Actions

Work Header

Astronomy In Reverse

Summary:

A year after the Winter Soldier failed his mission in DC, Bucky Barnes is doing his best to stay under the radar from both Hydra and Steve Rogers. His hope for a peaceful day-to-day life in limbo goes awry, however, when he meets Queens’ newest hero; a pure-hearted kid with a death wish and a ridiculous pair of red and blue pajamas.

The last thing Steve expects when he finally tracks Bucky down is that, not only has the man been living in Queens all this time, right under his nose, but also that, in the two years since they last saw each other, Bucky somehow acquired a kid.

Alternatively: How Peter Parker effectively fucks over Bucky Barnes, and also totally saves him.

 

Fanart by Monireh on AO3 and tumblr

Notes:

  • Translation into 中文-普通话 國語 available: [Restricted Work] by (Log in to access.)

(See the end of the work for other works inspired by this one.)

Chapter 1: Spider-Man

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

It hits him suddenly and without warning. Bucky’s halfway through beating the daylights out of a pathetic gang of street thugs when he realizes, with an intimate, sobering awareness, that there’s probably something seriously wrong with him, personality-wise.

Sure, there’s probably multiple somethings, but this one isn’t from his seventy-something-year-long detour as the Winter Soldier, or from being Hydra’s POW and being frozen in cryo-sleep for the better part of a century, or even from serving in WWII and living through the horrors of war.

No, this—whatever it is, personality flaw—stems from long before that, long before he’d ever held a gun, when he’d had no idea how to even shoot one.

Because there’s no doubt that it is a flaw. It’s an irrational and self-destructive behavior that he can’t control. That’s the goddamn definition of a flaw. He has no idea where it came from, only that it’s been an incessant burden longer than he can remember, even if Hydra hadn’t repeatedly wiped his memory.

It’s aggravating, but as hard as he tries, Bucky can’t suppress it. It’s practically suicide to be doing this; to be fighting in the streets, where there’s cameras, witnesses, potential spies, but he can’t help it. It’s something ingrained and inherent in him that he just can’t let small, stupid people get hurt.

And fucking God, is this kid both.

He packs a punch, that much is obvious, but it’s also blaringly obvious that he’s never been in a real fight before, and has no idea how to pick his battles. Sure, he’d taken these thugs by surprise, but that only gave him so much leverage, since he somehow failed to notice the guys were fucking carrying.

Bucky wasn’t going to intervene. He really wasn’t. The whole point of being in hiding is to lay low, and after the Project Insight disaster in DC, and Hydra and Steve Rogers trying to hunt him down, Bucky had been laying as low as humanly possible.

He wasn’t going to intervene. But then that asshole pulled his gun from his pocket, pointed it at the kid’s head, and the kid fucking froze, rooted to the spot in his ridiculous blue and red pajamas.

The guy went to pull the trigger, and so help him God, Bucky intervened.

He knows exactly how stupid it is to be fighting in the open like this, especially with his arm, but it comes in handy (no pun intended) for stopping bullets from being fired into kids’ brains. All he has to do is palm the muzzle. After that, the guys are no threat, and he takes them down, one by one, until they’re just a pile of unconscious punks littering the back alley.

Bucky can feel the kid staring at him, and knows instantly that he should book it out of there, before he gets a clearer look at his face, but then he hears a loud, high-pitched, “Uhm—h-hey!” and against his better judgement, Bucky turns around, returning the kid’s wide-eyed stare.

“I gotta go give this back!”

Bucky looks at him, confused, and then sees the tattered, brown leather wallet the kid has tightly gripped in his ridiculously-gloved hands. He looks back up at the kid’s face, keeping his own expressionless.

“Those guys—” the kid starts, voice quivering. He’s afraid. “They beat up this dude and stole his wallet. I-I gotta go give it back, but—could you wait here?”

Bucky wasn’t planning on verbally answering the kid, but even if he was, he doesn’t get the chance before he’s lifting his arm and shooting—something—out of his wrist, aimed at the top of the building beside him, and then he’s lifting off the ground with a powerful jump.

“I’ll be right back!” he shouts, swinging on—whatever that is—and flinging himself onto the roof.

What the fuck.

Of course, Bucky doesn’t wait, and the moment the coast is clear, he’s vanishing into the darkness of the alleyways and heading home to his apartment.

