Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Peter never made any plans to run away, until the day he leaves. It isn’t an idea that slowly creeps up on him. He just stands over the sink one day in early spring, watching his father’s bright red ashtray bob up through the soap bubbles, and feels an overwhelming urge to get the hell out of this place.

No one is gonna swoop in and rescue him, knight in shining armor, like Han Solo in A New Hope. So he needs to save himself.

He finishes the dishes first, places everything neatly back in the drawers and cupboards, hangs the tea towel over the oven door and wipes down the kitchen counter. Mom and dad raised him well, you might say, except they didn’t.

He still doesn’t make plans as he packs his bag. He just sort of grabs whatever he sees, pulls the bedsheets straight, wonders why a duffel bag is called a ‘duffel’ bag. His Spider-Man suit is the only thing he specifically goes digging around in his wardrobe for. He rolls it up tight and stuffs it in a corner of the bag, between his water bottle and his pencil case.

He writes his parents a succinct note, informing them that he watered the plants before he left, so they won’t have to worry about that for another week at least.

He leaves his house key.

He still doesn’t make plans as he gets on the bus. He doesn’t stop to check the line number, or the final destination. He picks a seat in the back. An unfamiliar sense of relief fills him when the doors shut with a hydraulic hiss and the bus jolts into motion. He is finally going somewhere. It feels like escaping the gravitational pull of a black hole.

The bus huffs and puffs as it turns corners, shrieks when it stops at a red light, groans when it pulls up at green. He leans his chin on his elbow as he watches the honking traffic of afternoon rush hour, the alleys with fire escapes, the endless strips of low rent storefronts. It feels comforting that he has no clue where he is at all.

Unplanned. Just like he was.

He stays in that seat for what feels like hours, until a couple starts a whispered argument in the seats behind him. That’s a thing that always grates down his spine, people arguing, so he gets up at the next stop. The bus spits him out on a fairly busy junction. Next to him is a corner store with pictures of fruit glued against the window, and across the street a movie theater with one of those large, boxy overhangs.

“Tourists,” a passerby grumbles as she sidesteps him.

Peter blinks and then guiltily swerves out of the way, finding a spot against the metal gate at the mouth of an alleyway. He hates feeling like he is in someone’s way. He lets the duffel bag slide off his shoulder and flop to the ground. He gives it a little kick.

He knows there’s still a lighter for his father in a side pocket. And lip balm for his mother in another, peach flavor. Backups he always carries around, because his parents get cranky when they run out. And when they get cranky, they get dangerous.

He closes his eyes and sees that red ashtray floating in the sink again. His mother threw it at his father’s head once. There was a lot of blood.

Now what, he doesn’t think, because if he starts thinking, everything will slide out of place, he can feel it. There’s a little cog that is turning in the back of his brain, trying to set a whole thing into motion, about dinner tonight and his biology test tomorrow and future plans for the entire remainder of his life and the slew of consequences of his decision and—

He pulls down the mental shutters, he doesn’t know where to begin thinking about any of it, so here’s the trick: he doesn’t. What he needs to think about is… literally anything else.

He picks up his bag and crosses the street towards the movie theater. He buys an iced tea, an oatmeal cookie, and a movie ticket for The Edge Of Seventeen.

-

He likes movies. When people around him are arguing, he plugs in his earbuds, goes to HBO+ and finds something. Preferably nothing heavy or dramatic, just a comedy or kids’ movie. And if he isn’t anywhere with access to a screen, he’ll play it inside his mind. He’s gotten very good at picturing entire movies from start to finish, as vividly as possible, opening crawl to closing credits. He can recite every line from Brave. ‘A princess does not chortle, doesn’t stuff her gob, rises early, is compassionate, patient, cautious, clean, and above all, a princess strives for perfection.’

In the movie of his own life, he has always felt like a bit of a side character. If his life were the movie Brave, Peter would be one of those bagpipe players in the background.

-

It’s dark when he steps back outside. It’s that time of year when the temperature drops like a sack of bricks as soon as the sun is gone. He shifts the strap of the duffel bag against his shoulder and inhales deeply. Crisp evening air. And exhaust fumes. Always a winner combo.

He takes his phone off airplane mode and sees that his battery is running low. He forgot to bring the charger. It’s still twisted around the legs of his nightstand.

I ran away from home, he thinks, and something starts rattling inside him. He swallows and turns, not even sure what he is looking for. Near the corner of the building, he spots a narrow space between two large pilasters and realizes that he is mainly looking for a hiding spot to privately lose his mind. He ducks into the shadows, leaning back against the brickwork. He ran away from home and he has no plan. He should, he can’t, he must, he must stay he must go he must go home he has to escape he can’t just he has nothing. He lowers himself to the ground and presses his face against his knees, his brain buzzing.

He hopes no one sees him.

He hopes someone sees him.

“I’m not insane,” he tells his feet, sternly, as if they have been spreading rumors about him. “I’m simply taking charge of my, uh, situation.”

And talking to myself, loudly, in the middle of the street.

“Shush,” he says. He turns his head, facing the brick wall and laying his cheek against his knees. He can already see his breath frost on his exhale. The ground is cold, which means his butt is cold. His butt is going to get hypothermia if he carries on like this.

He didn’t run away. No. He moved out. That sounds better. He moved out, and it was long overdue. That’s what he wrote on the note. Moving out today. Will not be back for my stuff. Watered the plants. Feel free to cancel HBO+ . His father probably found the note first and showed it to his mother, who wrinkled up her nose and said ‘who’s that from?’,

He has some money; if he spends it on a hotel he’ll be flat broke in weeks. But if he is taking charge of his situation, he for sure should be able to come up with something better than sleeping on a park bench and probably waking up without his bag and shoes.

“Are you quite all right?” someone asks, and Peter turns his head to see a woman with a flappy purple coat frown at him. He thinks he recognizes that big pile of blond curls on her head; she was in line in front of him when he bought the movie ticket.

“That movie just blew my mind,” he says.

She snorts and turns to leave, shaking her head.

Okay. Lining up the facts: the nights are cold, the days are pleasant. Keep himself busy patrolling all night. Then, come morning, find a nice sunny patch under a tree in the park or something—and boom, nap time. That’s pretty good, that works. Not exactly a long-term plan, but a plan.

-

He buys a salad and a can of red bull from the corner store, and wanders around for a while until most curtains have been drawn, televisions are off, dog owners have done a final quick stroll around the block. The real quiet of the night begins.

Everything is going to work out. He is taking charge.

He climbs up a drainpipe to the roof of the movie theater, going slow. If someone spots him, he doesn’t want them to think he’s enhanced. He wants them to think he’s—well, they’ll think he’s a burglar, most likely, but he wants them to think he’s just a parkour enthusiast, or perhaps a very workaholic roof shingler.

He changes behind an AC unit and then steps up to the edge of the rooftop. He closes his eyes a moment, cataloguing every little noise, the specific soundscape of this streetcorner. The humming, rumbling, dripping and clattering.

When he opens his eyes again, his mind feels clear. He made the right decision. And now he has a job to do.

He fires a web and jumps.

Everything is as it should be. He doesn’t fall. He never falls. He takes more risks than usual, swings higher, faster, he tempts fate. He saves a late-night biker from getting smushed by a delivery truck, puts out a bin fire and breaks up a fight on the doorstep of a pub.

A digital clock on a sign by the gas station blinks 3:14 at him, he’s fine, he’s doing good. He made the right decision. Do more, do more, find something to do, something useful. He hears no sirens, no shouting anywhere in the vicinity, so he drops down to the sidewalk and starts to pick up litter, jogging up and down the street, chasing after plastic bags that got caught in the wind.

He catches one, turns and almost slams into something. Someone. Peter jerks back just in time and looks up, his breath leaving him in a gust. Right in front of him, hovering two feet above the ground, is Iron Man. The red and gold metal gleams under the street lights. There is something menacing about that closed helmet. Peter takes a cautious step back and clutches his collection of empty plastic bags to his chest. “Hello. Sir.”

“What am I looking at, Olympic garbage triathlon?”

Peter likes Iron Man. OG superhero, has been looking out for the little guy since Peter was about nine. Cool tech. Solid secret identity. Always seems to know everything bad that’s gonna happen before it even happens. All things Peter aspires to.

But Iron Man is also famously rather sardonic and antisocial. And defensive of his territory.

“Uh. I guess I’m—Is this Manhattan?”

“Is this Manhattan.” Iron Man echoes flatly.

“I didn’t mean to intrude on your turf or anything.”

Iron Man stays silent, but there’s definitely something disapproving about the way he hovers.

“I’m Spider-Man,” Peter offers.

”I’ve heard.”

Oh. That’s... That’s pretty cool, at least. “I’ve… heard of you too.”

“Don’t you usually stick to Queens? And reasonable office hours?”

Maybe Peter tripped his alarm system by running around these streets. He always imagined Iron Man living in a network of underground tunnels; his control room in a repurposed abandoned subway station. He sleeps surrounded by an endless wall of screens showing CCTV feeds. And then he probably moonlights as some freelance IT professional or something, designing websites from home. Flexible hours. Ready to fly out any time he is needed.

He nods, even though he’s forgotten what exactly the question was. “Sorry, sir. Did I wake you?”

Iron Man takes another beat before he says: “Seriously, kid, are you good? Aren’t you supposed to be at home, in bed?” His voice sounds a whole lot softer, suddenly, and that is Peter’s undoing. His home, his bed, his mom his dad his chest feels like it’s imploding, crushing in on itself, he tries to draw a breath but he can’t, that black hole is tearing at him.

“Spider-Kid?”

Peter drops the armful of plastic bags to the ground, turns and bolts. He shoots a web and almost dislocates his arm with how hard he yanks himself up and forward at a sharp angle. He can hear a clink of metal, Iron Man following him, but he doesn’t look back, he runs, jumps, swings, hurtles, launches himself across electrical wires, Iron Man is fast but can’t make sharp corners so Peter swivels, darts left then right, bullet dives through narrow spaces between buildings, and he manages to shake him off.

He tucks himself away underneath a balcony for at least another hour, until long after the sound of jet propulsors have disappeared from the air, until the sky grows pale with morning light and his body numb with cold. He wishes he could say time passes in a haze, but he feels every second.

God. Hiding from Iron Man like a common criminal. That was a bad move. He could have stood his ground, even suggest teaming up. Shit, why didn’t he suggest teaming up? Perhaps there would have been room in that subway station for a spare bedroom.

Too late now. He ran, which means Iron Man thinks he has a reason to run. And there aren’t a whole lot of good reasons why someone would run away from Iron Man.

His muscles scream in protest when he finally moves. He peers past the balcony, up at the sky. He gingerly climbs up to the flat rooftop and does a few experimental lunges, rolls his shoulders. His eyes feel heavy, his whole head feels heavy. He should have bought more Red Bull.

No. Everything is fine.

The sounds guide him back to the junction that is slowly becoming ‘his’ junction. He changes into his clothes, then sidles down the drainpipe to street level. There are signs near the entrance doors of the movie theater: an early morning screening of Bridget Jones’ Baby at 10 AM. Awesome.

The streets are still mostly empty; a few heavy trucks jostle down the roads, belching enough fumes into the air to cost him five years of his life. It’s got to be around 6 AM by now. Lights are flicking on here and there but it will be a few more hours before anything is actually open and the temperature drags itself out of “mild Arctic death” and into “maybe survivable”, and Peter just wants to sit somewhere and be warm and have a hot drink and a nap, he just wants to sit down so badly he suddenly feels like crying.

How do homeless people do this shit every day?

He isn’t going home, though. He isn’t.

He circles the block, and again, and again. Still, nothing is open. He counts his steps, and then all the stones, and then the stones with cracks, and then the parked cars. Nothing is open. He is so cold and so tired and so hungry and so bored he thinks he might go crazy. He counts the lamp post and has to start over three times because he keeps losing count.

When he has circled the block again, a lady in a green apron is rattling at the roll-up gate of the corner store. Peter halts a few paces away from her and waits with bated breath. She pulls the gate up and goes inside, but shuts the door behind her. Peter lingers, he lingers until he feels like he might burst. He plasters himself against the windows, cupping his hands around his eyes to see inside.

Finally, the lights come on. The woman appears from behind a row of shelves, pricing tag gun in hand. She swings the sign from CLOSED to OPEN. She unlatches the door and opens it. “In a hurry?” she asks, brightly.

“Yeah.” His voice almost hitches on the single syllable. It’s pathetic how close to tears he feels. He can’t possibly be unravelling this quickly. He hasn’t even been gone from home 24 hours.

He buys pre-made egg salad sandwiches, bananas and a bag of crisps. He sits on the edge of the sidewalk and wolfs it all down, then goes back inside to buy granola bars and chocolate pudding. He eats that, too.

He feels a little more sane after that.

There is a playground around the corner; he passed by it about twelve times by now. He finds his way back there and makes a beeline for the bench in the corner, encircled by discarded cigarette buts, where he can soak up the early morning sunrays.

He sits, closes his eyes and breathes.

He imagines his life as an adult. A life where everything he has is actually his, a life made up of his own choices, reading the morning newspaper, drinking coffee, perhaps a cat circling around his legs.

It has always made him feel hopeful; the knowledge that his adulthood will come eventually, no matter what: time is on his side. That none of this is his real life. His real life has yet to begin. He wants to be someone, he wants to matter, he wants to count, he wants to speak a language, invent a cure, build a rocket.

He opens his eyes and sweeps a few cigarette butts together with his shoe.

His father always smokes inside, even though his mother doesn’t like it. Or, no. His father always smokes inside, because his mother doesn’t like it. Both his parents take an almost perverted pleasure in riling each other up as much as possible. And then she flung the ashtray at his head and he needed stitches. After that, Peter started hiding the evidence in hopes of preventing another boil-over. He’d open the windows, spray air freshener, wash the ashtray before his mother got home.

The trick was, he learned, to make himself useful enough to be tolerated, and if he couldn’t manage that, to make himself invisible.

He kneels down to pick the cigarette butts out of the dirt. He throws them in the bin and wipes the sand off his knees.

His phone has died, so he asks a few passersby for the time and saunters back towards the movie theater around a half past nine. He buys a ticket for Bridget Jones’ baby and finds a seat in the far back. There’s hardly anyone else in the theater.  

He is asleep before Colin Firth even appears on the screen.

-

Rhodey has the audacity to walk into his workshop with one white-chocolate donut.

“Give me that,” Tony says, turning in his chair.

“I just bought this.” Rhodey is wearing a grey cardigan with a zip down the front. The fluffy stay-at-home dad clothes usually don’t come out until he’s into his second month of inter-deployment.

“For me, yeah, thanks.” Tony snaps his fingers and the doors slide shut behind Rhodey, the metal shutters rolling down again. He has about a dozen failsafes to ensure people don’t just walk into his workshop when he’s working on Iron Man tech, but he still prefers an overabundance of caution. Ten layers of security between himself and the rest of the world at all times. Iron Man is a secret he is planning to take to his grave. Rhodey is the only one who ever gets to peek past the curtains.

“You said you were off sugar,” Rhodey says.

“That doesn’t sound like me at all.”

Rhodey chuckles and carefully tears the donut apart, offering Tony half.

“Oh very well, I’ll share. Tony Stark, philanthropist.”

“Long night, huh?” Rhodey’s gaze sweeps across the Mark 46, splayed out on the table in front of Tony.

“Spidey turned up in Manhattan.”

“That’s new.”

“He managed to do a disappearing act on me. I need to figure out how to make this damn thing more agile.” He shoves the half donut into his mouth in one go and leans back, chewing slowly.

“But it’s, uh,” Rhodey pulls up a second chair. “Spider-Man is one of the good guys, right?”

Tony’s mouth is full so he just shrugs, then nods.

“What’s that?” Rhodey asks, imitating the gestures. “Yes, no, don’t know?”

Tony glares half-heartedly and swallows. “He’s fine. I was just uh, he flew a long way from the nest and it was around 5 AM, I was just uh…”

“Worried,” Rhodey supplies, cracking a smile. Rhodey always looks very happy whenever he is reminded that Tony has emotions.

“It’s a public secret that Spider-Man is barely out of his diapers.”

Rhodey hums. He tucks into his own half of the donut and doesn’t say anything for a while. Rhodey has always been on the Spider-Man appreciation squad, from the first viral video. He never seemed to share Tony’s concern that there should be a legal minimum superhero-ing age. Apparently, it’s up to Tony to be the sensible out of the two of them, which is supremely frightening, because Tony is a fuckwit on his best days. There’s a reason he’s still flying around in the damn suit several times a week. He is continuously working on squaring his debts and righting past wrongs, with mixed success. He can’t imagine what possible reason some teenager could have to subject himself to the same grim martyrdom.

He'd like to have a talk with that kid’s parents, damnit.

“I got a call,” Rhodey says, pulling Tony back to the present. “I’m leaving for Mali in two weeks.” He wipes his hands together.

“Getting shot at or building roads?”

“Humanitarian efforts, but the peace agreement is very new, rebel groups are fragmented, making it hard to negotiate the specifics.”

Tony nods.

“Eight months,” Rhodey says. He is watching Tony closely for some reason.

“Okay. Try not to take a bullet. And if you must, not around my birthday.” It’ll be the third year in a row that Rhodey is deployed during his birthday. Not that Tony ever celebrated it much. Last year, he spent the day assisting in putting out a Wildfire in New Jersey state park. That is to say, Iron Man assisted in putting out a wildfire. As far as everyone else knows, Tony Stark celebrated his birthday getting drunk on a yacht. Which reminds him… “I’ve had another Cronkite on my tail.” It’s his recurring nickname for the occasional journalist, blogger or vlogger who comes knocking at his door, telling him, ‘hey, weird question, are you Iron Man?’

“Do we need an Operation Decoy Alpha before I leave?” Rhodey sometimes takes the suit for a quick spin around Manhattan, when Tony is abroad or at some public event. A very solid way to ensure his identity remains a secret.

“Nah. She’s one of those tinfoil hat ones, no-one will take her seriously. We’ve dealt with her before, actually. She made a video that blew up a bit a few years ago, claiming I was Spider-Man, when the kid first popped up in his onesie.”

Rhodey snorts. “I remember that.”

“Sprung up again this week like a cockroach in nuclear winter. At least she’s consistent in her insanity. I’ll just write another twitter rant about how all superheroes are self-important jackasses sometime soon, and we should be set.”

Rhodey frowns. “Just let me fly the suit for a bit, five minutes and done, I don’t understand why you prefer to constantly make yourself a social pariah. The amount of hate mail you get every time you publish one of those—"

“I’d rather play the asshole and ice everyone out for the rest of my life than run the risk of anyone sniffing out I’m Iron Man. I don’t want to touch that shit, did you see the coverage on Captain Rogers last weekend?”

Rhodey shakes his head.

“Right. Paps found out he had a date and they were digging the trenches outside his restaurant ten rows deep, Jesus. Vultures on an antelope before it even died. Felt sorry enough for him that I almost flew down to airlift him out.”

“You want to go on a date?”

“I want to walk around the city without getting hunted down like a humpback whale.”

“There’s other methods to protect your identity.”

“And I employ those. I employ all of them. That’s the point. And I like being alone, haven’t you noticed?”

“I haven’t, no.”

“Hand me that penlight,” Tony says, turning away and bending down over his suit’s helmet.

-

At a mere seventeen, he became the youngest owner of a Fortune 500 company in history, and the news couldn’t get enough of it. Headlines called it “inspiring,” “unprecedented,” “a modern fairy tale.” The fact that it happened because his parents had died in a tragic accident was treated as a footnote. The campus was overrun by press. They tried to gain access to his classes, they paid his fellow students to subtly interrogate him, they pitched tents on the lawn outside his dorm. That one lasted until Rhodey rallied a few friends for a guerrilla mission, stormed the field one night with sloshing buckets, yanked up the zippers and doused everyone in icy water. Tony got letters, phone calls from people he hadn’t seen since third grade but who suddenly decided they had been best friends all along.

He shied away from the limelight as much as he could after that. Years later, when he returned from Afghanistan, fractured and humbled and more awake than ever, his greatest worry was having to face the press.

So he didn’t. He sat on the balcony with Rhodey, showed him the arc reactor, had a beer, and then locked himself in his workshop and didn’t talk to anyone else for about a year. And the first time he did step foot outside the tower, it wasn’t to get groceries, go to the dentist or visit a friend — it was because he saw on the news that a little girl had gone missing and he somehow felt compelled to get out his suit that night and scour the whole neighborhood to find her.

And then he did, which was unlike anything he had ever felt before.

-

Peter is gently shaken awake by a frail, middle-aged woman in a bright red vest. Her nametag says Daisy. “You fell asleep, sir,” she says, a bit awkwardly. She straightens and pushes her hair back off her forehead.

His eyes still feel gritty and heavy. The lights have come on, the theater is empty. There is popcorn strewn across the floor between the seats. He stretches a bit and wipes his mouth. “Sorry. Sorry, ma’am.” He curls the strap of his bag around his hand and tugs. “I can help you sweep up?” The trick is to make yourself useful.

“That’s… okay, sir. It’s my job.” And then she nods a few times, like she really agrees with herself. She’s kinda too old to be calling him ‘sir’, but it seems impolite to point that out.

He returns to the foyer and squints against the bright daylight pouring in through the windows. There is a father hugging his small, clinging child and Peter finds he needs to look away from it. He dawdles for a while near the concession stands. He isn’t hungry, exactly. He’s just tired, still very tired.

And then he spots the signs for the bathrooms.

The bathrooms, as it turns out, have actual walls; none of those flabby partition walls that look like you could poke a hole right through them with a pencil. This feels like something he could get in trouble for, and he doesn’t like getting in trouble. But he does like sleep, he likes it very much. He steps inside and locks the door behind him. He curls up on the floor, folding himself up, knees pressed up against the toilet bowl, resting his head on his bag. Probably safer than his bedroom at home. This works just fine.

He goes right back to sleep.

-

A sharp knock at the door yanks him awake. He knocks his shins painfully against the toilet. “Occupied…!?” It comes out mostly as a question.

“Are you all right?” a voice asks from the other side of the door, but rather impatiently, a female voice, and the knocking continues.

Fine. Fine, fine, fine. They probably noticed that the toilet has been occupied for— however long Peter has been here. He hopes it’s been a couple hours at least, but it feels more like ten minutes. “Just—Just a moment!” He climbs to his feet and flushes the toilet. Why not, keep up appearances.

He unlocks the door.

It’s Daisy again, shifting on her feet. “You’ve been in here a long time.”

“Yeah,” Peter says. “How long?”

Her brow furrows, half-puzzled, half-suspicious.

“Sorry. All done.” He slings his bag over his shoulder.

She doesn’t step aside. “Kid… Are you homeless?” Looks like the ‘sir’ is gone.

“Could I wash my hands?”

She steps aside.

Peter washes his hands and splashes some water into his face. Daisy is watching him in the mirror. He shakes his hands dry and takes a single paper towel to wipe them. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience,” he says. “I… didn’t make any mess.” He just wants to be homeless without causing a fuss for other people, how hard can it be?

“Is there someone I can call for you?”

“No, it’s fine. I’m taking charge of my situation.”

-

Unplanned, just like he was.

His parents have worked for Ovexa for over twenty years. Revolutionizing Birth Control, One Pill at a Time. Contraceptives are their livelihood. On some level, it’s funny that they somehow managed to get stuck with an unplanned pregnancy. On some level, Peter’s entire existence is the butt of a joke.

Haha.

-

All right. Long-term plans.

Long-term plans are tricky when you don’t really know—anything relevant, like how to get a job or find a place to sleep. And he can’t look it up because his phone is dead, so step one in this long-term plan could be to buy a charger, it could be, except he prefers his phone dead, dead as a doornail. He doesn’t want to turn it on and see the missed calls and messages from his parents. Or see no missed calls and messages at all. He isn’t sure which would be worse.

Both. They’d both be worse.

There is a woman sitting on the sidewalk, her feet tucked underneath a parked car. She is wearing several layers of mismatched clothing. She’s got one arm wrapped around one of those reusable shopping bags, bursting at the seams, contents hidden below the scruffy brown blanket on top.

Peter pauses a few feet away from her and fiddles with his sleeves, wondering how to ask what he wants to ask, hesitating, until she turns her head, dark curls sliding off her forehead, and she snaps: “What?”.

“Good afternoon, ma’am,” Peter says, standing a little straighter.

She looks perplexed at being politely addressed.

“If you don’t mind me asking. Are you homeless?”

“How’d you guess?” Her voice is bone-dry.

“Uh.”

“Six years and counting.” She has an accent that is not New York, Peter can’t quite place it. She looks shriveled and shrunken; like she used to be taller.

“I’m, uh, beginner level homeless. Two—Two days and counting.”

She scrutinizes him, eyes speculative. Peter plasters on a smile and stands very still. She sniffs, then beckons him with one finger. “Come here and warm your feet.”

Peter approaches and lowers himself to the sidewalk next to her. The air underneath the car does seem warmer. “Huh,” Peter says, and sticks one hand under the car.

“Beginner’s lesson one,” she says. “It’s warm.”

“Probably because the surface of the car absorbs rays from the sun, it traps heat and basically creates a microclimate.”

“It’s warm,” she says.

Peter takes that as lesson two and says nothing else.

“Who you running from?” she asks. “We all running from something. Parents?” And, before he can react: “Yeah, fuck ‘em. Are the cops on your heels yet? Yeah, fuck ‘em too, most of them, at least.” And then she lapses into a quite abrupt silence.

Peter rests his chin on his knees.

Part of him doesn’t want to need anyone right now. He has no friends, at least none that he’d trust not to rat him out. No family he’s on speaking terms with. Or no family full stop, really, since his uncle Ben died. There’s an aunt somewhere; he’s met her a few times and she seemed nice. But it seems unlikely that she’d help him without getting his parents involved. He shouldn’t need anyone. And yet… “Can I stick with you a bit?”

She pulls a face he can’t quite decipher.

“I have some money,” he tries. The trick is to make yourself useful.

The look she gives at that is much easier to read. “Oh, we stick together, ohyeah,” she says. She elbows him in the side, quite sharply. “I’m June.”

“Peter.”

He doesn’t need anyone. But it’s nice to be needed.

Chapter Text

They go to a corner store first.

June is specific about it. That could have been a useful padawan-moment if she were able to articulate why she wants to go to this particular store, but she doesn’t really manage to give any explanation beyond “to get us some stuff.”

Peter grabs two apples and some bread rolls, which June tolerates with a bit of a sniff. And then June pulls a six-pack of beer from the shelves and pushes it into his arms. “Oh,” Peter says, and doesn’t know what to do for a moment. But June has already marched on to check-out, so he follows.

He half-hopes the store clerk will refuse to sell her alcohol with Peter there, but the man just asks: “This is for your own consumption, ma’am?” He looks bored and not particularly interested in the answer.

This might be why June prefers this particular store.

They go outside and sit on some stone steps in the sunlight. Peter offers her an apple and they eat. June sits very still for a good while, and then suddenly gets up very decidedly and announces they are going to the park.

They somehow seem to do a whole lot and very little all at once. They move from place to place, and Peter can’t tell if it’s on a whim or there’s a plan behind it. When he asks June, she can’t explain herself either. “So why are we going to the park?” he asks for a second time when they take the zebra crossing.

“Yes, to the park,” June says. June seems to have trouble with ‘why’-questions.

Peter follows her, the plastic bag with bread and beer cans bouncing against his leg, uncertainty swirling through his chest. What is he doing?

They sit on a bench near the pond. Ducks waddle up to them and hover. June watches them sharply, with an expression like she might kick them at any moment. She doesn’t, though. She sits very still, but in a way that doesn’t seem calm at all.

“So where’d you grow up?” Peter tries.

“Oh, I didn’t like it there,” she says, and nothing else. It’s probably insensitive to ask more.

“I’m not running from the cops, by the way.” He can’t really say whether or not he is running from his parents: are you running from someone if they’re probably not looking?

She turns that same sharp look on him now, that expression like she wants to kick something. “You ran away. That means you’re running from the cops, kid. Cops don’t like kids running around without parents, makes them cranky.”

Peter lifts his chin. “I didn’t run away, I moved out.”

June tugs the plastic bag closer and pulls out a can of beer. She holds it out to him. Peter becomes suddenly very aware of a lady with red hair sitting on another bench across the pond, looking in their direction. He hunches uncomfortably. “I don’t drink.” He feels like he fucked something up, like he’s going about this whole thing all wrong, took a wrong turn. He isn’t sure if it’s actually helpful; sitting here with this woman. His responsible mature grown-up long term plan isn’t really taking shape in his head just yet.

He takes out a bread roll and hands it to her, but she just chucks the whole thing straight at the water. The ducks shoot away, after it, and June giggles as she watches them fight over the drowning lump of bread.

“Aren’t you hungry?” Peter asks.

June opens the can and sips. “Sometimes people won’t give me money. You’ll just be spending all that on drugs and alcohol, they tell me. Let me tell you, I don’t do drugs, but I don’t judge the people that do. People just trying to survive whatever way they can.”

“But food is healthy. Some—sometimes at least.”

“Look at me, do I care about being healthy? I don’t understand. I drink a can of beer, it makes my day a little better. I’m not hurting anyone. I feed the ducks. Why do people care?”

Peter doesn’t want to argue. He’s thirsty, he should have bought a bottle of water. He isn’t sure if he likes June, but isn’t sure what he is supposed to do without her. He wants to be alone, but is also afraid to be alone. His days suddenly stretch out before him like a giant question mark. Tomorrow, next week, next month… what the hell is he supposed to do. “I want to sleep.”

“Well, don’t go doing it here, that lady over there is seconds away from calling the cops anyways.”

He looks back at the woman across the pond. She has taken out a book. “She isn’t even looking at us.”

“I know her type of people.”

His eyes burn. “I want to sleep. Can you just please—show me, like, a good spot, something?”

June says nothing for a moment. She looks at Peter, then at his duffel bag, and she might be wondering if she can steal it while he sleeps. “We’ll go away from eyes.” She stands and he follows her.

The woman across the pond closes her book.

-

They pile some dead leaves together underneath an overgrown bush. From the outside it was a wall of green leathery leaves, but inside branches arch overhead like the ribs of a ceiling and there is space to sit or lie down. Peter curls up on his side where the branches hang lowest. He pulls the duffel bag close, pressing the zipper against him and curling his arm through the straps.

“I don’t want to go home,” he says.

A few feet away sits June, one arm curled around a branch. She is looking sort of in his direction but not at him. She doesn’t react.

“When do you sleep?” Peter asks.

“I don’t.”

“Well. I mean. You do.”

She shakes her head. “You’ll learn to get by without sleeping. You’ll learn.”

He gives up and turns his face into the leaves, closing his eyes. It’s—not bad. Pigeons, children cheering in the distance, and the hum of traffic. The leaves keep tickling his nose and his arm starts hurting after a while. The thing is, he wants to fall asleep but also doesn’t. He has an awful feeling that he’ll wake up to find his wallet gone, and June too. She has no other use for him.

“June?” a woman calls out, and Peter must have dozed off at least a little because he has to claw himself through a very thick haze before he can pull his eyes open.

June is still next to him, but turned away. A few bushes over, the leaves are rustling wildly. “June, you in there again, girl?”

June swears softly under her breath. She rolls over onto hands and knees and turns her head to Peter, eyes narrowing when she sees him. “That’s a cop. This one’s not so bad. Just keep your mouth shut and lie still.”

She crawls away, pushing her way through the foliage.

“There you are.”

“Goddang, I was sleeping, Cheryl.”

“Well, it’s a good day, isn’t it.”

“Sure is.”

“Who’s your friend, June?”

“Whatarya talking about.”

“We’ve had a phone call that you got a kid hanging around you.”

“I fucking wish, Haven’t seen my kids in three years.”

“Well, we’ve had a phone call about it.”

“Hows people gonna know that was me?”

“They didn’t but I did. I know you by now, girl. Is he still here, the kid?” Someone starts pulling branches aside again. Peter should roll over, slip away, draw back. It would be so easy.

A branch is tugged down and a policewoman’s face appears. “Hey. Good afternoon.” She smiles cheerfully. “What’s cracking?”

Peter rolls onto his stomach and pulls the duffel bag up higher, hiding his face behind it. “Go away. I’m sleeping.”

“My god, flashback to this morning. I got three teenagers at home.” He can hear her pushing closer to him, twigs snapping. “There’s days they don’t get up unless I pull them out by the scruff of their necks.” A finger pokes him in the shoulder. “You got some ID, kid?”

Fuck. He actually does have his ID in his wallet. He should have thrown that out, he doesn’t want her to find out who he is. If she doesn’t know, she can’t send him back.

“Can you stand up, son?”

“No.”

Her voice turns sharper. “Did you take anything? Did June give you something?”

He’s suddenly worried about getting June in trouble, the woman who maybe sort of helped him in a way; who, Peter choses to believe, tried to look out for him.

He rolls back and wipes the leaves out of his hair. “Fine. I’m coming.”

June pokes her head back through the foliage. “Are you taking him?”

“Yup,” Cheryl says.

“That plastic bag is mine,” June says, very quickly.

-

Tony often cooks dinner in his workshop. He got a two-burner and mini-fridge; plugged them into the same power strip as his solder reflow oven. Rhodey once thought that it was a microwave and tried to reheat his coffee in there.

He leans against the counter and watches the broccoli enthusiastically bob around in the boiling water. He never particularly cared about ritzy meals. He eats everything boiled, with very little seasoning, sprinkles on some cheese if he’s feeling adventurous.

His workshop is Code Commonplace right now; all hard drives with superhero-sensitive data hidden behind a double wall, his suits tucked snuggly away in a hatch under his desk. The metal shutters are up, the door isn’t triple locked. The place looks like a normal workshop, for a run-of-the-mill, non-superhero engineer.

That doesn’t mean he’s happy about people walking in unannounced.

“Have you read your email today?” the woman asks. He recognizes her as his new assistant. Strawberry blond hair tied back neatly, eyes blue and sharp, heels high, clothes impeccable.

His CEO, Sunny Bain, always insists on hiring the most fussy, type-A neat freaks as his PAs. He still hasn’t figured out if she’s pestering him or trying to be helpful. “And you are?” he asks, reverting to his bored façade. Tony Stark: rich, petulant, spoiled asshole who incites public outrage on a monthly basis.

“The person keeping your inbox tidy,” she says, without missing a beat. Experienced in dealing with bullshit, then.

“Where is the other one, the uh—”

“Natalie Rushman,” she provides, “quit two months ago, sir.”

“Just as well. She didn’t appreciate me enough. What’s your name?”

“Virginia Potts.”

Tony stands straighter. “Oh no, that won’t do.”

She blinks. “I—Excuse me?”

“Don’t apologize, I doubt you were consulted when the name was chosen. Worry not, I’ll come up with something better.”

“Channel that brainpower into an exit strategy for our Lombardy branch,” she says sourly.

“We’re leaving Lombardy? Neanche per sogno.” No way in hell. Milan, the city where his parents met. Tony spent every vacation there until he went off to college. “There will not be an exit anywhere in the future.”

“Ms. Bain emailed you about it. Twice.” And then she makes a pissy deal of getting him to sign some documents before leaving again.

His broccoli comes out overboiled and mushy. He mashes it with a fork and sits on his crusty leather couch to eat it, elbows leaning on his knees.

-

Cheryl slaps a protein bar down on the table in front of Peter.

“Thank you ma’am.” He’s had plenty of food today, he’s not really hungry. He just wants to sleep. And some water, maybe. It seems impolite to bring it up, though, so he slowly tears the wrapper open and takes a bite.

Cheryl doesn’t ask anything yet. She takes out a pair of steel-rimmed glasses and slides them on, then starts filling out a really long form with really small letters. They’re in an actual interrogation room, but no one seems to be in any kind of a hurry. The door is left wide open. Down the hall, people are laughing. A radio is on. Cheryl yawns.

His wallet is burning in his inside pocket. They haven’t searched him yet. They haven’t even looked through the duffel bag; it’s on a metal bench against the opposite wall.

Cheryl lifts the first page of the stapled forms by the corner, scans the page underneath, looks up at him across the rim of her glasses. “What’s your name, kid?”

Peter takes another bite and chews very slowly.

“You don’t look like you’ve been on the streets very long.”

“I’m not on the streets. I was just napping.”

She gives him a look. “Where were you napping?”

He stops chewing, blearily narrows his eyes at her. “I see you point,” he concedes.

“Hm-hm. What’s your name?”

“Could I have some water, please?”

She drops the page back down and caps her pen. “Certainly.” She leaves the room.

Peter folds his arms on the table and lays his head down on them. He wonders which would be more stupid: punching his way out of here, or sticking around until they figure out his name.

Both. They’re both more stupid.

He breathes out and closes his eyes, conjuring up the images from the opening scene of Kung Fu Panda II, the peacocks and the fireworks.

“Mr. Parker.”

His head comes up off his arms, one elbow slipping off the table. Just inside the doorway stand two people. One is another cop; bit of a podgy guy with a bewildered expression. The other is a tall woman, dressed in black, face set in stony determination. His Spidey-sense—doesn’t flare up exactly, but there is a low buzz of caution. Not a dangerous person, but a person he shouldn’t mess with.

“Mr. Parker,” she says. “Walk with me.” In the voice of someone who is used to being instantly obeyed.

Cheryl reappears, standing on tiptoes to look over their shoulders. She is holding a bottle of water. “Excuse me…”

The podgy cop clears his throat. “Sadler. Ms. Hill is taking over the case.”

“The case,” Cheryl repeats, skeptically.

The tall woman flips open and flashes a badge in her direction without looking her way.

“Huh,” Cheryl says.

“Mr. Parker,” the woman repeats, voice lower and firmer. “Today, if you please.”

Cheryl stares after them as they leave, open-mouthed. Peter is too nervous to ask if he can take the bottle of water.

-

She carries the duffel bag for him. She leads him outside and straight into an SUV with wraparound seating in the back. It takes Peter three tries to fasten his seatbelt, his stomach feels like liquid. The woman sits opposite him, unbuttons her coat and leans back with a deep sigh. Peter catches the gleaming handle of a gun on her belt. She takes a stick of gum out of her pocket and offers it to him. Wrigley’s Doublemint.

Peter shakes his head, his hand curling around the seatbelt, his shoulders tight and bunched. People keep offering him food. He just wants a glass of water and a pillow.

She wordlessly passes the gum to their driver in the front seat and leans back, looking at him. “My name is Maria Hill. I work for SHIELD.” She pauses, a bit dramatically.

“Okay. I… don’t know what that is.”

The car pulls up and swerves into traffic, slow-paced.

“It’s a team. Of people with unique skillsets. People like you.”

“Uh,” Peter says eloquently.

“We know you’re enhanced.”

Peter sets his jaw. “Then you know I could totally take both of you.”

“I don’t think you would,” she says, her mouth twitching into an expression that could almost be called a smile. “We’ve made quite an extensive profile on you. Spider-Man is the type of person who doesn’t hurt people unless it saves a life.”

Ice cold nerves shoot down his spine.

“Calm down, Mr. Parker,” Ms. Hill says. “I think we can help each other. I have an offer for you, and if you choose not to accept, no hard feelings. We are very much on the same side, and I would like to keep it that way.”

“Yeah. No. Okay. What’s— What do you want? Ma’am?”

“Let me work my way up to it.” Ms. Hill gives him another slow once-over, burning a hole in him with the intensity of her stare. She crosses her legs, her raised foot bouncing in a steady rhythm. “I expect you realize you look like a wreck?”

He hadn’t realized but he isn’t surprised. “I’m tired. And thirsty.”

“Ah. Natasha?”

“Gimme a sec,” the driver says.

Ms. Hill turns back to Peter. “Unless I’m extremely mistaken,” she says calmly, smoothly, “you have no particular desire to return to your legal place of residence.”

“No,” Peter says. “I’m sorry.”

“Unless you are apologizing because your parents are incompetent, don’t bother.”  The phone on the seat next to her starts buzzing. She turns it off without looking at the screen. “I think we’d agree that both your previous and your present situation are unhealthy. I would offer you a job and an apartment, if it weren’t for the fact that you are sixteen.”

The car pulls up at a red light and the driver starts rummaging through the glove compartment. When she turns to hand Peter a bottle of water, Peter recognizes her as the red-haired woman who had been sitting across the pond in the park. She smiles broadly and winks at him.

Peter scowls, but it’s too late; she already turned back around.

“Drink that,” Ms. Hill directs. She lays her arm across the backrest of the empty seat next to her, looking unfairly relaxed.

Peter chugs the whole bottle in seconds. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’m not going home,” he then says.

“Then the choices are these. I can still get you a job and an apartment, provided you get emancipated immediately. Do you know what emancipation means?”

Peter nods numbly. He has researched it a few times, but it never seemed like an actual option, considering all the hoops he’d have to jump through.

“Alternatively, we contact social workers to have you placed with a good family and we part ways, no hard feelings.”

Right. No hard feelings. “But what if, uh, CPS decides to send me—”

“We will make it happen,” she says. “I guarantee it. A good family.”

“And emancipation, I’d have to fill out a whole pile of forms, get a lawyer…”

“Normally, yes. But we will make it happen. Get it settled before it ever gets to trial.”

“What is the job?”

“Agent of SHIELD.”

“Like, missions and stuff?”

“And stuff. Yes.”

Peter chews his bottom lip. “Is it dangerous?”

“It can be. Once you are ready for it. You are a viable asset. It would not be in our best interest to put you at any unnecessary risk. I have no plans of putting you in the field at all until you are well and truly off age and prepared. Until then,” she nonchalantly waves a hand towards the front seat, “Natasha would train you.”

Natasha sends him another grin in the rearview mirror. Peter takes the opportunity to scowl. Her grin turns wider and razor sharp.

“Okay.” Peter turns back to Ms.Hill. “That’s—I’d rather do that.”

She looks at him analytically, her foot still bouncing gently up and down. “We’re going to drive you to a hotel,” she says. “I want you to sleep on it. Exhaustion impedes judgment.”

“I don’t think I need to, we can just—”

“You’ll have the contract in your inbox by the time you get there. Do you have a phone or laptop?”

“Um. I have my phone, but I don’t want to turn it on.”

She nods, doesn’t question him. “I’ll provide you with a laptop and a new phone. You can keep those regardless. Read the contract and give me your decision in the morning.”

-

The hotel is a tall building with a dark brick exterior that stands out between the glass-fronted skyscrapers. A man dark sunglasses is waiting for them in the lobby with a laptop case under his arm. He hands it over to Maria Hill. “The password is on a sticker on the bottom. Phone behind the zipper.”

Ms. Hill leads him to the reception desk and checks him in. “Room service this evening,” she says. “And tomorrow morning. Check the menu in your room. I will be in the lobby at 10 AM sharp to meet you and discuss your decision. If you have any questions before then, call me.” She hands him a business card. And leaves.

-

The room looks out on the parking lot. A large bed, a couch with a curved back, a kitchenette in the corner. High ceiling, tons of natural light. Fancy but not too fancy. Outside his door, he can hear giggling children chase each other down the hallway. The clock on the opposite wall tells him it is a quarter to seven in the evening, and Peter realizes that until now he didn’t have even the faintest idea what time it was.

“Je – sus – christ,” he tells the empty room, dropping his duffel bag to the floor.  

Agent of SHIELD. Now that—that sounds mature and responsible as hell. That’s not the bagpipe player in the background, that’s Lara Croft, James Bond, Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor.

He sits cross-legged on the bed and unzips the laptop case. Behind the zipper is a phone. Both devices are devoid of any brand name. He’s totally James Bond right now. He turns the phone over in his hands a few times, then lays it aside and opens the laptop, entering the seventeen-digit password that was taped to the bottom. The only desktop shortcut is an internet browser, again one he doesn’t recognize, with a blue diamond-shaped logo.

He goes online and logs into his email.

An unread email, subject ‘Offer of Employment Contract for Your Review GX849’, sits neatly at the top of his inbox.

But he has a second unread email. From May Parker.

His throat tightens immediately — He isn’t even sure why, he barely knows her. He opens her email first and reads, fingers pressed against his lips.

Hi Peter,

Your parents called me this morning, and then the police a few hours later. They told me you left home yesterday. I really hope you are all right. I know we haven’t met often, but if you ever need help for anything, anything, just know that you can contact me any time.

-Your aunt May

He hesitates, mouse hovering over the reply button. He has no idea what he would tell her. Just a quick ‘no worries I’m not dead’ or something more? He doesn’t remember much about her, he remembers her on a sunny day, standing in the back yard, laughing, yelling for a family picture. He vaguely remembers that she likes lavender. He could give her a sign of life, but he has no idea if SHIELD informed his parents about anything. Peter might screw things up if he goes about this in the wrong order, gives out the wrong kind of information, piss SHIELD off before he even started. He really doesn’t want to screw things up.

Best not to make any waves, just yet. He can always email her later.

He clicks away and opens the email from SHIELD. It’s a succinct but cheerful message from someone named Deborah, ending on lmk if you have any questions :) . Not how he imagined a supersecret government organization would communicate. He downloads the attached contract. He reads it once, and then again more slowly. He has to rub his eyes and check the decimal to make sure if there’s not a typo because that— that’s a lot of money. More than his parents make combined, he’s sure: their income has been a frequent topic of their loudest arguments. There are clauses about his emancipation. About housing. The confidentiality and non-disclosure clauses are extensive. A lot of it is practically gibberish. His Spanish assignments are easier to read than this. But that’s kinda what all contracts are like, in his limited experience.

He picks up the third thing Maria Hill gave him before she left. Her business card. Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement Logistics Division is written in a circular shape, around the black-and-white emblem of an eagle with outstretched wings. Maria Hill. Deputy Director of SHIELD. And a phone number.

Deputy Director. That sounds—like a big shot. A huge shot, actually.

And she came for him, went out of her way. Rejected a call without even checking who it was, because she was talking to him.

These are people who actually want him around. Who are happy to— will pay to have him. This is something to hold on to. Thrown right into his lap. Easy.

He just has to put his signature under this thing, and he will actually be free.

-

The room service menu works with a QR code so Peter has to unlock the phone, too. He orders the eggplant involtini, just because it sounds fancy and grown-up.

And then he uses his company-issued supersecret laptop to illegally download a movie. His old laptop at home couldn’t even stream a single video without the computer’s fans winding up to level one hundred. He was afraid to ask his parents for a new one.

SHIELD can probably track everything he does on this thing but who cares, who cares if they know he’s watching Bridesmaids. Twice. And a half. Mouthing along with the dialogue. Until he finally feels like he has shaken off some of the madness of today.

The eggplant is delivered on a service trolley, by a woman with a perfunctory smile. “How was your day, sir?”

“Uneventful,” Peter says.

Chapter Text

Today is the first day of his real life. A balloon with its string cut, he can just shoot straight up into the sky.

He’s going to be a new person. A better one. It’s a shame he made a bit of a bumbling first impression, with his grass-stained jeans and that twig in his hair he had only discovered late last night when he hopped in the shower. But he can make up for it today.

He orders poached eggs for breakfast — fancy, mature — and a cup of black coffee. He has never had coffee before. It’s exceptionally gross. He reads the contract again, mostly to remind himself that this is real.

It’s only a little after 9 AM by then, so he takes the elevator down and jogs through pattering rain to the bodega across the street.

He has to circle the whole store three times before he finally spots the Wrigley’s Doublemint Ms. Hill had. He buys a twin box pack for $9.99.

-

Waiting in the lobby for Maria Hill to actually arrive is torture. Peter picks up a magazine with a picture of hot air balloons floating above arid, rusty brown mountains. IT list: Where to stay in 2014. He can’t manage to read more than four words at a time, his gaze constantly flicking up.

Needing to get away from the low thrum of anxiety, he starts picturing the opening scene of the movie Up! instead; the sepia images of explorer Charles Muntz, waving from the boarding ramp of his airship. Adventure is out there.

And then Ms. Hill is suddenly in front of him, folding her umbrella and asking him how he slept and whether he had breakfast. She doesn’t sit down.

“Yes, all set,” Peter assures, and then has to remind himself that she probably isn’t going to give him a mission right here and now. Probably. Probably?

She unbuttons her coat with one hand, her gaze trailing around the lobby. No gun on her belt, this time. “Follow me. We have a usual spot here.” And she starts walking without looking back. Peter scrambles to catch up, slinging his duffel bag over his shoulder.

There is an authorized personnel only door next to the bathrooms, that opens when she touches her watch to the doorknob. Very nice, very James Bond. Behind is a winding staircase going up, then an arched, wooden door. They end up in a windowless room, around the same size as Peter’s hotel room, with an oriental rug and a large round table right in the center. It smells of old carpet. She leads him to a cluster of battered armchairs in the corner and takes one, flopping down with a gust of a sigh, as if she got home after a long working day. Peter sits too, feeling unaccountably nervous.

“All right,” she starts, in the tone of a woman who has a shitload of things to do today. “Before anything else.” She takes out her phone and taps the screen twice, before turning it to Peter. “I was made aware of this recently uploaded video.”

It’s a shaky cam, grainy footage, from someone hanging out of a window at an awkward angle. They are slowly zooming in, past the window frame, towards the sidewalk across the street, where Spider-Man stands with his arms full of trash, talking to Iron Man.

“Do you know who Iron Man is?” Maria Hill asks, assessing him.

“No. Do you?”

She shakes her head.

On the footage, Spider-Man abruptly drops the trash and shoots away, Iron Man in hot pursuit. Peter looks at the sad pile of crumpled plastic bags left behind and feels bad. “Did someone clean that?”

She gives him a look. “I don’t know, Mr. Parker.” She puts the phone away. “Have you worked with Iron Man before?”

“That was the first time I saw him. I ended up in Manhattan without really meaning to.”

“What did you talk about?”

He strives for a blank, neutral expression. “He asked me if I was okay. I took off.”

She hums. “All right. Well. It was worth a try.” She eases back in her chair. “You’ve read the contract?”

Peter nods.

“Any demands?”

He doesn’t feel like he is in any position to be demanding, considering everything he is being offered. “No, ma’am.”

“Any questions?”

“No, ma’am. All good.” He smiles brightly, but when Ms. Hill raises a single, unimpressed eyebrow in response, he suddenly feels like he did something wrong.

“You have no questions,” she says. It sounds like a reprimand.

It occurs to him that perhaps the mature thing would have been to have some astute questions prepared to show he knows what he is talking about. He was shooting for committed and enthusiastic, but might just come across as naive. “Um. No.”

She crosses her legs, her foot starts bouncing again. And she gets that expression, the one that looks like almost a smile. “I would have expected some questions about Spider-Man.”

“Oh. Why?”

“You might, for example, be concerned whether you’d still be able to continue your weekend vigilante activities.”

“I can’t be Spider-Man anymore?”

“Oh, no. You can,” she says. “But you might have wondered about it.” She taps her fingers together. “SHIELD won’t dictate everything you do in your free time. However, you are an expensive asset. And a valuable one. I don’t want to see that investment brought to naught because Spider-Man gets his brains blown out in a back-alley before your first mission. You may have spotted the risk clauses that restrict our agents from engaging in physically demanding or dangerous activities in their free time, such as extreme sports. In other words, stay away from gunfights and explosives. Saving pets and arresting bike thieves is permissible.”

Peter only got himself caught up in a gunfight once. He certainly doesn’t seek them out. Friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. “Okay,” he says. “Great. Good.”  She called him a valuable asset.

She looks at him for a few more moments. “You might also, for example, be concerned about your education.”

“My…?”

“I hope you still have plans to get your high school diploma.”

“If you want me to,” Peter says.

“I do. Are you disciplined enough to get your GED through self-study?”

Peter sits up straighter. “Yes, ma’am. Definitely.”

“Let’s aim for that, then.”

He finally thinks of a question of his own. “Can I go to college, after?”

“I will see about getting you housing near campus.”

That’s a yes. “I’d prefer to stay in Queens, actually.”

She shrugs elegantly. “Very well.”

She lists a few more things that she thinks Peter should be asking questions about, all minor stuff, and then Peter accepts —again, and puts his signature on every page. It’s a dizzy happiness: life can take any direction from here. “When do I start?”

“Today,” she says. She takes out her phone and starts typing. “But one step at a time. You have the hotel room for another night. You’ll be sent a selection of apartment listings before noon, I need your decision by five PM so you can move in tomorrow. I’ll have the emancipation sorted by then, too. We’ll get you settled first, over the weekend, and you can properly start working with Natasha on Monday.”

Those are big steps to be taking one at a time, but he isn’t complaining.

She waves a hand around without looking up from her phone. “This won’t be your last time here. It’s a regular meet-up spot. A lot of our agents work with us for years without ever stepping foot inside HQ.” She puts her phone away. “Do you want to talk to your parents? Discuss things.”

“No.”

She nods slowly. “It’s not a bad thing in this line of work,” she says, her tone approving, “to keep a distance from family.”

Peter thinks about the email from his aunt May sitting in his inbox, and nods. He delves into his pocket. “Gum?” he asks, offering the Doublemint.

-

Peter was pretty useless as a baby. Just a good-for-nothing deadbeat made of baby fat, snot and diapers. And then, as he grew up, there were broken plates and scraped knees and that time he got lice. He doesn’t know why his parents kept him around. They didn’t have much love for him. Perhaps out of a sense of duty? No, unlikely, because they don’t have much of a sense of duty, either.

He got the hang of it a little bit as he got older. He wanted to matter. People didn’t always let him. “You need to be a child,” a meddlesome teacher told him once, and Peter told her to stop being ridiculous. Being a child was for children who didn’t know any better.

He did the laundry, so his parents wouldn’t argue about who should do laundry. He watered the plants, so his parents wouldn’t argue about who should water the plants. He drew the line at cooking them dinner. Most days he made himself a quick meal before his parents got home, then hid in his room for the rest of the evening as they either argued explosively or gave each other the silent treatment downstairs.

At the height of their arguments, when the divorce cards were drawn, he’d often hear his own name get thrown around: neither of his parents wanted to be the one saddled with him if they separated. Both of them wanted the kitchen table. It was wooden and heavy; from precolonial times, his parents always claimed. They sure were really fond of that kitchen table, even though it was clunky and too big for the room.

Either way, it’s a larger-than-life relief, to finally feel like he is not just in the way.

They’re probably arguing again right now, having to divvy up the chores again now that he is gone. Maybe they’re already throwing punches. Or maybe, he thinks with a sinking feeling in his stomach, they aren’t arguing at all. Maybe they only argued because he was around, and they’re happy now.

-

Deborah sends him another email with smiley faces and three apartment listings that he is to choose from. They are all furnished, one-bedroom, in Queens. He picks the one furthest away from his parents’ house. He sends Deborah his decision within ten minutes of receiving the listings. He accepts the apartment like SHIELD accepted him, sight unseen.

He deletes the email from May. And then deletes his email account.

He sets up a whole new account and passes it on to Deborah. Clean slate, cut all communication lines. He doesn’t think his parents even knew his email address, but best not take any chances.

He opens the little side pocket on his duffel bag and wriggles out the lip balm and lighter. He stands over the trashcan in the corner, turning them over in his hands. There is a gravitational pull, making it hard to actually throw these out. A black hole, pulling at him.

He sighs and turns, tucking the items back in the side pocket.

He grabs his old phone, takes out his sim card and snaps it in half between his fingers. He should do a factory reset but the phone is still dead. And even if it weren’t, he’s still a bit afraid to turn it on.

He’ll dispose of this thing later.

He sinks into the pillows when he hears a ding from his laptop. Another happy message from Deborah on his new email account: that the apartment is his, someone will drive him there tomorrow, As agreed I have opened a bank account for you (details attached) and deposited $8000 dollars for furnishing.

Peter practically chokes on his own air when he reads those words. He doesn’t remember agreeing to that and has no idea what on earth he would spend eight thousand freaking dollars on. His apartment is already furnished, and Ms. Hill said someone would pick up the rest of his belongings from his parents.

He emails her back, explaining politely that no thank you, he doesn’t need the money.

It’s barely three minutes after he hit ‘send’ that his SHIELD-issued phone lights up on the nightstand. The words Maria Hill Dep Direct flash across the screen. The laptop slides off his legs to the mattress as he hurriedly leans over to answer. “Hello?”

She doesn’t greet back; launches straight in. “’Furnished’ is relative. No bedding, towels, office supplies, the kitchen won’t be fully equipped.”

He needs a second to catch up, and then says, “Oh. Yeah.” He feels like a bit of an idiot. “Um. How should I—Can I get all that stuff delivered?”

“Right, you have no car. We’ll need to fix that.” He hears the clattering of a keyboard. “I will pick you up tomorrow and we’ll go buy all your essentials,” she then decides. It’s not a suggestion.

The deputy director, taking him shopping. “Don’t you have—uh, better things to do?”

“Tomorrow morning, twenty minutes past nine, front steps.”

“Yes ma’am.”

It’s fine. He’s not an inconvenience. He’s a valuable asset.

-

He spends a while finding every movie theater in Manhattan on google maps until he finds the exact junction where he stepped out of the bus two days ago. He scouts the area for a while, the satellite images of grey-brown cityscape, and he drags the little yellow stick figure here then there to go to street view mode.

He takes everything out of his duffel bag except his Spider-Man suit, and slings it over his shoulder. He takes the stairs down, all seven floors. The sky is steel-grey but it has stopped raining. He takes the subway, two stops, walks ten minutes, and then five more because he took a wrong turn. Until he has reached the exact square foot of pavement where he stood when Iron Man sunk out of the sky.

He does a careful three-sixty but doesn’t see any traces of the trash he dropped here two nights ago. The streets are clean. A gust of wind sends a single paper cup tumbling along the street gutter and Peter hops over to intercept it, scoops it up and tosses it in the nearest trashcan.

Okay that’s just—he just needed to be sure. Spider-Man doesn’t litter.

He moves to the edge of the sidewalk and looks down the row of parked cars on one side, then the other side. There is no woman in mismatched clothing warming her feet under a car.

He has to walk a while before he finds a good spot to change into his suit. In a quieter street, he finds a building hidden behind a maze of metal scaffolding, covered in green mesh netting. He uses that as a cover to make his way to the roof.

-

He scours the whole area, swinging past the park and the bodega that June favored. He only stops a few times to assist a person in need, helps a lost child find his parents and helps a young teenager carry her stuff home after her backpack split at the seams.

He buys a veggie wrap for lunch and eats it on top of a church building, sitting next to a gargoyle. “You have a pretty good view,” he tells it, dangling his legs. “Have you seen a lady around with a blanket in a shopping bag?”

“Making friends, huh?”

Peter drops the veggie wrap and pivots around in one fluid motion, feet landing solidly, he crouches low, fingers splayed against the rooftop for balance.

“Easy, tiger,” Iron Man says. He’s hovering half an inch above the rooftop.

It hadn’t even occurred to him that he would run into Iron Man again. But he can’t really justify why that hadn’t occurred to him. Obviously he’s on this guy’s radar after what happened the other day. Obviously the dumbest thing to do would be to go patrolling again in the exact same area of Manhattan. He pulls his mask down over his mouth, then clutches the gargoyle with one hand and leans back, teetering on the edge of the building, ready to shoot away as soon as he spots his chance.

“Kid, please don’t take off again.” Iron Man’s voice is gentle. “I just want to know if you’re okay, is all.”

That’s exactly the problem. Peter would rather get shot at. “I’m fine,” he says cautiously, every muscle in his body still prepped for fight or flight.

“Do you need help with anything?”

“No, sir.”

Iron Man stays silent for a moment. It’s disconcerting to have to look at this chunk of metal and guess what expression the man behind the helmet is wearing. “I could use your help with something,” Iron Man says.

Peter’s shoulders drop a fraction. “Oh?”

“I need to follow up on that fire we put out three blocks over. Just make sure the families are all still okay. But kids always start crying when they see me.”

“Oh,” Peter says. “Yeah, that’s… understandable.”

“Hm-hmm, I think I need to add more glitter to the suit or something.”

Peter tilts his weight forward a bit so he’s no longer hanging over the edge of the building. “Where to, sir?”

“Eat, first. Your lunch landed in that tree down there.”

Peter turns and spots it.

“Shall I—” Iron Man suggests, but Peter shoots out a web and yanks back, the veggie wrap pelting back into his lap. He wipes some dirt off of it. Still good, ten second rule or whatever. He pulls his mask back up.

“Did you move here?” Iron Man asks. “I won’t be salty about it. Well, maybe a bit salty because people always seem to like Spider-Man more than Iron Man.”

“Uh. No, sir,” Peter murmurs. He takes another bite and adds, chewing: “I’m looking for June.”

