#winterironwinter

I’m so sorry it took me so long to post this but, as you will see… it kinda got away from me TT. Anon, I hope you will like it ! <3

Fair warning : this rolls a little under 5k.

Also, a huge thanks to @dracusfyre who helped me with it and corrected it. Any remaining errors are mine.

I hope you’ll enjoy reading it!

Tony was definitely not your usual priest. Hands deep into the guts of a car or covered in grease and motor oil, more used to subdue assholes in a boardroom rather than taking care of demons on a daily basis. His best weapons were his snark and his smarts, he also knew how to handle himself in a fight and thought he was quite good at it, actually.

Not so much used to deal with malicious spirits or face the bone deep chill that came with them. Package deal.

Apparently, pissing off his father and winning a dare from Rhodey by taking on a Master of Divinity degree just out of spite made you the closest priest available in this corner of the world. There were plenty of priests to bother around but trust his luck to fuck up with him at the slightest chance.

Honestly, he’d completely forgotten about it until things started to happen.

It wasn’t much at the beginning.

Some chills running down his spine as he was washing his hands from grease, trying to get what was under his nails all the while knowing it was hopeless. The hair on the back of his neck, standing up on end as he was mixing fruits for one of his smoothies. Goosebumps all over his body while taking a hot shower and trying to get his muscles to relax after spending too much time bent over a workbench. An uneasy feeling in his guts when talking with someone.

It was small things at first and not very often, each one of those reaction spaced by hours, sometimes days in between. Then it started to get closer and stronger.

The faint feeling of being watched increased until he could sometimes feel something ghosting over his skin. Fingers trailing lately down his cheek. Harmless touches but not less frightening.

The idea of going crazy and seeking out someone to make a diagnostic made his way to him despite his well known dislike for doctors.

But then he realized some things were actually… useful, in their own way. Sometimes the petting shifted into poking, fingers digging in his ribs and making him turn around and spot a paparazzo trailing after him, looking for the next story to put on the first page.

After that, Tony started paying attention.

The spooky feeling never left, his guts kept churning and his hair stood up on end still but the instinctive fear was easy to push aside. It always has been, would always be.

***

“You don’t understand,” he said over his diner, looking at Rhodey with a frown. “There’s something following me around but it’s not… bad, per se, not really,” he trailed off, looking down at his dish without seeing it.

Feelings had kept creeping up on him, fear was always there, stinging and wrapping him in a sense of dread. The feather like touches, though, came along and Tony wasn’t sure he hated it. Not entirely. They stayed in somewhat innocent places. The back of his neck, his cheeks, his forehead, his hands or his arms. Nowhere else. Never. It always felt like a sweet gesture and always happened when Tony was doing something entirely banal. Making himself waffles or coffee, working in the workshop. It never happened when he was manipulating something dangerous, it only distracted him when he was trying to figure out something. In one occasion and as he was chilling in front of the TV, it felt like someone had sit down with him. Some line of heat and ghosted touch against his side, from his leg to his shoulder.

“You sure you’re not drinking too much coffee?” Rhodey asked, holding a fry and looking at his friend with a mix of concern and scepticism.

“Might be,” Tony admitted with a half shrug. Too much coffee could actually lead him down a dangerous slope of anxiety and jittery but Tony was sure he had kept his coffee consumption to an acceptable level. Well, by his standards anyway.

He was sure coffee wasn’t responsible for it though.

He stiffened as he reached for his glass of coke and  the hair on the back of his neck stood up on end. Tony felt himself blanched, the fear creeping up higher and his hand shook as he wrapped his fingers around the glass.

“What about,” Rhodey said, putting his hand over the rim of the glass, “I drink the coke and you take my glass of water?”

Tony nodded numbly, conscious of the ghost weight of hands settling down on his shoulders. There was an unusual feeling of resentment coming off of them but nothing directed at him.

For the first time, Tony felt a new kind of fear and this time, he wasn’t worried about himself. He was worried about his friends and what would happen to them if the thing took offense of whatever they might said.

The unending pit of violence he could feel, radiating heat right up against his back, made him reconsider his decisions.

***

The thought hadn’t left him.

