Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Peter has always been of the professional opinion that the tower penthouse has way, waaay too many kitchens. A mad big one, connected to the living room by this really fancy, wide, arched doorway. One in Tony’s workshop, a little dingy but has all the gadgets. And then several small ones, tucked away in little nooks in the hallways. As if Tony, when he designed this place, was worried that he would starve or dehydrate during the long trek between his private swimming pool and his lab.

The funny thing is, each kitchen has its own coffee maker, but Tony very specifically prefers one of them. “Petey, can you get me some coffee from the good machine, pretty please?” he had asked as he was elbow-deep in his newest Iron Man suit, shirt stained with grease.

“Don’t call me Petey,” Peter snapped back. And then he felt bad about snapping and went to get him his stupid coffee.

So here he is, in the hallway outside Pepper’s office, while the coffee maker huffs and puffs. He leans one elbow on the kitchen counter and looks in the direction of the office. The door is open but the lights are off and he hears no noises from inside. Maybe Pepper took a day off. She works too hard, anyways. Looks as exhausted as his aunt May does, ready to keel over and faceplant on the carpet at any moment.

He likes Pepper. She doesn’t constantly try to bond with him, unlike certain other people, and she talks pretty. Uses words like ‘panache’ and ‘quintessence’ and ‘incidentally’. Peter always thought panache was a dessert, but based on how Pepper uses it, it probably isn’t. She always says Tony has panache, so ‘having panache’ probably just means that you are very, very extra.

The coffee maker beeps and Peter opens the overhead cabinet, reaching for the thermos on the back of the—

A large, heavy mug is pushed off the shelf, bounces against the edge of the counter and crashes to the floor, neatly splitting in half. Peter mutters a curse as he bends down to pick up the pieces. Of course it has to be Tony’s favorite mug. Tony takes that thing everywhere, he’s a bit weird about it, in fact. It says ‘I don’t talk until my cup is empty’ on the front, and Tony loves to walk around the tower with it, slurping slowly and passive-aggressively shooting people looks when they ask him questions.

He buries the broken mug in the trashcan under the sink, pulling an empty chips-bag to the top to hide the shards. He pours the coffee into a mug with a big owl on the front.

He is never telling Tony about this. Just like he’s never telling Tony what happened at the hotel in Germany, or why he threw a tangerine at a security guard’s head that one time.

“Took you long enough,” Tony comments when he gets back.

“Then get your own next time,” he snaps.

“Fair enough,” Tony says easily. He has been surprisingly tolerant of Peter’s general vibe and personality, from the very first moment they met; when Peter webbed his hand to the doorknob and told him ‘give me one reason why I should go to Germany while you sit back and take the credit’.

It was the promise of money that won Peter over in the end. Not exactly the high road, but money has been screwing them over so much that priorities have shifted a bit, so he’s happy to cruise along the low road for now.

He is never telling Tony about that either, though.

They went to Germany where Tony put him up in the Bad Wurzen Hotel. Peter thought it was an objectively hilarious name and kept referring to it as the ‘bad worse hotel’ while Happy kept trying to explain the actual German translation like the big stick in the mud that he was.

In retrospect, the ‘Bad Worse hotel’ was a very apt name, considering what happened there.

He’s never telling Tony about that either, has he mentioned?

Tony steps away and wipes his hands on a rag so dirty that Peter doubts his hands are getting any cleaner. “Want to have a look, kiddo?”

He’s all big on teaching Peter stuff, has been since the start. As if Spider-Man was just an added bonus, and he’s actually interested in Peter himself, too. It’s kinda nice, and also kinda weird, but Peter is for some reason getting paid for it so he’s rolling with it. “Okay,” he says, stepping up to the new model and sticking his arm where Tony’s had been a moment ago.

“Feel those joint actuators? I think they’re out of alignment.”

“If I get electrocuted right now,” Peter says, nails scraping against metal, “how much money will you pay my aunt in damages?”

“Okay,” Tony says. “Mentorship lesson of the day: Don’t electrocute yourself for money.”

Easy for him to say, he’s a billionaire. Meanwhile, Peter and May have started taking cold showers to save on the electric bill, despite it being one hella frigid November. “They do feel out of sync, a bit,” he agrees. “Do we open it up?”

“Let’s.”

He pulls his arms out, wipes his hand on his jeans. “You do it.”

Tony slaps the rag over his shoulder and leans back against the workbench. “I’m paying you. You do it.”

“Fine. Get me a Philips screwdriver.”

“You forgot the magic word,” Tony says, very calmly. The kind of calm he gets just before he is about to get a little irritated.

Peter scrutinizes his face for a moment and then says, “please.”

Tony turns and rounds his workbench to reach the ceiling high shelves, pulls out a clear plastic crate. He rarely gets irritated anymore. He did a few times in the first month or two, one time even told Peter to go home early and ‘sort out his behavior’. He seems to have decided that putting up with Peter’s snark is worth… whatever Peter is managing to deliver in return.

Tony pushes two screwdrivers into his hands. “I’d try the bigger one first.”

“And I want food,” Peter says, glancing up at Tony and adding: “Please.”

Tony’s expression softens. “Let’s order. Indian?”

-

Tony gave him the suit as they came back from Germany, right at the beginning of a hot, stuffy summer. Record hot summer, the news was saying, but they are saying that almost every year, now that they are all dutch-ovening the whole planet.

Anyway. Afterwards, there was radio silence for a while, which was really just fine with Peter. He wasn’t exactly champing at the bit to talk to anyone after the Bad Worse Hotel Incident.

And then Happy called, all of a sudden. “We haven’t heard anything from you.”

“Uh,” Peter said, kicking up sand as he slowly swung back and forth on the swings — he was at the playground when he got that phone call, he doesn’t really remember anymore why, he goes there sometimes when he feels shitty — “I haven’t exactly heard from you either…?”

“You’re using the suit, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I was— Tony and I were of the firm opinion that you should be… reporting back to us.”

“Uh. Okay,” Peter said. “Like, you want a voicemail every time I carried someone’s groceries, or what are you imagining?”

Happy stayed quiet for a moment, like he hadn’t really thought that part through. “Voicemails are fine,” he then said, rather briskly. “Also, Tony is offering you an actual internship, effective immediately.”

“Is there money involved?”

“Does there need to be?”

“Duh-doy.”

“I don’t speak hooligan,” Happy said, prickly. Happy was always prickly back then, he’s trying to be nicer now. “What did that mean?”

Peter doesn’t remember how the rest of the conversation went, but he must have said yes to the whole internship thing, and Tony must have said yes to paying him, because here they are.

-

“Thanks for doing this,” Happy says.

He chose a simple place, one of those ones with a large neon sign out front by the parking lot and striped canopies, with a toilet door covered in postcards from different bands, a place where they serve fries with everything and the waiting staff are all blasted teenagers who know less than anyone.

May is wearing a baggy sweater. He feels like she’s sending a signal with that. Yes, she’s here, but no, she isn’t on a date date. Happy feels silly for pulling out his nicest shirt. “I’m going to put all my cards straight on the table,” May says. “Yes, you seem nice, and yes, I’m interested, or I would be. But I just broke up with someone a few months ago and it was… messy.”

“I had no idea.” Peter never mentioned anyone. Not that he talks to Happy all that much. Partly Happy’s fault for his less than sunny disposition when they first met. Happy has been trying very hard, lately, but doesn’t seem to be able to connect with the kid. “Was it serious?”

“I mean.” She picks at the corners of the menu, pensively. “It felt serious at the time, but in hindsight it wasn’t healthy. I don’t want to rush into anything, I have Peter to consider. My break-up with Robbie wasn’t easy for him, either. And I don’t have time to date, either way.” She does look tired, but she always does a bit.

“Okay. Just dinner, then? Still my treat.”

“Thank you,” she says. “If I’m honest, I find that old fashioned. But I’ll admit, since the cards are on the table, that I don’t have money to spend on eating out.”

Happy feels even worse, now, for putting on that nice shirt. Drat.

But she smiles at him,  before looking at the menu again. “I think I’ll just have soup for main, because despite the cold out, I want a lot of ice cream.”

“I think I’ll adopt that strategy.”

They order two potato soups and a bread basket. The bread arrives much earlier than the soup. These blasted millennials have no work ethic. They both pick a piece to nibble on. “How is Peter?” Happy asks.

May slowly tears her piece of bread in half. “What can I say. He’s a teenager.”

Happy is far from an expert on teenagers. And he knows he is partly to blame for his still strained relationship with the kid. But he’s pretty sure that as teenagers go, Peter is … difficult. Tony deals with it surprisingly well. For Happy, the past few months have been a great exercise in patience. There was a Tangerine Incident in particular, last summer, that he still can’t really wrap his head around: it’s the whole reason they don’t have fruit baskets at reception anymore. He has grown fond of the kid, and he wants to connect. But the harder he tries, the more Peter seems to pull away.

“Busy with Spider-Man, busy with Decathlon. Probably as busy worrying about me as I do about him.”

“What’s the worry?”

“About me or him?”

“Either.”

“He worries I work too hard. And I just worry…the way parents do, I suppose.”

“Do you work too hard?”

“Oh, yes. Most certainly. But it is what it is.”

The waiter arrives at their table with two steaming bowls of soup. They lean back so he can set them down. “Anything else?” he asks, clutching the round tray to his chest.

“Spoons would be nice,” May says. “Or alternatively, a pair of straws.”

“Right!” The waiter jogs off.

Happy slowly drags his bread through the soup, smiling softly. “I respect your choice. I just want you to know I think you’re something special.”

She wraps her hands around the bowl and looks back at him. “So are you, Happy. It wasn’t just an excuse, this really isn’t the right time. Ask me again in about two months, if you haven’t found someone else by then.”

“Deal.”

-

The elevator is whizzing up to the 54th floor when Pepper catches Tony’s hand. “I feel a bit unwell.”

They’re about to walk into an investor meeting. Tony sent the kid home after their Indian takeaway dinner because this one, he couldn’t get out of. Pepper has been badgering Tony all week to attend, no excuses, no getting out of this one, “Ms. Khalo is tuning in from a different time zone, Tony!”. And he has seen Pepper continue working with a low-grade fever. In fact, she gave one of her best press-conference speeches to date while battling a pretty nasty sinus infection.

So this is… He turns to her. She does look a bit pale, clammy. “Serious case of cold feet?” he tries.

“My chest has been hurting all day, but now I’m starting to feel… let’s call it peculiar.”

His stomach drops through the bottom of the elevator all the way towards the ground floor. “Your chest has been hurting all day? Pepper!”

She looks guilty. “I thought I’d perhaps pulled a muscle.” She rubs at her chest and inhales slowly. “I’m… a tad dizzy, incidentally.”

“Shit, FRIDAY, med bay.”

“Already on our way, boss,” she says, the elevator whizzing clean past the 54th floor. “I have alerted the doctor. And I’ll go ahead and cancel the investor meeting, encourage our less cooperative members to enjoy a nice coffee in the lounge by way of apology. I’ll contact Ms. Khalo.”

“Attagirl,” Tony says, right over Peppers faint noises of complaint. He gently takes her elbow. “What do I do, sit her down?”

“Based on the current symptoms I cannot yet definitively advise a course of action.”

“Start by calming down. You going into a tizzy is making it worse,” Pepper points out.

Tony practically growls at her. The nerve to ask that of him when she just revealed she has been walking around the tower in heart-attack-mode all day…

The elevator doors slide open and Helen Cho is already right there with a wheelchair, bless her. Pepper is quickly wheeled into a corner room and moved to a bed, where Helen measures absolutely everything as Tony paces.

Finally, Helen unwraps the blood pressure meter from around Pepper’s arm with a deep sigh, looks her in the eye with the expression of a doctor who is about to deliver some very bad news, and says: “I think it’s stress.”

Pepper gapes at her. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous, hon.”

“I advise,” Helen soldiers on, with her deepest-sympathies-face on, “immediate time off work, at least a month. Adequate sleep, balanced meals—"

“No, no, no,” Pepper says, wafting her hand. “Put me back on that infernal machine of yours, I’m probably just having a stroke.”

“Ms. Potts,” Helen says, very gently, “your body is giving you a very serious warning signal. You need to reduce the main sources of stress in your life.”

Pepper dramatically flings herself back on the bed, slinging one arm over her face. “Ugh. Just kill me now!”

-

Tony is pushing her wheelchair back to the elevator — he’s still not going to let her walk, thankyouverymuch — with a bunch of flyers about stress management techniques clenched in one hand, when the doors slide open and Happy steps out. He looks rushed, still wearing his coat. His eyes land on Pepper. “Oh. You’re…. What’s the verdict?” he asks.

“Burnout,” Tony says.

Pepper blows a raspberry.

Happy steps back and Tony wheels Pepper into the elevator, pressing his button for the penthouse with his elbow.

“Anything I can do?” Happy asks.

“Yes, please. We need to go over Pepper’s entire schedule, clear everything, see what issues need to be dealt with. That will take some time.”

Pepper shakes her head, dragging one trembling hand through her hair. She isn’t irritated anymore, but does seem dejected. “It’s not feasible, Tony. We’ll have to explore other courses of action. This whole company is going to fall apart if I don’t stay on top of things.”

“That’s a lot of pressure on you, Pep,” Tony says gently. “It’s probably healthier for the company to change that up, make sure we don’t just rely on one person.”

Pepper grumbles. “Darling, since when do you have common sense?”

The elevator opens into the penthouse and Tony wheels her around the partition wall and straight towards their huge corner sofa between the bookshelves. It’s big enough that Pepper can comfortably live there for the next few weeks; gives her a good view of the rest of the living room and the kitchen through the arched doorway. “There you go, hon.” He helps her sit and starts piling cushions around her. “I’ll go make you a cup of tea.”

“Fresh ginger,” Pepper says, almost petulant.

“Is there anything else you need?” Happy asks.

“I want a bunny rabbit,” Pepper says. “As a pet.”

Happy’s face doesn’t even twitch. “What color.”

-

There are three pigeons sitting on the back of a bench right outside their apartment door when Peter gets home. “You guys like Indian food?” he asks, and takes one of the papadams from the bag of leftovers Tony gave him. He crumbles it between both hands. The pigeons immediately flutter down to peck at the crumbs. It’s a cold November. Peter always feels bad for the birds when it gets cold.

“Hey, don’t feed those things,” someone says. “Flying vermin.”

Peter glances back. There’s a podgy man looking at him, wearing a flat cap, chewing gum. A ‘born and bred New-Yorker’ type. Peter knows exactly how to talk to people like that. “Mind your own damn business, mouth-breather.”

The man huffs and keeps looking at him, keeps chewing. Peter doesn’t like people chewing gum. Reminds him of the Bad Worse Hotel Incident.

He turns away. He has a feeling the guy is waiting for him to leave so he can chase the pigeons off himself. So Peter stays right where he is — paper bag with take-away in his arms, the cold biting his cheeks — and watches the pigeons until the man huffs again and crosses the street.

He likes birds. Ben always used to say that birds were the souls of dead people.

He enters the apartment and takes the stairs two at the time. He pushes their front door open, then winces when it bounces back against the wall. He always throws doors open too hard, it does May’s head in. There’s a whole dent in the wall where the doorknob keeps hitting it.

He pulls away his scarf. He kicks off his shoes, sending them flying through the hallway. He breathes on his cold fingers and rubs his hands together as he shuffles inside.

He stubs his toe on a box right next to the doorway when he steps into the living room. There are often boxes stacked up against the wall in their apartment, with DONATE written on them. It’s stuff May gets all over the place, from neighbors, friends, sometimes friendly store owners. When she has a few boxes full, she’ll bring them along to FEAST, the homeless shelter she works at.

It’s a reminder that there’s always people worse off than them, Peter thinks, hopping on one leg and rubbing at his poor toe. So he doesn’t kick the box for being in his way, even if he kinda wants to.

The apartment is dark. May isn’t home yet. She texted him that she was going to have dinner with someone, which is nice. May never gets to do nice things anymore and it’s a damn shame. He shuffles through the darkness until he can flick on the small table lamp next to the couch. May already explained a few times that it doesn’t really matter for the electric bill, which light they use. That it’s only maybe five bucks in a whole year you save by using one or the other. But Peter can’t help himself. If it were up to him, they wouldn’t turn on the lights at all. They’d just sit in the dark all the time. It’s pretty cosy in the dark, and people can’t see you, which is always nice. Safe.

He sits and leans his elbows on his knees and leafs through the big, heavy coffee table book for a minute. Ben and May had it made, coincidentally only a few months before Ben died. Peter loves this book, for two reasons. One: it has all their family pictures, almost four hundred pages of them. Two: it has proven to be a very good weapon to bash someone’s head in if needed.

He takes out his chemistry book and sits close to the light to read the assignment. It’s for next week, but he always gets his work done early. Teachers don’t usually like his attitude, but they like his grades.

He has just uncapped his pen and opened his notebook when the front door opens and shuts and May calls out.

“Hey,” Peter calls back.

May appears in the doorway, leaning against the doorpost as she unbuttons her coat. “Hard worker.”

“Pot, kettle.”

She shuffles closer. “How was your day? How was Tony?”

Peter shrugs, tapping his pen against the cover of his book. “I broke his favorite mug and didn’t tell him.”

She chuckles softly and doesn’t berate him. “Any Spider-Man?”

“No, I had dinner at the tower, then came home.”

She sits next to him on the couch, her coat flopping open, and rakes a hand through her hair. “I went to dinner.”

“I know, you said.”

“With Happy Hogan.”

Peter’s pen snaps in half between his fingers and ink sprays up into his face. He splutters and wipes at it with his sleeve. “What?”

She chuckles again. “Oh, honey,” she leans in and lifts the tip of her scarf to wipe his face.

“Don’t, you’ll ruin your scarf.”

“You’re ruining your sweater.”

“And my chemistry book,” Peter grumbles, swiping the remains of his pen from his lap to the floor. There’s ink all over a drawing of three isotopes of carbon. “What do you mean you went to dinner with Happy?”

“He’s a nice man.”

“Was it…” Peter hugs the open book to his chest, drawing up his knees. “Was it a date?” There is a prickle of dread in the back of his mind.

“In a way, yes,” she calmly affirms. “But I told him the timing is not good, and I’m not dating anyone right now.”

Because of you, is left unsaid. There are stirrings of guilt, now. “Do you… want to date him?”

He and May always tell each other the truth. “If the circumstances were different, why not,” she says with sincerity. “He seems like a nice man. And he cares about you. That’s a very big plus in my book.”

Peter can feel his whole face twist up. Happy, the guy who looks like he runs a dog fighting syndicate in his spare time, a nice man? Cares? Still, though. “I don’t want you to… to not date someone because of me.” Not for the first time, he feels like he is just aggressively standing in the way of her happiness.

“It’s not because of you, it’s because of Robbie.”

Fucking Robbie. “Same difference,” Peter says, frustrated.

“Too bad,” May says. “Because your peace of mind is the most important thing to me and it takes precedence over everything else in my life. You’re just going to have to be okay with that. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”

“I can be comfortable,” Peter says, probably far too quickly.

May waves a hand, as if the point is moot. “I don’t have time to date anyone at the moment, anyway. Dating is exhausting.” She takes out her phone and starts scrolling. Peter recognizes the usual coupon app. That’s another thing. May rarely has the time to grocery shop or the energy to cook, but they both know ordering food is a lot more expensive. You’re poor, which means you have to work hard, which means you never have energy to figure out how to effectively save costs, which means you stay poor, which means you have to work hard. Round and round you go, with no clear way out.

“Remember, our caseworker is visiting after the weekend,” May says.

Because that is the most terrifying thing of all. To the state, a family being poor can apparently be a reason to rip them apart.

-

Late spring, only a few months after Ben’s death, social workers descended on them like hungry wolves, picked apart their bills and debts, looked at Peter’s threadbare clothes and stamped the word NEGLECT on their forms.

A stupid hipster-looking social worker with a stupid little beard and stupid half-long hair interviewed Peter in his bedroom, asking really anal question about what he had for breakfast and when he bought those shoes.

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” Peter said.

“We’re concerned that your aunt might not be able to meet your basic, concrete needs. When custody was assigned to her and your uncle—”

“We’ll be fine,” Peter said. “I can get a job, I can help her out. I have some—some savings.” He picked up the old tin Ben gave him once, where he kept his money. He was about to take off the lid and show him, but then he looked up. And he could immediately tell from the expression on the man’s face that this had been the wrong thing to say. A sympathetic look of pity, one of those really pretentious ones.

Even now, months later, Peter sometimes thinks about that moment and wonders: if he had been smarter, said the right thing, maybe... Maybe May would have been spared all the work, the hassle, the humiliation she had to go through to prove that she could take care of him.

But he didn’t say the right thing, so he was whisked away to some white-picket-fence family on the other side of the city, all because of one stupid piggy-bank mistake. He was absolutely furious, broke the mirror in their white-picket-fence-bathroom, was sent to a second family where he kicked in their coffee table, and then to a group home, all within a week and a half.

It finally occurred to him to just run away, so he did, and he sat outside the door of their apartment until May came home.

She looked about as bad as he felt; tired, overwrought. “Oh, sweetheart,” she said in a rusty voice, and sat down next to him. They hugged on the welcome home doormat for what felt like an hour.

“I’m just gonna keep running away,” Peter said, “until they run out of places to keep me.”

May squeezed his face between her hands and drew in a few deep breaths. “Peter, I’m moving heaven and earth to get you back. I got a friend who knows about legal stuff, he’s helping. But if I don’t play by their rules, they will just have more ammo against me. I have to call them and tell them you are here.”

He felt a sudden sharp spike of betrayal. “Fuck you, you don’t even want me,” he said, white hot, and May’s face absolutely crumpled. All the anger flooded out of him and he immediately felt awful because he knew it wasn’t true. He dove back into her arms and apologized and apologized.

But he still feels guilty about it to this day, an awful clench in his chest whenever he thinks of that expression on May’s face.

After that, he kept his head down, though. Stuck to the rules in his group home, stayed in his bedroom all day, didn’t talk to anyone. And May did get him back, after mountains of paperwork, insanely high hoops and one threat of a lawsuit. She took double shifts, weekend shifts, night shifts at the homeless shelter where she worked. And May’s friend Robbie who knew about legal stuff suddenly came over to help out. A lot. Which seemed nice at the time.

Social workers continued monitoring them. The stupid hipster-guy was gone, at least. Their new tormentor became a woman named Tanya, except it was spelled Thanyia. T h a n y i a. That’s not a name, that’s a strong password. People with weirdly spelled names are always the worst.

May getting sick, burning out, losing her job, making one bad financial decision… it felt like any one of those things could turn their lives upside down all over again.

And then spring turned into a hot, stuffy summer and Tony Stark came along with his fictional grant that had money involved in it or whatever.

He uses the money to support May. The social workers wouldn’t allow that, and May wouldn’t allow it either, so Peter makes sure none of them know. He sneaks new groceries onto their shelves. Fixes her car and pretends he did it without ordering new parts. And whenever he loses his backpack, he finds one of the exact same color and brand. The store owner practically knows his name by now. May doesn’t know he has already gone through four of them this year.

It never really feels like they have a lot of control over their own life. All they can do is hang on.

-

“Incidentally. How was your date?” Pepper asks.

Some color has returned to her face. Tony has cocooned her up in several blankets and shoved an enormous cup of tea into her hands. He’s back in the kitchen, making coffee.

Happy looks down and runs a hand down his fancy shirt. “I had a very good time. She doesn’t want to date, though.”

“Did she give you a reason?”

“Bad timing. Just came out of a relationship, apparently.”

She hums, tapping her sharp nails against her cup.

Pepper was the first person Happy told about his somewhat embarrassing crush. She might be the person he trusts the most in this whole world — the two of them spending all those years together figuring out how to keep Tony alive before Tony figured out how to keep himself alive. Partners in crime. Pepper had been uncharacteristically enthusiastic about the idea of Happy dating someone, calling it “splendacious”, which made Happy feel a bit less awkward about the whole… ‘having feelings’-thing. Suck it up and move on, that’s how he was raised. “And I think she is worried about Peter. I mean, I’m worried about that bit, too. The kid still doesn’t like me much, it seems.”

“Prickly exterior,” she says. “Like a little hedgehog.” She clenches her teacup between her knees, pulls in her lower lip and holds up her hands next to her face in what is apparently a hedgehog impression.

“He’s not prickly with you.”

She leans back. “No. But we don’t chat that often. On occasion, he does get a tad defensive when I ask a more personal question. So I’m inclined to believe this disposition extends to his interactions with most anyone. We all remember the Tangerine Incident.”

“Yes, we do,” Happy agrees. “It’s the whole reason we don’t have fruit baskets at the reception desk anymore.”

Tony returns with two cups of coffee. “Can’t find my good mug,” he says a bit grumpily as he hands Happy his coffee. “FRIDAY, where did I put it? The one that says I don’t talk until my cup is empty?”

“Mr. Parker dropped and broke it this afternoon. He hid the shards in the trashcan.”

