Characters Tony Stark and Bucky Barnes Fandoms: MCU Summary: AU of Civil War. Tony's tasked with fixing the Winter Soldier and keeping custody of him at the same time.
So it turns out Tony Stark's car was just another vector for the trigger words.
As soon as he heard Friday's voice suddenly echoing around him the Winter Soldier had stomped on the brakes hard enough for them to squeal, the smell of burning rubber filling the sports car and the vehicle fishtailing to a stop with a wheel wedged up on the curb, his hand flashing silver toward toward the door only to find the locks had all remotely engaged with a dull thunk. He loses a second there with the locks; another second trying to punch out the window (reinforced?) before Friday finishes rattling off the rest of the trigger words in quick succession, almost blurring them together faster than he's ever heard them used before so that they slam into his mind, his body, almost like a physical punch. That's the advantage of an AI: Friday doesn't get flustered and its enunciation is flawless.
Friday says stop. He stops.
Friday says stay where you are. He stays where he is.
Conflicting directives war with one another as the Soldier goes rigid in the driver's seat with his hands stiffly locked on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead, barely seeming to blink as he twitches a little, a part of him struggling to fight off compliance as it always does and as always it's a losing battle in the end. Find Baron Zemo; free him; hand over the red book to Zemo because he is (was?) his handler. Stop. Stay where you are. Who's his current handler, Zemo or Friday? Can an AI be a handler?
Stop. Stay where you are.
He shouldn't, he still needs to -
- he doesn't want -
Stark's voice suddenly materializes next to the car. It takes every ounce of effort to even glance over, to flick just his eyes despite the order to stop. Sweat beads against Winter Soldier's clammy forehead. There's a faint, easy-to-miss tremble to his lower lip as he registers that Stark's somehow arrived, he's wisely suited back up, and that maybe he should've slit the man's throat after all and not gotten in his car in the first place. He hears more than sees Stark round the car and slide in, the passenger side dipping underneath the weight of his armored rig, the suspension creaking.
The drive back to Stark's tower is silent. The Winter Soldier can't speak and Stark's uncharacteristically quiet. Maybe he's regretting his earlier soft approach.
It's only when they pull back into the underground parking garage - exact same spot as last time, and there's the darkening red splotch of Tony's blood still drying against the concrete - that Friday speaks up again, the AI's voice filtering softly into the coupe and doing a surprisingly good job imitating the sound of a human's sympathy.
"Sergeant Barnes. Please exit the car and help Mr. Stark if he requires it."
The locks on all sides release with a click.
The new directive releases him from the stop order, the Winter Soldier visibly relaxing with a ragged gasp he doesn't realize he makes. It's the sound of a drowning man suddenly, unexpectedly, resurfacing above choppy waves; freed, his head swings toward Stark to stare at him with a mute, dead-eyed look. Stark's face is tight with pain, his skin paler than it was earlier. He looks like shit. Probably feels like it too. He can't say if he regrets he stabbed him or if he regrets he didn't stab him properly.
Without saying anything the Winter Soldier opens the door on his side and swings his legs out. This time he's the one rounding the car, stretching stiff legs that had been locked in the same position thanks to Friday. When he opens Tony's door, he doesn't lean in to snap his neck like he'd threatened to not even an hour ago.
Instead the Asset offers his left hand, silver palm up.
Silver metal meets red and gold as Tony takes the Solider's hand. He lets the man help him up, but that's about it.
"You don't need to coddle me. I'm already keeping you stuck here, I'm not going to make you butler me, too." Although the words are harsh, Tony's tone isn't. He already feels bad enough (and it's pretty obvious, which is disconcerting on its own-- the Solider brings it out of him, apparently). If he wanted someone to wait on him hand and foot, he could pay someone. Tony doesn't need to brainwash someone into it.
Now that the adrenaline's fading, Tony's really feeling the events of the past few hours. The suit is absolutely the only thing keeping him upright. He starts to stagger back towards the elevator, but then he remembers: right. Not alone. Sheepishly, he turns around to look at the Solider.
"Truce, for real this time? As long as you stay in the tower, you're welcome to do your own thing. But-- I get it, big, scary place, and you can't trust anyone but yourself." Tony usually tries to tamp down on his stims around other people, but he definitely doesn't have the brainpower for that at the moment. The awkward movement of rubbing his knuckles against his chest around the reactor would be mortifying if he even realized he was doing it, but he doesn't. "I'm heading down to my workshop. Feel free to tag along if you want to keep an eye on me, or something. But no pressure." It's not meant as a trap or a trick, it's a genuine offer, and Tony's pretty sure he comes across as sincere, for whatever that means to the Soldier.
(Tony let Clint lurk in his vents for a reason, okay? If keeping an eye on all of them helped soothe him, then by all means. Same with Natasha, but he honestly had no fucking clue how she did it, even to this day.)
The Soldier probably could (and would) slip the Tower's security, but surely not so soon after what just happened. Tony genuinely felt bad that FRIDAY had leverage over the Soldier and had shown she wasn't afraid to use it, but trust was going to be slow going anyway. Maybe it would never happen at all, but Tony at least hoped the Soldier would eventually get the idea that he had the guy's best interests in mind.
"Is it too much to ask DUM-E to get the first aid kit and not break something in the process, babygirl?" It's a lot easier to pretend that business is as usual than to feel it, but Tony's been in front of the press his whole life, he's well practiced in acting. The fact his hands are still shaking is a secret the Iron Man suit has always been good at keeping.
"Most likely. But I'm sure he'll do his best, boss."
It isn't a truce and it definitely isn't peace. At most it's a temporary ceasefire. Problem is, Friday reinforces the ceasefire just by existing, by being there entrenched inside a skyscraper and networked to the underground parking lot like a spider casting its electronic web, a silent, oppressive presence hanging in the air that the Winter Soldier's conscious of at all times. As far as he knows he can't escape. At least, not before the AI traps him - maybe not in a car like last time, but in an elevator, an emergency stairwell, a ventilation shaft, the bathroom - and Friday could easily shotgun the trigger words to "encourage" him back to compliance before he could make it outside to fresh air. To the blue sky.
Tony's right that he might not join him immediately in the workshop.
The Winter Soldier prowls about the skyscraper for hours looking for an escape, restless in the absence of an additional order to update Friday's deliberately vague one to "help Mr. Stark". He's constantly checking for weaknesses in the security systems. Hyperaware there's always an AI watching him that doesn't need to eat and sleep as he does, that it's primed to enforce his obedience with a speed and efficiency that HYDRA wishes it could've emulated. It's well past midnight that the Asset finally makes his way to Tony's workshop. He's...tired. Hungry; thirsty - he doesn't know when he last ate or drank - and so far he hasn't figured out a way to sneak past Friday just by manually scoping out the building. Friday hasn't said anything since the incident in the sports car. It doesn't need to speak, because it already said enough. Because in all likelihood, it's still there, watching. Waiting.
At this point the Winter Soldier's exhausted his immediate options. So he rides the elevator down and down and down, trying and failing to ignore the obsidian glint of Friday's camera lens in the corner until the doors open with a faint ding.
At 3:31 AM the door to Tony's New York workshop slides open, the Soldier entering with his shoulders hunched forward, his face still mottled with bruises from when Tony shot him out of the sky not too long ago. Even those are already starting to fade thanks to the serum's advanced healing, the black eye's swelling reduced. Physically he's probably doing better than Tony, stepping inside the workshop without limping, without favoring a leg that just got introduced to the business end of a scalpel. Outwardly the Asset looks like he's fine.
But the Soldier needs to eat and drink. There's just no getting around his accelerated metabolism and he tells himself that if Stark's serious about keeping him prisoner "welcome to do his own thing", that probably entails keeping him fed and hydrated.
He finds Stark at a worktable, sitting on a tall bench, and glancing at the other man, he can see he's attempted to treat the stab wound on his thigh. There's a hint of bandages winding around his leg that deforms the fit of his pants, a quarter-sized dark splotch where blood has seeped into the denim.
"You're bleeding again," the Winter Soldier suddenly says. He's standing only a few meters away from Tony, blue eyes flat, his face seemingly blank as usual even though his hands are balled at his side and his jaw's tensed like he's clenching his back teeth.
Getting sucked up in work is the thing Tony is best at, and it's exactly what he does. The fact that it's been hours doesn't even consciously register beyond the increasing number of coffee mugs in the corner, and various aches and pains that snap him from his focus upping in frequency.
It's not unusual for him to be so absorbed he doesn't notice people entering his space, especially with his usual tendency of blasting music at full volume, but what he does usually notice is FRIDAY warning him. So when the Solider's voice is suddenly right fucking behind him, Tony makes a very undignified yelp and jumps, like, five feet in the air. (Not actually, but he startles rather spectacularly.) It's his gut reaction to make some kind of quip, no wonder you were a renowned assassin, or, fuck, we should get you a bell, but it dies on his tongue. Mostly because of the sharp jab of pain that runs through him, but Tony also needs to try and be more conscious than ever over his actions and their consequences. "Hey there, tall, dark and handsome. Didn't see you there," is what he lands on, which. Yeah. Probably the best Tony's gonna get in terms of censoring himself.
Between the pain that jostling his leg brings up, and checking around for the time, it takes a moment for the Soldier's words to sink in. He looks down, and, yeah, sure enough, "oh. I guess I am." It's easy to wave it off, though, because, "I've had worse. It'll be fine."
There's an awkward silence, thick with unease. If asked how he knew, Tony wouldn't be able to pinpoint it, but the Solider's giving off this tense and uncomfortable vibe. It might be more intuitive leap than any actual social cue, but whatever. Safe assumption. But it's fine. Tony can talk enough for two people.
"Welcome to my humble abode, Sarge!" He does a miniature sweeping hand motion, showing off the room at large. It's kind of a joke, because the place is far from humble, but most definitely screams Tony Stark. Disorganized chaos? Check. Projects and papers and scrap metal and wiring galore on every available surface? Also check. A surprising amount of Iron Man merchandise or memorabilia interspersed with nerdy decor or things so hilariously bad or cheesy that it can only be ironic? Yep. The couch more comfortable than it has any right to be, shoved in the first available corner and covered in pillows and blankets because Tony sleeps down here more often than he doesn't? Mmmmhm. There's also the kitchenette, but it's mostly used for coffees and smoothies than any actual cooking. Tony keeps it stocked like every other fridge in the Tower, but he usually only bothers with takeout.
Also, yes, the time away has made his decision firmly clear: business is as usual, water under the bridge. Tony doesn't really see any point in scuttling around the Soldier like an anxious mouse, seems like a recipe for making the guy more uneasy and on edge. Okay, granted, overly chatty and larger than life probably will also do that, but Tony doesn't exactly have an off switch for that. It also seems like a pretty good way to attempt to put all of his cards on the table, without sitting down and having to talk feelings. What would he even say? Actions speak louder than words.
(Although, it might come off as cockiness, or a taunt-- turning his back to this man, seemingly unafraid that the Solider will lash out because of FRIDAY. That sends unease through Tony, but he hasn't really come up with a way to convince the guy of the contrary. Maybe taking him out on missions? Though putting a gun in the guy's hands seems like an equally intense way of saying, I dare you to try it.)
"What can I do you for?" Instead of bothering (attempting) to stand, he shoves his little swivel chair across the linoleum, sliding smoothly into the kitchenette. "Oh, that reminds me. I should set you up with your own floor. Fri, babygirl, put it on my list?"
"You got it, boss. What orders should I put in?"
"Nothin' too fancy. Steve got overwhelmed when I went all out; Better to let Barnes decide for himself." Tony's been rummaging through cabinets and drawers as he talks. DUM-E moved the protein bars. Again. And the fancy little coffee pods for the ridiculously expensive coffee machine. Thankfully, he finds them, making a small, triumphant noise.
"Feel free to help yourself. If you aren't a coffee or tea kind of guy, there's a ton of shit in the fridge. I've got alcohol around here somewhere, but I don't keep it in the lab anymore." If he says so himself, Tony's getting pretty good at this sobriety thing. Sometimes all that keeps him on the wagon is pure fucking spite, but he does do it.
The protein bar is almost half inhaled when he has the idea to ask, "Fri, when's the last time I ate?"
"Over seventeen hours ago." Oh. She does not sound happy. No wonder he feels like death warmed over. Contrary to popular belief (or unpopular, really, because it's only himself that is so insistent), he cannot survive on caffeine alone.
The possibility of it being almost that long or longer since the Solider has eaten does cross Tony's mind, but it might be an awkward subject to breach. Well. Even if he has had something while he's been doing whatever it is since Tony last saw him, Steve could literally always go for more food, so it's safe to assume the Solider would be the same. Doesn't hurt to offer. Probably.
"You hungry, Sarge? Got a takeout preference?" Now he slides over to the other end of the workshop, ends in a sort of semi intentional traffic collision with one of the bots. Butterfingers beeps happily at Tony, spins in a little circle when he gives her a pet like a dog. She also seems content to be used as a cheek rest, and Tony doesn't say no. "If you're more about home cooked meals, any fridge should have what you need. I can't cook to save my life, so, you don't want me in a kitchen."
He's about to leave it there, but there's this way that the Soldier is looking at him now, has been ever since the Sarge's and the Barnes's, that makes Tony pause. He also remembers earlier, how the guy had said this Steve, like he didn't remember him at all. Tony was under the assumption that referring to him as the person he was before the brainwashing would be more humanizing, but maybe it's the opposite? He'd probably feel pretty damn disconnected from himself, too, if all he'd known for seventy years was being the Solider.
"Actually, is 'Barnes' fine? 'James'? 'Bucky'? That one feels a little personal, but you never know. I figured if we're going to be living together, I should at least ask what you like to be called. I'm definitely not calling you the Asset." A pause, Tony sitting back up, hand to his chin, considering. "Solider?" That might not be any better than the Asset, but it's also not exactly uncommon. Sort of like calling him Sergeant, really.
“It doesn’t matter what you call me,” says the Winter Soldier after a pause, like he’s getting used to Stark making up for his earlier silence in the car. Now the man’s all chatty. “I don’t have a name.”
He knows he must’ve had one at some point. Obviously. Probably just aliases, depending on the mission. But they’ve been rendered irrelevant for who knows how long and he hasn’t worked out if he’s comfortable with being issued “Barnes” or “Bucky” or even “James” as placeholders: all three sound almost familiar but they also feel wrong, too, like trying to reassemble a pistol with parts from different manufacturers. At the idea of a name, the Soldier’s lips press together in a ghost of disapproval, the corner of his mouth splotched purple with a healing bruise.
For a second he looks like he remembered how to frown.
He’s hungry. He’s thirsty. He doesn’t know what his takeout preference is and it shows from the blank look he levels at Tony.
The order to help Stark doesn’t exactly tug at him like a leash collaring around his throat and brain, like it usually does - probably because it was fairly open-ended, because Friday is his primary handler and the AI hasn’t seen fit to issue new, more specific orders. But there’s still a vague urge to assist Tony Stark in some capacity, the Asset’s blue eyes dipping once more down to fix on Stark’s injured thigh and his clumsy attempt at first aid. The man’s pretty mobile, all things considered, scooting around his cluttered workshop on his wheeled stool, but when he wheels himself back, the blood stain’s only grown.
Glancing around the workshop, for a second the Winter Soldier feels…something. Alarm, maybe? The workshop’s positively covered in trip hazards between random junk and wires strung along the floor and seemingly every surface, ranging from finger-thin to cords the size of his calf, humming and pulsing, and that isn’t going into the fact that there’s all kinds of hard edges between the tables and the crates and the half-built shapes of armor and gear the man started work on, clearly got bored or distracted, and moved onto something else more interesting. If Stark happens to get woozy there’s a high chance he’ll brain himself on any and all of it. For a second the Soldier’s gaze lingers on the fridge, his stomach deciding to grumble and twist in on itself as if he needs the reminder that he must eat before his combat readiness is impacted.
Stamping it down, the Winter Soldier’s head swivels back toward Tony to pin him down with a flat stare. He can’t let the other man keep bleeding like this, so:
“Take off your pants,” he says without warning. “Or I’ll cut them off.”
He doesn’t immediately advance on Tony with a knife or whatever sharp object he decided will work just as well. But he does stalk over to the wall, toward the white plastic box of the first aid kit with a red cross splashed against its front like a target sign. Cracking it open, a quick glance tells the Asset that the kit should be fine for his purposes. Tucking it under his arm, he approaches Stark, reaching out with one hand to steady him with a firm grip on his knee so he can’t roll away from him and pretend he’s “fine” when he clearly isn't. Metal fingers - the same cold chrome that had wrapped themselves around his throat hours ago - clench around his kneecap.
Instead of looming over Tony, the Soldier crouches down with deliberate care so that they're almost eye-level. "The dressing," he finally decides to elaborate. "It needs to be fixed."
Okay. Guess they'll put a pin in the name topic. "Hey, no sweat. We'll figure something out. Sometimes it takes time to find the name that feels like it--" Tony circles a hand over his whole person, stalling to find the right words. "Covers all the bases," is what he settles on, and, yeah, basically.
(If anyone would know, it's Tony. He hadn't always been Anthony Edward Stark, after all. Now that Tony thinks about it, he and Soldier might have more in common than anticipated. At least in the figuring out who you really are, muddled by a lifetime of people telling you who you should be, area, anyway.)
Abundance of choice could be (and in Soldier's case, it definitely seemed like it was) overwhelming. Probably double the overwhelm when all you've known was a life where that wasn't an option. Baby steps. Tony has FRIDAY order Chinese (Tony Stark's billionaire priorities: knowing places that served takeout, let alone were open, at ridiculous hours of the morning), and he gets a little bit of everything, along with his usual. Soldier could try things and see what he liked.
Another silence fell, still awkward (but maybe less so?). Tony honestly thought that was it, started half checking out as he focused back in on work, but then--
Take off your pants. Or I'll cut them off.
The long day has worn down his defenses. Like an icy grip on his brain stem, Tony's suddenly stuck, and he only has one way to go: backwards. He's heard those words before (or some variation of) many times before, and it's like he's there all over again. Coherent thought slips through Tony's fingers like sand in an hourglass. If he could, he'd flinch at the way Soldier is advancing on him, like he's not going to take no for an answer.
