thirty-five.
Peter couldn't manage to shake the queasy feeling he had. He'd been hunched over the toilet throwing up for 10 minutes, even though now he had nothing left to throw up. He was just curled up on the tile coughing up bile. He thought if he coughed any harder he might throw up his own lung, but that was highly unlikely.
His head hurt so bad all he wanted to do was curl up and sleep, but he needed to get out of here. He felt too sick to stay at school, but his phone was in his bag and his bag was in his locker and- he suddenly remembered the watch on his wrist and double tapped the screen as he coughed.
The watch beeped and he coughed again. "Friday, call Mr. Bucky please."
He turned and retched once more as Friday connected him to Bucky, who took a moment to pick up. "Hello? Peter are you okay?"
"M-Mr. Bucky can you come get me please, I... I don't feel so good."
There was some shuffling on the other end of the line before Bucky responded. "Yeah, buddy I'm on the way. Wait in the office for me, okay? I'll be there as soon as I can."
Peter nodded even though he knew that he couldn't be seen. "Thank you. I'm sorry."
"You don't have to be sorry, Peter. I'm on my way."
Bucky was quick to hang up and Peter put a lot of effort into pulling himself up off of the bathroom floor and down the hall to the office. The secretary asked Peter if he'd called someone and he said yes before being offered a couch to lay on, but Peter decided that curling up on the floor would be just fine.
He stayed there, how long he wasn't sure, until Bucky came to get him. Bucky signed the little paper and walked around the desk to carefully scoop Peter up off of the cold floor. Peter curled up to Bucky's chest and squeezed his eyes shut. He felt dizzy but held tightly onto Bucky's shoulders.
Once he had a dream sort of like this, except he and Bucky were romantically involved... It was kinda weird but he wouldn't deny the dream he had was a little hot. Peter didn't know what he was thinking right now, his head hurt too bad.
Luckily, Bucky brought Natasha's car instead of either of the bikes. Bucky safely tucked Peter away in the back seat, Peter's phone falling out of his bag in the process. Bucky grabbed it up with the intention of putting it back but caught glimpse of a text from Wade on the screen, which read something along the lines of how much he couldn't wait to see Peter again.
Bucky wondered if Wade had any idea what could be wrong with Peter but knew that there was only one way to find out, and now was not the time to go looking for trouble from another mercenary. Also, Steve would kick the asses of everyone involved.
For now, it was important to just get Peter home and safely tucked into his bed.
Steve was at work, he'd started a new job that understood that he'd sometimes have to ditch work for Captain America duties on short notice. He'd picked it up because he wanted to provide for his family, without the help of Tony Stark. He wouldn't admit it, but sometimes he felt like a bum letting Tony do all the paying, especially now that they weren't together anymore, and Steve was too prideful to do anything else.
Nat was back at the compound. She didn't know how not to work. She's always needed to have something to do with her, ever since he dropped her off with Hawk-boy all those years ago.
So for now, it was just the two of them. And Bucky made easy work of getting Peter home, and into warmer clothes, and into bed underneath the best covers he and Steve had. He couldn't put him downstairs just yet as his part wasn't fixed up for him yet. And besides, he didn't want to leave him down there anyways, even if it was.
So he tucked Peter in, stuffed a hot pad under the blankets. The kid needed to sweat out whatever sickness was going on inside of him.
If only they knew then that it wasn't that kind of sickness.