Chapter Text
The night is cold. Ice on the ground and frost in the air. A chill that rattles his bones when the wind changes. He’s spent most of the day guiding elderly people across the street and ensuring the homeless have enough blankets to not freeze to death. It’s been a long day. Long and cold. Not that he would change anything. No lectures today and so Spider-Man has been increasingly active.
His suit doesn’t have a heater anymore and he’s vaguely aware of his tingle (he knows it’s a sense, that’s what the other Peters told him, but he likes to remember May--) that lets him know, as the temperature continues to drop, how careful he needs to be. Being warm-blooded hasn’t offset the physiological response to curl up and sleep, waiting for the cold to leave. A spider response he cannot escape even with being human. Still, he’s doing a fine job ignoring it, if he says so himself.
In fact, the cold helps. Means he has to think of something other than the shitshow that his life has become. Means the pain is worth something because it’s on his skin, in his lungs, and not just in his head. So yeah, he would say the cold is useful in that regard. Especially when he finally hangs the suit up and burrows under shitty covers and finally sleeps without dreaming of how much of a fuck-up he is. Since the temperature decided to drop, he hasn’t dreamt at all. He assumes this is what peace is.
A tingle.
He stretches, bones cracking and muscles flexing. The cold is unfortunately becoming too cold so this will have to be his last job of the night unless there’s an emergency. As much as he likes the feeling, he can’t risk getting caught passed out in the snow. Shudders at the idea of a stranger finding him and unmasking him.
Jumping and swinging across buildings - and no matter what’s happened, what is happening, nothing will ever beat that weightlessness he gets when he can swing - he manoeuvres to sit atop a fire escape ladder railing. Silently. Peering down, he takes note of a man walking down the alley and the two figures following him at a more sedate pace.
Could be normal, Peter thinks, but his tingle is to be trusted.
He watches. Waits. Leaning further around so his body is contorted in a way that allows him to fully see what is happening. He thinks, if he could see himself, it would be an unnerving sight but thankfully, he cannot see himself, and no-one else can.
Then the man suddenly stops. Seems to sigh. “Look,” he grumbles out and Peter looks away from the pair to the man because that voice is quite familiar. “I really wouldn’t do this, if I were you.”
The pair don’t stop advancing, instead, they pick up the pace. “Oh yeah?” One of them asks. “Why’s that, man? ‘Cause where I’m standing, it’s two against one.”
“Fuck’s sake.” The man who is quite possibly—
A metal hand catches a punch, flips the perpetrator, ducks under the other’s sloppy punch - seriously who is teaching these thugs? Bad form and no force - and swipes the legs out from him. The first struggles to a stand, grabs the other’s jacket hood and yanks him back. Together, they stare in what can only be dawning horror. Peter’s lips twitch and he shifts himself on the railing so he can see what happens next.
“Go on then,” the fucking Winter Soldier sighs. “Scram.”
The would-be robbers scram.
Peters impressed.
Then again, this is the fucking Winter Soldier. After the airport debacle, Peter did his research through the leaked S.H.I.E.L.D. files. Over two dozen assassinations recorded over the span of fifty years. He was revered and feared, from what Peter could read. Crazy stuff—
Tingle.
“That includes you, too.”
Peter slowly raises his gaze and finds himself trapped under the full force of a sniper’s eyes. Well, fuck.
“Uh.” Peter blinks, swallows. “I’m not with those guys.”
Winter Soldier snorts. “I gathered. Are you upside down?”
“From where I’m standing, you’re the one upside down.” Peter fires back and then immediately regrets his life choices because he cannot be back talking the Winter Soldier, Soviet spy and assassin. Remembering who he is dealing with, he pulls himself back onto the railing, pushing his weight down so the Winter Soldier can hear the creak, crouching down so he looks to be more stable. He has found that normal people aren’t able to balance the way he can, make no noise like he can, and when they see that, it tends to freak them out.
Once again, Winter Soldier snorts. “Spider-Man right?” He says, casually, like this totally isn’t breaking Peter’s brain. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Well, you know,” Peter says with a shrug, that’s way calmer than he’s feeling. You know, he says, as if the man before him has any idea of what Peter’s life has become. “Fighting crime, saving lives. Same as you, I guess, but we don’t run in the same circles.” He pauses and backtracks, lifts a hand and waves it around frantically. “Not that we did before! I’m saying— like we fought— I mean technically I beat you up— oh my god, I’m so sorry, I’m going to stop talking now.”
He pushes himself back – an instinct screaming for him to be further away from a threat – so he’s crouched on the side of the wall, facing down, instead of crouched on the railing. The cold makes him shiver, or maybe that’s the fear that’s steadily building, because he’s mouthing off to a man that could quite easily snap his neck.
