Chapter Text
“Hurry up before that Spider bitch gets here.”
One of the scarred men hissed, motioning the man across from him to hand over the filled crate to his companion.
“A little late for that,” called a disembodied voice.
“Shit,” he growled as chaos broke out. Both sides of the drug deal dove for cover, guns out and waving as they all tried to get a glimpse of the enigmatic figure.
From the darkness of the warehouse’s rafters came a quiet ‘thwhip,’ soon followed by a white string shooting out to grab one of the guns.
“I’ll be taking that, thank you,” the voice called out as more and more white strands landed harshly on wrists and elbows and shoulders and everywhere else on the men’s bodies until they were wrapped like flies in a web.
Out of the shadows came two bug-like, white eyes that peered through the darkness of the warehouse, slightly narrowed behind the gun-metal grey gas mask covering the bottom of their face.
Those whose arms weren’t stuck raised their guns and shot at the masked figure, who deftly dodged without stopping their assault. More of that webbing shot out and encapsulated their feet to the ground as, all at once, the figure jumped down from their perch onto one of the crates.
“Guh!”
“Shit!”
“Fu–”
It didn’t take long for the masked figure to be standing in a circle of unconscious bodies covered in webs. They lifted one of their arms, the blue fluff of their jacket swaying with the movement, and faux-wiped the sweat off their forehead.
‘I don’t know if I count as a bitch,’ Spider-Man thought with a hum, cracking open the crates the gang members were attempting to sell and recognizing those powdery white blocks.
‘I feel like it’s in poor taste to call a 13-year-old a bitch.’
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Peter Parker wouldn’t say he was a genius…
But he’d think it loud enough for his aunt to clip his ear about humility.
With an IQ of 230, eidetic memory, and open access to the internet, Peter knew from a young age that he was smart. Much more than the average 2nd grader, as he came to realize one day in class, while he was solving high school algebra, as his classmates were learning subtraction.
He could vividly remember his parents’ faces, despite having known them for only two years of his life. He was able to read and write before pre-school, and was generally considered “gifted,” excelling in school and higher-level work from an early age.
“Learning is fun,” was his excuse when one of his teachers questioned why he spent recess in the library reading anything he could get his hands on.
(He felt weird going to the public library anymore after he met Skip there. It was much safer just to get his books elsewhere.)
By the time he was twelve, he had already entered the 10th grade, having skipped most of middle school after testing out. He could have gone higher, but his uncle put his foot down.
That was why he was on the field trip in the first place. His chemistry class had gone to Oscorp, and despite everyone else being three or four years older than him, he was also a student of the class and was able to go.
That was why he wandered off; he’d always loved learning new things.
That was why he’d ended up almost deathly sick for the next week, with a throbbing pain originating from two small puncture holes on the back of his neck.
‘I don’t think anyone expects to suddenly develop superpowers at 12,’ was his first thought the morning he was finally able to get out of bed, only to accidentally crush his doorknob like butter.
What followed was a good few weeks of attempting to get his powers under control under his aunt and uncle’s noses.
‘There’s no point in telling them,’ he justified to himself as he curled up in the corner of his ceiling, scratching at the newly formed itchy spinnerets on his wrists. ‘I don’t want to use them.’
Unfortunately, life never goes the way you want it to.
(He learned that when his parents never got off that plane; When the door closed behind his aunt and uncle with Skip’s hand on his shoulder; When he was shoved into lockers and spat on for the crime of being younger.)
“With great power comes great responsibility,” his uncle had said to him in his dying moments. No platitudes, no “it’ll be okay”. Just the hard acceptance that he wouldn’t take another breath.
And he used it to comfort Peter, the boy who never cried (not even during the funeral, not even during the trial) but was now left a wailing mess, his hands sticky with blood.
He didn’t plan on using his powers.
But he had them for a reason.
Him, over anyone else.
That had to mean something, if only in retrospect.
~~~
“He’s not bad,” was all Tony said after the footage compilation ended. The screen was paused on a still shot of a tall figure in a red and blue, obviously homemade suit, a blue, fluffy jacket dwarfing their torso and obscuring their attempts at cataloging a body shape. “He just looks so…unprofessional.”
“He’s been around for over a year,” Natasha read off the file given to her by SHIELD. “You can see a noticeable improvement in his hand-to-hand from when he first started.”
There were varying degrees of interest and intrigue around the table; Tony was staring contemplatively at the screen, and Steve’s brows were furrowed. Bruce looked as if he wanted to study the unknown vigilante in the lab, Sam and Clint were whispering (read: insulting) to each other, and Thor was off-world, so he didn’t count.
