Chapter Text
Steve had always been a man of few words. Few, but good, politeness being the main lesson he had taken on from his mother —may she rest in peace.
Proof of that was how his friend Bucky never hesitated at the opportunity of reminding him of that one time when he had refused to say a word to an impertinent guy who had been molesting some chicks at a party. When the guy had realized that Steve, the tall and serious man who had taken him from his jacket and dragged him out of the pub, wasn’t saying a single word, he had started mocking him for being dumb. Dumb or mute, maybe both, he had said before starting to laugh in a manner that had reminded Steve to a hyena.
He had been slurring all that nonsense until Steve had suddenly released his firm grip to watch the guy fall, ass kicking the wet floor.
“I have nothing good to say”, Steve had said then, not even dignifying his words with a look at the drunk scumbag, “so I’d rather say nothing at all. Maybe you could learn something from that”. When the guy had started screaming at him, his voice full of anger rather than the drunk amusement it had shown before, Steve had just tsked and murmured, “or maybe not” before leaving.
Even then, his words couldn’t have been described as anything less than polite, even if they had any dose of the sass Bucky insisted the scene had had.
That had been months ago.
But then, in that exact moment? Steve found himself unable to conjure even the simplest words. Bucky was nowhere to be seen, for starters. The same went for Nat. That fact, next to the fact that the man before him was wearing a suit that he wouldn’t have been able to afford even if he had taken all the shifts in the work he could —something that he already did, only added to the sense of wrongness that impregnated the moment.
Steve gulped before he managed to say something.
“That can’t be right, sir”, he said. And even as he said it, as the words poured from his mouth, he knew he hadn’t picked the right ones. He knew that from the way the expensive-suit-guy looked at him over his glasses. And he knew it in his gut.
“Mr Rogers”, he said slowly, slower that before, as if he thought him the dumb guy that drunk months ago had thought him to be, “there’s no right or wrong here, I’m afraid. This is Mrs May’s will and, as I have just read to you, those were her wishes. Very clearly stated, if you ask me”.
“But I-I can’t take care of that kid”, he said, managing to get rid of the tremor in his voice, “and she knew it. She had to.”.
“Mr Rogers”, said the man again, slowly, in a patronizing way that would have angered Bucky. To him, well, it just managed to make him feel a bit smaller, if that was possible, “correct me if I’m wrong, but Mrs May alleges in her will that you not only have a stable job which earns you a living wage that allows you to live comfortably-“
“I-“, he wouldn’t call living comfortably to have to count every penny carefully before buying himself one more coffee apart from the ones he got every morning at Nat’s, he wanted to say. He wouldn’t say having to pick up every turn that came up in his job in order to be able to make ends meet was living comfortably, he wanted to add.
There were loads of things he would have wanted to say to the notary before him, but the man got to say a few words before he could manage to, and with those words Steve knew —he just knew, he was screwed.
***
Those words were still ringing in his head when he arrived at the social services building the notary had appointed him to. When he crossed the door, he was drenched head to toe because of the rain that had started only minutes before.
Panting, he approached the front counter, where a young woman talked with an animosity he envied over the phone. When she saw him approaching, she made him a pleading sign that he interpreted for the universal “wait ‘till I’m finished”, so he just leaned on the counter and picked up his own phone, unlocking it for the first time since he had entered the notary office.
There were two unread messages, which was exactly what he had expected given the fact that only two people knew where he had been summoned that cold, September morning.
“Finished yet?”, Bucky had asked him about an hour ago.
Right under that message, there was another, this one from Nat. “What did he say?”
Still unable to conjure any word that sounded appropriate to describe the situation his neighbor had gotten him into, he answered with a plain “Talk later” to both before turning to the receptionist, who was just finishing her call.
“What can I help you with?”, she asked once the phone was in his place.
The words sounded weird in his mouth as he said them —not wrong, just weird. They were heavy-laden with something he hadn’t felt in a long time, something powerful enough to make him tip-toe over them, indecisive.
The words of the expensive-suit-guy repeated in his mind once again, so loud Steve found it hard to believe no one heard them salve for him.
