Chapter Text
Tony is born with two soulmate marks.
It’s an odd thing for people to be born with two, but it’s not completely unusual.
There are even people out there with three and four, but Tony’s not one of them, which he’s secretly glad about, when he’s old enough to understand the woes and blows of it all, because he’s already a freak in this world that he lives in for so many reasons – he’s brown and he’s a genius and he’s pansexual – and he doesn’t want to be a freak in this regard as well.
There are two names across his femoral veins, James Buchanan Barnes and Winter Soldier.
Tony knows one of those names intimately; he grew up with that name as much as he did the name, Steve Rogers.
Bucky Barnes is dead.
The Winter Soldier, however, Tony has no fucking clue who that is.
He doesn’t allow the existence of these marks, one being a dead man’s name, stop him from living his life, though.
He has sex; he doesn’t believe in hoarding his virginity for someone who may never show up, someone who may show up but decide that they don’t want him, because Tony isn’t the kind of person that one keeps, in the end.
He learns that lesson, fairly quickly – Tiberius Stone is his greatest lesson of how much someone can hurt him.
He ends up in the hospital when he’s seventeen when he tries to end it with Ty, once and for all, when he realises that Ty’s brand of fury and resentment and thinly-veiled contempt and brief, fleeting moments of softness and affection and genuine belief that there is no one made for Tony the way he is, is not something that he wants in his life, and Ty decides to beat the shit out of him just one last time, before he hits the road.
When Tony’s alone in that bed, his jaw wired shut, one of his legs encased in a cast, his body black and blue, he wiggles his free hand to touch one of the names, the right one, Bucky’s name, and if he squeezes his eyes really tight, he imagines that it throbs, that somewhere, beyond this world and this life, Bucky wants him to be safe, wants him unhurt.
It’s a sweet dream.
When he’s nineteen, he’s kidnapped.
It’s not an odd thing.
When he was younger, he used to get kidnapped quite frequently.
His father had a way of pissing people off (a trait that Tony would inherit himself), and often, those people would take it out on Tony or his mother or both of them, but Tony was the weak link, as opposed to his mother who tended to have more people around her and was, thus, harder to reach.
His father never paid the ransom, of course; we don’t negotiate with terrorists wasn’t just the United States policy on aggression, but also the Stark family’s policy. So, Tony was often beaten on by his kidnappers, until they were stupid enough to leave him alone. And then, it was a matter of him waiting for opportune moments, before he could escape, do something terrible like set the kidnapper’s hideaway on fire, and run off into the woods.
When he would land at the nearest police station, though, he would tell them a standard dialogue, “my name is Tony Stark, yes, that Tony Stark, and I just escaped kidnappers. I need to call my butler to pick me up.”
At first, they usually didn’t believe he was who he said he was; to the ordinary American man, it was inconceivable that Tony Stark, boy genius, millionaire heir, was a brown boy, but they had to do something about the bruised, bloody, filthy child standing in their station, even if he was brown, and when they were finally put in touch with someone responsible, they were forced to apologise, especially when Ana came with Jarvis, and Ana was always terrifying.
So, when he wakes up this time, he prepares himself for such an ordeal, such an escape.
He’s in a cell, hands chained above his head.
He’s been stripped, and he’s sitting in only the dark briefs that he’d put on this morning.
He flexes his jaw and feels the bone ache; he’s been punched.
There’s something damp near his hairline, and when he lifts an eyebrow, it stings. It’s blood, the something damp. He runs his tongue over his lower lip; there’s that same sting again.
“Great,” he mutters.
He tugs at the chains, but they’re made of metal, and he’s just a human; there’s no way that he’s breaking them.
The cell door opens, and men flood the room.
“If you’re planning a show, I’ve got to admit that you kind of ruined the aesthetic by beating the shit out of me,” Tony drawls, ever confident even when the fear is slithering up his lungs and into his throat. “My pretty side is definitely when I’m unblemished.”
Tony expects the backhand, but it doesn’t mean that it hurts any less.
“Shut up,” one of the goons mutters.
“Or what?”
“Or we’ll keep beating you,” he threatens, and Tony smiles up at him.
