Archive of Our Own

“Why don’t we just ask him to join the team?”

“We’re not asking Spider-Man to join our team.”

John Walker set his glass down on the island counter, throwing a hand up towards the woman across from him. “Why not?” he asked the English lady, an index finger tapping down the rest of his other hand. “He’s a local hero. He’s been active for years. He solved Roosevelt Island on his own. He’s worked with the Avengers before, hasn’t he? Bucky will know him. We can make him join before Sam tries to take him.”

Ava Starr hissed over the rim of her own cup of coffee. “And he’s best friends with known-mass-murdered Frank Castle. New York’s ‘local web-slinger’ being partners with the Punisher is a detail Valentina will throw a fit at. And he put a cop in intensive care fighting the Scorpion. I’m expecting any orders we get to bring him in comes with a cage and a warranty.”

The lobby of the New Avengerz’s suite hummed dully around the two, New York’s skyline out the window behind Ghost’s back. Bob sat sunken into the same loveseat as always, curled up beside the window with a book and a glass of milk to enjoy the middle of the day.

John waved a hand and groaned as he paced along the counter’s edge. “Castle’s a vigilante. The guy’s insane, duh, but he goes after criminals and murderers. The cops have more problems with him than the public does. If she cared, Valentina would have made us bring either of them in months ago.”

“And we’re on good terms with the cops,” Ava reminded him. “Do you plan on giving the Punisher a letter too?”

“What do you think I look like, an idiot?” He raised a hand to stop her when her mouth opened again. “Don’t answer that. Castle isn’t our problem, and this isn’t about the guy. This is just about Spider-Man.”

Hulking steps stumbled into the room, as a door hissed and a big-bellied man barged into the lobby. “What is this about spiders?” Alexei Shostakov grumbled, swinging past U.S. Agent to the fridge. “We have pest problem? I know gas that can melt spiders. Canned. Easy to distribute.”

“We’re considering adding Spider-Man to the team,” John corrected him, and Ava scoffed.

“There is no ‘we.’”

“We’re talking about it.”

“Considerably different things.”

“The Man-Spider?” the Russian man slurred excitedly. He smiled as he leaned over the counter beside John, and the blond man took three steps back with a cough. “He is skilled acrobatic. Not better than my Lena, but skilled. And strong man enough to stop cars and buses, maybe almost as strong as us. He would make good ally.”

“Exactly,” John tacked on at the end. “There would be four people on the team with super-strength—five, once Bob figures out how to use his powers. And Bob would like him to join the team. Wouldn’t you, Bob?” He raised his voice for the man across the room to hear him, and the brunette peek his head around his futon to speak.

Ava’s raised hand in Bob’s direction cut him off. “Bob is a Spider-Man fanboy, his opinion is biased. Stay out of this, Bob.” The man raised a hand in apology as he sunk into his cushion again. “Is your brilliant plan just to get somebody the public likes on our team to make us look better?”

“Of course everyone is fan of Man-Spider,” Alexei waved her off, rising off the counter and gesturing a hand to the man across the room. “He save cat from tree, help old ladies across street; Man-Spider is popular small potato hero. Bob has good taste. Two favorite heroes are spiders.” The man raised his voice as he continued, “But he knows which spider is better than the other!”

Bob looked more carefully over his shoulder to the Russian man, giving a steady smile and jumpy thumb to the older man. “Yelena’s a great hero, sir.” His voice paused regularly between words.

“See? Smart boy. He understands. And my Lena has worked with Man-Spider before; told me she helped him solve the president island explosion. He shall join.”

John raised a hand to gesture at the other man. “You’re out-voted,” he told Ava.

“In a kitchen debate that doesn’t actually decide anything,” she growled back. “You think James is going to agree with you on this?”

The large metal doors of the lobby were already hissing open halfway through her sentence, as Bucky Barnes and Sam Wilson walked into the room. “Agree on what?” the one-armed man asked.

John turned to answer, but Alexei was already crossing the room with a smile on his face. “New Captain America!" he cheered, approaching the other man beside the senator with an outstretched hand. “You are not old America man, but we take too long to finally meet. Do you know where Rogers is?”

