"Hey Friday!" Peter waved at the camera as he stepped into the elevator. "Can you take me up to Mr. Stark's lab, please and thanks?"

"Good day, Peter." The AI greeted. "Most certainly."

Peter dropped his book bag on the floor after pulling out a packet of gummy bears and slouched against the wall.

"So, how was your day?" He normally spent the elevator rides catching up with the AI. It took a bit to get to the 75th floor.

"My day was very good, thank you for asking. Boss was called out early, so it's been nice and quiet around here. How was school? How's Ned?" Friday's voice, as usual, was warm and welcoming when speaking with Peter. It always made him think she was smiling.

"Ned is great! I'll tell him you asked." Friday asking about Ned was gonna make his friend's whole year. "Today was great too. The best day I've had all week, actually." He said brightly, thinking about how things seemed to be finally normalizing at school. He threw 3 gummy bears in the air and caught them all in his mouth.

"Nice." Friday's Scottish voice complimented.

Peter grinned at her camera and walked through the opening doors as she dropped him off at his destination.

"You're the best, Friday! Thanks!"

"I know and you're quite welcome."

Friday had turned on all the lights in Mr. Stark's lab before he opened the door. As soon as he stepped through, he was bombarded with a series of excited whirs and beeps from Dum-E and U. Dummy was racing around him like the most demented dog ever and U was poking at his backpack.

"Hey fellas! What's up?" He gave them each a pat on what passed for their heads and walked over to his favourite area in the corner of the lab. Before Peter started frequenting Mr. Stark's lab, there wasn't any comfortable seating. After Peter fell asleep at the various workstations one too many times, Tony had set up an awesome little corner close to the bots' charging stations with a couch, chairs, coffee table, non-alcoholic wet bar, and tv.

"You guys haven't seen my calculus homework anywhere, have you?" He started lifting off couch cushions and checking under chairs. "I'm pretty sure I left it here the other day."

The bots beeped at him in response and started canvasing the area, knocking objects off surfaces with a great deal of smashing and clanking, as if his homework was hiding under the likes of beakers and wrenches.

"Whoa! OK! Ok, that's great! Thank you! Your help is super helpful, but I found it, so you can stop looking!" He lied, frantically waving a blank piece of paper as if it was his found homework.

He had to stop Dum-E in particular from "helping" as he was nearing one of Mr. Stark's cars. The robot looked like he was about to unleash his brand of searching on the vehicle. If Dum-E managed to bust his way in under the hood looking for Peter's homework in the car's intake manifold or oil pan, Mr. Stark would literally donate him to a local community college. Peter would just have to ask Friday to help him find his papers later.

DUM-E's claw came up in the "Woo!" motion Peter had taught him and he instantly zoomed off behind his charging station to retrieve his favourite toy: a small red and gold ironman beach ball, which he then dumped on Peter's lap for him to throw. Peter had taught the bots fetch when Mr. Stark wanted him in the lab, but didn't want him to actually touch anything - 'You just spent almost three hours playing video games with Clint. If you're not going outside to play with your little friends or help the elderly population across streets, then you're going to be down here using your brain instead of tenderizing it into the same useless pile of mush as Clint's. He's already clinically brain dead, it's too late for him, but there's still a little time left for you. Here, solve this.' Mr. Stark had a seemingly endless supply of tricky engineering, physics, chemistry, and math questions at the ready for whenever Peter was proving to be too much of a hopeless teenager. By the time he finished the problems (or got stuck), Mr. Stark was always too deeply entrenched in his own work to talk to Peter, so Peter had resorted to playing with the bots. Sometimes he just came down to hang out with them instead of Mr. Stark.

"Alright, buddy, you ready?"

Dum-E was vibrating - excited charges surging through his circuitry - as Peter raised the ball to throw.

He launched it across the open side of the room near the door, free of any machinery and experiments. U made a half-hearted attempt at fetching it too, but he quickly deduced that there was no point. As soon as the ball left Peter's hand, Dum-E had let out a tremendous BEEP and raced after it with a speed U had no hope to match.

"Don't worry about it, U. While he's fetching that, you and I can work on our handshake some more."

Dum-E had reached the ball, but it was gonna be a little while before he was back with it. Picking up the toy proved a little problematic. Each time he went to grab it, he ended up pushing it a little further away. He was overly gentle, not wanting to puncture it like its 10 predecessors. He'd eventually get it, though, and would be whizzing right back to Peter to start the process all over again. It was a great exercise in fine-motor skills, which Peter suspected was the only reason Mr. Stark allowed him to do it.

