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"You promised, Steve," Bucky snarls at the camera from the sidewalk, where he kneels, bloodied and hostage. "You owe me."
The half-masked cultist with his knife to Bucky's throat grins up at the camera of Tony's heavily warded building. He probably thinks Bucky is begging for his life—that Bucky wants Steve to lower the wards, so the madman can get inside and trade Bucky's life for Tony.
Steve will know better.
What Steve owes Bucky is to stay in that impregnable panic room with Tony, Steve's husband, until dawn, no matter what happens to anyone outside. It's the only way to keep Tony safe from these people, and keep the city at large safe from the completion of their ritual. They only need two more demi-human sacrifices to complete it, and Tony is on the short list of locals who fit the bill.
"Don't hurt him," Steve says through the speaker beside one of the shattered glass doors into the lobby. "Just give us a minute. We can work something out."
Bucky's heart sinks. "Steve, please," he begs.
"You'll be okay, Buck," Steve says. He almost sounds like he believes it.
But Bucky won't be okay, and they both know it—not if Tony is going to stay safe in that panic room with Steve as his last defense.
Bucky feels cold in his bones, tastes blood in his mouth, feels the stabbing aches of a bullet wound in his side and the knife wounds on his forearms. He knows he can't stand up anymore, not with his ankle all but snapped. Just sitting back on his heels is enough to make him jerk violently away from the pain of putting pressure on it. Jerking away from the pain brings his neck close enough to feel the bite of the knife against his throat.
That's when Bucky knows: he must take the choice out of Steve's hands. It's all he can do for Steve and Tony now. He's held the line but ultimately failed. The least he can do now is not inflict them with the burden of guilt for his death. Steve will get over it. Tony will too. Bucky was only a friend who they flirted with sometimes. They don't know Bucky's been in love with them for almost a year now.
It never would've amounted to anything even if they did. Their relationship is solid and secure and complete, no hangers-on needed. Anyway, Bucky's known since he was eighteen that he probably wouldn't live long enough to see thirty. It's a miracle his myriad dangerous jobs have taken this long to kill him. He knew this was coming. His affairs are in order.
He lunges forward into the searing pain.
His blood is so hot, pouring down his throat. It feels nice. The rest of him feels so cold.
He thinks Steve yells his name, but he can't be sure.
The pavement is cold.
He's bleeding out.
Behind him, the sound of receding footsteps. Without Bucky as a bargaining chip, the cultist must know he has little chance of getting through the wards.
Little chance—but not no chance.
Bucky supposes there's one more thing he can do to protect Tony.
He drags his neck the scant inches to the threshold of the building. Its shattered door has been blown off its hinges, glittering the marble tiles and sidewalk with twinkling glass. It reflects the streetlamps and the lights affixed to Tony's building like a million jagged stars—the kind that foretell doom, not the kind you hang your hopes on.
Bucky bleeds over the threshold, bleeds his life into Tony's wards protecting the building from those with malicious intent. He sacrifices his blood, his body, his life, a final offering on the altar of his devotion. One's dying will is a powerful force, and Bucky threads his into Tony's wards. That power will protect the men he loves now that Bucky no longer can.
Bucky almost doesn't realize his soul is being pulled out of him. It feels so different, warm and almost gentle, compared to how it felt when his master did it, years ago, when Bucky was a slave. His master would rip out Bucky's soul and keep it in a jar on his office shelf, so that sending Bucky on suicide missions to do terrible things wouldn't lose him a slave, so long as he recovered Bucky's body within seven days. Have someone heal the corpse's fatal wounds and perform the procedure to return the soul, and he'd have a resurrected slave he could send out again—once the debilitating exhaustion wore off—or use for target practice, or to train more slaves to kill for him. The body can live without a soul for a week before the pathways to connect them wither to nothing and the body dies permanently.
Bucky feels his soul slip away with his blood, and distantly hopes the cultist he failed to kill isn't the person stealing it now.
He dies.
After Tony uses the extra power Bucky gave the wards to extend them far enough to envelop Bucky's body, protecting it from all comers, he breathes a shaky sigh of relief and slumps back against the couch.
