Over the weeks, things in the house settled.
Steve calmed down as T'Challa took him out on daily searches through the woods on the trail for Bucky, and he felt they would come pretty close soon. Bashenga and Shuri had volunteered to follow the trail on their land and see if anything came up.
Clint had been hunting with the bow and arrows, and Pietro had been accompanying him. The now close friends had worked out a pretty easy-going schedule, with Clint shooting the creature of choice, and Pietro running and grabbing it. Wanda had worked with them a few times, but she mostly got bored by the constant stream of inside-jokes and banter that filled the hours in the woods.
Wanda instead preferred to stay over at the house, using her powers to move things. Recently, Sam and Rhodey, the apparent engineers of the house, had undertaken the task of building a wooden bridge over the river so that the house inhabitants didn't have to choose either wet feet or precarious footing on the fast-eroding concrete remains.
Pepper and Natasha got on like a house on fire, both being reasonable, logical, and neat-freaks. The mess that the guys made (with the exception of Steve and Wanda) irked them no end, so they spent lots of time cleaning, maintaining and organising the house. Tony often joined them, personally offended by the way that Rhodey and Sam were constructing the bridge. (He hated the design to the point where it hurt his eyes.)
God knew what was happening down in Reed's play-pen.
"Hey, Tones," Steve had adopted the nickname he'd heard Pepper and Rhodey using so much. "Can you get under here and throw me the can?"
Tony was walking downstairs when he glanced into Steve and once-Bucky's room, where Steve was struggling to get under a bed. The ones in the room were extremely low, and it was funny to see the giant attempting to slide under them.
Tony tried to keep a straight face as he ran over, swiftly dropping to the floor and cleanly sliding under mission-impossible style. He easily grabbed the tin of spray-on joint loosener (was Steve trying to make the door fall off or something?)
"Why do you have joint loosener?" Tony threw the spray can back to Steve.
"There's a really stuffy old brick building pretty far out in the woods. The door's too thick to break through and rusted in place. I hope this can help; I found it in the garage." Steve explained, shaking it and making sure it was full.
"So why is it underneath your bed?" Tony was looking at him weirdly.
"I was running upstairs to shut the window, and I fell." Steve looked down, awkward. Tony just started laughing, the sound filling the room. It wasn't a mean laugh, just the idea of Steve falling over being hilarious to him. Steve started chuckling too.
"Alright, I'm gonna go and try to get the door to open," Steve rose to his feet and exited the room, waving a small goodbye to Tony, who followed like an impatient puppy.
"Please can I come? I haven't been out of this house since the spider incident. If I stay in this place, I'll end up crazy, and build a bridge even worse than Rhodey and Sam." Steve rolled his eyes sarcastically, nodding. Tony's reaction did not seem healthy; to Steve, nobody should be that excited about going outside, especially if it was the first time in days.
"Alright..." Steve and Tony set off into the woods, looking for the small building where T'Challa waited.
Steve hadn't exaggerated, the door was pretty much welded to its frame. It took nearly a whole can for the hinges to creak, and even then, it took both T'Challa and Steve's combined strength to get it open. (Tony was supervising and holding the almost-empty can - obviously important jobs.)
Inside, the building was smaller than they had imagined, and lined with various tools and wires. It looked like a maintenance station for the town's landline and wifi cables. The whole thing was covered in spiderweb, and they looked pretty thick. It was clear that nobody had been into the building in a long time.
"Great," Steve sighed. "Still no closer to finding Buck."
"Don't worry," T'Challa heaved the door back into place. "We'll find him soon enough. And besides, Bashenga and Shuri haven't returned yet."
Tony shrugged. "You know Bucky, Steve. If anything, he's probably gone down to the school to make sure that Peggy and the others are okay. I haven't seen Jarvis around, so he's probably followed him."
Steve furrowed his eyebrows. "Who is 'Jarvis'?"
"He's just a dog that I accidentally adopted. He kept on following me. He's huge, so I doubt people would jump Bucky if he was with him." Tony rambled, trying to sound reassuring. He didn't like seeing the normally cheerful blonde so worried. After all, there was nothing that worrying could do.
"Alright, fair enough. But I'd still like to keep searching around here." Steve seemed to lose the tension in his muscles.
"Obviously. If he's in the woods, we can find him." T'Challa's fewer words seemed to reassure Steve more than Tony's did. The shorter boy wasn't sure how he felt about that. Wait, since when did he care so much? If Steve was reassured, then that was what matt-
"Come on, let's head back to the house. Clint and Pietro seemed hyped about something." Steve changed the subject.
When they returned, the prophecy rang true. Clint was rapidly explaining and Pietro was shifting from foot to foot, sometimes so fast that his limbs blurred.
"Steve, Tony, T'Challa, guess what?" Pietro was making an effort to pronounce T'Challa's name correctly, even through his accent. The head of the Wakanda family appreciated it.
"We're not the only town stuck in here." Clint finished. "You won't believe what's happening in Stonebridge."
A/N: Just to clarify: The Xavier school is set in the fictional town of Tamworth, and the other town is called Stonebridge, a small rival. Creative names, I know. Thanks for reading!