Tony freezes momentarily, hovering above the armchair he was about to sit down in. “Okay,” he says slowly. He sags down and takes a sip.

“I suppose you’ll have to content yourself with one of the other five hundred mugs we have in this penthouse,” Pepper says.

Tony sticks out his tongue at her.

Chapter Text

Pepper seemed all right last night, and seems all right Saturday morning when Tony finds her at the breakfast table behind her laptop, drinking coffee, wearing her usual chic clothes, high heels.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Tony asks.

“Relaxing.”

“Uh-huh. What would not relaxing look like?”

“I’m merely reading the news.”

Tony read through all of the flyers Helen gave them. Limiting screen time, practicing meditation, engaging in moderate physical activities, avoiding caffeine.

“I feel all right, in fact,” Pepper says. “I suspect I just require a few good nights’ sleep. There’s an afternoon meeting that I—”

“Pepper, honey, please.” Tony pulls out a chair and sits. He folds his hands and looks at her intently. “You need to slow down.”

She blows a strand of hair away from her face, annoyed. “Well. What would you have me do?”

“What I would like,” Tony says, “is that the only thing you need to focus on, every single day for the next one hundred days, is what flavor tea you’d like to have next.”

Pepper promptly bursts into tears.

-

May has a weekend shift at FEAST. “Just leave the heat turned down,” Peter tells her. “I’m gonna patrol a bit in the morning and then stay at Ned’s place.” He thinks Ned is visiting his grandma, actually, but it’s whatever, he’ll think of something to do.

“I’ll bring dinner,” May says. Saturdays is usually when supermarkets donate their surplus food to the shelter, and anything that doesn’t have a shelf life needs to be eaten as quickly as possible, often leading to whacky food combinations like last week’s pizza with peas, potatoes and avocado. There are always leftovers for the employees to bring home. It’s always lowkey Peter’s favorite meal of the week.

He drops Ned a message, asking if he’s home. Ned quickly texts back and yeah, as Peter had suspected, he’s not around today but he will be tomorrow. So that’s one day sorted at least. Small mercies, as Ben used to say. Peter chucks his phone on his desk, crams his suit into his backpack and zips up his jacket as high as it will go before heading out. He decides on turning left today; he’s vibing with left. He tries to pick a different back alley to change in every time, because being predictable is how dumbasses get their identities discovered, and Peter’s no dumbass, thank you.

Light rain blows against his face as he trudges down the street. It’s such a damn cold November, almost making him long back to that record-breaking hot summer. Even if it was probably the worst summer of his life, one out of five stars on yelp, zero out of ten dentists recommend. He pulls the collar of his jacket up over his mouth and breathes in through his nose, out through his mouth, blowing warm air down his chest.

By the time he reaches a good back alley with blind walls all around, his cheeks are stinging from the wind. He can’t wait to get his mask on.

Someone left an armchair with one broken leg and a crummy, rolled up rug under a fire escape. Like a sort of sad parody of an IKEA showroom. Peter quickly changes into his suit, huffing and hopping to keep himself warm. He hides his backpack under the armchair and his jacket and shoes inside the rug. And then he swiftly scales the wall towards the rooftop. A crow flutters away as soon as he pulls himself over the ledge. Peter sits back for a moment and watches it fly off.

If birds are the souls of dead people, he thinks his parents can be found amongst the ducks in the park, just hanging out and being friendly, but uncle Ben is definitely more of a crow-type. Clever, bold, a bit mischievous.

He stands and readjusts his webshooters before taking a giant leap and swinging off towards an intersection, letting the sound of distant sirens guide him.

It’s a busy morning, but in a nice way. Not a lot of people being assholes, today. Most problems he encounters are just people needing help fixing something, or finding something, or carrying something. So Peter fixes, finds and carries his damn heart out. When the weather is a bit shitty, people tend to be more generous too. They offer him snacks and buy him hot drinks. When he hits up a hot dog cart around lunch time it’s not even raining anymore, but the vendor still gives him a hot dog for free, and with lots of onions piled on top, too.

“Hey, thanks,” Peter says.

She also offers him a single wrapped mint that he rejects. He hates the smell of mint since Germany. Even the slightest hint makes him gag. He even needed new toothpaste. He tells people it’s allergies.

“That suit keeping you warm enough, kid?” the vendor asks, her brow furrowed with a matronly sort of concern as she looks him over. No one ever asks his age, but a lot of New Yorkers call him ‘kid’ when they talk to him. Peter has stopped trying to deny it.

“Yeah, Tony Stark made it. It’s like, magic fabric. He’s very extra.”

She hums and smiles. “All right. Don’t work too hard.”

Peter gives her a little wave and then shoots a web to yank himself upwards to the roof. He sits, leaning his feet against the edge of the gutter. He carefully rolls his mask past his mouth, and then shoves half the hot-dog in in one go.

It was at the very end of that hot, stuffy, horrible summer that he told May about Spider-Man. A bit impulsively; he hadn’t planned to. But they had gone through so much together by that point that it seemed weird to keep this from her. He’s not used to keeping secrets from her, and he doesn’t really  have a reason to. She always understands, always. Spider-Man blind-sided her, definitely. But she understood that, too. She’s the GOAT.

He finishes the hotdog and decides to call it a day and head back to the alleyway.

The armchair is where he left it, but when he crouches down and reaches underneath — crap. Another backpack gone. He sits back on his haunches and sighs deeply, shaking his head and muttering a curse. Well. Bright side: now he’ll have something to do this afternoon. Keep himself nice and busy. A bit depressing, sure, but still not as depressing as just wandering around the city all day and counting all the red cars or whatever. He’ll have to go buy a similar pair of jeans, a similar black sweater. And the fifth backpack of the year. May’s never gonna know they were ever missing.

At least his shoes and jacket are still tugged away inside the rug. Yeah, small mercies. He leaves them there for now because he can’t be seen walking around the city wearing Peter Parker’s jacket over Spider-Man’s suit.

He knows the drill by now. He’s got an emergency fifty dollars tucked into the left boot of his suit and he pries it out before sauntering out of the alley and heading towards the usual secondhand clothing shop, about three blocks away.

The store owner is used to seeing him appear by now. “Aw, kid, stole your stuff again?” he asks sympathetically. A few of the customers do stare, though.

“Yeah,” Peter says, and “uh, ’scuse me,” as he ducks around a gaping elderly woman with her arms full of sweatpants to reach the jeans piled up in the back. He finds a pretty similar pair of jeans, and a black sweater that has a slightly different cut than the last one, but he doesn’t think May will notice. He grabs any pair of socks — May doesn’t really keep track of those — and dumps everything in a pile on the counter. He puts his fifty-dollar bill on top. The jeans were twenty bucks and the sweater fifteen and the socks, whatever, but the store owner still gives him a crisp twenty-dollar bill in return. “Thanks, man,” Peter says. “You da real MVP.”

And back to the alley he heads, swinging the green plastic bag of clothes back and forth. He unrolls the rug a bit to tug out his jacket and shoes and changes out of his suit, rolling it up and stuffing it into the green plastic bag.

All right. Next up, head home to grab his wallet. Then off to the backpack store. That one’s a bit further away. It’s all good, though, he doesn’t have anything else to do. He swings the plastic bag over his shoulder and starts walking. He even takes a detour, staring at store windows, sometimes ducking inside and circling the store to warm up. It’s insane what all you can buy for money these days. His favorite thing he comes across today is a ceramic little statue of a garden gnome riding a unicorn. Like, what the fuck are people spending their salaries on? He also finds a mug that says Shuh da fuh cup! that makes him smile, but then he thinks of Tony’s favorite mug that he broke and he feels bad.

He grabs a stack of toilet paper from a corner store. He always hides them under his bed and then sneaks a roll into their bathroom every now and then so May doesn’t notice he’s resupplying their household.

He gets home and dumps the green plastic bag on the couch, finds his wallet. His phone is blinking on the nightstand so he turns on the screen. Missed call from Tony Stark, wow, such an honor. He heads back out and calls back as he meanders down the sidewalk, kicking at a pebble.

“Hey kid. What are you up to? You didn’t answer your phone but you weren’t patrolling anymore, either.”

Ugh. It always annoys him a little bit, the way Tony Stark Big-Brothers him through his suit. “I’m just kinda walking around all day.”

“Oh,” Tony says. “Sounds… fun?”

“Nothing else to do.”

“You can come to the tower.”

Huh. That hadn’t even occurred to Peter as an option. He kicks the pebble too hard and it bounces off onto the street. “Um. I like being on my own.” Tony always wants to bond. It can be a bit exhausting.

“That takes the wind out of my sails a bit,” Tony says. “I was going to invite you to come ice skating tomorrow. Pepper needs to do moderate physical activities to cope with her stress levels, but I’m having a hard time convincing her. Could really use your help.”

Hard to say no when he’s phrasing it like that. “Won’t people recognize you?”

“I’ve rented out a rink.”

So, so extra. “I’m supposed to meet a friend tomorrow.”

“Ned? Guy in the chair? Bring him along, I’d like to meet him.”

Peter doesn’t remember ever mentioning Ned except perhaps in passing, so it’s weird that Tony seems to know his name so well. “Uh…” he says, stalling for time. He isn’t even sure why it feels like such a chore sometimes, hanging out with Tony Stark. It’s probably because Tony is so focused on him when Peter really prefers to be a little invisible. He thinks of how excited Ned will be to get invited to shit like this. “All right. Okay, sounds… fun. I don’t have skates. Or money.”

“No worries. Okay, great. Happy will pick you up. Oh, bring your aunt too, if she wants.”

“She’s working all day.”

“Boo,” Tony says casually.

Peter feels irritation flare up again. “Text me a time,” he says, and hangs up. That guy needs a reality check.

He reaches the backpack store and heads straight for the usual corner in the back, only to stop dead when he doesn’t see the tried and trusted collection there.

“Ah, yes, young sir,” the store owner leans around the shelves, smiling brightly at him. “I was wondering if you’d turn up again. Your usual order is not available I’m afraid. But we have a great new line of very sturdy backpacks, great value.”

“No, I need…” Peter swallows, his throat suddenly dry. “I need one that is blue and white, like the one I had.”

“I’m sure we have something similar,” the man replies encouragingly, before turning back to the elderly gentleman he was assisting.

Peter walks up and down the aisles, heart in his throat. His backpack had quite a distinct blue-white pattern and he already knows he won’t find something similar enough to fool May. But she would never allow him to pay for a new backpack himself. He feels ready to cry and he doesn’t know why, he doesn’t even know why it matters so much. It’s just one new backpack, May can afford buying a new one once. It won’t—be like a whole, a whole thing where this backpack is the straw that breaks the camel’s back and everything will spiral and Peter will end up back in a foster home because he’s such a fucking idiot. It will be fine. And Peter will just make sure to have May buy one in a plain color that is easier to replace without her noticing the difference.

He leaves the store, feeling hollow and exhausted.

It’s his fault for not anticipating this. If he just expects bad things to happen, they won’t hurt as much when they do.

-

It was right at the beginning of that record-hot summer. They flew back from Germany, drove back from the airport, and Peter did his best to seem normal. He made himself smile when he thought he was supposed to. He fiddled with his camera app. And he told himself, over and over, I am never telling Mr. Stark about this. He wasn’t even sure what there was to tell, what exactly it was that happened in his Bad Worse hotel room, how to even put words to it. He just knows it wasn’t right, it was… awkward and bizarre. And he isn’t talking about it, not in a million years.

Tony homed in on the camera lens, the way he was probably used to doing in front of the press. “You’re making a little video diary?”

“I told him not to do it,” Happy immediately butted in from the front seat.

“I’m not gonna do anything stupid,” Peter snapped, “I know how to keep my identity a secret unlike some people.”

Happy huffed loudly, but Tony said: “Hey. It’s all right. How’s about we record something together for your lovely aunt?”

“I’m not doing it anymore.”

“I’m gonna erase everything,” Happy promised. “I’ll take care of it.”

Peter clenched the phone to his chest, pulling his knees up for extra measure. “Don’t touch my stuff!”

“He filmed us on the airplane, filmed me sleeping.”

“You look dumb when you sleep, it’s funny. If you don’t want to be filmed, get a different face.”

“He even recorded the whole damn skirmish at the airport.”

Peter squeezed his eyes shut.

He was in the middle of an extended report on the airport-fight when someone knocked at his hotel room door. A woman with sharp features and an asymmetrical haircut. She was chewing gum, open-mouthed and loud. “We have thin walls, you know,” she said.
“Oh—yeah. Sorry.”
“Where are your parents?”
“It’s just me,” Peter said. The last thing he wanted was to involve Mr. Hogan.
She chewed some more. “Is that right.”

He pressed his hands against his eyes, kaleidoscopic blobs of color exploding behind his eyelids, and started kicking the back of Happy’s seat.

“Knock that off!” Happy barked.

“Hey,” Tony said, “I think I’ll let you keep the suit, how about that?”

It was very clearly an attempt to distract him, but Peter couldn’t not rise to the bait. He dropped his hands down to look up at Tony. “Really?”

“Yeah. Long as you promise not to do anything stupid. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, and don’t do anything I would do. There’s a little grey area in there, and that’s where you operate.”

They arrived at Ingram street. Happy threw the car door open and stomped around the car, opened the trunk, started rummaging around in there.

“Hey,” Tony said softly. “Happy is grumpy, but he does have a point. It’s probably smartest to erase that footage. He’s this close to a heart attack as it is.” He held his hand up, thumb and index finger pressed together.

“I already did.” Peter looked away from him. “I erased everything.”

“Good thinking,” Tony said. “How about a goodbye hug?” He already opened his arms.

Peter tugged at the door handle, his skin crawling. “We’re not there yet.”

He lugged his heavy suitcase up the front steps, letting it bump against every single step, and into the elevator. There was a man in there, who rudely stared straight at him. Peter turned away, leaning his forehead against the elevator wall. He didn’t like it when people look at him. He always felt scrutinized. He wished he could be invisible.

“You have nice cheekbones,” she said, chewing and chewing. “Anyone ever tell you that?”

He stumbled out on his floor. May should be home. He wanted to curl up on the couch, tucked up against her side, and play card games with her and not think about anything else for a while.

He pushed the front door open. It bounced back against the dent in the wall. The smell of nutmeg wafted down the hallway. This was a bad sign. Homecooked meals meant Robbie was around. Robbie, who kept their house clean, and washed their socks, and paid half their bills, and Peter hated it. Hated him. He tried not to, for May’s sake. But it was such a challenge to like this guy.

“Hey Petey,” Robbie said, leaning back to peer into the hallway. Robbie had a very round head and a lanky body. Peter always thought he looked a bit like a stick figure. “How was Germany?”

Peter grumbled something in response and walked past him, dropping his bag down by the couch.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that?” Robbie was very, very bad at just letting things go.

Peter slumped down on the couch and looked up at him, and remembered that he had promised himself to try. “It was fine. Didn’t get to go sight-seeing much.” He knew that May, who was already running on empty, would probably collapse entirely without Robbie here. He knew that he wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for Robbie. He’d still be stuck in some foster home.

So, yeah. Peter owed him. But that didn’t mean he had to like him.

“I’m making your favorite,” Robbie said, waving a big spoon.

Whatever. Peter almost said it out loud, but held himself back. Robbie obviously believed that the way to Peter’s heart was through his stomach, that love was measured in calories, from the very first moment when he introduced Peter to peanut butter sandwiches with Cheeto dust on top. This was back when Peter thought he might like Robbie. Before Robbie’s little mannerisms were beginning to grate on him.

“You didn’t take off your shoes,” Robbie pointed out. “I just vacuumed the place.”

Peter let out an ugly huff of breath and rolled over on the couch to bury his face in the cushions.

He could smell the gum in her mouth, pervasively minty. “You have nice collarbones, too,” she said. “Can I touch them?”

He did a full body shiver and pushed himself up again. Went into the hallway to kick off his shoes. They went flying, landing against the front door and tumbling down to the mat.

“Don’t bring this kind of energy into the house, young man,” Robbie said from behind him, in the usual tone. “We’ve talked about this. —Hey, what are you doing?”

Peter, who had been halfway to May’s bedroom, hand already outstretched to the doorknob, froze. “What? I want to talk to May.”

“She’s sleeping. You know how much she needs it.”

“I don’t care.” Without waiting for a reaction, he pushed his way into her bedroom and shut the door behind him. The room was dark and none of their ruckus had woken May up. Her breathing was steady and slow. She really did need her sleep. Peter was being selfish. Nothing new, there.

He shuffled forward, holding out a hand to grab a hold of the footboard so he could carefully round the bed and find the empty side. He crawled under the blanket, listened to May’s breathing and smelled her shampoo, and that’s when he began to shake, seemingly out of nowhere. His hands trembled most of all, so he tucked them between his legs and pressed his lips together until they hurt. Thoughts were clattering around in his head.

He and May had always told each other the unfiltered truth, but Peter wasn’t entirely sure what the truth even was, right now.

He knew he wouldn’t have a whole lot of time before Robbie would call them for dinner, so — still selfish — he reached out to gently poked May’s arm. And again.

Her eyes drifted open. She saw him and she smiled, and a few things fell back into place.

“Sorry I woke you up,” he breathed. “I missed you.”

He still remembers now how even in the low light, he could see her eyes crinkling fondly. “How was Germany?”

“Good. Didn’t get to go sight-seeing much.”

“Met the other interns?”

“Yeah. All mega-nerds.”

She reached out to clasp Peter’s hand. “Sounds right up your alley.”

“Are… you okay?”

She squeezed his hand. “Definitely. Just a rough day.” She always had rough days. Still does.

He hoped that this thing he was about to talk about wouldn’t make it worse. “There was an awkward thing, actually.”

She hums.

“Like. I don’t know how to feel about it.”

“Let’s hear it.”

He rubs his cheek against her sheets for a moment, turning his head into the mattress a little further. “Last night in the hotel,” he murmured, “someone knocked at the door, and it was this woman, and she was being weird, and she came into my room, and she kinda kept flirting with me, I guess, and she wouldn’t leave.”

There, he said it. He wanted her to acknowledge it was weird. Okay, hon, that woman sounds a bit cuckoo, I’m sorry you had to deal with her.

But May stayed quiet. When Peter glanced up at her again, her eyes were glittering furiously in a way that made Peter’s throat catch, made him want to slide out of bed and hide under it.

“Did she touch you?”

She just asked it, just like that, as if it was that simple to answer. “I didn’t know what to say. I just kind of… froze? I think if I had told her to leave, she would have. It was weird.”

May’s gaze was still intent, her lips pursed so tight they were going a little white.

From the kitchen, the sound of glasses and plates clinking together.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Peter whispered.

“Please tell me what happened. Exactly.”

-

He and May have always told each other the unfiltered truth. But even now, four months later as the sticky, hot summer has dissolved into a cold November, he hasn’t told Tony or Happy what happened at the hotel, and he has no intention to.

-

Happy holds the pet carrier with both hands as he steps out of the elevator, careful not to jostle it. He rounds the partition wall. Pepper is on the corner sofa, a fleece blanket tangled around her legs. She is watching Kung Fu Panda through half-lidded eyes. Tony is next to her, wearing clean clothes for once, legs crossed, tablet perched on his knee, concentrated frown as he reads.

It’s like watching Freaky Friday, role reversal.

They both look up at him as he approaches. “Express delivery,” Happy says, setting the pet carrier down on the coffee table and unfastening the latches.

Pepper pulls herself up higher and criss-crosses her legs, draping the blanket across them. Happy gently lifts the first bunny into her lap, and then the second. Both rabbits are a cinnamon, almost orangey brown with white patches here and there. They’re a smaller breed, fitting snuggly in Pepper’s lap.

“Aw,” Pepper breathes, and tears jump to her eyes. “Gosh, I’m already crying again.” She sniffles, her arms moving under the blanket to gather the rabbits closer.

Tony chuckles, sliding his tablet aside and scooching over. He wraps one arm around her, resting his chin on her shoulder. “They have your eyes,” he says.

“I got all the stuff in the car,” Happy says. “Enclosure, litter box, hay, treats, something called a zippi tunnel…” It’s a whole lot of blasted, plastic stuff. Things used to be built to last, but people don’t seem to care about that anymore, these days. Drat.

Tony sits up, kisses Pepper’s temple, then rises to his feet. “I’ll walk with you.”

They get back to the elevator. “Peter is coming to the ice rink tomorrow,” Tony shares as they make their descent. “He’s bringing Ned.”

“Nice work,” Happy says, pleasantly surprised. He didn’t expect Peter to say yes to that. “Is May coming?”

Tony gives him a bit of a knowing look. “Peter says she has to work.”

“Okay.” He gets the impression that May works a lot. More than a lot.

“Why do you think Peter would just hide that broken mug from me?” Tony asks suddenly. “Did he think I’d get mad at him? He doesn’t seem like the type of kid who would be worried about that.”

“Why not?” Happy asks, because it seems to him like exactly the sort of thing Peter would do.

“He’s quite brazen.”

“I’d say he’s defensive. People get defensive when they’re scared.”

Tony looks pensive, eyebrows drawing together. “Of me?”

Happy shrugs, because he doesn’t really know.

“We’ve known him for, what, five months now? And I feel he’s just pulling further and further away.”

“I know,” Happy says. “I don’t have the answer either. Maybe he’s had a bad experience. Or maybe it’s been all the upheaval in his life: his parents, his uncle. Or maybe it’s just puberty, what do we know.”

Tony lays his head back against the elevator wall and briefly closes his eyes, corners of his mouth tilting down. “I used to get annoyed at his attitude but I try not to, anymore. I mean. He reacts to kindness like a back-alley cat, but that just means he needs it more, right?”

“We’ll make it a fun day tomorrow.”

Tony gives a nod. “Let’s.”

Chapter Text

Ned turns up at the apartment next morning, his round face glowing with anticipation. He’s wearing brightly-patterned mittens, and a chullo hat with long strings. “This is the best day of my life,” he says with a fiery sincerity.

“Yeah.” Peter attempts to muster up some enthusiasm for Ned’s sake. If it weren’t for his friend coming along, he would have cancelled. He isn’t sure if he is ready for the world outside this apartment today; a world that seems so dead set on kicking him down.

Or maybe he would have done it for May’s sake. She hasn’t left for work yet; still taping up the boxes she’ll be bringing with her to the shelter. She was quietly pleased when Peter told her his plans for the day, clearly of the opinion that Peter could use a bit of fun.

Maybe it will be fun, and Peter should just get over himself. “I haven’t gone ice skating since I was about five,” he says.

“Dude,” Ned wraps the strings of his chullo around his mittens and tugs. “You’re mad athletic, you’ll have it down cold, or otherwise I’ll hold your hand and we’ll circle the rink like an old married couple all day.”

“Take some pictures,” May requests.

“I’m gonna practically have a camera taped to my forehead through this whole thing,” Ned says. “And I want that footage to play at my funeral.”

“Happy might force you to erase it all,” Peter says. He shivers. He wishes images could be erased from his brain just as easily. Or at the very least, that they’d stick quietly to their little folder instead of appearing at the forefront of his mind at the most unexpected moments.

Happy shows up only a few minutes later; their front door is still open so he just steps inside, wipes his feet. “I like your mittens,” he tells Ned. He must be making an effort to be nice again, because Peter doubts that’s true. Happy never wears anything with bright colors or patterns, as evidenced by his current big black coat, grey gloves and grey bowtie.

Peter puts on his own coat and gloves and while he is temporarily distracted, damnit, Happy has already gone into the living room and firmly inserts himself into May’s work preparations. “I’ll carry one.” He grabs the box on top.

Real fucking gent, looking out for her. Just like Robbie always would.

They all take the elevator down together. May is parked near the entrance. “My car’s over there,” Happy says, gesturing further down the road with his elbow.

Peter and Ned give a final wave to May and start down the sidewalk.

“Someone posted a video of Spider-Man rummaging through the socks in a secondhand shop last night,” Ned shares.

Peter’s stomach clenches. He was supposed to deal with that. “I lost my backpack again.”

“It looked pretty funny. People in the comments were making jokes about Spider-Man getting a new look.”

“I haven’t even told May and she won’t be home until late so the stores will be closed and we won’t even have, have time anymore for...”

The smile slides off Ned’s face. “Hey, don’t freak out. It’s just a backpack.”

“I’m freaking out, because our caseworker is coming over tomorrow, and she always wants to see my room and she’s going to be all like ‘oh my god he doesn’t even have a backpack that’s an automatic twelve-point deduction on, on….’ whatever, I don’t know how the fuck their system works.” They have reached Happy’s car. He lays his forehead against the cool, tinted glass of the backseat window and blows out a breath, thinking of the look on that social worker’s face when Peter showed him his piggy bank and promised to help pay the bills.

“You can borrow my backpack tomorrow,” Ned offers. “I’ll just put my stuff in a plastic bag until you got a new one.”

“Thanks,” Peter murmurs. “That might actually be helpful.”