“June.”

“Just—A homeless lady. I think she helped me.”

“You think she helped you.”

“I’m going back to Queens tomorrow.”

Iron Man hums and waits silently while Peter wolfs down the rest of his lunch. “No rush,” he says.

But it’s awkward to eat when Iron Man is watching you. Iron Man has never come across as a particularly patient superhero. He swoops in, barks at people to stay out of the way, does whatever needs doing and not gently either, yanking cars out of ditches or tasing criminals, and then flies off without talking to anyone.

Peter is surprised to learn he even does follow-ups at all. “What happened with the fire?”

“Apartment building on 68th. Some people got stuck in the elevator and fire department couldn’t get to them.”

“How do you always know when something bad is happening?” Peter asks, interested. He finishes the wrap and smushes the tinfoil into a ball.

“Trade secrets. Ready to go?”

“Yes, sir.”

He follows Iron Man’s directions to the apartment building. The roof is still charred black on one side, windows shattered. A wall has partially collapsed. “That was my entry point,” Iron Man says. “I practically ripped the whole elevator out through the wall. Building manager isn’t pleased with me, I’m sure.”

“But you saved people.”

“You’d be surprised. Well. I was hoping to talk to the family, but looks like they haven’t been able to return home yet.”

No, with half their apartment in ruins, it seems kinda wishful thinking that they would be. Peter is starting to think Iron Man just needed an excuse to keep Peter from running off, earlier.

It’s okay, though. “Thank you,” Peter says. “For, uh, worrying about me, sir. Sorry I took off the other day, I was a bit muzzy.”

“Were you.”

“It wasn’t a big deal.”

“If you say so. You’re going back home tomorrow?”

“I’m going home,” Peter says. “I got an apartment. Um. Though I still wouldn’t say ‘no’ to a spare bedroom in your secret underground lair.”

“Would you,” Iron Man says, his tone indecipherable.

“That was a joke, sir,” he clarifies.

“You’d have to settle for Bob the Builder bedsheets.”

Peter chuckles softly. “I would settle for those, sir.”

“Secret underground lair, huh?”

“That’s my best guess, yeah. An abandoned subway station or something.”

“Mysterious.”

“Yeah. Anyway, if you ever need a side kick.”

“Who says I shouldn’t be yours?”

“Uh,” Peter says, nonplussed.

Repulsors fire up. “You take care of yourself, kid.”

“I’m gonna,” Peter says. His life is finally at a point where he can.

He says his goodbyes and swings off, pausing on top of a steep rooftop to check that Iron Man isn’t following him.

He isn’t.

He spends another hour at least searching for June, and finally decides to make peace with the knowledge that he will never see her again.

-

Iron Man first appeared in New York when Peter was around seven, maybe eight years old. He was an urban legend for a little while at first, the only evidence he existed was claims by eyewitnesses and a bit of grainy footage, as if he was Sasquatch.

Peter remembers trying to impress a new girl in his class by claiming that Iron Man was his dad, and then another kid claimed that Iron Man was his dad and lots more people seemed to believe him.

And then Iron Man made a very public appearance when a parking garage collapsed at Lexington avenue; he was the first one at the scene, clearing away the rubble. He pulled two people and a dog out from under the debris. The dog in particular skyrocketed his popularity. Collapsed buildings and derailed vehicles became his specialty after that. Anything, really, that required brute force. Sony released an Iron Man game for the PlayStation 4 that mainly involved running around a huge skyscraper punching down all the doors. Peter played the game only once at a neighbor’s house; playing games at home was too loud, too risky, and he didn’t have many friends that he could go home with.

No one has released a Spider-Man game yet, as far as Peter knows. That’s definitely still on his list of life goals.

-

Maria Hill inspects his Queens apartment with the grim determination of a K9 sniffing out drugs. She opens all closet doors and cupboards, knocks on every wall, flicks every light switch, sniffs at a creaking hinge in the bathroom door.

His new apartment is on the second floor of a quiet and well-maintained building. A living room with an open kitchen, a bedroom that is mostly taken up by the double bed, a mosaic-tiled bathroom, a small balcony right above the entrance. A lawn stretches in front of the apartment building, neatly trimmed and dotted with a few dandelions. Beyond the lawn is a row of trees and then a quiet, one-way street.

From what he has seen so far, most other residents are over fifty. All in all, it feels very grown up. Peter doesn’t particularly like the idea of getting pulled into the messy throes of student life. He’ll have work to focus on, and he needs to toughen up or life will squish him like a bug. This place will do just fine.

“Do you know how to cook, do laundry?” Maria Hill asks.

“Yes, ma’am, definitely.”

“Good.” She gives him an approving look that makes him feel a spark of warmth. “How do you feel about the color scheme?” The bathroom has blue-green tiles, and the living room and bedroom have deep red carpeting and lots of wooden furniture.

“Uh. Good?”

“Good,” she says.

They drive to Bed Bath & Beyond, where two SHIELD agents in suits are waiting with full-size shopping carts. The mission: to buy a toaster and a mixer, plates and cups, a vacuum cleaner and a printer, pens and scissors, knives and forks, a watering can and a sauce pan, a knife block and a wall clock, a cutting board and an extension cord, and bath towels and tea towels and pillowcases and bedsheets and tablecloths—Peter is losing count. Every aisle they move through, it seems like Maria just gets everything. And she’s specific, too. “His bathroom is blue and green,” she snaps when one of the agents walks up with a brown shower curtain.

“Apologies, ma’am,” he says and hastily retreats.

It takes almost half an hour to get everything through check out. They load up both SUVs and drive back to Peter’s apartment, convoy-style. The two other agents park behind them and step out on the front lawn, suddenly wearing fluffy jumpers over their suit. The sunglasses are gone. They look exceptionally ordinary like this.

“If anyone asks, we’re friends from work,” Maria says. “Remember to present yourself as average as possible, be invisible.”

He knows how to pull that off, from long experience.

They carry everything into his apartment and fill his cupboards and drawers. They set up his printer, hang the clock, Maria puts a drop of oil on his bathroom hinges. Peter hands out more Wrigley’s Doublemint. And then they leave. “If you have any more questions,” Maria says, chewing, one foot across the threshold, “whatever it is, call me. Don’t email Deborah.” And she pulls the door shut.

Peter sags onto the couch, feeling like he survived a tornado.

He doesn’t think anyone has ever gone as far out of their way to help him as Deputy Director Maria Hill did today. It makes him feel more whole, makes him feel like he finally found his place.

-

Tony props his legs up on his desk, tablet in his lab. He cracks his neck, then his knuckles.

All right. Let’s get some people nice and angry. What better place than Twitter. It’s a platform where he has a modest following, 50 K people, mostly tech nerds who follow his technological advances with keen interest but who also, generally, just happen to be superhero fans. They always blow a fuse or two when Tony writes a post like this.

His CEO, Ms. Bain, will probably blow a fuse, too. Maybe he should start thinking about replacing her with someone lower-strung.

(1/5)

Superhero insanity. You know what’s fun? When you earnestly bust your nuts to actually improve the world through science, and you just created

(2/5)

groundbreaking new synthetic material to be used in solar panels, but don’t make any headlines because journalists are pissing their pants about

(3/5)

Iron Man and Spider-Man standing on a rooftop together. People are calling Spider-Man a superhero now??? Last I checked all he does is give

(4/5)

people directions. By that definition, my GPS is a superhero. Iron Man? Budget RoboCop. The Hulk???? His superpower is throwing tantrums.

(5/5)

Don’t get me started on Schmaptain Schmerica, Report on some actual news for a change, ffs. @NYpost @NYtimes @NY1 @NYdaily news

That should do it.

-

Something tings against his living room window. Peter looks up from his notes. A notepad is one thing they forgot to buy, so he’s using the back of an envelope, writing out a plan for the weekend. He wants to be on top of things. He can be on top of things now that he no longer has to deal with… certain other people’s whims and mood swings.

Another sharp tap on his window. He gets to his feet and walks to the open balcony doors.

Natasha Romanoff is on the front lawn, army green sweater and faded jeans, hands on her hips. “Help me carry your shit,” she says.

“Coming.”

He slips his feet into his shoes and goes downstairs. Natasha is already back by her car when he gets outside, trunk open. It’s a mossy green car with dust on the windows and streaks of mud around the wheels. All of Peter’s stuff has been crammed into garbage bags and banana boxes. They carry everything upstairs and only once they’ve stacked everything up on his sofa, does Peter dare ask: “Did you talk to my parents?”

“No. I climbed in through your window and stole all this. Yes I talked to them.”

“How were they?”

“Quite confused and quite salty.”

“Right.”

“It took them a whole day to realize you were missing, apparently.”

“Yeah. I usually—stay out of their way.”

“Do they have a way to contact you?”

“Uh, no.” He hesitates. Should he have—?

“Good,” Natasha says. “I will pick you up Monday morning 8 AM. Bring lunch and dress casual.” She flips her car keys around her finger. “Order some pizza tonight.”

Peter crosses his arms. “I can cook.” It’s one of the first things he wrote on his envelope-long-term-plan: healthy, balanced meals.

“You’ve had a day. Take my advice and order some pizza.”

“I have a meal plan.”

 “Suit yourself.”

-

As he writes out his grocery list, he realizes suddenly that Maria paid for their shopping spree this morning and there is still eight thousand dollars in his bank account.

He rolls his pen between his fingers as he considers his options. He’d feel awkward calling Maria again, but she told him not to contact that Deborah lady and he doesn’t have any other options. He feels like he could probably get fired if he holds onto money that isn’t his.

He takes out his brand-new phone. Maria is the only name in his contact list. He calls her. It goes straight to voicemail and Peter hangs up. He’ll try later, he thinks, but then a message appears on the screen.

In a meeting. Can text.

Okay. He picks up the phone with both hands, chewing his bottom lip before he writes. You paid for everything this morning. I still have 8000$. Can I transfer it back?

He bites on the nail of his thumb as he stares at the screen until a reply appears: No need, keep it for anything else you might need.

Eyebrows raising, he types back. But we already bought everything.

You might think of something.

And Peter accepts that SHIELD is just going to throw money at him, apparently. But it’s okay. He’s not an inconvenience, he’s an asset. He is going to be worth it.

-

He maps out his meal plan for the week on his envelope. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. He’ll probably need to prepare lunch and eat it on the go. Tupperware boxes or tinfoil wrap, that’s another thing they didn’t buy today.

He writes out every meal, and then the ingredients for those meals, and then reorders them into a categorized list based on the store lay-out. He adds garbage bags and toilet paper at the last second. And those SkinnyDipped almonds his parents never wanted to buy.

He can have those every day from now on. Every. Single. Day.

Chapter Text

“Coffee?” Natasha asks. Or, it’s not actually a question, really, because she is already holding the cup out.

“Yeah, great,” Peter says, because that’s what mature people do. They love their coffee, and they complain when they can’t get it. He takes a sip and manages to hide his grimace.

He is beginning to spot a pattern in how SHIELD chooses their meeting spots. “Were those people upstairs all agents?”

Natasha had picked him up in her decrepit car and drove him to a gym, where a long row of people of all shapes and sizes ran on treadmills. Natasha led him through another ‘personnel only’ door, down some stairs to this spacious, windowless basement with rubber floors. She made a beeline for the kitchenette in the far corner and didn’t turn to look at him until the coffee had finished brewing.

“Nope,” she says, leaning her hip against the counter, swirling her own coffee around in the cup. “Those people are the curtain we hide behind. But ten points to you for not loudly asking me that question while we were coming through.” She sips slowly, never taking her eyes off him. “Nervous?”

“Uh. I guess.”

“Don’t be. We’re only doing boring shit today.”

She isn’t lying. They sit at a metal table. She takes out a laptop, paper and pen and they start writing out plans. Just going over his GED requirements takes up most of the morning.

Natasha is an odd combination of scathing but patient. Her responses are never particularly kind, but she doesn’t get irritated either. She writes him up quite a detailed study plan, sets the bar high, and Peter mentally sets it even higher. She wants him to take the test within a year; he’ll do it in six months. Spanish is not required for the GED, but Natasha wants him to continue studying it. “Languages are going to be your best friend.” Afternoons are set aside for self-study. Spanish lessons every Tuesday and Thursday evening. Mornings are for—“training”, Natasha says, and then purses her lips a little like she despises the word.

“Like. Combat?”

“Everything. There is no precedent to your situation. I will develop your—lessons plan, so to speak… as we go.”

“Are you going to teach me all this stuff?”

“No. But I will make sure you learn.”

It feels like he’ll be going to superspy-school, like Spy Kids 2. “And the missions—"

“No missions yet, kid.” It’s the first time she calls him ‘kid’ and it feels deliberate. “Maria already told you.”

“I’ve been Spider-Man for two years. I can be useful, wouldn’t you think?”

“I follow orders, I ask no questions and have no opinions,” she says. Her mouth quirks up but her eyes are serious.

-

His psych eval takes up the whole afternoon. Natasha leaves the room. A woman with a weathered face and dark hair neatly tied back comes in with a suitcase and says “we will start with an MMPI” as if Peter knows what that means. She clicks her ballpoint and asks him stuff like “do you ever feel uncomfortable in social situations?” (hell, yes) and “do you sometimes hear voices that other people can’t hear?” (what the actual—).

“What would happen if I had said yes to that?” he asks, out of curiosity.

She gives the most boring possible answer. “You’d score higher on the Sc clinical scale.”

There’s an IQ test where he has to say which number comes next and repeat back words she gives him. And then she starts asking about his life. About his relationship with his parents.

“Not good.”

“Can you explain?”

“Uh. Well, they didn’t want me. So my birth was a bit of a bummer. And then it went downhill from there.”

“Were they violent?”

“Oh yeah. Very. But, you know. Mostly at each other.”

The amazing thing is, his parents work at the same company, Ovexa. Same department, even. They never make waves over there. Peter once overheard a coworker of theirs saying that Richard and Mary Parker were hardworking and rather boring.

Another worry rises to the forefront of his mind. “Will you ban me from working for SHIELD if my childhood was too messy?”

“We wouldn’t have anyone left,” she says dryly. “No, Mr. Parker. I’m establishing your triggers and blind spots so that we may know how to best equip you mentally.”

“Right. Good. Equip me.”

“You talk about your childhood as if it is a distant past,” she remarks, a bit pensively.

“Well, I mean. It’s over and done now.”

She hums and makes a note, before asking him about his earliest friendships.

-

He didn’t really have friends. No one disliked him, but no one wanted to hang out with him either. He was always miserable in school, and not only because of his social life. The lessons were boring, slow and repetitive, nothing ever happened. Everything was as bland and grey as the food they served in the cafeteria. He has one particularly vivid memory of being almost driven to tears when he was sick for a few days, came back to school and walked into his math classroom to see the exact same trigonometry problems still right there on the whiteboard. He sat behind a desk, knee wobbling as all his energy went into battling the white-hot frustration. He didn’t hear a word the teacher said that day.

Which didn’t matter, because she’d been saying those same words for two weeks, now.

So, yeah. Spy-school isn’t something he particularly looks forward to.

The weeks that follow, prove him wrong. Nothing about this is boring. He isn’t learning from a piece of paper, but behind the wheel of a car, then elbow-deep in that car’s engine bay. Within the first five days, he learns to use a compass, make a tourniquet, start a fire and put it out, make a bomb and defuse one. Some different SHIELD expert shows up every day to teach them, all of them speak rapidly and demonstrate everything only once. Everything goes at lightning speed and he is expected to keep up. So he does, with stoic determination.

Natasha teaches him hand-to-hand combat in the basement of the gym. “You’re gonna learn to fight without showing your enhancements.” She holds her thumb and forefinger close together and smiles sharply. “Or maybe just a smidgen of them.” She oversees some of his other training, at irregular intervals, with all her usual impatient patience.

Maria stops by once in his second week, as he is in the middle of performing CPR on a test dummy under the severe and watchful eye of Natasha — learning how to apply the exact right amount of pressure is tricky when you have superstrength. Maria stays for a few minutes and leaves again before he has a chance to actually talk to her or offer her some of the Wrigley’s Doublemint he always has in his duffel bag.

It’s fine. She’s busy.

In the third week, Natasha is suddenly absent during their normal training day. A bulky guy who doesn’t introduce himself spends the morning teaching him proper techniques for restraining a suspect.

Natasha is back the next morning and puts him through three grueling hours of ground defense. They have lunch together after, gleaming with sweat. Nat with her instant pot-noodles and Peter with his homemade quinoa salad. “Ten points for not asking me where I was,” she says, and pours water into her mouth.

“No questions, no opinions, right?”

He approaches everything else in his life with the same discipline. He gets up at ten past six and makes his bed. He does yoga every morning before work, he masters the peacock pose within a few weeks and feels very accomplished. He goes swimming on Sundays. He makes color-coded chore charts. He has a solid nine-step approach for planning his weekly meals. He counts his calories with an app. He organizes his socks the way Martha Stewart taught him in that video. He buys a flamingo flower and mists it twice a week, like clockwork. All of it will eventually start to feel natural, if he just keeps it up long enough.

He learns to drink coffee. He stops watching movies but subscribes to three different newspapers instead and reads them all, snacking on SkinnyDipped almonds.

-

“Is that the Wall Street Journal?” an elderly lady from across the hall asks when she sees him carrying his mail up. She stands in front of her door, her cane propped carefully against the frame as she sifts through her bag for the keys. Her white hair is tied back in a neat twist, and she has about four layers of necklaces that clink together softly as she rummages.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I do love their cryptic crosswords. But the headlines make me a bit ill so I cancelled the subscription long ago.”

“I’ll cut it out for you,” Peter offers.

She found her keys and looks up at him. Her gaze is piercing — the kind that makes grown men shuffle their feet. “Would you like some coffee?”

“Oh. Sure.”

Her name is April, and she has lived in this building for over thirty years. “Moved right in when they first built it. Back then it was all young couples and everyone knew each other,” she says as she moves around her kitchen, with a certain graceful slowness. “Nowadays, most neighbors turn and run the other way when I invite them for coffee.”

It’s funny to know that her apartment technically has the same lay-out as Peter’s and yet feels entirely different. Everything has lace and tassels: the curtains, the lampshades, the tablecloths. Small figurines or birds line her windowsill, each carefully dusted. It looks exactly how Peter would imagine the home of an elderly woman to look.

Peter was a late-comer, both his parents nearing their forties when he was born. His grandparents on either side died when he was pretty young and he doesn’t remember much of them. His grandma played the piano, he remembers that. He would hide underneath it as she played. He was always hiding underneath something.

He sits in a chair and folds the newspaper open in his lap, finding the puzzle section.

“Milk or sugar, dear?” she asks.

Natasha always just gets him black coffee, so that’s what he taught himself to drink. “No, thank you.” He scans the page. “I’m afraid I only see a regular crossword in here.”

“Oh, that’s a shame,” she says, shuffling from the kitchen with two cups on a little silver tray. “Yes, I remember now, I think they only have them on the weekend.” She sags into another chair with a puff.

“I like the birds,” Peter says.

She nods. “I studied them for fourty-odd years. Mostly in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea.”

“Wow, really?”

She nods again and launches into a tale about chasing rhinoceros hornbills through the jungle of Borneo.

‘Meeting new people’ wasn’t anywhere on the detailed schedules Peter wrote for himself. But he can make a little room.

-

When spring turns to summer, he is ready to get his license: motorcycle and car. He also knows the national privacy laws by heart, learned how to use an AED, how to disable an alarm, how to recognize patterns in phone records, how to tell the difference between a loaded and an unloaded gun. But the driving instructor doesn’t know any of that.

He passes, almost with flying colors. Floating colors, at the very least. He lightly brushed the curb when parallel parking, that’s it.

Natasha picks him up after, wearing sunglasses and a breezy shirt. She gets out of the car and throws the car keys at his face. “Now that you have your license, very important to maintain a regular driving routine.”

Peter gets behind the wheel and she takes the passenger seat. “Today, I’m going to teach you,” she says, “how to tell the difference between good gelato and train station gelato.”

“That wasn’t on the lesson plan.”

“Improvisation is a required skill in our line of work. And you’re ahead on schedule.” Peter has learned to speak Natasha’s language over the past month. This is her gruff way of saying ‘let’s just have a fun day’.

He is ahead, even by his own standards. He can take at least two GED tests by the end of summer, for math and science. He’ll do language and social studies later this year, in time for the spring admission deadline at NYU.

They drive past three different gelato places and Natasha explains why they are all shit, and how you can tell they are shit without even tasting. Natasha explains how the banana is always a dead give-away; “If it’s actually yellow, the owner put artificial flavoring in it, which means she probably also put it in everything else.” How tall piles of gelato doused in syrup and sprinkled in nuts or berries might look fancy but are most likely designed to hide the poor quality of the gelato itself. How the gelato should always be held in metal containers, not plastic.

Peter tries some peach at the first place, then strawberry and pistachio. Natasha refuses to have any until they get to the fourth gelateria which she deems ‘actually decent’. Peter has pistachio again for comparison, and isn’t sure if he really likes it that much better, but he says he does to appease Nat. She has coconut. “I’ll eat anything that has coconut in it.”

“Sounds like a liability.”

A smile spreads across her face. “Was that snark?”

“Uh…”

“Say ‘yes’.”

“Yes. Ma’am.”

-

His rapport with Natasha seems to come easier after that day. She makes jokes. He refuses to reciprocate, but she looks at him with wry amusement in her eyes, like she’s thinking, he’ll learn. He starts bringing coconut macaroons to their training sessions, tucking them away in a side pocket of his duffel bag. “I approve,” she says the first time he takes them out.

His salary from SHIELD keeps piling up in his bank account. He pays rent and buys groceries and newspapers, but spends nowhere near as much as he earns. SHIELD even gets him a car. Deborah sends him three options to choose from, and once he made his pick, the car is in his driveway within the hour. He can see it from the corner of his eye, black and gleaming, every time he sits on the balcony, snacking on SkinnyDipped almonds. Maintain a regular driving routine. It’s still hard to shake that feeling, like he isn’t giving SHIELD as much as he is getting.

He keeps working like a dog, steadily, yes ma’am, no sir, keeping his head down. Crime scene investigation, skid pan training, cybersecurity. He begins to feel less incompetent, it gives him a sense of deep relief. He counts his calories and organizes his socks and underlines courses in the NYU bulletin. He dons his suit and patrols Queens on the weekend. His flamingo flower blooms. He cuts out the cryptic crosswords whenever they appear in any of his three newspapers, and brings them along when he has coffee with April on her balcony.

He knows the moment is coming but it still catches him unawares. Natasha picks him up at eight AM but turns left at the next junction. “Time for target practice.”

He has never gone against his orders. “I don’t like guns.”

“Good. Only psychopaths do.”

The idea that he might one day end up on a mission where he’d actually need to shoot someone makes him feel queasy. Spider-Man never hurts people, full stop. One time he broke a man’s wrist in his rushed fury, getting him away from the victim. He could hear that crunch of bones in his dreams for several months after.

He can’t possibly refuse his orders, and he doesn’t know how to set this anxious feeling down, so he clasps his hands in his lap and thinks of the movie Brave instead, the horse flicking its tail, the torn tapestry, the woodcarver, the triplets.

Natasha parks the car and nudges his knee. “I always wonder where you go when you get like that,” she says, and Peter feels utterly embarrassed that she noticed.

“I never want to shoot anyone. I would never shoot someone.”

She turns, leaning one elbow across the back of her seat. “Fine,” she says easily. “If it’s up to me, you will never have to. But you might get shot at, or see others get threatened by firearms. You’ll have a better chance at saving them or yourself if you know how these things work.”

“I heal fast.”

“If a bullet hits you in the head, you’re dead instantly, no matter what miracles your body usually performs,” she says. “Dead before you even realize the person has pulled the trigger.” She pokes him in the sternum. “If a bullet hits you anywhere above the waste, it pulverizes your ribs, sending shards of it through your whole chest area, shredding the heart and lungs. You’re dead in five seconds. Perhaps it will be twenty for you, but I hope for your sake it will still be five.”

“Okay,” he says. “Okay. I get it.” And he follows her inside.

It won’t really be up to Natasha, anyway, he realizes as he stands on the pistol range with a gun in his hands and ear protection on his head. If SHIELD sends him on a mission that requires him to shoot people, it’s not like she’s going to speak on his behalf. She follows orders.

-

He practices the moves when he goes for patrol that weekend. Nat taught him how to disarm. She mostly taught him not to. Disarming is risky, do it as a last resort, when you are one hundred percent sure the other person is going to shoot and you have no other option.

He practices dropping, rolling and snatching a gun with his webbing. Would SHIELD ever let him bring webfluid on a mission, he wonders? Or perhaps, will they start demanding it, at some point? It won’t be just Peter who is a SHIELD-agent, but Spider-Man himself.

A siren wails in the distance and he shakes the thoughts off. The city is calling.

-

“Worst assignment you ever had?” he asks Natasha once.

Her face goes grim. He expects her to say something like ‘that time I ended up getting tortured by the Yakuza’ or ‘I lost three good men in the tunnels under Prague’, but instead she says: “I once had to pretend to be secretary to a snooty tech CEO. Worst three weeks of my life. Thank god they pulled me out when Gdansk happened and they needed me to get those hostages out. Ginny has been doing it ever since, and doing a fine job.”

Natasha has only spoken of ‘Ginny’ a handful of times, but always with a rare tone of approval, which makes her feel like a legendary SHIELD special OP in Peter’s book.

-

He turns seventeen without any hullabaloo and passes his first two GEDs. Maria drops by his apartment on a Saturday unexpectedly and says, “you’re doing well.”

It’s been half a year since he really spoke to her, but that is all he needed to hear. He invites her in and makes coffee, offers her some Doublemint from the pocket of his duffel bag. Maria looks at the color-coded chore chart on his fridge, at the herbs lined up in alphabetical order in his spice rack. “You are exceeding expectations, in fact.”

Warmth creeps up on him. “I try.”

She sits in one of the kitchen chairs, both hands wrapped around the coffee cup. “I saw your GED scores. And the IQ test, of course. Are you exceptionally gifted at science?”

“Uh.”

“No need for socially normative humility. I just need the facts.”

“Okay. Yeah. I’m pretty smart.”

She narrows her eyes at him.

“Ex—Exceptionally smart,” he says, feeling his cheeks burn.

“Have you decided on a major at NYU?”

“Something—engineering.”

“Good,” she says. “See if you can specialize in sustainability or clean energy. I’ll have Deborah send you course options.”

“Okay,” Peter says, and doesn’t ask questions.

-

He enrolls in January with a part-time schedule, which isn’t usually possible for this undergrad program, but Maria pulled her usual strings. His fellow students are older but seem less mature, turning up to lectures with blood-shot hangover eyes and asking him for his notes when an exam comes up. They do invite him along for drinks sometimes, group invitations, but usually give up trying to talk to him after the first half hour. Peter just can’t manage to relate to them. He doesn’t touch a drop of alcohol and an evening soon stops being fun when everyone but you is tipsy. He does buy a bottle opener and attaches it to the zipper pull of his duffel bag; just about the only way to ensure people will actually still talk to him and want him around.

The trick is to make yourself useful.

He doesn’t know what it is about him, that he is somehow always left out of the friend groups. No one ever seems to dislike him, but no one particularly wants to hang out with him, either.

He has April, though. They have coffee together on her balcony almost every Sunday now. They’ll try a cryptic crossword. She’ll tell him about imperial pigeons and Fairy-bluebirds. That makes them friends in his book.

-

He builds a solar-powered water desalination system for his ‘introduction to engineering design’. A fellow student says “uhhh, okay,” when she sees the sketches, and “holy shit, didn’t think it would actually work” when he first demonstrates.

He still doesn’t think it’s much of a big deal until the professor calls him into her office after a lecture and advises him to submit it for the James Dyson award. “I’d put my money on you winning it.”

“Uh, okay,” Peter says. “Ma’am.” He goes home and drops Maria a message about it. She responds swiftly, commending him for having the foresight to discuss the matter with her and confirming that, yes, SHIELD would prefer for him to stay in relative anonymity, low profile, under the radar, out of the spotlight.

“Maybe next time,” he tells the professor. And after that, he makes sure to only hand in projects that are at more or less a similar level to his classmates.

-

When the term winds to a close, Maria calls him to say they’re sending him to Italy for the summer. Milan.

“Okay,” Peter says. And doesn’t ask questions.

He asks Natasha later, though, at the gun range. “Why Italy?”

“Languages are important in our field.”

“But why not Chinese or French, something more widespread?”

“I don’t know.” Which is Natasha for ‘I know but I’m not telling you’.

-

He’ll later come to acknowledge that Italy is probably where things start sliding downhill.

He spends four months in the sweltering Milan heat — even the locals are complaining about it. He takes four hours of Italian lessons every morning.

Natasha sends him ‘homework’ at regular intervals, more theoretical stuff about navigation, criminal law, toxicology, data encryption. He tries a few gelato places in his first week, when everything still feels like a great adventure.

But he has more free time, and fewer people to talk to, than he ever had before.

He wanders around the city, away from the main arteries of tourist traffic, and feels directionless. He stands on his narrow balcony, watching the city sprawl vibrantly before him, and feels like he isn’t part of it at all. He doesn’t do yoga, he doesn’t go swimming. He doesn’t count his calories; some evenings he forgets to have dinner at all. He quite likes the woozy feeling hunger gives him. It softens and slows down his brain. He spends a lot of afternoons sleeping, calling it siesta first, and riposa later once he learns the Italian word, but those naps stretch longer and longer. He watches a lot of Phineas & Ferb. He knows the Italian word for ‘platypus’ before he knows ‘cow’.

He realizes he turned eighteen almost a week after his actual birthday.

He never misses a single Italian lesson, though, and gets all his homework done in time. So it’s fine. He’s just going slow. It’s just a vacation—sort of.

SHIELD sends him an admission ticket to some tech convention at Politecnico di Milano, and program with one panel session highlighted: From Firepower to Solar Power: A Business Transformation Story, in Aula Unione 1 with someone named Victoria Usachova and someone named Tony Stark. Peter does a quick background check on both and doesn’t find anything of note.

But, no opinions, no questions. He cancels his lesson for the day and goes. The topic doesn’t interest him much. Victoria Usachova is dry and monotonous. Tony Stark at least is odd in an entertaining way. Ninety percent of what comes out of his mouth is sarcasm, and then he’ll suddenly drop a clever insight or two. He knows how to play to an audience.

He goes to a different session after lunch, The matrix of contemporary scientific publishing facing institutional research arrangements and the marketization of academic environments, and finds it more interesting.

He took notes on everything, just in case Maria asks for some sort of report. But she doesn’t.

-

When he gets back to Queens, a Saturday in late September, his flamingo flower is dead. He knew it would be, of course, but it still stings. He looks at the chore chart on his fridge and feels like his limbs are locked down strangely.

He orders pizza for dinner.

Time to snap himself out of it, he thinks Sunday morning. He picks up the newspaper, folding it over to find the ‘puzzles’ section, and crosses the hallway to knock on April’s door. Seeing her familiar face when she opens the door fills him with relief.

They have coffee on her balcony and solve about half of the cryptic crossword. The hundred and one questions she asks about Milan are a bit grating, difficult to keep up his smile. But it’s fine, it’s good.

“I’m glad we’re neighbors,” Peter tells her.

And so, he’s fine. He goes back to training on Monday, brings macaroons for Natasha. Picks up his college courses later that week. He feels tired a lot, but it’s just because he got used to napping during the day, he’ll snap out of that, too. All of it will eventually start to feel natural, if he just keeps it up long enough. He’s getting back into it, back into the groove, he tries to remember how it felt.

He thinks about that day, that morning after he ran away, when he sat on the bench by the playground and imagined his adult life; how badly he wanted to be exactly where he is now.

-

“You know, you were allowed to drink in Italy,” Natasha says.

“Was that a trick question?”

“It wasn’t a question.”

“Okay. Was it a trick statement?”

They’re in—He doesn’t even know where. A parking garage that isn’t a parking garage. It has been steadily raining all day. She’s teaching him how to hotwire a car.

“I know you don’t go out often. With… friends. And while I applaud your self-discipline, it’s good to realize that social skills go a long way in our line of work.”

Good to know she still thinks he has self-discipline, anyways. Peter says nothing for a while, focusing on stripping the insulation from the battery wires. He eventually lands on: “Nat, please don’t tell me that the next part of my training is gonna be how to host birthday parties.”

“No. You’re gonna learn to fly a helicopter.

“Good. And I have friends. I have you.”

Her expression shutters strangely. “You shouldn't think of me that way,” she says, very calmly. “Friends. It’s not conducive. It compromises you in the field.”

“Oh.” His chest caves in. “Yeah. It’s—I didn’t mean friend friend. I just…”

“Keep an eye on those dash lights.”

“Yeah,” Peter says, ducking his head. Stomped, right on the heart. Your mistake for having a heart, Natasha would say.

-

He gets home, drenched from the rain. He left his window open this morning and the curtain is flopping wildly, the windowsill has puddles. He sits on the couch with his wet coat. He presses his folded arms against his own stomach, kicks off his shoes and shivers. He stares down at a tangerine growing fungus in his fruit bowl.

Fruit. He hasn’t eaten any fruit today. He should get some fruit. And close the window.

He doesn’t move.

He rolls off the couch eventually, shrugging out of his coat and dumping it over the back of a chair. He takes a long shower. He skips dinner intentionally, knowing the woozy feeling will distract him away from his thoughts. He puts on Spy Kids 2.

-

His sock-storing system has gotten violently out of control. He stands in the middle of the grocery store and realizes he didn’t make a list. He orders sushi on the weekend. The bag from his previous takeaway order is still in a corner, but it’s fine, he’ll get around to it. He hasn’t unpacked his duffel bag since returning from Italy which—is more than two months ago by now. How did that go by so fast, how does time work? He wakes up with a jolt one random midnight when fireworks go off and realizes only then that it’s the new year. Clothes are piling up in a corner of his bedroom, it might look messy to someone else but it’s fine, he has a system.

He’s getting really fucking sick of SkinnyDipped almonds

-

He wakes earlier than usual one morning when his phone vibrates. It’s a message from Maria. We are going to put you in the field. Undercover internship. Further details today at 9.40 AM. And an address. He looks it up and the search engine spits out a picture of the dark-bricked hotel between glass skyscrapers, where it all began.

Chapter Text

Natasha is on the front steps when he arrives, talking to a woman. She doesn’t notice him. Well, she does, of course, but it’s probably very deliberate that she doesn’t acknowledge him in public.

The other woman has blond hair tied back in a messy ponytail, a shambly sweater, trodden sneakers and a cigarette between her fingers. Peter only gives her a quick glance before heading inside.

Maria is sitting in the lobby and stands as soon as she sees him. He follows her down that same hallway to that same windowless room. They sit at the round table. Natasha comes in a few minutes later and greets them. The blonde woman follows soon after, coming into the room out of breath, with a “fucking hell why do all our meet-up spots have stairs leading to them?”

“Peak physical condition, are you?” Natasha jabs.

“Eat dirt.” She shakes Peter’s hand and introduces herself as ‘Ginny’. She looks Peter up and down with narrowed eyes and looks like she wants to say something else.

“Ginny, sit down,” Maria says.

She slouches in a chair, slinging one arm across the back. “Enlighten us.” She seems like a woman who has a lot of opinions and asks a lot of questions.

Maria slides a stack of files Peter’s way. “SHIELD has been running a covert operation at a tech company named Stark Industries for several years. We have reasons to suspect that they are one of the largest manufacturers of illegal arms for the international black market. Some of his cluster bombs just turned up in Indonesia a few weeks ago.” She opens the file and taps a photo. “This is Tony Stark. Remember him?”

Peter nods. Stark looks in the photograph like he did at the convention: superior smirk in place, like nothing and no one around him is worth spending time on.

“He is the current owner of Stark Industries. They produced weapons until seven years ago, when he made a very sharp turn to innovations in sustainability. Solar panels and radiator foil.”

“He claims it’s because there’s more money in it,” Ginny says. “But that’s bullshit. I’ve seen the numbers. And he isn’t doing it out of human decency either, that much is clear.”

Maria nods in her direction. “Ginny has been working at Stark Industries for almost two years now to build a case. We’re not making much headway. SHIELD is on the verge of pulling her out, her time is too valuable. But we have one card left to play. Which is where you come in.”

“Sorry,” Ginny says. “Sorry, sorry, Maria, my bestie. I feel an urgent need to interject.” She points at Peter. “How old is he?”

Maria’s tone is cool. “Off age.”

“That means eighteen,” Ginny translates. “I know this mission is low-stakes, but you really want to send an untrained kid in there?”

“He has been trained.”

Ginny narrows her eyes. “Of course he hasn’t, because that would mean he was recruited as a teenager, which SHIELD wouldn’t dare to do.”

“There were circumstances.”

“That means he’s enhanced,” Ginny translates. “Does our code of ethics not apply when a child is enhanced?”

“He got emancipated, he was technically an adult.”

“Before or after you hooked your claws into him?”

“Ginny, shut the fuck up,” Natasha says, irritated.

Ginny flips her the bird, but says nothing else.

“A final card left to play,” Maria says smoothly, like she wasn’t interrupted. “Which is where you come in. Ginny managed to persuade Tony Stark to join the ‘Turning Point Initiative’, whose mission is to empower students with untapped potential—who’ve faced personal challenges—to thrive through transformative internship opportunities.”

“That means,” Ginny translates, “he’s willing to personally mentor a few fuck-ups with good brains.”

“We will use this program as a cover to get you into the company, a lot closer to the fire than Ginny has managed to get.”

Ginny grumbles under her breath. “Irritating as hell. There’s entire days when he just stays in that workshop of his, metal shutters pulled down, won’t tell anyone what he is doing. I’ve been trying to get the current CEO kicked out of her job and replace her, get some actual power, but the old hag is stuck to that desk like a piece of gum to a hot sidewalk.”

Maria slides the picture aside to reveal an admission form, already filled out and signed. “You will start this internship in three weeks, alongside one actual student who signed up, who is there to keep some focus off you. The Turning Point Initiative is a legit organization, so as far as they know, you are who we say you are. Four days a week, for two months.”

“Oh,” Peter says. “I have my college courses—”

“You’ll need to drop them for now.”

Peter nods. “Of course.”

“We won’t need to change your backstory much, which is a positive. You will need to act like your life has been going off the rails recently.”

Peter clasps his hands together. “Uh. Yeah. No problem.”

Maria slides the admission form aside. There’s an ID there, with Peter’s picture, a different last name and a birthdate twelve days before his real one.

“I am the formal intern program administrator,” Ginny says. “So at work, you’ll need to act like I interviewed you. Off-site, to explain why the AI has no records of it.” She sits forward in the chair now, her gaze turning sharper. “At this tower, the walls literally have ears, the ceiling has eyes. Stark has an AI that watches everything all the time. You can’t even take a piss in there without his robot-brain knowing it. You must never break character, even when alone with me in a room. Got it?”

“Got it.”

She sits back again. “At Stark Industries, I go by the last name ‘Potts’. And Stark calls me ‘Pepper’.”

“Huh. Why?”

“Because,” she says serenely, “he is a colossal asshole. It took so much effort to get him to agree to something this altruistic, like getting a cat to take a bath.”

-

Rhodey lights up like that’s the best news he’s heard all year. Wildly annoying. “Man. You’re getting an intern?”

“Two, in fact. Pepper insisted. I think it’s in case I break one.”

It’s a clear day, late January, chilly wind, sun hitting their face just enough to make them squint. They’re circling the lake in Central Park. Rhodey just got back from three months in Colombia where leaders clinched a historic peace deal to end decades of civil unrest.

“Why’d you say yes?” Rhodey asks.

Tony’s own teenage years weren’t smooth sailing. Well. None of his years are smooth sailing, but his late teens knew particularly rough waters. He isn’t sure exactly how much money exchanged hands behind the scenes, but he is pretty sure he would have ended up in juvie if there hadn’t been bribes somewhere along the line. If not after that joy-riding stint then certainly after starting that fire in an abandoned school building.

And then he went to college and met Rhodey, who helped him channel all that restless energy into something productive, something that might help people, something that made him feel like life had a point. Rhodey was five years older than him, which at the time felt like a generational gap a mile wide, and he had a wide circle of friends his own age. He didn’t need to take Tony under his wing, but he did.

Every kid deserves a Rhodey. And Tony isn’t a Rhodey. Rhodey is the kind of person who asks what’s wrong when someone looks upset. Tony is tactless, cynical and disdainful on his best days. But he’ll make an effort.

That’s not what he told Pepper, of course. What he told her is the same thing he tells Rhodey: “Interns are those ones who get you your coffee, yeah?”

Rhodey doesn’t even roll his eyes, his grin just widens. “I’d like to see you keep this up, this whole posturing-as-an-asshole you do, once you have two actual kids in your workshop. Also.” He points across the lake. “We should rent a gondola sometimes.” There’s two, gliding lazily in the distance.

“As a fake Italian, I’m contractually obliged to express outrage at the mere suggestion of touching those cheap knock-off barges with even a ten-foot pole. And I don’t posture. I loathe people.”

“You keep people at a distance because you know you wouldn’t actually be able to say no if anyone asked you any favors.”

That’s an insult if Tony ever heard one. “Are you calling me a push-over?”

“Course not. I’m calling you a softie.” Rhodey picks up a pebble and turns it over in his hands, eyes glinting. “Remember when Ms. Bain told you her cat had to be put down?”

“I will never understand people wanting pets,” Tony says ruminatively. “They’re just aggressively in the way for a decade or two, and then they die.”

“You gave her the day off. Remember when you refused to close the Lombardy factory despite it turning a loss, because you didn’t want people to lose their jobs?”

Pepper had been suspicious about that one. Like she thought Tony was using the whole Milan branch as a cover for some colossal, underground drug lab.

“Remember that time you were worried about a kid, you know which kid, and the kid mentioned a homeless woman named June, and for that reason and that reason alone you went and spent over a week tracing down said homeless woman, and then you paid for her rehab and bought her an apartment and gave her a job in your cafeteria? Remember that?”

He never spoke to Spider-Man again. After the two unusual appearances in Manhattan, the kid had gone back to his customary Queens. And Tony prodded June about it once or twice, but she had never even heard of Spider-Man, looked at him like she thought he was pulling some fantasy figure straight out of his ass, so it’s still a bit of a head-scratcher why the kid was looking for her that day. “That wasn’t kindness, that was a — social experiment.” June was always late in her first months, stole from the register once and tried to quit on him twice, but it’s been a year now with no incidents.

Rhodey edges nearer to the lake, flicks the pebble into the water and they watch the ripples stretch out lazily. “I’m so glad I won’t be deployed for a while. I can’t wait to see this go down.”

“I’ll do my best to disappoint you.”

-

“Well. You survived a briefing by Maria,” Ginny says. “That probably means you’ll hold up well under torture, too.” She’s in the passenger seat, window rolled down, smoking again. Natasha is driving. Ginny looks at Peter in the rearview mirror. “What do you think of your wrangler, kid?”

If she’s expecting Peter to badmouth Maria, she’ll be disappointed. “She gave me a shot when I needed one. She wanted me.”

“She has a use for you.”

“That’s the same thing.”

She turns in her seat, now, to look directly at him. “Same thing, huh? You passed your psych eval?”

“Leave him alone, Ginny,” Natasha says. “We didn’t all come in the way you did, so what. Some of us practically owe SHIELD our lives. You know how I ended up here. I bet that was convenient to them, sure. But SHIELD has always had my back, respected my boundaries, and I wouldn’t have wanted to end up anywhere else.”

Ginny slouches back. “As if you have any notion of what your alternatives could look like. You feel so indebted to SHIELD that you will defend them no matter what. D’you ever think that might cloud your judgement?”

“Are you calling me gullible?” Natasha asks, a little coolly.

“Oh, no no,” Ginny shoots her cigarette butt out the window between thumb and forefinger. “I called you a softie once and you took me in a headlock.”

“If anything, SHIELD is too lax for my taste. Maria says I have to take a vacation.” Natasha sounds chagrined.

“I can’t imagine why,” Ginny says. “You had that weekend by the coast, why, not six years ago.” She moves her arm out of the way of Natasha’s elbow-jab.

Peter tunes it out, the squabbling. He thinks of Matilda, the movie opening on her as a baby, and her parents looking disgusted at her existence. It’s how Peter always imagined his own birth going down, his mom and dad complaining that the hospital overcharged them and forgetting their baby in the back of the car after driving home. The Wormwoods were so wrapped up in their own silly lives that they barely noticed they had a daughter. And then the kid gets superpowers—even that matches up. She was saved by Ms. Honey in the end. So that probably makes Maria Hill his Ms. Honey.

Natasha pulls over on a pretty random street corner. Ginny gets out and closes the car door, patting the roof with her hand as she smiles at Peter. “See you on the other side, kid.”

She gives a tiny salute, turns and disappears into the thronging crowd.

“Best, from now on,” Natasha says as she steers back into traffic, “to just think of her as Pepper Potts. To avoid slip-ups later.”

He nods. Pepper Potts, Pepper Potts, Pepper Potts.

-

Peter Romero, Peter Romero, Peter Romero.

Peter spends three weeks studying Tony Stark; reads his biography, and Gin—Pepper’s reports. Depressingly, he has to go through every single one of the man’s social media posts, ten percent of which are rants about superheroes in general, and at times Spider-Man in particular. The only uplifting part of it is that most people in the comments are cursing Stark out.

This is the man he is going to work with for the next two months. The man who needs to trust him enough to leave him in his workshop unsupervised. Two months is a short window, Natasha reminds him almost daily. Every minute will count. And it he fucks it all to hell, SHIELD will probably kick him to the curb.

His usual training schedule has come to an abrupt standstill. He meets with Natasha each morning to review. He’ll give her coconut macaroons and she’ll give him more reading to do for the rest of the day.

He digs through Stark Industries’ website. They are really laying it on thick with how devoted they are to the environment. There’s a whole section on how employees are encouraged to arrive by public transport or bike and they closed off half of their parking levels.

“Should I take the subway to work?” he asks.

“Let’s not,” Natasha advises. “I want you to maintain a regular driving routine.”

She gives him a second phone. His other one only had three contacts: Maria Hill, Natasha Romanoff and the building manager of his apartment. The new one is a phantom phone, Natasha explains, and has all the attributes a phone a ‘normal’ person his age would have. Photos he supposedly took. A long contact list of people who don’t actually exist. And all the way down to fake messenger exchanges with several of them. A certain ‘Zan Lochner’ invited him to the movies last night.  

“Who actually sends these?”

She shrugs. “Some algorithm. It’ll keep doing it. Make sure to respond now and then to keep it looking legit. We think Stark’s AI constantly scans all devices within the tower. We need to make sure it won’t flag you. Always leave your other phone at home.”

He goes home and swipes through it, looks at the photos. They’re all pretty safe food pics, close-ups that could have been taken anywhere. Peter Romero is apparently still competent enough to cook his own meals. Five out of seven evenings, Peter Parker settles for instant meals or something straight from the jar, these days. The paper take-away containers are scattered through his whole apartment. The clutter stresses him out, but so does the idea of having to clean it all.

He spends a lot of time at home with the reading material Nat gave him. Alone. Hours stretching out endlessly. With a dead plant in his windowsill. Another brown leaf pointedly flutters to the ground right as Peter looks in its direction, almost like the flamingo flower is mocking his shortcomings.

He should water it. He should go water it right now. Right now. He just has to get up off the couch. He just has to pull himself together. He just has to—He’ll do it later.

Or maybe not at all. He’s supposed to pretend like his life went off the rails, after all. He’s Peter Romero, who just started his first year of studying environmental engineering, who got emancipated at sixteen from his neglectful parents, survived rampant emotional abuse, and has been arrested twice for shoplifting.

“Groceries,” Natasha said about that. “On account of the neglect. Real sob story.”

From what Peter has learned about Tony Stark so far, the man seems pretty immune to sob stories. He once retweeted a post from the NYPD — a little photo collage with lots of heart emojis to honor their oldest police dog passing away — and he commented only: ‘reminder to self, my taxes are paying for the intern who threw this shit together’.

-

The final evening before his first internship day, he skips dinner in an attempt to deal with the anxiety. It’s fine. He just has to go in tomorrow and pretend everything is perfectly normal and he isn’t at all terrified out of his mind.

-

Tony shakes the plastic box, the toothbrushes rattle. He’s got too many spare toothbrushes in his bathroom cabinet. Rhodey is the only one who ever stays over. He shoves them back in the drawer. He pulls his sleeve down, wipes some streaks off the mirror, then shrugs his shirt off and eyes himself critically.

He experimentally taps one finger against the arc reactor. There are two hexagonal patches on either side of it, pulse dampeners. He pulls them away, and his arc reactor immediately glows up, casting a blueish light over the whole bathroom.

Another reason why he doesn’t like people too close to him.

There is at least one very persistent theory floating around that the Iron Man suit is powered by the body inside of it. He thinks the Daily Bugle came up with that one. It’s annoying how accurate they are, sometimes. Then again, they also concluded that the ‘body’ therefore had to be some sort of alien entity with paranormal brainwaves. So… no cigar.

He tucks the discarded patches away in a small metal container under the mirror. He’s too paranoid to just throw them in the regular trash.

Ten layers of security between himself and the rest of the world at all times.

He was planning on developing a subdermal implant to replace these skin patches. But he keeps putting it off — really isn’t looking forward to doing surgery on himself again.

He could ask Helen Cho, his best geneticist who specializes in… weird cases. Did her dissertation on the Hulk; she has had that guy in her X-ray machine. Tony and her have worked closely together on a few projects. But the thing is. Essentially. He’d trust her with his life, but not yet with his secret identity. That might seem like a strange prioritization to some people, but it makes perfect sense in his own head.

Either way, this whole intern project is a great excuse to put off thinking about it. He’ll have to shelf any and all Iron-Man related projects for the time being.

-

Here’s Tony’s favorite thing about getting two interns who only just crossed over from the wrong side of the law: he is expecting mayhem. A little of it, at least. He is expecting kids with a titanium backbone and a knife-edged tongue, who can both take it and dish it out when Tony plays in advanced asshole mode.

Here’s his least favorite thing about it: he’ll need to keep his workshop Code Commonplace for the most part of the next two months. Hard drives hidden behind the walls, suits hidden below the floor. It's Monday morning, the big day, and he's doing a third inspection of the place, frustrated when he notices that when you stand in that spot by the CNC router, and daylight pours in through the window just so, you can spot a seam in the wall right where one of the hidden doors is.

He's pushing an open storage closet in front of it when FRIDAY reports: “Michelle and Peter have arrived at reception. Shall I—”

“Huzzah, blow the bugle. Don’t inform Pepper. I’ll ferry them up myself.”

“I advise against that course of action. Though I don’t imagine you’ll heed it.”

He grunts as he throws his weight behind a final shove to get the closet in place. “Can you turn down the priggishness, FRI. Uh. Code 686B or something?”

“Code 686B remotely turns on the massage chairs on our 19th floor.”

Tony steps back, rubs his shoulder in circular motions. “We have massage chairs?”

“I don’t believe you have a specific code for priggishness, Boss, shall I put it on the to-do list?”

“Put it below ‘try blueberry tea’ but above ‘call back that councilwoman’.” He heads downstairs and straight for reception. “You’ve had a Michelle Jones and a Peter Romero sign in?”

Holly points with her pen. “He’s over there by that wriggly bubble sculpture, with the duffel bag. She’s over by the snack station after kicking our vending machine didn’t yield any results.”

He turns to find that Peter had already spotted him. A young man with a sharp, wary expression, peering at him around their eighty-thousand-dollar Arturo Di Modica statue—or ‘that wriggly bubbly thing’ as Holly called it. The strap of his grey duffel bag is firmly looped around his arm as if he expects someone to steal it. There is a beer opener hanging from the zipper. Peter is wearing quite a formal shirt with buttons that he doesn’t look entirely at home in.

“Are you expecting to take an engine apart in that, then?” is Tony’s opening line. “Or did you think you’d sit in a corner and take notes all day?”

Peter looks baffled for a moment, and then says “sorry, sir.”

Not much of that titanium backbone, apparently.

Tony beckons with both hands. “Up, up.”

Peter starts saying “Nice to meet—" but Tony already turns away.

With Peter in tow, he approaches Michelle. She hasn’t spotted him yet, too preoccupied arguing with poor Danielle about the bowl with little lemon bar squares by the register. “I’m just saying,” Tony hears Michelle say, “your sign says free samplessss, plural. So I think denying me another one makes you basically a nazi.”

This one is more in Tony’s wheelhouse. “I see you’ve found the center of operations of our company, Ms. Jones.”

She turns to face him, setting one hand on her hip, and blows a strand of hair away from her face with much indignation.

“As your mentor for the next two months, a few words of wisdom. Never be rude to people who might serve you food.”

“Oh, that’s right, it is you,” she says, eyes narrowing at him.

“You’re welcome for the opportunity.”

“Don’t be welcome yet, give it a few days.”

Yes. He’ll get along with this one just fine. “I’m glad to see all these positive vibes.” He takes half a step back and notices only then that Peter had basically been hiding behind him; he almost steps on the kid’s toes. A backbone of wet paper. “Peter, Michelle.” He waves a hand between them.

“Sup,” Michelle says.

“Nice to meet you,” Peter says.

She sniffs. “We’ll see about that.”

Tony leads them to the elevator in the back of the lobby. “Always take this elevator,” he tells them. “It’s the only one that goes up to the 75th floor. I’ll get you badges with access to the food court on the 52nd, the lobby, and oh, parking levels if you need them?” He points at the buttons for B1 and B2. There used to be a B3, but there is just a metal plate over the control panel in that spot. Stark Industries: the largest company with the smallest parking garage. And then a picture of a tree and a picture of a bike.

“Yes please,” Peter says.

“You have a fucking car?” Michelle asks, scandalized. “Wasn’t this an internship for poor people or som’n? I’ve never even seen a car up close. My family, we transport ourselves about in wheelbarrows.”

“Oh, take it from me, Ms. Jones,” Tony says. “You don’t have to be poor to fuck up your life.” He slams the button for the top floor and they whizz up. “FRIDAY, say hello.”

“Hello Michelle Jones and Peter Romero, it’s nice to meet you. I hope you enjoy your time at Stark Industries.”

“You have a robot butler?” Michelle asks, overtly amused. She has crossed her arms and slouches against the wall while Peter still stands ramrod straight.

“You may as well call Deep Blue a calculator. FRIDAY is everything, including my omniscient security guard. So don’t go pulling any stunts. Capisce?”

“Capoosh,” Michelle says.

“So, what do you study?”

“Engineering,” she says, in a voice like that should be obvious. “It was a requirement for this placement.”

“If you say so.” He thinks he got a file on these kids. Their application forms and stuff. He didn’t read them.

“Biomedical.”

“You?” he asks Peter.

“Environmental, sir.”

The elevator doors open and Tony leads the pair down the hall to his workshop. It occurs to him now, probably a bit late, definitely a bit late, that he’ll have to actually think of something for these kids to do. “Any expectations for the next months?”

Michelle grins. “My friend bet me fifty bucks that I wouldn’t last the whole two months, so I’m mostly here to spite him. Come to think of it, that may have been part of his plan.”

“Isn’t this supposed to be some sort of,” he gestures vaguely, “rare and ultimate opportunity to turn your life around?”

“Long as we’re not turning this into a big sob story.”

“No worries,” Tony says, “I have absolutely zero interest in hearing about your tragic backgrounds and reasons for being here. Negative interest. You’re both just here to do the boring parts of the work I don’t want to do.”

“Just a heads up,” Michelle says. “If you ask me to get you coffee, I will spit in it.”

“Hmmm.” Tony looks at Peter. “You’ll get me coffee, won’t you?”

Peter puts the duffel bag down on a desk, bottle opener clanging against the metal surface. “How do you take it, sir?”

-

Pepper is obviously wildly furious by the time she finally discovers the interns are already in the building. She invades the workshop in the middle of his introductory tour, her heels damn near puncturing the floor tiles, fingers tight around her clipboard. To anyone else, she probably looks perfectly composed. She throws only one single, deeply annoyed look at Tony before smiling perfunctorily and shaking hands. “Peter, Michelle.”

“Hello, ma’am,” says Peter, standing a little straighter.

“’Sup,” says Michelle.

Pepper turns her smile on Tony. It flickers at the edges. “I see you’ve gone ahead and started without me.”

“They’re mine, aren’t they?”

“After the formalities have been dealt with. We have an orientation briefing, along with our interns who started today in the PR department.”

“I will not have my interns,” Tony says, “cross-contaminated by the seepage of our public relations department, thank you very much.” And, to Michelle and Peter: “Pepper here is my PA which means, when it comes down to it, she has to do what I say even if she doesn’t like it.”

“Must be a hoot,” Michelle says.

Unfortunately for Tony, Pepper disproves him in less than no time. “Michelle, Peter, please follow me for orientation.” And both his interns do; Peter meekly, bringing his duffel bag, Michelle with a smirk in Tony’s direction like she’s only doing it to spite him.

-

“Wash your hands,” he says imperiously when they return, a little under an hour later. “Get the stench off you.” He leans back in his chair and pours another handful of blueberries from the bag into his mouth.

Michelle yawns and stretches her arms. “I mean, yeah, that was boring.” She points a thumb at Peter. “So what’s up with him. Can he say anything other than yes sir, no sir?”

Tony can’t suppress a snort at that, but also says, “all right, pipe down. Still waters and all.”

“I’m here to be useful, not insult everyone,” Peter says, doggedly.

Michelle rolls her eyes. “Thank god you got nice eyes, because they’re the only balls you have.”

Peter looks baffled.

Tony’s first impressions: Michelle: the kind of person who thinks the only way she’ll get what she wants, is if she takes it by force. Peter: bland and too earnest.

“So, uh. What’d you guys wanna do today?” he asks.

-

They converge in their windowless hotel room that afternoon for a debrief. Peter feels frazzled, but determined not to let it show. Pepper is the last one to arrive. She kicks off her heels as soon as she is in the door and pulls out her Chignon pin, letting her hair fall down. “Pigeon took a big fat crap on my car,” she says, miffed.

It was bizarre to actually see her as Pepper Potts today; composed, diplomatic, a bit pedantic. It made Peter feel almost inadequate, like he also should have designed an entirely different personality to go into this mission. Something closer to Michelle. Rougher around the edges, rebellious, street-smart.

He’d never be able to pull that off in a convincing way.

Maria has him describe his entire day from start to finish. Pepper fills in a few gaps. Stark essentially told them to think of ‘some project’ they wanted to do and then gave them paper and pen to write down ideas.

“I did write up a training plan for him,” Pepper says. “But it’s just as well he didn’t follow it. If he lets you do whatever, it makes it easier for us to let this work in our favor.”

Peter has already been pondering options to turn this ‘project’ into something useful for the mission, perhaps a hidden camera or microphone, though he’d have to be extremely careful with this FRIDAY watching everything like a paranoid Roomba. He observed Stark interact with her a few times today and it’s very clear that absolutely nothing gets past her.

“I suggest you use your first week to map out Tony Stark’s workshop in as much detail as possible,” Maria says. “And we’ll devise a plan of action based on that. From now on, we debrief in this location on Thursdays only. Obviously, inform me immediately if there is noteworthy news during the week.” She nods. “Good first day.”

-

The thing is, it didn’t feel like a good first day, Peter thinks once he gets home. If anything it felt pretty—stressful. It was immediately clear that Stark and Michelle were somehow on the same wavelength and Peter was the odd one out again. Which is fine. It’s fine. Michelle Jones is there for a reason, after all. That part worked, at least. She certainly did pull focus away from him. So that’s good, actually.

It’s just been a while since he felt so much like he was just in the way. He doesn’t even understand why he, on some level, needs Tony Stark to like him: the man sneers at dead dogs.

…And is probably a criminal making millions by selling weapons that kill innocent civilians; that too.

He thought he’d need to play nice with an asshole, but in fact he shouldn’t, because Tony Stark seems far less likely to lose interest in people who are rude to his face. He should have seen it coming, perhaps. Natasha did remind him that social skills go a long way. Or asocial skills, really, when it comes to Tony Stark and Michelle Jones. He had dismissed it at the time, but now it feels like every single other skill he has learned in the past years, through many ‘yes ma’ams’ and ‘no sirs’, is as useless as a parachute in a submarine. All he should have learned is how to clap back at insults.

A low-stakes mission, Pepper had called it. They’re probably expecting him to sail through.

