fossilised | it's a new plot!

Guy gives him and handjob and now he’s getting brain surgery to appease him.

That wasn’t really how Tony felt but he wanted to hold onto the the cynicism for as long as he possibly could do so. His heart was aching fericely, less out of fear for himself and more out of fear for what might happen to a man who wasn’t equipped to care fo himself much less anyone else. He lightly touched his arm without saying anything and headed up to his room.

“FRIDAY, I need a Will. Immediately.” She let him record it quickly and he finished it all in one take without writing anything down. Hopefully no one was going to have to see it but one never knew. “And if something goes badly... well that’s where you come in, my girl FRIDAY. I can’t ask James to do it. So I’m going to do it myself. If I wake up and my parameters fall below this level.... and if I can’t do it myself, send a bubble into my heart through the IV. I want a DNR on file if I’m a vegetable.”

“All right, Boss.”

He didn’t need to pack. He was always packed. But he touched his hand to the reactor in his arm and sighed. He didn’t bother to follow any threads. He already knew the possibilities.

Bucky would have been devastated if he knew that Tony was making a will. He had been alone for so long, and even now he felt oddly alone. He knew that he had a bunch of people who wanted to help him, and at least two who greatly cared about him, but he felt as though he wasn't entirely a part of things a lot of the time. He struggled even to feel human some days.

Tony had been the first friend that he had, the first person that he had kissed that he had actually felt something for beyond just a way to spend an evening with a frivolous girl, and he didn't want to lose it. It wasn't fair to gain something, finally, and then lose it.

He would be ready at the door to take Tony to the hospital like the bodyguard he had been years ago, glaring at every doctor and surgeon's assistant who even looked at him, despite them doing their best to put their billionnaire patient at his ease before he went under the knife. Only when the surgery actually crept up on them, did he lean down and press a fierce kiss to Tony's forehead.

"You can't die, I need you. I'll be here until you get back, okay? Right here."

Bucky would be alone for a long, long time. A brain surgery wasn’t easy to begin with, and with a brain like Tony Stark’s there was absolutely no room for error at all.

No one bothered to come out and tell the waiting man what progress they were making. He was just an employee for all they knew, though as the nurses watched him sitting and waiting in the same position, the man who brought down the Accords, the Winter Soldier, was becoming more and more obvious.

They gave him a wide berth after that.

Strangely, it was Steve Rogers who would approach him some twelve hours later. He’d tried to call Tony and FRIDAY, suspecting that Bucky might need someone, tipped Rogers off to location and time.

He was in blue jeans and sneakers and a bright white T-shirt. “Hey Buck...?”

It was probably for the best that the nurses and other staff gave him a wide berth, because the more he worried, the less human he felt he became. The urge to grab some of them as they passed and impress on them just how important it was that they do everything in their power, or to just demand answers as to what was happening, was insane.

After this long, he wanted to break into the damn OR and stand in the corner so that he could watch and make sure that the surgeon was doing everything that he damn well should be doing.

At least Steve got there before that could happen.

Both the person that he wanted to see the most and the one he wanted to see the least, what with how confused he was over the love he felt and the how he should reconcile it with who he should be with. It didn't stop the initial feeling of seeing him being one of relief, and for a moment he looked vulnerable.

"...what if he dies, Steve?"

“Never really thought of you as a glass half empty sort of guy,” Steve said, keeping s chair between them in the waiting room. He was doing his best to be a good guy here, to give everyone their space, but it was natural for him to gravitate towards Bucky and now he knew, at least partially, why.

He’d never thought he would end up with the other man. It never even crossed his mind. So this wasn’t a hardship, knowing he was with someone else. What hurt was that he had no idea if he’d even be allowed to be this guy’s friend again. And friend...

That was the only thing he was worried about being today.

“If anyone can survive this, it’s Tony. And we both know that.”

He wasn't a glass half empty kind of guy, but he was a realistic kind of guy, any sort of positive optimism long since swept away. It had been gone before he had even fallen from the train; he had been a different man after Steve had pulled him out of that facility the first time, but the war had been going on and there hadn't really been time to talk about it or fix it.

Bucky ignored the chair in between them and crossed the room to drag Steve into his arms, his head dropped onto Steve's chest to exhale shakily.

"He talked about it like it was some kind of joke, like he was just trying to keep up with me."

That might make more sense if he had ever told Steve about the mess in his head and how easily he could die from it at pretty much any time.

