fossilised | it's a new plot!

“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?”

"James is no longer on my sensors, Boss, but data suggests that this does not mean conclusively that he has left the Tower."

Just a little nudge about upgrading those security systems, unless he actually liked leaving back doors open for ex-assassins to break into his multi-billion dollar tower where he lived and, on the lower floors, a hell of a lot of people worked.

There was a moment's pause and then James' voice through the room on the recording. He sounded husky, a little like a man who might have been crying if he hadn't forgotten how to do that a long time ago.

"I know you're going to think that I abandoned you, because I don't like you or because I like someone else better, because despite being smart you're really goddamn dumb. So I'm telling you outright that I'm going because I can't hurt you like this, I don't want to be the cause of your mind pulling itself apart. You're the first friend that I've had in a long time, and being around you was reminding me of all of the human pieces that I thought I lost. So-- thank you for that. I'm sorry for what I did. I didn't have the right to tell you to stop drinking like I have my own life together, but I just didn't want to see someone so great trapped by something like alcohol. I hope you get help in a better way, and I hope you let yourself know that it's okay to need the friends you have in the Avengers."

There was a pause, before his voice and FRIDAY's in a lower tone, because he hadn't remembered to tell her to stop the recording.

"...I don't want to go."

"Then might I suggest not leaving, James?"

"I've gotta, you heard what he said, it's me-- I'm the one hurting him. He's too important to do that. It's-- it's okay, I've spent a long time without a home, I can do it again. Just make sure you give him that message, okay?"

Whatever James thought he was doing, what he was actually doing was the exact opposite. He hurt. He was in an incredible amount of pain, enough to make it feel like his chest would crack if he breathed in too deeply. He laid there for a moment, feeling sorry for himself as he always did, before it occurred to him that he needed to stop putting in stopgaps and actually get to work. He’d done it before when he was poisoning himself with palladium. Or when he let the UN’s forces give him intel about Barnes even when he ought to have done the work himself.

And that was always it. He needed to get over his own issues and just work through it.

Tony threw off the blanket and went immediately down to his lab. There were holes in his security and he’d been lax in fixing them, allowing James to do simple exploits. He was always very, very capable of tracking people down, especially people with signature devices in their skulls registered to his system that couldn’t just be removed.

So it came right down to doing what James had never wanted before. He worked through the remains of the night backing up all of his potential loops, finding ones he didn’t even think he had, and putting FRIDAY on APB Barnes.

Even if he wasn’t in the building anymore, Tony was going to find him.

Yes, there were Asgardians in a ship over his head. Loki was back. Peter was injured. Banner was non-existant. But they didn’t matter as much as his Nanny did. And no matter what was going on with his brain, Tony knew that much.

If Jarvis, the real one, could have seen him then he would have been proud. It was something he had tried to instil during what time he had, that there had to be a balance between focusing on your own problems and the problems of others. It hadn't been a lesson that stuck all too well, Tony was too good at getting stuck inside his head and making excuses as to why people kept abandoning him, but this was a big step in a better direction.

It took thirty six hours to find Barnes.

That was a testament both to how good James was at hiding, to evade someone who could track something inside his goddamn head for that long; and at how talented Tony was, that he could find someone in three days that the whole world looked for for years and didn't even catch a sniff of.

Eventually the signal would even out heading across the border into Canada, moving fast enough to probably be on a train.

What moved faster than a speeding train? Iron Man did, of course. He landed effortlessly on the top of the box car, thankfully not zip lining like Bucky had done the day he lost himself. The armor pressed itself to the hatch and Tony slipped through it without much more effort than climbing down a ladder. He was wearing his gray suit, Black T-shirt beneath it, and a pair of rose colored spectacles that he grinned over when passing waitstaff in their way back to the dining car from the lounge.

He spoke an easy French to them, given their location in northern Quebec, and let himself into the bar car where he stopped for soda water and lime.

Peter had gone home without getting to meet aliens. Loki had never come back after promising to find James and bring him to justice. Banner was still gone. Steve was making the rounds now that the Accords has been officially repealed further investigation as to HYDRA tampering. And, therefore, all Tony had to worry about was a man in a ball cap in the front of the train holding onto a leather duffel bag trying to keep to himself.

Tony figured that James would know he arrived the moment he stepped into the car. And he was prepared to give chase as he approached with his drink a few minutes later.

After having been in the weapons industry for a long time, and after being the sort of billionaire personality that people had strong opinions about, it probably wouldn't be the first time that Tony had seen fear on someone's face when they looked in his direction. But it might be the first time that he saw fear combined with intense longing, before James did the very thing that he thought he might do... and ran.

He didn't just run.

He wasn't an idiot, and he knew what he was doing. He slammed his gloved left hand right through the reinforced glass of the train window and vaulted up and out, leaving behind screams and confusion as he sprinted the length of the train from the front to the back.

While everyone rushed away from the broken window and to others on that side of the train to see where the man had gone, Tony told FRIDAY to cut the wifi to the train and stop anyone from taking video. He finished his drink, poor excuse for a cocktail that it was, and headed towards the connecting doors between cars. His armor pried the doors open for him and Tony stepped into it almost gracefully before he freefell towards the snow and blasted off when he was a safe distance away. Despite the snow, the world was dark outside and he spiraled through a drift before banking sharply. FRIDAY already had James’ location on the HUD and Tony followed where he could, down the side of the rocky hill towards the ravine. Water rushed below and the train, long gone over the tressle bridge above, still made the structure shake in it’s wake.

They were alone, he and James, but if the other man wanted to run for awhile, Tony would let him. There were several cities within a good dash distance, however, so this little chase couldn’t left to carry on for so long. He shot through a space between two steel beams and banked sharply to cut James off.

“You’re not messing me up,” Tony called through the grating of the speakers in his helmet. “I’m messing myself up. And you left me when you said you wouldn’t. So guess what, I’m going to follow you until you decide to come home. I’m not letting people just leave anymore, not if I can help it!” Yeah, that made him still selfish, but he could only do so much personal growth at a time.

At least they had already passed over the bridge, otherwise the residual memory of falling likely would have frozen James solid rather than letting him keep running. As it was, he banked sideways when suddenly the Iron Man suit appeared, apparently not listening to anything being said.

He jumped from the train, and the only reason he didn't die outright was the serum in his veins. He still wrenched a hell of a lot of muscles and broke his right arm, not that it stopped him struggling up to his feet to try and keep running.

Unfortunately, even a super soldier wasn't faster than Iron Man, especially running through snow that was almost chest height. So eventually he came to a stop, shivering and with a hollow look in his eyes as if he'd genuinely failed at his last mission and was shutting down completely.

“No-- No, you don’t get to do that,” Tony said as the mask flew up and he strode towards James as fast as he could in titanium gold. He shook open the whole top half of the armor and reached out with bare, warm hands to grip James firmly by frigid cheeks and to wrap his fingers around the back of his head. He hadn’t exactly intended on embracing James, but he pulled him into his arms just the same as the quinjet silently landed behind the man a hundred or so feet away.

Wind caught in James’ hair and Tony ignored the way it whipped against him as he exhaled on cold skin.

“I can’t lose you, even if you’re hellbent on losing yourself. Thirty years… Okay, I get that it wasn’t you, but sometimes it was. You made me feel safe. You protected me. And that wasn’t all the soldier… Let’s go somewhere warm, is that okay?”

James genuinely felt as if he had failed the first mission he had given himself, one that was a choice and not an order, and it was seriously fucking with his head. The touch of surprisingly warm fingers on his cheek and then the sensation of being pulled into someone's arms at least jolted him to life enough to speak.

"I hate the cold."

His voice was quiet, as if he were telling Tony another secret. Because even though it was a statement a lot of people might say, to James it was a reveal of one of his bigger vulnerabilities.

"I remember watching Steve struggle while we could both see our own breath in the apartment because we couldn't afford the heat, I remember fighting a battle where it was so cold that the blood froze to the snow, and I remember Siberia-- but it was when they put me under. It's a cold that should kill you and it doesn't, but all there ever was is darkness and cold and cold and cold that never ends. I hate it, I'm scared of it."

So yes, going somewhere warm would be okay.

With his eyes closed against the other’s neck, Tony nodded. He could see it, the way James painted all of it. The breath, the feel of a cheerful, but sickly man huddled beside him trying to keep your spirits up even when they themselves felt like they’d be going to meet God soon, likely, and maybe even tonight. And he could feel the loss of heat from the contact of the blood to the snow, the sizzle turned to a clink. He remembered Siberia. He had seen that place for himself, the dead soldiers, frozen, waiting to be revived. And he wasn’t even going to try to convey what he felt to think of himself being frozen into a block of ice.

Tony’s arms didn’t constrict so much as loosen, not to pull away, but to allow him to get James ot the quinjet. It only had seating for one, but he made it work.

The closest Stark property this far north was in New England, a research facility his father had used in Maine that Tony had never gotten rid of. FRIDAY had the place cleaned out ahead of his arrival and the two men landed in the back yard, facing nothing but three fingers of ocean all around them. It lapped, bitter cold, at the rocks but the mansion itself was warm, with wide windows that made the stormy sea actually look like something cozy instead of frightening.

“If it’s one thing I can attempt to deliver on, James, it’s that I can keep you warm.” It sounded cheesy and lame, but Tony Stark was a little beyond worrying about that right now. When he spoke with his heart, it was still full of innuendo, sure, but it was without the callousness he usually had.

Edited 2017-11-28 19:59 (UTC)

Lame and cheesy were things that James didn't care about either; in fact, after a life that had been mostly orders and hardship without any kindness shown, it was welcome. Perhaps it was overexaggerated, but it got the message across in a way that subtlety might now.

He slid down against the inside of the window with the stormy sea framing him at his back, head sinking down into his hands. Despite the fact that he had a good six guns and several knives on him right then, he looked utterly pitiable, like a lost dog that had been kicked too many times by a good owner.

"I can't, you have to stop doing this. You're-- you and Steve, you're the ones I want to protect more than anything, and you're not letting me do that. You told me that I hurt you, I make it worse, so why won't you let me go?"

Tony wanted to address that broken arm, he wanted to address the pain that James was in, but he didn’t, sucking it up with all of the other idiotic things on his mind right now. He did, however, bend to pick up the first aid kit that was under every kitchen sink he had ever been near. His mother insisted on it. He’d gotten hurt a lot as a child (and an adult) and it was good to know where to go for a bandage.

The kit was carried towards James and since Tony couldn’t let him sit on the floor alone, set down between them as he joined the man on the floor.

“I say a lot of things. Just that things seemed to pick up. Coincidence. It’s been getting worse for a long time now. Seeing things that aren’t there… That happened a long time ago too. I built DUM-E from a design I didn’t even know I had created when I was fifteen.” Right after his Nanny left. He couldn’t know that he normally, in other realities, didn’t built DUM-E until he was in MIT.

Things had happened differently here. More then usual. He was starting to get a taste of the fact that it wasn’t normal. That something was wrong. He just needed to really buckle down and think about it. And he would. Once James stopped wallowing.

“I don’t want to let you go. I was happy when you came back. And happy every time you showed up. And happiest when you stayed. You’re making me miserable with this disappearing act. Isn’t it easier to protect me if you’re around?”

"Sure, if I wasn't the reason you were suffering. If it wasn't me, then why did you say that?"

It seemed like a cruel thing to say to someone who already felt as though they were a monster, to blame him for the surge in voices and hallucinations. He wanted to be a help to Tony when that happened, not be an extra stress on that. Tony was a goddamn confusing man, he ran hot and cold like a faucet with no warning, and James couldn't always figure out which bits to discard.

"I don't want to leave. For the first time since I can really remember, I had a home. Those boxes you let me order? FRIDAY picked out all the clothes, but they were still the first ones I got to get for myself. You made me smile, and I think I love you a bit for that. That's why it was so important to leave if I hurt you, don't you understand that?"

“I shouldn’t have said any of that. I was just thinking out loud... I shouldn’t have. You looked so angry—. No. Hurt. You looked like I was just trying to purposefully make fun of you...” Tony pressed the heels of his hands into the pits of his eyes. “I try to have a filter, I just never turn it on. I didn’t want... I didn’t want any of this. I want you to have a hundred boxes of clothes that you don’t wear because you only like black hoodies. And I want you to humor me with video games you’re too good at but don’t like and I want to come home and find you in my lab. And knitting. I want to watch you knit.”

If this was Tony off of alcohol, the world had better watch out.

He tilted his head back against the wall and turned tired, lined eyes up to Bucky.

“I only pretend to understand stuff. And I love you more than a little bit. I have since I was five. Not the stoic, emotionless man I could get to carry me around like a Raja. The man that proved he cared. Even if he didn’t know it. And you— I’m going to stop now. I’m embarrassing us both.”

This was dangerous ground for James. He was stretched to the very edge of his ability to cope with pretty much everything, his world had crumbled around him several times over the past couple of years, and now he had somehow ended up attached to a guy who had absolutely no self preservation or tact at all.

He was still cold despite the warmth of the house, it sunk into his bones and took a long time to seep away, and that left fear tendrils creeping around the edges of his mind. Perhaps it was desperation for all of those things, where his life was nothing more complicated than padding through Tony's huge houses with knitting needles and soft clothes that were all his own, or perhaps it was just idiocy... but all of a sudden he just surged forwards and pressed a kiss to Tony's lips.

Dumb. So very dumb.

He pulled away as if scalded as soon as he realised what he was doing, shame flooding his face. "Sorry. Fuck, sorry."

Tony had been kissed many times. Generally, he encouraged it, sought it out, started the kiss or pursued it. This hadn’t been the case at all for James. A fourteen year old Tony had once thought long and hard about demanding kissing practice with the older man, but he had wisely not forced such a thing on a man who could never say no. It had never actually occurred to him that it might be all right to do it now, not because James had been brutalized or because he had trouble sometimes understanding his position in the lives of other people these days, but because he adored the guy, and James was obviously not disgusted by him either if what he had confessed was true.

Tony had written off being close to people. Three days ago he confessed to feeling a myriad of ways about his teammates, but that was just because he needed a sounding board to get his emotions out. He never actually wanted to be with Banner. Or with Rogers. He wasn’t trying to make James hurt or jealous. They had just gotten close. James had once again become his closest, truest friend.

But just because you’re friends doesn’t mean you should complicate it with more, right? Even if Tony invariably did.

To have James kiss him now, leaning over the first aid kit with a broken arm, as a storm threatened to blow up the coast, was cathartic in many ways. Tony hadn’t been surprised, not because he had seen It happen, or heard the voices whisper, but because it felt like a good thing to do in the moment. He’d closed his eyes. And now, at the cursing, they opened slowly and Tony lifted a hand to James’ cheek. This wasn’t a quick fling. “You should be sorry,” Tony mused, smirking. “I’ve been waiting thirty years for that. I mean, it’s way more appropriate now so I guess don’t be too sorry,” he yammered on. His mouth and brain were two things that he couldn’t stop running, even if he wanted to.

Tony really didn't want to get into this with James, not when he had so many issues of his own to deal with, adding in the trauma of everything that James had gone through would just make this messy and difficult for them both. Even just as friends they had managed to hurt one another deeply many times in just a few days, that would get worse if other barriers went down.

"I don't know--"

He didn't know whether he had done that because he was attracted to Tony, or because he was in a weird place, or just because he was temporarily fucking insane. Nor did he know how to vocalise any of this panic that he was feeling, because sex and especially attraction to men was still a deeply knotted issue for him.

"I don't want to hurt you, I think this might do that."

“I think you do know. Knowing isn’t the problem.”

None of that made Tony drop his hand. None of it made him move away. He was having his own emotional and mental crises right now. He was poor footing with his teammates, he was constantly messing up friendships, but he didn’t quite think about it as deeply as James was right now. He didn’t have the same hang-ups. All Tony knew was that he was entitled to the things he wanted, even when he actually wasn’t. And he never stopped to think things through before he took pretty desperate leaps of faith. They usually worked out for him, but he had the scars just the same.

“I also think I’m going to get hurt no matter what,” Tony voiced. “And I’m okay with that.”

But he was also understanding if James couldn’t. He never forced anyone to follow through, even when he was sure he was doing and wanting the right thing. He might be a selfish, arrogant bastard, but he wasn’t evil. Tony tucked long hair behind James’ ear and sat back, shoulders against the window. This wasn’t because he was giving up, or because he understand anything…he was just trying not to crowd into the other man’s space.

“It’s pretty much the way life goes. You do something, you get hurt. You learn from it. You get hurt. Never really been my style to try to avoid it if I want something. Not if it’s a hurt that I can bear.”

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