fossilised | it's a new plot!

James didn't mind that Tony slept on his shoulder, it wouldn't stop him doing what he needed to do because FRIDAY could very usefully bring up a screen in the air to help him get going on digging out some old HYDRA files and videos in a secret backdoor that he knew the password to.

One downside to having so many HYDRA operatives in positions of power, meant that there was almost no piece of legislation drafted or created in any country without at least one of them there. The Sokovia Accords had included four different politicians that were HYDRA operatives. James just needed to gather the evidence, videos, and other incriminating documents that would call their entire professional lives into question and post it on the internet.

The internet would do the rest.

Some of these videos included him. One of the members of congress who helped get this through had been an ex-handler. There were videos of tortures, of violations. He almost buried those again, but he pushed them through before he could second guess himself. Then-- then he waited.

By the time Tony woke up again, the internet was ablaze. He just tilted the screen so that he could see.

This was better than coffee. Tony was fully awake in a moment, moving to his feet after a five minute glance through Twitter. The mix of comments were expected, about twenty-five percent claiming the videos to be faked. Reddit was even more on fire, and Tony took his licks there, America siding with Captain America for being one of the few to understand that the Accords were bogus, and the oversight committee was meant to give HYDRA an edge. Stark was probably getting kickbacks. Or just didn’t care.

He was fine with all of that. People could say whatever they wanted about him. Legal was the one that kept his image as clean as possible, no one else…and certainly not Tony himself.

“This is insane,” Tony murmured, the screen following him as he left the study towards the kitchen to make himself and James something to eat. The blenders went crazy. “No, this is brilliant. You’re still a dick but damn, this is good stuff.”

He flicked to news reports as he pushed more spinach into James’ breakfast and leaned against the counter, watching reports about the craziness going on in the home towns of those accused. “This report might not be for everyone,” one anchor was saying as Tony poured the green smoothie into a tall glass. “The footage has been edited but it clearly shows what appears to be Sergeant James Barnes, the Winter Soldier, being abused at the hands of Senator Jessup.”

Tony closed his eyes and then shoved his hand through the screen to send it away.

James had been watching it all unfold with a morbid fascination. It was so strange to see that a movement had begun and was snowballing in his defence. So many people had seen the footage, and then more had found files in the massive dump that Black Widow had put out there before, and it was all being collated together. His image was shifting from terrorist to victim terrifyingly quickly.

He didn't know how he felt about that.

The news channel might have edited footage, but the raw videos were all available online and people were already calling for the Accords to be scrapped. How could they trust anyone to regulate superheroes if they were going to be revealed to be corrupt? They wanted Captain America to regulate them, they wanted Cap back and then they could trust in the team again.

James looked exhausted, but there was a shine of triumph in his eyes as Tony waved the screen away.

"That fixes it, right? Or-- it's a start, and you can build on that."

“I still want to be president,” Tony said, sticking straws in their morning smoothies before he handed one over to James. “The country thinks I’m corrupt enough that they probably will vote for me.” He was only being half serious as he leaned against the counter, watching James slink over to take the glass from him. He had already safeguarded his family secret and he was pretty sure that HYDRA itself would make sure of it since concealing their heads were always of utmost importance, but he couldn’t help but feel like he had a target on his back.

The families of the politicians that were being indicted were already suffering and more would come their way, even if they were not personally involved.

That seemed hard to believe, though. And Tony would fall, hard, should it ever be determined that his father was pretty damned high up on the roster before HYDRA decided to have him killed.

“But your way is going to be a whole lot faster. A few months instead of a year or two. You’re in luck. Your bestie will be coming home soon. We should make a sign to hold at the airport. I’ll get the glitter.”

He was kidding, of course. His glitter was retained for only really special people to him. And Tony was no longer drunk enough for Steve to be special.

That didn’t mean that he didn’t have FRIDAY patch Steve’s call in a few hours later in the lab when he was hanging out with James watching commentary on the constantly updated footage. Tony smirked. “Yeah?”

