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Jeremy doesn't know much about the kid moving in with him. He knows his name is Peter, but the only text conversation they’ve had so far is about what snacks are off-limits (Peter’s chocolate chip protein bars) and what their respective majors are (biochemistry, but they share a few engineering classes). Anything else is always met with indifference or half-answers. When the door finally flies open to a stack of boxes towering on the other side of the frame, Jeremy just isn’t sure what to expect.
“Uh, you need some help over there?” he asks from his desk chair across the room.
“Nope, I got it,” the person behind the tower responds before walking into the room. The boxes tremble in seemingly strong hands before they are finally lowered to the ground. The person that Jeremy now sees,
a guy around his age, though a bit shorter and scrawnier, stands to greet him. The guy holds out a hand as a nervous smile takes over his face. “Nice to officially meet you. I’m Peter.”
“Jeremy.” He looks down at all the boxes scattered across the floor, then back up at Peter. “You sure you don’t need any help?”
“Positive,” Peter says with a smile.
“NO!” Peter yelps into his phone, and even Jeremy jumps at the panic in his voice. When he looks over, the guy is still on the phone, but he’s no longer lying on his bed while lazily flipping through a Chemistry book; he’s sitting up with a hand tugging at his hair. “No, Dad, you don’t need to come up here. Alumni day is for like…I don’t know normal parents. The ones that are like…not you. Yeah, well, sorry I can’t banter while panicking.”
Jeremy is only catching half of the conversation, but he can sense the mounting panic from his side of the room. Though he can’t really figure out what would make a kid that terrified of letting their parent come to visit them. It isn’t like Peter goes to parties or does drugs or anything. At least not to Jeremy’s knowledge, and neither of them leaves the room for anything other than class for him to not notice.
“Dad, I know, but– No, don’t send Aunt Nat! I talked to Aunt May before I called you. Yes. Tell Mom I love her and tell Morg I’m sending her a Hulk-sized hug. And tell her if she really misses me like all her texts say, she can sleep in my room if she wants. Yeah, love you too.” Peter groans once he gets off the phone, and Jeremy looks over, only partially concerned. He and Peter aren’t exactly best friends or anything, but the conversation seemed a bit more stressful than he thinks a typical call home might warrant if Peter’s face is anything to go by.
“Want to talk about it?”
“S’not anything to talk about. My dad misses me and wants to come up for alumni day, bring my little sister. You know, make it a family thing.”
“And what, you don’t want him to?” Jeremy asks, chuckling. “Young Peter enjoying his freedom too much for family time, eh?”
Peter laughs with him but shakes his head. “No, it’s not that. I miss them too. I mean, me and Dad haven’t been apart this long since the blip a couple of years ago, and it’s hard, sure, but I just… I want to spend time with him, but if he comes up here, it’s going to make a scene, you know?”
“What is he, like a celebrity or something?” asks Jeremy jokingly, but Peter only looks at him, confused.
“What?”
“I mean, you didn’t have any help when you first moved in, either, so it must be a thing with him being noticed right?”
Peter looks around the room as if he’s going to find a camera hidden somewhere, before looking back at Jeremy and tilting his head, loose curls falling into his face. “You’re being serious? You...you don’t know who my dad is?”
“Should I?”
Peter’s laugh is practically hysterical.
“Nope. No, don’t-- uh don’t worry about it.” He snorts another laugh and shakes his head. “This was his alma mater, so he donates a lot to the school. Sometimes I forget not everyone cares about stuff like that.”
Jeremy chuckles through his confusion. He hadn’t really pegged Peter for a rich kid with his nerdy tees and beat-up sneakers. He wishes he could say he had known that, but he looks at the lean, goofy, and perpetually smiling kid across from him and can’t imagine him growing up with a silver spoon in his mouth.
When Alumni Day finally does roll around on the MIT campus, Jeremy hears the enthusiastic buzz of celebrities on campus, but he’s in the middle of studying for midterms, and Peter doesn’t come back to their room for the rest of the day. The next morning, when Peter is back, looking both happy and exhausted, he forgets to ask about it.
It all comes rushing together on movie night. Well, Jeremy’s movie night at least.
Peter had been coming back later and later over the last couple of weeks. Jeremy isn’t sure if the guy has picked up a few extracurriculars or if he’s just hanging out with a new crowd, but it’s a rare sight to see Peter back in the dorm room before 3 in the morning.
It’s barely gone midnight on a peaceful Friday when the knocking starts. It’s loud and insistent, and it’s moments like these when Jeremy wishes he had never set his bed on risers. The person at the door continues to bang away at the wood as he climbs down the ladder to the floor. He thinks that maybe it’s one of the drunk guys down the hall playing a prank when a voice calls out.
