bakerstreet | [ hey, i brought you this soulmate ]

Entry tags:

[meme] shipping

[ hey, i brought you this soulmate ]

soulmate meme ;
▸ post your character ◂
▸ you're now in a universe where destined soul mates exist! ◂
▸ rng for the type of au and for the ~situation~ ◂
▸ tag around ♥ ◂

type of au;

1. tats, your character has a tattoo of the first words the love of their life will say to them
2. familiars, your character has an animal tattoo representing their soul mate on them
3. glow, the first time your character sees their soul mate, their chests glow!
4. world in color, life is literally black and white, until you see your soul mate for the first time
5. choose your own, i'm definitely missing a milly because i'm lazy, pick your own

situation;

1. first meeting, you've never met this person before.
2. childhood mates, you've always known this person -- but on one particular birthday, everything changes.
3. together, you've been in a relationship for awhile now! happily wed or not, you decide.
4. not together, you've known you're soul mates for a long time, and yet have avoided a relationship.
5. choose your own, self explanatory c:

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Fighting these super soldiers is like fighting a miniature Hulk. They are relentless and ruthless, violent in nature in the way Barnes had been under the influence of the trigger words. Tony, thankfully, does not have any numbing flashbacks of Bucky, face blank, lifting that gun to his face. He doesn't need the distraction.

The blows that fall on the armor are hard enough to crush it on impact, something Tony had not been prepared for. War Machine is fairing better, but Rhodey's armor is more heavy duty than his own and made to withstand more than Iron Man at the cost of being somewhat less nimble. War Machine, for all it's brutal strength and resilience, finds himself on his back a moment later.

Sam joins in the fight just after that, taking to the air only to drop and attempt to rip away one of the super soldiers. It's a standard bird of prey tactic, and given the lack of space on the horizontal plane, it's one that seems like it will prove effective as Falcon climbs several stories with the wriggling soldier in his grasp.

The fall doesn't do as much damage as one might suspect, however.

"Stand back," Iron Man bellows through the external speakers on the armor, charging up the central pulse weapon at the reactor site. Overload is always a possibility here, but the frenzied soldiers are just about two much. Without Cap's shield to play deflector dish, the blast from the reactor will be brutal and unpredictable. He uses it anyway.

Can't exactly stand back when one of them's got him by the throat, though he does grab onto wrist and do an interesting little maneuver where he slams both his feet into the guy's chest. It gets him down onto his back, gets his assailant staggered away by two or three feet, but it doesn't get him out of the way of pulse. Impact's minimized at least, so that he only goes rolling a few feet with his elbows up near his ears and gripping tightly at his head.

It's effective. The three others stagger with the onslaught, temporarily thrown out of balance - enough, at least, for Barnes to roll over on his back and shoot cleanly through one of their heads from his place on the ground.

The other two rip their eyes to him, incredulously dumbfounded that their third was dropped so easily.

"What? We're soldiers, not god damn vampires," he manages, only to go wide-eyed a second later when they both break toward him in a staggered pulse-injured sprint.

Time to go--

Tony might have made a comment about any of this being easy right now. He's got a lot of pressure around his right elbow and a substantial loss of feeling in his fingers because of it. FRIDAY has a warning up about the limb, but he doesn't take the time to see if he's bleeding or if there's more damage than that. The way that the armor is will keep him together until he can get into triage.

And it will take a lot more than a potentially broken arm to put him down.

Taking off to go after than, not quite as stabilized as he would be with two working gauntlet repulsers, Iron Man banks hard against the wall. In response, the whole silo shudders. The cold has taken it's toll on the place and it's more than willing to crack under the pressure of a heavy object smashing against it.

It really is time to go after that. The silo coming down on them isn't something anyone wants to attempt to survive.

The place starts cracking at the seams, and his eyes go first to Tony - who's got his suit, who can get out just fine on his own in about an instant. Same for the guy he brought, and same for Wilson. Steve on the other hand has got no such means of flying and he's chasing Zemo through the halls of this place unaware.

He curses under his breath, then makes a break after his best friend.

It's not much of a choice, really, between leaving him behind or potentially getting buried with him. Fortunately he isn't hard to find. Zemo's smart but he's no super soldier, and when he stumbles across Steve, it's with Steve toting his unconscious body back toward the silo.

"Building's coming down- we gotta go-" if it isn't already too far gone to get out the way they came in.

