Chapter Text
‘Oh I am a seed,
Oh I am a seed,
I’ve been pushed down into the ground
But I will rise up a tree.’
“I Am A Seed” ~ David Crowder Band
“Has he been here long?”
“I think so.” A deeper voice rumbles a pondering sound. “His young lady friend was on the phone.”
“Ah. Gotcha.”
“Perhaps the stress of exams caught up with him, now that they are finished?”
“Could be. He’s only got two days of school left for the year.”
“It is late, even for us, so I was surprised to see him still up.”
“Yeah, I’ve got him. Thanks for letting me know.”
The strongest, most effective pulls of sleep are always when you’re right on the cusp of it, awake enough that your senses can take in information and drowsy enough that none of it makes any sense.
“Are we going to have to flip a coin?”
“That seems most unfair, leaving it to chance when I am the stronger of us both.”
“That’s harsh, blondie.”
“Arm wrestle you for him? I’ll tie the other hand behind my back and everything.”
“Now who’s being unfair?”
Peter struggles to piece everything together: the cool leather under his cheek, a heavy rectangle in his fingers, the smell of rain and ozone right before a storm, the prickly beard that kisses his forehead, heavy footsteps fading down the hall—
The irreverent hand that pokes his ribs.
It yanks Peter back from true sleep and he scowls. “Go ‘way…‘m nappin’.”
A breathless puff of laughter sounds above him. “Yes, I can see that. Considering you conked out while on the phone with MJ and I had to say goodnight to her for you.”
Peter’s eyes snap open. “Wait, what?”
Tony’s brow crinkles in another chuckle. “Nah, I’m just messing with you. She hung up ages ago.”
“Dude.” Peter deflates at having dodged that particular bullet. “Don’t scare me like that.”
Tony tickles him under the ribs again. “What can I say? You’re just too easy. You’re also adorable right now, by the way. Thor and I had to fight each other for tucking in privileges.”
Peter goes red, both from flinching away at the sensation and the words. “The news may think you’re cool and suave but I know better. I know the real truth, that you’re all a bunch of soft-hearted nerds.”
“Good thing you’re with your own kind, then,” Tony fires right back.
He gives up tickling Peter to just rub his shoulder and Peter doesn’t really have a comeback for what is, fortunately, quite true. Especially when he’s wearing a science pun T-shirt and Nyan Cat sleep pants—he’s got no defense for that. Peter watches Tony for a few heartbeats, the accordion folds around his eyes and the stretch of his goatee on one side in a half smile.
This man, his father, wears an aura that looks like home…like sunny days and long nights that smell of motor oil and tomato sauce, like safe arms and…and…
“Oh no.” Tony sees what’s happening and his hand stops. “Don’t go back to sleep on me just yet.”
The phone is removed from Peter’s palm and placed on the living room’s coffee table. Another poke brings his lids open again, and he’s startled that he can’t remember when he closed them.
“Come on, small fry, work with me here.”
Peter is surprised enough that he wakes further when Tony kneels down and swivels so his back faces the couch. A flutter zips through Peter’s stomach. He’s extra red now, but it’s from something else, an emotion he doesn’t have a name for. Images of Uncle Ben flash through his mind, bringing with them a pleasant warmth.
“Are you offering me a piggy back ride?”
Tony glances at him over his shoulder. “Are you denying it out of a false sense of pride that you can make the whole walk to your bedroom right now without keeling over?”
“Touché.” Peter winds his arms around Tony’s neck, careful not to cinch too tight. “Are you strong enough to carry me?”
“First of all: how dare you. What is it with people questioning my muscles tonight? Secondly, you weigh about as much as a ten year old with your freaky genetics so yes, I certainly can.”
Proving this, Tony straightens his knees without so much as a grimace. Peter wraps his legs around Tony’s waist and they’re in business. His ankles cross near Tony’s belly button and even through his socks he can feel the familiar, lullaby heartbeat.
