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For whatever reason, people tended to forget that Bucky Barnes was a highly trained, highly skilled assassin, first and foremost. Before Hydra, and the freight train. Before the Winter Soldier.
He was highly focused, highly disciplined; perceptive and patient, and that was Before. Seventy years of missions and Hydra training amplified (and arguably maxed out) his already existing skill-sets to the extreme, honing them to the sharpest point that even Steve was dulled in comparison.
The Winter Soldier was the weapon, but it was nothing without Bucky. For whatever reason, people forgot that.
Even dear Natalia, caught up in her own importance and legend.
He’d be disgusted at how compromised she’d become since their last encounter if it actually mattered to him. But Bucky had more important things to think about, like Tony Stark.
Tony was everything Bucky and the Winter Solider were not: bright and warm and brilliant. And human. So very uncompromisingly human. It baffled Bucky, actually, for all of Tony’s ingenuity, his genius, strength, determination, and unmatched sheer goodness, Tony was everything that was fallible.
He made mistakes and he overshot his marks. He insisted on handling everything himself, and combined with his idealism, he was also surprisingly naive. He craved approval, and didn’t put too much effort into hiding it if you knew where to look, and he still desired to be liked, however much he buried the deisre. He hoped so much for others, but expected so little in return.
But he was still himself, still abrasive, and snarky – the genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist. Tony's ability to play any role expected of him was impressive, even by spy standards, and again, Bucky found himself disappointed in Natalia’s inability to see through it.
Overtaken by her hubris and distracted by the sparkle of Captain America’s patriotic propaganda reel, no doubt.
However, Tony’s greatest error had been this, them - the Rogues. Tony had overestimated the so-called Avengers. He’d mistakenly put his trust and affection and love in their unworthy hands and they crushed him, and Bucky could see it, plain as day: A ticking-time-bomb of ego and manipulation, and at its center, the famed genius that shaped the future like putty in his hands who grew more and more tired as the body count piled up and the blame was laid solely at his feet.
For Tony’s sake, as well as his own, Bucky knew that he had to take things slow.
He had to.
Bucky had his own penance to pay, had accusations he had to face and deal with. He owed Tony that much.
Even with their shared history, Tony still had mercy to spare for Bucky. For everyone, really, if they’d just look.
Bucky’s seen what the Iron Man suits can do, knows what Tony is capable of.
The man’s been a threat level so high that no one in the underground would even consider playing in his sandbox unless they were willing to go all-in. People that crossed Tony Stark tended to die, and Bucky and Steve would’ve been no exception.
Except they had been, and they’d left him in a frozen tundra in an armored coffin without a glance back. Bucky still has nightmares about it.
And after, when he and the Rogues are returned to the United States, the first thing Bucky told Tony with a sincerity that aches was, "Thank you."
Bucky knew even then that he didn’t deserve it, the pardon, the forgiveness for the trouble they caused. Let alone the safe place to go to, a home with food and protection, and just - none of it. They didn’t deserve a damn thing.
But what had Tony done? He'd shrugged, careless and tired, and that was it.
“You don’t need to thank him, Buck,” Steve said, almost disapproving, and at the agreements uttered in varying volumes of Natalia’s smirk to Barton's vehemence that “Tony’s a billionaire, what else is he good” for to Maximoff's reminder that “Stark has sins to pay for.”
Bucky resolved his assessment that they didn’t deserve him.
On that note, Bucky wasn’t surprised to find that they didn’t want Tony just as much as he didn't want them.
For all the tech Tony offered up for personal weapons, protection, communication, and transport. His money that clothed, housed, fed them and then some, his generosity in still providing for them irrespective of their differences and their cruelty, Tony was rewarded by sneers and jeers and downright disrespect. Even, on the occasion – just the once, Bucky wouldn’t allow it a second time – harm against his person.
Bucky didn’t even care that Barton had to be hospitalized, you don’t taunt the man that recovered you from exile and prison and god knows what else, to offer the friendly reminder to Bucky that, “We’ve gotta watch our back, or Tony’ll break it like he did his pal, Rhodes.”
