Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Peter pauses on the sidewalk across the street. He looks up at the building towering over him; towering over everybody, making everything else insignificant. He has to crane his neck to spot, distantly, the word ‘STARK’ in neon letters near the roof. A name that, apparently, the whole city needs to see. Peter read online that Tony Stark made sure the building was precisely one inch higher than the Empire State Building. A man of superlatives.

It’s not how Peter remembers him, and that’s a little scary.

It’s all right. Everything will be all right.

He fiddles with the little toy figure in his pocket. His heart is in his throat. Around him, passersby keep passing by, like rivulets of water. Someone elbows him in the back and he steps closer to a trash can to not be in anyone’s way.

His feet hurt from walking all day with this heavy backpack. He has been in New York for hours, after a journey that span multiple days. Even though Tony was his entire reason for coming to this city, he put this moment off for reasons he can’t explain. He went scavenging, instead, eating all the free samples at a supermarket until they kicked him out. It was a force of habit; he has enough money on him. So he bought mint chip ice cream from a street vendor next, ate the ice cream, crushed up the cone and fed the crumbles to some pigeons. Someone yelled at him about not feeding the pigeons. So far, people in this city are kinda asshole-shaped.

This is not encouraging.

He forces himself to start moving again. Towards the crosswalk. Closer and closer to the broad, curved steps leading up to the revolving doors of Stark Industries. A balding man with a small trolley case marches up the steps and Peter follows behind him, slipping inside.

He steps into a lobby that is all shiny marble and chandeliers and chairs that are low to the ground and have weirdly deep seats. On a slowly revolving platform, someone is playing a grand piano. It may as well be raining gold coins in here and it wouldn’t make things any more extravagant.

The large reception desk is across the hall, right next to the rows of gates with metal detectors. The balding man has already trolleyed his trolley case right across the room and is talking to a receptionist. He receives a badge that he clips to his tie and he’s off.

That didn’t look so difficult.

Everything will be all right. Why wouldn’t it?

Peter doesn’t bother to straighten his jacket or flatten his hair. He knows he looks disheveled either way. He shuffles up to the desk, choosing a friendly looking young man with short curls and a broad smile that he flashes at Peter and asks: “How may I help you?”

Peter squints at his name tag. It says ‘Denzel’. Peter lifts his chin and says, in the most casual tone he can muster: “I’m here to see Tony Stark.”

Denzel laughs. A little louder than Peter thinks is strictly necessary. And then just says: “Um. No.”

“Yes!”

Denzel folds his hands together and smiles, in the way someone smiles when they decide to play along with the fantasy rules of some little kid’s game. “You have an appointment?”

“No.”

“I see. Do you want a signed photo? I can get you a signed photo,” he is already reaching under the desk where he no doubt has a whole stack just laying around.

“I want to see Tony Stark. I’m a … friend. He knows me.”

“I see,” Denzel says. “Then I’d suggest giving him a quick ring and he’ll arrange a visitor’s pass for you.”

“I don’t have his number. Anymore.”

“I see.”

“Can’t you just, like, pass a message? He’ll know me when he sees me.”

Denzel says no, and then says no about ten more times, no matter what angle Peter tries. He remains friendly throughout. Unlike the older man at the reception desk next to them, whose name tag Peter can’t read, but who begins throwing glares in his direction after a few minutes and finally says: “Sir. We’re going to have to request that you vacate the premises.”

Denzel looks annoyed at the interference. Probably, talking to Peter is the most interesting thing that happened to him today.

Peter curls his fingers around a ridge on the reception desk. “No.”

The older man’s impressive eyebrows dip into an equally impressive frown and he gives an almost imperceptible hand signal to a security guard nearby who had already been looking in their direction — probably from the moment Peter walked in here, sticking out like a sore thumb.

The security guard comes closer. “Is there a problem?”

“I’m here to see Mr. Stark,” Peter says, and doesn’t unclench his fingers from the ridge. He squints at the security guard’s name tag. It says ‘Jas’.

“He doesn’t have an appointment,” Denzel says in a loud whisper.

“It’s a four-one-three,” the other receptionist barks. Apparently teenagers showing up and claiming to be friends with Tony Stark is so common that they have a code for it.

“I’m here to see Tony,” Peter says. “He knows me.”

Jas says the same thing everyone else already said. That he needs to leave. Peter refuses three more times. And then Jas makes a movement like she wants to grab him by the arm but Peter quickly jerks away and makes a mad dash for the metal detectors.

-

And that’s how he ends up sitting in a small back room with a rectangular table and black plasticky chairs. His backpack was confiscated. There is a tall, slender guard standing by the door. Jas is next to him at the table, sifting through his wallet. “You got a lot of cash in here.”

“That’s mine!”

“Yeah, relax, kid. Peter.” She is looking at his ID. “Fourteen. And you got a lot of clothes in that backpack. You running away?”

“I’m on vacation. I’m staying here for the summer.”

“Here.”

“With Tony. I’ll be staying with Tony for the summer.”

“Hm.”

Peter crosses his arms. “Just ask him and you’ll see!”

“How do you know Mr. Stark, then?”

“He’s my dad.”

Jas chokes on her own breath and coughs, Peter’s ID fluttering to the table. “God.” She wipes her face. “Don’t just say stuff like that outta nowhere.” She shakes her head. “I’m on Tony Stark’s personal security detail most days, kid, I think I’d know it if Stark had a son.”

“What, you think he would publicly acknowledge it? You and your colleagues never made bets on how many illegitimate sons Tony Stark has out there?”

Jas looks at him for a while. “Get Mr. Hogan,” she then tells the other guard.

-

Mr. Hogan is a head shorter than the other security guards, but three times as broad. “Sorry,” Jas tells him apologetically as soon as he steps into the room. “It’s probably nothing. Err on the side of caution and all that.”

“Hmpf,” Mr. Hogan says, and glares at Peter. “What do you want?”

“To see Tony.”

“Why?”

“He’s my dad.”

“Try again.”

“Fine. He’s my spirit guide.”

“Call his parents and get him out of here,” Mr. Hogan says, already turning around.

“They’re in Malibu,” Peter says.

Mr. Hogan pauses, one hand on the door handle. “Friday?” he asks nonsensically.

Before Peter can ask for clarification, a voice sounds from overhead speakers. “Address confirmed, 1184 Langtown Road, Malibu.”

“Figured he was a runaway,” Jas says, nodding sagely.

The ceiling-voice is not done. “I will also confirm that there is no biological relationship between Peter Parker and Tony Stark. In fact, I have records of a paternity test that proves conclusively they are not father and son.”

Mr. Hogan’s eyes go wide as saucers. “You have,” he repeats, “a paternity test … in your records … for this kid?”

“Is this ‘Friday’ the new AI?” Peter asks. “What happened to Jarvis?”

Mr. Hogan stills at the mention of Jarvis. His gaze on Peter turns more calculating. “Get Ms. Potts,” he tells the other security guard.

-

Ms. Potts has very high heels and a frosty voice. Everything about her is rigid. She doesn’t even look at Peter. “What is this about?”

“The kid says he knows Tony.”

She taps her pen against her clipboard, her eyes not straying his way even a little bit. “Why is that relevant to me?”

Okay. Yeah. Peter doesn’t like her.

“He might not be entirely lying. Trying to figure out if we need to bother Tony with this.” He repeats the AI’s words to her.

Ms. Potts purses her lips, somehow looking even more impatient. “What does he want?”

“What do you want?” Mr. Hogan asks Peter, as if he is her translator.

“I’m gonna stay here for the summer. I’m on vacation.”

Ms. Potts lets out a single laugh that sounds more like a scoff. “Happy, this is ridiculous.”

“I’ve dealt with worse when it comes to Tony,” Mr. Hogan says, peering at Peter. He seems less hostile now than when he first walked in.

“Your name is Happy?” Peter asks.

A stifled laugh escapes Jas.

Ms. Potts sighs and pulls out a chair across the table from Peter. She lays the clipboard neatly to one side, caps her pen. And only then looks at him. “What is your endgame here, young man?”

Peter shrugs. “Slumber party.”

“How did you get to New York?”

“Train.”

“That takes two days.”

“Uhuh. Four, if you don’t have a ticket.” He only stole 523 dollars from Richard’s wallet. He wasn’t going to waste all that on train fare.

“Do your parents know you’re here?”

Peter grins and slouches in his seat. “Definitely.”

She looks at him like he is a mistake on her spreadsheet. “What makes you think Mr. Stark wants to see you?”

The words make him feel suddenly hollow, when he had been doing such a good job at pretending none of this really matters. He can feel his grin waver but strains to keep it in place. “He wants to see me. He is— He wants to see me. He knows me.”

“Mr. Stark knows a lot of people. Almost none of them are allowed to just drop in for a visit whenever they please, and certainly not if they attempt to force their way past security.”

“He knows me,” Peter says. “And I have nowhere else to stay. If you send me away, you’ll have to tell him my name and tell him you sent me out to spend the night on the streets. And I’ll probably die of hypothermia and get half-eaten by rats, and then he’ll be the one they call into the police station to identify my remains.”

Ms. Potts breathes out through her nose. “Go get Mr. Stark,” she says. And the security guard by the door leaves for the third time.

-

He fiddles with the little toy figure in his pocket. His fingers are trembling, which is stupid. It’s stupid. Everything will be fine. But every noise filtering through from the hallway still sends a spike of anxiety through him.

And then the door opens and Tony steps into the room. He is casually dressed, jeans and a sweater. He looks huggable. Something creaks in Peter’s chest as he looks up at him. Tony doesn’t look very different from the last time Peter spoke with him, but maybe that’s just because Peter has googled him regularly, or has seen him appear in his newsfeed. Tony spends a lot of time on social media, ridiculing or just plain attacking other public figures, and news outlets take great pleasure in reporting on it.

Tony pauses there, his hand still on the doorknob. His posture is slouched, almost like he is bored. He looks straight at Peter. “Huh,” he says, and releases the doorknob. “What the hell are you doing here?”

His fingers are tingling strangely. “I’m gonna stay here.”

“Come again?”

“I’m gonna stay with you. I’m on vacation. Summer break. I’m—I’m gonna stay in New York. With you. The whole summer.”

Tony looks completely baffled, but that’s okay. He’s just surprised, he will say yes, he will.

Tony turns to the scary lady. “Are you kidding me with this?”

“We just wanted to make sure—”

“Get rid of him,” Tony says. And leaves.

Ms. Potts brushes a hand down her skirt. Picks up the clipboard. “Get rid of him,” she tells Mr. Hogan. And leaves.

Mr. Hogan sighs and looks like he is going to say something else. But then he gestures at Jas. “Get rid of him.” And leaves.

The door slams a third time, but Peter hasn’t even processed the first. His throat feels laced shut, a lump rising with each breath. A hot pressure is building behind his eyes. This isn’t supposed to happen. Everything is supposed to be okay, happily ever after and all that.

“Sorry, kid,” Jas says. She actually seems apologetic. “Listen. I can get you a cup of coffee or something? Just stay put for a bit. Considering the circumstances, I’ll need to contact the police.”

“What?” Peter says, his voice cracking. His ears are buzzing strangely.

“No one is pressing charges. But you did imply your parents don’t know you are here and you got no place to stay, am I right?”

Peter should protest, make up a lie, that he was joking, that he can get a room in a hostel, she has seen how much money he has on him.

But he suddenly feels very tired, and he doesn’t say anything.

-

Pepper slips into his private elevator just before the doors close. She leans against the mirror and starts pulling her hair pins out and putting them back in. “Who was he?”

Tony stares at the number above the door slowly ticking up as the elevator ascends towards the penthouse. “Just some kid.”

Pepper throws him a look.

“Just some neighborhood kid who used to come over and break stuff in my house when I lived in Malibu.”

“That’s called vandalism, Tony.”

“It’s fine. He was a little kid. I haven’t seen him in about four, five years.” Pre-Afghanistan. It happens quite often that things that happened to him pre-Afghanistan feel like they happened to someone else. Like he has had the muted-down memories of some completely different person shoved into him. “He doesn’t matter.”

“Right. But you’ll tell me if I need to put out any PR fires.”

“I will not be dealing with any fires myself, so I can honestly promise you that I will. Gladly. But this is not a fire.”

“Yet.”

He looks at her hands as she twirls locks of her hair around her fingers and slides a bobby pin back in place. She has nice hands. “Go to dinner with me.”

“I’ll remind you that I made a checklist of everything that needs to happen before we can move forward with our relationship.”

“Yes, it’s very romantic.”

She smiles, because she probably does think it’s romantic. “You have not yet met all demands.”

“I’ll get right on that.”

“See that you do.” She presses the button for the floor they have almost reached, and the elevator slows down.

-

He steps out of the elevator and rounds the aquarium that mainly just serves as a room divider, since neither he nor Bruce are really into fish. It’s just the two of them, living in expansive luxury. Even Pepper refuses to come up here until Tony has checked at least four out of five boxes on her list. There are twenty fully furnished bedrooms on this floor. Eighteen of them are empty. There are five office spaces that go entirely unused since both Tony and Bruce prefer to spend their time in the workshop or the lab. There is a lounge area that extends to the kitchen, great for those extravagant dinner parties that they never host. There is a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that offers a 180-degree, unobstructed view of the rugged panorama of the city. From up here, everything seems far away; it’s alienating.

All in all, it’s a great place to feel both at the top of the food chain and also not really part of it. Tony likes both of those things.

He steps down into the sunken living room.

“So, what was it about?” Bruce asks. He sits at one end of the giant corner couch, under the dim light of an antique lamp that he insisted on bringing in here and that clashes horribly with the modern design of the space.

“Nothing.” He slumps down on the couch.

“All right,” Bruce says, and goes back to his book about… Tony ducks his head to glance at the title… moss and lichen. Riveting, no doubt.

He doesn’t think about the kid.

He takes out his phone and goes right back to the important task he had at hand: reminding Kate Moss on Twitter that he has more vintage cars than her. He hasn’t had a good day unless his online arguments make it into the gossip section of some tabloid news outlet.

Bruce always tells him to stop going on social media, and Tony always retorts that at least he is still in touch with the world outside this tower. He’s pretty sure Bruce hasn’t left this building in months. Too afraid that something or someone will upset him and the other guy takes over. So afraid of getting angry that he won’t even glance at social media.

He types out another scathing message and hits send. He doesn’t think about the kid. “Sushi for dinner?”

“We had sushi last night.”

“So?”

“Right,” Bruce says. He always says ‘right’ when he actually disagrees with Tony but is too afraid to say anything, because he’d rather drink bleach than have to deal with any sort of conflict, no matter how minor. “Sure. Sushi is fine.”

“Right,” Tony mocks. He sends the order down to their restaurant on the 72nd floor. Extra shrimp, as always. His mother was allergic, which for some reason meant that Tony was never allowed to have it either. Once, as a teenager, he sneaked some shrimp onto his plate at a buffet and thought his father hadn’t noticed, but the moment they stepped into the car to head back home, Howard had turned in his seat and whacked him so hard that his right ear was ringing for at least an hour.

So now he orders shrimp whenever he has the opportunity, and revels in the idea that his father is turning in his grave somewhere.

He doesn’t think about the stupid kid. “So what’s new with moss and lichen, what’s the hot goss?”

Bruce doesn’t look up from his book. “Some colleagues found a species of lichen in Lapland that retains radionuclides in an unusual way which makes them safe for consumption by other animals when they reasonably should be poisonous. They’re sending me samples.”

“Hm.” He should have guessed it was somehow related to radioactivity. It’s funny how Bruce seems so inclined to study the exact field of science that also ruined his life. Tony prefers to forget all the worst moments of his life. Including the stupid kid. Definitely including Mary Fitzpatrick.

Hell, no. He does not think about Mary Fitzpatrick. Abort, abort. “So, uh, animals are eating this radioactive lichen, then?”

Bruce nods. “I may need to get a terrarium with grasshoppers in the lab to study the effects. Would you mind?”

Tony shrugs. “It’s your lab.”

Bruce spends a lot of time in their personal laboratory. Nearly all his time, in fact. Tony only goes there occasionally, so it feels like Bruce’s space. The lab is one floor below the penthouse, in the same wing as the labs of their other top chemists. The sort of top chemists who are such experts in their field that they literally get paid to just do whatever they want, with limitless funding available to them. Bruce is technically on that payroll, too. They answer to no one, only send an email to Tony directly whenever they think they came up with something interesting.

Pepper doesn’t like it much. She’s always asking him what they are working on, what Bruce is working on. She wants reports. But as much as Tony doesn’t know anything about running a company, he knows this is how you actually get to the good ideas; by not clipping people’s wings.

Bruce lives in the penthouse rent free, too. He vacuums the place every week, though, which is a lot more useful than rent, anyways.

He has sent out another handful of tweets when the elevator chimes from behind the aquarium, announcing the arrival of their dinner. Tony rolls off the couch and pushes to his feet. He saunters past the bar and rounds the aquarium. A security guard is patiently waiting in the elevator with a white paper bag. Tony recognizes her as the same woman who was sitting in the interrogation room downstairs when they called him in about the kid.

The kid.

He isn’t good at remembering faces, but apparently she’s on his personal security detail too, or she wouldn’t have access to the penthouse. He takes the paper bag from her and can’t stop himself from asking: “Is the kid gone?”

The security guard was about to press the button again, but pauses, glances up at him with a neutral expression. “I had him picked up by the police.”

“Okay. Good. That’s good.”

She gives a polite nod, her face carefully blank. She hits the button and the doors close.

-

“Buzz me in, you loser,” Natasha says, putting her mouth close to the intercom.

Sam buzzes her in.

It’s a small apartment in a nondescript building by a busy street. A place where you can be comfortably invisible.

Sam is waiting for her in the doorway when she reaches the seventh floor. “How did you find me? I haven’t even sent out any change of address notifications.”

“I’m annoyed it took me this long. You’ve been here… four days?”

“How do you know?”

She points. “I can tell by how many of your sneakers you got unpacked.”

“Some are better in the box. Mint condition.” He walks ahead of her and takes two mismatched mugs from the drainboard, rinses out his coffee carafe.

“Why’d you leave Brooklyn?”

Sam finds coffee filters. “The usual, people found it and started to badger me in the street. So I had to switch it up.” He still keeps his coffee in that same, yellowish, rusty tin. “Trying to lay low. I got cocky, you know. Sat on my balcony too much, sunbaking.”

Natasha nods. Housing is an issue when you’re an Avenger. Most of them come from simple backgrounds and don’t feel comfortable renting mansions with their own security team, especially considering they are supposed to be the security for this city, this country, at times the whole planet. But unfortunately, being an Avenger means being famous, and you can only live in a small overhead apartment for so long before some asshole makes your home address, your license plate and your favorite café freely available for anyone to find online, from toxic fans to paparazzi to dangerous criminals. Changing her hair color every two weeks seems to mostly do the trick for her. “I suggested to Tony the other day that maybe we should all move into the tower.”

“What’d he say?”

“Over my dead body.”

Sam snorts. “Not surprised.”

“I think it’s important for the team to bond more, but I don’t know how to get it done. Steve is hesitant about it and, I don’t know, he’s in charge.”

“I thought you were in charge.”

That’s just typical for the ragtag team of superheroes that they currently are. Even they don’t know who they are supposed to be. “I think I can get Tony on board.”

“I’ll happily bet you one hundred bucks that you cannot.”

Natasha clacks their empty mugs together. “Deal.”

Chapter Text

Tony packs the leftover sushi away and wipes the table down. Bruce has gone to bed. He always turns in around nine, when Tony’s day is only just beginning.

And it begins with a phone call. He doesn’t recognize the number, but only important people have his number, like Pepper of Happy or the guy who gets him coffee. So he answers. “Yeah.”

“Hello, Anthony.”

His insides turn frozen, stomach swooping as he is abruptly yanked back into the past. He sees her eyes, smells her perfume. He grits his teeth, feeling hollow with something like panic. “Mary Fitzpatrick.”

“It’s ‘Parker’ now.”

“What. You actually married that son of a bitch?”

“You’re all sons of bitches,” she says. She sounds amused and lazy. He can hear traffic in the background.

“You have ten seconds to convince me not to hang up on you.”

“Okay,” she says, and proceeds to use the first five seconds to just breathe stupidly into the phone. “Well,” she then says. “A cop called me.”

“Are you high right now?”

“A cop called me that my son is at the police station—” and she shifts the phone until her mouth must be right over the speaker because the next words come out staticky, at twice the volume, “—IN GODDAMN NEW YORK, Anthony.”

“Fuck you, I’m hanging up.”

“No, please, come on. C’mon honey.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“I’m not joking. Peter is at a police station in New York.”

“I know. I put him there.”

“Oh,” she says. “Huh. Well, can you go pick him up again?”

“Fuck you.”

“I’m in Malibu. I don’t even know how— You’re the only person I know who lives around there. Is he supposed to spend the night in jail? Did he kill someone? Did he shoot someone’s brains out, Tony? Come on, we both know you’re too nice to leave a little kid in jail overnight.” Her voice turns smarmy. “Come on Anthony, come on baby. You’re such a good guy.”

He feels physically sick but somehow can’t manage to hang up.

“You just gotta pick him up, sign him out, whatever. Drive him to the airport and put him on a plane back home, I already got him a ticket and signed the thingymajiggy that he’s an unaccompanied minor. That’s all, hon. And he’ll be out of your hair.”

Tony doesn’t want to do anything for this woman, but damnit, he hadn’t intended for the kid to have to spend the night in jail. “I’ll send someone,” he bites out.

“I told them you were coming. And they said they can only release him to an approved, appropriate adult.”

Fuck everything.

-

In many ways, Peter is surprised he made it so long in life without ending up at a police station. And it’s not even that bad. Maybe not everyone in this city is asshole-shaped. They give him orange juice and goldfish crackers, and they prod him a bit about his parents and why he left Malibu, but Peter knows what to say to get them to back off. The same thing he has been saying to teachers for years.

“What about your dad? You get on with your dad?” They ask. They probably pulled  records and saw how many times Richard has been busted for drug dealing.

He caps the bottle of orange juice and leans back. “Yeah, we’re super tight. We play card games and stuff.” He always uses the card game example because it’s technically not not true, so there.

He can tell their phone call with his mother puts their mind at ease, too. His mother is even better at knowing what to say to get people to back off. She would be smart enough, for example, not to mention the money Peter stole from Richard’s wallet before he left.

He sits in his chair and nibbles on the goldfish crackers as people move around him. There is a black hole in the pit of his stomach, pulling at him.

He hadn’t allowed room in his head for any other outcome than Tony welcoming him with open arms. He doesn’t know what to do now. He just knows that he doesn’t want to go home.

“Your mother is sending a friend by to come pick you up,” an officer says, frowning down at the piece of paper in her hand. “Someone named Anthony Stark. Huh. Like the famous guy.”

The words register in his brain but do not compute. “…What?”

“Anthony Stark. Do you know him? Your mother said you know him.”

Stupidly, Peter feels hopeful for a moment. Stupidly, like a little kid. He has been stupidly hoping like a little kid for years, and look how that turned out. Tony barely even looked him in the eye.

He looks at the goldfish crackers and remembers a stormy day in Malibu. Tony took him to the beach to fly a kite. It was shaped like a fish, with a big, open mouth. There were hardly any other people there. The waves were wild and white-crested. Tony wore a big yellow raincoat. The wind came in gusts so strong that sometimes they could barely hear each other speak, and Tony’s hand was the only thing keeping him from falling over.

And Peter feels… He feels…

Furious.

-

The police precinct is small and robust, with a parking lot around the back with spots for visitor parking. Tony leaves his car under the flagpole and jumps over a trimmed hedge to reach the backdoor.

He is dangerously close to a panic attack, he feels it brewing right underneath his skin, and it's utterly pathetic.

What is this hold she has over him?

He hands his ID over to a flabbergasted officer behind reception. “Here to pick up Peter Parker,” he says. It’s okay. Just a little while longer. Just a short drive to JFK and he can put all this behind him.

Peter is soon led out of a room.

“You okay?” Tony asks.

Peter hoists his large backpack a little higher and then walks right past Tony without looking at him or saying anything, chin held high.

The mouth of the police officer quirks up. “Good luck.”

Tony returns to the parking lot, and Peter is standing there, looking into the distance with his arms crossed. “That one,” Tony says, pointing at his car.

Peter sniffs and walks towards it, yanks at the handle. Waits for Tony to unlock the car and yanks at the handle again. He puts his backpack at his feet and has to sit almost sideways to still fit his legs into the car.

Tony exhales slowly as he pulls up the coordinates of JFK’s cell phone lot on the GPS. At least there won’t be much traffic at 10 PM. “Buckle up.”

Peter says nothing and doesn’t move.

“Kid. I don’t have time for this. Fuck. Buckle up.”

Peter glares at him and tugs at the seat belt already across his chest, Tony missed him putting it on.

“Okay, you could have said that. Why am I the one getting the silence treatment when you’re the one who broke into my house?”

Peter looks away.

Tony pulls out of the parking space and onto the road. He has to turn left at the intersection against the GPS’ directions, because there is a roadblock ahead. Everyone just seems determined to make his life difficult today.

“I’m hungry,” Peter says. His hand hasn’t left the door handle since he stepped into the care. Like he thinks he needs to make a mad dash or something.

“What do you want from me?”

“Food, obviously,” Peter says with a bored infliction. “Duh.”

“All right, smart ass.”

“I had cheese, ice cream and goldfish crackers today, that’s all.”

“Shouldn’t have left home, then, where mommy provides for you.” Mary could cook a mean Paella. She knew how much Tony liked shrimp. Yeah. Fuck her. “She didn’t even know where you were.”

Peter says nothing.

“Anyways, you can get food at the airport, I’ll… give you money.” At those words, Peter frowns and looks at the display, squints like a grandpa who lost his reading glasses. Honestly. Where did he think Tony was taking him? “And maybe call your mom.”

“It’s like super late, probably the middle of the night in Malibu.”

“It’s earlier in Malibu than here, dum-dum, because it’s west.”

“Oh. Further west than New York?”

“Are you kidding me? Please tell me that wasn’t a serious question, what do they teach you in school, these days?”

Peter says nothing. He takes out his phone, but does not call. When Tony glances over three blocks later, he finds the kid looking up New York on the map.

He drums his fingers against the steering wheel as they wait at a red light and thinks about how he forgot to tell Happy he was leaving. Happy will probably chew him out for not bringing security. ‘And you really believed her when she said you were the only one who could pick him up from the precinct, Tony?’. It would be the perfect way to lure him out of the tower alone and then pull him out of the car somewhere along the way to JFK to hold him for ransom. He wouldn’t put it past Mary. She was always a mastermind when it came to creating complex plans to cheat money out of people. Fuck her.

They reach JFK and Tony pulls into a parking spot with a deep sigh. “All right. Get lost, kid.”

Peter says nothing. Doesn’t move.

“Go on. Get. Call your mother, she bought you a ticket.”

No response, and Tony is starting to get nervous. He made no contingency plan for this scenario. He doesn’t know how to get teenagers to do what he wants. What can he do? What would his parents do? Well, he knows the answer to that. Howard would have dragged him out by the hair. That’s not an option.

What would Pepper do? Tony sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. He can’t believe he’s attempting this. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I’m not leaving, is all. I’m on vacation.”

“You’re fucking deluded, kid.”

“You swear a lot.”

“Well I’m not asking for you sit here and listen to me, am I?”

No response. Tony growls and yanks so hard at the zipper of his inside pocket that he thinks he hears something tear. He takes out his phone and dials Mary’s number.

“Yes, yes?” she says.

“I’m in the car at JFK with your kid, and he’s refusing to step out of the car.”

“Oh. Why?”

“I don’t know. Why did you raise your kid to be an idiot? He says he’s on vacation.” He inhales and exhales, covering his eyes with his hand. If his panic attack takes hold now, while she is on the phone, while the kid is in the car, he’ll never live it down.

“Am I on speaker?”

“Not yet, hang on.” He taps the button and holds up the phone.

“Peter,” Mary says. “I already paid for your ticket, don’t waste my money.”

Peter presses his lips together and says nothing at all.

“Am I on speaker?”

“Yes, you’re on speaker, he’s just not talking.”

“Peter?”

Peter says nothing.

“Is he actually there?” She sounds amused again. “Or are you high right now?”

Tony mutters more curses and turns on videocall. “There!” He holds the phone facing forwards towards Peter. “Now get him out of here, I don’t have time for this.”

“Peter.” Mary’s stern voice sounds fake, like she doesn’t know how to really pull it off. Like she is moments away from collapsing into giggles. “That’s enough, now. You’ve had your fun. Fun, fun, road trip. Now let’s move, you’re giving poor delicate Anthony an aneurysm.”

Peter finally starts moving. Very slowly. He raises one arm. And flips his mother the bird.

“Now that’s rude,” Mary says. She still sounds amused and unbothered. Tony has no idea how she does it.

Peter pulls his hood up, as far forward as possible, tightly crosses his arms. He turns away from them and curls up in the seat, resting his forehead against the window. Yeah. He’s not moving any time soon.

“Take me off speaker, please,” Mary says.

Tony does and lifts the phone to his ear.

“Okay, fine,” she says. “Fine. I’ll get a flight to New York. I’ll come pick him up.”

Tony hates the idea of her being in the same city as him, but it seems like the only way. “Sure.”

“Just send me the address deets of where you’re leaving him for the night. By the way. You sound stressed, honey. Relax a little.”

“Fuck you.” Tony hangs up. He throws the phone on the dashboard and exhales explosively. He glances sideways. “If I drive you to a hotel, will you get out of the car?”

“No,” says the curled-up ball.

“If I drive you to the tower, will you get out of the car?”

“Yes.”

Fucking whatever.

-

Peter does get out of the car when they get to the tower. In fact, he acts as if his entire temper tantrum didn’t happen. “Woah. Fancy,” he says as they step into the elevator.

“It’s an elevator.” He knows everything at Stark tower is at least a little fancy, even the elevators. But it’s not as if Peter comes from a simple background. Mary has plenty of money.

Peter looks at himself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror for a while, fiddling with something in his pocket.

Tony sends Mary a message that Peter is staying at the tower, and to send him her ETA. She does soon after; a time tomorrow around noon. Okay. That’s doable. Looks like she is hopping on the plane straight away. “I have left-over sushi.”

“Okay.”

“You’re welcome.”

Peter says nothing.

They reach the penthouse and Tony grabs Peter a plate and the containers with leftover food. “There. And take the first bedroom on your left down that hall. I’ll be in my workshop.” He doesn't say where the workshop is. He leaves Peter at the kitchen island and goes down the hallway, past the five unused office spaces. He punches in his code and the doors slide open.

The bright overhead lights jump to life. There are windows on the west-side of the room, but the metal shutters are permanently down. Tony prefers to feel entirely closed off from the world when he is in here.

He stands in the middle of the room for a moment and breathes, rubbing his left shoulder.

Okay. He’ll be fine, he’s got this.

“FRIDAY. Notify me if the kid tries anything strange.” He decides not to update Happy or Pepper just yet about this latest development.

He steps over a cable and past the first row of desks. Dum-E greets him with impatient, grabbing motions. “I know. Later than usual. I had to run an errand.”

He sits at his most favored workstation, with the desk shaped in a semi-circle and plenty of space for holographic projections all around him. His current project is an upgrade for Nat’s utility belt. He should get in touch with her to run the latest updates past her, but he’s afraid she’ll start talking again about how they should all live together in the tower, like one big happy family.

He never thought that Natasha could be that gullible.

He turns the belt over in his hands again, and again. Squints up at a projection in front of him. He checks the numbers, and checks them again when he realizes he didn’t take in anything he just read. His brain refuses to focus. He sighs and restlessly taps his digital pen against the desk. He thinks back to the phone calls he made today and hates himself for how easily Mary gets him riled up.

If he plays his cards right, he won’t have to see her at all tomorrow.

When Tony was ten, he once found an injured young bird on the grounds of their manor. It had fallen from the nest. He brought it back home, intending to care for it. But his father spotted him carrying it into the house, took it from him, yelled at him for bringing it into the house and then killed it on the back porch with a rock, coldly and efficiently, with a single, sickening crunch; a sound that featured heavily in his nightmares for the rest of the week. He never told anyone about it, not even Jarvis or his mother.

He met Mary at MIT when he was nineteen. She was four years older. Actually, he met her dormmate Sheila first, in a bar. Went home with her. The sex didn’t work out because she was too drunk and fell asleep. He didn’t know her address, couldn’t call a cab so he stretched out on the couch. In the morning, Mary woke up first. She baked him an omelet and rolled him a blunt, as if that was a standard breakfast combination. That was his first time trying marijuana. It must have been in December, because he remembers the drugs making him all teary, and telling Mary about that time his father killed a little bird. He remembers saying he didn’t want to go home for Christmas. He was really too old to still be afraid of his father, but he couldn’t help himself. And then Mary inviting him to celebrate Christmas with her family instead.

After that, Mary took him under her wing. Introduced him to all her friends, including her best friend AKA her dealer, Richard. Took him to parties. Helped him come up with excuses to not have to see his parents. They had a ‘friends with benefits’ sort of relationship. Tony can safely say that she is the first person he ever truly trusted. There are a lot of other things that he told her, that he never told anyone else. He was twenty-one when his parents died, and for weeks, Mary was the only person he allowed to come into his room and badger him into eating and showering.

She graduated and was offered a position in Houston. They had a teary goodbye, and sent each other birthday cards, but Tony didn’t see her for another seven years.

He really needs to stop thinking about this, stop thinking about her. The past is pulling at him, his memories boiling over. Usually, a project helps him get out of his head, but this utility belt is not doing the trick. “FRIDAY, pull up Pepper’s list.”

It appears right in front of him.

1. know how to cook at least three meals
2. keep a houseplant alive for at least a month (no cheating)
3. know how to vote
4. know what that green thing is in the bucket under the sink and how to use it
5. know your own social security number

Bruce asked him once, not too long ago, why he wanted to be with Pepper. Suspiciously, like he thought Tony just wants to bang her because she happens to have a symmetrical face and nice hands.

One thing he loves about her is the look on her face when she is making a check list, or checking off boxes on a checklist, or ruminating about how she is going to put something on a check list.

“FRIDAY, pull up the easiest recipe you can find that still counts as a ‘meal’.”

-

Bruce wakes him up in the middle of the damn night, at 8 AM or something. “Tony,” he murmurs, lingering awkwardly on the threshold of his bedroom, radiating confusion. “There’s— There’s a teenager in the kitchen.”

Tony buries his head under the blanket. “It’s fine, his mother is picking him up today. Just make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.”

“And the kitchen smells of burnt plastic.”

“I tried to make pancakes.”

“…Okay.”

The door clicks shut.

-

Peter hadn’t even realized that anyone else lived in this eerily large, empty penthouse, until this man appeared in the doorway, froze, blinked at Peter for a few seconds and then slowly backed away, not breaking eye contact the entire time. Peter heard him and Tony mutter to each other down the hall and then the man returned, looking marginally more relaxed.

“I’m Bruce,” the strange man says.

“I’m Peter.”

The man pours himself a cup of coffee. “What brings you here, Peter?”

“I’m on vacation.”

“First time in New York?”

Peter nods.

“That’s nice. What’s on your bucket list?”

Peter shrugs. He’s in a strange sort of limbo where the one thing that was supposed to happen didn’t happen, and there is no other option available to him. “I don’t have a bucket list. I have a ‘fuck it’ list. There’s nothing on it, it’s great.” He can’t go home. He can’t go somewhere else. He can only sit here.

He tracks Bruce’s movements. The man sits, sets his coffee down and opens the newspaper on his tablet. Fine, apparently people here just drink coffee for breakfast. Peter thought it was a bit weird that all the cupboards were practically empty. He found one bottle of ketchup in the fridge and a bag of flour sitting on the counter, next to the burnt up remains of a spatula.

That’s okay. He can scavenge.

“Are you Tony’s boyfriend?” he asks.

Bruce turns his gaze away from the newspaper and looks at him across the rim of his glasses. “No. We’re… co-workers.”

And Peter suddenly realizes that this is Bruce Banner, the Hulk. The Avenger who isn’t on any social media and rarely appears in the papers. “Oh, right,” he says. “You’re an Avenger.”

Bruce grimaces a little.  

“I read that this, uh, Hulk guy— that you’re not really in control of him. Should I be worried that you’re just going to transform and smash this kitchen to pieces? Can I expect a heads-up?”

Bruce actually winces. Okay. Peter may have been insensitive. “I am in control,” Bruce says firmly. “As long as I avoid stressful situations.”

“Okay. And you’re also a scientist, right? Can you turn me into a superhero?”

“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, kid.”

Agree to disagree.

Bruce returns to his tablet and drinks his coffee, reading pieces of articles out loud and making observations about their contents. Peter doesn’t understand half of the things he is saying, but it is nice, it’s nice to have company, to have this voice rolling over him, sort of soothingly.  

And Bruce asks, absent-mindedly: “How long are you staying?”

-

Tony rolls out of bed a little after two PM. Later than usual, even for him. But he wanted to make sure that Mary and Peter would already be gone by the time he got to the kitchen.

He gets to the kitchen.

Peter is sitting at the table, liberally spreading peanut butter on a sandwich.

“What are you doing here?”

Peter looks up at him but says nothing.

“Your mom was supposed to be here an hour ago.”

“How ‘bout that,” Peter says. He folds the sandwich in half and squishes it between his hands.

Tony doesn’t remember ever buying peanut butter, or having bread just lying around. “Where did you get the food?”

“I’m good at finding food. This place is, like, really depressing. Why are there so many bedrooms? No one else lives here.”

“No one generally wants to live with me. Can’t be a surprise to you.” Tony takes out his phone. His anxiety levels are already way up, and he hasn’t even had his coffee yet. He dials Mary’s number.

“Yes, yes?”

“Where are you? You were supposed to be here an hour ago.”

“Oh, Anthony,” she says, like she needed a moment to realize who it was. “My flight was delayed.”

“You couldn’t have called?”

“I was going to,” she is speaking slowly, lazily. “Take a breath, baby, I’m getting very concerned about your health. Stress is a killer. Bad for the skin, too.”

The ‘fuck yous’ are getting a little old. “Delayed until when?”

“Same time tomorrow. Is he behaving? I’m sure he is. Tell him his dad wants his money back, by the way.”

“Just send me your ETA,” he bites out and hangs up. He lowers his phone and looks at Peter munching on his sandwich. “Did you steal money from your dad?”

Peter glances up at him with a little frown. Says nothing.

“Your mom is coming tomorrow.”

“Oh, sure,” Peter says.

-

There is no Jarvis in this tower, but there is a FRIDAY, and she is a lot like Jarvis. You can ask her anything at all and she always responds kindly, even if the question is dumb.

Peter asks FRIDAY to take him to Bruce and she directs him into an elevator, descending one floor. He steps out of the elevator into a long hallway with white floors. There are large windows with frosted glass separating the hallway from the offices. Or the labs, Peter realizes, as he squints at the little nameplates next to the doors. Dr. This, Dr. That. FRIDAY leads him to the lab at the very end of the hallway. “Should I—”

“I have announced your presence to Mr. Banner. He says you can come in.”

Peter pushes the door open and slips inside. The laboratory is narrow but deep, with windows in the far wall. The blinds are down. An infinite variety of jars, pots, ladles, mortars, sieves, funnels, and other utensils that he doesn’t know the name of, line the walls. There are machines taller than him, in all kinds of weird shapes. The only pieces of furniture Peter recognizes are the desks, the chairs and the trash can near the door.

Bruce as in the back, near the windows. He sticks his head out from behind a machine with a cone-shaped set of scales and a blue, pulsating light. “Hello, Peter.” He gives a kind smile.

“Hey. What are you doing?”

“Come see, if you want.”

Peter shuffles closer, giving the strange machine a wide berth. On the table in front of Bruce stands a row of glass boxes. “Aquariums.” Peter says.

“Terrariums.”

Peter leans against the windowsill. “What’s a terrarium?”

“It’s like an aquarium, but for land animals. I’m getting these ready for grasshoppers.”

Peter nudges the window with his elbow to test it, but it doesn’t budge. None of the windows in this tower open, and it honestly gives him anxiety. “What are you going to do with grasshoppers?”

“Feed them radioactive lichen and see how they fare.”

“What’s lichen?”

“It’s an organism that grows on trees.” Bruce points at a monitor nearby that shows a picture of a mossy tree branch.

Peter wants to ask what an organism is, but he’s already feeling stupid enough with all his questions. Going from the picture, it’s probably a type of plant. He pulls out another chair and sits, leaning his chin in his arms to study the aquariums. He’s not sure what he is doing here, but Tony just gets all agitated around him, and he doesn’t like being alone.

Bruce doesn’t seem to mind, though. “Do you like science?”

“Not really. I usually don’t understand it.”

“Oh, I usually don’t understand it, either. But that’s what makes it fascinating. Do you want to read a book about lichen?”

Peter hasn’t read a book since he can’t remember when, reading always gives him a headache, but Bruce is looking at him with a bright expression like he is sharing the last cookie from the jar with him, so Peter says, “sure.”

Bruce gets him the book. Peter turns it over and squints at the text on the back for a while. “Thank you,” he says. “Wow. Four hundred pages about moss.”

“Lichen isn’t technically a moss.”

“Whatever, shut up.”

Bruce gives him an odd look. Maybe he’s not used to people telling him to shut up.

Peter leans back in his chair, hugging the book to his chest. “My mother is picking me up tomorrow.” She probably isn’t, but it’s best for now to pretend that he expects her to. “What do you think I should do today?” He hooks his ankles around the legs of the chair.

“Hmm.” Bruce readjusts his glasses and looks towards the windows as he thinks. “There is supposedly an interesting exhibition at Oscorp industries at the moment.”

“What about?”

“Well. Science.”

“Like, actual cool science or more moss?”

“They’re showcasing a variety of their projects.”

Peter taps his fingers against the book. “Will you go with me?” he asks.

Bruce looks surprised, then apologetic. “I don’t like to go out.”

“Okay, yeah. No worries.” This is pathetic, anyways. He’s like a street dog, latching onto the first person who gives him the time of day.

“Why don’t you ask Tony?”

Peter nods. “Okay. Yeah. Okay. I will.”

Bruce studies him for a while, like Peter is a radioactive grasshopper. Peter looks away. “How do you know Tony?” Bruce asks.

Peter gives a stilted shrug. “We were neighbors in Malibu.”

“Really?”

“We… Me and my mom moved there when I was six. And my mom knew Tony from back in college. I used to hang around at his house a lot.”

“That’s funny. I can’t imagine— Was he any good with kids?”

Tony was extremely laissez-faire, just like Peter’s mom. They would let him run in and out, didn’t care whose house he was staying at, let him climb on the furniture, let him stay up as late as he wanted. But unlike his mother, Tony also made time for him. Tony used to push him on the swings, hug him, read him stories in funny voices, is still to this day the only person who ever got him a proper birthday present. His favorite was a big, red fire truck with an extendable ladder, and two little toy firemen. One had a smile, the other had a big mustache and looked angry. Peter liked the smiling one.

He fiddles with the little toy figure in his pocket.

After a horrible falling-out a few years later, Tony suddenly moved away. He never said goodbye. Peter just rang his doorbell one day and glanced through the window to see empty rooms and stripped walls. For years and years, he consoled himself by imagining that Tony was out there, somehow lost, but still looking for him, like in a fairy tale. But deep down, he knew Tony didn’t actually want to see him. That he didn’t actually care. That no one was looking for him. He just never wanted to admit it to himself.

Coming here was a stupid idea. He burst his own bubble. But he doesn’t want to go back home, either.

“Yeah,” he says. “He was all right.”

-

“Tony,” Pepper’s face fills the screen. Her exasperated face. “You missed a meeting this morning. In favor of insulting Norman Osborn online, I see. I will have to call him and apologize. And I still need a report on Bruce’s current projects.”

“I’ll… Yeah, I’ll figure something out, send it through today.” He smiles, leaning his chin on his hands. He doesn’t know how it’s possible that all he has to do is see her, and a certain pressure is immediately lifted off his chest. “I’ve just been so busy working on your checklist. Aren’t you proud? I even made pancakes last night.”

She lifts a single eyebrow, looking the opposite of proud. “How? I don’t believe you have any of the required ingredients up in that penthouse.”

“We have flour. I substituted water for milk. And left out the eggs.”

She smiles, then. “Right. And that worked out, did it?”

“Close enough.”

Doors slide open behind him and someone says “hey.”

“Who is that?” Pepper asks sharply. “Ti—"

Tony swiftly clicks her away. He’ll pay for that later. Later.

He turns. Peter is lingering just inside the doorway, a book clenched under his arm, a large mug in the other hand. His expression is guarded.

“What’s up?”

Peter takes a few steps forward. His eyes roam the workshop. “Wow,” he says. “Big.”

“What is it?”

Peter sets the mug down on the desk. “I brought you coffee.”