Sam took the Russian’s hand with a displeased look on his face. “Retired, and somewhere alone,” the Avengers leader replied. “He likes his privacy these days.”

Alexei accepted the answer with a wide smile. “I will find him.”

While Captain America pried his hand from the Red Guardian’s grip, Bucky looked between the two still standing at the counter. “What argument are you two having now?”

“We’re not having an argument,” John defended quickly.

Ava clicked her tongue. “All we have are arguments. Every idea you come up with is idiotic.”

“We want to ask Spider-Man to join the team.”

“Again, not a ‘we’ thing.”

Bucky stared at both of them again, several seconds of silent longer. “No,” was the quick answer he gave with the shake of his head.

The blond man scoffed and flicked a hand, while the brunette lady shot him a smug victorious smile as she emptied her mug. “Why not, Buck? He’s a hero — a good hero. The guy’s worked with the police for the past three years. He stopped Banner on a Hulk rampage two months ago, on his own.”

“He’s not joining the team,” the senator/hero repeated, walking away to move on. He stopped when a laugh barked through the lobby, and turned on heel at Sam smiling at him mockingly. “What? Do you want him?”

The leader of the Avengers shook his head as he looked away from the leader of the New Avengerz. “Nah, Buck. I just” — he shrugged his shoulders — “didn’t know you were jealous the kid is stronger than you.”

The rest of the team looked at Sam with a variety of confusion and intrigue. Even Bob had torn his eyes away from his closing book. “Spider-Man is stronger than Bucky?” John repeated.

“Man-Spider can trade blows with Winter Soldier?” Alexei asked with a gleam in his eyes.

“He’s not stronger than me,” said senator corrected them both first, before turning back to Sam. “You can have him. Steve mentioned he grew up in Queens, so he already liked the kid. Add him to your team.”

“Drag the Queens kid over to Washington? I don’t see him agreeing to that.” His teasing smile turned on the black-haired man again. “And if I remember right, that was clearly your metal fist in the palm of the kid’s hand after stopping a full-on punch to his face.”

Alexei nearly broke his face apart with a smile, hands clapping together. “I want to hear this story.”

“That wasn’t a real punch,” Bucky corrected the other man again. “I was pulling my punches. Not all of Steve’s friends can take a hit. I wasn’t trying to kill any of them.”

“Spider-Man caught your punch?” Bob squeaked out.

“He did not catch my punch.”

“The kid gushed about how cool his arm was right after,” Sam added.

Before the senator could argue in his defense again, the smaller door Alexei had come from creaked open again, Yelena Belova stumbling in with a groan. “Everyone arguing, too early for this,” she muttered, hobbling over to collapse on the sofa in the room’s center. “Figure it out or I’m answering questions with bullets.”

“U.S. Agent has glorious idea,” her father cheered as he strode over to her.

“He never does,” Ava snuck in before the blond man.

John shot her another glare before sharing, “We’re at a tie. What do you think about adding Spider-Man to the team?”

Yelena pried her face off the cushions to quip an eyebrow at the man. Her lips pulled side to side in silence for several seconds, and it ended when she pushed up to sit with a grunt. “No. Sad-Man has seen me naked. Would be too awkward. He cannot be on the team.”

Bucky gestured ‘see?’ with one hand to the Black Widow as he looked sternly at John, before his expression fell apart and turned to the woman his hand pointed at. “He what?”

Yelena stared back uncaringly. “At bath house,” she elaborated. “My office. He came by for information on Leshy that attack DODC building and blew up the island facility, some days before. Comes by for information on illegal tech trafficking. We share bath. Makes for awkward team dynamic. Best he works with someone else.”

Every pair of eyes bored holes into her head; all but Bob’s, who was coughing and sputtering in the elbow of his sleeve. “Hold on,” Ava spoke up. “That’s your office? A bath house?”

“It makes for good interrogation,” Yelena nodded. “Disrobe men with power into scared baby chicks. Removes all hidden weapons. And my complexion” — she swiped a hand along her collarbone, from shoulder to shoulder — “makes for distraction that gives me control of the room. That way, no one who comes in can be a threat. It is good tactic.”

“You’re holding meetings naked?” John balked.