Actually, the fear the Thing kept bringing up when it appeared started to have two faces. The first one was only the instinctual reaction to it, the one Tony had felt since it all started. The second one, however, came from the concern he felt about one of his friends being hurt, one way or another, because of the Thing.

It increased when the heat of anger knew new highs after Pepper had threatened him - good-heartedly - to lock him up in his office if it meant he actually signed the damn papers he was meant to sign. It was nothing out of the ordinary, Tony had stopped counting the times she threatened him of locking him up for that exact reason, but it was the first time she did it since the Thing had appeared.

The pit of violence grew in size, in darkness and in intensity. Along with the fear it brought up in Tony.

Pepper kissed him on the cheek and left and Tony stood in the middle of his living-room, facing a situation he had never faced. The Thing had disappeared as soon as Pepper had, although not before Tony felt a heat of a rarely felt intensity when she kissed him on the cheek.

“Alright,” he said, hoping it was still around despite not feeling it. “I think it’s time we have a talk. Are you even here?”

Usually, it didn’t need much prompting and any sign of any kind would get a reaction but, this time, Tony didn’t get any.

“Great, like anybody else - including myself - as soon as the “we need to talk” pops out, there’s nobody left to talk to.”

***

“Sir,” JARVIS said, pulling up a screen on the side of the workbench Tony was working on, showing a man standing at the fence and looking up at the camera. “I believe someone is asking permission to enter the premises.”

Tony frowned, staring intensely at the figure standing near the fence, awkwardly shuffling on their feet. He wasn’t the usual visitor, that much was obvious. Wearing a hoodie a size too big, shapeless jeans and the man had his hair pulled up on a messy bun and a few days old beard that did nothing to improve the hobo look. Although, to be fair, the messy bun made it better.

His finger hovered over the key to open a vocal channel with the stranger. Tony glanced at his half-finished project on which he had been working non-stop for the last hours. A bit of walk and some fresh air might do him some good, he thought with a raised eyebrow.

“Do you detect any trace of weapons?”

“Nothing metallic,” JARVIS answered after a beat.

“Very well, tell him to wait a minute, I’m coming up.”

JARVIS didn’t answer but the figure on the screen startled as JARVIS’ voice came through the speakers, advertising him to stay put. The man nodded numbly and Tony made his way out of the workshop.

He reached the fence while still holding a rag and cleaning his hands covered in grease, oil and some scraps where the metal had cut him with it. None of the cuts were too deep but they stills stung especially since Tony didn’t have his project to keep himself busy and thinking anymore, there was nothing to distract him from the pain and exhaustion.

Except, once he got closer, the actual man standing behind the fence. Whoever the man was, he rocked the hobo look like nobody else Tony had ever met. The camera also didn’t do justice to his eyes, making them a bland, faded grey. They were, however, the most interesting shade of grey and blue mixed together. Like a cloudy morning where the sky couldn’t choose between the bright and hopeful blue of a brand new day, and the threatening grey of a good raining.

Also, Tony had missed the dark circles under the man’s eyes that could rival with Tony’s, which was no small feat.

To be fair, aside from the wide eyes and awkward shifting, the man mostly looked exhausted. It went beyond words. His hands were shaking from time to time and he kept clenching and unclenching them, his thumbs rubbing the side of his index finger. That’s when Tony noticed the metal hand. The too big hoodie’s sleeves covered half of his hands, almost entirely hiding the shimmering fingers.

When he noticed his staring, the man blanched and quickly hid his hands behind his back, instinctively adopting the parade rest.

Military, Tony thought as he got closer, a greeting on the tip of his tongue. That’s when he felt it.

The feather like touch of a ghost along his arm, fingers feeling like they twined with his own as the Thing plastered itself against Tony’s back. The man startled, his head whipping toward him, eyes wide as plates and skin as white as a sheet.

“It’s you!”

A bone deep shiver ran along his skin as he felt himself go pale too.

“No! I mean, yes,” the man quickly said, giving up his parade rest posture to get closer to the fence, hands up in a calming gesture. “I came here to explain,” he rushed to explain, looking desperate, “took me time to figure out where he went. And to gather the courage to get here,” he mumbled with a frown and a forlorn glance toward Tony’s house.

