Something Wicked This Way Comes
The text messages came through as quickly as he turned the corner, walls to the hallway blurring together, the apartment building becoming one unfocused mess.
Vibrations buzzed frantically in his jean pocket, one after another, never stopping.
Neither did he.
Peter knew exactly what he’d be walking into when coming home.
“Oh my god!” May jumped up from the sofa, throwing her cell phone on the coffee table as she rushed towards him.
Peter didn’t take so much as one step past the front door, immediately holding two hands up in the air.
“I can explain —”
“I have been calling you for the past two hours — two!” May’s voice, taut with stress, easily plowed over Peter’s. She rushed past him, closing the apartment door as quietly as possible — which wasn’t quiet at all. “You haven’t been answering your phone, you haven’t been texting back any of your friends — you can’t do that!”
Peter twisted around to face her. “May, listen —”
“I don’t know what the hell to tell your principal, I have no idea what to tell the school —” Her hair loosened from its bun, her cheeks flushing red as she paced into the living. “This isn’t like you, Peter, this isn’t like you at all!”
“I know, I’m sorry,” Peter couldn’t get the words out fast enough. He dropped his backpack on the ground, nearly tripping over it as he tried to approach his aunt. “Honestly, May, I —”
“What the hell is going on with you!” May's voice cracked as it raised in volume. “Why would you do this, why would —!”
Peter stopped chasing her once he realized she was pacing in a circle. Her hands were waving around fast enough to create an artificial wind that not even the ceiling fan could match.
“I didn’t mean to —!”
“His mother sent me a picture, he has a black eye.” May fumbled over to the couch, blindly reaching for her phone and swiping across the screen with shaking fingers.
Peter visibly gulped as she extended her arm out, straight as a stick, shoving the display in his face.
“A black eye! You know better than that, you know — oh my god, with that — that strength — your powers, your — you could have done so much more, you could have — oh god, you could have —!”
“May, please, stop freaking out!” Peter begged, his hands grabbing at nothing, fists clenched so tightly fingernails began to dig painfully into his skin.
May spun around, her bun finally dropping from its loose hold.
“Stop freaking out?”
There was a pause, stifling as Peter fought for his next breathe.
“Yes,” he timidly nodded. His nerves wrapped so tightly around his windpipe that he couldn’t swallow even the tiniest bit of saliva accumulating in his mouth.
“Stop freaking out?” May repeated.
The strands of hair that had fallen in front of her face did nothing to hide her eyes, practically bulging out of her head.
“You punched your classmate!”
Peter’s jaw fell to the floor. He swung his arm out wildly, pointing at nothing that mattered.
“He started it!”
“And when has that ever made things okay!?”
Peter couldn’t remember the last time he yelled at May.
He couldn’t remember the last time May had yelled at him.
It was never a good thing when she was angry like this. She’d freak out, and then he’d freak out, and just like that, all of a sudden the neighbors across the hall weren’t the nosiest tenants in the building.
“He called me retarded!” Peter’s shout echoed with defensiveness, his voice meeting her from across the living room.
May abruptly stopped pacing. “And so you decided to start a fight!?”
“Why am I the one who started the fight!?” Peter suddenly felt hot, a scorching pit of lava gurgling in his stomach, one he could feel on the inside and out. Not even the ceiling fan could cool him down, not even May’s wild gestures brought in enough air to keep him from sweating buckets. “He’s the one who came at me, he’s the one who —!”
“You punched him!” May cut him off, her voice thundering over his.
“I was minding my own business —!"
“You punched him!”
“I was walking to class —!”
“You punched him!”
Peter threw up his hands. “So what!?”
“You could have killed him!”
May's words rang as they hung in the air, sharp and crisp, crashing through the barrier of furniture between them.
Peter stuttered for a comeback, stuttered for a retort that died in his throat. A weak breath parted his lips with nothing more to say. The longer she stared at him — her gaze hard as rocks — the faster he felt his heart jackhammer within his chest, a broken metronome that sent blood pooling to his ears.
Each beat, each thump pulverized the bones of his rib-cage, deafening the sound of his own thoughts.
“Peter, you’ve got to tell me what’s going on!”
May emptied every bit of emotion she had in her plea, her voice splintering at the edges. The sun shining through the living room window highlighted the glisten of liquid pooling beneath her round-framed glasses.
He could see May’s lips moving, he could see her throat convulse with each cry she delivered. But he couldn’t hear anything besides the white noise vibrating against his eardrums, increasing frequency so strong that pressure built behind his eyes. His vision grew blurry, cloudy, darker with each breath he fought to seize.
Peter swallowed, hard.
“I failed my history essay.”
May’s demeanor softened, the weight on her shoulders visibly reducing.
“What?” she practically whispered, surprise lining every thread of her tone.
The apartment went quiet.
The murky shadows that bordered his vision began to clear away, a darkened vignette seeping back through the edges of his eyes until it was no more.
Not even the muffled ringing that once flooded his ears was heard, only the sound of the refrigerator whirring in the kitchen, and a faucet dripping from the bathroom down the hall.
Peter collapsed onto the sofa, leaning forward with his head heavy in his hands.
“I thought I was doing good! I got a tutor and everything, I don’t understand—!” he smothered a frustrated groan into the squishy parts of his palms, his throat growing hoarse with frustration. “I tried and it just...it wasn’t enough.”
May’s sigh was forceful enough that he could feel her breath against the nape of his neck. She leaned over from behind the couch, gently placing both hands against Peter’s shoulders.
“So now your average is going to drop,” she concluded aloud, brushing away some lint from the green jacket he still wore. “And you’ll be off the Decathlon team for the rest of the semester.”
Peter weakly nodded. “And Flash gets my spot.”
The stress between them began to chip away. Slowly but surely, it melted with the sunlight that came pouring through the window, bright against the bookcases lined along the walls.
Peter took a deep, controlled breath as May began to massage the tight knots that kept his shoulders so tense.
“He said...”
Peter paused, forcing down the lump that ached painfully in his throat. His phone had stopped vibrating every second, going off only every other minute now. He had no doubt his friends stopped trying to reach him. If he kept ignoring them like this, he knew soon they’d stop trying altogether. And he wouldn’t blame them.
“He said that since I finally found a 'daddy' who can afford whatever I need...I should have him buy me a passing grade. Whatever the hell that means,” Peter’s tongue dripped with the bitterness his tone couldn’t soak up. “The whole school has been obsessing over this Paris thing with Mr. Stark, they keep thinking he’s my dad and he’s not and it’s…”
He took another deep breath, one that shook and rattled in his chest, forcing himself to stay calm. May continued to rub his shoulders, her thumbs putting pressure in just the right spots.
“It was on the way to second period, everyone was there, everyone heard and I just...I got really mad. I’ve never...” Peter scrubbed both hands down his face, pulling at his skin. “I was really angry. I don’t know what came over me, I don’t...I’m sorry, May. I’m really sorry.”