“Not the first time that I’ve heard that. Look, I like rough sex just as much as anyone, but I’m really not into the physical abuse side of it all. You might have heard things about me–”
A hand fists into his hair, pulling it back sharply, and something wrenches in Tony’s neck. The cold, smooth, sharp blade of a knife is pressed against his jugular, and Tony turns to stone – despite his very big mouth, Tony doesn’t actually have a death wish.
There are still so many things that he wants to and has to do, and when he imagines his death, it’s not in this cold, hard place, with a knife slicing his throat open, while a gang of kidnappers cheer the end of his life.
“You’re gonna shut up,” the man growls. “You’re here for a reason, Stark. You’re part of a show, and you’re gonna play your part. You just better pray that when it comes, your death, it’s going to be quick, because if I had it my way, you fucking cow-kissing pillow biter, I’d make it real slow, make you choke on your own blood before I shot you in the face, understood?”
Tony remains silent, the look in his eyes still defiant.
Finally, the man releases his hair, and Tony slumps back against the wall. The man turns a head over his shoulder.
“Bring the Asset in,” he orders.
There’s a ripple of emotion that goes through the crowd of men, tasting of fear and excitement, perfectly blended, and then, Tony sees him, the man they call the Asset.
He’s tall, taller than Tony, muscled all over, arms and legs and chest and torso built as fuck, and if Tony wasn’t currently strung up like a Thanksgiving turkey, he’d have been all over that. He’s dressed in tactical armour, from head to toe, like he’s heading out to a firefight, and there are weapons all over him – Tony can see at least two guns and three knives, and he bets there are plenty more where they came from.
He has long hair, hanging around his face, strands clumped together like it hasn’t been washed in a few weeks, and there’s a muzzle covering the lower half of his face.
The man who’d held a knife to Tony’s throat unchains him, something that Tony wasn’t expecting, but then, two men grab him by the shoulders, unceremoniously, pulling at already sore muscles, and drag him to his feet, shoving him into the centre of the cell.
They’re surrounded, Tony realises, the Asset and him, with all of the men circling them, like lions waiting for a meal.
“Kill him, Asset,” the man orders, jeering. “Make it last. Make it hurt.”
There’s a gun strapped to the Asset’s thigh, which the man retrieves.
Tony’s lungs are in his throat, and there are a thousand things that he wants to say (he doesn’t want to beg, though; even here, even in the end, his pride wins out), and his mouth is as dry as sawdust. There’s a dizzy, sick sensation in his head, and he wonders if this is what it feels like to be scared for your life, to know that it’s about to end and to not want it to end.
The Asset raises his gun, the barrel of which pointed straight at Tony’s chest.
Tony breathes.
His hands are shaking.
He closes his eyes.
A shot rings through the air, and Tony braces himself for the pain.
It doesn’t come, and Tony’s eyes snap open.
He turns around.
Behind him lies the man that had pressed the knife to his throat and threatened him, on the floor, bleeding out of a deep gunshot wound in his belly. The rest of the men are staring at him, horrified, before their eyes track back to the Asset.
Tony looks at him.
The Asset’s eyes are dead, when he raises his gun, this time pointed straight towards the ceiling and fires again.
The light goes out, shrouding the cell in darkness, and glass rains down on him. There’s an arm slung around his waist and Tony’s being pulled up against a hard body.
“Hold onto me,” a gruff voice murmurs in his ear, and then, he’s being lifted up against that body, slung over the man’s shoulder like a child, and they’re running.
There are more screams, but the corridors are as dark as the cell. When Tony opens his eyes, his chin balanced on the Asset’s shoulder, the Asset is sharp and methodical in the way that he takes out each and every single one of the kidnappers – sometimes, it’s with the gun, the shots loud and painful in the air, and sometimes, the Asset uses his hands, snapping a man’s neck like it’s nothing more than a toothpick, or with a well-placed punch that cracks a skull wide open.
Tony’s belly is twisted in fear, but he can’t deny that there’s some beauty to the violence – maybe because these guys were willing to kill him like five minutes ago.
The Asset carries Tony out of the base on his back. Before the large doors close behind them, he looks over his shoulder, and there are bodies, dozens of them, littering the ground, blood painting the walls, seeping into the paint, and the smell, God, the smell is awful; Tony didn’t think that freshly dead bodies could smell like that.
