Chapter 1: Tony
Chapter Text
It all starts with an email.
When Tony told Steve ‘mi tower es su tower, please make yourself at home’, he had expected the man would hang a picture or two, maybe add some board games to the collection.
Instead, Steve had creatively interpreted that phrase as ‘please go home-deco-ing your heart out, put new curtains everywhere, turn an old unused office into a full-on library, and ensure an alarming increase in the number of roommates’. Illustrated perfectly by the email Tony received just now, subject: Notice of Incoming Resident.
Dear Tony. Peter Parker will be moving into the bedroom next to Bruce as per tomorrow morning. Please extend your welcome and refrain (for at least one week) from traumatizing him. Kind regards, Steve Rogers.
Who the hell is Peter Parker.
This is the fourth email of this kind Tony has received. The first one was when Steve got Bruce Banner to move in, almost half a year ago by now. Great call, no complaints there. Sam Wilson followed a few months later. He is generous and easy-going, but other than that, not a bad person. And recently, Natasha Romanoff. Pepper was happy with that one, which is surprising because Steve was already the girlfriend she never had: the two of them went shopping for tablecloths last weekend and Pepper keeps asking his opinion about baby names.
Tony is not giving his firstborn some Captain-Rogers-approved name. “FRIDAY, where’s Steve?”
“Library.”
Of course he is.
-
The new library-room has floor-to-ceiling shelves, a thick Persian rug and a deep red couch where Steve is sitting and — insult to injury — reading What to expect when you’re expecting. He may as well be reading a book called I’m gonna be a better dad than the actual dad.
Tony crosses his arms and slouches against the doorpost. “Look who remembered to put on his smarty pants and goodie-two-shoes this morning.”
“Good morning, Tony.”
Tony glances up and down the nearest shelves. “Baby books and the holocaust. What a combo.”
“There’s still empty shelves,” Steve says mildly, nodding his head towards a corner. “If you tell me a topic you’re interested in, I can have some books brought in.”
“And I liked this place just fine the way it was.”
“The unused office? Three empty filing cabinets and a broken chair?”
“Well, I know you’ve lived a life of luxury, but I’ve always been a simple man.”
Sometimes he misses the good old days, when these sorts of remarks made Steve bristle or frown in confusion. Nowadays, Steve just smiles. “Tony,” he says. “I need FRIDAY to add Peter Parker to her clearance, Pepper already arranged for a badge.”
Oh, right. That’s what he came here for. “Who the hell is Peter Parker?”
“He’s Spider-Man.”
“He’s… Spider-Man.”
Steve gives a nod.
“Huh,” Tony says.
“I assigned him a mission, to find our Shadow Chaser. And bring him in.”
“Find the… We care about that shrimp? You could have told me, I can probably find him for you like that.” He snaps his fingers.
“I need your focus on our improved communication network, those portable mesh nodes. Spider-Man is the best person for the job, Nick Fury agreed.” Steve slides one finger along the edge of his book, his expression turning to something more unreadable. “Listen, he’s— Just a head’s up. I think he’s a good kid, but he’s got ah… rough edges.”
Tony tilts his head and squints. “Doesn’t everyone have rough edges compared to Steven Grant Rogers?”
“I’m picking him up from a juvenile detention center.”
That’s—a red alert. Tony just spent yesterday evening babyproofing the kitchen, and Steve wants to bring some knife-wielding maniac in here? “When were you planning on telling me?”
“Just now.” Steve says slowly. “When I told you.”
“What did he do?”
“He didn’t do anything. He wasn’t supposed to be in there.”
Tony rolls his eyes. “Sure. Yeah. Sure. He was framed. Miscarriage of justice is what he told you, right? Shawshank stuff.”
Steve looks faintly amused again. “You can’t be telling me that you’re worried about this, Tony. Of all people.”
“Why would I be worried? Why would I be worried about an enhanced criminal moving in? It’s not as if we have state secrets and billion-dollar technology up for grabs around here.”
“And an AI that’s always watching.”
“Pepper is two months pregnant. I was working on making this tower a kid-friendly space, Steve, and you’re putting an ex-con down the hall!”
“Peter is a kid.”
“I meant actual kids. Teenagers are devils. I’m skipping that stage. My child is going to stay a toddler for 20 years and then switch straight to self-sufficient adult. I’m still working out the right DNA-coding for it, but I’ll get it done.”
Steve’s smile cranks up a fraction. “That’s disturbing.”
Tony slaps a hand over his eyes and huffs loudly, then points at Steve. “Some books on actinobiology would be good.”
-
The Shadow Chaser. A far too cool nickname for an altogether very lame enhanced individual who keeps turning up at cold crime scenes in the middle of the night. He’s… vaguely on Tony’s radar. People on social media seem quite obsessed with figuring out why this guy is skulking around the streets at night in a black ski-mask. Someone posted a video of him easily lifting up an entire dumpster to retrieve some broken parts of Spider-Man’s web shooters, so he is definitely enhanced. And he does seem to have a particular interest in those back-alleys where Spider-Man was active during the day. Spider-Stalker. Not worthy of being called an Avenger’s level threat.
So sure, all in all, Tony can imagine why Steve made the call that Spider-Man would be the best person for this particular mission. Still, though. Something doesn’t add up.
“Pe-ter Par-ker,” he sing-songs to himself as he hops down the wide set of stairs. The Avengers’ living quarters are sort of awkwardly spread across two floors. Upstairs is his workshop, lab, a gym, and the office-now-library, all with sloped ceilings and a view on the helipad from every angle. Downstairs are the bedrooms and bathrooms, and a kitchen that bleeds into a long but weirdly narrow living room.
As he hoped, there’s people down here that he can complain to. Sam and Pepper are fixing lunch, laughing about something, some kind of tropical music playing down the speakers like they are on a beach in the Bahamas—Sam is even wearing flipflops. “Hide the silverware,” Tony says. “Steve is having a criminal move in.”
“I’ll set out another plate,” Pepper says.
“No, but really.”
“I assume you’re referring to Peter Parker.” And then she says something long-winded about non-offender detention that he doesn’t fully register. “Something doesn’t add up,” she says.
“My thoughts. My thoughts exactly.” He sits, curls his ankles around the legs and drums his fingers against the tabletop.
“I know that look,” Sam points at him with a bread knife. “Is this going to be another one of your obsessions?”
Pepper hides a smile behind her hand. “Sam. It will work out,” she says.
It’s outrageous how much they all get along, like one big hallmark movie. That’ll be their critical thinking error. They probably think bringing a teenager in is fine, like a bunch of roommates deciding to adopt a puppy. And then no one remembers to walk it and it’ll keeps chewing up the carpet and shitting in a corner of the hallway.
It’s an analogy that works, if you think about it.
-
Natasha lives at the gym. She probably sleeps under a squat rack like it’s a canopy bed.
She slings one arm around the punching bag and gives him a look. “Tony. Be an adult.”
“I am an adult. I got the certificates to prove it.”
Natasha reaches out and taps Tony’s forehead with one boxing glove. “Why don’t you hold all these complaints until he’s actually here?”
“Why is no one ever on my side?”
“You don’t like people on your side,” she says. “In fact, if I agreed with you, you’d probably change your opinion by morning.”
-
Bruce lives in the lab, probably sleeps propped up against the chromatography station as if it’s a lounge chair.
Unfortunately, he has nothing sensible to say either. Doesn’t even look up from his book. “Tony. Many Avengers have a past with mistakes, you included. Me included. I’d like to think we have compassion for that sort of thing.”
“Oh, he can sow his wild oats all he wants. Just not anywhere around my prospective newborn, thank you.”
“I doubt he is a greater threat than anyone else at this tower.”
“What do you think about this Shadow Chaser guy?”
“I wouldn’t put him very high on the list of threats, but I’ve also learned to never underestimate.”
“I could find him, and we wouldn’t need to bring in some stranger.”
“Do you think that maybe you might really be panicking about something else, but you’re projecting it onto this?” Bruce asks gently.
“Everyone in this tower is an idiot,” Tony complains.
-
And then, the next morning, he walks in on a teenager standing by the kitchen island. The teenager has a bulky sweatshirt and messy hair, and very sharp eyes. And he is holding a banana.
“Aha!” Tony says and points, though he isn’t even sure why.
The teenager— Peter looks back at him, one eyebrow climbing up.
“Where’d you get that banana?”
Peter looks at the fruit bowl right in front of him, then back at Tony. “Ecuador, dumbass.”
“Did they not feed you enough in prison?”
“I’m sorry,” Peter drawls. “Who are you and what the hell is your problem?”
Tony’s problem is that he found out two months ago that he is going to be a father, and bananas are supposed to be healthy for pregnant women which is why he bought them in the first place, and he’s about to be a dad, meaning he is supposed to—what, instill values in another human being? Set boundaries? Pay compliments that aren’t even disguised as sarcastic insults?
“Seriously.” Peter says, bringing him back to the present. The kid has peeled open his banana, is chewing, and adds: “Bananas are scientifically berries, you know.”
“That can’t be right. And don’t talk with a full mouth.”
“Yes, dad.”
Tony chokes on his own breath. “Don’t. Do not go there. That word is a trigger for me right now.”
“Okay,” Peter makes a sort of circular motion with his banana, the peel flapping against his hand. “I can see that you’re going through some sort of—probably midlife crisis,”
“I’m thirty-eight!”
“..so it’ll probably better for both of us if you kindly fuck off and don’t talk to me for—let’s say the entire duration of my stay here. Which is until I’ve found the guy you all want me to find, you’re welcome.”
“It wasn’t my choice to have you around.”
“Great,” Peter says. “I love people who didn’t choose to have me around, they’re my favorite type of people.”
He finishes the banana, chucks the peel in the general direction of the sink, holds up a piece sign, then rotates it into a middle finger and leaves.
The first words Spider-Man ever said to him: ‘Ecuador, dumbass’.
-
Peter doesn’t join them for lunch.
“He has arrived, though?” Natasha asks.
“Peter wanted to take lunch in his own room,” Steve says. “It’s a bit overwhelming, meeting everyone at once.”
“Oh yeah,” Tony says, smushing a potato under his spoon. “He sure seemed very overwhelmed when I talked to him.”
Nat narrows her eyes, pointing at Steve with her fork. “I want to assess him.”
“That’s… not necessary Natasha.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“He ate Pepper’s bananas,” Tony says.
“This tower is full of insane people,” Sam laments.
-
It’s not just lunch. It’s dinner, and breakfast. A day goes by and another, and another, and Tony never even catches a glimpse of the new tenant. He complains to Steve about it when they’re painting the nursery together.
“Shouldn’t you be happy about that?” Steve says. “Considering you seem to have a phobia of teenagers?”
Tony is on a stepladder, but he forgot why. He’s just sort of standing there. Meanwhile, Steve is rolling primer onto the walls in neat V-motions, exactly the way the home depot people did it in the video. It’s still annoying, how the guy is always immediately good at everything.
“It’s not kosher. FRIDAY told me the kid leaves the tower each morning and doesn’t return until late afternoon, but there have been no Spider-Man sightings. So what is he up to all day?”
“He goes to school.”
“Ah,” Tony says. “Well. Okay. That checks out.”
Steve smiles.
“But he’s been in this tower for days and I haven’t seen him. It’s creepy. Did we recruit Spider-Man or Sasquatch?”
“You can pick him up from school if you want. Pepper and I have been taking shifts.”
“Is that right.” Pepper hasn’t mentioned anything.
“He’s not very talkative, though. Not to me at least. He just puts in headphones and listens to music the whole way.”
Ah. So the kid isn’t fond of Steve. That means he has good taste, at least.