Sam scoffed under his breath. “This is why you guys are Avengerz with a Z.”

“I wear a swimsuit,” Yelena defended herself, face squishing in disgust. “Small one; covers the necessities. Wraps around the chest so they see bare shoulders and think otherwise. It is taktika. Public indecency is disgusting.”

“You saw” — Bob coughed again into his sleeve — “Spider-Man’s face?”

“No. He wears a mask all the time. Hides identity. I think he sleeps in it. It is why he is Sad-Man. He is big though; square muscles, like you Bob. Very cubic. Same gym plan, same diet. You would like him.”

Alexei’s breathing was heavy, chest rising and falling as his mouth flexed in different shapes. Eventually, it settled on a frown. “I will kill him.”

“What? No. Daddy!” Yelena hopped off the couch, rushing in front of her father as he turned for the exit. “No killing Spider. He is our ally. You cannot kill Spider!”

“That bug-man has tarnished my Umnichka's image,” the old Russia growled. “He has seen that which he is not privileged to!”

“He has not seen any of that! I am shoulders-up over the water, at all times! Nothing more! You are not killing him!”

Alexei breathed heavily out his nose. “You are right,” he agreed through his teeth. “I will not kill him. I break both his legs, and then his hands. When he begs for death, I will not allow it.”

“Jesus Alexei,” John breathed. “You were just all for letting the guy on the team. Now you hate him for having a meeting with Yelena?”

“Naked,” Ava reminded him.

“I’m skipping that part. I don’t want to think about it more than I already have.”

“He had trunks on,” Yelena scoffed at the two. “Protected his decency. No one gets in a bath naked with other people.”

John rolled his eyes with a sigh. “Depends on the people, apparently.”

“We’re not having this conversation anymore,” Bucky elected unanimously, stepping forward to face a hand at the Red Guardian. “Spider-Man isn’t joining the team, and we’re not killing, maiming, or otherwise harming him. Discussion over. And I’m talking with Valentina about your office.”

Yelena quipped an eyebrow at the finger pointed her way. “Who do you think signed off on it?”

“Uhhh,” Bob’s voice drawled out with a weak breath, “guys?”

“What, Bob?”

As the superhuman-experimented man looked over his shoulder at the lobby, his finger was pointed at the window where a red-and-blue costumed man hung on by his fingertips and toes. “You see him too, right?”

Spider-Man, wearing a Knicks jacket over his costume, peeled a hand off the glass to wave and point at Yelena.

“I am going to kill him!” Alexei announced once more, only stopped from charging at the window when Bucky grabbed his arm to hold him back.

“Damnit, Spider,” Yelena cursed under her breath, stomping over to Bob and the web-head hero. “What are you doing on window? This is the seventy-fifth floor!” Spider-Man’s hand moved in circles, fingers and thumbs pointing at the Black Window and back over the city behind him. “I cannot hear you! Why is glass so thick I cannot hear you?”

“It’s the seventy-fifth floor,” Bucky reminded her through grit teeth, at a stand-still with Alexei to keep him in place. “It’s protective glass. Who’s going to be flying outside the window that we have to talk to them?”

“Bob can fly,” Ava answered, a single finger pointing at the man. Said man was still staring at the window with wide eyes locked on the hanging hero outside the glass. “Once he figures out how to use his powers again.”

“And Bob knows we have an elevator he can use to come inside and talk to us! He doesn’t have to fly outside the window.”

“New Captain America can fly,” Alexei noted, turning his gaze of burning hatred away from the man outside the window to the mentioned hero. “He fights us about name but he should be welcome here. Glass keeps him out too?”

“Sam doesn’t hover in place.”

John turned his attention to Sam as well. “Why did you come here, anyways?”

The wing-suited hero rolled his shoulders. “A mission came up that I thought would go better with you guys and us working together, but it’s not more important than right now. It can wait.”

