Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“The world owes the Avengers an unpayable debt. You have fought for us, protected us, risked your lives… but while a great many people see you as heroes, there are some who would prefer the word "vigilantes." What would you call a group of US-based, enhanced individuals who routinely ignore sovereign borders to inflict their will wherever they choose? And who, frankly, seem unconcerned about what they leave behind? For the past four years, you've operated with unlimited power and no supervision. That's an arrangement the governments of the world can no longer tolerate. But I think we have a solution. The Sokovia Accords. Approved by 117 countries… it states that the Avengers shall no longer be a private organization. Instead, they'll operate under the supervision of a United Nations panel, only if and when that panel deems it necessary.”

——

“I have an equation. In the eight years since Mr. Stark announced himself as Iron Man, the number of known enhanced persons has grown exponentially. And during the same period, the number of potentially world-ending events has risen at a commensurate rate. There may be a causality. Our very strength invites challenge. Challenge incites conflict. And conflict… breeds catastrophe. Oversight… oversight is not an idea that can be dismissed out of hand.”

——

“There's no decision-making process here. We need to be put in check. Whatever form that takes, I'm game. If we can't accept limitations— if we're boundary-less— then we're no better than the bad guys.”

“Tony, if someone dies on your watch, you don't give up.”

“Who said we're giving up?”

“We are if we're not taking responsibility for our actions. This document just shifts the blame.”

“Steve, that— that is dangerously arrogant. This is the United Nations we're talking about. It's not the World Security Council, it's not SHIELD, it's not HYDRA.”

“No, but it's run by people with agendas, and agendas change.”

“That's good. That's why I'm here. When I realized what my weapons were capable of in the wrong hands, I shut it down and stopped manufacturing.”

“Tony, you chose to do that. If we sign this, we surrender our right to choose. What if this panel sends us somewhere we don't think we should go? What if there is somewhere we need to go, and they don't let us? We may not be perfect, but the safest hands are still our own.”

“If we don't do this now, it's gonna be done to us later. That's the fact. That won't be pretty.”

“Maybe Tony’s right. If we have one hand on the wheel, we can still steer. If we take it off…”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Tony’s POV

Tony was having a decidedly bad day. A bad week, really. A bad month. The split of the Avengers, his best friend being paralyzed, Rogers hiding the fact that his brainwashed best friend had murdered Tony’s parents— well, the list was endless.

So the cherry on top, really, was the letter he received in the mail this morning from the aforementioned super-soldier. (Who the hell even mailed things anymore anyways?) He stared at the closed envelope, debating the merits of whether he should even bother to open it.

Part of him wanted to throw the old-fashioned letter into an old-fashioned fireplace and watch it burn to ashes (like he wanted to do with Rogers’ old-fashioned ass). The only hitch in his plan— he didn’t have a fireplace. Because who actually had those these days? It would mess up his whole futuristic vibe.

Also, unfortunately— he was curious. Thank god he wasn’t a cat.

He opened the letter.

Tony, I'm glad you're back at the compound. I don't like the idea of you rattling around a mansion by yourself. We all need family. The Avengers are yours, maybe more so than mine. 

Tony would have laughed at that intro, if he didn’t think that Steve actually believed what he was saying. The Avengers had been his family, sure— despite his best efforts to avoid it— but he hadn’t been theirs, not really. He could tell as much, based on who stayed on his side of the Accords. Romanoff, who had betrayed him eventually (surprise, surprise). The new king of Wakanda, who had a vested interest in getting revenge for his father. Rhodey, Tony’s best friend since college. An enhanced Spider-Kid that practically worshipped the ground he walked on. And a sentient android that had been based off of the AI that had been his companion for the better part of four decades.

What a lineup.

Granted, the only opposition that had truly stung— by virtue of choosing Cap’s side— had been Barton. And Cap himself. Tony didn’t really know much of the other team members. Except that Barnes had apparently killed his parents. And no, he definitely wasn’t bitter about the fact that it had apparently been fine for Wanda to hold a grudge against him for inadvertently killing her parents (regardless of the fact that those weapons had been from Obie selling under the table, not him), but apparently it wasn’t okay for him to be pissed at the assassin who killed his parents.

His eyes flit back down to the paper. He really wasn’t sure why he was still reading it, not when he could still envision the look on Rogers’ face the moment he brought the shield down on Tony’s chest— but apparently the man had a way of making people listen, even through a mere letter.

I've been on my own since I was 18. I never really fit in anywhere, even in the army. My faith's in people, I guess. Individuals. And I'm happy to say that, for the most part, they haven't let me down. Which is why I can't let them down either. Locks can be replaced, but maybe they shouldn't. I know I hurt you, Tony. I guess I thought by not telling you about your parents I was sparing you, but I can see now that I was really sparing myself, and I'm sorry. Hopefully one day you can understand. I wish we agreed on the Accords, I really do. I know you're doing what you believe in, and that's all any of us can do. That's all any of us should do.

Tony ground his teeth together. Really, he wished Steve wasn’t as earnest as he was. Because now Tony felt like the one in the wrong for getting pissed about being lied to over his parents’ death. Couldn’t he ruminate in his bitterness for at least a few more days without Cap over here issuing genuine apologies? He’d never claimed not to be a selfish man (he had his flaws, he knew) but he felt like this at least was something he had the right to sulk over for a little while.

FRIDAY spoke up, interrupting Tony’s thoughts. “Priority call from Secretary Ross. There's been a breach at the Raft prison.”

Rogers, you stubborn son of a bitch.

“Yeah, put him through,” Tony waved his hand dismissively. He had no intention of actually doing anything about the situation— he’d just gone toe-to-toe with Rogers once, and he had no interest in doing it again so soon. Plus, he didn’t particularly care what the other Rogues were up to, so long as they weren’t in his face. And he certainly had no interest in helping Ross.

“Tony, we have a problem,” Ross barked. Ugh . Who gave the man permission to call him Tony?

“Ah, please hold,” Tony responded, in a tone that dripped with fake cheer.

“No, don't—” the man didn’t manage to complete his sentence before he was cut off. Tony looked back down at the letter Rogers had sent him in the mail.

So, no matter what. I promise you, if you need us, if you need me, I'll be there.

And, along with the stupid sincere apology note, was an honest-to-god flip phone. Tony debated throwing it halfway across the room purely because it was an insult to modern-day technology, but he managed to refrain. He sighed, running a hand down his face before dropping the flip phone in the drawer. He still had a black eye, for fuck’s sake, from Cap’s little murder-friend. This was all too soon to even be considering accepting an apology.

What if it were Rhodey? Wouldn’t you have done the same ? His traitorous mind whispered— which, rude. He wasn’t supposed to be feeling sympathy . He firmly pushed the thought away, unwilling to entertain it at the moment. Unfortunately, his mind had a habit of taking the things he didn’t want to think about and displaying them front and center with a bright neon sign flashing ‘LOOK HERE!’.

Dropping his forehead on the desk with a dull thunk, he let out a rough breath.

The phone rang again, interrupting his silence. He groaned. “FRIDAY, who is it?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“Secretary Ross.” She sounded apologetic. Tony brought his head up again with a long-suffering sigh, debating the merits of continually avoiding the man. Deciding it would be better to nip it in the bud, he signaled to FRIDAY to open the phone line.

“Stark,” Ross snapped. Oh, goody. Tony always loved it when the politicians reverted to the last name. Meant they were pissed. “The Rogues have escaped from the Raft.”

“Oh no,” Tony responded, voice monotone. “I’m shocked.”

“This isn’t a game, Stark.” Ross’s irritation was evident even with just a few words. “The computer and monitoring systems failed, and someone was able to break all of the Rogues out. The Accords committee is calling an emergency meeting to discuss next steps, and your presence is mandatory.”

As he was speaking, his irritation seemed to morph to anger— likely because he had somehow let an entire group of enhanced people break out of the Raft under his watch. It wasn’t a good image for him, and politicians all cared a lot about their image. Before Tony could say something that would perhaps get him thrown into prison as well, the phone hung up with a click.

“FRIDAY?” he sighed.

“Yes, Boss?” she responded, and in that moment, Tony was sure he regretted giving his AIs such human-like capabilities, because she sounded exactly like a smug teenager.

“Next time you pull something like that, maybe consider not doing it in a way that forces me to go to another one of those damned council meetings.” His voice came out more exhausted than reprimanding, already mentally debating how much Ibuprofen he could afford to take.

He knew that FRIDAY had to have had some role in taking down the computer monitoring systems at the exact moment Rogers was breaking the Rogues out. He had programmed her to learn based on his own emotions, and, while he undoubtedly held a grudge against Rogers for Siberia, he (and by extension, all of his creations) hated Ross even more. And what better way to piss off the man than to make him look like a fool?

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She sounded far too chipper given the headache she’d just induced, and Tony closed his eyes in exasperation. He spared half a mind to ask how she’d even gotten access to the system in the first place, but ultimately decided to save his breath. After all, he had gone to the Raft just a few days prior in his suit– and by extension, with her. And she was one nosy AI.

“Right.” Better to not ask any more questions, actually. He debated the legalities of being prosecuted based on a decision his AI made, and spent all of two seconds considering it before deciding that he didn’t have the mental bandwidth for it.

Sighing, he stood up from the desk and resigned himself to his fate.

“In that case, get one of my cars ready. I have a meeting to attend.”

—

Tony was bored out of his goddamn mind.

At this point, he felt like his own apology to Steve was suffering through these meetings as a result of the Rogue’s actions. The only minor blessing was that Ross was unable to attend this meeting— off doing damage control in some other way. Tony didn’t really know and he didn’t care to ask, either.

“Moving on… we also intend to expand the Accords to include vigilantes and other enhanced individuals who are not part of the Avengers.”

Suddenly Tony was wide awake.

“Mr. Stark, I understand you brought the vigilante known as… Spider-Man along with your team,” a council member continued. “He would be an example of an enhanced individual who needs to be held accountable under the Accords, and others like him.”

Oh hell fucking no. He was not dragging a fourteen (or was he fifteen?) year old into this whole legal mess. (He pointedly ignored the fact that he had , in fact, already brought the fourteen year old into this mess). As a vigilante, he would have been included in the Accords eventually anyways— whether Tony had recruited him or not— but being on Tony’s team did unfortunately draw more immediate attention to his gangly spandex-wearing self.

“It doesn’t make sense to include superheroes such as Spider-Man in this area of the Accords,” Tony argued, feeling a headache building at his temples. “He doesn’t operate on an international or even national level. He’s focused on street-level crime and protecting the citizens of New York City.” He left out the fact that, if given the chance, Peter would definitely stick his nose in big-battle stuff. They really didn’t need to know that.

“He still needs to be held accountable, as do all enhanced vigilantes.” A member of the committee— a balding man in his 40s or 50s— argued back in a snide tone of voice. “Otherwise there would be no point to the Accords, if any super could claim that they don’t operate at the national level. What’s to stop them from acting on it?”

Tony wanted to smash his head into the desk. Were people really this dense?

“Enhanced individuals are still American citizens with rights,” a lawyer on Tony’s side argued, her slick-back brown ponytail swishing slightly as she turned her head to fix her gaze on the man. “It’s unconstitutional to force them to give up their identity and submit to governmental regulation.”

“Well, we don’t actually know that they’re American citizens if they have a secret identity, do we?” the balding man asked with a sneer and disdain dripping from his tone. Great , Tony thought sarcastically. We’ve got a border warrior now too.

“The large majority of them are,” Tony’s lawyer (he was pretty sure her name started with a C— Clarisse, maybe? No. Clara? Eh, close enough) argued back, eyes flashing but tone calm and level. “And last I checked, we make rules based on the majority, not the exceptions. They still have the same constitutional rights that regular American citizens have.”

“They don’t have to use their powers,” someone else in the committee argued back. “That’s a choice, and they have to submit to regulation for it.”

“By arguing that, you’re essentially forcing them to hide an unchangeable part of themselves. That’s like saying gay marriage shouldn’t be allowed because they can ‘just ignore it,’” Clara snapped just as quickly.

“Last I checked, gay people didn’t have the ability to stop a bus with their bare hands,” someone else argued back.

Tony started to zone out as they went back and forth with their usual squabbling, tones rising in agitation. Until—

“They can’t just roam free , they need someone to watch over them, and nobody in their right mind would do that, so it’s up to the government to—”

“I’ll watch over him,” Tony interrupted, causing silence to fall over the room. Thank god . He was met with blank stares, and he saw someone else on the committee opening their mouth to argue. He barrelled on before they could speak, wanting to hold onto the blissful silence for a few more moments. “The point is accountability, right? What if I, a signing member of the Accords, agree to take responsibility for a lower-level vigilante and their corresponding actions?” He paused. “I’m referring to Spider-Man, here, to be clear,” he added dryly. He thought that implication was pretty clear, but politicians had shown him time and time again just how dense they could be. Like, supermassive black hole dense. He could not manage more than one spandex-wearing teenager at a time. He didn’t know if he could even handle one, to be honest.

The head of the committee raised his eyebrows, seemingly the only one left with the ability to speak. Huh. Maybe that was why he was the head of the committee. “You… do understand the implications of that, Mr. Stark? If Spider-Man steps out of line, you’d be risking your own professional reputation. You trust him that much?”

“I do,” Tony responded, ignoring the looks of shock. He knew it was probably an unwise decision to commit to this without thinking it through for a teenager he barely knew, especially with how many times he’d been stabbed in the back, but he couldn’t help but think of Peter’s oozing desperation and earnestness. How much he’d wanted to keep Spider-Man a secret, even from his aunt. How he was doing it out of a sense of responsibility and not ego or revenge (like Tony himself).

And okay, maybe Tony was a little bit biased. He knew what being a teenager in the media was like, and he didn’t want Peter to have to go through that, even though he barely knew the kid. Not to mention it was bound to be even worse for a known enhanced individual. He wanted to keep the kid’s innocence intact for as long as he could. Not that he would ever admit that out loud. He had a reputation to protect, after all.

The members of the committee exchanged glances, but they weren’t arguing back immediately, so Tony took that as a sign that they were seriously considering his proposition. Tony knew it was likely only because it meant that it was one more way that they could manipulate Iron Man for their own use, if either he or Peter stepped out of line. How decidedly pleasant of them.

“So say you agree to be Spider-Man’s… sponsor.” The head of the committee spoke with a certain disdain in his tone. Tony refrained from mentioning that he’d already given the kid a new suit, so for all intents and purposes, he already was a sponsor. Handing out new super-suits on a whim was probably not the best look for him.

“Well, I would prefer the term ‘mentor,’ if we’re being honest. Unless I mistook this for an AA meeting,” he quipped, interrupting the man. The committee head looked unimpressed, and displeased that he’d been interrupted. Tony figured he should probably know the name of the guy, but he couldn’t be bothered to remember. Bob seemed like a good enough fit, though. Generic, bland, far from memorable. Perfectly fitting.

“Mentor, sponsor, it makes no difference.” Bob sounded even more irritable now. Tony wanted to interrupt with another snide remark but figured it probably wouldn’t go over well. Not that he cared about that, but he was trying to make a bargain here, after all. “We would have to lay down a set of ground rules.”

Jeez, this was starting to sound like a damn PTA meeting. 

Tony thought rapidly for a few seconds. He wished he’d thought this through thoroughly before blurting it out, because he hardly had time to come up with all the conditions he might want in the future, but thinking things through had never really been his style. Not that he was going to let the committee catch wind of that. 

“Alright. But his identity remains a secret.” Tony kept his tone firm. That one, at least, was nonnegotiable.

Some of the committee members looked displeased at his words, but it came as no surprise, given that Tony had been arguing over it since walking into the room. Frankly, he hadn’t even really had time to come up with some other conditions because he’d been so focused on that one. Rookie move on his part. He would probably regret that in the future. Ah, well. What else was new.

The council members leaned together and started murmuring like a group of cliquey teenagers. Tony leaned back in his chair, pretending to be bored and unbothered, but in reality, his mind was racing, thinking of any other things he should try and throw in before they came to a decision. After all, this was the prime negotiation time. Anything he wanted to add in the future would be a hell of a lot more difficult to amend in the rules rather than just adding it in the first place.

He didn’t come up with anything else during the time that they were muttering amongst themselves. He couldn’t tell whether that was a good or a bad thing.

“The council has come up with their own set of conditions.”

No, really, I thought you were gossiping about what to have for lunch . Tony thought wryly.

Bob continued speaking, unaware of Tony’s hilarious internal monologue (if he did say so himself). “Spider-Man will be restrained to New York City and the surrounding areas; if he needs to go out of state he will need council approval.”

Tony elected not to tell them that he already had an alert that told him if the kid went out of city or state bounds. He was sure Peter probably wouldn’t be happy having that as an explicitly stated rule, but at the very least, Tony couldn’t think of a scenario where he would even need to go out of state for Spider-Man business. He didn’t object, and the councilman continued.

“He will work with the New York City police, not against them.”

Tony narrowed his eyes at that. “You might have more trouble convincing the police to accept that rule rather than Spider-Man,” he said dryly. From what he’d seen, Peter already tried to work with the police in a few scenarios, but they didn’t tend to take kindly to a scrawny pre-pubescent kid in a red sweatsuit and goggles telling them what to do. Not that Tony could really blame them on that front. He hoped that having a higher-tech Stark suit would get people to take the kid more seriously. Though maybe he was out of luck with that until his voice dropped.

Bob scowled at that. “They will have their orders.” He sounded bitterly displeased with the very premise, and Tony shrugged. He didn’t see much issue with that. At the very least, the police and Peter had a common goal: to save civilians. He was confident the kid would work it out.

“If you have reason to believe that the enhanced individual becomes a danger to society, you have a responsibility to warn the council immediately.”

Tony almost laughed aloud at that. Really, he barely even knew Peter Parker, but the thought of him being a ‘danger to society’ was a laughable topic. Seriously, did none of the council members see that most of his day-to-day activities involved rescuing cats from trees and helping old ladies with their groceries? FRIDAY had to go through a ridiculous amount of footage to find videos where he was actually doing larger-scale work, like catching a bus or car.

“In the same vein, if the enhanced individual you are sponsoring breaks the rules in any fashion, you will be benched until it can be determined if you were aware beforehand. If you were, you may be removed from the team or persecuted under the law, depending on what the infraction was. If either of you violate your benching, you will immediately be imprisoned in line with the Accords.”

“Sounds like a party. You all sure know how to have fun.” The comment dripped with sarcasm. He didn’t get any laughs, which was really quite disappointing; at least when he did press conferences, there were civilians to laugh along. During political meetings, all he could really do was try and piss off the head politician to the best of his capabilities. Which he was doing a great job of so far, actually.

“And, lastly: You have to spend at least five hours every week with the enhanced individual you agree to sponsor.” Bob shot him a mild glare.

Tony raised a single eyebrow. He hadn’t expected that one, if he was being honest. It wasn’t so often politicians were able to get the jump on him in that matter.

“I’m a very busy man, council,” Tony deflected, staring the man down, not showing a single hint of being thrown off-balance. He only got a level stare back.

“You can’t be a sponsor to someone you hardly spend time with. For your word on their character to have meaning, it has to be backed by evidence,” the committee head countered, and Tony pursed his lips, running through his potential argument options and finding that there weren’t really many viable ones. He could try the fact that Spider-Man proved his character enough by helping the little guy, as well as the fact that Tony was even willing to sponsor him in the first place. He couldn’t really use the time constraints of Peter having school and an aunt he had to explain his whereabouts to as arguments. Frankly, he was lucky enough getting as far as he had. 

Reluctantly, he nodded. He supposed it wasn’t the worst fate. The kid was… tolerable to spend time with. Five hours was hardly anything. He could probably stick him in the corner of the lab with a few projects and occupy him for plenty of time; minimal talking required.

Honestly, he was surprised that their constraints were somewhat reasonable . He supposed the benefit of blurting out something completely unexpected was that both sides had to come up with conditions on a whim. And they weren’t trying to relegate what Peter could do while he was patrolling inside of the city, which was more than Tony had expected them to try and go for. In fact, there was only one thing left he could think of that hadn’t been addressed.

“And if a world-ending event does occur?” Tony asked. “I trust that he won’t get in trouble for saving people.” He didn’t trust that, actually, which is why he was explicitly asking. Always better to have it in writing. It was the only other thing he could think of that may cause Peter to get in trouble. Because really, if there was an end-of-world event, there would be no way in hell he could get the kid to stand down and not help, even if it meant breaking the law.

Bob’s face twisted in annoyance, like he’d hoped to get away without that line of questioning. The way Tony had phrased it, there was no way to say no without sounding like a massive idiot or a stick in the mud, and the man knew it. Gotcha . Tony thought smugly. He’d had a lifetime of dealing with the smarmy bastards.

“ If it is an event that the other Avengers have been approved and called in on, then he is allowed to join in as temporary assistance, provided he follows all of the same rules as signing members,” the committee head agreed sourly. Tony leaned back in his chair. Bingo . He refrained from grinning in satisfaction. There was still the whole disaster with the Rogue Avengers to sort out (and even the thought of that was worsening his headache), but at the very least, this was one win that Tony could relish in. The kid got to keep his secret identity, would stay away from the big leagues except for world-ending events, and all Tony had to do was spend a few hours a week with the kid and schmooze up with some more politicians. Easy peasy.

He got up, clapping his hands together and making a show of looking at his watch. “Well, ladies and gentlemen, what a pleasure this has been,” he said, faux-cheerfully. “But duty calls, as it often does.”

“We’re not done here, Mr. Stark.” Bob sounded irritable again, and Tony gave him his signature press smile.

“No, but I am.” He gestured to his lawyer. “Send over the papers when they’re ready to sign,” he added with a wink, sliding on his sunglasses and ignoring the annoyed glares he got in response. They knew full well they didn’t have anything else important to argue over, and they couldn’t force him to stay. They would probably have to work out more general rules in case anyone else decided to pull the ‘sponsor’ thing, but Tony didn’t need to be present for that, and he couldn’t even really think of anyone else who would be willing to play the same role.

Spinning on his heel, he turned and made his way out of the committee room, breathing a sigh of relief when he was out of the eyes of all the stuffy politicians. He almost felt bad for leaving his lawyer in there with the sharks, but she was paid handsomely for her efforts. He knew they’d have to write up a draft for this rule, and send it back and forth between the committee and his lawyers until everyone was satisfied with the edits. Politics were fun that way. 

For now, he had to find a way to break it to the kid that he had some shiny new government-enforceable rules to follow.

—

He ended up getting to Rhodey first.

“You what ?” Rhodey asked incredulously, and Tony sighed.

“Please don’t.” he said, exhaustion seeping into his tone. He hoped his uncharacteristic use of the word please would get his best friend to back away. “Pep already chewed me out too.” Because go figure, the longest amount of time she’d spoken to him since their ‘break’ (outside of Stark Industries related business) was for that . Apparently his lawyer had sent the papers to her as well, even though she wasn’t an Avenger and really had no reason to receive it. Tony was pretty sure that was favoritism right there (he could hardly blame her, though; he’d choose Pepper over himself any day of the week anyways).

“Tones, you basically just adopted that child.”

“I did not .” Tony said, shooting a glare at his best friend. “I’m sponsoring him so that the Accords committee doesn’t come forward to unmask his scrawny ass. It’s a purely professional relationship. Nothing more.”

“Right.” Rhodey said, tone flat and unimpressed. “Because the government-sanctioned playdates definitely doesn’t scream ‘absent father given a court order to spend time with his child.’”

Tony groaned, leaning his head back. “Don’t call it a playdate, honey bear, you’re making it weird.” he pointedly ignored the father comment as well. “They just want proof that I’m involved and can be held responsible for keeping Spider-Man on the straight and narrow. Shouldn’t be difficult, really, he’s more harmless than a damn puppy dog.” Well, a puppy dog with dangerous enhancements. But really, Tony was hardly putting much at stake here. He doubted the kid was even capable of going off the rails like the government feared. Tony himself was far more likely to do that than Peter was.

Rhodey sighed, and Tony hoped that meant he was giving up the argument. “And how does the kid feel about all this?”

Tony winced at the question. He’d been hoping to avoid that one. Unfortunately for him, Rhodey was well aware of his tells, and he couldn’t smooth talk his way out of this, not with his best friend of over three decades.

“Tony.” Rhodey’s voice mirrored Tony’s own exhausted tone, and was laced with disapproval. “Please tell me you asked Peter before making a decision like this for him.”

Tony threw up his hands in the air, meeting his best friend’s eyes. “No, I didn’t, okay?” he snapped. Rhodey looked unperturbed, used to Tony’s outbursts. “I was cramped on time, the committee wanted to make it mandatory to unmask all enhanced individuals, and I blurted out the first offer that came to mind, which so happened to be me taking responsibility for him. I couldn’t exactly be like ‘Hey, let me just call him real quick, make sure he’s okay with it. Might interrupt his Spanish class or something, but I’m sure he’d pick up.’” he said, tone arid by the end of his spiel. 

The annoying thing was that he was sure that Peter would have actually picked up, if he called. He sighed, tone dropping into one that was less dry. “Look, the kid was very insistent on not having his identity revealed, even to his strangely attractive aunt. I’m sure he would have chosen this option anyways, especially when all it means is that he has to spend some government-sanctioned time hanging out with Tony Stark, and a few ground rules that he was basically already following. He’ll probably be delighted by that.” he muttered the last part.

Rhodey looked at him critically, silent for a few moments, and Tony really hoped that meant he’d won this argument. Or at the very least made it sound reasonable enough. When his best friend opened his mouth to speak again, though, he made a comment that threw Tony for a loop.

“You know that he has Spanish class?” he asked, sounding amused. Tony groaned, shooting another glare in his direction.

“Shut up, platypus, I saw his school schedule when figuring out what Spidey’s poorly hidden secret identity was.” he muttered, leaving out the fact that yes , he knew the kid’s schedule. And what extracurriculars he was in. It was part of the whole mentor schtick, that was all. He had a vested interest in the promising futures of the youth.

Rhodey was looking far too amused for Tony’s liking. He scowled, getting up from his chair. “I have to go explain this all to the kid.” he muttered, making his way to the door and distinctly avoiding looking at his friend. He could practically see Rhodey’s shit-eating grin, even with his back turned.

“Have fun explaining your government sanctioned playdate time!” he called out as Tony made his way out the door, flipping his friend off as he went.

“I told you not to call them that!” He called back with a scowl.

~ ~ ~

Tony was positive that the energy Peter Parker was emitting was more than enough to power an entire city for a few hours. Really, who even needed arc reactor technology? If he could bottle up this teenage energy he’d be set for life.

“Is it another mission?” Peter asked excitedly, bouncing in with far too much energy for eleven in the morning. Tony sighed internally and pinched the bridge of his nose to stave off the incoming headache. He knew it wasn’t the kid’s fault he was snappy after spending all of the day before with fucking politicians, but really, he did not have the energy to deal with this at the moment.

“Ah, no.” he said, pulling his hand away from his face to focus on the teenager in front of him. Jesus, the kid really had a baby face. Maybe this was a terrible idea. It was a little bit too late for second thoughts, though, considering he’d already proposed the idea to the committee board. Damn him and his continual lack of a brain-to-mouth-filter. “How much do you know about the Sokovia Accords?” he asked, peering at the teenager in front of him, who blessedly stopped bouncing around long enough for Tony to actually focus his weary eyes on him.

“Err… not much.” Peter admitted, blinking. “We started a unit on them in school, but I wasn’t paying too much attention,” he said sheepishly. Tony resisted the urge to close his eyes and bang his head against the wall. School . Right. Because he was talking to a high schooler.

He sighed. On second thought, he really probably should have had this discussion before taking Peter to Germany to fight on behalf of laws he apparently didn’t know anything about, but that was irrelevant at this point. Germany had come and gone, Rogers and the Rogues were in the wind, and he had an overly-excitable Spider-teenager to deal with. And he couldn’t even hand the kid off to Happy— which had been his original plan— because of the five hour requirement. He pushed the thoughts away and ran a hand down his face, realizing Peter was still waiting for him to say something.

“Right. You, uh, might want to read up on those.” he said, wincing when he realized he had indeed basically just made a legal decision on behalf of a 15-year-old kid that he was not the guardian of. Pepper and Rhodey yelling at him made a lot more sense now. 

He supposed the only saving grace was that while Tony himself had to sign the Accords agreeing to sponsor Spider-Man, Peter didn’t have to sign it, since he was remaining anonymous and Spider-Man’s signature wouldn’t have held any weight; not without a legal government identity to back it. So it wasn’t like he was forcing a teenager to sign his life away or anything like that (in fact, that was what he was trying to avoid). Still, he had gotten himself into much deeper shit than he originally realized in that council room.

Peter was still staring at him with that guileless trust in his gaze, and Tony felt slightly sick all of a sudden at the thought of that fading from the kid’s eyes when he realized just what Tony had signed him up for. It was still the best choice for him, far better than having to unmask himself and deal with the retributions, but the fact of the matter was that Tony had still done it without his— and worse, without his aunt’s— approval. He sighed again, figuring there was no good way to get around this; he just had to come out and say it.

“I had a meeting with the council yesterday.” he started. “They wanted to make it required to unmask all enhanced individuals and register them with the government.” Peter stiffened in front of him, but Tony continued. “I proposed an alternative, that I would act as your sponsor, mentor, whatever— basically, since I’m a signing member of the Accords, I would take full responsibility for you, in return for you keeping your identity a secret and not having to sign. There’s a set of conditions, but it basically ensures you get to operate close to how you already have been, under the condition that I take responsibility if something goes wrong.” he managed to get out, preparing himself for the barrage of questions. The kid had proven that he was able to ask countless questions with only a single breath. But he was quiet, and somehow that was worse. Tony braced himself for the worst— an explosion of anger, perhaps, at a teenager being told what to do, of having choices made for him. It was certainly how Tony would have reacted as a teenager. Hell, it was still how he acted as an adult.

But yet again, Peter Parker surprised him.

“You… put your reputation on the line? For me?” Peter sounded incredulous, and now it was Tony’s time to blink in surprise at him. Out of all the things to focus on… that’s what the kid got from this?

“Yes?” Tony said, annoyed that Peter had caught him off guard and it came out more like a question. “I mean, nothing has been signed yet, so if you’re planning to break the laws and commit a murder or something, perhaps let me know before I seal it in ink.” he said wryly, trying to save the situation with a joke. Peter’s eyes widened, and he waved his hands rapidly in front of him in the universal ‘no’ gesture.

“No, no! I didn’t mean it that way.” he said, words tumbling out rapidly. Tony furrowed his eyebrows; the teenager switched moods as fast as a jackrabbit. “I just– thank you, sir.” he said earnestly. “You didn’t have to do that.”

Tony felt his stomach recoil at the earnestness. Christ, this kid was better at playing with his feelings than Howard had been. Though he was doing it completely by accident. “I know I didn’t have to.” he said with a haughty sniff. “But really, drop the ‘sir,’ it’s going to make me feel old if you keep calling me that every week.”

“Every… week?” Peter said, looking hopelessly confused. He had the absolute worst poker face Tony had ever seen in his entire life. Every emotion was laid out as clear as day. Suddenly Tony felt far more sure of his decision to not let the kid’s identity be released. He didn’t want the media ripping him to shreds and forcing that sincere earnestness off his face.

He pushed that thought away as quickly as it came— it encroached far too closely in the ‘protective’ category, and he couldn’t cross into that territory with the kid. It wasn’t his position. With another sniff, he turned his head to the side and gripped his left wrist in his hand, massaging it firmly with his right thumb as he tried to figure out how to put this particular requirement into words. For some reason, it was more difficult to explain than the rest of it had been. ( “Absent father given a court order to spend time with his child”   his internal Rhodey mocked.)

Shut up, sour patch.

“One of the conditions was that the sponsor has to spend at least five hours a week with the enhanced individual they’re sponsoring.” he finally spoke, not looking at the teenager’s face as he said it. “Making sure we’re a reliable judge of character, or something. So, yes, every week. We’re already using the internship excuse with your aunt, we’ll just expand on that. FRIDAY can keep track of the amount of time Spider-Man visits for… government purposes.”

When the silence stretched on for a moment too long, Tony glanced back at the kid, expecting… well, he wasn’t sure what he was expecting. But Peter’s jaw was slack and his eyes were wide.

“I know your whole gimmick is spiders, but I don’t think you actually want to be catching flies.” Tony remarked, watching Peter’s jaw clamp back in place.

“I– sorry– this is—” Peter stumbled over his words. “This is incredible– I mean, wait– sorry, it’s probably not exciting for you, you don’t have to— except the government actually required it so you do—”

Tony was vaguely amused and wondered just how many times the teenager was capable of backtracking and restarting his sentence in one breath, but eventually he took mercy on him and cut him off.

“Relax, kid, it’s only five hours. I don’t mind.” he paused. Gross. That sounded far too genuine for his liking. Not Tony-Stark-like enough. He backtracked slightly. “Besides, they never said we had to talk, just that we had to be around each other for five hours a week. Being in the lab should work well enough.”

That didn’t quite seem to have the desired effect, because Peter somehow looked even more excited. Tony would have been insulted at the implication that the kid didn’t want to talk to him, except he knew for a fact it wasn’t because of that, but rather the implication that he’d be allowed inside of Tony’s lab. Which, really, he was surprised at himself for offering. He’d never allowed any of the Avengers in his lab— only ever Rhodey and Pepper. He told himself it was just because it was the easiest way to keep Peter occupied and quiet for the mandatory five hours (after all, what else was he going to do, watch a movie with the kid?), but he wasn’t really sure he believed it himself.

At that thought, he clapped his hands together before spreading his arms out. “Alright. Speaking of which— time for a lab tour.”

—

Peter’s POV

Peter’s day couldn’t get any better than this.

He’d thought that, after the airport battle when Mr. Stark dropped him off at his apartment, it would be at least a few weeks before the man would call for him again. Though to be fair, he had no idea the frequency at which the Avengers went on missions. He supposed it was probably lower now that the team was effectively disbanded.

Regardless, what he wasn’t expecting was a text from Happy Hogan, informing him that he’d be picking him up at 10 AM on Saturday in order to go to the Tower to meet with Mr. Stark. Peter had been waiting by the curb at 9:45, practically vibrating with excitement. The second Happy pulled up in the car, Peter could see him heave out a massive sigh as he unlocked the doors and Peter slid into the back seat, already firing off questions in rapid succession.

“Is it a mission?” Peter asked. “I brought my–”

“No.” Happy responded flatly, closing the divider in between them without elaborating. Peter frowned slightly, thrown off more by the words themselves than the tone they were spoken in. If this wasn’t a Spider-Man mission, then why would he be called in? He shook the thoughts off as they approached the Tower; maybe Happy just said it to shut him up. Yeah, it was probably that.

As it turned out, it wasn’t a mission, though Peter found that he wasn’t actually that disappointed by the fact— given that he’d received the news that he got to spend five hours a week in Tony Stark’s lab. And he got to keep his secret identity.

The man in question clapped his hands together and spread his arms out.  “Alright. Speaking of which— time for a lab tour.”

Peter was going to explode. In a good way, of course. Ned would absolutely freak out if he knew how Peter was spending his Saturday morning. Though, to be fair, Ned would also absolutely freak out if he found out that Peter was Spider-Man and had fought the Avengers.

“Hm.” Mr. Stark mused, spinning in a circle and examining the room. “There’s not much to give a tour on, actually. Mostly parts of projects and a lot of suits.” he waved at the right side of the room, where there was a large metal table with a bootjet placed on top, amidst a pile of screwdrivers and soldering materials. “That’s my desk, don’t touch it.” Peter nodded vigorously, and Mr. Stark pointed at a square-ish table in the middle. “That’s the hologram table, I use it for design schematics. You can use it too, it has a database of Spider-Man stuff, just ask FRI to open it for you. Design to your little nerd heart’s desire.”

Peter trailed after the man as he walked over to it and brought up a holographic screen, wide-eyed as he started to swipe through the different settings.

“We can clear off that desk for you, I never use it.” Mr. Stark added, waving his hand to the left in the general direction of a smaller metal table with various tools scattered all over it. Holy shit. He got his own desk in Tony Stark’s personal lab? “Keep everything neat-ish, don’t keep flammable stuff next to an open flame, yada yada. The usual. Don’t need Pepper chewing me out for child endangerment.” he said, and Peter was pretty sure he muttered “ any more than she already has” under his breath, but didn’t have time to dwell on it before the man turned to him and furrowed his brow.

“Speaking of which— you said you manufactured your webbing yourself. I don’t suppose you have a secret lab you’re holding out from me?” he asked, arching an eyebrow. Peter rubbed the back of his neck, a little sheepish.

“Ah… Midtown’s chemistry classroom?” he offered. Mr. Stark blinked.

“The—” he cut himself off. “You’re telling me that you make your very distinguishable Spider-Man webbing out in the open in the middle of your high school chemistry class?”

“No, of course not.” Peter replied, a bit indignantly. Mr. Stark’s pinched expression smoothed out ever so slightly, before— “I hide it in a drawer while I’m mixing it.”

The man sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “Right,” he said instead. “How have you kept your identity a secret for this long again?”

Peter blinked, furrowing his eyebrows slightly— ignoring the fact that ‘this long’ was only about a year anyways. “ You’re lecturing me on a secret identity?” he asked disbelievingly, before remembering that he wasn’t Spider-Man at the moment, and that he was trying to be polite. Mr. Stark blinked, momentarily thrown, and Peter scrambled to backtrack. He really didn’t want to be “fired” before Day One even started. “I mean, uh—”

Mr. Stark cut him off with a sharp-sounding laugh and a shrug. “Relax,” he said at Peter’s slightly panicked face. “I’m not going to bite your head off. Anyways, questionable decision-making skills aside, you can make your webs here from now on. Just tell FRI what materials you need and it’ll be fully stocked for you.”

“Is this some long-winded ploy to steal my web-fluid formula?” Peter asked, relaxing slightly and testing the waters again with a bit of sarcasm.

Mr. Stark snorted. “Hardly. I could always collect a sample from you swinging around to have FRIDAY analyze the composition if I really wanted to.” he said. Before Peter had time to really process the statement or figure out how he felt about it, the man continued. “Besides, you’ll be around if I ever find myself in dire need of spider webbing.” His face wrinkled slightly at the thought, as if the idea of needing to use webbing was generally distasteful to him. Even so, Peter felt his chest warm a little bit at the thought that Mr. Stark was referring to this — whatever this was— as a long-term thing. 

Well. Laws were a pretty long-term thing, so he should have guessed as much— but still.

He didn’t get a chance to figure out a response to that before there was a slight scuffling sound at the door, and Happy poked his head in and surveyed the two of them with an arched eyebrow. At the sight of him, Mr. Stark’s shoulders straightened slightly and he clapped his hands together like he’d just remembered something.

“Ah, forehead of security. Impeccable timing, as usual.” Mr. Stark said grandly, like it was some kind of inside joke. (And judging by Happy’s scowl, it was one at his expense). The billionaire turned back to Peter. “Hap’s no longer your point guy on this, I am.” he said, waving one hand in the air. “Obviously.”

Peter would have been more offended by the relieved look now plastered over Happy’s entire face, except that he was practically vibrating with excitement once more at the thought of Iron Man being his point guy.

“He’ll still drive you to and from the internship.” the billionaire revised (Happy looked distinctly less pleased at that). “Speaking of which— Tuesdays and Thursdays work for you?” he asked, but continued speaking before Peter could rearrange his tongue enough to respond. “Don’t answer that, I know you’re free, I saw your extracurriculars schedule.” he said flippantly. Peter squeaked out something that was adjacent to a ‘yes, I’m free,’ even as the man looked vaguely amused and shoved his hands into his pockets casually.

“Anyways, any questions go to yours truly— you have a phone?” Mr. Stark asked, arching an eyebrow at Peter, who fumbled in his own pocket to yank the aforementioned device out. His earbuds were still connected, and they dangled loosely in between them as he held his phone out with a half-extended arm. Both of Mr. Stark’s eyebrows raised halfway up his forehead at the sight, and a beat of slightly awkward silence passed.

“ That is an insult to modern-day technology.” he sniffed slightly. Peter frowned slightly at his phone, lowering his arm to peer at the screen. He didn’t think it was that bad. “I’m going to pretend like I didn’t even lay my eyes on that. We’ll get you a new Stark Phone, top of the line, all that.” he said, waving his hand. “My phone number will be loaded in it.”

Oh my god, I’m going to have Tony Stark’s phone number .

Just as he had the thought, Mr. Stark pointed sternly at him with one finger. “Do not try and sell it on eBay.” he warned, just as Peter started to sputter out an ‘of course not.’ “I don’t carry a physical phone most of the time anyways, FRI manages all of my calls and voicemails and paraphrases for me. So don’t be surprised if you don’t get an answer; talking on the phone gives me hives. Leave as many voicemails as you want, she’ll tell me of anything important.” he continued. 

Peter was getting a little bit of whiplash from the whole conversation; to be honest, he still hadn’t quite recovered from the initial shock of seeing Mr. Stark in his apartment that very first day two or three weeks ago. The man was a whirlwind, constantly moving and talking in such a way that Peter himself hadn’t quite achieved yet, even as Spider-Man. When Tony Stark talked, people stopped and listened. Peter was no exception.

The person in question continued, completely unaware of Peter's internal monologue. “Hap, we’re almost done here, you can go get the car while I finish up talking to the kid.” he said, waving a displeased Happy out of the room. At the mention of his moniker, Peter blinked, dragging himself out of his thoughts.

“This is— thank you, Mr. Stark.” he said earnestly. The billionaire’s face twisted into some sort of mix of amusement and exasperation.

“You can call me Tony, you know.” the man grumbled. “Mr. Stark is what they call me when they’re suing me.”

“Sorry, Mr. Stark.” Peter said, a little more firmly than he’d thought he was capable of in this scenario. In his defense, the billionaire had a very intimidating aura, and Peter was just… Peter Parker right now. A fifteen year old nerd in Tony Stark’s personal lab. Not Spider-Man. “Aunt May would kill me if I called an adult by their first name.”

Mr. Stark arched an eyebrow at that, and it hit Peter that perhaps that wasn’t the best choice of words if he was trying to get the man to treat him as more mature than a run-of-the-mill teenager. Evidently, that ship had sailed. Luckily, the billionaire didn’t comment on the matter, past a muttered “suit yourself, kid.”

“Boss.” the female AI voice— FRIDAY— piped up before either of them had a chance to continue speaking. “Mr. Hogan would like to inform you that he is displeased about being forced to wait.”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t let him get all worked up about it. Tell him it’s good for character development— patience is a virtue.” the man said, waving his hand, before turning back to Peter. “Alright then, you heard FRIDAY— skedaddle, young buck.” Mr. Stark shooed him off. If Peter weren’t so awestruck by the entire situation, he might have made a wisecrack at the old-man wording of that phrase. As it was, he was still glancing around, trying to soak everything in despite the fact that he’d apparently be here every week. “Pepper will send the official internship papers to your aunt to sign to keep your excuse up. Lab time starts on Tuesday.”

Peter couldn’t help the delighted grin that broke across his face at the statement. Lab time . Lab time and a real internship with Tony Stark. Starting in three days.

Rocking on the balls of his feet, he barely refrained from hopping onto the ceiling out of sheer excitement. Even though Mr. Stark knew he was Spider-Man, that felt like a bad first impression as an employee… intern… thing. Still, he couldn’t help the bounce in his step as he dashed to the doorway, not wanting to keep Happy waiting for too long. (He figured the ship had long since sailed of making a good first impression on the driver, but he was still going to try.)

“Bye, Mr. Stark! See you Tuesday!”

“See you Tuesday, kid.”

~ ~ ~

When Peter woke up the next day, May handed him a package that had been left on their doorstep with his name scrawled on it. He barely made it into his room before tearing the package open; he already knew what it would be, but seeing the Stark Phone— his Stark Phone— sitting in the box made his eyes widen involuntarily.

“Woah .” he breathed out, carefully lifting the phone out of the box and staring at the perfectly smooth screen for a few seconds. He knew he would have to touch it to turn it on, but it felt wrong marring something so perfectly glossy with his fingerprints. Eventually, though, his curiosity got the better of him, and he tapped on the screen, watching delightedly as it lit up. He went through the setup— of course, setting up a phone could never rival the amazement he had when trying on his suit for the first time, but it came in as a close second.

It felt even more special because Mr. Stark didn’t have to give him this. Sure, he didn’t have to give Peter a new Spider-Man suit, either, but that at least had a function . Peter’s old phone worked perfectly fine; Mr. Stark didn’t need to give him a new one. Even if it hadn’t been a big deal to the billionaire, it was a big deal to him. And, more importantly, it was a gift for Peter Parker— not Spider-Man.

Usually, he would patrol most of the day Sunday while May went to work. Today, though, he spent most of the morning fiddling around with the phone until about an hour after May had left. Then he pulled his suit and mask on before ever-so-carefully tucking his new phone into the suit’s hidden pocket. He didn’t particularly like having to bring his phone with him every time he went on patrol, but he didn’t want to freak May out if she tried to call him while he was out and he didn’t answer. Plus, he needed a way to call someone in case of an emergency, and he usually used the police scanner app he’d installed to find things to do.

Just as he clambered out of his window, he heard sirens in the distance, and leapt off the wall to start swinging in that direction. Time to go catch some criminals .

—

There were, in fact, no criminals. The siren had been a false alarm, and there wasn’t much activity in the city after that. He’d stopped one mugging, but it had taken less than five minutes and he’d already been on patrol for hours.

Peter supposed the criminals were all taking Sunday evening off, which was great for the city but not-so-great for his boredom levels. Seriously, does nobody appreciate how long it takes for me to come out here ?

Clambering up one of the buildings whose walls he’d been squatting on, he hopped up onto the edge of a roof and settled down, kicking his legs slightly. Everything had been completely quiet for more than 20 minutes, and he was amazed that he had lasted that long with no distractions. Usually, he tried not to use his phone while he was patrolling, for several reasons. First, he didn’t want to potentially miss anything because he was so absorbed in his phone. Second, things weren’t usually this slow— if anything, he could at least rescue a cat or help an old lady with her groceries. And thirdly— he just didn’t trust himself not to drop it from the top of a building. May already had to buy his replacement backpacks; he doubted she’d be as accommodating if he added his phone to that list.

Points aside— everything was quiet, Peter was bored, and he had a brand-new Stark Phone that he hadn’t fully had time to explore the features yet. Plus, it was known to be far more shatter-proof than his old phone was. Not that he desired to test that theory.

Peter considered it, pulling the phone out and staring at the screen. Opening it, he tapped on the contacts to send Ned a message but hesitated when he saw the contact name he’d labeled “MR. STARK!!!” He knew he’d just seen the man yesterday, and he didn’t have an astoundingly exciting patrol today, but… maybe he should call anyways. Y’know, just to make sure the number was working and everything, and to give a patrol recap like a responsible vigilante. Yeah. That made sense.

Holding his breath slightly, he tapped on the call icon and brought the phone up to his ear, listening as it rang once before:

Yes, this is Tony Stark. Leave a message after the beep. If this is urgent, press 1 for Pepper.

Peter felt a grin stretch across his face at the sound of the accompanying beep .

“Uh, hi Mr. Stark! This is Peter. Peter Parker. I know you said I could leave voicemails, and I was just testing out the new phone to see if it works— I mean, of course it works, you made it, it’s great, thank you sir— uh, just calling to give you my report for tonight! So it started with a…”

Chapter Text

Peter’s POV

Five weeks later…

“Hi, Mr. Stark!” Peter started cheerfully, after the now-familiar voicemail rang. “Here’s my report for tonight. I stopped a grand theft bicycle. Couldn’t find the owner, so I just left a note. Um... I helped this lost, old Dominican lady. She was really nice and bought me a churro. I don’t know, it’s been pretty slow tonight. Not much going on. The neighborhood is being a bit too friendly. Wait— not that it shouldn't be. That’s good. Ugh. Anyways, see you tomorrow! Obviously. Uh—” He was distracted from his ramblings by the sight of four distinctly suspicious-looking masked individuals creeping inside of a closed bank. “—oh, something is going on. Bye!” Peter hurriedly hung up the voicemail and tucked the Stark Phone carefully into his suit’s hidden pocket.

Hopping off of the ledge he’d been perched on, he swung down to the bank’s entrance, peering into the large windows. 

“Seriously, who even robs a bank that has floor-to-ceiling windows? Come on, guys,” Peter muttered to himself as he moved towards the doorway. With his enhanced hearing, he could hear the robbers talking amongst themselves as they shuffled towards one of the ATMs.

“Yo, this high tech stuff makes it too easy.”

“Told you it was worth it,” the second robber boasted. A third guy used one of their weapons to grab and pull off the front of the ATM. Peter tilted his head and watched as a large chunk of the metal was ripped off and suspended in the air, and cash started to spill out.

“We can hit, like, five more places tonight,” a fourth guy said gleefully, right as Peter opened the door and prepared for them to notice him. They remained oblivious.

Ouch, talk about feeling invisible. Also, having absolutely no spatial awareness seemed generally inadvisable when robbing banks. Weren’t they supposed to have someone set as a lookout or something?

“Ahem.” Peter cleared his throat pointedly, watching in amusement as all four heads whipped to him at once. “Don’t tell me you forgot your PIN number?” He tilted his head when he realized they were all wearing knock-off Avengers masks. “ Wooow , the Avengers!” he said, sarcasm dripping from every syllable. “What are you guys doing here? Decided to turn to a life of crime? Saving the city doesn’t come with a good salary?” (He, unfortunately, knew it didn’t. At least not for vigilantes.)

He hopped out of the way and shot a web at one of the alien guns, yanking it towards him and pushing one of the robbers into another. 

“Thor, Hulk. Good to finally meet you guys,” he chirped as he threw one of them into the wall. “You know, I thought you’d be more handsome in person.”

He perched on the ceiling and hung upside down, tilting his head to the side as the guy dressed as Iron Man charged at him.

“Iron Man. Hey, what are you doing robbing a bank? You’re a billionaire.” He dodged a punch from the fake version of his mentor, before turning to Captain America. “And you— aren’t you a war criminal now, or something?” It didn’t seem like the brightest move to wear the face of an even bigger criminal whilst committing crimes. But what did he know?

He dodged a punch from Iron Man and watched as he hit Hulk instead— both fell to the ground in a crumpled heap. Peter jumped towards Captain America but was caught in an… anti-gravity gun?

“Whoaaa, this is so weird,” he commented, waving his arms and feeling the weightlessness as he dangled just above the floor. He didn’t get to enjoy it for very long before the robber launched him against one of the walls in a decidedly unpleasant fashion. “What is that thing?” he asked, looking back up at it, even though he didn’t expect an answer.

He may not have gotten a verbal answer, but he got an answer in the form of the weightlessness wrapping around him once more. He had a brief moment to think oh, this is not good before he was suddenly flung in between the floor and the ceiling like a glorified ping-pong ball.

“I’m starting—” Thump . “to think—” Thump . “you’re not—” Thump . “—the Avengers!” Thump. Peter yelled, hearing as his voice was distorted before he managed to cling to the ground with his fingertips and shoot a web at one of the desks, yanking it towards the perpetrator. Free once more, he got to his feet, ignoring the tingling in his ribs that probably meant he had either bruised or broken something. 

(Though, now that he thought about it, his last encounter with the full Avengers team in Leipzig had turned out pretty similarly, so maybe these guys were doing a better job at their impressions than he originally gave them credit for.)

“Alright guys, let’s wrap this up. It’s a school night, and I’ve got lab time tomorrow. Can’t afford to be sleepy,” Peter said cheerfully as he kicked Thor (the much less attractive version) into a glass wall. “Mr. Stark gets grumpy if I don’t give him enough attention. Don’t tell him I said that, though— he’ll deny it.”

He didn’t receive a response for his efforts at humor, only a growl of frustration from one of the robbers. He webbed one of the guns against the wall before hopping onto the shoulders of Iron Man and lifting up the face mask to peer underneath. 

“So, how do jerks like you get tech like this?” he asked, tilting his head slightly. He was sure there was a black market for everything these days, but normally it was the supervillains with the high-tech weapons, not the average bank robbers. Besides, it was clear they really had no idea how to use the weapons properly.

Just as the thought crossed his mind, a tingling sensation of danger crept up his neck. He turned to see Hulk activating another device— the same one they had used to cut through the ATM metal— before aiming it at him and the robber Peter was still holding onto.

“Hey, waitwaitwait —” Peter yelled, before ducking rapidly, yanking the Iron Man robber down with him as the beam sliced through where they had both just been standing, cutting through the walls and across the street. Peter popped his head back up, looking to what it had hit—

“Mr. Delmar,” he breathed out, seeing the all-too-familiar deli store in flames. Throwing the robber to the side, he darted out of the door and sprinted across the street. Please no , he pleaded internally. “Hey, Mr. Delmar, you in there? Is anybody in here? Hello?” Please respond, please respond, please—

He heard a cough and he hopped over the counter, feeling his legs wobble in relief at the sight of the deli owner cowering behind it— ashy and shocked but seemingly unharmed. A small mrrow caught his attention, and Murph slunk out from under a toppled cabinet, blinking at him. Peter exhaled roughly and made his way over to Mr. Delmar.

“Here, I gotcha, come on.” His voice came out a bit breathy with relief, wrapping the man’s arm around his shoulders and lifting him up as he rattled with another bout of coughs. With his other arm, Peter scooped Murph up and led them both out of the still-burning deli. Once they were outside, Mr. Delmar pulled away, still coughing, and Peter turned back to the bank to—

“Oh, come on,” he muttered at the sight of the now empty building. He started towards it before another meow made him realize he was still holding Murph. “Here, here.” He pushed the cat into the deli owner’s hands, before letting out a rough sigh and resigning himself to damage control as he heard police sirens in the distance.

Well, at least he’d have something interesting to tell Mr. Stark during their lab time tomorrow.

~ ~ ~

Tony’s POV

“Mr. Stark, guess what happened on patrol last night!” Peter asked delightedly, bounding into the lab and already talking a mile per minute as usual.

“You got another churro?” Tony guessed, tone flat, eyebrow arched, unperturbed at the sudden entrance; he was used to it by now. Peter skidded to a halt and dumped his backpack with a loud thump beside his desk, contents slightly spilling out of the half-open zipper. Tony resisted the urge to tell him to move it out of the walking path.