-
It comes up when he heads to bed that evening and Pepper is still up, sitting up against the headboard, slowly flipping through a notepad. “We decided on green for the nursery,” Tony says as he toes off his shoes.
“Steve told me.”
“Isn’t he a champ. Love how much you two get along.”
“I like green. The most natural color.” And then she says something about going to Long Island tomorrow, and something else about solar panels.
Tony slides into bed and pulls the covers up to his chin. “What are you reading?”
“I wrote down conversation topics for when I pick Peter up from school tomorrow.”
Tony stares at her.
“I want him to like me. Is that pathetic?”
“Yes, very,” Tony says. “Show me that.” He takes the notepad from her and starts flipping through it. “Ice cream flavors,” he reads out loud. “Pufferfish. Pufferfish?”
“I saw a documentary on them, they’re interesting.” She snatches the notepad back and roots around in the bed sheets for her pen. “Teenagers never liked me, even when I was one myself. And now we’re going to have a baby who will be a teenager one day.”
“I’m actually working on that. I’m gonna code that puberty right out of its DNA.”
“I just need to know that my own child isn’t going to hate me.”
“Of course our kid is going to hate us,” Tony says. “That’s what normal kids do. You need to relax, hon.”
“You just said you want to genetically modify our child, Tony, I don’t think it’s me who should relax.”
“Point taken.”
-
The shadow chaser. He hasn’t been sighted in a while, but Tony only needs a few prompts to FRIDAY to get himself a holographic grid of the city, streets rendered in lines of cobalt blue, red dots marking every sighting of the enhanced. Rooftops, subway tunnels, back alleys.
Outside, rain is beating down against the helipad. Tony leans back in his chair, hands wrapped around a coffee mug. “FRIDAY, what is the most concerning thing anyone has seen the Shadow Chaser do?”
Friday pauses a moment. “I have several instances of him ignoring ‘do not cross’-tape,” she then says.
Why would Nick Fury care about this guy? And if he does care about this guy, why would he leave the case to some delinquent teenager? Something is not adding up.
“Temporal gradient, FRI, color-code the sightings by time.”
The map shifts as the red dots flicker into a rainbow spectrum. Older sightings now light up orange in the south of Queens, south of Forest Park, while the freshest data points towards the northeast, around Long Island City.
“Boss. I’ll go ahead and remind you that you promised Mr. Rogers to have the portable mesh nodes deployed into the Quinjet and every armored van by this weekend.”
“Boring,” Tony mutters.
“Possibly life-saving, boss. Communication is key to any relationship.”
Tony waves a hand and the holographic map disappears. “FRIDAY. Are bananas actually berries?”
“Botanically, yes.”
“Hmm,” Tony says, and spins in his chair. “Is Pepper picking the kid up from school today?”
“Ms. Potts is in Long Island City all day.”
“She didn’t even tell me!”
“Actually—"
“What have we got on Peter Parker, anyway?”
“Boss. The portable mesh nodes.”
“Just give me the headlines.”
“If I could sigh, I would,” FRIDAY says. “Shall I begin with the information I can legally access, or jump straight into breaking state and federal privacy laws?”
“Thank you for checking, let’s take the unusual route and start with the vanilla stuff.”
“I found some social media accounts that are fairly inactive and a few mentions of his academic achievements.” She brings up a scatter of blue holographic images above his desk. “The school newspapers mention, amongst other things, a project where Mr. Parker repurposed a toaster into a model for a closed spacetime loop-stabilizer.
Tony waves his hand to expand the file. His brow furrows as he reads. “What the hell is—This kid rewrote the laws of physics for a science fair? Did he invent time travelling toast?” There is a picture of a younger Peter Parker, no older than fourteen, his hair still messy but his eyes a whole lot less sharp.
“Boss,” FRIDAY says. “Seriously. The portable mesh nodes.”
Tony raps his knuckles against the table. “Tell Rogers I’m picking the kid up. Send the address to my phone.”
-
Midtown tech. A school for nerds. And ex-cons, apparently. Smart ex-cons, though. Tony knocks sharply against the window when he spots Peter.
Peter opens the door and slides into the passenger seat. He scowls. “Where’s Pepper?”
“Long Island City.”
The scowl turns into a grimace and Peter says, “I hate Long Island City.”
Tony wants to ask what Long Island City has ever done wrong, but he thinks Peter is probably just speaking out of principle, because teenagers always hate everything.
The kid dumps his bag at his feet. He takes a pair of earbuds from his pocket and starts untangling them.
“So you’ve been talking to Pepper, huh?”
Peter says nothing.
“I’ll give you a hundred bucks to tell her she’s going to make a great mom.”
“Every single one of you is insane,” Peter says. “Start the damn car.”
“You know, there’s a whole science behind why your earphones spontaneously get tangled.”
“I knooow, Brownian motion in the elastomers,” Peter says with much irritation, as if this is a topic Tony has been nagging him about for a week.
“Is that how you made that bio-inspired intergalactic sling-shot for AP physics?”
Peter yanks at the earbuds. “What the fuck, stalker?”
“It was in the school paper. You also use elastomers in your web fluid?”
Peter says nothing.
“I’ll give you another hundred bucks for a sample of that stuff.”
Peter says nothing.
“Want to come up to my workshop when we get back, I’ll give you a tour? Give you a hand finding that Shadow Chaser?”
“No. Fuck off,” Peter says. And puts in the earbuds.
Tony will wear him down eventually.
-
“Can’t believe he didn’t even want a tour. That’s a sign of some sort of psychopathy, I’m sure. You know, early signs.” He counts them on his fingers: “Hurting animals, having no friends, refusing to visit Tony Stark’s workshop.”
“He’s busy,” Steve says as he clears the plates away. “He’s working on a case. And he isn’t hurting animals. If anything, Spider-Man seems to be strangely preoccupied with saving cats, dogs and pigeons, lately.”
“Peter Parker’s Paw Patrol,” Sam says. “Ooh. Movie night, anyone?”
Peter was once again conspicuously absent during dinner. “Does the kid even eat?” Tony asks.
“I’ve seen him sneaking granola bars,” Natasha says.
Tony throws Steve an incredulous look. “Rogers. Who is looking out for this kid, exactly?”
“Sorry,” Steve says. “What happened to the ‘how dare you let an ex-con move in’-speech?”
“Well,” Tony says, and falters. Then scowls when he catches a slow smile creeping across Pepper’s face. He huffs. “What happened is, he made a multidimensional toaster.”
“He….” Steve starts, eyeing their toaster dubiously.
“Not here, genius. When he was in his first year of high school.”
Steve perks up. “He told you? He never talks to me.”
“Of course he doesn’t. You’re the one holding something over him. What’s gonna happen to him once he finds this Shadow Chaser, back to prison?”
Steve purses his lips. “I’m sure I can find another mission for him.”
“So he’s here as long as he’s useful, huh?”
“Stay out of this, Tony,” Steve says, sounding unusually stiff. “I’m handling it.”
“I’m going over there. You guys pick a movie without me.”
He tosses his napkin in the direction of the sink and heads to the hallway. Steve calls something after him, but Tony has gotten very good at not listening to him. He passes the elevator. He knows Peter’s room is next to Bruce’s, but there’s no way he could have guessed: no doorhanger, no creative door mat, no magnets or stickers, nothing that indicates anyone is living here. To be fair, the kid hasn’t been here long. But even Natasha hung up a nameplate.
Tony knocks and the door swings open. Peter scowls at him, no surprised there. Behind him, his bedroom doesn’t look any different from the unused guestrooms further down this hallway. Bare walls, a curtainless window, beige blankets.
“I like your style,” Tony says. “It breathes juvie jail cell. You got any hobbies?”
Peter leans one shoulder against the doorframe. “Sleeping, staring at walls, avoiding human interaction.”
“Hmm,” Tony cocks his head, gives the kid a measuring look. “How about hanging a dartboard? They let you play darts in prison?”
“Oh yeah. They’re really big on handing out sharp, stabby objects to all the prisoners. Sorry, residents. Is there a point to you being here?”
“We’re getting ready for movie night. Want to join?”
“I’m busy,” Peter says. “Working that case.”
“Kid. You’re not just here for some mission. Is that what Steve told you when he plucked you out of that jail cell?”
Peter snorts and pushes off the doorframe. “Steve didn’t tell me shit,” he says. “And even if he did, I do what I want. So if I wanted to sit around with all you people and play Settlers of Catan while eating homemade pretzels, I would. But I don’t, so I don’t. You are a roof over my head and food on my plate. Other than that, you can all leave me the hell alone.” He turns and the bedroom door slams.
“Is that right,” Tony tells the closed door, setting his hands on his hips. “Oh, we’ll see about that.”
Mission. Freaking. Acquired.
Also, homemade pretzels sounds like a great idea.
-
The thing is. Tony can probably find out who this Shadow Chaser is in just a few days if he puts his mind to it. And then Peter can move on to spending his time doing something that actually interests him. In Tony’s workshop, building a coffeepot that ages backwards or something like that. Steve won’t even need to know. Peter can just pretend like he’s still working this case. Tony will cover for him. They’ll drag it out for as long as they need to—
“Tony?” Steve says. He has appeared in the middle of the workshop and is looking at the holographic map of Shadow-Chaser-sightings. “Is this for those portable mesh nodes?” Bless him for being as dense as led when it comes to technology.
“In a way,” Tony says, and makes the hologram disappear with a hand wave. “Rogers, I’ll have the first updates done — soon. Question.” He leans back in his chair and steeples his fingers. “Why does Fury care so much about this Shadow Chaser?”
“It isn’t your concern, Tony, Peter is working on it.”
“What aren’t you telling me? Is that enhanced more dangerous than he seems?”
“He is precisely dangerous enough,” Steve says very evenly, “to be the right job for Spider-Man to handle. Let him handle it.”
“What if he needs help?”
“Then I will be the one helping him. You have enough work to do.”
Tony leans an elbow on the table and points. “Oh really. You’ll be helping him? You knew the kid had been in jail for weeks, and only got him out of there once you had a use for him. He’s fifteen!”
“Your attitude about this whole thing is giving me whiplash.”
“I’m two months pregnant, hormones are kicking in.”
“Send me a confirmation when the updates are… updated. An electronic mail will suffice.” Steve leaves.
Tony squints at the glass doors hissing shut and brings the holographic map back up with a flick of his wrist. He leans back and studies the pattern of dots. “FRIDAY, get me a compilation of the least unwatchable footage we have of this enhanced.”
“Compiling. Stand by.”
It’s still fuzzy and grainy, what she ends up showing him. Not to mention boring. Very, very boring. Just some person-like shape, walking around poorly lit alleyways, standing on poorly lit corners, climbing up poorly lit walls—
Hang on. Tony sits up straighter. “Rewind that.”
FRIDAY does.
“Is he… climbing up that wall?”
“If that black blob is indeed a person, then yes, it would appear that way.”
Tony leans back, his mind racing. “That’s a very specific superpower, wouldn’t you say?”
“Only one other enhanced is known to have it,” FRIDAY agrees.
So perhaps they are dealing with Spider-Man’s evil twin. Or perhaps Spider-Man, for some unfathomable reason, likes to spend some evenings running around in black rather than his own red-and-blue onesie. Meaning, Peter Parker is both Spider-Man and the Shadow Chaser.
In which case, this kid just got himself a get-out-of-jail-free-card by pretending to chase down his own alter ego.
In which case, unsurprisingly, Nick Fury and Captain America are a pair of oblivious dumbasses.
“Tell Rogers I’m picking the kid up from school.”