“Fury asked us to bring him in for either questioning or for recruitment.”
That had Steve raising his gaze from the table.
“Don’t we get a say in that?”
Natasha just leveled him with a dry look.
“We’re discussing it now, aren’t we?”
Tony snickered, then held his hands up in surrender at Steve’s dirty look.
“I don’t know, I say we scope him out a little first. Find out more about him.”
“Obviously,” Clint snorted, earning a glare from the billionaire. “The question is how we’re going to do it.”
“I say we try talking to him first,” Steve suggested. “Start peacefully. If that doesn’t work, then we may need to use force.”
“Who should talk to him, though?” Bruce’s eyebrow twitched. “I mean, I doubt he’ll be very open to talking with just any one of us.”
There were a few mumbled agreements, and that kick-started another discussion on who should seek out the Spider.
“Not it!”
“You can’t just call ‘not it,’ Bird Brain!”
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Spider-Man swung through Manhattan, humming the made-up theme song some kid (they were like 3 years younger than him, chill) came up with a couple of days ago.
“Spider-Man, Spider-Man,” he mumbled, smiling as some tourists shouted and pointed him out as he did a few flips around Times Square. “Does whatever a spider can.”
‘More accurate than you’d think,’ he chuckled, then landed on the side of a building. He stood up straight, his mechanical feet planted firmly on the windowpanes as he ignored the murmurings he could hear from the office workers inside.
He planted his hands on his hips underneath his jacket, looking down at the streets below him.
“Man,” he sighed. “I can’t believe they knocked down my crib.”
He’d been crashing in an abandoned apartment building at the edge of Queens near a Best Buy so that he could loot their garbage for his suit. Still, he’d overheard the voices of contractors wandering around the outside talking about starting construction in the coming days.
So it was better to get out of dodge sooner rather than later.
“That was my best one, too,” he continued to grumble as he made his way up to the top of the sky scraper. Hitting the solid ground of the roof, he stretched his limbs, even the fake ones.
‘I really need to get more parts for my legs,’ he scowled at the legs of his suit. From the outside, they appeared to be regular legs, albeit a little lanky. But beneath the fabric, making him much taller than he actually was, he stood on two stilt-like robotic legs that he built himself. No one would be able to tell that they weren’t actually his feet hitting the floor unless they got cut off (It took forever to make them as sticky as himself, but it was worth it, as evidenced by the way he stood upside down on ceilings to scare criminals.)
It was one of his greatest inventions, along with his voice-changing gas mask and web cartridges.
Could he just use his own biological webs? Sure, but they were much more delicate and didn’t dissolve after a few hours like his engineered ones did. He reserved those for his nests that he used as beds wherever he decided to sleep for the night.
But truly, his crowning achievement didn’t lie with his physical inventions.
No, that title lay solely in the digital world.
Held by the one and only Edward Timothy Parker, his paternal uncle, who took him in when his aunt May tragically passed away from cancer a scant few months ago.
A fake will here, a hacked government site to create a birth certificate there. Medical records, a driver’s license, a college degree (biochemical engineering, because even if Peter can’t go to college the way he planned, he still wanted a degree), a passport, and even a divorce document that resulted in Edward traveling through Europe for 10 years (the reason he couldn’t take in Peter the first time) before returning two years ago and finding out about his nephew.
Peter thought of everything—anything he needed to convince CPS that Edward was a real person. And the actor who played the part of a grieving uncle at May’s funeral earned himself all $300 Peter had left in his wallet from his old neighborhood repair jobs (thankfully, it wasn’t hard to hack himself a Photoshop account to create realistic family photos).
Peter knew he was smart. Smart enough to fool the government, smart enough to fool the world into believing Spider-Man was older than he actually was.
(He’d laughed hysterically at some of the fan art people had drawn, guessing what he looked like on Twitter. He’d really liked the ones that made him some hot college guy instead of the malnourished kid he actually was.)
And he figured, as he heard the telltale sound of rocket boots and pounding feet against concrete, that he might be just smart enough to fool the Avengers.
~~~
Tony landed on the roof behind the vigilante, raising his hands in surrender at the man’s cocked hip.
“Easy there, we come in peace,” Tony lifted his face plate to appear more sincere as Steve managed to join them on the roof.
(How? Tony didn’t want to question it, considering he just flew over the man a minute ago.)
“What could the Avengers want with little ole’ me?” Spider-Man tilted his head in a kind of creepy way, Tony could admit to himself.
“We just have a few questions,” Steve cut in with a friendly smile to cut the growing tension.
