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His name was James Buchanan Barnes of the 107th. He was raised primarily by his mother and older sister, he was Brooklyn born and bred, the middle child of three, four if you counted little Stevie Rogers from next door. He liked burgers and plums, and he was good at math.
His friends called him Bucky. And it grated on him.
Not the nickname, ridiculous as it was, rather the fact that he was being identified as anything other than who – and what – he was.
He didn’t want to be Bucky Barnes. But the Soldier hadn’t wanted anything in a long time.
“Doll, for goodness’ sake, if you keep staring at that screen you’re gonna give yourself another migraine.”
“Boo bear, it’s for the greater good,” Tony whined, already pouting up at him as the Super Soldier steered him up and out of his chair towards the well-used couch in the workshop.
Of all the skills he found most useful after Hydra, after Romania, after Leipzig, after Siberia, it was this: playing a role was much easier than being himself.
He’d been under Hydra’s thumb for seventy years and hadn’t made a single decision for himself that wasn’t between life or death.
Preferences and choices were already overwhelming enough, topping it off with personal responsibility and accountability sent him spiraling. Where did his actions begin, and Hydra’s control end? The moral dilemma of his existence and continued freedom was always up for debate, for him and for the people of the world that were affected by his actions in the past seventy-odd years.
No matter how often Steve insisted that it wasn’t his fault.
Which was why he was doing what he was doing.
The smaller stuff: what to eat, what to wear, what to say, what he liked, was much more easily decided on if he was pretending to be someone else.
If he groomed himself just right he looked exactly like the man in the war reel – if he watched those often enough, he’d get those little ticks down, the way the man used to walk or fiddle or glance around. Eventually, he’d get the drawl down until he was no longer hearing the Russian accent slanting his thoughts, until the Brooklyn tumbled off his tongue like it had never left.
Eventually, he’d be James Buchanan Barnes, because that’s who he was, wasn’t he?
For all anyone knew, the only person walking around in Bucky Barnes’ body was Bucky Barnes himself.
Steve ate it up with a spoon, and Tony, even after their scarred history and tentative reacquaintanceship, believed it enough to trust the soldier to move him around.
Though, less than a minute later, that illusion was shattered when the realization was made that Tony wanted to be moved all along.
Already, the engineer was reclining on the cushions, another holographic screen stretching before him out of thin air. His soaked feet crossed at the ankles, dark hair a perfect tousled mess, his shirt sleeves long rolled up and exposing bronzed arms with his tie already loosened and the buttons undone to show off his throat in open invitation. The picture of comfort in the company of someone who was more monster than man.
The Soldier's mouth dried up as Tony fluttered his lashes, exuding innocence.
With a grunt to hide the stutter of his movements, the Soldier asked, “Is the greater good gonna have to deal with your whiny ass for the rest of the night?”
“You like my whiny ass just fine.”
Bucky Barnes would have flirted back, that much he knows, but all the Soldier manages is a deadpan reply of, “It is the only organic thing I eat.”
Fortunately, the shaky ground with which the Accords were fought over (amongst other things) kept the chasm gaping between Steve and Tony even a year after the fact, and Steve would be none the wiser to the soldier’s less than stellar performance when it was just him and Tony.
After all, Tony didn’t know better.
The screen before the engineer flickered out in time to his jaw coming unhinged, lips parting beautifully as Tony gaped in clear surprise, “Oh my god, you just made a joke about eating ass.”
Again, more formal and awkward and less suave than Bucky, the Soldier defended, “My tastes are refined.”
“No kidding,” Tony declared, barking a laugh regardless, the noise sounding so different to when he heard it outside of the comfort of the workshop.
Then again, everything about Tony seemed different outside of this sanctuary that Tony found fit to share with the Soldier.
From the way he smiled more with his eyes, the way his smirk was less sharp and more teasing, and the responses that slipped from his lips were equally devoid of their cutting quality when they were out of the limelight – hidden from the media that constantly lingered beyond the walls, and away from the other occupants of the Tower.
He supposed it was a self-preservation tactic of sorts. The Soldier could understand the necessity of it.
Even with the Tower being Tony’s home, the people that surrounded and outnumbered him outside of the workshop and his private penthouse on the top floor were closer to hostile bystanders than comrades in arms.
It wasn’t fair on Tony, but life didn’t tend to be fair.
At least Tony had places where he could be more tired than snarky at the world, and the hand that it had dealt him. Even if the Soldier couldn’t claim the same, not completely – shared sanctuary or not – he was grateful to be allowed a part of it.
To be shown in action that though Steve might ignore the mistakes that the soldier made in being Bucky, Tony didn’t know better, but it meant everything to the Soldier that had nothing more than another’s man face and name and the half-forgotten memories of a life that aren’t his.
