Chapter Text
Barnes (because that’s as close as he’s willing to get to anything he might have been once, a name he rarely ever used) sticks to New York.
It’s basic math. Rogers will expect him to be on the run all over the world. He’s planted a couple leads, enough that’ll get him off his back for a while. All Barnes really wants, he thinks, is to be left alone.
He doesn’t go to Brooklyn. Memories are ephemeral things, but they come strongest in Brooklyn. Steve, Becks, everything long gone. It’s too overwhelming. But Barnes, the Barnes-From-Before, never went to Queens very much. So Queens it is.
Credit card fraud isn’t hard, so he has enough to eat. He’s got a hotel room he checks out by the week, a dingy room in an even dingier Super 8. Prices are too high these days, Barnes knows that much.
If Steve could see how much- he catches himself thinking sometimes, before he shuts it down.
Barnes spends a lot of time walking. He’s going to feel better once he has the absolute best sense of where he is, the ins and the outs. He walks late at night. Next to no one bothers him, and he makes the ones who do regret it. It’s quiet. It’s peaceful. It’s how he likes it.
Tonight, however, that quiet is interrupted.
“Just, just take it,” Barnes hears a young woman stammer near an alley. He pauses. “There’s nothing in it, but-“
“And the pearls,” a gruff voice interrupts.
“But- they were my-“
“And the pearls.”
Barnes has heard enough. He swivels into the alley. Three of them have a young woman backed against the wall. He flexes his fingers.
Out of nowhere, a red and blue blur swings into view. He shoots something at one of them and he flies back, getting stuck to the opposite wall. The blur stops in front of the woman, putting himself between the remaining two and the woman, resolving itself into a skinny form in a red sweatshirt and blue sweatpants, wearing some kind of mask over his face.
“Get out of here, ma’am,” the guy says, in a surprisingly youthful voice. The woman bolts, skirting past Barnes. One of the men punches the red and blue guy in the face and he staggers back before he does something with his wrist and that guy too is stuck to the wall. He tries to go for the last guy but he gets too him too quick, punching him in the face too, harder this time.
Barnes strides up and dislocates the guy’s shoulder before he knocks him out. He drops like a stone inbetween Barnes and the red and blue guy. The red and blue guy stares at him.
“Thanks,” he whispers.
“Come on,” Barnes says. The two of them retreat further into the alley. The guy sags against the wall a little, stretching his jaw.
“The fuck are you supposed to be?” Barnes asks. “Red and Blue Boy?”
“I’m Spiderman.” The kid sounds like he’s frowning.
“Fuck you are. You’re like twelve.”
“I am not,” he protests, voice cracking. He winces.
“Go home, kid,” Barnes tells him. “Don’t pick battles in alleys you can’t win.”
“I could’ve!” He deflates slightly. “But, um. Thanks.”
“Yeah. Whatever.” Barnes readjusts his hat. “Don’t do it again.”
Barnes slips out the back of the alley, leaving the spider kid behind him.
The spider kid does it again, as it turns out, not three days later, this time pinned down under a guy three times his size in an alley. Barnes hauls him off the kid, slamming his head into the opposite wall until he passes out. Barnes kneels by the kid.
“Hey,” he says. “You good?”
“Something’s wrong with my arm,” he wheezes. Barnes leans down and feels.
“It’s dislocated,” Barnes tells him. “I’m gonna count down and put it back in. It’s gonna hurt. One, two-“ Barnes snaps the arm back into place and the kid muffles a shout, hitting the ground hard with a fist. “Better?”
“Yeah,” he croaks. Barnes releases his arm, trying not to think about how easily his hand enveloped it, and helps him to his feet. “Thanks.”
“I told you not to do this again.”
“Yeah, well. They’re not gonna stop so why should I?”
The sentence sets a familiar feeling in his bones and Barnes scowls against it.
“Don’t do it again,” he repeats, and leaves.
So maybe Barnes keeps his ear to the ground. So maybe he recognized the defiant way the kid stood, a recognition that went right down to his soul, something decades of HYDRA couldn’t pry out of him. So maybe he walks the same areas he’s seen the spider kid, just in case. So what? He’s got no one to call him on it, so it doesn’t fuckin’ matter.
Tonight, Barnes stumbles on another mugging. The kid’s nowhere to be seen, but he’s here, so he cracks a few skulls. One guy, though, sneaks up on him with a knife, and when Barnes whirls on him, something sticky shoots out of nowhere and smacks the guy in the face. He splutters and the something sticky pins him to the wall. Barnes turns to see the kid, hanging off the fire escape.
“It’s good I got one on you,” the kid chirps. “I was starting to feel bad.”