They never take no for an answer--
But then Soldier is kneeling at Tony's feet, and for all his blankness, he looks oddly soft. Or maybe Tony's just projecting again. Whatever. It's such a deviation from the script of Tony's past experiences that it snaps him out of it, like a bucket of cold water was dumped on his head. The breath he sucks in is shaky, but at least he isn't hyperventilating or anything.
His leg. Right. Okay. Tony can do that.
"Um, yeah-- yeah, I guess. If you, uh, insist."
It isn't until his stiff fingers have started to undo his belt in a daze that another pretty crucial thing comes to Tony. This one is still nerve wracking, but at least not PTSD inducing.
By nature of being as famous as Tony is, he hasn't had to come out since he first did so. It's at least one thing he appreciates about being in the spotlight. Bigots will be bigots and people will be rude or well meaning but inappropriate, but every transgender person has to go through that. Any cons are far outweighed by the positives, in his case. It's relieving and refreshing when everyone is on the same page.
But Soldier... probably isn't on the same page. In and out of ice for seventy years doesn't leave a lot of time to, well, be with the times. Plus, Tony finds it hard to believe the group of uber fascists would be eagerly introducing their asset to the idea of queer people. If they did at all, it definitely wasn't positive. And who knows how much information Soldier has to work on, prior to all that! Not that Tony cares what other people think, but he'd really like to not go through another near death experience today, thanks.
(No wonder Soldier didn't recognize him. Tony hadn't started to transition properly until after his parents died. If Hydra had given him information on the Stark's next of kin, it would've been about a daughter, not a son.)
This probably wouldn't even be an issue if he hadn't taken out his packer, but, like, sue him, okay? He wasn't exactly expecting to do anything but hide away in the workshop, and he definitely wasn't expecting to take his pants off in front of someone else and have said person get in direct sight line with his crotch.
Tony wasn't going to say a damn thing, and, who knows-- maybe Soldier would be too occupied with Tony's shitty first aid to notice. (Yeah, asking a sniper not to notice something? Pigs are more likely to fly. Hell, it's not like a layer of denim does much for him-- maybe Soldier already noticed.) Tony didn't even think about it (clearly) before now, but showing off the arc reactor also meant showing Soldier his top scars.
Well, whatever. It would come out eventually. Especially with all the time they were theoretically going to be spending together.
Pop the button, undo the fly, remember he probably has to take his sneakers off first, then shimmy the denim down his legs. The only thing more mortifying would be wearing boxers with Iron Man on them, so thankfully Tony isn't. Not today, at least.
"There's a joke in here somewhere about taking me out to dinner first," he mumbles, more to himself than his audience. Tony suppresses a wince when he has to open his knees to give Soldier more leverage. His only saving grace is that Soldier definitely isn't the nosy type, nor the type to ask questions. Maybe they could ignore the, like, twenty seven different elephants in the room with their combined ability of avoidance.
When the Winter Soldier kneels down, he gets the first hint that something’s different with Tony Stark. He hadn’t clocked it at first, because there had been the trigger words, the book, the impact of the scalpel slicing into the man’s thigh as more immediate concerns to occupy himself with.
Now that he’s crouched in front of him watching silently as Stark hesitates, as his whole body seems to stiffen and lock up in place and he has to visibly make an effort to force it to relax, he’s starting to see…inconsistencies. For example, he thinks there should be more of a bulge in the crotch of his jeans: there isn’t. When Tony awkwardly wriggles his way out of his pants, his face tight and jaw set as the motion aggravates his recent injury, the Asset’s eyes dip back down to fix on his now visible underwear. Again, what should be there seems to be missing. Vague confusion flits across his face and in his tired blue eyes, his head tilting.
For a second he might even puzzle it over.
Then he decides that it’s irrelevant to treating the stab wound. Ultimately nothing’s changed: Friday’s order was help Mr. Stark and fixing his sloppy attempt at a dressing seems like a start.
The Winter Soldier settles himself between Stark’s spread knees as he opens the first aid kit. It mostly looks normal. There’s a sterile wash, butterfly closure stripes, bandages and gauze and medical tape, among other things. He holds up a little plastic package with an SI logo on the side, squishing it experimentally between metal forefinger and thumb: Stark Industries - Topical Anesthetic is printed on the other side of the square. Probably a cream or gel. Setting it aside, he begins to peel off the bandages crudely wrapped around Stark’s thigh.
Fresh blood wells out, dribbling in red trails along Stark’s thigh. He grunts “don’t move” and then his head bends down as he studies the weeping injury for a second, his left hand coming up unconsciously to tuck back hair that’s started to fall into his face behind his ear.
Considering he’d stabbed Tony, nearly strangled him and held him hostage all in the span of one day, the Winter Soldier can be surprisingly gentle when he needs to be. Sure, his bedside manner is nonexistent, but when he begins to flush the wound and uses two titanium fingers to smear anesthetic gel around the injury, his touch is soft. He’ll wait until the gel dries and absorbs into Stark’s skin before he begins applying the butterfly closures, followed by two pads of fresh gauze that he presses firmly into place with a self-adhesive wrap securely wound several times around the other man’s leg.
Finally the Winter Soldier leans back, still kneeling in front of Tony.
“Does it still hurt?”
It shouldn’t, he thinks, if the gel actually works. The Asset’s eyes lift to lock onto Stark’s face to search for signs of pain in his mouth and behind his eyes. Stark still looks like shit if you ask for his assessment but at least he isn’t running around with a subpar dressing anymore.
The longer time passes with nothing being said-- both literally and in the sense that Soldier doesn't say something like, "hey, bro, where's your dick?" (which, for the record, is absolutely not how he'd phrase it in any known universe, but it's a funny mental image nonetheless)-- Tony relaxes. Or, well, relaxes might be a stretch, but he definitely calms down.
For an assassin, Soldier is shockingly good at this. He's meticulous, precise, and efficient, for starters, but by no means rushed or harsh or anything like that. It's funny: in a way, Soldier's poor bedside manner works in his favor here. Tony's never liked hospitals or doctors, and he's never been comforted by idle chatter and small talk, or any of the other strategies doctors and nurses pull out. The cheer always felt too fake or too patronizing (or both), and he'd always get lectures. Being a genius aside, Tony lives in his own body. He's well aware of the consequences of his shitty self care habits, thank you very much.
What really gets Tony is that Soldier is being so gentle. That, in and of itself, is almost scarier than if Soldier had just been rough about it, or just tried to kill him again. Maybe more so, actually, because Tony's touch-starved skin blooming with happy and overwhelmed warmth, seeking out moremoremore like a sunflower tilting towards the sun is, uh, not ideal. To say the least.
(When was the last time Tony had been handled with care? Excluding Pepper and Rhodey, every moment of contact in recent memory has been of violence, and through a metal suit. And besides, it's not like he sees either of them as often as any of them would like.)
In an attempt to distract himself, Tony focuses in on the metal arm. It's surprisingly dexterous. Soldier uses it like he would a second flesh and blood one, an obvious familiarity with it, but also it really does seem that technologically impressive. The how of Hydra having tech this good, seventy odd years ago, will always bug Tony-- ever the curious, ever the engineer-- but even the best prosthesis is still that: a prosthesis. Does it cause him pain? Are there any problems, areas to improve? Does Soldier do his own upkeep? All that swirls around and around in Tony's overactive mind.
(How much pain would it have to cause Soldier before anyone knew? It's a nauseating thought.)
Just when Tony thinks he'll escape this situation unscathed or with his dignity even somewhat intact, Soldier-- he tucks a lock of his long hair behind his ear, unthinking, another gesture laced with so much familiarity he must do it countless upon countless times. It reminds Tony that he'd thought the guy was beautiful earlier, and that certainly hasn't changed. Even looking worse for the wear (but surely better than how Tony himself is fairing), his hair still tangled and hectic, wearing the same clothes he's been wearing for God knows how long, ragged and tired, Soldier continues to be so. He, by all accounts, shouldn't, and Tony shouldn't even be thinking it, but like the reactor keeping the shrapnel from his heart, Tony feels the pull like a magnet, dragging everything to the surface. He's just glad he has the self restraint to do something like, say, reaching out to touch, finger combing to try and work out the knots and tangles.
Swallowing thickly, like that'll shove everything down, Tony finally feels like he can take a breath when Soldier finishes, and moves away.
"No, it-- uh. It's better. Thanks." The jangling of his belt feels loud as he shimmies back into his jeans. Soldier watching makes Tony's cheeks flush. Maybe it's because they didn't actually do anything sexual at all that makes it more raw and vulnerable and thus, more embarrassing.
"I went ahead and ordered some food for us. Do you--" wait, actually, before that, Tony checks his watch-- and, yeah, FRIDAY's already running a timer for how long they have until it gets here. They'll be just fine. "Do you want me to take you to your floor? I don't know about you, but a shower always helps me feel better after a shitty day."
To anyone else, it would have sounded more like a tease or a jab, a subtle but entirely unstable you smell. But Tony's being entirely truthful, that really is what helps sometimes when nothing else does. Plus, Soldier just looks disheveled, it's not like he was wading through a dumpster or anything. Maybe Tony can introduce him to the wonders of conditioner.
"Figured you might want your own space where people won't bother you. But if it's too much-- we'll figure something out." (He knows he can go overboard with the gift giving. It's just what he does. A love language, even.)
The awkward my leg is injured waddle to the elevator that he does will definitely be funny in the future, but, unfortunately, it's not the future yet. At least it doesn't hurt anymore.
None of those words belong. Obviously he knows that assets can’t actually possess things, that the weapons and kit they’re given are just borrowed inventory. The facilities where he’s been kept, the food and water he’s been allowed, the maintenance on his prosthesis; HYDRA only temporarily gives all of those things in order to complete the mission. That’s all. So when Stark says he can have his own space, the Winter Soldier stares at him without comprehending and he has to remind himself that Stark doesn’t know better. It shouldn’t be a surprise, given he’d freed him earlier and got a scalpel to the leg as his reward.
“I’ll shower,” he grunts.
It feels out of place, the way that Stark not only keeps trying to insist he can own things, that he wants to give him these things. How he keeps asking for permission when he doesn’t need to. Things are requests and suggestions with the man, not orders. The Asset will wonder quietly about that as Stark leads him to the elevator and they step inside, the silence falling between them like a living, breathing thing. At least he can get himself cleaned up and reevaluate this floor he’s “given”, check out the accommodations, and it sounds like Stark actually intends to feed him after, even though it would’ve made more sense to start reduced rations as punishment for stabbing him.
Stark doesn’t make sense. He’d risked his life only a few hours ago just to drive in the lesson that there’s no escape, and yet he’d turned around to offer luxury after luxury. He’d tried to - poorly - bandage his own leg even though it would’ve made more sense to get outside help for it, almost like he didn’t want to inconvenience anyone even though he’s clearly rich enough to afford plenty of staff. Guilt ebbs off him in clouds. For some reason he keeps apologizing. On trying to personalize an asset by insisting on names, as if he can’t imagine someone without…even though he controls Friday and Friday controls the Winter Soldier.
He’s…unpredictable.
Maybe Tony Stark’s more of a threat to HYDRA than his parents had ever been.
The Soldier mulls that over by the time the elevator dings and they step out onto “his” floor, Stark limping a bit while he leads the way and favors his injured leg. Cardboard moving boxes still line the hall and past the door where, according to Stark, is the living room, there’s a bedroom and an office and a kitchen, this single floor larger than any of the HYDRA barracks he’s seen. No aging concrete stretching from floor to ceiling to radiate the cold so that it seems to seep everywhere.
The Asset’s silent, outwardly unimpressed even though his eyes are flicking everywhere (his version of rubbernecking), until Stark shows him the bathroom. It’s all modern angles. Stone tastefully arranged in places. Stainless steel without rust on the metal fixtures; no signs of mold or rot on the tile. The shower itself is an entire room in itself with glass partitions, looking so new that there’s no water stains or cracks or scum from years of soap. It’s fully tricked out with detachable shower heads, an overhead spray set into the ceiling, even a seat if you want to sit underneath a miniature waterfall and just relax under the warm cascade that can issue from a slit in the stone wall.
Something’s missing. Enough that the Soldier finally breaks the silence, speaking up as he stands there staring at the nicest shower most people will ever see in their lifetimes.
There were a few things Tony expected Soldier to say, and it wasn't that. It's so jarring that it throws him for a loop, brain buffering like it's on a shitty WiFi signal. An answer starts to come out of his mouth before he fully comprehends why Soldier would be asking that.
"Like a, a decontamination shower? Uh, There's one in any lab in the building? The usual Avengers entrances, too." It's saved them more times than any of them would probably like to admit-- weird alien substances or just the plain ol' mysterious deadly goop is incredibly common in the superhero business.
But that can't be where Soldier is going with this. Even though he hasn't figured it out yet, Tony has that sinking feeling in his gut again that is becoming rapidly familiar. Like his body just knows this is another thing that has to do with shitty Hydra captors and it's preparing for the onslaught of horror and disgust that usually follows in its wake.
"Not much of a use for that in a home bathroom," he says, lightly, and then that's when it hits him like a freight train. Hydra referred to the Winter Soldier as the Asset. Soldier was an assassin, but it was more like he was the gun, and Hydra was the one pulling the trigger. They shoved the guy in cryo whenever they weren't using him, like they were putting him in storage. Of course he probably didn't get to do anything like a person, let alone bathe like one.
(What'd Hydra even do, hose him down like a dog? Though, maybe that was even being too generous, since at least dogs these days went to groomers where there was shampoo and conditioner and haircuts and pampering.)
Tony remembers a time, back when it was just Iron Man, where he'd been hit with this corrosive fluid. The suit had taken the brunt of it, but SHIELD was paranoid, so they'd shoved him into a decontamination room at their facility. Tony had been stark (hah) naked as the day he was born, surrounded by a bunch of guys in hazmat suits. Transgender-ness aside (which SHIELD had known about anyway, the world knows about anyway, so whatever), it was a skin crawling experience, and he'd only done it the once before he installed his own so he'd never have to do that again. Tony can't imagine doing that for seventy fucking years!
Shoving down the horror and outage (and bile) was hard, but Tony managed. He definitely felt it bleed into the smile he flashed Soldier with, yet continued on anyway. "Here, c'mon, I'll show you how it works." While he was at it, he also pointed to the various bottles and things on the shower shelf so Soldier knew what he was working with.
"I don't know if you were thinking about a haircut," Tony starts, as he rifles through the different plastic bottles. He's putting all the ones applicable for Soldier on the top of the shelf, everything else going on the bottom-- mostly just different products meant for hair types the guy doesn't have. "But if not, there's some great stuff in here." Tony squints at the back of a bottle for something he's pretty sure he saw Natasha using once (and thus had JARVIS, at the time, order in bulk), shrugs, and puts it on the top.
"Long hair is the worst when it's all limp and oily," he mumbles. It's said like someone speaking from experience, and well... it is. It was a lifetime ago that his hair was that long, but Tony could never forget what it was like.
"I think we keep razors in the--" He turns around and goes over to the sinks, or, more specifically, the medicine cabinet next to the mirror on the wall over the sinks. "Yeah, here. Not that the scruffy look isn't working for ya', but not everyone enjoys having stubble." Tony shrugs. Calloused fingers smooth over his own meticulously kept goatee, another unconscious movement.
"'Kay, uh. I'll get out of your hair. Any questions? Oh, and towels are over here."
It’s sinking in that not only are the usual hoses missing, he doesn’t see signs of restraints. At all. No handcuffs? No collar to chain him to the floor so he can’t make a run at the guards? These are just basic security precautions and yet glancing around as Stark speaks and rambles on his tour of the unconventional shower, cold blue eyes roaming, the Asset feels something…off, tightening along his throat like the missing collar would under standard operating procedures. Is…is Stark saying he’s supposed to shower by himself? With his hands free?
He’s barely able to listen at that point, rushing blood rising to pulse in his skull like he’s been punched by another Winter Soldier.
The Asset’s teeth grit. “No questions.”
The idea of a free shower is already too much. The suggestion he could choose to shave, to chop off the curtain of tangled hair HYDRA didn’t consider worthwhile to address (and therefore he didn’t consider it either), is pushing it too far. The Soldier doesn’t wait for Tony to scuttle out of the oversized shower before he’s already shedding his clothes with zero self-consciousness. That’s the only thing that’s followed SOP so far, because after that’s when the restraints are supposed to click shut against his skin. The only sound he hears, though, is Stark beating a quick retreat with a curse under his breath, the man practically running out. The door slams shut behind him.
It’s his first shower alone like this and if it wasn’t for Stark giving him the rundown, he wouldn’t have known where to start. Usually the Soldier just stands there while they spray him with icy water laced with sanitizing compounds. If he’s exhausted or hurt, he’d get knocked to the floor and they’ll spray him down where he lies. But today there’s no cleaning crew, no guards to bark orders, and for a second the Asset stares at the daunting rows of bottles, unaware he’s feeling a rising sense of panic.
In the end he picks one and only one - the first bottle in the row that says “body wash”. Since there’s no hose, he has to work in the body wash with his own hands, rubbing the gel clumsily through his tangled hair and along his body; he can’t stop glancing over at the walls for the missing guards.
By the time the Soldier emerges from the shower, it’s been long enough that he’s either a) died in there or b) purposefully running up the water bill out of spite. While he’s at least dressed in a loose t-shirt and shorts instead of going commando, he’s currently dripping a trail along the tile as he pads out into the living room. Stark’s sitting on the sectional couch, head bent as he reads something on a semi-transparent tablet in his hands.
The Soldier drips to a stop in front of Stark’s legs. A puddle of soapy water forms, dangerously close to soaking the man’s designer shoes if he doesn't get them out of the way fast enough.
“I’m clean,” he says. “...You said there was food?”
Soldier dripping all over the place is... better than Tony had expected, actually. After dropping trou with him still in the fucking room, no shame whatsoever, Tony had been mentally preparing himself for the possibility that their new resident would walk out of the bathroom ass naked. Or in just a towel, which would at least be decent, but not by much. So a loose shirt and shorts combo (like Pepper used to wear to bed or after her showers, wait no, don't think about that--) is... yeah. Manageable. They can work up to the concept of drying off with a towel.
