Work Text:
Sam first meets Tony Stark in 2005 when he joins the EXO-7 Falcon program. Of course, he doesn’t actually know it’s Tony Stark at first. What he knows is that the Air Force is partnering with Stark Industries on this project and so when the team is finally selected, they send the whole team to California to meet with Howard Stark and his team of technicians who’ll be working with them.
He doesn’t like Howard, who comes off as cold and cruel and all but says that he doesn’t care what happens to them as long as the Falcon suits don’t fall into enemy hands. Sam thinks he might actually hate Howard Stark, just a little.
“What a dick,” he mutters to Riley as they’re being paired off with their technician. Riley laughs and Howard whips around to glare at them though Sam is certain he didn’t hear them.
Howard eventually comes up to him once everyone else is paired off and says, “The guy I had working with you isn’t here today. Wife is pregnant or whatever and he’s taking care of her. Sorry but I have a temporary technician for you instead. He’s not great but he’ll do until we can get your regular guy back. This is—” He half-turns, looking for the missing technician who pops up from behind a desk, grinning even though Sam’s sure that he heard Howard’s rude comment about him. “—Tony,” Howard finishes sullenly.
For as much as Sam doesn’t like Howard, he does like Tony, who’s bright and funny and young enough that he suspects Howard’s comment about the lack of Tony’s brilliance is entirely misplaced. And it probably helps that Tony is absolutely gorgeous, all fluffy brown hair and big Bambi eyes and Sam’s always been a sucker for someone who could bat their lashes like Tony can. So when they’re wrapping up their work for the day, Sam being sent off with the Falcon suit hidden inside a large duffel, and Tony stops him and says, “I really liked meeting you today. Maybe we could do it again next time you’re in California?” Sam accepts with a probably over-enthusiastic “Yes!”
Tony flashes a smile back at him, slips his phone number into Sam’s pocket, and sees him off with a flirtatious little wave.
They talk for six months while Sam is deployed about everything under the sun and Sam—Sam falls hard. Riley says that it’s his big problem, that he falls too hard and too fast, and it is a problem because six months into their conversations, he finds out that Tony isn’t just Tony but actually Tony Stark and the only reason he finds out at all is because they get the news on base one morning that Howard Stark crashed his car, killing him and his wife instantly and leaving the company…to Tony.
He can’t help but feel a little betrayed. There’s a big difference between talking to Tony, the cute and funny technician that Sam has spent long hours pouring his heart out to, and talking to Tony Stark, the now multi-billionaire who probably meets people hotter than Sam on a regular basis. And it’s not that he thinks Tony is so shallow as to dump him once he’s got a better offer. In fact, Sam knows that he’s a pretty amazing catch. It’s just that, well, he’s a little stung that Tony never once saw fit to tell him about his past.
But when his commanding officer, a real nice woman by the name of Rambeau, whose wife and her were apparently some of the Air Force’s first female test pilots, offers him the chance to take a few weeks leave, he jumps at the chance. Tony hasn’t texted him once since the news broke and maybe it’s presumptuous to think that Tony wants him there but Sam thinks he should take that chance anyway. Tony’s young and even if Howard hadn’t been great, he knows how much Tony loved his mom. He can only imagine how he would feel if his parents died like that and Tony, who with all his money has always come off as kind of lonely to him, must be just as needing as comfort as he would in his case.
And when he stumbles through the front door of Stark Mansion and Tony’s right there waiting to throw himself into his arms, when Tony sobs into his shoulders about his mom, when he eventually quiets down into soft whimpers and Sam carries him up to his room and sits beside him as he falls asleep, he thinks that it doesn’t matter who Tony Stark is. What he has, what he’s always had, is Tony.
He doesn’t think that either of them really mean to keep their relationship a secret. It’s certainly not something that they actually discuss. But Sam is still active duty and overseas most of the time and Tony always has to have a date with someone at those events he goes to and somehow the media gets it into their mind that he and Tony are just good friends like the way Tony acts with Sam is in any way comparable to Rhodey or Pepper. And after he figured out how to make the distinction between Tony Stark and Tony, it hasn’t mattered as much to him what everyone else thinks about them. He knows that he’s madly in love with Tony, Tony knows that he’s madly in love with Sam, and everyone else important knows that they’re madly in love with each other so what does it matter that the media can’t catch a clue?