“No— well, actually, yes, but that wasn’t the point,” he backtracked. Judging from Peter’s excited demeanor, Tony could probably have guessed what actually happened, but he’d learned by now that the kid didn’t ever actually want him to make a guess— he wanted to be able to tell him.

“I don’t know, kid,” Tony said, humoring him. Internally, he was making his own bets. He was currently guessing either bank robbery or high-speed car chase.

“So, there was this bank robbery—”

Bingo .

“—and they had plastic Avengers masks on and were robbing the bank with freaky alien weapons. One of them was dressed as you, by the way. They didn’t quite get the face mask right.” Peter mused. “Too yellow, not gold enough.”

At that, Tony looked up from his gauntlet with his eyebrows furrowed. “Freaky alien weapons?” he deadpanned, electing to ignore the fact that the kid knew his exact color scheme. Peter nodded, eyes alight.

“Yeah, there was one that was an anti-gravity one, I think? And, uh— another one that let out this crazy blast that totally destroyed Delmar’s.” He frowned at that, getting more subdued for a moment. “Mr. Delmar and Murph weren’t hurt, but I didn’t get to catch the robbers because I went to help them.”

Tony’s own mouth tugged down slightly at the news. Alien weapons— that wasn’t really surprising. After the Battle of New York, they’d cropped up in increasing numbers, used by common criminals and supervillains alike. Bank robbers wearing Avengers masks of all things certainly weren’t at the top of the danger list, and were well within Peter’s capabilities as Spider-Man, but he still didn’t exactly like the thought of the encounter.

“And you?” he double-checked, scanning over the kid with a quick eye. He didn’t look hurt, and he certainly wasn’t moving like it, but one could never be too sure with Peter Parker.

Peter blinked for a moment, as if he didn’t fully register what Tony was asking, before his expression cleared and he shook his head rapidly. 

“Oh, no, Mr. Stark, I’m fine!” he said reassuringly. (Tony would be lying if he said his shoulders didn’t relax minutely at the confirmation.) “I totally could’ve gotten them if I weren’t distracted.”

Tony hummed. “You did the right thing, kid,” he said. “The bank will recover from their losses, I’m sure. Plus they’ve got security cameras everywhere— the police have a whole department for tracking down people like that. Saving the deli guy was a good choice,” he tacked on, as if he didn’t know full well the man’s name was Mr. Delmar, given how many times Peter talked about him (and the cat, Murph).

“I know.” Peter plopped into his seat. “Just— wish I’d been more on top of my game, y’know? The deli got totally decimated, it’s gonna take Mr. Delmar ages to rebuild. And money. I hope it doesn’t hurt his business.”

Privately, Tony was glad that the result of Peter ‘not being on top of his game’ had only resulted in property damage, not human casualties, or they’d be having quite the different conversation right now.

“I’m sure he’ll be alright, kid,” he said after a half-beat of silence, trying to go for reassurance. “Best sandwiches in Queens, right?”

At that, Peter’s eyes lit back up. “Yeah,” he agreed, sounding somewhat surprised. “You remembered.”

Tony sniffed mildly, trying to go back to his unconcerned persona. “I’m a genius, of course I remembered.” he grumbled, ignoring the fact that his genius did not often make him remember inconsequential things. Like his social security number. Or peoples’ birthdays. Certainly not their favorite sandwich shops. But Peter didn’t know that. “Anyways, get over here, we’re working on this gauntlet today,” he continued gruffly, switching the topic and gesturing to the parts strewn about his desktop.

Peter took it in stride, hopping off of his chair and moving over to Tony’s desk to peer at the half-disassembled gauntlet. 

“What’s wrong with it?” he asked curiously, almost leaning completely into Tony’s space as he squinted at it. Normally, Tony would have backed away from anyone standing as much as three feet away from him, but for some reason he didn’t particularly mind the intrusion. He did not like where that train of thought led him, so he pointedly ignored it.

“The wiring to the repulsor got messed up when I tried to adjust the plating on the arm.” Tony grabbed a screwdriver. “Figured I could use your sticky little fingers to hold things in place while I fix it.”

It was a half-truth; Tony had long since mastered the art of fiddling around in the finer wiring of his Iron Man gauntlets, but it was true that Peter’s sticky powers would help to hold things steady. 

On second thought… What was the harm in letting the kid actually mess around a little bit with the wiring in the gauntlet? He was here for mentoring, after all.

If Tony thought Peter had looked excited at the offer to hold pieces of the gauntlet in place while he worked, that was nothing compared to when Tony held out the screwdriver to him in a wordless invitation.

“Wait— really?” Peter asked, and his eyes were wide as he glanced between Tony, the gauntlet, and the proffered screwdriver. “What if I mess something up?”

Tony just waved his free hand. “Eh, I’m sure I’ve done worse. You made your own web-shooters, this is basically the same.”

“My web-shooters don’t fire high-energy repulsor blasts.” Peter pointed out— and yeah, Tony supposed he had a point. Still, he shrugged.

“That’s what I’m here for,” he said flippantly, before he raised a finger and reached for one of the drawers in his desk that he rarely used. Yanking it open, he pulled out a pair of safety glasses and tossed them to Peter, who caught them easily. 

“Safety first, Mr. Parker,” he said, as if he probably wouldn’t have forgotten about the glasses had Peter not made his comment.

Peter furrowed his eyebrows slightly and glanced in between him and Tony, though he obediently slid the glasses onto his face. 

“Shouldn’t you have a pair, too?” he asked, and Tony waved him off once more.

“Do as I say, not as I do, kid,” he responded, easily brushing off the concern. At Peter’s slight hesitation, he sighed in resignation before he pulled the drawer open again, sliding another uncomfortable pair of safety glasses onto his face. 

“Chop chop, get to it,” he grumbled, when Peter didn’t immediately move. “I’m not getting any younger— my joints won’t let me sit in this position for very long.” He resolutely pretended that absolutely nothing had changed and decidedly ignored the way Peter fought the small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

At that, Peter ducked his head sheepishly and grabbed the screwdriver from Tony’s hand, hesitantly reaching for the wiring before glancing up at his mentor like he was afraid of making the wrong move. Tony just waved him on and watched as Peter hesitantly lifted up the paneling and peered inside.

“Woah,” he breathed out. “This is—”

“I swear, if the next word out of your mouth is ‘awesome,’ I’m kicking you out, Parker,” Tony interrupted flatly, though he wasn’t able to stop the faint amusement coloring his tone. “Focus on the wiring, tell me what you see.” He’d originally planned on just telling Peter how to fix it; he’d never been the type of guy to have the patience to teach someone how to do something instead of just ordering them around. Or, better yet, just doing it himself. He supposed he was full of surprises today.

Peter furrowed his brow and peered at the circuitry. “Well, the power is routed through this wire,” he said, pointing at one of the lines. “And it looks like there's a short in the connection here, where it’s frayed. If I reroute the power through this secondary line, it should bypass the damaged section and keep the circuit stable.”

The corner of Tony’s mouth tilted up in a small smile. 

“Not bad,” he allowed, even as Peter grinned proudly and glanced back up to him. “Give it a shot.” Maybe there was a reason he tolerated the kid more than most others.

At that, Peter nodded eagerly and dipped his head back down to peer at the wiring, safety glasses slipping slightly down his nose as he started to poke at it with the tools.

They worked on the gauntlet for a few hours; what should have been only an hour-long repair turned into a multiple-hour explanation on the inner workings of the circuitry. Surprisingly, Tony found that he didn’t mind— it was a pleasant break from the usual work he was forced to do.

Eventually, the clock struck 7:30 PM, and FRIDAY reminded them that it was time for Peter to start heading home in order to be back by curfew, with time to go out as Spider-Man later. She informed them that Happy was waiting in the garage for Peter, and the kid scrambled to pick his backpack up and throw all of his belongings in it before scurrying out the door in as much of a whirlwind as he came in.

“Bye, Mr. Stark!” he called out over his shoulder. “I’ll see you Thursday!”

“Mhm, see you Thursday, kid,” he responded, even though Peter was already out of sight. He shook his head slightly, glancing over to the now-fixed gauntlet and sliding it onto his hand, flexing his fingers thoughtfully.

“Hey FRI?” Tony asked after a moment of silence, pointedly ignoring the way the silence settled strangely over the lab without Peter in it. “Make a hefty anonymous donation to the rebuilding efforts for Delmar’s Deli. All expenses covered.”

~ ~ ~

Peter’s POV

Peter’s skull vibrated in tune with the chatter from the hallways, and he very much wished he did not have enhanced senses at the moment. He pushed his way through the throngs of students until he made his way to his locker, before yanking it open and shoving some materials in it, grabbing his books for the day. Just then, he felt a familiar presence come up behind him, right before a small pressure pressed into his shoulder. He glanced at it out of the corner of his eye and couldn’t help the small twitch of his lips as he caught sight of the Emperor Palpatine lego figurine perched there.

“Join me, and together... we’ll build my new Lego Death Star,” Ned said, in a raspy imitation voice. Peter spun around, wide grin stretching across his features, any prior grumpiness gone.

“What? No way!” he said excitedly, ignoring the ‘so lame’ he was pretty sure he heard from a cheerleader behind him. “How many pieces?”

“Three thousand eight hundred and three,” Ned recited, and Peter raised his eyebrows and let out a low whistle. 

“That’s insane,” he said, as he shut his locker and they began to walk down the hallway together.

“I know,” Ned agreed with a grin of his own. “You want to build it tonight?” At that, Peter’s smile fell slightly.

“Tonight?” he hedged. “I’ve got the Stark—”

“Mm-hmm. Stark internship,” Ned said, as if he’d been expecting that answer.

“Yeah, exactly,” Peter responded, feeling bad that he was ditching on Ned. Technically, his lab days with Mr. Stark were on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and today was Wednesday. But he’d told himself that he would stay out extra long as Spider-Man tonight, since he hadn’t really had time earlier in the week and didn’t want to feel like he was neglecting the city. He knew that technically his lab time with Tony was part of the whole legal-Accords-mentoring thing for Spider-Man, and he loved every second of it, but he still felt wrong not patrolling when he had time to.

“Always got that internship,” Ned agreed, and his tone was a strange mix of melancholy and fascination. Peter pressed his lips together momentarily before he let out a half-sigh.

“Hopefully it’ll lead to a real job with them soon,” he offered, as if his internship technically didn’t already count as a ‘job’ of sorts. At the words, though, Ned lightened up.

“That would be so sweet,” he agreed, and Peter’s mouth twitched in a smile.

“Right?”

“He’d be all, ‘Good job on those spreadsheets, Peter. Here’s a gold coin,’” Ned mimicked, dropping his voice slightly to mimic Mr. Stark (in a fairly terrible impression). “Though, I guess you probably wouldn’t be working with Tony Stark himself if you just had an intern-level job at SI,” he mused. “Can you imagine? That would be so sick.”

Peter shot him a semi-amused look at the sheer irony of his second statement, but Ned took it to mean that his first assumption had been wrong.

“I don’t know how jobs work,” he admitted sheepishly.

“That’s exactly how they work,” Peter reassured him, even though he actually wasn’t quite sure that was true. He knew that Mr. Stark had officially enrolled him in some kind of special cover “Stark Internship” to justify to May the hours that Peter was spending at the Tower for Spider-Man Accords documentation purposes. He knew she’d had to fill out some forms, but he wasn’t exactly sure how it all worked.

He refrained from telling Ned that he definitely wasn’t working on spreadsheets (FRIDAY could easily handle those), and that he actually had worked on the wiring of an Iron Man gauntlet yesterday with Mr. Stark personally. Ned would for sure freak out, and the entire school would know about it within a few hours. (Whether they’d believe him would be a different matter entirely.)

Regardless, he didn’t want the extra scrutiny, or for people to start asking why he’d gotten a Stark internship around the time Spider-Man had to follow the Accords. Especially when the internship was a “special exception,” because SI didn’t usually employ high schoolers. And Tony Stark himself certainly didn’t. All in all, not a can of worms he wanted to open, and Ned was… not the best of secret-keepers.

So, spreadsheets it was.

“Huh,” Ned responded at Peter’s agreement, before he shrugged. “Okay then. Hey– I have a plan. Since you’ll mostly be busy with the internship, I’ll knock out the basic bones of the Death Star at my place. And then I’ll come by afterwards—”

Peter zoned out as he saw Liz walking down the hallway with her friends, and he felt a slight zap in his spine as their eyes met for a split-second.

“—because for the most part, the difficult thing is the base of it. The top half we can knock out in two hours, tops.” Ned continued chattering as Peter zoned back in and realized he’d missed most of the conversation.

“That’d be great,” he murmured noncommittally as the bell rang.

—

Peter clambered up the side of his apartment building’s wall, looking around to make sure that nobody was watching him. When he was certain that nobody was, he quickly slid open his bedroom window and crawled inside. He held his breath as May walked past his open door, before he slid the window shut with his foot and climbed silently across the ceiling.

Yanking off his mask, he dangled from the ceiling with his fingertips before gently shoving the door shut, relaxing slightly as he heard the soft click of the lock.

Crash .

Peter jumped and spun around—

And there was Ned, sitting on his bed, mouth agape, the remnants of the Lego Death Star shattered at his feet.

Oh, fuck .

“What was that?” May called out from in the kitchen, and Peter spun back around to the closed door.

“NOTHING! It’s, uh, nothing!” he reassured, even as his voice cracked with the sudden volume. He spun back around towards Ned, hoping his best friend wasn’t about to let out an ear-curdling scream or something of the sort. He did not want to have his secret identity revealed to two people today. Ned stood up from the bed.

“You’re the Spider-Man.” He sounded breathless. “From Youtube!”

“I’m not. I’m not,” Peter lied uselessly, even as he slapped his palm against his chest and the suit deflated, pooling around his ankles and leaving him standing in his boxers. On any other occasion, he’d be embarrassed, but right now he had the very pressing issue that his best friend— who could not keep a secret to save his life — had just found out his very secret identity.

“You were on the ceiling!” Ned whispered back, tone bordering on hysterical. Peter debated the merits of how easily he could gaslight Ned into thinking he definitely was not on the ceiling.

“No, I wasn’t!” Peter replied in a high-pitched whisper— possibly the most unconvincing response he could have given. “Ned, what are you doing in my room?”

“May let me in.” Ned said, waving his hands. Shit . Peter really didn’t want to have to fend off questions from his aunt, too, about how he’d gotten back into the house without her noticing. “You said earlier today that we were gonna finish the Death Star!”

“You can’t just bust into my room!” Peter said, waving his own hands, and now he was the one who was bordering on hysterical. He stumbled out of the fabric pooled around his ankles, taking a few steps towards Ned when—

His door swung open, and May stood there in a plume of smoke, coughing and waving a rag in front of her face in a futile effort to dissipate it.

“The turkey meatloaf recipe is a disaster,” she said with a half-laugh, not even batting an eye at the scene in front of her. “Let’s go to dinner. Thai? Ned, you want Thai?”

“Yes,” Ned replied, still somewhat breathless, even as Peter spoke at the exact same time.

“No,” he said loudly. There was a half-beat of awkward silence at the contradictory responses before Peter elaborated: “He’s got a thing.”

“A thing to do… after,” Ned agreed haltingly— and bless his heart, at least it was an attempt, albeit a very unconvincing one.

“Okay.” May arched an eyebrow, but didn’t bother to argue. She squinted slightly at Peter and waved a finger at him. “Maybe put on some clothes,” she suggested gently, before shutting the door behind her.

Peter huffed and grabbed the nearest shirt— a soft gray long sleeve— before yanking it over his head. (He wasn’t sulking. He wasn’t .)

“Ohhhh, she doesn’t know?” Ned whispered, and Peter spun to face him once more.

“Nobody knows,” he hissed back. “I mean, Mr. Stark knows because he made my suit, but that’s it.” he revised. At the mention of Tony, Ned’s eyes went wide. Like, dinner-plate-wide.

“Oh my god,” he said, and he sounded far more hysterical than before. So much for that plan. “Spider-Man is sponsored by Tony Stark. You’re Spider-Man. You’re being mentored by Tony Stark .”

Peter huffed out a laugh. “Dude. The Stark Internship?” he pointed out. Ned flapped his hands.

“ Dude ,” he hissed back. “It’s one thing to have an internship at Stark Industries. It’s another thing to be personally mentored by Iron Man .”

“I didn’t tell you I wasn’t personally mentored by Tony Stark,” Peter pointed out. “You just assumed.”

Ned shot him a pointed look. “You didn’t tell me a lot of things, Peter.”

Peter opened his mouth to protest, before clamping his jaw back shut when he realized he had no rebuttal. Instead he just shrugged in agreement. 

“Yeah, okay,” he acquiesced. “But can you blame me? Nobody else can know. You have to keep it a secret. Even from May. Especially from May.” 

Ned looked at him like he was crazy. “A secret? Why?”

Peter mirrored his own look right back at him. “You know what she’s like. If she finds out people try to kill me every single night, she’s not going to let me do this anymore,” he hissed, and his voice cracked slightly at the words. “Come on, Ned, please.” he pleaded.

“Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay,” Ned muttered in rapid succession. “I’ll level with you,” he started, and Peter was about to breathe out a sigh of relief before Ned continued, voice rising slightly. “I don’t think I can keep this a secret. This is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me, Peter!”

“Ned,” Peter said, and he hoped with his entire heart that his best friend could hear the seriousness infused into that single word. “May can not know. I cannot do that to her right now, okay? I mean, everything that’s happened with her— and the Accords, too, and what Mr. Stark has done to keep my secret safe— I… please,” he begged. Ned’s eyes flashed with something at that, and his face settled as he actually registered Peter’s words.

“Okay,” Ned agreed, and his voice was subdued. Peter felt bad about crushing Ned’s excitement on the matter, but he couldn’t afford for his identity to get out. His heart was still thrumming wildly in his chest, and his hands felt shaky. He loved and trusted Ned, he really did— but Ned was guileless and terrible at keeping secrets. Especially one as big as this. Even if he didn’t intend to let it slip…

“Just swear it, okay?” Peter asked, hoping the confirmation would help settle his heart rate a bit.

“I swear,” Ned said, and his eyebrows were now furrowed slightly in concern. Peter blew out a breath.

“Thank you.”

“Yeah, of course,” Ned responded, blinking slightly before Peter turned away and ran his hands through his hair, tugging at his roots.

“God, I can’t believe this is happening right now,” he muttered. Of all the ways he’d thought his identity may be revealed to Ned— this was not one of them. He heard a slight scuffling behind him as Ned turned to look at his back, and Peter prepared himself for the inevitable follow-up question he could hear on Ned’s tongue.

“Can I try the suit on?” he asked, and his tone had picked back up to the excited level.

“No,” Peter mumbled, making his way over to one of the walls of his room and bracing his hands against it.

“How does it work? Is it magnets? How do you shoot the strings?” his best friend continued rambling.

Peter dropped his head against the wall with a satisfying thump .

“Wait, what’s the deal with the Accords, then?” Ned asked, cutting himself off as he suddenly realized there was more to Peter’s unfortunate secret identity than the web-slinging. Peter raised his head from the wall.

“Ned, we’re literally learning about them in history class,” he said flatly. Ned shrugged, unabashed.

“Well, yeah, but that’s history class. Hearing it from you is way more interesting than listening to Mr. Harrington going all: ‘The Sokovia Accords were put into place to begin regulating…’ ” he lowered his tone in a mock-impression of their history teacher. Peter had to admit it was actually pretty accurate. He sighed.

“Well, since Mr. Stark is sponsoring me, Spider-Man doesn’t legally have to sign the Accords,” Peter started, thinking back to when his mentor had initially explained everything to him. “Spider-Man is a persona, not a government-recognized entity, so his signature doesn’t hold any weight unless there’s a real person behind it with a social security number and birth certificate and stuff like that.” He waved his hand vaguely. “So in order to keep my secret identity, Mr. Stark basically signed in my place, agreeing to be held responsible for Spider-Man’s actions in case I break the laws or something.”

“Woah,” Ned breathed out, eyes wide. “He just— did that for you? Without you even asking?”

Peter swallowed slightly. “Yeah,” he agreed, and his voice came out soft at the reminder. “He’s— Mr. Stark’s really great, Ned.”

“Well, duh.” Ned said, stepping forward and shoving him lightly with his shoulder. “It’s Iron Man, of course he’s great.”

Peter wet his lips slightly, not bothering to point out that he’d been talking about Tony Stark, not Iron Man. Though the statement rang true for both, Tony Stark was the one who willingly spent his free time around Peter. Technically he supposed that Tony legally had to do that, but the man definitely spent more than five hours a week in the lab with him; that had to count for something.

“Yeah,” he agreed again instead, before shaking his head slightly. “Anyways, the Accords committee had a few rules in place— like, I can’t go outside of New York without approval, and I can’t help with larger-scale threats unless the Avengers are called in. And I have to spend time with Mr. Stark every week, for a judge of character or… something.”

Ned frowned. “So you, like, have to ask permission from a bunch of old men to save someone’s life?” he asked. “That’s lame.”

Peter hesitated. “Well… yes,” he said. Mr. Stark had gone through it a lot more with him so he knew and understood why it was more detailed than that, but he agreed with his friend that it really sucked in theory. Based purely on practicality purposes, it hadn’t changed much about his day-to-day activities as Spider-Man. But the stakes were higher considering it was now illegal for him to operate out of state without permission— no longer just a matter of coming home late and being grounded by May.

Frankly, he was glad he hadn’t yet encountered a scenario where it was the law against a person’s life, because he couldn’t imagine not saving someone’s life and he would really rather not spend time in prison.

Ned furrowed his eyebrows at the agreement, as if he’d somehow sensed Peter’s own train of thought. “Wait, what happens if you break the rules?”

Peter paused. “Uh. Well, Mr. Stark said the committee would bench me first, I think.” 

He elected not to mention the potential to be thrown into prison as well, depending on the severity— it was such an unlikely scenario, only if he went too far— there was no need to worry Ned about it.

“Bench you for trying to save someone's life?” Ned squawked. “Dude, that’s so lame.”

Peter shrugged. “I’m sure it wouldn’t be for long,” he said. “Plus, Mr. Stark is pretty scary when he goes all lawyer-mode. He can be very convincing.”

Ned paused, considering. “True,” he agreed. “I wouldn't want to be on Iron Man’s bad side either.”

Peter hummed in agreement. Based on what Mr. Stark had explained to him about the Accords, he knew it was probably higher-stakes than that, but he couldn’t help but feel somewhat removed from the situation. He had Mr. Stark helping him out, and Peter certainly wasn’t planning on committing any crimes or becoming a danger to anybody. He was sure if there were any misunderstandings, they’d be able to clear it up pretty quickly. He knew that Team Cap had originally been arrested and thrown into prison, but that was because they’d broken international law and then gone on the run and had hurt people in the process. Peter did not have any plans to do anything of that magnitude.

“Wait, so how did you get your powers?” Ned asked, immediately jumping away from the Accords into a different topic. Peter was glad, because he didn’t like potentially thinking of the worst-case scenario that could result from the laws. It was (probably) only a small chance of occurring, but it was still a possibility, and he tried his hardest not to think of it on a day-to-day basis. All things considered, he got lucky— even with the Accords implemented, because of what Mr. Stark had done for him, he really didn’t have to change that much about his usual Spider-Man activities. After all, Spider-Man had never even gone outside of New York before this, and he certainly had never faced any world-ending activities.

“I got bit by a spider,” he responded, pushing the thoughts of law-breaking and prisons away.

“You got bit by a spider? Can it bite me? Well, it probably would’ve hurt, right? You know what? Whatever. Even if it did hurt, I’d let it bite me. Maybe. How much did it hurt?”

Peter sighed, suddenly regretting the change in conversation topic. 

“The spider’s dead, Ned.” And yes, it hurt. A lot. He didn’t say.

“Can you spit venom?”

“No.”

“Can you summon an army of spiders?”

Peter covered his face with his hands. “No,” he deadpanned, voice muffled by his fingers.

“How far can you shoot your webs?” Ned rapid-fired the next question, clearly not picking up on Peter’s clear desperation to stop this conversation.

“It’s unknown,” Peter responded, voice still muffled.

“If I were you, I would stand on the edge of a building and just shoot it as far as I could—”

“Shut up. Please. I’m begging you,” Peter groaned, face growing warm at the unintended innuendo.

There was a brief moment of silence until—

“Do you lay eggs?”

“ No , Ned.”

~ ~ ~

Tony’s POV

Peter ran into the lab on Thursday just as Tony was listening to one of the many voicemails the kid had left on his phone. When Tony had said that Peter could call and leave him voicemails, he hadn’t expected him to take it as some sort of challenge . FRIDAY had informed him of the ever-increasing number of voicemails the teen was leaving about his patrols, and Tony had been momentarily perplexed but shrugged it off. The calls weren’t inconveniencing him, and Peter seemed content to leave them without expecting a response. So, Tony let them pile up with no intention of ever listening or responding to them. But then… He’d gotten bored one night and had listened to one, and from there, well— he’d heard a lot about churros since then.

“Hi, Mr. Stark!” Peter chirped cheerfully. “Here’s my report for tonight. I stopped a grand theft bicycle. Couldn’t find the owner, so I just left a note. Um... I helped this lost, old Dominican lady. She was really nice and bought me a churro. I don’t know, it’s been pretty slow tonight. Not much going on. The neighborhood is being a bit too friendly. Wait— not that it shouldn't be. That’s good. Ugh. Anyways, see you tomorrow! Obviously. Uh— oh, something is going on. Bye!”

“Christ, kid, that’s your— what, 43rd voicemail?” Tony asked, looking between the teenager and his phone. He made the quip in order to distract Peter from recognizing the fact that Tony did, in fact, listen to every single one of his messages. At the words, Peter flushed bright red and ducked his head down.

“Ah– sorry. I can, uh, I can stop those.” he said. Tony stifled a sigh. Well, shit. He hadn’t meant to make the kid feel bad.

“No, I’ve got a better idea.” Tony said, raising a finger and using his rolling chair to move over to the holographic desk. “FRI, can you be a dear and remove the training wheels protocol from the suit? Give the kid access to the AI.”

“Training wheels protocol?” Peter asked, sounding confused— but he no longer looked dejected, so Tony counted it as a win. See, he was decent at this mentoring thing.

“Ignore the name,” Tony said offhandedly as he waved at the suit splayed across the table. Didn’t matter anyways, since he was disabling it. “See for yourself.”

“Hello, Peter,” a female voice emitted from the suit. “I am your personal AI. Training wheels protocol has been turned off, meaning you have access to many new features, including 576 new web-shooter combinations and instant kill protocol,” she announced cheerfully. Peter’s eyes grew the size of saucers.

“Instant what now?” he squeaked. Tony winced. He’d forgotten about that. Maybe he wasn’t so decent at the mentoring thing.

“Ah, maybe turn that one off again, FRI,” Tony said, interjecting, before turning to Peter. “I mostly just meant for you to have access to the AI. Y’know, so you have someone to talk to. Instead of making it your personal mission to fill my voicemail box.” 

He added the last part as an afterthought— he sounded too mushy without it. (Even though his voicemail box was FRIDAY, and he didn’t think it was possible for her to have a limit.)

Peter’s eyes were still as wide as Tony had ever seen them, and he looked delighted. “You gave me my own personal AI ?” he asked, voice squeaking, and Tony couldn’t help but feel warmed from the pure adoration and thanks emitting from the teenager. 

Most people weren’t quite this… thankful when Tony made them things. It was just what was expected of him. Peter wasn’t like that— no matter how simple a gift was, he always looked at it with awe. (Seriously, the kid had thanked him no short of 25 times for the new Stark Phone, as if it were a gift worth hundreds of millions of dollars instead of a hundred.) He sniffed, trying to mask the disgusting warm emotions he was feeling at the sight. 

“That is what I just said, kid,” he commented dryly, but his tone wasn’t quite as scathing as it normally was. Peter was still staring at the suit in awe.

“What’s your name?” Peter asked the AI.

“I do not currently have one,” the pleasant female voice replied.

“Hm. We’ll have to fix that,” Peter responded, eyebrows furrowing like they did when he was deep in thought. “For now, can I call you Suit Lady?”

“Of course, Peter,” she replied. “You can call me whatever you wish.”

Tony barely held back a snort at the interaction, but his chest felt warm against his will. It reminded him of his first interactions with JARVIS. He was originally going to just put FRIDAY into Peter’s suit, but decided against it— her dry, scathing humor was perfect for Tony himself, but he didn’t think it would go over as well with the teenager. He had originally been stumped on what personality to give the new AI— he had no idea what would be best suited for the kid. Without even consciously realizing it, he’d eventually settled on a personality modeled after his own mother; by the time he recognized that fact, it was too late to go back. He hoped it was the right choice— and, judging from Peter’s wide-eyed reaction, it was.

He didn’t look too far into that particular train of thought.

“Thank you, Mr. Stark.” Peter turned to him. Tony waved his hand easily.

“Don’t worry about it, kid, Hap will probably be delighted by the development,” he said wryly. He had made the AI long before Happy had ever complained about Peter chattering his ear off during their drives to the internship, but it was a reasonable excuse. “That reminds me, actually— he’s going to be a little tied up next week, so you might have to swing here, sorry kid.” 

Peter tilted his head curiously. “What’s he doing?”

Tony waved his hand again dismissively. “He’s got moving day to worry about. I put him in charge of it. Probably not a good idea, given his electrocardiogram, but he insisted, so—”

“Wait, you’re moving? Who’s moving?” Peter asked, interrupting him, and Tony would have chewed him out for interrupting Tony Stark , except that the kid looked vaguely distressed. Tony furrowed his eyebrows, wondering why Peter looked so worried all of a sudden.

“Moving some stuff from the Tower up to the new compound upstate.” He watched as the distressed expression on Peter’s face only increased with the words.

Peter opened and closed his mouth for a few seconds. 

“What about me?” he asked eventually, and his voice was somewhat small, as if he didn’t know whether he should say the words. Tony frowned slightly. What did he mean ‘what about me,’ what would moving stuff have anything to do with—

Oh.

“Relax, kid, I’m still keeping the Tower,” Tony said, watching Peter’s shoulders relax instantly at the words. “Happy would have my skin if he had to drive you all the way up to the Compound twice a week for lab days. I’m just moving most of the Avengers’ stuff up there. Y’know… spring cleaning.”

Neither of them pointed out that it was October.

“Right, right.” Peter rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. Tony felt the frown still tugging at the corners of his lips. Had the kid really thought Tony would just up and abandon him to permanently gallivant off to the Compound? Jeez.

The semi-tense moment was interrupted as Peter’s stomach decided to growl loudly, and both Peter and Tony blinked in surprise before letting out startled laughs.

“Hey FRI, order some pizzas from the store down the street,” Tony called to his AI, and Peter’s head whipped over to him, immediately protesting.

“Oh, no, Mr. Stark, it’s okay, I can just pick food up on the way back or have leftovers, you don’t need to pay for—”

“Kid, I'm literally a billionaire, a few pizzas aren’t going to put me out,” Tony said dryly, cutting him off with a wave of his hand. “Besides, we have two hours left in lab time, and I think sitting here and letting my intern starve is poor employment practices.”

Peter looked somewhat amused by that, brows furrowing slightly. “Since when do you care what other people think?” he asked, but he didn’t protest the pizzas again.

Tony sniffed. “I don't, but Pepper would yell at me about the legal repercussions.” He pushed the thought of his girlfriend-maybe-not-girlfriend anymore aside and continued. “Besides, I don't want to listen to your stomach growl the whole time. Focus is important for creative flow.”

Neither of them pointed out that Peter's usual chattering didn’t exactly align with that. 

The pizza arrived soon after that, and Tony shoved three of the boxes at the kid, ignoring his protests and staring him down with a raised eyebrow. Peter had sighed but resigned himself, and started shoving slices in his mouth like he hadn’t realized how hungry he was before this.

“What am I, running a daycare around here?” Tony grumbled, eyeing the pizza grease dripping down the kid’s chin disdainfully. He tossed a napkin to Peter, who caught it easily and haphazardly wiped his face. Tony grimaced slightly as most of the grease smeared instead of being wiped away by the napkin. “I’ve seen toddlers eat more neatly than that.”

Peter just snorted. “Since when do you spend enough time around toddlers to have quantifiable evidence of that?” he retorted. And, okay, maybe he had a point there— not that Tony was going to let him know that. He waved a finger warningly at the teenager.

“You get pizza grease on my couch and I’m kicking you out, Parker.” he warned, and Peter just grinned, mouth still full of pizza.

“C’mon, Mr. Stark, a little pizza grease is not the worst this couch has seen,” he replied, and then he wrinkled his nose at the implications of that statement, sparing a glance at the stained cushions. Tony grinned— he knew perfectly well that almost all of the stains were a result of Dum-E spilling motor oil smoothies all over it, but he found Peter’s discomfort at the situation hilarious. He leaned back with a half-smirk and watched as the disgusted expression on the teenager’s face only grew. 

“Mr. Stark, gross ,” he complained, throwing a paper plate at Tony, who just laughed.

“I didn’t say anything, kid,” he pointed out. “This is all on you.”

“This is a hostile work environment,” Peter grumbled, shoving more pizza in his mouth. Tony rolled his eyes, but privately, he was glad that Peter had grown comfortable enough around him in the past few weeks to actually snark back outside of his Spider-Man suit. Even if that apparently meant his couch was paying the price.

“Objection: hearsay,” Tony drawled in response. Peter’s brows furrowed.

“Did you just quote Law & Order at me?”

Tony arched his own eyebrows and shot Peter an incredulous look. “Did I— no, kid, that’s an actual legal term.” Peter just shrugged. “Do I look like the kind of guy to watch legal dramas in my free time?”

Peter shot him a cheeky grin and swept his eyes up and down his mentor’s form. “ Well , since you asked…”

“I’m firing you.”

“Objection.”

“That is not how that works, Parker.”

~ ~ ~

May’s POV

May Parker was not a dumb person.

Granted, Peter hadn’t gotten his above average intellect from her— the credit for that went to his parents, on Ben’s side of the family. But she did have common sense. Something both Peter and her late husband seemed to lack (and if that comparison didn’t scare her shitless, the most recent comparison she’d come to did).

She had known it was unusual for Tony Stark to show up in their modest apartment out of the blue and ask for Peter. And she knew her nephew well enough to know that he had not been expecting the arrival at all. She’d played along, given them the benefit of the doubt— perhaps Peter had truly just applied to the internship on a whim and not expected anything of it. That would have been a reasonable thing to assume (more reasonable than the alternative, at least). And perhaps Tony Stark had been feeling generous that day and had chosen to pop in to announce the internship placement himself. He was, after all, known to be an eccentric man. Among other things.

But the oddities kept piling up from there. Peter, constantly sneaking out at night with all the subtlety of a flaming brick. The continued ‘internship,’ where her nephew seemed to be mentored by… Tony Stark himself? May had never questioned it outright, because the paperwork she’d filled out as Peter’s guardian said that he would be working in one of the labs; it never specified that it would be Tony Stark’s personal lab. Peter had either not realized this distinction, or couldn’t hold his excitement back while talking about everything he saw inside of the billionaire’s lab.

Eccentric was one thing, but taking on a personal intern out of the blue was quite another, given his reputation regarding both teamwork and children. Now, don’t get her wrong, if anyone were to deserve such a thing, May was quite sure it was her nephew. He was brilliant, and passionate, and she was sure he’d change the world.

But May Parker also watched the news. And Tony Stark taking on a personal intern, at the same time he famously proposed a modification to the Sokovia Accords in order to ‘sponsor’ Spider-Man… Well. The Accords were publicly available documents, and May had stumbled upon the quite interesting addition of ‘the sponsor must spend weekly time with the enhanced individual they are sponsoring.’

Once she’d made that connection, the rest snapped into place immediately. Peter’s asthma that had mysteriously disappeared, the glasses he no longer needed, the muscles he very poorly tried to hide under the nerdy t-shirts and not-so-baggy sweaters. Really, May was no expert, but she knew muscles like that did not grow overnight. Well, not without enhancements, that was for certain. (And did Peter actually think he had been slick, the night Ned found out? Sneaking in through the window, standing only in his boxers in his room, with a rather suspiciously familiar pool of red-and-blue fabric sitting on the floor and his muscles on full display?) 

The timelines perfectly matched up, too— Peter’s dip in attendance and grades. The sneaking out. Spider-Man’s brand new Stark tech. Peter coming back from the Stark Industries ‘internship trip’ with a bruise from a guy named ‘Steve.’ ( “So. Who was it? Who hit you?” “Some guy.” “What's ‘some guy's’ name?” “Uh, Steve.” ) Steve fucking Rogers. Seriously, Peter?

May briefly, seriously, considered marching her way into Stark Tower and slapping Tony Stark across the face for recruiting her baby boy as one of his pawns. She knew his lawyers would probably pin her up, down, and sideways with every lawsuit imaginable (if she even made it that far), but it would have been worth it. She’d been simmering with rage, and the anger was about to boil over— how could that man take her fifteen year old and put him in this superhero world, be his sponsor for a set of laws that Peter probably knew nothing about, and keep her out of the loop, as his legal guardian? 

Furious didn’t even begin to cover it. It couldn’t even encompass a fraction of what she felt. She waited for Peter to come home, mulling it over, getting angrier and angrier, ready to chew him out for lying to her and getting involved in this superhero world with these laws as a teenager. Ready to demand he put Tony Stark on the goddamn phone so she could give him a piece of her mind. Ready to take that fancy Spider-Man suit, light it on fire, and stick it right up the billionaire’s—

And then… and then Peter had bounded in, fresh out of his little mentorship experience of the week. And he’d been smiling . A real, wide, genuine smile. The one that made his eyes sparkle in that boy-wonder-like way. The one she hadn’t really seen since before her dear Ben died.

And all the anger seemed to abandon her at once.

“Hi, Aunt May!” he chirped, running through the doorway and skidding over to his room, unaware of her internal diatribe. She forced herself to take a deep breath in and exhale out slowly before responding, to make sure none of her residual feelings leaked into her voice.

“Hi, honey,” she called back. “How was school?”

“The usual,” he called back. “We had some sort of English lit pop quiz, but I’d kind of been expecting that. Michelle guessed that it would be today and she’s never been wrong.”

He came back into the kitchen, moving to the fridge to grab a drink. She made a noncommittal hum of agreement and glanced at him as he passed. She tilted her head, spotting a bit of pizza grease smeared on the corner of his mouth that he had clearly missed. Peter wasn’t usually in the habit of stopping to get food on the way back home; he usually just came back and ate leftovers at that point. Which meant that Tony Stark had fed him pizza during their lab time. A far cry from the detached billionaire persona plastered all over the media.

Peter had since finished chatting about school, and was now sipping his juice, making a beeline for the kitchen table to sit down and talk to her while she was finishing up dinner.

“And how was the lab?” she asked nonchalantly, busying herself with the stove. She could feel Peter staring at her curiously— she usually didn’t ask about the lab time. She’d never been an outright hater of Tony Stark, but she certainly wasn’t a fan, either— even before the whole Spider-Man business. And she had no idea what Peter was talking about whenever he did discuss what they’d done.

Regardless, he didn’t comment on her question, instead launching into a project he was working on— some sort of AI, from what she could gather. She hummed and nodded at the right places, stirring the pot of pasta occasionally and watching as his eyes lit up and he gesticulated wildly. Eventually, the pasta was finished— with no fire incidents, surprisingly— and they both settled at the kitchen table, Peter still chattering about his lab work. He paused for a moment to smile at her after he took a bite of the dish.

“This is really good, May,” he praised, shoveling some more food into his mouth.

“I know, it turned out far better than the turkey meatloaf,” she commented wryly, poking at the pasta with her fork.

Before he could respond, she could hear sirens blaring in the distance, and she saw the way his head perked up and tilted towards the window. She pretended to be oblivious as his eyes flicked between her and his room, until he stood up from his seat.

“I’ve got— uh, homework I should do, they assigned us a lot tonight, so I should get a head start on it,” he lied (quite terribly), giving her a tight-lipped smile. May forced herself not to sigh in exasperation, only giving a small smile and head nod in return. She watched as he darted into his room and shut the door behind him with far too much excitement to even remotely pass as him ‘doing homework.’ Sure enough, seconds later, she could hear the telltale sound of his window opening and his windowsill creaking. 

At that, she let out the sigh she’d been holding in and briefly cursed fate, because not only did Peter take after her late husband’s self-sacrificial streak, but he apparently also took on Tony Stark’s.

—

Over the course of the next few days, she tried to give him multiple opportunities to tell her by pretending to be blatantly oblivious, but Peter did not seem to be catching onto the memo ( “You see something like that, you turn and you run the other way,” May said, eyeing him critically as Spider-Man came on the news. Peter had a terrible poker face, and his face went through at least five different emotions before settling on a close-lipped smile. “Yeah, yeah.” he agreed, voice pitching up in that nervous way that it did every time he told a lie. )

Part of her wanted to confront him about it, to ask him outright why he was lying to her. But the bigger part of her wanted him to trust her with that information. It was the same strategy she’d been playing on ever since she discovered that he was sneaking out. She’d initially figured that some teenage rebellion was probably healthy (she’d certainly had her fair share of it). Then again, when she thought of teenage rebellion, she meant sneaking out and getting wasted in some shitty suburban house party, not sneaking out to fight crime in a glorified sweatsuit. Though, once she really thought about it, she really shouldn’t have been that surprised. Either way, she’d wanted Peter to trust her enough with the information to tell her what was going on, rather than her just outright confronting him with the facts. 

She was torn out of her thoughts by the sound of a window sliding open, and she barely suppressed a sigh at the sound of Peter climbing out of his window onto the fire escape outside. For someone trying to keep a secret identity, he was not quiet at all. With a glance at the clock, she saw that it was 8:30 PM, and she resigned herself to staying awake until she heard him creep back into his room around his usual time of midnight. She closed her eyes and dropped her head into her hand, massaging her temples and pushing her glasses to her forehead.

“Maybe I should call Tony Stark,” she mumbled to herself, but dismissed the thought as quickly as it came. Of all the people to teach her nephew some subtlety on the secret identity front, Iron Man was definitely not the one she should rely on. Even Captain America was more subtle than that, and the man was practically a walking American flag. With a sigh, she brought her other hand up to her face and pressed her fingers into the corners of her eyes, preparing herself for a long night.

Parenting a super-teen was a lot harder than she’d thought.

Chapter Text

Peter’s POV

“Hi. I’m Captain America. Whether you’re in the classroom or on the battlefield…” Steve Rogers spoke from the screen of the crappy TV set up in front of the bleachers. Peter barely repressed a sigh; just about the last thing he wanted to be doing at the moment was listening to Captain America in gym class. For the seventy-ninth time.

“Do you know him too?” Ned whispered. Peter shot him a side-eye.

“Yeah, we met.” he admitted, thinking back to the moment during the airport battle that had ended with him getting a plane hangar dropped on top of him. Not the most pleasant of experiences, but Ned didn’t need to know that. “I stole his shield.” he said, trying and failing to hide the glee in his voice at the words. Sure, the entire thing had been a shitshow, but he’d held Captain America’s shield . What other teenager could say that?

“What?” Ned squeaked, jaw dropping wide. Peter’s mouth tilted up in a slight grin.

“Today, my good friend, your gym teacher…” Steve continued, in a deep and distinctly more patriotic-sounding voice than he’d spoken with in Leipzig. Peter wondered if he did that on purpose. “...will be conducting the Captain America Fitness Challenge.”

“Thank you, Captain.” Coach Wilson droned. “I’m pretty sure this guy’s a war criminal now, but whatever. I have to show these videos. It’s required by the state. Let’s do it.” he said, sounding even less enthused at being here than the students were, before blowing his whistle.

Students started filing down the bleachers and scattering around the gym. In wordless agreement, Ned and Peter made their way to the mats to start doing sit-ups as a pair. Peter laid down first on his back on the mat while Ned pressed his hands against the tops of his feet in a show of holding him down. Peter turned his head to the side and saw Michelle plop down on a mat next to them, still engrossed in her book and lifting it up and down in a show of doing something.

“Do Avengers have to pay taxes?” Ned blurted out as Peter started doing his sit-ups.

“Shh!” he hissed in response, glancing around to make sure nobody had heard the question. Not that it was necessarily incriminating, in and of itself, but they didn’t need the attention.

“What does Hulk smell like?” Ned continued. Peter was about to point out the fact that Hulk had been off-the-radar for years at this point, but his best friend kept talking before he had the chance. “I bet he smells nice.”

“Ned, you have to shut up.” he muttered.

Ned did not shut up.

“Is Captain America cool, or is he like a mean, old grandpa?”

Peter considered the merits of flopping on his back and screaming at the ceiling.

“Hey, can I be your guy in the chair?” Ned asked next, and Peter glanced at him, eyebrows furrowed, thrown for a loop at the rapid change in topic.

“What?”

“You know, how there’s a guy with a headset telling the other guy where to go? Like, like if you’re stuck in a burning building, I could tell you where to go. Because there’d be screens around me, and I could— you know, swivel around, and…” he lifted one hand and waved it in the air aimlessly without finishing his sentence. “‘Cause I could be your guy in the chair.”

Peter’s brow furrowed even more at that. “Ned, I don’t need a guy in the chair.” he pointed out in a low mutter. “I have… Suit Lady and Mr. Stark for that.” Man, I still have to come up with a better name for her than ‘suit lady.’

Ned’s shoulders slumped slightly. “True.” he sighed, before perking back up. “I still can’t believe Mr. Stark built you your own AI. That’s so cool .”

Peter’s mouth tilted in a smile. “Yeah, it is,” he agreed. “You can be my honorary guy in the chair, though.” he backtracked, feeling bad that he’d rebutted his best friend’s idea so quickly. Ned looked delighted at the revision and pumped his fist with a whispered ‘yes!’

They were interrupted when Coach Wilson walked by them and spoke: “Looking good, Parker.” he praised, and Peer realized that he was doing the sit-ups far faster than he should have been. In his defense, they felt like nothing to him. He grimaced slightly and slowed down, trying to look like he was struggling at least a little bit. As he did, a voice filtered into his ears from the other side of the room.

“—what about the Spider-Man?” Charles asked.

“It’s just Spider-Man.” Betty said with a half eye-roll. At the name of his alter-ego, Peter’s head whipped around to the bleachers, ears tuning into the conversation almost involuntarily. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ned’s head turn as well.

“Did you guys see the bank security cam on YouTube? He fought off four guys.” Liz said, and there was a certain tone to her voice that had Peter’s eyes widening.

“Oh my God, she’s crushing on Spider-Man.” Betty said, with a kind of delighted glee.

“No way.” Charles said, jaw slightly ajar.

Liz shrugged, and Peter could see the faint blush coating her cheeks even from this distance. “Kind of?” she admitted bashfully.

Wait, what? Peter’s brain green-screened. He exchanged a wide-eyed glance with Ned, because there was no way she just said that—

“Ugh, gross.” Betty said. “He’s probably, like, thirty.”

“You don’t even know what he looks like.” Charles tacked on. “Like, what if he’s… seriously burned?”

“I wouldn’t care.” Liz said easily, with another small shrug. “I would still love him for the person he is on the inside.”

Peter, too distracted by the words themselves ( ohmygod Liz likes Spider-Man, did she just say she would love Spider-Man— ), didn’t realize his Spidey-sense was tingling before it was almost too late to alert him of Ned saying something very, very stupid. (Or maybe it wasn’t even his Spidey-sense; maybe it was just his Ned-sense.)

“Peter knows— mmmph!”   Ned was cut off as Peter violently slapped his hand over his best friend’s mouth, silencing the following words. Regrettably, Ned’s first two words had been loud, and the accompanying sound of Peter’s hand meeting his face at a high velocity was not quiet either. Most of the gym was staring at them now, and Liz’s friends stopped their conversation to look at the duo.

Peter was going to kill Ned. Screw the Accords, screw the laws, screw everything. He was going to do it.

Or, he was going to spontaneously disintegrate. Make a run for it. Screw his secret identity; he’d start climbing the walls just to get out of here. Maybe he’d start crying. Or screaming. Or just melt into a puddle on the floor and bang his head repeatedly against the wood. Wipe everyone’s memory so that they would never remember this horrifying, mortifying moment.

He did none of the above. Instead, he bared his teeth in a grimace of a smile.

“Ignore that.” he said in a strained attempt to make the words cheerful.

Flash, who had been climbing the rope, slid to the ground. “No, let him continue.” he taunted. “What was he going to say, hm? Something about the Stark Internship ?” he said, tone dripping with disdain.

If looks could kill, Ned would be dead right now.

As it was, Peter forced himself to continue smiling. “No.” he said firmly.

Flash cocked his head. “No?” he taunted. “Because what I think Ned over there was about to say is that you know Spider-Man.” he said, putting heavy sarcastic emphasis on the ‘know.’ “Hey, you know what? Maybe you should invite him to Liz’s party. Right?” he asked, glancing over at Liz, who shrugged her shoulders slightly.

“Yeah, I’m having people over tonight. You’re more than welcome to come.” she agreed quietly, and Peter’s brain blanked for a moment.

“You’re having a party?” he asked. And you’re inviting me?

“Yeah, it’s gonna be dope.” Flash interrupted, before Liz had a chance to respond. “You should totally invite your personal friend , Spider-Man.”

Peter ground his teeth together fiercely. “I never said that,” he pointed out, in an impressively calm tone. Not that his verbal opposition had ever mattered to Flash.

“It’s okay.” Liz interjected. “I know Peter’s way too busy for parties anyway, so…”

Bless your heart, Liz . Peter thought, just about to accept the excuse without embarrassing himself even further, when Flash sauntered up to him and (of course) had to ruin the situation.

“Come on.” he wheedled. “He’ll be there. Right, Parker?”

Just then, the bell rang, and Peter wasn’t sure whether he was relieved at the end of the conversation, or horrified at the situation he had now found himself in. As Liz gave him a slight nod and walked off, Peter threw his hands in the air and swiveled to glare at Ned.

“What are you doing ?” he hissed fiercely. He thought they’d had an agreement— sure, saying Peter ‘knew’ Spider-Man wasn’t the same as saying he was Spider-Man, but it was far closer than Peter would like. Especially in front of their entire gym class .

“Dude, I’m trying to help you out.” Ned whispered back, clearly not grasping the gravity of the situation. “Did you not hear her? Liz has a crush on you.”

“Ned, I absolutely cannot show up as Spider-Man at a high school party.” Peter hissed, completely ignoring the remark about Liz— he couldn’t afford to think of that at the moment. He had to be logical here. Ned looked at him, brows furrowed.

“Why not?” he asked, whispering back. Peter just barely held back a groan and dragged his hands down his face.

“First of all, Mr. Stark would kill me , and second of all, if I’m going to try and convince the Accords committee to let me do things when I need to, I have to have a good track record. And on that track record, I really don’t need a headline of ‘dangerous irresponsible enhanced individual seen hanging out at high school party.’” he hissed back.

Ned’s shoulders slumped. “Right,” he muttered. “Sorry. I forgot.”

Peter tilted his head back to the ceiling and took a deep breath, firmly pushing aside all thoughts of “ this is why I didn’t tell you,” because Ned was his best friend and that would be mean. Peter had been overly excited at the start, too; he could hardly blame Ned for a similar reaction. So instead, he blew out the breath in a large sigh and patted him on the shoulder. “It’s alright, man.” he said. “They were going to see us as losers anyways.”

“Well, Liz technically invited you to the party, too.” Ned pointed out. “Maybe you could score some points with her by showing up.” 

Peter considered it. He’d be embarrassing himself no matter what— either he’d show up to the party without Spider-Man, or he wouldn’t show up at all. Both ways would be ditching. He sighed once more. “We’ll see,” he said instead. Ned perked back up, looking excited, and Peter knew he wasn’t getting out of this.

—

They got May to drive them to the party. Well, more accurately, Ned had excitedly blabbered about the party to May, who had proceeded to gang up on Peter with his best friend and encourage him to go. Something about ‘it’ll be good for socializing’ and ‘it’ll be fun.’ Peter sincerely doubted the validity of both of those statements, but Ned had been excited and May had been insistent, and that was a particular combination he had yet to successfully overcome.

As such, he now found himself outside of an upscale suburban house, ears already rattling from the loud music and distinctly regretting his life choices.

“House party in the suburbs.” May said, with a low whistle. “I remember these. Kind of jealous.”

“It’ll be a night to remember.” Ned agreed cheerfully.

Yeah, in all the bad ways. Peter thought morosely, but didn’t say it aloud. There was no way he was getting out of this now.

May laughed and then tilted her head at his best friend. “Ned, some hats wear men. You wear that hat.”

“Yeah, it gives me confidence.” Ned admitted. Peter loved his best friend dearly, but he was certain that saying things like that was not going to get them out of loser-status.

May hummed in agreement, and Peter was hit with a wave of unease as he peered out the window into the house party. He didn’t think it was his Spidey-sense, but everything was really muddled and his common sense was telling him not to go in. He rarely listened to that— hence the swinging around the city in spandex— but right now he felt like both of his senses were in agreement, which was generally a bad sign. He turned back to May. “This is a mistake. Let’s just go home.” his voice was pleading, but he caught the glint in May’s eye and knew she was not letting him out of this.

“Peter.” she said, and he knew from her tone that he was not going to like the next words out of her mouth. “I know it’s really hard trying to fit in with all the changes your body’s going through. It’s flowering now.”

May, you have got to be fucking kidding me . He thought, and saw the way her eyes gleamed, like she knew exactly what she was doing.

“Uh-huh.” he said, staring her down as Ned was oblivious in the backseat.

Please drop this . He begged with his eyes.

Not a chance . May replied with her facial expression, and he wanted to drop his head against the dashboard as she turned to Ned.

“He’s so stressed out lately.” she said sympathetically, feigning innocence, but Peter knew exactly what she was doing. If he chickened out of this, she would make the car ride back even more awkward than going to the party would have been. Peter knew this, because it was a strategy she’d used to stop him from chickening out of a lot of social events during his childhood. Effective, but still. Rude.

Ned, ever oblivious to May’s tactics, chimed in. “What helps with stress is going to a party. We should go to the party.”

Peter saw May open her mouth, and decided that he’d rather get out of the car than hear whatever other embarrassing words his aunt could string together.