Tony looks down at the mug. Up at Peter.

“You’re welcome,” Peter says.

“I paid for that coffee, so don’t get smug.”

“Pff. You’re an asshole.”

“Sure am,” Tony agrees. “Feel free to leave at literally any point.”

Peter takes out his phone and turns the screen to Tony, to show some website that Tony can’t read from here. “There is an exhibition at Oscorp. Bruce says it’s good. It’s about— about science.”

“You don’t need my permission to go somewhere, kid, do whatever you want. I’ll—You need money? I’ll pay for a ticket.”

Peter looks away, refusing to meet his eyes. “Will you go with me?” He is nervous, Tony realizes.

He blows out a breath and makes an effort to keep his patience. Everything that happened between him and Mary, it’s not Peter’s fault. He knows that. He does know that. That doesn’t mean he’s happy that Peter dragged him into this teenage rebellion stunt, dragged him back into a past he has tried to escape. “You like science?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Because I love Bruce, but I’m not sure he knows what’s hot with the youth of today. You can do anything you want. I don’t know, cinema, laser gaming…”

“Just… Will you go with me?”

“Sorry. I actually got banned from Oscorp. For the same reason as why I got banned from Taco Bell.”

“Oh.” Peter puts the phone away, hesitates, then takes something else out of his pocket. It’s a little toy figure of a chubby, smiling fireman, about two inches tall. “Remember this?”

Tony frowns down at it, confused. “No. What is it?”

Peter’s face falls carefully blank. Apparently, Tony said something wrong. Peter slides the toy back into his pocket. “Never mind.” He turns.

Chapter Text

Tony walks into the living room that evening to find Bruce sitting next to that lamp he loves so much. “I should take you antiquing sometime. We’ll go to Côte d'Azur, hit all the best spots. You can load up my private jet to your heart’s desire.”

Bruce does a full-body shiver. “Ugh. People.”

“Right. How could I forget.”

There is a bowl next to the fridge with an apple and two tomatoes. Tony frowns down at it. He isn’t used to seeing food around here. He grabs a bottle of white and two glasses and moves to the living room.

Bruce accepts the glass of wine with a nod. “Sorry, I missed dinner. I hope you didn’t count on me.”

“It’s fine. I missed dinner, too. Did you eat? Do I need to go grab you something from downstairs?”

Bruce just frowns. “What about the kid?”

“Don’t know. FRIDAY?”

“Mr. Parker cooked pasta with tomatoes and cheese.”

Tony’s gaze wanders back to the bowl on the kitchen counter. “Where did he get it?”

“Unsure. He entered the tower this evening with the ingredients already in his possession.”

“Huh,” Tony says. “Self-sufficient. He got past security?”

“Considering the context of today, I cleared him.”

“Well done.”

Bruce sets the wineglass down and studies him, still frowning. “How can you not know whether the kid even had dinner, Tony?”

“I don’t have time to do shit for him. He can take care of himself, clearly.”

Bruce only looks more puzzled. “I thought he was here to visit you.”

“Visit m— He ran away from home, Bruce. He’s a runaway. He’s not here on a sleepover and I’m not his nanny. He refused to get back on the plane so now his mother - whom I loathe, by the way, thankyouverymuch - has to fly in all the way from Malibu to drag his ass home. Fuck, teenagers are the worst.” He drags a hand down his face.

“That’s new information.”

“Yeah, well.” Tony shrugs.

“He told me you and his mother were old college friends.”

“Big fat emphasis on were. She’s the antichrist, Bruce. We gotta hang garlic over the door or something before she gets here tomorrow.”

“He ran away,” Bruce clarifies. “From Malibu… to New York? How does that even work?”

“What do you mean?”

“He can’t fly unaccompanied. How did he get here?”

“I don’t know. Hitchhiked?”

“That must have taken him, what, almost a week? And his parents didn’t know where he was that whole time?”

“Yeah. Not such an innocent kid anymore now, is he?”

Bruce looks at him like he thinks Tony is missing the point. “Why did he come here?”

Tony snorts into his wineglass as he sips. “He says he’s on vacation.”

“Why did he really come here?”

Tony looks at him. The light of the antique lamp creates sharp shadows on Bruce’s face that make his expression hard to read. “What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t want you to say anything, particularly. I want you to think. I assume you— So you didn’t go to Oscorp with him, this afternoon?”

“Was that your idea?”

Bruce looks at him for a while, in a way that makes Tony feel defensive. He didn’t ask for any of this, in fact, the whole thing has already cost him five years of his life at least, and he’s still letting the kid stay here. How is this on him?

“I’ll take him tomorrow morning,” Bruce says. “To the Oscorp thing. What time is his mother coming?”

“You are going to Oscorp? Bruce the hermit? You know there’s going to be other people there, right?”

“I know. I’ll be okay, I’ll take it easy.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Tony says, feeling uncomfortable, because the obvious thing would be to offer that he’ll take the kid, after all. If Bruce can get over his deep-seated issues, why can’t Tony do the same? He stays silent, though.

“You want the kid to spend three days in New York and only see the inside of this penthouse?”

“He can go wherever he wants, Bruce, I’m not holding him prisoner. Quite the opposite, in fact.” He shows his disinterest in the whole matter by taking out his phone and laying it on his knee, looking over Pepper’s list again. He wonders what she even means by ‘cheating’ at keeping a houseplant alive and sends Pepper a quick message to ask her. When he looks up, Bruce is still studying him. “What?”

“Why are you being like this?”

“I’m not being like anything.”

“What happened with—What’s her name? The boy’s mother?”

Tony sniffs and looks away again. He isn’t sure if he trusts Bruce with this. Which stings, because it was Mary in the first place who permanently damaged his trust to the point where he isn’t sure if it will ever operate normally. It is that realization that makes him want to tell Bruce, almost out of spite. “Mary. We were college friends. Good friends. In fact, for a large chunk of my life she was the only person I thought I could trust.”

“What happened?”

He flicks the phone off his leg, letting it land face-down on the couch, and sighs. “We… She graduated and we fell out of touch for a while. Six, seven years later she turns up on my doorstep and she’s suddenly got this little kid hanging off her. I help her get a place near where I live. I give her money; she’d racked up some debts. I don’t know, I was happy to have her around again. She made me laugh. We smoked a lot of weed together, she knew how to get good weed. I didn’t object in so many words to her sharing the merchandise, you know.” He forces a grin, waves his hand. “Things were fine. Her kid was always running around my house. Oh—We didn’t smoke around him, don’t look so worried.”

“Still…”

“Yeah, yeah. Armchair critic. She threw parties, man she knew how to throw a party. Felt like I was back in college but this time without my old man breathing down my neck.” He wouldn’t say he misses that old life, that pre-Afghanistan life. He had to grow up at some point. But he does think he would at least remember it fondly, if his memories weren’t so tainted by what happened after. “Two years in she suddenly reveals to me that Peter is my son.”

Bruce chokes on his wine.

“Spoiler alert, he isn’t actually. Calm down. But she said he was, and it fucked me up. I couldn’t countenance the idea that she was lying to me, and the math checked out more or less, so I believed it. I didn’t want to be a dad; I can’t stress how much I didn’t want to be a dad. I mean, look at me.” He waves in a circular motion at his own face.

“What do you think the effects of being a dad are on the face?”

“A blank look of abject depression, probably? I mean, the kid was fun and all, I always took him to the beach or out for ice cream. But I didn’t want to be his dad. I spent four, five weeks practically in shock. Until my lawyers gang-pressed me into doing a paternity test. I wanted to fire them for even suggesting it, I didn’t— The idea that she could be making shit up, manipulating me, it felt so impossible to me that I didn’t even want to entertain the idea. But of course she was. And you know what,” he starts laughing, mirthlessly. “The kid’s actual dad turned out to be our fucking marijuana dealer, Richard Parker. How about that? He’d been practically living in her house the whole time, which I didn’t even know, because I’m a grade-A stooge. He knew about the whole thing, the two of them orchestrating it together. Just a way to get more money out of me when I already bought her an entire fucking house. Laughing behind my back about how gullible I was, I bet. All I can say is, thank God I got abducted in Afghanistan and re-evaluated my life.” Turns out, the most effective way to get clean is through pure hatred for your dealer.

“Don’t say that.”

“The woman is like a slow working poison. My system still wasn’t clear of her. And now I have to deal with her again.”

Bruce shakes his head in that particular manner of his. Here comes the quote about anger. “Anger is the last resort of the incompetent, Tony,” Bruce lectures. “A person who angers you, conquers you.”

“She’s a dick and I hope she dies slowly and painfully. Richard too, in fact.”

“It was not the kid’s fault.”

“I’m not saying it was his fault. Not at all. But he could have run away to anywhere. Why’d he have to come here of all places and drag me back into the past, reopen old wounds?”

“Yes,” Bruce says. “He could have gone anywhere. But he came here of all places. That’s the point, Tony.”

“Well, I’m clearly missing the point. I haven’t exchanged a single word with him in five years. Why would— It’s just hard to have him here.” His phone buzzes and he glances down and flips it back over. Pepper sent him a reply. No automatic feeding system like you do with those fish, and no getting help from Bruce or Dum-E.

He exhales. “Listen, the kid doesn’t matter. I need your advice on what kind of houseplant you think we should get.”

“Right.”

“Right,” Tony mocks.

-

Peter takes the little fireman out of his pocket and places it on his nightstand, on top of the book Bruce lent him. He kicks his shoes off, shrugs out of his hoodie and goes into the bathroom to brush his teeth.

He didn’t bring pajamas. He already crammed his backpack full of everything else until it was creaking at the seams. He doesn’t own a lot of stuff, anyways, because Richard has a habit of regularly sifting through his belongings to find things he can sell. He always does it when Peter isn’t around, too, like he thinks Peter somehow wouldn’t notice his calculator suddenly going missing from his desk, or his phone charger from the nightstand. Or just his entire nightstand. Peter never says anything, because he doesn’t want to set Richard off. So they just pretend that the thing they both know is happening, isn’t happening.

Richard always sort of drifts in and out of their house. Like a persistent mold. He is there for a few weeks and then disappears for months at a time, and it’s been that way for as long as Peter can remember.

Tony got him the fireman truck for his birthday when he turned seven. When Richard showed up only a few days later, he immediately confiscated it. Peter laid awake that night, and when the house was finally quiet, he sneaked downstairs to at least rescue his favorite little fireman. He has carried it in his pocket ever since, to keep it safe.

He rinses his mouth and returns to the bedroom. He likes his room. The windows don’t open, which makes him a bit claustrophobic, but the bed is great, and there are complimentary slippers and a bathrobe in the closet, as if this is a four-star hotel. They’re several sizes too big, but it’s the thought that counts and all that. It’s pretty cool. He slides under the covers and has just picked up his phone for some final late-night-scrolling when there is a soft knock on his door. Peter quickly shoves the phone away and looks towards the door. Nothing happens for a while. Then, another knock.

“Come in,” Peter thinks to call out.

The door gently creaks open. Bruce sticks his head inside. “Hi, Peter. Did you have enough dinner?”

“Yeah. I made pasta.”

“Do you still want to go to the Oscorp exhibition? I’ll go with you in the morning.”

Peter’s heart gives a leap. “Oh,” he says. “Okay.”

“We’ll get breakfast on our way.”

“Okay.” He’d bought an apple to eat for breakfast, but this sounds better. “Thank you.”

“You still want to go?”

“Yes! Yes. Thank you.”

“See you tomorrow, then. Sleep well, Peter.” The door closes.

Yeah, Peter thinks, punching his pillow a few times to get it in the right shape before lying back down. This might turn out okay.

-

He wakes up early the next morning to rain, pattering steadily against the window. Rain makes him nervous. He is used to spending a lot of time outside: the house is for sleeping, and not much else. But being outside in the rain is awful, so waking up to this sound has always been a bit demoralizing.

Today should be different, though, he reminds himself.

Bruce is early too, already at the table when Peter gets to the kitchen. He smiles at Peter and lays out the plan for that morning. They’ll leave a little after nine, security will drive them, they’ll get breakfast on the way, reach the exhibition as it opens at ten. And, since it’s too early to leave, Bruce reads the newspaper out loud again and comments on the headlines.

Bruce is nice.

Tony used to be nice too, but in a different way. He was nice, but low-key an asshole at the same time. Seventy percent nice, thirty percent asshole. Peter’s mother is more the reverse. And Richard is pure, undiluted asshole. Bruce is just nice, one hundred percent nice. Maybe all of the asshole went into that Hulk guy.

Eventually, Bruce lays his tablet aside and folds his hands together. “Tony told me a bit about what happened between him and your mother. I hope you don’t mind.”

Peter shrugs.

“Does she still do drugs?”

“No,” Peter lies easily. “Does Tony?”

“No.”

That might actually not be a lie. Peter hasn’t seen any evidence of it around the penthouse, and he knows what to look for. He hasn’t even seen a lot of alcohol, just a few bottles of wine. Half of Tony’s posts on social media still contain references to booze, though, so it’s hard to be sure.

When it’s time to go, Bruce says, “Just a heads up,” as they step into the elevator, “I don’t usually go… out. Much. I don’t enjoy being around a lot of people.”

“Oh. Yeah. That’s okay. People suck. We can leave if it gets too busy.”

“It’s early. But it’s also summer break. So I’m not sure how crowded it will get.”

“We don’t have to go, you know,” Peter assures him. “I’m… I’m fine with staying at home and playing a board game.” He just doesn’t want to be alone all day.

“No. We’ll go. It’s fine. It will be fine.” He looks nervous, though.

They reach the parking garage, and Peter’s morning is just getting better and better, because the person tasked with driving them to the exhibition is none other than Jas, the security guard who was nice to him, who now gapes at Peter as soon as she spots him.

“Hey!” Peter smiles broadly.

She recovers, then nods at Bruce. “It’s nice to see you going out, sir.”

They get into a car that smells really nice; minty fresh. Rain drums against the roof. They get bagels at a bakery on the way, and Peter accidentally gets jam all over the backseat which Bruce doesn’t seem to mind one bit.

The Oscorp exhibition space is in a low, separate building on the same lot as the rest of the company. They are dropped off close to the door. It’s two minutes after ten and the parking lot on this side is still practically empty. They exit the car. Bruce opens an umbrella. “Does Stark Industries have exhibitions, too?” Peter asks as they meander towards the entrance.

“Yes, but it’s not at the tower. There’s a separate building in the south of Manhattan.”

“Can we go there tomorrow?”

“Your mother is picking you up today.”

“Oh. Right.”

They enter through a revolving door and step into a room with a large reception desk, and lots of low tables that display books and bugs in resin, and rows of t-shirts against the wall. “Are these, like, inventions?”

“This is the gift shop,” Bruce says.

“Oh.”

“Haven’t you ever been to a museum?”

Peter shakes his head. “But I know you’re not supposed to touch anything, and stuff.”

Bruce nods. “Good start. I’ll get us tickets.” He shakes out the umbrella and leaves it near the entrance. Peter meanders through the gift shop as he waits. He wonders if he should buy Tony a present, if that would maybe fix something. He has 497 dollars left, and he doesn’t know how long that has to last him. The t-shirts have him the most curious. They’re all kinda… weird. He pauses in front of one that says ‘I wear this shirt periodically’, with a lot of colored squares above it.

“Do you like it?” Bruce suddenly asks from behind him, and Peter jumps a little.

“I don’t know. I don’t get it.”

“It’s a pun. Because that’s the periodic table.”

“What’s a periodic table?”

Bruce stays quiet for a moment. “It’s a science thing,” he then says, and Peter gets a feeling he said something wrong.

“Can we go inside?”

“I wanted to ask your age. Fifteen and under have free admission.”

“Oh, yeah,” he follows Bruce to show his ID to the lady behind the desk.

“Are you expecting a lot of people?” Bruce asks her warily as she tallies up a total.

“No, it’ll be nice and quiet. It’s a school day.”

“But summer break has started.”

“No sir, not until next week.”

“Ah.” Bruce swipes his credit card, his head tilted thoughtfully. “Your summer break hasn’t started yet?” he asks Peter as they make their way into the next room.

“I didn’t say it had.” Peter cranes his neck to take in the high ceilings, first. This space reminds him a bit of Bruce’s lab and Tony’s workshop combined. Except with tons of natural light — Bruce and Tony both seem to hate that. There is so much to see that he doesn’t know where to look first.

“Are you supposed to be in school right now?”

Peter hasn’t really, properly gone to school in ages. It’s more accurate to say that he makes guest appearances. “I’m failing everything anyways,” he says, and he seizes Bruce by the arm to pull him along to the first display that seems to be all about algae. This area of the room has bugs, and plants, and weirdly colored fungi that look like they came from a different planet. Bruce has patient explanations to give for everything. Peter only partially understands them and he’s afraid to ask more questions. It’s amazing, though, how much people get paid just to spend all day looking at mud from really up close.

Peter pauses by an aquarium — No, wait, a terrarium. About five feet wide. Inside, a handful of spiders are building webs or just chilling on tree branches. Peter squints to read the text on the little plate next to it. Pardosa, more commonly known as thin-legged wolf spiders. These five spiders have survived solely on a diet of radioactive lichen for the past three weeks.

“You squint a lot,” Bruce notes. “How is your eyesight?”

“Oh. Yeah. Bad.” Peter glances back at the terrarium. He only spots four spiders. But something else has him a lot more curious. “Bruce. I thought this was the research you were doing?”

Bruce steps closer, readjusting his glasses. He studies the text, his eyebrows slowly dipping into a frown. “Now, that’s strange…” he murmurs. “My colleagues discovered this species of lichen only about a month ago, and they haven’t shared it with anyone else.”

Peter feels instantly indignant on Bruce’s behalf. “So. What. They actually stole your ideas?”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

Peter pounds his fist against his other hand. “Let’s find the boss and smack him until he tells us what’s up. You hold him down, I’ll do the kicking. I’ll start with his ankles and work my way up.”

“You will be doing no such thing. I will talk to my colleagues and look into it.”

Peter rolls his eyes. “You know, violence solves a lot of things. …Kidding.”

“I should hope so. Anger is a pointless emotion. And the CEO of Oscorp is a powerful man, you do not want him as your enemy.”

“I once shoved a dead fish through the police commissioner’s mailbox, I think I’d be fine dealing with a rich nerd.” Peter moves on to the next terrarium, but it doesn’t go unnoticed to him that Bruce lingers next to the one with the copycat spiders, looking troubled.

There is a sudden, slight sting on the back of his hand, like a needle piercing through skin. Peter spasms and shakes his hand, glancing down. A spider tumbles to the floor, shoots away and slips underneath a wooden plinth.

“Well, fuck you too,” Peter tells it, and rubs at his hand. There are two tiny, red dots on the back of his hand, between thumb and forefinger.

“All right?” Bruce asks, catching up.

Peter quickly shoves the hand into his pocket. “I didn’t touch anything.”

They leave the bugs and moss behind and meander into a section that seems to be more about microscopes and blood cells. Other visitors have slowly trickled in behind them, but when a group of young men and women, probably students, enters the room cackling, Peter can feel Bruce stiffen next to him. “We can go if you want.”

“But—”

“I really don’t mind.”

It’s a testament to how uncomfortable Bruce is that he lets himself be persuaded pretty quickly.

“How do you make lichen radioactive?” Peter asks once they are back in the car. “Do you put it in an x-ray machine?”

“We don’t make it, we import it. From areas in Lapland where they have been exposed to nuclear fallout in the past.”

“Because they get their nutrition from trace chemicals in the atmosphere, right? That’s what it said in your book.”

“You already read it?”

“No. I mean, sort of. Reading gives me a headache, so I just kind of leafed through it and read bits here and there.”

Bruce gives that worried frown again. Peter has seen it a lot, today. “Reading gives you a headache.”

“Yeah. I think I need glasses. Do you have an x-ray machine? If I swallow a coin, can you take pictures?”

“You’ve never had your eyes measured?”

“No. That sounds scary.” He kicks off his shoes so he can curl up in the backseat. The rain is still drumming against the roof and he tries to ignore it. Ugh, rain is so depressing. He reminds himself that he doesn’t have to go outside today; just grab some food to cook dinner. “Are we going home?”

“I was thinking we could stop by a friend’s place for lunch, if you don’t mind meeting someone.”

Peter yawns a little and rubs his hand. The bite is itchy and the minty smell in the car seems suddenly too strong, giving him a bit of a heady feeling. “An Avenger?”

“Yes. A quick stop. We’ll leave in time to get home when your mother arrives.”

“Don’t worry, she’s not coming,” Peter says before he can stop himself.

Bruce says nothing.

-

It has been at least a month since Bruce last came to Natasha’s place, and his visits usually involve a lot of her gently coaching him out of the tower. It would be easier to get a wild animal to walk into her home voluntarily.

So this visit, announced only at the last minute, is noteworthy. Natasha likes noteworthy things.

I’m bringing a kid, he had messaged, and, cryptically: I want to see what you think of him.

Natasha understands the assignment.

The assignment is a scrawny boy named Peter. He wears a hoodie that is of good quality but worn thin at the elbows. The healthy tan of a kid who spends a lot of time outside, but combined with collarbones that jut out a little too sharply. His eyes are alert, and his voice doesn’t waver when he introduces himself, but he hunches in on himself as he stands, like he prefers to be invisible.

A boy of contradictions.

“Cozy,” the teenager says, scratching the back of his hand as he takes in her entire wall of missing persons flyers.

“You couldn’t have taken those down when you knew we were coming?” Bruce asks.

“Why would I? They tie the room together.”

Peter squints, his face already far too close to one of the flyers. “Are you looking for all these people, ma’am?”

“Call me Natasha. And technically, yes. Some more actively than others. But all those faces are in here.” She taps her forehead.

“And you catch bad guys?”

“All the time.”

Peter tugs at Bruce’s sleeve. “You should tell her about how Oscorp stole your research.”

Bruce flushes and shakes his head at Natasha. “Don’t— It’s probably nothing.”

Peter sniffs, dissatisfied. “You should be getting angry!”

Here comes the anger quote. “Anger is a pointless emotion,” Bruce lectures. “There is no point getting angry about something you can fix, and no point getting angry about something you can’t fix, either.”

Peter gives him a rather blank look.

“Lunch, then?” Natasha suggests.

Peter slowly walks around her apartment as she heats up some lasagna from the freezer. He nudges the windows, probably to test if they open. He lingers for a while in front of the drawing of three ballerinas she has by her balcony doors. Bruce stands near the wall and watches the kid. He is doing that finger tapping thing he always does when he is unnerved.

Peter takes the chair facing the door and windows. Tony has that same tendency. Bruce prefers to sit with his back to the ‘missing’ flyers. You can tell a lot about a person from their seating preferences. Natasha likes to call it her table test.

As they wait for the lasagna, Natasha pours everyone a cup of tea. She sets down her tea box with six compartments. One has eight bags of earl grey. The other five compartments each have one single bag of varying types. It’s what she likes to call her tea test. There’s two kinds of people. People who will take whatever tea they want, and people who won’t dare to take the last bag and only go for earl grey. Tony is of the first type, Bruce of the second.

Peter is a type two, as well. Leaning heavily on his elbows as he dangles the bag into his cup.

“So, Peter,” she says as she sits. “You live around here?”

“Malibu.”

“Ah. So you’re rich.”

Bruce frowns at her, but what was he expecting? He asked her to form an opinion, and the best way to feel someone out is by saying unexpected things and seeing how they react.

The reaction is muted. Peter shrugs and says he isn’t sure. Perhaps he is from a wealthy family but mommy and daddy recently went bankrupt. That would explain some of the contradictions.

They eat and she doesn’t ask many more direct questions. She just lets the conversation flow and picks up on noteworthy things.

Noteworthy things include: Peter doesn’t like rain. Peter calls himself ‘about fifty percent asshole’ but thinks Bruce is a hundred percent nice. Bruce says Peter is self-deprecating. Peter clearly doesn’t know what ‘self-deprecating’ means but doesn’t want to ask.

Peter wasn’t overly focused on the food when she was setting it out, but once they finished eating she notices the way his eyes keep straying to the fruit bowl in the middle of the table. “Do you want more food? Do you want to take some with you?”

“I have money!” Peter says, defensively, and slightly too loud.

“No one is saying—” Bruce starts.

“How much money?” Natasha asks.

“497 dollars,” Peter says. “And ten cents.”

“Show it to me.”

Peter wraps his arms protectively around himself and glares. “Why?” He clearly has the wallet in his left pocket. Interesting that he takes the risk of carrying around that much cash money in the big city. But apparently, he’d consider it a greater risk to leave some of it in his room at home.

“Never mind.” She already knows what she wanted to know.

They clear everything away. Natasha gives Peter a banana which he accepts with a bit of a frown but no further protesting.

“You want to head back?” Bruce asks.

“Yeah. Actually. I feel a little bleh.” Peter scratches the back of his hand and yawns.

“Could you give me a minute? Wait for me in the car?”

Peter shrugs. He shakes Natasha’s hand. “Nice to meet you,” he says, the words polite but his eyes still wary. “Hope you find those 3 billion people you got hanging on your wall.”

“So, what’s your read of him?” Bruce asks as soon as the boy has left the apartment.

“Is he homeless? Is he a runaway? Did you pluck him off the streets? He’s giving you a headache, isn’t he?”

“What do you mean?”

“You were doing that thing you do when you’re conflicted.” She imitates the tapping fingers.

“I asked you to profile him, not me.”

“Can’t turn it off, hon.”

“I’m worried about him. I’m not sure what to do. I just… You’re not a scientist, but you know what a periodic table is, right?”

“What exactly are you worried about?”

“That he’s not being cared for properly.”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

Bruce looks uncomfortable. “I don’t… I’m not good at….”

“How did he end up here?”

“Tony used to know his mother.”

“Right. Back when he was…” she makes the gesture of drinking alcohol to refer to Tony’s infamous old habits.

“Yes. And Tony is being… Tony. Even more so than usual.”

“Yikes.”

“I should leave. His mother … should be arriving any moment.” He sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose. “I’m not sure what to do if she doesn’t. I’m not sure what to do if she does.”

Chapter Text

Mary isn’t here. And isn’t answering her phone. Tony does something he isn’t supposed to and asks FRIDAY to trace the number.

Mary is currently in a night club in Malibu, despite it being around 10 AM over there.

He clenches his phone between chin and shoulder as he paces the kitchen. “FRIDAY, keep calling her number, non-stop.”

She finally answers after nearly half an hour. She sounds delighted. “Anthony. You’re so eager!” There is the muted noise of a bass drum in the background. She probably stepped outside.

Tony clutches the phone, pressing it against his ear. “Your son, for whom you are responsible, is in New York. You were supposed to pick him up today. Am I getting through to you?”

“I meant to call you, hon. Listen. I can’t come to New York. I got a terrible case of, what’s it called. Plane phobia. It’s not gonna work out.”

“You didn’t have a terrible phobia two days ago!”

“Can you just put him on the next flight out? I’ll pay for the ticket. Way easier. Why didn’t we think of that sooner?”

“We did think of that. We already tried that.”

“This is a liiittle bit your fault,” she says, stretching the words out.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re letting him stay at your house. You’re giving him an alternative. If he didn’t have one, he’d be on his way home.” She makes a whiny little noise. “Anthony-yy, this whole thing is starting to stress me out. Can you just get over yourself and take care of it?”

Tony sees red, anger sharpening to fury. “This entire thing— Your son— is your responsibility. This is stressing you out? This is stressing me out and I got nothing to do with it! God—” He gestures wildly to himself, almost throws the phone across the room but stops himself at the last moment. He takes a deep breath and raises it back to his ear. “Fuck you," he says in his most level voice. "I’m done. Fuck it. I’m done being the one chasing after you.” It’s clear she is dragging his whole thing out to get his attention, so all he needs to do is stop giving it. “You figure out how to fix it from now on. You know where to find him. Good luck figuring out how to get him back to Malibu. I’m out.”

He hangs up.

He used to like this about her; the way she was blasé about everything. No sense of urgency about anything, ever. No rules. He thought it was a great way to raise a kid. Just let them do their thing. Way better than his own old man, certainly, who got angry if Tony so much as breathed the wrong way. Anyone who did the opposite of Howard was doing all right, in his book.

But this ‘letting him do his thing’ is getting out of hand.

-

Bruce and Peter return. Bruce, predictably, looks pale and tired. But less predictably, so does Peter. Tony swirls his coffee around in his cup as his gaze drifts from one to the other. “Was it any good?”

“Yeah,” Peter yawns a bit. “I was gonna bring you a gift, but I forgot.”

That seems… undeserved. “You don’t have to buy me gifts, kid. Please don’t.”

Peter says nothing, just blinks heavily at him. He’s swaying on his feet. There’s a banana sticking out of his pocket, Tony notices.

“Your mother didn’t show,” he points out.

“Oh. Yeah. No.” Peter shrugs.

“So I told her you may as well stick around.”

Peter and Bruce both freeze. Probably for very different reasons.

“You wanted a summer in New York, right? Knock yourself out.”

“I… can stay the whole summer?”

“If it’s up to me.” Though if he knows Mary, she’ll turn up soon enough, trying a different angle to get Tony’s attention back.

“And… you’ll go sight-seeing with me tomorrow?”

The kid’s pushing his luck, obviously, but he chose a good moment. “Yeah. Fuck it. Let’s go see some sights.” Tony feels strangely vindicated.

Peter beams. “Okay. Okay. That’s… Okay. I’m going to bed, I have a headache.” He wipes his face with his sleeve. “Cool. We’ll see some sights.”

He leaves the room, taking the banana with him.

Bruce crosses his arms and watches him leave, his face grave. “His mother didn’t come?” he asks in a low voice.

Tony sets the coffee down. Shrugs. “Clearly.”

“Okay. Now what?”

“Now fucking nothing. She can figure it out. And in the meantime, I’ll take her son sight-seeing. You wanted me to be nicer to him, right?”

“I want you to be nice to him for his sake, not … out of some sort of revenge.”

“Same difference. Kid’s happy, I’m happy. Teenagers are great.” He claps his hands a single time.

“We should probably, uh,” Bruce says tentatively. “We should probably. Do something? Call someone?”

“We aren’t doing a thing. Ball’s in her court. End of story. All she wants is attention, and now she finally has to come here to get it. I got it figured out.”

“Right.”

“Right,” Tony mocks. He turns. “I’ll be in my workshop.”

“Tony. Wait. I have to call some colleagues about, uh, radioactive lichen. Some issues have come up. This might take a while. Please remember to make sure Peter has dinner?”

“Yeah, sure.”

-

Pepper calls him mid-way through an attempt to play catch with Dum-E.

“Why did Happy just tell me that someone from his team just told him that the boy is back in the tower?” She says ‘boy’ the way someone else would say ‘wanted criminal’.

Damn. A security guard drove Peter to the exhibition thing, of course. Tony should have been prepared for this. “I have everything under control.”

“Yes, but I don’t. And I don’t care for it. Why is he here? We had him picked up by the police!”

“What can I say, I’m a lenient and merciful ruler.”

Pepper tells him to stop being nonsensical and Tony caves. What else can he do; she won’t let this go any time soon. “Remember that time I told you about Mary Fitzpatrick’s fake paternity scam? Remember that? We were in Boston, I was drunk… no wait, that doesn’t narrow it down at all…”

“No,” she says, in that tone that makes it clear she immediately jumped to the right conclusion.

“Yup.”

“Why are you letting him stay?”

“It’s not his fault, what his mother did.”

“It sounds like a liability.” By ‘it’ she means Peter, presumably.

“It isn’t,” Tony assures her. “It’s her responsibility, she knows where he is. She’s just too used to getting things handed to her while she, I don’t know, probably sits at home making coats out of dalmatian puppies. And she wouldn’t sue either way. She hates cops.” Unless Mary radically changed over the last years — and the phone calls so far have done nothing to indicate that she has — calling the police under any circumstances is not an option that would ever occur to Mary, not even if she were actively being held hostage. “It’s fine, he’s just hanging out. Bruce took him to Oscorp today.”

That distracts her. “Bruce took him to Oscorp?”

“There’s an exhibition.”

“I know,” Pepper says. “That is… I haven’t seen it but — Norman told me.”

“Norman told you, did he? Isn’t he nice.”

“This whole thing sounds like it could get out of hand. I don’t like it. Stability is key, Tony.”

“Look. This is a personal issue. It’s not Stark Industries related. This isn’t even on your plate.”

Pepper is silent for a moment, and then admits: “I suppose not.”

“Great. Then let me take it off your plate, you already got plenty of stuff on there. Aren’t you glad you got me?”

“Okay, Tony, just… Please remember that teenagers need three meals a day and— I don’t even know. A bedtime, probably. Should I make a checklist?”

God, he adores her. “Go to dinner with me.”

“Have you successfully made pancakes yet?”

“No, but I’m… looking into houseplants. I’m trying, Pep. I promise.”

She hums.

-

He has a restless night, and bumps into Peter in the kitchen the next morning. Almost literally. The kid is swaying on his feet. Tony only just rolled out of bed, but so did Peter, clearly. “Hey. Did you get drunk without me or something?”

Peter wipes his face with the sleeve of his giant bathrobe. “Got really sick last night. I threw up like three times.”

Right. He was supposed to check if the kid had dinner. “Well, you look fine now.”

“Shut up,” Peter mutters. He snatches the apple out of the bowl next to the fridge and bites into it. The robe is far too big on him. Where did he even get it?

“Still want to go sightseeing?”

Peter nods. “I want to see the beach.”

“Don’t you have plenty of beach in Malibu?”

Peter shrugs. “Everything you got in New York, we also got in Malibu. What’s your suggestion?”

“Nothing. The beach is fine.” Tony looks through the dishwasher to find his favorite coffee mug and wonders if they need a security guard to accompany them to the beach.

There is a crack and a yelp and Tony’s head shoots up just in time to see Peter tumble backwards and disappear behind the table, splinters flying everywhere. And suddenly there are exposed shelves where there used to be a cupboard door. “Jeez. You okay?” He leans sideways to see Peter flat on his back, blinking up at the ceiling, the cupboard door splayed across his chest. Looks like it came clean off its hinges. “I just got about a hundred flashbacks to you breaking stuff in my house in Malibu, kid.”

That’s called vandalism, Tony.

“Your cupboards suck!” Peter snaps. He pushes it to one side and climbs to his feet. He looks flushed. “I was just opening it. That wasn’t—I didn’t do anything.”

“Yeah, no worries, you’re fine. I’ll have someone call someone to fix it. Did you hurt yourself?”

Peter quickly shakes his head.

One time, many moons ago, this kid climbed on top of his kitchen counter to reach a jar of peanut butter and knocked down an entire shelf of expensive dinnerware. Tony ran into the kitchen to find the shards strewn about, covering almost the entire floor of the kitchen, and Peter standing on the counter, scooping peanut butter straight from the jar with his fingers, looking entirely unfazed, perhaps even proud. The memory bubbles up from somewhere deep down.

Tony pushes it back down. “Go on, then. Get dressed.” He takes out his phone and sends a message to Happy. Sup homeboy. You want to go to the beach today?

-

Tony decides on Coney Island Beach. He opts for breezy clothes, sunglasses and a cap to avoid recognition. They get to the parking garage and Happy is there, wearing a black suit with a waistcoat and a tie, Windsor Knot. “You should have put on a Hawaiian shirt or something,” Tony tells him before getting in the car. “And slippers. We’re gonna be running through sand, man.”

Happy just looks at Peter, measuringly, and then back at Tony with one eyebrow raised.

“Don’t ask. Just drive.”

They get in the back. Peter kicks his shoes off, tucks his legs under himself and starts staring at Tony.

“What?”

“What does ‘self-deprecating’ mean?”

“You need to read more.”

“Reading is for nerds.”

“How dare you.”

“And nerds are lame.”

“Nerds get jobs. What’s your career plan with that limited vocabulary of yours?”

Peter shrugs. “I’m failing everything.”

Tony can’t say he’s surprised to hear it, though he had been wondering if he’s simply gotten too out of touch to really know what counts as ‘general knowledge’ for the youth of today. “School is a nightmare,” he says with a shrug. “Don’t blame you. I always used to say that lunch break was my favorite subject.”

“I like English,” Peter fiddles with his seatbelt. “But that’s just because the teacher is nice, I’m still failing it. Did Bruce tell you about Oscorp stealing his research?”

“No. What?”

“Yeah. His nuclear grasshoppers.” Peter explains something about radioactive Pardosa, “more commonly known as thin-legged wolf spiders”.

“Osborn is an asshole,” Tony confirms.

“Do you have his address? Can we send him a dead fish in a box?”

“That’s basic, kid. I’ll send him a few razor-sharp insults online. Treat him to some patented Stark snark.”

-

Tony hasn’t been to a beach since moving to New York. As they step off the boardwalk and into the loose sand, he realizes that it’s probably because the beach reminds him of Malibu. Happy follows them, grumbling under his breath. His shoes are already full of sand. He can’t say Tony didn’t warn him. Peter is leading the way, taking large paces towards the open water. And then he pauses quite abruptly. He wraps his arms around himself and looks around for a while.

“Now what?” Tony asks.

Peter glances his way. Shrugs. “I don’t know. See sights.”

They stand there for a while in silence. An empty plastic bag tumbles past.

Okay. This sucks. “Seriously, kid. What’s the plan?”

“What makes you think I have a plan?” Peter snaps.

“Oh yeah. What was I thinking. Assuming that the kid who ran away to New York without knowing where New York even is, has the ability to think ahead.”

“Shut up.”

“You shut up.”

“You guys wanna get some churros?” Happy suggests. Both Tony and Peter fall silent and turn to look at him. Happy points his thumb across his shoulder. “We just passed a place.”

They trudge back and take a seat at a round wooden table under a parasol. Tony pulls his cap further down when the waiter approaches, and orders churros and drinks for everyone. Happy wants a coke which is unlike him, but he breathes a sigh of relief when it arrives and holds the cold glass against his cheek.

“Take off your jacket,” Tony suggests as he digs in.

“I’m on duty.”

“Oh yeah,” Tony says around a full mouth. “I’m definitely gonna fire you otherwise. Come on, Happy. You could go running around naked and I’d still keep you around.”

“That just tells me your loyalty is a liability.”

“Hm-hm, love you too.”

Next to them, Peter is peeling a churro apart like it’s string cheese. “I’ve never had one of these before.”

“What’s the Malibu beach food like?” Happy asks him. He’s using his kind voice. That doesn’t usually happen with people he only met recently.

“We’d usually get tacos. Tony always wanted shrimp tacos. Remember?” Peter dangles a strand of churro into his mouth.

There was this small, colorful food truck that was their favorite. Tony can suddenly picture it again, and then pictures Mary, sitting at the picnic table with large sunglasses and a scarf around her head, laughing, cackling, like she always did.

Ugh. Tony puts the churros down, no longer hungry.

Which is ridiculous. Pathetic. It's just an innocent memory of tacos. “Yeah,” he says, keeping his voice level. “I remember.”

Peter says nothing and looks away. Tony can tell the level voice threw him off, but it's the best thing he can offer right now. “Want the rest?” he tries, sliding the churros Peter’s way.

Peter digs in, silently.

Tony plants his elbows against the armrests and leans back, looking Happy’s way. “So if Osborn did steal Bruce’s research, how did that happen?”

“Wouldn’t be your first case of corporate espionage.”

“Yeah, but usually at the lower levels, where security is not as tight.”

Happy nods a single time. “Ask Bruce what he thinks. And then I’ll look into it.”  

Tony nods and gazes out towards the coastline for a while.

Peter is staring at him again, he realizes at some point. “What?”

“I want more food.” The paper trays in front of him are both empty.

“Yeah, order whatever you want.”

Peter leaves the table and takes off towards the waiter, without asking if either of them want anything.

“This is some of the weirdest shit you’ve ever done, Tony,” Happy says, wiping his brow. “The kid was gone. And now he’s back again. And you two clearly don’t even like each other that much. What’s the story?”

“Take off your jacket and I might tell you.”

Happy huffs, but doesn’t take off his jacket, just rolls up his sleeve a bit.

“Scandalous,” Tony says.

-

Peter falls asleep in the car on the way back. That’s another thing he used to do, Tony remembers suddenly. Fall asleep anywhere, any time. On Tony’s couch, on his doormat, on the spiral staircase, between the trash can and the fridge. Mary would try and fail to wake him up and end up just leaving him there and go home. And then Tony would feed him dinner and make him brush his teeth and maybe drive him to school the next morning if he wasn’t too hungover.

So Tony doesn’t even attempt to wake him up when they reach the parking level under the tower. “FRIDAY will let him up.” He closes the car door behind him.

Happy looks, well, unhappy. Tony isn’t sure if it’s because he considers this bad parenting or a security risk.

They part ways and Tony takes the elevator up to the floor below the penthouse. He saunters down the broad hallway and steps into the lab without knocking. Bruce looks up and nods at him. He is holding a spray bottle of water in one hand and using pliers to pick some grass off a plate. On the table in front of him are eight terrariums with a grasshopper in each one.

“You making some friends?” Tony pauses by his side. “Finally swore off humans once and for all?”

“I already did that a long time ago, Tony.”

“What’s this I hear about Oscorp stealing your work?”

Bruce sighs. “I had a long meeting about it last night. My colleagues definitely didn’t share their findings with anyone else. So unless one of Oscorp’s researchers happened to stumble upon the same species of lichen in the same general area around the same time… Well. I’m afraid there is not much I can do about it, either way, except try to work on an actual breakthrough before they do. Figure out how it’s possible for animals to eat radioactive food without dying.” He sprays water on the grass and drops it into the first terrarium.

“Let me know if you want to bounce ideas. I mean. It sounds boring as hell, but I’ll happily help you one-up Osborn and his thin-legged wolf spiders.”

“You know the species?”

“That’s what Peter said. ‘Pardosa’. Did he remember it wrong?”

“No, he remembered it right,” Bruce says thoughtfully. He shuts the lid of the terrarium. “I think he might be quite smart, you know.”

“A smart-ass, is what he is.”

“He doesn’t seem all that surprised that his mother isn’t coming. I find it concerning.”

“He seems fine. It’s called free range parenting.”

“Right.”

“Right,” Tony mocks. “I’ll be upstairs.”

-

Mary sent him a text message, asking him to put Peter on the plane. Come on, baby, stop being mean. With lots of kissy face emojis. Look how the tables have turned. She finally seems to realize she overplayed her hand. Tony doesn’t respond. He puts his phone away and asks FRIDAY if Peter is still asleep in the car.

“Mr. Parker woke up and has left the tower.”

“Huh. Okay. Fine either way.” He hesitates a moment. “Remind me to make sure he has dinner, okay?”

“Will do, boss.”

-

Peter doesn’t need to be reminded to have dinner. He turns up in the penthouse early in the evening with a plastic bag that he shakes out over the kitchen counter. More tomatoes roll out, plus a plastic bag with grated cheese.

“Is pasta the only thing you can make?” Tony asks, looking on.

“No. But it’s the easiest thing.” His hair is standing up in all directions and he looks a bit flushed.

“What have you been up to, did you steal that food? You look like you ran half a marathon or something.”

“Just explored the city, you know, see how far I can jump.”

“See how far you can jump.”

“Get off my back.” Peter turns on the stove and Tony decides to watch, pulling out a chair by the table. Who knows; he might learn his first recipe and finally check off one third of a check box on Pepper’s list.

Peter doesn’t seem to mind the scrutiny. But he warns: “I’m not cooking anything for you.”

“Yeah, no thanks. I’ll order. Do you know how to make pancakes?”

“Yeah. From a box and stuff.”

“Will you teach me?”

“I— Sure,” Peter says.

Cooking looks pretty easy. Peter waits for the water to boil and then unceremoniously dumps in the entire box of pasta. And then he just leans against the fridge and watches it cook.

“The box says six portions,” Tony points out.

“I’m hungry. Shut up.”

“You shut up. Not my fault if you didn’t learn how to count.”

“Asshole,” Peter grumbles, without looking at him.

“Lighten up, it was a joke.” Tony takes out his phone to order food. “God, I’m glad I never had kids.”

Peter stiffens but keeps his eyes firmly on the food. “Yeah. That was clear.”

“Meaning?”

“Just, it was clear. Walking out without even saying goodbye to me or anything.”

“Get over it. I wasn’t your dad, I didn’t owe you a thing. You have your mom to thank for the way I left, go yell at her.”

“I’m not yelling.”

“Do you know what ‘misplaced anger’ means, or is your vocabulary too limited for that?”

Peter explodes. With a single sweeping motion, he smashes the pot of water off the stove. It crashes against the splashback tiles, water and half-cooked pasta flying everywhere, then bounces against the floor with an ear deafening clang.

“What the hell, kid!”

Peter walks out without looking back. A door slams so hard that the whole building seems to shake.

