Chapter Text
Ten months ago, Peter was erased from the world’s memory by a spell gone horribly wrong. In the course of a few hours, everyone who loved him forgot he existed. But, then, Bucky Barnes had rocked up to the tiny studio apartment he lived in, demanding to know why Sam Wilson didn’t know who Peter was.
Maybe HYDRA had messed with Bucky’s head so often that it couldn’t be messed with anymore. Maybe Shuri’s healing had protected him. But he was the sole person on Earth who had known Peter. And, boy howdy, had he been pissed at Stephen Strange for the spell.
After ten months alone, Stephen had fixed his own memories along with those of Happy, Pepper, Morgan, Sam, F.R.I.D.A.Y., Karen, DUM-E, Ned, MJ and Rhodey. And, while it still hurt to know that Ned’s lola didn’t know him and Mr. Delmar had no idea who he was, his life was looking up. Hell, he’d gotten a nice apartment, left his terrible job, had good meals with his friends, gotten back together with MJ. It had been less than seventy-two hours, and his life was unrecognizable.
It was weird to go back to school with Pepper and Stephen. It felt almost routine now to explain how Stephen had erased him from memory — he’d had to have the conversation a lot over the last couple of days. Principal Morita clearly wasn’t sold on it until he started looking at yearbooks and saw Peter in clubs. When he entered the student files, he found Peter’s transcript quickly. It still had his teacher recommendations and all his test results.
Looking at it, Principal Morita said, “You were in the running to be the valedictorian?”
Peter nodded, “Early in the semester.”
“How is studying for the GED going?”
“Good,” he nodded. “I read all of my high school textbooks. Half our teachers put the class syllabus online and I… I don’t know, I kept up with it just to feel connected. So I don’t have to learn anything for the GED, just learn the test format.”
Thinking briefly, Principal Morita said, “Would you be able to pass your finals if you sat them?”
Peter nodded, “I know I missed a whole semester but… I like school and did all the work.”
Principal Morita smiled his gentle, kind smile, “Forget the GED, I’ll set it up, you can take your finals in two weeks.”
“Wow, really?” he smiled.
“A high school degree gives you a better shot at college than a GED,” said the man. “I’ve never seen a recommendation as vehement as Mr. Harrington. There’re exclamation points.”
“Mr. Harrington is the best,” said Peter.
Chuckling, Principal Morita said, “Just take the tests and we’ll get you your diploma, Peter. You shouldn’t be punished for a magic spell going wrong.” Then, looking at the candid shots in the yearbook, he said, “Have you been able to make any new friends?” There was a photo of Peter laughing, surrounded by the Academic Debate team.
“Dr. Strange fixed a few people’s memories in the last couple of days. So I have MJ and Ned Leeds. But… it’s been hard. I had two jobs. One they were nice the other… I edited the anti-Spider-Man videos for J. Jonah Jameson and he’s as awful as you think.”
“He’s handled it masterfully all by himself,” said Pepper. “I’m very proud.”
***
His new apartment was beautiful. He installed Karen throughout it, just like F.R.I.D.A.Y. was everywhere in the lake house. Pepper had bought the palatial apartment for him, and it was so big that he had invited Bucky to live with him. Bucky loved Karen, was so enthusiastic about technology, and was thrilled to live with an AI, didn’t think she was creepy or invasive. Living with Bucky was nice; Bucky was kind, if a bit of a mother hen.
He spent the week filling out his ESU application with Bucky. Bucky loved school, and it hadn’t taken much for Peter to talk him into applying. Pepper went to the admissions department with Stephen without Peter and spoke to someone. Then she came to the apartment and said, “When you guys finish your applications just hand them to me.”
Bucky was overwhelmed, “Pepper, I didn’t sit the SATs, I graduated high school in 1935. My transcript is apparently in a museum: Peter wrote a school report on my school life.”
