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Chapter Text

There was a slight humming that was steadily getting louder the more he faded into consciousness. Peter took a silent, deep breath as he tried to remember why he was unconscious in the first place. After a quick mental assessment of his body, he registered a slight ringing in his ears and a dull throbbing at the back of his head. What had happened? Where was he? There was a faint but constant tingle in the back of his neck. Never a good sign.

The last thing he could remember was being in target practice in one of the Hydra shooting ranges. He had lifted the gun, aiming for the human shaped target about 100 yards away, but right as his finger curled around the trigger, the wall to his left caved in with a loud bang that was only made worse with his enhanced hearing. He had been knocked to the ground in the explosion, his head throbbing where a chunk of the wall had collided with his skull. He had heard screaming from the hallway and quickly got back to his feet, holding the gun out in front of him.

In the doorway was a big metal robot. At least he thought so until faceplate slid up, revealing a very human man.

“Shit... you guys they have a kid in h-”

The man wasn’t able to finish getting his sentence out to whoever he was talking to before Peter had pulled the trigger.
The man threw his arm up in front of his face, only barely managing to stop the bullet from going straight through his head. The next minute the faceplate was slammed back down and the man was holding his glowing palm out towards Peter.

“Listen kid, I don’t know if you know who we are but we’re the good guys here. We want to help you get out of here, ok? I don’t want to hurt you.”

Peter stayed quiet. He had been with Hydra as long as he could remember, and one of the very first things he was taught was to stay quiet on missions. It was easier that way. No risk of revealing information he shouldn’t share. Exterminate the target and leave. No need for small talk.

“Can you understand me? Do you speak English?” The man tried.

Nothing.

The man sighed, “Ok kid, just come with me, ok? We’re going to get you somewhere safe, alright?”

Peter didn’t move. He was safe. Hydra had been training him his whole life to be able to protect himself and others while keeping them secluded in an underground bunker where no one could find them. Well at least that’s what he had been taught. But now he’s here having a standoff with a man in a metal suit. How did he get here?

Peter opened his mouth slightly, about to demand for the man to tell him who he was and why he had blasted his way in here, when he heard a slight whizzing noise go by his ear. A look to his right showed a man with short blonde hair lowering a bow and backing away. To his left there was an arrow rooted in the wall. The tip flashing red.

“Sorry Tony, we needed to hurry it up. Duck.”

Peter only just had time to see ‘Tony’ drop to the floor before another explosion happened. However, this time Peter didn’t get up. His ears rang and his head pounded. He could taste blood in his mouth. He thought he heard Tony and the archer talking but he couldn’t make out any words. The two of them came to stand over him but before he could do anything his body gave up and his world went black.

*******

What had happened after that explosion? Where was he now? He couldn’t hear anyone near him, so he slowly peeled his eyes open, only to wince when met with a bright light right above his face.

He gave himself a minute to let his eyes adjust before scanning them around the room. He tensed, seeing he was in a lab. There were a bunch of screens showing different tests and graphs on his right, next to a messy countertop covered in beakers and vials and syringes full of who knows what.

Was this another Hydra bunker? When Peter was about 8 years old, he moved from one bunker to the one he was just in. They had started doing experiments on him when he was young. Too young to even fully remember. He was the only one who didn’t immediately die from whatever they had given him. And the more experiments they did the more his power and abilities grew. They moved him to a different bunker; they said as a reward. For being strong enough to withhold the tests they were doing on him.

At the time he thought that meant he was done with the testing and experimenting. That he had somehow succeeded. But it only got worse after that. They pushed his abilities to the max. Seeing how long his enhanced metabolism could go without food, leaving him hungry for a week before he almost died. But he didn’t.

They tested his strength by deploying a bomb that made the ceiling of an old training room collapse on top of him. He managed to lift it enough to escape but for a moment he thought he wouldn’t be able to do it. He thought he was going to die. But he didn’t.

They tested his enhanced healing by doing all sorts of things to his body. Slicing him with knives, stabbing him in vital organs, snapping bones, severing ligaments. He always healed. Normally within hours, but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel the pain. There was one time they broke his left leg, his ankle, sliced a nice sized gash in his forearm and stabbed him in the lower stomach all at the same time, after withholding food for a few days. That time it took him about a week and a half to fully heal every wound, only being given the smallest amount of food possible during the healing process. For a while there he thought he wouldn’t be able to heal himself. He thought he was going to die. But he didn’t.

Sometimes Peter wished one of these tests had killed him. After fourteen years of none stop torture and testing and experimenting and body modification... Sometimes he wished he would die so he wouldn’t have to go through it anymore. But he never did.

Peter shook his head to clear his thoughts. If he thought about it too long, he would send himself into a panic attack and his Hydra handlers always told him that super soldiers didn’t have those. Unfortunately, Peter’s biggest weakness was his own mind. Not in terms of brains. He took pride in being their smartest super soldier to date. Being on par with some of Hydra’s own scientists. But he occasionally let his emotions get the best of him. He’d sometimes get a weird feeling in his stomach before shooting his target, giving them almost enough time to escape before he snapped out of it and carried through. He always got punished for it, but he was told as he trained more and grew older, he would stop feeling things and would eventually be their perfect soldier.

He tried to lift his arms, but they got caught. He was strapped down on a cold metal table, with thick cuffs on his wrists and ankles. He didn’t know what they were made of but even his super strength did nothing on them. Why was he here? We’re they starting new experiments on him? Would they be worse? He struggled for a few minutes before freezing when he heard voices approaching. He went still, closed his eyes and breathed in slow, measured breaths as the door slowly opened.

“He’s still asleep,” A voice said quietly, closing the door behind him with a click.

“Clint’s arrow really did a number on him huh?” A more familiar voice joined, “With all of those enhancements I would have thought he’d be awake by now.”

Peter listened as Tony moved a little closer to the table he was strapped to.

“Some of the files Nat found dated from this week showed that they were withholding food from him to test how his focus fared when running on low energy. That compared with the two explosions he was caught in? Yeah, he’s probably exhausted.”

“What other files did she find?” Tony asked.

Peter heard the other man move closer to him from the other side.

“There’s… there’s a lot. Poor kid’s been through basically every awful thing you could think of. Nat and Sam are compiling and organizing everything they found. Fury wants to be there when we go over everything.”

“Course he does,” Tony scoffed.

Peter heard it before he felt it. Thank his enhanced hearing and his experience with being experimented on. He heard the telltale sound of a syringe be filled and then felt a light jab in his upper arm. It didn’t really hurt, but he didn’t know what he was being injected with. Normally the scientists would tell him what was happening. Sure, it was only to taunt him, knowing he couldn’t stop it no matter how awful it sounded, but at least he still semi knew what was coming.

Before he could fully realize what he was doing, Peter was already in a sitting position, his eyes open wide, doing his best at elbowing away the hand holding the now empty syringe.

“Woahhh,” Tony said, putting his hands up in surrender, coming around the table to stand next to the other man, “Have you been awake this whole time?”

“What was that? What did you inject me with?” Peter asked, ignoring Tony’s question. He tried to seem tough, but his voice wavered from disuse.

“It was nothing to hurt you,” The man said quickly, “It was just some nutrients. Your body needs them, it’ll help you feel better.”

Peter furrowed his eyebrow slightly. Why were they giving him nutrients? Why are they making him feel better?