Bucky will be pissed when he wakes up—Tony is sure of it. But he'll be alive. He'll also be long-lived and hard to kill, two attributes Tony has longed to bestow on Bucky since learning he's constantly imperiled by his job. When they get their hands on his body, fix it up, and Tony weaves Bucky's soul back into it, it'll be tied to his, to Steve's, and they can use their bond and Tony's magic to keep Bucky safe. He'll heal as fast as Tony, like Steve after Tony bound their souls together; and like Steve, he'll share the longevity of a powerful dragon.
Not that Bucky knows Tony's a dragon and not just a demi-human—yet. That side of Tony's heritage is a closely guarded secret.
It's one he's wanted to share with Bucky for a long time. Now that their souls are bound, he can.
Tony wants to rush upstairs and smuggle Bucky's body back to the panic room, keep it safe, protected, with them, fix him now and watch him open those pretty blue eyes, maybe smile at Tony one last time before he finds out how deeply Tony has betrayed him. Maybe if Bucky was with them, even if he lay on the couch behind them, cold and dead, the impenetrable suite that felt like a prison while they helplessly watched that asshole press a knife to Bucky's throat would turn back into a safe room, a refuge, a shelter to protect Tony and the men he loves.
The panic room's decor is meant to impart a sense of peace, with its soothing shades of blue and white and silver, but how can Tony feel at peace with Bucky's body broken and so far out of their reach, and Steve a quiet wreck beside him? The array of security cam monitors on the honey oak desk beside the heavy metal vault door to the sub-basement hallway are visible from any point in the room; there's nowhere to escape Bucky lying there, surrounded by blood, and so very still.
He has blood streaked across his face—the part they can see, the part not lying in a puddle of glass and the blood he spilled for them, to help them, as if him dying would ever be okay. Tony wants to tilt his face up out of the blood and wipe it clean. Some part of him knows its irrational, but he nevertheless feels like if he could only wipe the blood away, somehow things would be okay and this interminable nightmare would end.
But he can't wipe the blood from Bucky's face. He and Steve promised they'd stay in this room, and Bucky died so they could keep that promise. It's the last thing he asked of them, and even knowing it won't really be Bucky's last wish doesn't keep it from fixing Tony impotently in place. Bucky is out of their reach until dawn, and the blood remains staining his face, and it's somehow all Tony can focus on, that spray across his cheek that's far too pale now—too pale because of them.
The soft hum of the stocked kitchenette fridge tears through the silence like thunder, but it's still not loud enough to drown out the hitch in Steve's breaths that amplifies the throbbing ache in Tony's chest. The plush chair and love seat are arranged around them, on the wall opposite the outside door, but Tony and Steve are slumped on the soft throw rug in the middle of them, hemmed in on every side. Even the furniture seems to know Tony just selfishly stole Bucky's soul and bound it to his.
Tony wants to curl up in bed around Steve in the room behind them. It's a den-like bedroom, filled with sumptuous reds and golds, and the bed is soft, and he's tired. But they can't keep watch over Bucky from there, so by unspoken agreement, out here they remain.
The bed is big enough for three. Bucky would fit easily with him and Steve—if that had ever been something he wanted.
But it's okay if Bucky doesn't love them, so long as he's alive. It's okay if he never wants to see Tony again for doing this to him without his knowledge or consent. It's okay that a human Tony treasures will reject him and the safety of his building, his hoard, to live an independent life far outside Tony's reach.
It's okay. Really.
Tony knows what he's done is unconscionable, a fate he's forced on Bucky that cannot be undone. And sure, his body was the only vessel on hand capable of containing Bucky's captured soul, so it was bind Bucky's soul to his own or let Bucky die forever. But Tony shouldn't be happy he didn't have a soul jar. This shouldn't be a choice he's relieved he couldn't undo even if he wanted to—because he doesn't want to.
Bucky's work is so dangerous it scares Tony, who's far too aware of how breakable the human body is, how easily its light is snuffed out. Bucky's enchantments have kept him alive, made him more durable, but they're nothing compared to the protections a dragon naturally extends to a mate, a living treasure, when he binds their souls together.
Tony can live with what he's done. He can live with it because he knows Bucky will live with it too, and be well-nigh unkillable. Tony and Steve will worry about his safety less now that Tony's magic protects him. Now that if he needs help, they will know and be able to find him, aid him, no matter where he is.
