“I will totally vacuum your car when we get back,” Peter says. “Remind me to vacuum your car.” He tugs at the legs of his pants and looks down at the run-down trainers he is wearing below his borrowed suit.

Tony glances over. “Why?”

“I’m leaving mud everywhere.”

“No you’re not. I don’t see anything.”

“That’s because you’re responsible and you’re keeping your eyes on the road.”

Tony snorts, and then has to remind himself that Peter is probably not being sarcastic but entirely genuine. That phrase would one hundred percent be sarcastic if it came from literally any other person in Tony’s life right now, including Morgan, who has gotten very good at rolling her eyes, lately. “It’s fine, don’t worry about it.” He remembers one of the claims Peter made during his presentation. I’m great at not being in anyone’s way.

“I’m not worried,” Peter says. “I’m just saying I’ll clean it up. You’re not supposed to start your first day in a new home, like, leaving a mess everywhere.”

Two hours ago, Tony and Pepper had one child and no immediate plans to get another. Two hours ago, Tony didn’t even know Peter existed. But that’s two hours ago. That’s old news. That’s back when Tony was young and naive. Right now, he and Peter are on their way to pick up his belongings while Pepper stayed back to blitzkrieg her way through the paperwork and make the adoption official.

Peter’s group home is a nondescript brick building surrounded by a lawn and a chain-link fence. Nicky is stepping out of her car just as they pull into the driveway, a clipboard and a roll of garbage bags under her arm. She handled Morgan’s case too. Tony liked her no-nonsense attitude. But she never gave a single mention of Morgan having a foster brother, so he thinks he likes her a little less.

He still greets her politely, though.

“Don’t know who’s working today,” Nicky says, glancing towards the house. “Haven’t been able to reach anyone.”

“Mo should be here,” Peter says. “He never answers the phone. Unless someone brings it to him.”

Mo is a man with a greying beard and a tired expression. He opens the door and instantly looks astounded. “Who… What…” His gaze finds Peter. “Please tell me you didn’t pee in your future employer’s kitchen sink on your first day.” He says it with resignation.

“No.” Peter says. “What?”

“That’s why Cam was brought home in the back of a squad car last week.”

“Mo,” Nicky says. “Peter is here with his adoptive parent to pick up his belongings. Let’s try and be professional, yeah?”

Peter snorts at that. Tony feels concerned but amused all at once; a combination of emotions he is rapidly growing more familiar with ever since he became a parent.

“What?” Mo looks endlessly confused. “He was going for an internship, he told me.”

“Can we come in?” Nicky asks.

Mo’s mouth is still hanging open, but he steps aside. They filter into a hallway with an immaculately clean tile floor and bare walls.

“Upstairs?” Tony asks.

“You don’t have to help me,” Peter says. “I can take care of everything. You can have some coffee, the coffee here is pretty good.”

“I want to help.”

“Mo, could you offer Mr. Stark some coffee?”

It occurs to Tony that Peter might have his reasons for not wanting his brand-new guardian digging through all his personal belongings a mere two hours after first meeting him. Morgan was the same way, hiding her favorite stuffed toy and all her drawings under her bed when she moved in. It wasn’t until week two that she magnanimously allowed them to gaze upon her impressive collection of glitter, which finally explained why Tony kept finding the stuff everywhere: in her socks, her hair, her backpack. Glitter, in all colors, shapes and sizes.

Now, she feels confident enough to proudly display her collection on her nightstand. Every day when she comes home from school, she carefully unfolds a piece of paper and tips her day’s haul into one of her little plastic jars. Tony has a feeling she secretly scrapes it off her classmates’ drawings when they aren’t looking.

He would buy her a thousand different types of glitter if he didn’t have the feeling that it would take away some of the magical appeal for her.

Anyway. Bottom line. “Coffee sounds good.”

Nicky hands Peter the garbage bags. Tony is directed towards the kitchen while Peter clatters up the stairs and starts stumbling around above their heads. Mo pulls out chairs for them and busies himself with the coffee machine, bashing the coffee grounds into the sink as he keeps glancing over his shoulder at Tony.

“Looks like both our days took quite a turn,” Nicky says. “Well. Yours more than mine, I’ll admit that.”

“You should have told us about him.”

She crosses her arms and looks at him for a while. “Perhaps,” she then says. “But you were quite clear in your application that you wanted to adopt one child.”

That’s true. He and Pepper had wanted to take it one step at a time.

“I didn’t think they’d stand a chance, together. I didn’t think you’d even agree to meet them.”

Probably also true. “You got a tough job,” he acknowledges.

There is a BANG from upstairs, immediately followed by a hollered ‘I’m okay!’ from Peter. Nicky winces. Mo mutters something.