The doors close, and the image of all of those dead men fade. Tony finally gulps cold, clean air into his lungs, and he slips from the Asset’s body, landing on his feet.
He doubles over, bending at the waist, and throws up the meagre contents of his stomach onto the grass, retching until his throat and lungs are burning, on fire. He straightens, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and turns around, peering at where he’d been kept.
It’s not the same kind of ramshackle safehouse that his kidnappers usually bring him to; whatever this was, whatever these people were planning, it was definitely on a much grander scale than the two-bit thugs who wanted a cool million for their troubles.
Tony turns around; the air is shuddering with the stillness that exists between him and the Asset, and Tony, for the first time in a long time, doesn’t know what to say.
The Asset talks instead.
“Stay here,” he orders like Tony is a pet.
Tony bristles, and before he can open his mouth to argue, the Asset is gone, disappearing around the corner of the building like he was never there.
Tony’s alone.
He looks around.
“Great,” he mutters to himself.
A breeze flutters through the forest that borders the base, and Tony shudders, wrapping his arms around himself, only now remembering that he was standing there, beside this great, big kidnapping base in only his underwear.
Fuck, he needed clothes.
The urge to run rears its ugly head, and he considers disobeying the Asset, leaving him here and making a run for it into the woods, but before he can act on that urge, he hears a rattling sound.
He looks around and then, gapes when he sees the Asset returning, driving a black car around the corner of the base towards him.
The Asset parks right in front of him, peering through the front window.
He’s still wearing that muzzle, and all Tony can see are his blue-grey eyes, hard like chips of ice.
“Get in,” he orders.
“I need clothes,” Tony replies, his voice terse and clipped.
He’s torn between an insane amount of gratitude for the man who just killed all of his kidnappers instead of very well killing him on their orders, which is clearly exactly how this night was supposed to go down, and being terribly fearful of exactly what he exchanged one set of shackles for – something tells him that they don’t call a man the Asset, dress him up the way they dress him up, with the kind of murder skills that he appears to have, and hope that he turns out to be someone who cuddles puppies in his spare time without strangling them.
“There are clothes in the car. Get in the car. There will be more hostiles returning to the base soon,” the Asset replies, no inflection his voice at all.
Tony curses under his breath. He looks over his shoulder at the quiet, dead base, and then, surges forward, opening the passenger door of the car and climbing inside. The leather is cold against his bare skin, and he finds himself shivering early on.
The Asset starts the car, and without a second glance at him, reaches behind him to yank on the strap of a duffel bag in the backseat.
That’s when Tony realises that his saviour has a metal arm; it stretches all the way to his shoulder, and now that there’s absolute silence in the car, and Tony’s not immediately afraid of the possibility of the Asset deciding to strangle him to death, he can hear the whirring of the gears, the sounds of the plating moving when his arm shifts.
Tony opens his mouth, his interest piqued, and the itch begins under his skin, his fingers twitching on his bare thighs – Tony, no, groping the kidnapper assassin would not end well, even if you have a metal fetish.
The Asset drops the bag in his lap without another word.
Tony waits for a second, for some instruction to come his way, and when it doesn’t, he pulls back the zip, revealing a combat undersuit, black and made of Kevlar, and Tony dresses quickly, huddling into the sudden warmth that it provides.
He pushes the duffel bag back into the seat behind him, and he shifts, folding his hands in his lap, which immediately begin to fidget, especially with silence echoing in the small space of the car.
“So,” he drawls, stretching out the monosyllable, “you got a name.”
“Assets do not have names,” the Asset replies, immediately, his voice cold. “Assets are assets.”
“That makes sense,” Tony says, gently, and there’s something uncomfortable twisting in his chest as to the way that the Asset replies to his question – everyone has a name, unless something awful happened to them, unless there was some reason why no one would have given him a name, like expecting someone to devote their entire lives to being their killer in the dark.
There’s a pause, and Tony, for once in his life, doesn’t know what to say, but before he can, the Asset begins to speak.
