Hey, guys! This is my first one-shot, so let me know what you think! I might end up doing more with this if y'all like it, so let me know!
Steve was an idiot.
Bucky blinked owlishly. He knew he probably looked like an idiot, but he couldn't be bothered to care. But maybe he was overreacting-maybe he'd misunderstood what the other man was saying. "I'm sorry-what?" Maybe he could get him to repeat himself, and it wouldn't be what Bucky had thought that he'd said.
"I said that-" Clint stopped himself short, cocked his head to the side. He rocked back on his heels, finally, and gasped in realization. "Oh! That's what Tasha meant that I shouldn't tell you." He threw his hands out in front of him in a placating gesture. "I wasn't supposed to tell you that."
"Could you just..." His head swimming, but he needed to hear it again. What were the words for that? "What did you just say?"
Before answering, the archer took a swig of the beer in his left hand. "I said that I wasn't supposed to tell you-"
"Yeah, yeah, I got that. What weren't you supposed to tell me?" Bucky was being rude, but he didn't care. If he'd heard Clint right, then...
I'm going to kick Steve's-
The door behind him opened (not with a squeak-this was a house owned and operated by Tony Stark, after all-but with a whoosh-ing noise) but there were no footsteps to be heard. Natasha. She was the only one who could walk so silently, save for himself, and Clint's eyes were widening dramatically (in slow motion-before he knew the man very well, he'd tense up whenever this happened, thinking that Clint could see some threat appear over his shoulder. After a while, though, he stopped bothering. Clint only ever got the comically afraid look that he currently wore on his face when it was Tasha that he'd crossed, usually by way of a prank gone wrong).
He didn't look over to see her sit down beside him, but he was still sure that it was her. The couch didn't even dip beneath her weight. There was a sucking sound-something through a straw. Definitely the red-head, he knew, and one of those foamy lattes that she loved.
"Tasha," Clint said, hands flying out again. "It's not what it looks like."
Bucky had to know what she thought it looked like. He turned to see her face and found her eyes glancing back and forth between himself and Clint, the cards that had fallen from Bucky's hands in his surprise, the beer sitting in front of Clint, and the stack of cards sitting next to it.
"What did you do?" she groaned. Apparently, this happened often enough that their back-and-forth didn't require a whole lot of forethought, because the red-head didn't bother looking at the archer as she walked around to the front of the couch. She took a sip of the drink in her hand (a latte, as he'd suspected) and threw herself backwards. Only once her head was resting on the arm of the couch, her legs tucked up behind her, her drink safely on the floor, next to the nearest to her of the coffee table's legs, did she return her steely gaze to Clint. "Didn't I tell you not to do anything stupid while I went to Starbucks?"
For a moment, Bucky was reminded of the back-and-forth between the two assassins was familiar, too-he remembered banter of his own, with a smaller, blonder Steve, and then a bigger, taller superhero. Of the words he'd said to Steve before he'd shipped out, all those years before: "Don't do anything stupid until I get back," he'd ordered him, all those years (an entire lifetime) ago.
The dark-haired man nearly snorted. Yeah, because he kept to that so well.
According to Clint, Steve had miserably failed at not-doing-anything-stupid.
Under the red-haired assassin's gaze, the archer snatched his beer from the table. Before she could tell him not to, he put it to his lips and tipped his head backwards, the bottle up. Guzzled what was left of it in one go.
"I may"-both hands, even the empty beer bottle, which seemed one decent jostle from flying out of Clint's hand, flew forward again-"or may not have told him"-belch-"something kind of"-he slammed the newly empty bottle onto the table where it had been a moment before-"stupid."
Bucky couldn't take it anymore. Even though Tasha had already opened her mouth to respond (read: scold Clint, threaten him within inches of his life, and then look to the heavens and dramatically yell "Why?" loud enough for Pepper to come running downstairs to see what the problem was-it had happened more than once, from what Bucky understood, even if he'd only seen it one time), he demanded, "Did Steve really crash a plane into the Antarctic?"
The red-head's eyes widened. She let out an inhuman shriek. Almost so quickly that Bucky couldn't keep up with her, she was springing off the couch and over the table and throwing herself at Clint.
