Years of public scrutiny, and all he had to do was get a James

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/17866823.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Category: M/M
Fandom: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Captain America (Movies), Iron Man
(Movies), The Punisher (TV 2017), Deadpool - All Media Types,
Deadpool (Movieverse)
Relationship: James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark, Harley Keener/Peter Parker, Harley
Keener & Shuri, James “Bucky” Barnes & Frank Castle & Wade Wilson
& Nathan Summers
Character: Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, James "Bucky" Barnes, Peter Parker, Harley
Keener, Frank Castle, Nathan Summers, Wade Wilson, Riri Williams,
Kamala Khan, Shuri (Marvel), Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov
(Marvel), Senator Stern (Marvel)
Additional Tags: This was suggested, I’m sorry man idk what you really wanted, just
kinda went with it, I’m very tired, i should be revising, not team Cap
friendly, bit salty, major (minor) character death? Idk man we don’t like
Steve so is he that major?, um, competancy kink, we’ve been over this
babes, Nathan summers/Wade Wilson (mentioned) - Freeform
Language: English
Series: Part 5 of Let’s be real, Bucky would be on Team Iron Man
Stats: Published: 2019-02-20 Words: 1,742 Chapters: 1/1

Years of public scrutiny, and all he had to do was get a

James
by orphan_account

Summary

Tony could deal with an insult to his person. He had been for years. But James? James was
off limits. James was his Brooklyn hugglebunny Of violence and he wasn’t to be touched,
and if he had to teach the world a lesson to prove that’d he wasn’t afraid to do it.

Notes

So @kweandee thought this would be cool, and I may hate this in a few days, scrap it and
rewrite it bc idk how I feel about it, but here ya go

Side bar, I keep mentioning this, but if you think this is drifting, (and by drifting, I mean
that the thing I meant to write about takes up like a long parapgraph in the middle of this)
it’s because I’m on so many painkillers that my carpet occasionally ripples. Be warned.
See the end of the work for more notes

Being shadow president was kinda cool.

Pepper ran things, obviously, and he didn’t really have too much impact, but he, Pete and Harley
shared over half the cabinet positions between them, and he sweet talked the press and the senate
and congress and the House like no one else in their group.

Even the Republicans.

Tony was pretty sure that that was because he was married to one of the most respected military
men in America. And the planet. If you supply a country with guns, your husband shoots the guns,
and shoots them well enough to have the sniping record, a high rank, and a position in the most
feared squad on the planet, the republicans fall in line pretty damn quick.

It was quite pleasing.

Senator Stern had been yapping once, at a White House function that Tony had attended for
Pepper, bitching about Tony and this and that, and then James had appeared behind him, in army
green, medals pinned to his chest, metal arm holding a glass of champagne, and had pressed a kiss
to Tony’s temple, and turned, as though interested in the conversation. Stern had turned a lovely
shade of purple and had started wittering about the technological advances Tony and made and
how he was so glad that Tony was back working with the military. He’d never heard another
negative word out of the man.

The rest of the opposition followed suit. Those who didn’t like Tony for his liberalism loved him
for his war hero husband, and those who hated him for his capitalism loved him for the charity his
husband had laid the foundations for before returning to war. Years of public scrutiny, and all he’d
had to do was get a James.

There was, of course, one small faction that wouldn’t join in line. The so called loyalists. Those
who supported the Rogues, and the Rogues themselves. Minus the Widow, thanks to his spiderson
and Wade.

Tony knew sometimes it hurt a part of James. Knew there was something in him that screamed to
be called Bucky and smirk at dames and take em dancing with good ol Cap before defeating
Steve’s enemies. But Steve interacted only ever with Winter, because Tony and Winter had come
to an agreement that James was happy and precious and didn’t deserve being thrown in front of his
old time best friend.

*****

The first time Rogers had turned his attacks to James, Tony had gone to Nate and Wade, and asked
them to teach him about the whole dismembering gig that they seemed to find pretty swell. He
found tearing about rubber dummies with Rogers’ words “twisted, traitor, vile, embarrassment to
the howlies” echoing in his ear rather cathartic. And if he took James, slow and deep and
affectionate and everything he deserved that night, no one else needed to know.

*****

Winter and James had a long held tradition of reading together, and leaving notes regarding the
murder of characters, and sometimes real people they happened to be thinking about, in the
margins of books, with specific detail, in both Winter’s pragmatic type print, and James’ looping
cursive .

Tony had never really had an interest in reading them, because although he found the competency
ridiculously hot, eventually it got kind of terrifying, (but still totally hot) because he found the tick
marks next to the names of people who sometimes showed up on the news missing.

But when Rogers was seen giving a speech, stating that James had been warped by Hydra, twisted
to desire a permanent state of submission to whoever got to him first, and a need to be used, and
he’d always been a bit of a slut anyways so an agreement with notorious egotistical manwhore
Tony Stark was hardly unsurprising, Tony had started reading them in a rather more serious light.

*****

In the end, Tony decided to be a dick about it.