Happy catches up with them. “Off we go,” he says. “Your aunt’s all set.”

Such a damn gent.

-

He made mac ‘n cheese for dinner once during that hot, stuffy summer, because Mr. Delmar had given him a box for free and he wanted to have dinner ready for May when she got home. Robbie arrived before May, though; immediately started tidying up the backpack and shoes that Peter had thrown all over the hallway, and the empty soda can Peter had left on the kitchen table, and turned up his nose at the mac ‘n cheese. “You couldn’t have done that on a different day? You know May gets food from the shelter on Saturdays.”

“Oh,” Peter said. “Right.”

“For chrissake, use your brain.”

Peter would have told him to fuck off, except Robbie sounded so exasperated and tired, like having Peter around was the giant-est chore, and Peter kinda felt that he should have used his brain. “I wanted to do something nice.”

“Next time you want to do something nice, maybe clean up after yourself for once instead of kicking your shoes all over the house.”

-

“I want you to invent little ice skates for bunnies,” Pepper says as she slowly draws a wavy line on the fogged-up passenger window. “So Thelma and Louise can partake next time.” She says things like that, now. Nonsensical things that just sort of drift to the conscious upper stream of her mind. Tony takes it as a good sign, a sort of sign that she’s allowing her mind to de-stress as well. Like this morning when he woke before her and watched her sleep for a while, and when she opened her eyes and saw him, her first words were “have we ever exchanged views about the Monarch Butterfly migration?”

Tony snorted.

“Because I think it’s amazing,” she said.

It took Pepper a day to accept her fate, but she has become a very good patient, full-on embraced relaxation mode. Tony tried to talk to her last night about the interim managers they appointed, thinking it would make her feel better to know the company was in good hands, but she said “I don’t even want to hear it.”

They’re drifting through traffic now, towards the north of Manhattan. Happy has texted to let him know they’re on their way too. A chance for Pepper to relax and a chance to bond with Peter. Killing two birds with one big rented-out indoor ice rink.

Peter is gonna love it.

-

“This is so stupid,” Peter says. “This is so weird, Tony.”

“Weird is fun, not stupid. Make up your mind, kid.”

The ice is glittering invitingly. Happy and Pepper already have their skates on and are doing a slow, wide circle, elbows hooked around each other, probably gossiping as always.

Peter’s friend Ned has one skate on and seemingly entirely forgot about the other. He’s standing a little way’s off, just staring at Happy and Pepper, mouth slightly hanging open. Ned is not what Tony expected. He’s almost the direct antithesis of Peter. Bubbly, cheerful, a little awkward, finds everything absolutely amazing.

Peter is on a metal bench, still battling it out with a tight knot in his left skate’s laces, his fingers angrily red from the cold. “Why did Pepper want to go ice skating? That’s so random.”

“I made her do it. She’s got a burn-out.”

Peter drops the skate to the floor, head jerking up like Tony just told him she’s pregnant. “Really?”

“Yeah. Worked too hard.”

“Oh,” Peter says, and bites the inside of his cheek. He snatches the skate back up. “What do—What happened? Can she still work?”

“No, the whole point is that she shouldn’t.”

“What would happen if she kept working?”

“Don’t know, but she practically had a heart attack the other day.”

“Fucking hell, a heart attack?” Peter repeats loudly, voice echoing across the ice. He tugs at the laces so hard they almost snap.

“Language, Petey.”

“Don’t call me that. And you do this.” He shoves his skate towards Tony.

“Magic word?”

Peter grumbles and says nothing, bows his head and stubbornly starts picking at the knot again.

“Go on, give me that.” Tony extends a hand. “She’ll be okay.”

“No doubt.” Peter hands over the skate with a huff and then slouches lower in his seat. “I’m just worried about my aunt. I mean, sure, I’m worried about Pepper, too, but she’s got a husband who can rent out a whole skating rink for her. I don’t think our insurance covers that.” He puts his gloves on and flexes his fingers, sighs.

Tony keeps his face neutral as he picks at the knot in Peter’s laces. He doesn’t remember Peter ever sharing a detail about his own life like that. First bonding accomplishment of the day. Now, don’t mess it up with stupid follow-up questions, Stark. “She away from home a lot?”

From the way Peter bristles and draws himself up, he can tell that this was a stupid follow-up question. “We’re fine! She’s not doing anything wrong!”

“All right, Tonya Harding.” The knot finally comes undone and he pulls it apart.

“Peter!” Ned is hopping back over. “Get on with it! I just thought of something brilliant. One word: Ice skating conga line.”

Peter wriggles his feet into his skates. “That’s one word, is it?”

“Iceskatingcongaline,” Ned says very quickly. “I want to go to bed tonight knowing that at least one thing I did with my life was to have an ice skating conga line with Iron Man and Pepper Potts oh my god.”

Peter glares. “And me and Happy are just here for decoration?”

Ned guffaws and hops closer, wrapping both arms around Peter’s shoulders and jostling him, quite roughly. “Come on, come on Mr. Grinch, come oooon.”

“Knock it off,” Peter says, shaking him off, but he’s smiling.

“Get them on,” Ned chants, poking his mittens at a different part of Peter’s body with each word. “Get them on, get them on, get them on.”

“Oh my goooood,” Peter protests, twisting away and sliding further down the bench to tie his laces. “There, I’m going faster than you, you only got one skate on.”

Ned looks down, clearly only just remembering that himself. “Shit, where did I put the other one?” he hops off.

Peter ducks his head but his smile is ear to ear and Tony’s heart sings at the sight. He can’t remember ever seeing Peter smile like that. He just watched Ned poke straight through Peter’s prickly exterior. And more importantly, Peter let him.

“I haven’t ice skated since I was about five,” Peter admits in a low voice.

“Conga line doesn’t sound so bad, then,” Tony suggests.

Peter chuckles for a moment, then cuts himself off and presses his lips together. Tony feels smug.

“Kid.” He lifts a hand to ruffle the boy’s hair but Peter ducks away and glares, so Tony lowers his hand again. “If you need some help. For anything. Just let me know.”

“We don’t need help.”

-

There were times, during that scorching summer, when Peter wondered if he should tell May that, seriously, he really didn’t like Robbie. But he wasn’t sure what he would even say. I hate the way he always cleans everything so perfectly. I hate that he keeps cooking my favorite meals. I hate that he drops me off at school and corrects my homework. I hate that he helps you so much. Yeah. As if that was gonna fly.

The air just felt so stifling whenever Robbie was around. Everything had to be in the right place and done at the right time and Peter was somehow always getting it wrong. And the more he got it wrong, the more he snapped back, and the more he snapped back, the more annoyed Robbie got in return.

In the end, May brought it up first, as they were having a blissful night to themselves, playing Go Fish. “How do you feel about having Robbie around so much, lately?”

Peter didn’t have an immediate answer. Saying nothing had been easy, but actually lying was hard. The truth was so dumb, though. “I don’t really know what to say about it.”

“You never seem very relaxed around him.”

“He’s uptight. That winds me up. And I don’t think he likes me.” He picked at the five of clubs.

“What makes you think that?”

“Because he’s just— I don’t know, I know he’s looking out for you. And then I do stuff that stresses you out and that pisses him off. And then he gets all nah nah nah nah” he mimicked Robbie’s most annoying patronizing tone.

“You don’t stress me out, Peter.”

Peter shrugged. Robbie was very good at picking apart and pointing out in great detail all the ways Peter was making life harder for May. As if Peter needed it pointed out to him.

“I’ll talk to him,” May said.

“Sure,” Peter said, not expecting much.

But then the next day, May had another weekend shift. Peter was supposed to go to the tower for his internship around ten, but Robbie turned up at the apartment with a brown paper bag. Unusual on a Saturday, because Robbie did competitive flag football which— Peter didn’t even know what that was. Still doesn’t. A sport for assholes, probably.

“Hey,” Robbie said, seeming very tense. Just walked into the apartment like he owned it. He put the paper bag on the kitchen table. “I brought you guys some oranges.”

“Yowzer. What would we do without you.”

His mouth flattened disapprovingly. “Since I’m here. Have you been talking to May about me?”

The oranges were just an excuse, clearly, to catch Peter alone. “Why? Does that hurt your feelings?”

“I think it hurts May a lot more than me.”

That made something clench painfully inside Peter’s chest. “What do you mean?”

Robbie’s voice was very cool and very even. “I just think it’s pretty selfish that out of the two of us, I’m the one actually supporting her, and then you make me out to be the bad guy.”

The words were a sharp stab right into the balloon of fear and guilt that had been growing in Peter’s chest ever since the Piggy Bank Incident. The fear and guilt that he was everything that was wrong with May’s life. “You,” Peter said, ashamed that he couldn’t keep his voice from trembling, “you can fuck right off, Mr. Asshat McFuckface.”

Robbie scoffed, bitter, and threw up his hands. “Typical response. You know what.” He pointed, his finger very close to Peter’s face. “If May loses you again, don’t expect me to lift a damn finger this time to help her get you back. She’d be better off.”

“You asshole,” Peter said. He was rattling apart but he wouldn’t cry in front of this man, so he channeled all that emotion into rage. He pushed over the bag of oranges, letting them roll out and drop to the floor. “You fucking shitface, I’m gonna make sure she dumps you harder than last week’s trash, you fucker, you—" and in the next moment, Peter found himself slammed against the wall hard enough to rattle his teeth, Robbie’s hand painfully tight around his arm.

“You want to calm down, kid.” Robbie’s voice was very low. “You want to calm down, right now, before you do something stupid. I’m here to help and I don’t see anyone else helping, so I’d be very careful.”

“You’re hurting me,” Peter said, as calmly as he could manage. “I’m giving you three seconds to let go of my arm, you f-fucking abusive piece of shit.”

Robbie sucked in a breath and then a second hand tightened suddenly around Peter’s neck, cutting off his air, his spider-senses spiked and Peter moved on instinct. He shoved.

Robbie landed flat on his back on the floor, his head knocking against the floorboard with a painful sounding thud. He let out a pretty pathetic whine. “What the hell, kid?”

“What did you think would happen?” Peter rasped, lifting one hand to press it against his burning throat. “Get out.”

“Excu-“

“OUT!” He advanced on Robbie, who finally had the good sense to look afraid and scrambled back until he hit the wall. “Out, out, out, out, out!” Peter yelled. Robbie pulled himself to his feet —“out out out out out!” — stumbled backwards down the hallway — “out out out out out out out!” — and stepped into the hallway. Peter slammed the door and kept yelling “out” until he no longer heard Robbie’s heartbeat on the other side of it.

He went back inside and kicked the oranges around until they all looked like roadside accidents and then sank to the floor, chest heaving.

If he had been a bit more right in the head at that point, he would have called May or maybe gone over to Ned’s place to have a familiar, friendly face until she’d get off work.

But he wasn’t right in the head, all his thoughts were ricocheting like pinballs, and he decided instead that what he really needed to do right now, was to get going because he’d be late to his internship. And since his arm was already beginning to bruise, the way it always happened with the speed of his cell regeneration, it seemed hugely logical to simply throw on his biggest sweater with a high collar and zip it all the way up. Never mind that today was the hottest day of this damn summer so far.

He got to the tower with his backpack and his sweater and his pinball thoughts. The security guard knew him; gave him a nod. Peter already took off his backpack to put on the plastic tray for the x-ray and stepped back, but then the guard said “jacket on the tray too, please.”

Peter froze. “What?”

“Jacket off and on the tray too, please.”

“I’ve never had to…” he trailed off. He had never worn a jacket to Stark Industries, because this whole summer had been a never-ending inferno. He looked at the security guard like a deer in headlights.

The headlights frowned back at him. “Jacket off and on the tray too, please.”

“Uh. No,” Peter said.

“I can’t let you—”

“Never mind. I’ll just not come in.” His heart was beating rabbit-quick.

The guard’s frown intensified by a factor of ten and he eyed Peter’s pockets like he expected he’d be finding meth in there. “And what is the objection, exactly?”

“Just, just give me my backpack.”

“You wanna tell me what you got up your sleeve, literally?”

They had a staring contest for another three seconds.

And then Peter darted around him and grabbed his backpack from the plastic tray.

“Oi!”

He ducked under the guard’s arms again, grabbed a tangerine off the fruit bowl on the reception desk and flung it at the security guard’s face, hard. It hit its target with a whack. Peter turned on his heel and ran out the doors.

For some reason, he always ended up in that one playground when he felt at his lowest. It had a set of swings over loose white sand, a green tube slide, monkey bars, a little merry-go-round. He liked the swings, but when there were other kids, Peter would usually sit at the picnic table and face away from them so the parents wouldn’t think he was weird.

Today was a Saturday and a hot one, so there were kids running around, screaming, and parents wafting themselves with magazines, foreheads gleaming with sweat. The ice cream place across the street was doing good business, there was a line all the way out the front door.

The picnic table was smack bam in the middle of the sun so Peter walked past it and laid down under a tree instead. Face down, arms spread wide, shirt clinging to his sweaty back. It was so damn hot and he wanted to get out of this sweater. He closed his eyes.

He hated Robbie, but he didn’t want him to leave. He was terrified, skin-crawlingly, breath-stiflingly, mind-numbingly terrified that May would keel over without someone else there, and Peter would be back in a group home, this time for the rest of his childhood.

His phone buzzed.

He rolled onto his side and wafted at a curiously hovering wasp before answering.

“Hey, kid,” Tony said. “I was expecting you here by now.”

Peter pulled out some blades of grass. “Uhh…”

“I was also informed that there has been a tangerine-based terrorist attack on my staff.”

Peter winced. He said nothing.

“Care to explain?”

Peter did not care to explain, no. He was never telling Tony about this. But he had to come up with something. “I just—had my Spider-suit in my backpack. Remembered it too late. So.”

“Hm-hm. Except the tracker shows your suit has been in the ceiling of your bedroom all day.”

“You’re tracking me?”

“I’m tracking the suit.”

Peter said nothing again.

“Peter?”

Peter said nothing.

There was a sigh at the other end. “Listen, kid, it’s not like we believe you were trying to smuggle a bomb in here,” (he heard the distinct noise of Happy grumbling something in the background) “we’re just… worried.”

That’s what the social worker said right before he yanked the rug out from under Peter’s feet. That’s what adults say when they pretend to be doing things in your best interest. Peter rubbed his face. His skin was tingling strangely. “Am I fired?”

“Why don’t you come back in so we can talk about it?” It sounded pretty ominous.

Peter squeezed his eyes shut. “Can I come in tomorrow?” The bruises would be gone by then.

Tony paused for a while. “Okay, kiddo,” he then said. “Leave the attitude at home, please. You’re doing Happy’s head in.”

That’s all Peter ever did, ever does: do people’s heads in.

He doesn’t really remember how he spent the rest of his day. He just remembers the important bit: the moment he got back to the apartment eventually and heard voices from inside.

May was home early. And Robbie was with her.

He gripped the zipper of his sweater and stepped into the living room, feeling a strange clearness in his mind, a laser-focus that usually only came when he was on patrol and someone was in danger.

The two of them were on the couch. May looked up at him, expression pinched with concern. “Hi honey. Robbie tells me you two had a bit of a fight.”

Robbie sat closest to the door, between her and him. He had the nerve to look contrite.

“Why don’t you sit down so we can talk it out?” May suggested.

Peter did not sit, no thank you. “Did he tell you he tried to strangle me?” he asked.

Something flashed over May’s face.

“I took him by the arm,” Robbie said, rolling his eyes. “To calm him down. Perhaps a little firmer than intended, but—”

Peter yanked the zipper of his sweater down and shook out of it. Robbie visibly paled, eyes shooting from Peter’s arm to his throat. He seemed genuinely shocked, like he hadn’t fully realized—

“Robbie,” May said, her eyes narrowing to furious slits.

“I… look, that is clearly… I went too far. But he punched me too, look!” Robbie lifted his shirt to show a bruise running just below his ribcage.

“Yes, I see,” May agreed, her face tight. “Well done, Peter.”

Robbie’s mouth dropped open, but his surprise quickly morphed into anger. “That’s how you raise him, huh? No wonder he turned out this way. All the stress he gives you and you never say a single word. You should be glad someone is stepping up to deal with him.”

“Get out,” May said.

“What?”

May rose from her seat like the Kraken rising out of the depths of the ocean. It felt as though she cast a shadow over the whole apartment. “Get out of my house.”

And then, when Robbie didn’t budge quickly enough, May grabbed that heavy, heavy coffee table book with the family pictures and started whacking him until he fled the apartment for the second time that day.

She took Peter to the bathroom, after, and sat him down on the toilet. Her fingers trembled as she dabbed a wet towel against his arm as if that would help anything. Peter let her, though, because it was one of those things where it was clear she needed this more than him. “Has he hurt you before?” she asked.

“No.”

She took his chin, her eyes piercing him. “Peter, has he hurt you before? Even just grabbed you too hard, or pushed you out of the way, or—”

“No, May. I promise. He just had an extra big stick up his butt today.”

She released his chin and dropped her head forward, hair falling over her eyes. “I am never dating someone again. What’s the point if I just pick buttfaces?”

“You don’t just pick buttfaces,” Peter said. “You picked Ben.”

“We are one hundred percent reporting him,” May said.

Peter bit the inside of his cheek. “Won’t it show up in the social workers’ records?” Another reason for them to think May couldn’t hack it as a parent.

“We’ve had this discussion.”

They did. They had this exact, very same discussion after Peter told her about the Bad Worse Incident. She wanted to file a police report, Peter very emphatically did not, worried that it would just draw attention to them and not actually solve anything. He had won in the end by pointing out that there was no statute of limitations and asking her to just give him a little time to think it over. As far as he was concerned, the whole thing would remain a cold case.

This time, though, she wasn’t budging. She took him down to the station that same evening. And it all went nowhere, a police lady wrote it all up, even took pictures of his bruised neck and arm, but they ended up not really doing anything, not as far as they could tell, at least. Which was just fine because it reinforced Peter’s argument that reporting these crimes was pointless.

“I can’t believe Spider-Man keeps telling me not to go to the police,” May said, when Peter argued that exact point.

“Spider-Man’s a vigilante,” Peter pointed out. “For a reason.” Why would he have faith in a government that couldn’t do jack shit about his uncle’s death, and yeeted him into a foster home over one Piggy Bank Incident?

“Will you be okay?” he asked. “Without Robbie?”

“Of course,” May said, and she sounded so determined that Peter decided to believe her.

But the next morning, Peter heard her crying in her bedroom before facing the day, gasping quietly, muffled, clearly trying to make sure Peter wouldn’t hear her. Peter curled further into himself and pulled his pillow over his head, his own tears burning behind his eyes.

-

And that’s all. That’s everything from that horrible summer that he is never telling Tony about.

Well, and there’s the broken mug from last week. He’s never telling Tony about that either.

-

He does get the hang of ice skating pretty quickly, in the end. He takes his first steps onto the ice with one arm hooked around Ned’s and one around Tony’s. They do one big circle together and then he says, irritably, “okay, I got it, sheesh, let go of me.”

He isn’t even the first person to fall on his butt. To his great pleasure, that honor goes to Happy. Happy complains about it, of course, blames it on Tony and on the ice and ‘back when I was a kid we didn’t use these overly fancy sharp skates, we had wooden skates, like real people’.

Tony just laughs at him.

When Peter first falls over, no one laughs. Pepper swiftly catches up and pulls him to his feet and doesn’t make a big fuss about it, just gently squeezes his arm and skates off again.

Pepper is nice.

They take a break to have sandwiches and Happy complains again that people put blasted avocado on everything these days. And how when he was a kid, they would skate outside, on real ice.

“A lot changed since you were a kid, Happy,” Tony says. “For example, we have electricity now.”

Happy glowers. “We’re practically the same age.”

“We used to go ice skating in Central Park every year,” Ned says. “But the last few winters were too warm. Maybe this year will be good.”

Hell. Someone referring to a cold-ass winter as ‘good’. Peter swallows the last of his avocado-hummus sandwich. “When it gets really cold out and all the, like, puddles and ponds get frozen over, do you think the ducks just get confused as hell, or do you think they have enough of a long-term memory to know that this has happened before?”

He tried to google a few days ago how long a duck’s memory is. He typed in how long duck, and google’s first autocomplete suggestion was how long duck in oven, which made him a little sad.

“I bet they have a ball,” Ned says. “I bet they slide around when no one is watching, like penguins.”

“I rescued a bird the other day that was frozen to a pipe on some rooftop. You’d think they know how to act when it’s cold out, don’t sit in one place because your ass will freeze to something. Like, how did they evolve over billions of years without having that little nugget of common sense ingrained in their DNA?”

“You didn’t mention any of that that,” Tony says. “We missed out. Your debriefs are generally about five words long. Stopped a robbery. Went well.”

“It’s not like you ever debrief me about any of your work.”

“Point taken.”

-

Happy drops Ned off, first. Peter walks him to his front door and when he returns to the car, gets in the front seat. Happy is fumbling with the GPS, as always. He’s not big on technology. “I’m probably under recently visited,” Peter suggests.

“Yes,” Happy says. “I was just considering… Maybe we head to the mall, first? Get you a new backpack?”

That’s a little sus. “Who said I need a backpack?”

“You and Ned were talking about it when I picked you up. Quite loudly.”

Peter feels a flush creep up from his neck. “Oh.” How much did Happy hear? Did he hear Peter talk about the social worker? Peter wants to ask, but he’s afraid that by even asking, he’ll give something away. “Did May hear?”

“Don’t think so.” Happy looks amused. “Usually when teenagers hide things from their parents, it’s not this sort of thing.”

“I don’t want her to have to spend money on me for no reason. She works too hard for me to just throw her income away on lost backpacks.”

“That’s why I’ll buy you one,” Happy says. “Or three. Because losing your backpack is an occupational hazard for Spider-Man. Most Avengers get a stipend to compensate stuff like this.”

“M’not an Avenger.”

“Please just take the silly excuse at face value and let me buy you a backpack.”

It’s so weird because Peter knows, he knows damn well that he’s been acting like a little shit for five months at least, and Happy and Tony somehow only got more patient with him. Happy gave him grief about the Tangerine Incident for about two weeks straight, but hasn’t even mentioned it anymore in months. And Peter is tired and worried, and it would be nice if things went his way for a change. “Okay,” he whispers. “Thank you.”

Chapter Text

Happy has always been of the professional opinion that Tony Stark is an extremely poor judge of character. Quick to trust people who would stab him in the back for a KitKat; patronizing and defensive towards people who actually endeavor to keep him alive. Pepper had been working for Tony for almost six years before he began to look at her as something more than some annoying, nameless PA who drifted through his workshop now and then to get him to sign things and remind him to eat a vegetable.

Bottom line, when Tony sent him a long, rambling voice message about some teenager from Queens who would be coming to Germany with them because he was ‘the best thing since sliced ciabatta’… Happy had his doubts.

And then he actually met Peter: an impertinent, sullen teenager who kept shoving his phone in Happy’s face all the way to their private airstrip, ‘vlogging’ or whatever it is that generation does with their phones all day. He kicked off his shoes, sending them flying through the private jet, ate all the snacks on the plane within the first ten minutes and then began staring at Happy, legs dangling over the armrest of his seat.

“Can I help you?” Happy asked pointedly.

“When am I getting paid?”

“What are you talking about.”

Peter’s frown deepened, he wrapped his arms tightly around himself. “Mr.— Tony said I’d get paid.”

Yikes. No work ethic, these days. “Ask him, then. No idea.”

Peter laid his cheek against the seat, his eyes not leaving Happy’s face. “What is your job, exactly?” He said it in a tone of voice that implied he hadn’t found Happy very useful thus far.

“I’m security.”

“You’re here to protect me?”

“From doing something stupid, yeah.”

Peter’s grin flashed up, then faded. “Good luck.”

Happy could see why Tony liked this kid. Which was not a good sign.

On the flight back home, two days later, the boy was even more sullen but at least left them alone; he curled up in his chair with his back to Happy and Tony and pretended to be asleep. He did throw quite a temper tantrum in the car, though, when Tony caught him vlogging again. Peter claimed he had erased all the footage. Happy didn’t believe a word of it and made sure to have the kid’s social media monitored for several weeks, but no photos or videos ever appeared.

-

The backpack store Happy leads them to has reduced opening hours on Sunday. It’s twenty minutes before closing and the store is quiet.

Peter seems to know what backpack he wants. He circles the store in one minute and then picks a plain black one.

“Grab two,” Happy suggests. “To have a back-up.”

Peter looks up at him, scrutinizingly, the backpack clutched to his chest. “Are you being all nice and smiley to me because you want to date my aunt?”

“No.”

“Why, then?”

 “I’m always nice and smiley.”

Peter looks faintly amused. He grabs a second backpack of the same color. Happy pays for both of them, Peter thanks him again with shoulders hunched down and a ducked head, and they head back to the car.

Peter gets into the back seat, sitting right behind him. An attempt to be as invisible as possible, probably. Happy decides not to remark on it.