Him and his fucking character flaws. What difference does it make to him, if one kid gets shot trying to play hero? Saving some tiny idiot with superpowers that he doesn’t know how to use is not worth the risk of giving away his location to Hydra, or to Steve.

But he’d done it anyway.

He pulls the brim of his cap lower to hide his face, stuffing his gloved hands (one with a hole in the palm now, thanks, kid) into the pockets of his jacket. It’s finally starting to get warmer now, not that the cold had even touched him. Still, he’s grateful the snow is gone. He didn’t want to have to steal a pair of boots, and these sneakers did a lousy job of staying dry over winter.

He notices a “Dog Walker Wanted” flyer stapled to a telephone pole and snags it, pulling out his shitty burner phone. The flyer advertises ten bucks a walk, twice a day, Saturdays and Sundays. An extra hundred and sixty dollars a month would almost land him in the green. Bucky texts the number, trying his best to upsell himself, before sliding the phone back into his pocket and continuing his way home.

It’s the shithole part of Queens, but it’s the only kind of apartment Bucky can afford with his stolen ID. It’s a small studio on the second floor, noisy asshole neighbors above and below him, but it’s been almost a year now, and even though it’s gross, he’s strangely fond of it.

He knows he shouldn’t be. He has to be ready, every minute of every day, to leave it behind without a drop of hesitation. He just keeps hoping that he won’t have to. Which is stupid, because of course he will—sooner or later, someone will find him. It’s only a matter of time.

Hoping otherwise is foolish, but as Bucky has realized today, somewhat painfully, he is deeply flawed.

He climbs the stairs to his balcony, to his battered and decaying front door. The stairs are handy because they’re loud and creaky, and he can hear almost anyone climbing them to get to his door. It’s the closest thing to security this dump has.

He pulls his key out of his pocket, and almost fucking drops it when a shrill and cheerful voice calls out, “Hey!”

Bucky whips around faster than the eye can see, knife in hand and ready to throw at whoever’s behind him, and he barely—seriously, barely—manages to stop himself from imbedding the thing into the stupid, pajamas-wearing, shrimp of a walking death wish’s forehead.

“Whoa! W-Wait!” the kid hollers, hands up defensively. “It’s just me!”

He lowers the knife, only a little, not wanting to give the kid the wrong impression that getting stabbed in the face is completely off the table.

“Sorry for asking you to wait,” the kid says. Christ, how old is he? He sounds like an eight-year-old girl. “It took me longer than I thought to track that dude down, but he was super grateful! He said to tell you thanks for helping me get it back.”

The kid’s tone is sincere, but it’s almost impossible to take him seriously through the ridiculous, bug-like goggles strapped to his face.

“I wanted to say thanks, too,” the kid continues, nervously, when Bucky doesn’t say anything, “you totally saved my life. I—I wasn’t expecting that guy to have a gun, and—and I would be, y’know, really dead right now if you hadn’t helped me, so, y’know—thanks. I seriously owe you.”

Bucky honestly couldn’t be less interested in carrying on this conversation, so instead of responding, he re-pockets his knife and turns back to unlock his door. The kid spies his metal hand glinting through the hole in his glove, and openly gawks at it, obvious even under his stupid get-up.

“It was so cool how you blocked that shot!” he gushes, inching forward a step. “That bullet didn’t even put a dent in your hand! Where did you get that, by the way? If you don’t mind me asking, I mean. It’s so cool! And, like, indestructible! Is it Stark Industries? I didn’t even know they made prosthetics.”

Pointedly leaving this whole conversation one-sided, Bucky opens his door and steps in, turning around, fully intending on shutting the door in the kid’s face.

“Hey,” the kid says, tone disgustingly hopeful. “Could you teach me how to fight like you?”

Bucky stares down at the stupid, ugly goggles, lets his irritation show plainly on his face, and firmly, coldly says, “No.”

And slams the door.

 

He hates the smell of moldy leaves, soaking wet and half-decomposed when the snow on top finally melts. They cling to everything, to his shoes, to the bottom of the legs of his pants, to the shitty, old rake. He’ll have to leave his shoes outside on his balcony when he gets home so he doesn’t track this gross mess all over his floor.

Still, it’s better than snow. People had stared at him funny when he shoveled driveways in a light jacket and sneakers, but no one’s staring at him now. He’s finally dressed seasonally-appropriate.

