Chapter Text
Peter steeled his resolve, grit his teeth, then shoved the briefcase at Happy. “Here. I can’t keep this.”
Happy merely looked at the briefcase, making no move to take it from Peter. Of course he was going to make this difficult.
“I’m serious,” Peter said through clenched teeth, lifting the briefcase towards Happy once more.
Happy rolled his eyes. “Kid, Tony made that suit for you . He expects you to keep it.”
“Yeah, and if I don’t give it back now, he’d expect me to be able to keep it in my possession— and to be able to use it. Unfortunately, I can’t make that guarantee, so.” Peter set the briefcase on the ground and nudged it towards Happy with his foot, then stepped back.
Happy narrowed his eyes at Peter.
Peter glared right back. The only thing worse than having to give back the super suit of his dreams was the thought of the myriad consequences that would come from trying to keep the super suit while living in foster care. Losing the damn thing in one of his near-constant moves would be the least of his worries.
“Look, kid, Tony must think you’re responsible enough to handle it because he’s the one who decided you could keep it.”
Peter could feel frustration bubbling up through his gut. He didn’t want to talk about this— it was shameful and horrible, and he didn’t want to talk about it, and it would be so easy to just acquiesce and keep the coolest thing he’d ever even seen— But then he thought about his file with CPS (already a thick stack of papers), he thought about the many foster parents who insisted on bag checks before moving in and the utter lack of privacy from foster siblings. If he kept this unmistakable, undisguisable suit, his secret would be out in a matter of days.
“You know I’m in foster care,” Peter said, unclenching his jaw through sheer force of will. He had to sound unbothered now.
“And?” Happy asked, the unspoken ‘what’s the point’ clear as day.
“And the thought of having th-the autonomy necessary to not only keep my hands on the suit, but to keep it secret too, is-it’s laughable.”
At this, Happy actually began to look a bit less stubborn.
Peter thrust a hand through his curls and sighed. “Look, if it’s so important to you that the suit be mine, you can keep it for me, or something. It’s only four years till I age out of the system, and I can get it back from you then.” He did his best to keep his discomfort at the long years stretching ahead of him clear from his face. “And besides, my old suit is perfectly fine for the lower stakes of the streets of Queens.”
“Fine, kid. Fine. If you ever do need it, call me,” Happy said, finally picking up the briefcase.
It was a victory, and it was what Peter had fought for, but it tasted bitter.
After Germany, not much changed for Peter.
He still patrolled as often as he could manage (nowhere near as often as he should have), he was still bouncing around from foster home to foster home, leaving whenever the foster parents got sick of him and sent him away, or when Peter decided he’d had enough of whatever variety of poor treatment he’d been given. He still went to school, still spent as much time with Ned as possible, still found himself intrigued with the mystery that was Michelle, and was still bullied by Flash.
Really, the only thing that changed was the voicemail he sent to Happy after he patrolled and the occasional thumbs up emoji he received in response.
Pathetically, those stupid emojis made him feel more seen than the vast majority of his fosters managed in the time he lived with them.
So when he stumbled upon those alien weapons in his territory, in his home , he found himself getting a bit excited. Finally, he had something to break up the quiet, miserable monotony of his life. He should have known the disruption would go sour, that the good ol’ Parker Luck would never let him have a merely interesting diversion.
His first encounter with the Vulture had ended disastrously— the impact from hitting the water had broken his bones and stolen his breath and there had been several terrifying moments where he hadn’t been sure he’d be able to pull himself out of the water.
But pull himself out of the water, he did. Peter was grateful that he had had even the brief experience in the Stark suit because it had inspired him to work with Ned to make some dumpster-supplied tech for Spider-Man purposes. Peter was able to put a tracker on one of the Vulture’s companions and with it, he saw their move to Baltimore. Peter managed to get himself onto the decathlon team again and went to investigate, getting himself trapped in a secure warehouse in the process, making him miss the competition and late to the trip to the Washington Monument, which was honestly a huge bummer. At least he got to stand next to Michelle while he waited for the rest of the team to come back down.
But then things got so much worse with the Ferry Incident.
In retrospect, Peter was still a touch bitter about how the whole thing went down. He felt like he’d done everything right— he’d tried to warn Mr Stark about the Vulture, tried to share his lead with the man, and if Mr Stark had shown any signs of taking him seriously, or better yet, told him about passing on the information to the authorities, then the whole thing need never have happened.
What ifs aside, Mr Stark didn’t do any of those things, so Peter skipped school to make it to the ferry in time, only for things to go horribly wrong. Peter felt sick when he thought about how close he’d come to being responsible for that many deaths. When Mr Stark confronted him on that rooftop, Peter was practically vibrating with suppressed emotion. Everything was just so much, the adrenaline, the guilt, the panic, the pain.
The lecture Mr Stark delivered missed the mark in some ways and crippled Peter in others. If asked, Peter would have given it a 6/10.