It makes Peter’s eyes heavy, so he rests his cheek on Tony’s shoulder, nose in his hair. Tony’s careful to duck a little to keep Peter’s weight from slipping off his back, his arms under Peter’s knees.
The bobbing feels right, easy, and Peter wonders what it would have been like to grow up with these people from the very start. To have Clint teach him how to walk. His first language lessons from Nat. To have Bruce, an ever patient teacher, show him how to tie a shoelace. To eat his first chocolate cake with Thor, both of them covered in it, and have Tony guide his hands across a piano.
He thinks about being carried by Ben like this, high up on his shoulders at the fair, and realizes that maybe it all turned out the way it was supposed to.
“Hey, Peter? Remember when you asked me what being sixteen felt like?”
Peter’s fingers tighten in Tony’s shirt over the left side, and the man’s heartbeat is under his knuckles now too. “Mhmm.”
“Well.” Tony tilts his head slightly while walking, kissing the back of Peter’s hand. “It turns out that having a kid means you kind of get to live vicariously through them, experience the world at those stages again.”
There’s a pause and Peter can see his bedroom door getting closer, but it’s not until they’re near it that the words make sense.
“Is that so?”
Tony grins wider. “It really is.”
Peter mirrors it, savouring the decrease in Tony’s blood pressure at the action. “What does it feel like so far?”
With an out of character silence, Tony thinks about how to answer this. “So far, mostly, I’ve learned that driving is a nightmare.”
“Hey!” Peter flicks Tony’s ear to the sound of his laughter. “I’m getting much better!”
“That you are, kid, that you are…”
Tony soothes Peter with thumb strokes along his knee. Peter calms, fighting an urge to chew his sweater cuff that he hasn’t had in months. He settles for resting his chin on it. Tony must feel this, because his fan lines deepen even more. His eyes seem to flicker like twin stars.
“Being sixteen, a teenager,” Tony says in a low murmur, “is supposed to be about making a patchwork quilt, I’ve realized.”
This bizarre statement takes several moments for Peter to decipher. He still doesn’t, totally, until he looks into each bedroom door, the ones that are open, as they pass. It must be late, for even Steve, Nat, and Bruce are asleep.
Then it sinks in.
Peter hides his face and Tony laughs in his throat, buzzing across Peter’s skin. “It’s about taking all the pieces of those who love you, Peter, and making something new out of it. You’re gaining more independence, your own person, but you still need us. And that’s okay.”
Peter’s mind drifts to Tony’s childhood, the cold and exposed environment of the Stark household. His own pieces must have been so small and fraying to work with.
“We’re both making our quilts for the first time, then.”
Tony doesn’t reply to this one, but Peter hears his heart miss a beat. He kisses Peter’s hand again.
Lulled and so content that he wonders if he’ll burst, Peter falls asleep before they even make it through his bedroom door. He does so with a smile on his face.
Peter never feels the hands that tuck him into bed or the lips that press to his hair or Tony’s whispered words that he is one of the biggest, most vibrant center pieces in his life.
“And you always will be, Peter, until I take my last breath.”
It’s snowing in June and every single one of the four hundred students spilling out the school doors are revelling in it. They jump up and down, white paper swishing down in winking clumps.
MJ stops on the top step leading to the curb, her hand still in Peter’s, to take in the full scene. A shard of loose leaf with algebra on it gets stuck in her hair.
“This is so much litter,” she moans. “It’s like a flash mob but with more crime.”
Peter laughs and can’t help but agree. He pities the freshmen who have to help janitorial staff sort all the thrown papers into recycling. The last day of school jitters are contagious, and the front lawn is just one massive storm cloud of excited shouting. Homework is tossed high with reckless abandon.
MJ swings their joined hands. Hand holding is the one cliché PDA thing she actually enjoys in this tentative, budding relationship, and this had come as no small shock to Peter when she told him. She grew up in a very unaffectionate family, she explained, and the contact reminds her that some things are constant.