He’s glad the season’s changing; walking home in cold, wet shoes every day had been the fucking worst. No wonder people were willing to pay for someone else to shovel snow for them, it sucked. But even still, it’s not like he could go out and get a real job, and rent and food money had to come from somewhere.

Besides, honestly, the menial work isn’t so bad (when his feet stay dry, anyway). The days go by quicker when he’s got his hands full, and the work is mindless, lets him shut down until it’s all done and he can get paid and go home.

He keeps busy. It helps every day go by more smoothly.

Bucky scrunches his nose as the smell of rotten leaves wafts up into his face, bending over to tie the garbage bag, full of them, up. It smells like shit and death, but at least that was the last bag, and he’s done now. He carries the bags of leaves to the yard-waste bin, takes the rake back to the shed, and knocks on what’s-his-face’s door to tell him he’s finished.

“Yard looks great. Thanks, Jimmy,” says what’s-his-face, a friendly, older gentleman. “Here you go.” And hands him two twenty-dollar bills.

“Thanks,” says Bucky. “Got my number, case you need more work done?”

The man smiles, “I’ll call you. You take care now,” and shuts the door.

Pocketing the money, Bucky makes his way to the sidewalk, heading home. He’s relieved it’s not a motel day. The motel’s owner gives him close to minimum wage, but it’s always the grossest, shittiest maintenance jobs he has, the jobs no one else will do. Sometimes he hates having to take every job he’s offered, but then again, he gets to eat almost regularly. He really can’t complain.

He needs to land at least three more medium-sized jobs to clear rent this month, so today won’t be an eating day. His stomach whines at the thought, but Bucky ignores it, choosing instead to take a long-ass nap when he gets home.

His stomach rumbles angrily, but the idea of resting his tired body lifts his spirits, at least until he climbs the stairs to his door.

He knows how to walk up the steps so that he’s utterly silent, but still, somehow, the kid sitting by his door whips his head up when Bucky reaches the balcony. Bucky doesn’t know how the hell he heard him or, more importantly, who the hell he is.

“Hi!” the kid says, beaming at him as he stands. The voice is unmistakable. The height—or lack thereof—and scrawniness are unmistakable, too.

Bucky looks the kid over, somewhat surprised that he looks so… normal. Not nearly as insectoid as Bucky had imagined. He’s definitely young, though; too young to be inciting thugs to shoot him in the face. The floppy brown curls and baby-face do absolutely nothing for the vigilante gig he’s pursuing.

“What do you want?” Bucky says, as unfriendly as he can manage. The kid’s face reddens, and he looks away, down at the floor. Nervous.

“Well, I, uhh—” he stutters. Only when he’s feeling insecure, apparently. He had no problem running his mouth about Bucky’s arm a few nights ago. “Just saying ‘thanks’ the other night didn’t feel like enough, so, I, uhh—” he lifts a white, plastic shopping bag, stuffed almost too full, the sides stretching and threatening to tear. “I thought I could thank you with dinner?”

Bucky stares at the nearly-overflowing grocery bag, then at the kid’s face, who looks nervous, but tentatively hopeful, the corners of his mouth barely threatening to quirk upward.

“Kid,” Bucky says, less hostile now, “I am way too old for you. Aren’t there any other boys in middle school you can crush on?”

The kid’s face goes apple-red, all the way to his forehead. “It—it’s not like that!” he shouts. “I’m not—and besides, I’m in high school!”

“Good for you,” Bucky drawls, moving past the erupting mountain of embarrassment that used to be a teenage boy to unlock his door. “Doesn’t change the fact that I’m not interested. Now get lost, I got enough going on without having to worry about changing my address to escape from pint-sized stalkers.”

“Okay,” says the kid, and the disappointment practically pours out of him, heavy like a waterfall and just as audible. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to—uhh—make you uncomfortable, or anything. But—” he reaches into the bag and shuffles some things around, pulling out a clear plastic box of cookies. “Will you take these? I really just wanna do something to thank you. I mean, you saved my life.”

Bucky looks at the outstretched hand, holding the box of cookies out to him—at the bulky bag of groceries gripped tightly in the kid’s other fist—and finally at the sad-but-still-slightly-hopeful look on the boy’s face.

He sighs.

“What else you got in there?”

The kid’s face lights up like Coney Island on opening night. Inwardly, Bucky groans.