“Bruce here is a doctor,” Tony said, gesturing to the man who was now sheepishly fixing his glasses.

“Well not-”

“He fixes all of us up after missions,” Tony cut Bruce off, “You got top of the line health care here.”

“Where is here? Where am I?” Peter asked, looking around for a hint.

The room they were in had no windows and he had no recollection of being brought here. It made him uneasy. He curled his hands into fists, being reminded of the cuffs around his wrists.

“You’re in a med lab in Avengers tower,” Bruce stated.

“New York,” Tony supplied, seeing Peter’s confusion.

New York? His bunker was in Sokovia. How is he now laying in a med lab in New York? Why would they need to move him here? What tests did they have lined up next that would need him to move countries?

“We know you’re probably confused and scared-” Bruce started.

“I’m not scared.” Peter cut him off.

Tony raised an eyebrow, “Well good, because you shouldn’t be. We’re not going to hurt you. We’re not like them.”

Peter tilted his head slightly, looking between Tony and Bruce.

“You’re not with them? I’m not here for more testing?” He asked quietly.

Something akin to pity flashed briefly across the two men’s faces. Peter hated it.

“No kid, you’re not. You’re not going to go through that ever again, ok?”

Peter suddenly felt a little lightheaded. His mind couldn’t keep up with everything that he was being told right now. He was in New York, in a med lab, not to be experimented on? The men currently watching him very closely weren’t part of Hydra. They said not to be scared of them, and that he’d never be experimented on like that again.

It sounded too good to be true.

He didn’t believe them.

Chapter Text

After an exhausting hour or so of being given different nutrients and IVs and even being hand delivered a water bottle by Captain America himself, it seemed they were finally done for the day.

Peter had stayed pretty quiet after Tony and Bruce started making promises that he wouldn’t be hurt again. He would have loved to believe them, but he had been lied to enough that he knew better than to get his hopes up that they were telling the truth. It was only a matter of time before they discovered one of his abilities that perked their interest, and they decided to test it out more ‘in the name of science.’ He knew how this went.

Although, to give credit where credit was due, Bruce had been very gentle while administering all of his fluids. He was acting as if Peter would shatter into a thousand pieces if he inserted an IV too rough, even though he clearly knew he could take a hit. It was a nice change from the way he was usually manhandled around, but Peter didn’t think he liked being treated so fragile either.

“Okay, I think you’re stable enough for us to wrap up today,” Bruce stated, removing the last IV from Peter’s arm and turning to his desk drawer to get a Band-Aid for the small incision. To everyone but Peter’s surprise, by the time he had turned back to him, the cut was already completely healed. No indication that he had spent the last 30 minutes with an IV drip in his arm.

“Well. At least you won’t be making a dent on our Band-Aid supply,” Tony said, standing from the chair he had been occupying.

“You’re good to head out,” Bruce said calmly, “I’ll have you come back here tomorrow to double check that everything is ok, and then if you’re comfortable with it we’ll do some more testing throughout the week. Nothing painful, just some simple blood work so we can see how your body works with your enhancements. We need a reference on your normal vitals and healing process, so we know how to help you if you were to get hurt or sick.”

Peter was not surprised by the news that they would be doing tests throughout the week. He had been expecting that since he woke up in a med lab. He was however shocked by the first part.

“Wait, I’m not staying here?” He asks.

“In the med bay? No. The only reason you’d stay here overnight is if you were too injured to be moved. You’re not a prisoner here, Pete. You’ll have a bedroom while you stay here.” Tony told him.

Peter took a moment to take that in. He had felt like a prisoner when he first woke up, but after only about five minutes of talking with Bruce and Tony, they seemed to decide that he wasn’t a threat to them here and had uncuffed him from the table. He told them his name after getting sick of hearing Tony repeatedly call him kid. He kept calling him kid anyway. He seemed big on nicknames, calling Bruce about seven different names in the hour they spent together.

“You should consider yourself lucky,” Tony spoke again, “You’ll have a room on the Avengers floor. People would kill to be in that position.”

“How... How long will I be staying here?” Peter asked.

“We’re going to meet with Fury later tonight, he’s kind of in charge of things like this,” Bruce told him, “We’ll know for sure after then, but I’d say it’s a safe bet to say at the very least you’ll be here for a week.”

Peter nodded slowly. Okay. Spending a week in the Avengers tower. Rooming on the same floor as the Avengers and supposedly not being experimented on. Definitely not a sudden jarring change or anything.

Tony clapped his hands, “Let’s go then! I’ll order everyone some takeout. Busy day, who wants to cook?”

Bruce gave him a smile, “Since when do you ever cook?”

Tony pointed a finger at him, “Keep quiet big green or I won’t order anything that either of you like.”

Make that nickname count eight.

Peter slowly stood from the table, stretching out his legs before following Tony out of the room. The two of them walked in silence down a few hallways before entering an elevator.

“Avengers floor please, Friday dear,” Tony said to seemingly no one, smiling at Peter’s confused face.

“Of course, Boss,” A robotic voice said from above.

“Friday is my AI. She’s programmed throughout the entire tower. She monitors and controls basically everything here,” He explained as the elevator started moving up.

Peter nodded, trying to mask how cool he found that. Based on Tony’s knowing smirk he didn’t do a very good job of it.

The elevator opened and Peter barely managed to suppress a flinch at the sudden yelling, immediately feeling on edge. His mind ran a mile a minute trying to make sense of what was the cause of the yelling. Were the Avengers training? Fighting maybe? There was no tingle in the back of his neck so that was a good sign.

“Yeah,” Tony started, “Your roommates are a rowdy bunch. You’ll get used to them, come on.”

He led the way into the room and Peter saw what all the commotion was about. There were five people spread out in a living room. Three of them were sprawled out on a large couch and two sat on the floor holding controllers and yelling at a tv screen.

“That’s cheating!” One of them yelled.

“It’s strategy,” Another yelled with a laugh.

Peter only recognized one person in the room, and it wasn’t a face that he was that eager to be seeing again.

“Pete, you know Clint already,” Tony introduced, gaining the attention of everyone in the room.

Peter watched as a boy who couldn’t be much older than himself paused the game on the tv before looking at the archer who tried to blow him up yesterday.

“Hey,” Clint said, sitting up on the couch, “No hard feelings, right? I knew what I was doing, I wouldn’t have seriously hurt you.”

Peter didn’t say anything, just stared.

Tony cleared his throat, “Anyway… Pete’s going to be staying here for at least a little while, so be nice. He’ll be taking the guest room at the end of the hall.”

“When are we not nice?” A girl sitting on the floor said with a grin.

“Don’t be too nice either. Pete’s had a rough few hours, let him rest,” Tony sent her a pointed look, to which she raised her hands in mock surrender.

Tony motioned to the people lounging on the couch near Clint, “This is Wanda and Vision.”

Peter nodded slightly at the red-haired girl and the literal robot who sat with his arm around her. He wished he could say that was the weirdest thing he’d encountered but you’d be surprised. Wanda sent him a small smile and Vision gave him a wave.

Tony nodded to the two on the floor, “That’s Kate and Harley.”

“They look too young to be Avengers,” Peter said immediately, looking between the two of them, as looks of offence slipped onto their faces.