Steve's not alone. T'Challa had helped with Zemo's capture and the man in the black vibranium armor tilts his head towards the silo as if listening. "He is right," comes the conclusion. "I have made arrangements for transport."

Captain America trusts his team to make it out all right, and after Falcon confirms that the other three are indeed safe on the other side of the mountain ridge, Steve turns back to T'Challa. "For Bucky too," he asks, trying to confirm what the prince is offering.

It sounds a lot like asylum and that's exactly what Barnes needs now. It's something that they may both need if Ross decides to lump Steve in with the terrorism charges, or the whole Accords fiasco.

Black Panther bows ever so slightly and Steve's bright blue eyes plead towards Bucky to accept.

He wants to run. Everything in him wants to run, and it's clear by the way he falters, frozen, in a hallway outside of a collapsing building as though risking it would be preferable. Staring back into that black mask that nearly took him out once already... He's not picking up on that offer being for something greater than just a ride. Can't fathom asylum.

But Steve's pleading, and there's a guy on the roof upstairs he owes a favor.

Reluctantly, finally, he gives a single nod.

They bolt.

It's a precarious game of hauling ass around falling chunks of concrete, of climbing something that requires launching their entire damn bodies at a platform and hoping it's stable enough to carry them, but before the interior control room collapses proper they're peeling themselves out one after the other, Barnes last of all.

They stand in the snow, all of them but two wanting him either dead or arrested, and he can't help the way his eyes clock the treeline. The internal debate on whether or not he could make it before someone with wings or claws managed to subdue him.

Finally, there's a detached sort of tiredness that settles over his eyelids, ripples down his expression.

Life in a glass prison. He's hoping that's the way this goes, and no worse. Already thinking about an appeal to impress the urgency onto Stark, so they keep everyone but the people in this circle far the hell away from his cell. It's the only way to know.

Edited 2020-03-31 16:48 (UTC)

As usual, Captain America gets the final say in everything, though in this case, that say is silence. Stark, Wilson and Rhodes have caught up with the, the rubble of the silo like a big black scar in the snow. It's the first time that most of the others have seen Black Panther, and though Tony doesn't really see much beyond his own nose, Rhodey and Sam are impressed.

And Tony is quiet too, his armor dented in places, missing in others. His arm still isn't right but FRIDAY has confirmed that it's only got a hairline fracture close to his elbow joint and while he'll be in a cast for a little while, a few runs under the regeneration machine will make him right as rain. Just the same, he doesn't bother to drop his helmet. It's cold...and he's good with not having another staring contest with Barnes right now.

As the ash settles and the silence gives them all time to reflect, Steve finally lifts his chin to dole out orders.

"We have two crafts. Buck, T'Challa and I will return in the prince's. Stark, you bring the quinjet back and try to leave it where you got it." It seems all on the up and up, but Steve has been known to lie and cheat when need be.

Today is just the same.

The moment they split up, T'Challa will be cloaking the plane and taking them to Wakanda. He doesn't want to leave Sam behind, but it's necessary to protect Bucky.

He gets the feeling that as soon as they're gone from here, it's going to be the end of something. If he sees Tony again it'll be through a plate of glass, and that's only if T'Challa doesn't declare midway through that they won't be extraditing him to the US. He shares a look with Steve, a glance at Tony and back, an unspoken just give me five minutes.

And he peels away from the rest of them toward a dented suit of armor.

It'd be nice to have that space and that face-to-face they had in the jet, just those few stolen seconds of conversation where it felt like they established something even in that short, short stretch of time. Unfortunately, what he's got is about ten feet of distance from the group in the snow through a face plate, but all the same...

"Thank you," spoken with a stoic sort of sincerity. For listening, and for helping with the fight, even though you had no reason to aside from the sense of obligation his tattoo brings. A glance down, then somewhere off to the side as he throws out, "I don't have a phone."

Just... so you know. So he can't keep in touch, regardless of whether or not he wants to. He's thinking about it.

But it means this likely ends here, because he doesn't exactly have the resources or the bodily autonomy to make any kind of choice that would allow him to reach out to Tony once they part.

It shouldn't matter, maybe - they spent their entire lives without one another, and they've had five total minutes of conversation, but... Still. It's important to him that he makes the effort anyway.

And hey - odds are if the guy's interested he can always hit up the Wakandan prince to inquire about visiting hours at the pokey.

