Chapter Text
When he goes to see the Parkers, Peter goes alone.
He goes on his way home from school one Thursday afternoon, having changed into a barely-wrinkled dress shirt and tie to go with the khakis he wore that day in the bathroom right after his last class, shoving his t-shirt into the depths of a cluttered book bag. He walks over, because the train would be too fast and there’s so many things he wants to say exactly the right way and he needs the time to figure out exactly what they are. His emotions are jumbled-up mess that seem to contradict yet complement each other at every turn, running somehow both parallel and perpendicular to each other, and he can’t fully interpret whether he’s terrified, happy, excited, nervous, apprehensive, angry or curious; they’re all just merging into something that has his stomach flipping every which way and his hands all clammy.
His dads don’t know that he’s going to see them. They’ve asked him before if he wanted to, but he’s always given vague answers that intentionally disguised his intrigue in meeting the couple. He’s not sure why he did so, to be entirely honest—a part of him felt guilty, he figures, that he felt curious towards the two unknown long-lost family members of his when he has a full and loving family right before him; as if he were betraying his family with the Avengers by just thinking about the family he could’ve had, in a different life. He knows that the guilt is unfounded—that it’s natural to be curious about them, justified, even, given his background—but he just can’t help but feel this way, even now, when his curiosity has finally overpowered the guilt and led him to this point.
Tony texts him to ask him when he’s planning on coming home that day, and if he wants a ride from the school. Peter’s in high school now, but more often than not he’s more than happy to let his dad come and pick him up, even though it sometimes makes him feel a bit guilty because their relation still isn’t public knowledge and, as such, Tony’s got to come covered up in disguises, but Tony doesn’t seem to mind too much and Peter’s not one of those teenagers who try to push away their parents in order to seem less like a baby. Hell, he’s still more than willing to cuddle Steve if the man himself is willing.
As far as Tony knows, Peter’s at his robotics club today, so Peter’s got until about seven or eight tonight to meet the Parkers before he’s got to head home. He replies that he’s going to get dinner with his friends and then head home after. Tony doesn’t seem all too pushy, so he just simply asks for an estimated time and inquires if Peter needs a bit more money in his account, which the boy refuses adamantly. Tony’s already got a full college fund set aside for him so Peter can go to literally any university or college he wants to, and he deposits about five hundred bi-weekly into an account Tony set up for him last year—and there would be more, too, if Peter and Steve and Bruce altogether hadn’t managed to talk Tony down to a quarter of the original amount seven months ago.
Before he thinks about it, he smiles at the thought of that argument before it can begin to sour, flashes of Ultron coming to disturb the memory. Every memory before five months ago, especially those including Bruce, became bittersweet ever since the intelligence had tried to kill the human race, especially when it served to fracture his family a bit. Natta’s smiles, which weren’t so easy to get before, are damned near impossible to get now that Bruce is gone, and Uncle Clint tends to stay at his farm more often than not, and Thor, who had become a quick and easy friend in the short time he’d known him, was away again, for who knew how long, leaving him with just his fathers, sometimes Wanda, a lot of the time the Vision and, on occasion, Sam; none of whom were terrible people but none of which were the family he gained with the exception of his fathers—one of whom is barely around anymore.
It hurts, to think of how much he misses Steve, but he knows that it’s for the best. Steve’s got a job to do, a team to lead; and it means that he’s needed away more often than not. The world’s safe, though not appreciative of his struggles, and Peter’s safe, and appreciative of the work he’s doing—just a bit saddened that he doesn’t get to see him as often as he would like is all, and he knows that what he feels is but a fraction of what Tony feels, because he’s seen it first hand, though Tony does his best to hide it. Steve is as much a part of Tony as he is, and he can only guess that for Tony, it’s like he’s put part of himself on loan to the world and can only hope that the world is willing enough to allow it to come back.
And it hurts, knowing that Tony feels such a way, and it’s even worse because on top of that, Steve’s as much his dad as Tony is, and he’s struggled for so long to find his parents and now he doesn’t get to see one of them anymore because he’s committed to the greater good. It hurts and it sucks and it’s just downright unfair, especially when he has to see that look in Tony’s eye when he sees one of Steve’s forgotten sketchbooks; that look of pain and longing and sadness that hangs for a few terse seconds before he pushes it right back down as he refocuses his attentions on something else for his own sake.
But he can’t think about that now, he reminds himself as he steels his resolve, continuing forwards with steps he hadn’t even realized he’d stopped making, his hand clenched tight around his phone in a way that, if he were more like his father, would’ve made it shatter already. He refocuses himself instead of letting the sadness envelop him, because he just can’t do that, not when he’s about to make such a big step in his life. He focuses himself on the Parkers instead, because that’s where his focus should be, and that’s where he needs it to be, for his own sake.
