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As Bucky stared into the bright light that had thrown down half of his team he wished he'd never woken up that morning. He'd known from the first the day was going to suck, ever since waking up on the floor.
It was a bad morning, following a bad night. Bucky woke up in the corner of his bedroom – the bedroom he slept in, he had trouble considering it ”his” yet – clutching his blanket. He didn't even consciously remember the nightmare that had driven him off his too soft bed and into the perceived security of a solid wall behind his back.
It was not unusual. Sleeping through the night peacefully, or even at all, would be more of an anomaly, albeit not unheard of in this new existence of his. Some mornings he woke up, feeling almost like Bucky Barnes, and couldn't wait to leave in search of his friend. Some mornings he felt more like a blank screen, unconsciously waiting for instruction. Those mornings he wouldn't leave the room, whether due lack of initiative or some sense of security – no one could give him commands if he didn't see anyone.
It's not like he actively distrusted his new teammates, it's just that he didn't trust them. Yet. In the field, he was learning to anticipate their moves, and that was a form of trust on its own. He could fight with them. He just... couldn't really be Bucky with them. Bucky may have been a soldier but he was vulnerable.
He left the rooms, making his careful way to the communal kitchen. Steve was bound to be there, maybe even Sam, if the latter had actually woken up voluntarily to join the blond for his morning jog.
Stark was there occasionally, though he was mostly on his way to bed after an all-nighter in his workroom, or then looking like a silver screen star in his impeccable suit, on his way to his other job. Bucky didn't know what to make of this man in whose house – and on whose dime – he lived these days. Stark was as good at his masks and fronts as the Black Widow he also shared his space with these days, with a much harder edge than Howard Stark had ever had.
Sure, he could portray the flippant playboy, but the raw bleeding edges were much closer to the surface. Then again, he was older than his father had been in the war, and had the senior Stark really surfaced from the war as unscathed as he had seemed? Bucky doubted it very much, especially as he seemed to be a subject to be avoided with the junior.
Bucky had seen other sons, traumatized by their fathers, haunted by the war.
In the field, Iron Man was the biggest wild card. He had the least formal training in the art of battle, but his quick mind made him an asset and a threat. He was just as likely to support your move as to do something recklessly stupid that risked his life to protect the other Avengers, or the civilians.
That also reminded Bucky of someone else so much the emotions got twisted around sometimes too.
Steve would probably hate the comparison, seeing as much as he berated Stark for his foolhardy plays. Even when they were the only move that could have saved the day. What Stark never seemed to realize was the reason Steve was so mad was because he wouldn't consider the loss of a team mate an even trade – even if it was Stark with whom he butted heads with constantly, even as they were forming a friendship.
Steve was easier for Bucky to trust, because all the old memories commanded it. Yet it still went against every instinct that had been trained into him over the past decades, and made it harder to show that trust outside the battlefield.
The Black Widow was the same. Natasha. She had a name, he should give her the courtesy of using it. He could trust in her skills, the training telling him they were on the same side, even as they demanded caution. But outside the field, those same instincts told her she was the enemy. Seeing her without make up in the kitchen eating her sugary cereal was always something that made him unconsciously suspect a set up.
The others were easier in a way, as they had no part in his memories or trained instincts beyond classing them in a fight. Hawkeye was the one with whom he shared positions and angles in the battlefield, with whom he needed to coordinate. Hulk was a loose cannon they could only unleash on the enemy without any hope of coordination or planning, but that was okay, Winter Soldier knew how to think on his feet. Bruce was soft-spoken and careful, and Bucky had little to do with him outside official Avengers business.
To be fair, he had very little to do with anyone outside official Avengers business, sharing the same space the few times he ventured out into the shared areas of the Tower didn't really count as interaction.
This morning the kitchen was full. Steve was eating his post-workout breakfast, Sam scrambling his own eggs. Sam nodded at him, and Steve greeted him with a smile Bucky wasn't ready to return yet. He had come out. That was already a lot, maybe enough for the whole day. Natasha had apparently been exercising too, showing up in gym clothes, eating her own breakfast.
Sam shared his eggs with him when he sat down, and that forced him to meet the other man's eyes for a grateful nod. Luckily Stark chose that moment to show up and it prevented anyone from demanding him be more present. (Steve. He meant Steve wanting him to socialize. He remembered the Bucky that had died in the war. The life of the party that would be trying to make Natasha giggle, no matter how foolhardy such proposition would be.)
”You look like you slept,” Steve told Stark. ”How are you up at this hour?”
It could have been a jibe, a deadpan taking of piss, but there was honest will to know in his voice too. Bucky wasn't sure Stark recognized that yet, though. He looked ever so slightly confused.
”I don't even know. But as I am, I figured I'd come witness this fabled 'breakfast' I keep hearing about.”
”Fry your own damn eggs,” Sam said when Stark looked towards the stove.
”I would suggest not,” JARVIS said, in a mild tone that seemed to be full of too much emotion for a machine.
Natasha perked up. ”That sounds like a story.”
”Hush, traitor,” Stark told his disembodied butler, but by-passed the stove on his way to the coffee maker.