Somewhere over the last months Peter graduated from the backseat to the front seat. Happy doesn’t know when exactly it happened. It just occurred to him one day, as the kid hopped down the front steps of his high school, that he was holding open the door on the passenger side. He couldn’t even remember if he had done it before. Maybe Peter had been riding shotgun for weeks before Happy finally realized.

The kid clearly failed to see it for the massive compliment it was. He had merely huffed when Happy told him he could even change the radio to a different channel if he wanted, despite the youth having no taste in music, these days.

Peter doesn’t usually crawl into the backseat anymore.

“When does your aunt get off work?” Happy asks.

A shuffling sound behind him. “Uh. Soon.”

Happy pokes his way through the blasted GPS system and finds Peter’s address in his recently visited locations. “You know what, kid,” he says slowly, “I’m the paranoid type, it takes me a sec to warm up to people. I’m sorry I wasn’t nice and smiley all that soon, back when we met.”

Peter says nothing and Happy can only see his shoulder in the rearview mirror.

“Head south on Hackney Road,” his GPS says. Happy often feels the urge to check the GPS’ claims on a proper, paper map. Blasted technology. He suppresses the urge and turns on his indicators, pulling up and slowly merging into traffic.

“I’m not gonna apologize back,” Peter warns suddenly.

Happy hums and smiles. Just the fact that the kid acknowledges that there might be something to apologize for when it comes to their interactions from past summer, gives him that funny little burst of exasperated fondness that only Tony Stark and Peter Parker can bring about.

-

May calls him late that evening to thank him for the backpacks. “I suspect Peter didn’t want me to know. I swear to god, if he lost a shoe, he’d rather hop around on one leg all day than ask me for money.”

Happy muted the TV to answer his phone and absentmindedly watches Michelle Yeoh punching someone’s head in on screen. “You’re welcome. It was nice to bond.” He can hear voices in the background. “Aren’t you at home?”

“Grocery shopping at the only bodega still open right now. Early morning shift tomorrow.”

“Do you ever have a day off?”

“I think I do, next weekend. Whoops.” The sound of something clattering to the floor.

Happy taps the remote control against his knee. “May, I’m worried about your stress levels.”

“Oh, don’t, this is just my vibe. Curses…” more unidentified noises.

“Can’t you take a bit of a break? You know Tony would be happy to financially support you if you’ll accept it.”

Her voice turns cynical. “So the state can declare me an unfit parent who can’t provide for her own family, and shove Peter in a foster home?”

Happy can’t even parse everything in that sentence thrown at him, seemingly out of nowhere. “What? May, they don’t just do that.” But when May scoffs, a laugh with no humor and full of resentment, Happy begins to suspect… “Peter mentioned a social worker today. Are they… Is there actually a risk that they’ll take him away?”

“Give me a moment, let me pay for this,” she says, and Happy waits through the noises of chatter, clinging bottles and bleeps. It takes almost two full minutes for May to come back to the phone, a little out of breath. It sounds like she is outside by now.

“You see,” she says, “you see…” She falters, then tries again. “They, uh,” she huffs, and then the sentences tumble out. “They already did. They removed Peter from my care, late spring. We were still getting our bearings after Ben’s death. I was behind on the rent. Some teacher probably complained that Peter kept coming to school with duct-taped shoes. They said I was neglecting him which, Jesus Christ, what arbitrary standards do I need to meet? I didn’t have money for shoes but I loved him!”

Happy turns off the TV entirely, sitting forward, thoughts racing. “Last spring…?”

“CPS schlepped him all over the city for almost a month and didn’t listen to anything I said until I threatened to file a lawsuit. I just got him back barely a week before Tony Stark turned up on my doorstep.”

“He never said anything.”

“Of course not, it’s fu— It’s embarrassing. And when I tell people they look at me like there’s probably something I’m hiding, like I was probably starving him and locking him in a cupboard or something.”

Happy feels the corners of his mouth quirk up, despite everything. “That’s Harry Potter, isn’t it?”

She huffs again. “I’m still furious. But they’re monitoring us, another home visit tomorrow, and if I’m not friendly and smiley and cooperative, I might lose him. If I work more, I neglect him emotionally. If I work less, I neglect him financially. If I ask for help, I’m an incompetent parent. There is no scenario where I win. I think I’ve been in survival mode for a very long time. But if I stop, I might lose him.”

“Would they really hold it against you if you asked for help?”

“Maybe not. But.” A car door slams and the background noises are dampened abruptly. “Listen. The last person I turned to for help in all this, turned out to be the biggest mistake I ever made.”

The infamous ex, probably. “Tony could…”

“Don’t tell Tony about this, please. I don’t mind, personally, but Peter sees him a lot more and you know how he is.”

Yes, the kid built so many walls around himself that even Tony’s bulldozer personality keeps rebounding. “Did someone hurt him while he was in foster care?”

“What makes you ask that?” May doesn’t sound all that surprised by the question. She mostly sounds tired.

“He’s…” Happy is suddenly worried that whatever he says will sound like an insult and falters.

“No one hurt him, per se,” May says. “I think he would have told me, he doesn’t keep many secrets. But he went through three homes in four weeks. Ran away, caused property damage. Very angry. It was plenty traumatizing without— without everything else.”

“Sounds pretty traumatizing for you, too,” Happy says gently.

She sniffles. “Don’t make me cry, you soppy potato.”

“Just think it over,” Happy says.

“I will,” she says. “I will. Gotta go now and have a good cry in my car before heading home.” And she adds, not very convincingly: “that was a joke.”

“Great. I love jokes.”

-

The first time Happy felt that specific, odd burst of fondness for Peter was a few weeks after the infamous Tangerine Incident, when FRIDAY informed him that Spider-Man had turned up in the lobby of the Tower.

Happy got downstairs to find Spider-Man slouched in one of their deep blue armchairs, reading TechCrunch magazine. When Happy approached, he clumsily threw it on the round table next to him and puffed out his chest. “I wanna talk to Tony. They wouldn’t let me in.”

Peter had never come to the tower as Spider-Man, they had no protocol for this. “Thanks for not throwing fruit at anyone’s head, I suppose,” Happy said. He was still a bit grumpy about that incident but he had accepted, after a few weeks of the kid absolutely refusing to say a single word to explain himself, that it would remain a cold case.

“Don’t Avengers get, like, an automatic free pass?”

“You’re not an Avenger.”

“Are you gonna let me in or what?”

“Yeah, I’m gonna let you in.” Happy beckoned with both hands.

Peter pushed himself up, a bit stiffly and awkwardly, and followed him past the detector gates and into the private elevator where Peter pulled off his mask. He leaned back against the wall, looking a bit pale.

“Did you pull a muscle or something?” Happy asked, taking in the way Peter held one arm stiffly across his stomach.

“Broke my wrist.”

“Shees— does it hurt?”

“Fucking agony.”

“You could have said something.” He slammed the button for the med bay instead. “How’d it happen?”

“You’re going to laugh at me.”

“Of course I won’t, I have no sense of humor.”

“Little baby goose lost its momma,” Peter said. “I walked all around the park with it to find her. First one I found with other babies hissed at it, all mean, chased it off. Kills me when they do that. Second one basically ignored it which I think is sort of the done thing with geese. That’s just their parenting style. So either that was its mommy or it’s got a foster mommy now.”

“All right…?”

“Slipped on some goose shit and fell down.”

Happy actually did laugh. Peter sent him a withering glare. “Sorry,” Happy said. “I lied.”

“I like birds,” Peter murmured.

That was the moment.

-

Peter wakes up unsettled. The images bleed away into nothing as soon as he opens his eyes. But he knows, just from the tightness in his chest and the queasiness in his stomach, that his dream was about Germany and minty chewing gum.

He sits up, pushes his head down between his knees and breathes out. His bedroom is cold, but it’s kinda nice because his PJs are sticking to his back, gross and clammy, ugh. He shivers and wriggles his toes to feel the sheets wrinkle between them. Sometimes he feels like a household object: a coat rack or a floor mat. He's either useful or he’s in the way. People think they can just move him around, can just grab him anywhere, can just walk all over him.

Once he no longer feels like he is about to throw up, he swings his legs over the edge of the bed and stretches.

Fucking home visit today.

Cold showers are the worst, even after a nightmare. He just never gets used to them. Peter grits his teeth as he rushes through shampooing his hair, suds flying everywhere. It’s probably an immediate five-point deduction if their caseworker comes in and sees him with unwashed hair. He rinses the soap out and turns off the shower with a relieved sigh. He wildly towels his hair dry and then uses a corner to wipe the condensation off the mirror with a squeaky sound. He looks at himself, critically.

He looks okay. Normal. No Spider-Man bruises anywhere. It's weird, the difference between how unfazed he feels about those bruises. Just bruises, no big deal. Just a huge, towering mugger with a balaclava coming at him with a knife, no big deal. Whereas Robbie, who was a pretty skinny dude and Peter could have snapped him in half if he wanted to… Big deal.

Everything will be fine.

He wraps the towel around himself and shuffles back to his own bedroom. May has already gone to work, which is a shame. Peter usually tells her whenever he had a nightmare about Germany and she’ll always hug him extra tight.

He gets dressed, careful to select stuff that looks relatively new. The day of a home visit always makes him think of that movie scene in ratatouille, where all the rats frantically clean up the kitchen to get it ready for the food critic’s arrival.

“Are we the rats in this scenario?” May asked him when he made that comparison out loud once.

“Yeah, but the rats are like the good guys in this movie. Most of the time.”

He leaves all the lights off as he shuffles his way through the living room, feeling around the edges of the kitchen counter. He pours some cereal into a bowl by the light of the fridge and then stands at the window, spooning it up dry.  

There is a woman standing on the balcony across the street, backlit by the light of her own living room, smoking, looking almost straight in his direction. She’s got a mad hairdo, looks a bit like Marge Simpson.  Peter likes the dark; likes that he can stand here and look into other people’s apartments, but no one can see him. It’s safe.

He puts his bowl in the sink and hovers for a moment, unsure if it would be best to wash the bowl so the apartment will look cleaner, or leave it out to show their caseworker he definitely had breakfast.

Fucking home visits. They’re like mental chess games.

He ends up leaving the bowl. Before heading out, he drops a message to Ned, letting him know that he won’t need to borrow his backpack, and another message to Tony that he forgot he can’t come to the internship today because I got some important shit going down so Ill come by tmorrow instead if that works and if it doesnt too bad.

-

It is right at the beginning of his calculus class when his phone pings and he spots an incoming voice message from Tony. Tony never voice messages him. And, he sees with a sinking feeling, the message is damn near three minutes long. Freaking hell, he hopes it’s not a whole lecture. He’s not in the mood for a lecture today.

He can’t listen to it in the middle of class, so he has to wait almost an hour for the class to be over. By then, he’s feeling hella nervous, and also annoyed at himself for being nervous.

It’s just stupid Tony Stark.

He ducks into the quiet alcove underneath the stairs to listen to the voice message… and it’s literally just Tony Stark rambling on for three minutes about Dum-E malfunctioning, the donuts tasting weird today, and making ice skates for bunny rabbits, and how that’s probably not considered animal abuse ‘because after all dogs have roller-skates now’.

Annoyed, he types out WHAT DID I JUST LISTEN TO? and hits send, before rushing off to his history class.

The second voice message drops right as he squeezes into the seat Ned kept for him. One minute and twenty-six seconds, crying out loud. He rolls his eyes and drops his phone into his backpack.

-

It’s raining when his classes finish so he runs all the way to the subway, leaping over puddles, almost breaks his damn neck going down the slippery steps.

There’s one seat available when he gets on the subway but it’s next to this lady who is chewing gum, blowing bubbles even, so Peter turns his back on her and grabs one of the overhead straps.

He plugs in his earbuds and taps play on Tony’s second voice message.

“What you just listened to, Underoos, is an example of a proper debriefing, and coincidentally also the dissertation of a genius, so pay attention. Now, I’m backtracking slightly on my earlier comment about roller skates for dogs. I looked into them a bit more and it turns out they’re for disabled pets, not to just give them a casual weekend hobby. I think we need to put a pin in our ice skates idea—” as if Peter had been in any way involved in that “—and move on to one of our other many pressing issues.” A pause. The sound of him slurping coffee, an unwelcome reminder that Peter broke his favorite mug last Friday. “Have you ever looked into the migration patterns of the Monarch Butterfly?” Tony then asks. “I was reading about it this morning. You should do an essay about it or something. Kid. If you ever need to do an essay for school, just hit me up. Remember when you didn’t want to go to Germany because you had homework? We should have stayed home and done your homework.”

Yeah, Peter thinks. They really should have.

“Now, bear in mind, back then I wasn’t the wise mentor figure that I still am not today. But I’m learning. What else… Oh, our food court on the 12th floor has a new candy corner. When you come over tomorrow I want to buy you a lollipop the size of your head. Doesn’t really align with our health policies but I guess Pepper’s replacement is loosening the reins a bit. I won’t tell her if you won’t. Mentorship lesson of the day: It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. And easiest to do neither. Anyway, uh... Good luck with your important shit. See you tomorrow. End of debrief.”

So, so extra.

Peter realizes too late that he is smiling. Despite all the resentment he feels, sometimes it’s hard to be mad at Tony Stark.

-

Thanyia is an intimidating woman. Tall and broad, with a loud voice and an even louder laugh. Peter hears it rolling down the hallway as soon as he steps out of the elevator. Gods, he’d hate to sit behind this woman in the movie theater during a comedy or something.

He feels all the muscles in his back lock down, readying for battle. He steps into the apartment to find May and Thanyia on the couch, drinking tea, both smiling pleasantly. The big coffee table book lies open in front of them like they had been casually chatting about family pictures. May is stupidly good at staying calm and friendly during these visits, and Peter knows he should be doing the same. That is the best way to convey that he is comfortable, happy and safe where he is. But he can’t be relaxed. There is a threat in his living room. He hates this woman and fears her in equal measure.

“Hiya Peter. How have you been?” Thanyia asks, voice shooting up the register as if Peter is a three-year-old.

Be cooperative, Peter. “Fine, thank you.”

“How was school?” May asks.

“Got an A-plus in biology.” He actually got that grade back last Thursday, but he kept it for today.

“Oh, well done, honey,” May says warmly while Thanyia yells out a loud and proud “Whoooaaah!” right over her. Peter winces at the noise. He toes off his shoes and neatly sets them next to the couch. Robbie would approve. He spots too late that the rain soaked straight through his shoes, leaving wet patches on his socks. Thanyia probably clocks it straight away, though.

He’s suddenly very, very tired of this whole puppet show. Tired of the way people look at him, want things from him, hover around him, smile at him.

“Shall we just have a chat right away, Peter?” Thanyia asks, smiling broadly as if a chat with her is a prize he won.

“Yeah, sure.”

He knows the drill. Bedroom inspection, or ‘environmental check’ as they call it, along with a personal interrogation, or ‘collaborative conversation’ as they call it. “Where do you want me to sit?” Thanyia asks once they’ve stepped into his room.

“Wherever you want.”

She takes the only chair in his room and Peter is glad. He doesn’t want some woman sitting down on his bed.

Be cooperative. Be cooperative.

He sits on his mattress, scooching away from her until his back hits the wall, clasps his hands tightly together and watches her. She is looking around his bedroom as if she’s seeing it all for the first time, despite coming over every month. Her large earrings swing gently back and forth. Her nails are unicorn pink with glitter. “What’s your favorite thing in your room?” she asks.

These questions are always so damn patronizing. He wants to say that his favorite thing is the door closing behind her ass as she leaves. “I don’t know. Everything is… Everything’s good.” He can’t seem to get his sentences up off the ground, they’re stuck in the mud.

“How have you been?”

“Grand.”

“Do you still have that internship?”

“Yup.”

She beams like that’s the most marvelous news she has heard all week. “Any idea what you want to do with the money?” A very transparent attempt to find out if he’s using the money to support May. That’s one thing about social workers. They think they’re so subtle and everyone else is an idiot. It would be hilarious if it weren’t mostly frustrating.

“I don’t know. Just saving up.”

“What’s a dream goal that you’re saving up for?”

“I don’t know,” Peter says, getting frustrated. Is he supposed to make something up on the spot? And if so, what is the correct answer? What is something teenagers buy with their money that would be deemed appropriate by a social worker?

“Are you angry at me?” she asks, her voice softer that time, her head cocked.

Be cooperative. Be cooperative. “No, ma’am.” He can see his fingers go white, but somehow can’t manage to unclasp his hands. He’s hanging onto the very edge of his self-control but dangerously close to losing his grip and plummeting down.

Act natural, Peter, or she’ll think there’s something wrong.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Peter? Is there anything you want to tell me? Anything at all? You can tell me whatever.”

Fuck this lady.

“I can’t tell you whatever,” he bites out. “I don’t know if you’re just that deluded or if you somehow take pleasure in—in playing this part…”

“If there’s any reason why you feel unsafe—"

“You make me feel unsafe. Jesus. How is that something I need to explain?”

“Explain it,” she says.

“You ripped me away from my family and put me through the worst month in my life while I was grieving my uncle. For, like, no reason at all, just because you thought you knew better. And I feel like I can’t even say anything about it, because if I get annoyed at you, you’ll mark us down as ‘uncooperative’ and end up just putting me through all of that all over again. So I just have to lay down like a doormat and smile and take it. Like, I have no say over my own life, tomorrow you could just randomly decide that I should move in with some family in Wisconsin and never see my aunt again, and there’s nothing I’d be able to do about it. That’s fucked up.”

She looks flabbergasted, as if that is the last thing she expected to hear. That alone pisses him off. Their shitstorm of a life is just a little blip on her radar.

She clears her throat, caps her pen, and Peter suddenly feels a bit dizzy. He doesn’t want to hear what she is about to say. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” she says. “But Peter—”

He stands abruptly. “Well, I just fucked it up, didn’t I?” he says. “So what’s the point anyways?”

He storms out, past a surprised May, out into the hallway, down the stairs. Without his shoes.

-

It’s still raining. He finds his way back to the usual playground, feet feeling like lumps of ice by the time he reaches it. The playground is deserted. Small mercies. He crawls into the tube slide and curls up, listens to the rain patter against the hard plastic.

His phone buzzes in his pocket. He pushes his head under his arms and ignores it, and ignores it the second time it buzzes, and the third. He’s waiting for the blind fear and panic to set in, but all he manages to feel is a distant, blank numbness.

He takes out his phone and swipes away from May’s missed calls. He opens his messaging app and taps the screen before pressing it to his ear.

“What you just listened to, Underoos, is an example of a proper debriefing over voicemail, and coincidentally also the dissertation of a genius, so pay attention. Now, I’m backtracking slightly on my earlier comment about roller skates for dogs.”

He listens to the whole thing, twice, and thinks the buzz in his brain might be tapering off a little bit.

He wants to talk to someone, and he dials the first number that comes to mind.

“Huh. Hey kid, what’s up. Are you waiting downstairs? Thought you were coming tomorrow.”

“I am.”

“Good,” Tony says slowly, tone curling up, and waits.

“I’m at the playground, inside the slide.”

“You’re—where?”

“At the playground.”

“Inside the slide.”

“Yeah. It’s raining.”

“Which playground?”

“Um. I don’t know the—There’s an ice cream place across the street.”

“I’ll find it. Stay there.”

Peter hadn’t even said he needed help.

Chapter Text

“Peter called me,” Tony says. The light jumps to green and he accelerates.

May breathes out. “Oh. Good.”

“Is he all right? He didn’t sound all right, I’m driving out to meet him.”

“He’s all right. I mean, no. But yes. Everything is okay, but he is freaking out. You can talk to him. I don’t want to say too much, I don’t know what he wants to… You can talk to him.”

“No one dead or dying?”

“Everything is okay. Thank you, Tony. I’m so glad he called you, he’s not answering for me.”

“Keep you updated.”

He arrives at the playground a few blocks from Peter’s house. It has a set of swings over muddy sand, monkey bars, a little merry-go-round and a green tube slide with a dark shadow inside.

He parks the car and steps out, pulling the hood of his coat forward. He crosses the street, hops over a puddle and zigzags through the chicane gates. He reaches the slide and leans down, spotting a pair of jeans and a pair of wet socks with sand clinging to them. Christ, kid isn’t even wearing shoes.

He straightens and raps his knuckles against the slide. “You in there?”

“Yeah.” Peter sounds rather subdued.

“You wanna come out?”

There is a shuffling sound, but Peter doesn’t appear at the mouth of the slide. Probably just rolled over in there.

The wind picks up and Tony shivers. It’s such a cold November. “Please, kid? Let’s go sit in my car. I have Twizzlers.”

Peter sniffles. “What flavor.”

“Rainbow, of course. What do you take me for?”

There is another shuffling sound, and this time Peter’s feet appear, and then his jeans, sweater, and finally his face: eyes shadowed and full of sorrow. “I don’t have my shoes.”

“I can see that.” Tony holds out a hand to help Peter up.

Peter ignores it and pushes himself to his feet. “Which car?”

Tony points and Peter pads off towards it, arms wrapped tightly around himself. Tony follows at a sedated pace, opens the door on the passenger side for him and then grabs their emergency fleece blanket from the trunk.

He gets behind the wheel. “Take those off,” he instructs, gesturing at Peter’s socks. “Before your toes fall off. Pull your feet up on the seat, wrap this around you.” He makes sure to use his most calm, even voice, because Peter always seems to actually listen to that one. Peter ducks his head and follows instructions, dragging the socks off, tugging the blanket around his shoulder and bunching it up around his bare feet. His socks are left in the footwell; two sad, wet clumps of fabric. Tony turns on the heater, full blast.

And then he turns back to Peter. “Can I give you a hug?”

“No. Piss off.”

“All right.” He adjusts the direction of the car heaters so they all blow in Peter’s direction, then turns on the radio to a low volume. “I called May.”

Peter plucks at his fringe. “What did she say?”

“Nothing much. Just that she was glad you called me.”

“I freaked out.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t know why I called you.”

“Want to talk about it?”

Peter turns sideways in his seat so he is facing Tony directly. He wipes his face with the tip of the blanket and sighs. “I got a bad grade.”

“Hmm.”

“It’s… stupid.” His voice wavers.

”Why?”

”Just is.” He coughs a bit, lifting the corner of the blanket to cover his mouth. His eyes droop.

“I don’t think it’s stupid,” Tony says. “So you can always call. Whatever it is, we can fix it together. We can study together, write an essay together. Whether it’s this or something else, whatever you need. Don’t be afraid to ask.”

Peter closes his eyes and tilts his head to the side to rest against the seat. “I don’t understand why you’re always trying to be nice to me when I’m never nice to you.”

“Yeah, real conundrum, that.”

“I liked your voice messages,” Peter murmurs.

Second mission accomplished. Tony merely hums in acknowledgement. It stays quiet for a while, rain pattering, heaters humming, windscreen wipers wiping and the radio DJ laughs about something.

“When we were in Germany, where did you sleep?” Peter asks. He has opened his eyes again. There is something unusually open about his expression.

“Sleep?”

“Me and Happy were staying at the Bad Worse hotel. Were you there, too?”

“Bad Wurzen. I had a room there but I ended up not really— I didn’t actually sleep there, I had a lot of overnight meetings, diplomatic incidents to ‘confabulate’ about, as Pepper called it.”

“Hm.” Peter frowns, considering. “If you had been there…” He doesn’t finish his sentence.

“Would we have hung out and watched a movie?” Tony guesses. “Why, yes we would have, assuming you would have let me into the room and not tried to keep me out with a ten feet pole.”

“We should have stayed home and done my homework.”

“Next time.”

Peter stretches a bit. His toes peek out but he rearranges the blanket around himself. “I didn’t actually get a bad grade,” he says.

“Hm-hmm.”

“We got a home visit from a social worker today and I fucked it up so they’re going to put me in a home now. Which is fine anyways because May is probably better off without me.” He sniffles. “But I’m just tired of people doing whatever they want with me.”

Tony looks at him for a while. “I see,” he says. He leans in and opens the glove compartment, takes out a packet of rainbow Twizzlers. “Let’s top-up our sugar levels while we unpack all of that.”

-

Tony met Peter at the beginning of a very hot, cloudless summer. Record hot summer, the news was saying.

Tony had seen videos of Spider-Man floating around the ol’ interwebs and cracked the kid’s identity at some point in March or perhaps April. He kept sitting on that information for a while, until that tidbit of info graduated from ‘fun fact’ to ‘potentially world saving’. Captain America was planning to commandeer a jet from Leipzig/Halle Airport and Tony needed all the help he could get to stop that lunatic.

FRIDAY gave him an address and the names Peter and May Parker.

“No pops around? Didn’t tragically die, I hope? I hate tragic backstories, so overdone.”

The subsequent family history FRIDAY succinctly laid out for him made Tony swallow those words along with a slice of humble pie.