“Bucky, fill out what you can, write the essays, get Sam to write you a recommendation,” said Pepper. “You have a Congressional Medal of Honor. You’re an Avenger. If they don’t accept you, they are siding with HYDRA… at least that’s how I framed it.” He laughed, and she smiled. “You’ll be fine. You’re getting in.”
“Steve said he’d write me a recommendation too. It’s both the Captains America,” said Bucky. “Not Walker — obviously.”
“Obviously,” agreed Pepper. “He doesn’t count.”
***
Peter aced his finals. And Principal Morita told him to invite his friends to the school on Saturday morning. Peter didn’t know why, but he did as he was told. It wasn’t a huge group.
Pepper told him to wear a suit, but when he got there, Principal Morita gave him a cap and gown and told him to go put them on. As he returned to the room, that song that always played at graduations in movies played. He was pretty sure it was called Pomp and Something. He laughed as he walked to his seat next to MJ.
Principal Morita stood at a podium and said, “Michelle, Ned, you’ve heard this before.” He took a breath. “Good morning, welcome, and congratulation, class of 2025: you did it.”
Peter felt himself well up as he listened to the commencement speech he should have heard months before. It was a nice speech. He probably liked it more because he’d always been fond of Principal Morita. As he finished, he said, “It is my pleasure to present today’s sole graduate with his diploma. Peter, if you would like to come up.”
Peter stood, and he saw Pepper standing with a real camera. Peter went and took the certificate in the nice holder. He smiled as he shook his hand, and the man said, “Smile at the camera.”
Peter did as told, and Pepper grinned, “Got it, thank you. That’s going on my desk.”
“You brought a real camera?” asked Peter.
“We got called to the school on a Saturday after you did your tests,” said Pepper. “I knew what we were doing.”
Grinning at Principal Morita, Peter said, “Thank you for this, what should I do with this robe?”
“That’s yours to keep,” said Principal Morita.
“Keep it on. Wear it to brunch, please,” said Pepper. “Principal Morita, would you like to come? We have a reservation at Llama Inn. We’d love it if you could join.”
“Sure, and please, call me Jim.”
***
Bucky and Principal Morita got on well. Bucky had known his grandfather. The first Jim Morita was one of the Howling Commandos. And Principal Morita had questions.
Pepper took more pictures, and Rhodey took pictures of Pepper and Morgan with Peter. “So proud,” said Pepper.
***
Principal Morita asked Pepper how she knew Peter, and Pepper told him the same BS story they had been telling people for years. Peter, so outgoing, applied for a September Foundation Grant at fourteen. They were only available to college students. The sheer audacity of a high school Freshman applying for one got attention; the fact that his proposed work was genius got the application in front of Tony. And then Tony had had his first and only personal intern ever. Peter had become a part of the family. Peter’s work was stunning. Peter designed Spider-Man’s suits.
The lie was practiced and seamless, but the laughter and warmth as Pepper spoke was real. She reached out to stroke his cheek and said, “Meeting Peter was one of the best things that ever happened to us.”
***
He and Bucky gave Pepper their applications. She came back to them two days later with “fat envelopes.”
She sat them down and said, “So: yay. You’re enrolled part time. Freshmen are supposed to live on campus and take full course loads. But I told them that you build Spider-Man’s suits and maintain Bucky’s arm and work a large internship at Stark Industries. And, Bucky, you’re Captain America’s partner. So they cleared you both taking two classes instead of four and living off campus. You can start in the spring or fall, you just have to reach out to the email addresses in your packets. Take your time, get enough sleep, be Spider-Man and the White Wolf and parttime students.”
Peter felt himself tear up and hugged her tightly.
***
Patrolling with company was odd. But he was getting used to it. Bucky seemed unwilling to let Peter out of his sight. And when Bucky wasn’t there, Dr. Strange was. He got to like the company.
***
During the blip, Mr. Stark sold all of the space in Avengers Tower, or Stark Tower, whatever people wanted to call it. When Peter asked Pepper why she sighed, she said, “It just made him sad. He missed his friends, he missed you. He missed… what the team was before Germany. And he couldn’t be in those labs without you.”
