Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Peter’s time as an intern in Tony Stark’s workshop is always spent incredibly efficiently.

“What, would you say, is the opposite of a spatula?” Peter asks. He lies on the oversized corner sofa and gazes up at the ceiling tiles, at the fan rotating slowly and leisurely in its winter setting.

“Did you smoke something before coming here?”

“You’re a very bad influence.”

“Am not. If you had said yes, I would have given you the mother of all lectures, made you watch Steve’s PSAs, called your father, the whole shish kebab—”

“shebang”

“—I’m a great influence.”

Peter rolls onto his side, letting one hand dangle down to the floor. Tony is several feet away at his workbench, folded over like a very focused banana, doing something with a voltage reducer and a robotic arm. And Peter is just… not feeling it today. He’s in Zen-mode. Minimum effort mode. “I made pancakes last night. Quality non-stick pan, no complaints there, awesome—awesome pan. But I left the plastic spatula in it for a little too long and it melted. I want something that doesn’t melt every time my brain, like, temporarily branches into other subjects. I want something that is Peter-proof.”

Tony doesn’t look up, he is plucking at wires with delicate but deliberate movements. “So what you actually need is something very similar to a plastic spatula but slightly different. The actual opposite of a spatula is probably something like a steam engine, you want to flip your pancakes with a steam engine?’

Peter laughs softly. “I mean, I do now.” There’s probably a robot he could build. A pancake flipping robot. Who knows, it could be driven by a steam engine. That’s, like, totally a legit idea, actually.

“Could you be a good intern and grab me the locking connectors? The bright little plastic thingies—”

“I know what a locking connector is, how dare you.” He pushes himself off the couch, keeping his head ducked. On this side of the workshop, the walls are slanted inwards, just like they are in Peter’s bedroom. Though in his case, it’s because his bedroom is crammed in right under the roof. Here in the workshop it’s probably a fancy design choice.

He meanders towards the shelves by the opposite wall, where the windows offer a view of rain relentlessly pelting down on the helipad.

Tony has a habit of keeping all his nuts, bolts, screws in mismatched mugs, so the shelves look like a chaotic kitchen cupboard more than anything else. On days when Peter is really bored, he’ll sort through some of them and then line the mugs up by size, and an hour later do it again, by color. He pulls a step stool closer and climbs on. “Hmmm…”

“Green one with the cows,” Tony says.

Peter plucks it up and steps off the step stool.

Hah. Step stool. “You’re not my real stool,” he tells it, and then giggles to himself.

He brings the mug to Tony and plants one knee on the office chair next to him, hanging over the backrest as he observes. “Is that for Mr. Barnes?”

“Metaphorically,” Tony says. Whatever that means.

It’s nice to come to the workshop. It’s so nice. It’s so cool. Peter has made an almost daily habit of it by now. Sometimes he does actual intern things. Other times he just lays on the couch and watches Phineas and Ferb because Tony thinks that’s his favorite show, and eats the Spicy Queso Funyuns Tony keeps buying him because he thinks they are Peter’s favorite snack. Tony has been entirely convinced of all that for months now, and Peter doesn’t have the heart to correct him.

“Want to hear a joke about construction?” he says.

-

Pepper brings them food. The bread is still warm, fresh from the oven, and she added cream cheese that was probably homemade, and cucumber and little green snippets of a dark green herb that was probably homegrown. Ugh. When Peter eats food like this, he wants to cry; it makes him ridiculously happy.

Tony always reads the news on his phone during lunch, even though it always annoys him. Although, he seems to enjoy being derisive to other people, so maybe he likes being annoyed. Maybe he seeks out excuses to be annoyed. “I can’t believe they’re erecting a statue for that asshat,” he’ll say. Or: “All these senators have a room temperature IQ.”

Tony swipes and his mouth twists as he reads the next headline. Peter recognizes the logo of the Daily Bugle, and recognizes the picture too. This is the article about Spider-Man wrestling a giant spider on the roof of the Chrysler building last Sunday.

The Spider-menace, once again defacing some of our most precious heritage sites.

“One of these days, I’m going to sue these people,” Tony says.

Peter picks two slices of cucumber off his sandwich and leans in to press them against Tony’s eyes. Tony splutters and bats his hands away.

“You need to relax more,” Peter says. “I’m all about self-care. You want to see that video again of the spider-dog scaring the shit out of people in Poland?”

“Eat your sandwich.”

“Come on. It’s the Daily Bugle. They have high journalistic standards. They’ve probably got good reason to write all this.”

“They’re claiming that Spider-Man eats bugs. They’re saying an eyewitness caught him digging for worms in her back garden!”

Peter just smiles his most charming smile. “I mean, I don’t know what to say. It adds up.”

Tony looks at him as he takes a slow sip of his coffee, his gaze calculating. “So.” He sets the cup down. “What have you been up to this weekend?”

“Family picnic,” Peter says.

“Oh, great, great fun,” Tony says and swipes away from the article.

It’s quite obvious that Tony knows he is Spider-Man, but decided not to acknowledge it; decided to keep the secret going. For what reason, Peter doesn’t know. Maybe Tony thinks he can use the information in his favor, or maybe he just doesn’t want Peter to freak out. Either way, it serves Peter just fine, because Tony tries so hard to keep up his oblivious act that he never prods too hard or looks too deep.

Which means all of Peter’s far bigger secrets are still safe.

-

Peter applied for an unpaid internship at Stark Industries four months ago, during his summer break. He did one of his usual tumbles, deep into the Stark-Industries-rabbit-hole, and found the job posting at the bottom.

The description asked for a college student, which Peter wasn’t; who had a bachelor’s degree in a scientific field, which Peter hadn’t; who had strong communication and interpersonal skills, which… the other day a girl said ‘hi’ to him in the street and Peter walked into a lamppost; who was passionate about contributing to a green and sustainable world.

So, what the hell, one out of four is good enough, right?

He sent an application letter, an overview of his projects, yammered on a bit about one of Tony Stark’s recent publications. He received a reply within two hours: an invite for an interview that same Saturday. When he showed up in his best shirt and jeans, Tony Stark himself stood downstairs in the lobby to greet him, sunglasses pushed into his hair, wearing a big lebowski sweater, turning heads. And he said he would be conducting the interview.

This is when Peter started to suspect that this man might just know about Spider-Man.

Tony Stark led him to an office, gestured for him to sit, and folded his hands on top of the desk. “You clearly have a good brain, but you meet none of our qualifications,” he said. “Why should I hire you?”

Peter flashed a bright smile at him and said: “Because I am a bastion of wisdom.”

Tony Stark tilted his head back and laughed, and then hired him on the spot.

And that’s more or less how they have interacted ever since.

Tony Stark has no idea, though, about the secret double life Peter has been leading. Phineas and Ferb and Spicy Queso Funyuns and, and, and...

At this point, Peter is in too deep. Like Pinocchio when he was in that whale.

-

“Lollipop?” Peter asks, offering the bag of chupa chups to every student he passes in the hallway, giving his widest smile. “Lollipop? Lollipop?”

“I love how insane you are,” someone says, and takes two.

“Insanity is the highest art form!” Peter yells after her.

Midtown is a place full of oddballs, but apparently Peter is still the weird one, just because he’s always in a good mood. Which is stupid, because being in a good mood is awesome. Other people should try it, sometime.

There is a light tap on his shoulder and he turns to find his English teacher right there, briefcase clenched under her arm, holding up a worn copy of Othello. Her face is creased in weariness. “Mr. Parker. Your report on one of the works of Shakespeare was due last night and yet I found my inbox tragically empty. If I don’t see it appear this evening, I’m afraid I’ll have to fail you.”

“Mrs. Carvalho.” Peter smiles pleasantly and holds out the bag. “Would you like a lollipop?”

Mrs. Carvalho moves her briefcase to her other arm to take a lollipop. “Please do not make me fail you, Mr. Parker, you are one of the few students I like in this nightmarish hellscape they call a high school.”

“I’m sorry. I was really busy with this family picnic over the weekend. There were so many puppies there, you know, I had to—I had to pet them all. How could I possibly…? Do you hate puppies or something?”

“Mr. Parker.”

“Right, no, right. I will get right on this. Nothing—Nothing more important in my life right now than Shakespeare, I promise. Priority one.”

“Shakespeare is always priority one, Mr. Parker,” she says. “Don’t forget it.” She sticks the lollipop in her mouth and walks off.

-

And yet somehow, when he is in the workshop that evening, he finds himself reading a library book called ‘Living with Hearing Loss and Deafness’, that definitely wasn’t written by Shakespeare.

“Is that for a school project?” Tony asks.

“No. It’s because you never listen to me.”

He has chosen his favorite spot today; on the beige vinyl floor, back against the wall, crammed in between two shelving units, his knee digging into a metal ridge, with a good view of the workbench where Tony is working.

Tony is looking his way, a smudge of something black on his cheek, smoke curling up from his soldering iron. “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable on the couch?” he asks, instead of anything like are you planning to actually do any intern work today at all?

This is how Peter, only a few weeks into his internship, decided that yes, Tony definitely knew he was Spider-Man. There was no other reason for Tony to keep him around when half the time Peter wasn’t actually doing anything at all.

“No. If it fits, I sits.” He pats the floor. “There is a heating pipe going through the floor here, and it’s almost November.”

Tony turns his gaze back to his project. “You are like a high maintenance cat.”

The autumn weather is hitting him a bit harder than usual. It might be the spider thing or maybe he’s just, whatever, getting old. Every breath of wind feels like it is cutting straight through him, like his body is just a metal frame. Rain is even worse. Tiny pricklets of cold steel. He got himself soaked to the bone last week, wetter than a dog in a car wash, feet sloshing in his sneakers, and it took about eight hours of napping for him to feel like a human being again.

It's a real shame, because rain is objectively awesome. Like, he loves rain. It brings life and all that jazz. Rain is great. From a distance.

If Tony knew that Peter knew that Tony knew about Spider-Man, he would probably just make Peter a better suit. Which would be—

No. No, no, no. If one secret gets out, they all get out. It will be Spicy Queso Funyuns-gate.

“Incoming call from Mr. Rogers,” FRIDAY reports.

Tony lifts his shirt to wipe his brow and glances up at a digital clock above the door. “It’s… 3 AM where he is.”

“That might mean it’s an emergency,” Peter helpfully points out, tipping the book back against his knee.

Tony hums in acknowledgement. “I’ll take the call on my cellphone, FRIDAY. Kid, could you—”

“Yep.” Peter flashes a smile and a thumbs up. “Get lost.”

Tony rolls his eyes as he picks up his phone. “Rogers, I’m here, are you dying? … Okay, then give me three seconds.” He covers the mouthpiece with one hand and looks back at Peter, a bit sternly, grandfather-sternly, head tilted forwards. “Don’t ‘get lost’, no, kindly give me some privacy while I deal with this other high maintenance cat.”

“Captain cat,” Peter says.

-

He goes to the one place where he knows he is always welcome, no matter what important phone calls come in: the penthouse, the big open spaces with the kitchen at its heart: with the round table and the wide-plank floorboards, all in warm walnut wood. Where one of Tony’s sweaters is perpetually hanging over the back of a chair. Where parsley and oregano and mint grow on the corner of the kitchen counter, and tomatoes in the window. Where Pepper is nearly always at the stove, like she is right now, stirring a big pot; really putting her back into it, too. “Honey!” she exclaims, and lays her wooden spoon across the pan so she can lean in and give him an enthusiastic side hug. “It’s been so long!”

It’s been three days.

“I melted a spatula,” Peter says as he inhales the scent of turmeric and cilantro. He has been told that Pepper has always been a pretty good cook, but that she really threw herself into the hobby last summer, around the same time when Peter got his internship. The stars aligned. Because it just so happens — unpopular opinion: Peter likes great food.

“You can’t become a good cook without melting a few spatulas,” Pepper says reassuringly. “And setting your own hair on fire once or twice.”

“What are you making? It smells like tomato-y heaven. This is lunch?”

“You know I love feeding you.”

Pepper is so nice. So nice, that it makes him a little sad sometimes. “What are you making? Or is it a soup-rise?”

She huffs out a laugh. “It’s harira soup, you little comedian.”

Peter gives a tiny bow. “I am your court jester. Me being here is basically just a community service.”

“Hmmm.” She starts stirring again, scraping along the bottom of the pan. “Is Tony coming, too?”

“In a few minutes, I’m guessing. He took a phone call.”

Steve Rogers is currently in Romania, looking for his friend Bucky Barnes, and Tony is assisting from a distance, guy in the chair, and Peter is not supposed to ask any more questions, you already know more than you should, kiddo.

“Hon, can you grab some garlic bread? You know where it is.”

Peter sets the table for three. He always picks a tablecloth in the same color as the sweater Tony is wearing that day. He wonders how long before Tony will notice.

“How are you?” Pepper asks. “How is the family, how is school?” She generally doesn’t prod much, either. Peter is pretty sure Tony told her about Spider-Man.

“One big Shakespearian tragedy. Shoot. Must remember to read. I’m totally gonna forget it anyways but I should try to remember. Have you read Shakespeare?”

“I liked Midsummer Night’s Dream; try that one. It’s up your alley, I think.”

“Yeah? Are there zombies in it?”

“Just try it. Because I say so.”

“Compelling argument, don’t quit your day job.” Peter sits, leaning his chin on his hands. “What was your favorite subject in school?”

“I hated school.”

“Really?” That surprises him.

“I was a goody two-shoes so I did all the assignments, but I didn’t like it. I could stomach math, but that’s about it.”

“I like school,” Peter says. “I like that everything is basically about solving little puzzles all day, different kinds of puzzles. I like being on the decathlon team. Naming all the planets in the right order is such a rollercoaster.”

“You nerd,” she says, very affectionately.

Tony shows up and says absolutely nothing about his phone call with Captain Cat. “Do you want to actually do some work after, intern Parker?” he asks Peter, and blows on his soup.

Peter smirks. “Yeah, what the heck, why not.”

Pepper pours a whole lot of leftover soup into a tight-lid container for Peter to take home.

-

He takes his chances when they are back in the workshop, and he is optimizing the rolling contact joints for printing. “Will you be using 2 millimeter UHMWPE cord?”

“Correct.”

“And want me to calculate the position for a linear actuator?”

“Please.”

“And what will you do when you find Mr. Barnes?”

Tony frowns at him, disapprovingly. Peter beams a smile in response.

“Not sure yet,” Tony says. “Nothing you need to worry about.”

Tony vaguely, hazily, ambiguously disclosed a few details about Bucky Barnes. One: that Captain America ran into him a year ago after presuming him long dead. Two: that he appears to have fled to Romania. Three: that he has a metal arm. And google shows absolutely zero results when you search the name. So officially, theoretically, that is all Peter knows about the case.

“I’m not worried,” he says. “I know the great Iron Man will protect us all.”

“You little shit.”

Peter lowers his head to hide his smile.

These moments might be his favorite. The evenings, when everything feels quieter, after the sun has set and the windows offer a panoramic view of the city lights twinkling and winking in the rain. He still isn’t entirely sure why Tony keeps him around, but he wishes he could tell him sometimes how much this all means to him. Unfortunately, he’s not good at being sappy. He’s better at cracking jokes.

“Seriously,” he says. “You know how people hang dream catchers or horseshoes or evil eye amulets in their house to ward of danger? I have a little Iron Man toy dangling from a string.” He mimics the dangling with his index finger.

“Yeah, well I have—” Tony starts, before breaking off and shaking his head, chuckling. He was about to make a Spider-Man joke, Peter realizes.

Damnit. If Tony ends up slipping up and accidentally blowing this whole Pinocchio-thing wide open, Peter will be so annoyed.

-

Peter feels bad for autumn. The season really gets a bad rep.

He leaves Happy’s car with Pepper’s soup tucked protectively under his coat like it’s a baby kitten, and a borrowed umbrella angled against the rain. A sharp wind sends trash skittering along the pavement.

What kind of spider-suit would Tony Stark make? Probably something with nano-heaters. Peter might be able to pull that off himself, if he had the budget to get nano-heaters. They’re not the sort of thing you can just find by going through people’s trash, casually tossed in with the pizza boxes and socks and occasional household appliances.

He shakes the umbrella out as he climbs the stone steps towards the third floor.

Maybe he can ask Tony for some nano-heaters, and they can both pretend that it’s not for the thing they both know it is for.

He steps inside and dramatically throws off his coat, leaving it in the middle of the hallway. “Honey, I’m home!” The living room is blessedly quiet. He kicks off his shoes, then his jeans, the legs are soaked around the ankles. He curls up on the couch, under his checkered throw blanket. It’s a good thing he’s got such dry humor. Hehe. He giggles to himself, pulling the blanket tighter.

The first thing he does is check his bank account to see if the hundred bucks from the Daily Bugle is there.

It is. Good. Sometimes the Bugle gets lazy about paying their people and then Peter calls Mr. Jameson a million times, leaving funny jokes in his voicemail, ‘Hey, hey Jameson, Why can’t you hear a pterodactyl going to the bathroom?’, because he has learned that this is the most efficient way to get Jameson annoyed enough that he’ll just pay.

As far as he’s concerned, it’s a dream job. A hundred bucks for a picture and a short article about Spider-Man every week, that he’s pretty sure no one even glances at before some intern throws it up on the website. Easy money, anonymous, not to mention fun. Peter loves making up weird shit about himself. Making up that rumor about how Spider-Man eats bugs was particularly inspired.

The ideas he still has lined up make him chuckle whenever he thinks of them. That Spider-Man is a secret Canadian spy, that Spider-Man has four extra limbs which he hides behind his back, that Spider-Man lays eggs, that Spider-Man is a secret child of Tony Stark.

That last idea is a personal favorite, but also, Tony will probably actually sue, so he shouldn’t.

He doesn’t have the heart to tell Tony that he is the one writing all these articles. Even though part of him thinks Tony might just laugh and think it’s hilarious. He’s Pinocchio and he’s in the whale.

He finds a funny video of two kittens jamming to ‘turn down for what’ and sends it on to Tony for the man’s daily dose of animal therapy. And then he grabs his laptop to watch Fargo, his actual favorite show, and he eats salted caramel popcorn, his actual favorite snack. Life is good.

-

The next morning, he’s lumbering from the cafeteria towards the biology classrooms when he spots Mrs. Carvalho up ahead, her arms folded across her chest.

Oh. Shoot.

-

Spider-Man is always cheerful and always kind, smile smile smile. No request too big, nor too insignificant. He’ll catch a bus, wrestle a giant spider, save lives. He’ll pose for a selfie, help someone look for their car keys, go to the corner store to buy an elderly lady some bird seed. Spider-Man is happy, relaxed, unfazed, his life is good, his cup is full and he’s pouring. That’s why people like him.

Maybe Peter should just act grumpy and stressed all the time, to protect his identity. Complain about his to do list, and deadlines, and stuff that needs fixing, and stuff that is being fixed, like “ugh, the builders woke me up this morning with their big boomhammer”, whatever it is called, or “ugh, why can’t the government fix the— the…” he doesn’t actually know what kind of stuff the government usually fixes.

See. He doesn’t even know how to do it. He doesn’t even have the right vocabulary.

Tony never seems concerned about deadlines, and look how far it got him.

Peter is perched on the edge of a roof where warm fall sunlight reflects in the still puddles. Autumn can be pretty, if it wants to be. The copper leaves, and the orange sunlight in the morning, and the purple skies when a storm approaches. Beautiful.

Hehe. Beautifall.

Life is good.

Below in the street, a dad wheels a stroller along the sidewalk, his eyes on the traffic around him, he doesn’t see his little daughter dropping her bunny-sleep toy, one of those long, narrow ones with a little blanket for a body.

Time to do his duty.

He shoots a web and soars down to street level.

-

Movie night? He texts as he blindly grapples through the fridge, looking for a snack.

He gets the same reply as always: O.K.

He puts the library book in his backpack, and his laptop. The weather is decent. He zips up his coat and leaves his gloves. He takes his bike, lifting it by the steer and spinning the front wheel to check the dynamo light before he leaves. It’s only a twenty-minute ride; he whistles as he zigzags around potholes.

He rings the doorbell but also sends a message just in case, I’m downstairs, and waits patiently for the low mechanical buzz so he can push the heavy door open. He sets his hip against it as he wrestles his bike across the threshold. He always leaves it inside, under the mailboxes, because this neighborhood is pretty crummy and he wouldn’t have money for a new bike if it got stolen.

When he gets to the second floor, the door to the apartment is already open. He wipes his feet in the cramped hallway, on a doormat that says ‘home sweet home’ with a looping heart in the corner. He closes the door behind him.

He lets the backpack slide off his shoulder, swaying it back and forth in his hand as he steps into the living room.

Bucky is on the couch, bare feet, hair tied back, green sweater. All his sweaters are green, sort of army-green. Only color he feels comfortable in. Ankles crossed. Silent gaze on Peter.

“Hey,” Peter says, smiles, and points a thumb across his shoulder. “I’ve been meaning to ask. Did you buy that doormat? That’s cute.”

Bucky squints at him for a while, and says: “Are you asking if I bought the doormat?”

“Yes.”

“Does anything in here look like I bought it myself?”

Not really. Not the couch cushions with the same red-orange psychedelic pattern as the rug on the floor. Not the knitted pan holders in the kitchen drawer. Definitely not the television that doesn’t even work because Bucky has no cable.

Probably all belonged to Mr. or Ms. Blunt, then, whose name is still on the mailbox.

Peter thought that was hilarious when he first found out. “So I should call you Bucky Blunt?” he had asked with a grin. And then Bucky pointed out his real name was James, which made it even better. “So you’re James Blunt?”

Bucky didn’t know who James Blunt was.

Peter sets his backpack down on the coffee table and unzips it, takes out the library book, holds it out.

Bucky doesn’t take it, he just gives Peter another long look. “I don’t really read.”

“I read it.” Peter says, pointing at himself. “It’s good.”

“You read it?”

“I did.”

“Why?”

Peter rolls his eyes and tugs at his ear. “Because no one ever listens to me.”

Bucky’s mouth quirks into a gentle smile. He takes the book.

“You have two weeks,” Peter says, holding up two fingers. “Before I have to take it back.”

“Next time get me a book about zombies or something.”

“Oh my god. Same brain.”