For being a smart guy, Tony hadn't seen through Rogers' plan until this moment and it leaves him colder than what even Siberia can do. Bucky striding across the snow, the sound of it crunching under his boots akin to what it might feel like to have his heart run over on a gravel driveway. He's holding his breath, not that anyone can tell, though Rhodes does shift his weight to intervene if something snaps in the other man again. He'd seen the footage of Barnes' escape and he's not letting his best friend take the hit.

Tongue too dry in his mouth to speak at first, and the mechanism to actually peel down the helmet stuck from the escape of the collapsing silo, Tony instead struggles to rip the face plate off with one hand.

Steve might be having a flashback of doing just that, considering the look he's giving the two.

"Where are you going? Wakanda?" There's something strangled in Tony's voice. It's unpleasant, acidic. Wakanda is closed off from the world. If Bucky goes there, that might just be it.

And hadn't Tony just said to him that they had already waited their entire God damned lives to find out that they both did still have a soulmate? Tony's anger isn't anger at all.

It's fear. Bucky might be able to smell it on him.

Not that Steve cares. "We don't have time, Buck. We have to go now." Five minutes might be all it takes for Ross to track down that quinjet now that they've advertised what they've done.

The face plate goes, and he's surprised to see the fervor with which Tony peels it off - happy that it's gone, just the same. There's a sudden lurching feeling in his chest, something twisting up tight for reasons he can't quite put a name to. The tenor of Tony's voice, maybe, or the gravity of the situation.

Thickly, he manages, "I don't know. Wherever they wanna throw me, I guess."

A cell in Wakanda, a cell in the States, maybe back into cryo if he's considered too dangerous to even keep awake - the last one wouldn't be so bad, he thinks. He could understand it, and he'd rather be frozen in a dreamless sleep than wake up in a cot to the sound of someone calling желание.

There are things he considers doing, absurd notions that involve moving toward him, except there's a suit of armor between them and pulse weapons aimed at his back if it seems like he's making a sudden move on Iron Man. All the same, they don't know each other, and Tony's sentiment on this whole thing has been less than receptive as far as he can tell.

So he checks his impulses, dips his head, and with pursed lips he peels away under Steve's orders.

They gotta go.

This is honestly par for the course. Tony can't even be properly upset about it because it's just so typical. He can feel his eyes start to sting, but no one else is really paying that much attention to him, so he doesn't bother to swallow back the pain in his chest this time. Instead, he admonishes himself on feeling it in the first place.

People leave him. Unless they're assigned to him because they need to watch over his end of filling military contracts (Rhodes), under his payroll (Happy, and Pepper), or constructed by him (DUM-E, FRIDAY), no one stays. Pepper and JARVIS are very good examples of what can happen when the ties that bind are broken.

As logical as Tony likes to think he is, he's still ruled by irrationality and whim. Genius doesn't really follow the straight and narrow and he has trouble checking himself when impulse strikes. He's not a soldier. He doesn't have the training Bucky does not to be an idiot.

"You knew about this, Rogers," Tony calls across the icy landscape to Captain America and his stoic, handsome face. The venom is jarring. "You knew and you kept it to yourself. People are supposed to trust your judgement."

Sam and Rhodey, and poor T'Challa, have no idea what any of this is about, but of course Steve knows. You don't grow up with someone and not know about the tattoo on their chest...or what it means the first time you meet their soulmate and decide to keep all of that to yourself.

Steve doesn't say a word. He just heads towards the waiting plane, to where he knows Bucky will be able to get the help he needs. At this point, Tony's feelings just don't matter to him.

The realization startles Bucky, too. Something he hadn't thought about - something he didn't have time to think about. Steve must have known, because he'd seen Bucky's tattoo a dozen times or more when they were kids. When they were in the war together. He'd have probably known about Tony's through pre or post mission medical care, or at the very least he'd be able to recognize the position and shape of an arc reactor. He'd be able to tie it back to his best friend, and he'd have been able to do it in the early days of meeting Tony.

Clearly he didn't breathe a word of it to Stark himself. There's no question, otherwise things might've played out differently.

Otherwise, Stark might've gotten involved in looking for him - not that he wanted to be found. But this might've gone differently, he might've had more time to find a way to work this out.

For the first time, he falters. Stares at Steve's back with lips parting, stricken with a sudden inexplicable betrayal that he can't quite articulate.