“Yep, let’s do it.” he said, scrambling out. “I’m gonna go.” He heard Ned start to follow him, just as May called after them.

“Peter.”

He turned around, bending down to peer at her through the open window. Her facial expression softened into something more honest, and she was no longer playing the game.

“Have fun, okay?” she said gently. If he asked her right now to let him get back into the car and drive away, he knew she would listen with no additional questions or teasing, but he didn’t. Instead, he nodded.

“I’ll try.” he promised, and got a smile for his efforts.

“Okay.” she responded, and Peter gave a small smile in return before turning towards the house.

“Bye, May!” Ned called out, waving as she drove off— still oblivious to the subtext of the interaction May and Peter had just had.

Both of them started up the hill towards the doorway, and Ned gaped at the large windows and clearly expensive property. “Dude, this is insane.” he whispered, and Peter hummed in agreement. His enhanced senses were not about to have a good time, but he would try to tough it out for the sake of a ‘normal’ high school experience.

They pushed the door to the house open and stepped inside, and Peter was immediately assaulted by the vibrations of the music and the sharp smell of spilled alcohol. He glanced around and found that mostly everyone was unfamiliar to him; likely a lot of the senior class, some juniors as well. Not too many freshmen and sophomores. Flash was running the DJ station— which, yeah, that explained the ear-shattering bad music. Peter didn’t get the chance to observe much else before his eyes landed on a familiar but completely unexpected face— Michelle.

“Can’t believe you guys are at this lame party.” she said, narrowing her eyes slightly at him when she caught them looking at her. Peter blinked for a moment as he took in her appearance— was she weaning a dress ? He’d never seen her in anything but jeans before. His brain went blank— for what reason, he had no idea— and he didn’t even process her statement before Ned was responding.

“But you’re here too.” Ned pointed out. Michelle tilted her head and finished doing something with her hands— Peter realized that she was putting jam on… where did she get a piece of toast from?

“Am I?” she responded cooly, not giving Peter a chance to collect his thoughts for a moment before she was taking a bite of the bread and walking off.

Peter had no time to dwell on the weird feelings he’d just experienced when he heard Liz’s voice from the other end of the hallway and whipped his attention over to her.

“Oh, my gosh.” she said with a wide smile. “Hey, guys. Cool hat, Ned.”

“Hi, Liz.” Ned said, and Peter felt his eyes dart over to the side of his face, completely unsubtly.

“Hi, Liz.” Peter said, and his voice came out breathy. He couldn’t really tell whether that was because Liz was actually talking to him, or whether he was still trying to find his voice after that weird not-conversation with Michelle, or whether his senses were just making him feel crazy.

“I’m so happy you guys came.” Liz said, still smiling. “There’s pizza and drinks. Help yourself.”

Peter gaped slightly. Act normal, Peter . He berated himself. Normal. Right. He could do that. Except that his ‘normal’ was swinging around New York City fighting crime in sentient spandex.

“What a… great party.” he settled on instead, because his other option was ‘ I like pizza’ and that seemed to be the second best option here.

Liz ducked her head slightly. “Thanks.” she said, and Peter really wished his neurons hadn’t taken this moment to stop functioning as a cohesive unit—

The sound of glass shattering caused all three of them to whip their heads to the left.

“Oh, I… My parents will kill me if anything’s broken. I gotta—” Liz said, jerking a thumb in the direction of the sound.

“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry.” he said, waving her off. She smiled again before nodding and moving.

“Have fun.” she said.

“Bye.” Ned said with a small wave.

“Bye.” Liz called back, and her voice was fainter as she moved away.

Peter opened his mouth to say his own goodbye but shut it again and glanced around instead. His Spidey-sense had started tingling again, though he couldn’t really tell from what. He frowned slightly, but before he could tell Ned, a familiar voice piped through the microphones.

“Penis Parker, what’s up?” Flash yelled, playing an accompanying honking sound. Peter suppressed a sigh. And here he thought he’d manage to escape Flash if he stayed out of sight. “So, where’s your pal Spider-Man?” Flash taunted, continuing. “Let me guess. In Canada with your imaginary girlfriend?”

Peter didn’t bother trying to retort that he’d never promised Spider-Man’s appearance. He knew it wouldn’t matter anyways.

“That’s not Spider-Man. That’s just Ned in a red shirt.” Flash continued, and people laughed around them. Ned shifted uneasily beside him, but Peter wasn’t even focused on his bully anymore. His Spidey-sense was amping up, still warning him of something— something other than Flash. He frowned more, turning his gaze to the large windows of the house. His feet started moving of their own accord, and he made his way to one of the more secluded corners of the house, peering out of the window and scanning the horizon. He barely registered Ned following him and whispering ‘Peter? What’s wrong?’ or Flash’s voice in the background. Something was going to happen, something—

A flash of blue lit up the horizon. Peter’s back straightened. It was gone in a moment, but he knew he’d seen it.

“Woah, what was that?” Ned asked, directly in his ear, and Peter jumped slightly, on edge from his Spidey-senses thrumming.

“I don’t know,” he muttered. “But I have to go check it out.” He turned towards the doorway of the house, already preparing to leave in order to make his way towards the explosion. He’d worn his suit underneath his clothes— usually he just brought it along in his backpack for emergencies, but he figured bringing a backpack to a party would be more suspicious than just wearing it under his jeans. He was glad, now, for his past paranoia.

Before he could leave, Ned grabbed his shoulder. “ Dude ,” he hissed. “We just got here!” he waved his hand in the direction Liz had wandered off to. “You’re just going to ditch?”

Peter shook his hand off and leaned in closer. “Ned, there have been alien weapons going around lately. One of them took out Delmar’s. That explosion looked like one of them— I have to figure out who’s distributing them, and my sixth sense is tingling. Something dangerous is going down.”

“Your— what?” Ned asked, brow furrowing, and Peter shook his head.

“I’ll explain later. I have to go now. Tell Liz I’m sorry.” he said, not waiting for a response before darting towards the doorway and slipping out easily. Breaking out in a sprint, he hopped onto a nearby roof and stripped his shirt and pants off, yanking his mask over his face before taking off in the direction he’d seen the explosion occur.

He reached the location within a few minutes, after running through one too many golf courses for his liking (he hated trying to swing through suburbia). As he approached, he heard hushed talking, and the delighted shouts and laughter of a man. 

You’d think they’d try to be a little bit quieter if they’re doing illegal activities . Peter thought wryly, creeping up the side of a bridge and peering over the edge. Below, there was a small clearing with a discarded car and a variety of metal scraps. The blue explosion from earlier had clearly come from one of the weapons that was being tested; as he watched, one of the men gathered shot another energy pulse at the car, causing it to blow up in a loud explosion. He hooted and laughed delightedly as the other two men cringed away from the blast.

“Now, this is crafted from a reclaimed sub-Ultron arm straight from Sokovia.” the loud guy said, sounding smug before passing the weapon over to another, quieter man. “Here. You try.”

“Man, I wanted something low-key. Why are you trying to upsell me, man?” the presumed buyer complained, voice coming out with a Brooklyn twang as he took the weapon warily. Peter crawled along the side of the bridge, watching the interaction go down.

“Okay, okay.” the first guy muttered, sounding a bit off-put at the other guy’s disapproval. “I got what you need, alright? I got tons of great stuff here. One sec.” He scuffled up to his van and rummaged around inside. Peter narrowed his eyes and spotted far too many alien weapons and machinery in the trunk for his liking. “I got black hole grenades, Chitauri railguns…” the seller called out, back still turned to the other two, rummaging around in the bins.

“You’re letting off shots in public now?” his partner asked gruffly, glaring disapprovingly at his back. “Hurry up.” He then turned to the buyer. “Look, times are changing. We’re the only ones selling these high tech weapons.”

“Huh. This must be where the ATM robbers got their stuff.” Peter murmured, half to himself and half to his new AI, who made a humming sound in assent.

“I need something to stick somebody up.” the buyer said, holding his hands up placatingly. “I’m not tryin’ to… shoot them back in time.” he gesticulated wildly.

“I got anti-grav climbers.” the first guy called out, still rummaging in the truck. At that, the buyer perked up.

“Yo, climbers?”

Suddenly, Peter heard a painfully familiar ringtone; one that could only have come from his own phone, from a certain Ned Leeds. Peter highly regretted bringing his phone along with him now.

The men below him were instantly on-guard, looking around wildly. Which was a fair reaction; Peter might respond the same if he suddenly heard random yodeling in the middle of his illegal weapons deal. Well, if he were an illegal weapons dealer, that is.

“Okay, what the hell was that?” one of the sellers asked. Peter’s phone didn’t take the cue to shut up, because it kept ringing. Ned really had some terrible timing. They were going to have to have a talk about that.

Evidently, one of the sellers was a paranoid and not-very-friendly guy, because he turned his gun on the buyer. “Did you set us up?” he snarled.

“Woah, hey, man.” the buyer yelped, raising his hands. “I didn’t do nothin’.”

The seller was looking a little too trigger-happy for Peter’s liking, and he wasn’t about to let someone get shot in front of him because his phone had gone off. He flipped off the wall out of his hiding spot and landed on the ground.

“Hey!” he yelled, and all of their gazes snapped to him. “Hey, come on. If you’re gonna shoot at somebody, shoot at me.”

“Alright.” the weapons dealer leered readily, turning the gun on him.

Okay, maybe not his best plan.

Peter shot a web at the gun and yanked it towards him before charging. The man shoved his hand into some sort of gauntlet and used it to punch Peter, sending him flying backwards before he could adjust his trajectory. He let out an oomph as his back made contact with a concrete pillar, and he heard a crack . Whether that was the concrete or his ribs, he couldn’t tell.

“What the hell was that?” he groaned, pushing himself up from the ground as the weapons dealers clambered into their truck and started to drive off.

“That was a high-energy weapon that emits strong vibrational waves. It appears to be custom made, as I have no record of such weapons in my database.” his new AI piped up helpfully.

“Yeah, I got that.” Peter groaned again as he fully pushed himself up. That crack had definitely come from his ribs.

Scrambling to his feet, Peter broke out in a sprint after the truck, shooting a web to attach to the still-open back door. He hadn’t exactly thought his plan through, because before he could plant his feet on the ground, the truck’s momentum had pulled him forward, dragging him along the asphalt.

“Agh.” Peter let out a grunt as he slammed into a trash can. Adjusting himself, he shot a second strand of webbing at the van, trying to pull himself to his feet like he was in some strange version of waterskiing.

“We gotta call him.” the guy driving the truck said. Call him? Who’s him? Peter wondered, but didn’t have time to dwell on it before the other guy was aiming another weapon at him from the back of the open van.

“Nah.” he said, and fired another burst of energy. Peter’s Spidey-sense spiked, and he dodged as best he could. Luckily, it missed him, hitting one of the swinging van doors instead.

“Did you just do it again ?” the man driving yelled.

“Shut up.” the partner ground out, firing up the weapon once more.

“I’m calling him.” the driver said firmly. Peter couldn’t spare time to think about that ominous statement, given that he was still being dragged along asphalt in a rather unpleasant manner.

“Ouch, my butt.” he yelped as he was pulled along a particularly rough patch. The guy shot even more energy blasts at him, and one of them hit his second web, leaving him with a single strand. Peter wavered slightly at the change, and just as he was preparing himself to be hit by another blast, the car hit a road bump, causing everything to wobble violently. 

The man was thrown off-balance, and he blasted a hole in the side of the van by accident before dropping his weapon on the road. Peter didn’t have time to try and pick it up before the driver was making a sharp left, causing him to slam into the side of a parked car. And then into a line of garbage bins. And then a solid brick pillar. A painfully solid brick pillar.

“Oomph .” Peter let out an entire lungful of air and heard his web snap. He didn’t have time to think before he was getting to his feet again and firing another web. It made contact with the van door— which evidently had had enough of this situation, because it broke off, clattering to the ground and leaving Peter stuck in the middle of the road. He threw up his arms in exasperation.

“Great.” he muttered, looking around. He could run after the van, but he was really getting tired of getting fired at by the energy pulses, and he also didn’t particularly want to be dragged around like a ragdoll again. “Guess I’m gonna have to take a shortcut.”

He started sprinting down the sidewalk, jumping over a tall metal grate and then sliding over the top of a parked car.

“Hey, guys. Good game. Have fun.” he called as he ran past two men playing ping pong in their garage. He heard their exclamations of confusion behind him, but didn’t have time to process their calls before he was leaping into another yard. A golden retriever bounded up to him, barking excitedly and trying to lick him.

“Hey, buddy.” Peter said, delightedly running a quick hand over the dog’s head. “Sorry, no time to play, supervillains to catch.” he rushed out, before grabbing a nearby tennis ball with his webs and throwing it across the yard. He was pretty sure it went far further than he’d intended, given his enhanced strength, but it did the job, and he swung away while the golden retriever was occupied.

Swinging from the trees, Peter felt as his web snagged on a poorly constructed treehouse, and it started to give way beneath his weight and momentum. Crap. he thought, just as it slipped and caused him to careen onto the rooftop of a shed.

Turns out, the shed was also not particularly structurally stable, because it collapsed under his weight. Peter let out a (very dignified and manly) yelp, before pushing his way through the front door and slamming through the wooden fence right in front of it.

“Hey, Suit Lady, please make note of all of these locations so I can come back and try and fix this later.” he panted as he ran through another yard.

“Noted, Peter.” the AI responded. “Would you like me to call Mr. Stark?”

Peter got tangled in a kid’s soccer net and fell forward through a neighboring hedge, face-planting into yet another yard.

“ No, do not call Mr. Stark.” he half-yelled as he ripped himself free. “I’ve got this handled.” he said firmly, starting to run again and waving at a man barbecuing and staring at Peter, wide-eyed. “Smells really good!” he called with a thumbs-up.

“If you insist, Peter.” the AI said, and her tone was smooth and sweet but sounded skeptical. “This does not appear to be the optimal environment for your web-swinging.”

“Yeah, I got that part, but I’m fine—” Peter started, just as he swung straight into a line of twinkling fairy lights and promptly refuted his own statement, getting tangled in the wires and falling to the ground.

“Ugh.” Peter groaned at the impact, before realizing he had company. “Oh, hey, guys.” he said, going for a smile at the two little girls staring at him, wide-eyed. He was pretty sure he was at least a little bit concussed, and he blinked his eyes rapidly, trying to fix the spinning in his vision.

The little girls screamed.

Peter screamed back.

Both scrambled to get away from each other in tandem, Peter sprinting from the yard and back onto the rooftops. He caught sight of the van again, racing down the street at a speed that definitely broke the neighborhood limit, smoke billowing out of the back.

“Almost got you.” Peter panted as he hopped from roof to roof, trying to get level with the van. Pieces of roof tiling skidded and ripped off beneath his feet at the speed he was going, and he winced slightly with every step. I really hope these people have superhero-related insurance . He thought wearily. 

“Come on, come on.” he muttered, gaining on the vehicle. “You thought you got away from me, huh?” he asked, panting even more. Just a few more feet… “I got you… right… where… I want you.” He finally got level with the car, and with one big push off the roof, Peter leapt for it, arms outstretched to cling to the vehicle.

“Surprise!” Peter shouted, just as his Spidey-sense spiked violently. Unfortunately for him, he was already midair, with no way to dodge or avoid as giant metal claws latched around his leg.

Surprise, indeed.

“What the hell?” Peter shouted, twisting in the grasp of… a giant flying bird?

This is so not how I envisioned my evening going.

He wrestled to pull himself free from the giant bird-guy’s grasp, and piercing, glowing green eyes glared down at him.

“Ohhhh-kay, that’s fucking creepy.” Peter muttered to himself. They started to fly even higher, and Peter panicked ever-so-slightly, because they were in the middle of suburbia with no buildings for him to use his webs on if the other man decided to drop him.

Before Peter could make a decision of whether he’d rather die via bird-guy-claws or from plummeting to his death, he heard a beeping sound coming from his suit.

“Altitude warning.” Suit Lady said. “Deploying parachute.”

What the—

He barely had time to process before an honest-to-god parachute was unfolding from his back. The sudden air resistance ripped him from the bird-man’s claws, which would have been a good thing— except that now Peter was wrapped completely in fabric, plummeting from unknown heights, with no way to stop himself.

He mentally prepared himself to become a flattened human-spider-pancake on the ground (as much as one could during the few seconds of free-fall). Instead, his back hit freezing cold water, and he didn’t have time to feel any sense of relief before the cold stole his breath away, and he was sinking deeper into the dark, quiet water. He thrashed, trying to tear free of the fabric billowing around him, but he couldn’t find a way out, and his lungs were spasming from the lack of oxygen. He knew it was only a matter of a few seconds before he took an involuntary breath in and started drowning.

Drowning in a lake tangled in my own parachute. Not the way I thought Spider-Man would go out. Peter thought deliriously, just as the darkness swept in.

—

Tony’s POV

Tony dove beneath the surface of the water, repulsors going full blast, hoping that he wasn’t too late—

His eyes caught on the unmoving figure tangled in fabric sinking in the water, and his breath froze in his chest. No, come on, please, don’t let him be—

He grabbed Peter under his arms and rocketed towards the surface of the lake, breaking free and shooting towards the dry ground on the other side. He expected to have to perform chest compressions or resuscitation, mind going a mile a minute, until he heard a wet cough and the teenager in his arms moved, lifting his head. Tony’s shoulders slumped inside the suit, and the jaws clamped tight around his chest loosened, letting him breathe for the first time since getting the altitude notification.

“Huh?” Peter mumbled in waterlogged confusion, and it was probably the single most relieving thing Tony had ever heard him say. “Oh, hey.” he said, when he realized who exactly was carrying him. At the realization that the kid was not, in fact, dead or dying, Tony’s momentary relief was washed away by a bout of righteous anger.

He spotted a playground on one of the shores of the lake and less-than-graciously dropped Peter on the jungle gym, watching as he pulled his waterlogged mask off. Tony flipped his faceplate up and hovered in front of him, frowning at the sight.

“Christ, kid, I gave you access to your AI so that you’d call me for these types of things.” Tony snapped before Peter even had a chance to open his mouth, disapproving glare piercing through the teen as he shivered on the jungle gym. Because really ? Peter would call him over patrols about churros, but not before he’d been dropped from the sky from however many hundreds of feet?

“I’m sorry, Mr. Stark.” Peter said morosely, shivering like a sad wet rat. “I thought I had it handled, really. I didn’t want to bother you.”

Tony sighed, bringing up his fingers to pinch the bridge of his nose. His heart rate was only now coming back to a normal rhythm— he really did not appreciate getting an altitude warning for the Spider-Man suit at nine fucking PM on a Friday. Nor the follow-up parachute deployment notification. Nor the water detection notification after that. Really, the kid was trying to give him a heart attack. “What happened?” he asked, moving his gaze back towards Peter, who started recounting the series of events.

“And then he just, like, swooped down like a monster and he picked me up and he took me up, like, a thousand feet and just— dropped me.” Peter explained, going through the motions with his hands as if Tony couldn’t visualize the scene in excruciating detail without it. “Anyways, how’d you know to find me? Did you put a tracker in my suit or something?”

“I put everything in your suit. Including this heater.” Tony said, distinctly ignoring the real question at hand and electing to ignore the three consecutive heart attacks the kid had given him. It seemed to work, because Peter made an ooh-ing sound at the warmth emanating from the suit.

“Oh, that’s way better, thanks Mr. Stark.” Peter said earnestly, and Tony sighed.

“Forget the vulture guy, please.” Tony said imploringly, and Peter looked at him incredulously.

“What! Why?” he asked, and Tony deeply resisted the urge to snap back ‘because I said so.’ (Like his dad.) Inhaling deeply, he paused, and then exhaled slowly. Pepper would be proud of him for using his stress management techniques. God knows the kid put him through it.

“Because the Accords are iffy about that kind of stuff.” Tony said instead, staring directly at the teen, hoping he understood. “Right now you’re set with protecting the little guy, and you have temporary allowance regarding immediate end-of-world events. This doesn’t fall into either category. This is pushing the borders. And things get dangerous when you push borders. Politicians get upset, and laws get stricter.”

Peter huffed. “But then who’s going to look into this?” he asked, shoulders slumping in defeat. “I can’t just let it go.”

Tony hesitated. This was probably a terrible offer that he would regret later, but for now, it seemed like it would keep the kid out of trouble. “Bring it to me.” he said, and Peter raised his eyes to look at him again. “Anything you find, tell me about it, and I’ll see what I can do.”

Peter hesitated, but he nodded, and Tony felt some of the tension bleed out of his shoulders. He didn’t tell him that there was probably nothing Tony could do— this sort of thing was too low-level for the Avengers, or Iron Man. There were just too many stories like it; the committee would get on his ass about infringing on the police’s territory if he were to get involved personally. But he also didn’t want the kid gallivanting off to who-knows-where investigating alien weapons. This seemed like a happy medium.

“Boss, the investors board from India is calling back. They do not seem happy.” FRIDAY informed him, and Tony winced as he remembered abruptly hanging up on the meeting when he got the notification from the Spider-Man suit. Peter’s eyes went wide at her words, and Tony realized he probably heard her too, given his super-hearing.

“Tell them I’ll call them back soon.” he grumbled, already annoyed at the thought. He had originally planned to actually be in India for the Stark Industries meeting, but because of all the Accords mess they had decided to do the meeting virtually. Good thing, too, or the kid would probably be toast at the moment. He glanced back at Peter with a sigh. “Just— stay close to the ground, alright?” he said, turning to leave before a thought occurred to him. “Y’know, it’s never too early to start thinking about college. I got some pull at MIT.” he offered. Maybe college would keep Peter out of trouble more than high school would. (Regrettably, he doubted it.)

“No, I don’t need to go to col—”

“Kid, I swear if the next words out of your mouth are ‘I don’t need to go to college,’ I’m firing you. No personal intern of mine isn’t getting a college education.” he said wryly, watching as Peter’s jaw snapped shut.

“Technically, nobody knows I’m your personal intern.” Peter muttered, somewhat mutinous, and Tony would have laughed if he weren’t still coming down from the adrenaline rush of worry and still fending off the calls from the investors in India. God, Pepper was going to be so mad at him.

“Not the time, Parker.” he said sharply, before closing his faceplate and blasting off. “I’ll see you Tuesday.”

When he was back in the sky, he heaved a deep sigh; he would have run his hands over his face if he had the capability. (Dammit, why did he already feel bad for snapping—) 

“FRI, make sure the kid gets home okay.” he said tiredly. “And reconnect me to the call with the investors.”

“On it, Boss.”

—

Peter’s POV

Peter started the long trek back to Liz’s house, still soaking wet and somewhat shivering even after the suit’s heaters took their effect. He’d shed his clothes somewhere near the suburban house, and he couldn’t just swing back home because May was picking him and Ned up. Admittedly, he could just start swinging back in the direction he’d come from instead of walking, but he was sulking just a bit.

“Stay close to the ground.” Peter muttered, kicking a patch of grass as he walked through one of the yards he’d been dragged through. “What is he talking about?” Also, college? Really? He was a sophomore, he had at least a year to think about that whole mess. (He’d distinctly avoided thinking about it until this point, not wanting to dwell on what would happen to Spider-Man, especially if he went to college out of state.)

Really, he just felt kind of bad that Mr. Stark had to come all the way out here to stop him from drowning in a lake. He was Spider-Man . He should have been on guard the whole time— even though he hadn’t been expecting a giant bird to come swoop in and grab him out of the sky like he was an actual spider. He hoped his mentor’s business meeting hadn’t been too inconvenienced by him almost drowning. It wasn’t so much that he was annoyed at Mr. Stark, really— he was just annoyed at himself, for not executing things properly and for making a fool out of himself.

His thoughts were cut short when he saw a faint purple light glowing from up ahead, where there was a torn up patch of grass from the high-speed car chase earlier. Peter moved towards it and crouched down, tilting his head. In the dirt, there was part of a weapon— some kind of gun, torn in half, with a purple power-source-looking thing embedded in the center. Hesitantly, he poked at it and flipped it over. When it didn’t explode, he lifted it up and peered more closely at the wiring.

Just then, his phone rang with Ned’s telltale ringtone, and Peter lifted his phone to his ear without even glancing at the screen (he was so glad that Stark Phones were waterproof). 

“Hey, man, what’s up? I’m on my way back.” he greeted.

“Actually, I was calling to say maybe you shouldn’t come back in. We should just call May and get a ride home. Listen to this.” Ned said, before removing it from his ear. Through the speaker, Peter could hear the faint chanting voice of Flash, and he barely suppressed a sigh.

“When I say ‘penis,’ you say ‘Parker.’ Penis!”  “ Parker !”  “Penis!”  “ Parker !”

The sound was muffled again as Ned brought the phone back to his ear. “Sorry, Peter. I guess we’re still losers.”

Peter didn’t bother to point out that he’d already known this would be the outcome— he’d never planned to actually show up as Spider-Man to the party. He really only came because he hoped to see Liz; though evidently, even that didn’t play out as planned. At that, he did sigh. “Yeah, sorry Ned. I’ll call May and tell her we’re ready to leave.”

At Ned’s sound of assent, Peter hung up the phone and carefully lifted the weapon up fully, thinking of his options.

He knew Mr. Stark had specifically told him to bring him any alien-related stuff, but Peter couldn’t resist the urge to poke around with it first. He was a science nerd, alright? And it was alien technology. Plus, Mr. Stark had been kind of annoyed just now, so maybe it was better to wait until Tuesday until he cooled off anyways. Peter didn’t want to call him back immediately— he’d be busy with the investors and didn’t need Peter interrupting him for a second time that evening. And if he was going to bother dragging it home, he may as well just keep it until lab time on Tuesday.

It was only a few days, what could go wrong?

—

Peter didn’t actually get the opportunity to see or talk to Ned until Monday morning rolled around and they were back in shop class together. May had picked them both up from the party, not commenting on Peter’s somewhat damp clothing, and had dropped Ned at his place on the way back to their apartment. They’d texted over the weekend, but Peter didn’t want to risk talking about illegal alien weapons deals over their text messages, so he refrained until class. He’d been the first one there that morning, and had started fiddling with the weapon on one of the tables tucked into the very back corner while he waited for his best friend.

“So, you going to explain what was so important that you bailed on Friday?” Ned asked, joining him at the table and tossing his backpack on the floor.

“Something came up.” Peter said, gesturing at the table with the partially-disassembled weapon strewn on it. “I told you there was something going down. I picked up one of their weapons parts on the way back.” He left out the part where he’d been yelled at by Mr. Stark while sitting on a jungle gym after almost drowning in a lake.

Ned glanced down at the weapon and the glowing purple piece embedded in it, any mild annoyance immediately swept away. “Woah, what is that?”

Peter grunted slightly, lodging a screwdriver in one of the edges, trying to pop the purple alien part out. “I dunno, but some guy tried to vaporize me with it.”

“Seriously?” Ned asked, voice incredulous and squeaky.

“Yeah.” Peter replied, squinting at the machine as the glowy part refused to even budge.

“Awesome.” Ned breathed out, and Peter shot him a look with his eyebrows raised. Seriously, Ned?

“I mean, not awesome.” he rapidly backtracked. “Totally uncool of that guy. So scary.”

Peter gave Ned another look before poking at the weapon half-heartedly with the screwdriver— none of his prior efforts had made any progress at removing it. “Anyways, look— I think it’s a power source.”

Ned hummed and squinted closer at it, tilting his head and pointing a finger towards the wires. “Yeah, but it’s connected to all these microprocessors.” His finger moved towards a small, flat plate. “That’s an inductive charging plate. I use one of those to charge my toothbrush.” he said with a half-grin.

“Whoever’s making these weapons is obviously combining alien tech with ours.” Peter agreed, bending his knees to get closer to the table and picking up a hammer. If he could just dislodge the glowy part from the rest of it…

“That is literally the coolest sentence anyone has ever said. I just want to thank you for letting me be part of your journey into this amazing—” Ned continued rambling, though Peter wasn’t really listening. He tilted his head slightly before bringing the hammer down on the edge of the glowy power source, dislodging it from all of the wiring. It made a loud sound and a thrumming pulse, knocking over all of the tools and rattling the table. Both Peter and Ned ducked simultaneously, glancing furtively at their teacher in case they were about to be yelled at.

“Keep your fingers clear of the blades.” Mr. Hapgood called out, not even glancing up from his book. The students around them were similarly occupied with their own projects; this wasn’t the first or the last time Peter and Ned had been disruptive.

The duo exchanged wary glances at the brief pulse of power and the now-free glowy purple core. Peter was suddenly reminded of the fact that it was still an alien weapon, and he winced slightly.

Okay, maybe taking it to Mr. Stark was the better idea.

Chapter Text

Tony’s POV

Peter entered the lab somewhat warily on Tuesday, like he wasn’t sure that Tony wasn’t still annoyed at him for the lake incident. Tony tried to ignore the unpleasant twisting feeling in his chest at the kid’s hesitance, and any potential residual annoyance he had at the situation was firmly stomped out.

“Hey, kid.” he greeted casually, like it was any other day. Peter’s shoulders immediately relaxed, and Tony felt the strange tension wrapped around his chest decompress just a bit. He resisted the urge to rub his ribcage at the arc reactor scar— the old pain flared up sometimes, he was sure this was just some sort of side effect.

“Hi Mr. Stark.” Peter greeted as he moved to go over to his own desk— presumably to work on his suit or web-shooters, as he usually did. Tony beckoned him over to his own desk instead, and Peter blinked for a moment in surprise before shuffling his way over.

“We’re working on some of FRI’s code today— she has a minor bump in her code that I want to smooth out. Figured you might want to see some of the inner workings while I’m at it.” Tony said, watching as Peter’s eyes lit up excitedly. Tony hadn’t even really been planning to work on FRIDAY until about thirty seconds ago, but it was the only thing he could think of that was new to teach the kid about; they’d already gone over several parts of his Iron Man suits, and Peter had basically taken over the production and adjustments of his Spider-Man suit. Peter was still moving around the lab slightly hesitantly, and Tony figured some good old-fashioned nerd science was the best way to get him rambling again. 

“Really?” Peter asked, a grin stretching across his features. Bingo . Tony thought, giving a hum in agreement. Wordlessly, he gestured nonchalantly to the small stool next to his desk, and Peter hurried over and plopped down on it.

Tony pulled up a hologram of FRIDAY’s code and swiped a screen over to Peter. “How familiar are you with her base code?”

“Well, coding is more Ned’s thing, but I researched a bit about neural networks while I was still in the robotics club, when they had us build our own robots.”

Tony huffed in mild amusement. “FRI is a bit more complicated than the average Roomba, but that’s the idea.”

“A bit, Boss?” FRIDAY chose this moment to interject, tone dry. “A Roomba wouldn’t be able to tell you that Mr. Parker has something volatile in his backpack that should likely be removed from the lab environment before anything else is done.”

Tony took that moment to arch an eyebrow at Peter, who immediately looked somewhat flustered, mumbling an ‘ I forgot about that’ under his breath. Were it anyone else, Tony would have probably immediately suspected some sort of weapon or assassination attempt and immediately reached for his gauntlet to protect himself— but this was Peter.

“Out with it, underoos.” he said, beckoning with his hand. Peter sighed, reaching for the bag like he’d been avoiding bringing the topic up.

“Well, I know you said to bring you any alien stuff. I found—” Peter rummaged around in his backpack, and Tony should have considered those words in and of themselves as a warning. But he didn’t, not until Peter pulled an honest-to-god Chitauri energy core from the tattered bag.

Suddenly Tony was very glad that Peter didn’t usually check in through the normal security entrance— the one with the X-rays. That would have only ended in disaster.

Tony blinked, staring at the glowing purple core that Peter held loosely in one hand. “—this glowy thingy in one of their weapons.” the kid finished, waiting patiently for Tony’s response.

“Peter.” he said flatly. “That is an explosive Chitauri energy core.”

Peter blinked, and nearly dropped the core in his shock (which, alright, not Tony’s wisest delivery). “A what?” he squeaked. “I’ve been carrying a bomb ?”

“Gimme that.” Tony said, and plucked it out of the kid’s hands. Peter sputtered at the casual movement, reaching his hands out warily as if he hadn’t just been carrying it around in his backpack.

“Mr. Stark—” he protested. Tony waved off his concern.

“Relax, kid, it takes radiation to activate its explosive properties.” he said, and Peter somewhat loosened up, though he shot his mentor a poor attempt at a glare at the words.

“You could have led with that.” he grumbled, and Tony huffed out a laugh.

“Says the one who was carrying it in his backpack without knowing what it was.”

“I wanted to run some tests.” Peter defended himself, and Tony arched an eyebrow disbelievingly at him.

“ Tests ?” he asked skeptically. “And what would those be?”

“Uh… I tried poking it with a screwdriver?” Peter said, and Tony ran a hand down his face. Jesus christ. This kid.

“You tried poking a Chitauri energy core with a screwdriver ?” he asked, really hoping he heard that wrong. Peter’s cheeks flushed and the tips of his ears turned red.

“I didn’t know it was an alien energy core!” he defended himself, voice squeaking again slightly. Tony shot him an unimpressed look.

“Kid, rule of thumb: when you don’t know what something is, don’t poke it with sharp objects. Especially if it’s glowing .” he said, hardly believing he actually had to have this conversation. “That’s like Lab Safety 101.” Peter’s eyebrows furrowed.

“ You poke things all the time.” he said, and Tony scowled slightly and pointed at him.

“Do as I say, not as I do, Parker.” he turned back to the core before Peter had a chance to argue more. He promptly disregarded his own rule, poking at the core with his index finger and ignoring the affronted squawk from Peter behind him. Technically he wasn’t disregarding his own rule, since he knew what it was.

FRIDAY interjected, “Might I suggest placing the core in a containment unit, Boss? We do have procedures for a reason.”

Tony rolled his eyes but complied, walking over to one of the walls of the lab that had reinforced drawers built into it and placing the core inside. “Happy now, FRIDAY?”

“Immensely, Boss.” she responded dryly, and he rolled his eyes ever-so-slightly, turning back to Peter and clapping his hands together.

“Anyways. Where were we before you decided to bring a bomb into my lab?”

“I didn’t know it was a bomb .” Peter said. “Now you’re just trying to make me look bad.”

“We already established that, underoos.” Tony said, amused. “And hardly. You do that well enough on your own.”

Peter grumbled a bit at that but didn’t actually seem too offended by the accusation.

They fell into their usual rhythm after that, going back to FRIDAY’s code as promised. All jokes aside, Tony was a little bit surprised that Peter had actually listened to him, and brought the Chitauri energy core to him instead of keeping it. 

It wasn’t that Tony thought that Peter would purposefully get a kick out of doing the exact opposite of what Tony told him to do, but the teenager was curious by nature and wanted to prove his capabilities to some extent. Not a good combination for listening to authority figures— though Tony hoped that this particular incident meant that Peter trusted him enough to come to him for help. He couldn’t decipher why that fact felt so important to him, but he elected to ignore it, turning back to his work.

“Mr. Parker, Mr. Hogan is waiting for you downstairs.” FRIDAY interjected at some point a few hours later, speaking to Peter. The kid in question scuffled over to pick up his bag, slinging it over his shoulder and heading for the doorway in a semblance of their usual routine. Today, however, he hesitated slightly at the threshold of the room instead of hurrying out with his usual gusto. (Tony thought it was amusing that even after all this time, Peter still didn’t want to inconvenience Happy by being late).

“See you on Thursday, kid.” Tony said on instinct, distracted by the hologram, even though he should have been clued in that something was different today.

“Uh… I have Nationals at the end of this week, actually.” Peter responded, fidgeting slightly in the doorway. Tony turned and raised an eyebrow at him.

“Nationals for what?” he asked, pretending like he didn’t know damn well what they were for. The kid was only in a few extracurriculars, and he certainly wasn’t going to nationals for playing the trumpet in band.

“Decathlon.” Peter said. “They’re held in DC, I’ll be gone for two days.”

Tony nodded as if he didn’t already know this information. “Right. Have fun at your science nerd event, then. We’ll move lab time to a different day.” he said easily. Peter blinked in surprise before he huffed in amusement.

“It’s not just a science nerd event, you know.” he grumbled slightly. Tony arched his eyebrows disbelievingly. “We have to give a prepared speech and an impromptu one, too.” Peter said with another half-sigh. “Believe me, I wish it was just science,” he said under his breath. Tony’s eyebrows arched even further up, and he rolled his chair back to fully face Peter.

“A prepared speech, you say?” he asked, mouth tilting in a grin. “Let’s hear it then.” he said, despite the fact that Happy would not be pleased with the delay. Peter’s eyes widened.

“Nope. Forget I said anything.” he backtracked, but Tony was already grinning wider.

“C’mon, you’ve got a chance to run your speech by Tony Stark and you’re turning it down? I’ve given hundreds of speeches. Thousands, probably.” he mused after a second.

Peter furrowed his eyebrows at him. “That’s precisely why I don’t want to run it by you.” he pointed out. Tony scoffed and waved a hand.

“This is a no-stakes environment, kid.” he said. “I won’t make fun of you. Probably.” 

Peter fixed him with an unimpressed look.

Tony held up his hands defensively. “Alright, alright, I promise. No teasing.” In all likelihood, he probably wouldn’t have anyways. He had no idea why he had such a strong urge to hear the kid’s speech— maybe he was interested in what he’d chosen to talk about? Maybe it was because he’d never seen him give a speech before? He couldn’t tell, and it was driving him a little bit insane. Either way, he wanted to hear what Peter had to say, which was strange of him considering that he rarely listened to other peoples’ speeches when he could help it.

Peter sighed before shifting slightly. “I still have… a few more things I need to fix.” he hedged. “It’s not quite ready yet.” Tony tilted his head slightly, well aware that there couldn’t be that many things he needed to change, given that Nationals were in a day or two. But Peter was shifting and nervous-looking, and instead of pushing like Tony was so prone to do, he decided to take a step back.

He hummed in assent. “Alright.” he acquiesced. “Then here’s what we’re gonna do. You’re gonna practice your little spiel tonight, iron out… whatever it is you’re concerned about, and then you’ll come in here tomorrow and give me the finished product. Capische?”

Peter furrowed his brows slightly, confused. “Tomorrow is Wednesday,” he pointed out, not answering his question but not refuting it either. Tony clapped his hands together.

“Yeah, I meant to tell you. I figured you’d swing by after patrol tomorrow– you’ll have to give me the Spider-Man suit back before your trip. I’ll keep it here.”

“ What ?” Peter asked, voice squeaking with its high pitch again, completely forgetting his previous Decathlon qualms with the news. “But— I need it for emergencies! I won’t use it otherwise, I swear!”

Tony would have believed that, except he was pretty sure the kid’s definition of an emergency could probably be adjusted to saving a cat from a tree.

“No way, kid, I know you well enough by now. If you have the suit, you’ll be compelled to help if you see even a petty theft. And as I will so kindly remind you, the section of the Accords says that you need to have committee approval before operating in another state.” Tony said, shooting him a look. “And let me tell you, by the time you were to submit the request to operate in DC, even if it were approved— which it wouldn’t be— you’d be back in New York long before they even got to it. Politics are slow like that.” Tony said.

Until someone stepped over the line— in which case they were quite immediate. He left that part out, though.

“But what if—”

“Nuh uh.” Tony said, raising his index finger and pantomiming a zipper across his mouth, already anticipating the kid’s protests. “If there are any world-ending events, you call me . DC isn’t that far. The Iron Man suit can get there fast enough.” And Iron Man, at least, was qualified to work within the 50 states without prior approval. It was only when things went international that they got tricky.

Peter frowned, and Tony softened slightly.

“Kid, it’s not worth prison. I’m sorry.” he said. He wasn’t even really sure what the hell he was apologizing for — it wasn’t his fault the committee had sticks up their asses regarding enhanced individuals with secret identities. But Peter was looking like Tony had just kicked his puppy dog, and for some reason, that made a very weird and uncomfortable feeling in Tony’s chest. That was three times in a few hours, now. Maybe he should get checked for heartburn.

“No, I understand.” Peter said, but he still looked dejected.

“Boss, Mr. Hogan has elicited some very particular threats if Mr. Parker is not downstairs soon.” FRIDAY interjected pleasantly. Peter winced slightly and Tony huffed in amusement, knowing full well that Happy would never follow through with a single threat against the teenager. Peter himself didn’t seem so sure of that fact, and Tony allowed him to hurry towards the door without any more delays.

“Remember— speech tomorrow.” Tony called after him. Peter sighed but nodded.

“Speech tomorrow.” he agreed. Tony pursed his lips at the still somewhat downtrodden tone from the teenager’s voice, and spun around in his chair slightly. He had an idea…

~ ~ ~

Rhodey’s POV

Rhodey really fucking hated physical therapy.

It was made more bearable when Tony showed up, though Rhodey rarely ever asked him to come— his best friend always got that guilty look on his face, no matter how many times Rhodey told him the accident wasn’t his fault. Still, it helped to have him here, and today was one of those days where his whole body ached and his prosthetics weren’t cooperating and he was irritable at every little thing. In other words, he could use a little extra boost of moral support. Usually, his strategy to deflect Tony’s guilt involved distracting the man with a question to get him talking in order to get his mind off of the actual activity they were engaged in.

“So, how are your babysitting duties coming along?” Rhodey asked, fully expecting his best friend to launch into a long-winded explanation of his woes and regrets of taking responsibility for a chatty super-powered teenager. Or perhaps to berate him over his purposeful use of the word ‘babysitting’ again.

Tony shot him a side eye at the word choice, but merely… shrugged? “Kid comes over every Tuesday and Thursday after school for a few hours, he fiddles around, then Hap drives him back home so he can go on patrol.”

Rhodey blinked. “Tuesday and Thursday?” he echoed. He knew the Accords requirement was only for five hours— Tony could have easily fit that into one day, not two.

Tony shrugged once more. “It works better with his schedule, and makes more sense with the whole internship excuse with his aunt. The weekends didn’t really work for that excuse and five hours after school wouldn’t leave him enough time to patrol and get a reasonable amount of sleep.”

Rhodey arched his eyebrows until they were halfway up his forehead. Tony Stark… optimizing his own schedule around the kid’s school, patrolling, and sleep ? Since when was he that courteous? Since when did he care about a teenager’s sleep schedule ? He didn’t even care about his own. “You see him… twice a week?” he repeated, instead of voicing those thoughts.

“He has his own desk in the lab.” Tony defended himself, sensing Rhodey’s disbelief and trying to defend himself. “I can do my own work uninterrupted unless I’m showing him something. It’s co-habituating.”

It was not the defense Tony thought it was, because in the three decades that Rhodey had known the man, he had never willingly shared his lab space. Granted, there weren’t all that many people who would even desire to share it— Pepper and Rhodey never had, and neither did the Avengers. (Minus Bruce Banner, who had his own lab.) But still.

Rhodey arched his eyebrows. “You actually show him stuff?” he asked, somewhat disbelievingly. Tony shot him a semi-offended look.

“No need to sound so surprised, platypus, I can be a good teacher when I want to be.” he sniffed. “Besides, what else was I going to do for the five hour requirement, pawn him off to some lower-level lab?”

Yes . Rhodey thought immediately, because that was exactly what he had expected from Tony when he heard about the Accords modification. For Tony to pawn the kid off on someone else, or figure out some other slippery loophole to fulfill the requirement without actually personally spending the allotted time with the kid. Certainly, there was no shortage of ways that he could have gone about it. Hell, Tony could have set Peter loose wandering the Tower, 50 floors down, and the Accords committee would be none the wiser, as long as Peter was inside of the Tower’s walls for five hours a week. And if those were just the reasons Rhodey himself could come up with, he was sure Tony could find a hundred more. Rhodey had continually seen how his best friend managed to escape rules that he’d thought for sure were airtight, all throughout their time at MIT and into their adult lives.

And not only was Tony willingly spending the time with the kid, but he was exceeding the five hour requirement. Of his own free volition.

Rhodey was suddenly very invested.

“So when do I get to meet him, then?” he asked casually. Tony squinted at him suspiciously, not trusting his nonchalant tone (rightfully so).

“Technically, you already have.” he pointed out, and Rhodey rolled his eyes, shooting his best friend an unimpressed look.

“Yeah, and all I heard from him was a Star Wars reference and a lot of mindless chatter.” he pointed out, skipping around the very obvious elephant in the room of how that battle had ended. Tony did the same.

“Why the hell would you want to willingly meet a teenager?” he asked, and though his tone was still suspicious, he sounded mostly confused. Rhodey wanted to sigh and drop his head against the wall. For someone who was supposedly a genius, Tony Stark could be incredibly dense sometimes.

For the same reason you want to willingly spend time around him . He thought, but didn’t say it, even though he very much wanted to. He knew that if he did say that, he’d spend the entire rest of the conversation trying to get through to a very thick-skulled Tony Stark. (In fact, it reminded him of when he had caught onto the fact that Tony loved Pepper, and tried to point out the obvious, but Tony had refused to accept the fact for months. Months. ) Instead, Rhodey shrugged easily.

“Can’t hurt to meet the next Avenger in-training, or whatever he is.” he said nonchalantly. Tony made a slight face at that, but the suspicion slipped off his face.

“He wouldn’t be able to be an Avenger until he released his identity, which I don’t see happening anytime soon. Besides, the committee would have a fit if they heard that. He’s strictly a vigilante for now.”

Rhodey shrugged, because truth be told, he didn’t give a damn about what title Spider-Man had in regards to the Accords. He was much more fascinated in how Peter Parker had managed to be the only teenager that Tony seemed willing to spend time around. It certainly wasn’t because he was quiet, that was for sure.

Just as he had the thought, Tony confirmed it aloud. “Just don’t get him talking if you want to leave anytime soon. He’ll keep going.”

Rhodey snorted in amusement. “Sounds like someone else I know,” he said wryly, because that sounded exactly like how Tony had been at MIT. Tony pursed his lips, and his expression took on something a little more pinched.

“Yeah, well, let’s hope he doesn’t make the same mistakes.” Tony muttered, a little bitterly as he shot a glance at Rhodey’s leg braces. Rhodey suppressed a sigh, because he’d suspected as much.

“You’re not as unbearable as you think, you know.” Rhodey said, tilting his head at his long-time friend.

“Don’t get all mushy on me, sour patch,” Tony replied, though a small smile was now tugging at the corner of his mouth. “But if you want to meet the kid, drop by the lab sometime. He’d probably freak out at meeting War Machine.”

“Oh, I will.” Rhodey promised, a slow grin spreading across his face. He was already planning multiple different ways to become Peter’s favorite, because he would be able to hold that over his best friend’s head for the foreseeable future. (Also, he had called #1 uncle duties all the way back at MIT, and this was as close as he’d gotten in decades, so he’d take it.)

“Don’t you dare corrupt my intern, honey bear.”

“He’s your intern, Tony. It’s a little too late for that.”

~ ~ ~

Peter’s POV

Wednesday rolled around, and Peter was torn between feeling excited for Nationals and feeling worried that he had to leave his Spider-Man suit behind. Logically, he knew that Mr. Stark was right, and that he was protecting Peter from making a really stupid decision in DC. Also, it was only two days— but still. 

The school day had just finished, and Peter and Ned were wandering through the halls— Peter mostly because he was avoiding the fact that he’d have to hand his suit back over to Mr. Stark in a few hours. And give him the Decathlon speech he had prepared. (Part of him was grateful for the man’s offer, and the other part was horrified that he’d embarrass himself in front of him.)

A violent spike from his Spidey-sense rather abruptly tore him out of his thoughts, and he froze in the middle of the hallway. His gaze immediately latched onto the figures of two adult men who definitely did not belong in his high school hallways.

“Crap.” he muttered and threw himself into an adjoining hallway. How the hell did they even convince security to let them pass? After a second, he realized that Ned hadn’t caught onto his memo, and was still standing in the middle of the hall like a deer in headlights. “Come on.” he hissed, and Ned shot him a wide-eyed look before scuffling over.

“High schools creep me out.” one of the guys said. Says the adult man who definitely should not be in here . Peter thought wryly. The feeling is mutual . “They got this funny smell, you know?”

“That’s one of the guys that tried to kill me.” Peter hissed to Ned.

“What?” Ned near-squawked. Peter murmured an assent. “We gotta get out of here.” Ned continued, ever the voice of reason. Peter shot him a side-eye.

“Pfft, no. I have to follow them. They might be able to lead me to the bird guy that dropped me in the lake.”

“Someone dropped you in a lake ?” Ned sounded near-hysterical. Peter just flashed a half-grin.

“Yeah, it was not good,” he said. “Mr. Stark came and fished me out though.” At the thought, he remembered the man telling him to stay away from the flying vulture guy. Sorry, Mr. Stark . Well, actually, in his defense, these were just his lackeys— they weren’t actually bird-guy himself. So technically Peter was following the rules.

The two men walked into a classroom— the shop classroom they’d been in on Monday, Peter realized— and he was moving before he could form another thought.

“Peter—” Ned hissed behind him.

“No. Stay there, Ned.” he ordered. He hardly planned on picking a fight in the middle of his high school, but he still didn’t want his best friend anywhere near these guys. He heard Ned engage in some kind of whisper-conversation with someone, but he wasn’t paying attention to who as he snuck into the room.

“Can you imagine what the boss would say if he knew where we were?” Goon #2 asked. The boss. Vulture guy.

“It’s saying there was an energy pulse right here.” The first guy said instead of a real response— and ah, that was what Peter had been afraid of. The glowy thing ( Chitauri energy core ) was trackable. He supposed it was a good thing he’d taken it to Mr. Stark.

“There’s no sign of the weapon. And even if it was here, now it’s gone.” Goon #2 said, and Peter’s Spidey-sense tingled. He knew that feeling— he was milliseconds away from being caught. Shit .

“So are we.” the first guy said, just as Peter clung to the underside of one of the tables. His enhanced hearing caught the slight wobble in one of the stools on the table, and he held his breath as the footsteps stalked closer to his hiding place. Man, it would be a really bad time if I had to sneeze . Just as he had the thought, his nose began to itch slightly. You have got to be fucking kidding me .

The footsteps stopped by his desk, and Peter held perfectly still ( don’t move don’t movedon’tmove— ) before they moved towards the doorway. Peter resisted the urge to let out a sigh of relief, instead reaching one arm out to shoot a tiny spider-tracker onto one of the guy’s shoes.

Gotcha .

—

Patrol was relatively uneventful, and he swung by the Tower after he was done, crawling in through one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. His mentor was in the same exact position that he was whenever Peter visited at 4 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which was a mildly concerning sign given that it was 11 PM on a Wednesday, but he pushed the thoughts aside.

“Hey underoos.” Mr. Stark greeted, glancing over at him and not looking particularly startled by the different method of entrance than usual. “How was patrol?”

Peter shrugged, pulling his mask off and running a hand through his hair. “Uneventful.” he mused. “Mr. Whiskers was stuck in a tree again.”

His mentor shot him a side eye with a raised eyebrow. “ Again ?” he asked wryly, and Peter shrugged.

“I think he just likes being ‘rescued’ at this point,” he admitted. Mr. Stark shook his head and pointed a finger at him.

“This is why I don’t have pets in the Tower.” he responded. “Devious little creatures.”

“Actually, Boss, it’s because Miss Potts vetoed any pets in the Tower until you learned to manage to feed yourself on a regular basis.” FRIDAY interjected wryly. Peter laughed and his mentor shot him an affronted look.

“Slandered in my own Tower.” he grumbled. “I’m kicking you out. Go wait in the garage for Hogan.”

“Oh, Happy doesn’t have to drive me, I can take the subway.” Peter protested immediately, not wanting to inconvenience the man at nearly midnight on a Wednesday. Mr. Stark shot him a look.

“I’m going to pretend like you didn’t say that.” he said.

“But—” Peter started, because he was literally Spider-Man ; he could handle riding the subway home at night.

“Trust me, he gets paid more than enough for his efforts. Besides, this is nothing compared to what he used to deal with in my early days.” Mr. Stark waved his hand. “Just let him drive you, kid, I don’t want to deal with the repercussions from your aunt if you somehow got mugged coming back from my building.”

“Mr. Hogan is on his way.” FRIDAY interjected smoothly, and Peter sighed, because now it was a pointless argument. Mr. Stark looked smug, and Peter huffed slightly, before remembering that he had yet to tell the man about the tracker he’d placed earlier that day.

“By the way, two of the guys from the weapons incident— you know, with the lake—” Peter started as his mentor arched his eyebrows. “—they showed up at my school today.”

“They did what?” Mr. Stark asked, expression schooling itself into something more serious, and he gave Peter a quick once-over, like he was looking for injuries. Peter shrugged and waved his arms.

“They didn’t see me, or anything. They weren’t there for me— they were tracking the energy core. I guess it emitted some sort of signal.” Peter reassured him. The man relaxed slightly at the news and shook his head tiredly. 

“I would ask why you took it to your school , but for the sake of my headache, I’m not going to.” he said flatly. Peter raised his hands defensively.

“Hey, I didn’t know what it was.” he said, even though they’d already had this argument. “Anyways, I put a tracker— one from my web-shooters— on one of the guys, so it should be tracking him to wherever he’s going next, like their base of operations or their next target—”

“Pete.” Mr. Stark started, placing both of his hands up to stop Peter’s flow of words. “I’ve got it handled.” he said with a half-laugh. “Go be a nerd, or whatever.”

Peter hesitated. “Are you sure—” He cut himself off at the raised eyebrow from his mentor, and let out a huffing laugh of his own. “Yeah, okay.” he acquiesced. He supposed it was a bit ridiculous to be questioning Iron Man’s capabilities.

“Good answer.” Mr. Stark said with a grin, patting him on the shoulder. “Go chatter your friend’s ear off about periodic table elements or whatever they cover in those science competitions.” Peter furrowed his eyebrows slightly before his mentor made a ‘ah’ sound and moved over to his desk to pick something off it. 

“Speaking of chattering—” Mr. Stark tossed him a… watch? “I installed your AI in that. Figured you might miss your daily debriefing sessions without your suit.” he said wryly. Peter gaped at the gift, glancing up to his mentor before back down to the sleek watch again.

“It transforms into one web-shooter with a single cartridge. For emergencies only .” the man emphasized clearly, pointing a finger at him as Peter nodded eagerly. “I mean life-or-death, you’re-falling-off-of-a-building type of emergency. Not ‘Mr. Whiskers got stuck in a tree’ emergency.”