Then Riley falls and Tony goes missing all in the same month and it’s killing him that no one else knows they’re together because if he’d been given spousal privilege to go home and see Tony after his best friend dies, then maybe Tony wouldn’t have been in Afghanistan.
He joins the search parties. How can he not? And when he’s ordered away from the search and back to active duty, he takes the choice to retire. It doesn’t feel right flying without Riley anyway. Rhodey is luckier than he is—his superiors don’t try to order him back until nearly three months into the search and by that time, Tony has built himself a suit and flown out of a cave.
Rhodey is the first one to reach Tony once they find him but Sam is there almost immediately afterward. Tony sinks into his arms and Sam doesn’t think about how he can count Tony’s ribs or about the hard metal thing he can feel under his shirt.
“Forget riding with Rhodey,” he gasps before kissing him. “Next time, you’re staying home.”
Tony sobs once, throws his arms around his shoulders, and kisses him again.
It’s not that things are different, per se. Not at first. Things are really much the same as they’ve always been. Sam has a lease in D.C. that he can’t walk out on and he needs some space after Riley’s death, just like Tony needs some space after Afghanistan. Tony’s the one who asks him to go, immediately after they land in California. There’s something quieter about him like the real Tony is poking through the holes of Tony Stark’s mask and Sam doesn’t really know if he has a place with this new Tony so he goes back to D.C. and Tony goes back to Malibu and he ignores the niggling feeling in the back of his mind telling him that he’s making a mistake.
After—after Tony announces he’s shutting down the weapons division, after Obadiah, after Iron Man—Sam calls him and says, “Fuck this. I’m coming back.”
Tony chokes on a laugh. “Good. I’m pretty sure Pep thinks I can’t do this without you.”
Sam’s quiet for a moment before saying, “And what do you think?”
“I know I can’t do this without you. But—” Tony hesitates and Sam can picture him nervously drumming his fingers on the closest hard surface. “I know Riley’s death was hard and I don’t want to make you feel like—”
“I don’t,” Sam interrupts. “I’ll be on the next flight.”
“You could take SI’s jet,” Tony offers. But that’s a step that he doesn’t think either of them are ready for, not after one of Tony’s other secrets has already come to light in the spectacular fashion that it did.
Instead he does what he said he’ll do and he takes the first commercial flight, arriving in Malibu less than two days after Tony announces his new status as a superhero. He catches his first glimpse of the Iron Man armor after he arrives at the mansion and heads down to the workshop. Tony is working on one of the legs, fixing something that he supposes Stane must have broken. It’s gorgeous, sleek, and Sam nearly chokes on how much he misses his own suit.
“You could join me,” Tony says once he realizes what has him so upset. “Iron Man and his sidekick, Flyboy.”
Sam laughs even as his heart aches from missing Riley. Tony’s always had that effect on him and he loves him for it. “Maybe it’ll be the other way around: Falcon and his sidekick, Metal Boy.”
“Hey!” Tony protests, shoving lightly at him. Sam catches his arm, reels him in, and kisses him, smothering all of his further protests with more drugging kisses until Tony is limp in his arms and he’s tugging him upstairs to the bedroom.
They stay in Malibu—sort of. They stay in Malibu and when they need a break, they go back to Sam’s new house in D.C. Still, no one knows that he and Tony are dating so the house is still a secret and really, who would expect a billionaire to have a house in D.C.? This works for two years, right up until Tony and Rhodey nearly destroy the Malibu house in a huge fight.
Sam has known something’s wrong for months now. Tony has been acting wrong for months, first with giving the modern art collection to the Boy Scouts and then the company to Pepper and even asking Sam if he wanted to take the bots back to their other house the next time he visited. Not they, but he. He’s been trying to get Tony to open up about it. He’s got a degree in psychology, for fuck’s sake, one that he’s been using to help run support groups for the VA ever since he retired. But Tony, usually so willing to talk about anything on his mind, is completely closed-mouthed about this and it isn’t until Nick Fury tracks him down after the party that he realizes just what is going on.
“You think he’s dying,” Sam states flatly.
“No, I know he’s dying,” Fury corrects. “Took a while to confirm since you turned away Natalie—” Sam thinks about the young woman from Legal, the one who’d modeled in Japan that Tony hadn’t even noticed because he’d been too busy trying to make Sam laugh while he boxed with Happy. “—Tell me, Wilson, have you heard of palladium poisoning?”
Sam’s no slouch. He hears palladium and says, “That’s what the arc reactor’s made out of,” and then puts the pieces together. “It’s killing him?”