What if I can’t do this, he thinks, and suddenly he can’t breathe. There is a rubber band around his chest, squeezing. His fingers tingle and he rubs his arm. What use is he to anyone if he fucks this up? He stands and paces. He throws open all the windows but it feels like the air is pulling away from him.

He wonders distantly if this is what people call a panic attack.

He stumbles into the bathroom and turns the shower on full blast, cold. He shucks his clothes and steps in, immediately gasping for breath as his heart stutters wildly in his chest. His brain freezes along with his body.

He lasts only a minute, maybe two, and then turns the shower off. The tingling feeling in his hands is gone, but it might just be because they are numb from the cold. He towels himself off wildly.

Get it together.

Nothing bad is actually happening, everything is fine. It was just a first day, and even a good first day, Maria said. The issue is inside his own head. He'll skip dinner and go patrolling. That will calm him down.

-

He swings around the city until he can feel his heartbeat in his ears. He wants to tire himself out so he’s sure he’ll actually sleep. Once he gets to bed, though, his sleep-addled brain rocks that hamster wheel of thoughts right back into motion. He pulls the blankets over his head and stays there. Too tired to move, too wound up to sleep.

-

Rhodey steps onto his balcony unannounced, taps Tony against the shoulder with a bottle of beer he already stole from the fridge, and says: “Well?”

“We had a hoot. One of them is very neat and polite. The other one thinks I’m an idiot barely worth talking to.”

“I think I know which one you like more.” Rhodey turns over a bucket and sits, tugging his scarf down to take a sip. The little cubbyhole, the corner pocket of the tower that Tony carved out for himself has always been sparsely furnished. Tony splurged on a painting or two, and everything else is just reused office furniture.

Tony was acquisitive as a kid. When things were nice, he wanted to own them, and when he didn’t, he considered it a cosmic oversight. He spent a lot of his teens browsing real estate that went for at least seven figures and imagining himself living there. His parents were reasonably liberal with their spendings on him; they had a high standard of living but they also had a high standard of self-discipline and always reined him in on his more ludicrous ideas, like celebrating his sweet sixteenth by taking his classmates on a private jet tour around the world. Back then, he looked forward to the moment when he would own the whole company and could do whatever the hell he wanted.

He was seventeen when his parents died, and their grotesque amounts of money were suddenly his, but it was sickening. The idea of lavish parties and million-dollar mansions now made him queasy.

There were some sparse living quarters tucked away in a corner of the tower, where his parents stayed sometimes when meetings ran very long. Tony moved in there and never looked at another real estate listing again. He owns a few expensive suits and sunglasses, and one insanely expensive watch, and that’s enough to maintain his front of rich, spoiled billionaire, and keep people at a distance.

“They’re both fine,” he says. “It’s just easier to be an asshole to her than to him. I was counting on a bit more oomph. I have a feeling Michelle probably had it a lot rougher, growing up.”

“You know, ‘kids who had it rough’ doesn’t just mean they’re troublemakers,” Rhodey points out. “It could mean he lost a loved one or, I don’t know, spent his teenage years battling cancer.”

“True.”

Every struggling kid deserves a Rhodey. Even the annoyingly polite ones.

Chapter Text

He had never even noticed before that some corner stores sell fresh blueberries in little pouches. He spots several kinds of them now, by the walnuts and dried apricots. He buys Zespri, the same brand Mr. Stark had.

It’s early morning, and he’s okay, actually. Hunger and lack of sleep make him double woozy and he feels a bit like he’s drifting, pleasantly.

No one will notice, he’ll make sure of it. He’ll be sharp. Professional. He goes home and has a strong cup of coffee and a can of red bull, forces himself to eat a few pickles, straight from the jar. He tips half a glass of water over his flamingo flower and feels like he already accomplished a whole lot today.

He’s going to do well today. He’s going to take his flaws and use them in his favor, be the timid intern who does everything by the book and would never keep secrets. He’s going to prove himself and find something, something good, to put on the table at the next debrief—

There is a knock at the door.

Which isn’t supposed to happen. He can’t have people just drop by when the apartment is a fucking mess because he’s been useless and lazy oh god oh god there’s takeaway containers in the sink and unopened letters all over the couch and pieces of styrofoam— he doesn’t even remember where those came from—and a pile of clothes from…

Another knock.

Fuck—what if it’s Maria or Nat?

He gathers armfuls of trash and hurls it into his bedroom, kicks a few more stray pieces of paper aside as he makes his way to the door. He nervously smoothes a wrinkle out of his shirt and opens the door, heart pounding.

“Hello dear,” April says and Peter breathes out, almost wants to laugh.

“Hey. Hi, April.”

“I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“Oh.” He scratches the back of his ankle with his other toe. “No, I’m leaving for the internship soon.”

“That’s what I thought. I was hoping I could borrow some aspirin, I have a bit of a headache. And perhaps a functioning can opener? I’ll have it back to you by this evening.”

“Of course.”

“Join me for a cup of coffee this evening?”

“I’d like that.”

He’ll consider this a subtle wake-up call, he tells himself as he looks for his can opener. He is actually going to clean the apartment later today. Enough is enough.

-

“What do you think?” Tony asks, pulling the hem of his new sweater down to better show the picture of a pig on a motorcycle on the front.

“I think it looks… very heterosexual.”

“That’s precisely what I requested in the store.” He never wears clothes unless June approves. She told him many times she was a seamstress in another life, which might mean ‘before I lost my house’, or ‘because I reincarnated from an eighteenth-century artisan’. Either way she seems to have a real preference for bright or silly clothes.

He always visits June on Tuesdays, because that’s when she makes croissants. Puff Puff Pastry is tucked away in a corner of the food court on the 52nd floor. June started across the hall at the salad bar, but the manager over there is a bit more high-strung and couldn’t cope very well with June’s initial inability to follow a daily routine. So Tony had her moved to the bakery, whose Chef de Pâtisserie happens to be a former convict with precisely the right life experience to haul June’s life back on track.

“I just got some new interns.”

“May the Lord have mercy on ‘em,” she says solemnly. She lays his usual order on the counter for him, a plain croissant wrapped in a white paper bag.

“I think I’ll bring them here sometime, they might learn something from you. It’s a… some kind of charity that helps young adults getting back on their feet after a rough patch.”

“And that relates to me, how?” she asks, but she’s smirking.

“Would you mind?”

“Don’t expect miracles from me, eh?”

“No, no. Just put the fear of God into them. They’re both little snotrags.”

“Never stopped you from becoming successful, did it?”

It’s good, talking to June. He can be an asshole freely and it won’t perturb her. She is also his only employee who is unafraid to curse him out.

“What do I owe you?”

“Two fifty.”

“Can you break a 500 dollar bill?”

She throws a napkin at him. “Bug off, punk.”

-

He catches Pepper in one of those rare moments when she looks almost human. Not perfectly poised, but leaning back in her office chair; arms crossed, gaze on the ceiling tiles, heels digging into the carpet. She looks very deep in thought. Probably debating which labels to use for her next spreadsheet.

“I want food,” Tony says.

She doesn’t startle or veer up the way most employees would. She doesn’t even look away from the ceiling. “That’s a tricky request, Mr. Stark. Have you tried the cafeteria, if the suggestion is not too outlandish?”

“I want unhealthy food. Which Ms. Bain banned.”

“Hm. You’re welcome to fire her at your earliest convenience.”

Pepper has made it clear before now that she is gunning for the position of CEO at this company. It’s strangely flattering that she apparently sees a future here, despite how often Tony derails her daily schedule.

She sits up straighter and looks at him. “Order in.”

“I don’t want to order. I’m hungry right now. I want some cheesecake. Make there be cheesecake.”

“You are three minutes away from me calling an HR meeting about professional conduct in the workplace.” She slowly twirls her pen around. “I will be coming down to the workshop this morning to take a few pictures for the ‘Turning Point Initiative’ newsletter.”

“Pictures.”

“For the ‘Turning Point Initiative’ newsletter.”

He pretends to have no idea what the hell that is, gives her a blank look.

“Are you following the training plan I outlined?”

The blankness is genuine this time. He doesn’t remember her giving him one. They’re just kinda farting around up there, doing whatever he can come up with.

“Let those kids do something fun today, yes?” she says. “Let them explore the workshop a bit.”

There are hard drives full of Iron Man tech designs hidden behind his wall, and a suit behind a steel hatch under his desk. But sure, let them explore. “About the cheesecake?”

“Get out.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

-

“Blueberries?” Peter asks, holding out a white-purple bag.

“I don’t like being handed things.” Tony snatches it out of his hand and frowns at the packaging. “Huh. You got me the exact brand I like. After you saw me eat them yesterday.” He observes Peter across the rim of his tinted glasses. “You know I don’t love brownnosing, right?”

Across the room, Michelle suppresses a snort.

“I just bought them,” Peter says, looking flustered. “I just—buy stuff.”

“Go do something useful,” Tony says, and Peter retreats to his assigned workbench.

Tony handed them both a pile of assembly drawings for several rejected product ideas, just to see what they’ll come up with, how their minds even work, what kind of stuff draws their eye. Michelle started scribbling as soon as she got her hands on a pencil. Peter, on the other hand, slowly and very carefully sorted through the drawings first before landing on one that he has been studying quietly for the past twenty minutes.

He finally picks up a pencil now, and starts copying the design onto a blank piece of paper.

Tony puts the blueberries aside and goes to Michelle’s table first. It seems she mainly put question marks all over several of his sketches. “I want to know how they work,” she says.

“I can tell.”

He sits with her for a while, walking her through the failed designs for a wind turbine that had far too high noise levels, and a composting toilet with inadequate ventilation.

“Still better ventilation than our house, I bet,” she mutters.

He moves onto Peter’s workbench. Peter sits back in his seat and turns his sketch over for him to study.

It’s an oldie. An energy blaster that never actually went on the market.

He swiftly recognizes that Peter’s altered design uses a different synthetic conductor: a material capable of withstanding extreme heat. It would compromise the power output, though, so it’s not actually a practical improvement. But the kid did identify correctly that this particular weapon runs a risk of overheating after prolonged use; Tony remembers that flaw from their field testing. “We don’t make weapons at Stark Industries anymore,” is all he can think to say.

“Oh. You didn’t specify. I’m sorry sir, should I—?”

“No, hang on. You’re right, I didn’t… I just wanted to see ideas. It’s just, with your background I would have expected you to pick something from our… more recent projects.”

“It was objectively a good invention.”

“The road to hell is paved with good inventions,” Tony mutters, laying the sketch back down.

Peter pulls it closer, scrutinizing him cautiously. “Why did you stop making weapons, sir?”

“There’s more money in solar panels.”

“But surely the overhaul of the entire production line was a massive investment? Practically establishing a whole new brand. People losing their jobs.”

He sniffs and aims for a disdainful tone of voice. “People losing their jobs is no concern of mine.” In reality everyone at the company was offered the option of retraining. Some people did leave on their own accord, apparently too horny about producing weapons to think about anything more… well, less murdery.

“My mom once lost her job a week before Christmas,” Michelle says. Her voice is level. “She worked there for twelve years. And they didn’t even tell her in person, she got a mass email, no need to come in tomorrow.”

“Oh, well everyone we fired got a ten-dollar AMC gift card. So I think we did good.”

Michelle glares viciously. “Enough to see half a movie.”

“It would definitely have been a whole movie back then. Inflation.”

She scrunches up her nose at him and then turns away, continuing to work with her jaw set.

Sometimes Tony tries so hard to pretend to be an asshole that he thinks he might just be an asshole. “Hey, Pete,” he says. “Get me some coffee.”

“I’ve never even been to the movie theater,” Michelle mutters from across the room.

-

They go to the food court on the 52nd floor for lunch. The line outside Puff Puff Pastry is long, so Tony steers them to the salad bar instead. Michelle is outraged at all the options being vegetarian. “Bunny huggers.”

“You know you signed up at a pro-environment company, right?”

“Still. Not even a tuna melt.”

“I thought students were supposed to be socially aware.”

“I am very aware,” she says, piling chickpeas into her salad bowl with resignation, “that I want bacon.”

“We’ll get you over to the dark side. You’ll be going on climate marches before you know it.”

They sit in a corner booth and tuck in. Michelle eats with one arm curled around her bowl, like she thinks someone might take it away. “Tastes of moral superiority,” she says.

-

Pepper enters the workshop already brandishing her phone. “All right,” she says without preamble. “Pictures for the newsletter. The agreement is, no names, picture taken from behind.”

Michelle folds her arms. “What agreement?”

“The one you signed when this opportunity was kindly presented to you by the Turning Point Initiative.”

“I need to start reading shit before I sign,” she mutters.

“If that’s the only thing you take away from this internship, I suppose you’ve learned something valuable,” Pepper says, managing to sound only mildly patronizing.

Michelle’s eyes glitter furiously.

“All right then, let’s have you standing around the holo-table, put something on that looks interesting — what on earth, no not any sketches of weapons, put that away this instant. Mr. Stark, if you would stand on the other side, Michelle and Peter, back towards me. That’s lovely.” She takes what feels like fifty photos and then says again: “That’s lovely.”

“Happy now?” Michelle snaps.

Pepper slides the phone into her inside pocket. “If I weren’t, you would know it, Ms. Jones.”

“I don’t like her,” Michelle says as soon as Pepper left the room.

“That was clear.”

“She was all stuffy and rigid during our first interview.” She looks at Peter. “Wasn’t she at yours?”

“Uh,” Peter says.

“Oh, what am I thinking. I bet you two got on like a wildfire, two peas in a pod.”

-

All right. Peter unbuckles his seatbelt with great determination.

He’s going to get out a bucket and a sponge and clean his damn apartment. It shouldn’t be this hard. It’s—embarrassingly unprofessional, in fact, that he has allowed his home to get as messy as it did.

He steps out of his car, crosses the front lawn and takes the stairs to the second floor.

The door to April’s apartment is open. A couple is standing in the doorway, talking in hushed undertones, the man bouncing a sleeping baby in his arms. Peter pauses. “Everything okay?”

“Oh. Yes,” she says, a bit distantly. But when he turns to open his own door, she says: “Oh, sorry, you live—” she waves a hand towards the hallway full of bird pictures behind her. “My aunt passed away this afternoon, I need a number for the building manager.”

“Oh,” Peter says. He rocks back, his own door handle jamming painfully into his spine. “Passed away.”

“It went very quickly. Brain aneurysm. She felt unwell this morning and called the doctor, and within a few hours...”

“Oh,” Peter says again, stupidly. He starts biting the nail of his thumb. He has no idea what to say, so he grasps for a customary “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“Yes. Thank you.” She looks at him, a bit expectantly.

Right. She wants something from him. He feels strangely untethered, a boat cut off from its anchor. Can I come to the funeral?  Seems like an impertinent question. He takes a shallow breath and tries something else: “Let me find you that number.”

“Thank you so much.”

He steps into his own hallway and quickly closes the door behind him. A little dazed, he shuffles to the living room and stands there for a moment, looking around, trying to remember why he came in.

Right. A number for the building manager.

He can see the panic coming, but isn’t able to feel it yet.

He finds his other phone, the one with only three contacts listed, and goes back outside, telling himself to act normal. He gives her the phone number.

Clean. He was going to clean the apartment. His three newspapers a day have grown into an unread pile next to the balcony doors. There are empty jars lined up next to his overflowing trashcan. And there are crunched-up cans of red bull fucking everywhere.

He should water his flamingo flower. He looks for something that will hold water and pours a half-empty coffee cup into the sink, past the pile of dishes. He fills it up and goes to the window. He pours it over the curled, brittle leaves that have faded to a dull brown.

He stares down at it a moment, then sets the cup down with a shaky exhale and presses his fingers against his eyes. What the hell is wrong with him. The plant is dead, it’s not going to matter how much water he pours on there, it won’t come back to life.

He roughly scrubs his face with his hand and goes back to the kitchen. Maybe dinner first, collect his thoughts. He checks his overhead cabinets and finds a can of tomato soup. That’s good. That’s healthy. Vegetables. 180 calories.

April borrowed his can opener.

He sets the can back down on the kitchen counter with a clang and bows his head, eyes burning. A cold feeling has crept from his legs all the way up to his chest. He is beginning to feel very heavy.

He’ll clean some other time.

He curls up on the couch, turns on Nanny McPhee, and scrolls through his phone, looking at all the fake people he can’t call because they are just part of an algorithm. Lisa Brady sent him a picture of a cat. He replies with a heart emoji and feels hollow inside.

-

“I need a page one rewrite of that whole article.” Tony waves his phone in Pepper’s face. “How am I not even mentioned in it?”

She bats it away without looking up from her work. She is scratching her way through lists of numbers with an angry red pen. “You are mentioned.” There are massive piles of paperwork stacked up around her.

“As ‘The owner of Stark Industries’, not by name.” He enlarges the photo with two fingers. Peter and Michelle, from the back. And, in the left corner, Tony’s elbow only just entering frame. It made him chuckle when he saw it. Pepper one hundred percent did that on purpose.

“Yes,” she says. “He’s a very modest guy. Agreed to help two young people through a troubled time without seeking any personal gain.”

“Sounds like a stick in the mud.”

Her red scratching becomes scratchier. “You have inconsistent totals in this week’s balance. Again.”

“I told you to leave that stuff to Sunny.”

“Ms. Bain has requested me specifically to look into it.”

“Fine. Look into it.” He raps his knuckles lightly against her desk. “About my cheesecake?”

“About my promotion?” she fires back.

He grins in acknowledgement. “Impasse.”

-

“Pete, get me some coffee.”

Michelle huffs, but oddly, Peter doesn’t respond with the usual enthusiastic subservience. He is sitting at his workbench, staring down at his drawings —has been staring for the past ten minutes.

Tony leans back on his feet and moves the holographic projection off to one side with a handwave to get a better look at the kid, then waves his hand again to turn it off entirely. “Mr. Romero.” He picks up a tiny bolt and throws it at Peter. It drops down on the table, bounces once and then SNAP, Peter snatches it out of the air with one hand. He drops it down to the papers in front of him and only then looks up, eyebrows drawn together in a puzzled expression.

“Coffee,” Tony says.

“Coffee?”

“Yeah, sheesh. Kid. Who died?”

Peter’s face twists strangely and Tony thinks oh fuck.

Peter slides the drawings away from him and stands. “Coffee,” he repeats, a bit firmer. He turns and leaves the workshop, doors hissing as they slide open and shut.

“You dumbass,” Michelle says from behind him.

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t know we were allowed to throw stuff at him, though. That’s handy.”

Tony turns to her. “Out of interest. Were you a bully in high school? Stealing lunch money and dunking heads?”

“Do you get your information about the daily grind at high school from Glee?”

“Did you just answer my question with another question?”

“Do you enjoy the epic highs and lows of high school football?”

When Tony has no answer to that — because what the hell — she smirks and turns back to her work.

Peter returns after a few minutes and pushes the cup of coffee across the table at him.

“Thank you,” Tony says. “Why don’t you show me your work from this morning?”

“I… hadn’t really started yet.”

Tony lifts an eyebrow. “It’s a quarter past ten.”

Peter’s gaze swings from him to the clock on the wall behind him and Tony sees him actually blanch, like he hadn’t even noticed time passing. All right. This kid needs a break. He plucks up his coffee cup. “Let’s go, you two. If you’re not producing anything up to standard, we’re putting a pin in that. We’re going on a field trip. Follow me, then. —For the love of God, Peter, leave the duffel bag, you won’t need it and no one’s gonna steal it.”

Peter begrudgingly lets go of the straps. Michelle also looks a bit chagrined. “I was working!”

“Chop, chop.”

She marches up to them and jabs Peter in the side with her elbow. Peter’s only response is to step out of elbow-range.

They go to R&D, UI design and Testing & Validation. Everywhere they walk in, employees drop what they’re doing and warily follow him with eyes huge in their faces, like gazelles who spotted a lion.

“So, who did die?” he hears Michelle ask under her breath at some point.

“Uh. My neighbor.”

Michelle hums. “I don’t even know my neighbors.”

“Well. She was the only person I really talked to outside of—work.”

Tony expects Michelle to pounce on that statement and pile on the ridicule, but she just says: “Oh yeah, people do suck on average. It’s slim pickings.”

-

Employees in blue overalls bustle around in the parking garage, unloading a van. Peter drapes his arms over the steering wheel and leans his chin down on them. He watches the men detachedly as they stack boxes together.

He would be lying if he claimed that the mission was at the forefront of his mind today. He needs to snap out of it, he can’t afford to be mucking around like this. Every minute counts.

Michelle was damn near civil to him, though, for the first time since they met. And Tony Stark was less of an asshole than usual, too. That’s good. That’s a good thing to report back at his next debrief.

Aaaannd now he feels like he’s using April’s death as an excuse to get their sympathy.

Ugh. Just what he needed. A crisis of conscience.

He drops his head down and leans his forehead against the steering wheel, breathing out. He doesn’t feel like driving home, what’s the point? There’s nothing there for him except dirty dishes and piles of laundry. He may as well nap in his car right here and go back up tomorrow.

Eventually, though, he remembers Stark’s AI who sees everything and he reluctantly starts the engine.

-

It’s pouring rain, wind coming in wild gusts, when Peter drives to work the next morning. His windshield wipers are going full throttle. People are jumping from shop awning to shop awning, holding the hoods of their coats with both hands.

He’s plenty early. He has a plan for the day — freaking finally — and worked it out step by step. It has to look legit, even to the omniscient, omnipresent FRIDAY, so when he arrives at SI, the first thing he does is go up to reception. “Do you have a lost and found here? I lost a key. Small, round one, with a little green fish as the keychain.”

The receptionist leaves and returns, dropping a whole shoebox full of keys on the counter. Peter carefully sifts through them, then shakes his head. “I’ll try again later in case someone found it.”

He takes the elevator up, checking his watch. He heads to the bathrooms first, and makes another show of looking around there, checking all corners. And then he heads to the workshop. He has fifteen minutes before Michelle will get here, and anywhere between half an hour and an hour before Stark himself will waltz in with an air like he’s expecting slow-motion applause.

He starts where it would seem logical to start: around his own workbench. He opens and closes the drawers, checks underneath, slides the whole thing a few feet to the side and then back. And then he starts with a wide, sweeping circle around the workshop. He feels around all the shelves, ducks down to look under the desks, gets on all fours and checks the inches of space underneath every machine.

He starts checking behind the open storage closets, sliding each of them away from the wall and feeling around carefully before sliding it back. He reaches one with a load of crates stacked on the top shelf, making it top-heavy, when FRIDAY suddenly pings on. “Can I help you Mr. Romero?”

“I’m looking for my key,” Peter says, unperturbed, nudging the closet away from the wall.

“I have no records of you dropping it anywhere in the workshop.”

“But you can’t look behind the shelves, I assume?” Interesting that she’s activated at this exact moment. There are scratches on the floor, like this particular shelving unit has been recently moved here.

“You have not been near this corner yesterday. I could help you retrace your steps?”

Peter carefully inspects the back of the shelves, runs one hand alone the wall. “I may not even have lost it yesterday. It could have—” he falters when his fingertips find a groove, barely more noticeable than two pieces of paper overlaying each other. “Could have been any time in the past week,” he murmurs.

“Hey Pete, what are you up to?”

Peter drops his hand away and turns. Tony Stark stands just inside the doorway, unusually early and sounding just a little out of breath, like he ran here, like FRIDAY warned him that Peter was dangerously close to …something. His gaze is hard.

“I lost a key,” Peter says. “It has a little green fish on—”

“Try lost and found.”

“I’ve already been. It’s… It’s my neighbor’s spare key.” Screw it, yeah, he’s using that. Great excuse to seem unusually frantic about finding it. He doesn’t even need to make an effort to make his voice stumble a little. “They’re—They’re cancelling her lease and the landlord needs it back”

Stark slowly breathes in and takes a few steps closer. “When did you last use it?”

“Uh, I—never used it. I just had it.”

“So you could have lost it anywhere, kid,” Stark says. with more gentleness than Peter would have expected from him. “Over the last… months? Year?”

“I guess,” Peter murmurs. “Maybe. I just—”

“FRIDAY, have you seen a key with a little green fish?”

“Nowhere in my records, boss.”

“Alert me if that changes, yeah?”

“Will do.”

Stark takes a few more steps, closing the distance between them. “People lose keys all the time, kid. I’m sure your landlord is used to it.” He wraps his hands around the metal vertical posts of the shelving unit and firmly pushes it back against the wall. “Let’s go get some coffee.”

They run into Michelle in the hallway right outside the elevator. She is drenched, water pouring in rivulets down her sleeves and dripping on the floor. She looks at them savagely. “Look at you, driving up in your cars, perfectly dry, rich kids.”  She walks closer to them, right up in their faces, and then shakes herself out like a dog.

-

It’s with a sense of relief that Peter exits the elevator into the Tower’s lobby that afternoon. He has something to bring to the table during this debrief. It might be nothing, but it doesn’t feel like nothing. There are things hidden in Tony Stark’s workshop. He did something useful.

He just needs to drop by reception again to ask for the key, to complete the whole charade, a convincing finale to the act. He is halfway across the lobby when he freezes.

His mother is standing in the middle of the lobby, near the wriggly bubbly statue. She has already spotted him.

Seeing her feels like being ripped right down the middle. Like two different realities suddenly smashing into one. His mother isn’t part of this life. She is part of something that he packed away very deep down and tightly screwed the lid on. This isn’t—

She raises a hand and waves. She looks casually impatient, like they agreed to meet here ten minutes ago and he made her wait. There is a black hole opening up right behind her and it’s pulling Peter in.

He turns around and flees back into the elevator, slamming the button for level B2.

He’ll reach the hotel for the debrief in only fifteen minutes, but he still calls ahead to Maria. “We may have a problem.”

Chapter Text

“That is a problem,” Maria agrees, though her face remains entirely impassive. “How does she know where you work? Have you been in contact with her?”

“Of course not,” Peter says hotly. “I don’t want to talk to her, I don’t want to see her.” This is not what he wanted for this debrief. He wanted to present them with useful progress, not a setback.

“Have you been in contact with anyone who may have been in contact with her?”

“I think you overestimate the breadth of my social life.”

Her eyebrows dip lower.

“I meant, no ma’am.”

Pepper snorts, then shrugs when Maria turns her gaze on her. “Look. Maybe it was the Turning Point Initiative newsletter. She could have seen that. So it’s our own fault, probably.”

“My face wasn’t in that,” Peter says.

“A mother can recognize her son from behind.”

“I just didn’t think mine would.”

“Natasha, look into that,” Maria says. “I want to know where the leak is. As for Ms. Parker herself, what to do about her?”

“I can ask security to contact me first if she shows up again,” Pepper says. “That won’t seem out of the ordinary, I’m the formal intern program administrator, we’ll just say Peter confided in me about this very personal matter. If I run interference, Tony Stark might never hear about it.”

Maria takes out her phone and starts typing. “Worst case scenario, Tony Stark does hear about her. Not a complete loss, because she is part of your backstory. If anything, if she shows up and throws a fit, it would lend authenticity to your reason for being in this Turning Point program.”

“Real fucking convenience,” Pepper drawls. “That you recruited a kid straight out of an abusive household.”

Maria ignores her. “He might not even question the difference in last names and assume she kept her maiden name. The only risk is he somehow hears she specifically asked for Peter Parker, in which case you can simply explain you changed your last name during the emancipation out of a desire to cut ties with your family. I can have some paperwork whipped up to corroborate that story, should it come to that. It would be inconvenient, him knowing your birth name, but not a complete risk.” She lays the phone aside and looks at Peter again. “All in all, nothing insurmountable.”

“Right,” Peter says. “Um. I really don’t want her to show up at work though.”

“We will discourage her. Subtly.”

Mary Parker doesn’t really do subtle. She throws things at people’s heads to show her disagreement. But he’s grateful at least that Maria doesn’t seem too exasperated at him for causing this whole situation, so he just nods.

“How is progress, otherwise?”

“Tony Stark isn’t exactly jovial and open. I’m… a little worried that two months won’t be enough.”

“I have faith in you,” Maria says, with that unwavering stare of hers.

That’s nice. That’s great.

He knows Maria cares. But there are moments when he doubts that she cares past his usefulness. How much of what she says is true, and how much is designed to simply get him in the right headspace?

Which is fine, anyway. They aren’t friends. This is a job. And he’s a professional. “I discovered a possible concealed door in his workshop when I searched the room. It was a quick sweep, so it stands to reason that there could be more concealed areas.” He describes the almost invisible seam in the wall, and how FRIDAY and Tony had reacted when he got too close to it. “Which is something,” he concludes. “But also makes it pretty obvious that I can’t go around knocking on all the walls without making myself very suspicious. They’re clearly pretty paranoid about it.”

Maria looks to Pepper for suggestions.

Pepper shrugs. “If we bring a wall scanner or thermal camera in there, either security will flag it downstairs or the AI will detect it. I once heard her warn Stark about some press lady coming in with a microphone hidden between the roots of a potted plant. No chance.”

“Will the AI detect it if it is surrounded by live tissue?” Maria asks.

Peter wonders if that means what he fears it means, and apparently it does because Pepper says: “You think FRIDAY won’t flag someone rooting through their own excrement in the toilets as suspicious?”

“Is there any way you could bring a scanner like that into the building, under some guise? You have enough credit built up over the past years that they won’t immediately suspect—”

“Perhaps,” Pepper says. “But even the CEO was once barred from going to the top floor because her smartphone had a VPN app installed that apparently also had some function for reading encrypted data packets if you, say, click about a hundred buttons and do a backflip. But FRIDAY still sounded the alarm. She was pretty cheesed off about it. Not enough to quit, unfortunately.”

“I can make it from the inside,” Peter says.

All eyes turn to him.

Peter forces himself to take a calming breath. “Look. You gave me this job for a reason, right? I got into his workshop because I actually know how to build things. And I’m good at it. Stark basically told us to do whatever we feel like. I will come up with some device that seems to have environmental purposes, but has the ability to detect hidden areas. And I’ll get his permission to make it, right there in his workshop.”

“He would never give that permission.”

“He would if it seemed on the surface like it had a different purpose. A trojan horse. I can design it in such a way that it doesn’t appear capable of scanning his room. I could pretend to make a mistake in the design and accidentally have the device scan the workshop.”

“So you’ll just need to outsmart Stark and his AI,” Pepper says dryly.

“I will,” Peter says.

-

He meets with Natasha in the basement under the gym on Friday morning. They’re supposed to go over his plans together, which Peter frankly thinks is a little ridiculous. He respects the hell out of Natasha, but she doesn’t have any kind of engineering background. He may as well explain everything in Italian.

Maria is just going to have to put her faith in him on this one, but it seems she is reluctant to. Which is fine. It’s fine. Peter is inexperienced and a wrong move could screw up their entire operation, he understands that.

He still feels a little crabby about it, though.

But he brings coconut macaroons, and Natasha brings cherry coke, they hop up on sugar and coffee. “I’ll visit your mother tomorrow,” she says. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Right. Take care of it, or… take care of it.”

“I’m not killing her, if that’s what you’re asking. Subtle, Maria said.”

“I really don’t think subtle will translate well, for her.”

“I know her a bit. I’ll figure it out.”

Peter keeps his head bowed as he pulls his designs out of his duffel bag. He arranges them on the table. Something is aching in his chest and he can’t really figure out what. “You knew when I ran away from home, right? You followed me. I saw you in the park.”

She nods.

“So how long had SHIELD been monitoring me?”

“Ever since Spider-Man appeared on the radar, of course.”

“And was it convenient?”

“What do you mean?”

“Was it convenient to SHIELD,” he says, keeping his voice very level, “that I was fucking miserable in that house?”

She crumples the empty can in her hand and throws it at the trashcan. “What do you think monitoring means, Parker? That I was in a van parked across the street 24/7 and mic‘d your bedroom? That I had nothing else to do? I didn’t know every little damn detail about your life!”

Peter blinks, taken aback at the unusual show of an emotion other than bland impatient patience. “Uh. Sorry.”

Natasha kicks the leg of the table, her jaw set. “Don’t apologize,” she says gruffly. “Just don’t ask stupid questions.”

She’s disappointed in him, and he discovers he really doesn’t like how that makes him feel. “Maria didn’t even question me when I wanted to get emancipated, so she must have known it was for a reason...”

“Maria wanted you to join SHIELD. She’s a government agent, not a social worker. She won’t be the one judging if the reason was valid: you wanted a way out and she had one to offer. So everybody is happy, right?” She snaps her fingers. “You gotta decompartmentalize that shit in our line of work. If a, a childhood tragedy is something you can use for a mission, learn to use it. Gin—Pepper would probably have preferred for you to go to some lovey-dovey foster family, because she doesn’t understand— People like you and me— Maria put the foster family on the table and you took it right back off. You wanted emancipation. You are an adult, you either are or you aren’t. You can’t pick and choose. Am I wrong?”

“No. You’re not.”

Natasha deflates. “Let’s get to work.”

-

After that he has a whole weekend just to himself. It… doesn’t go well. It’s an ocean of empty, pointless time, time without an assignment, without a purpose.

-

It somehow hadn’t even occurred to Tony that his interns might actually come up with something useful all on their own.

But Peter returns after the weekend, looking weirdly exhausted, and presents him with rough sketches of an amphibious-drone hybrid with a scanner that detects chemical leaks in water through heat anomalies. Tony is trying to taper down his enthusiasm for the sake of his asshole persona. He makes skeptical humming noises as he thoroughly inspects the drawing. Peter is sitting across the table, looking nervously expectant. Hmm. A rather unique combination of spectral sensors, drift trackers, thermal cameras, hyperspectral imaging; the sensors don’t seem compatible at first glance, and the thermal cameras would be a safety concern but the way Peter is setting them up, they would only work under water anyway—

“Hey losers, I need tampons,” Michelle announces.

Tony’s head sways up at her. She’s standing between the sliding doors, hands on her hips.

“I forgot my stupid little bag, and I need tampons.”

“Why?” Tony asks.

“Why?” she repeats. “Why???”

“Sorry. Right. I don’t remember putting in an order for those recently. Or at any point in my life.”

“I’ll settle for pads.”

“Pads.” What the fuck are pads. “FRIDAY?”

“I would happily direct Ms. Jones to our facilities one floor down. All toilets in our buildings have tampon dispensers, except the one outside this workshop.”

Tony frowns. “That feels like an oversight.”

“I imagine they didn’t expect you to need them,” FRIDAY says. “But I’ll put in a request to have one installed, post-haste. Ms. Jones, follow my directions, please.”

Michelle disappears again. Tony looks toward Peter to find the kid looking about as awkward as he feels. “You didn’t grow up with sisters either, huh?”

Peter looks back at him, a bit startled, and Tony realizes he has never asked a question about his interns’ personal lives.

Peter clears his throat and ducks his head. “Uh, no. Only child.”

“Samesies. Orphan?”

Peter shakes his head.

“Just me, then.” He taps his fingers against the sketch before sliding it back Peter’s way. “There are reasonable ideas here, even if I doubt the device will work as intended.”

Peter, for the first time since he walked into the tower and—Tony wouldn’t be surprised—possibly for the first time in his life, looks defiant. “I think it will.”

Tony inflicts a tone of boredom. “Go ahead and try to prove me wrong.”

When Michelle gets back to the workshop, he says: “Hey kid. You got siblings?”

Her eyes narrow at him. She opens her mouth, closes it again, and then lands on a curt: “No.”

“Orphan?”

“This was all in my application file, I’m sure.”

“I didn’t read that.”

Her shoulders relax a fraction, as if she thought he was just baiting her with these questions. “Yup. Orphan.”

Tony nods. “Samesies.”

-

Michelle needs a few more pushes to get the brain-engine running. “I don’t know where to start,” she complains, staring down at a blank piece of paper.

Tony is reviewing some proposal about a small company that uses drones to collect data from nature reserves. His CEO is eager to make an offer to buy them out. Sure, it seems a fitting match, their missions are well aligned, but Tony is a bit tired of big companies always seeking to swallow up the smaller fish. Ix-nay on oligopoly, and all that.

Also, it’s boring.

He lays the paperwork aside and looks at Michelle. “Think of something that you wish existed because it would make your life easier.”

“Like a remote control that could turn people off?”

“Should I ask?”

She mimes aiming the remote at him and pressing a button.

Tony feels a childish urge to pretend to faint, as if she is five years old and he is the fun uncle entertaining her whimsies. He glowers at her instead, pretending to be irritated.

There might be something wrong with him, that he finds himself getting exasperated at Peter’s politeness, but amused by Michelle’s shameless misbehavior. Would she have survived if the Turning Point Initiative had placed her somewhere else, he wonders? Imagine her ending up at SkyTerra or Statacore, with their stifling company policies. Or even in the PR department of his own tower.

Whereas Peter Romero, soft-spoken, eager to please and always on time, would have flourished anywhere, probably. Tony isn’t even sure if the young man needs this opportunity. This kid is more polished and curated than most of his actual hires.

Smart kids who just need a chance, Pepper had told him.

Behind her workbench, Michelle has finally started scratching her pencil against paper. If Tony goes over there later and sees a remote control, he might be forced to revoke her coffee privileges.

-

Peter is pretty sure — he doesn’t mean to be smug or anything — but he’s pretty sure that he would have finished the whole scanner in a day if that was all he was trying to make. But no. He needs a device with a scanner that looks like it would only work under water, but that could with only a few modifications work in air. And he needs it to not work to some extent, it has to throw up just enough errors to provide the perfect excuse for him to keep tweaking and adjusting. But he also needs to be able modify it swiftly and have it working perfectly on the first actual try.

He chews his bottom lip as he stares at the screen of the laptop. He’s in early stages of the CAD design, going very slow, feeling like he needs to think ten moves ahead constantly to know which bits he should get right and which he should get wrong.

“Look who’s gracing us with her presence,” Stark says.

Peter glances up and sees only now that a stately woman has entered the room, late fifties, steel-rimmed glasses.

Peter has done enough research to recognize her as Ms. Bain, the CEO. She gives friendly nods at him and Michelle before telling Stark: “FRIDAY tells me you’ve been staring at that paperwork for half an hour, now.”

“Well, it’s riveting.”

“I did hide a dad joke in every clause,” she says dryly. “Just one signature will do.”

“I don’t know, Sunny. I’m not feeling this one.”

She stares him down. “Come to my office this afternoon,” she says, like a headmistress warning a disobedient child. And then, still equally as stern: “I’ll have oatmeal cookies.”

She leaves again.

She… seems okay. As CEOs of tech empires go.

Peter wonders if Pepper ever feels bad about trying to push her out of her job. You can’t have friends in this line of work, probably. You have to keep a distance. It’s just as well that Stark is an asshole, really. It would be a lot harder to plot circles around the man if he were kind. Or even pleasant.

Stark sweeps the papers together into a single pile with a sigh and leaves his desk, coming to Peter’s table first. “Well?”

“Uh,” Peter says, not sure what he’s being asked. “It’s… going okay?”

Stark leans over and stares at his screen for a while. Peter sits very still, feeling his ears go hot as he waits for the inevitable caustic comment. “Still don’t think it’ll work,” is all Tony Stark says in the end.

“It’ll work,” Peter says. The last thing he should do is ask for help and have Stark screw up his delicate balance of functional dysfunctional progress.

Stark moves to Michelle’s workbench and squints down at her first sketch. “A printer. Brilliant. That will revolutionize the way we distribute knowledge globally—”

“It’s a braille printer, dumbass,” she says. “One that’s gonna be actually portable, too.”

“Ah. So blind people can carry their printers around, just like the rest of us,” Stark says with a nod. He turns, so doesn’t see that Michelle sticks her tongue out at him.

Yeah. Just as well that he is an asshole.

-

He stops by the supermarket after work, because he knows the moment he crosses the threshold of his apartment, a strange weariness will settle over him like a heavy blanket. He can barely muster the energy to stand up off the couch, let alone head out again to shop. So he has learned to trick his mind by picking up groceries on the way home, before the exhaustion can take hold.

He gets food that he knows he’ll actually eat and won’t go off. Canned soup, crackers, cereal, bags of crisps, coffee, and three 12-packs of red bull. He has accepted by now that he’s not gonna be spending his evenings throwing together a cob salad or curry. He doesn’t need perfect meals. He just needs to hold his head above water.

He gravitates towards the health and wellness section of the store and isn’t even sure what he wants there, until he pauses by the feminine hygiene products. Christ, why are there, like, fifty different types of tampons? He bites the nail of his thumb and picks a smaller purple box that looks pretty classy.

Just in case Michelle needs them again.

He gets back in the car, and tucks them away in an inside pocket of his duffel bag.

He gets home. April’s doormat is gone, as is her name plate, and the wood looks like it has gotten a lick of paint. Peter stares at it for a while, feeling an irrational desire to go over and knock at the door. A small part of him is convinced she’ll answer, and they’ll have coffee on her balcony and everything will be fine.

He turns away and goes inside.

He dumps the bag of groceries in the kitchen and flops down on the couch. He scrolls through the fake messages on his phone and sends a few thumbs ups without really reading anything.

He opens his inbox to find an email from Deborah, sharing happily, It is time for another psychological evaluation :) Please fill out the attached questionnaire and I will get back to you soon with a date :)

That’s just the cherry on top of this day. He throws his phone on a pile of laundry, rolls over on his stomach, presses his face into the couch and tries to sleep.

-

“Today,” Tony says, “I’m going to introduce you two nerds to the rudest employee who bakes the best croissants in this company every Tuesday.”

“You’re in a good mood,” Michelle observes.

“Oh yeah, I just fired someone.”

Her face immediately falls into a scowl. It’s a sensitive issue with her, this ‘firing people’ thing.

“I also kicked a puppy on my way here.”

She analyses him a while longer. “You enjoy this, right?” she says, waving her pen in a little circle. “Being like this.”

“I don’t hate it,” Tony says.

“Ever tried not being an asshole?”

“After I worked so hard on becoming one? No thank you.”

Peter is observing them quietly from behind his own workbench, like a cat watching two dogs fight over a bone, like he wishes he could hide underneath something.

 “Well?” Tony says. “Get over here, or I’m leaving without you.”

They take the elevator down to the food court on the 52nd floor. Puff Puff Pastry is in a corner, squeezed in between the dumpling bar and the mezze counter.

June is sorting mini preserves by color. She’s wearing a scarf in her hair and a tie-dye shirt. “Oh good god, it’s you again.”

“Brought some ducklings.”

“Poor unfortunate souls.” Her gaze drifts from Tony to Michelle to Peter and then stays there.

“The usual, times three,” Tony says.

“Aren’t you…” June says. “Hey. Aren’t you that kid?”

Tony turns to follow her gaze. Peter looks puzzled, and awkward under the scrutiny. “Excuse me?”

“That kid who asked me for advice on how to be homeless.”

Peter flushes a bright red, mouth dropping open. “Oh my—June?”

“I’ll be damned!” She rounds the counter. “Let me have a better look.” She takes him by both elbows. “Still a scrawny little dear in headlights, aren’t you?”

“You… look good,” Peter says weakly.

“Compared to six years on the streets, I’d bloody hope so!” She ushers him to one of the metal chairs around the tiny square tables. “Sit down. I’m making you all some coffee.”

She bustles off to the espresso machine in the corner without even another look in Tony and Michelle’s direction.

Tony sets a hand on his hip. “I think I take offence.”

“Oh, same,” Michelle says. She takes three steps closer to Peter and pulls out a second chair. “Since when are you the most interesting person in the room?”

Peter still looks dazed. “How long has she been working here?”

Tony slips into a seat as well, leaning back to scrutinize the kid. “Two years, almost.”

“Must have been right after I met her,” Peter murmurs. “What are the odds?”

“How do you know her?”

“Uh,” Peter starts biting the nail of his thumb, looking a bit helpless. “She helped me. I think.”

“You think she helped you,” Tony repeats slowly.

Which is precisely how he echoed those words back, two years ago, on the roof of a church.

Holy buckets.

Son of a biscuit.

Michelle seems to have more pressing concerns. “How the hell did you go from being homeless to having an apartment and a car?”

Peter clears his throat, and wipes a hand down his face. The dazed look slides out of his eyes and his bland, polite look snaps back into place. “I wasn’t actually. I just ran away from home. I only lasted two, three days. Uh. A cop picked me up.”

He says it like it’s just another fact, like saying he used to have braces, or his pet rabbit died when he was twelve.

“And then, what, went back home?” Michelle asks, eyes narrowing.

“No,” he says curtly. “Got emancipated.” He looks over his shoulder towards June.

“Okay.” Michelle bumps Tony’s elbow with hers. “Honorary orphan, then.”

“Don’t you elbow me, I’m a billionaire.” He leans away from her and keeps squinting at Peter. Peter notices, frowns and pointedly looks away.

Michelle says what he is thinking. “Guess you’re not entirely cookie-cutter.”

Peter blinks at her. “Is that good?”

“Too soon to tell,” she says.

Tony knows he shouldn’t say much right now — his mind is racing too far ahead of his mouth. He needs to recalibrate first.

June brings them croissants and three cups of coffee. Tony raises his. “To honorary orphans.”

-

He leaves the kids in the workshop, Peter with his chemical leak detector and Michelle with her braille printer, and heads back to his own little apartment on the same top floor. “FRIDAY,” he says as soon as he’s through the door. “Does Peter live in Queens?”

“Yes, boss.”

He makes a beeline for his tablet on the kitchen counter. “Did he grow up there?”

“Yes, boss.”

He has never particularly cared to know the identity of Spider-Man. He made a half-hearted attempt at finding him after the kid randomly turned up in Manhattan, more out of concern than out of curiosity. But when it’s potentially dropped right into his lap… “And he’s a similar height to Spider-Man?”

A pause, before FRIDAY confirms. “They would appear to have a similar body type.”

“Any other data we can throw against this?”

“I could, but I would need to access private data on secure servers to analyze. Do I have the go-ahead?”

“No. No, that’s… not necessary.” He of all people understands the importance of keeping identities a secret. He cards a hand through his hair, then covers his eyes, blowing out a slow breath. He can see again, with a sudden vividness, that image of Spider-Man standing on the sidewalk with his arms full of trash, holding his ground until the moment Tony asked him if he was okay.

Homeless, emancipated, Spider-Man. His whole image of Peter just got unzipped and turned inside out, like one of those flip plushies.

And he isn’t going to let it show— for even a moment.

“Are you all right, boss?”

“Of course not. I have two insane kids in my workshop.”

-

Peter passes by Puff Puff Pastry again before going home, hoping for a chance to talk to June alone, find out how she’s doing. The food station is closed, though. The sign on the door shows opening hours from 7 AM till 3 PM.

He’ll come in early sometime soon.

He also stops by the lobby, throwing a quick look around to make sure his mother isn’t skulking around, before stepping into the elevator to go down to the lowest parking level.

He arrives home to find Natasha’s dented car parked in front of his building. He bites his lip and lets his car roll into the spot on her right side, looks over to find her waiting behind the wheel, black beanie and fingerless gloves. She beckons with two fingers.

He turns off the engine, steps out of his car and straight into the passenger seat of hers.

“We’re getting gelato,” she says.

Peter wants to ask Am I in trouble, but it seems like a childish question, so he doesn’t. And he wants to ask how her talk with his mother went, but he’s afraid he won’t like the answer, so he doesn’t. They drive, in a silence that isn’t comfortable, to one of the rare gelato places that’s open in February. Natasha hands him a twenty-dollar bill once they get there. Peter nods and gets out.

He gets coconut for Natasha and hazelnut for himself.

When he returns to the car, Natasha has pulled up her legs to sit cross-legged in the driver’s seat, turned towards him. She takes the small tub from him. “Used your Italian yet?” she asks.

There are moments when Tony Stark mumbles something under his breath. “Mainly swear words. He doesn’t sit around muttering about his illegal weapon deals to himself, no.”

“And your scanner thingy?”

“My autonomous thermal reconnaissance unit for aquatic environmental detection? It’s coming along.”

She smirks, now. Her eyes soften.

SHIELD selected him for the mission, simply because they thought his background would get him access to the workshop, they didn’t even consider that Peter would be capable of building the technology that would take Stark down, right from the inside. But they set the bar high, he sets the bar higher. It’s the only situation he feels comfortable in: when he exceeds expectations.

“I want to apologize for last week,” she says. “I got defensive. Which tells us what?”

Natasha taught it to him herself, ages ago. “People get defensive when they know they’re wrong and don’t like it.”

She nods and eats a few scoopfuls of ice cream before she carries on. “SHIELD found you at fifteen, and started tracking your phone. Not with much urgency, a trifling matter. Spider-Man’s behavior was analyzed, but Peter Parker’s wasn’t. I was usually the one called in to monitor you when you moved in… irregular patterns.”

Peter just nods. The only thing he finds surprising about the conversation so far is that Natasha is the one telling him this.

“So I—we didn’t scrutinize you to a degree where I knew how you were feeling or what you were thinking, what happened behind closed doors.”

“Yeah, it’s fine, Nat. I shouldn’t have implied anything.”

“SHIELD did build a file on you, on Peter Parker, even if it wasn’t extensive. It included three separate incident reports. Your neighbors called 911 because your parents had been screaming and throwing things around for more than an hour.”

“Only three, huh?” He remembers finding those police visits absolutely terrifying when he was young, convinced that getting arrested was somehow a package deal, so if the police found a reason to put his parents in jail, Peter would be sent there too.

Even after he became Spider-Man, it took a while before he was willing to work with the police. His throat still involuntarily clenches when he spots a patrol car.

Natasha looks at him very intently. “I have a limited understanding of what a happy childhood is supposed to look like. Which tends to make me…unsympathetic towards others. But that’s not something I’m proud of. You deserved better. I feel like I should have looked closer.”

“What if you had? If you had reported back to SHIELD that I was living in a war zone, would they have even interfered? Would it have mattered? Or is the mission all that matters?”

“Now you sound like Gin—Pepper. After you ran away from home and your file ended up on Maria’s desk, she is the one who ensured you wouldn’t have to go back there. It was only then that I realized that I may have missed something, and I didn’t like it. She dropped everything else to arrange it.”

“She had a use for me. It was convenient.”

“Of course it was, but one doesn’t exclude the other.”

“How did SHIELD recruit you?” He has never asked Natasha a question like that, or anything close to it. He knows nothing about her, really, apart from coconut being her favorite flavor. But this feels like a rare occasion where he might be allowed to breach the topic.

She apparently agrees, because she doesn’t hesitate before answering. “I did not start with SHIELD, but with a Russian rival agency. I was recruited at birth, or rather more precisely, my birth was planned in accordance with their long-term vision. I was taken from my artificial family when my formal training started, at thirteen. I defected to SHIELD at nineteen.”

Christ. And Peter is whining about a few stupid arguments from his parents. A little ashamed to have been complaining, he just mutters: “That blows.”

“It is how it is. We find a way to grow through the cracks.” She assesses him. “Are you still glad you chose emancipation?”

“Yes,” Peter says, because he is, isn’t he? Getting stuck with some foster family just sounds exhausting.

Natasha reaches out and taps her pinky against the back of his hand: an unusual display of physical affection. “You deserved a good family.”

“You had it way worse.”

“I deserved a good family, too.”

Chapter Text

Someone new moves in across the hall. Peter stands on his balcony, shivering in the cold, and watches the moving truck pull up. It’s noisy all day; things getting shoved around, hammers and nails. Peter doesn’t want to go out and meet them. He doesn’t even want a glance, he doesn’t want to imagine anyone else living there. He still looks for cryptic crosswords in the puzzle section every time a newspaper is delivered. He still cuts them out. Keeps them in a corner of his duffel bag.

He knows he is not okay. He doesn’t need to go to his psych eval to know he is not okay. It’s the stress of the mission. He’d be fine without it. He gets home drained every day and spends most of his weekend sleeping and taking hour-long showers. He has given up on cooking dinner. He either eats something straight from the jar, or nothing at all. Washing dishes is a gargantuan effort. He uses his final moments of battery life to do laundry now and then, worried people will start to notice if he shows up to the internship or debrief in a cloud of stench.

No one can ever notice.

There are moments when he has short bursts of energy. When he tells himself, come on, come the fuck on, when he remembers Maria or Natasha complimenting his self-discipline. And then he’ll get up and find a bucket and fill it with water and mix in the soap and get a sponge and a rag, and by the time he did all that he is beat, ready to drop, and doesn’t know where to start. All that ends up happening is that his messy room is now even messier because there are buckets with cold, murky water standing in random corners.

He just has to get through these months, bring the mission to a success, put Stark behind bars, and then he needs a reset-moment, a fresh start, he’ll make a plan.

-

His patrol takes him dangerously close to his parents’ house that evening. He chases a bike thief for a while, and then follows the sirens of a fire truck, and suddenly he recognizes the buildings around him, the corner store where he’d go grocery shopping sometimes because it was reasonably far from the house which meant he’d get more time away from his parents.

His parents got each other sent to A&E in about equal proportions. They’d come back with stitches that looked like little rows of tiny spiders. Peter only risked the occasional slap when he was stupid enough to not get out of the way on time. Most of the time his parents were happiest when they could pretend he didn’t exist. So in a sense, he was lucky that he was unwanted. It meant they left him the hell alone.

And he managed, through all of that. He did their laundry and washed their dishes and vacuumed the stairwell and hallways. He managed back then, how come he can’t manage it now?

Even as Spider-Man — he’ll swing around for hours, and when there’s nothing to do he’ll drop down to street level to pick up litter. All that, when he can’t even take out his own trash at home.

There’s something wrong with him. But he’s going to figure it out all by his damn self. He’s a superhero and a government agent. He’s a fucking adult.

-

“Just a heads up,” Michelle says, “if you’re just gonna ask me to click through your presentation slides I will fuck it up on purpose.”

“You’ll click through my presentation slides, won’t you?” Tony asks Peter, craning his neck away from the sound tech who is clipping a wireless mic to his collar.

He brought the kids along to his keynote speech at TechCrunch, due to start in a few minutes. He doesn’t even have presentation slides — please, how mundane — but he can’t help but see if Peter will rise to the bait.

Peter is looking past the edge of the stage at the silhouettes of people finding a seat in the dark theater. “That is how I had hoped to spend my morning instead of testing the sonar-thermal fusion mapping on my chemical leak detector, yes.”

Tony’s smile widens. “Was that snark?”

Peter falters. “Uh.”

“Say ‘yes’.”

“Yes. Sir.”

There’s a lot of press in the front rows, as Tony had hoped and expected. “You know what, I think I’m gonna wing it.” That’s how it usually goes. He’ll step into the spotlight, start talking, and he has forgotten everything he said five minutes after leaving the stage. But they keep asking him to come back, so whatever he comes up with, it’s probably genius. “Yes. One, two, three, ixnay on oligopoly,” he says in his smoothest voice and the sound guy nods and gives a thumbs up before moving through the curtain.

“I see that ugly dude from the Daily Bugle,” Michelle comments, standing on tiptoes.

“You watch that?”

“No, but there’s loads of memes. He had a conspiracy theory that you were Iron Man, like two weeks ago. He said you had an engine in your brain that powered the suit.”

“Like I’m secretly an android?”

“A cyborg, actually.”

Tony theatrically lays a hand across his mic and whispers, eyebrows wiggling. “Maybe I am Iron Man.”

“I don’t think you’d last a day without telling people.”

“I do have an unquenchable thirst for external validation.”

“That’s a nice way to say ‘a big ego’.”

Peter has taken a seat on the steps leading up to stage, arms wrapped around his knees, and watches them squabble with his ever-present wary expression, like he thinks they might start bashing each other’s brains in at any moment.

A woman with smooth black hair and a beige suit comes up and shakes his hand. “I’m going up to introduce you.”

“Don’t be modest,” Tony says.

She gets on stage and does give him quite a lengthy introduction that includes plenty of flattering and also a few humorous digs that make Michelle snort.

“I’ll allow it,” Tony mutters.

The screen at the back glows to life, showing the Stark Industries logo, and a spotlight snaps to center stage. Tony hops up the steps and spreads his hands, grins widely, waves a peace sign, cameras flash. Watch me, assholes.

And then he spins a few tales about his most exciting project, RenewGen — a modular system that captures solar radiation and turns it into clean, decentralized energy. Lightweight. Durable. Self-repairing. Perfect for remote settlements. The beige-suit-lady rolls a 3D rendering of the product across the stage. The product is still deep in beta, but that hardly matters. This isn’t why he is really here.

When he gets off the stage, a waiter is setting out a buffet lunch in their backstage area. She’s still transferring plates from her trolley cart to the table, but Michelle has already grabbed herself a brie sandwich — probably snatched it out from right under the lady’s nose. “Guess what,” she says.

“Get me some water.” He tugs his tie loose, pulls away the mic. “What?”

Peter jumps up to follow orders. Michelle takes out her phone. “This is live.”

“What is? Come here.”

“You come here.”

Tony rolls his eyes but steps closer. He already knows what he’s about to see.

It’s a smaller, local channel, bit below his usual status but whatever. Showing live footage of Iron Man diving around the lake in Central Park.

“Show pony,” Tony says.

There isn’t anything particular to be found in the lake. Him and Rhodey just thought it would make for good footage. Intriguing enough to make the news — How many dead bodies do YOU think are in Lake Central Park?

Another successful Operation Alpha Decoy.

Peter sets a bottle of water down on the table near him, already uncapped. “Cheers,” Tony says, and downs half of it in a single go. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “All vegetarian?” he asks the waiter.

“Absolutely, sir.”

Tony plucks up an eggroll and waves at Peter to grab something, too.

Peter shifts on his feet and seems to have trouble even looking at the options on display. “I’m… not very hungry.”

“Brown-bag something for him, please,” Tony tells the waiter.

“Can I bring stuff home, too?” Michelle asks quickly.

Tony waves a hand. “You know what. Just pack it all up.”

-

Peter returns home, holding the paper bag loosely in one hand. Stark shoved in some pizza slices for him. Michelle took practically the entire rest of the buffet home with her. And then Stark let them go home early.

Peter didn’t want to go home early.

Stark had spent the whole drive back home grumbling disparagingly about Iron Man, and about superheroes in general. Peter had tuned him out pretty swiftly. It’s not like he needs this guy’s validation.

But now that he’s home — He looks around and deflates. No. This doesn’t look like the home of a superhero, of someone who is an example to follow.

He throws the bag with pizza slices on his kitchen counter. It slides across and bumps into the microwave. He might eat that later. He might.

He crashes on the couch.

-

He arrives at the tower at 8 AM the next morning and takes the elevator up to the food court on the 52nd floor.

His instinct is always to bring something he knows the other person likes, but the only thing he remembers June liking is cheap beer.

There is a line outside Puff Puff Pastry this morning. The smell of fresh bread hangs heavily in the air. Peter had coffee and red bull this morning and now his stomach growls. He should have some breakfast, even if he doesn’t feel like it. He can skip dinner all he wants, but at work, he needs to stay sharp.

Past a sea of shoulders he catches a glimpse of June laying something napkin-wrapped down on the counter for a customer, her colleague bustling back and forth with her hair pushed up in a hair net.

He feels silly, suddenly. She’s obviously busy now. He’ll just be in everyone’s way; his least favorite place to be.

He should have breakfast, though, and not many places on the food court are open. So he’ll settle for saying a quick hello.

June has other plans, though. “Thought you might turn up!” she booms when it’s his turn, her voice carrying practically across the entire food court. “Hungry, are you?”

“Yes, ma’am. What do you recommend?”

She sniffs. “Nothing to recommend, ever since the CEO banned all unhealthy food.”

Her colleague leans over her shoulder with a bit of an exasperated look. “Zucchini bread is today’s special.”

“I’ll have that.”

June waves towards the tables against the wall. “Sit down, go on. We’ll have a chat.”

“You’re busy.”

“Nonsense, bub, I’ll make time.”

He takes a seat by the window and watches her work through a line of customers, no small talk or pleasantries, get your orders in, she gets impatient when customers dawdle and huffs when they want to pay in cash, but—  she knows all of their names, and they all know hers. “It’s not rocket science, Ellie, it’s two types of fruit!” she loudly admonishes a dilly-dallying woman.

“But could I get the cup with melon, without any of those sour berries?”

“Here.” June slams two cups down on the counter. “Get both and pluck out what you like.”

“Thank you, June.”

Her colleague takes over at some point and June rounds the counter, two thick slices of zucchini bread on a small plate. She sets it down in front of Peter and sits with a deep sigh, wiping her hands on her apron. “That cop send you back to you family?” she asks without preamble.

Peter needs a moment to follow her train of thought. “Oh. Uh, no. I got emancipated.” He tears off a corner of the bread and nibbles on it.