-

Bucky showed up on his doorstep a few months back. This was after he started interning for Tony Stark, after he had already heard the name Bucky Barnes getting thrown around, but never seen a picture.

It was a simple knock at the door and Peter opened to find a stranger there, posture slouched, frayed baseball cap, green-gray clothes, one glove. He assumed it was a neighbor looking to borrow something, since he hadn’t buzzed anyone up.

“You’re home alone, correct?” the man asked.

Ominous first question. “At the moment.”

“Yes or no, please.”

Sheesh. “Yes.”

“Do you know who I am?”

Peter lazily hung against the doorpost, grinning. “Can’t wait to find out, I feel like we’re going to be great friends, you give off this real wholesome vibe.”

“Yes or no, please.”

Peter rolled his eyes and said nothing.

The man squinted at him for a moment, then dug into his pocket. He held out a photo, all hues of yellow and gray, two young men standing side by side, one was Captain America and the other one— Peter stood up straighter. “Holy shit. Are you Bucky Barnes?”

Bucky gave a single nod, his eyes on Peter’s face, watching intently.

“Prove it,” Peter said, eyes flitting down to Bucky’s left arm.

Bucky huffed out a breath whipped off his glove, revealing a gleaming metal hand.

“Woah….” Peter clasped a hand around the doorpost so he could lean in closer. “Can I poke that thing with a screwdriver? Do you know Captain America is looking for you? Want me to organize a reunion, like this is Toy Story 3?”

“I know you’re Spider-Man,” Bucky Barnes said, pointing past Peter, at the windows. “I’ve been watching.”

Okay. This was very quickly turning into an evil-villain-slash-blackmail scenario.

Bucky clearly saw the look on his face, because he continued: “I’m not here to start something. I need your help. You’re the best person for it.” His voice was rather intent, but there was hesitation in his body language, the way he stood with his shoulders slightly hunched, baseball cap pulled down as far as possible.

“Why don’t you go see Captain America? Isn’t he your friend? Like Toy Story 3?”

Bucky squinted at him for a while, and then said, in a far softer tone: “I’m not the person he thinks I am, and I’m not eager for him to find out.”

Peter understood keeping secrets. No judgment there. “But, uh—”

“I need your help. One time. And then I’ll disappear.”

That all sounded perfectly above board and definitely nothing to be worried about at all. “Is it illegal?”

“Are you asking if it’s legal?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.”

“Can I explain inside?”

“Yeah, sure, what the hell.” Peter stepped aside.

Bucky — holy shit, it was Bucky Barnes — pushed past him, down the hallway into the living room where he stepped straight up to the tall windows and surveyed the street below.

“Is someone following you?” Peter asked.

Bucky didn’t answer, but he also didn’t close the blinds, so it was probably fine.

“How long have you been in New York? Pretty sure people think you’re in Romania.”

Bucky didn’t answer. His head moved slowly left to right. He craned his neck to see past the neighbor’s balcony. And then he turned. His eyes were solemn. “I’m going to give you a list of eleven words you’ll need to read out,” he said. “They’re Russian words, I wrote them down phonetically. I want you to say them as loudly and clearly as possible. If all goes wrong, I respond in Russian, I need you to neutralize me immediately. That webbing you have is quite strong, correct? I do have enhanced strength, so make sure to properly tie me down. And then you’ll have my full permission to contact Tony Stark. If all goes well, then all goes well. I’ll leave and won’t bother you again. And you can still run to Tony Stark and tell him if you want, I do not care, he won’t find me.”

Peter gaped at him.

Bucky let the silence stretch for a good twenty seconds and then asked, politely. “Any questions?”

“Uh. Yeah. What the fuck?”

“Did you just say the f-word?”

“What are you, like cursed by Baba Yaga?”

“I didn’t understand any of that.”

“She’s from Russian folklore, I figured you’d know.”

“What are you asking me, precisely?”

“Are you cursed?”

Bucky’s gaze flicked from his mouth to his eyes and back. A hint of amusement slipped into his expression. It made him look softer. “Are you asking if I was cursed?”

“I mean, it’s a reasonable—”

“It’s close enough, I suppose. If I say yes, will you help me?”

He was Spider-Man. No request too big, nor too insignificant. “I’ve always wanted to break a curse.”

“Was that a yes or a no?”

“Yes. Obviously. I’ll, uh—” he turned towards his bedroom door, “grab my webshooters, and then look at those words you got. I can find some text-to-speech thing online that will help me practice, don’t want to accidentally make your whole curse thing even—"

“Parker,” Bucky interrupted.

“Huh?”

“Don’t talk unless I can see your face. I’m deaf.”

Peter stilled, then turned, one hand on the knob of his bedroom door. “You’re… What do you mean?”

“I mean, I’m deaf.”

“But you’re talking to me right now.”

“Lipreading, body language and context clues,” Bucky said. “I happen to have been trained in all those things, quite rigorously. I still usually understand fifty percent at best, but people rarely seem to notice, which I believe says a lot about our society. And deaf means, the issue is the ears, not the vocal chords.”

“Oh.” Now that he thought about it, he wasn’t even sure why he would assume that a deaf person wouldn’t be able to talk. And then he felt bad. “You should have said something, I wouldn’t have been an asshole about the ‘yes or no’ thing.”

Bucky squinted at him and said nothing.

“If you’re deaf, why am I reading words out to you?”

“I can hear noises. If I pay attention I can hear that you’re talking, can’t make out the words.” His voice turned rusty. “I just want to be sure that, that it’s good enough.”  A crackle of sorrow splintered across his face and Peter felt a sudden rush of compassion.

He gave a quiet nod and said, slowly, “I’ll go grab my web shooters.”

He spent ten, maybe fifteen minutes bent over his coffee table, practicing the list of words with a little help from a text to speech app, while Bucky meandered around the apartment and fiddled with everything; the phone charger, the tin with instant coffee, a dead plant in the window. His face was grave, he seemed to be bracing himself.

“Okay, I think I’m good to go,” he said.

Bucky didn’t answer.

Right. He pushed himself up.

Bucky turned.

“I’m good to go.” Peter gave a thumbs up and a smile.

Bucky gave a grimace that was, perhaps, supposed to be a smile, too. His eyes flicked down to the webshooter in Peter’s hand. “I don’t think I will attack you,” he said, matter-of-factly. “If anything, it is far more likely that I would mindlessly obey you.”

“Okay.” That actually sounded scarier, as far as Peter was concerned. His instinct was to make a joke, but he saw Bucky’s face and decided not to. “I won’t—take advantage.”

“I counted on as much.”

Peter smoothened the paper out a bit more and cleared his throat. “Here I go.”

-

He asked Bucky once, later, when they were out for coffee. “Seriously, though. Why me?”

He remembers Bucky ordered a cappuccino, remembers the disturbed look on his face when it was served with a little heart in the milk foam. And how he said something like: “I thought about it from every angle, and you were my best option. Because I knew you’d be able to stop me if it turned out I was a threat, but you would let me go if it turned out I wasn’t. No other person met both of those requirements.”

“Wow,” he said in reply, slouching lower in his seat and grinning. “I’m also a bastion of wisdom, very good at getting a job without meeting any of the requirements.”

Bucky gave him a flat look. “I didn’t catch any of that, that was gibberish.”

Chapter Text

The living room at the tower has an enormous L-shaped couch facing away from the kitchen, and against the other wall is one single swiveling armchair, oatmeal color. Peter likes to sit there and turn it to have a good view of the kitchen as he picks the feathers out of the cushion. The fabric is very soft. The chair has round shapes and a reclining seat, so he feels like a baby chick sitting inside his egg. Life is good, and when he is sitting here, life is even better.

Tony is in a meeting that he forgot to tell Peter about, so Pepper gave him her copy of A midsummer night’s dream to read; with a creased back, dog eared, some parts underlined with pencil, Pepper really likes this book. And fair play, it’s not as awful as some of Shakespeare’s other scribbles, there’s even jokes and stuff, but on the whole it’s still dull as dishwater. And it’s too late to save his school assignment. But he’ll read some of it to make her happy. He loves making people happy, it’s definitely in his top ten favorite things, squished into a spot between kitten videos and decathlon competitions.

Pepper scrapes the chopped onions off the cutting board into the pan, then looks his way. “Next time you have an assignment or project, bring it to the tower,” she suggests.

Peter lets the book flop forward and looks at her, corner of his mouth quirking up. “Are you sure you didn’t use to like school?”

-

Mr. Harrisson asks him to wait after class. Peter wishes he had brought more lollipops. Lollipops always make people happy. He leans his chin on his hands and waits while the others stumble out, bumping into his desk.

Mr. Harrisson hovers in the doorway as he waits for the last student to leave, and then steps back inside and firmly closes the door behind him, which is definitely not a good sign. He picks the chair at the desk in front of Peter up, and turns it around so he can sit facing Peter. He folds his hands in his lap, thumbs tapping together. He looks a little uncomfortable, actually.

“It’s okay,” Peter says.

Mr. Harrison looks startled. And then exhales. “As I’m sure you remember, you were over half an hour late at our last decathlon practice. And I have since then been made aware that you have now failed to hand in assignments twice this month.”

“Oh, has it been—? Oh, right. But, you see, bu-uuut…” He pauses, lifting a finger. “I’ve been handing out lots of candy.”

“Peter.”

“Bringing smiles to people’s faces, which in a way is sort of, like, the greater assignment of life, wouldn’t you say?”

“It’s—”

“Hey. Why can’t you hear a pterodactyl going to the bathroom?”

Mr. Harrisson exhales. “Do I need to be concerned about you, Peter?”

Peter throws him an incredulous look. “What, concerned like—I’m on drugs or something?”

“I wasn’t planning to be that concerned, no,” Mr. Harrisson says, forehead creasing, eyes dancing around Peter’s face. “But if you feel like you need to, say, take a step back from decathlon to focus on your other schoolwork—”

“You’re throwing me off the team?”

“Not yet. As things stand, I’m simply giving you an out if you feel like you need it.”

“I don’t need an out, sir, I breathe trivia facts, you know, Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is the biggest moon in our solar system, the desert spider babies eat their mom after birth, that sort of stuff.”

“That’s…” If anything Mr. Harrisson looks slightly more worried.

“I’ve just been a tad disorganized, I totally got this. You can trust me, you know I’m an open book, heart on my sleeve, etcetera.” He points at himself, aiming for his widest smile. “This is the face of someone who has totally got this.”

“I hope you do better on your upcoming school assignments.”

“Totally,” Peter says.

-

“And so, your assignment,” the teacher says, holding the computerized plastic baby up high for everyone to see, “is to keep your baby happy and healthy for an entire weekend. The less it cries, the higher your grade, simple stuff.” She starts distributing them. They come with a keyring with little cards that say ‘feed’, ‘change diaper’, ‘bathe’. Peter gets one with brown eyes and a cotton-white onesie. The eyelids droop down every time you hold her up.

“It’s got better eyelashes than I do,” one fellow student says, very, very offended.

“This is bullshit,” another mutters, lifting her doll up by the leg. It promptly starts crying and she curses.

“This is awesome,” Peter says. “I’m naming her Princess Leia.”

-

It is already near-dark by the time he gets to the workshop. Tony texted him earlier if he was still planning to show up, could use some of your happy vibes around here, and Peter debated sending him a picture of the baby as a reply, but decided he wanted the live reaction.

“What the hell is that?” Tony asks, really stretching out the ‘h’. He’s looking at Peter through a blue-green sea of holographic interfaces hovering above his desk.

“Yes,” Peter says. “I am with child.”

He watched a video at home and swaddled Princess Leia in one of his smaller bath towels. She only cried once so far, and Peter just had to find the right keycard to put into the slot on her back. ‘Bathe’ made her stop crying.

Parenting is easy.

Tony looks at the baby for a little while, open-mouthed, and then just says, “show that to Pepper later. I’ve been trying to convince her for ages,” and picks up his screwdriver again.

“Was that in the intern job description? Convince Mr. Stark’s wife to bang out a baby?”

“You should have read the fine print.”

“I’m telling HR.”

“Oh no.” Tony’s voice is very, very flat. “My spotless reputation.”

Peter steps around the table to take stock of the damage. Several half-finished products are each taking up their own little plot of desk-space, making the desk look like a robot graveyard. Above it, holographic interfaces form a sea of unrelated blueprints and calculations. To some, it might imply that Tony has had a productive day, but Peter has learned by now that this means Tony’s head isn’t really in the game.

“Her name is Princess Leia.”  He angles his arms to show her to Tony. “And if you hold her for a while, I’ll clear up some of this mess for you.”

“It’s not a mess. It’s the future.”

Peter rocks the baby in his arms, giving Tony his most disarming smile. “This could be your future.”

“Tempting.” Tony holds out his arms.

Peter hands Princess Leia over and starts by surveying the holographic screens, flicking most of them away with a quick hand motion. Most of them, Tony clearly opened while on some brain-tangent, and then forgot about. “How many tabs do you have open on your phone?” he asks.

“Boo boo boo ba ba ba,” Tony is saying to the baby.

Peter steps around him. Most of the projects that were on the table go back in their white plastic boxes. Loose nuts, bolts and screws go back in their designated mug. Peter lines them up at the edge of the desk, in rainbow order. One of them says ‘world’s greatest dad’ and Peter wonders where Tony got it. And why. “All right.” He points at the thing Tony had been poking at with a screwdriver. “What’s that?”

“Something, something, solar power,” Tony says, and waves a hand. “Boo, so boring, saving the planet like a nerd. Just, just get rid of that, too. We can get back to the robotic arm, you know your way around that software. You want to do some work?”

“If you look after Princess Leia. Don’t drop her, I need a good grade.”

“Oh, it’s a school project?”

“Please share with the class,” Peter says. “What did you think it was?”

“You don’t even need a good grade, probably, I mean no worries, I won’t drop her, but I bet it wouldn’t even put a dent in your perfect GPA.”

“Yep, all perfect, thankyouverymuch,” Peter says, “but imagine being a perfect parent and going, ‘I can chuck my child at a wall one time, it’s not gonna bring down my average’.”

“I won’t drop her.”

Peter tidies his last project away, carefully tucking all the loose parts into the box and stacking it on top of the others. All right. Robot arm. He asked for a closer look at Bucky’s arm one time, but Bucky just shook his head and tucked his arm against his side, so he hasn’t asked again. But sometimes he sees Bucky reach for something, twitch, turn his elbow strangely and try again. He wonders how long that arm has gone without maintenance.

“I got you those Spicy Queso Funyuns that you like.” Tony points at the sideboard next to the couch.

“Ah, great.”

Lying to Tony Stark used to be so incredibly easy. He was just some guy, Peter didn’t owe him anything, didn’t need to lay his entire life bare at Tony’s feet.

-

That day, after he said eleven Russian words — twice, Bucky made him speak louder the second time, stand closer, until Peter could see the muscles jump in his jaw, hear his heartbeat, and Peter didn’t know yet what was supposed to happen, or not happen, but definitely nothing happened — Bucky said ‘thank you’ in a soft but rusty voice and walked out.

Peter blinked into empty space for a few seconds, and then rushed out the door into the hallway. “Hang on!”

Bucky kept walking.

Oh, right. Peter broke into a jog and caught up, a hand landing on Bucky’s shoulder—

—the next moment his cheek was slammed into the cinder block wall, collarbone grazing against the rough concrete, arm twisted painfully behind his back.

“Fuck.” Bucky immediately released him and stepped back, though his face remained a glare. “Do you have a death wish?”

“Ouch,” Peter said and shook his arm out. Pins and needles from his shoulder down to his fingertips. “Uh, I’m pretty sturdy, generally.” He rubbed his cheek.

“Don’t follow me.”

“Same side, right?”

“What?”

Peter pointed between them and flashed a smile. “Same side.” He offered a thumbs up.

Bucky squinted at him. “What do you want?”

“Uh. Some, like… A little more context would be great.”

Bucky squinted some more.

“Is the curse gone?” Peter asked. “Curse. Poof?” he made the universal sign of things magically disappearing in thin air.

“I’m deaf, not infantile, Parker.”

“Sorry, I’ve never— Could we just grab some coffee?”

He got another long, silent look in response. He hadn’t yet figured out if that meant Bucky hadn’t understood him, was perhaps still patching the words together, or if this was just how he communicated. “I know you go to Stark Industries. Several times a week,” Bucky said. “So. Thanks for the favor. But this is where we part ways.”

Something in his stomach squeezed. “How long have you been following me?” He didn’t want Bucky Barnes to know—things he didn’t need to know.

“Every day, after school, for the last two weeks.”

Peter huffed. Whatever. It was fine. If Bucky knew anything, who was he gonna tell? “I won’t tell Tony,” he said slowly.

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“Because I never tell him anything.”

Bucky stared at him again for a stretching moment, his eyes narrowed. “Don’t follow me,” he repeated. He stepped back. “And water your plants.” He turned away.

Peter liked to keep his arms attached to his body, so he didn’t follow. He withdrew to the apartment and debated putting on the suit and following Bucky across the rooftops, but when he pressed himself up against the window to see which direction Bucky would go, the man was nowhere to be seen.

-

It was another week before Bucky suddenly turned up outside his school.

-

“Oh, that looks creepy,” Pepper says. Tony and Peter caught her in the stairwell between workshop and living room. Tony is still holding Princess Leia.

The look of anticipation slides off Tony’s face. “Huh. You—You really think so?”

“I don’t know, I have a thing about fake babies.”

Tony recovers swiftly, as usual. “Oh yes. The fakeness. The fakeness is an issue.”

“Though this is handy.” Pepper has taken the keyring with the cards and is turning it over in her hands. “I wish I had one of these for you. Nap, drink water, do paperwork. And I’d just slot it in.” She reaches out to tap a finger against Tony’s back, between the shoulder blades.

“Thank you for sharing your utopian view on our relationship.”

“Hmmm,” Pepper says, smiling ambiguously, and hands the keyring back. She looks at Peter. “I made three different key lime pies. Want to taste-test?”

“Your cooking literally keeps me alive,” Peter says. “You’re baking my day.”

“These dad jokes of yours land better now that you have a baby,” Pepper says.

They both follow her to the kitchen where all three pies are neatly displayed in the center of the table; fresh, red fruit sprinkled on top and everything, the way you would probably get them in a fancy restaurant where you pay a week’s wages for a three-bite portion. So fancy and pretty, that Peter wouldn’t dare cutting into it, but thankfully, Pepper does it for him. Peter gets slices three times as big as Tony.

He props princess Leia up in his lap as he eats.

“Which one is the best?” Pepper asks, clicking her ballpoint. There is a legal pad on the table in front of her with lots of notes in a looping handwriting, and an underlined heading ‘THANKSGIVING’. So organized. The kitchen is spotless, too. When Peter cooks, the entire living room turns into a war zone.

“They are all the best,” Peter says. “Pie is good. Life is good.” His next mission: to get himself invited for thanksgiving with the Starks.

“You have to pick one.”

“You can’t,” Peter says. “You can’t make me choose between pies. Even Hitler never made people do that.”

Pepper gives him a rather exasperated look that she usually reserves for Tony. “How about, please pick one, as a personal favor to me, your favorite CEO.”

“You are my favorite CEO,” Peter acknowledges.

Pepper sends Tony a bit of a smug look. As if they had debated this earlier, and Tony had told her something like ‘nah, I bet his favorite CEO is that guy on Shark Tank who makes knock-knock jokes’.

“Hm.” Peter pokes the nearest slice with his fork. “Hmm, let’s see, let’s see. I like the crust on this one.”

Pepper immediately begins taking notes.

“Does my opinion count at all?” Tony asks.

“Oh, shush.”

Ironically, Princess Leia starts crying right as she says that, a tinny sound from a speaker somewhere inside that silicone head. Peter sits up straighter, folds the towel away from her and leans over to grab the keyring off the kitchen counter.

She stops crying at the first attempt, Feed. She was just jealous about the pie, probably. “Parenting is easy, you know.” He looks at Pepper. “Could you hold her for just a second while I fold the towel?”

Behind her back, Tony is shooting him a quick thumbs-up with a wink.

Pepper does take Princess Leia from him but holds her with outstretched arms. Like she is a bomb, or a rabid raccoon. “Meh. Still creepy,” she says when she hands the baby back over.

Later, when they are heading back down to the workshop, Peter gives Tony an encouraging poke in the side with his elbow and says “We’ll get her next time.”

Tony chuckles.

Lying to Tony Stark used to be so incredibly easy. But all the kindness being shown to him in this house is making it harder every day.

“You’d make a good dad,” he says.

“Thanks kid,” Tony says, looking surprised. And then he softens. “Yeah, thanks.”

-

‘Movie Night?’ he asks Saturday, late afternoon, when he’s pretty sure Bucky must be awake.

‘O.K.’ is the reply.

‘I also need a favor.

It takes Bucky a bit longer to respond to that one.  ‘Should have led with that. Would have said no.’

‘2 l8 :D’ Peter writes, and then backspaces and writes the words out before hitting send.

He isn’t really sure how this whole thing works, this hiding with a secret identity thing. It sounds exciting, like you’d have to constantly look over your shoulder, have contingency plans, safe houses. But as far as he can see, Bucky is leading an exceptionally ordinary life. So ordinary, that it makes Peter a little jealous sometimes. He puts an apron on when he bakes eggs, he buys magazines about gardening, he collects his paycheck.

Peter knows he got a job working at a local ice rink, very early morning shift. Bucky has talked about it a few times, about getting into work at 5 AM when his breath still frosts on each exhale, and sometimes the lock of the side door is frozen so you have to breathe on it for a while before the key will turn. Collecting used paper cups from the bleachers, hoovering around the lockers, sharpening the skates, resurfacing the ice.

“Do you know how to skate?” Peter asked once.

Bucky nodded at that, face grim and hard in a way that made Peter think that maybe he had to learn it as a HYDRA-thing, a spies on skates thing.

Bucky never sees any colleagues, let alone customers. He leaves before the rink opens, goes home and straight to bed. He hasn’t figured out how to make an alarm clock work for him, so he prefers to sleep during the day, wake up in the evening and then stay up all night to be ready at 4 AM to head back to work.

“Don’t you want to talk to people?” Peter asked once.

Bucky shook his head and said “most people just talk nonsense anyways.”

He seems very content with the job, this former Hydra operative. And very content with the apartment that has hearts on the welcome mat.

