Break the Water

6

YES I FINALLY UPDATED AFTER EIGHT WHOLE ASS MONTHS I'M SO SORRY

Back to the story

Screams awoke Peter from his drowsy sleep. His eyes opened with a jolt as he tried to comprehend the situation. It couldn't have been more than a couple of hours since he fell asleep, because the sun was still burning high up in the sky. Peter sat up and looked around. The screams weren't of pain, fear or anger, they were desperate. Not to mention far away.

"What's wrong?" Natasha asked, giving Peter a small glance before going back to braiding her hair out of boredom. "You should go back to sleep, it has only been an hour or so." Peter shook his head and looked around. He was pretty sure that someone had screamed something.

It might have been a noise that his head had formed during his dreams, but when he was asleep there wasn't any kind of story going on in his head. He only sat on a small bridge with his feet dangling in the water as seagulls flew around his view of the sea that slowly started to become orange from the light that the sunset provided. Nothing happened in his dream: he only sat there. Maybe that was the place of comfort inside his mind.

There was no possible way that his mind had fooled him. Someone had screamed. That could only mean two things: either he and Natasha were in serious danger because Hydra agents had found them, or there were other people on the sea who could turn out to be friendly and help them out. Peter wasn't sure which of the two it was, but his Spider Sense never flared up, so he decided to trust his instincts.

"I heard someone," he said absently, looking around for any sign of life. Natasha's head shot up from the braids that she was making. She quickly looked around as well before turning to Peter. "Are you sure? Where? Who was it? Are they hostile?"
"One question at the time please. And I don't know, I'm pretty certain that I heard someone yell. Maybe call out for help."

"What if it was Steve or Bucky?" Shit. For some odd reason, that possibility never crossed Peter's mind before. His movements became more frantic and he mentally cursed to himself for not worrying about the two super soldiers sooner. "It's possible," he answered, hiding the fact that he had almost forgotten about them, "but I barely heard whether it was a friend or foe, so let's not jump to any conclusions."

"Did you hear how far away they were?"
"Pretty far, about a mile or two."
"You can hear that far?"
"Depends on if it's important or not, I'll explain later." A new scream came. It wasn't hostile, it wasn't desperate and it wasn't demanding. It was an exhausted yell. From the sound, Peter knew that whoever was yelling was using almost all of their might to make sure that at least some kind of shout could escape their throat.

"Scratch that, about half a mile," Peter corrected himself. When the next scream came, he could make out what the person was saying.
"Natasha! Natasha!" Peter sat up straight and looked at the direction where the sound was coming from. It was the Captain, it certainly was. Usually his voice contained some kind of leadership and determination; Peter could always rely on the comfort that the strength in Steve's tone provided, but now it lacked every single bit of passion. It was worrying.

"It's Cap," he said with a smile, looking at Natasha. "It's Cap! It's the Captain! They're calling out for you." His smile grew even more when the woman next to him softly smirked, obviously trying to hide her happiness. "Natasha!" The new scream came, but it sounded different from the previous ones. "Spider-Man!" Oh, wow. Peter sure as hell didn't expect that one.

"Over here!" Peter screamed back once he saw Steve approach in the distance. After a few minutes, he finally arrived at the floating debris, Bucky following suit. They struggled to climb on top of it, and Natasha smirked as she helped them up. "Good to hear that you missed us." Steve let out a huff of air. "Of course, no one was with us to roll their eyes at our actions and no one was babbling on in our earpieces, it was gettung quite boring at some point."

Once Bucky was also on the debris, they all sat in silence for a while. The piece of debris was big enough to hold to four of them, but the amount of personal space had vividly lessened. Peter pulled his legs closer to him and shoved away from the water for a bit. The position hurt his back, but he cared more about those billions of liters of water that surrounded him and splashed over the side with every small wave. He hated this. He hated it.

Steve's awkward expression changed once he saw Natasha's leg. The blood had started to spread through the fabric of Peter's sleeve and slowly dripped on top of the metal below her thigh. Natasha simply shrugged. "A shark, I've had worse."
"It's bleeding pretty heavily, Nat," Bucky said, talking for the first time since he arrived. "Shark bites are famous for giving people nasty infections. That doesn't seem like something to treat as if it's a papercut."

Peter put his hands in the air and made a mock-serious expression. "Hey! Papercuts are the worst pain known to mankind! Don't underestimate them." He had expected the men to at least let out a snort at his attempt to make light of the situation, but only Natasha smiled at the comment. Steve and Bucky, however, looked at him as if he had grown a second head. The Captain opened his mouth and let out a few stuttering noises, but nothing more could be produced, so he closed his mouth again. Peter lifted a single eyebrow in confusion.

"What? Is there something on my face?" He tapped his cheeks and forehead, looking for some kind of parasite sucking at his skin, but nothing was there. It took him a few seconds before realisation was drawn upon him. "Oh. My face."
"Nat, did you know that we took a twelve-year-old on a mission?" Bucky asked, leaning over to Natasha. "I'm fifteen," Peter protested. He fiddled with the mask in his hands. "Nearly sixteen."

"That still makes you a fifteen-year-old, son," Steve said, eyeing the boy up and down. "I don't think it's wrong, though. I'm just surprised."
Peter's head shot up at the statement. "You don't?" He asked, knitting his eyebrows together. Steve merely shrugged in response. "No, not really. I lied to get into the army-" he got cut off by Bucky. "Not that it worked in any situation," the man snorted. His laughs died down when Steve glared at him.

"I was not fit for the army, and still I wanted to help people. You've got your powers and you use it for the good, I respect that. Age only truly matters when it comes to pedophilia."
"What about getting a job?"
"Isn't what he does a job?"
"It's not like I get paid for it."
"It also matters during parenthood."
"No child wants to have a kid."
"Then how come those kids always treat their dolls as babies?"
"Guys! You're ruining my point," Steve whined.

"With all due respect, your point didn't make any sense, sir," Peter said, avoiding eye contact. "Whatever, you're seven," Steve remarked jokingly.
"How long have you guys been looking for us?" Natasha asked, interrupting the conversation. "Around a day? Maybe more. The sun came down once, but it feels like I've been swimming for weeks," Bucky said as he wrapped the sleeve around Natasha's leg again, putting more pressure on the wound.

"You've been swimming all this time?"
"No, we rested during the night. In fact, we waited for Spidey here to return." A few glares were sent to Peter's direction. "Sorry, what?" The boy remarked, making a confused expression. "We all went out to look for Nat, but at some point you disappeared. We waited for you to come back at some point, but when you hadn't arrived yet in the morning, we thought that you had both died. You fell on those metal plates quite hard only a few hours before."

"Oh."

From all of the words that Peter could have said, he responded with oh. The only word in the entire English vocabulary that didn't hold any kind of information, emotion or relevance to the situation whatsoever. He had just found out that two people who he didn't even know were worried about him. Honestly worried. But he couldn't help it. It felt good.

SHORT CHAPTER I KNOW BUT HEY no one probably cares cuz the last update was eight months ago so everyone already forgot about this book so yeah

Anyways: how you doin'?

Shizzle Dizzle!
~SOS-pad (cuz my hair is turning red, is that normal?)