Unable to help himself, Tony looked over his shoulder, up along the admittedly long path to his house. To be fair, the thing had been built despite everyone telling him it was a spot where nobody or nothing could be build. Tony had proved them wrong and his Malibu house was a wonder of modern architecture. The walk to the fence had taken him quite some time but it had given him the time to clear his thoughts and stretch his legs and back.

With an acknowledging tip of his head, accepting the point the man had just made, Tony turned back toward him. The Thing was still stuck on him and it felt like he was being huggled by a ice bucket ghost.

It felt weirdly nice, on a way.

The Thing had disappeared for the last three days and Tony had felt more alone that he had in a long time. Which was not nice.

“Alright,” he agreed, crossing his arms over his chest and looking straight at him. “Explain.”

“Here?” the man exclaimed, looking around as if seeing the premises for the first time and hadn’t been standing there for a while now.

“His name is James Buchanan Barnes,” JARVIS informed him in his com. “Former military, rank : Sergeant. Honorably discharged a year ago, following a severe injury to his left arm and the left side of his torso.”

“Well, you can’t expect of me to invite someone I don’t know inside and hope for the best, can you?” He hoped JARVIS would get the message through but he really shouldn’t have worried.

“Some records about violence in bars, mostly in someone else’s behalf. Rewarded sniper among other skills, including gathering of intelligence. Lieutenant Barnes doesn’t have the profile of a murderer but there is a sudden lack of informations from three months ago. Sergeant Barnes reappeared two months ago.”

Along with the ghost that had taken on pursuing Tony ever since Tony thought with a frown.

“Well, I guess you got a point,” Barnes conceded with a nod, his words covered by JARVIS’ dump of informations. He looked around again, shoulders rounded up to his shoulders and he got closer to the fence. He opened his mouth but found himself lost for words, his eyes trained to the ground.

Tony was the one with what might be a ghost plastered against his back but James Buchanan Barnes looked more haunted than Tony felt.

Tony sighed and lightly kicked the fence, effectively drawing Barnes’ gaze back up to him. He jerked his head toward the house :

“You can dump the kicked-puppy look, I’m surrendering, you have the right to came in.”

Barnes blinked, dumb-founded, his eyes going from Tony to the house, nestled in the background.

“JARVIS, open the gate if you please.”

“Very well, sir,” came from the gates’ speakers and Barnes startled.

Apparently all too aware of Tony’s games, the Thing pinched him in the side. Barnes looked at him, his eyes trailing down to where the faintest of pain kept pulsing ever so slightly. They traded a glance through the fence before the man finally made a move. He entered the premises slowly, taking his sweet time as if he was expecting someone or something to jump him as soon as he crossed the threshold.

“What happened to the “not letting strangers in”?” Barnes asked, eying him with a frown.

“I had JARVIS make some research, you came out clean.”

Holding himself carefully, Barnes raised his eyebrows at Tony before glancing toward the gates’ speakers. Tony smiled sweetly and gestured for Barnes to follow him.

***

James Buchanan Barnes called “Bucky” by his friends - what kind of friends were they exactly? - was in dire need of a hot cocoa, a blanket and then a bed to sleep for the next decade or so. He looked exhausted and, while he actually made the way up to the house without complaining, the way his shoulders were hunched and his steps dragged, he was bone deep exhausted. His eyes, circled with black, were of an amazing blue-grey color but they were dimmed by what Tony guessed were sleepless nights. And not of the nice kind.

Once they entered the house, Tony invited him to sit on the couch, which Bucky did with a deep sigh, and offered him something to eat or drink. James refused both, even though he looked tempted, probably too eager to be done with what seemed to be a difficult discussion.

That Tony had to be a part of said conversation wasn’t making him feel any better, to be entirely honest.

Once he had washed his hands and made himself some coffee, Tony pushed a mug of steaming hot cocoa into James and sat in front of him.

“Is there any way I can make it easier for you to talk?” He asked, cautious and watchful.

There wasn’t any ounce of something bad in the way Bucky held himself or in his eyes, his hands were shaking but it was hard to say if it was from nerves or tiredness. No maliciousness, like he could feel into the Thing that had disappeared as soon as they passed the threshold. Just weariness and… well, nervousness.

