#anyway Steve also calls Bucky ‘son’ during that hallucination scene

[daydreamerdrew]

I was thinking about how Steve calls Bucky “Bucky boy” during his hallucination of Bucky in Tales of Suspense (1959) #82 and how the ‘real’ Bucky wouldn’t like that. and then I remembered that even Sam, who didn’t personally know Bucky when he was young, refers to Bucky as the “kid” when talking to Steve in Captain America (1968) #606… he’s in his 30s. sorry, Bucky, you’ll never escape being thought of as younger than your peers/friends

[imaginetonyandbucky]

And Still, You’re Next To Me - Chapter 4/4

Once Bucky stopped freaking out about his relapse, he noticed the only one freaking out was him. No shrieks of horror from the civilians, no glares from the Avengers…Wanda was even smiling at him for fuck’s sake! He knew the Soldier wouldn’t listen to that agent, no matter how many trigger words he had in store for them. Murder’s just not in his nature anymore. He knew, but still freaked about it because in all honesty, he expected Clint to riddle him with arrows the second he snapped into the Soldier.

And then there was Tony, who witnessed the Soldier in his new element many times by now and wasn’t fazed by him coming to the surface at all.

So it took a failed HYDRA attack for Bucky to realize a lot of…interesting things. Concerning Tony. He can’t sleep through the entire night after the attack, mulling over the revelation and devising his next move.

The Avengers beat him to it during breakfast.

Steve approaches him first, apologizing for not supporting him more in the past few months.

Being half-way through his sandwich, he doesn’t really know what to say, completely caught off guard by his absolutely devastated looking best friend so he just nods and waves him off.

“S’not a big deal.”

“Yes it is!” he widens his eyes and keeps apologizing for the remainder of his meal until Bucky finally persuades him it’s fine and forgiven.

Because it is. Since Tony subtly inserted himself in between him and the Avengers’ bullshit – quite literally like a knight in the shining armor – Bucky decided not to dwell too much on it anymore. Of course it hurt. And it was so unfair on so many levels. But with Tony in charge of damage control, the Avengers were slowly coming around and he also shifted his demeanor onto the positive side as a result.

Natasha whips around the corner at one point, giving him a challenging look. “I was a real bitch to you. Wanna spar after lunch and kick my ass for it?”

“Uh…,” he frowns and her look intensifies a hundred fold which is just damn scary. “Yeah, sure.

“Cool,” she nods in approval and disappears again.

One by one, the other members approach him to say sorry – each in their own specific way. Except for Wanda, who is probably not in the apologizing stage quite yet, but at least she’s not all up in his business anymore.

And then there’s Clint, who mandrops on him from the vent in the hallway leading to the elevator some time later.

“Yo, Barnes!”

He’s lucky Bucky doesn’t scare easily these days. No need to let him know that he caught him completely by surprise though. God forbid he’d grow an ego. “Lemme guess. You wanna say sorry by…challenging me to a cook off. Oh wait, no. That was Vision. So, what are we gon’ do?”

Clint’s the surprised one now. He takes a step back and squints. “Guess I’m the last one, huh? Well, I was thinking I’d take you on a tour de Compound, show you all the secret paths and hideaways so we could do some serious spy off later…while profusely apologizing.”

“Sounds like a plan,” he grins at the archer and takes a step forward, but Clint blocks his way.

“Great! So in the spirit of apologizing, you might wanna know that Tony is in the workshop…as usual.”

“O…kay? Why are you - ”

“He’s in the lockdown mode…meaning that he won’t be coming up anytime soon and nobody’s making it past the doors inside either. Unless you know the supersecret password of course,” he smirks. “Which I can tell you.”

“Becaaause…?”

“Because you were heading there anyway? And because he only ever goes into lockdown mode if he’s either in the middle of a scientific breakthrough, or in the middle of a personal crises. My money’s on the second one this time. So you might wanna go…lift his spirits.”

Oh. Who knew Birdbrain - as Tony so loves to call him - was this insightful? He actually thought Hawkeye doesn’t even like Tony very much, and yet…

“Dinner would…lift his spirits. Or a movie night. He likes movies. Especially bad sci-fi ones, those entertain him to no end.”

“Uh, a’right? Why would I - ”

“Because I’m not blind? And only half-deaf, so make a move, Snowflake, before he either drowns in self-doubt, again, or someone else will. Make a move. If you know what I mean.”

Maybe too insightful, for Bucky’s liking. “Okay, fine, give me the damn password, Birdbrain.”

Clint’s shit-eating grin as he tells him the password is probably going to stick for days, that’s how strong it is. But Bucky can wipe if off for him later when he totally owns him in the spy off.

He’s got a date to plan and a man to dig out of a workshop first.

(read-more ahead!)

“This doesn’t look right, DUM-E,” Tony inspects the bot’s handy work. How hard can it be to sort the tools in alphabetical order?! In DUM-E’s case real damn hard apparently, otherwise the welding stuff wouldn’t be put first and the hammer wouldn’t be all the way over there with the screwdrivers. “Wh…why is U and Butterfingers in here too?!”

DUM-E, the little shit that he is, just beeps happily and considers his work done, rolling away from the scene. 

