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“Boring.”
“It’s not boring. It’s finished.”
“It’s boring,” Tony said from his position lounging on Bucky’s bed. He grabbed another shirt from the ‘clean’ laundry pile, crumpled it up, and threw it through the hoop on the back of Bucky’s door. “I actually think it’s making you boring just by sitting near it. Quick. That kind of thing might be permanent.”
The floor surrounding Bucky was a ruin, laundry both clean and dirty covered every inch that Bucky wasn’t either sitting in or using for his desperate attempt at finishing his project. “You hate Pierce. What do you care if my assignment for him is boring? We need to build a bridge out of printer paper, not invent a new field of physics.”
“I hate him,” Tony lined up another shot and whiffed, “because he hates you. You think you’re going to get an A in his class by turning in boring? Crush him. Destroy the bell curve. Force him to give you what you deserve.”
Bucky looked at his assignment. Tony wasn’t wrong. Three sheets of printer paper to make a bridge was… basic. Doable. A challenge for some. A challenge for Bucky. It had taken him a week to work out how to support the thing. But it was uninspired, achieving exactly the minimum and nothing else.
The rhythmic thump swoosh of laundry basketball paused, Bucky’s bed creaked, and then his desk drawer whispered open.
Tony smirked over a pair of scissors, and Bucky’s heart stopped.
“Tony… no.” He lunged for them.
And missed.
For an interminable ten seconds, Bucky’s life was an anime scene ripped out of time. The sudden quiet had the singing of the metal blades against each other smacking into Bucky’s ears. Two seconds eked past and Tony brought the open scissors to the bridge. Three more, deliberate hesitation, giving Bucky a chance to stop him. The ceiling lights glared off the metal, taunting him, but Bucky didn’t move. Another heart squeezing second, and Tony closed the blades. Three final moments to ruin everything, for Bucky to regret every decision that had led to him sitting in this room with Tony Stark.
“Do it again.” A single sheet of paper sat in the hand Tony held out. The other two he held up and away.
Blinking slowly, Bucky breathed. Breathing was good. Useful. Normal. Everyone breathed and didn’t die or murder their friends.
Tony’s throat worked through a hard swallow, and his smile crumpled. “Bad idea?”
It was a very, very bad idea.
“You know why they call me a prodigy? A genius?”
“Because you are, you asshat.” Regaining the use of his limbs, Bucky ripped the paper out of Tony’s hands. That at least felt good. Panic and anger clawed at his throat. He should have stopped him. Why was he always letting himself be egged on by Tony? Especially in fields Bucky could never hope to catch up. If he couldn’t recreate what he’d done, Pierce would fail him. Bucky was good, he understood his own skills, but not as good as Tony and he sure as hell didn’t have Tony’s money. If he failed, that was it. No second chances.
“There is that.” Tony’s voice was low. A bump at Bucky’s shoulder pulled his eyes away from the ruin of his project. But Tony was slipping around him to sit, propping him up, back to back, on the floor. “Sophomore year was shit for Rhodey because he was friends with me. Things got so bad they made him retake his finals alone under observation.”
He’d known some of that. It wasn’t a secret, but it never seemed like the right time to ask for details.
“These assclowns shouldn’t be allowed to get in our way. Not Rhodey’s, not yours. If Pierce can’t see the potential in his best students—”
“—You’re his best student.”
“But I’m not. Class is optional. I don’t do assignments, I do what I want and they bend themselves out of shape to make it count. DUM-E’s cool, but a recreation of a medieval siege engine he is not.”
“I can see it, trebuchet, the arm.”
“That’s what they said. Anyway, fuck it, I’m terrible at this. If you get an A, you want to have dinner with me?”
“What?”
“What what?” Tony pushed more firmly against Bucky’s spine. “That a ‘no’?”
“You came in here, ruined my laundry, sabotaged my assignment, called me boring and now if I want to date you, I have to get an A?”
“Well, when you put it like that…” Tony leaned away.
Bucky spun around and snagged Tony by the collar. Then leaned in until they were breathing each other’s air. Huge brown eyes looked up at him, making his stomach swoop. “Yes.” He said, close and deliberate, lips millimetres from Tony’s. “I’m going to date you and I’m going to get an A. Now get out of here so I don’t fail.”
He lasted until Tony was out of the room before he slumped back into the laundry littered carpet, cheeks aflame. Had that... worked? Or did it sound as lame at the time as it felt now? Tony hadn’t immediately rescinded the offer. That had to be a good sign.
Embarrassment was excellent fuel, apparently. Bucky slaved through the weekend and, with dawn Monday, he had his bridge assignment and two extra sheets of paper. Pierce wouldn’t bend over backwards for him. So Bucky used the sheets—malicious compliance was still compliance—to draw in water under the bridge and the skyline of New York.
He got his A.
Kissing Tony? A .