Peter wakes up on a couch, his head pounding. A pillow rests beneath his head and it spins off the couch when he jerks up.
"Hey, Sam, Sleeping Beauty is awake!" an unfamiliar masculine voice says, slightly muffled. Peter focuses his eyes enough to see a brunet man across from him, eyes open and curious. They're a warm shade of hazel, bright. Peter realizes his voice is muffled because of the yogurt being shoved at a rapid rate into an open mouth.
The scent of strawberry and sugar drifts over and he wrinkles his nose.
"Is he now?" a sarcastic voice comes in, this time belonging to a black man with intelligent eyes. Sam, as Peter guesses his name is, sits down next to Hazel Eyes, who immediately drops his legs on Sam's lap. The glass and wood table between them rattles with the movement.
"You're Peter, right?" Hazel Eyes asks. Peter nods. "I'm Scott. Nice to meet you. This is Sam."
"You can call him Dumbass," Sam interjects, stealing Scott's yogurt and spoon.
"Hey!" Scott protests as Sam scoops yogurt in his mouth. Peter feels fabric against his skin and notes that he's wearing a short-sleeved shirt and a pair of sweatpants. The shirt is blue, with a decoration of a cat and an oddly shaped bubble with text in the middle. I'm Pawfect it reads.
"You've eaten half the carton and this is my yogurt," Sam retorts, lifting the spoon. He smacks Scott gently across the nose with it, smearing pink across the other's nose. Scott grumbles and wipes it off, licking it off his fingers.
"So, Peter, you ever seen Back to the Future?" Sam asks calmly, ignoring the muttering of the man next to him. Peter shakes his head, fascinated by their dynamic.
"Scott, did you hear that?!" Sam pokes Scott's ribs with a long finger. "The man has never seen Back to the Future! It is our responsibility as older folk to educate this young man! Come on, up and at 'em!"
Peter watches them, oddly captivated, as Scott gets up (stealing his yogurt back), and taking Sam's outstretched hand. The latter presses an easy kiss to Scott's cheek as thanks, taking the yogurt and spoon. Oh, Peter thinks numbly. So they're like that. I didn't know men could be like that.
"Tic-Tac, I'm entrusting you with the enormous duty of finding the movie and putting it on. Can I trust you?" Sam asks seriously, shifting the yogurt and spoon to one hand. He grasps Scott's hand with his other hand.
Scott gets down on one knee, still holding Sam's hand. He presses his hand to his chest, his expression one of somber intent. "Of course, sire. Your wish is my command."
He kissed Sam's hand. Gravely, he looked at Peter. "Can I trust you to help me with this great task, Sir Peter?"
Catching on (thank god, that would have been embarrassing) and brushing aside his shock, Peter nods, sobering his face and emptying his eyes of all emotion (HYDRA is good for something, at least). "Of course, Lord Scott."
They hold eye contact for a full thirty seconds before they burst into laughter. Sam holds out for about fifteen more before he's chuckling too.
"You're calling me Lord now," Scott informs Sam between bouts of giggling.
"I thought you wanted me to call you something else," Sam says, quirking an eyebrow. "We discussed it extensively."
"And we agreed that it would never happen and would remind us of Cassie, which is not conducive to fun times," Scott answers, moving over to a wood shelf against the plain, pale blue wall. What looks like thin books fill the space. Peter walks over, looking at the titles. Sam leaves.
A flash of memory. Peter remembers holding Tony to the wall by his throat, punching him in the lip.
He decides to just not think about it for a while, and he lets himself get distracted by the books. Sam and Scott seem alright, and he thinks he can relax around them.
He exhales and tension he didn't know he had flows from his body. Lifting a hand, he brushes his fingertips across the titles.
The one called Legally Blonde catches his eye. He pulls it from the shelf and peered past the plastic wrapping. The smiling face of a cheerful, oddly dressed blonde was put in stark contrast with the white title. A small, beady eyed dog was in her arms. He turns it over, reading what looks like a description.
"Oh, Legally Blonde!" Scott exclaims. "I love that movie!"
"Scott, you are the patron saint of straight white girls everywhere," Sam says, carrying a bowl. Something buttery wafted from it, carrying hints of salt. "And I made popcorn."
"It's a classic, shut up," Scott retorts.