”Still, it's always important to check the function of the fire alarms regularly,” JARVIS went on, and his dry tone almost, almost made Bucky crack a smile. That reminded him so much of another British voice... what was his name? Why could he remember hours and days spent drudging through mud and snow with the man, the dry humor and piss-taking attitude – even his use of the term was because of the fellow, for God's sake – why couldn't he remember a name as easy as the face?
He wanted to ask Steve, wanted to plug the holes in his memory but to do it here would just draw attention to himself he didn't want. He was there, among them, that was already so much progress he couldn't have imagined just a few weeks ago...
Bruce shuffled in, and he always looked the same, whether he'd slept or not, but Stark appeared to be able to read his tells better than anyone, as he actually surrendered the cup of coffee he'd just poured to the other man before pouring a new one for himself.
Almost the whole team was there, save for Clint and Thor, and Bucky felt surprisingly content. He could be in their company without his instincts going crazy. They ignored him, but not in a way that made him fear they were ignoring a potential threat, just... accepting him as part of the scenery. It was almost peaceful.
So obviously that was the moment the call to Assemble came.
- - -
It was an impossible fight. The enemy was everywhere, and didn't seem to go down even when ripped to pieces by a green rage monster, decapitated by a shield, or filled with bullets. They seemed to almost lack a corporeal form, being half light and it was impossible, because they could hit, and burn, and destroy, and Captain America was limping, even the Hulk looked worse for wear, and the Iron Man armor was smoking. Bucky had had no confirmation of Hawkeye's location in minutes, no visual or auditory, and the Widow was down, she was down, and Hawkeye was MIA, and Iron Man was so still, and they were losing, their city in flames around them, and this couldn't be happening, Captain America was supposed to triumph over impossible odds.
He felt the burning sensation of the being behind him before the blackness overtook him.
Bucky woke up in the corner of his bedroom, clutching a blanket. He started up, looking wildly around him, checking his arms for burns, but both the flesh and blood one and the metal one were okay. What had happened? If they had survived, why wasn't he in a hospital? Surely he didn't heal that fast?
Had he lost time again?
”JARVIS, date,” he got out, clutching for the security blanket that had kept him sane during his first weeks in the tower.
”November 18, 2014.”
Wait, what? ”Eighteen?” Wasn't eighteen yesterday? He was sure he'd read the paper after Steve had finished it, trying to feel connected to the world.
”Yes, sir.”
His mind had to be playing tricks with him. He was merely remembering the date wrong. He swallowed.
”Is everyone okay?”
”Captain Rogers is eating breakfast in the kitchen,” JARVIS replied without pause, starting from what he obviously had classed as most important to Bucky. ”He appears well, as do the others in the Tower. Mister Thor is visiting his lady friend, but I am sure he is fine as well.”
”But the fight? Wasn't anyone hurt?”
”Which fight are you referring to, Mister Barnes?”
Which fight. Could he have dreamt it? Dreaming of death and destruction and the death of his team was not new, but usually less innovative, and he could always tell they were dreams afterwards.
”What happened yesterday, JARVIS?”
”You need to be more specific, Mr. Barnes.”
Mr. Barnes had been a compromise. Bucky didn't feel comfortable claiming his old rank, but needed the reminder of his identity. JARVIS at least wouldn't judge him for it.
”There was no fight?”
”Misters Barnes and Odinson fought valiantly over the remote control when it was time to choose the evening's entertainment.”
”Die Hard. We watched Die Hard.” Because Clint had won, and nothing would convince Bucky that Thor hadn't let that happen.
”Affirmative.”
”But... that was the day before yesterday.”
”It was Monday. Today is Tuesday. Do you need medical attention?”
”No! No, I... Stevie's in the kitchen?”
He made his way there, without bothering to change out of his sleep wear – a t-shirt, and jogging bottoms. The same clothes he woke up in yesterday.
Steve was eating breakfast. Sam was scrambling eggs. Natasha was eating cereal, with the same strand of hair sticking up from her ponytail.
Sam shared his eggs. Stark walked in and didn't know why he was awake, appearing, if possible, even more confused than the day before. But again he gave Bruce his coffee and what the hell was going on?
When the call to assemble came, Bucky was already filled with dread.
Bucky tried everything he could – being ready earlier, armed with more guns, trying to keep track of his team mates better, trying different ways to defeat the enemies, trying to search through the whole affected area for something, anything, to help, but his team always fell, and he always fell with them.
It was an impossible task – every time he changed something in what he did, the enemy changed as well, and that changed the actions of his team mates, and it was impossible to keep track of all the variations.
And yet he kept waking up in the corner of his room. Some mornings he wouldn't go to the kitchen, some mornings he went and greeted Steve with a desperate hug but that led to worry and questions from the other man and that was too hard to handle.
But he kept waking up. How many more chances would he get?
Then one morning there was a knock on the door. He paused – that had never happened before. But JARVIS had said the date was still the 18th.
It was Stark.
”You are the only other thing that changes,” the other man said. ”You're here with me.”
