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:

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only | Expand All

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.”

He can't really say much about their entire friendship and the lies within it - after his anger simmered down to a low boil with Steve it's become easier not to outright fault him for it. Still thinks it was wrong, but he can't carry a grudge after everything Steve's done and he really can't bring himself to partner with talking bad about him. His loyalty streak's too high.

It slips away without comment, only silence in response for that.

What gets him, though... What really gets him... Probably could have saved you. His throat feels thick, chest tight, a jolt of anger or unfairness or something cascading through him that he has to take a silent second to stifle.

"Maybe," he agrees in a way that suggests it's more like maybe not. "The world thought I was dead. Nobody could track my name to- what I was. Even after it came out and Steve woke me out of it, those first few months..."

Weren't good. He wasn't a person. He was a wailing animal, a screaming storm with a metal fist. Something that teetered on the brink of swallowing a bullet. Someone who didn't know who he was, only what he'd done.

"You wouldn't have wanted to find me."

What Bucky says is the truth. There’s a good chance that, two years ago when he was in the throes of a happy relationship and a thriving business, he really wouldn’t have wanted to be saddled with a soulmate. Just as Bucky has with his comments on Steve, Tony doesn’t say anything now either in favor of trying not to kindle a fire he’s not prepared to handle.

Instead, he says something that may be objectively worse.

“I can still save you,” he says with the certainty of a drunk and the sadness of a man without an equal. Banner no longer fills the spaces he has always needed filled with conversation and understanding.

Maybe Bucky can’t either but Tony is desperate enough for a connection to try it.

”And I know where you are now. No more excuses.” Tony has to physically pull himself up, climbing up the back of the couch to right himself again. It’s a struggle. He’s throwing the damned alcohol away after this. “I just need some time. And a little less meddling.” Ahem. Steve. “You just have to start growing your hair out a little more for me, Rapunzel.”

Tony plucks a chord in his chest like a guitar string, a single radiating note that reverberates through his ribs and curls around his heart. It's sad and sweet and beautiful, and he has to peel away from the wall he'd been leaning on to just... pace a few steps. His head dips down, hair obstructing his face, phone held to his ear like it's glued there.

I can still save you.

He gets his first inkling that maybe Tony's not all in the way of sober now, just some combination of his tone and his sentiment, the deep contrast between now and before. I'm all out of helping hands today unless you're ready to surrender.

Another soft, breathy laugh at Rapunzel.

"Sweetheart, much as I appreciate the gesture, maybe instead of saving me you can just start by learning how to trust me. Maybe take a day trip or two."

The pet name slips out of its own accord, an accident, an old habit from a man he used to be but isn't any longer. Something he hasn't said in years and years.

And anyway, he doesn't think he can be saved - too much history to his name. Too many black marks. Too much death. Even if Tony could pull it off... well, there's a big murmuring voice in his head telling him he probably doesn't deserve it.

Edited 2020-04-01 00:08 (UTC)

It sounds like a challenge. Tony enjoys them, he loves to show off, and if Bucky doesn’t think he can deliver, he’s got another thing coming.

Back on his feet, Tony bends to pick up his still warm coffee mug and pauses as he brings it halfway to his lips. Trust is something he has struggled with since Uncle Obi had tried to kill him. Trusting someone you love only lets that person know where you’re most vulnerable at. He trusted his parents and they sent him to boarding school. He trusted his nanny and... well that’s a story for another day. He trusted Obadiah and ended up underground for four months. He trusted Pepper and she stole his heart. He trusted JARVIS, but a body was better than being his friend. He trusted Steve and the man kept the most important thing in his life from him.

This is going to be a hard one, Bucky.

“Can’t commit,” Tony says, though the sweetheart that had come first has stained his lips with a smile. “Hard to trust Brooklyn.” Because that accent. Wow. Tony doesn’t know the last time he unleashed Long Island.

The New York Borough rivalry is strong here.