I think we're past the dramatic yelling and "Why?" part-but we might still need Pepper. He did not want to break up a fight between the other two.
"You weren't supposed to tell him!"
The sound of her body slamming into the archer's never reached the other man's ears. Bucky did a double-take before realizing that Clint had, having anticipated this move, rolled over the back of the couch that he'd been sitting on. She had landed on the exact spot where he'd been sitting seconds before, knees pressing the cushions down and chest pressed against the back of the couch. Her arms were reaching down as if to pull Clint back up and into the sitting area with her bare hands.
The dark-haired man knew that she was more than capable of doing this, too. That only made it more bizarre, for some reason.
"Who wasn't supposed to tell who what?"
Bucky whipped around, Tasha sprang to a standing position and turned, and Clint jumped up to his feet, to find Steve standing just behind Bucky's couch. It appeared that none of them had heard the whoosh-ing of the door, so wrapped up as they'd been in whatever it was that was going on (he wasn't sure what to call it-Natasha and Clint trying to kill each other? Natasha trying to kill Clint? Bucky watching as it happened?)
"Well, if it isn't the man of the hour," the archer chuckled. He caught sight of the Look on Tasha's face-murder in her eyes, lips pressed together-and the one on Bucky's-shock, disbelief, and anger warring for control-and proceeded to laughing so hard that he had to lean on the couch for support.
Steve was just confused. "What's going on in here?" He took stock of Bucky's half-full beer and Clint's newly empty one on opposite sides of the table, the cards neatly stacked on Clint's side of the table, and the cards dropped haphazardly next to Bucky's drink. "Is something wrong?" His eyes locked squarely on the side of Bucky's face as he spoke.
"You tell me," he shot back. He adjusted his stance so that he was staring directly at Steve, feet planted like he was gearing up for a fight. The dark-haired man was suddenly filled with rage, something he hadn't felt since the just after the helicarrier, when everything had come rushing back all at once, and he'd realized Steve was about to die in order to avoid knocking his lights out (after Bucky had actually shot him) "Did you actually crash a plane into the Antarctic?"
To his credit (or perhaps against-he really looked like he hadn't intended on Bucky finding out about this particular misadventure of his), Steve blanched at the question. "The Tesseract was on board," Steve said-not a clear answer, but better than nothing. When Bucky said nothing in response (but continued glaring), the blonde raked a hand through his hair and rambled on. "I had to do something-that power didn't belong in anyone's hands."
"Yeah, sure, you had to do something." His voice was loud, too loud, and he was being harsh-he knew that he was being awful, but he couldn't seem to stop himself, because why would Steve have done something so stupid?. "You had to do the right thing, because that's what Captain America does!"
Steve's mouth was wide open, and Bucky's chest burned at the sight of the pain in his best friend's eyes. Behind him, Clint and Tasha were opening the window and climbing out of it-according to Tasha, they had a pulley system that they used to scale that side of the building for quick exits, and it seemed that they'd found a good reason to use it.
They probably didn't want to be around for the shouting match.
But as soon as the window dropped shut behind them, and the room was empty save for the two of them, the fight drained out of Bucky. There were tears in his eyes, and all of the sudden, he was exhausted.
When he looked back at Steve, even through his tear-blurred vision, the blonde's eyes were red, too. And he still wouldn't argue with Bucky-he'd let him take out this anger on him, without complaint, without telling him that he was a stubborn moron himself and calling him on his B.S.
The fire in Bucky's stomach threatened to rekindle at the thought, but he forced himself to calm down. Dragged both hands over his face. Took a deep breath.
After another minute, he looked back up at Steve and said, his voice barely a whisper, "You don't just get to... You could've died, Steve. You would've, without the serum."
The blonde man was silent for a minute. Bucky took the time to absorb what the last eighty years had done to them-Bucky had been the tall one, the broad-shouldered one, and Steve had been shorter and struggled to breathe for eight straight months out of every year. Now, Steve had an inch and a half on Bucky and a couple of pounds to boot.
When he spoke again, Bucky wasn't expecting it.
