Chapter Text
Being intoxicated is like lucid dreaming; currently, Peter is trapped in a nightmare. He coughs, blood spurting from his lips and on to the ground against his cheek. Asphalt. Asphalt. He’s pressed against the street, sideways. A car should not be sideways and yet-
Fuck shit damn bitch cunt fuck.
This is a crash, a legit fucking car crash, and Peter is on his side, bleeding from God knows how many cuts and MJ-
Peter does his best to turn, to get a good look and make sure she’s okay. But no, wait. The car is empty.
For a split second, he panics, wondering if Michelle has been ejected from the car, until he remembers earlier-
“I’m getting out of the fucking car.”
“Don’t, come on, you know--”
“I’m getting out of the fucking car right fucking now. Stop the car. Stop the car. Stop the car.”
He’d stopped. She’d departed, slammed the door, flipped him off.
“Fuck you,” she’d said, muffled.
“Yeah, fuck you too.”
Blessing in disguise, he figures. She’ll thank him later, if in fact, he’s around to thank.
At the moment, he is very, very high, and needs to get somewhere to heal. No hospitals, can’t do that, unless he wants to get arrested for a DUI. He peels himself up from the bloody asphalt and stands, wobbling.
He pauses, wavers, and-
“Fuck!” He yells, guttural. He kicks the crumpled car and it skids across the pavement into the ditch. Peter wipes his bloody cheeks and thinks for a moment before he slides down the ditch to finish the job. He figures, if he hides it far enough in the woods, he’ll at least be buying himself some time.
The car whines as he lugs it between two well-placed evergreens. He leaves it somewhere covered in the brush, and treks back to the road to call an Uber.
Thankfully, the driver remains silent save the initial “Peter?”
“Yep.”
The boy falls asleep in the back seat, blood dripping from his forehead to his neck. There’s a new Shawn Mendes song on the radio. The driver sings along, off-key.
At this moment, if Peter were thinking clearly, he would likely be thinking about Tony. Wondering what he would think if he saw him now. What he would say, how he would confront him. How he would try his best to fix what Peter swears is not broken. These are the thoughts that cross his mind, more often than he’d like. Would Tony be proud of him? Ashamed? Would he even care? And that pain, the agony in the question of adoration and love, used to be the worst feeling he could have. But as time has passed, the pain is not the worst thing. This is it. The numbness. The lack of worry, an uncaring dismissal of something he once held so dear. This is his worst moment. He has done worse, said worse, but this- this as a whole, is the worst person he could be. It breaks him as he sleeps. He doesn’t have any dreams.
The next morning, Peter wakes up on the front lawn of- he recognizes this place. It takes him a moment to recognize, the decorations new, changed from last Halloween to this New Years. Blades of grass, dewy, lead to wooden planks that compose a rustic home, broad and welcoming. Distorting the picture of country-land bliss is a man, elbows on his knees as he squats. He scratches his beard, looking at Peter with pity and frustration.
“Looking rough, Queens.” his lips quirk up. “Wanna follow me inside?”
Peter rolls over and looks at him, upside down. “You look worse, Barnes. Like absolute shit.”
Barnes playfully slaps Peter’s face, and it stings, so he recoils.
“Come inside, brat.”
Peter sits in a leather armchair as a man with perfect skin applies creams to his cuts.
Barnes lays on the couch, finishing up a text and sending it. When he finishes, he looks up to see Peter wincing.
“It might hurt, but it’s worth it. Aren’t you supposed to heal?”
Peter swallows the pain and stills his face as the man continues.
“Usually I do.”
“Maybe its karma. Maybe you only heal if you deserve to.”
“Fuck you.”
“Yeah, right back at you.” He pauses, and his grin fades.
“What are you doing all the way out here, kid?”
“I’m not a kid.”
The man finishes applying antiseptics, and departs.
“Who is that?”
“That’s Avinn. Home nurse. For cranky ass, you know. I asked you the question.”
“I was going on a road trip.”
Barnes rolls his eyes.
“Why?”
“How’s he doing?” Peter gestures towards the hall, the room at the end of it. Barnes knows the one.
“Kid-”
“I’m 20.”
“I’ve got a hundred years on you, so I think I’ve earned the right to call you that. And I asked you a question.”
Peter swallows. They’re both playing a game of avoidance.
“He’s doing okay,” he admits, slowly, hesitantly. “Most days, at least. And we have help. Do you?”
Peter shrugs. There was a time when he could honestly answer ‘yes’, but at this point, will Barnes even tell the difference? But something about lying to him feels wrong.
“No, not really. But I don’t really need that.” his throat hurts, tightening. “Not like him.”
And they embrace the silence that follows. He’s right, he doesn’t need the same all around care that… well, that Steve does. Neither of them likes talking about it much.
They are interrupted by a sharp wail down the hall, thick and curved, a scream of terror. Barnes shoots up.
“Steve?” he calls, racing to him. Peter stays in the armchair, eavesdropping without intending to through the walls.
“What are you doing up?”
“I couldn’t leave her.”
Steve’s voice is rigid, wobbled. He sounds like a child, if it wasn’t for the ripple of age that rips through his tambor every time he gets above a certain volume.
“I know, Steve.”
“Because we have a date.”
“I know, Steve.”
Peter pretends he can’t hear Barnes’s voice wobble, the support beams of his strength wavering in the wind of Steve’s breakdowns.
He pretends he can’t hear Barnes pick up the old man and set him back down again in bed, the crunch of fragile bones and joints, shifting, the sag of the mattress, the creaking of springs. He pretends he can’t hear the tenderness, the way Barnes sets him down with all peace and gentleness of handling something as breakable an eggshell, as explosive as dynamite.