“How many kids live here?”

“Twelve. Everyone is at school. Or supposed to be, at least.” Nicky looks tired for a moment, before visibly catching herself. “Not Peter, mind you. His attendance is near-perfect, as are his grades, and his conduct. Apart from one stuffed-bear-incident—”

“Our dishwasher’s still broken, Nicky,” Mo says, giving it a little kick.

“I’m not in charge of dishwashers.”

“C’mon, Nick. At least you get shit done. I’m tired of sending twenty emails to twenty different people every time I want one tiny thing fixed. Management doesn’t know what it’s doing.”

“Mo. Not right now,” Nicky says, jerking her chin in Tony’s direction with a pointed glare.

“The whole congregate care system is fucked. And you know what, no one is going to fire me for saying that in front of a prospective adoptive parent, because we’re criminally understaffed, too. And I’m glad Peter is getting out of here, he was completely miserable. I watched him shrivel up before my eyes.” Mo sets two cups down in front of them, coffee sloshing up to the rim. He sags down in a chair and pulls up his sleeve to reveal a tattoo of Iron Man. “Can you sign this?”

“Huh. The Mark III,” Tony says, studying it. “OG fan, huh?”

Footsteps on the stairs. The rustling of garbage bags. And then Peter appears in the doorway in jeans and a sweater, one hand raised in the air. There is a shallow cut on his thumb. “I tripped over some binoculars and broke the mirror.”

Nicky clicks her tongue. “Peter.”

“I’ll go buy a mirror at a thrift shop or something, that looks just like it.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Mo says.

“I’m not worried. I’m just saying I’ll buy a new one. And I’ll get a hammer and nails and personally come back here and hang it in the exact same spot, Mo, I promise.”

“Bring a dishwasher, too,” Mo says, grumpily.

“Thanks for letting me borrow the suit, I left it on my bed.”

“Would have given you a pocket square to boot if I knew you were trying to get adopted.”

Peter gives a sheepish smile.

-

Peter sags into the passenger seat and breathes out.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” Peter picks at the band-aid Nicky wrapped around his thumb. “Thank you for adopting me, sir. I’m like— I could cry. I mean, I already did, so I won’t, but I could.”

“Call me Tony, kid. Gum?” he hands the kid a piece of spearmint. “You really didn’t like it here, huh?”

Peter shrugs as he peels off the thin piece of foil. “They were nice. They cared. But, like, this was their job. It’s just not the same as, as...” He blinks a few times rapidly and pulls up his hoodie to wipe his face.

Tony reaches out to squeeze his shoulder. “Come on. If we quickly dump your stuff at home, we’re still in time to pick Morgan up from school together.”

Peter’s face lights up.

-

Morgan patters out the front door, her lunch box in one hand, a drawing in the other.

She sees them. Her eyes widen, expression morphing to shock, then delight. “Peter!” And she runs forward, the drawing fluttering in the wind. Peter bends down to pick her up, drops a kiss on her forehead as she squeals with delight. “Peter! I know all my colors! I even know beige! Your sweater is green and white. And Miss Wigton played my favorite song. And we were supposed to make animals with beads, but I made a drawing instead. I made a cat-unicorn that breathes fire.”

“You are a menace,” Peter says.

They huddle in the backseat. Morgan is practically in Peter’s lap, splays her drawing out on his knees and spends the entire drive home walking Peter through the lore behind cat-unicorns, the ins and outs of primary school politics, and several obscure color names. “And our new dad is Iron Man!” she squeals, bouncing in her seat. She hadn’t shown much enthusiasm about that before, hadn’t given much indication that she even knew who the Avengers were. To see her like this is heartwarming.

“I know,” Peter says, a smile in his voice. “We finally got to meet a real superhero.”

“Yeah, finally,” Morgan says, dramatically sagging back in her seat. “Finally.”

-

Peter’s plan to tell Pepper and Tony about Spider-Man has five steps. It’s really only four, but he made up a fifth step because five sounds better. His plan to get adopted had five steps, too, and look how that worked out. He’s sticking with that magic number.

Step one, ask them to help him unpack. Step two, leave the room to, quote unquote, ‘go to the bathroom’ and then let them, quote unquote, ‘accidentally’ stumble upon the suit. Step three, give them a few minutes to freak out and discuss the repercussions between the two of them. Step four, by the time Peter returns to his room, they will already have fully moved on to the stage of acceptance.

Step five. Everyone’s happy and they go out for ice cream.