Now, NYU and twenty different charities held the space. SI still owned the building and the land, but they didn’t work inside. It made Peter sad; he wondered what the lab was now, not a lab, not their shared space.
He changed the gym in his apartment into a beautiful lab. DUM-E came down every day to visit. Bucky loved it and would ask Peter what he was doing as he worked. He would sit reading through Peter’s science textbooks from high school, preparing for class, hoping to keep up.
***
It was a rough day, he was trying to ignore the date, but Happy said, “I talked to Dr. Strange, who talked to some other heroes, take the night off. They’ll cover you. You shouldn’t be out there tonight. He’s going to open a portal for Ned and MJ. Pepper and Morgan are gonna come. We’ll have a party for her.”
Peter nodded and said, “She would have been, fifty-four today.”
“I know, I’m so sorry, Peter.”
He went to F.E.A.S.T. with a check for ten thousand dollars. He still didn’t really understand how much money he had, but he wanted to do something nice for other people today. Anna saw him and smiled, “Peter, how are you?”
“I’m okay. I’m good. I graduated from high school. I got into college. So that’s good. Today’s May’s birthday, I wanted to… well, I guess it’s a birthday gift of sorts.” He held out the check to her.
She looked at the zeroes and said, “Peter, that’s a lot of money.”
He nodded and said, “S’okay, I can afford it. It’s for May.”
She sighed and said, “I know it sounds trite, but it gets better.”
“It did after Mom and Dad. It did after Uncle Ben. It will again,” Peter agreed. “Anyway, I should go.”
“Let me give you a form for your donation. A check that big, you declare it on your taxes.”
“Oh, yeah, taxes, that’s a thing,” he agreed and followed her to the office, where she signed in the check and filled out a form for him.
She thanked him, wished him well and congratulated him on getting into college.
***
He planned on inviting Bucky to dinner. But when he got home, he saw that Sam and Steve were there. Steve was, like, a million years old but still around. Peter had heard the rumors that he lived on the moon but assumed it was bull. He still hadn’t expected to see the man ever again.
Steve stood as Peter entered and started to introduce himself, and Peter said, “Steve, we’ve met several times. Dr. Strange erased me from memory, but we’ve met. I’m Peter.”
Steve smiled, “Well, it’s nice to re-meet you.”
Peter just felt weird and said, “Huh, yeah.” He thought over the situation and spoke to Bucky. “Um, obviously you should have your friends over, as much as you like, always. But, uh, Morgan is going to stay here tonight, and I don’t… if you could just be away from her when I bring her down to bed. Like, maybe be in the sitting room?”
“Sure,” said Bucky. “You okay? Is Pepper coming with Morgan?”
“I… yeah, Pepper, and MJ and Ned. It’s May’s birthday. So, we’re having a dinner party. And I was going to say you should come but…”
“Does May not like me?” asked Steve. He was smiling in a way that was clearly meant to be disarming. But Peter just was very much still armed.
“She didn’t while she was alive,” said Peter. Peter was in a terrible mood and felt like someone should stand up to him. “Y’know what, I’m just gonna say it: I have no idea why Bucky and Sam are friends with you. Mr. Stark was one of my best friends. And I think about Siberia and… You lied through your teeth about his parents being murdered and then left him for dead in Siberia. But then I think about the fact that you did it for Bucky. It’s not that you were a bad friend to Mr. Stark — you faked a friendship with him. But you did it for Bucky. And I think about my best friend, Ned, and… maybe I could use someone and leave them half dead — for Ned. But then, then you ditched Bucky and decided to live in the past and left him all alone when he didn’t have many friends other than you. You just left. So you were evil to Mr. Stark in the name of friendship, but then you abandoned your friend. You went off and lived a life instead of making one with him. And y’know, like, late at night when you can’t sleep and you wonder if you’re a good person? It happens to everyone. I need you to know: you’re not a good person. Bucky and Sam deserve better friends because they’re nice. They’re good people.” He looked at the other two men and said, “I’m sorry I made your night awkward. I have to go to my dead aunt’s birthday party. You’re both invited.”
