bakerstreet | [ hey, i brought you this soulmate ]

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[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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Tony feels the clamp on their tenuous, threadlike bond as a heart attack. He struggles, clawing at the tattered ends as the snap away from him, but he can't reach it. The loss is so totally encompassing that his body can't process the trauma. There is no reactor in his chest to restart his heart, he's probably on the verge of a secondary stroke complication, and his demise will be reported across the world as due to weakened health or something else painfully trite and common.

Of course, Tony is not suffering from a heart attack. He's not experiencing a stroke, either. The shortness of breath and ramped up pulse rate are simply physiological occurrences due to emotional trauma. And Tony's been there before. He knows the drill of rejection and loss. The little spasm has found him on the floor between the seat he had been occupying and the bar. He's got a low grade migraine and a head full of Swiss cheese where Bucky had so briefly been. There are tears in his big brown eyes, tears running in rivers down his cheeks, and he looks almost maddened as he pressed a hand to his chest where his reactor had once been.

He should have been better capable of self control at this point in his life, but Tony can already feel the hold he has on his emotion falling away the same as the bond had. He can literally feel himself losing his shit as the emotional whirlwind has takes over.

He found a soulmate he hadn't wanted, came to a conclusion that what he actually didn't want was to lose him, lost him anyway for awhile only to find out that the loss wasn't measured in terms of forever after all. And now, after all of that, he's been rejected by the one person in his life that he should have been able to count on.

So yeah, fuck biology and happily ever after.

Rage (because even in this day and age, it's easier for a man to hold that emotion rather than feel comfortable fully breaking down in front of another) cuts through the tears on his face, the skin flushing. He can't even find the words right now.

Things start to spiral quickly, from good to great to terrifying to bad. He doesn't need the bond to feel what Tony's feeling, because he's carrying it there on his face and in his body language so powerful it's like that pulse he sends from his hand. It thuds through Bucky's chest, it overwhelms him in its intensity.

He doesn't reel back from it.

His hand shoots out, gripping the wrist Tony'd been pressing his chest with, and drags it instead to his own. Above tattoo, but mostly above his heart which is hammering a god damn mile a minute.

"I want it-" He implores, shifting forward -- but there's only so much space on the floor of a car, and Tony's occupying most of it. Another six feet of muscle can't fit, so it leaves his back sloping in as deeply as he can manage while still pushing that palm against his chest. "Jesus, do I want it."

It, the bond. You.

"That wasn't-"

Intentional, a choice. He didn't peel back of his own accord so much as a knee-jerk reaction like a starving dog who's been kicked too often to take food without tucking tail and bolting.

You're breaking his heart, looking at him like that. That probably makes them even, so lowly he impresses, "We can try it again."

And again, and again, until he gets it right, sweetheart, he's just a little bit broken is all.

The very last thing that Tony thought he wanted was for Bucky to touch him, but that turns out to be entirely untrue. He doesn't struggle away from the other man, though his hackles aren't completely settled either down either. It feels consciously and subconsciously good to know that his heart rate mirrors Bucky's though. He's not as alone as he thought he was. The words that follow put the rest of him at ease, though his hand is still shaking and his eyes refuse to stop watering.

Relief, however, is not a sensation that will come to either of them tonight. Bucky's confession sparks an understanding in Tony's still addled mind as to everything that had stopped them from what they'd both wanted to do.

It helps Tony to know that Bucky is still partially with him. He can still feel him, or parts of him, though whatever tattered bond they'd initially shared. It's a ghost, but it's something.

Tony tries to wipe his face, tries to exhale, tries to stabilize something going on physically with him so that he can find the words to do more than shake his head when Bucky offers another round of what will end with him once again in a TKO.

"I don't think you can," he says, sounding like he's had a three pack a day habit for the last ten years. "Whatever HYDRA did...I think they locked me out."

The theory makes his mouth snap closed, teeth set, jaw clenching. There's a small tremor in his hand, flexing fingers gripping too tightly with just a hair too much strength before he reigns in control of it.

He tugs his eyes away to set them firmly on the glass, a subtle burning bitterness taking over his features.