The Queens afternoon traffic from outside began to pick up, car horns honking replacing the sound of their arguing. Peter was just happy that his aunt had calmed down, if only a little bit.
“Alright, so first off,” May finally let go of his shoulders, walking around the sofa to face him head-on. “That’s absolutely disgusting, and unacceptable. Eugene’s mother is hearing about all of that.”
Peter shot up, his back rod straight against the cushions of the couch. “May —”
“Uh-uh, I’m not hearing it. If Rosie Thompson can give me hell over her son’s black eye, then she can take what she dishes out. I’m telling her about all of this. And the principal as well.” May held a finger up when Peter tried to speak, a fire lighting in her eyes that he’d only ever seen a few times before. It was her defensive side, dare he say her maternal side. “You absolutely do not get a pass on punching the mouthy little jerk, but he doesn’t get out of this scot-free either.”
Peter let out an exaggerated groan, thumping his head against the back of the couch. Between Flash’s broken leg, a black eye that honestly looked to be more make-up than anything else, and now taking Peter’s spot on the Decathlon team – the entire school would be stuck hearing about how victimized he’d become.
The attention he’d get from it — Flash would absolutely use the spotlight to make his life a living hell.
“May, please, don’t,” he stressed, pulling at handfuls of his hair. “Just leave it alone, you’ll make this so much worse!”
His plea was the most vocal he had been since entering the apartment, reaching levels that not even his anger had yet to achieve.
May looked at him, her eyebrows knitting together tightly with a hybrid of confusion and concern.
“Peter, chill out. It’s okay. I’ll talk with Mr. Harrington, see if he’ll work with you,” she insisted, still taken aback by Peter’s irritation. “You’re a good student, you’re excelling in all your other classes. They’ll see that, trust me.”
Peter slumped down further into the sofa, practically burying himself into his jacket. As May shifted her weight from one foot to the other, he realized she was still wearing her work clothes — high heels, a pencil skirt, and a blouse. It was the outfit he saw her leave in this morning.
He realized she must have left the shelter when getting a phone call from the school.
God — Peter rubbed at his eyes until he saw dancing stars. They called her while she was at work. He really screwed up. In so, so many ways did he screw up.
“It’s not just that. It’s...” Peter trailed off, his voice lowering to barely a murmur. “I was going to take MJ to homecoming.”
May’s brows shot up high, dangerously close to disappearing into her hairline.
“You what?” She tugged at her ear, pulling it towards him.
Peter looked away, his cheeks reddening, his nervousness bleeding straight through him. “It’s stupid. She’s gunna be so upset now, she’s had so much on her plate and —”
“Hold on, rewind there for a second.” May walked around the coffee table, taking a seat next to him on the couch. He looked away from her, and she had to crane her head low to see his face. “You asked Michelle to go to the homecoming dance with you?”
Peter could only nod, too busy biting his tongue to say anything.
May quickly caught onto his hesitance. She leaned back and away, providing a bit more breathing room on the small sofa.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she softly asked, no judgment, all curiosity.
Peter shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, not anymore. She’s not gunna want to go with me now. I messed up — she was relying on me to hold my spot on the team, she even told me to get a tutor and I still flunked out and she didn’t want to deal with Flash and now — May, I screwed up big time.”
Despite Peter knowing that May was more than used to his mile-a-minute rambles, she still seemed to struggle to absorb the information thrown her way.
May sat quietly, wordlessly as she slowly took everything in.
Peter couldn’t dare look at her while she did.
“Well, you’re...you’re not being kept from the dance, are you?” she finally asked. “That’s still weeks away. It wouldn’t make any sense to punish you for that long.”
Peter fidgeted with his fingers, picking at his nails and pulling at split cuticles.
“I have detention for two weeks,” he admitted, shrugging to make himself seem more casual than how he felt. “Principal Morita said he’ll make a decision after that.”
May sighed. It was another sigh he could feel hit his skin, all the way from where she sat on the sofa.
“Okay, I can talk to him,” she finally said after a pause. “But you have to talk to me in return, Peter. What is going on with you?”
Peter’s head shot up at a record-breaking speed. The pang of frustration hit him like a tidal wave.
“I told you! Flash said —”
“And you punched him,” May ran right over him, her voice sharp as knives. “When have you ever done that? Ever?”
For a suspended moment, neither of them said anything.
For a moment, Peter clenched his jaw with a strength he’d never felt before, bone against bone grinding and straining under the pressure of his own anger.
“Are you taking his side?”
His question came so abruptly that May couldn’t help but find herself startled.
“No, Peter, but —”
“He’s done this crap all the time!” A sudden rush to get his defense out had Peter speaking in a jumble, cluttered mess. “You don’t get it! He says all these really hurtful things and I just let it go, all the time! The one time I do something —”
“It only takes one time with you!” May’s voice faltered as her emotion began to surface again. “One time — you know that!”
Peter let out a sound of disbelief, forcing himself to look away, staring off at nothing. It felt like he had hit a brick wall, driving at two hundred miles per hour without a seat belt.
It felt like he had crashed into a dead end.
May’s accusation pummeled through him, tore into him in a way he had become so accustomed to as of late. It was just like every other adult he’d try talking with lately. They wouldn’t hear him out, they wouldn’t listen to him.
Without another thought, Peter stood up from the couch. “Am I grounded?”
“What?” May blinked, and then blinked again. “I — I don’t know —”
“I want to go to my room,” Peter quickly interrupted, his voice growing flat. “Can I please go to my room?”
May stared at him for the longest time, as if searching for something that he knew she wouldn’t find. Maybe she was looking for a reason for his attitude, in which case he had no answer to give her. Perhaps it was a resolution to their bickering, which he knew wouldn’t come anytime soon.
And from the looks of it, she knew it wasn’t happening either.
Ultimately she caved, waving her hand down the hall while the other reached for her discarded cell phone.
“Okay, fine. I need to call Tony anyway.”
Peter’s knees buckled.
“What? Wait, no, why?” he panicked, almost diving for her cell phone before quickly realizing how incredibly stupid that would have been. “May, don’t tell Mr. Stark about this, please. I’ll – I’ll stay home this weekend, you can ground me, whatever you want. Please, just leave him out of this.”
May held tightly onto her phone, stunned at Peter’s outburst, at how red his cheeks had grown in a second’s time.
“Why? Peter, he wants to be involved —”
“Him being involved is exactly what caused this!” Peter’s throat started to burn, growing hoarse with each word that cracked and broke in pitch. He suddenly felt lightheaded, dizziness nearly stealing his balance. “People keep thinking he’s my dad — even you’re treating him like he’s my dad! He’s Mr. Stark, he doesn’t need to know about this! It wasn’t even a fight, it was nothing, really! I’ll go to detention, I’ll do what I have to do, it’s fine — just don’t tell him about this!”
May sat quietly during Peter’s explosion, patient as she waited for him to finish. Only once the detonation of his frustration began to clear away, only when he finally took a moment to let his chest heave in the air he so desperately needed, did she finally speak up.