“They’re both older than you are, and they’re not Avengers,” Tony said with a small smirk, “Clint is currently training Kate and Harley is my son.”

That had Peter turning to look at Tony with a raised eyebrow, “I didn’t know you had kids.”

Peter noted the change in the room at the mention of Tony’s kids. He wondered what that was about.

“Well, we’ve only known each other for about an hour and most of our conversations have been about you, not me,” Tony said, folding his arms across his chest.

“That’s new,” Clint muttered from the couch, causing the others to laugh, breaking the air.

“Do you live here too?” Peter asked.

“In the tower, yes, but me and my family have our own floor, just above this one. Harls tends to hang around here to annoy this bunch and distract them from their work, so you’ll probably be seeing him around.”

Harley scoffed in a dramatic manner, “Annoy? Distract? They love me! What would they do if I didn’t come down here to brighten their day?”

“Probably get more work done and spend less time playing video games,” Vision stated matter of factly.

Wanda smiled into her hand.

“I’ll show you to your room, you can clean up while I order dinner,” Tony said, “The rest of you, we have a meeting with Fury in an hour, don’t be late.”

Peter followed Tony down the hallway, ignoring the eyes following them.

“Home sweet home,” Tony said, opening the last door at the end of the hallway and ushering Peter in.

The room was… nice. Really nice. Peter had never stayed in a room this big before. His room at the Hydra bunker was just big enough for a small cot and a sink. Even the Hydra labs were half the size of this room. Who needed this much space? There was a big bed in the middle of the room, on the opposite side sat a large desk with a big tv mounted on the wall above it. To his right the wall was lined with some bookshelves and on the other wall there were two doors.

“Those are the bathroom and the closet,” Tony said, seeing him looking at the doors, “I had Steve bring up some of Harley’s old clothes that should fit you but if you end up staying longer, we’ll have to get you some of your own.”

Peter nodded. He was starting to feel a little overwhelmed. This was a lot. Honestly even if they did decide to start experimenting on him the same way Hydra did, it may be worth it if he got to come back to this room every night.

Tony must have caught on, “Why don’t you take a shower and change into some comfier clothes, and I’ll order some dinner for you ok? Just relax tonight.”

Peter nodded again, not saying anything. He was exhausted and the bed in the middle of the room looked really soft.

Tony shifted uncomfortably at his silence.

“You’ll have the floor to yourself for a while. Clint, Vision and Wanda will be at our meeting. Kate normally heads back to her own place at the end of the day, and I’ll send Harley back to our floor. Feel free to explore the rest of this floor. Kitchen is free game. Or you can spend the night in here, whatever you want.”

“Thanks,” Peter said quietly.

“Need anything else before I head out?” Tony asked.

Peter could tell he was eager to leave, and Peter was eager to be alone, so he quickly shook his head.

“Great!” Tony sounded relieved, “Then I’m out. Enjoy the room.”

Peter let out a sigh of relief as the door shut, finally leaving him alone. He relaxed his shoulders and moved to sit on the edge of the bed. He closed his eyes and focused his hearing on the living room, listening as Tony led everyone to the elevator.

He stood and made his way to the bathroom where he took the nicest shower of his life before changing into a pair of sweatpants and a large t-shirt with the words ‘Star Wars’ printed on it.

When he walked back into the bedroom there was a plate of food piled high, waiting for him on the desk. Someone must have brought it in while he was showering. He didn’t even think twice before shoveling it down at a record pace. He hadn’t eaten since the night before he was taken, give him a break. Never mind the small voice in the back of his head warning him that it could be poisoned or something. He was forced to ingest poison once at Hydra to see how he’d fare against it. Not fun.

After barely holding himself back from licking the plate clean, he climbed into the bed. It was soft and warm, and he let out a small sigh of content.

He couldn’t help but laugh a little at the way he had been so compliant with everything the Avengers had given him. Every instinct about fighting back was thrown out of the window with the probably false promise of safety, and a nice bedroom. If his old trainers could see him now.

He knew the Avengers didn’t fully trust him, no matter how nice they were being. The biggest give away was being placed at the end of the hall on the Avengers floor. If he wanted to try and escape, he’d have to pass by every single Avenger on the way, and Peter doubted they were heavy sleepers.

Luckily for them, even if Peter were to try and run away, it wouldn’t be happening tonight. He was exhausted and for the first time in years he was going to sleep in a warm bed, with a full stomach.

He was asleep before his head even hit the pillow.

Chapter Text

The first morning at the tower was… eventful. To say the least. Peter had woken up, made his bed and waited. That’s what he did every morning. Woke up, made his bed, and waited for one of the handlers to come and get him to take him to whatever he was to do that day.

He sat on the edge of his bed with his hands placed on his knees for 30 minutes before there was a knock at the door.

“Kid, you up?” Tony’s voice called out, “Can I come in?”

Peter furrowed his eyebrow slightly. Why was Tony asking him if he could come in? This was his house.

“Yeah…” He replied.

Tony walked in, looking put together in a three-piece suit. He leaned against the desk and tilted his head at Peter, looking confused.

“What’re you doing?”

“I was waiting for you to come get me,” Peter replied.

Tony’s eyes softened a little, “Pete, you don’t need to wait for anyone to come get you. Once you’re up you can head out into the kitchen and grab some food. Or go lay on one of the couches in the living room and wait for someone else to wake up and cook.”

Peter didn’t say anything. He felt like that was a test, and if he actually just had done that, he would have gotten into trouble.

Tony cleared his throat, “So… we uh. We talked with Fury last night. About you.”

“Uh huh…” Peter didn’t like that Tony seemed a little apprehensive to continue.

“We told him that we don’t know much about your enhancements yet, but he doesn’t like the idea of letting a mutated ex Hydra soldier wander loose with no supervision. We discussed sending you to a shield base, but apparently, they’re dealing with some off-world space stuff and don’t really have the time or room to keep you there,” Tony explained, waving his hand around.

“So… what happens to me?” Peter asked.

“Looks like you’re staying here indefinitely, kid,” Tony said, sending him a tight smile.

Peter’s eyes widened, “Wait what?!”

“Look, it’s not all that bad,” Tony said quickly, “We’ll get you some clothes and other necessities, and you can get stuff to decorate this room however you want. Plus, you’ll be living with basically every other enhanced individual in New York. You fit right in.”

Peter took a deep breath, trying not to freak out. Indefinitely was much longer than a week. But what other choice did he have? Run away and have to get chased down by the Avengers who knew New York much better than he did? They hadn’t been mean to him yet, but they definitely would be if he tried and failed to run away.

“We’ll figure out more details later, ok? Right now, we’ll take it slow. Start with getting you healthy and helping you with your enhancements. We’ll decide what comes after that when we get there, sounds good?” Tony said, standing up from the desk.

Peter nodded slowly, looking up at him.

“Get dressed and then come into the kitchen. Sam made breakfast, if you hurry you can get some before the others wake up and eat it all.” Tony said before heading out, closing the door behind him.

Peter took another minute to collect himself before throwing on a pair of jeans and a red hoodie. He ran a hand through his hair a couple of times, trying to tame the curls that were all over the place from sleeping. He didn’t have much luck with it, but he was too excited by the prospect of another meal so soon after his last one that he headed to the kitchen anyway.

