fossilised | it's a new plot!

Tony hit the cancel button on the phone the moment FRIDAY’s voice interrupted him. He’d been dialing three or four numbers every night since the FedEx for Mr. Stank came. Tonight he’d gotten to the sixth number and was one more away from likely hanging up on a ringing line. He’d have to call tomorrow, or in a few minutes. Or maybe he’d wait twenty four hours before he picked up the phone. Bucky hadn’t come. He’d promised to fill Steve in.

And as much as he truly loathed to admit it, he missed listening to Steve’s overbearing but gentle voice talking to him through an earpiece or pleading with him on the phone to help—. Steve didn’t need him. The Avengers had mostly split apart, which was exactly what Zemo had wanted in payback for the battle of Sokovia... Orchestrated completely but his own pride. And Steve had always been willing to help him fix a mess.

Tony was no stranger to guilt and now it was eating him just as much as the alcohol was, consuming his liver with disease that one day he wouldn’t be able to fight.

FRIDAY again told him about an intruder and Tony, frustrated, slammed down his drink. “Tell Rhodey—“

His eyes caught to clock though. Still a few minutes to midnight.

He stumbled upstairs, lonely and pathetic and drunk, hoping for the best.

Bucky knew what had happened in Siberia, he had been there just a few days after they had endured their fight there and he had completely mined the security feed for the information. He had slipped in and out dressed all in black leather, a silent ghost along the corridors of his past. But he still hadn't gone to either of the men that probably wanted answers from him, or even revenge.

He hadn't been sure if he wanted to live or die.

But six months went by and he hadn't eaten a bullet yet, and somehow even after finding out what he had done to his parents, Tony hadn't sent anyone looking for Bucky despite being able to track him down. The headaches had grown more severe, he was nearly blind in one eye now from waiting almost the full length of time to get this done, but... he was here.

When Tony got up to the floor above, he'd find Bucky sat cross legged on top of a table dressed in jeans and a faded blue hoodie with the Iron Man arc reactor on the front of it. He had a mouthful of cereal, and the box cradled in his metal hand.

Swaying in the doorway between the hallway stairs and the lab, holding on with one hand, Tony watched Bucky chew methodically for several long moments before his feet moved him forward. Six months was a long time, he decided, his drunken mind listing days and hours and minutes in ever increasing increments as some sort of attempt to seem more lucid than he was.

“You can’t wait until the last minute. It gets worse exponentially every day that passes. And I can already tell that you haven’t been taking care of yourself. Look at you— Good fashion sense but bad eating habits. You’re picking out the sugar bits aren’t you? When is the last time you washed your hair?”

Drunk and lonely Tony wrapped his arms around Bucky the way he used to as a kid. And he knew it was ridiculous, that was probably the worst part. This sort of weird clinging wasn’t going to win him friends and any influence he had would be opposite of what he wanted.

“You’re an idiot,” he murmured. It was directed towards himself.

The last six months had been a steep learning curve for Bucky. He had come to realise that, even as he got back more pieces of who he used to be, that he would never be fully rid of the Soldier either. He had trauma and panic reflexes and a mess of issues that even the most trained psychiatrist in the world would have trouble with. He remembered Steve, he remembered parts of himself, but he was still a different man.

He had expected a pretty different reaction from Tony.

He hadn't known if in coming here he would be shouted at or even attacked, but he sure as hell hadn't expected a surprise hug from someone drunk as a skunk. So he went still for about ten seconds, before one arm lifted to loosely and awkwardly pat Tony on the back. Not pushing him back, but not knowing how to react either.

"Wasn't expecting a hug," he said, and his voice was enough of a rasp to suggest that he probably hadn't spoken in weeks before this.

“I’m not hugging you,” Tony said with lame stubbornness. “I’m yelling at you for your life choices, aren’t you paying attention?” That didn’t mean that he let go, however. The scratch of his cheek along the edges of his beard rubbed against Bucky’s ear from stubble having grown since he shaved that morning. He smelled of scotch and sorrow and too much pride, which lingered when he did pull back, bracing himself against the table before he could get to a stool.