He doesn’t want to waste time by wondering if he should even do this at all: let someone in on this secret he has kept entirely to himself until now. He already made this choice before even stepping foot in this tower; he was already one hundred percent ready to throw his identity in their faces as a final bargaining chip to get himself adopted. In hindsight, he wishes Pepper hadn’t stopped him from spilling the beans. Now it’s still hanging over him, hanging right over him like a heavy black mass and his head feels like it’s full of bouncing balls and he wants all that gone before he melts down.

They arrive in the tower’s parking garage. Peter takes Morgan’s backpack as they meander towards the elevator. There are rows upon rows of cars, nice cars. Better than nice. Looking like they rolled right of the conveyer belt into this garage. Peter cranes his neck as he takes in the tinted windows and hood ornaments and—

He almost faceplants against a concrete support beam.

“Buddy, careful,” Tony says, pulling him out of the way just in time with a warm, steadying hand on his arm. “You already got yourself injured today.”

“Peter falls over a lot,” Morgan says. “He is Humpty Dumpty.”

Their foster mom Amy gave him that nickname. Peter lets out a laugh that comes out sounding a little choked. He runs one finger along the edges of the band-aid, knowing the cut underneath has already fully healed.

They enter the elevator. “Top floor,” Pepper says, lightly tapping Peter against the arm.

The amount of buttons is insane, and Peter feels an irrational urge to press every single one of them, just to watch them light up and get a peek at every floor. It’ll be one hell of a ride which, he imagines, will involve at least several glimpses at robots running amok while scientists chase after them in a frenzied panic.

“Are you all right, honey?” Pepper asks, and reaches past him to press the button for the top floor.

“Oh. Sorry. Yep. Yeah. Yes ma’am.” Morgan is leaning back against him and he pats her head. “Who braided your hair?”

She points at Tony.

“Fishtail braid,” Peter says. “Good technique, sir. Solid, solid eight out of ten, which is better than anything I can do.”

“You don’t, shouldn’t say ma’am and sir,” Morgan says, bouncing her head back against his stomach. “That’s weird.”

“Bossy,” Peter says, evasive.

“Let’s give your brother a little time,” Tony says. “We all need a little time adjusting, sometimes, right?”

She gazes up at him, twirls the end of her braid around her finger. “What’s adjusting?”

“When you go to a new place and you need to get used to everything.”

She gives an uncomprehending look. “But Peter is not in a new place anymore, he came home.”

Oh, sheesh. This day. Peter is ready to bawl again. He slouches back against the wall, then jumps when he hears a series of dings and leans away to see that he accidentally pressed about ten elevator buttons. “Uh—"

“Override, FRIDAY,” Tony says easily.

Peter shifts to the side, swallows. Part of him wants to put off this whole identity reveal thing until tomorrow or the day after. But he also knows, if he does, that heavy, black mass above his head will only grow heavier and blacker.

So when the elevator halts at the top floor and the door opens, Peter gathers his courage and asks if Tony and Pepper will help him unpack his stuff. He remembers which garbage bag he has stuffed the Spidersuit into.

“You need to have a drink, first,” Morgan says, tugging at his sweater with a frown. She really is being bossy today. They’re both in an unfamiliar position, of course, where Peter is still the big brother, but also the new kid who needs to be shown the ropes.

Pepper suggests a drink and a snack, beckoning them towards the open kitchen. “And then we can all help you unpack.”

“And I need my glitter,” Morgan announces firmly.

“Oh, yes,” Pepper agrees. “Naturally.”

Morgan rushes out of the room.

“I forgot about the glitter,” Peter says. He tugs at a strand of his hair. “In Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. It’s, like, way up there with food, air and water.”

“We’ve noticed.”

“I can make the drinks if you show me where everything is. I’m really good at making drinks. Putting liquids in glasses and all that.”

“It’s an exact science,” Tony agrees.

“Don’t be silly,” Pepper says. “Sit. We’ll take care of everything.”

Peter turns his back on the kitchen and looks towards the sunken living room, two broad steps below the kitchen. An oriental rug. Sunny, yellow sofas. Overgrown plants in the windowsill. He takes the two steps down and gravitates towards that side of the room. Upon closer inspection, the leaves of several plants have browning tips on one side that might be caused by overexposure to the sun. He starts turning all pots 180 degrees. He hesitates when moving the peace lily, thinking how it might do better on the dinner table over there rather than this close to the window.

He turns at the sound of weight against wood. Pepper is setting glasses of lemonade down on the coffee table. Fancy lemonade, with large ice cubes and actual wedges of lemon. She looks at the plants and then at Peter sort of strangely, but doesn’t say anything, just smiles. “You like plants?” she asks.

“They’re a bit fussy sometimes, but on the whole, yeah.” And then he steps forward and throws his arms around her, because he forgot to do this earlier.