His last backward glance at Tony might make it clear that the wheels are turning, that he hadn't made that connection until now, and that something foundational has been a little bit cracked.

But he doesn't have anywhere else to go.

Without a word, he boards the aircraft.

The doors seal, they take off, and it isn't more than forty seconds before Bucky's breaking in with a rusty, carefully measured, "Why didn't you tell him?"

"There is a place to talk in the hold," the prince says calmly while Steve is left trying to formulate a plan of action here. He does it with all the grace royalty has instilled in him and returns his attention to his flying. The blond murmurs a thanks and then nods for Bucky to follow him into a very small portion at the rear of the small plane. It's not exactly comfortable to be there, both because of the tight quarters and because Bucky is obviously torn up about his inaction.

He sighs slightly through his nose and leans awkwardly against the curved side of the plane, arm lifted to brace himself from shifting on the low ceiling.

"You were dead when I met him," Steve says, hiding nothing from Bucky. "And when we were looking for you... I should have told him. He wouldn't have listened or believed me, but I should have told him."

Steve had been in DC. He hadn't seen Tony in a long while. Sam was his literal wing man on Bucky's trail for the last two years and Stark was a guy he didn't really get along with. At all.

"I didn't trust him. I still don't. Not when it comes to you." He holds up his other hand, covered in shoot and concrete dust to stop Bucky from saying anything more. "It wasn't my call to make, keeping it from him. I shouldn't have and I'm sorry."

There's a burning, steadily rising fire in his chest that he can't quell. It's not easy to get him to this point, he's not temperamental in the least. Even when he was back in his younger days, back when he was quicker to an outburst, it still took time to get him there - time, and a lot of cracks against his mask to make him slip.

It rises up with unprecedented quickness and ferocity, at least as far as his best friend is concerned. Never been so angry at Steve so fast, and it makes the plates in his left arm shift into position as though preparing to take a swing.

He doesn't.

It's excuses. A lot of them, layered on one another, back to back, and all of them sound cheap. The muscle in his jaw thumps as his teeth grit, as he tries to reign himself in, and--

Maybe, maybe what's making this so big inside him is bleed-through from what Tony's consumed with at the same exact moment.

"Tell me something," He starts, a quiver in his otherwise steady voice. "If it was the same situation, but it was you and Peggy, would anything coming out of your mouth right now be enough for you?"

It's such a god damn complex moment, such a thick and layered situation. Steve just saved his life, his freedom, his reputation. Steve just gave up everything for him to get him here. He's still got an insurmountable load of guilt on his mind for leaving Steve on the banks of a river in the first place for nearly killing him, for not reaching out the entire time Steve went looking.

These two things make it hard to feel justified in his anger, hard to feel like he deserves to be angry, so rather than waiting for an answer he just shakes his head and pulls back. Slips from the hold back into the craft proper, to sit down silently for the remainder of the flight.

The fix to his arm is easy. The repairs to his armor are less so, but he gets started on them right away, as soon as he's debriefed and threatened enough times to be laughable. As long as he's busy, he's all right. Tony's worst enemy is stillness and silence and so he fills it as best he can with tasks and with music.

The nights are pretty bad, though. It's never a good look to drink alone, but there's no one to share the top shelf scotch or brandy with. FRIDAY doesn't count, not because Tony doesn't see her as a real person, but because after JARVIS' death and subsequent transformation into Vision, Tony has decided not to get close to his AI anymore.

Loss is too much for him. It turns him into someone he doesn't like. At least there aren't cameras rolling. And Ross has decided not to keep calling when all Tony does it put him on hold. Barnes and Rogers are gone. Ross can suck on that the same as Tony is forced to.

He's seven or eight sheets to the wind when the oldest FedEx guy in the history of the universe arrives at HQ in upstate New York, banging away on the glass door of the building his living quarters and workshop are in. Tony frowns. How the guy made it through security is anyone's question, but if the man wants to shoot him, so be it. He doesn't even bother to take offence at the mispronunciation of his name.

He gives no shits and stumbles away from the weird encounter to tear open the package.

He's not expecting to find a dinosaur of a phone inside and frowns at it for awhile before he takes it, the note that's come with it, and himself to the bar for a refresh of his glass.

It's not Steve's idea to send the phone in this timeline, but Bucky's. It takes some days, some long talks, some heated discussion with Steve and some respectful discussion with T'Challa. It isn't a cell he's relegated to, but an apartment suite in the castle with all of the guard in the joint prepared to spring on him if necessary - but mostly, they say, to spring on anyone else who may somehow find out he's here and infiltrate the place for him.