“You… Thanks, Tony.”

“Wasn’t me,” Tony said immediately, though he knew Steve wouldn’t believe him. “I wanted to run for president. It’s humbling to know that I can’t always be right.”

James had got quieter and quieter throughout the day. After telling Tony that he hadn't done this to get back his 'bestie', but because Tony had been hurting and wanted to fix things, he had got less and less inclined to speak. The occasional word here or there, but he hadn't said anything in over three hours by the time Steve's call came through. He had just sat in silence, knees drawn up to his chest, and deep blue eyes fixed on the screens showing all the updates with a sniper's focus.

His head snapped up when the call came through, a full body shiver running through him, before he simply got to his feet and walked off. He didn't want to hear Steve's voice, he didn't want to hear what this conversation would be.

Steve didn't hear.

He might have super soldier hearing thanks to his serum, but he couldn't detect Bucky's footsteps from the other end of a phoneline and, even if he had heard something, he would just have assumed it was Tony. He honestly hadn't expected this, but it was both wonderful and terrible. It ached inside to know just how deeply the rot had spread into such high positions of power.

"...sure, well if you know who did do it, then thank them. Thank you. This isn't just for the Avengers, you might have helped get Bucky's name cleared and I know-- I know how hard that must have been for you, I'm real proud of you."

“Thanks, Dad,” Tony shot back, half pleased and half annoyed. He didn’t need Steve’s approval (though he was glad for it) and he wasn’t about to make the other man think, for a second, that they were friends again. Last night’s conversation, for all the strangeness of it, was forgotten and left by the wayside where it belonged. Tony didn’t need to be missed. Steve didn’t need Tony to love him. So that was that.

He did, however, watch James leave, dark eyes tracking the slink of his form straight through the door. He didn’t know what happened there and he’d been too engrossed in watching news anchor commentary to realize that James had been drawing more into himself. Selfish Tony Stark did not learn to be anything but in just two days of having a house guest. Pepper hadn’t even managed it and she had known him for years. He assumed, therefore, that James was just clearing the room because of Steve.

“Maybe you should steer clear of the Tower for now, though. I’ll stop by HQ in a few days when you’re settled. I’ll bring some Brooklyn pizza.”

He tried rushing Steve off of the phone… A part of him was afraid that if he waited to look for Bucky, he’d be gone.

"Tony, no."

Steve's tone of voice was odd, halfway between his Captain's firm orders and a vulnerable Steve Rogers who didn't want to have his friends broken into pieces any more. Maybe Tony had swept their conversation the other night under the rug, but he hadn't. Those words and Tony's actions since, had proven that they were on the road to recovery.

"You're an Avenger, and if we're getting this back together properly, then I don't want to do it without you. We all move in the Tower, or you come to HQ. We're were team, Tony, I want to be a team again."

“I’m still retired, Cap. I’ll help out, I’ll fix whatever you break and bankroll whatever you need, but I’m not coming out of retirement for this. I’ll stand with you when you bring everyone back together and we can hold as many press conferences as you want, but I like where I’m at. And I like not having everyone under the sun living with me. You’re two hours away by car and fifteen minutes by power armor.”

He wasn’t having everyone move in here. He wasn’t giving up his space. He wasn’t putting James at risk.

“This part is non-negotiable. Two days. That’s enough for you to come back and send word to everyone. Assemble the Avengers and this former one will come for the ride, okay?” Jesus, Rogers, stop talking!

Tony hovered by the doorway, looking up and down the corridor for a sign of James. Ha. As if that was possible.

There was no sign of James in either direction, and no noise to indicate where he might have gone after he had slunk away. FRIDAY would be able to tell him, but as she wasn't asked then she would never do something as rude as interrupt a phone call.

"Tony, please."