Chapter 2: Peter
Chapter Text
It all starts when Captain Freaking America steps into Peter’s jail cell—that he isn’t supposed to call a jail cell, they told him, it’s a unit; and he’s not an inmate, he’s a resident; and those aren’t guards, Peter, they are youth counsellors. It’s to avoid stigmatizing minors, Peter.
Whatever, he’s locked in and there’s barbed wire everywhere. You can polish a turd and put glitter on it, it’s still a fucking turd. In fact, you just made the turd even worse, because people are more likely to pick it up and make their hands all dirty.
It’s an analogy that works, if you think about it.
Peter is lying in bed, head lolling over the side when the man appears in his upside-down field of vision. He’s in simple jeans and a brown coat, but Peter recognizes him instantly. His chest does a funny squeezing thing, but he doesn’t sit up, he just blinks up at the Captain and idly kicks the wall with one foot. “Am I getting a personalized PSA? What a treat.”
“Would you like to get out of this place?” Captain America asks.
Peter blinks a few more times and then rolls over onto his stomach, folds his hands under his chin. Well. This guy knows about Spider-Man, clearly. And seems about to make Peter an offer he can’t refuse, though he’s going to try his damn hardest to pretend that he can. “Say more,” he says in a tone of bored indifference.
So Captain America explains The PlanTM. One that seems to mainly evolve around Peter capturing the Shadow Chaser. Who is also Peter.
“The mission is to bring him in,” Cap explains. “And if you choose to accept it, our resources are at your disposal. We’ll move you into Avenger’s tower. There’s… uh. We have a kitchen. And bedrooms.”
“A kitchen, huh? You’re the least persuasive person I’ve ever met.”
“We have, uh…”
“Will I be allowed to leave the tower?”
“Yes, of course.” Cap sounds offended about it. As if keeping a kid locked up for no reason is an unusual thing to do. Go figure.
“And the curfew situation?”
“The… what?”
That is answer enough. This man very clearly does not know what he is getting himself into. Which could work very nicely in Peter’s favor.
“Official custody remains with the Department of Child Welfare,” Cap says. “All legal decisions go through the state.”
“Oh, thank god,” Peter drawls. “That’s a load off. They’ve been doing such a good job of it.”
“I know, Peter,” Cap says. “I’m here to get you out. This is the offer I can give you.”
He wants to ask For how long, but he can already kinda guess the answer. The same as it has always been, anywhere he has ended up in his life: We don’t know. Just until someone decides something else, usually on a whim. Peter has a PhD in dealing with people’s whims, and how to get the most out of them, scrape the bottom of the barrel.
Avenger’s tower is one big fat swanky barrel and Peter is going to scrape that thing until he has splinters under his nails. “What am I supposed to tell the people here?”
“Nothing. Keep your head down, stay out of trouble, I’ll get everything in order and pick you up this weekend.”
“Aye aye, Captain.”
“Call me Steve.”
-
The Shadow Chaser. A far too cool nickname for an altogether very lame last resort.
After his parents died, Peter went through two temporary foster families, and then a handful of group homes because at that point he was too old to be decently appealing to any foster parents. People prefer a kid who’s shiny and new and malleable. And yet, a year ago the Craxtons suddenly agreed to take him in, which was supposed to be permanent—
And here he is.
Peter sighs and tugs at the sleeves of his jail uniform. Excuse him, his youth-counselling-therapeutic-sweatshirt. The facts of life are, ‘home’ comes with heavy quotation marks. Important stuff is never safe there, everyone steals, and the kids that don’t steal like to break things. The only safe place to keep your stuff is your school locker, so as soon as Spider-Man happened that’s where he always stashed the suit. And on those rare occasions that he’d fucked something up during the day and needed a follow-up, he’d sneak out of whatever quote unquote ‘home’ he was staying at, dressed all in black. To follow up.
That’s it. That’s all. Buzzfeed Unsolved will be so disappointed.
Does it feel like a great use of his time to pretend to be chasing himself down, and come up with fake things to report back to the Avengers to string them along and drag it out as long as possible? No.
Will he still do it if that means he can get out of this place? Hell fucking yes.
-
Keep your head down is easier said than done, several guards look at him real weird the rest of the week.
“We’re not guards, we’re youth counsellors,” Marcus corrects when Peter complains about it.
Peter tugs at the grass. “Oh my god, fuck you. You’re just a glitter-turd.” He shivers, the winter cold is seeping into his bones, but he doesn’t want to go back inside.
“Of course we’re looking at you weird, you had Captain Freaking America visiting you, and we were told not to ask any questions. From hii-igh up.” He stretches out the word ‘high’ to emphasize exactly how damn high.
Captain America walked into his room and asked him to move in. That’s pretty ridiculous, actually. That’s way too ridiculous. Peter rolls onto his back and breathes out. When he looks straight up like this, he can’t even see the razor wire on top of the fences, just the sky. And he can hear distant cars, and he can pretend that he is in Forest Park in Queens.
“What did you read about, today?” Marcus asks.
“The murder on Hypatia of Alexandria. And fish ladders.”
“What’s new with fish ladders?”
“They made a bigger one.”
“Cool. And how did Hypatia get murdered, then?”
“By an angry crowd, because they didn’t like her ideas.”
“History ain’t pretty, huh?”
“Yeah,” Peter says, turning his head a little until he can see the razor wire again. “I mean. They used to put people in prison who hadn’t even done anything. Just for, like, insulting the queen or being gay. Can you imagine such barbarity?”
Marcus snorts, but then says, sincerely: “You’ll get out of here, kiddo.”
Marcus is one of the more useful guards. Whenever Peter is in a particularly foul mood, Marcus will always take him outside to the little patch of grass behind the laundry facilities and let him just lie down on the ground and talk about nonsense. Works a whole lot better than his bi-weekly therapy sessions with Dr. Magliano.
Just because he’s useful, doesn’t mean Peter has to like him, though.
Prison is fucked up but also strangely sheltered. Everything is decided for you, you don’t even have to think about anything, just follow the rules. The idea of leaving is weirdly intimidating. Let alone leaving to move in with the freaking Avengers.
Maybe the whole thing was some big joke, or it’ll all fall through at the last second. He’ll just be sitting around until Sunday evening’s lights out, the dumbass who got his hopes up.
No sir, he won’t be making that mistake.
-
And then he is awoken Saturday morning when the Captain—sorry, Steve, steps into his jail cell—sorry, unit. The overhead intercom hasn’t even buzzed yet, so it’s gotta be before 7:30 am.
“You’re here…” Peter says stupidly, half-awake, and then cringes at himself. That sounded borderline pathetic.
“Let’s move, son,” the Captain says. He’s wearing a baseball cap and there’s a rolled-up paper in his hand that probably says something like Peter Parker has been excused from prison, sincerely Captain America.
There is something warm in the man’s gaze and Peter doesn’t like it, he doesn’t like people looking at him like they’re friends. He swings his legs over the edge of his bed and stands. He avoids the intensity of the Captain’s gaze by turning away to fold his blanket, the way he has done every morning, and might actually be doing for the last time right now. Something lodges in his throat and he swallows it away. “Okay.”
“Ready, then?”
“Almost.” He grabs EcoCurrent magazine off the desk and stuffs it under his sweatshirt. He hasn’t finished reading about those fish ladders.
The Captain’s eyebrows do a funny thing, but he doesn’t say anything of it. Which is great, because Peter would really prefer not to have to yell in this idiot’s face before they’re even out of here. “Ready.”
He actually gets to do it; walk down that hallway back to the intake office. The paperwork clears at the snap of a finger, getting Captain America to bail you out of jail is like getting a general pardon from the president himself. Peter gets to wear his own coat again, he slides his arms into the sleeves and pretends it’s no big deal. They hand him plastic bags with his clothes, some books, a wallet with nothing in it. Steve wants to grab a bag but Peter wafts him away and slings one over his shoulder. “Let’s fucking go.”
He doesn’t care about saying goodbye to any fellow inmates—sorry, residents. Clingy people who are way too concerned with forming cliques, even though a friend today can be a snitch tomorrow. Whatever, if they haven’t learned yet, they will soon enough.
The buzz of the lock, then the clank of the gate sliding open. It feels like someone should run up and stop them at the last minute, but no one does. They step onto the cracked concrete of the parking lot. The sky is grey and passing cars stink up the place. It’s nothing poetic, being out here.
He shivers, so it must be chilly. He can’t really tell, because he’s also strangely numb. “What time is it?”
“Just gone seven o’clock.”
“You couldn’t have let me sleep in, huh?”
“They let you sleep in, in there?”
“Oh yeah, dude. Every weekend. Breakfast in bed around eleven. Eggs benedict and chocolate croissants.”
“Sounds like an awful combination.”
“Fine, I was lying.”
“I figured. We’ll have croissants at the tower.” The captain smiles down at him. “My car’s over there.”
“Aye aye, Captain.”
“Steve.”
Peter hoists the bags up higher and follows him. He is led to a modest black car. Peter stuffs his bags in the backseat and gets in the front.
“Buckle up, kid.”
“Or what, I’ll get arrested?” He buckles up, though.
They drive, and the Captain talks some more about The PlanTM, until Peter is about ready to lose his mind. He doesn’t want to think about this too much. He has a place now that is—not home, not permanent, just for as long as he can keep up this lie. Which is fine, actually. In fact, he kinda prefers it this way. He isn’t relying on people’s charity—because that always runs out. He is useful to Captain America and Captain America is useful to him, the balance sheet is even. They’ll have a deal until one of them isn’t useful anymore. Very simple, simple is nice.
He pulls his fish magazine out from under his sweater and flips it open.
-
The elevator opens into a hallway with wide marble flooring, a velvet-upholstered bench, large potted plants that look fake. Cap leads him down the hallway. “Natasha,” he says, waving at a door they pass. “Bruce. And that’s you.” They pause by an open door. “You can meet everyone at dinner.”
Yeah, that’s not happening. Peter steps across the threshold. “Okay thanks.” And shuts the door in the Captain’s face.
He stands next to the bed and presses down against the mattress with both hands. He isn’t even sure why, it’s just so… high. And fluffy. The whole bed looks like a cake. A mocha cake with different layers of beige and brown, and big pillows on top like tufts of whipped cream. Behind it is a broad window that floods the rooms with natural light. No bars.
He lies down on that bed, staring up at the ceiling. This is how he spent most of his days in the past six weeks.
He should probably try to remember what hobbies he used to have.
-
The Avengers are fucking weirdos. Peter is barely settled in before one of them starts yelling at him about bananas. Another one knocks on his door and says she wants to assess him. “Assess this,” Peter says, and flips her the bird.
A woman with long blond hair brings him dinner and doesn’t immediately get all up in his face like everyone else in this tower, so that’s something. “I’m Pepper,” she says. “I’m glad you’re here, Peter.”
Peter tucks his hands in his pockets and says nothing.
“Please, help yourself to anything you need. I put towels and toiletries in the bathroom and I’ve taken care of all your school supplies. We usually have lunch and dinner together, but do whatever feels comfortable. There are always lots of leftovers to be found in the fridge and freezer. I’ll be driving you to school tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Peter says, taking a step back. She is already getting on his nerves.
“Anything you need.”
“Yeah, great.” He makes sure it sounds like a dismissal.
“And you can always ask FRIDAY.” And then she points at the ceiling and leaves.
Peter blinks, nudges the door closed. He turns and looks up at the ceiling. Clean and white, with brass pendant lights.
“She meant me,” a female voice says from every direction all at once and Peter jumps back, the doorknob digging painfully into his spine.
“What?” he squeaks.
“An artificial intelligence created by Tony Stark, here to answer any questions you might have.”
“Oh,” Peter says. “Um.” He rubs his back. “What do you know about fish ladders?”
-
Pepper does drive him to school the next morning. Peter puts in his earphones and turns the music up, leaning away from her.