Fucking flaws.

 

For someone who practically begged to cook him dinner, the kid is laughably lost standing in the middle of Bucky’s kitchen.

Part of him takes pity on the kid, but a bigger, pettier part of him enjoys the almost dumfounded expression on his face as he stands there, the bag of groceries deposited on the counter, looking around Bucky’s studio apartment like he’s never seen the inside of a building before.

He takes in Bucky’s sparse and threadbare furniture; the tattered loveseat against the wall, the thin and creaky mattress on the floor—Bucky’s backpack, stuffed with all the clothing he has, lying at the head of the bed where he’s been using it as a pillow. His one ratty, fleece blanket pulled tightly over the mattress, a habit he can’t seem to break. The uneven barstool with its splintering wood, pulled up against the island counter, the shade-less floor lamp in the corner that flickers even with a new bulb in it.

The kid’s gaze shifts back down to the bag on the counter as he starts pulling the items out. Vegetables, pasta, chicken breasts, a bottle of unnaturally-blue liquid that says “Gatorade,” whatever the hell that is. The kid spreads everything out on the standalone counter and then stares down at it, unsure of what the next step is.

The pity wins out, and Bucky takes a semi-reluctant step further into the kitchen. “What were you planning on making?”

“Uhh, well,” the boy starts, cheeks darkening a little, “I don’t—I’m not really sure? I kind of just grabbed a bunch of stuff I was hungry for in the store…”

Of course he did. Bucky sighs. “Well, it looks like we’re having pasta with chicken and fried vegetables,” he says, bending down to the cupboard with its missing door, pulling out his one pot and his scratched-to-shit frying pan. “Why don’t you start boiling the pasta, and I’ll fry the chicken?”

He hands the kid the pot, who looks down at it like Bucky just gave him a live grenade. Then he stutters out a high-pitched, “O-Okay,” placing the pot on the stovetop and scooping up the box of noodles to read the directions. He doesn’t look up from the box as he fumbles to turn the element on.

“Kid.”

“Yeah?”

Bucky honestly doesn’t know whether to laugh or groan.

“You have to put water in it first.”

Face red as a lobster, the kid’s mortified expression morphs into sheepishness, laughing embarrassedly as he swipes the pot from the stove. “Oh! Y-Yeah, duh!” he laughs. “I’ve, uhm, I-I’ve never really done this before, so…”

“Really.” Bucky says, voice drenched in sarcasm.

Which still manages to go completely over the kid’s head, somehow.

“Yeah, I, uhh… just never really learned how, I guess,” the kid starts filling the pot, then stops, pulling it away from the tap. “Uhm, how much should I…?”

“About halfway,” says Bucky. “A little more if we’re cooking all of it.”

The kid does so, placing the pot back on the stove and adding the noodles, and then puts the too-large lid on top.

Bucky takes up the other burner, starting on the chicken. “Dice up the vegetables while you wait for that boil,” he says, “there’s a knife in the drawer, but be careful, it’s duller than it should be.”

The kid obediently pulls the knife out and begins lining up the vegetables to be chopped. He doesn’t ask for a cutting board, not that Bucky has one anyway, and besides, it’s not like the countertops aren’t already cut to shit. Bucky leaves him to it, turning back around to focus on the chicken, and a couple of moments go by in silence before it’s ruined with a loud and shrill, “Ouch!”

“I told you to be careful,” Bucky says, without turning around. The kid tries to mutter an apology, but it’s broken up by a whine of pain. Bucky sighs again and turns. “Let me see.”

The kid is clutching his hand up to his face, trying to hide it, but there’s blood dripping copiously through his clenched fingers. Bucky curses under his breath and snatches the boy’s wrist, pulling his hand forward to get a look at the cut. His finger is sliced just above the knuckle, and while it’s not very long, it’s deep enough that Bucky can pull apart the skin, which earns a loud yelp of pain from the kid.

The blood runs faster in a heavy stream. He’ll need stitches. God fucking damn it.

“How the hell did you cut yourself this bad with that shitty knife?” Bucky demands, pulling the kid to the bathroom so he can stifle the flow of blood with a wad of toilet paper. He sits the kid down on the rim of the bathtub and kneels in front of him, holding the paper against the wound in a tight fist.