"Yeah, of course they did," He manages, dark and toneless. Because why wouldn't they? Out of everything else they've taken from him, what's a little more, right? If you're gonna take a man's history, his identity, his free will you might as well take his capacity to bond while you're at it. Property doesn't need to bond.

There's a beat of silence, then thickly, "They tried to burn it off. They tried to cut it off. Just kept growing back."

But how do you grow back something that deep and intangible? How do you grow back an open door, your subconscious's willingness to let something else in?

Though he certainly doesn't need to ask for an explanation, Tony can't help but be curious at how perfectly Barnes recovered from that sort of physical trauma. His tattoo have been burned and cut off, but his chest, and the exterior indication that he had a soulmate somewhere or sometime had come back? That's pretty remarkable, though likely because of the other changes that had happened to Bucky during his time in Italy and with HYDRA.

"The Nazis used to experiment on soulbound people," Tony says as he gets to his knees and crawls back to Bucky with some difficulty. He feels unwell, out of sorts, like he's still recovering from being sucker punched. Thankfully, he doesn't have that far to go in order to reach the other man, lift a hand to his face, and pull those dark blue eyes back towards him. "Look at me, Barnes. They were never successful in anything they tried to do in the long run and they're not going to win here. You just have to tell your friends in Wakanda to find me a window to crawl into."

Tony knows he must look foolish, but that doesn't mean he doesn't sincerely believe he can make this happen.

"And if they can't, I'll find one myself."

Generally, that tenacity doesn't always go so well, of course. He's been known to blow himself up during attempts at making progress.

It is almost wholly and entirely due to the serum that he's managed to get by without clearly evident scarring on his chest. No brands, nothing like his arm, which had been sawed off and replaced before the end of the procedure. Everything they did to his chest they did after he was already at peak, and it took less than two weeks each time for the skin to slowly scab, flake, heal back to perfect. Took a week after that for the tattoo to blossom with color again, filling out the parts that had been damaged, reforming itself perfectly as though it were never gone.

It takes a second and some great willpower to obey that look at me command, but ultimately he does - only by Tony's guiding hand.

He isn't one to allow himself to cry. Never been good at letting vulnerable emotions through before the war thanks to his father, but after being systematically disassembled and punished for outward displays of emotion the lock he's got on himself is practically made of vibranium.

All the same, his eyes shine like he's on the cusp of it. He just won't give himself the relief of falling. Opposite of Tony's bright and vibrant, clear emotional response. Opposite in a million tiny ways.

He thinks it would've been easier if they'd just carved out his heart instead.

He swallows tacky spit, works to release the muscles of his jaw and the clenching of his throat to grind out a muted, "I'll talk to them." The effort it takes to keep his face stoic means his cheek muscles are tense, and the words come out small. Quiet. Rigid.

His fingers go lax around that hand he'd been pressing to his chest, releasing it from captivity.

Of all the people in all the world, he's sorry you got stuck with him. Damaged goods that don't even have that romantic notion of letting someone fix him through the magical power of gay love and a first kiss.

It's a good thing that Tony's not really into fixing people...or things for that matter. He's a start over from scratch kind of guy, and while repairs are sometimes needed, he's been known to let whole projects burn just to have an excuse to begin again. In that way, perhaps, Bucky is exactly the sort of soulmates he deserves. Biology deeper than any human understanding has linked them together and Tony Stark is going to fight to keep it now that he knows Bucky hasn't been pushing him away.

He's less romantic than Bucky is, less capable of seeing outside of himself to the needs of others, and that will play an important part in this next step their lives are taking. Tony is never going to stop until he gets what he wants...

Or possibly becomes distracted. It's happened before and he wouldn't rule it out now either save for the simple fact that he can feel Bucky pushing on his subconscious so heavily that there's no way to ignore it.

Tony takes a deep breath, staring into Bucky's eyes in an attempt to get the other man to just breathe with him. "We have...some time left. I have to put somethings on hold. I'm coming back with you." This is not open for discussion.

He manages, reigning in control through only the soft outward breath that escapes through his nose - long and quiet, until all the air from his lungs disappears. He peels a hand back to pass it across his mouth, the inner joints of his index and middle finger scrubbing away the tension like he can't manage it without them.