He slowed down once he reached the entrance of the kitchen, suddenly feeling like he was intruding even though Tony had told him to come in here. Sam was standing at the stove, flipping pancakes, Tony was leaning against the counter, nursing a cup of coffee and scrolling through his phone, and Harley was sitting at the bar, eating a plate full of pancakes covered in syrup.

Tony looked up as Peter hesitated in the hallway.

“Come sit, Pete,” He called out, drawing Sam and Harley’s attention to him.

“Uhm, ok,” Peter said, shuffling into the room and taking a seat at the bar next to Harley.

Harley gave him a smile, “Do you like pancakes?”

Peter shrugged, “I’ve never had them before, but they look good.”

Harley gasped, “You’ve never had pancakes? You need to try them! Especially Sam’s, he makes the best pancakes.”

“The only time Harls is nice to me is when I make him food,” Sam teased, sliding a plate of pancakes in front of Peter.

“Thanks,” he said, accepting the plate.

“I’m Sam, unofficial chef and pro Mario Kart player,” Sam smiled.

Peter gave him a small smile, not really understanding the last part of his sentence, “I’m Peter.”

Sam leaned against the counter as he watched Peter take his first bite.

Peter's eyes widened a little, “Wow these are so good…”

Sam laughed as Peter quickly took a few more bites.

“I’m glad you like them. I make them every Saturday, per Morgan’s request.”

“Morgan is my little sister,” Harley said, seeing Peter’s confusion.

“Ah,” Peter nodded.

“She’s the biggest fan of Sam’s pancakes,” Tony said, “Well, maybe second now.”

Peter felt his face flush slightly as he slowed down eating.

The kitchen was quiet for a while as Sam finished up cooking. Tony kept sipping his coffee and Harley and Peter finished their plates in silence.

Peter looked up only to be met with Sam looking closely at him.

“What?...” He asked.

Sam shook his head with a smile, “Nothing. You and Harley just look really alike. Especially while you’re wearing his old clothes. You could pass as brothers.”

Suddenly the room was quieter than before. A deeper kind of quiet. Peter watched as Sam’s light smile slipped right off his face and Harley tensed slightly beside him. Tony suddenly stood up straight, his jaw tight.

“Shit. Tony, I didn’t even think, I’m sorry, I really-” Sam started, looking guiltily at Tony.

Tony gave Sam what Peter thought was meant to be a smile but came across as more of a grimace, “It’s fine. No biggie.”

He downed the last of his coffee before setting the cup on the counter a little too hard.

“I’m heading to my lab. Busy day,” he said, striding to the elevator.

He was gone before Peter could even fully process what had happened. Sam let out a long sigh before turning to Harley.

“I really didn’t even think. Peter just looks a lot like you did when you were his age, it honestly just slipped out.”

Harley shook his head, “No it’s fine. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just a sore spot for him still is all,” he said softly.

Sam nodded.

Peter didn’t know what was happening, but he couldn’t help but feel like he was somehow in the wrong.

“Did I do something?” He asked quietly, “Do I need to go change clothes or something, or-”

“No! No, you’re fine, you did nothing,” Harley quickly cut him off.

He and Sam looked at each other, a silent conversation happening between them before Harley turned back to Peter with a serious expression.

“My dad… he reacted like that because he- I-” Harley let out a breath before starting again, “When I was little, I did have a brother. His name was James. But he uhm… He got taken. He was only a year old. I was three at the time, we were at some press conference work thing. My dad had taken me to the bathroom before he had to give some speech, and my mom had James. She was called away for something. Just for a minute, just to help someone with something, and she left James with one of my dad’s security guards. She thought he’d be fine, we trusted this guy, he had worked for my dad for years. But I guess he was part of some bigger organization, plotting against my dad, and he… he took James.”

Peter stayed quiet as Harley took a breath.

“By the time mom was done helping and me and dad were back, no one could find either of them. They locked the place down, had everyone looking but it was like he just disappeared and took James with him. There had to have been multiple people in on it, they had to have been planning this basically since he was born. We searched for years. Waited for a ransom note, ready to pay anything to have him back, but nothing ever happened. We still don’t really know what happened or why they took him or where he is now… if he’s even alive.”

Peter bit his lip, “I’m sorry. That sounds awful,” he said quietly.

Peter had seen multiple children be brought into Hydra, some of them were tested on like Peter was, but none of them ever survived. The few who didn't go through the same testing never stayed around long, they always got moved to different bases. Peter had no idea what happened to them after that. He couldn’t imagine being taken from your family like that. He wondered if one of them could have been James.

Harley cleared his throat, “It is what it is. Dad has a bunch of systems in place in case anything ever comes up. I was just telling you, so you know. It’s still a sensitive topic for my parents, so we try not to really bring it up too much.”

Peter nodded and Sam stood up from where he was leaning on the counter.

“I’m uhm, I’m going to go and wake the others up before breakfast gets cold,” He said, “Peter, Tony will come get you later so you can start on your checkups, but until then you’re free to do whatever.”

Harley took both his and Peter’s empty plates to the sink as Sam quickly excited the room.

“Do you have any family?” Harley asked.

“No,” Peter replied, “Well not any that I know. I’ve been alone with Hydra my whole life.”

Harley nodded, “Well since you’ll be staying here for the foreseeable future, maybe you can become part of our dysfunctional family. Full of super soldiers, spies, mutants and certified geniuses.”

Peter gave him a small smile, “Yeah, maybe.”

“Want me to teach you how to play Mario Kart until you’re needed?” Harley asked, nodding towards the living room.

Peter nodded, following him out of the kitchen.

He listened as the rest of the avengers slowly made their way into the kitchen and started eating as Harley walked him through the controls for the game. For a second, just a second, Peter let himself think that maybe he really could fit in here.

Chapter Text

“Okay so we’ve got super strength, enhanced healing, enhanced stamina, agility, and your, uh, stickiness. Is that all?” Bruce asked, checking his notebook.

Tony had brought Peter down to the med bay about an hour ago, where they met up with Bruce and another doctor named Helen. The four of them had been going through everything Peter could do and he was showing them examples. He had climbed the wall, picked up the metal table with only his pointer and middle finger, and sliced a small cut in his wrist to show off his healing factor. That last one had the three others all jumping to their feet and demanding he didn’t do that again.

“I uhm. I also have my webs,” Peter mumbled quietly.

Helen, Bruce and Tony had been nothing but kind to him, taking things slow and telling him that he didn’t need to do anything he didn’t want to. Peter didn’t quite understand that. They easily outnumbered him and could make him do whatever they wanted. He assumed their being nice was their way of trying to get him to let his guard down a little. He was just appreciating the kindness while it lasted.

“Your… webs?” Helen asked gently, turning in her chair to face him.

“You have webs on you?” Tony asked, arching an eyebrow.

“No, no I uhm,” Peter started, looking around the room. He angled himself on the bed so that he was facing the blank wall he climbed earlier and stuck his arm out, folding his middle and ring finger and firing a web at the wall.

Tony quickly stood up from the table he was sitting on, “What was that?!”

“Amazing,” Bruce whispered, looking closely at the web on the wall, “You produce your own webs.”

Peter bit his lip, Bruce’s fascination reminded Peter of the doctors back at his bunker who also found his powers ‘amazing’ and decided to try and get a better understanding of them by cutting into Peter themselves.