“Super strength,” the kid mumbles, staring at the white toilet paper as it turns red and wet. “I was having trouble with the potatoes, so I tried to push harder and the knife slipped.”

“Your fingers never should have been in the way of the knife in the first place,” Bucky chastises in a stern tone. It’s too risky to take this kid to the hospital himself. Too many people, too crowded. He’ll have to send him alone, which the kid will probably bitch about.

Well, too bad. He should have thought of that before he wasn’t careful, like Bucky told him to be.

“I’m sorry,” the kid says, voice quivering slightly. He looks down at his lap in shame. “It was my first time, so… I didn’t know.”

“It should be common sense. How old are you?”

He blushes to the tips of his ears. “Uh, fourteen.”

Fourteen. Christ.

Bucky suppresses the urge to groan, and says instead, a little less coldly, “You’ll need stitches.”

The boy starts, almost knocking their knees together. “What? N-No I won’t.”

“The cut’s too deep to heal on its own, kid. It won’t stop bleeding if you don’t get it patched up.”

“It—uhh, it—” he stutters, “—it already has.”

Bucky looks up at him, one eyebrow raised. “What?”

“Here, lemme—” the kid says, wiggling his hand out of Bucky’s grasp. He gently peels the wet paper from his finger, holding it up for Bucky to see.

The wound is still deep, but not deep enough that the blood is pouring out of it. Bucky stares, grabbing the boy’s hand to inspect it more closely, watching as the wound heals before his very eyes.

It puts his accelerated healing to shame, and Hydra had been pretty adamant about making sure they had the best. Who the hell would turn a fourteen-year-old kid into this?

“Who are you?” Bucky says, staring into the boy’s large, wide, brown eyes, not bothering to mask the suspicion and mistrust in his voice. The boy stares back at him with an almost overwhelming amount of open honesty.

“Peter,” he says, voice soft. “Peter Parker. But, uh, when I go on patrol, I’m Spider-Man.”

“Who do you work for?” Bucky tries, hand tightening around Peter’s wrist. The boy grimaces, and Bucky eases up, just a smidge.

“Nobody,” Peter says, leaning back under the weight and intensity of Bucky’s glare. “I—it’s just me.”

“You were born like this?” Bucky says, dubiously, shaking the wrist in his hand for emphasis.

Peter shakes his head, but doesn’t try to pull away. “It was an accident.”

“Who caused the accident?”

“Uhm, me? I guess?” Peter bites his bottom lip, sheepishly. “I was careless in a lab and I got bit by a radioactive spider.”

“A…” Bucky starts, then stops, dropping the boy’s wrist from his hand. He leans back, gaping and unable to help it. Of all the things he expected this runt to say, that was not one of them.

Christ. Being a top secret Hydra agent would've been more fucking believable.

“You—” Bucky tries again, then ducks his head, pinching the bridge of his nose with his metal hand, feeling the tickle of a headache beginning to serpentine its way up. “Okay,” he says, “well, that explains the name, I guess.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then Bucky feels the pressure of something moving against his metal hand. He pulls it away from his face, sees the kid running his fingers over the back of his palm, tracing up and down each digit in wonderment and reverence.

“Who are you?” Peter asks, gently.

Bucky doesn’t say anything right away, a little taken aback by the sight of this kid mapping out every inch of his hand like it’s a work of art. If only he knew what a weapon it really is, the things he’d done with it. He pulls his hand away, and Peter looks back up at his face.

“Bucky,” he says.

Peter beams, and it’s that same Coney Island smile, overwhelming in its intensity. There’s something almost familiar about being looked at like that, but Bucky can’t remember where from.

“Nice to meet you, Bucky,” Peter laughs, and then his expression falls, eyes darting upward in frantic shock. “Oh, crap! The pasta!” he cries, practically leaping over Bucky to rush to the kitchen.

Bucky listens to the “Ouch, ouch, ouch!” of Peter trying desperately to stop the pot from boiling over with his bare hands, and can’t help the disbelieving grin that stretches across his face, head lowering to try and hide his amusement, though Peter isn’t even there to see it.

 

Somehow, they manage to save dinner, and Bucky finds himself feeling pleasantly confused, sitting next to the kid on his shitty mattress, as they pick away at their mismatched plates of food.

Gatorade, it turns out, is pretty damn good. Bucky hummed appreciatively when he took his first sip, and Peter grinned at him in that “I told you you’d like it” sort of way. Bucky had half a mind to flick him for it, the little punk.