“Oh,” she says softly, with almost a gasp. And her hands land on his back. “Hey. Hey, sweetheart,” she murmurs.

“Thank you for adopting me, ma’am. It’s, like, super appreciated.”

She chuckles, as if that is a strange thing to say.

Morgan patters back into the room. “Can we have blueberries?”

“I thought you were going to get your glitter?” Tony comments.

She looks down at her empty hands. “…I forgot.”

They have fancy lemonade and blueberries. “We can jump on the couch here,” Morgan says, looking at Peter earnestly. “But we can’t eat cookies in bed.”

“Okay,” Peter says. “That’s okay.”

And she adds, still earnest: “And we can’t say ‘shit’, only Pepper can.”

“What?” Pepper exclaims, turning immediately to her husband.

Tony sips his lemonade. “I have no idea what she’s on about.”

-

Step one of his plan is finally set in motion; they make their way down the hallways towards his bedroom. Morgan hop-skips after them, and sure, she might as well find out, too.

The garbage bag that was sitting on top before has now tumbled to one side, but Peter thinks he still knows which bag is the jackpot, the ticking bomb, the endgame, the garbage bag of doom. The one that Pepper and Tony will need to unpack physically, then emotionally.

It’s totally fine. It will be fine. Because Peter made a plan, and things always work out when you have a plan. That’s exactly why things usually don’t work out for him, because as a general rule, he never has a plan for anything.

It will be fine.

He sits cross-legged on the floor and Morgan immediately crawls into his lap. “Which one is Monkey in?”

When it became clear that Morgan and Peter would be sent to different foster homes, Morgan gave Peter one of her stuffed animals, a teddy bear named Monkey. Since Peter learned awfully fast that in a group home none of your stuff is safe from getting stolen, he preferred to keep Monkey in his school locker. Which mostly worked well, apart from that one time when Flash spotted the stuffed animal and thought it would be funny to tease Peter about it and… well, suffice it to say the stuffed bear incident is infamous among both his teachers and guardians.

“Monkey is at school,” he says. “Watching over my books. I’ll bring him home tomorrow.”

Everything will be fine, he repeats to himself as he watches Pepper reach for the Armageddon garbage bag. His suit is stuffed near the bottom, below a batch of mismatching socks. It’ll be fine. They’ll totally be cool about this. Why wouldn’t they be?

Step two. “I just need a glass of water,” he says, and lifts Morgan out of his lap. “Be right back.”

-

The living room feels suddenly smaller, the air denser than ten minutes ago, and his head still feels like it’s full of bouncing balls. Peter paces from the couch to the window and back. He counts the hexagons in the oriental rug, and counts them again. He fluffs up the throw pillows. He still hears no surprised exclaims coming from his room.

Pepper is probably painstakingly sorting through his socks, fruitlessly attempting to find a pair that matches. That could take a while. He could be vacuuming Tony’s car right now. He could be rehanging those pictures over there because, what the hell, why are they not at the same height, why is one half an inch below the other one, what maniac hangs up pictures that way.

Surely Pepper has unpacked the whole bag by now, surely she stumbled upon the suit. They must be gaping at it in stunned silence, that’s probably why he’s not hearing anything.

He should at least put the peace lily on the dinner table where it won’t get sunburned.

He lifts the pot and hugs it against his stomach, shuffles around the rug. He takes the three steps up from the living room to the kitchen. Except it isn’t three steps, it’s two. Something he only remembers when he has already tripped on air, lost his balance, and tumbled forward. The plant flies out of his hands and the pot cracks open against the floor, spilling black soil onto the oak hardwood.

“Ow,” Peter says, and only after he says it, he feels pain shooting up his right leg. Which makes a second ‘ow’ come out, much more indignantly.

There are quick footsteps down the hallway. This isn’t part of his plan. Peter slowly pushes himself up on hands and knees and wipes his chin. He bit his tongue. “Oh, sheesh, kid. What’d you do?” Tony kneels by his side. Two hands on his shoulders. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“I’ll buy you a new one!” Peter says, wiping soil together. “New— New pot, you can keep the plant, the plant is fine, just put it in a bucket for now. Don’t kill it.”

“Did you hurt yourself, kiddo?”

“Ow,” Peter says.

“Okay. Ow. ‘Ow’ where?”

“Ankle.”

“Can you stand? Lean on me, let’s get you to the couch.”

“But d-did you unpack my bags?” Peter asks, insists, fingers digging into Tony’s sweater as he pulls himself up.

Tony laughs. “Kid, it’s fine. Yes, we already unpacked everything. Let’s worry about you right now. Hop. Hop.”

They make it to the couch. His ankle is actually throbbing, a sharp pain shooting up towards his knee whenever he rests any weight on it. “I thought you had three steps,” Peter says. “I had a stairprise. Have you heard of proprioception?”