“You know, he’s worried about you.”
Her calm did nothing to off-put his agitation.
“Yeah, because he’s freaking out over everything I do lately!” Peter could feel his arms begin to tremble as his anger boiled over, unearthed from his gut, quick to temper. “You can’t tell him about this, he’s just going to flip out —”
“He thinks you’re acting strange.” May was the one to interrupt this time, steadier than he expected her to be. “And I’m inclined to agree.”
“Mr. Stark doesn’t know what’s going on,” Peter stressed each word, dragged on each syllable. “May, please —”
“If he doesn’t know what’s going on,” May folded her arms across her chest, “then tell me.”
Peter spun around, unable to face his aunt anymore, worried that the tremble in his hands would lead to a hole in the drywall straight ahead of him.
“Nothing is going on, I’m fine —!”
“Cut the bullshit!”
Everything in Peter froze. His breath halted in his chest, his mouth ran dry. And as quickly as May stood up from the couch, she stormed over towards him, her heels dangerously forceful against the floor.
“I know you’re not sleeping. I know you’re not eating,” May’s voice was cold, steely. “I know that you passed out last weekend at the compound. That’s not fine!”
Peter blinked rapidly; whether it was to urge unshed tears back in their place or digest what May had said, he didn’t know.
He didn’t know what to say.
He vaguely realized May was staring at him, hugging herself tightly. Yet the corners of his vision were growing dim again, shadows invading the room. A darkening gray veiled his eyesight in a way that didn’t feel right, didn’t feel normal.
“Talk to me, Peter,” she begged him, a shuddering breath conveying a fierce concern that consumed her. “If what happened back...if it’s bothering you —”
Peter jolted away from May before her touch could reach him.
“It’s not!” His shout was sudden, grating, like a needle digging underneath his skin. “Why are you saying that? Why does everyone insist on bringing that up?! It’s not bothering me, I don’t care, and I don’t want to talk about it!”
If May had anything to say, Peter didn’t give her the time to respond. He stormed past her, each step he took pounding with the anger that flooded through his core, practically shaking the walls and picture frames where they were hung.
“I don’t need to talk about it! It happened, and it’s over. Why is nobody else just happy that it’s...over!?”
Peter stopped halfway to his room, suddenly grabbing hysterically at the roots of his hair, pulling so hard May could see his knuckles grow white — even from where she stood down the hall.
“And why is the bathroom sink STILL LEAKING!?”
Peter’s scream was only drowned out by the slamming of his bedroom door.
The wood near the hinges cracked and splintered.
It left an echo that swept through the apartment.
May stayed standing in the living room, unmoving, aghast to the moment that just occurred.
Behind the broken door and unseen to her, Peter quickly removed his jacket and stuffed it against his face, frantic to contain the stream of blood that poured out from his nose.
A large plate of cookies placed down on the kitchen island, the glassware clunking and clattering as it made contact with the marble stone.
“A gift from Laura Barton,” Natasha announced, making no hesitation in taking a cookie for herself before settling down one of the bar stools nearby.
“That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” Sam was the first one to lean over the table and remove the saran wrap, the cookies still somehow warm despite having traveled all the way from the mid-west. The Quinjet proved to be worth its cost; the steam rising from the plate gave the sign that the treats were freshly removed from the oven only a short while ago. “If there’s one thing that marksman is good for, it’s his wife’s amazing baking talents.”
Sam eagerly snatched two, and two more after that, only stopping once getting a bewildered look from Bruce.
“Being a homemaker will give you that skill,” Tony mentioned from across the way, leaning casually against the wall, too busy eyeing his electronic tablet to look up at the group. “Put me in a kitchen for ten hours a day, and I could bake you a Sole Meunière to die for.”
Rhodey rolled his eyes, approaching the kitchen with his mechanical legs whirring at every step. Though the large island had enough room for all six of them, he opted out of taking a seat himself. It was easier to stand with his braces, choosing to lean against the cabinets instead.
“How’s the family doing anyway, Nat?” he asked, snatching a cookie of his own.
Natasha swallowed past the crumbs in her throat, shrugging nonchalantly. “As well as they can be for the simple life. Clint’s pulling out his hair right about now — the oldest got busted sneaking out of the house last night. He wants to make sure the little delinquent follows through on punishment this weekend. Something about scrubbing the tractor-trailer with the toddler’s toothbrush.”
The glistening shine in her eye told Rhodey that the punishment mentioned didn’t come from Clint, or even anyone who resided in the Barton family. If Natasha’s mischievous gleam didn’t give it away, her smirk did.
As Bruce rummaged through the fridge for a carton of milk, Steve pulled up a stool at the end of the table. He clasped his hands together firmly, setting them down in front of him.
“Good, you got to steer them right at a young age,” he said, his serious tone failing to match the smile that upturned his lips. “I hope you gave them our regards?”
Steve politely shook his head at the glass of milk Bruce offered him, and Natasha took it instead.
“Always, gramps,” she smiled even as she sipped on her drink.
“Alright, small talk can be dialed back to a healthy dose of none,” Tony’s firm voice reached across the kitchen as he pushed himself off the wall, discarding his tablet next to the plate of cookies. He didn’t bother to take one, not even as Sam reached for more. “We’ll make sure Farmer Joe gets the meeting minutes in his email. I’m sure one of you will be happy to draw up a thank you card for the wife. Until then, down to business.”
He looked over to Natasha, an expectant expression written across his face. “La Femme Nikita, whacha got for us?”
Natasha brought one leg up on the stool, her knee pressed against her chest with flexibility not even rubber could obtain.
“Cookies,” she needlessly stated, innocently pointing to the plate.
Tony’s glare turned glacial.
“Lighten up." She pulled a small flash drive out from her pant pocket. “You’re going to appreciate that joke once I hit you with this.”
Natasha slid the small device across the table, straight over to Tony. He didn’t waste a second in picking it up, plugging the USB connector into his tablet and immediately swiping the screen into holographic form.
A blue and white light illuminated the empty space that surrounded them, glowing with faint tones of different colors, muted once displayed on a lucent screen shinning across the length of the kitchen table.
Tony flipped through multiple files with precise haste, his hands erratic as he sorted them — organized them — before anyone could set eyes on a single word that was laid out.
“What is it?” Steve asked, leaning forward with interest.
Rhodey folded his arms across his chest, stuffing his hands deep into his armpits. “A few months back — after the courts tossed out the subpoena that the Air Force Weapons Procurement Liaison Department submitted against OsCorp industries — Natasha and myself created an algorithm. It took a while to perfect, but we eventually snuck it into their systems.”
“We wanted to latch onto any words, codes, cryptography — anything that may possibly lead us to where they’ve been hiding their experiments since SHIELD shut down the clandestine bunker in the Bermuda Triangle,” Natasha added, wrapping an arm tightly around the leg pulled high to her chest.