“The Asset has no name,” he says, haltingly, almost as though he feels bad for the short tone that he took with Tony before, “but the Asset has a designation that its handlers use while the Asset is in the field.”
That uncomfortable twisting in Tony’s chest burns hotter when he hears the Asset refer to himself as it.
“Oh?” Tony’s voice remains purposefully light.
“The Asset is called the Winter Soldier.”
Tony wishes he could say that all time stopped when his companion said that.
It doesn’t.
Tony wishes he could say that he reacted all calm, collected and most importantly, cool.
He doesn’t.
“You’re who?” he demands, his voice sliding high.
The Asset–no, the Winter Soldier looks at him, confused, his brow furrowed; at least, Tony thinks that he’s confused, because he still hasn’t taken off his mask yet.
“The Asset is the Winter Soldier,” he repeats, this time unsure.
“No, you can’t be.”
“It is,” the Winter Soldier insists.
“No,” Tony shakes his head, “no, that’s not possible. That’s not possible.”
“I do not understand,” the Winter Soldier says, carefully.
“The Winter Soldier isn’t, can’t be a real person,” Tony retorts. “He just can’t be. It’s not possible.”
“I am the Winter Soldier.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No, fuck–no, you can’t be. You just can’t be,” Tony snaps.
“I do not understand,” the Winter Soldier replies, sounding a little frustrated himself, even through the mask. “I am the Asset. The Asset has a designation called the Winter Soldier. I am the Winter Soldier.”
“You can’t be, you can’t be the Winter Soldier.”
This time, Tony’s voice is small, stunted, barely above a whisper.
“But I am.”
Tony’s hands are shaking, and his hand is flying to the waistband of the Kevlar suit that he’s wearing, yanking it down in a hurry, along with his underwear. The material stretches and bites into his bare skin, but it moves down the length of his thighs anyway.
It bares the name, though, that is written just across his femoral vein, as well as a thatch of dark pubic hair that Tony should be embarrassed about flashing at an actual stranger, but he doesn’t think too much of it in this moment (and he’s probably flashed a lot of people that he shouldn’t have).
The Winter Soldier’s eyes on his naked hip burns a livewire path right to his cock, and he bites his lip, feeling himself respond in turn.
“So, you see, you can’t be the Winter Soldier,” he says, quietly.
The car comes to a halt, a sharp halt that has Tony clutching onto his seatbelt for dear life.
The Winter Soldier’s hands loosen from the steering wheel, and his flesh hand, just the tip of a single finger, traces the black ink across the inside of his thigh. Tony sucks in a deep breath, and heat is curling in his belly, cramping, and he doesn’t move, especially when the Winter Soldier’s eyes drift up to catch his.
“You have my name on your skin,” he murmurs.
“I do,” Tony says, swallowing past the knot burning in his throat. “I have your name.”
“This means,” the Winter Soldier hesitates, looking innocent, looking like a little boy all of a sudden, “this means that the Asset is your soulmate.”
“No, it means you are my soulmate,” Tony corrects. He chews on his lower lip. “After all, you’re the Winter Soldier, right?”
The Winter Soldier’s face cracks open wide, his eyes liquid. “That does not make sense,” he says, his voice low and rushed. “Assets do not have soulmates. They have missions; they serve the great cause. They do not have soulmates.”
Tony’s heart is rattling around in his ribcage. “Apparently, they do.”
The Winter Soldier’s thumb brushes against his name again, and Tony’s cock twitches. “They wanted me to kill you,” he snarls, baring his teeth.
Clearly, that resting murder face is an actual murder face, and it turns him on something fierce.
“Evidently so.”
“They wanted me to kill you, and something stopped me,” the Winter Soldier says, softly. His eyes catch Tony’s again, and Tony has the sudden urge to kiss shim, hard and careless. “Something stopped me. I could not kill you. They were a threat to you, and so I killed them instead. I could not let them hurt you.”
Tony smiles at him. “Can’t say that I’m not happy about that,” he says, roughly.
“I won’t let anyone hurt you,” the Winter Soldier promises, his voice dark, full of resolve, sharp like flinders. “I won’t, Tony. I won’t.”
Tony hesitates before curling his hand around his wrist. “I believe you,” he says, honestly. “I mean, you kind of killed twenty people back there just to stop them from hurting me. I’d be stupid not to believe you.”