"Yup," Tony exaggeratedly pops the p sound. Soldier took long enough in the shower that it gave the delivery time to arrive. He'd arranged all of it out on the coffee table ahead of time. Tossing one of the couch's cushions on the floor in front of the table, Tony gets himself comfortable. "Open stuff and have at whatever looks good. I know you super soldiers need a lot of calories to keep up with your metabolisms, so, eat up! There's plenty."
He hadn't bothered with plates, Tony has always been a eat it straight from the carton guy, but he did grab Soldier a fork. Just in case, right? Who is he to assume that dexterous assassins know how to use chopsticks? Tony hands a pair of chopsticks and the fork over, then breaks open his own. Then, without further ado, he eats.
If there's one benefit to sharing a meal with Tony Stark-- a real, proper meal, not any of those stuffy charity or gala dinners-- it's that he doesn't give it any time to be awkward. There's no attempt at clumsy small talk, no prolonged eye contact-- none of that. He just turns back to his phone, resting screen up on the wood, and talks science and engineering jumbo with FRIDAY like he would in the workshop.
"Pull up a hologram for me, would you, babygirl? Thank you." Tony twirls it this way and that with the back of his chopsticks in between bites.
It's not a disrespect thing. Tony's brain is just constantly running at one hundred miles per hour, he needs to get it out, have something to do with his hands, all of that. Logically, he understands the point, socially, of things like small talk, but it doesn't appeal to him and why bother, when you can get straight to the point? The eye contact thing is similar-- it doesn't come naturally to him, and staring someone in the eye for too long makes him all squirrelly and uncomfortable. He's also, frankly, just bad at it. When do you look? When do you look away? Where is the balance of the two? There's no concrete formula to spell it all out. Taking stabs in the dark and always doing it wrong is beyond frustrating. So, whatever. Being branded as a flighty mess and shocking people when he's actually listening is better than a reputation for staring people down unwaveringly and creeping them out until they're the ones not listening. Okay, that approach still has its uses, but still.
All this is to say, Tony thinks he and Soldier will get along well in this area. Maybe it would be better if Tony could shut up for more than two seconds at a time, but that's just an unfortunate given with him.
"I know the answer to this is probably a resounding no," he starts, suddenly, and this is actually aimed at Soldier, "but I'd be a jerk if I didn't at least offer: if there's anything about that arm that's bothering you, I can fix it up for you." It doesn't really need saying which arm he means, but he gestures at the metal one with his chopsticks anyway. "If you know anything about maintenance or upkeep, I can give you some tools for the smaller stuff."
After a moment to gauge where he’s supposed to sit (and maybe flicking a glance to cheat and see what Stark’s doing), the Soldier lowers - or, more accurately, he squelches - his dripping body down onto the floor so that he’s close to the coffee table straining underneath what seems like too much food for two men. Well, maybe it would be too much food for two average men. But there’s Stark, with too much intelligence and not enough common sense, and there’s a super soldier with the accelerated metabolism to match, and even from here he’s getting a little dizzy with the olfactory assault wafting up from the takeout containers spread between them.
His mouth’s feeling thick with saliva all of a sudden. HYDRA never gave him this much food and what was there, it definitely didn’t smell like this.
At least he vaguely remembers to cross his legs so he doesn’t risk kicking Stark underneath the coffee table. Friday’s last order had been to assist the man: kicking him in his crotch or his just-bandaged thigh seems counterproductive to those orders.
Stark tells him to dig in, like he knows what he’s looking at. The Asset can’t place the scents or the scrawl in black permanent marker on the containers, so he just does what he did in the shower: he picks the closest one. They eat in silence, which is surprising in that he would’ve expected Stark to run his mouth off like he usually does. But he doesn’t, splitting his attention between food and his phone, and the quiet is almost…the Winter Soldier wouldn’t say it’s a relief but he can focus on prodding the food with his chopsticks, on how it’s all kinds of different colors and textures and smells. He doesn’t speak until he’s spoken to. When he is, the Asset glances up, his mouth full of some kind of marinated meat and flat noodle slippery with grease and if he first finishes chewing and swallowing, it’s not out of politeness but because it’s just hard to speak clearly with his mouth occupied.
“There’s a limited amount of maintenance I can do on it,” the Soldier, which is true. He wasn’t supposed to fuss with it, was supposed to sit there and stare straight ahead or at the floor while techs handled all that busy work. “It’s not malfunctioning yet.”
The Winter Soldier lets slip that “yet” without thinking about it. The food’s a more pressing distraction than if the cybernetic prosthetic starts acting up again, which it will because it eventually always does, and by now he’s already demolished his way through several takeout containers. Pulling another toward him, he peeks inside, and he’ll dig in without thinking to offer Tony some before he polishes that off too.
It does seem like Soldier is more than a little out of his depth, but he's eating the food and doesn't seem too disgruntled or anything, so Tony will count it as a win. Hopefully they can work up to finding out what the guy likes eventually, but for now, this works.
As Soldier relays information about the arm like it's a mission report, Tony chews, considers, listens.
And, okay, look. He knows he should be more delicate about this, but he can't help himself, alright? Pushing buttons until someone breaks is what he's done his whole life, and all things engineering have been his special interest since he was, like, four. Combine the two? Yeah. Also, seriously, the Iron Man suit has how many Marks now? Tony couldn't stop improving things even if he had a gun to his head.
"But, okay, see-- it very might well be malfunctioning. Hydra's definition of malfunctioning could be a whole lot different than mine. I can see that it works, yeah, but is it optimal? Efficient? Is every intended function behaving as expected? Pretty important of a prosthesis: is it causing you pain? Because it shouldn't. Whether they wanted it to hurt, or it's a side effect of old tech and people less competent than I am, I don't know, but, still. If it's hurting or bothering you, it doesn't have to be.
"Things are different now. I want to give you an arm that's yours, not Hydra's."
To avoid eye contact, Tony looks down at his chopsticks and swirls them around in the almost empty container he's holding. If they're on the subject of things Tony could build for Soldier... It might as well be a good time to bring this up, no?
"And... I've been thinking. There's no way you can trust me or anyone until the trigger words are gone, yeah? But relying on what other people do and don't know is inefficient and cumbersome and it doesn't leave the power in your hands. If Hydra could build something over seventy years ago to program the words into you, I bet I could build something to take them out. If they don't work on you anymore, it doesn't matter who does and doesn't know them, right?" He shrugs one shoulder in a motion that could be described as bashful. "You should have the power to decide what you want to do with your life. I got my second chance, and you deserve one, too. What happened to you isn't even your fault, so it's a little bogus that it would be seen as a second chance, but... Can't be picky about public perception. I should know."
In truth, Tony probably won't ever forgive those responsible for what happened to his mom, and, hell, his dad, too, but it wasn't Soldier's fault. The very human part of him will probably always be bitter and hold Soldier with some blame and all those things, but as a whole, he's just another man out of time who had his autonomy taken from him. Maybe it's Steve that makes him want to do right by this man, maybe it's something else, but he does want to do right by Soldier. Fixing him up, right as rain, and giving him a place to stay, that's just what Tony does already. So what's one more person for his brood?
"But I understand that something like that requires a lot of trust-- no offense taken if you just want me to fuck off and leave you be. Just, ah, you know, something to think about."
It’s one thing to know about the triggers (some of them, at least, because there must be others he isn’t aware of). But to entertain the idea of removing them? It’s enough to freeze the Soldier in place, his spine locked vertebra by vertebra, his hand gripping the chopsticks tight enough that minute cracks begin to spiderweb across their surface, breath hitching as he stares down the partially-eaten container of takeout and remembers how to frown. For a second his vision tunnels with static. He won’t - can’t? - sabotage HYDRA like that, even if Stark’s almost like an indirect handler by proxy of Friday’s final order. No matter how convinced Stark sounds, the cold hard fact is assets don’t have that kind of power.
Assets don’t deserve anything.
The Winter Soldier sits there for a moment, unsure if it’s just his training kicking in or if it’s some safeguard implanted in his skull somewhere asserting itself. The next second those traitorous thoughts begin to slide away, fragmenting; the takeout box in front of him blurs until it snaps back into focus with a suddenness that throbs against his temples like the aftermath of a punch. Emptiness howls in his head to indicate something’s missing but when he pauses to dredge it back up, there’s just the void and then Stark talking about his prosthesis, Stark playing with his food, Stark talking too much but he always does that, that’s nothing out of the ordinary, so -
Blinking quickly, he gives himself a little shake and it’s like nothing happened; the Soldier goes back to eating and drinking with the same mechanical motions, and when he speaks up again, it’s like he didn’t hear half of what Tony said.
But apparently he’s allowed to think about the cybernetic arm.
“You can upgrade the arm,” he says. “But only if you focus on optimizing it, you work on top of the base frame and I can watch what you’re doing.”
As for whether the arm hurts, well, it is what it is. Maintenance usually has other things to worry about, plenty of other, more pressing repairs scheduled. Although…Stark’s made it clear that he runs things differently and from the glimpse he got down in the workshop, it almost seemed like he was tinkering for…fun? Just because he can? Could explain why he has all this free time to waste his energy thinking about the arm that had choked him just a few hours ago. The idea of not having that constant pulsing pain vibrating from where the prosthetic is socketed into his shoulder is a non-issue, though, and instead the Soldier focuses on something more important, his eyes slipping away from Tony’s face to fix on:
Tony almost doesn't catch it, but the sound of snapping wood and hitched breathing makes him look at Soldier again fully. For a second it's almost like how he was back out in the field that first time, eyes blank and devoid of anything human, and Tony has that fuckfuckfuckfuck is the Winter Soldier going to attack me moment, but then it clears.
If that didn't give away that something was wrong, completely avoiding the topic of removing the trigger words would've.
Kidnapping a guy and turning him into an assassinating object is bad enough, but putting in a failsafe to prevent the triggers from being removed in the event of his rescue? God. It makes logical sense, and that's what's so sickening about it. How anyone can see a person as no more than an object-- an Asset, well, no, Tony can't fathom that.
This certainly complicates things. He'll figure something out, though. He always does.
"Aye, aye, Soldier. I can do that. We'll get you right as rain in no time."
Tony expects the conversation to end there, but then Soldier asks him if he's going to finish what he's eating, presumably with the intent to finish it instead. Sure, the guy is probably just hungry, crazy metabolism and what not, but just the fact that he's asking, and that it's something Tony can provide, it sends butterflies kicking up a storm in his stomach. He doesn't eat much anyway, so Tony easily acquiesces. "Sure, buddy. Knock yourself out."
Soldier digging into the food (his food) makes the butterflies get worse.
Christ, Tony. Get a grip.
He sits around for some minutes longer, but without the excuse of food or showing Soldier around, Tony has no reason to stay. With a sigh, he stands, stretches and pops. "Back to the workshop with me." (He can already sense Friday's disapproval, but readily ignores it.) "Invitation's always open to you, but I can also just let you know when I finish the first blueprint if you don't want to wait around."
Tony doesn't expect an answer, so he doesn't wait around for one. "'Kay, nighty-night. Give me a holler if you need something."
Stark sweeps out - well, more like limps out - and the Soldier's once again left to his own devices, though he'll watch the door until Stark's vanished into the elevator. It's a weird, unsettling feeling, being left to figure out what to do with his time without someone ordering him around. No maintenance. No guards. Obviously there's no need for guards with Friday watching any CCTV feeds but...
Without Stark rambling on and filling the silence with every and any thought running through his head, exhaustion finally hits the Soldier in this heavy weight draping across his shoulders and seeping through bone and muscles. For awhile he still paces a bit more throughout "his" floor as if he wants to keep moving, as if that'll make a difference - but eventually he's already established that it's too much space for one person, he's located all the glints of the CCTV cameras recessed into the ceilings and corners.
He runs out of things to do.
The Soldier wanders back into the bedroom to stare at the king-size bed with its silk sheets, a muscle in his jaw faintly ticking as he grits his teeth: he knows without even lying down to test it out that it's too soft, that he shouldn't fool himself into thinking it's okay to use the bed. After a second he opts for the floor, positioning himself in a corner where he has a good line of sight just in case, and curls on his side in a fetal position with his head pillowed by the unforgiving metal of his left arm. Exhaustion closes in, pressing down like a weight tolerance stress test on his body...
He jolts awake with a grunt, eyes flaring open to dawn's dim light filtering in through the windows. The sky outside swells with the gray underbellies of a storm rolling in from the river; he sees more than hears the lightning skittering across the clouds as he sits up, his neck and body sore, his head feeling a little better now that he's finally snatched a few hours of sleep -
Something beeps from the doorway.
It's one of Stark's drones, the crude looking ones that wheel around with a single manipulator arm and basic prongs. Not sure which one. Stark's named the things but they look the same to the Soldier. The robot spins in a little circle and then waggles its prongs at him, almost like it's beckoning him over. It does it a second and then a third time before he gets up, takes a step toward it and that earns him what sounds an awful lot like a pleased trill as it backs up a few more feet and then waves again.
He's been herded before, but having a robot coming to fetch him is new. As they get into the elevator, the robot tapping the button to Stark's workshop with its prong, he gets the inexplicable feeling it's...happy? A sidelong glance and he can see the arm bobbing up and down slightly, as if moving to some invisible song.
Stark doesn't seem to have left the workshop since last night. He has, however, made it to a couch shoved up against the wall, almost nestled between half-finished projects, one leg sprawling over the edge, the blanket he'd been using half kicked off. Without thinking about it, the Winter Soldier reaches down, picks up the blanket, and then drapes it back over Stark, telling himself he just doesn't want him to trip on it if he suddenly wakes up.
Maybe not so much for any other project on his plate, but for the new arm, it's a very successful night in the Tony Stark workshop. FRIDAY was able to pull together a hologram from various scans she'd done, giving Tony a base to work off of. And from there, well... He just did what he does best.
Regardless of the condition, he knew immediately that whatever internal wiring was in there, had to go. Who knew what Hydra had going on (which, unfortunately, he wouldn't know for sure until he could get a scan in the workshop itself plus take a look inside), and it was seventy years old, to boot! Yeah, no. Tony absolutely could do better. He planned out roughly what he wanted, but it would get refined and adjusted based on the actual state of Soldier's arm.
Design wise, Tony didn't have much to say. Other than the star (which he was hoping he could talk Soldier into removing, but they'd just have to see), the aesthetics were actually quite nice. He'd see what he could do about what was likely annoying gaps in the finger joints and plates, but everything else seemed fine to stay. That seemed to be what Soldier wanted, also-- Tony was given permission to work off of the old one, not make one from scratch (yet?). No, what would probably be the biggest undergoing was the shoulder joint.
He'd read the files, he saw it on scans-- the thing was drilled into Soldier. Without undergoing major surgery, there was nothing Tony could do to remove it, if Soldier would even let him (and that would definitely be a no). Now, one thing Tony could do was dull or completely block any nerves that might be causing chronic pain. The rest of Soldier's pain, Tony assumes, is from shoddy craftsmanship and repair work. Maybe Tony couldn't remove the arm from being drilled into Soldier, but he could definitely build a better connection point. Hell, maybe he could build some kind of shoulder joint housing, so Soldier could remove the rest of the arm for some relief. And, definitely on the list: hopefully he can do something about the skin to metal attachment site, but that was another thing Tony would have to confirm in person.
After finishing everything in one sitting, he'd been bullied onto the couch to finally rest. (As per usual, Tony insisted he wasn't tired, and then promptly fell asleep within seconds.)
Tony could only get a few hours at a time before the nightmares hit, so, even to FRIDAY's displeasure, she always woke him before that point. This time it seemed to be by sending DUM-E to retrieve Soldier.
And, look. He had been a light sleeper before Afghanistan, okay? So of course as soon as Soldier is in his space, fixing his blanket, Tony wakes.
His fear prepares him for violence. Instead, he gets warmth.
There are barely there memories of his mother tucking him into bed when he was really, really young. So young, and so worn by time, that they're more of a whispy, foggy recollection than a clear image. It's painful, that he stopped getting that treatment so long ago, that he can't remember.
(The pain of not being able to clearly remember his mother's face, unless he's reminded by a picture, is a whole different beast.)
But it's not really about the act of being tucked in, it's about the care and consideration of it all. It stirs the same warmth in him as when Pepper would leave him coffee and a kiss on the forehead, back when he was still CEO of SI. It stirs the same warmth in him as when he and Rhodey were at MTI, and Rhodey would carry him to bed after he passed out-- be it at a movie or homework or whatever they were doing. Maybe even more so, because it's the fucking Winter Soldier. In the sleep haze, Tony doesn't even consider that it might all just be some mandatory obligation to him. It's just plain nice.
This will be mortifying later, but Tony's sleep deprived and just waking up, so instead of doing anything sensible, he's entirely too vulnerable for his liking. Which is to say: Tony gives the man a sleepily smile, and then grabs the nearest hand (the metal one, it so happens) that's adjusting the blanket, plonking his face into it.
"Good, you're still here," he mumbles. It says a lot about him that the uncomfortable, unwavering give of the metal is immensely comforting. "W's afraid you left again. Tower's been so quiet lately. Hate it."
(Yeah. Definitely mortifying. This is why he needs caffeine first thing in the morning.)
Tony stays there until Dum-E wheels his way over, a mug gripped in his claw. The little guy is finally getting the hang of the coffee machine-- FRIDAY only warns Tony of motor oil in the coffee once a week now! And since there's no such warning, Tony sits up and emerges from his blanket cocoon enough to start drinking from the mug.
The Winter Soldier doesn’t smile back or flinch when his hand gets suddenly grabbed. To his credit, he also doesn’t retaliate by breaking every major and minor bone in Stark’s hand, although he can’t say for sure if it’s because of Friday’s order or a failing in his reaction time or some other unidentified malfunction cropping up. Instead he’ll freeze in place, shoulders squared in a tense line, the metal plates of his palm cool against Stark’s cheek flushed pink from where it’d been pressed against the pillow wedged along the couch’s armrest. With the exception of last night's bandage redressing, he can’t remember the last time he touched someone, anyone, and it wasn’t for interrogation purposes or the disposal of a target.