But he doesn’t speak to anyone at the ice rink. He doesn’t speak to anyone at home. He always says ‘O.K.’ when Peter suggests a movie night. He’s a major pushover. He might be lonely, a bit isolated.

Hehe. Ice-olated

-

The day Bucky unexpectedly turned up outside his school, a week after unexpectedly turning up outside his apartment, rain was falling in thick, lazy droplets, spaced far apart. They left stains like black coins on the sidewalk and on Bucky’s green sweater. “You didn’t tell Stark.” Bucky said.

Peter stood at a safe distance from him, leaning back on his feet. “How would you know?”

“Because Stevie is still in Romania.”

Peter didn’t ask again, how do you know. Bucky clearly had his ways. Peter met his eyes, earnest. “I won’t tell him.”

Bucky’s face was closed off and controlled, his eyes hard, and Peter felt like his face was about to be slammed into some concrete again.

“Grab a coffee?” Bucky asked, gruff and stilted.

-

“Hell no,” Bucky says.

“I just need you to watch her for, like, two hours tops. I’ll keep my patrol short. I promise you she’s not possessed at all, I mean, she can turn her head all the way around and stuff, full three-sixty, but that’s just her inheriting my flexible genes, probably.”

“Two hours, what?”

“Watch her for two hours. Please, Bucky.” He puts the baby on the couch — Bucky immediately pulling his leg away — and presses the palms of his hands together in a pleading gesture, though he can’t keep his mouth from twitching into a smile. Bucky sees it and glares.

Peter makes puppy eyes. “I can’t just skip Spider-Man for a whole weekend. But I need a good grade. I’m an inch and a half away from getting kicked out of school.” A little exaggeration never hurt anyone. “Please, Bucky, and I’ll let you pick the movie later.”

Bucky eyes Princess Leia with incredible reluctance. He is leaning back, away from her, arms crossed.

“Look.” Peter digs out his phone, opens the app. “I downloaded this.” He turns the phone towards Bucky. “See? It shows you sound waves, all pretty colors. Very relaxing to look at, I’m all about self-care. So you can see when she’s crying. And then you just slot the cards in until she stops.” He points at the keyring next to Bucky’s leg.

Bucky’s eyes flick from Peter’s mouth down to the tiny cards. He scrunches up his nose like the words ‘change diaper’ are offensive, the same look he gets whenever he thinks he sees Peter use the f-word. “One hour.”

“Hour and a half.”

“One hour.”

“Hour and fifteen minutes?”

“One hour.”

Ugh. “Fine. But it only starts once I’ve left.”

Bucky gives a terse nod. Peter totally out-negotiated him.

He goes to Bucky’s cramped bathroom to change into his suit, elbows knocking against the tiles as he pulls the blue-red sweater over his head. There is a potted plant on the shelf above the sink that possibly once belonged to Mr. or Mrs. Blunt, but it’s still looking very alive, so Bucky is definitely watering it. Peter thinks that’s pretty cute.

His own plants at home have been dying.

He steps out of the bathroom and gives Bucky two thumbs up.

-

The city is his playground, and Spider-Man loves to play. The friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, the always cheerful Spider-Man.

He scales walls and leaps over railings. The sun is dropping lower in the sky, the shadows are growing long, and then streetlights flicker on with that low hum that Peter only started hearing once he became enhanced. The constant buzz of electricity made it hard to fall asleep at first, but now he finds it soothing.

Happy, happy Spider-Man. Smile, smile, smile.

Bucky lives on the edge between Queens and Brooklyn, and Peter doesn’t know this area that well, so he doesn’t stray far. He fishes trash out of city planters, lifts a lady’s car so she can replace the wheel, mediates in an argument between two neighbors, takes down a tree branch that had snatched off but was still dangling dangerously. It’s a night for small stuff, which suits him just fine, because his measly one hour passes even quicker than he thought it would.

He pauses to take a picture for the Bugle, balancing his phone against an AC unit and posing on the roof edge. And then he climbs down to perch on a fire escape, looks the alley up and down, twirling the drawstrings of his hoodie around his fingers and pulling them tighter.

When he made this costume last spring, it seemed perfectly suitable for all his needs. Sewing the goggles into the ski mask was the most work, it kept coming apart at the seams and he had to redo it a bunch of times. He got the sweatpants, and a long-sleeved shirt for warmer days which, uh, still kinda turned out too hot in summer when temperatures would hit ninety degrees and everyone else was walking around in bathing suits. And this red hoodie for colder days which, yes, he can now tell is still gonna turn out too cold when winter actually gets here and everyone will be walking around in bear coats.

If Tony made him a suit, it would have nano-heaters and nano-aircon. It would be bullet-proof and water-resistant. It would probably be able to read his mind. In fact, it would probably be able to solve world hunger or something, that’s how extra Tony is.

He notices himself smiling at the thought, and then shakes his head. He’ll be fine. It’s nice how much Tony cares, but it isn’t necessary. It’s just, like, a bonus. Playing life on easy mode. He’s already fine. Super-duper fine.

He hears a noise.

He tilts his head. Through the pigeons flapping, traffic lights ticking, engines revving, cats purring, children crying, sirens wailing, empty cans rattling, laugh tracks laughing, heels clicking, dogs barking, musicians practicing, water rushing through sewers, and vacuums vacuuming, he hears a noise he has never heard before.

Something like an auto-tuned chicken.

The fire escape rattles as he pulls himself to his feet, angling his head left then right. He jumps, lands against the wall on the opposite side of the alley, fingers spread wide against weathered plaster, and quickly scales it towards the rooftop. The sound is clearer from up here. Maybe six or seven blocks away.

He covers that distance jumping, rolling, sprinting, swinging, fluidly, easily, as if he’s being pulled along in a current, a current that spits him out on a rooftop. Below is a small parking lot, about twelve spaces surrounded by low-rent storefronts, some still open, some closed, some abandoned, all of them entirely customer-less.

The sound is coming from somewhere behind a cluster of garbage cans and dumped furniture, against the blind wall of a building.

Peter drops down to street level and approaches. The weird sound is still there, and he might be about to discover E.T. hiding under a broken chair or something. He avoids a nasty looking puddle as he gets down to hands and knees and peers through the gaps, nudging one garbage can aside.

“Oh.”

It’s… a lizard. Rusty brown, frills flapping. Tail included, it’s about the length of his forearm. It sits very still, eyes rolling towards Peter. And then it makes the noise again.

Peter definitely doesn’t think lizards are supposed to sound like that.

“Hey,” he says, slowly extending a hand towards it.

Lightning hits a flash of light swallows up his world for a split second gravity reverses and his head collides. With something very solid.

Which way is up?

He groans.

He hit something—he’s slumped against a wall, the taste of blood in his mouth, his elbow screaming as if it was smashed to splinters. He groans again and cracks open an eye.

In the middle of the parking lot stands a woman, tall but so thin that she is almost not there at all. Bald head, her dress is all flowy fabric. One arm still raised ominously. The other hand clutching the lizard against her chest. Definitely, like, a witch or something.

“Ouch,” Peter says.

“Leave my lizard alone,” she snaps.

He rolls over to push himself to hands and knees. The elbow protests but he can still move his arm. He lifts his head. “You could have asked.”

She moves back, almost glides. Her eyes are very light in the darkness; glow in the dark moons. “Stick to your own neck in the woods,” she says, voice turning to a hiss. “Spider-Man.”

Across the parking lot, a few store owners stand with their noses pressed against the glass, mouths agape. Not a common occurrence around here, then.

Peter stands, stumbles. “Wait.”

She does the opposite of waiting. She pulls her skirt higher with one hand and shoots off down an alleyway.

Peter follows, as well as he can, through the pounding in his skull. And maybe she is very fast or maybe he is slow; every time she turns a corner, she seems to become a little more invisible, until she is just a silent shadow moving against brick walls, and then nothing, dissolved into the darkness. Peter stumbles to a halt, leans one hand against the wall, gags and spits out some blood.

He fruitlessly meanders around the block one last time, sharpening his hearing to try and pick up those strange sounds. But a different sort of concern is becoming more and more pressing in his mind: He didn’t pay attention, doesn’t know where he is. And he’s definitely past the hour mark. And Princess Leia… And his grade…

-

He finds his way back to the apartment after asking directions three times. It must have been almost two hours since he left. The headache has lifted a bit but he feels more miserable than ever, dragging himself over the railing of Bucky’s balcony. He doesn’t hear any crying so maybe it’s not—

Bucky is right behind the balcony doors and Peter yelps, legs sliding out from under him. The railing digs painfully into his spine when he falls back.

Bucky yanks the door open, face grim, eyes heavy and hard.

His other arm is wrapped around one very content, non-crying Princess Leia.

“Sorry,” Peter manages, making the ASL gesture he learned, even though Bucky told him he doesn’t know ASL, never learned it, only ever learned some Hydra military hand signs that don’t exactly come up in casual conversation.

Bucky reaches down and grabs his arm, dragging him to his feet and inside. He chucks Princess Leia on the couch, none too gently, but at least she lands softly. His hands clamp down on Peter’s shoulders and he pushes him down onto the couch, too.

“Are you injured?” Bucky asks through gritted teeth.

“Yeah,” Peter says, and nods. Nodding hurts.

He pulls his mask off. Bucky huffs, most likely at the— bruise? Head wound? Peter hasn’t even taken stock of the damage yet. And he gets Peter an icepack. And then another after Peter rolls up his sleeve to reveal a black-violet mass of bruising up and down his arm.

“Do I have a head wound?” Peter asks, but Bucky is looking down at his elbow, fingers ghosting around the edges of the bruise, and doesn’t see him talk.

Peter nudges him with his knee and waits for Bucky to look up. “I’m sorry, Bucky.”

“Don’t,” Bucky says roughly, looking down again. “I knew you wouldn’t stay out longer than agreed unless something had happened.”

Okay. Bucky is worked up because he was worried about him. And he still looked after Princess Leia. Peter smiles goofily and feels like crying, so it’s a good thing Bucky isn’t looking at his face right now. This is odd, but nice. Peter is normally the one who takes care of people. Not the other way around.

Bucky fusses over him for a little while longer, face set, eyebrows drawn together. He brings Peter tea and a blanket from his bedroom, and then huffs again when he finally does catch the goofy smile on Peter’s face. “You smile too much. It’s not healthy.”

“Actually scientific research shows that—”

Bucky just turns his head away so he doesn’t see what Peter says.

Rude.

They watch E.T. with subtitles that say things like HEARTFELT MUSIC and GATE OPENING OMINOUSLY.

-

Sunday morning, he rolls out of bed way too early when Princess Leia starts crying and he fumbles with the keyring until he finds the right card. Honestly, the novelty of this robot baby thing is beginning to wear off.

He feels like he went through the wringer, tired, but the bruises are gone. Something faintly dark left under the eye that could be mistaken for just the shadows of a bad night’s sleep. If he puts on a proper smile, no one will even notice them. That’s how it always goes.

He eats dry cereal for breakfast and washes it down with some black coffee, he puts on Fargo, he googles emancipation.

He should definitely tell Tony about the alien-slash-witch lurking around Blatchington Road, but it takes him a while to figure out how to bring it up without making it incredibly obvious that he is Spider-Man.

But then the idea hits him and he clicks away from people getting shoveled to death in the Minnesota snow, opens an empty document, cracks his knuckles, and enthusiastically starts tapping away about that damn Spider-Menace who caused a nuisance on the edge of Brooklyn — Is nowhere safe from him? — and didn’t even manage to capture the bad guy. Bad girl. Bad—bad lady. He attaches the picture he took of himself; whatever, Jameson never actually cares if the picture matches the article. He sends the whole thing off without proofreading. That should show up in Tony's newsfeed soon. Phew. Life is still good.

He crams his laptop into his bag, picks up Princess Leia and heads to the nearest subway station.

-

If Tony knew that Peter knew that Tony knew about Spider-Man, if it was something they could just talk about, then maybe he would call Tony after a bad patrol, say ‘I just got my head busted open, can you come pick me up?’ and then Tony would drive out and bring him to the tower, and he would stick kiddie band-aids all over his head, tsking under his breath, and Pepper would feed him homemade pizza with three types of pavlova for dessert. He wouldn’t even have to act all happy, he could just pout and ask for a blanket and a painkiller.

“There she is!” Tony exclaims as soon as Peter sets foot into the workshop, and he rushes closer to take Princess Leia from him. He coos. “Look how you’ve grown!”

“You are a little weird, actually,” Peter informs him.

“Insanity is the highest art form.”

Peter can’t even remember if Tony stole that quote from him or the other way around. They spend entirely too much time together.

“How’s life?” Tony asks.

“Top notch as usual.”

“Good, good,” Tony says, and doesn’t ask more, as usual.

“I swear she said your name this morning,” Peter says. “That’s why we came to visit you.”

“That’s why, huh?”

“Grandpa Stark.”

Tony’s face does something funny. “Okay, all fun and games,” he says, and points, “but don’t actually have a baby before me, kid. Christ. ‘Grandpa’.”

“Or don’t have a baby at all until I’m an adult with a steady job?” Peter suggests.

“Solid advice, too.” Tony turns and meanders back towards his desk, bouncing Princess Leia on his hip. “I’m only fifty percent there, myself.”

“Which fifty is that?”

“You little shit.”

The robotic arm is back on Tony’s desk, palm up, the thumb oddly askew. Above the desk floats a holographic screen; a vague picture of a man in dark clothes, half-hidden behind a wall, his arm a blur of movement.

“Who is that?”

Tony shuts his laptop, the motion slightly too casual. The projection disappears. “Rogers thought he was being followed. I’m looking into it.” He sits, Princess Leia in his lap, and picks up his penlight.

“Oh,” Peter says. “By… Mr. Barnes?”

“No.” Tony’s voice is quite even, suddenly.

“Secret admirer, then?” Bucky always seems to know for certain that ‘Stevie’ is still in Romania. He’s probably got a little spy sidekick feeding him information, a little Tinkerbell or a Jiminy Cricket who is currently shadowing Captain America.

“Must be.” Tony seems eager to move away from the topic. He shines the penlight into the joint of the robot-arm-thumb, head tilted and eyes narrowed. “Want to have a look, kiddo? I want to know what you think.”

Peter pulls up a second chair, leaning his elbows on the table. He looks at Tony, not the arm. “Why are you making him stuff?” he asks. “What makes you think he wants it? If he’s hiding from you?”

Tony purses his lips. “He might not be entirely himself.”

“Oh. Like, cursed?”

“A bit like cursed, yeah.”

Peter leans back and lifts one leg, leaning his foot against the side of Tony’s chair, still studying him. “What if he gets uncursed and still doesn’t want to be your bff?”

“That would be tragic,” Tony says, going for a cynical tone, but it still sounds more flat than usual. Something about Bucky clearly unsettles him. Tony is the kind of person who tries to go for jokes when he doesn’t want to show his true feelings.

He’s not as good at it as Peter is.

He wonders what the story is behind all of it. Maybe he should ask Bucky, sometime, what is actually going on, who is after what, and why, what is at stake, who is at risk. He’s afraid these sorts of questions will chip away at the tentative trust that has been building between them, though.

“What’s orange and sounds like a parrot?” he asks.

Tony’s shoulders relax and he smiles. It really does eat at him a bit, whatever this whole thing is about, that much is clear. Peter will have to send him a few funny turtle videos, later.

“Hey,” Tony says, poking Peter’s arm with the penlight. “Your dad hasn’t been responding to my latest emails, did he change his address?”

Peter hums. “Don’t think so.”

“Can you give me his phone number?”

Peter lifts an eyebrow, amused. “You two want to gossip about me?” But he takes out his phone and finds the number, sharing it with Tony with a few taps.

“Thanks.”

“Yeah,” Peter says, and quickly drops his father a message while he’s at it. Gave Tony Stark your number, don’t get all embarrassing and fanboyish when he calls you.

-

He gets an A-plus for his baby project.

“May the force be with you,” he tells Princess Leia, and chucks her back into the big box on the teacher’s desk. Fun while it lasted but—yeah. Good riddance.

Mr. Harrisson is pleased when he hears about it. “Glad to see you’re on top of your schoolwork. I would be sad to miss you at our next decathlon scrimmage. Remember. Friday evening at the Bronx school of Science.”

“Totally.”

Chapter Text

Peter is in the middle of voice messaging his own grocery list at himself when the headline flashes across his screen:

LIVE: AVENGERS FIGHTING GIANT MAGICAL LIZARD IN NY QUEENS

There is a picture of the lizard stomping down the street, taking up all four lanes, people running off. The lizard is rusty brown, with flappy frills.

Huh…

Peter suits up and goes.

-

The Avengers are, in fact, not fighting a giant magical lizard.

The giant magical lizard is chilling on a rooftop, sunbaking, blinking leisurely, its tail sweeping down the side of the building, the tip grazing the sidewalk. It definitely looks like the E.T. lizard from the other day, a few sizes bigger. Like, one million sizes bigger. It’s 45 degrees out, but the sun has that autumn sharpness to it, and the lizard looks very content where she is.

On a rooftop across the street, Iron Man, Dr. Strange and the Falcon are standing around and watching, no urgency in their body language whatsoever.

Peter swoops in, double flips before landing on his feet right next to them.

“Hey squirt,” says Tony.

“Show-off,” says the Falcon.

Dr. Strange says nothing, his face is buried in a book.

“What’s the plan?” Peter asks. A few months ago, maybe he would have taken the trouble to make his voice sound different, deeper, scratchier. But at this point—meh.

“Dunno,” says Tony.

“Yeah, dunno,” says Sam.

“It’s not doing anything.”

“Yeah, it’s just chilling.”

“And it’s an animal.”

“If we shoot at it, PETA will come for us.”

“Where did it come from?” Peter asks.

“Dunno,” says Tony.

“Yeah, dunno,” says Sam. He yawns and scratches the back of his head.

“Always a pleasure to see your great minds at work,” Peter drawls.

Dr. Strange shuts the book with a heavy, dull thud. “It has been magically enhanced.”

“By?” Sam asks.

“I fought a witch.” Peter waves his hand around vaguely. “Somewhere around here.”

“I heard the rumors,” Tony says.

“She had a lizard like this. It made a funny noise.”

“Was it also sixty feet long?”

“Not at the time, no.”

“Can you get rid of it?” Tony asks Strange.

Peter feels like they are four construction workers standing around a hole. Across the street, the lizard’s tail flicks lazily. Like a particularly high-maintenance cat.

“I will counter the magic that I sense is there. And we’ll have to see what we’re left with.”

“Cut-and-dry as always,” Tony says.

“You’re welcome to suggest your own approach,” Dr. Strange says waspishly.

Tony Stark and Stephen Strange together in a room is rarely a good idea. Peter can see Sam already rolling his eyes — putting his whole head into it — and mentally tuning out of whatever back-and-forth will now inevitably follow.

“I don’t know,” Tony says, rising to the bait. “Shake a magic eightball and do whatever it advises? That feels like it’s around the same level of—”

“Your plan sounds great, doctor,” Peter says loudly. “We should probably all stay quiet and let you concentrate.”

Sam snorts. Tony, miraculously, does stay quiet.

The lizard doesn’t. It shifts its eyes towards the sun and, there it is: it clucks like an autotuned chicken, about ten times as loud as it did before.

“Oh, fuck me,” Sam mutters, face twisting into an unsettled expression. “Now it’s yodeling. The hell.” He takes a step away from Dr. Strange, nose scrunched up.

Strange lays the book down at his feet and straightens, closes his eyes. He breathes out slowly and the wind dies down. Everything is suddenly very, very quiet.

Strange holds out a hand, palm turned up. Small, silvery wisps of light curl up from his hand, like smoke curling up from a soldering iron. They slide smoothly into the shapes of symbols that float dreamily up towards the sky in a broad spiral, flowing like a lazy river, ethereal, quite beautiful.

“I hate this magic shit,” Sam murmurs.

Peter shushes him, tilting his head back to take it all in. The symbols spin faster, drawn closer together like gravity pulling them in, until they collide into one bright white star.

The lizards’ eyes shift again, towards it, but it doesn’t move a single toe.

Dr. Strange makes a single sharp motion and the white ball of light shoots forward and hits the lizard square in the face. The light is blinding, and then it’s gone. So is the lizard.

No—wait. It’s not. Something much smaller and rusty colored, about the size of Peter’s forearm is skittering across the rooftop, disappearing behind an AC unit.

“Now we get rid of it,” Tony says, and blasts into the sky.

Metal wings unfold behind Sam’s back and he takes to the sky, too.

Get rid of it?

Peter hops up to the edge of the roof and fires his web, dropping down, firing a second web to steer himself neatly into the alleyway running up the side of the building, determination brewing in his chest. Get rid of it. Hah. He lands on a fire escape and pauses, turning his head.

Yep, there it is.

He fires another web and soars, swift and silent, towards the chicken sound.

It’s still up on the roof, Peter can hear her when he pauses again, plastered against the wall near the corner of the building. He climbs up, cautiously inching forward, and peers over the edge.

Iron Man and the Falcon are scouring the roof, but still a ways off. Dr. Strange is still across the street, hasn’t even bothered floating over; he’s leaving the manual labor to others, clearly.

The lizard is right there, in the corner of the roof, half-hidden under the protruding ledge. Her eyes roll towards Peter and her throat bulges a bit, but she stays quiet.

Peter waits for the opportune moment, pushes himself a little higher and snatches her off the roof, ducking back down.

“No one is getting rid of you,” he promises, and he strokes the lizard’s head with one finger. “C’mon. We can hang out at my place.”

-

He temporarily hides her inside a garbage can and then goes back up to the roof to help the others look for her.

“Real bummer, man,” he says when Iron Man decides after half an hour that they probably lost its trail.

-

Regina George — that’s the lizard’s name, he decided — seems mostly harmless to him. Might just be merely magically enlarged by a witch, but an entirely normal lizard otherwise.

Well, she does make that chicken-ish noise but hey, it’s 2014, if Regina George self-identifies as a chicken, let her.

He wonders if Tony and Pepper are the types of parents who would let their child have a pet. More specifically, if they would let their child have a possibly harmless but potentially magical lizard. It’s a matter of time, probably, before Tony and Pepper have that baby. They’ll be a family. The average family in the US consists of 3.16 members. So with two parents, one child and one lizard, that’ll be it. Max capacity.