“I understand, Mr. Stark.” Peter said solemnly. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah, kid.” he muttered with a sniff. “It was hardly difficult, I already had the AI code and the base design from my own watch.”

Peter knew differently. This was a gift— one that Mr. Stark had completely no reason to give him other than out of pure kindness. Nationals were only two days long; hardly an extended period of time, but the man had still made him his own unique watch. Easy or not, it still took time; time that served no other purpose other than making him slightly happier.

He was suddenly struck by the impulse to hug his mentor. He refrained, not wanting to make the same mistake twice ( “It’s not a hug, I’m just grabbing the door for you— we’re not there yet.” ), but the all-consuming gratitude was there nonetheless. Instead, he cleared his throat and fastened it on his wrist firmly.

Mr. Stark still had yet to ask him to give his Decathlon speech, so maybe he’d forgotten since yesterday. Peter started backing towards the doorway before the man in question cleared his throat, raising a pointed eyebrow and looking amused at his attempt. Peter sighed in defeat and scuffled back towards the center of the room.

“I was hoping you’d forgotten.” he grumbled, and his mentor laughed.

“Not a chance.” he said, before patting Peter on the shoulder. “Come on, I’m not that scary.” he said, gesturing to his outfit.

“Who said you were scary?” Peter asked with a half-grin. The man lightly punched his upper arm.

“Kid, when I offered to give you feedback yesterday, you looked like I was holding your puppy dog hostage at gunpoint.”

Peter wrinkled his nose slightly at that imagery, electing to ignore the second half of the sentence. “An offer typically implies the ability to refuse.” he said pointedly, and his mentor shrugged, unconcerned.

“Chop chop, Mr. Parker. You’re only delaying the inevitable.” he said, and Peter sighed again, knowing he wasn’t getting out of this. It wasn’t so much that he wasn’t prepared— he was— but… the billionaire gave speeches all the time, like it was second nature. For him, it was. Peter’s speech wasn’t particularly flashy or long or interesting; it was designed for a panel of judges at a high school competition, after all. He didn’t want to disappoint his mentor. He wet his lips slightly, rocking back and forth on his heels for a moment before inhaling and setting his shoulders, gaze coming to a rest on Mr. Stark.

His mentor’s face was uncharacteristically serious, eyes focused on him intently. Peter almost shied away from the gaze— it was rare for any one person to experience the full, undivided attention of Tony Stark. Peter really wasn’t sure why on earth the man wanted to hear his high school decathlon speech, of all things, but… he’d offered, and he was here, and he was paying attention so closely that Peter felt like it would be even more of an offense to back out at this point. (For a brief, ever so slight split-second, Mr. Stark’s eyes aligned in his mind with May’s, and he was reminded of running through this speech with her in their living room over and over and over again. He shook that thought away just as quickly as it came, not daring to dwell on its potential implications for even a moment.)

Instead, he took a deep breath, locked eyes directly with Mr. Stark, and started speaking.

"Innovation drives progress. Throughout history, technological breakthroughs have transformed our society, from the Industrial Revolution to the Information Age. Today, we stand on the brink of another revolution, driven by advancements in renewable energy, artificial intelligence, and biomedical engineering…"

~ ~ ~

Peter woke up on Thursday before his alarm clock; he hadn’t been able to sleep all night. They still had classes all day, and weren’t leaving for Washington until right after school, but the nerves were still getting to him. The day passed quickly (quicker than normal, Peter was sure), and before he knew it, they were boarded on a ratty old school bus en route to Washington DC, and Liz was quizzing them on some last-minute trivia.

Peter glanced down momentarily at the watch Mr. Stark had made for him. Really, it was like its own little mini-phone. The GPS he had up said 90 miles to Baltimore, 126 miles to Washington.

Speaking of his mentor— running through his speech had helped more than he’d like to admit. As promised, the man didn’t make fun of him, and had even seemed… impressed? Relatively speaking, at least. Peter didn’t quite know how he felt about that; on one hand, Tony Stark was not known for mincing his words or for saying things he didn’t mean. But on the other hand, maybe the man had felt some sort of weird obligation to be nice to him that day.

He didn’t have time to dwell more on the matter before his attention was caught from a call at the front of the bus.

“Focus up, everyone.” Liz called out. “Our next topic is the moons of Saturn.” she paused, glancing at them. “What is the name of Saturn’s moon that has geysers of water ice and may have an underground ocean?"

Ding!

"Enceladus." Cindy said, and Peter resisted the urge to groan and bury his head in his hands. He was not particularly good at the geography-space-mythology-history side of Decathlon. Science— particularly biochemistry— he could do. Math, too. The rest was a hit or miss.

"Which moon of Saturn has a two-tone coloration and was named after the Titan who held up the sky in Greek mythology?"

Ding!

"Iapetus."

"What moon of Saturn was discovered by William Herschel in 1789 and is known for its heavily cratered surface?"

Ding!

"Mimas."

“Good.” Liz praised. “Now onto the randomized round. Any topics are viable.” she warned. "What principle states that the total entropy of an isolated system can never decrease over time?" Peter’s head shot up as he registered the question, and he went to reach for the bell—

Ding!

“The second law of thermodynamics.” Cindy called out, beating him to it. He let out a slight huffing sound, and she shot him a challenging look. Oh, you’re on . He thought, straightening himself slightly and positioning himself to hit it quicker the next time around.

"Which famous singer and actor, known for songs like 'My Way' and 'Fly Me to the Moon,' was a significant cultural icon in the 20th century?" Liz asked. Ugh . Of course it was a music-pop-culture one.

Ding!

“Frank Sinatra.” Charles responded.

"What was the location of the first major battle of the American Civil War?" Liz asked next, and Peter went to reach from the bell— this was one he actually knew— but he saw Flash reaching for his own and pulled his hand back, deciding to let him have it.

Ding!

“Fort Sumter.” Flash answered confidently, and Peter winced slightly. Not quite . He thought to himself. Fort Sumter was where the first shots were fired, but Bull Run was the location of the first major battle . He didn’t say anything aloud, though— the last thing he needed was more bitterness from the other teen (partly why he’d let Flash answer in the first place).

Ding!

“Flash is wrong.” Abe said gleefully, having none of the compunctions Peter did. Flash shot a half-glare in the other kid’s direction.

“Okay, guys, let’s focus.” Liz chided. “Next one.”

“Liz, don’t overwork them.” Mr. Harrington warned.

“What are some elements that can be used to produce different colors of flames?” Liz asked from the next flashcard. Peter’s head shot up; he knew this one—

DIng! He slammed his hand down on the bell.

“Strontium, barium, vibranium.” he listed. Red flames, green flames, and purple flames, respectively.

Liz smiled. “Very good, Peter.” she said, before tilting her head slightly. “Glad to have you back.”

Peter smiled in return, ducking his head sheepishly. “Glad to be back,” he said. Honestly, he’d missed Decathlon— he hadn’t been as involved recently as he used to be, but the familiar ding of the bell and rush of adrenaline that didn’t accompany flinging himself off of buildings was… a nice feeling.

Just then, his phone vibrated in his pocket, and he pulled it out, glancing at the screen.

Have fun at Nationals, kid. It read. Peter couldn’t help but smile, a warm feeling blooming in his chest.

Thanks, Mr. Stark! :D He texted back.

He was interrupted by someone clearing their throat, and he looked up at Liz sheepishly. She was raising a pointed eyebrow at him, and he hurriedly shoved his phone back into his pocket and gave her his best impression of an innocent smile. She shook her head slightly before turning back to her flashcards. Out of the corner of his eye, Peter could see Michelle looking up from her book to stare at him curiously. He met her gaze and she arched an eyebrow of her own before pointedly looking back to the pages. Liz’s voice brought his attention back to the front of the bus once more.

“Alright. Onto the science round…”

—

They arrived at the hotel after a few more hours, all of them clambering off the bus with their backpacks, happy to be back on solid ground. Peter cracked his neck with a wince and stretched as Ned came up next to him.

The entrance to the hotel was plastered with banners advertising the Decathlon event, and there were large tents out front labeled ‘check-in’. Liz and Mr. Harrington made their way over to the tents for a few minutes while the rest of their group milled around, and when they came back, they were carrying everyones’ hotel keys and room assignments.

“Alright, we’re all on the fourth floor. We’ll figure out what pairs we’re splitting up into when we get up there.” Liz instructed, and Peter and Ned glanced at each other, already knowing they would share a room. Nobody had ever tried to assign them with anyone else. “Until then, everyone stick together.” Liz called out, voice echoing in the wide-open space. Mr. Harrington made a sound of assent.

“Are you kidding me? This place is huge.” Charles said, gaping at the high arching ceilings.

“I’ve seen bigger.” Flash said nonchalantly, but even he was peering around curiously. Peter could have said the same— after all, Avengers Tower’s lobby was bigger than this—- but he refrained, looking around with the rest of his teammates.

“There’s a bird in here.” Abe said, pointing at the rafters with a mix of intrigue and disgust in his voice.

They all made their way to one of the elevators, piling in and going up to the fourth floor. When they got there, Liz started calling out pairs and passing out keys. “...Cindy and Michelle, room 43… Flash and Abe, room 46… Peter and Ned, room 49…”

—

“Peter, it’s Nationals! Come on, you have to be at least a little excited.” Ned goaded as Peter flopped face-first and groaned into his hotel bedsheets.

“I can’t be Spider-Man for two whole days , Ned! Mr. Stark didn’t even let me bring my suit! What if we get attacked? What if Suit Lady tells me more info about those guys I put the tracker on and I’m not there to stop them?” he listed off. He’d been fine on the bus, but now that they were here in the hotel and he had no idea what was happening back in the city, he was getting antsy.

“Peter, dude. You know I love Spider-Man. But it’s only two days. I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Ned said, peering at his friend.

“Now that you said that, it definitely won’t be fine.” Peter huffed, flipping onto his back to stare at the ceiling.

“Peter, the only ‘fine’ you should be worrying about is whether we’re going to win Nationals or not.” Ned said, slightly exasperated. Peter sighed. Right. Nationals. “Come on, really. You have Mr. Stark on call– which is so cool by the way– I’m sure he can manage taking care of the city while you’re gone. And he said he’d get here if you needed him.”

Peter refrained from telling Ned that he doubted Mr. Stark would help save any cats from trees. Also, he really had a bad feeling about those guys who had wandered into his high school. Given that they threw him in a lake and all. Instead, he groaned into a pillow in some sort of vague muffled agreement.

A knock on their door interrupted them both. Peter hopped off the bed and opened it, startled to see Liz in a bathing suit standing at the threshold. He blinked, mouth slightly ajar as she gave him a slight smile.

“We’re gonna go swimming.” she said, before beckoning down the hall. “Come on, come on, come on.” she whispered, and a few more students ran past.

“What?” Peter whispered back, poking his head out slightly.

“Hey, Peter.” Sally responded, sneaking by. He heard a few more echoed ‘hi’s. Liz looked back to him and smiled.

“You should come.” she invited, peering over his shoulder into the room curiously. “What are you two even doing in there?”

“Oh, Ned and I were just… studying.” he said, saying the first thing that came to mind even though talking about Spider-Man did not at all qualify as studying.

“Peter, you don’t need to study. You’re, like, the smartest guy I’ve ever met.” Liz said gently. He blinked at her, speechless, mouth ajar. Did she seriously just say that? “And besides... um, a rebellious group activity the day before competition is good for morale.” she said, tilting her head down bashfully.

Peter made a noncommittal sound of agreement— or so he thought, he couldn't really hear much over his racing heart— raising his eyebrows and giving an attempt at a smile.

“Um, well, I read that in a TED Talk, so, I— I heard it in a TED Talk.” she stumbled through her words slightly, rambling. “And I read a coaching book.” she tacked on.

Peter swallowed slightly, mouth dry. “Wow, you really… this is really important to you.” he said, and she tilted her head slightly. 

“Yeah, it’s our future.” she said, like it was obvious. “I’m not gonna screw it up. Besides, we raided the minibar and these candy bars were, like, eleven dollars.” she tossed him a Snickers bar and he caught it, blinking in surprise. Where the hell did she pull that from? “So get your trunks on and come on.”

Peter opened his mouth to respond— what he was going to say, he had no idea—- but whispers from the other team members caught her attention.

“Come on!” Charles whisper-called, and Sally echoed him impatiently.

“I’m coming, I’m coming.” Liz assured, before shooting him one last half-smile and hurrying down the hallway.

Peter blinked after them, still holding the door slightly ajar as Ned scuffled up behind him.

“What did they want?” he peered curiously over Peter’s shoulder, down the now-empty hallway.

“Uh…” Peter started, brain totally blank. “You didn’t happen to bring swim trunks, did you?”

—

Ned had apparently been more prepared than Peter had been, and had brought a swimsuit. He’d told Peter to just throw on a pair of sports shorts and a t-shirt and come downstairs anyways.

“I’m going to look ridiculous, Ned.” he complained. Ned shot him a look.

“Peter, no offense, but you’ll look ridiculous anyways.” he said, and Peter didn’t have time to be offended before he was continuing. “Come on, this is redemption for ditching me at the party.”

Peter sighed. “Low blow.” he grumbled, but obliged, because Ned was kind of right. 

They snuck out of their room— though ‘sneaking out’ was a relative term, because Mr. Harrington was probably asleep in his hotel room and had no way of knowing that they’d left their respective rooms. Peter trailed after Ned a little warily as they followed the signs to the hotel pool. He was used to spending his evenings swinging around in his suit, and it felt strange to not be patrolling, especially when he knew there were bad guys to track down. But another part of him was excited at the prospect of having a little fun; he almost never sacrificed Spider-Man time for his own personal time, because he’d never forgive himself if something happened while he wasn’t there and he’d chosen not to go patrolling that day. It felt different, in this scenario— the fact that it wasn’t him who had made the decision not to patrol, but rather the Accords made the decision for him. Of course, that wouldn’t ever stop him in the instance of an emergency (which he was trying not to think of the ramifications), but for everyday patrol reasons… it was a little bit nice to have a weight lifted off his shoulders, just for one night.

Peter heard the whispers and quiet chattering of the team long before they reached the pool area, thanks to his enhanced hearing. To his surprise, everyone was there— even Michelle, who was sitting on one of the chairs by the side of the pool reading a book. The rest of the team was in the water, or perched on the edge of the pool. Peter’s gaze was drawn to Liz, laughing as she splashed water at Sally, who semi-shrieked and retaliated in turn.

As Peter and Ned approached, they got the attention of a few of their teammates, who waved in greeting and looked somewhat surprised that Peter had actually shown up. Not that Peter could be particularly offended by that— his attendance track record over the past year since becoming Spider-Man hadn’t been the best. In his defense, though, it had gotten better in more recent weeks (mostly because Mr. Stark had threatened to take his suit away if he kept ditching school for patrolling. Peter didn’t know whether he was actually serious, but he didn’t want to test the theory).

“Well look who decided to show up.” Flash called out from the other end of the pool.

Peter didn’t really respond to the comment with much more than a shrug. Flash always seemed to mellow out when it was just the AcaDec team— he certainly wasn’t friendly , but he dropped the ‘Penis’ and just referred to Peter as ‘Parker.’ Peter couldn’t tell whether that was because he didn’t want to risk his position as an alternate, or whether he just felt like he had some sort of reputation to maintain in the general school population that he didn’t have to uphold when it was just the team. Peter suspected it was more of the latter.

“Peter!” Liz called out with a smile and a wave. “You made it!”

Peter smiled and called out his own assent before he plopped down on the edge of the pool near Michelle, dipping his legs into the lukewarm water. He didn’t actually have any particular desire to go swimming, especially in just shorts and a t-shirt rather than an actual swimsuit; he was more than content enough to sit on the ledge and watch his teammates splash each other. Ned shot him a look, but Peter just beckoned him to go into the water without him.

He watched from his perch for about an hour or two, joining in with the scattered bouts of conversation and enjoying the occasion more than he thought he would have. At some point, Flash left to go to the bathroom, and after a few minutes, Peter felt his Spidey-sense tingle a slight warning. He sat up straighter and adjusted his senses to his surroundings, checking for what was setting it off. It wasn’t a loud, insistent warning; it felt more like the mild buzz he got when Flash tried to push him lightly into the lockers—

Ah.

His hearing caught Flash’s footsteps attempting to sneak up behind him, and he resigned himself to the fact that he was probably about to be shoved into the pool. Luckily, that gave him time to take a deep breath just as hands met his back and pushed, and then he was tumbling face-first into the water.

For a second, all was calm, and quiet, and dark—

He couldn’t move, he was tangled in the parachute, he was going to drown—

He almost gasped in a lungful of water, before he realized his eyes were screwed shut. He opened them wide, and light flooded in, chlorine stinging his sensitive corneas. Still, the influx of light from the underwater lamps caused his body to go limp with relief, because it was so different from the bottom of the dark, dark lake. His fingers twitched, then his arms, then his feet hit the bottom of the pool ( concrete, not silt— ) and he propelled himself upwards, breaking the surface of the water with a gasp.

“ —dude. ”

“Flash, not cool.”

“Peter, are you okay?”

“Parker.”

It was the last voice of Michelle that got him to snap to attention, and he blinked the water out of his eyes, peering around at his teammates through the wet hair plastered to his forehead. He opened his mouth to speak, before coughing and sputtering slightly.

“I’m—” cough . “I’m fine.” he reassured them raspily. “Just wasn’t expecting it.” That was a lie; he’d been fully expecting it, he just hadn’t been expecting the residual panic at the feeling of being unwillingly dumped in water again. Still, they didn’t need to know that.

Flash had the grace to look slightly embarrassed, ducking his head at the pointed looks from his teammates. “Sorry.” he muttered under his breath, actually sounding genuinely regretful, and Peter let out another wet cough before grimacing in a facsimile of a smile.

“It’s fine.” he said, wading over to the pool ladder and clambering out, shivering slightly as the cool air wrapped around his soaking form. His lack of thermoregulation meant that he would probably be very cold for the foreseeable future, but he’d live (though he was sorely missing the suit’s heaters at the moment).

There was a moment of silence, and Peter realized everyone was still staring at him— though most weren’t looks of concern anymore.

“Dude, when the hell did you get muscles?” Abe asked, looking impressed, and Peter startled, looking down at himself and his now-soaked shirt. He flushed slightly when he saw that his abs were… far more visible than usual.

“Um. I took up… gymnastics?” Peter said, and it came out more like a question than an answer. He felt Michelle’s gaze drilling a hole into the side of his skull, and his teammates all seemed skeptical of the answer, but he was doing his best impression of a sad sewer rat and they seemed to take pity on him.

“ You ?” Flash vocalized what they were all thinking, but short glares from the team got him to clamp his mouth shut and duck his head sullenly. Peter felt a flash of warmth at the defense of his teammates, even though he was well and truly capable of handling Flash’s words himself. And, to be fair— he wasn’t wrong to question it. Peter Parker taking up gymnastics was almost as unbelievable as him being Spider-Man. 

Key word: almost.

“Gymnastics?” Sally echoed, eyebrows raised.

“Uh, yeah. Gymnastics,” Peter reiterated, nodding fervently. “You know, flips and stuff. Good for… agility.” He tried not to cringe at how unconvincing he sounded.

Ned jumped in to save the day. Or, well… he tried to. “Peter’s been working really hard. You guys should see his backflips.”

It was still evident that mostly nobody believed the half-baked excuse, but they had no better reasoning for it. After all, it wasn’t like accusing him of being bitten by a radioactive spider and gaining super-powers was a more reasonable accusation. Flash looked like he wanted to challenge Peter to do a backflip— which he would have easily been able to execute— but even he realized that a slippery pool deck was probably not the best place for that. Especially after just shoving him into the water.

“Hey, Parker.” Michelle intoned from a few feet away, breaking the tension. He glanced over to her, and she tossed him a towel. He caught it easily before processing what it was, and he blinked a few times before looking back up to her.

“Thank you.” he said gratefully, and wrapped the fabric around himself. It was blissfully warm, and while it didn’t do much to quell his shivering, it felt a whole lot better than before.

They both looked on as their teammates got back to their prior activities, the chatter slowly building back up to the level it was at before Flash had shoved him into the pool. There was a moment of silence before Michelle spoke again, voice bordering on amused. “So… gymnastics, huh?”

Peter dropped his head into his hands and groaned.

—

Ned— bless his heart— had let him take the first shower; probably because Peter was still shivering and he was pretty sure his fingers were going numb. Peter did his best to make it as quick as possible, not wanting to use up all the hot water before Ned had the chance to get in— despite the fact that he could probably have stayed in the blissful warmth of the shower for hours. The second he clambered out and dried off, he made a beeline for the beds and wrapped himself in all the blankets they had, doing his best to warm back up.

Ned then went to go shower himself, and Peter laid flat on the bed for a few minutes, torn between wanting to stay in the warm blanket cocoon and being horribly bored with nothing to do. Ned probably couldn’t hear him over the sound of the water even if Peter tried to have a conversation with him, so that left him alone with his thoughts. Normally, he’d call May to talk to her, but it was past midnight and he didn’t want to bother her. When he was bored on patrol he would usually leave Mr. Stark a voicemail or talk to—

Peter sat bolt upright, feeling around for the watch Mr. Stark had gifted him prior to the trip. He’d almost forgotten that the man had installed his suit’s AI into it, meaning he would have someone to talk to.

“Suit Lady?” he asked hesitantly when his hand closed around it. “Are you there?”

“I am here, Peter.” the soft female voice responded, and Peter grinned, shifting to lay back on the bed.

“You know, I kind of feel bad calling you ‘suit lady.’” Peter mused. He’d been calling her that ever since Mr. Stark unlocked her, and he’d been meaning to try and name her, but could never find something suitable. (No pun intended.) It felt especially pertinent, now, though— she wasn’t even in his suit at the moment. Suit Lady just didn’t particularly fit, and felt too impersonal for a companion AI that he literally had in a personalized watch. “I think I should probably give you a name... like Liz. No, no, no. God, that’s... that’s weird.” he backtracked rapidly, before a moment of silence passed. “What about Karen?”

“You can call me Karen if you would like.” the AI responded, and her voice was soft and gentle. Peter grinned, and a few moments of silence passed, with Peter still staring at the ceiling.

“So…” Peter spoke, drawing out the vowel sound. “Are there any updates on the tracker I placed?”

Peter almost jumped off the bed when a voice that was decidedly not female and all-too-familiar responded from the watch. “Nice try, underoos.” his mentor said.

“Mr. Stark?”   Peter sputtered, sparing a glance at the time. Had his mentor been listening this whole time—

“That was an automated recorded message, Peter.” Karen’s voice spoke up again. “He requested that I play it in the event that you ask about any Spider-Man related business while on your Decathlon trip.”

Peter groaned and pressed his face into the nearest pillow.

“Tell him he sucks.” Peter grumbled under his breath, with no real heat behind it. He wasn’t exactly expecting a response from the AI— it had been a rhetorical statement, after all, not a literal one. Evidently the AI did not pick up on that fact, because she spoke after a beat of silence.

“I have informed him of your feedback, Peter.” Karen said, in a cheerful tone. Peter sat bolt upright. 

“You what ?” he squeaked out, mortified. Karen continued in that same helpful (not-at-all-helpful) chirping tone.

“Yes. He laughed and responded: ‘Welcome to the real intern life, kid. Complaining about your boss is the #1 step. Not that I would ever know, I’ve always been the boss.’”

Peter groaned again and pressed his now-burning face further into the pillow. “Karen, for the record, we need to work on your sarcasm skills.”

“Noted, Peter.”

~ ~ ~

Peter and Ned walked shoulder-to-shoulder together as the group made their way to the Decathlon venue. Peter’s heart was hammering— it had been so high all morning that he’d gotten multiple alerts from the watch informing him of such ( Attention: Your heart rate rose above 120 BPM while you seemed to be inactive for 10 minutes starting at 7:49 AM. And 8:01 AM. And 8:15 AM. And 8:32 AM—)

Karen had piped up after the fifth alert and asked him if he was injured or if he would like for her to call Mr. Stark. He had very vehemently opposed the idea, and she had promptly offered him a variety of breathing exercises for anxiety and panic-related issues. Which— while incredibly sweet of her— Peter was not exactly in the mood for. He’d settled for pacing the ceiling of their hotel room instead, until Liz had come to collect them. (Peter was desperately wishing for a reason to ditch, but unfortunately, none came.)

As such, he’d reluctantly followed Liz into the group as they made their way to the venue.

“Dude.” Ned hissed to him, eyeing Peter as he bounced restlessly on the balls of his feet. “Calm down.”

“You were the one who told me I should be excited.” Peter whisper-grumbled back.

“Yeah, I said excited , not anxious.” Ned whispered pointedly.

“Technically, both excitement and anxiety activate the sympathetic nervous system, so it's the same thing.”

Ned huffed in mild amusement before settling a hand firmly onto Peter’s shoulder. “You deal with way more high-stakes stuff when you’re— you know .” he said pointedly, making not-at-all subtle finger motions. “This is nothing compared to that.”

Just as Peter was about to come up with his own retort, Michelle materialized beside them. “I’m not sitting next to you if you’re going to be vibrating in your seat like that, Parker.” she said flatly. Peter blinked in surprise and forced his feet to settle. Her gaze seemed to soften ever-so-slightly. “You’ll be fine.” she said, and the words— though spoken in a harsh tone— were kind. “You have a frankly disturbing amount of knowledge on biochem and physics. Just stick to that. There’s a reason you’re not an alternate.” Peter blinked again and she was gone, moving up towards the front of the line into the venue.

“Did she just— reassure you?” Ned asked beside him, sounding awestruck.

“Yeah,” Peter murmured quietly, staring at her retreating back and feeling something warm grow in his chest. “She did.”

At that, they both followed her into the line, blending in with the other excited, chattering students around them.

“Please be sure all cell phones are turned off.” the security guard called out, collecting all of their phones when they reached the front and putting them into individual plastic bags. Ned, one spot ahead of Peter, handed his phone in, and Peter followed suit. “Sir,” the guard started, and Peter realized he was looking straight at him, pointing at Peter’s wrist. “Smart watches too.”

Peter blinked and glanced down at Mr. Stark’s watch. “Oh, right, sorry.” he muttered, sliding it off his wrist and putting it in the bag with his phone. His wrist felt bare without it, even though he’d only owned it for two days.

“Thank you.” the guard said, and Peter nodded and hurried into the room after Ned.

—

Inside the venue, the air buzzed with nervous energy. Students from all over the country milled about, their voices a mixture of hushed whispers and excited chatter. The room was massive, with arching ceilings and rows of chairs facing a large stage where the competition would take place. Banners from different schools adorned the walls, and a large screen displayed the event schedule. The events were split into two groups: the seven objective tests (art, economics, language and literature, math, music, science, and social science) and the three subjective events (essay, interview, and speech). In addition, of course, was the Super Quiz relay event. The objective tests were half-hour multiple-choice exams, with each having 50 questions; except for math, which had 35 questions. The subjective events were graded by judges, allowing students more creativity.

Peter took a deep breath, trying to steady himself as he and Ned found their seats among their teammates. Liz was already seated, flipping through some last-minute notes. She glanced up and gave Peter an encouraging smile. He returned it, and settled into a seat in between Ned and next to Michelle.

The announcer's voice crackled over the PA system, calling everyone to attention. “Welcome to the National Academic Decathlon! We are thrilled to have so many brilliant minds here today. Please find your seats as we prepare to start the first round.”

The room quieted down as everyone settled in. Their team huddled together, Liz taking the lead to give a quick pep talk. “Alright, everyone, we’ve worked hard to get here. Let’s do our best and remember to stay calm. We’ve got this.”

Peter nodded. The first round was about to begin, and he could see the nervous anticipation on everyone’s faces. He was sure it was mirrored on his own as well.

The announcer continued, “We will start with the individual written test. You will have one hour to complete it. Please remember to remain silent and focused. Good luck to you all.”

The papers were distributed, and Peter tapped his pencil against his index finger as one of the packets landed in front of him. He glanced up with the rest of his teammates and everyone else in the room, waiting for their cue.

“You may start.”

He flipped the book open.

Analyze the themes of isolation and community in Gabriel García Márquez’s ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude.’

Calculate the derivative of f(x) = 3x^3 - 5x^2 + 6x - 7.

Explain the significance of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle in modern quantum mechanics.

What are the primary economic theories discussed in Adam Smith’s ‘The Wealth of Nations’?

He scribbled words until his hand cramped and ached, and between one blink and the next, the hour was up. The proctors collected the tests, and Peter leaned back in his chair with a sigh, pressing his fingers to his temples as he realized that he’d been scrunching his eyebrows in violent concentration the whole time. He felt an elbow nudge his side and he turned to face Ned.

“How’d you do?” he asked, and Peter shrugged.

“Okay— I think. I knew all the science questions but I was a little iffy on some of the literature. Hopefully I was able to make a reasonable enough argument.” he twisted his face slightly, and Ned nodded in agreement.

“Yeah, me too.” he said, before nudging Peter again. “Hey, what’d you put for the one about quantum mechanics? I wrote about the position and momentum of…”

—

By the time they reached the final buzzer round— the Super Quiz— Peter’s skull was aching from the constant sensory input and his muscles were cramping from sitting still all day. Still, he was vibrating with adrenaline, and he felt his teammates (along with everyone else in the room) shifting in the same manner.

With little preamble, the moderator started the rounds, and Peter let instinct take over, suddenly glad for all the times Liz had drilled them on their flashcards.

“Who wrote ‘Pride and Prejudice’?”

Liz buzzed in immediately. “Jane Austen.”

“Correct.”

"What principle in classical mechanics states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction?"

Peter slammed his hand down on the buzzer within milliseconds— he would have shattered it if he hadn’t remembered to pull back at the last possible moment. “Newton’s Third Law of Motion,” he answered confidently.

“Correct.” the announcer said again, and Peter felt a surge of pride as his team murmured ‘good job’s and Ned patted him on the back. He shifted slightly in his seat as they continued, going through round after round. They made it through the first, then second, then third, then… Peter lost count after that.

“We have now entered sudden death. The next correct answer wins the championship.” the moderator announced, and Peter inhaled roughly, spreading one palm flat against the denim of his jeans and the other hovering steadily over the buzzer. To his left, he heard Flash do the same.

"What is the difference between the electric potentials at two points in an equipotential surface?"

Ding .

The sound came from their table, right next to Peter, and all of their heads whipped over to Michelle, who had been the one to hit her button. She sat there for a moment, shoulders curled slightly inwards, eyes focused on the table.

“Midtown Tech?” the moderator prompted. Peter was close enough to hear the slight uptick of Michelle’s heart rate and breathing, and there was a moment of charged, buzzing silence before—

“Zero.” she said coolly.

“That is correct. Midtown takes the championship!”

Cheers erupted from the table around him, and everyone was jumping up, shouting, yelling, piling on Michelle’s chair. Ned yanked her in for a side hug, and Peter could see a reluctant smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. He found himself grinning, too, and their eyes met for just a moment. His ears were ringing from the eruption of sound, and everything else was fuzzed out, but he stared straight into her eyes and felt his mouth form the words “good job.” He must have spoken them aloud, because her lips curled into a wider smile, eyes crinkling at the corners in a way that he’d never seen on her, before one of their other teammates jolted her chair and the connection was broken.

The next thirty minutes or so were a rush of awards ceremonies and medals getting passed out, and countless pictures being taken by Mr. Harrington and his teammates alike. Peter’s face ached from smiling so much, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had this much fun outside of Spider-Man in… years.

After all the raucous excitement died down and they were heading out of the venue, Peter pulled out his phone in order to call May and excitedly inform her of the news. Before he could, he hesitated over the two contacts currently at the top of his text list. One was May ( Good luck, I larb you, honey ) and the other was Mr. Stark. He clicked on the chat with his mentor and hesitated again as he saw the texts between the two of them. It was a recent development that they actually sent a few texts back and forth that weren’t just “Happy is picking you up at 3.” He could just wait until he got back to New York to tell his mentor that they’d won, but for some reason, especially after the man had wished him good luck, he felt the urge to tell him now.

We won, Mr. Stark!!!!

Looking back over it, Peter deleted two exclamation points. Then added a smiley face. Then deleted the whole thing. Then rewrote it.

After a great period of hesitation (seriously, why did this feel like such a big deal to him, it was just a few words), he pressed the send button and slid his phone back into his pocket. It let out a chime almost immediately, letting him know he’d gotten a response already, and he scrambled to pull it back out in surprise. He couldn’t stop the wide smile that stretched across his face as he saw his mentor’s response.

Great job kid, I knew you could do it.

—

As a group, they decided to spend their post-celebratory high on a tour of the Washington Monument, since it was a short walk away from the venue and a massive sightseeing location. The walk there was filled with excited chatter and re-hashing some of the more difficult questions and arguing over the answers.

“You guys, I am so proud of you.” Liz interjected, smiling widely and looking around at all of them. “We actually did it.”

“That last round of questions was insane. You hit that buzzer so fast.” Ned gushed, glancing over at Michelle, who ducked her head slightly at the chorus of agreements from their teammates.

“It was nothing.” She dismissed coolly. “Someone else could have gotten it, I just got lucky enough to hit the button first.”

“It wasn’t luck.” Peter said, daring to shove her arm lightly. He knew that it wasn’t, because even with his enhanced reflexes, he hadn’t hit the button before her. He undoubtedly had faster reflexes, but part of the challenge was also processing the question and coming up with an answer as quickly as she had. She shot him a look out of the corner of her eye at the physical contact, but he caught another small smile tugging at the corner of her lips, and considered it a win.

“Says the person who bumped our points by answering almost every one of the science questions.” she pointed out in a deadpan tone, and it was Peter’s turn to duck his head and rub at the back of his neck.

“Please.” Flash scoffed slightly, saving him from having to answer. “We could have done it without him.” His tone held no real heat, though, and Peter couldn’t even detect animosity in the words.

“You didn’t answer a single question, Flash.” Abe pointed out wryly. Flash huffed out a breath of annoyance but didn’t have a verbal comeback. Peter just let out his own breath of amusement, not quite sure why his face was still burning from the compliment Michelle had given him. Sure, he wasn’t the best at accepting compliments, but his teammates had all said similar things at some point. Hell, Liz had told him that multiple times, and he didn’t have this same level of reaction.

Maybe it was because Michelle didn’t often compliment people. Yeah, it was probably that.

They made it to the base of the monument, gawking up at the structure that towered over them and cast a shadow over the group.

“This is insane.” Charles said. “It’s so much taller in person.” The team echoed choruses of agreement.

Ned leaned over to whisper in his ear. “ Dude , that would be so crazy to swing off of.” he said lowly. Peter agreed, but really, he didn’t want to ever have to test that theory, because there was absolutely nothing in the nearby vicinity that he could use to swing from if things went terribly wrong.

“Guys, they have a tour to go to the top— come on, come on.” Liz beckoned, and they all excitedly glanced over to where she was pointing.

Just as Peter was about to follow the group to the line of tourists waiting, he realized that Mr. Harrington and Michelle had drifted a little ways away.

“—no, I just don’t really want to celebrate something that was built by slaves.”

Peter glanced in between the group heading for the monument, and Michelle now standing alone by an awkward Mr. Harrington. He jogged over to them before his teacher could bail.

“Actually, I'll stay on the ground too.” he said, and they both turned their gazes to him. “Not a fan of heights.” he blurted out.

Mr. Harrington sighed but nodded. “Stick together.” he instructed, before hurrying back to the group. Peter and Michelle stared after him.

“You’re a terrible liar, you know.”

He whipped his head to her. “What?”

“The ‘fear of heights’ excuse. You didn’t have to lie to keep me company.”

Peter shrugged. “You’re not the only one who likes observing things from afar, Michelle.” he said, because it was kind of true.

She arched her eyebrows, looking almost amused at his quick rebuttal. “MJ.” she responded after a moment. It was Peter's turn to raise his eyebrows. 

“I thought only your friends called you MJ.”

“They do.” she responded coolly, and Peter’s mouth twitched in a smile.

“MJ it is.” he agreed readily, and he got a true smile from her for his efforts.

~ ~ ~

They came back to New York late Friday evening; a few of the AcaDec team members got signed waivers from their guardians granting them permission to be released to stay in DC for the weekend, if they wanted to see more of the city. However, since Nationals had finished and the school only paid for hotels for Thursday night, students had to arrange details of their trip and they were no longer under the school’s responsibility if they decided to stay the weekend. Ned tried to convince Peter to stay with him, but Peter declined— he didn’t want to be away from Spider-Man for four days, and he didn’t want to make May pay extra for a hotel in DC over the weekend, or a plane ride back to NYC. He’d encouraged Ned to stay if he wanted to, but Ned refused, saying it wouldn’t be as fun on his own.

By the time Peter got back to his and May’s apartment, it was already 2 AM on Saturday morning, and he came in quietly so as to not disturb his aunt if she was sleeping. He made a beeline towards his room, already looking forward to the prospect of crashing under his sheets and sleeping for twelve hours straight. He’d tried to sleep a little bit on the bus, but all the bumps and constant shifting did nothing for his REM quality.

Opening the door to his room, he stifled a yawn and tossed his bag to the side, before stopping momentarily in his tracks. There was an innocuous-looking paper bag on his bed that he was 98% sure contained his Spider-Man suit, and Peter saw his mentor’s scrawled signature on the side, along with a note.

Welcome back, underoos. - TS

—

He didn’t see Mr. Stark until their scheduled lab time on Tuesday, but he was in a fantastic mood when he bounded into the room. He’d ridden the high of winning Nationals all weekend, and on top of that had a successful patrol on Sunday. May had even taken him out to a celebratory dinner, and they’d spent a rare quiet evening watching TV together; a habit they didn’t usually get to engage in anymore, with May’s job and Peter being Spider-Man.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Stark!” he greeted, sliding over to his desk. The man in question furrowed his eyebrows and looked up from a hologram he’d been hunched over.

“It’s afternoon already?” he asked.

“Indeed, Boss. It is 4:08 PM on Tuesday.” FRIDAY interjected smoothly.

“Huh.” Mr. Stark said, looking ever-so-slightly disoriented.

“Welcome back, Peter.” FRIDAY said, a touch of amusement in her voice at her creator’s confusion. “Congratulations on Nationals.”

“Thanks, FRIDAY.” Peter grinned widely, setting his bag down. “What happened with the guys I was tracking while I was gone?” He’d been anxious to know for the last few days, but assumed if anything big had gone down, he probably would have gotten some sort of alert.

“Oh, them?” Tony asked, waving his hand slightly. “They stole a few things from a truck, nothing big.”

Peter froze in his tracks. “What do you mean, they stole stuff?” he asked, confused. Surely he heard it wrong. “Didn’t you try and stop them?”

Tony barely glanced over at him this time. “Uh, no.” he said, still distracted with whatever he was working on.

“What if someone was hurt?” Peter insisted, eyebrows furrowed. Tony looked at him strangely, as if he genuinely couldn’t understand why Peter was so worked up about this.

“Nobody was, kid, they’ve been doing this for years since the 2012 invasion, they know how to get in and out without a scene or even interacting with people. Truck drivers didn’t even know anything was stolen until long after they were gone.”

“But I thought the point of the tracking and me telling you was that they would be stopped.” Peter said, chest tightening uncomfortably. His mentor still seemed distracted, shaking his head slightly.

“No, that wasn’t a job for the Avengers, all they did was pick up a few things from the truck. It was nothing major, it would be better to wait and send the FBI in to catch them on a bigger charge.”

“The FBI?” Peter echoed with a frown. What was the FBI supposed to be able to do against alien weapons?

“Yeah, they’ve got a unit for tracking down illegal weapons and black market stuff.” Tony waved his hand. “They don’t really like it when superheroes step on their toes.”

“But…” Peter trailed off. FBI or not, they were still just humans . An overworked human department against alien weaponry. He'd seen what those things could do— the FBI wasn’t equipped to manage that. 

When his mentor had promised to watch over things for him, Peter had thought he would actually do the work himself, not pawn it off to a police department. Though, now that he was thinking of it, he should have seen it coming. Iron Man was never a vigilante, not like Spider-Man. He undoubtedly did good, but Mr. Stark didn’t seem to understand why these weapons needed to be off the street immediately. That was a job Spider-Man could do. It was a job Iron Man could do, if he put an effort to it. He supposed it wasn’t a job Tony Stark would ever pick. He wasn’t on the streets— didn’t see Delmar’s get decimated, or the weapons demonstration under the bridge. Didn’t see Uncle Ben get shot in front of him with a weapon the robber shouldn’t have had access to.

Peter felt a warmth rising in his chest— but this time, it wasn’t a good feeling. It was embarrassment. Because it was clear to him, now, that his mentor had been humoring him about the Vulture and the alien tech. Or at the very least, didn’t seem to think it was as important as Peter knew it was. 

Instead of saying all of this, he swallowed back his feelings and nodded. He’d just have to prove that it was worth Mr. Stark’s time. This was important. People could get hurt. People were getting hurt. Just because they picked up a few minor things from the truck didn’t mean the overall situation wasn’t important. The FBI wasn’t equipped to handle alien weapons in the same way the Avengers or even Spider-Man could. When people got weapons they shouldn’t have access to, innocent people paid the price. Why would they wait when they could take them down now? 

He set his jaw and made his decision. He could do this with or without his mentor’s support, and it was looking increasingly more like the latter option. Whatever. So be it. He was Spider-Man. One way or another, the Vulture was going down.

Chapter Text

His mood had not particularly improved since his last lab session with Mr. Stark. He elected to go patrolling, hoping that saving people and doing some physical exercise would help boost his mood. Endorphins and all that.

It didn’t particularly work.

He was jerked out of his thoughts as he heard an ear-curdling scream, and was swinging in that direction before he’d even had the chance to truly register it.

“Karen, how far away—” he started, before he heard another scream, from the same woman. This time, it wasn’t of fear— it was of pain. No . He thought, and pushed himself even faster, not daring to think that he could be too late. He dove into the alley it had come from, and was on top of the figure holding a knife before he could move again. The mugger (he presumed) went down with a grunt, and Peter kicked the knife halfway down the alley, webbing the man to the ground before turning to the woman who had screamed.

He almost gasped aloud, lungs freezing in place as he caught sight of who , exactly, was standing in front of him.

Liz .

His jaw gaped under his mask, and he was sure his lenses were blown completely wide. He opened and closed his jaw a few times, unable to reconcile the familiar face in an unfamiliar situation.

The moment was broken when she stumbled a bit, gripping her side, and Peter felt his heart stop for the second time in a few seconds when he remembered the scream of pain and saw the blood dripping through her fingers.

No .

He grabbed her just as she collapsed, feeling her full weight suddenly slumped over the right side of his body.

“Karen, call an ambulance.” he ordered, and his voice wavered a bit. She gave him a verbal assent, but he wasn’t listening, gaze intently focused on his classmate. “L— Ma’am.” he corrected, even though he wasn’t sure how aware she even was of what he was saying. “Hey, stay with me.” he said, guiding them to the ground of the alleyway and pressing his hands firmly to what looked like a stab wound in her abdomen. She groaned slightly at the contact, and he reached one hand up to tap the side of her face. She blinked and opened her eyes, looking into his lenses.

“Hey.” he started again, trying to sound cheerful, but his tone was too strained to come off as genuine. He should probably be more worried that he might recognize his voice, but truth be told it was the last thing he cared about at the moment. “No, no, come on.” he said as her eyes started to flutter shut again. “Focus on the eyes.” he ordered, and she followed his instructions. “Yeah, that’s it.” he said with a slight smile under his mask. “I’ve got a handsome face, I know.” he joked, batting his eyes for dramatic effect. She let out a breathy little laugh, and Peter considered that an immense win, because it meant she was still awake and had some hold on consciousness.

Just as he had the thought, her eyes blinked again, slower this time. “No, no— come on.” he encouraged. “Eyes on me.” Her eyelids fluttered shut again. “Ma’am? Ma’am.” he said. He jolted her slightly, but her eyes didn’t open back up. “ Liz .” he tried, a sort of desperation crawling into his throat and into his voice. He moved one of his hands from where they’d been pressing on the wound and scrabbled at her pulse point, trying to find it—

Thu-thump . It was weak, but there. Peter found he couldn’t relax; not when the last time he’d been in an alley with someone’s blood on his hands had been with Ben. Just then, he registered the sound of sirens, loud and blaring, right before hands were grabbing at his shoulders. He jolted slightly, head shooting up, and found that the ambulances had finally arrived and were trying to take his place. Despite all his instincts screaming otherwise, he scrambled to his feet and backed off, watching blankly as they put her on a stretcher and loaded her into an ambulance.

“—pider-Man? Spider-Man.” A voice filtered in his ears, and he blinked three times in rapid succession, shaking his head to focus on a short paramedic standing in front of him, looking a little concerned. “Are you alright?”

Peter stared blankly at him before glancing down at himself, covered in blood. “I’m— I’m fine.” he managed. “It’s… not mine.”

“She’ll be fine, Spider-Man.” the paramedic assured him. “You kept her awake and put pressure on her wound. You saved her life.”

Peter pressed his lips together and nodded blindly, but found that it didn’t particularly make him feel better. 

His hands were still covered in her blood.

—

Word got around school quickly of the incident, and Peter grit his jaw every time he heard someone whispering about it. It was no surprise, really— Liz was a popular girl, and everyone knew about Spider-Man saving her life. Ned had originally been eager to talk about the situation, as he was with any Spider-Man mania, but had quickly realized that Peter was not in the mood for discussing it in any regard. Peter couldn’t really blame him; nobody but Peter knew how serious the situation had been. None of them had seen the way her eyes shut and been unsure if they’d ever reopen again.

Liz didn’t come back to school for a few days, still in the hospital, and people were sending gifts and “get well" cards left and right. Peter felt like he needed to do something — something to apologize for not getting there sooner, for letting her get hurt— but he hadn’t been able to think of anything suitable enough. Between the mugging and the whole deal with Mr. Stark and the stolen weapons from the truck, he’d been in a rather sour mood lately.

MJ had taken one look at him at lunch today and had set him straight. “You’d better pull yourself out of whatever gutter you’ve fallen into, Parker.” she said flatly. “Sulking isn’t a good look on you.”

“I’m not sulking.” Peter protested, glancing up at her momentarily before averting his gaze and poking halfheartedly at his lunch food. He had the barest of warnings from his Spidey-sense before an apple slammed solidly into the side of his temple and fell to the table with a thunk . “ OW— ” he yelped, raising a hand to rub at the sore spot on his skull and shooting a half-glare at the offender: MJ, who looked utterly nonplussed. “MJ, what the hell was that for?” he complained.

“I don’t appreciate liars.” she responded coolly. “Maybe that’ll knock some sense into you.”

Peter just made a face, mouth pulling deeper into a frown. She sighed, rolled her eyes, and stood up from her lunch seat. She walked past his seat on her way out of the lunchroom door, plucking the apple off the table from where it had fallen beside him and taking a bite out of it.

“I’ll hang out with you after you stop moping. I don’t surround myself with that kind of energy.” she said flatly, shooting him another pointed look before strolling out of the cafeteria. Peter closed his eyes and sighed, rubbing at the sore spot on his temple and running a hand over his eyes. The thing was, she wasn’t wrong— he had been in a foul mood, and Ned and MJ had faced the brunt of his frustrated energy. Even if he didn’t say anything out loud or snap at them, he couldn’t imagine it was pleasant to be around. Ned was far too sweet to say anything, but it seemed MJ had no such qualms— which, while Peter didn’t particularly appreciate the apple to the skull, he supposed it was a necessity.

“Fine, you win.” he muttered, even though she wasn’t around to hear it. Maybe she’d pick it up telepathically. There was no response from the sad school lunch that sat in front of him, and he sighed a final time before getting up and tossing it. He decided that this afternoon he’d get Liz something.

After school, he went to a small flower shop before patrol, hovering uncertainly around the doorway. He didn’t have the best track record with flower shops: the only time he really entered them was to buy flowers to decorate memorial gravestones.

“What would you like, dear?” a nice old lady asked, smiling warmly at him.

“Uh…” Peter started, looking at the frankly overwhelming assortment all around him. “Flowers?”

She laughed, and Peter felt his sullen mood lighten just a bit. “I know that look.” she said fondly. “Let me guess: apology flowers?”

Peter’s face twisted. “Yeah, something like that.” he sighed. The old lady nodded wisely, reaching over to pluck a few of the flowers out of the buckets. 

“Well, I’ll give you some advice: just flowers won’t cut it. A handwritten card is always the next best step.” she said, nodding to the register, where a line of cards stood, with different floral arrangements sketched on their fronts.

She winked at him. “Trust me, I get all kinds of men in here looking for apology flowers for their girlfriends.” she said knowingly. Peter felt his cheeks turn a little pink.

“Oh, I’m not— we’re not— we’re just classmates.” he said, a little awkwardly. She glanced up at him from where she’d gathered an assortment of flowers, looking a little amused.

“Mmhm.” she said, and Peter pressed his lips together. For some reason, the insinuation that Liz and him were dating— or could be dating— made him feel a little upset. He didn’t know why; if someone had made that same insinuation a week or two ago, he probably would have been delighted, if a little flustered. Now, he just got a kind of twisted, strange feeling in his gut. He thought maybe it was because this was supposed to be an apology for failing her— he hadn’t been able to stop her from getting hurt; he wasn’t good enough for her. It didn’t seem fair to her to insinuate such a thing, to place her with Peter, who hadn’t been able to help her when she needed it most.

It was a reasonable explanation, but it didn’t account for the way his thoughts slipped into thinking about MJ for the briefest of seconds. He didn’t know what that could possibly mean, so he shoved it aside. It was probably because she’d been the one to push him to do this in the first place. Yeah, that made sense.

“Does this look good?” the old lady spoke again, breaking him from his train of thought. He blinked, startled, before his gaze flitted from her face to the now-full bouquet of flowers gripped loosely in her hands. It was a beautiful arrangement, perfectly arranged in a circle, and he nodded, trying to smile.

“It’s perfect, thank you…” he glanced down to her shirt, looking for some kind of name tag. She laughed when he found none.

“Francis.” she said.

He smiled. “Peter.” he said in turn, gesturing to himself. “Thank you, Francis. How much?” he asked, reaching for the crumpled up cash in his pocket.

She waved him off. “It’s on the house.” she said. Peter blinked.

“No, I can’t—” he immediately protested, shoving a sad-looking $20 bill at her. She shook her head and put her hands up, backing towards the counter and grabbing a card as well, before moving back to him and pressing it against his chest. He instinctively reached for it, and she retracted her hand, leaving him holding a blank card with a looping flowery decoration on the front.

“You seem like a genuine young man.” she said firmly, though not unkindly. “You could use a little kindness today, I can tell.”

Peter blinked again, left arm still half-extended with the money gripped loosely in his fingers. She wasn’t wrong , he’d had a pretty shitty week— but still, the unexpected gesture of kindness brought a lump to his throat and warm stinging to his eyes. He cleared his throat slightly, lowering his arm.

“Thank you.” he repeated, quieter. She smiled again and patted his shoulder gently.

“Consider your thanks to me by writing a nice note in that.” she said, nodding a head towards the card in his grasp. “For your… classmate.”

Peter’s mouth twitched in a smile, and he nodded. “I will.” he promised, and she pushed him gently towards the door.

He made a mental note to come back as Spider-Man at some point and leave her a gift or help out by lifting something in the shops. Regardless, he allowed himself to be guided out, making his way to an alley with the flowers and card in tow. He changed into his suit and made his way to Liz’s house, glad that he had the address still from the house party. He had to take it slower than usual, to ensure the flower arrangement didn’t get crushed or squished too much (though he wasn’t entirely successful at the endeavor).

When he got there, he carefully set the gift down on her doorstep, glancing around to make sure nobody was watching Spider-Man deliver flowers to some random person’s house. The last thing he needed was a headline involving him having some sort of romantic interest— a high schooler, no less.

Satisfied, he hesitated for a moment before also placing a card next to it. He’d agonized over the few words scrawled on it for a good half-hour, and debated whether he should sign it as Spider-Man or Peter Parker. Spider-Man shouldn’t know who a mugging victim was or what her address was, but Peter Parker giving Liz Allen flowers with no context was a bit more of a reach than he would usually go for. Eventually, he made his decision, and swung away before anyone had the opportunity to catch sight of him.

I hope you get better soon. I’m glad that you’re alright, and I’m here if you ever want to talk. – Peter Parker

~ ~ ~

Pepper’s POV

Tony Stark was a predictable man.

Well— in certain regards, at least. His exact actions at any point in time were impulsive and all over the place, but she anticipated the existence of them in that very same vein. It was a dichotomy Pepper had long gotten used to, in her decades around the genius.

In turn, their relationship did the same dance: Tony would stress her out, or mess up, or do something horrendously reckless and threatening to his life for the umpteenth time. Pepper would freak out and determine that she couldn’t deal with her cortisol levels spiking anymore than they already did running the company, and they’d take a break. They’d realize they couldn’t stay apart, and they’d come back together. Their breaks were almost as familiar as their relationship at this point.

In other words— Pepper had been expecting the apology. That was the predictable action, after she initiated their break. Tony had been in too deep with the Accords, not sleeping, being even more reckless than usual, shutting her out and locking himself in his lab. She knew that for every predictable action, there was an unpredictable one. (Tony had once joked that it was Newton’s Third Law in action.)

Despite the fact that she’d been preparing for an unpredictable move, it still came completely out of left field, in the form of Tony Stark fondly referring to a teenager that he willingly spent time with. She had yet to decide whether the fact that said teenager was also Spider-Man made it more or less of a foreseeable action.

It was the first thing she’d noticed, when he stepped into her office. He’d looked… softer. The harsh, stressed lines of his face— the ones normally in place when they argued or he apologized— were smoothed out when he first met her gaze. 

She blinked. “You’ve been sleeping better.” she commented, instead of a greeting. He looked thrown off-guard for a moment, tilting his head slightly. Tony always had difficulty keeping reasonable hours in the lab, or even knowing what day of the week it was. Something had clearly forced him to keep track of the days, and Pepper seriously doubted it was the Accords paperwork, because paperwork had never been a reason for him to straighten out his schedule before.