Steve had no problems showing his emotions or being truthful when he needed to, and he wasn't going to humour this dumb retirement that was born out of guilt and petulance. If they were going to move forward and heal from this, then they all needed to be involved as a cohesive unit from the start.

"I don't accept your retirement. You're one of the heart of the team, and I know that it wouldn't be the same without you. We need you-- I need you. So how about you stop pretending that you're doing anything other than getting way too drunk and moping around, because Pepper already told me that's what you're doing, and agree to come back where you belong. To your friends."

“How about I think about it?” Tony pinched his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. “I will think about it. I’m just in the middle of a project right now, all right? I need a little while. You know these things can be sensitive.” He needed Steve to take the bait immediately and he needed to track down his house guest. “You can give me two days, can’t you? Don’t make me devise some sort of anti-Cap weaponry.”

Why wasn’t he just hanging up? Was it because Steve said he needed him? Was it because Steve said he missed him?

“Also, I hope you don’t do this to Barton. He likes having his life somewhere else. In Iowa. Away from HQ. I’m glad to hear it’s only me that you’re sweet on.” Tony hung up the phone after that, hoping that he made Cap uncomfortable, and then immediately as FRIDAY to tell him where James got off to.

James had been unable to stop the panic coursing through him, the sound of Steve's voice was just the final straw that broke the camel's back after a whole day of slowly giving in to it. Though he had been the one to post these things online, the sheer response was overwhelming and every time he saw an argument either for or against him it struck him in different ways.

Now Steve would be coming back and, even though that was what he had been trying to achieve for Tony's sake, it was still terrifying. He'd have to leave again, because Tony kept trying to push him back onto Steve, and he couldn't do that.

"James is currently in the air vents on level six," reported FRIDAY, having scanned the building for heat signatures after he had evaded her cameras by climbing into the vents on level fifteen.

Great. “Sure, that’s normal. I was going to check there,” Tony muttered before he took the elevator down to the lobby, switched towards the local elevator there and rode back up with an uncomfortable but still somewhat flirty woman who must have worked for him in some boring clerical position to the seventh floor so he could access the duct system.

He fitted the door behind him and pulled himself along the surprisingly roomy HVAC ducts, over vents, to where FRIDAY showed him in little blinking lights at junctions where James had gotten himself. Tony laid out on his belly a floor above where James was crouching, but he didn’t fool himself into thinking that his noisy progress wasn’t heard by a guy with hearing good enough to listen to a fly beat it’s wings against a window pane.

He leaned his chin on his forearm though and whistled down at James.

“Hey. There’s better places to hide than here. Unless you’re spying on a women’s bathroom.”

James had heard Tony coming from a whole three floors away. He could have slid out of the vents before he had a chance to reach him, kept scooting around to evade him, but he stayed put. Tony might be able to see through the grill that James was hunched up on his heels, half a man folded in on himself and half a predator waiting to spring.

"I'm not hiding."

That was so blatantly untrue that it was almost embarrassing.

"Leave me alone, I'll be out of your Tower after it gets dark. Too many witnesses before then."

Tony felt his stomach collapse. He looked down at James as if he had just been told that Ultron and FRIDAY were getting married and Vision was the officiant. Bucky might as well have shot him in the gut.

“I don’t want you to leave.” It seemed better to just be honest, though his system bucked against it and he felt a genuine rage that he’d easily told James things that he could never share with another person.

He hadn’t even been able to tell Pep how much he wanted her to stay either. He’d let her go. Wordless.

“So... how about you don’t? You stay here. You’re still recovering. We haven’t gotten a chance to trounce ten year olds at Call of Duty yet either. And where will you go that’s better than this? After everything you’ve just done?”

"I did it for you, because you were destroying yourself over hurting Steve, you wanted him back. And you keep trying to push me onto him."

All of those semi-jokes about him going to run to the airport as soon as Steve was back in the country, and veiled barbs about Steve being his best friend and most important person. It had all got under his skin. He had asked to stay with Tony because it was Tony he felt comfortable with, not as some kind of stepping stone to bring Steve back into his life.