“Why are you here?!” Yelena shouted at the window, hands gesturing to convey her words. The web-headed hero stuck a hand in one of his jacket pockets and fished out a USB to wave in the glass. “And you brought it here?” Spider-Man made his own gesture back to the city, calling a phone, and tapping his wrist where a watch should be. “Time-sensitive means on business hours! You have my number!” Sheepishly, the red-and-blue-costumed hero shook a hand and crumbled the air between his fingers. Yelena gave an aggressive sigh. “How do you lose my contact? Whatever. Elevator! Go downstairs and use elevator! Like normal person! Get off window!” Spider-Man gave a two finger salute and fell backwards, his feet peeling off the window and he plummeted out of view. The blonde woman let out a louder groan. “Now I want to kill Spider.”

“See? Good plan.” Alexei nodded feverishly. “When Man-Spider come up elevator, we rush him together. Beat him to pulp in confined space. Hide body in useless floor—one in the thirties. No one works in the thirties.”

Yelena shook her head again, giving her father a soft glare as she walked past him. “No. No killing Spider. I will talk with him. You, do nothing. Leave him be. In fact, get out of the room. You should not be here when he comes up. It is safer that way.”

Bob fumbled out of his seat, tripping over his own two feet to run across the lobby to the side door. “Spider-Man’s coming up? I have to change. Don’t let him leave! Please!”

“Why don’t you just take him to one of the office rooms up here?” John offered the idea to the Black Widow.

Alexei rounded his glare at him. “Man-Spider will not be alone with my Lena! They will not have room together!”

As Yelena waved her father to back off again, she shot a glare at the blond man. “Stop giving stupid ideas! All your ideas are bad!”

Ava snorted as she walked through the counter to refill her mug. “Told you.”

“This is why you’re Avengerz with a Z,” Sam repeated with a barely-suppressed laugh.

Not a minute later filled with bickering did the elevator beep down the hall, and the large doors to the lobby hiss open once again, allowing the wall crawler in his basketball jacket to stride in, heading craning around to survey the room. The eyes of his mask showed more white with every passing second. “There’s more tech in here than the current Stark Industries’ lobby,” the masked man muttered out loud.

“Sad-Man!” Yelena greeted him with a smile forcing its way on her face, the senator holding back her father. “Office hours are tomorrow. Don’t climb outside my house on my off days. Enter building like normal, not-depressed man.”

“I didn’t know if they’d let me in!” Spider-Man hastily defended himself, hands waving between him and the Black Widow. One of them gave up the effort to wave wordlessly to the rest of the room’s inhabitants. “I’m used to people having windows to open. How was I supposed to know these didn’t have latches?”

“By not being sad man who avoids people and using the front entrance,” she reasoned, exasperated, and held out a hand. “Give me the data.”

“Oh! Right.” Spider-Man dropped the USB stick in her hand, and Yelena took it to a tablet on the wall to pick up and immediately plug into. “Got everything I could get out of them, and anything still encrypted I couldn’t unlock. I’m going over that stuff back at my place so I don’t send you any malware by accident, so I’ll make a second delivery later in the week, hopefully. But this is everything about their operations; transportation vehicles, shipment schedules, names of drivers. I think the buyers are in the zip bomb back at my apartment. Were the rooms in the tower always this big?”

“Huh, Yelena was right,” Ava muttered, taking a loud sip from her mug. “You are built like a square.”

“Of course I am right,” Yelena said, eyes focused on her tablet. “I learned my shapes like every other baby.”

“Uh,” the masked hero looked back at the blond woman and then turned his gaze to the brunette lady, “thanks? I think I’m more of a rectangle, really. Less cuboid, more prism. Don’t really want to be known as the friendly neighborhood blockhead.”

Yelena pried her eyes off the electronic device to give him an unimpressed stare. “You are a blockhead. Do not sell yourself short.”

“I’m pretty sure those are polar opposites, actually…” The arachnid hero’s head swiveled around the room. The biggest of them, standing behind Senator Barnes, was glaring at him and breathing steam out of his nose so he kept his neck turning. Eventually his gaze landed on Sam. “Hi, uh, Captain. I didn’t know you were all on the same team.”

“We’re not,” Sam and Bucky responded, but the former continued, “Everyone’s favorite and fluent senator here and I were just talking. About Germany, actually. You remember that?”

“Shut up, Sam,” Bucky scoffed at him.

Spider-Man’s eyes darted between the two men. “Germany…oh. Oh! Right, right. Yeah, sorry. I’m sorry I never apologized sooner, for the whole ‘fighting and treating you guys like criminals’ thing. Really should have asked if we could talk it out like adults…adults and teen.”