"I-I didn't know what to do, Buck." His voice broke more than once. Each time was like a punch to the stomach for Bucky. "Look, I-I'd never thought that I would have to do it without you, and I wasn't ready for it."
Steve staggered towards Bucky a step, and Bucky met him halfway. It was good that they were both super-soldiers, because rib-crushing hugs would've been much more difficult if one of them wasn't.
"You don't have to do it without me now, you stupid punk." The words were on the tip of Bucky's tongue, and they felt right, so he didn't stop himself from saying them. "I'm with you 'til the end of the line."
The blonde playfully groaned, squeezing his best friend a little bit tighter. "Does that mean I'm stuck with you?"
"'Til the end of the line, you punk." Bucky (playfully) shoved him away, laughed, "Stuck with me? I'm a pleasure to be around, I'll have you know."
Steve's muttered response was lost in a heaving breath as they tackled each other and rolled to the floor. A few minutes later, when they managed to knock over the coffee table in their wrestling around, Bucky was glad to notice that Natasha had been smart enough to take her latte with her-it was one less mess for them to clean up.
Both of them groaned aloud when they heard a faint click, though, because they were sure that Natasha had gotten herself into some ungodly place to take a picture of them. They straightened up at the same time to see where it came from. Their only response came from a warm, British, slightly robotic voice: "My deepest apologies, gentlemen. Mr. Stark and Mrs. Potts needed something for the Christmas cards."
"JARVIS!"
-/-
"Sir, Mrs. Potts, I have found the perfect photo for your annual Christmas cards," JARVIS said, the lilt to the not-quite-robotic voice telling Tony all he needed to know: it probably would never make it on to Pepper's Christmas cards, but it would certainly be good for a laugh.
"Sure thing, J, why don't you put it onto the monitor on the left."
Pepper's eyebrows nearly flew up into her hairline when Tony said nothing else. She crossed the room to stand beside him and see the photo for herself.
It took a few seconds, but a photo appeared on the screen, and the mug of coffee that Tony was holding nearly fell right out of his hand.
It was Steve and Bucky. They were sprawled out on the floor of the game room in the Common Floor that Stark had designated for team-building and generally hanging out. The room around them was a wreck—the coffee table was on its side, there was a spilled bottle of beer (broken) and what appeared to be another beer bottle, though it was empty (also broken), and a deck of cards was scattered across the mess. There had been a tray of cupcakes or something in the center of the table, Tony guessed, because there was a bit of ballerina-pink frosting on Steve's cheek.
Pepper pursed her lips. "That's… interesting."
Tony shook his head. It was going to be a little more of a hassle than he wanted to deal with to get the coffee table replaced and the carpet cleaned, but then again… Steve and Bucky looked happier than he'd ever seen them. Steve hadn't smiled at anyone like that since they'd started working together, and neither of the men in the photo had looked so relaxed or content since ten months before, when Steve had barged into the tower, half-dragging a half-conscious Bucky behind him.
In the photo, they were looking directly at each other, smiles wide and eyes bright. Tony decided that, because whatever had caused the mess had also caused that, that happiness for them, he wouldn't mind taking some time the next day to get the mess cleaned up.
"JARVIS, go ahead and set up a carpet cleaning appointment for tomorrow morning. And see if you can't put in an order for a new coffee table."
There were some whirls and dings on the monitor in front of them as the two instructions were carried out.
Pepper looked up at him, slid an arm around his waist. Her expression was knowing, her eyes a cross between pride and amusement. "Good choice, Tony."
"What are you talking about?"
She looked back at the picture for a moment, then glanced up at the speaker where JARVIS's voice came from. "I don't think we'll use it for the Christmas cards, JARVIS, but I have an idea." There was a devious glint in her eyes. "Is there a way to make that the desktop background for every computer in the Tower's network, JARVIS?"
"I can certainly make that happen, Mrs. Potts." JARVIS paused for a moment, and there was a click as the monitor switched back to the desktop. A few seconds later, the background changed, cropped and zoomed in so that the frosting on Steve's face was perfectly noticeable, so that the mussed hair in Bucky's face (which Sam would no doubt use as evidence for why Bucky should get a haircut when he saw the picture) was obvious as well. "As they say, your wish is my command."