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The early New York sun illuminated the lobby of Avengers tower as Peter crept across it, head pounding as he pushed the button for the elevator. The ding it made had him wincing, and as he stepped inside he pushed the button for the floor below the penthouse.
Peter had never snuck out before, and while he wasn’t sure it was a habit he wanted to continue it was something he had decided he needed to do; a rite of passage for teenagers. One of the upperclassmen was throwing a graduation party and had invited Flash, who had invited MJ (in hopes of being upgraded from first alternate on the AcaDec team) who in turn had threatened Peter and Ned under pain of permanent benching that they had better come. The party had been loud, busy and filled with drunk teenagers, and as someone who couldn’t get drunk and had spent years being told cautionary tales of the genetic risk of alcoholism Peter hadn’t stayed so much for the fun of it but so that he could say that he had. Once he’d heard his mother force his father out of the workshop and into bed around midnight Peter had used his manual override for FRIDAY and crept out of his window before swinging over to a large brownstone in Midtown. Within minutes of finding Ned he could tell that his best friend was having the time of his life at being included, and so when the party finally came to a close at around 4am Peter helped his inebriated friend get back to his apartment. He also checked in on MJ who had left all of ten minutes after Peter had shown up, and while she’d thrown a shoe at him for waking her up by tapping on her window she pulled him into a quick hug before shoving him onto the fire escape and closing the blinds.
Though he hadn’t had anything to drink other than soda – he didn’t see a point, since it wouldn’t affect him – Peter’s head was throbbing in a way that reminded him of all the times he’d seen his Uncle Clint looking like death and complaining the morning after a party where Thor had broken out the Asgardian mead. With his senses as sensitive as they were the hours spent looking at strobe lights with pulsing music had left him with a headache unwilling to fade, and the bright interior lights of the elevator were making it worse.
“Lower the lights please, FRI,” he mumbled, eyes scrunched closed as the small car ascended to the group floor below his home with his parents. The harsh white light dimmed behind his eye lids and when he opened them again he was greeted by a softer, warmer light. The doors finally opened and the boy stepped out and turned to the stairwell. He couldn’t believe that he was going to get away with this, but the closer he got to his very welcoming bedroom with his thick comforter and blackout windows the more he thought he might actually do it. Before opening the door leading to the stairs he toed off his sneakers, the cool tiles causing his socked feet to arch in discomfort at the temperature change. Snagging the shoes by their messily-tied laces, looping them around a finger, Peter nudged the door to the stairwell open and eased it shut once he’d passed through it. Although no one lived on the group floor – his aunts and uncles had their own apartments on different floors – it wasn’t unheard of for someone to be up at this time in the morning, and the last thing he needed was to be ratted out when he was so close to getting away with it.
The exhaustion was beginning to catch up with him, having been out all night. Even when he went out on patrol he was never home this late, he may be the only superhero with a curfew, but as he stumbled bleary-eyed up the stairs to his apartment he was beginning to realise it was probably for the best. Finally reaching the door at the top he gently pushed the handle down and nudged the door open. The light from the rising sun scattered shadows through the hallway, and as Peter shut the door behind him and dropped his shoes haphazardly beside the table in the entry way he registered that the apartment was just as silent as he’d expected.
“Made it,” he muttered to himself in congratulations, refraining from pumping his fist in the air in victory due to the sheer exhaustion he felt. His plan for the immediate future was simply putting on his pyjamas and sleeping for as long as he could get away with. That plan, however, was immediately derailed by the sound of a throat clearing coming from behind him. Frozen like a deer in headlights, his breath caught in his throat, an amused voice coming from the open-plan living room off of the entrance hall was all he needed to know that he’d been caught.
“I’m pretty sure your parents or Steve would be yelling about what kind of time you call this,” the voice pondered, and Peter groaned before turning around to face Bucky. The man was sitting on the back of the couch, arms folded with an easy grin on his face of which the casualness was given away by the tightness around his eyes.
“Instead,” Bucky continued, “I’m just going to tell you that you’re in for it big time, kid.” He pushed out of his reclined stance to stand up and walk towards Peter, stopping once he was in arms reach and tilting his head minutely as he surveyed the teen in front of him.