Bucky's soul inside Tony's chest is warm, like a hearth fire Tony's contentedly curled around—a hearth fire that means home and hoard. It shines. It's precious and beautiful, and it will be hard to let go of, just like letting go of Steve's soul was when Tony bound them together on their wedding night. But it was oh, so worth it when he saw part of himself laced through Steve's shine.
Poor Steve. Bucky is his best friend. Hopefully, still will be after he learns what Tony has done to him. But Tony's selfishness has helped his husband—still more reason he can't bring himself to be sorry. Steve has stopped making those moaning sobs at the monitor. The whirlwind of anguish ripping through him from where their souls join has slowed to a low ache tempered with hope.
"He's going to hate me for this," Tony confesses softly.
Steve reaches out then, arm propped on the couch cushions, and laces his fingers through the soft curls at Tony's nape. Although both men are leaning against the couch now, they arrived there separately: Tony sliding down to sit cross-legged on the floor to help anchor himself to the building's wards to pull Bucky's soul to safety when Bucky tapped into them, and Steve falling to his knees in horror when Bucky killed himself to keep him from having to choose between Bucky's safety and Tony's. Steve's matching anguish helped fuel Tony's desperate grab for Bucky's soul. But Steve has regained his composure when he meets Tony's eyes now, and sends a wash of reassurance through their bond. "He'll understand," Steve soothes. "And he'll be alive to understand. That's what matters."
"I can't believe he did that," Tony rasps, the memory of Bucky's last moments a discordant echo in his head. Bucky's bright shine dimming to nothing before his eyes; Bucky's gorgeous body a broken, bloody shred; Bucky's vibrant eyes sightless and painfully still.
"I know." Recognizing that Tony has finished his rescue efforts enough to handle conversation and company, Steve curls around him, offering comfort he desperately needs.
"He shouldn't have done it," Tony says. "We could've figured something out."
"I know," Steve agrees.
But they both know that isn't true.
Despite knowing they couldn't have saved him, however, the fact still stands: Bucky sacrificed his life for them. He couldn't have known tapping into the wards to strengthen them would allow Tony to pull his soul to safety, so resurrection was possible. Bucky chose to die to keep them safe, first in staying behind to fight, and then in throwing himself onto the knife, so he couldn't be used as leverage against them.
That knowledge, that memory, will never leave Tony.
But it shouldn't. And sacrifice is a form of love, right? Protecting them was more than just a job for Bucky; Tony knows that. Just like Bucky is so much more precious than a mere friend to Tony, even if Bucky never sees him that way.
At least he'll be alive to tell Tony so. Tony holds on to that, and to Steve's arm around him.
And he holds on to Bucky's soul, cradled within him, a treasure Tony gets to possess and protect, just for tonight, while he waits with his husband for the dawn.
Steve carried Bucky's body to the infirmary. He wouldn't let the paramedics touch it, much less take it away. As he walked the Stark building halls with Tony, down to their bright, cutting-edge infirmary, he'd cradled Bucky's sagging head in the crook of his neck.
If he hadn't, it would've dangled precariously.
Bucky had cut deep.
Steve and Tony watched the healer cut away Bucky's torn, bloody clothing, and use potions and spells to clean and heal and preserve his body for re-entry of the soul. She didn't ask for the soul jar to do the procedure herself; they'd told her a specialist was waiting upstairs.
It's another well-kept dragon secret, known to only dragons and the treasured people they bind to themselves, that dragons can remove and return a person's soul to their body more easily and naturally than any healer ever could. When Tony explained it before doing it to Steve's to bind their souls together, he'd said it has something to do with dragons' natural ability to phase between the physical and metaphysical planes. By their very nature, dragons simultaneously exist in multiple dimensions, their dragon body and human body—or another form entirely—never inhabiting the same plane, but eternally ready to switch places with a burst of energy and will.
Tony helps Steve wrap Bucky in a sheet, and Steve carries Bucky up to the penthouse and deposits him on their bed. He can dress himself when he wakes; Steve has more clothes than he knows what to do with, and he and Bucky are roughly the same size. He can't deny he'll enjoy seeing Bucky wear his clothes. He knows Tony will enjoy it—Tony loves when Steve wears clothes that Tony bought him.
Steve sits on one side of Bucky while Tony leans over him from the other, cups a hand to his chest, then carefully turns it and presses it to Bucky's. Just as when Tony did it to him, Tony's hand appears empty to Steve.
But he can feel when their bond to each other gains another thread of warmth: Bucky.