Peter Parker himself was more or less the way Tony had expected him to be, based on the videos. Sardonic, flippant, sharp as a whip. But also a teenager with perfect grades and nothing on his rap sheet. All snark and no bite. “Give me one reason why I should go to Germany while you sit back and take the credit,” he said when Tony offered him his opportunity of a lifetime.

“It’s a nice hotel,” Tony said, trying to pull at the webbing that currently pinned his left hand down against the doorknob. “Great amenities.”

Peter leaned back against the wall, arms firmly crossed. “Oh. Yeah. Caviar for breakfast is definitely a good compensation for getting knocked around by a supersoldier.”

Tony gave up on the webbing and decided to act like getting stuck to the door had been part of his plan. He casually shoved his free hand into his pocket. “I’m hoping there won’t be any ‘knocking’ at all. I just want to show up and make sure he backs down. That’s why I need the numbers.”

“Quantity over quality, huh?”

“I mean, let’s be fair, I also got the best people on my team. You included.”

Peter lifted his chin higher. “I am not susceptible to ass-kissing.”

“What are you susceptible to?”

“Bribe,” Peter says, faux-casual. “I want money.”

“I got some of that.”

“We might be in business, then.”

The kid still seemed reluctant, though, so Tony guessed: “First time away from home for this long?” He hadn’t needed that thorough of a look at the apartment to know this little family probably didn’t have money to throw at vacations or summer camps.

Peter’s face shuttered. “Not exactly.”

-

Tony hadn’t paid it much mind at the time. But as they sit in the car, in the rain, across the street from the playground; as Peter describes the Piggy Bank Incident and the three foster homes he bounced his way through last spring, Tony suddenly vividly recalls that expression on Peter’s face, that ‘not exactly’, in that tone.

“Okay, kiddo,” he says. “I suggest what we do now is go talk to your aunt, assess the damage. And then figure out a fix.”

Peter shrugs listlessly, helplessly. He picks at his rainbow Twizzlers.

“Great,” Tony says, deciding to pretend that was a resounding ‘yes’. “FRIDAY, plot route back to Peter’s home. Send May the 411 and our ETA.” He taps Peter’s knee with the back of his hand, pleased when the kid doesn’t flinch away. “Put on a seatbelt.”

It's only a three-minute drive back to Ingram street. May is waiting for them on the sidewalk under a yellow umbrella, a large scarf wrapped around her shoulders, holding Peter’s shoes in her hand. Peter’s breath hitches when he sees her. When she opens the car door on the passenger side, drops the umbrella and perches on the edge of his seat, he shakes apart in her arms, stuttering out apologies.

“Hush,” May says. “Everything is okay, Peter. I promise. Let’s get upstairs and talk. Everything is okay.”

Tony exits and rounds the car to pick up the umbrella, holding it over both of them as May helps Peter wring his bare feet into his shoes. Peter is trembling; probably months’ worth of built-up tension coming to a head. Tony feels like he failed him, like he should have known. Though he realizes at the same time that it is a small miracle Peter told him this much. The kid might even regret it in the morning and become twice as defensive in an attempt to restore balance to their relationship.

He thinks of the phrase ‘I don’t talk until my cup is empty’ from his now-deceased favorite mug. Peter’s cup is definitely empty. That might be the only reason he started talking.

They head upstairs, May’s arm firmly around Peter’s waist. Peter still has the blanket wrapped around his shoulders. Tony is carrying the umbrella and the wet socks. When they reach the front door of their apartment Tony hovers for a moment, unsure if his presence is still wanted, but May smiles at him and asks “want some coffee?”

“Would be nice.” He knows he’d feel pretty restless for the remainder of the day if he were to bow out now.

He leaves the umbrella next to the front door to let it drip-dry before stepping inside. He spots a radiator beneath the coat rack and drapes the socks across them.

“So what’s the deal?” Peter stands in the middle of the room, roughly scrubs at his cheeks, visibly angry at himself for losing his calm. His voice is hard and even. “Should I just go pack, or what?” He kicks off his shoes. They fly over the couch and disappear from sight.

“You gave Thanyia a real piece of your mind, didn’t you.” May is smiling, but Peter shrinks in on himself.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters.

May gestures. “Sit. I’ll make coffee.”

“I can find my way around,” Tony offers. He has only been in this apartment twice before, but he has a remarkable memory when it comes to where to get coffee.

The first time was at the beginning of that boiling hot summer, when he recruited Peter for Germany. The second time was at the end of that boiling hot summer, when Peter told his aunt that he was Spider-Man and Tony was summoned to the Parkers’ apartment to be subjected to an hour-long lecture. He likes to think that really cemented his friendship with May.

He remembers the coffee; the dented tin can May had pulled out, green and blue, with a picture of a cat and ‘TREATS’ written in large letters on the side. He opens and closes cupboards and spots it next to the box of cereal.

While he fumbles around with the coffee maker, May and Peter sit down on the couch.

“We talked for a while,” May says. “Bottom line, she says she understands your frustration. And that she actually wanted to recommend back to the agency that they reduce the home visits to quarterly. She didn’t see any reason why this wouldn’t be a good home for you.”

“There wasn’t any reason back in spring, either!”

“She didn’t want to comment on that. Said it was before her time.”

Peter pounds his fist against a throw pillow. “Easy answer. That’s still her organization! Why is she acting like she’s got nothing to do with it?”

“I know,” May murmurs. “Pete— It pisses me off, too, this lack of accountability. But every system has flaws. It’s up to the good apples to fix them. Who knows, she might be a good one. Either way, she said her evaluation will be positive.”

“I’m supposed to just, what, trust her? Do you?”

“I’d prefer to call it reserving judgement.”

“I don’t like her. She’s pushy.”

“I don’t need to like her. I just need her to do her job right.”

Peter picks up the pillow and presses it over his own face.

“Okay, Peter?”

“I freaked out,” Peter says, muffled, from underneath the pillow.

“You’re allowed to.”

Peter pulls the pillow down and clenches it against his chest. “Okay. Okay, okay, ‘s all good. Let’s pretend it never happened.”

Tony flicks the button on the coffee maker and turns away from it. Peter will definitely hate him for what he is about to say. “You mentioned May would be better off without you, anyways?”

Peter rolls over, flopping onto his stomach and burying his face in the crease between the couch cushions. He lifts one arm to dramatically point blindly in Tony’s direction. “Traitor!”

May pinches the bridge of her nose; the gesture of a woman who has already had this discussion many times. “Peter—"

“I stress you out,” Peter says into the couch.

“You do not stress me out, our social workers stress me out!”

“But they’re here because of me, and you have to work way too hard, and I make a mess and always make mac ‘n cheese on the wrong days.”

May lays her hand on the back of his neck, tutting, shaking her head. “There’s no wrong day for mac ‘n cheese, I’ve told you that a million times.”

Peter sniffs in a way that makes clear that he thinks May is being an idiot, and says nothing. May looks up at Tony and smiles a strained smile. “Anything else I should know about?”

Peter gives a low growl of protest, but Tony is a superhero. He has faced greater threats. “The Piggy Bank Incident,” he says. Peter stays very still under May’s hand, but the coffee maker behind Tony makes a sort of groaning noise and a cloud of steam rises, as if it’s protesting on the kid’s behalf.

May’s brow furrows: this is clearly not something she has already heard a million times. “Peter?” Her tone rings with a steely authority.

Peter pushes himself up, folds his legs up underneath him. He doesn’t look her in the eye. “Well, I fu—uh, I whiffed it,” he says, resigned. “That first interview with the stupid hipster-looking social worker. And I didn’t want to say because it’s embarrassing and you’ll hate me, because you basically drove yourself into the ground trying to get me back.”

“All right,” May says. “Well, it’s a new topic, but this is all chugging down a very familiar track. Explain to me how it’s your fault?”

“I told him I’d get a job, support you. I showed him the money I had saved up. And I think I may as well have told him that you once swung me around by my pigtails and hammer-threw me out the window.”

The corners of May’s mouth quirk. “That’s from ‘Matilda’, is it?”

“It was definitely a ten-thousand-point deduction, and then they put me with the Millers family.”

“They put you with the Millers family because their policies are flawed,” May says. “Therefore, it can’t possibly be your fault. I think it’s very sweet that you made the offer, even if part of me wishes that you wouldn’t feel the need to worry about our finances. But some things are the way they are.” She tugs gently at a lock of his hair. “It’s very sad if you were somehow made to feel like your kindness was punished, because your kindness is such a lovely thing. Not a bug but a feature.”

Peter ducks his head further down and starts tugging at his fringe to hide his eyes. “I just wanted to help.”

“I know. Please don’t ever feel bad about that.”

Peter drops his hand down and sighs, then nods.

“I’m actually in the mood for mac ‘n cheese now,” May says. “Would you run to the corner store to grab a box?”

“Or you could just say ‘buzz off so I can talk to Tony’,” Peter says, but he gets up and finds his shoes.

When the front door has fallen shut behind him, Tony pours two cups of coffee and sets one down in front of May. He takes the other end of the couch. “You know, he broke my mug a while back and hid the shards in the trash can. He doesn’t know that I know.”

She hums. “He told me.”

“Why didn’t he tell me? What did he think I’d do, hammer-throw him out the window?”

She chuckles softly. “I don’t know, Tony. Maybe fire him? I know he doesn’t often let it show, but he loves the internship and… he clearly trusts you. I’m so glad he called you today. And actually talked to you.”

“I fear he might regret it in the morning,” Tony admits. “Because our usual mojo is, I ask him how he’s doing in school, he tells me to mind my own damn business.”

“I hope he isn’t … too challenging.”

“God, no. Didn’t mean it like that. I… really care about him, May.” He taps his fingers against his coffee cup as he looks at her for a while. “He’s quite different around you.”

“I know. I’ve had complaints.”

“He is worried about you and from what I’ve heard, I understand why. And I need you to know that I’m here for whatever you need to make life easier. Bills to pay, or lawsuits against CPS to file, or even just taking the kid for a weekend sometimes to give you some breathing space. We’ll call it another intern retreat.”

May breathes out a wry chuckle, devoid of any actual humor. “Don’t call it that,” she advises. She looks down, clenching her hands tighter around her coffee cup. “I’ve learned that sometimes it’s dangerous to rely too much on others for help.”

It occurs to Tony that she is maybe as defensive as Peter is. She’s just more polite about it.

“Thank you for the offer,” May says. “Give me a little time to think about it?”

-

Pepper is on the couch, next to a modest mountain of colorful yarn. She has started knitting scarves for everyone. Thelma and Louise are chasing each other around the living room. Happy is in the armchair, feet thrown up on the ottoman, bag of cashew nuts in his lap, making himself at home. He looks up at Tony. “Kid okay?”

“Yes and no.” He grabs a handful of cashews from Happy’s bowl before slumping down on the couch.

“Was it the home visit?” Happy asks. “May mentioned it.”

“Yeah, it’s all tickety boo, probably.” He starts sorting his cashews from small to big so he can eat them in that order. “Kid calmed down. Social worker possibly not the antichrist. I did some fair-to-middling mentoring. May takes about twelve percent of the credit, too.”

“Embracive debrief,” Pepper murmurs.

Tony uses his thumbnail to split the first cashew down the middle and nibbles on the first half. Squints at Happy. “Do you think someone hurt him while he was in foster care?”

“Funny, I asked May the same thing. She said no, but she didn’t seem all that surprised that I asked. Actually I think what she said was ‘not per se’.”

That’s reassuring. “I think May’s about this close to a burn-out, too,” Tony says, holding up his hand with his thumb and index finger pressed together. “How hard do you think we need to push to get her to take a vacation?”

“Ooh,” Pepper says, twisting a strand of bright blue yarn around her finger. “She could come to the tower. We’ll be burn-out buddies, wouldn’t that be marvelous?”

-

“Did you sleep?” May asks Tuesday morning over breakfast.

Peter nods. He slept surprisingly well. He felt a bit restless and a lot embarrassed when he went to bed, but then played Tony’s three-minute-long voice message and he was asleep before Tony finished his dogs-on-rollerskates-rant.

“I didn’t,” she says, scraping the burnt edges of her toast. “Ugh. Headache.”

“Sorry.”

She drops her knife and pinches the bridge of her nose. “I wish you’d stop apologizing for things that aren’t your fault.”

“I don’t apologize for things that aren’t my fault,” Peter says. “I’m not a stooge. I’m actually pretty rude, most people will tell you.”

“People have told me,” she says. “In many a PTA meeting. How come I never get to see that side of you?”

“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”

She snorts.

-

They are now officially in a record-breaking cold spell, the news is saying. Honest to God, this earth was not created with humans in mind. Peter pats his arms and stomps his feet to try and keep his blood-circulation from falling asleep on the job as he waits for the light to turn green.

He's supposed to go to his internship today after school, which is both a blessing and a curse. The thought of seeing Tony after that whole hot mess yesterday is mortifying as hell. But at least he won’t have to swing around the city all afternoon, attempting to find something to do until May gets home and they can turn on the heat. Even Spider-Man gets bored after a few hours, particularly when it’s minus a googolplex degrees out. Winter hasn’t even started yet but he tries not to think about that.

He thinks about Robbie instead, which is a bit of a downgrade. All the stuff he said about Peter stressing May out so much and making her life miserable. He knows, rationally, Robbie’s words should not still be stuck in his head like this. The guy was a complete jackass. But jackasses do tell the truth, sometimes.

-

Happy is picking him up after school. Bizarrely, he is standing right next to the school’s entrance when Peter walks out; standing there all statuesque, staring every kid down who passes him.

“What are you doing?” Peter asks when he’s within earshot.

“Waiting for you.”

“Why aren’t you waiting in the car?”

“Is this not allowed?”

“You look like a serial killer sex offender.”

“I look like an upstanding member of society,” Happy says. “And I wasn’t sure if you’d remember the internship, since you’d swapped days. Let’s go.”

The car is warm and Peter sags into the passenger seat, fiddling with all the heaters so they blow air directly at him. He wonders if Tony told Happy anything about what went down yesterday, but he worries that even by asking, he’d be giving something away. So he turns up the radio a little louder and says nothing.

He's hella nervous about seeing Tony today, his heartbeat picking up as they approach the tower, park the car, take the elevator up, walk down the hallway to Tony’s workshop, his Green Mile.

So, what the fuck was that, yesterday, he imagines Tony saying. What the hell sort of pathetic meltdown was that. Do you make a habit of throwing temper tantrums in a tunnel slide?

“Hey, kid,” Tony says. “Get over here and look at this.” He’s at his holo-table in an advanced state of hyperfocus, sketching under the light of the holographic projection.

Peter comes closer to study the projection. “What is it?”

“A full-scale digital twin of the Quinjet’s main modular repulsors. And we’re going to improve the regenerative braking systems to recover energy when the repulsors are not at full thrust.”

“That’s my cue,” Happy says, stepping back across the threshold. “Enjoy your playdate. Don’t blow anything up.”

“You can’t keep a lid on genius, Hogan!”

“I’m not,” Happy says. “I’m keeping a lid on you.” He punches the pad by the doors and they glide shut with a low hiss as Tony splutters indignantly.

They get to work on the repulsors and Tony doesn’t mention or even subtly reference anything that happened yesterday.

The thing about this whole internship is, Tony Stark has a sort of fiery focus, and it isn’t easy to have all of that directed at you. Peter prefers to be a little bit invisible. He wonders if things at the Bad Worse Hotel would have ended differently if he had felt more comfortable around Tony. And then he wonders if he’d be feeling more comfortable around Tony if things at the Bad Worse Hotel had ended differently.

“It’s cold, right?” Tony asks. He left the sketching up to Peter and is sitting back in his swivelly chair, a whole lot of focus aimed very directly at Peter.

“Yeah,” Peter says, because it is cold, no denying it.

“Do you still think about the ducks? Because you made me think about them.”

Peter rolls his pencil between his fingers, then shrugs. “Get me a protractor,” he says.

“Magic word?”

“Get me a protractor, you imbecile.”

It’s always a bit of a fifty fifty bet, whether Tony will laugh or get annoyed. Today, he laughs. And gets up to find a protractor. “Is the heater in your suit holding up?” he asks when he comes back with one.

“Yeah, duh-doy, I’d be dead.” He measures the angle. “I’d be a Spi-cicle. I patrol for ages.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“Beats sitting around a cold empty apartment, waiting for May to get back so I can turn the heat on. Don’t tell her I said that, half the time I pretend I’ve been staying with a friend.” He throws his pencil down and slides the sketch Tony’s way.

Tony looks at him for a while, and then at the sketch for a while. “Have you ever used any 3D modelling software?” he asks. “I made my own, but it helps if you know the basics.”

“I haven’t.”

“Back to the basics it is, then.”

-

Peter enters their apartment, white plastic bag with leftovers in hand. They had gotten really caught up in their 3D modelling and forgot to order anything, so Pepper brought them spaghetti Bolognese. She looked all right and she said his sketches look ‘splendacious’. It cracks Peter up when she says stuff like that, it’s the best. And Tony gets such a kick out of teaching people stuff. It is a little endearing actually.

He kicks off his shoes. They bounce against the wall before dropping to the floor. He can hear May’s voice and rounds the corner to find her stretched out on the couch, on the phone. Her eyes find him. “He’s home,” she says. “Let’s talk more later.” She hangs up.

There’s only one little light on in the whole apartment, which is unusual because May is always telling him it doesn’t matter for their electric bills which lights they leave on or off. He extends his hand to the nearest light switch. “You okay?”

“Headache got worse.”

He retracts his hand. “Oh. Have you had dinner?”

“Yes, I had something.”

Something. Just boiled pasta with nothing, probably. May is lazy as hell when she’s just cooking for herself. “You probably got a vitamin C deficiency and that’s giving you a headache.”

“Peter, would you come sit here for a moment, please?” She pulls her legs up.

Uh-oh. Peter sets the plastic bag down next to the coffee table book and sits next to her, hands folded in his lap.

“If I’m home late or on a weekend shift,” May says, “do you ever tell me you are staying with Ned when in actuality you are just wandering all over the city by yourself because you don’t want to turn on the heat in our apartment?”

Peter’s mouth drops open. All newly developed feelings of fondness for Tony Stark go right out the window. Hammer-thrown out by the pigtails, like that girl in Matilda.

“God, Peter.” May sounds all kinds of frustrated and also like she wants to start bawling. “What happened to telling each other the truth? Do you have any idea how much that makes me feel like an incompetent parent?”

“Well, ya know.” Peter picks at the hem of his sweater. “There was this little matter of social workers threatening to bodysnatch me if you didn’t have enough money to pay your bills.”

“And what do you think the social workers would say if they knew about this?”

“Well, here’s an idea, let’s not tell them! I was trying to help.”

Her shoulders slump. She moves, folding her legs under her so she can lean in and hug him. “I know,” she says, “I know. I know.” She isn’t angry, Peter can feel it. She is sad, and frustrated, and remorseful, and exhausted, and discouraged, and worried and overwhelmed. She feels very small in his arms.

-

He receives another three-minute voice message. “Three things about 3D modelling that I forgot to cover today,” Tony starts.

Despite his current irritation with Tony Stark, he still listens to the whole thing to help him fall asleep that evening.

-

The next day, May still has a bad headache and has developed a fever to boot. She has to call in sick. For the first time since she book-batted Robbie out of the apartment, she yields, hoists the white flag and asks for help.

So the good news is, Happy is coming over. The bad news is, Happy is coming over.

Chapter Text

It was a very average, unassuming Saturday morning when FRIDAY said: “Mr. Hogan wishes me to inform you that Peter Parker entered the tower, threw a tangerine at Mr. Ruggiero’s head and ran out again.”

“Huh,” Tony said. “That’s new.” He threw a glance at the digital clock in the corner of his screen and pushed his chair back, letting it swivel slowly towards the doors of his workshop.

“Mr. Hogan is on his way up.”

“I figured.” Never a dull day when you had Peter Parker as your intern. Tony regularly found himself torn between intrigued and annoyed, exactly the combination of emotions that usually kept him invested in his projects.

“He refused to take off his jacket.” Happy started ranting as soon as he stepped foot inside the workshop. “God knows what he was trying to smuggle into this tower. And when the security guard questioned it, the boy assaulted him.”

“That’s a strong term.”

Happy drew himself up. “Mr. Ruggiero is currently in the Med Bay with a bump on his head the size of a small planet.”

“Shit. Really?”

“I told you from the beginning that boy is a liability. Only here for the money or as a way to illegally obtain footage for his TokTok followers. The amount of access he has—someone could have paid him to upload a virus into your system. Probably had a USB—”

“You’re paranoid, Hap. He probably just had a nicked joint in his inside pocket and freaked out a bit.”

Happy gripped the arm of his chair to stop him from swiveling. He was scowling so much his face looked ready to cave in. “Were this anybody else, we would be suing their ass into oblivion.”

“I see your point.” It was not anybody else though. It was the only person who was not anybody else.

“Give me one reason why we should still let him set foot in this place.”

Tony held up one finger. “He’s Spider-Man.”

Happy grimaced.

“We’ll talk to him,” Tony said.

He called Peter, who agreed to come back to the tower the next day. And he did: without a jacket, and without much of an explanation. He just claimed to have been in a bad mood, seemed uncharacteristically contrite, apologized about the tangerine. It wasn’t nearly enough for Happy, but it was enough for Tony. He promised to pick Peter up from the lobby for the foreseeable future to guide him past security, and asked FRIDAY to keep an extra look out for any shenanigans from the kid, “including secretly rolling a joint in my bathroom, all right?”

And that was that. The Tangerine Incident became a cold case.

-

A sharp wind tears through the streets, rattling roofs and damn near blowing Peter sideways as he exits the subway. He jogs the final block to his house. He’s home later than anticipated and a bit worried about what he’ll find there, imagining Happy only needs one afternoon to ooze his existence into every corner of the apartment like he owns the damn place.

He reaches the apartment block, takes the elevator up, wipes his feet on the welcome mat. His worries don’t taper off one bit when he steps inside to be greeted by soft, old-timey jazzy music that May definitely wouldn’t listen to. Something with a saxophone and a man with a rough voice rumbling the lyrics, you can barely call it singing.

Happy is in the kitchen. He has taken their coffee maker apart and seems to be deep-cleaning it. He’s wearing jeans and a sweater, sleeves rolled up neatly. For the first time, Peter is seeing Happy without a three-piece suit on. Honest to god, this man went ice skating in a bowtie. “Hey, kid.”

“You look like a mom at parents evening,” Peter says, and kicks his shoes off. The whole apartment looks clean and Peter feels his skin crawl. He hopes Happy didn’t go into his bedroom to scrub his floors, he should have tacked a note to the door or something before he left.

“May thought you’d be home earlier.”

“Got detention for telling the truth.” He lets his backpack drop to the floor with a thud that makes Happy wince. He looks at the groceries gathered on the kitchen table. “What’s with all the tomatoes?”

“Well, I imagine I’m going to cook dinner,” Happy says. “Possibly, something with tomatoes. Do you want a drink?”

How nice, being offered a drink in his own home by an intruder. “Did you go into my room?”

“No, why?”

“No reason.” Peter turns. He can’t remember May ever calling in sick to work before, so it feels ominous that she did today. He’s been thinking about her all day, about whether she might be close to her breaking point.

“What are you doing?”

Peter, who is halfway to May’s bedroom, hand already outstretched to the doorknob, freezes. “What? I want to talk to May.”

“She’s sleeping. She’s sick. Maybe you want to help me make dinner?”

“Shove those tomatoes in a dark place,” Peter snaps. He turns the doorknob and steps into May’s room, quietly shutting the door behind him. The room is dark. May is on top of the bed sheets, wearing sweatpants and a jumper. Her cheeks are flushed, but she doesn’t look too bad.

“I heard that,” May murmurs without opening her eyes and Peter jolts.

He exhales and climbs on the bed next to her, stretching out on his side. “Please tell me you took a warm shower today.”

“I did.”

“Good.”

She opens her eyes and looks at him. There is some reproach in her gaze and Peter huffs. “I’m not letting him tell me what to do just because he’s cooking us dinner.”

She hums.

“How are you?” he whispers.

She scrunches up her nose. “Pretty miserable.”

“Sorry.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Stooge.”

Peter wraps his arms around himself and rubs his feet together.

“Hey,” she says. “If you’re not comfortable with him here, I’ll ask him to leave. He’ll understand.”

Guilt settles heavily in his chest. He’s such a selfish fucking idiot. “So I can push away the second person who’s actually making your life easier? No thanks.”

Her face darkens and she reaches out with both hands, grabbing fistfuls of the front of Peter’s sweater to yank him closer. “The only way anyone can make my life easier,” she says, very, very intently, “is by making you smile. Get that through your thick skull, you beef-witted son of a biscuit.”

Peter snorts.

“Letting that piece of shit anywhere near you is the greatest failure of my life.”

“Ugh.” Peter rolls out of her grip and rubs his face. “He was just—I was pretty rude to Robbie most of the time, you know.”

“That doesn’t matter, Peter!”

“I think it does,” Peter says, subdued.

“He was an asshole to you, too.”