To answer Tony’s question, Bucky shook his head and sighed deeply.

“Lately you’ve been followed by something, haven’t you?” He asked without looking up at Tony, his voice lifeless and tired.

Tony blinked, disconcerted by the question but also by what it meant. He kept coming back to that very moment where the Thing had touched him - hugged him, really - and the frightened edge in Bucky’s eyes when his head had whipped up toward Tony. As he had felt what the Thing had done.

“What is it?” Tony asked faintly, dread coiling tight in his guts.

“A demon,” Bucky answered honestly, this time looking straight at Tony. He seemed desperate, frightened and pleading. “Did he hurt you?”

“It’s a “he”?” Tony asked, feeling as if his heart had climbed up in his throat.

“I think his name’s Winter,” Bucky answered quickly. “Did he hurt you?” He pressed, concern pushing fright and desperation away from his gaze as he looked Tony up, his eyes stopping momentarily on Tony’s scraped-up hands. Tony looked down at them, noticing the angry red around the cuts.

“No,” he said thoughtfully, still stuck on the “demon” part of the situation. It actually coincided with the pit of violence Tony could sometimes feel from “Winter”. The deep jealousy like a white hot brand on the back of Tony’s neck. The anger, to strong and deep, it felt like a black wall pressing on him.

But then, it felt off with the way “Winter” touched him, soft and gently. Feather-like caress on his arms, on his hands, on his neck or, more often, against his cheeks. The presence was comforting despite the fear it inevitably elicited. Tony wasn’t alone anymore when “Winter” was there and, still despite the fear, Tony also felt protected.

“He didn’t hurt me,” he added, lifting his eyes to meet Bucky’s with a soft smile. “Actually, I think he was pretty sweet if we sweep aside the anger, jealousy and violence issues.”

Bucky blinked, the concern shifting to something else. Something that looked a lot like astonishment.

“Are you for real? A demon’s been harassing you and you think he’s sweet?”

Tony grinned at him, unrepentant. Though the word “demon” still felt like a bell ringing in his mind. Echoing against his skull. Loudly.

Tony wasn’t much of a believer, even though he didn’t deny the existence of a superior entity. Maybe. He also didn’t thought there was a big red devil clanking its hooves on the ground and laughing evilly, holding a giant fork. But, the same way, he didn’t deny it.

Admitting that an actual demon was actually haunting him, though, was something else entirely and while the facts were all there, it was a step he couldn’t take. Yet.

Shaking his head and taking a sip of his coffee, Tony watched Bucky. “And how do you know that? I mean, you think I’m the crazy one but you’re the one telling me I’m being haunted by a demon.”

“Shouldn’t a priest be taking this more seriously? Or propose to exorcise me? Or kick me out of it? Or have recognized him for what Winter is?” Bucky countered with a frown.

There was a new kind of fire in Bucky’s eyes, burning the tiredness away. Not quite indignation but definitely some defensiveness. Tony liked it better than the weariness that had been weighing down on the former Sargent.

“I don’t know. Why not ask an actual priest?” He said, raising an eyebrow at him and leaning back in the couch.

Dammit, he felt tired too now. Except for the part where he was not, too curious and intrigued by the crazy story Bucky was telling him. Nothing made any sense and Tony was missing Winter’s presence. Well, maybe Winter wasn’t it’s name but it felt better calling it that way than keeping it up with “the Thing”.

Bucky stared at him, confused. “Aren’t you one?”

“Me?” He spluttered, spitting coffee out.

What the fuck was that clusterfuck of a conversation?

“I can’t exactly communicate with him. Sometimes it’s clear, sometimes it’s not but… “ Bucky pulled a face, grimacing when he realized what he was saying and how crazy it could sound for anyone. Including himself. “Anyway, at some point he explained that you were the hottest priest he’s ever found.” Bucky’s voice faltered and the tip of his ears colored to a sweet pink. “So, you’re a priest, right?”

“No, I’m no-… Oh goddammit,” Tony sighed, setting his mug of coffee on the table and hiding his face in his hands. “Rhodey was right. Of course he was. It was a bad, bad, bad idea.”