"Well, where is the movie?" Sam gestures around at the TV on the wall and frowns at him. He sits down on one of the couches, setting the
"Here." Scott retrieves one of the weird books and pops it open. He pulls out a thin disk and moves to a machine on a shelf below the TV. Peter watches, fascinated, as Scott presses a button and another shelf slides out.
This is so fucking weird, Peter thinks as the other slips the disk on the shelf, presses the button again, and grabs a remote, turning on the TV.
"What was that?" Peter asks, grabbing the book and peering at it. BACK TO THE FUTURE it declares.
"You really don't know what a DVD is?" Scott asks.
"No," Peter replies. He opens up what he supposes is actually a case. Three triangles sit in the middle of a circular indent. Tracing the edges of the indent, he turns back to the TV.
A menu has popped up.
Scott, without any great care or delicacy, flops down on Sam backwards, nearly sending the bowl of popcorn flying. Fortunately, Sam holds out his bowl-filled hand and sets the dish on the table, saving his snack. Scott ends up half on him, his head on Sam's shoulder, comfortably nestled in the cushions.
Peter sits down on the other couch, rolling his eyes as they bicker quietly.
Scott lifts a remote and selects PLAY MOVIE before dropping his hand (carefully and well placed) right into Sam's unsuspecting stomach. His victim hunches over with a groan.
"Dammit, Scott!"
Peter snickers quietly.
-.-.-
It turns out that Sam and Scott have a way of making people gravitate to them. Twenty minutes into the movie, a blond Peter recognizes as Clint wanders in.
"This again?" he groans. "We watched this last Wednesday!"
"We weren't here!" Scott protests. Peter, curled up on the farthest side of the couch from the TV, tears his attention away from the movie to watch what may turn out to be an excellent show.
Clint grumbles and grabs the pillow Peter had flung off the couch, sitting on it. He leans back against the couch and Sam's arm. Peter, realizing that was the extent of the entertainment, moves his attention back to the movie.
"Can we watch Mean Girls after this?" Scott asks sleepily, his face firmly stuck in Sam's armpit. Peter looks over at him just in time to catch Sam's expression as he peers down at the man on him. It's something Peter has only seen in The Princess Bride, something soft and tender and warm and a little bit disbelieving, like Sam can't believe his luck.
It makes Peter's chest ache, and somehow he can't bear it, like he's watching something deeply intimate.
He moves his gaze to Clint, who's blatantly staring at him.
"What the fuck do you want?" bursts out of Peter's mouth, laced with venom and edged with steel.
Unexpectedly, Clint starts laughing.
"H-holy shit," he gasps out, eyes streaming. "You're just like Bucky when he first came in."
Sam starts chuckling too. "Remember when he tried to stab me because I took the last of the coffee?"
"That was some funny shit," Scott mumbles from his position. "Sam screamed like a baby."
"I did not!" Sam protests while Peter hides a grin behind his hand.
"Sam." Clint says seriously. "I had never before, nor have I since, heard a man's voice reach that pitch."
"I'm not the one who shrieked because there was a spider in the vents."
"It was the size of a half-dollar, you would have too!"
Peter starts laughing at their antics. Doubling over, tears streaming down his face, he laughs his ass off.
"Holy shit, I think we broke him," Clint whispers theatrically after three minutes of Peter's hysterical chortles.
"Who'd you break?" a familiar voice asks as two sets of feet walk into the room. Peter sobers, slowly but surely, enough to look up at Steve Rogers and a strange brunet with striking grey-blue eyes that radiate intensity like a force field. Peter notices a glint of silver at his side.
"Sam," the brunet says seriously, "I told you, you're not supposed to break him before the end. Look, we have twenty minutes left."
He points with his left arm at the screen, and Peter gasps without meaning to when he sees that it's silver, painted with a red star. But someone decorated the star to include rays of blue edged with gold at the ends, like a planet in odd colors.
The Winter Soldier.
Peter thinks he might die of shock.
But it's oddly not as dramatic an introduction as he would have expected. Dressed in a t-shirt with a picture of a white, oddly geometric android, and the text Little Light, along with a pair of blue sweatpants, he's less than frightening.
Kind of sweet-looking in a vaguely threatening way, like he'd cuddle but stab you during it.
"Why's the kid staring at me?" the Soldier snaps, glaring at Peter.
"I'm 25," Peter snaps back just as quickly, narrowing his gaze.
"That sounds like bullshit to me, chief," Clint cuts in. "You're short."
"I'm five foot ten," Peter tells him, annoyed. "We're the same height."