He starts to pull free. Stark squeezes - not hard, just a little - and he immediately stops trying to extricate his hand.
…Now what?
Unsure what he should do next with his hand trapped against Stark’s cheek, the Soldier glances around and then finally settles slowly into a crouch, his right hand resting loosely on his thigh. He doesn’t say anything and Stark doesn’t either, the other man’s eyelashes fluttering like he’s tempted to go back to sleep with a titanium hand as a pillow instead of the perfectly good one less than a foot away. Huffing a faint sound under his breath, the Winter Soldier’s about to prepare for the very real possibility that he’ll be stuck here when that robot from before rolls up wafting the scent of freshly brewed coffee from the mug in its manipulator.
He’ll remain crouched even when Stark finally frees his hand to reach for the coffee. The robot warbles, pivots, wheels off…and comes back with a second cup, filled almost to the brim. This time the machine comes to a stop in front of the Soldier. When he doesn’t reach for the mug, the robot beeps, insistently jolts forward, and almost slops hot coffee all over him.
The Winter Soldier’s forced to intercept it before the thing comes at him for a third try. He grips the handle in his right hand, cupping the mug’s bottom with his left. Ignoring the robot's triumphant trill, he turns toward Stark with that flat-eyed blue stare of his, his mouth pressed into that line.
“Why aren’t you sleeping in your bed?” he asks, because it doesn’t occur at all to start with even a polite good morning or how’d you sleep? “It’d be better for your leg.”
Insomnia? Or did the medicated gel wear off and it was too painful for Stark to make it to the elevator? The Soldier continues to stare at Stark, unblinking, searching for signs of pain in the skin around his eyes or if he’s gritting his jaw or maybe he’s holding his himself gingerly, favoring the stab wound in his thigh.
Do all snipers crouch like they're birds perching on a branch? Tony errantly thinks, before his brain snaps back to the present, and Soldier's question. The caffeine also helps to keep him from being (as) scattered, as it slowly absorbs into his system.
(Dawning awareness of what he just did also horrifies Tony, but Soldier isn't talking about it, so he can just pretend it never happened. Yep. Yes.)
With a snort, Tony replies, "dust probably sleeps in my bed more than I do," into his mug. It's not really an answer, though, so Soldier keeps staring at him. The feeling of eyes on him makes Tony squirm, (well, no, not exactly. Tony is good at ignoring people staring at him, it's just that he knows Soldier won't eventually give up that unnerves him), and he cracks pretty quickly. "This time? I worked until I couldn't anymore and it's the nearest soft surface. FRIDAY gets grouchy when I pass out at my workbench."
A shrug, another sip of coffee, then turning the mug around and around in his palms so Tony has something to do with his hands. He speaks about it all so flippantly, like it's no big deal. "Insomnia. Fun perks of C-PTSD: nightmares. I dunno; I spent three months captive in a cave in Afghanistan-- beds haven't really felt the same, since."
Unfortunately, Soldier does have a point: a bed would definitely have been better for the leg. The more awake Tony is, the more he feels it. Plus, every other pain and ache, be it chronic or 'I sleep on a couch, and I'm not as young as I used to be' related. Some neck and shoulder and everywhere rolling results in some pretty sickening cracks, but it's the thigh that Tony ultimately rubs at with a slight grimace.
"I'm gonna need to call my physical therapist, aren't I?" The pinched 'I just swallowed a lemon' face says all it needs to about how he feels about that. "Whatevs. Fri, put it on my to-do for later."
Tony stands (on wobbly legs). "Okie-dokie. That's enough vulnerability for a lifetime, I think. C'mon, hot stuff, lemme show you what I cooked up for that arm of yours. I've got some questions for you."
The workshop has much more expansive hologram technology, so the interactive blueprint Tony pulls up is huge. More than life sized. He pulls it apart into multiple components, so Soldier can see more clearly what Tony plans to do externally and internally.
"It's your arm, so you can veto whatever you'd like. Would you be cool for some more in depth scans? I did the best I could with what I have, but I'd do better if I knew exactly what I was working with. Oh, and how do you feel about the star? Can we buff it out? Leave it blank, put something different there...? It, and the whole," vague hand gestures to the arm's whole shiny chrome, "make this thing kind of... anti inconspicuous. I get the whole point used to be that it wasn't, but I figured you might want differently. You're a pretty lowkey guy, and all."
Stark tells him a little bit more about himself and now the insomnia makes sense. It explains the dark bruises around his eyes, the exhaustion that seeps into the man’s body language even as he chatters away about anything. And just like he suspected, his leg is giving him trouble, confirming what the Winter Soldier’s already guessed: no enhanced healing.
If it wasn’t for the Iron Man suit, he’d be almost painfully easy to kill as soon as he took it off.
…so why does he continue to put it on? It must make him a target and yet…
The Soldier quietly turns that over in his head as he obeys, following Tony’s limping figure deeper into the workshop as they wind their way around half-finished projects, slabs of metal and seemingly endless coils of wire in various sizes that Tony steps over without having to look down. He comes to a stop when Tony does; flick of his hand, an easy twist of his wrist and suddenly the air fills with ghostly images of holo schematics slowly turning in space.
Gazing up at it, his face awash with blue light that seems to erase the exhaustion lines etched in it, the Soldier supposes that looks…surprisingly accurate. He thinks. He knows basic repairs on the arm if it needs to be dealt with in the field, but anything more in-depth has always been left to the mechanics. For awhile he doesn’t say anything, just looks at the image of the cybernetic arm pulled apart while distantly aware that it’s still hanging at his side at the same time, heavy, humming quietly into the socket where it meets his shoulder.
Tony’s questions drag him back. His head tilts down, eyes searching out the other man as he levels a cool, flinty stare at him.
“Scans are fine,” the Asset says after thinking about it. “Make it lighter. All that matters is you increase its efficiency and remove any obsolete tech that could be slowing me down. Leave the star.”
He says it as if it’s his idea and maybe he even believes it because he’s been made to believe it. But that star marks the arm - and by extension, him - as HYDRA’s property and he instinctively balks at the idea of changing it when it’s always been there and always will. Suddenly aware he’s still cupping the coffee, the Winter Soldier lifts it as he gazes at Tony. For a second surprise - maybe even pleasure - flits across his face as he inhales the scent of roasted coffee beans. It smells…fresh. Not the stale stuff they used to have when he was quivering in the chair and there was something wrong with the halo and they were arguing about it over his head, pissed they had to work late into the night.
It’s his first cup of coffee since…he doesn’t know. But the Soldier sips it, pauses, and now he’s staring at the mug with a frown, his eyes glistening almost as if there’s the start of involuntary tears brimming.
With the okay for scans, Tony has FRIDAY get to work. While it's a little vague, Soldier's instructions give Tony the perfect frame of reference for what areas he should focus on. Otherwise, he'd keep going until he'd tinkered with every inch of the damn thing.
(Keeping the star makes Tony frown in this scrunchy, pouty way of his-- not dissimilar to a child when they don't get what they want-- but he doesn't verbally object. You can't exactly expect Soldier to shake off the effects of the programming within a day, but Tony can still be grumbly about it.)
Since he has to wait for the scans to finish before he can do anything, Tony's attention span starts to itch for something else to keep it occupied. So of course his eyes skip around the room, and land back on Solider contemplating his coffee mug. And then Tony sees the tears, and-- fuck, what does he do?
Calling attention to it seems like a recipe for disaster. A gentle breeze would probably have Soldier retreating and pulling away, so like hell is Tony going to shine a spotlight directly onto him. The gut reaction he has is to just ignore it, but that's not what Tony really wants to do-- he's self aware enough to know that it's just a fear response, being anxious avoidant as usual.
The vow to avoid being vulnerable and honest was still hot off the press, was Tony seriously considering doing it again? But what else could he do?
(Begrudgingly, it was nice. Tony was the type of guy to dump and run, and talking with Soldier was sort of like talking to a brick wall. Well-- okay, that sounds meaner than he meant it. There's none of the pity eyes or sympathy frowns, is what he means-- which just makes Tony's skin prickle and make the urge to escape worse.)
"Good, isn't it?" Tony doesn't make eye contact, and it's only partly for Soldier's sake. It's easier to fake a casualness he doesn't feel, this way. "Admittedly I've always been a coffee snob, but I figure: 'hey, you only live once, why skimp on the good stuff?' It's the little things in life."
Touch is undoubtedly still risky, but Tony's stupid little touch starved hindbrain is in overdrive after earlier, so he can't help himself. He steps up next to Soldier (with his own mug in hand) and leans against the guy-- still not making eye contact. While taking some of the weight off his leg is nice, and Tony will absolutely use it as an excuse if asked, that's exactly what it feels like: an excuse. Taking weight off your leg doesn't mean you need to lay your head on someone's shoulder, but here he is.
God, age is making him soft. Stark men are made of iron-- all of them except Tony, that is.
(But being made of iron would mean he wouldn't get to feel the press of another against him, or their body heat, or the warmth of coffee through a ceramic mug, so maybe being flesh and blood isn't so bad.)
The Winter Soldier wouldn’t know what good coffee tastes like. If Stark says it’s good, it probably is.
It smells different, better, somehow, than what he’d picked up in HYDRA. Those stolen snatches of scent he wasn’t supposed to register and file away because they’re irrelevant to assignments or maintenance. Even so, the taste feels familiar as it floods across his tongue, the mug warm against his hand. Even the steam curling up feels…
It’s enough that when Tony comes up to him - close, maybe too close considering how poorly yesterday started out - the Soldier doesn’t step back, shoot a flat-eyed stare or shove him so he’ll have more clearance. There’s a moment where he stiffens at the sudden touch…but it’s slow, not too bad, a brush of the shoulders that almost feels as familiar as the taste of coffee warming his body. A difference in body size: the man he’d leaned up again was bigger than Stark, broader.
The Soldier doesn’t jerk away.
In fact, he stands right where he is, seemingly allowing (or, at least, tolerating), Tony’s presence. Maybe it’s because he’s not chattering up a storm, overwhelming him with new ideas about the arm improvements or going on about this man he’s supposed to be, this “Bucky Barnes”. He isn’t even making him struggle his way through a simple decision like what body wash to use of a choice from several. They’re just existing in close proximity.
In this crowded, messy workroom without guards or handlers or even the cries of prisoners echoing down concrete halls and the Soldier’s startled to realize this isn’t…bad.
He doesn’t bump back, exactly. But as he steals another sip of coffee, a part of him still surprised he’s allowed a cup of his own, he’ll let Stark lean against him all he wants. He’ll even let the other man rest his head against his shoulder.
They’ll stand there for awhile, silent, and the Soldier’s almost done with his coffee, glancing down at its reduced levels with dull alarm.
“...can I have more?” he surprises himself by daring to ask. An asset shouldn’t ask for anything, he knows that’s standard protocol. His voice still creaks out, his head tilting a little so he can glance down at Stark’s dark head resting against his shoulder.
"Mmmhm. As much as you want," he says, mostly into Soldier's shoulder. At face value, those words could sound dismissive, but in reality, his tone makes the sentence much more gentle. Contented, a little sleepy. Tony takes one last sip, then, "Was just about to top up myself."
Pulling away is hard, because Tony knows once he does, he won't be able to cozy back up again. And, lo and behold, stepping away breaks the little safety bubble that had formed around them.
(But better sooner rather than later, ripping off the bandaid and all that. It's not like he could stay there forever.)
Tony takes the mug from Soldier with a smile (which, unbeknownst to him, comes off much more gentle than intended-- he'd wanted to break any potential awkwardness by being his usual lighthearted I-don't-take-things-too-seriously self). Now that he can see Soldier again, the guy seems... a little less tense, maybe? It's difficult for Tony to pinpoint exactly, but there is definitely a small improvement from yesterday.
If this whole situation had a progress bar, they'd maybe ticked up to 1%. Which doesn't sound encouraging, but even the slowest of processes eventually got there in the end.
By the time the second round of coffee is ready, FRIDAY is done with the scans. (She probably finished them a while ago, but Tony's glad she had the tact not to interrupt the... moment? Was it a moment? That they were having. ((Plus, his AI learning what tact is!)) Tony hands Soldier his mug before re-situating back at the workbench.
"M'kay, let's see what we've got here--"
Any ease and/or good mood Tony has evaporates the second he sets his eyes on Soldier's scans.
It's... bad. Bad doesn't even begin to describe it. So monumentally bad that even Tony has to take at least ten minutes cataloging each and every problem.
"I..." Tony wipes a tired and disbelieving hand over his mouth. (What has his face even been doing this whole time? Hopefully nothing that makes Soldier pull away again. They'd only just started making progress.) "I'm shocked this thing even works at all."
If FRIDAY weren't there to assist him, who knows how long it would've taken him to decipher the tangled maze of the wiring. Sorting through all of it is going to be a nightmare. But it has to be done. He can't leave wiring that looks like this in-- frayed and split and rusting, there's so much rust in this arm that Tony could swim in it. Some of the wiring is knotted and tied around other wires, too. There's no way any of it can be salvaged. If only it could be as easy as ripping it all out, but that's the downside when it comes to prosthetics with a neural link-- you have to tread carefully.
Designing better functioning parts was going to be the easiest part, honestly. And seeing some of the, frankly, painful looking mechanisms that make up this arm? Yeah, uh... Pretty much anything else would be an improvement (both for function and comfort).
"Do you, uh-- do you want me to tell you everything that's wrong, or should I just... go ahead and fix it?"
The Soldier will still be puzzling over what “as much as you want” actually means - naturally, an asset doesn’t (shouldn’t) want anything - even when Stark hands him his second cup of coffee and they’ve migrated back to the workbench.
A silence falls over the lab. The Soldier settles down where there’s just enough space in the junk and half-finished projects that he can wedge himself down and sit. For a while he retreats into the heady smell of the coffee cupped in his hands, a part of him feeling like he’s somehow stealing these snatches of scent and taste to file away in a secret place in his mind, just in case, in the event they’re taken from him. Maybe not by Stark, given how he’s acted so far, but there’s always the possibility a HYDRA retrieval squad comes.
Stark could still get caught by surprise if he’s out of the Iron Man suit, after all. The robots like DUM-E hardly seem combat capable. The only question would be how effective FRIDAY is at fortification.
The Soldier’s almost finished with his second cup, resorting to rationing out those last sips out of habit, when Stark speaks up again.
“Fix it,” the Soldier says, simply, still gazing into his dwindling coffee cup, more concerned with that than the metal arm bolted to his shoulder, the pain he’s grown used to as a kind of constant. “I’m not involved in maintenance, so it would be a waste of both our time to go into additional detail.”
There’s basic field repairs and then there’s the real maintenance, the kind that would take several teams multiple shifts over multiple days. Then again, none of them were Tony Stark.
Productive results matter and the Winter Soldier’s been trained to be primarily goal-oriented. In short, Stark going onto the nitty gritty details of what, exactly, is wrong with HYDRA’s titanium prosthesis - both a marvel of engineering and held together with duct tape and Soviet prayers from the 1970s - will just fall on deaf ears. The Soldier wouldn’t understand what he’s talking about, anyway.
Maybe Tony is a bad man after all, because Soldier's refusal to hear the details only fills him with relief. The world has let this man down time and time again (be it as Bucky Barnes, The Soldier, or whomever he'll be in the aftermath of all of this), and to Tony, delivering that news again, in this way, is just... it feels unbearable, and he hasn't even done it.
Engineering and robotics and inventing and everything in between is Tony's... is there even a word for it? The fact that you can't think of any of those things without thinking of him (or the Stark name in general), says a lot more than a word probably could. Anyway, it's Tony's life and livelihood, it's his hobby and special interest-- you could even go as far as saying it's his everything. So of course, as irrational as it may be, he can't help but feel like this is somehow his fault. Like he's somehow letting Soldier down. Tony wasn't even alive when Bucky Barnes was presumed dead, for fuck's sake! It's ridiculous! But just saying so doesn't automatically make the feeling go poof!
It's fine. He'll fix this. Soldier will be as good as new. Tony will give him an arm so good that it'll never let him down again.
"Fix it, it is," Tony says. Like usual, and especially right now, he shoves that world weary feeling down as far as it'll go. At the very least, sinking his teeth in deep into a new project feels like coming home.
First tackling everything that can be done before he needs to drag Soldier in for the hands on treatment seems like the smartest idea, so that's where Tony starts. It's the usual blur of time, orders to FRIDAY, back and forth discussions and calculations with her, holograph blueprints and tinkering, soldering irons and clanging metal. Oh, and of course, Tony's usual taste in music. He's not blaring it quite as loud as he usually does (and it's definitely not for Soldier's sake, pfft, that would be ridiculous), but it's enough, and it all helps him sink into that headspace where hours feel like seconds.
Tony isn't worried about Soldier's wellbeing-- he already made sure FRIDAY would supply him with enough food and/or takeout suited for his metabolism, and DUM-E should certainly adore having a patron he can supply bottomless coffee to. (Tony would be jealous of the all you can drink coffee buffet, but he sort of enjoys things like being alive and his heart not jackrabbiting out of his ribcage, so.) He's plenty free to dive deep.
An indeterminable amount of time later, Tony snaps back into present awareness. Like a bubble that's been blown into the air, and it finally makes contact with the asphalt, a large and jarring, but silent, pop. All Tony can do is stare and blink owlishly for a beat, then two. It's sort of like watching a movie where the visuals and audio are out of sync-- it's hard for his brain to process the rushing back of all physical (and emotional) sensation, like hunger and exhaustion and pain (oh, right, stab wound in the thigh).
Usually FRIDAY is the one who snaps him out of an engineering binge, but Tony doesn't hear her telling him things like the date and time or how many emails he needs to respond to.
Oh. To his right is... another mug. A warm mug. And food. Tony swallows thickly, and it's not because of a sixth sense awareness pinging him about a certain new resident assassin looming directly behind him.