“What did it find?” Bruce looked around the room, as if asking anyone nearby. “The program, what – what did it find?”
Steve squeezed the fold on his hands, watching with intent interest as Tony’s technology lit up the kitchen with an artificial glow. The once marble stone of the table was now a display case for translucent screens.
“Not much.” Natasha shrugged. “Rhodey and I were starting to wonder if they’ve given up the game, gone straight after a good scare from Director Hill and her team.”
“You don’t think Fury was involved in all that in any way?” Sam brushed cookie crumbles away from his shirt, swallowing hard as his demeanor fell serious. “Shutting them down and all?”
Natasha shook her head, barely glancing his way. “I don’t know what Fury is up to these days, aside from lurking in the shadows where he sees fit.”
“It’s the man’s favorite past time,” Tony muttered, not once looking away from the multiple screens that he waved and flicked around in the air, a conductor of intangible images only made touchable by his technology. “And you’re spewing fairy-tales and folklore, Romanoff. There’s no way they’d stop cold turkey, not this far into their game. They’ve gone too deep.”
“Pun intended?” Rhodey dryly joked, a tight smile creeping across his face.
Tony gave him the side-eye and nothing more.
“You’re right,” Natasha remarked, nodding towards the holograms ahead. “Something else has taken precedence.”
Tony tapped twice on the table, the glowing imagery beaming as it lifted upwards. His fingers pinched tightly together until the tips of his nails made contact. With one smooth move, he spread his arms wide apart, enlarging the document with ease.
It rotated, spinning around to show those facing the other way. Tony walked the length of the kitchen island to keep up with it, eyeing it with a line deepening between his brow.
“What the hell is this?” Sam asked, adjusting himself on the stool to get a better look.
The images littering the document weren’t hard to distinguish — scans of the human brain, detailing the different matter and components, looking like pictures straight out of an antonym book. With it were diagrams of DNA strands and cell structure, each moving in animation, trial and error to a hypothesis that detailed alongside the report.
“A formula,” Tony stated, finding conclusion faster than anyone else. The look in his eyes said one thing; he was studying it, absorbing the information in ways no one else could even consider doing.
Rhodey’s eyes drifted over his friend, watching as he kept up with the spinning hologram, the reflection mirroring directly onto his face.
“The Oz Formula, to be exact," Rhodey said.
Tony came to a screeching halt. He snapped his head over to Rhodey, his eyes wide, the whites shining blue from the image gleaming in the air.
“Well, stone the crows and strike me pink…I’ll be damned.” He pointed to the document, his finger shaking multiple times, practically wagging at it with excitement. “Rhodey —”
“I know,” Rhodey immediately cut in, calm and cool, collected despite Tony’s heightening emotion threatening to overtake the room. “I told you...I believed you.”
To all the others, it looked as if Tony’s mind had short-circuited. As if the information was too heavy to handle, too much to process.
For Tony, it was his brain running a mile a millisecond, only having stopped wagging his finger to tap it endlessly against his chin. The thoughts came too fast to keep up with, a head-rush of realization opening a gate of closed-off questions that he hadn’t let himself ask until now.
Months of searching, months of digging — finally they had something.
OsCorp could pay their employed scum the worlds worth in money to keep their mouths shut. It didn’t stop the Avengers from finding out the truth.
It wouldn’t stop the Avengers from finding out the truth.
“It came through on the algorithm a few days ago,” Natasha spoke up, addressing the team. “I back-traced it within the servers to a Doctor Lucas Murphy, a scientist employed at Oscorp for over three decades. Multiple PhD’s, doctorates — holds more degrees in biochemistry than anyone in this entire facility.”
“And he’s working for OsCorp?” Sam scoffed, incredulous disbelief lacing his tone. “They must have some amazing pension plans there.”
“So this Doctor Murphy is the one creating the formula?” Steve looked to Tony for an answer, only to see the man had immediately returned to swiping through screens and pulling up new ones. He instead cranned his head behind him. “Rhodey, didn’t you say they claimed it was a cure for any human sickness?”
Rhodey nodded curtly. “Immune to the destruction of one’s own molecular structure and some additional bullshit verbiage, yeah. It sounded too Strucker-ish for me. Like they wanted to create the next super-soldier serum, or something damn close to it.”
The screech of a chair against tile floor cut through the room.
“That’s not this,” Bruce said in one breath, standing from his seat and slowly walking over to where the document floated in the middle of the kitchen table. It was his turn to wag his finger at the screen. “That’s not this at all.”
Natasha straightened up in her stool. “Use your big boy words, Bruce.”
“He doesn’t have to,” Tony cut in. “FRIDAY just analyzed the entire document. While you all were sorting the puzzle pieces, she put the puzzle together.”
Tony took a step back, further away from the table than anyone else. As he did, an array of different screens began flickering to life, one by one, each brighter than the last.
“It’s an artificial biogenic mutagen,” he stated. “They didn’t lie about one thing, It’s definitely being designed to augment the cell structure of the human body.”
The animation in the reports played in a seamless loop, 3D designs pivoting with smooth agility.
Steve realized not long after silence had taken their conversation that the funky-looking DNA strands had circled a total of five times.
“How?” he finally asked.
Bruce pointed a stern, straight finger to the hologram. “This here? It’s a string of different chemical compounds and nucleotides. Adenine, thymine, phosphate-dexyribose — uh, that there is guanine, and cyosine. There’s an entire study here on ribonucleic acid and it’s connection to cytoplasm —”
“It’s the CRISPR technique,” Tony interrupted, offering Bruce an unapologetic smile. “Sorry, Brucey, you were going to put them to sleep.”
There was a pause as the others struggled to understand the information. Natasha tilted her head to the side, pressing her chin against her knee with an attentive look. Steve, Sam, and Rhodey waited for further explanation, eyeing the two men that stood at the head of the table with tense impatience.
“I’ve never...I’ve never seen anything like this,” Bruce awed.
“What’s this?” Steve all but demanded. “What are we looking at?”
“Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats,” Tony smoothly explained, not a stutter in his words. “Otherwise known as the molecular biology’s version of copy and paste.”
“It’s fascinating,” Bruce drawled on. “It’s based on how bacteria protect themselves from foreign viruses. When viral DNA is detected, the bacteria sends out two single strands of RNA — a nucleic acid present in all living cells. It then uses a protein called Cas9, which locates the section of that DNA with the same code. The RNA then locks onto that piece and cuts it there, disabling it.”
Bruce carefully removed his glasses, cleaning the lenses with the hem of his shirt as he continued. “The same process can be used to add or delete information from any organism, including humans. The CRISPR technique can edit genomes — it can deactivate some gene, but at the same time it could also cut DNA and provide another copy. A mutated copy of that gene to change the way its expressed. It can completely alter someone’s cell structure, create a whole new strand of DNA in the process. A whole new person.”
The only immediate response was a mildly disconcerting silence, tense and stifling in the air.
Sam leaned back in his chair, blinking more than once. “That didn’t put me to sleep...but it sure as hell confused me.”