Almost immediately, Bucky wakes up. His eyes are wide and wild, his breaths short and frantic.
He calms when he sees Steve and Tony beside him, though, and presses a relieved hand to his chest. He seems to consciously slow his breathing as he sits up and scoots back against the pillows. He only flushes slightly when he looks down at his bare chest, seems to realize he's naked, and modestly tucks the hospital sheet around his hips. "You're safe?" he asks Tony as he adjusts the sheet, though the question sounds more like a statement.
Tony's smile is fleeting. "Thanks to you, yeah."
He nods to himself and looks down again before meeting their eyes. "And I guess I'm safe. How is that possible?"
"Tony saved you," Steve replies. At Bucky's suspicious look, he adds, hands raised in surrender, "We stayed in the panic room until dawn, just like we promised."
Bucky begrudgingly relaxes. "How'd you do it?" he asks Tony. "I died—I know I did. How long was I dead?"
Steve flinches just hearing the word.
But Tony tenses at the first question, for obvious reasons, and looks at Steve.
So Steve answers for him, taking the second question first; it was hardest to hear but is easiest to answer: "The attack was yesterday evening. You've been… You were… It's been about fifteen hours."
Tony can probably tell Bucky exactly how long he was dead—fifteen hours and three minutes, by Steve's count—but Bucky doesn't need to hear how frantic they were right now. They have more important things to discuss.
"How did you save me?" Bucky asks again.
Tony grimaces. "I guess now's a good time to tell you I'm not just a demi. So… Surprise!" He grins sardonically and raises his hands in a voila gesture. "I'm a dragon. Don't tell your friends—or your sister, or whoever else, just… Keep it secret, keep it safe, the whole nine. But, uh, yeah… I'm a dragon. That's pretty much how I did it."
Bucky boggles at Tony. Steve can understand why; dragons keep to themselves, and have managed to mostly conceal their abilities, chief among them the ability to shift into human form. The idea of a dragon becoming a human—or falling in love with one—is the stuff of fairy tales and fantasy romances.
"You're fucking with me," Bucky concludes after a few aborted attempts to speak.
"He's not," Steve says firmly. "I have sketchbooks full of drawings of him as a dragon."
Bucky trains a hard gaze on them both, and finally huffs. "If you're a dragon, prove it."
Tony winces. "Honestly, I would—I'd shift for you right now—but it's harder to explain things in that form, and it takes a lot of energy, and I kind of spent most of mine on the wards and being a soul jar and doing the binding, so, for now, I know it sucks, but you're kind of stuck with me." He hesitates. "Sorry," he adds, distraught.
Some of Bucky's tension slides away in the face of Tony's distress, replaced by a rueful smile. "I'll take getting stuck with you any day of the week, Tony," Bucky says, tone gentling and gaze intent. "Both of you. So…" He purses his lips and takes a deep breath through his nose. "Alright, let's say you're a dragon, even though you look human to me. That still doesn't explain how you saved me."
Tony looks like an adorably frazzled mixture of hopeful and highly anxious. Steve wants to fluff his soft hair and drag him close to kiss his forehead, to soothe and calm him, but knows derailing this conversation now that Tony's worked up to it would ultimately be a cruel distraction. It's with reluctance that he keeps his hands to himself.
"Okay," Tony says, "first off: I cannot stress enough that this doesn't leave this room—"
"Fine," Bucky says, punctuating his terse statement with a sharp nod.
The immediate agreement stops Tony short. "Oh. Good. Okay." He sucks in a fortifying breath and begins.
At first, Bucky seems skeptical. But as Tony's anxious explanation of the soul removal and return continues, and he answers Bucky's myriad questions cogently and without contradictions, Bucky's skepticism turns to wonder, and his wonder turns to marveling. By the time Tony finishes, Bucky is slumped against the headboard, smiling and utterly relaxed, his gaze suffused with unfettered admiration. "Holy shit," he says, not for the first time during Tony's summation. "That's incredible. Is the dragon thing why I don't feel like shit right now? It felt so different, I almost didn't realize someone was taking out my soul. Usually, it hurts, and I feel like I got hit by a bus when it's put back."
Tony's eyes widen.
So do Steve's. "'Usually?' You've done this before?" Steve asks. The skills needed to remove and return souls to the physical body are so difficult to learn and implement that only a small fraction of healers are capable of doing it safely, and the price for their services is high—well outside the budget of any but the super-rich, a social status Bucky has never enjoyed as far as Steve knows.