(There was a time, when this tower was what you would call a home. Tony would come up from his binges to meals and leftovers waiting for him, or sometimes to the people who came to deliver them. Bruce's shy and rueful smiles, Clint's endless supply of pizza boxes and, dare Tony say, mother henning. Natasha cared too, in her own way, and so did Thor when he was around to. Steve... Tony tries especially not to think about Steve, but at least the food offerings from him were easy to stomach. It's hard to feel like you're being pitied when it's from a man who grew up during the Depression.)
And here, now, Soldier is unintentionally following in their footsteps. Or maybe FRIDAY told him to do it, but even then-- scraps are better than nothing.
Thunking his head backwards against Soldier's sturdy torso, Tony sighs. He rubs at his face and just hides in his hands for a long few moments. It's absolutely necessary, or else he'd be liable to lashing out or, God forbid, crying.
For a guy called the 'Winter' Soldier, he's shockingly warm, Tony's traitorous brain supplies. Thankfully he does not say that out loud.
"If FRI is making you do nanny duty, I must've been out of it for a while." He stifles a yawn into his fist. "You've got the time, Soldier? If it's even still the same day."
The tower would take a few days to map out manually.
Under normal circumstances it would, except FRIDAY provides him with a map shortly after Stark settles down to work on the prosthetic arm. Or, more precisely, the AI sends one of Stark’s low-tech drones to roll up with a tablet clenched in its manipulator claw, beeping, and then settling for bodily poking the Winter Soldier in the hip until he takes it. The uploaded map’s probably edited knowing he’ll be looking at it. Flicking through it, learning how to use the tablet, and it confirms what he already knows: the tower is a maze and there’s no feasible escape without FRIDAY knowing about it.
Aside from that, no new orders.
Unsure what to do without those, the Soldier wanders. A few times he makes it back to Stark’s workshop and while the…mess is still there, all the trip hazards that are probably more dangerous to the man than his scalpel ever was, the music volume blaring through the speakers is noticeably lower than before, just loud instead of bone-shaking, head-pounding loud. Even at a lower, more reasonable volume the music’s still somehow grating, the Soldier slipping out after a few minutes, unaware that he might just be missing something more sedate like the Andrew Sisters or the Ink Spots instead of another round of A/C’s guitar riffs.
But Stark holes up in his workshop long enough that the Soldier returns, back music or no music, because standing orders were to assist him and he can’t assist him if the man worked himself into a coma because he forgot about eating and drinking. He isn’t sure where the food comes from - delivery again, maybe - but FRIDAY’s voice had filtered through the walls, through everywhere, seemingly without a source, and the AI had requested that he make sure Stark ate. Not exactly an order.
Might as well be.
It’s easy to sneak up on Stark, like every other time. The Soldier walks in with the delivery, has time to set it down and retrieve a streaming mug from DUM-E and there's time to set that down too. In fact, he can stand right behind Stark’s chair, easily within arm’s reach that he could’ve snapped his neck or slipped a knife between his ribs, and still Stark doesn’t seem to register he’s there.
The Soldier doesn’t move when Stark’s head shifts and then bumps into the firm planes of his stomach.
“It’s 2:34 pm,” the Soldier says quietly. “Over twenty four hours. You should take a break.”
He doesn’t move away. Not at first. Leaning over and minding Stark’s head, the Soldier reaches for the mug and then maneuvers it into Stark’s hands with surprisingly gentle care, his palms briefly fitting over the back of the other man’s hands.
“Drink. Then eat. You can give a status report while you’re doing that.”
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As soon as he heard Friday's voice suddenly echoing around him the Winter Soldier had stomped on the brakes hard enough for them to squeal, the smell of burning rubber filling the sports car and the vehicle fishtailing to a stop with a wheel wedged up on the curb, his hand flashing silver toward toward the door only to find the locks had all remotely engaged with a dull thunk. He loses a second there with the locks; another second trying to punch out the window (reinforced?) before Friday finishes rattling off the rest of the trigger words in quick succession, almost blurring them together faster than he's ever heard them used before so that they slam into his mind, his body, almost like a physical punch. That's the advantage of an AI: Friday doesn't get flustered and its enunciation is flawless.
Friday says stop. He stops.
Friday says stay where you are. He stays where he is.
Conflicting directives war with one another as the Soldier goes rigid in the driver's seat with his hands stiffly locked on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead, barely seeming to blink as he twitches a little, a part of him struggling to fight off compliance as it always does and as always it's a losing battle in the end. Find Baron Zemo; free him; hand over the red book to Zemo because he is (was?) his handler. Stop. Stay where you are. Who's his current handler, Zemo or Friday? Can an AI be a handler?
Stop. Stay where you are.
He shouldn't, he still needs to -
- he doesn't want -
Stark's voice suddenly materializes next to the car. It takes every ounce of effort to even glance over, to flick just his eyes despite the order to stop. Sweat beads against Winter Soldier's clammy forehead. There's a faint, easy-to-miss tremble to his lower lip as he registers that Stark's somehow arrived, he's wisely suited back up, and that maybe he should've slit the man's throat after all and not gotten in his car in the first place. He hears more than sees Stark round the car and slide in, the passenger side dipping underneath the weight of his armored rig, the suspension creaking.
The drive back to Stark's tower is silent. The Winter Soldier can't speak and Stark's uncharacteristically quiet. Maybe he's regretting his earlier soft approach.
It's only when they pull back into the underground parking garage - exact same spot as last time, and there's the darkening red splotch of Tony's blood still drying against the concrete - that Friday speaks up again, the AI's voice filtering softly into the coupe and doing a surprisingly good job imitating the sound of a human's sympathy.
"Sergeant Barnes. Please exit the car and help Mr. Stark if he requires it."
The locks on all sides release with a click.
The new directive releases him from the stop order, the Winter Soldier visibly relaxing with a ragged gasp he doesn't realize he makes. It's the sound of a drowning man suddenly, unexpectedly, resurfacing above choppy waves; freed, his head swings toward Stark to stare at him with a mute, dead-eyed look. Stark's face is tight with pain, his skin paler than it was earlier. He looks like shit. Probably feels like it too. He can't say if he regrets he stabbed him or if he regrets he didn't stab him properly.
Without saying anything the Winter Soldier opens the door on his side and swings his legs out. This time he's the one rounding the car, stretching stiff legs that had been locked in the same position thanks to Friday. When he opens Tony's door, he doesn't lean in to snap his neck like he'd threatened to not even an hour ago.
Instead the Asset offers his left hand, silver palm up.
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"You don't need to coddle me. I'm already keeping you stuck here, I'm not going to make you butler me, too." Although the words are harsh, Tony's tone isn't. He already feels bad enough (and it's pretty obvious, which is disconcerting on its own-- the Solider brings it out of him, apparently). If he wanted someone to wait on him hand and foot, he could pay someone. Tony doesn't need to brainwash someone into it.
Now that the adrenaline's fading, Tony's really feeling the events of the past few hours. The suit is absolutely the only thing keeping him upright. He starts to stagger back towards the elevator, but then he remembers: right. Not alone. Sheepishly, he turns around to look at the Solider.
"Truce, for real this time? As long as you stay in the tower, you're welcome to do your own thing. But-- I get it, big, scary place, and you can't trust anyone but yourself." Tony usually tries to tamp down on his stims around other people, but he definitely doesn't have the brainpower for that at the moment. The awkward movement of rubbing his knuckles against his chest around the reactor would be mortifying if he even realized he was doing it, but he doesn't. "I'm heading down to my workshop. Feel free to tag along if you want to keep an eye on me, or something. But no pressure." It's not meant as a trap or a trick, it's a genuine offer, and Tony's pretty sure he comes across as sincere, for whatever that means to the Soldier.
(Tony let Clint lurk in his vents for a reason, okay? If keeping an eye on all of them helped soothe him, then by all means. Same with Natasha, but he honestly had no fucking clue how she did it, even to this day.)
The Soldier probably could (and would) slip the Tower's security, but surely not so soon after what just happened. Tony genuinely felt bad that FRIDAY had leverage over the Soldier and had shown she wasn't afraid to use it, but trust was going to be slow going anyway. Maybe it would never happen at all, but Tony at least hoped the Soldier would eventually get the idea that he had the guy's best interests in mind.
"Is it too much to ask DUM-E to get the first aid kit and not break something in the process, babygirl?" It's a lot easier to pretend that business is as usual than to feel it, but Tony's been in front of the press his whole life, he's well practiced in acting. The fact his hands are still shaking is a secret the Iron Man suit has always been good at keeping.
"Most likely. But I'm sure he'll do his best, boss."
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It isn't a truce and it definitely isn't peace. At most it's a temporary ceasefire. Problem is, Friday reinforces the ceasefire just by existing, by being there entrenched inside a skyscraper and networked to the underground parking lot like a spider casting its electronic web, a silent, oppressive presence hanging in the air that the Winter Soldier's conscious of at all times. As far as he knows he can't escape. At least, not before the AI traps him - maybe not in a car like last time, but in an elevator, an emergency stairwell, a ventilation shaft, the bathroom - and Friday could easily shotgun the trigger words to "encourage" him back to compliance before he could make it outside to fresh air. To the blue sky.
Tony's right that he might not join him immediately in the workshop.
The Winter Soldier prowls about the skyscraper for hours looking for an escape, restless in the absence of an additional order to update Friday's deliberately vague one to "help Mr. Stark". He's constantly checking for weaknesses in the security systems. Hyperaware there's always an AI watching him that doesn't need to eat and sleep as he does, that it's primed to enforce his obedience with a speed and efficiency that HYDRA wishes it could've emulated. It's well past midnight that the Asset finally makes his way to Tony's workshop. He's...tired. Hungry; thirsty - he doesn't know when he last ate or drank - and so far he hasn't figured out a way to sneak past Friday just by manually scoping out the building. Friday hasn't said anything since the incident in the sports car. It doesn't need to speak, because it already said enough. Because in all likelihood, it's still there, watching. Waiting.
At this point the Winter Soldier's exhausted his immediate options. So he rides the elevator down and down and down, trying and failing to ignore the obsidian glint of Friday's camera lens in the corner until the doors open with a faint ding.
At 3:31 AM the door to Tony's New York workshop slides open, the Soldier entering with his shoulders hunched forward, his face still mottled with bruises from when Tony shot him out of the sky not too long ago. Even those are already starting to fade thanks to the serum's advanced healing, the black eye's swelling reduced. Physically he's probably doing better than Tony, stepping inside the workshop without limping, without favoring a leg that just got introduced to the business end of a scalpel. Outwardly the Asset looks like he's fine.
But the Soldier needs to eat and drink. There's just no getting around his accelerated metabolism and he tells himself that if Stark's serious about keeping him prisoner "welcome to do his own thing", that probably entails keeping him fed and hydrated.
He finds Stark at a worktable, sitting on a tall bench, and glancing at the other man, he can see he's attempted to treat the stab wound on his thigh. There's a hint of bandages winding around his leg that deforms the fit of his pants, a quarter-sized dark splotch where blood has seeped into the denim.
"You're bleeding again," the Winter Soldier suddenly says. He's standing only a few meters away from Tony, blue eyes flat, his face seemingly blank as usual even though his hands are balled at his side and his jaw's tensed like he's clenching his back teeth.
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It's not unusual for him to be so absorbed he doesn't notice people entering his space, especially with his usual tendency of blasting music at full volume, but what he does usually notice is FRIDAY warning him. So when the Solider's voice is suddenly right fucking behind him, Tony makes a very undignified yelp and jumps, like, five feet in the air. (Not actually, but he startles rather spectacularly.) It's his gut reaction to make some kind of quip, no wonder you were a renowned assassin, or, fuck, we should get you a bell, but it dies on his tongue. Mostly because of the sharp jab of pain that runs through him, but Tony also needs to try and be more conscious than ever over his actions and their consequences. "Hey there, tall, dark and handsome. Didn't see you there," is what he lands on, which. Yeah. Probably the best Tony's gonna get in terms of censoring himself.
Between the pain that jostling his leg brings up, and checking around for the time, it takes a moment for the Soldier's words to sink in. He looks down, and, yeah, sure enough, "oh. I guess I am." It's easy to wave it off, though, because, "I've had worse. It'll be fine."
There's an awkward silence, thick with unease. If asked how he knew, Tony wouldn't be able to pinpoint it, but the Solider's giving off this tense and uncomfortable vibe. It might be more intuitive leap than any actual social cue, but whatever. Safe assumption. But it's fine. Tony can talk enough for two people.
"Welcome to my humble abode, Sarge!" He does a miniature sweeping hand motion, showing off the room at large. It's kind of a joke, because the place is far from humble, but most definitely screams Tony Stark. Disorganized chaos? Check. Projects and papers and scrap metal and wiring galore on every available surface? Also check. A surprising amount of Iron Man merchandise or memorabilia interspersed with nerdy decor or things so hilariously bad or cheesy that it can only be ironic? Yep. The couch more comfortable than it has any right to be, shoved in the first available corner and covered in pillows and blankets because Tony sleeps down here more often than he doesn't? Mmmmhm. There's also the kitchenette, but it's mostly used for coffees and smoothies than any actual cooking. Tony keeps it stocked like every other fridge in the Tower, but he usually only bothers with takeout.
Also, yes, the time away has made his decision firmly clear: business is as usual, water under the bridge. Tony doesn't really see any point in scuttling around the Soldier like an anxious mouse, seems like a recipe for making the guy more uneasy and on edge. Okay, granted, overly chatty and larger than life probably will also do that, but Tony doesn't exactly have an off switch for that. It also seems like a pretty good way to attempt to put all of his cards on the table, without sitting down and having to talk feelings. What would he even say? Actions speak louder than words.
(Although, it might come off as cockiness, or a taunt-- turning his back to this man, seemingly unafraid that the Solider will lash out because of FRIDAY. That sends unease through Tony, but he hasn't really come up with a way to convince the guy of the contrary. Maybe taking him out on missions? Though putting a gun in the guy's hands seems like an equally intense way of saying, I dare you to try it.)
"What can I do you for?" Instead of bothering (attempting) to stand, he shoves his little swivel chair across the linoleum, sliding smoothly into the kitchenette. "Oh, that reminds me. I should set you up with your own floor. Fri, babygirl, put it on my list?"
"You got it, boss. What orders should I put in?"
"Nothin' too fancy. Steve got overwhelmed when I went all out; Better to let Barnes decide for himself." Tony's been rummaging through cabinets and drawers as he talks. DUM-E moved the protein bars. Again. And the fancy little coffee pods for the ridiculously expensive coffee machine. Thankfully, he finds them, making a small, triumphant noise.
"Feel free to help yourself. If you aren't a coffee or tea kind of guy, there's a ton of shit in the fridge. I've got alcohol around here somewhere, but I don't keep it in the lab anymore." If he says so himself, Tony's getting pretty good at this sobriety thing. Sometimes all that keeps him on the wagon is pure fucking spite, but he does do it.
The protein bar is almost half inhaled when he has the idea to ask, "Fri, when's the last time I ate?"
"Over seventeen hours ago." Oh. She does not sound happy. No wonder he feels like death warmed over. Contrary to popular belief (or unpopular, really, because it's only himself that is so insistent), he cannot survive on caffeine alone.
The possibility of it being almost that long or longer since the Solider has eaten does cross Tony's mind, but it might be an awkward subject to breach. Well. Even if he has had something while he's been doing whatever it is since Tony last saw him, Steve could literally always go for more food, so it's safe to assume the Solider would be the same. Doesn't hurt to offer. Probably.
"You hungry, Sarge? Got a takeout preference?" Now he slides over to the other end of the workshop, ends in a sort of semi intentional traffic collision with one of the bots. Butterfingers beeps happily at Tony, spins in a little circle when he gives her a pet like a dog. She also seems content to be used as a cheek rest, and Tony doesn't say no. "If you're more about home cooked meals, any fridge should have what you need. I can't cook to save my life, so, you don't want me in a kitchen."
He's about to leave it there, but there's this way that the Soldier is looking at him now, has been ever since the Sarge's and the Barnes's, that makes Tony pause. He also remembers earlier, how the guy had said this Steve, like he didn't remember him at all. Tony was under the assumption that referring to him as the person he was before the brainwashing would be more humanizing, but maybe it's the opposite? He'd probably feel pretty damn disconnected from himself, too, if all he'd known for seventy years was being the Solider.
"Actually, is 'Barnes' fine? 'James'? 'Bucky'? That one feels a little personal, but you never know. I figured if we're going to be living together, I should at least ask what you like to be called. I'm definitely not calling you the Asset." A pause, Tony sitting back up, hand to his chin, considering. "Solider?" That might not be any better than the Asset, but it's also not exactly uncommon. Sort of like calling him Sergeant, really.
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“It doesn’t matter what you call me,” says the Winter Soldier after a pause, like he’s getting used to Stark making up for his earlier silence in the car. Now the man’s all chatty. “I don’t have a name.”
He knows he must’ve had one at some point. Obviously. Probably just aliases, depending on the mission. But they’ve been rendered irrelevant for who knows how long and he hasn’t worked out if he’s comfortable with being issued “Barnes” or “Bucky” or even “James” as placeholders: all three sound almost familiar but they also feel wrong, too, like trying to reassemble a pistol with parts from different manufacturers. At the idea of a name, the Soldier’s lips press together in a ghost of disapproval, the corner of his mouth splotched purple with a healing bruise.
For a second he looks like he remembered how to frown.
He’s hungry. He’s thirsty. He doesn’t know what his takeout preference is and it shows from the blank look he levels at Tony.
The order to help Stark doesn’t exactly tug at him like a leash collaring around his throat and brain, like it usually does - probably because it was fairly open-ended, because Friday is his primary handler and the AI hasn’t seen fit to issue new, more specific orders. But there’s still a vague urge to assist Tony Stark in some capacity, the Asset’s blue eyes dipping once more down to fix on Stark’s injured thigh and his clumsy attempt at first aid. The man’s pretty mobile, all things considered, scooting around his cluttered workshop on his wheeled stool, but when he wheels himself back, the blood stain’s only grown.