"I kind of hate him a bit for not caring about his own safety enough... it's a familiar feeling, Steve. You were always like that too."

“That might be the only thing we have in common,” Steve said, and instantly regretted it. He wanted friendship with Tony. He’d always wanted it. He had Howard hadn’t been great friends and he had wished he could have changed that. Plus, he knew that Tony was a good guy. He knew he was a really good guy and it bothered him so much that he couldn’t just come out and say that without the other man deciding it was a joke or, somehow, a slight.

He held Bucky for as long as Bucky wanted to be held and it both hurt and felt right to hug him.

“I think he gets more boastful when he’s scared. He probably didn’t want to worry you. How did they even... how did they find the clot? Was he acting weird?”

Weirder than usual. He did not come out to say that.

He didn't know whether Tony wanted his abilities told to others. It wasn't that he wanted to lie to Steve, he really didn't, but he also had a duty to not tell secrets that had been put into his care. He was silent for a moment before he chose a half truth.

"FRIDAY scanned him, she does it all the time, you know how she worries about him."

That was true, but it had come because Tony had already known and told her to do it, Steve didn't need to know that, though. He remained against him for a few more moments, before pushing back and away.

"You should talk to him more, he likes you, he's just scared you don't like him."

Steve was silent for a moment, just talking down into Bucky’s hair. Breathing it in. He closed his eyes. He could still hear the guy telling him how much he wanted to kiss him and that made his grip a little tighter. Bucky should get to have everything he wanted—. And if that meant playing nice with his... boyfriend... Well that wasn’t much of a hardship.

“I hurt him pretty badly in Siberia,” Steve said. “The first time around. I found out a little later that I crushed his breastbone. Not that he had much to begin with because of the reactor socket but.. he’s never brought it up. Not once. He’s never held it against me. The only thing he’s ever thrown back in my face is friendship.”

Tony wanted to be important to him and Steve let him down.

He chose Bucky, who he hadn’t even found at that point, over Tony. And that’s what set it all off.

“I’ll do better. I promise you.”

Bucky believed him.

Steve was the one person in the world who he knew was good, deep down in his soul where other people had darkness, Steve was a true hero. It didn't matter that he had muscles now to match his heart, he had always been a true hero, and he thought that was why he was the leader of the Avengers and the one that everyone looked up to.

"Thank you."

He knew it had to be hard. He had swallowed a hell of a lot of jealousy when Steve had fallen for Peggy Carter, like a knife every time he saw them together, this could be no different the other way around.

"He needs someone to look up to, I think he's lost a lot of faith in the goodness of humanity and the world. I know if anyone can give that back to him, Steve, it's you."

“I don’t know about that,” Steve said with a slight edge of hopelessness to his words that he was doing his level best to clear up. “Tony and I don’t get along all that well but I’m going to make more of an effort not to let him get to me. He’s a good guy, deep down. He really is.”

Because if he wasn’t, Steve would step in. Bucky deserved the best. And maybe Tony was the best for him, Steve didn’t know. Not yet. He just had to give the guy a chance. Besides, he trusted Bucky to make good choices for himself.

Even if it would have been so very, very easy to try and get more out of the guy he’d been in love with since the moment he laid eyes on that smile of his.

“Have you eaten anything? Let me get you something. Coffee…water…anything.” He needed to be useful.

Bucky didn't have nearly the same faith in himself to make good choices as Steve seemed to have in him, he was unpractised with choice of his own now and often made bad ones just based on his gut feelings at the time. But it was touching to know that Steve trusted him.

"I don't need anything."

His body could last for a while without sustenance. Not that it should, the serum meant that his body burned through calories faster than any normal person, but he could because he had been trained to do it.

"All I need is for you to be here, Steve. Anchor me, wait with me."

It was a strange thing to be in a hospital and not actually be the guy in the bed hooked up to machines. Steve didn’t know what the waiting room was like. His mother died at home. Field hospitals were mostly just tents or taken over abandoned buildings in hostile territory during the war.

Sitting in hard plastic chairs? He wasn’t good at that. He ignored the texts and the calls that came in, discreetly flipping the ringer off just as a nurse tried to approach them.

He stood, knowing that Bucky was a little intimidating, and went to meet the woman halfway so that she could let her guard down a little and stop giving Bucky a glare like he might attack. “How is he?”

“He’s out of surgery,” she said. “The doctor will be out in half an hour or so to explain but they were successful on removable of the clot. They’ll keep him unconscious for at least another day since they want to keep him from moving, but you can go in to see him in an hour.”