They gave away his locker, Jesus, the one place his belongings were supposed to be safe. “Kept it all in storage, though,” Mr. Harrington says chipperly, nudging a pile of stuff across the table.
“Great,” Peter says, heart in his throat, carefully looping the strap of his gym bag around his wrist and tugging it closer. His spidersuit is in there. Next to the gym bag is a pile of books and a picture on top that used to hang on the inside of his locker. The decathlon team, about a year back. He is at the far left, smiling. Peter looks at that smile and feels weirdly angry.
“Will we see you at decathlon?” Mr. Harrington asks.
“You haven’t replaced me yet?”
“Well. Well we have, but—”
“Great. Let’s keep it that way.” He gathers the books, hoists his bag up and turns.
“Oh, Peter, there’s a new kid in your—”
“Not interested.”
He throws the picture in the trashcan on his way to the biology classrooms. He got assigned a new locker over there, between all the first years. Peter grumbles as he kicks one aside to clear the way. The school bell rings.
School. He used to like school, though he never really had any friends. He would describe his classmates as politely aloof at best. Which is just as well. The last thing he wants is people caring enough to ask prying questions on his first—
“Hi,” the boy says, breathless, coming out of nowhere. “I’m Ned. Mr. Harrington said you’d be showing me around on my first day.” He pats his hand against the locker next to his. “Look. Locker-buddies. You’re Peter, right?”
That’s sounds like exactly the sort of thing Mr. Harrington would consider a good idea. So clever, so smart, let’s put the kid with no friends with the other kids with no friends, match made in heaven. “Yeah,” he says. “Peter. Um… What’s… Did you move here?”
It’s a perfunctory question, making friends feels so pointless. He doesn’t even know how long he is actually staying.
“Yeah,” Ned says. “Well, my mom and dad separated, so—"
Peter slams his locker. “Let’s move.”
A few kids remark on his return — mainly Flash, loudly and obnoxiously, “Did you get lost in the woods after that party? Did you get drunk and arrested?”
But by lunchtime he is old news.
Unfortunately, Ned is far more interested in him than his other classmates. And far more insensitive about it. “Were you sick?” he asks point blank during lunch, as he drags his potato wedges through the tomato sauce. “Like, really sick for six weeks? Did someone die? Were you pregnant? Did your house burn down? Were you suspended for vandalism?”
“No,” Peter says. “Did you just ask me if I was pregnant?”
“Who is the loudmouth with the green shirt?”
“Flash. Stay out of his way.”
“And the girl with the stare?”
“MJ. Stay out of her way, too.”
“Wanna come over to my place after school?”
“No,” Peter says.
But no matter what he does over the next few days to try and evade Ned, Ned always seems to catch up with him, like some menacing horror villain.
-
Steve Rogers and Pepper Potts are similar problems. Peter does a pretty damn good job of avoiding everyone at the tower. He stays holed up in his room after school, lies on his bed and stares at the ceiling, prison-style. In the evenings, he waits until FRIDAY gives the all-clear and then rushes to the kitchen to grab himself dinner. Which is trickier than it sounds, because someone babyproofed the kitchen to an extent where opening a cupboard feels like solving a Rubik’s cube.
But Potts and Rogers — They drive him to school, pick him up, and keep asking him how he is doing, it’s a nuisance. Particularly the Potts lady is a bit of a mystery. With Steve Rogers at least, it’s pretty clear why he’s keeping an eye on Peter; what he expects in exchange for hot meals and barless windows.
So as soon as he has the chance, Peter suits up. Adjusts the goggles, tugs the gloves down and wriggles his fingers. Following FRIDAY’s directions, he takes the stairs up and steps onto the helipad. Moves right up to the edge and leans over, the city sprawling out beneath him.
Freedom.
He jumps.
Past chimneys and gutters, he swings to Queensboro bridge in only a few minutes and reaches Long Island City — a neighborhood he knows he shouldn’t hate, he shouldn’t, because there’s loads of people living here, it’s not just the Craxtons. There’s loose roof tiles to fix and bike thieves to chase down, just like anywhere else in the city.
If he had to choose between Peter Parker, the Shadow Chaser and Spider-Man — then it’s definitely when he is Spider-Man that he feels most like himself. The Shadow Chaser is a compromise, and most of the time, so is Peter Parker. No one ever actually wants you to be yourself.
So which is really the secret identity?
He helps a drunk guy out of a pond and returns a lost cell phone, and a frustration is building in his chest. Because it feels like something was supposed to click back in place and it doesn’t. He just keeps feeling… annoyed.
“I wrote a song about you, want to here?” an excited young girl offers.
“Oh,” Peter says. “Um. No, I’m good.”
Spider-Man used to love kids. He liked the Avengers, he wanted to be one of them. He used to leave post-its everywhere with encouraging messages. He thinks that must mean that he used to be happier, but he can’t really remember.
Peter Parker has given up on humanity, but Spider-Man shouldn’t.
He gets back to the tower feeling frustrated, and passing Captain America in the hallway doesn’t help.
“Hey, did you—” Steve starts.
“Piss off.”
-
“Was it that party?” Ned asks. “People say the last place they saw you before you disappeared was the decathlon mixer with Frosty Tech.”
“Forsyth Tech,” Peter mumbles as he copies the formulas from the whiteboard into his notebook.
“Did you go on a secret vacation? Did you break a leg? Did you get amnesia?”
“Oh my god,” Peter whispers furiously.
“What? I’m an interested friend.”
“I was in prison,” Peter says. Doesn’t even keep his voice down. “Punched someone in the face. “
Ned gapes at him. “At the Frosty Tech party?”
“No.”
“You can go to prison for that?”
“I guess. If you punch hard enough.”
“Why’d you punch someone?”
“He kept asking me annoying questions.”
Ned abruptly snaps his mouth shut.
Peter breathes out and goes back to copying the formulas into his notebook. The teacher made a mistake in the second one, but Peter is not going to be the one to—
“What’s prison like?” Ned asks.
“Shut up.”
“Like a dungeon, and a moat full of crocodiles?”
“You’re very annoying, you know that?”
“Well, you’re very rude. So I think we’re even.”
-
“Hey,” Flash says, poking him roughly in the back during gym class dodgeball. “Were you actually in prison, Penis?”
“Yeah. Punched someone’s teeth out.”
Flash gives a smile; a fake, I’m-pretending-to-be-cool smile. “For?”
Peter sneers and tugs at the hem of Flash’s neon-color shirt. “For dressing like a twat.”
Flash pales a little and jogs away. Peter grabs a ball and aims for the back of his head.
-
Mr. Harrington stops him in the hallway. “I’ve had some concerned kids come up to me, Peter,” he says. “If you’re going to go around telling classmates you were in prison, maybe tell them the truth about the exact circumstances? To avoid harmful rumors?”
“All due respect, sir,” Peter says. “Fuck off.”
-
He leans back in the passenger seat and breathes out. Fuck everyone, fuck everything. You know what, Spider-Man is giving up on humanity too. He’s only saving cats and dogs from now on. They were already about fifty percent of his clientele anyways.
“Are you all right?” Pepper asks.
Peter scowls and doesn’t reply.
“How was your day?”
Peter buckles up and says nothing.
“Do you like ice cream?”
“Jesus,” Peter breathes, “can everyone just leave—"
“Have you heard of pufferfish?”
Peter blinks at her. “I’m sorry?”
“Pufferfish. They make sand sculptures. I saw a documentary on them.”
“I thought they were the toxic ones that blow themselves up really big.”
“That, too. But there’s this one species of pufferfish— I forget the name.”
“Like, what kind of sculptures?”
“Huge circles in the sand, on the bottom of the ocean. And they decorate them with shells. Scuba divers found the first sand structures in the nineties, but didn’t know how they got there. It took another twenty years before we discovered how they got made.”
Peter hums. “Bet they thought it was aliens, for a while.”
“Like crop circles.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out a fish is making crop circles, some undiscovered species. Have you heard of cuttle fish? They’re like, uh, liquified chameleons. They can change their color and their skin.”
“Fish are cool, right?”
“Yeah,” Peter says. “Fish are cool.”
When they get to the penthouse, Pepper says: “Please have a cup of tea with us?” Steve is at the kitchen table with a stupidly wide smile.
“I got homework,” Peter says. “And Mr. Rogers gave me a mission to work on.” He flees down the hallway to his room.
He circles his room once, idly, and pulls the large wardrobe open.
He tossed his garbage bags of clothes in there on day one and hasn’t really organized them since, just digs through the mess whenever he needs something. Maybe it’s time to graduate to drawers.
That was somehow always the most depressing part of any new home. Unpacking. Because unpacking felt like getting your hopes up.
He squats down and sighs as he rummages through. Pulls out the black ski mask and pokes his fingers through the holes.
It would be wishful thinking that he’ll ever have the need to be the Shadow Chaser again. Now that he’s officially been in juvie, hell will freeze over before a foster family agrees to take him in. So it’s Avengers’ Tower for as long as he can scrape this barrel, and then it’s at best a highly restrictive group home until he has aged out of the system. He won’t be able to sneak out at night.
Bottom line, he might as well get rid of this mask, before any other Avengers see it and put two and two together. Steve Rogers wouldn’t be happy about that.
For now, he tucks it back into the pile. FRIDAY is watching, after all.
“Hey,” he says, standing, “did you know about pufferfish making sand sculptures?”
“The white-spotted pufferfish, Torquigener albomaculosus,” FRIDAY says. “The sand structures are roughly twenty times their own size, made by the males, and a part of their mating ritual.”
“I’d fall for that.” Peter lets himself drop down on the bed. He pulls a pillow closer and hugs it to his stomach, kicks one foot against the wall. “I’d totally go on a date with someone if he made me some art twenty times his own size.”
Not that he’s going on dates any time soon after everything that’s happened. Whether it’s with a he or a she. He’s keeping that part of his social life firmly on lockdown until he’s on his own two feet.
-
He patrols Queens all evening and sticks firmly to rescuing animals. Steve never said he couldn’t. He puts a baby pigeon back in its nest, cleans up trash so it doesn’t end up killing a turtle, helps a frog cross the road, and redirects one confused raccoon.
-
Steve Rogers and Pepper Potts were one thing, but then Tony Stark starts getting up in his business. Turns up outside his school, outside his bedroom door, talking nonsense about how Peter should come to movie night or buy a dartboard. It’s all very stupid.
He wouldn’t mind having a dartboard, though. Maybe he’ll even put a picture of the Craxtons on it, have something to aim at.
He decides to ask Pepper. Because she likes fish, so she’s cool, kinda.
He knows where to find her around this hour; having tea with Steve Rogers in the living room, talking about baby names and pie recipes. Which is exactly what Peter pictured when he was fourteen, had just gotten his powers, and dreamt of becoming an Avenger.
He sidles past them to grab a snack, and on his way back, pauses by the table. Steve and Pepper immediately go quiet, because Peter never pauses. In the — what has it been, two weeks — that he’s been here, he has never stayed longer in this room than he absolutely had to.
“Can I hang a dartboard in my room?” he asks. “I’ll pay for it.”
He didn’t think it was a big ask, but Pepper and Steve both get a weird look on their face. Peter almost says ‘never mind’, but Steve breaks the silence just in time. “Sure, Peter. I’ll order one for you.”
“I can pay.”
“I just set up an entire library upstairs at the request of this one,” Steve says, lifting his teacup in Pepper’s direction. “Really, a dartboard is not a big ask.”
“Fine,” Peter says, and then feels annoyed at himself for the rest of the day.