“Damn right,” Fury says. He holds out a syringe, filled with something Sam isn’t familiar with. “This can slow the poison.”
“Until what?”
“Until he finds a cure.”
And Tony does. Against all odds, he manages to discover—or rediscover—an unknown element. Sam is right there with him every step of the way, kissing him when he’s finally successful, and when Tony jets off to the Expo, Sam is the voice in his ear, giving him advice, clearing the airspace, and wishing desperately that he still had his wings.
When the dust settles, he calls Tony again and says, “So when are you coming back?”
He hears the hesitation in Tony’s voice when he says, “Actually, what do you think about moving to New York? Or maybe not New York. Maybe we’ll stay at your place for a few weeks, let everything die down. Pep’s mad at me; she definitely thinks I should lay low for a bit. But anyway, New York? Big ol’ tower, call it Wilson Tower.”
“Yeah that sounds great,” Sam replies amusedly. He wonders how long Tony has wanted to get out of the Malibu mansion. “You’d have to explain who Wilson is but sure, call it after me.”
“…Maybe we’ll just call it Stark Tower.”
“Tony. What brought this on?”
Tony’s quiet long enough that he wishes this could be a face-to-face conversation. “It’s just,” he says eventually, softly in a way that Sam has come to recognize since Afghanistan. “It’s nice, you know? It’s quiet where you live. I like being there, feels like I can be me.”
“Yeah,” Sam agrees. “I know what you mean.”
Four years later, Tony is an Avenger except the Avengers don’t really get called up for much of anything so Tony spends more time at their house in D.C. than he does at the Tower and, as a result, Sam spends all his time at the house too. That’s where he is on an early April morning, still a little cold but shaping up to be an absolutely beautiful day. Tony is asleep beside him, on his stomach the way he always sleeps now that the reactor is gone and lit by the first rays of sunlight.
Sam leans down and kisses his shoulder, grinning when Tony shivers. “Hey, babe. You still gonna be here when I get back?” he murmurs. He knows that Tony has a meeting in New York at some point today but he isn’t sure when it is.
“No,” Tony mutters, muffled by the pillow. “Prob’ly gon’ leave af’er you do.”
“I’m sorry, was that English?”
He gets a lazy swat for that one that he dodges easily as he hops off the bed to Tony’s grumbled, “Morning people.” He grins as he pulls on running shorts and an old Air Force sweatshirt that might be his but could just as easily be Rhodey’s by way of Tony. “Fly safe,” he says, dropping one more kiss on Tony’s shoulder before heading out for his usual run around the monuments.
He’s out there for only a couple minutes before he hears a huffed, “On your left,” and glances to the side just in time to see a blond Adonis sprint past him like it’s a leisurely jog. Huh. Wonder who gave him steroids.
Except then it happens again and again and Christ, Sam’s trying but clearly this guy is—oh. He’s Captain America. That’s the only possible explanation. The Battle of New York hadn’t gotten any good pictures of the guy but he’s heard enough descriptions from Tony to know that’s who he must be. He finally gives up on his race, knowing that he’s never going to win. His heart is pounding and he’s breathing heavily, and honestly the best thing to do is to just collapse next to a tree.
A few minutes later, Captain America joins him, snarking about his run, and Sam can’t help but banter back even though he knows this guy made some pretty rude comments to his boyfriend the last time they met. He thinks it’s in his eyes. He looks at Captain America—now Steve Rogers, apparently—and he sees what he saw in Tony’s eyes after he came back from Afghanistan, what he saw in his own after Riley died.
Steve Rogers is lost, lonely, and Sam can’t help but wonder if he has anyone to talk to besides Romanoff.
He thinks about calling Tony and telling him who he ran into during his run but when he checks his watch, he realizes his flight has probably already taken off. They end up talking later that night and by that time, Sam has already decided against telling him about meeting Steve Rogers. He knows how hurt Tony had been that the Avengers hadn’t stayed together after the Battle of New York and he doesn’t think that finding out that Rogers ended up staying with SHIELD and Romanoff is the best of news for his surprisingly insecure partner. Instead, he lets Tony rant about his day placating shareholders and tells him about his own day at the VA, heavily redacted of course. Just because he doesn’t hold one-on-one sessions doesn’t mean that the people who come to his group sessions don’t have that same right to privacy.
“I think I’m gonna end up staying a few more days,” Tony says at one point. “If that’s okay with you?”
