more than one person. But then he’d probably just sleep with himself and get nothing done anyway.

James watched as Tony heaved and panicked, his breathing obviously short and too shallow, but he didn't move or make any indication that he wanted to help, he just watched. He still couldn't quite get his head around the idea that he had left his safety and his privacy in order to try and save Tony.

"She said you were in danger."

The words were quiet and level, almost a report to a handler rather than an explanation to a friend.

"I couldn't lose you, even if Steve was there."

He was still breathing hard. It took a lot out of a person to have a panic attack and Tony still had residual feelings of his leg being messed up, resulting in him walking with a limp for the rest of his life. He wasn’t even sure what that was about. The Hulk has been pulling at his arms and his chest, not his legs. Tony stayed on his said. He watched James, from wrist to shoulder at least since he didn’t feel like lifting his head, and then reached out, tentatively, to touch the other man’s outer knee.

His fingers did not connect, however, as he had stopped himself two inches away from James and left his palm face up with his fingers curled in on each other, resting on the marked landing pad.

“Thanks.” It wasn’t often that people came to his aid. He didn’t need them to, but he’d been on many a solo run into danger and he never anticipated there being anyone beside him but himself. And sometimes Rhodey. War Machine hadn’t even arrived as quickly or with as much passion as Bucky had. “Thanks for... saving me. Again. You’re getting really good at it.” He had switched back to English to get Hames acclimatized to it again. This was not a fun process.

It wasn't a fun process for either of them. A part of him wished that he could have stayed behind and not cared so much if Tony got ripped apart by a rampaging Hulk. He could still have been barefoot and in the sweatpants that got delivered for him this morning, soft and warm and casual, instead of tooled up in full gear with his mind feeling like someone had wrapped barbed wire around it.

It was good of Tony to not have questioned where he got all those guns and how he'd smuggled them into the Tower without being noticed.

"He knows now," Steve, he meant, obviously. "You can tell him, I don't want to cost you your other friends."

“He knows but he is going to leave you alone. He’s a good guy.” Tony hated to admit it but he was. Steve was down right perfect in literally every single way and that just wasn’t right. How could anyone compete? How could anyone else ever have a chance?

He sat up a headache, but the voices were back down to a manageable buzz now that he knew he wasn’t horribly disfigured. They had nothing else to go on and the memories pushing their way through his troubled mind had ceased for the moment.

He did, however, double check his leg again. Just in case.

He decided not to ask about the weapons. And he wasn’t going to ask where he’d gotten the uniform from and where he had stashed it. He was, however, going to spend the next few days reprogramming some of his security measures. Bucky kept him on his toes.

“I don’t want to be mean about this, James, but I don’t want my Nanny back. So I need you to let me help you get out of this funk. Especially with all of that eyeliner. We really need to talk about modern fashion. Are you hungry? Looks like it’s just going to be us for awhile anyway. Might as well get a good carb binge in.”

It wasn't the same.

Steve knew that he was here now and, even if he didn't come and find him personally, it would feel like he had a target on his back. The longer he remained in isolation, where Steve knew that Tony was seeing him and he wasn't being allowed to, the more it might put a strain on the relationship between Steve and Tony. He didn't want that, and nor did he want to feel guilty for not talking to Steve. Those hurt blue eyes were already going to haunt his nightmares.

He exhaled heavily and then switched to English with a significant amount of effort, voice still far too emotionless but at least stepping in the right direction.

"Yeah, we should eat something before you have to go back. I'm sorry if I made things worse."

It occurred to Tony then and there that Bucky would not be here when he got back. “I have life model decoys. And a telephone. I don’t need to go back right away.” Peter would be all right and Tony wasn’t much of a hospital visitor. Not when people were awake enough at least. He preferred to see them when they wouldn’t remember he was there.

He wasn’t the most graceful man pulling himself out of the pile of junk on the roof, but when there was the sort of wildfire in your eyes like there currently was for Tony... what did a little grace matter?

“I have other places. Homes. Safe places that are off the map and off the grid... you don’t have even have to tell me which one you pick and it’s pretty obvious you can get around my systems and my security— Just don’t leave without a good place to stay. I’ll even let you take DUM-E for company.”

