#i kinda wish they had stitching and were angled a little more sensibly?

[bobby-rising]

at last....... this thing gets eyes

[wolfsrainrules]

Mischievous Bucky prompt: Someone made Tony sad and Bucky plus a few others takes offense. Revenge involves pink hair dye, glitter, rubber ducks, several well timed balloons filled with various liquids, and whatever else you wish to add.

Anon my lovely, so am I. To clarify real quick: Team!!Family!!Avengers are referred to with first names. Canon!!!NotFamily!!Vengers are all last names. I also ended up combining this one with rubixcube9730’s prompt because I saw a chance and I took it (so everyone is gonna see this post twice when I answer the two asks.)

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If there was one truth that the universe could take from him, it was that Bucky Barnes was in fact quite a protective soul.

It had started when his Ma handed him the tiny little form of his baby sister, and only gotten worse with the next one, and then with a little blond punk who liked to pick fights.

So when Bucky picked somebody for his tiny little family, he was a mother hen.

And he could own that.

With the Avengers, he was particularly bad, he knew. He owned all of them more than he would ever be able to pay back after all. They’d been the team that Stevie had needed when Buck had been otherwise indisposed, and then they had taken Bucky in too, when Steve brought him in. They’d rallied around their own, stared down everyone who had a problem with the Winter Soldier being an Avenger, one of theirs, and dared them to say a word.

And maybe Bucky had a real soft spot for punks that picked fights they shouldn’t, okay?

And friends that looked at the world and said ‘if you want him, you have to come through us first’-well. Those were the kinda friends he wanted to have. The kind he wanted to be.

And maybe Bucky was worse with Tony than the others, but once he’d figured out that Tony wouldn’t take care of himself, what else was he supposed to do? 

Tony was so good to them, such a good man, and the world scoffed at it all, liked to hit the man while he was down. Tony gave them all a home, made sure everyone had the equipment to come back to each other. He’d rise to their defense like a wildfire, but tended to let others come after himself with little retaliation.

And the Avengers, maybe, might have noticed and started going after people for Tony.

The point stood: Bucky was particularly on alert when it came to Tony.

So when he heard the explosion down in Tony’s lab, he’d already started headed that way. He was much calmer than the first time he’d head Tony’s lab explode (he may, possibly, have shoved The Arm through the lock when it wouldn’t open to the lab and ripped the door out of the wall. Possibly.) now that he knew it was a regular thing and usually under control within the first five to ten seconds. 

He’d still check though.

Tony had learned to let up on blackout protocols if they were in effect after an explosion or accident lest Bucky get creative about how he got into Tony’s workshop to check on him.

So when he got to the lab, and it was still blacked out, Bucky went on alert.

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Tony cursed, loudly and in multiple languages, as his hands flew over holographic keys.

Nothing was working. Nothing was slowing the process down. He kept the hole ripping itself into being in his workshop in his sight-line even as he tried to stop it from happening. It had already caused two separate explosions, and the fact it was sucking everything into it was getting worse, so-

Tony would not allow it to expand beyond these walls. More than the fact that New York sat outside the building, and who knew what the rip in space would do to civilians, his team was in the building.

His makeshift family would be in danger if Tony couldn’t stop this here and now, and Tony refused to allow it.

Bucky would be pissed, but Tony hadn’t taken the time to deactivate the blackout protocols, and he’d had JARVIS lock down the vents so Bucky couldn’t drop himself straight into the middle of the rip. As soon as he’s been sure Buck wouldn’t accidentally throw himself at an unknown danger he’d had JARVIS help him trying to contain whatever was happening.

Adrenaline poured through Tony’s veins, and when the force of the rip pulling things into it got to be too much, he simply rearranged himself, calling the legs of the suit to himself and using the boots to help keep his feet firmly on the ground.

He didn’t even look up when he heard the doors of the lab start to make a metallic whining noise. He knew Bucky would try to get inside, and Tony had already reinforced the doors since the last time. He had a few minutes before Buck actually succeeded in getting anywhere at all.

“JARVIS,” he hissed, his voice tight as his hands flew faster over the keys in front of him, “Inform the Tower it’s a code Trojan Horse and they need to get out.”

He knew, even as he said it, that his team would just rush to him instead of being sensible and leaving, but he had to tell them. Had to tell them to leave, let them know something dangerous had gotten into the tower. It would also get all his personnel out of the tower, down into the streets and away.