That’s how it is. Eventually, the door gets shut.

“Here,” he says, gently placing some lettuce in front of Regina George. She is perched on top of a cushion on the couch. Peter put her in the sunlight because she seemed to enjoy that.

His own father would never let him have a pet, not in a million years. But he’s not here, so who cares.

Oh— Regina George is on the move. She slowly but deliberately moves off the cushion, one leg at a time, trampling all over the piece of lettuce—

—and then a tongue furls out and she snatches up a loose paperclip. Down the hatchet it goes.

“Uh…” Peter says. “You sure about that, ma’am?”

Regina George crawls back onto the cushion and closes her eyes, content.

-

Jameson calls him at the weirdest time, almost midnight. Peter is brushing his teeth, about to go to bed. He spits into the sink and answers. “Uhuh?”

“Peter!”

“Uhuh.”

“How are you,” Jameson says, in that absent-minded way that means he doesn’t actually give a hoot.

“Fine.”

“Listen I need—ah. I need your sources from your latest article.”

“Huh?”

“The article—What was it about?”

He turns to sit on the toilet lid, elbows leaning on his knees. “Uh…” he says slowly, “Spider-Man, generally.”

“Yes. Spider-Man. Doing something and there were—did you mention eyewitnesses?”

Yeah, he usually makes up one or two. “I think so.”

“Quotes from eyewitnesses?”

“Uhuh. Scandalous stuff.”

“Yeah, so I need names. And I need to know where you got that data, the, uh,” he starts reading out loud, then, “estimated thirty-five grand worth of damage to a wall of great historical value. That. I need the data that supports that claim. What did he do, punch the Hadrian’s Wall?”

“The Hadrian’s Wall is in Britain.”

“I don’t care where it is, did he punch it is my question.”

“No. Slammed his head into a building.”

“Of great historical value?”

“Jameson, who cares? Since when does the Daily Bugle care about honest journalism?”

“How dare you! We hold all our content to the highest ethical standards.”

“Dude, have you been brainwashed?” Peter asks, amused.

Jameson grumbles under his breath a bit, and then says. “We’re being threatened with a lawsuit, actually. By that asshat Tony Stark. Libel. So I gotta appease him, either by handing over the proper sources that proves that we did high—high standard responsible journalism, fuck it, whatever. Or I fire you, that’s another great way to appease him. Do you understand where this is going?”

Wonderful.

This turn of events is objectively hilarious and Peter wants to laugh, even if this is the job that pays for his groceries every week. “Fire me,” he repeats. “Me. The only guy who can get you proper Spider-Man pictures, the perfect clickbait, no one else gets traffic to your website like I do.”

“But I’ll still have a website, at least.”

“He doesn’t know the name of the journalist, just invent some random name—Penelope Buckswackle or something. Oh my god, Penelope Buckswackle is a great name. And you tell Mr. Stark you fired Penelope Buckswackle, she was an asshole anyways, never liked her, lazy lazy journalism. He’ll definitely believe you because no one would ever make up a name like Penelope Buckswackle.”

“Yeah, sure. Except, you know Parker, I’m not exactly planning to publish anymore Spider-shit content with this dickwad breathing down my neck. So I don’t actually have a use for you anymore, do I?”

His heartbeat picks up and he feels the smile slide off his face. Sounds like he’s going to lose this gig either way, whether he has any sources and data to hand over or not. “I can write different stuff,” he tries.

“Sure. Send something in and we’ll consider it.” Jamesson sounds wholly uninterested. “We’re… We’ve always been fully transparent and our aim is always to achieve a sustainable long-term working relationsh—”

Peter hangs up.

It’s—Whatever. He’s still Peter Parker, who never stresses about anything. He’ll work something out.

He exhales noisily and pops his toothbrush back in the cup. He looks at himself in the mirror. “Okay,” he says, and taps his own cheeks a few times with both hands. “Cheer up, dude. Life is good.”

He leaves the bathroom to look for Regina George, and finds her under the kitchen table, gobbling down an entire teaspoon.

-

The elevator is zooming up towards the penthouse.

“How is life?” Tony asks. He picked Peter up from the lobby in slippers and his big lebowski sweater and ruffled hair, and now he’s leaning heavily against the wall, looking unfairly relaxed.

“Top notch.”

There must be something off about his voice, because Tony gives him a longer glance than usual. So he beams a wide smile and says “me and my friend Regina George successfully flipped pancakes with a steam engine last night, it was a revelation.”

Tony hums, amused, and order is restored. “What about the baby thing?”

“Got an A-plus.”

“Naturally.”

He offered Regina George a few bugs this morning, but she ate a button cell battery instead. It’s probably fine. “I read something about a giant lizard?”

“Yes,” Tony says, and does not elaborate.

Peter should probably make a joke right about now. But he’s feeling tired. He looks at the numbers above the door swiftly ticking up towards 93, towards that very special corner of the world where he never needs to worry about anything. He wants to sit in his egg-chair or curl up on the tattered couch in Tony’s workshop, press his face into the crease between the seat and the backrest and listen to the background noises of Pepper baking or Tony tinkering.

“Are you okay?” Tony asks.

Peter smiles and points at the numbers. “Feeling very uplifted.”

Tony chuckles.

-

He knows he isn’t being all that convincing, but strangely, Tony doesn’t seem to mind at all. He doesn’t get annoyed. He gets the opposite of annoyed. He steers Peter to the couch, and then piles pillows and blankets and a few bags of Spicy Queso Funyuns around him. “Go nap,” he says, and ruffles Peter’s hair fondly.

There’s a tiny voice in the back of Peter’s head that says he shouldn’t, that it’s not in character. But there is a much bigger voice that goes, fuck it, and he tugs the blankets around himself, firm, like someone hugging him, punches the pillow in a better shape and curls up. The bags of Funyuns crackle softly with each exhale. Tony doesn’t tinker, but he clatters away at the keyboard, sometimes rustles a few papers. There is a low hum, somewhere from the back of the workshop. It’s good.

Tony must think Peter is asleep by the time he gets the first phone call. A murmured conversation in a low voice about lizards and witches and where they might be hiding. Talking to Dr. Strange? Though there is a distinct lack of acerbic insults.

The next phone call is in a different tone. Quieter but sharper, a hissed whisper, about who is getting fired and who is getting sued and how Buckswackle sounds like a made-up name and the whole so-called newspaper should be put out of business.

Tony most definitely thinks he is asleep and maybe Peter should drop a hint that he is not, but it’s whatever. He has lied about far worse things.

He must have actually fallen asleep at some point, because the next time he becomes aware of words being spoken, it is a conversation that seems to have been ongoing for a few minutes. “I see your point,” Tony murmurs. “No, I see your point. But what if it’s a stitch up? Part of it? What if they’re doing it to make you think Barnes flew to the US, when he’s actually still right there?” He listens for a while, and says “Yes, but maybe that’s what he wants you to think, maybe he knew that you knew he was following you. Triple bluff.” A few more beats of silence, and then: “Okay. I’ll book you a plane ticket. First seat I can find, just head on to the airport.”

Peter notices he has been holding his breath and releases it slowly. He shifts his hand slightly to press his fingers against his stomach, right over the spot that feels like it has turned to lead.

“Yeah, let’s,” Tony says. And then the soft, brief thud of his phone being put back down on the table.

When Bucky hears about Steve coming back to the US, he might assume Peter snitched. So maybe that is how it ends. It has to, eventually. Eventually, the door always gets shut in your face, no matter how much you smile.

The clattering keyboard noise starts up again. It’s a nice noise; gives Peter a pleasant tingling feeling in the back of his head.

He wonders if Tony has called his father yet. What was said, whether Richard did anything embarrassing. He shouldn’t ask about it, though. Things might start unraveling. Spicy Queso Funyuns-gate.

“Is he sleeping?” Pepper’s voice comes from very nearby, and Peter must have dozed off again because he didn’t even hear her come in.

“M’not,” he murmurs groggily. “Am working.”

Pepper hums and a hand lands on the back of his head, patting gently. “You’re working right now, are you?”

“Hm-hm. Brainstorm. Brain tornado.” He tries to drag up the picture of one of Tony’s blueprints from somewhere between the fuzzy layers of his mind. There; he’s thinking useful thoughts. He doesn’t want to give them a reason to question why he is still around.

“Wake up, honey. I made cookies.”

“I am awake,” Peter says, but maybe he isn’t entirely, because his mind is making all kinds of strange leaps. He frowns and forces himself to drag his eyes open.

There is Pepper, soft eyes and smile lines.

“Hey. What do you call a fish with no eyes?” Peter asks

-

He gives himself a stern talking-to when he gets home. Kicks his shoes off and stands in front of the mirror, poking at his reflection. “You,” he says, “better get it together, man. If you want your secrets to stay secret. Get your face under control.”

His reflection nods earnestly.

Pepper gave him about three pounds of cookies to bring home, and he eats them for dinner along with a pint of ice cream. Regina George starts eating the clingfilm that the cookies were wrapped in, and at this point Peter doesn’t even worry anymore. She knows what she wants, clearly.

He spends about an hour staring at the cursor blinking back at him from an empty document and eventually just throws together an article about the giant magical lizard running rampant in New York. He only mentions Iron Man and Dr. Strange in passing, and leaves out Spider-Man completely.

Ugh. Boring.

All right. That’s quite enough self-pity for today. He sends the article to the Bugle. It’s fine. It will be fine. He needs to do some laundry, and write out a grocery list for tomorrow.  He should probably eat a vegetable some time this week. “Up, up,” he tells himself, clapping his hands.

-

He watches his digital alarm clock jump from 04:13 to 04:14. He doesn’t think he got any sleep at all, so far. Maybe a few minutes here and there, sometimes it’s hard to tell.

Bucky is heading to work right now. Possibly. Maybe. Or maybe he already knows about Steve Rogers coming to the US. Maybe already changed his number and his address, and there’s a different last name by his new doorbell. He’ll be James Cook or something, and Peter will just never see him again.

That’s just life, apparently. It’s fine. It will be fine.

He doesn’t want to feel this way. He’s usually pretty good at flipping his mindset to something more positive, but his brain hasn’t been cooperative today. It hasn’t been cooperative in a while, actually.

Regine George is scampering around his bedroom, possibly finding loose change to eat, or a phone charger, and Peter feels like he is going to burst out of his skin.

He kicks the blankets away, flicks the light switch on.

-

He has never been at the ice rink where Bucky works, but he remembered the name and looked it up. It’s not that hard to find, between a gym and a used car dealership. Peter parks his bike against an iron gate and then uses that bike as a foothold as he scales the gate, swings a leg over, careful not to jostle his backpack, slowly lowering himself on the other side.

The side door is open, just as he hoped. He closes the door behind him and wipes his feet thoroughly — doesn’t want to give Bucky more to clean. He lets his backpack slide off his back and opens the zipper, reaching in to take out Regina George. He drapes her over his lower arm. “I’m gonna put tiny little ice skates on you, I bet you’d make a great skater.”

He wanders down the empty hallway until he reaches the rink; the empty, smooth expanse of ice, lying silently in the darkness, waiting. Dim light is flooding down a hallway further down the rink. Peter starts making his way over, shuffling between the aluminum bleachers.

He went ice skating once or twice, with his parents. Both of them, so it must have been before he turned eight, before his mom died in the plane crash. He remembers the room feeling huge and loud, holding her hand at first until he felt that was too embarrassing. And maybe his father waving from the bench. He liked his father well enough back then, or at least he doesn’t remember disliking him, but Richard was definitely always the more aloof parent.

Sometimes it feels like his father died in that plane crash, too.

He made it about halfway to the other door when Bucky steps out, jeans, green sweater, hair hanging loose, hands wrapped around a paper cup. He zeroes in on Peter immediately and his face falls into a perplexed scowl. “Peter.”

“Hey,” Peter says, and flashes his widest smile. “How did you even get this job? I’ve been wondering.” His voice echoes eerily across the dark ice.

“It’s five AM.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

Bucky looks at him for a while, his eyes are ominous slits.

“Uh. Want to hear a joke about construction?” Peter tries.

“Come into the light, so I can hear you better.”

Peter takes a few more steps forward until he reaches the end of the row. Bucky’s eyes track him the entire way. Peter sits sideways on the seat, facing him.

“Want to explain that?” Bucky says, lifting his cup a little, his eyes on Regina George.

“Didn’t want to leave her home alone.”

“I am not babysitting this one.”

“Na-ah.” He lifts her a bit. “Her name is Regina George.” He made Bucky watch that movie not too long ago.

“Are you all right?” Bucky’s voice is quite intent, a hint of concern.

Peter doesn’t know what is wrong, lately, that people keep looking at his face and immediately assume something is wrong. That never used to happen.

He lifts his chin. “I’m always all right.”

“It’s five AM.”

“I wanted to hang out. There is no bad time for spending time with friends.”

Bucky gives him another long look. Peter avoids the piercing gaze by carefully stroking Regina George, his fingers trailing all the way down to the tip of her tail.

“Do you want a slushie?” Bucky asks. “I know where to kick the machine to get a free one.”

“Awesome.” Peter lifts Regina George and sets her down on his shoulder. He follows Bucky down a hallway with scuffed floors and lots of black-and-white pictures of ice hockey teams on one wall, and rows of lockers against the other.

The slushie machine is right outside a corner office. “Blue or red?”

He points at red.

Bucky places a cup under the dispensing spout, and then pulls the handle while simultaneously banging his metal hand firmly against the opposite side.

Peter gets his red slushie with a candy-cane-striped paper straw.

“Come on,” Bucky says, and goes into an office with a low ceiling and mustard-yellow curtains. Peter follows him, and sits in the weathered, leather swivel chair that Bucky waves at. The desk is massive and heavy, with metal legs. There are blue crates stacked against the wall behind him. There is a plant in the middle of the desk with long stems and big, round leaves. “I bet you put that here?”

“Her name is Dorothy Gale,” Bucky says, a smile in his voice. He made Peter watch that movie not too long ago.

Peter puts Regina George in his lap. She makes the chicken noise again, her frills quivering softly. It’s a good thing Bucky can’t hear that. He probably can’t. Peter read a lot about hearing loss by now but is still never entirely sure which sounds Bucky can and cannot hear. He feels awkward about asking.

Bucky pulls up a folding chair and sits, his gaze, calm but heavy, still focused on Peter as he sips from his paper cup.

“Captain America is flying back to the US,” Peter blurts out.

Bucky gives a single nod, his hair swaying forward. “I know. My guy in Romania lacked some subtlety, clearly.”

“Are you going to leave?”

“Not today. I need to consider my options.”

“You know, Tony Stark is making you an arm.”

Bucky’s face twists, corners of his mouth turning down. “He’s making what?”

“An arm,” Peter points at his own. “Robot arm. For you.”

Bucky’s expression shutters, he looks almost defensive. “He doesn’t know me.”

“Why won’t you talk to Steve, though?”

“Why won’t I talk to Stevie?”

“Yeah. The curse is gone, isn’t it?”

Bucky puts the cup down and leans back, crossing his arms, giving Peter a long look. “I did things while I was… that,” he says in an even voice. “Indefensible things.”

“But you were cursed. Isn’t that the defense?”

“Life isn’t always that straightforward. You’ll learn that as you grow older.”

“Don’t patronize me, I know what the deal is with life.”

Bucky cocks his head slightly, eyes dancing around Peter’s face. Peter shouldn’t have said that, it sounded too grumpy. Bucky probably didn’t catch it all, anyways. So Peter flashes a smile instead and says “I’m sure you can all be friends. Like Toy Story 3.”

“I have killed people.”

“While you were cursed?”

“I was conditioned,” Bucky says.

“But the curse is gone, right? Not coming back?”

 “I blew out my eardrums for a reason.”

Bucky never outright said before now that he deafened himself, but Peter has been suspecting it for a while. “If you do leave,” he says, looking at some spot behind Bucky’s shoulder, at the dark stains in the curtain, “will you say goodbye?” He’s glad Bucky can only read his lips, not hear his tone of voice, not when he’s sounding so embarrassingly plaintive.

Bucky doesn’t respond for a while, maybe hasn’t heard him right. But Peter doesn’t look up at him, doesn’t meet his eyes.

“Are you all right?” Bucky asks instead of answering the question.

Peter’s eyes snap back to Bucky’s face. Bucky’s gaze is still steady and it’s strangely infuriating. “Yes,” Peter says, making sure to roll his eyes. “I already said yes.”

“Do your parents know you’re not home in bed?”

Anger flares up inside of him, but he keeps his face as neutral as possible. “You stalked me for two weeks, you tell me what my parents know.”

“I didn’t see them.”

Peter exhales slowly. This is all pointless; he shouldn’t have let himself get dragged into this conversation. He slouches in his chair, softly tapping Regina George on her head, and then flashes a grin at Bucky. “Hey. Why can’t you hear a pterodactyl going to the bathroom?”

“Because I’m deaf?” Bucky suggests, looking amused.

Oh. Right.

-

He gets to school late that morning. They take a listening test in Spanish and Peter zones out about three different times and has to guess half the answers.

It’s fine. It will be fine.

-

When he gets home, Regina George is emitting a faint, greenish light, like a glow-in-the-dark moon.

Okay. It’s probably not fine anymore.

Damnit, he’s going to have to tell Tony, isn’t he?

All right. Come on, Peter. You can do this. Engage maximum smile.

-

Security doesn’t want to let him in with a glowing lizard, particularly after they hear the noise it makes. One guard even nervously tests for radiation. “Oooh. Can I see?” Peter asks, leaning over to peek at the screen of the device, curious.

“Gentlemen,” a voice says.

Tony is standing by the metal detector gates, hammer in hand. His face is unreadable.

“I’ve got it from here,” he says.

The security guards scatter without another word, like leaves blown apart by a gust of wind. Peter is left staring up at Tony Stark, Regina George draped lazily over his arm. He beams a smile. “Look what I found!”

Tony says nothing.

“So how—how have you been?” Peter asks.

“Come with me.”

“I—yeah, okay.”

They step through the metal detectors, Tony with his hammer and Peter with his lizard. He carefully runs a finger along her back. “Just don’t kill her,” he says once they are in the elevator.

“Why would you assume that?”

“That’s what you said. Get rid of her, you said.”

“I said that, did I?” Tony’s voice is difficult to decipher. Not annoyed, but not amused either.

“She’s just a lizard.”

“She looks like she’s about to collapse like a neutron star.”

“Nah. She’s just like, like a little firefly.” Peter lifts Regina George higher, cheek to cheek, and gives a bright smile. “Can we stay for dinner?”

Tony looks at him, shakes his head. “What am I supposed to do about you?” It sounds like the kind of thing a dad would say to his son.

“Feed me,” Peter says.

“Are you not even going to try and make up an excuse about how you found that lizard?”

“An excuse?”

Tony’s expression twists in an odd way, he pointedly raises an eyebrow.

Oh. Right. Spider-Man. “Right. An excuse. It’s uh—”

“You knew that I knew. Didn’t you?”

“Well. I mean.”

“Any other secrets I should be aware of?”

Peter lays one hand over his mouth and says, in his best Darth Vader impression. “Luke. I am your father.”

“For the love of God.”

They reach the penthouse and Tony steers Peter into the living room. Pepper isn’t there but she must be around. There is a half-chopped eggplant on the kitchen counter, and lots of ingredients measured out in little bowls. Tony’s sweater is still hanging over the back of that chair.

Tony takes the box with paper waste and dumps all the paper out. “Put her in there.” He holds the box out.

Peter leans away, half-turning and drawing his shoulders up to shield Regina George from his view. “Only if you promise not to kill her.”

“I have it on good authority Dr. Strange just wants to study her. He is in the midst of creating a— something like a magical pocket dimension inside a wooden crate, with a suitable habitat, where she can yodel her little heart out.”

Peter studies him with narrowed eyes. “Like a Poké Ball?”

“Yup,” Tony says, clearly not knowing what that is.

“I don’t think it sounds like yodeling.”

“Peter. Put the lizard in the box.”

“She has a name, you know.”

This might be what Tony looks like at the end of his tether; nostrils flaring, eyebrows dipping, the lines around his mouth tight. This might be where Peter crosses the line into being too useless to still be tolerated.

Tony sighs and lowers the box. “What is her name?”

“Regina George.”

“Of course it is.” Tony puts the box aside and steps forward. “Can I pet her?”

Peter gives him another suspicious squint, but consciously relaxes his shoulders. Tony reaches out and gently taps Regina George’s head like she’s a puppy. Once. Twice.

Regina George just rolls her eyes and makes her little clucking noise.

“Hello Regina,” Tony says. And then he looks at Peter, his gaze surprisingly warm. “You are something special, kiddo, you know that?”

The praise is unexpected, makes heat flare up the back of his neck and his heart stammer in his chest. “Uh…” he says.

“I never brought up Spider-Man because I felt it was your secret to tell, once you trusted me enough.”

“I… I trust you.”

“I hope so. I feel like we’ve grown reasonably close, haven’t we?”

“Yeah,” Peter says and he feels suddenly, painfully and breathtakingly lonely. Because the person Tony got close to isn’t him, not really. The person Tony got close to is a cheerful teenager with a perfect GPA who likes Phineas and Ferb, and Spicy Queso Funyuns, and his own father.

His chest is aching, and he needs a way out of this situation. “I, uh… What… Why can’t you hear a pterodactyl going to the bathroom?”

Tony blinks. “I’m sorry?”

Peter bites the inside of his cheek, then holds Regina George out. “Okay. Dr. Strange can put her in a Poké Ball.”

Tony takes the lizard and gently places her in the cardboard box. “FRIDAY, send an alert to Strange.”

“Done.”

Tony straightens and looks at Peter. “You are welcome to stay for dinner, of course. But we do have another guest.”

-

Captain America looks tired, but he’s very kind and soft-spoken. A real middle-ground kind of guy.

“Peter’s an intern,” Tony says, waving a hand around vaguely.

“All right,” Steve says, and clearly doesn’t fully believe it, but also doesn’t ask. A gent.

Peter sets the table, picking the mint-green table cloth that matches Tony’s sweater to a tee. “You’re looking for Bucky Barnes, right?” he asks as he neatly lines up the knives and forks.

“Yes.”

“Because he’s dangerous?”

“He’s—a friend.”

“But he’s hiding from you?”

“It’s complicated.” Steve’s eyes are dull.