Tony sits for a moment, speechless. Several tiles above the sink have cracked; one has shattered entirely and fallen off. Above it, the cupboard is still missing a door from the incident this morning. That kid has some serious muscle behind his punches.

That’s called vandalism, Tony.

He gets up and squats next to the pot. He sets it upright and scoops up watery pasta, dumping it back in. When he got most of it, he stands and upturns the entire pot above the trash can. He turns off the stove.

He orders pizza.

Mary was a pretty good cook. Tony doesn’t just remember the paella with shrimp, but also the eggplant curry, the mushroom risotto, the pizza with olives. She would hand-knead the dough and make the tomato sauce from scratch. Cooking was the only thing she seemed to enjoy doing, besides drinking and smoking. She didn’t want other people in the kitchen when she was working, though, so she’d chase him and Peter out, and the two of them would go into the garden and make cupcakes out of sand instead.

A stack of pizza is delivered less than half an hour later, by that one female security guard whose name he can’t remember. “Can you bring one of these to Dr. Banner in his lab?”

“No problem, sir.”

Tony places the other three pizzas on the kitchen table.

He pads down the hallway and stops in front of the closed bedroom door. He raps his knuckles against the wood and pushes the door open. The bottom of the door scrapes against the carpet. Tony frowns and steps inside, experimentally moving the door to one side then the other, and glancing towards the hinges. One screw has sprung clean away from the bottom hinge and the door is out of plumb.

Some serious muscle behind his punches.

“Is any part of my house gonna be left standing by the time you leave?” He looks towards the bed.

Peter is there, quietly peering out at him from under the covers. His face is unreadable.

“I’ll fix it later,” Tony says.

Silence.

“I ordered pizza for you.”

Silence.

“Two pizzas?”

Silence.

“…Okay,” Peter then says, and kicks the blankets away.

Peter quietly follows him back to the kitchen and stares at the cracked tiles, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll get someone to call someone to fix it. Did you burn yourself?”

“No.” Peter glances his way, his eyes shadowed. “I’m—”

“I’m sorry,” Tony says. “I was being an asshole. I’ve been an asshole for the past three days. Just— It’s not your fault. Here.” He motions towards the pizza.

They eat mostly in silence.

“Your mother makes good pizza, right?” Tony asks as he watches Peter start on the second one.

Peter shrugs, rolling the slice of pizza up like a burrito. “She hasn’t really cooked in a while.”

“Oh. Shame.”

The elevator chimes again, announcing Bruce. Peter glances up, pizza halfway to his mouth, and freezes.

Tony turns.

It’s not Bruce. Natasha is standing halfway between the aquarium and the kitchen. She is carrying a brown paper bag in both arms, and has a small duffel bag hanging off her shoulder.

“I don’t remember inviting you,” Tony says.

“That means nothing,” she says. “You probably don’t remember what you had for breakfast this morning.”

“We had churros at Coney Island Beach. What’d you bring?”

She moves past him and, instead of answering, starts unpacking. Rice, breakfast cereal, onions, a carton of eggs, dried apricots, tea bags, cashew nuts, milk, bananas, dried oregano, a cucumber, mustard, dark chocolate, a can of beans, bread. “When’s the last time you ate a vegetable?” she asks Peter.

Peter is still sitting there with a pizza-burrito in his hand, and blinks up at her.

“There’s tomatoes on his pizza, Romanoff. Back off. Why are you here?”

“No reason. Just passing through.” She runs one hand across the cracked tiles. “Did Bruce turn?”

“No, he’s okay.”

Natasha nods, folds the paper bag. She is wearing a bright pink shirt that says ‘after whiskey I am risky’ and it’s horribly distracting. Tony points at it. “What’s that about?”

She ignores him. “You and I are going shopping tomorrow,” she tells Peter. “You need clothes. And glasses.”

“I’m sorry,” Tony says. “Do you two know each other?”

“I don’t think I need glasses,” Peter says. “Um. Anymore.”

“We’ll let the optometrist decide that in the morning.”

“I can decide for myself just fine,” Peter says, defensively.

“What an attitude, coming from a type two teabagger.” Natasha tucks the bag under her arm. “I’ll take the bedroom next to Bruce.” And she disappears down the hallway.

Peter frowns as he watches her leave. He turns to Tony and whispers: “What’s an optometrist?”

-

Bruce enters the workshop, late that evening, holding a rubik’s cube in one hand. “Are you okay?” he asks, and the way he asks it tells Tony that he knows Natasha is here.

He nods at the cube. “What’s that for?”

Bruce turns it over in his hands. “Was gonna give it to the kid, see about his problem solving skills.”

“It’s probably far superior to ours, Bruce, we’re both useless.”

Bruce just chuckles. “You okay?” he asks again.

“I don’t know why she’s here. And now I have to figure out a way kick her out. I’m really bad at kicking people out, Bruce. That’s why I don’t want people coming in in the first place!”

“Don’t kick her out. I asked her to come.”

“What?”

“The kid needs help. You weren’t listening to me. Maybe you’ll listen to her.”

“What the—Oh jeez.” Tony covers his face with both hands and groans. “You are so fucking spineless. So afraid of even the tiniest difference of opinion that you need someone else to fight all your battles for you.”

“Don’t get angry.”

Tony drops his hands down. “Don’t lecture me about anger just because you are emotionally constipated.”

“Oh, obviously,” Bruce says in a rare show of defiance, “we all know how perfectly mentally stable you are.”

“That’s more like it,” Tony says. “Now call me an asshole, I deserve it.”

Bruce lets out a slow, controlled breath. When he speaks again, his voice is perfectly measured. “Natasha is going to determine the problem. And find a solution. You won’t even have to do anything. Just let her do her job and figure out what’s up with the kid.”

If something is up with the kid… If he does need help, then probably… probably… “Yeah. I mean. Fine. And then she leaves the tower. We’re getting way too many roommates.”

Chapter Text

Natasha holds the cupboard door up with one knee as she screws the hinges back in place. The edges of the door took some damage, a few splinters have sprung away, so it doesn’t exactly look good as new, but it’s perfectly functional.

Down the hall, a door opens.

She lowers herself off the kitchen counter and sticks the screwdriver in her back pocket. “Do you want cereal or eggs on toast?” she asks as soon as Peter is within earshot.

Peter stops dead. He hadn’t even stepped fully into the room yet, so he’s just sort of peeking around the doorpost. He looks at her with obvious distrust. “Both?” he then says.

“Both it is.”

Peter stays where he is for a while longer, as she breaks eggs into a bowl and whisks them together with a bit of grated cheese. He finally steps into the room when she turns on the stove. “Did you find any missing people?” he asks as he sits on the edge of a chair.

“Yes, yesterday. A runaway. Tracked her down at the bus station.”

“Oh,” he says, frowning.

“Have cereal first, the eggs will be done in a few minutes.”

Peter wolfs his food down: he has emptied an entire bowl by the time she slides the scrambled eggs onto a plate, adding a piece of toast.

Bruce enters the room, looking content to see them both here. “Morning.” He is holding a book under his arm. He takes a seat next to Peter and lays the book down so the kid can read the title. “Once you have glasses, try reading this.”

Natasha glances at the title. Understanding chemistry essentials through problem solving. “I won’t understand it.” Peter says.

“Don’t say that. I think it’s right up your alley.”

Peter kicks the leg of the table and says nothing.

-

“Why do you think I need clothes?” Peter asks. It took a bit of persuading from Bruce, but he finally agreed to go into town with her. The roads are busy but not clogged, they are past the peak of morning rush hour. “Mine look fine, don’t they?”

“You took a single backpack. How many pairs of pants fit in there?”

“Three. Which is—”

“Did you bring pajamas?”

“No, but—"

“Or a raincoat?”

“A raincoat?”

“I rest my case. We’ll stop by the optometrist, first.”

“Does it hurt to get your eyes measured?”

“No, Peter. Not at all.”

Peter kicks his shoes off and pulls his legs up. He fiddles with something in his pocket. “I really don’t think I need glasses.”

-

The optometrist declares Peter’s eyesight better than perfect, which is certainly strange. Natasha could have sworn he was farsighted. “All right then,” she says, smiling at the way Peter stares up at her triumphantly. “No glasses.”

“Can I still try some on, though?”

“…Sure.”

Peter tries a pair with a purple hexagonal frames, and a pointy pair with a leopard print. He looks at all the price tags and snorts each time. Natasha is getting the feeling he is not used to having… things. Time to test that theory. “Do you need sunglasses?”

Peter is trying on a pair of glasses with heart-shaped frames. He slides them to the tip of his nose and glances at her across the rim. “Who’s paying?”

“I am.”

“Why?”

“Because I have money.”

Peter pushes the glasses back up. “Shut up, show-off.” He starts browsing for sunglasses, though, and seems unbothered about the idea of someone else buying him stuff. He does settle for one of the cheaper pairs.

“Thank you,” he says when they step back into the car. “And since you’re the one offering to buy me stuff, I don’t owe you anything.”

“You don’t,” Natasha confirms.

The sunglasses are in a sleek, black case. Peter turns it over in his hands a few times, thoughtfully chewing his bottom lip.

“Thinking about where to hide them?”

She knows from the way he stiffens and then glares that she extrapolated correctly.

“So. Who steals stuff from your room back home? Is it one of your parents?”

“Shut up!”

Natasha smiles sweetly and starts the engine.

-

“I hate rain,” Peter says as he holds up a blue raincoat. They’re in the back of the store, in a quiet aisle between rows of bulky coats.

“Yeah? You don’t like curling up in an armchair with a book and a cup of hot cocoa while the rain patters against the window?”

“I’m not answering your questions anymore. They’re all trick questions to get me to admit personal stuff.”

The kid is smart.

“Ask me a question, then,” she suggests.

Peter says nothing for a moment. He unzips the coat and tries it on over his clothes, right there in the aisle. He waves his arms a little, rolls his shoulders. And then asks: “What happened to the girl you found at the bus station. Did you take her back home?”

“I did.”

“What’s the biggest thing you’ve ever done to find a missing person?”

“Flew to India.”

“Oh. Wow. … So. If I was a missing runaway and you found me, would you take me back to my parents?”

“Perhaps. But I’d first talk to you, try to discern the reason why you ran away. I’d make sure your home was safe before I returned you there. That’s what I did with the girl, too.”

Peter tugs at the hood of the raincoat that got caught on the internal lining of the coat. “What if I lie about my home and say that everything is fine when it isn’t?”

“I’d still know,” Natasha says simply.

Peter narrows his eyes. “How?” He is still tugging.

“I’m smart.”

Peter’s mouth twitches a little, but he doesn’t laugh outright. “You are, I guess.”

“And I always follow up. Once you’re up on my wall, I make sure you’re okay. People count on me to do the right thing, so that's what I do.”

“Sounds annoying.”

“It’s not. It’s nice when people expect good things from you. It gives you purpose.” She steps forward and reaches up, ignoring Peter’s flinch and firmly moving her fingers around the collar to pull the hood free, then tugs it up over Peter’s head. “There.” Peter didn’t breathe that entire time, she notices. “Does it fit?”

Peter inhales. “Uh. Yeah.”

“Comfy?”

A shrug. “Raincoats are never comfy, they’re made of yucky fabric. Like, the fabric-equivalent of nails on chalkboard.”

“Disagree. Let’s keep looking.” She turns back to the racks of coats. “So if you were a missing kid and I found you at the bus station, would you tell me everything is fine at home?”

“Oh yeah. Me and my dad, we’re real tight,” Peter says. “We play card games and stuff.”

-

He must have been five, maybe six years old — Peter doesn’t remember exactly, but he remembers they hadn’t moved to Malibu yet — when Richard taught him how to play Gin Rummy. It started with him telling Peter to ‘go get that blue box from your nightstand’. Peter had a wooden box with a slot in the top, and whenever he found a coin, he would put it in that box. Nothing big, pennies and nickels, probably no more than a few bucks all together. But it still felt like a lot to him, because he had found that money all by himself and it was entirely his. And also because he was six and an idiot with no sense of money.

Richard had him shake the coins out of the box with the promise of teaching him a fun new game. Peter had been gullible enough to just feel excited at the prospect. When all the coins were on the table, Richard divided them equally between Peter and himself. He took out a deck of cards, explained the rules of Gin Rummy, and also explained that the winner would get the loser’s money.

And then they played a round, which Peter lost, of course. He remembers it vividly; the way Richard slid all the coins into his own pocket and said ‘wasn’t that fun?’

After that, Peter was smart enough to keep his money away from Richard.

-

He picks a big, yellow raincoat; just like the one Tony would always wear on windy days at the beach.

-

The accessories are right next to the checkout area. Natasha is distracted, paying for his yellow raincoat and his blue-red pajamas, so Peter surreptitiously stashes a ski mask under his shirt.

Because, oh right. He has superpowers now, which is part awesome, and part really inconvenient timing. But he’s rolling with it; he has been rolling with things his whole life. They moved from Houston to Malibu with two days’ notice? Didn’t matter; perfect opportunity to tell the lame kids at school he was going undercover as a spy-astronaut. His mom told him to pretend that Tony was his dad? No problem; he had been imagining Tony as his dad for years at that point anyways. He can suddenly see and hear everything, jump insanely far, and climb walls? No biggie; if anything, it’s a great way to entertain himself when he’s out and about in the city, not to mention they’re very useful skills when he wants to shove dead fish through that asshole Norman Osborn’s mailbox and slip away unnoticed. He just needs to make sure not to draw attention to himself. Hence the mask.

“Is there anything else you need?” Natasha asks.

The more stuff you have, the more stuff you can lose. So Peter shakes his head.

“Let’s grab some lunch, then.”

-

Natasha’s idea of lunch is apparently a salad.

“I don’t eat rabbit food,” Peter says, pulling a face as he pokes at a piece of lettuce with his fork.

“That’s why your growth spurt hasn’t kicked in yet.”

“Shut up!”

“Eat your salad, Parker.”

“Gross,” Peter mutters as he shoves some of it into his mouth. It’s not that bad, actually.

“Look, you like it.”

Damnit, the Black Widow is way too good at reading him.

-

He puts the raincoat and pajamas in his closet. And scales the wall of his bedroom to hide the sunglasses on top of the curtain rod.

With the ski mask still tucked under his shirt, he goes back to the living room to find Natasha. “I’m going out for a few hours.” He isn’t sure why he feels like he needs to ask her permission. He certainly never feels that way with Tony and Bruce.

“All right,” she says. “Don’t buy groceries, I’m making dinner.”

More vegetables, probably.

-

He jumps from rooftop from rooftop, bouncing off against balconies and fire escapes, finding purchase on windowsills and protruding ledges.

“Hey!” Someone yells from the street below. “Are you a superhero?”

“No, get lost!”

“Do a backflip!”

Peter flips him the bird instead and runs on.

He finds a spot on a rooftop with a perfect view of Oscorp. He sits on the edge, letting his legs dangle over the side and fiddles with the fireman still safely tucked away in his pocket.

The Oscorp building isn’t anywhere near as high as Stark Tower. It has maybe ten, fifteen floors and looks very square, gray, and boring. Behind most windows, he can see endless rows of people in cubicles, working their desk jobs under flat, fluorescent lights.

And then there are floors near the top where the windows are tinted. That’s probably where the real shit is going down. That’s where all the stolen business ideas are fiercely discussed. Peter would sure like to be a spider on the wall during those meetings.

He tries sharpening his hearing; he’s tried it a few times before but just like the previous times, he is immediately hit by a cacophony of noise, a wall of sound that almost feels solid enough to knock him over. He roughly shakes his head and tunes it all back out.

Stupid. What’s the point of enhanced hearing if it just causes this overwhelming wave of unfiltered auditory input?

He pushes himself to his feet and moves back to the far side of the roof. He tugs at his ski mask, then gets a running start, pushes himself off against the edge of the roof and leaps towards the Oscorp building. He lands and plasters himself against a huge window like one of those stretchy sticky hands.

Behind the glass several employees turn their heads and blink at him, stupefied. Peter flips them all off too and starts climbing towards the roof. That’s probably where he’ll find his entry point. Doesn’t matter if they saw him; he has superpowers, he can get in anywhere.

He reaches the roof and doesn’t immediately know what to do. Kick in a skylight? Rip the grid off the ventilation shaft and slip in through the vents?

He isn’t even sure what he would be looking for, but he’ll surely recognize something suspicious when he sees it.

A roof hatch is slammed open and a man in uniform steps onto the roof. He has one hand on the walkie-talkie clipped to his shoulder. “This is a restricted area, sir.”

“Oh,” Peter says, “so you guys do understand the concept of private property? Then explain to me why you’re stealing from other people?”

“I have a confused, potentially dangerous man on the roof,” the man says into his walkie-talkie.

Rude.

At least this guy gave him a perfect entry point, though. Peter takes a few steps forward.

The man raises one hand. “Sir, I’m warning you—”

Peter makes a mad dash past him, towards the hatch. He tumbles down a steep staircase, falls, gets back on his feet. The security guard is right behind him, yelling into his walkie talkie.

Peter bursts through a door into a hallway with beige carpeted floors. A man in a lab coat yelps and drops a stack of papers. Peter ignores him and sprints on. At the end of the hallway, a second security guard appears so he darts around the corner—

—and immediately crashes into a third guard.

They both go down. Peter quickly rolls off, but then there is another one, already grappling at his legs, going for his mask. And then a third. Shit, shit, shit, there’s so many of them. Peter kicks and hears a yelp and manages to wriggle free. He shoots off again, heart in his throat, the hallway ahead is clear but he can hear shouts from all directions.

This was a terrible idea and he needs to bail, now.

His brain makes him do something, probably, stupid.

He speeds up, throws up his arms and crashes against the large window at the end of the hallway. It shatters, shards flying outward as Peter smashes through. He blindly throws his arms out and finds purchase against the side of the building, his shins knocking painfully against a concrete ledge as a waterfall of glass rains down on him. Far below, he can hear alarmed shouts as pedestrians scatter.

He catches his breath, shakes his head. He slithers down the side of the building, half crawling, half falling, and when he’s low enough, jumps towards a streetlight and then onto the next rooftop. He lands and rolls clumsily to help break the fall and, without a single pause, is up and running, vaulting over low walls.

He finally stops when he reaches the edge of a low building overlooking a quiet street. He drops down to the roof, flat on his back, legs akimbo, out of breath.

Fine. Even with superpowers, you can’t just get in anywhere.

-

“To what do I owe the pleasure of you two ganging up on me?”

Natasha and Bruce cross their arms in sync.

Tony has a feeling he knows what this will be about. He pushes himself up off the floor of the workshop, pulling a desk chair closer to sit. He plants one elbow in the desk, careful to avoid all the loose bolts and screws there. “Go play,” he tells Dum-E, who whirrs and rolls off.

“I’ve been out with the kid all morning,” Natasha says. She is wearing a green shirt with a pineapple in sunglasses and Tony finds that he cannot look directly at it because his brain simply does not accept the Black Widow wearing a t-shirt with a pineapple that says ‘Aloha Beaches’.

“What is it. You want me to send him home? Believe me, I tried.”

She steps forward until her fingertips rest on the desk, her gaze sharpened steel. “Quite the opposite. We want him removed from his parents’ care. I’m going to build a case, then contact the proper authorities and have him placed with a better family.”

“That’s… Why?"

“His home is unsafe, so we act. End of.”

There is a prickle of worry in the back of his head. “Why? What did he tell you?”

“Nothing, of course. I deduced. He isn’t going to say anything either, hence the need to build a case before I make the call.”

“I— Look, speaking as someone who actually came from an unsafe home; the kid seems fine to me.”

“They always seem fine.”

“Tony,” Bruce says, hovering in the background, “you know his mother was a drug addict and a manipulative scammer. Why would you think—"

“Yeah, so, she’s weird. Weird parents have weird children and they’re all happy weirdos together. Doesn’t mean anything.” He starts aggressively sorting the screws and bolts on the table in front of him, chucking them in their little plastic containers with unnecessary force. He can’t explain why he is feeling so agitated. The kid is fine, he has to be, because if he isn’t…. “Doesn’t mean anything. The kid is fourteen and stupid, is all.”

“He’s not stupid!” Bruce snaps in a sudden, rare show of anger.

“I wasn’t— I just mean he’s stupid the way all fourteen-year-olds are stupid. You know, in a fun, kind of endearing way.”

“You’ll barely even have to do anything, Tony,” Natasha says in a lower voice. “Just give me the details of how you remember Mary as a parent so I can put them on record. And I’ll take care of the rest. I’m not leaving here until the matter is resolved.”

“You’ll leave when I tell you to leave, this is my house.”

“Uh-huh,” she says, clearly planning to do whatever she wants anyway.

Tony sits back and crosses his arms, feeling horribly out of his depth. “Okay,” he says. “If you’re right… What if you’re right? Are my memories from five years ago really going to clench the deal to—?"

“I’ll travel to Malibu if I have to.”

Tony knows all about Natasha’s protective streak. Once she has decided someone needs her protection — and she is rarely wrong — she will travel to the end of the earth and back for them.

He closes his eyes and exhales, shakes his head. “When you get to Mary’s place, be careful not to look directly into her eyes. You’ll turn to stone.”

-

Tony raps his knuckles against Peter’s bedroom door and pushes it open. Peter is sitting on the floor, his back leaning against the bed. There is a book in his lap. Tony steps forward. “I brought you coffee.” He lifts the mug a little.

Peter fiddles with the pages of the book and gazes back at him in silence.

“You’re welcome.”

“You know, Bruce always waits for me to say ‘come in’ after he knocks.”

“Do you want the coffee or not?”

Peter holds out a hand. Tony hands the mug over.

His conversation with Nat and Bruce put him on edge for the rest of the day. Natasha wants to take his ‘statement’ soon, and he is afraid that, god forbid, she will make him think rationally and realistically about the things he has so far swept under a rug of blissful indifference and careless assumptions.

If Peter isn’t okay, then maybe he never was okay.

“FRIDAY says you just got back. What have you been up to today?”

“Just … out and about.” Peter looks distrustful. “Urban exploring.”

“Is that a euphemism for ‘trespassing’?”

“Why do you care?”

Tony starts slowly circling the room. It is entirely bare. The only thing out of place is that little fireman on the nightstand. And the rubik’s cube, perhaps. Tony picks it up from the desk. It’s solved. “Did you do this?”

“I cheated. There’s, like, algorithms.”

Huh. He puts it down. “Whatcha reading?” He flicks the desk lamp on and back off. Opens and closes a desk drawer.

“Why are you going through my stuff?”

“What? I’m not. You don’t even have any stuff.”

“How would you know unless you went through my stuff?”

“Okay,” Tony holds up two hands and sits in the chair by the desk. “Not touching anything.” He glances down at the book in Peter’s lap. “Periodic table? That’s too basic for you. Give me that. You want to learn science? I just published a piece on a new freeze ray I’m building.”

Peter closes the book with an irritated snap and doesn’t hand it over. “What do you want?”

Tony leans back, one arm stretching out on the entirely empty desk. Seems there is literally nothing for the kid to do here, except read boring books Bruce gave him. Getting his eyes measured with Natasha is a fun road-trip in comparison. “Why are you here? In New York?”

“I’m on vacation.”

“Why are you actually here?”

Peter’s shoulders hunch down into a more defensive posture. He hugs the book against his chest and stares at Tony for a stretching moment, measuringly. Finally, he says: “You were always nice to me.”

It is difficult to separate how he feels about Mary from how he feels about Peter, but it hadn’t really occurred to him until today that he probably should. Should somehow unravel that dark, twisted up mess into separate strands. It is difficult to remember things about Peter — the indoor treasure hunts, the baking soda volcanos, going on bug safari in the garden  — without also thinking about what came next.

He does want the kid to be okay. He does.

Natasha is going to take care of it. Which is great, because Tony would fuck it all to bits if he were somehow in charge of this. “Do you want to see my freeze ray?”

Peter’s expression doesn’t change at first. He takes several moments to carefully analyze Tony’s face as if looking for signs that Tony is making fun of him. And then the rigid set of his mouth softens, and he smiles. “Yeah. Okay.”

-

The name ‘freeze ray’, Peter quickly surmises, promises more than it delivers. He had imagined some enormous gun-like contraption, but it in fact looks more like a common printer.

“You place something inside and press the button to activate it,” Tony explains.

But apparently, it doesn’t even work yet.

“The problem isn’t with thermodynamics. The problem is that the device itself is not yet durable enough to handle the thermal stress.”

Peter just stands there with his hands in his pockets, afraid to touch the wrong button and accidentally trigger the apocalypse or something.

“I’m trying to design a surface that inhibits ice crystal formation. Stealing some ideas from the way the leaves of certain plants are shaped to prevent cold damage.”

Peter maybe remembers Tony more favorably than he should. He only remembers the good stuff, but he has been stalking Tony online for long enough that he knows the man has his issues. His brain always refused to acknowledge it, though. It only acknowledged one single narrative: he missed Tony and Tony missed him, and once they found their way back to each other everything would be okay, everything would fall into place.

It wouldn’t be like this; him standing in a room full of strange machines, afraid to touch anything and awkwardly trying to find the right thing to say.

He can tell that Tony doesn’t really know what to do with him. Peter doesn’t really know what to do with himself, either.

“Oh,” he says. “Like, what shape?”

“Mmm. I don’t know if I should go over the whole glossary of leaf morphology. Dichotomous veins seem to best do the trick. I’m no botanist. I’m mostly just winging it.”

Okay, yeah. Tony is just trying to make him feel stupid, now. He can’t think of anything else to say so he says, dumbly: “Lichens have hyphae to protect them from the cold.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh. I don’t know. Like… It just looks like tiny hairs, I guess. Hair-like structure. I read it in Bruce’s book.”

“Huh. Good suggestion,” Tony says. “You got a good eye, maybe, kid. Let’s see…”

Peter’s shoulders untense a little at the throwaway praise. And then he feels frustrated with himself. It’s nothing new. Ever since arriving here, he has been dealing with this uneasy blend of opposing emotions; every interaction with Tony brings a sense of comfort and familiarity, mingling with aversion and disillusionment. But that might be his own fault.

Is he spoiled, self-entitled? Did he have unreasonable expectations?

Tony walks around him and grabs something off the shelf, randomly pushing it into Peter’s hands. It’s some half-broken appliance. “Have you been in touch with your parents at all?” he asks, equally randomly.

Peter’s face falls into an immediate glare. “Why?”

“Just wondering if it’s only me she’s bothering.”

Peter picks at the loose wires on the appliance. “It’s because you’re letting her get to you. She likes getting a rise out of people.”

“Hmmm.” Tony studies him.

“I blocked her number a long time ago. Is this thing gonna electrocute me?”

“It’s how I learned to do what I do. My first ever successful fix was a broken alarm clock. So…” he waves a hand. “Go on. Show me how far you get.”

Peter is being tested again and he’s not having it. “I can’t fix stuff. You do it, I’ll watch.”

“That’s not how this works.”

“Remember when you played video games, and you gave me a controller that wasn’t plugged in?”

Tony cocks his head, then smiles. “Ah, yes. The one with the little turtles.”

Peter remembers curling up on the couch and sticking his toes under Tony’s leg, gleefully pressing all the buttons on the console, while the rain poured down outside. This was back when he liked rain. Rain meant he’d get to spend a lot of time at Tony’s place, because Tony wouldn’t make him walk back but was also too lazy to drive him that quarter mile down the road to his own home.

There it is again; that mixture of nostalgia and resentment. “Right,” he says curtly, and pushes the alarm clock back into Tony’s hands. “So you fix it. I’ll sit next to you and pretend to be involved.”

Tony cocks an eyebrow. “What’s— Are you mad I didn’t let you play videogames seven years ago?”

This man really doesn’t get it. Peter wants to scream in his face, but that will probably just get him kicked out of not just this workshop but this whole tower. “No,” he says, feeling suddenly very tired. “Just… Please?”

Tony gives a one shouldered shrug. “All right, kid. All right. Demonstrations first. It’s fine — I guess it’s just not really how things worked with me and my old man. But, ah, it’s not like that should be a blueprint for anything ever.” He kicks one chair swiveling closer to Peter and pulls one out for himself. “Your dad ever teach you anything useful?”

Peter cringes at the word ‘dad’. He has never called Richard that. “Yeah, we’re real tight,” he says. “He teaches me card games and stuff.”

Tony gets out a tiny screwdriver — Peter didn’t even know you could get them that tiny — and starts prodding at the case of the clock, finding a gap.

Peter pulls up one knee and watches. “Did Natasha move in or something?”

“Certainly not.”

“She acts like it.”

“I’m kicking her out of here as soon as she has… you know,” Tony seems uncomfortable suddenly, mumbling a bit towards the end, “done her thing.” He clears his throat and continues, a bit louder. “She wants the whole team living together. Like a particularly dysfunctional frat house.”

“I get it. Teamwork makes the dream work and all that.”

“Unfortunately for her my dream is to not be part of a team.” He lifts away part of the case, turns the alarm clock towards Peter and taps something flat and green with his screwdriver. “That’s the circuit board. It houses the timing circuits, controls the display.”

It suddenly occurs to Peter that Tony is actively trying to be nice. Which is kinda different. At the beach, it was more like Tony was just tolerating him. This is… “Are you not angry at me anymore, and stuff?”

Tony’s attention remains focused on the alarm clock, but his mouth twists. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I ran away.”

“Yeah, well, I ran away from your mom too, can’t really blame you.”

Peter studies him as he considers those words. “You were angry when I first got here.”

“Bad memories.”

“Oh. Of… Of me?”

Tony sighs and puts the screwdriver down. He opens his mouth, closes it again, and then finally shakes his head. He still isn’t looking at Peter. “No, kid. Not of you. I have good memories of you, but they’re shoved very deep down. I’m… sorry.”

“Oh. I… That’s okay. You’re old.”

Tony barks out a laugh.

-

Oscorp quite unexpectedly brings the fight right to Peter’s doorstep the next day.

Peter steps out of the elevator onto the floor below the penthouse and rounds the corner towards Bruce’s lab, but stops dead.

Ms. Potts is standing right outside Bruce laboratory with her perfectly straight posture and her shoes that have heels like knitting needles. And next to her, Peter realizes with a tingling feeling up and down his spine, is the man he recognizes as Norman Osborn. She says something and he laughs, and then two of them turn to move further down the hallway.

Hair standing on end, Peter rushes forward on tiptoes and pauses next to Bruce’s lab, one hand on the door handle. He watches their backs until they turn to go down the broad staircase and then he quickly sticks his head inside.

Bruce isn’t here. No one is guarding his secrets.

Peter dashes down the hallway towards the staircase and leans across the railings. He spots Osborn’s elbow moving down the stairs and follows; down the stairs, into another hallway, around a corner.

Potts invites Osborn into an office. It has a waiting area right outside, and quite a large one, too. There is no one else here. Peter slouches in one of the chairs and flicks the leaf of a large potted plant on the side table next to him. He leans to the side to see if he can spot Osborn through the sidelight. He just sees the back of his head, nodding a lot.

He tries to sharpen his hearing and is immediately hit by another wall of noise. He clamps his hands over his ears, squeezes his eyes shut, and growls in frustration. Come on, come on, he must be able to somehow make this work. Superpowers are supposed to make life easier.

He focuses as hard as he can, with all his might. And suddenly he manages to hear the voice coming from the next room, just distinctly enough over the rest of the background hubbub that he can make out words.

“…pass your message on to Mr. Stark and keep you in the loop.”

The door opens and Peter startles so badly that he almost slides out of the seat. Potts and Osborn step into the hallway and immediately zone in on him. Two pairs of eyebrows shoot up.

Peter sits up straighter. “Hey. ‘Sup.”

“Can I help you?” Ms Potts asks, face falling into a frown.

Peter points at Norman Osborn. “What is he doing here?”

Her nostrils flare.  Osborn’s smile turns sharp. “I apologize, Norman,” she says. “Please ignore him, I’ll take care of it.” She holds out a hand, which he shakes. “We’ll be in touch.”

With a final calculating-curious look at Peter, Osborn disappears down the hallway.

She turns back to him. “What is your name again?”

“Bradley.”

She points into her office, elbow straight. “Step inside, please.”

Sure.

Potts’ office is all pastel colors and exudes a sense of sophistication. A large, imposing desk stands in the middle of the room. There is art on the walls that doesn’t actually look like anything, which means it’s probably expensive.

Peter takes the chair in front of the desk and waits for her to be seated, too. He rests his chin in his hand and studies her desk. There is a whole bunch of fine, silver figurines there that all seem to have weird scientific purposes: a row of small metal balls suspended from a frame, fragile birds that balance on their beaks and seem to defy gravity, a silver acrobat balancing on a single point. And between all that fine silver is a bright green, wooden tumbler in the shape of a frog that seems really out of place next to everything else.

Ms. Potts does that thing again where she doesn’t immediately look at him. She looks at her computer screen and types something. “I’ve been given to understand that Tony is allowing you to stay for a while.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That does not mean you are permitted to be on this floor. The penthouse is Tony’s personal space. Everywhere else is Stark Industries property, and you are not authorized to access any part of it past the front desk, understood?”

“Bruce is fine with me visiting him in his lab. Why were you showing Osborn around in there?”

“Doctor Osborn,” she stresses, “is an important business partner with whom I regularly meet, and what I do or do not show him is no business of yours.” She nudges her keyboard to the side and finally looks at him, folding her hands. “The last thing I need is a teenager running loose in my building. I run this company like a tight ship, Bradley.” She pushes against the frog and lets it bounce back up. “See? Everything is perfectly balanced. Balance is key.”

Okay. Control freak much.

“Do I make myself clear?”

Peter slouches lower in his chair. “I don’t like you.”

She stands, looking entirely unperturbed. “Let me walk you back home.”

-

When Pepper walks into his workshop, Tony almost knocks his freeze ray off the desk. “Oh my goodness! The venerable Pepper Potts in my workshop, when I didn’t even finish the checklist.”

She raises a single eyebrow. “Have you even checked a single item off that list, Tony?”

“Just go to dinner with me. Let’s not make things complicated.”

She ignores the request. “I just ran into Bradley right outside my office. He was quite rude. That’s not acceptable behavior, Tony.”

Tony scratches his chin with the back of the screwdriver. “So fire him. Who is Bradley again?”

“The boy you’re letting stay here.”

“Who. Peter?”

Pepper frowns, then purses her lips. “He told me his name was Bradley.”

Tony snorts.

Pepper is not amused. Unfortunately for her, Tony finds impatience an attractive look on her. “You can’t just let him run around the tower, Tony. Especially not the top floors, where they handle dangerous chemicals.”

“I… didn’t say he could.”

“I assume you also didn’t say he couldn’t.”

“Well, I didn’t expect— What was he even doing there?”

“Being incredibly insolent towards Norman Osborn.”

Tony chuckles. “Good instincts.”

“Between you and him, it’s a miracle Oscorp is still willing to work with us, Tony! And this meeting was important, Norman was sharing some curious news. An enhanced individual attempted to break into his company yesterday.”

He puts the screwdriver down, turning his attention more fully to her. “Who was it? The guy with the red ears?”

“Someone who appears to not yet be on your radar.”

Huh. That is interesting. “Does he have footage?”

“Yes, but he is reluctant to share it. He nevertheless hopes that the Avengers can assist in locating this individual.”

“They steal anything?”

“No, but he caused some property damage. He blew out an entire window, prompting bystanders to call the police which Norman finds most annoying of all, because he doesn’t want that particular department under any kind of investigation.”

“Right. Right. Because everything he does is illegal.”

“Please.” She gives her usual smile: half-exasperated, half-fond. “As if you would be happy about police coming in and searching your workshop. Can I let him know the Avengers are looking into it?”

“All right, I’ll talk to Natasha.”

“Thank you.” She eyes him a moment longer. “You look better.”

“Than Osborn? I should hope so.”

That one earns him an actual eye-roll. “Than a few days ago. More… balanced. Are you keeping that boy alive and healthy?”

“Yeah. That is… Natasha is here.”

“Oh,” she says, perking up. It’s strange how so much approval can shine through a single syllable. “I thought it was a shame you turned down her proposition before. I’m glad you changed your mind.”

“Yeah,” Tony says. “I’m… Me too.”

-

He’s back to researching houseplants when Mary calls him. She calls him.

Instead of the usual dread, Tony feels a whole different array of emotions. Contempt is there, and a strange sort of determination. Something has shifted in the way he perceives her, he isn’t sure how.

He answers. “Hello, nurse Ratched.”

She doesn’t pussyfoot around, this time. “Hon,” she says, rushed. “We got a warning letter, all red letters and exclamation points, that an attendance officer is conducting a home visit next week and Peter needs to be here for it.”

Tony slouches in his desk chair, swiveling it slowly to the left and the right as he gazes up at the ceiling. “Hm. That is a conundrum. Missed too many school days, did he?”

“That’s what you get for being the fun mom, am I right? Bottom line, Anthony, this has been great fun, great fun. But I need him home.”

“You know where he is, you know where to find him.”

“Anthony… you know I can’t fly.” Her voice turns smarmy again. “Come on, honey. You’re teasing. You’re so awful. You know you love me.”

“Who says anything about you getting on a plane? Can’t you just crawl out of my TV like Samara?”

“You’re not making sense,” she says. “How much did you smoke today?”

Someone is yelling in the background, a booming voice, followed by the sound of something crashing and breaking.

“Right, right,” Mary says. “Poor Richard is terribly stressed out. He wants his money back.”

“To buy a new one of whatever he just broke? Why doesn’t he come pick his son up if you’re so scared of flying?”

“Trust me, sweety, I’m doing you a favor by not sending him down there.”

Tony believes that.

What an environment for a kid to grow up.

The thought is there before he can nip it in the bud, smother it while it is still half-formed. He didn’t want to have it. He has been trying so hard not to have it, but it is undeniable. And it’s as if that thought dislodges something, allowing other memories to bubble up. The mess in her house, the weed, the one hundred times Mary had simply forgotten Peter at his house. The parties that Richard didn’t often attend, but when he did attend, it usually ended with him drunkenly brawling with anyone who had looked at him wrong.

He’s glad Peter is not there anymore.

“Listen, babe—” Mary says.

Tony hangs up.

He sets the ringtone for Mary’s number to a deep, hollow, evil laugh.

Chapter Text

Way too many roommates.

Bruce, Natasha and Peter are all at the kitchen table when Tony shuffles into the room. Peter is spreading peanut butter on bread again, about an inch thick, but there is a whole variety of food on the table that somehow made its way into the tower: egg salad, fruit preserves, sliced tomatoes, pickles, hummus...

It looks very healthy and homely. Gross. Both those words are gross.

He sits. “Ahhh. Breakfast.”

“We’re having lunch,” Natasha points out.

Tony checks his watch and hums.

“I fixed your tiles,” Natasha adds.

Oh, shit, yeah. The tiles behind the kitchen stove are suddenly a minty green instead of white. “Why did you redo the whole thing? There were only three cracked tiles.”

“Couldn’t find the same color and shape. You’re welcome.”

“I didn’t ask you to do anything, I was gonna get someone to call someone.”

“Thank you, Natasha,” Bruce says.

Oh. Right.

“I would like to speak with you later today,” Natasha says with a pointed look. “About your statement.”

Tony glances at Peter who is spreading a fat layer of jelly on top of the already fat layer of peanut butter and doesn’t seem to listen. “Sure. Late afternoon would be best.”

She shrugs her consent.

“What are you doing today?” Tony asks Peter.

“Urban exploring.” He says it with a certain determination, and then adds, as if it is at all related: “Bruce’s grasshoppers all died.”

Tony turns his gaze on Bruce, surprised. “Did they?”

Bruce gives a nod. “So I suppose the lichen isn’t safe for consumption, which is very odd because this exact species of grasshopper has been observed to survive on this exact type of lichen in their natural environment in Lapland.”

Peter looks disgruntled. “I vote Osborn poisoned them when he broke into your lab yesterday. He has the look of a man who likes to kill defenseless animals. As like a casual hobby.”

“He didn’t break in,” Bruce says in a chastising voice. “He was getting a tour. Pepper assures me they didn’t even enter the lab. All above board.”

“Yeah, well, she’s obviously in on it, isn’t she? She’s, like, secretly working with him. She’s probably the one who stole your whole idea and passed it on to Oscorp.”

Tony snorts. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Pepper doesn’t even know what research I’m doing,” Bruce adds.

“I mean, she does,” Tony says. “She is quite insistent that I report back to her. But it’s still ridiculous. By the way, kid, don’t go wandering around the tower, okay? We handle dangerous chemicals left and right. You can stay in the penthouse or go down to Bruce’s lab when Bruce is there, but that’s it.” He points at the ceiling. “I’ve asked FRIDAY to keep an eye on you, so don’t try anything.”

Peter’s eyes flash to the ceiling and back to Tony. “Have you read 1984?”

“No, and I’m gonna go ahead and assume you haven’t either, considering you barely even go to school.”

“I know that it exists, though,” Peter says, and takes a large bite of his sandwich.

“Do you know who wrote it?”

Peter stares in the distance for a while, munching. “The lady who did Harry Potter?”

Tony wants to scoff, but Bruce is glaring at him, so he doesn’t.

-

Attempt number two.

Peter crouches between two broad chimneys and observes the Oscorp building. He approached the building from the southwest this time. He’ll be more careful. Avoid the windows as he climbs up. Carefully gain entry through the vents. Today is a Sunday, so there won’t be many people in the building. The offices on the lower floors certainly all look empty from here.

He waits for a lull in traffic and then makes the jump, landing against porous concrete. He climbs up, sticking close to the corner of the building. He reaches the roof, pulls himself up, and stands there for a moment to overlook the city, easy-peasy, everything so far running smooth—

“Afternoon, sir.”

He whirls around.

Natasha Romanoff is leaning against the ventilation shaft, arms crossed. Posture lazy, eyes sharp. “Nice to meet you. I had hoped to get the opportunity to have a chat.”

Peter swallows and then drops his voice low, putting on the thickest New York accent he can muster. “How can I help ya?”

Her arms drop to her sides and she takes a few steps closer, her eyes narrowing. “Wait,” she says. And then: “Peter?”

His entire skin heats up in a sudden flush. “What?” he squeaks, very un-coollike.

She exhales explosively and puts her hands on her hips. Her gaze on him is measuring, but not angry. “Now I know why you stole that ski mask the other day.”

Peter feels honestly indignant. It’s entirely unfair how Natasha always seems to know everything. How is anyone supposed to get away with anything under these circumstances?

“And you’re enhanced. Now I know why you came to New York, to Tony.”

It’s the first time he has heard the Black Widow deduce incorrectly. It feels like an advantage, so Peter doesn’t correct her. “They stole Bruce’s research!” He points at the building under their feet: the belly of the beast, the anthill full of meanies.

“Probably,” she acknowledges.

“I’m doing the right thing, here. I’m, like, on the case.”

“I’m glad to hear you want to use your powers to do the right thing, but this isn’t it. Your sense of right and wrong needs some recalibrating. Enhancements are not an opportunity but a responsibility. You injured a security guard.”

“So what? He’s Oscorp.”

“He’s a father with three children trying to make a living.” Her voice isn’t angry, but has a certain authority to it that makes Peter want to cower and hide.

Natasha said something else after that, but Peter later finds that he can’t remember what it was, he can’t remember if it was just a few words, or entire sentences. All he remembers later is that their words shattered around them and they were smashed into a whole different dimension of fire and debris.

Peter blinks and doesn’t know where he is. Everything is sideways. There is no sound, only a single high-pitched tone in his ears. Flames are flickering.  Smoke is billowing down and ash falling up. He sees a hand right in front of him and realizes it’s his own. He tries to move it. It moves.

The realization jolts him back into his own body. The back of his head hurts, his right leg screams. He is — Okay, he’s lying on his side. There is a sky. He is still on the rooftop but part of it has caved in and smoke rises up from the gaping hole. The smell of burning chemicals hits him.

Exploded. Something in Oscorp just exploded right under their feet.

He rolls onto his stomach. He can move. He can feel his legs. He can push himself up on hands and knees. He is hit by a dizzy spell, but it passes.

He stands, unsteadily, his gaze roaming the wreckage around him. And then he spots Natasha. She is below him, halfway down the caved-in crater of debris, on a cracked slab of concrete. She is lying face-down, unmoving.

He tries to say her name but all that comes out is a croaking sound. He coughs and wipes his mouth, spits out soot. He drops back to hands and knees and scoots down the slope of debris, staying low to avoid the smoke.

He reaches her and shakes her shoulder. “Nat.”

No response.

And then he spots the growing pool of blood.

-

“Blueberry?”

“Not under the circumstances, no.”

“Fair enough.”

Bruce is dissecting a grasshopper on a small, metal tray. Tony is half-watching, and half-keeping one eye on his phone.

“Friday confirmed Osborn never stepped into my lab the other day,” Bruce says. “Did someone really break into Oscorp?”