After that, Bucky stayed glued to Tony.
“I don’t trust these assholes,” he told Friday when he first came down to the lab.
Friday, AI or not, was one of the few people he liked. She was downright protective of her father.
According to Tony himself, none of the Rogues (besides Bucky) could even step foot in the elevator to his lab, and his penthouse was locked up tighter than Alcatraz.
Bucky’s declaration had been the only reason he was allowed in, something Friday warned could be revoked at any moment: “Boss hasn’t said anything about banning you, and from my understanding of you, you are not a threat to him. But if you hurt him in any way, I can very easily make your life a nightmare and Boss would never know. Ask the Witch.”
How Friday managed to upgrade her systems to deal with magic was beyond Bucky’s realm of understanding, but the sentiment was appreciated. Tony Stark needed to be protected. It was a directive Bucky could get behind.
Besides, Bucky had the added benefit of relishing in the opportunity to be awash with the future that Tony bent to his will, all to himself. Not to mention Tony all to himself.
They’d pounded it out, as it were. At the time, not in the way Bucky now wanted, but it was necessary and late in coming. Tony deserved to take his anger out on him. Bucky – The Winter Solider – he deserved it.
Bucky could take it, and Tony – still good, still merciful – would never actually kill him.
If anything Tony was more broken up about it in the end.
After Bucky peeled himself off the floor, he placed a tentative hand on Tony’s shoulder.
Tony’s glistening eyes and trembling lips looked like closure, and the hand Tony covered Bucky’s with felt like absolution, and that was all Bucky needed.
It all went downhill from there.
He supposed Tony attributed the constant touches as a craving for any human contact, the physical displays of affection as something Bucky was re-learning, which was fine. Whatever reasoning made it acceptable, whatever made it okay for Bucky to touch him like this, Bucky would take.
It was hard to get his mind around that himself, the constant urge to poke and prod and caress and smooth out and touchtouchtouch because Tony Stark was nuclear fusion in skin and he burned.
It was unintentional at first, fingers brushing when passing the coffee or handing over the plate, moving past each other in the communal areas or in the space of the lab.
Then more purposeful: picking Tony up to lay him down on the couch after he fell asleep at his workbench, throwing an arm across his shoulders when they were watching movies, tugging at his hand whenever he was in the lab too long and needed fresh air and a shower.
To, tentative: wrapping his arm around his waist when they both dozen off, lingering at his shoulder to watch Tony do something, and sliding their fingers against one another until they slotted in place, caring and cautious whenever he looked over any injuries Tony obtained from lab-related experiments.
Bucky couldn’t help it.
Tony was always warm, his olive complexion going noticeably red in response to all the touchtouchtouching, and Bucky’s a greedy bastard, so of course, it escalated into more.
Bucky was out of practice, but it didn't seem to matter. By then he'd simply decided that Tony should know. Tony should know that he burns like the sun. That he’s precious and lovely and needs to be protected, and I could do it. I could keep him safe.
Holding Tony close, pressing lips against his skin; it seemed the closest thing to a confession Bucky could give Tony. Kisses on the temple, on the cheek, on the hand, against his fingers, on his shoulder; with every press of his lips against Tony, Bucky apologized for all the scars Tony had had to bear, all the loneliness that lingered in his eyes, all the pain that others had caused until every kiss was a proclamation of I’m here now, you aren’t alone, I’m going to take care of you.
It was all relatively innocent and chaste except for the times when it’s not.
When Tony’s wearing that tank top that looks like it’s painted on, his hair in all directions and a grin so wide that Bucky can’t help it.
His enthusiasm is rewarded because Tony’s lips taste like happiness and surprise, and every tentative press and pull of their bodies against one another just feels so damn good.
Then there was that skintight under-suit Tony wore beneath the armor, soft and pliable, and Bucky liked it best, liked it most until Tony tugged himself free and bare and vulnerable and his and –perfectperfectperfect, all of you, sweetheart – every inch.
And though Bucky had decided since his arrival that he would protect Tony, it was cemented now more than ever that it would be his primary directive.