Of all the emotions that assaulted Bucky at once, the one that surprised him the most was relief. He was not alone. After getting to slowly trust having a team around him, being alone in this had been daunting but now... he had a teammate here. He was not alone.
”I thought it was just your unpredictable behavior in the field,” Bucky said, because he had not trusted in the changes enough to even wish for this.
”Oh thank God.” The relief was there in Stark's voice and face too and Bucky wanted to hug him.
It was a fleeting thought, and it passed as soon as it had crossed his mind, but he remembered it a long time after.
”What do we do?”
”What do we know?”
They compared notes – Stark always woke up in his garage level workshop, having slept but not remembering when he fell asleep; the alarm; the impossible fight.
”Let's try tag teaming them from the start.”
They plotted until the call to assemble came, then tried the new strategy. Then another. And yet another. For weeks, they attempted to affect the flow of battle, trying to learn as much of the enemy as they could, even if it meant suicidal tactics, or Stark returning to his lab to study samples as long as they still had time.
It was obviously hard for him to leave while his team was dying, and Bucky found himself admiring him for doing it anyway.
Stark's time line seemed to end when Bucky fell to blackness they found after comparing notes, and he couldn't get anything useful out of his quick tests anyway.
“Would another kind of death count, do you think?” Stark asked one morning, and Bucky knew the glint in his eyes.
“You want to try killing yourself.” It was not a question. He knew that reckless fire, and more and more it was not a reminder of Steve in Stark, just pure Stark. How long had they been at this?
“We need the data.”
“But what if it's permanent?”
“Then you get out of the loop.” Bucky would get out of the loop. Bucky would be free. Like that exchange even made sense.
“Then it should be me,” he said instead.
“Barnes...”
“Stark... “ And why were they still on last names? If a fella was offering to die for you, the least you could do was to call him by his name. “Tony, there must be a better way to test this.”
“Sure, we could try timing it in the battle which we know we keep coming back from.”
“You've been trying to do that,” Bucky realized.
“Hard to get conclusive data in the chaos,” Stark... Tony admitted. “Besides, verify, verify, verify – only repeatable results count.”
And now the gauntlet in his hand made sense. “Don't...”
“We have to. We're not getting anywhere.”
“The call will come soon.”
“At least I get a day off from watching our friends die.”
Bucky closed his eyes, which proved to be a bad idea.
Bucky woke up, and as soon as his eyes were open, he stormed out of his room, and ran towards Tony's workshop.
“Don't you ever do that again,” he gasped when he met Tony at the door to the elevator on the lab floor.
“Well?”
“At least I didn't need to live with having watched you kill yourself in my room.”
“Right... should have done it here.”
“Because that's the part I'm having trouble with!”
“But at least now we know. The loop resets with death.”
“No, we don't. We know it resets with your death.”
“We already established it the other way round,” Tony said, too fast, and...
“You don't want me to try that,” Bucky realized. “What happened to 'verify, verify, verify – only repeatable results count'?”
“I can't ask you to...”
“To take a risk you already took? At least you'd be free?”
“Goddammit, Bucky!”
Bucky smiled at his name, at the exasperation that spoke of affection. “I won't make you look.”
“I made you witness it.”
“That's just because you're an asshole,” Bucky said, and grinned, and the impulse to hug Tony was back.
“Takes one to know one. I know you're carrying a gun.”
“How?”
“Because I know you.” It was a flippant line, and one Bucky took with him to the next round of the same day. This time it was Tony, showing up panting behind his door, and apparently struggling with the same impulse before giving into it, and then they were hugging.
“Let's never do that again,” Tony said against his neck, and Bucky couldn't agree fast enough.
“Let's take a day off,” Tony said one morning, showing up behind Bucky's door. They hadn't made it to the kitchen for some weeks now, the innocent morning routines of their friends too much to handle.
“Let's... yeah, alright.”
“Alright?”
“Yeah, let's go somewhere.” Bucky couldn't believe the words coming out of his mouth. But if he had to keep watching his city be destroyed, at least he could enjoy it first. “Let's have breakfast.”
“I know the perfect place,” Tony promised, and led Bucky out with a hand on his lower back.
- - -
“What if we try telling the others? More minds working on the problem?” Bucky suggested while shoveling bacon into his mouth.
“I tried that the first week. Bruce wouldn't believe me in the time I had.”
“Maybe we can delay the distress call? The whole thing only gets out of hand when the Avengers join in. If we could stop the alarm, we might have a few more hours before it gets bad?”
Their communicators were going off with the call to assemble, and they turned the sound off.
“Let's try that tomorrow,” Tony said, grinning, and raised his coffee cup.
- - -
“What did you do?” Bucky asked the first thing next morning, when Tony took his time showing up at his door.
“I convinced JARVIS to disable the alert system. Come on, let's get everyone together before they catch the news.”
Tony was in a dark suit, Bucky had opted for his Winter Soldier uniform. Obviously they were both in need of an additional layer of security.
Steve and Tony ended up in a shouting match which Tony ended by turning to Bucky, throwing up his hands in the air in defeat. “Your turn, Buck. He's your friend.”