-
“New offer,” Stark says one afternoon when he picks Peter up from school, and Peter can’t get his earphones untangled in time. “Ever wanted to muck around with a 3D printer? A sandblasting cabinet? Want to see how much shit you can throw into my industrial shredder? Want to make a baby-cry-to-text translator with me, or reprogram Dum-E for midnight feeding?” Tony pulls away from the curb. “Seat buckle.”
“Are you the one babyproofing the whole house?” Peter asks. “There’s a baby gate in front of the elevator now.”
“And if you help me, we can have child safety hinges installed on every single door by tonight.”
“Why do you care how I spend my afternoons?”
“Because the idea of you sitting in that sad, barely carpeted bedroom by yourself gives me second-hand depression.”
“I’m busy, I have a mission.”
“Right. Right. The Shadow Chaser. That’s tricky. Tricky mission. He’s pretty mysterious, isn’t he?”
Peter says nothing.
“You know, sometimes the trick to catching someone is putting yourself in their shoes,” Tony says. “If you were the Shadow Chaser, where would you be hiding?”
Currently, in the closet. In a garbage bag.
“Come on, why won’t you talk to me about science or missions?” Tony wheedles. “You talked to Pepper about fish, for crying out loud.”
“Pepper is cooler than you. She married down.”
“Please. I’m pretty charming, right?”
“I once lived in a group home where they had guinea pigs with more charm than you.”
Tony huffs. “You could have just said ‘no’.” They pull up at a traffic light and Tony sighs, shifts a bit in his seat. “Listen,” he says. “I’m gonna tell you something, but don’t freak out, because I’m on your side, okay?”
“I don’t need—”
“Just listen. The kind of stuff you make in your bedroom for some irrelevant school project, with a glue stick and paperclips, is far superior to anything my R&D department could cook up in an entire year. So my plan was, I was gonna find this Shadow Chaser for you, blow your schedule wide open. We tell Rogers you’re still looking, he tells Fury, no one is any the wiser. And then we can buckle down with some actually interesting projects in the workshop, something you enjoy doing. Not a bad plan, right?”
Bad. Very bad.
“I had FRIDAY go through the footage, and she finds a video of the Shadow Chaser climbing straight up a wall, and his sightings coincide perfectly with Spider-Man’s, and with the foster homes and group homes you’ve lived in.”
Peter clenches his hands around his seatbelt and braces for impact.
“So that’s it, right? This guy is actually you, you just have two costumes for some reason? Honestly kid, to tell you the truth, the black one is far less embarrassing than that blue-red atrocity you seem to favor.”
“Are you sending me back to prison?” Peter whispers.
“Weren’t you listening? I’m on your side. Come on, forget Rogers. I’ll cover for you, I lie to that man constantly. He still thinks I’m great with house plants, hasn’t noticed they’re all fake. I just think you should be able to spend your time better.”
“By making stuff for you,” Peter clarifies.
“You’ll have fun. Are you familiar with fun?”
Well. Peter is definitely very familiar with reshaping himself into whatever people want him to be to keep him around, it’s different every time: be quiet, be confident, be straight, be ambitious, be progressive, be conservative. Talk to us about your problems Peter. No, don’t think about your problems so much Peter. You should have more fun Peter. No, don’t be so loud Peter. And what Stark wants is a…. by the sounds of it, some inventor sidekick.
He’ll be useful to Tony Stark and Tony Stark is useful to him, the balance sheet is even. They’ll have a deal until one of them isn’t useful anymore. Very simple, simple is nice.
If it weren’t for the fact he already had a deal with Captain America.
-
He finds Steve Rogers in the library, reading a book about actinobiology.
“Peter,” Steve says, lighting up. “Your dartboard arrived, I put it by your door.”
“Okay,” Peter says. “Listen. We may have a… a bit of a weird problem.”
Chapter 3: Steve
Chapter Text
It all starts on December 12th. Nick Fury mentions during a meeting that Spider-Man was recently transferred to a juvenile detention center.
Spider-Man. Who feeds stray cats and lectures little kids for saying bad words. “On what grounds?” Steve asks.
“No grounds. It’s non-offender detention.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means he didn’t actually break any laws, but he’s a ward of the state with a bit of a history. They just can’t find a suitable foster placement for him.”
“So they put him in jail? I didn’t know that was even possible.”
“It’s not really our concern,” Fury says, and moves on to the next topic on the agenda.
Alien spaceship sightings over Madagascar. A wizard caught attempting to open a black hole somewhere over the Atlantic. Traces of a new bioweapon found in Seattle. Spider-Man really shouldn’t be their concern. But Steve is concerned.
He looked into the enhanced a while ago. SHIELD had a profile, a teenager named Peter. Fourteen at the time, which makes him fifteen now. No family, foster kid, had at the time just moved in with a middle-aged couple in Queens.
Fury is talking, he realizes. “—we thought it was the Chinese, the Chinese thought it was us—"
“What does it mean, a bit of a history?” Steve asks.
Fury falters, scowls at him. “I’m discussing the possibility of an alien invasion with you, Rogers.”
“Yes sir, of course,” Steve says.
“We have increased orbital surveillance, but not currently upscaling any further than—"
“Sorry—which prison is he in?”
Fury stops flipping through his papers and presses his fingers against his eyelids. “Christ, this is like talking to a brick wall. Or to Tony Stark. I do the debriefs with you for a reason.”
“Right. Aliens. What do you need from me?”
“At the moment, just make sure you and your merry band of brothers are ready for combat if necessary.”
“Consider it done, sir.”
“I’d like to.” Fury slides the papers aside. “Moving along—” and goes on to list their minor concerns. They include the transfer of a raft-prisoner, a scorpion-woman turning up in Chile, and the local Shadow Chaser. They do not include ‘Spider-Man is in prison for no reason’. That didn’t even make it to the rank of ‘minor concerns’.
“What do you need from me?”
“I want to cross this Shadow Chaser off my list. Look into it. He seems of no great consequence, shouldn’t take you long
Steve nods. “Minor concern.”
“Moving along, we’ve delivered one of our new armored truck to your tower. Stark is aware. He’ll need to update our communication systems accordingly.”
“Yes, sir.” Fury gave up on talking directly to Tony over a year ago. These days, he just tells Steve what he wants Tony to do, and it’s up to Steve to try and get it done. Usually, by telling Tony to do the opposite. There’s been some alien activity but we really don’t need your help figuring it out.
-
December 13th.
He sends some emails about it, even though he has no idea who is responsible for what. But it turns out, when you’re Captain America, people take the time to respond. Responses that are all very proper and diplomatic and according to protocol, our primary responsibility is to ensure both the safety of the community and the well-being of the child. In this case, the child had a documented history of physical aggression toward caregivers in previous placements. Several foster families and group homes were considered, but it was determined they could not provide the level of supervision required without jeopardizing the safety of other — and then there is legal jargon that he doesn’t entirely understand. He sends the email on to Pepper.
He doesn’t know what else to do about it. So he turns his attention to the Shadow Chaser.
Most information that can be found on the guy comes from social media posts. People reporting a sighting, including grainy pictures where bright red arrows point at black blobs and claim THAT’S HIM, when it might as well be a trash bag in the wind.
Social Media has never been Steve’s area of expertise. Everyone on the internet, he has learned, is permanently hysterical. But he dredges up the most recent pictures. He sits there, chin propped on one hand. He stares at the blurry collections of pixels.
The facts so far: the Shadow Chaser is short and slender. Probably young. Enhanced strength. Seems to be following Spider-Man around. Queens-based. Was first sighted last year on May 7th, three weeks after Spider-Man’s first sighting.
Essentially, he seems to be Spider-Man’s evil twin. Or perhaps Spider-Man is the evil one. Spider-Man. Evil.
A documented history of physical aggression toward caregivers.
Spider-Man is the least aggressive superhero Steve has ever seen. The kid has been recorded having animated conversations with pigeons. Being taught dance moves by kids. When he catches a criminal, he tells them jokes until they yell at him to just call the cops already.
Something doesn’t add up, here.
-
December 14th. Pepper leans into his office. “That email you forwarded to me is outrageous,” she says with much indignation. “Who is Peter Parker?”
“He’s Spider-Man.”
“He’s… Spider-Man.”
Steve gives a nod.
“Huh,” Pepper says.
“You said outrageous.”
“Well.” She folds her arms, tapping her fingers against her elbow. “I just never realized this was an option in our welfare system. But there are legal grounds, apparently, when there are no appropriate options outside of the justice system. They call it non-offender detention.”
“So he’ll just have to stay there?”
“Until a foster placement with capacity to manage high-risk behaviors has been deemed suitable.”
“Deemed by whom?”
“I don’t know the ins and outs. Some dunce with a clipboard, probably. It’s depressing.”
“Can we do something?”
“I can look into it but… either way the kid would need a home, and even my legal team can’t whip one of those up out of thin air.”
“Would they deem Avenger’s tower suitable?”
Pepper laughs like that is the silliest thing she has heard all week. “No, but it really is outrageous,” she says.
-
December crawls on. They celebrate Christmas together with a fiber-optic tree and A Muppet Christmas Carol. They celebrate New Years. Steve clinks his glass against Bruce’s and thinks about Peter Parker sitting in jail.
He studies footage of the Shadow Crawler. Sightings have dropped significantly over the past weeks. Meaning, there have been zero. As if the guy disappeared. Exactly at the same time as Spider-Man.
Also, FRIDAY finds a video of some black blob crawling straight up a wall.
He has suspicions.
-
January 12th. Monthly debrief with Nick Fury. Still odd activity in the airspace near Madagascar.
“But is it aliens?” Steve asks.
“It’s not Delta Airlines, that’s for certain. “Moving along. Has Tony updated the communication system?”
“He has hit a few snags on the portable mesh nodes,” Steve says. The snags are: Tony has been too lazy to be bothered to do any work. “It’s trickier than expected.”
Fury grumbles a bit, but nods. “Well. If Stark thinks it’s tricky. No one else will stand a chance. Moving along. Can I cross the Shadow Chaser off my list yet?”
“I have a proposition.”
“Hm-hm?”
“I’ve been monitoring the situation. You’re correct that this individual has not done much of significance, but he has unusual levels of strength. And, I don’t know sir, I don’t entirely trust the situation.”
“Based on?”
Steve looks him straight in the eye. “Instinct.”
Fury gives a low hum. “I respect your instincts, Rogers. And the proposition is?”
“I want to bring Spider-Man onto the team to investigate this case. I’d much rather delegate this task to him. We have important updates in our communication systems to work on, after all.”
“The kid’s in jail, Rogers.”
“Surely you can arrange something.”
Fury narrows his eyes. “Why do I feel like I’m being played.”
“I’m running an operation here, sir,” Steve says in his most indifferent voice. “You ask me to make the calls. This is the one I’m making. He’s the best person to handle a smaller case like this, keeping the rest of our hands free to deal with—the major concerns. Spider-Man can deal with the Shadow Chaser, let’s bring him in.”
-
January 14th. Steve gets to drive down to Clearview Youth Correctional Facility. He flashes the paperwork Fury got him. It seems the guard barely glances at it. He just blinks up at Steve, chewing gum dropping out of his mouth, and waves him through.
Another guard leads him down an empty gray-green hallway and pauses by a door, jangling his keys. “Room 27B. You got twenty minutes until recess time if you want to get out without being seen.”
“Thank you.”
Peter Parker is on his bed. His head hangs over the edge and hands are folded on top of his stomach. He looks up at Steve and says nothing. He’s a scrawny kid, not as thin as Steve at that age, but looks like he'd be a hundred pounds soaking wet.
Steve pulls the door firmly shut behind him and pulls out the wooden chair by the desk.
Peter just silently watches him and idly kicks the wall with one foot. “Am I getting a personalized PSA? That’s a treat.”