“Have I? It’s only my favorite of the ceptions. Let’s see.” Tony pulls the leg of his jeans up, his sock down. “Oh. Ouch, kiddo, it’s already swelling up.”

“You unpacked everything?” Peter asks. That can’t be right.

“Yup.” Tony squeezes both his feet. “At least now I know why you’re wearing mismatching socks, kid, it’s actually impressive how you don’t have a single matching pair.”

“The dryer keeps eating them.”

“Incorrigible, aren’t they? Okay. I’m getting you an icepack.”

This is not supposed to— He had a plan. Maybe they thought the suit was a costume, or even just pajamas? He should have put a post-it on it or something. ‘Super secret spider suit confidential need-to-know only’.

Pepper returns to the living room as well, holding Morgan’s hand. “Did you fall over again?” Morgan asks, and dramatically rolls her eyes. Something she must have learned over the past few months, because Peter has never seen her do that before. She releases Pepper’s hand and hops down the two steps, making an umpf noise as she throws herself over the armrest to grapple at Peter’s legs.

“Careful, sweety,” Pepper says, rounding the couch to inspect his ankle. “Look at that, it’s already going all shades of blue and purple. We should probably elevate that.” She starts packing pillows together.

It’s just how Peter’s healing generally works, really. Everything goes faster, including the initial swelling and bruising. “You unpacked everything?” he verifies once again.

“Yes, you’re all set.”

“All your clothes were normal,” Morgan says.

“Well, your socks threw me for a bit of a loop,” Pepper amends.

It must be the pajamas thing. Which— Fine. Peter will just make a new plan. Maybe make it ten steps this time. There’s no way a plan can fail when it has ten steps. Maybe it should include a presentation. No. A diorama.

Tony returns with an ice pack, and no-one as much as gives a single second glance at the broken pot lying hallway between the living room and the kitchen. “I’ll clean it up,” Peter says. “And buy a new pot. I gotta go to the store anyways to buy a mirror for Mo. And a pencil sharpener, I broke my friend’s pencil sharpener the other day. I sat on it.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Tony says.

“I’m not worried. I’m just saying I’ll clean it up.”

They ignore him, sort of. But not in a bad way, more in casual kind way. Pepper takes the ice pack from Tony and wraps it around his ankle, sits on the couch with him and starts asking him all sorts of questions about his hobbies and favorite food and, like, life aspirations. And Tony cleans up the broken shards. He leaves the room, comes back with a new pot that he places the peace lily in. And then puts it back in the window sill where it got sunburnt in the first place— but Peter doesn’t want to say anything, it’s too embarrassing now. And Morgan gets her glitter and felt tip pens, puts them on the coffee table and sits on the rug, leaning heavily on her elbows as she draws.

Peter thinks he could really feel at home here. But the bouncing balls are still bouncing.

By the time Pepper has to leave to make a few phone calls, his ankle feels pretty much fine. But, yeah, he’s gonna have to pretend it still hurts, at least until tomorrow morning. Or at least until he comes up with his ten new steps to reveal his identity. He reaches down to pull up his sock, hoping no-one will notice the disappearing bruises.

That heavy black mass is still there, hovering right above him.

“What are you drawing?” Tony asks, kneeling next to Morgan.

Morgan jabs the end of her pen against a glittery, red-blue blob on her drawing. “Spider-Man was at our school during lunch break.”

“Spider-Man, huh?” Tony asks, sounding immediately intrigued.

“Yes. He returned the ball that Maisie kicked over the fence and then gave her a fist bump.”

What the actual hell?

Peter pushes himself up to get a better look at the red-blue blob, his heartbeat suddenly in his ears. Morgan could be making things up, she’s only six. But Peter hasn’t ever heard her fantasizing much. Is there a copycat out there? He doesn’t have the energy to deal with that right now, he really, really, really— Could this have something to do with his suit suddenly going missing? No, now Peter is just getting paranoid. But also, the room is spinning a little and there is a staticky whine swelling in the background. “I… Sir, I,” he says, his voice wobbly.

Tony looks up at him, his gaze instantly alert. “All right?”

“I don’t know. I’m, I’m just a little. I just feel—” He tugs his sweater away from his chest.

Tony scoots away from Morgan and pulls himself up to sit on the edge of the sofa. He lays one hand on the back of Peter’s neck and guides him to rest his head on Tony’s shoulder, and carefully folds his arms around Peter. “You’re safe,” he murmurs, low enough that Morgan doesn’t hear. “I know today was crazy, it’s normal to feel overwhelmed, but you’re safe. You’re safe.”