“So he claims.” Tony swipes up a few times. “Natasha is doing a stake-out today and I’ve looked over cctv footage from the area. Osborn himself is refusing to hand over his own security tapes. Not much to go on, it seems ski-mask appeared out of nowhere. I’m not even fully convinced he is enhanced. Maybe it’s just a guy with some nifty parkour skills. Maybe it’s a stunt Oscorp made up to gain entry to the tower again, or distract our attention away from something else, something like radioactive lichen.”  

Bruce sighs and takes off his glasses, cleaning them with the hem of his shirt. “If I’d known it would turn into such a fuss, I would have thanked politely for the offer to study this lichen.”

“Really.” Tony waves his phone around. “You would give up on groundbreaking research just because a few people might take offe— Why am I sounding incredulous, that is precisely what you always do.”

“Are you on social media again?”

“Give me a moment. One of my business rivals just claimed he has the most innovative AI customer service in the nation. Hold my blueberries. I’m about to end this man’s whole career.”

Bruce puts his dissecting pins down and holds the blueberries.

“Discovered anything by the way?” Tony asks, eyes flicking to the dead grasshopper and back to his screen.

“Everything so far in accordance with radioactive poisoning. I don’t like Dr. Osborn either, but it seems I botched this one myself. Are you about done?”

“Give me another moment. Oscorp is trending at warp speed, I need to see what this is about.” He taps the hashtag and his screen immediately floods with footage of flashing sirens, debris in the street, a cloud of black smoke. “What the—” His heart rate triples.

“What is it?”

“Explosion at Oscorp.”

“And you’re not happy about that because?” Bruce asks dryly.

“FRIDAY, call Nat’s phone.”

“I’m afraid her phone went dead at the time of the explosion, boss.”

“Last known location?”

“On the roof of the Oscorp bui—” FRIDAY abruptly stops speaking, and then reports: “New information. An unknown enhanced is scaling our building towards the roof. He is carrying Ms. Romanoff. She appears to be unconscious.”

Tony stands up so fast his chair clatters back and rushes out the room. Without looking back, he knows Bruce is following.

FRIDAY has the good sense to open every door in their way until they burst onto the helipad. The enhanced is there, crouching next to Natasha’s still body and Tony realizes only now that he should have suited up, just in case.

The enhanced backs away, though, both hands raised. Tony rushes forward until he is between the man and Natasha’s body, every inch of his spine wrung tight with tension. “Who are you?”

The enhanced takes a few more steps back.

“Don’t move!” Tony barks. “Do. Not. Move.”

The enhanced moves. He takes a final step, half-turns and jumps off the side of the building.

Tony curses and races forward, slamming into the railings. Many feet below, he sees the enhanced has found purchase against the side of the tower and is sliding down fast.

But Tony can be faster, he can—

“Tony!” Bruce calls out. He sounds terrified and that pulls Tony’s focus lurching in a different direction. “Help. She needs help.”

-

Until the moment they get her on a bed in the med bay and one doctor finds her heartbeat, Tony isn’t even sure that she is still alive. He has never seen a person look that pale.

Him and Bruce are unceremoniously shoved out of the room and are made to wait in a claustrophobic little corner room, both their clothes drenched in her blood. Bruce ignores all the chairs and sags to the floor in a corner instead, hands shaking.

Nurses pass through now and then. None of their reports are very encouraging. External bleeding. Internal bleeding. Pulmonary hemorrhage. Head injury. Emergency surgery.

Peter bursts into the room at some point in his too-large bathrobe, his face ashen. He tugs at their bloodstain clothes and asks about a hundred times what happened.

Tony looks down at his hands, at the blood under his nails. Bruce is saying something to answer the kid, and Peter drops to the floor, throwing both arms around him.

It’s infuriating that he is supposed to be a superhero and yet he so often finds himself in situations feeling completely powerless. His fear, anger, frustration finds the only target he can dredge up in the moment. “FRIDAY. I want everything you can find on that unknown enhanced. Everything. That piece of shit is our new priority one.”

“Don’t get angry,” Bruce says, making a motion like he almost wants to cover Peter’s ears.

“Don’t lecture me about anger right now. Just don’t.”

“We don’t know that he caused the explosion or what his intentions are.”

“I don’t care about his intentions, Natasha was there because of him. Not to mention his fucking incompetence, dragging her helter-skelter all around the city when she probably has neck injuries that required stabilizing.”

“Not now,” Bruce says pointedly.

Tony looks at Peter, trembling in Bruce’s arms, and presses his lips together.

Bruce takes a breath, and then refocuses on the teenager clinging to him.  “What’s this?” he asks Peter, tugging up his sleeve to reveal a purple bruise.

Peter doesn’t even look at it. “I don’t know. Tripped.” His voice is muffled, his face turned away.

“Are you hungry? You need lunch.”

Peter shakes his head and buries his face deeper into Bruce’s sweater. He looks small, years younger, fingers bunching into Bruce’s shirt.

“Come on, kid,” Tony says. “Go with Bruce, you’ll know about it as soon as something changes, I’ll make sure of it.”

They manage to convince Peter to follow Bruce out of the room, miserably dragging his feet and tugging his fringe down over his eyes.

Tony sags into one of the seats and turns his gaze away from his own blood-splattered hands and clothes by laying his head back and looking up at the ceiling. He wonders if he needs to call someone. Someone on the team, maybe. The people Natasha considers her family, judging by how badly she wants them all to move in together. “FRIDAY, alert Pepper.” He suddenly feels that he needs her here.

She arrives quickly, out of breath, holding her heels in her hands like she sprinted down the hallways. “How is she? What happened?”

“Explosion at Oscorp.”

“Is she okay?”

“No.”

She hovers in front of him as he brings her up to speed as much as he can — which isn’t much. She chews the inside of her cheek, a rarely seen nervous habit. “Want me to call Norman? See if he knows anything?”

“He’s fucking useless. She was there on a stake-out at his request.”

“He didn’t ask for his building to blow up, Tony.”

“I don’t care. Natasha was there because of him. She’s out there doing him favors when he can’t even get basic security for his building sorted out.” He angrily flicks a pink-purple flyer with some quote about mental health off the side table.

Pepper picks it up and puts it back on the table, neatly lining it up with the corner. “What do you need?”

“I don’t know. Just sit with me?”

“Give me a moment to cancel my plans for the afternoon.”

“Thank you.”

Dr. Cho comes out after another two hours and declares the operation on the perforated lungs and broken ankle a success.

“Is she stable?”

“Unfortunately, no. Her heart rate is controlled, but her blood pressure all over the place. Haemoglobin level is low, we’re currently giving a blood transfusion and then see where to go from there. We’re keeping her in an induced coma for now.”

Tony nods and thanks her.

“You need to go have some food,” Pepper says. “She’s not waking up any time soon. And change your clothes.”

“Will you come with me?”

But even now, Pepper refuses to come up to the penthouse with him.

-

Upstairs, Bruce is furiously vacuuming the living room. He turns the vacuum cleaner off as soon as he spots Tony. He turns to him but doesn’t ask anything, so FRIDAY probably kept him updated.

“Where is the kid?”

“In his room.”

Tony goes down the hallway but walks past Peter’s bedroom. He enters his own room first and changes his shirt. He returns to the living room where Bruce is still standing next to the vacuum cleaner, almost motionless.

“Did he eat?” Tony asks. He pumps the soap dispenser by the kitchen sink a few times and starts scrubbing at the bloodstains.

“He is very worried,” Bruce says in a low voice.

Tony nods. He hadn’t realized Peter had grown so attached to Natasha in such a short period of time, but it makes sense, considering the role Natasha took up from the moment she arrived.

“He was crying,” Bruce continues, nervously wringing his hands. “I… I didn’t know what to say.”

“Okay. Okay, I’ll—” He sighs and turns off the tap, shakes out his hands. “We need to get over ourselves and deal with this, Bruce. We don’t know how long Natasha is gonna… If she will even… I don’t want to send this kid back home.”

“Me neither.”

“Right. But we’re both fucking useless, too. So what do we do? Call social services, see if they’ll do anything?”

“Probably. But not right now. Please. Can’t we just… take a day?”

Tony exhales slowly and studies his hands. “Yeah—Okay. Do nothing. Sleeping dogs. My favorite kind of dogs.” He has rarely felt this incompetent and powerless. “The kid needs dinner.” He opens the fridge.

“You’re going to cook?” Bruce asks in a weird voice.

“Right. What was I thinking. I’ll order.” Something with vegetables, farm-to-table. Something Natasha would approve of.

-

“I don’t eat rabbit food.” Peter’s face is a storm cloud, his eyes red-rimmed. He pokes his fork against the stuffed paprika Tony scooped onto his plate.

“You do now.”

“I’m not hungry.”

Tony doesn’t know what to say to that so he says nothing, just pushes the plate even closer to Peter.

“You don’t have to eat if you’re not hungry,” Bruce tries.

“Yes he does,” Tony snaps. Natasha would want the kid to eat.

“Oh my god,” Peter rolls his eyes. “Mommy and daddy are fighting.”

“Don’t give me an attitude right now, just eat. I got enough on my mind.”

Peter ducks his head and starts eating.

-

It’s raining. Of course it is.

Peter tiptoes down the hallway and hovers in the doorway to the living room for a while to make sure the coast is clear. He tried in vain to fall asleep for the last few hours, and then when the rain started he gave up entirely. Whenever he closes his eyes, he sees Natasha lying face-down in rubble, a hundred times, like seeing it through a kaleidoscope.

He asked FRIDAY for an update and she came back with some medical jargon that he didn’t understand and just made him more worried.

His first act as a superhero: breaking in and injuring a security guard without getting any results. His second act: getting someone probably killed. He keeps thinking about all the flyers of missing people on Natasha’s wall, all the people that will not be found.

People count on me to do the right thing, so that's what I do.

He sits and takes out his phone again to check for updates on the Oscorp explosion. As expected, Osborn already released a statement that the unknown enhanced was behind the whole thing. No other casualties; at least that’s something.

He scrolls through his phone and hesitates, his thumb hovering over his mother’s contact. It’s near midnight in Malibu, his mother won’t be asleep yet.

When he left Malibu, he’d sent her a message. ‘Going on a trip, don’t worry about me, not kidnapped or anything.’ Which, admittedly, sounds exactly like the kind of message a kidnapper would send from his victim’s phone. But it did the trick.

She sent him back a thumbs up.

He blocked her number after that.

He already knows that talking to her right now won’t help him in any way, but he feels an overwhelming, choking, almost painful urge to talk to someone.

He unblocks her, then taps her name and lifts the phone to his ear.

It takes a minute for Mary to answer. “Hello my lovely darling,” she says.

Peter’s eyes fill with tears, which is really, incredibly nonsensical because he knows her well enough to be aware of the terrible emptiness behind those words. “Hey.”

Her voice immediately turns conspiratory. “How’s good ol’ dad holding up? What’s the gossip? Give me the most scandalous story.” Her speech isn’t slow and lazy, so she probably isn’t high right now. Peter can picture her; on the couch, feet thrown up, twirling her hair around her finger, eyes alight. When she wants to rile him up, she always refers to Tony as his ‘dad’, because she knows how much that whole debacle fucked him up.

“I’m okay,” he says in response to a question that wasn’t asked.

“Are you on your way back? We’re having another home visit this Thursday from the attendance officer.”

Peter exhales slowly. Not being there for a home visit will probably put them smack-bam in the middle of some social worker’s spotlight. That has never led to anything in the past, but with warning after warning, at some point a straw will break that camel’s back. “I don’t want to come home.”

She clucks her tongue. “Why no-oot?”

“Because I don’t like you. You pretend to be nice, but you’re mean.”

“Oh, boo. You’re no fun. Tell me, hon, is Tony Stark still as attractive up close as he is in his Instagram photo?”

Gross. Peter says nothing to that. “There was an explosion in the city today. Someone I know got injured.”

“Someone you know, what are you talking about, you don’t know anyone in that city. New York is a dreadful city. Went there once, never want to go back. When can you get a flight back to Malibu? I’ll send a cab to the airport.”

Peter sighs and rubs his face with his sleeve. He’s so tired. “I’m sad, mom.”

She begins to sound impatient. “I don’t know what you want from me, hon. You keep changing the subject.”

Predictably, Peter is feeling worse instead of better. He does what he usually does in that case; lower the phone and hang up.

He scrolls down and tries Richard’s number.

Richard answers the phone with: “What do you want?”

“Hey. Where are you right now?”

“I want my money back.”

“I just want to talk or something.”

Richard hangs up.

That one was a long shot anyways. Peter folds his arms on the table and leans his cheek down on them as he scrolls through his contacts, wondering if there is anyone else who he can bully into a conversation.

The stupidity of this whole situation is becoming more and more apparent. All he has done since arriving here is make trouble for people, with today’s events as an all-time low point. And Tony isn’t the man Peter wanted him to be. Being around Peter clearly just stresses him out. No one wants him here. Maybe he should cut his losses and go home. What is he doing here?

He jolts when a hand shakes his shoulder and realizes he fell asleep with his head resting on his folded arms, his phone still loosely in one hand. Tony is standing behind him.

Peter wipes his chin, glancing up at him. “I couldn’t sleep.”

A raised eyebrow in response. “Evidence suggests otherwise.”

“Ha ha,” Peter intones.

“Did FRIDAY give you an update about Natasha?”

Peter rubs his eyes. “I asked but I didn’t understand. ‘Cause of my limited vocabulary.”

Tony turns away from him, to his espresso machine, and presses some buttons. “FRIDAY just woke me up because her fever spiked and they’re already taking her in for another surgery. Craniotomy.”

“Oh.” Not good, probably.

“That’s a surgery on the head,” Tony explains, then shrugs, the motion stilted. “Nothing to do but wait.”

“Right. Yes.” He stares at Tony’s back. The pit in his stomach slowly sinks lower and lower. Tony wouldn’t allow him anywhere near this tower if he knew the full truth, he made that abundantly clear with his outburst in the med bay. The ‘enhanced’ is now a person of interest to Tony in a way Peter himself never was. And Peter doesn’t exactly want to tell him, but it doesn’t seem right to just sit here and eat the food Tony paid for and watch cartoons on his TV and poop on his toilet. “I can take a plane tomorrow, or something.”

Tony stills, but doesn’t turn. Peter resists the urge to crawl under the table. He shouldn’t have said it so fast. Now there is no going back.

“Take a plane,” Tony repeats.

“Back home, I mean.” He rubs at his eyes. The rain is clattering against the windows and the sound grates down his spine.

Tony finally turns, pulls back a chair and sits, coffee cup in hand. “Where’s this coming from?”

Peter shrugs.

Tony shifts in his seat, restless. His fingers tap against the coffee cup. “Don’t go home.”

Peter blinks groggily in his direction. “What?”

“I don’t want you to go home.” The words are rushed, tumbling out. Tony seems incredibly uncomfortable.

“I— Where’s this coming from?”

“You shouldn’t go home. I think your home is not safe.”

Not safe? Peter has no illusions about his parents being in any way perfect, or even moderately competent. But it’s not like their place is a warzone. “Where do you think I should go?”

Tony’s mouth flattens out and he looks away, and Peter can tell that he already regrets bringing it up. Tony isn’t the first person to imply that Peter should be taken away from his parents, but he knows exactly where he’ll end up when that happens so he’ll kindly pass, thankyouverymuch. “Me and my parents are real tight.”

“Yeah, I bet.” Tony doesn’t even bother to make his voice sound disbelieving. “Stay here for the summer,” Tony says. “You were going to.”

Actually, he was going to pretend to stay for the summer and then just stay indefinitely, because he dreamed, he thought, he assumed that Tony would let him. Would be happy to have him. “You have stuff to deal with.”

“I’m Iron Man, I always have stuff to deal with. Natasha will want to see you when she wakes up.”

Peter jolts back in his seat at those words, as if electrocuted. He looks at Tony and swallows, trying to gather himself. “Fuck you for saying that. That’s emotional blackmail. Now I can’t leave.”

Tony looks satisfied and smug.

-

Tony manages to coax the kid back to bed eventually. He dives back under his own covers, too, and sets the alarm for 8 AM.

When it goes off, he is terribly disoriented for a good five minutes before the brain fog lifts enough for him to turn the alarm off.

He stumbles to the kitchen, and into Bruce.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“I was gonna make the kid breakfast.

“Me too. Eggs on toast.”

“And cereal.”

They look each other in the eye, an unspoken agreement is being made between them. And they set to work.

Tony doesn’t remember ever making the kid breakfast in Malibu. Even though Peter stayed the night plenty of times. The kid was usually out of bed and running around the house way before Tony got up. Maybe that’s why he found him with that jar of peanut butter that time. There was no food in the house, so Peter scavenged.

Why has he always been so oblivious and incompetent? Why did he never make sure to have some bananas around, or even a packet of saltines?

Peter arrives; not from the hallway leading to the bedrooms, but from the elevator. He hovers next to the aquarium.

“Where’d you go?”

“To the med bay. They wouldn’t l-let me see her.” His voice cracks, and Tony feels a sudden urge to hug him. He shoves his hands into his pockets instead. “Come have breakfast.”

-

“Two major surgeries within 24 hours,” Pepper says. She has picked up her frog tumbler and is fiddling with it, restless. “That is—”

“Don’t finish that thought.” Tony holds up a finger. “Don’t say what you want to say. No, say what you want to say, but really sugarcoat it for me.”

“That is very, very bad.”

Tony deflates. “She’ll be okay, she’s tough.”

Pepper sighs and looks towards the windows. Between the two of them, a dozen silver figurines balance on needle-thin points, and the Newton’s cradle is clicking away. “Should we be informing anyone? Your… team?”

“I was considering the same thing. A lot of people are abroad. I know Wilson is in town.”

“Start there,” she advises. “This is the sort of information you should not withhold. Do you want me to call him?”

“No, I can deal with it. This isn’t Stark Industries related, it’s not on your plate.”

“Well. Yes. I mean, No. Just tell me if you need anything. I’ll make time.” She sets the frog down next to her pen cup. “Norman is terribly upset.”

“My condolences.” Tony plucks one of the fine, silver birds off her desk and balances it on the tip of his finger instead.

“He wants to talk to you about the incident.”

“Rock hard pass.”

“It was his building that blew up.”

“So? Why do I owe even a second of my time to a business rival?”

“Business rival, business partner.” She moves her hands, like scales tipping. “Balance is key, Tony.”

Tony lifts his hand and looks at the bird, wobbling gently on his finger. “I don’t know what to do about the kid,” he admits.

She straightens in her seat, tapping a pen against her keyboard. “What do you mean. What is there to do?”

Right. She is drastically uninformed. “He’s not just visiting. He’s a runaway, his parents stink like a couple of mackerels that have been left in the sun—”

“That’s your objective opinion, is it? Not at all swayed by your personal history with—”

“Screw my opinion; what do I know. Natasha deduced. She was going to build a case and everything.” Tony snatches the bird up and sets it down on her desk again. “I think she was even planning to fly to Malibu. Should I fly to Malibu?”

“And do what?”

“Gather evidence.”

“What is your plan, Tony, dust for fingerprints? Don’t we have a government who deals with this sort of thing?”

 “I don’t know. Do we?”

“Please tell me his parents know he’s here, Tony, because if not, this is not just a PR fire, this is an inferno. This sounds asinine. You can’t just do whatever when it concerns the safety of a child.”

“You think Natasha didn’t know what she was doing?”

She purses her lips. Her pen tick, tick, ticks. “I suppose she would,” she acknowledges. “I just don’t understand why— we have systems in place… They have families they can put him with, snip snap, checked another box. Do not fly to Malibu, Tony, I’m quite serious. I know what that place did to you. Get CPS on the phone to deal with this, or I will. If the boy is not being properly cared for, he needs help from a professional, not you. I say this with all the love in the world.”

Tony lets his head drop back and exhales. When did he make the mistake to start caring about this whole thing? “Give me a day. Give Nat a day. If she hasn’t woken up tomorrow, I’ll let you call the shots about this whole thing.”

“I’ll be ready.” It comes out combative.

-

It’s nice when people expect good things from you. It gives you purpose.

Huh. Wonder what that feels like.

Peter stands in front of his wardrobe. He has taken out his brand-new blue-red pajamas, letting the fabric slide through his fingers as a plan forms in his head. Potentially a stupid plan, but most his plans are stupid plans so he’s an old hand; he’ll roll with it as he usually does, and if shit hits the fan and gets flung in every direction, he’ll just put on that raincoat Natasha bought him.

He stuffs the pajamas and ski mask into a plastic bag and heads out.

He finds a quiet park with large rhododendrons and ducks behind the foliage to change his clothes. He puts on the ski mask. He rolls his shirt and jeans into a bundle and stuffs them in the bag. The pajamas have no pockets, so he tucks the little fireman into his sock. He punches the plastic bag into a smaller shape and crams it between two robust branches. He wrestles himself through the foliage until he is back on the gravel path.

Where to begin.

The kid who ran away to New York without knowing where New York even is.

Start easy.

He heads towards a group of young children who are throwing a purple ball around.

“Woah,” one says when he spots Peter, and points. The other kids turn.

Peter waves awkwardly. “I’m a superhero,” he says. “You guys need help with anything?”

His words inspire exactly the kind of awe he had hoped for. The children crowd around him, wide-eyed, pluck at his clothes. A girl with a missing tooth beams up at him. “Can your eyes shoot lasers?”

“No. But I can hear things that are far away, and walk on the ceiling.” He elects not to mention that his superhearing still leaves something to be desired.

“Will you play throwball with us?”

“I… Yeah. Sure. What’s the rules?”

“You throw the ball.”

And so his first act as an actual, good superhero is to play a game of throwball with self-invented rules, with a gaggle of kids. Gotta start somewhere.

He plays a few rounds and then waves the kids goodbye, sprinting towards the entrance of the park. He’s feeling pretty good about his day so far. So good that he ignores the swing gate and instead jumps clean over the iron fencing. He lands on the sidewalk, right in front of a plump woman he hadn’t spotted in time.

She yelps, rearing back.

“Oh. Sorry.”

“The hell,” she says.

“Sorry.”

“Where’d you come from? It’s raining men, or what?”

“I was just—”

“Why are you dressed like that?”

Peter pauses, clasping his hands behind his back. “Do you need help with anything?” he asks lamely.

The woman stares back at him with probably very reasonable suspicion. “Get a real job, man.”

“I’m fourteen!”

She clucks her tongue. “Boy, where are you parents at?”

“…Probably getting high.”

“Yeah, that tracks.” She gives him another once-over. “Do you need help?”

“What? I— No— Do you need help?”

She hums and squints. “Come on then. If you carry my bag for me, I’ll make you a sandwich at home.” She lets it slide off her shoulder and holds it out.

Peter gets the feeling that he is being indulged and, or, pitied. But he’s gotta start somewhere. And he could go for a nice sandwich.

The woman lives in an overhead apartment where the elevator is out of order, paint is peeling, and kids race up and down the corridors in bare feet, playing tag. She makes him a sandwich with lettuce and tomato and Peter decides not to complain about rabbit food this time.

“What’s your name?” she asks.

“Spider-Man.”

Her eyebrow twitches but she says nothing. “What about your parents, then?”

“I don’t live with them anymore.”

“Ah. Good.”

This city isn’t so bad. People are asshole-shaped, but that’s superficial stuff. Don’t judge people by their shape and all that.

After the sandwich she lets Peter go, so he returns to the park. This was fine for a first day. He wants to head back home, see how Natasha is doing.

The kids are still there. They shriek when they see him and run closer. One tugs at his arm. “Can you get our ball down from the tree?”

“Oh. Yeah, definitely.” He follows them to a tree with smooth bark and reddish leaves. There is a flyer pinned to it with a picture of a cat. MISSING. He carefully avoids it as he scales the tree, encouraged by more awed little noises from the kids. He nudges the ball until it drops back down to the grass. The kids cheer.

He climbs down and, after a moment of deliberation, takes the flyer off the tree and folds it into his pocket.

Enhancements are not an opportunity but a responsibility.

-

The doctors finally let him in to see Natasha. She is lying very still in the hospital bed, propped up with pillows, skin pale, bandage wrapped around her head. There are monitors, and tubes with different colored fluids. Peter wishes he knew any medical stuff at all, something useful, instead of just remembering random facts Bruce and Tony keep harping on about, like how dichotomous veins prevent cold damage in leaves or how scientists can use lichen growth to determine the age of rock structures.

The beeps from the monitor drive up his anxiety. At any moment, he expects to hear that beep suddenly drop away into silence, or to see the shallow rise and fall of Natasha’s chest taper off into nothing.

Being here feels pointless. He leaves.

-

He tacks the Missing flyer to the wall above his bed.

Chapter Text

Tony knocks on Peter’s door.

“What?” he hears Peter yell from inside.

“You’re supposed to say ‘come in’!”

Peter lets out a frustrated groan.

Tony nudges the door open. “Breakfast.”

“Ugh.” Peter rolls over and sticks his head under his pillow. His voice drifts out, muffled: “I liked you more when you rolled out of bed around noon and didn’t care what or if I ate.”

“Tough luck. Come on, kid. Get dressed, I want to see you downstairs in fifteen.”

“Am I living at a military compound?”

Such a teenager. “Get up, or I’ll sell all your toys,” Tony says, and leaves.

He gets back to the kitchen, and literally thirty seconds later, Peter pads in, wearing the huge bathrobe. He is frowning at Tony. “What did that mean?”

“Hm? Oh. It was a joke.”

Peter squints at him. “It’s not funny.”

“Thanks for the feedback. Come on. We’re out of eggs, you can double up on cereal.”

“Don’t touch my stuff.”

“I’m not going to sell your toys, Peter, it was a joke. What’s your plans for today?”

Peter takes the big bowl Tony handed him. He scrutinizes Tony a moment longer and then shrugs. “You wanna go sightseeing?”

“Another time. I have a meeting with Osborn, and then I’ll probably be in a terrible mood for the rest of the day, so steer clear of me, kiddo. Ugh. Gotta find that enhanced, that’ll take some time. What do you want for dinner tonight?”

Peter shrugs. “Too early to think about.” He pours cereal into the bowl, then milk. His face is set in a thoughtful frown. “What will you do when you find him? …Or her?”

Tony picks up the carton of milk, wiggles it to see how much is left before putting it back in the fridge. “Don’t know yet. He might be harmless.” He needs to remember to order groceries.

Peter sits. “What about when he dragged Natasha all over town while she was injured?”

“Incompetent but perhaps not ill-intended.”

“But you were really angry.”

“I was emotional.”

Peter looks at him a while longer, then starts spooning his breakfast into his mouth. “Can we hang out tomorrow?” he asks around a full mouth.

“Yeah, I think so. I mean. Yes. I’ll make room.”

-

“I was very saddened to hear about Ms. Romanoff’s injuries.”

“She’ll be fine,” Tony says, because he refuses to believe anything else, or refuses to pretend otherwise in front of this man.

Norman Osborn smiles with performative empathy. “Hopeful prognosis, then?” His voice is buttery with concern. “I’d be happy to pay for her treatments.”

“Uhuh.” The offer only serves to irritate Tony more. “I’ll be happy to pay for you to actually get some competent security in that fleapit you’re calling a company.”

They’re in Pepper’s office, because Tony doesn’t have an office himself and would rather stick his hand in a woodchipper than invite Osborn up to his workshop.

“I believe that controlling the enhanced activity in this city is actually the Avengers’ responsibility.”

“You’re very quick to assume he is behind it.”

Osborn gives a casual, elegant shrug and fiddles with one of the ritzy rings on his fingers. “The explosion occurred precisely in the part of our building where the enhanced was overpowered by my security guards a few days before. Police investigation into that break-in was still ongoing. This is simply his attempt to cover his tracks.”

“You’re suggesting that this enhanced managed to break into your building a second time to place an explosive device, entirely unseen, and then decided to be on the roof when it detonated?”

“It’s not my job to figure out the why and how, Mr. Stark, it’s yours. Please find him.”

“Believe me, I’m working on it.” The enhanced's only known appearances are those two times at Oscorp, and he seemed to mainly travel via rooftops, where not much camera footage can be found. Tony’s best guess right now is: disgruntled former employee who fell into a tub of chemical waste and is now exacting revenge. “Have you been dabbling in human experimentation, by any chance?”

Osborn smiles the way he always smiles. “Sticking to animals for the moment. How is Dr. Banner doing with his grasshoppers?”

“As if you don’t know.”

“You seem in an antagonistic mood,” Osborn says mildly. “But I’ll excuse it, considering the circumstances, and play along. My theory is that they probably died, since our spiders have died, too. Quite a mystery, isn’t it? They’ve been observed to survive in the wild, on the same diet. I’d be happy to exchange theories.”

“Listen, this is a waste of my time,” Tony says. “We could have done all this over twitter, with twice the insults, like normal people.”

Osborn almost rolls his eyes; Tony can tell by the way he inhales a little too forcefully. “It’s times like these that I really miss your father.”

Here it is again. The usual spiel about TECHSPO.

“That man knew what he was doing. Exemplary. I remember his work at TECHSPO particularly fondly. He truly showed what he was capable of, that day. It’s a shame I never got to witness him in action quite like that, ever again.”

Tony gazes back at him, keeping his face blank.

It was the only time, ever, that Howard had lost his temper with him in front of other people. In the green room behind stage 14 he had smacked Tony in the face with a book so hard that Tony had passed out for a few seconds. Only a few other people had been in the room. Osborn, up-and-coming young entrepreneur, had been one of them.

Osborn loves to bring up the event, without ever directly acknowledging what happened. Particularly in front of other people who weren’t there and don’t catch the malevolence behind the words, making it impossible for Tony to clap back without seeming like an asshole.

Osborn smiles and looks like a piranha. “How lucky you are that you got to witness it behind closed doors, undoubtedly many times.”

Tony leans in. “One of these days,” he says, keeping his voice as pleasant as he can, “I’m going to punch you square in the face, Norman.”

Norman tuts and shakes his head. “Such poor manners. You’re very lucky to have Ms. Potts on your staff. Don’t take her for granted, eventually I will offer her the deal that steals her away.”

Tony didn’t know Osborn had offered Pepper any deals at all.

-

Peter is starting to really get a grip on his enhanced hearing, somehow finding himself able to pick out individual sounds, even from a distance, and keeping everything else muted in the background.

It sucks ass.

Because his brain decided that it’s a good idea for his hearing — even when Peter is upstairs in his bedroom or in Bruce’s lab — to autofocus on the relentless beeping of Natasha’s heart rate monitor at the most random times. It’s something that just happens, and then Peter has to concentrate with all his might to draw his attention to something else before that sound pushes him straight into an anxiety attack.

Like the book Bruce put on the table in front of him. It’s about volcanoes, and it has lots of brightly colored pictures and little comic strips where a dog in a top hat explains everything again in a funny way. It’s clearly aimed at a younger audience and really, how many more reminders do these people think Peter needs that he is dumber than the average preschooler?

“…and that’s a cinder cone volcano,” Bruce says.

Peter nods. He didn’t pay attention. He also doesn’t really know where this impromptu science lesson came from, but it’s nice to spend time with Bruce, so he isn’t complaining.

“So the most important difference between a cinder cone volcano and a composite volcano is…?” Bruce says, looking at him expectantly.

Peter never particularly cared about disappointing his teachers, but Bruce is a different story.

“The shape?” he guesses.

He can tell from Bruce’s expression that he had expected a bit more, but the man still nods encouragingly. “That’s certainly part of it.” And then goes on to explain something about types of eruptions, something he probably already explained a minute ago.

“Which volcano killed the dinosaurs?” Peter asks.

The elevator chimes. A man that Peter hasn’t seen before appears from behind the aquarium. Flashy sneakers, broad shoulders in a navy henley, hair shaven very short; there’s a bit of military in him, Peter thinks. Bruce greets him and calls him ‘Sam’, which is when Peter vaguely remembers the name ‘Sam Wilson’.

Sam’s gaze wanders past him but he doesn’t comment on Peter’s presence yet. “How is she?”

“Stable, but not out of danger. Shall I walk you down?”

“FRIDAY will lead the way, I’m sure.” He nods at Peter and holds out a hand to shake, which Peter does. “Sam.”

“Peter.”

“New recruit?” He says it with a smile, though his eyes remain serious. He has quite a hard stare, as if he wants to peel Peter apart like string cheese; this man knows how to be intimidating. Richard has a death stare just like that.

Peter sits back cautiously, drawing one knee up.

“Peter is here on vacation,” Bruce says.

Sam shoots him a disbelieving look, but just says: “Sure.” He turns. “Catch up later?” And he is gone as suddenly as he had arrived.

“Just go on and read this,” Bruce says, closing the book and sliding it Peter’s way with a hopeful smile.

-

Sam Wilson hovers around for the rest of the day and Peter. does. not. like. it. The guy keeps appearing out of nowhere; it’s like he has some sort of radar to be right there when Peter is rounding a corner, almost bumping into him twice already.

“Not gonna eat you, kid,” Sam says when Peter sidesteps him for the third time that day.

Peter was on his way back to the living room, the volcano-book clutched to his chest.  “What are you talking about,” he snaps, not liking the idea that Sam actually noticed his discomfort. He doesn’t even know what it is about the man that sets him on edge.

“Summer break, huh? How do you know Tony, then?”

“He’s my spirit guide.”

Sam snorts. “Try again, kid.”

“He’s my dad.”

Sam nods at that. “Makes more sense.” And then he reaches out and slaps Peter roughly on the back. “Aren’t you lucky, spending your summer break with Bruce Banner reading to you.” He says it like it would be anyone’s worst nightmare. Peter frowns at him as furiously as he can. This is ignored. “You like card games?” Sam asks.

Peter lets his hand slide into his pocket, clench around the little fireman. “No.”

“How about darts?”

Do people bet money when they play darts? Peter isn’t sure. “When are you going home?”

Sam clearly recognizes the provocation, but lets it slide. “I’ll be around. Catch you when you’re in a better mood.” He walks on. So does Peter.

Bruce is not in the living room, so Peter tries the lab instead. Bruce is there, rinsing out eight now-empty terrariums. Depressing. “Hi, Peter.”

Peter puts the book down on top of a pile of loose papers with frayed edges. “I finished it.”

Bruce frowns down at it, then up at him. “I only just gave it to you.”

Peter doesn’t know what to respond to that, so he shrugs. It was nice to read; his brain didn’t latch onto the sound of Natasha’s heart rate monitor a single time. He kinda wants more.

“Are you a visual learner? Shall I find you a documentary?”

It seems he doesn’t believe Peter actually read it. “There’s no such thing as a visual learner, I saw a TED talk about it. Are you gonna get new grasshoppers?”

Bruce shakes his head, shoulders sagging as he stacks one terrarium on top of another. “No point until I figure out why these ones died.”

“Do you have any books about medical stuff?”

Bruce glances back at him, then up at his shelves. “For instance?”

“I don’t know. Something that helps me understand what FRIDAY is talking about when she gives me updates about Natasha.”

Bruce rummages with something in the sink for a while. There is upset in his body language. “I’ll find you something upstairs,” he says, and gives Peter a rueful smile.

“Thank you.”

-

FRIDAY already informed him that Sam Wilson was in the building, but Tony doesn’t actually run into him until he goes to check on Natasha around dinner time. He knows when he sees the pair of sneakers neatly lined up next to the door to Natasha’s room. Sam has always been a tiny bit insane about his sneakers.

He enters the room. Sam sits in partial sunlight in the low barrel chair, book in his lap. He smiles a greeting. “How you doing,” he asks, in that cheerful tone people use when everything is fucked up and they’re just trying to keep spirits up.

“Been worse.” Natasha looks less pale than this morning, but the bruising around her eye looks worse. Tony pauses at the foot of his bed, leaning in.

“Catch the asshole, slash, assholes yet?”

“No. Osborn is being annoyingly anal about handing over all security footage from the past week to his business rival to scrutinize.”

“Imagine that.” Sam rubs the back of his head, still smiling faintly. “You need anything?”

“Maybe. Don’t know yet.”

“Because I’m here.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“Mind if I say the night?”

“As long as you want.” At this point, what’s another roommate?

“The kid upstairs. Is he actually your son? Come on, fess up.”

“Fuck. Is he still going around telling people that?”

Sam’s smile widens. Conspiratorial.

“He’s just some kid I know from way back. It’s nothing.” He feels bad about saying that, suddenly, but doesn’t know what else to say.

“Seems legit. You let vaguely acquainted teenagers spend their summer break here all the time.”

Tony looks down at his hands gripping the bedframe. “This one is special.”

“Ya, I bet he is.”

-

It bothers him, though. Peter talking about Tony being his dad as if it’s just a funny joke, rather than one of the most painful memories that haunts him.

He always told himself that he never even wanted to be Peter’s dad anyways, but events lately have made him face the facts: part of him had wanted it. The more he thinks about that, the more he knows it’s true. He had been so incredibly fond of the kid, had loved the kid, more than he has ever been willing to admit.

It bothers him. So much so that he avoids everyone during dinner. Which only has the undesired effect of Peter shuffling into the workshop with a plate of leftovers and a tentative smile.

“Yeah, thanks,” Tony says, a bit shortly. He wants to bring it up, but also really, really doesn’t want to bring it up.

“What are we doing tomorrow? Wanna go to the beach?”

He was vaguely toying with the idea of finally buying that houseplant Pepper wants him to get, because honestly, he feels bad about how low her list of demands has dropped on his list of priorities by now. “Going to the garden center, probably.”

“Can I come?”

It seems petty to say no. “Yeah. Sure.”

He makes the mistake of mentioning his plans to Pepper the next morning, and not five minutes later Happy calls him to ask who will be driving him, “because I sure hope you’re not planning on going alone, Tony. We agreed very specifically—”

“Fine. You take us.”

“I’m driving Pepper to a conference today. Ms. Jas McMahon is available to take you.”

“Let McWhatever drive Pepper, I don’t want some random security guard eavesdropping on me.”

Happy grumbles mutinously but eventually agrees. And he doesn’t bat an eye, this time, when Tony shows up with the kid in tow.

Tony tries to spend the drive there dashing out inventive insults on Twitter, but the kid is staring at him again, and it’s making his skin crawl, making him feel strangely self-conscious. “Something you want to ask me?”

“Does the med wing have its own ventilation system, separate from the rest of the building?”

He lowers his phone. “Where’s that coming from?”

“Bruce gave me the Handbook on the Fundamentals of Medicine. It says hospitals need air filtration systems to reduce the risk of airborne contaminants. And patients are more at risk after surgery due to a weakened immune system and surgical wounds.”

Tony wonders if the kid understands what he just said. Is he simply regurgitating the stuff he has read, or is there more to it? “Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay,” Peter says, and continues to look pretty worried.

They get to the garden center and meander amongst shrubs and herbs and flower seeds and planting containers and garden soils and wicker chairs and barbecues and bird feeders. Happy follows at a sedated pace, hovering just within earshot while peering around every tree as if he expects an ambush.

“What do we need?” Peter asks.

“A plant that’s easy to take care of.”

“A cactus?”

Pepper hadn’t included that in her examples of ‘cheating’, but Tony still has a feeling a cactus won’t check any boxes. “Something slightly higher maintenance. By this much.” He holds his thumb and forefinger half an inch apart, and feels his mouth twitch into a smile.

They pause in front of a feature table with purple-ish plants, apparently called ‘succulents’. These seem easy enough. Tony sorts through them, lifting some up for closer inspection.

“How long is that Sam guy staying?” Peter asks, with an undertone of aversion.

And it brings everything — BAM — rushing back.

Tony drops the potted plant back down to the table and leans towards the kid, setting one hand on his hip. “By the way,” he says. “Can you stop telling people I’m your dad?”

Startled eyes meet his. “I—what?”

“It’s not funny. It was never funny. You know damn well how much that fucked me up. I’d like it if you showed me the basic respect of not reminding me at every turn.”

“I haven’t—”

“I know you have, so don’t lie to me, either.” He turns back to the plant and yanks one up. “This one is fine.” He marches towards check-out.

Peter and Happy get in line behind him, both quiet, and Tony doesn’t turn to see their expressions. He pays and makes a beeline towards their car, and then impatiently has to wait for Happy to catch up and unlock it. He gets in the back and places the plant between his feet.

“You wanna sit in the front?” he hears Happy ask the kid. Happy is such a damn traitor.

He doesn’t hear a response, but the door opens and Peter slides into the backseat, too, keeping his body very still and his gaze averted. Tony doesn’t feel great about his outburst, but it was justified, right? Right?

He gazes out the window as they drive and focuses on breathing.

“Listen,” he says eventually, as they cross the bridge back into Manhattan. “I know your own dad is far from stellar—”

“He’s not my dad,” Peter says quietly.

“What?”

“He’s not— I never called him my dad. He’s just, just some guy. He isn’t… There is only one person I ever called ‘dad’ when I was a kid.”

Memories bubble up. They’ve been doing that annoyingly often lately; Tony really needs to get a handle on them. A memory of Peter, seven, maybe eight years old, on the swings. Tony had some installed in his backyard just for him. Peter yelling ‘dad, look how high!’ and Tony just laughing, not even bothered by the d-word.

“I suppose you did call me dad once,” he acknowledges.

“It wasn’t once.”

Tony waits for more memories to bubble up, but nothing does. “I only remember once.”

Peter kicks his shoes off and curls up in the seat, leaning away from him. “Maybe the other times were just in my head, I don’t know, now I’m not sure.” His voice is flat in a strange way.

“How about we stop for some churros?” Happy suggests from the front seat. “We just passed a place.”

He circles back but then actually deems the café, in his professional opinion, ‘too damn crowded’ for Tony to safely sit there, so he goes in to order churros for them to have in the car.

“I remember the time on the swings,” Tony says as they wait. “I had them installed for you. I think it was your birthday. Is that a weird birthday present to give; one you couldn’t even take home?”

Peter still isn’t looking at him, arms wrapped around himself, forehead leaning against the window. “It was actually better to have a present I couldn’t take home, trust me.”

“Yeah? I also remember a basketball hoop. And a fire truck with…” his voice trails off as he suddenly realizes where he did see the little fireman before. Peter turns his face even further away, but Tony can see a red flush creeping up from his neck to his cheeks.

Why would Peter carry that toy around as if it’s the most precious possession he owns?

Facts. Peter clearly saw him as a dad. And Tony left.

It’s a realization that smacks him in the face. It’s like seeing a picture of a vase a million times, and then suddenly seeing the two faces. Peter saw him as a dad. And Tony left without a word. That must have been— Fuck, incredibly painful.

How on earth is it possible that it has taken him this long to come to such a simple realization?

There is the distinct feeling of his heart slowly creaking under pressure, before fracturing apart into ugly, jagged pieces. Fuck. Five years of self-pity that he suddenly sees with a different sort of clarity. It hits him like a bucket of ice water, making goosebumps ripple over his arms. He breathes in and out and tries not to let the sudden rush of emotions show, because it won’t help. It doesn’t change their current situation. Peter’s actual parents are still assholes, Tony is still incompetent, and the only adult who was on top of the situation is still in a medically induced coma.

“I don’t think I ever really thought about how upset you must have been,” Peter says quietly. “I was just thinking about my own stuff a lot. I know my mom is the worst. I’m sorry she did all that to you.”

Tony reaches out and grips Peter’s knee before he can stop himself. “Don’t apologize,” he says, almost angrily. He is angry, but tries to keep his voice calm for Peter’s sake. “Do not apologize.”

“Richard used to sell my toys all the time, you know, that’s why I wanted to keep this one safe.”

Tony wants to start bawling.

“I’m just sorry,” Peter murmurs.

“Don’t. It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know.”

-

It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know.

Wouldn’t that be a great excuse.

Peter in fact remembers it perfectly, as if it happened this morning: Richard and his mother sitting him down and telling him that he needed to pretend from now on that Tony was his dad, and if he did a really good job, he’d get a big, big bag of candy. Gummy worms, his favorite. Which seemed fine to him, because he had already been pretending Tony was his dad inside his own head for ages, so getting to say it out loud and even getting a reward for it felt like hitting the lottery, triple layer chocolate cake with a cherry on top.

He didn’t think about the morality of lying, the consequences if that lie would be discovered, or the hurt it would inflict on Tony. Not then, or in the years that followed.

Shit. Maybe he’s an asshole as big as his parents.

Shouldn’t feel as much as a wakeup call as it does, considering Natasha is currently fighting for her life because of him.

Tony is unusually quiet for the rest of the drive home, munching thoughtfully on his churro. He doesn’t seem angry anymore, though. And when they get home and take the elevator up, Tony’s land hands on the back of Peter’s neck and squeezes a little, the motion almost thoughtless.

Tony hesitantly asks if Peter wants to help get the succulent set up in a nice place, but Peter shakes his head.

He goes up to his room instead and packs his Spider-Man suit, before heading out.

A lot of people around the city still look at him weirdly, but he helps a store owner fix a broken canopy, retrieves a pair of shoes from a lamppost, posts a birthday card for a nice old lady, and collects three more missing pet flyers.

