AU Yeah August 23/31--Imprinting AU
I have no idea what this AU meant so y’all are getting what you can’t and you can’t pitch a fit. @s2ma suggested James Squared so get ready to enjoy some truly hilarious Bucky/Rhodey fun. Watch out for under the cut!
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“Tony,” Jim said.
“Pooh Bear,” Tony replied. “Love muffin. Apple of my eye. My main squEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” he shrieked when he turned around and found his best friend had a familiar, angry-looking shadow.
“I’m going to be polite and not mention the pitch you just hit because I need help,” Jim said. Tony continued to stare at The-Asset-slash-The-Winter-Soldier-slash-James-Buchanan-Barnes-slash-Bucky in mild horror. Jim didn’t blame him. “So uh. This guy’s been following me around for like… six hours.”
“You’ve been here for six hours and didn’t say hello to me?” Tony asked, fear immediately on the back-burner in place of offense. “Platypus!”
“I needed to ask Steve somethin’,” Jim said, shrugging. “Anyway, this guy was there with Steve and he just started… following me. I know you’re still kind of upset with him so I didn’t want to bring him down so I thought I’d spend some time with him since that’s clearly what he wanted, right? Except, uh… he hasn’t stopped following me since.”
“First of all I am not still upset with him,” Tony lied. He was, but he wasn’t gonna hold that against the guy. He’d been tortured for seventy years, and Steve had taken him aside and told him about everything, so. He was working on it. But he didn’t actually hold it against Bucky. “Second of all this is mine,” he added to Bucky sternly, taking Jim’s arm. “You already have a best friend! You can’t have this one too!”
Bucky gave Tony an impressive bitch-face. He said nothing.
Tony narrowed his eyes at him, calculating.
“Hey whoa whatever you’re thinking you better not,” Jim cut in immediately, stern. That was the expression Tony got whenever he was considering if a lawsuit would be worth it. He turned back to Bucky. “Listen, bud, I wanna hang out with Tony for a little while, okay?”
“Okay,” Bucky said. He didn’t move.
“...Alone,” Jim continued.
Bucky looked supremely unimpressed as he looked Tony up and down, but he eventually said, “Alright.” Then he turned and left.
“What the fuck was that,” Tony exploded as soon as the doors had shut after him. “He looked at me like I wasn’t good enough for you! And I mean maybe he’s right, but―”
“Cut that out,” Jim scolded, cuffing the back of his head. “You’re my best friend and you’re always good enough.” He pulled Tony into his arms, stroking one hand through his hair to take some of the sting out of the cuff he’d given him. “And no weirdo who overuses eye shadow is gonna make me think different.”
Tony snuggled up against his chest, greedily soaking up the hug.
Jim noticed movement in the corner of his eye and turned his head. Bucky was peering at them through the safety glass, expression speculative. Jim scowled at him and turned so he could no longer see Tony. What a fucking weirdo.
.-.-.-.
Bucky was following him again.
“Is this some weird serum thing, do you think?” Jim asked thoughtfully.
Tony looked up from filing his nails, surprised. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, Steve follows you around all the time,” Jim reasoned. “Maybe it’s a serum thing? They find the smartest person available and just follow them around to try and figure out the new century?”
“Steve doesn’t follow me around,” Tony said, bewildered.
Jim watched as Steve sidled up beside Bucky in the kitchen. Both of them were watching him and Tony in the living room. Steve, at least, was pretending to make a sandwich. Bucky had been staring at them with a cup between his hands that had stopped steaming forty minutes ago. Steve always seemed to be in the kitchen when Tony was in the living room. But sure, he wasn't following Tony around at all.
“I wonder if we went someplace dumb, they’d follow us,” Jim mused.
“I’ll go put on shoes,” Tony said immediately.
Jim snorted as he catapulted himself off the couch to fetch his shoes. In the kitchen, he watched Steve look between the elevator and the skeleton of his sandwich like a lost puppy. Eventually, he finally decided to continue making his sandwich. He’d never seen anyone look so goddamn sad while making a sandwich. It was hilarious.
“We should go get mud masks!” Tony exclaimed excitedly as he burst back out of the elevator. “One time Natasha and I put on clay masks and Steve just made confused sounds at us! I’m pretty sure he still doesn’t understand why we ‘put dirt on our faces on purpose.’”