"Not by choice, but yeah, at least a dozen times. I told you I was a slave, right?"
Steve stiffens. Bucky's only mentioned it once or twice, and never in any detail—much less something as egregious as this. A knot of rage forms in his chest.
Tony lets out a low growl. "Who was it?" he snarls.
Steve frowns expectantly at Bucky. He and Tony will find the bastard and end him.
But Bucky assures them, "He's dead." His tone is lazy, but his pale, pretty eyes are hard and proud. "He and his doctor. Permanently. Some friends and I took care of it."
Steve feels the knot loosen. He wants details; he wants to know everything—including why none of those friends were him—but now isn't the time to dredge up Bucky's most painful memories. Not when he and Tony have serious groveling to do.
Bucky softens. "It never felt like this before." He looks down and absently rubs his chest. "This feels…amazing. Warm. It might sound crazy, but it's like I can feel you."
"You can," Steve says, softening himself in the face of Bucky's contentment. "That's us. That's the bond." The same surge of excitement Steve felt when Tony explained things to him wells up in him now. He wants Bucky to feel that too. If nothing else, he hopes Bucky will value how the bond can help him, even if he's angry that they never gave him a choice. "The bond will heal you and armor you, and we can use it to help keep you safe. Eventually, you'll get comfortable enough with it that you can use it to find us. You'll know whether we're hurt or need help. You can send feelings if they're strong enough, or if you really focus on doing it. I can even send thoughts now, sometimes. Tony's been helping me practice. You'll have plenty of time to figure things out now that you're bound to him, though. Centuries, at least."
"Oh." Bucky stills. Sucks in sharply. He ducks his head, and his eyes take on a glassy sheen. "Centuries?" he murmurs. He huffs a laugh through his nose and gives them a watery smile. "I never thought I'd live past thirty. Centuries! Wow. That's…" For a moment, his face crumples, and Steve is terrified he'll cry—but Bucky's thread in their bond says he's happy, not heartbroken. "I can see Becca's kids grow up," Bucky says with a wet laugh, and wipes his eyes with the heels of his hands. "Holy shit. I can be there when she needs me." He sniffles and shakes his head, awestruck.
"Yep," Tony agrees, sounding more flippant than Steve knows he feels. Tony isn't great with tears and intense displays of feelings—his or anyone else's. As always, he falls back on humor—but that seems to be what Bucky needs. "You'll be uncle Bucky for a long time. Well, uncle Bucky, then great-uncle Bucky, then great-great uncle Bucky—you know what, great-stacking sucks. You can level up from great-uncle to amazing-uncle or something. Each generation gets its own adjective, so you can tell them apart."
Bucky snickers and shoots a grateful glance at Tony, and then his gaze skitters away to settle on the curtained window—though his focus is beyond it, lost inside the middle distance.
Steve wonders where his thoughts have gone.
Bucky is silent for what feels like a long time, breathing slowly, composure seeping back. At long last, he turns back to them. "Thank you, Tony. For doing this." His joy is wilted around the edges, weighed down by what feels to Steve like guilt. "I'm just sorry you had to form a mate bond with me to save me. That's what this is, isn't it? It's a mate bond." At their incriminating silence, Bucky ducks his head. His lips twist unhappily. "You gave me everything when you saved me, even though you'd be paying for it the rest of your lives. Centuries, at least—that's what you said. I know having me in your heads and your relationship isn't something you'd've signed up for if you had another choice, and I'm so sorry what I did forced you to do that. Once I get a handle on the bond, I'll try to keep out of—"
"Don't you dare shut us out, Bucky," Tony snaps. His tone is sharp, an order, but his big brown eyes are pleading. Guiltily, furtively, he admits, "I'm glad there was no other choice. Shitty of me, but there it is." He doesn't look at either of them when he says it.
Steve pushes solidarity and support and love at him through the bond, and pride at his bravery. Tony has said what Steve was unwilling to—too much of a coward to tell Bucky the shameful truth: he's happy about the lifelong bond they've forced on him.
Tony blinks up at Steve, startled, but his shoulders relax. He warily looks back at Bucky.
Who seems floored.
