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Peter shuts the door behind him with his foot and gazes at his new, clean, empty apartment.
His fingers ache a little bit from clutching the box in his arms, he notes absently. That’s a little silly, considering all that his body’s been through recently. But maybe that’s also why it’s happening.
He glances around the room, looking for a place to set his box down. It doesn’t really matter, and it’s not really urgent. No one’s sharing this space with him, and Peter Parker doesn’t have anywhere to be any time soon.
Eventually, he just puts it on the floor by the door. He’ll deal with it later.
Peter lays down on his bed and pulls out his phone. He scrolls through the camera roll, images of friends and classmates he’s saved from the internet. The Academic Decathlon team. Betty’s school news coverage. Even Flash.
Ned’s Instagram, which Peter follows as an anonymous meme account he created in a matter of minutes. Ned has liked a few of his stupid posts today. It’s depressing if he tries to bargain: if he thinks about the fact that this way, through faceless social media, he’s still a tiny, tiny part of Ned’s life, even though it’s 0.0000001% of what they were before, and Ned doesn’t know it’s him. So instead, he just thinks about how clever he is that he has access to Ned’s photos now and can add him to his camera roll, making things look a little more as they should be.
What was it Spider-Man 3 said about photography? It’s all been kind of a blur, really. Maybe he just mentioned liking it.
You don’t have to wear the lab coat, you know.
Hey, why not? We’re in a lab, doing science.
That much of a nerd, are you? Even compared to us?
I can be artsy, too! Got a camera?
Peter opens the camera app and takes a picture of the ceiling. Not really knowing why.
He doesn’t have any pictures of MJ yet. He promises he’ll take one himself, when she finally remembers him. Because she will, right?
She has to. He promised. And she promised.
He’ll keep trying, and she’ll figure it out, like she always does.
“Kid.”
“AAAAAAUUUUGHHH!!!” Peter leaps into the air, making himself small in the corner of the ceiling.
He immediately regrets it. So stupid– everyone has finally forgotten his secret identity, and now he’s given it away again to the first intruder who shows up in his apartment?
Wait. Not a stranger.
“Calm down, I just brought snacks,” Bucky Barnes says, putting his hands up slowly. He nods to a pile of grocery bags on the small kitchen table Peter assumed was still empty.
Peter lowers himself down from the ceiling, hanging on by just one hand before dropping softly to the floor.
“Bucky Barnes?”
Bucky shrugs, like he’s finally used to being recognized after decades of being erased. Meanwhile, Peter can’t get used to being without a history. Peter wonders if Bucky also feels like they’ve switched places a little bit, or if it would be offensive to compare their very different experiences with being in the public eye. So, he keeps the thought to himself.
Peter sits back down on the bed, and Bucky reaches into one of the grocery bags. What is happening?
“Plum?”
Peter catches the fruit being thrown at him without looking up. Bucky remains standing and bites into a plum of his own.
“You know,” the ex-Winter Soldier says with his mouth full, “I didn’t expect these to be good. They’re not in season right now, you know? But I’m pleasantly surprised.”
Peter says nothing, fidgeting with the plum like it’s a stress ball rather than produce. Better not squeeze it too tight, or it’ll explode. Bucky swallows his bite and frowns.
“Okay, that’s all I’ve got and I don’t know what I’m supposed to say now.”
That, finally, gets Peter’s throat unstuck.
“Mr. Barnes, it’s not that I’m not really, really happy to see you and be talking to you right now, but… why are you here and talking to me right now? Do you– do you remember who I am?”
Bucky glares at the window, not meeting Peter’s eyes.
“Nobody else remembers you. Not Sam, not Dr. Strange, not Happy Hogan, or Pepper Potts.”
In the pause while Bucky prepares to say something apparently difficult for him, Peter processes that he just said Pepper Potts’ name and has the horrible, nauseating realization that at least Tony didn’t have to forget him, too.
Bucky keeps talking.
“But my memory’s been messed with before, and way worse. Whatever thinly-cast spell went over the whole planet, it wasn’t enough to work on me. Thanks to HYDRA, I guess.”
“So you… remember the airport in Germany?”
Bucky starts to smile.
“Sam has the blessing of not remembering we got our asses handed to us by a fourteen year old. I was not so lucky.”
Peter laughs a little and bites into his plum. It actually tastes really sweet and good, like summer vacation.
“And you’re still just a kid, aren’t you?”
With that, Peter tells him everything, even though Bucky didn’t ask– from the identity reveal, to the multiverse, Aunt May’s insistence to do the right thing and the price they paid for it, the other Spider-Man variants, and Dr. Strange’s spell that fixed everything but took away everyone Peter had left.
At the beginning, Peter thinks he’s got this. He’s already cried so much, he’s pretty sure he’s not gonna cry anymore. By the time he gets to Norman Osborn showing up at the shelter, lost and upset, though, he notices that he was very, very wrong about that.
Bucky lets Peter hug him for a long time, even rubbing his back gently with the metal arm. It’s probably not the most comfortable Bucky’s ever been, making Peter appreciate the gesture even more.
A long time passes in a silence that isn’t quite comfortable, but also isn't remotely awkward. Bucky eventually speaks up, looking at the wall. He keeps his arm around Peter.
“You want to get out of here for a bit, regroup and recover? I know a family in Louisiana who’d be happy to let you crash for a while.”
“Nah,” Peter wipes his eyes again, “Thanks, man. Really. But I gotta stay here. I still have people, even if they don’t remember me yet.”
“Yeah, of course. Then, I’ll introduce you to Esther, Lydia, and Ollie sometime. They live in this area– super nice elderly folks. Oh, and their cat. They’ll love you.”
Peter stares at Bucky.
Bucky turns to look at him, and the emotion in his eyes catches Peter off guard. First, because it’s been a while since anyone looked at him like they cared about something, and second, because it looks out of place on Bucky Barnes’ face. But maybe that’s just because they’re not that close, yet. Knowing each other’s names is a low bar, even if the rest of the universe can’t manage to meet it.
“You’ll be okay, Peter.”
“How do you know?”
Bucky laughs a little, shakes his head, and looks at Peter in the corner of his eye.
“I know something about starting over.”