“Twenty-nine,” the Winter Soldier corrects. “I killed twenty-nine of them.”
He looks out of the dashboard, charmingly vulnerable, and Tony stares at him, hungry for anything that he can possibly get.
“You know my name,” Tony points out. “I never told you what my name was.”
The Winter Soldier frowns, his lips pressed into a thin line, and then, Tony’s eyes widen when he begins unbuckling his slacks, pulling them down just a smidge, before rucking up the top half of his armour, to show Tony the underside of his belly.
Tony’s eyes track from the trail of dark hair leading down to the Winter Soldier’s cock that he would really like to put his hand on, to the name inscribed there: Anthony Edward Stark.
“Oh,” he whispers, and he brushes his thumb over the name.
The Winter Soldier jolts in his seat, and Tony yanks his hand away, looking up at him, panicked.
“I’m sorry,” he stammers, “sorry, did I… I shouldn’t have done that. I should have asked first. I’m big on that, consent. I… I make it a point to make sure everything is exactly that, consensual. It needs to be consensual. I wouldn’t want someone to do that to me, so I should have asked.”
“I did not ask you for your permission,” the Winter Soldier says, after a moment. “I should have asked you for your consent before I touched you.”
“No, no, it’s okay–”
“No, I…” The Winter Soldier closes his eyes. “I should not have touched you without asking for your consent. I am not…” He grinds his teeth. “I am not my handlers. I am not owed you. You are not…” He shakes his head. “I will not do that again,” he says, vehemently. “I will not touch you without your consent again.”
“You have it,” Tony says, softly, his blood running hot. “I’m stupid, but you have it, my consent.”
The Winter Soldier cups his face, his jaw, his thumb finding the curve, his fingers warm against the nape of his neck, and Tony’s eyes flutter closed, shadowed by his dark lashes.
“You should not give it to me,” he says, sadly, “and you have mine as well.”
Tony’s mouth is as dry as sawdust, and he breathes in, slow and deep.
“So,” his voice warbles, “that’s how you knew my name, because you have my name on you, because we’re soulmates.”
“We appear to be, yes.”
“That’s…” Tony clears his throat. “That’s really interesting.”
“They wanted me to kill you because I was defective.”
Tony pulls away. “What?”
The Winter Soldier scours his face, as though he’s memorising every inch of it. “I was… distracted. I was rebellious. I was incompetent. I was defective. They initially believed that any imperfections would be repaired with maintenance. However, the wipes did not do what they hoped it would.”
“The wipes?” Tony says, almost afraid to hear what the answer is.
“The handlers have a device.” The Winter Soldier shakes like a leaf before recovering. “It restores me to factory default.”
The mechanical jargon is frankly making Tony want to beat the shit out of an asshole, if any of the assholes were still alive back at the base.
“The device did not make me a competent asset as it should have,” the Winter Soldier explains. “It should have cured any and all deficiencies in my behaviour. But it did not. I was defective. I have been defective for years, for decades. Because of you.”
Tony startles. “Because of me?”
“I knew you were out there, from the moment you came into this world,” he tells him, his fingers sliding into Tony’s hair. His accent changes, his tone as well, becoming something fierce and emotional. “I didn’t know where you were. I didn’t know who you were. I didn’t know how or if I would find you. I didn’t know how to get to you, or how to leave them, but I knew you were out there. You made me defective.”
He has a Brooklyn accent, Tony realises, dazed, before actually processing what he said.
“That’s a good thing, I hope?”
“A very good thing.”
The Winter Soldier squeezes the nape of Tony’s neck, and it makes Tony happy, deliriously happy, in a way that he never thought it could be.
“Where are we, anyway?” Tony asks, casually, staring out the window.
“Milwaukee.”
Tony gapes at him. “An evil kidnapper base was in Wisconsin?” he asks, a dubious tone to his voice.
The Winter Soldier looks at him, cocking his head like a puppy. “Where would you want an evil kidnapper base to be?”
“Texas,” Tony says, immediately.
“Why Texas?”
Tony snorts. “You do not want me to get into this.” He stretches like a cat, his arms above his head. “Well, it’s a long drive from here to New York.”