It was the equivalent of a child promising his favorite toy to someone he liked.

"Stop it."

Bucky pushed himself properly up to his feet and, in contrast to Tony's stumbling movements, he was always graceful. A mixture of his natural muscle, his training, and his serum made sure that he was always in complete control of his movements, like a large predator feline.

"Stop always thinking I'm about to leave you. It's hard enough to fight to stay without you pushing me to leave, so stop it. I exposed myself to Steve to try and keep you in my life, I'm not running."

Tony needed to learn not to expect the worst, or he'd become a self fulfilling prophecy.

Tony’s life was built around expecting and then coping with the worst. That wasn’t fair, of course, he had pretty much everything, but he also had a thousand of lifetimes alternating turns to mind rape him with whispers about potential outcomes and in each and every one, he was usually left alone. It was just something to expect.

“I’m not pushing—. You know what? You’re making me feel like a love sick teenager desperately wanting his Instagram crush to notice him. So we’re just going to stop there.” It did help that James set his mind so readily at ease too.

Even if he was an asshole about it. Tony appreciated it.

After a little something to eat and asking James not to shoot anything while he was gone, Tony took back that lighter, single person quintet he’d been working on back upstate to HQ.

Thor, Valkyrie and the Hulk had left to return to the ship now too high above the Tower for anyone to see. Scott and Sam had gone with them to discuss what was to happen with the Asgardians, much to Scott’s delight. Natasha, Rhodey and Clint had already headed to DC. And that left Peter (forced to sleep because once the machine had helped to heal him coupled with his already incredible healing ability, he’d woken up and talked everyone’s ear off), Wanda and the Vision who were making up in their own awkward way.... and Steve Rogers.

Tony had brought pizza and beer. It was a shit dinner but they needed to talk. James had given him permission to after all.

Steve did everything that he needed to do with perfect efficiency. He got Peter stable and fixed, he saw off the others to the ship and to DC, and he got the place cleaned up. But his heart wasn't in anything, he felt like someone had reached into his chest and squeezed his lungs until he couldn't breathe.

Bucky was here. He was nearby, he was with Tony, and he still didn't even speak to Steve. He just fled from him like Steve was the monster that he feared more than anything, something that made him want to weep.

He looked up when Tony appeared, appearing as if he had aged fifty years overnight, something utterly sorrowful in his eyes. He tried to smile at the same, but it seemed hollow.

"Hey-- hey, Tony."

This couldn’t be like all of the calls, the ones spent in silence. He couldn’t watch Steve’s heartbreak and stand there with a box of pizza and a six pack. He couldn’t turn and run, he couldn’t crack a joke. He felt paralyzed, just the same.

And then the words just all came out. Mister Perfect might consider himself to be, but he was a paragon of caring and virtue and a weirdly impressive truth serum. All he had to do was look up at a guilty conscious with those liquid blue eyes—

There was a reason Tony had loved him, been in love with him, many, many times. And he felt the weight of that love, filtered through his malfunctioning mind, as he stood there. His grip on the box of pizza caused the cardboard to bite into his fingers.

“Dad was HYDRA. It’s not... I buried it when I found out about it a few months ago. Barnes came to me when he didn’t remember who he was. He needed to be repaired. He thought I was dad, I guess. And he was the one who told me about his... affiliation. I scrubbed all the records clean of it. And I found a lot of records.” Tony pressed his lips together for a moment and then dropped the pizza and beer onto a nearby table so he could properly pace. He didn’t want to look at Steve at all right now. “I didn’t put two and two together. The whole time we were looking for him, the whole time we were in Siberia watching that footage of the Soldier killing my parents... I didn’t recognize him. Not until he was standing in my study about to die from a blood clot in his brain. He was my bodyguard when I was a kid. He was my Nanny for ten years of my life. So when he asked for me to help him while he tried to get his life together— You understand that I had to do it. And to keep it from you. From everyone. He’s not the same person. He’s not my Nanny and he’s not Bucky. And you can’t call him that. His name is James. And it’s what he’s chosen for himself and I can’t believe I’m even saying this to you but the guy needs to be allowed to do what he wants to do. He’s wrecked, Cap, and he knows it. And you know it too. Do you have to be willing to back off because we will lose him if we get too emotionally attached right now.”

