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The secret of a happy marriage is finding the right person. -- Julia Child
Tony thought it was a prank at first; it seemed like the sort of thing Rhodey would do. A guy with a metal arm gunned down a fucking ninja right in front of Tony, the blood splattering in a theatrical spray against the wall (good special effects, by the way, really top notch on the fake blood) and then turned to Tony, holding out the metal hand.
“Come with me if you want to live,” he said.
The guy was fucking gorgeous, dark, messy hair and eyes as blue as ice chips, a rich, sensual, ultimately kissable mouth and a scruff of dark beard like he was only on nodding acquaintance with a razor. “Yeah, right, Terminator,” Tony said. He’d been drinking and gambling and all the other fun stuff that you did when you were out in Vegas, and now he was going back to his hotel when this…
The smell of blood hit him like a truck.
“What the fuck?” He stared at the body. “You shot him.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” the man snapped. “He was gonna stab you in the neck, so… can we go now? Where there’s one, there’s more.”
“Who are you?” Tony jerked away, backing up hastily.
“Ug, I don’t have time for this,” the man said. He lowered his head for just a moment, then sprung forward without warning. He caught Tony around the middle, bent Tony over his shoulder and picked him up. “Can we not struggle, I’m in a hurry, here?”
Of course Tony was going to struggle, Jesus Christ. He’d been kidnapped by more people than any single human being ought to, and the one thing he knew is that you never, ever cooperated.
He was still struggling when the guy dumped him into the front seat of a black SUV. The man was weirdly gentle, despite Tony’s best efforts, and he had a really high pain tolerance, because Tony had tried several of his better self-defense moves.
“Tony, stop, come on,” the man said. “I don’t want you to die, and I do not have time to explain right-- ah, fuck it. I’m sorry.” The guy groped in the glove compartment for a moment, took out a shiny syringe and plunged it into Tony’s thigh.
“Ow!” Tony struggled harder, managed to get his foot against the man’s chest and shoved, but he’d only managed to stagger out of the vehicle when gravity picked him up and slammed him down like a Saturday Night Special in the WWE smackdown. “Wha th ‘ell’s that?” he managed to gasp out.
“Ketamine,” the man said. “Sorry.”
The world went away in a haze of blackness.
***
“James,” the red-head said coolly, “you know I can’t marry you two if he’s not consenting.”
Bucky Barnes pointed the gun at his long time ally and friend. “I need the paperwork, Tash. It’s important and I don’t got time to argue with you. Hydra’s coming, and we’re in trouble.”
“Don’t make me take that away from you,” Natasha said. She was looking down at her manicured nails. “Wake him up, get him to say yes. I won’t ask too many questions, but I like being able to sleep at night.”
Bucky almost laughed. Natasha had the weirdest sense of honor for a thief and a forger. She didn’t mind getting a mass-murderer out of the country without being picked up, but she balked at marrying an unconscious person.
Tony was limp, barely on his feet. Swaying and incoherent. Didn’t know where he was, didn’t know who he was with.
Bucky didn’t really know him at all, either. What he knew was from weeks of watching the man, leaning him, figuring him out. But that had all been done at a distance, and while Bucky had slowly gotten interested in the man, respected and admired him, Tony had no idea that Bucky was a paid mercenary, and that Tony was supposed to be dead -- Bucky glanced at the clock -- thirty hours ago.
“Come on, kitten,” Bucky said, low and persuasively. “Wake up a little an’ tell Tash you love me.” Such a lie. Bucky was such a liar, but if it meant Tony kept living and breathing for a while longer, Bucky was willing to lie until his tongue turned black.
Tony turned a little, eyes blearily seeking his face, looking for the sound of Bucky’s voice in the darkness. “Huh?”
Bucky lowered his mouth to speak directly in Tony’s ear. Ketamine made people very… agreeable, most of the time. “You love me, right? Yeah, say yes, say it, come on, Tony, you want to live, don’t you? You want to live, tell me you love me.”
Tony blinked a few more times. “Yeah, yeah,” he said, like he was chewing on the words. “Want… want to…”
Well, Tony probably meant he wanted to live. But it was enough.
Natasha signed the wedding license. Got them new identification. Congratulated him on a very malleable husband.
***
Tony woke up.
Sunlight poured in the window, setting all the brilliant white sheets and pillows aglow. Given that he had a big black hole where his memory of the past several hours was supposed to be, Tony was surprised that his head didn’t hurt.
He stretched, cautiously. Nothing hurt, not much at any rate. He had a bruise on his thigh and… was he wearing a wedding ring ?
“Hey, kitten,” a vaguely familiar voice said. Tony startled in surprise. The man who’d kidnapped him was standing in the doorway holding… two cups of coffee? He sat one down on the bedside table. “You take it black, right?”
“Not from you,” Tony said. He was stripped to his boxers, weaponless. There was no way out of the room except past his kidnapper, who was not unarmed. Not even mentioning that metal arm, the man had a small arsenal on him.
“Look, we’re in the same boat now,” the man said. “My name’s Bucky. I was hired to kill you. Changed m’ mind. But the people who hired me are gonna be tryin’ twice as hard now, to knock you and me out of the equation. I might make it six months on my own before Hydra finds me. You… kitten you’re gonna last two days, at the most, if you don’t let me help you.”
Tony wasn’t entirely unconvinced. He’d certainly been a sought-after target for kidnappers; maybe assassination was next on the list. He held out his hand. “And the marriage?”
“Gives us an excuse to be traveling together,” Bucky said. “One bedroom. An’ there’s the fact that I ain’t lettin’ you out of my damn sight, like ever again.”
“Stalker much?” Tony sighed.
“Look, I won’t say this is my fault; I just got a call about a contract an’ took it,” Bucky said. “But I would have done you quick and painless. You wouldn’t have had time to be afraid, or to be in pain. That’s not what’s gonna happen now, if Hydra catches you. Consider it an apology.”
“You consider a marriage an apology for not killing me?”
“If you want, I can shoot you now and save us both the trouble.” But Bucky wasn’t meeting Tony’s gaze and the back of his neck was turning a delightful shade of pink.
“Could you?” Tony asked. He leaned back in the bed, tucking his arms behind his head. “Could you really ?”
Bucky shot a heated look at him from under the curtain of his thick hair. “Drink your coffee an’ stop bein’ an ass, kitten,” Bucky said. “We ain’t got time for this. Gotta roll again in less’n an hour. Won’t take ‘em long to track us down. Not yet. There’s a safe house, we might be able to get there day after tomorrow. Might keep us hid for a while.”
“So, um… Bucky? Husband. Darling?”
“What, kitten?”
“What’s my new last name?”
That beautiful blush grew until Bucky’s face was burning with it. Tony smiled. This was going to be fun .
“Barnes,” Bucky managed.