WinterIron one shots

Metal Men

Word count:4444

Summery: maybe Bucky and tony have more in common then Bucky first thought. But looking at tony through the glass, he realises how he got there, wasn't a mistake.

( I was feeling angsty - so here a long one to make up for the lack of chapter recently - I'm so sorry! I have so much work! So I hope you enjoy!!)

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When Tony was younger, his dad had boxes on boxes of old stuff. The boxes were filled to the brim, some with comics, others with toys and some, the most important ones, filled with actual pieces of history from the lives of men who served.

Many people wouldn't find Tony to be sentimental. His ego is too big to have room for feelings, right? That's what people think and he's fine to let them think that.

Except, Tony is really, secretly, sentimental.

He still has the bracelet that Susan Wood made him when they were 12, both too smart and rich for their own good, no idea what they wanted to do in the world except get away from their parents.

He thinks he loved Sus, can remember the way her hair smelled faintly of honey and vanilla, the way her lips felt so soft on his cheek. The bracelet is in the drawer of his bedside table and reads "genius" with yellow and blue beads. Sometimes, he takes it out just to remember the way it feels in his hands.

Susan is some big-time designer now, traveling the world to go to Fashion Week and inspire people in her own special way. Tony thinks about her sometimes in the way one often thinks of friends long since gone and wishes he would have kept in touch with her.

He thinks it might be better that he didn't. He's not sure she'd like the man he's become.

Tony still has DUM-Es first blueprints, sketched on worn napkins from the Diner he escaped to when MIT was too much, stained with coffee and pen smudged on the sides. He looks at it to remind himself of a time where creating came easy in a way that things only do when you're 15 and without the weight of the world on your shoulders. Though, Tony isn't sure Howard ever left him feeling truly weightless.

He thinks he'll give the blueprints to Peter. One, because he's one of the few that will understand them and, two, because he holds a certain fascination for the dumb bot.

Tony keeps the ticket from the first baseball game he ever took Steve to next to the bracelet. It was years ago at Fenway Park; Tony adopted the Red Sox as his team when he joined the bandwagon at MIT and the game was the only cross-division series of the season, what with the Dodgers being in the National League and the Red Sox in the American League.

Steve was stoked and Tony... Tony was just happy that Steve was happy. Sometimes he dreams that it all ended a little differently, that he'd still be able to get that sort of happiness out of Steve. He would've done anything to get Steve to smile, to laugh. Steve could cure depression with just a white-toothed smile and a flash of those baby blues.

Though, Tony supposes he's living proof that that isn't quite true, huh?

Anyways, Tony keeps a lot of the memories from his and Steve's outings: receipts from restaurants, movie stubs, a stuffed animal from Coney Island. He should have thrown it all away ages ago. Really, it's pathetic.

The point is, Tony keeps things. He likes having things that are his, memories that money can't buy.

And he has a dozens of those things belonging to one Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes and one Captain Steven Grant Rogers in storage somewhere.

He thinks he'll leave them the information to obtain their belongings, too. It's the least he can do after causing Bucky so much pain.

Hopefully Bucky will like that. Everybody deserves to have something to remember the person they used to be.