Sam won’t lie to himself. He’s a little disappointed; he’d been looking forward to cooking dinner for the two of them tonight. He’d been thinking about trying a new recipe he found from the Food Network’s website and he tells Tony that because after all these years together, they’ve both learned that communication is the most important thing in their relationship. But then he finishes up with, “But I know you wouldn’t stay unless it’s important so you stay and save the world.”
“Hey, don’t sell yourself short,” Tony protests. “You’re saving the world too.”
He smiles fondly. “Love you.”
“Love you too.”
They hang up and Sam is still grinning when he tells the birds outside, “Hear that? Tony thinks I’m saving the world.”
He has no idea how right he’ll be.
He doesn’t get the chance to call Tony before Rogers is dragging him and Romanoff back to New York after the fall of SHIELD. He barely even has the chance to tell JARVIS that he’s okay and has to trust that the AI can get the information to Tony. So the first chance he has to see Tony again is with the rest of the team since Romanoff apparently wanted to pick Barton up before they head to New York.
Sam kind of wants to just curl up beside Tony on the couch, tell him about how it felt to fly again, how terrified he’d been but how right it had felt. It’s been over five years since the last time he flew. He’s forgotten how much he missed it. But it had been terrifying, a lot worse than he remembers his time with the Air Force had been. Maybe that’s because he’d been staring down the world’s greatest terrorist organization and history’s best assassin at the time whereas he’d only been part of a pararescue troop in the military. But then again, maybe it’s always been that terrifying and he’s just forgotten the details over the years.
Point is, he wants to just see Tony but when they step inside the elevator and JARVIS says that Tony is in the workshop, Steve says, “Would he be willing to see us or can we go straight to the common floors?”
“You may go to the common floors or, if you prefer, Sir has taken the liberty of preparing rooms for you,” JARVIS says. Four buttons for individual floors light up, each one lit up with the matching Avenger’s symbol.
“Tony doesn’t miss a trick,” Steve says, brushing a finger over Sam’s. “He must already know you’ve joined.”
He does, Sam thinks. Because I told JARVIS and JARVIS told him.
Outwardly, he just says, “Nice of him to give me the penthouse,” fully aware that he’s sharing the penthouse with Tony.
“Surprised he didn’t take it for himself,” Clint says. Sam glares at him. People who haven’t taken the time to get to know Tony don’t get to judge him. Maybe he should have told the team earlier that he’s dating Tony but there hasn’t been a good time to bring it up.
“Play nice,” Natasha orders. “I think we’ll unpack first. We can meet up later.”
“Speak for yourself,” Sam says, surprising himself with a yawn. “I want a nap.”
They shoot up through the building, the ride so smooth that Sam wouldn’t have even known that they were moving if it hadn’t been the lights changing from floor to floor. He hadn’t had a chance to see the Tower before the Battle of New York since it had literally been completed the night of Loki’s first attack and afterward, it had been under construction so they’d gone back to Sam’s house and then just never left. He likes what he’s seen so far though he’s pretty sure that at the moment, he’ll like the bed best, especially if he can talk Tony into joining him.
Clint gets dropped off first, then Natasha, Steve, and finally, Sam itself. He looks around the penthouse with interest. It’s decorated more modernly than his home but that doesn’t really surprise him. Tony doesn’t like to decorate his own homes and every designer he’s ever hired has always thought that the futurist must want a futuristic home. It’s not bad just different and, as he’d expected, the best part is the bed where Tony is waiting for him.
“Thought you were in the workshop,” he says as he drops his duffel by the foot of the bed and starts stripping.
“I lied,” Tony says, making grabby hands. “JARVIS helped.”
“Thank you for your praise, sir.”
“Not complaining.” He climbs up next to Tony, curling around him. Tony isn’t really small but he’s smaller than Sam and that makes it easy to shift them onto their sides, cuddling up behind him. “Missed you,” he breathes into Tony’s neck.
“Hmm,” Tony hums. “Was worried about you.”
“Worried about you too. Hill said you were one of Insight’s targets.”
“Of course I was,” Tony says, tossing his head haughtily and getting hair into Sam’s mouth. He splutters, trying to spit the hairs back out. “I’m brilliant, you know.”
“Yeah you tell me that all the time.”