“Just that one time.”

“I don’t believe that. I’ve picked up on enough little off-handed things you said over the past months to know that he made you feel unwelcome from the beginning, and I didn’t notice.”

“Because I stress you out.”

“You say that one more time I’ll dunk you head in the toilet.” She sounds actually furious, now.

“You can’t threaten me with bodily harm, that’s a hundred-point deduction from your good friend, your new bff T h a n y i a. Thaaaaanyia.”

She reaches out again, gentler this time, cups his cheeks. “Why won’t you ever let me apologize?”

“You never let me apologize either.”

“Because you’re not—” She breathes out and rolls her eyes. “Ugh. Going in circles and circles.” She pulls him closer for a hug. “I love you.”

“Love you too.”

“All right. Let’s leave it at that.”

Peter tucks his head under her chin. “If Happy says anything mean to me I’ll tell you and you can hit him with the coffee table book.”

He feels her suppressed laughter. She kisses the top of his head. “Thank you,” she says. “That means a lot.”

He gives himself a few more seconds, then rolls out of the hug. “I’ll help Happy. Go nap.”

He shuffles back into the living room, quietly closing the bedroom door behind him. Happy is putting the coffeemaker back together, throws quite a neutral glance in his direction and doesn’t say anything.

Peter walks to the kitchen table and pulls out a chair. “It is a lot of tomatoes,” he says.

“Have you ever had lescó?”

Huh. Recipes with foreign names. “Are you like actually a good cook then?”

Happy chuckles softly.

“You have bad taste in music, though.”

“I have no hope for today’s youth,” Happy complains. He steps away from the coffee maker and wipes his hands on a towel, his gaze on Peter.

Peter looks away and picks at the nearest bunch of tomatoes. “Okay, so how do we make this? I’ll help or whatever.”

Happy sits at the table. “I’m sorry if I overstepped earlier,” he says. “I didn’t mean to make you feel like you couldn’t talk to May.”

That seems so out of left field that Peter can’t help but gape at him. Soon as he realizes, he snaps his mouth shut and crosses his arms. “Oh. Yeah. It’s… whatever.”

Happy raises an eyebrow.

“It’s freaky having people apologize to me all day when I’m the one being an asshole. Thank you… for helping May.”

“I’m glad she called me,” Happy says. And adds, after a beat: “You know you can always call me, for anything.”

How different things could have ended in Germany if Peter had felt like he could just—go next door and say ‘there’s a weird woman sitting on my bed and she won’t leave’. It’s probably really stupid that he didn’t. He tugs his sleeves down over his hands and leans back in his seat, legs bouncing up and down. “Uh. Okay.”

Happy drums his fingers against the table and looks at him for a while. “Can you chop some onions?” he asks. “Or are you the weepy sort?”

“How dare you.”

-

They had a good dinner, May ate lots and Happy talked her into staying home another day tomorrow, which Peter never would have managed. It should have ended fine but then Peter botches it all to hell it like he always does.

May crawls back into bed after dinner and he and Happy are doing the dishes with no small talk whatsoever. Peter feels awkward but Happy seems perfectly comfortable, thoroughly wiping the plates dry with much concentration. Peter would do the dishes with Robbie sometimes. Robbie always asked him about school. And Peter never felt like sharing anything, because whatever he said, Robbie would find something to nitpick about.

Maybe Robbie was just an asshole. Because yeah, fine, Peter wasn’t always getting it right, but there are probably nicer ways to point that out. And he is just as rude to Tony as he ever was to Robbie, but Tony never grabbed him around the throat like Darth Vader lost his fo—

A hand lands very suddenly on his upper arm and Peter moves on instinct, whirls around and shoves.

Happy tumbles back, arms flinging. He lands flat on his back on the floor, his head knocking against the floorboard with a painful sounding thud. He swears and grips his head. “What the hell, kid?”

There is a moment of absolute silence as Peter stands there, staring down at him with dripping hands.

And then he does what he always does, and runs.

-

The streetlights are on and the only people in the playground are two kids. They’re on the swings and are chatting quietly. Younger than Peter but too old to actually play at the playground. That’s kinda sad, Peter thinks as he walks past them to the merry-go-round. It’s sad that you just get to a point where you feel like you can’t play anymore, it’s not even like you don’t want to, just like people will look at you weird if you have too much fun.

The merry-go-round creaks under his weight as he sits. He wraps one arm around the metal frame and shivers. He doesn’t have his shoes. Or coat. Or phone. Or his sanity. He looks down at the grass. At least it didn’t rain today. He can still feel the cold settle into his bones, though, and he pulls his feet up on the merry-go-round. That helps.

He can’t even call Tony. Or listen to one of his voice messages to calm himself the fuck down. If he had half a decent bone in his body he would turn around and go back home, make sure Happy is okay, explain. He’ll have to, sooner or later.

But it’s so much nicer to block his mind off entirely from thinking about any of that and just sit here and watch the evening traffic crawl past. He can squint his eyes a bit until all the headlights and taillights blur together and it feels like he is floating in outer space between the stars.

He isn’t sure how long he’s been sitting there when over by the swings, the two kids start giggling loudly over something and ruin the illusion.

Fuck, it’s cold. He tugs his sleeves down over his hands and pulls the collar up to breathe warm air down his own chest.

What would be worse, dying of hypothermia or dying of shame? He lays his cheek against the metal frame, breathes and watches the traffic.

One car pulls over. The door opens. Tony Stark steps out and smooths down his jacket. Peter thinks, ‘wow, that’s Tony Stark’, before his mind fully catches up. Tony leans back into the car and pulls out a jacket and a pair of shoes.

Huh.

Fully—fully debriefed, this guy. That didn’t take long, clearly.

Tony looks right and left and then crosses the street. Peter just watches him approach, doesn’t lift his head away from the metal frame. It occurs to him that Tony looks like a real big shot when you see him out in the wild. He doesn’t look like much of anything when he’s down in his workshop with his greasy jeans, but when he’s just walking down the street he’s got a certain—just a vibe that makes you go ‘that guy is probably famous’.

“Good evening,” Tony says mildly. He’s standing right in front of Peter, now. He shakes out the coat. It’s Peter’s coat, even. This guy dropped by his house to pick his stuff up. So coordinated, him and Happy and May, bravo.

Tony drapes the coat around Peter’s shoulders. Peter slides his arms into the sleeves and then burrows into the coat, keeping his gaze on his knees. “It’s cold,” he says, stupidly.

“Yeah.” Tony wraps a scarf around him, too, one Peter hasn’t seen before. “Pepper made you that.”

“Oh,” Peter says, and feels like crying.

Tony sits down on the grass in front of him, cross-legged. Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man, is sitting in the muddy grass with his million-dollar suit. Because Peter lost his damn mind for the second time this week. Seriously, he is just a basket case at this point.

He chances a glance at Tony’s face. Tony is looking right back at him of course, and he looks almost frighteningly gentle and maybe a little sad. All of that fiery focus, aimed very directly at Peter. It doesn’t feel so bad, for a change. It’s usually around this time that Tony asks if he can give Peter a hug.

“Will you put on your shoes?” Tony asks. “Or can I do it?”

Peter sits forward and takes the shoes from him. He wipes some sand and dirt off his socks and then wrangles his feet into the shoes. He attempts to tie his laces but his fingers are too numb from the cold so he gives up and burrows back into the coat.

And then Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man, scoots forward in his million-dollar suit and starts tying his shoelaces like he’s Peter’s chambermaid.

“Is Happy okay?” Peter asks.

“Yes, he’s fine. Just worried.”

Right. Right. So everyone is just completely fine and okay with Peter knocking someone to the floor, then.

He really feels like there should be a conversation, right about now, about how he probably shouldn’t go out as Spider-Man if he’s so messed up in the head that he’ll physically assault people without provocation.

The two other kids have slipped off the swings and are now lingering a few yards away from them. “Are you Tony Stark?” one asks.

Tony glances over his shoulder. “No. Sorry. I get that a lot.”

They look suspicious, but they withdraw.

Tony looks back at Peter. “Are you ready to come sit in the car?”

“Are you driving me home?”

“At some point. No rush.”

“Do you have rainbow Twizzlers?”

“Lots.”

Peter smacks the heel of his foot against the grass, petulant. “Do you think I’m crazy?”

“No, kid. I think you’ve been under a lot of stress.”

Peter is getting suspicious. “How much did May tell you?”

 “She didn’t really tell us anything.” She didn’t need to, is very heavily implied. Tony stands and holds out a hand to help Peter up.

Peter takes it.

He knows his way around Tony’s car by now. He adjusts the direction of all the car heaters, finds a packet of Twizzlers in the glove compartment and starts fiddling with the radio.

“Oi,” Tony says.

“Happy always lets me pick the radio channel.”

“I don’t believe that. He doesn’t even let me pick, that control freak.”

“He likes me more.”

“True,” Tony agrees easily.

Peter leans back in his seat and exhales. He wishes a little bit, a tiny bit, that Tony hadn’t picked up his coat and shoes. He liked getting wrapped up in that big blanket. He opens the packet of Twizzlers. “What color do you want?”

“Dealer’s choice.”

Peter gives him blue raspberry.

“I finished the Quinjet’s braking systems,” Tony says. “I sent you a long-ass voice message to debrief, just a little while back. You’ll have to listen to it later.”

“Did you integrate the ultracapacitors?”

“I did.” Tony pulls at the Twizzler, stretching it out until a piece snaps off. He pops it into his mouth.

The day after the Tangerine Incident, Peter went back to the tower. Tony was waiting for him in the lobby and guided him past the unfriendly stares of the security guards. Happy was by the elevator: arms crossed, nostrils flared, tapping his foot and everything. And Peter apologized and all that, sure he did, but he didn’t necessarily feel like actually explaining anything. So he didn’t. It drove Happy right up the walls, but Tony was pretty relaxed about it.

That’s one thing. Despite all that fiery focus. Tony is really good at not breathing down someone’s neck. You can knock out his head of security and he’ll just talk to you about ultracapacitors as if nothing happened. Peter used to think that Tony just didn’t care enough, but that doesn’t feel true anymore, not when Tony drove all the way to Queens for the second time this week and got mud all over his expensive suit.

“I don’t think you’ve ever actually flown in the Quinjet, right?” Tony asks.

“No.” Peter pulls up his legs and sits sideways in his seat, facing Tony. His fingers are burning as they warm up and he rubs them together. “Do you remember when I threw an orange at that security guard?”

“Pretty sure it was a tangerine.”

“Oh, yeah. It was.” He yawns a bit. Sitting in Tony’s car always makes him sleepy. Or it might be the nervous breakdown that wore him out. “You never, like, got on my case about it. I like that. That’s real pilanter—philanthropical.”

Tony looks amused. “Well. We must all do our bit.”

“Robbie was living with us back then.”

“Robbie.”

“He knew about legal stuff. And he helped May get me back from foster care. So we were both like, yowzer, he must be a stand-up guy. Until he tried to strangle me one time.”

Tony absolutely freezes.

“But then May kicked him out, so it’s all good.” Peter sticks up two fingers in a peace-sign. “Anyway. That happened right before I came to the tower, so I didn’t want to take off my sweater because I had some real—real ugly bruises. Which is kinda stupid, because I could have just said they were Spider-Man injuries. Although you probably would have been like ‘hmmm your suit’s data does not corroborate that story young man’ because you’re basically stalking me half the time.”

Tony is staring at him, visibly processing the information.

“Anyway, that’s what happened then. And I think that’s what happened today, too, like, I don’t know, we were doing dishes and I was just generally reminiscing about how much of an asshole Robbie used to be and then Happy was suddenly behind me. So. Yeah.” He finds himself wanting to look away from Tony’s stunned expression and focuses his attention on the packet of Twizzlers instead, turning it over in his hands. “Oh. Red 4 artificial coloring. Did you know they make that from bugs? They squish them until the red comes out.”

Tony’s hand appears in his peripheral vision and Peter ducks away from it before frowning up at Tony.

Tony looks back at him, his hand hovering. “Can I put my hand on your shoulder?”

Peter scrunches up his nose. “If you have to.”

“Yeah, I—I think I do.” The hand lands on his shoulder and squeezes gently. “I’m so sorry, kid.”

“Oh my god,” Peter complains. “I’ve had it up to here with people apologizing to me today.”

“I feel like I should have known. I hate the idea that you…” Tony trails off.

Peter has never really seen this man at a loss for words. “It’s fine. He was a—He wasn’t even strong. I shoved him right off. Could have snapped him in half if I wanted.”

“That doesn’t matter, Peter. I mean, sure, I’m happy you pushed back so he couldn’t do worse, but you shouldn’t have had to. And if he hurt you before—”

“He didn’t.”

“If he did,” Tony carries on, determined, “we’re not doing this I could have fought him off but I didn’t so it’s my own fault. You should never have to protect yourself from someone who is supposed to keep you safe.”

Peter’s stomach seizes up as memories of Germany are propelled to the forefront of his mind. He’d lost his nerve so much that time, that he couldn’t even manage to politely tell that woman to fuck off, let alone kick her ass. Not fighting someone off is one thing, but he didn’t even say anything.

He drops his head down to rest his forehead on his knees, the Twizzlers getting scrunched up against his chest. “I guess,” he murmurs. He breathes in, then out deeply.

Tony’s hand slips off his shoulder. Maybe he thought Peter was shrugging him off. That wasn’t the intention, but whatever.

“So May knows the whole story, right?” Tony asks.

“Yeah, I told her the same evening. And then she beat Robbie over the head with this really big heavy book. It was the best thing. It was, like, better than uh, Kill Bill fighting that one-eyed lady.”

“To clarify. You think ‘Kill Bill’ is the name of the protagonist in that movie?”

Peter lifts his head to stick out his tongue at him.

Tony smiles flashes up, then fades. “I’m sorry you didn’t feel like you could tell me.”

“Me too.” Because, yeah. Peter wishes it was easier to just tell Tony things. Tony always seems like he just wants to have his back. Peter could probably tell him about Germany and Tony wouldn’t even… laugh at him or, whatever, Peter isn’t even sure what reaction he is afraid of exactly. It should be simple, the simplest thing. “Can we go home, talk to Happy and then, uh, like, play a board game or something?”

“Definitely.”

-

Happy knew May Parker was something special when he dropped Peter off after the internship one day and they had to climb over a mountain of boxes and garbage bags to reach the living room. Peter didn’t even blink, he just kicked off his shoes and told Happy to ‘watch out for thumb tacks’.

May was next to the couch, sorting books into piles. It was the dead of summer and all the windows were wide open but the apartment still felt like a sauna.

“Are you moving?” Happy asked.

“People dropped stuff off,” Peter answered for her. “Last Friday of the month is drop-off day, when people get to feel better about themselves for off-loading all the crap they no longer want on some poor unsuspecting homeless person.”

“You sound like my boss,” May said. “Shoots every idea down. Not an ounce of creativity.”

“Wow. Thanks.”

She blew a little kiss at him.

“Your boss doesn’t like the idea?” Happy asked her.

“He likes it only as long as I do it on my own time and from my own home. We’re a homeless shelter, Ms. Parker, not a secondhand store. It’s such a shame. There’s so much potential to build on the idea, set up a network between local businesses and charities, not just products but life skills training, employment opportunities, peer support networks, resource distribution—"

“And then all there’s left to do is run for president,” Peter said from the kitchen, head practically in the fridge.

“Actually, running for president is only step eight in my ten-point plan,” May said distractedly.

It was right around that moment that Happy wondered if he could possibly get away with asking her out on a date. It took him three more months and one slightly embarrassing conversation with Pepper to actually muster up the courage.

-

Happy has tried every espresso machine and every café in the tower, yet, without a doubt, the best coffee still comes from the old, rusty coffee maker in the hallway outside Pepper’s penthouse office that practically explodes every time it brews a pot.

Happy really needs to deep clean this thing sometimes.

He watches the coffee drip down into the pot as yesterday’s events run through his head once again. They’ve been doing that all night, he barely got any sleep. Peter’s horrified expression right before he bolted. His resigned expression when he came back. Happy lifts one hand to feel the back of his head where it hit the floorboards. A little tender, but no bump.

Suck it up and move on?

The door to Pepper’s office is open, but Happy had subconsciously assumed she wouldn’t be in there until he hears a few quiet noises. He quickly pours himself his cup of coffee and wanders closer.

Pepper is in her office, though not working, thank God. She’s on the green carpeted floor in her hoodie and sweatpants, feeding slices of cucumber to Thelma and Louise. She looks happy, relaxed.

“Afternoon.”

She looks up at him, smile widening. “Good afternoon," she says. "How are you?”

Happy gives that question the contemplation it deserves, and then lands on: “Adequate.”

“Wow.” She smiles knowingly.

“I’m heading back to Queens today. Perhaps you want to tag along, get out of the tower a bit?”

“Is May still poorly?”

“We talked on the phone this morning. She said her fever is down but she’s so tired she practically seeing double. And today is drop-off day which is a whole—I’ll explain on the way, if you want to come.”

“It’s good, that she called you.”

“Well. I called her. But she didn’t hang up on me. So that’s something.”

She looks sympathetic. “That bad? According to Tony you ended up having a nice evening.”

“Yes, a nice evening playing Settlers of Catan. Right after we went over all the details why I have been a blasted idiot for a whole summer. Damnit.” He wipes a hand down his face.

“Ah yes. Sound like you’re in a lovely, propitious downward spiral of shoulda-woulda-coulda.” She scratches Thelma behind the ears with one finger. “I don’t believe you’ve done anything ungentlemanly over the summer.”

“Apart from religiously mud-slinging the traumatized little intern every chance I got?”

“You acted on the information you had, honey.”

Happy frowns down at his coffee cup. “It kills me that he was right here under this roof, and hiding injuries,” he finally admits. “Like he didn’t even expect us to help him.”

“He barely knew either of you. And he’s a little hedgehog.” She does the thing with her teeth and her hands again.

“Just to clarify, is that you doing an impression of a hedgehog?”

She gives him a look and elegantly drags a hand through her hair. “Of course it wouldn’t occur to him to ask for help back then. That doesn’t mean you did anything wrong.”

“I suppose I didn’t do things wrong, per se. It just kills me, is all.”

“I get that. From where I stand, it’s very obvious that you’ve grown to care about him. I have no doubt he has noticed that, too.”

Happy says nothing.

“Did you know they make candy from squished bugs?” Pepper asks.

“Do they.”

“Tony told me last night. I haven’t fact-checked, though.” The last piece of cucumber has disappeared and she wipes her hands together. “Do you want to leave right away?”

“Finish my coffee first.”

She beckons. “Here. Hold some bunny rabbits while you do. Calms you right down.”

-

Boxes are piling up outside May’s front door when they arrive. “I would have told people it was bad timing,” May shuffles around the apartment in pajamas and a bathrobe. “But it’s mostly word of mouth these days, I don’t even know half the people who turn up with stuff.” She looks worse, somehow, despite her fever being down. Dark circles under the eyes. “You two want coffee?”

“You sit down, I’ll make it,” Happy says.

“Okay.” She wafts a hand as she retreats to the couch to sit with Pepper. Two women in sweatpants. “It’s the tin that says ‘cat treats’.”

“What time will Peter be home?”

“He usually goes patrolling on Thursdays, so not until near dinnertime.”

“Do you think it’s best if I leave before he gets here?”

“No, don’t be ridiculous. He’ll want to see you.” She looks around the apartment and exhales. “So. What we’re going to do is, people are going to be leaving stuff here all day, random stuff, so we unpack every box, and sort it all into categories, and then pack it into the boxes again.”

“I think what you’re going to do—” Pepper rolls up her sleeves “—is stay right there on the couch and I will beaver away at your behest.”

“Weren’t you in a burn-out?”

“Yes. That’s why I like to be told what to do and just do it. No cognitive functions required. I am happily offering my beneficence.”

They unpack and repack all the donated goods as per May’s instructions. “I’m contemplating a career change,” Pepper says brightly as she tapes another box shut, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

“This isn’t entirely in the job description,” May says. “This is just my personal crusade.”

“May, honey,” Pepper says conspiratorially, planting her elbows on the couch and leaning her chin on her hands as she looks at her. “Have you ever thought about taking a vacation?”

“Not currently within the realm of possibilities.”

“Darling, everything is within the realm of possibilities when you have Tony Stark wrapped around your little finger the way Peter does.” She waggles her pinky.

May exhales slowly and pinches the bridge of her nose. “I’m aware that there are offers on the table. It’s just strange to… Just feels risky because…”

“Because the last person who helped you financially turned out to be an abusive asshole?” Pepper suggests.

“I’ve learned the hard way that it can be unwise to rely too much on other people.”

“Hmm.” Pepper stands, wipes her hands together. “Could we go for a little leisurely promenade around the block, get some air? Happy will hold down the fort.”

“Will I?” Happy says.

She pats him on the chest. “Stoutheartedly.”

-

Peter returns home before May and Pepper do, just as Happy is rummaging through the fridge to figure out what he’ll make for dinner.

“Huh,” Peter says, lingering just inside the doorway. “Um. Hi. Where’s May?”

“She and Pepper have gone for a walk. You’re earlier than we expected.”

“I wanted to—make sure I’d see you.”

That’s nice.

“I brought you Gummi Bears,” Peter says, holding up the small plastic packet. “Someone got them for me after I lifted their car out of a construction site ditch.”

“Wow. Thanks. That’s an honor.”

“Was that sarcasm? Because I’ll have you know Gummi Bears are in my top three snacks so this is a pretty big sacrifice for me.”

“Let’s share then,” Happy suggests. “Do you… want coffee?” He doesn’t really know how teenagers work.

“Sure.” Peter saunters to the couch and flops down. He bites the nail of his thumb, bounces his leg up and down as he looks up at Happy. “Is your head okay?”

“It’s fine. Doesn’t hurt. It was just a little shove.”

“Oh. Yeah. You’re lucky I can’t roundhouse.”

“As if, Spider-Man.”

Peter smiles, almost shyly. “No. I guess I can. Anyways. I don’t think I really said ‘sorry’ last night. So.” He gestures with the packet again.

Happy’s heart just about melts. It’s a very strange and highly unfamiliar sensation. He feels that he should be saying something reassuring right about now. Drat. All he can come up with is a repeated: “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“I bet it does,” Peter says with a frown, “and you’re just trying to make me feel better.”

“Since I’m the adult and you’re the child, I suggest you let me,” Happy says, a bit gruffly.

Peter rolls his eyes a bit but doesn’t snap back about not being a child.

“It’s my job to make sure people are safe,” Happy says. “I feel like I’ve been dropping the ball.”

Peter’s bouncing leg stills. “Yeah,” he says slowly. “Safe. That’s… That’s good.”

They have coffee and split the packet of Gummi Bears. “I think there’s minced bugs in these,” Happy says. “Pepper told me today.”

“Hm.” Peter looks amused. “Fun fact.”

-

May and Pepper return home, giggling like a pair of teenagers. “Oh, honey,” May says, leaning in to hug Peter. “You’re home early. Did you already show all the criminals who’s boss?”

“Hmmnah, but I showed a really annoying double-parked car who’s boss, does that count?”

She sits on the armrest and runs her hand through his hair a few times. “Pete,” she says. “How would you feel about the two of us … bunking at the tower? For a week or two. Or three.”

Peter looks thoroughly confused. “How… How would that… What does that mean?”

“It means May taking some time of work,” Pepper says, “and Tony cooking her dinner and doing her laundry for the next weeks.”

Peter looks cautiously hopeful. “Like… Like May would get to relax?”

“May would get to luxuriate like the queen of Sheba.” Pepper says. “And we have bunny rabbits. Need I go on?”

“I’ll go pack,” Peter says.

Chapter Text

On our way back. ETA 20m. Bringing guests. May is taking three weeks of unpaid vacation that we will be paying for. I’m not allowed to mastermind anything, as per doctor’s advice, but would be much obliged if you’d (1) get our guest rooms in order and (2) rearrange Happy’s schedule so he can drive Peter to school for the next weeks. Love you lots xoxoxo.

Tony swipes away from the message and slowly shakes his head, feeling a smile spread across his face. Thank god for Pepper Potts. He has been agonizing for days over how to get May Parker to accept an offer like this.

All right. Guest rooms.

He picks two that are right across the hall from each other. He gives May the one with the floral curtains and the Roman bathtub, and Peter the one with the wall-mounted flat screen and the framed movie posters.

It’s been a while since the penthouse had guests sleeping over.

May and Peter arrive and Tony feels almost embarrassingly relieved to have them here, under his roof, where he can mollycoddle them. He shakes May’s hand. “I’m glad you’re here. Welcome to Pepper Potts’ fabulous getaway for kicking back, switching off and winding down.”

“I will be showing them around,” Pepper says imperiously. She seizes May by the hand, and then Peter, and leads them both down the hallway.

Tony looks at Happy who is still standing by the partition wall, two large bags slung over his shoulder. “Hogan. You look like a man who shouldn’t have dinner alone.”