The memory of Howard’s wrath, though, was totally worth it. His father had been pissed for months and it lasted until Tony had obtained his Master of Divinity. With amazing grades, for that matter, which made it only worse in a way. Too happy to make the joke go as far as possible, Tony had made it until he actually obtained the rank of a priest. The paper was somewhere in his stuff, attesting of it.

Tony was a priest.

“I am,” he said, his voice muffled by his hands pressed against his face. He sighed deeply and rubbed his palm against his face before looking up at Bucky.

“What does he want?”

“Nothing, as far as I know. I think he… kinda likes you. But I was worried he was hurting you or making your life some kind of hell. So I made some research from what I gathered through…” Bucky stopped suddenly, sniffed, uncomfortable, and started again. “From what I gathered. It took me more time than I liked but I finally found you. I wasn’t sure about it because either being a priest pays way more than I thought or Winter lied to me, which ain’t impossible but it ain’t his style.”

“Lying’s not a demon’s style? How does that work?” Tony asked in disbelief.

Bucky snorted and smile, something crooked but genuine and Tony found himself staring at his lips a little too long. “Don’t know,” Barnes admitted with an awkward shrug, “but he’s not like that. Since I’ve been… “ Barnes frowned, his smile wavering before it died, leaving nothing but bad memories written across the veteran’s face, “since he’s stuck with me, he didn’t try anything. I mean, he’s a pain in the ass but not…” Bucky stopped himself, biting into his lower lip and wincing.

“Not dangerous?” Tony proposed, already knowing this was exactly Bucky was about to say but refused to when he recognised the lie it was.

“Well. I mean. He didn’t hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it,” Bucky edged, looking uncomfortable. “Look, can you do something for us?” He asked, brows pinched and eyes shining.

“What? You want me to exorcise him or something?”

“Yes. No.” Bucky cursed, rather inventively and dropped his head in his hands. “I don’t know.”

While Bucky’s last comment about Winter not “hurting anyone who doesn’t deserve it” was still lingering in Tony’s mind and making him uncomfortable, he was also very conscious about one thing. Winter had felt angry emotions at people around Tony but never attacked any, as far as Tony knew. The pit of violence deepened and grew but nothing had ever happened to the “responsibles” for those reactions. Now, maybe Tony didn’t know the whole thing and Winter had gone rogue, hurting and killing innocent people to take it out of his system.

“Listen, why don’t you tell me everything and we can go from there?” Tony proposed, voice even and calm.

Bucky looked up at him, shoulders tense but dropped in that tired slump Tony was starting to hate with his whole self.

***

Apparently, demons were actually a thing and demon cults actually existed too. Sacrificing ones, even. With humans as the sacrifices.

The story had some holes in it but Tony didn’t mind them. There were enough details as far as he was concerned.

A cult named “HYDRA” had caught Bucky, after he came back from Afghanistan, short an arm and looking for a job, desperate to find one, struggling to keep one despite his motivation. They first approached him but confronted to his refusal, they chose to take him. The rest of the story wasn’t any better, torture and attempts at brainwashing through the means of conditioning. They didn’t appear to have much time though because before their plans had worked, they were dragging him in the basement.

The ceremony was gruesome, at best, and at the end of it, Bucky got to share his mind and body with a demon named Winter and a new metal arm. Bucky told him, uneasy, how Winter had tore through the HYDRA cultists, tearing them apart with Bucky’s bare hands, one flesh and one metal.

“They’re the only ones he hurt since he was brought,” Bucky assured him. He had steady eyes, darkened by the bags underneath them. He was shaken, but more because of exhaustion than the blood bath he was currently narrating. Bucky was a soldier, Tony reminded himself, who knew what kind of horror he had seen on the battlefield. And those men had tortured him and tried to use him in order to get ahold of a demon. “When I came back, two months had gone by and I could barely remember half of it. I found a spot to stay, got a job as soon as I figured out how to conceal this,” he said, gesturing at his metal hand. “Then I realized you were starring in most of my dreams, if not all of them. Winter was making himself scarce, as much as a demon can, but I realized it only was because he was resting from visiting you. It takes a lot from him to cover that much distance and stay for long with you.”

“So it takes a lot from you too?”