Bruce however, only scooped some of the web off the wall and into a small test tube before returning back to his desk.

“I’d like to run some tests on this and see what exactly it’s made of, if that’s alright with you? He asked, smiling at Peter.

Peter nodded.

“Ok Spider,” Tony teased, “I’ll keep in mind that you could just web us up at any time.”

Peter tensed at the name, not even hearing the second part of his sentence, which immediately caught Tony’s attention.

“What? Not a fan of that nickname?” He asked.

Peter shook his head slightly, “That’s… that was my name back with Hydra,” he said quietly.

The room was suddenly still.

“Peter was uhm, Peter was just the name they gave me to use if I went on any sort of undercover mission or anything. They just… they just called me Spider. They gave everyone some sort of animal themed nickname to make us feel less human.”

Everyone was quiet for a few more seconds before Tony spoke up.

“Well, that won’t do. Luckily for you, I’m an expert at making nicknames.”

“Oh boy,” Helen said, turning back to her computer with a smile.

“Let’s see,” Tony started, standing in front of Peter, “If we want to keep the Spider theme, we can make it more human. Maybe Spider-kid? Spider-man? Spider-boy?”

Peter let a small smile slip onto his face, “I think I’ll stick with just Peter for now.”

“You do that. I’ll have a new list of names by the end of the day. I’ll put it at the top of the to-do list,” Tony smiled.

“Was there any more abilities that we missed Peter?” Helen asked.

“Uhm no, that’s all,” Peter said. He knew he should probably tell them about the tingle in his neck, but he wanted to keep at least one thing to himself. At least for now.

“Alright,” Bruce said, “Then we’re almost done here. If you’re ok with it, I just want to quickly grab a blood sample before you go. I think looking at your DNA will help us understand your abilities a little bit more.”

Peter messed with the sleeves of his hoodie a little before nodding, “Yeah I guess we can,” he said.

“If you’re not comfortable doing that, we don’t need to do it right now,” Helen reassured him gently.

Peter shook his head, “No it’s fine. I’m fine. We can.”

Bruce and Tony shared a look over his head before Bruce nodded.

“Thanks Peter. This will only take a second, I’ll be gentle.”

Peter felt his heartbeat start to speed up as Helen pulled out a syringe and Bruce grabbed a cotton pad and poured a small bit of rubbing alcohol onto it. Helen moved over to him with a comforting smile.

“I’m just going to put this rubber band on your arm, ok? It just helps make your veins more visible and easier to access.” She said.

Peter nodded, and as he did, he realized how lightheaded he had suddenly become.

Helen secured the rubber band on his arm and after a moment Bruce began to wipe off a little patch of his skin with the cotton pad. Peter’s breathing quickened as he watched Helen pick up the needle and move towards him.

Suddenly Peter wasn’t in the med bay at Avengers tower anymore. He was back in his bunker with Hydra. He was restrained to a metal table in a small lab that smelled of chemicals. His body was on fire, every inch aching. He was thrashing as much as he could as he watched one of the meaner doctors come towards him with a needle.

“Stay still, Spider,” The doctor growled, grabbing his arm.

He shoved the needle harshly into Peter’s arm, causing Peter to let out a small cry. That earned him a harsh slap across the face.

“Silence Spider. How weak are you that you can’t even handle a needle. You earned another punishment.”

Peter’s vision started blurring and blackening around the edges as whatever was put into his arm started to take effect.

“That is if you live through this,” he said, earning chuckles throughout the room.

“NO!” He yelled, instinctively kicking out his leg.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was vaguely aware that he wasn’t really in the Hydra bunker but at the Avengers tower, but at this point it didn’t matter. He couldn’t breathe, he felt like his chest was collapsing into itself and the room was blurry and spinning. He could faintly hear someone yelling something and he thought he heard the door opening and closing but he couldn’t keep his focus on anything for longer than a second.

He squeezed his eyes shut as tightly as he could and clamped his hands over his ears, but he still couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t get a breath in no matter how hard he tried.

He dug his fingers into his hair, pulling on his curls tightly as he gasped out short, harsh breaths.

“I-I can-can’t breathe. I can’t-”

Suddenly his hands were being pulled away from his ears by steady but gentle hands.

“Peter. Peter, listen to me kid, you’re ok,” He heard Tony’s voice.

It sounded far off, but it was Tony’s voice.

One of his hands was moved to a firm surface.

“Breathe with me ok Pete?” Tony said, taking a deep breath, “You can do it. In and out. Follow what I do.”

Peter kept gasping but after a few more seconds, that felt like minutes, of feeling Tony take deep breaths, he started to follow him, allowing himself to finally breathe again.

“There we go, you’re doing great Pete,” Tony said quietly, “Can you open your eyes for me?”

After another minute Peter did. He was met with Tony’s chocolate brown eyes looking at him with concern.

“You’re okay,” he said.

Peter looked around the room, noticing the needle laying on the floor a few feet away. Helen and Bruce were nowhere to be seen, it was only him and Tony left in the room, both of them sitting on the floor. Tony’s hand was still holding Peter’s against his chest.

Peter’s brief calm didn’t last long as he suddenly realized what happened.

“Oh my god,” He said, wide eyes, “I- I think I kicked Helen. I’m so sorry. Really, I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean to hurt her, please Mr. Stark I didn’t-”

“Hey hey hey, it’s fine,” Tony said, “She’ll barely have a bruise, no one is mad at you.”

Peter didn’t realize he had begun to cry until Tony was carefully wiping a few tears away. That only made Peter’s heart drop more.

He quickly pulled away from Tony, scooting back until he was against the wall with his arms wrapped around himself.

“I-I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Tony looked confused, “I just said it’s ok?”

Peter shook his head, taking short breaths, “No… for-for crying. I know I’m not supposed to. I-I just got scared is all. I’m sorry. You can punish me for it. I knew better.”

Tony’s face fell, “Pete…”

Peter didn’t look up until he felt Tony’s hand lifting up his chin. He reluctantly met his eyes again.

“Pete, you can cry. I don’t know what those Hydra freaks told you, but crying is completely normal. You can cry as much as you want, no one here will ever judge you or punish you, ok?”

Peter didn’t reply, he just kept trying to calm down. He was wary, but grateful that he wasn’t going to be punished for crying. At least not today.

Tony wiped the last of the tears off his cheek, looking at him closely.

“Your freckles,” He started quietly, “They… they remind me of James. He had freckles on his cheeks too when he was little.”

Peter didn’t know how to respond. Harley told him that Tony doesn’t talk about James much because it made him sad. He didn’t have to answer though before Tony was clearing his throat, seeming as if he didn’t mean to say that aloud, and slowly standing. He offered a hand to Peter.

“Seriously though,” He said, pulling Peter to his feet, “Don’t feel bad, ok? We shouldn’t have pushed you so far today. Next time if you don’t feel comfortable doing something you need to tell us.”

Peter just nodded. He was tired and embarrassed, and he felt guilty anyway.

Tony set a gentle hand on his shoulder and led him to the elevator.

“How about you go lay down for a bit and relax. Take a nap. We’re having a team dinner tonight and trust me you’ll need energy to deal with them.”

A nap sounded amazing right now. Peter couldn’t believe the reality he was living currently. He went to a medical lab and was treated like a human by the doctors, he had a panic attack, and instead of being punished, he was comforted and sent to his own spacious room to have a nap before dinner.