The kid does recognize him, then. “Would you like to get out of this place?” Steve asks.
Peter blinks a few more times. He rolls over onto his stomach, folds his hands under his chin. “Say more,” he says in a tone of bored indifference.
“I know you’re Spider-Man.”
Peter’s mouth twists. “Gold star for you, then.” This isn’t bubbly, happy Spider-Man who loves talking to pigeons and dancing with kids. But, fair enough.
“Have you heard of the Shadow Chaser?”
“Yeah. That’s a dumb name.”
“Are you him?”
Peter’s face falls into a smirk. “What’s this information gonna buy me, Captain America?”
Steve checks his watch. Eighteen minutes. “I have a plan.” And he explains. How the director of SHIELD agreed to have Spider-Man brought onto the team of Avengers, with a personal mission to track down the Shadow Chaser. “The mission is to bring him in,” he explains. “And if you choose to accept it, our resources are at your disposal.”
“But I am him.”
“Let’s not emphasize that detail too much. By which I mean, no one needs to know. You’ll move into the tower. Leave the debriefs to SHIELD to me, don’t worry about that part. You remain a ward of the state. That doesn’t change. What changes is where you live. Which is, not here.”
Peter slowly sits up, wrapping his arms around one knee. He studies Steve, incredulous, wary. “What’s in it for you?”
Steve has a feeling that saying ‘I don’t think you should be in here’ will be poorly-received. “Another member on our team,” he says. “Another person keeping the streets safe.”
“Are you going to send me on missions?”
“No. Just… be Spider-Man. Be a team member. We look out for each other. We have no family, so we are a family, you see? Um — Official custody remains with the Department of Child Welfare. All legal decisions go through the state.”
“Oh, thank god,” Peter drawls. “That’s a load off. They’ve been doing such a good job of it.”
“I know, Peter,” Steve says. “I’m here to get you out. This is the offer I can give you.”
-
“What the hell?” Pepper says.
Steve blinks. “I thought you’d approve.”
“Well… Well, I… He’s fifteen, Steve. Who’s going to look after him?”
“All legal decisions will still go through the state.”
“Steve. He’s fifteen.”
“I don’t follow.”
Pepper breathes out and combs one hand through her hair. “All right,” she says. “I’ve got it.”
-
Tony is even more outraged. “Pepper is two months pregnant. I was working on making this tower a kid-friendly space, Steve, and you’re putting an ex-con down the hall!”
“Peter is a kid.”
“I meant actual kids. Teenagers are devils. I’m skipping that stage. My child is going to stay a toddler for 20 years and then switch straight to self-sufficient adult. I’m still working out the right DNA-coding for it, but I’ll get it done.”
-
He picks Peter up that Saturday, January 18th, early in the morning.
Steve goes over the plan again as they drive back to the tower, in great detail. He debated including other Avengers in this little scheme but decided not to drag anyone into this. He will take responsibility. And it’s fine, it will be fine. Peter is a good kid, just some rough edges.
“Yeah I got the damn plan, okay, it’s not complicated,” Peter snaps. “And your car stinks of fucking cheese.”
Just some rough edges.
-
January 23rd. Early evening.
Considering how outraged Pepper was about Peter being in prison, she is strangely displeased about him being here. She keeps bringing it up when they’re having tea together.
“I think it was a great idea,” Steve says, sipping his tea.
“He’s fifteen. And no one is actually taking responsibility for him.”
“But he’s doing fine,” Steve says.
“If I may interject,” FRIDAY pipes up. “Mr. Parker is waiting in his room for my signal that the living room is empty so he can get something to eat. Might I request that you vacate the room for about half an hour?”
“This is insane,” Pepper says, shaking her head as she stands. “I don’t want to have to leave the living room every evening just so the kid can get a basic meal.”
“He’s just shy right now,” Steve argues, “he’ll get used to us.”
They take their cups of tea to the balcony.
-
January 31st, afternoon.
“I think he’s really settling in,” Steve says, sipping his tea.
And then Peter enters the room, pauses, and asks: “Can I hang a dartboard in my room? I’ll pay for it.” And he looks extremely uncomfortable about asking, in a way that makes Steve’s stomach clench.
Pepper throws him an I-told-you-so look.
Steve clears his throat. “Sure, Peter. I’ll order one for you.”
“I can pay.”
“I just set up an entire library upstairs at the request of this one,” Steve says, lifting his teacup in Pepper’s direction. “Really, a dartboard is not a big ask.”
“Fine,” Peter says, and practically flees the room.
“This is what I was talking about,” Pepper hisses. “He doesn’t even think he’s allowed to ask for basic requirements?”
“All right, fine. It’s not ideal. None of this is ideal. But the alternative was prison, Pepper.”
“I’m glad he’s not in prison, but you need to step the fuck up.”
“Language!”
“You can’t just treat him like another teammate moving in, Steve, he needs to know he is safe here.”
“He knows he is safe.”
-
February 3rd, afternoon.
Peter turns up in the library as Steve is reading.
“Peter,” Steve says, lighting up, because Peter never comes to him voluntarily. “Your dartboard arrived, I put it by your door.”
“Okay,” Peter says. “Listen. We may have a… a bit of a weird problem.”
Steve closes his book. He’s being confided in. Suck it, Pepper, this is going great. “Let’s hear it.”
“Tony knows I’m the Shadow Chaser. He just gave a whole speech about it in the car home. About how he’s going to hide it from you, and we can just lie about it, and, and he’s blackmailing me into working in his workshop and making, I don’t fucking know, subspace vortex safety hinges for his baby.” Peter’s voice is crawling up the register, getting tighter and louder.
“Okay, okay,” Steve says. He holds up a hand, blows out a breath. “Okay, that’s a lot.” He puts the book aside entirely and leans forward to look Peter in the eye. “First of all. He isn’t… Trust me, Peter, he’s not blackmailing you. He’s just… enthusiastic. And he can’t imagine anyone not being interested in science. But if you tell him you’re not interested, he’s not going to sell you out. I guarantee it.”
“Oh yeah? And if I play music he doesn’t like? Or accidentally drop his commemorative plate from the last royal wedding? Because there’s always gonna be something.”
“Not for me,” Steve says steadily. “You have a place in this tower without conditions. You know that, right?”
Peter pauses, looking thrown off balance. “That’s—That’s not true,” he says, eyes narrowing accusingly. “You told me to be Spider-Man.”
“What?”
“That’s what’s in it for you. Another member on your team. Another person keeping the streets safe. Those were the conditions. And now Stark wants me to stop patrolling and work in the workshop and I can’t do both at once, so one of you is going to fuck me over, don’t tell me that’s not true.”
Okay. This is— bad. It’s bad.
“I don’t… I didn’t mean…” Steve drags a hand down his face. “I just meant I wanted you to be yourself.”
“Yeah? Then I repeat, what’s in it for you?”
It feels like anything he says right now would be the wrong thing to say. He’s either giving Peter the idea that his place in this tower could be here today, gone tomorrow, or— “I just didn’t think you should be in there. In prison. You’re a kid. The other stuff, it was just an excuse.”
As he feared, Peter only looks more horrified. “So it’s charity?”
“It’s unconditional.”
Peter’s cheeks have gone red. “Fuck you, it’s not. I’m relying on your goodwill, now? What if I bring home the wrong groceries? Or accidentally drop your commemorative plate from the last royal wedding?”
“Okay, I sense some underlying trauma about some event involving a commemorative plate, but there’s nothing you could do to lose your place at this tower, Peter, I promise you.”
Peter sighs. His shoulders droop. “That’s not true. You might believe it’s true. But there’s always going to be something.” He tugs at his fringe and sighs again. “I’m just gonna… go on patrol. And then head down to the workshop, see what he wants.”
He slinks away, dragging his feet.
Yeah. This is bad.
-
He heads down to the workshop, where Tony is sitting on the floor, surrounded by a landscape of screws and bolts.
Tony scowls up at him. “I will get around to those portable mesh nodes, stop pressuring me.”
“Forget about those,” he says. “Peter is the Shadow Chaser.”
Tony splutters so loudly that a few nearly bolts roll away. “You weren’t supposed to know about that!”
“Actually, you weren’t.”
Tony narrows his eyes at him. “Say more.”
“Can we sit down somewhere?”
Steve meant at a desk or something, but Tony clears some floor space next to him with a sweeping motion of his arm.
“Sure,” Steve says, and steps over the other screws and bolts to reach it. He sits, his legs folded under him.
“So?” Tony demands.
So. Steve tells him the whole plan, what he told Fury to get Peter out of prison. What he told Peter when he visited him there.
Tony looks furious. “That’s a dumb plan, Rogers.”
“Up until five minutes ago, it was your plan.”
“Fine. It’s a brilliant plan.”
Steve sighs. “No. It wasn’t. He’s a teenager, he needs more than just a bedroom.”
“When that bedroom is not in prison, we’re doing a whole lot better than the people actually in charge of him!”
“That’s what I told myself. But it isn’t that simple. He needs—What do teenagers need? Boundaries, encouragement…”
“You tell me, you’re the one who read all the parenting books.”
“You’re the one who is going to be a parent.”
“Don’t remind me,” Pepper says.
They turn around to find that she had entered the workshop—who knows how long ago. She looks at them, hands on her hips. “All right,” she says. “Is anyone going to adopt him already, or what’s the plan here?”
Chapter 4: Pepper
Chapter Text
It all starts when Pepper is seven years old; when her parents sit her down and gently explain to her that they really want her to have a little brother or sister, but one that will not come from mommy’s belly.
They bring baby Delilah home some time later — it’s hard to remember how much time went by. And Pepper had a little sister for three years until Delilah’s mother, who had been a teenager when Delilah was born, reapplied for custody and was approved. For another year or so, Delilah would come over every weekend to give mom a breather. And for years more after that they stayed in touch. But they did drop off each other’s radars eventually.
It’s not as exciting as your average origin story, sure. She wasn’t hit by gamma radiation or injected with a serum during the war or held prisoner in a cave. But it did shape her.
When Tony and she get together, when they start talking about having kids, she talks about the possibility of foster care. Tony gets leaflets about it, looks into it, but she can sense some unease in him, that he’s only doing it to placate her. So she lets the matter rest.
They decide to have a baby when they’re in Maine for the weekend, visiting her cousin who just had a baby herself. The final decision is made as they’re out on a walk together.
“Do we want this?” They ask, and they agree that the answer is yes, one hundred percent. “Can we do this?” They ask, and they agree that the answer is yes, one hundred percent.
That doesn’t take away from the fact that Pepper knows Tony is going to be freaking out throughout this entire thing. He wouldn’t be her husband, otherwise.
-
As PA to an insane boss and then CEO to an insane company, she never had time for friendships. But then Steve Rogers moves in, and Steve is strangely into hearing about office gossip, loves all the same flavors of tea and will happily spend a Sunday afternoon quietly browsing bookshops with her. Once Pepper gets pregnant, they discuss baby names and swaddles and diapers. Her ideas about foster care have softly sunken into the background.
Until Steve forwards an email to her, with phrases like
—considered, but each determined they could not provide the level of supervision required—
—history of assault, which resulted in a court order for secure placement —
—recognize that juvenile detention should never be used as a substitute for foster care, and we are actively working to expand the availability of —
She reads it three times, something very deep within her is stirring and yawning. ‘Non-offender detention’ is what it’s apparently called, when teenagers are put in prison on no charges, simply because no other placement is available. She has never heard of it before and immediately hates it.
Curious why Steve would have such an interest in this particular teenager, she heads down the hall to his office and leans into the doorway. “That email you forwarded to me is outrageous,” she says. “Who is Peter Parker?”