“I feel really weird. Do you think you could run a test to see if I’m, like, full of bouncing balls, or something?”

“You’re panicking a little. Just keep breathing slowly, it’ll pass. I promise. Copy my breathing.” His chest rises and falls against Peter’s cheek.

“You hung your pictures at different heights,” Peter says, tears burning behind his eyes. “On that wall over there.”

“Oh, I’ll get right on that,” Tony says.

Morgan passes her glue stick all over the drawing and hums as she liberally douses the whole thing in glitter.

“What if I was Spider-Man?” Peter asks.

Tony chuckles. “Then New York would be in trouble. You can’t even walk up some steps without getting injured, Humpty Dumpty.”

Peter laughs softly. “That would just make me more relatable.”

“We’d have a Spider-Man who webs up a bag-snatcher and then loses the bag on his way to give it back.”

“Or I’d misfire a web and then faceplant against a skyscraper.” Because that definitely never actually happened.

“I’d make you a new suit with an airbag in it,” Tony says. He says it like it’s a fairy tale. Like Papa's gonna buy you a mockingbird in that one song.

Peter hums and burrows further into the hug. The staticky whine is still there, but when he focuses on Tony’s heartbeat it’s not as loud. He is safe. Everything else can be fixed. “Thank you for adopting me.”

“Thank you for giving the best research-based presentation I’ve seen in my whole professional career.”

“I’m making a presentation, too!” Morgan informs them. “For all of you.”

“Are you? What’s it about?”

“It’s a secret. But you are all re-required to attend.”

Tony snorts.

-

Against Peter’s vehement protests, Tony goes downstairs to vacuum his own car. He restocks the glove cabinet with spearmint gum. When he gets back to their living room, the peace lily is suddenly standing in the middle of the dinner table, and the couch is empty.

“My presentation is done!” Morgan announces, holding up some papers.

“Can’t wait! I’ll get an audience together. Where is your brother?”

“That way.” She points at the hallway towards their bedrooms.

Tony puts the vacuum cleaner back in the closet and makes his way to Peter’s room.

The door is wide open, and he finds the kid standing in the middle of what can only be described as a battlefield of clothes. It looks like someone picked up his entire wardrobe, shook it out and put it back in its place.

“I’ll clean everything up!” Peter insists as soon as he spots Tony. Behind him are only empty shelves.

There is something heartwarming about the utter chaos. Peter initiates hugs, breaks stuff, falls over and gets injured, keeps moving their house plants around for some reason, and Tony is beginning to suspect he is actually, unwittingly and unapologetically, really bad at not being in anyone’s way.

It’s a wonderful thing.

“You shouldn’t be walking around yet, with your injury.”

“Oh, right,” Peter says and pulls one leg up.

“Wrong ankle, kid,” Tony says flatly.

Peter puts his leg back down. “It—doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“Clearly. It was pretty swollen, though. Can I have another look?”

“I lost my pajamas,” Peter says. His eyes are blown wide.

“We can get you new pajamas, Peter. Sit over here.”

Peter doesn’t move. “But…” he says, and then seemingly can’t think of an actual argument.

Morgan appears in the doorway, her expression demanding. “My presentation is about to start!”

“Coming,” Peter says quickly, and follows Morgan out with, all things considered, a rather dramatic limp.

-

Morgan laid out three separate drawings on the coffee table. All of them are entirely unrecognizable, but at least one of them is the drawing of Spider-Man giving Maisie a fist bump during lunch break.

Someone is running around town in a Spider-Man suit, and Peter suddenly can’t find his own suit, and he doesn’t know what to do. Maybe Tony and Pepper would know what to do, but Peter hasn’t even come up with a single step in his ten-step plan to reveal his identity.

This day.

He takes an armchair while Tony and Pepper sit on the couch together.

“My presentation,” Morgan says, “is about all the reasons why Peter is not Spider-Man.”

“What?” Pepper says.

“What?” Peter says.

“Huh.” Tony says.

“Peter is not Spider-Man,” Morgan repeats. “And I have all the reasons and with proof. I used glitter. Please hold for the questions until the end.”

“The floor is yours, hon,” Pepper says. She looks absolutely delighted.

Peter’s brain has crashed into the ground.

“Reason number one. He was with you all day, but Spider-Man came to my school during lunch break. I made a drawing of it, so it happened.” She holds it up.

“You would call that exhibit A,” Pepper says.

“Exhibit A,” Morgan repeats. “Reason number two.” She holds up a second drawing that tells them absolutely nothing. “He does not have the Spider-Man clothes. You can go upstairs and go look through his whole room, you will not find them.”

Wait.

“Reason number three. Peter has different superpowers than Spider-Man.”