“What do you think? Can you sneak me in? Don’t suppose you’ve got an in with the King?”

"Oof," He audibly winces, playing it up just a hair for the sake of a little rapport. Hard dagger to the heart, huh, Stark?

(In all actuality, the ties he had with Brooklyn have faded to something distant. His Brooklyn and this Brooklyn might as well be different planets. He thinks of hovels in Romania when he thinks of home.)

He finds himself lowering down onto a chair in the waiting alcove, long legs stretching out and body slumping back into the worst sort of posture - not terribly unlike a teenage boy, if that boy were two hundred pounds of muscle and had a metal arm. "Fortunately, the king feels a little bad for tryin' to take my head off for something I didn't do. Think I could maybe sway him and call in the favor already, but it'd take some work. You'd have to comply to their terms."

About how he gets in, what he brings with him, what he has access to, how long he can stay. They'll monitor tech and they'll make for damn sure Tony doesn't get a good opportunity to look at anything too long without someone auditing its importance.

Might be more trouble than Tony's willing to commit to. "If I were still sixteen and this were a fire escape window I'd get you in no problem. It's a little different."

If they were sixteen, they’d have their whole lives ahead of them. Things would be different. So different. Tony can’t think about that for more than a moment because his mind takes him to the joy it must have been having a friend-like brother. He can’t actually do that thought justice because it’s so foreign to him. As is sneaking in through windows. At sixteen, he was on his way to MIT, ready to surpass the life work of countless adults in the span of two semesters. The cockiness started then as a shield to protect him from the jealousy and dislike he faced as a teenager.

No wonder it took him so long to grow up.

Tony outright winces into his coffee at the thought of playing by someone else’s rules. He can’t even play by his own rules and he has the scars to prove that. He props the phone between his shoulder and chin and heads towards the staircase leading upstairs.

“It would be easier to meet on neutral ground,” he suggestions. T’Challa would know his reputation. It’s easier to swallow a central meeting place. “And if you tell the people that need to know what’s on your chest.”

Tony knows very little about Wakanda, but he can’t imagine they would willfully separate soulmates.

He shifts up in the chair, transitions gently into a forward-sloped back with his left forearm on his thigh. Dips his head down so he can scratch at his eyebrow with a metal thumb for a second, curled over himself and eyeing the floor again.

Neutral ground.

"You're right, the thing is..." It's not the chest part, he'll flash the tattoo at anyone that looks. You'd have to be out of your god damn mind not to be proud of the fact that you're soulmates with Tony "I Am Iron Man" saving peoples lives avenging genius Stark. It's the first part. "I don't know where neutral ground is anymore. There was a manhunt for me internationally. My face's been on every news station oin the globe. If I show up anywhere with civilization, there's a chance someone's going to call it into someone who knows what I am and how to use me."

Which... he supposes is a problem that can be averted only one way.

"Unless you're a fan of camping..."

“I’ll figure it out,” Tony says almost too quickly, as if he’s afraid that his brain will catch up with some biological urge he has to do whatever it takes to see Bucky again. He’s sure it’s just an emotional response to the alcohol and the loneliness and nothing else, easy to squash once he’s sober, but by that same token, it would also be easy to back out if he didn’t give his word.

Now, there are other possibilities that Tony might have suggested, like one of the many homes he has scattered across the globe, or perhaps the purchase of a small island, but he’s very likely being watched. Large purchases, even made through shell companies, would be traced back to him.

Thankfully, he has a bit of a habit of traveling the globe of late on his downtime in his search for the whereabouts of one Not So Jolly Green Giant, and so he plans to make a few reservations across India at top hotels to throw anyone curious off of his trail.

Tony isn’t good at hiding. He’s never been good at it. He doesn’t even want to try but he doesn’t have a whole lot of options left to him right now. Lay low and see Bucky it... don’t.

