Notes:
Warning: Adorable Tony and Bucky learning how to be *not* friends, shenanigans and of course the obligatory blank space analogy I can't help writing into everything.
-Stay hydrated, and no fighting for 24 hours. SM
-Yes Ma'am. JBB
Bucky's last note and Stone's had been removed from the fridge and no new reminders took their place. Once or twice a week Bucky returned to an empty gym, pounding his nightmares into dark leather and running through the checklist he'd created with Dr. Rob's guidance.
"My name is James Bucky Barnes, I served my country faithfully, I never served Hydra, they used me and that's not the same. The winter soldier is dead, Hydra is gone. I am not a machine. I am James Bucky Barnes; I can be a good man."
Every few weeks he would see the jeep pull into the parking area and he'd choose to make himself scarce. Sam would walk her out some hours later, sometimes joined by Clint if he was around and they'd stand around talking like old friends, slapping each other on the arm and laughing at some joke Bucky wouldn't hear. It was good. They were good for each other. Bucky just had to be good for Steve. And at the moment that was more than enough.
The first few therapy sessions hadn't daunted Steve, he'd acted as though this was another of those things he'd naturally excel at, but Bucky had known Steve before the serum, knew that same little Steve was still in there somewhere and helping him sort through the rubble wouldn't be as simple as an injection. Dr. Rob allowed Bucky to spend twenty minutes of every session talking through his attempts to help Steve, offering advice and correction when Bucky was going too far, reminding him that he knew what it felt like when everyone was just trying to fix him, reminding him to still be Steve's friend. And then they were back to Bucky's wounds, addressing his mindset on the world and his place in it, the things he'd endured. Every session ended with Bucky collecting the darts from around the room and taking one more tiny step forward into the truth. Into the future.
Through Steve and Tony's visit to the doc, they learned that the same VR that had sent Steve into that spiral may also be useful to unwind his trauma. Tony's visits to the therapist hadn't lasted beyond the first, but he was in daily communications with several of the leading psychiatrists in the field and they were brainstorming ways to integrate Stark tech with existing treatment options like EMDR. Steve had received the idea with skepticism but Bucky could see the lights on in Starks lab late at night when everyone else was asleep.
Hope was a beautiful and dangerous thing.
Bucky read everything he could find on the subject, starting with articles Rob sent him and then going deeper when Friday began sending him weekly collections of peer-reviewed studies. But Bucky wanted more than tests and theory, he wanted to see it happen. He watched Tony tinker from a shadowy corner of the otherwise glass walled hallway, wondering what made the man mutter to himself.
"You coming in or just gonna spy from the hall again tonight?" Tony said loudly, not looking up from the circuit board he was soldering on. "Biomechanical Barnes, I'm talking to you."
The door opened as Bucky approached it and he walked in quietly, circling the work bench to approach Tony from the front with his hands held out in a display of peace.
"Pull up a seat, but don't say anything. Not that that'll be a problem for you, hey? Actually-" Tony set the screwdriver shaped tool in a cradle and planted both hands on the table to look at his wary guest, the haze of half-mad brilliance glazing his eyes. "Talk. yeah, I need you to talk, I'm so darn tired of listening to my own voice, so take a look at this and tell me where I'm going wrong."
Bucky looked at the helmet, the wires sticking out of it and the circuit board, the digital representation of schematics he didn't know the first thing about and then at the scribbled notes on paper and the dozens of dried coffee rings marking every page.
"Water." He finally said, jerking Tony from his reverie.
"What? I must have dozed off- there's no way you're saying my design needs to also electrocute the wearer."
"No." Bucky shook his head and hazarded a smile. "How much coffee have you had?"
"What's that- you know what, fine, I'll humor you, maybe it'll get me out of this rut. Twelve, maybe thirteen."
"Have you eaten anything?"
"Yeah, of course I eat, what are you on about, I had… Lunch, I think… We had bagels for lunch right?"
"Breakfast. Lunch was tacos."
"I missed tacos? Again?" Tony said with a flash of anger, "Friday, I told you to remind me when tacos are on the menu.
"I did sir, you dismissed the alert three times."
"What? Why would I do that?"
Friday sounded incredibly offended for a computer, "would you like me to play back the lab recording?"
"No, no, that's fine." Tony said, slumping onto a stool and dragging his hands through his hair. He looked older than ever with the dark circles under his eyes and the slightly stretched look of his cheeks.
"You can't expect your Maserati to run on diesel fuel." Bucky ventured quietly, making his point in a language he thought Tony would appreciate.
"What, you're a gearhead now? When did that happen?"
"Steve never told you I worked in my dad's car garage growing up?"
"No, he didn't. Wait! you were the guy, the friend who helped him fix up the bike he found at the dump. That was you! Oh, its all coming together… and then of course, you go and get that lovely little bit of exoskeletal magic attached to your shoulder, d'you know how to work with that? Did they teach you in Wakanda? C'mon, spill, I've got all night."
"I can try, but I've got to warn you, talking makes me hungry."