Bucky should have a lot of experience with this, he had spent most of his childhood in fear of Steve's life, but a lot of that was a blur now. Just one unending memory of worry, rather than sharp details that might help him cope with how to sit and wait while someone else he loved was in danger.

He was relieved when the nurse said the surgery had been successful, but that didn't translate too well onto his expression. He still looked as though he might bite through the solid wall as he swept out of the room so that he could pace outside of where they were keeping Tony for that hour, and then was at his side.

He would still be at his side when Tony woke up that day later, but he'd be fast asleep on the chair next to the bed. Steve, stood at his shoulder, would be the one to greet him in a low voice.

"Hey-- welcome back, Tony, how're you feeling?"

Tony felt like he’d been hit with a truck. When he woke up, it was like his entire body was on fire and then dunked in ice. His nerves were coming back to life, and though he’d been easily patched up with Helen Cho’s technology, the bone that they had drilled through was still open and the swelling of his brain, a tissue her technology couldn’t repair, pushing against it, was making his waking life a misery. The sound of Steve Rogers’ voice?

Well that just added to it.

Tony groaned. His mouth was like paper, his tongue rough, but he reached forward to take hold of the guard rail just to have something under his IV hooked up hand.

When he opened his eyes, they were unfocused, the pupils pinpricks, and that was when he started to laugh. It was a dry, horrible sort of sound, one that continued as he wriggled his toes and flexed his fingers.

“Wonderful. I feel wonderful,” he lamented between those oddly crazed laughs and turned his head away from Steve. “Thanks for your visit. Leave cards and candy on the table.”

The laughter was worrying, but he could maybe attribute that to the high amount of medication that Tony was currently on. At least he was awake and coherent, slightly more slurred than usual, but definitely still him. A relieved smile pulled his own lips up and he tugged his chair a bit closer, holding a paper cup of water close to Tony's face.

"I've got some water instead, not as exciting as a card or candy, but I bet you'll appreciate it more. Take some small sips and then you might want to go back to sleep."

They could have their discussion about friendship another time, when Tony had just woken up from brain surgery really wasn't the ideal moment.

"Bucky's here too, if you turn your head just to the left you'll see him. I can wake him up if you want?"

He'd rather not, Bucky had barely slept in the past two days, and God knows how well he slept in general before that anyway. He had to be exhausted to have passed out in a public space like this.

“I don’t want the water right now. And just... Let him sleep.” Tony didn’t turn his head. He didn’t open his eyes and he wasn’t going to sit up to let Rogers try to spill water into his mouth.

What he wanted was to call for a doctor to get some answers on how the surgery went, what other complications he could enjoy, but he didn’t need Rogers running around and waking Bucky up—

God forbid. He couldn't handle Bucky right now. He wasn’t sure he could even handle himself.

“If I pretend I’m still out cold, could you get him to go home?”

"Not a chance."

Steve's voice was warm and fondly amused, though he made sure to keep it quiet in an attempt not to jar Tony if he had an aching head... which, if he had his head cut open, then he probably would.

"He nearly suplexed the last doctor who suggested he leave the room for a bit, but I can keep an eye on him. Don't worry about anything except yourself right now, Tony, you need to rest and heal. The surgeon said everything went well and they got the clot, so you just need to recuperate now."

Keeping his head away from Steve, Tony tried to open his eyes. His fingers tightened noticeably around the metal bar and then relaxed again. There was nothing to be done. No amount of squeezing would let him see anything but vague washes of light and dark. He knew why, but it actually hadn’t been one of the things he’d feared going into this surgery. This, like ending up with Bucky, happened to be one of the strange deviations of this life from the other ones he more or less remembered in bits and pieces. He searched silently for a moment for the whispers to give him a hint of what to do now, but they were gone.

Of course they were gone. It was the clot that had connected them to him, that had given him that rare gift that had been meant to save them all from Thanos. And it was that clot that had taken his sight. Perhaps temporarily, but perhaps not. He had no way of knowing.

“I need a favor.”

It wasn’t for a drink of water. It wasn’t even to spirit Bucky away from here. He turned his head on the pillow and he tried to figure out which hazy bits of fuzzed and graying color were parts of Steve Rogers and which were the medical equipment or the wall behind him. He couldn’t tell and he closed his eyelids again.

“I need my phone. And I need you to wheel him out into the hallway for about five minutes. Can you do that?”

