#collaborative effort

“I can’t lift it, Buck,” Steve said, and Bucky squinted at him, not sure if Steve was sincerely trying or not. Couldn’t prove it. But none of them had much lingering fondness for Tony. Steve had only come for Bucky -- he’d managed to get his SOS and location out when they’d plugged him in to torture him; the extra electricity had given his internal circuits some extra boost. Enough that Natasha would have been able to find him, and Steve would come for him.

Bucky knew that like he knew his own name.

Admittedly, there were days that Bucky didn’t know his own name. So there was that.

“You bring the witch with you?”

Of course they had; just the way Hawkeye’s gaze flickered upward was enough to tell him the truth.

“Get her down here and get us out of here.”

“He’s pretty badly hurt,” Steve reasoned. “You think--”

Bucky drew a knife from the small arsenal he’d taken off the guards. “He’ll live. He has to. You get us out of here.” His fingers tightened against Tony’s

“Wanda’s evacuating the other prisoners,” Steve said. “Clint, hold up Stark, Bucky can help me lift.”

Bucky thought he might throw up, trusting Hawkeye to keep Tony’s head above water while they worked on the support beam, but what else was he going to do? Aside from flay Hawkeye alive if he let Tony drown.

Bucky got himself under the beam and heaved. Okay, provisionally, Steve was forgiven for being an asshole, because Bucky was pretty sure he couldn’t have lifted the goddamn thing on his own. His bones ached from the strain of the weight against him.

In the end, they barely managed to shift it enough for Hawkeye to pull Tony free. A blossom of red bloomed against the water as soon as they moved; something had been keeping Tony from bleeding. As soon as Steve was clear, Bucky dropped his half of the beam and raced to Tony’s side. “Shit, shit, shit.”

And the water was rising faster, now. “Come on, Buck,” Steve said, grabbing his arm and pulling him. “We need to go now.”

“He’ll bleed out if we don’t get this stopped now.”

“Buck, I’m not leaving without you.”

“Well, I ain’t leavin’ without him, so get the hell off me, pal,” Bucky snapped.

Bucky located the source of the blood and started basic first aid. The lack of supplies was maddening.

“Jesus,” Steve complained, but at least he helped get Tony out the water so Bucky could get a tourniquet on. “What happened here? Why’s he so important to you?”

Bucky looked up at Steve; if his heart wasn’t in his eyes, he suspected that was because it was busy panicking. But he didn’t have time to sort through his tangle of feelings. It wasn’t just what Tony could do for him, free him from the mess inside his head. There was more to it, but Bucky needed some time to figure it out. “He’s just important.”

“Hey, hey, doll, shhh,” a voice said. It wasn’t quite a familiar voice, but it wasn’t an unfamiliar voice either, and it calmed Tony just enough that he stopped struggling against whatever was holding down.

The nasal cannula was hanging down his cheek, looped over one ear, but in his frantic attempts to sit up, he’d knocked it aside.

Another set of tubes went into his arm. There was probably a set of tubes that were coming out of his ass, too. Tony’d been in the hospital a few times for long-term injuries. Those visits fucking sucked.

“Get me out of this bed,” Tony said, or he tried to say. His voice was just about gone, hoarse and scratchy like he’d been screaming, and his throat hurt like someone had shoved a tennis racquet down his throat. Sideways.

Barnes-- no, Bucky, they’d decided that, just before the big crazy, hadn’t they… yeah. Bucky didn’t bother to try to talk him out of it, or object, or anything. He just started unwinding the tubes, peeling off the tape. He tugged the IV line out with an expert hand and produced a bandage pad and a roll of pink medical tape to stop the bleeding.

“You want me to decath you, or wait for a nurse?”

Yeah, great. Tube up his dick. That was just charming.

Tony blinked. “You know how to do that?” Safely was unspoken, but decidedly implied because really, no, he didn’t want anyone to just rip a Foley tube out of there, not even him.

“Yeah,” Bucky said. He held up a syringe -- no needle, thank Christ -- and a pair of thin, blue gloves. “I can do it.”

What the hell? Bucky had already seen everything Tony had to offer, and they’d been through hell together. A little further wouldn’t cross anyone’s eyes. He nodded, then didn’t watch while Bucky did a number of uncomfortable things in the general vicinity of his dick. He didn’t even want to know what Bucky did with what was probably a bag full of pee. Just, yeah. See no evil.

“I brought your clothes, too,” Bucky said. There was a brush of cool, wet cloth along his thighs and then, “and coffee, in a thermos. Wasn’t sure when you’d wake up.”

“What clothes?”

“Jeans, sneakers with lifts -- you wear lifts, Tony -- and a Metallica tee.”

“You’d wear lifts too if half your friends were a good four or five inches taller than you are,” Tony muttered. No point denying it. Anyone who’d ever paid attention to his footwear knew he was a little sensitive about his height. “Also, did you say something about coffee?”