Oh god. Peter feels his lungs shrivel up in his chest. Abort. Abort.

“Spider-Man can jump far and lift heavy things. But Peter can hear people very far away. It’s a different power.”

“I think Spider-Man actually does have enhanced hearing,” Tony says.

Morgan falters. “Oh.” And then she frowns at Tony, like he just ruined her whole day.

“You think Peter has superpowers?” Pepper asks. She still looks amused. Tony, Peter notices, does not.

“I think he... Okay. But Miss Wigton said that Spider-Man also has superfast healing and Peter doesn’t, because he hurt his ankle before and it still really hurts. Right Peter?” She throws him a pointed look. Like she thinks he should really get with the program already.

Peter covers his face with his hand.

“Peter,” Tony says.

Peter spreads his fingers so he can peek at Tony. Yeah, that’s the face of a person who just jumped to a conclusion. “I… I was totally going to tell you,” he says. “I had a whole, whole five step thing going.”

Pepper looks from Peter to Tony. “What?”

Tony gives her a look.

“What? No way,” Pepper says. “No.” She covers her mouth with her hand and sits up straighter, staring at Peter.

“I have more proof,” Morgan says. Her face shows that she feels she is losing control of the situation. “I have a poem.”

“Wait. Stop,” Pepper says. “Just… stop.”

“Okay,” Peter says, “I was supposed to be in the bathroom while you went through this whole mental crisis thing. I was going to let you find out about Spider-Man and not be in the room. I have no steps for this.”

“But… it’s a secret,” Morgan says, looking confused and distraught.

“Am I having a stroke?” Tony asks.

“Just.” Pepper lifts her hands in front of her. “Just give us a moment,” she says. “We just need a moment. Can you—please wait in your room?”

Peter stands. “Come on, Mo-mo,” he takes her hand.

This day.

He steps into his bedroom and stares at the pile of clothes on the floor, doesn’t know what to do for a moment. Next to him, Morgan sniffles and buries her face against his leg.

“Are you crying?”

Morgan sniffles again. “You ruined the s-secret.”

“I ruined it, did I?” At least this is a part he can do on autopilot. He kicks some clothes aside and guides her to his bed, helps her untie her shoelaces and takes off her shoes. Grabs his rubik’s cube from his desk and sits next to her. She likes to watch him solve it. It’s a trick he often turns to when he wants to take her mind off things.

“You ruined the presentation,” Morgan complains again, leaning heavily into his side as he solves the yellow side, first. “It was supposed to be a secret!” She lets out a hiccup.

 “Morgan,” he says, suddenly remembering how she insisted on getting her glitter as soon as they got home today, only to return empty-handed. “Did you sneak into my room and steal my suit?”

She pouts. “I hid it under my bed.”

“Did you make up that whole story about Spider-Man coming to your school?”

“It’s a lullaby!”

“What?”

“A lullaby for the secret.”

She means alibi, Peter realizes. Bless her heart. “You,” he says, poking a finger into her belly, “are a menace. How did you find out?”

“I saw you climbing out the window. All the time.”

Sheesh. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“Because it was a secret!” she insists, with the flawless logic of a six-year-old. Her eyes are wide and teary.

“Don’t cry, okay? It’s just as well. You ripped the band-aid off for me, I guess.” Speaking off. He peels away the band-aid Nicky gave him. The skin underneath is entirely unblemished.

His reassurances don’t help; the first tear spills over. Morgan scrubs at her eyes with her fists. “Are Tony and Pepper m-m-mad?”

“They’ll get over it,” Peter says. If he hadn’t believed they would, he would never have considered telling them.

“O-k-kay,” Morgan says in a small voice, and Peter is reminded that she moved through two other foster homes after Amy before ending up here. She might not feel all that reassured that this is permanent.

Or maybe Peter is the naive one, for trusting so quickly that it is.

“Everything will be okay,” he promises. He loops one arm around her.

He has only solved the rubik’s cube three times, once with a different pattern, when he spots Pepper’s feet appearing in the open doorway from the corner of his eyes.

Peter glances up at her face. It’s quite neutral, not easy to read. He gives her a careful smile. Morgan, on the other hand, takes one look at Pepper and instantly bursts into tears.

Pepper actually jumps, and then hops over the clutters of clothes to rush to her side, “hey,” and sits sideways on the mattress, “what’s wrong, honey?”

“I want to stay heeeere!” Morgan bawls.

“Oh, sweety,” she pulls her into his lap, her arms wrapping around her. “I’m so sorry. Of course you’ll stay here. Of course you will. You will stay here forever, no matter what happens. Both of you will.”