Steve can't tell whether his shock is good or bad, but he needs Bucky to understand: "We want you here," he says firmly, resting a hand on Bucky's knee. "Me and Tony are getting exactly what we wanted. We've wanted to bond with you for a long time." Almost a year, to be exact, but Bucky had made it clear Tony and Steve's relationship was sacrosanct to him, gone out of his way to prove himself no threat to it, to show them all he wanted was their friendship. "But this isn't something you wanted," Steve acknowledges with a frustrated sigh. "You didn't ask for a mate bond with us, or for us to be in your head for the rest of your life. We knew you weren't interested in being part of our relationship, and we forced you into it anyway. You have every reason to be angry with us for that."
Bucky looks incredulously at Steve and barks out a short, shocked laugh. "Steve, Tony is literally as possessive as a dragon. You're both possessive. Why would I ruin our friendship by showing I wanted more than that?"
"Wait, so you are interested?" Tony bursts out.
Steve feels hope churn in his stomach. Unconsciously, his grip on Bucky tightens.
Bucky's eyes and crooked grin are edged with teasing when he replies, "I knew my job would get me killed someday, but I wouldn't do myself in for just anybody."
It's a joke. Steve knows it's a joke. But the room around him falls away, and he's back in the panic room: helpless, useless, hopeless. Bucky lunges onto the knife that's at his throat because Steve failed him. Bucky bleeds out onto the pavement, but his blood is on Steve's hands.
Bucky's wavering voice wrenches Steve back to the present. "You two are—" He shuts his mouth abruptly, closes his eyes, and takes several steadying breaths. "If I'd had any idea what you wanted," he says instead, "I'd’ve said yes a long time ago."
Steve's throat catches, but he still asks: "Yeah?"
Bucky covers Steve's hand with his own and gives it a reassuring squeeze. "Yeah."
"Oh, thank god," Tony says, slumping against Steve's arm and once again bursting the bubble of intensity. He tugs at his collar. "Is it too soon to ask you to move in?"
Bucky chuckles. Steve snorts and kisses the top of Tony's head. "Not if Bucky says yes," Steve answers.
"Yes to move in, or yes to too soon?"
"Move in with us," Steve tells Bucky.
This time Bucky laughs. "You got a funny way of asking, Steve—but I'm saying yes anyway. Not like I haven't lived here before," he adds with an amused shrug. "I assume I'd be moving in here this time, not the blue guest room?"
"You assume correctly," Tony says.
"We've still got toiletries in there for you," Steve adds, "if you want to stay the night. We can help get your apartment packed tomorrow morning."
"Not today?" Bucky asks. "It's not even ten yet, if I've only been out fifteen hours."
Steve twists his palm up to link his fingers with Bucky's and presses his nose to Tony's hair, taking solace in the warm grip and soothing scent while he takes a shaky breath. "Those were the longest fifteen hours of our lives," he admits. "I'd rather stay in today."
Tony sends reassuring warmth through their bond—edged with a dragon's possessiveness. "Preferably right here," he adds aloud, eyes darkening as he looks over Bucky's bare chest. When Steve draws back to look at his face, Tony's dark brown irises are limned by dracontine gold.
Steve knows that look, and a Pavlovian stir of excitement rises within him.
"I'm not complaining," Bucky says with a velvet chuckle that sends a zing down Steve's spine. "I'd kiss you if my mouth didn't taste like blood and death."
Tony grins slyly. "Worried we won't like mourning breath?"
It takes Steve and Bucky a moment, but then Steve groans, and Bucky titters. "Our first kiss is not gonna taste like corpse, Tony. Sets a bad precedent."
"But makes for an interesting story," Tony counters, leaning closer.
Steve tugs Tony back. "Let's let him get cleaned up and eat some breakfast. Us too," he adds with a quelling look. "You barely ate last night, and you did all that ward and soul work."
Tony sniffs airily. "Pot, kettle," he says.
He's not wrong. Steve had fought to protect Tony on their mad dash into the building from down the block, and although he'd gotten out a protein shake for Tony and forced one down himself, they were too stressed to eat and could barely look away from the monitor of Bucky's body. Neither has actually eaten since the hors d'oeuvres at the dinner party Bucky dragged them from yesterday. For Bucky, it must've been longer still. And although the healers didn't use Bucky's energy to help heal him—he'd had none left after pouring it all into Tony's wards—Bucky's body will crave sustenance to replenish all it lost. They might as well take care of the necessities before allowing Tony to herd them back into bed, so he can hole up with his living treasures. "We all need to eat," Steve says, then reminds Tony, "And we need to clean up and get some sleep."
