#look who's feeling all fuzzy fluffay today

[anthonyed]

soulmate au: where your soulmate’s name is written on your skin [part 2]

[part 1]

Wordlessly, he tugs at the collar of his shirt and lean a little into Stark’s space.  

He anticipated the sharp inhale. But what he didn’t anticipate is the brush of trembling finger tips over his skin.

He whips his head so quickly to face the man that he hears the resonant crick of his stiff tendons grating at his veins.

Stark though, he looks like he’s in his own world. 

Eyes singularly focused in the way he always is when he’s in front of one of his creations. Or the blue light shows that dance to his rhythm.

“The first thing I learnt about you was that you were dead.” Stark whispers into the space between them. “It was a whirlwind from then forth.” He chuckles humourlessly, now surer in his contact with his imprinted name.

“Can’t say I wasn’t mad at you for dying on me. The only sure thing I got at being loved, and it was robbed even before the day I was born. Fuelled over a decade of angsty feel, that thought did. So when I got this,” He taps lightly over the blue glow that’s emitted from his chest, “I thought finally. Maybe this is the answer to all my questions.” Stark – Tony? Anthony? His soulmate. - smiles up at him.

It’s the still present light pressure over his shoulder that braves him to reach for that bright glow. 

The tip of his middle finger connecting first and he keeps his eyes fixed on his soulmate’s as he lets the rest follow – until half of that blue orb is beneath his fingers and he shudders.

“I thought of removing your name.”

The blunt confession rips something violently within him making him hunch over, and press harder at the blue light.

Stark’s fingers leave his skin then, and they circle his wrist instead. Giving a small pull. “Sorry, I’m sensitive about the reactor.”

He follows Stark’s lead, skin to skin, wrist within a set of fingers and he’s guided under the soaked fabric, into heat and more skin and when Stark lifts up the shirt, he can see his own name across the left side of his chest. 

Written in a swirl of bold cursive, in what must once have been his own handwriting.

Right over where the heart should be.

He drags his thumb across James then Buchanan and lastly Barnes; rinse, repeat, over and over. The rest of his flesh hand, splayed beneath the imprint. 

Stark watches him in weighted silence, never intruding, simply letting him. Even when he covers James and presses over it gently. Staying there. Then he says, in the darkness that poured drizzle over both of them, “I imagined calling you James. It was kind of a self-indulging masochism thing I did - Do. Well, even now. Sometimes. Not so often,” He wavers, embarrassed with himself. 

Then he adds hurriedly, “Didn’t mean to be creepy. Cause I legit thought you were dead up until the whole SHIELD fiasco and then – 43 years of being alone sort of convinced me to give you some space? I don’t know. I don’t know if I should have reached for you sooner but something told me that leaving you be until you find your own way – I mean, it wasn’t like I didn’t know if you were safe or not. I kept track. I mean – I just -,” He seems to tire after that.

Brown eyes wide and begging for him to understand.

Which doesn’t make sense because there was nothing wrong with what he did.

None at all.

“Call me James.” He says after an aching beat of silence. 

Stark’s chest caves inward with a deep sigh under his hand and he covers his name with his palm securely before he looks up at the man, wet hem of t-shirt pooling around his wrist. 

“Didn’t know who you even were until three months ago. Think you made the right call, leaving me on my own.”

Stark nods shakily at that, Adams’ apple bobbing in his throat and there’s something in his eyes, like a request, before he reaches out.

He follows the hand. Follows it’s tentative course ‘til it reaches for his left hand.

Warm skin brushing against cold metal and he watches in gripping curiosity and fear as Stark touches what had been designed to be his weapon with careful tenderness.

His entire body goes stock still. 

Afraid to move, terrified if he’ll lash out without control and cause harm to the one person who’s inexplicably tangled with delicate yet, unyielding intricacies with his life and soul - or what’s left of them, at least.

“This is alright right?” His soulmate asks. 

“James?” He calls softly when he doesn’t receive an answer.

And maybe it’s the skin over his metal. Or maybe it’s the way his first name rolls out of his soulmate’s tongue.

Because, Stevie calls him Bucky. Something familiar and sure to him.

Everyone else calls him Barnes.

Until now, he’s never heard what Stark refers to him as.

Now that he has, it summons him with the same power Zemo had when he recited those set of words. Perhaps even stronger than that.

Except James makes him want to comply willingly. 

Go to his soulmate because he wants to and stay with him because he wants to be.

It also makes him yearn for the same power over Stark - Anthony, Tony, his soulmate. To make Stark come to him when he calls his name. Make him want to stay. 

Keep him forever.

To love him unconditionally.

So, he asks, “What do I call you?” letting the metal plates slide and click into places as he twists his wrist and instinctively intertwines their fingers together.

“I always imagined… Anthony.” Comes the answer, whisper soft and hot on his cheek. Closer than the distant he counted a minute ago.

He looks away from their connected fingers to find his soulmate barely an inch from his face. 

Beads of water clinging to his skin. Dark eyelashes framing questioning eyes. 

The hand he has over his name - on his soulmate’s exposed chest - slides up north, over long stretch of warm skin, the rain soaked fabric catching sharply at the inside of his forearm but he persists until he has his fingers curled around a sharp jaw, thumbing over stubbles - his own blood thrilling in their vessels.

“I want to be what we’re meant to be.” He murmurs, bringing their foreheads together.

Anthony, shivers in his hold. His flesh fingers around metal ones giving a shaky squeeze as he asks faintly, “Soulmates?”

And James nods. “And everything, if you’ll have me.”

Something seems to tickle Anthony about that answer as he breathes out a choked laughter. James cups his jaw and thumbs over his cheekbone fondly.

“I’ll always want to have you, James.” Anthony says surely.

And the sigh that leaves James’ chest spoke for both of them as they clung to each other that night, dawn breaking in the sky above them as the rain drenched them from head to toe. But all the care they have in the world is only for one another. 

United, finally, after decades apart, just like it’s written in their fate.