“Peter Benjamin, if you don’t open this door right now, I swear to--”
“Peter’s not h–,” starts Jeremy as he opens the door, only to freeze at the sight of Tony Stark. There are people peeking out of their doors, curious as to who was causing all the commotion. Jeremy clears his throat. “Uh… Peter’s not here?”
“Are you asking me?”
“No?”
Tony narrows his eyes and pushes a finger to his earpiece. “FRIDAY, where’s Peter?”
Jeremy only hears the buzz of a response, though he has no idea what is said. Tony looks at him again before making a gesture and motioning for Jeremy to let him in. He does without complaint.
“So, you’re the roommate,” says Tony, more like a statement than a question. “Dover, right? Jeremy Dover.”
“Yes?”
“Let me ask you something, Jeremy. What’s your deal?”
“My deal?”
“Do you only speak in questions or..?”
“No? I— I mean, I’m a big fan, and you kind of caught me off-guard, and I’m uh...not really sure why you’re here.”
“I’m here because I got an emergency notification from Peter’s phone, and I came to see if he was alright. Is he at a party or something?” Tony is pacing around the room, looking at all of the posters and sticky notes all over the walls. “I mean, I’m not going to judge him; at least he waited until the weekend. When I was his age…” He shakes his head. “He better be at a party.”
“I actually don’t er...I don’t actually know where Peter is, uh...sir. I haven’t seen him since maybe lunch. He just comes back late sometimes. He could be in the library studying or something. Have you tried calling him?”
“Have I—” Tony rubs a hand down his face, the other pressing against his earpiece again. “FRIDAY call Peter and don’t let him ignore it.”
Jeremy watches as the creases on the hero’s face ease away at the sound of what is presumably Peter’s voice.
“Kid, you don’t send a distress signal, then send me on a wild goose chase. Where the hell are you? No, no, no. You don’t get to ‘it was an accident, Dad’ me. Not after I flew all the way out here to your dorm just to find out you hacked my suit again. So I’m not leaving until I can see you and know that you’re okay. Nope. This one isn’t on me, bambino. You want to act like a kid, I’ll treat you like one.” Tony hangs up the phone and starts talking again, but Jeremy is still stuck on the fact that his roommate is Tony Stark’s kid, for fucks sake.
“Uh,” says Jeremy intelligently.
“I'm going to need more than an ‘uh’, Jeremy. Does Peter pull this missing boy stunt often?”
“I guess? I mean, I wouldn't really call it missing… he just comes back late sometimes.”
“And how often is ‘sometimes’?”
“Just the last few weeks. Usually just the weekends.”
Jeremy wants to ask if he and Peter are going to be in trouble, but just as he starts to speak again, the door slams open and Peter trips in with his shirt on backwards and his right shoe untied.
“Kind of you to join us, Peter,” says Tony Stark with his arms crossed, and Jeremy kind of understands Peter's alumni day panic now.
“Dad, I can explain—”
“You can explain? Fine. Explain to me why you've missed three labs and an internship meeting. Or you can explain why you felt the need to hack a multi-million dollar suit again. Or maybe you can explain why Jeremy here says you've been going missing for weeks.”
“I never said he was missing. Just late….sometimes.”
“Kid, this is where you zip it.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Stark, sir.”
“I—” starts Peter before stopping. “Well, when you say it all together like that, it seems kind of bad.”
“Pete, you almost gave me a heart attack.”
“Okay, so I probably should have said something.”
“Probably? Peter, you can't just disappear like that. There was a distress signal, then you went offline. You haven't been offline since—” Tony takes a deep breath. “Can you imagine how Pep and I felt when we got the message?”
“I was just trying to… I didn't realize—”
“You didn't realize? Hey, Jear-Bear, mind giving us the room?” The man doesn't look away from Peter as he says it, but Jeremy doesn't need to see his face to understand how serious he is. He can feel the tension in the room like a rubber band pulled too taut. He doesn't have to be asked twice to leave as it prepares to snap.
He grabs his phone, his earbuds, and a blanket before leaving the room and making his way down the hall towards the lounge.
It takes an hour and twelve minutes for Peter to finally text Jeremy to let him know that the coast is clear, but by that time, he's fallen asleep on one of the questionably clean dorm couches.
Peter's brother shows up in their dorm about halfway through the spring semester, and Jeremy is still somewhat reeling from Tony Stark showing up a month ago for him to be adequately surprised.