He doesn’t realize that he’s hugging Tony too tightly until he squirms. Immediately, Sam loosens his grip though not enough to let Tony move more than a couple inches. “Sorry,” he mutters. “Just—”
“You were worried,” Tony says. “Want to talk about it?”
“Not right now. Just want to hold you right now.”
“We can do that.” One of Tony’s hands moves to thread his fingers through Sam’s where it rests on his waist. He pulls it up toward his lips and kisses his knuckles. For the first time since Steve and Natasha showed up at his door, Sam relaxes.
When they wake for dinner, JARVIS informs them that Steve is making dinner in the communal kitchen and that everyone is expected to attend for introductions.
“But I already know everyone,” Tony protests.
“I believe Captain Rogers was referring to you and Sergeant Wilson.”
“But I already know Sam.”
Tony sounds genuinely puzzled which is why Sam wraps an arm around his shoulders, steering him toward the elevator as he says, “I haven’t told them yet.”
“Why not?” Tony turns big, wet eyes on him that Sam would probably fall for if it hadn’t been for the fact that he’s been dating Tony for nearly ten years and that hasn’t worked for the last five of them. “Sam, don’t you love me? JARVIS! Alert the presses! Sam doesn’t love me anymore!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You know I love you. It just hadn’t come up.”
“Why not?” Tony repeats. “That should have been the first thing you said. ‘Hi, I’m Sam Wilson, I’m ridiculously handsome, and I’m dating Tony Stark, who is also ridiculously handsome.’”
Sam laughs right as the elevator doors open to show Clint and Natasha and Bruce Banner sitting around a large wooden table. Apparently, they’d just been waiting on him and Tony. The room smells amazing, like meat and potatoes. Tony steps out from under his arm and waves cheerfully.
“I heard you all were moving in,” Tony says. He takes a seat next to Banner, pulling out another chair for Sam next to him. “What’s for dinner?”
“Shepherd’s pie,” Steve says from the kitchen.
Tony makes a face and Natasha says, “What’s that face for?”
“Tony doesn’t like peas,” Sam says unthinkingly.
All noise comes to a halt. He’s pretty sure if this were a movie, it would have been a literal record screech.
“How do you know that?” Clint asks suspiciously.
Sam glances at Tony. The nice thing about dating for as long as they have is that he can all but read Tony’s mind just from the expression on his face which is why he knows that Tony wants him to drag this out as long as possible.
He shrugs. “It was an in interview couple years back,” he says.
“An interview,” Natasha states.
“Yeah, I know you spy types don’t pay attention to the tabloids but growing up with Tony Stark was like Britney Spears or something. There were all these interviews about his personal preferences. Some of them stuck, I guess,” he says, hiding all expressions of glee from his face.
“But you two looked friendly coming in,” Clint points out.
“Met in the elevator,” Tony says blithely. “I don’t know if you know this but I’m a public figure and I have to be good at making people like me.” Clint narrows his eyes. Tony sticks his tongue out.
The next morning, he makes Tony a cup of coffee in the communal kitchen, just the way he likes it. Tony thanks him by pressing a quick kiss to his cheek, which is right when Natasha wanders in, half-asleep but immediately perking up when she sees the exchange between them.
“What was that?” she exclaims, pointing between the two.
Sam deadpans, “I’m touch-starved.”
“I’m tactile,” Tony offers.
Keeping direct eye contact with her, Sam leans over and kisses the top of Tony’s head, breathing in the smell of his shampoo.
Steve decides that he wants to hold a team movie night since they’re all coming together now, even though he still can’t get Thor to come back from—apparently—London (“Have you met Dr. Foster? I don’t blame him,” Tony says). Tony spends most of the previous two days on a workshop binge while Sam spends his mornings on runs with Steve and training with Natasha and Clint and his afternoons playing ping pong with DUM-E. He ends up having to remind Tony that they even have a movie night and when he looks at the big circles under Tony’s eyes, he realizes that they’ll be lucky if Tony’s awake for even half the movie.
He’s not wrong.
Tony falls asleep before the opening credits is even over. Steve looks put-out, a little like a kicked puppy, but Sam says, “He was working. Pepper’s got him troubleshooting some issue with the latest StarkPhone. Kept him up most of the last couple nights.”
“How would you know that?” Clint asks.
Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Bruce smiling into his cup of tea and he wonders if Bruce has already figured it out. Since no one else has though, he says, “I like robots so Tony lets me into the workshop.”
“Tony has robots down there?” Steve asks excitedly.