He nods.

A few hours to put some things on hold, whatever that means. As far as taking him back goes, well, Bucky's not the one in charge of the aircraft or who boards it, so all he can offer is a faintly wry, "Guess you can take that up with the scary bald lady who steers the thing."

Because sometimes she just looks at him and he knows she could probably snap his neck with her thighs if she was pissed enough. They should've just sent her to handle the Winter Soldier.

He shifts back in his seat, blows out a breath, then clasps his hands together between his knees. "You need me to-- wait outside, while you..."

Make calls, or do whatever putting things on hold constitutes?

A quizzical look is all Tony spares before he heads up to the divide between himself and his driver. Could he push the button to lower the screen? Absolutely. Does he? No. It’s more fun to slam his fist on the window. He needs to let off steam anyway.

Happy drops his phone, startled, at the thumping. He’d heard a little bit of something going on back there during a commercial break from his shows but he doesn’t ask questions. If Mister Stark wants to pick up strange men from a beach in India, that’s what he does and Happy can occupy himself with anything really.

He’s trying not to look on the backseat while giving Tony his full attention, face turned only partially. “What can I get for you, Mr. Stark?”

“Cancel everything for the next week. I’m going to need you to drive back to the hotel. You’ll have to bring everything I left there to the car. Don’t check out. Extend my stay until the end of next week. And then bring us back here. What the time—“

Happy tells him but Tony can see it illuminated on the dash.

“Six hours. You can take the scenic route. Don’t open the back doors, Happy.” He has to keep Bucky concealed. And that’s easy to do in a limo as long as no one puts down a window.

This leaves Barnes settled in the back to watch the whole exchange, left arm propped up on the door frame, leaning into it a little to support him like all of a sudden his head is too heavy. Watching Tony go immediately business mode like it's as natural as breathing is an interesting break from the turmoil, and it allows in the first fleeting feelings of cathartic relief.

His body being what it is, he rarely gets physically tired.

His mind being what it is, he almost always feels mentally and emotionally fatigued. It doesn't help that he just had his metaphysical rubber band broken midway through a soul bond or whatever.

(And maybe he's wondering what this means for them, if physicality is off the table until they figure this out, because he's not sure he can do much more than kiss Tony without that thing in his chest desperately reaching out.)

There are other things they can accomplish in six hours.

Seemingly from nowhere, he fires off, "Favorite color?"

Because they don't actually know each other at all, and maybe... somehow, with some stupid logic, it'll help if they do.

Happy has just started driving when Bucky speaks up and Tony insistently jams his thumb against the button the draw the glass between them and his bodyguard back up. He’s seated across from Bucky now, the full length of the stretch limo making the space feel more like a chasm. Tony’s eyes are puffy and red, but he’s gotten over the upset and the anger. He rests his elbow against the back of the seat, the one belonging to his recent fracture, and makes a circular gesture with his finger tip that moves the joint of his wrist too.

His mannerisms are so fluid and graceful and expressive. Moreso than even his eyes when he’s not blocking them out with tinted shades.

“I’m sorry, did you smuggle in a Teen People magazine?” he asks, eyebrow arching. He doesn’t think Bucky is actually asking him questions from a compatibility quiz, but the question is so out of the blue.

Is this what dating in the thirties and forties had been like?

He’s amused.

“Red, but I feel like that was a trick question.” Because you should have already known Barnes. “What’s yours? Black? Not a color by the way. Just so you know.”

He pulls an amused expression, softened by the strain of what lead them here, but an attempt at one nonetheless. Yeah, sure, maybe this is something teenagers do, but remembering what it was like back then? When things were simple and love felt bright, optimistic, all-consuming? Why not act a little bit like teenagers.

He was sure as hell better at this when he was 17 than he is now, anyway.

He scoffs a soft laugh at red, and wonders why he even asked. That one probably should have been obvious, considering.

"Blue," he flatly corrects. It's calming. It's soothing, the color of the sky and the ocean, something he associates with peace. God knows he could use a little more of that in his day to day. But they're on a rapid-fire session here, so he shoots out another quick, "Favorite food?"