“He’s Spider-Man.”
“He’s… Spider-Man.”
Steve gives a nod.
“Huh,” Pepper says.
Spider-Man is the gentlest superhero she knows. The little noises he makes when he gets to hug a baby, the pleases and thank yous, the kind post-its he leaves.
History of assault, which resulted in a court order for secure placement.
Something doesn’t add up there.
She explains the ins and outs of non-offender detention to Steve, who even appears to suggest they could move the boy into the tower, an absolute impossibility.
Nevertheless, she does ask her legal team to look into the matter, including… possible alternative housing arrangements. She gets in touch with two different charities who specialize in youth justice support. She calls CPS, trying to wheedle out more information about Peter Parker’s case, but CPS are still going according to protocol, child welfare records are confidential and may only be disclosed to authorized individuals directly involved in the placement or legal representation of the child.
She finds Peter’s name in the Midtown Tech school newspaper and calls the school, because teachers never learned to be diplomatic, bless their hearts.
A certain Mr. Harrington seems eager to meet with her. She has an appointment penciled in with him—
And then Steve Rogers walks into her office and announces he will be picking Peter up from juvie and bringing him to the tower this weekend.
“What the hell?” Pepper says.
Steve blinks. “I thought you’d approve.”
“Well… Well, I… He’s fifteen, Steve. Who’s going to look after him?”
“All legal decisions will still go through the state.”
“Steve. He’s fifteen.”
“I don’t follow.”
Pepper breathes out and combs one hand through her hair. “All right,” she says. “I’ve got it.”
So she obtains the medical consent forms, gets the boy a local doctor and dentist, a list of his allergies, a bus pass, all the school supplies he could possibly need. She makes his bed and leaves the WiFi password on the desk.
-
“Hide the silverware,” Tony says. “Steve is having a criminal moving in.”
“I’ll set out another plate,” Pepper says.
“No, but really.”
“I assume you’re referring to Peter Parker. And he isn’t a criminal. He’s currently held in non-offender detention, which legally signifies that he has not been convicted of, nor charged with, any criminal offense. They’re claiming they put him there due to a history of assault, when we all know that Spider-Man refuses to even swat at mosquitos. Something doesn’t add up.”
“My thoughts,” Tony says. ‘My thoughts exactly.” He sits and drums his fingers against the tabletop.
“I know that look,” Sam points at him with a bread knife. “Is this going to be another one of your obsessions?”
Pepper hides a smile behind her hand. “Sam. It will work out,” she says.
-
It doesn’t, really. Peter is stand-offish when she welcomes him, and doesn’t show up for dinner. Or breakfast the next morning. Steve tells her over tea that Peter has been rude and defensive in every encounter they had.
That’s quite a change in behavior, compared to only six weeks ago.
“He’s just settling in,” Steve says, and drinks his tea.
-
Mr. Harrington receives her in his office. It’s a little easier to explain herself, now that Peter is actually living with them. Mr. Harrington assumes she is the new foster parent, and Pepper is happy not to dissuade him of that notion.
“I’m so glad to hear he is coming back,” Mr. Harrington says happily. “He’s a lovely young man, bright, polite, kind to everyone.”
“How aware are you of the reason why he was taken out of school six weeks ago?”
“Yes, right,” Mr. Harrington sobers. “The only available placement was prison. It’s awful. I’m so glad you’re—”
“I was told it was due to his history of physical aggression toward caregivers, which resulted in a court order for secure placement.”
The teacher blinks. “Aggression? …Peter?”
“Everything I’ve heard about him suggests that he has no violent streak whatsoever.”
“He doesn’t. Didn’t.” Mr. Harrington hums and smoothens his necktie. “I wouldn’t worry about it, ma’am, I’m sure he won’t—”
“I’m not worried about myself,” she says in a steely voice. “I’m trying to find out who was responsible for putting him in prison, and why they thought that was a good idea.”
“I only met the Craxtons once. They seemed a lovely pair, if somewhat traditional.”
Bless his heart. Really never learned to be diplomatic.
-
The Craxtons.
Pepper firmly shuts her office door behind her and rounds her desk. “FRIDAY, I’m on a mission.”
“Shall I ready the quinjet, boss?”
“I just need an address for a couple by the last name Craxton, Queens-based.”
The last name is unusual enough that FRIDAY only produces two results. Pepper is quickly able to dismiss the twenty-something-year-old newlyweds as the most likely candidates.
Leaving Percy and Aveline Craxton who live in Long Island City.
“I think I can get there by car.”
“Shame,” FRIDAY says.
-
The Craxtons live in a nondescript neighborhood, a low-rise apartment building in a two-way street lined with trees. Pepper rings the doorbell.
The light by the intercom starts blinking. “Hello?” says a female voice.
“Hello, is that Avelina Craxton?”
“Yes.”
“I’m terribly sorry for dropping by unannounced, but Peter only gave me an address. He just moved in with us a few days ago and I’m really hoping to pick your brain about him.”
Silence for a moment. Then, the door buzzes.
Pepper reaches the second floor where Aveline is standing in the doorway of her apartment, immaculately dressed in shades of brown.
“So nice to meet you.” Pepper shakes her hand. “Ellie Steinway.”
She is invited into a house with a lot of wooden furniture, decorative rugs and delicate statues of cats. A bit of a grandparents-vibe, though Aveline looks to be in her forties.
Aveline pours her a cup of tea. “I hope he didn’t speak too badly of us,” she says. “I know we didn’t part on good terms.”
“Oh, no. To be perfectly honest, he isn’t speaking much at all. Very withdrawn. Which is why I had hoped to hear more about him from you.”
“Oh, he was always very quiet and polite,” she says, liberally adding sugar to her own tea. “Had a tendency to break curfew, but no other complaints. Apart from— well.”
“Yes, his files mention physical aggression towards previous caregivers?”
“He broke Percy’s nose. It came out of nowhere.”
“That sounds awful. Was there an argument?”
“No. Well, I wasn’t home when it happened. But Percy said he just made one comment about the state of the dishes and that set him off.”
“Is there any advice you would give me?”
“I suppose, just… instill the right values.” She hesitates, carefully blows the steam off her tea. “We didn’t think he would end up in jail,” she says. “We just… couldn’t have him in the house anymore.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Pepper says, and smiles sweetly.
-
It still doesn’t add up, but she can’t precisely say that she gathered any incriminating evidence, either.
“Still working?” Tony asks when he catches her furiously googling in bed.
“No. I’m on a mission.”
Tony frowns. “…Shadow Chaser related?”
“Who? Never heard of him.”
-
Meanwhile Peter has tentatively started talking to her during their car rides, as long as she keeps the topics strictly limited to animals, and not anything to do with his personal life, his day at school or his thoughts and emotions.
She tries to get Steve to see reason, but it seems he isn’t really connecting the dots yet. He just says, “He’ll be fine, Pep,” and drinks more tea.
Until she walks into the workshop one day and Steve and Tony are sitting on the floor, surrounded by shrapnel, having a heated debate about the care and management of teenagers.
“All right,” Pepper says, because she’s about done with this. “Is anyone going to adopt him already, or what’s the plan here?”
“Foster him, you mean?” Steve asks.
“Wait. What’s the difference?” Tony asks. “Is there a difference?”
“At least we’re asking the right questions, now,” Pepper says.
“Okay.” Tony nods, steely. “Okay. Let’s talk about it.”
“Can we sit?”
Tony sweeps a heap of bolts and screws out of the way.
“Sure,” Pepper says, and sits on the floor, legs crossed.
“Before we start,” Tony says, “there’s something else you should know. Peter is the Shadow Chaser.”
“Okay. I still don’t know who that is. Is it anything important?”
Tony and Steve exchange a glance. “I guess not,” Tony says.
-
“Do we want this?” They ask, and they agree that the answer is yes, one hundred percent. “Can we do this?” They ask, and they agree that the answer is yes, one hundred percent.
That doesn’t take away from the fact that they know Peter is going to absolutely freak out about this.
“Yeah, he hates us,” Tony says.
“Excuse me,” Pepper says with much indignation, “he happens to love my fish facts.”
“Well, he thinks my offer to spend time together was essentially blackmail. Shouldn’t we try to… bond a little more? Before we spring this on him?”
“He’s already here, we’re just putting it on paper, and much overdue. Tony, he isn’t going to trust us unless we stick our necks out, first.”
“How are we going to get this insane asylum approved as a stable foster placement?”
Pepper looks to Steve. “How useful is Fury going to be, you think?”
“Oh, completely useless, unless there is something in it for him.”
“Fine,” Tony says. “Fiiine. I guess it’s time for me to take a look at those portable mesh nodes.
“We should at least hold off on talking to Peter until we know we can make this work.”
-
There’s more than enough other things to talk to Peter about, though.
“Where the fuck is that coming from?” Peter asks, bristling. They are driving home from school and Pepper casually asked him, in-between fish facts, why he punched Percy Craxton in the face.
“It’s not like you.”
“How would you know what I’m like?”
“Please. Spider-Man was always my favorite superhero.”
Peter falters, then squints at her suspiciously.
“He’s great with people. Great with kids.”
“I don’t do that stuff anymore,” Peter snaps. “I stick to animals now, fuck people.”
“Oh yes, I did see the Instagram post about you retuning lost ducklings to their parents.”
“So I’m not great with people, and I’d happily punch all of them in the face.”
“But why did you punch Percy?”
“I’m a nightmare in about a million different ways, why does it matter what the reason was?”
“It matters if it was self-defense.”
“Well, it wasn’t. So back off. I’m not your damsel in distress.”
“Peter. There is nothing you can say that will change our minds about you. We’re here to help.”
“Oh my god!” Peter yells furiously, pounding the armrest of his seat with his fist. “You think I haven’t heard that speech a hundred times before? And guess what, IT’S NEVER TRUE!”
Pepper releases a controlled breath as she can feel her heart break for the teenager sat beside her. He deserves so much better than people have been able to offer him. She stops at a red light, a million pedestrians swarming by in front of her as a million thoughts race through her head.
“I’m sorry for yelling,” Peter says, subdued.
“I’m sorry you haven’t had a stable family.”
“You know. Out of everyone at that tower, I dislike you the least,” Peter says, and Pepper beams with absolute pride.
-
Pepper slides a file across the table in Nick Fury’s direction. “Today, we are presenting you with the opportunity to bring Spider-Man permanently into our sphere of influence. Think about it. An enhanced teenager, a budding genius, unsupervised. All the wasted potential.”
Next to her, Tony nods staunchly.
“Yeah, he seems docile, so it’s not really out concern,” Fury says. “I already told Steve when— what do you mean ‘genius’?”
“Well. Just to give a minor example.” She leans in, opens the file and taps the first page. “Peter managed to deploy the portable mesh nodes and improve the entire communication system over the weekend.
Fury points at Tony. “You mean the thing that took Stark weeks and he still hadn’t figured it out?”
“I have no idea how the kid did it,” Tony says. “I mean, by all accounts, that configuration shouldn’t even be possible without a full diagnostic of the wiring diagram. I spent hours on it, hours. He just wandered in with a toolkit and a snack and casually rewrote half the firmware.”
In reality, when Tony finally could be bothered to take the time to actually look at the portable mesh nodes, he had the whole thing wrapped up in an afternoon.
Fury leans back in his chair, steeples his fingers. “All right,” he says slowly. “But if we want the kid to remain in our sphere of influence, we’d have to look at a more… permanent arrangement.”
“Well,” Pepper says. “That’s a lot you are asking from us, Nick. But we’re willing to make the sacrifice.”
Fury narrows his eyes. “Why do I get the feeling I’m being played?”