People sometimes thought that because Steve tried to give people the benefit of the doubt that he was somehow stupid or naive. He wasn't. Although he wanted to believe in all of the people that he had fought with and liked in the past, he had sometimes wondered how many of them had skeletons in their closets that he wouldn't want to find out about. This... well, this answered that question.

It made some sort of hollow sense. He knew that HYDRA had grown inside SHIELD, so to have had one of the founders and leaders of SHIELD being HYDRA would have made that easier. But to get the implication that Howard had worked on Bucky, had fitted him out with that arm and helped make him the Soldier, it made him want to punch something really hard.

"Thank you," it sounded more like a snap than a genuine thanks, though it actually was genuine. "I mean-- I mean thank you." A bit softer this time. "That must have been hard to find out and harder still to take in someone you knew had killed your parents, no matter what Howard had done, and I won't forget that. I won't-- I won't go near the Tower, but has Buc-- James, has James said anything about me?"

He was trying so hard to do the right thing and be the bigger man here, but god it hurt so damn much to have him near and not be available, to agree to stay away from him.

Tony felt hollow himself. He hadn’t really come to terms with his father. The man had been abusive in life and he still managed to be in death too. It hurt. It hurt a shocking amount to simply have Steve know and he understood everything James said about not wanting to let the guy down. Tony really did feel like he had. He could feel it in his bones, like he had just kicked a dog that hadn’t been trying to hurt him. He let Steve down, though it was through no fault of his own save his attempt to keep it private.

And maybe he should have done that. Maybe he should have kept everything to himself and kept on lying.

Tony shoved his hands into his pockets and kept his chin and his eyes down. He wasn’t ready to own most of this and so it was with a great guilty conscience that he spilled his guts to the one guy on the planet he didn’t want to disappoint and yet had already done so.

“His memory from before the war isn’t great. He doesn’t talk about it. He just says that he’s not ready to talk to you. He wants to— I’m not here to spare your feelings by lying, Rogers, all right? He wants to but he spent a long time being a thing and not a person and it’s hard for him to talk to you. Me.. that doesn’t matter. I was a snot nosed kid that made him help me build machines when I was ten. But you’re something else and he’s got this messed up idea that he deserved what happened to him. He needs some space. And I’ve been shitty at giving it to him lately. The bastard was more worried that we stopped being friends than himself anyway. I have a really bad habit of destroying things. Ask FRIDAY. I ignore my own safety protocols. But he... James was my only friend for most of my life and I owe him. You of all people can get behind that.”

Tony really needed to listen to what other people were saying to him, because Steve was the opposite of disappointed in him. He was sad that Bucky didn't want to see him - no... No, James, not Bucky. He needed to get used to that because he deserved to have any choice of his honoured - but he didn't blame either of them for that. He was proud and pleased that Tony was helping by giving him a safe space to stay.

"Everyone always ends up owing him."

His smile was sad and fond at the same time, wistful as if he could picture being sat in the Tower and having a conversation that didn't immediately end in James fleeing from him.

"He's-- I won't try and make him see me, and I won't even mention him to you, but... but just once, could you pass on a message? Tell him that he didn't deserve what happened to him and no matter what, whether he's the man I knew or a whole different person to get to know, he could never disappoint me."

Tony had a momentary ‘I wish you were my dad’ moment, that deepened into a need to treat Steve as one does not treat their parents before he nodded and picked up the beer again. “Got it,” he said, tossing the other man a can. He knew it wouldn’t do much for Steve and he never drank the swill (plus, he wasn’t allowed to be drinking anyway). It was just something you did with old fogeys. Pizza and beer, Brooklyn style get togethers.

Dinner was surreal, awkward, and left a lot to be desired. The topics ranged from what Steve thought of the food in different countries he visited and how Wakanda was for an extended visit. It was the only place in the world that Tony had never been. He’d never been invited and the reclusive nation didn’t make it easy to just fly over.