“What’s that?”

“It means I became legally an adult, and I can live on my own and get a job and stuff.”

“Handy.”

“How did you wind up here?”

“I can barely tell you. Tony Stark literally approached me on the street. Swooped down from the heavens I’d almost say, except he’s not really angel-like now, is he?”

Peter chuckles softly. “No, ma’am.”

“Weird as hell, but I’ve stopped asking questions about it. When he first got me a job, you know, I wasn’t really in the right frame of mind or anything, but every time I made trouble and got kicked out some place he personally came down and found me something else to do. Fed me some bullshit about how he didn’t want a wrongful termination lawsuit to deal with. I’m waiting for him to reveal that he’s actually a long-lost relative of mine, or something. Only explanation I can think of.”

“That’s so weird,” Peter murmurs.

“It is. It is. He’s weird as hell. It’s good to see you, you know, I had been wondering about you. Scrawny kid, way too polite to be getting caught up in trouble.”

“Thank you for helping me, ma’am.”

Her lips twitch. “I don’t think I did a very good job at all that.” She leans in. “You’re interning with Tony Stark, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Trick with him is, he’s a good guy, but he doesn’t like being reminded of it. So you gotta be rude to his face, as much as you can.” She pats his arm and winks conspiratorially, as if to say, That one’s on me.

-

“Where’s Michelle?”

Peter looks up at the clock. It’s twenty minutes past nine. He got to the workshop half an hour ago and has been so caught up in the first test model of his chemical leak detector that he lost track of time, and now Tony Stark is standing in the middle of the workshop, frowning at Michelle’s empty workbench.

“I don’t know.”

“FRIDAY, did she call in sick for the day?”

“Nothing logged, boss.”

If Peter didn’t know any better, he’d think Tony Stark, illegal arms dealer and famous asshole, looked concerned. “Call her cell phone.”

“Calling. Stand by. Straight to voicemail. Do you wish to leave a message?”

“No. Do we have an emergency—"

“Don’t anybody wet their pants, I’m right here,” Michelle announces right at that moment, marching in with long strides. She throws her backpack across her workbench pretty violently. It slides across and drops off on the other side. Michelle sniffs and wipes her hair out of her face, and that’s when Peter spots the black eye and cut lip.

“What happened?” The words come snapping out of Tony Stark’s mouth.

She sneers at him. “I woke up like this.”

Stark takes a step closer to her but she backs away, shoulders drawing up, and he falters.

“I got fucking mugged,” she then bursts out. “And I can’t afford to get mugged!” Her breath stutters and she turns away from them, snatching her backpack up off the floor and slamming it down on the table. She keeps her head bowed, hair falling forward.

“Pete, go to my apartment and get an ice pack,” Stark says, very calmly. “FRIDAY will direct you.”

Peter swiftly leaves his workbench and moves to the sliding doors. He has that same feeling in his stomach he always gets when he reads about tragic accidents or bad guys who got away. A feeling that Spider-Man should have been there.

FRIDAY directs him down the hallway, past the elevator, around a corner into a narrower hallway with only one dark blue door at the end. “I have unlocked it for you,” FRIDAY says.

Peter pushes his way inside and closes the door behind him, leaning back against it.

This is where Tony Stark lives. An apartment about the size of Peter’s own. A door to a balcony straight ahead, a wall of tall windows, an open kitchen with a round table to his right, a worn-in couch by the window to his left, a coffee table with papers scattered around it — papers.

The mission, a little voice immediately whispers in the back of his mind.

But. Michelle is hurt.

But. She’ll be fine.

Like an elastic band getting pulled in two directions at once, he feels guilty for putting the mission first, and feels guilty for not putting the mission first.

“You’ll find an icepack in the freezer,” FRIDAY directs gently.

He doesn’t see how he could possibly walk over to the couch and play it off like an accident or coincidence, so there isn’t anything he can do, really.

“To your right,” FRIDAY says, in a sort of 'quick-as-you-like' tone of voice.

Peter tears his gaze away from the coffee table. “I—Yes, sorry.” He pushes himself off the door and steps into the kitchen. There’s a used bowl in the sink, and an empty coffee cup. Peter opens the fridge to see a collection of condiments, half a cucumber, a carton of eggs, a tight-lid container with yesterday’s leftovers, a few bags of blueberries. Extremely ordinary.

It’s so exceptionally unlike what Peter would have expected. He studied Tony Stark’s social media for weeks. He knows this man spends his birthdays on luxury yachts. He knows Tony Stark is in the workshop right now wearing a watch worth more than everything in this apartment combined.

He opens the freezer compartment and spots the ice pack quickly. It’s the only thing in there apart from an empty ice cube tray.

“Wrap a clean tea towel around it,” FRIDAY instructs. “Drawer just to the left of the sink.”

Peter follows her instructions and leaves the apartment again with a steady tread, not even throwing another look around before pulling the door shut. No need to cause suspicion right now. He’ll try to find a better excuse to snoop around later, when he is more prepared.

He gets back to the workshop. Tony Stark has pulled up a second chair and is sitting opposite Michelle, knees almost touching. “As if I have money for a new phone,” she is saying. She snatches up the ice pack and slaps it against the side of her face, wincing at the impact.

Tony leans back in his chair again. “Don’t I pay you for the internship?”

“Yeah, thanks, that money’s coming next month and will cover our back payments. Fuck you, rich kids, you got no idea what it’s like.”

Tony shrugs, unfazed. “I’ll get you a new phone, then.”

“I didn’t say it to get your charity, fuck you.”

Tony ignores that entirely. “FRIDAY, express delivery.”

“Will do, boss.”

She starts sniffling. “I had pictures of my mom and my brother on that phone. Motherfuckers. There’s been robberies and muggings all over my neighborhood this month. Lot of moms aren’t even letting their kids play outside anymore.”

“I can pick you up in the morning, drop you off?” Peter suggests. “I almost pass by Brooklyn on my way here anyways.”

She lowers the ice pack a bit so she can glare across it. “I’m not your damsel in distress, asshole.”

“Thought you didn’t have siblings,” Tony remarks.

“YEAH NOT ANYMORE, DUMBASS!” she yells, her voice cracking.

“Oh, shit,” Tony says. “I’m sorry, Michelle.”

She bows her head lower and tears start rolling down, dripping on her jeans. She gulps as she struggles for control.

Peter stands frozen still, feeling stupidly awkward, but Tony seems to know what to do, carefully pats her knee. “Let’s get her a glass of water, too, Pete,” he says. “And some tissues. Under the sink.”

Peter quietly crosses the workshop to the small kitchenette in the corner, finds a glass and a whole box of tissues. Tony stays next to Michelle, murmuring at her, his voice soft with reassurance.

He returns and sets the tissues down, pushing the cup of water across the table like it’s the holy grail.

“Thank you, kid,” Tony says, smiling up like he thinks Peter needs reassurance, too. “There you go.” He takes the ice pack from Michelle and she thoroughly wipes her face, blows her nose.

“All right,” she says, sounding angry at herself. “All right, that’s enough of that. Back to work.”

Tony pushes the glass of water into her hand. “I wanted to go over the user interface with you this morning,” he says lightly.

“Great. Awesome. Let’s go.” She downs the water, then pushes her hair out of her face and cautiously looks up at Peter. “Um. It would be nice if you could drop me off later, actually.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Thank you.”

Tony spends practically the whole day at Michelle’s workbench, going over about a hundred customization options for her printer. A new phone arrives before lunchtime and Tony swiftly sets it up. Peter watches from across the room. It’s like— seeing Tony Stark’s entire personality get flipped inside out.

-

He drives Michelle home after work. She lives in Bushwick in the north of Brooklyn, so it’s practically on his way home, anyways. She sniffs when she sees his car, but doesn’t make any comments about ‘rich kids’.

“Are you going to report it?” he asks as he backs out of the parking spot.

She huffs and shrugs. “It won’t work anyways, and it’ll just freak my grandma out. Uh, that’s who I live with. I’m not gonna tell her anything happened.”

“I think she might notice the black eye,” Peter points out.

“I think she won’t actually, because she’s blind.” She shifts against the seat and sighs. “So. Tell me something about yourself, I’m not gonna sit here in awkward silence for twenty minutes.”

Oh. Well. “Uh. I study environmental engineering,” he starts, and then peters off.

“Wow, well done. You know one whole fact about yourself.”

“Uh. Yeah. Sorry, I’m boring.”

“You play an instrument?”

“No.”

“Do sports?”

“I… go swimming sometimes.” He hasn’t gone since before Italy.

“Favorite hang-out spot?”

“Oh. I don’t know. My neighbor’s apartment, but she died.”

“Favorite food?”

“Oh, no. I don’t like food.”

She guffaws. “What are you, like, secretly an android or something?”

“What about you?” he asks, eager to get focus off of himself.

“Dunno. I live with my grandma. Study medical engineering. I like art, but not the snooty kind. Like, if it has some social commentary bullshit, I’m out. I like drawing. And I make good milkshakes.”

“What’s your secret?”

“Good question,” she says, and launches into a full break-down of her milkshake-making-process. Oh, and she’s a purist about it. Like Nat with her gelato. “Some suckers use skim milk, that’s a fucking joke, we’re not living through a war. Whole milk, or don’t even bother. And three scoops of ice cream. Less is paltry, more is greedy. You have to commit to a flavor, don’t half-ass it, none of those peanut butter-chocolate-vanilla hybrids. Blend and count to twenty, to that bee-gees song like you’re resuscitating a dead guy. And then you have a milkshake. Everything else is just sad milky soup. Got it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Peter says.

-

That evening, Tony nudges the open storage closet away from the wall. The doors of his workshop are firmly locked, all metal shutters are down. “Let’s open it up, FRI.”

The space behind this particular wall is only about a foot deep. There are several hard drives in a plastic container, and two metal suitcases on narrow shelves, both of them containing an Iron Suit. He takes the top one and has FRIDAY slide the wall back into place before pushing the closet back against it.

He drives to a parking garage on the edge of Chinatown. He suits up and takes to the sky. He crosses the east river and the patchwork of rooftops and streets until he reaches Bushwick. He already had FRIDAY analyze police reports and map out an area for him.

This is the first time Iron Man is leaving Manhattan for a patrol, and Tony isn’t entirely sure if this is really the right move. But it seems he has made the mistake of starting to care about this kid.

Michelle lives in a narrow, tree-less street where kids are kicking a deflated basketball across the asphalt. Low, booming music drifts out of an open apartment window.

Something red-and-blue is perched on the edge of a roof-top.

He should have known, he should have expected this. “FRIDAY, turn on voice modulation.”

Spider-Man spots him from afar, this time. Tony can see him lifting his head, sitting up straighter.

He pitches forward and slams the air brakes, hovers for a moment. “Spidey. Long time.” He gently sets himself down on the rooftop.

Spider-Man cocks his head at hearing the modulated voice. “That’s new,” he says. Very definitely in Peter Romero’s voice. “That’s… handy.” He straightens out of his crouch, his stance wary. “Um. Sir, this isn’t…”

“My turf? Yeah, no worries, kid. Just passing through.” He was already ninety percent sure, but it still feels unbalancing to get confirmation. Peter is eighteen. Spider-Man has been active for— what is it by now, four years? That’s worse, even, than what Tony had estimated in his head. A fourteen-year-old kid, jumping in front of getaway cars. The same kid who now sits meekly in the corner of his workshop every day with his wet paper backbone. Honestly. Where were his parents?

The kid got emancipated at sixteen, that’s telling enough. Honorary orphan.

Damnit, Tony had better not make the mistake of starting to care about both these kids.

“Me too,” Peter says. “Just been hearing about a lot of, uh, activity around here.”

He should leave. Even with the voice modulation, the longer he sticks around the more risk he runs that Peter will recognize him somehow. But if there really is some street gang actively trying to take over the area, it doesn’t feel like he can just fly off and leave the kid to deal with it himself. Especially not since he’s basically wearing pajamas.

“Ah,” he says. “In that case, maybe I’ll circle the area a few extra times as well.” A nice compromise. He’ll stick around but keep his distance.

“Okay,” Spider-Man says. “That’s — helpful, actually, because I’m not supposed to get close to people with guns.”

“By whose rules?” Tony asks, interested. Spider-Man draws his shoulders up and Tony holds up a hand. “Sorry. Not trying to wheedle out your identity. Just surprised. I thought Spider-Man was a solo act.”

“I have… back up.”

Interesting. Tony nods and engages his thrusters, floating a few inches into the air. “Back up’s good. All right. Flag me down if you spot anyone who’s armed.”

He slowly circles the neighborhood, following the perimeter FRIDAY set. Most likely, just their presence will be enough to deter any criminals from the area tonight. He spots Spider-Man in the distance a few times, flipping through the air. He only sinks down to street level once, when he sees a guy lurking suspiciously on a street corner. The man says “uh, nothing,” as soon as he sees him and hastily returns to his car.

The rest of the evening is quiet.

Tony doesn’t go home until after he has seen Spider-Man swing across the main street and further north, back towards Queens.

-

Peter picks Michelle up the next morning. The black eye looks even worse today, yellow and purple bleeding together, but the split lip has healed a bit. “I look badass,” she says.

“You always did.”

“Oi,” she protests, trying to pretend she didn’t like that comment.

“First time I ever saw you, you were kicking in a vending machine.”

“That was self-defense.”

“The vending machine struck first, did it?”

“You think self-defense means waiting for the other guy to get you first? You need to toughen up, man.” She doesn’t even smile as she says it; she looks earnest and almost concerned. “You gotta come into every room with your fists raised or people are always gonna know you’re an easy target. And that’s when this shit happens.” She points at her own face.

“Does it hurt?” he asks. “The bruises, I mean.”

“A bit, I guess. The eye keeps getting watery.”

“Do you want aspirin? I got some in my bag, somewhere.”

She perks up. “Oooh, I’ve always imagined that thing being like Mary Poppins’ paranormal handbag. And now I actually get to look inside?” She grabs it off the back seat and pulls it into her lap. “Bottle opener right on the zipper,” she says. “Bad boy.”

“I don’t drink.”

She flicks it. “So what’s up with this?”

“You know. In case other people need it.” He hasn’t been to an actual party since before Italy, but he still can’t bring himself to get rid of the bottle opener. It’s like a sort of safety net, having it.

“Okay.” She zips the bag open. “Have you seen Mary Poppins?”

“I knew all the dialogue by heart when I was younger.”

“What’s this?”

He glances over. Looks like she has found the box of tampons. “You know what they are.”

“Wha— So you did have some when I asked for them, and didn’t even mention it?”

“I bought them after.”

She looks at him like he is insane. “You bought them after. What— Why—"

“Just in case.”

“You know every toilet in that building has them.”

“It’s—just in case.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she asks, but not unkindly. Next, she digs out a packet of flattened and cracked coconut macaroons that has spent some time at the bottom of his bag by now. It says ‘family size’ on the front.

“I had a colleague in a previous job who liked those.”

She finds the Wrigley’s Doublemint in a side pocket.

“My previous boss liked those.”

 And the creased cryptic crosswords in another side pocket.

“That—Those were for my neighbor who passed away, you can just throw those out.”

And then, the lighter and the peach-flavored lip balm.

“That’s… You can definitely throw those away.”

“I don’t know whether to find this funny or tragic,” she says, stuffing the items right back where she found them. “You just walk around with a bag with a hundred pockets full of stuff other people might want? Is that how you get people to like you?”

Peter feels suddenly transparent and doesn’t like it. “It’s called being a nice person, I know you’re not familiar with it.”

She chuckles softly. “Was that snark?”

“Maybe.”

“You gave up on the blueberries, though, didn’t you?” She finally finds the aspirin and shakes one out of the bottle.

“I don’t need Tony Stark to like me. He’s an asshole.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “A bit on purpose, though. That makes it different.”

“Right, right. Just like, famously, killing someone isn’t that big a deal when it’s on purpose.”

“He was pretty nice yesterday.”

“That doesn’t count.” He says it quickly, and then feels frustrated at how petulant he sounded. He just… really doesn’t want the man he is trying to put behind bars to suddenly have any redeeming qualities.

She swallows the aspirin with water and zips his duffel bag up again. “You know, niceness is a character flaw.”

Peter thinks that’s a pretty tragic attitude, too, actually. He says nothing.

“My friends call me MJ, by the way.”

“Uh. Okay.”

She rolls her eyes. “I meant you should, too.”

Chapter Text

Peter pops open the waterproof casing of his chemical leak detector to poke through the microprobes. He throws a glance at Tony Stark standing by MJ’s workbench, back to Peter.

His first test run resulted in a cascade of errors, all of them entirely as planned. He needs Stark to think he is nowhere near finished with this thing. The second week of his internship nears its end and Peter once again wants, more than anything, to have something substantial to report back at the debrief. He wants to finish the model by the end of today so he can test it first thing Monday morning. That’s when Tony Stark always comes in late — even compared to his usual — so it will give him time.

The thermal scanner is supposedly meant to help detect chemical leakage into water, but he will use it to detect temperature anomalies behind the walls, anomalies that indicate hidden voids. And he already knows which wall he will be starting at.

The thermal sensors are shielded in an insulated gel bubble — perfect for suppressing ambient noise underwater and rendering them useless for detecting anything in air. Just a way to make sure Tony Stark would not object to Peter using them. All Peter has to do Monday morning is peel the gel layer away, solder a universal infrared receiver onto the circuit board and reroute the calibration.

He can do the whole thing in under two minutes if he focuses, meaning that even if FRIDAY warns Stark that something is afoot, he’ll hopefully already have the proof he needs before he can get interrupted.

And, of course, he’ll make a show of just doing it all because he’s clumsying around, not really sure what he’s doing, and innocently testing it indoors.

Tony Stark saunters his way, coffee cup in hand. He didn’t even ask Peter to get it for him, today. Apparently, even Tony Stark sometimes grows tired of acting like the whole world should bend to his whims.

“That’s lot of red flashy lights, kid,” Stark comments.

“Yeah.” He shrugs in a way he hopes looks a bit dejected, and continues poking the circuit boards while Tony Stark looks over his shoulder and does absolutely nothing to help him. Not like he actually cares about clean oceans, after all. His own company is probably guilty of illegally dumping chemical waste into the ocean, considering he can’t get rid of it legally without raising questions about why a company producing solar panels is also dumping toxic byproducts of TNT.

Still. Stark seems to go out of his way to help MJ, walking her through all the steps. Not that Peter cares. It’s fine.

The doors slide open and Pepper walks in, mouth set in a firm line. Stark grumbles an Italian swearword under his breath but Pepper ignores him. She looks at Peter. “Mr. Romero. I need a word.”

“Peter Romero to the principal’s office,” MJ says in a sing-songy voice.

“Yeah, what’d he steal?” Stark asks.

Pepper ignores them both. “Right away, please.”

Peter slides off his chair and follows her to the hallway, door sliding shut behind them with a low hiss. He’s still holding a pair of small pliers, he realizes too late, and starts fiddling with them.

Pepper leads him about four, five paces further down the hallway and then turns. Her voice is very soft when she explains: “Your mother showed up at reception again this morning.”

Peter’s heart stutters in his chest. “Oh.”

“She injured a receptionist and a security guard, and pushed over a very valuable statue, which meant per protocol police had to be notified. She has been arrested.”

“Do you know what she wanted?”

“To speak with you. It didn’t go very far beyond that. We did not confirm that you were working here.”

What on earth could his mother possibly want from him, after two years of radio silence? Then again, Peter was the one who made sure there could not be any kind of contact. Perhaps his mother has been trying to find him all along, and didn’t know—

No, he shouldn’t get carried away like that. There’s no way.

“Are you quite all right?” she asks, pulling him out of his thoughts.

He runs a hand through his hair and looks at her. Ginny and Pepper have few things in common, but one thing they do is that neither of them are particularly gentle and patient. So it’s strange to have her looking at him like this. He wonders how much of this concern is genuine, and how much is a front she puts on because FRIDAY is watching.

“Uh. Yeah. Yes, ma’am.” He hopes that she will similarly assume that some of his consternation is just an act. He doesn’t want her to think that he’s… compromised. That’s he’ll let this affect the mission. Because he won’t. He won’t, he won’t.

“Do you have any questions?”

He shakes his head. None that he can ask now. Just later at the debrief — where this incident will once again overshadow all the actual progress he made.

“I think I do need to tell Tony.”

For the mission, she means. Decompartmentalize that shit. If a childhood tragedy is something you can use for a mission, learn to use it. Garner sympathy. If Tony Stark has any to give.

He nods again. “Yes, ma’am.”

“He needs to sign off on whether we decide to press charges about the statue.”

“Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He hopes they won’t. He doesn’t want his past and present life to get tangled up even more.

“Do you want me to tell him, or would you prefer to be present for the conversation?”

Peter tries to think what would be most strategic but his mind blanks. “I, uh. What’s your advice?”

“I will talk to him,” she decides swiftly.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

-

“Tony, a word.”

Tony throws Peter a sharp look but the kid doesn’t make eye contact; just slinks back to his workbench and picks up his work.

He follows Pepper out into the hallway.

“Peter’s mother showed up at reception this morning,” she says briskly. “Demanding to see her son. When denied, she attacked and injured the receptionist, then a security guard, and pushed over our Arturo Di Modica. Police have taken her away. I need a decision on whether to file a separate civil lawsuit about the damages.”

Tony blinks, taking a moment to parse those words. “Okay, that’s… Which receptionist was attacked?”

“Excuse me?”

“Which receptionist?”

“Holly Sabirov.”

“And which security guard?”

“Marsha Jay.”

“Are they all right?”

“Both very minor injuries. They have continued working.”

“Um,” Tony rubs the back of his head. “And the reason she couldn’t just come speak with him…?”

“Peter doesn’t want to.”

“And you know this because…”

“It came up in the interview.”

“Right. Right.” He already knew there was a lot more going on below Peter’s bland, polite veneer than he had previously assumed, he had been scratching at that surface, but he’s starting to get more and more sense of just how deep those still waters go.

“I just need a decision on the statue. Quick as you like.”

“I’m assuming you told the kid, just now?”

She looks a bit exasperated, as if Tony having concerns about his employees is really getting in the way of her schedule. “Yes, just now.”

“Is he all right?”

“He’s fine to continue working.”

“That’s not what I’m asking, Pepper!”

She draws her shoulders back and looks at him steadily. “I didn’t put him through a psych eval. He handled the news with maturity, that is all I can tell you. And I think he’ll thank you not to bring it up ad nauseum.”

“Okay, I can take a hint.”

“That wasn’t a hint, Tony, I couldn’t have been clearer.”

He flaps a hand. “Never mind that lawsuit. Chasing pennies with a dollar, more trouble than it’s worth. The state will sue her either way, I assume?”

“As do I. I can pass the information on to our legal team and have them monitor the proceedings.”

Whatever, Tony thinks. “Great,” he says.

When he enters the workshop again, Peter’s gaze flicks up at him but then quickly away, and he bends lower over his laptop, his shoulders hunched and awkward and guilty.

Tony wishes they had the sort of relationship where he could say something reassuring right now. He scowls and looks away.

Michelle is looking between them with a speculative gaze. “What’s happening?”

“Get back to work.”

-

It’s a debrief day, which means Peter will need to drop MJ off in Brooklyn and then drive back to the hotel in Manhattan, but he’s happy to go out of his way. He pulls out of the parking space—

“Oi!” someone yells and he slams the breaks. Almost rear-ended a van. A Stark employee in a blue overall is hanging out the window on the passenger side and glaring at him.

“Hey, I already got plenty of bruises,” MJ says, rubbing her sternum where the seat belt caught her. “Where’s your head at?”

Peter shakes his head and shifts gears, rolling towards the exit. He once again wasn’t at peak mental performance today, but he did manage to finish the model version of his chemical leak detector, prepped precisely the way he wants it. Monday is going to be the big day.

“You wanna talk about it?” MJ says.

Peter blinks. “What.”

“I don’t know what, how should I know. You were all being very mysterious about it.”

“Oh. Right.” His mother. He doesn’t particularly care about it being a secret, it was just awkward to bring up in front of Stark, who spent the whole rest of the day scowling whenever he looked in Peter’s direction. “My mom showed up in the lobby today. Apparently she attacked some people and destroyed an artwork.”

“Heh. She sounds delightful.”

“I haven’t seen her in two years, and she spent the sixteen years before that mostly pretending I didn’t exist, so I really don’t know why she was here.”

“She makes a habit of attacking people?”

“Mostly my dad, but she might be branching out.”

“Shit,” she says. “That sort of stuff always pisses me off, why can’t people take care of their kids properly?”

“Yeah. It’s… over and done with now, anyways.”

“Over and done with…” She sighs a bit. “I guess you’re glad to be older and be getting out. I’m like the reverse, I was fine growing up. I mean, single mom, we didn’t have a lot of money. But she was funny, you know, she made it light. And I’ll never get to talk to them again, wish I could, I just want to be young again.”

“That sucks, too.”

“Guess that’s why we’re here anyways, right?” She yawns and twists a little in her seat to stretch her back. “My friend signed me up. You?”

“A teacher.”

“Your mom’s not gonna be, like, waiting at your front door when you get home, right? I will throw hands if you need me to.”

“She doesn’t know where I live. And she might be in jail right now? I don’t know how the fuck any of it works.”

“That’s probably how it works.”

-

Maria is not pleased. “What on earth is wrong with that woman?”

“Guess I was too subtle,” Natasha says.

Peter swallows past a dense pit of shame and guilt, more than a little unnerved. He doesn’t know what he could have done to prevent this whole mess, but he feels like he should have done something. He’s tired of looking incompetent in front of the people he wants to impress. So tired, in fact, that he suddenly wishes he could go home, crawl into bed and sleep for about a year, and maybe try again then.

He had spent his whole drive back here practicing how to break the news, only to find Pepper was of course already in their usual windowless hotel room when he arrived, and Maria had that blank, jaw-tightened look that Peter has learned means anger.

“Will Stark sue for the property damage?” Maria asks. She still hasn’t sat down, towering over the three of them. Her coffee is probably lukewarm by now.

Pepper shakes her head. “He didn’t want the hassle. Don’t think he gives much of a hoot about art anyways. She might still be charged for the assault. I don’t know. Most of those things get settled before it ever gets to trial.”

Peter nervously tugs at his own sleeves. “I’m really sorry,” he bursts out.

“Do not apologize,” Maria says immediately, her voice dark and her eyes still blazing.

Peter can’t really help himself, though. “Sorry,” he says again, low.

She studies him, but says nothing.

“I found the leak, by the way,” Natasha says. “The Turning Point Initiative has worked with Ovexa in the past, they probably receive the newsletter. we overlooked that weak link in the chain, so it’s our fault in the first place that she’s bothering you.”

“Bothering,” Pepper repeats with a sniff. “Maria, the kid needs to be pulled out of this one.”

“I have complete faith in Mr. Parker’s ability to keep the mission on track,” Maria tells her with a frown. “As we’ve already established, these incidents do not necessarily damage his cover story.”

“How about his ability to focus?” Pepper shoots back.

“Don’t—Don’t pull me out,” Peter says, glaring at Pepper. “I’m ten minutes away from a first breakthrough.”

Maria waves her hand and takes a seat, breathing out. “Let’s hear it.”

So Peter talks them through the ins and outs of his chemical leak detector and it bolsters him a bit, because they keep telling him, slow down, repeat that, what are surface heat maps again, and it helps to feel like he has something of value to offer.

“The only thing is, once I do confirm that there are hidden rooms in the workshop, I can’t just go around breaking into them,” Peter says. “The surface heat maps are already going to be plenty suspicious if I don’t play the part right. If I push my luck, my entire cover could disintegrate in seconds.”

“Breaking into these hidden compartments will need to wait until the end of your internship,” Maria decides. “Use the intervening weeks simply to gain his trust and learn what you can about this AI of his. Tell him you want to study it as part of your internship. See if you can gain his full permission so that nothing you do while researching is flagged as suspicious.”

They shoot some ideas around a while longer. The cherry on top is Maria’s approving nod at the end. “I’m impressed, Peter.”

Pepper looks chagrined.

They wrap up, and Peter is already turning away when Maria says: “A quick word, please, Mr. Parker.”

Peter lets the duffel bag slide off his shoulder again and waits nervously for Natasha and Pepper to leave. Maria has stood up too, the table between them, her hand resting on the back of a chair. After the door falls shut behind Natasha, she lets the silence linger heavily for another beat. “What your parents do is not something you can control,” she then says. “Do not apologize for it.”

Peter blinks. “Right. Sorry. Uh— I mean. Yes, ma’am.”

“What matters is how you respond, and you held the line. You did everything right.”

“Okay,” Peter says. His throat is growing awfully tight, so he doesn’t say anything else, just nods. It feels weird to have this whole table between them. He remembers a time when Maria was the one he wanted to impress more than anyone.

“Your mother has no way to contact you personally?”

“No.”

“If she bothers you in any way, don’t hesitate to call me.”

“I will. I will.’

“Go get some rest then, enjoy the weekend.” And she almost—almost smiles again. “Dismissed.”

-

He’s in his car in the hotel’s parking lot, gathering his courage to start the engine and drive home when there is a knock on his window. He rolls it down and Pepper leans in, draping one arm across the roof. “Are you okay, squirt?” she asks, and she looks as genuinely concerned as she had up in the tower.

That’s the thing: He can get annoyed at SHIELD for recruiting him as a teenager, at least somewhat in their own best interest, and appreciate that Pepper seems concerned about it. Or he can appreciate that Maria treats him as a grown-up while Pepper clearly sees him as more of a child who can’t handle any setbacks. You are an adult, you either are or you aren’t. He needs to make a decision on which side to land on.

“I’m fine, Ms. Potts,” he says. “Your concern is appreciated but not necessary.”

She looks quite unconvinced. “Don’t you think—”

“I don’t have opinions or ask questions,” Peter says, pointedly. “I follow orders.”

-

He has been driving for almost fifteen minutes when he realizes he didn’t even turn GPS on and isn’t going in any particular direction. He pulls the car over in front of a dentist’s office and leans his head back, breathing out.

The idea of going home just makes him feel a bit queasy. A sort of reverse homesick. He is dreading that low, miserable feeling that snaps onto him like a magnet the moment he steps into the door.

He has nothing on his schedule until he goes back to the internship Monday morning, and the three days until then stretch out in front of him like a gaping canyon.

What else is there to do. Go see a movie? Watching movies used to really calm him down. It hasn’t worked much, lately, after months of watching three, sometimes four movies in a row until he fell asleep on the couch…

A black hole is pulling at him, and he can’t escape its gravitational pull. He breathes in and out again and then takes out his phone and looks for the nearest precinct to Stark Tower.

-

His mother, it turns out, has already been moved to the detention complex. For the first time in his life, Peter has the pleasure of bailing someone out of jail.

“Took you long enough,” she says airily, pushing her hair back in shape while clutching her purse with her other hand.

“Yeah, good to see you too.”

She blinks at him, taken aback. Right—Peter has never said anything remotely sardonic to her at all. Only ‘yes ma’ams’ and ‘no ma’ams’. Then again, it usually felt like his safety and survival depended on it.

He twirls his car keys restlessly around his finger as he surveys her. She looks exceptionally the same, thin-rimmed glasses and too much lipstick, and Peter still feels like there has somehow been a rip in the space-time continuum. “Why are you here?”

“Take your poor mother out to dinner,” she says, with a withering glare he recognizes so well. Unfortunately, it still makes him want to crawl underneath something.

“Yes, ma’am.”

One of the rules he has lived his life by was to never be alone in a room with either of his parents. He can feel the warning signs when he gets in the car with her; like a blade of grass tickling the back of his neck.

He takes her to an Italian place. “I need money,” she says as she tucks into the carpaccio.

Didn’t even wait until the main course.

Peter twirls his fork through his risotto. “Did you quit your job at Ovexa?”

“No, of course not,” she says impatiently.

“So why—”

“Stop asking so many questions!”

“Sorry.” Living with his parents had always felt like walking along the edge of a cliffside. “I—mom— don’t think it’s very wise for us to be in touch,” he says carefully. “I left because I wanted—"

“We didn’t want you either but we did our duty. But I suppose now I can just starve on the streets for all you care?” Her eyes are wide and accusatory behind her glasses. “You don’t get to walk away from family. I suppose I raised you for nothing if you can't even help your own mother. The parents take care of the child, and then the child takes care of the parents, that is the natural way of life.”

Peter wouldn’t call what she did ‘taking care of him’ by any stretch of the imagination.  “How much money do you need?”

“A few hundred to start with. — In cash,” she adds

Start with. That’s what this is, the whole reason she is acknowledging his existence. She finally has a use for him. He spent all his teenage years trying to get to that point and now that they are here— “Mom. You can’t show up at my work, you know. You really can’t.”

Her mouth twists. “Those people were really fucking unpleasant.”

First sign of danger, when she starts swearing. Next is when she becomes so restless that she’ll start pacing or rocking in her chair. Not long after that the first things will go flying. Peter really wants to prevent that, this is a nice restaurant. One of those with leather-bound menus.

“And you weren’t. answering. your. emails.” She taps her fork sharply against her plate with each word.

“I don’t have—”

“Or answering your phone.”

“I wanted—"

“If you say one more fucking sentence starting with ‘I’, I think I might be sick,” she announces. “There are other people in this world besides you, and you might try to think about someone else for more than five consecutive seconds at a time.”

“Yes ma’am,” Peter mutters.

She nods and tucks into her food again. Peter is not hungry anymore. He forces down the risotto and barely touches the main course while his mother eats in silence.

“Your father and I got divorced,” she announces eventually, after downing her wine.

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. That man doesn’t know his own asshole from a donut. I damn near killed him and probably already would have by now if we’d still been together.”

Which means it was never Peter’s fault, after all. His parents were always going to be unhappy together, unplanned pregnancy or not. “Who got the kitchen table?” he asks before he can help himself.

“I got the house. And he switched jobs.”

And yet she needs money. Peter is wise enough not to question her again, though. “Listen. I’ll give you my new phone number, all right? But you have to promise not to come to Stark Industries again.”

She lifts her chin. “I wouldn’t want to come within a hundred feet of that rathole.”

They get through dinner without his mother throwing any plates around. Peter pays the bill, writes his phone number down on the back of it and hands it to her, and then they walk to an ATM where he withdraws her six hundred dollars.

That was… unpleasant.

But it somehow still beats sitting at home alone an entire evening.

-

He gets through Friday all right; he patrols all day. Fixes a few cars that broke down. Gets some shoes down from a tree. Saves a bird that got herself caught in a washing line. He has some waffles for lunch and then heads to Bushwick, Brooklyn. A lot of people wave at him from the streets around here. People in Queens are nice, but have grown used to him. It’s kinda cool, he’ll admit, to see people excited about the novelty of having a superhero who cares about their neighborhood.

He spends the rest of the day there. There isn’t much drama to be dealt with this particular afternoon, and he hopes his clear presence here will be enough to keep it that way from now on.

When the sun sets, he reluctantly goes home.

Weekend.

He can’t eat that evening from the sheer anxiety of knowing he’ll have to make it through two whole days alone. Like fight or flight has kicked in, but there's nothing to fight or flee from. He considers just patrolling again for his entire Saturday and Sunday, but he knows SHIELD is probably monitoring all social media mentions of Spider-Man, and he doesn’t want Maria to question his sanity. He’s already doing that just fine himself. 

“Come on, Jesus,” he tells himself, pounding his fist against his own leg. Right now, he only needs to focus on completing the mission. Once that’s done, he’ll sort himself out.

Movies.

He watches all the Disney movies from the nineties in a row on Saturday, his arm curled around his pillow.

He scrolls through the messages in his phone, random shit some algorithm threw at him. Another cat picture from Lisa Brady. Ali Roshdy sent him a link, have you seen this, to a video of a cockatoo riding a skateboard. He tries to imagine they are all real people and types out an answer to some of them. That feels like it actually calms him down a bit.

He scrolls his way to the only real person in his phone. Pick you up again Monday? He asks. He stares at the screen for a while, then lays the phone aside. He is about halfway through Pocahontas when his phone buzzes with a reply from MJ. No thank da hood has bn quiet lately.

That’s good, he tells himself.

Sunday, he wakes up with a bit of a jolt, feeling like he forgot something, like a deadline is approaching that he didn’t prepare for, worry coiling in his stomach. His day is a mix of half-hearted attempts to relax and jittery bursts of wanting to be productive. Neither actually happens. That evening, he feels exhausted, even though nothing substantial has happened. He hasn’t even washed a single mug. But at least he can go to bed— and to work tomorrow.

-

Rhodey comes over on Sunday and wants to stay a few days. He brings freshly cut flowers in a vase.

“Am I your secret lover?” Tony asks.

“Forgive me for wanting to liven up this place. I don’t want to spend the next two days feeling like I’m being held hostage.”

“What dramatics. My place is hostage chic, at the very least.”

Rhodey makes a three-course dinner that evening, one that makes Tony’s taste buds come back to life after being numbed down by months of boiled pasta and vegetables.

Tony has double servings of everything and then can barely move from his chair. “Holding you hostage is beginning to sound very tempting.”

“Will I get to meet your kids tomorrow?”

“I don’t see why not. We’ve—They’ve had a turbulent week.” He shares the story of Michelle getting mugged and Peter’s mother turning up at the tower.

“Damn,” Rhodey says. “Do you know how she lost her mom and brother?”

“No, didn’t ask.”

“And Peter. Growing up with a mother like that. He left home at sixteen, right?”

“Escaped the noose, yes.”

“You’ve got your hands full.” A smile tugs at Rhodey’s lips.

“You don’t need to look so pleased about it.”

“Your posturing is crumbling, it’s crumbling like a shortbread cookie.”

“I hate you.”

He watches along with Rhodey’s usual talk shows, sprawled out on the couch, and heads to bed straight after.

-

He always wakes up before Rhodey. He slaps his pulse dampeners on, gets dressed. Rhodey left overnight oats in the fridge; coffee mugs covered by a tea towel. Tony takes one and eats it with a teaspoon, makes coffee, empties the dishwasher.

It’s not until a quarter to nine that he finally hears Rhodey stumbling around. Peter has probably arrived already, but Tony is rarely on time, the kid knows how to let himself in. He starts on a cappuccino and has it ready as soon as Rhodey shuffles into the room, wearing a sweater over his pajamas.

Rhodey hums appreciatively when he accepts the coffee. “I got a meeting at Jacob K. Javits in the afternoon.”

“FBI?”

“DHS.”

“Boss,” FRIDAY says sharply. “Mr. Romero seems to be running a few risky experiments in the workshop.”

Tony isn’t in a rush yet. “What. Blowing something up?”

“He is doing test runs with his chemical leak detector, but with the modifications he made, the thermal scanners could detect temperature differences in the room, meaning he could get a reading of the workshop and spot uneven heat distribution around—”

Tony is already out the door. He turns the corner and rushes down the hallway. FRIDAY slides the doors of his workshop open.

Peter glances over his shoulder, a frown on his face. The laptop screen in front of him is showing a slew of errors in red letters. “Morning, sir,” Peter says, and turns back to squint at his screen. The model of the chemical leak detector is lying on its back on the table next to the laptop.

Tony crosses the distance and keeps his voice neutral. The kid doesn’t even know what he did, and Tony will only draw attention to it if he acts shifty about it. “What’s the plan for this morning?”

“Uh. Fix—some of this. I tried a different infrared receiver and I did get readings, but also even more errors.”

Tony tugs at the circuit board hanging out by its wires. “Because you swapped it for a universal one. And your software is adjusted to underwater conditions.”

“Isn’t universal, like—"

“You say you got readings?”

“Yeah, but it’s not like they have any point. It’s supposed to work under water.”

Tony disconnects the receiver from the circuit board and tucks it in a back pocket, his heart rate calming down to manageable levels. “Put the old one back on. Trust me, the receiver wasn’t the problem.”

“But how should I—"

“Figure it out,” Tony says curtly. He is surprised the kid hasn’t, already, considering the impressive level of work he has shown himself to be capable of so far.

He turns and spots Rhodey, who had evidently followed him into the workshop and is standing just inside the doorway, coffee cup still in hand.

“No bare feet in the workshop,” Tony says.

Peter startles and turns.

“You must be Peter,” Rhodey says, face lit up in a smile. He approaches with his hand outstretched. “I’m James Rhodes, everyone calls me Rhodey. Tony has told me a few things about you.”

Peter blinks, and then his inner polite person kicks in. “Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Rhodes, sir.”

Rhodey pulls a chair up right next to him. “What are you working on? Explain it to me like I’m three, I have no background in gizmo wizardry.”

Tony turns away from the two of them and takes out his phone, quietly sending FRIDAY a command to delete Peter’s readings. If the kid spots them missing, he’ll likely just assume it’s another software error.

-

The rest of the day is uneventful. Rhodey hangs around a while longer, meets Michelle too and seems to love her attitude to bits, as he should.

At lunch time, Rhodey takes off. Tony sends Peter down to the food court to get them all some noodles, and then sits Michelle down. She immediately looks defensive and he makes an effort to look as relaxed and non-threatening as possible. “Is the phone working okay?”

Her shoulders sag a little. “Oh. Yeah.”

“I have changed the food court access on your intern badge to limitless. That means both in terms of hours and budget. I know we always have lunch together, but if you want to have breakfast here before work, go ahead. And most of our food is served fresh, but we also have a few prepackaged options, so you can also bring things home with you if you need.”

Her mouth flattens. She tugs a bit at the badge hanging from her lanyard, seemingly subconsciously. “What makes you think I need your dumb prepackaged sandwiches?”

“You took home the entire buffet from TechCrunch.”

She says nothing.

“If you don’t need it, don’t use it. I won’t know whether you do or don’t.” He nods brusquely, once, to show that that’s enough said about that. “Now, let’s look at your work from this morning, shall we?”

She still fidgets with the badge. Nods. “My friends call me MJ,” she says. “By the way.”

“Okay, MJ. Let’s look at your work.”

-

The grey walls of the Stark Industries parking garage are becoming a very familiar view. Peter counts the grey bricks top to bottom for probably the fifth time as he tries to gather his courage enough to start the engine and drive home. Employees in blue overalls pass by in his rearview mirror at irregular intervals, carrying crates.

Today was good. He has reason to be happy. He had no way to safely download the data from the surface heat map without FRIDAY spotting it, but he committed to memory exactly where his scanner found heat abnormalities in the room. Underneath Stark’s desk. Behind the open storage closet.

There is a knock on the window. Peter turns and looks up, straight at the impatient face — eyebrow raised high — of Tony Stark. The man gestures with two fingers for him to roll the window down. Peter does, swallowing. “Sir?”

Stark doesn’t say anything for a moment, his eyes speculative, and Peter has the horrible thought that this man just figured out exactly what the chemical leak detector is really for.

“How are we doing, kid?” Stark asks.

“I’m sorry?”

“Were you planning to camp out down here?”

“No, sir. Just gathering my thoughts before driving home.”

“FRIDAY says you’ve been here almost two hours.”

Peter frowns. His gaze swings away from Tony Stark’s face, towards the clock on his dashboard. Realization sinks in. “Oh,” he says, his voice sounding very small even to his own ears.

“Step out of the vehicle, please.”

“Sorry, I can just—”

“Come on, andiamo.”

He hefts his duffel over his shoulder and opens the car door, Mr. Stark stepping to one side to make room.

“All right,” Stark says, one hand landing firmly on Peter’s shoulder, and Peter is steered back to the elevator. Peter wants to ask Am I in trouble? but it seems pretty obvious that he is.

“Do you have any allergies?” Stark asks as they zoom up.

“Sir?”

“Allergies.”

“Uh. No?”

They step out on the floor of the workshop, but Stark steers him left instead of right, rounding a corner and down that narrow hallway with the dark blue door at the end. Peter is led straight into Tony Stark’s small apartment.

Rhodey is in the kitchen, glass of wine in hand. Onions are popping and sizzling in a frying pan.

“Can you handle an extra mouth to feed?” Stark says, before unceremoniously planting Peter in a chair at the round table. “I have one intern here in need of a good meal.”

Rhodey’s eyes crinkle up, friendly. “Hi, Peter.”

And Peter very abruptly understands what exactly is happening here. He looks up at Tony Stark, horrified. “This isn’t… I’m, really sir, I am…” He almost does it. He almost gets the word ‘fine’ out, but he somehow can’t get it past his lips.

“Uh-huh, that’s what I thought,” Tony says, almost absentmindedly. He turns away to rummage through a cupboard. “Do you want your water flat or sparkling?”

“I—really don’t need to eat.” He can’t even remember the last time he had an entire meal at dinner.

In response, Tony just sets a third plate down on the table with a very definite air of finality.

Peter sighs a little. “Just—flat water is fine.” And then, lower: “Thank you, sir.”

“Still waters,” Tony says, nodding.

They have stuffed portobello mushrooms and pumpkin gnocchi, and tiramisu for dessert. Peter eats more than he has in weeks, maybe months. He’s hungry.

“Have you thought about a patent?” Tony asks half-way through dessert. “For the chemical leak detector?”

“What? Uh, I don’t think it’s that good, sir.”

“It is.”

“I could use your help on some of those errors, though.”

“I don’t think you do,” Tony says. There’s something in his eyes Peter can’t quite decipher. “You made a nearly-functioning scanner that can autonomously follow warm trails in water with sonar-thermal fusion mapping and predictive algorithms, in a few weeks. Like it was nothing. If I’d help you along, there would be no challenge in it for you whatsoever.”

So, what… Tony completely ignored him this whole time because he thought that would be helpful? That doesn’t line up with the image Peter had of him. Then again—none of this does, really.

Tony Stark turning nice. That’s the last thing he needs after he just spent the morning gathering necessary evidence against him.

He knows he is good at this sort of stuff, he knows building this chemical leak detector isn’t something just anybody can do. But Tony Stark being impressed by his work is something unanticipated. Particularly since the ‘errors’ were entirely deliberate and Peter already knows how to fix them. The device wasn’t even meant to be a chemical leak detector. If he actually put some effort in, he’s sure he could do better.

“I… didn’t think it was that good, sir,” he says, a bit helplessly.

“We’ll talk it over again when you’ve finished it,” Tony decides. And then he waves his dessert spoon around and asks, completely out of the blue and like it’s no big deal at all: “Are you staying the night?”

The question knocks him sideways. “I… I’m sorry?”

“Rhodey is staying in the bedroom, but that couch pulls out.”

Peter sneaks a glance at Rhodey, who doesn’t seem to think the turn in conversation is weird at all, and then looks back at Tony, who is watching him with a casual sort of patience, like all he did was ask Peter about his favorite color.

Maybe this will hurt.

Maybe this will help.

“Okay,” he says, and thinks he may have gone insane.

-

It helps that neither Mr. Stark nor Mr. Rhodes ask any questions, or act like any of this is out of the ordinary. They load the dishwasher, and then Tony reads a book while Rhodey questions Peter about his project here, and his course load at uni. Rhodey wants to watch the news and some current affairs talk show that comes right after.

Tony finds him an extra toothbrush, and a charger for his phone, and some pajamas to borrow — hello kitty pants and an oversized shirt you’d find in a souvenir shop. He clears the couch of the back cushions and pulls the seat up by a strap, letting the couch unfold in sections. Rhodey has found sheets and a Bob-the-Builder blanket. Peter brushes his teeth and changes into the pajamas and comes back out to find the bed made up. Rhodey creeps around the room, drawing the curtains shut.

“Good night, Pete,” Tony says, and flicks off the light, shuts the door.

He crawls under the covers. He feels like he has slid into a little pocket dimension where none of the rest of the world exists. The sheets smell flowery. There is a strip of light underneath the door to the hallway. Tony and Rhodey are still chatting quietly in the other room but Peter doesn’t focus on it. He tucks his face beneath the blanket.

Something softens inside of him. He has been waiting to feel safe, waiting to feel anything but worry. He often feels like a part of him is still that sixteen-year-old boy who just ran away, huddled between the pilasters of that movie theater, cheek resting on his knee. Waiting for someone to see him.

Chapter Text

He wakes up Tuesday morning to gentle clanging and scraping noises. He opens one eye and spots Tony Stark moving quietly around the kitchen, barefoot, barely visible in the pale morning light that leaks in through gaps in the curtains.

“Morning,” Tony says as soon as Peter lifts his head. “I just showered, if you want a go. Rhodey won’t be up for a while.”

“Thank you, sir.” It feels a little rude to be using up Tony Stark’s water, but if he’s going to be wearing the same clothes for two days in a row the least he can do is shower.

Stark is a billionaire anyways, even if he doesn’t live like one.

“Towels in the blue cabinet, top shelf,” Tony says.

Peter showers, and when he gets back to the kitchen Tony asks: “how do you like your coffee?”

The question brings him up short, somehow. He always drinks it black, but that’s just because it’s always been handed to him that way. He knows there are a million ways to have your coffee these days, and that people are often oddly particular about it. “How do you like your coffee, sir?”

Tony’s eyebrow comes up. “Black.” He is standing by the espresso machine, a round tin in his hands.

“Okay. Yeah. Me too.”

“Somehow,” Tony drawls, “I’m not convinced.”

“I’ve just not had it a lot of ways. And I don’t want to impose.”

“Rhodey always has a cappuccino in the morning.”

“Okay. That sounds—I’ll try that.”

Tony makes him a cappuccino. It has a layer of thick foam and tastes creamy, Peter likes it. He leans his elbows on the kitchen table and folds his hands around the cup. “Are you going to sue my mother, sir?”

Tony takes a moment to answer. Neither of them has mentioned the incident to each other, they’ve both been pretending it didn’t happen. “No,” Tony says, turning away to the fridge. “My dad bought that art work. One less thing to pretend I like.”

“Okay.”

Tony turns back with a packet of blueberries in hand, tears it open at a corner. “When you said you got emancipated, I assumed it meant you weren’t in touch with your parents anymore.” He pours some into the palm of his hand.

“I wasn’t. I hadn’t seen her in two years. She doesn’t have my phone number or address but somehow found out I work here so she— So that’s why.” He lowers the coffee cup so he can look down at it and avoid looking Tony in the eye.

“I mean. Technically you still haven’t seen her, right? Police took her away.”

“Right,” Peter says. “I mean. Yes. I’m just—sorry, sir.”

“Don’t be. Wasn’t on you.”

“I actually spotted her a while back. Um. That day I was looking for my lost key? I went down to lost and found and she was waiting in the lobby. I just ran off to the parking garage. If I had gone and talked to her, maybe she wouldn’t have thrown a fit….”

Tony pulls out a chair and sits at the table so he’s back in Peter’s eyeline. “Yeah, all of that; not on you,” he repeats more intently. “And well done for not turning out like a fuckwit being raised by parents like that.”

“I wouldn’t say they raised me, perse.”

“Oh—you grew up somewhere else?”

“No, I just mean they mostly ignored me.”

“That feels like zero improvement.” Tony shakes his head and swirls his coffee around before downing it. “Rhodey made overnight oats. They slap. Want to try?”

“Thank you, sir.”

-

He stays just long enough to say a polite goodbye to Rhodey, then heads to the workshop. MJ arrives at nine on the dot, and it’s still another half an hour before Tony walks in. “Morning, hooligans,” he says, and doesn’t say anything all morning to indicate that Peter spent the night here.

Peter keeps his head down and works on his detector. Now that it has done its duty, he needs to finish the project quickly so he can move on to the next phase. He is hyperaware, as he sits here behind his usual workbench, where the two hidden voids in To— in Stark’s workshop are located. But he’ll need to disregard those for now; until he finds the perfect opportunity.

Gain his trust. Learn about his AI.

SHIELD might be pleased to hear that Peter in fact gained Tony Stark’s trust so much that he spent the night on his couch. But he isn’t sure if he wants to share that. Because that would mean explaining why Tony was worried about him in the first place and sure, Peter can tell them he sat in that garage like a zombie for two hours of purpose, like it was all part of the plan; after all, he was supposed to make it seem like his life went off the rails… But so far, in all their debriefs, no one ever suggested that Peter should play that particular card. So it might still come across as strange that he went by his own initiative.

What he wants to— needs to avoid above all else, is SHIELD considering him fragile, or a liability. His life would fall apart like a wet cracker without this job.

Gain his trust. Learn about his AI.

He gets to work, steadily, methodically, fixing the errors on the device until the red letters on his screen turn green, one by one.

He is aware of Tony hovering, looking over his shoulder at some point, but refuses to look up. Until Tony says: “How did you fix that one? The—'sensor range exceeded’-error?”

Peter’s gaze drifts past his screen. “Oh. The analog amplifier was only rated for surface temperatures, so that’s what distorted it.”

“Huh,” Tony says. And saunters off again.

It’s Tuesday, so they head down to Puff Puff Pastry around lunchtime for their famous croissants. June is busy, and Peter wishes he could find a moment to speak with her alone, but is also strangely afraid to invite her for coffee or something.

“Three times the usual,” Tony says.

They find a table in a quiet corner this time.

“Sir,” Peter asks carefully. “Do you know whether June is in touch with her kids again?”

To his surprise, Tony actually does know the answer to that one. “I believe she is, tentatively. She hasn’t said much about it. Both of them still live in Minnesota.”

“How do you know her so well? You have so many employees. I asked her and she has no idea why you hired her in the first place.”

“I saw opportunities.”

It’s becoming muddier and muddier, his image of who Tony Stark is, exactly.

He spends the afternoon finishing the detector and heaves a deep sigh when, a little after four PM, it no longer throws up any error messages when he runs a simulation. “Mr. Stark, sir? Could you run final diagnostics for me, see if I missed anything?”

Tony does, taking his time. “FRIDAY?” he asks at some point.

“It seems to be running smoothly, boss.”

Tony nods. “I’d usually send it down to Testing & Validation at this point, have them throw a farrago of triple checks at it. If you want?”

“Great,” Peter says, making sure to look interested. He just needs to move on from this project, he doesn’t care how.

“This is good work, Peter.” Tony sits back, looking him up and down. “What do you want to do next? I have a few failed products that I never managed to get operational. There’s a real challenge for you.”

“Actually, sir.” Peter clasps his hands in his lap. It doesn’t really matter if he seems nervous: he knows this is a big ask, even if there weren’t an entire secret government operation at stake.

“Spit it out,” Tony says, amused.

“Sorry, sir. I’m really interested in your AI. I haven’t ever… I was hoping I could study it, maybe design a new algorithm or anything your company might need.”

He holds his breath when it looks like Tony is genuinely considering his suggestion. “You can’t study FRIDAY,” Tony says, pointing a finger up at the ceiling. “Because she runs everything, she encrypts sensitive data and company secrets, she is the building’s main security. But I could set you up with one of my earlier models, as a sort of sandbox.”

“That sounds great, sir.” Earlier test models are a fine start; they would still tell him a lot about how FRIDAY works.

“All right, uh.” Tony checks his watch. It’s close to 5 PM by now. “We can call it a day and set it up tomorrow. Or get started right now if you don’t mind going home a little late.”

“Now is good.”

“Does that mean I can go home?” MJ asks from across the room.

“Yeah, kid, you’re welcome again for this rare and ultimate opportunity.”

She sticks out her tongue and starts gathering her stuff together. Holds up two fingers as she leaves. “Hasta la pasta, losers.”

Version 3.2 of FRIDAY is hosted on a separate internal server. “The thing is firewalled six ways from Sunday,” Tony says as he is merrily clicking away to get Peter access. “And I got copies. So don’t worry about screwing up any algorithms. Go bananas.”

They finish around a half past five and Peter heaves his duffel bag over his shoulder—but Tony holds him back by gently laying two fingers against his wrist. “Are you all right, today?”

He knows the question behind that question. “Yes, sir. I’m fine. I’ll—I’m going home.” He nods.

He goes downstairs, gets in his car, starts the engine right away and pulls out of the garage. He’s got this.

-

He gets home and opens his laptop to find an email with lots of smiley faces from Deborah, confirming that his psych eval is scheduled for this Friday. Dr. Raynor will do the evaluation with you again. Peter hadn’t even gotten her name last time, almost exactly two years ago.

Peter does what he probably should have done weeks—months ago. He looks up how to fix your damn mental health. He doesn’t dare to use his SHIELD phone or laptop for it, so the next day he looks it up during his lunchbreak on Wednesday, on the laptop Tony gave him—he has FRIDAY 3.2 give him tips, even. He doesn’t give a hoo-ha if Tony finds out, if Tony knows he is a little bit insane. It lines up with his sacred freaking backstory, after all.

Physical exercise, F3.2 says. Healthy food. Structured morning routines. Meditation.

Okay. Natasha mentioned meditation once. They sharpen the mind, or whatever. So if she does them, it should be fine if he downloads some on his SHIELD laptop back home and tries them out. That won’t raise red flags.

He has two days to fix himself right up. Should be enough.

-

Meditation for peace, tranquility and healing. Let’s fucking go.

He creates space on the floor by kicking dirty clothes and empty takeaway containers to one side. He presses play and then lays on his back.

Let's begin by becoming aware of the breath. Feel the cool breath as it enters, bringing you energy...

He can do that. Easy peasy.

Exhale through the nose, releasing stress, feeling the warmth of your breath…

He’s got that down too. Check, check.

Now I want you to visualize yourself in a place where you feel comfortable and safe…

Right. A place where he feels comfortable.

It can be anywhere, inside or outside, a childhood room, a garden…

He thinks long and hard, and then longer and harder.

Wherever it is, let that place start to form in your mind.

All of anxiety comes rushing back over him until he feels buried under twenty layers of it. He can’t come up with a single place, a single place where he has ever felt comfortable and safe.

Now, begin by noticing what you see. Notice colors, shapes, light.

He’s already falling behind, she’s going too fast. Or he’s going too slow. Because every other damn moron in the world can come up with a place just like that, off the top of their head, only Peter can’t.

Next, notice what you hear. Maybe leaves rustling, distant voices, or just peaceful quiet.

Suddenly an image of Tony Stark’s pull-out couch pops into his head. The sound of Tony pottering around in the kitchen. Or the smell of the sheets as Tony and Rhodey talk quietly in the hallway.

It’s insane that that’s what he landed on, but it will have to do. He closes his eyes and breathes.

-

He still feels unbalanced about the whole thing on Thursday when he’s back in the workshop. It doesn’t help that Tony seems particularly mellow today. He just lollygags around the workshop a bit, sipping his coffee and sharing anecdotes about the weirdest stories the press ever published about him — all of which Peter had already read. And then he naps on the leather couch in the corner and MJ draws a pair of glasses and a lightning-bolt scar on him with a green sharpie.

“I feel red would have been a more Gryffindor-esque color,” FRIDAY puts in.

MJ snorts appreciatively.

Tony wakes about ten minutes later, downs the rest of his now-cold coffee, pulls a face. And then busies himself with attempting to take apart some model of — something, an air conditioning unit that is climate neutral.

Peter wonders if he’s putting on a show for the interns, if he’d usually be in here designing hand grenades. Or he leaves all the weapon manufacturing to someone else and actually spends most his time designing all things eco-friendly and climate-smart.

The doors slide open and Pepper marches in, tapping her pen against her clipboard. “Mr. Stark. The RenewGen deal. You were supposed to sign it on—” She looks up, sees Tony with his glasses and lightning scar and falters.

“What?” Tony asks.

She looks at him a moment longer, then whips the paper around towards him and repeats, stony faced: “You were supposed to sign it on every page, not just the final one.”

“Ugh, fine.” He snatches it up and puts down a few wild scribbles.

Pepper nods and leaves without another word.

“Can’t get the damn casing off this thing,” Tony mutters, wedging a screwdriver underneath the hard plastic.

“Try alohomora,” FRIDAY suggests.

MJ laughs so hard that she falls out of her chair.

-

“Maria’s not here yet,” Pepper says when Peter passes her on the front steps of the hotel that afternoon.

“Oh,” Peter says and hangs back.

She is next to the ashtray bin. Her hair looks frazzled. She’s holding her heels in one hand, a cigarette in the other, still in that polished and pressed suit she wore at work. A strange clash of her two personalities.

“Sure as hell surprised me to see him like that,” Pepper says, without naming names. She has cocked her head and studies him with interest.

“Well, not like he knew about it,” Peter says. In fact, he and MJ went home in the afternoon and Tony still hadn’t seen his own reflection anywhere.

“Yes, but for the little Miss to even attempt it, she’s gotta be pretty damn convinced he wouldn’t go postal when he noticed.”

Tony wouldn’t. Peter is pretty convinced of that, too. He doesn’t really know how to explain it. “Have you ever seen him get angry?”