If Tony failed-which he would not, could not- but if he failed, his family had to have the warning to do something.

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Bucky’s breath caught as JARVIS’ voice came over the speaker systems, loud and delivered to the entire tower instead of just the Avengers’ floors. Bucky knew then. He knew this wasn’t a run of the mill problem, something easy to fix.

Code Trojan Horse was only meant to be activated when something or someone got into the tower that shouldn’t have, and it or they were dangerous enough whoever activated the code wasn’t sure they could stop it.

He twisted his Arm into the door-frame harder, cursing that Tony had reinforced the doors since the last time he had broken them. It was taking too long. He snarled, even as he head the rushing footsteps of his team coming his way.

It was a fail-safe once the code was activated, that the walls would light up to lead towards the source of where the code came from. It was…it was just in case whoever activated it couldn’t tell the others where the dangerous thing was.

In this case it lead his worried and panicking teammates right to him.

“Steve!” he growled, heaving against the metal doors, and like he always had, Steve knew what Bucky needed.

Between two panicked super soldiers with a vibranium shield and arm, the door standing between the team and their wayward inventor crumbled in seconds.

They walked into chaos, Tony bracing himself against the reinforced counter, Iron Man boots on his feet and being used to stop his forward momentum. Any loose items in the lab seemed to be pulled towards the center of the room, BUTTERFINGERS, U, and DUM-E all having retreated to a safe little recessed corner in the lab.

Tony’s curses were loud even as the Avengers took in the rip in space, as if someone had tugged harshly at an unseen  stitch in reality until it had unraveled.

Bucky gripped harshly at the door frame as he felt his feet slide, and he felt Steve wrap an arm around his waist and yank backwards, pulling against the suction of the portal. Even then Steve moved, shoving his enhanced self between the rest of the team and the threat, shoulder to shoulder with Bucky as they braced each other against the pull of the portal.

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Tony saw both super soldiers slide on the smooth floor of his lab and snarled.

He couldn’t stop the thing. He couldn’t stop it, and his family was too close, too close, and in danger, and Tony couldn’t stop it-

Something was going into that portal and coming out the other side. Something living. It wouldn’t stop until it had happened. Would only get bigger and more powerful, Tony knew.

Something had to go through that portal, something biological and living.

But-

Tony sat, suspended for a moment as his mind raced, making snap connections as a new angle presented itself.

But maybe it didn’t have to be from this end. Maybe he could reverse the force, stop the rip from taking from their side, and instead spit something out from the other.

The reinforced counter he had placed himself behind to brace against on top of his boots began to crumble. Tony staggered a bit closer, before he adjusted his footing, the holographic displays following the movement.

In this moment, Tony didn’t curse, was utterly silent as he honed in on the his solution.

His math was always right, he couldn’t afford it not to be-

It wasn’t the best idea, but it was something. And his team was here, they could take whatever came out of the portal. Tony refused to let this thing have any of his team mates- not even himself.

(and it had been a team effort, taken a lot of work, to instill this sense of self worth in Tony by the team, to break his old habit of throwing himself at the problem, to make his first instinct something that wasn’t prioritizing everyone else over himself, and instead a desire to make it out the other side with them.)

Tony smiled, a flash of satisfaction as his work paid off. The suction sputtered and slowed before it began in reverse, wind being blown out instead of pulled in.

His lab was going to be a wreck, and Tony cursed, staggering backwards a few steps as he once again had to adjust his footing.

And then Tony heard the cries of shock, and he tensed because he recognized those voices-

And then bodies crashed out of the rip and everything stilled.

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So.

Tony had no idea why or how it had happened, but there was another team on the ground.

It was his family, but it….wasn’t?

They looked….wrong. Harsher, more strained and stressed, scars his family didn’t have, more hard lines, darker eyes.

Tony was carefully not thinking about the other him.

He knew himself okay?

He knew his tells. And what he was reading from the other him- from Stark- said he was very not okay with any of the other Avengers at his back. Stark kept flinching, any time his Rogers and Barnes or Romanoff moved.

The three of them all looked….darker too. This Rogers seemed…. harsher, this Barnes less put together, like Buck had been before Tony had hooked him up with BARF and Wakandan tech. This Romanoff more alert, more…feral.  This Barton was a tense line of anger, eyes dark and crouching like he wanted to lunge at the next person to breathe on him. Their Thor wasn’t present, but their Banner….

