There is a knock on the door and James sets down the paint brush.
He is allowed to have the door shut now. Last night when they returned to the tower, Sam had asked him to keep it open. James thinks that either Romanoff or Barton told Sam about the cigarette because this morning they took away everything in his room with a sharp edge, as well as replacing the razor in the bathroom with an electric one. After that, they said he could close the door. He is not sure what difference it made—JARVIS can see him whether or not the door is shut—but it put them at ease, so he agreed.
Another knock. Dum-E chirps, JARVIS pauses the song that was playing, and James stands. It can't be Steve. Steve will not be home until tonight, and from what James has been told about Steve lectures, they do not begin with knocking.
Stark is in the hallway and he is speaking before the door is open more than a crack. "Hey 3PO, JARVIS tells me Dum—what."
James waits for elaboration. Stark is speechless. It is a look James cannot recall seeing on him before. It is also funny.
"I," Stark manages after twenty seconds. The word sounds raw, as though he has been recently strangled. "What the hell did you do to your hair?"
"It's dyed." Also bleached, because yesterday when he'd asked for dye Romanoff had said his hair was too dark for it to show well. While Barton and Sam were making the room safe this morning, Romanoff had led him to the bathroom to put stinging chemicals and foil on his hair. But the effects of the bleach are hidden by the dye, so he doesn't mention it.
"I can see that, Sailor Mercury." Stark's voice is normal again; the man recovers quickly. "Why is it blue?"
"I like blue." James also likes green, but Romanoff had called that overkill. The nails of his right hand are green now as a compromise.
Stark shakes his head. "When Cap sees this you're in for such a—"
"Lecture?"
"Reckoning."
James is not sure why changing the color of his hair would be a worse transgression than attempting to return to Steve's enemies. But he's not sure of a lot of things. "Would a piercing have been better?" he asks. Barton had suggested that last night, but he had laughed right after so James had dismissed it as humor.
That dumbfounded look is back on Stark's face, but his recovery time has improved. His eyes dart up and down James's body and then close as he shakes his head. "And, uh, just what would you pierce, Prince Albert?"
James taps the side of his nose. Without context, he remembers a woman with a stud in that spot. It had sparkled when the light caught it. In the room behind him, he can hear Dum-E whirring around.
"Yeah," Stark says. "Maybe wait to run that past Captain Overprotective so he won't kill us all for letting his kid go wild." He resumes staring at James's hair. "Actually, too late."
He likely would not go through with a piercing. It would make the affected area vulnerable to grabbing or tearing in combat, and James thinks his skin would heal around the jewelry rapidly. "What did you need?"
"I was in my lab trying to, you know, science, and my robot was missing," Stark says. "JARVIS tells me that he's with you."
"He is." Dum-E rolls to a stop behind James as he speaks, clicking and trilling and opening the door wider.
Stark has gone silent once more.
"We were painting," James says. Stark has probably gathered that from the white stars covering the robot from wheels to claw, but he feels he must say something.
Stark opens his mouth and closes it again.
"I was going to paint three stars," James adds, "but he insisted on fifty-six."
There is a sound in Stark's throat that might have become words had he not choked on it.
"You're angry?" James guesses. His stance shifts, ready to shield Dum-E with his body should it prove necessary.
"I'm apoplectic," Stark says. "I can't even see straight, I'm—"
"I will take whatever punishment you want to inflict, Howard. But I cannot let harm come to my friend." James swallows, metal hand tensing on the doorknob. "I'm sorry."
Stark is giving him an even stranger look than when he'd seen the newly dyed hair. "What?"
"You can't decommission him or melt him into scrap or de…def...defen—"
"Defenestrate?"
"Yes, that. I will not allow it." He tries to sound as though he has the authority to allow anything.
"I would never." Stark's voice sounds angrier at that than it had at the stars. Angry and wounded?
"You have said eight times you plan to decommission him." He thinks back, counting in his mind. "That doesn't count specifics. Twice you said melting, once you said a hat rack, once donation to an elementary science fair, three times—"
"I wouldn't actually do it." Stark shakes his head, then buries it in his hands. "Insults aren't always serious. They can be terms of endearment, all right?"
He thinks of Bucky Barnes calling Steve dumb. "They can?"
Stark raises his head. "Yeah."
"Oh." James is not sure how to process that, so he sets it aside for now. He feels the need to apologize although he thinks it should be Dum-E's choice whether or not he's covered in stars. "Howard, I—"
"And another thing," Stark says. He still looks wounded. "My name isn't Howard, okay? It's Tony."
"But they called you Howard at the Expo." James can remember it suddenly, vividly. "With the Cadillac."
"That was my father," Stark says. "Do you have any idea how old I'd have to be to—"
James looks at the man. He and Steve are both in their nineties.