“Suppose not,” she acknowledges, and takes another long drag, the tip of the cigarette glowing up. “He’s got a pretty fragile ego, though.”

“Yeah,” Peter says, mouth quirking up, though he feels a little bad about badmouthing Tony. “Can I be honest? Stark has nice moments sometimes, and it doesn’t make things any easier. Is that like—a thing, a familiar thing?”

“Of course,” she says right away, nodding, looking at him without judgement. “Man, kid. ‘Bad guys’ are rarely just assholes all the time. If anything, Stark’s an exception. He thinks being unpleasant is an artform. My last mission before this, I nailed a guy who took care of stray dogs on his farm. Had almost twenty of them that he cared for with genuine patience and affection. But he was also a key figure in the hard drugs trade and was really big on forcing homeless kids to do most of the dirty work for him. I don’t know what happened to the dogs after I got him busted, but I doubt anyone went out of their way to get them all loving homes.” She shrugs. “It’s part of it.”

“Right. Compartmentalize.” He is the stray dog in this scenario, obviously.

“And narrow your focus. We don’t decide who’s good or bad. We’re just there to collect the evidence, maybe cap a few guys if it goes sideways. They all get sent to trial and then someone else has to look at that whole picture and weigh it.”

He nods. “Thank you. That makes sense.”

Maria and Natasha arrive together, both looking grim. Pepper gives them a cursory glance as they march in, and taps her cigarette above the ashtray bin. “Did you watch Lakers vs. Celtics last night?”

“Uh. No.”

“You need a hobby,” she tells him, quite sincerely. “Preferably a proper guilty pleasure.”

“I… have done some yoga.”

“Yoga is for suckers.” She finishes her cigarette and flicks it into the ashtray bin. “I meant, trashy novels, bubble baths, cheap horror movies.”

“Uh…” Peter says, but she already turned away and is heading inside, swinging the heels around by their straps. He follows.

Turns out Maria’s grim look was for a reason. “Weapons found during a raid in Cabinda. Not branded of course, but decidedly made with Stark technology. Stark Industries recently showcased models of a modular system that captures solar radiation and turns it into decentralized energy, not on the market yet.”

“RenewGen,” Peter says. “It’s still deep in beta, Stark says.”

Her mouth twists. “And yet these weapons we found use that precise system to a tee, except the solar collectors were jury-rigged to overload to a surge that could knock out power grids.”

It suddenly feels very stupid and immature — laughing at a pair of green glasses drawn on a man’s face.

-

Weekend again. Endless long days with nothing to distract him from himself. The good news is, at least he has his psych eval on Friday afternoon. This is, simultaneously, also the bad news.

Peter has spent a few more sessions lying on the floor of his apartment, visualizing Tony’s pull-out couch. He managed a little cleaning, changed his bedsheets, threw out a cucumber from the back of his fridge that had turned black and was oozing a brown juice all over the shelves. He even forces a few proper meals down. He doesn’t want to have to lie when the doctor asks about his eating patterns. He has a feeling that might make things worse.

He meets Dr. Raynor in a study room of a library. There is a whiteboard behind her, and a little plastic sign on the table explaining how to get on the public WiFi.

She does ask about his eating patterns. “Answer with ‘rarely, sometimes, regularly or almost daily, please,” she says, and then starts listing things that all fall very much in the category of ‘daily’. Feeling down, feeling anxious, little interest or pleasure in doing things, trouble sleeping or sleeping too much, poor appetite.

Peter tries to skirt around the edges of honesty. It would probably seem ingenuine if he acts like he is the Buddha himself or something. So he says “I do get nervous about the mission sometimes. And, uh. I get quite bored on the weekends.”

“What are your hobbies?”

There is a short moment of panic that he quickly tempers. He can answer that. “I watch movies. I’ve done yoga a few times. Uh. I like plants.”

She nods approvingly. “Those are all good things. Any mission — but your first one in particular — is bound to be emotionally and mentally draining. On your days off, it’s important to get out of your head.”

All in all, it’s a good thing he went, he thinks as he drives back. It was reassuring, somehow. Because yeah, of course your first mission is going to be draining. He’d been thinking of it that way, but it’s nice to hear it confirmed. He just needs to focus and get through it, and then he’ll have the energy to get the rest of his life back on track.

He doesn’t really know who gets to read the report Dr. Raynor is going to write up. Probably everyone.

On impulse, he pulls over by a florist and walks past the fresh-cut flowers to the potted plants in the back. There are no flamingo flowers on display, but he spots something called a ‘Spider plant’.

He brings it home and puts it in his windowsill. He steps back to take in the view — the brand-new plant in its shiny azure-blue pot, surrounded by dust, dead flies, a chipped mug and a shriveled-up flamingo flower — and already starts second-guessing himself, feeling a little bit insane, actually.

Like the Titanic is sinking, and he’s trying to solve it by rearranging the deck chairs.

-

Spider-Man has now firmly added Bushwick in Brooklyn to ‘his’ turf. Tony has seen one or two smaller news outlets remark on it. The Daily Bugle compared it to a spreading infection.

“You know, Peter is Spider-Man,” he casually drops into conversation when he’s visiting Rhodey on Saturday.

Rhodey, who was about to serve up coffee, drops the cups the final inch to the table, coffee sloshing over the rim. “Crap,”  he mutters. “Tony — What the… Was that a joke?”

“If I made a joke, you’d be laughing. Give me some credit.”

“And Michelle is Daredevil?” he asks dryly, but with a wary look like he’s not even entirely kidding. He grabs a dishcloth to wipe up the coffee.

“Now that would be a coincidence.”

“Coincidence,” Rhodey echoes. “Wait. You found out after he became your intern? I figured that it was why you picked him!” He narrows his eyes at Tony. “What are the odds of that? Don’t you think that’s, uh…”

“Do I think it’s statistically unlikely that a kid who became a vigilante at fourteen, might also be a kid whose life goes off the tracks later in life and who might need some kind of, uh, life changing internship program to get back on them?”

“Fourteen,” Rhodey mutters. Tony can see him redo that math in his head and then nod grimly when he arrives at the same conclusion. He wipes the underside of the cups and throws the dishcloth into the sink.  “Does he know you know?”

“It hasn’t come up in casual conversation, no.”

Rhodey sits, picking up his coffee with both hands. “Are you going to tell him?”

He hasn’t thought much about it, honestly.

“He’ll only be with you for… five more weeks?” Rhodey reminds him, surveying him over the rim of his cup. “This might seem like a reason to stay in touch.”

Right. Time flies. “It’s pretty inconvenient, having them in the workshop. I haven’t even worked on the Mark L in all that time.”

“Uh-huh.”

“They’re punks. I hate them bitterly.”

“Uh-huh,” Rhodey says again, in that exact same tone.

“She drew on my face.”

Rhodey lowers his cup that time. “I’m sorry?”

-

Tony enters the workshop Monday morning around ten, and the first thing he does is point a threatening finger at MJ.

“In my defense,” she says, “you fell asleep.”

“Never do that again,” Tony says. “You ingrate.”

“Can I just do it one more time?”

“Fine, one more time, but then never again.” He turns to take a glance at Peter, sitting at his own workbench.

“Peter is in a pretty pissy mood, by the way,” MJ says.

Peter doesn’t look at them but his mouth twists as he slams the spacebar a few times. He looks quite pale. He never looks particularly good on Monday mornings, and Tony is beginning to get an idea why.

He shrugs. “Well. I know all about partying too hard on the weekend.”

MJ smiles widely, leaning an elbow on the table as she points towards Peter with a screwdriver. “I don’t think he does, though.”

“Lay off him, get to work, you miscreant.”

The day is rather uneventful, apart from Peter being clearly on edge, and in an unusually surly way. He even almost glares when Tony suggests he take a break and get some coffee or a glass of water. “I’m fine,” he says, and belatedly tacks on a “sir”.

Tony decides to give him space and spends most of the day working on MJ’s braille printer with her. He’s supposed to review some RenewGen update ideas today, but the longer this internship goes on, the more he finds himself getting invested in the kid’s projects instead.

Things don’t go pear-shaped until the last half hour of the day. MJ has gone to the bathroom and Tony takes the opportunity to check in on Peter. “How are you today, kid?”

“Fine.” Peter’s eyes are scanning the screen, but Tony can tell he isn’t really reading.

“You know my door’s always open for—”

“Mind your own damn business for once!” Peter snaps.

There is a beat of silence, in which Peter goes very suddenly and alarmingly pale, gripping the edge of his workbench.

“As outbursts go—” Tony starts, but Peter grabs his duffel bag and bolts out the door.

Tony blinks at the empty chair in front of him and says a soft “hmm” to himself.

“Where’s the nerd?” MJ asks when she comes back, shaking out her wet hands.

“I let him go early. He wasn’t feeling well.”

“No shit.”

-

Minding his own business has never been a particular strength of his. As soon as MJ has left, he shuts the workshop down, looks up Peter’s address in his files, finds his car keys and takes the elevator down to B2.

It’s dark out by the time he gets to Peter’s apartment building. He crosses the lawn and catches the door just before it falls shut behind an elderly man. The man stops in front of the elevator but forgets to press the button. Tony pauses a moment to get it for him.

“Oh, tarnation,” the man says. “Everything has buttons, these days. Back in my days, they’d pull elevators up with a crank.”

Tony takes the stairs to the second floor. Peter’s apartment is right next to the elevator. He knocks.

He waits about a minute, then knocks again, louder.

The door is pulled open just wide enough for Peter to fill the doorway. He takes one look at Tony and blanches again, hand flopping away from the doorknob. The door sways open a little further. Peter stares at him.

“Evening,” Tony says.

“Please don’t fire me, sir,” Peter bursts out. “Please, please, please—”

“Peter, breathe.”

Peter snaps his mouth shut, his eyes turbulent. Under the glaring overhead lights of the hallway, the bags under his eyes are far more prominent than they had been in the workshop.

“Kid, you’ve heard MJ say far worse things to me on a daily basis. Come on.”

Peter opens his mouth, then closes it again.

“Can I come in, perhaps?”

That seems to shake Peter out of his stupor, he sways a bit on his feet, clenching the door with one hand. “It’s a—a little messy,” he says with hitching breath.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve been a student.” He takes half a step forward and Peter stumbles to the side.

“Though I shouldn’t be surprised you picked a flat that seems to be mainly inhabited by senior citizens,” Tony says, pulling his scarf away as he moves down the hallway. “I met a gentleman by the elevators who—” He steps into the living room and falters as he takes in the landscape of half-empty cups, take-away containers, unopened letters, dirty laundry. The floor is barely visible beneath the layers of cluttering. It doesn’t smell awful, but the air is stale. This isn’t the mess of a student dorm, this is the mess of someone who has not taken care of himself for a very, very long time.

He looks back at Peter, who has followed him inside.

Peter looks away. He starts biting the nail of his thumb, his gaze skittering around the room.

“You’re right, kid,” Tony says calmly. “It is a bit messy. Let’s see if we can do something about that, huh?”

“I’m sorry,” Peter whispers. Tony sees fearful panic in his eyes and his heart clenches.

He steps closer. With a gentle nudge, he guides Peter towards the couch. “Have you had dinner yet?”

“No, sir.”  Peter sits on the couch, pulling his legs up protectively, hands clenching and unclenching. He looks utterly defeated. His breathing is ragged and wet: trying not to cry.

“I think I’ll just order some pizza.” Something you can eat right out of the box.

Peter squeezes his eyes shut tightly. “I don’t eat dinner. It’s better if I don’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“It calms me down.”

Tony sets that whole can of worms aside for later. “I’m gonna order something anyway. Do I have your permission to clean up?”

“I can clean,” Peter whispers, bowing his head lower, the words thrumming with anxiety. “I just d-don’t know where to start.”

Tony kneels on the floor in front of him, ducking his own head to try to look into Peter’s eyes. “If I tell you where to start, do you want to help me?”

“I’m sorry…”

Tony reaches out to squeeze Peter’s wrist, watching him struggle to hold himself together. “It’s all right, kid,” he says. “We’re all faced with problems sometimes, that we cannot solve alone.”

He can see Peter’s expression fracturing apart, and then tears spilling out. Peter buries his face against his knee, shuddering, gasping breaths stutter out of him. The sobs are ragged, coming from very deep down.

Tony’s thumb rubs slow circles on the back of Peter’s hand and he waits it out quietly. He can imagine the lengths Peter would have gone to to hide this from everyone, and how unsettling it is to have that carefully constructed facade crumbling apart like this.

Eventually, the sobs turn to resigned sniffles. Peter’s hand flexes under his, as if he wants to feel if Tony is still there. Tony grips a little tighter in response.

All the emotions—he hopes there’s some relief mixed in there as well. Carrying a secret is exhausting.

“I just—” Peter starts, and then needs another full minute to form a coherent sentence, hitching breaths, until he manages: “I just h-had a rough weekend.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. That’s the problem.” He pulls up his shirt to roughly scrub his face.

Tony understands all too well. “Alone with your thoughts, huh?”

Peter closes his eyes in surrender to another tide of emotions riding over him, and gives an uncoordinated, swaying nod, more tears dropping down from his lashes.

“Hm-hm, those aren’t always your best friend.”

“I thought I was going crazy.” Peter swallows. “Maybe I did. This isn’t what I’m really like, all this. I’m not…” he shrugs miserably.

Tony has a suspicion that Peter has never really had the luxury of self-discovery and can’t possibly determine what he is or is not like. He squeezes Peter’s wrist again, before letting go. “We’re going to start by cleaning. And then see what else you need.”

“You’re not supposed to be nice,” Peter whispers.

“I know, it’s ruining my whole vibe.” He stands and unbuttons his sleeves so he can roll them up.

Peter sniffles, wiping his nose with the back of his hands. “Are you—You’re not serious?”

“I’m happy to start alone, you can go nap. You can go downstairs and take a nap in my car if you prefer. You can help out, if you want.”

Peter takes a few bracing breaths. “I can clean,” he says. “Sir.” His hands are trembling, but it probably is best if he gets a simple job to do, rather than leave him stewing in spiraling thoughts.

“All right. Stand up, first.”

Peter does, swaying only a little. Tony gives a nod, squeezes his shoulders. “Go have a drink of water.”

“Yes sir,” Peter murmurs. He stumbles his way towards the bathroom — Tony had already spotted that the kitchen sink is overflowing with dishes. He hears water running, and then Peter comes back out. He pauses on the threshold and looks up at Tony like a dog at its owner, waiting for instructions.

“Why don’t you go around the whole apartment and gather all your laundry in one place. Let’s put everything on the couch.” He transfers a pile of papers from the seat next to Peter to the coffee table, recognizing some sketches of the chemical leak detector in passing. “I’ll start in the kitchen.”

Peter sniffs a few more times. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“No more of that.”

Peter gets to work while Tony sets his sights on the kitchen. They won’t be able to clean if they can’t even get a bucket under the faucet. The dishes are piled up high and full of suspiciously murky pools water. A faint, sour smell rises. “Are you particularly attached to any of your kitchenware?” he asks.

“No, sir.”

He starts packing it all away in garbage bags. He’ll just buy the kid all new stuff. This is a day for choosing your battles. Once the sink is empty, he collects the buckets standing in various corners. He throws the water out, rinses the buckets and wrings out the sponges and cloths. There aren’t any clean towels or cloths anywhere, so the actual cleaning and scrubbing will have to wait until later.

Garbage duty, first. The fridge is empty, save for a carton of something that used to be yoghurt. There isn’t much food in the house: canned soup, boxes of cereal and a lot of Red Bull. He finds a familiar bag with three rock-hard and discolored pizza slices next to the microwave. He sweeps the apartment, collecting empty takeaway containers, wrappers, crushed cans. There is a long-deceased plant in the window that he tips into the garbage bag, too. Another one next to it is drooping, a little dry around the edges, but revivable. He fills up five trash bags.

He has Peter start a cycle with the towels and dish rags first, “high temperature, long cycle.” By then, the pizza has arrived. They sit cross-legged on the floor by the coffee table. Peter still looks pale and picks at a slice of pepperoni.

“Are you in debt?” Tony asks, his gaze sweeping past the clutter of unopened letters that are now gathered into a pile.

“Um. I don’t know, I don’t think so. Maybe behind on some stuff, but… I have money.”

Tony nods.

Peter bites on the nail of his thumb some more, then looks Tony straight in the eye. “Sir. Please don’t tell Ms. Potts about any of this.”

“Ms. Potts?”

Peter nods, very earnestly.

Wow, his PA sure made an impression on the interns. “I mean. I won’t, of course, it’s none of her business. But she isn’t really that scary, you know.”

Peter says nothing. He takes another small bite of his slice while Tony already starts on his third.

“How long have you lived here?” he asks.

“Two years. But it hasn’t always been like—like this.”

“Does anybody know?”

Peter shakes his head, looks like he’s welling up again. “No, sir.” He looks down.

Tony feels compelled to say: “You know I still think you’re brilliant.”

Startled eyes meet his.

“Bit too polite, though,” Tony says.

Chapter Text

There are only three stalls open on the food court at 7:30 AM when Peter arrives there. A grab-and-go place with pre-packed meals, a coffee place all the way across the hall where most employees are lining up. And Puff Puff Pastry.

The last thing Tony did before leaving last night, was tap around a bit on his phone before informing Peter he would now have unlimited access to the food court at the tower. “You need more balanced meals, you’ll give yourself scurvy living off dry cereal.”

“I really can pay for my own food, sir,” Peter had assured him. His salary from SHIELD is still piling up in his bank account.

“Consider it an incentive.”

And it was. It wasn’t hard to wake up half an hour earlier this morning to come to the tower: it’s always a relief being able to leave his apartment.

June’s colleague is behind the counter this morning. Peter waits for his turn and asks for June first once he gets to the register.

“In the back. She’ll be out at some point. What can I get you?”

Everything here is healthy, as per company policy; the signs all say whole grain, whole wheat, no sugar. Balanced, he promised Tony, so he gets chia seed pudding, a fruit cup, two boiled eggs and a savory scone.

He has always been in favor of a good breakfast, is the thing. He needs to be sharp during the day. It’s only his dinners that he prefers to skip. But he hasn’t really had the energy to properly throw something together at home in the morning, so he usually eats crackers or dry cereal from the box.

He sits at one of the tables closest to the counter and tucks in.

He spots MJ stepping out of the elevator. She makes a beeline for the coffee place and doesn’t see him. It doesn’t seem like she could afford the luxury of those four-dollar coffees — but Peter realizes as soon as he thinks about that, that Tony is most likely paying for her food, too, probably has been for a while.

At least she is going to be here. Peter would feel horribly embarrassed spending a whole day alone with Tony in the workshop, after breaking down so spectacularly last night.

It’s fine, though. SHIELD told him to bond, gain Tony’s trust. So it’s all good, actually.

June does come out after a while to mind the register. She spots Peter and her grin flashes up, Peter waves. But she’s pretty busy after that, tending to the customers in her usual gruff manner. It’s nice, though, the way she sometimes looks at Peter and winks right after she’s made some snarky comment, like everything is an inside joke between the two of them.

-

“Today,” Tony announces as he strolls in, spreading his arms, “we are going to go see a movie.”

His interns look up at him, neither of them looking immediately as overjoyed as Tony thinks they should. Both of them are at MJs workbench, bent over her braille printer.

Tony lowers his arms. “Don’t everybody cheer all at once.”

“Uh. What do you mean, sir?” Peter asks.

“Which movie?” MJ asks, eyes narrowing.

“I don’t know. Whatever is hip. What number Die Hard are they on now?”

MJ mutters something Tony can’t hear, but Peter suddenly looks like he is struggling not to laugh. Tony glowers at them, because he should, even though he is quietly pleased that the kids are getting on so much better these days.

MJ jams the back of her screwdriver against the metal casing of her printer. “I just want this damn thing to— I still can’t get the dot height calibrated the way I want it, and I want it fixed!”

She has been stuck on it since yesterday morning. Tony already knows she is going to have to cut her losses, take out the entire embossing mechanism and adjust the dot height manually. But he wants her to figure that out by herself. “Exactly. What you need is a mental break, distraction, then go at it fresh.”

“It’s gonna be her first time in the cinema,” Peter says. “It can’t be something stupid, sir. She can’t go through life being like ‘the first movie I saw in theaters was…’ uh, like, Sharknado or something.”

“Something thought-provoking and award winning, then?” Tony suggests.

“I’m not going to ruin my day watching some stupid woke-ass thing about social injustice and climate change!” she warns.

“You’re aware you’re currently interning at about the wokest, climate change-est company in the city?”

She snorts. “Man, shut up, I’ve been on your twitter feed. We all know you’re just in it for the money.”

“That’s just my public image. I’m actually all about altruism, philanthropy.”

“Uh-huh,” she says. “Sharknado sounds pretty good, actually.”

-

They all take Tony’s car together. “I thought your climate-manic CEO banned cars,” MJ says. “Largest company with the smallest parking garage, and all that. Shouldn’t we be taking our bikes?”

“That’s an idea,” Tony says. “Company issued bikes. We can use former parking level B3 for it. And then award points for miles ridden. Winner gets an extra day of PTO.”

“They’d just have to not die on these streets before they can cash it in.”

She’s not wrong that biking through certain areas of Manhattan is a perilous dance with death. “I might build an elevated bike expressway across the whole island.”

“Funny when you’re a billionaire,” MJ says. “You just look at New York like it’s your SimCity, don’t you?”

“I’m their benevolent overlord.”

“I played SimCity a lot as a kid. Mostly to set off tornados.”

“I don’t know the game, but that sounds on brand.”

-

He found a theater where they are doing an early showing of Sharknado 2 in 3D. If they’re going to do this, they may as well do it properly. “It’s sixteen and over, sir,” the ticket booth attendant says, looking at Peter and MJ. “Did you bring ID?”

They did, and the lady gives them both a cursory glance, nodding. “Almost happy birthday,” she tells MJ, sliding the cards back across the counter.

Tony snatches it up before MJ can and looks for the birth date. “Ah, in eight days.” He holds the ID out to MJ who looks outraged, like Tony just read her diary.

“And when is your nineteenth?” he asks Peter; it didn’t escape him that the kid wasted no time tucking his own ID safely away.

“Not until summer, sir. 28th of July.”

“Hmmm.” He’ll check the contracts later to be sure.

They’re pretty early and it’s a Tuesday morning so the lobby is quiet. He buys the kids a multitude of snacks, plenty for MJ to take home later, and they pick a corner booth.

“I think she’ll need to take out the entire embossing mechanism and start those steps over,” Peter says when MJ is across the lobby, pouring herself a neon-green slushie.

“No doubt.”

“She’s gonna be grumpy about it.”

“Well, that’ll be a nice change of vibe from her.”

Peter ducks his head. He looks up at Tony out of the corner of his eye, a smile on his face. He seems a tad uncomfortable around Tony after yesterday, but that’ll sort itself out.

“You don’t mind a break from work, yourself?”

Peter shrugs. “Bonding is good,” he says, and then purses his lips thoughtfully, gaze flicking up at Tony again, then away.

Tony pushes a Twix across the table. “Chocolate for your thoughts?”

Peter shakes his head and starts biting the nail of his thumb again. But then he does say: “I think I need to be more professional. And you’re not supposed to be — nice.”

“You’ve mentioned that.”

“Why did you make the switch?” Peter asks. “Weapons to solar panels?”

“For the money. Have you not been paying attention?”

“I’ve been paying a lot of attention.”

Tony surveys Peter’s earnest expression. “Right. Still waters.” He rips the Twix open himself and hands one of the chocolate bars to Peter. “What’s the last movie you saw in theaters?”

Peter narrows his eyes a bit, but he doesn’t call Tony out for changing the subject. “Bridget Jones’ Baby. Slept through most of it, though.” He almost says something else, but stops himself. He takes a tiny bite of the chocolate and takes his sweet time chewing. Now that Tony is starting to pay attention, yeah, the kid could definitely stand to eat more.

“I practically lived at the cinema when I was a teenager,” he says.

“Uh.” Peter swallows the chocolate down. “Yeah. Me too.”

-

Cheap horror movies, Pepper told him. That box was definitely ticked today. Peter spent most of his life watching kids’ movies and easy comedies so this was… an experience. They have lunch at a place across the street and then drive back to the tower. “That’s enough mental gymnastics for today,” Tony announces. “Rest of the day off.”

“Mental gymnastics.”

“I just watched a guy jump off the Empire State Building, land on a flying shark, and surf it down through the air. My brain is fried.”

“Am I still getting paid for a whole day?” MJ asks.

“I’ll pay you triple time for enduring that with us.”

“I’ll have that in writing, please.”

-

Peter has already started the washing machine on another cycle before Tony arrives. Tony brings buckets, four different kinds of detergent, a mysterious white paper bag, and a box full of plates, cups and bowls.

“I can—pay for those,” Peter says.

“I know.” The plates clatter together as he sets the box next to the sink and starts unloading. “We’re going to scrub the place down today, all right? Have you cleaned before?”

Another rush of humiliation, though not nearly as strong as yesterday. “Yes, sir. I was, I used to be really good at, uh, all that stuff.”

“All right. If you take the bathroom and bedroom, I’ll do the living room and kitchen. Do you have a step ladder?”

“Yes, sir. Hallway closet.”

He starts in the bathroom. It’s all coming back to him, the way he did this back when he had his life on a tight rein, how to do this in an orderly fashion. Spray cleaner in the toilet bowl, on sinks and in the shower. Let it soak. Shake out the rug on the balcony. Then wipe it all down. Paper towel for the mirror. It feels like he can breathe this air again.

He doesn’t feel any of his usual exhaustion, that feeling like he could barely get up off the couch; he feels energized. Simply because Tony is here with him. A lot of it is between the ears, he knows. Brains are weird.

They take a break around three. Peter makes coffee and Tony brought bananas in that brown paper bag. Also, a cauliflower and a handful of potatoes. “For dinner.” The couch is covered in papers and books, neatly sorted into piles, so they sit on the red carpet next to the coffee table.

“I used to be good at this,” Peter says. “Did you see the chore chart on my fridge?” It has faded, barely readable in most spots. But it’s proof that Peter hasn’t always been a fuck-up.

“It’ll come back. It won’t be like this forever.”

“Yeah,” Peter says, for the first time feeling like he can really believe that. “I used to do a lot of chores when I lived back home,” he says. “It was a way of keeping the peace, you know?”

“I get that. Your parents fought a lot, huh?”

“Felt like I was growing up in a war zone.” He dips his banana in his coffee. Tony makes a face but says nothing of it. “Remember when my mom started throwing punches in your lobby?”

“I’m not likely to forget.”

“I actually did go and meet her after,” Peter murmurs. “Bailed her out of jail.”

“Oh, kid.”

“It’s hard to pretend they don’t exist. It’s like there’s a gravitational pull.”

Tony slowly shakes his head. “Of course there is. Your entire childhood, that’s a hard thing to shake. And it’s no surprise at all that you should have trouble coping sometimes. Your parents are exactly the people who should have been your safety net.”

“They’re my reverse safety net,” Peter says. “Uh. My danger catapult.”

“Humans aren’t wired to deal with their stuff alone, right? We need each other to fill in the gaps. We’re herd animals. People often use that in a negative sense, which I really think isn’t fair to the, the elephants and penguins and whatnot. We all love it to bits when we see them move through life together.”

“I’m a lonely penguin,” Peter says, a smile starting on his face despite himself.

“Oof,” Tony says. “You’re breaking my heart, kid.”

“I don’t even like being alone, you know. It’s not like I push people away. I always try to—to—It just seems I missed the memo on how to connect.”

“In a way you probably did, you know, and that’s not your fault. Some of us don’t get that blueprint along in our baggage, showing us how to build bonds.”

Peter sips his coffee silently for a while. “So d’you think it’s just, like, a lost cause, sir?”

“Of course not, come on. I learned how to ride a bike when I was thirty-five. Your life is only just beginning.”

They spend another hour cleaning; final-stages stuff, the missed spots. Tony cooks, meaning he throws his cauliflower and potatoes in a pot of boiling water until they’re soft. The food is mushy and bland, but someone cooked this for him so Peter savors every bite.

-

MJ glares. “You’re hovering again.”

“Sorry,” Peter says.

FRIDAY 3.2 is objectively pretty fascinating. Peter has never studied an AI before. And if he doesn’t think about it too much, he can almost forget that he is doing all of this to collect evidence against Tony. But he’s not great at just sitting behind a laptop all day, so he keeps finding himself gravitating towards either MJ’s or Tony’s workstation to take a peek at their progress.

“Come here, Pete,” Tony says. “You want a break, right? Can you make sure all my battery modules are charged and ready?”

Peter takes a seat at Tony’s table, lines up the battery modules. He remembers the early days when doing a job for Tony meant just getting him coffee.

“Fucking fine,” MJ grumbles behind them. “I’m gonna have to take the whole thing apart, aren’t I?”

“If you think so,” Tony says cheerfully.

MJ pops the front part of the plastic casing off with two fingers. “Screw blind people.”

“Can you read in braille?” Peter asks, interested.

“Only when I can see the dots. Don’t you smirk, I know the irony, but you try feeling a whole sentence of dots and figure out where the letter ends and begins.”

“It’s a superpower,” Peter agrees.

“I’m learning along with my grandma, actually. She didn’t have that kind of access to education where she grew up, and she could also see a little bit better when she was younger, so it’s like, if you can milk cows, you’re fine, that’s all you’ll ever need.”

“I can’t milk cows,” Tony says.

“Rich kid,” Peter says.

MJ snorts. Tony just looks surprised.

The day passes slowly. Peter struggles to keep focusing on his AI project for more than an hour at a time. It’s not just because of how theoretical it is, he thinks. It’s because of everything this work is starting to represent. His reason for being here. The job he has to do. Nice guys can still be bad guys, which means it’s a very, very bad idea for Peter to put his trust in Tony Stark.

-

Thursday morning, Tony arrives in the workshop early for once, when MJ isn’t there yet. He pulls out a chair directly across from Peter at his workbench, and sets a bag down on the table between them. “How are you feeling about the weekend?”

“Oh,” Peter says. “Um. Not great.”

“Do you have anything planned?”

“No, sir.”

“I’m gonna— now, bear with me. I’m gonna make the outlandish suggestion that you leave the house once every day.”

“I leave the house, sir. I take—walks, pretty long walks on Friday actually.” It has become his traditional day for patrolling the neighborhood.

“All right,” Tony says. “How about Saturday. Go to the grocery store? Apples. Buy some apples.”

Peter doesn’t know whether to be amused or embarrassed by all this. “Okay. Yes sir. I can buy apples.”

“And I’ll have lunch with you on Sunday. Pick you up at twelve.”

A very, very bad idea for Peter to put his trust in Tony Stark. But he doesn’t know what else to do. Because the idea of having someone check in on him fills him with a delicate sort of relief. “Thank you, sir.”

Tony nudges the bag forward. “And promise me you’ll eat these. I spent an hour making them.”

“Stop being so nice,” Peter murmurs.

“I see no particular reason to.”

-

The debrief that afternoon is fairly uneventful. His mother didn’t show up, so that’s one less thing to worry about. She hasn’t called or even texted. And there are no major breakthroughs at Stark Industries. Maria still seems very happy, even with just slow, steady progress. Peter realizes, more than before, that he sets the bar much higher than SHIELD ever did.

His plan for the weekend gets derailed a bit, though, when Natasha says right before they leave: “I’m taking you out for gelato tomorrow.”

-

It’s three big tubs of soup that Tony made him, as he discovers when he gets home. Scribbled on the lid in permanent marker; lentil, potato leek, split pea. It makes Peter want to cry. He puts two away in the fridge and heats up the potato leek soup.

It’s not like he’s opposed to having dinner, anyways. It’s just easier not to, sometimes. It sticks with him, though, the things Tony said about it. He never put a whole lot of conscious thought into why he should skip meals. It was just a thing, an afterthought. If anything, on some level it felt like something to be proud of, because it was a form of self-discipline.

It’s weird, now, to suddenly feel like he can be proud of himself for eating soup, instead.

-

Natasha picks him up the next morning in her crappy, green car. They drive back to that same gelato place, the only one that’s open on a Friday morning in early March. Peter gets coconut for Natasha and Stracciatella for himself.

“How have you been?” she asks.

“Why do you ask?” Peter asks in neutral tones.

She gives a mild shrug. “First mission is always a rollercoaster. Even if it’s low-stakes.”

“Did you read the transcript for my last psych eval or something?”

“No. That’s confidential. The shrink writes up a report, that’s all we get. Recommendations, no personal background info. Intelligent and composed, but emotionally distant. That kind of stuff.

“Was that you?”

She throws him a look. “That was you, kid. Subject demonstrates high intellectual and creative aptitude. Anxiety appears situational and manifests primarily in social or performance-related contexts. Reassessment upon supervisor request. That was your first one, actually. I don’t think the report from your last one is in my inbox yet.” She surveys him shrewdly, but with a smile pulling at her lips. “Why, did you complain to her about your assignment?”

“I don’t complain. I follow orders.”

“You know I wasn’t lying, that time I told you that going undercover at Stark Industries was the worst mission I ever did. So. Wouldn’t blame you if you did complain.”

“What happened to having no questions or opinions?”

She taps her little spoon against the rim of her single serve tub. “Are you calling me spineless?”

“I don’t know. Are you gonna take me in a headlock?”

“Maybe once you’ve finished the gelato.” She smiles again but her eyes are serious. “You know, this mission is pretty clear-cut. Meaning, you know what you are doing it for. There’s going to be plenty of moments in the future when you just get a mark, they just tell you to bring someone in, transport someone from A to B, you don’t know what they did or why they are important. You simply trust that SHIELD is making the right decisions. Some people don’t like it. They might call it mindless, obeying orders. I don’t think it’s a weakness. In fact, I find it takes a great deal of strength to put your faith in something bigger than yourself, move past your own ego, accept you are a cog in a much bigger machine and do a job that is required.”

Peter guesses that ‘some people’ includes Virginia, Ginny, Pepper Potts. He shifts in his seat to see her face better. “What would you do,” he asks, “if SHIELD sent you on a mission to kill a person, and then that person saves your life?”

“I would kill him,” she says. “I might say ‘thank you’, first. Why. Did Stark save your life?”

“It was a hypothetical.”

“Hmmm.”

“He’s nice, sometimes. But Ginny said that’s part of it.”

“It is. Not an easy part, though, I get that. Not an easy part at all. We have a lonely job sometimes, right?”

“Right.”

“He’s nice, huh?”

“You really didn’t like him, did you?”

She shrugs with one shoulder. “No, but I’m hardly easy going. I can’t say I’m entirely surprised that someone like you might bring out a softer edge in just about anyone.”

“I think I take offense.”

Her eyes twinkle.

“I’ve missed hanging out with you,” he admits.

Natasha scrutinizes him, and Peter braces himself for another caustic comment about how —whatever— you’re not supposed to form any attachments ‘in our line of work’.

“We didn’t hang out. We trained,” she says, predictably.

“Sure. Yeah.”

She scoops up some more ice cream. “When this mission is over, I’m going to teach you how to tell good churros from bad churros.”

Peter looks down and smiles, knowing that’s probably as close as an acknowledgement he’ll get from her that their ‘training’ was not always strictly formal.

“Do you remember who you were before the world told you who they wanted you to be?” Natasha asks.

His parents mostly wanted him to not be anything at all. ‘No son of mine,’ his father started once, and then he said something after that. Peter doesn’t remember what, or where they were when he said it. He just remembers it was a remarkable moment because his father not only acknowledged his existence but also seemed to have certain expectations of him.

“I don’t think there is anything to remember,” he replies honestly. “The people around us are all twisted up in us. It’s like, uh, the lady from my meditation videos says ‘it’s not us who shape our relationships but our relationships who shape us’.”

“Did she, now.”

“Then again, she also said my inner child is sailing on the great cosmic ocean of awareness.”

She smirks.

-

He resolves to patrol the neighborhood on Saturday instead, but that plan goes sideways too, when that evening he receives a message as he is heating up Tony’s second tub of soup. From an unknown number, but undoubtedly his mother. I’m available for lunch tomorrow 1PM @Altura. No question, no lead-in.

Irritation flares up— That’s quite an unfamiliar feeling to have towards his mother, actually. So much so that Peter pauses, waiting for the usual apprehension to set in. It does, a little bit. Mostly because he thinks his brain is just wired that way whenever he thinks of his parents. He just hopes she won’t start throwing things… Altura sounds like another more upscale restaurant.

And —okay, feeling a little petty, he writes back: Will be there at 1.15. He doesn’t really have anything else to do, but no harm in pretending that he won’t always drop everything he’s doing to meet with her.

Frankly, he thinks with grim determination, once the mission at Stark Industries is over and he won’t have to worry about her showing up at work, he can just change his number and cut all ties once again.

-

“So, what’s new in birth control?” he asks her as he peruses the menu.

She scowls. “Is that supposed to be amusing?”

“It was a question, mom.”

“Excuse me for finding it hard to believe you suddenly have any interest in my job.”

Peter sighs and says nothing.

“And don’t roll your eyes at me either.”

“Yes ma’am,” he says, though it comes out quite sardonically and he thinks she notices.

It comes as no surprise to him when she asks for money again. Or— rather, informs him that he’ll need to give her some.

“What for, though?” he asks.

She glares. “Do you know how expensive it is to raise children? Your father and I worked around the clock to provide for you.”

“Yeah, and I did the groceries, I did the laundry, I washed the dishes. I earned my keep, mom, I don’t owe you anything.”

She starts sniffling, reaching for her napkin to dab at her eyes, an abrupt shift in her emotions. "It's sad how children just forget their parents the minute they grow up."

“Mom. Describe to me a single time you cooked me dinner.”

She blinks. “What on earth are you on about?”

He shakes his head and looks down at his plate.

“I said,” she repeats, voice hardening. “What the fuck are you on about?”

Warning sign number one.

“Forget it,” Peter says, feeling very heavy and very tired.

The waiter comes up to them at that point and his mother gets distracted ordering all the most expensive things off the menu.

They eat in silence, and then he walks her to the nearest ATM and withdraws another six hundred dollars. “Want to take a walk around?” he suggests, not sure when exactly he got that insane.

She pats his arm. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous.”

-

He picks up some apples on his way home. He leaves them on the kitchen table and sprawls out on the couch, sweeping one hand along the carpet to remind himself how nice it is that it’s no longer covered in a layer of clutter. He breathes easier. The conversation with his mother was far from pleasant, but he finds that he can somehow let it all slide off him a bit easier.

There’s no point telling himself that he’s going to be perfectly disciplined from now on, he knows that. He knows he’s going to let the dishes and laundry pile up again eventually, he’s a herd animal and he isn’t wired for this. That’s the issue, he understands it now. He’s a penguin. Some days, he feels so fucking lonely he wants to cry.

But he also wants to try.

-

So. Patrolling on Sunday, it is. He gets up early. He’ll get a few solid hours in before Tony picks him up at twelve.

It’s not a good day for it. It is raining steadily, the sky overcast with dark clouds. He’d usually stay inside on a day like this but it’s his final chance to patrol this week and he needs the distraction. So he packs his suit into his duffel bag and jogs for a good twenty minutes until he hits an area with a lot of high-rise apartment buildings. He changes behind a dumpster, clothes soaked and teeth chattering. He’ll warm up once he’s swinging.

Sunday mornings are quiet, of course. He mostly uses his time fixing stuff, picking up litter, bending a crooked lamppost back into shape, swings past a primary school to nudge a few basketballs off the flat roof. He keeps moving.

For a moment, sunlight breaks through the clouds and hits the roofs, raindrops catching the light as they fall. He hears children laughing somewhere, distantly. He tucks himself right underneath the ledge of a roof and just watches for a moment.

This is a good place to start. To stop whenever he feels peaceful, sit down and breathe.

Cold as hell, though.

Keep moving. He swings on, his grip slippery with rain, his webbing is holding up—

And then the clouds break without warning.

Rain slams down, torrential and cold and almost solid. Trees bend under the wind. A flash of lightning, another. His mask lenses fog up.

It always takes only a second.

He knows those seconds. When he lost composure and broke a man’s wrist. When he got the angle wrong once and impaled his leg on a spikey fence.

His web misses its mark, slides uselessly off a drenched metal railing and snaps loose. He tries to fire another—too low, too fast, the wind shoves him off-course, careening—he painfully grazes the metal scaffolding of a construction site smashes through a billboard and his momentum barely stops he impacts slams into a metal beam head bouncing back. He hears rather than feels his ribs break, an awful series of cracks. He drops to the ground like a sack of potatoes, sparks explode across his vision.

Second over.

He gasps in some air… and that’s when pain flares up in his chest. He whimpers as he tries to take shallower breaths. Eyes closed, blindly moving his fingertips against the wet stones underneath him, he tries to reorient himself. The rain is falling as loud as the roar of the sea.

When he opens his eyes the light feels like it is stabbing straight into his skull. He squints and pushes himself up into a seated position.

Fuck. He lets out a strangled grunt at the explosion of pain that causes on the right side of his chest. His pulse is pounding in his head and he almost gags.

He sucks in a stuttering breath. It feels like all his insides are wobbling around like jelly. As injuries go, he knows this one is pretty bad. Definitely needs a full night to heal — and he’s supposed to meet Tony for lunch.

He needs to get home in time to cancel.

Holding his upper body as still as possible, he slowly drags himself to his feet. He winces as his right ankle twinges and pauses a moment to wriggle his toes. That one is not broken, at least. He lifts his good hand to brush against the back of his head. He hisses again at the stabbing pain but—no blood. Parker luck.

The rain slows as abruptly as it started. Not entirely; back to that insistent drizzle it was before. Peter is soaked like he jumped into a river, and his chest is on fire. The idea of having to cross town and then change back into his clothes makes him want to weep, not to mention he’ll have to walk through a pretty crowded neighborhood in broad daylight, like this. What can he do?

If he takes off his mask, spider-embroidered sweater and socks, he can just walk home from here in his blue sweatpants and black undershirt. Which will look like he is… stupid, possibly stoned, but not like he is Spider-Man. And it’s fucking February and he’s fucking soaked, so he’ll be freezing when he gets home, but he can deal with that then.

Limping around, he finds an empty plastic Walmart-bag and peels half his suit off. The socks and mask are okay. Trying to maneuver out of the sweater is agony. He ultimately decides to rip off the band-aid, takes a breath and throws his right arm up in a single motion, the movement producing a wave of pain that causes stomach to turn and his knees to almost buckle. But he can finally peel off the sweater. He tries to squeeze some water out of it with one hand before letting it slide into the bag.

He bunches the crinkly plastic bag into a tight grip and swallows a few times to quell the nausea. His mouth tastes coppery.

Eyes watering with pain, he focuses on simply setting one foot in front of the other, shallow breaths.

At least the rain has one upside: the streets are still relatively quiet. People do give him looks as he stumbles past like a baby giraffe. No one asks if he is okay, people just give him a wide berth, which is… fine. It’s fine. Any attempt at help would just end in disaster for him.

His brain slowly slides into a strange shutting-off thing. He feels like his thoughts are barely coherent by the time his apartment building comes into view. He is dreaming, maybe he is dreaming, he hopes he isn’t actually unconscious in a gutter somewhere. The waves of nausea are still passing through him, at faster intervals. He’s probably cold, he must be, but he can’t feel it.

He’s too late. Tony is standing on the front lawn, phone in hand. “Oh, hey, kid,” he says, tucking the phone away and ambling towards him, rounding a large puddle. “Was beginning to wonder. Were you out in that weather? …Christ, what are you even—why are you barefoot?”

“Hey,” Peter says, and promptly keels over.

Chapter Text

He remembers only one time that he got very, very sick. It was after the spider bite. He missed almost a whole week of school, throwing up a few times the first day and then battling a fever. His parents were… very inconvenienced by it. That part is what made him the most miserable. As soon as he could — sooner than was probably advisable — he dragged himself back to school.

He remembers walking into his math lesson to see the exact same trigonometry problem as a week ago still on the whiteboard, and practically having a meltdown about it.

He blinks his eyes open. He just hopes he won’t throw up today, he does feel pretty queasy. And he can’t really remember if his parents left for work already—

No. He isn’t living with his parents. Maria came to the precinct and rescued him. He’s Matilda and she’s his Ms. Honey. This bed isn’t his… This ceiling…

Tony Stark is in a chair by the bed, looking straight at him, opens his mouth and says something. A crumpled-up plastic bag from Walmart stands at his feet.

Oh. Fuck. Peter thinks. And falls back asleep.

-

When he wakes up next, the fog lifts a little quicker. It’s dark outside, and raining. He is in a very white room, a lab of some sort. He is hooked up to a machine. And this bed is… weirdly high, and not soft enough to really be a bed. More like someone piled some blankets on top of a table. Tony is still in that chair, snoring, slumped over strangely to one side.

Okay. Tony Stark found out he is Spider-Man. And then put him in a lab. Great, not at all ominous.

Peter closes his eyes and breathes. His head feels too heavy to lift, his right hand is bandaged up, so he explores his own chest with his left hand. His ribs are wrapped, too. They feel tender and bruised, but the sharp burn is gone, and he can breathe.  He can fight his way out if he needs to.

His identity is most likely screwed either way.

He glances towards Tony again and swallows. It feels… almost dangerous to wake the man up, but he needs to know exactly how hot the water is that he landed himself in.

He can’t roll over or sit up, so he grapples for something from the small table near his head, finding a pen, and throws that in Tony’s face.

Tony wakes with a jolt, floundering a bit, before his gaze snaps to Peter and he goes still.

“You’ll hurt your back, sir,” Peter says.

Tony exhales, then stretches and straightens, pushing his hands against his lower back. “Yeah, that is a main concern right now.”

“How long… have I been…”

Tony stands and drags a tired hand down his face. “It’s technically Monday morning. About—” he checks his watch “—two seventeen. Exactly two seventeen.” His gaze swings back to Peter, calculating something, turmoil behind his eyes.

Peter lies very still and holds his breath.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Tony says brusquely. “It’s fine. I won’t tell anyone.”

Peter’s breath leaves him in a gust. He doesn’t know where to even begin. It seems like they are way past the stage of attempting to deny being Spider-Man, but not attempting it at all might be foolish. He doesn’t know what Tony has to gain from keeping quiet, what he expects in return, how much his word is worth.

The biggest illegal arms dealer in the US, the man he is trying to put behind bars, knows his identity. Nothing about this is even remotely fine.

“Hey, breathe, kid.” Tony moves closer. “It’s okay. I promise.” There’s a weird sort of pressure around the top of Peter’s head.

“You hate superheroes,” Peter whispers.

“That’s… I mean. Sure. That doesn’t mean I want you hunted down like a baby seal by every bad guy in the city.”

“What if you’re the bad guy?”

“Am I?” Tony asks, amused, and Peter realizes abruptly that the odd pressure by his head is Tony’s hand brushing through his hair. It makes tears jump to his eyes.

The man who cleaned his kitchen and took him to the movies and made him lentil soup knows his identity. Maybe it is fine.

He sniffles. “I don’t…know…”

“You’re doped to high hell, kid. Get a few more hours of sleep.”

The words are like a magic spell, and Peter sinks right back into darkness.

-

When he wakes a third time, it’s light out and Tony isn’t there. Peter scans the room and quickly spots a woman in a lab coat, half-turned away, looking through a microscope. She seems deeply focused, adjusts the fine focus knob and then, without looking away, picks up a pen and jots down a few notes.

Peter clears his throat and her head snaps up. She looks at him, exhales, turns in her chair and stands. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Peter says, rather fatalistically.

She slowly moves closer. “Are you … in any pain?”

He shakes his head.

“Good, at least something worked.” She leans her hands on the makeshift bed Peter is lying on. “I’m Helen.”

“Are you a doctor?”

Her mouth twists. “I’m a geneticist. But I suppose it’s all the same to our idiot boss. FRIDAY, could you let Stark know his duckling is awake again?”

“Already done,” FRIDAY says.

Peter fiddles with the edge of the blanket. “Is that— Did you take my blood?”

She follows his gaze to the microscope. “I’m studying yeast cells,” she says.

“Are you going to study me?”

She pauses. “I…” she starts slowly, “well, I took a few tests in an attempt to monitor your health. If you’re suggesting something more sinister—”

“Knock knock,” Tony says. He’s got no glasses on, and a knitted sweater hastily pulled on over some pajamas, hair sticking up, red slippers. He has a plastic bag in one hand. He looks frazzled and tense, very unlike Tony Stark. “Doctor, how is our patient?”

She glares. “I am not a doctor.”

“But…?”

“His temperature is seven-tenths of a degree above normal, but I don’t know what his average base temperature is. ECG test came back normal. I don’t have any way to test his blood because—" and she glares some more “—this is not a hospital.”

“IQ test came back negative?” Tony jokes weakly. He shuffles closer, flattening his hair with one hand. He squints down at Peter. “You look adequate,”

“You said you wouldn’t tell anyone,” Peter whispers.

“Oh,” Tony says, his gaze swinging to the woman and back, like he hadn’t even considered her ‘anyone’. “Just Helen, kid. I know it’s not... Look, you passed out. I didn’t know what to do. I panicked.”

Tony Stark. Panicked. It’s hard to believe, but the evidence is still right there, lurking in Tony’s eyes.

“What you do is, you drive him to a hospital,” Helen says dryly.

“Well, it’s a good thing I didn’t, isn’t it? He’s fine, you did good, and his identity is safe.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Helen snaps back. “I just took measurements as his body stitched itself back together. It’s pure dumb luck that he’s fine. He just as well could have died in the backseat of your car.”

“Measurements…” Peter repeats slowly.

“Right. He thinks we want to experiment on him,” Helen informs Tony.

“A reasonable assumption,” Tony says, gently brushing Peter’s hair back from his forehead. “Always gotta plan for worst case scenarios.”

“That’s not helpful, I do believe!”

“Give me a moment alone with the kid, please.”

She throws up her hands, but then caps her pen and leaves the room with long strides.

Tony sets the plastic bag in a chair and perches on the edge of Peter’s table-bed. “You’re full of surprises, huh?”

“Why am I in a lab?”

“Uh. Sorry. Dr. Cho is the closest thing I have to a medically trained enhanced-expert. She had the Hulk in her X-ray machine, you know. We improvised.” He tugs at the blanket Peter is lying on. “I hope your back isn’t hurting yet. I know mine would. You know, you recited pi to the twelfth digit while you were out. That was something.”

He is rambling. Tony Stark is rambling.

“Tony, please just don’t tell anyone,” Peter whispers, grasping at the man’s sleeve.

“I said I wouldn’t.”

“Right.” It just doesn’t seem like Tony would be the sort of person to go out of his way to keep this secret. Then again, it’s not as if he has an awful lot to gain from telling anyone. And even if he hates superheroes he… cares about Peter. Right?

“Here’s a deal,” Tony says. “If it puts your mind at ease. I know a secret of yours, I can tell you one of mine.” He crosses his arms, tapping his fingers against his opposite elbow. He looks uneasy. “I’m… I slept with a stuffed animal until I was in my twenties. Rhodey can attest, hand on heart.”

As secrets go, Peter thinks that one is pretty lame. But he appreciates the sentiment.

He pushes himself up into a seated position. It goes easily, nothing hurts. Tony still pales and says “careful, careful, careful”, one hand on the back of Peter’s shoulder and then on his elbow. And then he hovers.

It’s so weird to see this energy from him.

“I looked pretty close to dead, huh?” Peter surmises.

“Yeah,” Tony says. “Pretty close.”

“It’s okay,” Peter says earnestly. “Really, sir. I get shaken up pretty badly sometimes, but I always sleep it off.”

“Well, when you know you know,” Tony says, smiling widely, though it still looks a bit forced. “Look.” He grabs the plastic bag and upturns it in Peter’s lap. A charcoal grey sweater and a pair of socks with the NASA logo on them roll out. “That should tide you over. Your own clothes and shoes are still lying around on some rooftop, I’m guessing?”

“Under a garbage can.”

“It’s close to nine AM. Will you stick around until four, so I can drive you home? You can wait in my apartment if you want. I’ll let MJ go early. We’ll pick your stuff up on the way.”

“I can come to the workshop. I want to work.”

“Kid…”

“Sir, really. I’m fine.” He rotates his shoulder a few times to make his point.

“Okay. Just do your poor old boss a favor and have Helen clear you, all right? I’ll tell MJ you were a bit unwell and are coming in late.”

“I… Okay. Thank you sir,” Peter says slowly, plucking at the sweater.

It is silent for another moment. “Kid,” Tony then says, and he waits for Peter to look at him. “I wouldn’t do anything that could get you hurt. I wouldn’t even let you walk around with your shoelaces untied. There is no way in hell I would ever breathe a word about this to anyone. Uh, anyone else.”

“I trust you,” Peter says. Because he does, doesn’t he?

And then he feels worse than ever.

-

Helen does her final scan, confirming that his ribs look perfectly healthy.

He heads up to the workshop around lunchtime. MJ and Tony aren’t there; probably gone down to the food court. Peter sits at his workbench and stares at his pile of notes on FRIDAY 3.2, lines of code, color-coded behavior trees, successful and unsuccessful prompts.

How is he supposed to spend his days gathering evidence against a man who has shown him such unconditional kindness? This isn’t supposed to— He knows what Pepper said and it makes sense. The world isn’t black and white, and lots of criminals can be very nice people. But Tony has gone above and beyond for him, and it’s seriously messing with his head.

He still has an awful, nagging suspicion that Tony Stark could be the kind of man who is kind to people around him, but simply doesn’t ever think about what his weapons do to innocent civilians in Cabinda or some other far away region. He does get pretty nasty on Twitter, after all.

He sighs and drops his head into his hands.

“Are you stuck, Mr. Romero?” FRIDAY asks.

“Yeah. Pretty stuck.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“Um. It’s, like, a personal thing.”

“That’s all right, I can assist with anything you might need.”

The thing is, in a sick twist of fate, the only person in Peter’s life right now with whom he feels like he could talk about this sort of stuff, is Tony himself.

He is getting a headache that, he is quite sure, has nothing to do with the concussion he gave himself last night.

He isn’t going to figure this out right here, behind a workbench. He needs to just put off thinking about this, keep his head down and do the job required of him. And he’ll take some time to properly think his options over during the weekend or something.

Not that being alone with his milling thoughts during the weekend is usually a good idea. Ugh.

Why is every option a shitty one?

“Hey, loser,” MJ says.

Peter’s head comes up and he watches her enter the room. Tony follows. “Hi Pete. FRIDAY said you had shown up.” He sets a bowl of steaming noodles down in front of him, and a lays a fork rolled into a paper napkin next to it. “I’m guessing you haven’t had lunch.”

“Thank you,” Peter murmurs. “Sir. Did you tell Ms. Potts that I missed half a day?” That’ll be tricky to explain to SHIELD later.

“I never tell her much of anything, so, no.”

“Hungover, huh?” MJ says, poking him in the side as she passes him.

Peter grumbles something noncommittally.

“And where’s the big duffel bag?”

“Didn’t bring it.”

“Wonders never cease.” If she notices he isn’t even wearing shoes, she doesn’t comment on it.

Peter slides the laptop and his notes to one side and tucks into the food.

He wishes that he were Peter Romero, who survived rampant emotional abuse and was arrested twice, and got an opportunity fair and square from the Turning Point Initiative. That he would just be here on a normal internship and not have to think about anything else, and eat Tony’s food without feeling guilty.

He slowly eats, observing MJ and Tony behind their own workbenches. When he finishes his noodles he sits back and stares at his laptop for a while, morosely.

“Want to properly label my resistors?” Tony asks him, so Peter moves to his table.

He spends a good while sticking tiny labels on the correct silvery cylinders. Peel and stick and drop in the bin, peel and stick and drop in the bin. Like arts and crafts. Or a bit like meditation. Nothing required of him, except sticking the right label on the right part, minutes ticking by, while Tony pretends not to watch him but really watches him like he might keel over again at any moment.

Tony eventually does move away to MJs workbench for a while to work through some of her questions, and when he comes back he says, “You know, kid,” in a low voice. “If FRIDAY 3.2 isn’t keeping your interest, you’re free to switch to a different project.”

“No, sir. I really want to learn. Just, uh… I need a break sometimes.”

Tony is kind enough not to point out that Peter, so far today, has spent quite some time labelling resistors, and precisely zero hours actually studying the AI.

He in fact does take a bit more time for F3.2 in the final hours of the afternoon. He gets caught up in it enough that he doesn’t notice it’s five PM until MJ starts gathering her stuff together.

He caps his pen and gathers his notes together in a pile, closing the laptop.

MJ slings her bag over her shoulder. She pokes Peter in the shoulder as she passes him. “Chug some pickle juice. Helps with hangovers.” She leaves.

Tony said he’d drive Peter home, so Peter turns in his chair, watching him. Tony stands, stretches and looks back at him. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Headache, dizziness?”

“No, sir.” He stands, too, and shuffles closer to Tony’s table to glance at his projects. “Do you need help with anything? I’m not in any rush to leave, any time that’s convenient for you.”

“Right,” Tony says slowly. “Yes. I can drive you home. But I was hoping you would do me a favor and stay in the guest room tonight.”

“I’m not going to slip into a coma, Tony! I mean, sir.”

“Says you and what medical degree? And you know ‘Tony’ is fine.”

“Says me and four years of experience. Sir.”

Tony gives him a look like he thinks Peter is just calling him ‘sir’ out of rebelliousness, somehow.

“I don’t even have my shoes,” Peter says.

“We can collect your stuff and come back here.”

That seems extremely inefficient.

Tony must see the skepticism on his face, because he says: “Have mercy on an old man, Pete. It will let me sleep a lot better tonight.”

“When you put it like that, I suppose I can’t really refuse.”

Tony smiles cheerfully. “No, I suppose you can’t.”

“And you’re not that old.”

“What did I tell you about brown-nosing?” Tony rubs his hands together. “All right. Apologies in advance for dinner, I’m a terrible cook. I just boil everything until it’s mushy.”

“I’ll cook,” Peter offers. “I’m— I used to be …okay at it.”

Tony purses his lips, then nods. “That sounds like a deal.”

-

Tony drives him, first to the alley where he left his clothes under a trash cart. And then to his apartment to get other essentials.

His phone is on the kitchen counter, the light blinking. Peter quickly scoops it up and turns on the screen. Missed call, this afternoon. It’s not his mother; he knows her number. Which means it has to be someone from SHIELD, which means he should definitely phone back. But he can’t do it later at Stark Tower, with FRIDAY listening in. So he’ll just have to call back now and make clear that he can’t currently speak freely. “One moment, sir,” he tells Tony, and lifts the phone to his ear.

The call connects.

“Yah, hello?”

That’s… his father’s voice. Peter recognizes it immediately.  “Oh for fuck’s sake,” he says. Across the room, Tony’s head shoots up like a dog hearing the word ‘cat’.

“Peter!” His father bellows, but with a casual tone of voice like they last spoke to each other a mere two days ago. “What’s your address?”

“My— Why do you want to know?”

“Because I don’t have it.”

Apparently, his parents are still enough on speaking terms that she passed his phone number on to him. Peter doesn’t know what to even say. He doesn’t want to deal with this right now.

Not right now.

He hangs up. He stands frozen for a second longer, then puts the phone down. He expects to feel apprehension stirring in his gut, but he just feels numb.

Across the room, Tony’s eyebrow rises higher.

“My dad,” Peter says with a stiff shrug. “Don’t want to talk to him.” The phone starts buzzing against the butcher block and Peter turns away from it, going into his bedroom. He gets a clean set of clothes and heads back to the living room.

Tony has stood up from the couch and is hovering closer to the kitchen, scowling at the buzzing phone. “You know, you can block numbers,” he says.

“Right.” Peter doesn’t want to, though it takes him a moment to figure out why. “If he starts showing up at work too, I have to be able to reach him to deal with that.”

Tony’s jaw clenches. “If he shows up at work, I’ll personally deal with him.”

Shit, Peter just messed something up. Tony isn’t supposed to talk to his parents, he might find out Peter’s real name, Pepper was going to run interference. It just slipped out, just like that, because he’s trusting Tony too damn much, he’s not being professional, he’s losing focus—

Tony is suddenly right in front of him, a hand on his shoulder. “Breathe, kid.”

Peter sucks one in and covers his eyes with one trembling hand. The phone is still buzzing. “Sorry. Haven’t spoken to him in two years.” If a childhood tragedy is something you can use for a mission, use it. “I’m fine. Can we just go?”

Tony studies him with a look Peter can’t really decipher, then nods.

-

“I want to ask you about a few things,” Tony says as he watches him cut the onions. Peter is throwing a stir fry together from everything he found in Tony’s pantry.