He was almost nervous to take a nap in case he woke up and this was all a dream. But he didn’t think he could even come up with this if he tried.

Chapter Text

Peter had been lying in bed, staring at the ceiling for about 20 minutes. He had planned to take a short nap and ended up sleeping for almost three hours. He had had a rough day, ok? Give him a break.

He continued to stare holes in the ceiling and debate if he wanted to actually get out of bed when there was a knock at the door. He assumed it was Tony. Tony always knocked for some reason, and he wouldn’t come in until Peter said it was ok.

“Come in,” he said, his voice a little hoarse from disuse.

However, when the door opened, a little more hesitant than Tony usually was, Peter sat up, confused.

The man standing in his doorway was not Tony. It was a man he knew but had never met.

He stayed quiet as he looked at the man. From the long brown hair down to the metal arm. The winter soldier was in his room right now. Peter, of course, knew all about the winter soldier. He was used as an example in Peter’s training so many times. The hydra agents often complained in disgust about how the winter soldier had lost all of his good traits and joined the Avengers, ruining years of their hard work and training. Peter would never have dared speak it aloud, but he always secretly admired the winter soldier for escaping the torture that was Hydra and getting away. He used to have a faint hope that that could one day be him, but he never let his hopes get too high.

Now here he sat, in his bed at the avenger's tower, having a staring contest with the winter soldier, who just gave him a small smile.

“Hey. Uhm, Peter, right?” He asked.

Peter nodded slightly, “You’re the winter soldier.”

The man grimaced, “Please, just call me Bucky. I don’t really go by that name anymore.”

Peter nodded again, feeling guilty. He should have known. Peter didn’t like being called the name Hydra gave him either.

“Can I come in for a minute?” Bucky asked, lingering in the doorway.

“Uhm, yeah, sure,” Peter said, not really sure why Bucky was here.

Bucky walked in, wandering towards the desk before carefully sitting down in the chair. Peter just watched awkwardly, not knowing what to say.

“Sorry, I just- I just wanted to make sure you were ok. I heard what happened in the med bay and I just… I also have a bad record with medical exams because of Hydra so...” He trailed off.

Peter felt his cheeks heat up. Oh my god, did all of the Avengers know that Peter freaked out because of a simple blood draw? They probably thought he was ridiculous and weak and a child and-

His spiraling thoughts were cut off by Bucky quickly speaking up.

“No one else knows. Tony just came to ask me for advice. He feels really bad that you didn’t feel safe and he knew that I’ve been through a lot of the same shit you have, so he came to talk to me. And I don’t think that this makes you weak or anything. Anyone would have reacted like that after spending time in Hydra experimentation labs.”

Peter’s eyes widened. Could Bucky read minds? No one had ever told him about that before.

Bucky just smiled another small smile, “I know what you’re thinking kid. Like I said, I’ve been there. We’re very similar.”

“Right…” Peter started, “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. It’s fine, you’re fine,” Bucky said.

After another minute of silence, Peter spoke up again, a little quieter.

“Tony felt bad?”

Bucky’s eyes softened, “Yeah. I know he doesn’t always seem like it, but he does care. He felt pretty bad that you ended up with a panic attack. But he’ll be fine, don’t you feel bad about making him feel bad for you feeling bad. That’s too much feeling bad.”

Peter smiled a little.

Bucky seemed to take this as a sign to lighten things up a bit. His eyes glinted a little mischievously before he spoke again, voice lighter.

“Y’know you have this a lot easier than I did. A room and a bed and meals so soon?”

“You didn’t get this?” Peter asked quietly.

He didn’t know much about what happened to Bucky after Hydra lost him. He was just jealous that he had gotten away.

Bucky shook his head, “Oh no. I didn’t get any radioactive spider bites, I got brainwashing, so there was a lot of that still left over to deal with. I got blamed for murdering a king, fought half of the avengers, and then got refrozen for a while until the Wakandan’s could figure out a way to get rid of Hydra’s trigger words from my brain. Me and Tony, uh, didn’t get along until very recently. Actually, we’re still working on it. Since we all moved back to the tower everyone has spent these past few months getting back onto good terms with each other.”

“Wow,” Peter said, “I didn’t know all of that happened. I’m sorry.”

Bucky brushed it off, “It’s ok. We’re here now and we’re slowly but surely getting there.”

“Why is he being so nice to me then? We came from the same place,” Peter asked.

Bucky looked at him for a minute before answering, “Because you’re just a kid. You’re about the age his son James would be right now; I think you remind Tony a lot of him, who he would have been. He’ll never admit it, but he has a soft spot for you already.”

Peter stayed silent, staring down at his own hands. Tony had a soft spot for him? Because he reminded him of his missing, probably dead son?

“Also, you didn’t kill his parents, so you’re immediately on better terms than me and him started on.” Bucky said matter-of-factly.

Peter looked up quickly in shock.

“You killed his parents?!” He gasped.

“Well, the winter soldier did. A long time ago. But we’ve moved past it. Mostly.”

Peter sat staring in shock as Bucky chuckled.

Bucky stood up, “Well, if you’re feeling up for it, we’re having a team dinner tonight. Starts in like 10 minutes. Part of that whole ‘getting back on good terms’ thing. Mandatory team dinner nights. It’s…crazy, but fun. And there’s good food. I think we’ve ordered pizza tonight. You in?”

Peter thought about it for a minute. He didn’t want to intrude on their team dinner; this was clearly their thing. But he was starving and pizza sounded so good. Plus, he had been invited by both Bucky and Tony now, so at least two people maybe wanted him there, even if no one else did. And he could always leave after he ate if it got too awkward.

“Yeah, I’ll come. If that’s ok.” he said.

Bucky nodded once more, “‘course. Meet us in the kitchen whenever you’re ready.”

He gave Peter one last smile before leaving, closing the door behind him.

Peter collapsed back onto his pillows. His life just kept getting weirder and weirder. A few days ago, he was living his normal life in his base, and now he was getting invited to avenger’s pizza nights by the winter soldier.

*******

It was 20 minutes before Peter finally worked up the courage to head out into the kitchen. He could hear the overwhelming loud voices of many people from his bedroom, but he could also smell the pizza. In the end pizza won.

Much like this morning he slowly came to a stop at the end of the hallway, seeing the big crowd of people almost scrambling over themselves to get to the pizzas that were laying spread across the long dining table.

“Pete! Come sit,” Tony said, as soon as he saw him in the hallway.

Peter felt his face flush as everyone turned their attention to him for a minute before quickly continuing their conversations after Tony not so subtly cleared his throat. Peter was grateful for that as he made his way around the table and slipped into the seat to Tony’s left. He assumed everyone here had already heard all about him.

He looked around the table, trying to take everyone in and subconsciously scanning for threats. He wasn’t used to being around this many people at once like this. There was no tingle in his neck, but he still sat rigid in his chair.

“Help yourself kid, there’s a bunch of different kinds.” Tony said, taking a bite out of his own slice.

“Thanks,” Peter mumbled, grabbing a single slice of pepperoni pizza.

“Peter,” Harley spoke up from where he sat in between Kate and Wanda, “You need to give your opinion on the debate.”

“Debate?” Peter asked nervously.

Harley nodded, “The big question. Pineapple on pizza, yes, or no?”

