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Peter stalked the seconds as they ticked away. He studied his watch, studied like his life depended on it, and it sort of did. At least his social life.
He waited and watched for freedom. He waited for five PM like he was at a New Year’s party, waiting for the ball to drop. He supposed it was kind of the same. Being ungrounded after two weeks of boredom felt like a New Year, like a fresh start and a new chance.
Five PM was completely arbitrary. Peter knew that. It was a random time, just something Tony had thrown out on a whim at dinner the night before after Peter had explained what he and Ned had planned for his first night of freedom. It was a troll. An arbitrary one, and yet, Peter stuck to it.
He laid stomach first on his bed, scrolling through his phone with his thumb and keeping an eye on the watch locked around his wrist as he did.
He was relaxed, and his hearing wandered down the hall and into the dining room, where Tony’s heart was thumping around in his chest and Pepper sighed with disappointment.
“Really, Tony? Tonight?”
“Sorry, Pep,” he told her. He really did sound sorry. His voice was drenched with regret, and it left Peter with just one conclusion.
Tony was breaking their date, and only thing that could drag him away from an evening spent with Pepper, an evening the two of the them had been looking forward to just as much as Peter looked forward to being ungrounded, was that something had gone wrong.
That the world needed Iron Man more than Pepper needed her husband.
His assumption was proven right when Tony explained to her that somewhere someone had let a monster loose. It was his responsibility, and Pepper and Peter’s sacrifice. He was beginning to learn that being a Stark meant making sacrifices just as much as being Spider-Man.
It meant cancelling family nights and dinners and sometimes the routine they’d fallen into on Friday nights, making late night suit upgrades in the workshop while he turned Tony’s hair grey with stories about that night’s patrol. It meant shuffling dates around on a calendar, and sometimes it meant putting real life on hold.
It meant worrying that someday their little sacrifices might one day become a big one. A permanent one. Another grave to visit at the cemetery, just like his Uncle Ben.
Peter listened to the sound of Tony kissing Pepper’s forehead, and his promise to be back in one piece. He rolled off his bed and onto his feet while Tony’s footsteps faded out to the balcony where he’d be surrounded in his armor before blasting off into the night sky.
He shook the image from his head and went into his closet, where he his eyes lingered on his suits. All week he looked forward to hanging out with Ned. All week Pepper had talked about the grand opening of this new restaurant she’d been dying to try out.
Peter knew what his decision was before his hand reached out and grabbed his favorite suit, before he suited up in a different kind of armor and made a different kind of sacrifice, one that meant pushing back freedom just a little bit longer.
He straightened out his tie as he walked into the dining room, where Pepper sat, still dressed for dinner, at the table. She scrolled through her phone and didn’t look up at him when he entered the room, but greeted him anyway.
“Hey Peter,” she said. “Tony isn’t here to do that obnoxious oh you’re not really ungrounded bit he had planned so I guess you’re just going to have to somehow survive without it.” Her thumb stopped against her phone when Peter sat down in the chair across from her. “You’re dressed nice. Where’re you and Ned going?”
Peter shrugged. “I heard Tony bailed on your date. Figured we could go out to dinner, since he’s a flake.”
Pepper smiled, titled her head at him, then shook it. “That’s very sweet, but you should go be a teenager with your friends. I can go by myself.”
“No way, look, I want to go,” said Peter.
It wasn’t exactly a lie, either. Sure, he wanted to hang out with Ned, enjoy being ungrounded a little, but he wanted to have dinner with Pepper, too. He didn’t want her going by herself, even if knowing Pepper didn’t mind, knowing she occasionally liked going places alone.
“It’ll be fun.”
“I don’t believe stuffy restaurants are your idea of fun,” said Pepper. “But I won’t say no twice.” She stopped, and smiled, and Peter was sure he was doing the right thing. “Some company would be lovely.”
Peter sent a quick text to Ned, postponing their plans until Saturday. Being a teenager could wait. Being a Stark, just in that moment, meant a little bit more.
*
The cameras were clicking and flashing when Peter and Pepper stepped out of their car. Reporters were shouting. Happy was pushing them forward, away from the crowd and towards the doors of the new restaurant, under an archway that announced their grand opening.
Peter’s shoulders were loose. He pretended the press wasn’t there. That he saw through them. That they didn’t overwhelm his senses by yelling and waving their cameras around. It was Harry’s advice.
“They don’t deserve your attention,” he’d told him, over the phone, just a couple of days ago. “They’re just going to print some bullshit headline, anyway.”
Peter didn’t know if he was exactly right, didn’t know if he was important enough for his attention to be deserved, but he found Harry’s advice easier to follow than Tony’s.
“Look,” Tony had said, while Pepper had been behind him, shaking her head. “If someone is really hassling you, just take their camera or their phone and smash it against the concrete. No camera, no problem.”
Peter had laughed, but didn’t see himself getting that confrontational, unless he was pushed.
Happy left them at the door, and when they were safely inside, the noise and chaos transformed into elegant music and high ceilings and a host that greeted them both by name, expressing shock, but not disappointment, when he saw it was Peter there instead of Tony.
“He’s off,” said Pepper. “Playing with the Avenger’s.”
“Ahhhh, hopefully nothing too serious.”
Peter listened to Pepper make small talk with the host, too caught up in how normal he felt in an expensive suit inside a brand-new restaurant, where people no longer looked at him like he was strange and a charity case. He was expected, and that shouldn’t be.