It eases the guilt in his stomach, hopefully just enough to be able to sleep tonight.

-

He steps into the elevator, swinging the plastic bag with his spider-suit back and forth, letting it bounce against his shins.

He reaches the penthouse, rounds the aquarium.

Sam Wilson is at the table, peeling an orange. The sight inexplicably fills Peter with rage. Natasha bought those oranges. People can’t just go around eating them.

“Hey,” Sam says.

Peter marches forward and slaps the plastic bag against the table. “You’re eating our food.”

Sam just looks back at him in that particular way of his, and pops a piece of fruit into his mouth. Peter fidgets where he stands, already regretting that he didn’t just slink past him and escape to his bedroom, maybe barricade the door.

—Well, no. Probably not that. He did that once when he was little and it only made Richard twice as angry. That’s the thing about Richard. He always thinks he’s entitled to go anywhere and have anything, in a ‘if I touch it, it’s mine’, ‘if I like it, it’s mine’, ‘if I can take it from you, it’s mine’-sort of mentality. Toddler rules. And just like a toddler, if he is told ‘no’, it will lead to a tantrum of epic proportions.

“You okay, kid?” Sam asks.

“Don’t eat our oranges. Natasha is in a coma.”

Sam hums. “I see what you mean.” He looks down at the half-peeled orange. “You want the rest, then?”

Peter gets the feeling he is being indulged and, or, pitied again. But someone has to eat the rest of that orange, so he pulls a chair out and sits, holding out a hand.

Sam hands him a first wedge and continues peeling. “You and Natasha tight, then?”

“She bought me sunglasses. And a salad.” Damn, he shouldn’t have mentioned the sunglasses. He had been hiding them so well.

“Hm.” Sam gives him another hard look that Peter avoids.

He is saved by Bruce, who enters the room with his soft tread. He has the familiar book about moss and lichen clenched under his arm. Peter feels every muscle in his body uncoil when Bruce’s hand lands lightly, warmly on his shoulder.

“What shall we do for dinner?” Bruce asks.

“I can whip something up,” Sam says, and his gaze wanders right back to Peter. “If the kid doesn’t mind me touching any of the ingredients.”

Peter glares.

“Don’t be silly.” Bruce sits, laying the book down.

“Wanna grab a beer, after?” Sam asks Bruce. “I’ll find a quiet place.”

“I don’t go out.”

“I’ll find a quiet, quiet place.”

Bruce shakes his head.

“C’mon man, it’s not healthy being cooped up in here all the time.”

“I went to an exhibit last week.”

Sam huffs and hands Peter another slice of orange. Peter accepts it, remaining quiet, glad the focus is not on him anymore.

“Have you talked to Tony about the explosion?” Bruce asks, clearly just as eager to steer the focus away from his wallflower lifestyle.

“Yeah. New enhanced in town. But also, Obsorn refusing to share security footage, or let any of us set foot in his building to investigate.”

“He’s afraid his company secrets will get leaked.”

Sam wildly waves the paring knife around, raising his voice. “From what Tony said, those company secrets were stolen from you in the first place.”

“Don’t get angry,” Bruce lectures. “It’s a pointless emotion.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “What secrets is there to leak, anyways? Tony said something about you making nuclear grasshoppers. Are they glow in the dark? I’ll put in an order of three of ‘em for my nephews.”

“The main issue at the moment is that these grasshoppers survive after eating radioactive lichen in the wild, but die when I give them the same diet in my lab. I don’t know if Osborn figured out why. I sure didn’t. There must be something else they eat in their natural environment that somehow mitigates the effects.”

“I don’t like Osborn,” Sam says. “His eyes are too small for his head, you ever noticed that?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“Beady little things. Like a pig.”

Peter wipes his juice-sticky hands on his pants. He remembers something he was thinking about this afternoon, while out Spider-Manning. “Tony is building a freeze-ray.” He says.

“Hmmm?” Bruce says in half-acknowledgement. He has opened the book and is looking over the table of contents.

“He showed it to me, and he told me that some plants can adapt very quickly to cold circumstances. Like, dichotomous veins prevent cold damage. He said that. And that made me think. Lichens absorb nutrients from the atmosphere and store them in the lower cortex, right? That’s what it says on page 27.” He points at the book. “And they also produce cryoprotectants that protect them against the cold. That’s what it says on page 159. So maybe it’s not about the grasshoppers getting different nutrients here than they did in the wild. Maybe it’s about the lichen adapting to the warmer climate, which changes their structure and maybe changes the way they break down radioactive material, making them suddenly not safe for consumption.”

Bruce stares at him, so he probably said something incredibly stupid, and then thumbs at the pages and leafs through to page 159, as if he thinks Peter can’t remember basic information. His eyes scan the page, and then flick up to Peter’s face again.

“Anyway, I was just thinking about that,” Peter says, feeling uncomfortable.

Sam is grinning at Bruce’s expression. “You didn’t know he could do that, huh?” He hands Peter the last slice of orange.

Bruce closes the book, pushes his chair back. “Excuse me,” he says weakly. “I need to go check something.”

He rushes out of the room.

Not wanting to be alone with Sam Wilson again, Peter pushes his own chair back, too. “If you’re going to make us dinner, you’re allowed to use our ingredients,” he says benevolently. And leaves.

-

Tony snaps a picture of the succulent and sends it to Pepper, calling her immediately afterwards. “Do I hear a car? Where are you?”

“I was at a conference in New Jersey. On my way back. You’re on speaker phone, but it’s just me and a security guard. Which— Thank you very much for snatching away Mr. Hogan at the last minute and throwing everyone’s schedule for the day out of balance.”

Yes, yes. Balance is key. “It was for a good cause. Did you see the plant?

“I did. Remember, no cheating.” He hears the rustling of paper. “Tony. We’re talking about the boy when I get home. You asked for a day, and I’ve given you twenty-eight hours. I will be contacting the proper authorities about him.”

“Guess what Bruce just told me about him.”

She makes an impatient little noise.

“He solved the science problem Bruce had been mulling over for days and days. He just solved it. The kid who doesn’t know where New York is or what an optometrist does.”

“Are you talking about the lichen project?”

“Yup,” Tony swivels left and right in his desk chair, feeling incredibly smug, which is weird, because this was Peter’s accomplishment, not his own. “Bruce said the kid practically recited his stuffy, nerdy moss-book from memory and then handed him the solution on a silver platter. Special thanks to me for showing him my freeze ray, I hear it really clinched the deal.”

Pepper hums, amused. “You’re practically giddy. It’s nice to … hear you happy about something.”

“I am. I don’t know. It’s quite remarkable, don’t you think?”

“It doesn’t change his circumstances, though.”

Tony sobers, his swiveling slowing down. No, it doesn’t. Still assholes, still incompetent, still in a coma. “Yeah, we’ll talk when you get back.”

Peter needs someone. But it has to be someone better, someone far better than Tony.

“I have to drop by my apartment to feed the cat. Meet me in my office around eight?”

-

Peter squints down at his phone, because what the actual hell.

Oscorp just contacted him. Through Instagram. Not some front desk secretary. Not even middle management. No, the message is from Norman Osborn himself. It’s really him; Peter checked.

Dear Mr. Parker, it reads.

It would be my pleasure to invite you to an informal interview at our company, whenever convenient to you. Your remarkable academic achievements — (what the actual hell, what achievements? Best thing he ever achieved in school was starting a fire in the toilet and setting the fire alarm off.) — have been brought to my attention, and we have many opportunities for a sharp mind like yours. Do write me back at your earliest convenience.

-N.O.

This is quite possibly the weirdest thing that ever happened to him. And he was bitten by a supernatural wizard-spider. What the hell could he have done to land on Norman Osborn’s radar? Is it a mistake? But the message is addressed to him personally. Was Osborn hacked? Does Osborn know about Spider-Man? But then what does he have to gain by inviting him over like they’re big buds?

There has to be something more to this. Osborn is playing at something.

Then again: if he can’t break into Oscorp as Spider-Man, maybe he can walk in as an invited guest, and find the evidence he wanted, after all.

Two can play at this game.

He grips his phone and starts typing. Dear Mr. Osborn…

-

“Cat still alive?”

Pepper looks at him with something in her gaze he can’t quite decipher. “She’s fine.” She waves at the chair on the other side of her desk. “Everything in the penthouse still… stable?”

“Yeah. We need groceries.”

She looks for a pen. “Make me a list. No, wait, you don’t— All right. Send me a picture of your fridge, I’ll figure something out.”

“No, I didn’t mean— I’ll get them myself.”

“Oh.” She looks surprised, then nods.

“Wait. Do you normally buy me groceries? If you do, it’s not working. We never used to have any food around.”

“Just… toothpaste, toilet paper, that sort of thing.”

“Take that off your to do list right away, Christ. I can buy toothpaste. You’re busy enough as it is.”

“A monthly order of toothpaste is not much compared to the hours I spend putting out the fires you start on social media. If you want to ease my workload, delete your Twitter account.”

“Now you’re asking too much.”

“I figured,” she says dryly.

She adjusts her monitor, sits up straight and has him explain everything, from the beginning, while she makes notes, her nails rattling against her keyboard. “Do you know the boy’s social security number?”

“I don’t even know my own.”

She looks dismayed, but doesn’t comment.

“What will happen when you call CPS. Will they just come and take him away?”

“I certainly hope so! This has gone on for too long already. They’ll find him a proper family.”

“What if they just take him home? Mary could convince anyone that a stick is a carrot, the social workers will gobble it up. I don’t know, Natasha seemed fairly convinced that we needed to build a case, first. She never really went into specifics, though.”

She slides the keyboard aside and folds her hands on top of the desk. “Unfortunately, she is not able to give those specifics now, and the boy is still walking around the tower. You are on very, very thin ice, keeping him from his parents.”

“I’m not— She knows where he is.”

“But you have been either ignoring her calls or insulting her when you answer.”

“I told you those jokes to cheer you up, not so you could use them against me.”

“I’m using them against you now so that someone else doesn’t, later.” Her face softens. “He won’t drop off the face of the planet, Tony. Wherever he goes, you can stay in touch. And if CPS sends him back home, we’ll do what we can. But we have to go through the proper channels, no cutting corners. We’re talking about a child. All I’m suggesting is to have him placed with a family that will show him love and stability. I’m struggling to see why— What exactly is your objection?”

“I… I don’t know really.”

“If my understanding is—"

“Boss. I have an update on Ms. Romanoff,” FRIDAY announces suddenly. Pepper’s mouth snaps shut.

Tony jolts in his seat, gripping the edge of Pepper’s desk. A delicate, silver tightrope walker falls off her rope. “What? Yes?”

“She has been deemed stable and out of danger. Dr. Cho wants to bring her out of her coma. She would like to discuss with you the details of how to progress from here.”

Tony inhales sharply. “I’m coming.”

Chapter Text

Sam and Bruce are already there, listening to Helen Cho with intent expressions when Tony and Pepper arrive. “Again from the beginning, please,” he says without greeting anyone.

The plan is: Take her off the ventilator, lower the sedation, take her off Nitric Oxide, but keep her on vasopressors. “We’re expecting a gradual awakening over the course of the night. If all goes well, she will be responding to stimuli by morning. We’re hoping for full recovery of cognitive functions by evening and perhaps she’ll be able to get up the morning after.”

That all seems way too slow. Tony wishes this was the sort of thing where he could just throw money at it and tell his staff ‘hire whoever you need but I need this done by tonight’.  He shoves his hands into his pockets. “Great. Perfect.” He wants to go tell the kid, who wilts like a kicked puppy every time someone mentions Natasha. It would be nice to see him smile for a change.

He nudges Pepper with his elbow. “CPS is off the table?”

“How do you figure?”

“Talk to Nat, first.”

She drags a hand through her hair, looking conflicted. “You heard Dr. Cho. It could take more than 24 hours before she’ll be able to do any basic communication, let alone discuss the complexities of this case. We shouldn’t be bothering her with this.”

“What’s happening?” Bruce asks.

“Pepper wants to hand the kid over to social services.”

“Oh,” Bruce says, having the nerve to look relieved. “Yeah. That’s— Yeah, probably better.” The coward.

“Guys, come on. You know Natasha. She will want to be bothered with this. She will be angry if we go through with this now, and I’ll be the one suffering the consequences. The consequences of Nat’s anger are not pleasant.”

Pepper has that look she always has when she is about to cave and doesn’t like it. “All right. All right, I’ll give it another 24 hours. But I want you—” her eyes bore into Tony’s “—to call the boy’s mother this evening and give her an update on his wellbeing.”

“Uh,” Sam says. “So. I‘ve been meaning to ask. Who’s the kid?”

-

I cordially invite you to join me in the workshop and behold the glory of my latest projects, he texts the kid.

Peter sends back a question mark.

“FRIDAY, just tell the kid to get his ass in here.”

Peter arrives a few minutes later, barefoot, wearing that large bath robe over his clothes. “Hey.”

“Hey. How you doing, kid?”

Peter looks suspicious, which — sheesh. Tony was just asking. “Fine?” he says, his tone curling up.

Tony has carefully maneuvered the freeze-ray closer to his favorite desk so he can do a thorough inspection from the comfort of his usual chair. “Remember this baby?”

“Sure.”

“Did FRIDAY tell you anything about Natasha?”

Peter jolts. “No. What?”

“Come sit.”

Peter zings up to his side like a cartoon character, pulling another chair closer, seemingly out of nowhere. “What?” His hands curl around the armrest of Tony’s chair.

Tony repeats what Helen told them and watches a whole array of emotions spell out across Peter’s face.

“Okay,” Peter says, nervously fiddling with his enormous, fluffy sleeves. “Okay. So she’s going to be totally fine?”

“It’s too early to really tell, but things are looking up.”

“Okay.” Peter’s eyes are shining, and Tony feels that urge to hug him again.

“Hey. Did Bruce talk to you yet?”

Peter is back to looking wary. “About?”

“You know, you could have mentioned you were a secret genius.”

Peter sits back in his chair and draws his legs up. He has a look like he thinks he’s in trouble, like he’s worried anything he says will make things worse. Tony is probably handling this wrong, but he isn’t sure how he— He’s just complimenting the kid.

He turns his gaze away from the kid and towards his freeze ray, twisting at the screws that hold the outer casing together. “You know. The grasshoppers.”

Peter still says nothing.

“Bruce finally got the edge on Oscorp. He pretends he doesn’t care, you know, just in it for the science, anger is a pointless emotion, bla bla. Believe me, he’s a vengeful man deep down, and he’s enjoying this. Osborn’s gonna wish you walked into his building.”

Peter frowns, not like he is angry or confused; more considering. “You think Osborn would have any interest in me just because I said a random thing about, uh, plant shapes?”

“I literally think he would adopt you if he could.” He gently lifts the outer casing away, revealing the control panel wires, and turns the appliance a bit so Peter can see.

Peter isn’t even looking at it. “Did you happen to tell Ms. Potts about my idea?”

“I think I mentioned it. Why?”

Peter says nothing.

“She doesn’t actually get involved with any of the research, you know.” Tony disconnects the ribbon connectors. “So do you in fact like science, or what’s happening?”

“I don’t know. I mean. I read about the periodic table. And about volcanoes.”

“Why did you miss so much school?”

“What do you care?” Peter doesn’t sound defensive; just completely, genuinely confused and okay, that stings.

“What do you do when you’re not at school?”

“Walk around.”

Tony carefully extracts the mainboard from his freeze-ray. “Know what this is?”

Peter shrugs.

“Want me to explain it to you? Run a few programs together?”

“Is it complicated?”

Yes. But. “You’ll understand it just fine.”

Peter kicks the leg of the table. “Okay.”

Tony walks Peter through modifying a BIOS this and that way. Peter has only vaguely heard of HTML, doesn’t know the difference between hardware and software, but is not bad at understanding things instinctively, not bad at all.

What it really is, probably, Tony decides, is a good set of brains but a bad set of circumstances.

Peter finally announces he has a headache, at which point Tony realizes it’s past midnight. He wonders what a normal bedtime is for teenagers and resolves to ask Friday, later. And, ugh. He promised Pepper to call Mary. He should do it now, before it’s too late in Malibu.

-

As always, Mary titters enthusiastically as soon as she answers. “Hello, hello.”

“Hello, Lady Tremaine.”

“Anthony, darling!” She is speaking slowly and lazily, dragging out the words. “I was literally just thinking about you. Remember when you bought me my house?”

Talking to this woman is like going on a derailing rollercoaster ride each time. “You didn’t deserve it.”

“The roof is leaking. I have puddles in the linen closet. I want a refund.” Followed by muffled chortles.

“Just calling to inform you that Peter is still doing well, and you’re still welcome to come pick him up at your earliest convenience.” There. Checkbox ticked.

“Oh, good,” she says. “Good, good, good. Isn’t he a sweet boy? Takes after his dad.”

“Fuck you.”

He hears something rustle and she sighs a bit. “To be perfectly honest, hon, I forgot what the plan was. He’s spending the summer at yours, is he?”

“Didn’t you have a home visit sometime this week?”

“Did we? Well, we can’t have that.”

Forget it. “He’s spending the summer at mine,” Tony confirms.

“My god, we’re so functional.” He can hear her slowly inhale and exhale, then cough slightly. She’s probably smoking weed right now. “Like those divorced parents who still spend Christmas together, and maybe still fuck occasionally without telling anyone. Being divorced makes it twice as hot. I’m up for it if you are. Do it for the kids, Anthony.”

Tony hangs up and promises himself right there and then: if CPS takes Peter back to Mary, Tony will kidnap him and move to Costa Rica together. He might be able to convince Pepper to come along, she speaks perfect Spanish. She practically speaks every language.

Yeah, that doesn’t sound like such a bad life.

-

He checks on Nat before going to bed, and again around four AM. The nurse watching over her greets him with an encouraging smile each time. “She was blinking a moment ago” and “we had some finger twitches”.

When he returns a third time around six AM, Bruce is there, too, and Helen has also returned.

“She is waking up fast,”

“Is that a good thing?”

“It is.”

He approaches the bed. “Hey Nat.” He gently squeezes her hand. “Quit lying around, you lazy bastard.”

Natasha squeezes back.

He goes back to bed for a few more hours, and then FRIDAY wakes him and reports that Natasha is fully awake and attempting to communicate. He returns to the med bay once again. Natasha’s eyes are open. Helen is speaking to her softly, asking questions to which Natasha replies with low hums.

She sees him and makes a small gesture with her hand. She murmurs something, her gaze on him seeming very focused. Tony steps closer and sits on the edge of the bed.

“Peter,” Natasha says. “Okay? Peter okay?”

He can’t help but smile. “My god, Natasha, yes, Peter is okay. We’re not so incompetent that we can’t keep him clothed and fed for a few days while you do your beauty sleep.”

She hums again and her eyes drift shut.

It’s time for Peter to get up anyways so Tony heads upstairs and knocks on his bedroom door. There is no response, nor after the second knock. “FRIDAY? Is Peter inside?”

“He is,” Friday confirms. “And awake. But I sense a low-grade fever.”

Tony knocks again. “Kiddo?”

No response.

Tony opens the door ajar, but doesn’t look inside. “Peter, can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” Peter croaks. “I’m fine.”

“Can I come in? FRIDAY says you’re sick.”

“I’m fine.”

“Please can I come in?”

It’s funny, how bedsprings creaking can somehow sound confused. “Uh. Yeah, okay.”

Tony steps into the room. Peter is in bed. He looks all right, cheeks only slightly flushed, eyes glittering a bit.

“Still have a headache,” Peter mumbles.

Tony hums and shuffles closer. “FRIDAY says you also have a temperature. Do you think you can stomach some breakfast, though?”

“Don’wanna get up.”

“I’ll bring you something.” He squats by Peter’s bedside. “Hey. Guess what.”

Peter wipes his face with the tip of the blanket and gives an askance look.

“Natasha is waking up, I just talked to her a tiny bit.” He holds his thumb and index finger half an inch apart.

He notices with alarm that Peter immediately tears up. Peter sniffles and scrubs at his face. “Is she okay?”

“She’s doing very well, considering.”

“Does—Does she remember what happened?”

“I don’t know, yet. She can’t talk a lot. She asked for you right away, though.”

Peter’s bottom lip trembles. “Okay.”

“I’ll get you some fruit and a cup of tea, yeah?”

Peters sniffs and wipes his nose on the blanket. “Yeah.”

Tony heads back to the kitchen and has FRIDAY instruct him on the requirements of a sick teenager.

“Peter coming down with something?” Bruce asks. He entered the room and caught the tail-end of FRIDAY’s lecture.

“Nothing major, but he’s staying in bed a bit.”

“I’ll find him something to read.”

“Have you been down to see Natasha?”

Bruce nods. “Just now. She was sleeping, but I hear you talked.”

“Hm-hm. She was more talkative than she ever was before the coma.”

“How dare you,” Bruce says, but good-humored, with a sense of relief.

Tony cuts an apple in slices, boils water and opts for a small bowl of yogurt, too. At FRIDAY’s direction, he finds an enamel tray in an overhead cupboard. It has flowers and birds painted on it and Tony is pretty sure that Bruce must have bought it at the same place that he got that stupid lamp. Bruce brings him a book about dinosaurs that he adds to the tray.

He brings it all to Peter’s room. Peter is looking guarded and perhaps even slightly overwhelmed. He reaches for the book, first, rolling onto his side and studying the back cover. His eyes are still wet, and he wipes his face again.

“Eat whatever you feel like. But do drink the tea, at least. FRIDAY says you need to stay hydrated.”

“I… Okay.”

“I’ll check on you regularly. But tell FRIDAY if you need anything. Anything at all.”

Peter hugs the book to his chest and glances up at him. “You know. My second day here, I think. I got really sick. Like, really sick. I threw up three times and missed two meals. And you didn’t even notice. And when I told you the next day you just said I looked fine.”

“Yes, well—” he lets his hand settle on top of Peter’s head, brushing at his fringe with a thumb. “Newsflash, I’m a pretty self-involved guy.”

“And when I was little, I’d get sick sometimes. And mom would take me over to your place because she didn’t want to take care of me. Like that time when I had the sneezies, or that time when I threw up all over your rocking chair.”

Tony hums. He has fleeting fragments of memories about that.

“And you’d buy me ice cream which was objectively a really—a r-really bad idea but you were trying,” Peter continues with halting breaths, another tear slips out, “and you had a hot water bottle shaped like an owl and you let me s-sit on the couch with you even if I just threw up and you read me stories and the blanket and the bubble—bubble bath—"

Okay, this is getting… “Peter, sweetheart. Breathe,” he instructs softly.

Peter’s hands ball into fists, creasing up the bedsheets. “I hate you so much. I hate you s-s-so much. I hate you, I hate you.”

Without thinking, Tony clambers up on the bed, his knees knocking against Peter’s, and pulls Peter into a hug, tucking the boy’s head against his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Peter is shaking in his arms. “You l-left me.”

“I know.”

“You n-never. You never even…” Peter cuts off halfway through the last syllable and burrows closer to Tony, hiding his face, fever radiating off his skin as he takes shuddering breaths. Tony wants to shish-kebab the person who hurt this kid, except that person is him.

He hums softly and rubs circles on Peter’s back, as he breathes through a potent wave of self-hatred that the kid doesn’t need to know about.

He had not spared a second to think about the position he was putting Peter in when he left Malibu. It didn’t even cross his mind. He was being fueled by a fiery, focused sort of fury, the kind that occurs rarely, but when it does, it completely overtakes his brain and leaves no room for anything else. He packed his stuff and moved to the New York estate his parents left him, overnight. And then Afghanistan happened, and he pushed everything else deep, deep down.

Back then, he had been too young and unworldly, probably, to fully appreciate the role he was playing in Peter’s life, even if he had been thinking straight. He does remember Mary dropping Peter off on his doorstep whenever he was sick, but back then, he just thought it was funny; thought Mary was quirky, a free spirit, exactly what he liked about her.

His thumb rubs against Peter’s shoulder blade, and he glances down. Peter has fallen asleep, it seems; his cheeks blotchy, his breaths rattling with congestion. He didn’t even drink his tea.

Tony carefully turns onto his back, one arm staying pinned under Peter’s shoulders, and breathes out slowly, staring up at the ceiling.

The little fireman is staring back at him from the nightstand, accusingly.

-

Eventually he has to leave, though, when FRIDAY informs him at a low volume that Natasha is awake again and asking for him.

Tony to the nurse’s station, Tony to the nurse’s station. One sickbed to another.

He finds her looking quite awake and leafing through her own medical file. She speaks slowly, with pauses. “FRIDAY tells me — you haven’t moved along — with Peter’s case.”

Tony shakes his head, sagging down into the chair. “Wanted to talk to you first.”

“Good.” She takes a longer pause and slowly rubs her chest.

“Are you in pain?”

“Never mind that. — Just listen.”

Sure. Tony drags a hand through his hair. God, what a day.

“The enhanced—” Natasha carefully waits until Tony has his full attention on her, “is Peter.”

“Uhhh,” Tony says.

“We were — on the roof — together.”

“Uuuhh,” Tony says. His brain has gone offline, blue screen of death.

“He needs — to stay here.”

“Wait. Just wait.” Tony covers his eyes with his hand. “Fuck. I know you can barely talk. But please start from the beginning.”

With fits and starts, in halting half-sentences, Natasha manages to explain something about miraculously recovering eyesight, stolen ski-masks and finally the rooftop rendezvous.

“I want him here,” Natasha repeats. “No other family.”

“I—Nat, how do you see that playing out?”

“Enhanced,” Natasha says firmly, chopping the side of one hand against her open palm. “No other family. I totchka. Period. I want him here.”

“I want him here too, but I have enough sense to know that I’m not good enough to be the person he needs. How would we—"

“I’ll be here. I’ll take him.” Her chest is heaving from the effort, her voice turning raspy.

“Okay,” Tony says, holding up his hands. “Okay. Yes. No other family. I’m not saying… We can talk about it later. I won’t send him away. I hear you. Just rest, please.”

She sags back against the pillow and mutters something in Russian that Tony has heard often enough to recognize as a swear word.

Peter, enhanced. Peter, delivering Natasha back to the tower after the explosion. Peter, sitting in the waiting room outside the med bay while Tony ranted furiously about…

Fuck.

What a day.

-

Peter wakes up with gritty, heavy eyes and a pounding head. He breathes in and then immediately coughs. There is something nagging at the back of his mind. Something wrong. A reason for him to feel upset. He sniffs and opens his eyes.

It comes rushing back to him when he sees Tony sitting in a chair next to the bed. Oh god. Peter blubbered all over him. There are still wet patches in the bed sheets, his hand brushes past them and he cringes. “Uhm.”

Tony was reading the book about dinosaurs, but his eyes snap up. His shoulders slump when he makes eye contact with Peter and he lays the book aside. “Some outdated views there.”

“Can I get a tissue?” Peter asks bravely, though he doesn’t dare to look Tony in the eye.

Tony nudges a whole box of them closer. Peter hadn’t noticed them on his nightstand.

“Thanks.”

“Feeling better?”

“No. Head hurts.”

“FRIDAY says your temperature is down, though.”

“Hm.” Peter lays down again. “Uh. We don’t need to talk about that whole thing before.” He weakly flops his hand around.

“No, we most definitely do. We need to talk about a lot of things. Natasha just gave me some more details about the Oscorp explosion. I’m sure you can imagine what those details entailed.”

Fuck. Peter shrinks in on himself. “I didn’t cause that explosion.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Tony snaps. “Just… God. You’re enhanced? That’s why you came to New York?”

“No!” Peter rasps. “Do you have any idea how depressing it is that you all find it so incredibly hard to believe that I came to New York simply because I thought you would give a shit about what happens to me?” He balls up the tissue and flings it in the general direction of his trashcan, his heart pounding.

Tony’s voice is carefully controlled. “What kind of enhancements are we talking about? Where did they come from?”

“Are you sending me to jail?”

“No, don’t be ridiculous. Just answer my questions.” Tony’s voice is all impatience and frustration, and Peter feels tears burn behind his eyes. He is so tired.

“One of Osborn’s magic spiders bit me when me and Bruce were at the exhibit.” He doesn’t look Tony’s way but can hear him breathe, louder than usual. “That’s the night I got sick. And then I got better. I don’t know. I see things, I hear things, I can jump pretty far, walk on the ceiling… Yeah. That’s it.” He plucks at his blanket.

Silence, save for Tony’s breathing. “Don’t break into people’s houses or offices again,” Tony says.

“I haven’t been!”

“Good.”

The chair is scraped closer. Peter draws his shoulders up higher and pulls up the blanket to bury his face into. He doesn’t care how childish that looks.

Tony’s hand lands on his, a thumb slowly rubbing his knuckles. “Two things,” Tony says.

Peter lies as still as he possibly can, holding his breath.

“Well. A lot of things, really. But we gotta start somewhere. First. I’m glad you weren’t injured in that explosion. You did the best you could, bringing Natasha home. Disregard everything else I said about it.”

The tears are back, humiliatingly, but at least they are silent so Tony might not notice.

“Second, Peter.” Rough fingers find his scalp, combing through his hair. “I am sorry for leaving Malibu the way I did.”

Peter hadn’t known he needed an apology. He had come to New York full of hope and anticipation, just happy that he’d get to see Tony again. He doesn’t really know where this chasm of resentment came from. It’s not even fair — Tony already made it plenty clear that Mary’s lies really tore him up. The lies that Peter was a willing participant in.

This whole thing is so messed up. He can’t even figure out how he is supposed to feel. He should post one of those reddit ‘Am I The Asshole?’ things.

“And, no. Third,” Tony says. “I am sorry for being worse than useless when you first arrived here. You deserved better. I didn’t think you… I didn’t think.”

“Stop,” Peter croaks, because hearing all these apologies is physically hurting his chest.

It is silent a moment longer, Tony’s hand curled around his. “Want to come to the living room and watch a movie on the couch?” Tony whispers.

Peter nods against the sheets, mostly to make sure his tears are wiped away.

-

Bruce joins them, which is kind of a relief, not having to be alone with Tony after all those awkward declarations before. He wouldn’t know what to say to the man, and his most prominent feeling right now is embarrassment over his earlier outburst. Tony spends a lot of time looking at Peter while pretending to watch the movie. It’s simultaneously unnerving and reassuring.

Sam Wilson doesn’t join them, which is also a relief.

Bruce prattles on a bit about lichen and grasshoppers when there is a prolonged action sequence, which he apparently finds the most boring part. He’s now having thermoelectric coolers installed in his terrariums, based on Peter’s idea, and starting the experiment again from scratch. “I’ll credit you,” he says.

Peter nods, not knowing what that means.

He hopes to be mostly fine tomorrow; he has promised to meet Norman Osborn in his office at 11 AM, and Osborn has confirmed.

After their appointment he’ll sneak around the building with two specific missions. Find evidence that they stole Bruce’s research, and find evidence that Ms. Potts is the one snitching. Because, seriously, Osborn messaging him probably, like, three minutes after Tony told Pepper about his discovery is all kinds of suspicious.

He’s not breaking any promises. He won’t be breaking in. He’s invited.

-

He’s not allowed to visit Natasha because of his cold, but that evening, just before bed, Natasha facetimes him.

“Like the new décor,” she says, and Peter realizes his collection of missing pet-flyers is right in the background of his video.

“I’ve been trying to do good things for people, and stuff.”

“Proud of you.” Her face is really soft. Peter doesn’t remember seeing that expression on her before.

-

Oscorp is not as nice as Stark Industries. The ceilings are low and the lights are flat. Peter blows his nose noisily in the atrium before stepping up to the reception desk. “I have an appointment with Norman Osborn?”

He receives a skeptical look, but after handing over his ID, the receptionist glances at her screen, then nods. “Please be seated. Someone will come pick you up shortly.”

Norman Osborn himself comes pick him up which, judging by the craning necks from both visitors and staff, is not all that common. “Mr. Parker,” he says with a jovial smile, holding out a hand.

“Sorry, I have a cold,” Peter says. “If you don’t mind.”

“Nonsense, nonsense.” Osborn grabs his hand and pumps it up and down. “Follow along.”

They take the elevator to the thirteenth floor. Peter did his research this time, and knows that the building has sixteen floors.

“Temporary office space,” Osborn explains, leading him through a door. “Due to renovations on the floors above us.”

Yeah, makes sense.

The office doesn’t look all that temporary. It looks nice, classy, well thought-out, with art that actually looks like something. It all looks really old and religious and stuff.

“The assumption of Mary,” Osborn says when he sees Peter pausing in front of a large painting. “Actual fifteenth century piece. The pride of my collection.”

“Oh. Cool.” Whatever.

Osborn points at the painting some more, talking about brush strokes and something called sharo-scuro. Peter nods along a bit.

“So,” Osborn finally points him to a chair on one side of the desk, and takes a seat on the same side, crossing his legs. “A little birdie tells me you’ve been spending the past weeks at Stark Industries.”

“What birdie is that?”

Osborn smiles and taps the side of his nose. “You’re from Malibu, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Hm-hm. Two days by train. Four without a ticket.”

Peter narrows his eyes. That is literally what he said to Pepper Potts when she questioned him on his first day. At this point, is Osborn just trying to expose his spy on the inside?

“What brings you here?” Osborn continues.

Peter isn’t all that well-versed in the art of interrogation, but he did spend some time this morning coming up with things to say that would spike Osborn’s interest and maybe make him reveal something. “Tony invited me.”

“Based on?”

“I sent him some ideas about this freeze-ray he’s working on.”

“You have an interest in science?”

“I guess.”

“Is Tony Stark currently paying you for your efforts?”

Peter shakes his head.

Osborn tuts. “What a tragic oversight. Then again, Tony Stark has always had a tendency to piggyback off other people’s ideas and not give credit where credit is due. Still cruising on the waves of his father’s legacy. Howard was the real deal, my boy. I remember one TECHSPO where he particularly impressed me. I won’t bore you with the details, you can ask Tony about it.”

“Sure.” Whatever. “Do you remember meeting me before? It was outside Ms. Potts’ office.”

Osborn squints a bit before his expression clears again. “I do remember. Not the particulars, though, I’m afraid.”

“I was surprised to see you talking to Ms. Potts.”

He waves a hand. “A real fellow art lover, that one. Recognized my ‘assumption of Mary’ the first moment she set foot into my office. That’s how I knew she was one of the few competent people Stark has in his company. You might be one, too. The work you’re doing there right now; you could be doing the same for us and getting paid.”

“I’m fourteen.”

Osborn shrugs in a way that shows that the law is not something he ever particularly takes into account. “Paid internships are always on the table. Plus a little under the table, wink wink.”

“Can I think it over?”

“Naturally,” Osborn says. He takes a pen and notepad and starts sketching out different scenarios of how he would fit Peter into the company.

Peter finds, to his own surprise, that he feels completely and totally indifferent about the frankly staggering amounts of money offered. He suddenly knows with absolute conviction that he wouldn’t want to work for a bad guy if he was paid millions.

Osborn finishes by adding his phone number at the bottom of the paper and tearing it neatly off the pad, folding it sharply. “I’m hoping to hear a response by the end of the week.”

He didn’t even ask about radioactive lichen. Peter has to hand it to him. He’s subtle.

Osborn walks him back to the elevator and they say their goodbyes. He watches Peter press the button for the ground floor. So unfortunately, Peter has to travel all the way down, before he can push the button for the fourteenth floor and go back up.

The elevator doors open into a dimly lit hallway. There are charred walls, but all debris has been cleared out. See-through plastic is covering up holes left and right, billowing in a draft. Every door has a criss-cross of red-white tape on it. Peter pushes one open anyway.

The furniture was left inside, but pushed to one side of the room. Just desks and desk chairs, nothing to see here, probably. He ducks back out and wanders further down the hallway.

There is a prickle down his spine when he approaches a corner.

“Hey,” a security guard barks, stepping into his way. “No one is allowed up here.”

Peter freezes for a moment.

And then darts past him.

-

When Tony first hears his phone go off, he ignores it.

“Ms. Potts insists that you answer,” FRIDAY says as soon as it stops ringing.

“Shoot. Yes, okay. Where is it. Dum-E, do you see it?”

“Desk to your right, next to the keyboard,” FRIDAY says.

“Let Dum-E play sometime too, FRI.”

“Ms. Potts is impatient. I prioritized.”

“Good call.” His phone buzzes again and he answers. “Y’ello?”

“Tony. Norman just called me. The police picked Peter up from his company.”

“What?” A dozen scenarios shoot through Tony’s head and all of them involve the kid foolishly breaking in again with his silly ski mask and Osborn discovering his enhancements.

“He had an interview with the kid and apparently, afterwards, Peter wandered. Security caught him out of bounds and contacted the police when he refused to be escorted out.”

Okay. Confusion sky-high. “What do you—Why the hell would Peter have an interview at Oscorp?”

“I don’t know.”

“How did that happen? Why wasn’t I aware? What does Osborn even want with him?”

“I don’t know, Tony, I’m telling you everything I’ve been told. I don’t know more than you do.”

“Did you tell Osborn that Peter figured out the issue with Bruce’s grasshoppers?”

“Excuse me, what do you take me for?”

Tony quickly backpedals. “I— No. Sorry. I’ll go pick the kid up.”

“For the love of God, Tony.”

“Yes, yes. Thank you.” He hangs up and heads for the door. “FRIDAY, run some plates, CCTV, can you find out what precinct Peter is at?”

-

It’s a different precinct from last time. This one doesn’t have a parking lot behind it so Tony clumsily parallel parks — Happy will be yelling at him again — and takes the steps up to the front doors two at a time. “Here to see Peter Parker,” he says, leaning far forward over the reception desk.

The agent behind the desk frowns and hovers her pen in front of her computer screen. “Oh. The young man who was just brought in?”

“Is he in any kind of trouble?”

“He’ll be released with a warning.  We were still tracing down his next of kin.”

“Well, I’m here.”

“And you are?”

Tony opens his mouth. Closes it again.

The agent takes another look at him. “…Iron Man?” she says.

“I… yeah. Listen. Any chance I can just bring the kid home? He’s staying with me for the summer.”

She looks nervously apologetic. “I’m sorry. Sorry, sir. I mean. Big fan of your work and all that, but I can only release the boy into the care of a parent or legal guardian, or an appropriate adult approved by them.”

“Shit. Okay. Give me a moment.” He takes out his phone and dials Mary’s number.

“Hello, hello, hello?” she says.

“I want custody of the kid,” Tony barks.

“Uh,” she says slowly. “Who—Who is this?”

“I want you to transfer guardianship. I want custody of Peter now.”

The police officer behind the desk gapes up at him, her pen dropping from her slackening hand.

Mary giggles. “Oh. Anthony. Come back to Malibu, Anthony. We’ll have so much fun together. Fffffun.”

Jesus Christ. “Are you drunk?”

“Wasted. Join me.”

“Listen to me, Yubaba. I want custody of Peter, post-haste, effective yesterday.”

“Uhh…” Mary says slowly. “I… Yeah. Okay. I mean. Is there a website or something? What do I do?”

“Fuck.” What is he doing. He’s losing his mind. This is not how anything works. He pinches the bridge of his nose, then abruptly hangs up. “FUCK!” he bellows, pounding his fist against the wall a single time.

“Sir, please remain calm,” the agent says, weakly.

“Yes, I— Yes. Apologies.” He rubs his fist, shakes it out. “I’m not thinking straight. Please just… Can you get his mother on the phone and ask her permission for Tony Stark to sign the kid out?”

-

Peter is led out by an officer and approaches Tony, his head ducked low. He pauses in front of Tony and glances up. “I’m sorry.”

“Talk later,” Tony says, and yanks him into a hug, dropping a kiss into his hair.

-

“Uh…” Peter says, after they’ve driven in silence for a few minutes. “Don’t you want to know what happened?”

Tony’s mind is still going haywire, and he had frankly completely forgotten that Peter still has some explaining to do. “It’s—Are you okay?”

“Fine.”

“Didn’t we say no breaking in?”

“I was invited.”

“Apparently so. Want to tell me what that was about?”

“I don’t know. It happened, like, ten seconds after I had the idea with the lichen problem thingy. So you’ve got a snitch. In your inner circle. Is all I’m saying.”

Tony sighs and honks impatiently at someone changing lanes in front of him. “Next time include me in your plans, won’t you? Or you’ll just get yourself into trouble.” Christ on a pogo stick, he can’t believe he just yelled at Mary to get custody of the kid when all he has been doing the last few days is convince himself what a terrible idea that would be. Is he losing his mind?

“You’re angry, right?” Peter asks, observing him closely.

Tony shakes his head. “Not angry. Just… thinking about stuff.”

“About the snitch? Because I still think it’s Ms. Potts. Osborn just literally quoted something I said to her when I first arrived here.”

“Coincidence?”

“You should probably fire her either way, just to be safe.”

“Be nice, Pete. That’s the woman I’m trying to date.”

Peter’s mouth drops open.

Chapter Text

She finally exchanges her diamond-patterned hospital gown for normal pants and a shirt with a picture of a dog in sunglasses that says ’sup dawg.

She reaches the hallway. And then the elevator. And then the kitchen island. And then the hallway outside of Peter’s room. She pauses to catch her breath each time.

It’s only when she knocks that FRIDAY thinks to inform her that Peter left the building earlier this morning.

“With his pajamas?”

“Indeed.”

Sure. She leans her crutches against his doorpost, carefully, gingerly lowers herself to the floor and leans her back against the wall. A little further down the hallway is her own bedroom. Tony was already talking to Helen about the modifications Natasha would need. A walk-in shower, an adjustable bed.

As much as Tony has resisted the idea of Avengers moving into the tower, he seems equally reluctant — perhaps even more reluctant — to let people leave once they have set foot inside this place.

One door further down is probably where Sam settled in, Natasha can tell by the dartboard hanging off the door.

Family is a funny thing.

She dozes off. Sam passes by at some point and gently shakes her arm to wake her. “That can’t be comfortable. Let me get you to the couch.”

“Waiting for the kid.”

“Yeah, well, he’s out collecting find-my-dog-flyers, might be a while.”

Peter’s enhancements and self-appointed missions are taken in stride like they’re nothing more noteworthy than the average teenager taking up a paper route. This is how Natasha knows he has to stay here.

Sam takes her to the couch and leans her crutches against the bookshelves.

She must have dozed off again, because it seems like she blinks and Peter is suddenly there, cross-legged next to the couch, plucking specks of dust from the carpet.

“Hi.”

He perks up, sitting up straighter and leaning his arms on the edge of the couch. “I found a missing cat!”

“Nice work.”

“Yeah.” He leans his chin on his arms, smiling tentatively.

“How’ve you been?”

“I don’t know. Weird.”

“Arrested again?”

Peter’s smile widens to something more genuine. “I guess you guys are a bad influence. I never got arrested in Malibu.”

Natasha hasn’t talked things all the way through yet; with Tony, with Bruce. She doesn’t want to make any promises to Peter about staying here until she knows she can keep them.

Tony is avoiding the issue, and not being very subtle about it. She really thought the kid was growing on him, but maybe this step is a bit too much too soon. He had promised Natasha at her bedside not to send Peter away, but Natasha has tried to talk to him twice since then, and both times he made a feeble excuse and practically ran from the room. Damn these crutches; otherwise Natasha could have been running after him and tackling him to the ground. One leg wrapped around his neck, the other around his ribs, and keep him pinned down until he gives in to all her demands.

Yes, yes. Family is a funny thing.

She pokes Peter’s hand. “Peter.” She waits for him to look at her. “We handle Osborn.”

He sniffs, his mouth twisting a little. A short pause. “Did you know Tony is trying to date Ms. Potts?” He says it with almost a whiny pitch.

Yes. It’s one of the great miracles of their time. Natasha respects the hell out of both Tony and Pepper, but they really take the ‘opposites attract’ cliché to an extreme. “You don’t approve?”

“She’s scary.”

Natasha hums in acknowledgement. “Her best quality.”

Peter frowns at her.

-

“Holy shit,” Sam says. “I mean, I was with all of you one hundred percent when we were doing space battles or fighting the Skynet-robot, but getting a kid? That’s the real shit. That’s not something you can just lah-di-dah about.”

Natasha sent Peter out for an innocuous errand. The rest of them have gathered around the kitchen table, laying out strategies, like this is the evening before battle. Natasha likes it; it all feels very familiar. Only difference is, Tony is being unusually quiet instead of his usual cynical self. And he squints every time he looks at Natasha’s shirt, like he’s looking into the sun. But at least he joined them, didn’t try to invent an excuse.

“We’re most certainly not lah-di-dah-ing,” Bruce says. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so serious about anything my whole life.”

“No offense, man, but what’s the plan; you’ll be going to the PTA meetings? You can’t even step out of the tower to grab a beer.” He points to Natasha. “You’re only just at the beginning of a significant recovery process, and you,” that one is aimed at Tony. “I don’t even know where to begin with you.”

“I know,” Bruce says. “We’re hopeless. The point is to do it together.”