Bucky would have to let the man sober up a little before he went tinkering around in his brain, despite the fact that Tony had used a large portion of the last few months trying to extend the hardware he would be using for Bucky’s eventual return that might provide some extra relief for the future. He was no neurosurgeon but he was an extremely quick study and six months to Tony’s brand of genius, when not completely bogged down by voices of memories he’d never actually made weren't sopped up by the copious amounts of alcohol he regularly consumed.

His face was red and his eyes watery, looking for all the world like he might burst into tears at any moment. There was a kid inside of him that was just so relieved that his Nanny wasn’t dead that it was overpowering what it meant to be a man these days.

“FRIDAY, put the coffee on,” he sniffled, pressing his hands together between his knees. “And order a pizza. Extra grease. Two pizzas. Extra large.” He knew Bucky would be able to pack it away. “Give me a few hours,” he said to his Nanny. “How bad is it? No. I don’t want to know. You did it to yourself. You almost forced me to talk to Rogers.”

"You should talk to him anyway, he probably sent you that phone for a reason."

It wasn't that Bucky had spied on Tony, and he definitely hadn't spoken to Steve, but he had spied on Steve a bit after he had seen what happened in Siberia and worked out that the other man had walked away from everything that mattered to him. Idiot. Bucky had just gone to make sure that he wasn't destroying himself in a hole somewhere, and he had heard the other man talking to Falcon about Tony.

He was fairly sure that if Tony asked them back, they could probably figure out the mess with the Accords. Nobody actually wanted the Avengers gone, especially not ones like Captain America.

Bucky hadn't moved from his position cross-legged on the table, but he watched as Tony swayed his way backwards, watched at the tears gathered in his eyes.

"I came here tonight thinking you might refuse to help me, I know what you saw in Siberia."

He was not going to discuss his complicated and often times uncomfortable relationship with Steve Rogers. It was hard enough to be around a childhood hero without having him be nice and understanding too. It would have been just so much easier if he had been a jerk—. But then he wouldn’t have been Captain America—. Tony wasn’t going to get into it with Bucky, though. His Nanny was bias and evidently still keeping up his spying skills. And Tony was better off putting his head in the sand to anything he didn’t care for. Just like every other healthy American did.

Since there was no point in addressing the Cap issue and he couldn’t just sit there in silence, Tony shrugged at Bucky. “My dad deserved worse.” His mom... Tony didn’t what to know what she deserved. He believed that both possibilities (she was HYDRA or just complacent) were possible. But there was no way that she didn’t know what his father was doing. Not when she went with him almost everywhere.

He frowned at Bucky, hard.

“And it wasn’t you. It wasn’t you but Rogers knew that my parents didn’t die in a car accident and he never told me. He’s always on be about being fully truthful— I get it. He’s human. He’s capable of deception. But I wasn’t ready to see that. And I wasn’t ready for it to be the Soldier. And I was so... I’m still so mad every time I find out something new about what they made you do.”

It wasn't the brilliant grin that he had given Tony after being introduced to hot chocolate, but Bucky's lips still pulled upwards into a warm and genuine smile for a few moments. All of his expressions were genuine, he had lost too much of himself to be false or bother with lies, he couldn't pretend to be someone else when he still didn't really know who he really was.

He didn't say anything to that, just let that smile linger for a few seconds, and then slid off the countertop, somehow silent even in combat boots that weren't even laced up properly.

"You should stop looking into it, you'll never scratch the surface of what the Soldier did and you'll just spend your whole time angry. And drunk."

Apparently.

Waving a hand at that assessment, Tony snorted as if his concern was pointless. “I like being angry.” And being drunk was the only coping mechanism he knew that worked. Coke was pretty good too, but not nearly as socially acceptable as it had been in the 80s and 90s. It tended just to make him manic anyway and he was naturally manic enough without the help.

Pressing a thumb against his eyelids, Tony sighed and watched Bucky move. He seemed fine but he knew that couldn’t be possibly true. Not after the projections he’d had FRIDAY make based on the scans that had been done a few months before.

That Bucky was even capable of moving was pretty spectacular.

“I like being drunk too. Not usually this drunk but—“ Well he didn’t know what Bucky remembered about his voices. “Rogers just drives you to it. And no. I’m not calling him. You call him. He’d rather hear from you.”

Bucky did remember the voices. Of all the things that he recalled over the past six months, bits of his time as Tony's bodyguard were some, and he remembered the voices that sometimes scared him and gave him horrible headaches. Coping with them using drink was not a good plan.