It’s good that there’s a follow up question because Tony had been about to quip about every boy’s favorite color being blue. He wouldn’t buy any other reason, just like he would never admit that he hadn’t found his groove for this sort of thing until he was in his early twenties. At seventeen, he was the kid stealing grants and tenure from his professors at MIT and no one in his classes got along with him. He hadn’t yet learned to use that to his advantage.

“Cheeseburgers,” he answers smoothly and crouch walks back towards Bucky. “In and Out Burger is the best but I’ll take McDonald’s if that’s all that’s around. Are you going to say pizza?”

He doesn’t know why he keeps trying to guess here, and it doesn’t occur to him that he’s still desperately reaching out to make the connection that had been lost to him.

They should be able to already know these things, to pull them through their bond, but it had all been aborted. Tony’s mind hasn’t processed all that yet.

"Chocolate," He corrects, lips twitching up a little farther into a lazy sort of smile. It's made to look all the lazier by the fact that he still hasn't peeled his head out of his metal hand to sit up properly. He looks about a step away from fully sprawling out across the limo's seat.

A beat, and then he concedes, "Pizza's a close second, but I got a sweet tooth like you wouldn't believe."

When he started to run low on both in the war, it was almost always a toss up between trading chocolate for cigarettes or cigarettes for chocolate. Sugar's a whole food group for this man, don't leave it unattended in the room with him.

He nods his head at Tony. "Your turn."

He’d never have guessed that about Bucky, not in a million years. The guy is an eyeliner pencil away from Green Day in appearance, and chocolate isn’t something you expect those guys to be snacking on in between bong hits or some heroin. Tony scratches a finger down the side of his neck in thought for a moment, not for a question, but trying to rack his brain to see if they have chocolate in the limo.

They don’t. He tends to drink his sugar, as fermented as possible.

Bucky is looking at him so earnestly now though and so Tony doesn’t make him wait any longer for new question. Favorites. Favorite color, favorite food. He’s going to skip animal. “Favorite song.”

And there's where the first breathy laugh escapes him, a sort of self-deprecating thing that he stalls on by passing a hand over his mouth. He cards his hair back and, settling into something akin to resignation, asks, "Before or after?"

Before he became the soldier, or after he woke up? He's two different people, it feels like. Two different personalities. He had his preferences when all he knew was the forties, and before he got his mind completely back he had several months to develop a new taste for it. Modern music, the stuff they play on radios and in stores, on public transportation, on television.

Two whole different worlds feels like he ought to get two whole different songs.

“Now. But if you say it’s Basketcase, we can’t continue.” Tony doesn’t really have a lot against Green Day but he has to keep up the running jokes in his head. He’s still fishing around for that connection after all, especially now that he’s seen a flash of teeth behind a smile. Bucky’s is really lovely, once he flips his hair out of the way.

He’s always liked longer hair on both men and women. It’s something more to touch. He’s a glorified mechanic, and his hands are his business. The rest is just gravy.

“You’re the only version of you I know,” he points out. That makes him so very different from Steve. Neither of them are fighting against childhood memories here.

You keep on crackin' those Green Day jokes, pal, he's heard of them but he couldn't tell you a single thing they play. Just something mentioned in passing one time, the name of that band, but the thing is...

He's already goddamn sad all the time. The last thing he wants to listen to is music that makes him more sad, or angry, or anything like that. He's from a time when people used to love swing, and they only loved it because it was the best thing you could dance to at the time.

These days, if you're looking for cardio the options are a hell of a lot better.

So there's another long pause, and he clears his throat in that way only people ashamed of themselves can be, and then finally admits to the ceiling of the car, "Anaconda."

Queen Nicki. Doesn't know half of what in the hell she's talking about, but she sounds strong as hell while she does it.

Don't you go putting him in a box, Stark.

As ashamed as Bucky is, Tony just looks incredulous. His mouth is slightly agape and his eyes are wide as he stares at his soulmate. Tonight has been the world’s most insane rollercoaster and yet Tony doesn’t want to give up his spot on it for anything.