Jim ran a hand over cheek thoughtfully. “I have noticed the bags under my eyes have been kinda big lately. Maybe some of those gel eye masks, too?”
Tony rubbed his hands together gleefully. “This is gonna be the best! Come on hurry up I’m excited now!”
“Okay,” Jim replied, amused, and watched as Steve and Bucky came to peer at them from around the edge of the wall as they waited for the elevator door to shut.
When they walked off the elevator at the ground floor, the door to the stairwell opened and Bucky and Steve came walking out. They were sharing the sandwich.
“I want my nails done, too, I only got them half done,” Tony added, examining his nails. “I’m thinking something subtle. Would gold be too much?”
“That’s what you think is subtle, huh?” Jim replied, amused. “When I think of subtle, I think of really pale pink. Maybe with shimmer, if you can’t stand the idea of not having sparkles.”
Tony continued examining his nails. “Pink? I could pull off pink.”
“Maybe I’ll try purple,” Jim mused.
Later that night, Steve and Bucky were both teased for their pink and purple nails, respectively. Jim privately thought the polish looked better on them than either of the super soldiers but he wasn’t going to kick them when they were down; they’d been so polite and terrified when they’d gotten their nails done, after all.
.-.-.-.
Jim had never been a fan of the opera, but Tony enjoyed it, and La bohème was interesting enough that he wasn’t too put out by going. It helped that he could watch Steve and Bucky squirm, trying to stay engaged with the story, in the seats below.
Bucky’s head dipped as if he was dozing off. Steve thumped him and he sat back up with a snort.
The best thing about La bohème, Jim decided, was that it was three hours long and he could spend all of it watching Steve do whatever he could to keep Bucky awake that wouldn’t upset the other opera-goers in the seats around them. Steve gave up for about twenty minutes at one point and then the music had swelled and Bucky had obviously snorted himself awake, if the scandalized look from the woman next to him was anything to go by. He looked entirely unrepentant.
Jim kinda liked that, he realized. Oh no.
.-.-.-.
“We could have just watched Rent instead of coming out to the opera,” Jim said, because he knew how much Tony hated when he said it.
“Shut up,” Tony scoffed.
“I could have worn my pajamas,” Jim continued, trying and failing not to smile. “Instead of putting on this monkey suit.”
Tony sniffed at him in disdain and reached out to brush imaginary dust from his shoulder. “I think you look nice in a suit.”
“I think you chose this opera specifically because you knew how long it was and you wanted to make Steve and Bucky squirm,” Jim declared.
Tony shrugged. He did not deny it and he did not look remorseful in the least. “At least they’re finally wearing the suits I bought them when they first moved in. Like casting pearls before swine. I don’t know why I put up with them.”
Jim turned to give Tony a supremely unimpressed frown. “Because you’ve always been a sucker for a man shaped like an upside-down corn chip, Tony.”
“Wh? How di. Who wo. I’ll have you know I showed restraint and haven’t mentioned Steve’s Dorito proportions to him at all,” Tony sputtered. “I can’t believe you’d. How dare. Why, I. Of all the slander!”
“It’s okay, Tony,” Jim said, patting him on the shoulder. “I know that you’ve got the emotional maturity of an ill-socialized chihuahua but I love you anyway.”
“A chihuahua?” Tony gasped, offended.
“Oh look there’s Steve and Bucky now,” Jim said. “Hey guys! It’s late and I felt bad making you guys take a cab after suffering through the opera.”
“Suffering?!” Tony squawked.
Steve huffed. “I, for one, enjoyed it! I would have enjoyed it more if someone hadn’t kept falling asleep and snoring,” he added, turning to give Bucky some pretty lethal side-eye.
“Maybe they shouldn’t have been such hoity-toity assholes,” was all Bucky replied.
Tony looked scandalized. Jim decided to save Bucky the suffering, turning toward Steve and suggesting, “Why don’t you and Tony discuss what you liked about the opera and Bucky and I will talk about how we could have been home in our pajamas?”
“I could have been at home in my pajamas instead of sitting through this snooze-fest?” Bucky asked, affronted.
“We’ll take a cab,” Jim said hastily when Tony drew himself up as if to give a mighty scolding. He stuffed Tony into the limo and then shoved Steve in after him.
“I could have been at home in my pajamas? You didn’t even like that thing?” Bucky repeated, outraged. “I put on a suit, Rhodes!”