"Pretty sure he'd like to hear from you too."

He said it mildly and gestured for Tony to take a seat on the couch a little way from where they were both stood. If Tony were looking closely then he might notice that one eye focused more sluggishly than the other, indicating a lack of sight there, but he covered any other problems exceptionally well.

"You can't do anything while you're drunk, so sit down."

“I’m going to get coffee and pizza and then I’ll patch you up and send you out again. Nanny 3.0. You’ll be fine again for awhile. I got an idea or something to relieve the pressure going on with your eye, to shunt some of the clotting. We’ll see.” Tony talked his entire way to the couch, moving a little more gracefully than one might expect as he pulled down a Periodic Table throw blanket that was the only thing he had left of when Banner was staying here with him.

Just another person he liked who left. And over a stupid girl of all things. Tony was not thrilled with Natasha chasing his second favorite person away. And he was even less pleased that his trail had gone completely cold.

Completely. Not even Bucky could hide from him but the second leading genius of the world had evidently figured out how. Fuck him.

No no. Tony didn’t mean that. He let his head fall back as he frowned at Bucky, counting the seconds it took for his eye to focus on him again. He had to be in pain but he didn’t show it. That was something Tony had always admired. And that was why he tended to keep his own pain to himself.

“Maybe we should invite Steve over for pizza and talk to him together,” Tony suggested before he laughed. “Yeah. Not going to happen. Why ruin a perfectly good night? FRIDAY, tip the delivery guy a few hundred to just leave the pizza with DUM-E?”

“Was already the plan, Boss.”

Not long ago, perhaps a month at most, Bucky had got on a greyhound bus heading on a fifteen hour journey. He had huddled onto the back seat nearest the emergency window exit, and had settled in to travel in silence. A woman had sat down nearby and begun to talk to him, to the sort of excited rambling that some people were given to, and every word had been like nails on chalkboards, because he had no idea how to reply. He had got off the bus almost at once and travelled a different way.

Tony didn't elicit that reaction from him. Maybe because he knew that ramble from old, and he knew that Tony didn't expect a response. He just wanted to know that someone was listening, and he actually appreciated when the other person only said things that were worth saying. It took the pressure off and it made this relaxing rather than stressful.

As soon as Tony got seated on the couch, Bucky took up position behind him and began to massage the fingers of his left hand over his scalp. It was something he had last done when Tony was fourteen, but had been done many times before that. The pressure, the mild click and whir of mechanical fingers, and the coolness of the digits all usually brought relief from the voices. Not completely, but allowed them to quiet down and be more bearable.

He didn't speak, there was no need to, but he was prepared to step back and stop if he were overstepping his mark.

Having forgotten all about this, and feeling pretty numb already from the copious amounts of scotch needed to shut the whispers up that calling Steve would make him whole again, because Rogers was his antithesis, his other half, and a better friend than any other if he would just let him in. It was those voices that caused him to get to the sixth number, to have gotten to any number at all really. It was those voices that drained half a bottle of alcohol and was leaving him feeling all sorts of conflicting ways, along with an unpleasant drowsiness. Tony needed to function tonight. He needed to get to Bucky quickly, he needed to be allowed to do something good to make up for the way that he really fucked up a few weeks back.

When the massage started, however, Tony felt the air in his lungs slip through his nostrils. His shoulders slumped ever so slightly and his head dropped back towards Bucky’s abdomen.

“This should be weird, right?” He opened just one eye to look up at Bucky. “I feel like this should be weird but... a little harder.” It had been awhile since he’d been pampered like this. Pepper used to rub his head sometimes but never this well. He stewed a little, sighed a little, and let both eyes shut.

Maybe Tony would remember Bucky doing this for him countless times before, long before he asked Pepper to help out and it gained slightly sexual overtones. It still didn't have that for Bucky, this was just an instinctively recognised thing that he knew would help out just as much as trying to kill himself with scotch would.

He made the fingers of his metal hand press a little harder, find the right spots on his skull to be the most relaxing, and just... stood there, silent and stoic as he used to do, massaging Tony's head. They were interrupted about twenty minutes later by the elevator doors opening and DUM-E rolling in with several pizza boxes, some garlic bread, and some soft drinks.