He considers going back into cold storage anyway, but he's got a responsibility now. Something he's tied to, someone he has to work things out with.

So he gets a phone - it's top notch, better than anything he's ever owned, and absolutely loaded with the type of Wakandan security protocols he can't begin to wrap his head around. He's markedly less technologically inhibited than Steve, having been semi-awake and utilized through the boom of it, but it's still an intimidating device.

They send a burner flip to Tony.

The note itself is from Steve, and it's short. Sweet, to the point. About how he thought he was doing the right thing, about how he acknowledges that he wasn't. It talks about fear and about selfishness. About the accords.

About how if Tony needs him, there are two numbers in the phone.

Steve's, and James Barnes.

At the bottom of the note in scratchier scrawl:

I got a phone.

No shit, Tony thinks as he sets down the glass and rereads the letter again. Steve has printing like newstype, like an artist. None of the important things at the moment are written in that script and so he focuses on making sure he commits the last four words and their chicken scratch lettering to memory. It's not easy to do when the world is swimming around your head, that's for sure, but Tony makes a genuine effort before he makes a bigger one going to get some coffee.

What he should do after that is take a nap and sleep off some of the alcohol, but he doesn't. He can't.

This is far too important.

Letter shoved into his pocket (folded gently, thank you), Tony sprawls out on a white leather couch and props his sneakered feet on the arm rest so the soles of his shoes don't touch the sofa. He gazes at the phone for a moment before he hits option 2 on the speed dial and waits as it rings.

Bucky would have just gotten done a therapy session with the princess, which had amounted to much less talking and much more computer programming to find a way to erase the trigger words from his mind in a way that would trip the circuit from Bucky to the mindless soldier. It's exhausting...both being around someone so exuberant, and being a test subject. Even if the testing is kind and so far non-invasive.

Frankly, he feels a little bit like a moron in the first five minutes when he says, I thought this was gonna be some kind of, I don't know, talk therapy. She fires back Do I look like Dr. Phil to you? Get in the chair, we have work to do. Does it in a way that's kind, though, with a smile and no heat to her words. It becomes rapidly apparent that assuming she's a shrink is offensive to what she actually is: a god damn genius. His eyebrows are practically in his hairline when she almost immediately pulls up a 3D holographic representation of his brain, and the neural pathways within it.

Truth be told, it leaves him a little more optimistic about the whole thing. He had his doubts that talking it out or hypnosis or something would actually undo 70 years of programming, but lasering his brain to just burn off the synaptic connections is a tangible, physical thing.

He's on board.

He's only out in the hallways after the appointment when the cell starts going off, and there's only two people it could be.

It's not the one he was expecting. He can't put this on hold, or send it to voicemail, he can't, so he ducks into a pristine, minimalist alcove meant to be a waiting area for the medical lab. The phone responds to his metal fingers in a strange and specific way.

He answers.

There's a beat of silence, and then a careful, "Hey."

Hey is such an amusing way to answer the phone that Tony can't help himself but laugh. Hearing Bucky's voice doesn't immediately trigger anything in him, though. It's been too long. Their connection had been minor. Knowledge of one's soulmate does not a bond make and so Tony's current depressive state has nothing to do with bonding sickness or the like. It's purely emotional. And yes, the man without a heart can indeed prove it's there simply by the ache he feels at missing out what could have been the best thing to have ever happened to him in his entire life.

Considering the massive amounts of things he's experienced, that's a huge compliment.

"How's Wakanda?" he's slurring a little, though the words are calculated and precise to control that. He's a functioning alcoholic at his lowest periods and he knows exactly how to overcome his drinking habit when something important comes up and requires his attention. He's managed to do quite a lot in his life in various stages of drunkenness, he's happy to report. There's just something missing in his speech though. The off-the-cuff quality to it is missing.

His life's not over. Neither of their lives are over, even if it does consistently feel like the end of the world every other day. Even if they both feel old, worn down, past some kind of point of no return. The reality is, they have some tomorrows left still.

He doesn't know Tony well enough to know the intricacies of his voice. Can't tell that he's been drinking, not yet - he can only tell that it's missing a levity it felt like almost everything else had those days ago at the start. Even if they were angry, twisted, judgemental - there was still a certain bleak humor to them. An attitude.