“No doubt.”

“Do you mind?” Tony is hovering, hasn’t sat down at the table yet.

“Does it matter, whether I mind?” Peter asks in short tones. His experience so far with Tony is that the man can’t help but pull at loose threads, and only pulls harder when he encounters resistance. So Tony is going to ask, no matter what Peter says. It’s up to Peter whether he’ll answer anything.

Although — he could use this as an opportunity. To find out some things he wants to find out. “You remember that thing this morning where you knew a secret of mine, so you gave me one of yours?”

Tony frowns. Then his face clears up in understanding. “Ah. You’re proposing a trade-off.”

“Of sorts.”

Tony pulls out a chair and sits across the table from him. “Seems only fair that you get to start.”

Peter crushes a clove of garlic under his knife as he considers where to start. “Why do you hate Spider-Man?” That’s not anything particularly useful to the mission. He just wants to know.

“I don’t.”

Peter throws him a look. “I’ve been on your twitter, man. Uh. Sir.”

Tony shakes his head, an exasperated smile playing on his lips. “That’s just the first line of defense. I grew used to playing the asshole online. I tell myself that it’s just a way to keep people at a distance. But I don’t know, sometimes I think I might just be an asshole.”

“So you don’t think superheroes are actually useless?” Peter clarifies. “You’re just saying it to… intentionally piss people off?”

“Perfectly rational approach, n’est-ce pas?”

About as rational as you can expect from Tony Stark, probably.

“All right,” Tony says. He leans his chin on his hand and watches Peter. Peter is expecting a question about his parents, but Tony asks: “Why do you not eat dinner?”

“I’m making dinner right now.”

“Are you gonna eat it?”

“Probably.” He’s feeling okay enough.

“Okay, then. Why do you regularly not eat dinner?”

“It calms me down.”

“Does it.”

“Makes me feel a little, you know, woozy, in a nice way.”

“Yeah, it would,” Tony agrees. “So what you mean is, you starve yourself until you can’t think straight.”

“I’m hardly starving. I have breakfast. I have lunch.”

“I think it’s a form of disordered eating. Or a form of self-harm.”

Peter blinks at him, because that’s the biggest load of crap he’s ever heard. “I’m not, like, trying to lose weight or look skinny. And I don’t do it to hurt myself. It helps, that’s the whole point.”

“But that’s what a lot of self-harm is. An attempt to distract yourself from mental anxiety by creating a physical discomfort.”

Peter scowls down at the cutting board. He uses the knife to push the chopped garlic over to one side. “My turn,” he says, effectively cutting the conversation off. “Why did you stop producing weapons?”

Tony doesn’t seem to mind him changing the subject. He smiles. “Hmm. I believe you’ve asked me that three times now.”

“Because you keep saying it’s for the money and I don’t buy it.”

Tony rubs his chin, then shrugs. “Ten years ago I was abducted during a field trip to Afghanistan.”

Peter read about that while preparing for the mission. But it hadn’t felt entirely real when it was just a collection of old newspaper clippings. He realizes it now, like a smack in the face: Tony, this Tony, who makes him eat dinner and takes them to see bad shark movies, was held hostage in a cave for months.

“I re-evaluated my priorities,” Tony says simply.

“And the reason you pretend it’s for the money?”

“It keeps people at a distance.” Tony stretches out one arm like he’s holding an invisible person back with a hand against the chest. “Where I like them.” He lowers the arm, waves a hand in Peter’s general direction. “There’s exceptions.”

Peter starts stripping the rosemary as he thinks. It all makes sense on a surface level, except Tony didn’t actually stop producing weapons, now, did he? …Did he.

“Why are you Spider-Man?” Tony asks.

Peter lays the stem of the rosemary aside and starts chopping. “I got bitten by some mutated spider.”

“Oh— sheesh, first of all, yikes. But that’s not entirely what I meant. Not how. Why are you Spider-Man?”

“I don’t follow, sir.”

“Why do you choose to go out and help people?”

Peter looks up at him, frowning. “It’s not a choice. It’s just—what you’re supposed to do.”

“It really is not.”

“You’re just saying that because you’re—” he imitates Tony’s gesture from earlier, keeping people at a distance.

“An asshole?” Tony suggests.

Peter doesn’t say yes, he just says, “and I’m a people pleaser.”

“That’s true,” Tony acknowledges.

“My turn again.” Peter waves his knife at the space around them. “Why don’t you live in a bigger house?”

“What? I don’t know. Seems like such a hassle to buy one and then buy stuff to put in it. I’m lazy. I want to come home from the workshop and smash down on the couch. I don’t want one of those houses where I’ll still have a ten-minute walk from my front door to my living room.”

“You could put in a travelator.”

“I’ll consider it.”

-

The conversation during dinner is lighter: about Peter’s project and MJ’s project. Peter asks a few questions about RenewGen, because that feels relevant to the mission at least. He somehow ends up lecturing Tony Stark about the only right way to eat gelato. He isn’t sure how they drifted onto the topic.

“There’s no sadness gelato can’t cure,” Tony says in Italian at some point. Peter pretends not to understand.

He gets the guest room, this time. Like the rest of the house, it’s simple and sparse, with very light green walls, no windows but a large skylight, and a low wooden bed frame with crisp linens. He gets the same toothbrush he used last time. Tony wrote Peter on it in permanent marker. Peter rubs his thumb across the letters.

If he wakes up early, he could pretend like he’s looking for a phone charger and use it as an excuse to rummage around the apartment and see if he can spot any suspicious sketches or contracts. But he doesn’t feel like it, doesn’t feel like stabbing Tony in the back. He recognizes that this isn’t—that he is becoming a liability, emotionally involved…

Especially when Tony tells him, just before he heads to bed, and with a painfully earnest expression: “Peter, please remember. No matter what happens, you can come to me day or night, and I will help you.”

-

“You’re both invited to dinner at my place tomorrow, after work,” MJ announces brusquely as she strides in. “But you don’t have to come.” She dumps her bag on her workbench.

“Ah,” Tony says. “Birthday?”

“Yeah,” she says. A little bit defensive, like she expects them to laugh at her and decline. “Look, my grandma told me to ask, and now I did. I’m not gonna be offended or anything if you say no.”

“Is there gonna be lots of people?” Peter asks apprehensively.

“Do you think I’d subject any of my actual friends to having to deal with you two losers?

“Can we bring anything for dinner?” Tony asks.

She deflates, shoulders sagging. “If you could bring dinner, that would be helpful.”

“Does your grandmother have any allergies?”

She lifts her chin. “Rich white guys make her sneeze, so give her plenty of space.”

“I’ll wear my cheapest Balenciaga sneakers.”

She rolls her eyes but says nothing.

“Don’t want to yell at me about my privileges?” Tony asks.

“Maybe later.” She tugs at a strand of her hair, shoulders hunching. “So, uh. Are you actually coming, then?”

“Of course, kiddo.”

Peter nods, too.

A birthday party. He hasn’t been to someone’s birthday party since he was in preschool. And even then, it was only because it was one of those kids whose parents just let them invite the entire neighborhood. He remembers it was a big house with a pool out back, and they spent most of their time playing the Iron Man videogame.

What do students do at birthday parties? Get drunk, is his limited experience, but he doubts that will be the case when it’s just gonna be the four of them, including MJ’s grandma. Play board games? Make polite conversation? Watch TV?

He pulls his laptop closer and asks FRIDAY 3.2 what she thinks.

-

His second phone is still on the butcher block when he gets home. The light is blinking. A message from his father, sent this morning, Meet today 18h??? along with the address of some random street corner.

Peter checks his watch, weary. It’s already close to 6 PM. And he doesn’t need to go out again. He doesn’t…

Whatever. Still better than just sitting around at home. He slings his duffel bag over his shoulder again and sends a message back that he can be there in twenty.

At least his father doesn’t insist on meeting in some fancy restaurant. That seems like an indication he won’t be as demanding.

-

Turns out he has bad instincts.

He parks his car near the street corner and sits on a low wall as he waits, checking his phone every ten seconds, watching the approaching traffic. It’s eminently possible that his father didn’t even spot the message in time and is just sitting at home right now, watching some sports game and yelling at the screen. Peter tries to imagine his father in a different house, maybe an apartment with sparse furniture. Didn’t even get to take the kitchen table.

A grey car swerves, pulls up right next to him, hits the curb. All the windows are down. His father blares the horn — a lot longer than necessary considering Peter is already looking right at him.

“Yeah,” Peter says. “I noticed you.”

“Come on, get in!” Richard yells, like they got somewhere to be.

Peter gets in.

The car smells of smoke—of course it does. There is a dark green ashtray on the center console. Peter remembers, looking at it now, that he still has a lighter and some lip balm in one of the pockets of his duffel bag.

His father looks like he has lost weight. His eyes are a bit sunken and his clothes hang differently. But maybe Peter is just remembering him wrong.

“Goddamn traffic here is a pain in the ass around this hour,” his father says. A bit accusatorily, as if Peter was the one who picked this time and place.

Peter says nothing.

Richard pulls back into traffic without checking any of his mirrors. “Hey. You got your license yet?”

“Are we going somewhere?”

“The ATM is right down the street. You can jump out and back in.”

“I can jump—” Peter starts.

“In and out. Or out and in, hehe. No dawdling, you know, gas is expensive.”

No conversation about it. Not even a direct request. Peter wraps his arms carefully around his own stomach and says nothing.

The last time he saw his father was the day he ran away. That same morning, before he left for school. He hasn’t thought about that moment in ages, but remembers it very vividly, now: His dad sitting at the kitchen table in boxers and socks, and Peter quietly stepping around him to make himself breakfast. The silence was dull and heavy and familiar.

He really should say something, something like ‘I missed the part where you said please’ or ‘thanks for asking how I’ve been’. But the words stay stuck in his throat. Richard pulls over by the ATM and Peter wordlessly gets out. He withdraws six hundred dollars and gets back in.

His father takes the money, counts it, then frowns. “Is that all?”

“What— Excuse me?”

“That doesn’t even cover rent.”

Peter is speechless for a few seconds, and then the words finally become unstuck. “Have you heard of getting a job?”

Red splotches of anger bloom across his father’s cheeks. “Well, I should get more than her because—”

“I’m not interested in the one million reasons why you two despise each other.”

Richard snatches up his green ashtray — “Pissy little shit!” — and hurls it at him. Peter lifts his arm in time and it hits him in the elbow before smashing back down to the center console and cracking in half.

“DAMNIT!” Richard yells.

Peter throws the car door open. A hand grabs his sleeve but he yanks himself loose and slams the door behind him. He walks away, weaving his way through the evening foot traffic, and doesn’t look back once.

Chapter Text

“This is an outrage,” Tony says.

“I checked with the rental dock, and they said it’s made with real Italian wood.”

“Right, and I’m the queen of England.”

Rhodey steps into the gondola, testing the stability before sitting down and looking up at Tony, expectantly.

“After you, I guess,” Tony says.

“Oh, shush.”

Tony gingerly places one foot on the wooden seat. “Don’t even,” he says when Rhodey holds out a hand to help him. He slides into place and nudges the oar away from him with one foot. “I’d make a great queen.”

“You have every attribute of one,” Rhodey agrees. “Except grace.” He picks up the oar and pushes them away from the shoreline.

They glide along the lake. It’s bloody cold, too. The sun is setting. A soft mist hangs over the surface of the water.

“This is the worst,” Tony says.

“I’m getting deployed again, next week,” Rhodey says.

“And you put me in a gondola to tell me. Because you thought I wouldn’t make a scene?”

“To Lebanon. Until late July.”

“Finally, some peace and quiet.”

Rhodey smiles and pushes the peddle through water. “Not too much of it, I hope.”

Tony burrows further into his coat and tucks his hands into his armpits. “Meaning?”

“Keep making connections. I don’t want FRIDAY to be the only—entity you talk to for the next four months. Ask Helen Cho out on a date, invite Sunny Bain to dinner.”

 “I’ll have you know I’m going to a birthday party tomorrow.”

Rhodey sticks the peddle vertically down into the water to abruptly slow them down. “Are you?”

“Christ, don’t,” Tony says. “We’re going to capsize. I’ll get stranded on some desert island, and I’ll have to escape by sawing off my own foot.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Rhodey says.

“No, I suppose it doesn’t.”

“Who’s the birthday boy or girl?”

“One of the interns. The rude one.”

“Hm,” Rhodey merely says, eyes twinkling, and Tony is annoyed, wishes he hadn’t said anything but he also— He knows Rhodey worries sometimes and he hates that, can’t help himself.

Rhodey lays the oar across the boat and eases back with a long exhale.

Tony figures he may as well do the same. “You got a thing for Helen Cho, then?” He asks as he rearranges his scarf.

“It was a suggestion.”

“But you didn’t suggest I date Sunny, I notice.”

“She’s more than ten years your senior, but if that’s what the heart wants, go for it.”

“Or Pepper Potts.”

“Well, she very clearly hates you.”

“Thin line, you know. And by the way, armchair critic, it’s not as if you’re settling down.”

“Who knows.” Rhodey hesitates a moment, then shares: “Actually, I think this’ll be my last mission before I move on to something else. More stable. I’m not crazy about the idea of a desk job, carpet cop. But something that’s just in one place, at least.”

“I’m hearing this now!”

“Didn’t know if I should… jinx it. It’s like in the movies when a soldier shows a picture of his pregnant wife, and that’s when you know that guy is gonna be dead before the half-way point. I feel like if I tell too many people this is my last stint before retirement, it’s a guaranteed way to get a bullet in the skull.”

“Absolutely not allowed.”

“It won’t happen, knock on wood.” He raps his knuckles against the side of the boat.

“Never knew you as the superstitious sort.”

“That’s my mom’s genes. She hates my job. Did I ever tell you about her scrapbook?”

“Don’t think so.”

Rhodey blows on his hands, rubs them together. “She had one when I was a kid. Full of newspaper clippings of bus and plane crashes. And every time I wanted to go on a trip with friends, she would get it out and make me look at it and she said ‘these kids also wanted to go on a trip, and now they are dead’.”

Tony only met Rhodey’s mom a handful of times, but that sounds spot-on. He laughs.

Rhodey smiles, too. He’s rubbing his hands up and down his own arms, now. “This kinda does suck,” he admits finally.

“Great. Let’s make landfall, flank speed, and get some coffee.”

Rhodey picks up the oar again. “So what present are you getting her?”

-

Peter rolls over on his other side when his phone buzzes a single time. Maria or Nat wouldn’t text him, so it’s probably one of his parents again. He doesn’t need to look at it, he doesn’t—

But the black hole sucks him in. He hefts himself up on one arm and leans forward to snatch his phone up off the coffee table, before sagging back onto the couch.

Another unknown number.

Hey kiddo, did you buy MJ a present for tomorrow? I don’t know what kind of stuff vibes well with your generation. Do I get her a Cabbage Patch Kid? Is that still a thing? Tamagotchi?

Oh.

Is that Tony?

Another one comes in. I know this isn’t office hours, so feel free to ignore this entirely.

Fuck. With that whole thing going down with his father, MJs birthday had already escaped him entirely. A present… He’d have to get up and put on his shoes and go out and find a store that’s still open after 7 PM. A herculean task.

Havent had time, he sends back. Will find something on m way to work tomorrw.

The response is swift. Right i frgot ur sposed 2 use bad spellng in these my bad

Peter stares at the message, a bit incredulous, and huffs out a laugh. And then yelps and almost drops the phone when the screen lights up. Tony is calling.

He swipes to answer. “Hello?” he says tentatively.

“How are you this fine evening?”

“Uh... I’m, like, good?”

“That’s, like, great?” Tony says. “Anyway. I think I’ll go down to the Rockefeller center. Everything is still open there. Can I swing by to pick you up?”

“Swing by Queens, to go to another place in Manhattan?” Peter asks with a bit of a laugh.

“No trouble.”

He knows why Tony is offering. And it sounds a whole lot better than spending the rest of the evening alone, thinking about Richard. “Would be nice,” he says. “Thank you, sir.”

“Be there in thirty.”

-

The ice rink is still open and bustling with activity, 30 Rockefeller Plaza towering over it. Peter cranes his neck and wonders what view Spider-Man would have from the top of that.

“Did you have dinner yet?” Tony asks.

“Um.”

“Tacos first, then.”

He’s quite hungry, actually. He devours four large tacos and Tony looks pleased. It’s so easy to make Tony happy.

“So. What do we know about Michelle Jones.”

Peter wipes his hands on the napkin. “She likes art. And milkshakes.”

“She likes art, does she?”

“Only when it’s, uh, what did she say. Dumb art. Not the obnoxious stuff.”

“A Picasso?”

“Let’s start smaller.”

Tony hums. “We’ll hit up some of those ‘lifestyle’ stores. Where you get scented candles and throw pillows with ‘live love laugh’.”

“MJ would hate both of those things.”

“I was thinking of getting her a good scarf. She always dresses too cold.”

It would be just like Tony to notice a thing like that. Tony is nice. Damnit, Tony is nice. It’s not fair. Peter needs to figure out how to reconcile two opposing truths. He has a job to do that no longer feels right.

Maybe SHIELD is just… wrong. Maybe the weapons aren’t coming from Stark Industries at all. They don’t have hard evidence, after all. If they did, Peter wouldn’t have been assigned this mission in the first place. Maybe that’s what Peter’s mission should be. Find out everything he can in order to prove Tony Stark’s innocence. That way, he isn’t defying SHIELD but he isn’t betraying his mentor, either.

Assuming of course that his instincts are right and there is innocence to be proven.

“Mint for your thoughts?” Tony asks, holding the individually wrapped candy up by a corner.

“My thoughts are worth more than a breath mint, sir.”

Tony’s expression splits into a wide smile. “Was that snark?”

“Yes, it was.” He scrunches up the napkin into a ball and tosses it neatly in the bin behind Tony.

“Wisecracker,” Tony says.

They go past several of the local boutiques. Peter has a feeling that MJ would only really appreciate gifts that are actually useful. A scarf is easily found; deep blue with little gold specks. They also settle on a thermos, a weighty sketch book and an umbrella with carbon fiber ribs.

“I could have done better,” Tony says about that one, investigating the open-close mechanism with a sniff. “But I suppose it will do.”

“Ten bucks says she’ll make some kind of remark about us rich kids always staying dry because we drive everywhere.”

Tony grins and closes the umbrella. “No way am I risking ten bucks like that.”

Peter is worried for a moment that Tony will insist on paying, but they split the amount evenly. “Tacos are on me, though,” Tony says.

“All right. If you’ll let me buy you a milkshake.”

“Hmm. Okay, I’ll bite.”

They get it from a vendor near the ice rink. Peter is too shy to ask whether the lady uses whole-fat milk, but it tastes just fine to him.

They sit on a low wall, watching people circle the ice, and sip slowly. There is a really unique feeling that hanging out with Tony gives him. Like he doesn’t need to worry about anything, because he can let someone else call the shots. “Tony,” he says. “Thank you.”

“This helps, huh?”

“Yeah.” Surprisingly much. The one hundred things that seem like impossible problems when he is at home sitting on his couch, don’t even feel like they exist anymore when he is here. And that alone is helpful; realizing that a lot of this is just about perspective. That he doesn’t need to change everything about his life until he feels good about it. He just needs to feel good about himself and everything else might just follow. “It’s because I’m a herd animal, right.”

“Probably.”

He thinks he just needs to talk to more people. Like, actually talk. Not just debriefing for a mission, or talking through the blueprints for a chemical leak detector, but talking about his day, what’s on his mind, what are his plans for—

That’s the thing though. Where do you find people to talk to about things like that? Tony is here, sure, Tony is here. But whatever result this mission is going to bring — even if Peter does prove his innocence — Tony is going to be out of Peter’s life in a few weeks at most.

“I’m gonna miss you,” he says before he can stop himself. “After.”

Tony opens his mouth, then closes it again. “I… hadn’t anticipated that,” he says finally.

Peter smiles. “Yeah. Because you’re the last one to find out that you’re not so bad, actually.”

-

Tony picks up Peter’s chemical leak detector from Validation & Testing on his way back up to the penthouse. Valerie sent him a message to inform him it had passed all validation, calibrated to spec.

He swings by the workshop to gently set it down on Peter’s workbench, placing the validation report and calibration data next to it. Peter might be interested in reading those.

It’s weird that Peter wants to study the AI so badly. He doesn’t seem all that interested. Half the time, he’s sitting at his table with an air like there’s a guillotine hanging over him.

Tony already took a peek at the final summary of the validation report. Barely any anomalies or deviations spotted. Peter delivered better work than most of his actual engineers, with no hand-holding whatsoever.

Overqualified for this underpaid role.

Tony wouldn’t even need an excuse to keep Peter on once the internship ends. This validation report alone is a perfect justification. No one would question it. It doesn’t need to be about— anything more personal than that. It doesn’t need to have anything to do with the exhaustion he sees in Peter’s eyes, how he fears that if he just lets this internship end, Peter is going to slip through the cracks.

This place needs to be more than just a temp stop for him. For both these kids, really.

He can offer a continuation of the internship. Or create some sort of… entry level job as assistant engineer, right here in his workshop. HR might raise an eyebrow about that aspect of the job, but they rarely lower them either way.

But. He would risk his own identity.

He was fine with shelving all his Iron Man projects for a short duration, but that can’t last. The longer these kids stay, the more he’ll have to keep the facade up. He’d need to keep completely taking out and then completely hiding away all his Iron Man tech anytime he’d want a crack at it. And each time, he’d risk forgetting some crucial detail, leave a tab open on the wrong device, or a repulsor lying around between some rejected spare parts.

It's… not feasible.

But there’s no way he’s just going to let Peter drop off a cliff either.

-

Wednesday, Peter spends the whole day resolutely studying FRIDAY 3.2 like he’s trying to prove a point. He hasn’t even looked through the validation report yet. The birthday girl gets her printer calibrated right and is finally making headway again, which has cheered her up — as much as MJ can possibly be cheered up.

Tony sits behind his desk, slowly savoring his coffee, watches them both and thinks absentmindedly that he should take them camping sometime.

Christ, what’s wrong with him. He shakes his head, wipes a hand down his face and mutters I must be crazy in Italian.

Peter glances up at him and smiles.

-

He gets Korean food from a place across the street. He takes the subway to MJs house, mostly to prove a point about being green and all that. He should seriously look into that bicycle idea.

He has already been in MJs street but only as Iron Man, hovering above the rooftops. At street level, it feels a little less claustrophobic, actually, than it had seemed from a distance. It’s still a shame there’s no trees here, though. That should be a basic human right: to be able to look out your window and see something green.

“Sir!”

He stops and turns, waiting for Peter to catch up to him. “I really wish you’d broaden that vocabulary of yours.”

Peter has the paper bag with MJs presents; he shifts it in his arms, looking puzzled. “Huh?”

“Something like, you running up to me out of nowhere and yelling ‘hey, fucker!’”

Peter ducks his head to hide his involuntary smile. “No, sir,” he says, almost reproachfully.

“Maybe later.”

“Do you know the address?” Peter asks. “I’ve dropped her off before, but I don’t know what apartment number and I forgot to ask.”

“Yes, come on.” He nudges Peter’s shoulder towards the nearby entrance. Tony rings the doorbell. The speaker by the doorbell crackles and then the door buzzes.

“This reminds me,” Tony says once they’ve stepped into a quiet elevator. “I spotted a local news outlet commenting that you had started appearing in Bushwick as well.”

“Uh, yeah. After she got mugged.”

“Hm,” Tony says. “Don’t get stabbed, okay?”

“I… wasn’t planning on it.” Peter bites on the nail of his thumb. “It’s weird to talk about this.”

“No one else knows?”

“No one.”

Tony wonders if that is true. Spider-Man mentioned his mysterious ‘back up’, after all. But he isn’t sure if that was a fabrication or this is. Either way, he decides it’s none of his business. He’d be a hypocrite if he insisted Peter share all his secrets.

“I haven’t been to a birthday party in—forever.”

“Me neither.” Tony squeezes Peter’s arm just above the elbow. “We’re getting popular.”

“Oh, I hope not,” Peter says, heartfelt, and Tony chuckles.

MJs apartment is on the fourth floor, at the end of the hallway. She is already waiting in the doorway, looking unusually nervous. “Shoes off. And don’t embarrass me, Tony, yes, looking at you.”

“What would you consider embarrassing?” Tony asks. “Asking for a friend.”

“Shoes off,” she repeats, imperiously wafting her hand in his face.

They patter into the living room where MJs grandmother sits at the table. The apartment is small but cozy, walls covered in photos, lots of bookshelves, no clutter. The radio is on but she turns it off to greet them. Her name is Desiree. She is shorter than MJ but her handshake is firm. “Lovely to meet you,” she says. “I hope Michelle is minding her manners.”

“Oh, definitely,” Tony says. “I brought dinner, I hope you like Korean food.”

“She eats anything,” MJ says with an eyeroll. “I watched her dip cheese cubes in peanut butter this morning.”

“Well, I’m blind,” she says elegantly. “I thought it was Nutella.”

MJ shudders.

Tony hands MJ the bags of takeaway. “Since it’s your birthday, I even got some chicken.”

“I’ll have that.” Desiree rubs her hands together. “Michelle has become a vegetarian.”

MJ flushes and sheepishly swings the bag around when Tony raises an eyebrow at her. “I mean. I guess it does fuck up the environment and all that.”

Peter makes a sound like he’s suppressing a laugh.

MJ zeroes in on him immediately, her chin lifted. “Something you wanna say?”

“Uh,” Peter says, covering his mouth with one hand. “Happy birthday?”

-

Thursday, debrief day.

Peter leans his head back against the elevator wall as he zooms up to the food court. He tugs his bag closer and fiddles with the bottle opener on the zipper.

He has made his decision, and that decision is that he chooses to believe Tony is not secretly producing weapons for the black market. And maybe that makes him an idiot. He has put his trust in the wrong people before and he probably will again, but right now he is putting his trust in Tony. Because how can he not?

That means his mission has a new purpose. There are weapons out there, being made with Stark Technology. And Peter is here to prove how someone at this tower is getting away with it.

He is here to clear Tony’s name.

Not without breakfast, though. He stops by Puff Puff Pastry. June isn’t behind the counter today, so he orders swiftly and gets a table in the corner. He has just finished his scrambled eggs when he spots MJ stepping out of the elevator and heading for the coffee place. She is wearing her new scarf.

The previous times he spotted her, he was always happy to let her pass by. But today, there’s a fleeting sense that perhaps being invisible isn’t as comfortable as he has always told himself it was.

He isn’t going to shout her name across the whole food court, though. He takes out his phone and snaps a picture of her retreating back, sending it to her.

She appears at his table five minutes later, with a cup of coffee and a brown paper bag. “That’s creepy as fuck, stalker,” she says, amused.

Peter laughs — a quick, nervous breath.

MJ slides into the seat, slinging one arm over the backrest and slouching. She reminds him of Pepper sometimes. MJ wouldn’t like that comparison. Well. She would if she knew what Pepper was actually like. “How are you?” he asks.

“I’m pissed off and I want pizza.”

“So. The usual, then.”

Her smile cranks up a fraction. “Was that snark?”

“Yes it was.”

“I guess if this internship didn’t teach you any technical skills, at least you’ve learned to grow a spine.”

“I’ve learned lots of technical skills!”

She snorts. “Please. I’m not an idiot. That thingymajiggy you built in only a few weeks practically had Stark himself salivating. He didn’t even think it could be done. I’m surprised he hasn’t offered you a job yet.” She narrows her eyes. “Or maybe he has, and you both think I’d be butthurt about it. In which case, good instincts, because I would be.”

Peter shakes his head. “I wouldn’t want to work here, I don’t think.” Maybe he would, if he were just Peter Romero. “Have you figured out what you’re gonna do after you graduate?” The question feels weird. The kind of question a normal student would ask, one who isn’t secretly a government agent.

“I’m not gonna be one of those people just making rich people richer, that’s for sure. I want to build something of my own, you know. Be my own boss. Like Darth Vader.” She sips her coffee. “What about you?”

“I don’t know.” And he doesn’t, does he? He has never really put any thought into what work he would like to do. If he did, would he choose the job he has? His internship with Tony is going to end, whether he finds something incriminating or not. Where will SHIELD send him next?

Probably not a good idea to go down that line of thought. That’s something he can spend his whole weekend mulling over and over and over.

Ugh.

“So have you, uh, seen your mom again at all?” MJ asks.

“Oh. Um, no. I think she’s going to stay away. I hope. She needed money, apparently.”

“She’s the one who needs your money and still can’t manage to behave?”

“Yeah, well, my parents are a pair of twats.” It feels like a relief to say it out loud. “They’re not going to ask nicely, they don’t know how. This is the only way they’ve ever gotten what they wanted.”

She hums and purses her lips, looking at him a while. “Do you like board games?” she asks.

“Uh…”

“Because me and my best friend host a thing once a month in his dorm room, it’s always just a few people and no alcohol, we’re very boring. You’d be fine.”

“Okay,” Peter says, realizing far too slowly that she is inviting him to something.

“Since we’re friends now, and all that,” she says. “I hope you weren’t expecting to be rid of me soon as this internship ends.”

Wait.

Can he have friends? Specifically— can he stay in touch with people who met during a mission, under a fake name, when that mission is over?

He may need to review his contract about that. There might be a clause barring it. What if it does? He probably can’t even tell her the truth, he’ll just have to blow her off without being able to tell her why.

“I like board games,” he says.

-

They take the elevator up around nine and make their way to the workshop. Tony is late as usual. Peter zigzags around the chairs and heads for his own workbench, but then the zipper of his bag snags on the corner of one of Tony’s many nameless machines.

There is a snap.

The fabric gives way with a loud tear, and the bag splits open at a seam. A small avalanche of the contents spills out—coconut macaroons, pens, tampons, an aspirin bottle.

Peter freezes a moment, taking in the mess, and then breathes out, crouches slowly. He inspects the bag. The broken seam gapes wide. He can—probably get it fixed, it’s fine.

MJ appears next to him, nudging the aspirin bottle back towards him with her foot. “Guess that was gonna happen at some point, right?”

Peter blinks quickly. “I guess it... Yeah.” He swipes everything together into a sad pile, but then doesn’t know what to do. He can get the bag fixed. Does he want to?

“We can duct tape it up or something,” MJ suggests.

“Yeah. Uh. I don’t think I… should…” He doesn’t know how to explain himself.

She kneels next to him and picks up the coconut macaroons — still the same crinkled bag as last time. “I vote we just eat these.”

“Yeah. May as well."

She picks up the tampons. “And I don’t see you needing these any time soon.”

“You can take those.”

She throws them in the general direction of her workbench. “All right. What else.” She starts investigating the little side pockets, taking out the lip balm and the lighter.

Peter winces. “I should throw those out.”

“All right. And your chewing gum?”

“We can eat that, too.”

MJ opens a final pocket and takes out the creased cryptic crosswords Peter cut out of his newspapers.

“Um.” He starts biting the nail of his thumb. He is never going to need those anymore, but throwing them out feels—wrong somehow.

“For your neighbor, right?”

He nods.

She lays them to one side, along with his pens, wallet and aspirin bottle. “Go visit her grave sometime, bring some flowers, read a poem. And then buy a new bag and put stuff in it you actually need.” She lifts the sad remnants of the duffel bag by the bottle opener and shakes it in his face. “This isn’t how you build actual connections, dumbass. Can I throw it?”

Peter breathes out. “Yeah.” He doesn’t even know where April was buried.

She takes the lighter and lip balm with her and stuffs everything in the small trashcan in a corner.

And then they sit at Tony’s workbench and eat the entire bag of coconut macaroons between them until crumbs scatter the table like confetti.

“How dare you,” Tony says when he finally comes in.

“We’ll clean up,” Peter says.

“You only left me one is what I meant.” Tony snatches it up, looks at the bag again. “And it was family size, even.”

“I’m counting you as family for the occasion,” MJ says.

-

Peter spends the morning pretending to study FRIDAY 3.2 while actually reworking his entire strategy.

If he approaches this mission from an angle where he wants to prove Tony’s innocence, how would that change his tactics?

The assumption would be that weapons are created with Stark tech, not with Tony’s full blessing but under his nose. The most obvious red flag would be if there are areas within the company where FRIDAY has limited or no access and wouldn’t be able to log any activity as irregular or potentially suspicious. A large chunk of the production of these weapons might not be happening at the tower at all, but in some remote facility. However, they would still need some sort of foothold at the tower, some kind of access to the technology produced here, considering they got their paws on RenewGen before even the first field test.

When it’s lunchtime he looks at Tony. “Would you mind bringing me back something, sir? I really want to keep working.”

What he actually wants is a moment alone with the real FRIDAY.

“We’ll grab something and all have lunch up here together,” Tony decides, beckoning MJ.

“I got about a dozen coconut macaroons still in the digestive system,” she says, but she drags herself out of her seat and follows Tony out.

Peter starts flipping through his pile of notes on FRIDAY’s algorithm, thinking about how to phrase his question in a way that won’t seem suspicious. “Hey, FRI? Question for my research in your algorithms. Were there any, like, privacy concerns about the amount of monitoring you do at this tower?”

“Ms. Bain, as well as several lawyers, have attempted to regulate the surveillance,” FRIDAY says, “but usually based on misconceptions. None of my core systems violate privacy laws.”

“Really?” Peter asks. “I mean. I’ve overheard employees here saying they can’t even go to the toilet without you knowing.”

“I can analyze digital equipment, but above all cameras and microphones are my eyes and ears. There are in fact none installed in any of the bathrooms in the building, though I am aware that several employees believe otherwise. Most other areas are covered. Boss installed an overabundance of them in his own workshop, labs and apartment, as well as Ms. Bain and Ms. Potts’ office. Primarily because it improves the quality of my service, which is Mr. Stark’s main priority.”

Could someone be operating out of a toilet? Not very likely; too exposed. They’d have to pretend the toilet was under maintenance, and other employees would complain once that started taking too long.

Most other areas are covered, FRIDAY said.

Peter suddenly sits up straighter, notes crumpling up between his hands as his mind starts racing. Because there is one area — one large area inside the company that he knows isn’t covered and hasn’t been in years.

If he could just…

Without thinking about it much further, he pushes his chair back. He grabs his chemical leak detector off the corner of the workbench, and a screwdriver on his way to the door. He rushes out, then into the elevator. He looks at the metal plate on the control panel, where ‘B3, parking’ used to be. He hits B2 instead.

He squats on the floor as the elevator descends, and pries open the scanner’s case, making the same modifications he did a few weeks ago when he repurposed the scanner to something that can be used in air rather than under water. He peels away the protective gel layer, detaches the probe array from its coolant loop.

Precisely as the elevator doors open, he tucks the screwdriver back into his pocket and turns the scanner back over, waiting for the calibration to finish. Once the three lights flicker green, he nods to himself.

“FRIDAY, can you see me down here?” he asks.

She should be able to: There are cameras overhead. But no speakers, so she can’t reply.

He walks the whole length of the parking garage to reach the grimy stairwell on the opposite side. A simple chain stretches between the metal banisters of the downward stairs, a laminated sign dangling from it. B3 no longer accessible. Stark Industries: the largest company with the smallest parking garage 🌳 🚲.

Peter steps over the chain and hops down the stairs, turning a corner and another one. He surveys the ceiling above as he goes; no cameras anywhere. In one corner are two exposed wires where a camera probably used to be.

At the bottom of the stairs is a heavy, metal door. There is a narrow, vertical glass pane, but what looks like a garbage bag has been taped over it from the inside. From behind the door he can hear whirring noises from what could be machinery, but it’s hard to know for sure. No voices. The air smells sharp, chemical.

He tries the doorknob. — Locked, of course. He can probably still bust his way in, but that would be a remarkable lack of subtlety.

He sits cross-legged on the floor, aims his scanner at the door and runs diagnostics. If the parking deck behind the door is as empty and abandoned as it’s supposed to be, the scanner should detect only a cold void.

Instead, on his detection panel, clusters of heat signatures emerge. Too steady and cold to be human, but definitely indicating machines. Dozens of them.

This is it. It has to be.

A yellow-red, decidedly human-sized heat-blob suddenly shifts in front of the screen and Peter practically drops the scanner in alarm.

The door is yanked open, scuffing against the concrete floor.

Peter jolts and looks up. One of those men in saggy blue overalls fills the doorway, scowling. Also, Peter is looking down the barrel of a gun.

Chapter Text

“What a little boy,” the man says. “What’s a little boy like you doing scanning my doors?” An accent Peter can’t quite place. He has quite a round, pockmarked face. Large hands around the gun, but Peter can tell the grip is practiced and relaxed. This man knows how to hit a target.

You’re dead in five seconds. Perhaps it will be twenty for you, but I hope for your sake it will still be five.

Nat taught him how to disarm. She mostly taught him not to. Disarming is risky, do it as a last resort, when you are one hundred percent sure the other person is going to shoot and you have no other option.

“I’m an intern,” he says, cradling his scanner closer to his chest. “I’m just — testing something I made. I don’t understand what’s…”

“Stand up.”

Peter pushes himself to his feet.

“Come on in then,” the man says pleasantly, like he’s inviting Peter for tea. He steps back, holding the door open with one hand.

Peter shuffles through the doorway, quickly sweeping the area. There are crates stacked up against a wall and tarps stretched over wonky shapes; probably machines. Several other machines are uncovered, pistons hissing, and every few seconds, a heavy clunk echoes through the space.

“Put it on the floor, Mr. Intern. And your badge.”

Peter puts the scanner down and removes his lanyard from around his neck. He takes a few steps back until his back hits a wide, concrete pillar. All he has to do is not die right now, and SHIELD will have their case solved. Well, they’ll probably have their case solved either way considering FRIDAY saw him go downstairs. But. He’d like to not die.

The man steps forward and then squats down without lowering the gun. He examines the badge first, front and back, then drops it back down and pulls a walkie talkie off his belt. “B3 to main hub, level five breach in progress. Badge number 8639-BX. What do you got?”

Static for a while, and then a female voice. “Prime one alerted. Sending reinforcements down. Don’t do anything stupid, yeah? Intern. Here for some dumb ex-con program or something.”

“Oh, I see.” He tucks the walkie talkie away, twinkling at Peter. “Ex-con. I won’t surprise anyone, then, if the hoodrat doesn’t come back from his lunch break one day. They’re expecting you to screw up, no? Authorized by your manager to come down here? I suspect not.” He starts poking at the chemical leak detector.

Peter is silent. He is, admittedly, beginning to see his errors in rushing down here instead of debriefing SHIELD first and establishing a course of action together. But one thing he can be sure of, is that Tony won’t just shrug his shoulders when Peter disappears over his lunch break.

-

Tony and MJ have just stepped into the elevator, MJ with three poké bowls in cardboard containers stacked on top of each other, when FRIDAY reports: “I have a possible concern about Mr. Romero.”

“I have many,” Tony says, “but let’s hear it.”

“He took the stairs down to B3 roughly twenty minutes ago, for no discernable reason.”

Tony frowns, glancing down at his watch. “You mean the parking level?”

“Former parking level. No longer accessible, which means he either forced his way inside, or has been standing outside the closed door for twenty minutes.”

“You got no eyes on him?”

“Negative.”

“Oh my god, how does that nerd keep getting in trouble,” MJ says.

“Did he say where he was going? What precipitated it?”

“He was asking me about areas in the building where I have no camera access.”

Okay. Beginning to sound a bit sketchy.

“He took his chemical leak detector with him and modified it on the way down,” FRIDAY adds.

Okay. Okay. Maybe the kid simply had some engineering revelation and needed a reason to test his device in a specific area. But just in case… “I’ll go fetch him.” They wait for the elevator to reach the top floor so MJ can step out. “Don’t eat everything before we get back,” Tony says with a smirk, before hitting the button for B2.

He is familiar with the magnetic pull that closed off areas seem to have on a lot of people, particularly the teenage variety. Whenever there’s a Stark Expo around town, Ms. Bain has many complaints about the extra security measures needed to keep kids with cameras from sneaking onto the grounds to record ‘urban exploring’ footage for their snotrag YouTube channels.

He steps out on B2 and takes out his phone to keep a line open to FRIDAY. “Which way?”

She directs him to the opposite side of the garage. There’s a door to a stairwell. A chain the kid must have hopped over, so Tony does the same. He goes down the stairs, humming as he goes, turning two corners, and reaches a door. He tries the doorknob. “Well, Fri. The only door is locked and there’s no one here.”

FRIDAY takes a moment to answer, which happens whenever Tony presents her with entirely incongruous facts. “I have footage of him going down those stairs, and nothing coming back up,” she says eventually.

Okay. There is only one way the kid could have gone, then. He lifts his hand and pounds on the door until it rattles in its frame.

“Excuse me,” a man says. Tony turns to see two men in blue overalls standing at the top of the stairs. “Oh, shit,” the taller one says. “Tony Stark.”

“Language,” Tony says amicably. He points a thumb across his shoulder. “You guys got a key for this?”

The two men stare back at him. “B3 is locked down, sir,” tall guys says, seeming unnerved. “Did you need a car? We have—”

“My intern seems to be currently testing his boundaries in there. I’m here to collect him.”

“That’s… not possible. B3 is locked down.”

Tony knows irritation is leaking into his voice. “Well, I’d like to check, so let’s open her up. Don’t have all day.”

The men exchange a look, and something in their body language is setting Tony on edge. “FRIDAY,” he says, lifting his phone closer to his mouth. “Send some security down here, would you? I’m breaking this door down if I—”

One of the men abruptly surges forward, practically tumbling down the stairs, knocking the phone out of Tony’s hand and pushing him back roughly with both hands until Tony’s back slams against the wall, hard enough to rattle his teeth.

“Fuck, Vince!” the other man bellows.

“He was calling it in!”

“He’s fucking Tony Stark, dumbass!”

”I second that,” Tony wheezes. An elbow drives into his ribcage and the wind is knocked out of him. His knees buckle.

”Phantom protocol, activate phantom protocol!” one of them hollers as Tony gasps for breath. Keys come jangling out, the heavy metal door is thrown open and Tony is hauled inside. He has just a moment of time to take in the scene in front of him — Peter being held at gunpoint by some man who catapults himself straight to the top of Tony’s kill list — and then comes the shriek of metal, flashing lights, jets hissing, sparks flying, his Mark LVIII comes smashing down the stairwell and into the room, hurling both men backwards, and in less than a second, it smoothly wraps itself around Tony’s body.

“FRIDAY, you legend,” Tony says, rising to his feet.

The man with the gun makes the mistake of swinging the barrel towards Tony. Tony sends a blast his way, knocking him off his feet so hard his shoes fly off. He crashes into some weird tarp-covered machine and drops to the floor with a low groan. He doesn’t get up.

Tony turns to Peter, lifting the face plate. “The hell you doing down here, kid?”

Peter stares back at him, mouth dropped open. “Iron Man?”

“Sir,” FRIDAY interjects with urgency, pulling data up on his HUD. “Security breaches on floor 19, 42 and 75. Several groups of employees attempting to steal classified documents. Most urgently three men are attempting to break into your workshop. I have pulled the metal shutters down but it will not keep them out. Ms. Jones is still inside.”

Tony lets out a string of curse words. What the hell is going on. “Tell her I’m coming. Start a full evacuation.”

He blasts back into the stairwell, spiraling three floors up and crashes straight through the first window he finds. He sees red lights flashing on every floor as he whizzes up. “Talk to me FRIDAY.”

“I fear Stark Tower has been infiltrated for a while, boss. The discovery of B3 seems to have caused a red alert and several last-ditch attempts to abscond with your technology.”

“How many?”

“Fourteen people exhibiting suspicious behavior so far. This includes Ms. Bain and Ms. Potts.”

Fuck. Has he been that blind? He reaches the top floor and crashes straight through another window, landing in an unused office space. He surges forward to the door—

“Three men have gained entry to your workshop”

“I’m coming.” He speeds down a hallway, turns a corner, heart in his throat. Up ahead, he spots Pepper at the other end of the hallway, barefoot, sprinting, gun in hand, heading straight for the workshop. He shoots forward and watches her kick in the door that was already askew in its hinges. And then she roars: “Back away! Back the fuck away from her! Drop that, you motherfucker!”

A clang of something metal, a muffled yelp.

Tony reaches the doorway to see three men cowering back against a wall, a crowbar lying halfway between them and Pepper, who is standing in the middle of the workshop in her pencil skirt and pantyhose, gun raised as she spits orders. “Turn around, lie on the ground, hands behind your heads!”

Tony can see MJ’s feet poking out from under his own desk, but can’t see her face. He takes another step inside and Pepper notices him.

She goes rigid, keeps her gun trained on the men who are rather sheepishly following her directions, but her gaze now sweeps back and forth between all of them. And then she takes a very deliberate step back, between Tony and MJ, shielding her from his view. Everything about it is so methodical that there isn’t a shred of doubt in Tony’s mind that she is professionally trained.

He lifts his face plate and watches shock spell out across her features. And then they say, at precisely the same time, “what the fuck?”

Pepper recovers more swiftly. “What the hell is going on?” she spits.

“Damned if I know,” Tony says. “Who the hell are you with?”

She clenches her jaw and says nothing, gaze swinging back to the three men lying face down on the floor.

MJ moves. Tony watches her peek around the cabinet drawers, eyes widening when she spots him. She seems unharmed.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

She clenches one hand around the leg of a table and says nothing.

“Hey!” Pepper snaps. “If you’re not with these assholes, maybe tie them up?”

Tony takes a beat to calculate his odds and then disengages the suit, stepping out of it. “If you try to shoot me, my suit will shoot you,” he warns. But then he grabs a bag of zip ties from a blue crate. He crouches by the three grumbling men and makes swift work of tying wrists and ankles together, making sure to not be gentle.

He stays in a squat as he turns, throwing a look up at Pepper, and then past her at MJ. “Are you okay?”

“Uh,” she says, blinking fast.

“Boss,” FRIDAY says, from the overhead speakers this time. “Security breach on the 19th leveling up in priority, employees skirmishing with security guards. Also, several employees moved down to B3, possibly arming themselves down there.”

Fucking shitstorm. “Where is Peter?”

“On his way.”

Tony wants to ask what that means, but it becomes clear when Peter storms into the room, skidding to a halt. He scans the room with a single sweeping look and then turns to Pepper of all people. “Lowest parking level was used as a production floor for weapons. They infiltrated the tower. He didn’t know.” He jerks his chin towards Tony at that sentence. “They got found out and now they’re collectively flipping their lid.”

“How many?” Pepper asks.

“No idea.”

“Can I trust him with her?”

Peter looks at the table MJ is hiding under, then locks eyes with Tony. “Yeah,” he says.

“Notify SHIELD, have them send reinforcements.”

“Yes ma’am,” Peter says and storms right back out.

Pepper turns, finally lowering her gun. “SHIELD op,” she says. “I’m heading down to take some of these fuckers out. Take care of her.”

And then she rushes out, too.

Tony is left blinking into empty space.

Christ.

Okay. Focus.  “FRIDAY, see if you can have her back,” he says.

“Yes, boss.”

He shifts forwards out of his squat, onto hands and knees and crawls closer to MJ. “Hey, kid,” he says, sitting back on his haunches.

She is tugging nervously at a strand of her hair. “You’re Iron Man,” she mutters.

“Yeah. Look, I have to, uh…”

“Kill me,” MJ says, nodding.

Tony chokes on his own air. “Jesus. No!” He wipes a hand down his face. “I want to airlift you out of here so I can go down and help the others, okay?”

She gives a jagged nod.

“Okay, kid. I’m getting out another suit for you but you’re, ah, sitting on the secret hiding compartment.”

She pales even further and scooches to one side. Tony pushes the desk back until the hatch becomes visible. He opens it up and takes out the metal suitcase. He snaps open the metal latches and lifts the lid.

The suit unfolds out of the suitcase, optics flaring to life, and then it wraps itself securely around MJ. Her wide-eyed gaze is the last thing he sees before the face plate snaps down.

“FRIDAY, bring her home,” he says.

-

He crashes down the stairwell, his suit hitting the wall at every corner — Iron Man still has trouble with sharp corners — FRIDAY blasting updates into his ear. “Evacuation of floors 38 and down ongoing. 19th floor on full lockdown. Voice modulation is on. I have redirected people from higher floors to safe wings. Police have been alerted. Three injured on the 19th floor.” She pulls images up on the HUD of people on the 42nd cramming hard drives and tablets into bags and he grits his teeth, but the warzone on the 19th has to take priority.

Red lights pulse against the white office walls when he gets there. A grim battle has sprawled across the open floor plan. His security team has come to blows with a group of employees.

Not all employees have evacuated— Christ, seems that some have jumped in to help security, wrestling down former desk mates, tackling people sprinting for the exits with bags crammed full. “I made you a birthday cake you piece of shit!” one woman hollers, her heels dragging across the floor as she hangs onto the strap of her colleague’s backpack.

Barricades made out of piles of tables and chairs, fire extinguishers being wielded like weapons, filing cabinets lay open and gutted, a whiteboard has been repurposed into a riot shield. Motivational posters, ID lanyards, clipboards, Tony pinballs around the room, people yell and duck, a plant crashes to the floor, he blasts someone down, dodges a flying stack of performance reviews, pivots, tasers someone, tears through the entire office floor in a metal whirlwind.

He doesn’t pause to check when FRIDAY tells him he took everyone down, he just careens onward to the next floor she highlights for him.

He bounces his way through his own tower, blindly following her directions. He reaches the hallway of the 42nd floor: empty save for four people who were heading his way, now faltering in their steps, then stopping entirely. All of them carry plastic bags crammed full.

Sunny Bain is one of them. Her blouse untucked, her usually flawless updo hanging loose, arms full of thick files of paperwork.

Tony slams down, taking position right next to the elevator.

“What the fuck,” one of the group says. Two others take a step back.

Ms. Bain has the balls to step forward. “What do you want?”

He lifts one arm, charging up. The whole group yelps and ducks, but too late. He blasts a wall of compressed air at them and they are blown off their feet, go flying, land in a heap of limbs. The paperwork gently rains down on them. Ms. Bain rolls onto her side and lets out a litany of swear words.

“Sending more security your way,” FRIDAY says. “Back up has arrived.”

“Goddamn superheroes,” Ms. Bain spits.

“Pipe down or I’ll taser you,” Tony snaps.

-

Once security has arrived and rounded up the whole group, he heads back to the 19th.

Agents in dark suits have arrived and fanned out across the entire office space. Sunglasses and earpieces. SHIELD. And right at the center of them is his former PA, Natalie Rushman, barking orders at all of them — including at Peter who is holding some guy down in a restraint hold, his hair dusted with the white powder from the fire extinguisher.

His whole image of Peter, unzipped and turned inside out again, like one of those flip plushies.

He whirs back into motion, marching forward towards Natalie —clink clank. A few SHIELD agents move out of his way, looking appropriately awed.

She looks entirely unimpressed. “Looks like you’ve got a mess here.”

“Internal breach. Seems like you should have known, with the amount of people you got undercover in my company.”

She says something but he doesn’t hear because FRIDAY reports into his ear. “Boss. I have footage of Ms. Potts being taken away through the parking garage. I cannot track the vehicle.”

-

They converge in an office. Several of the SHIELD agents want to shake Tony’s hand and introduce themselves, until a tall woman with brown hair stomps in and says “if you’re all quite done wasting time, one of our own is missing.”

They review the CCTV footage from B2, huddled around the screen of a laptop; three men in blue overalls dragging a seemingly unconscious Pepper from the stairwell into a white van, still barefoot, her usually neat ponytail knocked loose. It fills Tony with incandescent rage.

“Plates?” Natalie asks.

“Nothing from ALPR.”

The tall woman starts barking out orders. “Get me their names. ID records, license numbers, then track phone activity, GPS pings, in that order. I want all surveillance camera footage in the nation going through our facial recognition system.”

There is a flurry of activity from the other agents.

“Wait,” Peter says. “Maria.” He points at the screen again. Another man in blue overalls throws something into the back of the van before stepping in. “That’s my chemical leak detector. It has a tracker in it.”

“Get me that data.”

“FRIDAY?” Tony says.

“I have coordinates,” FRIDAY confirms, commandeering the large screen on the wall to show a location. Somewhere in the middle of a damn forest, of course.

“Thank you Mr. Stark,” the woman—Maria says. “We’ll take it from here.”

“Like hell,” Tony snaps. “She’s my employee.” The faceplate snaps back down. He can make it there in only five minutes.

“We need a plan of attack,” Maria says.

“I have a plan. Attack.”

-

He shoots into the sky, blasts southwest, rooftops passing under him at dizzying speed. He reaches the city’s outer limits.

Pepper was alive an hour ago, has only been at this location for perhaps fifteen minutes. If they took her, they want her alive. They want information from her. They won’t just put a bullet through her skull. They’ll just…

He doesn’t kid himself about the kinds of things they might do to get information from her.

But they can’t have done much damage in fifteen minutes. He speeds on.

-

Turns out, someone can actually do a lot of damage in fifteen minutes.

Tony touches ground outside a low, concrete structure hidden under the canopies of large oak trees. An enormous sliding steel door stands half-open.

Pepper is sitting on the ground right outside the door, back leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette. Her feet are bleeding and there are ligature marks on her wrists but she looks utterly relaxed. Through the door, Tony spots at least three bodies lying face down on a dirt-packed floor.

He steps out of the suit to stare down at her, speechless.

“Took you long enough,” Pepper says, shooting her cigarette butt away and already shaking a second one out of the packet. “Are you all right?”

“Am I all right?”

Her eyes twinkle.

Tony lowers himself to the ground, exhaling as he stretches out his leg. He closes his eyes and breathes. He can feel the tender spots, now, where the metal of his suit has dug into his skin. There will be bruises tomorrow.

He opens his eyes and looks at her. “SHIELD, huh?”

She twinkles some more, then points at the suit behind him with her cigarette. “Iron Man, huh?”

“Looks like we played each other like Yo-Yo Ma plays the cello.”

“That’s not how Yo Momma jokes work.”

It’s—bizarre. Like she hit her head and dislocated her entire personality.

“Did they hurt you?” he thinks to ask.

She waves a hand. “Please.”

“It seems being a PA to a snooty tech CEO is way below your skill level.”

“I did enjoy scheduling your dental check-ups.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t see.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t see. You have an excuse. For me, it’s my job to notice this shit.” She narrows her eyes at him. “Did you really not know about the weapons?”

It stands to reason that he would be their first suspect in all of this. He hasn’t exactly made any effort to make his turn away from the weapon industry seem even remotely convincing. “Is this how we start my formal interrogation?”

“This is formal, you think?” She waves her cigarette vaguely at the trees around them. She takes another drag.

Tony crosses his ankles and leans back on his hands. “You know, you’ve been at my company about two years, and you never went in the basement either.”

“True,” she acknowledges with a shake of her head. “Got much too fixated on the gaps in the paperwork. You realize someone high up had to be involved to cover that shit up?”

“I already tasered Sunny Bain into the carpet, if that answers your question.”

She sits forward, face lighting up. “Reaaally? I’d like video footage of that.”

“You like Iron Man, then?”

“Stark. You don’t need my praise to think highly of yourself.” She stretches.

“I’ve thought higher,” Tony says, bitter. Tech from his company has been secretly funneled into Sunny’s little side project. Has probably cost lives. His tower grew rot right under him. He can’t even be mad at SHIELD — he’s just grateful.

“Is Michelle okay?” she asks.

“I sent her home.”

“Anyone injured?”

“I haven’t fully taken stock yet, but nothing too serious, I believe.” He blows out a breath and rubs at his chest, just underneath the arc reactor.

“Does Tony Stark have a heart?” she teases.

He shakes his head at her.

She hums. “There were things that made me wonder sometimes, you know. The way you knew all the employees’ names.”

“Not all of them, have mercy.”

“Well. The ones a rich company founder usually doesn’t bother with.”

“If you expect me to secretly be a nice guy, you’ll be bitterly disappointed.”

“No, I think I’d be disappointed if you were.” She rubs at her wrists.

The hum of an engine. Tony turns, immediately alert. A black SUV thunders across the gravel path towards them.

“No worries, that’s me,” Pepper says.

Something occurs to Tony that—in the ongoing shit-hurricane—hadn’t occurred to him yet. “Should I consider this your resignation? Or will you be back behind your desk tomorrow?”

“Your chairs have shitty lumbar support.”

That’s a no. “Well,” he says as they both climb to their feet. He doesn’t know what the hell to say, but he has to say something; he’s Tony Stark. “Thank you… for doing good work. Even if it made me look like a fool. Good luck to the next person who thinks you’re just the assistant.”

He doesn’t like people anyway, so it’s fine.

-

He flies back to the tower, not caring who does or does not see Iron Man landing on the roof. Not like they can hide his involvement at this point.  With a bit of luck, they can at least spin the story in such a way that the wider public will think Iron Man was simply called in to help.

He’ll deal with the fall-out tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after. He can feel that he’s going to need a few days to process… all of this.

Like Yo-Yo Ma plays the cello.

He takes the metal stairs from the roof back down to the top floor. He pauses on the bottom step. His suit folds away from him as he descends, and slides back into the shape of a suitcase. Tony picks it up, breathes, and pushes through the door.

He gets to the workshop—and Peter is there. Behind his workbench, sweeping a few meager belongings into a plastic bag. He freezes when he catches sight of Tony.

Right. Peter.

Tony keeps his distance, surveying him like he is seeing him for the first time. The real Peter Romero—That’s probably not even his name. There’s still some white powder in the kid’s hair.

“Did you find her?” Peter asks, cautiously.

Tony nods. “She’s fine.”

Peter’s shoulders relax a fraction. He nods.

“I guess your work here is done?”

“I… have a debrief,” Peter says. “But. Probably?” He fiddles nervously with the plastic bag, looking at Tony like he expects to be attacked.

“And that chemical leak detector was actually just a way to scan my workshop?”

Peter purses his lips a bit and then gives a curt nod, looking away.

“Well. Color me impressed. You got me. Stellar performances all around.”

Peter says nothing, his eyes are tired and solemn.

“Hey, I’m not mad. If anything you did me a solid. Under my damn nose this whole time…” He blows out a breath. He is impressed, but admittedly, also feels like an idiot, not just for failing to notice the side hustle operating out of his basement, but for falling for the whole SHIELD charade on top of it. His mouth quirks into a smile. “Can’t believe you made me clean your whole apartment, though.”

Peter says nothing.

“Also, whoever the agent or actress was who pretended to be your mom and pushed over my statue — that thing was worth eighty-thousand dollars, is SHIELD gonna reimburse that?”

Peter says nothing. He looks like he really wants to get out of here.

Tony waves a hand, feeling suddenly incredibly tired. “All right. Don’t let me keep you.”

Peter picks up the plastic bag and leaves. The chemical leak scanner is still on the corner of his workbench.

-

Peter doesn’t really recognize this odd numb feeling he experiences as he drives to the hotel, makes his way to the debrief room, even as he sits with Maria and explains everything that went down today. Three times, just in case he missed a detail.

He would have expected something else by now. Rationally, he thinks he should be relieved. Instinctively, he knows he should panic. It’s like his body can’t decide what to think or feel, like it’s in a sort of stasis.

“That concludes our mission, then,” Maria says. “Your role in it, at least. The rest of us will do the sweeping up, make sure we flush out all the rotten apples and roll up the network. Not, in hindsight, as low-stakes as we had expected.” She gives him one of those rare looks of approval. “You held up remarkably well. I’ve come to expect great things from you, Mr. Parker.”

Peter nods. The compliment doesn’t give him the same warm feeling it used to.

“Your training will be back on schedule. With a different handler, as Natasha is moving onto a different project. But,” and she actually smiles, then, “Deborah will not send you the new schedule for another two weeks at least. Until then, take a vacation. No obligations whatsoever. You deserve it.”

It feels like a death sentence.

Chapter Text

He sleeps—fragmented. It feels like every fifteen minutes he jolts awake, heart racing, mouth dry.

No obligations whatsoever.

This is when he told himself he’d get it together. He was going to wait for the mission to end, and then get the rest of his life in order. But he knows with clarity now what he knew subconsciously all along: he can’t do it.

No more internship, no more debriefs. No more Pepper, no more MJ, no more Natasha. No more Tony. Just time, stretching out infinitely, alone.

He kicks the blanket aside and drags himself out of bed. It’s a little before 4 AM. He leaves his bedroom, bringing his blankets along, and crosses the living room to the balcony doors, throwing them wide open. He just needs to breathe.