Not even as Iron Man.

What he brought away from the meeting was two things. The first was that he was questioning his sexuality pretty damned hard again and the second was that he still didn’t know how he felt about Steve. He was perfect in every stupid way and Tony both hated and admired that. When he finally made it back home to Barnes, it was well after midnight. Tony had sat with Peter for awhile, and left him a little something to prove he was there…and that Tony was feeling pretty guilty over everything. He had another pizza on his shoulder, though, when he asked FRIDAY if James was in. He wanted to show him something.

Obviously, he’d recorded Steve’s message for the other man. He thought James would want to hear it in that soft, familiar tone.

James almost made himself a liar and fled the moment that Tony was no longer there and the crushing realisation of what he had done sunk in. He had messed up big time by going to that fight and letting them see him, he had compromised his security, and he had no idea how effective Tony would be at reinforcing that security.

He also almost followed. It would have been easy to track and spy on the meeting, the security at the compound was no better than the security at the Tower (he had scoped it out before). But, in the end, he did neither of these things. He forced himself to work out in the gym that Tony said he could use, shower, dress in some of the fresh clothing that had been delivered by friendly Amazon drivers to reception and then sent up in the elevator, and then wait.

FRIDAY informed Tony that James could be found in the lab, sitting on one of his workbenches, knitting.

Knitting.

Tony actually understood that one. It was on the literature from the war, a way to get soldiers to do something eith their hands, to keep them occupied. Steve told him once that he did it too, sometimes for hours on end. He had some pretty impressive chains going, which he usually unraveled. No need to waste the yarn. Wasn’t surprised, therefore, when he slipped into his lab with as much noise as he could muster. James would have heard him downstairs no doubt but Tony wanted to be obvious, to give James no reason not to know he was coming.

He put the pizza down, dropped his keys, and stood with his hip jutting out for a moment to watch the other man masterfully chain together his yarn before he offered out a memory stick.

“Got a message for you,” he said, trying not to seem too pleased that James was still here. “And a pizza. I’m taking out stock in pizza, by the way, so eat up.”

Knitting was still used with soldiers to this day. It had been the data gathered from men of James' generation that had given them the links between knitting and a lessening of stress from symptoms of PTSD. James didn't know about that particular addition that could help him, but the needles and yarn had been in one of the boxes that had come for him and so he had got started.

He looked up as soon as Tony walked in and felt his shoulders relax a bit. He didn't look like a man who had either just lost a friend or who might be besieged by a friend any time now, though he did look at the memory stick as though it were a snake and didn't deign to take it.

"Thanks. You're gonna have to give me a job, I've already spent way too much of your money. Sixteen boxes arrived for me while you were out."

“Well, I know you’re still good at being a bodyguard. My last one is too busy making sure people wear badges and sign in when they enter the buildings. And since we have Asgardians and the Hulk running around, I could use you.” James could order anything he wanted from Amazon, then. It wasn’t like tony was hurting for money and the other man probably enjoyed ripping open tape and seeing what was inside. It was like a present you buy for yourself. Tony was already fairly amused by the sheer amount of cardboard was collecting upstairs.

He slipped the memory stick on the table and tapped it.

“You don’t have to listen right now but you do have to listen. I promised, and you’re going to feel better once you hear it,” Tony said. He didn’t touch the pizza. He’d been having too much of it lately anyway. Up went his feet onto the nearest surface and he leaned back, watching James. “Can I ask you something. You can’t get mad at me.”

That was a dangerous way to start a sentence.

“Is it normal to be attracted to a bunch of people all at once, and all of a sudden?”

Obviously Tony had to know that James wasn't nearly stable enough to be anyone's bodyguard right then, he barely wanted to leave the few rooms of this locked down floor that he had been allowed to live in. He had thought more something like... cleaning the place? He didn't know.

But then that all went out of his head.

He might have been offended considering what they had talked about before, and how his own confession about the people that he had been attracted to hadn't been taken as seriously as it should have been, but the absurdity of Tony asking him just made him bark out a hollow laugh.