Bucky smirked at him and Tony conceded with a raised voice and hands out in a gesture of resigned submission. "Friday, send a drone for delivery. Two- make it three large pizza's extra pepperoni."
"Yes sir."
"Did you want anything to drink with that?" Tony asked, new light blazing in his eyes.
"I don't know if you can get it but there's this grape hydration stuff…"
"I, can get anything." Tony said, clapping his hands forcefully. "Alright, start talking Buckaroo."
By the end of the night Tony had a full belly, a case full of electrolytes in various flavors- he'd insisted on trying them all to see which was really the best, it was a holdout between blackberry and strawberry thus far- and he had gained a new appreciation for Bucky's fascination for the scientific.
"The concept makes sense but I can't follow the logic to the numbers, its just too much to process all at once." Bucky said after Tony's third attempt to explain coding, tapping the side of his head apologetically. "I appreciate you trying but I don't think there's enough room up here to make it fit."
"Hey, that's cool, leave all the computer whizz stuff to me, I don't mind taking the credit." Tony waved him away with a wide smile. He was drowsy now; the frenetic energy of the earlier problem had left him after making a tweak on the helmet and testing it with preliminary success. "How about the kiwi flavour?"
Bucky shrugged and tossed him a pale green bottle with a grin.
"Eh, not bad." Tony said after a first sip. "Coffee's still better, but not bad... Who'd have thought, Bucky Barnes is a brainiac, and we're both insomniacs... Speaking of sleep, I think I could catch a few zees."
"In a real bed." Bucky said in a stern gravely voice. The rapid fire of Tony's questions and a full therapy session in the morning had dried his throat.
"At least my couch is better than the floor." Tony said in half-hearted argument. Bucky had admitted sleeping on the floor in conversation with Steve yesterday and Tony wasn't letting it go. "I have to drink water, eat food, even when I don't feel like it - You have to sleep on the ridiculously expensive mattress I paid for." He thrust his hand out and Bucky shook it reluctantly. "Deal?"
"Fine."
"Sweet dreams Bucky-boy." Tony said standing up abruptly and walking to the elevator that would take him to his own penthouse suite.
Somewhere between the pizza and the prosthetics, things had changed between them.
The delicate truce they'd formed in order to coexist more than a year ago was shattered now, and in its place was something almost like kinship. Not friendship. Neither Bucky nor Tony would ever concede that. But something like a brother's best friend, teasing jabs and mischief and an underlying silent respect that prevented them getting too far up each others nerves. No one who had seen the simmering resentment between them a year ago could have anticipated this outcome, but as long as no one challenged it, the two of them would get along alright.
For Steve.
For themselves.
oooo
Tony never missed another taco lunch. Friday would alert him once and failing to receive a response would send Bucky, who would show up, usually glistening with sweat from a morning training session and threaten to bodily drag him to the dining room. More than once a fully suited Iron Man landed on the balcony outside the common room with Bucky administering a headlock, clinging to his back. Sam watched Steve laugh as the two came up with more and more absurd ways to play at fighting, the best shows always happening to coincide with Steve's EMDR therapy sessions. Steve knew why they did it, but he made Sam swear not to tell the other two their ploy was so easily seen through. It may have started as a joke, an attempt to improve Steve's mood, but it was making changes in Bucky and Tony too: the tension between them that had held the compound in an atmosphere of anxiety was melting away.
Neither had the deep shadows under their eyes anymore. Bucky laughed and smiled more freely, and Tony's face had lost its sallow appearance. Even Pepper laughed on the few occasions she witnessed their antics, her nerves around them had noticeably dropped off lately. Therapy had much to with it. But the power of forgiving the man Tony had blamed for his parent's deaths had lifted a burden from him even defeating Thanos hadn't achieved.
Full as Bucky's days now were, with afternoon siestas to make up for late nights planning pranks with Tony or pounding out built up tension in Stone's gym, training with Steve, therapy, supervising Steve's EMDR sessions on his request; there was still a space in his week.
A space suspiciously khaki coloured and jeep shaped in the driveway. Even more suspiciously in the shape of the small gym office refrigerator unmarked by friendly yellow notes.
It seemed to be going well; Sam was cheerful on climbing days. Bucky wouldn't ask. Sam would just tell him for the hundredth time. "If you want to know how she's doing, you're going to have to work up the nerve to ask her."
"I didn't say anything." Bucky said, raising his hands in frustration.
"You're face says it all my friend." Sam answered cheekily back. "You care. You just need to figure out why."
"No. I don't." Bucky said, grinding his teeth and turning his back on Sam. Muttering under his breath. "I don't even know her."
Sam had still heard him. "You could change that if you weren't so darn stubborn."
And then one day, Bucky's phone rang.
"Bucky?"
Notes:
What do you think of Tony and Bucky's new friendship? Was it a believable transition from the previous chapters?
Who is calling Bucky and what do they want? Mysterious... *dons Sherlock hat and swirls overcoat dramatically*