For him, they were deafening.
“... but you also know this kid, have babysat him before and, forgive my rawness by saying this, Mr Rogers, but I doubt very much that I’m wrong by stating that you’re the only person this kid will be able to trust after the departure of his only family. In other words, you’re the only one this kid has left.
Are you really telling me you want to leave him to his own devices?”.
Fuck, thought Steve as he drew breath and courage, of course not.
“I’m here for Peter Parker”, he said, and even though his voice was firm, he found himself unable to decide where to put his gaze before saying the next words, “I’m his guardian”.
***
In a firm silence, he followed the woman through white, sterile halls that reminded him of his own infance, spent mostly from hospital to hospital. No , he thought, shaking his head, that isn’t it. While he had spent a lot of time outside of home in places that looked —smelled, even like that one, he had always done so with his mother by his side.
Peter didn’t have that, and the mere thought was enough to tighten his chest.
“Here he is”, said the woman, looking at him with a small, knowing smile, “take your time”.
She didn’t say it, but Steve was able to hear clearly the next words, the unspoken “both of you are going to need it”.
Once he was alone in the corridor, he drew a small breath and, after that, knocked gently on the door. Then, he waited in the utmost of the silences for some sound. He thought he could hear some kind of rustling, but it was so small he wondered whether he had imagined it.
When he knocked again, he could hear it again, this time a bit louder.
“Yes?”, said a small voice behind the door, and Steve took it as his cue to enter.
The room was smaller than he had thought it would be. With merely enough space to accommodate a bed and a small nightstand, it made Steve feel radically out of place. He had to fight down the need to make himself smaller, just like he had done in the notary office. Furthermore, the walls were of the same intense whiteness that tainted the corridors, making the room feel even colder than it already was.
And there, sat —no, couched in the bed, was Peter.
Steve had to take his time just to reconcile the image that he had had of the kid until then with the one that was before him. In his mind —in his memories, Peter Parker was a six-year-old-menace. The kid with the biggest smile he had ever seen, as well as the savviest mind he had ever encountered. He was the kind of person whose presence wasn’t announced by his words, his steps or his smell, but by his laugh.
The kid before him, on the other hand, didn’t have an expression at all. With his gaze lost in the wall behind him and a paleness that couldn’t be healthy for anyone, Steve found it hard to think of him as the kid he had been babysitting for the last months while his neighbor battled her own wars.
Drawing a shaky breath, Steve recomposed himself and, trying to appear stronger —firmer that he felt himself to be, approached the bed. Carefully, he sat by Peter’s side.
“Hey, Petey”, he said, his voice a mere whisper where merely hours before those words had been the usual greeting between them, “I’ve come to take you… home”.
Steve smacked himself mentally at the doubt in his voice, but forgot about it when Peter started moving. Slowly, the kid sat back and looked at him, giving him something that appeared to be a nod.
He looked so small, so vulnerable , Steve found himself wanting to hug him, wanting to give him some of the warmth that room —that whole place, really— had been unable to give him. But in the end, he just gave him a small smile as he gave the kid enough space to stand up.
When Peter had put on his coat, the one he had been using as a blanket, he looked up to him with big, wet eyes. And the words of that man came back at him with the strength of a thousand typhoons. He was the only one Peter had left, the only one that could take care of him as a kid his age deserved.
With that in mind, Steve kneeled in front of the kid and waited for a few seconds before he threw himself at his arms, shaking with a violence Steve hadn’t been expecting. But that didn’t stop him from hugging him with all he had, letting the kid hide his head on his shoulder, wetting his coat in the process.
When the shakiness remitted and Peter felt less fragile in his arms —less like he would break if Steve so much as dared to move him—, Steve stood up with him in his arms and got him out of that place.
***
When Steve and Peter arrived home, it was warmer than Steve had been expecting. Usually, he didn’t have the heating on unless he planned on spending the day at home —otherwise, that was an extreme waste of heat and money. He almost smacked himself at that thought now, given the fact that Peter would be living there from then on, needing the place to be as warm as possible.