Peter yelled out a supportive "You're doing great, Dum-E. You got this, bud!" and received a series of bolstered chirps from the bot, who was way off in the far corner of the lab.

He held out his hand to U, "Alright, let's do this."

25 minutes later found Dum-E unable to rotate his claw due to some incident Peter had not witnessed. There'd been a crash followed by a loud mournful beep, and then Dum-E had wheeled himself over to Peter, claw drooping.

Gently taking the appendage in his hand, Peter examined it while U looked over his shoulder. Dum-E had managed to jam up his rotator with some sort of goo as well as bend the hell out of one of his fingers, which would require removal and re-wiring. Peter was more than capable of fixing it.

"It's okay, Dum-E, I can fix your finger and de-goo everything, no problem."

He led them over to one of Mr. Stark's benches (the one with the least amount of breakables) and proceeded to clean out the goo and then set to fixing everything.

After 50 minutes he was almost finished. He just had to solder closed a small hole he had accidentally made (whoops!) and then Dum-E would be good as new. He was interrupted by the clearing of a throat. Looking up, he saw Sergeant James Barnes menacing over by the door. He hadn't had any interaction with the Sergeant since the incident at the airport. He knew the guy was at the tower, but he generally kept to himself in his rooms. Peter had overheard Steve and Sam talking about him giving them the slip to hunt down Hydra bases a little while ago. He knew Steve didn't want his friend fighting alone.

"Uhhh….?" Peter trailed off, intimidated.

"Is Stark in?"

"Uh, n-no, sorry, Mr. Stark's not here. But I'm sure he'll be back soon. Super soon. In, like, no time." He assured, not wanting to anger the Winter Solder. "Friday, when is Mr. Stark coming back?"

"Boss won't be back until tomorrow night."

Peter gulped when he saw Sergeant Barnes' jaw clench in frustration. Whatever he needed Mr. Stark for he clearly didn't want to wait a day. Peter's enhanced eyesight saw a faint tremor jolt through the man's metal arm and its plates spasm in response.

Stupidly, Peter said, "That doesn't look good. I just fixed Dum-E's arm, I could fix yours too" and then cringed. What. An. Idiot. He basically just clumped the Winter Soldier's killer arm in the same category as Dum-E's gooed up, arcade claw.

The man looked down at his arm and them over at Dum-E's claw and raised an eyebrow. "Do you know what you're doing?"

Peter shrugged, but was starting to get a little excited at the prospect of looking at the mechanics of the arm up close and personal, despite the scary assassin attached to it.

"I can take a looksee and if it turns out I don't know what's wrong, then I won't mess with it and you can wait till tomorrow for Mr. Stark."

He turned back around to Dum-E and finished up the last touches. He senses picked up that Barnes was quietly coming closer until the man was near enough to watch as he worked. Peter tensed. His spider senses weren't tingling, but his Peter senses were freaking out because the man was wearing all black and was scary. He tried his best to ignore him and focus on Dum-E.

"There you go, bud. Good as new! There's a little scar, sure, but the ladies dig em'."

Barnes snorted quietly and Peter relaxed a bit at the small, but distinct, sign of humanity.

"So, what's going on with your arm? Which I think is insanely awesome, by the way."

Barnes huffed, "Yes, you made that clear last time." He held out his arm, "You saw, it keeps tremoring."

"Wanna sit down?" Peter patted the seat beside him in invitation. "It's easier to look at under the light over here."

Barnes sat down beside him and Peter's only thought was, 'Dude huge.'

He leaned in close and watched as another surge went through the arm. 'Hmm...'

"Can I look at your shoulder?"

Barnes rolled his sleeve up until his shoulder was exposed and Peter pulled the light over.

"I think the panel right here will need to be removed. It looks as though something is messing with the relay, which I'm assuming is up here somewhere…"Peter grew quiet as he spotted a bit of blood splattered on the upper portion of the arm.

Barnes looked at him emotionlessly for a long moment (Peter tried not to hyperventilate) before reaching over with his flesh hand and unlatching a small panel, which would allow Peter to look inside where he specified.

Peter bit his lip to keep any embarrassing noises from escaping. He was slightly terrified, sure, but this was one of the coolest things he'd ever seen. He grabbed a screw driver – 'I'm not gonna unscrew anything, I promise, I'm just gonna move things aside so I can see any obstruction.' – and got to work.