“Well, I wouldn’t say better .” Tony said, arching an eyebrow. “More regularly, maybe.” At the clear, silent question in her gaze, he sighed and elaborated. “The kid comes over on Tuesdays and Thursdays.” he shrugged. “Forces me to remember what day it is, I guess.”

Pepper blinked again. “The… kid.” She started slowly, because she was just a little bit lost.

“Spider-Man. Peter.” Tony elaborated. “You know, for the Accords sponsor thing? The same thing you yelled at me over when you first got the paperwork for it?”

Ah . She did remember that. Quite clearly.

“I sign a lot of paperwork, Tony.” she said tiredly. “But yes, I remember. I didn’t realize you were still… doing it.” She ended with, delicately. Part of the reason she’d originally chewed him out for the decision was because she had been sure that he would get bored of being a mentor. Dumping a teenager to fend for himself amongst the legal sharks and the Accords was a side effect that she couldn’t let happen. It wasn’t that she thought he would do it out of cruelty, because she knew that Tony was not— and had never been— a purposefully cruel man. What he was was impulsive and reckless, and sometimes other people paid the price. Though it seemed that she really had underestimated him in this regard, if he was still partaking in lab time with the teen.

Tony pressed his lips together, staring at her for a stretched out moment. “He’s a good kid, Pep.” he said, and his voice had a sort of strange, serious tone that she rarely heard from him. “Besides, I doubt I’d be able to shake him even if I wanted to.” he snorted. “He’s sticky in a number of different ways.”

His voice, and accompanying expression, was so different from his usual countenance that Pepper found she couldn’t tear her gaze away from him. Part of it was due to the fact that he didn’t try to truly hide his emotions when they were alone together anymore, as part of the whole trusting-each-other bit. 

The other part was that it was the kind of expression she’d never really seen on him, when he was talking about other people in his life. She was used to the complaining about investors, or government officials, or about the Avengers. She was used to the kind of fond exasperation he got when talking about Rhodey, or the loving care that she often found directed at her. 

This… this wasn’t quite either of those. It wasn’t annoyance or slight discomfort that he usually displayed around other children, or the weird kind of fondness-annoyance combo he even displayed around the Avengers. This was… some sort of meld of fond-exasperated-protectiveness that Pepper had never before seen on him. Not the protectiveness he showed around her or Rhodey, or even his teammates. Something else. More parental— and she was shocked by her own train of thought, because she never thought she’d see that expression on the man who swore up and down he would be a terrible father after Howard. Tony himself seemed to be completely oblivious of this particular distinction.

You care about him. Pepper thought, but she didn’t say it. ( You love him. Was an immediate afterthought; one she didn’t even dare to fully form in her own mind, much less speak aloud). Instead: “Do his parents know?” she asked, because she hadn’t gotten the chance to question anything about the kid past his name and age when she originally tore Tony a new one over the Accords.

Tony let out a large puff of air, holding up his hands slightly like he expected her to yell at him. “He lives with his aunt.” he said, and Pepper pressed her lips together firmly at the unpleasant implication of that. “And no, he was very insistent on that matter. Webbed my hand to the door and everything.” His brows furrowed as he fell into a memory. “Can you believe that? Gangly 15 year old meets me, Tony Stark , and webs my hand to his bedroom door within twenty minutes of meeting me? The disrespect.” he muttered, shaking his head. Pepper refrained from a dry comment. Tony shook his head once more. “But that’s besides the point; I didn’t come here to talk about the kid. I came here to apologize.”

Pepper had almost forgotten about that fact.

“I know.” she responded instead. Tony sighed.

“I’m not asking for a second chance.” He paused at her raised eyebrow. “Okay, actually I am. A third, fourth, fifth chance—  you’ve given me a lot.” he paused, and his shoulders slumped ever so slightly. “I’m sorry.” he said, and Pepper knew she was one of the few people that Tony Stark apologized to and meant it. “I know things have been… shaky. I've been a mess. As usual. I'm not asking you to jump right back into dating me full-time, but… dinner next week? You and me?” he asked, and his tone was hopeful, brown eyes earnest and wide.

Pepper had been avoiding a discussion like this because she knew she’d cave, no matter what he said. She always did. But it was different this time, she could see. Some sort of shift, even if Tony himself didn’t see it yet. She had higher hopes than usual that this might be their last actual break.

“Alright.” she agreed. “But I expect you to tell me more about Peter.” she tacked on, because she needed to know more about this teenager who had worked his way into Tony’s very carefully protected inner circle.

Tony tilted his head slightly, but he looked more relaxed at her acceptance, and his eyes had taken on that playful twinkle. “You know, Rhodey was being just as nosy. What is it with the kid? Am I too boring for both of you? Jumping on the next brand-new superhero?” he joked, but Pepper could tell he was genuinely confused.

Idiot. she thought fondly. But if Rhodey hadn’t tried to explain it to him, she wasn’t going to either. Instead, she plastered on a small smile. 

“Do we have a deal, Mr. Stark?” she asked smoothly, referring back to the dinner date and completely ignoring his question. He cocked his head ever so slightly but mirrored her smile. 

“We have a deal, Ms. Potts.”

~ ~ ~

Peter’s POV

“Hey, Karen.” Peter greeted, pulling on his Spider-Man mask the second he got home and checked that he was alone. “What's up?”

“Hi, Peter.” Karen greeted kindly. “How was your Spanish quiz?”

“Eh.” Peter responded. He hadn’t failed, but he’d been a bit too distracted thinking about all the alien weapons stuff that he hadn’t dedicated as much time as he probably should have to it. “Listen, I was wondering if you could help me. I'm trying to figure out who the guys under the bridge were that night, but I can only kind of remember part of a license plate.” he continued, ignoring the question of school for now.

“I can run facial recognition on the footage of that encounter.” Karen offered.

“Footage?” Peter echoed. He didn’t remember asking her to record anything during that incident, which meant—

“Yes, Peter. I record everything you see.” she said calmly. He blinked.

“Everything?”

“Everything.” she confirmed.

“Like all the time?” Peter asked, voice squeaking slightly. Ugh, he had done so many embarrassing things while in the suit, this sucked—

“It's called the Baby Monitor Protocol.” she confirmed cheerfully.

Peter tossed his pen across the room in frustration. If he’d heard that a few weeks ago— hell, even a few days ago— he probably would have laughed and thought it was funny. Now, after the whole deal with Mr. Stark not listening to him about the weapons— it just felt like salt in a fresh wound. It felt more like a taunt about his abilities than a lighthearted joke.

“Of course it is.” he grumbled, electing not to say anything about it. After all, there was no need to be rude to Karen; she hadn’t named the protocol. He sighed. “Yeah, just roll it back to last Friday.”

“With pleasure.” she replied, before footage of himself started playing on his HUD. He immediately knew it was not the type of footage he wanted to see.

“It is I, Thor, son of Odin!” Past-Peter said in a deep voice, and Peter wanted to drop his head into his hands in embarrassment.

“No, no, no, no, no, no.” he said rapidly, waving his hands instead as if that would help matters. “That's definitely… no. That's definitely not what we wanted to watch. Just…” he trailed off, doubt striking him for a moment. Maybe Mr. Stark really was right. Just from the footage… Well, Peter wasn’t so sure he’d consider himself capable from that alone. He doubted the man had taken the time to examine all of the footage from his suit without a reason, but the thought that he could was mortifying.

“Your impressions are very funny.” Karen said, and it snapped him out of his thoughts. No. He could do this; he was Spider-Man. He could prove that he was capable of it regardless of his age.

“Fast-forward to the arms deal.” he said instead of a response. Obediently, she displayed the footage on his HUD, and he stood up from his chair in order to pace while he spoke. “Okay. The two on the right, who are they?”

“Searching law enforcement databases.” Karen said smoothly, and thousands of faces flashed across the HUD within milliseconds of each other. “No records found for two of the individuals.” she spoke after a moment or two.

“Nothing?” Peter asked, somewhat incredulously. These were not rookie criminals; they’d for sure been operating for years, at the very least. If they’d never been caught, that meant they were more highly skilled than he’d originally given them credit for, and a lot better at hiding it.

“One individual identified.” Karen said, in lieu of a response. “Aaron Davis, age 33. He has a criminal record and an address here in Queens.” As she said it, the man’s criminal record popped up on his screen.

“Huh.” Peter mused, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “Let's pay him a visit, then.”

“Would you like me to activate the Enhanced Interrogation Protocol?” Karen asked as he grabbed the body part of his suit.

Peter narrowed his eyes, remembering when Mr. Stark had first unlocked the ‘training wheels protocol’ and it had activated ‘instant kill mode.’ “What, exactly, does that protocol involve?” he asked warily.

“A voice modulator, enhanced optics, a drone—”

“A voice modulator?” Peter interrupted, eyebrows furrowing. “Everyone already knows what I sound like, why would I need that?”

“Would you like to test it right now?” Karen responded smoothly.

“Sure.” Peter said, drawing out the vowel sounds. There was a moment of silence. “So, what—-” he startled violently as a voice came out of his mask that decidedly wasn’t his own. “What the hell?” he said aloud, and the words echoed around his room in a deep, gravelly voice that sounded like they were being spoken from some super cliche villain.

“This is the voice modulator.” Karen responded helpfully.

“Yeah, I got that.” Peter responded, wincing as the freaky metallic voice reverberated around the walls and his eardrums. “Turn it off, please.” There was another moment of silence before Peter spoke again, relaxing when his voice was back to normal. “You’re telling me that that’s supposed to help me interrogate people?” Peter asked incredulously.

“Yes, Peter.” Karen responded. “I believe Mr. Stark created it in case you ever needed to sound more intimidating than you do currently.”

Peter huffed, partially annoyed but also amused against his will. He knew he didn’t have the most intimidating voice— not that he’d ever needed it, either— but he couldn’t imagine how that voice would possibly ever get people to take him seriously. “He didn’t think to make it… I don’t know, more subtle?” he asked, somewhat exasperatedly.

“I do not believe ‘more subtle’ has ever been Mr. Stark’s strong suit.” Karen replied sweetly, and Peter let out a startled laugh.

“See? I knew you could understand sarcasm.”

—-

Karen tracked Aaron Davis down to a multi-story parking lot, and Peter crawled along the ceiling as the  man made his way to open the trunk of his car. He had elected not to go with the voice modulator part of Enhanced Interrogation Protocol (making a note with Karen to change the voice later), but the little spider-drone had turned out to be helpful. And cute. Peter was going to name him Drone-y.

As Aaron reached to open his trunk, Peter webbed his hand to the trunk and hopped down from the ceiling. The man startled slightly and turned to see Drone-y hovering around his head, slowly turning to face Peter.

“Remember me?” Peter asked, strolling towards the man. Aaron narrowed his eyes and gave him a once-over.

“Kind of hard to forget the guy crawling around in red-and-blue spandex,” he said warily. Yeah, okay, fair .

“It’s actually more of a high-tech synthetic fabric.” Peter said casually, reaching the car and leaning against the side of it. Aaron narrowed his eyes at him.

“I don’t give a shit.” he said flatly. “What do you want?”

“I need information. You—” Peter pointed at him. “—are gonna give it to me.” he said faux-cheerfully. The other man laughed.

“And why would I do that?”

“Because you have a criminal record, and because I have footage of you engaging in an illegal weapons deal.” Peter said calmly. The other man straightened, no longer amused, and stared Peter down through his lenses, trying to see if he could intimidate him. Peter didn’t let him.

“I— I didn’t want nothin’ to do with the weapons part, man.” Aaron said, putting his non-webbed hand up in a ‘stop’ gesture. “I just wanted some anti-grav climbers, or somethin’ non-lethal.”

“I know.” Peter said— because he did know, and he really had no desire to throw someone in jail that wasn’t the weapons dealers. “These weapons are dangerous— they can't just be out on the streets. I mean, if one of them can just cut Delmar's bodega in half…” he trailed off. Aaron raised an eyebrow.

“You know Delmar's?”

Peter let out a half-laugh. “Yeah, best sandwiches in Queens.”

Aaron hummed. “Sub Haven's pretty good.”

“It's too much bread.” Peter disagreed with a slight shrug.

Aaron tilted his head, and something almost like amusement was coloring his expression. “I like bread.” he said, and there was another moment of quiet. Peter sighed.

“Look, man. I don’t want to get you in trouble. I just wanna get these guys off the streets, okay? I need to know who’s selling the weapons, and I’ll leave you alone after that.”

Aaron stared him down, mouth pressed in a thin line. “You’re bein’ serious?” he checked. “You won’t rat me out after I tell you what I know?”

Peter shook his head and put a hand up. “Scout’s honor.” he said, with a half-grin under his mask, tilting his head slightly.

The other man sighed, looking down towards his feet as another beat of silence passed. “The other night,” he started, voice thoughtful. “You told that dude, "if you shoot somebody, shoot me." That was pretty ballsy. I don't want those weapons in this neighborhood either. I got a nephew who lives here.”

Peter straightened and leaned towards him. “Who are these guys? What can you tell me about the guy with the wings?”

Aaron gave a half-shrug. “Other than he's a psychopath dressed like a demon, nothing. I don't know who he is or where he is.”

Peter sighed, tilting his head down. “Really?” he deadpanned— because there had to be more information than that, judging how unwilling the man had been at the start.

“Well.” Aaron said. “I do know where he's gonna be.”

Peter arched his eyebrows. That was notably important information. “Really?” he double checked, getting another shrug out of the other man.

“Yeah, this crazy dude I used to work with, he's supposed to be doing a deal with him.”

“Where?” Peter asked, when he didn’t elaborate. Aaron made a face.

“Staten Island ferry, eleven.”

“Oh, that’s soon.” Peter muttered, glancing at the time on the corner of his HUD. If he swung fast he’d be able to make it. “Thank you.” he said, looking back up to the man. Aaron titled his head and gave an ever-so-slight nod.

“You remind me of my nephew,” he said with a mild shrug. Peter didn’t know what to say to that, so he nodded and gestured to the webbing.

“That’ll dissolve in two hours, by the way.” he said, backing away and already planning on sprinting in the direction of the Ferry.

“Hey— no.” Aaron called out after him. “No, no, come fix this.”

“Two hours!” Peter called back cheerfully. “You deserve that.”

“Not cool, man, I have ice cream in here.” Aaron complained. It was almost enough to make Peter let him go. Melted ice cream was a cruel fate, and he had just helped Peter out. Regrettably, he was already running tight on time as it was, and he needed to catch these guys.

“Consider it public service!” he called back, webbing his way to the ceiling. “Karma. You're a criminal. Bye, Mr. Criminal.”

Just as he got out of earshot of the other man and his protests, he heard him mutter: “He’s definitely like Miles.”

—

Peter made it just as the ferry was pulling out of the dock, and he leapt from the top of the roof and shot a web to the hull of the retreating ship. He grunted slightly as his ribcage met the metal, but clung to the surface with his sticky fingers and successfully didn’t fall off. Crawling up the side of the ferry, he peeked into one of the windows and scanned the people inside.

Supervillain weapons dealers, come out come out wherever you are. He thought, as he scanned all of the unfamiliar faces.

Aha. There you are. He spotted one familiar face, sitting a little ways away from the crowds with another person.

“Karen, activate Enhanced Reconnaissance Mode.” Peter murmured. He could technically hear them speaking with his super-hearing, but the audio came through clearer when he used his suit, and he didn’t have to try and focus to filter out other sounds. Plus, it meant he would have clear video evidence for later.

“Sure thing.” Karen confirmed, and Drone-y detached from his chest. His HUD zoomed in closer to two men. At first glance, it didn’t look like they were speaking to each other, but Peter could see the way they were angled slightly towards the other. They were also seated at a perfect distance to hear if the other person spoke in a mutter. One of the men’s faces was familiar, but the other one was new.

“He’s up front. Main deck.” The new guy spoke— an older white man, with graying hair cropped close to his head, maybe somewhere in his 60s. (Peter wasn’t very good with estimating ages.)

“I hate this guy.” The familiar man muttered.

“That’s the guy from the bridge, right?” Peter double-checked. Karen made a sound of assent. “Who’s that other guy?”

“Just keep me posted.” The new guy said, sounding slightly irritable.

“There’s no record of him in my criminal database.” Karen said, and Peter sighed. Of course not. Clearly, this man was of a higher rank than the other, given that he was giving the orders and seemed to be arranging some part of the drop-off deal. That was good; it meant that Peter was getting closer to the Vulture— who he presumed was the leader, at least. The question was how far up the chain of command this new guy was.

“Peter, I have an incoming call from May Parker. Should I reroute to your heads-up display?”

“No, no.” Peter murmured, declining. “I’ll be done within a half hour, I’ll call her back.” He crawled up to the roof of the ferry and peered down at four men now gathered on an outside deck. The man from the bridge had now met up with three others, all of whom were unfamiliar to Peter. “Who’s the guy on the left?” he asked.

“Mac Gargan. Extensive criminal record, including homicide.” Karen said, tone cheerful as if she were reading from a children’s book. “Would you like me to activate Instant Kill?”

Peter balked. “What— no, Karen, why would I want Instant Kill?” he paused, and could just sense an incoming response. “That was rhetorical, don’t answer that.” At the very least, he now had one name to go on; he assumed Gargan was the buyer, given his criminal record and the way the deal seemed to be going down.

The guy from the bridge approached Gargan. “White pickup truck.” he muttered. Gargan nodded to another scrawny guy, who walked away from the group.

“White pickup truck?” Peter muttered. “How much more stereotypical can they get ?” Karen didn’t respond, and he continued. “Drone-y, scan the ship for a white pickup truck.”

The drone obeyed his command, going into the cargo hold and starting its scans. Peter tilted his head curiously as he continued watching it all play out— the men clearly unaware of his presence. He could just wait and do surveillance; he had all of their faces on film as proof of the deal. But Peter knew that he didn’t want these weapons in the hands of someone like Mac Gargan for any length of time, and he couldn’t just sit by in good conscience and let a weapons deal go down in front of him without trying to stop it.

“This is perfect. Weapons, buyers, and sellers all in one place.” Peter murmured. 

Of course, just as he spoke it into existence, that was the moment everything decided to go to shit. (It only ever got worse from there.)

“Incoming call from Tony Stark.” Karen said, all-too cheerfully.

Well, crap .

Before Peter could decline (not that his mentor would have let that slide, anyways), Mr. Stark was pushing the call through to his HUD.

“Hey kid, mind telling me what you’re doing departing Staten Island in your suit at 4 in the afternoon? Ferries aren’t your usual choice of playground, unless there’s some new mugging scheme I’m unaware of.”

“Uhhhhhh…” Peter trailed off, distracted by the scene playing out in front of him. “Taking a trip to see the Statue of Liberty?” he joked, only to realize that he had to make his move now . “Shit— sorry, Mr. Stark— Karen, end call.”

“ Hey –”

Peter didn’t have the chance to think about the affronted sound his mentor made, nor the fact that he was so fucked for just hanging up on Tony Stark, before he leaped from his hiding place and shot a web at the keychain. “I’ll take those!” he shouted as it made contact. “Yoink!”

He leapt onto the deck and peered down at them as they shouted in shock and turned to stare at him. “Hey, guys. The illegal-weapons-deal-ferry was at 10:30. You missed it.”

They did not like that.

Quickly, he shot webs at their weapons, yanking them away before he could get a repeat situation of Delmar’s. He kicked Gargan into the railings and ducked as the guy from the bridge swung at him with the familiar shock-er weapon. His partner had been the one wearing it last time, but Peter remembered that it was not very pleasant to get hit with.

“Spider-guy is here.” Peter heard one of them hiss into a phone— he didn’t have time to pinpoint exactly where before two more lackeys were coming for him. ‘Spider-guy’ was more of an improvement from ‘Spider-boy’ or ‘bug’ or any other variation he’d heard of— but still, really? Spider-Man was not that difficult of a name to remember. He was a man (as far as they were aware) with a spider emblem slapped on the middle of his chest. He felt like that was pretty self-explanatory.

As it were, he clucked his tongue disapprovingly at the lackeys charging him. “Not so fast.” he admonished, before throwing them away from him. They flew several feet into the air before hitting one of the adjacent walls. “Are you guys okay?” Peter asked, half-joking but with a touch of seriousness. “My bad. That was a little hard.”

He turned his attention to the bridge guy, who still had his weapon stuck in the grating. “I gotta say, the other guy was way better with that thing.” he chattered, as he saw a low webbing notification from Karen on his HUD and reloaded a new cartridge into his web-shooter. “Honestly… I’m shocked.” he started, before giving up any guise of trying to be serious and laughing at his own joke. “Sorry, I had to. It was right there.” he said, as he heard another person charging him from behind, and he webbed him to a wall.

Suddenly, his Spidey-sense— which had been thrumming the whole fight— spiked, and he jerked his head up and fell into a defensive position just as people rushed out from behind cars and pointed guns at him.

“Freeze! FBI!”   “Don’t move.”  “Get on the ground! FBI.” 

The cacophony of shouts came from multiple people at once (seriously, couldn’t they just have one person shouting it; Peter couldn’t tell where to focus his attention). Peter put his hands up in a ‘don’t shoot’ motion, even as his immediate instinct was to get the hell away from the guns currently pointed at him.

“Woah, woah, woah— what do you mean, FBI?” Peter said, hands still held up defensively. Why the hell were federal agents here? He hadn’t called them, and the weapons dealers certainly hadn’t called them, and he doubted they were just hanging out in full gear on the Staten Island ferry at 11 AM for another reason.

“The FBI is the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Karen piped up, rather unhelpfully. (Man, he really had to work on her sense of comedic timing.)

“I know what the FBI means— shit , Mr. Stark sent them, didn’t he?” Peter realized, suddenly remembering his mentor name-dropping the FBI when Peter had asked about the arms dealers. Though he hadn’t mentioned that they would be here , now, of all places—

Suddenly his Spidey-sense flared up even further, feeling like an ice pick driving into the base of his spinal cord. He whipped around just in time to see a mechanical wing burst out of the side of a white pickup truck (so that’s what the guys earlier had been referring to), right before the full suit ripped free.

Peter didn’t stop to think of the unpleasant implications of the wingsuit ripping through metal so easily (and what that could mean for his skin) before he was leaping for the FBI agents, who were rather unhelpfully trying to shoot the Vulture down with their machine guns. 

“Get out of the way!” he shouted, just as the Vulture threw a car at them. It hit Peter instead, and launched him off the side of the boat. He narrowly avoided another lake incident by catching onto the side of the paneling with his fingers, watching as the car plummeted into the water. He hoped that the owner had insurance.

“Karen, run all of the faces from the people involved in the deal. I need matches.”

“They are not in my criminal database, Peter.”

“I know that.” Peter near-snapped as he clambered his way back to the deck. “Sorry. Just— start scanning any and all databases you have access to. Civilian ones. DMVs. I don’t know. Someone on this boat is the Vulture; that’s a narrower pool of people to pick from than before.”

“It is technically illegal to access such databases.” Karen responded as he made it back to the top of the deck and re-engaged in the fight. “But Mr. Stark placed an override in the case of an emergency. Is this an emergency?”

The Vulture shot a blast from an alien weapon at him, and he narrowly dodged it. “Is it— yes, it’s an emergency!” Peter half-shouted, shooting a web at the villain’s wings.

“Processing override request.” Karen said. “I will begin searching any databases available, but given the quantity of people to process and the multiple faces I have to review, it may take a while before I am able to provide potential matches.”

“Yeah, that’s—” Peter dodged another blast, still hanging onto the web. “— fine . Just do it.”

“Get to the top deck. We’re getting out of here.” The Vulture spoke through his comms, voice metallic and raspy.

“I don’t think so, buddy.” Peter muttered. He’d already lost the man once before; though in all fairness, he hadn’t been expecting to be dropped into a lake. And then technically he supposed he missed him a second time while he was at Nationals. But he wasn’t making that mistake again; as he’d warned Mr. Stark, the FBI was not at all equipped to handle this type of situation, and Peter was more worried about keeping them safe through this whole thing than he was sure about getting their help. Also, they’d pointed their guns at him . Hello— friendly neighborhood Spider-Man? Did they seriously not get briefed on things beforehand?

The Vulture shot another blast at him, and Peter dodged once more. “That’s getting old.” he called out, before aiming a web at the weapon and yanking it towards him. It clattered to the deck, still glowing and bouncing around with a strange sort of energy, and Peter saw one of the guys making a dive to pick it back up. Quickly, he webbed it to the surface of the deck, and sprayed more webbing on top of it when it didn’t want to seem to stay still . And, really, that was kind of creepy, because weapons shouldn’t be able to move of their own accord.

“You’re messing with things you don’t understand.” The Vulture warned, and Peter looked back up at him, about to respond, before—

His Spidey-sense screamed .

Peter leapt to the side just as a burst of light emitted from the weapon, growing into a large blast that ricocheted almost perfectly down the center of the ship. The flash of light grew into longer rays, stretching all the way down the length of the vessel and hundreds of feet into the sky, and Peter could see the Vulture dodging the beams in the air. Peter fully expected an explosion of sorts to follow, given the way his Spidey-senses were going off, but that didn’t happen. Instead, they vanished, leaving behind a thin smoking line that ran down the center of the boat.

All was silent for a moment, before the undeniable sound of metal groaning and water rushing into the cargo hold way faster than it ever should have filled his ears. The deck rocked under his feet, and to his horror, he realized that the movement wasn’t because of the waves; the other side of the deck was actually moving away from him instead of moving in tandem.

The ferry had been split completely in half.

“Oh, my god.” Peter breathed out, because, well— how else was he supposed to respond when an entire ferry had just been broken apart beneath his feet in the middle of a river? Peter was no boat engineer, but he had learned enough about the Titanic to know that water entering the hull was very, very bad. And that had just been a hole , not the entire ship splitting apart .

“What do I do, what do I do?” he chanted, pacing back and forth for a few steps before snapping his head up. Being on the Titanic 2.0 had never been on his life bingo card. (Then again, neither had ‘being bitten by a radioactive spider.’ Life was funny that way.)

“Karen, give me an X-ray of the boat and target all the strongest points.” he ordered, pushing all other thoughts to the side and watching as his HUD lit up. Here goes nothing.

He started leaping from point to point, shooting webs as he went. It was almost like the calculations that he had to do while swinging— though those had become instinctual at this point, and he had to move a lot faster here or else the first webs he placed would snap under the pressure.

“Web grenade. Web grenade.” he muttered, swinging. If he attached a point here , and criss-crossed it there , and made another web perpendicular to that , he could hold those two beams together while he webbed the third beam—

He fell into a rhythm, trying to hit every point on his HUD and jumping in-between the strands of webbing he’d already placed. Flames were erupting from the lower levels, too— from what, he couldn’t tell. Shooting a final burst of webbing, he hopped up on the bow of the boat, peering down at his work.

For a few tenuous moments, all was still. Peter could hear metal groaning, water lapping at the sides of the boat, the sound of people breathing heavily, the crackle of flames.

Even before Karen said it, he knew what was going to happen. Physics was physics, after all. Even though the amount of webbing he’d used was enough to hold the two halves of the Ferry together purely based on their weight, that wasn’t taking into account the constant motion from the waves or the shifting of the passengers on board. And while the pressure points Karen had highlighted worked well for static loads, there was no way to calculate the torsional effects from the waves, or the shifting weight distribution of the people. 

He’d used fifty-one strands of webbing to hold the Ferry together, enough to support its 3000-something tons of metal. But… if he were to introduce a safety factor to account for dynamic forces on top of the static load, he needed at least twice that. He didn’t have enough webbing with him to shoot over one hundred strands to account for that fact, and if even one of the original pieces holding the Ferry together broke—

He heard the first strand snap, and knew it was over.

“Peter, your webbing isn’t strong enough to hold the Ferry together for extended periods of time.” Karen warned, long after Peter had reached that conclusion in his gut.

“No, no, no.” Peter chanted, making a desperate leap for one of the broken strands as the rest of them started to follow suit. He didn’t have enough webbing with him to fully stabilize it the first time around, and there was no way he had enough left to do it all over again. He had no webbing, no other gear, no help. Just him and an entire Ferry full of people about to sink into the Hudson River. So he did what any other reasonable person would do in this scenario: he grabbed two opposing pieces of webbing from each half, suspending himself in the middle, and pulled .

He could feel the strain on his arms from trying to hold thousands of tons of metal together, and he thought he could hear screaming, too, as the sides shifted further apart. Peter could feel his tendons and muscles going completely taut, stretching, stretching, slipping, snapping—

I’m going to be torn in half . He thought deliriously, and for a half-second, he almost thought he had been, when the pressure started decreasing. He blinked, looking left to right, and was certain he was hallucinating, because the sides of the Ferry were… moving together ?

“What the hell?” he breathed out, until he adjusted his hearing past the ringing in his ears and heard the familiar sound of thrusters. Oh, fuck . He thought, just as the Iron Man suit rose into his line of sight through a window.

“Spider-Man.” His mentor’s disapproving tone could be heard, even through the helmet across the boat. “Talk. Now.”

—

“Is everyone okay?” Peter asked, sitting on a building overlooking the water as he heard the suit fly up behind him. Now that the adrenaline had faded, all that remained was the sickening realization that if Iron Man hadn’t shown up, the people on the ferry would have died. Hell, if he’d been even a minute later, Peter wouldn’t have been able to hold on for that long. He kept running and re-running the scenario through his head, over and over, trying to see where it had all gone terribly wrong. It always came back to the weapons. The damn alien weapons and the Vulture-guy.

“No thanks to you.” the metallic voice responded pointedly and harshly.

“No thanks to me?” Peter echoed, and suddenly all the frustration he’d felt building up since nationals bubbled up and spilled out. Every instance— from the blatant dismissal of the stolen weapons on the truck, to the damn Baby Monitor Protocol— it all came out. He jumped off the ledge and stalked towards the suit, which was still hovering in midair, faceplate down.

“Those weapons were out there, and I tried to tell you about it. But you didn’t listen. You didn’t do anything about the stuff in the truck— you just let them get away. The FBI were nowhere near equipped to handle the situation, and you didn’t trust me to deal with it!” He was well aware that his voice was rising, and he didn't want to yell at his mentor– really, he didn’t– but he was frustrated, and vibrating with energy, and angry. 

He didn’t understand why Tony hadn’t just taken him seriously the first time around. If Spider-Man hadn’t been on the ferry, there was no way the FBI agents with their guns would have been a match for the weapons the Vulture had on him. Sure, maybe the ferry wouldn’t have been split in half, but a fight would have broken out anyways when the FBI tried to interject themselves, and all of the agents probably would have died or been badly injured as a result. And if Tony had actually tried to intercept the stolen weapons on the truck a week ago, maybe he’d have been able to stop the Vulture long before this incident even happened.

At that, the Iron Man suit opened up, and his mentor stepped down from the suit and marched in Peter’s direction. Peter felt the anger flood out of him almost instantly at the sight of Tony’s face, and he backed off a few steps, nostrils flaring slightly.

“I did trust you, kid.” Tony said, looking at him with something foreign in his gaze. Peter felt even more sick to his stomach when he identified the emotion. Betrayal. 

I did trust you. 

Did.

Not anymore.

He swallowed roughly. His jaw unhinged; he wanted to say something, to defend his reasoning, but he found he didn’t have the words. It was true that the FBI agents wouldn’t have been equipped to handle the Vulture, but… neither was he, not with civilians around to take into account. And people would have died if his mentor hadn’t been paying attention or hadn’t shown up when he did. He swallowed roughly, knowing there was nothing he could possibly say to combat that very real fact.

“I made an agreement, Peter.” Tony snapped, not waiting for him to find his voice. “It’s in law. Don’t you get that? I put myself out there for you, under the condition that if you became a danger to anyone, the committee would be notified. And not only did you endanger everyone on that ferry, but worse, yourself.”

“I— I’m sorry.” Peter said, and he was embarrassed to hear his voice crack slightly. 

His mentor looked away, clenching his jaw and not looking Peter in the face. “If you don’t think the committee is going to be all over your ass for this stunt, you’re dead wrong, Parker.” he said. Peter never thought the use of his last name could sting so much. “You’re damn lucky nobody died today, or you’d probably be in jail before you could even get off that boat.” he snapped. “ This is what I meant when I said things get messy when you push the boundaries. This is not watching over the little guy. This is getting involved in things beyond your jurisdiction, without approval from the committee, and in public, endangering hundreds of civilians.” he said sharply.

The words stung more because Peter knew he was right. He’d come here trying to make things better– trying to capture the Vulture, get them all locked up so that no more people could be hurt in the future. But he’d done so while endangering people in the present.

“If people had died tonight, that would have been on you.” Tony said, leveling him with a harsh gaze. “And if you had died…” a flash of something crossed his eyes, and there was a moment of uncharacteristic hesitation. “I’d feel like that’s on me.” he finished, a strange kind of tautness to his tone, and Peter swallowed roughly once more. He wanted to say that it wouldn’t have been, but he felt like it would come off as an argument rather than an attempt at reassurance. Because it wouldn’t be Tony’s fault— Peter had made the choice to be Spider-Man, long before the man came into the picture. And he didn’t want him feeling the same guilt that Peter felt over Uncle Ben’s death (because that had been his fault.)

Instead, he tilted his head down, forcing the stinging tears back into his tear ducts and refusing to let them fall. This situation was his responsibility, and he didn’t deserve to pull the crying card to try and get out of it. “I’m sorry.” he apologized again instead, not knowing what else to say.

He heard the sound of his mentor’s jaw grinding, and a moment of heavy, thick silence descended on both of them.

“Sorry won’t cut it.” Tony said. Peter forced himself to lift his gaze to the man, meeting his eyes even as he had the urge to look away.

“I know.” Peter replied quietly. Tony pressed his lips firmly into a narrow line, and they stared at each other for a few long moments. Peter knew his eyes were no doubt glassy, and something twitched in Tony’s expression. He didn’t think it was his imagination that, for a split-second, the man’s eyes softened slightly. He knew it wasn’t his imagination when Tony’s gaze shifted into something more forcibly distant and removed, and Peter knew that the moment— along with any potential sympathy— was gone. He swallowed back the painful, twisting feeling that it caused in his chest.

“We’ll have to talk about this later. The committee will call. There will be official ramifications, I’m sure.” His mentor sniffed, breaking the stare first. “Until then… Spider-Man is benched. Indefinitely.”

Chapter Text

Peter’s POV

Peter shuffled down the hallway of his apartment complex, clad in oversized Hello Kitty pajama pants and a NYC t-shirt to boot— mentally preparing himself to be yelled at by another adult figure for the second time in less than two hours.

He could still hear the echo of his mentor’s words, and the sting of rejection. The official order to bench Spider-Man had come in less than thirty minutes after Tony had already reamed him out (bitterly, Peter figured the only time the government would ever work this fast was in the instance where he messed up). He supposed it was a minor blessing, at least, that Tony (and Happy) had been kind enough to drive him back to his apartment, instead of making him take public transportation. It didn’t feel much like a blessing during the ride, with the stifling, choking silence settling in every corner of the car.

Peter didn’t quite realize the full consequences until Tony had stared straight ahead at the car seat headrest in front of him and stiffly informed Peter that Happy wouldn’t be picking him up Tuesday. Or Thursday. It hit Peter, then, that the five-hour requirement had been suspended along with his benching, since it had been an Accords requirement— not a Peter Parker contingent internship. (He’d thought they’d grown into something more than just Accords-mandated time for Spider-Man. Guess he’d assumed wrong.)

No lab time, no Spider-Man, and subsequent radio silence from Mr. Stark. The realization shouldn’t have caused his chest to feel like it was being carved open and laid bare, but he felt that way nonetheless. In the moment, he’d just nodded jerkily in agreement— not trusting himself to speak and not daring to beg any differently.

Sighing, he reached his apartment doorway and raised a hand, hovering for a moment before bringing his knuckles down to rap against the wood. He heard scuffling that sounded like May was hurrying to the door, before it was yanked open.

“Hey.” he murmured, not sure of what else to say. He knew he’d worried her— he’d left his phone in his room, along with his backpack after school. Ever since he’d acquired Karen, he hadn’t needed to carry his phone with him, but that meant that May had no way to contact him for the last few hours. Plus, he didn’t have anything scheduled that afternoon, so he should have been home.

He watched as she inhaled deeply and stormed into the room, and he trailed after her, feet scuffling on the floor.

—

May’s POV

May had been out of her mind with worry. Just as she was about to report Peter missing to the police, she heard a knock on the door and opened it to find her nephew in oversized clothing that definitely wasn’t his. She turned and stormed back into the apartment, knowing that if she looked him in the eyes, her anger would dissipate at the sight of the tears— and she needed to cling to it for just a little longer.

“I’ve been calling you all day.” she started, and her voice was wavering even in her own ears. “You didn’t answer your phone. You can’t do that. Then this Ferry thing happens.” she continued, and her shoulders tightened of their own volition. She’d seen the news— of Spider-Man holding the entire Ferry together, then completely disappearing for hours afterwards. She had been progressively losing her mind with every minute that ticked by without so much as a call from Peter, and she’d immediately assumed the worst— thinking that maybe he’d been so injured from the incident that he had collapsed in an alley somewhere.

“I’ve called five police stations.” Two of them she’d asked for Peter Parker, and the last three she’d asked about Spider-Man, hoping that at least that would yield her some sort of general location. She’d hit dead ends every time. “ Five . I called five of your friends.”

“I’m fine,” came the quiet protest, but she wasn’t listening.

“I called Ned’s mother .” she stressed, because she’d been desperate. She knew that Peter had been out as Spider-Man, and she hoped that if he was injured maybe he’d gone over to Ned’s; someone who knew his identity and was safe. But those hopes had been crushed when Ned’s mother had said that Peter wasn’t there.

“May, I’m okay.” Peter said, and his voice was hoarse and quiet. “Honestly. Just relax. I’m fine.”

Just relax? Peter, you held together a fucking Ferry . She thought furiously, and spun around to face him. ‘ I know you’re Spider-Man.’ She wanted to blurt out; the words sat heavy on her tongue. She didn’t say them.

“Cut the bullshit.” she said instead. “I know you left detention. I know you sneak out of this house every night. That’s not fine. Peter, you have to tell me what’s going on. Just lay it out. It’s just me and you.” she was pleading by that point.

Please. Please, tell me Peter. You can trust me. Just tell me.

There was a moment of silence where they stared at each other, before the tears in Peter’s eyes welled up more, and he blinked rapidly. “I lost the Stark internship.” he admitted, and his voice was wobbly and stretched thin.

May stopped in her tracks. What did he mean, he lost the internship? The internship was tied to Spider-Man, if he didn’t have it anymore that meant—

Oh .

“What happened?” she asked quietly, instead. All her anger and frustration rushed out of her like a popped balloon, replaced by an aching worry.

“I just thought that I—” he wet his lips as his voice cracked. “I could work really hard and he could— he would— you know.” he cut himself off, and May knew that Peter wouldn’t be telling her that he was Spider-Man, not tonight. “But I screwed it up.” he whispered, and sat down heavily on the couch cushions. May blew out a breath and walked over to him, settling her hands on his shoulders and massaging them gently.

“It’s okay.” she murmured as he shook slightly under her fingers. “It’s okay.”

She still wanted to blurt out that she knew what he really meant by those words, but she didn’t let it spill out. He needed comfort right now, not… another piece of stress added on top. Not another accusation of him lying to her.

A part of her knew that she was lying to even herself— she was terrified of the implications of this. Whatever had happened at the Ferry… she was no lawyer, and she wasn’t an expert at the Accords, but she had read them the second she figured out that Peter was Spider-Man. She could figure out from the context clues that he must be benched for this incident. (Showing up in brand-new tourist clothes, without his suit anywhere in sight? She knew the signs of Tony Stark’s involvement.)

Some small part of her was relieved by this news— it would give her a reprieve for a little bit, not worrying about her nephew going out every night and putting himself in danger. Another part of her was hurt because he was hurt— one of the main reasons she hadn’t put her foot down on this was because Spider-Man was intrinsically tied to Peter, and ripping that away was like taking away a piece of him. And a third part of her was worried, even more so now; because she knew that if he violated the benching for any reason…

She shook those thoughts away as she moved her hands up and stroked his hair.

“I’m sorry I made you worry.” Peter murmured, and she swallowed at the tone of his voice.

“You know I’m not trying to ruin your life.” she said, instead of another ‘it’s okay.’ It hadn’t been okay— it wasn’t okay, the way he went completely off the grid, and he needed to know that— but she still understood.

“Yeah, I know,” he replied quietly.

“Just—” she started, before pressing her lips together, not knowing what to say before she sighed. “I used to sneak out too.” You can trust me, I promise .

“Yeah.”

She sighed again, before wrinkling her nose as she got a whiff of his hair.

“And take a shower. You smell like… garbage.”

At that, Peter huffed out the slightest of laughs. “I know.”

May ran her hands through his hair one more time before shoving him slightly towards the bathroom, not commenting on the obvious change of his attire. “You and I, movie night.” she said, and got another breathy laugh from him. 

“Let me guess, Gray’s Anatomy?” he asked, and she grinned.

“You know it.” she responded, and he shook his head slightly before heading towards his room and the bathroom. “Peter.” she called after him, just before he reached the door, and he turned to blink at her. “I love you.”

His expression softened, and his lips turned up slightly. “I love you too, May.”

~ ~ ~

Peter’s POV

Peter had never been particularly good at waiting.

Especially when he didn’t have Spider-Man as his usual outlet for the accompanying restlessness. The special blend of amped up energy, anxiety, and the roiling feelings he got from the situation in general made for quite the mix of constant emotions. He blamed the teenage hormones; he was positive they were not helping his situation presently. One moment he’d feel a pit of twisting guilt in his stomach over the Ferry incident, similar to how he’d felt about Liz’s mugging— and the next he’d be tasting the bitter tang of resentment over the injustice of losing his ability to be Spider-Man.

The idea of Spider-Man being taken away , like it was some sort of… toy, and not an intrinsic part of his identity, grated at him. He tried not to think about it, though— after all, even though Mr. Stark had been the one to technically take the suit away, it was the Accords that were the baseline reason. Even if he were to risk going behind Mr. Stark’s back to patrol as Spider-Man in his old suit, he’d be breaking the law now, too— which was a lot more of a severe transgression than just risking his mentor’s wrath. And contrary to popular belief, he did have some sort of sense of self-preservation.

So, he waited.

If he watched the news channels or listened to police reports of crimes he knew it would just give him the urge to go out and help, so he did his best to avoid all mentions of vigilantism. Instead, he tried to focus on being just a normal, everyday, average high-schooler.

Though annoying, he soon found out that he wasn’t actually as bored as he feared he’d be. Sure, it was no match to swinging through Queens, and the knowledge that he’d helped someone get home to their family far outweighed any other feelings he may have, but regardless. Being a full-time high schooler was surprisingly time-consuming. Who knew.

In fact, he’d gotten so bored originally with nothing else to do that he’d resorted to actually doing his homework and studying consistently. (Oh, the lows he’d reached).

"¿Qué te gusta hacer en tu tiempo libre? (What do you like to do in your free time?)" The question from his Spanish teacher tore him out of his thoughts.

Peter blinked, a little bit surprised that he’d managed to actually understand the words. Usually in class, the teachers’ words went in one ear and out the other, especially if it was in a different language. Glancing around, he saw that nobody else had bothered to raise their hand to respond, and after a half-beat of silence, he lifted his own hand. With a slight look of surprise, his teacher nodded at him to speak.

“Me gusta hacer la tarea. (I like doing homework.)” Peter said, like a liar. He should have probably said anything else, but he had been thinking about homework already and couldn’t exactly say something like ‘being Spider-Man.’ Not that that was relevant anymore.

“Muy bueno, señor Parker. (Very good, Mr. Parker.)” His teacher praised, looking pleased— if not surprised— at his… unusual participation.

Peter gave a half smile in return and settled back into his seat. The teacher started speaking to the class again.

“"Ahora, para la tarea de esta noche… (Now, for this evening’s homework…)”

—

Peter hadn’t touched the watch Mr. Stark made for him since the ferry incident. He told himself it was because he didn’t need to, but really he was just scared. Scared that the only reason his mentor hadn’t taken the gift back was because he’d forgotten about it. Scared that the second Peter tried to talk to Karen, she’d be snatched away from him again. Logically, it was a baseless assumption— Mr. Stark hadn’t been mean when taking his suit, and it was for a completely logical reason. The man hadn’t taken his Stark phone back; there was no reason to assume he’d do the same with the watch, either.

He was currently splayed on his bed, flat on his back, staring at the ceiling with his watch gripped loosely in his fingers. He’d just gotten back from school; May was at work, and usually Peter would be patrolling, but, well—

He sighed and raised the device level to his face.

“Hey, Karen.” he murmured. For a moment he was afraid that there would be no response.

“Hello, Peter.” Karen replied gently. “It has been a while since you last spoke to me. Are you alright?”

Peter snorted through the tight feeling in his chest. “Physically, yeah.” he said, because physically speaking, he was on his longest no-injury streak since he’d been bitten by that spider. No patrol, no injuries. Karen was quiet for a moment.

“Would you like to talk about it?”

Peter blew out a breath. Did he? He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it, and hadn’t talked about it to anyone except for Ned (briefly). His best friend was sympathetic, but didn’t understand the true extent of the ramifications, and Peter hadn’t admitted that Mr. Stark had yelled at him or that he didn’t have lab time anymore. As far as Ned knew, Spider-Man was only temporarily benched because of ‘stupid legal issues,’ and he and Mr. Stark were on as good of terms as always. In other words, Peter had nobody to talk to about it other than himself. And… Karen, apparently.

“I messed up.” Peter said, in lieu of a yes or no. “At the ferry. The committee benched me from being Spider-Man, and… Mr. Stark hasn’t talked to me since.”

Karen didn’t speak up for a moment, and Peter wondered if AIs were capable of true hesitation.

“What would you say to him, if you had the chance?” she eventually asked, and her voice was soft and non-judgemental. Peter blew out another long breath.

“That I’m sorry.” he admitted, staring up at the small cracks in the ceiling. “I mean, I already said that, but…” he pressed his lips together. “I messed up. I was mad that he didn’t seem to be taking things seriously, but instead of talking to him I put people on the Ferry at risk. I should have known that if there actually was a weapons deal, I shouldn’t have gone after them there with no way to evacuate civilians if things went sideways.”

“Why didn’t you tell him your concerns?” she asked, and Peter shrugged. Coming from anyone else, it would have sounded like an accusation, but it never did coming from Karen— she just sounded curious.

“I did tell him, and he just… didn’t understand.” Peter’s initial words were ‘didn’t care,’ but he knew that wasn’t entirely fair to the man. If he hadn’t cared at all he wouldn’t have called the FBI; Peter could see that now, even though he still felt the sting of being brushed off so easily. “He was completely confident that the FBI were equipped to handle the weapons, but I knew they weren’t. I didn’t know how to balance those two. I guess I thought he wouldn’t listen to me.” he admitted. It was true that he hadn’t tried very hard to explain his point of view, but Tony had just been so sure of himself. It was hard to have a conversation or debate with someone who was so sure they were right. Especially when that person is your famous billionaire superhero genius mentor.

“Why not?”

“Because he’s Tony Stark .” Peter said, as if it were obvious. “And I’m just some teenager.”

There was a moment of quiet before Karen spoke back up. “I’m not sure I understand, Peter. You are a lot more than ‘some teenager.’” Her voice was gentle. “He didn’t just create me for any teenager. He made me for you.”

Peter sighed, and ran a hand down his face. “He made you for Spider-Man,” he said. “Which is— I guess that makes me different from just a random teenager. But I didn’t mean it like that. Just—” he shook his head and huffed out another breath. “—don’t worry about it. I don’t think I could explain it.” After all, how could he possibly explain it all to an AI? The Tony Stark who created her was Tony Stark to everyone else— genius, billionaire, philanthropist, and world-renowned superhero. Even without Iron Man, his name was recognized around the world. In contrast, Peter Parker was virtually unknown, and Spider-Man certainly wasn’t an international superhero; he was considered more of a vigilante. Most people would never expect Tony Stark and Peter Parker to be in the same room , let alone interacting with each other.

Sure, Peter was smart, but so were a lot of people. College admissions these days were basically a lottery, even if he had a perfect GPA and extracurriculars and good recommendations. The latter two he wasn’t even quite sure he’d get, given his slew of absences due to Spider-Man. Stark Industries internships were just as difficult to come by— if not more difficult— than regular college admissions. Not to mention that even if he had, at some point, been lucky enough to get a position at the company, he would likely have never met Mr. Stark. It was all a complete lottery, and Peter’s luck had never been particularly favorable. 

If Peter hadn’t been bitten by that spider, he never would have met Tony Stark. That was the fact of the matter. But that was the root issue of it all, wasn’t it? With Spider-Man off the table, Mr. Stark had no reason to communicate with Peter until he could resume patrolling. Even then, Peter wasn’t sure where their relationship would stand; it seemed impossible to return to their normal lab time after everything that had happened.

Point was: he’d fucked up. Big time.

Karen took this moment to provide a rather unhelpful suggestion, cutting his train of thought short. “You should call him.” Karen prompted, and Peter huffed.

“I already tried once, the day after. He didn’t answer. He has no reason to answer now that the Accords have me suspended.” He couldn’t help the bitterness that stretched over his tone as he said that— it still stung that apparently the billionaire hadn’t thought much of their relationship outside of Peter being Spider-Man. Logically, he’d assumed that from the start, but it was easier to forget when the man had called him by a host of nicknames and had ruffled his hair and had seemed to enjoy lab time and had wished Peter luck at Nationals. Maybe he hadn’t enjoyed it all as much as Peter had.

“I would not venture to say that.” Karen said carefully. “I have not been around for very long, and I am still learning from my predecessors and the world around me, but Mr. Stark’s behavioral patterns are consistent with someone who has an avoidant attachment style.”

Peter laughed aloud at that, the sound involuntarily bubbling up. “Karen, I don’t think he’d appreciate you psychoanalyzing him.”

“I am merely analyzing the data points provided to me as an artificial intelligence.” Karen replied smoothly. “There are many examples in his behavior towards you that point towards more than just a professional relationship. I can list them for you, if you would like.”

Peter considered it for a moment. “No, that’s alright, thank you Karen.” It felt almost like an invasion of privacy to psychoanalyze the man using the AI that he’d created. Besides, all the examples in the world wouldn’t matter if Mr. Stark refused to talk to him again. It didn’t exactly matter what the man’s feelings towards him in the past were if they never had a relationship in the future. He thought, briefly, of Mr. Stark helping him with his decathlon speech, knowing his schedule, creating Karen for him, making his own personal watch—

You should call him . Karen’s advice echoed in his mind. Maybe if he left just a few more voicemails the man would see that he really was apologetic for how things went down. After all, just one apology wasn’t really enough to offset the whole disaster. He made up his mind after a few seconds.

“Karen, call Mr. Stark.”

~ ~ ~

Mr. Stark hadn’t picked up the phone that day, or any of the days Peter called him afterwards. He stopped trying after that, and instead tried to distract himself from the situation as a whole. He wasn’t entirely sure that the endeavor was proving to be successful, but he and Ned had finally finished re-building the Lego Death Star last night. Peter had fallen into a new sort of routine; the kind of life he’d had before he got bit by the spider and decided to swing around NYC in full lycra getup. Wake up, go to school, hang out with Ned, do homework, have dinner with May, go to sleep. Rinse, repeat.

He was currently in the ‘go to school’ phase of today. Peter had been falling asleep out of boredom in his last class, and had asked to go to the bathroom just to clear his head in hopes of staying awake for just a bit longer.

He was just making his way back from the bathroom when—

Peter’s gaze caught sight of Liz, and he stopped in his tracks, swallowing. She had her head tilted away from him, not clocking his presence just yet, and he hesitated. He hadn’t talked to her since the mugging incident, unless he counted leaving the flowers and card. He’d been a little scared to talk to her, frankly, afraid that she’d remember his voice or put the dots together the second he interacted with her as Peter Parker again.

Just as he was debating whether to flee or not, she turned her head and spotted him, and… there went all chances of fleeing.

“Oh.” He started lamely, pretending like he had been heading in that direction and had just noticed her. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Liz echoed.

“I thought you had calculus fifth period.” Peter said curiously, before immediately kicking himself at sounding borderline stalker-ish. Luckily, she didn’t comment on it.

“Yeah, I was just doing some homecoming stuff.” she gestured at the banners, and he was reminded that homecoming was tomorrow night. He tilted his head and examined her; she looked more tired than usual, and she was a little bit hunched over on the side of her stab wound. Peter wasn’t actually sure what the timeline for normal healing from a stab wound was, but he knew it almost certainly still felt fresh to her.

“I know probably everyone has asked you this lately, but… are you— are you okay? You know, with the mugging and everything. I know those can be…” he trailed off, pressing his lips together and letting the silence carry the implication. Everyone in the school knew that Ben had died from a mugging, and though he was referring to his experience as Spider-Man, the thought of Ben was certainly never far from his mind.

“Yeah.” she smiled softly. “Look, I never got to thank you for sending those flowers and the card to my house. That was really sweet of you.”

“Oh! Yeah, I, uh—” Peter stammered slightly, face flushing momentarily at the mention. “It— it was nothing, really. I mean, I like you, so—” he cut himself off and his eyes widened. Shit . He had so not meant to say that, way to make things weird, Peter—

“I know.”

Wait, what?

“Uh— you do?” he asked, blinking slightly.

She gave a soft laugh. “You’re terrible at keeping secrets.”

He gave his own disbelieving laugh, because, alright, fair— but still. “Yeah, you’d be surprised.” he said, meeting her gaze. There was a beat of silence where they both just stared stupidly at each other. “I’ve got to get to class, but, uh— I’d say we should hang out, but you’re probably super busy this week with homecoming—” she hummed in agreement, and he continued rambling. “—though speaking of which, I… guess you already have a date to that.”

“Actually, I was so busy planning it I never really got around to that part, so…” she shrugged slightly, and Peter green-screened. Was she implying what he thought she was implying? It wasn’t like Peter had ever asked anyone out before, especially not a senior girl, but he was fairly sure she would have lied and said she had a date if she didn’t want Peter to ask.

“Do you… want to go with me?” he asked hesitantly, half-expecting her to laugh in his face. Instead, she smiled.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Really?” he squeaked, before clearing his throat. “I mean— great. Cool.”