Luckily, Nat had already thought about it, as well as Bucky had thought about the fact that they would need something to eat that weren’t leftovers.
“Guys, how…?”, whispered Steve to avoid waking up Peter, who had fallen asleep in his arms not so long ago.
“I won, Buck”, said Nat, emulating his own tone of voice.
“Damn it”, murmured his friend. Steve wasn’t really sure if it was because he had lost a bet against their friend —again—, or because of the kid in his own arms. “So that’s happening, huh?”.
“Yeah”, whispered Steve while he left Peter on the old couch. After that, he signaled his friends to come over to the kitchen, where they would be able to speak more freely. “I wasn’t expecting it, to be honest”.
“It was obvious”, said Nat rolling her eyes as she turned to the tuppers Bucky had brought there, “you’ve been taking care of that kiddo since before his auntie got ill. I’m sure she went in peace only because she knew her kid was in good hands, your hands”.
“Nat, I…”, Steve’s gaze lingered from his friend to the couch, where the little guy slept in a tight silence. Dodger, his dog, had approximated cautiously to the kid and was now sniffing carefully, as if to memorize his scent. Even he seemed at peace with the idea of a new buddy, as he got on the sofa and curled with him. Pete, in the midst of his tight dream, reacomodated and ended up hugging the dog. Steve sighed. “I don’t know if I can…”.
Nat rolled her eyes and started to unpack all the tuppers.
"Of course you can, man" said Bucky with a soft smile that was enough to let him know he had also seen the scene in his living room. "I'd say you would be able to do it alone, but you know what the best part is? You are not. You have us."
“I don’t even know where to start”, Steve admitted once they all had their dinners in hand, “I mean, I’ve babysat him before, sure, but that’s not even close to raising a child”.
“No, it isn’t”, Nat conceded, “that’s why you’re going to have to change some things around here”.
“Like what?”.
“Your spare bedroom, for starters”, Nat looked at him with narrowed eyes, “you don’t expect him to sleep in a room with barely a mattress and no bed sheets in sight. And that’s just the beginning. You’re going to move everything he had in his old house here. You had already thought about that, right?”.
“Right”, said Steve while he shared a lost look with Bucky, who shrugged in the universal sign meant to say “she’s right and that’s it”.
“And then there’s your job”, said Nat. And, at that, Steve focused.
“What’s wrong with it?”, he asked, already knowing the answer but not wanting to hear it out loud.
But that was the thing: Nat never did what you wanted her to do. Instead, she did what you needed her to do. Which was good, but at the same time bothered him to no end.
“You work as a bodyguard”, she said, slowly, “in a job that, apart from being dangerous, mostly demands you to work night shifts. You can’t work a night job while you have a kid at home. I mean, Buck and I can babysit sometimes, sure, but we also have our own lives”.
Steve looked at his dinner intently and silently for a few seconds, as if the subway sandwich had all the answers. Bucky, by his side, looked at him for a few seconds before trying to lift the mood.
“Right, what Nat’s saying it’s true and you’re going to have to face the music at some point, but first, let’s feed the kid, yeah? For how long has he been in that place?”.
“It must have been a week”, murmured Steve while his gaze looked for Peter, who had cuddled with Dodger and seemed as peaceful as a kid his age could be. Sprawled like that, he seemed even smaller than before. He hadn't realized until that exact moment that, as he was the silent kind, Peter was the kind of person that made himself bigger with his smile.
While Bucky and Nat talked and bantered behind him about what kind of job he could apply to, Steve allowed the heaviness of that day to fall over his shoulders. Could he be a good parent to Peter? He had never thought he could end up in a situation like that, and although he had taken everything that had been thrown in his direction that day with wide-open arms and a surreal feeling, the importance of that situation was starting to sink into him now.
And, despite what he had expected to feel —dread, maybe, panic for sure—, everything he could think about while looking at that eight-year-old kid that had just lost his only family was duty.
The duty he now had to Peter.
Strangely, it didn't feel bad. Just… right.