Walking toward the elevator, he heard Bucky say, “So that’s my friend Peter. He’s just the sweetest.”
***
MJ and Ned came through the door to Happy’s place twenty minutes later, looking a little shaken.
“Do you know who is downstairs?” asked MJ. “I dropped my stuff off in your bedroom, but I mean.”
“I told him off,” said Peter.
“Who?” asked Happy.
“Steve,” said Peter, “I don’t care if he’s a little old man: I told him he’s a bad person.”
“That explains the very tense vibe,” said Ned. He hugged Peter, “Hey.”
“Hey,” said Peter, hugging him back.
Pepper and Morgan came, and Pepper handed him a wrapped box. “A birthday present,” she said.
“Should I open this?” he asked.
“Go for it,” she said.
He opened it and saw a framed photo of Peter and May in grinning swimsuits on the dock at the lake house. He smiled at it, thinking of Morgan’s fourth birthday. “That was one of the first good days after… coming back. You did a really good job,” he said, thinking of their grief for Mr. Stark but the fun party. “Thank you. I’m hanging this up in the kitchen. Happy and I are making scallops and fries. It was one of May’s go-to celebration recipes and it’s really good. Morgan, do you like scallops? Or I have chicken fingers in the freezer.”
“I like scallops. I like all seafood,” she replied.
“Awesome,” said Peter.
Everyone moved into Happy’s big kitchen to hang out as Peter and Happy cooked, Happy giving Peter tips and instructions as they followed May’s recipe for scallops and homemade fries. F.R.I.D.A.Y. said, “Hap, Sergeant Barnes and Captain Wilson are in the elevator. Should I open the door?”
“Anyone else with them?” asked Happy.
“No,” said F.R.I.D.A.Y.
“We have tons of food, of course they’re welcome,” said Peter.
They came in with smiles and some bags, and Sam said, “Hey, we brought stuff for a cake. Karen said you had profiteroles. But she said May liked lemon rosemary olive oil cake, and she had a recipe.”
“You bake?” asked Peter.
“I was trying to impress a girl who said she liked a man who could bake. I told her I could. So then I had to learn real fast,” said Sam, making Peter laugh.
Looking at Bucky, Peter said softly, “I’m sorry.”
“No,” said Bucky, firmly. “Someone should have said it a while ago. You didn’t say anything untrue. The awkward thing was that we couldn’t say, ‘Ignore him; we disagree.’ Only thing you forgot was that he was also Sam’s best friend. So you should have told him off for abandoning Sam too.”
“Oh, sorry, Sam. Y’know, Bucky and I don’t have day jobs right now. We’re both looking for therapists, trying to work on our sleep schedules and falling into a routine with patrolling. We have spare bedrooms. And I’m a nicer friend than Steve Rogers… except that I made your meet up horribly awkward.”
Sam laughed, “Don’t worry about it, man. And I would love to come by more.”
Sam started baking and explaining it to Peter and Morgan, who were watching him work. They sat down to dinner while the cake was cooling. MJ and Ned told stories about college; Peter and Bucky talked about getting ready for the next semester. Morgan spoke about school too.
Then Ned said, “All this school talk, Sam, did they ask you to redo the terrible Captain America PSAs for schools?”
Sam smiled, “Yeah, I’m pretty excited.”
“Noooo,” groaned Peter. “Don’t do it. Kids love you. Don’t ruin it. Get Scott to do it: kids think he’s lame anyway.”
“You guys don’t like them?” asked Sam, looking disappointed.
Peter, Ned and MJ launched into their best impressions. But they were all tinged with disdain because they couldn’t stand them.
“God, the detention loop. It’s forty-two minutes long but detention is one hundred minutes and it’s like water torture that it’s so bad but you also don’t get a full three loops.”