Barnes scowls. “Go home, kid.”
“Nope,” the kid says, popping the p. “Hey, how’d you learn to do all this stuff? Did you take a class from some guy on Craigslist?”
Barnes doesn’t know what a Craigslist is. “Go home.”
“Nope.”
Barnes points at him, feeling a surge of perhaps slightly irrational anger. “You don’t know what you’re doing. And you’re gonna get yourself killed. So forget about whatever this is, and go home.”
Barnes turns and heads for the exit to the alley.
“When bad things happen and you can stop them,” the kid says. “They happen because of you.”
Barnes pauses. He turns to look at the kid, still hanging off the fire escape.
“Something really weird happened to me,” the kid tells him. “Something that changed me. I have the ability to help people. And I’m gonna keep doing it. I don’t care what anyone says. If I sit on this and people get hurt, it’s my fault. And I can’t live with that. So I’m not gonna.”
Barnes stares at him.
It’s too familiar.
It makes him want to scream.
Instead, Barnes takes a deep, long breath.
“You’re not eating enough,” he says.
The kid rears back a little. “What?”
“I felt your arm, last time. You’re not getting enough food.”
The kid shifts. “I process stuff really quickly.”
This is a dumb decision. Barnes is gonna regret this.
“Come on,” he says.
“What?”
“Come on, now.”
The kid drops off the fire escape. “Why?”
“Do as I tell you.”
“I’m not really good at that.”
Barnes sighs. “I bet.”
The kid’s rolled his mask up so he can eat the Chinese food Barnes’ bought him, devouring it like he’s starving. Barnes picks at his General Tso’s.
“This place is awesome,” the kid enthuses. “I didn’t even know it was here. How’d you find it?”
“It was cheap.” Barnes takes a bite. “You process food quick, huh?”
“Yeah. I think something’s weird with my metabolism, so I’m just kinda hungry all the time, but I don’t want my aunt to know about like, any of this, so I’m keeping it to myself. How’d you know I wasn’t eating enough?”
“I had a friend as skinny as you.”
“So how did you learn how to do all the-“ The kid mimes karate chops.
“Don’t think you’ve ever seen me karate chop someone.”
“Yeah, but you get it.”
Barnes pops a piece of chicken in his mouth. “I joined the army,” he says, a little bitterly, remembering the last time he heard that.
“Oh, you’re a vet.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s your name, anyway?”
“I’m Barnes.”
“Cool.”
“What about you?”
“I’m Spiderman.”
“I don’t think that’s the name your mother gave you.”
The kid pokes his chopsticks into his fried rice.
“I don’t want any of this to get back to my aunt,” the kid tells him. “I mean, look at Batman. Batman has to have a secret identity or the people he cares about get hurt.”
“You’re not Batman,” Barnes tells him, relieved that he at least picked a superhero he knows about.
“Yeah, but I could be, y’know? And like, how Batman-y do I need to be before the people I love get hurt? So. I’m… just Spiderman.”
“…yeah. Yeah, okay.” Barnes takes a sip of his water. “You gotta keep drinking water. You’ll get dehydrated easy, it’s gonna be bad for your reflexes and you’ll get dizzier easy.”
“How do you know?” The kid perks up a little. “Did you get bit by a radioactive spider, too?”
“Did I- what- no, I knew a guy with an increased metabolism.” The less the kid knows about what Barnes personally is capable of, the better. “You were bit by a radioactive spider?”
“Yeah, I think that’s what kicked this all off. One day my hand blew up like a balloon, the next I could hang off the ceiling.”
“…you can hang off the ceiling?”
“Yeah! Check this out, it’s really cool-“ The kid puts his food down, gets off the park bench, and walks up the side of the Chinese joint.
“Huh,” Barnes said.
The kid deflates slightly. “You don’t think it’s cool?”
“It’s cool.”
“You don’t seem like you think it’s cool.”
Barnes thinks of a man peeling his face off. “I’ve seen shit weirder than you.”
“…really?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh.” The kid climbs off the building and sits back down. “Yeah, I guess we were invaded by aliens a couple years ago, huh?”
“Yeah. So I heard.”
“You don’t remember?”
“Wasn’t here for it.”
“They locked the schools down pretty tight but we still had our phones so we kept track of it. Scared the shit out of my aunt and uncle.”
“Yeah. I could see that.”
“Is Barnes a first name or a last name or-“
“It’s just Barnes.”
“Cool. I gotta head back. Can I take this with me?”
“I bought it for you. It’s yours.”
“Thanks.” The kid stands, taking his takeout with him. “I’ll see you around, Just Barnes.”
“See you round, kid.”
The kid leaves. Barnes finishes his food and heads home.