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The sound of a firearm going off in the other room of the Avengers Tower brought Bucky running, especially when he heard Pete yelp. He barreled through the door, gun in hand, more than prepared to shoot any intruders on sight.
Instead, he saw Pete standing near the window, which had a hole in it, holding one of Tony’s newest experimental weapons, which no one was allowed to touch, and which Pete damn well knew.
Pete met Bucky’s eyes, stunned surprise giving way to sheepish embarrassment. “Umm, sorry.”
Bucky nodded, dropping his firearm to his side, and willing the adrenaline spike in his blood to calm down. “What are you doing?” he finally asked, calm enough to not shout.
“Screwing up,” Pete admitted, gingerly setting the weapon back on Tony’s bench.
Wordlessly, the two of them looked at the hole in the window. “Shit,” Pete finally said. “I guess there’s no hiding that.”
“Windows are fixable,” Bucky said.
“Yeah, I guess that’s true.” Pete wiped his hands nervously on his pants. He gave Bucky a wary side eye. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to… umm… not tell Mr. Stark?”
Bucky looked at him, expression unchanging and Pete hurried on. “It’s just, he takes this stuff so seriously, and really, no one was hurt, and it wasn’t a huge deal.”
“Are you allowed to touch his things?” Bucky asked, genuinely curious as to how Pete would answer. It was common knowledge that the wallcrawler had crossed Tony in the past with unspecified, but clearly upsetting consequences.
“Umm, sure,” Pete said, but his voice lifted at the end like a question, like he was wondering just how gullible Bucky was.
Bucky snorted. He wasn’t that gullible.
“And now you add lying to your transgressions,” Bucky shook his head.
“Look, umm, Mr. Soldier, sir,” Pete stammered, and Bucky interrupted.
“Bucky.”
“Bucky,” Pete repeated. “But I would really appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell on me. Come on. Snitches get stitches?”
Bucky’s eyebrows shot up. “Are you threating me?”
“No! No! I was trying to make a joke.” Pete rubbed his head, looking increasingly nervous and uncomfortable. “A bad one. I suck at jokes.”
Bucky hid a smile. He’d heard the kid prattle on during battles before and of the many things that Pete didn’t suck at, joke-cracking was high on the list.
“Please?” Pete asked, bringing Bucky back to the situation at hand. On one side, Bucky didn’t much care for Tony. He hadn’t totally forgotten that Tony would have quite easily killed him at one point. On the other, something about Pete’s stammering tugged at Bucky’s protective side. And his therapist – and Steve for that matter – had both encouraged him to listen to that side when it spoke up. Protecting people and caring was a great deal better than the numb oblivion that had swallowed so many years of his life.
“Ok,” Bucky said, making up his mind.
“Ok? Really? Wow! Thanks,” Pete said, looking so relieved that Bucky briefly wandered exactly what Tony had done to Pete. But it didn’t matter. What mattered now is what Bucky intended to do to Pete.
“Yeah, ok. But,” he held up his metallic hand, “you did break a rule that you knew about, then you lied to me about knowing about it, and I think we’re probably all lucky that there’s a hole in the window instead of in you. Or me,” Bucky added as an afterthought.
Pete deflated a bit, but he nodded, accepting the scolding as his due. “You’re right.”
“You don’t touch guns you don’t know how to use,” Bucky said, hearing an echo of his own father saying the same thing to him a century ago, and suddenly Bucky knew just how to handle this situation. “Come here.”
“Umm, why?” Pete said nervously, not moving towards Bucky at all.
“Because you’ve earned what my dad used to call a damn good hiding.”
“What?” Pete’s eyes bulged slightly, and he tensed, clearly ready to flee.
Bucky cocked his head to one side and asked softly, “Don’t you think you’ve earned it?”
Pete just stared at him for a long moment, then hesitantly took one step towards Bucky, then another. Finally, he stood right in front of him. “Have you ever done this before?” Pete asked, eyeing Bucky’s metal arm nervously.
Bucky thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Not on this side of it, but I think I understand the general logistics.”
“That’s comforting,” Pete said, swallowing hard. “Are you sure you won’t… like break me?”
“I watched you get hit by a bus,” Bucky said with a chuckle. “I won’t break you. But,” he flexed his prosthetic arm, “I think you’ll feel it.”
Pete grimaced but waited until Bucky realized that he was waiting for Bucky to make the next move. “Oh, sorry, come over here.” He led the way to a chair and Pete eyed it suspiciously. Bucky put one foot on the seat and reached to grab Pete and – strong as he was, he still weighed so very little – tossed him over his knee. Then he brought his mechanical arm down with a solid thwack on Pete’s upturned bottom.
Pete sucked in a breath. “Oh, shit! That really hurt.”
“Good to know,” Bucky said, then laid down a second swat just as hard. Pete kicked his leg in surprised reaction, but he stayed put, hands clutching Bucky’s leg for stability. Confident now that Pete really did know he deserved this spanking, Bucky set to his task with a single-minded dedication that he’d honed during his years as the Winter Soldier. He didn’t fuss or scold. Pete knew what he had done.
In fact, Bucky realized now, thinking about Pete’s facial expressions, Pete had felt guilty about what he had done. That’s likely why Pete hadn’t fought too hard to get out of this spanking. Of course, Pete hadn’t thought about the fact that Bucky, thanks to his prosthetic arm, was more than capable of delivering a spanking that even the Spider-Man would feel.
When Pete had moved from silence to grunts to yelps to cries, and then finally to soft sobbing, Bucky stopped. Carefully, he eased Pete to his feet, and was then stunned when Pete grabbed him and held on for dear life. Awkwardly, Bucky put his arm around Pete’s shoulder, relaxing after a few minutes, and then soothing the bawling kid with a gentleness that surprised them both.
“Hey,” Bucky finally said. “You did it. You took your punishment. It’s over now.”
“I’m sorry,” Pete sniffed, and Bucky leaned back to look at him. Pete sounded – and looked – so young that Bucky’s chest tightened.
“Yeah,” Bucky said. “I can see that you are. That’s good. It means you probably won’t do it again.” Bucky cracked a small smile. “Probably.”
That earned a chuckle from Pete. “I won’t,” he promised. “I used to like sitting down. I want to do that again someday.”
“Don’t you have super-fast healing?” Bucky asked.
“Yeah, but so far, your vibranium palm is winning.” Pete reached back to rub his bottom gently.
“Well,” Bucky considered that. “Good. I’d have hated to spent that much energy for no reason at all.”
“What about the window?” Pete asked, a hint of nervousness entering his voice again. Bucky winked at him. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell them I did it.”
“Why would you have done it?” Pete asked, incredulously.
Bucky shrugged, but he was smirking as he did so. “I saw a spider.”