The noodles are a little too floppy and the vegetables aren’t cut quite small enough to get cooked all the way through, but Bucky doesn’t mind, and neither does Peter, who finishes his entire plate so fast that Bucky wonders if he even tasted any of it.

Plates empty and piled next to them, they sit comfortably, sharing the box of cookies and Gatorade, Peter rambling on the entire time.

“So I lifted my hand like Iron Man, right, like I was gonna shoot a blast out of my palm and take him down, but then a blast actually appeared! And then Iron Man was there, in his suit and everything, and he said, ‘Nice work, kid’ and then took off! It was the best moment of my entire life.”

“And this was before you got your powers?”

“Oh yeah,” Peter laughs. “This was at the Stark Expo, years ago. I was pretty little back then.”

Bucky huffs. “Haven’t gained a sense of self-preservation in all those years, huh?”

Peter grins, but his face burns red in embarrassment. “I guess not.”

“At least you have super-healing now,” Bucky says, then adds, almost absentmindedly, “I wonder what he would think if he knew you actually grew up to start fighting crime.”

Peter’s eyes widen until they almost bulge out of his head, a mix of excitement and alarm. “I don’t even know what I would do,” Peter says. “He’s, like, my idol. But I guess—I mean, like—it’s not like he’d even recognize me. It was years ago and—and I had that mask on…”

He leans back, a whimsical smile gracing his features. His tone is light, airy, totally wistful. “Aw man, if he did, though? That’d be awesome. That’d be the new best day of my life, easy. No contest.”

The kid straightens up after a minute, resting his elbows on his knees again. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not doing this so I can, like, meet the Avengers or anything. I mean that’d—that’d be amazing, but—I feel like, with what I can do, I’m obligated to try and help people, you know?”

A somewhat faraway look crosses Peter’s face then, his smile faltering. It lasts for a moment, but then he chuckles, shaking his head avertedly. “Though I guess, it all totally would have been a waste if you hadn’t saved me the other night, huh?”

Bucky hums, agreeing. “Hard to bounce back from a bullet in the head, kid, even with your healing abilities. If you want my advice, next time, don’t freeze up.”

“I guess I just…” Peter says, pausing to reconsider his words, “…got scared.”

“You had a gun pointed in your face. If you didn’t get scared, you’d be an even bigger mutant.”

Peter laughs, looking over at Bucky with mock-indignation on his face. “Thanks,” he says, sarcastically, though he giggles again.

Bucky shrugs, not letting the smile that’s threatening to appear show.

“It’s getting late,” the kid bends down, grabbing their plates, “I should, uhm, I should go,” he says, taking them over to the sink. Bucky watches him rinse them off, then says, “Don’t bother. You brought dinner, I can clean up.”

“You had to do most of the cooking though,” Peter says, smiling shyly, “but okay. I’d stay and help, but the longer I do, the less time I’ll have to patrol, so…”

“You do that every night?”

Peter nods, fidgeting with the sleeves of his hoodie. “Yeah, well, I mean—crime’s not gonna take a break just because I do, right?”

He has a point, but the irrationally over-concerned part of Bucky pipes up to remind him that Peter is a kid—a small kid. Superpowers or no, the deeply flawed part of him protests that Peter has no business trying to fight anyone, let alone criminals with guns, who won’t hesitate to shoot a tiny punk in pajamas, even if he is only fourteen.

It’s none of his business. Just like it wasn’t any of his business the other night, or all the other times a runt with no common sense tried to take on more than they could handle.

But it seems to be a universal truth of those runts, that there’s an inherent goodness inside each one of them, and Peter, apparently, is no exception.

This kid isn’t the only one who can’t sit back and do nothing.

“Hang on a second,” Bucky says, stalling Peter at the door as he slips his shoes on. Bucky heads to the bathroom and roots around in the medicine cabinet, finding the half-assed first aid kit he’d thrown together all those months ago.

He comes back out and holds his hand out to Peter. “Here,” he says. “Careful, it’s sharp.”

Peter, curious, holds his palms up, and blinks confusedly when Bucky places the small sewing needle in his hands.

“Uhm?”

“Keep this in your sleeve,” Bucky says. “Or in one of your gloves, if you can sew it in so that it won’t constantly prick you. Just make sure you can touch your finger to it in a heartbeat.”