He sits, leaning against the railing. It’s nice, the cold, it’s supposed to snow a bit later this week. He leans his forehead against the metal bars and counts the tiles on the path that leads from the front door to the street.

He falls asleep and wakes up again— cold down to his bones. Shivering. Natasha taught him shivering is good. It means you’re alive. He rolls over and crawls inside on hands and knees, pulling the blanket behind him. He shuts the balcony door and lays face down on the floor. He can’t get up, everything is too heavy.

He falls asleep again and dreams that he is stuck in a snowstorm. He wakes to early sunlight streaking his walls, his back protesting, eyes misty.

He needs to get a hold of himself. He just needs to get a fucking hold.

He pulls himself up and leans against the side of the couch, where sunlight can hit him in the face, and closes his eyes. He thinks about good things, a cup of coffee, the plant in the window, a movie, ‘a princess does not chortle, doesn’t stuff her gob, rises early, is compassionate, patient, cautious, clean, and above all, a princess strives for perfection’,

his name, written on a toothbrush in permanent marker.

He realizes he is crying when a teardrop hits the back of his hand. He learned very early on in his life not to cry — a very bad way of staying invisible. He rubs the back of his hand on his pajama bottoms and opens his eyes, peering out through the balcony doors. Crows are circling above a tree across the street. A woman walking her dog.

A car pulling up. Tony getting out.

Peter’s stomach seizes up and he slings one arm over the side of the couch to drag himself to his feet. He opens the balcony doors again and steps out. Tony moves across the lawn purposefully and pauses under his balcony, hands tucked into his pockets. His expression is disconcertingly sharp. “Hey.”

Peter swallows. “Hello, sir.”

“Did you talk to MJ?”

“I… What?”

“I tried to call her to follow up, you know, make sure she’s…” Tony shakes his head. “She isn’t answering her phone, and then I called her grandma who was in a state because apparently MJ left home last night in a panic and hasn’t come back.”  

Peter’s hands tighten around the balcony railing. “Someone took her?”

“Sounds like she freaked out. Apparently said she would endanger her grandma by staying home.”

“Why?” Peter asks, bewildered.

“She did think I would kill her for knowing my identity. I don’t know. She wasn’t…” he waves a hand in a circular motion, “… part of this whole thing, was she?”

“No. No, sir.”

Tony turns away. “Grandma gave me the names of a few friends, so I think I’ll…”

“I’m coming,” Peter says. He rushes back inside, not bothering to change out of his pajamas, pulling on his shoes and a coat and thundering down the stairs.

Tony did wait for him, still standing right underneath the balcony. He gives Peter a once-over but says nothing of the pajamas. He starts walking back to his car and Peter falls into step beside him. “Do you know of any places she liked to go?” Tony asks.

Peter shakes his head.

“Should have checked in on her right away,” Tony mutters.

They get into his car and Tony starts the engine. “Closest friend is a Ned Leeds, living on campus.”

Peter takes out his phone. “Let me see if she’ll answer for me.”

She doesn’t. Peter tries three times in a row and then shoots her a message, just in case. “Um. If we don’t find her I could try and ask SHIELD…”

“I guess you do have friends in high places,” Tony says. He doesn’t even sound snarky about it. He just seems concerned.

“And she wasn’t hurt or anything?”

“She was physically fine, but freaked out. And there wasn’t time to talk her down, we had…” Tony blows out a breath, “…I want to say priorities, but she should have been a bigger one. I just wanted to get her out of there.”

“We didn’t know the situation,” Peter says. “It would have been unsafe for her to stay.”

“Yeah. My thoughts.”

“You did what seemed best at the time.”

“Thanks for the pep talk.” He does seem a bit snarky that time.

-

They knock on the sticker-covered door of Ned Leeds’ student dorm room. The sound of low, drumming music from within the room abruptly cuts off, then there is a scuffling sound. “Who is it?”

“Two neighbors with a question,” Peter says in a raised voice.

More scuffling noises.

“Christ,” Tony says faintly. “We’re on the third floor, if she’s trying to climb out the window right now…”

Peter sets his jaw and grips one elbow with the opposite hand, turns and slams his shoulder against the door. With a loud crack, it buckles inward, coming clean off its hinges and toppling backwards into the dorm room. Peter steps inside.

A young man about Peter’s age stands in the middle of the cramped dorm room and gapes back at them. He has a round face and a green Grinch-shirt. Ned Leeds.

Tony steps inside, too. “I’ll… pay for that.” He sounds slightly baffled.

“We’re looking for Michelle Jones,” Peter says firmly.

“I don’t know who that is,” Ned says, and goes bright red.

Tony’s tone shifts to something of a drawl. “Really? Because you were best friends through all of high school.”

Ned shifts on his feet. “I just meant… I don’t know where she is.”

“Look, just… Is she in trouble?” Peter asks.

Ned looks at him funny. “You guys tell me.”

Peter and Tony exchange a look.

That clearly sends a bad signal, because Ned instantly goes into panic mode. “Look. Look, just… Take me instead. I’m the one who made her sign up for that whole internship.”

“Take me instead,” Tony echoes.

A closet door bursts open and MJ surges into the room, a sock hanging off her shoulder. “Do not touch him!” she yells, before plucking the sock up and flinging it at them. It flutters the ground halfway between them.

“Hallo, MJ,” Tony says, using his most gentle voice.

She points at Ned. “I didn’t even tell him anything so you don’t have to wipe his brain!”

“You can wipe brains?” Ned asks, looking far too excited about it.

“I’m flattered you’d even consider it a possibility,” Tony says. “FRIDAY, let Desiree know we have her granddaughter safe and sound.”

“Done,” FRIDAY says from his pocket, somewhere.

Tony exhales. “Can we sit? Let’s sit.” There is a green couch with a faded patchwork quilt draped across it. Tony wipes some candy wrappers off the seat, sits and crosses his legs. Peter follows his example.

MJ crosses her arms and glares. “Am I supposed to believe that you’re just fine with me knowing—what I know?” Her eyes flick to Ned, then back to Tony.

“She means your secret identity,” Ned says, helpfully.

“Shut up Ned you idiot!” MJ yells, flushing.

Ned nervously tugs at the hem of his shirt. “Oh, right. I know nothing. Iron Man who?”

Tony actually snorts at that and that seems to break some of the tension. “MJ,” he says. “Will you please just sit down and talk to me?”

She pulls out the chair that was at Ned’s desk and sits with a huff.

Ned perks up. “I can make some lemonade. And I got those extra fancy chips.” He shuffles to the corner and opens the fridge, rattling the precarious arrangement of bottles standing on top of it.

“Who were those people?” MJ asks, arms crossed, glaring.

“Unfortunately, my own employees. They’d been covertly using Stark Technology to continue producing weapons, until Peter decided to wander into their lion’s den and blow their cover to bits.”

MJ’s eyes shift to Peter. “Yeah, what were you doing going down to the basement like you were in Scooby-Doo?”

Probably, too much was going on yesterday for her to even connect the dots between the fragmented bits and pieces she overheard. “Uh,” Peter says. He wants to look at Tony for his reaction but is also afraid to. “I was, a little bit? Undercover?”

“A little bit undercover,” she echoes.

“Um. Weapons made with Stark Technology were found in Indonesia and—”

“Sour cream and onion?” Ned asks, pushing an open bag of chips into his face.

But tension has a tight grip on Peter’s stomach and he shakes his head.

“Don’t mind if I do.” Tony snatches them up. He looks into the bag, shakes it once and says: “extra fancy.”

“Iron Man has had a secret identity for a decade,” MJ says. “The times did a top ten recently of people most likely to be him and you weren’t even in it, Tony. At number one was our mayor, Lynda Strode.”

Tony points at her with a large potato chip. “You’ve been keeping up, huh?” He shoves it into his mouth.

“Well, yeah. I had an Iron Man plushie when I was a kid. When I pressed its stomach it said ‘get that camera out of my face’.”

Tony snorts.

“And now you’re just fine with people knowing about it?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘fine’,” Tony says. “What happened yesterday is less than ideal for a multitude of reasons.”

“Right,” she says, voice brittle. “Right, right, right. That’s my point. You’re not who you said you were and now I’m a—a loose end to be tied up.”

“Yes, I have secrets,” Tony says on. “Had. But the internship was never a part of that, not to me. Just because I had a side-hustle doesn’t mean I’m not myself when we’re calibrating braille printers together, kid.”

Peter finds himself wondering how much he was himself when he made that chemical leak detector.

MJ curls her hair around her finger, gaze shooting from Tony to Peter and back. Her shoulders, usually squared, are hunched in a way that makes her look small.  “But, uh…” she says, hesitant.

“MJ,” Tony says, almost impatient, now, “I'd throw hands with a grizzly bear if it looked at you wrong, I would never hurt you.”

Her chin trembles, and she turns her face slightly away.

“Ohmygod Iron Man is your bodyguard,” Ned breathes.

MJ tugs at her strand of hair and kicks the leg of Ned’s desk. “Well, that’s dumb, and you better toughen up if you don’t want this whole thing to get you killed. Because people don’t keep your secrets — they just store them up to use them against you later.”

“I trust you,” Tony says mildly.

MJ sniffs, then flicks her hair back and mutters, “dumbass.”

But her resistance is wavering, Tony poked through, that’s clear. She will be back in the workshop on Monday, her and Tony, diving into the details of paper feed mechanisms for her printer. They’ll probably talk about Peter—or perhaps even worse, they won’t talk about him at all.

“Can I drive you home now?” Tony asks. “Please?”

-

Peter lets her take the front seat and sits quietly in the back, suddenly wishing he hadn’t offered to come along. They don’t appear to remember he’s here, anyway; MJ is too busy interrogating Tony about that time at TechCrunch when Iron Man went freediving in Central Park, and “is the suit actually powered by your brain?”

“Tell you another time,” Tony says.

They reach her house and Peter gets out with them, but doesn’t know what to say.

“See you Monday, then?” MJ asks.

“Yup,” Tony says, and then does look at Peter.

Peter tries to shove his hands into his pockets and remembers he is still wearing his pajamas. “Um. No. I didn’t have— It was just a job, and I’m done now.”

She sets one hand on her hip. “You weren’t even shitting me, you were actually undercover? I feel like I’m Dorothy Gale who wandered into an Agatha Christie novel.”

Peter shrugs in a way he hopes looks casual. James Bond would probably be way smoother about it.

“Uh. Bye then.” She looks uncomfortable and reserved, suddenly, glancing at Tony as if to ask for help.

“Bye,” Peter says, lamely. He turns away and takes the front seat. If he can’t have any of this anymore, he’d rather get it over with.

It takes another minute, Peter watches in the side mirror how Tony talks quietly to MJ and squeezes her shoulder before she actually heads inside. And then Tony rounds the car and gets back behind the wheel. “Back home, then?” he asks.

“Yep,” Peter says. “Thank you, sir.” He buckles up.

They drive in silence for a little while.

“For what it’s worth,” Peter ventures eventually. “I… apologize for the inconvenience.”

Tony shakes his head. “It’s fine, you had a job to do, and you did it well. I have no particular grudge against SHIELD, never had. And now that the whole identity thing is out in the open, I already have an appointment next Monday to talk to Maria Hill. See if we can… pool resources.”

Oh.

That’s good, probably. Except it isn’t. Tony talking to Maria is a very bad no good thing. Peter can already imagine the conversation inevitably turning to his role in the whole thing at some point. Tony going Haha, you made me clean up Peter’s fucking mess of an apartment, Tony going That was really convincing, the way he cried about it like a baby.

No psych eval needed, Peter will be canned on the spot, which means he’ll lose the apartment, and the salary that pays his college tuition, and whatever ties to Natasha he has left.

“You seem young, how old are you actually?” Tony asks.

Peter blinks at him. “Um. Just… Eighteen?”

Tony frowns. “What do you mean? How is that even possible?”

“Sir.” Peter looks down at his hands, folds them tightly in his lap. “Could you maybe… not tell Maria about any of it? Um, my apartment, and me staying at your place a few times, and the—the eating thing which isn’t a disorder anyways so if you could not bring that up that would be great.”

Without a single word of warning, Tony yanks the wheel to the right, veering closer to the sidewalk. He slams the brakes. Peter jolts forward and the seatbelt catches him, knocking the air out of him. He leans back, warily glancing at Tony.

Tony takes in a bracing breath and turns in his seat, watching Peter with a blend of consternation and confusion.

“Um. Sir?” Peter says.

Tony turns off the engine. “Why don’t you tell me which things I learned about you over the past months were real and which were fake.”

Peter tugs nervously at the seatbelt. “Um. Well. My last name is different. And my actual birth date is not the 28th of July but like, two weeks later, in August. Um…” He chews his bottom lip as he thinks.

Tony waits out the silence for a few seconds. “That’s it?”

“I think so. Oh— And I haven’t actually ever been arrested.”

“I… didn’t think you’d been arrested.”

“It was in my records.”

“Right. Well, I didn’t read those.”

“Some SHIELD agent worked hard on faking those,” Peter jokes weakly.

The joke doesn’t land. Tony just stares back at him, looking frankly appalled. “How can you possibly get sent on a mission like this at eighteen?”

“I got emancipated at sixteen.”

Tony doesn’t look any less horrified. “And SHIELD hired you then?”

“They knew about Spider-Man.”

“Did they, now.”

Peter crosses his arms tightly across his chest. “Maria got me away from my parents.”

“Entirely selflessly, I’m sure,” Tony drawls.

“You sound like Pepper.”

Tony looks a bit taken aback at that. And then… a little smug. Like he enjoys the comparison.

“Just… It’s not your concern anymore, is it?” Peter says, voice pitched low. “I’m not asking you to lie, sir, just don’t… mention it.”

Tony’s eyes glimmer dangerously. “And what exactly do you imagine will happen if I did tell Maria Hill about everything?”

“I’d get fired, and I don’t want to get fired, because SHIELD is all I have!”

“And what do you imagine will happen,” Tony says, “if I don’t tell anyone, and you keep hiding this?”

Peter opens his mouth and closes it again, then ducks his head and shrugs helplessly.

“Did you have dinner last night?”

Peter flushes, keeping his eyes firmly trained on his own hands. They are clasped so tightly together that the fingers are going white.

“I see,” Tony says, very slowly. “And what is SHIELD planning for you; straight into another mission?”

“No, sir. They gave me a v-vacation.” He stumbles over the word. “Two weeks at least.”

“Right. You alone with your thoughts, huh?”

“Yes, sir,” Peter says dully.

“These ‘yes sirs’ and ‘no sirs’ are driving me up a tree!” Tony snaps. “Peter, look at me.”

Peter does, warily, and whatever Tony sees in his face makes him drop the scowl. His face softens. He leans in and gently untangles Peter’s fingers, before taking one of Peter’s hands in his own. “I am not telling SHIELD a single thing,” he says, “as long as I don’t know if they would be worthy of that trust.”

Peter can’t really decipher that one. “Okay?” he ventures.

“But you are not spending two weeks alone in your apartment. You will be staying at the tower.”

Peter’s heart stutters and his vision suddenly blurs, a lump rising in this throat. “I… Yes,” he agrees quickly.

“We’ll drive back to your place to pack everything you need.”

Peter’s head bobs up and down. “Uhuh. Yes,” he agrees and sniffles, wiping his face. “Yes, sir” — it slips out again.

Tony doesn’t berate him this time. He just exhales with a muttered curse, and reaches out with both hands to brush tears off Peter’s cheeks, and then lays one hand on the back of Peter’s neck, looking him very seriously in the eye. “I’m only going to say this once, right now,” he says, “because I don’t want this SHIELD business to hijack the whole two weeks. But I hope that by the end of those weeks, you will have come to a decision regarding your work for them, and whether you’re still willing to lose pieces of yourself for that job.” He waits a moment while Peter absorbs that statement. And then smiles. “Now. Let’s get you ready for your stay at Hotel Stark.”

-

Peter’s apartment still looks reasonably tidy compared to the last time Tony saw it. Some clothes strewn about. There’s a large blanket on the floor in front of the balcony doors.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Peter says when he notices Tony looking at it.

Tony simply nods and turns to the kitchen. “Go pack. I’ll take out your trash.”

Peter disappears into his bedroom.

Tony pulls the bag out of the kitchen trash can and ties it off. He moves back down the hall, kicking the doormat across the threshold so the door won’t fall shut, lets the trash disappear down the chute with a whoosh. He returns and checks the fridge for perishables. There aren’t many. Peter is clearly still living off canned food and dry cereal. Tony mentally adds all the fruits and vegetables to this grocery list for next week. He checks the cupboards, finds an opened cereal box and places it on the counter.

It's giving him a sort of mental whiplash, first reorienting himself around the belief that it was all fabrications, a sob story to get him to trust the undercover agent. And just when he felt like he had come entirely to grips with that, everything sliding out of place again.

He has a company in disarray, the huge evacuation making every front page in the city, journalists getting pissy about it because no one will confirm what the evacuation was for, SHIELD agents crawling all over B3, even scratching off the drywall in some places to collect as evidence, his CEO and PA are both gone, as well as one of his top engineers, and the board is in a tizzy about it—

And Tony doesn’t need to think about it. There is only one thing he wants to focus on for the next two weeks.

He looks up when Peter re-enters the room, a plastic bag in hand, crammed-full. “I think I’m all set, sir.”

Tony nods. “You want to take your plant, too?”

“Oh. Yeah. Yes, please.”

Tony taps the cereal box. “And this one, I think. So it won’t go stale. You don’t have any other food that might go off anywhere, right?”

“No.” Peter shuffles his feet. His eyes already look suspiciously shiny again. That’s emotions: like clutter in your house building up, you ignore it and ignore it, try to store it out of sight, until it has piled too high. And then you suddenly have to deal with it all at once.

“Did you bring the Spider-suit?” he thinks to say. “Because you can, if you want.”

“I did, yes sir.”

“Okay.” Tony nudges the box of cereal closer to him. “Maybe have some before we get going? When’s the last time you ate something?”

“I… had breakfast.”

"When do you think you're going to stop lying to me, kid?” Tony asks gently. It’s a low blow, he knows, Peter’s shoulders draw up and his breath stutters, but Tony is done skirting the issue. It’s time to acknowledge instead of avoid.

“I just f-forgot. I have breakfast, I always do. I just p-panicked.” He pulls his sleeve down and wipes his face when tears roll down again.

“We’ll have some lunch at the tower.”

Peter sniffles, head bobbing up and down. “Yes sir thank you sir.”

Tony tucks the box of cereal under one arm and moves past Peter to the windowsill to pick up the plant. “Andiamo.”

They zip up their coats, go downstairs and put everything in the trunk. Peter wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I know I haven’t been taking care of myself.”

“I’m gonna do that for you.”

“Can I have a hug?” Peter asks.

This kid. “Hell fucking yes,” Tony says and tugs him closer by one arm. Peter tilts forwards, Tony wraps his arms around and hugs him, winds one hand into his hair, squeezing closer, proud of Peter for asking, he knows it means his need for love is greater than his fear of rejection. “There you go, I’m even wearing my most emotionally available scarf.”

Peter lets out a faint, tear-choked laugh.

Tony keeps Peter’s head tucked under his chin. Peter’s breath still hitches every time he tries to take a deep breath. Tony holds him, and holds him up, this is where he’ll be for the next two weeks and after, for however long it’s needed, holding Peter up. “You know, when Pepper roped me into the whole Turning Point thing, she said it would be good PR,” he says. “And here you are, making me look like I have a heart.”

“Could—could have fooled me, for sure,” Peter murmurs.

Chapter Text

“I can cook,” Peter offers, gaze sliding around Tony’s kitchen.

“I think it’s better to have lunch at the food court. It’s just barebones in the fridge today. Unless you have a recipe made up of ketchup and ice cubes.” Tony sets the box of cereal down on the kitchen counter. “I’m happy for you to cook dinner, though.”

Peter had expected him to refuse. It’s a bit of a relief. As happy as he is to be here, he wouldn’t really look forward to just having to sit around for two weeks and have Tony dote on him.

Tony sets Peter’s spider plant in the window. “We’ll go grocery shopping this afternoon,” he decides.

It’s that thing again, the way he talks and moves around the house, as if having Peter over is entirely natural.

They take the elevator down to the 52nd floor. “Where to?” Tony asks, and adds: “June doesn’t work Fridays” when Peter glances towards Puff Puff Pastry.

“Oh. Well, doesn’t matter then. Your pick, sir.”

Tony steers him to the salad bar. Peter grabs a bowl and adds a bit of everything, including all five types of cheese.

It’s lunch hour and bustling with activity. Groups of coworkers hunched over laptops, or chatting animatedly over their half-eaten sandwiches. Some people give Tony a nod when they see him, but just as many seem to not even know who he is.

“Hope I don’t lose this,” Tony sighs as they slide into chairs around an empty table in a quiet corner. “This anonymity. Yesterday’s chaos… Hard to tell if all that is going to leak at some point over the next weeks.”

“SHIELD won’t tell.”

“Some of Sunny’s henchmen saw me suit up, though they’re behind bars for now. And I’m not sure how many other employees put two and two together. We won’t be able to hide from the wider public that Iron Man was at the tower. I just hope we can spin it in a way that he was called in to help.”

“Is it true your CEO was arrested, too?”

Tony nods. “It seems Ms. Sunset Bain was the brains behind the operation.”

“Her full name is Sunset Bain? Wow. I could have told you she was gonna be the bad guy.”

Tony chuckles. “Wisecracker.”

Peter smiles as he dangles some arugula into his mouth, feeling lighter than he has in months.

-

They go grocery shopping after lunch. Peter embarrassingly falls asleep in the car on the way there. He wakes up looking out across the parking lot of Whole Foods. Tony is in the driver’s seat on his tablet, The digital clock on the dashboard reads just before 3 PM. Peter sits up, wiping his face. “Sorry. You… could have woken me up, sir.”

Tony turns the tablet off and flips its case over. “We’re not in a rush,” he says mildly. “We’re not going to be in a rush for the next two weeks.”

The grocery shopping is strangely soothing, actually. Peter pushes the cart, and Tony maneuvers him around, one hand resting on the edge of the cart, shopping list in the other hand. All Peter has to do is let himself be guided around and give some opinions here and there. Strawberry or cherry marmalade. Red grapes or white grapes. Peter wants to make lasagna for dinner and he tries to remember all the ingredients. It’s been a while.

“You could probably get a butler for all this,” he remarks at some point.

“Getting bored?” Tony asks, looking up at him with a smile.

“No. This is nice actually.” His eyes are burning a bit, though, and he rubs at them.

“Try not to nap again,” Tony advises. “You’ll get horribly disoriented and risk lying awake tonight. Try to stay awake for now and then have an early night.”

“Yessir,” Peter murmurs.

-

“Hey,” Tony says as they pack the groceries away. “Just to make sure you won’t find out at the worst possible moment….” He taps two fingers firmly against his own sternum—the solid clunk clunk of hollow metal. The sound is so unexpected, so not fitting, that Peter freezes halfway between the table and the fridge and almost drops the parmesan.

“I have a—heart thing. So I got this, basically an extra fancy pacemaker. It glows in the dark, too, so when you stumble into me outside the bathroom tonight, well. Don’t freak out.”

“Oh.” Peter hugs the hunk of cheese to his chest and bites his bottom lip. “You aren’t, like… dying. Or anything. Right?”

“No more than usual,” Tony says. And then, probably because he sees Peter’s worried expression: “Meaning, no. I’m perfectly healthy.”

“It glows in the dark?”

“It glows all the time, really, but I use pulse dampeners to keep its enthusiasm down. Little patches, wear out in a day. They’re a bit of a bother, but I haven’t figured out a better method yet.”

“It’s… a secret?”

“Oh. Yeah. Definitely a secret.” He taps again, the awful metal sound grates down Peter’s spine. “This baby powers the Iron Man suit.”

“Are you an android?”

Tony snorts. “Would that explain a lot?”

“Uh…”

“Don’t worry. I can feel love like a real boy.”  Tony smirks about it, and it doesn’t help the worry and apprehension Peter is feeling.

“Please be serious for a moment, sir.”

“I’m seriously not an android, Peter. I had heart surgery in a cave in Afghanistan, and now this thing is holding me together. There have been rougher versions, but I perfected it. You won’t find technology like this anywhere else in the world; it’s keeping me perfectly safe.”

“Okay,” Peter whispers. “Does it hurt?”

Tony shakes his head. “Most days I forget it’s even there.”

“Okay. Okay.” Peter nods firmly. “Um. That’s pretty cool, anyways, sir. That the whole thing where you almost died, is now literally inseparable from you being Iron Man.”

Tony’s grin widens. “Well, no one becomes a superhero because they’re sane.”

“Oh, yeah. Fair enough.”

He packs the cheese and veggies away and wonders absentmindedly how much Spider-Man has been built up out of all of the worst experiences of his life. Which means, in a way, that those experiences don’t just define him negatively…

He’s too tired for this philosophical shit. He’ll think more on it later.

-

The weekend slowly drifts by like a boat floating over water. Peter cooks lunch and dinner in Tony’s dim kitchen. Lasagna and chili and tofu scramble. He eats at every meal, if only to prove a point. It’s easier to eat, though, when someone is eating with you. Tony squeezes oranges and grapefruit for breakfast and takes Peter for a walk to Central Park and gives him some random book with animal stories, the back creased and the pages nearly falling out.

“My parents are scientists, too,” Peter shares at some point on Sunday afternoon, curled up on the couch under a throw blanket, Tony next to him. It’s snowing a bit outside. The flakes dance past the window in random patterns. “They work at this company that is, like, top of its field in advancements in birth control. And then they had an unplanned pregnancy. That’s pretty funny, right?”

“I don’t know if it’s funny,” Tony says wryly. “Depends. Did they have a sense of humor about it?”

“No, they kinda considered it an insult by the universe.” And Peter spent his whole childhood feeling like he owed them a debt just for existing.

Tony hums. His hand pats Peter’s foot through the blanket. “Well. My parents tried desperately to get pregnant for years before they had me. I was practically a miracle, the doctors said. And then they were still assholes about it.”

Peter tries to imagine Tony’s parents just giving up on it all, and Tony never existing. Yeah, he thinks it’s pretty damn accurate that Tony being around is a miracle. “I think you’re my Ms. Honey,” he says.

Tony raises and eyebrow and snorts at the same time. “Meaning?”

Peter yawns a bit. “We’ll watch the movie sometime.”

“How much are you still in touch with your parents?”

“I can just— I think I’ll block their number again. Soon.”

“Any other family?”

Peter bunches the blanket up under his chin as he thinks. “I have an aunt. She emailed me once after I ran away from home. I never emailed her back.” He chews his bottom lip. “Apparently, my parents got divorced last year. So it wasn’t just me, the reason they were miserable. That was kind of a relief. Is that stupid?”

Tony shifts and grasps the fabric of Peter’s sweater at the sleeve. Peter doesn’t understand what’s happening for a moment, until Tony is pulling him forward and Peter’s cheek lands against his shoulder. Tony’s arm drapes around him, the blanket slides away but Tony pulls it back up and tucks it snuggly around him. “Nah, kid,” he says. “Not stupid.”

A hug he didn’t even need to ask for. He settles into the embrace and breathes. This is a very unique sort of warmth: fuzzy and comfortable. There have been so many times in his life when he needed a hug and got a lecture.

“You silly penguin,” Tony murmurs, and Peter chokes out a laugh.

He isn’t sure how long hugs usually last, but Tony doesn’t seem in any rush; never does.

He has felt his entire life like the only way to survive was to make himself useful. Like Spider-Man: once he got powers, he had to help people, there was no other possibility that even crossed his mind. That’s a little sad, probably.

But he loves Spider-Man, he’s proud of Spider-Man, there is a unique sort of happiness he feels when he is in the suit. Spider-Man has been built up out of all of the worst experiences of his life, but those experiences don’t just define him negatively.

“Are you brooding?” Tony asks. His chin leans lightly on Peter’s head.

“Maybe. But like, not in such a bad way.”

Tony squeezes Peter’s foot and gets up, rummages around the kitchen for a while, then comes back with a plate and a bowl and starts peeling an orange.

“Sir? Can I still do, like, internship stuff this week?” The idea of having to sit in this apartment alone while Tony and MJ are down the hall working on her braille printer makes him kinda sad even just thinking about it.

“Probably a good idea,” Tony agrees. “I’m guessing you don’t want to study FRIDAY anymore?”

“Uh no. That was just a thing—a thing—”

“Yeah, I get it. I told MJ to take Monday off, though. I have an appointment with Maria Hill in the morning.”

Peter twists the corner of the blanket between his fingers. “Oh. Yeah. You said.” Pool their resources. Tony and SHIELD have a common goal now, after all: bringing down the entire network that funneled Stark Technology into the illegal arms trade. “You’re not going to talk ab—about me, right?” he asks, stumbling a little over the words.

Tony shakes his head. “My differences with SHIELD are not yours, Peter. You must come to your own decision about them.”

“Uh. Just FYI, she might bring it up first. They probably already know I’m here, because my laptop and phone are SHIELD issued so I guess they monitor it at all times.”

Tony pricks a little too hard and a small mist of citrus oil sprays into the air. “You guess.”

Peter shrugs.

“And that doesn’t strike you as the least bit messed up?”

“I don’t have questions or opinions, I follow orders.”

“Gross,” Tony says. “Don’t ever say that to my face again.”

“I just hope they aren’t, like, recording me.”

“FRIDAY would definitely notice that.”

Peter crosses his arms, poking the side of Tony’s leg with his foot. “So, basically, you monitor everything, too.”

Tony opens his mouth, “well…”, then closes it. Then smiles.

“That’s how you always know when bad things are happening somewhere in the city. Right?”

“Except when it’s in my own basement.” He separates the orange into segments and drops them into the bowl, which he pushes into Peter’s hands. He crosses his legs and wipes his hands on his shirt. “FRIDAY’s surveillance is not as extensive as some of my employees seem to think. I put a lot of cameras and speakers on this floor, and in some of the more important labs and offices. Not because I’m running a dystopia, but because it improves FRIDAY’s operational oversight, efficiency. And yeah, she has camera footage of most of the rest of the building, but so does my security team. It’s all pretty standard practice compared to other companies. It’s just they don’t have an AI watching along with their human security guards.”

“What about the way you always know everything that happens in the city?”

“All open source. I built an algorithm that helps FRIDAY cross-reference social media posts, live streams, public transportation APIs, local police scanner logs, 911 dispatch logs... It’s all publicly available stuff, out there in the wild, any grandma could google it. Again; it’s just that no one else has the capability to monitor it all at the same time. FRIDAY’s my army of ten thousand doom scrolling teenagers rolled into one program.”

Peter nods and silently chews on his orange slices for a while, rubbing his feet together under the blanket. “So, uh. Am I gonna be alone all morning tomorrow?” he asks, and wishes that he wouldn’t sound so anxious about it.

“I’ll think of something,” Tony says. “How do you take your coffee nowadays?”

“With milk and repressed emotions.”

“Wisecracker.”

“And the fancy Italian foam, please.”

-

The thing Tony thinks of, is to drop Peter off at Puff Puff Pastry the next morning with his laptop and the book with animal stories. “I’ll be back around lunch time. Don’t do anything intelligent. Play some SimCity or something.”

Peter hasn’t even changed out of his pajamas. He just threw a sweater on over the hello kitty pants. He would have expected to feel embarrassed about it, all of it, everything that is happening right now, everything Tony is doing for him. But the relief is so all-encompassing that it drowns everything else out, and that’s pretty nice, actually. It’s nice to just feel happy to be here, to have someone watching his back.

He only ever had the opportunity to see June before work or during lunch break, when the lines were long and she was busy. But it’s a bit after nine when he installs himself in a corner booth, and the food court is quiet, by now. A few small groups of people settling in for semi-informal meetings over coffee, a few late comers rushing to grab breakfast.

June brings him a strawberry smoothie and sits with him a bit. “I like the outfit.”

“They’re my pajamas.”

“Well, the pattern suits you.” June always liked happy clothes, even back when she was homeless. “I was a seamstress in another life,” she says. “What about you?”

“Oh.” Peter doesn’t really know what to say to that. “Uh… A kid?”

“That’s good,” she says. “Because you carry that with you, right? The things you used to be.” She lowers her head and peers into his eyes. “Yah, I can see him. The kid. Obsessed with airplanes? Finding bugs in the garden?”

“Hide and seek, mainly. Without the, uh, ‘seek’ part.”

“Ah, I see how it is. You gotta take care of him, you know,” she pats her own chest. “That little kid, that’s inside of you. You gotta be kind to him, but not too indulgent.” She waves a finger. “Sometimes he’s gotta sit down and let the grown-ups talk. But you always leave room for him.”

“I… yeah,” Peter says. He suddenly has a vision of the six-year-old boy he once was, hiding in the attic, his favorite spot, behind a stack of boxes. He wishes he could reach through time, give that little boy a hug and tell him, things will turn out okay.

“How are your kids?” he asks. “Um. The real ones, not like your inner child.”

“Turned out real good. I take no credit in that, but it’s good to see.”

“Don’t you want to move closer to them?”

“Want, sure. But I’m going at their pace. Not mine. I love them, love’s not always enough to make it simple. They have every right to their feelings. I show up when they let me.”

“Sounds pretty difficult.”

She shakes her head. “No, I’m grateful.”

Peter looks down at his hands, lays them flat on the table. “Yeah. Me too.”

“I bet.” Her eyes start glittering, now. “So, you’re sitting around in my bakery wearing PJs. Does that mean Stark adopted you?”

“Not yet,” Peter says, and then huffs out a little laugh— surprised at himself.

“We’ll give it a few more weeks, then,” June says.

-

It’s odd to conduct meetings in Pepper’s office, but it’s the only spot Tony could think of. It didn’t seem wise to invite Maria to the top floor. And it was either this or some weird backroom in a gym she had suggested. “Don’t trust me enough to give me the address to your headquarters, huh?” he says as he holds the door open for her.

“Most of our own agents never even step foot in headquarters.”

They take  the pod chairs by the window. She unbuttons her coat and leans back, she looks fairly relaxed.

“Am I a suspect yet?” Tony asks.

“Less and less each day, despite our best efforts,” she says pleasantly. It’s hard to tell if she’s kidding.

“Do you have any statistics to throw at me?” he asks. “How many people died because of—my technology?”

“I wouldn’t pursue that line of questioning, Mr. Stark. It’s not conducive. These things happen. You’re not the first CEO to encounter sabotage from within, and you won’t be the last.”

“Maybe not the first or last, but certainly the smartest.”

“I have no statistics for that, either,” she says dryly. She takes out a notepad and flips it open to a page already full of scribbles in a frankly atrocious handwriting. She launches into her updates on the case and touches on all the boring stuff, the fisticuffs at the tower, Sunset Bain, the RenewGen technology. She offers financial recompensation for the loss of his PA. That’s even how she says it, “your PA.”

Tony waves it away. “Please. You all did me a favor.”

“You have my number if you change your mind. The mission ended in more mayhem than I had anticipated. We usually try to avoid such theatrics.”

“Uh-huh.” There is no chance in hell that he will let her know Peter is with him. But he can’t help but steer the conversation in that direction, hoping to get a read on her. “The kid who called himself Peter was pretty young, right? Is SHIELD that short staffed that you’re scooping them out of sandboxes?”

Her eyes flick up at him, then back down to her papers. “He’s exceptionally gifted.”

“I guess he was smart, yeah,” Tony says loftily.  “I don’t suppose you’re planning to send me another one.”

“Not in the immediate future,” she says, and it’s still hard to tell if she’s joking, but Tony is starting to suspect that she is.

“Where’d you find him? NYU? What’s his real name?”

She gives him an unwavering stare.

“Come on. He spent two months in my workshop and I don’t even get a name?”

“We find that it tends to blow their covers.”

“I want to hire him,” Tony says. “He’s wasted with you people. How many millions to I need to pay SHIELD to release him from his contract?”

“He’s wasted with us?” she looks openly amused.

“He could build something better here.”

“With a corner office and a company credit card?”

“Give me a name and his email address and I’ll send him the offer. We’ll let him decide which he prefers.”

“Send the offer to me,” she says. “And I’ll pass it on.”

-

Just another Tuesday morning—arriving in the workshop before anyone else. Peter turns his chemical leak scanner over in his hands and hums to himself. Now that this thing no longer needs to function as a Trojan Horse, he’s going to rework it into a scanner that is actually up to his own standards.

He sets the scanner back down and thumbs through his sketches. He almost lost this: sitting at this workbench under these lights, quiet, peaceful—

“What the absolute fuck?”

He turns.

MJ is standing between the sliding doors, hands on her hips. She looks outraged. “How are you just sitting there, I just spent the entire weekend mourning your death!”

“What? I didn’t die.”

“You know what I mean.” She stomps closer until she is right next to his table.

Two months ago, that look on her face would have made Peter want to hide underneath something. Right now, though, he just smiles. “Surprise?”

She sets her jaw and lifts her fists up in front of her, squaring up.

“Uh,” Peter says.

“What’s your real name?”

“Peter.”

“Are you lying? What would you do if I punched you?”

“Once again, Ms. Jones,” FRIDAY says,  “I remind you that I’m afraid we have a policy against punching in the workplace.”

She ignores it. “I could totally take you, you think I can’t take you? I know where Tony keeps his suits, now.”

“You do?” Peter asks, curious.

“Yep.”

“Under his desk, probably,” Peter realizes. “And behind that wall, right?”

She lowers her fists. “Behind the walls?”

“I can show you.” Peter pulls his scanner closer. “Look.” He starts up the software, aims the scanner at the wall and runs a scan.

“FBI freak,” she mutters.

“SHIELD.”

“Never heard of it.” She slams her backpack down on his table and sits, squinting at his screen. “You mean that blue patch?”

“Yeah. It shows there’s an empty void behind the wall.”

She hums, tapping a finger against her chin. “D’you think we could just break in or would we need Tony’s fingerprints? You can use a bit of tape to get those of his coffee cup, I’ve seen it in the movies. We won’t even need to chop off any of his fingers when he’s sleeping.”

“Hello children,” Tony says. He’s standing just inside the doorway, barefoot. Something is glowing through his shirt. “Why does FRIDAY tell me you’re breaching another safety protocol?”

MJ slides of her seat, standing up straight. “What the fuck is THAT?” She points at the pattern of light glowing straight through Tony’s blue shirt.

“That’s the technology holding my heart together, no point keeping it hidden now, is there?”

MJ closes her eyes and lays a hand against her forehead. “I’m learning too much new info in one single week. I can’t even with you two dumbasses. Next thing you’re gonna tell me Peter is daredevil.”

“I’m not,” Peter quickly reassures her.

She opens her eyes and looks at him again. “You said you weren’t coming back.”

“Uh, yeah. But then I had like a nervous breakdown and Tony had me admitted to his penthouse. So I’m just staying here. For a bit.”

“Oh, so that wasn’t a front,” she says. “You’re actually like…” he waves her fingers in his general direction, “like this.”

“Pathetic?”

“No. Just like, hurting.”

Peter crosses his arms. “Since when are you so observant.” It somehow makes him feel simultaneously a bit embarrassed and a bit warmer, that she noticed.

“Oh, what, you thought you were hiding it?”

Peter looks to Tony for help, but Tony just looks amused. “Perhaps we could circle back to the conversation about you two chopping off my fingers?”

MJ flaps a hand at him “We weren’t going to. That was the whole point.”

“Oh,” Tony says. “Good.”

-

Peter spends the morning at MJs desk, working on her braille printer with her. He doesn’t have a project of his own anymore, anyways, and it’s an adequate way to get back in her good graces. She spends the whole morning huffing and glaring, but that’s just kinda how she shows she likes people, anyways.

“Kid, what do you want to do this week?” Tony asks after MJ has gone down to the 52nd to grab them lunch. They couldn’t all go together, with Tony walking around like a toddler’s glow-in-the-dark ceiling.

Peter looks at the circular pattern of lights. “Can I study that?”

Tony blinks, then reaches up to pat his fingers against his chest. “The arc reactor?”

“Like—maybe I can improve it.”

Tony stares at him a bit more, then smiles faintly. “If anyone can. Okay, kid. I’ll find you the blueprints.”

-

He grows used to the particular sounds of the 75th floor over the next week. The way the wind always howls or whistles around the edges of the windows up here, the pruttling of the espresso machine, the soft clanging in the pipes when the heat comes on, the sound of rain against the skylight in his bedroom. He no longer wakes up dreading the day. He finishes his book with animal stories and asks for another. Tony looks pleased at being asked. They go grocery shopping and Peter vacuums while Tony folds laundry. It’s like all the things that should be hard, are easier here, in this little pocket dimension away from the rest of the world.

Tony never makes him feel like he is in the way. He is mellow about everything, never rushes, and doesn’t ask questions unless Peter brings something up first. He just creates room for Peter, but waits for Peter to invite himself in.

He sits in the armchair, reading the news on his tablet and mutters “It’s the damn politicians spreading the most lies these days” in Italian.

“Più si è lontani dalla verità, più si è vicini al potere,” Peter says. The further you are from truth, the closer you are to power. He was lounging on the couch, but rolls over on his side to watch Tony’s reaction.

It’s fairly muted. “That’s new,” Tony remarks simply, studying him across the rim of his glasses.

“Wasn’t supposed to tell you.”

“You even sound Lombardy-specific.”

“SHIELD sent me there for about three, four months. Got pretty fluent. I saw you in Milan, actually, at a thing, around my seventeenth birthday.”

“It’s where I spent all my summers growing up. You were already being prepped to go undercover here before your seventeenth?”

“They never told me, but I think so. I think it was a— You know, as soon as I got a high score on my science GED, Maria came by and told me to study something to do with renewable energy. So I think they knew as far back as that, or at least were considering it as an option.”

“I’m flattered to have been a priority for that long,” Tony says flatly.

“Italy is where everything got fucked to bits,” Peter says, wrapping his arms around himself. “You know, I was doing fine until then. I cooked, I went running every morning, I had a system for my socks and everything.”

“Maybe you weren’t fine. Maybe you were just pushing yourself past your limits until you snapped.”

Peter frowns at the leg of the coffee table.

“I just mean, don’t take that as a baseline,” Tony says. “Find a balance. No one has their entire life together all the time. We have our life together in some areas, and it’s a mess in others.”

“You have your life together,” Peter points out quietly.

“Have you noticed I have hardly any friends and no family?”

Peter mulls that over for a moment. “I thought you just liked being alone.”

Tony looks at him quite pointedly. “Evidence suggests otherwise.”

That’s probably his way of saying he doesn’t mind Peter hanging around. Peter grins stupidly, feeling suddenly overwhelmed with a wave of gratitude. “Do you like movies?”

“Meh.” Tony makes a wibbly-wobbly gesture with his hand.

“I want to watch Matilda.”

They watch it after dinner. “See, that’s me,” Peter says after the opening scene with the baby. “And you’re gonna be Ms. Honey.”

“Okay,” Tony says. “I get it.”

-

Peter finds a note on the breakfast table, next to the eggcup. Out for IM errand. Back in a jiffy.

He peels the egg as he scrolls through social media with his pinky. Staten Island ferry collided with a buoy and got stranded, and Iron Man is at the scene to help with evacuations. The top comment says ironman = mayor strode we see u girlll. So it seems Tony’s identity has not yet turned into some public secret. Hopefully, there's so many theories flying around that no one will put much stuck in a few criminals swearing up and down they saw Tony Stark behind the faceplate.

He makes himself a cappuccino, eats a bagel, waters his spiderplant, and is hoovering some dead flies off the windowsill when Tony walks in again. Sweatpants and a shirt, like he just rolled out of bed. The only giveaway is the metal suitcase he sets on the kitchen counter.

Peter turns the hoover off and points dramatically at him. “I just realized. The Bob the Builder bedsheets. I should have known!”

-

“I deleted my old email address ages ago,” Peter says. He’s peeling a sweet potato with a normal table knife because that’s all Tony could find. But it’s good, he’s learning to do everything three times as slowly as he usually would. “Can you find my aunt for me?”

“I could,” Tony says. Peter feels a ‘but’ coming. Tony stays silent.

“But?” Peter says.

“Is … she … good for you?” Tony asks cautiously.

“We’ll have to see, I guess.”

Tony watches him for a while. “Fair enough,” he says.

“Maria told me it’s better, in our line of work, to keep a distance from family.”

“Oh, indeed?” Tony says, tone shifting. “Let’s definitely find her, in that case.”

-

He has a phone number for Peter within the hour.

-

It’s a dark and quiet café where they have bookcases against every wall, and deep red leather seats. Tony had offered to come with him and didn’t insist when Peter said no. He likes that. It’s a nice sort of balance between knowing someone has your back and still being treated like an adult.

Peter is very early — but so is May, because she is already there when he arrives. He recognizes her instantly, he didn’t think he would. When he tried to picture her in his mind, it always felt like he couldn’t fully bring her into focus. But then he sees her, chin leaning on her hand, looking so earnest, and it’s like suddenly remembering a dream you hadn’t thought about in years.

She spots him and her face opens up. She rises and holds out her hands.

He pulls off his gloves and steps readily into the embrace. Her arms close around him, squeezing tight.

“Oh, thank you, thank you,” she breathes, her hands patting all over his back. “Petey... I didn’t know if you were alive or dead.”

She sounds so full of relief that it makes Peter’s eyes prickle. “I deleted your email,” he blurts out.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she says, sounding sad, as if that was all Peter needed to say for her to understand precisely what his last two years have looked like.

She leans back, cupping his face. “You didn’t grow much more,” she says. “I like that. The hair is a little longer.” She brushes his fringe back. “You used to have dimples when you smiled,” she adds, and Peter realizes that he is smiling.

“Come, sit.” She tugs him along. “Let’s talk.” He shrugs out of his coat. They sit and she keeps her hand lightly resting on his arm, like she worries he might dissolve into nothing if she lets go.

She orders an iced coffee even though it’s freezing outside. Peter likes the quirkiness so he orders the same.

He knows he owes her an explanation. He has rehearsed the things he would and would not tell her. He wants to be honest, but explaining the whole Spider-Man-SHIELD mess feels like too much to dump on someone at a first reunion.

But she doesn’t ask about the email, his parents or the day he left. She looks at him attentively and asks: “What have you been up to today?”

“Today?”

“You can tell me the hard stuff when you’re ready,” she says.

So he goes backwards, talking first about his morning, the funny lady he saw on the subway on the way here. Then his little apartment, his internship, his courses at uni, getting his license, spending a summer in Milan. May seems content to just hear him talk.

He pauses when the waiter comes by to serve them their iced coffees, and then that pause stretches. The radio changes songs.

“I never planned to leave home,” Peter says, pushing ice cubes around with his straw. “Just happened.”

“Were you unhappy?”

He tugs the collar of his sweater a little higher, like he’s a turtle trying to hide. “Yeah.”

“Are you happy now?”

He isn’t sure when it happened, but his days are now more good than bad, which used to be the other way around. He takes a moment to be fully aware of it, and to feel grateful for the people who came into his life—are coming into his life. “I think so. Yes.”  An awful thought comes to him that makes him panic for a moment. “Um. My parents don’t know where I live. Are you still in touch with them? Please don’t tell them anything I said about my place.”

She shakes her head. “I haven’t talked to them in two years, and not about to start. Especially when…” she goes quiet, studying him.

“When?”

“They clearly make you feel unsafe.”

“Yeah,” Peter says, and adds, remembering how good it had felt last time to say it out loud: “They’re assholes.”

Her hand drops down to the table. “Oh my god, they are such assholes.”

He has to suppress a slightly hysterical giggle, hiding his mouth behind his sleeve.

She huffs a bit. “I always thought Ben’s stubbornness was as much to blame as Richard’s gruffness.”

“Probably not.” Peter has only fond memories of his interactions with Ben.

“I don’t think we had spoken at all since Ben’s funeral, and then they called me out of the blue to ask about you. Not even ask— they basically just said ‘if he’s with you we’ll get you thrown in jail’. Took me a while to figure out what the problem even was. When I tried to call them back later to see if they had found you, they blocked my number. The police only said you were not a missing person anymore, so I assumed you’d been placed with a—family.”

“I’m sorry I never emailed you back.”

“Don’t be sorry. I wasn’t a stable factor in your life, Peter. But I can be one, if you’ll have me.”

He thinks, for a fleeting moment, about how different his life might have turned out if he had answered her email two years ago. He remembers that moment, pictures himself sitting on top of the covers in that hotel room, mouse hovering over the ‘reply’ button. It almost feels close enough that he can hit rewind now and go back there, and everything else that happened would be a strange dream.

But there are so many other people he wouldn’t have met, who have made life weirdly manageable. “There’s, like, so much I should probably tell you. I don’t know where to even start.”

“It can come in bits and pieces,” she says. “Let’s start with having coffee again next week?”

“I’d like that.”

-

He brought the throw blanket along to the balcony to enjoy the crisp cold and the clear sun when his mother sends him another message, a time and a place for lunch tomorrow. It’s a restaurant just down the street from Stark Tower, as if she’s reminding him that she knows where he works—well, lives now. He doesn’t need to answer, he doesn’t—

He sends back a thumbs up.

-

Tony doesn’t question him when he says he has an appointment for lunch the next day, but Peter can tell from his expression that he has a suspicion.

-

It’s his mother’s own fault, really, for picking a place this close by. She should have anticipated they might run into someone. Then again, it most likely never fully occurred to her that Peter has an actual life of his own. As far as she is concerned, he doesn’t exist when he isn’t directly in front of her.

Either way, they’ve just gotten their drinks, negotiations haven’t started up yet, when June descends on their table out of nowhere, being her usually loud self; asking, at a volume as if she’s warning ships away from sand banks: “Who’s this, then, who’v’ya been hiding from me, this you mom? This your fun auntie?” She sticks a hand right in his mother’s face with so much enthusiasm that Mary flinches back a moment. She shakes June’s hand for all of half a second before quickly letting go and tucking her hands under the table.

“This is my mother,” Peter says. “Mom. This is June, a colleague.”

“That’s fun,” June says. There’s an edge to her voice, and Peter is acutely reminded that June knows he ran away from home and got emancipated at sixteen. “That’s so nice, because Peter literally never talks about you. Nice to see you exist. Very nice.”

“We were having lunch,” his mother says, a bit snootily. He can tell that it unnerves her, meeting someone who seems to like Peter.

June nods. “Makes sense, makes sense, what with you being at a restaurant around lunch time. What are you having?”

“Peter,” Mary says, “your friend is being rather rude, don’t you think? Can you…” she makes a flappy gesture, as if June is an insistent pigeon, “…take care of it?”

“You’re a right ol’ bitch, aren’t you?” June asks conversationally.

Mary looks like she has been slapped in the face.

“It’s okay, June,” Peter says, laughing a little, he can’t help himself.

“It’s not,” she insists, seizing his hand and already tugging him away. “Come have lunch with me, ditch that broad.”

“No—please. I have to deal with her. I got it.”

June bristles but releases him. “I’ll be over there,” she says, jerking her head. And then she actually does a thing where she points two fingers at her own eyes and then points them at Mary, I’m watching you. She marches off, head held high.

Peter bites his thumb to stifle his laugh. He glances across the table at his mother, who still looks perplexed. He takes a moment to gather his thoughts. His previous apprehension has melted away a bit.

Mary regains her composure. “What a boorish woman,” she sneers.

“Don’t insult my friends,” Peter says curtly.

She sniffs. “How about you don’t let your friends insult your mother?”

“You don’t get to claim that word, I don’t think. You’re not my mother, you’re just a stranger who wants my money.”

She stares at him, stunned.

“You know,” Peter says. “Like a telemarketer, or a pop-up ad.”

She grasps for a napkin and starts sniffling. “When did you get so awful?”

“I think it’s the way I was raised.”

“I just w-wanted to have a n-nice—”

“I don’t have to deal with you,” Peter realizes suddenly. “I don’t. I don’t have to.” He pushes his chair back.

“Where are you going?” she asks, voice suddenly a whole lot sharper.

“To have lunch with a friend.”

-

Tony is growing used to the particular sounds of having Peter around the house. His soft tread as he patters around the room to water the plants. Pages turning in whatever book he is engrossed in. The onions or chopped garlic sizzling in the pan in the evenings.

Peter stands at the stove, barefoot, hello kitty pants, making quesadillas. As Tony watches, the corners of Peter’s mouth quirk up, laughing at something in his own head. He is holding himself like he deserves to take up space and Tony feels something like pride swell in his chest.

There’s still things to discuss. But they will come up when they do.

-

“Tony,” Peter says. He’s balancing his laptop on one arm, sets his other hand on his hip and looks at Tony — sprawled out on the couch — with an unusual mixture of confusion and amusement.

“Yeah?” Tony says.

“Why did Maria just send me an email with a job offer from you?”

Interesting. “It was a social experiment. I guess she passed the test. Did she say anything?”

“That apparently I made an impression.”

“Hmm.”

“So it’s not, uh, anything real?”

“Real, like?”

Peter bites his bottom lip, clearly gathering his courage. “If my, my vacation is over and I decide to leave SHIELD, would I be able to…come back here?” he says the last words in almost a whisper.

Tony hadn’t wanted to bring up the topic until Peter did, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t thought about it. He sits up with a bit of a grunt. “Look, kid. I don’t really want to offer you a job,” he says. “It was an experiment. What I really want is to offer you a home.”

Peter’s eyes go very wide and very round.

“Have you been thinking about where you want to go from here?”

“I…” Peter’s throat bobs. He takes a few steps closer and carefully set his laptop down on the coffee table before clasping his hands together. “Just, like, options? I want to graduate, so I could try for a scholarship, or get a different job first until I’ve saved up enough money. Um. I have a lot of savings, so maybe if I study and work on the side I can make ends meet. I don’t really know what job I’d like to do. And I did realize I’d have to leave SHIELD’s apartment, but I haven’t thought too much about, uh…” he averts his eyes.

“It sounds like staying with SHIELD is not one of the options you are considering?” Tony asks, making sure to sound neutral and not steer the kid in one direction or another.

“Uh yeah. That job is killing me. But I don’t really know if I can just walk away. Contract-wise, I mean.”

“We’ll get you out of it.”

“I’m supposed to live on my own. I’m an adult.”

“MJ lives with her grandmother. I don’t believe you think less of her for it.”

“That’s different. It’s a financial thing.”

“It’s not different. It’s family, it’s support. I’ll pay for your college if you can’t make it work some other way, don’t even worry about that. I think it’s important for you to be around people. That can be on a student campus, but it can also be here. I can convert the office next door into another apartment. There’s already a toilet and a kitchenette, it won’t even take much. You’ll have your own space, but I’ll be nearby.”

Peter blinks a few times rapidly, wraps his arms around himself, and then whispers, “that’s too generous, sir.”

Tony stands and takes a step closer so he can put one hand on the back of Peter’s neck. He ducks his head to try and meet Peter’s wandering eyes and says, speaking as clearly as possible: “Peter. You are one of the brightest, most capable and most selfless people I’ve ever encountered. Please believe me when I assure you it would be a privilege to provide a home for you.”

Peter sways forward slightly as if he is about to tip into Tony’s chest, but then rocks back on his heels again. “Can you just—just give me a second,” he says. And he bolts.

-

Peter curls up on his bed, pressing his knees against his chest so tight that it hurts, thoughts rolling around his head, falling over each other. The offer Tony made somehow feels simultaneously like a huge relief and something utterly terrifying, just like everything else Tony has done for him, because how can one person possibly earn that much generosity?

But how can he refuse when he has never wanted anything more?

He rolls over and reaches for his phone. Not giving himself any time to change his mind, he quickly scrolls through his contacts and calls May. “Can I ask you for advice?”

“Can you?” She laughs. “Sounds like I’m moving up the wise trusted auntie ladder much faster than I had dared to hope.”

“I like that,” Peter murmurs. His wise trusted auntie. “Have you ever heard of Tony Stark?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“He owns Stark Industries, it’s where I’m interning.”

“Googling it now.”

“He’s actually been… You know, because I was going through a rough time a bit, he’s been helping me a lot, like, organizing my life, cooking me dinner.”

“Oh, I see he’s very rude on Twitter.”

Peter laughs a little. It comes out watery. “It’s a long story. He made me potato leek soup because I’m bad at eating.”

“I’ll give him points for that,” she allows.

He twists the blanket between his fingers. “I’ve actually been staying in his guest bedroom for the past two weeks.”

She hums, waiting for him to continue.

“Because at home I was like… I really hate being alone and I get really overwhelmed and, uh, it’s been so much better here.” His throat is closing up. “And now he offered to build me a whole-ass apartment next to his— Um, he lives at Stark tower and he’s a billionaire. That’s just for context because you have no context. But it’s like, so I could have my own little place but still have people around. He’d convert an office into an apartment. There’s already a kitchenette and a toilet so he said it’d be easy-peasy. I’m sorry, I’m rambling. I just really want to say yes.”

“But?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“Are you expecting a catch?”

“No. I think that’s the problem: I know there isn’t one. He’s just offering, just because. It feels super rude to say yes. I have literally nothing to offer in return. But the last two weeks have just been s-so much easier.” He sniffles softly and she stays quiet for a moment, before saying:

“Honey, I’ll be honest, it sounds like you really need this.”

“I d-do.” He wipes his face with the tip of his blanket.

“So don’t allow your pride to isolate you. Generosity doesn’t always need to be balanced on the spot, hon. You might be the one visiting him in his care home when he is eighty.” She chuckles softly. “Life tends to even things out over time. You know what Ben always used to say? Lean on others, so that others may lean on you.” Her voice softens further. “Don’t rob people of the joy of helping you, Peter, let them give.”

Peter feels a very strong desire to burst into very ugly tears. “O-okay,” he manages, wobbly.

“And you had better invite me to the housewarming.”

-

Tony is still sitting in the same spot on the couch. Peter crosses the room like an elastic band is pulling him in, stumbles onto the couch into Tony’s arms, bunches Tony’s sweater in his hands and holds on tight. He has something to cling to and they’re going to have to pry him off with a crowbar. Tony just pulls him in closer, arms wrapping around him.

Tony just holds him, doesn’t give those awkward back-pats. “I’ve got you, kiddo,” he says, very steadily, and Peter suddenly feels grounded enough to stay standing in a hurricane.

He isn’t a guest, he isn’t a problem, he doesn’t have to be someone useful.

And he isn’t letting go first.

“I want to stay here,” he says. “I want to go to college and have a lousy meaningless side-job as like a washer-upper, and talk to people, I want everything to be normal.”

“Okay,” Tony says. “Guess what, Pete. That’s all really, really easy to arrange.”

-

He sits on the balcony and calls Maria. “Can we, uh, meet?”

“For any particular reason?”

“I need like some kind of evaluation. I’ve been… having some problems.”

“I see,” she says. “We should, then.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. Tomorrow morning, 9.15 AM, at the hotel.”

“Okay,” Peter says. “I’m bringing Tony.”

“Tony Stark?” She sounds surprised enough that maybe SHIELD hasn’t been monitoring his equipment 24/7.

“Can I?” Peter asks, feeling his resolve dwindling a bit already.

A beat of silence at the other end. “I don’t see why not,” Maria then says. “But a different venue, then. I’ll have Deborah send you an address.”

Chapter Text

Tony dresses for the part. Gets out his most expensive suit, a dark pair of sunglasses, shoes with the soles that sneakily give him an extra inch. Today, he is Peter’s attorney, his spokesperson, his squeaky wheel.

They meet in the backroom of a restaurant. He is prepared for anything Maria Hill might throw at him — with the exception, perhaps, of Pepper Potts turning up for the meeting in her wake. It’s the first time he has seen her since D-day. She’s wearing faded jeans and a simple black sweater, hair shoved into a messy ponytail. She has four styrofoam cups of coffee in a tray. “Mr. Stark,” she says, looking covertly amused.

He nods. “Ms. Whatever-your-name-actually-is.”

They sit at an old plank table with deep grooves. Maria opens her briefcase. Pepper hands out the coffee. Peter looks pale but reasonably composed. He avoids eye contact with Maria. “Uh, how are you?” he asks Pepper.

“Fine.”

“How is Natasha?”

“Flying back from Chile as we speak.”

“Ginny,” Maria says, looking annoyed.

“Right,” Pepper says airily. “Moving from one undisclosed location to another undisclosed location in an undisclosed mode of transportation as we speak.” She smiles beatifically at Maria’s impatient glare and sips her coffee.

Maria turns her gaze on Peter. And waits. And keeps waiting.

Peter clears his throat. Starts a sentence. Abandons it halfway. Tries again. Tony expects Maria is gonna let the kid flounder miserably until he finally spits it out, with the patient detachment of someone watching a bug struggle on its back.