“Cool.” she echoed, and there was definitely a note of amusement there, but he couldn’t bring himself to feel embarrassed. He started to turn and walk away, before realizing that was not the direction of his classroom.

“I’m actually— going that way.” he said, gesturing a little awkwardly before hurrying past her, feeling a grin split his face wide open.

Holy shit, I have a date to homecoming.

~ ~ ~

“May, I need your help.” Peter said desperately, sliding into the kitchen. His aunt turned to face him, blinking rapidly in surprise.

“Peter, what—” she asked, eyes scanning him as if looking for some sort of injury or emergency.

“I asked Liz out to homecoming.” he blurted out, and her eyes widened even more before her whole face split into a grin and she jumped up.

“Oh my god, Peter! That's amazing!” May practically squealed, rushing over to him and pulling him into a tight hug.

Peter laughed but hugged her back. “I think you’re more excited about this than I am.” he teased, as she pulled back and put her hands on his shoulders. May rolled her eyes but didn’t exactly protest the accusation.

“Okay, first things first: you need a suit.” May instructed. “And a corsage. And a game plan. And…”

—

They had eventually settled on using one of Ben’s old suits, packed away in the few boxes in one of the closets that they rarely dared to touch. May had told him that she’d understand if Peter didn’t want to go in one of his late uncle’s suits, and that she’d buy him a new one if he didn’t want to bring a touch of sadness to his high school homecoming dance. But Peter had refused; he didn’t want her to spend extra money on him for no reason. And besides, carrying a part of his uncle to an event he couldn’t be around to witness in-person was… nice, in a way.

May had just given a small smile when he told her as such, and tugged him into another hug. They’d stayed like that for a few minutes, before they broke apart in unspoken agreement. He’d tried the suit on, and May had helped him pin it up in different places so that it fit better. It certainly was no perfectly tailored suit, but Peter found he didn’t mind all that much.

They’d moved onto the ties next, and had gotten all the way through picking the color before realizing that neither of them actually knew what to do with it.

“You wouldn't happen to know how to tie a tie, would you?” Peter asked, staring meekly at the offending piece of fabric in his hands. May peered at it before waving a hand.

“No, but that’s what google is for.” she responded cheerfully. “I’m sure we can get it.”

Famous last words. Peter thought ruefully, when two hours had passed and they were no closer to successfully tying the knot than they had been the first time around.

“How do people even do this?” Peter muttered, staring at the mess of twisted fabric hanging limply around his neck. Maybe he should just get a bowtie. There was still a day left until the dance; that was enough time to go out for a quick final shopping run, right?

May didn’t answer his question but clicked on yet another YouTube video— yet again deceptively titled with some variation of ‘How to Tie a Windsor knot in less than TWO minutes!’ Or ‘How to Tie a Windsor Knot (quickly!)’

Or, Peter’s personal (not) favorite: ‘The FOOLPROOF way to Tie a Windsor Knot!’

Liars. All of them.

He followed the steps on the screen for what seemed like the fiftieth time. Cross wide over narrow, wide through the loop, wide under narrow to the right, wide through the loop, wide over narrow, wide through the loop, pull it down—

Peter blinked, staring in shock at the… passable? Windsor knot now nestling in the hollow of his collarbone. His jaw hung open for a few seconds, before he spun to May, a wide grin breaking out over his features.

“I did it!” he said triumphantly, and she mirrored his delighted expression, coming up to him and carefully straightening his lopsided collar so that it laid flat.

“Perfect.” she said, beaming at him, even though it was decidedly not perfect. Then she clapped her hands together. “So, dancing?”

Peter gave an involuntary wince. He already knew this was likely to end in disaster.

She led him into the living room, halfheartedly kicking some magazines aside to clear a space between the couch and the TV. “Alright, first things first. We need some music. What kind of songs do they even play at these dances nowadays?”

Peter let out an amused huff. “You’re not that old, May. Music hasn’t changed that much.”

His aunt gave him a look, and he put his hands up defensively. “Okay, okay. Uh… I don’t know, pop music? Just put on a Top 50 list or something.”

May shrugged but reached for her phone, tapping through several different songs before settling on one that seemed to have a good enough consistent beat. Then she turned to him with a grin and twinkling eyes, and Peter knew he was in for disaster. “Alright, let’s get those feet moving.”

For the next hour, she tried to teach him the basics, and he was pretty sure he’d stepped on her toes no less than thirty times. And had tripped on his own feet no less than fifty times.

Eventually, though, he started to get the hang of it. (Sort of. A little bit.) He successfully guided May through a full twirl without bumping into her or kicking her. When he let go of her hand, she clapped a bit and cheered, and they were both grinning ear to ear.

With a start, he realized that for a short period of time, he hadn’t even thought about Spider-Man, or the Accords, or Mr. Stark not responding to him. In fact, he was in a better mood than he’d been in since the Ferry incident.

He was broken out of his thoughts by May giving a small laugh and glancing down at his feet.

“I think you’re going to need to re-polish your shoes.”

—

May’s car rolled to a stop in front of Liz’s house, for the second time in a few short weeks, and Peter’s Spidey-sense made its distinct displeasure at the fact known.

Seriously, he’d almost assume this was the house of some freaky supervillain instead of his high school crush, given how wild his senses went off even in the driveway.

“It’s game day.” May said, putting the car in park and turning to him. “So, what’s the plan?”

Peter pushed his reservations aside and turned to face her as well. “Open the door for her.” he started, ticking things off on his fingers and trying his best to think of Liz and homecoming and not his senses going wild. May made a sound of assent. “Tell her she looks nice, but not too much because that’s creepy.” he said, and May nodded.

“Don’t be creepy.” she confirmed.

“Right.” Peter said, with a firm nod, ticking off the third finger. “And— uh, when I dance with her, I’m putting my hands on her… hips,” he said. May smiled and nodded, and he blew out a breath. “I got this.” he tried to tell himself, aiming for some words of positive affirmation, but he was sure it didn’t work at all.

“Of course you do.” May agreed, with a wide smile, eyes glimmering proudly. Peter let out a little huff of a laugh, but his chest felt warm at her support. Pulling at the door handle, he climbed out of his seat before closing the door and leaning against the open window frame.

“Larb you.” he said with a smile.

May let out a little laugh. “Larb you too, honey. Now, shoo, go have fun.”

Peter’s smile widened, but he backed away— corsage gripped in one hand and waving with the other as she put the car in drive and pulled out. “Bye!” he called after her.

After her car was no longer visible, he drew in a deep, steadying breath, and turned to walk up the driveway. His Spidey-senses only protested with each step he took towards the front door, and Peter really wished he had an off switch for it, because it was setting the back of his neck on fire. Glancing around warily, he wondered if he was about to be hit by a speeding car or have a tree branch fall on him or something, but there was nothing moving in his general vicinity.

He firmly shoved the thoughts back and took the final few steps up to the front door. Raising his hand, he pressed the doorbell, hearing a sharp ding that seemed to vibrate in tune with the spike that ran down the entire length of his spine. He blinked harshly a few times, trying to squeeze the feeling back into a tiny manageable compartment. What the hell was causing it? There was no real danger. Maybe he was just anxious, it was just nerves, nothing was wrong. He heard footsteps, and the door started to swing open, just as his senses spiked to unbearable levels.

On the other side—

The Vulture grinned at him, dressed in a plaid button up and dark wash jeans. Peter froze.

Oh, you have Got. To. Be. Fucking. Kidding. Me.

He hated his Parker Luck.

“You must be Peter.” the man spoke, and his voice— though slightly different than when he was in the suit— was very familiar.

“Yeah.” Peter echoed, mind still blank.

“I’m Liz’s dad,” he said. Yeah, I gathered . Peter thought wryly. “Put her there.” he stuck out his hand, and Peter grasped it, involuntarily squeezing the man’s hand as his Spidey-sense screamed at the physical contact.

If there were any doubts before that this man wasn’t the Vulture, they were firmly put to rest at the contact. His senses only went this wild whenever he was in physical contact with the bird guy, not any of his lackeys.

So… Adrian Toomes. Liz’s father. Peter had heard of the man by name only; according to Liz, he was usually frequently traveling and couldn’t come to all of their Decathlon events the same way her mother sometimes did. Peter had thought nothing of it at the time; May was often busy with work, too, and he never held it against her. He wondered, distantly, how differently things could have gone if he’d ever met the man before this.

“Hell of a grip.” Toomes said with a half-grin, and Peter forced himself to relax his stance, lest he leap onto the ceiling in surprise or something. “Come on in here. C’mon.”

Peter followed reluctantly as Toomes headed towards the kitchen, allowing his feet to lead him through the somewhat familiar territory.

“Hi, Peter.” Doris— Liz’s mom— greeted cheerfully, popping into the room. “You look very handsome.”

Peter resisted the urge to shake his head physically to push the thoughts aside, instead doing his best to smile at the woman. He needed to relax and act normal until he could figure out what the hell was happening here.

“Thank you.” he said quietly.

“You got his name, right?” Doris whispered to Toomes.

“Freddie?” the man asked, and Peter was jolted from his momentary existential crisis. Seriously? Freddie?? He did not look like a Freddie.

“Peter.” Doris whispered back exasperatedly. 

“Peter, Peter.” Toomes echoed, and a shiver went down Peter’s spine at the sound of his real name on the Vulture’s lips.

Doris laughed and shook her head. “I’m gonna go get Liz.” she said, and gestured towards the stairs.

“Okay.” Peter agreed, because he couldn’t exactly beg her not to leave him alone with her husband because he was a supervillain. She left, and an uncomfortable silence settled over the room as Toomes made his way over to the kitchen counter. Peter felt like he should strike up some form of conversation, maybe “oh, what do you do for work?” except he knew whatever it was would be an outright lie.

“You alright, Pete?” Toomes asked, polishing his kitchen knives. Peter barely refrained from making a face— the only one who ever called him that nickname was Mr. Stark, and thinking of the man at the moment was not helping matters.

“Yeah.” he said firmly instead. As alright as I can be when you’re holding knives in front of me and my Spidey-sense is screaming.

“Because you look pale. You want something to drink? Like a bourbon or a scotch, or something like that?”

“I’m not old enough to drink.” he responded, almost robotically— as if someone were programming his mouth to spit out answers at will.

“That’s the right answer.” Toomes said approvingly, like Peter was being tested. He supposed he was, just in a lot more… complex manner than usual. His hearing caught the sound of heels tapping against stairs, and he saw Toomes’ eyes widen, sliding to someone behind him. Peter turned, and blinked in surprise as Liz came into the room wearing a bright red dress.

“Wow, wow, wow. You look beautiful.” he said, and Liz ducked her head and tucked her hair behind her ears.

“Please don’t embarrass me, Dad.” she murmured, but the man paid no mind.

“Doesn’t she, Pete?” Toomes asked, and Peter forced himself not to clench his jaw once again at the use of Mr. Stark’s nickname for him.

Instead, he smiled at Liz and caught the way she blushed slightly, ducking her head bashfully. “Yeah, you look really good.” he agreed genuinely.

“Once again, that’s the right answer.” Toomes said, pointing one of the knives at him in gesticulation. 

“Is that a corsage?” Liz asked curiously, and Peter realized he was running the risk of crushing the box by accident. He blinked and looked down at it, before shaking his head and speaking.

“Oh, yeah, let me—” Peter turned, and ignored the spike at the base of his neck that he felt when turning his back on Toomes. He determinedly and carefully fastened the corsage on Liz’s wrist, swallowing slightly as his fingers brushed her skin. He was pretty sure he heard the click of a camera from Doris, but he was trying to reign in all of his senses at once, and he paid it no mind.

His Spidey-sense may be screaming, but his common sense was still intact. Toomes wouldn’t attack him here, not with Liz and Doris, and this was as much Liz’s night as it was his. He didn’t want to ruin it for her by being weird.

“Thanks.” Liz said when he finished, and she flashed him a smile when their eyes met. He mirrored it, then flicked his gaze back over to Toomes, who gave him a sharp grin.

“Well, I’m your chauffeur, so let’s get this show on the road.” he said, and Peter felt another spike of dread at being in an enclosed space with his #1 enemy at the moment.

“No, no, no, no—” Doris rushed to say, and for a split-second Peter thought he’d be saved. “—we have to take some pictures, babe.” Nevermind . She gestured Liz and Peter together, beckoning them over to a well-lit corner. “Alright. Oh, right here. Perfect.”

“Mom.” Liz said, and her voice was half-pleading, half-exasperated. 

“C’mon, you guys.” Doris implored, and he heard Liz give a sigh next to him. “Peter, closer.” He blinked in surprise at being mentioned, but did as he was told. Meeting Toomes’s gaze, in a brief moment of stupidity or bravery (he couldn’t decide which), he wrapped an arm loosely around the back of Liz’s waist. He felt Liz startle slightly beside him, not expecting it, but she leaned in after a split-second. He heard Doris make a sort of cooing sound, before telling them to smile, and the click of the camera shutter going off several times. All the while, he kept his gaze locked on Toomes, trying to parse what he was thinking. It seemed like the man was doing the same.

“Sir, you don’t have to drive us.” Peter started, hoping for one last-ditch attempt to get the man to stay away from him and hopefully quiet his senses. Regrettably, now was the time that Toomes decided to be a gentleman; notably, not when he’d dropped Peter hundreds of feet into a lake.

“Nah, it’s not a big deal.” the man said, waving his hand. “I’m going out of town. It’s right on my way.”

“He’s always coming and going.” Doris said with the same sort of fond exasperation as earlier.

“It’s the last time, I promise.” Toomes said, leaning over to peck her on the cheek. Peter’s brows furrowed against his will. Last time? Last time of what? And why was he going out of town, anyways? NYC was where the majority of alien weaponry was located, because of the Battle of New York.

He didn’t have time to dwell on it before Doris was turning to Liz and hugging her. “Have fun.” she said, before whispering: “He’s cute.” Peter felt his face flush slightly when he realized that she was referring to him. He pretended to be oblivious as Liz shushed her mom and shot him a furtive glance.

Doris and Toomes said their goodbyes to each other before Toomes turned to him and shot him that same toothy grin. “Come on, Pedro.” he said, and Peter knew he was getting his name wrong on purpose. An intimidation tactic— ironically, not because he was Spider-Man, but because he was Liz’s date. Well, actually, he wasn’t 100% sure that the man didn’t know he was Spider-Man, but given his lack of reaction when he opened the door and the mildly suspicious glances he’d been getting the whole time, Peter was fairly sure of his assumption. He’d been testing the waters with his eye contact game, and hadn’t seen so much as a flash of recognition. He hoped it would stay that way.

“Bye, Peter. Have fun.” Doris said, and her smile was genuine and sweet in all of the ways that Toomes’ was not.

“Yeah, I will.” Peter said, smiling back at her to the best of his ability. “Thank you.”

Luckily, Toomes moved ahead of them to get the car going, and Peter offered Liz an arm to help her down the driveway in her heels. His entire body was rebelling the closer they got to the car, but he forced himself to step forward and open the door for Liz with a smile, even as he could feel Toomes’ stare boring a hole in the back of his skull. He climbed in after her and shut the door, face twisting as he heard the lock slide into place. With his enhanced strength, he could snap the door and lock with no issue at all (if it came to that), but the click echoed with a strange finality in his skull.

They drove in tense silence for a few minutes. Liz was checking her makeup through her phone camera, while Peter stared out the window at the flashing lights, Spidey-sense screaming and wishing he was anywhere else right now.

“What are you gonna do, Pete?”

“What?” Peter asked, snapping his head to stare into the rearview mirror. What are you gonna do? What kind of ominous question was that—

“When you graduate, what do you think you’re gonna do?” Toomes elaborated, though Peter was pretty sure he just phrased the first question that way to try and catch him off-guard.

“Oh.” Peter said, a little bit blindsided by the question. He hadn’t anticipated being grilled about college by the Vulture. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

“Don’t grill him, Dad.” Liz said exasperatedly.

“Just saying, you know. All you guys who go to that school, you pretty much have your life planned out, right?”

“Oh— yeah, no, I’m just a sophomore.” Peter said. He definitely didn’t have his life planned out. He didn’t even have his week planned out.

“Peter has an internship with Tony Stark. So I think he doesn’t have to worry.” Liz piped up, and Peter felt jaws lock painfully around his chest and diaphragm at the mention of his estranged mentor.

“Really?” Toomes asked, sounding interested, eyebrows arching. Liz made a humming sound of agreement. “Stark?” he confirmed.

“I know, it’s so cool.” Liz said with a smile. Toomes did not look nearly as excited by the prospect.

“What do you do?” he asked.

“Uh— well, I don’t know how much I can say, but mostly small… projects.” Peter fumbled out, because he couldn’t exactly say his Spider-Man suit, or Iron Man gauntlets. Toomes narrowed his eyes and made a ‘hm’ sound.

“Look, so cute.” Liz said, tilting her phone screen towards him and saving him from having to continue.

“Aww…” Peter said, momentarily trying to distract himself with the picture of the cute cat and not the guy who had dropped him into a lake staring him down in the rearview mirror. Toomes did not get that memo.

“I’ve seen you around, right? I mean... Somewhere. We’ve, uh, have we ever? Because even the voice…”

“Um, Peter does Academic Decathlon with me.” Liz interjected, glancing up. “And he checked in on me after my mugging.” she continued helpfully. “He left the flowers— you know, at our doorstep.” She turned and smiled at Peter, who forced himself to smile back. Her immediate defense of him was painfully sweet, and Peter would have appreciated how much she was trying to get him into her dad’s good graces, but she was missing the one very important variable that their alter egos were arch-enemies.

Her father made a noncommittal sound of recognition, locking eyes with Peter directly in the rearview mirror.

Liz, please shut up or else your supervillain dad is going to figure out my secret identity, he begged internally. He thought that maybe dropping the flowers off as Spider-Man hadn’t been his wisest idea; though in his defense, he didn’t know he was literally dropping it at the Vulture’s house .

Liz did not shut up.

“And he was at my party.” she continued. Peter latched onto that, because that party had been in the middle of the weapons deal— right when Toomes dropped him into the lake. That could be his alibi.

“Yeah, it was a great party.” he agreed quickly. “Beautiful house, too. Lots of windows.” he continued, as if he hadn’t just been in the house less than ten minutes ago. Liz smiled at him, but there was something slightly exasperated in her gaze.

“You were there for, like, two seconds.” she said. Peter opened and closed his jaw silently.

Well. There went his alibi.

“That was— I was there longer than two seconds.” Peter protested as Toomes’ gaze sharpened with interest. Liz laughed.

“You disappeared. I tried to find you and Ned said you left.”

“I—” Peter started before he sighed, not knowing what to say. He thought it couldn’t possibly get any worse than this.

It got worse.

“I figured it was because Flash was being his usual self. I’m sorry about that— I know you never promised that Spider-Man would show up.” Liz continued, and it was sweet, but Peter was seriously considering opening the car door and jumping out.

“I… yeah, he’s— he’s a busy guy.” Peter got out, swallowing.

“Spider-Man, eh?” Toomes interjected. They were stopped at a red light, and the glow casted ominously over his features. Peter didn’t respond, just staring back at him for a few long moments. The light flashed to green, coating every plane on the other man’s face, and for a second, all Peter could see was the glowing green eyes of the Vulture trained on him—

“Dad, the light.” Liz interrupted the moment as car horns blared behind them. Peter wet his lips and tried valiantly to push away any potential impending panic attacks. He could not afford that at the moment.

Luckily, within a few more minutes they arrived at Midtown, and Peter was pretty sure he’d never been so glad to see the front of his high school before this.

“Here we are. End of the line.” Toomes said, drawing out the last four words like it was a premonition.

“Thanks, dad.” Liz said, putting down her phone, not privy to the double meaning.

“You head in there, gumdrop.” Toomes said, smiling at Liz. “I’m gonna give Peter the— ah, the ‘dad talk.’” Peter was quite certain that this conversation was not at all going to be a normal dad talk. Add it to the list of things that were going horribly sideways.

Liz huffed a sound of amusement, turning slightly to Peter. “Don’t let him intimidate you.” she said. Yeah. Peter thought, almost letting out a hysterical laugh. I’m working on that part . (It wasn’t proving to be particularly successful.)

Liz leaned over the seat to kiss Toomes on the cheek. “Love you, dad. Have a safe flight!”

“Love you too, gumdrop.” Toomes said, grinning in a way that looked normal to an outsider, but seemed particularly malicious in the way that his gaze never left Peter’s. Liz clambered out of the car and Peter’s eyes trailed slightly after her as she met up with some of her friends a few feet away. He turned his attention back to Toomes, who… now had a gun.

Delightful. 

“Does she know?”

“Know what?” Peter asked, playing dumb. He was good at playing dumb, he could totally do that—

“So she doesn’t.” Toomes concluded. “Good. Close to the vest. I admire that. I’ve got a few secrets of my own. Of all the reasons I didn’t want my daughter to date…” he cracked a half-grin, despite the fact that he was sitting in a closed car in front of his daughter’s high school, holding a gun to her fifteen-year-old semi-boyfriend.

“Peter, nothing is more important than family. You saved my daughter’s life. I could never forget something like that. So I’m gonna give you one chance. Are you ready? You walk through those doors, you forget any of this happened. And don’t you ever, ever interfere with my business again. Because if you do, I’ll kill you and everybody you love. I’ll kill you dead . That’s what I’ll do to protect my family. Do you understand?”

Peter nodded, not making eye contact with Toomes. He didn’t want to risk escalating anything– not here, not in front of his school, filled with a bunch of his classmates. He didn’t know whether Toomes was one of the kind of old people to take direct eye contact as a challenge or not, but he wasn’t going to risk it.

“Hey. I just saved your life. Now, what do you say?”

You have got to be fucking kidding me .

Peter was not a malignant or hate-filled person, but in that moment, Toomes sealed his fate. One thing Spider-Man could not stand, even more than armed weapons dealers, was pretentious armed weapons dealers.

He raised his head and looked straight at Toomes. “Thank you.” he said levelly. Toomes grinned.

“You’re welcome. Now, you go in there and you show my daughter a good time, okay? Just not too good.” Toomes said, with an honest-to-god wink. Peter nodded tersely and grabbed at the door, yanking it open and controlling his strength at the last second. He was half-tempted to rip it off its hinges or bend it a little bit, but that would cause a spectacle that he couldn’t afford. He fumbled slightly as he got out, innocuously dropping his phone in the back seat of the car. (He really hoped that was the right decision, given that he had no real way to replace it, but didn’t have any chance to second-guess the choice in the split-second he was climbing out of the seat.)

Toomes drove off, and Peter stood on the curb, spine stiff and adrenaline still racing through his veins. His feet automatically carried him up the familiar steps, and he could hear the muffled sounds of people talking and laughing, and the sound of music.

Liz’s dad is the Vulture. Liz’s dad is the Vulture. Liz’s dad is the Vulture—

He pushed the door open and blinked at the sudden onslaught of sound, rearing back ever-so-slightly and snapping back to the present moment. He glanced around, eyes skipping over countless faces before they landed on Ned, who waved at him, and MJ, who gave him a middle finger with a half-grin. Peter wet his lips and didn’t return either gesture, gaze slipping over to Liz, who was gathered with her friends on the dance floor. When she spotted him, she smiled and made a beeline towards him, and he forced his feet to move in order to meet her in the middle.

“Hey.” she greeted him, furrowing her brow slightly at his expression. “What did he say to you?”

Peter just blinked for a moment, before shaking his head. “Oh— nothing.” he said, with a tight-lipped smile. “Just… normal dad talk. Or so I assume.” he tacked on, trying to go for an orphan joke even though he knew damn well it wasn’t a normal dad talk.

Liz relaxed and smiled at his words, and he led them onto the dance floor, settling his hands onto her hips for one dance. It went surprisingly well, even though he was slightly distracted despite his best efforts. At the very least, he didn’t step on her toes— though that was no longer the highest-stakes part of his evening.

After a few moments, he let her go off to talk to her friends for a little while, catching the way her face was flushed with the movement and a delighted sparkle was in her eyes. On any other occasion, he would be more excited at the effect he’d seemingly had on her, but everything still felt slightly muffled.

He tried to push the thoughts of Toomes away for the following few minutes to enjoy the atmosphere, but something was bugging him, now that he no longer had anyone to distract him. Maybe he’s just taking a trip out of the city, that doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean he’s going to steal stuff as the Vulture. He tried to convince himself. You don’t have your suit, you can’t—

He cut his own train of thought off as he realized he did have his suit. Or, well, “a” suit. His old one was stored under the lockers. Just then, the comment Doris had made came back and smacked him— about Toomes always “coming and going” for “work”— and he felt stupid for not noticing it sooner. His work was being the Vulture. Whatever the man had planned, it wasn’t good. He’d left his phone in Toomes’ car with the intention of tracking it later, in hopes of following him to his secret lair, but he realized that wherever Toomes was going right now wasn’t to a lair. It was to steal something. Some sort of mission. Otherwise he wouldn’t be gone for multiple days.

Peter thought back to how mad he’d been at Mr. Stark for not stopping the Vulture from stealing weapons off of the truck. This was the same scenario; he couldn’t let Toomes get wherever he was going.

A touch on his arm startled him, and he realized that Ned had come up to him and was peering at him worriedly.

“Hey man, are you okay?” Ned asked. “You’ve been zoned out.”

Peter swallowed and glanced over to Liz laughing with her friends, then back to his best friend. “I have to go.” he said hoarsely. Ned’s eyes widened, and he opened his mouth to speak but Peter cut him off. “I know, I don’t want to, but the guy with the wings is Liz’s dad. He’s going somewhere tonight, and he’s planning something big.” 

Last time, I promise . Toomes had said to Doris about him leaving town. Peter sincerely doubted the man was going to give up a life of crime forever, so that meant something big was happening.

Ned gaped at him. “ What?” he hissed, and Peter wet his lips.

“I need you to back me up, please. Cover me and wait for my call.” he said, just as Liz broke from her friends and came over to them. Peter spun around to her with a wide-eyed, panicked look that he’d long perfected. The smile on her face melted into something more concerned.

“Peter, is everything alright?” she asked, and he blinked rapidly, as if he was trying to push back tears.

“I— I— just got a call.” he said, gesturing wildly. “May is— there was an emergency. I have to go, I’m so sorry.” he babbled, waving with his hands. Liz’s eyes widened, and she lifted a hand to her mouth.

“Oh my god, is she—” she started, before shaking her head and cutting herself off. “Don’t worry about this, go to her.” she said, and Peter started backing away. He felt bad using May as an excuse, but it felt worse to just ditch Liz on her homecoming night without any other explanation. He couldn’t very well explain the actual situation, and if he just left with no reasoning, she’d spend the entire night wondering if she did something wrong or if she wasn’t good enough. After all the time and effort she’d put into this dance, Peter didn’t want that for her; at least this way, even if she was worried about what happened, she would still be able to enjoy her night with her friends. Hopefully.

He turned just before he left. “I’m so sorry.” he apologized again, even as she furrowed her brow and shook her head. Not just for this . He said internally. But for whatever is going to happen with your dad .

He didn’t allow himself to dwell on the fact, quickly pulling his old sweatsuit on and sprinting out of the back doors of the school. His Spidey-sense screamed, telling him to dodge, but he was sprinting at full speed and didn’t have time to change his trajectory before his trajectory was being changed for him.

“He gave you a choice. You chose wrong.” A familiar voice spoke, accompanied by a familiar energy blast from the Shocker-guy.

“Ugh.” Peter groaned. He was really getting tired of being hit with that weapon. It was not pleasant.

“What’s with the crappy costume?” the guy continued with a disbelieving laugh.

“I could ask you the same.” Peter grunted, making a dive for his webshooter and grabbing it. He attached it to his wrist just as the other man used the weapon on a school bus, sending it careening into Peter. He flew with the force, crashing straight through the windows of another school bus, and landed against the back wall, flat on the floor. He wrinkled his nose at the chewed gum stuck to the bottom of the seats. “Ugh. Gross.” he muttered.

His Spidey-sense told him to move, and he listened in time, diving out the back window and onto the pavement just as Shocker punched the whole bus, sending it rolling.

“Dude.” Peter said, staring at the now-wrecked bus. “We so do not have the funding to cover that.”

The man didn’t seem to care, because he came at Peter again. He was prepared this time, and he dodged, shooting a web at the gauntlet and yanking it off. He easily crushed it with his enhanced strength, taking more than a little satisfaction at the sound— that weapon had been a real pain in the ass.

Now disarmed, the man tried to make a run for it, but Peter easily webbed him to one of the school buses with another press of his fingers.

“HEY!” the man shouted. “Let me out, you—”

Peter webbed his mouth shut and pointed a finger at him. “You deserve that.” he said, backing away. “Better hope the school doesn’t try to sue you for property damage. Have fun finding a lawyer!” he called out as he shot a web and swung off. Immediately, his mind shifted back to the Vulture.

He needed a way to follow Toomes, but without it being obvious that he was Spider-Man. Toomes would probably be watching out for web-slinging behind him, but not in the same way he’d be looking for a car trailing him. Plus, Peter had left his own phone in the car to track him, so he needed someone’s phone as well—

A familiar silver sports car drove past him on the way to the front steps of Midtown, and the voice of his high school bully reached his ears, talking about… branzino or something.

Bingo .

Peter had never been so glad to see Flash Thompson.

“Flash, I need your car and your phone.” Peter said in a low raspy voice, landing on the hood of the car and ignoring the high-pitched scream of surprise he got in response. He watched as Flash cowered in his seat— any other day, he might have found the irony somewhat amusing, given that Flash had tried to run Peter over in this very car multiple times, but he had a job to do.

“Uh, sir, technically, this is my dad’s car, sir. So I can’t—” he stammered, and Peter just cocked his head to the side and narrowed his eyes. “—which, uh— I’m sure he wouldn’t mind you using.” he squeaked and rushed to open the door, clambering out as the girl on the other side (his homecoming date, Peter presumed) did the same. He scrambled to shove his phone at Peter as well, who grabbed it and hopped into the driver’s seat.

“Thanks!” Peter shouted out as he haphazardly drove away, knowing full well that Flash probably wouldn’t be getting his car back intact. As soon as he was out of earshot of the other teenager, he dialed Ned’s number on Flash’s phone— suddenly very glad that he and Ned had memorized each others’ numbers the day they’d gotten their own phones. It only rang once before the line picked up.

“NED?” Peter shouted into the receiver in a decidedly high-pitched voice as he narrowly avoided smashing into someone. “Can you hear me?”

“Go for Ned.” Ned replied cheerfully on the other end of the line. Oh, thank god.

“Ned, I need you to track my phone for me.”

“Oooo-kay, but where is it?” Ned asked, but Peter could hear him obediently clicking away.

“In the back of Toomes’s car.” Peter responded, swerving to avoid a bike.

“Genius move.” Ned breathed out. “Okay, he just passed the GameStop on Jackson Avenue.”

Okay, okay, okay . Peter repeated to himself. He just had to tail Toomes until he stopped somewhere, and then… well, actually, he hadn’t planned that far ahead. He assumed Toomes would change into the Vulture suit at some point, in which case Peter could then take him down. 

But first he had to actually make it there alive. Baby steps. Speaking of which—

“Hey, where are the headlights on this thing?” Peter yelled into the phone as he swerved for the 7th time, squinting through his old Spider-Man goggles at the disorienting street lights and lights of other cars around him. “I’m in Flash’s car.”

Ned let out a disbelieving chuckle on the other end of the line. “You stole Flash’s car? Awesome. I’ll pull the specs.”

“Yeah, it’s awesome.” Peter agreed breathlessly. “It’s—  get out of the way, get out of the way! Move! Please!” he yelped as he almost ran into an entire line of cars.

“Peter, are you okay?”

“ Uhhhh , I’ve never really driven before. Only with May in parking lots. This is a huge step up—” Peter cut himself off with a very manly scream as a car almost hit him. (His voice definitely didn’t crack. It didn’t .)

After a few more moments of swerving (he really hoped someone hadn’t called the cops on his erratic driving yet), he spoke up again. “Ned, how are we doing on those headlights?”

“Oh, yeah—” Ned said, with a slight shifting sound in the background. “—round knob to the left of the steering wheel, turn clockwise.”

Left, clockwise — the headlights clicked on. Peter let out a rough breath of relief. “Where’s my phone now?”

“Um... He stopped in an old industrial park in Brooklyn.” Ned offered, voice tinny over the phone.

“What? That makes no sense. He said he was going out of town.” Peter said, voice rising in pitch, even as he wrenched the steering wheel to avoid running into another car. Luckily he was leaving the more crowded city streets now, with less to crash into.

Brooklyn? Why Brooklyn, that doesn’t make any sense, come on, Peter, think. If you’re an evil supervillain focused on stealing lots of high-tech weapons at one time, what would you target—

The car skidded past a store, titled ‘Jake’s Moving Co.,’ and Peter’s spine straightened in the seat like he’d been zapped.

“Moving, moving boxes— Ned, it’s moving day! He’s going to rob Mr. Stark’s plane!”

“Oh, that is not good.” Ned spoke what he was thinking. Peter’s mind was racing. Mr. Stark’s plane was in danger, that had Avengers equipment and countless weapons and who knew what else on it, he had to let his mentor know—

He ground the car to a screeching halt on the side of a somewhat abandoned road. In his hurry, in his rush and thoughts about oh my god the Vulture is Liz’s dad and he’s going after the plane — he hadn’t stopped to think about the fact that Spider-Man was supposed to be benched. More accurately, he hadn’t stopped to think about what exactly would happen to him if he disobeyed the government’s direct orders.

“Ned, call Mr. Stark.” Peter said urgently. He and his mentor hadn’t spoken since Spider-Man had been grounded by the committee, but surely the man would pick up if it was an emergency, right? He’d tried to call his mentor to apologize countless times and hadn’t received an answer, but maybe, just maybe–

“He’s not picking up.” Ned said after a moment, voice tinny and urgent.

At the thought, Peter realized this was the situation he’d been dreading, ever since the start.

His mentor wasn’t picking up and Spider-Man was legally grounded. But if Peter let Toomes get away with whatever else was in that plane…

People could get hurt.

People would get hurt.

And Spider-Man could stop it.

He always knew what choice he’d make.

—

The coordinates led him to a large, abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of the borough. Peter crawled onto the roof and slid in through a small opening, descending from the tall, arching ceiling on one of his webs. He’d expected that Toomes would meet up with a team, or some people from before— but all was quiet. He could only hear one heartbeat, and it was Toomes himself.

Landing on the floor, Peter made his way from the big room into one of the smaller adjoining ones, spotting the Vulture’s wingsuit along with monitors showing the Tower and a blueprint of what Peter assumed was Mr. Stark’s plane. He narrowed his eyes; it looked like his guess had been right.

Toomes himself was fiddling at a desk, completely unarmed with his back turned to Peter. Peter just stared at him, not really sure how best to approach this situation. Toomes was undoubtedly a dangerous man, but here with no backup and no weapons… even in his old suit, Peter far outpowered a normal human.

“It’s over, Toomes.” he called out, walking towards him.

To his credit, the other man didn’t outwardly startle, instead turning to him with what looked like an amiable smile. “Oh, hey, Pete. I didn’t hear you come in.” he said casually, as if he hadn’t threatened to kill Peter a half-hour beforehand.

“You don’t seem surprised.” he responded, and Toomes shrugged.

“You know, I gotta tell you, Pete, I really, really admire your grit.” he said, and oooo-kay , this conversation had officially crossed into really-fucking-weird territory. First Toomes threatened to kill him, now he was calm and complimenting him? Toomes continued speaking. “I see why Liz likes you, I do. When you first came to the house, I wasn’t sure. I thought, ‘really?’ But I get it now.” 

Peter wasn’t really sure how to respond to the mixed insult-compliment combo, but at the mention of Liz, he tilted his head. Toomes seemed like he truly cared about his family; maybe that was Peter’s entrance in a last-ditch attempt to reason with him. “How could you do this to her?” he asked.

“To her? I’m not doing anything to her, Pete. I’m doing this for her.”

Peter snorted. “Yeah. I’d really appreciate it if my dad were a supervillain, too.” he said dryly, half-heartedly shooting a web to keep the man’s hand secured on his desk despite the fact that Toomes hadn’t yet tried to make a move on him. He knew for a fact that Liz was a good person, and could not possibly be happy about the effects of her father’s weapons if she ever found out.

Toomes sighed. “Peter, you’re young. You don’t understand how the world works.”

Peter pressed his lips together and tilted his head, a sort of rage lighting in his chest. He did understand how the world worked, thank you very much. His parents were dead, and his uncle was dead, and he may be fifteen but he saw more on the streets than most adults encountered throughout their entire life. He was far from sheltered or naive just because he had decent morals.

Peter gave a short, sharp laugh. “Are you seriously trying to convince me that selling weapons to criminals is morally right?” he asked incredulously.

“How do you think your buddy Stark paid for that tower? Or any of his little toys? Those people, Pete, those people up there, the rich and the powerful, they do whatever they want. Guys like us, like you and me, they don’t care about us. We build their roads and we fight all their wars and everything, but they don’t care about us. We have to pick up after ‘em. We have to eat their table scraps. That’s how it is. I know you know what I’m talking about, Peter.”

Peter narrowed his eyes. How awfully presumptuous of you . He thought. He was getting really tired of people telling him what he did or didn’t understand, or that he knew what they were talking about.

The difference between Mr. Stark and Toomes was that Tony had changed after he found out what his weapons were being used for. Peter was under no illusions of his mentor’s past, but even when he was upset with the man for not listening to him, he never believed that Mr. Stark truly didn’t care . Toomes didn’t care, and had never cared, even when the consequences were shoved directly in his face. Peter didn’t say any of this aloud, because he’d been on the streets long enough as Spider-Man to recognize the glimmering eyes of a crazy man from far away.

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked instead.

“Because I want you to understand.” Toomes said, and Peter knew that was bullshit even before he continued. “And… I needed a little time to get her airborne.”

Just as he said it, Peter’s Spidey-sense spiked and he dodged out of the way of the wingsuit that flew at him. He saw Toomes slash through the webbing on his hand with a folding knife, but his attention was torn away as the wingsuit came at him again. It was flying haphazardly, in a pattern that didn’t really make sense. That could possibly be because Toomes wasn’t actually in the suit, but that still wouldn’t make sense as to why the navigation systems of the wings had suddenly gone to shit.

“I’m sorry, Peter.” Toomes apologized, sounding actually sorry for the slightest of moments, and warning bells went off in Peter’s mind at the confident tone. He furrowed his eyebrows, glancing around at the wingsuit flying overhead once more. There was something he was missing here. His Spidey-sense was building up to a painful thrum at the base of his neck, but he couldn’t figure out why. There was no other danger; Toomes was unarmed outside of the wingsuit, there was nobody else in the warehouse, what was he—

Peter heard the unmistakable sound of concrete crumbling, and the accompanying spike of his senses slammed him with the realization. He felt unbelievably foolish for not catching it before, but it was too late now; the warehouse was coming down. Just as he had the thought, thousands of tons of metal and brick and concrete came raining down on him, and everything went dark.

After a few moments (or so he thought; he couldn’t actually judge the time), Peter realized that he hadn’t passed out and he wasn’t dead. The darkness all around was the result of the roof that had just fallen on top of him, and the sharp ache in his bones informed him of the fact that he was definitely still attached to his corporeal form. (Unless this was some kind of special punishment from hell, which he was kind of convinced it was already.)

“Oh, god.” Peter gasped, reaching up with one arm to yank his mask off in a desperate attempt to get more air. “Okay, ready?” he readied himself, before trying to push himself off of the ground. You’re Spider-Man, Peter, come on. He didn’t know how strong he was, he’d never tested his limits, but his enhancements had never failed him before—

It didn’t even budge.

It was then that he started to truly panic.

“HELLO! Hello! Please. Hey— please.” Peter shouted, gasping and trying to project his voice as far as he could. “I’m down here. I’m down here. I’m stuck. I’m stuck. I can’t move. I can’t—” he tried to take a deep breath in, to calm himself down, but found that he couldn’t. The concrete was preventing him from taking in any more than shallow breaths, which was not helping his impending panic attack. He gasped helplessly for a few more moments (in, out, in, out, in, out— come on, Peter, breathe—) before he tried in vain to assess his surroundings. It only took him a few seconds to come to the conclusion.

There was nobody coming for him. He wasn’t wearing his watch; he couldn’t wear it at the same time as his web-shooters. He had no Karen, no Mr. Stark, no Ned. He was trapped in an abandoned warehouse, with no civilians anywhere nearby and nobody likely to come in this direction at 9 PM. He could wait for Ned to realize something had gone wrong and call the police, but… He had already risked everything to come out here in his makeshift suit. He had violated his benching already— if he gave up now, it would have been for nothing. There was nobody else to stop these weapons, nobody else who knew. Nobody else who cared enough.

Peter grit his teeth, clamping his jaw shut so hard that the force spiked up the side of his face and reverberated in his eye sockets.

“Come on, Peter.” he grunted to himself, shifting his arms and slipping ever so slightly as he tried to press his palms flat against the rubble pinned to his back. “Come on, Spider-Man.” His fingers caught in the concrete above him, rough against the pads of his fingertips. The dust was in his eyes, his ears, his mouth— forming a thick, dry paste with the blood already there. “Come on, Spider-Man.” He started pushing, pressing his palms fully against the concrete, feeling it shift along the line of his spine, scraping against his shoulder blades. “Come on, Spider-Man.” The whole building began to groan, pieces of rubble shifting and falling around him, water and sweat dripping in equal parts down the front of his suit, his arms shaking with the effort. But he could feel it tipping, shifting, and he was almost free, almost there, almost— 

“Come on, Spider-Man!”   he screamed at himself, not caring that he probably sounded like a madman. His entire world had narrowed to the feeling of water seeping through his boots, the taste of blood and dust on his tongue, the rough feel of stone scraping his fingertips, the ache and strain and pop of his shoulders—

The rubble fell away, and he collapsed forward into a puddle with the sudden loss of weight pressing against him. He gasped, clutching his ribs, taking deep breaths and marveling at the sensation of his chest expanding without concrete pinning him down. Then he looked up, and saw an all-too-familiar silhouette perched on top of a nearby billboard.

He paused for a moment, still holding his bruised and likely broken ribs with one arm, staring up at the Vulture perched on the metal railings. This was his final chance to stop; nobody had reported a Spider-Man sighting yet, and he knew it was only a matter of time before they did. If he went after the plane, they’d be waiting for him when he returned— however he managed to get down. He knew all of this, ran through his options, and realized the consequences if he didn’t do it. He made his final decision, shooting a web to attach to the wingsuit just as the Vulture took off into the air.

Accords or not, he had a plane to catch.

~ ~ ~

Tony’s POV

Tony stared mindlessly at the chandelier in front of him, sipping a scotch as he tried to distract himself from the utterly boring chatter of the patrons around him. He was at this dinner purely for appearances’ sake— something about PR for Stark Industries after the Avengers fallout, blah blah. Pepper had told him to be here, so he was. Unfortunately. (He figured if he had any shot of ever ending their ‘break’, his chances would be better if he actually listened to her on these kinds of things).

He’d tried, in a vain attempt, to think of anything other than the kid, or Pepper, or Rhodey, or the Avengers, or any of his other colossal fuck-ups over the past few months. Primarily, the kid, who seemed insistent on leaving apologetic voicemails every damn day. Tony hadn’t listened to a single one— he didn’t know how to fix this. Spider-Man was benched until the committee deemed that the Ferry incident wasn’t his fault. The chances were in his favor, given that nobody died and the fact that Tony had some damn good lawyers, but there was always a chance of politicians going sideways. Tony needed Peter to understand the severity of his actions; if Tony hadn’t been backing Spider-Man on the Accords, he’d likely have been in the Raft long before this, and certainly would have been after this. And the Raft was something even Tony Stark couldn’t just break open (as much as he would wholly like to).

His phone vibrated in his pocket, and he pulled it out, glancing at the screen and seeing that it was Happy calling him. He excused himself from the mindless chatter that he hadn’t been partaking in anyways and went out to the quiet hallway.

“Boss? Boss.” Happy said into the phone when he answered, voice breathless. Tony frowned; he’d been about to make a quip about thank god you saved me from all the boring dinner talk , but the joke died on his tongue.

“Hap, what’s this about? I told you not to stress too much, moving some boxes to the compound shouldn’t be that hard. I know you’ve got your high blood pressure and all but–”

“No, boss.” Happy cut him off. “The bird guy tried to hijack the plane. Spider-Man stopped him.”

Tony stiffened, feeling like his spine had just been zapped with electricity. “ What ?” he asked. This was bad, this was very very bad, Spider-Man was benched by the committee, if Ross found out—

“Ross showed up. It’s Peter. They arrested Peter.”

Chapter Text

May’s POV

May was working at the hospital when she got the news. Or, more accurately, when she saw the news.

She had left for her shift shortly after Peter had left for homecoming, figuring that he’d be occupied for most of the evening and early morning by the time she would have gotten back anyways.

The night shift at the hospital wasn’t usually an overly busy one, and it paid well— which was mostly the reason why she picked up as many of them as she could. There were often lulls in their duties, usually between 2 and 4 AM, where May and her co-workers gathered in the main breakroom for some coffee and their usual rounds of gossip. It had just hit 2:15, and May had just finished up with her last patient and was headed in the direction of the room.

Pulling her phone out of her pocket, she frowned slightly when she saw no new messages from Peter. She’d texted him at 10 PM to let her know when he got back from the dance safely, and she had yet to receive a response. It wasn’t overly alarming, given that it was Homecoming night and all— it was possible that he was still out having fun. She shoved her phone back into her pocket and made her way to the breakroom, deciding that if it hit 3 AM and he still hadn’t responded, she’d call him.

When she approached the room, she heard murmuring from her co-workers, and she furrowed her brow. Talking wasn’t unusual to hear, but the tones of the voices sounded… more agitated than usual. 

Sarah— one of May’s common night shift work partners— popped her head out of the room and beckoned frantically to her. May took in her appearance and frowned at the washed-out complexion that adorned the woman’s face. They were seasoned nurses in a busy NYC hospital; not much caught them off-guard anymore. The expression on her friend’s face told a different story.

“May, you have to see this.” Sarah practically yanked her into the room, and something in May’s gut twisted and settled uncomfortably even before she stumbled over the threshold. (Instinctively, she felt like she already knew what this was about. Call it a mother’s intuition.)

All of their co-workers were gathered around the break room TV, talking in low murmurs and eyes glued to the screen. May’s eyes followed theirs, and landed on the big, bold text letters on the banner at the bottom.

Her heart dropped down to the floor of her stomach.

“VIGILANTE SPIDER-MAN ARRESTED BY SECRETARY OF STATE FOR ACCORDS VIOLATION.”

She could see shaky footage of a red-and-blue clad figure on a sandy, fire-strewn beach ( Coney Island, her mind distantly supplied, spotting the rollercoasters). She saw the moment the guards marched in and locked handcuffs and chains onto the small, hunched figure. He didn’t resist— just stood, on wavering legs, blood dripping from wounds on his torso. The footage was too grainy and far away to see details; just ashy, smoke-ridden blobs of color and movement. May felt like she couldn’t breathe. She knew that figure. She knew those colors. She knew that hair. He was unmasked, his face tilted downwards and too far away to see defined features, but that hair…

But no— Maybe it was a mistake, maybe the news had gotten it wrong, maybe it was all a misunderstanding—

Her phone rang, and she fumbled for it with clumsy fingers, just barely managing to hit the ‘accept’ button before it went to voicemail. A small, desperate part of her hoped that she’d hear Peter’s voice on the other end of the line, even as she knew she wouldn’t.

“Ms. Parker?” a voice that was definitely not Peter’s rang out on the other end of the line. It was familiar, but she couldn’t quite place a finger on ‘ who’ through the echoing in her ears. She must have made some sound of assent because the voice continued. “This is Happy Hogan, Tony Stark’s bodyguard.” The voice sounded strained at that, taut and pressed to the limits, and she could feel her lungs freeze in her chest, not daring to move an inch. “He needs to talk to you, urgently. It’s about Peter.”

She took a single breath in and felt her lungs shatter.

~ ~ ~

MJ’s POV

Ned had been antsy all night, ever since Peter Parker had gone running out the door with some half-baked excuse about his aunt being in trouble. MJ had watched curiously, but not intervened— Liz seemed to buy the story, at the very least, practically radiating concern. MJ knew it was bullshit, because she’d seen the way Peter had walked in, almost as if in a trance, before dancing with Liz and then standing alone in a corner, utterly lost in thought. Ned had walked up to him and whispered something, and MJ had watched in absolute fascination as Peter’s entire demeanor changed— coiling like a loaded spring, a sort of fluid grace to his movements and a hard determination lining his face, trailing down to the angular set of his jaw. Then Liz had walked over, and Peter was spinning to face her— all wide-eyed innocence and jerky, panicked motions.

Huh . It looked like Peter Parker was a better actor than she’d originally given him credit for. She may have even believed him, had she not watched the changes with her own eyes. Then Peter had darted out, and Ned had disappeared as well, with an even worse lie of ‘using the bathroom.’ It was easier for him to slip away; after all, the only one who he needed to excuse his presence from was MJ herself. Not that she cared. Not at all. She was just… curious. And observant.

He had eventually returned after an hour, looking sheepish and red in the face, escorted by Ms. Warren. Ned kept his head ducked down and mumbled out an apology as their teacher ordered him sternly to stay here.

“So. Bathroom, huh?” she asked nonchalantly, taking a bite out of one of the sandwich appetizers they had spread out on a table. Ned sighed and rubbed at the back of his neck.

“Computer lab.” he mumbled, embarrassed. MJ let out a loud snort.

“Nerd.” she said. Of course Ned snuck out of their homecoming dance to go to the computer lab. “What were you even doing in there, anyways?”

If possible, Ned’s face got even redder, and she raised an eyebrow, intrigued. “Um.” he stammered, face only growing more crimson with each passing millisecond. She eyed him warily.

“I swear, Leeds, if you say something like ‘watching porn,’ I’ll kick you.” she deadpanned.

Ned practically squeaked at that, and MJ almost laughed aloud. She knew full well that there was no way Ned actually had been doing that on the school computers— he was far too smart for that. But he was a terrible liar, and MJ knew for a fact that he defaulted to completely unbelievable lies because he was incapable of coming up with a better excuse on the spot. It seemed that Ms. Warren had fallen victim to one such circumstance.

“I’m kidding, I don’t care,” she said easily, when Ned looked like he was about to combust. He relaxed minutely, but his face was still flushed all the way to the roots of his hair. She ignored it, grabbing another sandwich and settling in to watch the event progress. Ned didn’t say much else— rather uncharacteristically of him— but he joined her, standing on the edges of the room and watching their classmates laughing and dancing.

After some unknown amount of time had passed, the dance started to draw to a close— couples going home, people filtering out, music dying down. Ned and MJ found themselves helping to clean up the fallen cups, confetti, streamers, balloons— MJ mostly just because she didn’t want to go home, and Ned because he was antsy and practically jumping off the walls. It looked like he was waiting for something—- some kind of news—- and MJ would bet her savings account on that news involving Peter somehow. Given that he had yet to reappear again, hours later.

Just as she had the thought, she heard a loud clatter, and turned to see that Ned had dropped the container he was holding, letting it fall to the ground without so much as a glance spared to it. MJ furrowed her eyebrows at him.

“Ned, what—” she started, mildly annoyed.

She turned fully to see him staring at his phone. Walking over, she peered at the screen, finding the headline “VIGILANTE SPIDER-MAN ARRESTED BY SECRETARY OF STATE FOR ACCORDS VIOLATION” plastered in bold text, overlaying shaky video footage.

MJ blinked, before glancing to Ned, who now looked so pale that she was sure every capillary in his face had been emptied of blood.

“Peter.” Ned breathed out.

“What?” MJ asked, even though a terrible, sick feeling settled in her gut. She was smart; she could put the pieces together of something she’d already suspected. But for once, she desperately hoped that she was wrong— that Ned had spoken Peter’s name for a completely unrelated reason. (She already knew what the true reason was, even before Ned opened his mouth to speak the three words she didn’t want to hear.)

“It’s Peter. Peter is Spider-Man.”

~ ~ ~

Tony’s POV

“VIGILANTE SPIDER-MAN ARRESTED BY SECRETARY OF STATE FOR ACCORDS VIOLATION.”

The horrible, terrible headline was seared into his minds’ eye; the accompanying shaky video footage playing on loop behind his eyelids.

He should have prepared for this. Why wasn’t he prepared for this?

He knew the answer, and as usual, it lined up with all of his failures: his own ego. He’d prepared for every other contingency in the book in regards to Peter and the Accords, but hadn’t prepared for this one. Purely based on the fact that it was centered around Tony not being there, and he had made the utterly foolish, arrogant mistake to assume that that would never happen. But it had— and by his own hand, too.

Tony Stark was the type of man to learn from his failures, to fail better the next time around. It seemed that that very thought, in and of itself, was his own fallacy. Thinking he could ever outrun his own particular brand of failure. This hadn’t happened because he wasn’t smart enough, or strong enough, or fast enough. This happened because he was arrogant, and blind, and stubborn, and didn’t do the one thing he had promised Peter he would do: to pick up the phone.

In his mind’s eye, right next to the shaky footage of Peter getting arrested on Coney Island, was the repeat memory of the Ferry incident. The last time he’d seen the kid, or talked to him. He replayed every word, every action, and cursed himself individually for each one.

Because he had pushed it. He’d seen the way the kid’s eyes shimmered with tears, had seen the hunched way he held himself. And he’d still gone in for the kill.

Because that’s what Tony Stark did, didn’t he? Made sure he got the last word, in everything. He’d ripped into the kid because he was scared, sure, but he didn’t need to keep pushing it. He’d driven in blow after blow, despite Peter’s apologies, despite the fact that he looked like he was going to cry. He’d done exactly to Peter what Howard did to him. Except, arguably worse, because his consequences had never ended up this badly.

And to top it all off, Tony had ignored every call from Peter since, knowing that the second he heard that earnest, apologetic voice on the other end of the line, he’d cave in an instant. Now Peter was paying the price for his negligence, and Tony hadn’t even been able to offer his own apology. The kid was alone, scared, in the Raft, probably still blaming himself and thinking Tony was angry at him because Tony couldn’t bother to pick up the fucking phone.