He shouldn’t feel normal or comfortable, but somehow, when Peter sat down across Pepper at the table they reserved for New York royalty, he felt both.
“Thanks for coming with me tonight,” said Pepper. “You’re right. Dinner’s more fun with company.”
Peter shrugged. “No problem. No big deal.”
“It’s a big deal to me,” said Pepper. “I know you were looking forward to spending time with Ned, and I know –“ she looked around the glittering dining room “-and I know this isn’t usually your scene.”
“I don’t know… I guess I’m getting used to it. I – I sort of like it?”
Peter hadn’t meant to phrase the last part as a question. It came out that way, he suspected, because he didn’t know if that was okay. That liked Tony and Pepper’s friends, their scene, but he still loved and missed Queens.
“You know,” said Pepper, as if she were reading his mind. “It’s okay to come from more than one place. One of the best things about life is that it’s possible to have a lot of different homes. Doesn’t change who you are.”
Peter blinked. “May changed.”
“Sometimes… people just lose their way.”
He focused back on the menu and nodded his head with agreement. Sometimes people did lose their way and sometimes they didn’t ever find it again. Peter still liked meeting up with May, but he couldn’t deny that she wasn’t the same. More like a ghost of the parent he once knew.
Peter was just about to ask Pepper what her menu recommendation was when the hairs on his arms stood up. Debilitating dread accompanied it, as he, as subtly as he could, looked around and tried to pinpoint the threat making his spidey senses flair up.
He didn’t have to look very hard. It was obvious.
A man had a gun and he had it pointed at the back of Pepper’s head.
It seemed as though everyone in the restaurant noticed at the same time. Someone screamed, more people ducked under tables, and terror shot through Peter’s veins. He didn’t think. Didn’t have the time. All he knew was this wasn’t happening again. At least not tonight.
He shouted something at Pepper and dived across the table as the gun went off. Peter felt the familiar sensation of a bullet in his arm, and the next second, he and Pepper were on the floor, more people were screaming and yelling, and then there was a blur of red and gold covering Pepper’s arm.
There was a blast, a repulsor beam, and the buzzing and smoke the beam left in its wake. That was the end of the screaming, the hiding under tables, and also, the man with the gun.
Pepper Potts stood above Peter, wearing an elegant evening gown and high heels and blowing a cloud of smoke off her iron covered palm. She looked down at Peter, and her expression changed from anger to concern.
“Pete…” she said. “How’s the arm?”
“Hurts,” said Peter. The pain made him dazed, as well as the realization that he hadn’t needed to take the bullet for Pepper.
“Never do that again.”
Peter let his head fell against the floor of the restaurant, and tried to smile, though it got twisted from the pain caused by the bullet lodged in his arm. “Can’t make that promise, Pep.”
*
Getting a bullet extracted from his arm wasn’t the way Peter imagined his night would go.
Still, it was better than the last time he got shot. Three times in the legs, without his powers and his supernatural healing factor. Compared to that, it was a walk around Central Park on a sunny day. Oh, and there were drugs, numbing his pain away and making his thoughts hazy and cloudy.
And yet, turning his emotions incredibly clear.
“Pepper,” said Peter. She looked up from her laptop, from where she sat next to his bed in the Tower’s Medbay. “Uh, tonight I thought I might lose you. You know like I’ve had all these families, and I just thought, what if I just keep getting families, only to lose them, like I lost Ben and May, my parents.”
Pepper stood up from the armchair, closed her laptop and put it down on the bedside table. She swiped Peter’s hair from his forehead. “I can’t promise Tony and I will live forever, but while we’re around, we’ll be around… and as for May, sometimes people come back, even when it feels like they hadn’t been themselves in years.”
Peter swallowed, thinking, daring to hope that he might see his aunt as his aunt again, and wondering what kind of miracle that would take.
“What is this?” asked Tony, coming into the room. His hands were full with brown paper bags that carried the smell of their family’s favorite Mexican restaurant. “I can’t leave for a few hours without you getting shot?”
He put the bags down on the table, on top of Pepper’s laptop, which prompted her to hit him on the arm until he got a clue and put them somewhere else. Peter’s eyes never left the bags. His mouth watered, he could practically see the tacos inside, and nothing else.
Tony snapped his fingers in front of his face. Peter blinked and looked at him.
“Earth to Parker,” said Tony. “I asked if you were alright.”
“When are eating? I’m starved.”
“Guess there’s your answer,” said Pepper. “I’ll hit the vending machine. Get us some drinks.”
Tony watched her leave, and only once she was out the door, looked back at Peter. “You good tonight, kid.”
“I didn’t need to,” said Peter. The image of Pepper blasting that crazed random was stuck in his head on repeat. “Pepper – she killed that man.”
“Actually he survived. Barely, and I’m still angry so we’ll see,” said Tony, and Peter frowned trying to put together what he meant in his drugged mind. “And I wasn’t talking about the bullet. I was talking about you sacrificing your night to keep her company. Classy, Pete, and I’m actually impressed because normally when I use that word, I’m being sarcastic.”
“Wasn’t much of a sacrifice,” admitted Peter. “Would’ve had fun if I hadn’t been shot… besides she’d do the same for us.”
Tony agreed, and when Pepper came back into the room with their drinks, Peter felt lucky to have come from so many families. Even if there was no guarantee of tomorrow, the present felt pretty damn good.