“Sure, now it's my turn,” Bucky snarked back, but rested his hand briefly on Tony's shoulder to show his sympathy.
Steve's eyes were narrowed as he followed the movement.
“Since when do you guys...”
“Since we've been stuck together in a time loop,” Tony replied, slowly, enunciating very clearly, and Bucky burst in laughter.
That was the bit that convinced Steve.
They ended up repeating the scene countless times, streamlining the process of making the others believe them. After they had learned bits off the morning news show by heart, the order of the deck of cards in Clint's pocket, and other stupid parlor tricks to convince them all, the others came up with shortcuts for convincing them. For Steve it was a password for a mission done after Bucky's fall in the war, for Natasha and Clint a SHIELD code phrase (“Yes, I'll remember that, why does no one ever remember the whole 'genius' bit?”) for Bruce a private exchange with his old girlfriend. Thor always just believed them, when he made it back to the meeting in time.
(“If something like this ever happens to you alone,” Tony told Bucky one of those days, “Remind me Yinsen joined his family in the end.”)
(“I don't know if there's anything you can say to me to make me believe you – all the memories and codes are tainted.”
“I'll just have to convince Steve then.”
“That's... a good call.”)
Still, it was no use. Steve still wanted to join the battle, and the odds were still against them.
“Fuck this noise,” Tony said in the middle of yet another repetition of the fight. “We're taking another day off.”
“A day off?” Clint's voice demanded in their communicators, sounding affronted.
“We should watch some TV,” Tony went on, as if he hadn't said a word, as if Thor wasn't on fire in front of them, as if Steve wasn't nursing a broken arm.
Maybe they were getting little too comfortable with this? Maybe a vacation was what they needed. For all of them. Maybe they should have a day when they didn't need to watch their team die around them, so they wouldn't start taking their resurrection for granted – which would be bad if they ever got to the day after.
- - -
The next morning Bucky joined the others for breakfast, trusting Tony to convince JARVIS not to relay the alarm so that they could just hang around in the tower for the day. Maybe if they covered the windows and killed the signals from all incoming messages they could spend the whole day without the team ever realizing what was going on outside?
“Morning, all!” Tony breezed into the kitchen, and started rooting for... popcorn? “Come on, Bucky MacBuckface, we have a playlist.”
Bucky laughed at the shocked expression on Steve's face, which just confused the poor man more.
“What are we watching?” he asked, moving to help Tony with his increasing pile of snacks.
“Time loops!”
“What?”
“It's a common theme in TV shows. Let's call it research,” he said, winking, and the silence in the kitchen around them was deafening.
All eyes were on them, but the attention didn't bother Bucky in the least. He returned Tony's happy smile, his holiday attitude catching, and followed him into the TV room.
“We are starting with Groundhog Day. The grand daddy of the trope. Then we're going to watch some Star Trek – Next Generation, not the original, we'll get to that some other day – Stargate SG-1, Xena, Buffy...”
“You do understand most of what you said means nothing to me, right? Except... Groundhog day? Is that still a thing?”
“Yup. And the rodents are as bad at predicting the weather as ever. Although apparently even worse in recent years.”
“And... we are going to watch a recap of that?”
“Nah, it's a movie. You'll like it.”
He did.
“So all we need to do is to learn to be better human beings and tomorrow will come?” Bucky suggested, snatching the last dried blueberry from Tony's hand.
“Hey! You're off to a bad start.”
“Or maybe we just need to find the women of our dreams?”
He almost flinched when he realized what he'd said, he'd heard Tony had just recently broken up with his girlfriend, who seemed to have been as close to a “woman of his dreams” as one could get.
But the only thing Tony said was, “Let's work on that, then.”
Still, the only thing they actually did was queue in the next thing to watch.
It was hard spending time with anyone else than Tony, because whatever they did, what ever conversations they had – the others wouldn't remember them. So Bucky found himself even avoiding Steve because the more human he started to feel, more like the Bucky Steve had known... the more it hurt to go back to being the Bucky Steve looked with wary yet hopeful eyes. And he'd have to go through it again and again.
They didn't actually talk about it with Tony, but he wasn't spending time with anyone else either. He didn't even spend that much time in his workshop as usual. So when ever they took days off, they watched more TV. They “binge watched” Star Trek, they learnt to bake a goddamn cake, they did anything and everything to stop thinking about the mind-fuckery that was their current existence, and...
And Bucky got better. He still woke up every morning in the corner, head muzzy from nightmares, but – slowly, slowly, he started feeling like a human being again. Maybe because he didn't actually sleep so he didn't need to deal with nightmares? Or because they were in a limbo and nothing really had consequences. Maybe it was because Tony was somehow the perfect companion to have when stuck in time. Or for him. Because Tony understood darkness, and regret, and guilt, and didn't try to talk it off like Steve did. Tony made him take responsibility for everything he'd done while under HYDRA control, but somehow convinced him he could still go forward, regardless, could take responsibility and do better.