"Nah, I'm taller."
"Can we please watch Mean Girls?" Scott begs from the couch. Sam sighs.
"Fine."
"Do we not get a say?" Rogers inquires, cocking an eyebrow.
"No," Scott says.
"Ugh." Clint flops over on his back, oddly arched due to the pillow. "I should have stayed in Missouri."
"Oh, you want to be a farmer?" Sam asks. He drops the popcorn bowl on Clint's unsuspecting stomach, the unpopped kernels rattling. He points out the window. "Here's two acres."
His victim makes a startled noise like a hawk cut off mid-cry and curls up around the bowl in an odd fetal position.
"Jesus Christ, Sam," Scott says, chuckling. The Soldier smirks as Clint sets the bowl back on the table. Clint holds out his hand, the middle finger pointed straight up.
"Ironic," Sam says. "You're flipping me the bird."
"Sam, can you do me a favor?" the Soldier-no, Peter decides to call him Barnes, he's not the Soldier anymore- asks.
"What?"
"Drop dead."
"I don't do requests," Sam says, deadpan. Clint groans and stands up. Peter looks over at the TV, seeing the credits roll.
"It's over," he announces. Clint groans again.
"Bucky, can you pleaaase put in Mean Girls?"
"No," Barnes says.
"Ugh." Clint stands up, moving over to the shelf and grabbing a DVD. He moves to a machine by the TV. Popping open the case, he presses a button on the machine and the shelf slides out.
"I sensed Mean Girls and came as quickly as I could," yet another person says. Deadpool.
"Ha! He likes the movie!" Scott holds an arm up, fist curled, and Deadpool bounds over to press his own fist onto Scott's.
"You two are stereotypical teenage girls," Barnes says, comfortably setting himself atop Sam and Scott's tangled legs. He ignored the curses aimed at him. "We don't have enough seating."
"Just move the coffee table," Rogers says. No one moves to do so.
For a moment, all is quiet. Then Rogers sighs loudly and moves the table out of the way. After a moment of what looks like consideration, he goes over to Peter's and drags it so it's parallel instead of perpendicular to the TV.
Peter does not shriek like a startled rabbit. He doesn't.
Deadpool snickers and plants himself on the other side of the couch.
Rogers eyes his handiwork for a moment before giving Sam, Scott, and Barnes the same treatment, although all three make manlier noises of surprise than Peter.
"There," Rogers says, brushing his hands off. "All done."
"I'm gonna grab Nat," Barnes says, getting off the couch. Twin sighs of relief follow him. He walks out of the room just as Clint turns around with a disk in his hand.
"Where's Tony and Bruce?" Peter asks Deadpool quietly, leaning forward, thinking that he would be the most likely to answer.
"They're in cells until we determine allegiance," Rogers pipes up from where he's standing. "It's for safety."
Super soldier hearing. Peter forgot.
"Why am I not in a cell?" he asks.
"You stole from HYDRA, which means you don't wanna work for them. But we don't know if you're with us or not, so you're on probation until we know we can trust you," Deadpool explains concisely.
"Oh," Peter says.
"Don't worry about it, Petey," Deadpool says, moving over and putting Peter into a friendly headlock, rubbing at his hair with his knuckles. Ignoring the grumbles and half-hearted attempts to escape, he sings, "you've got a friend in me!"
"Jesus Christ," Sam says at the same time that Scott yells, "You've got a friend in me!"
"Scott, no-" Clint starts.
Deadpool smirks beneath his mask, releases Peter, stretches his arms (with a chorus of pops), and continues where Scott left off.
"When the road looks rough ahead, and you're miles and miles from your nice warm bed!"
"You remember what your old pal said, boy, you've got a friend in me! Yeah, you've got a friend in me," Scott sings.
"Scott, if you don't stop right now-" Sam says.
"Alright. The movie's in," Clint interjects, effectively ending the song and Sam's protests.
"Ooh, Petey, this is a classic," Deadpool says, turning Peter into his captive to silent protest. Peter catches Rogers' eye.
Help me, he mouths. Something like a smirk crosses the other's face, and Rogers shakes his head.
Peter glares as Rogers shifts Sam and Scott's legs, sitting down in the now vacated space. Clint snatches up his floor pillow and sits in his former place, grabbing the remote from Scott and turning on the movie just as Barnes reappears with a slim redhead.
Natasha Romanov. Peter cranes his neck uncomfortably to get a good look at her. Like Barnes, she appears almost non-threatening, in a tank top and sweatpants.