“It was a mess,” Sam agreed. “No harm, no foul, kid. We’re over it—well, one of us is.” His smirk turned to the black-haired man once again, who gave his own look of frustration back.

As the mask’s eyes shrunk with confusion, John clarified, “Knew you were strong, but we weren’t aware you had super-soldier strength, Spidey. Never heard anything about serums hitting the streets of New York.”

“What? Oh, no. I didn’t take a serum or anything like that.” Spider-Man shook his head. “I’m just…hard work. A good diet. Maybe some radioactive biochemicals from an animal toxin injection but that’s beside the point. It’s not something you can really recommend to people, you know? Protein bars and milk are easier to market to kids.”

“What, like Banner gamma radiation?”

“Less second identity creation—that’s more self-inflicted, really…”

“But you can stop a super soldier’s punch,” Ava added, pointing a thumb at their exhausted leader.

The eyes on his mask blinked before they winded. “Oh. Yeah, uh, I’m not sure he was putting all his power behind that punch. He wasn’t actually the killer guy the news was making him out to be at the time, right? It was probably only, like, half strength, maybe?”

“And then you kicked him full force and sent him flying,” Sam reminded.

“A kick that was aimed for you after he webbed you to the rail,” Bucky reminded him as well. “I think I remember him kicking you first, actually.”

“I’m not the super soldier here, Buck. I was the guy punching upwards.”

“Wait,” John interrupted, “you beat Sam and Bucky in a fight?”

A straining sound came from Spider-Man’s throat, mostly drowned out by both the older men telling the blond man that he was wrong. “It was more of a tie, really? We got split off to do…other things before anyone could really win. They’re both better trained than I am.”

“You tied a fight with the Falcon and the Winter Soldier?” Ava rectified the question.

“More or less?”

“On your own?”

“More than less.”

Alexei stomped forward, getting past Bucky’s shoulder to approach the masked hero. “I do not believe you,” he mulled, his voice deep. “We are super soldiers. You are boy in refurbished basketball.”

Spider-Man shrugged. “Really, it’s mostly spandex—”

“Daddy,” Yelena quickly cut in, stepping up to try and place herself between both men. “You’re not doing this. We said no.”

“I want to know his strength,” the older man reasoned, his voice cracking for just a second. “He caught Winter Soldier fist with bare hand. He cannot be super soldier strength with radio poisoning. That is cheating.”

“I’m not actually a super soldier,” the spider hero tried to clarify. “I stick to walls and shoot webbing from my wrist. I can hang upside down without the blood rushing to my head. The name’s a lot more of a dead giveaway than the suit.”

“That stuff comes out of you now?” Sam asked, a look of disgust flashing across his face.

“Terrible development. It’s even worse up close. Solves a problem of resources but swinging on a bad stomach having to know this now isn’t easy.”

“Alexei, you’re ruining the plan,” John hissed, finally stepping forward with a warning hand.

“Plan was stupid. Do not like plan. I make new plan.”

Bucky’s metal hand clamped down on the Red Guardian’s shoulder. “You are not fighting Spider-Man.”

Said costumed hero took a tentative step back. “I’ve delivered all I had to bring. Should I just leave before we get into the bobs and weaves?”

“Bob wants to see you, actually,” Ava informed him. “We have a fan of yours up here. Probably finding the right poster for you to sign.”

“Who does his hair?”

“Man-Spider can catch punch,” Alexei continued, a very aggressive grin morphing onto his face. “I want to know if he can throw.”

“I’m not punching you,” the wall-crawling hero immediately shot down. “And thank you for remembering the hyphen, but you’re getting the name backwards, sequentially. You’re Yelena’s dad. I’m not punching her dad. That doesn’t help anyone.”

“If your punch can make him sleep,” the blond woman spoke up, “it would be very helpful. Don’t do it.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

“Spider-Man!” The smaller door into the lobby snapped open, as Bob in a new t-shirt and jeans and a poster rolled up in one hand rushed in. He had stopped after only three steps, staring at the red and blue hero with unblinking eyes. “You’re still here.”