“Yeah…” Sam says slowly. “You could probably ask if you could go down there.”
Steve brightens even more, which Sam had thought was impossible, before his face suddenly falls. “You think he wouldn’t mind?”
Not for the first time, he wonders what happened between Tony and Steve on the helicarrier. Tony had never wanted to tell him, which had always made him think that it was something Tony did, but now he wonders if it’s the opposite.
“Worst he can do is tell you no,” he says reasonably.
Steve must like that answer because he doesn’t argue, just starts the movie and settles back into the couch next to Natasha. It’s an older movie, still in black and white, but it’s still very funny and Sam finds himself enjoying. He’ll need to remember it so he can watch it again with Tony.
Tony is still asleep by the end of the movie so Sam scoops him up, tossing him over his shoulders in a fireman carry. “I’ll take him upstairs,” he offers. “Headed that way anyway.”
They’re all headed that way; the communal floors are the bottom of the Avengers personal floors. But no one argues with him and since Bruce has the two floors right below them—one is apparently for the Hulk because Tony felt bad he didn’t have a floor—no one even realizes that Sam is taking him back to their floor.
No one, that is, except Bruce who says, “How long?”
“Almost nine years,” he replies.
“You must really make each other happy.” There’s something sad and a little wistful in Bruce’s voice but Sam misses that, too surprised by what Bruce had said. No one ever phrases it like that. It’s always that he makes Tony happy or Tony makes him happy, not that they both do.
“I love him,” he says simply. “And he loves me.”
“And that’s all that matters,” Bruce finishes with a small smile on his face.
“How many times do I have to tell you?” Tony snips, snagging the orange juice out from Sam’s hands. He pulls out a glass out of the cupboard and pours the juice into it before handing the glass to Sam. “Don’t drink out of the carton.”
“We’ve only lived her two weeks,” Steve says, frowning thoughtfully.
“And I’ve had to tell him this every single day,” Tony says archly. “What’s your point?”
Steve shakes his head hastily. “Nothing. Just—”
Sam turns now too, curious to hear what Steve has to say. But Steve just shakes his head again and says, “Never mind.”
Huh. Maybe Bruce isn’t the only one close to figuring it out.
He misses whatever happens when Tony leaves their bedroom one morning right as Steve is coming up to their floor to apparently ask Sam about something he’d recommended for Steve’s list. He’s still asleep, a little hungover from whatever Thor had brought with him from Asgard or London or wherever when he’d arrived last night. He only knows about it when Tony finally shoos Steve off and crawls back into bed with two water bottles and a handful of Tylenol.
“What was that about?” he whispers. Anything louder hurts his head too much. They’re probably getting too old for doing things like this. Both of them are over thirty now. They’re not super soldiers or gods with the world’s fastest metabolisms. Tony passes him a water bottle and two Tylenol. “Thanks.”
“Steve just wanted to make sure I wasn’t abusing your virtue.”
Sam pushes down the anger that always riles up when he hears about someone thinking that just because Tony has been seen with a lot of people at various events, that makes him dirty somehow. He knows that Steve didn’t mean it like that. Steve is just overly protective and a little disinclined to think the best of Tony after their argument on the helicarrier, which he’s finally wormed the details out of Tony.
“And what did you say?” he asks instead.
“I told him we were sharing a floor.”
“He believed that?” If he did, Sam fears he might have to be more worried about the team’s intelligence.
“He asked if the rest of them were supposed to be sharing a floor as well. I told him that I hadn’t planned on more Avengers so I housed you up here since I felt bad you didn’t have a floor and since neither of us minded, I just haven’t moved you. He believed that.”
Sam snorts softly. So maybe he should be a little worried but Tony really is one of the world’s best liars when he needs to be. He probably would have believed a reasonable excuse like that too.
Rhodey jerks his chin at Tony curled up beside Sam on the couch. It’s another movie night and everyone seems engrossed in the film—some cartoon about cavemen that came out in theaters a couple years ago—which is why he assumes Rhodey feels comfortable asking, “Have you thought about proposing?”
“All the time,” he says quietly after glancing around to make sure that no one else is listening. Only Bruce might be but he turns back to the movie as soon as Sam looks in his direction and since Bruce already knows, he isn’t worried about it.
“But,” he continues, “Tony told me on pain of death would he let me propose first and then he got it in his head that he doesn’t want to get married until it’s legal all over the country so…”
“What’s with the secrecy?” Rhodey asks. “I know you two aren’t ashamed of your relationship.”