Glancing around the workshop, for a second the Winter Soldier feels…something. Alarm, maybe? The workshop’s positively covered in trip hazards between random junk and wires strung along the floor and seemingly every surface, ranging from finger-thin to cords the size of his calf, humming and pulsing, and that isn’t going into the fact that there’s all kinds of hard edges between the tables and the crates and the half-built shapes of armor and gear the man started work on, clearly got bored or distracted, and moved onto something else more interesting. If Stark happens to get woozy there’s a high chance he’ll brain himself on any and all of it. For a second the Soldier’s gaze lingers on the fridge, his stomach deciding to grumble and twist in on itself as if he needs the reminder that he must eat before his combat readiness is impacted.
Stamping it down, the Winter Soldier’s head swivels back toward Tony to pin him down with a flat stare. He can’t let the other man keep bleeding like this, so:
“Take off your pants,” he says without warning. “Or I’ll cut them off.”
He doesn’t immediately advance on Tony with a knife or whatever sharp object he decided will work just as well. But he does stalk over to the wall, toward the white plastic box of the first aid kit with a red cross splashed against its front like a target sign. Cracking it open, a quick glance tells the Asset that the kit should be fine for his purposes. Tucking it under his arm, he approaches Stark, reaching out with one hand to steady him with a firm grip on his knee so he can’t roll away from him and pretend he’s “fine” when he clearly isn't. Metal fingers - the same cold chrome that had wrapped themselves around his throat hours ago - clench around his kneecap.
Instead of looming over Tony, the Soldier crouches down with deliberate care so that they're almost eye-level. "The dressing," he finally decides to elaborate. "It needs to be fixed."
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(If anyone would know, it's Tony. He hadn't always been Anthony Edward Stark, after all. Now that Tony thinks about it, he and Soldier might have more in common than anticipated. At least in the figuring out who you really are, muddled by a lifetime of people telling you who you should be, area, anyway.)
Abundance of choice could be (and in Soldier's case, it definitely seemed like it was) overwhelming. Probably double the overwhelm when all you've known was a life where that wasn't an option. Baby steps. Tony has FRIDAY order Chinese (Tony Stark's billionaire priorities: knowing places that served takeout, let alone were open, at ridiculous hours of the morning), and he gets a little bit of everything, along with his usual. Soldier could try things and see what he liked.
Another silence fell, still awkward (but maybe less so?). Tony honestly thought that was it, started half checking out as he focused back in on work, but then--
Take off your pants. Or I'll cut them off.
The long day has worn down his defenses. Like an icy grip on his brain stem, Tony's suddenly stuck, and he only has one way to go: backwards. He's heard those words before (or some variation of) many times before, and it's like he's there all over again. Coherent thought slips through Tony's fingers like sand in an hourglass. If he could, he'd flinch at the way Soldier is advancing on him, like he's not going to take no for an answer.
They never take no for an answer--
But then Soldier is kneeling at Tony's feet, and for all his blankness, he looks oddly soft. Or maybe Tony's just projecting again. Whatever. It's such a deviation from the script of Tony's past experiences that it snaps him out of it, like a bucket of cold water was dumped on his head. The breath he sucks in is shaky, but at least he isn't hyperventilating or anything.
His leg. Right. Okay. Tony can do that.
"Um, yeah-- yeah, I guess. If you, uh, insist."
It isn't until his stiff fingers have started to undo his belt in a daze that another pretty crucial thing comes to Tony. This one is still nerve wracking, but at least not PTSD inducing.
By nature of being as famous as Tony is, he hasn't had to come out since he first did so. It's at least one thing he appreciates about being in the spotlight. Bigots will be bigots and people will be rude or well meaning but inappropriate, but every transgender person has to go through that. Any cons are far outweighed by the positives, in his case. It's relieving and refreshing when everyone is on the same page.
But Soldier... probably isn't on the same page. In and out of ice for seventy years doesn't leave a lot of time to, well, be with the times. Plus, Tony finds it hard to believe the group of uber fascists would be eagerly introducing their asset to the idea of queer people. If they did at all, it definitely wasn't positive. And who knows how much information Soldier has to work on, prior to all that! Not that Tony cares what other people think, but he'd really like to not go through another near death experience today, thanks.
(No wonder Soldier didn't recognize him. Tony hadn't started to transition properly until after his parents died. If Hydra had given him information on the Stark's next of kin, it would've been about a daughter, not a son.)
This probably wouldn't even be an issue if he hadn't taken out his packer, but, like, sue him, okay? He wasn't exactly expecting to do anything but hide away in the workshop, and he definitely wasn't expecting to take his pants off in front of someone else and have said person get in direct sight line with his crotch.
Tony wasn't going to say a damn thing, and, who knows-- maybe Soldier would be too occupied with Tony's shitty first aid to notice. (Yeah, asking a sniper not to notice something? Pigs are more likely to fly. Hell, it's not like a layer of denim does much for him-- maybe Soldier already noticed.) Tony didn't even think about it (clearly) before now, but showing off the arc reactor also meant showing Soldier his top scars.
Well, whatever. It would come out eventually. Especially with all the time they were theoretically going to be spending together.
Pop the button, undo the fly, remember he probably has to take his sneakers off first, then shimmy the denim down his legs. The only thing more mortifying would be wearing boxers with Iron Man on them, so thankfully Tony isn't. Not today, at least.
"There's a joke in here somewhere about taking me out to dinner first," he mumbles, more to himself than his audience. Tony suppresses a wince when he has to open his knees to give Soldier more leverage. His only saving grace is that Soldier definitely isn't the nosy type, nor the type to ask questions. Maybe they could ignore the, like, twenty seven different elephants in the room with their combined ability of avoidance.
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Now that he’s crouched in front of him watching silently as Stark hesitates, as his whole body seems to stiffen and lock up in place and he has to visibly make an effort to force it to relax, he’s starting to see…inconsistencies. For example, he thinks there should be more of a bulge in the crotch of his jeans: there isn’t. When Tony awkwardly wriggles his way out of his pants, his face tight and jaw set as the motion aggravates his recent injury, the Asset’s eyes dip back down to fix on his now visible underwear. Again, what should be there seems to be missing. Vague confusion flits across his face and in his tired blue eyes, his head tilting.
For a second he might even puzzle it over.
Then he decides that it’s irrelevant to treating the stab wound. Ultimately nothing’s changed: Friday’s order was help Mr. Stark and fixing his sloppy attempt at a dressing seems like a start.
The Winter Soldier settles himself between Stark’s spread knees as he opens the first aid kit. It mostly looks normal. There’s a sterile wash, butterfly closure stripes, bandages and gauze and medical tape, among other things. He holds up a little plastic package with an SI logo on the side, squishing it experimentally between metal forefinger and thumb: Stark Industries - Topical Anesthetic is printed on the other side of the square. Probably a cream or gel. Setting it aside, he begins to peel off the bandages crudely wrapped around Stark’s thigh.
Fresh blood wells out, dribbling in red trails along Stark’s thigh. He grunts “don’t move” and then his head bends down as he studies the weeping injury for a second, his left hand coming up unconsciously to tuck back hair that’s started to fall into his face behind his ear.
Considering he’d stabbed Tony, nearly strangled him and held him hostage all in the span of one day, the Winter Soldier can be surprisingly gentle when he needs to be. Sure, his bedside manner is nonexistent, but when he begins to flush the wound and uses two titanium fingers to smear anesthetic gel around the injury, his touch is soft. He’ll wait until the gel dries and absorbs into Stark’s skin before he begins applying the butterfly closures, followed by two pads of fresh gauze that he presses firmly into place with a self-adhesive wrap securely wound several times around the other man’s leg.
Finally the Winter Soldier leans back, still kneeling in front of Tony.
“Does it still hurt?”
It shouldn’t, he thinks, if the gel actually works. The Asset’s eyes lift to lock onto Stark’s face to search for signs of pain in his mouth and behind his eyes. Stark still looks like shit if you ask for his assessment but at least he isn’t running around with a subpar dressing anymore.
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For an assassin, Soldier is shockingly good at this. He's meticulous, precise, and efficient, for starters, but by no means rushed or harsh or anything like that. It's funny: in a way, Soldier's poor bedside manner works in his favor here. Tony's never liked hospitals or doctors, and he's never been comforted by idle chatter and small talk, or any of the other strategies doctors and nurses pull out. The cheer always felt too fake or too patronizing (or both), and he'd always get lectures. Being a genius aside, Tony lives in his own body. He's well aware of the consequences of his shitty self care habits, thank you very much.
What really gets Tony is that Soldier is being so gentle. That, in and of itself, is almost scarier than if Soldier had just been rough about it, or just tried to kill him again. Maybe more so, actually, because Tony's touch-starved skin blooming with happy and overwhelmed warmth, seeking out moremoremore like a sunflower tilting towards the sun is, uh, not ideal. To say the least.
(When was the last time Tony had been handled with care? Excluding Pepper and Rhodey, every moment of contact in recent memory has been of violence, and through a metal suit. And besides, it's not like he sees either of them as often as any of them would like.)
In an attempt to distract himself, Tony focuses in on the metal arm. It's surprisingly dexterous. Soldier uses it like he would a second flesh and blood one, an obvious familiarity with it, but also it really does seem that technologically impressive. The how of Hydra having tech this good, seventy odd years ago, will always bug Tony-- ever the curious, ever the engineer-- but even the best prosthesis is still that: a prosthesis. Does it cause him pain? Are there any problems, areas to improve? Does Soldier do his own upkeep? All that swirls around and around in Tony's overactive mind.
(How much pain would it have to cause Soldier before anyone knew? It's a nauseating thought.)
Just when Tony thinks he'll escape this situation unscathed or with his dignity even somewhat intact, Soldier-- he tucks a lock of his long hair behind his ear, unthinking, another gesture laced with so much familiarity he must do it countless upon countless times. It reminds Tony that he'd thought the guy was beautiful earlier, and that certainly hasn't changed. Even looking worse for the wear (but surely better than how Tony himself is fairing), his hair still tangled and hectic, wearing the same clothes he's been wearing for God knows how long, ragged and tired, Soldier continues to be so. He, by all accounts, shouldn't, and Tony shouldn't even be thinking it, but like the reactor keeping the shrapnel from his heart, Tony feels the pull like a magnet, dragging everything to the surface. He's just glad he has the self restraint to do something like, say, reaching out to touch, finger combing to try and work out the knots and tangles.
Swallowing thickly, like that'll shove everything down, Tony finally feels like he can take a breath when Soldier finishes, and moves away.
"No, it-- uh. It's better. Thanks." The jangling of his belt feels loud as he shimmies back into his jeans. Soldier watching makes Tony's cheeks flush. Maybe it's because they didn't actually do anything sexual at all that makes it more raw and vulnerable and thus, more embarrassing.
"I went ahead and ordered some food for us. Do you--" wait, actually, before that, Tony checks his watch-- and, yeah, FRIDAY's already running a timer for how long they have until it gets here. They'll be just fine. "Do you want me to take you to your floor? I don't know about you, but a shower always helps me feel better after a shitty day."
To anyone else, it would have sounded more like a tease or a jab, a subtle but entirely unstable you smell. But Tony's being entirely truthful, that really is what helps sometimes when nothing else does. Plus, Soldier just looks disheveled, it's not like he was wading through a dumpster or anything. Maybe Tony can introduce him to the wonders of conditioner.
"Figured you might want your own space where people won't bother you. But if it's too much-- we'll figure something out." (He knows he can go overboard with the gift giving. It's just what he does. A love language, even.)
The awkward my leg is injured waddle to the elevator that he does will definitely be funny in the future, but, unfortunately, it's not the future yet. At least it doesn't hurt anymore.
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None of those words belong. Obviously he knows that assets can’t actually possess things, that the weapons and kit they’re given are just borrowed inventory. The facilities where he’s been kept, the food and water he’s been allowed, the maintenance on his prosthesis; HYDRA only temporarily gives all of those things in order to complete the mission. That’s all. So when Stark says he can have his own space, the Winter Soldier stares at him without comprehending and he has to remind himself that Stark doesn’t know better. It shouldn’t be a surprise, given he’d freed him earlier and got a scalpel to the leg as his reward.
“I’ll shower,” he grunts.
It feels out of place, the way that Stark not only keeps trying to insist he can own things, that he wants to give him these things. How he keeps asking for permission when he doesn’t need to. Things are requests and suggestions with the man, not orders. The Asset will wonder quietly about that as Stark leads him to the elevator and they step inside, the silence falling between them like a living, breathing thing. At least he can get himself cleaned up and reevaluate this floor he’s “given”, check out the accommodations, and it sounds like Stark actually intends to feed him after, even though it would’ve made more sense to start reduced rations as punishment for stabbing him.
Stark doesn’t make sense. He’d risked his life only a few hours ago just to drive in the lesson that there’s no escape, and yet he’d turned around to offer luxury after luxury. He’d tried to - poorly - bandage his own leg even though it would’ve made more sense to get outside help for it, almost like he didn’t want to inconvenience anyone even though he’s clearly rich enough to afford plenty of staff. Guilt ebbs off him in clouds. For some reason he keeps apologizing. On trying to personalize an asset by insisting on names, as if he can’t imagine someone without…even though he controls Friday and Friday controls the Winter Soldier.
He’s…unpredictable.
Maybe Tony Stark’s more of a threat to HYDRA than his parents had ever been.
The Soldier mulls that over by the time the elevator dings and they step out onto “his” floor, Stark limping a bit while he leads the way and favors his injured leg. Cardboard moving boxes still line the hall and past the door where, according to Stark, is the living room, there’s a bedroom and an office and a kitchen, this single floor larger than any of the HYDRA barracks he’s seen. No aging concrete stretching from floor to ceiling to radiate the cold so that it seems to seep everywhere.
The Asset’s silent, outwardly unimpressed even though his eyes are flicking everywhere (his version of rubbernecking), until Stark shows him the bathroom. It’s all modern angles. Stone tastefully arranged in places. Stainless steel without rust on the metal fixtures; no signs of mold or rot on the tile. The shower itself is an entire room in itself with glass partitions, looking so new that there’s no water stains or cracks or scum from years of soap. It’s fully tricked out with detachable shower heads, an overhead spray set into the ceiling, even a seat if you want to sit underneath a miniature waterfall and just relax under the warm cascade that can issue from a slit in the stone wall.
Something’s missing. Enough that the Soldier finally breaks the silence, speaking up as he stands there staring at the nicest shower most people will ever see in their lifetimes.
“Where’s the sanitation hoses?”
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There were a few things Tony expected Soldier to say, and it wasn't that. It's so jarring that it throws him for a loop, brain buffering like it's on a shitty WiFi signal. An answer starts to come out of his mouth before he fully comprehends why Soldier would be asking that.
"Like a, a decontamination shower? Uh, There's one in any lab in the building? The usual Avengers entrances, too." It's saved them more times than any of them would probably like to admit-- weird alien substances or just the plain ol' mysterious deadly goop is incredibly common in the superhero business.
But that can't be where Soldier is going with this. Even though he hasn't figured it out yet, Tony has that sinking feeling in his gut again that is becoming rapidly familiar. Like his body just knows this is another thing that has to do with shitty Hydra captors and it's preparing for the onslaught of horror and disgust that usually follows in its wake.
"Not much of a use for that in a home bathroom," he says, lightly, and then that's when it hits him like a freight train. Hydra referred to the Winter Soldier as the Asset. Soldier was an assassin, but it was more like he was the gun, and Hydra was the one pulling the trigger. They shoved the guy in cryo whenever they weren't using him, like they were putting him in storage. Of course he probably didn't get to do anything like a person, let alone bathe like one.
(What'd Hydra even do, hose him down like a dog? Though, maybe that was even being too generous, since at least dogs these days went to groomers where there was shampoo and conditioner and haircuts and pampering.)
Tony remembers a time, back when it was just Iron Man, where he'd been hit with this corrosive fluid. The suit had taken the brunt of it, but SHIELD was paranoid, so they'd shoved him into a decontamination room at their facility. Tony had been stark (hah) naked as the day he was born, surrounded by a bunch of guys in hazmat suits. Transgender-ness aside (which SHIELD had known about anyway, the world knows about anyway, so whatever), it was a skin crawling experience, and he'd only done it the once before he installed his own so he'd never have to do that again. Tony can't imagine doing that for seventy fucking years!
Shoving down the horror and outage (and bile) was hard, but Tony managed. He definitely felt it bleed into the smile he flashed Soldier with, yet continued on anyway. "Here, c'mon, I'll show you how it works." While he was at it, he also pointed to the various bottles and things on the shower shelf so Soldier knew what he was working with.
"I don't know if you were thinking about a haircut," Tony starts, as he rifles through the different plastic bottles. He's putting all the ones applicable for Soldier on the top of the shelf, everything else going on the bottom-- mostly just different products meant for hair types the guy doesn't have. "But if not, there's some great stuff in here." Tony squints at the back of a bottle for something he's pretty sure he saw Natasha using once (and thus had JARVIS, at the time, order in bulk), shrugs, and puts it on the top.
"Long hair is the worst when it's all limp and oily," he mumbles. It's said like someone speaking from experience, and well... it is. It was a lifetime ago that his hair was that long, but Tony could never forget what it was like.
"I think we keep razors in the--" He turns around and goes over to the sinks, or, more specifically, the medicine cabinet next to the mirror on the wall over the sinks. "Yeah, here. Not that the scruffy look isn't working for ya', but not everyone enjoys having stubble." Tony shrugs. Calloused fingers smooth over his own meticulously kept goatee, another unconscious movement.
"'Kay, uh. I'll get out of your hair. Any questions? Oh, and towels are over here."
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He’s barely able to listen at that point, rushing blood rising to pulse in his skull like he’s been punched by another Winter Soldier.
The Asset’s teeth grit. “No questions.”
The idea of a free shower is already too much. The suggestion he could choose to shave, to chop off the curtain of tangled hair HYDRA didn’t consider worthwhile to address (and therefore he didn’t consider it either), is pushing it too far. The Soldier doesn’t wait for Tony to scuttle out of the oversized shower before he’s already shedding his clothes with zero self-consciousness. That’s the only thing that’s followed SOP so far, because after that’s when the restraints are supposed to click shut against his skin. The only sound he hears, though, is Stark beating a quick retreat with a curse under his breath, the man practically running out. The door slams shut behind him.