“Here you go.” Bucky washed his hands, then poured him a cap full from the thermos, still steaming, black as night and bitter as regret. Perfect.

“You’re my new favorite,” Tony declared. The hot liquid woke him up a little, soothed his aching throat. “What happened, where are we, who’s with you, and are we in any danger?”

“Slow down,” Bucky said, steadying the cup before Tony dropped it, which would have been both uncomfortable and a waste of perfectly good coffee. “In answer to your questions, we’re in Budalange, in the hospital.”

“Luxembourg? Why?”

“They’re not signees of the Accords, and it was the safest -- and closest -- neutral zone we could maintain on the fuel that was left in the quinjet.”

Tony nodded, make a continue gesture while he caffeinated himself. After weeks of being without, the buzz was hitting him right away.

“The Raft sank. We have no way to estimate lives lost, since the facility had no official records, but over four dozen powered persons were rescued who’d been held prisoner there, not including you and I. Steve, Romanov, Barton, and Wanda came to the rescue. Your friend, James Rhodes, brought me your clothes via overnight Warmachine delivery, and after he comes back from a forty-eight hour stint of bedside vigil with no sleep, he’ll be damned happy to see you. And… we’re in as much danger as is the status quo for superheroes.”

“Situation normal. All fucked up,” Tony said. Rhodey was here? There was a warm fuzzy feeling at that, which neatly counteracted the chill around his heart at the thought of Rogers or Maximoff. Or Barton for that matter. He wondered if Rhodey had used his bionic legs to kick Barton’s ass yet. He hoped not.

He’d rather be a witness.

“That’s about the size of it, yes,” Bucky said.

Tony cocked his head. “There’s more you’re not telling me.”

“True,” Bucky said. He shook out Tony’s jeans. “Lean on me, if you need. I’ll help you get dressed.”

He was wobbly, even if he didn’t want to admit it. Bucky was calmly stoic about the whole thing, enough so that Tony only felt mild embarrassment about using him as a human crutch while getting into pants and his tee.

“So, is this some sort of Stockholm Syndrome thing? We bonded over being imprisoned and tortured together? And you know, while there’s an unlocked door nearby, you want to tell me what was up with that…” Tony waved his hand around, as if there was a word for the not-quite-sex that had happened between them.

“I don’t know,” Bucky said. “And probably? And… that was a calculated risk.”

Tony’s eyebrow reached the stratosphere. “So, you’re bad at math.”

Bucky chuckled. “Maybe so, doll,” he said. “But there was an extreme protocol set up. Hydra… made it impossible for me to turn on certain higher ups, even if I was ordered to by someone who had my command words. I can’t… I can’t hurt anyone I’ve been… intimate seems the wrong word.”

Tony considered vomiting, but he didn’t think there was anything in his stomach to come up and his throat already hurt. “Who--” He bit that off. Tony really didn’t want to know.

“I think most of them are dead,” Bucky said, not meeting Tony’s eyes. “I wasn’t sure it would work. But that shit is still in my head and I didn’t want to hurt you. Kinda counterproductive to the whole idea of rescuing you.”

Tony gave a bitter barking sound. It wasn’t a laugh, no, not even close. “Hydra is so fucked up.”

“You don’t even know the half of it,” Bucky said, and that was true. Didn’t want to know.

“So, what now?”

Bucky shrugged. “I don’t know. I ain’t never been the brains of the operation before. Which Steve’ll tell you. Battle plans, yes. What happens now? I got no clue, doll.” He reached out, touched Tony’s face with two metal fingers. The metal was warm, which seemed like it should be strange, except how it wasn’t. Electronics got hot when they were working, fact of life. That’s why the arm had vent-ports in it, after all.

Tony took hold of Bucky’s metal wrist, held those fingers in place. He didn’t know what came next. He’d figure it out as they went. But he did know one thing. He didn’t want Bucky to leave. And he didn’t know how to ask him to stay.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why come for me at all? How’d you even know where I was? Why… why… lots of why?”

“There were a lot of reasons, in the beginning. Before I ever got thrown in that damn hole and saw you there, strong as hell, defiant as a windstorm. Then the old reasons stopped mattering.”

“So what’s the new reason?”

Bucky took a step, the most hesitant, tentative step Tony had ever seen, tilted his head, inhaled--

Tony met him halfway, already sensing in his bones what was about to happen and wanting it more than anything.

Tony’s hand came up and found its way into that tangle of rich, dark hair, pulled Bucky’s head down. Bucky opened his mouth, caught Tony’s bottom lip in his teeth and tugged, then licked at it until Tony thought he might actively die from the sensation. Bucky whimpered, pulled them closer.

Tony rewarded that beautiful little sound by opening to the kiss, shifting against Bucky to test his mouth, taste him.

When Bucky pulled back, his eyes were wide, dark. “I don’t… I don’t know what it is,” he said. “I ain’t… felt anything like it before.”