The masked hero pointed a finger at the other man. “Bob,” he guessed, and the quick nodding of the other man’s head answered. “I heard somebody in this tower actually liked me. Glad to meet you—” The spider-themed hero ducked suddenly, as a red-wrapped fist swung through the air his head previously occupied.

“Do not ignore me, Man-Spider!” Alexei roared, throwing another punch that hit air again as the other hero leaped and rolled over the counter away from him. Bucky and John held Alexei by the arms before the man could run through the set dressing to chase him. “You do not walk away before apologizing to me and my Lena!”

Spider-Man landed on the other side of the porcelain and steel table, dancing backward on his feet in Bob’s direction. “Alright, alright! I’m sorry I showed up unannounced. I should have called ahead that I had the information but my phone’s been on the fritz and E.V. said she couldn’t contact you through your normal line, and you told me you needed the information as soon as possible so I thought I’d just make a quick delivery.” Before his shoulder could collide with the other man, the web-head hero glanced back over his shoulder. “Was this a bad day to come here?”

“Uh, Alexei isn’t mad about that,” Bob stuttered out, his eyes glazing down and up the hero’s costume. “He heard about your, uh, meeting with Yelena.”

The mask blinked at the brunette man before whipping back around to the rest of the New Avengerz. “Oh! No, it’s nothing like that! I only ever see her face and hands! That’s just how she holds meetings!”

“Apparently,” Ava drawled out before taking another loud swig from her mug. “This is the first time any of us heard she was doing this.”

“...Really?”

“Really.”

“Huh.” Spider-Man’s arms fell to his sides. “Do you guys not, like, talk to each other or anything? Isn’t that how teams work?”

“We talk a lot,” Bob confirmed with a soft voice.

“Not enough about work apparently,” John grunted out, as Alexei stopped fighting against the hold of two other super soldiers. “You done?”

“That is not apology,” the Russian man growled across the room. “You undress in front of my Lena and blame her for it?”

“I’m not blaming her for anything! It’s just a…normal abnormal meeting. In a hot tub. It happens all the time.”

As Alexei was once again held back by two enhanced men and his daughter, Ava shot the web-swinging hero an unimpressed frown. “You’re a terrible public speaker.”

“You think I run away from cameras because I don’t want them to capture my bad side?” While the rest of the heroes struggled with each other, Spider-Man turned his attention to the man beside him, pulling a Sharpie out of his jacket pocket. “Always come prepared. It’s good to meet you, Bob.”

Bob took the hero’s offered hand with a tight grip and a vibrating shake. “I’m a big fan,” the brunette admitted with an equally shaky voice. The poster in his hand unraveled, showing the wall-crawler doing exactly that on a glass building. “Did you actually fight the Hulk?”

Spider-Man’s throat made a strained sound as he drew his mask in the corner of the frame. “More of a ‘calm him down excursion’ than a real fight. Dr. Banner was having a bad day, and I was just trying to help him out of it. Don’t tell anybody, but he let me win. What it does for my reputation hasn’t been bad yet — unless more Hulks come out of the woodworks to challenge me. I think there’s three of them now?”

“Bucky said something about a fourth but I don’t know who,” Bob gave with a barely noticeable shrug before admiring the other man’s signature.

“Huh. I’ll have to look into that.” He spared another glance at the mess of adults arguing about violence across the lobby. “Is it always like this?”

Bob gave his own glance to the rest of the New Avengerz, his mouth flatlining and its corners tilting down. “They’re good people,” he breathed meekly. “They, uh, were actually talking about inviting you to the team, you know, before you showed up? Not everyone agreed, though…”

“Oh. Uh, thanks for the offer, but I don’t know if I’m a big team guy right now. Kinda just bouncing between the neighborhoods as a temp for the other guys down there with me when they need it. Besides, I” — his head tilted for a beat — “got someone back home who isn’t much of a people person, so I don’t want to drag her into something like this until she’s ready.”

Bob’s eyebrows rose. “You have a partner?”

“Future partner. Possibly. Potentially. Eh, trainee, more so. Point is making sure she’s comfortable before I start upending the status quo. Baby steps. Don’t tell her I said that; I might come back in the morning.” The brunette man pretended to zip his lips together. “Good man. You’re a good sales pitch.”