And now the other man was coming back, and he was scared. James wasn't ready to see him, face him, or talk to him. He wanted to stay here, but Tony kept making it seem like he was obviously going to run to Steve.

"I'm not ready, so I'm going."

Tony’s attempt to lighten the blow when James did leave him had backfired. He couldn’t say so outright. He couldn’t lay here on his belly in the duct above where James crouched and admit that he was jealous. That he had felt as a child that if his dad found Rogers, he’d never see him again. It was not a good feeling.

“I just spent ten minutes arguing with the guy that I wasn’t going to move into HQ and that the Avengers couldn’t move back here. For you. So that you would stay. If you never want to see that blond golden retriever again, that’s up to you. But don’t leave because you think I’m going to tell him about you. I’m not. I haven’t yet and I don’t plan on ever telling him.”

He wanted his Nanny to himself. He wanted the only person he consistently felt comfortable around, who knew him better than anyone, to stay here. With him.

The whispers were getting bad again. Tony pressed his eyes closed, forehead against his palm.

“You’re not a prisoner. But I like you a lot better than Captain America. If you want to go, go. But I want you to stay.” Tony pushed back, away from the junction, and started the journey back to the access panel. Alone again. This was pretty standard. It just made him feel so sad.

Maybe this was why Tony should try and be open with his feelings. In trying to pretend like he wouldn't care if James left, he had left James feeling like his position here was untenable with Steve on his way back. Because he would want to see him again, probably, maybe... one day in the future when he felt like he could withstand the goddamn bullets that were those pleading blue eyes.

He didn't say anything as Tony left.

In fact, Tony might be forgiven for thinking that James had left the Tower entirely, because full dark came and he was nowhere to be seen. It actually wasn't until nearly two in the morning when he finally reappeared, barefoot again, and took a seat next to wherever Tony was.

"Steve means something to me that I can't figure out yet and I don't want to see him. I wanted to stay here because I trust you. You're the only one I trust at the moment, and that includes me, so-- I'll stay if you quit trying to push me onto Steve, like you can't wait to get rid of me."

It was the worst day in his life to wake up and be told that he was too old for a Nanny and so his had been sent away. It was worse than the day his parents died, worse than when Obi tried to have him killed, worse than Afghanistan—. And that was surely saying something. He’d never felt true loneliness until James had disappeared and oh... oh it was so lonely that it felt like his world’s colors were just leached out around him.

Tony looked at his hands, strong and scarred and calloused from years of hard work. People saw the suit, the shades, the women and the cars. They didn’t see the hard working engineer, or the desperate little boy pushing his way out to be recognized and loved and cared for. There was a tremor to his palms, imperceptible, but Tony could feel them quiver ever so slightly. It was the alcohol. He knew it. It was ruining him. At least he wasn’t really a mean drunk, not like his dad. Mostly.

“Good choice,” Tony said, the whole city stretched behind him as he sat against the thick, floor to ceiling glass. He had never been afraid of falling, not just because he could fly now, but because he liked the thrill of it. “Rogers is a bastard. You can just tell. No one is that good. I wouldn’t push my worst enemy into him and you’re not my worst enemy.” Tony looked over at James, eyes unfocused. “But I feel the same way. I just don’t want to figure out how I feel about it. I’d rather just hate his perfectly patriotic guts.”

"I don't hate him."

James' voice was low as he leaned back against the glass for all of two seconds, before he got back up and went to sit on the kitchen island instead where he didn't feel like a sniper could easily get him through the transparent wall out to the city.

"I'm scared of him, and I think you are too. I'm scared because he's a good guy and he's genuine with what he says, and I don't want to be the one to let him down when he finds out that I'm not as good as he is. I think you probably feel the same way."

Life lessons from James Buchanan Barnes.