“Oh,” Peter says. “Tricky.”

Pepper serves grilled vegetables with a light green sauce, and potatoes that are crispy on the outside and creamy on the inside. It’s so perfect, Peter wants to cry, he just wants to cry. He never had meals like this, even when his dad was still around. Thanksgiving is in only two weeks or so, and he really needs to work on getting himself invited.

Dr. Strange appears halfway through dinner in a circle of fiery sparks. He accepts the lizard without too many questions and even promises that Peter can visit if he wants.

Peter feels like he is finally regaining the balance he seems to have lost over the past few days.

Yes. Life is still good.

-

And then he returns home and the lights aren’t working and there is a puddle of water in front of the freezer.

He can hear the TV in the apartment upstairs and the vacuum cleaner next door, so it’s clearly just him, not a power outage. He tries the faucet — nothing.

Crap.

He really doesn’t want to call his father about this, but he has no idea what else to do. He doesn’t even know which company supplies their water and electricity.

Peter goes around the entire apartment, pressing every button he can find even though he knows it is pointless. It is probably — what has it been… three months since he last saw his father, and at least a month since they talked on the phone, and he doesn’t want to, really doesn’t want to.

He blows out a breath and dials the number.

His dad answers quickly enough. “Hey.”

Peter used to try and sound upbeat when he called on the phone. Maybe open with a nice joke. His dad has always been running and hiding, but he runs even faster and hides even deeper when difficult emotions come into play. Difficult emotions, in his book, are all emotions except a bland sort of cheerfulness.

But Peter has slowly been giving up on trying, and right now in particular, he doesn’t have it in him. “I have no water and electricity,” he says tersely. “Who’s my supplier?”

“Oh, right. Shoot.”

“What’s ‘shoot’? Have you just not been paying the bills?”

“I… There was a thing. Uh. Yeah. A thing.” God. Talking to his father is like talking to a potato. Like shouting at a potato from across a field and hoping it will somehow understand you and respond. “Uh… Your stepmom—"

“Don’t call her that.” It’s incredibly grating that his father continuously insists on referring to his new girlfriend, a woman who he prefers to spend all his time with instead of being at home, a woman Peter has never seen or exchanged a single word with, as ‘your stepmom’.

“I was gonna call you. I’ve been a bit ill. I have some stuff going on.”

“Yeah, sounds rough,” Peter bites out. “Pay your bills, dude.”

“Yeah. Uh. Yeah.”

“And call the company tomorrow to sort it out. And send me a message when stuff will be up and running again. I don’t want to wait until next month. Get it sorted.”

“Uh… Yeah. I think the new—"

Peter hangs up and sends a message, PAY YOUR BILLS, with five exclamation marks.

All right. His main concern is the fridge and freezer. He inspects the contents of the fridge, mostly leftover meals from Pepper in tight-lid containers. He stacks them all together, clenching a tower of tupperware under his chin, and stumbles outside. He stands on tiptoes, balancing the containers, and holds out a pinky to ring the neighbor’s doorbell. Mr. Dukas is home, thankfully, and perfectly willing to let Peter temporarily store some food in his fridge.

That’s one less concern.

He throws a towel on the floor in front of the freezer. The stuff that is unsalvageable, he takes it out and starts piling it in the sink to finish defrosting there.

His phone rings. He doesn’t recognize the number, but answers with a muttered curse, clenching the phone between cheek and shoulder. “Hello?”

“Hi Peter.” It’s Mr. Harrisson. “Are you in the building, yet?”

Peter pauses, ice cream leaking from its carton, dripping down his fingers. “Am I— what?”

A beat. “The scrimmage?” Mr. Harrisson says. “At the Bronx High School of science?”

Fuck. “I can’t make it.”

“Peter. Didn’t we have a very clear conversation about—?”

“It’s just a scrimmage, who cares?” Peter snaps.

Mr. Harrisson inhales sharply. “I expect you to find me after class on Monday,” he says tersely. “Consider your position on the team very much up in the air. And I would like to speak with your father.”

Yeah, Peter thinks, so would I.

“Call him, then.” He hangs up and throws the phone on the table. Tries to wash the ice cream off his hands, realizes there is no running water. He attempts to wipe it off with some toilet paper instead.

He doesn’t want to be here right now.

Movie night? he sends to Bucky. And then notices that he has an unread email, a reply from the Bugle. His heart skips a beat and he quickly taps the screen to open it.

Dear Mr. Parker

Thank you for —bla bla bla, yada yada — already sent in an article on the same topic and the choice fell on their piece. Feel free to write in again. We’ve always been fully transparent and our aim is always to achieve a sustainable long-term working—

He swipes away and stares into space for a few moments.

All right. Come on, Peter. He can do this. Just a few minor setbacks, nothing he can’t bounce back from, the way he always does.

His phone buzzes. Bucky texted him back. Not tonight. Sorry.

Peter almost cries. Almost. He allows himself about three seconds of self-pity.

And then he tucks those feelings away. Smile, smile, smile.

Chapter Text

Peter’s time as an intern in Tony’s workshop is always spent incredibly efficiently.

“Hey. What starts with an E, ends with an E and only has one letter in it?”

Tony can never pinpoint what it is, exactly. Why it feels so natural to have the kid around with his weird jokes and his bright smiles, and his insistence to sit on random spots on the floor because there’s heating pipes or whatever.

Peter is in one of his favorite spots right now, between two shelving units, geography book balancing on his knees. He’s looking at Tony with the usual smirk.

“Finish your homework, kid,” he says, going for a stern tone. Peter is staying the night for the first time, and Tony wants to be responsible about it, make sure the kid gets delivered to school in mint condition tomorrow.

“I finished it. I’m just reading ahead for fun.”

The kid has always been erratic about his schoolwork. Sometimes he throws himself into his projects with everything he’s got, excessively so, other times he seems to be barely aware of what subjects he is currently taking, he’ll take out his history book and look at it like he has never seen it before.

Tony doesn’t know how Peter ever expected to keep the Spider-thing from him. The kid wears his heart on his sleeve, he’s not one for secrets.

“Hey.” He throws a scrunched-up paper at Peter to draw his attention again. “Talked to your dad on the phone last night. Did he tell you?”

Peter closes his book, keeping his thumb between the pages. “He left before I woke up this morning. Did he say anything embarrassing? If he did, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.”

“He didn’t say anything embarrassing.” He wasn’t massively talkative.

“Okay. Did he really not, or are you only saying he didn’t because I just asked you not to tell me if he did?”

“Sometimes when you talk I feel like I’m having a seizure.”

Peter chuckles.

“He told me about his irregular job, so we agreed I’d be your emergency contact at school. Sorted it all out.”

The smile drops off Peter’s face. He looks astounded.

“You know. In case of emergencies.”

“I—Yeah, I figured that’s what an emergency contact is for.”

“I’ll come swooping in and save the day. Like that blue animal with the hat, in that series you like so much. What animal is he?”

“Perry the Platypus.”

“That’s the one. What animal is he?”

“I’ll let you figure it out, genius,” Peter says. “You sure you wanna go with him as your leading example?”

“For emergencies only. I can’t stress that enough.”

“Imagine that,” Peter says. “Imagine that. Hey, Tony Stark is picking me up because Richard Parker is too busy. That’s like saying ‘we got Taylor Swift to play at my birthday party because the clown is on a world tour’.”

“Pepper always says I need to get out more. Be amongst mere mortals.”

“I never have emergencies. What kind of emergency am I gonna have?”

“Well, good. It was just an FYI.”

Peter looks at him for a while longer. “Just don’t embarrass me, please,” he then says, and picks up his book again.

-

Tony shows Peter around the guestroom. Peter looks at the bathtub like it’s Willy Wonka’s chocolate river. “Oh my god, can I—?”

So Tony points out where the towels are, which button to press to flush the toilet, and which button to press to activate the smart mirror that will tell you the time or sing you happy birthday.

Peter seems to like the mirror. But he seems to love the towels. “Sooooft,” he says, rubbing one against his cheek.

Tony snorts. “All comped. Dinner is in thirty, go nuts.”

He steps back into the hallway and pulls the door closed behind him. One door down is the guestroom where Steve is crashing while they figure out their next move. Steve is an unobtrusive house guest, you almost forget he is here, sometimes. When he isn’t tucked away in his room, working on the case, he’ll help Pepper chop vegetables when she cooks, or he’ll dust the blinds, or sometimes he’ll spend up to an hour standing quietly in front of their bookcase, perusing the titles.

Or he’ll set the table, like he’s doing right now. He picked the beige tablecloth. Peter won’t like that. He always picks a tablecloth in the same color as Tony’s clothes and seems to believe Tony hasn’t noticed. “Peter is here, right?” Steve asks, setting out a fourth plate.

“Affirmative.”

“Nice kid.”

Potatoes are spluttering pleasantly in the oven. Pepper is pouring herself a glass of wine and watching eggs tumble around in boiling water.

“Any progress?” Tony asks. “Eureka moment?”

Steve sighs a bit, and purses his lips as he nudges a fork a few millimeters to the right and then back to the left. “I’m finding it very hard to predict his movements, when I don’t know the state of his mind.”

Tony rarely knows the state of his own mind, to be frank. “Do we think he could have been sent here on a mission?”

“At this point, anything feels possible. Is his mind… clear? And if his mind is clear, how much does he remember?”

Pepper turns her back on the eggs to watch them, wineglass in hand. She meets Tony’s gaze. He knows she worries about this case, about the way it sometimes constricts his breathing when he thinks about it for too long.

Steve seems more oblivious to it, which is preferable.

Imagine, Captain America finding out Tony has a real feeling.

-

Peter takes the full thirty minutes before he appears in his pajamas, towel slung around his shoulders.

Pepper brightens when she sees him. She pats his head, squeezes his shoulders. “How was your bath?”

“So nice,” Peter breathes. “I don’t even have—We don’t have a bathtub at home. I tried out all your soaps. I liked the pink one with the little, like, grains of sand in it. What’s for dinner?”

“Niçoise salad with everything. Some lovely homemade focaccia.”

“I might actually cry,” Peter says, and hugs her.

-

“I worry about him sometimes, you know,” Pepper says later, when Peter has gone to bed.

“What? What is there to worry about? Like he’s on drugs?”

“I wasn’t planning on being that worried, no.”

“What, then?”

“I don’t really know,” she pensively twirls a lock of hair around her finger. “He’s such a sweetheart. I worry the world might chew him up and spit him out.”

“He’s tougher than he looks.”

-

Predictably, the first time Tony is called in for a ‘Perry the Platypus’-emergency is embarrassingly soon.

“This is really, firmly against school policy,” the woman says over the phone. “And I was unable to reach—”

“Yes, yes I’m on my way, posthaste.”

To be frank, he feels like the whole thing is mostly just hilarious. And when he gets to the school and sees Peter’s expression under the icepack pressed against his forehead, the twinkling eyes, the twitching mouth; the kid clearly feels the same way.

Tony leans over, his mouth close to Peter’s ear. “All right?”

“Already healed, this is just for show,” Peter mutters.

This is new: the way they can just murmur about Spider-Man stuff, conspirationally.

“He could have broken his neck,” a man, presumably the school principal, says from the doorway.

Peter shifts the icepack to hide his smile. “There was a cat on the roof.”

“Students are not allowed to climb up on the roof.”

“I wasn’t being, like, gangster. I was saving a cat.”

“Nevertheless.”

“Okay.” Tony squeezes Peter’s knee and looks up at the principal. “I’m here, what happens now?”

“Take him home. Go to the ER if he starts vomiting. Tell him to not climb on the roof again.”

“How is the cat?” Tony asks.

The principal blinks back at him. “The—what?”

“How is the cat.”

“Wait a minute. Are you the Tony Stark?”

“Off we go,” Tony says quickly, pulling Peter to his feet.

-

“Uh, are you not bringing me home?” Peter asks when Tony turns left at a junction. He laid the ice pack on the dashboard. There is no trace of a bruise or head wound.

“Is your father at home right now?”

“No, but—”

“So I’m gonna watch you to make sure you don’t start vomiting. That’ll be a fun afternoon.”

Peter starts rummaging through the glove compartment. He knows where Tony keeps his snacks. “Can I stay for dinner?”

“Yeah, sure. I have something to show you anyway.”

Peter leans back, tearing open the wrapper. “Can I stay the night?”

“Uh—”

“We can do a 24-hour Phineas and Ferb marathon.”

“Fine, if you check with your dad.”

Peter crams a bounty into his mouth and manages, around a full mouth: “Wha’ did you wan’ to show me?”

-

“Hell no,” Peter says, stepping to the side to hide behind Tony.

“She promised to behave,” Tony says. “Won’t you, Juniper?”

The young witch is similarly half-hiding behind Dr. Strange, but her eyes are narrowed and her chin lifted churlishly. “Don’t know about that.”

Dr. Strange had contacted Tony last night to inform him of this latest development — a young woman turning up on his doorstep, demanding to see her lizard. Barely nineteen, about as scrawny as Peter is.

She had sounded a whole lot more intimidating in Peter’s description.

“She threw me into a wall!” Peter complains.

“He stole my lizard!” she hisses back.

“Children,” Dr. Strange says, warningly, authoritatively.

Both ‘children’ huff, cross their arms and look away.

“Peter,” Dr. Strange says. “Would you like to see how our lizard is faring? She quite enjoys playing fetch.”

-

“When is she leaving?” is the first thing Peter asks, resentfully, once they have stepped through a portal back into the Tower’s living room.

“Dr. Strange has accepted her as his ward, she will be staying at his house for the foreseeable future.”

“But whyyy?”

“She’s young.”

“Not that young.”

“Young enough that she shouldn’t be alone.”

Peter’s shoulders collapse and he gives Tony a wary look. “That easy?”

“Of course. That easy.”

-

It’s raining, thunder rumbling, when Steve finds him in the workshop, hovers at a short distance away from him, looks at him with those achingly earnest eyes. “So. How are you?”

Tony is on the floor, between two shelving units, just to see what all the fuss was about. Peter wasn’t wrong; this heating pipe is pretty comfortable. He stretches out his legs and crosses his ankles, looking up at Steve. “Did Pepper tell you to ask me that?”

Steve gives a faint smile. “No. Sometimes I notice things all on my own.”

“I’m not backing out, you don’t need to worry. I have always been a consummate professional.”

“That’s not my worry, exactly. I’ve never seen you back out of anything. At your own expense, that might be the worry.”

“Are you implying I am emotionally fragile?”

“Why, does that hurt your feelings?”

Tony snorts and lays his head back against the wall. “That was a proper joke, Rogers. Borderline insulting, too. Not really your usual style.”

Steve’s smile cranks up a fraction. He tugs the back of his sweater down and then lowers himself to the floor, crossing his legs. “If he has forgotten everything, do you think we should tell him?”

“Tell him.”

“Yeah, just a—”

“Just a quick ‘by the way, you killed my parents’?”

Steve’s shoulders sag. “Maybe not.”

After HYDRA was exhumed from SHIELD, Steve came to the tower with a stack of stolen files and a bottle of whiskey, and told Tony what he knew. And then they got properly drunk. Tony had a right to know, he said, which seemed only natural. Bucky Barnes has that same right, probably, if he did forget. A right to know. If anything, he was more directly involved than Tony. Tony tries to imagine having that conversation over a bottle of whiskey. “Let’s just… not cross any bridges until we get to them.”

Steve nods slowly. He leans back on his hands. “Can I ask you about the kid?”

“Sure.”

“Is he family?”

“No.”

“Family friend?”

“He—Sort of. Is there a problem?”

“No. I like him. And he seems very comfortable here. I like that.”

“He’s comfortable everywhere, that boy is permanently in a good mood. You could put him on Snake Island and he’d just make friends with the snakes.”

-

The second time Tony is called into Midtown Tech for a ‘Perry the Platypus’-situation is only a few days later which … is a little ridiculous, considering both Peter and Richard assured him that Peter never has any emergencies. “What, did he jump into the fountain to save a squirrel?”

“No. He forged a signature on his report card,” the woman says. “And I was unable to reach—”

“Yes, yes I’m on my way.”

It’s probably nothing, he thinks as he pulls his car out of the garage; even though it sounded kind of serious.

But when he gets to the school and sees Peter sitting in one of the blue plastic chairs outside the headmaster’s office — his sullen expression, the tightly crossed arms, the shadows under his eyes — he gets a sense of foreboding.

When Peter sees him approach his expression does a funny thing, his face falling strangely blank before it breaks into a wry grin. “Hey.”

“Are you okay?”

“Just—stupid. I’m really sorry they called you.”

“You forged a signature?”

Peter gives a stilted shrug. “My dad was busy. Didn’t think it would be a big deal.” He bites the nail of his thumb and smiles softly, a little embarrassed, knee bouncing up and down. “I can recompensate you in snacks, I have lollipops in my locker.”

The door opens and the principal leans out, holding a sheet of paper in an L-shaped clear folder. “Mr. Stark,” he says.

Tony wonders if this, whatever it is, really is a big deal or if the principal just wanted an excuse to call him in after figuring out who he was way too late into their last meeting.

He steps away from Peter to shake hands with— Mr. Morita is his name, apparently.

They head into the office and sit. Mr. Morita puts the clear folder on his desk and slides it across. It’s Peter’s report card. Tony glances it over, and then again, careful to keep his face neutral. Peter’s grades are… all right. Fine. Perfectly fine. But they are not the straight A’s Tony saw from him when Peter auditioned for the role of intern last summer.

“I would have preferred to speak with Mr. Parker himself, of course,” Mr. Morita says. “But I hope you can make sure the matter is brought to his attention. Forging a signature is not acceptable under any circumstances, but particularly with the recent dwindling of his motivation and academic commitment, getting suspended from the decathlon team—"

Tony can feel Peter tense beside him, but strives to keep his own face neutral.

“—the entire point of a report card is to keep parents and guardians abreast of such matters.”

“Yeah, I see.” He has many questions, but this is not the time to start an interrogation, not in front of this man; he has a feeling that Peter would clamp up like a vice.

Mr. Morita taps his fingers against the report card, looks at Peter. “This is a clean copy. I want it back on my desk with the actual signature on Monday.”

Peter nods and smirks. “I’ll ask him to lick the paper too, in case you want to test for DNA.”

Mr. Morita exhales through his nose and purses his lips.

-

Peter announces he needs his books from his locker, and returns with a bright smile firmly back in place and a frankly massive bag of lollipops. “I got lime, strawberry, watermelon, blackcurrant…”

“Tangerine?”

Peter holds one out.

The bell rings.

“Let’s move,” Tony says. “I don’t want your gross, sweaty fellow students crowding us.” He pops the lollipop into his mouth and puts a hand on Peter’s back. They move swiftly down the hallway as students pour into the hallway. A few turn their heads, some furious whispers erupt behind them. But they are out the door and in the car before any insanity has a chance to get off the ground.

“Seat belts.”

Peter fastens his seat belt. “Can I stay for dinner?”

Tony bites down on the lollipop until it crumbles apart in his mouth. Chews.

“Dude. That’s not how you eat a lollipop,” Peter says.

Tony starts the car, looks over his shoulder to check if the road is clear. “Where is your dad?”

“Work.”

Tony pulls into traffic. Fiddles with the GPS. “At what time can I call him about all this?”

Peter leans back in the seat, pulling up one leg. “You don’t have to.” He looks away from Tony, out the window.

“I think I do. And I wouldn’t have let you fart around the workshop if I knew your grades were taking a blow.”

Peter snorts. “They’re not, they’ve always been like this, how would you know?” His voice is still light. “My grades are fine, I’m not even failing anything.”

“But you were a straight-A student until this summer. And what’s this about you getting kicked off the decathlon team?”

“Uh—okay, this...” Peter sounds confused. “What’s…? You don’t actually need to concern yourself with any of that stuff, Tony, it’s fine. It’s fiiiiine. Just send my dad an email. I’ll work it out with him.”

“At what time can I call him?”

Peter sighs and apparently gives up. “Dunno. Just try his number, whenever he answers, he answers. Can I take a bath at the tower? I swear to god, I’ve had dreams about that bathtub.” He flashes a bright smile. “And also you didn’t say ‘yes’ to dinner. So can I?”

“Why have your grades slipped?”

“Fuck, why do you care!?” Peter snaps out of nowhere. And then he immediately flushes and yanks his face to the side.

The air in the car turns stale and something in Tony’s chest constricts. He hasn’t had to deal with a mood like this from Peter before and he doesn’t have a plan of action for this.

“I’m sorry,” Peter says in a very small voice. “I was—I’m sorry.”

Tony just looks at the road ahead and breathes the tightness away. “Why have your grades slipped?”

Peter says nothing. Tony can see his fingers digging anxiously into his knees.

“Is the internship too big of a distraction?”

“No,” Peter says, hands curling into fists. “Don’t kick me out.”

“I’m not kicking you out, Peter, we’re talking.”

“Yeah,” Peter says. “Uh. Why?”

Good question. There is no reason why Tony should need to take on this role, no one asked him to. All he needs to do is bring Peter home and drop Richard an email. “Yes,” he says. “You can stay for dinner.”

“Can I stay the night?”

-

When they get to the tower, Peter heads straight to the bathroom.

Tony calls Richard but it goes to voicemail. He decides not to leave a message yet and try again later.

Peter takes almost an hour this time. He finally gets back to the living room, wearing a bathrobe over his clothes that almost touches the ground. He looks at Tony and says: “You got me fired, you know.”

“What?”

“I mean. Not fired exactly, because I’m a freelancer. But I used to get good money for just a random picture of Spider-Man and a few made up facts. Until you threatened to sue them.”

Tony tilts his head, then points at Peter. “Oh my god. The damn Daily Bugle? With that insane editor in chief?”

Peter picks at his nails, head ducked low. “Insane enough to pay me a hundred bucks per article.”

Maybe Peter has more secrets than Tony always assumed. “Don’t work for that asshat. You’re short on cash? We’ll make it a paid internship.”

Peter glances up at him through his fringe. “I still have the internship?”

“I’ll give you any salary you want. Give me a number.”

“Uh. Seven,” Peter says.

“Seven. What’s seven?”

“I just— What? I don’t know, you told me to say a number.”

“How much money do you want to make, genius?”

“I’m—That’s not why I said it.”

“Why did you say it?”

Peter wraps his arms around himself, shrugs. “Just. To show that… sometimes I have stuff going on.”

