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"Mister Stark, I don't feel so good." Peter stood at the end of the hallway looking into the living room.
"What's wrong kiddo?" Tony looked over at a flustered Peter.
In the living sat the majority of the Avengers, Tony and Steve were on one couch watching the news, Natasha was sitting in an armchair reading a book, Wanda and Thor were playing a game of cards while Sam, Bucky and Clint were sitting on barstools around the island chatting.
"I don't know. I feel really cold and I keep on getting an urge to eat, and it's almost like my spider sense is going off, but it's not warning me of danger. It wants me to do something, but I don't know what." Peter briefly explained.
"Can you come here for a second." Peter walked over to Tony who then put a hand on his forehead, "Well you aren't warm so hopefully that means you aren't sick."
Tony seemed to ponder on what was wrong before he simply suggested, "Hey Pete why don't you come with me into the kitchen and we'll start with getting you something to eat." Tony got up and started to walk towards the kitchen.
"Stark, sit your ass down." Bucky interrupted Tony before he made it to the kitchen, "You can barely boil water without burning it. I'll make something for the kid."
Bucky took Peter into the kitchen and started to mix together some pancake batter. He made sure to mix up enough for Peter's enhanced metabolism and was therefore very surprised when Peter finished all of the pancakes and then still asked for more. Buck compiled and mixed up some more batter. Peter just ate all of it and again asked for more. This was repeated a few more times before Bucky finally told Peter no and carried him out to the living room and plopped him down on a couch.
“Please Bucky.” Peter tried, “I’m still hungry.”
“No Peter I’m quite sure you ate over half your weight.” Peter looked at Bucky with his pleading doe eyes, “Peter no. There aren't even the ingredients to make more pancakes. You ate all of it.”
“It doesn’t have to be pancakes. I’m just hungry.” Peter whined.
Bucky looked defeated as he looked at the kid who just ate ten times as much as they should. How could Peter be this hungry? On one hand Bucky didn’t want Peter to sit there starving, but on the other hand he couldn’t feed him any more because he already ate more than what's safe for him.
Luckily before Peter could beg any more Tony tried to take his attention away from food, “Hey underoos, you said your spider-tingle was going off yeah? Why don’t you go and find what’s setting it off.”
“It’s not a tingle Mr. Stark, and I don’t know if it's something specific setting it off. It's not like its warning me of danger like it usually does. It’s almost like it's telling me I should do something, but it won’t tell me what it is it wants me to do.” Peter explained.
“Well why don’t you go and try doing a bunch of random things and then see how it reacts to different activities. Maybe you’ll figure out if it calms or annoyed your spider-tingle.” Tony urged.
Peter got up so he could go and find something to do, “I already told you, it's not a tingle” Tony just chuckled at Peter’s annoyance.
* * *
After about an hour after Peter left the Avengers took Peter’s not coming back as a sign that he must have found something to appease his spider-tingle… or he just snuck back into the kitchen and ate half of their food. No one was really concerned with what he was doing and technically they were right, Peter did find something to appease his tingle, it just so happens that the only thing Peter could do was build a nest.
At first Peter had just wandered around the tower doing odd tasks here and there, but after so long he noticed that if he went in a certain direction his spider-sense seemed to get mad at him. Trying to be safe the first place he went was to his bedroom, apparently that was the wrong answer. The spider-scene had most definitely shown it’s protest to that idea.
Sighing in defeat Peter left his room, closed his eyes, and spun around a few times before letting himself walk blindly in whatever direction he felt an urge to. Once he found that his spider-sense was at its calmest he opened his eyes to find that he was in Mr. Stark’s closet.
“What? Why did you bring me here?” Peter wasn’t really asking anyone in particular.
Peter looked around the space trying to figure out why he was brought here of all places. Nothing seemed to pop out of place until he was facing the back corner of the huge walk in closet. The shiver that ran down his spine urged him further into the closest, closer to the corner. He slowly climbed up the wall until the shiver went away. After that Peter closed his eyes again and waited for his spider-sense to give him a hint of what he should do.
It was about an hour before Peter had another urge, this time he started to use his webs and he slowly started to spin something that resembled a spider web. The spider web kept on getting built up until it looked like a very large human sized cocoon. A contempt feeling washed over Peter as he weaved in an end of his webbing which finished his nest.