Peter pretends because he’s used to pretending by now. It’s almost easy.
When Barnes returns, it's almost as if nothing has happened.
“He okay?” asks Peter.
Barnes masks his pain behind a half-smile. “Yeah, he’s good.”
Peter breathes in through his nose, out through his mouth.
“So do you have a guest room?”
Peter catches a glimpse of the room at the end of the hall as he passes, the shadow of a shape under a knitted blanket, black and white portraits on the wall. Peggy Carter. A young Barnes. Two children.
Barnes gives him several blankets and some neosporin to keep applying to the cuts.
“After you rest up, we’re gonna talk about this.”
“We don’t need to.”
Barnes pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Yeah, but we do. You’re my responsibility, eh?”
Peter rolls his eyes. “I’m my own responsibility now.”
Barnes laughs, leans against the threshold of the door. Peter sits down on the guest bed and leans against a pillow.
“Yeah? And how is that going for you?”
Peter takes the pillow and tosses it at Barnes’s chest.
“It’s going fine.”
Peter has made a grave mistake in underestimating Barnes’s strength. The pillow returns so quickly that he wonders if Barnes has some boomerang power, at a speed that singes his hair as it passes. It skims his ear and slams against the wall behind him, cracking a patch in the drywall. The boy jumps back and rubs the side of his head, glances back at the broken wall behind him.
“What the fuck, James?”
“Don’t throw pillows at me.”
Barnes vanishes from the threshold only to duck back in and add one last parting thought. “We’re still talking about this later.”
He shuts the door behind him.
Peter groans and leans back on the mattress, smothering himself in the remaining pillow for a moment as he gathers his thoughts. For all the time Tony had invested in planning an intricate future for Peter, this seems to be an awfully large lapse in judgement.
This isn't the first time Peter has shown up randomly on his front lawn. Two years ago, the same thing happened. Then, it was alcohol poisoning. The time last year, a bit less severe but still, an imposition in intoxication, it was a mix of edibles, Monster Energy, and a little bit of Coke. It doesn't really matter the substance, it usually goes about the same. He arrives. He stays a few nights. He leaves.
Spider-Man inexplicably disappeared after Parker’s identity was revealed on a live broadcast- one that was later recounted and ‘proven false’, no doubt, the work SHIELD, or at least, what is left of it. It was too dangerous to continue on as the masked vigilante, according to his Aunt, at the time. Regardless of any doubts the public still may have about the identity of the hero, people were still quite angry at Spider-Man for the fiasco in Europe. Of course it had had an effect on the boy as he grew, and the city sorely took a beating in the absence of their webbed rescuer.
No, this isn’t the first time, but it certainly seems the worst. Previously, Peter had never shown up this bruised and beaten, and this isn’t Bucky’s first rodeo- he knows what automobile accidents look like and what they leave behind. And when Peter shows at his house, it’s a sign, not of wanting help, but of needing a safe haven. Which makes Bucky think- is Peter in trouble?
But there are more important things to see to currently. Steve is beginning to have bed-sores, and he likely needs an extra nurse as the workload is getting too hard on Avinn (although the man would never say any such thing.) And the dementia is progressing. Peggy had it, and it wasn’t quite this severe; she eventually passed in her sleep of natural causes before it had completely taken over. Steve, however, is still keeping up the fight on a physical level, but has given way to the terrors and trials and tribulations of his illness. Most days, Steve doesn’t know him, or at the very least, confuses him for somebody else. But there are good days, too. This is not one of them.
Peter’s sleeping now, so Bucky figures it's a good time to go through the journal. After ensuring that Avinn has Steve all taken care of, Barnes returns to his bedroom. Light peers in through the window, blanketing his bed in afternoon sunshine. He lays down, gets comfortable, and pulls the small leather booklet from inside his pillowcase. He traces the cover, the star at the center.
He pulls it open gently.
“Aleksandar Balasko,” He swallows. “April tenth, 1973.”
He prays, silently, then moves on to the next.
“Meghan Balennet, Date unknown, 1997.”
Every time he opens his eyes, it feels like the list grows longer.
There are so many names to go.
It’s the evening when Peter wakes up. He’s drenched in sweat, curls matted to his forehead, drool dried against his cheek. He rolls over and stares at the ceiling, trying and failing to find shapes in the stucco to fill his mind and distract him from reality. Some rooms over, Steve murmurs to himself. Bucky whispers names and dates. Cars drift and stop and start outside. It’s overwhelming, to hear everything around him and have no choice, no selection.
He can remember the moment he stopped hearing Tony’s heartbeat. How there was a pause, a moment where the rest of them wondered if he was really gone- Pepper pulling away from her parting embrace, checking for a pulse- but Peter knew. At the very least, he does not have to face that silence, now.
He shouldn’t be thinking of Tony. He doesn’t deserve his memories of his mentor, this person that dedicated a quarter of his time, if only to provide Peter with comfort… a father figure, to give him some kind of advice, to help him grow and learn- and what has he done with it? Peter’s a dissapointment, and he knows it. When he was young, he reached this level of infamy his brain couldn’t handle, and he let it get to him.
Just like every Disney star ever, at some point and time.
He’s so hyper-focused that he doesn’t hear Barnes approaching, so the knock on the door sends him across the room, startled.
The door opens, and Barnes smiles at him warmly, worriedly.
“Alright, Parker. Naptime’s over. You ready to talk?”