Obviously nobody knew yet that Tony had compromised sight, it was one of the things they couldn't test until he woke up, like some aspects of coordination and speech. But it might well be temporary, the surgery had gone well and he was a relatively healthy man for his age, drinking notwithstanding.

The blur that was Steve shifted and stood up, giving at least more indication of which bits of the room were him and which bits were probably stands of equipment.

"I try and move him and he's going to wake up, Tony, but I think he's out enough that you could make a call and he won't hear. I can go out into the hall to give you privacy, but if it's something that you need fetching or doing then maybe I can get it done for you?"

No that he didn't trust Tony to not try and discharge himself, except... he absolutely didn't trust Tony.

Tony didn’t trust that Bucky was asleep at all either. He didn’t trust that the man wouldn’t wake up and blame himself. Or wouldn’t leave once he found out that Tony was about as useful as pea soup splattered on the sidewalk. He counted to three, once more trying to reach out for something, for anything to give him some hope, and once again being treated to silence.

Silence.

He hadn’t experienced that since he was a child, and as he couldn’t remember what that was like, he might as well never have known it at all.

So what languages didn’t Bucky speak? The thought occurred to him that he could transmit in binary, but that could take hours to get a sentence out. The following thought was that he was so damned relieved that he even knew binary now. His mind was intact even if his sight was not. Not that it mattered. He was still ruined.

“You know what, never mind. I’ll wait until he wakes up to shoo him out.” He needed privacy. He wanted to speak to the doctors but he couldn’t let James know yet how bad it was. “But I still need my phone. And my clothing. Don’t give me the brain surgery speech. I don’t want to wear a hospital gown.”

Not that he was. Tony had been dressed in a soft cotton button down and his sweats. He facility knew he didn’t do hospitals.

"..."

The silence that came after Tony's words would probably be pretty telling. People often thought that Steve wasn't that intelligent, they only saw his muscles or his manners and never thought there might be more under the surface, but he was smart. Maybe not a genius like Tony or Bruce, but definitely smart enough to notice when someone says they're wearing something that they should be able to see that they're not.

"...you're not in a gown, Tony."

His voice was a mix of concern and gentle firmness, he knew that he would be scared if he had woken up and something might have gone wrong, but it was important that Tony trust them and not hide this.

"Is there something you want to tell me?"

Tony’s hand smoothed down the front of his chest. He did tilt his head as if to look and made a fairly convincing sigh. “Just woke up three seconds ago. You can forgive me for being disoriented.” And Tony was feeling pretty disoriented because he could hear Bucky breathe but he couldn’t see him or pinpoint where he was in the shapes of dull gray. He couldn’t even see Steve when he was standing still so rather than search for a direction to point his face, he closed his eyes and rubbed a hand against his forehead. “Shouldn’t a Doctor be in here welcoming me back to the land of the living?”

He hated how perceptive Steve was. Unlike most people, Tony didn’t think he was dumb or a jock. He knew he grew up dirt poor and sick. He knew the toughness came from a lifetime of being misjudged. But he also knew that everyone else on earth was an idiot compared to himself.

And he just wasn’t thinking clearly. He was too afraid.

“But that said, I don’t really want to talk anymore. Everything hurts. Even if I’m in my sweats. Thankfully. Someone listened for once.”

Steve wasn't entirely convinced, but he was willing to give Tony the benefit of the doubt for now. If something was really wrong then he wouldn't be able to hide it for long, the doctors would need to know and then they could help him. Then again, maybe he was just tired and disoriented.

"Okay, Tony, just-- try and get some sleep, like I said. I can look out a doctor for you when you next wake up, but I think it's for the best that you try and rest some more right now."

After any kind of surgery, let alone brain surgery, the body needed sleep to help it recover from such a trauma.

Maybe if he fell asleep, his head would right itself and then everything would be all right again? He could only hope. Sleep, however, all but refused to join him and he ended up blankly staring at nothing for a good twenty minutes after Rogers finally left. He was probably out in the hallway, the asshole.

When he did sleep, it was fairly restful. No voices. No dreams. Nothing.

He woke again slowly, mouth still as dry as a desert, to a nurse checking his pulse. He couldn’t tell that she was also trying not to stare Bucky down, afraid he would make a move to hurt her.

“Are you the doctor,” he asked, unable to tell if the person next to him was in a white coat or not.

“No Mr. Stark. I’m Hannah. I’m your RN. Let me get the doctor for you.”

it's a new plot!

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Guess who? That's right, it's me! No more work for two whole weeks

YAY!!

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