Still, it's never a straight line into healing, and he still had his bad days. But that was okay, Tony had them too. They had days where they didn't even watch anything, just shared the couch and waited for the world to end, which it inevitably did every evening, even if they didn't join the fight. They'd just – wake up. Kind of like you never really remember the exact moment you fall asleep, just wake up and realize that means you had to fall asleep at some point – they just woke up in another place, with a vague notion of blackness taking over.
And then there were the days when Bucky found it hard to find the will to even get up from his corner to face the same day again and again.
It had been a bad night anyway, and somehow he always kept the dark looming feeling of a night filled with nightmares even though he never remembered the actual content.
If Tony showed up behind his door, he ignored the knocks, before yelling, “not today, Stark!” In the end Tony usually gave up, and some days Bucky didn't even get up from the floor until the darkness collected him.
Eternity in the loop notwithstanding, he was still freshly off brainwashing and freezer burn, and his mental health wasn't in a place where he could constantly keep handling the nightmare “time loop.”
One of those days he waited for the call to Assemble go off, fobbing off Steve and JARVIS and even Natasha who were trying to get him to join in (apparently Tony hadn't disabled the alarm, maybe he was joining them? Maybe this day would end sooner then, if he went and got himself killed in the fight.)
He then made his way into one of the gyms, pounding on a punching bag with both hands – the reinforced ones could even handle the metal arm, if he pulled his punches a little. He didn't feel like pulling his punches. He went through quite a lot of bags.
It almost helped, getting into the rhythm of it, just mindless repetition, the strain of muscles, the sound of strikes hitting, just that, and his panting breath after hours and hours of exercise, and what was that noise? Like buzzing, something he should react to?
A touch on his shoulder had him whirling around to strike before conscious thought – a fist hitting target, flesh, yell of pain, body hitting the ground – Tony.
Tony was lying on the ground holding his midsection and holy hell, what had he done? But the anger was still there, his blood boiling under his ill-fitting skin, and he just snarled. “What the hell were you thinking, Stark!”
Guilt, too, but he couldn't look, couldn't deal with it, he turned towards the bag, not daring to hit it again, in case Tony touched him again, and he reacted without thought again and the sound of metal hitting flesh echoed in his ears as the pants and hits on the bag had previously but this was not soothing, not...
Gasp of pain from behind him as Tony got up from the floor, then his retreating steps. Oh God oh God oh God...
He did not leave his room the next day, nor was there a knock on his door.
The next time he woke up he collected his courage and made sure to be behind the workshop door before Tony could disappear for the day.
Tony looked wary but admitted him in. Good. He should be wary. Bucky was dangerous, he was always going to be dangerous, he should never have risked getting close to anyone, should not have had “days off,” should not have pretended he could have something so pure and simple as friendship any more...
“I almost wish you weren't here with me,” he started quietly, and when Tony flinched visibly, hastened to explain, “so I wouldn't need to figure out a way to say sorry... but I'm glad you are. Because doing this alone would suck, and I am sorry.”
“It was my fault for interrupting,” Tony said, subdued.
“No! No, Tony, someone hurting you is never your fault.” Okay, maybe he had had ambivalent feelings about this in the beginning, but this was important goddammit!
The other man looked vulnerable then, and despite all his thoughts earlier Bucky was so fiercely glad that Tony was letting himself be that, to show that to Bucky, even after what he'd done, because they were friends, and he vowed to do better.
“At least I don't need to deal with the bruises,” Tony said, flippantly, but Bucky could hear the “this time” so clearly in his tone he wanted to hug him and never, ever let go.
That... could become a problem. That was not the kind of protective he felt about Steve, after all.
“I...” He didn't know what to say, what to do, what to do with his hands, his body. These hands that had killed and hurt, had hurt Tony...
“It's okay,” Tony said, and now his tone was different, and there was such understanding in his eyes it hurt.
“Some days I feel like I should never touch anyone because all I can do is hurt and kill,” Bucky confessed.
“I know.” And after everything he'd learnt about Tony? He could believe that so well.
“So, who are these guys?” Bucky asked, with lightness that was only a little forced, because the big, moving... hand thing behind Tony was waving at him. Or having some kind of a spasm.
“Oh, you haven't met Dummy? That's Dummy. He earns the name. Come on, I'll show you something actually cool...”
Bucky followed Tony to one of his machines and smiled. The chatter and easy smiles told him as clear as anything how easily this man forgave. It should worry him – Tony shouldn't keep letting people who hurt him close again. But a bigger part was just relieved that no matter how badly he screwed up, Tony would still give him another chance.
“I thought of something. If you ever need to convince me of the existence of time loops or anything like that, just tell me who my first kiss was.”
“Wouldn't Steve know it?”
“Steve thinks it's a gal called Jacqueline. It was actually a fella called Jack. I'd have never shared it with anyone back then, and HYDRA is unlikely to have cared.”
It was somehow inevitable that they'd end up here – they were too much each others' everything these days (this day?). It was no surprise the lines started to blur, the relationship deepen. Or maybe it would have happened anyway, when they got to know each other better, if everything went on the way it should have?