“We’ll be talking about that later young man! You can’t think of your brothers as t - ” he yells after him, but cuts himself off as soon as he spots one very much present Bucky Barnes sitting on the table opposite of the workbench. “Tools. And we’ll be going over your alphabet! You little…should have left you in the Tower,” he mumbles when the only reply he gets is another happy beep that seems to be aimed at Bucky anyway. “How did you get in here?” he looks between the definitely password protected entrance and the…grinning supersoldier. Nope, he’s beaming. He’s been smiling more lately but this is…a suspicious increase by a ton.

He looks happy. And hell if that sight doesn’t do weird things to Tony’s brain.

“Through the door,” he answers, grin widening.

Tony glares at him, folding his hands. “It’s password protected!”

“Yeah,” he nods, still smiling. “One, two, three, four, five is a real good password.”

Son of a…okay, the password is the worst but he didn’t expect the tech illiterates here to crack it and anyone with any tech knowledge would never guess his password to be this shitty.

“Clint gave it to me. I bet he’s spied it off from the AC vent over there.”

“Son of a bitch!” he grumbles out loud this time. Usually, he would go inspect the vent…and rig it with deadly explosives, and then have Fry change the password to something more formidable this time around, but he can’t tear his eyes off of the man in front of him. “What’s with the…,” he waves a hand at the whole of him, realizing he doesn’t know how to describe what he’s seeing. It’s a bit weird to ask ‘oh hey, why are you looking so damn happy?!’. And what the hell is he wearing?! A beige shirt?! Since when does he own colors other than black?! And those jeans he totally got from whoever Steve stole his pair of the all too fitting ones years ago. What’s with supersoldiers never wearing their actual clothing size?!

He’s dressed to kill. Not the assassin kinda killing.

“All the…what?” he smirks and that’s it.

That’s the end of Tony, right there. “The uh…you’re…smiling. Like…a lot,” he stutters out, willing his thoughts to behave.

“Had a good day. A really good day,” he adds.

“Yeah?”

“Uh huh,” he hums an octave lower than should be legal and continues to just stare at Tony. “Had five club sandwiches for breakfast along with seven heartfelt apologies from the team and then Wanda took me shoppin’. And didn’t kill me on the way there or back so yeah, that’s my definition of a really good day.”

Tony’s brain takes a minute to stop conjuring dirty thoughts and then processes what he’s just said. “Wait…apologies? They apologized? The team?” he shakes his head, holding a finger up. “No no no, never mind that, but Wanda took you shopping?!” he blurts out and Bucky nods. “Wanda…are we talking about the same Wanda? Are you sure? You’re not hallucinating or anything?” he asks but the man only gives him more nods and wider damn smirks. “Am I hallucinating? Or drunk?”

“Your haven’t drunk anything, boss,” FRIDAY reassures him. “Including water, by the way. And I can confirm that Sergeant Barnes did actually go shopping with Ms. Maximoff. Without any incidents.”

So if he’s not drunk or losing his mind…that means the Avengers really did apologize to Bucky and Wanda took him shopping…what?!

He decides solving the mystery behind those actions is not the priority right now and focuses on the result instead. The happy, grinning result standing just over there and looking at Tony like he’s the Sun and Bucky’s the Winter and he can’t get enough of the warmth.

Yep, his brain is so done for. 

He relaxes his tense posture and slowly cracks a smile of his own. “Wow…was about time they got their heads out of their asses. You better not be letting them off too easily, especially the SHIELD twins.”

“Nah,” he shakes his head. “I’m happy with the way it turned out…no vengeful thoughts in mind. Yet,” he shrugs. “Besides, I’m gonna be too busy anyway.”

“Busy?” he tilts his head to the side, eyebrows raised. Busy doing what, looking like a new deadly sin?

“Yeah. Busy inviting a guy to dinner to thank him…for a lotta things.”

“Oh?” Oh…okay, sure. A thank-you dinner. Awesome. Very…friendly. And appropriate. And is it too late to fly into a black hole in the sky and disappear forever? He hopes not.

“And when the thank you’s part is done, I’m thinkin’ we forget the food and just…make out. Hoping the Soldier won’t go berserk because of the spaghetti he’s made are going cold in the background,” he says with a flare of confidence Tony didn’t think he possessed.

“Oh really? S’what you’re thinking?” he asks, trying to look and sound uninterested but failing miserably. He can’t stop the excitement and he can’t stop the smile.

“Unless I got this all wrong…me and the whole team, by the way…then yeah. That’s what I’m thinkin’.”

Tony’s brain snaps back into action and with one swift motion to the side of the workbench, he shuts down the project he’s been pretending to work on through the night. “Why don’t we forget the thank you part and just make out on the way up to the kitchen and eat? Wouldn’t wanna make the Soldier angry, would we?”

“That’s a great idea,” he chuckles, leaning away from the table.

Tony walks up to him with a smirk and winks. “Been full of great ideas lately.”

“Yeah, you have,” Bucky’s grin eases into a gentle smile and it’s the final thing that wipes all the fears and doubts away from Tony’s mind.

They move in for the kiss and Tony has to quickly forget about the damn Birdbrain, who he’s gonna have to thank for all this later. And then promptly kill him for spying on people from the vents.

But for now, he’ll enjoy the moment, the kiss, the dinner and the man whose smile is definitely gonna be the death of him.

~Fin