"Fine," Tony says, but he looks a little too pleased to be innocent. "We'll shower and get breakfast." He slides off the bed and grabs Bucky's hand, starts tugging him out of bed. "C'mon, Steve," Tony calls over his shoulder. "Bucky, you're gonna love our shower."
"Am I really?" Bucky says with a laugh. He runs his free hand through his hair and momentarily stiffens, feeling around. "You gonna help me wash the blood out of my hair?"
"I'll help you wash a lot more than that," Tony says with a leer before winking back at Steve.
Bucky casts Steve a come-hither look and drops the sheet before letting Tony alternately drag and herd him into the master bathroom.
With their trifold bond warm in his chest, an unquenchable smile adorning his face, and a frisson of excitement buzzing underneath his skin, Steve pulls off his shirt and happily follows the men he loves to the shower…
A few steps behind, so he can enjoy the view.
Bucky feels like he's awoken in the best kind of dream. He's mate-bonded with Tony and Steve! They love him the way he loves them! And if their behavior in the shower is any indication—slowly and carefully cleansing him of the evidence of his bloody death the previous night—Tony treasures him with a dragon's possessive and relentless fascination, and Steve with the deepest, unwavering adoration a human is capable of.
Now, when Bucky flirts with Tony and flusters Steve, he can conclude things with a kiss instead of laughing it off and pretending all his honeyed words meant nothing. He doesn't have to pretend his eyes aren't drawn to them and look away before he's caught, or hide his attraction, or tone down his affection to friendship-appropriate levels. He can feel how much they want him, cherish him, treasure him, through the warmth in his chest and the threads in his mind that echo their long-held, comfortable love like a song inside his head.
When they fuck him in the shower, a soft rain warming their backs, Tony's dragon-hot, compact body cradled to his chest, and Steve's more lithesome body pressed to his back, Bucky comes and shakes and comes again as they push their pleasure through the bond to amplify his.
When Tony rifles through Steve's closet and tosses Bucky soft flannel lounge pants and one of Steve's sinfully tight t-shirts, and then an oversized MIT sweatshirt from his own side of the closet, Bucky doesn't have to hide his pleasure at wearing their clothes, surrounding himself with their scent. And when Tony looks him up and down with unfettered avarice, Bucky can kiss his hunger into a smile, and then grab Steve and kiss him, too.
When they sit down in the kitchen to eat an actual meal—their first since the day before—and Steve's bare foot hooks around his heel, and Tony audaciously drops a foot into his lap, Bucky can challenge their innocent looks with a smirk, a raised eyebrow, and admit, "I'm glad I don't have to pretend not to notice you playing footsie anymore." When Tony's foot moves sensually against him over dessert, Bucky sucks in a shuddering breath but makes no move to stop him. "I see why you always get red in the face when you sit across from Tony," he tells Steve tightly. Tony smirks and makes him shudder again. "Holy shit," Bucky hisses. Steve just smiles indulgently and caresses Bucky's ankle with his toes.
Routine keeps Bucky from realizing he can cuddle with them on the couch, rather than wistfully watching Tony and Steve cuddle in his peripheral vision and wishing he could settle under Steve's arm, or pull Tony against him, without them kicking him out and never wanting to see him again. So when Bucky sits down in his spot, on his end of the couch, like usual—it's habit, being alone when they're together—he's surprised when Steve crams next to him instead of sitting on the other end. Steve curls an arm around Bucky's shoulders, tucks him close, and Tony drapes himself across their laps like they're piles of gold he's claiming and aggressively cuddles them both to distraction. Bucky doesn't remember what episode of Star Trek Tony put on, nor how long the series played, because the three of them wound up necking on the couch like teenagers, and Tony made good on what his lunchtime teasing had promised.
That's how they spend their first day together as mates. It's lazy and wonderful—the best day Bucky's had since the weeks he stayed with them months ago, when their domesticity had been just shy of everything he wanted. Shy, because Bucky had wanted Steve and Tony, to be in their relationship, not just an object of friendly affection.
Now, though… Now he has that. He has everything. Everything, and a warmth in his chest that brings an irrepressible smile to his face.