“Yeah,” Bucky said, nodding as he took a sip from his coke and bit into a slice of pizza that might or might not be the half of said pizza. “Since he became my body roommate, I’ve been eating like crazy. I can’t put money on the side, everything goes into food or I start starving faster than you’d think. And when he’s paying you those little visits, it’s even worse.”

“I see.”

“You do?” Bucky asked around his slice of pizza he had just bitten into, blinking at Tony.

“No, I don’t. Not really. Anyway, you came here just to make sure I was alive and fine, right?”

Bucky hesitated then nodded, watching Tony carefully. Wariness had disappeared sometimes between the moment Tony had offered food and waved Bucky’s worries away when he mentioned his concerns about dirtying Tony’s couch.

“So now that your concerns are proving to be unfounded, what are your plans?”

Bucky shrugged after a few seconds, his shoulders dropping ever so slightly in the face of his hesitation. He swallowed his mouthful of pizza, drank some coke then said: “He doesn’t want to leave, I kinda get used to him and his assholery.” He shrugged again, as if unable to help himself. “Honestly, I don’t know what to do.”

Tony didn’t remember much from his divine studies or, rather, he remembered all too well but admitting it was above his will, but he was sure of one thing: “You got that splendid lady at the same time that you got Winter, right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“This, my friend,” Tony said, pointing at the magnificent piece of machinery the man used with the casualty of someone who didn’t think of it as a foreign object attached to them anymore, “is your link with Winter. Or, rather, the material part of it. Removing Winter would remove this from you at the same time and I don’t know how they put it on you, with magic or not, but I can assure you one thing: it won’t be a walk in the park. Also, using that kind of means to invoke a demon can only means one thing: they expected to control him through it.” There wasn’t much about what Tony could have found interesting but demons, angels and spirits had an interesting way of working. There were as many rules and differences as with mathematics, it was probably why Tony had finished it and got great grades at it. There were unknowns and things that could go wrong despite everything going according to plan, but most of the time spirituality in its whole worked with specific rules. The case he had in front of him was a very specific one but one he could understand. There was nothing as scary as a demon in the flesh, impersonating him in a human’s body through the mean of a leash was smart… as long as the leash was effective. Which, in this case, wasn’t how they expected it to work. “You both have it. When Winter initiate contact with me,” goddammit it was weird and Tony had seen some weird shit before, “I felt that one of his hands was colder than the other. So I guess you’re both sharing this feature.”

Bucky was frowning at him, looking lost and unsure. He was holding the other half of the pizza, folded in two, in one hand and his coke in the other but he seemed to have forgotten them.

“I’m not sure I understand,” he said slowly. “I mean, ok, he’s got a metal arm too but why is it the way to control him? Me? Us?”

Interesting. The metal limb was not a hand, then, but the whole left arm. Tony played with a napkin to ease the need to grab Bucky by the arm and have a look at the beauty.

For the beautiful, amazing @araydre‘s birthday. You’re a gift and a wonder, such kindness and generosity. I hope you had a great day, hon <3. I know this is late and I’m sorry, love.

Getting out of where Tony had been held and rid of his pursuers had been harder than he’d thought it would. His bruises and scratches shouldn’t have been enough to keep him from doing a good job at fucking them up. Yet, here he was, stumbling in a back alley, feeling like the earth had stopped turning, like life had ceased its course. The world felt numb and cold.

The mark on Tony’s neck had faded. It hadn’t disappeared totally yet, but Bucky’s heartbeat was impossible to feel, unreachable, absent. Like he had ceased to exist entirely. Vanished from earth, never to be felt again. The bond linking them together was a never-ending thread leading to a vast nothingness, fading into a darkness Tony had never felt before.

A sob tore itself out of Tony’s throat, feeling like it scratched everything inside on the way out. Scraping where the ARC Reactor used to be, burning his lungs and leaving his throat raw. Tony’s steps faltered and he let himself lean against the nearest wall, uncaring of how it glistened filthily, of the putrid scents and disgusting garbage scattered around.

What was the point?

Hydra had taken them. Tony had woken up in a damp cell, alone. Bucky was nowhere in sight. Either he had been taken and lead somewhere else or he had managed to escape and was planning Tony’s rescue from the outside. Probably reaching out to the Avengers for some well needed help.

[Beware the read more <3]