It’s his first shower alone like this and if it wasn’t for Stark giving him the rundown, he wouldn’t have known where to start. Usually the Soldier just stands there while they spray him with icy water laced with sanitizing compounds. If he’s exhausted or hurt, he’d get knocked to the floor and they’ll spray him down where he lies. But today there’s no cleaning crew, no guards to bark orders, and for a second the Asset stares at the daunting rows of bottles, unaware he’s feeling a rising sense of panic.
In the end he picks one and only one - the first bottle in the row that says “body wash”. Since there’s no hose, he has to work in the body wash with his own hands, rubbing the gel clumsily through his tangled hair and along his body; he can’t stop glancing over at the walls for the missing guards.
By the time the Soldier emerges from the shower, it’s been long enough that he’s either a) died in there or b) purposefully running up the water bill out of spite. While he’s at least dressed in a loose t-shirt and shorts instead of going commando, he’s currently dripping a trail along the tile as he pads out into the living room. Stark’s sitting on the sectional couch, head bent as he reads something on a semi-transparent tablet in his hands.
The Soldier drips to a stop in front of Stark’s legs. A puddle of soapy water forms, dangerously close to soaking the man’s designer shoes if he doesn't get them out of the way fast enough.
“I’m clean,” he says. “...You said there was food?”
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"Yup," Tony exaggeratedly pops the p sound. Soldier took long enough in the shower that it gave the delivery time to arrive. He'd arranged all of it out on the coffee table ahead of time. Tossing one of the couch's cushions on the floor in front of the table, Tony gets himself comfortable. "Open stuff and have at whatever looks good. I know you super soldiers need a lot of calories to keep up with your metabolisms, so, eat up! There's plenty."
He hadn't bothered with plates, Tony has always been a eat it straight from the carton guy, but he did grab Soldier a fork. Just in case, right? Who is he to assume that dexterous assassins know how to use chopsticks? Tony hands a pair of chopsticks and the fork over, then breaks open his own. Then, without further ado, he eats.
If there's one benefit to sharing a meal with Tony Stark-- a real, proper meal, not any of those stuffy charity or gala dinners-- it's that he doesn't give it any time to be awkward. There's no attempt at clumsy small talk, no prolonged eye contact-- none of that. He just turns back to his phone, resting screen up on the wood, and talks science and engineering jumbo with FRIDAY like he would in the workshop.
"Pull up a hologram for me, would you, babygirl? Thank you." Tony twirls it this way and that with the back of his chopsticks in between bites.
It's not a disrespect thing. Tony's brain is just constantly running at one hundred miles per hour, he needs to get it out, have something to do with his hands, all of that. Logically, he understands the point, socially, of things like small talk, but it doesn't appeal to him and why bother, when you can get straight to the point? The eye contact thing is similar-- it doesn't come naturally to him, and staring someone in the eye for too long makes him all squirrelly and uncomfortable. He's also, frankly, just bad at it. When do you look? When do you look away? Where is the balance of the two? There's no concrete formula to spell it all out. Taking stabs in the dark and always doing it wrong is beyond frustrating. So, whatever. Being branded as a flighty mess and shocking people when he's actually listening is better than a reputation for staring people down unwaveringly and creeping them out until they're the ones not listening. Okay, that approach still has its uses, but still.
All this is to say, Tony thinks he and Soldier will get along well in this area. Maybe it would be better if Tony could shut up for more than two seconds at a time, but that's just an unfortunate given with him.
"I know the answer to this is probably a resounding no," he starts, suddenly, and this is actually aimed at Soldier, "but I'd be a jerk if I didn't at least offer: if there's anything about that arm that's bothering you, I can fix it up for you." It doesn't really need saying which arm he means, but he gestures at the metal one with his chopsticks anyway. "If you know anything about maintenance or upkeep, I can give you some tools for the smaller stuff."
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His mouth’s feeling thick with saliva all of a sudden. HYDRA never gave him this much food and what was there, it definitely didn’t smell like this.
At least he vaguely remembers to cross his legs so he doesn’t risk kicking Stark underneath the coffee table. Friday’s last order had been to assist the man: kicking him in his crotch or his just-bandaged thigh seems counterproductive to those orders.
Stark tells him to dig in, like he knows what he’s looking at. The Asset can’t place the scents or the scrawl in black permanent marker on the containers, so he just does what he did in the shower: he picks the closest one. They eat in silence, which is surprising in that he would’ve expected Stark to run his mouth off like he usually does. But he doesn’t, splitting his attention between food and his phone, and the quiet is almost…the Winter Soldier wouldn’t say it’s a relief but he can focus on prodding the food with his chopsticks, on how it’s all kinds of different colors and textures and smells.
He doesn’t speak until he’s spoken to. When he is, the Asset glances up, his mouth full of some kind of marinated meat and flat noodle slippery with grease and if he first finishes chewing and swallowing, it’s not out of politeness but because it’s just hard to speak clearly with his mouth occupied.
“There’s a limited amount of maintenance I can do on it,” the Soldier, which is true. He wasn’t supposed to fuss with it, was supposed to sit there and stare straight ahead or at the floor while techs handled all that busy work. “It’s not malfunctioning yet.”
The Winter Soldier lets slip that “yet” without thinking about it. The food’s a more pressing distraction than if the cybernetic prosthetic starts acting up again, which it will because it eventually always does, and by now he’s already demolished his way through several takeout containers. Pulling another toward him, he peeks inside, and he’ll dig in without thinking to offer Tony some before he polishes that off too.
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As Soldier relays information about the arm like it's a mission report, Tony chews, considers, listens.
And, okay, look. He knows he should be more delicate about this, but he can't help himself, alright? Pushing buttons until someone breaks is what he's done his whole life, and all things engineering have been his special interest since he was, like, four. Combine the two? Yeah. Also, seriously, the Iron Man suit has how many Marks now? Tony couldn't stop improving things even if he had a gun to his head.
"But, okay, see-- it very might well be malfunctioning. Hydra's definition of malfunctioning could be a whole lot different than mine. I can see that it works, yeah, but is it optimal? Efficient? Is every intended function behaving as expected? Pretty important of a prosthesis: is it causing you pain? Because it shouldn't. Whether they wanted it to hurt, or it's a side effect of old tech and people less competent than I am, I don't know, but, still. If it's hurting or bothering you, it doesn't have to be.
"Things are different now. I want to give you an arm that's yours, not Hydra's."
To avoid eye contact, Tony looks down at his chopsticks and swirls them around in the almost empty container he's holding. If they're on the subject of things Tony could build for Soldier... It might as well be a good time to bring this up, no?
"And... I've been thinking. There's no way you can trust me or anyone until the trigger words are gone, yeah? But relying on what other people do and don't know is inefficient and cumbersome and it doesn't leave the power in your hands. If Hydra could build something over seventy years ago to program the words into you, I bet I could build something to take them out. If they don't work on you anymore, it doesn't matter who does and doesn't know them, right?" He shrugs one shoulder in a motion that could be described as bashful. "You should have the power to decide what you want to do with your life. I got my second chance, and you deserve one, too. What happened to you isn't even your fault, so it's a little bogus that it would be seen as a second chance, but... Can't be picky about public perception. I should know."
In truth, Tony probably won't ever forgive those responsible for what happened to his mom, and, hell, his dad, too, but it wasn't Soldier's fault. The very human part of him will probably always be bitter and hold Soldier with some blame and all those things, but as a whole, he's just another man out of time who had his autonomy taken from him. Maybe it's Steve that makes him want to do right by this man, maybe it's something else, but he does want to do right by Soldier. Fixing him up, right as rain, and giving him a place to stay, that's just what Tony does already. So what's one more person for his brood?
"But I understand that something like that requires a lot of trust-- no offense taken if you just want me to fuck off and leave you be. Just, ah, you know, something to think about."
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Assets don’t deserve anything.
The Winter Soldier sits there for a moment, unsure if it’s just his training kicking in or if it’s some safeguard implanted in his skull somewhere asserting itself. The next second those traitorous thoughts begin to slide away, fragmenting; the takeout box in front of him blurs until it snaps back into focus with a suddenness that throbs against his temples like the aftermath of a punch. Emptiness howls in his head to indicate something’s missing but when he pauses to dredge it back up, there’s just the void and then Stark talking about his prosthesis, Stark playing with his food, Stark talking too much but he always does that, that’s nothing out of the ordinary, so -
Blinking quickly, he gives himself a little shake and it’s like nothing happened; the Soldier goes back to eating and drinking with the same mechanical motions, and when he speaks up again, it’s like he didn’t hear half of what Tony said.
But apparently he’s allowed to think about the cybernetic arm.
“You can upgrade the arm,” he says. “But only if you focus on optimizing it, you work on top of the base frame and I can watch what you’re doing.”
As for whether the arm hurts, well, it is what it is. Maintenance usually has other things to worry about, plenty of other, more pressing repairs scheduled. Although…Stark’s made it clear that he runs things differently and from the glimpse he got down in the workshop, it almost seemed like he was tinkering for…fun? Just because he can? Could explain why he has all this free time to waste his energy thinking about the arm that had choked him just a few hours ago. The idea of not having that constant pulsing pain vibrating from where the prosthetic is socketed into his shoulder is a non-issue, though, and instead the Soldier focuses on something more important, his eyes slipping away from Tony’s face to fix on:
“Are you going to finish that?”
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If that didn't give away that something was wrong, completely avoiding the topic of removing the trigger words would've.
Kidnapping a guy and turning him into an assassinating object is bad enough, but putting in a failsafe to prevent the triggers from being removed in the event of his rescue? God. It makes logical sense, and that's what's so sickening about it. How anyone can see a person as no more than an object-- an Asset, well, no, Tony can't fathom that.
This certainly complicates things. He'll figure something out, though. He always does.
"Aye, aye, Soldier. I can do that. We'll get you right as rain in no time."
Tony expects the conversation to end there, but then Soldier asks him if he's going to finish what he's eating, presumably with the intent to finish it instead. Sure, the guy is probably just hungry, crazy metabolism and what not, but just the fact that he's asking, and that it's something Tony can provide, it sends butterflies kicking up a storm in his stomach. He doesn't eat much anyway, so Tony easily acquiesces. "Sure, buddy. Knock yourself out."
Soldier digging into the food (his food) makes the butterflies get worse.
Christ, Tony. Get a grip.
He sits around for some minutes longer, but without the excuse of food or showing Soldier around, Tony has no reason to stay. With a sigh, he stands, stretches and pops. "Back to the workshop with me." (He can already sense Friday's disapproval, but readily ignores it.) "Invitation's always open to you, but I can also just let you know when I finish the first blueprint if you don't want to wait around."
Tony doesn't expect an answer, so he doesn't wait around for one. "'Kay, nighty-night. Give me a holler if you need something."
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Without Stark rambling on and filling the silence with every and any thought running through his head, exhaustion finally hits the Soldier in this heavy weight draping across his shoulders and seeping through bone and muscles. For awhile he still paces a bit more throughout "his" floor as if he wants to keep moving, as if that'll make a difference - but eventually he's already established that it's too much space for one person, he's located all the glints of the CCTV cameras recessed into the ceilings and corners.
He runs out of things to do.
The Soldier wanders back into the bedroom to stare at the king-size bed with its silk sheets, a muscle in his jaw faintly ticking as he grits his teeth: he knows without even lying down to test it out that it's too soft, that he shouldn't fool himself into thinking it's okay to use the bed. After a second he opts for the floor, positioning himself in a corner where he has a good line of sight just in case, and curls on his side in a fetal position with his head pillowed by the unforgiving metal of his left arm. Exhaustion closes in, pressing down like a weight tolerance stress test on his body...
He jolts awake with a grunt, eyes flaring open to dawn's dim light filtering in through the windows. The sky outside swells with the gray underbellies of a storm rolling in from the river; he sees more than hears the lightning skittering across the clouds as he sits up, his neck and body sore, his head feeling a little better now that he's finally snatched a few hours of sleep -
Something beeps from the doorway.
It's one of Stark's drones, the crude looking ones that wheel around with a single manipulator arm and basic prongs. Not sure which one. Stark's named the things but they look the same to the Soldier. The robot spins in a little circle and then waggles its prongs at him, almost like it's beckoning him over. It does it a second and then a third time before he gets up, takes a step toward it and that earns him what sounds an awful lot like a pleased trill as it backs up a few more feet and then waves again.
He's been herded before, but having a robot coming to fetch him is new. As they get into the elevator, the robot tapping the button to Stark's workshop with its prong, he gets the inexplicable feeling it's...happy? A sidelong glance and he can see the arm bobbing up and down slightly, as if moving to some invisible song.
Stark doesn't seem to have left the workshop since last night. He has, however, made it to a couch shoved up against the wall, almost nestled between half-finished projects, one leg sprawling over the edge, the blanket he'd been using half kicked off. Without thinking about it, the Winter Soldier reaches down, picks up the blanket, and then drapes it back over Stark, telling himself he just doesn't want him to trip on it if he suddenly wakes up.
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Regardless of the condition, he knew immediately that whatever internal wiring was in there, had to go. Who knew what Hydra had going on (which, unfortunately, he wouldn't know for sure until he could get a scan in the workshop itself plus take a look inside), and it was seventy years old, to boot! Yeah, no. Tony absolutely could do better. He planned out roughly what he wanted, but it would get refined and adjusted based on the actual state of Soldier's arm.
Design wise, Tony didn't have much to say. Other than the star (which he was hoping he could talk Soldier into removing, but they'd just have to see), the aesthetics were actually quite nice. He'd see what he could do about what was likely annoying gaps in the finger joints and plates, but everything else seemed fine to stay. That seemed to be what Soldier wanted, also-- Tony was given permission to work off of the old one, not make one from scratch (yet?). No, what would probably be the biggest undergoing was the shoulder joint.
He'd read the files, he saw it on scans-- the thing was drilled into Soldier. Without undergoing major surgery, there was nothing Tony could do to remove it, if Soldier would even let him (and that would definitely be a no). Now, one thing Tony could do was dull or completely block any nerves that might be causing chronic pain. The rest of Soldier's pain, Tony assumes, is from shoddy craftsmanship and repair work. Maybe Tony couldn't remove the arm from being drilled into Soldier, but he could definitely build a better connection point. Hell, maybe he could build some kind of shoulder joint housing, so Soldier could remove the rest of the arm for some relief. And, definitely on the list: hopefully he can do something about the skin to metal attachment site, but that was another thing Tony would have to confirm in person.
After finishing everything in one sitting, he'd been bullied onto the couch to finally rest. (As per usual, Tony insisted he wasn't tired, and then promptly fell asleep within seconds.)
Tony could only get a few hours at a time before the nightmares hit, so, even to FRIDAY's displeasure, she always woke him before that point. This time it seemed to be by sending DUM-E to retrieve Soldier.
And, look. He had been a light sleeper before Afghanistan, okay? So of course as soon as Soldier is in his space, fixing his blanket, Tony wakes.
His fear prepares him for violence. Instead, he gets warmth.
There are barely there memories of his mother tucking him into bed when he was really, really young. So young, and so worn by time, that they're more of a whispy, foggy recollection than a clear image. It's painful, that he stopped getting that treatment so long ago, that he can't remember.
(The pain of not being able to clearly remember his mother's face, unless he's reminded by a picture, is a whole different beast.)
But it's not really about the act of being tucked in, it's about the care and consideration of it all. It stirs the same warmth in him as when Pepper would leave him coffee and a kiss on the forehead, back when he was still CEO of SI. It stirs the same warmth in him as when he and Rhodey were at MTI, and Rhodey would carry him to bed after he passed out-- be it at a movie or homework or whatever they were doing. Maybe even more so, because it's the fucking Winter Soldier. In the sleep haze, Tony doesn't even consider that it might all just be some mandatory obligation to him. It's just plain nice.
This will be mortifying later, but Tony's sleep deprived and just waking up, so instead of doing anything sensible, he's entirely too vulnerable for his liking. Which is to say: Tony gives the man a sleepily smile, and then grabs the nearest hand (the metal one, it so happens) that's adjusting the blanket, plonking his face into it.
"Good, you're still here," he mumbles. It says a lot about him that the uncomfortable, unwavering give of the metal is immensely comforting. "W's afraid you left again. Tower's been so quiet lately. Hate it."
(Yeah. Definitely mortifying. This is why he needs caffeine first thing in the morning.)
Tony stays there until Dum-E wheels his way over, a mug gripped in his claw. The little guy is finally getting the hang of the coffee machine-- FRIDAY only warns Tony of motor oil in the coffee once a week now! And since there's no such warning, Tony sits up and emerges from his blanket cocoon enough to start drinking from the mug.
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He starts to pull free. Stark squeezes - not hard, just a little - and he immediately stops trying to extricate his hand.
…Now what?
Unsure what he should do next with his hand trapped against Stark’s cheek, the Soldier glances around and then finally settles slowly into a crouch, his right hand resting loosely on his thigh. He doesn’t say anything and Stark doesn’t either, the other man’s eyelashes fluttering like he’s tempted to go back to sleep with a titanium hand as a pillow instead of the perfectly good one less than a foot away. Huffing a faint sound under his breath, the Winter Soldier’s about to prepare for the very real possibility that he’ll be stuck here when that robot from before rolls up wafting the scent of freshly brewed coffee from the mug in its manipulator.
He’ll remain crouched even when Stark finally frees his hand to reach for the coffee. The robot warbles, pivots, wheels off…and comes back with a second cup, filled almost to the brim. This time the machine comes to a stop in front of the Soldier. When he doesn’t reach for the mug, the robot beeps, insistently jolts forward, and almost slops hot coffee all over him.
The Winter Soldier’s forced to intercept it before the thing comes at him for a third try. He grips the handle in his right hand, cupping the mug’s bottom with his left. Ignoring the robot's triumphant trill, he turns toward Stark with that flat-eyed blue stare of his, his mouth pressed into that line.
“Why aren’t you sleeping in your bed?” he asks, because it doesn’t occur at all to start with even a polite good morning or how’d you sleep? “It’d be better for your leg.”