“Sam. Stay too,” Natasha says. “Help us. Four people — better than three.”

Sam hesitates. “The kid doesn’t seem to like me much,” he says, which is not at all the same as That sounds stupid, I don’t wanna.

“Didn’t like me either.” Natasha says. “First.”

“But you’re scary. And I’m a delightful goofball. Seriously, kids normally love me.”

“Win him over,” Natasha says. “You loser.”

Sam snorts.

Their gazes wander to Tony. They have already established that the paperwork needs to be filed in his name, considering he has demonstrably known the kid for a long time, which gives their case a much better chance. But that fact alone is enough to freak Tony out plenty, even if there seems to be an unspoken agreement that Natasha would be mostly in charge of the actual parenting.

“Are you on board with letting the kid stay?” Bruce asks Tony carefully. “If we promise to do all of it… together?”

Tony’s face does a thing like he is going through all five stages of grief, and then he gives a terse nod.

Good enough for Natasha. “Plan." She speaks slowly, pressing one hand against her aching chest. "Get his parents to agree. Get a lawyer to draw up the documents. Present them to a judge. Then social worker. Wish we could — do this without court. But we can’t. Might take months. We need — to be delicate about this. Diplomatic.”

Tony clears his throat. “It may be a bit too late for that.”

All heads swivel to him. “Because?”

Tony hunkers down lower in his seat. “Well. I may have yelled to his mother over the phone to sign custody over to me.”

Silence meets that statement.

“Though she was quite drunk, so she may not remember,” Tony adds, faux-casual.

Okay. That puts Tony’s evasive movements into a different light. Perhaps this whole thing does not feel too much too soon for him, but rather too little too late.

“What did she say?” Bruce asks. “Did she get angry?”

“Mary Fitzpatrick does not get angry. She does not care enough. About anything. I’m—Look, I did lose my mind a little bit. Let’s definitely not talk about it at all.” He runs a hand down his face. “Is there any way a substantial bribe is on the table to move things along?”

Natasha purses her lips, considering. “Equally likely to backfire…  You’ll end up arrested — for trying to buy a child.”

“I do want him here,” Tony says. His voice is brusque in that way it is when he tries to hide his emotions. “And I want all of you here, because I want him to be okay, and I’m going to do what I can, but I don’t think I’ll be enough. So. Yeah.” He stands, abruptly. Clears his throat. “All in agreement, then. I’ll see if Pepper can help. We all know I love finding ways to get her stress levels nice and high.” He leaves quickly, without looking at anyone.

“You owe me a hundred bucks,” Natasha tells Sam.

-

Peter saunters back into the tower, one arm wrapped around a paper bag. He waves at Denzel behind reception, and at Jas by the security gates. Both of them still look a little puzzled whenever they see him, but they’ve learned by now to simply wave back.

“Gotta check what you’re bringing into the tower there, kid,” Jas says, indicating the bag.

“Oh, sure,” Peter says, and shows her.

Natasha apparently has a craving for bananas, and she was in a coma so Peter is not going to argue, nope, he bought as many bananas as he could get for the ten dollars she gave him. Which is a whole paper bag full of them.

No one has ever just handed him money like that.

Peter has been taking money from his mom’s wallet for years, but she is either too lazy to notice or too lazy to care. He had been wise enough to never take any money from Richard until he knew for certain that he would not see the man again for at least a good while, hopefully ever. Bottom line is: his brain is wired to take money, guard it with his life and not ever, ever giving it back.

He got a quarter change. It feels heavy in his pocket, clicking against the fireman with every step.

“Huh,” Jas says. “They not feeding you enough up there?” She says it in a voice like she is kidding, but also not really kidding. It’s funny that someone who is supposedly on Tony’s personal security detail, has so little actual faith in her employer.

Or maybe it’s to be expected, considering she has seen Tony up close a lot.

Because Tony is… yeah.

Peter officially no longer knows how to act around him at all. It was almost easier when Tony practically ignored him. Which is stupid, because Tony caring for him when he’s sick, showing him how to program a motherboard, watching movies with him, are exactly the sort of things Peter had fantasized about when he snuck onto his first train back in Malibu. But now that they’re a reality, it seems like all he can think about is how he sold Tony out for a bag of gummy worms.  

He reaches the penthouse and Tony is right there. As soon as Peter steps around the aquarium, Tony’s gaze is on him. And the man isn’t even doing anything; just sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee. Like he was waiting for him. “Hey, kid.”

“Hey.” He starts unpacking the bananas.

Tony watches. “Are we stocking up for the big one?”

“What big one?”

Tony waves a hand. “Never mind.”

Peter frowns. “No. Tell me.”

Tony looks surprised, but then explains: “It’s just this big, hypothetical earthquake that could hit California, along the San Andreas fault. I don’t know. People would reference it in Malibu quite a lot. In New York not as much, but people know about it. Never heard of it?”

Peter shakes his head. He read about earthquakes in the volcano-book, though. He knows what a fault line is.

“It’s supposedly long overdue for a major quake.”

“Good thing I’m not there anymore, then.”

“Yeah,” Tony agrees. “Good thing.”

There is a silence that feels loaded, and Peter wonders if they’re both thinking the same thing.

“Where is Natasha?” he asks.

“Sleeping in her room.”

Peter nods and folds the paper bag. The kitchen table is covered in bananas. The quarter is still in his pocket.

“Nice job,” Tony says, reaching out to the closest bunch of bananas.

Peter slaps his hand away. “Not for you! Natasha was in a coma!”

“Okay. I underwent major heart surgery in a cave in Afghanistan. How many bananas do I get for that?”

“Shut up!”

“You shut up,” Tony says, but he’s smiling.

Peter starts to pile the bananas into the fruit bowl, stacking them up like a Jenga tower. “Friday. Tony is not allowed to have any of these bananas.”

“Noted.”

“I’m gonna go see Natasha.” Peter points at Tony with the folded paper bag. “Do. Not. Touch.”

Tony makes no promises, he just says: “Don’t wake her up if she’s sleeping.”

Peter patters down the hallway and is relieved to see Natasha’s door is half-open. That gives him permission to peek inside, right?

Natasha is flat on her back, with lots of pillows around her. The blinds are down. Peter shuffles forward, careful to avoid making any sound, until he is standing by the bed.

She looks… okay. She looks okay. Like a normal, sleeping person. They took off the bandage around her head. Peter can see the shaved patch of hair above her ear, and the scar from the surgery.

He sticks his hand into his pocket, finding the fireman and then the smooth texture of the coin.

It’s just a quarter.

He exhales, takes it out and places it on the corner of her nightstand. And then exits quickly, not looking back.

Tony is still in the kitchen, slurping coffee. He didn’t touch any bananas. Peter leans back against the fridge. “So are you and Ms. Potts, like, going out on dates and stuff?”

“No. Can’t say that we have.”

“So you’re not dating for real. You basically just have a crush.”

Tony sets his coffee down and looks at Peter with quite a serious expression. “She is very important in my life.”

“Okay.” Peter is not sure what to do with that information.

“And, you know, for — however long you’re staying here, you’re… It always takes her a moment to grow on people, but I have faith.”

That’s…

A sudden, strange noise fills the air. A sound, something like a demon laughing, the way they do in the movies. Tony shoots out of his chair, coffee sloshing over the rim, and digs out his phone. The sound is coming from its speakers.

Tony turns on his heel and pretty much runs from the room.

Peter stares after him.

For however long you’re staying here.

What the hell does that mean?

-

Tony answer as soon as the doors of his workshop slid shut behind him. “Yes, hello, mother Gothel?”

“Hello, Anthony.” Mary’s voice is unusually crisp and clear. “I’m so glad I caught you. You’re not going to believe this. I’ve been so silly sending Peter out to you this week. You’ll never guess who’s here.”

She is in full swindle-mode, and Tony isn’t playing this time. “I don’t know. The devil, to give you back your soul?”

“An attendance officer is here to speak about Peter’s, well, attendance. It slipped my mind completely; I got that letter ages ago.”

“I reminded you, what was it, not three days ago.”

“I know! Yes, I told her Peter has been terribly stressed out and delicate, and that’s why I sent him to New York for the summer, to be away from it all.” This attendance officer is clearly standing right next to her. “But she’s quite insistent that she needs to talk to him.”

“What’s the plan?”

“We’re rescheduling for next Monday. I’m getting a plane ticket for Peter right away so he can fly back.”

“I mean. You know that’s not gonna happen, but I know you’re just pretending right now.”

“Thank you, darling,” she says.

Tony wonders how Mary figures she is going to get out of this situation when Peter still isn’t home on Monday.

But then he remembers that Mary never thinks ahead more than one hour, so she’s probably not figuring anything. She just wants to get out of the hot water she currently finds herself in, and then she’ll instantly forget all about it and be  just as caught off guard when someone knocks on her door again on Monday.

“Okay, thank you thank you, bye,” Mary says quite unceremoniously, and hangs up.

Leaving a child in this woman’s care is rapidly climbing on the list of worst decisions Tony has ever made.

He glances down when his phone beeps. Mary sent him a follow-up message: Also btw Richard left again anyways so you cn tell Peter its safe to come home

The fucking nerve of this woman to actually say that black on white is astounding.

-

It’s not something he ever thought about before, but the kid had a point: He and Pepper never actually went out on a date. Which is sort of a thing you do when you are romantically interested in someone, isn’t it?

So he brings Pepper some bananas, which is equally romantic, he’s pretty sure. Peter might not approve, but honestly, if Natasha is the only one who gets to eat these, half of them will be black, brown and mushy by the time she gets around to them.

“I’m allergic to bananas,” Pepper says when Tony presents them to her.

“I—What?”

“Only joking,” she says, a twinkle in her eye.

“Absolutely not allowed.” Tony pulls the chair closer to her desk so he can lean his elbows against it. “Do you have some time for me?”

“Unfortunately I’m a little behind on my usual schedule because I just had a long phone conversation with the CEO of Foamly Inc. after someone insulted her online last night—”

“The shampoo lady? The one who claims her soaps taste like marshmallows?”

“—but sure. I have a few minutes to spare.”

“Okay. Okay.” He taps a finger against her wooden frog tumbler. “We need your help. I need your help. I want custody of the kid.”

The smile drops off her face and she actually goes pale. “…No, Tony,” she says, in a tone like he just asked permission to build a giant fireman’s pole from the penthouse to the ground floor. Like the suggestion is so ridiculous that she knows just saying ‘no’ once will be enough to make him back all the way off and go ‘okay fine can I just get a faster elevator?’. Or in this case, ‘okay, fine, can I just adopt a goldfish?’.

“Pepper, I’m dead serious.”

“Tony, I… appreciate you as a person.” So romantic. “But I don’t think you know what it means to be dead serious. I’ve seen you be dead serious about ideas like toilet snorkeling or dogbrellas, only to completely discard the ideas within 24 hours. This is the story of my cat all over again.”

“I don’t remember toilet snorkeling, that’s interesting.”

“Tony.”

“This is different.”

“Yes it is. You’re talking about an actual child. I’ve already pointed out that CPS has perfectly good systems in place—”

“No, no. That’s… Pep, listen. When I told you about Mary Fitzpatrick’s paternity fraud, I may have undersold just a smidgen exactly how close the kid and I were back then. He knows me. He doesn’t need to go to some random, new family.” He knows that disclosing Peter’s enhanced powers will go a long way in helping Pepper understand why they want Peter here, but Peter quite obviously does not feel comfortable around Pepper yet. So telling her feels like breaking his trust.

It's going to require diplomacy, he realizes, to parent Peter Parker and pursue Pepper Potts.

“I just don’t think you can possibly oversee the consequences of—"

“Bruce and Natasha want to help. Sam, too.”

“Sam doesn’t even live here.”

“He’s moving in.”

“So…” she says, “so we’re bringing together this ragtag group of superheroes who haven’t lived together before, none of whom have ever been a parent, several of whom have their own mental issues to boot, throw a teenager with baggage in the mix, and this is expected to work out splendidly, yeah?”

“Go easy on the sarcasm, Pep, that’s my schtick.”

“I do not approve,” she says, dry and factual.

“Okay. I don’t technically need your approval, but I can’t deny it’s important to me.” He had hoped Pepper would help deal with the paperwork, build a case. But he can always put some lawyers on the case, some people who will just nod at whatever he says.

Something on her computer dings and Pepper sighs a little, her shoulders drawing up. A reminder of some deadline, probably. “Let’s talk more later?” she suggests.

“Great.”

He leaves, feeling dejected.

-

On Friday, it rains all morning. Peter is going stir crazy in his bedroom, but he also doesn’t want to go to the living room. There’s this weird vibe that has been hanging around the penthouse for a few days now. Ever since Natasha woke up, really. Everyone keeps looking at him in a certain way.

He digs out his phone and dials Bruce’s phone number.

Bruce answers quickly. “Are you calling me?” He sounds amused. “I’m just down the hall.”

“Don’t wanna come out.”

“Are you feeling unwell?”

“No. Lazy.”

A deep voice rumbles in the background.

“Sam wants to hang out with you. What do you want to do today?”

Great. That’s just great. “Um. Nothing.”

“Go to the library. Sam can get you a card and then you can get any books you want.”

Peter nervously twists the tip of the blanket around his fingers. “Go with us?”

“I… don’t like going out, Peter, you know that.”

“Please go with us. Am I on speaker phone?”

“No.”

“Okay. Because Sam is scary. Please go with us Bruce, pleeeease.”

Bruce chuckles, but then says “Oh, very well. I am nothing if not a social butterfly.”

-

A security guard Peter has never seen before accompanies them. He keeps walking ahead of them in the garage so Peter can’t read his name tag, and he doesn’t say a word during the drive.

The library is an imposing building with large lion statues by the entrance.

“I hate rain,” Sam says, gazing out the car window. “There’s puddles. I’m wearing my best sneakers.”

“I hate rain too,” Peter says.

Bruce lifts the umbrella that was leaning against his leg. “I’ve brought this.”

“That’s not the point,” Sam says.

“Yeah,” Peter agrees. “That’s not the point.”

The security guard drops them off right in front of the building before driving off to find a parking space, and they huddle together under the umbrella as they hop over puddles to reach the entrance.

Inside, the library has grand arches and high ceilings. Peter didn’t know libraries could look so much like palaces or cathedrals. The place is huge, Peter could easily spend an entire day here.

He doesn’t even know where to start, so he looks around to Bruce for guidance. But Bruce is hanging back, hovering near the entrance, eyes flitting around like he’s counting how many people there are.

“Come on, kid. Let’s get you set up with a library card, first,” Sam says. “Show you how all that works.” And leads Peter to the information desk.

Bruce joins them after a few minutes, just as Peter’s brand-new card is rolling out of a funny little printer.

“Nice,” Peter says, letting his thumb slide along the smooth surface and sharp edges.

They meander past endless rows of shelves. Peter finds a book about extraterrestrials, a book about the Boston massacre, and one about sharks with really cool pictures.

Sam taps his shoulder. “You know, kid, you don’t have to just get serious stuff. You can get a comic book or something, if you want.”

Peter looks at him suspiciously. And then at Bruce for approval.

“Yes, certainly,” Bruce says.

They find the comic books section. Sam makes a beeline for one particular corner. “Show you something.” He browses the titles for a moment, then picks a comic and holds it out.

Peter shuffles closer. WHEN THE CHITAURI INVADE, is the title, and the picture on the front shows a colorful drawing of Iron Man with a nuclear bomb strapped to his back. “Is that…”

“Oh, yeah,” Sam says. “They make comic books about us. They never get my jawline right.”

“This is awesome!” Peter exclaims, snatching it up.

Someone shushes, and Peter turns to see a man glaring at him. “This is a library.”

Peter is about to snap back, but Bruce’s hand lands on his shoulder, firmly. “Apologies,” Bruce tells the man.

“There were signs at the entrance. If he can’t read, there’s no point of him being in here in the first place.”

Bruce inhales, then draws himself up higher. “Apologies retracted,” he says sharply. “You are not a kind person.”

“You tell him Bruce,” Sam says.

The man’s gaze drifts to Sam and his face floods with clear recognition. He looks back to Bruce, clearly only now understanding who he is, then sniffs and marches away, nose in the air.

Bruce exhales slowly. His fingers are still digging into Peter’s shoulder. “I’d like to leave now.”

“Head back to the car?” Sam suggests. “I’ll take the kid to the atrium, past the self-checkout machines.”

Bruce hesitates, looking down at Peter.

Peter nods. “Yeah. That’s okay.” He can deal with Sam.

“All right.” The corners of Bruce’s mouth twitch and he hands over his umbrella to Sam. “You need this more than I do.”

They part ways. Peter follows Sam towards these ‘checkout’ machines, snatching up another comic book on the way. Sam leisurely twirls the umbrella around, sneakers squeaking against the shiny floors. “Why do you not like rain?”

Peter shrugs. “Spend a lot of time outside.”

“And why do you not like me?”

Peter doesn’t respond to that, because he’s not entirely sure, himself. “What’s an atrium?” he asks.

“Beats me. Fancy word for big hallway.”

“Okay.” Sometimes it seems like people have another fancy word for every normal word, just to make people like Peter feel stupid.

They get to the check out and Sam shows him how to scan his pass and bleep-bleep-bleep the books. “And we bring them back in fourteen days, max.” Sam arranges the books back into a pile and hands them over to Peter. “All good?”

“Yeah.” Peter follows Sam out, and thinks about how apparently Sam is pretty sure Peter will still be here in fourteen days.

They pause by the entrance door, Sam looking at his phone. “Bruce says they’re bringing the car around.” The pitter-patter of rain has changed to something more solid and persistent. When they spot the car, Sam steps outside and unfurls the umbrella. “Take cover, kid.” They hurry down the stone steps, reach the sidewalk. Sam has the umbrella angled against the rain and doesn’t spot the biker in a bright blue rain poncho wooshing towards them at high velocity.

“Careful!” Peter warns.

Sam jolts and steps to the side. Right into a deep puddle. He yelps and jumps back. The biker passes them in a blue blur and Sam curses. His sneaker is completely soaked, Sam looks furious and Peter wants to duck and take cover.

“Jesu— Fuck. Quick, quick.” Sam opens the car door and Peter crawls into the backseat, a prickle of dread in his stomach. Sam follows and chucks the umbrella behind the backseat. He lifts the soaked pant leg and curses again.

“You all right?” Bruce just looks amused.

“My best sneakers.”

“I’m sorry,” Peter says, fiddling nervously with the seatbelt.

“It’s fine, kid. Really. It was my own fault.” Sam sags back in the seat and hooks one arm around the backrest. “What about you,” he asks Bruce, “recovered yet from your enraged outburst in there? I’m proud of you, man.” He’s… already smiling again.

No tantrum of epic proportions. Okay. Maybe Sam really is okay.

They get home. Tony sees Sam’s sneakers. Points. Laughs.

-

The next morning, Pepper turns up in his workshop just as Tony was putting the final touches to Nat’s new utility belt. She is not going to be using it for a while, but it felt weird not to finish it.

“All right,” Pepper says, taking a seat on his weathered, brown leather sofa in the corner. “I barely slept at all last night… Oh. Yes, thank you honey” —Dum-E rolled over with his one-pincer-arm to proudly show her a paperclip he found on the ground — “And I’ve pushed back my appointments for this morning. So explain it to me again. From the beginning, please.”

Tony feels a sudden wave of incredible fondness for her. Most people he knows would have too inflated an ego to return to a matter they had vetoed the day before, but Pepper has always made an effort to understand him, even when his suggestions seem certifiably insane.

He lays the belt aside and wheels closer to where she sits. “I just want the kid here.”

“From the beginning, Tony.”

“From the beginning.” He inhales slowly, and nods. “Once when I was ten, I found this injured little bird on the grounds of our manor.” And he explains how his father killed it on the porch. How he met Mary in college and she was the first person he ever told. Their friendship. Her move to Houston. The way she turned up on his doorstep in Malibu years later with a kid in tow. The peanut butter and the d-word and the indoor treasure hunts. The betrayal — Pepper already knew the non-specifics about that, so it’s not too hard to talk about. The reason why he thinks Peter came to New York. The fireman, the freeze ray, the fever.

Everything except Spider-Man.

“Okay,” she says. “I understand. I’m still a bit worried. But I understand.”

“Will you help us?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you, you absolute marvel.” Tony wheels closer to grab her by the shoulders and kiss her on the cheek. With Pepper on their side, there’s simply no way they can’t pull this off.

“Just make sure I don’t regret this one, because I don’t think I would forgive myself.”

“I’m gonna make this place the best possible, functioning dysfunctional home for a teenager you could possibly imagine.” He declares, and then hesitates. “Which is… Listen, I’m gonna be… focusing on the kid for a little while. I have to. And I’m still rooting for us, big time. But I have to shift my priorities.”

She scoffs a bit.

“Pepper, I have to. The kid—This is a major—"

“It’s not about Peter, Tony, I get it. It’s just… our relationship has never been a priority to you. You’ve had my list for weeks. Most things on there, if you put in a little bit of effort, you could get them done in one day. You haven’t managed a single thing.”

“I’m not good with lists.”

“Just. Maybe this is a good thing. Focus on Peter for now. Please focus on Peter for now, Tony, don’t…  I have plenty of matters to focus on, too. I don’t know. We’ll take a raincheck on the relationship stuff.”

“Okay,” Tony says, not sure how to feel anymore.

“Does the boy have everything he needs?”

“Natasha took him clothes shopping.”

“What about a phone? A laptop? Shampoo?”

“He has a phone. …You know what, can you make me a checklist?”

“Does Peter know that you want him to stay?” Pepper asks.

“That will be number one on that list.”

Chapter Text

Sleep comes and goes swiftly, these days. She blinks, and hours have suddenly passed. She blinks and it’s dark, she blinks and the sun is out. She blinks and she’s alone in the living room. She blinks and Peter is there, sitting on the carpet and leaning sideways against the couch, while gentle clanging noises come from the direction of the kitchen. Tony is putting groceries away. Peter is wearing his blue-red pajamas.

She slides a hand out from under the blanket and Peter’s head shoots up. He catches her eye and smiles brightly.

“Hello, little spider,” she says. Her fingers comb carefully through his hair. “Did you go out?”

Peter leans closer. “Yeah.” He has the usual goofy smile he always gets when she pets his hair.

“And?”

“I don’t know. Mainly picked up trash.”

“That’s good.”

Tony approaches and pauses by the end of the couch, studying her. He is still holding a bottle of olive oil. “How awake are you?”

“How awake do you need me to be?”

“I wanted to talk to the kid. You know.”

Peter stills under her hand.

”I’m awake,” Natasha says. She squeezes the back of Peter’s neck reassuringly. She braces on one elbow and levers off the couch a little to shift her position, sitting more upright. Tony is telling FRIDAY to send Bruce up, too. “Come on,” she says.

Peter pulls himself up on the couch, sitting close to her, his back straight, alert. “Talk about what?” he asks, his eyes huge and dubious as he looks between her and Tony.

“We’re getting custody,” she says.

Peter absolutely freezes.

“Woah, Nat,” Tony says. “Ease into it.”

“You were freaking him out. Tell him.”

Tony sets the olive oil down and sits on the couch. “We — Yeah, kid. We’re gonna make sure you can stay here. We all want you to stay here.”

Peter is staring up at him. His shoulder is pressing against Natasha’s and she can feel him begin to tremble.

“We’re going to get the paperwork done and everything, so it will be official. Not just… you hiding up here. We want to take care of you. All of us. I mean, it will be in my name, but we’ll all be here.”

“Are—Are you sure?” Peter stammers.

A smile breaks through on Tony’s face. “Yeah, kid, we’re pretty damn sure. I mean—” he takes in a deep breath and edges forward, putting his hands on Peter’s shoulders. “I’m gonna apologize in advance, because I’m gonna get a lot of stuff wrong, Peter. I’ve already done so much stuff wrong. And I really want to get it right, because you deserve a good family. That’s why everyone will be here. So they can tell me when I’m being a fucking idiot.”

Peter is still staring, hands clenching and unclenching around the hem of his shirt. “And… when Natasha moves out?”

“She won’t be moving out. Teamwork makes the dream work, right?” Tony ducks his head and peers into Peter’s eyes. “Are you okay? If this whole idea is absolutely horrifying to you, blink twice.”

Peter instantly throws his hands up to cover his eyes. Tony chuckles.

“So…,” Peter says, muffled. “You’re, like, not just talking about this summer?”

“I’m talking about forever.”

Peter tips forward and Tony catches him, a little clumsily. “I want to stay,” Peter says, sounding anxious. “I want to stay, I want to stay, I want to stay.”

Tony shifts on the couch to better accommodate Peter’s weight. “We’re getting it done, kid. I promise.”

“What does this mean, do you have to sue my parents or something?”

“Let us worry about the paperwork.”

“What if you lose? Will I still have to go back?”

“We won’t lose. We got Pepper on the case. We won’t lose.”

Soft, padding footsteps announce Bruce. He pauses next to them, his eyes soft. “You already spoiled the whole surprise without me, hm?”

“Blame Nat,” Tony says.

“I want to stay here,” Peter repeats. He sounds overwhelmed and anxious. Natasha had hoped for relief, but it seems it’s too early for that.

“You’ll stay here,” Tony says. “It will be okay, sweetheart. We’ll go to the beach and make pancakes and fix alarm clocks.”

Peter sniffles softly.

“We’ll have to enroll him in a school.” Bruce says.

-

This, as it turns out, becomes Bruce’s personal mission. His magnum opus, if you will. He takes it more seriously than anything ever before. He finds it so important, in fact, that he’s willing to go back to the library that same afternoon with Peter to get more books. Sam watches them carry another stack of them inside and yells: “You didn’t even invite me, you traitors! What is this place, house of the dragon?”

“I brought you something,” Peter says, “for your sneakers.” And he throws a book in Sam’s lap. Tony needs a moment to take in the full title. How to Shine a Shoe: A Gentleman's Guide to Choosing, Wearing, and Caring for Top-Shelf Styles.

“The nerve—” Sam starts

Peter chortles and dashes out of the room with his other books.

“We’re gonna need to teach that kid some manners,” Sam says.

“Don’t pretend you’re not going to read that cover to cover.”

-

Peter curls up in bed with a book about forensic sciences, bare feet rubbing against the sheets.

He can stay here now, probably. Signs currently point to yes. That’s good, that’s pretty good. Tony and Bruce want him, and Natasha is going to be okay, like, she can actually speak in full sentences now. And Sam is not that scary after all.

Ms. Potts is still a clear and present danger, though. Tony told him that she was sorting her way through all the legalities, or whatever, and he said it in a tone of voice like Peter should be happy about it. Which he is not. She could be sabotaging all the paperwork for all they know. He’ll probably end up adopted by Norman Osborn.

Tony seems to really trust her but… Tony doesn’t really have a great track record when it comes to crushing on the right woman. Peter’s entire childhood is evidence of that.

Natasha seems to trust her too, though. That’s something, right?

He sighs in frustration and tries to focus his attention on the book, skipping straight to the chapter about explosives.

-

“The most likely scenario: Osborn set the explosives himself.” Natasha lays out a blueprint of Oscorp industries on the table. They are using one of the offices on this floor. It’s the first time one is being used. Tony has to admit, it doesn’t feel that terrible, breathing some life into this penthouse.

Natasha points, lets her finger slide down the white lines that mark the outer edges of the building. “This is where Peter jumped from the window. That area then came under investigation by the police. Osborn didn’t like that, he has been pretty vocal about it. It is quite possible that he was conducting illegal experiments, precisely in that area. By setting off an explosion, he was erasing any evidence from existence. Catching me and Peter in the blast was probably just a happy coincidence for him.”

“What’s the plan?”

“Pepper has another meeting with Osborn right here in Stark tower tomorrow. I’m going to walk her through some instructions to prod him. I trust her to be subtle.”

Tony frowns. “She agreed to that?” Pepper usually stays away from Avengers business.

She shrugs. “She said he has always given her the creeps. I took that as a yes.”

Fair enough.

“There is still the matter,” Bruce says, “of figuring out who in our inner circle is passing details of my research on to Osborn. Is that an Avengers-level case?”

A smile plays on Natasha’s lips. “I’ll see how much Pepper can do.”

-

“I did homework,” Peter says, showing Bruce his notes on explosion scene investigations. He finished his book, and Tony got him a laptop, so he spent hours browsing the topic.

Bruce smiles gently as he lets his finger slide down the page. “Looks good. Although I’m afraid there is no high school subject on forensics.”

“That’s why I never went. I wanted to learn about explosions, and do first aid, and learn to speak Japanese.”

“Pepper speaks five languages fluently. Japanese is one of them.”

“Bully for her.”

Bruce purses his lips but doesn’t berate him. Probably because anger is a pointless emotion. “We want you to start school again after summer, and your current grades are far from stellar. I don’t want you to be held back a grade, because I think you’d get very easily bored. So if we buckle down and revise some stuff, I’m sure we can transition you very smoothly.”

Peter draws little triangles on the back of his hand with his pen and says nothing. It has been ages since he properly went to school. The less he went, the less people seemed to want him there when he did show up. Other students ignored him, teachers scolded him for not keeping up. The idea that everyone here wants him to actually go kinda freaks him out. He’ll probably hate it and be miserable for eight hours a day.

“Have you heard of the Pythagorean theorem?” Bruce asks.

He shakes his head.

“Let’s start there.”

Bruce takes his notebook and draws a triangle; starts explaining. It’s not difficult and Bruce’s explanations are always clear, and patient, and he doesn’t start yelling at Peter every time his attention drifts.

Peter suddenly feels like crying. “Can’t you teach me?” he asks, interrupting Bruce in the middle of his third example.

The question is met with raised eyebrows.

“You have… You’re smart, right? You can teach me stuff. Isn’t homeschooling a thing?”

Bruce looks blindsided. “I… Well, it’s…”

“Please? Please, please, please?”

“I’m not sure if that’s…”

Peter tugs at his sleeve. “Please?” He pleads.

Bruce looks down at him. Peter isn’t sure what expression he sees there, but it makes the man sigh and nod slightly. “I’ll… I can look into it at least. I can’t promise anything.”

Peter mentally pumps his fist. “Thank you.” Bruce is a push-over, Peter says that with all the love in the world. This was practically a definite ‘yes’.

“Let’s get back to—Were you listening to the example?”

“Yes, yes. Twenty-five minus sixteen equals A-squared. Which is nine, which means A equals three. BAM.” He beams.

Bruce chuckles.

They go through some more examples, and then Bruce starts drawing all kinds of other shapes, some of which have completely ridiculous names. Peter is just about dying from laughter about some idiot coming up with the word parallelepiped, when the elevator chimes and Pepper Potts suddenly steps into the room, Tony in her wake.

Peter’s laughter abruptly dies away and his pen rolls to the floor. Excellent. An excuse to dive under the table.

Bruce greets them both kindly.

“Doing a math lesson?” Pepper asks.

“Indeed.”

Peter dawdles until it no longer feels like he can stay under the table without seeming completely insane, and pops back up, not looking at anyone.

“Nice going, kid,” Tony says.

“Parallelepiped.” Peter says.

“Yeah. Tell me about it.”

“We were talking about the possibility of homeschooling,” Bruce tentatively shares. “I think we could look into it. You know. Considering his… capacities.”

What a nice way to say ‘stupidity’.

“Oh.” Tony shrugs. “I don’t know. I mean. Yeah, sure. We can look into it.”

But Pepper is already waving a hand. “No, no, no. That does not sound like a good idea to me at all. He should go to high school. He should have been going to high school all along.”

“But I could—” Bruce starts.

“You have a busy job, Bruce.”

“I’m sure I could make time…”

“What’s the harm in looking into it?” Tony says

She hesitates. “Can I speak to you in private for a moment?”

They do.

And then they return, and Pepper just nods goodbye at them and steps back into the elevator. Tony pauses by the table, scratches the back of his head. “Yeah,” he says. “No. You should go to high school.”

And Peter is livid.

-

The adoption process hits snags.

Tony doesn’t like snags.

He doesn’t understand why it needs to be so complicated. Peter wants to stay. He wants the kid to stay. Mary is whatever about it. Snip snap, sign some documents, should be fine.

Apparently, as Pepper explains to him patiently about three times, some CPS person still needs to visit the tower and interview him. “And maybe don’t mention the uh—” she twirls her fingers, “—whole co-parenting thing. I think they might be too conservative for an idea like that.”

Peter seems just as annoyed about it as Tony. “What’s he got to do with anything?” he asks aggressively when Pepper announces that a Mr. Graham will be visiting them.

“We just need one formal testimony, and then have a judge approve the whole case. This is the best way to ensure that it actually goes through, I promise you.”

Peter sticks his tongue out at her when she isn’t looking. Tony decides not to berate him. Baby steps.

-

Tony makes sure to be in Bruce’s lab the next morning, because he knows that a tour around the labs is part of the scheduled meeting between Pepper and Osborn.

He helps Bruce hide the new grasshopper terrariums in the supply closet in the far back. They don’t want Osborn to see the newly installed coolers and quote unquote ‘borrow’ the idea again.

“I’ll punch him in the face if he even looks at this closet,” Tony says vindictively.

Which inevitably leads to another lecture from Bruce about the pointlessness of anger.

They sit around and wait, and prattle on about freeze rays for a bit.

“I really think homeschooling might be the better choice,” Bruce brings up randomly at some point. “He has a lack of general knowledge, but his IQ is through the roof. Not a combination that will have him fitting well with any high school grade.

“Yeah. I just don’t think it would be good for the kid, being cooped up in here. Pepper pointed out that he’s already had so few interactions with his peers in the past.”

“True,” Bruce acknowledges.

“We should try it, at least. If he hates school, we can always revisit the idea.”

“You should have explained all that to Peter.”

“Yeah—Okay. I will.”

Pepper and Osborn turn up somewhere between ten and eleven. Osborn’s smile widens and sharpens when he sees the two of them sitting there. “Esteemed company.”

Okay. Backhanded compliment to Pepper.

They all shake hands. “Delighted to see you again,” Tony says. He makes sure to say ‘delighted’, because it’s a word everyone knows he would never actually use unironically. “How is the company. Anything else exploded lately?”

Yeah, Natasha was probably right when she said Pepper was more subtle.

Osborn ignores the question. “I hear Ms. Romanoff is recovering well. I’m delighted to hear it.”

Tony can feel his eyes narrow.

“How are your grasshoppers, Dr. Banner. Still dead?”

“Unfortunately,” Bruce says in his stiffest voice.

“Oh, apologies,” Obsorn says, expression still banally amused. “I see I’ve struck a chord. And apologies again, of course, about the unfortunate recent misunderstanding with Mr. Parker. I’m sure he just got lost on his way out.”

Tony says nothing.

“Though it is strange of course, that I watched him press the button for the ground floor and he somehow ended up walking around the fourteenth.”

“What’s your point?”

“He seems like a troublemaker. I’ve been told it wasn’t his first time getting picked up by the police since arriving in New York.”

“Told by who?”

“If he’s more trouble than he’s worth, I’d be happy to take him off your hands.”

Tony grits his teeth. “He’s not an industrial robot.”

Osborn chuckles. “Unfortunately not; that would make things so much easier. I’ve done some digging. His parents are quite the pair, aren’t they? I understand why you picked him, Stark. No parental figures in his life who will complain about his emotional wellbeing. Are you even paying him at all or did you simply kidnap him? Is this a form of indentured servitude?”

“Norman—” Pepper starts in a warning voice.

“Apologies, apologies,” Osborn waves a hand. “A bit of good-natured ribbing. I’m sure you’ve taken him under your wing in an exemplary manner. Does he tag along to events? Is there a TECHSPO in his future, perhaps? We teach how we are taught, after all, don’t we, Tony?”

“There hasn’t been a TECHSPO in at least five years,” Bruce says with a confused frown.

“Norman was just making a funny little reference,” Tony says calmly, “about the time he saw Howard beat me unconscious.”

There is a sharp, stunned silence.

Osborn looks vaguely unbalanced. Tony calling him out was not part of the plan, clearly. “I made the reference, simply said out of concern. We all know that you’re more used to a raised hand than a helping one. One can only wonder if the Parker boy is suffering the same fate.”

Before Tony can retort, Bruce pushes him aside and plants himself squarely in front of Osborn. “You,” he says. “You… Fuck you, man.”

“Though, having dealt with the boy, I’m sympathetic to your methods; I’m not altogether sure there’s any better way to keep him in line.”

Bruce punches him square in the jaw.

-

It takes about half an hour for the green hue to disappear fully from Bruce’s eyes. Tony dragged him into an empty lab, asking FRIDAY to evacuate the floor preemptively. He didn’t even look back to see where Pepper was taking Osborn, but he trusts her to take care of it.

He has seen Bruce come down from the Hulk before. This wasn’t a full transformation, of course, but he still expects the same process: the anger gradually being replaced by shame and despair.

But as Bruce slowly gets his breathing back under control, he doesn’t drop his head into his hands or start muttering  anxiously under his breath. He just looks up at Tony with clear eyes and says, very very calmly. “Fuck that guy, man.”

“Yup,” Tony says. “Yup. You… doing okay?”

“Yeah.” Bruce rolls his shoulders. He seems oddly calm and Tony doesn’t know what to make of it. “Shall we go see Natasha?”

Natasha always knows how to keep Bruce on an even keel.

“Sure.”

They go a floor down and Tony delivers Bruce to the med bay, where Helen is running Natasha through a series of tests. “Bruce would love to assist,” he says, and plants him in a chair.

Then he goes to find Pepper.

Friday directs him right back to her office. The door is open, which is unusual. Pepper is inside, her back to him, standing near the windows overlooking the city.

“Is he gone?”

She jolts and turns. Sighs. “Yes. Is Bruce all right?”

“We’re in the clear.”

She hums. “I delivered Norman back to his car. Friday confirmed he has left the building. A minor nosebleed, but nothing serious.”

“Did you… apologize?”

Her eyes shoot flames. “I told him he is not welcome on our premises until he learns how to behave himself.”

“Oh. That works, too.”

-

He finished all his books. Peter visits the library himself, this time. Sam got him a subway pass on top of his library card.

He meanders past the endless shelves and picks books, mostly at random. One about gardening, one about business psychology, one about the cold war. And one he chooses very specifically: Japanese for beginners.

He takes the subway back. He waves at Denzel and Jas again as he passes them and heads to the private elevator. It zooms up, and when it slows Peter almost wants to step out but halts at the last moment when he notices they are only at floor sixty-something.

The doors slide open and Ms. Potts steps into the elevator. “Ah,” she says when she sees him. Her eyes fall on the books in his arms and linger. The book about Japanese is on top. Peter suddenly wishes he hadn’t gotten it.

“Mr. Parker,” she says. “Peter. I’m glad to run into you. Would you follow me? I have something to show you.”

It doesn’t feel like he can say ‘no’.

When the doors open again, he follows her out and towards her office. He sits in the chair she points at, balancing the books on his knees.

“Look,” she says, taking out a manilla folder. From the manilla folder she takes three flyers that she lines up at the edge of the desk, facing him.

Peter leans in, careful not to bump the table and throw her little silver balls and birds and figurines, and that one weird frog, out of balance.

They are all flyers for summer camps. Computer camp, BMX camp, theater camp.

“Doesn’t that sound like a good idea?” Potts says. “There will be lots of other kids your age.”

Okay. She’s not even trying to be subtle about wanting to get rid of Peter.

She steps around the desk and piles the flyers on top of his books. “Pick whichever one you want.”

“Yeah,” Peter says. “Great.”

“You’re leaning Japanese?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“I’m fluent in five languages.”

“Right. Humble brag.”

Her lips twitch. “Apologies. I just meant, I’ll help you practice, if you want.”

“Oh. Great.” Never gonna happen.

-

Mr. Graham appears with a clipboard and glasses with a neck cord that he keeps putting on and taking back off, tapping the corner of his mouth with one of the legs.

Peter is rude to him from the get-go. Tony can’t entirely blame him, but he had hoped that the kid would understand that playing nice will probably get them further.

“I don’t know what you’re doing here,” Peter says. “I moved. That was my decision. Don’t I have free will and stuff?”

“We need to ensure that you’re in a safe environment.”

“I can ensure that for myself just fine, thank you. Why did you think I came here?”

Mr. Graham asks him a few questions that Peter answers belligerently. Tony gleans from the questions that CPS already visited Mary, too. Mr. Graham seems to have certain details in his file, including a picture that looks recent, of an absolute pigsty of a living room. Mary didn’t even have the common sense to not throw a big party the night before a home visit.

“I would like to talk to Mr. Stark alone, now,” Mr. Graham says.

“I’m telling you now,” Peter says as he stands. “If you make me go somewhere else, I will just run away a bazillion times and go back to the tower every time. So save yourself the trouble.”

He leaves.

“He’s, ah, very happy about living here,” Tony says, chipperly.

“Yes.” Mr. Graham makes tiny notes on his clipboard that Tony can’t read. “Would you not consider that a sign of an unhealthy attachment to you?”

“Uh,” Tony says. “No? I’d consider it a sign that he’s glad to finally be away from his godawful parents.”

“I’ve been informed that he has been arrested twice since arriving in New York.”

“He wasn’t charged either time.”

“Hmmm.” Mr. Graham says neutrally.

All in all, Tony doesn’t feel that the interview goes well.

-

He rants to Bruce about it that evening. Peter had been moody throughout dinner and locked himself in his room afterwards. Sam went for a run and Natasha is sleeping.

It’s just the two of them, under the light of Bruce’s antique lamp. Like old times.

“Screw them if they deny my application. I already know I’m hopeless, I don’t need a stamped form to prove it. But I’m trying here. I want what’s best for the kid, I care about him. Can’t a guy get any points for trying?”

“Wait for the result,” Bruce says. “If it’s not what we want, we can fight it. We can always fight it.”

“I’m just… angry.”

“I’ll tell you something.” Bruce nudges Tony’s knee with his knuckles. “Tell you something. I learned this. Anger is okay, sometimes. Use that anger to fight for Peter.”

-

Peter has put on his huge bathrobe and sought refuge on his bed, cross-legged, surrounded by a ring of books. The bathrobe always makes him feel a little safer, he isn’t sure why.

There is a knock on his door. Tony, calling out his name.

“Yeah, come in.”

He picks at the blanket and warily looks up at Tony. There are so many emotions fighting for the spotlight in his chest that he feels like he might explode soon.

Tony lays one book aside so he can sit. “You were quiet at dinner.”

“I’m not leaving here.” His stomach is twisting, painful and tight.

“You won’t,” Tony promises instantly. “Even if this guy denies our request. We’ll fight it, whatever way we can.”

Peter wraps his arms around himself. “He won’t disapprove. He can’t.” He can’t, he can’t, he can’t.

“He might. Because I don’t have the best track record, kiddo. I haven’t been a good parent in the past.”

Peter throws him a furious glare. “What? You have been to me!”

Tony exhales slowly, then pulls up his other leg so his sits cross-legged on the mattress. “Peter, kiddo… No, I haven’t. I was just marginally better than your mother, that’s it. I just did the bare minimum, which she neglected to do. That doesn’t make me a good parent. I didn’t actually look out for your wellbeing the way I should have. The way you deserved.”

Peter is losing track of the conversation. “You were nice to me. All the time.”

“Peter. Please just accept this from me: I did not do enough for you—”

“Yes, you did,” Peter says stubbornly.

“—and that’s not how I want to handle things from now on.”

Peter plucks at a loose thread in his bathrobe, warily glancing up at him. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. I’m still reading up on parenting. But I’m thinking, making you eat your vegetables and go to school are definitely going to be at the top of the to-do-list.”

All Peter had hoped for when coming to New York was a Tony who would shrug and laugh about Peter staying at the tower, who would not think about it too much. And his mother would forget he even existed, and that would be enough, Peter would just ride it out until he was old enough to stand on his own two feet. He didn’t even need anyone to take care of him. He just needed to not be alone.

Tony is trying so hard when he already has so much other shit to deal with.

Tony, who slides another book aside and scoots closer until their knees touch. “Peter. I’m sorry for the way I left Malibu. I’m sorry for leaving you behind. It’s my greatest regret, and it’s never going to happen again.”

Peter draws his shoulders up. His chest hurts, like it is crushing in on itself. “You… You weren’t my dad or anything.”

“I was still an adult figure in your life.”

“You already apologized.”

“Yes. Well. You were… feverish at the time. I figured I should do it again, properly.”

“Okay.” Peter fiddles with his sleeves. “Uh. Apology accepted and all that.” He glances up at Tony through his fringe. “I’m… I… You know, I knew you weren’t my dad from the start. Richard and my mom told me about the plan, I was supposed to play along.”

“That’s all right, sweetheart,” Tony says, easily. “You were just a little kid.”

“Oh.” His breath hitches on the single syllable and he can feel his face crumple.

Tony’s face spasms to surprise, then concern. “Oh, jeez. Have you been worried about that?”