“You alright?” The question was casual, but Peter had known Bucky for enough time by now to detect the underlying concern. He nodded in response, running a hand through his hair before twisting his head around and waiting for his mom or dad to appear and start yelling. When neither Pepper nor Tony made their grand entrance, however, he frowned.
Bucky watched him complete his scan and once he had the boy’s attention again he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and held it out to Peter. The questioning glance he received in return had him sighing before he began to explain.
“Fire alarm last night, kid,” he stated plainly, watching the horror dawn on Peter’s face. He nodded in agreement. “Yeah, guess that not being able to find your kid at 3am is enough to get some people to call every superhero in the vicinity to spread out across the East Coast to find their dumbass son.”
“Oh my god,” Peter whispered, dropping his head into his hands as the cold rush of guilt and shame trickled through him
“Yep.” Bucky’s reply was flat and devoid of sympathy. He waved the phone in front of Peter until the boy looked up and took it from him, dread clear in his expression. He looked at Bucky pleadingly but before he could open his mouth the man shook his head.
“Not gonna happen – you got yourself into this, you get to be the one to call your dad before he causes an international incident looking for you.”
Peter gulped, the phone in his hands feeling more like a brick, before summoning the courage to find his dad’s name in the contacts; he wasn’t even able to take a moment to enjoy the fact that his dad was listed in Bucky’s phone as ‘Stark that isn’t Peter’. His finger hovered over the call button, taking a deep breath before pushing it and lifting it up to his ear. It hadn’t even rung twice before his dad answered, and the frantic and desperate tone to his voice had Peter feeling like shit.
“Did you find him, did he come home?”
“Hi, dad,” Peter whispered meekly.
His greeting was met with silence followed by a shaky exhalation on the other end.
“I’m so sorry, dad,” Peter got out, “I didn’t -”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“We’ll be home in ten, and you’ll be waiting in the living room when we get there, is that understood?”
The blunt turn the conversation had taken left Peter blinking confusedly, met instantly with the dial tone before he could process it.
Bucky cocked an eyebrow at the boy’s expression, tension radiated off of him as he wordlessly handed the phone back. With saying anything Peter stepped around him and sat down on the couch, elbows bracing against his knees before dropping his head into his hands once again. Bucky walked over and sat beside him, placing a firm hand on Peter’s shoulder.
“He’s going to be mad, but the most important thing to him is that you’re okay.” Bucky’s attempt at consolation was received with a groan, and Peter withdrew his head from his hands to give him a look of disbelief.
Bucky’s hands went up in surrender. “Don’t look at me like that, I’m not the dumbass who left their phone at home when I snuck out of the house. Disabling the robot nanny, that was a nice touch too.”
As Peter began mumbling bits and pieces of prayers in Italian Bucky rolled his eyes and took in the anxious form of the fifteen-year old. He hadn’t realised how deep he’d buried himself in the family he’d been welcomed into until Steve had thrown open his bedroom door ridiculously early that morning to say that Peter was missing. The instinctive horror he’d felt, a gut-wrenching fear, had thrown the soldier for a loop as he realised how much he cared for the kid who reminded him of Steve when they were young. He was a pain in the ass at times but his heart was huge and he was a good kid. He and Steve had gone to Stark’s floor and found the rest of the team gathered in the living room as Pepper was trembling with the effort of holding herself together to give descriptions of what Peter had been wearing when they saw him go to bed. Natasha and Steve each left on their bikes to scour Manhattan from top to bottom while Tony did an aerial sweep of Midtown and Queens. Clint dispatched himself to Oscorp, Pepper left for the police station to meet with Happy, and Bucky was left to stay in the tower in case Peter showed up.
The two sat in silence, Peter’s mutterings having ceased, until the ding of the elevator had Peter’s head jerking up and eyes widening. He stood up, turning slowly to face the hallway, and as Bucky peered over the edge of the couch cushion from his seat he saw Tony, Clint and Pepper coming towards them.
The second Pepper laid eyes on her son she bolted across the room to wrap her arms around him, tangling one hand in his messy brown hair and the other pulling her into him as close as possible. Bucky could hear Peter’s whispered apologies and he turned his attention to the men now in the living room. Clint had an expression of relief with a hint of amusement to it, albeit with clear stress and worry in the lines of his face, but the anger in Tony’s eyes was undeniable. Once his wife and son had pulled apart he stepped forward, hands trembling with the exertion of keeping himself calm.
