Chapter Text
Peter checked that his tie was on straight, and jacket’s shoulders were level. The cuff of his trousers was a decent length and there was nothing that suggested this was not a custom-made suit. Mr. Stark had never personally cared if his clothes were off-rack or designer creations, but he had a fine appreciation of how those things influenced what people thought. Stark Industries had sent the suit over yesterday still warm from pressing. With Aunt May’s door shut, it was hard to make out the exact color in the dim hallway, but that hardly mattered.
Five years is a long time not to see your own reflection. It was mostly as he remembered, a little taller, a little leaner. There were thick callous on his hands and feet where he was used to having friction burns. The manbun was an interesting change it made him look older, maybe a bit sinister. He was still considering a haircut, but right now a little bit of solidarity where it was deserved was more important.
His new phone alerted him that his ride had arrived, without backward a glance Peter left the apartment.
The graveside service was on the Mansion grounds. Howard and Maria were buried here, as were Maria’s parents. There had been a public memorial yesterday for the dignitaries and brown-noses. Peter hadn’t gone, even MS. Potts had stayed the bare minimum of time. The Press had been surprisingly gracious. After all, five days ago 50% of the world’s population had been missing and presumed dead. To have the lost sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters returned at the snap of a finger had made an impression, at least temporarily.
The service was modest and private, their collective loss too painful to tolerate observers or questions. With so few of the Avengers on their feet, Peter was pressed into service as a pall bearer a duty he wouldn’t shirk, but once the casket was lowered, he faded back to the margins. He’d never been good in crowds and post spider bite, even less so. If he had cried himself to sleep every night for the past week that was no one’s business. They were all suffering and if he couldn’t offer comfort to the grieving, at very least he wasn’t going to be a distraction.
This was his tribe; these men and women, united by commitment to the greater good. It was horrible, and it was amazing. Spider senses can be a bitch though. Even in a group as small as twenty people, without his suit’s buffers the sensory input verged on overwhelming. MS. Potts was pretty much the center of attention. Her participation and the ferocity in the last battle had surprised many, including Peter. Mr. Stark said “she was an absolute beast in the boardroom” so maybe it made sense that she had abandoned business attire for flying armor and gone to war beside her husband.
Today she wore simple black her waist length hair loose over a jacket, long strong legs elegant in tailored trousers. With Rhodes and Hogan flanking her progress, she was every inch the warrior queen. The fires of her grief carefully banked while she comforted those mourning her husband.
Aunt May always said “funerals are for those left behind”. He wasn’t sure how that could be true when all he wanted to do was wail to the heavens and could not because it would upset other people. Other people -- other people were desolated by this same lose and maybe hanging on to their composure by threads as thin as his. Harley for instance standing well back from the group hovering in the shadows of the rustic chapel. Or Captain Rogers who was no where to be seen though Peter knew he was here with the same Spidey sense that identified Sargent Barns pacing among the cedars or Dr. Banner where he stood by the graveside.
It was the schism between Rogers and Barns that had been the final lever in Peter’s decision to attend. An Iron Man fanboy through and through, Peter hadn’t thought twice about siding with Mr. Stark in Brussels. However, watching the way those two were together had softened his opinion, and it nearly broke his gay-boy heart when Rogers came back to the present day old and withered, saying he had stayed in the past to be with his one-true-love.
After all of Rogers' efforts to free Barns, first from Hydra, then the U. S. military, to just abandon him with such a callous dismissal was every kind of wrong. So wrong, but what did Peter think he was going to do about it.
Captain Rogers appeared in the chapel doorway looking like a wraith in some midnight thriller. He had been Mr. Stark’s friend once; maybe the haggard features reflected regrets and amends that could never be made. The brisk pace to meet the new widow indicated some urgency and Peter steeled himself for a new emergency or catastrophic revelation.
“Ms. Potts, can I have a word with you?”
Potts seemed to brace herself, “absolutely. Is there something you need Captain Rogers?”
“Not me, I got my second chance. Bucky though, he’s alone again and . . .”
Barns’ paused his pacing. Whether he could hear Cap clearly, Peter didn’t know enough about the super-soldier’s enhanced senses, to guess.
“And without you he may fall apart” she finished Roger’s sentence.
“Something like that.” Rogers faced her squarely, head up and shoulders back. Peter had seen it before when the Cap thought he was doing the right thing.
“Cheeky bugger.” Hogan mutter, and Peter couldn’t agree more.
“Captain, a lot has happened” Ms. Potts said calmly. “And we are all struggling, but it’s my husband we buried today” she said with a catch in her voice. “So kindly clean up your own mess.”
She stepped into Rogers space as if he wasn't there. Rhodes and Hogan closed in like they were going to physically remove the Captain from her path, but Rogers hung his head and stepped aside.
Her trajectory went right past Peter, and he didn’t have a clue what to say but she passed him without a glance. Hogan and Rhodes were behind her and Peter stepped aside to keep from being trampled on.
Harley had faded back into the shadows. The remaining people were mostly employees of Stark Industries and former Shield agents. Captain Rogers hadn’t moved, though he seemed to be observing the crowd. Sargent Barns stood in the sunlight and was watching Rogers. It took a moment before Peter clocked the captain’s line of sight was like the needle of a compass, it’s orientation always where his friend was not.
“Oh hell no. Hell the fuck no!” Peter growled. Ever since Rogers had passed his shield on to Sam, he had wondered how Rogers was going to make amends to his partner. If this was it Peter wasn’t onboard.
Aunt May’s adage about funerals, comforting the survivors came to mind and Peter was beside the Winter Soldier in a second. “Sargent Barns, can you give me a ride back to Brooklyn?”
