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Peter’s not running late for his meeting with Mr. Stark for once, and he’d woken up with blood staining his sheets and a fresh smattering of zits high on his forehead, so he ducks through an alley to try and find a Rite Aid on the next street over to grab some tampons, because the suit is not exactly pad-friendly, and, after some intensive discussion with Ned and Michelle, he’s decided that Spiderman is way more important to him than a touch of body dysmorphia.
After he checks out, gives an uncomfortable laugh to the cashier who jokes about “boyfriend duties” when the guy sees what he’s buying, and tears open the Snickers he’d grabbed on impulse, he has a few extra minutes, so he’s flipping through the magazines on the corner paper stand, bag of purchases still hanging innocuously from the crook of his elbow like the world’s dumbest outing when he spots Tony across the street, Ironman sunglasses on, phone pressed to his ear.
Friday must have spotted Peter in the peripheral, because Tony’s pulling the phone away from his face and turning in Peter’s direction and Peter doesn’t even think, just takes off at a run and uses the emergency webbing strapped to his wrist underneath his hoodie to yank him back into the alley where he then leaps into the dumpster.
Hey’s laying amongst the bags of garbage—his brethren, he thinks inanely, when his Starkphone starts to vibrate and play the Jimmy Neutron theme song: Mr. Stark’s personalized ringtone.
“Hi, Mr. Stark,” Peter says cheerfully, stuffing his evidence into his rucksack and getting comfortable.
*
He and Michelle are hiding in one of the likely hundreds of bathrooms in the Avengers tower, whispering frantically back and forth because, while Friday isn’t allowed in the bathrooms, most of the team have supernatural hearing anyway.
While she runs the cold water again, he starts to unwind his ace bandages from around his chest, his breathing hitchy and halting. She’s got a huge tub of gold bond and a tube of icy hot at the ready, but her annoyed expression falters when his bruised ribs and red skin come into view “You need to stop with the bandaging, it’s terrible for your health!”
“All of my binders are disgusting!” Peter says defensively, poking at a bruise he’s fairly sure is from a fight and not from too-tight binding. “I’m a boy, not a beast!”
“So do some damn laundry,” Michelle says unapologetically. “Saving the world is not more important than yourself.”
“Stop regurgitating tumblr,” Peter tells her, half-hearted and Michelle makes like she’s going to smack him when they hear Mr. Stark and Miss. Romanoff bickering in the hallway outside. Michelle and Peter stare at each other in mute horror, and she gestures to the faucet without saying anything. He shakes his head frantically, makes three long strides across the bathroom and throws open the window over the tub before leaping out of it, to Michelle’s garbled shout of protest.
Peter lands in some shrubbery on a lower balcony deck level, and it’s only a few seconds later that his suit lands on top of him, the metal cuff that he keeps his webbing attached to nailing him in the side of the face. He imagines Michelle lying, straight-faced and unconvincing to Ironman and Black Widow, imagines her not hearing anything they have to say, and it’s half an hour later that she comes down with a bulky sweatshirt and some shorts he can pull on so he’s not laying, nearly naked and breasted in front of the Winter Soldier’s empty living quarters.
She has an ace bandage wrapped around her wrist and a smug expression on her face and Peter almost doesn’t want to know what she told Natasha and Tony to get them to back off, but of course he wants to know.
“I said I hurt it masturbating too much,” she tells him, cheerfully, after he’s dressed and out of the bushes, twisting and wriggling to try and convince his ribs to stop aching quite so bad. Peter stares at her in horror and she grins at him, leaning over to pull a twig from his hair.
*
When his gym bag bursts and three sports bras are amongst the sweats and the extra pair of sneakers that tumble out, Ned smothers his laughter and tells Mr. Stark and Captain America that Peter likes the way Black Widow smells.
Peter spends the next few weeks working out at home.
*
He forgets about his period again and doesn’t notice in time to cancel his tutoring session with Mr. Stark without incredible suspicion, and when he’s busy panicking between train stations, he hears the beginnings of trouble brewing a few blocks away.
Peter pulls on his face cover first before unzipping his jeans and wriggling out of his MIT tee, looking down and sighing in resignation at the blood pooling between his thighs. The suit is athletic material and it’s not that noticeable, but it’s pretty uncomfortable and he’s maybe a little meaner than he intends to be with the three thugs trying to rob the bank.
“Who even robs banks anymore?” Peter asks incredulously as he’s making sure his webbing will hold them secure until the cops show up. “Just hack an account online like everyone else!”
It’s only seconds after the words are out of his mouth that he visualizes Miss Potts’ disbelieving look at what the tabloids will definitely deliberately misinterpret, but the dark blue of his suit is starting to creep towards a ruddy brown-black with blood and Mr. Stark’s ringtone has gone off more than once.