“I think I get it,” Natasha bemused, setting down her leg to lean closer towards the hologram. “You’re saying that this formula will target sections of DNA and replace it with a completely different strand?”
Bruce nodded a few more times than necessary. “Essentially.”
“Why is that bad?” Steve didn’t ask out of ignorance or asininity, knowing full well what powerful things could do in the wrong hands. But rather, he asked out of a deepening need to broaden his scope of the world.
As if he was questioning all the likelihoods they needed to account for, everything within the realm of possibility that could become their next battle — their next fight.
Tony knew that about him. He had no problem engaging with his devil’s advocate side.
“Depends on Hermagoras’ method of the five W’s,” Tony easily tossed back, stuffing his hands deep into his trouser pockets. “Who, what, when, where and why. What’s the substitute DNA? Why pursue the research in the first place?”
“When do they plan on doing it?” Bruce chimed in, his glasses slipped back on his face, the reflection of the screen stealing sight of his eyes.
“Where do they plan on doing it?” Tony continued, circling the table.
“And who’s it for?” Rhodey finished. He gave Tony a curt nod as the man passed his way.
Steve’s eyes darted around carefully, cautiously as each man tossed words no more easily than if they were tossing a ball on a sports field. He unclasped his hands, going to let his chin rest on a closed fist.
“What’s the worst this could do if obtained by the wrong people?” Steve fell silent for the moment, noting the suffocating misgiving that had found its way through the kitchen. “You talk about creating perfection, a new man. Are we still looking at someone trying to achieve a copy of the super-soldier serum?”
Tony gnawed on the corner of his lower lip, tapping his index finger restlessly on the marble material of the island.
“I’d say they’re trying to achieve something damn similar. But from the looks of it, their enticement — it’s entirely different. Curing human illnesses, becoming immune to cellular destruction...they want some sort of immunity,” he pondered out loud, eyes staring far off into the distance, deep in thought. “Best case, somebody takes this formula and never has to see a doctor again in their life. Their bad genes get deleted, the good ones are popped right in...hell, do it right and they may never have to shake hands with the Grim Reaper. Ripley’s Believe It Or Not...they’ll be the first human to never see death.”
Sam’s eyes widened, his jaw nearly touching the cookie crumbles below him. “That’s the best case?”
His incredulous outburst was left untouched, the room growing quiet while Tony stayed busy studying the documents slowly rotating in the air.
“Worst case...” his voice dawdler off with piercing alarm, a heavy weight of the unspoken lingering between them.
Steve straightened in his chair, growing alertness stiffening his posture.
“What is it, Tony?”
Tony spared him a glance, one that said everything he needed to know.
“Genome editing technology at this level,” his hand gestured to the hologram, waving at it, practically frustrated with it. “You might as well be playing God. Consider it the scientist’s version of Jenga. You remove one piece, and the whole thing comes crashing down. Worst case...” he managed a deep breath, his chest expanding. “Worst case, it creates a monster.”
Tony didn’t bother to look at the others as he spoke, and they didn’t bother to look at him.
Thoughts ran rampant in the room, too great to speak, too heavy for words.
“You think OsCorp is dirty enough to stoop that low?” Natasha’s quiet voice spoke up, borderline timid for someone of her demeanor.
Tony looked her head-on, the lines between his forehead deepening. “I saw those files down there in that bunker. They’ve been doing much worse. We just haven’t been privy to their plans.”
Rhodey stepped forward, the buzzing hum of his leg braces in tune with the spinning hologram floating above the kitchen table. He grabbed Tony’s tablet, unplugging the USB device with a restrained sigh, stuffing it deep into his jacket pocket.
“Now what?” he asked, just as the hologram flickered out to nothing.
Steve leaned back in his chair, folding his arms over his chest. “Now we wait.”
Tony may as well have had a stroke then and there.
“We what?” He threw back without any delay, placing two open palms on the table as he leaned forward. “Focus up. I’m sorry, did I mishear you? Or did you really just say that you want us to stand around like lost lemons?”
“We can’t barge in there, Tony, not with stolen information that tells us little to nothing about their intent. You said it yourself, there’s too many questions left. Too many answers that we need before pursuing anything. We’ve been alerted.” Steve looked straight forward, no hologram of fancy images to block his view of Tony, nothing to obscure his determined expression as he firmly stated, “Now, we wait.”
A pin could have dropped, and it would have sounded like a bomb.
Bruce looked around, his arms fidgety as he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose — stuffed his hands deep into his armpits, balanced from one foot to the other with unsure, uptight movements.
“And what happens if we wait too long?”
His question was answered not with words, but rather looks from faces that held brittle worry. An edge that kept their confidence strained and taut.
Tony kept his eyes locked on Steve, unmoving, a table length apart and silent for an awkward beat.
Rhodey noticeably cleared his throat, breaking the unwanted silence.
“On the topic of the Osborn dynasty,” he spoke up, looking Tony’s way as he did. “Peter still hanging out with Norman’s son?”
Tony looked away and towards Rhodey, almost involuntary, like he didn’t want to. A hard, cold stare later and he finally shrugged.
“I have no clue,” he admitted, pulling his sunglasses from his blazer pocket and slipping them onto his face. “Kid’s barely saying more than two emojis to me. Three is like winning the lottery.”
Natasha snorted, keeping her head low as she remarked, “Can’t say I blame him.”
Her not-so-subtle whisper was heard, intentional or not. Tony arched an eyebrow high, marching the few steps to close the distance between them. He titled his head to the side, staring her down from where she sat.
“Come again, Covert Affairs?”
“She’s got a point,” Sam immediately came to her defense, arms folded across his chest with a smug cockiness that couldn’t be shaken.
Tony balked at him, and then at the others — none of whom came to his rescue.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he exhaled, holding two hands high in the air with the sun from the skylights bouncing off his purple-tinted frames. “Exactly when did this turn on me?”
“It hasn’t,” Rhodey finally stepped in, albeit too casually for Tony’s liking. “It’s just...you’ve been a bit of a mother hen around him, don’t you think?”
His eyes widened to the point that not even his sunglasses could cover them anymore.
“Mother hen?” Tony echoed.
“Oh lord,” Sam muttered, rubbing at his forehead. “Here we go.”
Tony plowed right over him. “Last I checked, I’m not licking my feathers and sitting on eggs on day —”
“Tones...” Rhodey gently interrupted, “you yelled at the kid for forgetting to eat his breakfast.”
Tony’s reply was instant.
“He passed out.”
“Yeah,” Rhodey tensely tossed back, “and how many times did I drag your sorry ass to a doctor because you decided coffee was a great substitute for protein?”
“Hey, you just said this wasn’t about me —”
“It’s not,” Rhodey insisted. “It’s about Peter.”
“Yeah, Peter,” Tony repeated, tempered frustration lining his voice. “The same Peter who almost died a few months ago, the same Peter who we all thought was dead. The same damn Peter who I bought a casket for. Or am I the only one that seems to remember that? That is what started all this, after all.”
Natasha scoffed, eyes locked on the table in front of her. “It started something, all right.”
Tony placed two hands firmly on the table, leaning over and into Natasha’s space until they were nearly face-to-face.
Natasha didn’t so much as flinch when she looked up at him.
“Mother hen,” she pressed, “take a breather. Come off those eggs every now and then.”
Tony stood up straight, swiveling his head around to lock eyes on every team member in the room. None disputed Natasha, instead choosing to stay quiet — some with heads bowed low like Bruce.
Tony pointed his thumb to his chest, grounding his teeth together. “You guys got a problem with how I’m handling my kid?”
“No one has a problem, Tony,” Steve chided, hands in the air placaintingly. “Just...be careful. We all see how hard you’re trying with Peter. But the more you try to pull him closer to you, the further you may end up pushing him away. Trust me, I’m seeing it happen with —”
One look from Tony and Steve immediately got the hint.
The name still wasn’t welcomed.
“...someone else,” he opted on saying.
The lack of anyone running to his aid was more than enough for Tony to realize they all felt the same way.
Traitors, he figured. Every last one of them.
He sighed so loud it blew cookie crumbles off the table, shrugging so dramatically his arms felt disconnected from the rest of his body.
“Fine!” Tony snapped, forcing in a deep breath to calm himself. “Fine, I’ll back off. But if I remember correctly, there were some of you in this very room that lectured me five months ago about not doing that to the kid.”
Rhodey rolled his eyes, throwing Tony a pointed look without even glancing in his direction. “You tend to go one extreme or the other, Tones.”
“Back to the, uh, the original point...” Bruce said, one single digit raised in the air. “I’d make sure Pete doesn’t have anymore interaction with...well, anyone related to the Osborn’s. If Norman is the brains to all this...who knows how dangerous he could be.”
Sam furrowed his brows. “I don’t think a high-schooler could do much damage, regardless of their namesake.”
“No, maybe not...” Natasha trailed off, contemplative in a way she normally didn’t share with the group. “But being close Norman Osborn’s son is being one step closer to Norman himself.”
“Is it really fair to assume the kid is trouble because of his bloodline?” Sam was quick to rebut.
Natasha threw him a cold look. “People judged me based off my bloodline, and they were smart to do so.”
“Bruce is right,” Steve needlessly stated, putting an end to the dispute. “Peter’s already been a target before, we don’t want that happening again. Until we can get a grasp on this situation, he needs to keep his head low, stay far away from this.”
“Trust me, I’ve been trying.” Tony massaged the bridge of his nose, disdain coating his tongue, leaking deep into his words. “It’s like pulling teeth with the kid, he doesn’t want to do anything he’s told. I might as well be talking to a deaf monkey.”
The frustration Tony emitted was palpable, visible despite the sunglasses he used to hide his face. What once was a jab at his overly-strict parenting had quickly turned somber.
No one dared to make a joke now.
Despite his berating, no one had forgotten about what occurred only a handful of months ago. When a young, naive kid showed up at their door playing super-hero. Tony may have been the one to buy the casket, but they were all involved in one way or another.
It would be impossible to forget; it was a lesson learned that they all took to heart.
Possibly going through that again — it was a vast precipice to wrap their minds around.
“We’ll make sure that we do our part on this end,” Steve assured, looking Tony straight on. “We took Peter under our wing, we took on that responsibility. It’s our job to make sure he’s safe, make sure we protect him. Whatever happens here, whether he gets involved or not, he’ll be protected.”
Something clenched deep in Tony’s stomach as his gaze latched onto Steve’s, his doubt ebbing into a fierce fury of determination.
Steve reflected that determination right back at him.
“We will protect him, Tony.”
Tony nodded.
He had nothing more to add.
The meeting ended not with a conclusion, but rather with a long, drawn-out silence. Slowly, and one by one, they departed the kitchen with nothing more to say. Nothing more to note.
Hours later and the sun had set through the skylight of the kitchen, the day fading away with faint chirping of birds from the nearby woods. Dim overtones of orange and yellows cascaded over tables, chairs, and cabinets, and soon only moonlight shined through the windows from above.
The occupants of the afternoon had long since left, leaving room for those of the night.
“It tastes like candy.”
The contents of his bowl soaked up what otherwise would have been a resounding CLATTER. The noise was instead absorbed by milk and colorful pieces of what was advertised as a ‘healthy, nutritious breakfast.’
From the face Bucky made, Peter assumed he had some doubts.
“I don’t know how you eat that garbage,” Bucky murmured, pushing the dish away with a grimace, smacking his lips with a look Peter figured was disgust. The man didn’t often show any expressions outside of...well, neutral. He was probably the hardest read Peter had encountered so far, and that included Natasha-Friggin-Romanoff.
With a shrug, Peter dug his spoon deep into his bowl.
“Fruity Pebbles aren’t bad. Not the greatest, but far from the worst.” He barely gave himself time to chew, swallowing down a mouthful and immediately going in for more. “I like the Cocoa Pebbles better, if I have to choose between the two. I think Clint likes Fruity Pebbles and that’s why he buys ‘em. They’re okay, but they’re no Cocoa Pebbles. Better than Cheerio’s — don’t like Cheerio’s, too dry, doesn’t flavor the milk at all.”
Bucky arched an eyebrow high. The cereal box sat between them on the kitchen table, blocking his complete view of Peter. Yet it didn’t stop him from eyeing the teenager, all while he devoured the nauseatingly sweet junk food.
“Right...” he drawled, craning his head slightly to the side to better see Peter — who noticed, and honestly didn’t seem to care.
It was late. Peter could feel it, his eyes heavy with bone-weary exhaustion that he couldn’t seem to shake. The clock against the stove highlighted past midnight, which became his usual time to wander down into the kitchen and grab a snack.
The only difference tonight was that Peter hadn’t even tried to go to sleep.
It was strange. Happy dropped him off at the compound around nine-ish, close to ten. It was unusual for a Friday; typically he came to the compound straight after school. But he had detention today, and he would for every day next week as well.
On top of that, Happy had given some excuse about needing to be in the city for a while, for something — Peter didn’t ask; it wasn’t like he’d get an answer anyway. And with May out of the apartment for a work thing, he used the time for patrolling.
Despite stopping four muggings and a car theft, he still couldn’t find the urge to go to sleep. He was tired, sure.
Just not enough to risk sleeping.
He hadn’t even seen Mr. Stark yet.
It felt weird.
Really weird.
Friday’s always kicked off their weekend, they’d always be in the lab or workshop doing something or another. There was always pizza, and always music. He’d wrap up his homework for the week, and Mr. Stark would be focused working on whatever insane project he had going on.
Falling out of routine left him feeling odd, kind of empty inside.
Peter hated to admit it, but at the same time, he couldn’t deny it. He was avoiding Mr. Stark, ever since last weekend. Ever since —
“I think I know what’s keeping you up at night, kid.” Bucky squinted his eyes, his only arm having brought the cereal box close to his face. His left shoulder was covered in scarfs that smelt like farm animals. “These things are loaded with sugar...”
Peter rolled his eyes, quick to stuff his face with another spoonful of fruity bits colored like the rainbow.
“Hey, don’t at me,” he garbled, words mixed with chewed up cereal nearly causing him to spit milk out of his mouth. “You guys used cocaine for like, Tylenol or whatever back in your day.”
Bucky’s eyebrows rocketed high, seen easily over the long strands of hair that covered parts of his face.
“I’m old, punk...but I ain’t that old.” Bucky wagged the cereal box in his direction, little-to-no-contents inside rattling through the plastic bag. “You really need to brush up on your history.”
Peter groaned, briefly closing his eyes in defeat. “Don’t remind me.”
The taunting image of a bright red sixty percent written over his World History essay still burned in his eyes. And of course, that happened to be the one and only class he was practically failing. Not only would flunking mean being kicked off Decathlon for the entire school year, but it could also mean losing his scholarship for Midtown Science and Technology.
Ned was worried about him having to transfer schools. Peter was worried about something else entirely.
He brought his spoon into his mouth, gazing off at the refrigerator with a blank stare. Peter knew he’d have a way to stay at school, keep his classes, keep his friends — all if it really came to that.
But the idea of Mr. Stark paying for his semesters felt wrong. It felt like chewing broken glass, swallowing it and throwing it back up.
His parents got him that scholarship.
Uncle Ben always bragged about him having that scholarship.
He couldn’t lose that scholarship.
Out of the corner of his eye, Peter caught the blur of the cereal box being whisked away.
“Hey!” He reached for it blindly, a failed attempt as Bucky quickly yanked his arm back.
“It’s empty,” he dryly insisted, shaking it to prove his point. “And clearly rotting your brain.”
Peter watched with furrowed brows as Bucky ambled over to the garbage can, dumping his totally-not-empty and still-had-half-a-bowls-worth of cereal into the trash bag.
So not cool.
“The cereal is fine, dude,” Peter gestured his arm out, stick straight, all in-vain. “I eat it after I wake up. It makes me feel better...I think.”
Bucky gave him a side-eye — a look that made Peter realize his defense clearly needed some work — but he said nothing, pulling the fridge open and reaching inside, searching the contents with an audible hum.
“Still got those nightmares?” Bucky didn’t look his way as he spoke, popping off the lid to his beer with the bottle opener attached underneath the kitchen cabinet.
Peter ran a hand through his hair, scratching at his scalp while the other held his spoon a little too tightly.
“Do you?” He didn’t ask with animosity, there was no bite to his tone. Peter was genuinely curious.
Bucky took a long swig of his beer, and one more for good measure. He was still facing away from Peter when he finally answered.
“Always.”
The pause that followed wasn’t silent; Peter fiddled with his spoon, clanking it against the sides of his bowl. Bucky let out a burp, a sniff, and ultimately he walked back over to the table, his combat boots loud against the stone flooring. He pulled out his stool with no consideration to the expensive material, the legs screeching along the way.
Bucky looked over the beer bottle with little to no interest, turning it over and reading the back like he had the cereal box.
Peter watched as he did. And though he obviously didn’t drink, Peter noticed that the beer in the fridge was never the same. It was always weird stuff, never anything he saw at the deli’s or grocery stores. He had assumed it was another thing Clint would bring back from the farm.
Bucky seemed to have taken an interest in it. Peter wasn't sure if that's something Clint was aware of or not.
“Do yours ever change?” Peter asked, aiming for casual and missing the mark completely. Yet Bucky didn’t even look away from his beer bottle. “Like, do you ever dream up anything different?”
Bucky noticeably ran his tongue across his teeth, taking a moment to deliberate on a response. Peter waited patiently as he did, considering eating the remains of his cereal but too afraid any noise might ruin the chance of getting an answer.
“Sometimes,” he said, holding in a burp with a closed fist tight against his mouth. “Sometimes I’m falling. Other times I’m —”
There was no lingering trail to Bucky’s words. They cut off suddenly, his mouth clamped shut quickly, releasing a heavy breath through his nose. His eyes drifted down to the floor, suddenly lost somewhere very far from a kitchen in the middle of upstate New York.
Peter wondered if he should say anything.
He had a gut feeling that he shouldn’t.
“Sometimes,” Bucky finally settled on murmuring.
Peter nodded...and nodded, and nodded — around the fourth nod and he started to feel awkward, holding the handle to his spoon so tight he could feel it bend beneath his grasp.
“I can’t shake the same dream,” he blurted out, hating himself in every way possible the moment the words left his lips.
Luckily for him, it was the thing that got Bucky to look his way.
“Drowning?” Bucky asked, setting his beer bottle down. The condescension began to drip down the amber bottle and create a puddle on the table.
The words rang in Peter’s brain. They seemed too simple, too nonthreatening, and yet...
He paused before nodding. “Yeah.”
Bucky hummed.
Peter put way too much thought into that hum.
He had also definitely bent the spoon by now.
“Ever drowned before?” Bucky asked, so nonchalantly it made Peter feel like they were talking about baseball cards or some nonsense.
His eyes shifted away from almost-certainly-soggy cereal and back up to Bucky. “I think so?”
There was no hum this time, no look or expression that made Peter think Bucky was listening. He had a feeling his answer wasn’t satisfactory. It wouldn’t surprise him, nothing he did lately was.
“I dunno,” Peter forced out, shrugging. “I don’t remember much of what happened. Down there. Like, in the ocean or whatever. Just bits and pieces, and like...what everyone told me.” Peter struggled to breathe in an inhale desperately needed after so many words, his chest growing heavy, cramping with constriction that narrowed his windpipe. “I think I dream of the things I don’t remember.”
“Sounds about right,” Bucky said without missing a beat, mostly spoken into the open top of his beer bottle. He took a swig, a large gulp that bounced his Adams Apple. “Mind’s fucked up. It likes to remember things you wanna forget.”
Peter wasn’t expecting an answer full of hope and optimism — he hadn’t known Bucky longer than a few weeks, but he’d gotten the hint early on that the Winter Soldier wasn’t exactly full of rainbows and cotton candy.
Still, the feeling of his heart plummeting down to his sock-clad feet left him feeling nauseous, suddenly unable to entertain the idea of eating another spoonful of his rainbow-colored cereal.
It wasn’t that he wanted to be lied too. It was just that he didn’t want to feel like this.
Whatever this was.
“Do you?” Peter asked quietly, not really sure he wanted an answer. “Remember...things…?”
The kitchen fell silent.
Peter looked down, past his bowl of cereal and at the littered crumbs he’d just now realized were there. They were from a cake or cookies, whatever mess the snack created never having been cleaned up. Without much thought, his index finger pushed them aside, one by one, each crumbling underneath the pressure of his skin.
