fossilised | it's a new plot!

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.

Thinking about it for a moment, Tony’s lips turned up and he couldn’t help but nod. “Sort of, in a way. But no one stays dead.” He nodded for James to follow him, it to his lab or his office but to what looked like a giant, personal movie theater. Tony plopped in an over stuffed leather recliner, in the middle of the first row, and told FRIDAY to drop the screen. There were controllers in the arm rests and as Left 4 Dead loaded, Tony handed one to James. “None of this is real. You use this to move your guy around, this to jump, this to run and this one to shoot. I don’t know how healthy your brain is so if you start getting hot flashes or sweats or nervous or whatever, you tell me and we’ll switch to something else. We’re going to kill monsters. Zombies. And if you can handle this, we’ll move onto my favorite game.”

Maybe Black Ops wasn’t the right sort of game to play with a physically and mentally abused war vet from the 1940s so he didn’t start off with that.

“Okay, pick your person... they have different specialties. I’m on the left. You’re on the right. There’s such a thing as friendly fire, so don’t shoot anyone that isn’t going to mess us up. Got it?”

When was the last time he had someone to play games with?

Tony couldn’t even remember. Happy didn’t even have time for him anymore.

That was... really goddamn weird.

He knew that movies and technology had come a long way, but the graphics on this thing made him have to look three times closely to make certain that they weren't actually some real people that Stark had hired to run around at his command just because he was super rich and thought it might be fun.

Lucky for him, the Soldier had been taught to assimilate technological information quickly in case he came across something on a mission and needed to use it. So it only took him about five minutes of concentrated study to get the controls down and then it was just a case of super soldier reflexes.

Tony might not want to play with him for long once they kicked in and he started racking up all the points.

"This is what people do for entertainment these days?"

There was a reason that Tony picked a co-op game. Because yeah. James had some amazing reflexes and there was no way his thumbs could keep up, even with modified hair trigger controllers. Tony enjoyed the first few levels though, he enjoyed mucking around in the swamps and the mall, he enjoyed watching his friend scout ahead to investigate the sound of a crying woman without telling him how Banshees worked and how immediately deadly they were if they provoked.

He felt like a kid again, and while it could be easily argued that Tony never grew up, he also ended up growing up way too fast.

“Some people like doing this, yeah. Some people couldn’t care less. It lets you blow off steam. Get our aggression. I mean, technically I could put my armor on and fly over the the Middle East and rescue some villages from being burned and raped but... this works too. And no one actually gets hurt this way.”

It was sticky, all the things he couldn’t help but feel about the Accords, even now that they were done and being slowly dismantled as the hours and days went on.

“Okay that guy there? Stay away from him. He explodes. We have to snipe him from up on that Tower.”

Things like this didn't scare James, it took a different type of imagery or experience to trigger flashbacks in him, but he also wasn't sure that he understood the appeal of blasting virtual monsters with fake guns while sitting still on a couch. Why not work out aggression and pent up energy by learning something physical, it's why he had always enjoyed boxing.

He did as Tony told him for the rest of the level, the two of them ending up decimating the whole thing with a combination of James' reflexes and Tony's experience making them damn near unstoppable. He tilted his head to Tony when the level ended, eyebrows raised in mild confusion.

"I don't know if I get it."

He didn't hear how much of an old man from the forties he sounded there.

"What's the point?"

“Wasting time thinking about something that isn’t part of you and can never happen to you,” Tony theorized, dropping the controller back into the armrest. “If you can just blow sway virtual monsters and use your brain to come up with strategies, you don’t have to think about anything else that might be bugging you.” Like Steve Rogers, just for example. Or his much he wanted a drink even if the whispers weren’t bother him right now. His body just craved it.

He shrugged and the lights in the room sparked back to life, the screen going black.

“What have you been doing all of this time when you’re alone and you don’t want to focus on reality? Something old fashioned like reading?” Tony made the idea sound horribly undesirable. “Or I dunno. Sixty years of sports reruns?”

"Why wouldn't I want to focus on reality?"

The question was so genuinely confused that there was no malice behind it, not disdain, just absolute bafflement.