He rolled right over to his master and upended the whole lot onto his lap.

Twenty minutes of pleased groaning turned into one moment of cursing and leaping up. Thankfully, the pizzas didn’t spill open all over him but they had absolutely been toppled over and once the boxes were opened, goopy cheese and mangled pepperoni would be all over the cardboard. It was a very hipster way to eat pizza, all sloshed together, but Tony was too old for that.

And he was also too drunk to feel the two liter bottles collide with his balls too, so that was a big plus.

Tony kicked the bag of garlic bread towards the table and sat back down, sending DUM-E to the corner so that he could think about what he had done. It was too bad that the moment had been ruined. Tony had actually felt good and relaxed for the first time in months, maybe years.

“I hope you don’t mind picking cheese from the lid... because there’s not a scrap of cheese still on the crust. Jesus—“ He tried to plop the mess back onto the pizza but it had little success. Tony wasn’t the best host. There was no offer of glasses with ice or plates. Bucky made him feel like a kid again. Kids weren’t considerate. Or neat.

Bucky looked at the pizza with mild distrust. The hot chocolate, as nice as it had been, had made him pretty sick. He had experimented with other foods over the past six months, but everything solid except for the most bland bread made him really sick. It was HYDRA's fault. The Soldier had to be kept in cryogenic freeze when he wasn't being used, and that presented a whole lot of problems.

The first time the Soldier had been frozen and thawed, he had nearly died. The food left in his stomach had crystallised and formed sharp shards of ice that pierced his stomach lining and intestines. Since then, he had been fed only a carefully made up meal replacement milkshake, full of the exact amount of proteins and vitamins he needed to keep his body in peak physical condition. But that meant that his body was no longer used to eating anything else.

He had lost quite a bit of weight in the past six months and, if it hadn't been for the serum and the discovery of SlimFast milkshakes, he probably would have died of malnutrition by now. Which was why he didn't go for the pizza, but neither did he explain why, he just sat beside Tony and watched him out of his one good eye.

"Tell me why you didn't tell Steve that you had seen me, or that you could find me, or even send the authorities after me. Even after what you saw that I'd done to your parents."

As usual, Tony didn’t notice the little things right away. He was too busy shoving messed up pizza mash into his mouth, trying to do his best to sober up. Coffee helped. So did the soda and the hot, greasy cheese clumps pulled from the edges of cardboard boxes. He kept glancing at Bucky as if he wasn’t real, the gap between their hips and knees and shoulders somewhat minuscule compared to how Tony generally was with most people.

“You told me not to,” Tony replied to Bucky’s question. “You don’t want to be found. I’m not tracking you. When you’re ready to talk to him, you will. Or he’ll get lucky and stumble across you. I like you a lot better than I like him anyway.”

Which was probably weird to hear considering that Steve Rogers was the most likable guy on the planet. And Bucky, no matter how forced or brainwashed, had killed people. Including Tony’s parents.

He took another bite of pizza before he glanced up at Bucky.

“I didn’t poison the pizza.”

Bucky shrugged, but he still didn't take a piece of pizza. He was more concerned with the other things that Tony had been saying and the way it felt to be sat here. He felt-- comfortable. Safe. He so rarely felt safe anywhere, but this was the second time that he had felt safe in Tony's presence. Maybe because Tony had proved now that he wasn't going to hand him over to anyone, maybe because of the electronic guard that would alert them before anyone got in.

"I want to stay here."

The words were low and almost hesitant. He still wasn't used to asking for things he wanted, rather than waiting for the orders of others, but it was something he was working on every day.

"I think you might be my first friend in seventy years, I feel more human with you."

No one had ever told Tony that he made them feel human. Usually it was the opposite. He looked up at Bucky, through strands of long hair that reminded him a little of the cheese he was trying to chew up so it would slide much easier down his throat, and stared at his profile as if trying to decide if this was real or another trick of the bow quiet voices. “So stay.”

It was not as simple as the two word reply might have made it seem for Tony was left feeling just a little queasy, enough to set down the pizza.

His Nanny had never officially been his friend. He’d never talked with him much, but he was always there. Always there and always trying to problem solve Tony’s personality against what his goals seemed to be. It was never easy dealing with a genius child who heard whispers from time to time or seemed to know what was happening before it could actually happen.