"Okay, point. But not everyone's been frozen in ice, Snow White. I'd look a hell of a lot older if I were my father."
"I thought you maybe had…" He can't think of the term for the procedure. "Face surgery."
Stark's face goes from gaping to maybe angry to possibly amused and then back to wounded very fast. "I'm Tony Stark. My father was Howard Stark. My dead father. My very dead father that y—that didn't even look all that much like me, facial hair aside."
"Tony," James repeats.
"Yeah. Tony."
"I'm sorry your father is dead, Tony." It must have been the wrong thing to say because Tony goes stiff and looks away and makes another choking sound.
"Don't worry about it," he says after a long time. "Just…any other misconceptions I should clear up?"
"What's a disco stick?" James asks.
Tony no longer looks wounded. He looks the way James imagines his own face looks when he tries to comprehend things. "The hell?"
Without being prompted, JARVIS resumes the song that had paused when Tony knocked. It is a type of music called dance pop with a familiar woman's voice. "Disco stick," James repeats as the woman sings the phrase. "What does it mean?"
"It means you have terrible taste, Coraline."
It is night when Steve returns. He does not come straight to James; first Sam goes to meet him and then Barton and Romanoff are called out of the room. James supposes that their lectures—or punishments, or both—are different than his own. He is not sure how group reprimands work; as the asset, he was dealt with separately from the strike team.
He sits in one of the tower's common rooms, adrenaline in his stomach. It is the same room where he'd petted Lucky but there is no dog to provide a source of comfort now. James has no idea what a lecture entails; HYDRA never lectured that he can remember. They preferred corporal punishments. Steve won't hit him, he knows that, but James tried to run away. He lied. And Barton and Romanoff may be telling Steve how awful Bucky Barnes was.
What if Steve will not want him around anymore? What if Steve cannot trust him now that he's been dishonest? Steve never lies. How can he believe that James will improve as a person if James is already a proven liar?
He doesn't hear Steve enter because Steve does not make a sound, but he can sense his presence all the same. James turns, struggling not to stare at the floor.
He cannot read Steve's face.
"It grows out," James says, thinking of his hair and Tony's response to it.
"We need to talk," Steve says. He cannot read Steve's voice either.
James stands, reaches into his pocket. "Wait." If he is about to be cast out, he wants to make sure this is taken care of first. He walks to Steve, offering a thin silver chain. An oval pendant hangs from it; on the pendant is the image of a woman with her hands held out, light streaming from her fingers. She stands on a globe, crushing a snake under her heel. "This is yours."
Steve takes it, brow furrowed. "Why—"
"I think you're Catholic? Or were." James shrugs. "There was a big church in DC, by the hospital."
Steve flinches at that and James rushes to finish before he can be thrown out.
"They sold things. The lady who worked there, she said if you wear this, you go to heaven. I think you should go to heaven, someday. I think you deserve it."
Steve is quiet for a long time, maybe as long as Tony was when James apologized about his father before. His mouth begins to form words and stops several times before he speaks. "Where's yours?"
"Mine's different." He taps at where it lays under his shirt, beside his dog tags. His is of a man, someone named Jude.
"C'mere," Steve says, and then he is hugging James tight. It doesn't seem like a punishment. After several minutes, James shifts his arms in Steve's hold enough to hug back. He thinks he will not mind if this gesture continues all night.
But it doesn't, because Steve pulls away. "We still need to talk, Buck."
"All right." Maybe there will be hugs after the lecture. He doubts it, but his expectations have been so frequently subverted as of late that he dares to hope.
A/N: 3PO, or Threepio, is the shortened name of C3PO, the droid from Star Wars.
Sailor Mercury of the anime Sailor Moon has blue hair. Yes, that does imply that Tony's watched it. Hey, if Bruce Wayne's seen Sailor Moon (I am not joking that is comics canon) why not Tony?
Coraline is the titular character of the novel by Neil Gaiman. In the film adaptation, she has hair dyed blue.
A Prince Albert piercing is a genital piercing. The memory of a woman with a nose piercing isn't meant to be anyone in particular – I figure that at some point over the last century, the odds are he's seen at least a few facial piercings.
The song in question is Lady Gaga's LoveGame, (in)famous for the lyrics "Let's have some fun this beat is sick/I wanna take a ride on your disco stick."
The church/store that James is referring to is the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC. The necklace he bought for Steve is a Miraculous Medal. There is a long history behind it, but to summarize: in 1830 Saint Catherine Labouré had visions of the Virgin Mary, who showed her the image of the medal and tasked her with having it made, saying that those who wear the medal will receive special graces. There is a belief not officially endorsed by the Catholic Church that anyone who wears it in faith and devotion will go to heaven.
Saint Jude is the patron saint of lost causes.