“I’m curious," Tony eventually said, "what are your thoughts on the BDSM lifestyle?”
“I didn’t know they were related," the Soldier remarked, smile far shyer than he knew Bucky’s would have been had he been asked. “But what makes you think I have an opinion?”
“Oh ho, don’t play innocent with me,” Tony called from over the back of the couch, not paying all that much attention to the Soldier moving around his workshop without his eyes on him. “I may not keep track of your google search history, but there’s no way rimming is a forties thing.”
The Soldier's smile was wary.
The only downside of their situation was that Tony thought the Soldier was Bucky, and for all Tony knew, that's exactly who the Soldier was. It still felt like a lie though, and the Soldier didn't want to lie to Tony.
Shaking his head, the Soldier a plate down in front of him, and ordered instead, “Eat.”
Tony’s eyebrow raised to touch his hairline, a blush dusting his cheeks, long lashes fluttering distractedly as he blinked. “B-beg your pardon?"
Feigning consideration, the Soldier replied, “After you eat.” Grateful for how intuitive Tony’s tech was that a tray table popped up and extended from the armrest of the couch.
Shaking his head as if in a daze, Tony argued, “But I had -”
“Caffeine doesn’t count.” Again, the man’s lips parted to argue, but the Soldier interrupted, “And weird shakes don’t count either.”
“But -”
“You can’t ‘innovate the world into the future’ if you’re dying from starvation, doll.”
The Soldier couldn’t remember when it started or where this mother-hen routine came from that Steve bitterly told him that Bucky saved for when Steve was still scrawny and asthmatic and why did it have to be Tony? But the Boldier was grateful for it. The Soldier didn’t think he was capable of anything but violence, a sentiment anyone unconvinced that he was just the Winter Soldier shared like Romanova did.
But here he was – choosing to take care of a man he hurt in the most brutal of ways – all because of the facts the Soldier faced every day: That he was allowed entry into the workshop outside of arm-maintenance, that he got to see who Tony was beyond the genius-billionaire-philanthropist mask, that Tony didn’t blink twice when he was anyone but Bucky Barnes.
That Tony let him care.
Tony Stark trusted the Soldier, and that was more than anyone else did.
By caring for Tony who worked himself ragged every day to mend the bridges still charred and smoking from the previous year’s mishaps, and to prepare for the threat in space that was to come sooner rather than later, the Soldier could be honest.
Though, Tony was nothing if not a brat, “It’s only been a day, I’m fine -”
“Boss,” Friday interjected, disapproving, “your blood sugar is low.”
“Nothing more coffee won’t fix,” Tony declared cheerfully.
“It won’t fix it.”
“What are you, a nutritionist?”
“Unimpressed is what I am,” he replied, rolling his eyes, not even having to feign his annoyance and mentally wonder what would Bucky do? “Eat your damn food, and don’t think I’ll leave you alone until that plate is spotless.”
Huffing out a breath through his nose, Tony snagged the crockery a little rougher than necessary towards himself on the tray table, moving his food around with a fork and grumbling.
Politely, the Soldier chose to ignore the childish behavior and retrieved a glass of water from the cooler before setting it down on Tony’s right.
“There’s water in my coffee,” Tony grumbled.
“Don’t make me get Doctor Cho on the phone to tell you the many ways that isn’t nutritionally sound.”
“Spoiled sport,” he accused, pointing at him with the utensil, and still not putting any of the food in his mouth.
“Or I could get Miss Potts on the line and she can tell you how she feels about your poor eating habits,” he posed, brow raised in challenge.
Tony deadpanned, “It’s official, you’re a monster.”
“Stop playing with your food.”
With a huff, Tony began to eat, chewing slowly as if every morsel deserved his undivided attention, his brow furrowed in thought as if he were going to name each one he discovered. Until with less hesitance than when he began, his verdict came loud and clear: His eyes fell shut as he focused his full attention on the taste on his tongue. Quiet, pleased noises escaped between his lips, already shiny with grease before his tongue chased after the last visages of flavor before digging right back for another – just another – and another. Sooner rather later, he was kitten licking the fork clean, a pleased smile tugging at his pink, plush lips –
The Soldier swallowed thickly.
“Who made this?” Tony demanded in a daze, whiskey brown eyes deep and dark enough to drown in. “I must know!”
“That would be me,” the Soldier replied, missing that Bucky Barnes bravado.
Tony as always, didn’t notice and only met his gaze head-on before he deadpanned, “Marry me.”
The Soldier hadn’t wanted anything in a long time, but when he looked at Tony…oh, how he wanted.