Boys like Boys|| Peter Parker

.5.

May, 2015

The days started to blur with Bucky, Oliver wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. It was still weird living together with someone. Sometimes he'd wake up, still believing he was in the red room. Sometimes, Bucky lashed out in his sleep. 

They were both two very broken people trying not to let the other see the extent of the damage they had endured. 

But then again, they had normal days. They had days where they watched tv shows and read books side by side like two cats enjoying each others' company but refusing to move closer. They had days where Oliver tried to experiment with food and Bucky tried to learn some new recipe. 

It was hard getting used to this new normal, but it was easier than being alone. 

"Wait, wait, what happens if I land on the snake square?"

"I told you, you go down his body and he sort of poops you out" Oliver rolled his dice and moved his token ahead, incidentally he landed on a ladder square, moving nearly thirty squares up. "Ha ha! Suck on that"

Oliver was sitting in an armchair, Bucky on the couch with a game of snakes and ladders on the coffee table between them. It took days and weeks to get the apartment clean, but they managed. Now it was just starting to look more like a home and less like an abandoned apartment. It was weird for Oliver to think that he'd stayed in the same place for nearly three months now.

"You cheated"

"I did not" Oliver frowned looking at the man. How could you even cheat in a game like snakes and ladders?

"You did something to the dice. I saw you"

"Liar" Oliver stuck his tongue out. 

Bucky looked like he was about to stop frowning, which was his default by the way. Somehow he even frowned in his sleep. Just yesterday Oliver had had a pretty bad nightmare and he had woken up to see Bucky frowning in his sleep, the fuck? 

Just as Bucky's eyes lit up a little, shining with the bright blue— the windows of their apartment shattered inwards. 

Someone had broken in. 

Immediately, Bucky was on his feet, followed closely by Oliver. It was sad how fast they both flipped. In the blink of an eye, their relaxed minds had sped up, their eyes narrowing coldly, trying to place what had just happened. 

No matter how much they pretended to be normal, how they cooked spaghetti for dinner and watched a movie side by side, how they played board games and went grocery shopping together, how Oliver made a show of being disgusted when someone assumed they were father and son, this is what they truly were. 

The normalcy was just a mask. They had always been soldiers first— no, Killers.

 The other person it turned out was a woman, maybe in her late twenties. She would've looked younger if her eyes weren't drawn together so tightly. 

Everything about her looked sharp. She reminded Oliver of Madam Petrova and he didn't like the comparison. 

Bucky went for a punch while Oliver slid their game board off the coffee table and under her feet making her lose balance. She quickly recovered from that with an elegant back flip, landing perfectly on her feet before leaping at Bucky and wrapping her arms around his waist. 

Quicker than Oliver could comprehend, she was on his back— no her legs were around his neck. The boy didn't even have a clear shot because Bucky kept thrashing around. 

Oliver couldn't help the sinking feeling that consumed him. No, no, no. They were supposed to be playing a board game, they were going to eat ice cream after dinner, Oliver was finally a little content.

Muttering a quick 'fuck', Oliver jumped on the couch and then planted a foot onto the wall before landing on top of the woman. 

She tried to reach for her gun, but Oliver twisted her arms and had his arms twisted around her neck. 

She was smart though, with a quick jab to his chest, she made Oliver fall off Bucky's back and instead grabbed the older man's head as she flipped her entire body and made Bucky fall onto the hard ground. 

Bucky had been afraid to hurt Oliver so he hadn't done much, but now he took out two knives and charged towards the woman. The older man, as normal as he tried to act for Oliver's sake, was just as paranoid as the boy. Of course he couldn't just erase decades of brainwashing and training. Obviously he had knives hidden everywhere.

Somehow she always seemed two steps ahead of him, blocking his strikes and instead curling his hand so the knife made a small gash on his right arm. 

Meanwhile, Oliver who didn't want this to end in death was trying to think of ways to snap the woman out of Dreykov's mind control. He knew a few things so far— This woman was definitely from the red room and she'd been sent here to incapacitate or kill him. It only helped to make him feel guiltier. 

He needed to help her. Maybe that would make him feel better. But he couldn't think of anything other than breaking her nose. He wasn't, and had never claimed to be a tech genius, but he knew common fucking sense. This woman too had a chip implanted in her face and he needed to help her and Bucky.

"LOOK OUT BRYCE" 

Bucky ducked out of the way just as Oliver came from behind him. The poor woman didn't even see what hit her, a pan actually. A blood stained pan in Oliver's hands.

For a moment, they just stood, chests heaving. Oliver looked at the crumpled form of the woman and bit his lip. Everything had been going right for once and now everything was going wrong.  

"Is she dead?" He asked breathlessly. 

"I don't think so" Bucky pointed to her moving chest, "Just knocked out."

"Breaking her nose was the only way to snap her out of the mind control. That's how I escaped"

"And you had to use the pan?" Bucky frowned. "I was going to make eggs in that"

"This would've been a great time to come out as pansexual" Oliver breathed heavily, not paying attention to Bucky. "Unfortunately, I only put the Bi in Bitch"

"What?"

"Geez, can we talk about my sexual orientation later?" The pan slipped from his hands and landed on the floor. Too much noise, too much exposure. They'd been found. It wouldn't be long before more widows followed. 

And it was all his fault. 

Now everything was ruined again. 

He grimaced, looking at the woman. He felt truly sorry for her, for all the widows. They weren't his enemies, but Dreykov was and he was using them for his dirty work when they were innocent. That was why Oliver didn't like to kill them. He knew most of them personally, and he wanted to avoid death for them and him. "Help me drag her inside the bedroom"

"Usually you need to ask for the woman's permission" Bucky said from behind Oliver as he grabbed the woman's legs.

"Was that—" Oliver gasped dramatically, his hand going to his chest which still hurt very much, "Was that sarcasm young man?"

Bucky scoffed humorously before picking up the woman with ease and dropping her on the unused bed. 

"Now what?" Oliver asked. 

"We wait for her to come around, I guess"

"I'll keep the pan nearby in case I need to do.... that again"