Multiple heads turned to look at Peter now and he felt his face heat up, “Uhm… I’ve never had it so I can’t really say…”

“You’ve never had pineapple on pizza?” Harley asked, shocked.

“Consider yourself lucky, you’re not missing much,” said the man sliding into the seat on the left of Peter.

“Don’t listen to Rhodey,” Kate said, “Hawaiian pizza is the best.”

“I have to agree,” Captain America said from the other end of the table, “I didn’t think I’d like it, but I do.”

Bucky scoffed, “You always have been a little odd.”

He received an elbow in the ribs from Steve which made Bruce laugh into his soda.

A piece of pizza was suddenly dropped onto Peter’s plate from behind him. He looked up to see Sam standing near him with a smile.

“Hawaiian pizza. Give it a try and let us know what team you’re on,” He teased before sitting in his own seat.

Peter took a hesitant bite, making sure to get a piece of pineapple too. He watched from his peripheral vision as people leaned forward, expecting his answer.

“I like it,” he said.

“Yes!!” Harley exclaimed, making Wanda laugh next to him, “Welcome to the correct side.”

Clint scoffed, “Right side... Sure.”

Before anyone could say anything, the elevator dinged and a woman walked out, holding the hand of a small girl.

“Sorry we’re late! Traffic was awful. I’m glad Happy is getting a day off but man do I hate driving in New York,” she said, coming to join everyone at the table.

She leaned down and gave Tony a quick peck on the lips, causing him to grin.

Peter watched as the little girl let go of the woman’s hand and ran as fast as she could to Harley, who quickly scooped her up into a huge hug.

“Hi Morgs,” He said with a grin, “Was your playdate fun?”

The girl nodded enthusiastically as she was carefully set back on the ground.

“It was so much fun, Harls! It was at Lily’s house, and she has a bunch of cool Barbie dolls so we played with those, and I pretended that mine could fly like daddy, even though she doesn’t have a suit, and then we played tag in her backyard and then we had cookies!”

“You had cookies?” Tony spoke up with a mischievous smile on his face,” Then I guess you don’t have any room for pizza.”

The girl’s eyes widened, “No no, I do! I want pizza!”

Tony picked her up as she ran over to him, sitting her on his lap and pulling her into a hug.

“Okayyy, I guess you can have some pizza,” he said dramatically, causing the girl to giggle.

Peter watched as everyone at the table smiled fondly at the scene. This girl was loved by everyone here, that much was obvious.

“Peter,” Tony said, pulling Peter out of his thoughts, “This is my wife Pepper and my daughter Morgan.”

Peter nodded, looking over at Pepper, “It’s nice to meet you.”

Pepper smiled a warm, welcoming smile, “I’ve heard a lot about you, Peter. It’s nice to meet you. Are you settling in well?”

Peter nodded once more, “Yes ma’am. The room I’m in is really nice, thank you.”

“I’m glad to hear that, and please just call me Pepper.”

“Okay, Pepper.” Peter said with a small smile.

Peter felt a little tug on his shirt sleeve and looked over to where Morgan was still sitting in Tony’s lap but now looking at Peter with a big smile.

“Hi! I’m Morgan!” She introduced herself.

Peter smiled, “Hi Morgan.”

Peter hadn’t been around little kids much. He spent most of his life in solitude or with agents who were older than him, but already he felt something akin to protectiveness towards the girl sitting next to him.

“Do you like pizza?” She asked.

Peter opened his mouth to answer but was cut off by Morgan.

“I loveeee pizza! My favorite is cheese pizza because I really like cheese. And my favorite drink is pink lemonade! And my favorite Disney princess is belle!” she rambled.

Peter smiled at her, “That’s pretty cool.”

Morgan grinned.

“Why don’t you eat before uncle Rhodey eats all of your cheese pizza?” Tony asked, causing Morgan to gasp and quickly grab a piece of pizza that Rhodey was teasingly reaching for.

Peter went back to eating as did everyone else at the table. He listened quietly as the conversation casually switched from Natasha teasing Clint for tripping over a stray arrow of his during a mission, to which movie everyone wanted to watch after dinner (beauty and the beast ended up winning, because even a team full of heroes couldn’t resist Morgan’s puppy eyes.)

All of Peter’s plans of going and hiding in his room were abandoned as Morgan took his hand and demanded he sit next to her during the movie. He sat down next to her on the large couch, surrounded by pizza drunk avengers and got comfortable as the movie started.

About halfway through, Peter caught himself almost falling asleep. Since when was he comfortable enough to fall asleep around strangers? Well, he supposed they weren’t strangers anymore, but still. He couldn’t help but notice that he hadn’t felt the tingle in the back of his neck since he had gotten here. It was blissful compared to the almost constant tingle he used to live with.

Once the movie ended, he stretched his limbs out after Tony had carefully lifted a sleeping Morgan from where she had cuddled into Peter’s side. The Avengers sluggishly all said goodnight to one another before heading down the hallway, off to their rooms for the night.

“I think Morgan really likes you, y’know?” Tony said quietly.

Peter smiled, stifling a yawn, “I like her too. She’s sweet.”

“Careful about saying that,” Tony warned, “She’ll have you wrapped around her finger, and you won’t be able to deny her anything.”

Peter laughed a little. When was the last time he laughed?

“Go get some sleep, kid, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Tony said, ruffling Peter’s hair slightly before joining a half-asleep Harley and Pepper in the elevator back up to the family’s floor.

Peter turned the opposite way, heading back down the hallway to his bedroom. He barely managed to get his teeth brushed before he crashed into his bed and immediately fell asleep. Friday took the liberty of turning off his light for him. Maybe he could get used to this.

Chapter Text

Peter had spent the past week slowly letting his guard down more and more without even realizing it. He stopped hesitating and overthinking before joining other people in a room or during a meal, he no longer felt as uncomfortable helping himself to things in the tower (however he had now developed a bad habit of going to kitchen at midnight for a snack), he had even started to joke around with everyone, instead of just staying silent while they talked. He wouldn’t admit it out loud, but he was starting to feel like maybe he had a place here.

He was currently in Bucky’s bedroom, barely watching as some movie played on the TV. He gently ran a hand through the silky soft fur of the purring white cat in his lap. A few days ago Peter had knocked on Bucky’s door, as he had taken to spending a lot of time with Bucky, and when Bucky had opened it, out ran a small white ball of fluff.

Bucky scooped him up before introducing him to Peter.

“Peter, this is Alpine, my cat,” He had said, smiling softly.

“Since when do you have a cat? Why didn’t I know that?” Peter had asked.

Bucky scratched under the cat’s chin, “I’ve had him for a few months. He mostly just stays in my room though. There’s a lot of people here and he gets scared easily.”

Peter had quickly become friends with Alpine, often going to Bucky’s room just to see him. There were never any animals allowed at Hydra, unless they were being tested on, but Alpine was warm and calm and Peter had decided that, yeah, he liked cats.

There was a knock on the door, causing Bucky to look up from where he was journaling at his desk.

“Come in,” He said, spinning his chair around to face the door.

The door opened to reveal Tony, smiling at the sight of Peter lounged across Bucky’s bed with Alpine sitting on top of him.

“Who would have thought that spiders and cats get along?” He teased, sharing a smile with Bucky.