“How come?” Peter asks, lifting the needle like he’s never seen one before.

“This is how you learn not to freeze,” says Bucky, taking the needle and holding it up in front of the kid’s face. “The next time your mind blanks out like that and you can’t move, poke yourself with this. Lightly, but enough that it hurts. The pain will release the flood of adrenaline you need to get yourself moving.”

He goes to set it back down, Peter lifting his hand to take it. “You need it to be somewhere on your outfit that you can reflexively pierce yourself with it almost absentmindedly. Think you can do that?”

The question snaps Peter out of his little daze, and he nods, enthusiastically. “Yeah, totally! That’s really smart!”

Peter pulls his shabby, old wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans and slides the needle into it.

“Thanks, Bucky,” he says, righting himself again. “Uhm, I had a lot of fun. Sorry I bled all over your bathroom and almost flooded your kitchen with pasta water.”

“Don’t sweat it, kid,” Bucky says, surprised with himself when he realizes he means it. “Dinner was good.”

“Yeah,” Peter agrees.

A moment passes, and then it stretches on. Bucky waits, because it’s obvious there’s something else the kid wants to say, but when he doesn’t, Bucky sighs, putting his metal hand on his hip.

“Spit it out.”

“Huh?”

Bucky frowns. “You’re still here for a reason, so out with it.”

Peter’s gaze lowers to the floor, and Bucky’s momentarily taken aback by the utterly humiliated look that passes on the boy’s face, a cross between petrified and completely ashamed.

“Oh, God,” Bucky groans. “You actually are crushing on me, aren’t you?”

“No!” Peter says, almost loud enough to be a scream. His face turns the darkest red Bucky’s seen so far, covering every inch of his exposed skin and creeping down his neck below his hoodie. He looks up at Bucky utterly mortified, then sees the smirk that Bucky can’t wipe from his face, and his embarrassment ebbs away into an unimpressed glare. “Jerk.”

“Hey,” Bucky teases with a shrug, still smirking, “I’m going to assume that’s what you’re blushing about until you tell me otherwise.”

A childish pout settles on Peter’s face, but then he lowers his eyes to the floor again, taking a big, deep breath. “Well… uhm…” He rustles his sleeves again, bites his bottom lip, then finally seems to steel himself. “I don’t wanna be, like, pushy or anything, and—I-I understand if you don’t want to, really, I totally get it, but, uhm… well, I—I was just thinking, y’know, maybe we could do this again?”

Peter looks up, makes the briefest eye contact with him, and then lowers his gaze again.

“I don’t really have anyone I can talk to about this stuff with,” the kid finally confesses. “Nobody knows about it, ‘cept you. And I, uhh—I could bring dinner again sometimes? I know I can’t cook, like, at all, but I can help? Or try, anyway?”

Finally the kid looks up at his face and holds his eyes steady, bracing himself for Bucky’s response. He tries his best to look nonchalant, but fails miserably—Bucky can plainly see the tension around his eyes, in his jaw, the quivering of his lips as he forces his mouth to stay straight.

Bucky wants to sigh. This had been the last thing he’d wanted. And sure, with an inconsistent income, money’s tight and food is, more often than not, a luxury, but that doesn’t mean he’s thrilled by the idea of some kid spending his lunch money on buying him dinner.

But he realizes, that’s not what Peter’s asking for, not really. The other night, he’d asked him to teach him how to fight. He’d shown up with a bag of food, unannounced, attempted to cook for him even though he has no business being in a kitchen ever, and then stayed long after the food was done, eating cookies on an old lumpy mattress with some guy he doesn’t even know.

Pre-Hydra Bucky Barnes probably spent time with people just for the sake of doing so all the time, but post-Hydra Bucky never has, not once. This little stint is the first time Bucky has ever spent time with someone just for company.

It hadn’t been so bad, when he really thinks about it.

“I don’t see why you would want to,” Bucky sighs, “but yeah, kid, we can do it again.”

The smile that breaks over the kid’s face hits him right in the chest, brightening the room.

Yeah, it isn’t so bad.

Notes:

Hey guys! Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed the first chapter of this new story. I'm super excited for this one; it's going to be roughly 100k words of pure, fluffy Dad!Bucky & Son!Peter goodness, spiced with romance and some Iron Man hero worship.

Much love to you all!