Spider-Man’s white lenses narrowed, his stance widening in a way Tony recognized as one ready to bolt when needed.
“Such as?” He grunted. His voice was deep and staticky from the mask, and Tony thought privately to himself that the double mask looked a little stupid.
“Such as,” Tony rolled his eyes, “your identity, for one–”
He didn’t get to say much more as suddenly there was a large web encasing the feet of his suit to the rooftop.
“HEY?!” He barked, surprised.
“No can do, Tin Can,” Spider-Man jumped back, feet half off the edge of the roof. “That’s a closely guarded secret.”
“That’s fine!” Steve tried to cut in, hands still raised but shoulders tensed. “We won’t ask again.”
“You won't,” Tony grumbled quietly, but kept still. He still couldn’t believe that FRIDAY couldn’t find anything about who was under the mask.
“Tony,” Steve hissed back, turning to glare at him. That was a mistake, as the second he took his eyes off Spider-Man, the vigilante was gone.
“Shoot,” the super soldier ran to the edge and watched as their target swung off in the direction of Queens, his home turf.
“Are we gonna try again, or is it time to bring in the big guns?” Clint asked rhetorically.
“We should give it another try,” Sam said, ever the clear-headed one. “Without bringing up his identity this time.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Tony sighed. “I get it.”
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They tried again a few days later, this time with Natasha and Clint.
“You don’t need to take off your mask,” Clint tried. “SHIELD just wants to ask you a few things.”
“Why?” Spider-Man didn’t seem hostile, more so cautious. “So they could test my powers?”
“Partially,” Natasha admitted. “However, it is because you’re a candidate for the Avengers Initiative.”
That had Spider-Man freezing, his head tilting almost 90 degrees as his large white lenses bored into them.
(“It was so fucking creepy,” Clint would say later on, not bothering to suppress his shudder.)
“Why?”
“Because you do good work,” Natasha had smoothly taken over the confrontation, analyzing the man in front of her.
‘It’s hard to get a decent read on him with that jacket on,’ she internally sighed. He was a couple of inches taller than her 5’8” self, probably standing at around 6’1”. She’d wager that he was anywhere between 23 and 35, but it was hard to tell.
“We’ve been watching you. You help old ladies cross the street, you rescue cats from trees and play with kids in the park, you stop robberies and rapes–”
They both noticed the way Spider-Man went deathly still, drawing dual raised brows.
“You do good work.”
“I see,” Spider-Man hummed, considering. “And would I need to reveal my identity?”
“Eventually,” was all the archer said.
It was quiet on the rooftop for a few moments, anticipation strung tight in the air. Before Spider-Man let out a heavy sigh, Natasha frowning in response, she could tell where this was going.
“Then I’m gonna have to decline.”
“Is your identity really that important to you?” Clint looked surprised.
All Spider-Man said was “yeah, it is,” before he swung off in a set direction, no doubt hearing some distant crime.
“That was a bust,” Tony sighed from where he was stationed at the tower. “Plan B then?”
“I’m afraid so,” Steve’s voice was low and full of resignation. “Aim for unconsciousness. No permanent injuries.”
~~~
“This fucking sucks,” Peter sighed as he sat on the edge of the Statue of Liberty. He liked to go up there whenever there was something on his mind. Just to think without all of the overwhelming smells and sounds of the city.
For the past few weeks, he’d been subjected to the Avengers’ assault. He knew that they didn’t want to actually hurt him; they wouldn’t have intentionally avoided permanent injury if they did, but they weren’t pulling their punches that much compared to it.
‘Should I have just agreed?’ He shook his head at the thought. ‘No, Parker. They want your identity, the one thing you can’t give them. If they knew you were 13 then it’s over.’
He stood up with a groan, hearing the metal legs of his prosthetics click annoyingly.
“I’m gonna have to fix that, aren’t I?” He groaned. He felt his spidey sense flare at the back of his neck, whipping his head around to see an explosion on the Brooklyn Bridge.
“Well shit.”
It was never that hard getting to and from the monument. He liked slingshotting himself using his webs, calculating the distance, angle, and trajectory to make it. He landed on the edge of the waterfront, enjoying the shocked and startled shouts of bystanders, before rapidly swinging toward where he could now see Iron Man and the Falcon flying above the growing fire.
Peter swung to take out one of the men in black who had a large rifle aimed at Captain America. He knew that the man probably would have blocked it with his shield, but he thought it looked cool.
“Uh, guys? Spider-Man is here,” he heard Hawkeye call out from somewhere elevated, no doubt taking shots at who Peter could now tell were Hydra agents.