“N-n-n-no,” Peter hiccups and buries his face in his sleeves.

His bedsprings creak and Tony’s arms swiftly close around him, rooting him here, in his room, in his home, with his dad. Tony rocks him and hums, and Peter feels like he is eight years old again.

He scrubs at his face with the scratchy fabric until his cheeks feel raw. “I was totally telling the truth,” he whispers. “I’d run away a bazillion times.”

“Have faith in us, Peter,” Tony murmurs. “We’re not letting you go any time soon.”

-

Peter does have faith.

Some.

But when he exits the library again the next day, a fresh pile of books in his arms, Jas is standing right there on the sidewalk, the door to a black SUV already open. “I’ve been asked to pick you up.”

His heartbeat instantly kicks into overdrive, there is a prickle on the back of his neck. “Is something wrong?”

Jas half-shrugs with an apologetic smile. “No one ever tells me anything.”

Peter quickly crawls into the car, his feeling of dread only getting worse. Jas gets behind the wheel. “I need your phone.”

“What?”

“Security issue. You’ll get it back when we arrive.”

“…Okay.” He hands it over. “New car,” he says, buckling up.

Jas chuckles. “Yeah. Stark has more than one.”

-

“To what do I owe the pleasure of your two ganging up on me?”

Bruce and Pepper stand on the other side of his desk, wearing equally determined expressions.

“We want to take Osborn down,” Bruce says.

“Obliterate him,” Pepper corrects.

Tony snorts. “Ms. Potts, you have never been more attractive.” And he adds: “Neither have you, Bruce.”

“Tony, we’re serious.”

“I appreciate the sentiment, but what is the plan? Sue him for making jokes about child abuse?”

Pepper slaps a file onto the desk. “He is stealing Bruce’s research. Stark research. Between the three of us, let’s buckle down and figure out where the leak is. Then nail him for corporate espionage.”

It’s fair enough, really. With everything else going on, they haven’t given this issue the full attention it probably deserves. Tony sighs and invites them with a gesture to sit.

“All right,” he says. “Assuming we weren’t hacked… Not many people knew about the contents of Bruce’s research. Let’s not forget the kid himself was one of them.” A thought occurs to him. “Fuck. If it turns out he accidentally leaked something… He’s probably been wallowing in self-blame this whole time the same way he did with—” he almost says Natasha, then remembers Pepper still doesn’t know about Spider-Man.

“Peter didn’t slip up,” Bruce says. “Osborn already had radioactive lichen before Peter even understood what my research was about. At first I thought my colleagues who discovered the lichen and sent it to me were the issue. But that wouldn’t explain that Osborn somehow knew is that it was Peter who worked out the science behind my grasshoppers dying. I didn’t tell anyone it was him, and Osborn still knew within hours.”

“And I only told Pepper.” Tony turns to her. “Did you tell anyone else? Even family members, or someone who seemed insignificant?”

“I did not.” She shakes her head. “Though you were on speaker phone, if you recall, when we first discussed it, and I was being driven by a security guard.”

“Okay. Okay. Rule nothing out. Which security guard?”

“Switched at the last minture. Jas McMahon. Hmm—” she frowns and lifts a finger. “She is on your private security detail, so she does have more access than others. She has access to the private elevator and the penthouse. Though Friday would alert us if she ever stepped foot in here without authorization.”

“What about the lab. Friday, has McMahon ever been in Bruce’s lab?”

“Jas McMahon has been authorized several times over the past months by you personally to deliver food to Dr. Banner’s lab. She was never inside for long and did not take photos or notes, but I of course cannot control what she saw.”

Fuck, the amount of times he sent her to bring pizza to Bruce. Tony turns back to Pepper. “Peter said the other day that during his interview with Osborn, he quoted something to him that Peter literally said to you when he first arrived here. Was McMahon in the room while—"

Pepper nods grimly. “She was there.”

Tony blows out a breath. “That’s enough to at least have a sternly worded talk with her, wouldn’t you say? Friday, where is McMahon right now?”

“Today is her day off. She is not in the building and hasn’t been all day.”

“Find her anyway,” Tony says.

Chapter Text

Friday does find McMahon. On footage from the New York public library in Manhattan. Holding open a car door for Peter.

It sends them into a frenzy.

The stealth pings on Peter’s phone or McMahon’s phone do nothing; both have been turned off. Tony wants to fly straight to Oscorp.

“Bad idea,” Sam says. He and Natasha have been called in to help. “They could be anywhere, and you’re the fastest one out of all of us. You and me need to stay at the tower so we can fly out as soon as Friday finds something.

“I…” Bruce hesitates, face pale. “All right. I could drive down to Oscorp and …ask around. I’ll… I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

Natasha stands, leaning heavily on her crutches. “I’ll go with him.”

“Nat, you can’t—”

“Just to keep him from Hulking out. I won’t even get out of the car.”

It seems like a terrible idea, to let them do this. But Peter is missing. “Just… don’t get kidnapped,” Tony tells them.

-

Something has been feeling a little off, but when Jas takes another left turn, Peter knows for certain. “We’re not heading to the tower,” he says.

Jas says nothing.

“Hey, lady. Are you gonna kill me?” he asks, hoping he sounds braver than he feels.

“There’s someone who wants to meet you.”

Peter subtly tries the handle of the car door, but it’s locked. “Is it someone who was recently punched in the face by the Hulk?”

Her brow furrows in confusion. “What?”

Sounds like really no one ever tells her anything. “Let me—I’m not interested in meeting him.” There is a pit of dread in his stomach and he is frustrated with himself for it. He’s a superhero. A minor abduction is nothing. He should be all cool and collected like Kim Possible. “Are you the one who told Osborn about the radioactive lichen?”

“Just a bit of friendly business rivalry,” she says.

He could probably punch his way through the car door. He hasn’t tried before, but he probably could. Natasha said to never show his enhancements, though, and he doesn’t particularly want Norman Osborn to find out about them.

If it’s a life-or-death emergency, though, surely needs must.

Is it a life-or-death emergency?

“Does Osborn want to kill me?”

“He wants to talk to you.”

“But is that, like, maffia-speak for kill?”

She shakes her head. “I saw how Tony Stark was with you that first day. Face it, kid. He’s a douchebag. Norman Osborn can probably offer you a much better deal.”

“Right. Right. So this whole kidnapping is a favor you’re doing me, then?”

“I’m not kidnapping you.”

“You totally are.”

“I’m not.” She sounds frustrated. Apparently she prefers to think of herself as the good guy.

“Okay,” Peter says. “I want to get out. Pull over and let me out. I want to get out, right now.”

“I’m not pulling over.”

“Then you’re kidnapping me.”

“It’s for your own good.”

“I’m too young to die.”

“Fucking hell, no one is going to kill you, kid!”

She seems angry enough at the insinuation. No life-or-death, then, perhaps.

-

Jas makes him get out of the car at quite a desolate stretch of land overlooking East River. In front of them, backed by huge pine trees, stands the skeletal structure of a building that looks like it was once quite stately. The building is U-shaped, three stories high. All windows are missing. Moss and lichen crawl up the stone walls.

Everything about this building screams that Peter is about to get killed and buried here in pieces.

“Move,” Jas says, her hand landing on his shoulder.

They enter the building through the entrance with a heavy stone porch and a tower-like structure above. There’s no roof or floor slabs inside the building. Daylight pours straight in: dust particles dance in the air.

Osborn stands at the bottom of a formerly grand, now half collapsed staircase, smiling mildly, posture deceptively relaxed. “How was the drive up?”

“Uh.” Peter sticks his hands in his pockets. His fingers close around the little fireman, and he feels less nervous. “Kinda bizarre.”

“Welcome to Renwick hospital. They used to cure smallpox here.”

“Okay. We couldn’t have met in, like, a restaurant or something?”

“Walk with me.”

They step over exposed floor beams into a hallway. Jas follows at a sedated pace.

“I wanted to show you a piece of local history. This is what science is all about, isn’t it? Curing people. It’s what makes that species of lichen so interesting. Harmlessly radioactive. Imagine developing a radiation therapy for cancer patients that doesn’t have harmful side-effects.”

“That’s Dr. Banner’s research.”

“May the best man win. Competition is the law of the jungle.”

“Well, he’s one step ahead of you.”

“So I’ve heard. Not on his own merit, though, is he?”

Peter says nothing.

“I had hoped they would at least compensate you for your efforts, but I’m starting to think they don’t pay you at all, do they?”

“None of this is about money.”

Osborn pauses. “I spoke to your parents on the phone,” he says. “Your mother was quite blasé, but your father was very happy to speak to me in exchange for a small fee.”

“He’s not my father.”

“Either way, he seemed fairly convinced that Tony Stark had no interest in you at all until, coincidentally, right around the time when you started advancing his research. It seems Stark is actually in the process of adopting you, hm? And I know you think that the deal he is offering you  — whatever it is exactly — is a fair one. But I promise you I can offer more.”

“I think there has been a misunderstanding.”

“Tell me. Why did you go wandering around my building after our interview? What had you been tasked with finding?”

“I didn’t advance anyone’s research. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do.”

“I think you got some wrong intel, is all.”

Osborn leans in, getting right in his space. “You can argue, even call me names if you want, but I do not,” he says calmly, utterly calmly, “appreciate liars.”

Peter wills himself not to step backwards. “I’m failing chemistry and science in school, dude. You want to see my report card? Give me back my phone, I’ll show it to you. I don’t even know what lichen is, I thought Bruce was researching grasshoppers. They don’t even— They probably just eat grass, it’s right there in the name.”

“You see. The problem is. I don’t believe you. It’s not your fault, of course. I know you’ve been briefed on what to say and not say.”

“Give me my phone, I’ll show you.”

Osborn stares at him for a stretching moment. “I’ve been on the phone with CPS, too,” he then says. “He is really going through the proper channels, isn’t he? Seems even Tony Stark can’t just get anyway with anything. Which means it is not too late. I have serious concerns about your wellbeing, being manipulated by Stark in this way. It would be for the best if someone interfered and decided you were better off in my house.”

Peter’s heart rate spikes at that. “Fuck you. Don’t even try it, I would just run away.”

“I’m sure we would manage to come to an understanding. Competition is the law of the jungle, but cooperation is the law of civilization. This will happen one way or another, Peter. I’m just giving you the chance to strike a favorable deal now. Let’s continue negotiations where we left off. This is like ‘deal or no deal’. The longer you wait, the more I take off the table. As it stands, the offer now is room and board, and a reasonable allowance. Not as high as the first deal I offered, of course.”

“I’m leaving.” He suddenly, desperately, wants Tony.

Osborn just shrugs. “To your detriment, Peter.”

-

The stealth pings on Peter’s phone or McMahon’s phone do nothing. But tracing the car through its built-in LTE finally gets them a hit.

“What the hell did she take him there for?” Sam wonders, squinting at satellite images of an abandoned site at East River.

Tony’s heartbeat is in his throat. “Nothing good. Let’s go.”

The Iron suit is faster than the Falcon, and Tony doesn’t have the patience to wait, so he arrives first, circling above the ruins of a large building. He quickly spots two figures standing by a black SUV. Peter is not one of them.

He smashes down against the ground right in front of them. McMahon at least looks intimidated. Osborn just smiles pleasantly.

“I know you got my kid,” Tony spits.

“Pardon?”

Tony thrusts one arm forward and the metal folds away, components of his biggest, best weapon whirring into place, the buzz of a laser warming up.

Osborn leans to the side to glance past the gun, at him, still fucking smiling. “Oh, he left a while ago. Half an hour, give or take.”

“Friday, call his phone.”

“He left his phone inside.” Osborn waves towards the creepy haunted house. “Along with his backpack.”

“What did you do to him?”

“Do calm down, Mr. Stark, or one might get concerned that you’re overly controlling over the kid. I invited him for a talk and he happily obliged. We talked. He went home. Does he need your permission to talk to anyone?”

“And turned off his phone, did he?”

“Privacy is a precious thing; not that he’d ever know it, living under your thumb.”

Sam lands. Tony doesn’t turn, but he can hear the feet against muddy grass, the engine powering down, the metal wings folding. “We found the kid?”

“This asshole says he went home.”

“Tried his phone?”

“This asshole claims he left it here.”

“Let me go check.” Sam sprints off towards the building.

“You’re overplaying your hand, my friend,” Tony says through gritted teeth. “Illegal experiments, corporate espionage, exploding your own building and now kidnapping. Even if you get away with one of these, I’ll still put you behind bars on all other counts.”

“You can’t even find one measly enhanced in a cheap ski mask,” Osborn scathes. “Somehow, your threats feel empty. Could you put the gun away? This is all feeling very uncivilized.”

“Step aside. I’m searching your car.”

Osborn steps aside, looking faintly bored. Tony elbows McMahon to the side, too and yanks all car doors open. Checks the trunk. Everything is empty.

Sam is jogging back towards them, Peter’s backpack in one hand. “Phone is here,” he confirms.

“This isn’t over,” Tony warns. He just needs the kid in his arms, first. And then he can turn his full attention towards revenge. He throws a derisive glare at McMahon. “By the way, you’re fired.”

He shoots off into the sky.

-

Peter reaches the lobby of Stark tower, out of breath. He barrels past the front desks, not even waving back at Denzel, through the gates and into the private elevator. He smashes the button for the penthouse about twenty times. When the doors slide shut and the elevator starts moving, he sags to the floor, suddenly feeling boneless.

Osborn freaked him out so much that he just started running. He didn’t even take his backpack. Jas still has his phone.

He wishes he’d never even looked at those stupid grasshoppers. He doesn’t want to be a secret genius that business magnates fight over. He just wants to sit on the couch and watch TV with Tony. Is that too much to ask for? He feels like a shriveled-up sponge that has been out of water for way too long.

The elevator doors open. He pushes himself to his feet and stumbles out. He just wants to curl up in Tony’s arms and not think about anything for a while.

But of course, fate has other plans with him.

The penthouse is entirely empty, save for Ms Potts, who jumps up from her seat by the window when she spots him. “Peter!” She rushes towards him, and Peter has to stop himself from stepping back.

“Where is Tony?”

“He’s out looking for you. —Friday, update Tony.” Her hands land on his arms, above his elbows, but Peter quickly shrugs them off. That gives her pause, and she takes half a step back. “Are you all right?”

No. No he is not. But he doesn’t want to talk to her about it, even if she wasn’t actually, whatever, secretly a spy this whole time.

“Peter, talk to me. Are you hurt? Do you need a doctor?”

“Is Bruce here? Natasha?”

“Everyone is looking for you. Are you hurt?”

Is the hint of impatience in her voice that makes his heart skip into overdrive, something low, rumbling, roaring in his ears. “Back off,” he snaps. “Can you just fucking back off? We both know you don’t even want me here, with your… your stupid summer camps.” Panic is stormy in his chest, dark and painful. “So drop the act. I don’t even— I hate you!”

Pepper takes another step back. “Oh,” she says, a little helpless. And Peter sees tears jump to her eyes.

That storm in his chest is suddenly frozen still. His gaze skitters away from her.

Pepper takes a careful breath. “Just sit on the couch then, maybe? Tony is—I’m sure he’s only a few minutes out.”

Peter shuffles around her, eyes on his shoes. He reaches the couch and curls up, miserably. Pepper stays near the kitchen. He can hear her fidget around in there.

He feels guilt coil deep inside him, which isn’t fair, because his outburst was entirely justified, right? Right?

It feels like it takes ages for Tony to finally return. He barrels in, tripping over his own feet. He takes Peter’s face in his hands, turning it left and right, looking for non-existent injuries. “What did he say to you?” Tony’s face is white. Peter can’t tell if it’s from anger or something else. “What did he say?”

Peter doesn’t even know where to begin, so he just tips forward and Tony’s arms shoot out to catch him.

“Okay, kiddo,” Tony murmurs, pulling himself onto the couch next to Peter. “I got you, I got you.”

“I just want to stay here. I just want it to be easy. I just want everyone to leave us alone.”

Tony says nothing, but his arms are tight around Peter, the pressure is comforting. And Osborn feels a tiny bit further away.

Sneakers squeaking against floorboards announce the arrival of Sam. He sets Peter’s backpack down on the table in front of them— That’s one less thing to worry about at least. Peter squirms out of Tony’s arms, leans forward, pulls it close and opens the zippers. All his books are still there.

He exhales.

Tony looks a little more balanced, now, his voice calmer when he asks again: “What did he say to you?”

He leans back, drawing up his knees. The whole story comes out haltingly. His eyes start drooping now that the adrenaline is wearing off, he feels exhausted.

“He will never bother you again,” Tony promises fervently. “I will have him locked up, one way or another.”

“What if he really convinces CPS to—”

“That’s not happening.”

Peter doesn’t think there is any way Tony can really guarantee that. But it feels nicer to pretend to believe him, so he just murmurs: “’Kay,”

“Let me go call Nat,” Sam says, and exits the room. Pepper has left, too, Peter now realizes. He sags back against Tony’s side.

“I’m so sorry this happened to you, Peter.”

“It’s okay. I’m a superhero. Wasn’t scared.”

“Hmm.”

Peter plucks at the hem of Tony’s sweater as he thinks about this one tiny thing that Osborn says that maybe bothers him a tiny bit. “Would you still have wanted me if I wasn’t, uh, weirdly good at making lucky guesses about grasshoppers?”

The hand rubbing circles on his back stills. “What? Of course!”

“Because you made fun of me a lot for not knowing stuff.”

Tony lets out a frustrated sigh full of self-reproach. “Yeah, kid. I… I make mistakes, I mess up. It doesn’t matter what you know or don’t know. It just matters that you are Peter.”

That’s nice. Peter blows out a breath, some tension leaving his shoulders. “Do I have to talk to the police?” he whispers. “Like, all official and everything?”

Tony doesn’t seem to know the answer to that. “We’ll see how to go about it.”

-

How to go about it.

Bruce and Nat get back and Natasha unfortunately is crashing pretty hard, so she hugs Peter for a bit, murmuring lots of Russian into his ear, and then retires to her bedroom.

Tony will definitely need to involve her in their scheming: a surefire way to take Osborn down hard and fast. Like a bug splashing against the windshield.

So they’ll wait.

Usually when he is in a mood like this, he goes on social media to yell at people. But he tries to put his restlessness aside and spend some more time with Peter, who is still going through a whole palette of anxiety and self-blame while Tony reassures him as best he can.

Saying: “I’m such a dumb idiot for even getting in the car with her when she turned up out of nowhere.”

And: “Do you think Ms. Potts hates me, or what’s her deal?”

And: “I just don’t want him to hack CPS and force me to move.”

“That’s not happening,” Tony promises, although it is stressful to him too, that Osborn is interfering with some system that Tony has no control over.

Nothing he says seems to matter, Peter just keeps repeating the same questions in a loop.

Come on, Tony, damnit, be a parent.

“Let’s go work on our freeze ray,” he says.

-

He puts Peter in his favorite chair, and puts the freeze ray on the desk right in front of him, and puts a screwdriver in his hand.

Peter just turns it over in his hand and hangs his head, chewing his bottom lip.

He feels out of his depth. Parenting is hard. Howard and Mary were at opposite ends of the spectrum, from dictatorial to laid-back, and they still both sucked. So what is there left to do? What is the gray area where Tony should operate?

Although, he realizes, there is one thing Howard and Mary very clearly did have in common when it came to their parenting. They were never just there.

He pulls up a second chair. “Okay, kiddo. When there is a situation I can’t fix, I simply grab an appliance I can fix. You remember how to unscrew the side?”

“Yeah…” Peter runs his thumb along a groove and starts on the first screw. It’s a tiny screwdriver and they’re tiny screws. Which is good. Concentration means distraction. Six tiny screws come out and Peter lifts part of the case away.

“All right. Remember what you got here?”

“The mainboard,” Peter says. “The condenser. The evaporator coils. The overload protector. The defrost system.”

“All right. Let’s take it all apart and then put it back together.”

Peter taps the screwdriver against his leg. “What if I break it?”

“Then we’ll fix it.”

Peter breathes out and then nods. He starts disconnecting the ribbon connectors, the way Tony showed him before. He manages to extract the mainboard. Tony waits for him to start poking at the evaporator coils before speaking up again. “Now. Let’s go over your earlier statements. Because you seemed to have some concerns. Let’s see. Getting in the car with McMahon. That was not dumb.”

Peter angrily jabs his screwdriver a little more forcefully. “I knew something was wrong when I saw her. I felt it. But I still didn’t think…”

“You got in the car with a person you should have been able to trust, a person who should have protected you, a person we hired.”

“I’m a superhero.”

“You’re fourteen.”

“Almost fifteen.”

“Peter. When adults let you down, it’s not ever your fault.”

Peter stops fiddling with the freeze ray and lets the screwdriver rest against his leg, his head hanging.

“As for the whole CPS procedure going on… Peter, look at me.”

Peter crosses his arms on top of the desk and lays his head down on them, turning it away from Tony.

Fair enough.

Tony lets a hand gently land on the kid’s shoulder. Peter doesn’t shrug it off. “We all love you, Peter. If CPS sends you home, or to some other asshole’s house, don’t believe for a second that we would take that lying down. I will sell my entire company and use every ounce of resource I have to keep you around. We got your back. We got your back, we got your head, we got your feet, we got every part of you.”

Peter says nothing.

“Do you believe me?”

“…Yeah,” Peter croaks.

He has a lot of reasons not to, but this is a start.

“Okay. Good. And finally, as for Pepper—”

The doors of the workshop slide open.

-

Speaking of the devil, Peter wants to say as he lifts his head.

Pepper has appeared in the doorway.

She takes a few paces inside, then stops. She is holding one of those manilla folders in her hand. “Bad time?”

Tony is still patting Peter’s back. “Depends. Are you here to give bad news? Because I personally could do without.”

 “No. I wanted to show you something,” she says. “Peter, I mean. Well, no. Both of you.”

Peter sits up and leans back in his chair, closer to Tony.

Tony gives his arm a squeeze that feels reassuring, and says: “Let’s see it.”

Pepper opens the folder and takes something out, holding it out. It’s another flyer for a summer camp.

A father-son camp.

Peter holds out a cautious hand and takes the flyer to read it. Rolling hills. Outdoor adventures. Canoeing. Archery. Fire building.

“I don’t want to get rid of you, Peter,” she says. “I just want you to … make some friends. You don’t have to go. But I think you might have a good time.”

“Oh god,” Tony says, reading along over Peter’s shoulder. “I mean. I’m a bit concerned about potentially getting recognized, but kid, if you want to go I’ll shave my goatee and dye my hair blue.”

Peter lets out a hesitant chuckle at that mental image.

Pepper smiles, too. “I’ll leave it with you,” she says. And leaves.

“Hmmm,” Tony’s chin is leaning on his shoulder. “Participants will demonstrate their singing talents during our camper talent show. That sounds like a whale of a time. Do you want to go?”

“I don’t know. I just … want to sit on the couch and watch TV with you or something. Simple stuff. But it’s … a nice suggestion.”

Tony hums in agreement. “She doesn’t hate you, kid,” he says. “But it often takes people a little time to warm up to her and vice versa. That’s okay. I already discussed with her that you’re my first priority from now on. Nothing is happening as long as you’re not ready.”

That’s… kinda nice.

Although it might also be just another reason for Pepper not to like him.

-

Nat wakes up again late afternoon, hops past them with her crutches and says “let’s do this”.

Bruce, Sam and Pepper are happy to join them, all looking grim with determination.

“Option one,” Tony says, pacing slowly through the office. “Seems easy. We sue him for kidnapping. He will deny all charges, lawyer up, we’ll go head-to-head. Probably publicly, ugly and taking a heavy toll on Peter. I don’t like it. But an option, nevertheless. Option two. We nail that motherfucker for corporate espionage, or for blowing up his own building to cover up whatever shady business he wanted to cover up. Not as easy since we have very little evidence so far, but far more likely to land him in jail and keep Peter out of the public eye.”

“What’s our window?” Bruce asks Pepper. “If we don’t sue for the kidnapping within, say, a week, does that diminish our chances of winning a case? That might give us a deadline if we want to pursue option two first.”

“I’ll consult our legal team.”

“On the off chance—" Tony’s phone starts buzzing and he pauses mid-sentence. He recognizes the number. “Sorry. I want to take this.”

It’s his great friend from CPS, Mr. Graham.

He answers, and is already bracing himself for all of this to get much, much worse, when he realizes Mr. Graham is saying: “—approved, and you should receive the paperwork in the mail shortly.”

“Sorry, I was… What? Approved.”

“Signed and stamped.”

Tony grips the edge of the table. “What? That’s so soon! I thought it was a, a…”

“There were… circumstances,” Mr. Graham says, stiffly. “Someone high-profile attempted to interfere with the case. It seemed… prudent… to move things along.”

Tony says nothing, his mind racing.

“I would not normally share the details, but you’ll likely find them on the evening news either way, given the… public nature of his arrest. The person in question is Norman Osborn and the headlines will tell you he has been arrested for attempted bribery and endangering a minor.”

“How…”

“He essentially attempted to buy the child. CPS does not take such matters lightly.”

Holy shit. Norman Osborn shot himself right in his big, ugly foot. “Will Peter’s name appear in the articles?”

“Absolutely not.” Mr. Graham sounds offended at the insinuation. “I don’t know who exactly this young man is, Mr. Stark, and I don’t need to know. Given the circumstances I’ve seen, it seems he is safest in your tower.”

“I… Thank you.”

“There will be home visits, of course,” Mr. Graham says sternly.

“Thank you. Thank you.”

“Remember to sign all the appropriate paperwork and get in touch with your appointed social worker within a week.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

Mr. Graham’s voice softens. “Good luck, Mr. Stark.”

Tony hangs up and stares down at his phone a moment longer. “Huh,” he says.

-

He barges into Peter’s bedroom. Pauses in the middle of the room. Peter is sitting on the floor next to his bed, fiddling with the rubik’s cube. He looks up at Tony, pauses.

“Sorry,” Tony manages. “I didn’t knock.”

Peter’s eyebrows draw together. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Nothing.” He takes a few more steps closer and then kneels right in front of the kid. “Mr. Graham called. Our case was approved.”

The cube drops to the floor. Peter’s eyes go impossibly wide. “Really?” he breathes.

Tony nods, emotion lacing his throat shut.

“And Osborn can’t—”

“Osborn was just arrested.”

Peter weakly reaches out, clasping Tony’s sleeve. “So… So…”

“You’re staying here.”

Peter takes in a deep, shaky breath, like someone who has been stuck underwater for fourteen years and finally broke the surface. His face crumples. Tony anticipated this and is already holding out his arms. Peter collapses against his chest, grabbing fistfuls of Tony’s sweater as tears spill over. “I can—I can stay?”

“You will stay.”

“Because I, I want to stay.”

“You are. You’re staying here.”

He has made so many mistakes with this kid. Now, he’ll have the rest of his life to balance it out. He shifts on the floor, stretching out his legs on either side of Peter’s curled up body. His own eyes are burning, too. He hums softly and rubs circles on Peter’s back, a strange sense of calmness washing over him, like something just falling into place.

“I never want to go b-back to Malibu,” Peter stutters. “I hated it there so much, I was so f-fucking lonely all the time.”

“You’re not going back. You’re staying here. We’re going to be here and take care of you. I love you, kid. I’m gonna make you eat so many vegetables.”

Peter chokes out a wet laugh.

“Carrots and spinach,” Tony says, dropping kisses into his hair between each vegetable, “and parsnips and broccoli and eggplants and beans, and the… What’s the one with the white bulb and green stalks?”

“You have s-such a l-limited vocabulary.”

Tony laughs. “I love you,” he repeats. He tangles one hand into Peter’s hair and breathes.

-

Natasha is getting a little sick of the med bay, which is ironic.

At least this time she is here to reduce her medication, phase out the pain killers. “I’d suggest two more days of bed rest, and then starting on physical therapy,” Dr. Cho says. “Monitor your pain levels. Report any issues. Stay hydrated. Don’t get caught in another explosion.”

“Thanks, doc.”

Surprisingly, Pepper is waiting in the hallway when she hops out with her crutches. “I’ve been meaning to ask how you’re doing.”

Natasha gestures grandly. “Take a good long look.”

She smiles and scrutinizes her. “Well. I need to ask,” she says. “Why the silly shirts?”

Natasha looks down at the one she is wearing today. It has a picture of a toad playing the electric guitar, and the words Toadally Rad. “I’m just waiting to see how long it will take Tony to either explode or move on to radical acceptance. I call it my t-shirt test.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” Pepper says.

She and Pepper never exchanged too many words. But when they did, they were usually on the same page. “Join us for dinner?”

She shakes her head. “Not a good idea for many reasons.”

No one told Natasha that Tony and Pepper’s relationship has slipped to unsteadier grounds, but she deduced plenty. “Meet the kid. Properly.”

“I don’t think he likes me.”

Yes. The boy who has spent his entire life so far living in disorganized independence, and the woman who is always looking for control in a world that has a lot to offer except control.

“Win him over,” Natasha says. “You loser.”

She smiles wanly, twirling a pen in her fingers. “Did I do the right thing? By getting all the paperwork done, letting the boy stay?”

“You did.”

“I still don’t entirely feel that way. Children need stability. Did I ever tell you the story about my cat?”

“You can’t apply the same checklist to every person. We can give Peter what he needs. You did the right thing.”

“How dare you question my checklists.”

-

She gets to the living room to find Peter hanging upside down above the couch, only his toes touching the ceiling. His face is as red as a tomato. Below him, on the couch, Tony appears to be walking Bruce through something on his phone.

Peter grins brightly when he spots Natasha and shares, with great enthusiasm: “My eyes are about to pop out!”

“Get down now,” Natasha orders.

Peter looks taken aback, then crouches down — or up, depending on how you look at it, sets his hands against the ceiling and drops down to the floor right in front of her. “I just wanted to see how long I could hang on.”

“You could have passed out.”

Peter shrugs. “I would have healed.”

“I told him he could,” Tony says from the couch, looking sheepish.

“And I didn’t stop them,” Bruce says, looking equally sheepish.

“All right,” Natasha says. “First house rule for enhanced teenagers: no experimenting with our own health in the assumption that we’ll just heal if it all goes from pudding to poop.”

Peter shuffles his feet. “But it will help me to figure out—”

“Whatever needs figuring out, you will do with the appropriate supervision. Tony, are you hearing me?”

“Yes. Hearing you, makes sense. Sorry. Noted. New rule.” They have worked together as a team many times now, and Tony has never been this eager to take feedback on board, Natasha will give him that.

She sags onto the other end of the couch. Peter hovers next to her, uncertainly. His face is still red. “Do you want a banana?”

“That sounds lovely.”

Peter rushes off to grab one for her and swiftly returns. And then hovers again, like a guilty golden retriever. Unused to being chastised, of course, and not really knowing how to deal with it.

“Come on, then, little spider,” she says, and Peter quickly climbs up on the couch and curls up against her side. “So what are we up to?”

“Teaching Bruce about the delights of social media,” Tony says. “Particularly when your archnemesis is being mocked relentlessly online. Oscorp is trending at warp speed again.”

“There’s at least a hundred emojis,” Bruce says. He is holding Tony’s phone and is slowly scrolling down with a pained expression. “I don’t even have a hundred emotions.”

“We only need one right now: vindication. Watching memes of Osborn being dragged screaming into his car all day. No doubt about it: this man is Screwed with a capital-S.”

“It’s still not enough,” Peter says, vengefully. “He has to be sued on top of being sued, for causing that... ka-plow.” He claps his hands.

“Was that supposed to be an explosion?”

“I can go back to Oscorp, you know, and look for evidence.”

“You will not go anywhere near there,” Natasha warns. “If you do, I will ground you. No Spider-Man for a week.”

Peter looks outraged and immediately turns to Tony, opening his mouth—

“Listen to Natasha, kid,” Tony says.

Peter slumps with a whiny sound.

Natasha pokes him gently. “I need a favor.”

Peter immediately perks up again. “Anything.”

“Could you go bring Pepper some bananas?”

-

He taps his nails against the door, because knocking feels like it would be too loud.

“You may enter,” FRIDAY says.

He pushes the door open. Ms. Potts is behind her giant desk with all the wobbly silver thingies.

“These are bananas,” he says, lifting them up a bit.

“Indeed they are.”

Peter takes a few steps forward until he is in front of her desk. “Natasha wanted you to have them.” He puts them down.

“Thank you.”

He nods, turns.

“Hold on, Mr. — Peter.”

He looks back. Ms. Potts doesn’t seem to know what to say. She points at the chair by the desk.

Peter sits. The silence stretches for a moment. “Are you going to tell me off for thinking you were a spy?”

Her eyebrows shoot up. “You thought I was a spy?”

“Totally.”

“Hmmm,” she smiles, tapping her pen against her desk.

Peter waits a little longer for her to say something, but when she doesn’t, he says: “You know. You and Tony seem pretty different people.”

“Oh, we are.”

“But you’re like… in love?”

She clears her throat and fiddles with some papers, lining them up neatly. “You are Tony’s first priority for now, he has made that very clear.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s actually one of the few things he has done recently that reminded me why I… appreciate him so much.” Her gaze roams her own desk, pensive, before it returns to Peter’s face. “I will give you the space you need. Even if I demonstrably fell short, I was trying to act in your best interest. It’s not something you should apologize for.”

That’s like, her way of saying ‘don’t worry about it, man’, probably. “Why did you tell Tony to send me to a regular school?”

“I assume Tony explained our reasoning.”

“Not really.”

“I see.” She taps her nails against the side of her keyboard. “I think homeschooling is a bad idea. I’m worried it would ruin your social skills.”

“Uh. What social skills?”

“When you go to school, you’ll make friends. You’re fourteen. Friends are important.”

“Bruce is my friend.”

She folds her hands on top of her desk and leans forward a little. “I speak five languages,” she says.

“So you’ve mentioned.”

“My parents moved around a lot when I was a child. We lived in Panama, Japan, Belgium, Japan again… I was homeschooled at times. Other times, I went to school, but I never completed a full school year in any one place.” She pushes the wooden frog on her desk with one finger, and lets it bounce back. “I bought this in Yokohama. It was my favorite toy as a child. Everything around me was always moving, and my little frog showed me how to maintain balance when everything else is shifting under your feet. Stability is key. Knowing other cultures and languages certainly has its advantages. It has gotten me ahead, professionally. But I regret never having gotten the chance to make friends.”

“Okay. I… I kinda just want a family, first.”

She looks taken by surprise. “I— Yes. Understandable. Our experiences are not the same.” She says it like she hadn’t fully realized it before, though. “I would still advise going to high school. Even if it’s just to give it a try. But talk it over with … your parents. I don’t actually have a say in any of this.”

“Yeah. But Tony listens to you! All the time!”

Her lips twitch again. “I see how that might be annoying. Though in my defense, it has also kept him alive and out of prison on more than one occasion. It’s a role I’ve played in this company for a long time. Perhaps too long. I believe I’m still catching up to this… new and improved Tony.”

“Yeah,” Peter says. “Me too, sometimes. I mean, he was nice when I was a kid and all, but now he’s actually trying. It’s weird, you know?”

Pepper frowns. “But you feel comfortable here?”

“Yeah. Will you teach me Japanese?”

She gives him one of those long looks that still kinda freaks him out. “I’d be happy to.”

“Okay.” He’s not really sure yet if he’ll take her up on the offer.

He delves into his pocket and takes out the little fireman. He places it on the desk, right next to the frog tumbler. They are almost exactly the same height. “They can be friends,” he says.

Pepper smiles. “That sounds nice.”

Chapter Text

“Ready to go?”

“Yeah.” Peter wriggles his feet into his shoes.

Tony glances around the kid’s bedroom. “What’s that?” There is a familiar frog-shaped tumbler on the nightstand, next to the fireman.

“Pepper gave it to me. Hang on a sec.” And then Peter climbs up the wall to grab something off the curtain rod. Even though Tony has seen him do it a few times before by now, he still gets a minor heart attack each time. “Let’s go,” Peter says, sliding a pair of sunglasses on.

“You don’t want to bring the fireman along?”

Peter glances back. “Oh. No, it’s fine. It can stay there. It’s… not going to get stolen.” He smiles sheepishly.

Tony’s heart swells inside him. “It’s not,” he agrees, and slings an arm around Peter’s shoulders.

-

Tony lets out a dramatic, delighted gasp. “Would you look at that.”

“Do not make fun,” Happy says. He is wearing a Hawaiian shirt, white slacks, and sandals.

“Never.”

“You look cool,” Peter says.

“That’s what I thought. Let’s go.”

They didn’t pick the best day for this. It’s cloudy, very windy. Beach umbrellas are flapping. There are ripples in the sand. It also means the beach is relatively quiet, though.

“We should have brought a kite,” Peter says. He pushes the sunglasses up into his hair.

Tony hums. “We probably would have lost it.” He remembers flying a kite together on the beach, on a stormy day. The waves were wild and white-crested. The wind came in gusts so strong that sometimes they could barely hear each other speak, and Tony’s hand was the only thing keeping Peter from falling over.

“Let’s get some churros,” Happy says.

They find a table at the same place as last time. The waitress serves the churros on plates instead of paper trays to keep them from getting blown off the table. “Can’t believe I let you talk me into wearing these clothes,” Happy grumbles. “It’s chilly.”

“It’s fine!” Peter says, his eyes bright, even as he is actively shivering in his seat.

Tony takes off his tattered sweater and passes it to the kid. They order their churros with hot chocolate, this time. The sun breaks through the clouds at some point, and the temperature turns pleasant. Peter very much refuses to take Tony’s sweater off, though. “I want a weekly churro day,” he says as he dunks his churros in his hot chocolate. “Every Sunday. Churros for dinner. All you can eat. Are you in?”

Natasha warned him about this co-parenting pitfall: Peter wanting something, asking each of them separately and then rolling with whatever answer most suits his purpose.

And Tony knows he is in danger of becoming the ‘fun’ parent.

Thankfully, they have established an infallible strategy together. “Ask Natasha, later.”

“But she’ll just say no!”

“Then the answer is no.”

Peter pours some chocolate milk into his plate so he can coat the entire churro with it.

“Jesus, kid.”

Peter ignores him. “Do you want me to teach you to make pancakes later?”

“Oh. The pancakes.” That seems like a memory from a long time ago. “Hmmm.”

“You wanted to learn, right?”

“I don’t know. Pepper wanted me to know at least three recipes. It was on the list. That ship has sailed, a bit. But it wouldn’t be remiss, I suppose; knowing how to cook, now that I’m a dad.”

Peter gets a very soft smile on his face.

“Though usually dads aren’t taught to cook by their own kids, are they?”

“You’re making all this very complicated,” Happy tells him brusquely. “Do you want to make pancakes together, yes or no?”

“I would be honored to.”

“Okay.” Peter twirls the drawstring of Tony’s hoodie around his finger. “So, what list? What does that mean?”

“Something Pepper made. Things she wanted me to know, or do, or don’t do before she would agree to date me.”

“Can I see it?”

“It’s not really relevant anymore, as we stand.”

“Can I still see it?”

“Are you going to make fun?”

Peter gives a sly grin. “Maaaybe?”

Tony gives him a good-natured glower, but swipes through his phone and finds the list quick enough. He puts his phone on the table in front of Peter.

“Know your own social security number.” Peter reads out.

Happy snorts.

“Pepper always remembers it for me,” Tony says.

Peter shrugs. “That’s okay. I don’t know mine either.”

“I know yours,” Tony realizes.

“Really?”

“Hm. You have no idea how much paperwork about you I’ve had to sign recently.” Which had also reminded him, incidentally, that Peter’s fifteenth birthday is coming up.

“So you know my social security number, but not your own?”

“Well, you’re more important, aren’t you?” Tony teases.

“Know what that green thing is in the bucket under the sink and how to use it,” Peter reads. He looks intrigued. “What green thing?”

“Yeah. No idea.”

“Well, now I have to know! What’s living under our sink? A leprechaun?”

“I am moderately concerned about this one as well,” Happy says.

“We’ll check when we get home.”

“You should finish this list,” Peter says.

“My relationship with Pepper is on the backburner right now, you know that.”

“Don’t do it for her,” Happy says. “Do it to be a halfway functioning adult. Christ. Why are you like this?”

“A chemical imbalance in the brain, probably.”

-

The thing in the bucket under the sink has a wide, metal blade with a rubber strip, and a green, plastic handle. It looks a bit like a T wrench. Happy glances over Tony’s shoulder and starts laughing as soon as he sees it, before turning on his heel and returning to the elevator. He is still laughing as the doors slide shut.

“You don’t know what this is?” Peter says, waving it in Tony’s face.

“Do you?”

“Duhhh.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Nope,” Peter says, grinning widely. “Guess, first.”

“Let me see.”

Peter hands it over and Tony turns the object over in his hands a few times.

“A door stopper?” he guesses. “Or do you use it for cooking?”

“It’s for cleaning windows. You use it to wipe the water away after cleaning them. Schwoooop. I don’t know what it’s called, though. A window schwooper. Okay.” He snatches it back up and throws it back in the bucket. “Your plant is still alive. So I guess you gotta learn how to vote, next. I’m not sure about that one, either, but I’m sure there’s videos.”

“Already know my list by heart, do you?”

“It was only five things.”

-

Oscorp’s board of directors have staged a coup and ousted their former CEO. His replacement is some woman Natasha has never heard of, but her first act as CEO was to hand over all documents and security footage to the police for a formal investigation into her predecessor, and announce that Oscorp is ready to sue Osborn if evidence suggests he caused any damage to the company.

This is boring.

Between CPS and the Oscorp board, they haven’t even left Natasha with anything to nail Osborn for.

Though she can be creative.

Revenge can take many forms. She is not even above dye in his shampoo bottle, or toilet papering his house.

So she stumbles her way through the living room — where Tony and Peter are watching a documentary on voter suppression for some reason — to Pepper’s office, because if anyone can be her partner in crime on this, it’s her. Pepper isn’t there when she arrives, so Natasha stretches out in one of her chairs and closes her eyes.

She wakes when a hand shakes her arm. “Honey,” Pepper says, looking disapproving. “That can’t be good for your back.”

“Well, surprisingly my back is one of the few body parts that came out relatively unscathed.” She carefully pushes herself up higher in the chair.

“What can I help you with?”

“Revenge. Petty revenge.”

Pepper doesn’t even need to ask on who. “He is going to jail, Natasha.”

“I just want to give him a little farewell present. You’ve had to deal with him a lot. I’m sure you can think of a way to hit him while he is down, and where it hurts, too.”

Pepper leans back against her desk and gazes at her for a while. Pepper always wants to do everything above board, of course, but when it counts, she can be deliciously—

“He has a painting,” Pepper says. “An old piece. The assumption of Mary. He never shuts up about it. He constantly implies that he gets his art at the more… disreputable auctions. And you would be surprised to learn how much art that gets auctioned off was stolen at some point in history. In fact, most museums today have stolen art in their collection. With a bit of digging, you might find the rightful owner and Osborn will have to give his painting up. Is that the sort of petty revenge you are looking for?”

“That is exactly the sort of petty revenge I am looking for.”

-

Peter went out to do Spider-Man stuff. Natasha locked herself in one of the offices all day, definitely up to something. Bruce is in his lab with his newly arrived grasshoppers. Sam left too, Tony isn’t even sure why. So he has laid claim to the living room this morning, blasting AC/DC from the ceiling speakers as he teams up with FRIDAY for the most important mission he has ever set himself: finding out who Richard sold the firetruck to.

FRIDAY filters out an ad on craigslist pretty swiftly. It seems to check all the boxes. Uploaded in the right year. The whole set for thirty dollars. Tony thinks he even recognizes the wooden floors in the background of the picture. It doesn’t tell him much about who the eventual buyer was, though. The only clue is that the ad says the toy set must be picked up. No one is driving twenty miles for a simple fire truck. So it was probably bought by someone who lived nearby.

As much as he hates it, the only person who can tell him where the toy set ended up, is Richard Parker. Richard Parker who, last Tony heard, rode off into the sunset. Even Mary probably doesn’t know where her husband is. From what Peter told him, the man usually disappears for months at a time, so he won’t be back any time soon. But FRIDAY runs the name through every system and finds a hit.

Richard Parker is currently two days into a sixty-day prison sentence in the Los Angeles county jail, for driving without a license. Which he lost earlier due to a DUI.

“FRI, Can I call him?”

“It is not possible to contact an inmate on the phone. You could write him a letter asking him to collect call you, or you can apply for a visit. The approval process can take anywhere between several days to several weeks.”

Or several hours, when you have Pepper.

Sam appears next to the aquarium, carrying a leather briefcase. Tony hadn’t even heard the elevator over the music. “Hey. Where’ve you been?”

“Work.”

Tony slams a few keys on his laptop and the music cuts out. “You have a job?”

Sam snorts, moving past him to grab a glass and fill it up with water.

“What do you do?”

