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The forties might have been different times and an awful lot had certainly changed in the past few decades, but Steve was pretty sure that what was happening was in no way considered normal. Not to anyone.
He was yet to decide if he should be feeling responsible enough to stop whatever it was that was going on.
“Come on! Just hit him already!”
“Clint shut the hell up I’m trying to concentrate here.”
“Well you’re doing one hell of a job there aren’t you buddy? You’ve managed to succeed a grand total of none amount of times.”
“That doesn’t even make grammatical sense also shut up.” Sam grunted, his first swinging wildly through the air and connecting with nothing.
Spider-Man laughed from where he was suddenly crouching on the floor. Steve watched him sweep his leg out to connect with Sam’s shins sending the other man tumbling. Luckily he caught himself before disaster but that didn’t stop Clint from hooting with amusement.
“Shut up.” Sam hissed through gritted teeth while he redoubled his efforts to take the Spider out. Sam aimed a jab at the guy’s torso but he had already leapt up into the air, backflipping elegantly away from Sam’s reach. The kid let out another chuckle as Sam twirled around on the spot to face his opponent yet again and growled. Honestly, Steve knew no one except Stark had seen Spider-Man’s actual face but they all knew he was clearly a child. If the voice hadn’t given him away the constant jokes and conversations he kept making in the middle of battle seemed like a big enough hint. But no matter his feelings on the matter it couldn’t be denied the kid had skills. What he hadn’t expected to come out of all of this however was that the rest of his teammates would apparently become children themselves in his presence.
Exhibit A was that Sam was trying to just land a punch on the kid… while he was blindfolded.
Not Sam. No. Spider-Man was blindfolded. Spider-Man the child who was being attacked by one of Steve’s teammates was blindfolded and still laughing happily.
What was happening here.
He watched Sam feint to the left before trying to follow it with an uppercut but the kid just danced away, as light on his feet as always.
“You missed me,” He cooed, flipping needlessly around the room while Sam chased him with as much dignity as he could muster.
“Hey,” Clint called, “if you hit him I’ll give ya twenty bucks.”
“Clint,” Steve chided the man for trying to incentivise Sam to hit a child. Hawkeye did not look remotely ashamed. He was too busy lounging on the gym floor watching the other two in their little dance.
“What Cap? You know Birdbrain won’t do it, I know Birdbrain can’t do it. So what’s the problem huh?”
Steve had to admit that from what he could see Spider-Man was doing just fine and still having an awful lot of fun. He turned just in time to watch him leap impossibly high towards the ceiling, spinning mid air and just as Steve was about to shout a warning to look out Spider-Man landed on the ceiling.
What.
He can do that?!
Everything in the room went quiet as the adults craned the necks up to see the boy just… sitting there.
Spider-Man cocked his head to the side, the ridiculous bandana around his mask slipping slowly off his face because apparently some things still like to obey the laws of gravity.
“Are you guys alright?” He finally asked.
“Uh, yeah kid,” Clint’s response was laced with surprise but he hid it quickly “just wondering how you think Sam is gonna be able to not hit you when you’re all the way up there.”
“I would totally have gotten him.”
“No you wouldn’t.” Came everyone’s chiming reply.
Giving up Steve decided to just sit down on the floor next to Clint and watch as the kid elected to just crawl across the ceiling and then down the wall because apparently dropping from that height was totally possible but it also, like, really hurt your knees y’know.
Soon enough Spider-Man made it back down to the floor standing uncertainty at the edge of the gym mats. “So, do you guys still wanna, like, fight or whatever? Because I don’t know if I should take this blindfold off or-” He cut himself off at the last second, dropping to the floor and rolling out of the way of Sam’s incoming charge. Apparently Sam had decided the only way to land a hit was to try and sneak attack a blindfolded child. God, Steve had conflicted feeling about all this. On the one hand he was vehemently against the practice of fighting children for what he considered to be obvious reasons. Like the fact they were children. But, on the other hand this particular child was certainly not your average kid. The more Steve interacted with him the more he kept getting surprised. It was weird enough suddenly finding out he could just hang off ceilings but when the kid succeeded in picking up an entire garbage truck with his bare hands in the middle of a fight Steve got a bit distracted.
Regardless of his feelings though, Steve couldn’t deny it was hilarious to watch Sam unsuccessfully attempt to sneak up on a kid who insisted he could “just tell” when someone was trying to hit him. Steve had certainly not believed it at first, and even after Clint’s quiet assurance that “Trust me, it’s freaky shit but the kid just knows Steve” he had doubted just how much the kid knew. But what he had seen today definitely seemed to be proving the guy right.
A groan came from the floor. Specifically the area of the floor where Sam lay in a defeated pile of sadness.
“Okay,” the sadness pile said, “I’m done. You keep your freaky spider-ness away from me y’hear?”
Steve smiled fondly as Sam propped himself up on his elbows to glare at Spider-Man who was reaching up to remove the blindfold. Which is when Tony walked in.
“Hey Pe-” he paused, looking at the scene before him where Steve and Clint sat calmly on the floor and Sam was lying there staring daggers at Spider-Man who was really struggling with the knot at the back of his head before he decided to just give up and rip it off. The eye holes in his mask widening slightly as he apparently adjusted to the light again.
“What is this?” Tony asked, more confused than annoyed.
“Oh hey Mr Stark, I was just showing that uh,” Evidently the kid didn’t know how to describe that he was showing off to a bunch of Avengers by actively letting one try and hit him. To be fair, if Steve was in the kid’s shoes he wouldn’t want to have to explain that either. Especially with the way Tony got defensive of him any time Spider-Man was brought up.
“He was just showing us that his magic supersenses-” “Spidey sense” “His… spideysenses are very good at knowing where things are and Sam here just happened to trip over. Nothing strange to see here.”
See, Steve knew he wasn’t the best at lying, in fact, that hadn’t been a particularly good one at all. But apparently it was enough for Stark who with only one or two suspicious glances around the room, accepted Steve’s word and telling the kid to head down to the labs to see if some new web shooter would work the way Tony wanted it too.
The kid happily skipped out of the room, calling a goodbye over his shoulder. Tony was soon to follow but not before he paused in the doorway, looking back at the three men inside.
“Here’s an idea: let’s not try to test and see if we can hit a kid while he’s blindfolded huh?” Tony’s glare alone was enough to make them all avoid eye contact and simply look at the ground in shame. Well Steve and Sam did, Clint just stayed where he was like he hadn’t been adding any monetary incentive to the game. “But,” Tony continued, his voice far less grave than before, “If you do ever attempt this again like the idiots that you are,” He paused, probably just for dramatic effect but also maybe to glare just a bit longer. “Then my money is on him.” And with a wink in Clint’s direction Tony flounced out of the room after his kid.