“I’d say it’s great to see you all again, but I’d be lying,” Peter said, shooting out a web to grab onto a grenade an agent threw and pulling the string so that the small device landed back where it started.
‘Is it bad I kinda wanted them to stay put?’ He thought as the agents ducked for cover as the grenade went off.
“I thought you didn’t kill?” Captain America called out, grunting as he hit another two agents with his shield.
“I don’t,” was Peter’s response. He ducked and weaved out of the way of bullets, making sure there were no more bystanders in cars on the bridge and attempting to put out any fires with his webs.
“You have got to let me get a look at your webs, Webs,” Iron Man called out. Even though Peter didn’t make a comm like the rest of them, they all knew about his advanced hearing.
“No way, you’ll just patent it as, like, a hammock or something.”
He and the others snorted at Tony’s sputtering, but quickly grunted as a lucky bullet went through his shoulder.
“Shit, Spidey. Are you alright?” The Falcon called out in worry.
“Fine,” he grunted back, putting some webbing over the bullet hole. He could already feel his body attempting to close around the still-lodged bullet, and he just knew it’d be a bitch to get out later.
The battle continued until every last agent was either unconscious or dead (from their own hands). The bridge was now starkly silent as the heroes gathered together.
It was just Stark, Rogers, Romanov, Wilson, and Barton there with him. Banner and Thor weren’t there, but they typically weren’t unless it was an emergency.
“Thanks for the help, Spidey,” Stark’s faceplate lifted to reveal a smirk. “Though this seems a little more big league than just saving cats from trees.”
Peter couldn’t hold back his scoff.
“If you think that’s all I do, then you’re more stupid than you let on.”
Barton and Wilson giggled at each other while Stark’s eyebrow twitched in irritation.
“That wound looks bad,” Rogers spoke up, eying the dark patch at Peter’s shoulder. “Would you like to come back with us and get stitched up?”
Peter really, truly wanted to say yes. He liked them, he did.
But he knew he couldn’t let it happen.
“Thanks, Captain. But I’m gonna head out,” he pointed his thumb back before giving a mock salute. “May the next time we meet be when I’m kicking your asses.”
He swung off with a chuckle, enjoying their agitation at the truth of the past few weeks. They’d never been able to catch him for more than a few moments, and hopefully, they won’t any time soon.
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“Tony, what are you doing?”
The group watched as Tony took off his suit to kneel next to the rubble. There was fresh blood splattered on the ground and on the surrounding chunks of concrete, of which Tony pulled out a vial (from somewhere, as no one knew why it was in the suit in the first place) and began collecting it.
“You see this?”
He held up the vial of as much blood as he could collect. Collected together, they noticed that it was much bluer than typical human blood.
“Gross blood?”
“Not just any gross blood. Gross spider blood.”
They blinked in astonishment.
“Tony…are you saying–”
“I’m going to find out who Spider-Man is. Once and for all.”
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“This is a horrible plan.”
Tony tuned out Bruce’s grumbling.
“This is a great plan, actually, Brucie Bear. It’ll save all of us a headache in the long run.”
“Or it’ll just make Spider-Man never want to talk to any of us ever again.”
“And at that point we already know his identity so there’s not much he could do,” Tony finished, smug.
It took a lot of willpower for almost everyone in the room not to strangle him.
“I don’t think this is right, Tony,” Steve sighed, only for FRIDAY to call out before the man could respond.
“Results ready, Boss.”
“Perfect,” Tony gave a wolfish grin. “Read them out, dear.”
Before anyone could stop it, the AI began reading.
“The DNA sample was corrupted by an unknown factor. The closest I could get to an identity was a specific family bloodline.”
Tony frowned, but it was better than nothing.
“What family, Fri?”
“I have sent the results to your Stark Pad, Boss. I have narrowed down the most likely candidate to be one, Edward Parker.”
“Pull it up on the screen, too, so everyone can see it.”
One of the screens on the wall flicked open to the file FRIDAY created. Despite their reservations, everyone leaned forward in interest. They were also curious as to the man behind the mask.
Under the name ‘Parker’, there were two individuals.
“That’s it?” Clint couldn’t help but ask, causing Steve to glare at him lightly.
There was a picture of a young boy with glasses and a slight upturn to his lips, similar to the Mona Lisa’s not-smile. The other picture was of a man remarkably identical to him, if not older. They were definitely related.
Clicking on the man’s picture, there was just the headshot.
“Edward Parker, age 37–”
“Huh, older than I thought,” Tony blinked. “I thought he’d be in his late 20s.”
“Date of birth, April 1, 1988.”
The AI continued reading out the information in the file, with the words scrolling rapidly on the screen.