He is about to smoothly step in when Maria finally gives a helpful prompt. “How has your vacation been so far?”

“Oh. Good,” Peter says, breathing out. And adds, testing the waters: “I’ve been staying at the tower.”

“Hm,” she says. She looks at Tony, back at Peter.

“I go a bit stir crazy at home.”

“Hm,” she says again. “Would you care to elucidate?”

Pepper openly rolls her eyes.

“Stressed out, I guess,” Peter says. “Or depressed. Or a bit of both, rolled into a winner combo. I’m—sorry.”

“Is it because I proposed to change your handler? Because you wouldn’t be the first agent to have trouble adjusting. Not to mention the pressure of a first mission. There is no shame in it.”

Peter shakes his head. “Things went wrong way before that. I just made sure you wouldn’t notice. Even before the inter—the mission. Training with Nat, most days I’d go home after and just laid on the couch and I couldn’t—I just couldn’t get myself to— I didn’t go out. I didn’t open my mail. I barely ate. I just drank coffee and red bull to at least keep me going because I don’t want to f-fuck it up.”

Maria’s face has slid into a frown. “You require counseling.”

“Probably,” Peter says. “Not from, uh, you guys though, I don’t think.”

“We have some actual good shrinks, you know,” Pepper says. “They’re not all like Dr. Raynor. Some seem almost human.”

“Sure,” Peter says. He looks down, tracing the grooves in the table with his fingertips. Tony lays an arm across the back of his chair.

“You want to leave SHIELD,” Maria quietly surmises.

Peter actually winces. “I mean. Can I?”

Maria looks affronted, now. “We’re not a cult.”

“Cults are more fun,” Pepper says.

“You’ve invested a lot of money in me,” Peter says. “Like. A lot of money.”

Maria gives a mild shrug, as if that’s the least of her concerns.

“I don’t think I’m really cut out for this kind of work. I’m sorry.”

“Do not apologize,” Maria says, and then lapses into silence again as she scrutinizes him.

Peter shifts in his seat, clearly unsure whether to keep talking or wait.

 “Considering what you just told me,” she says, “I’m concerned if you abruptly pull away from all your obligations, it will leave you with nothing to hold on to. If we were to transition you to a less demanding role—”

Peter shakes his head. “It doesn’t fit. I’m sorry.” Tony feels a stab of pride of the kid for standing his ground. That was never Peter’s strong suit — and opposite a person as fierce as Maria Hill…

Though her face does look a bit softer, at the moment. “Do you know what does feel like a good fit for you right now?”

“I’ll find something else,” Peter says. “And, uh. Tony will help me. That’s—That’s a good fit for right now.”

Maria looks at Tony again, something flashes over her face, too fast to decipher. “All right,” she says neutrally. Pepper’s look is easier to read; full-blown skepticism.

Tony slides his sunglasses down to the tip of his nose and surveys them both. “I won’t break him, you know.” In fact, it was SHIELD who broke the kid in the first place, or at least it was under their watch that the kid started cracking. And if Peter does fall to pieces while at the tower, it will simply be because he knows he finally has someone there who will put him back together. Tony isn’t a Rhodey or a Ms. Honey. But any affection and care ever shown for Peter has been conditional and Tony knows at least enough to sidestep that pitfall.

He doesn’t argue his point though. He simply slides the glasses back up his nose and says: “Your concern has been noted.”

Peter nervously clears his throat. “I really do want to, uh…” He looks Maria in the eye. “I’m very thankful for the opportunity you gave me. Everything you’ve done for me. You believed in me before I really believed in myself, and you wanted me when no one else did. I know Tony thinks it’s kinda bullshit and I think even Pepper, uh Ginny thinks it’s kinda bullshit, but it wasn’t bullshit to me.”

Tony exchanges a look with Pepper. She gives a little shrug and he smiles.

“It seems you have thought this over thoroughly,” Maria says.

“I have. Yes ma’am.”

“I will have Deborah send you the paperwork today.” And she adds rather pointedly: “Don’t be afraid to ask questions.”

Peter bites his lip. “Thank you. Um. Can I… Can Natasha…? Can I say goodbye?”

“If you’re amenable, I could send Natasha by at some point next week to pick up the SHIELD-issued laptop and phones.”

Peter relaxes. “Thank you.”

Maria gives a nod. “There is something else I would like to discuss with you. Regarding your parents. We can speak in private if you prefer.”

“Uh, nope. Not in private,” Peter says, glancing up at Tony as if to ask permission.

Tony nods.

“All right.” She folds her hand on top of the table and leans in. “I have recently been alerted to the fact that you make irregular appointments with your parents on your SHIELD-issued phone and always withdraw large amounts of cash on the same day. My assumption is you give the money to them.”

Tony had his suspicions about the secret meetings, but the tidbit about the money is infuriating. He clenches his jaw and holds back a curse.

Pepper doesn’t. “Fucking hell,” she mutters.

Peter squares his shoulders. “I was just trying to keep them from messing up the mission.”

“I am not berating you. I’m simply informing you. Have your parents told you why they want money, in cash no less?”

Deflating a bit, Peter shakes his head.

“They were convicted of tax fraud last year. Their bank accounts were frozen by court order, and they’ve been placed on a strict financial leash. They currently receive a carve-out for basic living expenses. The rest of both their salaries are seized to pay fines and back taxes. They get enough money to cover essentials, though, so they are fine. They use the money you give them simply to permit themselves certain luxuries.”

“Right,” Peter murmurs, tugging at his own sleeves. “Well. It’s not like I ever thought they were starving or anything, so that’s…” He shrugs, stilted.

Maria looks at Tony. Tony gives her a curt nod to convey he’ll keep an eye out, now that he knows. But in the end, all he can do is provide solid advice. Peter is an adult.

They deal with a few more minor formalities, surprisingly easy, Tony still feels like there might be a catch once the paperwork comes in. But when they stand up to leave, Maria shakes Peter’s hand, one hand on his shoulder, and says, very calmly: “Rest assured, Mr. Parker, that my regard for you has not changed after today. You have delivered excellent work and I believe you have a bright future ahead, either way. Our door is always open for you.”

“Uh, okay,” Peter says, flustered. He gives her a bit of a scrutinizing look. “You know. There was a time I thought you really cared. And then there was a while I thought you didn’t, at all.”

“I wasn’t supposed to,” she says. “It wasn’t… in the job description.” She turns away and picks her briefcase up off the table. And leaves the room.

“Well, shit, that was cute as hell,” Pepper says. She steps up to Peter and lays both hands on his shoulders, jostling him slightly. “Remember what I told you. Trashy novels, bubble baths, cheap horror movies.” She yanks him closer and drops a kiss on top of his head, before turning on her heel and leaving, too.

Peter looks entirely speechless.

-

Tony gets the permits in order, and a team of construction workers come in early the next morning to install plumbing in the office next door, make sure it’ll all pass as code, and rework the lighting plan.

He sends Peter down to get them all lunch that day, and then sits at MJ’s workbench, looking her in the eye. “Peter is moving in.”

“So I heard.”

“The same offer stands for you, should you need it.”

Her pencil pokes straight through the sketching paper and she mutters a curse. “I mean. Uh. What?” she says.

“Should you need it,” Tony repeats.

“I live with my grandma.”

“She is welcome, too.”

“That’d be a freaking disaster,” she says, “moving to a whole new house, at her age, too. She’s lived in that house for fifty years, she can find her way around better than me and I can see.”

“I understand. I just want you to know the offer is on the table.”

She leans her chin on her hand, staring up at him in frank curiosity. “You know, Tony, you used to be an asshole. What happened to you?”

“Well,” Tony says, “I got these two terribly annoying kids into my workshop, and I made the horrible mistake of starting to care about whether they live or die.”

“Oh, such a sap,” she says fondly.

“New offer. Your internship officially ends soon. I would be happy to get you a junior position, with better pay.”

She frowns slightly. “That’s— Um. I want to go back and finish my studies.”

“You can work at whatever hours suit you.”

She tugs at a strand of her own hair in a way that is beginning to be familiar to him. She studies him closely and he consciously makes his posture as relaxed as possible.

“What department?” she asks.

“Just here in the workshop. Unless you have different ambitions.”

“Do I get to keep my infinty food badge?” she asks.

“Good name. And definitely.”

“Okay,” she murmurs. “I’m still not getting you coffee.”

“I’ll be getting you coffee, ma’am.”

“This is weird,” she says. “I don’t normally just get good things offered. That’s not how it works.”

“Would it make you feel any better if we pretend that you blackmailed me into it?”

“I’m not good at blackmail. Let’s pretend I threatened to punch your face in.”

Peter returns and they gather around the workbench where he unpacks steaming cartons of noodles, spring rolls, napkins and chopsticks.

“Barely enough vegetables,” Tony comments. “But I’ll let it slide.”

MJ pushes at the corners of a container to pop it open. “Since when do you care?”

“He thinks I have an eating disorder,” Peter says.

MJ throws her hair back, scoffs. “Man, get out of here. Only women get eating disorders.”

“That is entirely incorrect,” Tony says, outraged.

MJ pats the back of her hand against Peter’s stomach, not gently either, making him wince. “Peter just wants a six pack. That means you need to eat lots of broccoli, you know.”

“I—okay,” Peter says.

MJ lifts her serving and uses the chopsticks to push her suatéed veggies into Peter’s bowl.

-

Peter gets the email that evening. Deborah confirming the paperwork, apparently something called severance pay exists, two months of salary for every year of service, which totals up to a frankly staggering amount of money. And he has the apartment for another four months.

Peter weighs his options and then texts Maria again. Moving in with Tony, you can cancel the lease for the apartment right away, I’ll clear it out this weekend.

She replies swiftly. Hang onto it just in case. You may think of something you need.

“Everything okay?” Tony asks. Peter asked him a question when he started reading through all the terms, about some NDA clause he spotted, and Tony has been eyeing him sharply ever since.

“Yes. Just reminds me of how much effort she made for me that first weekend after we met. But back then I was coming into SHIELD. Now I’m leaving. It’s not like there’s anything in it for her to go out of her way to give me all this stuff.”

“I don’t care how much ‘stuff’ she gives you.”

“I know you don’t,” Peter says curtly.

“Recruiting you that way was unethical.”

“Probably.”

“But you still defend her.”

“I don’t defend her. I just don’t think people are always perfect.”

“I—” Tony starts, but cuts himself off. “Yeah, sorry,” he then says. “It’s not up to me to tell you how to feel.”

-

He takes the subway to Queens and patrols the neighborhood for a few hours. The temperature is up a bit, crawling towards something resembling spring, and the streets are busier than they’ve been in a while. People look happy — that’s a thing. When you feel good, it seems like the whole world feels good.

He doesn’t have time to head to Bushwick, but maybe he’ll just ask Tony to fly by sometime this week. That’s nice too, actually. Feeling like he doesn’t have to solve every crime by himself. He has back-up now.

A purse snatching, a crying toddler, a few loose roof tiles, and one lost dog later, he heads back to the park, changes into his clothes behind the rosebushes.

It has been a while since he felt this much like a real, actual superhero, like someone people can lean on, someone who can take on the whole world.

And so — holding on to that feeling — he takes out his phone and sends both his parents a polite but clear message that they won’t be seeing each other anymore, swallows only once before hitting send. Anxiety claws up his throat, but then he goes to his contacts and blocks their numbers entirely, and it just melts away. Like escaping a gravitational pull.

He puts his phone in his back pocket and heads to his old apartment.

Turns out May lives only a fifteen minutes’ walk from here. “We could have run into each other in the street,” she says, shaking her head as she looks out his windows at the front lawn. She’s helping him clear out the apartment. His clothes, books and piles of notes. He’s going to leave everything else for SHIELD to collect, or give to whoever is getting this apartment next.

“I probably would have run the other way,” Peter says, honestly. He wasn’t in the right frame of mind to deal with that. “Listen. I’m leaving most this stuff for my, uh, previous employer. But Maria did say I could keep anything I want, so if you spot something you’d like to have…”

“Hmmm,” she smiles. “I might steal that coffee maker. Mine broke last week.”

“Please do. Like, seriously, that would make me happy.”

He also ends up taking the little round rug by his bed, because it matches the bed sheets he was already bringing anyway. Maria rolled like that. She could be an interior decorator. He wonders what it would be like to know her under different circumstances.

He tucks the SHIELD laptop and both of the phones into a box with underwear and socks. Natasha should come by some time soon to collect those—He’s nervous about seeing her.

“Environmental engineering is what you did, right?” May asks. She is sitting cross-legged on the floor, sorting his sketches into neat piles, going slow, studying them all as if they are pictures of Peter’s childhood.

“Yeah. I mean, I actually dropped out for a little bit. But I’m going to pick it up again after summer.” That gives him four whole months to get his apartment sorted, figure out his new courseload and— do a lot of nothing. Coffee with May, board games at Ned’s place, lunch with June.

May just nods. He can kinda sense that she is afraid pushing him will make him shut down. He doesn’t mind talking to her about personal stuff, he just doesn’t know how to do it without overwhelming her. All of the craziest aspects of his life are twisted so firmly together that you can’t really just mention one without everything else piling on top.

“There was a lady who lived across the hall,” he says. “We used to have coffee on her balcony. She liked birds. She had been on all these amazing journeys, she had a million stories to tell. And I didn’t really talk to a lot of people back then.”

She is listening, Peter’s sketches curling over her legs.

“She passed away a little while ago. That sucked. And her family didn’t know I existed, so I didn’t get invited to the funeral or anything. MJ told me to visit her grave, but I don’t even know where she is buried.”

“You can look that up,” she says.

He blinks at her.

“Yes, there’s databases.” She lays the sketches aside and takes out her phone, scooting closer to him.

Peter can’t believe the possibility didn’t even occur to him. With April’s last name, May locates her gravesite on the second website she tries.

“Do you want to go?” she asks.

-

Rain gently drizzles down when they follow the path up a gentle slope until they reach the right row. They step off the path and walk along the uneven line of headstones. Peter’s throat catches when he spots her name. It always felt so unreal, that she was suddenly gone.

The stone is smaller than he thought it would be. It has gentle, round shapes and is surrounded by lavender and small, stone statues of birds. He recognizes some that used to be in her window sill back home.

“That’s nice,” he says. “She would have liked that.”

May steps closer and slips her hand into Peter’s.

He shuffles his feet, heart knocking unevenly in his chest. “I don’t really know if I’m supposed to, like, say something.”

“Hi April. Thank you for keeping my nephew company while I couldn’t,” May says warmly, and squeezes Peter’s hand.

Peter’s eyes sting and he nods. “Yeah. Thank you for the coffee and the stories, April.”

“Do you want to sit?” May asks, and points at a wooden bench under a tree, shielded from the rain.

They sit, and Peter tells her April’s tales about chasing rhinoceros hornbills through the jungle of Borneo, rising with the cicadas, tagging nests and feeling like you won the jackpot when you found droppings.

When the rain starts dripping down from the lowest tree branches. Peter pulls up the hood of his coat. “Um. One last thing, if you want,” he says. “I really need a new backpack. One without pockets.”

-

It’s funny how something as simple as grocery shopping has now become one of Peter’s favorite activities. Practically a hobby. Ambling around the store, Tony steering him, browsing all one hundred types of tea. This weekend, though, with temperatures still steadily climbing up, it’s sunny and the sky is clear, so Tony takes him to the farmer’s market by the dock: Wooden stalls spilling over with fresh produce, guitar music, vendors calling out, elderly couples babbling, children running past shrieking and laughing, ducks bobbing on the rippling water. They get herbs and veggies and bread and cheese and then stop to get some falafel, eating it piping hot out of a paper cup, blowing on their fingers.

Peter thinks this might be the happiest he has ever been.

-

“Oh damn, weeeeird,” Pepper says looking around her old office, hands on her hips, as if she hasn’t stepped foot in here in months. Tony will admit it is weird to have her back here. But he pushes his sunglasses higher on his nose, tugs at his cufflinks and says nothing.

It’s a little after 5 PM, so most employees have left the building. He collected Maria and Pepper from the lobby for more tantalizing discussions about RenewGen. Maria had to take a visitor’s badge, but so did Pepper, which majorly confused Holly from reception.

They take the pod chairs again. Maria hands him a thick file, first. “That’s everything Ginny found on your bookkeeping during her time here. Numbers that weren’t adding up. We have already traced down two off-shore accounts. With the bust of the distribution hub at the Newark docks and the primary drop point at Rotterdam harbor, I believe we have now taken all illegal Stark technology out of the market.”

“Give that to Conny,” Pepper says. “She knows her shit, she’s your best accountant.”

“Thank you,” Tony says. For this, he will trust SHIELD not to have fucked it up. He quickly flips through the file and closes it again. No more weapons being used in his name.

“SHIELD would like to offer you a position as special consultant,” Maria says.

Tony looks up at her, even though he already knows he won’t be able to read that stoic face of hers. “I can’t believe you’d consider me so very capable,” he says wryly, “considering what happened in my own basement for years, and that I picked the worst possible CEO.”

“We all have our blind spots.”

Tony nods slowly. “I guess you took care of mine, I’m taking care of yours.” He left Peter upstairs with popcorn and a movie. The kid hadn’t seemed anxious this time about spending the afternoon alone. Progress.

“I failed him,” she acknowledges. “Thank you for seeing what I didn’t see. I got his psych eval on my desk, and even that…” She shakes her head.

“He bullshitted his way through that, huh?”

“Dr. Raynor had concerns, but no red flags. She recommended giving him a vacation.”

“How useful is SHIELD going to be if it turns out we need to step up our game to get his so-called parents off his back?”

She purses her lips. “I have no specific intel on his father. But his mother’s assault on your employees at Stark Industries is reason enough to get a restraining order filed, if he wants one.”

“I’ll ask my legal team to look into it.”

She shakes her head and scribbles something in the margins of her papers. “Just ask him for a decision and then let me take care of it, I can have it sorted in a few hours.”

“All right,” Tony says. He won’t be saying thanks — That’s going too far. “I’ll think about the job,” he says instead.

They return their focus to Pepper’s findings after that. She walks Tony through some of the most important steps to be taken. “The expense tracking. The vendor logs. The weird duplicate invoices with just enough spacing errors to make them technically separate files. None of this crap makes sense, Tony, if you put this in a library it would have to go in the fantasy section. I flagged everything I couldn’t fix. Look— I really suggest you double your legal team and accountants’ team, because it will be a bitch to get this all sorted with IRS at the end of the year.”

“Noted,” Tony says, trying not to get distracted by how violently his memories of Pepper are clashing with the woman sitting before him right now.

“Also, just off the record, please talk to your PR department about their ‘motivational quote of the day’ emails. I swear to god, that shit damn near drove me over the cliff edge.”

“Ginny,” Maria says with mild reproach.

“I always thought those came from you,” Tony says.

She looks outraged.

-

He spends a few minutes silently reading through the file after the two of them have left. And then comes to a decision.

He takes the elevator down. “FRIDAY, which way did they leave?”

“Ms. Hill went to the parking levels. Ms. Potts left through the lobby.”

He rushes through the lobby and out their front doors. He catches up with her at the pedestrian crossing. The light is red. “Hey,” he says.

She smirks in his direction. “I don’t talk to strangers.”

“Very wise.” He takes off his sunglasses and slips them into his breast pocket. “You still want to be Stark CEO?”

That one takes her by surprise. She gives him a sharp look, then hums. “I can’t think of a single job I would a, want less, and b, be worse at than that one.”

“Can’t do much worse than the previous person in the position.”

“The bar is on the floor,” she agrees.

“So?”

“No.”

Tony sniffs. “Fine. You want to be my head of security?”

She breaks into a low, friendly laugh. “You mean, do the job I’m already doing, but boring?”

“Fewer risks, better hours. And a boss who doesn’t use words like ‘elucidate’ and ‘amenable’.”

“I know it doesn’t often seem like it,” she says, “but I’m happy with my job. And with my boss. She accepts me at my worst, and I can tell you that’s pretty rare.”

“So, I’m guessing…”

“It’s a no, again.”

“Fine.” The light turns green. “Wait. Hang on. Final offer.”

She cocks her head.

“Go on a date with me. Um. Italian place. I’ll get snooty about the way they serve their bread and bore you to death with stories about Milan.”

“Talk about tempting.”

“We can go right now if you want. Are you hungry, or—”

“Starving,” she says.

Chapter Text

Peter throws the popcorn container out, wipes down the kitchen counter and rinses the dishrag in the sink. It’s strange how much easier it is to clean someone else’s house than your own.

Tony sent him a message to let him know he’s going out for dinner with someone. He didn’t say who, but he was supposed to meet Maria and Pepper this afternoon so… yeah. He didn’t follow it up with anything motherhenny either, like ‘you better not skip a meal, I’ll be checking with FRIDAY’. But somehow, that bit of trust makes Peter all the more determined to have a proper dinner. He is just gonna steam some broccoli and boil some pasta, grate a bit of cheese. That’ll be good enough.

He sends a picture to MJ as he’s cooking, with a thumbs up and adding: six pack coming in.

You got about as many muscles as that piece of broccoli, she sends back, and Peter snorts.

He got a new phone; he’s supposed to meet with Natasha tomorrow to hand in his SHIELD-issued equipment. He’s nervous about it. It might just be his final time seeing her which is really messing with his head a little. He’s going to miss her. He wonders if she’ll think badly of him for quitting on SHIELD, considering how wholeheartedly loyal she is to the agency. He bought a whole pile of coconut-flavored snacks he’ll bring along. That’ll hopefully soften the blow.

The drilling starts again and he winces. It’s just as well that Tony isn’t here this evening: they barely would have been able to have a conversation. Not that he is complaining: that’s his future apartment next door, where construction workers are currently installing a kitchen. Peter picked out all the colors, materials and finishes from the pile of flyers, samples and paint swatches Tony provided. All the way down to the knobs on the drawers. Tony came in yesterday with a flat box full of samples. “Haven’t seen this many knobs together since my last board meeting,” he had joked.

Peter has gone through a few phases of being horribly embarrassed by all the hassle he is causing for Tony, and finally decided to just enjoy the feeling of someone wanting to do things for him without expecting anything in return.

-

Tony returns home when Peter was about to go to bed. He seems to be in an awfully good mood, standing in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips and grinning like a maniac.

“You look happy,” Peter says. “What cheered you up, did you insult someone’s dead dog online?”

“Would I ever?” Tony says, and then, off Peter’s look: “Oh, did I?”

“Don’t get me started.”

“Go easy on me, kid,” Tony says. “I’m a recovering asshole.”

“Where’ve you been?”

“Out.”

“Oh. Out. I have no further questions.”

“Good, because I have no further answers.”

“I’m going to bed,” Peter says. “You doofus.”

-

The next morning, he packs the bounty bars and coconut macaroons and coconut brittle and coconut ladoos and coconut biscotti into a brown paper bag.

“Nervous, huh?” Tony asks, slurping his coffee.

“How can you tell.” He wanted to put these people-pleasing-instincts behind him, but it’s hard when the stakes are this high.

Tony puts the cup down and looks at him, quite seriously. “Listen. I’m in Atlantic City all day. But if it goes horribly and you want to talk, you can call me, all right?”

“Yes dad,” Peter says and then flushes, for a horrible moment fearing he overstepped.

Tony just smirks at him, says: “better than ‘sir’.”

-

Tony leaves fifteen minutes before him, and Peter spends that time pacing around the kitchen, staring at a clock that seems to be standing still. He’s meeting Natasha in a small park only two blocks away. He’s still very, very early but he may as well go downstairs.

He grabs the brown paper bag, and his new backpack with the laptop and phones. He takes the elevator down and crosses the lobby, steps out the doors and down the broad steps until he reaches the sidewalk. He’s still debating if it’s better to turn right or left when he hears a “Hey.”

That’s his father. Christ.

He turns but doesn’t immediately spot the man, until he sees an arm waving from the driver’s side of a parked car, facing away from him.

Annoyed, Peter hoists the bag up higher and takes three steps to close the distance towards the passenger side. The window is already rolled down. He ducks his head and snaps: “What?”

“Uh, well, calm down, first of all,” Richard says. “You weren’t answering your phone.”

“I blocked your number.”

It’s almost funny how bewildered his father looks. “Why?”

“I’ll give you three guesses.”

“Will you get in?”

“I have an appointment at Silverwood Park in twenty minutes.”

“That’s ages. I’ll drop you off.”

“I’m not giving you money.”

“I don’t want money. I want to talk to you.”

“Are you gonna throw something at me?”

Richard looks contrite. “No?”

He doesn’t owe this guy anything. He doesn’t need to—

Peter gets in. It’s that black hole, sucking him in.

He drops both his bags down between his feet. “Sil – ver – wood – park,” his father says as he types it into his GPS. He rolls up the windows. He looks over his shoulder and merges into traffic. “You know, I still don’t have your address.”

“I’m not giving it to you.”

“How am I supposed to reach you?”

“Dad,” Peter says. The word feels wrong in his mouth. “I left home at sixteen. I got emancipated. I dumped my phone and changed my email address. What else would I need to do for you to take the hint?”

“I don’t follow.”

His father isn’t actually this stupid, Peter realizes suddenly. It’s just another manipulation tactic. He should have realized sooner — what else did his parents do all their lives but find expert ways to push people’s buttons? They don’t know how to be anything else. They probably don’t even do it consciously, they’re in so deep. It’s sad, in a way. Peter can’t imagine either of his parents being happy.

“I don’t follow,” Richard repeats.

“Hm-hm,” Peter says, deciding not to engage anymore. The trick is to just make yourself useless.

“How am I supposed to reach you?”

“Left at the next junction,” Peter says, pointing.

Richard is quiet as he sorts into the left-hand lane. He seems to be recalculating the trajectory of the conversation. The silence is tense, but Peter does what he can to seem entirely relaxed — Natasha taught him how.

The light jumps to green and without warning, Richard guns the engine, whips the car into a highly illegal U-turn with shrieking tires and shoots down Canal Street.

“Fucking hell, Richard!” Peter yells furiously.

Richard tears down the road, weaving through traffic, the Holland Tunnel entrance looms ahead. Down the entrance ramp they go, and Richard slows the car to a more reasonable speed. He is grinning madly, which somehow makes it worse. “Just a bit of fun,” he says. He slams the button for the radio and turns the volume high until Peter can feel the bass in his bones. Richard just shimmies his shoulders along to the music and blares his horn at no one in particular.

The tunnel begins to rise subtly, upward toward the daylight of New Jersey. It spits them out, and Richard immediately merges onto the I-78. He sighs, then, seeming relieved. And turns the radio down.

“Talk to me kid,” he says. “We got all the time in the world, now.”

“I have a meeting in fifteen minutes.”

“We’re family. We’re going to talk this out even if I have to drive until we run out of asphalt.”

Sweet sentiment. Peter mainly hears the threat underneath it. They’re on the wide-open highway, and the I-78 alone stretches out for over a hundred miles, westward.

He debates throwing the car door open and hurling himself out. He might break all his ribs again, but whatever, he’ll sleep it off.

Does he need to? There is a hollow feeling of panic in his stomach but it annoys him — this whole thing is pointless. What’s Richard gonna do, drive until he’s out of gas? Let him. Wherever they end up, Peter will call someone and find his way back from there. There’s nothing Richard can actually do to him.

All he needs is for his father to stay calm enough not to drive them both into a damn guardrail. “Talk about what,” he says, steadily.

“What have you been up to.”

Peter crosses his arms and assumes his most relaxed posture again. “I did an internship.”

“So I read. Special internship, for young adults who need to turn their lives around. What’d you fuck up in the two years since you left home?”

“Spent most of it in jail,” Peter says. He can tell that throws Richard.

“What’d you do?”

Peter almost says Tax Fraud, but that wouldn’t really be helpful in the whole don’t-drive-into-the-guardrail-plan, probably.

“I said,” Richard starts.

“I heard you.” Peter runs a hand through his hair. “Just stole some shit.”

Richard doesn’t say anything for a while.

“So, you want money?” Peter prompts. At this point, he just wants to say whatever he needs to say to get this man to pull over.

“Wondering now, are you, huh? Not such a tough kid when you’re not talking to me from behind a little screen, huh?”

“You’re kidnapping me,” Peter points out.

Richard sniffs. “Since when do you have money to give out anyway? Not like you ever contributed when you lived with us. You barely had two dollars to rub together.”

“I was a kid,” Peter says, bewildered.

“Wasted our money on you for years, and much against our will, I might add. And you were a creepy kid, you were, stalking around the house like a ghost.”

“Trying to stay out of the way.”

“How much money do you have, anyways?”

Peter settles for a non-answer. “I’d have to look over my finances.”

Richard bristles. “You can look over your finances all you want, but at the end of the day, you’d better get things in order. And I’m tired of chasing after you, too. We need to come to an understanding about this. You know. Work out some sort of deal, decent and fair. I raised you. You wouldn’t even be sitting here if it weren’t for me. I’ll remember this the next time you come asking for help. Hah, don’t expect me to lift a finger. Sometimes I wonder why I even bothered. Should have kept the placenta and thrown you out!”

“Yes, sir,” Peter says, on autopilot. Jumping out of the car and risking a broken neck is sounding like more and more of a tempting option.

He lowers his head to check the traffic behind them in the side mirror—

—and recognizes the dented, mossy green car tailing them in the same lane.

His breath shakes as it rushes out of him. For Natasha to be here already, she must have been staking out, observing him from the moment he left Stark tower. For once in his life, he’s thankful for her near-paranoid vigilance.

He’ll still need to get this dumbass to pull over, though. “What deal are you thinking?”

Richard starts tapping at his GPS. “I’m gonna drive until we hit the Great Swamp. You’re gonna withdraw me my money, and if there’s no funny business I might let you back in the car and drive you home.”

“Is there gonna be an ATM in the swamp?” Peter asks, snootily.

Richard inhales deeply, clearly about to launch into an explosive tirade.

“Sorry,” Peter says quickly, reeling himself back in. “I just meant. If you get off the highway right here and drive to the nearest ATM, I’m happy to do it.”

“Bet you would! So you can run off back home soon as I’m standing still, huh? You think I’m a fucking idiot, boy? And you’re gonna compensate me for the gasoline I’m wasting with all this, as well.”

Natasha told him once about the ‘bullet fee’, common under certain dictatorships. When people got executed by the government, their families would get a bill to compensate for the cost of the bullet used to kill their loved one. That’s more or less how this feels.

“I had an appointment,” Peter says. “Can I call them and cancel?”

Richard grumbles. “If you say anything funny, I’ll be using that phone to bash your head in.”

He has about a hundred flashbacks to the times he overheard his parents yelling similar threats at each other. Suddenly, he is thankful that he was so useless as a kid, or this rage would have been directed at him much sooner in his life, probably. “Yessir,” he says, flatly, and gets his SHIELD phone out.

He dials Natasha’s number.

She answers, clipped. “Yes?”

His voice emerges calm and level. “Hey. I can’t make it to our appointment.”

“Uhuh,” she says, voice smoothening out. “Are you on speaker?”

“No.”

“If he’s armed, tell me to reschedule for Saturday.”

“Oh, no. We don’t need to reschedule. Um. I don’t think so, at least.”

“How many hours does he have left in the tank?”

“Three, tops. We’re, uh… It’s an unplanned trip to the Great Swamp, so I can’t make it.”

“I hate swamps,” she says with a bit of a sniff. “Okay. Don’t do anything stupid, see you there.”

“Thank you,” he says, heartfelt. “Yeah. See you.” He hangs up.

Richard lapses into a terse silence after that, and Peter doesn’t particularly feel like talking either. He sags low in his seat, lays his cheek against the window and watches Natasha’s car in the mirror. The highway stretches out ahead like an endless gray ribbon. The low drone of the engine is the only thing filling the silence between them. Peter feels okay enough, in control enough, but every shifting movement from his father’s direction does send a spike of adrenaline through him.

They don’t actually make it to the Great Swamp.

Richard takes an exit and merges onto a smaller road, one lane in either direction, that loops through fields and clusters of trees. They cross train tracks. Ten more minutes, the GPS says.

“And don’t give your mother another dime,” Richard speaks up suddenly. “She got to keep the job. And she got the house.”

“You don’t have a job?”

“I do, but that’s not the point. She fucked me over financially, so we’re not giving her jack shit.”

“We?” Peter asks pointedly.

“Jesus Christ, you got mouthy.”

“Is that what it’s called, sir,” Peter says, “when I have opinions about you kidnapping me and threatening to bash my head in if I don’t give you money?”

Richard takes a wild swing in his direction, his hand slamming into the side of Peter’s face, Peter yelps, the car swerves dangerously.

“Keep your hands on the fucking wheel, dumbass!” Peter snaps, gripping the handle of the door.

“Fuck you!” his father hollers and sharply pulls over on the grassy shoulder, stopping at a skid. He lunges over, the angle is awkward, but he still hits Peter hard enough to snap his head to the side. Peter twists, slamming his elbow into Richard’s side below the ribs. Richard lets out a wheeze and crumples.

The door on the driver’s side is yanked open and Natasha wraps one arm around Richard’s chest. “Woah, woah, woah!” he hollers, eyes widening in panic, and she hauls him out of the driver’s seat. His boots knock against the steering wheel as he flails. And then he’s out of sight.

With shaking hands, Peter undoes his seatbelt, pushes the door open on his side. Rubbing away the sting on the side of his face, he rounds the car.

Richard is face down on the cracked asphalt, already handcuffed, cursing a blue streak. Natasha was on top of him but stands, wiping her hands on her black pants with a face like Richard is the grossest thing she touched in a long while. She looks at Peter.

“Sorry,” Peter says. “I… That was stupid.”

She closes the distance in an instant, her hands landing on his shoulders first. She says something in Russian. And pulls him into a hug.

Peter freezes, a little unsure of what to do, but then he numbly closes his arms around her, resting his cheek against her shoulder.

“I… brought you coconut stuff,” he says lamely.

She hums and rocks him gently from side to side. “I’m gonna miss my little supplier.”

His eyes sting. “I’m sorry.”

She leans back, cupping his face. “Are you hurt?”

“I don’t think so.”

Behind them, Richard is still grumbling into the ground.

A car coming from the opposite direction slows down. Natasha steps back and flashes a badge and waves for them to keep driving.

“Uh. What now?” Peter asks.

“Ginny will be here in ten minutes.”

“Really?”

“Hm-hm. She can take him in the van. You drive with me. His car will be picked up later.”

-

Pepper arrives in seven minutes in a large black van and Richard is loaded into the back.

“Is he going to jail?” Peter asks, and bites his bottom lip.

“Yup.”

“Okay. That’s okay.”

“I’ll have all of you up for charges!” Richard hollers. “Just see if I don’t!”

“For fucks’ sake, someone get me a shovel,” Pepper says, bored.

-

“It might interest you to know,” Natasha says once she has turned her car back onto the road, “that Maria wanted to send a helicopter. And Stark was moments away from calling one of his own suits down to pick him up in Atlantic City.”

“But that’s his secret identity!”

“Hm-hm, I talked him out of it. He’s driving back to New York.”

Knights in shining armor, swooping in to rescue him, like Han Solo in A New Hope.

“Maria said he seemed to genuinely care for you,” Natasha says.

“Oh. Yeah. He does.”

-

Tony is standing in the middle of the parking garage when Natasha rolls down the ramp. “Ai ai, control freak,” she mutters, slowing down to a stop.

Peter just grins and gets out. He steps up to Tony and is pulled straight into a firm hug. Tony rocks him from side to side, muttering curses under his breath, about flattening Richard Parker “like a sheet of lasagna, I swear to god, come una sfoglia di lasagna. Pfwahh.”

“I’m fine. I’m okay.”

Tony leans back and drops a kiss on Peter’s forehead. It makes his eyes sting all over again. “I’m okay, Tony,” he repeats softly.

Natasha has parked the car and approaches, flipping her car keys around her finger.

“Natalie,” Tony says, lifting his chin, his tone a mixture of respect and challenge.

“Natasha.”

“Natasha. Coffee?”

She gives him a measuring look. “Why not.”

They head upstairs. Peter gets her to drink one of Tony’s cappuccinos and they open a packet of coconut ladoos that are disgustingly sweet, actually. Tony is too restless to sit at the table with them, still shuffling around his kitchen, muttering swearwords.

“You were like, stalking me,” Peter says.

Natasha stirs her coffee, smiles, says: “You’re welcome.”

“You’re supposed to take all my SHIELD phone and stuff.”

“I’m aware.”

He’s feeling pretty tired, like he wants to take a nap. His dad is going to jail and there’s a restraining order against his mother in place. That’s pretty wild, actually. “My parents are a little insane I guess.”

The muttering from Tony’s direction swells in volume.

“You have a good place now,” she says.

Peter doesn’t really like to admit it — how much significance Natasha’s approval holds for him. Like just her saying it makes everything more real.

“Do you think badly of me? For leaving SHIELD?”

“People quit their jobs, sometimes.”

It hadn’t felt like anything quite that straightforward and simple, but maybe it is, to Natasha. Just. Not a big deal at all. Just something that happens.

“I have learned a lot from you,” Natasha says.

Peter blinks at her, not sure what she means by that and too tired to think on it much. “Am I… Am I just never going to see you again after today?”

She frowns and reaches out, cupping his face in her hands and squeezing his cheeks. “Of course you will,” she says, very firmly. “We are friends.” Her gaze is intent, and Peter feels it like a burst of warmth through his heart.

“Okay,” he murmurs.

“This weekend, I’m going to teach you how to tell good churros from bad churros. And I might pop in for unannounced visits.”

“I’ll remember to lock the doors,” Tony says dryly.

She tuts at him. “You think I can’t get through a locked door?”

-

“What do you need?” Tony asks as soon as Natasha has left.

Peter quietly sticks their coffee mugs in the sink, “um…” he says, rinses his hands in cold water and presses them to his cheeks. He wipes his face with his sleeve and shrugs, glancing up at Tony. “I don’t know. I feel kinda okay. Mostly relieved.”

Tony leans back against the kitchen counter, turning a coffee spoon over in his hands, his eyes hooded. He might need some time to process this, too.

“We can watch a movie?” Peter suggests. “Lunch on the couch?”

Tony’s shoulders relax a fraction and he nods. “You pick a movie. I’ll get us some spring rolls or something.”

Peter piles all the blankets and cushions he can find together, sinks down into them and idly scrolls through Tony’s movie collection—

—and then wakes up at what must be at least half an hour later, because The Princess and the frog is playing on the screen, he has sunken down low between the cushions, and Tony’s hand is resting lightly in his hair. When Tony notices Peter’s half-lidded eyes, his mouth quirks up and he leans in to push a small bowl of sushi rolls into his hands.

Peter tucks his knees up against his chest, turning his head a little under Tony’s hand, and turns his attention to the screen. “You’ll have to tell me what happened.”

“We’ll start it over. FRIDAY, pause it.”

While in the car with Richard, he thought he was dealing with it fine, but he recognizes the adrenaline crash now. He starts nibbling on a first piece of sushi. “I guess I am tired.”

“Hm-hmm.”

“I thought I was fine.”

“You’re not,” Tony says. “But you are.”

“I guess I was kidnapped, basically.”

“Basically.”

“It’s just different. My parents were always pretty violent, but mostly at each other, you know. And then when I was sixteen I just—left. I didn’t even plan it, I just got on the bus.”

Tony hums again, his fingers still combing gently through Peter’s hair. It feels like all his memories have been brought up to the surface, and without really thinking about it, Peter keeps talking, about everything, sleeping in the movie theater, meeting June, and the police lady, he can’t remember her name, Chelsie or something. Shopping at bed bath and beyond, going to the gun-range with Natasha, his sock-organization system, the heat of Milan, April’s cryptic crosswords, he talks until he feels like he’s all out of words, he has used them all up. He eats another piece of sushi and puts the bowl aside.

“My turn,” Tony says, hand drifting down from Peter’s hair to his nape and squeezing, and he tells Peter about tracking June down, and where exactly his suits are hidden in the workshop, and about the time he actually found out about Spider-Man which was way earlier than Peter thought it was. “I told Rhodey about it,” he says. “Huh. I’d… already forgotten about that, actually, shit. I’m sorry. It was before—everything. I needed to confide in someone.”

“S’okay,” Peter murmurs drowsily. “Rhodey is chief secret keeper.”

Tony chuckles softly. “Sure is.”

“We’ll all team up. Fight some, some aliens together.”

“I thought Spider-Man only did the small stuff.”

“There can be, be—” he yawns “—be small-stuff-aliens. Like, alien rabbits.” His eyes are drifting shut.

“Space bunnies, huh?”

“Space hoppers.”

“Iron Man can’t make sharp corners, though. Don’t know how useful I’d be.”

Peter smiles, opening his eyes again. Tony is looking right at him, with an expression so warm that it thaws him all the way through. “I thought I was fine,” he says again. “When I was in that car with him, because I knew wherever I ended up that I could just call you and you would come get me.”

“You got that right.”

His eyes are prickling and he blinks slowly. “Movie?”

“FRIDAY, restart it from the beginning,” Tony says.

He tugs a blanket closer and watches New Orleans at twilight appear on the screen. “I might just fall asleep again.”

Tony’s thumb is rubbing slow circles through his hair again, smoothing out the tangles. “If you do, I get to draw on your face.”

“Deal,” Peter says.

-

Pepper picks Tony up one afternoon in a summer dress and sandals, driving a small, bright red car that is probably not SHIELD-issued.

“It’s March,” Tony says. “I’m not lending you my jacket if you get cold.”

“Thank you for setting the tone, dear.”

She drives him to the Spyscape museum where they currently have an exhibition called ‘Spies Among Us: Real Cases of Neighborhood Intrigue’. Tony feels almost like he is getting pranked.

“So. Are we going to be colleagues or what?” she asks as they meander through a quiet hall full of everyday objects with hidden compartments, her sandals slapping as they strike the floorboards.

“Is that why you invited me out here? Is this recruitment?”

“No, I invited you out here because you’re a hot piece of ass.”

Tony clutches his chest. “Ms. Potts! At least buy me dinner first.”

“I plan to.”

“If I join SHIELD, will I find out your actual name?”

She snorts. “Pepper was never my actual name, if you’ll remember, so I don’t see why you would care too much either way.”

“Maria called you Ginny. So you really do go by Virginia?”

“I prefer Pepper,” she says and starts absent-mindedly braiding her own hair as she looks at a display of suitcases with false bottoms. “How is the kid?”

“Resting. For the next month or two. No trashy horror or bubble baths just yet, but I’ll get him there.”

“Momma bear.”

“Zoolander.”

“Who would have thought,” she says.

Tony bought a proper reclining lounge chair the other day, one of those with an adjustable backrest. He put it on the balcony. That’s where he left Peter this morning, hot chocolate and a bowl of blueberries nearby, soaking up some sun rays.

“Yeah,” he says.

-

It’s hard to say precisely why it is so easy to trust Helen Cho, when Tony knows very little about her. She despises small talk and does not tolerate distractions when she is at work. Which is why she glares when Tony pauses behind her desk, lowers his head until his chin is resting on her monitor, and says: “What I’m about to tell you, can never leave this room.”

She leans back, expression exuding displeasure. “I don’t have time for special requests. I’m spending my whole afternoon logging all my colleague’s results, since he was arrested in last week’s commotion, you may have heard about it.”

“You’ll want to hear this.”

“That is what you said when your AI cooked up those pictures of human-alien hybrids.”

Tony lifts his head and takes a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. “My intern cooked up an idea that I need your feedback on.”

She takes the paper and gives it a cursory glance. “What is it? An artificial heart?”

“Of sorts.”

“These calculations look—Why does it have an electromagnet? I don’t see how this could serve any actual purpose.” She pushes the sketch back at him.

Tony doesn’t take it. He leans back on his heels and taps his fingers firmly against his arc reactor through his shirt, the dull clanks resonating through the lab.

The sketch flutters down to the desk. “What the fuck,” Helen says.

-

There is a kitchen with an electric stove, and in the bathroom a walk-in shower with a sliding door. It’s starting to feel like something Peter can live in. The harsh fluorescent tube lights were replaced, part of a whole different lighting plan that Peter thought was overboard — light is light — but Tony insisted on. And he’ll admit, it does make a world of difference. The windows are still uncovered, but Peter picked out some bright blue curtains that should be delivered this week. He’s leaving all the walls white except for one bedroom wall they’re painting in a dusty blue-green color.

“Like the sea on a foggy day,” May says as she stirs the paint to properly mix it.

“I like that.” It’s something he loves about this specific spot of the tower. Tony’s apartment faces away from the ocean, but from his own kitchen, Peter can see the blue stretching out infinitely, glittering under the sun or fading away in fog. He’s going to put a little breakfast nook right by that window, where he’ll have his morning cappuccino from now on.

“What’s your place like?” he asks.

“About the same size. One bedroom. But ground floor, so I have a little space out back. Mostly wildflowers and a few stubborn herbs. I have a cat.”

Peter perks up. “A cat?”

“Gus.”

“I’ve never had a pet. But I’ve let my houseplants die, so. I’m not really ready for one yet, probably.”

“Try a stick insect,” she suggests, her smile lines deepening.

With Peter’s luck, it’ll turn out to be a radioactive one that ends up biting him.

“I brought you something, actually,” she says, lifting a finger like she’s only just remembering. She finds her plastic bag in a corner and rummages through. “I hope this isn’t overstepping.” She hands him a small, plain wooden frame. Inside are four colorful stamps against a white background. “Found those online. They’re the real deal.” Four green, Malaysian stamps with a picture of a large bird. It has a curved bill and a bright orange-yellow casque that looks a bit like a rhino’s horn.

“Is it…?”

“A rhinoceros hornbill. It’s always good to have something to remember people by, I know all about it.”

“It is,” Peter says, warmth filling him down to his bones. It’s starting to become a bit more natural to him; people going so far out of their way to do things just because they want to make him happy. And May’s presence is bringing something very unique into his life, he can feel that. “Thank you, May. This is like—so special.”

They give the wall a first coat, and then Tony brings them coffee and chocolate fudge and they sit down on the tarp-covered floor together. Tony and May still seem just somewhat on guard, feeling each other out. Both wondering if the other person is ‘good enough’ for him. Peter can’t bring himself to let it bother him, it’s nice to have people look out for you, anyways.

“What did Helen say?” he asks Tony.

“She’d like to talk your ideas over with you after the weekend, if you go down to her lab instead of the workshop.”

“Oh. Yeah, that’s cool.” He knows he shouldn’t say much more in front of May, so he picks up a piece of fudge, tucks up one foot underneath him and leans back against an unpainted wall. “I like chocolate.”

“I guessed. Considering you use half a jar of chocolate spread per piece of toast,” Tony says dryly.

“Do not!”

“It’s one of your best qualities, don’t get defensive.”

May hides a smile behind her hand. “Ben was like that. He always wanted cereal with marshmallows. Or he’d eat a slice of pie and call it fruit.”

“He sounds like a visionary,” Tony says.

“I was really bad at eating for a while, actually,” Peter admits to her. “It’s just… easier to feel hungry than stressed out, at some point.”

She frowns a little, but more thoughtful than worried. “I see how that might happen.” She lifts her cup in Tony’s direction. “Is this one making you eat?”

“Didn’t take much,” Tony says. He smiles at Peter across the rim of his cup. “Just a bit of company, probably.”

Peter nods. “Like penguins.”

“Have you thought about getting some FRIDAY in here?” Tony asks.

There are currently no cameras and microphones installed at all and it’s funny to see how much it unbalances Tony. Already twice this week while setting up the apartment, Tony would randomly ask the ceiling a question and then huff when he remembered he wouldn’t be getting an answer.

“Let’s start small,” Peter says. “Like, maybe just one camera-microphone-thingy I can put on the kitchen counter. Like those Alexa things?”

“Excuse me—” Tony starts, gearing up for a tirade.

“Yeah, FRIDAY is vastly superior to Alexa, bla bla, but you get the point, right?”

“I always get the point,” Tony says. “I’ll make it in the shape of a penguin.”

-

He isn’t bringing anything, this time. The only thing in his backpack is a scarf in case the evening gets chilly, and his wallet tucked away behind the zipper.

“Make good choices,” Tony says.

“It’s just board games, Tony. MJ said it’s always very low-key.”

“I’d never believe a word coming out of her mouth.”

“Oh, bullshit,” Peter says fondly. “If anyone is going to tell it to you straight, it’s her.”

“Fine. Fine. Just don’t hesitate to call me if things run late and you need me to pick you up. Even if it’s after midnight, okay?”

“Okay you doofus. I promise.”

Tony holds out his arms and Peter steps into the embrace. “Have fun,” Tony says. “Proud of you.”

He hadn’t noticed before. But hugging Tony feels a lot like giving into gravity.

Chapter Text

April, May, June, July.

New York looks different after four months. He is only really noticing it today, in the sharp sunlight.

He arrived at the airport late last night, but he doesn’t feel like he has really landed. He never does, really, not in New York. This city has always just felt like a layover.

He was planning on a long, leisurely stroll around The Bronx, clear his head and let it sink in that he’s staying, this time. He’s staying. He has two apples and a thermos of herbal tea in his little backpack, and a flyer he found on his doormat for a new café that opened a few blocks away: free smoothie with your lunch order. He looks like a tourist and doesn’t care.

Tony calls him as he waits by a pedestrian crossing. “Did you get my email?”

“Haven’t opened it in two days. I’ve been a little busy.”

“Rhodey-bear. This is a Code Alpha Level One Red Imminent Emergency.”

“We’re having a C.A.L.O.R.I.E., huh?” When Tony says something is an emergency, that means it is not an emergency. If Tony were having an actual emergency, he’d be far more likely to say something like No rush or anything but were you planning on dropping by any time this week?

“How fast can you be here?”

“I was going to get a free strawberry smoothie.”

“You think I can’t get you a free strawberry smoothie at the tower?” Tony demands.

“I was going to get one from Sugar & Steam, I want to support my local businesses.”

Tony says, muffled, more distant— “FRIDAY, order a strawberry smoothie from some hovel in The Bronx called Sugar & Steam to have delivered to the tower asap thank you.”

“All right,” Rhodey laughs. “Coming.”

-

The first time Rhodey met Tony, Tony was a scrawny teenager, running across the lawn at campus, yelling curses, using a tea towel to try and trap a roomba-like contraption that was zigzagging wildly through the grass, until he tripped over his own feet and faceplanted. People laughed but Rhodey took pity, so when the thing zoomed towards him he lifted one foot and trapped the robot underneath it. It beeped once and the wheels stopped whirring.

Instead of thanking him, the teenager scrambled forward on hands and knees, glared up at him and said “well thanks you probably broke it, dumbass.”

One of Rhodey’s friends bristled and said “who let you out of kindergarten anyway, little shit?”

Tony sneered, snatched the robot up and stalked away, chin raised, mud clinging to his knees and forehead.

The second time Rhodey met Tony was later that day, when he got back from his afternoon classes to spot a very familiar teenager unpacking boxes in the formerly empty dorm room right across the hall. There was still mud on his forehead.

-

The delivery guy beats him to the tower. When he enters, Tony is waiting in the lobby and pushes a smoothie into his hands. “Happy now?”

Rhodey pulls him into a one-armed hug. “You said this was an emergency?”

Tony pats his back and says, as he steers Rhodey into the elevator: “Peter’s getting home from work any minute and I did not want you to miss his fake birthday.”

Ah. Peter. Peter Parker, as it turns out.

He and Tony always email back and forth a bit when he is deployed, and over the last months Tony’s reports on Michelle-now-MJ, on Pepper and most of all on Peter slowly got more and more crisp and concise. Peter moved in. That’s all he’d write. Which was telling because Tony often has trouble expressing his emotions openly and directly. Rhodey has learned that the less Tony elaborates about something, the more significant that something usually is.

Peter moved in, Tony said, and then wrote an entire paragraph about how Major General Sir Nils Olav III has a longer Wikipedia entry than him. Date with Pepper, said another email, followed by a dissertation on the company bikes installed on level B3 and the bike expressway he and mayor Linda Strode are going to build all the way across Manhattan.

“Okay,” Rhodey says. “Fake birthday.”

“July 28th.”

“Checks out.”

Peter’s apartment is in the same narrow hallway that leads towards Tony’s own, but instead of the blue door at the end, they take a white door on the left.

There are balloons and a birthday banner. MJ and Pepper are there, and another woman and a young man Rhodey doesn’t recognize. Her name is May, his name is Ned. “I didn’t expect Tony to have roped more people into this insanity,” he says as he shakes hands.

“Excuse me,” Tony says, “roping people into insanity happens to be my specialty.”

May smiles, eyes twinkling. “Oh, I think it’s cute.”

“He’s going to be so embarrassed,” MJ says. “Wouldn’t miss that for the world.”

Rhodey looks around. The apartment is serene, very beach house, with blues and beiges and rattan lamps. It’s clear Tony put a whole lot more care into decorating this place than he did his own.

Tony claps his hands. “All right. The plan I devised is: Peter comes in, we yell ‘happy birthday’.”

“Where do you come up with these revelations,” Pepper says and MJ snorts.

“Both of you just lost Peter Parker party popper pulling privileges.”

Ned’s hand shoots up. “Can I?”

The cool voice of FRIDAY interrupts them — coming from some plastic penguin on the kitchen counter. “Peter is on his way up.”

“Okay, team, moment of truth.” Tony pushes a party popper into Ned’s hand and steers him closest to the door. “Right into his face, bud.”

In the first few years of knowing him, Rhodey regularly asked, ‘Tony. Are you sure about this?’ He still thinks it at times, but has learned not to say it out loud anymore. So when the door opens, he just yells ‘Happy Birthday’ along with everyone else while a cloud of confetti explodes from Ned’s direction.

When it clears, Peter is standing there with a backpack slung over one shoulder and an expression of exasperated fondness that Rhodey feels to the deepest of his bones. “Tony, you doofus.”

Tony reaches out to yank him closer and drop a kiss into his hair. “Happy — mwah — fake birthday kid. Nineteen years since you weren’t born, can you believe it?”

“You are absolutely exhausting,” Peter says, wrestling himself out of Tony’s grip. He looks around at everyone gathered. “I’m so sorry to all of you—May!”

May laughs and steps forward to hug him. “Oh, any excuse to come visit you, sweetheart. Happy fake birthday.”

“I guess this is a thing, then,” Peter laments, before a smile spreads across his face. “Does this mean we have cake?”

“As if you haven’t already sniffed it out like the chocolate-bloodhound you are,” Tony says.

“You haven’t even offered people drinks,” Peter accuses. He tosses his backpack to one side and heads into his kitchen to rummage through the fridge. He carries himself very differently from the young man who crashed on Tony’s pull-out couch four months ago. “You guys want coffee, or something cold?”

Pepper cuts the cake, and iced coffees and sparkly lemonades are soon distributed around. “I’ll stick to my strawberry milkshake,” Rhodey says, wiggling it.

Peter nods. “Welcome home, sir,” he says politely. “I’m—Again, I’m really—”

“Kid, don’t apologize for Tony’s shenanigans, particularly to me.”

-

He doesn’t get his long, leisurely stroll around The Bronx, but he gets a chance to meet people or meet people again.

Ned is the definition of harmless. It makes sense why MJ and now Peter would gravitate towards a friend like this, someone who’ll make you feel accepted and unjudged.

MJ keeps her arms crossed at all times, but she seems to have more of an open interest in him, this time. “I used to live in The Bronx,” she says, and starts listing places she thinks he should know about. Most of them are, by the sounds of it, half-abandoned.

Pepper’s snark is new, but what’s also new is the affection with which she rolls her eyes at Tony. “James, you know him,” she says as she waves at the balloons. “It started as a joke, and then spiraled into something actually important to him while he pretends it’s still a joke. He called me three damn times to change the flavor cake he wanted me to get.” He sees it in her, too: that very specific brand of exasperated fondness.

May Parker is—a real trooper. All soft smiles and kind words, but somehow managing to not only hold her own amongst this absolute bag of monkeys, but even commandeer the room when she wants to. When she taps her fork lightly against her glass, an immediate hush descends. “Just a few words,” she says, eyes crinkling at Peter’s instant awkward hunch. “Yes, this is really happening. I won’t get many more chances to turn you into that embarrassed teenager, I’m enjoying it while I can. You’re growing up so fast, Pete, and in all the right directions. Life threw you some serious curveballs, but you’re flourishing. Even landed your dream job, promoted from government agent and engineering intern to shelf stocker at a local bodega. I’m incredibly proud of you. Here’s to new beginnings and good days ahead.”

“Bravo, bravo,” Tony says, beaming like a dad at graduation day.

-

“It looks different.”

Tony nods once before buttoning his shirt back up, the arc reactor disappearing behind the fabric. It doesn’t seem to glow anymore, despite the lack of patches. They’re in Tony’s kitchen, the evening is quiet, everyone went home.

Rhodey frowns as he continues slicing the carrots, stomach clenching. “You performed surgery on yourself again? Didn’t I tell you to at least wait until I—”

“Helen Cho did it.”

“oh—huh.” Rhodey pauses. “You told her.”

“I did.”

Rhodey lifts the cutting board and uses his knife to sweep the carrots into a bowl. “Wow,” is all he can think to say. “That— The kid is good for you.”

Tony’s grin is lopsided. “I’d say so. He designed it.”

That adds up. In fact, it’s poetic.

Tony is like a simmering volcano. He’ll seemingly lay dormant for years, all his behavior seeming set in stone, but there’s fire churning under the surface. And then something cracks open and he’ll suddenly explode and reshape. Rhodey saw it happening after the Starks died, after Afghanistan, and he’s seeing it again now.

“Dinner for three?” he asks as he debates whether or not to chop up another carrot.

“Probably. FRIDAY, will Peter join us?”

“My access to Peter’s apartment is not fully functional at the moment,” FRIDAY says.

“Huh,” Rhodey says. “Is that—"

Tony has already turned and heads for the door. Rhodey, curious, follows. They pause at Peter’s white door. Tony knocks, and pushes it open when Peter yells ‘Come in!’

There is an upside-down fruit bowl covering the penguin on the kitchen counter, and there is a  woman who looks vaguely familiar sitting with Peter on the balcony, smiling like a satisfied cat.

Tony makes a noise like the wind was punched out of him and points at her. “What—How is that even possible?”

“Calm down, Stark,” she says, her voice carrying.

“Ms. Romanoff has entered the building,” FRIDAY immediately says from underneath the fruit bowl.

“Yeah, I see her.”

Rhodey pokes his head over Tony’s shoulder. “Dinner for four?”

She smirks. “No. I’ll be out of your hair soon.”

Tony huffs. Peter just leans back against the balcony railing, looking amused and entirely unbothered.

-

Dinner for three.

“Final mission, right, sir?” Peter asks as he soaks up the tomato sauce with a piece of garlic bread.

Rhodey nods. “Already got a new gig as a crisis management consultant at DHS.”

His parents were both military. They didn’t necessarily want that life for him so they encouraged him to pursue his studies, but he never felt quite at home at MIT; only stuck it out as long as he did because he had a skinny pale nerd to look after — speaking of crisis management. He enlisted right after graduating and has spent over fifteen years being abroad more often than at home. And now he gets to settle down…

Maybe he should ask Helen Cho out to dinner sometime.

Tony nudges his empty plate back. “So,” he says, folding his hands on top of the table and looking at Peter. “I haven’t given you your fake birthday present yet.”

“For the love of god,” Peter says.

“I had some art commissioned for you.”

“What? Tony, that sounds so expensive.”

“Don’t go anywhere,” Tony says, gleeful, and practically skips away to the hallway leading to his bedroom.

Peter meets Rhodey’s gaze and the look they exchange feels like they’re two soldiers who’ve been through the same war.

“I’m glad you’re gonna be around for a while, sir,” the kid says with a soft smile.

Rhodey snorts.

Tony returns with a wooden frame, held to his chest. When he’s next to the table, he flips it over to show a drawing in vibrant colors. Rhodey spots Iron Man, Spider-Man, a UFO and a whole bunch of rabbits, for some reason.

“It’s…” Peter starts.

“You and me fighting those space bunnies.”

“It’s…”

“Insane, I know,” Tony says, nodding.

Peter stands, takes the frame and then hugs Tony. “Thank you,” he says. “For being a little bit unhinged, and doing sweet things by wrapping them in something silly. I’m totally onto you, such a sap.”

“Well, you know,” Tony murmurs, rocking Peter from side to side, “every kid deserves a Rhodey.”

-

Rhodey took a plane home last night. And for the first time, it feels like he really landed.