Morgan clutches to her like she is adrift at sea and Pepper is her lifeline. While it’s a little sad that she is feeling scared right now, it’s also wonderful that she so clearly feels at home and so deeply hates the thought of leaving. Peter reaches out to rub her back.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, sweety-pie,” Pepper murmurs, rocking her. “I’m so sorry. Don’t be sad.” She reaches out to him as well, pats his knee, which is the only part of him she can reach right now. “You know, that was quite a presentation, Morgan,” she says. “As I’m sure you’ve noticed, you rather blindsided us.”

Morgan’s lower lip wobbles. “You lis-listened to it wrong,” she insists with a hiccup.

“I think it was fantastic,” Pepper says. “Best presentation I’ve heard all day.” And she sends Peter a smile at that, with an eyebrow waggle.

Peter needs a moment to process that she is actually poking fun at him, and then he ducks his head and laughs down at his rubik’s cube. The black, heavy mass above his head begins to dissipate.

“We’ll need to establish some ground rules, Peter,” she says. “But we can make it work, right?”

“Right,” Peter says, and a soothing relief rolls up over him. Tony and Pepper needed less than five minutes to decide to adopt him, and apparently even less time to decide they could totally work with him being Spider-Man. He puts the cube away and curls into her other side, head resting just below her shoulder. “Thank you for adopting us.”

“Thank you for being amazing and lovely,” she says.

Morgan tugs at her sleeve. She still looks worried. “Where is Tony?”

“He is in his workshop,” Pepper says. “I believe he said something about making a suit with an airbag.”

-

The workshop is… heaven on earth. Peter has never seen anything like it.

“Pepper?” Tony’s voice sounds from somewhere underneath a nearby desk.

“No,” Peter says. “It’s me. Pepper’s new foster child.”

Tony’s head pops up, his gaze flat and instantly exasperated. Peter can’t help himself. The secret is out, and he’s feeling a little giddy. He grins.

“Pepper’s new foster child who almost gave me not one but two heart attacks in a single day?” Tony asks.

“I really was going to tell you,” Peter says.

Tony pushes himself up with a grunt, lays a screwdriver aside. He steps around the desk until he’s only a few feet away from him and stares at Peter for a moment. “I wouldn’t have held it against you if you hadn’t,” he then says. “But I’m glad to hear you trust us. And it’s— That is. I mean.” He scratches the back of his head, huffs out a laugh that verges on embarrassed. “Spider-Man is awesome. I’m… I might be fanboying right now on the inside. Just a smidgen.” His gaze flicks down towards Peter’s ankle.

“And freaking out about airbags?”

“There is that,” Tony admits, his eyes roaming the workshop. He shakes his head and starts pacing. “Let’s be real here. We’re responsible for you now. We want you to be as safe as possible. I mean.” He picks up a paper and waves it in Peter’s face, a bit too wildly for him to actually see anything written on it. “We will need to talk things over, and I am making you a new suit. It will be done by the end of the week.”

“You don’t have to do this.”

“Isn’t that what you yell at the bad guy when he’s dangling a bus full of children over a cliff edge?”

“When I said I’d give you a return on investment I didn’t factor in a million-dollar suit. And there aren’t many cliff edges in Queens.”

“You didn’t factor—” Tony cuts himself off, shakes his head. “What do you think return on investment looks like to me?”

“Like, how the time and money that you put into something—”

“I’m gonna invest all the time and money I want into you. And the only thing I want to see in return is a teenager growing up, feeling happy, safe, and finding a purpose in life. So when you think about return on investment, that’s what I want you to think about from now on. Everything else, we’re taking it off your shoulders. Understand?”

Not really. Peter might need a few more hours to parse those words. But he thinks he can figure it out. “Yeah. Okay. Thank— Thank you, Tony.”

“And the thanking thing is a bit much, too, but I’ll allow it for now, seeing as how we at least got past the ‘sir’ stage.”

“It’s only day one,” Peter points out.

“Jesus on a jet ski, that’s true,” Tony mutters. “Feels like it’s been a year. That’s how much I aged in the past few hours, at least. Look.” He leans closer to Peter and plucks at his own hair.

“I don’t see anything.”

“Don’t give me platitudes, I know I’m going grey. No more insane surprises, please?”

And Peter dives right into another hug, flinging his arms around Tony. “Thank you,” he says. “Just let me say thank you, because you’re so cool and nice and kind, and Morgan loves it here which makes me, like, ridiculously happy. It’s like I couldn’t dream up a more, a more per—perfect—”

“Okay,” Tony says. “Okay. We got you.” He rests his chin in Peter’s hair and hums.

“As for surprises,” Peter says. “We did tell you about Morgan’s evil doppelganger, didn’t we?”

“You are a menace,” Tony says.