“Thirteen hours and twenty-two minutes,” the Winter Soldier agrees.
Tony whistles low in his throat. “That is definitely a long drive.” He sighs. “We’re probably going to have to stop somewhere for the night.”
“No need. I am optimised for long distance travel.”
Tony pauses, unsure of how to respond to that. “Okay,” he says, slowly. “But that can’t be good for you.”
The Winter Soldier pauses. “As I said, I am optimised for long distance travel,” he replies, carefully, uncomprehending.
“Yeah, but you don’t have to be. We’re just going back to my place. By the way, how do you know where my place is?”
“You are Anthony Edward Stark, son of Howard Stark, notable weapons’ manufacturer and CEO of Stark Industries. Stark Industries has its headquarters in Manhattan, New York.” The Winter Soldier looks at him. “Is my data incorrect?”
Tony huffs, his mood souring at the mere mention of his father. “No, your data is not incorrect.”
“This upsets you.”
Tony scowls. “No, it doesn’t.”
“It does. I can hear an elevation in your heart rate, and you are clenching your jaw.”
Tony loosens the grip on his jaw on purpose. “It’s not upsetting me,” he says, mildly.
The Winter Soldier looks at him with an alarming amount of condescension for a guy who was just referring to himself as an asset an hour ago.
“Fine,” Tony bites out, “I just… have a problem with the idea of my soulmate identifying me via my father, whom I have a complicated relationship with, okay?”
The Winter Soldier pauses. “If it makes you feel better, I was given a higher threat level for you than your father.”
Tony blinks and then, something swells up in his body like pride. “Really?” he preens.
“I am unsure if it is as a result of you being my soulmate or because my administrators felt that you would pose a greater threat to HYDRA than your father would.”
“Well, I mean, to be fair, I am smarter than–” Tony pauses. “Wait, what did you just say?”
The Winter Soldier rattles off his previous statement once more.
Tony gapes at him in disbelief. “HYDRA,” he says, flatly. “HYDRA was the one who had you. HYDRA was the one that kidnapped me?”
The Winter Soldier nods. “You were unaware of this?”
“It’s not like any of those bastards introduced themselves when they were drugging me, beating me up or chaining me to a fucking pole,” Tony snaps, before he gets a hold of himself. “Okay, HYDRA. HYDRA. That’s a problem, and that was something that I wasn’t expecting. HYDRA isn’t supposed to be… like, functional.”
“HYDRA is functional, though,” the Winter Soldier points out.
“Yeah, I know that, and you know that, and HYDRA clearly knows that, but I don’t think anyone else actually knows that,” Tony retorts. “As in the people who would want HYDRA gone are under the impression that HYDRA is gone.”
“Oh.” The Winter Soldier looks thoughtful for a moment. “Yes, I see the problem.”
“Oh, you see the problem–” Tony shakes his head. “My father, hell, my godmother–”
“–are leaders of SHIELD.”
“What the hell is SHIELD?”
“Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division,” the Winter Soldier says, promptly. “They are an American extra-governmental military counter-terrorism and intelligence agency, tasked with maintaining both national and global security. It was founded in the wake of the Allied victory over the Axis powers by Howard Stark, Margaret Carter and Chester Phillips, as a successor to the Strategic Scientific Reserve. They are HYDRA’s greatest enemy and greatest success.”
Tony frowns. “How is it that you know more about this SHIELD organisation than I do when my father and godmother are literally its founders?”
The Winter Soldier shrugs, an abnormally casual gesture for him. “Perhaps they have been lying to you.”
Tony reels back in offence. “Excuse me?”
“It may have been to protect you,” the Winter Soldier offers.
“Still not a fucking good thing in my book if I got kidnapped by HYDRA in the end,” Tony mutters under his breath. He rubs at his temples, which are beginning to pound. “I guess that’s something that I’ll have to deal out with my father. Joy.” He pauses. “Wait, you said that SHIELD is HYDRA’s greatest enemy and greatest success. What did you mean by that?”
“SHIELD has been infiltrated and is largely being controlled by HYDRA,” the Winter Soldier says, matter-of-factly.
“I’m sorry, what?”