“I’m going to be in Chennai in three days. The Grand Marquis. Have someone tell me where to go and I’ll be there.” He’s really going to hate himself when this coffee kicks in.

That ain't exactly his immediate thought when it comes to laying low - frankly, he'd been going a little overboard picturing the god damn Russian wilderness in Winter a hundred miles form civilization, but admittedly that's just his own paranoia driving him. Had to stay alive by himself, had to navigate by himself, had to keep himself safe for those years. Erring on the side of caution is the only thing that worked, and he knows for a fact it preserved him at least two lethal encounters with Hydra operatives who wanted to drag him back and rip him from his body.

It's a choice between his fear-based paranoia, and never seeing Tony again.

He chews his lip, gnawing at the skin.

"I'll figure something out," finally escapes, resignation and a promise. He'll make it work, even though he knows Steve's gonna disapprove and T'Challa's going to give him some hard looks about it.

He'll take it. Navigate those things. Accept the risks and the lectures and the potential consequences. "I'll go talk to them now. It's gonna take some time to figure out."

And he does.

They end their call with not much else aside from a strange, weighted goodbye.

At nearly midnight that third day after radio silence, Tony will finally get a text message. Coordinates to a secluded spot on Marina Beach, some place out in the middle of goddamn nowhere that there isn't a soul to be seen, especially this late at night, except for one.

He'll be there with his feet in the path of the tide and his ass in the sand, waiting.

Tony has been to India many, many times. He’s gone through his spiritual phases, sure, but there’s only two places in the world to get really good curry and that’s Chennai and London. The former had seemed like the best place to lay low for awhile and deal with his problems through outreach to Ross and other members of the UN and congress. Working remotely is on brand for him and no one seems to expect anything, not even Ross, though he barely seems willing to trust what Tony says. Luckily, no one needs him to.

The rendezvous location comes after Tony’s made some headway with the State Department, as he’s headed back from dinner at one of his favorite restaurants. They don’t have time to stop back at the hotel, but that hardly matters. Tony never travels light and the trunk has everything he imagines he’ll need if called up suddenly to ‘rough it.’

He has Happy park back on the road so that he can head towards the solitary figure in the sand, a black lump by the moonlit surf. He takes his time, feeling the sand shift under his feet. He’s wearing all white, linen to stave off the heat, though the night air is more than just a little cool on the skin beneath the fabric. It prickles with goosebumps but he ignores it. Just knowing who waits for him leaves his stomach smoldering. That will keep him warm enough.

Tony isn’t sure if this is their final destination, if Bucky has a plane at his disposal or if Tony will need to provide the transport for the rest of the trip, but that’s not a question for the moment.

He focuses instead on finding a spot beside the other man, hair far too full of product to blow in the wind the way Bucky’s does.

“Am I interrupting the brooding and writing smi poetry?”

He blames the ocean tide for how long it takes him to notice the sound of oncoming feet in the sand. The steady waves lapping and receding make for a really calming white noise, so he only looks over his shoulder when Tony's about ten feet away. It would've been too late if it were anyone else, and the spike of anxiety gives way to a quick, pulsing relief.

The quip has his lips quirking up, faintly amused.

"I don't know, maybe you wanna take another lap on your white horse for the cologne commercial first and I might be done by then," He answers, slow and dry, a subtle pleasure in the back and forth playing around the way his eyes slit a bit more than usual. He doesn't get up, which might be a slight indicator there isn't a second stop on this visit. His elbows settle on his knees, the water floods in past his heels, and he watches Tony settle himself in the sand with a curious, keen perception.

There's a lot to learn here. A lot to store away about Tony; how he moves, what his facial features give away about what he's thinking as opposed to what he wants to project. What his body language indicates about where they stand and whether or not he's interested.

Fortunately, Bucky's always been an intent observer. That's all he plans to do here tonight - watch, learn, get a feel for this whole thing.

Edited 2020-04-01 02:58 (UTC)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject