• Home
• Synopsis
• Index
• Gallery
• Author

Some duct tape, the arm of the martial arts dummy from down in the gym, and a lot of aluminum foil later — Sam and Bucky were ready.

“It looks like crap,” Bucky remarked, eyeing the poorly-constructed prop hanging from his shoulder. It dangled like a wet noodle, although even that would be giving the hasty craft more credit than it deserved.

“The kid won’t even notice,” Sam insisted, looping the roll of duct tape around Bucky’s shoulder and back towards him again. “Trust me. This is going to work.”

Bucky gave a one-shouldered shrug. He really couldn’t care less one way or the other. Anything to keep him from being forced to review SHIELD mission reports and train the cadets, of which he had learned the hard way were the most pansy-like, technology-obsessed, closed-minded bunch he had ever seen before. It had been an eye opener to see first-hand how drastically men had changed since his time.

He wouldn’t lie; staying on the goat farm in Wakanda sounded way more appealing than spending more than two minutes with those cadets.

Sticky tape put pressure against the nub of his arm with a tightness that felt too tight. Bucky looked up at Sam, mildly irritated with an expression that somehow remained apathetic.

“So what am I supposed to do? Just wait around here all day, or —?”

“No, I texted him,” Sam answered, ripping off the final piece of duct tape and securing it in place. “He’s coming up from the lab now.”

With wary eyes, Bucky examined the final product. By now it looked like total shit, but he wasn’t going to say a word. Not at the risk of instigating Sam to put more time and craftsmanship into the prank. Fun or not, it wasn’t worth exerting that much effort into it.

Sam, though? Sam seemed as if he could go all day messing with this kid — the kid who was long since owed a good chunk of payback for Germany, because of course Stark was housing teenage superheroes in this godforsaken place.

Nothing surprised him anymore. Not even,

“Texting...right. Cell phones. Those exist.”

Sam gave a sympathetic hum while looking over his work. Dare he say, admiring it. “Yeah...must be weird. You know — jumping back into a society that’s advanced so much.”

“It’s been...something.” Bucky rolled his shoulder, testing out the crudely designed homemade device. It hung limply at his side and barely lifted when he went to mimic a shake. He had a hard time believing Wilson when he said the punk would buy this. Cause either this kid was incredibly stupid, or insanely trustworthy.

And if it was the latter, that made him both in Bucky’s eyes.

A holler from the hallway of the rec room caught his attention.

“Hey, Sam? You wanted something? I was just about to see a movie, what’s up —” Peter came to a sudden halt the moment he crossed into the doorway, feet freezing in place at the sight ahead of him.

Or more accurately, the person.

“Oh.”

Sam immediately stepped in front of Bucky before Peter could stare too hard — and staring he was, eyes locked intently on Bucky like a deer caught in the headlights. It reminded Sam a lot of the first time he officially met the twerp, having removed his vigilante superhero mask in one of Tony’s workshops like a dog with his tail tucked between his legs.

Sam couldn’t resist the smirk that crept along his lips. Call it a brotherly kinship; messing with this kid was just too easy.

“Hey, webhead! I’ve been getting everyone acquainted with our new housemate here. Tony gave you the DL on that, right?”

It took a moment for Peter to register what Sam had said — a moment longer after that to try and understand Sam’s forced attempt at another generation's lingo — before he finally managed to snap out of his confused trance.

“DL? Huh?” He shook off the momentary shock and stepped forward. “Yeah-yeah, Mr. Stark told me...that we’d be...he’d be...um...yeah...”

Peter couldn’t stop staring. He could tell he was staring, and could tell that Sam noticed he was staring — and was desperately trying not to laugh at him for it. Still, it wasn’t until a good beat later that Peter cleared himself out of the awe-struck moment.

“Hi. I’m Peter.” With stiff, overly polite movements, he jogged further into the rec room, his one arm extended outward like a rigid vaulting pole. “Peter Parker.”

Sam re-positioned himself to stand behind Bucky, who hadn’t even twitched a muscle on his face, let alone tried to seem remotely interested in anything regarding the situation. It was a good thing that Peter was oblivious to it all, poorly-crafted foiled arm included.

The same exact arm he invited in for a handshake.

So when he went to grasp Bucky’s hand at the same moment Sam deliberately ‘bumped’ into Bucky’s side, he was damn near traumatized when the limb detached straight from the soldier’s arm socket.

Peter’s jaw fell straight to the floor — figuratively.

Bucky’s arm dangled in his grasp — literally.

“Uh...” Peter’s eyes darted back and forth, from Bucky’s arm back to Bucky — back to the arm, back to Bucky. All while his mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. “I, uh...”

Bucky quirked an eyebrow high into his hairline.

“Holy cow.” Peter finally managed to squeak out, immediately extending the arm back to Bucky as if it were any other casual item he may have taken. “Oh my god. I am so sorry! Oh my god, Mr. Bucky, sir, I must have...I didn’t mean to...holy shit, I am so sorry! I didn’t mean —!”

Sam’s sharp, gut-aching laughter was the only thing that finally tore through Peter’s panicked and borderline terrified rambling. It came so abruptly, breaking free with a howl so loud that it finally had Bucky giving way to an expression.

Annoyance.

“Damn, kid!” Sam hollered, bent over, clutching his stomach.

Peter could feel his heart shaking in his rib-cage. It didn’t matter if that were physically possible or not; he could feel it. His hand let go of the foil-covered arm, letting it drop to the ground — where no one went to pick it up, because of course they wouldn’t, because it wasn’t real — and his fingers twisted into his hair from a stress he never thought he’d experience before.

That was, the stress of thinking he had just dismembered someone.

“Oh man, you should see your face!” Sam slapped his hands across his knees. “You were scared shitle —!”

“For the record, if I’d made that arm, it wouldn’t have fallen off.”

All three heads simultaneously looked over to the entrance of the room, so quickly that Peter could hear the joints in Sam’s neck crack, aging bones loud enough to hear under his enhanced eardrums.

“Hey, Wilson,” Tony had his arms crossed, leaning in the doorway with a face a bit harder than his light tone would imply. “You know, next time you wanna pull a prank like that, I suggest a quick-release weld. That way you don't have to use up all of my duct tape.”

Though Sam didn’t seem the least bit bothered by Tony’s sudden and rather uptight appearance, and Bucky remained characteristically distant to the situation as a whole, it was Peter could feel the goosebumps spread along his skin. He wasn’t sure why, aside from the fact that Mr. Stark appeared to be far from amused — borderline furious even.

The longer Peter stared, the more he saw a surge of boiling animosity flickering across Mr. Stark’s eyes. It sent a chill through him.

He had never seen the man look quite so...hostile before.

“Tony, hey, what’s up,” Sam greeted, nodding his way. “We were just —”

“Corrupting the youth of America, I’m sure.” Tony walked into the room with an unmatched pose; shoulders pulled back sharp, chin held up high. Despite directing his words towards Sam, his eyes never wavered past the other man in the room.

And it was noticeable. His grimace paired neatly with his glare, seen through the purple-tinted glasses covering his face.

Peter looked between them both, afraid to speak, yet knowing it was best he didn’t utter a single word.

“Nah, man, it’s not like that. We were just...” Sam trailed off, noticing the same thing Peter had, just a second too late. He looked between Bucky and Tony with growing concern. “...having...some fun…”

Tony had now gotten close enough to Bucky that Sam almost wanted to pull the two apart.

Almost.

“I should go,” he ended up saying instead, quick on his feet to head out the door.

“You should,” Tony responded without missing a beat. His head twitched towards the floor below them but otherwise stayed locked ahead, eyes firmly glued on Barnes. “And take your fifth-grade home-ec class project with you.”

Sam rolled his eyes, keeping any comeback to himself as he bent down to grab the discarded arm from the floor. He turned to leave, though not before Peter could catch up with him.

“Hey, wait up, Sam! Let me see that!" Peter met him at the doorway, reaching out for the foil-covered arm with an enthusiasm that radiated straight from his smile. “Holy crap, is that the arm from Bob the grappling dummy in the gym? That’s so clever!”

Sam found himself laughing as Peter looked over the fake arm with wide eyes, full of light and curiosity.

“You should have seen your face, pipsqueak.”

“I thought it was really his arm!” Peter defended, his voice cracking in pitch.

Sam patted him on the shoulder. “Oh trust me, we could tell. You —”

“Peter.”

Tony’s voice cut through their banter, heard across the room, containing such hot intensity it warmed the draft air around them.

Peter craned his neck around, eyebrows furrowing with a mix of concern and irritation. If he didn’t know better, Mr. Stark was staring at him the same way he had the afternoon of the Ferry incident, eyes sharp enough to put daggers to shame.

That wasn’t right, that couldn’t be right. They had gotten so far past that time, now a mere blip in what was the beginning of things for them. This Mr. Stark — this angry, fuming Mr. Stark — this wasn’t directed at Peter. It couldn’t be.

“We good, man?” Sam’s question broke through his runaway thoughts. Peter looked over, noticing the extended fist Sam was offering.

“Yeah, dude, we good,” he answered, a laugh in his voice as he bumped his own fist into Sam’s. It wasn’t long after that he left, taking the dummy’s arm with him.

Peter fought off the urge to follow him out of the room, wondering if Mr. Stark would even realize that he’d slipped out. If he had to take a guess, he would say that his presence wasn’t very much noticed right about now.

Bucky’s, though? Well, that was a whole other story.

Peter made small baby steps as he approached the two adults.

Tony stared at Bucky for a hard moment, doing everything short of scowling. A moment of grim silence stretched between them, broken only by the occasional sound of Peter’s sneaker scuffing against the marble floors below them.

“You can leave as well,” Tony coldly stated.

Bucky shrugged. “I got nowhere else to be —”

The tension in the room finally snapped as Tony ripped off his glasses, and — ‘yep’ Peter noted, the eyes of fury he once endured near Staten Island had made its return. He felt slightly selfish for the gratitude that the look hadn’t been directed towards him this time.

And all things considered, Bucky seemed to be handling it a lot better than Peter had in the past. In fact, the man seemed unconcerned the moment realization hit him — he wasn’t wanted here.

“Mhm,” Bucky acknowledged distantly. “Got it.”

He left the room without another word, a second glance, or even an acknowledgment of Peter on his way out. Bucky left like he had never even been there to begin with.

Long after he was gone, Peter couldn’t help but continue to stare at the empty doorway. For someone that made Tony so angry, Bucky hadn’t made much of a remarkable impression on Peter. He was quiet, kept to himself, and aside from the weird clothes that made him look like a middle eastern farmer, there wasn’t anything particular about him that stood out.

Peter knew, though, that there was more to his story than that. Tony had told him...things. Things they never talked about again, things that clearly still affected him to this day.

Tony had once said that he was learning to move on past the whole incident, for the team’s sake, for his own sake.

Looking at him now, Peter wasn’t too sure how true that remained.

“What’s up, Mr. Stark?” he finally asked, the stretch of quiescence making his voice sound foreign to his own ears.

Tony sniffed, hard, and folded his arms across his chest.

“You need to stay away from that guy.”

“Who?” Peter did a double take at the doorway. “Mr. Bucky?”

“Mr. Bucky?” Tony repeated back incredulously, the thunderous look on his face nearly as hot as his words. “Is that what Rogers told you to call him?”

Peter had a bad feeling that all of Mr. Stark's buttons had been pushed by now. He knew that not all had been pressed by him; he was just very unlucky in being the one to deal with the aftermath.

“No! I mean, maybe, I mean no but he could've —” Peter shook his head free of his stutter. “What’s the big deal?”

Tony’s mouth stayed set in a thin line as he slipped his glasses back onto his face, purple-tinted lenses reflecting brightly from the skylight ceiling above him.

“He’s trouble,” Tony flatly explained. “He’s here so SHIELD can keep an eye on him, nothing more, nothing less. I don’t want you associating with him.”

“Mr. Stark, come on!” Peter tossed a hand in the air, full of exasperation. “You can’t tell me —”

“Kid,” Tony warned, his voice firmer now, with an underlying note of rigor authority. “Stay away from him.”

The warning came with narrow eyes and a twisted face; an expression Peter couldn’t read past the purple-tinted lenses, frames acting as a veil to his reality. His voice, meek whines in protest, was lost amid a whirlwind of emotions. Ninety percent of which he was sure could be categorized as pure aggravation and annoyance.

He settled on a scoff of disbelief, one he failed to keep tightly in his chest, and he didn’t bother to hide it either. Tony’s eyes shot towards him at a record-breaking speed, a way of saying ‘I heard that!’

Peter shook his head, looking away and back towards the empty doorway. There was a part of him deep down inside that coiled resentment, frustration snowballing into something bigger despite his efforts to ignore it all weekend.

First, Tony grounded him — which, what was with that? He knew the man kinda-sorta saw him like, well, ‘like a son’ as he once said a few months back. But grounding? It just seemed very...un-Mr.Stark-like. And now this? Telling him who he could and couldn’t hang around?

If he didn’t know better, Tony was acting like his da—

“Peter!”

Tony’s voice pierced through his thoughts for what felt like the fifth time that day.

“Yeah! I heard you, okay?” Peter shifted uncomfortably on his feet, quick to cover up his outburst with, “Don’t worry. It’s a big place, right? What are the chances of me even seeing him again?”

Peter hid his frustration behind a look of false reassurance, the type he had mastered as of late. It was typically a look he’d find himself giving May before leaving for patrol on the weekend nights, where his curfew was later, and her panic strung higher.

She never did look convinced.

And right now, neither did Mr. Stark.

 

 

The clock on his laptop read 6:10pm, but his body screamed 1:30 in the afternoon. All the meanwhile, his hands twitched desperately to fiddle with a tool of some sort down in his workshop.

Alas, Tony had actual business to work on. Or at the very least attempt to work on before completely passing off to someone else, because his mind couldn't stay focused to save his own life.

For the most part, his responsibility within Stark Industries had greatly diminished since handing the reigns over to the wonderful Pepper Potts, now his fiancée and long-awaited-to-be-wife — a wedding that they’d postponed more times than he could count at this point. But remaining a chairman to the company still required the occasional paperwork to fill out.

Okay, it required a lot of paperwork to fill out, most of which Pepper managed to handle for him. It just so happened she was out of the country for another week, dealing with the overseas management and requiring him to step up his game for once. Considering his recent month-long vacation — if he could call spending over eight hours a day in a car with a smelly teenager a ‘vacation’ — Tony wasn’t complaining. Too much.

Until, that was,

“Tony,” a familiar voice greeted him from the doorway of the lounge. “Glad I bumped into you. Got a minute?”

Tony looked down at his laptop, the clock in the corner now reading 6:12pm. He barely managed to bite his tongue, wondering just how long a minute could stretch on for in the presence of — he craned his neck behind him, catching sight of Steve standing in the doorway — ‘yep,’ he thought, ‘the one and only Star-Spangled-Asshole.’

“If you need more wax polish for that glorified dinner plate of yours, go through Pepper. She handles the finances.” Tony turned back to his laptop, resuming the data-sheet he had been semi-occupied with. “Or at least, she handles the people who handle the finances. Possibly the people of the people who handle the finances.” His fingers paused on the keyboard below, hovering in the air as a thought suddenly struck him. “It’s a big company. Lotta work. She needs to give herself a raise. Hey, she can ask for one when she talks to the people who handle —”

“Tony.” Steve had walked into the room by now, hands on his hips in a way that said he was unimpressed.

Tony fought the urge to toss his laptop straight at him. The gift-to-mankind would probably just catch it like his damn Frisbee anyhow.

The room quickly became stuffy with tension, the feeling of tightness building right beneath his diaphragm in a way that screamed ‘Stress! Panic! Do not want, must leave, must leave!’

It took Tony every muscle in his body to resist the urge. He focused instead on the screen to his laptop, the numbers in his excel sheet starting to blur together.

Steve shifted slightly on his feet. “He’s unpacked. He’s here to stay. Can we please just...talk about this now?”

Despite the obvious tension in the man’s tone, pinched high with strain containing built-up emotion, Tony didn’t appear conflicted. 

“Mhmm...” Tony hummed aloud before curtly answering, “No.”

Steve’s exasperation broke with a sigh.

“It’s been months. You’ve been avoiding me — you’ve been avoiding this. A part of me...” Steve trailed off, his chin resting low to his chest with his eyes glued to the ground. “A part of me wonders if that’s why you took Peter and went on that road trip.”

Tony looked up from his laptop with a single raised eyebrow. A solid beat passed before he managed, “Well, that’s not egocentric at all.”

“You know what I mean,” Steve amended. His hands were stuffed deep in his khaki pockets, making it look as if his square shoulders were slumping inward. “The other night was the most we’ve even interacted with each other since Peter’s birthday party. And that was just to punish the kids!”

Tony rolled his eyes. “But honey, one of us has to be the stern parent. If we don’t both put our foot down —”

“Knock it off with the jokes.”

“Not going to happen if you keep making us sound like an old married couple.”

Steve leveled an emphatic look his way. “I know why you’re upset.”

“You don’t—!” Tony shoved his laptop to the side, his teeth biting hard enough on his tongue that he could feel the indentation marks it left behind. He forced himself to take a deep breath before speaking again. “You don’t know why I’m upset.”

Despite Tony’s increasing temper, an anger sizzling off his skin like animated electricity, Steve remained where he stood — cool and collected.

“I get it. I do. I kept a secret from you, I kept...I should've told you about the deal with SHIELD. Sooner. A lot sooner.” Steve’s sigh felt like nails on a chalkboard to Tony. “It wasn't right. It was hypocritical. I should have told you about it, all of it all — the deal with Fury and having Bucky move in. I understand why you were so reluctant telling us about Peter, it's... it's difficult, sometimes. But the last time we resented each other, we nearly tore the team apart and —”

“I don’t resent you,” Tony admitted, almost somberly.

Steve’s look of doubt was enough to have Tony’s stomach rolling. It meant one thing — this conversation was happening.

And he really, really didn’t want it to be happening.

Damn it.

“Scout’s honor, I don’t.” Tony stood from the sofa, clearing his throat more than necessary to force out the rest. His reluctance didn’t go unnoticed. “You know I’ve...I’ve discovered the hard way that resentment is corrosive. And what you did, what you kept from me...I’m not okay with it. I probably never will be. But I can live with it.”

Steve listened intently, focused, hanging on Tony’s every word. It was typical; any conversation involving Barnes had them both on edge.

“Barnes? He’s the one that killed my parents. Him. Not you, not HYDRA. Him.”

“That wasn’t Bucky,” Steve insisted.

“I saw the footage,” Tony’s tone was clipped, sharp, and his usually relaxed exterior was constrained. “One-hundred-percent the man now living under this roof.”

“That —” Steve chewed on his lip, swallowing down the force of his words and trying again. “That wasn’t Bucky. He was under the influence of something...something much more powerful than him, than what he could control.”

“You can say that until the twelfth of never. But I can’t believe it. Influence doesn’t excuse the horrendous actions of a man. And it was his hands that did the deed, and you know that.” Tony’s eyes momentarily reflected the rage that laced his words. He held that look with Steve for a strong moment, time suspended until he broke away.

His feet went straight for the exit, without any detours.

Steve’s voice followed him out, hitting right in earshot before he could reach the doorway. “It was the Winter Soldier that killed your parents, Tony. Not him.”

Tony wasn’t in the mood for arguments — for fights, for vengeance. Those emotions had long since washed away in a sinking bunker that now laid buried beneath the ocean. He had finally reached a point in his life where he just wanted to let things be — to not harp on the past, not let it eat him alive.

It was hard, sure. But as he walked out of the lounge, he remembered what a wise kid had told him just earlier that day.

This was a big place. What were the odds of bumping into one person?

 

 

The compound was much more...different at night.

Peter wasn’t exactly sure why there was such a change come sundown. At first, he tried pinning it on the empty hallways. There was such a lack of security — no SHIELD employees, and no activities, most ending after dinner time. But while it was definitely quieter, he couldn’t say for sure what else it was that contributed to the difference in atmosphere.

No, Peter had yet to pin down what made things feel so odd at night. All and all, things just felt more...empty. Not that the facility felt much like home to begin with. It was fantastic staying over for the weekends — really, it was. But there was no denying that the compound had an impersonal feel to it.

It wasn’t his home. 

Home or not though, it had food. And with a stomach growling loud enough to hear miles away, Peter trudged into the kitchen, dragging his sock-clad feet against the marble floors.

With a halfhearted yawn and a yank up at his flannel pajama pants, he turned a corner just as the dim lights to the kitchen faded on. Most of the lights in the facility were automatic, sensitive to the presence of others to conserve energy. So Peter didn’t think much of it when the kitchen went from completely pitch-dark to dimly lit.

Not until he saw the figure that had been sitting in the dark, seated on a barstool at the kitchen island with his head bowed low.

“Mr. Bucky?” Peter squeaked out, his fists rubbing at one eye. “Were you just...sitting in the dark?”

Bucky looked up, hair mostly covering his eyes, beer bottle hiding half his face. His only response was no response at all, although the sound of his teeth grinding together could be heard from where Peter stood.

“Okay...” Bleary-eyed, Peter pointed to the cabinets nearby. “I’m just going to…yeah.”

The further Peter walked into the kitchen, the more lights that turned on. The small under-the-cabinet type that illuminated the counter space and nothing more. With another yawn, he reached for the top shelf and brought down a box of cereal, one of many that he kept up there.

Well, the many that Clint kept up there.

He had the archer to thank for his sugary midnight snacking eating habits. To be honest, he wasn’t sure if he had ever even asked Clint to stock up on the cereal. But that was Clint; the guy just knew how to make the team happy, no words needed.

Natasha’s unsalted almonds were always in the cupboards, right alongside Bruce’s chamomile tea, Sam’s Eggo’s, Rhodey’s craft beer, and the loaf of bread that Steve never really ate. Rather, it stayed in the cabinet for his peace of mind.

Peter rummaged around for a bowl, craning his head behind him as he asked, “Lucky Charms?”

With his back facing him, Bucky didn’t answer. Instead, he lifted his beer bottle to his mouth, took a chug, and set it back down on the island. The glass made a clang as it touched the granite counter.

Peter waited an extra second for an answer. When he didn’t get one, he brought out a second bowl and dug around for a second spoon. “They’re good. Magically delicious.”

Peter could see Bucky’s head twitch just a smidgen as he poured an obscene amount of cereal into one bowl, a small amount into the next. A few marshmallows fell to the floor, and he swept them aside with his foot, making note to clean up his mess after he ate.

It was on his way to the fridge that he finally heard a voice break through the stale air.

“Shouldn’t be hanging around me, small fry. You know your pops really snapped his cap about that today.”

Peter froze mid-grab to the milk jug in the fridge. He looked behind him, eyebrows furrowed with confusion so intense he wasn’t sure if he could still feel his fingers — now blindly reaching around in the fridge while he stared at Bucky’s backside.

“I have no idea what you just said,” Peter pulled out the jug of milk and walked back to the counter where two bowls of cereal awaited him. “Anyway, Mr. Stark isn’t my pops — or my dad, or whatever. He’s just...Mr. Stark.”

With a steady hand, Peter poured the two-percent milk into each bowl — over flooding his bowl while dishing out a reasonable amount in the other. The few pieces that floated to the top fell over the rim, and he collected them in his hands before tossing the handful straight to his mouth.

Behind him, Bucky scoffed. “Wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

Peter rolled his eyes, setting both bowls down on the kitchen island, deliberately pushing the one that wasn’t his in front of Bucky.

“Seriously. Mr. Stark is cool, but he’s more like...” He dragged a barstool across the floor, moving to sit directly across from the older man. “I dunno, he’s like my mentor or something. It’s just that he’s been sorta...protective lately.” Peter dug his spoon into his Lucky Charms, shoveling marshmallows and oat pieces into his mouth.

Bucky looked down at the bowl in front of him, eyebrow quirked high as he opted instead to grab the base of his beer bottle and swig a gulp.

“Why’s that?” he asked, practically grumbled under his breath.

Peter shrugged, taking in another spoonful. “I think he feels responsible for me. He’s been helping me with this...” Peter swallowed hard and gestured vaguely, “... super-hero stuff for a while now.”

Bucky hummed, the sound hoarse, rumbling like grinding stone. It almost seemed darker in contrast to Peter’s voice, even the sound of his chewing somehow lighthearted.

“And also,” Peter swallowed before speaking again, “these crazy bad guys kidnapped me after they stole his tech and held me hostage under the sea in the Bermuda Triangle and I almost died. So there’s that.”

Bucky paused mid-swig of his beer, eyes wide enough to see through the bangs of his hair. He didn’t take a drink this time, rather he set the bottle back down on the counter and stared hard at Peter.

If Peter noticed, he didn’t point it out. The kid — ‘if he could be called that,’ Bucky mused, considering Peter was incredibly close to the age that he had been when he enlisted in the War. He shook off the thought. The rascal continued to shovel food into his mouth, rarely giving himself a break to breathe.

“Huh,” Bucky mumbled. “That explains a few things.”

He’d never say it out loud, but as he eyed the scrawny looking teenager, Bucky couldn’t help but see a bit of Steve in him. For starters, Peter was eating so fast, practically at a pace that increased his risks of choking. At he very least, it kept him from actually tasting what he was stuffing into his mouth.

Steve had been the same way; could never slow down with his food, always hungry — nay, starving. That, of course, changed later in their life. When Steve himself changed.

But still, Bucky knew lanky-Steve way longer than he ever knew Captain America Steve. He had a feeling that he’d forever see his friend that way; a small boy from Brooklyn with an attitude twice his frame. The only difference now was his attitude finally matched his body.

There was also the kindness to Peter, the type that came deep from his bones. He had set out a portion of food for Bucky, not even asking. Just doing. And Bucky stared down at the bowl, with floating and now soggy pieces of cereal below him. The smell was sweet and disgusting and overall completely unappetizing, but the thought blossomed a warmth in his chest that he hadn’t felt in what could easily be centuries now.

Even if it had been Steve’s only meal of the day, he’d be damn well sure to split it with Bucky. The question then became if he noticed that Bucky would slowly but surely return the food back onto his plate.

“You almost died, didn’t you?”

Bucky's whirling thoughts came to a sudden disconnect at the sound of Peter’s slightly high-pitched voice. His head shot up, his expression doing the talking for him.

Peter got the hint, going on to clarify. “In school, we’re taught about World War II in history class. Things about...you know, the Howling Commandos and all...”

He trailed off, noticing an odd vibe coming from Bucky — one that didn’t seem too amused or welcoming or, well, understanding.

Bucky just stared at Peter with a sense of confusion, as if he was soaking it all in.

Peter, in all his well-composed manners, continued to ramble on. “I actually wrote two essays on Captain America before I ever even met Mr. Rogers — uh, you know...Steve. I wonder if that’d be considered cheating now? Not that my teachers know that I know him. Well, they sorta know that I know him but not in the way that you know I know him and...” He took a deep breath while shoveling a spoonful of Lucky Charms in his mouth, saying between bites, “Shutting up now.”

“Right.” Bucky gave one curt nod. “History class.”

He’d love to say that it wasn’t a weird thought, but all of this was a big giant pile of weird, and Bucky knew that would be a lie. Kids were studying him in school — well, of course they were. Logically, it made sense.

But on a deeper level, it just didn’t settle right with him.

Bucky took another swig of his beer. Two gulps for good measure.

“Does it ever get easier?” He heard through the swallow of liquid, quiet and slightly murmured.

Peter was looking at him when he put his bottle down on the counter.

“The whole...almost dying thing?” he asked, quietly. “Does it ever get easier?”

The question gave him pause.

Bucky once lied to Steve when they were fourteen, right after his mother died. “It’s going to get better, Stevie.” It wasn’t something he said with ill intent; it was something everyone did and said during hard times.

He didn’t think much of it, not until the years went on, and things just kept getting worse and worse. A snowball effect beyond what they ever expected or prepared for.

Bucky still thought about that to this day. False hope, wishful thinking, a pipe dream — call it whatever, it still left a bitter taste in his mouth.

“I’ll let you know if I ever figure it out,” Bucky ended up answering.

Peter was slurping on his milk, stopping only once hearing Bucky’s answer. He lowered the bowl to the counter with an overly enthusiastic nod.

“Cool, cool.”

Peter wiped away his milk mustache, sighing. His cereal was gone with the milk alongside it, leaving an empty bowl in front of him. He should be heading back to his personal quarters. Get some shut-eye, try to at the very least. Though he didn’t need much sleep since The Bite, he still tried to get as much rest as possible. Growing brain and all.

There was one slight, small, itsty-bitsy problem he had ran into.

Sleep wasn’t happening.

He couldn’t pin down exactly why, to be honest. What the root of the problem was. All he knew was that didn’t like being alone with his own thoughts — not anymore, not as of late. They had a tendency to wander, and it seemed he had more negative memories to focus on than positive ones.

A chill sent goosebumps up his arm. He wasn’t sure if it was from the temperature in the kitchen or the memory of —

“Which one of us do you think would win at an arm-wrestling contest?” Peter was quick to ask. A little too quick.

Bucky observed him, a blank expression written across his face.

“Like, I know you have the metal arm and all, but I’m also super strong,” Peter explained enthusiastically, pulling Bucky’s bowl of cereal closer to him and digging the spoon in. “And I once broke through this experimental metal, ada-metal something, so I think I’d have a chance.”

Bucky sighed in exasperation. He took one last swig of his beer, looking at the bottle with disappointment once he finished.

Peter continued to ramble, shoveling spoonful after spoonful of Lucky Charms into his mouth.