Both Rhodey and Pepper had called him as soon as they saw the headline, and if he were in a more stable state of mind (relatively speaking, for him), he’d take a moment to appreciate them for it. As it was, Rhodey had taken one look at him over the hologram call and had declared that he was coming over. Tony didn’t bother to argue.

When his best friend got there, Tony was pacing in the lab, cursing out his past self for not further negotiating the potential situation where Peter had broken the rules. He’d been utterly foolish, believing blindly that Peter was too good of a kid to break the law and that Tony could protect him from the rest. The first part held true; in fact, too true, because it was Peter’s goodness that hadn’t let him stand by. It was Tony’s arrogance that had driven the coffin in the nail— both due to the fact that he hadn’t successfully negotiated for at least allowing a trial if Peter broke the rules, and for thinking that Tony himself would ever be able to protect him.

Rhodey tried his best to calm Tony down, but it was far from successful.

“No, Rhodey, you don’t fucking get it.” Tony snapped, running his hands through his hair for the umpteenth time. “He called me. If I had picked up—”

“— you would have told him to stop?” Rhodey asked, eyebrows raised.

“ Yes .” Tony said. 

“Would he have listened?”

“No, probably not. But I could have—”

“— what, Tony?” Rhodey asked, interrupting him again. If it weren’t Rhodey , Tony would have slapped him. “You’re benched too, until they come to a conclusion about the Ferry Incident. So you would have what, exactly? Gone after him? Helped him? Broken the law yourself?”

“If it meant he’d be free right now, yes.” Tony snapped, almost immediately. Rhodey was looking at him with a strange expression.

“He wouldn’t be.” he said, bluntly. “Neither of you would be. Both of you would be sitting your asses in prison because you would have both violated your benching rules. As it is now, you being at that dinner is the only reason you’re able to fight for him out here.”

“Yeah, a lot of good that’s doing him.” Tony snapped again. Rhodey softened. 

“It is doing him good, Tones. He’s got people who care for him out here, already fighting tooth and nail. He's got you.”

“I don't—” Tony started, ready to immediately and instinctively refute the claim. I don't care about him. He couldn’t even say it. The words refused to come out of his mouth. It was such a big fat fucking lie that his stomach curled in on itself even thinking the words. His mouth clicked shut, and his best friend was looking at him with a knowing expression.

“Damn you, Rhodes,” was all Tony could mutter in response. He was defaulting to anger and frustration as a coping mechanism— as usual— to cover up his actual feelings.

Because he was scared. Scared for the kid, what they would do to him; Tony had that tight ball of worry in his chest that he felt whenever Rhodey did something risky in the suit or—

Oh.

Oh, fuck. 

Oh, hell no .

Tony didn’t just care about the kid.

Tony loved this kid.

He’d broken one of his own biggest cardinal rules: do not get attached. (He had already failed that with Rhodey. And Pepper. And Happy. And… all of the Avengers).

And now, apparently, Peter Parker.

He wasn’t really sure why this fact completely blindsided him— the kid was endearing, after all, in that sad-earnest-kicked-puppy-dog kind of way. And Jesus, did Tony actually just label the kid as endearing ? His own thoughts were going to give him acid reflux.

Tony swallowed back all of the feelings, firmly shoving them down— even as he knew that once they were unlocked, there was no going back. Still, he didn’t have time to dwell on any of it; this was his fault. He knew Peter; he knew that if something were going down, Peter was too good to just let it go. He’d always known that if Peter violated the Accords it would be to help someone. And he’d been in that position, had been benched— that was the moment Tony should have been listening to him the most. And instead he’d ignored him.

The taste of failure was bitter but all too familiar.

“Boss, May Parker is here as requested.” FRIDAY interrupted— quietly, like even she knew how serious this situation was. He had requested that the AI contact Peter’s aunt the minute he learned of the information, but he hadn’t quite realized that so much time had passed. Rhodey pressed an encouraging but firm hand to his shoulder.

Tony closed his eyes and prepared himself for the worst.

~ ~ ~

Peter’s POV

It was dark. Peter couldn’t see anything, nor move his limbs; it was so dark inside the container that he may as well have had a blindfold on, and he had what he assumed were Vibranium (maybe Adamantium?) cuffs encircling his arms and legs. This was really feeling a lot more like a kidnapping than an arrest.

His entire body ached; shoulders burning from where he’d pushed the warehouse off of him and ribcage aching with every breath he took. He wasn’t even sure how the committee caught wind of him as Spider-Man so quickly, given that he’d been dressed in his old suit and had spent the majority of the fight in the air on a plane— not fighting smack-dab in the middle of New York City. Though he supposed that crashing said plane right in the middle of Coney Island was not the most subtle of moves.

Either way, by the time he had webbed the Vulture up and had struggled to his feet, arm pressing against the puncture wound in his stomach, he’d been faced with a military-grade barrage of trucks rolling up to the scene. An entire militia of heavily armed men— from what force, he didn’t know (army, maybe)— had clambered out of the trucks and pointed various weapons at him.

Thaddeus Ross himself had climbed out of the front truck in the convoy, dressed in a slate gray three-piece suit that stood out horribly against the camouflage vests of the men around him.

“Spider-Man, you are under arrest for the violation of your benching order,” he’d called out. “Put your hands in the air and do not resist.”

Peter almost made a quip along the lines of: ‘Isn’t this the part where you’re supposed to read me my rights?’ (They never did.)

Nevertheless, he hadn’t resisted. Later, he’d wonder why he felt so numb during it all— maybe because the reality of the situation hadn’t hit him yet, maybe he was still high off the adrenaline from fighting the Vulture, or maybe he was just too tired for it to make a difference.

He could have probably fought back, if he wanted. Even sore, bruised, bloody and beaten, he probably could have taken down the armed guards and swung away with only a bullet wound or two. For the briefest of moments, he considered it. He dismissed the thought as quickly as it came, though— his mask had been ripped off while fighting Toomes, and they had already seen his face. Not to mention if he resisted arrest, he’d only incur more charges against him, and there was no way he’d ever be able to be Spider-Man again without constantly running from the law. 

Perhaps it was also a sense of naivety— that even though he was being arrested, he’d still done the right thing. He’d stopped the Vulture; that had to count for something . Once they realized why he did what he had, it would all be cleared up and he’d be free to go. It had to be.

So he’d put his hands up, ignoring the sharp pain in his shoulders at the movement, and hadn’t fought back. Hadn’t even made a quip. They’d kept the guns trained on him the entire time— despite him making no efforts to jump at them or attack— as they’d marched forward and jerked his arms forward. He’d stumbled a bit, not expecting the sheer force they were using on him, and heard the sound of a dozen guns cocking at the slight movement.

I’m not resisting . He wanted to scream, the first tendrils of resentment at the injustice twisting around his tongue. I didn’t hurt anyone. Why are you being so harsh?

He glanced up into the eyes of the nearest man who was cuffing him— searching for any inkling of humanity or recognition that Peter was a person . A fifteen-year-old in a bloodied, tattered red sweatsuit. 

He found none.

The man glared down at Peter as if he were the scum of the earth, or a genocidal maniac who had killed millions. He didn’t seem fazed in the slightest by the fact that Peter was a teenager, nor that his face was covered in ash and soot and dust and blood, nor that the Vulture was webbed up just a few paces away. He just glared, and twisted Peter’s arm harshly when the eye contact went on for a little too long.

Distantly, Peter thought that he treated the criminals he came across every day kinder than this.

He stayed numb with shock, even as they cuffed his ankles as well, wrapping chains in between the two so that Peter could only move forward in small increments. He found himself staring blankly at Ross as they loaded him down with more chains, not reacting outwardly in the slightest until—

Something hard and cold wrapped around his neck.

Peter reared back instinctively, and there were shouts and the sound of guns cocking once more, accompanied by several sets of hands twisting his shoulders back painfully. He couldn’t help the pained yelp that escaped his mouth as the puncture wound stretched uncomfortably, even as his eyes caught sight of what it was that they’d been trying to lock around his neck.

A shock collar.

Peter stared at it, not really comprehending. The cuffs— the cuffs made sense, for an arrest. Even the ankle ones did too, he supposed, so he couldn’t run. But a shock collar ? He was— he was a human , for christ’s sake, not a dog.

His eyes trailed up to Ross, who had moved closer at some point, peering down his nose at him with harsh, unforgiving gray irises. Distantly, Peter noticed that they almost perfectly matched the color of his suit. One large, monochromatic plain gray blob. The same color as a gravestone. How fitting.

“A contingency, Spider-Man.” the secretary said, voice dripping with false sympathy that didn’t cover the steel cold current running through the words. “I’m sure you understand. Wouldn’t want to be marked as resisting arrest, now, would we?” he asked, and gave Peter a sharp, shark-like smile. 

Peter swallowed, and couldn’t find his voice to respond, even if he’d known what words to say. But he didn’t react when they moved in again to lock the collar around his throat. He just stared straight ahead, right into Ross’s eyes, and watched as a slow, slippery smile stretched across the secretary’s face at the same time the lock sealed into place with a hollow-sounding click .

They’d marched him to one of the heavily armored trucks, practically carrying him across the sand, not waiting for him to try and waddle there with his legs cuffed together. They’d tossed him inside with little grace, and had sealed the door behind him, plunging him into total darkness. The truck had started moving after that, driving for some indeterminate amount of time. Peter tried and failed to adjust himself into a more comfortable position, but kept getting jolted around in the back in a way that seemed almost purposeful.

When they’d stopped, Peter expected the doors to re-open somewhere unfamiliar, but they never did. Instead, the entire back of the truck he was in detached and was lifted into the air, getting loaded onto a plane or helicopter of sorts. Peter supposed that must be so that he didn’t try and escape if they unlocked the container— not that he probably would have tried, anyways, considering he was still practically in a dissociative state.

The numb feeling stayed with him, all throughout the journey. Part of him thought it was a joke, a scare tactic. Or maybe it was just a nightmare. Him? He couldn’t be going to jail— he didn’t— he hadn’t done anything wrong . Jail was for criminals, for people who hurt others.

It was only when he heard the sloshing of water against metal that it fully hit him, and the accompanying fear finally sunk icy claws into his lungs and heart. 

But it was too little, too late, and any slim chance he may have had before of escaping was long gone. If the situation weren’t so serious, he would have laughed at how horrendously long it took for his survival instincts and fight or flight response to truly kick in. But this wasn’t a laughing matter, because this was no scare tactic, or joke, or nightmare. This was real.

He was being taken to the Raft.

~ ~ ~

Tony’s POV

May Parker came in like a whirlwind; a sort of rush of energy that reminded him, achingly, of Peter. She looked disheveled, but not necessarily caught off guard, and she didn’t fire off a long list of questions like he thought she might when she first laid eyes on him.

“Ms. Parker—” Tony started, not knowing how the hell to even begin this conversation. How does one tell a parent that their fifteen year old kid is an enhanced spider-y superhero who had violated his Accords parole rules and was now locked up in a maximum-security prison?

“I already saw the news.” May said abruptly, eyes piercing through him critically. “Tell me what you’re doing to get him out of there.”

Tony went slightly slack-jawed. Did she just—

“I know he’s Spider-Man.” May said, a bit impatiently. “I know my nephew, Stark, and he’s a terrible liar. You are too, for that matter. It wasn’t that hard to piece together, once the Accords rules were put into place. I had been waiting for him to tell me—” she hesitated slightly at that, before shaking her head firmly and steeling her expression once more. “But he never found the time. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, tell me how you’re getting him out of this mess or so help me, I will put my foot so far up your ass that it’ll be a permanent fixture and people will be able to see it every time you open your mouth.”

It was not often that Tony Stark was rendered speechless.

He blinked. Once, twice, three times—

“Why did you allow it?” Tony asked, looking at her closely. It wasn’t an answer to her question, and he half-expected her to go off on him for that fact, but she just stared back at him with a level gaze.

“Well, I wasn’t going to at first.” she admitted. “You’re lucky Peter was in a good mood that day or you would have gotten a chewing out so intense you’d be begging to go back and listen to those stuck-up politicians.”

Tony winced slightly— he didn’t doubt her on that front. In fact, May reminded him a lot of Pepper, except Pepper had perfected the sickly-sweet ‘you’re in trouble’ tone, while May just flat-out said it. The woman in question continued with a sigh, eyes piercing as she swept over him.

“But he was happy.” she continued, in a quieter, softer tone of voice. “Happier than I’d seen him since his uncle passed away.” she said, and Tony’s throat tightened at the admission. “I may not have been a fan of you, or your frankly horrendous choice to make legal decisions for my child without my knowledge—” Tony winced again. “—but you filled a role for him that I couldn’t, and that made him happy.” She shrugged. “I wasn’t going to take that away from him.”

Tony swallowed at the implications those words carried— that he’d managed to make Peter happy, back before he’d gone and fucked it all up. He half-expected May’s next words to be that she blamed him, that it was his fault for the situation, and that she didn’t need his help because he’d make it all worse—

May sighed. “Don’t do that.” she said sharply. “That— self blaming look.” she waved her hand towards his expression as she said it. “I see it on Peter all the time. I don’t care if you feel guilty about what happened, I don’t care what arguments you two got into before all this, I don’t care what regrets you have. Your wallowing won’t help Peter get out of there.” she said firmly. “Peter needs your full undivided attention on this matter. Not thinking about the past. You need me to say I don’t blame you? Fine: I don’t blame you. I don’t have the resources you do, and I’m not foolish enough to refuse them to make a point. I need your help. Peter needs your help. So pull yourself out of it and be the person he’s always looked up to.”

Tony pressed his lips together firmly but lifted his head, more than a little surprised that she’d managed to read him so quickly. But she had a point. 

“Alright.” he agreed, tone perfectly level and meeting her gaze head-on. “I contacted my Accords lawyer as soon as I saw the headline. She’s already drafted up arguments, I’m sure, and she’ll put in a request for an emergency committee meeting. The committee would have likely called one anyways; given the arrest and the fact that I’m his sponsor, they’ll have to officially clear my alibi.” 

He knew there was no doubt that he was at the dinner, given that his face had been plastered all over pictures and media all evening during the time frame Peter was on Coney Island, but it was all formalities. Even if the committee hadn’t had a reason to call him in, there was absolutely nothing that would stop him from joining that meeting. He was not about to let them discuss the kid’s fate without him present and arguing against them every single step of the way.

“I’m coming too.” May said firmly, leaving no room for argument— not that Tony was planning on it. Instead, he nodded.

“They probably would have called for you anyways, too.” he said. “They’ll know his identity by now, and that you’re his legal guardian.” He pushed aside the twisting feeling in his gut at the thought that Ross knew Peter’s identity. “We have the best lawyers available.” he continued, looking at her head-on. “Any possible loopholes or arguments they can find, they will. We’ll get him out.”

He didn’t know whether it was more of an attempt to reassure himself or her.

“Just answer me this:” May asked after a moment of silence, eyes boring into his. “Do you care about him? And I don’t mean Spider-Man. I mean Peter Parker.”

Tony swallowed, but met her gaze head on, hoping she could see the genuine truth in his gaze. He was trying to go for that Steve-Rogers-earnestness that always seemed to work so well. “I do.” he said, quietly, but firmly. “I’ll do anything for him,” he admitted. (It was as close to the admission of ‘I love him too’ as he could get.)

She searched his gaze for a few moments, and for a second he was afraid that she’d deem him unworthy (which he admittedly would have deserved), but instead she just nodded. 

“Good.” she said. “Glad we’re on the same page, Mr. Stark.”

“Call me Tony.” he responded, holding out his hand in an exact replica of what he’d said when he first met May and Peter in their apartment so many months ago. Except this time he wasn’t lying, and he wasn’t holding anything back from her. A fresh start, if she was willing to take it. May looked at his hand, silent for a moment before her critical gaze swept up his face, coming to rest on his eyes. 

“May.” she said at last, reaching out to grip his hand firmly with her much smaller, cooler fingers. “Now let’s go fight for our kid.”

Chapter Text

Peter’s POV

Peter had royally fucked up. He’d thought the worst part of his night was figuring out his girlfriend’s dad was the Vulture. Then he’d thought it was the warehouse collapsing on him. Then he’d thought it was crashing an entire plane on Coney Island. 

But no. Then he was arrested and thrown into an underwater maximum security prison.

He had often joked about Parker Luck (what better way to cope with trauma than humor), but even Peter couldn’t think this was funny anymore. Seriously, what the hell did the universe have against him?

They’d unloaded his container from the plane, and he could hear the waves hitting the outside of the Raft and smell the salty tang of ocean water. There was a sharp rattling from the crate door, before it was pulled open and light spilled in. Peter cringed back and covered his eyes instinctively, pupils blown wide from being adjusted to the pitch-black of the container for hours on end.

“Get up.” Someone poked him with something long and thin, and he winced again as his bruised-slash-broken ribs protested. He squinted in the direction of the offending object and found that it was a pole; almost like an honest-to-god broomstick. He would have laughed at the ironic spider-imagery that evoked, but his diaphragm was frozen in fear and he could barely breathe, much less laugh.

Stumbling to his feet, he shuffled to the door and saw that, once again, there was an entire small army of armed men warily surrounding the area. Which, really, seemed like drastic overkill, considering both the fact that Peter hadn’t resisted yet, and the fact that they were literally on a floating disk in the middle of the ocean, with nowhere left for him to run. He almost made a quip about how they were clearly paranoid, but he was all too aware of the shock collar around his neck and he really didn’t want to risk unnecessary electrical voltage to his spinal cord.

Once he was out of the container, two men grabbed his shoulders on either side, and four more men positioned themselves around him— two in the front, and two in the back. Peter watched as the floor started to split before his very eyes— the center opening up in a hatch, the doors lifting up and out of the way and a small platform rising to the top from within. The guards hauled him onto the platform, and Peter watched helplessly as it started to descend into the depths of the Raft, the doors of the hatch above them closing slowly. The salty mist from the ocean spray floated down and coated his face, stinging the same way tears would have. Still, Peter kept his eyes trained upwards, determined to keep sight of the sky until the hatch finally fully settled into place with a dull, final-sounding thump .

They dragged him down a long hallway after that, walls colored a sad, steel-cold gray, lit by harsh fluorescent lights. Peter tried to keep track of the path they were leading him on, even as he knew in his gut that it wouldn’t matter. He could hear the sloshing of the water against the walls, and the subtle popping of his ears that signified that the Raft was descending beneath the surface of the ocean, leaving him inexplicably, truly trapped.

Peter felt like he shouldn’t feel surprised by that realization, given that he’d come to it no less than three times throughout his journey here— each time feeling like a bucket of cold water had been dumped down his spine. But it was different, now. For once in his life since getting his powers he truly couldn’t hear the sounds of a city all around him— just low murmurs, the clattering of chains, the buzz of fluorescent lighting, and the sound of waves against bending metal.

The guards chained him to a chair, bolted into the floor, before leaving him alone in the room. Peter tugged a bit on the chains, experimentally, to see if anything would budge, but nothing did. He wasn’t surprised in the slightest— not that he’d have known what to do if he were able to escape.

A scrawny man in a lab coat carefully entered and approached him, like he was a rabid animal and would lunge at any second. Peter couldn’t help but feel annoyed— because first of all, he wasn’t a rabid animal, and second of all, he was chained down with so much vibranium or adamantium that he couldn’t move more than half a centimeter even if he wanted to.

“Name?”

“Peter Parker.”

“Height?”

“5’8””

“Weight?”

“167 pounds.” Peter said, and watched as the man scribbled more down. The questions were familiar, having been in and out of hospitals his entire childhood; he could almost pretend like this was some weird fucked up doctor’s office visit.

“Mutant or mutate?”

Peter blinked. He… didn’t know there was a difference. English-wise, he knew the word mutated was closest to what could be used to describe what happened to him after the spider bite, but he didn’t know there was a difference in the base meaning of the words in regards to enhanced people.

At his momentary silence, the man seemed to get mildly irritated at him. “Do you have the X-gene or not?” he said, annoyed, and Peter blinked once more.

“No?” he responded, because he didn’t know what the hell that was but he was fairly sure he didn’t have it. If he did, nobody had told him, and science-wise, he assumed having a designated gene meant someone who was born with their powers. Which he very much was not.

“How did you acquire your powers?” the man followed up with, which Peter assumed meant he’d answered the question correctly.

He hesitated once more, but for a different reason. The last thing he wanted to do was explain how he’d gotten his powers and have someone try and replicate the situation, but these didn’t seem to be optional questions. “I was bitten by a spider.” he said at last, settling on something vague but truthful enough that they couldn’t do much with it.

“What kind of spider?”

“I don’t know.” Peter said, which wasn’t… strictly true. While he didn’t know the exact species of spider, he knew it was radioactive. And the research he’d done online after the bite narrowed the specific spider to likely part of the Araneous orb-weaving genus.

Not that he was going to tell them that.

The man looked up at him and narrowed his eyes suspiciously at Peter, wrinkling his nose in distaste. 

“I’m not a spider expert.” Peter defended himself, the slightest of his alter-ego’s snark coming through for the barest of moments. The scientist sneered at him, taking a wary half-step back despite the fact that Peter hadn’t moved an inch in his direction. It was clear he didn’t believe Peter, but it wasn’t like they had any basis to call him out on a lie.

The man resumed his questioning, flipping to a new page on his clipboard. “Do your powers have any limitations or weaknesses?”

Peter furrowed his brows at that. Of course he had weaknesses. His need for web fluid, his sensory overloads, his moral compass— but did they seriously expect him to just give them a list? Were they that dumb, or did they just think he was that dumb?

“Uh… I get tired like normal people. And if I run out of web fluid, I can’t swing around.” he said, because those two were logical assumptions that anyone could draw from watching a five-minute YouTube compilation of him.

“Have you ever killed anyone?”

Peter’s blood ran cold. “No!” he answered immediately, the loud exclamation escaping his lips before he could think. “I don’t— Spider-Man doesn’t kill people.”

The man just made a noncommittal sound, as if he didn’t really believe the words, or just didn’t care. Peter’s chest felt tight as the implications of the question hit him. The Raft wasn’t just used to store superheroes or vigilantes who broke the Accords. In fact, that was only a very recent change. Before that, and still even now, it was used to house supervillains. Ones who had killed people. 

There were a few more moments of silence as the scientist continued scribbling on his clipboard. For a brief second, his eyes flickered to Peter’s, before he glanced away like he’d been burned.

Peter wasn’t sure why that particular action stung so much; he’d been bullied all throughout his developmental years, he thought he’d developed thicker skin than this. But the man, scientist, warden— whoever he was— hadn’t even truly looked at Peter. He was scribbling things down as if Peter’s world wasn’t shattering in front of him, and he seemed… bored. Annoyed. Indifferent. This was just another day for him.

It wasn’t just that he wasn’t making eye contact. He was distinctly avoiding it. As if Peter were a crazy drunk in the NYC subways and the man was just a passerby, keeping his head down and eyes averted. Except Peter wasn’t crazy, and he wasn’t acting out. He was just sitting here. And the man was treating him like he was… infectious. Like even looking at him would cause something inside of Peter to snap. Like he wasn’t a human.

That motion, in and of itself, seemed to throw him headfirst into another spiral. The cuffs around his wrists were heavy and tight, the collar was cutting off his airflow. The fluorescent buzzing reverberated in his skull, and his ears were popping from the pressure changes, and he hadn’t said goodbye to May or Mr. Stark or Ned or MJ or Mr. Delmar or his teachers or—

“And would you like to sign up for the benefits program?” the man asked flatly.

Peter blinked, momentarily distracted. “Benefits program?” he asked.

“Enhanced individuals can sign up for benefits if they give consent for a series of tests.” he responded shortly.

Right. Because that didn’t sound suspicious at all. “For what?” Peter asked.

The man shrugged, eyes still locked onto his paper. “Genetics, disease, immunity tests, who knows. Whatever the secretary orders.”

“No.” Peter responded firmly, though still rather politely for the scenario, if he did say so himself. There was no way he was letting his blood get in the hands of someone to use for ‘whatever.’ At that, the man finally did look up, raising an eyebrow disdainfully. Peter’s refusal seemed to momentarily override his wish not to look at him head-on.

“You won’t survive a day in gen pop, especially if they find out who you are.” he said with a scoff, derision dripping from every syllable– emphasizing ‘who you are’ like it was some kind of dirty secret. “Which they will. That’s the equivalent of putting a fed in prison. Basically suicide.”

Peter swallowed, but he shook his head. “No.” he said again, making sure to not say anything else. He wasn’t sure how the laws worked down here, but the fact that they’d asked him seemed to mean that they had to have some sort of consent to take his blood (small blessings). Him not saying anything else other than ‘no’ would leave less of a chance for them to twist his words around. Or something like that. (He wished he’d paid more attention to some of the law dramas that May occasionally played on their TV).

The man just shrugged. “Suit yourself.” he said flatly, not looking at Peter anymore. “Don’t be surprised if you change your answer soon enough.”

Peter didn't respond to that, not knowing what to say. The man clicked his pen and turned away, leaving the room and Peter alone with his thoughts. The silence was oppressive, and he focused on the thrum of his heartbeat, echoing in tandem with the dull throb of his bruises. He was tired, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. His Spidey-sense was thrumming painfully at the base of his neck; a dull throb that made the backs of his eyes ache.

I know I’m in danger . He wanted to scream at it. Please go away .

(It didn’t.)

Minutes felt like hours as he sat there, waiting. For what, he wasn’t sure— but it certainly couldn’t be good. He tugged again at the chains again, testing for any weakness out of pure boredom and a desire to move even in the slightest amount. Just like before, there was none. He tried to think, to plan, but his mind kept wandering back to May, to Mr. Stark, to his friends. He wondered if they knew where he was, and if they were looking for him. Did they even know what had happened? Crashing a plane into Coney Island and getting arrested wasn’t subtle at all, but maybe the news hadn’t reached them yet.

The door creaked open again, and a different figure entered this time. Tall, imposing, with a stern expression that made Peter’s stomach twist. The man was dressed in a uniform; not military or army, but a plain gray that almost blended into the walls of the prison.

“Peter Parker,” the man said, his voice a deep rumble. He didn’t ask it as a question; he knew who Peter was.

Peter nodded, swallowing hard. “Yes, sir,” he said quietly.

“I’m Warden Marks,” the man introduced himself, stepping closer. Unlike the scientist before, he made consistent eye contact with Peter, but there was no sympathy in his gaze. Like the scientist before, this was just another day, another prisoner for him. “I’ll be overseeing your stay here at the Raft.”

“How long will that be?” Peter asked carefully, mouth dry, though he wasn’t so sure he wanted to know the answer.

“That depends on a lot of factors,” Warden Marks said, studying Peter with narrowed eyes. “Your behavior, the status of the Accords, and whether or not you cooperate.”

“Cooperate?” Peter echoed. All he’d done so far was cooperate; what more could they want from him? “I haven’t done anything wrong. I was trying to stop—” he tried, still hoping that he could find someone who was sympathetic to his situation.

“Save it,” Marks interrupted, holding up a hand. “I’ve heard it all before. Every one of you thinks you’re the exception. But down here, there are no exceptions. Only rules. And you will follow them, or you will suffer the consequences.”

Peter pressed his lips into a firm line and clenched his fists, nails digging into his palms— the only movement he still had available to him. He wanted to argue, to shout, to do anything but sit there and take it. He’d been cooperative this entire time and they were still treating him as if he were thrashing in his chains and fighting back every step of the way. But he knew that yelling would only make things worse. So he nodded, forcing himself to stay calm. “I understand.”

“Good,” Marks said, though his tone suggested he clearly didn’t believe Peter. The ache behind his eyes intensified. “You’ll be taken to your cell soon. I suggest you use this time to reflect on your situation and decide how you want to proceed. Cooperation can make your life here much easier.” He said it like a warning, not a suggestion.

With that, the warden turned and left, the door closing behind him with a solid thud. Peter let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding, slumping back in the chair. The chains rattled softly, but didn’t yield.

Reflect on your situation. The words rang in Peter’s ears as he stared at the plain white ceiling, trying to process everything. He was in the Raft, surrounded by dangerous criminals, with no way out. He didn’t know if anyone was coming for him, or if they even knew he was here.

Mr. Stark had to know of his situation, Peter was sure. (Was he?) But May— May didn’t even know he was Spider-Man. And Ned; god, Ned was going to be freaking out. The last that Ned knew, Peter had been chasing after the Vulture, and hadn’t contacted him since.

Peter had never been a particularly cynical person. But here, now, chained to a chair and alone in the room with no distractions, all he was left with was the cold, hard truth.

He was imprisoned in the Raft, and he wasn’t getting out.

—

The Raft was laid out like a large circle. Peter didn’t know how many floors there were— it wasn’t like they gave him a tour, after all. Unless parading him to his cell in chains counted.

More guards— different ones than before, he thought, though he couldn’t be too sure— came to collect him from the room. They led him to another room to hose him down and change him into a prison uniform, out of his battered red sweatsuit and into a plain blue jumpsuit that vaguely resembled medical scrubs. The fabric was a kind of crinkly, flimsy material that did nothing to keep him warm; he could feel the draft of air through the pants and up the shirt, making him shiver where he stood, damp hair dripping down his brow into his eyes.

Peter watched with a sort of detached melancholy as they whisked his suit away, and he knew in his gut that he wasn’t getting it back. He knew he had bigger problems to focus on, but it was… a kind of devastating reality, to have his very first suit taken away so easily. They were stripping away the pieces of his identity and his freedom, one by one.

They led him down another long hallway, lined with cells on one side and a few interspersed branching off doorways on the other side. Peter saw the people inside get up and come to the front of their windows as he passed, leering at him.

At some point, he was pretty sure that they had gone down another level, though they’d never climbed down another set of stairs. With a start, he realized that the hallway floor was slightly sloped downwards, meaning they got deeper and deeper into the prison without ever having to take the stairs or an elevator. He wasn’t even sure he could climb stairs— not with his ankles cuffed the way they were.

The guards seemed to be leading him somewhere away from the rest of the cells, towards the bottom level of the Raft. Peter’s Spidey-sense spiked the further in he went, and he didn’t think it was just from anxiousness. Purely from a logistical standpoint, it made sense that the more dangerous individuals were further from the outskirts of the prison, though Peter wasn’t really sure why he qualified as such. He tried to make sense of the layout as he walked— anything to distract himself from the impending horror of imprisonment with no foreseeable end.

There was a shuffling sound, and a new man— dressed in the same gray uniform as the rest— came up to their little convoy.

“Orders from Ross.” the new guard murmured to the one leading Peter, voice hushed like he didn’t want Peter to be able to hear him. “He wants him put with the rest, not in his own cell.”

“He’s a vigilante, aren’t we supposed to keep him separate from gen pop, like we did the Avengers?” the head guard murmured back. “We were heading to put him in level one.” 

The new one shrugged. “I didn’t question it. Orders are to put him in block 17C, with the rest of the level threes.”

Peter did not like the sound of that. He didn’t know what a ‘level three’ was, but he doubted it was good.

The warning from the scientist echoed ominously in his mind. You won’t survive a day in gen pop, especially if they find out who you are. He had a sinking feeling that this was some sort of punishment for not allowing them to take his blood.

“There’s not much more space in level three,” the first guard murmured. The new one shrugged.

“Bump him to level two, then,” he said. Peter didn’t like the sound of that even more.

The guard leading Peter narrowed his eyes, but nodded shortly, tugging on Peter’s chain to lead him further down the hallway.

Peter wanted to ask, but he doubted that would go over well. What he did know was that his Spidey-sense didn’t appreciate it either.

From what he gathered— at least based on the guards’ muttering— level ones must be individual cells, for higher-security threats. Like the Avengers, or he supposed other superheroes or supervillains. That meant level twos and threes must be ‘general population’ of other enhanced people who had broken the laws. Given that level ones seemed to be max security, he guessed level twos were subject to higher security than level threes. If he had to guess, probably for more serious crimes, like murder.

And that was where he was headed. Fantastic.

They walked— or in Peter’s case, shuffled— down the hall for a few more minutes. The line of cells became more interspersed with empty ones, and the guards eventually came to a stop in front of a single cell with an open door. Peter stared at it, knowing this must be his—- a small, square room, with reinforced glass on one side, where the door was, and plain gray steel on three of the other walls. There was a small cot pushed into one of the corners, with a lone flat pillow and a single sheet draped over the top. A camera was positioned in the upper right corner, angled to take in the whole room. Not that that was a difficult feat, considering that the cell was no more than four paces long in every direction.

Someone shoved him from behind, and he stumbled into the cell, barely managing not to fall onto his face.

“Cuffs will unseal when the door is locked. Don’t try anything stupid. Breakfast is at 7,” the guard said gruffly, before the door slammed shut and locked in place with a solid, final click .

—

A bell rang some hours later; 7 AM, Peter assumed. He hadn’t slept. He thought that was justified, given the situation. His Spidey-sense had been violently thrumming all night, despite the fact that he was in his own cell and nobody could get to him. It didn’t help that the cot was rigid and uncomfortable, and the sheet provided no comfort against the chill of the cell.

The cuffs, discarded near the door from when they’d automatically unlocked the night before, were blinking a red color. Peter eyed them warily, but they didn’t seem dangerous or particularly notable apart from the blinking.

He jumped, startled, as a robotic voice blared from the speakers in his cell. “Place your wrists into the cuffs,” it said. Peter hesitated. It didn’t sound like it was an option , but he didn’t want to willingly restrict his movement again. Even though he was locked in a cell, at least he could move his arms around.

He didn’t get much of a chance to wait longer before the shock collar around his neck went off, and he gasped, reaching up involuntarily to grasp at it. At the contact of his hands, the current only got stronger, and he yelped, jerking his arms away as his spine stiffened.

“Place your wrists in the cuff,” the voice instructed again, and Peter hurried to comply this time, not eager to feel the electric shock again.

As he did, the cuffs locked with a hiss, and he heard the lock to his door unseal. With a buzzing sound, it slid open. Peter eyed it warily, waiting for a guard to appear at the entrance or for something to happen. Nobody appeared in the empty space, but he could hear the clattering of chains and shuffling of other prisoners leaving their cells. He poked his head out of the door and spotted a long line of prisoners along the hallway lining up just outside their doors, not bothering to try to run or fight back. So this was normal, then. Not some kind of door malfunction or a test to see if he’d try to make a run for it.

Glancing down the line, Peter could see all of the prisoners in similar attire as him—- the same light blue jumpsuit, paired with cuffs and shock collars to match. The one benefit, he supposed, was that he no longer had the ankle cuffs to contend with. Not that they would have much use anymore— they had nowhere to run, after all.

He almost jumped when a guard started marching down the line, shouting loudly and waving what looked like a police baton.

"Let's go! Line up!" the guard yelled, his voice echoing eerily down the confines of the hallway. Peter’s back stiffened as the man marched past him, Spidey-sense flaring as the baton got a bit too close for comfort. “Keep your mouths shut— I hear talking and I activate the collars!”

Peter didn’t want a repeat incident of a few minutes ago (not to mention he didn’t even have anyone to talk to), so he kept his head down and avoided eye contact with the prisoners around him. It became very clear that he was the smallest and youngest out of everyone here— he could practically feel the curious eyes boring into the side of his skull, though nobody spoke aloud.

They started moving in single file along the hallway after a few moments, towards what Peter assumed was the dining hall. His Spidey-sense screamed when he turned his back to the prisoner behind him in order to walk forwards, but he didn’t dare do anything to try and alleviate it. At the very least, he assumed that if the prisoner tried to jump him or anything like that, the guards would probably stop a fight from breaking out.

The line moved slowly down the corridor, the guard at the front leading them through a series of twists and turns until they arrived at a large, open hall. The room was filled with rows of long, metal tables bolted to the floor. Some prisoners were already seated, eating from trays that matched the color of the table. Others were lining up in front of a counter holding empty containers and waiting for food to be served before dispersing to the tables to eat. It seemed like the no-talking ban was lifted once they were inside, because he could hear the low murmur of conversations starting up as more and more people filled the tables.

Peter glanced up momentarily as the chef, linesman, cook— whatever he was— scooped a spoonful of what could best be described as goop onto his tray. “Thank you,” he murmured quietly, out of habit, and the man gave him a weird look that bordered on annoyance. Another man further down the line tossed a piece of stale-looking bread onto his tray, along with a bottle of water. Peter wrinkled his nose slightly as he looked down at the food; all of it some variation of shades of beige or gray. It definitely fit with the color palette of the Raft, and Peter was certain he would not be meeting all of his nutritional needs while he was here. Turning, he surveyed the room, halting momentarily when he realized he… had no idea where or who to sit with.

Really, he would have laughed, if he weren’t secretly scared shitless. It felt like he was 12 years old again, wandering into the lunchroom with his oversized glasses and clothing and not knowing a single soul. He hadn’t felt like this since before he’d met Ned; the two were losers, sure, but at least they could be losers together. And he certainly hadn’t felt this physically vulnerable since getting his powers. It was a strange dichotomy; he was only in here because of Spider-Man, but he’d never felt more like Peter Parker.

His gaze trailed over to one of the only individuals sitting alone, hunched over his lunch tray and shoveling food into his mouth. Peter hesitated. This whole situation may have reminded him eerily of public school, but he had to remind himself that everyone in here was more dangerous than a group of normal high schoolers were, and likely engaged in some sort of criminal activity.

After a few moments of hesitation, he decided to take his chances. It probably wasn’t good that he would rather take his chances with a potential supervillain rather than sit alone, but he didn’t want to just stand helplessly in the middle of the lunchroom for any longer. He shuffled awkwardly up to the table, wincing as his cuffs smacked the metal of the table and made a loud rattling sound. 

The man shot him a mildly suspicious glance as he plopped down in an empty seat across from him, but he didn’t say anything, just shoving more food into his mouth. Peter mirrored him, moving a mouthful of the cold, tasteless slop into his mouth and trying not to gag at the texture. He shuddered slightly and thought he saw the man across from him shoot him a mildly amused look at the reaction. He didn’t comment on the matter, though, and after a few more quiet moments, Peter cleared his throat and attempted to strike some form of conversation.

“What happened?” he asked, gesturing to the man’s face, where he was sporting a nasty black eye. He got another strange look in response, but he wasn’t immediately cursed out or spat at, so it was already going better than most of his encounters.

“Welcomin’ committee.” he received a flat response. 

“Oh, I’m new here too!” he said, maybe a bit more excitedly than he should have, given the situation. In his defense, he wasn’t excited at the situation , but rather having someone who maybe understood. He received another dry look.

“I can tell.”

Peter ducked his head awkwardly at that, picking up his fork and shoveling a bit more of the food into his mouth. The cuffs made it really difficult to eat and move, and privately, he thought it was overkill given that he also had a shock collar on. Which he shouldn’t be so cavalier about, but if he let himself dwell on it for too long, he would probably cry, which he did not need at the moment.

After a few moments of silence, Peter cleared his throat and attempted to speak again. “So, uh, what’s your name?”

“Lucas.”

“What are you, uh… in for?”

He really hoped it wasn’t murder.

He got a huff at that. “Theft. Used my powers to rob a store.” he scowled. “Got caught.” he poked at his food, clearly annoyed. “Was supposed to be in level three, not up here with these crazies.”

Peter could relate to that .

They fell silent as a prisoner stalked past— and Peter blinked when he realized the guy wasn’t wearing any handcuffs. The only thing that distinguished him from a guard was the shock collar around his neck and the light blue of his uniform.

He didn’t realize he’d vocalized this thought aloud before Lucas snorted. “Benefits program,” he muttered, stabbing at his food again. “They get their cuffs taken off if they let the scientists do tests on ‘em.”

“I thought that was just giving up blood.” Peter murmured, eyes trailing after the prisoner as he joined a group of others at a lunch table— all of them without their cuffs on.

Lucas wrinkled his nose. “That’s the lower level benefits, apparently. Better bed, more blankets. If ya consent to the testing and don’t try anything stupid, you get the cushy things. No cuffs, better meals, warm showers. Special treatment.”

Peter pressed his lips into a firm line. It sounded tempting, he had to admit. Very tempting. He’d only spent one night here and he could already see the appeal. Looking around, he saw that the majority of prisoners were still in cuffs— Lucas included. He knew the reason he wasn’t giving up his blood or submitting to testing, but he didn’t think most prisoners here would have the same moral qualms.

“Are you signing up for it?” he asked, instead of saying that.

Lucas snorted. “Hell no. I’ve heard some of ‘em get nasty side effects. I ain’t risking getting infected with some crazy disease that has me throwing my guts up.” he gave a half shrug. “Already gave ‘em my blood, but I ain’t signing up for more than that.”

He eyed Peter curiously, as if he’d just registered that he was speaking to a teenager. “So, what the hell did a kid like you do to end up here?”

Peter remembered the man-slash-doctor-slash-guard who checked him in when he got here, and the warning that people in the prison would not take well to him being a vigilante.

“I, uh. Crashed a plane?” Peter said, and it came out more like a question. He wasn’t sure what reaction he would get from that— possibly more follow-up questions like ‘how the hell did you get control of a plane’ or something like that. What he did not expect was the reaction he got.

The man froze slightly and peered at him closely before shooting a furtive glance at the bigger group of super-baddies.

“You’re Spider-Man.”

Peter’s jaw dropped slightly open at the accusation, and he opened and closed it a few times, trying to find the words. The other man lowered his tone even more. “I overheard a chatty guard. It was all over the news— crashing a plane into Coney Island and getting arrested. Didn’t think you’d be so young, but it’s you. You’re Spider-Man.”

“No, just… just Peter.” Peter managed to get out, just as the bell rang that signified the end of breakfast. Everyone got up and started moving, including Lucas.

“Well, Peter , you’d best get better at lying, because you’ll be dead if anyone finds out,” he hissed, all prior casualness gone, before he turned tail and left.

Peter watched as he disappeared into the crowd of prisoners, and he forced himself to get up, despite the fact that his legs were uncooperative and his chest was tight. Looking down at his tray, he saw he’d barely touched the food— something he was sure he’d be feeling the consequences for later, but couldn’t be bothered to care about now. His stomach was rolling unpleasantly, anyways, and it wasn’t because of the food itself.

Part of him expected the guards to usher them back into their cells, but that wasn’t what happened— instead, they started making their way down the hallway in the opposite direction of where they'd come from. Peter wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or excited by that fact; on one hand, he didn’t want to be sitting in a tiny box for 23 hours a day, but on the other hand, his Spidey-sense only spiked when he was in close proximity to the other prisoners. He didn’t feel safe locked in his cell, per se, but his senses were at least quieter with nobody around.

Warily, he fell into line again, cuffs chafing uncomfortably against his wrists. They were led to a large common area, filled with various exercise equipment and a few scattered tables and chairs. It was clearly a place meant for the prisoners to spend their free time, though the presence of guards at every entrance made it evident that any misbehavior would be swiftly dealt with. Peter was certain that they must have other emergency measures that he couldn’t see just yet, because there was no way they let a bunch of enhanced prisoners in the same open space without being absolutely certain of their contingencies. Not to mention, he was sure that if there were some easy way to get out by just overpowering the guards, everyone in here would have already tried.

Peter found a quiet corner and sat down, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible and hoping that he’d be able to gather some information by people-watching. Criminal-watching?

Lost in thought, he only noticed the group of prisoners approaching him when his Spidey-sense spiked violently. A large, muscular man with a shaved head and a tattoo covering half his face loomed over him, flanked by two equally intimidating men. Peter noted, distantly, that all three of them didn’t have cuffs. They were part of the upper-level benefits program, then.

"’Ey, new guy," the leader said, his voice a low growl. "Welcome to the Raft."

Peter got the distinct impression that the welcome was not meant to be sincere. 

He almost quipped something back out of instinct, but he bit his tongue firmly to avoid blurting it out. He couldn’t afford to pick a fight right now— he was outnumbered, cuffed, and among a population of other enhanced people who didn’t know he was Spider-Man (and he intended to keep it as such). He needed to figure out a plan first before antagonizing anybody.

He looked up, trying to keep his expression neutral. "Thanks," he said carefully, diplomatically. "Just trying to get by like everyone else."

The man chuckled, a sound that sent a chill down Peter's spine. "Ain't that cute.” he drawled mockingly. “You see, in here, it's all about survival. And you're gonna need friends to survive."

Peter swallowed firmly. He didn’t quite think he wanted these people to be his friends , and he knew damn well that they didn’t want to be his friends, either. Even if he weren’t in a prison locked up with a bunch of bad guys, he knew a bully’s expression when he saw one.

"I don't want any trouble," he said instead, doing his best to decline the invitation. "Just want to do my time and get out."

The punch was heading towards his face with hardly any time to react. Peter forced himself not to jump out of the way, all too aware of every prisoner around him, and winced slightly as the fist hit his nose with a solid crack. His head whipped to the side, and he let it move with the motion, biding his time.

Ouch. Definitely enhanced . He reflected, at the aching pulse in his face. He heard the man let out a sharp laugh.

“First lesson, runt: I don’t take no for an answer,” he said, and Peter’s face twitched slightly. Yeah, I gathered as much . He thought wryly, forcing himself to bite his tongue once more. “So here's the deal: you do what we say, and we'll make sure you stay out of trouble. Got it?"

Peter's mind raced. He was fairly certain that being involved with these prisoners would get him into more trouble than he’d get into alone, but he couldn’t outright refuse— that much had been made clear. "Got it," he said evenly.

"Good," the man said, clapping him on the shoulder with enough force to make Peter wince. "We'll be in touch."

Well that wasn’t ominous at all.

~ ~ ~

Tony’s POV

It had been three long, dragged out weeks since Ross had arrested Peter and taken him to the Raft. Tony’s lawyers had jumped on the fight within hours, but hadn’t made any immediate progress. One of the biggest contentions with the Accords had been that, if arrested, the enhanced person didn’t have a right to a trial before being indefinitely detained. They’d dragged Peter away before Tony had even been fully aware of it, and had set a meeting date to discuss the issue for three weeks from his arrest date— which was now tomorrow.

Clara and the rest of the Accords lawyers had already been fighting for weeks to get the meeting moved to a sooner date than the one the committee had set, but they hadn’t had any success. Now, Tony found himself on call with the group of the lawyers in preparation for the ‘trial.’ It could hardly be called that, given that Peter himself wouldn’t be allowed out of the Raft for it, but it was the closest they were going to get at the moment. 

Tony had attempted to weasel his way into visiting the prison— as he had for the Rogue Avengers— but had been immediately blocked, by both Ross and the committee, stating that as his sponsor, Tony was ‘too close’ to the case. Tony wasn’t entirely surprised by their response, especially considering that the Rogues had managed to escape (and they were still suspicious of his involvement on that), but it still grated at him. In all fairness, he didn’t think they were particularly wrong on that front, because if Tony had to see Peter locked in a cell with his own eyes, he probably would do something impulsive and reckless.

That didn’t stop him from trying again anyways.

“We’re doing everything we can, but Ross is stonewalling us at every turn," one of the lawyer's holograms said, and Tony’s attention was brought back to the meeting they were having to prepare for the committee hearing tomorrow. "The Accords are so new that there aren’t any established legal precedents for what we’re trying to argue against. Or for, for that matter."

Tony pressed his lips into a firm line. "There has to be something we can do. Ross can’t just keep him there without a trial indefinitely."

"Unfortunately, he can," another lawyer interjected. "The language of the Accords is intentionally vague on this point, and Ross is exploiting that. We’re pushing for an actual hearing, arguing that Peter’s a minor and shouldn’t be held in maximum security, but it’s slow going."

“Are there protections, at least?” Tony asked, pressing a hand into his temples. “He’s a vigilante, he should be in his own cell to keep him safe.” The thought of Peter locked alone in a cell wasn’t an appealing image in the slightest, but it was better than being thrown among a group of supervillains and other enhanced people that hated Spider-Man’s guts.

The lawyers exchanged glances, and Tony got a sinking feeling in his stomach.

“We tried to ask about that, but Ross just said that there’s no clause that specifies that he has to release the details of an enhanced person’s detainment.” Clara said carefully. “Which means…”

“He’s not in his own cell.” Tony finished, and his throat was tight. Ross wasn’t the kind of guy to hide behind laws unless he was trying to conceal something. If Peter had been in his own cell, like how the Rogues were when they were being detained, he would have just come out and said it.

Clara shook her head, and Tony knew she was thinking what he was. “Spider-Man’s actual crime under the Accords was essentially the same level of severity as a parole violation for normal people. It’s just more severe, in his instance, because he’s enhanced. In theory, he wouldn’t be placed in the individual cells because those are for the highest-security threats, like the Avengers. We’re trying to push the angle that it’s for his own safety to be moved to protective custody, just as we would if a law enforcement officer were placed in jail, but… there just isn’t any precedent to the Raft laws the same way there is for normal prisons. If Ross wants something done his way, it’s almost guaranteed to have some legal path to do so.”

Tony sighed. “What about the public angle?”

Clara’s mouth twisted into a displeased line. “There’s a certain amount of outcry, for sure.” She started slowly. “The people of New York— the vast majority— are Spider-Man supporters.” Tony waited for the inevitable ‘but.’ “But the Raft— and Accords— are an international UN proposition. Spider-Man is a New-York-based vigilante, and most people outside the city don’t know much about him, nor do they care. There’s not nearly enough pushback to get Ross to release him. One cities’ worth of people against 117 UN countries is… nothing.”

“So what are our options?” Tony tapped a finger restlessly against a nearby desk.

“Get to the committee hearing, argue as much as we can on behalf of him being a minor and bank on the fact that there were no casualties from his actions.” Clara said carefully. “It isn’t guaranteed that anything comes of it, but he has a higher chance, given the circumstances, as opposed to anyone else in his position.” she paused again, and looked at him like she could tell he wasn’t going to like her next words.

“And the other options?” he asked, even though he was a genius and could figure out damn well what the alternative was. Clara sighed and shrugged.

“The only other alternative is waiting it out.” she said tiredly. “Ross can do a lot of things, but even he can’t justify keeping Spider-Man locked up for life because of a benching violation. His sentence will likely be on the lighter side, given the circumstances—- a few years, probably. Then he’d be free to go.”

Tony’s breath got caught in his chest as the words sunk in. A few years— a few years could mean anything. Peter was fifteen, now. In his prime developmental years. Three years would make him eighteen, five would make him twenty . A fourth of his life would have been spent locked up on the Raft, away from anyone and everyone he’d ever known, among the most dangerous criminals of the world. Tony was certain that if that happened, they’d lose the Peter they knew forever. He’d come out as someone different.

“That’s not an option.” he said firmly, refusing to go down that path. It couldn’t be an option. Clara nodded, but her expression was guarded.

“I agree.” she said. “But that means we have to be prepared for the committee meeting. We have no option but to lay out everything that we have.”

Tony just nodded; he’d expected no less.

“In terms of Ms. Parker,” Clara continued, gaze flickering over to him. “We advised her to say she didn’t know about Peter’s activities as Spider-Man to avoid any charges of child endangerment, but she’s... ah. not quite on board with that."

Tony nearly snorted at the likely massive understatement of the century. He rubbed his brow. “I’ll talk to her.” he said, even though he knew that once May had made up her mind, there was nothing he could do or say to change it— unless it were to benefit Peter’s chances of getting out.

Clara nodded at that, and Tony sighed. “That’s all for now?” he confirmed, and she nodded once more.

“I’ll let you know immediately if we come up with anything else,” she said, and Tony tilted his head in thanks before her hologram blipped out, as did the other lawyers. He moved his hand to his temple and pressed his two forefingers to it forcefully, before dropping his hand altogether.

“FRI, call May Parker,” he ordered, and heard the ringing sound across the phone lines as she complied. There was a click, and Tony could hear the moment it connected, and the hologram popped up. “May.” he greeted.

“Any updates?” she asked, and Tony sighed.

“Nothing new.” He didn’t bother masking the disappointment in his tone. “The lawyers are going to try to work the minor angle at the hearing tomorrow, and the fact that there was clearly no malicious intent. They’re recommending that you… don’t exactly mention that you knew he was Spider-Man, so that the committee can’t try to turn it on you for child endangerment.” Technically speaking it wasn’t truly a lie— since Peter had never told May he was Spider-Man, there was an ever-so-slight opportunity for error in her assumptions.

May laughed, and it was a kind of high-pitched, startled sound. “ They’re going to lecture me on child endangerment?” she asked incredulously. “The same ones who are keeping him in a maximum security prison with no protection around enhanced adult supervillains?”

Tony’s face twisted slightly. “Those are the ones,” he confirmed.

May let out a long exhale that was halfway to a sigh. “What do you think I should do?” she asked, after a few drawn-out moments. Tony blinked, a little thrown off-guard. He’d expected her to stand her ground, not to ask him for his opinion.

“Well,” he started, carefully. “I wouldn’t bring it up at all unless they specifically ask. Politicians are slimy in that manner, though, so they probably will. If they do…” he shrugged. “Then that’s up to you.”

May’s hologram stared at him for a long moment. “The one time I actually ask for your advice, and it’s notably unhelpful,” she commented, and a startled laugh tore its way out of his mouth. The corner of her lip twitched up slightly in the faintest of smiles, and he shook his head. 

“Yeah, alright,” he said. “My real recommendation if they ask is to just say you had no direct knowledge. It’s not exactly a lie, but it’s not the whole truth either. It keeps you out of trouble and keeps the focus on Peter.” his shoulders bobbed up and down in a shrugging motion once more.

May tilted her head to the left and stared at him for a little bit again before nodding slowly. “I’ll take that into account,” she replied, and Tony’s mouth twisted in a small half-smile. The fact that she’d asked for his opinion at all was more than a little shocking— not just because he didn’t have the best track record with not pissing off politicians, but because this was about what she should say as Peter’s parent . It felt like a strange thing to ask Tony Stark, of all people.

Before he could come up with an adequate response to that remark, May made a slight face, pressing her lips together. “It’s late.” she said, and Tony glanced at the time. It was indeed later than he’d expected; it seemed like he’d been working on the Accords all day. In just a few hours, they’d be in front of the committee trying to bargain for Peter’s release.

Tony sighed, all traces of prior humor gone. They didn’t have anything else to discuss, anyways, and they should at least try to get some rest before the hearing. “Goodnight, May. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Goodnight, Tony.” she said quietly, before hanging up.