Bucky just knew they were touching more, a hand on the arm to draw attention – and Tony never shied away from touching his metal arm either – a shoulder against the other when sitting on the sofa, a hand on the lower back leading the other.
There were looks, lingering and fond, or questioning and shy. There was the itch in his fingers to touch the skin, to run his hands over the compact body, to taste his lips, feel the brush of his facial hair against his – the awakening of his libido was almost a scary thing, after decades of being not quite human in his urges and reactions.
But it wasn't just the physical either, it was the deepening fondness towards this man who was somehow the best possible person to be stuck with – optimistic and bright when needed, but broody and dark enough to understand his own pain.
And he knew he wasn't alone in it either – all his memories of the process were decades old, all his instincts suspect these days, but he knew the signs of someone being into him, knew what the dropped gazes and cheeks tinged with the vaguest shade of red meant. He started to recognize the different smiles Tony had for different people, and knew there were some that were just for him now.
So it was not really a risk when he leaned in one afternoon and – broadcasting his move a mile away in case Tony didn't want it, wasn't ready for it – pressed his lips against Tony's. It wasn't a risk in that he had very little to fear that it would be misunderstood, or rejected violently – but they were each others' all right now, so it was foolhardy and hazardous in a way that should frighten him.
If this blew up in their faces when they were the only constant the other had? Talk about workplace affairs going catastrophically wrong.
But Tony just sighed, just a little, and returned the slight pressure of his lips. Bucky pulled back, and they shared a look that had to be equally vulnerable from both sides.
“If we do this... we can't do it lightly,”
Tony said quietly.
“I know.”
“I'm not good at...”
“I know. Me neither. But we've been doing okay, haven't we?”
Where was this optimism coming from? Bucky didn't know, but he knew that this was right, goddammit. There would never be anyone who could understand him as well as Tony, who understood how integral part of him Steve was even though there had never been anything romantic about it, anyone who knew the bad he had been – could still be – and still see the man – hero – he could be. Who made him want to be that better person
And, yes, dammit, who made him remember he had body parts that felt like they'd been dormant for close to a century. And he didn't even know which was more shocking, the heart or the cock.
“I'm not just trying to get you to bed, I want to... Well. I want you. I want this. Don't you?”
“Damn it, yes.”
- - -
They didn't do more than kiss for days, and talk, and kept asking JARVIS to delay the alarm so that there was no hurry, no guilt in enjoying in each others' presence while their friends were fighting and dying. Sure, other people were, but they were easier to forget.
But kissing wasn't enough, Bucky needed to get closer, even if he wasn't quite yet ready for anything more – he worried about hurting Tony if he lost control, and somehow the famed playboy didn't seem to be in any rush either. Maybe he was also a little wary after his long relationship, or maybe he really was that good at reading Bucky.
They were entwined on the sofa now when binge watching more TV – fiction and documentaries in equal measure, and the kisses grew longer and more heated, and it was harder and harder to be apart.
One evening they fell asleep on the sofa, and the next morning he woke up alone, again, Tony gone from his arms and it hurt, but then Tony was there, having obviously run from his workshop, and the lay down on Bucky's bed, arms around each other, and didn't move apart for hours.
It was like being a youth again – giddy and infatuated, and the joy of it sometimes bubbled over. The first time their new relationship came in contact with their teammates was on another morning when they had run to each other as soon as they woke up, almost collapsing into each other half way, their dash turning into a silly game of tag and they burst into the kitchen, half hugging, half tickling each other, laughing – okay, more like giggling, but Bucky couldn't ever remember being happier so he excused them.
Bucky reached back and pulled Tony against his side as they made their way to the coffee maker, only then noticing the unnatural stillness around them.
Steve was staring at them with his mouth open. Sam was standing by the stove (those eternal eggs), and even Natasha was frozen, spoon halfway to her mouth. Bucky laughed harder.
“Ooh, we should explore all the different ways we can come out to them!” Tony suggested, face shining.
“You're on.”
“Bucky,” said Steve with a solemn voice. “Can I have a word – in private.” He stressed the last word with a warning look towards Tony and Bucky frowned.
“This did come out of nowhere from where he's standing,” Tony reminded him, pushing him towards his friend.
“Yeah, right, of course.” Still, it was hard to be walking away from Tony when all he wanted was to keep touching him. Was it ever like this in the past?
Tony leaned in for a kiss, just a light one, something casual which Bucky hoped like hell he could get used to, a habit for when they needed to part.
“Go. I'll have breakfast with Bruce.”
Like clockwork, like they'd known he would, the other scientist walked in just as Bucky followed Steve out.
“Sam, your eggs are burning.”
- - -
“Bucky... what is going on?”
“You see, when a boy and another boy like each other very much...” Yes, his TV education courtesy of Tony had taught him very bad habits but the solemnity on Steve's face was killing him.
“Bucky! When did this happen? Why... how are you all...” Words failed Steve as he obviously couldn't figure out how to phrase his question without sounding like he didn't want Bucky to get better. “And Tony? Is he really the best choice? I mean, it's not that long since he ended his previous relationship.”