There is no reason why Tony should need to take on this role, no one asked him to. He steps closer until he can rest both hands on Peter’s shoulders. “Kid,” he says, and waits for Peter to look at him. “If you have stuff going on, just know you can always talk to me about it.”

“Okay,” Peter whispers, looking suddenly very tired.

-

Pepper notices.

Peter is trying to be upbeat. He laughs at everyone else’s jokes but doesn’t make any himself.

Pepper’s solution to this, apparently, is to feed him even more than usual. “Honey, are you all right?” she asks carefully when Peter puts his spoon down halfway through dessert to roughly rub his face with both hands.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Your food is just so good, it makes me cry. You guys… You guys are going to have the best Thanksgiving.”

So it’s no surprise that after dinner, she herds him straight upstairs to put him to bed.

Tony calls Richard a second time but it goes to voicemail again. He leaves a message this time, explaining the situation. “Let’s talk soon. Maybe… grab a coffee sometime?” If he wants to get serious about being involved in Peter’s life, he’ll need to get on the same page with this man, fully and properly.

Pepper takes a while to return. Tony just finished loading the dishwasher when she shuffles back into the kitchen. “I tucked him in,” she says. “Is that excessive for a teenager?”

“Did he complain?”

“Not in the least, he was a sweetheart like always. He showed me a video of a dog in a spider costume and we talked about Shakespeare and zombies. He had a bit of a rough day, huh?”

“Might be more than just a day.”

She hums, plucking at the herbs growing on the kitchen counter.

“Can you change the kid’s contract to a paid internship? Let’s start with a hundred bucks a week.”

-

It’s a bit more life as usual the next morning. It’s a Saturday, no school for Peter, and Tony has the entire weekend to get Richard on the phone. Peter wakes up before Tony. When Tony gets to the kitchen, he is already there with Pepper and Steve and he’s folding a pancake into some origami shape.

“What’s that?” Tony asks, pulling out a chair.

“A goblin shark, of course,” Peter says. He turns the plate and the pancake construction flops over to one side. “These pancakes are flipping great,” Peter says, and he grins. “Get it? Flipping great.”

“Hm-mm.” Tony pours himself a coffee.

His plan was to drive Peter home, talk to Richard, but Peter says something about going to the ice rink with friends and insists on taking the bus.

Tony tries Richards number again once the kid has left. Voicemail. He presses his lips together and taps the screen to hang up. It might not be his place to say this — to even think this, but if he were a dad, it wouldn’t take him a full day to respond to a concerned call from school.

-

“Do you think I’d make a good parent?” he asks Pepper that afternoon as they are crawling through heavy traffic on Atlantic Avenue. Rain is drizzling down, their windshield wipers are swiping back and forth lazily.

“Obviously. We have plans, don’t we?”

“We do have plans,” Tony agrees, musingly. “What was it again, you penciled us in for conception in August of next year, baby out by spring?”

“August 13^th, at seventeen minutes past nine in the evening.”

“I’m worried that wasn’t even a joke.” They are going to a thing at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Tony doesn’t remember what the thing is, he doesn’t know how to get there or at what time they are supposed to arrive. He thinks he is expected to give some sort of speech at some point, but he isn’t sure. That is why Pepper makes the plans. But still, he can nudge her a little. “Sweet little Princess Leia didn’t convince you to move the schedule up a bit?”

“That was the plan when you showed me that demonic robot baby, was it?”

“That was the plan.”

“A terrible plan.”

“But flawlessly executed, am I right?”

“Are you going to be heavily pregnant of our child in the middle of a blazing-hot summer?”

“I… see your point.”

She pulls up at red traffic lights and leans back in the seat with a sigh, one hand lightly tapping her own stomach.

“Am I supposed to give a speech at this thing?” Tony asks.

“You are.”

Okay. “I’ll think of something.”

She hums. A stream of pedestrians crosses in front of them.

“I can do July, you know,” Pepper says.

Tony smiles and opens his mouth, then freezes. In a flash, among the waves of raincoats and umbrellas passing in front of them, he recognizes a face he has seen hovering in holographic form above his desk for weeks — months by now.

He throws the car door open — Pepper shouts something behind him. He pushes forward, shoving his way through grumpy bodies in waterproof fabrics. The man is just up ahead, he’s—holding a pink orchid in one arm. “Mr. Barnes!” Tony yells out, keeping his voice firm. The man keeps walking, hood up, nothing in his body language changes, his back and shoulders are a silent wall. Tony elbows another person aside, surges forward, grabs an arm.

The man whips around and Tony comes face to face with James Buchanan Barnes, the Winter Soldier, eyes sunken in a steely face, for a moment just a blank, empty expression and then the man dramatically pales, rearing back, pulling away, horrified.

Tony stares, frozen still, too busy reeling to come up with the right words, the right course of action.

Barnes hoists his orchid up higher, turns and runs, and Tony just watches him go.

Behind him, Pepper honks the horn.

-

Steve arrives in less than thirty minutes, whizzing towards them down the sidewalk and stumbling to a halt next to their car; jeans and a long-sleeve shirt, didn’t even throw on a coat. Rain is dripping from his hair into his neckline. He leans over, putting his hands on his knees, coughs, spits.

“Did you seriously just run eight miles in half an hour?” Tony asks. He is standing under the overhang of a shop. Pepper is still behind the wheel, window rolled down.

Steve straightens and rubs his chest. “Which way?”

“We already circled the block, I don’t think there’s much point walking around randomly. Let’s strategize. He grew up here in Brooklyn, right?”

Steve wipes the rain out of his eyes and gives a nod, warbled, but stark with determination. “South Clayton Street.”

“Get in the car, you’re going to catch pneumonia.”

“Um—Don’t think so,” Steve says. But he gets in the car.

They drive to South Clayton Street. It feels silly to have Steve point out all the street corners they used to play on as kids, as if a brainwashed HYDRA soldier would just come back and pitch a tent there. But they have no idea what Barnes’ mental state is so then again — why not? When Tony escaped Afghanistan the first place he went was Burger King. You find comfort in weird places, sometimes.

Steve’s face is pinched in concern as he cranes his neck, swivels his head, looking up and down every street they pass. He doesn’t even seem to notice that he’s shivering, so much that Tony can almost hear his bones rattle. He takes off his coat and passes it to the backseat. “Do me a favor.”

“I don’t get sick,” Steve says.

“Do you get cold?”

Steve shrugs with a wry smile and puts the coat on.

Pepper loops around the same block for a third time. Tony lays his head back, covers his eyes with a hand. It is mysterious, baffling, but at the same time completely understandable to him, that Barnes would come to New York, but not to them. “We should stop chasing him,” he says. “We know he’s fine. We know he’s around. He knows where to find us when he wants to.”

He glances up in the rearview mirror to see Steve’s face. Steve is looking away, out the window, expression full of doubt. “What if HYDRA still controls him?”

“He was out buying orchids, he did not look brainwashed.”

“You don’t know that,” Steve says stubbornly. “Look. If we find him and he doesn’t—doesn’t want to talk to me, he doesn’t have to. But if I stop searching and then next week I hear about a family executed in their own home by a HYDRA sleeper agent, I’ll—”

“All right,” Tony says. “All right. We’ll… Let’s circle the block one more time.”

-

They find nothing. FRIDAY finds nothing. He and Steve spend their entire Sunday buried in documents, maps, camera footage, lists of stolen cars and sold weapons. Tony even calls florists in Brooklyn to find out which ones sell pink orchids. All of them, is the answer.

Sunday evening, Peter sends him a video of a tiny hamster eating tiny burritos. It’s—At this point it’s honestly a welcome distraction.

-

Monday morning, Tony has barely finished his first coffee when his phone rings again. He has saved the school’s phone number by now and seeing the name on the display is—

Right. With everything going on, he forgot to try calling Richard again on Sunday, but Richard also didn’t call him. Most likely, the kid failed to hand in a properly signed report card today and Tony really needs to figure out what the hell the deal is with—

“Sir, you are—We have you listed as Peter Parker’s second emergency contact.” The woman’s voice sounds strange, not as crisp as usual. “We just received word that his father passed away. We—literally, we were only just informed a few minutes ago.”

Those words came too quickly for Tony to fasten onto them, make sense of them. “He… He…” His hand finds the edge of the kitchen counter for balance.

“Principal Morita wants to pull him out of class to tell him, he would prefer for you to be there.”

Rewind, stop, slow down, Tony wants to say. But nothing comes out apart from a strange, choked-off sound.

“I have no idea if you were—Well, we certainly hadn’t been informed of any… He was apparently diagnosed with advanced and metastatic cancer only two months ago. The boy is in the middle of his chemistry practical exam right now, we…” she falters again, something bewildered in her voice. She has no idea how to deal with this.

She has no idea how to deal with this, and she isn’t even anything to Peter. Just a woman who sees his name on a few lists here and there, between hundreds of other names, who maybe exchanged words with him two or three times in her whole life. She doesn’t even need to feel like she should know how to deal with this, like she should have been dealing with this all along.

“I’m coming.”

His mind is spinning away while the rest of his body is dragging him down and he uses every breathing technique from every shrink he has ever been treated by as he makes it to the car, finds the address in the GPS history — he was there only last Friday and he wasn’t even—Peter didn’t seem— Well, no, Peter did seem. Peter did seem, very much. The facts are rearranging themselves, slotting into this new truth.

He drives.

Peter is doing a chemistry practical exam right now even though his dad is, has probably been in hospital. Because the school, because Tony has been breathing down his neck about his grades? Did he feel like he had to be here, instead of by his father’s bedside in his final moments?

And he didn’t say, he didn’t say. Never said a damn thing, and Tony’s entire perspective on their relationship is shifting, the way he assumed Peter saw him, the way he assumed Peter trusted him. The image he had of himself through Peter’s eyes, the mentor, the hero, the friend, someone to rely on. The kid who wears his heart on his sleeve, who is not one for secrets, the ‘Luke I am you father’-kid who sends him cat-videos and folds his pancakes into goblin sharks.

Mr. Morita is waiting in the hallway when he arrives, nervously shifting his weight from one leg to the other. “We had no idea,” he says.

“I—Yeah.”

“We were notified by social services who told me there were immediate custodial concerns, I… I gave them your number, which might not be—”

“Yes. Good.”

Mr. Morita gives a shaky smile. “I’ll go and—collect Mr. Parker, then.”

Tony sits in the blue plastic chair and waits.

Immediate custodial concerns. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Peter never talked about his family, nothing beyond his mother dying in a plane crash when he was eight. Tony never asked too many questions because—because, well, because there was Spider-Man and Tony thought it was cute, he thought it was cute Peter was trying to keep it a secret, the way you think it’s cute when children believe in Santa Claus. He didn’t want to put the kid on the spot so he didn’t ask, he didn’t ask when he probably should have, when the kid invented his third family picnic within a month.

Mr. Morita appears with Peter in tow. Peter is in a lab coat, fiddling with the goggles in his hand. He looks nervous, even more so when he spots Tony. He probably already knows what this is about, part of him must have been expecting this, must have known the moment would come, one of these days.

“Let’s all take a seat.” Mr. Morita opens the door to his office.

They sit. Tony wants to hold Peter’s hand or something, but he hasn’t done that before, and doing it for the first time in front of practically a stranger is unnerving. He settles for resting his hand against the back of Peter’s chair.

“Sir, I can get the report card,” Peter blurts out nervously. “I just left it at—uh—”

Mr. Morita holds up a hand. “Peter,” he says gently. “We just received a phone call that your father passed away this morning.

Peter makes an odd, choked sound, the hard plastic goggles cracking between his fingers. “He… Huh?”

“I’m so sorry, Peter.”

There is a horrible silence for a few seconds.

“But…” Peter then says, weakly, clenches the goggles even tighter.

Tony reaches out, heart in his throat, and gently pries Peter’s fingers apart before the kid hurts himself on hard plastic shards. He swipes the goggles to the floor and laces his own fingers with Peters’, instead. “Kiddo.”

Peter looks up at him, bewildered, and then back at Mr. Morita. “My dad died?”

“I’m so sorry,” Tony murmurs.

Peter is still staring at Mr. Morita. “How… How did he die?”

There is an abrupt, stunned silence. Something in Tony’s brain gets jammed, his thoughts suddenly can’t move beyond a certain point, there is a mistake happening somewhere, an error somewhere in the lines of code, but he can’t find it.

“From his cancer,” Mr. Morita says slowly, eyes narrowing into a squint, looks like his brain is jamming too.

“He had c-cancer?” Peter’s voice wobbles.

And Tony knows where the error is, the world shifts again, the facts tumbling out and rearranging themselves a second time. “Peter,” he says. “When is the last time you spoke to your father?”

Peter looks at him like he is looking down the barrel of a gun.

-

None of this is anywhere close to even the… the outer edges of what Tony has experience with, what he is good at, what he knows.

Peter is in the passenger seat. But he also isn’t. He isn’t here, there is only a shell of Peter, pale, with empty eyes.

They drive.

Four months. Peter hasn’t seen his father in almost four months, because his father has been getting cozy with his new girlfriend, and Tony utterly and abjectly failed him. Is still failing him, because Peter is sitting right there and Tony doesn’t know what to say, where to begin. He exhales slowly.

“Can you stop breathing so loud?” Peter snaps.

“I—Jesus Christ,” Tony says.

“What?”

Tony doesn’t know what. A lot is happening and very little of it is making sense. Hah. Immediate custodial concerns. There should have been immediate custodial concerns years ago, probably. Tony is not overly optimistic about how well Richard would have treated Peter when he was still around.

Don’t speak ill of the dead.

But also, fuck him.

This is all utter insanity, he concludes as he turns into the street where Peter lives. He can feel a rage building in his chest, a swirling black mass with a very, very solid core of cold hard panic. He tries to keep his breathing even.

Peter has his arms tightly crossed, his entire body tense as a tightly coiled spring, eyes glittering with a strange sort of intensity. “What’s the plan anyway?” he asks aggressively.

Tony pulls up to the curb. “You—We pack some of your stuff. And I… call some people. Your…. Your dad’s…”

“Don’t,” Peter mutters, throwing the car door open and hoisting himself out.

Tony blinks into space for another ten seconds at least before it occurs to him to follow. He rushes after him, into the apartment building, takes the stairs two at a time until he catches up.

Peter’s hands tremble as he tries to fit his key into the lock, and Tony says nothing. He follows Peter down a narrow, dark hallway into an apartment with dead plants in the windowsill, take-away containers on the couch, dirty dishes piled up in the sink, a whole row of heavy two-liter bottles of water lined up in front of the fridge. Tony deflates, something painful twisting in his chest.

“Got something to say?” Peter snaps.

“Kid—”

“I got everything fucking handled, don’t patronize me.”

“Of course,” Tony says in a flat voice.

“Yeah, uhuh, ‘of course’. What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re full of shit.”

“Fuck you.”

He’s hanging on by the very edge of his self-control. “I’m here to help, Peter.”

“Fuck you, what do you know.”

Tony unzips his coat and steps closer to the sink, taking stock. He should probably at least wash those before they leave. Take out the trash. Who knows how long before anyone comes back here. Yeah. Yeah, those are all—all logical things to do right now.

“Don’t touch my stuff!” Peter grouses behind him.

“For the love of—Will you just go pack your bags!?”

The sound of something smashing. “GO PACK YOUR OWN STUPID BAGS!”

Tony curses under his breath and reaches out to whack the faucet open.

Nothing happens.

Tony grips the handle, turning it up, down, left, right. His heart is pounding in his ears, hollow panic in his chest. “Why is nothing happening. Why is—Why is nothing happening, Peter?” His voice is loud, now. Too loud. He whirls around. “Why is nothing happening!?”

Peter is looking back at him, face red, his eyes huge in his head, his chest heaving.

And then he turns and flees back down the hallway.

“Peter!”

The front door slams shut.

A potent self-loathing instantly bleeds into his veins. No. No, no, no, no, Tony you stupid fuck.

-

Peter runs until it feels like his chest might explode. He didn’t even consciously decide to come here, but here is where he ends up. He sags against the wall and slams a hand against the doorbell BLUNT, tears rolling into his mouth, something breaking apart inside him, something very sharp and jagged. He finds his phone, hands shaking.

Am downstairs now. Please open.

He holds his breath as he waits, saying a silent prayer, Bucky would have gotten back from work maybe an hour ago, still getting ready for bed, not yet asleep, please, please, please.

The door buzzes, the lock clicks open.

Chapter Text

When his mother died, Peter’s dad pulled him out of school to tell him. He was in the third grade. Peter remembers they were doing a math class about multiplication and the teacher was throwing giant foam dice around the room, he remembers being disappointed that he had to stop because his father was knocking on the glass partition.

He remembers thinking how weird it was when his father hugged him. He doesn’t remember anything about the actual conversation, or how he felt immediately afterwards. He does remember a lot of other people taking care of everything, a lot of strangers suddenly around the house to make phone calls and do laundry.

His father is lazy like that.

No.

His father was lazy. His father is dead.

He falls into Bucky’s apartment and Bucky is right there, catches him by the elbows, drags him to the couch, asks him something.

“Hey,” he says stupidly. “You’re home.” He thinks he says it, anyways, he isn’t sure. His teeth are chattering together and some words might be rattling out through them. He is cold. Was it raining?

What happened?

That was—a question. Someone was asking it. What happened, what happened?

Bucky’s face comes closer, a little less hazy, his gaze intent. “Peter, you have to talk to me. What happened?”

“I—My dad is just dead like it’s—And Tony said—"

“I can’t understand you.” Bucky’s voice is wavering in a way Peter hasn’t heard before. Peter must look bad for him to sound like that. Hands cup his face. “Peter. Look at me when you talk.”

Peter yanks his head away and curls up instead, he presses his face into the couch, wraps his arms around himself to try and hold himself together. His phone buzzes in his pocket again, he felt it buzzing as he was running, buzzing and buzzing, and then nothing for a very short moment, and then buzzing again. He knows who it is, he doesn’t want to answer.

He is gasping with every breath and it hurts, he really needs to get himself under control, he really needs to— This isn’t how—

I was gonna call you. I’ve been a bit ill. I have some stuff going on.

There is a weight, suddenly. A hand sinks into his hair, fingers combing through. Something comforting and solid. He can feel it. Bucky starts humming, low. He can hear it. Peter’s shoulders droop and the tears pour out, soundlessly, with no heaving, just tears dripping down his lashes and his nose and his fingers, everywhere, he’s slowly wringing himself out like a wet cloth. But he can breathe again, he can breathe through it without feeling like his chest will crush inwards. And he tries to put the pieces together.

Okay.

His father is dead.

The principal was already talking about social services.

Tony saw his apartment at the worst possible moment.

Bucky has seen—is seeing him in the middle of an embarrassing breakdown.

He needs to somehow salvage whatever there is left to salvage. Where to begin? There is still that soft pressure carding through his hair, but Peter moves, shifts, and Bucky snatches his hand back.

Peter sits up— he tries to sit up, his head is made of lead. He makes a strange choked-off noise and presses one hand against his chest. Come on, Peter.

Bucky is back, pressing an entire roll of paper towels into his hands. Peter tears a few squares off and blows his nose. Twice. Wipes his face. He glances up at Bucky hovering next to the couch. Bucky looks guarded, nervous, maybe a bit helpless. “Peter,” he says.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Peter flashes a smile that possibly looks absolutely horrendous because Bucky’s mouth twists, disturbed.

His phone starts buzzing again and Peter lets his head slump forward, reaching into his pocket. He’ll have to talk to Tony, but he doesn’t know if he can right now, maybe…

It is Pepper’s name lighting up the display.

A strange mixture of fresh panic and painful longing bursts apart in his chest and he forces a breath into his lungs before tapping to answer. “Hello?”

There is an intake of breath. A beat of nothing. And then Pepper’s voice, very, very steady. “Hello sweetheart,” she says. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

His eyes burn, his whole face burns. “Uh. Yeah,” he says.

“Please let us come pick you up. We want to take care of you. Tony is—Please let us know where you are.”

“Yeah,” Peter says. “Yeah. Yeah.”

There’s a silence, it feels like Pepper is waiting for him to say something more, but Peter can’t think of anything.

“All right,” Pepper soothes. “We can track your phone and come find you where you are, just stay put, yes?”

Peter’s thoughts screech to a halt once again. “No,” he says. “Don’t. I’ll come to the tower. Don’t track my phone.”

“Honey—”

“I’ll come to the tower, I’ll be there—maybe an hour.”

“I don’t feel comfo—"

“Don’t track my phone.” He hangs up.

“Peter,” Bucky says again, voice thin and measured.

“Yeah.” He turns to face Bucky. “Yep. Yep. Uh. I need to leave.”

“You need to leave?”

“Really urgently. Um. My dad is dead, you know, properly dead and stuff, stuff probably needs to deal with—I mean, I have to deal with stuff.”

Bucky is squinting at him, gaze heavy and hard.

“See—See ya later alligator,” Peter says, attempting another smile.

Bucky’s face spasms again, so it probably didn’t work.

-

He manages to keep it together just wonderfully as he gets to the subway, finding the right stops, where to get on and off. Ful – ton – sta – tion. Eigh – ty – sixth – street. He remembers them and he looks out the window at every stop, spelling out the letters on the signs. No, no, no, yes. He gets off at the right stop and he makes it to the tower. He can still do this.

Pepper is standing outside on the front steps with windswept hair and a baggy sweater over her fancy pencil-skirt suit. She looks at him, her eyes clear and unwavering and reaches for his shoulder as soon as he is near, drawing him into a hug. “Honey,” she murmurs. “I’m so glad to see you.”

“I made it,” Peter says. “I made it.”

“Yes, you made it. Come on.”

She leads him inside, guiding him, firmly, into the elevator that carries them to the penthouse, towards that very special corner of the world where he never needs to worry about anything.

Tony is right by the elevator doors when they step out, his eyes red and puffy, his motions jerky when he reaches out and yanks Peter into another hug. “I’m sorry,” he says, his fingers digging into Peter’s back. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

 “Yeah,” Peter murmurs as he sags into the embrace. “We were being idiots, huh?”

“I was being an idiot. For about four months, I’m guessing.”

“A lot—lot longer than that,” Peter says. Tony huffs out a laugh.

Score.