Insomnia? Or did the medicated gel wear off and it was too painful for Stark to make it to the elevator? The Soldier continues to stare at Stark, unblinking, searching for signs of pain in the skin around his eyes or if he’s gritting his jaw or maybe he’s holding his himself gingerly, favoring the stab wound in his thigh.
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(Dawning awareness of what he just did also horrifies Tony, but Soldier isn't talking about it, so he can just pretend it never happened. Yep. Yes.)
With a snort, Tony replies, "dust probably sleeps in my bed more than I do," into his mug. It's not really an answer, though, so Soldier keeps staring at him. The feeling of eyes on him makes Tony squirm, (well, no, not exactly. Tony is good at ignoring people staring at him, it's just that he knows Soldier won't eventually give up that unnerves him), and he cracks pretty quickly. "This time? I worked until I couldn't anymore and it's the nearest soft surface. FRIDAY gets grouchy when I pass out at my workbench."
A shrug, another sip of coffee, then turning the mug around and around in his palms so Tony has something to do with his hands. He speaks about it all so flippantly, like it's no big deal. "Insomnia. Fun perks of C-PTSD: nightmares. I dunno; I spent three months captive in a cave in Afghanistan-- beds haven't really felt the same, since."
Unfortunately, Soldier does have a point: a bed would definitely have been better for the leg. The more awake Tony is, the more he feels it. Plus, every other pain and ache, be it chronic or 'I sleep on a couch, and I'm not as young as I used to be' related. Some neck and shoulder and everywhere rolling results in some pretty sickening cracks, but it's the thigh that Tony ultimately rubs at with a slight grimace.
"I'm gonna need to call my physical therapist, aren't I?" The pinched 'I just swallowed a lemon' face says all it needs to about how he feels about that. "Whatevs. Fri, put it on my to-do for later."
Tony stands (on wobbly legs). "Okie-dokie. That's enough vulnerability for a lifetime, I think. C'mon, hot stuff, lemme show you what I cooked up for that arm of yours. I've got some questions for you."
The workshop has much more expansive hologram technology, so the interactive blueprint Tony pulls up is huge. More than life sized. He pulls it apart into multiple components, so Soldier can see more clearly what Tony plans to do externally and internally.
"It's your arm, so you can veto whatever you'd like. Would you be cool for some more in depth scans? I did the best I could with what I have, but I'd do better if I knew exactly what I was working with. Oh, and how do you feel about the star? Can we buff it out? Leave it blank, put something different there...? It, and the whole," vague hand gestures to the arm's whole shiny chrome, "make this thing kind of... anti inconspicuous. I get the whole point used to be that it wasn't, but I figured you might want differently. You're a pretty lowkey guy, and all."
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If it wasn’t for the Iron Man suit, he’d be almost painfully easy to kill as soon as he took it off.
…so why does he continue to put it on? It must make him a target and yet…
The Soldier quietly turns that over in his head as he obeys, following Tony’s limping figure deeper into the workshop as they wind their way around half-finished projects, slabs of metal and seemingly endless coils of wire in various sizes that Tony steps over without having to look down. He comes to a stop when Tony does; flick of his hand, an easy twist of his wrist and suddenly the air fills with ghostly images of holo schematics slowly turning in space.
Gazing up at it, his face awash with blue light that seems to erase the exhaustion lines etched in it, the Soldier supposes that looks…surprisingly accurate. He thinks. He knows basic repairs on the arm if it needs to be dealt with in the field, but anything more in-depth has always been left to the mechanics. For awhile he doesn’t say anything, just looks at the image of the cybernetic arm pulled apart while distantly aware that it’s still hanging at his side at the same time, heavy, humming quietly into the socket where it meets his shoulder.
Tony’s questions drag him back. His head tilts down, eyes searching out the other man as he levels a cool, flinty stare at him.
“Scans are fine,” the Asset says after thinking about it. “Make it lighter. All that matters is you increase its efficiency and remove any obsolete tech that could be slowing me down. Leave the star.”
He says it as if it’s his idea and maybe he even believes it because he’s been made to believe it. But that star marks the arm - and by extension, him - as HYDRA’s property and he instinctively balks at the idea of changing it when it’s always been there and always will. Suddenly aware he’s still cupping the coffee, the Winter Soldier lifts it as he gazes at Tony. For a second surprise - maybe even pleasure - flits across his face as he inhales the scent of roasted coffee beans. It smells…fresh. Not the stale stuff they used to have when he was quivering in the chair and there was something wrong with the halo and they were arguing about it over his head, pissed they had to work late into the night.
It’s his first cup of coffee since…he doesn’t know. But the Soldier sips it, pauses, and now he’s staring at the mug with a frown, his eyes glistening almost as if there’s the start of involuntary tears brimming.
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(Keeping the star makes Tony frown in this scrunchy, pouty way of his-- not dissimilar to a child when they don't get what they want-- but he doesn't verbally object. You can't exactly expect Soldier to shake off the effects of the programming within a day, but Tony can still be grumbly about it.)
Since he has to wait for the scans to finish before he can do anything, Tony's attention span starts to itch for something else to keep it occupied. So of course his eyes skip around the room, and land back on Solider contemplating his coffee mug. And then Tony sees the tears, and-- fuck, what does he do?
Calling attention to it seems like a recipe for disaster. A gentle breeze would probably have Soldier retreating and pulling away, so like hell is Tony going to shine a spotlight directly onto him. The gut reaction he has is to just ignore it, but that's not what Tony really wants to do-- he's self aware enough to know that it's just a fear response, being anxious avoidant as usual.
The vow to avoid being vulnerable and honest was still hot off the press, was Tony seriously considering doing it again? But what else could he do?
(Begrudgingly, it was nice. Tony was the type of guy to dump and run, and talking with Soldier was sort of like talking to a brick wall. Well-- okay, that sounds meaner than he meant it. There's none of the pity eyes or sympathy frowns, is what he means-- which just makes Tony's skin prickle and make the urge to escape worse.)
"Good, isn't it?" Tony doesn't make eye contact, and it's only partly for Soldier's sake. It's easier to fake a casualness he doesn't feel, this way. "Admittedly I've always been a coffee snob, but I figure: 'hey, you only live once, why skimp on the good stuff?' It's the little things in life."
Touch is undoubtedly still risky, but Tony's stupid little touch starved hindbrain is in overdrive after earlier, so he can't help himself. He steps up next to Soldier (with his own mug in hand) and leans against the guy-- still not making eye contact. While taking some of the weight off his leg is nice, and Tony will absolutely use it as an excuse if asked, that's exactly what it feels like: an excuse. Taking weight off your leg doesn't mean you need to lay your head on someone's shoulder, but here he is.
God, age is making him soft. Stark men are made of iron-- all of them except Tony, that is.
(But being made of iron would mean he wouldn't get to feel the press of another against him, or their body heat, or the warmth of coffee through a ceramic mug, so maybe being flesh and blood isn't so bad.)
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It smells different, better, somehow, than what he’d picked up in HYDRA. Those stolen snatches of scent he wasn’t supposed to register and file away because they’re irrelevant to assignments or maintenance. Even so, the taste feels familiar as it floods across his tongue, the mug warm against his hand. Even the steam curling up feels…
It’s enough that when Tony comes up to him - close, maybe too close considering how poorly yesterday started out - the Soldier doesn’t step back, shoot a flat-eyed stare or shove him so he’ll have more clearance. There’s a moment where he stiffens at the sudden touch…but it’s slow, not too bad, a brush of the shoulders that almost feels as familiar as the taste of coffee warming his body. A difference in body size: the man he’d leaned up again was bigger than Stark, broader.
The Soldier doesn’t jerk away.
In fact, he stands right where he is, seemingly allowing (or, at least, tolerating), Tony’s presence. Maybe it’s because he’s not chattering up a storm, overwhelming him with new ideas about the arm improvements or going on about this man he’s supposed to be, this “Bucky Barnes”. He isn’t even making him struggle his way through a simple decision like what body wash to use of a choice from several. They’re just existing in close proximity.
In this crowded, messy workroom without guards or handlers or even the cries of prisoners echoing down concrete halls and the Soldier’s startled to realize this isn’t…bad.
He doesn’t bump back, exactly. But as he steals another sip of coffee, a part of him still surprised he’s allowed a cup of his own, he’ll let Stark lean against him all he wants. He’ll even let the other man rest his head against his shoulder.
They’ll stand there for awhile, silent, and the Soldier’s almost done with his coffee, glancing down at its reduced levels with dull alarm.
“...can I have more?” he surprises himself by daring to ask. An asset shouldn’t ask for anything, he knows that’s standard protocol. His voice still creaks out, his head tilting a little so he can glance down at Stark’s dark head resting against his shoulder.
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Pulling away is hard, because Tony knows once he does, he won't be able to cozy back up again. And, lo and behold, stepping away breaks the little safety bubble that had formed around them.
(But better sooner rather than later, ripping off the bandaid and all that. It's not like he could stay there forever.)
Tony takes the mug from Soldier with a smile (which, unbeknownst to him, comes off much more gentle than intended-- he'd wanted to break any potential awkwardness by being his usual lighthearted I-don't-take-things-too-seriously self). Now that he can see Soldier again, the guy seems... a little less tense, maybe? It's difficult for Tony to pinpoint exactly, but there is definitely a small improvement from yesterday.
If this whole situation had a progress bar, they'd maybe ticked up to 1%. Which doesn't sound encouraging, but even the slowest of processes eventually got there in the end.
By the time the second round of coffee is ready, FRIDAY is done with the scans. (She probably finished them a while ago, but Tony's glad she had the tact not to interrupt the... moment? Was it a moment? That they were having. ((Plus, his AI learning what tact is!)) Tony hands Soldier his mug before re-situating back at the workbench.
"M'kay, let's see what we've got here--"
Any ease and/or good mood Tony has evaporates the second he sets his eyes on Soldier's scans.
It's... bad. Bad doesn't even begin to describe it. So monumentally bad that even Tony has to take at least ten minutes cataloging each and every problem.
"I..." Tony wipes a tired and disbelieving hand over his mouth. (What has his face even been doing this whole time? Hopefully nothing that makes Soldier pull away again. They'd only just started making progress.) "I'm shocked this thing even works at all."
If FRIDAY weren't there to assist him, who knows how long it would've taken him to decipher the tangled maze of the wiring. Sorting through all of it is going to be a nightmare. But it has to be done. He can't leave wiring that looks like this in-- frayed and split and rusting, there's so much rust in this arm that Tony could swim in it. Some of the wiring is knotted and tied around other wires, too. There's no way any of it can be salvaged. If only it could be as easy as ripping it all out, but that's the downside when it comes to prosthetics with a neural link-- you have to tread carefully.
Designing better functioning parts was going to be the easiest part, honestly. And seeing some of the, frankly, painful looking mechanisms that make up this arm? Yeah, uh... Pretty much anything else would be an improvement (both for function and comfort).
"Do you, uh-- do you want me to tell you everything that's wrong, or should I just... go ahead and fix it?"
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A silence falls over the lab. The Soldier settles down where there’s just enough space in the junk and half-finished projects that he can wedge himself down and sit. For a while he retreats into the heady smell of the coffee cupped in his hands, a part of him feeling like he’s somehow stealing these snatches of scent and taste to file away in a secret place in his mind, just in case, in the event they’re taken from him. Maybe not by Stark, given how he’s acted so far, but there’s always the possibility a HYDRA retrieval squad comes.
Stark could still get caught by surprise if he’s out of the Iron Man suit, after all. The robots like DUM-E hardly seem combat capable. The only question would be how effective FRIDAY is at fortification.
The Soldier’s almost finished with his second cup, resorting to rationing out those last sips out of habit, when Stark speaks up again.
“Fix it,” the Soldier says, simply, still gazing into his dwindling coffee cup, more concerned with that than the metal arm bolted to his shoulder, the pain he’s grown used to as a kind of constant. “I’m not involved in maintenance, so it would be a waste of both our time to go into additional detail.”
There’s basic field repairs and then there’s the real maintenance, the kind that would take several teams multiple shifts over multiple days. Then again, none of them were Tony Stark.
Productive results matter and the Winter Soldier’s been trained to be primarily goal-oriented. In short, Stark going onto the nitty gritty details of what, exactly, is wrong with HYDRA’s titanium prosthesis - both a marvel of engineering and held together with duct tape and Soviet prayers from the 1970s - will just fall on deaf ears. The Soldier wouldn’t understand what he’s talking about, anyway.
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Engineering and robotics and inventing and everything in between is Tony's... is there even a word for it? The fact that you can't think of any of those things without thinking of him (or the Stark name in general), says a lot more than a word probably could. Anyway, it's Tony's life and livelihood, it's his hobby and special interest-- you could even go as far as saying it's his everything. So of course, as irrational as it may be, he can't help but feel like this is somehow his fault. Like he's somehow letting Soldier down. Tony wasn't even alive when Bucky Barnes was presumed dead, for fuck's sake! It's ridiculous! But just saying so doesn't automatically make the feeling go poof!
It's fine. He'll fix this. Soldier will be as good as new. Tony will give him an arm so good that it'll never let him down again.
"Fix it, it is," Tony says. Like usual, and especially right now, he shoves that world weary feeling down as far as it'll go. At the very least, sinking his teeth in deep into a new project feels like coming home.
First tackling everything that can be done before he needs to drag Soldier in for the hands on treatment seems like the smartest idea, so that's where Tony starts. It's the usual blur of time, orders to FRIDAY, back and forth discussions and calculations with her, holograph blueprints and tinkering, soldering irons and clanging metal. Oh, and of course, Tony's usual taste in music. He's not blaring it quite as loud as he usually does (and it's definitely not for Soldier's sake, pfft, that would be ridiculous), but it's enough, and it all helps him sink into that headspace where hours feel like seconds.
Tony isn't worried about Soldier's wellbeing-- he already made sure FRIDAY would supply him with enough food and/or takeout suited for his metabolism, and DUM-E should certainly adore having a patron he can supply bottomless coffee to. (Tony would be jealous of the all you can drink coffee buffet, but he sort of enjoys things like being alive and his heart not jackrabbiting out of his ribcage, so.) He's plenty free to dive deep.
An indeterminable amount of time later, Tony snaps back into present awareness. Like a bubble that's been blown into the air, and it finally makes contact with the asphalt, a large and jarring, but silent, pop. All Tony can do is stare and blink owlishly for a beat, then two. It's sort of like watching a movie where the visuals and audio are out of sync-- it's hard for his brain to process the rushing back of all physical (and emotional) sensation, like hunger and exhaustion and pain (oh, right, stab wound in the thigh).
Usually FRIDAY is the one who snaps him out of an engineering binge, but Tony doesn't hear her telling him things like the date and time or how many emails he needs to respond to.
Oh. To his right is... another mug. A warm mug. And food. Tony swallows thickly, and it's not because of a sixth sense awareness pinging him about a certain new resident assassin looming directly behind him.
(There was a time, when this tower was what you would call a home. Tony would come up from his binges to meals and leftovers waiting for him, or sometimes to the people who came to deliver them. Bruce's shy and rueful smiles, Clint's endless supply of pizza boxes and, dare Tony say, mother henning. Natasha cared too, in her own way, and so did Thor when he was around to. Steve... Tony tries especially not to think about Steve, but at least the food offerings from him were easy to stomach. It's hard to feel like you're being pitied when it's from a man who grew up during the Depression.)
And here, now, Soldier is unintentionally following in their footsteps. Or maybe FRIDAY told him to do it, but even then-- scraps are better than nothing.
Thunking his head backwards against Soldier's sturdy torso, Tony sighs. He rubs at his face and just hides in his hands for a long few moments. It's absolutely necessary, or else he'd be liable to lashing out or, God forbid, crying.
For a guy called the 'Winter' Soldier, he's shockingly warm, Tony's traitorous brain supplies. Thankfully he does not say that out loud.
"If FRI is making you do nanny duty, I must've been out of it for a while." He stifles a yawn into his fist. "You've got the time, Soldier? If it's even still the same day."
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Under normal circumstances it would, except FRIDAY provides him with a map shortly after Stark settles down to work on the prosthetic arm. Or, more precisely, the AI sends one of Stark’s low-tech drones to roll up with a tablet clenched in its manipulator claw, beeping, and then settling for bodily poking the Winter Soldier in the hip until he takes it. The uploaded map’s probably edited knowing he’ll be looking at it. Flicking through it, learning how to use the tablet, and it confirms what he already knows: the tower is a maze and there’s no feasible escape without FRIDAY knowing about it.
Aside from that, no new orders.
Unsure what to do without those, the Soldier wanders. A few times he makes it back to Stark’s workshop and while the…mess is still there, all the trip hazards that are probably more dangerous to the man than his scalpel ever was, the music volume blaring through the speakers is noticeably lower than before, just loud instead of bone-shaking, head-pounding loud. Even at a lower, more reasonable volume the music’s still somehow grating, the Soldier slipping out after a few minutes, unaware that he might just be missing something more sedate like the Andrew Sisters or the Ink Spots instead of another round of A/C’s guitar riffs.
But Stark holes up in his workshop long enough that the Soldier returns, back music or no music, because standing orders were to assist him and he can’t assist him if the man worked himself into a coma because he forgot about eating and drinking. He isn’t sure where the food comes from - delivery again, maybe - but FRIDAY’s voice had filtered through the walls, through everywhere, seemingly without a source, and the AI had requested that he make sure Stark ate. Not exactly an order.
Might as well be.
It’s easy to sneak up on Stark, like every other time. The Soldier walks in with the delivery, has time to set it down and retrieve a streaming mug from DUM-E and there's time to set that down too. In fact, he can stand right behind Stark’s chair, easily within arm’s reach that he could’ve snapped his neck or slipped a knife between his ribs, and still Stark doesn’t seem to register he’s there.
The Soldier doesn’t move when Stark’s head shifts and then bumps into the firm planes of his stomach.
“It’s 2:34 pm,” the Soldier says quietly. “Over twenty four hours. You should take a break.”
He doesn’t move away. Not at first. Leaning over and minding Stark’s head, the Soldier reaches for the mug and then maneuvers it into Stark’s hands with surprisingly gentle care, his palms briefly fitting over the back of the other man’s hands.
“Drink. Then eat. You can give a status report while you’re doing that.”