“So, this is him?” Bruce looked intrigued despite his reservations. “This is Spider-Man?”
“Yes,” Natasha confirmed, smirking at the profile. “Edward Parker is Spider-Man.”
“Perfect,” Clint clapped, “so that takes care of his identity issues. We’ll just tell him we know and–”
“But wait,” Steve cut in, a troubled look on his face. “Go back.”
The screen returned to the two pictures side by side, and at his prompting, he opened the boy’s file.
“Peter Parker, age 13. Under Edward’s guardianship for six months after the passing of his previous guardian May Reilly seven months ago.”
The room’s atmosphere dropped at the news.
“I’m sure the reason Spider-Man didn’t want to reveal his identity was so that his nephew wouldn’t be put in danger,” Steve’s voice was quiet and full of sadness.
“So then…what do you suggest? It’s not like we can just ignore this.”
The group sat for a while trying to come up with ideas, Peter’s young face filling the screen, before Tony lit up.
“I got it!”
~~~
Peter was swinging his legs back and forth on the ledge of the building where he was sitting. It was a typical apartment building, and he tilted his head to listen in on the soap opera playing on a TV three floors down.
“Listening to anything interesting, Spidey?”
The teen barely twitched as Romanov stood behind him; he just looked over his shoulder toward her.
“Lucinda is attempting to break up with Kendell because she’s in love with his brother, James, but it turns out that they weren’t actually brothers, they were secretly lovers pretending to be brothers so they could run off with Lucinda’s money.”
The Avenger didn’t even blink, only the upward quirk of her lip revealing her amusement.
“Should I be upset that you spoiled it for me?”
Peter just chuckled as he turned back.
“I highly doubt you care. Now, what is it?”
“Hmm?”
“Why are you seeking me out? Something must have happened.”
Sure enough, Peter then heard the sound of rockets coming closer and closer until the Iron Man suit landed on the rooftop.
“Spider,” Stark greeted genially.
“Iron,” Peter snickered.
“Let’s cut to the chase,” Stark rolled his eyes, lifting his faceplate to do so. “We know who you are.”
Peter froze, the air around him growing rigid as he slowly turned his body almost 180 degrees.
“What did you say?”
“Oooh, that’s creepy as shit,” Stark shuddered.
“You know my identity?”
Stark held his hands up in surrender while Romanov just raised a brow.
“Yeah, yeah, invasion of privacy,” the billionaire sighed. “But we know who you are now. Isn’t that right, Edward?”
Freeze frame.
Record scratch.
‘Wait, what?’
“We ran a sample of your blood through our systems and found a match for Edward Parker.” Here, Stark’s face softened somewhat. “We understand that you just want to protect your nephew, but we can’t just leave this alone.”
‘They…don’t know?’ Suddenly, Peter wanted to jump for joy and maybe hit Stark over the head with his degrees. ‘Holy shit…’
Taking his silence as a confirmation, Romanov spoke up.
“We’d like to offer you a deal.”
“What kind of deal?” He asked almost absent-mindedly.
“If you join the Avengers, then we’ll fund your nephew’s education and even offer him an internship at Stark Industries. We’ve seen his grades and how he skipped a few years, he’s a smart boy. He could benefit from an internship like that.”
‘Well…it would help me in the long run…even though I have no problem getting more scholarships.’
“Alright…but the mask stays on. It’s one thing knowing you know who I am, it’s another thing entirely for you to see me bare-faced.”
Romanov’s eyes narrowed, expression turning contemplative, while Stark just nodded with an air of acceptance.
“Alright, then it’s a deal.”
“Oh!” Peter suddenly perked up as the two turned to leave. “By the way, don’t tell my nephew about this. He doesn’t know what I do.”
The two nodded as they finally left. Romanov stepped into the shadows while Stark positioned himself to fly off before hesitating.
“For what it’s worth, you do a lot of good. We want you to join us for a reason.”
Peter just sighed and looked out across the city, already preparing to swing away as he heard a domestic dispute in an alley a few blocks away.
“Sure, Stark. But my priority will always be this city and the people in it.”
Stark nodded silently as he flew off, Peter leaping off the building toward the yelling. His thoughts were occupied by what had just happened and the knowledge he had just learned.
‘I can’t believe it…I really fooled the Avengers…I mean, I knew the papers looked pretty legit, but I didn’t think they’d get past the Tony Stark and the Avengers.’
He shook his head as he webbed the two men to opposite walls. They were still shouting, so Peter shot webs at their mouths, and the two had to calm down.
‘Guess it's time to test my acting abilities.’