Tony wasn’t going to argue if he was scared of Steve Rogers or not. He was. He made him feel things that he wasn’t used to and would probably never be used to. His head plunked back on the glass.

“Hate to break this to you, but no one can ever measure up to that guy. No one needs to be afraid of being good enough because it’s not possible. I’m not good enough. You’re not good enough. No one is ever, ever going to be good enough.”

And that was why he wanted to hate him. And why he wanted him so badly. It was pretty rare for Tony to find interest in men, but Steve did it for him.

Terribly.

“And I let everyone down. That’s why no ones here. But you. But you don’t count. You have terrible taste.”

James went silent for a few moments. It was still strange to him to see people look up to Steve in this way as if he were a paragon capable of doing no wrong. That wasn't what he meant when he said he wouldn't be good enough; not 'good' in the good and evil sense, just not what Steve wanted and needed. After a moment or two he spoke up again, voice a quiet rasp in the gloom.

"I remember him double daring me to take off all my clothes and go skinny dipping in the Hudson. Little punk stole all my clothes while I was in there, I came out almost blue all over and had to run home in nothing. Nearly got arrested three times. He had an asthma attack from laughing so hard."

That was the guy that everyone looked up to.

"But I don't remember laughing too, though I know I did. I don't remember how I got him back, I'm not what he thinks I am, and that's why I'd let him down. You are who you are, you're only gonna let him down if you're too scared to let him in."

“You gotta remember it’s not the 40s. People these days don’t let other people in platonically most of the time. We live screens apart. You should check out Tinder. Or Grindr. I’m not the judging sort.” Even if Tony absolutely was, silently, amusingly, one eye brow perpetually arched. “And now you’re doing it. Pawning him off on me. I’ve never been all that interested in his friendship. And I don’t need it either. I’ve got you back.”

And he was just fine with that, even if Bucky probably wasn’t going to approve.

“And I have Rhodey too. And Happy. And Dum-E and FRIDAY. My dance card is full.”

Tony stretched his legs out and crossed them at the ankles.

“Just me on my side. And I’ll be on yours.” He wasn’t pleading, not exactly, but he wanted Bucky to know where his current loyalties laid. Steve had hurt him. But James had only ever been James. Silent, but there for him. Now he could be annoyingly chatty but still there, right?

"I don't know why you think that you can't have one friend and then have another one too."

That wasn't something that he remembered from the Tony he used to take care of, it must have developed later. But it was incredibly immature, this idea that someone had to pick a side, and it's what had almost driven him away because Tony seemed to be pushing the idea that James would have to go back to Steve and that would be the end of their friendship.

"And your bullshit isn't fooling me."

Of course he cared what Steve thought, and of course he was interested in Steve's friendship.

“Can’t two people just be so ideologically opposed that the world would implode if they suddenly became some sort of real life buddy cop drama? Rogers isn’t hurting for friends. He’s on his way back and he’s going to feel obligated to force me to do things he thinks I want. That’s bad enough. I don’t need you ganging up on me too. In fact, however about we drop our Captain America conversations down to five percent from the seventy-five we are currently enjoying?”

He didn’t know why James was so hung up on this. All Tony wanted to do was have some fun with a guy that looked like he and Sheryl Crowe met in a bar facing a giant carwash once.

“Let’s just agree that a Cap neutral zone, for the next day at least, has been declared over the entire Tower. Good? Thought so,” he muttered and climbed off of the floor. He paused where James sat on the counter and leaned towards him, a hand on the stainless steel. “So what do you know about Xbox?”

He still thought that Tony was talking a lot of bullshit, but he could respect there being things that he didn't want to talk about and he was still too new to friendship again to know where the boundary lines should be drawn. Besides, he had spent the last few hours in the air ducts considering whether to run away again.

"Nothing, is it a type of weapon system?"

He had been up to date on pretty much all weapons and vehicles, but he had let that lapse a little since he had broken free of being the Soldier. It could have been something recently developed.

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