They both knew neither of them would be sleeping.

—

"We are here to discuss the case of Peter Parker, also known as Spider-Man, and his recent incarceration at the Raft." The committee head opened the meeting, peering down at Tony, May and the lawyers from his seat on the podium.

Tony felt the tension in the room skyrocket, and he glanced out of the corner of his eye at May, sitting rigidly beside him. She caught his glance and returned it with a slight half-nod. I’m fine. She reassured through the gaze. He rolled his shoulders backwards and turned his attention back to the podium.

"Mr. Stark, Ms. Parker, and the legal team," the committee head continued, "you are here to present your case for Spider-Man's release. We will hear your arguments now."

Tony nodded over at Clara, who stood up, smoothing her skirt before addressing the committee. "Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We contend that Peter Parker, a minor, has been wrongfully detained in a maximum-security prison without due process. The Accords, while designed to manage enhanced individuals, have failed to account for minors in their language, creating a legal gray area that is being exploited in this case."

She paused, allowing her words to sink in; a tactic Tony had seen Pepper use a multitude of times. Clara continued, "Peter Parker's actions, while technically in violation of the Accords, did not result in any casualties or significant property damage. He was acting in the capacity of a vigilante, but his intentions were to protect and serve his community, not to cause harm."

One of the committee members, a stern-looking woman with sharp features, interjected. "Ms. Whitmore, are you claiming that because Spider-Man is a minor, he should be totally exempt from the Accords' regulations?"

Yes. Tony thought immediately, but didn’t interrupt. From the way May shifted beside him, he figured she felt the same.

Clara— ever composed— shook her head. "No, ma'am. We are arguing that the circumstances of his detainment are unjust. He should not be held in a facility designed for the most dangerous criminals, especially when his actions do not warrant such severe treatment. We believe he should be placed in protective custody until a proper trial can be arranged."

“A proper trial is not guaranteed under the Accords,” one of the men said coolly. “We have the legal authority to give him a sentence at the end of this meeting, if we determine that there is nothing further to discuss on the matter.”

Tony pressed his lips together firmly, displeased at that thought, and he heard May take in a long breath and exhale slowly.

“I understand that.” Clara responded, unfazed. “But I would like to mention that there are options other than the Raft. Charles Xavier, for instance, has established a safe haven for young mutants to learn to control their powers. Defaulting to a maximum security prison sentence, especially for someone who is merely trying to help and hasn’t hurt anyone— is outrageous. There are other methods of potential reform. All you’re doing here is driving away people who could be our greatest assets if given the chance.”

Tony’s face twitched slightly at Peter being referred to as an ‘asset,’ but he knew that Clara was just doing her job and pulling out all the stops. To the committee, this argument would be far more appealing to them than any other Tony could come up with.

The stern woman spoke again. "We understand your point, but we have to ensure that these individuals are held accountable for their actions. Spider-Man is an enhanced—”

“Peter Parker.” May interjected, her voice controlled but holding the fierce protective tone of a mother. It seemed that she had had enough sitting still and listening to the argument. Everyone’s heads swiveled around to stare at her, clearly not expecting the interruption.

“What?”

“His name is Peter Parker. A fifteen year old boy. I’m not here to argue on behalf of Spider-Man. I am no expert in these laws or the superhero world, like everyone else here is. I am here to argue on behalf of my child. The teenager I have raised since he was five years old and orphaned by his parents. The teenager who sleeps in fuzzy pajamas and builds lego sets with his best friend. That is who you have stuck in the Raft.”

“ Mr. Parker was in direct violation of a section of the Accords.” A man on the committee replied, as mildly as if he were discussing what to eat for lunch and not the fact that they were detaining a minor without trial. “Despite the addendum that was added regarding individuals who wished to keep their identity a secret under the sponsor condition, the rules remain the same. Section 23A: Any enhanced individuals who use their powers to break the law— including those who take part in extralegal vigilante activities— or are otherwise deemed to be a threat to the safety of the general public, may be detained indefinitely without trial. As a direct follow-up, Section 23B: If an enhanced individual violates the Accords, or obstructs the actions of those enforcing the Accords, they may likewise be arrested and detained indefinitely without trial. Spider-Man was lucky not to be detained following the first part, regarding the Staten Island Ferry Incident. However, his violation of the direct order from the committee to remain benched until further notice could not be ignored.”

Tony clenched his jaw, ignoring the way it made his headache worsen. “He violated it to save peoples’ lives,” he snapped back, breaking his own silence. The committee member merely stared down at him with mild disdain.

“No, he violated it to prevent your technology from being stolen.”

“Which, if put in the hands of supervillains and anyone on the black market, would have been dangerous to the public.” Tony argued back.

“That is not what we are here to quarrel over, Mr. Stark. As far as I’m concerned, if you had paid better attention to your technology, we wouldn’t even be in this courtroom debating it.”

The accusation knocked all the breath out of Tony like he’d been sucker-punched. Years of practice let him keep a straight face, but hearing the words coming from someone else rather than his own self-monologue hit him harder than he’d like. Because the man was right. It was Tony’s fault. He’d been so mad at Peter after the Ferry Incident that he’d pushed him away and refused to listen to any of his apologies.

He only realized now that the anger stemmed from a deep-seated terror to not lose the kid, but it was too little, too late. And now Peter was paying for his mistakes twice over— firstly, for not ensuring that his tech was more protected, and secondly, for not picking up when the kid had called him. He should have known. He remembered telling Peter to call him if he ever got into any trouble and was in over his head. Peter had called him. And Tony hadn’t picked up.

“Maybe so.” Tony replied, forcing his voice to stay level. It may be his fault, but the committee could still damn well do something about it. “But you’re right, that’s not the debate here. I can’t foresee who exactly will come after my weapons at any given point in time. The kid happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and shouldn’t be punished for doing the right thing.”

The committee member shook his head, and Tony grit his teeth in frustration. They seemed to be disinterested in hearing from his opinion any more at the moment, and they turned back to May instead. When their eyes landed on her once more, she straightened her spine and didn’t shy away from their gaze.

“Ms. Parker.” one of the men on the committee started. “Did you know that your nephew was Spider-Man?”

Tony resisted the urge to blow out a breath in a sigh. So much for hoping they didn’t ask that. He should have known it’d be their very first line of questioning. Politicians were so predictable sometimes.

May lifted her head proudly, and didn’t even hesitate in her response. “Yes, I had an assumption.” she said, in a cool and hard tone. “He never told me outright, but I know my child.”

Tony’s gaze flickered to her momentarily, and he saw his lawyers warily do the same. Clara shot him a look— which he promptly ignored. This was May’s choice. Even if Tony had advised her to lie about knowing, if she’d made up her mind to do it anyways she would have. Tony wished he could say he was surprised, but he wasn’t really in the slightest.

“You do realize,” a man on the committee started, voice dripping with smarminess. “That we could charge you for child endangerment for this?” He said it with an air of importance, as if he were expecting to catch her out and send her floundering. What he didn’t know was that May was clearly already prepared for this, and that she was about to flip the argument back on its head.

“Endangerment?” May said, eyes glinting slightly. “With all due respect, sir , you don’t exactly get to criticize me on that front given your current stance.”

The committee person narrowed his eyes at her. “That sounds like an accusation, Ms. Parker,” he warned.

“It is.” she said, firmly, and Tony felt a sense of cosmic satisfaction at the look on the committee’s face. “An accusation implies that you have done something wrong, and you have. Yes, my nephew broke his benching. But he did it to save people. He did it because he has experienced first-hand what happens when weapons are in the hands of those they shouldn’t be. He did it because he didn’t want anyone else to be orphaned twice over by the age of thirteen like he was, when he could have prevented it. He did it, knowing the consequences, because he is the bravest person I've ever met. And I will not have a committee sit here and tell me that I’ve endangered my nephew when not a single one of you spineless bastards has stood up and confronted the fact that you have stuck a child who is just trying to do good in this world in a maximum security prison along with some of the most dangerous villains of society.”

She paused, and she wasn’t yelling, but her tone had taken on a measured, raised level of hardness that Tony had often seen in Pepper when she was in full businesswoman mode. He stared at May’s side profile, watching the firm set to her jaw, the bright glint in her eyes, and the coiled tension in her posture. He wondered, briefly, how he’d ever thought it was okay to hide the fact that Peter was Spider-Man from her. He wasn’t quite sure what, exactly, had shifted in his mind in the last few weeks— but he knew that he couldn’t imagine not having her here right now. She would have been well within her rights to cut him out of Peter’s life after the mistake he’d made, but they were here, now, together. All he could feel was relief that Peter had someone who so deeply and openly loved him in a way that Tony never could.

“You cannot possibly sit here and try to insist that he is in less danger on the Raft than he was going out as Spider-Man.” May finished. “So if you’re going to try to call me out on child endangerment, where does that place you?”

The committee members exchanged glances, clearly unsettled. The room was silent for a moment, and then the chairman cleared his throat, shifting in his seat.

"Ms. Parker," he began, tone obnoxiously authoritative. "We understand your concern for your nephew's safety, and we are not taking these proceedings lightly. However, the fact remains that Spider-Man violated the Accords, and there are legal ramifications for such actions."’

Clara seized the moment to continue her argument. "Mr. Chairman, while we acknowledge that Peter did violate the Accords, we argue that the current conditions of his detainment are neither just nor appropriate given his age and the nature of his violations.” she said, again. Tony felt like they were running in circles. God, he hated legal proceedings. “We propose that, at the very least, Peter should have protective custody like the Rogue Avengers had before we can discuss an actual trial or his release."

The stern woman on the committee, who had been silent since May's outburst, spoke up again. "Ms. Whitmore, your proposal is intriguing, but Spider-Man is not an Avenger. It is doubtful anyone in the Raft recognizes him as even a vigilante. Giving him special treatment for no outward reason could set a dangerous precedent and sew discord."

Tony could feel his frustration bubbling up again, and he couldn’t hold back a scoff. "This isn't about setting a precedent. This is about doing what's right. You have a fifteen-year-old kid locked up with adult criminals, many of whom would not hesitate to harm him if given the chance. Your entire argument hinges on them not finding out of his vigilante status— but you can’t guarantee that. Are we really going to let bureaucratic red tape keep us from making a humane decision?"

The chairman raised his hand to calm the room. "Mr. Stark, we understand your reasoning, but we must consider the broader implications of our actions. However, we will take all arguments into account." Before anyone else could say anything, he continued. “The committee will now adjourn and discuss, and return with a decision,” he commanded, before they were shuffling out of the room and into an adjoining one.

As such, they waited.

Clara and the other lawyers were murmuring amongst themselves, probably about laws and backup plans and everything. Tony and May sat shoulder to shoulder, too tense to try to speak, staring at the door the committee had left out of.

Tony wasn’t sure how much time had passed when there was another shuffling sound, and the door swung open again. He could have glanced down at his watch to check, but that would have required him to remove his attention from the committee members. Given that he was trying to gauge their expressions, that simply wouldn’t do.

For a moment— a brief, ever-so-slight moment— he’d believed that they’d gotten it. That they’d managed to break through to the committee, to get them to see Peter as a fifteen-year-old kid rather than a masked criminal vigilante. It had been a naive thought, he knew, but he’d hoped regardless. Now that he was looking up into the stone-cold face of the committee members taking their seats, he knew in his gut what the response would be, long before they opened their mouths to speak.

“The committee has elected not to release or protect Spider-Man in any way at this time,” the head of the committee read out, and Tony’s ears started ringing, fuzzing out the rest of the world. He only just barely managed to catch the following words, and immediately wished he hadn’t. He thought he heard May make a choked-off sound beside him.

“In addition, we have decided that no further discussion or official trial is needed. Spider-Man’s official sentence for the violation of section 23 of the Accords has been decided by the committee via vote. Five years in the Raft.”

Bang . The gavel hit the desk.

~ ~ ~

Peter’s POV

When Peter had thought that he wanted to figure out how everything in the Raft worked, he didn’t exactly mean that he wanted a hands-on demonstration.

Regrettably, he soon found out how the shock collars worked.

They were operated by the guards, who had remotes that they carried around. In the event of a fight, they’d pull out the remote and shock both participants, no matter who had started it. The duration and strength of the shock was left up to the guard; presumably so they could give warning shocks, or longer-duration currents if the prisoner tried to continue fighting. Which would be a reasonable design, except for the fact that the guards on the Raft just seemed to delight in keeping the electrical current running for far longer than was necessary. There was also a failsafe in place, designed to keep the guards protected if someone tried to lunge at them before they could pull out their remote control; any rapid lunging movements resulted in the collar going off automatically.

How, exactly, did he figure this out, one may ask? By being beaten up, of course. (More so than he already had been.)

He was cornered at breakfast by the same group of prisoners as before. Peter was eating alone, this time; he hadn’t seen Lucas since the man had figured out he was Spider-Man. He’d been shoveling food into his mouth, eyes averted towards the table, hoping to avoid trouble. (That particular strategy hadn’t worked all throughout his childhood with bullies; he didn’t know why he thought it would work now.)

Peter heard footsteps striding towards him, and the back of his neck spiked with danger. He kept his head low and hunched his shoulders, shoveling more food into his mouth. His lifelong experience told him that whatever food he managed to get into his mouth now was likely all the food he’d manage to eat until the next mealtime. (He was right.)

“Runt.” the same tattooed man from before greeted, slinging a heavy arm around Peter’s shoulders. His Spidey-sense screamed in violent discomfort at the touch, and Peter couldn’t help the slight wince as he shied away at the contact. It wasn’t the comforting, friendly way that Mr. Stark usually slung his arm around Peter— instead, it was a tight, controlling hold, squeezing harshly at his upper bicep.

The man reached for Peter’s food tray, aiming for the piece of bread, and before Peter could stop himself, he was grabbing the bread before the other man’s fingers could close around it.

Time seemed to freeze, and when Peter realized what he’d just done, his blood ran cold. Oh, fuck .

The thing was— he hadn’t exactly meant to do that. He wasn’t looking to antagonize anyone. But he was already so very hungry from consistent under-eating over the past couple of… however long it had been, and he’d moved on pure instinct.

The arm tightened around his shoulders, and the man leaned down to hiss menacingly into his ear. “It seems you didn’t learn your lesson from last time.” he growled, warningly, and Peter’s danger sense was going nuts. “We’ll have to remedy that.”

They got him on the way out of the cafeteria.

He’d been expecting it, and his spine stiffened just before a fist drove harshly into his gut. He gasped and bent over slightly, arms wrapping around his stomach just as the back of his neck spiked, warning of another incoming hit.

His senses screamed at him to fight back, but he knew that would only make matters worse and betray the extent of his strength. Surely a guard would notice what was happening and put a stop to it—

His train of thought was cut off as a fist hit his jaw, and he fell backwards, just as the other prisoner was on top of him. He had half a second to think it was strange that it wasn’t the leader of the group that was delivering the punches, standing off to the side while one of his followers reared back for another punch—

And then the hit landed, and Peter’s head slammed back into the floor. Wham. Wham. Wham.

“HEY! Break it up!” a guard shouted, and Peter didn’t even have time to register a modicum of relief before electricity was coursing through him. He gasped, arching off the ground, muscles locking up. He was burning, burning, burning—

It stopped.

He collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, gasping on the floor like a fish out of water. To his side, he saw one of the goons— the one who had been delivering the punches— doing the same. Distantly, he realized that must have been why the leader hadn’t been the one to start the fight; he’d had one of his lackeys do the dirty work for him, so he wouldn’t be shocked.

He groaned slightly, ribs protesting the movement. His wounds from the fight with the Vulture had mostly healed, thanks to his enhancements and despite the lack of food, but nowhere near enough to not be affected by the assault.

“Up,” a guard said gruffly, grabbing at Peter’s upper arm and yanking him to his feet. Peter grit his teeth as pain flared through his body, but he didn’t dare yelp or give the prisoners any further ammunition. Distantly, he realized that they weren’t being treated with anywhere near as much force as Peter himself was being treated with. Even though it was clear that they had started and instigated the fight.

Benefits, indeed . He thought bitterly.

The guard shoved him in the direction of the common room, uncaring of his injuries. Peter stumbled along, noting that the other three prisoners were being taken in the opposite direction. He had the feeling that it probably wasn’t for punishment.

They made it to the main area, where the guard deposited Peter roughly in a corner before barking out orders to the entire room.

"Everyone, listen up!” he barked out. “Time for the morning work assignments. You'll be grouped up and given tasks. Follow the rules, and you'll make it through the day. Step out of line, and you'll regret it."

Several prisoners eyed Peter at that, having seen the commotion play out, and Peter kept his head down, pointedly ignoring them.

The prisoners lined up as the guards began calling out names and assigning tasks. 

“Parker, laundry,” one of them shouted, and Peter shifted a bit. Laundry, at least, seemed like one of the less dangerous and less labor-intensive options, which he was relieved for. It probably wouldn’t be too pleasant with his hands still cuffed together, but he’d presumably be able to manage, given that most of the other people around him were in a similar situation.

He shuffled into the small group of people heading for what he assumed was the laundry room, warily glancing at the guards as he passed. The knowledge that they had a remote that could be used to shock him at any time was… unsurprising, but still not pleasant.

The inside of the laundry room was warm and steamy, machines thrumming loudly all around him. Peter glanced around for an open position, and felt his body involuntarily relax when he spotted a familiar friendly face.

Well, friendly was a bit of a stretch, but at least Lucas wasn’t openly antagonistic.

Part of him was worried the man wouldn’t even acknowledge his presence, but when Lucas met his eye, he didn’t immediately look away. Peter took that as a silent invitation, and moved over to stand across from him gratefully.

“Welcomin’ committee got to you too, eh?” Lucas asked, and at Peter’s short nod, he huffed. “Guess you took one of the beatings meant for me.” he muttered, before pausing, a strange sort of expression washing over him. “I mean… does it hurt?” he asked, a kind of almost sheepishness taking over his tone.

“Actually, it wasn’t that bad.” Peter lied with a mild shrug, not mentioning that it was triggered by the stunt he’d pulled with the bread. He was sure they’d have found a different reason to beat him up even if he hadn’t done that. The fact that they all had enhanced strength sucked— as did the electric shock— but at least with his enhanced healing, the bruises would be gone within a day or two. Either way, the group had been too focused on beating Peter up to focus on Lucas.

“Well, uh, thanks for…” Lucas waved his hand at the bruise. “Uh… thanks.” he finished somewhat awkwardly. Peter realized that it might be a little weird for him, a 20-to-30-year old, thanking a teenager for getting beat up in his place. Even if said teenager was Spider-Man.

“You would have done it for me,” he said instead, with another easy shrug. Lucas looked at him like he was crazy.

“No, I wouldn’t have.” he said slowly. Peter blinked. “Look man, I appreciate it, I really do. I respect the hell outta you, too— you’re stubborn for a little pipsqueak. But you’re gonna get fuckin’ killed if you keep pullin’ stunts like that, makin’ enemies with the most dangerous people in the whole damn prison. I won’t have your back. I can’t.” he said.

Peter pursed his lips and turned his head slightly, unsure what to say to that. “Well,” he chose to ignore it instead. “Now that they’ve picked us out as the new guys, they’ll keep coming back.” He may not be familiar with prison life (yet), but he was well-familiar with bullies.

Lucas scoffed. “Yeah. I know exactly what they’re like. It’s the same in all prisons. The Raft is no different. Next time, they'll come to us with real demands, and if we say no, we ain't goin’ to the infirmary. We're goin’ to the morgue.”

~ ~ ~

Tony’s POV

Two more weeks had passed since then, with none of them getting a single step closer to getting Peter out of the Raft. That was five weeks. Nearly a month and a half. A month and a half since he’d seen the kid. A month and a half of who-knows-what happening down there.

Clara and the other lawyers had been drafting things up, coming up with every argument possible in order to get Peter out of there. With each new argument came another disappointment, another failure. Another step closer to running out of options, and having no choice but to let Peter live out his sentence. The committee had set it at five years. Five fucking years . May had been borderline hysterical at that news, and Tony himself wasn’t much better. They’d shared multiple drinks together that night, up in the Tower, taking shots like they had the alcohol tolerance of a college kid. It was almost laughable that it was the first time they’d ever done any sort of ‘hanging out’ activity together, and that it came after hearing that the kid (their kid) would be stuck in prison for five years if they didn’t find some sort of alternative.

Tony hadn’t really slept in the two weeks that followed— he didn’t dare let himself fall into some sort of routine, because routine was how habits were formed. Routine was what had driven Howard mad, searching for Steve until the end of his life, still hoping to find the man who had gone into the ice and never returned.

Tony’s not really sure why his brain came up with that particular comparison; five years was a definitive, finite time. Nothing like someone crashing into the Arctic and not knowing even a general radius of where they went down. Yet he could also see the parallel. He knew that he’d spend every single day of the five years trying to find some alternative, some way to get Peter out even one day earlier. He didn’t give a damn if it was four years and three-hundred and fifty-nine days in; he’d still take the other option.

And yet a deeper part of him knew, even more than that— it wasn’t the finite five years that he was afraid of. It was the time that came after. Tony wasn’t afraid that he’d spend his entire life trying to get Peter out of the Raft; he was scared he’d spend his entire life trying to find the Peter that went into it. And he didn’t know at which point that would become an impossibility. Had it already happened? Would it happen at two months? Six months? A year? Two years?

He didn’t allow his brain to dwell past that.

Part of him knew Ross was planning something. He always was. But he’d been waiting. Biding his time. Waiting for Tony to get more and more desperate, the longer Peter was locked in the Raft with no foreseeable end in sight.

After all, a desperate man was far easier to bargain with.

The anticipated call came that afternoon.

Tony was in his workshop, staring at a holographic display of the Accords, eyes unfocused, when FRIDAY alerted him.

“Boss, you have an incoming call from Secretary Ross.” she said, and even her tone was tight with displeasure. Tony’s nostrils flared; he didn’t even need to tell the AI to answer it before the line was connecting.

“Ross.” Tony said levelly, hearing the man’s breathing on the other end of the line. His usual quips and snarks were gone. Here, this was Ross’s playing field— and as much as Tony despised playing on someone else's terms, a joke or a quip wasn’t worth making Peter go through even another week in the Raft.

“Mr. Stark,” Ross said smoothly, his tone taking on a certain level of delight at knowing perfectly well that he held the reins. A muscle in Tony’s jaw twitched, and he glared at the screen in front of him as if the secretary were actually in the room with him. “I am calling about Spider-Man. I believe we can come to… a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

Tony’s tongue darted out to wet his lips. “What kind of arrangement?” he asked carefully, knowing that it certainly wouldn’t be a small price to pay— not when Ross had Tony Stark’s full attention and will at his disposal. The man was irritating, but he was no fool. Even knowing this, Tony still had the urge to agree immediately to whatever it was— for Peter’s sake.

“A trade,” Ross said simply.

“A trade?” Tony echoed. “For who?” Even as the words left his mouth, it was blatantly obvious who the secretary was referring to. He didn’t need to be a genius to figure it out.

“The Avengers,” Ross said, tone sharp.

Tony’s nostrils flared. Protests were heavy on the tip of his tongue— the ones he’d been giving out this entire time. I don’t know where they are. I can’t get in contact with them. I can’t do that . It was a useless argument, and they both knew it. If he said any of those, Ross would simply hang up and call him back in another week or so— whenever he thought Tony would get desperate enough. They both knew that there was nothing on Earth that could stop him from finding the Avengers if he really, truly wanted to. Even with no flip phone, even if they used every resource they could to hide themselves from him— he could still find them. He just hadn’t had motivation to, before now—- and Ross damn well knew it.

Instead, he swallowed.

“A whole team for one person doesn’t feel very fair,” he commented, and his mind was already racing with all the new possibilities, factoring new equations and outcomes. This . This was Peter’s alternative to his sentence. This was the magical ‘out’ he needed.

Ross was silent for a few moments, and for a split-second, Tony was terrified that he’d hang up and wait for Tony to get more desperate, leaving Peter stuck in the Raft for even longer. Then he spoke, lip curling in a sneer that was evident even through his voice. 

“Steve Rogers, then,” he said. Tony grit his teeth. Of course. Granting a pardon to a lower-level US vigilante whose only crime was violating his parole in exchange for a high-profile international war criminal and leader of the Rogue Avengers. Go figure, Ross could justify that trade to the committee. 

The secretary didn’t wait for Tony to come up with a response. “I trust you’ll make the right decision.” Then he hung up, leaving Tony with an empty ringing sound.

Tony's thoughts went wild. He had the flip phone. One call and Steve could be right where he needed him. Right where Ross needed him. It was Steve or Peter. 

Steve, the man who’d betrayed him, his old teammate— or Peter, the kid that was his responsibility, who he loved, who didn’t deserve to spend five years on the Raft.

Steve or Peter.

It wasn’t really a choice.

He picked up the phone and called the only number on it. It rang once. 

“Tony?”

Chapter Text

“Tony?”

“Rogers,” Tony greeted, then hesitated. He thought of Peter, and how upset he would be if he ever figured out that Tony had betrayed and turned in Steve Rogers for his sake. He thought of the damn letter Steve had sent him, and his earnestness. He thought of the fact that if he did this, it would be a bigger betrayal than the one Steve had made regarding his parents. He exhaled. He made up his mind.

“I need your help.” he said, forcing the words out. He heard Steve inhale slightly on the other end of the line.

“Anything, Tony,” the man said genuinely, and Tony couldn’t help but let out a weak huff of a laugh.

“You might want to hear me out before promising that, Cap,” he warned. “Have you seen the news about Spider-Man?”

“Yes.” Steve said slowly— carefully, like this was a dangerous topic they were treading on. Tony supposed it was. “About the arrest. We also saw that you agreed to sponsor him.”

Tony blew out a breath. “Yes,” he said, and the exhaustion seeped into his tone. “He’d have to reveal his identity otherwise, and that was one thing he was insistent on not happening. He wanted to protect his family and friends— though that ship has… mostly flown. Now that they’ve arrested him they— well, Ross and the government, at least—- know his identity. And…” he hesitated momentarily. “He’s fifteen.”

There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line, but Tony barrelled on. “I know it was a bad decision to take him to Germany, trust me,” he said tiredly. “I’ve made countless mistakes when it comes to him, but I just— didn’t want to add a public identity reveal into the mix.” He knew that Steve would understand; even though he’d been an adult when he became Captain America, he knew what it was like to be suddenly thrust into the spotlight.

There was another moment of silence. “What’s his name?” Steve asked quietly. Tony swallowed.

“Peter. Peter Parker,” he responded, and his mouth was dry as he spoke the words. “He’s… he’s a really good kid. Genuine. Honest. Smart as a whip.” he paused. “Well, most of the time. He has his moments.” He rubbed a hand roughly across his face and blew out a breath. “He doesn’t deserve this.”

“Nobody does,” Steve replied, and it wasn’t a diminutive argument, just a simple statement. “But I assume you didn’t call just to tell me this. You have a plan.”

Tony let out a long, ragged breath— this was the part he had been dreading. “‘Plan’ is a loose word,” he admitted. “‘Deal with the devil’ would be more accurate. Ross called me earlier. Said that he was willing to make a trade. You… for Peter.” He closed his eyes, expecting the man to laugh at him, but there were no sounds from the other end of the line, so he continued speaking. “I know you don’t know him, and have no reason to trust that I’ll get you out after we make the trade. But…” he trailed off, uncharacteristically not knowing what else to say. “You said to call if I needed you. And I do.”

There was a long, continual stretch of silence, and Tony half-expected the man to hang up on him. It felt somewhat unfair, on his part; Steve surely hadn’t meant willingly giving himself up to the Raft when he said he’d be there if Tony asked. He doubted himself for a moment; if Steve refused to join in on the plan, Tony effectively gave up all chances he had at making the drop on his former teammate. Peter would be stuck on the Raft until Ross successfully got Cap where he wanted him.

“He's your kid.” Steve said at last, and his tone was quiet but sure. Tony sputtered. Of all the things the man could lead with after Tony dumped everything on him, that was his deduction?

“What— no.” he said. “The kid has— he has an aunt. May. Great woman. Kid’s parents died when he was a toddler. I’m not— we’re not related.” He stuttered out, jumbling his words. Jesus . He was sure he had never answered anything that ineloquently since he was four and cameras were shoved in his face for the first time.

There was another beat of silence on Steve's end. “But you care about him.”

Tony swallowed, forcing back the sarcastic retort he could make. ( No shit, Rogers, I’m calling you of all people .)  “Yes.” he admitted, even though everything in him screamed to lie to protect himself, to protect his feelings from someone who had hurt him once.

“Then that’s enough for me,” Steve responded, his voice equally quiet, and for a moment, it felt like they were on the same page for once. Not just the same page, but on the same line and word, too. Maybe for the first time since they met.

“Thank you,” Tony said, letting the words out in one big breath.

“You’re my friend,” he responded simply.

Tony didn’t have a response to that, throat closing up momentarily at the memories of the bunker. He firmly shoved them aside. Now was not the time to be thinking about that.

“Where do you need me?” Steve asked next, and any doubts Tony had before picking up that phone went out the window. Because despite all their differences, every argument, every fight— including the one that had ended up with him almost dying in a bunker in Siberia— he knew that Steve Rogers would pick up that phone when he called. And despite everything, despite every single warning bell going off in his mind, every single defensive mechanism his brain put in place over all the years… Tony trusted him to help.

“Nowhere, yet,” he said with a sigh, dragging his hand down his face. “The sooner I arrange with Ross to make the ‘trade,’ the sooner the kid gets out of the Raft, but we need a plan and I haven’t had time to come up with one yet.” He didn’t say that the reason for that was because he had called Steve immediately after Ross hung up, but he was sure it was implied. 

“I don’t trust Ross,” Tony continued, plainly. “As it is, FRIDAY has recorded evidence of him offering me the deal, and even he isn’t quite stupid enough to continually push the boundaries of his luck around me. Though completely irrespective of the trade itself, we still need some way to get you out after we have Peter back.”

He didn’t say aloud what he was truly fearing— that Ross wouldn’t give Peter back, after the trade; that he’d keep demanding and demanding more from Tony while he still had the upper hand. But… what else could they do? They’d run the legal route, coming into dead ends at every turn. He could wait to see whether Clara and the lawyers would run into some magical breakthrough, but realistically speaking, their window of time with the best bargaining opportunity had already passed. Tony knew politicians, and that the next time they would even manage to get a committee hearing would be months from now, if that— and that there was no guarantee at all that anything would change. In fact, it probably wouldn’t change at all, because legal committees liked to lean on past decisions instead of making new ones; and they had no reason to change their minds if none of the circumstances surrounding the case had changed.

Tony would gladly blast the kid out of the Raft in the same way Rogers broke out the other Rogues, but… how much better would that be for Peter? He’d be a fugitive from the law; wouldn’t be able to see his aunt or his friends, or experience high school like a relatively normal person. And he certainly wouldn’t be able to be Spider-Man in the way he always adored— forming connections, helping the little guy. He wouldn’t be able to afford connections on the run. Not to mention if he got re-captured somehow, his sentence would be even longer for resisting arrest. It would be better than the Raft, certainly, but as for long-term quality of life for a fifteen-year-old? Not so much. The only other alternative he could see as a potential solution would be to abolish the Accords completely, pardoning the Rogues and everyone else underneath it, but… well, to say that hadn’t exactly made any progress in recent months would be an understatement. It may be years until something changed enough to force the committee’s hand.

So, no. Tony didn’t trust Ross in the slightest. But he was running dry on other options, and hinging on the fact that— as Tony Stark—- he had connections. Politics was all about being slimy and slipping through legal loopholes, but outright promising one thing (Peter’s release from the Raft) and then completely going back on said promise was generally seen as… more dishonorable than usual. And that was a low, low bar. Even Ross would have difficulty escaping that one if he blatantly stabbed Tony Stark in the back, because Tony would make sure it was blasted far and wide for the entire world to see. Ross knew as much, too—- so he could only hope that it would be enough.

God , he fucking hated politics.

“Alright,” Steve agreed, after a beat of silence, likely having the same doubts but not saying so aloud. “We need a plan.”

“That is what I just said, Cap.”

~ ~ ~

Steve’s POV

“This is a terrible idea, Steve,” Sam said, leaning against the doorframe of their shabby safehouse with his arms crossed. He had an eyebrow arched disapprovingly as Steve neatly folded his few belongings into a single pile.

“It’s not you making the decision, Sam.” Steve pointed out mildly. As it was, he was very glad that Ross had only requested him in exchange for Spider-Man; Steve would gladly give himself up for the sake of the teenager Tony cared so deeply about, but he couldn’t ask any of his fellow teammates to do the same. But Sam Wilson was nothing if not loyal, and very verbal about his disagreement on this matter.

“So, what?” Sam scoffed. “Stark messes up and expects you to get yourself stuck in the Raft for a half baked ‘trading’ plan?”

Steve had to admit it sounded stupid out loud. But Sam didn’t know Tony. Steve sometimes wondered if he ever did either, but one thing he could tell for sure was that Tony cared about that kid like his own. And Steve meant it when he said he’d come if Tony called. That's what family did. Even now, after everything. Peter was Tony's family, so he was Steve's by extension. 

Plus, Steve was known for his stupid plans. 

He shrugged in agreement at the words. “Tony will come up with a backup plan. The trading part is just until we get Spider-Man out of the Raft.”

There was a sigh, and Sam uncrossed his arms and moved from the doorway further into the room. His posture had softened, but he was staring at him now with a sharp intensity.

“Steve, you realize what you’re risking here?” Sam asked, brows furrowed. “Once Stark has Spider-Man he could leave you high and dry with Ross. You trust him that much?” 

“I do.”

The kind of relationship Tony and Steve had was… different.

Tony had always been arrogant, flamboyant, cocky; flippant in a way that Steve nor anyone else around him could ever afford growing up. In the same vein, he’s brilliant, heroic, and selfless in a way that Steve would never have thought possible when first meeting him— and had no such qualms about saying it to his face. (Only to be proven wrong no less than a few hours later.) The man was one big ball of shifting contradictions; somehow managing to elicit both Steve’s frustration and admiration within the breadth of a few seconds.

Steve wouldn’t trust Tony not to let him fall during a trust exercise, and not to laugh if Steve fell flat on his ass. He wouldn’t ever trust that the man would show up to a single government meeting on time. He wouldn’t even trust Tony to follow his orders without arguing every step of the way and potentially jetting off on his own to make some sort of reckless decision. But he would trust Tony to have his back in a battle, to save his life. He always had.

Sam looked at him like he’d gone slightly crazy, and Steve felt the need to defend himself— and by extension, Tony. “He could have just called me and baited me to Ross,” he said. “He’s smart enough to know where we are, and how to get me to fall into a trap. He asked for my help instead.”

“What an astoundingly high bar,” Sam said in a dry tone.

“Point is,” Steve continued, breezing over the remark. “If he wanted to trap me, he could have done so already, and made it a lot easier for himself.” Steve paused. “You didn’t hear him on the phone call. He was…” he trailed off, not finding the words to say. Vulnerable . Tony sounded raw and vulnerable and regretful, and that was a list of emotions that Steve had never particularly attributed to the man. If Tony had been lying, he’d been putting on a very convincing act, and Steve was certain that his ego would never allow him to even pretend to do something of the sort. No, those emotions had been real— he was certain of it.

Sam sighed. “It’s up to you, Cap,” he said, looking Steve directly in the eyes. “I follow you because I trust you. If you trust Stark, well…” he twisted his face in a displeased expression. “I may think you’re an idiot for it, but I’ll follow you regardless.”

Steve’s mouth flickered in a smile. “Not the first time I’ve heard that,” he said wryly, thinking of Bucky with a pang. He was beyond grateful that T’Challa had offered a place for Bucky to stay in Wakanda to clear the Winter Soldier programming from his mind, but… thinking of Bucky made him think of the last time he’d seen Tony, and that wasn’t exactly a warm memory.

Sam seemed well acquainted with his train of thought, because he patted Steve on the shoulder. “Follow your gut, Cap. It’s never led you wrong before. Don’t let a paranoid guy like me change your mind if you feel like it’s right.”

Steve wasn’t so sure his gut had never led him wrong before—- he’d lost Bucky on the train, then to HYDRA, and then he’d lost Tony by lying to him about his parents. None of those really classified as ‘gut instincts’; he’d trust his instincts to lead him right in battle, but his emotions had led him astray before. 

He didn’t lay all his thoughts on Sam, though, only offering him a half smile. “If you’re paranoid, then what does that make Romanoff?” he asked, a little dryly. 

Sam snorted. “Scary.” he responded flatly. “She probably has some creepy sixth sense that alerted her of us saying her name just now.”

—

Sam’s guess wasn’t too far off. 

Natasha didn’t ask what he was doing; she seemed to already know. How, Steve wasn’t quite sure, since he hadn’t been the one to tell her— but he’d long since stopped questioning her methods.

She’d come up to the doorway of his room, leaning against the frame in the same manner Sam had done. She’d been out of the safe house when Tony had first called him, so by all accounts she shouldn’t have known what went down in the meantime, but she took one look at him and surmised:

“He called you.”

Steve didn’t bother trying to play dumb on the ’he’ in this scenario. There were only two men not in this room that he’d drop everything for at a call in this manner, and one of them was safe in Wakanda. 

“His kid got taken by Ross.” Steve said, by way of explanation. Natasha’s eyebrows raised in surprise— as much as a declaration of open shock as he was likely to ever see on her.

“Spider-Man is his kid?” she asked, and Steve didn’t ask how she’d narrowed it down to the vigilante so quickly. He gave a half shrug.

“May as well be,” he responded, before hesitating. “I’ve never heard him like that, Nat.” he admitted quietly. Natasha examined him closely for a moment. 

“How old is he?” she asked, and her gaze was guarded. 

“Fifteen,” Steve said, watching as her eyes flashed with something and her lips pressed together. “His name is Peter.”

Natasha watched him for a long moment. “You have a recording of the conversation?” she asked, and he nodded. They recorded every conversation by default that they received via phone call, in case one of them was out and needed to hear the call, or in case they managed to catch evidence or coordinates to something and needed to replay it. They usually destroyed the recording immediately afterwards, if nothing consequential happened, but Steve was glad in this instance that he had evidence of Tony’s tone. He didn’t feel like he was giving the billionaire justice in regards to the situation without the tone of his voice accompanying the words.

Steve played the recording back and watched as Natasha listened, expression completely neutral. He knew she wasn’t happy about the fact that Peter was fifteen, but Steve thought that Tony had been genuine in his care for the teenager. He wondered whether Natasha would think differently. 

The recording finished playing, and they stood in silence for a long, drawn out moment. Natasha didn’t say anything, even as Steve stared at her, trying to catch any hint of what she could be thinking. Eventually, he couldn’t take the waiting anymore. 

“Do you think I shouldn't trust him?” he asked.

“Would my response change your mind?” Natasha responded cryptically.

Steve considered. “No,” he admitted. He was a man of his word, and he had promised that if Tony ever needed him, he’d be there. If there was even a sliver of a chance that Tony was telling the complete truth, he had to trust him.

Natasha gave a flicker of a smile. “Good,” she said. “For the record, I do think he’s being honest. I just wanted to see if you had your heart set on it.”

Steve let out a huff of a laugh, and Natasha tilted her head at him, expression falling into something more serious again. “But you have to realize what you’re risking, Steve.” she warned. “Even Tony doesn’t have the infallible ability to smooth talk his way out of everything. Especially not where Ross is involved. There’s a very real possibility you’ll end up in the Raft for a very long time.” It was the same warning Sam had given him, but it sounded more ominous coming from her.

“I know,” he responded. “But you know I don’t really have a choice.” Even if he didn’t help Tony, he’d still be a fugitive on the run, with no guarantees that he may not get caught tomorrow and get shipped off to the Raft anyways. Sure, it was different—- he’d grown acclimated to the constant risk, but being on the run was different than offering himself up on a silver platter. Still, it wasn’t an option—- it never was when helping people was involved. He’d risked the Raft once to break his teammates out; he could do it again. 

“In that case.” Natasha said, not trying to convince him out of it as Sam had done; recognizing it was a futile effort long before she even attempted it. “How can I help?”

—

Tony’s POV

Tony had called Steve back after brainstorming all night. The man had answered, sounding wide awake despite the fact that it was some atrociously early hour of the morning for his time zone. 

While he’d been coming up with a plan, he had been tinkering— as he was prone to do. It helped him think. He’d come up with a little hologram projector for the flip-phone in the meantime; apparently the ancient piece of tech had a camera he could use for his whims (albeit an old one). When he’d called this time around, he’d managed to activate the camera on Steve’s side, projecting a video feed of Tony onto the man’s screen. Tony relished as Steve jumped in shock at the sudden appearance of an image, and he snorted a bit.

“Hello to you too,” he said wryly, projecting Steve’s face onto a hologram in his lab. Steve huffed out a short laugh.

“I didn’t even know this had a video feed capability,” he said, as his form of a greeting. Tony waved his hand. 

“Oh, it didn’t. But it had a camera. I hijacked it. So now it does,” he said dismissively. Out of the corner of the screen, he could see Romanoff and Wilson enter the frame. He braced himself for the Winter Solider to make his appearance next, but he never did. “Is that all of you?” he asked, going for nonchalance and missing by a mile, judging by the look on his former teammate’s face.

“He’s not here,” Steve said carefully, answering the subtext of the question instead. Tony squinted, a little surprised. If the man wasn’t with Rogers, then where the hell was he staying? The question was on the tip of his tongue, but he hesitated uncharacteristically, wary that Steve would shut down any line of questioning related to his old war buddy. It certainly wasn’t a surprise that he’d be wary of giving Tony his location, given what happened last time—

“Wakanda.” Steve said, and Tony blinked, thrown again. “They’re… they have the resources to take his programming out.”

Tony stared at the man through his screen, surprised by the voluntary information. It wasn’t relevant to Peter— which was what Tony had been calling for— but Steve had volunteered it anyways. A sign of trust; that he still trusted Tony.

Tony pressed his lips together, and Steve watched him carefully, clearly waiting for his reaction. “Good.” he got out, through the suspicious tightening of his throat. “That’s— good. I’m glad.” he said, and he meant it. Steve’s shoulders relaxed slightly, and he offered a small smile. Tony’s lips felt a bit plastic, but he mirrored it.

Natasha took that moment to appear fully in frame.

“It’s good to see you again, Tony.” Natasha said, her green eyes flickering eerily in the projected hologram. Tony’s mouth twitched, and he gave her a curt nod. He was still a bit disgruntled about her mid-battle team-switching; not because he’d been surprised, but because he hadn’t been.

“You too,” he said, and though the words were short and level, they were genuine. She nodded and moved back out of frame, taking Wilson with her. Tony watched them go, before it was just Steve and him again.

“They know?” Tony double checked, referring to the two who had just left. He couldn’t imagine Steve keeping the situation from Romanoff and Wilson, but he asked regardless. Steve nodded. 

“They do,” he confirmed. “And this call? It’s secure?” Steve asked next, his hologram flickering slightly in the dim light of Tony’s lab. He was a bit wary of reusing the same phone more than once— wartime habits. Tony scoffed.

“I’m going to pretend like you didn’t just ask that, Cap,” he said dryly. “Yes, it’s secure. Don’t insult FRIDAY’s talents like that.”

The corner of Steve’s mouth tugged up in a half smile. “Noted,” he said. He didn’t look exasperated as he might have before; instead, he looked a little… fond?

Gross.

Tony sniffed, pointedly ignoring the look. “Anyways, in terms of the plan,” he sighed, rubbing a hand down his face. “We can put a tracker or bug of some sort on you, for starters. Part of Ross’s bid is that none of us know where the exact coordinates of the Raft are.” After all, can’t break into something you don’t have the location of.

His face twisted. “I’m still working on the part of the plan to get you out of the Raft, but I’ll come up with something.” Neither of them pointed out that that was part of the major issue with Peter. Even though Steve didn’t say anything aloud, Tony knew he was thinking it, and he shook his head firmly to push the doubts away.

“It’s different, if we can prepare before you get on the Raft. We can put contingencies in place that we couldn’t for…” Peter . He didn’t say the kid’s name. “We can be prepared.” Tony continued, and he wasn’t sure if it was more of an attempt to reassure himself or Steve.

“I’m sure you will.” Steve responded, and Tony shot him a mildly suspicious glance, but the tone and Steve’s expression showed no sarcasm. Tony pressed his lips together in a firm line. They were on the same team again, here, fighting towards the same goal— but the elephant in the room remained unaddressed. The fact that they’d split up over arguments over the Accords, and here they were trying to reunite to beat them.

“You were right, y’know,” he said abruptly, faint bitterness leaking into his voice. He barely even had a chance to form the admission in his mind before it was rolling off his tongue. Steve blinked in surprise— not that Tony could blame him; Tony Stark admitting that Steve Rogers was right on something? If you’d asked him when that would happen even a few weeks ago, he would have laughed and said when hell froze over. Tony supposed Peter getting imprisoned on the Raft because of the Accords was close enough to that to count. For all his ego and the persona he showed to the media, he knew he had a tendency to get things wrong. Far more often than he would like. He hated himself for allowing Peter to be the one to face the repercussions of his actions.

“It’s not about being right, Tony.” Steve responded quietly, recovering from his shock. “I never wanted to be right.”

Tony shook his head. For once, he needed to actually set things straight. “You don’t buy a house and then negotiate the terms. I was…” he trailed off, pressing his lips together. He was no fan of the government himself. If the Accords had come around at any other point in time, he would have agreed with Steve and told the government to go fuck itself, like he’d done when they tried to take his Iron Man suits.

But that kid. Charlie Spencer. His mom. That damn photo.

—

A few months prior…

Tony pushed his way into a quiet corridor, cheers still ringing behind him from his presentation on the September Foundation. He wasn’t really sure whether the audience was still cheering or whether his ears were just echoing, but he found he couldn’t really care. He’d pushed his way past some MIT faculty member chattering about… some chemical project, he thought. Plus his assistant, who apologized profusely for not fixing the teleprompter. Tony waved her off easily— wasn’t her fault, even though the sight of Pepper’s name on the teleprompter had frozen him like a bucket of liquid nitrogen had been poured down his spine.

He’d been holding things together relatively well until that point, at least.

The corridor was blessedly quiet, and he loitered by the door to the men’s restroom, glancing around furtively in case anyone from the presentation had heard his half-assed excuse of needing to use the bathroom. When he found nobody there to catch him in the act of ditching, he made a beeline down the hallway towards the elevators.

There was a woman standing there already— dark clothes, a neat blazer and pencil skirt. He took in her appearance on instinct as he slowed his steps down, shoving his hands into his pockets and plastering his media persona back onto his face. She didn’t seem all too interested in his presence— so not some crazy fan, at least— but he couldn’t afford to clue anyone in on how close he was to falling apart at the moment.

He turned his back to the wall on instinct (always on guard, always alert) and stared straight ahead. If she wasn’t going to strike up a conversation, he was perfectly willing to stand in silence—

“That was nice, what you did for those young people.” she said, and, well, there went the silent option. Her voice was quiet and level, and she didn’t turn her body fully to face him, only tilting her head slightly in his direction. His eyes flickered briefly to her form before he focused once more on the wall ahead of him.

“Ah, they deserve it.” he responded noncommittally. There was a heavy pause where neither said anything. “Plus, it helps ease my conscience,” he admitted. He wasn’t quite sure why he added that on, but there was a certain… atmosphere about the hallway. He couldn't put his finger on it. Not that it would matter; the elevator should be here within seconds, given that the woman had already been waiting for who knows how long before he’d arrived.

“They say there's a correlation between generosity and guilt,” she said, and to an outsider, it would sound like an agreement to his statement. But there was something… off, about her tone. Tony felt it when she turned her head fully to stare at him head-on. “But if you've got the money… break as many eggs as you like.”

At that, he turned to face her, too, startled by the turn that the conversation had taken. There was still a pleasant half-smile on her face, even at the words coming out of her mouth. He opened his mouth slightly and tilted his head, momentarily thrown. Jesus, how slow was this elevator going to be? Now would be a really good time to be saved by the bell.

In lieu of a verbal answer, he turned to face the elevator to see if there were any indicators of how long it would take, when she spoke again. “Right?” she added on, just as his eyes caught on the button.

It wasn’t lit up. Why wasn’t it lit up? Alarm bells started going off in his mind.

He shot her a long glance out of the corner of his eye, reaching out to jam a finger into the ‘up’ button.

“Are you going up?” he asked, gesturing with the same hand. He didn’t make a move yet— while suspicious, the woman hadn’t done anything… just been vaguely creepy and standing in front of a closed elevator door for no particular reason—

“I'm right where I want to be.” she responded, before reaching into her handbag, and the alarms in Tony’s mind started ringing full-tilt, honed from years of experience and attempts on his life. Before he could even form a rational thought past dangerdangerdanger he was reaching out and grabbing her wrist firmly.

“Okay, okay. Hey!” he said, and she stopped. They stood like that for a moment— his hand gripping her wrist in a way he was certain was uncomfortable, and her staring back at him with deep brown eyes. There was something in them, now, that hadn’t been there before; deep-seated grief. There was anger, too, but it wasn’t the type of irrational anger that would cause her to pull out a handgun and shoot him. His rational train of thought caught up to him at that, and he let go of her hand as if he’d been burned.

“Sorry, it's an occupational hazard,” he apologized, though he thought it was a valid reaction on his part, given that he was shot at quite frequently. (In his defense, if Happy had been here, the woman would have been tackled to the ground within seconds of reaching for her purse, so his own reaction was relatively mild in comparison.)

“I work for the State Department,” The woman continued, and her voice was no longer calm and controlled, but shaking with barely restrained grief and fury. He nodded slightly and took a half-step back, eyes flickering to the elevator button then back to her face as she kept talking. “Human Resources. I know it's boring… but it enabled me to raise a son.” 

At that, her tone lifted up slightly, dipping in and out of the anger; the mere thought of her child was able to change her countenance. To anybody else, these would have been the ramblings of a potentially crazy woman— but to pessimist genius Tony Stark, he knew exactly where this was about to go.

“I'm very proud of what he grew up to be.” she said, and her voice fell off at the end. She made another motion, shoving something at him, and he didn’t try to stop her this time— she wasn’t out to kill him. He already knew whatever she was about to say would force him to live a life far more painful than if she’d shot him. And she knew it too.

Her hand made contact with his chest, palm pressed flat against it, pinning a small piece of paper to his blazer. No— not paper. The slight sheen and pop of color against his clothes told him otherwise. A photo.

“His name was Charlie Spencer.” she said, and Tony knew his fears had just been confirmed. There was another heavy pause, a beat of silence where they both stared at each other. Her hand was still pressed against his chest. He wondered whether she could feel his heart rate tick up. “You murdered him.” 

Another pause, and all Tony could do was stare at her. His hand hovered over her own, where the picture was pressed, but he made no motion to actually remove it or come up with a retort. 

“In Sokovia. Not that it matters in the least to you. You think you fight for us? You just fight for yourself,” she said, and her tone got lower, angrier— until she was practically hissing and spitting the words out at him.

All Tony could do was shake his head slightly— though he was sure it looked more like a twitch. His entire body was frozen, the accusation ringing in his mind and spreading across his skin. His hand finally made contact with her own, and her skin was cool to the touch. ( Just like Charlie Spencer’s , his mind whispered accusingly.)

“Who's going to avenge my son, Stark?” she asked, ripping her hand out from under his own and leaving his palm pressed against the glossy surface of the photo. “He's dead… and I blame you.”

At that, she turned and walked away, down the other end of the hallway. Tony stared after her, photo still clutched in his hand, heartbeat echoing in his mind.

He’s dead.

He’s dead, and I blame you.

—

He wondered, if she hadn’t managed to catch up to him that day, whether the team never would have split. If he and Steve would have agreed. He really didn’t even have to ask the question; he already knew the answer.

“I made mistakes, too.” Steve spoke up once more, jarring him out of his train of thought, and Tony blinked, momentarily thrown. He was immediately brought back to a discussion both of them had over the phone, after the airport battle.

It had been one last phone call, on Tony’s part— an attempt to call Steve back, after he’d escaped Leipzig on the Quinjet with Barnes. It hadn’t worked, and Tony had made a last-ditch effort to head to Siberia in hopes of keeping the Avengers together, even if that meant helping Steve break the law.

They both knew how that decision had ended.

—

A few months prior…

“Tony.” Steve greeted, voice crackly over the comms. Tony tapped a finger against the chair he was sitting in— to be honest, he hadn’t expected the man to pick up. Sure, his suit’s comms were still connected to the Quinjet Steve had stolen. But he’d been expecting ignorance.

“Rogers.” he greeted, not betraying his internal thoughts. Steve knew him too well, because he seemed to sense the incoming argument, and sighed.

“You’re not going to get us to come back in, Tony.” he said, and it didn’t sound angry or even annoyed; just tired. Tony pressed his lips together, still tapping away at the armrest.

“You don’t seem too offended by the fact that every male in America has to register with the government when he turns eighteen.” he said, instead of a true response. Maybe a different angle would work better. “The Accords are like that, for enhanced people.”

"Most eighteen year olds haven’t made personal enemies of supervillains." Steve responded. “Besides, we’re not soldiers. Giving that controlling power to the government is dangerous.”

Tony sighed. "I’m not arguing with that fact,” he said, because he knew that much was true. “But you can’t see from my perspective because it’s predicated on the premise that superheroes make mistakes. You're Captain America. You don't make mistakes."

At that, there was a long pause on the other end of the line— so long that Tony almost thought Steve had disconnected it.

"... I do make mistakes. Steve Rogers does." he admitted, and there was another beat of silence. "But I can’t in good conscience sign this. You're a good man at heart, Tony. But you've always thought you knew best by virtue of your genius, and once you decide, that's it.”

Tony continued tapping at the armrest. (How foolish he’d been to think for a second there that he’d convinced Steve otherwise.) But the super soldier wasn’t done.

"You can be the nicest guy in the world, Tony— the bravest hero, the staunchest ally.”  Wow, listing all my good qualities, are we now, Cap? He wanted to joke. “But at the end of the day, what you want trumps everything else.” And there it was. The “but.” Just as Tony was debating what witty quip to respond with, Steve continued in a voice that was quieter, almost indiscernible. “It's a quality I see in a lot of alcoholics.”