Winteriron and 69. “Why the hell are you bleeding!?” !!
69. “Why the hell are you bleeding!?”
Bucky was very aware that his boyfriend had a plethora of idiosyncrasies. He typically did not know or even entirely understand the reasons why Tony had them, of course, but he was supportive nevertheless. He did not take a shower unless Tony was awake, even if it meant that he had to sometimes shower in the gym or wait in sticky discomfort until Tony woke. He did not run the sink more than necessary, even though he really liked washing the dishes by hand. He did not lower the lights below fifteen percent when they went to bed, even though he had difficulty sleeping with the brightness. He did not ask for the temperature to be lowered beyond what Tony was comfortable at night, even though he got uncomfortably warm with his own higher body temperature.
He figured he was pretty good at rolling with all of Tony’s weird personality punches. Still. Sometimes even the great Winter Soldier was thrown for a loop.
“Why the hell are you bleeding!?” Tony snapped.
Bucky turned to stare at him, clutching his arm, which had an arrow-shaped hole in it. “Because I… got hit by friendly fire…?”
“No, no, no!” Tony ordered, shoving at his back. “You can’t bleed here!”
Bucky gaped at him and couldn’t even muster the wherewithal to pretend that Tony’s pushing was hard to fight against. “What?!”
“You can’t bleed in my penthouse! You can’t!” Tony exclaimed, and looked like he was seriously considering body-slamming him, except then Bucky might get blood on him. “You need to leave! You can’t be here while you’re bleeding!”
Bucky wasn’t going to lie. He was hurt. He was injured, and vulnerable, and had come to his safe place (his home) and was being turned away by someone who was supposed to love him. “Where do you want me to go?” he asked, feeling helpless.
“Away! Not here!” Tony answered immediately. “You can’t be here while you’re bleeding!”
Bucky seriously considered dropping his hand so he got blood everywhere. He was just wondering if Tony would be petty enough to make him clean it up or if he’d be kicked out indefinitely.
“Bucky please, you can’t be in here, you can’t, you can’t!” Tony exclaimed, slowly growing louder, and Bucky was alarmed to see Tony was curling in on himself, like he did whenever he was feeling anxious and trapped. “You need to leave, you need to–help, help, this can’t be here! You can’t be bleeding here! Please you’re going to–YOU’RE GOING TO GET BLOOD ON THE FLOOR PLEASE. PLEASE BUCKY PLEASE YOU NEED TO LEAVE!”
Bucky stumbled out the door as quickly as he could, feeling more than a little terrified by Tony’s frantic screams. “Tony! Tony I’m out! Sweetheart, I’m not in the house anymore–”
“I’m sorry,” Tony half-sobbed, half-shouted, and slammed the door shut on him.
Bucky probably would have felt even more hurt, except he could hear Tony sliding down the door onto the floor, pounding it with his fists and sobbing quietly to himself, whispering ‘stupid’ and ‘weak’ and ‘disgusting,’ and sounding like all those words were directed at himself.
Bucky left to get seen to by one of the doctors in the infirmary, keeping his hands clasped so the doctors wouldn’t see them shaking. He kept his face schooled into an impassive mask, too, so they wouldn’t realize how shaken he was. He didn’t want someone to ask what was wrong, because he was so freaked out that he might actually tell them–he’d gone to ask his boyfriend for help and Tony had flown into a screaming, crying meltdown over blood in his penthouse.
The hurt was bleeding off, because he was used to being rebuffed as the Soldier, as sad as that might sound. The confusion and concern stayed, though. Tony wasn’t squeamish. He’d talked about needing to walk Pepper through sticking her hand in his chest to change the arc reactor. He’d mentioned performing surgery on himself before. He’d even pointed at a couple scars once and explained where they came from when he noticed Bucky kept gently rubbing his hand over them. So what was it about the interaction that had sent Tony into a tailspin?