Of course he couldn’t be put at ease forever, soon enough something was wrong again and Peter stirred from where he was laying down. As Peter got up he noticed that something was off with his senses. It was like his sense of smell just became stronger than the rest of his senses. Peter focused on what he could smell myself, the webs are what first came to mind, but soon after he realized there was a very familiar scent that seemed really far away, Tony.
An intense longing fell over him as he thought of the motor oil and liquor smell of Tony. He longed for it to be closer even though he was sitting in the man's closet.
Slowly Peter made his way out of his best and towards the clothes that were hanging. The first thing he did was change into one of Tony's old shirts and a pair of boxers. Next he gathered more clothing from Tony's wardrobe and took it back to his nest.
Just like with the webs Peter just let instincts tell him where to put the various pieces of clothing. A couple shirts here, a pair of trousers over there. There was no logic to how he laid the clothes, he just put them where he wanted. There lots of trips back and forth gathering more clothes from Tony’s closet to put into his nest.
Despite how right it felt to have Tony’s things so close to him there almost seemed to be something still missing. Peter sat and pondered what could be missing. He pondered and pondered for a good half hour before it hit him not what but who he had Tony included in his nest but what about the others, what about Natasha, Steve or Thor and Wanda, what about Clint, Bucky and Sam.
Yeah that's what was needed to complete the nest, the others. Peter slowly crept out of his nest and along the wall through the tower in search of the others. It was well into the evening and since it was on the weekend everyone was in the living room watching a movie. Usually Clint, Tony, Wanda, Sam and Bucky were already asleep by now and Steve is usually retired to his room. That just left Thor and Natasha still awake in the living room.
First he checked Steve and Bucky’s room. Bucky still had really intense nightmares from the winter soldier and so after a month of Bucky always heading to Steve’s room anyways, they just brought Bucky’s stuff over to Steve’s room. Just as predicted Steve was in the room, but he was asleep, so Peter very slowly crawled through the room and first grabbed things that seemed to smell of Bucky before something shiny caught his eye Steve’s shield he quickly snatched that and brought it back to his nest along with what he grabbed of Bucky’s and weaved them into his nest.
The next place he went was to Natasha’s and Wanda’s rooms, they were right next to each other so he could do both of them in one run. For Natasha Peter found her favourite pair of pajama pants and her leather jacket she wore as Black Widow, and for Wanda, her red coat was hanging in her bedroom. Now Peter just couldn’t resist those so again he collected the few items and brought them back to weave into his nest.
Sam seemed to be the easiest next target. He was passed out in the living room so it was easy for Peter to sneak into Sam's room and steal his workout clothes. They had such a strong scent to them and weaved in very nicely into the nest.
Now Thor and Clint didn’t actually live in the tower so going into their rooms would be very useless. Peter's only option was to go to the living room, that would’ve been an easy feat if it weren’t for Natasha. Thor gets very interested in movies and is never aware of what's going on any ways, but Natasha is a trained assassin you can’t just enter a room unnoticed, so Peter crawled up in the vents and moved so he was close enough to the living room to wait for an opportunity.
It was a long wait this time. It was almost an hour later that Natasha got up to go use the restroom, leaving a small window of opportunity for Peter. He quickly crawled out of the vent and searched the room for something to take. Thor's cape was hanging over the back of an armchair and Clint had his bow and jacket next to a couch perfect. Peter quickly grabbed all three items and brought them back to his nest and put the final pieces in place.
“There now it’s perfect.” Peter told himself as he finally was able to get into his nest and once he was inside and settled all he seemed to want to do was sleep, and so he did.
* * *
The next morning the tower was in absolute chaos. Everyone was running around accusing one another of ‘you stole my shield’ and ‘no your the one who took my jacket’ and there were lots of demands of ‘give it back’ and lots of ‘not until you return mine’ being thrown around the building.
“Okay enough!” Tony finally shouted tired of everyone screaming like children, “All of you to the living room. Now.”
After everyone was in the living room Tony sat down with a notepad and pen, “Okay now I’m going to ask you one at time what everyone is missing, because you all seem to be missing something. You guys are going to tell me and then I’m going to ask Friday to locate everything so you guys stop acting like children.”
Everyone sat back and felt a brief moment of shame when they all realized that yes they have been acting like children since they all woke up to find their belongings missing.
“Okay Natasha what's missing for you?” Tony was ready to write everything down.