“I don’t miss this tradition.” Peter has to yell to be heard over the racket. “Do you remember cleaning up the seniors’ calculus papers until it got dark out?”
MJ groans at the memory. “I try not to.”
Through the maelstrom, Peter finally spots a familiar face parked along the pick up lane. A whole host of faces.
Blinking, astonished, Peter and MJ wander down to see not one but two vintage convertibles hogging the lane.
MJ looks surprised too. “They all came? Aren’t they incredibly busy, even retired?”
“They’re supposed to be.” Peter waves to catch Clint’s attention.
He’s driving the lead vehicle, Bucky and Steve piled in the back. Tony drives the one in behind, Bruce in the passenger’s seat and Nat and Thor lounging over top of each other—the only ones not buckled up—along the back. Other kids have also spied the infamous faces but give them a wide berth, especially when Tony lowers his shades to give one senior a shrewd look.
“Hey, champ!” Clint leans across to open the door for them. He’s even wearing a costume chauffeur's hat. “You’re going to have to sit in the back with our senior citizens.”
“Was the pageantry really necessary?” Peter’s touched, and he’s never felt more loved, but he feels compelled to ask. “At least a dozen kids have already livestreamed this.”
Steve puts a hand to his chest. “It’s your last day of eleventh grade! This is a big deal, Peter!”
And so saying, he holds up his phone to take a photo of them. Tony snaps one too.
Peter sighs, fondly annoyed. He turns to MJ. “I haven’t warned you yet—but my family is nuts. Like, really nuts. I can’t emphasize enough how loopy your life will become.”
Tony splutters. “Watch it or you’re walking home!”
Peter warms to his subject, smile growing. “And you’ll never know a moment’s peace.”
MJ catches on, eyes sparking. “Sounds like they’re pretty vocal.”
“Oh yeah.” Peter nods. “This is a very I-don’t-know-the-meaning-of-personal-space group.”
“Touchy feely?”
“The worst,” Peter confirms. “They’ll cry during a dog food commercial.”
“Hugs?”
“All. The. Time.”
The pair smirk when Tony honks the horn.
“That’s it,” he says. “You’re walking home and I’m making you do it carrying all my groceries.”
Bruce just laughs at him and so does Peter, seeing right through that. MJ takes it all in stride, that these whack job band of retired superheroes show their affection in such eccentric ways.
She leans closer, whispering just for Peter’s ears. “Sounds amazing.”
Peter’s eyes skim to her in wonder and awe. “They really are. They’re insane but they’re great.”
He jumps in the back next to Steve while MJ slides into the passenger’s seat. She doesn’t bat an eyelash at these famous faces.
For once, Peter can predict her behaviour down to the letter and she doesn’t disappoint—as soon as they’ve all settled, she immediately twists in her seat. She waits for Steve and Bucky to finish texting on their phones before pointing at them.
“Barnes, Rogers: what’s your take on the new arms crisis?”
The two men only lose a second gaping at her before Steve jumps in to talk political war theory. She counters with a list of broken peace treaties throughout the last three decades. The men look floored to meet someone who can talk with such knowledge on the history of it.
Tony’s busy snapping another photo of the moment.
Clint even takes off his hat and settles it on top of Michelle’s hair with a loving pat.
Peter doesn’t join in the discussion, leaning back to simply watch all these people, the way they’ve absorbed MJ into their circle of warmth without a second thought and Bruce sharing his banana with Nat in the backseat of the second car. The way Thor is leaning out to help one kid with a backpack zipper stuck to his shirt.
Peter realizes that all of them, even MJ, fall into one homogeneous category.
Family.
Tony honks again so Clint cranes around to catch their eyes. “Are we ready?”
Peter nods, smile so broad it hurts his cheeks. Finally, finally he is.
“I was born ready, Arrow Man.” MJ tips the hat. “Let’s go!”
And they’re off.