Bucky made sure he had stopped bleeding before he raided Steve’s closet for a clean, blood-free shirt. He could stay and lick his wounds for a while, maybe even stay the night because Steve was a good friend like that, but he couldn’t help but remember the desperate look in Tony’s eyes, the deep-seeded shame and anxiety as he shouted ‘I’m sorry’ before he slammed the door shut in his face. As hurt as he might have been or still was, he would never leave Tony to stew with his own feelings longer than he had to. Tony had the extraordinary skill to make himself feel hundreds of times worse than he had started if left to dwell by himself.
He went back up to the penthouse and knocked softly. “Sweetheart? Are you in there?”
He heard a shuffling noise, and then the most heartbreaking, croaked out, “No.”
“Sounds like you’re in there,” Bucky said with just a touch of levity, to make it sound like he was okay. He didn’t want Tony to think he was mad at him, especially when he wasn’t, now, only worried. “I’m going to open the door, okay?”
Tony was quiet again, but finally, he answered with a soft, “Okay.”
Bucky opened the door, and he let out a dismayed sound when he saw that Tony was wearing a mask over his face, and rubber gloves over his hands, as he carefully crawled after one of his cleaning robots with a sponge and what smelled like badly-watered-down bleach. “Honey.”
“I’m sorry,” Tony whispered again, shoulders hunching, but returned to cleaning the floor.
Bucky watched him for a few minutes, feeling endlessly helpless and ashamed as Tony went on to clean not just the patch of floor Bucky had stood on, but a five-foot radius around the spot, too. Finally, though, he managed to choke out, “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t–” Tony began, then sagged onto his hands and knees as if all the energy had left him, staring down at the sponge in his gloved hands. “I don’t have–I–I’m… I’m compromised.”
“Compromised?” Bucky repeated quietly.
“My–my immune system,” Tony explained haltingly. “Ever since Afghanistan. I’m–I don’t have the reactor anymore, but. When I did, I–anything could get me sick. Anything. And I’m–better? Now? I’m not as immunocompromised as I was before. But it–I never swung back to a hundred percent. I still have to be careful.”
“So I came into your sterile living environment with an injury, and nearly messed your environment up completely,” Bucky sighed, suddenly feeling exhausted down to his bones. No wonder Tony had freaked out. Come to think of it, Tony allowed nearly every other space he owned be a sort of free-for-all. Of course he’d have a safe place too. It was just… his safe place had to be safe in an entirely different way than most people’s.
“It’s not your fault,” Tony said mechanically, and went back to scrubbing the floor. “I shouldn’t have yelled. I’m sorry.”
“Tony,” Bucky said, voice soft, and reached out for one gloved hand.
Tony flinched and looked away. “I’m sorry.”
Bucky didn’t let himself be deterred. Tony flinched for a lot of reasons; he didn’t take it personally anymore. Instead, he gently took Tony’s hand between both his own, trying to give him the comfort of contact, even with the rubber barrier between them. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry. I should have gone to the infirmary in the first place. It’s not like I could have bandaged my arm myself in here. I would have just made a mess.”
“I made you feel unwelcome in your own home,” Tony said, eyes filling with tears. “I made you feel like you couldn’t come to me for comfort.”
“I made you terrified for your health,” Bucky countered. “Unintentionally, maybe, but now that you’ve got it all out in the open… it makes sense. Just because Stevie an’ I can’t catch anything doesn’t mean we’re not carriers, even if only for a brief time. You had no idea what made me bleed. It could have been something that got you sick.”
“I’m sorry,” Tony whispered. “That you got stuck with someone as weak as me.”
“Hey,” Bucky said, just a touch angry, and gently pulled Tony into his arms. “Don’t talk about my boyfriend like that.” He felt Tony’s little hitch of breath before he placed a hand on the back of the other man’s head and gently guided his face to rest on his shoulder. “He has trouble tellin’ me his problems, but other than that, he’s perfect.”
Tony buried his face into Bucky’s shoulder with a helpless sob, exhausted.
“How ‘bout you take a shower, and I’ll finish cleaning up in here, okay?” Bucky quietly suggested. “And then we’ll cuddle for a while.”
“I’d like that a lot,” Tony admitted, shaking a little.
Bucky turned his head to press a kiss to the other man’s temple before getting up to help him to his feet. He’d like that a lot, too.