Sam downs the glass of water in one and then breathes out. “I’m a therapist. Specialize in PTSD.”

“Fuck. Really?”

“Don’t freak out.”

“No, I’m just surprised. I wouldn’t have guessed. I would have guessed… fireman, maybe.”

Sam hums and points at the screen of his laptop that still has a picture of the ad on craigslist. “I see.”

-

“I’m in a meeting,” Pepper says when Tony sticks his head around her door.

Tony glances at the two people at her desk. He doesn’t recognize them. “Are they important?”

“Tony!” she hisses.

“Right-o. I’ll wait outside.” He retreats and sags down in one of the chair, idly flicking the leaf of the potted plant on the side table. He takes out his phone and goes through all his social media again, a bit listlessly. It’s a habit, more than anything else. He isn’t really feeling his usual urge to mock people.

Pepper finally shows her two visitors out, thanking them liberally for coming as she steers them diplomatically past Tony.

And then she beckons him in.

Tony sags down in the chair by her desk and flicks her Newton’s cradle into motion.

She sits. “How can I help you?”

“Have you ever walked on the Hollywood walk of fame?”

“I have not.”

“Great. I want to fly to Los Angeles. Visit Richard Parker in jail. And then probably drive to Malibu afterwards. And then fly back. I need a visitor application for the Los Angeles county jail approved as soon as possible.” He smiles beatifically.

Her chin rests in the palm of her hand. “I would like to ask a question about this.”

“Yes, go right ahead.”

“Why?”

Tony conjures up a picture of the craigslist ad on his phone and turns the screen towards her. “I bought Peter this toy set when he was seven or eight. And then Richard sold it. So I want to get it back for him.”

“You want to travel to Malibu? Tony, for years, even mentioning Malibu was enough to severely rattle you.”

Tony shrugs and puts his phone down. “That’s why I was incidentally also hoping that you would come with me. As a normal work friend slash colleague slash occasional therapist. Wheels up early morning, we might just make it back before midnight.”

She bites the inside of her cheek. “This all sounds very impulsive.”

“Sometimes being impulsive can be a good thing. And I know I shouldn’t usually trust my own brain, but it’s the only brain I have access to, okay?”

“I have meetings—”

“If I promise not to insult anyone online for a whole week, surely the hours you’ll save on not putting out those fires will make up for it?”

A beat of silence.

“Make it two weeks,” she says. Her eyes are twinkling, now. “And I’ll see what I can do.”

-

He and Peter make pancakes that evening, after dinner. From a box that says ‘just add water’.

“I always add gummy bears into the mixture, too,” Peter says as he scoops a first ladle-full into the frying pan. “But this will do, I guess.”

They serve the pancakes as dessert, with cherries and ice cream.

Tony has never felt so much like a grown-up.

-

“I got you a present, by the way,” Tony says as they settle into their seats.

Pepper managed to get his visitor application approved for today, so they got up at the crack of dawn to fly out to Los Angeles. He simply told Peter that he’d be on a business trip all day and possibly not back until after midnight. Strangely, he doesn’t feel nervous at all about this trip down fucked-up-memory lane.

“Is that so,” Pepper says.

“104 768 944.”

“I’m very impressed.”

“Thought so.”

“Between this and the strawberries, you really know how to make your CEO happy.”

“I still don’t know what that number is for, really, but I know it, is the point.” He yanks at the handle by the seat and reclines it all the way back. “Don’t know about you, but I’m getting a few more hours of sleep.”

She opens her laptop. “I need to get some work done.”

Of course.

Tony dozes for a while, and when he wakes up again Pepper is in the middle of an online meeting that he half-listens to. A lot of legal jargon is getting thrown around and it goes on for ages before Pepper finally pulls her headphones off with a sigh.

“All good?”

“That was the new CEO of Oscorp. They discovered Norman had been conducting experiments on his own employees. Some performance-enhancing serum that never worked. And he did give the order to set the explosives. They’re gearing up for massive lawsuits.”

Tony sags in his seat and pouts. “We don’t even have to do anything.”

“You sound like Natasha.”

-

It’s a rainy day. And Tony is away for business. Both those things suck.

Peter pads down the hallway, disgruntled, rounds the couch and stops in front of Natasha. “I don’t like rain,” he complains. He has wrapped himself in a blanket, head to toe.

“You look offensively cute,” Natasha says. “And a bit like Palpatine. Do you know who that is?”

“Yeah, duh. I’m not stupid.”

“I know you’re not. How about curling up in an armchair with a book and a cup of hot cocoa while the rain patters against the window?”

“I finished all my books. And we don’t have any chocolate milk.”

“Come here,” she says. “I got a job for you.”

He caterpillars himself onto the couch, and leans into her side. She turns the screen of her laptop towards him and he sees the webshop of some big-box home furnishing store.

“Buy stuff for your room. I want to see at least three things in the shopping cart. Meanwhile, I’ll see how we can get us some hot chocolate delivered, like the lazy bastards we are.”

Peter frowns at the catalog pictures. “Like what things?”

“Anything. A poster, a pillowcase, a bathrobe that actually fits you.”

Peter folds his blanket cocoon open so he can start clicking around with her touchpad. “My room is fine, you know, and I like the big robe, I don’t really need— oooh, they have R2D2 nightlights!”

“If you want it, click the little cart,” she directs.

“Can I get anything I want?”

“Within reason.”

“I want a hot plate. And those glass thingies that are shaped like this.” He holds his hands up in a triangle. “So I can conduct experiments. I want to make my own spiderwebs.”

“No,” Natasha says. “Any experiments you want to do, you can do in Bruce’s lab under his supervision.”

Peter grumbles a bit, but then continues browsing the website. He gets the nightlight, and a fleece blanket with a watermelon-wedge-print, and a pair of headphones, and a small memo board. He hovers the mouse for a moment over an acoustic guitar, but then clicks away. That seems like too big an ask at this point. “Is that enough?”

“For now.”

Bruce shows up with three styrofoam cups and the usual mild smile. “As requested. Freshly made by the people downstairs with actual cocoa powder.”

Peter accepts his cup of hot coca. He tugs the blanket back into a cocoon and leans back against the pillows. He listens to the rain patter against the window. Yeah. This isn’t so bad. “Bruce. Can I get a hot plate in my bedroom?”

“Ask Natasha,” Bruce says.

-

They touch down outside of LA, a little after noon.

“We should get a car, I guess,” Tony realizes.

“I already ordered a car, it should be waiting for us.”

A car with tinted windows and spacious seating is indeed waiting for them when they step off the plane.

It used to be so easy to just let Pepper take care of everything. But lately is has made Tony feel just a tad… inadequate.

The temperature is smoldering. Heat billows up from the asphalt. Inside the car, the air conditioning is blazing. Pepper starts briefing him, passing paperwork his way. “It’s a single person visitor’s pass. I’m not allowed to go in with you. So please remember to behave.”

“I always behave.”

“You got banned from Taco Bell for glitter bombing the place.”

“In my defense. It was Christmas.”

That makes her laugh.

Pepper Potts. The woman with a look that can kill and a smile that can bring you back to life.

They arrive at the county jail, and she deems Tony’s simple sunglasses an inadequate disguise. “I have something you can use.”

And so Tony steps into the poorly ventilated visitation area of the county jail, wearing Pepper’s pastel pink sunhat. He had hoped for one of those glass-partition-situations. But there are rows of simple wooden tables with benches, all bolted to the floor. There are a few other people in the room. None of them pay attention to Tony as the correctional officer leads him to a table.

Richard is already there. Blue jumpsuit, no handcuffs. He looks restless, fingers drumming against the table. “The fuck are you wearing?” he asks as soon as Tony sits.

“Shut up and listen to me.” Tony plants his elbow on the table, turning the screen of his phone towards Richard. “I once bought Peter a toy set for his birthday. A fire truck. You took it from him and sold it. I want to know who you sold it to.”

Richard looks bewildered. “Why?”

“None of your business. Just answer my question.”

Richard scratches the side of his neck. “I don’t know. It’s ages ago. I don’t think I actually ever sold that one. It might still be in my storage locker. Check there.”

That was… fast. Tony had expected something more, something like a ‘what’s in it for me’, or a ‘how much is this information worth to you’. But then again, Richard has never been good at blackmail or bribe. That is more Mary’s style.

He lowers his phone. “You know, part of me thought you might feel bad about stealing from a six-year-old. But you cared so little that you didn’t even return the stuff you couldn’t sell?”

Richard’s furious glare is obviously meant to intimidate. “Everything the kid owned was technically mine, anyways, that’s how it works.”

“That’s how it works, huh?”

“I stole way more from your place, and you never noticed. But hey, I always got you the good drugs, so we’re square.”

“We are not square, we are still very much circle.”

“You were always such a damn pussy. I remember times you wouldn’t even step outside your house unless Mary was with you. It’s pathetic. And now you’re here again to cry about how mean I used to be to you?”

“I don’t care about anything you ever did to me. I care about what you did to Peter.”

“Why are you here, really? Can’t be for the stupid truck.”

Tony exhales. He already has the information he wanted, there is no need to waste any more oxygen and brain cells talking to this man. He tucks the phone in an inside pocket. “Fuck you for being a terrible parent.”

“Yeah, right back at ya.”

Tony thinks there was once a time when he was as far gone as Richard. “Just try to get clean, dude.”

Richard looks chastised at the suggestion. Tony finds, with a twinge of satisfaction, that he quite enjoys that look on him. “Good luck getting used to seeing the inside of these walls.” He stands, taps a finger against the brim of his hat, and leaves.

He collects his items in the screening area and turns his smart watch on immediately. “FRIDAY, I need the address of the storage locker owned by Richard Parker.”

She has the address ready for him when he steps back into the car, and he passes it on to their driver.

“Everything okay?” Pepper asks.

“He loved the hat.”

-

The storage unit is in Malibu in the underground level of a parking garage: narrow hallways and lots of concrete. There is a combination lock on the green, metal door. Tony was prepared for this, and taps his smartwatch.

“Should we perhaps—” Pepper starts.

The iron gauntlet folds out around Tony’s wrist and he smashes the lock to pieces. He pulls the door open.

Pepper exhales through her nose but doesn’t berate him.

The locker is not crammed as full as Tony had feared. A dozen cardboard boxes and a garbage bag. Probably full of stuff Richard stole from Peter and then never actually managed to sell. “All right. Shouldn’t take long.” He grabs the garbage bag while Pepper opens the first box.

The garbage bag appears to just be full of broken appliances, but Tony carefully sorts through them anyway, to make sure.

“Are you certain about visiting Mary?”

“Yes. I need to do this.”

“Do you want me to come inside with you?”

“No. I’ll do it alone.”

“Do you promise you will not trespass?” Pepper says. “Or break something? Again? Or threaten her, or physically attack her, or make a public scene, or try to bribe her, or accept drugs from her, or—”

“I’m beginning to feel inspired.”

Pepper frowns at him across a hill of boxes. “You know, research shows that having a civil relationship with your adopted child’s birth parents is beneficial to—"

He puts the garbage bag to one side. “Pepper. What exactly are you so worried about?”

“What do you think, Tony? He’s a child.” She folds the flaps of the box back down and reaches for a second box.

“And I’m going to take care of him.”

“It has always been my job to keep you from doing stupid things. And sometimes I’ll let you persuade me, and then when things go pear-shaped, I’m always the one left feeling awful and responsible.”

“This isn’t stupid to me. And nothing is going pear-shaped. Everything is perfectly… What’s the opposite of a pear? A bell pepper. Bell pepper-shaped.”

Pepper says nothing for a while. Tony opens another box. Kitchen stuff. Once again, in a terrible state. Most of it dented and cracked. This isn’t promising.

“Do you remember Coco?” Pepper asks.

Yes. A few years back, Tony suddenly decided that he really wanted a cat. Pepper said no. He begged and begged and she still said no. And then he remembered he didn’t technically need her approval, so he went out and got the cat himself. And then about a month later he grew tired of her and asked Pepper to get rid of her. “Yeah. I remember Coco. Hmm. What happened to her?”

“I took her to my house, I’m taking care of her.”

“Really? You have a cat?”

Pepper gives him a look like she already told him that a hundred times.

“Huh. So if I give up Peter, he can go live at your place, too?”

She slams her hand flat against the box in front of her, a red color shooting up her neck. He thinks he even sees tears jumping to her eyes. “That is not funny!”

“Okay. No. Sorry. Fucked up joke.”

“For the love of God, Tony!”

“This is all different, Pepper, I swear. I’m never letting that kid go. I love him.”

Pepper stills, looking perplexed.

“What—Is that so surprising?”

She looks at him for a moment, then away. “I’ve just never heard you say those words before.”

That… sucks. “I’m sorry.”

She slides another box away and doesn’t say anything for a moment. “For?” she asks eventually.

“I know I’ve consistently made your work more stressful. I know I was dismissive and erratic. I know I’ve never given you much reason to believe I can be a good parent. I’d write you a list of all my mistakes, but I’m afraid there isn’t enough paper in the world.”

“I don’t need an apology,” she says. “I believe you’ve grown, and I haven’t given you much room for it. I regret that. I think at times we feed into each other’s worst habits. I sometimes find myself wishing I didn’t live my life in lists.”

“I love your checklists. It’s easily one of my favorite things about you. No, I’m serious.”

Her face softens. “I like your impulsivity. And that you’re not afraid to let things go wrong.”

“With a little course correction,” Tony says, “you might say we can simply rely on each other’s strengths. You know. As a normal work friend slash colleague slash occasional therapist. I’ll take Coco back if you want.”

She looks wryly amused. “So now you’re trying to steal my cat?”

“Have dinner with us,” he says. “All of us, I mean. You’ll see how perfectly dysfunctionally functional we are, and you’ll feel better.”

“I’ll consider it.”

He opens another box and immediately spots something red behind some cracked vases. He carefully pulls the shards away, like a paleontologist uncovering an old fossil. “I got it.”

He extracts the firetruck, piece by piece. It’s missing a wheel. The ladder snapped off. The plastic siren is hanging on by a thread. “I can fix it,” he murmurs, fiddling with the ladder to see where it used to fit. His throat feels tight. “I can fix it.” He continues digging and finds one frowny fireman. The missing wheel is nowhere to be found, though.

“Here,” Pepper says, pulling a tea towel from the box she had opened.

Tony wraps it around the remains of the truck. “All right. Let’s go.”

-

They have left the built-up area of Malibu behind them. The car is cruising past rolling hills covered in coastal scrub. Tony feels rumpled and tired. He is holding the fire truck in his lap.

Pepper is next to him, laptop balancing on her knees, and is avidly emailing back and forth with their head of PR about some disgruntled former employee who has been venting about them on Tumblr.

Tony takes his phone from his pocket and deletes all his social media apps.

-

They pull up in front of Mary’s house. A Tudor-style villa, timber-framed, set in a deep, unkempt garden. It makes Tony think of the witch in the story of Hansel and Gretel.

He still feels nothing.

He slides the fire truck off his lap. “Will you wait in the car?”

“I’ll be… rear-windowing. Good luck.”

He steps out of the car and walks up a twisty, stone walkway. The front door is half open, just like it always used to be. Anyone could just walk in or out as they pleased. He still gives a few firm knocks on the wood as he steps inside. The hallway is dimly lit, a few boxes, a heavy mahogany side table with a pile of unopened mail. “Hello?”

From somewhere in the back of the house, someone answers.

The living room is as he remembers it. Couches that stretch for a mile, a ping pong table. No used glasses on every surface, this time; no recent party. There is a plant with blooming pink flowers on the coffee table. She takes care of her plants better than Tony does.

She takes care of her plants better than of her son.

Through the large windows, he spots Mary. She is on the back porch in a long, flowery dress, barefoot, stretched out on a deck chair by her pool, a bottle of wine tucked against the leg of the chair, a cigarette drooping casually between her fingers.

He opens the screen door.

She turns and sees him. Her mouth drops open. And then she claps her hands, eyes lighting up. “Anthony!” She spreads her arms wide. “Hello stranger. Give us a hug! You look handsome.”

He doesn’t move from the doorway. “You look older.” She doesn’t, really. She looks like always, but somehow also the opposite. Like looking at a picture of a vase and then realizing there’s two faces in there.

“Oh, how dare you.” Her eyes twinkle, she drops her arms down. “What’s the occasion?”

“I was in the neighborhood.”

“I don’t believe that for a second,” she says. “You wanted to see me. You missed meeee. Get over here, let’s gossip.”

“I visited your husband in jail today.”

“Oh, poor Richard.” She looks entirely unbothered. “Did he piss in someone’s gas tank again?” She flicks the cigarette into her pool. “Your timing is impeccable, babe. Two days later and I wouldn’t have been here. I’m moving.”

He takes a few steps forward, until his shadow falls over her and she can look up at him without squinting. “You’re selling the house?”

“Not exactly. It’s the bank that will be selling it.”

“You got repossessed?”

“Mean, isn’t it?”

It was a matter of time probably, considering how many times Tony used to bail her out of her debts. “Where are you going?”

“Chicago.”

That’s where her parents live. Probably a good decision. “And getting a job?”

She waves a hand. “Don’t be silly.”

Right. “Are you going to ask how your son is doing, or are not even going to bother to pretend you care?”

“I’m sure you’ll take care of him splendidly,” she says. “Look how it all worked out. These social workers were all very helpful. I’m supposed to go to mandated counselling, but I won’t be attending.”

That certainly won’t come back to bite her in the ass. “Not what you expected back when you first concocted your paternity fraud?”

She looks up at him and says nothing.

“What, you don’t want me to mention it?”

 “No, hon. Mention it.” She shrugs.

Tony wonders if he should say something more about it, but he finds he doesn’t care. He cares about his own agency in all of it, his decision to leave and forget. He cares about what she did to Peter. But he knows she’ll just enjoy it if he loses his temper.

She who angers you, conquers you.

Mary is still looking up at him. “He’s a lovely boy, you know. He gets a little mean sometimes, prickly.”

“Maybe he just doesn’t like you.”

She laughs like that is the funniest thing she has heard all week. “He probably doesn’t, no.”

Tony takes a step back. “Did Peter leave anything in his room I can take?”

“Some government lady already picked everything up.”

Peter’s clothes were indeed mailed to them a few days ago. Just clothes, nothing else. “I’d still like to check.”

She turns her face to the sun and closes her eyes. “You know where it is.”

He does know where Peter’s room is. He makes his way back through the living room, up the staircase, down the hall.

Peter’s room still has the crayon drawings on the wall he made when he was little. A rocket, and a bird with a hat, and a cowboy. The bed has been stripped. The wardrobe is empty, the doors left open.

He stands there for a while, hands shoved into his pockets, and thinks about life. He wonders what Peter has been up to today. And he feels a strong desire to hear the solid clunk of a front door falling shut behind him.

He heads back downstairs. Mary is still outside, sitting forward on the chair as she lazily fishes her own cigarettes out of the pool with a wide net. That’s one way to keep yourself busy.

“I’m leaving,” he says.

“Won’t you stay for dinner? I’ll order something with shrimp and we’ll make a toast to your dear old dad.”

She is finding buttons to push. It’s essentially her only form of communication.

It’s… pathetic.

This woman who used to loom so large in his mind now seems very small, sitting with her bottle of wine in a house she is about to lose.

“It’s been good to see you,” he says. Because it really has.

He turns and walks away from her. She calls something else after him, but he doesn’t listen.

He pulls the front door shut. The driver gets out and opens the car door for him when he approaches.

“Everything all right?” Pepper asks.

“Yes. Let’s go home,” he says, sagging back into the seat. “I want to see my kid.”

Chapter Text

He ends up needing to take the entire fire truck apart to rewire the siren. He gets his 3D printer to work on making an exact replica of the wheel.

He finally got all that sorted and is fiddling with the ladder, figuring out how to best glue it back in place, when the doors of his workshop slide open and Peter steps inside.

Tony freezes like a deer in headlights.

“I got you coffee,” Peter says, and then he zeroes in on the project under Tony’s hands.

“Uh. This was supposed to be a surprise,” Tony says.

Peter moves closer and sets the cup down, almost drops it. “Is that the original one?”

“Yeah.”

“How—Where did you get it?”

“Malibu.”

Peter’s hands clench around the edge of the table, eyes flitting back and forth between the truck and Tony’s face. “It’s broken?”

“I can fix it. I’m fixing it.”

Peter stares at him, and it occurs to Tony only now that Peter is fourteen years old, almost fifteen, probably has absolutely no desire to play with a fire truck anymore, and if he did he could have just asked Tony to buy him a brand-new one instead of this old junk.

But Peter steps around the desk and interrupts his mental crisis by throwing his arms around him and leaning his head down on Tony’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he whispers, voice thick. “You are amazing.”

“Anything for you, kid.”

“Hmmm,” Peter pulls up another chair, carefully tracing the scuff marks on the side of the truck with his fingers. “You mean that?”

“Of course.”

“Okay. Can I get a hot plate in my bedroom?”

“Ask Natasha.”

-

A church in a moderately-sized town in Belgium lost their altar piece, depicting the Assumption of Mary, during the Second World War when Nazi soldiers looted the building. After the war, the pastor made some attempts to find the piece again, but it was impossible to trace. Decades later, a local history enthusiast uploads a picture of the old altar piece in a database for missing art. For a long time, it doesn’t lead to any hits.

Until Natasha finds it.

Norman Osborn’s family is meekly cooperative in returning the piece to its rightful owners. With the massive lawsuits currently ongoing against Norman Osborn, the story of the painting is not even mentioned in any news outlets here. But the local paper of the Belgian town dedicates a full page to it.

Natasha gets herself a copy, gets it translated, prints it, and signs her name at the bottom. She sticks it in an envelope and sends it to the prison where Osborn is awaiting trial.

Revenge is a dish best served piping hot.

-

The dinner is… not as smooth sailing as Tony had hoped.

He thought it would be a great idea to use this occasion to learn a second recipe, perhaps shoot for something slightly more ambitious than pancakes.

It soon becomes apparent that this was in fact the opposite of a great idea.

Pepper steps into the penthouse just as Tony is frantically wafting at the black smoke billowing from the oven. She pauses, watching from a short distance away as Tony slams all the buttons, waves the towel around, pulls the dish from the oven, curses and drops it into the sink. “Really? No help?” he asks her.

“I’m trying this new thing where I’m letting you make your own mistakes without immediately jumping on top.”

“How close to death do I need to be before you give up on that?”

“I have faith,” she says.

Tony takes out his phone and orders pizza.

He can salvage this. He can still make this a perfectly pleasant evening that showcases how responsible he is as a parent.

And then Peter comes running into the room, yells “check THIS out” and shoots some sort of net of white, shimmery rope from a container in his hand all over the kitchen. Tony ducks with a yelp. The fruit bowl is knocked off the table, apples rolling everywhere. Pepper was fortunately not in the drop zone.

“Peter,” Bruce says, following him in. “What did I tell you?”

“I’ll clean it up. Look, Tony, I made this. Look how bouncy it is! Not very strong yet, though.”

Tony sticks his head out from behind the table. “Kid, you’re killing me. This is the sort of stuff that will get you banned from Taco Bell, FYI.”

“What is it for?” Pepper asks.

“Uhh,” Peter says, clearly only now fully realizing that she is here. “Uhhhh. For fun?” He starts wildly moving his arms around to reel the sticky substance back in.

Tony can still salvage this. He can. He sets about gathering the apples back into the bowl. “Peter. Wash your hands, dinner is on its way.”

“I don’t think I have to wash my hands,” Peter says. “I exploded a glue-paint mixture all over Bruce’s lab this afternoon and we had to disinfect everything.”

Pepper looks alarmed.

Well. The situation has officially become unsalvageable. Tony gives up. “Next time, invite me,” he says. He sets the fruit bowl back on the table and starts plucking bits of shimmery rope off the kitchen cupboards. “You’ve been experimenting?”

“He did really well,” Bruce says. “Apart from the explosion.”

“Is that dinner?” Peter asks, peeking into the sink.

“I ordered pizza.”

“Oh good, because this looks awful.”

“I worked hard on that!”

“Don’t give up your day job.”

“You little shit,” Tony says. “Go set the table.”

The pizza is brought up by a security guard about half an hour later. Sam and Natasha join them. Natasha is wearing a shirt with ruffles that says ‘Hi hungry, I’m mom’. Tony doesn’t even care anymore, he has just accepted the Black Widow’s fashion choices by now. “Nice shirt,” he says. Natasha smiles sweetly.

Tony folds all the pizza boxes open. “We got a bit of everything. First come, first serve.” Pepper picks something with spinach, Peter goes for pineapple.

“You’d better keep that stuff far away from me,” Sam tells him.

“Pipe down,” Tony says. “Don’t yuck other people’s yums.”

“I’m a little afraid to ask, but could I possibly get a napkin?” Pepper asks.

Bruce gets her a napkin. Peter watches the way she neatly cuts off a first corner of pizza with knife and fork, then turns to Tony with a worried frown. “I can eat with my hands, right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony says. Dinner is a lost cause, anyways. Who cares about looking civilized.

Peter immediately stuffs an entire slice of pizza into his mouth, cheeks puffing up like a hamster.

“Any opinions on Oscorp’s new CEO?” Natasha asks Pepper.

“So far, a breath of fresh air. Osborn was getting uncomfortably pushy.”

“Let’s get you over the trauma of having to deal with him a million times. Tell us something awful or embarrassing about him, and we’ll all laugh uproariously.”

“Well,” Pepper shifts in her seat. “Is it not appropriate to gossip about one’s business rivals.”

“But…?”

Pepper taps the butt of her knife against the table. “….But I did witness more than one incident of road rage when he took video calls in the car,” she then says. “Dickwaffle was his curse word of choice.”

“Dickwaffle,” Peter repeats, almost awed.

Tony snorts. “What are you doing, Pepper, teaching my kid bad words.”

Peter elbows Tony in the side, “shut up!” and then points at Pepper with a rolled-up slice of pizza. “You can come to my birthday party.”

Pepper looks delighted.

-

Tony holds the door of the elevator a moment longer when she is heading home. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay for a glass of wine? That’s usually when Natasha actually becomes funny.”

“Next time?” she suggets.

“I’m sorry about this disaster.”

“I had a nice time,” she says. “It was nowhere close to a disaster.”

“All right.” He takes his hand off the elevator door. “See you tomorrow at the board meeting.”

Sam and Bruce are cleaning up.

Peter has already installed himself on the couch with his watermelon blanket, next to Natasha. “Star Wars?”

“All right,” Tony flumps down next to him. “But first show me the stuff.” He waggles his fingers.

“What?”

“That magic string you just glitter-bombed us with. Fork it over.”

Peter grins widely and delves into his pocket, taking out a see-through, cylinder-shaped container with a shimmery substance inside.

“What is it?”

“Spiderwebs. You know, for tying up the bad guys, or catching myself if I don’t stick the landing. Though I’d have to make it stronger, first. Right now, it’s mostly just Halloween decorations.”

“Safety precautions are good.” This running around with a ski mask seems to be more than just a phase. It’s evolving into something serious. Would a proper parent let their enhanced teenager run around a city in pajamas? “So this is why you glue-blasted Bruce’s lab today? How do I shoot it out? Where do I press?”

“Don’t. You can look at it.”

“No, no, no,” Tony says. “I want to touch.”

“This is the front. Aim that away from you. Then squeeze there.”

Tony does, and white webbing instantly shoots from what was supposed to be the back of the container, straight into his face. He splutters and Peter collapses into chortles.

-

“If I make Peter a better suit,” he asks Natasha, once Peter has gone to bed, “Is that good parenting or bad parenting?”

“Practical parenting, I’d say.”

-

Peter likes math. Everything makes sense in math. It’s the only subject where he doesn’t constantly need to ask Bruce ‘but whyyyy?’, or his new favorite, ‘wakarimasennnn!’ because he read that’s Japanese for ‘I don’t understand’. Bruce is walking him through something called a Pappus-Pascal theorem, which is almost as funny as parallelepiped.

“This is quite advanced material, you know,” Bruce says.

“Oh,” Peter says, kicking the leg of the table. “So. Like. Almost normal high school level?” He doesn’t particularly want to go to a regular school. But he especially doesn’t want to go to school and have to sit in class with a bunch of eleven-year-olds who are still smarter than him.

“You—What? No!” Bruce actually looks shocked.

Okay, sheesh. Never mind.

“Peter, did you think— No, buddy. This is definitely beyond high school level. I would say junior or senior undergraduate level. And they would generally take weeks to grasp what you just did in two hours.”

“Oh,” Peter says, a bit stupidly, because that makes no sense. That doesn’t add up at all.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce says.

“What? What for?”

“For not making it clear how— After the grasshoppers I assumed you would realize that you are exceptionally smart, but of course you hardly have a frame of reference.”

“What’s a frame of reference?”

Bruce smiles with little crinkles around his eyes. He takes a piece of paper and draws a square, and explains what is inside the square and what is outside. “Your childhood has been… unique,” he says. “So sometimes you don’t know things. But that doesn’t say anything about what you could learn.”

“So I can do normal high school?”

“Definitely. You lack certain knowledge. But if you pay attention in class, and with a bit of tutoring on the side, I think you’ll be fine. In fact, my biggest concern about sending you to high school is that you might soon grow bored with the lack of challenge.”

“Uh, no. I really don’t mind, uh, things that are not challenging.”

-

They have churros in the usual place. The day is warm and cloudless. Happy is in his Hawaiian shirt again, and not complaining for a change.

Peter had a double portion but still finished way before they did, and then raced off, kicking up sand, towards two teenagers that look about his age, who are standing close to the shoreline: one is holding a kite. Those things work like magnets on Peter.

“I’m proud of you, Tony,” Happy says. “Can I say that, or are you gonna mock me and get all defensive?”

“That was almost entirely a compliment, you ruined it at the end.”

“Option B it is, I hear.”

“Just… don’t be proud of me yet, give it a few more months. I’m currently at about a five out of ten, I’d say. I’m still afraid I might fuck this up.”

“I should be the last person to Monday-morning-quarterback this whole situation, but think that just makes you an average parent.”

“Don’t call me average, what’s wrong with you.”

“Well. I work for an insane boss and it damaged my sense of normalcy.”

They finish their churros, and a man sidles up to their table and asks if he is Tony Stark.

This means it is time to go. “Sorry, man. Never heard of him.”

He steps off the wooden boards into the sand and when Peter looks their way, Tony gives a little handwave, then taps his finger against his watch.

Peter comes flip-flopping back towards him. “Wait,” says when Tony turns to head back. He points into the distance. “They’re going to ride the Ferris wheel. Can I go with them?”

Okay. Parenting moment. Teenagers hanging out with other teenagers without parental supervision is a normal thing, he knows that. It’s a good thing, in fact. And the teenagers in question look innocent enough. So it’s probably fine to say ‘yes’. And then what else does he need to do?

He is taking too long, he realizes. Peter already looks crestfallen. “Hang on, kid. I’m not gonna say no. I just need a moment. Okay. How will you get home?”

“Subway?”

“You don’t have a pass.”

“Yes I do. Sam got me one.”

Okay. They really need a text chain or something to coordinate this parenting thing.

“Do you need money for the park?”

“I have money at home. Can I just borrow fifteen bucks?”

Shaking his head, Tony takes out his wallet. “This one is on me.” He hands over the money. “Get everyone some ice cream, after. Be home before six. Call me if there’s any issues. Uh. What else. Don’t play with matches, don’t eat soap, don’t go with strangers.”

“Thank you!” Peter hops-skips away towards the other teens.

-

The kid walks back into the tower a little after five PM, just as Tony starts prepping the vegetables he’ll need for the stir fry from his new book Sixty Easy Dinner Ideas: A Practical Guide for Stubborn People to Suck Slightly Less at Cooking. “Hey, Pete. Did you have fun?”

“Yeah.” He holds out a few dollars change.

“Put it over there, I have sticky hands.” The cherry tomatoes keep rolling all over the kitchen counter, and the seeds seep out when he tries to cut them.

Peter stuffs the money into the fruit bowl, between the peaches and mandarins. “Don’t burn the kitchen down again.”

“I might not.”

“I’ll have to bring out my fire truck.”

Tony snorts. He scoops the sad remnants of the tomatoes into a bowl.

Peter is lingering.

“You wanna help?”

“Yeah.”

Tony gives him a cutting board and puts him on mushroom duty. And then he realizes he doesn’t really have anything left to do for himself, so he washes his hands, dries them. He sips at the glass of wine he poured himself and looks at Peter, the way he plucks the stems from each mushroom before slicing it as evenly as possible, with a concentrated frown.

This wonderful, brave, determined kid is actually his now. “Did you exchange numbers? Are you going to hang out again?”

“Maybe,” Peter says.

“Maybe.”

“You know. Going to school might be okay,” Peter says. “Making friends, and stuff.”

-

Going to school is a hassle, though.

He has to take a lot of assessment tests where some questions are ridiculously easy and others are impossible to understand. One question he’ll be doing a simple number riddle, and the next question they’re suddenly talking about some war he never heard of.

One test is for a regular high school, and one for a science-y high school that is supposedly more challenging but weirdly, most of their questions are easier.

“I see what you mean,” the test-taking-lady tells Bruce as she looks over his answers. This sounds ominous.

“We work with individualized education strategies,” she continues, which sounds even more ominous. “I think we could come up with something fitting. He will likely need tutoring on the side.”

“I expected as much. I will take care of the tutoring.”

So if he understands this well, Bruce will still be teaching him stuff.

Best of both worlds, really.

-

“Hey!” Someone down in the street is yelling up at him, waving an arm. “You’re that Spiderguy from YouTube, right?”

“Call me Spider-Man!”

“Okay Spider-Man. Do a flip!”

Peter does a backflip. Down in the street, people cheer.

He spends most of his morning giving a tour around Manhattan to an excited group of foreign exchange students and one chaotic teacher with a pencil in her hair, whose own tour guide didn’t show.

A few people approach him. Not to tell him to get a real job, or ask where is parents are, but to share concerns they have, about a suspicious vehicle parked in their street, or a postbox that keeps getting vandalized.

“I’ll look into it,” Peter promises each of them.

He heads back the usual park where he always starts and finishes his patrols. Natasha admonished him about that, apparently he needs to learn to switch it up or he’ll run the risk of being found out.

But, he thinks, as he pauses under a tree for a while to gaze out towards the playground, he knows a lot of these kids by name by now. They often drag him into their games of tag or frisbee-with-a-stick.

Someone tugs at his sleeve and he glances down. It’s Elias, one of the kids he knows, about five years old. His face is set in a serious frown. “Spider-Man. You have to arrest my dad.”

Immediately his focus is entirely, one hundred percent on this boy. He squats in front of him. “What do you mean?”

Elias points an accusatory finger at a man strolling towards them down the gravel path, a younger girl perched on his hip. Peter hasn’t seen either of them before. “He’s mean.”

Peter studies the man suspiciously. “Why?”

“He sings all the songs wrong. And he wouldn't let me bring Gigi home. And he gives me the blue cup, I want the green cup.”

The father is now within earshot. “Hey,” he says, setting his daughter down, holding her hands with both his own. “Elias mentioned you a few times but I wasn’t sure if he was making stuff up.”

Peter stays squatted next to the boy but does square his shoulders. “How are you,” he says, aiming for a carefully polite tone.

“In a bit of a hurry, actually. Eli, can we go?”

Elias blows a raspberry at him and slumps against Peter’s side. “I want Gigi!”

Peter pats him on the back, looking up at the father. “Who is Gigi?”

“A giraffe we saw at the zoo yesterday. Elias wants him as a pet and I said he couldn’t. He’s been mad at me ever since.”

“You want a giraffe as a pet?” Peter asks Elias.

“We can put her on the balcony!”

“Do you think the giraffe will be happier on your balcony, or in the zoo with his friends?”

Elias doesn’t want to respond to that. He just kicks at the gravel.

“Go home with your dad, kiddo,” Peter says. Because he doesn’t actually know what else to do, and it might all be fine.

It stays on his mind though.

“Where is Natasha?” he asks Tony as soon as he gets back home.

“In her office.”

Apparently it’s already her office.

He kicks off his shoes and pads down the hallway. He finds her settled back in her chair, one arm dangling at an awkward angle, eyes closed. He hovers in the doorway, unsure if he should wake her up.

“I’m not sleeping,” Natasha says, and Peter jumps. She opens one eye. “What’s up?”

He steps forward and hovers near the corner of her desk for a moment, lifting up a paperweight and putting it back down. “How do you know, like, really know if someone is not okay at home? Can you teach me?”

She hums, looking thoughtful. “It’s more a gut feeling.”

“I don’t think my gut feeling works right. Like, the settings are wrong.”

“Then you ask help. From me.”

“Okay,” Peter says, and explains what happened at the park.

“That boy is fine,” Natasha says immediately. “You did well.”

Peter kind of knew that. He thinks he knew that. But it’s nice to hear.

-

“What do you want to do for your birthday?” Tony asks. “Bronx zoo, water park, planetarium, go karts. You name it, I’ll dye my hair blue.”

“I want to stay here. I just want to sit on the couch and I want everyone to be here and I want to hang out together.”

-

The summer days slowly drift by, and all the surrealness becomes a little more real with each day. His sixth attempt at webfluid is strong enough to hold his body weight. Sam teaches him to play darts. Tony successfully cooks lasagna. Bruce takes him to a Stark exhibition. Natasha dyes her hair again. They name all the fish in the aquarium. They keep the succulent alive. They have churros at the beach.

They run out of toilet paper.

Peter uses up the last bit and then finds the shelf in the hallway closet empty. That’s okay. He can scavenge. He takes the elevator down a few floors. He likes this floor. It has a kitchen right near the elevator where he found bread and peanut butter on his first day. An overhead sign shows that the toilet is just around the corner.

“You are not supposed to access this floor, Peter,” Friday warns. “I have alerted Ms. Potts.”

“Yeah, whatever.” It’s Sunday, so she might not even be here. He enters the toilet and goes past all the cubicles, snatches up the toilet rolls. Balancing them precariously in his arms, he heads back to the elevator, passing only one single confused-looking employee on his way.

The doors slide open, and of course it is Pepper who steps out, phone held loosely in one hand. She is dressed a little less scary than usual, in a knee-length polka-dotted dress. “Peter,” she says, raising an ominous eyebrow.

“Konnichiwa.”

She points and says: “Explain.”

“We ran out of toilet paper.”

“Hm.” She smiles, now. “How is the toothpaste?”

“Uh. Not sure.”

“You really can’t be on this floor, Peter. People handle dangerous chemicals here. If something happens, I’m responsible.”

“You shouldn’t be working on a Sunday.”

“I’m not really working,” she says, gesturing at her own clothes as if that somehow proves it.

“Do you like being a CEO? Because you seem stressed out a lot.”

“Oh no,” she says. “That’s just my personality. You should see me on vacation, I’m excellent at creating bucket lists with unachievable goals.”

“Can I take the toilet paper?”

“Yes, certainly. Next time, ask an adult. Or ask FRIDAY and I’ll have some delivered.” She turns.

“Wait, wait. I… want to ask you something.”

She pauses.

Peter shifts the toilet paper in his arms. “Uh. This Wednesday is my birthday. And I wanted to make everyone a cake. You know, like a thank-you-cake. But it has to be a surprise, so I can’t do it upstairs, and I can’t think of anywhere else, really. I was going to do it in this kitchen here. So… can you not kick me out?”

“Have you made a cake before?”

“I’ve made brownies once. Real ones, without weed.”

“Lovely,” she says with a dry voice.  Peter still doesn’t know if she is amused or annoyed when her voice sounds like that. “This kitchen has a microwave and not much else. I doubt it will be sufficient.” She hesitates. “If you do it in the evening, after eight, I can make sure the kitchen of our 72nd floor restaurant is available. You will need supervision.”

“But it has to be a surprise. For everyone.”

“I can be there, if you don’t mind.”

Peter hesitates, hugging the toilet paper close. Does he mind?

Pepper doesn’t seem offended at his reluctance. “I can ask Happy, too.”

“No. No. It’s okay.”

-

Peter thinks the whole ‘supervision’ thing is a bit control freak-y, until he actually steps into the enormous kitchen on Tuesday evening. The cooking ranges all have at least a dozen burners and even more heavy-duty knobs that probably all do different things.

Pepper is already there. “I won’t look over your shoulder the whole time.” She points at her laptop waiting for her on the kitchen island. “I’ll just be over there in case you set yourself on fire. FRIDAY can explain everything else.”

Peter sets the bag of ingredients down. “Oh. I— Yeah.”

“Not what you had in mind?”

“Have you ever made a cake?”

“Not in a while, but I used to bake. When I had more time.”

“Will you help me? I don’t want it to come out awful.”

“Tony will eat it either way, you know,” she says. “I’ve seen him gobble up a whole plate of nachos from Taco Bell after it got glitter-bombed. But yes, I’ll help.”

They make banana bread. It does help, to have Pepper around, even if she is a bit anal about measuring out all the ingredients with insane precision. It’s probably for frog-related reasons, so it’s fine. She talks about living in Belgium, and about her cat, and asks Peter about his favorite books, and asks nothing about his family. And when the bread goes into the oven, she teaches him some Japanese letters as they wait.

The banana bread turns out… above expectations. Much like Peter’s life, lately.

“Thank you,” Peter says. “You’re coming tomorrow, right?”

“I’d be happy to.” She neatly folds a towel and puts it to one side. “You’re a lovely young man, Peter,” she says. “I’m sorry if anything I said ever made you feel unwelcome. I’m glad you found a place here.”

Peter looks at her and then has to blink a few times, rapidly.

“Oh — I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

“I’m not crying.” Peter denies. “I’m just… allergic to people saying nice things.”

-

There are red-and-blue helium balloons bouncing around the living room when Peter gets up the next morning. He hasn’t slept much last night because, for the first time in ages, he had been excited about a birthday.

Everyone is already up. Tony is wearing a paper hat and throws his arms up when he spots Peter. “There he is!” He rushes closer in large paces and throws his arms around Peter. “Happy birthday, buddy,” he murmurs, planting a kiss in his hair. “Love you.”

Oh, god. You’re not supposed to cry on your birthday. Peter draws the hug out a little longer to be sure his eyes are no longer misty, before he finally turns away to accept hugs from the others, too.

“Birthday pancakes,” Tony says, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s gooo.”

They have pancakes with every topping imaginable, and Peter quickly decides that the best thing about being enhanced is that you get to eat as many pancakes as you want and still have room for cake.

Pepper arrives after breakfast. “Now the party can get started,” Tony says. “Everything going bell-pepper-shaped!”

The presents come out. Actual presents that he has to unwrap, like he is a little kid. Pepper got him a Japanese movie. Sam got him a comic book. Tony got him a kite. Bruce got him a t-shirt that says ‘Periodic table jokes are great…. But only when I’m in my element!’. That makes him chuckle.

Natasha got him the guitar Peter hadn’t dared to add to his cart when he was online shopping on her laptop a while back. “You are too good at reading me,” he complains.

Cake is next. Tony got a cherry chocolate cake from a bakery. Peter gets his banana bread from the back of the fridge and unwraps it. “It’s a thank-you-cake,” he says. “For, you know, taking care of me.”

“What a coincidence,” Tony says. “Mine is a thank-you-cake, too. Thank you for being here, kid.”

It feels like a silly thing to be thanked for.

But that’s probably the point.

And then they play charades, and hangman, and 20 questions and Who Am I. Peter sits on the couch, drinking it all in, and feels like a shriveled-up sponge that is slowly absorbing water again.

When Peter was little, he would curl up on Tony’s couch with the TV on and watch shows that he was probably too young for, while Tony flitted around the house. He’d walk in and out, sometimes join him for a few minutes, relentlessly mocking anyone who appeared on the screen, and Peter would lean against his side, only to tumble sideways when Tony would suddenly jump up and walk off again and Peter would hear him hammering something in the basement of sawing something on the back porch, or watch him take the dinner table apart and put it back together because one leg was slightly askew.

This Tony is different from that Tony. This Tony sits on the couch with him, one arm slung around him, solid and steady, and he only gets up because it’s his turn in Pictionary, and returns right back to Peter’s side after he finishes drawing a horribly ugly airplane that Pepper somehow still guessed correctly.

(“It looks like a whale with ten eyes,” Sam says.)

Peter came to New York, hoping to find a Tony who would tolerate him. Would say “yeah, sure, whatever,” to every suggestion Peter made, and spend some time with him when in the right mood.

He didn’t know this was a possibility. Like jumping off a sinking ship into a lifeboat, and then finding out the lifeboat has a hot tub and a vending machine and, like, takes you to the beach to have churros just because it wants to spend time with you. That kind of lifeboat.

Tony is looking down at him, he notices. He maybe zoned out a little bit. “Your turn to draw, buddy,” Tony says softly.

Peter gets up. He picks a card off the pile. It says ‘family’.

That seems about right.

Four adults, one kid, and maybe some pets. Peter smirks and starts on the grasshoppers.