How ironic, considering the file Peter was given on her was nearly an inch thick, even with all the info left out.
She raises a brow at him, and he looks away to the TV.
Peter watches the redheaded girl onscreen nearly get run over by a bright yellow bus. "Dumbass."
Deadpool laughs under his breath as Barnes plops down on Rogers' lap.
"Mean Girls, Scott?" Romanov says. "Really?"
"How'd you know it was me?" Scott asks.
"No one else wants to watch early-2000s chick flicks," Romanov answers.
"Told you that you were a typical white girl," Sam says teasingly.
"Your insults won't touch me, Sam."
"Oh, I suppose nothing hurts you."
"Only pain."
-.-.-
Deadpool passes out around halfway through and Peter is entrapped by muscular arms. He suffers through the rumbling and snoring with relatively little protest, mostly because the other gripped him with enough force that it would be a struggle.
At least he's toasty.
Sighing, Peter arranges his body so the handle of the other's knife doesn't stab his very unwilling ass. His attempt fails. Deadpool's snoring ceases (thank God).
"This fucking knife handle," he grumbles, reaching back to try and fix the issue manually.
"I wouldn't attempt that," Deadpool says, his voice deep and rough. "That's not a handle."
Peter stares forward determinedly, snatching his hand back. His face ignites just as he catches Clint's gaze.
Deadpool starts laughing loudly at the same time Clint does.
"Oh my God," he says as the blond rolls around on the floor. "I was just kidding."
"Fuck you," Peter snaps.
"Language," Rogers corrects from the other couch, fingers firmly buried in Barnes' long hair. Peter glares at him.
Thankfully, Deadpool releases him enough to arrange the knife. Peter doesn't attempt to escape mostly because he's warm and doesn't know where he'd sit once he'd left.
He pillows his head on his arm. Deadpool doesn't octopus his way around him again, just curls an arm around his waist. The weight is oddly comforting, as is the smell of gunpowder and something spicy that surrounds him in a warm haze.
Despite himself, Peter's eyes slip shut, and he exhales, soft and quiet. Deadpool's hand slips into his hair, and he's asleep.
-.-.-
He dreams in movements, in stages, a smooth sonata that encapsulates everything. And then he's back in the workshop with Tony, taking apart a gun.
"You can't use tin, it's too weak, like aluminum," Tony says, showing him the melted inside of the barrel.
" I'm sorry," Peter says, because he is. He's an Engineer, and this is only the first month. He should be doing better. He turns around to test the steel he has, and he comes face to face with Callison.
"616!" she barks. "Are you ready to comply?"
"What?" he asks, and Tony sets down the gun behind him. He joins Callison at her side. His brown eyes bore into Peter's.
"Are you ready to comply?" she asks again.
"No, I don't work for you anymore," he tells her, firmly. "I'm not a part of HYDRA anymore. You aren't my superior."
Bruce appears at her other side, staring at Peter.
"I made you," he whispers.
"Are you ready to comply?" Callison demands.
"No!" Peter yells. All three glare. Callison opens her mouth.
"616!"
"No!"
"страстное желание!"
"No!" he insists, but his back straightens.
"ржавые! Семнадцать! рассвет!"
"You don't give me orders anymore!" His voice is weak to his own ears.
"Плита! Девять! Мягкосердечны!" she hisses maliciously, eyes gleaming.
Desperately, he lashes out, trying to stop her tongue from moving. He's angry, and scared, and through his fog, he recognizes her laughing. But his fist might as well be made of paper for how heavy it hits.
"Возвращение домой! Один! Грузовой вагон."
His head goes blank, and he knows nothing at all.
-.-.-
With a gasp, Peter wakes. Blinking open his eyes, he notices that Sam, Scott, and Clint are asleep. Deadpool snores, his face tucked into the couch.
Everyone else is gone.
Gently, he removes the arm from his waist, sitting it up and letting it flop down on the couch.
He slips from the room, heading outside. Something like a plan echoes through his head, and he realizes he doesn't know what to do.
He spins at the crunching of dead leaves behind him.
"Where are you going?" Deadpool asks.
"I need to stop HYDRA," he says.
"We've been trying to do that for years. Think smaller."
Peter sighs. "I need to stop Collin Harpy."
Deadpool grins, sharp and lined against his mask. "Good boy. I'll come with."
Peter grins back.