“Yeah, but I thought you would be riding in the Limousine?”
Glancing back to where Hogan and Rhodes were disappearing into the landscaping. “I think that ship may have sailed.”
“You don’t want to ride with Cap?” Peter shook his head.
“Aunt May said if you can’t say anything nice, come sit with me.” Barn’s tight look of worry lifted in a strained smile.
“Then, lets blow this pop-stand.”
Sargent Barn’s rental was a sedate gray SUV that wouldn’t be out of place at any soccer field or supermarket in the country. Dressed in funeral black no one would guess the driver was an almost mythical assassin.
Harley was still lurking. Since they had ridden together in the limo and the teenager hadn’t said three words to Peter, he wasn’t feeling any special kinship.
“Who’s that kid?” Barns asked.
“Harley Keener, he's another protege.”
“Protege?”
“Yeah, there’s a story but it doesn’t have anything to do with us.” Barns frowned but let that stand.
Peter had seen video footage of the chase through Brussels and made sure to fasten his seatbelts securely, but Barns negotiated the parking lot at an almost grandmotherly pace. The super soldier met Peter’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “The primary objective of any spy is to be unnoticed.”
The Stark Mansion was in Connecticut and bordered by a State park on on side and on the remaining three by other estates, so it was most of an hour before they made it to the turnpike toward Brooklyn. It had been an awful week and Peter didn’t think Barns needed to be babbled at.
“What did Steve say to MS. Potts that pissed her off so bad?” Barns asked.
Okay, maybe he was wrong. “You didn’t hear? I mean your enhanced and I don’t know where your limits are.”
“Ditto” Barnes said, “but Steve knows how to pitch his voice below the threshold of my hearing.”
“But you could hear Ms. Potts?”
“Yes.” Barns gave Peter a speculative look “she’s not angry with you?”
“Not specifically.” Peter knew not to take the incident personally “but I wouldn’t want to tempt fate at the moment.”
“So, what did Steve say?”
They were getting into deep waters now. “He’s worried about you.”
Barns nodded. “Anything specific?”
“Just that you’re alone again.”
“Stupid punk!” Barns’ aura crackled with anger, startling Peter. The super-soldier noticed younger man flinch “not you Peter.” Putting his eyes back on the traffic “I keep forgetting you’re not a normal kid.”
“Sargent Barns, I’m not a kid at all.” The condescending amusement on the hero's face tipped Peter into an argument he had already rehearsed. “It’s been five years. Do I look the same as in Wakanda? Do you? I’m 20 years old and that’s not some trick of the calendar.” Peter thought about the other thing and tried to keep his heart rate and breathing from unmasking his real feelings.
“Okay” Barns said. “There maybe something to that. Gods know the powers that be are beside themselves trying to sort it out. But you’re still a kid even if you aren’t still jailbait.” There was a warmth in Barns’ voice that Peter had never heard before, and something about his aura that made Peter’s body tingle. “Steve is going to shit a brick.”
“Yeah, well he should have thought about that before.”
“You seem to be taking his defection very personally.”
Peter knew he was going to have to explain this properly. “He was Captain America, everyone looked up to him including Mr. Stark.” The memory of Tony’s broken body being returned to New York from Siberia still made Peter nauseous. “But Steve turned his back on all of that to rescue you. Not that you didn’t deserve rescuing” Peter added. “But then he abandoned you to go back in time and have the ‘love of his life’. Now he wants to organize everybody, so he doesn’t feel guilty. That’s not okay!”
“Wow” Barns said. Those are a lot of feelings. Would it make you feel better to learn he was never my lover?”
“What?”
“We weren’t lovers. I know people thought so before, and more think so now but it wasn’t true.”
“But the way he practically spit in the eye of every homophobe that crawled out of the woodwork . . .”
“That was Steve defending his best friend” Barns said with a roughness in his voice, “and for the record, Steve was very proud of making things better for queer people all around.”
“But you loved him.”
“Like he hung the moon and the stars.”
“He didn’t love you back” Peter felt crushed. At the same-time he felt like he could fly. “How did he keep his hands off of you?”.
“He managed to keep his hands off of you.” Peter blinked, Barns’ voice was suggestive, and he reached around to rest his hand on the nape of Peter’s neck.
Peter caught his breath, and then needed to verify. “But you want to touch me?”
“Oh yes – I want to touch you.” His fingers began to wrestle with the elastic tie holding Peter’s hair in place. “I have a question though.”
Peter’s brain fizzed incoherently for a few seconds before remembering they were having a conversation “What, what do you want to know?”
“How is all that hair going to fit under your cowl?”
“You don’t like it?”
“I like it fine, but it might kill the secret identity.”
“I’m not sure that secret is still a secret, or if I need to keep it. I signed the accords after Brussels and I am not a minor anymore.”
“What about college? You had a scholarship I think.”
“Mr. Stark offered one.” The loss of the man who had so utterly changed his future returned like a punch in the gut. “I don’t know. It doesn’t seem right to ask.”
“I get it, but you will have to ask. Stark wouldn’t want you to ruin your future” he withdrew the hand with a lingering feather light touch, but Peter turned and quickly caught it back, bringing it to his lips. Barns shivered. Spidey senses registered the quickening pulse and a change in the harmonics of the energy field around his body.
“Shouldn’t I take you to dinner first?”
“Start treating me like a girl and you won’t survive the night.”
“Not hungry?” Barns quick leer made Peter’s heart jump.
“I could murder a corndog” he said around the lump in his throat.