As he was running out of steam, Mr Stark released a deep sigh and adjusted his tie. Peter was struck by how utterly unruffled Mr Stark was after stepping out of the Iron Man suit— and at a time where Peter felt nothing but ruffled, too. Then Mr Stark was talking again.
“This isn’t working out,” Mr Stark said, his now-cold gaze sweeping over Peter.
Peter huffed out a breath and tilted his head to the side, not sure where this was going, but long used to the sting of disappointed adults.
“Time’s like this, I really wish you’d taken the damn suit,” Mr Stark muttered. “But whatever, fine, Spider-Man is grounded until you’ve learned a lot more about responsibility.”
Peter laughed, then, the sound choked and bitter. “You’re not my parent, Mr Stark. Nobody is my parent. Haven’t you heard? I’m an orphan; if I fuck up, I’m sent away. I’m not grounded ,” he said with another bitter laugh. Grounding implied that the ground-er wanted him around, wanted to keep an eye on him. Nobody wanted that anymore.
“I know you’ve got guardians,” Mr Stark said, evidently choosing to ignore the second part of what Peter had said. “Would you rather I talk to them about grounding Spider-Man and Peter Parker?”
Peter’s stomach dropped to the ground. His head started shaking. “ No-no-no. No. You can’t—” Peter took a deep breath, gathering his arguments. “The public in general already doesn’t feel great about mutants, there’s no way any foster parent would keep me if they knew I was one. And that’s assuming I’m not taken by some government organization or crime syndicate,” Peter rambled out in a desperate panic. “Please, sir, I-I know I screwed up, but please, this is my life —”
“Christ, kid. Fine. I won’t tell your guardians if you agree to ground Spider-Man.”
Though it felt like losing a limb, Peter had no choice but to nod his agreement. Happy drove him back to his foster house after that, since the grounding was effective immediately, so Spider-Man was not allowed to swing back. Despite the many awkward car rides Peter had been subjected to since entering the system, he thought that that drive might have taken the cake.
Time passed, and though Peter felt cast adrift without even the hope of going out as his alter ego, he still somehow managed to find himself going to Homecoming with Liz. He even worked up the energy to feel giddy about it. He scrounged together the money to buy her a corsage and turned up to her house, filled with excitement to see her. Then his Parker Luck hit again, and he found out that Liz’s dad was the goddamned Vulture.
When he was released from the Vulture’s car, he mournfully ditched Liz and ran off to find Ned. He convinced Ned to track his phone where he’d left it in the Vulture’s car, gave Happy’s number to Ned, telling him to call Happy and tell him what was going on. Happy didn’t answer, because of course he didn’t. With a heavy heart, Peter went to retrieve his spidey suit, despite Ned’s attempts to stop him.
Peter didn’t want to violate the terms of his grounding, but this was bigger than just an alien weapon or two on the streets of Queens. This was the potential for so much worse, and Peter knew that if he didn’t stop it now, all the harm that would be done would be his fault. So he grit his teeth, banished his terror that this would be the reason why Mr Stark went through with his threat to tell his (new) foster parents about Spider-Man, and suited up.
Peter could admit that he did take a bit of pleasure from stealing Flash’s car given his genuine justification in doing so. He used it to follow the Vulture, who he found in a warehouse. Peter confronted him and then things really started to go south. The feeling of an entire building crushing him was one that would haunt Peter’s nightmares. Somehow, though, he managed to lift the building off of himself before launching himself back into action. If a building on his chest wasn’t enough to stop him, nothing would be.
The knot of guilt Peter was carrying in his chest grew just a bit tighter when he crashed Mr Stark’s plane, even though he didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. He saved the Vulture, thus preventing Liz from losing her father, and though the warm glow of accomplishment lightened his emotional burden, it wasn’t enough to keep him from collapsing to the ground in the aftermath. He was maskless, webbing fluid-less, and damn near hopeless.
With a monumental force of will comparable to that required to lift the warehouse, and a bitterly muttered curse for his enhanced metabolism leaving him weak, Peter managed to pull himself into a sitting position facing away from the oncoming cars. He could only hope Happy was the first one on the scene.
And he was.
Even through all the chaos, Peter was able to recognize the sound of Happy’s heartbeat approaching at a steady clip. The man pulled off his coat, draping it over Peter’s head to disguise his identity, and deposited him in his car. Peter lost track of things after that and the next thing he knew, he was sitting in the medbay at the compound and turning down an offer to join the Avengers. A measly villain like the Vulture had almost been enough to do him in, he certainly wasn’t ready for more.
The offer was shocking on many levels, but he had to assume that the plane needed saving badly enough that it was worth breaking his grounding. Mr Stark didn’t say anything about talking to his fosters again, instead he focused the conversation on his non-optional plans for Peter to come to the compound every other weekend for lessons in “superhero strategy” and “minimization of collateral damage” and “self care for the enhanced individual” since Mr Stark said that a simple grounding wasn’t teaching Peter anything.
Eventually, Peter’s time at the compound became less about superhero-self-improvement and more about spending time together in the workshop. And before he knew it, the weekends with Mr Stark became a source of light and consistency in his otherwise unstable life.