He walks in to find who he later discovers to be a recently dumped Harley Keener throwing pens at Peter's word of the day calendar.
“Er…” Jeremy starts. “Hello?”
“Hey.” A pen stabs through one of the O’s in monotonous, but the guy keeps going.
“Am I in the right room?” Because sure, that looked like his framed, limited-edition, signed Batman comic, but maybe it was just a really good fake.
“Yep.”
“Did Peter let you in?”
“Nope.”
“Awesome. I'm calling campus security.” Just as Jeremy pulls out his phone, a pen flies at his forehead, and he catches sight of the guy’s face.
“I'm Harley,” says the guy. “I'm Peter's brother. He gave me his keys before he went to his physics lab or whatever.”
“I didn't know Peter had a brother.”
“Yeah, it's new for all of us.”
“Still calling campus security.”
“Whatever.” Harley rolls back around in Peter's desk chair and sends another pen through the calendar.
It gets quiet as they both fiddle with their phones. Jeremy is searching the internet for the campus security number when Peter bursts into the room. He wonders if maybe that's just a Peter thing.
Peter is huffing as he looks around the room and only releases the tension in his shoulder when he deems the room to be safe. What standards he bases that information on, Jeremy isn't sure.
“Harley!” says Peter, out of breath. “You can't just text me an SOS if there's not really an emergency.”
The other boy shrugs. “Your roommate was going to call campus security on me, and I don't go here. I think that counts as an emergency.”
“He was going to what?” he says, stunned, turning to his roommate, stern. “You can't just call the police on people, Jeremy.”
“I— He— Peter, what the actual fuck?” Jeremy rubs the bridge of his nose and stuffs his phone back into his back pocket. When he starts talking again, he’s speaking slowly as if Peter is being particularly dense. “There was a stranger in our room who had your keys. I had every right to call campus security.”
“He’s my brother!”
“I tried to tell him that,” Harley puts in from where he’s returned to throwing pens.
“I didn't know you had a brother. What if he was lying? I didn't even know Tony Stark was your dad until he fucking showed up at 1 in the morning looking for you!”
“Dad showed up here at 1 am, and you're still living?” asks Harley as he nods appreciatively at Peter. “Nice.”
“Not nice,” Peter argues. “He grounded me!”
“No suit?”
“No suit or lab time with Doctor Banner when I come home for spring break.”
“Brutal.”
“I think you're both missing the point,” Jeremy says, trying to focus the conversation back up. “Stranger. Keys. Explain.”
“I wasn't going to be able to let him in ‘cause I had class, so I gave him my keys.” Peter shrugs. “He wouldn't touch anything in here that wasn't mine.”
“That doesn’t– That isn’t– Do you not get how completely crazy you sound?”
“I mean, I’ve said crazier, I think.” Peter turns to look at Harley, who nods his head as his last pen goes flying through the air and bouncing off the wall to roll under Peter’s desk.
“Much crazier.”
“See, not crazy,” Peter tries to insist.
“Just because you’ve said crazier things, it doesn’t make this conversation any less crazy. That doesn’t even make sense!” Jeremy sucks in a deep breath, remembers a strange number texting him for emergencies only, and he exhales. “Yeah, I’m calling your dad.” He can hear how resigned he sounds, but he doesn’t know how else to fix it.
Peter slumps over where he’s standing, and Harley just shrugs. “Yeah, that’s about what I expected.”
Jeremy wouldn’t call him and Peter best friends. They’ve gotten closer since Harley has transferred to MIT, but only because their dad (Tony freaking Stark) insists on inviting him to family events as a thank you, he guesses, for keeping both of his sons out of trouble. Well, that and the fact that Morgan absolutely loves him, couple that with finding out that their families actually get along, even though his parents basically hate privileged rich people, and apparently, you have the perfect recipe for Sunday Dinners at the Parker-Stark-Keener residence.
This is how Jeremy finds out his roommate turned friend is actually adopted; how out of 6 kids, 2 of which are robotic, and one who is a literal alien, Tony Stark only has one biological child, but he loves them all the same. He’s oddly proud and reverent of both their failures and successes because Sometimes you bust your ass, but you have to run before you can walk. Jeremy thinks this is maybe why his parents like them so much. There’s something about this family that just worms its way into your heart. Jeremy knows. He, Peter, and Harley are looking into student apartments instead of dorms so they can all live together.
Sitting around a dinner table that includes his family, one of his closest friends, and a retired superhero is a far cry from where he thought he would be when he got his roommate assignment at the beginning of the year, but as he watches Morgan try to sneak her broccoli onto his plate, he can’t say he hates it.