“You were my only friend for most of my life. It’s about time you reciprocated,” he said, more saucy than he was feeling.

He understood that he was asking a lot of Tony. Having an ex-assassin super soldier who was, technically, on the run from pretty much every world government as well as members of Tony's own team was... awkward. But Tony hadn't even hesitated before he said that, just gave him the option of remaining as if it was no big deal.

"You can call me James."

He had decided it was the name he was going to claim for himself for now. He certainly wasn't ready to be a Bucky again, but he could have his other name and maybe make a human being out of himself.

“You sound like a butler,” Tony said, more than willing to let some sort of humor exist between them. He was feeling better about the whole thing, more or less. Everything was quiet. He had no premonitions. James would be safe here since the Avengers, minus Rhodey, weren’t talking to him. He wouldn’t be alone all the time, he might not need to be so reliant on the alcohol— “But your metabolism has to be pretty out there. I’ve seen Rogers pack away insane amounts of food. You really don’t want this?”

He had scanned Bucky but had been looking only at his head. A full scan would reveal the cause of his inability to eat and maybe even how to rectify that but he had no reason to check for himself.

Helen Cho’s machine could do wonders, thankfully. It was just a matter of directing it to heal the damage done and switch off some of the neurological issues that kept James from accepting food for fear of the damage being put back on ice might do to his system.

There was no more fear of that anymore after all.

He doesn't care if he sounds like a butler, James is the name he's chosen and Tony is the first one that he's given it to. If it turns out to not fit him in the future then he can change it again, he can become whoever he needs to be. But for now there's pizza and a gnawing pit of hunger in his belly.

He shrugs awkwardly.

"I think it might make me sick. I've tried a bunch of food and it all makes me throw up, guess it's something that HYDRA did to me. When I was there, I mostly just ate liquid stuff."

They messed with his brain. They messed with his arm. They missed with the person he used to be. And they messed with his stomach? Tony felt disgusted and shoved the pizza back into the box. “High protein, low fat I’m guessing? I’ve got you.”

He was king of the fruit and spinach smoothie shakes, or had been when he cared about trying to be healthy. That had stopped some time ago, however, but not for any reason other than the fact that scotch and loneliness and manic fits of invention took up the majority of his life these days and he didn’t have the time nor the energy to worry about smoothies.

Tony headed into the kitchen, walking a lot straighter and more confidently than before. It was amazing how quickly his body metabolized and neutralized alcohol. His tolerance was impossibly high.

He’d make something James would be able to eat. He’d try at the very least. He couldn’t have his friend and former Nanny starve to death on him, though it was probably better to perform brain surgery on an empty stomach. He was pretty sure a few sips wouldn’t hurt and then they could get down to business of relieving the pressure from inside his head, complete with some new work arounds he’d been focused so much on.

That was something else that he liked about Tony, the man never sat there and got upset about the things that he was told. He knew that if he had told Steve that HYDRA had fucked his body up so much that he couldn't even eat solid food, then the other man would probably be in tears or beating up a wall somewhere. But Tony just shrugged and moved on, provided a solution.

James swayed just a little when he got to his feet, vision blacking out completely in the eye that it had mostly gone from already, just more signs that he had left this far too late. But he steadied after a moment and followed Tony into the kitchen, watched him make up a disgusting looking shake.

"How long will the surgery take? And it'll last another six months, right?"

“Counting no longer this time. I have the technique down. I installed an upgrade to FRIDAY to help out and super charged Dr. Cho’s machine. I’m going to replace some of the corroded wires with fiber optics. Probably take me about three hours, maybe four? Let’s give ourselves four with recovery.” He shouldn’t be betting himself on the time it would take him to perform brain surgery on his own, unlicensed and accredited. “Maybe slap another hour on there to work on your stomach. I have a feeling that will take multiple sessions since I don’t know how to recalibrate the machine just yet. We’ll see.”

He was ready to go almost immediately, hands steady and eyes unclouded. He’d been drunk an hour ago but it had worn off.

And let’s face it. James was in a bad way.

“Why don’t you lay down on the bed at least?” He said after he made sure that the other man had something nourishing in his stomach. “It can put you out and I’ll get started in a few minutes.” If james has trusted him this far, what was another ten minutes worth?

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