Who Am I? » [Stucky]

72. Bad News

Bucky's grey iPhone 5S began buzzing frivolously and sliding across the table, surfing the vibrations the phone was emitting, the irritating generic tinkly tune ringing through the fuzzy low-def speakers on the small device, its screen flashing up the unknown number.

Bucky squinted at the phone, scrunching his face at the offensive tiny sound in was blurting, for once ringing with someone’s number apart from Steve’s. His curiosity was lit like a fuse, burning bright and fast. He rapidly paced across the cold linoleum flooring and swooped up the cool metallic phone into his hand, swiping the green bar the bottom with the calloused pad of his thumb. 

"Hello?" He answered, his voice questioning, echoing into the silence on the other end.

"Barnes," a familiar self-righteous voice came out of the phone, and Bucky could just hear the smirk on the caller’s lips. He could picture the pleased face concealed by the device.

"I don't remember giving you my number..." Bucky drawled in a voice thick with confusion and a small dose of displeasure, his mind still numbed and vexated at the early hour of the morning.

"I'm Tony Stark, I don't need you to give me your number," Tony replied, voice full of snark and smugness. It had been easy enough, all he had to do was ask JARVIS and he had the number found and uploaded onto his mainframe in seconds – it was nearly instantaneous.  

"Why are you calling, Tony? It's nine thirty in the morning," Bucky grumbled in his hoarse tired voice, his throat still waking up, trying to formulate coherent syllables and failing miserably along with his lamely flailing tongue. He rubbed his stingy burning eyes with the sensational fingertips of his human hand, massaging the closed lids, trying to ease the irate pain.

"Do you read gossip magazines at all?" Tony inquired in a genuine curious tone, bubbling with zest on that particular morning, but a ghost of dismay and chagrin lingered in his tone.

"Just 'cause I'm gay, doesn't mean I'm effeminate..." Bucky replied, crossness in his harshly spat words. "Why? Do you?" 

"Not normally," Stark's voice cooed and the flapping noise of fluttering pages entered the phone, the sound of the sheets stapled together being flipped and wobbled as Tony’s fingers parted them to read through the articles.

"Why today?" Bucky asked, making immediate assumptions, quick to catch on. 

"Don't freak out, but you two lovebirds have made the front cover," Tony commented in a stern unamused voice, flipping open the mag, reading the text printed onto the page with a photo of them pasted across it, smiling sincerely and smooching sensuously in the bright sunny park, bubbling translucent champagne in hand and their heads tossed back laughing without a care, blissfully unaware of the lens that had been focused in on them and frozen the moment in time to be preserved for eternity, for the nosy pleasure of onlookers.

"Sorry, what?!" Bucky spluttered, shock surged through him, his whole body going rigid and his face falling.

At the exclamation, Steve snapped his head ‘round and gave Bucky’s a pleading look. Bucky waved him off with a hand and a soft smile; telling him he didn’t need to be so on his guard.

"I didn't know how Steve would react, so I thought I would tell you and you can decide what to do about it," Tony told him.

“I wish I hadn’t found out if I’m honest Tony…” Bucky drearily complained, feeling the pressure being dropped on him like a sudden stack of weights being placed in his arms, far too heavy to carry on his own, but to share the load with Steve would cripple the taller man.

“Would you rather he found one of the magazines in the newsagents down the street from you, or on show in any of the supermarkets near you, or would you rather you broke the news to him?”