“How frequently did you have to go to detention?” asked Sam.
“On Thursdays there was no study hall and I didn’t have a club. My mom always has a boyfriend. And every single one of her boyfriends has been the kind of guy who says ‘in my house.’ But none of them ever helped with the rent. So I went to detention and sketched. And I listened to the ‘So, you got detention. You screwed up. You know what you did was wrong. The question is, how are you gonna make things right?’ Video over and over again. Honestly, after torturing high schoolers in those PSAs, I’m completely unsurprised that he clocked Peter as a kid in Germany and still dropped a shipping container on him: he never hesitated to choose violence when it came to kids.”
“Scott’s a great candidate. Kids already think he’s the boring Avenger,” said Ned. “You’re so cool, Sam. Don’t do it.”
“If you want to do a PSA people will like, see if you can replace Thor’s ‘Silence your phone’ message at the movies. That one everyone hates because Thor is so booming,” said Peter.
“You’d be a hero to everyone for replacing it,” said MJ, “I swear to God, he has blown out my eardrum in that video. Thor and an AMC sound system should never have mixed. Leave the Captain America Fitness Challenge video as Steve. Kids will just hate a guy who lives on the moon for making them do pull ups.”
“Do the movie PSA, not the ones about personal hygiene or nutrition or the weird one about patience,” said Ned.
“I’ll ask around,” said Sam.
***
They ate scallops and cream puffs and the cake. It distracted Peter from being sad and crying. It was a fun gathering, and Morgan didn’t want to go to bed, but Peter promised to read her a chapter of her book and tuck her in. He brought her downstairs, helped her brush her teeth and hair, sorted out her PJs, tucked her in and read her a chapter of a book called Peppermints in the Parlor. He kissed her forehead and said, “Go to sleep, or DUM-E will break all your toys.” She giggled and rolled over onto her side to go to sleep.
He went back upstairs, asking Karen to keep an eye on Morgan.
“She down?” asked Pepper.
“She’s tired,” said Peter, “didn’t even try to talk me into ice pops.”
“She must be exhausted,” said Happy with a laugh.
They ate another round of dessert, and it was getting late, and they all headed off to bed.
***
Peter woke up and heard MJ in the shower. He stretched slowly and rolled over, inhaling their mixed scents on the sheets. The shower turned off, and he started to dose off. Then MJ came and draped herself over his back, “You should get up, baby, and shower. You smell. Morgan will ask why. And you’ll get flustered and possibly, horrifyingly, honest. I don’t want to explain sex to Morgan.” She kissed the back of his neck.
“Okay, getting up,” he agreed. He wiggled, prompting her to get off his back and flop down beside him. Looking at her he said, “You’re movie star pretty. No one is as pretty as you are in real life. And you look like this in the morning.”
She laughed, “Yeah, I am. And guess what? I picked you.” She kissed his cheek. Standing, she slapped his ass, “Up, tiger, shower.”
“Oh, but one more for the road, please?”
She laughed and smacked his ass again, and he groaned, “We’re not starting something. I’m getting coffee, and you’re showering.”
“Spoilsport,” he sighed. “You could just stay here — ignore the rest of the world.”
“Morgan loves having breakfast with you,” she said with a laugh. “Get up.” He sat up, and she kissed him gently and then said, “Your breath is gross. Still love you.”
She left the room in her jammies and his robe. And he said, “You’re happy with Sam seeing you like that, right? He’s still here.” He would never question how she dressed; he just wanted to be sure she was okay with Captain America seeing her in her PJs.
“Yeah, I’m fine with it. You’re not going to remind me about Bucky?” she asked.
“He lives here so I know you remember he’s here. Plus, I’m starting to feel like… Bucky doesn’t count. He’s not company, y’know? He’s incredible,” he said with a smile.
She studied his face for a moment and smiled, “Good. I’m glad you have such a good friend here on the ground.”
He stood to go and shower and get ready to face the world.