“Always.”
Bucky’s quiet voice did nothing in a room full of stillness.
Peter heard.
Even when practically a whisper, words spoken only in exhale, the bite in his tone was harsh enough to rattle everything within and around them.
Peter decided not to respond, not directly, not acknowledge what felt like a topic of pins and needles and bad things he didn’t need to get into.
If there was one thing being around The Avengers made him realize, it was that he was young. Very young, no matter how much he wanted to believe otherwise. And so long as he was, there were too many things he’d never be taken seriously for. Too many things he didn’t understand.
Peter stared down at his milk, the swirls from colorful cereal pieces slowly circling in an amiss direction. The pink cereal bits always did saturate the milk the most, staining what once was white and turning it into a light pink.
Peter narrowed his eyes. His milk looked different, darker. What should have been a light pink was suddenly turning dark — very dark.
A drop of red liquid fell from his nose and plopped right into the bowl.
“Crap!” Peter cursed, scooting his stool back, nearly falling over in a sudden, panicked rush.
Bucky craned his head up and around, mildly startled, mostly confused. He arched an eyebrow but otherwise said nothing as Peter stumbled to the other side of the kitchen.
“Sorry! Sorry, I – crap, uhm...” Peter brushed him off with one hand while the other pulled recklessly at a roll of paper towels. His fingers quickly stained the whole thing, from top to bottom, covering it in warm clots of blood that gushed out from his nose. “Sorry, I gotta —”
Peter pinched his nostrils tightly and held his head back, nearly gagging at the taste that began to trickle into his mouth. He held in his panic, the best that he could.
The pungent liquid seeped into his throat and coated his tongue, each swallow leaving him fighting the urge to dry heave. What the hell — he rushed to get more paper towels, the wad pressed tightly against his face quickly growing wet and weak. He hadn’t gotten nose-bleeds this bad since elementary school. It was so long ago that he had forgotten just how nasty they could be.
He also didn’t think it was possible to get them anymore. Not since —
“You good?” Bucky asked.
Peter pulled the handful of paper towels away from his face, his stomach twisting into painful knots when he saw the damage first hand.
They were soaked.
Not good.
“I’m good!” Peter croaked out, quickly unrolling a fresh bunch of napkins, as much as he could with one hand. It was enough to mummify himself if he wanted to. “Just, uh...just got these nose bleeds lately. No big deal. It’s good — I mean, uh, I’m good.”
Peter swallowed what he was almost positive felt like a blood clot. Suddenly, the realization that Fruity Pebbles wouldn’t taste as good coming back up made him want to swear off the cereal for life.
Behind him, Bucky cleared his throat, turning around in his stool with his beer bottle still in hand.
“You oughta tell an adult,” he dryly stated.
Even through wads of paper towels, Peter made a face.
“You’re an adult.”
Perhaps if he wasn’t surrounded by bloody tissues, Peter would have been taken more seriously.
Bucky looked him head-on and deadpanned, “You oughta tell a better adult.”
Peter rolled his eyes as he turned around to face the kitchen sink, the happiest he’d ever been in his entire life for automatic sensors. The water turned on at his presence, and he leaned over to rinse off his hands and splash cold water to his face.
He tried not to notice how long the water ran pink, the color as unsettling now as it was in the milk of his cereal. It was even harder to ignore how many chunks of dark red gunk he pulled from his nostrils, each blow of his nose giving way to more and more of a bloody mess.
Just when he thought it wouldn’t end, and after literally emptying the whole roll of paper towels, Peter was relieved to feel no longer feel his insides pouring out of him.
“It’s fine,” he insisted, this time with more confidence behind his words. “I’m fine. Probably just like, the air quality in here or something.”
His excuse didn’t account for the three bloody noses he had at home, or the four he had at school. But Peter chose to believe it anyway.
Otherwise, that meant telling an adult — someone, anyway. And that would mean not handling it himself.
“Yeah...” Bucky drawled out, nodding. “Or something.”
Peter could feel eyes on him while he trashed the mess that had been created. Dirty, blood-soaked napkins landed in the garbage bin right on top of the cartoon characters decorating the box of cereal. He didn’t need to look at Bucky to know the man didn’t believe him, but he caught sight of the expression regardless once he sat back down at the kitchen table.
There was a pause between them, even after Peter got comfortable in his stool again.
Bucky was staring at him.
Peter wiped at his nose, pulling his hand away to make sure he’d done a proper job of cleaning himself up.
“You know, kid...” Bucky finally spoke up, a swig of his beer preempting his next words. “I got no problems listening to you and all, but, uh…”
Peter looked away; not that Bucky was looking at him anymore, having wandered his eyes to whatever nearest appliance sat in the kitchen. Without realizing it, Peter began to cave in on himself, shoulders pulled so inward they might as well have touched the table below him.
“You’d be a lot better off spending your time with someone who can actually help you.” Bucky sniffed, clearing his throat a few times before adding, “I ain’t that somebody.”
Though he had no intention of eating any more of his cereal, Peter grabbed the handle to his spoon, bent and crooked at a funky angle. He held onto it tightly as he shrugged.
“I don’t need help,” he said lamely, his hand fidgeting with the silverware. Each spasm of his fingers made a rattling sound of metal-against-metal, his nerves having no rhythm to the song created. “It’s just...easy talking to you. That’s all.”
Bucky tipped his head, bangs further hiding his eyes.
“Uh-huh, sure...whatever you say.” With one hand, he pushed his hair aside, looking even more tired without the long, brown strands hiding his face. Only the dim lights from underneath the cabinets highlighted his features, and with it, he leveled Peter with a serious look. “But it ain’t gunna do you any good. We’re both messed up if we don’t get what help we need.”
Peter’s erratic fidgeting increased. If his fingers moved any faster, he’d shatter the bowl.
“Have you gotten help?” he asked.
Bucky finished off his beer with a satisfied exhale, though his next words were far from content. “Steve wants me to.”
Peter arched an eyebrow, his spoon slipping from his fingers and dropping straight into the ruined bowl of cereal.
“Have you?”
A look flashed across Bucky’s face, one that Peter couldn’t decipher. It lingered for a second, possibly two, but not long enough for Peter to try and figure it out.
It was gone by the time he leaned forward and snatched his bowl away.
“Don’t know how you eat this shit,” Bucky mumbled, taking both dishes in a single hand while pushing back his stool, walking away from the table with a scoff sounding deep in his chest. “It’s too damn sweet.”
Peter blinked, too tired to comprehend what had just happened.
He watched with half-lidded eyes as Bucky went straight to the kitchen sink, dumping both bowls of cereal down the drain. A once-over on the clock next to him and Peter realized it was quickly approaching one a.m; as quickly as the sudden bout of exhaustion that weighed him down like lead.
He was tired. Really tired.
And he had training in the afternoon.
Which meant he should really get some sleep.
With a yawn that stretched his mouth wide and cracked his jaw, suddenly, all Peter wanted to do was sleep.