He took a deep, slow breath before addressing Peter. “Explain,” he demanded in a dangerously level voice, and Peter visibly recoiled at the command. The elevator dinged once more, Natasha and Steve exiting and looking around with concern at the tension present.
“There was a party at Trey Barring’s house.” Peter’s reply was barely a whisper but he maintained eye contact with his dad as he’d always been taught to with adults. “I knew if I’d asked you would’ve said no, so….,” Peter trailed off and finally dropped his gaze to the floor, fingers pulling at a loose thread on his cuff.
When his confession was met with nothing but silence he dared himself to look up and could practically see the tension radiating off of his father. Tony’s arms were crossed tightly over his chest, the tendons pronounced under the short sleeve t-shirt he was wearing. His eyes were shut and Peter knew that he was taking a moment to put his thoughts in order before speaking. It was a practice he saw his father do whenever he was in trouble, but it never usually took him this long to get his anger under control.
The contrast between the living room’s usual noise levels, video game explosions and loud conversation, and the silence that could have been broken by a pin drop was excruciating to all.
“Поехали,” Natasha murmured, stepping back towards the elevator with a hand on Steve’s shoulder. Bucky made his way over to the others, meeting Peter’s pleading gaze with an apologetic expression, but Clint snorted.
“C’mon, Tony, this is ridiculous. When you were fifteen you were out scoring blow and getting arrested for indecent exposure, he went to one party, don’t you think you’re blowing this out of proportion?”
At Clint’s words the frail stability of the room shattered but in the time it took Tony to round on Barton the man had been knocked onto his ass with a foot on his sternum pining him to the ground. Everyone’s eyes went wide in shock at the suddenness, with the exception of Natasha who was muttering in Russian about the stupidity of men, but Bucky’s position remained unchanging.
“Don’t,” he muttered, “use someone’s past against them.”
A hand was placed tentatively on his shoulder. “That’s enough, Buck,” Steve said quietly.
Bucky threw a final warning look at Clint as he lifted his foot back onto the floor and held out his right hand to help the man up. Clint took it and got back up to his feet, glaring at Bucky and moving to stand beside Natasha who promptly smacked him over the back of the head. She stared at him expectantly, and so he turned to Tony with a hand rubbing the back of his head regretfully where he’d been smacked.
“Sorry,” he muttered. Natasha shook her head in exasperation and proceeded to wrap a hand around the top part of his arm and dragged him from the room. Steve pulled his hand from Bucky’s shoulder and turned to follow Natasha and Clint. He looked at Bucky and nodded towards the elevator, signalling his friend to follow the others out, but Bucky ignored him and walked over to where Peter was stood in shock at what had unfolded in under two minute. In an action that would have stunned the room into silence only months before he wrapped a hand around the back of Peter’s neck and ducked his head to meet the regretful brown eyes.
“Just because they love you, remember?” he reminded softly before pulling back. As he walked away he exchanged a glance with Tony who in return offered a small nod of acknowledgement for what he’d said. The two would never be close, that much was an obvious given, but after a while they found they were able to peacefully coexist and Tony appreciated how much the other man clearly cared for his son.
Peter watched mournfully as the others stepped into the elevator car and the doors closed behind them. The moment the lights indicating the floors began to change Pepper took a step towards Peter. He’d been so focused on Tony and his father’s struggle to get his temper under control he’d forgotten what a powerhouse his mother could be – her figure was practically shaking with the anger coursing through her now that the relief had faded.
“What,” she asked, her voice razor sharp, “were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t-”
“No, you clearly weren’t! Do you have any idea what it was like to go into your room in the middle of the night and see that you weren’t there? And then to ask FRIDAY where in the tower you were and she said you weren’t in the damn tower?” She took a step closer to her son and lifted a hand to run through her hair which was tangled – a nervous habit of hers – in a way that let Peter know it wasn’t the first time that evening. “You aren’t allowed to interfere with FRIDAY, you know that, Peter!”