"HYDRA took away what was reality for me for seventy years, I have a lot to catch up on. I've been trying to remember who I am, I've been researching the Avengers, researching the world."

He hasn't exactly had a lot of time for hobbies and things that served no purpose other than enjoyment.

“Wow okay, so you’re a bad example,” Tony said, not quite rolling his eyes. “Lets just say that you’re interested in scholarly pursuits in your free time. So let’s do something you want to do, okay? Who or what do you want to research?”

He had a feeling that it would be Steve, but he was hopeful that James would remember the tone it down when it comes to Rogers rule that Tony had enacted. He himself knew everything about Cap’s childhood. He’d been obsessed with him until he came to hate him, after all.

Maybe the obsession caused the hate? It was hard to say.

“We don’t even have to go anywhere. We can spy on people from right here.”

James hesitated for a moment, the little book that he used to do his research and record the pieces of memory that came back to him was very private. He had so little of who he was before the Soldier that he guarded any fragment as fiercely as a dragon might do with their hoard of gold.

But Tony was trying to help, and he had proven himself trustworthy.

After a moment or two, he rose and silently walked away without explanation. He wouldn't be gone long, just ten minutes or so, before he returned with a worn backpack that Tony likely had never seen before, but had always been hidden in his house. From inside it, he pulled out a book that was about half full of neat handwriting and cut out pictures from papers or magazines. There were pages on Steve, on Tony, on Sam, on Natasha, and on Clint. There were also little pages with snippets of memory written on them, just simple but heartfelt things like: The smell of Ma's split pea soup or My eldest sister was called Rebecca.

He handed it over.

"What do you think should be next?"

Tony took the book without reverence until he really started reading the pages. He skipped everything on Steve just out of general principal and because he didn’t care about Sam, he skipped that too. There was decidedly little on Rhodey, boring. Natasha’s life was an open book already. Clint— three kids. Hm. James was a better spy than most. Tony was impressed.

It was the sections about him that really stuck, though. And sure. That probably sounded conceited, but James remembered a lot of things from his childhood. Just little moments.

And that made Tony, for the first time since he’d been with the Soldier before, feel important. And even well looked after. He’d been cared for as a child. Even if his mother and father was absent and his father was abusive, James had really cared.

Right down to noting his favorite lunches and how he liked his sandwiches.

He skipped a few pages until he found the last few years of his life and grimaced. “Well I think you’re really good on me. Jeez. Some of these newspaper clippings are really unflattering—. What about we start with the things you remember liking... before or during lucid moments. And we can see what’s up with them these days? Like for split pea soup? Still gross. What about your sister? Did she get married?”

James' fingers itched to take the book back as soon as he handed it over, especially with how irreverently Tony treated it, but he kept his hands by his sides. His eyes, though, they stayed focused like laser focused sniper rifles on the pages to make sure that nothing got damaged.

"What?"

He had more meant which Avenger should he be researching next. The pieces of himself were intensely private and, even if he trusted Tony, he didn't know if he wanted to share them with the other man. He wasn't exactly the most respectful, and he didn't know if he could handle having important and tiny moments trampled on like that.

"...I meant-- my research isn't complete, which Avenger is the most important one to research next."

“James Barnes,” Tony said, just trying to gauge what James would do when he brought up the idea that he could and probably should be an Avenger. He deserved it more than Tony, who didn’t even want it. He didn’t want the responsibility and he most certainly didn’t want to have to see Steve Rogers all the time. He kept rounded back to that. It was as if his mind looped when he didn’t have enough filler.

Given how unimpressed James looked, eyes too blue behind strands of dark hair that Tony thought about reminding him to wash in a few days after his scalp had fully healed from the invasive surgery.

“Or okay, jeez, don’t jump down my throat. How about we get some more dirt on Rhodes? He knows way more about me than I know about him.” Poor Rhodey. The guy just tried his best to keep Tony on track.

He settled back into his arm chair.

“How about—. FRIDAY, do we have a social security number on file for James Rhodes?”

There was a pause before FRIDAY said that they did. “But it’s not a good idea to mess with your friends, Boss.”

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