He doesn't hear that.

But it's only two words.

He presses his back against a wall, losing himself in the phone so hard that he doesn't even see the tiled floor his eyes are pointed at.

"Better than prison," He says, only barely joking. "Better than a Hydra deep freezer, too."

And those shitty, sketchy, probably ought to be abandoned apartment buildings in the cheapest parts of Romania. Better than anything he's had in the last lifetime he's lived.

"How's-- New York, right?"

How is New York? Recovering from an intergalactic family grudge. Trying to come to grips with the world as it is. Being a whole cosmos unto themselves. Tony smiles and gets comfortable. He's not a big conversationalist, not on the phone at least, but this feels somewhat therapeutic. It's likely not because of the particular person so much as it's a person at all.

Maybe that's not exactly fair to Bucky, though. If Steve were on the other end of the line, Tony would be much less content right now.

He manages a little quip about the city still standing and squints up at the ceiling. "Not in the city, though." He can feel his eyelids start to lower and he snaps them open far too quickly. He hasn't slept in who knows how long and as comfortable as he feels night now, if he starts to snore, he'll be angry at himself. "Working on getting Ross off your case."

Okay, no he isn't. He's been wallowing. But he will be working to get Ross off of Bucky's case. He needs to see him and he knows for a fact he won't be welcome in Wakanda.

There's a quiet moment following the comment, soft surprise, grateful interest. He tries to frame his words before he says them, so it comes out a little slow and a little careful.

"Wasn't sure you'd want to get involved," considering the push-back he got during their first meeting. It's been a little whiplash even in their short time, from absolute mistrust and disregard to an intensity in their brief exchanges, the unfairness of it all on clean display on Tony's face.

He doesn't have a good, comprehensive understanding on where Tony stands on this whole thing. Feels a little too forward to just ask.

"Don't be too upset if it's a lost cause. As far as criminal records go... Mine's a CVS receipt. Even if you take off the UN, the stuff I did when I was..."

Something else in his mind.

All that is worthy of the death penalty.

“Last I heard, that wasn’t you.” You can’t blame the Manchurian Candidate. Tony has no doubt that a certain faction will probably blame him, but Stark has enough money to change anyone’s mind. At least where it counts. He’s not at all above playing the games he has to play to get his way.

Maybe he should run for office? Imagine what he could do to protect people if he was capable of passing law rather than just lobbying it?

Perhaps a more sober minded Stark will find reasons not to but this Stark is already planning how to get out of giving an acceptance speech for Senate.

The couch creaks under him as he turns onto his stomach, the phone resting on his face as his lets his knuckles rub along the thick white rug spread beneath the couch.

“Would you be okay if we pin all the blame on Rogers?” The guy deserves it.

A soft puff of breath is the only answer Tony gets at his supposition. He's not sure that's entirely true - more than that, he's not sure Stark would share this same opinion if he knew what Bucky's still got left to tell him. He can't bring himself to do that over the phone, though, and not so soon into this... tentative thing they're trying to navigate. Once they get to see each other face to face, or at least maybe through virtual conferencing, he'll work up to it.

Soon. He means it when he tells himself that. He's never been one to bear secrets out of fear for accepting the responsibility of them.

At least part of it was him. His body, his fault for breaking, and the cognitive awareness at the moment is still in his memory, first person perspective, undeniably him. A piece of him that they just sharpened and isolated. Still a piece of the whole. If a car crashes because it's got faulty parts, it's still a car crash.

He does, however, huff a surprised and breathy chuckle at the request.

"Afraid not. Wilson, though... still on the table."

Wilson... which one is Wilson... Tony makes a mental shrug before the face slips into view. Sam Wilson. With the wings. The guy Rogers thought was the better person to go searching for his soulmate with. Yeah. Tony is feeling some sort of way about that. His mood involuntarily darkens.

“He didn’t spent our entire friendship lying to me,” Tony says, and though he’s classified his relationship with Steve as ‘friend,’ it’s not exactly accurate. Tony hasn’t had the chance to get to know Steve the way he has some of the other Avengers, though the blond has always managed to push him to be better despite everything.

He is pretty sure Bucky doesn’t want to listen to his best friend raked through the mud, and so Tony’s follow up to that is a sigh.

“I could have found you so much faster, Barnes,” he ends up complaining instead. “Probably could have saved you.”

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