“So it has nothing to do with his being a fella?”
Steve looked pained. “You know I don't care, I just don't want either of you get hurt. You are still... I mean...”
“Steve, relax, I know you don't exactly have the full context right now but...”
“He's not coercing you in any way?”
“Do I look coerced, punk?”
“No. You look like... you look like Bucky Barnes. The Bucky I haven't seen in decades so excuse me for worrying. Love isn't a miracle cure.”
“No, but it sure helps,” Bucky quipped automatically, then paused. Love? Yeah, hell, of course it had to be. Neither one of them would really risk it for anything less. He sobered up.
“Tony just... Tony gets it. Me. The darkness that is a part of me now because it's a part of him too. Look, I know you're worried, but can you trust me on this?”
He'd get another chance at this conversation anyway, but if Steve was disappointed, that was a hard image to forget.
“I just... I just want you to be safe,” Steve said, and then the alarm went off.
“Oh for fuck's sake, we forgot about the end of the world.”
Love wasn't a miracle cure, not for Bucky's mental health nor for their situation, and inevitably they would both have their bad days. This time it was Tony's turn.
“I can't.... I can't work. I try not to think because any idea I get, I can't write down, I can't implement, anything I do will be gone in the morning and I... Do you remember what happened yesterday?”
“I take it you don't mean the last loop.”
“No. The 17th. The actual yesterday.”
“It wasn't a very eventful day,” Bucky started to say, but stopped himself, because he did get the point, all too well.
“It's been months. God, I stopped counting. A year, maybe?”
“I thought this was a blessing, that first morning, when everyone was still alive. A wish granted... then I thought this hell. Having to watch you all die, again and again. And then there was you and this couldn't be hell either.”
“Maybe it just is what it is, a time loop,” Tony suggested, using the name from all those TV shows.
“But they all broke theirs,” Bucky reminded, maybe a little wistfully.
“When thematically appropriate,” Tony said dryly.
“Do we have a lesson to learn?” Bucky asked. “Or just a fight to win? Or do we just need to die the right way.”
“The X Files one sucked,” Tony said. “If we're not both going to make it through, then screw tomorrow.”
“Tony...”
“Think about it – if I lost you, no one would even know we were together, all of our relationship has been five minutes for them, but I can't imagine being without you any more.”
“I love you,” Bucky said, because it was that kind of a moment.
They both seemed to hold their breaths, then let it go with a laugh. “Still here. Maybe not the trigger. Love you too. So damn much. At least this is eternity with you.”
“Even if we need to tell our friends of our relationship again and again.”
“I liked the one where Steve walked in to us making out on the sofa most!”
“You would. I... would have liked the deep heart to heart I had with Steve but... he will always forget that, no matter how often we'll have it again.”
“So maybe this is not the way we want our eternity.”
“I'd take it,” Bucky said. “I still have Steve, I have you.” He paused to think. “No... I have you, and I still have Steve, too.” Steve would always be important, would be his brother but there was Tony now. And maybe his priorities had shifted at some point during this endless Tuesday.
“Let's try again,” Tony said. “Let's finish this.”
They went back to sharing their situation with their teammates, repeating it day and day and day again, trying to get their minds to work in different directions, having JARVIS analyze the patterns of battle from different points of view. (“Figure out where you would start your analysis and skip the first ten processes.”)
They held back from joining the fight, having Clint and Bucky over to reconnoiter, feeding data to the rest of them back at the Tower, with Steve's strategic mind working in unison with Natasha's, Bruce using his research skills in trying to find any and all matches with past events.
“We need to get there earlier,” Tony concluded after a few weeks of this. “There has to be an entry point for this – they seem to come from nothing, en masse, but they can't just appear out of nowhere without some kind of... of portal, or another mean of transportation.”
So they changed their focus into analyzing the pattern and direction of their attack, getting a vague feeling of the progression of it all. They spent the next loop sharing this info with the team, going through battle plans, working with everyone individually for something that would work best for them, and also be easy to explain and implement fast.
The next morning they rushed through the “time loop, code words, believe us now, because we are in a bit of a hurry,” portion of the plan, then joined the fray.
They had pinpointed a moment when the creatures were vulnerable for their attacks – not too small, not too big, somewhere in the middle of their development. But there were still too many of them, and when in their final form they were still seemingly invulnerable.
They tried the same next morning, moving the briefing into the quinjet, saving some precious minutes, and this time Tony was sure he saw some of the forms being formed.
“It's... it's a device of some sort?” he reported the next morning.
Later, privately, Bucky and Tony speculated the device could also be in charge of the weirdness with time.
“Maybe we should just skip explaining to the others and try to get there as soon as we wake up?” Bucky suggested, even as he shot another half-formed shimmering shape. They were using a private line, not the shared Avengers frequency, because the others would surely have opinions on that.
Tony's next words came out with a wholly different tone.
“Bucky, that... female shape in your three o'clock, do you remember seeing her before?”
Bucky looked into the direction and paused. No, no he hadn't, and said as much.
“She's not attacking – just standing there watching,” he elaborated.