“Yes, and you look very handsome,” Jim cut in. “It’s a nice suit.”
Bucky frowned and looked over his shoulder as he followed him into a cab. “Really? I thought my butt looked kinda dumb.”
“Well of course it does, because you don’t have one,” Jim scoffed. “I was talking about your shoulders and your thighs.”
Bucky turned to look at him, affronted but also flattered. He decided to go with the affront because it was more familiar. “I have a butt! Maybe not like Stark, but I have to sit on something, there’s not just empty space there!”
“You don’t have a butt, you have a concave space where a lap goes,” Jim retorted.
Bucky glared at him for a minute, then smirked. “Oh? Are you inviting me to sit on your lap?”
“Maybe. What if I am?” Jim asked slyly.
“Excuse me,” the driver of the cab said, and they jumped. He shoved his hand at them. “Please don’t do that in my cab. Please. Also take these. Be safe.”
Jim held his hands out, and the cab driver dropped something into his hands. He examined it and blushed a little. He’d been given a handful of condoms.
“...Thanks,” Bucky squeaked after a minute.
“No problem. Be safe,” the cab driver said again.
Jim continued to stare at the condoms for a minute before he said, “Man, I’m gonna be so embarrassed when I tell Tony what happened. He’s never gonna let me live this down.”
Bucky frowned at him. “You don’t have to tell him.”
“No, I’m gonna,” Jim replied.
Bucky stared at him, uncomprehending.
Tony laughed so hard he snorted his soda out of his nose when Jim told him what happened in the cab.
.-.-.-.
Natasha and Sam were laughing.
Jim squinted at them suspiciously as he shuffled into the kitchen but decided to ignore them in favor of the mug of coffee Bucky was offering him. This was a relatively new development, and he was pretty sure Bucky didn’t even like coffee and just drank it because he did. But if it meant coffee would be ready and waiting for him, he didn’t see a problem with it.
“Oh my God,” Sam wheezed, putting his head on the counter. “Natasha told me about this but I didn’t believe her!”
Natasha fell off the stool she was sitting on, crying with laughter.
Well, that probably wasn’t good, Jim thought. Natasha wasn’t one to laugh much. He wondered what they were laughing about.
“Bucky really did sexually imprint on you,” Sam continued, then threw his head back with a bark of laughter and fell from his stool as well.
Jim frowned down at them, unimpressed.
“I didn’t… it wasn’t imprinting,” Bucky tried to explain desperately. “I just… liked you and wanted to do things you liked, so.”
“I wonder if it’s a serum thing,” Jim wondered again. “Because Steve’s been doing that to Tony, too.”
Bucky frowned at him, confused. “You. You aren’t mad?”
“Why would I be mad, you’re cute,” Jim said. “Also this way I can always be assured to have the better butt out of the two of us.”
“Hey!” Bucky squawked.
“You’re allowed to touch it if we’re dating,” Jim pointed out.
Bucky closed his mouth, looking equally delighted and put-out and pissed off about those two things. “...Steve doesn’t follow Tony around like I did,” he finally mumbled.
Jim stared out into the living room where Steve was handing Tony his own cup of coffee along with a plate of blueberry pancakes. He looked at Bucky in disgust.
“Oh, maybe it is a serum thing,” Bucky said after watching Steve feed a very smug-looking Tony with his own fork.
“Unbelievable,” Jim muttered, rolling his eyes, then leaned over to nudge his shoulder. “Well, are we gonna go make them jealous over how cute we are, or what? You can sit in my lap.”
Bucky immediately grabbed his arm to tow him over to the living room and stuff him into the recliner so that he could sit on his lap. Steve and Tony looked offended. Jim smirked at them.
“Oh, I see,” Tony said grimly. “We’ll just have to see which one of us sickens Clint the most.”
“What,” Steve and Bucky said, but Jim and Tony were already glaring competitive daggers at each other.
.-.-.-.
“I really think all of you are gross but Tony ekes out the win by a hair because he called Steve his ‘shmoopsie’ without even a hint of irony when Steve got up to get him a second serving of cake,” Clint said after a few months.
Jim swore softly. He always knew Tony’s nicknames were going to bite him in the butt. He just thought it would be with military brass and not over who was the most sickeningly sweet couple in the tower. Well. At least he got the handsomer super soldier.