They haven’t talked all too much about the Parkers since Tony initially told him about them, but Tony’s given him access to everything he knows about them through a folder on Peter’s personal drive within JARVIS’ OS, which was thankfully salvaged when FRIDAY was activated upon losing JARVIS. He knows that the Parkers are in their early-to-late fifties, May at fifty-three and looking no more than forty-two, and Ben at fifty-eight and the gray hairs to match. He knows they moved to Forest Hills right after getting married in 1988, and tried several times to have children before giving up by 1994. May studied to become a nurse soon after, and currently works for Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn, while Ben, a former veteran, currently runs his own business. His own father, Richard, was younger than Ben by fifteen years, only twenty-nine when Peter himself was born in August of 2001. Ben listed him as missing in November of 2003.
It’s weird, knowing all this with the sort of detachment he has to it all, because as he doesn’t remember any of it, it almost feels like another person’s life rather than his own. Peter doesn’t reconcile that May is his aunt, and Ben his uncle, because to him, they aren’t—they haven’t been. He doesn’t blame them for it, it was a situation never in the realms of their control, but it doesn’t change that he doesn’t see them as family as so much as strangers who happen to have known him when he was but a toddler.
Still, he can’t figure out what to say. The words seem to gum up in his head and stick in his throat; refusing to come forth and be released and uttered. He’s nervous because of the infinite negative possibilities he seems to conjure up, and he’s apprehensive because of all the positive outcomes at conjunction with them. This situation, for him, has no clear and obvious result, and while as a child of science, he’s used to the idea that there exists potential for unknown reaction, where he would usually find excitement in finding something new, he instead finds himself with far too much potential downfall.
And it’s just downright terrifying.
Peter’s school isn’t exactly far from the Parkers’ home, so it shouldn’t be so much of a surprise as it is, but he’s there before he can truly contemplate exactly what it is that he can say, and suddenly he has a burning desire to run away screaming, because somehow the little brick home looks far more intimidating than it does in the photographs Tony’s showed him, even with the little bits of flowers and homely touches it’s got, but all Peter can see is the potential for implosion, and suddenly it’s just really hard to breathe, like it’s actually choking him out, and all he can hear is the blood rushing through his ears as he tries to force his foot to make a step forwards, and he does try, but it doesn’t want to, his feet both want to run away as fast as possible, just run run run, go back to the home where he knows he’s safe and wrap his hands around his fathers and never let go because they’re comfortable, they’re safe, they’re what he knows and they’re his family and god how much he wants his dads and—and—
And when did the door open?
A man is staring at him, familiar lines and strands of grey hair, frowning at him because it’s probably a weird sight to see, a kid just glaring at your house like it’s sentencing him to death, and he knows he’s glaring because he tells him as much, in a rough voice that speaks of age that makes sense for the man, and Peter really just wants to curl up and die because this is stupid and it’s scary and he just wants to go home and pretend that he never came by this house in the first place, looking for answers whose questions he doesn’t even really know.
But he doesn’t. He’s come too far and his dad would sometimes say (usually in the midst of the lows of depression) that Stark men are made of iron, and Peter’s not a Stark, technically [but then again, neither is Tony, really] but he’s the son of one so that counts for something. He’s got a big name to live up to, and as such he stands his ground, imagining himself to be a wrought iron pole ripping up through the concrete, unwilling to bend to the tests of abuse and time, and he opens his mouth and says,
”HiI’mPeterParkerandIthinkyou’vebeenlookingformemayIcomeinplease,”
As one huge breath of a sentence, because he knows that if he doesn’t get it all out in one shot he’ll just let his fear get the better of him and he’ll just run, so for better or worse it’s out now, and by the look on the man’s face he heard everything, because his expression just drops, instantly, looking crestfallen and upset and angry and Peter completely understands why he feels that way, and knows that it’s not because of him that he feels it—because this man has been looking for practically all of Peter’s life and now he’s just fucking walked up and he can understand why he’d be pissed.
Benjamin Parker is quiet, and Peter allows the silence although it makes his fear run rampant, but the silence is only a few moments before Mr. Parker asks, quietly, “Please don’t be another one of those liars.”
Peter frowns. “I—no. Of course not.” It’s a thought he’s never considered but should’ve. There’s plenty of people who would capitalize, after all. “I can’t prove it, though, I guess. I don’t really remember all that much from before being in group homes, after all, so I can’t just throw down random pieces o-of the past or anything. I haven’t got much.”
He swallows. He should’ve brought some of the few relics he did have, though, admittedly, he doubts that they would be much help—all that’s left, after all, are an old wristwatch of, presumably, his mother’s, and the original but broken [treasured] remains of his father’s glasses.
Peter’s thoughts are interrupted by a sigh so pained from Mr. Parker that he immediately returns his attentions to the man, who’s staring at him with such a heart-broken expression that Peter’s immediately afraid that he’s done something entirely wrong, and it must show because he shakes his head and gestures for Peter to come on inside, saying almost too quietly,
“You look too much like Richard like that to be anyone else’s kid.”