“I'm going to try to make contact.”
“Be careful,” was the only thing Bucky said. Maybe he was getting too nonchalant about the possibility of their deaths, but any anomaly warranted a second look. After all, the other shimmering shapes were less distinct, and had been unreceptive to any means of communication.
The next thing Bucky saw was Tony taking his helmet off. That made him abandon his position and rushing towards them. Still, he wasn't shooting, because the creature didn't seem to be harming Tony.
“Bucky,” Tony said. “She's... she's talking to me. She knows about the device.”
“I am the device,” the voice said inside his head, somehow, and Bucky felt like shaking his head to dislodge the intrusion. But he also sensed no malice in the presence, and how the hell did that work?
“I am the lock that keeps you within these hours. I needed an anchor to stop the destruction of everything, and your loudest wish gave me the key.”
“Let me guess,” Tony said, and how could he sound so flippant? “I wish this day never happened.”
“Close,” the voice was amused. “I wish I'd never woken up this morning.” Somehow the mind voice made it clear she was quoting Bucky, although how that effect was born he couldn't say.
“Then why me?” Tony asked.
“Your vibrations matched his, and I felt you would work together the best.”
“Our... vibrations?”
“Your souls resonated, if you will.” Now she was just taking the piss.
“Ooookay, now, about ending this day...”
“You finally figured it out. I believe one more try should do it. Good luck, and thank you for being my champions, James Buchanan Barnes and Anthony Edward Stark.”
And then the shimmering shape of a woman was gone, and Bucky and Tony were left staring at each other in confusion.
Then Tony smiled, and touched Bucky's face with his gauntleted hand. “I'll take it,” he said, simply, and Bucky smiled.
“Come on, let's figure out the rest.”
- - -
Bucky woke up in the corner of his room, and was on his feet before he'd even finished opening his eyes. He was dressed and armed in record time before making his way to the workshop where Tony was getting ready.
“We could take another day for ourselves,” Tony suggested, but halfheartedly, letting the machine finish putting the armor on him.
Bucky smiled, and laid his rifle down on a table before dodging the bots to get close enough to reach for a kiss.
“We've got tomorrow either way.”
- - -
It was blindingly simple, in the end. By not wasting time explaining to the others or waiting for the alarm but flying straight to the coordinates they had extrapolated the loop before, they were present when the first lights started appearing in the scene.
It was almost anticlimactic how easily a single well-placed bullet destroyed the mechanism on the device and the lights were extinguished before ever forming into matter.
“Wait... she said she was a device... does that mean we just...?”
“I don't think I want to know. I just... is this it?”
“I don't suppose we'll know until the morning.” Tony shrugged, as well as the armor allowed him to, and Bucky smiled.
“Looking forward to waking up with you.”
“Sap,” Tony accused, but his grin was happy, the kind that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made his whole face shine.
So maybe he was a sap. But there was something in the eternity that had made him feel like he had a tomorrow again. Regardless.
- - -
Apparently JARVIS had alerted the team of something being amiss because there was a welcoming committee waiting for them on the balcony when Iron Man touched town with Winter Soldier in his arms.
“Where have you been?” Steve demanded, and Bucky and Tony shared a fond look.
“Saving the world.”
Epilogue
“I don't believe it,” Clint repeated for the tenth time.
“Do you want me to do the code words again?” Tony asked.
“We can do the deck of playing cards thing too,” Bucky offered, arm around Tony, smiling. He couldn't seem to stop.
“I wouldn't believe it,” Steve said, “but for the fact that somehow, overnight, I got my friend back.”
“I'm not quite the man you knew,” Bucky said, chagrined.
“But you learnt to smile again.”
Bucky turned to look at the shorter man at his side. “Yeah, yeah I did.”
Tony returned the look and smile, and leaned in for a kiss.
“That is going to take some getting used to, though,” Steve said.
“Look, it's been months for us, this didn't come out of nowhere. Yes, I've been with guys before, no, he's not taking advantage, yes, I know I have other choices but I happen to like this one. No, we're not rushing into anything, no, it's not just the fact we were each others' only constants... Anything else?”
“Why do I have a feeling you've had this discussion before?”
“Or then you're just predictable.”
“Punk.”
Bucky smiled. If tomorrow was another today, they'd just try again, and he'd have this conversation with Steve again, and he'd still have both Tony and Steve, and sooner or later they'd get it right.
“When will you know if this worked?” Natasha asked.
“When we wake up.”
“It's three o'clock in the afternoon, when did the loop reset?” Bruce asked.
“Nine-ish, if one of us didn't die before that.”
“Do you want to go to your workshop?” Bucky asked Tony, knowing what he'd missed the most during their enforced eternity.
“I have time. You said something about waking together.”
Bucky smirked. “It's too early to go to sleep.”
“But not for going to bed.”
Bucky was sure they'd get around to the waking up bit at some point too. And whichever tomorrow dawned – Tuesday or Wednesday – he'd still share the day with his team – his family – and they'd be okay.
He shared a smile with Steve before taking Tony's hand and starting towards the elevator.
“Your place or mine?”