“Are you just saying that because you’re hoping I’ll cook for you?”

“I’ve already ordered, actually. I hope you’re willing to settle for Italian pizza made by a Turkish joint. Though I suppose we can throw a side salad together to appease Pepper.”

Happy looks hesitant. “I’m not entirely…”

“I’m opening a really good bottle of whiskey. Does that convince you?

It does. Happy sets the bags down. He steps closer and rolls up his sleeves. “What’s the occasion?”

“The occasion is that I have a really good bottle of whiskey.”

He pours two glasses as Happy inspects the contents of his cupboards. “You know,” Happy says. “There was a road diversion on the way back here.”

“Uh-huh?”

Happy turns on the faucet and washes his hands, because he’s always admirably serious about following health protocols when he cooks. “My GPS knew about it.”

“It tends to, yeah.”

“I really prefer a GPS that doesn’t think too much.” Happy shakes out his hands before drying them on the towel. "Blasted technology. The world’s going to hell in a handbasket."

“Okay, boomer.”

Happy glowers at him. “Once again. We are practically the same age.”

“I don’t know what—you want me to… down-date your GPS, as it were?”

“That would be great, thanks,” Happy says, a bit waspishly. He opens the fridge. “Can we use those radishes?”

To Tony, a salad just means some lettuce and tomato and throw a vinaigrette on there, maybe some cucumber if he’s feeling extravagant. But Happy gets out the radishes and walnuts and capers and their side salad is coming together as a dish more complicated than the dinners Tony usually cooks.

“I helped Peter pack his stuff,” Happy says as he chops a feta cheese into small cubes. “He was hiding toilet paper under his bed. Apparently, he sneaks it into their bathroom’s supply whenever he thinks May won’t notice, as a way to help pay the bills.”

“Lordy.” Tony takes a sip. “That’s… awfully cute but in a heartbreaking way. You know, when I recruited him for Germany, he only wanted to come if I paid him.”

“He mentioned as much on the plane. Had I known—”

“A lot of things would have been different, had we known this and that, etcetera.” Tony shakes his head pensively. “Who would have guessed, back in spring when I first came across those videos, that we’d be here right now, huh?”

“Would you get on with chopping those walnuts?”

“Yes, yes boss.” He sets his glass down and picks up the kitchen knife. “Do you ever just make, for example, a simple grilled cheese?”

“Sure I do. With some Dijon mustard and Jalapeños.”

Simple.

They both look up when Peter appears in the wide, arched doorway and pauses there, hands in his pockets. “Uh. I just realized we forgot to bring our own toothpaste.”

Tony waves the knife around. “We got plenty.”

“Yeah but I, ah, can’t use the minty stuff. It’s an allergy thing.”

“Oh. Sure thing, kid. I’ll run out and grab some right after dinner. Anything else you need?”

“No.” Peter makes a move like he wants to turn around but then doesn’t. “Just… Why the hell did you put pictures of creepy old men up in my room?”

“Excuse me?”

“There’s one of a guy in a river who looks like a deranged murderer.”

“They’re movie posters. That one is Apocalypse Now. It’s a classic.”

“It’s straight up nightmare fuel.”

“You can take them down if you prefer.”

“Uh. I already did,” Peter says, turning around. “Duh-doy. My god.” He shuffles off.

Tony and Happy exchange a look and then both smile.

-

A hot shower. Hallelujah, he has made it to heaven. Peter lets the water pummel him, leaning his forehead against the tiles. He had to get up a little earlier than usual with the longer commute, but it’s an easy sacrifice to make.

Friday morning. It has been exactly one week since he broke Tony’s mug. And what a week it has been.

He hums one of his uncle Ben’s favorite old-timey songs. I should've changed that stupid lock I should have made you leave your key. When he was younger, too young to understand money problems, he took long showers because he’d just be in there, daydreaming away. So Ben taught him to shower more efficiently by blasting I Will Survive through the bathroom door. Peter had to turn off the shower when the final note hit. The way Peter remembers it, Ben did that for practically his entire childhood. That’s probably not true, though. He probably only did it for about a month until Peter learned to time himself.

Sometimes he’ll sing the song to himself as he is showering, as a way to keep track of time. Made him really damn sad, sometimes, after Ben died. But, like, a nicer sort of sad. A sad where you know you really loved someone.

He hums his way to the end of the song and doesn’t turn off the shower. He just starts again at the beginning.

His fingers are wrinkly and his hair still wet when he finally makes it to the kitchen. Tony is drinking coffee and scrolling through his phone, but slides it away when he sees him. “Morning, kid.” He gives Peter an appraising look. “Do you have a blow dryer? I can get you one.”

“It’s fine, I never use one. Is May…?”

“Still sleeping.”

It makes him feel exceptionally lighter, knowing that May can just sleep and chill out and people will take care of her. Her cup has been empty for so long and she just kept pouring.

He pulls out a chair to sit.

“Want to try a yoghurt parfait for breakfast? We get them delivered from downstairs. I’m always a fan.”

He doesn’t even know what that is. “Sure. Sure. Parfait away.”

Tony gets up from the table, leaving his mug behind. It’s the one with the picture of a badger. It occurs to Peter only now that he should try and find the mug he broke somewhere online. If he googles the phrase ‘I don’t talk until my cup is empty’ he might find it, so he can order a new one. He looks away. “Is Friday still internship day?” he asks.

“If you want, definitely. Just come find me in the workshop after school.” Tony brings him the yoghurt parfait, which is apparently a complete miracle of food architecture, with stacked layers of yoghurt and different fruits in rainbow order, and little edible flowers on top.

“Normally they have a little mint garnish on there,” Tony says. “But I told them to leave it out from now on. I hope they’ll remember.”

So, so extra.

“I’m not gonna be any nicer to you just because you’re helping May,” Peter says, in the interest of full disclosure.

Tony cocks his head, a smile spreading across his face. “Kid. You know I adore you exactly as you are, right?”

Peter feels a flush creep up his neck and plants his elbows on the table extra aggressively to scoop up his first bite of parfait.

-

He tells Ned during lunch break, over a plate of quesadillas with very little queso in them. Predictably, Ned damn nearly suffers a coronary. “Oh my god,” he manages, pulling at his own hair. “Oh my god, Peter, you get to like, poop at the tower and everything?”

“Would be weird if I just went somewhere else to poop.”

“I don’t know, that’s the first thing my mind went to.” His mind then goes to something else, clearly, because his eyes widen to comical proportions and he breathes: “Are you allowed to invite people over?”

“Probably, but I can’t think of anyone I’d invite.”

“Dude!”

Peter chortles, then shrugs as he slowly rips a quesadilla in half. “I’m sure it’s fine. You can come over this weekend or something.”

“Is May feeling better now?”

“I don’t think it goes… that fast. But she’ll be okay.”

“Oh gosh,” Ned murmurs. “Okay. One word: Avengers tower pajama party movie night. Popcorn edition.”

-

Tony sends him another three-minute voice message and Peter doesn’t really have the opportunity to listen to it until he’s in Happy’s car, on their way back to the tower.

“So temperatures are dropping below zero again tonight,” Tony says, “Celsius of course. Measuring in Fahrenheit is so late 2000s. You got me thinking about those duckies again, and where they go when their little ponds freeze over.” And then he rambles on a bit about an invention of a robot duck with little paddle feet that create ripples, which disrupts ice formation. Put one in every pond in the city and the ducks are happy all winter long.

“Does he always send you nonsense like that?” Happy asks.

“Yup. Really weird and annoying. Um. But don’t tell him to stop.”

“Grows on you, right? That’s the thing about Tony Stark, he wears you down eventually. I think it’s a form of Stockholm syndrome.”

“He’s really…” Peter scrolls up back through Tony’s previous messages and takes a moment to think. “He’s, like, got a sort of gravitational pull. We’re all in orbital decay.”

“I was thinking I looked a bit decayed when I glanced in the mirror this morning.”

“I think he just cares a lot.”

“Oh, yes,” Happy’s voice goes a whole lot softer. “He does.”

Peter lets his phone drop back against his stomach.

They pull up at a red light and Happy starts poking at the GPS. “Want to pick up some snacks for everyone on the way home?” he suggests.

“Can we get ice cream? May will eat ice cream any time, even when it’s cold as a penguin’s buttocks outside. I know all her favorite flavors.”

“Ha.” Happy taps the screen. “Let’s find one close to the tower then, so it won’t have melted by the time you get home.”

Peter hums and leans back in his seat. He looks at the throngs of people crossing the street in front of them. A sea of hats, scarves, big coats. Seriously, when you’re miserable everyone around you looks miserable. But today the people don’t seem miserable at all, even if they’re out there in the cold, wearing their January-scarves in November. They just look cozy. “How is May?”

“A bit restless this morning, but Pepper took her in tow. They went swimming in their private pool.”

That’s so extra and so nice. Peter can’t remember the last time May really got to relax and do something fun. She used to dance around the living room sometimes, when she was in a silly mood. With no music on or nothing. That was before Ben died and his soul became a bird. It’s been a really long time since May was in a silly mood like that. “It’s kinda my fault she won’t date you, you know.”

The light turns green, but Happy doesn’t see because he’s frowning at Peter. Not an angry frown, more like a puzzled frown. “She is careful about who she is letting into your life after her previous boyfriend physically assaulted you. How is that your fault?”

A car behind them honks. Happy mutters something and pulls up.

“I guess it isn’t,” Peter says. “I mean. I know it isn’t. That part isn’t my fault. I just wish I’d get over it already, so she wouldn’t feel like she needs to plan her entire life around my meltdowns.”

“I think it’s nice how much you look out for May,” Happy says. “And I think you make her life a whole lot easier and lighter.”

Peter glances his way. From the half of Happy’s face he can see, the man looks dead serious. Peter bites the inside of his cheek. He wants to ask, ‘really, like how?’ He wants to hear Happy explain it, maybe give a few nice examples. “You don’t think she’d have it easier if she didn’t have to take care of me?”

“No, course not.” Happy says it readily, almost casually, like the question is a no-brainer, like it’s one plus one.

“’kay,” Peter murmurs.

-

They get to the tower with two pints of strawberry cheesecake ice cream. May is on the couch, two rabbits in her lap, and her whole face lights up. It always does, really, but it’s like this is the first Peter time is really, really aware of how big her smile gets whenever she sees him. He hands the ice cream to Happy and goes in for a hug.

-

Weekend.

The tower is a strange sort of sanctuary, with bunnies and AI driven vacuum cleaners and yoghurt parfaits. Tony gets him a lollipop the size of his head. They watch Inception on a huge flat screen. Pepper helps him with his Math homework. On Sunday he invites Ned over and Tony lets them build a catapult out of scrap metal in his workshop. Ned is absolutely giddy through the whole thing and on his first attempt to use their contraption, he fires a heavy bolt that hits Tony’s coffee mug. It tumbles off the desk and crashes to the floor, splitting apart.

“Oh, shoot,” Ned gasps, hands flying to his mouth.

“It’s okay, kid, I’ve done much worse.” Tony leans down to gather the shards. “Ask the missus. Or don’t, actually, it might honestly traumatize you.”

“I’ll buy you a new one.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay,” Ned says, face splitting into a smile. And then he proceeds to actually not worry about it at all, goes right back to getting the catapult ready to fire again.

Peter feels… slightly unbalanced.

-

Once Ned has gone home, him and Tony get back to the living room to find Pepper and May sitting cross-legged on the carpet, and the coffee table covered in scribble-filled papers.

“What’s this?” Tony sounds suspicious. “Neither of you are supposed to be working.”

“We’re not working. We’re just… brainstorming.”

The real purpose of the brainstorming becomes clear that evening. Him and May have dinner, just the two of them in May’s bedroom. “Pepper has some interest in my work at FEAST,” May says. “And how we could expand on it, or start a new organization affiliated with it.”

“What. Give you more work?”

“No, with proper funding we could hire more people, which means less workload for me.”

Peter twirls spaghetti around his fork. “Okay. So you want to… set up a whole exchanging-stuff-system like what you’ve been talking about?”

“That is one idea. To be honest, we’ve also talked quite a lot about helping other families who are at risk of losing their children due to poverty. And see if we can raise some awareness within CPS.”

Peter stares at her, frozen, until his spaghetti slides off his fork and drops back down to his plate. He blinks. He clears his throat. “I mean. You’d actually — I don’t know — go to blows with the state?”

“I would prefer to think of it as cooperating with them to improve things.”

“Cooperating. With CPS.”

“There are families right now who are in the same position as you and I were last spring.”

Peter looks away, bouncing his knee. There is a tightness in his chest. “What if they call you a troublemaker, and use this as an excuse to put me in a home again?”

“That would be unethical. My opinions of CPS are higher than that. If they weren’t, I wouldn’t want to make efforts to tweak their policies.” She purses her lips, tapping the butt of her fork against the table. “But I understand you, honey, it’s hard not to feel a bit paranoid. Fear is a paralyzing force. Though obviously, we’d have quite a formidable legal team at our disposal if we went through with this; that’s Pepper’s specialty. Which is also precisely why this is important. All these other people don’t have a billionaire with a team of lawyers on speed dial.”

“You really think you can change the system?”

“I don’t really believe there is something like a system. I think there is just a whole lot of people together, who can be well-meaning, but make bad decisions when they are not well-informed. So, yes. I believe we can make a difference.”

His own instincts are to lie low. Don’t ask for help, don’t file the police report, don’t expect the—the system to work in your favor. But May… May wants to fight back. She wants to take that hurt and channel it and use it as a reason to stand up. Like a superhero.

“I don’t want to cause you any stress,” May says. “If you’re really worried about it, I’ll wait three years until you’re eighteen before putting anything in action. Pepper and I are fine with longer term plans. There’s no rush either way, these are just ideas. We’re a while away from them being solid.”

“Okay,” Peter murmurs. “No. Yes. They’re good ideas. Helping people is good. Can you just promise to… run things by me before anything is made final?”

“Definitely.”

“Yeah, okay. I think it’s really cool. You’re really cool. Um. Can you promise me one more thing?”

“Name it.”

“Please, May, for fuck’s sake, will you use these three weeks to relax?”

She laughs.

-

If he does file a police report about the Bad Worse Incident, would it make a difference? Can he somehow find it within himself to trust the legal system, the way May somehow found it within herself to want to cooperate with CPS after all the hurt they caused her?

Christ. Cooperate. May and Pepper and Thanyiaaaah, teaming up, partners, confederates.

He spends the rest of the evening googling how to report a crime in another country, and what would happen next, and what would happen after that. All the websites give different variations of It highly depends on the context of the crime, and it mostly just stresses him out.

He tosses his phone aside and tries to sleep. He doesn’t succeed much

-

Monday morning he manages to keep it together during breakfast, but at school he just can’t concentrate at all. A few teachers get annoyed with him, nothing new. There’s this buzzing in his head that makes it hard to be around people. He just wants everybody to shut the hell up for once and let him think. Somewhere halfway through his biology class, he honestly feels like he might go insane.

He makes it until the bell rings and then ducks into a toilet stall. He sits on the floor and texts Happy. Feeling unwell pick me up now. And, belatedly: Please.

Happy’s response comes swiftly. Okay, bud. Hang tight, on my way.

He hugs his phone to his chest, closes his eyes and lays his head against the wall. At least he didn’t crawl inside a tunnel slide this time.

-

Tony met them in the lobby when they checked out of the Bad Worse hotel. Well. ‘Met’ is a big word. He was sitting across the lobby in one of the armchairs, dark sunglasses on, and didn’t even wave.

“Is he dead?” Peter sneered. “Is this gonna be Weekend at Bernie’s?”

Happy ignored that question. “Hand it over, please,” he said, indicating the metal suitcase with the Spidersuit inside.

Peter handed it over and sauntered off, taking another armchair, purposefully very far away from Stark. He didn’t feel like talking to either of them right now. The armchairs were those ones with a high back and button tufting and armrests that curled inwards and looked like cinnamon rolls. He sat sideways in the chair and pulled up his legs as he waited for Happy to finish filling out the forms or whatever it was you had to do when you checked out of a hotel.

Unfortunately, Tony Stark got up and wandered closer. He slid some magazines to the side and took a seat on the round table in front of Peter. “Hey. We’ll get them next time.”

Peter said nothing. Typical Tony Stark, thinking Peter would give a rat’s ass about his problems as if they were the only things that mattered in the world. Peter couldn’t care less what Captain America was doing right now. “When am I getting paid?” he asked.

Tony tipped his sunglasses down a bit to look at him. “It will be in your account by the end of the week, Mr. Parker.”

“Fab.”

He wouldn’t have expected to be able to recognize the woman’s voice, but he heard it right then in that moment and it was unmistakably her. He peered around the back of his armchair towards the reception desk. Happy was heading their way, suitcases in both hands, and behind him the woman was speaking to the receptionist in rapid German.

Peter ducked back down, heart rate skyrocketing. He had spent most of the night and his entire morning convincing himself that what had happened had not been a big deal, that he’d just forget about it, but now he could feel a heat spreading across his skin, a strange pressure in his ears, a sick sinking feeling in his stomach.

“They’re bringing the car around,” Happy said brusquely as he caught up to them. “Let’s go.”

For the first time, Peter didn’t balk at being told what to do. He was the first one out those front doors.

-

Happy sends him a message that he is out front and Peter shoots back a quick thumbs up, pushing himself to his feet. He’s supposed to officially sign out and everything but what the hell. Happy doesn’t know that, and Peter will just figure something out. He is used to getting in trouble.

He finds Happy’s car and yanks the door open, slumping into the seat.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes. I mean, no, but it’s… fine. I just, um. I just. I just, I just—”

”Okay, bud,” Happy says. ”Let’s just drive home. May’s out for a long walk on the beach with Pepper. I can call her.”

“No, it’s fine.” Peter buckles up and then clasps his hands together in his lap and breathes out. “I think I want to talk to Tony.”

-

Happy takes the elevator with him up to the penthouse. “Where is Tony?” he asks.

Peter wants to snap back, how the hell do I know?

“Boss is in his bedroom,” the ceiling voice responds, and Peter jumps. God, he always forgets about her.

“Tell him to come to the living room, please.”

Peter exhales explosively and kicks off his shoes. They fly through the whole penthouse, don’t even hit any walls before landing on the carpet. He shrugs off his backpack and pads over to the huge corner sofa, slouching down.

Happy hovers until Tony appears in the doorway. “Kid needs to talk to you,” he says. And then he disappears swiftly.

Tony approaches the couch and sits on the opposite end. He’s wearing a fuzzy sweater and some socks that look like Pepper knitted them. Green and blue stripes.

“How are you, kid?” Tony asks.

Peter lifts his eyes to meet Tony’s gaze. “I want to file a police report.”

“All right. Against Robbie?”

“Um. No, we already—we already reported him.”

“I see,” Tony says, his face falling strangely blank.

Peter looks back down at the blue-green socks; that’s easier. One, two, three, four, five strips between heel and toe. He wonders if May is also going to take up knitting any time soon.

“Did something happen today?” Tony asks.

Peter glances down at his own socks. Beige and worn. He wiggles his toes. “No,” he says, slowly. “Something happened in Germany. At the hotel, I mean. After we got back from the airport.”

Tony says nothing and the silence feels really loud. Peter is afraid to look up at his face. He swallows a few times. And then the words start tumbling out. “This woman walked into my hotel room and was saying weird—just weird things, like, commenting on… I don’t know. On me, I guess.” His voice begins to hitch but he doesn’t attempt to get it back under control. It doesn’t matter, he just wants to get it out, now. He needs people to know. “And she wouldn’t leave, she just kept walking around my hotel room and looking at all my stuff and looking at me. And then she started, like, putting her hands everywhere and I was just sitting there all awkward and I didn’t,” he gulps in a breath, “didn’t know what to do. And then she fucking finally left and I still didn’t know what to do so I just went to s-sleep. I didn’t do anything.”

He feels like such a fucking idiot for both doing too much and too little, a paradox that he can’t wrap his head around, that he is simultaneously mad at himself for needing help over something this stupid, and mad at himself for not asking help over something this big. “I just don’t… didn’t know— All Spider-Man does is prevent traffic accidents and find lost dogs, and you took me halfway across the world to fight some superheroes.” Overwhelmed tears well hotly in his eyes. “I was in way over my head, and I barely knew you and I barely knew Happy and I felt out of place and I didn’t know how to ask for help and I just sat there, I didn’t even say anything.”

He looks up at Tony’s face and the buzzing in his ears abruptly dissolves into clear silence when he sees the raw terror there — and the wetness around Tony’s eyes. “Shit,” Tony breathes when he notices Peter’s gaze on him, and he roughly scrubs his own face. “Shit. Peter, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” His voice breaks.

That just about breaks Peter’s heart, it really does, and without thinking, he closes the distance between them and tumbles into Tony’s lap, throws his arms around Tony, tightly. “Don’t cry,” he murmurs, even as his own tears drip down when he squeezes his eyes shut. He hides them in Tony’s fuzzy sweater. “It’s—It’s not that bad. Don’t cry, you’re making me cry and I haven’t cried since B-Ben’s funeral, I had like a r-real good streak going, you’re ruining it.”

Tony breathes out and his arms close around Peter. He starts rocking him. “I’m so sorry, kiddo,” he says, sounding steadier. He rests his chin on Peter’s head. That’s nice, makes him feel like a little kid, like when Ben hugged him after a nightmare.

He stops wriggling and just lays his head down and lets himself float for a while, letting the fuzz of Tony’s sweater tickle his ear with each breath, the rise and fall, like waves in an ocean. There is a familiar sense of numbness, but it’s not as distancing as usual, it doesn’t make him feel hollow, it makes him feel full.

“You had a really shit summer, didn’t you?” Tony says.

Peter lets out a wet laugh. He leans back, feeling a little sheepish suddenly about the display of affection. He slips out of Tony’s grip but settles next to him on the couch, tucking his beige-socked feet under Tony’s leg and curling one fist into the fabric of Tony’s sweater. He runs his thumb across the fuzzy fabric. He ducks his head to wipe his nose on his own knee.

Tony pulls one sleeve down and gently wipes at Peter’s cheeks. His expression is soft and tender, all his focus is on Peter, and it makes Peter just want to start blubbering even louder. “Maybe she didn’t know I was underage.” He doesn’t even believe that, but he just wants to dangle it out there, he needs someone else to validate everything he has been arguing about with himself.

Tony swiftly shakes his head, hand settling firmly on Peter’s shoulder. “No, kid. That is what experts would refer to as fresh bullshit. First off, consent doesn’t have an age limit. Second off, you don’t look a day over thirteen. That woman knew full well what she was doing.” He smoothes back Peter’s hair, hesitates and seems to brace himself. “Does May know?”

Peter nods.

Tony breathes out. “Okay.” His hand lands back on Peter’s shoulder, squeezing gently. “Can I give you another hug?”

In response, Peter simply tips over, falling against Tony’s side, settling his cheek against Tony’s shoulder. It was a really shit summer, but in the past few days, things have been sort of breaking apart after months of being lodged in his chest; from dry, packed soil to much looser sand.

“And we can absolutely file a report,” Tony says. His arm settles around Peter. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“Thanks,” Peter murmurs. He thinks about what May said about having a billionaire’s legal team at your beck and call. It does make things easier, feeling like someone will fight this battle for him or at least with him. “Let’s take her down.”

“Down to the hellhole that spawned her,” Tony agrees.

Tony is here. Tony will be here. “Could you tell Happy?” Peter asks. “It feels like he should know, but I don’t want to do this twice. I don’t have that kind of battery power.”

Tony’s hand settles on top of his and squeezes. “Yeah, I got ya, kid.”

Peter turns his hand over so he can interlace his fingers with Tony’s. It’s been a real long time since he felt like he had steady ground under his feet. He sniffles. “Do you think Pepper will knit me some socks, too?”

-

Peter eventually withdraws to his room to catch up on his homework and, or, process everything that happened today. Tony, not knowing what to do with himself, rage-bakes some brownies and has a tall glass of wine, hoping it will quench some of his thirst for revenge.

Happy is somewhere downstairs, probably. But he needs to talk to someone else, first.

The brownies have gone in the oven and he’s cleaning when Pepper and May return home with wide smiles and windswept hair. “You’re baking?” Pepper questions, skeptical.

Tony leans back against the kitchen counter and sets his glass down. “Could I talk to May?” His heart is stuttering in his chest.

Pepper doesn’t ask or even look confused. She just nods and says: “I’ll be off to entertain Thelma and Louise.” She disappears.

May steps forwards, unzipping her coat. It’s one of Pepper’s coats, actually, probably warmer than her own. She looks cautious, with disconcertingly sharp eyes. “Everything all right?”

“Peter told me about Germany.”

All wariness immediately melts away from May’s face. “Ah,” she says softly.

“I’m—” he stops, swallows. Something cracks inside his chest. “I’m so sorry, May. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep your kid safe.”