“We just have to work stuff out,” Peter says. “Right? We just have to work some stuff out.”

“Kid. Come on.”

They lead him to the couch—Tony practically carries him.

“Are they going to kick me out of the apartment?” Peter asks, pulling a cushion into this lap and wrapping his arms around it. “Because I’m fine, I was fine, I just need the water and electricity back up. You caught me at a bad time.”

“I—Yeah, I’ll circle back to that in a moment,” Tony says. “We’ve been told your father’s body has been transferred to the funeral home and if you want—”

“I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to.”

“The funeral is on Thursday.”

“Fine and dandy,” Peter says, looking away.

There is a silence in which he knows Tony and Pepper are exchanging a look. “All right,” Pepper says. “The apartment. Social services have already contacted us about your custody. We said yes, of course. Which means you’ll be living here from now on. We’ll get everything arranged and try to—find another moment today to go back and pack your belongings.”

That… feels so out of left field that Peter doesn’t respond, because surely Pepper is going to say more.

But Pepper just gazes at him for a while, before asking: “How do you feel about that?”

“I… I don’t understand.”

“You’ll be living here. Tony and I will be your guardians.”

The tears are back again. Stupid tears. “I don’t u-understand.”

“We want to take care of you.”

“You don’t e-even know me,” Peter blubbers. “I made everything up, I lied about everything.”

“None of that matters,” Pepper says.

How can it not? “That’s s-stupid,” he manages. “You’re both so stu-stupid.”

Pepper squeezes his knee. “Let’s see if you can manage a nap. I think you need it.”

They pile cushions and blankets around him, and it feels pointless, because his thoughts are very loud, all the things that were said, all the things that need to be said. But he manages to latch onto one phrase.

We want to take care of you. We want to take care of you.

-

He wakes up, blinks at the backrest of the couch, and remembers that his father is dead, a cold weight immediately settling back on his chest.

The penthouse is quiet. His head is loud.

He rolls onto his back. Tony is still there, sitting in Peter’s favorite oatmeal armchair. He’s reading through some documents that are stapled together in the corner, draped over his knee. Peter spots an upside-down Venn diagram on the back of a page and tries to decipher it for a few moments. When he looks up at Tony, Tony is looking back at him.

Peter cuts his eyes away.

Too late. Tony lays the papers aside and stands. “Hey.”

Peter says nothing.

“Are you awake?”

Peter rubs his eyes. “Duh.”

“Okay,” Tony says, and looks at him for a while.

“What?”

“Do you feel up for going back to the apartment and packing some essentials? Just the stuff you need now, we have time to go back later and go through everything.”

“No,” Peter says, rolling onto his stomach and pressing his face into the crook of his elbow. “I don’t need to move. I just need electricity and I’ll be fine.”

“It’s not fine.”

“Can you just sort out my electricity?” Peter demands. “Can you just be Iron Man and call someone to sort out my electricity? It is fine. It is fine because nothing changed, this doesn’t even change anything. My father being dead literally has zero impact on my life.”

“Peter, you need a family.”

“Don’t patronize me!”

The couch dips as Tony sits on the edge, his knee touching Peter’s back. A hand lands on his shoulder, a thumb brushing the back of his neck. “Peter, I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry I didn’t see it, didn’t notice. I failed you. You’re allowed to be mad at me.”

“I’m not mad at you!” Peter snaps. No one is understanding anything.

“We are going to take care of you.”

“Fuck off, leave me alone!”

Tony sighs softly. “Do you want some lunch? Pepper made Italian wraps.”

Peter sniffles. “Yes. I want wraps.”

Tony squeezes the back of his neck. “Be right back.”

Peter drags himself into a seated position, leaning sideways against the backrest, the blankets scrunched up around his legs. Tony returns with the wraps cut up into roll-ups, as if Peter is a little child. He sits on the edge of the couch again and sets the plate down between them. Peter sniffs derisively and picks at the food. His stomach is rumbling and churning at the same time, and he wants to eat but also wants to throw up, and his dad is still dead. “My favorite show is actually ‘Fargo’,” he says. “So. You don’t know me.”

Tony just hums.

“And if you don’t know me, then I’m just some random kid off the street. And if I’m just some random kid, why would you want to take care of me?”

“Because you’re Peter,” Tony says.

Peter looks up at him, searches Tony’s face, his soft expression; looking for the lie there.

“Mr. James Buchanan Barnes has entered the tower,” FRIDAY reports.

Tony makes a wheezing sound and practically tumbles out of his seat, slamming one hand down on the coffee table to hold himself up. Peter’s stomach feels like it has dropped straight to the floor.

“Is he armed?” Tony asks, regaining his composure and climbing to his feet.

“Negative. He is asking to speak with you.”

“Where’s Rogers?”

“He was in the gym. I have informed him and he is already on his way down.”

Tony hesitates, head swiveling back to Peter, consternation in his eyes. He takes in a breath and then lets it out again, his shoulders drooping. “Let Rogers do his thing. Notify me if you perceive any threat.”

“Will do.”

And Tony… sags back onto the couch. His gaze returns to Peter, softens once it lands on him.

Peter blinks. “You don’t… You don’t need to…?”

“First things first,” Tony says neutrally, and nudges the plate closer to him.

Peter ducks his head as he nibbles on another piece of wrap. He should probably… probably say something. It’s pretty obvious why Bucky is here. “Are you— You won’t arrest him, will you?”

Tony cocks his head. “That is not the intention, no. But we don’t know if he is a threat.”

Peter plucks a piece of lettuce from the wrap and says nothing, because he doesn’t know where to start. He just wants to sit here and let everything wash over him; let all the truth pour out around him and sit here quietly until the world has stopped spinning and he can get back up without tumbling over.

He puts the half-eaten wrap down, lays his head back and closes his eyes.

“Kiddo, if you don’t feel up for it, you can just give me a list of things you need and I’ll go pick them up myself.”

“Don’ need to move in,” Peter murmurs. “M’fine.”

“Not even if you can have baths every day?” Tony asks. “And eat Pepper’s food?”

Peter sniffles and wipes at his nose, slouching lower in the seat. “Do you know what kind of cancer my dad had?”

He hears a rustling noise. Tony clears his throat. “No. Only that he was diagnosed two months ago when he was already terminal. I can see if I can get the details if—”

“No, never mind, it’s not important.”

“It’s okay to have questions, Peter.”

“Don’t give me platitudes.”

“Kid—”

“Mr. Rogers is asking your permission to bring Mr. Barnes up to the penthouse,” FRIDAY says.

“Denied,” Tony says sharply. “The kid is here, Steve knows that. He can take an office somewhere on—”

“Mr. Barnes is asking for Peter.”

A silence falls.

Peter should probably say something. He opens his eyes to look at Tony’s stunned expression. “He won’t hurt me,” he murmurs. “Don’t hurt him.”

Tony analyzes his face a while longer. “Wait here,” he then says, standing. “FRIDAY, tell Rogers I’m coming down. Ask Pepper to sit with Peter.”

It’s Spicy Queso Funyuns-gate.

-

Steve and Bucky break off a murmured conversation when Tony barges in. They were herded into some windowless little room in a corner where Tony has never been before; looks like a former supply closet, hastily transformed into a cramped office by the security team.

Tony looks at Steve, at the odd but familiar blend of resignation and determination. Steve’s mouth is flat and earnest but his eyes suspiciously moist.

Tony looks at Barnes. Barnes looks… exceptionally normal, just some standard-issue, garden variety New York citizen. Worn baseball hat, moss-green sweater, hunched in his seat, nothing particularly noteworthy about him if you don’t know what’s under those black gloves. He makes eye contact. “Mr. Stark,” he says curtly, could be mistaken for rude but Tony thinks it’s just nerves.

Tony stares a moment more, then closes the door behind him. “My kid seems to know who you are. A little too well. What brings you here today?”

“Is Peter all right?”

Tony clasps his hands behind his back, keeps his voice light. “What’s it to you?”

“I asked his assistance a while back. We’ve been in touch.”

“In touch.”

“He came to my house this morning. He was… unsettled.”

What on earth is Tony supposed to do with this information? He feels like he can barely keep up with everything life is throwing at him right now, how is Peter supposed to catch it, store it all, put it all down?

“I care about him,” Barnes says. Intently.

Tony feels something inside him soften, just a bit, but is careful not to let it show. He looks at Steve, who gives a strained smile, and back at Bucky. “And who currently owns your mind, Mr. Barnes?”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Bucky looks at him for a few quiet moments, and then asks: “Did someone die? I think Peter said someone died.”

“I’m not talking to you about Peter until I know which version of Bucky Barnes I am speaking to.”

Bucky tilts his head to the side and looks at Tony for a while longer; there’s nothing hostile in his gaze, he just looks pensive. “I am James Blunt,” he says slowly. “I work at an ice rink. I watch movies with Peter. I babysit his school projects when he needs me to, unless they are lizards. I—I like plants. That’s… That is the version.” He looks achingly earnest.

“And the previous version?”

“HYDRA operative Barnes who executed high-profile targets. I remember him, but he is gone.”

He doesn’t mention Tony’s parents. No judgement, Tony wouldn’t have led with that, either.

“And what did you want with Peter?”

“Just. Been trying to keep him alive.” Bucky’s mouth twitches into a cautious smile.

Tony hums, pulling out a third chair to sit. “You got a new identity and settled on James Blunt?”

-

“I’m still not moving in,” Peter says stubbornly as he twirls the pen between his fingers, rubbing his bare feet against the blanket. Pepper managed to rope him into writing out a list of personal belongings he needs, the letters are blurring on the page and he blinks again. “This is just—just the emergency list for tonight. To stay the night. One night.”

Pepper has changed into jeans and a sweatshirt, she is sitting on the rug by the coffee table, files scattered around her. “No,” she says kindly but uncompromisingly, not looking up from her paperwork. “You will be living us from now on.”

Peter sniffs and scratches phone charger off the list, because his charger isn’t at the apartment, it’s in his school locker since he had no way of charging his phone at home. He scratches harder and harder, phone charger disappearing under a big angry mess of blue ink. “If you’re expecting a thank you, you’re not getting one.”

“Quite all right.”

“Boss is coming up to the penthouse with Mr. Rogers and Mr. Barnes,” FRIDAY reports.

“Fucking finally!” Peter snaps, throwing the pen across the room. He crosses his arms and glares in the direction of the elevator, until the three men appear.

Tony’s eyebrows twitch a bit when he sees Peter’s face but he says nothing, just steps aside.

“Oh my god, it’s James Blunt,” Peter says and he chuckles, but it sounds disjointed and weird, even to his own ears.

Bucky steps forward. He looks at Peter a moment, before his eyes trail slowly around the room. He scrutinizes Pepper. He looks at the plants in the window. “Tomatoes,” he says.

“Uh. Yeah,” Tony says.

Bucky steps forward until he is looming right over Peter, eyes keenly sharp, posture calm. Peter glares right back at him, because this is—because Bucky could have—should have— because everything is just stupid.

“Have you been all alone?” Bucky asks softly.

Peter suppresses a flinch. The question pulls at a thread, a loose little thread in his head, like everything might unravel, which is strange because everything already has. Peter presses his lips together.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Bucky asks.

Peter scowls at the question. At least Pepper and Tony didn’t ask him dumb stuff like that. “I didn’t think it would make a difference.” In his experience, adults rarely have real life practical applications.

He tugs at the blanket, pulls it higher. “All right, well, here I am. You’ve had a good look. You can go now.” He pulls the blanket all the way over his head and curls up underneath it. He bites down on his thumb and squeezes his eyes shut.

He hears Tony ask, impossibly, “do you want to stay for dinner?”

Bucky doesn’t reply, of course, and Peter feels overwhelmed tears welling hotly in his eyes. He wants Bucky to stay. He wants Bucky to leave. Tony probably takes the silence as a refusal.

“Coffee?” he hears Bucky asks, gruffly, and then some more murmured conversation, the words smudging together in Peter’s brain, and it’s probably Bucky and Steve leaving together when the elevator dings. Tony and Pepper are murmuring too, and then he hears more rustling of paper and not much else.

He takes out his phone because he needs to send himself a voice message with his grocery list, anyways, he needs to go grocery shopping tomorrow, he’s all out of—of stuff. And he’ll need stuff tomorrow when he gets back home, when everything will be back to normal. “Potato wedges,” he says into his phone. “Eggs. Uh. Bananas. Fucking—fucking parsnips or something. Toilet paper.”

He jolts when a hand lands on his shoulder, squeezes through the blanket. “Kiddo,” Tony says. “I’m going to pick up all the stuff from your list. Do you want to come?”

“No,” Peter says. “And don’t touch my dishes, I’m doing them tomorrow.”

Tony squeezes again but doesn’t promise anything.

-

Tony exhales slowly when he enters Peter’s apartment for the second time that day. His mind is clearer now. Everything is still a shitstorm, but it’s his determination that’s keeping him functioning. Whatever happens, he’s going to take care of the kid.

He takes his time scrutinizing everything. There are shoes in the hallway that are too big for Peter, and a large coat, nothing that indicates Richard hasn’t even been living here.

Peter’s backpack is in the middle of the living room, where he dumped it this morning before he ran. Tony picks that up first, sets it on the couch. There is a checkered blanket rolled up next to the cushions, that Peter may have used regularly. Peter didn’t put it on the list, like he didn’t really put anything non-vital on the list. Maybe he will appreciate the blanket, tear up and ask again why Tony even wants to take care of him. Or maybe he will be furious and yell that he has everything covered and he’s going back home tomorrow so why would Tony even bring this.

Maybe Tony shouldn’t push him right now.

He leaves the blanket.

He gets everything else. The toothbrush, pajamas, some clothes, not all of them. The biology book that apparently counts as vital.

He collects the take-away containers and stuffs them in the trash, before pulling the entire garbage bag out and tying a knot. They’ll definitely need to sort out these dishes, too. He can’t just let them sit in the sink and grow mold. He’ll come back tomorrow, when they’ve hopefully dealt with all the paperwork. Throw them in the back of his car and wash them at the tower.

Paperwork has shown that Peter has been without water and electricity for almost two weeks, and every time Tony thinks about that little fact, a sharp fury crawls through his chest. He keeps combing through his memories, scrutinizing every memory he has of Peter from every angle, poking at them, prying them apart. Hindsight is not twenty-twenty, not for him, he still can’t pinpoint the moment when he should have known; this kid who keeps his heart tucked away very far up his sleeve.

He goes over Peter’s crumpled up list, circling the apartment one last time. He pauses by the couch again. Looks at the blanket.

Maybe Peter needs confirmation that he has a home, even if that makes him angry right now.

He takes the blanket.

-

Peter is asleep on the couch again when he gets back. His cheeks are blotchy from what was clearly another significant crying fit, the tip of the blanket is tangled tightly around his fingers.

Pepper gives him a nod from behind the mountain of forms social services left them with.

Steve is still out with Barnes. That’s a thing Tony doesn’t even let himself think about right now, he doesn’t have room for it. What a day.

He sets Peter’s bag down, shakes out the blanket and lays it across the kid, carefully ghosts one hand through Peter’s hair. He kneels on the carpet next to Pepper. “What can I do?”

-

Peter wakes up, blinks at the backrest of the couch, and his father is still dead. In a funeral home right now, somewhere in— He doesn’t even know where, he doesn’t know where his dad is when he’s not at home, where his girlfriend lives.

He becomes aware of Tony and Pepper having another murmured conversation behind him, about doing dishes. Right. Tony is back. Right—That means he can, he can get on with things.

He pushes the blanket away and sits up. Pepper and Tony are both sitting on the floor, paperwork shoved to one side, and look up at him. Peter avoids their gaze, swivels his head left and right—there. His backpack is on the floor, sagging against the leg of the table.

He sniffs, wipes his face with the back of his hand and heaves himself out of his seat. Stumbles. He zips open his backpack and finds his biology book right on top.

“Do you want some tea?” Pepper asks behind him.

“No. I’m… I’m gonna do, do home—go study,” he clenches the book to his chest and shuffles around the couch. “I have a biology test tomorrow.”

“You’re not going to school tomorrow.”

Peter turns back. Tony has risen to his feet, his gaze calm and solemn.

“You’re deciding that for me, are you?”

“You’re in no state to go to school.”

“Fuck you,” Peter says, white hot, and he turns to leave and walks straight into a wall.

“Jesus—” Tony rounds the couch to reach him, takes his arm.

“Why is there—a w-wall—” His voice cracks on a sob, he rubs at his forehead. “Your house is s-s-stupid. Your house—Your house is s-so stupid.”

“I know, kid.” Tony folds him into a hug. “I know. I know.”

“I want to go home. I want to go h-home.”

Tony blows out a breath and leans back, clasping both hands down on Peter’s shoulders and ducking his head to look him in the eye. “Peter. Why do you want to go home?”

“Because I’m doing great.” Peter hiccups, wiping at his eyes. “Great, great, great. Top notch.”

Tony cups his cheeks, very gently. “Kiddo. You’re full of shit,” he murmurs, his gaze warm.

Fresh tears well in his eyes. “I’m tired,” he whispers. “I’m so tired. I’m so t-tired, Tony.”

“I know, sweetheart. Please just let us take care of you. Please. We want to be your family.”

He wants that.

“Forever.”

He wants that, too.

“And you’ll not have to do anything alone anymore.”

He really, really wants that.

Could it be that all he has to do is say ‘okay’ and he’ll have it? Can life be that simple sometimes? This thing he has been holding at arms’ length, but it’s suddenly in the palm of his hand, these people who have been holding his head above water without even knowing it.

“O-okay,” he says, and his legs turn into a puddle underneath him, but Tony is holding him up.

-

Pepper tucks him into bed that evening. Peter brought his checkered blanket along, spread it out on top of the bed before crawling under the covers. Pepper sits on the edge of the bed and tugs the blanket a little this way, a little that way, smoothening out a wrinkle here, fluffing up a bit there. As if tucking in is a very precise artform.

Peter curls up on his side, one arm wrapped around the pillow. “Sorry I was rude today,” he murmurs. “I’m—I promise I’m not usually like that.”

Pepper pats his head, tucks a lock of hair behind his ear. Her fingers are cool, but it’s nice. “What are you usually like?” she asks gently.

“Um.” Peter takes a moment to think. “I’m not sure, actually.”

She hums and lifts her hand to brush her knuckles down Peter’s cheek. “Let’s find out together.”

Chapter Text

He sits on the mint-green carpet, in a patch of early-morning sunlight. The window in this bedroom — his bedroom — faces east. And all the walls are, like, normal straight walls, nothing slants in or out. He has stayed in this room twice before, but it hits differently when it’s not a guest room anymore.

There is a soft knock at the door. Did he take too long to come to the kitchen for breakfast? He has the schedule of other people to take into account, for the first time in a long time. “Come in!”

Nothing happens. And then another knock.

Peter suddenly thinks he might know who it is. He pushes himself to his feet and opens the door.

Bucky is there, baseball cap, green sweater, all of the usual, except he is holding a plant with long stems and round leaves.

“Hi,” Peter says, and then doesn’t know what else to say so he adds, stupidly: “This is my room now.”

Bucky nods, mouth quirking into a smile. “I see.” He lifts the plant a little. “Remember Dorothy Gale?”

Peter nods, and it occurs to him to step aside.

Bucky looks hesitant for a moment, like he hadn’t thought ahead this far, hadn’t expected to be invited in. But he comes in. He pauses in the middle of the room and looks around, slowly, taking everything in. Peter pushes the door closed with his back and leans against it, waits for Bucky to turn back to him.

Bucky scrutinizes him as quietly and thoroughly as he examined the room. “You didn’t look this wary when I first barged into your house as a practical stranger.”

“I was rude to you yesterday.”

A short silence. Bucky’s head tilts slightly to one side. “Are you apologizing?”

Peter nods. “About yesterday.”

“Don’t.”

“Uh. Okay.”

Bucky sits on the floor, setting Dorothy down at his feet. Peter blinks and then follows his example, because it feels weird not to.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Bucky says.

Peter looks down at his feet, at the toe poking out through a hole in his sock. His loss. What did he lose, exactly? Perhaps a few convictions, most of all, that he can do it all alone, that everything is fine, that he’s feeling fine. “Did you really never wonder why you didn’t see any parents in all that time you were stalking me?” He doesn’t know how to feel about it because it was… it was convenient, but it was also… It’s like he wanted people to see him and not see him at the same time.

Bucky’s smile widens a bit, then fades. There’s a bit of amusement there, a bit of regret. “The first time I spotted Spider-Man, I managed to keep up for perhaps two streets before I lost you completely. I tried again every day after that. It was difficult to follow you, but easier to reverse engineer your movements. I found out where you went to school before I found out where you lived. I only watched your apartment for a bit, one or two days, before I knocked on the door.”

Peter nods. “Yeah, makes sense.”

“No, it doesn’t. I should have noticed. I was too focused on information that was relevant to me. Very selfish.”

“Oh. Yeah, it’s not like you had anything else going on.”

Bucky squints at him for a while. Then he nudges the plan forward. “I quit my job at the ice rink this morning. I’ll be talking to Stevie and… some other people, important people I suppose, about how I can support SHIELD.”

“I thought you liked the ice rink.” Did Peter screw up Bucky’s peaceful little life by forcing him out of the shadows?

But Bucky shakes his head. “It was a nice escape. I want to… do some good with the abilities I have.” And he smiles a smile that reaches his eyes.

“Be an Avenger?”

“A what?”

“Avenger. You’ve heard of Avengers?”

“Ah. Yes. Avengers,” Bucky says in quite a heavy tone that Peter can’t decipher. Bucky nudges the plant again. “I’m going to be in DC for a few days. I thought maybe you would want to take care of Dorothy for a little while.”

“Oh.” Peter touches the leaves, bites his lip. “What about your other plants?”

“They’ll be fine. Plants don’t need that much care. But Dorothy Gale likes a bit of company.”

“I… I don’t know how… I don’t even know what kind of plant it is.”

“For three, four days, maybe.”

“What kind of plant is it?”

“A money plant. Also known as a pancake plant or a UFO plant.”

“You just definitely made all of that up.”

“I watered it this morning, so it won’t need anything at all.”

Something to take care of. Peter can do that, he thinks. “How do I know if it needs water?”

“It won’t.”

“Yeah, but how do I know?”