“We’re seeing how long it takes them to figure it out.”
“And?”
“Bruce discovered it less than a week after moving in. No one else has.”
Rhodey frowns. “It’s been two months.”
“Yeah. We know,” Sam says flatly. He’s been thinking about finally giving up and just telling everyone because this isn’t really funny anymore. He wants to be able to kiss Tony before a mission and pull him into his lap at breakfast. He’s tired of acting like he doesn’t love the man he does. It’s fine when they’re pretending for the cameras but he hates having to do it in front of their friends as well. Tony says he still finds it amusing but he thinks it’s starting to grate even on him.
“Sounds like something you should talk about,” Rhodey observes. Sam nods. It’s past time. The team deserves to know.
As it turns out though, they don’t end up having to tell the team themselves because the next morning, Bucky Barnes is sitting at their breakfast table when they all pile in. Steve may or may not drop a mug, Clint may or may not shriek, and Tony may or may not leap into Sam’s arms. Some of those Sam will confirm later for blackmail purposes (Natasha is vicious and he needs leverage on her) and some he will deny forever.
For his part, Barnes looks amused by the sight of the team freaking out and when Tony goes back and watches the security footage with Sam later, they can both agree that he’s right. It’s hilarious—just not in the moment, when Tony is yelling about security breaches and Steve is nearly in tears and Natasha almost stabs the poor guy.
“Alright that’s enough!” Sam yells. Gratifyingly, the kitchen goes silent. “We are all going to calm down and figure this out like goddamn adults or so help me, none of you will have access to the X-box for a week.”
In a small corner of his mind, he laments that that’s an effective threat.
Still, it’s nice to see everyone sit down even if Natasha is still watching Barnes like he’s a threat. Sam remains standing, just behind Tony’s chair, since it seems like the thing to do if he’s going to be taking charge of this discussion.
“First things first, are you Barnes or someone else?” he asks. Tony twitches at the question and he puts his hands on Tony’s shoulders, calming him.
“Barnes,” he replies. “Sorta.”
“Sorta?”
“The memories are comin’ back slowly but I’m…me, I think.” Dispassionately, Sam observes that he looks a little overwhelmed.
“Good enough. Tony?” Tony startles and tilts his head back so that he’s looking at him upside down. “Do we have room to house him?”
Tony nods. “As long as the Hulk doesn’t mind giving up his floor.”
Sam only has to glance in Bruce’s direction and he says, “He doesn’t mind.”
“That’s settled then. Is this a permanent stay or are you only stopping for a few days?”
Steve is the one who twitches at that, making a dissenting noise in the back of his throat. Sam glares at him.
“Barnes?” he asks.
“Bucky,” Barnes says. “My name is Bucky. And…permanent, for now. Hydra did things to my mind. Think I might be too dangerous by myself.”
“We’ll look into that,” Sam assures him.
“What about the arm?” Tony asks. “Any self-destruct sequences, are you in pain, that kind of thing.”
“Not in pain,” Bucky says slowly. “Don’t know about self-destruct. S’pose you could look.”
Tony all but vibrates out of his seat in excitement. Sam strokes a finger across the back of his neck, a trick he’s learned after years of dating him, and he goes quiet again. Interestingly, Barnes’ eyes grow sharp as he looks at the two of them.
“In that case, I think everything’s settled,” Sam says. “We good?” He waits for everyone to nod before continuing, “Bucky, welcome to the tower.”
Almost immediately, everyone breaks into a low babble of noise: Steve is talking to Bucky about the last few months, Natasha is discussing contingency plans with Clint and Bruce, and Tony tugs on Sam’s hand.
“Can I talk to you?” Tony asks lowly. “Outside?”
They’re barely around the corner before Tony is pushing him back against the wall, kissing him fiercely. “Fuck, that was so hot,” Tony moans. Sam grins, spinning them so he can press Tony into the wall instead. His hand slides down Tony’s side to his leg, hitching it up around his waist.
“Yeah?” he asks. “You like it when I take charge?”
“Mmm yes, use your sergeant voice,” Tony whispers.
Sam is just opening his mouth to say something when he hears Bucky ask, “So how long have they been dating?”
“Who?” Steve asks.
He can hear the confusion in Bucky’s voice. “Wilson and Stark.”
The table goes silent. Then—“What?”
Sam drops his head against Tony’s collarbone. Here they go.