“I’m okay, sir,” he says into the phone when he finally answers, “I stopped a robbery and, uh—” Peter glances down at his suit and then at the jeans he’s just pulled from his recovered bag. “Yeah, I got—uh—mugged.”
Mr. Stark is apoplectic and horrified and doesn’t even seem to consider the possibility that Peter is lying which makes him feel kind of crummy. It’s not like he doesn’t know the team will be fine with it or will learn to be fine with it, but even making himself say the words feels impossible.
Peter gets to the tower and Mr. Stark is waiting in the lobby and takes in the blood on his shirt and pants with a pained expression. “They got you in the stomach?”
“Healed right up, like usual,” Peter says, aiming for comforting, and Mr. Stark closes his eyes briefly before coming closer, moving slowly so as to not spook him, and herding him to the private elevator.
*
Mr. Stark volunteers himself and a few other Avengers to help Peter and Aunt May clean up and pack up the only house Peter really remembers living in. Aunt May and Michelle have got his bedroom handled and Miss Romanoff and Mr. Rhodes are dealing with the kitchen and the big furniture is set to be moved the following day, so it’s Mr. Stark and Peter and Ned in the attic, carefully packing up decades of momentos and forgotten artifacts of the Parker family.
Mr. Stark had been keeping up a steady stream of commentary and questions, testing knowledge and getting to know in equal measure, but he’s since trailed off and Peter assumes he’s doing complex astrophysics in his head or something so he and Ned keep to their side of the attic and keep their voices low as they argue about the best way to pack up Grandad’s collection of hats and ties.
“The best way is to bin the entire thing!” Ned finally hisses at him in frustration and Peter lets out a startled laugh before he notices that Michelle is standing at the doorway.
“Aunt May says it’s break time in twenty minutes, but it looks like youse haven’t done much at all,” she tells him and Ned before carefully stepping over half-filled boxes of antiques and tchotchkes alike to help them finish up Grandad’s wardrobe in record time.
When they’re done, they cross the attic to help Mr. Stark finish rounding up the thousands of photos he’s been collecting and storing and Peter stops short when he spies the album on Tony’s lap, flipped open to a spread of pictures of Peter as a child.
As a child in a dress and darling little pig tails. Not a girl, never a girl, but.
Ned and Michelle, stopped behind him, notice almost immediately, longtime experts at diversion and secret-keeping alike only improved with the knowledge of his new superhero alter-identity.
“Who is this?” Mr. Stark asks, his voice mild, and Peter feels his chest seize up, like he’s wearing a too-small binder over too-tight bandages and it’s squishing his torso until his heart is lodged firmly between his tonsils.
Peter can’t hardly make words form, much less tell Mr. Stark, like it’s nothing, even though all the evidence is literally lying in the man’s lap. “Michelle used to be white!” is what comes out of his mouth and Tony’s head snaps up to give Peter the world’s most unimpressed glare around the same time that Ned slaps his palm to his forehead in a moment of pure disbelief.
“Is that racist?” Ned asks, when no one else has said anything in probably too long.
“I—” Michelle says, trailing off, looking stunned. “I have—no idea.”
They each clap Peter on his shoulders and loudly clomp through the attic and down the ladder, leaving him and Mr. Stark alone.
*
“Peter,” Mr. Stark says, quiet and pleading all at once and abruptly Peter wonders how long the man has known. Has he always known? Probably, Peter realizes, guilty and defiant all at once. He doesn’t owe anyone a formal coming out, but Mr. Stark probably deserves one.
Peter sinks to his knees in front of Mr. Stark, looks at his hands for a second, thinks about that summer when he and Ned had gone into the creepy palm reading shop on the corner of First Avenue and Washington and the wizened old woman had seen his palms and refused to give him a reading.
He still wonders what she’d seen in his future, or if he was just the customer of the day to receive that treatment.
But he became Spiderman because he’s no slouch when it comes to bravery, and he takes a deep, steadying breath, and looks up to meet Mr. Stark’s eyes.
“My name was Hailey,” Peter says, and suddenly it’s easy. Easier than algebra 2, easier than befriending Michelle, easier than finally helping his aunt move out of this tomb the two of them have lived in for so long. Easier, even, than getting bitten by a radioactive spider and putting the suit together and stealing out into the night to help make the world a little better.
Mr. Stark lets him talk for a long time, there in the dim, wooden attic, the dust motes floating through the air the only observers, and Peter suspects that Ned and Michelle are at fault for why no one comes up to get them, and when he’s done, when his voice is starting to get scratchy and his eyes are all itchy from the dust, not from crying, the man takes his own steadying breath.
“Okay,” he says, offering Peter a little smile, and then pulling Peter in for a tight hug, one of his hands clasped on Peter’s shoulder blade, the other cupping the back of Peter’s head, and Peter thinks, as he always does, dad.