“Oh, Tony,” she says, voice full of an empathy he doesn’t deserve. She steps forward and Tony finds himself wrapped in his second hug of the day. Just like her nephew, May is far too forgiving. “There are a lot of things I could get angry about—I did get angry about as you well remember, when it comes to you bringing Peter to Germany,” she says. “This is not one of them. It was a good hotel and you were there with him, you had him in a safe place.” She leans back and squeezes his arms. “Sometimes bad things just happen. Sometimes you simply don’t anticipate how awful certain people can get.”

“I should have—”

“Don’t.” She releases his arms but her gaze on him stays the same. “I go down that path all the time and it never leads anywhere. You have done so much to help Peter. That is what matters, Tony.”

Tony just shakes his head, though he doesn’t know what to say.

“Believe me, I know,” May says. “We’re all going around in circles, blaming ourselves, all of us. I do. Peter does. When in reality it’s pretty damn clear who is to blame here, isn’t it?”

“Oh, believe me, I got their names down on a list,” Tony mutters darkly.

May takes a step back and slides out of her coat, drapes it over the back of a chair. She tucks her hair behind her ears. “What prompted him to tell you?”

“I’m not sure. I didn’t ask. He asked Happy to pick him up early from school. He said he wants to file a police report.”

She looks pleasantly surprised. “That’s good. All right. We can do that. Thank you, Tony.”

To be thanked on top of everything is mildly frustrating. May must see it on his face, because her smile widens again, a smile tinged with sadness. “It’s been so wonderful to see him open up to you,” she says. “And to see how well you deal with it. I hope I’m not overstepping here. But he could use a father figure like that in his life.”

Tony cracks a tentative smile. “I’m in the market for a son-figure.”

Chapter Text

There were five framed posters in the guestroom when Peter first arrived at the tower. Movie posters, apparently, all for old timey movies from back when people had rotary phones and Happy was in high school or something. Peter took most of them down on the first night, except one of a movie called ‘The Birds’ that just has a picture of a whole bunch of crows sitting on a wire. Looks like a real mellow movie, a nature documentary or something. Those documentaries where they say all their sentences backwards. They don’t say ‘The hawk is a formidable hunter with razor-sharp claws and lightning-fast reflexes’; they always say ‘With razor-sharp claws and lightning-fast reflexes, the hawk is a formidable hunter’.

Anyway. Peter likes birds.

-

They’re in the middle of a history class, teacher droning on about how “in the eighteenth century, the third estate was unhappy with the society of estates, and while the rich people in the cities could afford the taxes—" when THUD—

Something smashes against the window. Every head swivels towards it, but there’s nothing to see except some faint smudges on the glass. Peter is close to the window and leans across the radiator to look down. They’re on the first floor, and right below the window, next to the trashcans sits a crow. It looks hella confused, just kind of sits there with his feathers ruffled.

“Dumbass bird,” the student in front of him says dismissively, leaning over as well.

“The rich people in the cities could afford the taxes but they thought it was unfair that they had no say in government,” the teacher says and everyone turns back to her.

Peter doesn’t. He lays his arms down on the windowsill and leans his chin on his elbow, letting the edge of the radiator dig into his ribs. The crow doesn’t move, it’s breathing pretty quickly but then, Peter doesn’t really know how fast crows usually breathe. He should watch that documentary, maybe.

Minutes pass and the crow doesn’t move. Peter is getting seriously worried, because there’s a whole lot of damn cats in this neighborhood. Cats are the worst: mad entitled. They always have beef with everybody for no reason.

“Mr. Parker.”

The teacher is standing right by his desk, suddenly, and everyone around him is scribbling on their worksheets.

“I’m thinking,” Peter says. “Is that encouraged around here, or what?”

She bristles. But she does that a lot and never actually gives him detention.

The crow still hasn’t moved by the end of the period, so Peter rushes down the hallway and takes the back door with the big NO SMOKING BY THE TRASHCANS sign.

The crow wobbles a little when Peter approaches, but he can scoop it up no problem. He walks to the large bushes against the fence and gently places the crow down between the leaves. That’s a much safer place for her to recover. She’ll probably fly off before the end of the day, and if she doesn’t…

Peter will think of something.

-

Tony finds Happy in his security office, filling out forms, illuminated by the glow of multiple surveillance monitors.

He tells him swiftly, ripping off the band-aid. Happy takes it about as well as can be expected. He stares at Tony for several dead silent seconds, the form slowly scrunching up in his hands as they ball into fists. And then he starts blinking very rapidly and unnaturally.

“Hey, no worries, I cried too,” Tony says.

Happy sits forward and plants his elbows on his knees before dropping his head in his hands. “Um,” he says, muffled. “You— should probably fire me now.”

“It’s not on you. I was responsible,” Tony says, feeling hollow.

“I was security,” Happy says, sounding just as hollow. “I was right in the next room. Oh god.”

“Exactly, Hap. You were there, you were doing your job the way you were expected to. What else could you have done, hover outside his bedroom door all night? That would have gone over well.”

“Oh, god.”

“We got him now, Hogan. That’s— We should focus on that.”

“We should have had him. We should have had him, Tony.”

Tony steps forward and takes Happy by the wrist, pulling him from the chair and into a hug. “Yeah,” he says as he roughly pats Happy on the back. “Okay. Okay. We blew it. We blew it so hard they should name a hurricane after us.” He steps back. “So, what are we gonna do. Sit and wallow, or step the fuck up?”

“Both, probably,” Happy says. “But yeah. I hear ya. I get it.”

“You look like a man who should not have dinner alone,” Tony says. “Join us. Please. I can tell you’re just going to go home and kick yourself all evening otherwise.”

-

Happy spends the entire ride to Midtown Tech wondering what he should say to the kid, if he should say anything, if he’ll upset Peter if he says something, or if he’ll upset Peter if he says nothing at all.

He arrives at 3 PM on the dot. Teenagers are swarming down the front steps and past his car. Happy leans back and watches them pushing each other, laughing, breaths fogging the air.

Yup. Teenagers are still awful. With one exception.

He sits back and waits, and goes over all of it in his head again. What to say, what not to say. The clock ticks slowly to five minutes, then ten minutes past three. Peter is usually here by now.

Happy is already digging through his pockets for his phone when he spots the kid coming out the front door. He loops around the gaggles of teenagers, shoulders hiked up defensively, holding his bunched-up scarf in his arms like he has a newborn baby wrapped in there.

He reaches the car and fumbles with the scarf a bit so Happy leans in to open the passenger door from the inside. Peter nudges it open further with his knee and then collapses into the seat. He pulls the door shut, rearranges the scarf in his lap and Happy spots a black bird with two beady eyes, twitching its head as it takes in its new surroundings.

Peter has an absolute death glare on his face. “You have to make her better,” he says.

“Is that a crow?”

“She got hurt,” Peter says, and then demands: “Fix her.”

“I—What’s wrong with it?”

“I don’t know but she won’t fly.”

“What am I supposed to do about it?”

Peter squares his shoulders, his scowl flickering strangely. “Find a way to fix her! Duh-doy!”

Happy can see the panic blazing right under that surface of anger. “Okay. Let’s give Tony a call.” He taps the screen on the dashboard. Call Tony is one of those buttons he has permanently installed on his home screen.

“Y’hello?” Tony says through the car speakers, against the background of a huffing and puffing coffee machine and mugs clanging together.

“Peter found an injured crow,” Happy says. “What do we do, take it to a vet? Is there one that specializes in birds?”

Tony hums. “I mean… How should I know?”

“I don’t know,” Happy says dryly. “You’re a genius. Surely you can figure something out. Like asking your AI.”

“Right. Stand by.”

Silence for a moment. Peter’s breath is hitching in a strange way, like he is trying his absolute damnedest not to start bawling.

Tony returns to the phone. “FRIDAY recommends taking her to a local wildlife rehabilitation center or animal rescue organization. There are several in the city.”

Peter pounds his fist against the upholstery. “So get on with it and find us one!” His voice is a lot higher than normal.

“Okay, kid,” Tony says, very calmly.

“Please,” Peter says, softer, dropping his head a bit.

“Yeah, yeah. Okay. I’ll send one right on through that’s closest.”

“Thank you,” Happy says.

They get an address in the Upper West Side of Manhattan and Happy punches the address in with a bit of effort — blasted GPS. “There we go, bud,” he says.

“Yeah,” Peter breathes. He rearranges the scarf again, his shoulders drooping. “I’m sorry. I just like birds.”

Happy hums. “Remember when you broke your wrist slipping on goose shit?”

Peter’s laugh is tentative. It’s music to Happy’s ears.

-

“It’s a very clean break,” the lady at the wildlife rescue center says. She has cupped her hands around the crow’s body, leaving the wings free. “That’s good. I’m going to put a little splint on him and he should be fine in a few weeks. Crows are tough.” She hands the scarf back to Peter. “You may want to wash that before you put it on again.”

“Thank you,” Peter murmurs. He has been unusually demure from the moment they walked in.

“We’re keeping him in here for a few weeks,” she says, gesturing at their wall of small enclosures.

“Her,” Peter says.

“Actually—” she starts, but Happy shakes his head at her and she picks up on it. “We keep her inside,” she says with a nod. “In a confined space, to prevent flapping. And then once the splint comes off, we move her to our bigger cages like the ones you just walked past so she can rehabilitate.”

“Great.”

They pause in front of a large birdcage on their way back to the car. A handful of crows are lined up on a hanging rope.

“Looks like the poster for that documentary,” Peter says.

“Which one?”

“It’s in my bedroom. I think the title is just ‘the birds’.”

“Ah. That documentary.”

Peter curls his fingers through the mesh of the cage. “My uncle used to say that birds are the souls of dead people.”

Welp, Happy doesn’t know what to say to that. He’s not cut out for these sorts of conversations.

“His soul is probably in that goose that left shit on the road,” Peter says.

Happy laughs.

-

“Tony told me what happened in Germany,” he shares as they drive to the tower.

Peter focuses on folding his scarf. “Okay. Um. Yeah. Good.”

“I’m … just sorry.”

“Um, ’s not your fault. I could have come to you.”

Happy purses his lips. “I didn’t exactly make myself approachable.”

“Yeah, but I could have,” Peter says. “I know that now. Like, you have my back.”

“Always.”

“You’re really nice,” Peter says. “But you pretend like you aren’t, so don’t worry, I won’t tell. If anyone else ever gets weird around me, I’m hands down coming straight to you.”

That is weirdly sweet and reassuring. Happy doesn’t know what to say.

“Can we make one more stop before we get back?” Peter asks.

-

Tony sighs as he wraps his leftover brownies in saran wrap. He’ll just leave those in a breakroom somewhere. He thinks he may have ruined brownies for himself. This will now be forever the snack that reminds him that Peter was assaulted in the hotel room Tony picked out for him.

He hears the elevator ding and Peter and Happy round the corner soon after. Peter is holding his scarf in one hand and a small paper bag in the other. He looks better than Tony would have expected based on the phone call. “Hi, you two. How was the little adventure?”

“Good,” Peter says.

“Good,” Happy confirms.

Peter swings the arm with the paper bag back and forth a bit before setting it down on the table. “I got you something.”

Tony pushes the brownies aside. “Huh.” He grasps the bag by a corner and pulls it closer to peer inside. “Huh,” he repeats, and reaches in.

Out comes a sturdy, large mug in a soft, mossy green color. Printed on the front, in bold letters, are the words Shuh Da Fuh Cup. Tony has to read it twice and then laughs. “Good find, kid. What’s the occasion?”

“No occasion. It’s just a gift.”

“Ah.” Tony exchanges a glance with Happy, who shrugs. “Well. Thanks. I think this might become my new favorite.” And he grabs his cup of coffee to pour the contents into the new mug.

Peter looks satisfied. He pulls out a chair, his gaze wandering to the brownies. “Are we not eating those?”

“Oh. Have more if you want. I decided I might no longer like them.”

Peter’s eyes twinkle. “Is it because baking makes you look too much like a dad?”

Tony stares. “Baking makes me look like a dad?”

“Duh-doy.” Peter starts unwrapping the brownies again.

Tony looks to Happy for confirmation.

“Duh-doy,” Happy says.

Peter frees the brownies and scrunches the saran wrap up into a ball that he chucks towards the sink.

“Fine.” Tony holds out a hand. “I’m back to liking them. Hand me one.”

-

Freaking finally, the temperature begins climbing back up to something a little more manageable. Peter can no longer see his own breath when he walks outside, and he can feel his fingers again. Progress.

Winter is still coming, of course, but ya know. Small mercies.

Even though school is drudging on as usual, living at the tower feels like a vacation. It’s always nice and warm, and there’s movies he hadn’t seen, and a shower with about twenty different settings, and food he had never tried before. Like, seriously. What the fuck are lychees? That shit comes from a different planet, Peter is not an idiot, you can’t fool him.

Pepper has been knitting him so many socks that he feels like he could braid a hammock out of them or something. A very vibrant one, because Pepper uses yarn in all the colors of the rainbow. Imagine napping in a hammock made out of Pepper’s socks. Strangely soothing. Exactly the sort of ritziness he signed up for when he agreed to this whole thing.

Then there’s Tony, who is really throwing himself into baking. Even Pepper is surprised by it. For probably the first time in his life, Tony wakes up at the crack of dawn each morning, pours himself a big cup of coffee in his Shuh Da Fuh Cup and then makes Peter waffles, or grilled cheese, or pancakes, or eggs Florentine, or oatmeal cookies, or avocado toast. It's always ready for Peter when he gets to the living room. Sometimes it’s a little burnt around the edges, or a bit heavy on the salt, but that just kinda makes it feel a little more special. Like Tony doesn’t really know what he’s doing, but he's doing it anyway.

“You make me think of ratatouille,” Peter says once when he catches Tony standing by the stove one morning with one wooden ladle in either hand and a third one tucked behind his ear.

“You mean I remind you, specifically, of the rat?”

“The rats are like the good guys in this movie. Most of the time.”

Tony also still leaves him really long voice messages, even though Peter is literally living in his house. Sometimes Peter’s phone buzzes on his desk with an incoming debrief while he is doing homework, when he knows Tony is probably just in the next room.

Happy always drives him to school and picks him up, grumbling at the GPS and complaining about Peter’s choice of music. They usually get a snack on the way home. Sometimes ice cream, sometimes other stuff. Mainly ice cream, really.

“I want the piña colada ice cream,” Peter tries once, elbows leaning against the display case in the parlor as he studies all the flavors on offer. “With actual rum.”

Happy taps the little card behind the glass that says not suitable for minors. “Absolutely not.”

“Okay, but what if I told you…. Please?”

Against all his expectations, Happy actually asks for a small serving of the ice cream and lets Peter have one little plastic-spoon-scoop of it.

“Look at you, ya big grifter,” Peter says.

“Don’t tell May.”

And yeah, May. May gets to do the best stuff. Pepper takes her on walks, and to the cinema, and kayaking, and to a pottery class, and to the Guggenheim museum. They’re probably secretly discussing their business plans the whole time, but it’s okay, because May looks happy and a whole lot less pale. Peter only realizes how worried he has really been about her now that he no longer needs to worry about her.

-

The last time he was at a police station was after Ben’s death. A cop picked him up from school, cranking the gossip mill into overdrive. There’s still classmates today who think Peter’s secretly a drug dealer or something.

May and Tony both go with him. Tony put on a suit and sunglasses and carries a briefcase. “There’s nothing in it,” he says in the car on the way there. “I just need that whole precinct to know without the shadow of a doubt that they’ll be answering to someone if they fuck this up.”

The police lady is all right, as police goes. “I don’t like cops,” Peter tells her right at the start, in the interest of full disclosure.

She looks up from ticking lots of tiny boxes on blue-lettered forms. “Oh. That’s a shame,” she says. “Want to tell me why?”

“My uncle got killed almost a year ago and you never found the guy that did it.”

“That is awful,” she agrees. “I’m so glad you still decided to come in today.”

It makes him think of what May said, how systems are actually just a whole lot of individual people. “I’m just hoping you’re like, one of the good apples,” he says.

Really, it feels kinda helpful to go through all this. She has him describe everything all clinically and factually. The first time feels awkward and embarrassing, but he has to go over the story a bunch more times and it gets a bit easier. Like it takes away some of the power shame is holding over all these details.

Tony and May take him out for cinnamon rolls after. He and Tony wait in the car in the parking lot while May steps out to buy them. “Our little private booth,” Tony calls it.

May returns with an unreasonably large box and opens it to reveal at least two dozen cinnamon rolls.

“Christ, May,” Peter says.

“They had different kinds,” she says defensively. “And I had to get three of each.”

Tony nods earnestly. “I don’t know what to say, that sounds like the done thing.”

May places the entire box in Peter’s lap. “We have a lot to celebrate.”

“Didn’t think any of this was celebrate-worthy.”

May squeezes his knee. “Of course it is, honey. I’m so damn proud of you.” Her voice goes sandpapery rough and her eyes suspiciously shiny.

“Sometimes I feel like I should just do something crazy,” Peter says. “Like. Cut off all my hair. Or burn all my socks. Or dye my hair purple.”

“A lot of hair-related suggestions.”

“Like, one crazy thing to get it out of my system and then I’d be okay after that.”

“I thought that, once,” Tony says. “But several crazy, drunk parties later I conceded that the actual solution was much more boring and it was to talk, a lot, to a lot of people.”

“That is boring,” Peter agrees. He kicks off his shoes, letting them tumble to the floor, and then curls up in the car seat, rearranging the box of cinnamon rolls in his lap.

“You can have snacks while you talk,” Tony says. “Really good snacks.”

“Point taken. All right. Talk me through these.”

May points. “Original flavor. Caramel Pecan. Maple glazed. Pumpkin spice. Apple cinnamon. Nutella. Gluten free.”

“You got the gluten free as a ‘flavor’, did you?”

She shrugs as she plucks one up. “I was just wondering if they’d taste different.”

“You’re silly,” Peter tells her, and smiles. May being silly gives him hope.

-

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Relaxing,” Pepper says. She doesn’t even look up from the paperwork on the desk in front of her.

Tony shoves his hands into his pockets to keep himself from ripping the papers away from her. He should have boarded up her office the moment she got her burn-out diagnosis. “I thought we were finally past this, Pep.”

“This is… different.”

“God. I’m having flashbacks to the last time you caught me with an empty bottle of whiskey and I insisted I had merely drunk it in the interest of science.”

She chuckles now, lowering her pen and looking up at him. “I admonished you that alcohol was not a solution and you said—” she imitates his drunk voice: “—nu-uuuh, it’s not a solution, it’s a solvent.”

“I’m starting to realize now that workaholic is still very much -aholic.”

“Darling, I promise. I mean — Yes, it’s technically work, but coincidentally, it’s… This is me orchestrating a course of action so I can go back to a job I actually love doing, small scale, reasonable hours and real impact. May has comprehensive expertise in the nonprofit sector and a wide network, I have the legal know-how and the funding to get us started.”

“Yes, you’ll conquer the world together,” Tony agrees.

“How can you object to a sustainable plan to ensure I avoid future burn-out?”

“I love your sustainable plans. They’re my favorite kind, particularly when there’s graphs—”

“Ooh, I have graphs.” She starts rooting through the papers.

“—and you can make all the sustainable plans you want. After you have watched every episode of Parks and Recreation.” And he points at the doorway, sternly. “Now, if you please.”

She huffs and slides the papers away. She glances up at the clock, then frowns and caps her pen. “What are your plans for dinner?”

“To not rush it, definitely. Peter just ate seven cinnamon rolls this afternoon.”

-

“If I write a note to Mr. Whatever from security,” Peter asks one day as they are driving to school. “As in, to say I’m sorry and all that crap. Will you give it to him?”

“Sure,” Happy says. “I think he’d appreciate that a lot.”

It’s their last week staying at Stark Tower before May is going back to work or, whatever, getting started on the new version of what work is going to be for her. She’s working something out with Pepper and Peter doesn’t fully understand the details. But May says it’ll be bigger impact, better hours and better pay. So. Win, win, win, and warm showers.

Something occurred to him last night, as he was lying in bed and contemplating the usual stuff like his existence, his purpose in life, what it means to be a good person, and whether ducks have a good memory. He was looking back on his summer and it didn’t make him feel depressed as hell for a change. It felt like he could sort of pick up all those things that happened as if they were little boxes; pick them up and look at them from all sides and then just put them back down. And it occurred to him for the first time that the people in those white-picket-fence-foster homes he got sent to were just trying their best, like most people on this weird fucking planet.

So he wrote them both a little note this morning to apologize for smashing up their houses. He’ll post them later today. It feels like a way to close a chapter in his life.

-

During his AP math class, May sends him a screenshot of an email she received. It’s from Thaaahnyiiah, citing a positive evaluation from the last home visit and confirming a transition from monthly to quarterly home visits.

Sorry if this is horribly distracting for the rest of your day, May sends along. But wanted you to know right away.

Peter gives her a quick call after class, as he makes his way down to the PE dressing rooms. “That is very distracting,” he says. “Thank you, I want to cry.”

“I’ll come with Happy to pick you up, later. We’ll go for celebratory— I don’t know yet. Donuts.”

“You think they got those with gluten free options?”

She giggles. She sounds really happy, like the kind of happy where you get a little giddy and crazy.

“So. Um. Are you, like, content?” Peter asks.

“Of course.”

“But are you actually? Because you want bigger things, right?”

May stays silent for a moment. “I want no home visits at all,” she then says. “I want them to acknowledge the whole thing was a mistake. I want them to reevaluate their policies. I want them to invite me as a speaker to their next employee conference or corporate retreat or whatever it is they have. I want an article in the Guardian newspaper. That’s what I want, but I can wait, Peter. Until you’re eighteen, like we discussed. I don’t mind. Revenge served cold, you know, honey.”

“No,” Peter says. “Don’t wait. I want you to go for it. I know you can do it. There’s… other people who need this.”

“I’m so proud of you, Peter.”

“Me too, of you. You’re so awesome. We’re both pretty awesome.”

May laughs.

-

On their final Friday at the tower, Peter is called back into the police station to ID a picture. The same police lady is there and lays six pictures of women out for him. Peter clocks her straight away. The haircut is different but it’s unmistakably her. It gives him the shivers a little bit, seeing her picture, but he also can’t help but think I fucking got you, bitch.

“What’s next?” he asks.

“The case will be handled by German and Swiss police, but they will keep us up to date.” She hesitates. “I won’t mince words, Mr. Parker, he-said-she-said cases are always a tough win. But it might help you to know that she is currently already in a prison in her home country Switzerland, on different charges.”

“That is good,” Peter agrees. “For like a good ten years?”

“No. I mean. I can’t tell you that.”

“If we get her for this, what’s her… Is she getting jail time?”

“Couldn’t tell you that either.”

“All right,” Peter says. “Well. I’m used to hard-earned victories, so. Bring it.”

-

Tony pours himself a cup of Shuh Da Fuh Cup coffee and leans back against the kitchen counter, surveying the room.

It’s a very tranquil Sunday.

They spent their whole Saturday helping May and Peter move back home, and today the tower feels quiet.

They already arranged a sleepover for next Friday, though, so he’s hopeful they might build a new tradition together.

His phone buzzes. He’s been expecting it, because FRIDAY informed him a few minutes ago that Peter ended his patrol and was changing out of his suit, and the kid usually sends his five-word-debriefs on his way home. He thumbs through his phone and opens the app, eyebrows raising when he spots a voice message of almost two minutes long.

He presses play.

“Hi Tony. I’m on my way home because it started raining and we all know criminals stay inside when it rains so I figured I could, too. Um. What to say. I stopped a grand theft bicycle. Couldn’t find the owner, so I just left a note. Um... I helped this lost, old Dominican lady. She was really nice and bought me a churro. I asked if it was gluten free and then I laughed about it like a moron because I totally forgot that was like an inside joke so she didn’t get it.”

“So guess what, maybe you already know, I don’t know if Happy told you before me, but he sent me this picture that the wildlife rescue center sent him about how crowie had her splint removed and they moved her to the big cage. So she’ll be okay, I think. You should tell Happy to ask May out again, I think she’ll say yes.”

“You know, I just needed to tell you — Uhh, you know you have waaaay too many kitchens at the tower. It’s pretty insane. It’s very, very… panache. You know, very panache. I don’t know if that’s a good word, but I mean it in a good way. And I know you have your favorite coffee maker, and you had your favorite cup that you don’t use anymore, the, what was it, ‘don’t fucking talk to me until I’ve had my coffee’, that one. And I just figured I should probably… tell you…” Peter’s voice tapers off.

It stays quiet for a good five seconds, and then he resumes, briskly: “Um. You know. Forget it. We’ll talk about it another time. It’s not important. Just, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, Monday internship day. Thank you for— Just, thank you. You’re weird, but you’re really nice. That sounded pretty corny, I don’t know why I said that. Have the protractor ready for me, you imbecile. See you tomorrow. End of debrief.

The message ends.

Tony lowers his phone and shakes his head, a smile spreading across his face. This kid. Incredible, exactly as he is.