The only imperfection in Bucky's perfect day is one he caused: his death left scars on Tony and Steve, and even his swift resurrection hasn't erased those indelible marks.
Bucky doesn't have to pretend he doesn't love Steve and Tony with his whole heart anymore. Instead, he has to pretend he didn't break theirs with his suicide. Pretend not to notice that Tony gets clingy, and his eyes suspiciously wet, when he looks at Bucky's bare throat. Pretend not to notice Steve continually indulging him: letting him have the last slice of tiramisu even though Steve's as much of a bottomless pit as he is, and yielding the last word whenever they bicker to make Tony laugh. For tonight, Bucky will pretend not to notice when they look at him like he's a ghost, a memory, a hole his devotion carved out of their hearts.
He'll help them do what they need to, to cope, and do what he can—with help from the bond—to assure them they need not fear his loss again. And if the gutted looks persist, Bucky will ask Sam for Doc Samson's number, and get them all in for a group counseling session or few to fix what he's coming to realize he thoroughly broke.
But for tonight, he'll focus on enjoying getting to live the dream he longed for, getting the men he longed for, the promise of a long life with them in a way he never dared hope.
It's to Bucky's surprise—but not Steve's—that despite the relaxing day, Tony gets antsy around dusk and herds them into bed far earlier than Bucky thinks he'll be able to fall asleep. At Bucky's questioning look, Steve shrugs and says, "It's a dragon thing. Just go with it."
Bucky's protest lodges in his throat because the moment he and Steve are sitting naked on the bed, Tony shifts.
Between one blink and the next, human Tony is gone, replaced by a magnificent red and gold dragon.
Wondering and wide-eyed, Bucky raptly watches Tony curl his sleek, sinuous dragon body around the bed and rest his large, scaly face next to Bucky's hip. "I've never seen a dragon in real life," Bucky says, voice unconsciously hushed.
"Amazing, isn't he?" Steve asks, then kisses the back of Bucky's neck. It sets off a pleasant shiver down Bucky's back, but even that can't distract him for long.
He wants to gawk, to take in the tail, the horns, the wings, and touch whatever Tony will let him, but Tony presses his hearth-warm snout to Bucky's torso and nudges him to lie down. The thread of anxiety coming from Tony through the bond convinces Bucky to do it. There will be time to look later. There will be entire centuries, goddamn. "You're gorgeous," he tells Tony as he gets situated—on his side, so he can keep staring. He pauses. Frowns. "Can I say that about a dragon?"
The thread in Bucky's head that feels like Tony preens, so he thinks maybe the answer is yes.
Steve confirms it. "I say it all the time. I guess I can show you my drawings of him now that the cat's out of the bag."
You mean, 'Now that the dragon is out of the bag?' says Tony's sly voice—inside Bucky's head.
Bucky startles.
Immediately, he feels washes of comfort from both Tony and Steve.
"He does that," Steve says ruefully. "Words are harder to send, though, so don't expect many from me."
Yet! Tony says.
Steve smiles and reaches across Bucky to stroke Tony's snout. "Yet," he agrees.
Taking that to mean it's okay to stroke the gold-tinged red scales of Tony's elegant snout, Bucky does. Excitement buzzes in his stomach; he's touching an actual dragon. "You're so warm," he marvels.
"Yeah, you'd think a dragon would be cold," Steve sasses, lying down and wrapping himself around Bucky's back.
Tony slow blinks at Steve like an unimpressed cat, but nevertheless rumbles his appreciation at being pet like one. The vibrations it sends through the mattress make Bucky feel like he's on a massage chair. "Oh my God," he mumbles, relaxing further. "That feels fucking amazing."
Steve nestles his face against Bucky's nape to share the pillow and lets out a contented sigh. For a moment, he strokes Bucky's bare stomach with the arm on top of the blanket. Then he reaches past Bucky and rests his big hand on Tony's far bigger snout. The gesture, like Steve's arm around Bucky, seems both a gentle reassurance of Tony's presence and a silent claim that Tony, like Bucky, is his.
As Bucky falls asleep in their embrace, Tony's long, warm tail draped possessively over them—a cage as much as Steve's arms, but a comforting one, both bonds intended to claim and protect as much as to hold—Bucky thinks that this soul theft and resurrection are the first ones he's ever been grateful for.