He started bringing James out for every single appearance, got in on every homely interview with
the boys, discussed their new family in the tower and how they were so proud of Pepper in the
White House and James and Frank and Nate and Wade in the army, called the boys home for
Pepper’s presidential campaign because “excuse you, I’m Tony fucking Stark and that’s my
husband and if you want to tell me I can’t have him home for a few months, you’ve clearly never
seen him shoot,” and even invited the Rogues to an official event in the capacity of co-workers.

*****

He did the work himself.

It was rather beautiful, if he did say so himself. He’d sent the suits for the Rogues to assure Steve
ended up in a gorgeous velvet black, the kind blood wouldn’t show up on. And then, they danced.
And if every time Tony and James passed close to Steve and his partner Tony made a little incision
with an accidental brush of a knife so sharp Steve probably wouldn’t even feel it, then they
wouldn’t be deep enough to kill him anyways. And if Tony poisoned his champagne, then Steve
had a strong enough metabolism for it just to make him a bit ill. And if Tony followed him outside
and preached a sermon on his beautiful, perfect husband who deserved a hell of a lot fucking more
than some controlling dick of an ex best friend who couldn’t respect a guys’d boyfriend so tried to
present him to the world as a desperate, non functioning, kinky sub or some shit despite his
ridiculously successful career hundreds of miles away from Tony, despite the decades he’d spent
fighting torture and brainwashing and probably other evils just to wake up to this, whilst
dismembering his sorry ass in the slow, careful way that Nate and Wade had showed him. And if
when they did the screenings they found deep lacerations that would’ve bled out a non enhanced
hours ago and poison, well, better to leave em wondering anyways.

*****

Tony wasn’t sure how romantic it was to show your husband how you killed his enemy, with wine
and popcorn, but Winter was a fucking psychopath who hated Steve with a burning passion and
who had been trying to teach the art of violence to Tony for years, so he figured, even if he didn’t
show James, not that e wouldn’t tell him, but god if he didn’t ask, he wouldn’t see it, that Winter
would probably like it.

And if Tony was a little bit louder, and had a few more hickeys, and limped a little more obviously,
and if Winter was a little more smug, and a little more clingy, then they’d just defeated an enemy, a
problematic one at that, especially for Pepper’s campaign.

*****
 With Rogers no longer badgering his military contacts, James, Wade, Nate and Frank got promoted
again pretty soon. Their little special ops squad began touring again as soon as Pepper got herself
firmly in office.

Peter, the little fucking genius, set up a government lab system that Rogers had been opposing to
start testing on willing enhanced individuals, and soon he and Dr Banner were using DNA to create
cures and treatments for everything they could think of. They eventually even turned off the
immortality switch on extremis and started rationing it out, although they kept a few vials of the
original stuff on hand for if they made any more friends.

*****

Rogers was forgotten pretty quickly. By the time Tony had taken care of it, he’d been a loudmouth
disrespecting a national war hero, volunteer worker, and all round stand up guy. Not to mention
Vogue dad of the year for like five years straight, tied with Tony, because how do we award these
men for being amazing and beautiful and adorable if they’re not bachelors?? Best dad award. Duh.

Others took his place.

A new guy with an affinity for a shield similar to Cap’s, but a love for knives and guns too started
popping up, and was soon nabbed by James to start training, seeing as he’d wielded the shield a
couple times, and he excelled under his tutelage, although out of loyalty to his mentor chose to
forgo the iconography and title, and simply be one of Barnes’ men, with an official licence to wield
his own weapon.

A girl Peter called RiRi rocked up too, and Tony and Harley immediately ‘adopted’ her, as James
called it fondly, despite him fawning over her just as much. And she was followed closely by Miss
Marvel, or Kamela, who adored Shuri, who occasionally visited her “band of broken white boys”
to check on them, and geek out with peter.

James found his footing too. He had never wanted to be singled out. Sure, there was Barnes and the
generals three, but they only stuck with that because it sounded fucking awesome, and it pissed
Thor off. He liked the team feeling. For so long he had been a part of the whole, we we’re wearing
the same uniform, with the same stripes on our sleeves, and the only reason we have different
weapons is because we have different strengths, and we’re playing to them, kinda thing that it had
felt odd with Rogers when that hadn’t applied.

He fell into leading a battalion along side his generals three beautifully. He loved the teaching,
loved inspiring the coming out and the uplifting and loved telling stories about his fella, and telling
stories about Frank’s fella and about wade and Nate together. The four of them each had their
battalion, and anyone that could outrun them on any run, at any time, was automatically given their
quarters for a month. Wade let others win all the time, since he stayed with Nate, but Nate was a
fucking hardass, and only two or three, all enhanced from his men, had managed to earn it. James
and Frank let the same thing apply to sniping, but were still reigning champions in that regard.

It was like a happy ever after. Pepper was president, and therefore the world was back in balance.
Rhodey had a fuck tonne if power, and therefore, if something happened to Pepper, the world
wouldn’t disintegrate, Rogers was vanquished, Wicked Witch of the West Style, and Tony and
James had their happy ever after with their kids and their friends and the kittens they adopted more
of every time they went for a walk in the city.

End Notes
 Please find me on tumblr under the same name :)

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