Bucky looked at the scrawny teenager poking around his arm with humor. The kid was wearing khakis and a green, old man sweater with a flannel collar. He was the most unobtrusive and unsuspecting superhero he'd ever met, aside from Banner. That this was the unitarded man-child who had stopped his metal fist one-handedly, like it was nothing, was a hard concept to wrap his broken mind around. He knew Steve really liked the kid. The entire team did. He was apparently charming and quirky, with a pension for chattering non-stop. Which you'd never given how silent he was at the moment. The high schooler was clearly intimidated by him, which gave Bucky got a smug, comedic thrill. Nobody on the team was intimidated by him anymore. The amount of times Clint had stuck fridge magnets to his arm was embarrassing and Tony, whose parents Bucky had mindlessly murdered, called him Snowflake. So, sue him, it was nice to be recognized as petrifying every once in a while. He hammed it up by remaining silent and emotionless, though inside he was cackling like the troll Steve knew him to be.

It wasn't painful, but Bucky could feel the pressure of wires and pieces being moved around. Usually Bucky didn't like anyone messing with his arm as it reminded him too much of Hydra's scientists, but Peter was so focused that his tongue had started poking out the side of his mouth in concentration and he had started quietly humming some jingle Bucky didn't recognize.

'Holy shit, this is so amazing! Be cool, Peter, be cool. Who's cool? Yeah, you're cool.' Peter had to keep himself in check with every amazing piece of engineering he encountered in just this small area of the arm. It was unlike anything he'd ever seen before and he had helped Tony with the Ironman suit once. For a glorious 20 minutes. Until he had been kicked out of the lab for breaking off one of the suits pinkies.

"AH HA!" Peter grabbed a pair of tweezers and yanked out the offending piece of debris that was screwing things up and brandished it at Bucky. "I fixed it! Yeah, I am cool! It was this thing!...wait, what is this thing?" Peter looked at the miniscule ivory shard trapped between the pincers of his tweezers. "Is this… bone?!" Peter looked at Bucky with wide eyes.

Bucky made sure to look as assassin-y as possible when replying, "Maybe."

"Is…is it…your bone?"

"Doubted." It definitely wasn't. The bits of blood and bone belonged to the Hydra scum he had annihilated two days ago. It had gotten messy.

Peter felt like gagging, but was also undeniably impressed with the dude's badassery. The man had been walking around with a piece of someone else's bone stuck in his arm for who knew how long.

It was at that moment Steve Rogers entered the lab.

"Bucky! Here you are. Uh, hi Peter." When Friday said Bucky was in the lab, Steve had assumed Tony was working on Bucky's arm. It was a little worrying to see Peter working on Bucky's arm without Tony anywhere in sight. "What's going on?"

"Nothing. The kid's just tinkering with my arm." Bucky said dismissively.

"Tinkering?!" Peter cried indignantly. "I fixed your arm, thank me very much!" Turning to Steve, he tattled, "He had a chunk of some dude's bone stuck in here, messing everything up, and his arm was covered in blood." He knew Bucky wasn't supposed to be out fighting and he knew Steve would lay into him at the clear signs he had been. That'll teach the ungrateful terminator.

Peter felt great vindication (and slight terror) at the surprised look on Bucky's face as he ratted him out.

"It was not 'covered in blood', you little punk. And 'chunk of bone'? It was less than a mm wide." Bucky stood up and closed the latch covering the interior of his arm.

Peter looked a little sheepish at his outburst. "Fine. I'm sorry. How does it feel now?"

Bucky did a few recalibration movements without issue. "Good." He looked at Peter, "Thank you. I appreciate it. Even if you are a bit of a narc."

With that, he ruffled Peter's hair 'I'm not a dog! Why does everyone keep doing that?!' and walked out of the lab with Steve while lamenting the youths of today.

Peter sat on the bench and tried to fix his hair while muttering about 'Goddamn, cybernetic-armed assholes.'

His angry mutters were met with a series of sad, questioning beeps.

"Oh no! Not you, Dum-E. You're a cybernetic-armed delight. Now let's clean up that mystery goo before Mr. Stark comes home."

A/N: Yay Bucky and Peter! I wasn't planning on writing that, but the words just typed themselves. Hopefully you enjoyed. I'd love to hear what you think (makes my day!). Till next time :)