-
Peter already looks very suspicious when Pepper and Tony pick him up from school together. Pepper takes a detour through a quieter neighborhood and parks in a spot she had pre-selected, overlooking a dog park.
“Am I about to get killed?” Peter asks. He’s trying to sound bored, but Pepper can recognize the tension in his voice.
Pepper and Tony unbuckle and both turn in their seat to face him. “Peter,” Pepper says, “we’re going to tell you something that will probably make you very angry, but we’re hoping you’ll hear us out and give us a chance.”
“O…kay?” Peter says.
“We want to adopt you.”
“FUCK no,” Peter says.
“That is not hearing us out,” Tony admonishes.
Peter sags down in his seat, scowling heavily, and crosses his arms.
“You’ve been staying with us for a while now, but we went about it all wrong,” Tony explains. “I mean, it was mainly Rogers who was doing it all wrong, I didn’t even know what he was up to until you were already in my house…”
“You shouted at me about bananas.”
“Yeah, that was bad,” Tony agrees. “Bad Tony. I have moments now and then when I freak out about becoming a parent, because I want to be a good one, you know?”
“Peter, we know you’re skeptical, and we know why,” Pepper says. “A lot of people have promised you a permanent home, and it always turned out it wasn’t. We won’t say that we’ll never have disagreements, but there’s nothing that we won’t be able to figure out and move on from.”
“Even if you break my nose,” Tony says.
“I didn’t break his nose,” Peter mutters.
“Okay.”
Peter’s knees start wobbling and he burrows down into his coat. He says nothing else.
Pepper reaches out a hand and gently squeezes his knee. “Peter. Whatever happened there, we can help you with that, too. Whether you did something or he did something.”
“I didn’t do anything, just… I was at this party, a mixer with Forsyth tech after our decathlon competition. Percy was picking me up. And he just happened to walk in when I was making out with a guy from that school. I don’t even remember who it was. It was just a funny thing, you know.”
“And?”
“And, that’s it. Not supposed to kiss guys. But I guess they knew that wasn’t gonna fly with the social worker, so they came up with something else.”
“Let me get this straight,” Pepper says, the fury of a thousand suns building in her chest. “They lied about being attacked by you, and got you thrown in jail… because you kissed a boy?”
“I don’t even know if I’m actually into guys, I was just…”
She holds up her hand. “I know, Peter. You’re figuring yourself out. That’s what your teenage years are for. And you should feel safe to do so.”
“Everyone is always like, be yourself. But then I am myself and they put me in prison.”
“Jesus,” Tony says, and he practically kicks the door open on his side. He dives into the back seat and pulls Peter into an enormous hug. Peter doesn’t lean into it, exactly, but he doesn’t resist. “I’m sorry, kid,” Tony says, muffled. “That’s the most fucked up thing I’ve heard in a while.”
Pepper gets out of the car as well to slide into the back seat and join the hug. “Honey, our home is yours, however you identify, whatever you believe in, or however you want to live your life.”
“But something is going to come along that will be it; the thing about me that makes you not want me around anymore. If it’s not this, it will be something else.”
Pepper sighs, her hand rubbing up and down Peter’s back. “Unfortunately, I don’t think there is anything we could possibly say or do to change your mind. We’ll have to give it time.”
“I mean. We might as well just do this.” There are tears in Peter’s eyes, they seem like tears of frustration. He rubs them away with furious motions. “I’m already staying at the tower. What difference does it make if there’s some stupid stamps on stupid paper.”
“Let’s get it done, then.”
“I just want to make it clear I think the whole thing is stupid.”
“Noted,” Pepper says.
Chapter Text
The paperwork is approved within a few days, with Fury pulling a few strings. “All right FRIDAY,” Pepper says. “Now I have some avenging left to do.”
“Shall I ready the Quinjet?” FRIDAY asks.
Pepper gathers up her paperwork. “Why not.” She’s not adverse to making a scene right now.
FRIDAY pilots her to her destination. The trees bend backwards as the Quinjet lands squarely in the middle of the two-way street. Drivers hang out their car windows, mouths dropped open.
She rings the doorbell so long that Percy Craxton bursts through onto the balcony above her.
“Excuse me,” he says.
Pepper takes a few steps back so she can see him fully. “Percy Craxton,” she booms, well aware that neighbors all around are hanging over their balconies, phone in hand. “You absolute turd of a human being. The kid who should have been under your protection is now under mine and. you. know. what. you. did.”
Aveline’s pale, nervous face appears over her husband’s shoulder. “Ellie?”
“I am Pepper Potts, CEO of Stark Industries, and I have an army of lawyers behind me. We’re suing for malicious prosecution and intentional infliction of emotional distress.”
Percy slams his flat hand against the railing. “We didn’t send him to jail!”
“But you knew where he ended up because of your lies, you coward.” She points. “I’m gonna rain down hellfire on the both of you.”
And, with her chin lifted, she strides back to the Quinjet. All that’s missing is a superhero cape billowing in her wake.
-
February 17th, morning.
“It’s funny how bad you are at this,” Steve says.
Peter bristles and draws himself up.
Steve holds up a hand before the kid can start ranting again, as per his specialty. “Just because you have, you know, super senses, super reflexes…”
“You don’t need reflexes in darts, it’s not like my enemies are aiming at me.”
“Well, you sure are aiming at your enemy,” Steve jokes lightly.
Peter hung a rather crude drawing of the Craxtons on his dartboard. “It’s for good luck,” he says. Pepper and her team of lawyers prepared a lawsuit and are filing it today.
“Are you hoping for any particular outcome?” Steve asks.
Peter shrugs. “No. It’s just nice to hear some sort of official acknowledgement that what happened was fucked up, even if it won’t change the past.”
“Little more faith in humanity?”
Peter scowls and throws a dart. It hits Percy Craxton right on the forehead.
“Nice,” Steve says.
“I was aiming for her.”
“Lucky accident, then.”
Peter fiddles with the next dart. “I helped a woman find her stolen backpack when I was patrolling the other day. I still prefer to stick to animals, but I can make exceptions. So, you know, if you were gonna tell me off for rescuing too many pets—”
“I don’t require you to be or do anything while you are Spider-Man, Peter, you can just be yourself.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Peter says, and throws another dart. He always responds evasively when Steve says things like that, and still has a tendency to report back about his patrols as Spider-Man. But he’s willing to play a game of darts together, so there’s progress.
During his recent monthly meeting with Fury, Steve broke the news that the Shadow Chaser will no longer be an issue.
“Meaning?” Fury asked.
“He has been retired.”
Fury squinted at him for a while, and eventually just said, “one day I’m going to figure out what kind of circus you are running up here.”
“One day,” Steve said.
-
“Hey,” Peter says, knocking his elbow against Ned’s.
They’re spending their free period in an empty hallway, sprawled on the floor against their backpacks with half-finished worksheets in their laps.
“Uh-huh?”
“You wanna… come back to my place after school?”
Ned shoots up straighter, and then raises both hands, triumphantly. “One month. One month of perseverance!”
“Yeah, you wore me down.”
“That’s what good friends do,” Ned says. “Do you have Lego? Videogames?”
“I have a dartboard,” Peter says.
Ned nods earnestly. “Awesome.”
“What do you make with Lego?” Him and Pepper did go out and buy some more stuff for his room last weekend, but Peter mostly wanted books. Pepper kept suggesting other stuff, but Peter just couldn’t think of anything he wanted. The last time he played with Lego was in a foster home where he had a seven-year-old sister. He didn’t know you could still play with that stuff as a teenager and not get laughed at.
“The Star Trek U.S.S. enterprise, the orient express… I’m building Avenger’s Tower right now.”
Peter could not have asked for a better segway. “I gotta warn you.”
“Hm. Weird foster parents? Really strict ones? Or really smothering ones? Or just evil ones, like in Despicable Me? We can go and explore their underground lair.”
“It’s Pepper Potts and Tony Stark.”
“No it’s not,” Ned says, and laughs. He looks at Peter. Looks again. “No… it’s… not?”
Peter perhaps should have broken it to him more gently, because Ned spends their last two periods in a strange state of simultaneous excitement and denial. “There’s no way,” he says. “This is so awesome! But I know it’s not true. But if it’s true this is the best thing that ever happened to me. But there’s no way.”
And that lasts as they leave their books in their locker, as they exit the gates, all the way until the moment Ned is in the backseat and actually looking Pepper in the face.
Pepper, who looks about just as stunned and delighted to see him. She probably didn’t even think Peter was capable of having friends.
“This is Ned,” Peter says.
“Oh my goodness, Ned, how great to meet you!” she exclaims. “Peter told me so much about you.”
“I did not,” Peter says, “liar.”
She reaches back to smack his knee. “It’s nice to be polite.”
Ned gasps and points. “Woah are you pregnant? That hasn’t been on the news.”
“Ned is annoyingly curious,” Peter says. “FYI.”
“But Peter is rude,” Ned says. “So I think we’re even.”
Pepper chuckles as she buckles up. “Home, then? Or do you boys want to make a pitstop somewhere?”
“Maybe pick up some Lego,” Peter says.
-
“Here we go,” Tony says, putting the heavy Dutch oven on the kitchen table. “Can you keep count as we throw this together?”
“Oh, sure,” Peter drawls. “I love doing five bar gates, reminds me of being in prison.”
“Well, you’ll only need one five bar gate, because that’s how many layers this lasagna is getting. Start with a layer of sauce at the bottom.”
“I have to scoop and count?”
“You made time travelling toast, I think you’ll manage. I’ll be grating the cheese.”
Peter grumbles but gets to work. “Are we putting in a layer of peanut butter?”
Pepper started having her first cravings this week and wants peanut butter with absolutely everything. “I’ll give her a jar on the side.”
“You’re going to have an actual baby in a few months,” Peter murmurs as he carefully arranges the lasagna sheets in the baking dish. “Like, a real kid.”
It has been a month now since the official adoption, far too soon for Peter to be feeling anywhere close to reassured that this is permanent. “You are real too, Peter.”
“It’s not the same.”
“It is.”
“Stop saying that, I’m not an idiot.”
Tony hands him the bowl of grated cheese. “Now one layer of that.” He watches Peter sprinkle it on. “Did I ever tell you how Pepper and I decided to have a baby? We were in Maine for the weekend, we took a walk. We talked it through. Do we want this? Can we do this? And the answer was yes, one hundred percent. We asked the exact same questions when we decided to file for adoption, Peter, and the answer was yes, one hundred percent. One hundred percent, Peter. That puts you in exactly the same position as our other kid, no matter where you came from.”
Peter sets the bowl to one side and says nothing. Which, Tony has learned, is a good sign. If Peter thinks you’re being an idiot or a liar, he’ll tell you. When he stays quiet, you know he’s actually contemplating what you’ve told him.
“I just want to make it clear I still think the whole thing is stupid.” Peter says eventually.
Tony tugs him a little closer and drops a kiss on top of his head. “Noted.”
“Can I paint fish in the nursery?” Peter asks. “On the ceiling? I saw a picture on Instagram, I know how to make it look cool. You can make them bioluminescent if you get glow in the dark stickers.”
“Yeah, Michelangelo. I guess you won’t even need a ladder. Just check with Pepper.”
“Pepper likes fish,” Peter says. "She’s cool.”
“Good thing I married up.”
-
After dinner, they play Settlers of Catan while eating homemade pretzels.
Mission. freaking. accomplished.
Notes:
Thank you for reading! Have an awesome day <3
-
(In response to some readers' questions, yes, as far as my research went, it is possible for foster children to be housed in prisons due to a shortage of placements. I don't know if there is a legal term for it, I couldn't find one, so the term 'non-offender detention' was made up. You can try this article for more info)
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