“My widow jacket is gone as well as my favourite pair of pajama pants that Clint’s kids got me for christmas a few years ago.” Natasha calmly explained.
“The blue ones?” Tony clarified with a nod from Natasha, “Okay and Clint.”
“My jacket and my bow.” Clint listed.
“Just your bow? They didn’t take your arrows?” Clint shook his head, “and Thor?”
“I have only misplaced my red cape.” Thor quickly stated.
"Okay," Tony quickly jotted it down, "Sam?"
"My gym clothes are gone." Sam spat out.
Tony didn't even say anything to Sam, he just wrote it down, "Wanda?"
“My red jacket wasn’t where I left it last night.”
“Steve?”
“My shield is gone.” Steve almost looked scared.
“Someone took your shield?” everyone almost looked concerned at the fact that that particular item was missing. Steve nodded his head minisculely.
“Bucky?” Tony looked at the last person.
“Every one of my left shoes.” Everyone started to giggle and laugh at Bucky's predicament.
“So we’ve fallen victim to a troll?” Clint teased, Bucky just flipped him off.
“Okay so is that all that's missing?” Tony asked, giving everyone one more chance to come forward about missing items.
Everyone seemed to think for a moment before they all shook their heads, “Okay. Friday can you locate all of the items listed off.”
“Yes boss, they all seem to be located in your closet sir.” Tony’s face fell at her answer and the rest of the avengers started cussing at him.
“I swear I did not take any of your guys’ stuff.” Tony frantically tried to explain.
“Stark cut the bullshit. We all just heard your AI say that you took it.” Bucky glared daggers at Tony, “Now give us our stuff back.”
Tony sighed in defeat and led the others to his bedroom, but when he opened his bedroom door none of their stuff was anywhere to be seen, “Friday you said the stuff was in my room?”
“Yes sir it's in your closet.” Tony gave a confused look towards the ceiling as he crossed the room and went to his closet and opened the doors.
Sure Tony didn’t know what to expect, but this was the farthest thing from imaginable. They were all staring at a mess of webs and clothes and other items around the tower.
“What the hell is that?!” Tony exclaimed.
Upon closer inspection the team noticed that it was a cocoon like nest and on the inside of said cocoon was one Peter Parker curled up on top of Captain America’s shield wearing one of Tony’s T-shirts and Natasha’s pajama pants while he was using Thor’s cape as a blanket.
“Awe look at my baby spider.” Natasha cooed, no one knows how Peter managed it, but he somehow made her soft.
“He almost looks cute for once.” Sam said sarcastically earning a slap on the arm from Natasha.
“I almost don’t want to wake him up.” Tony gently reached into the cocoon to stroke Peter's face, unfortunately that didn’t work to wake Peter up like Tony thought it would, “Kid?”
Tony tried to shake the kid a couple times, but Peter was not waking up, he was just curling up farther into the cocoon. Starting to worry Tony became more desperate with his attempts to wake up the spiderling. It wasn’t until Natasha pulled Tony away from Peter that TOny realized that Peter was not going to wake up.
“Why isn’t he waking up?” The concern in Tony's voice was visible from a mile away.
“I don’t know Tony but I bet it has something to do with his spider DNA.” Steve tried to comfort Tony.
“Friday I want you to research everything you can on why a Peter might be asleep like this. Send me the results ASAP.” Tony commanded.
“Of course boss.” Friday responded.
Tony stood by the cocoon and tapped his foot impatiently as he waited for Friday to finish her research, “Sir the most reasonable explanation I can find is hibernation. Most spiders will hibernate once it starts to get below freezing. The past few years New York or specifically Queens area has never dropped below freezing during the winter months.”
“How long will he have to stay asleep?” Bucky asked, concerned of Peter’s health.
“I can only assume that Peter will sleep until the temperature rises, but I cannot be sure.” Friday explained, “I do predict though that the cold weather will only last for about a week's time, so if my guess is correct Peter should wake up during next weekend.”
That seemed to satisfy Tony. His kid was only going to be asleep for a week and it didn’t seem like anything was wrong with him. Of course during the next week Tony had to check on him every couple of hours, but like Friday predicted next Saturday the temperature rose and so did Peter. Once Peter had realized what he had done he had apologized to everyone and returned their stuff with his cheeks red from embarrassment, and if everyone had a picture of a cute Peter sleeping with items from all the Avengers, well no one had to tell.