“To join the Avengerz?”

“To inflate my ego. He doesn’t get enough sunlight. And he’s dangerously malnourished. If the door’s still open in the future, I’ll consider it.” He clapped a hand on the other man’s shoulder and turned his head back to the group of other heroes. “Now to get out of here with all my teeth intact.” No matter trying a left or right path, Spider-Man couldn’t shake off the aggressive glare the Russian father continued to point at him.

“Alright, fine,” the web-slinger sighed, rolling up the sleeves of his jacket. “One punch. I’m not giving, but I will take—Forget I said that. I will let you” — he pointed a finger at the larger man, and then pressed it into the palm of his other hand — “punch my hand. And I will try to catch it. Just like I did with Mr. Barnes.”

Yelena sighed loudly. “Blockhead was too generous an assessment.”

Alexei squinted his eyes. “This is trick.”

“No trick. Think of it like those punching games at arcades. Ever been to an arcade? I watched a guy try and kick one of those just to miss and flip onto his face. It’s hilarious. Go ahead, try it.” He held out his right hand. “Palm, not the fingers. Please don’t break my fingers. It really hurts to put them back in place.”

“No,” Bucky immediately intervened. “We’re not doing this.”

“It’s fine,” the web-head reassured. “I caught your punch before. And I think this guy looks up to you since he seems to listen. ‘Sides, I got an update of my own pretty recently, so why shouldn’t I test my own limits now that I’m around similarly strong people?—”

THWACK

Fabric clashing with fabric reverberated through the room, the Red Guardian’s fist pressed and resting in the outstretched hand of Spider-Man. Alexei’s fist pushed forward, and the other hero’s hand held.

The wall-crawling hero grunted. “I’m not gonna say that doesn’t sting,” he groaned out at a slightly higher pitch, “but warn a fella next time. I’d break my wrist if I don’t brace correctly.”

The Russian held an unblinking gaze with the younger man’s mask, his shoulders rising as he pulled back his fist. It was silence that broke seconds later with a soft grunt from the older man. “Fine,” he muttered. “You are good enough for my daughter.”

“Daddy!”

“Haha, Jonathan, you are—nope, not gonna finish that,” Spider-Man mumbled under his breath before finally clearing his throat. “That was definitely stronger than Mr. Barnes’ punch. Maybe you got a better serum.”

“I was holding back,” the senator repeated, ignored as the Russian puffed out his chest with a moment of pride.

“Jesus,” John breathed. “He really is stronger than us. And you’re stronger now than when you beat Bucky?””

“Again, tied,” Spider-Man and the even-more-annoyed-looking Bucky responded in unison, the latter with more vitriol than the other.

“This part of your master plan to pitch a recruitment request to the kid?” Sam asked from the side.

Spider-Man shook a hand as he began to walk aside. “Bob already told me about that. Sorry guys, but I’ve got other commitments to other people I promised to fulfill. Don’t think I’m ready for the big-team-dynamic again yet.”

“The door was not open,” Yelena told him dryly as he passed.

“Yeah but the elevator was. And look, it’s still open. I make my cunning escape.” As he hurried out the main door towards the elevator, he gave another wave back. “Got a message that most of the remaining data is decrypted and safe. I should have it ready on Tuesday, so I’ll swing by your office then to deliver it properly. Sorry about the sudden intrusion.”

The Black Widow made another groan and turned to the leaving hero as he entered the elevator. “Sad-Man.”

“Yeah?” he called back as the doors started to close between.

The side of her face pinched before she shouted, “Wear the speedo next time.” The masked hero had no time to respond before the elevator and lobby doors both closed between them. Yelena stepped backward, the line of her mouth fighting not to break out into a larger grin stretched across her face. The fight was harder to manage when she turned to the disgusted expressions of her teammates and father.

John blinked. “What the fuck, Yelena?”

“Is what he gets for barging in unannounced and making scene. He can swing home in embarrassment and think about what he’s done. Not my problem. I will live. So will he. He only wears trunks anyways.”

Alexei’s mouth snapped shut. “I will kill him.”

“No, we are not doing this again!”