“Check the soil. Just push your pinkie in a little.” Bucky demonstrates. “And if the soil feels damp, you’re fine.”

It still seems like an awfully big responsibility. But he nods firmly and pulls Dorothy into his lap. “I got it.”

-

It’s quite clear that Tony still doesn’t quite know what to make of it, barely knows what to make of Bucky, knows even less what to make of Bucky and Peter knowing each other, and even, even less what to make of Bucky leaving a plant in Peter’s care.

“It is a plant, right?” he asks. “I mean, it’s just a normal plant? It’s not going to glow in the dark like that lizard?”

They’re at the kitchen table. Tony and Pepper have finished their breakfast, but they’re still leaning back in their seats and looking at Peter. Peter put Dorothy between them on the table, so he can feel like he’s hiding a little bit.

“Pancake plant,” he says.

“That sounds made up.”

“UFO plant?”

“Are we all going to be killed by this plant, is all I want to know.”

“It’s just a plant,” Peter promises. “She has a name, you know.”

“That’s cute when it’s a robot baby or a lizard, but a little weird when it’s a plant.”

Peter twirls his spoon through the cereal, glancing up at Tony. “The robot baby was, yeah, cute, right?”

Tony looks up, examines Peter’s face. “Sure, she was cute.”

“Yeah,” Peter says, cutting his eyes away. “So. Uh. How’s… How’s my life gonna look from now on?”

“Proper food and lots of hugs,” Tony says. “Doctor’s orders.”

Peter spoons some more cereal into his mouth and chews slowly. Tony and Pepper seem to think it’s all just natural, him living here. No big deal. Which is weird, considering Tony just freaked out about a plant. Apparently, making room for a plant is a huge deal, but making room for Peter is effortless. “What, uh, what kind of food?”

“Every kind. You know Pepper.”

“And what kind of hugs?”

Tony looks down at him with an undisguised affection that makes Peter want to look away but also never look away. “Every kind.”

-

There are lots of kinds of hugs, actually.

There are side hugs, when he’s helping Pepper in the kitchen. He’s familiar with those, but they seem a bit gentler now, they last a bit longer, Pepper squeezing his upper arm, her thumb rubbing his shoulder.

There are couch hugs, when they’re watching TV together, or just reading quietly. They happen almost thoughtlessly, unintentionally. He’ll sit down on one end of the couch when he starts reading, and by the time he finished the first chapter he has ended up curled up under Tony’s arm, and how he got there is a bit of a blur.

There are fix-up hugs; those always start with Pepper fussing over his hair or his clothes. Parts his hair this or that way, rebuttons his blouse, tucks his shirt in, straightens his collar, wipes a smudge off his cheek. “There,” she’ll say, and then drop a kiss on his forehead and hug him.

There are Heimlich-hugs, when Peter is in the workshop, at Tony’s desk, twisting copper wires together or filing and fitting metal parts, and Tony is suddenly behind him and hugs him like a boa constrictor, firmly, his arms around Peter’s chest, his chin digging into Peter’s shoulder until Peter complains that he can’t breathe.

So, yeah. He’s still not sure about everything else that is supposed to happen in his life from now on. But this part, this part works.

-

The funeral is somewhere in a small church in the east of Long Island.

It’s an hour drive at least and Peter keeps Dorothy Gale in his lap the whole time. He brought a bottle of water and regularly checks the soil, the way Bucky taught him, to make sure she doesn’t need to drink.

“Pete,” Tony told him that morning, “you really don’t need to bring a plant to a funeral, it won’t die if you only—”

“Dorothy is coming,” Peter said stubbornly.

He wasn’t even sure if he wanted to come for the longest time. He has been going back and forth on it, and Tony and Pepper thought it would be good to go, so he agreed. They’re both driving him, but to avoid a whole scene around ‘famous Iron Man’, only Pepper will go inside with him while Tony will be waiting in the car.

The church sits in the curve of a road, white walls and a dark grey roof, flanked by topiaries. There aren’t a lot of people inside, and Peter doesn’t know any of them. There’s a lady near the front who is probably his dad’s girlfriend. Was.

Peter doesn’t bother going over to introduce himself.

He doesn’t sign the guestbook, either. They sit in the back, close together, Dorothy in his lap, Pepper’s hand on his back.

There’s a closed, brown casket, and behind it a flatscreen on top of a metal cart that plugs into the wall and shows a picture of his dad standing on the beach, waving at the camera.

Peter leans his hands on the back of the wooden pew in front of him, and his chin on his hands, and wonders what he was doing while this picture was being taken. Cooking his own dinner, doing his own laundry, faking autographs on report cards?

No one says anything remotely personal during the service, maybe no one cared enough. Some official-church-person with a black suit and a sort of weird short scarf around his neck says a few words about God and then reads a really long poem, and they play an old song, one of those songs Peter has heard a lot but doesn’t know the name of. Smooth road, clear day. Maybe his dad’s favorite song. Who knows? He sure doesn’t.

He pushes his pinkie in the soil to check if Dorothy might be thirsty.

The new girlfriend cries a little at the end of the song, Peter can see her wiping at her face and he doesn’t know how to feel about that.

The church guy talks some more and it’s very factual this time, like a business meeting, he explains about the procession to the burial site, who goes in what order and who will carry the casket, how to get to reception, and that smoking is not allowed anywhere on the premises.

“I want to go home,” he tells Pepper. He feels absolutely zero desire to stand around and watch the casket get shoved underground. And then maybe people will expect him to leave Dorothea Gale at the grave. Can’t have that.

Pepper hums, her hand rubbing circles on his back. And then she nods.

“Do you want to talk?” she asks as they meander back to the car, away from the rest of the flock.

“I don’t know. It’s weird.”

Pepper stays quiet.

“I feel like an asshole. The last time I called him, he mentioned being ill and I just yelled at him, I could have listened...”

“That’s not fair,” Pepper says firmly. “That’s bullshit. He had ample opportunity to tell you, to tell you what was going on, a million different ways to go about it. He didn’t.”

Yeah. He didn’t. He only vaguely mentioned something when it was Peter who called him, when his dad probably finally remembered he even existed. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to be mad at him. How can you be mad at someone who was really sick and then died?”

“I’m mad at him,” Pepper says. “He treated you unfairly. The one person who should have made sure you felt supported and protected.”

Pepper being mad feels a bit like permission for Peter to be mad, too. “Okay,” he says. “It’s… Yeah. Okay.”

“Sometimes you can have a whole lot of feelings all at once, right?”

Maybe. Peter hasn’t ever thought much about feelings.

Pepper hooks her arm around his and they move crunchily down the gravel path towards the car park. “Anything else on your mind?”

“What if I accidentally kill Bucky’s plant?”

“We’ll just buy a new one, like people do when the rabbit they’re babysitting gets run over.”

“Stop,” Peter says, his voice wobbling into a laugh. He hasn’t laughed in a while, he thinks. It feels inappropriate to do it at the funeral for the first time.

Tony is behind the wheel, elbow propped up against the window, reading a book. The car’s blower fan is still humming and it’s comfortably warm when they get in.

“How was it?” Tony asks.

“Pepper said ‘bullshit’,” Peter says, leaning back against the seat with a yawn.

“Out of earshot,” Pepper says.

“But still on church grounds.”

Tony snorts and starts the car.

-

Peter’s smiles are hard-won, soft and tired, but Tony wants to do what he can to bring them out.

Peter smiles when he sees Tony’s drawing of a new Spider-suit. They’re on the couch, watching Fargo. Peter dozed off a while back, curled up against Tony’s side, breathing soft and even. Tony was doing something, something, solar power, yada yada, his notebook balancing on his knee. He got bored and started sketching lots of Spider-Men, lots of different gloves, and goggles, and insoles, and webshooter combinations, with crisscrossing leader lines to the quickly growing list of ideas and annotations.

He doesn’t notice Peter has woken up again until the kid shifts against him and asks: “Can I have a spider, a picture of a spider?” And he taps his finger against the sketch of his suit. “Like, right here on my chest?”

Tony hums and scribbles something with eight legs, close enough. “What else do you need? Hit me with your wish list.”

“Not much,” Peter says. “Just… to stay a little warm in winter.”

“Okay,” Tony says, “I got you, kiddo, I got you.”

-

Peter smiles when Bucky sends him a message from DC. “Look,” he says, showing Tony a blurry picture of a random, small brown-black lizard sunbaking on a stone fence post.

It’s still a bit of a mystery to Tony, how exactly his kid came to trust this former HYDRA operative so much. In a way, it makes sense. But it is also a mystery.

“I’m gonna send him back a picture of Dorothy,” Peter says, and jumps up.

-

Peter smiles as they sort through Tony’s mug collection. They’re keeping Peter home from school for one more day, this time at his own request, which Tony thought was a good sign; Peter saying what he needs. So he asked what Peter wanted to do, and now here they are, sorting through all his binder clips, bolts, tacks, rivets, nails, drywall anchors, eyelets, drill bits, tacks and screws. Peter lifts one mug. “Where did you get this one?” It says World’s Greatest Dad.

“Don’t remember. Probably just nabbed it from another floor.”

Peter turns the mug back towards himself and runs his thumb across the letters.

-

It’s strange how much everything is… the same… when Peter gets to school the next Monday. There is still a shoe hanging from the tree out front. The window in the stairwell is still cracked in the corner. Students are still talking about the ice bucket challenge. When he opens his locker, the bag of lollipops is still there.

It’s just two days of school this week, before their extended Thanksgiving weekend. It’s manageable.

He takes out one lollipop. Watermelon.

He has a double period of biology first, but after, he finds Mr. Harrisson in his classroom, sloppily cleaning the whiteboard, leaving stripes all over. “Hello, sir.”

“Peter!” Mr. Harrisson drops his dry eraser, leans down to snatch it up and puts it on the table.

Peter steps forward, holding out the Watermelon lollipop.

Mr. Harrisson takes it with a pinched smile. “It’s good to see you, Peter. I was very shocked to hear about your— About everything.”

“Yeah,” Peter says. He fidgets. “I’m, uh, I moved in with a new family.” He isn’t sure, actually, if the teachers know who he lives with now.

“I am sorry for your loss.”

“Yeah,” Peter says again. This is awkward. He likes Mr. Harrisson, but it’s still awkward. He still feels like he failed, somehow. “Thanks. I mean, he wasn’t ever very nice to me, but…” he shrugs.

“I’m sorry,” Mr. Harrisson says again. “I wish I’d paid more attention.”

“You did.”

There is a silence. Mr. Harrisson fiddles with the lollipop. Sighs softly. “Listen. The decathlon team is—”

“No,” Peter says quickly. “Uh, that’s okay. I think I do need an out. I’ll try again—after Christmas break or something. Maybe.”

“Are you settling in well with your new family?” Mr. Harrisson asks. “Do they have more children?”

Peter wraps his arms around himself. “Um. Not—Not yet.”

-

“What’s this?” Tony asks, sinking into the couch and pulling Peter’s history book into his lap to have a closer look at the picture. “We never got to talk about dogs in our history lesson, back in the day.”

“Cold war.”

“Cold war dogs?”

“Yeah, like space dogs.” Peter doodles a bit on his notepad and stretches his legs out so he can stick his toes under Tony’s leg. “Star Wars dogs.”

“I really don’t follow.”

“Tony,” Peter starts, tilting his head so he can rest his cheek against the backrest.

Tony looks up at him for a while and then raises an eyebrow. “…Yes, kid?”

Peter doodles a while longer, lips pressed together, looping around and around the timeline he was supposed to make. “You thought Princess Leia was cute, right?”

“You already asked me that.”

“And you have that, uh, the mug thing, you like the mug?”

“I don’t— The one with the cows?”

Peter hesitates a moment longer, and then the words stumble out. “You and Pepper wanted to have a baby, right?”

“Oh,” Tony says, sounding surprised. Surprised like he hadn’t even been thinking about that in ages. “Yeah, sure. I mean, I don’t know, now. You find it a scary idea? Because we do too, I promise you.”

“Okay. Right, right,” Peter says and he shrugs, sullen.

Tony waits.

“No. It’s not scary,” Peter eventually says, words clipped off.

“We don’t even know if we’re going to do it now. You know. Considering.”

Peter stares down at his notebook, the lines of ink blurring together. “You know, if you… If I end up messing up all your life plans with my, uh, being around, hanging around, I would feel bad about that. If you had a picture in your head and now I’m photobombing your picture, that’s really, really, really not what I want, because I’m worried that you’re, you’re going to hold it against me—”

“Pete.”

“—hold it against me later, if I’m the reason you call the whole thing off—"

Tony leans in, reaching out. “Peter, look at me.” He firmly squishes Peter’s face between his hands. “Look at me, look at me, look at me.”

Peter huffs. “I can’t not look at you Tony, you’ve practically got me in a headlock.”

“The baby will either come or it won’t. What do I know, life throws you curveballs. Anything can happen that pushes the decision one way or another. We want to take care of you and we love you. Only good things can come from that, I can’t predict what they all are, but they will only be good things.”

Peter hums and then tips forward against Tony’s chest. Tony catches him, pulls him closer. “You silly goose,” he murmurs, rocking him. “You silly little thumbtack.”

Life is getting better.

-

Thanksgiving at the Starks.

Open bottles of oil. Garlic cloves. Piles of chopped vegetables on chopping boards. Oven mitts. Spoons with batter on them. Measuring cups.

Pepper is in mid-battle, deep in the trenches, flour on one cheek, stacking her third layer of cake on top of the other two.

“You know it’s just going to be the three of us, right?” Tony points out.

“But one of us has super-human appetite.”

There are soft footsteps down the hall and Peter pads into the room, holding Dorothy Gale in his hands. “Bucky is downstairs. Can he come up?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure. FRIDAY?”

“I have cleared Mr. Barnes and will direct him towards the elevator.”

Peter hugs the plant a little tighter, bites his bottom lip. “Do you think she looks good? There’s a brown spot over there, I’m not sure if she already had that.” He gently rubs one leaf between his fingers.

“I’m pretty sure you’re fine, kid. I don’t think anyone has ever looked after a plant better. Ever.”

Bucky Barnes looks … still looks normal. Scuffed sneakers, coat, thin gloves. He had been working at an ice rink, Steve mentioned. Every day, cleaning up paper cups from between the bleachers. It sounds— If Tony ever manages to get an early retirement from this whole life, he wouldn’t mind a job like that. Meditative.

Peter has handed over the plant. Bucky analyzes it for a while and then analyzes Peter’s face as Peter fidgets. “Looking good,” Bucky says and Peter’s face lights up.

“Yeah,” he says. “I actually did give her a little water yesterday. Not a whole meal, just a snack.”

“Right,” Bucky says. He isn’t looking at the plant.

“Did you … get, like, a mission?”

“Not yet,” Bucky says. “Working things out.” His eyes scan the kitchen. “Would you give me a moment with— Mr. Stark?” he says.

“Uh…” Peter gives Tony a bit of a suspicious look, like he thinks Tony will wait for Bucky to look away and then yank a bag over his head. Despite all of Tony’s best efforts to always pretend that Bucky is a perfectly welcome presence. He’s not as good at hiding his emotions as Peter is, clearly.

“Come on.” Pepper wipes her hands together and opens the fridge, carefully sliding her three-tiered lime creation onto the glass shelf. She steps around the kitchen island and lays her hands on Peter’s shoulders. She looks at Tony. “Turn off the oven when the timer goes off.”

She guides Peter from the room, down the hallway.

Just the two of them, then.

When this man’s face was floating on a hologram above Tony’s desk, he was James Buchanan Barnes; cold, hard eyes full of grim determination. Tony preferred not to look straight at him.

But Bucky, standing in front of him, just looks like some guy, some ordinary guy, and though Tony can’t deny having conflicted feelings, it’s still somehow easier to be in the same room with him than it was to see him on a screen.

Tony exhales, checks Pepper’s timer, caps the bottle of olive oil, sets it to one side. “I made you an arm, you know.”

Bucky says nothing.

Tony turns to him. Bucky’s expression is flat and neutral. That’s probably a ‘no’ on the arm, then.

“Stevie told me about your parents,” Bucky says. “That is. I already knew, but he told me that you knew, too. So now you know that I know and I know that you know.”

Tony leans back against the kitchen counter. “There’s a lot of that going around recently.”

“What?”

“Secrets, coming out.”

Bucky gives him a long look, then a sharp nod. “I’m sorry,” he says, and Tony is about to say, ‘it wasn’t you, not really’, when Bucky adds: “About the kid, not seeing it sooner.”

“A lot of that going around, too.”

 “He seemed… happy.”

“Yeah. Yep.”

Bucky takes a step forward to set the plant down on the table. He looks down at it for a moment, then back up at Tony. “I don’t think his father was very good to him, probably.”

“Doesn’t make it easy that he is dead.”

Bucky cocks his head. His gaze is annoyingly intent. “No. Dead is never easy. Your father—”

“Don’t,” Tony says. “Let’s just. Not.”

“Your mother, then,” Bucky says.

Tony says nothing. He doesn’t want to be that person, that person who shoves all his feelings deep down until the water is flooding the bridge, not now that he is supposed to be a dad to a teenager who insists on hiding his own emotions.

“I’m sorry about your mother.”

Tony gives a single nod. “Yeah. Okay. Acknowledged. Water under the bridge, bridge has been crossed. Now let’s … not bring it up again.”

“Let’s … what?”

“For my peace of mind.”

Bucky looks at him for a while.

“Presuming that other version of you isn’t coming back, Dr. Hyde.” Tony hasn’t delved into the specifics of it, he’s leaving all that to Steve and Steve said he knew the facts, and that it wasn’t an issue anymore, which is good enough for Tony. Because Steve’s a hairsplitter and a stickler, but he’s also honest and dutiful as fuck, annoyingly trustworthy.

“If you’ll have me, yes.”

Tony frowns. “What do you mean?”

Another long, silent gaze. And then: “Peter mentioned something about an arm.”

This entire conversation is putting him off-kilter, he isn’t sure what it is. “Yeah, the arm. You’re in dire need of an upgrade.” He wouldn’t know, particularly, because Bucky has yet to even take his gloves off in Tony’s presence. But whatever that arm looks like, it wasn’t made by Tony, which means it can be improved upon.

“I’m not sure that it would be a good idea,” Bucky says slowly.

“Yeah, sure. It’s just an arm. Why bother getting one that actually works.”

“I appreciate that a lot of hard work went into it.”

“Right,” Tony says, rubbing his wrist. “Would be really fucking rude if you didn’t at least take a little test flight.”

“Did you just say the f-word?”

“I’d need all kinds of measurements first, anyways. And medical advice, I’m no expert on health concerns around prosthetics, possible areas of discomfort, risks, don’t want to go all out on a limb, pun intended. It’s just a prototype right now, not the real McCoy.”

A strange expression of wry amusement spreads across Bucky’s face. He takes a few breaths like he is not sure how to say what he wants to say, and then ends up with: “You use a lot of strange words. And you talk fast.”

O…kay. “Great feedback.”

“And I’m deaf.”

“You’re… huh?”

“Really quite deaf.”

Tony looks at him. “Huh,” he says.

“Yeah.”

His brain veers in a different direction without slowing down. “Do you use hearing aids? Have you visited an audiologist? Should we look at implants, neosensory watches?”

“Are you suggesting fixes?”

Tony closes his mouth, nods.

“Don’t rush it,” Bucky says gently.

“But,” Tony starts, and then stops himself. He clenches his hand around his wrist and nods again, giving a wry smile. “Yes. Okay.”

The timer goes off and Tony turns away, switches off the oven, leaves the door wide open and the potatoes on the rack to cool down.

“I would like a look at the arm,” Bucky says. “If you don’t mind.”

-

Thanksgiving is quiet and cozy, the three of them together at the table, having very, very good food. Which makes it not that different from any other day this week. “I am very thankful to be here together,” Pepper says, quite formally.

“Samesies,” Tony says with a lazy grin.

Peter doesn’t know what to say, where to even begin, so he nods, throat tight.

The weather is stormy, thunder grumbling in the distance, slate grey skies and rain scattering against the window. There are three different kinds of potato, and vegetables Peter had never heard of before, and they let him try a sip of wine. It’s gross. “Is the dessert key lime pie?”

“Hm-hm,” Pepper says. “With the crust. The good crust.”

All crust is good crust.

-

“How do you feel?” Tony murmurs when they are on the couch that evening. Peter started reading a book about zombies and ended up curled up against Tony’s side, somehow. He only notices it now, now that his focus shifts from the story to Tony’s voice.

Everything feels quieter, the sun has set and the windows offer a panoramic view of the city lights twinkling and winking in the rain.

It all feels so familiar, like something slotting into place, like the pieces of a puzzle weren’t properly lined up his whole life and then someone shook everything up, everything went flying, tumbling, but somehow landed just right. He closes his eyes. “Every time I stepped into the elevator I felt like I was coming to the, the one place in the world where I wouldn’t have to—where everything was all right. Just quiet and easy. It was so special. I was only gunning for the intern thing because I figured it’d help get the full scholarship that I needed. But you and Pepper were so nice from the beginning and you didn’t even need to be.”

Tony says nothing, he is listening.

“Just letting me be here like I belonged,” Peter continues, voice getting ragged, “like I didn’t even need to do anything special to get you to notice I existed. And my dad being gone for longer and longer stretches of time, I didn’t mind because he was an asshole, so it felt like a whole step up to just be, just be alone, flying solo. But when I was here I didn’t have to. I could just hang around, and it wasn’t even that you were just tolerating me, it felt like you were actually happy to have me.”

“We were,” Tony says softly. “We are.”

“It just always meant a lot. I wanted to say that.” He opens his eyes and looks at the dark windows, the distant lights blurred and scattered by rain, at the profile of their own reflection, huddled together in one single silhouette.

Tony hums and says, “love you, kiddo.”

They will probably watch a movie later, or maybe play a game, ‘who am I’ or something. And Peter will tell them that he likes popcorn, actually, and then Pepper will immediately go and make some, stovetop popcorn with homemade caramel. And the night will be over at some point, but it’s okay because then there is tomorrow and the next day and the next.

“Hey,” he says, turning his head to look up at Tony. “Did you hear the joke about the roof?”

He watches as Tony’s face lights up in gradual stages: surprise, amusement, affection, pride.

Tony leans in and presses a kiss to Peter’s forehead. “No. Tell me.”