Peter felt his eyes beginning to prick with moisture and dropped his head so that his gaze was focused on the ground so as not to give it away to his parents. No sooner had he done so, however, but someone placed a gentle hand under his chin and lifted his head up to meet their gaze. The look on his dad’s face was so wholly different to the expression he’d been wearing before; his eyes had been filled with rage when he’d entered the living room but that had given way to a soft understanding.
The hand under his chin brushed a thumb lightly over his cheek and that was all it took for the first of the tears to spill. Lifting a hand swiftly to drag under his eye Peter sniffed and shuffled backwards out of his father’s reach.
“I’m sorry,” he said as evenly as he could manage, a fisted hand coming up again to wipe roughly at another tear making its way down his face. “It was dumb, and I shouldn’t have done it, but just for one night I wanted to do something done and be a regular teenager. I wanted to go to a dumb party where my friends would be hanging out, where no one was going to be taking a picture of me wearing a suit at some charity thing.”
“Why didn’t you just ask, kiddo?”
“Because I wanted to sneak out!” he exclaimed. He uncrossed his arms from across his chest and shoved his hands into his pockets. His parents exchanged a baffled look and he sighed.
“I spend all my time being escorted around by Uncle Happy, and occasionally I get picked up from school by Avengers. Even when he pretends he isn’t I can sense Bucky trailing behind me sometimes when I’m walking somewhere, and that’s fine! I get it, I do, I’m not a regular kid.” He shrugged dejectedly. “I knew if I asked you’d make someone pick me up and drop me off or not let me go at all. I’m sorry for scaring you, I didn’t think you’d know I was gone.”
There was a pause Pepper and Tony took a second to absorb everything Peter had just said. They exchanged a look between the two of them and managed to have an entire conversation without saying a word. It was one of Peter’s least favorite things his parents did, mainly because whenever they did so it was about him, and he’d much rather hear the deliberations of any punishments out loud.
His dad finally stepped forward to put him out of his misery. “You’re grounded, obviously. Two months – no Ted, no scary girlfriend, no lab time.”
“Unless it’s school related,” Pepper interjected.
“Unless it’s school related. No Spider-Man unless you are given explicit permission by your mom or myself.”
“Wait, no Spider-Man, you can’t be serious!”
Tony raised an eyebrow and stared at his son in disbelief. “You snuck out, went to a party with – and I’m just guessing – a lot of underage drinking, messed with the programming of a system you’re not allowed to tamper with, and you’re seriously wondering why we’re not letting you run around unchecked when you’re grounded? Make sure this is a hill you’re willing to die on before you start the battle, kid.”
Peter sighed reluctantly. “Two months. Got it.” He paused, hesitating. “Does being grounded mean I have to stay up now, or…?”
“Go to bed, Peter.”
Peter picked his phone up from where it had been discarded on the couch but it was plucked from his fingers immediately. When he turned around wide-eyed and was met with his mother’s withering stare as she held the device any argument he had died in his throat and he made his way back to the stairs to go up to his room. The door closed behind him, leaving his parents alone, but he couldn't help but loiter for a moment on the other side.
“I really thought my gene pool would win out when it came to this,” he heard his mother sigh, sarcastic wistfulness coloring her tone. “He looks like you, he’s a genius, I was so hopeful he’d get my temperament but this? This is all Stark.”
His dad let out a yelp of indignation. “Hey, this isn’t all on me, this is maybe fifty percent on me. The rest of the blame falls on you for deciding to let the ragtag gang move in here and influence him, this is at least fifty percent Barton’s fault.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, “but it’s like fostering a dog…you can’t keep them for too long or else you get attached. I don’t think we can get rid of Barton.”
Peter huffed out at a laugh as his parents' voices drifted further away.
“No, I guess not. Besides, how many parents do you think have a group of people they can dispatch across the city to look for their malcontent teenager? Is it wrong that I’m almost hoping he does it again so that Barnes and Rogers can scare the shit out of some teenagers at a frat party?” The tell-tale sound of a playful smack of his mom's hand against his dad's chest made its way to Peter's ears as his dad backtracked, “ow, kidding, I’m kidding", and he succumbed to his future of confinement as he headed up to his bedroom.