"You're asking me what's normal to feel?"

“You were a lady’s man, back in the day,” Tony said, obviously not thinking through anything he was saying. The guy was so scattered lately that he’d actually thought about running for office a few days ago. The voices in his head weren’t as bad as they had been at points in his life, but the hallucinations he was having were starting to get bad. It was hard trying to pull out reality from this augmented, alternative reality he kept finding himself blinking into.

Hearing whispers.... That he could get medication for (and had from time to time). But what did a person do when they started to remember two conversely different moments, at the same time, while living something else?

He’d been medicating with alcohol for so, so long that he wasn’t equipped with dealing with this.

“I’m not going to lie to you, I’ve been interested in and fucked my fair share of people. Sometimes gender didn’t matter, usually when I was very drunk,” or very lonely. “But I’ve never really.... just today I’ve been daydreaming above chest hair and licking abs. And thats fine. I’m fine with that side of myself. But it feels like I could be in relationships with half a dozen people. All of whom are my former teammates. I think it was premature to stop drinking, James. So stop laughing and be my friend here.”

Tony didn't have to worry about James laughing, he had stopped the moment that he had been called a ladies man and his expression had only soured further and further as Tony kept speaking. That was a cruel sort of advice to ask him, and the cruelty just differed whether he was being serious or mocking at what James had told him before. Either he cared so little about James' feelings and how he struggled with this as to dump it on him, or he really thought it was a thing for fun.

His jaw tightened, hurt in his eyes, but other than that he didn't show it. He set his needles down before he replied, words very level.

"If you want to pursue those relationships and the world really doesn't care about that now, then do whatever you want."

Selfish asshole.

“It’s not me,” Tony said, gritting his teeth. “I keep seeing things. Things that haven’t happened. Not to me. This me. Shit, like your surgery? I already knew what to do when I opened your brain up. Like I’d done it before.”

He tried to rub his temples, but the whispers were just a buzz and the rubbing wasn’t helping this new problem that he was having. He stopped almost immediately to lean forward, feet on the floor and knees spread as he rested his elbows on his lower thighs.

“It was never this bad before you showed up, James. Like... seeing you? Seeing you somehow just ripped this interdimensional portal open in my brain—“

And that was when he caught the look.

Tony stood, shrugging it off. “You know what? It’s probably the withdraw. I’m a functioning alcoholic so I need that alcohol to function, right? Jesus what did I agree to? Forget I said anything. Blame it on the typical mania.”

Actually, no. He blamed James for all of that. Especially when he looked at him so blankly, just a crackle of hurt in his eyes. He just didn’t have anyone else to talk to. Rhodey was in DC and Banner was back to being green.

“I’m going to bed.”

This was a mess.

At least James didn't think that Tony was mocking him any more, but he also had no idea what to say in order to make this better, and no idea if he even wanted to. Apparently it was his presence that had fucked with his head to begin with, so that was horrifying... he didn't want to hurt anyone else again, and it turned out he was ripping apart the first friend he'd had in decades.

He didn't try and stop Tony from going to bed, he just paced the goddamn room ripping holes in his neatly knitted lines for hours.

It would be about four am when FRIDAY spoke up, quietly even though she knew her Boss wasn't sleeping. "Boss, are you awake? I have a message for you."

“It’s from James, isn’t it,” Tony said flatly. He’d been laying awake long enough to go over what he’d said and he knew he’d blown it. Every time he opened his mouth, it was always worst case scenario. It had been so much better when none of it mattered because he had no desire to be with anyone. Or when he was with Pepper or Bruce and they wrote off his idiocy as just that.

What he’d said had probably sent the other man away. He’d blamed him, off handedly, for what was happening to him when the reality of the situation was that he was suffering from what all genius level minds tended to. Mental illness. If he was the smartest man on the planet (and he truthfully thought he was), then the he was just having it all catch up to him. That was how brains worked. If they overloaded a cortex, the rest had to suffer for it.

Tony rolled over onto his side, holding his pillow against his chest. “Can you tell me if he’s still in the Tower before you play it?”

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