Tony wanted to kill someone. That Bruce- Banner, he-

Banner looked broken. Not all present, something inside him just….like it had given up.

This entire team set off all of Tony’s instincts, made him want to bristle, stand in front of his family, show the world that he may be Iron Man now, but they had once known him as Merchant of Death and for his own Tony would gladly watch the word burn, would hold the match, because he was a selfish son of a bitch and they were his. He could see the same in his own team, how each of them read their doppelgangers and picked them all apart, how they looked and hated what they were seeing.

A broken team.

Something had gone wrong.

Something had gone horribly wrong with this team. They weren’t a family, not like Tony’s team, and Tony wanted to shove them all through the rip that wasn’t there anymore. He wanted to get them all away from his team, because this was everything Tony had ever feared laid out, broken bonds, broken trust, wary eyes in the faces of his friends, of his family and Tony wanted to scream.

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Okay.

So as previously mentioned, Buck and the Team were viciously protective of Tony, because the man wouldn’t be for his own sake.

When Rogers- and Buck knew Stevie, knew him  as well as he knew himself, and this Rogers was not his Steve, this one was more jaded, more hurt, more- he was dark in a way Buck’s Steve had never had to be- opened his mouth, eyes narrowed on Tony well.

He knew Steve’s faces, and Rogers was wearing the ‘I am about to be a punk ass and pick a fight’ face. He gave him the benefit of the doubt, hoped that maybe this other-team’s bonds were not as twisted and broken as he was reading.

He could see Rogers had shifted in front of the others, put himself between the threat and the team, so perhaps- well.

Perhaps even if their bonds were broken, they were still there.

“What the hell did you do Stark?” Rogers’ voice was strong, harsh, eyes narrowed and mouth twisted.

And Tony flinched, much like Stark did, and Bucky was instantly done.

He and Steve moved at the same time as the rest of the team, shoulder to shoulder as they put themselves between Rogers and Tony. Buck could hear the others shifting, swallowing Tony into the middle of their group, because this might not be Steve, but it was still Steve’s voice, Steve’s look alike, still a person who for all intents and purposes was Steve, throwing the accusation out.

And Tony was sensitive about family using a tone like that with him.

“Hey,” Buck growled, both Steve and Buck pulling themselves to their full heights, “Tony just saved New York from a rip in the fabric of reality.”

Steve picked up where Buck stopped “and it wasn’t his fault, so just don’t.”

Buck sneered at the surprise in Rogers’ eyes “And if ya gotta problem with ‘im, punk, ya can take it up with me.”

Rogers flinched backwards, eyes wide, and in the silence, the synced response of all the other Avengers was loud:

 “With us.”

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Buck was done.

It had been four days, and the tower- his home- was a tense, uncomfortable place for the first time since Buck had moved in.

He loathed it.

He loathed watching people who looked so much like his family be….broken; fighting. Really fighting.

Not to mention the Others kept treating his team like their counterparts and it was pissing him off. Especially Tony.

So Buck may have, possibly, gotten the team to help set up a bit of a warzone in the Others’ floor. 

He’d started simple, changing bathing supplies to dye hair and skin alike. Then he’d added glitter to the hair dryer, layered it into their beds and clothes, abused the hell out of Amazon and JARVIS to get about 800 rubber ducks- which were scattered throughout the floor in more and more unlikely places.

It was possible that Buck may have, had a bit too much fun setting up scenes with the ducks, ranging from classic movie shots, cult circles on the couches, counters and beds and using ‘ticky-tac’ to stick them all over the walls and ceilings. He had also set up entire obstacle courses worth of tripwires,  catapults and carefully positioned balloons filled with paint, syrup, honey, vinegar, glitter, and various combinations of the previous with glitter in them. Ducks were strategically placed to trip people up, fall out and startle, and Bucky may have possibly gotten one of the really big blowup ducks and stuck it in the pantry. 

If they wanted to be grumpy little shits while Tony tried to figure out how to get them home with Stark, then Bucky would give them a reason to be exceedingly grumpy.

His lips curled into a dangerous smirk as he hung outside the vent on the Others’ floor, one of many pillowcases of feathers being carefully positioned over the minefield of sticky substances in balloons.

(They were lucky they were alternate versions of his family, otherwise Buck- and the team- would be much harsher about their retaliations)