Peter really needs to go back in his life and see where it all went wrong. He wonders how far back he could go. Maybe before even Uncle Ben--
Winter Soldier huffs a laugh, that sounds like it’s being forced past his lips. “Easy, kid,” he says and then pauses because Peter has gone deadly still. “Or not a kid,” he carries on with a shrug. Playing casual. “I remember you sounded young at the airport.”
Peter swallows. Something rises in the back of his skull, not unlike his tingle, but something darker, something that hisses and demands blood. He has felt it before. A few times before. When rubble pressed against his body and the pressure began to crush his body; when a simple man stood before him and threatened him with a gift freely given; when a man took Aunt May from him. Each time, it crawled in the corner of his mind and hissed for more, for him to better, to be stronger, to be vicious.
The Winter Soldier is not threatening him.
He knows that because those sniper eyes have lost their keen focus, and his hands, both human and metal, hand limply at his side. He’s not even sweating, his heart rate slow, his breathing even.
The Winter Soldier is not trying to hurt him.
The comment is innocuous. A way to build connection, maybe, citing how they met before. A way to ease the tension Peter’s running mouth created. He did not intend to make Peter uncomfortable.
But that crawling creature in his skull is defensive regardless. The comment said too casually, and hitting too close to home.
Anyone could be on these streets. Anyone with a grudge or something stronger. Anyone could hear that Spider-Man is nothing but a— a child. Without malice, Winter Soldier has easily offered something no one knows. Or if they do, it’s but rumours.
Before, when his secret identity was exploited, he had family and friends to rely on.
Now, he has nothing.
“Well,” Peter finds himself saying when the silence stretches out and those blue eyes swing back to him. His voice colder than the snow the man stands in. His body remaining unnaturally still. He has to physically force himself to move, to be less unnerving. Webs latching onto the metal, he hops down onto the metal, shifting his weight just enough to produce a sound. After all, sudden movements without sound around brainwashed ex-assassins seems like a bad play. “Times change.”
Winter Solder has a look in his eyes now, his heart rate increasing slightly. Peter has done something that has left the ex-assassin somewhat alarmed. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “They do.”
“Be safe,” Peter says and is webbing away before the man can reply.
The hiss still remains in his skull and so Peter calls his patrol short, crossing the skyline in seconds and sliding back through his window into his room. Frost curls around the sill and his entire flat is freezing but Peter simply closes the window, strips off the suit, throws on a thrift store shirt and baggy sweatpants and burrows into his bed. The pipes creak and his upstairs neighbours are fighting again and none of his items are his because Peter Parker technically does not exist, but the blankets cover him, and the pillow is soft and that is enough.
For tonight, that is enough.
For a while now, it has been enough.
(He sits in his flat, staring down at the coffee he made himself that has most definitely gone cold. Yet he can’t bring himself to grab for it. Can’t make himself drink it. He made it so he wouldn’t sleep tonight but it seems he won’t even need it.
Not with how loud his thoughts are.
Usually, he would handle it by himself. Or he would consult a more informed source. Or he would go snooping. However, the boy was too quick to follow and clearly had more skills under his disposal than just his ability to stick on the walls. Afterall, he remembers their fight. Even if that whole week is somewhat hazy from his brief stint in the chair by Zemo—
He swallows. Shaking off those unhappy thoughts, he focuses back on what he can remember.
On Ironman’s side. Extremely strong. Voice, young and masculine. Fighting style easy enough to spot, so no formal training, but quick and dirty. Fast and nimble. Exactly like the spider his code-name was probably created because of. Which leaves him to wonder just how spider-y the kid is, and then pauses because that opens up his thoughts to wondering how young the boy is, and just what powers he could have.
He’s dialling a number without really thinking about it. It’s not the number he would usually call but that number is for a woman long dead. Dead without Bucky able to tell her—
“Wilson.” Sam’s voice cuts through the sudden headache. He sounds tired.
“Sam.” Bucky starts. Stops. Doesn’t know how to ask if he remembers the boy they fought at the airport without bringing attention to a time Sam probably doesn’t want to think about.
For fuck’s sake Barnes, he’s Captain America now, he doesn’t need your shit.
And somewhere, in the back of his mind, he remembers a different man in that suit. Wide shoulders and golden hair. He remembers blood on his temple and metal in his mouth and the smile he gave to the man when he looked because he didn’t need to know that Bucky walked those miles simply because he could not falter. He could not be the reason for Captain America’s failure. For his frown. Not when that man was—
Swallowing, he says with every bit of training he picked up from watching the Black Widow’s, “Saw a pigeon today. Wondered if you knew him.”
Sam barks a laugh. “Oh, fuck off, Buck,” he says, voice dripping amusement, and hangs up the phone.
Bucky nods to himself. Right. This is a mission for him and him alone. With that thought, he switches the coffee machine back on, pours his now-cold coffee down the sink, and opens his laptop. Seems he needs to research spiders. Seems he needs to find some things out about a certain spider boy.)