The lyrics of the song flash through his mind and he tilts his head to the side as Bucky avoids eye contact. The beat is good. The rap is clever. The samples he can do without and the drug and sex messaging is about as in your face rock and roll that there can be.

But that doesn’t keep him from laughing.

It’s a good, deep belly laugh, the kind that people like him never do because he’s the funniest guy in the room and it’s tacky to laugh at yourself like that.

He might start crying again. This is just beautiful.

“Go to a lot of clubs in Romania?”

It's the god damn laughter that gets him, cracking up his composure and tugging at his lips into a sort of sideways, reluctant grin. It's a good sound - Jesus, might actually be the best sound, and rewinding their reactions clean through to the first meeting, he thinks this might be the first time he's heard Tony actually laugh.

"I like girl rap," He says, some note of defensiveness in his tone, crossing his arms over his chest. "If they sound like they could snap your neck with their thighs, it's pretty much guaranteed."

He's not gonna dignify that clubbing question with a response - like hell they'd let his homeless, shaggy ass into a club, even if he had the money to pay a cover.

Admittedly, though, his musical taste is spotty as hell. He knows chart-topping hits from the last year or so, he knows things people consider classic enough to replay on oldies stations, he knows bits and pieces of stuff that cropped up while he was the Soldier and he somehow stored away the sound of it only to rediscover it recently. He likes weird Europop and the most random stuff they play in the different countries he's passed through while on the run.

But yeah, he god damn loves Nicki Minaj.

Time to deflect, get the spotlight back off of him, "Okay, yeah, yeah, shut up. What's yours?"

“Oh no. I want to hear more of James Barnes’ Infinite Playlist,” Tony says, shifting again to sit beside Bucky. They don’t touch. Tony doesn’t want to touch his soulmate again for a little while, but he still craves the closeness. “Do you have Rhianna on there? Missy Elliot or was she before your time?”

Bucky does look younger than he does by at least fifteen years. It doesn’t matter that he was born just after the turn of last century. He has a baby face when he smiles and despite the metal arm and the penchant for frowning, he still looks so young.

For a moment, Tony had to bite down the urge to tuck Bucky’s hair out of his face. He doesn’t. He won’t. No touching, he reminds himself and is already mad at his own rules.

“Okay, okay, if I tell you my favorite song we have to swing back to all of your favorite songs. Back tin Black.”

Edited 2020-04-03 03:08 (UTC)

Back in Black he thinks he knows - he's pretty sure, because it's that rock song they play on a whole lot of movies and on the classic rock radio he scans through sometimes. It's interesting, a little insightful as to Tony's personality really, and it has him tilting his head a little to study the guy anew.

But of course, they're still talking about his admittedly unusual taste. With a sigh, he reaches his hand into his pocket to pull out his phone. Taps the Spotify app, and hands over his liked from radio list.

It's all over the god damn place.

It's girl rap and big band and euro trap and german pop, but it's mostly girl rap. And yes, to answer both questions - there is both Rihanna and Missy Elliot. Strangely enough in his weird rabbit hole of female rap, there's even a blast from the past in the form of Salt-N-Pepa, though he's got no idea that it's considered old. None of it seems dated to him.

I love this, is all Tony can think as he thumbs through the playlist, eyes scanning the artist names and songs in samples. He can hear bits of the songs as he goes and while he doesn’t know all of them, he has to say he approves of the majority.

He himself is not a one hit wonder sort of guy. He’s not a metal head by any means, but before he had built the tech he uses to help him fabricate more tech, most of his projects were loud and required equally loud and thumping music to overcome the sounds of industrial construction.

For the R&D portion of his work, he’d say he’s more of a smooth jazz sort of guy.

Both eyebrows are raised as he hands the phone back to Bucky, actually deciding not to go snooping in Wakandan technology. He wants to, but what Bucky had said the first time they’d met about trust makes Tony want to try to meet him in the middle.

Even if the phone may be tapped and spying on them out of Rogers’ need to protect his friend.

Hopefully that failed bond hadn’t completely translated over.

“Can you Charleston to Nicki Minaj?” Inquiring minds need to know.

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[ hey, i brought you this soulmate ]

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