Tony had been sticking to calling Peter spider themed nicknames, but for some reason Peter didn’t mind it. They didn’t sound mean coming from Tony.

“Do you need something?” Bucky asked.

Tony nodded, “Firstly, brain freeze, you need to make sure you’re packed for the mission later. We’re leaving in less than an hour.”

Bucky rolled his eyes at the nickname but nodded anyway, causing Peter to smile.

“And webs,” Tony continued, turning to Peter.

Peter raised an eyebrow as Tony hesitated for a minute. It was short but Peter caught it anyway.

Tony sighed, “We want to know if you think you’re ready to try getting that blood test done again? If you aren’t ready, that's ok, no one will be mad. Bruce and Helen are just getting a little antsy the longer we go without it. If you got hurt or sick, we have no idea what your body is like normally so we wouldn’t be able to help much.”

Peter bit his lip and paused his scratching of Alpine’s ears. He understood why they needed it, but it didn’t make him any less nervous. He caught Bucky’s eye, who gave him a reassuring smile.

“It’s really quick and it hardly hurts. It’ll be done before you can even process it, they won’t hurt you.”

Peter was still nervous, but deep down, he knew that he trusted everyone here. Even if he’s only known them for a little over a week, he knew they wouldn’t hurt him. The other day Peter was walking down the hall, when Bruce walked out of his bedroom and ran right into him. Instead of yelling at Peter and telling him to watch where he was going, he instead rambled apologies for two minutes before Peter finally convinced him that he was fine. Then he spent another couple of minutes double and triple checking that Peter wasn’t hurt.

He took a deep breath before nodding slowly.

“Yeah… I guess we can.”

“You sure?” Tony asked, “No rush if you aren’t ready.”

Peter carefully moved Alpine off of him and stood up, “No it’s ok. I’m ready.”

Tony smiled and ruffled his hair, a habit Peter saw him do often with Harley that he now used with Peter too.

“Alright, let’s head down to the med bay then. It’ll be fast and painless.

“Have fun,” Bucky called out as Peter followed Tony to the elevator.

Helen and Bruce were already in the lab when they arrived, and greeted him with soft smiles.

“Hey Pete,” Bruce said, “Are you comfortable with doing the test today?”

Peter nodded, straightening his shoulders and trying to not show any nerves, “Yep, all good.”

Bruce smiled and motioned towards the table.

“We’ll be fast and gentle, promise,” Helen said as Peter hopped up onto the table.

He watched with bated breath as Helen and Bruce moved quickly, rolling up his sleeve, securing the rubber band around his arm and getting the syringe ready. He dug his fingers into his jeans as Helen moved toward him with the needle, listening when she told him to take a deep breath.

Before he could even overthink it too much, she was moving away with a tiny vial filled with his blood.

“All done.”

Peter blinked. That… that was easy. And fast. He looked down at his arm in time to watch as the pricked skin healed over by itself. His healing factor had been much quicker and more effective since he started eating full and regular meals.

Peter caught Tony grinning at his shocked expression.

“Told ya it’d be quick and easy. Good job, kiddo,” he said.

“Ok, we’ll get this up and running. Friday can work through everything pretty quick and by sometime tonight or tomorrow morning we’ll have everything sorted out. This’ll be really helpful in helping you if anything happens,” Bruce explained.

“Thanks,” Peter said quietly.

It was weird being surrounded by so many people who actually cared about his health. So much so that they wanted to make sure they had everything ready to help him before he had even gotten hurt or sick. Weird, but nice.

Tony set a hand on Peter’s shoulder, giving Bruce and Helen a nod before leading them back to the elevator.

“Let’s head back upstairs. You’re lucky, you get the place to yourself for the day. We all have a scheduled training mission we need to go to. Yay for us. Not like we don’t go on enough regular missions, I think we got it. But nooo new protocol with the updated accords, every six months all ‘heros’ meet up together for training and to make sure we’re all on the same page about things. I thought I was avoiding this type of thing by not working a corporate job,” Tony whined.

Peter giggled as Tony rolled his eyes dramatically.

“What are you laughing about?” He teased, “One day we might start bringing you on missions. Won’t be funny then.”

Peter grinned. He wondered if Tony had said that just as a joke or if he really planned on taking Peter on missions one day. The first few days after leaving Hydra, he hadn’t wanted to use his powers at all. They had come from Hydra, they were forced upon him, they were bad. But, surprise surprise, living in a tower full of superheroes, some who had their own enhancements, he had been thinking about using his powers for good. He had watched the Avengers leave on missions, and spent countless nights listening as they told stories and he had the itch to get out there and join them. He may not have wanted these abilities, but he couldn’t get rid of them, so maybe he could use them for something good.

He was snapped out of his thoughts by the sudden jumble of voices. He stepped out of the elevator to see everyone standing around in the living room with backpacks slung over their shoulders.

Nat, Steve, Bucky, Sam, Clint, Rhodey, Wanda, and Vision all quieted down and looked up as they walked in.

“How’d it go?” Bucky asked.

Peter smiled sheepishly, “It was fine. Really quick, it didn't hurt.”

Bucky grinned, “Told ya.”

Tony clapped his hands together, “Okay everyone. Let’s go. Down to the quinjet. Bruce is heading there now, Thor is going to meet us there with everyone else.”

Peter got a squeeze on the shoulder from Bucky and a hair ruffle from Tony.

“Have fun, don’t set the tower on fire, we’ll be back for dinner,” He said as he followed everyone to the elevator.

Peter stood in the living room, suddenly in silence. Living in a tower full of loud, obnoxious heroes, it had been a minute since he was alone with his thoughts.

He managed to waste about an hour, devouring some chips, chugging a can of soda, and watching some colorful stupid cartoon on the tv about a sponge who lived in the ocean. He even went to Bucky’s room to bother Alpine but changed his mind when he saw the cat sleeping soundly in his bed. He was slouched on the couch in boredom when he heard the elevator ding. It was way too early for them to be back yet, had something happened?

But when he turned, there was no Avenger there, instead he saw Harley standing in the elevator with a grin.

“Bored?” He asked.

Peter flushed at being caught lounging on the couch with his snack wrappers and soda can splayed on the table in front of him.

“Oh, uh, yeah,” He gave him a small smile, “Not used to being here on my own.”

Harley smiled, “Good thing I’m here then. C’mon.”

“C’mon? Where are we going?” Peter asked, confused.

“My mom sent me to bring you up to our floor. We’re making a dinner spread for when everyone gets home. They’ll probably bring some of the others to spend a night or two so we’ll need a lot of food. And you’re all alone so come hang out and help us. Don’t even think about saying no ‘cause Morgan is already excited to see you,” He smirked.

Peter smiled a little, “Are you sure? I don’t want to intrude on your family’s space or anything.”

Harley scoffed, “Please, the amount of times I’ve woken up to an Avenger in our kitchen because this floor didn’t have any milk or something? You’re always welcome. Plus my mom will be putting you to work cooking sooo.”

Peter laughed, he had been doing that a lot since he got here, it was nice. He stood and joined Harley in the elevator up to the Stark’s floor.
Harley stepped out and led Peter through the living room. The layout was similar to the Avenger’s floor but in true Tony Stark fashion, it seemed like it was somehow even more expensive. It was also decorated more homely and cozy than the Avengers floor, Peter figured that was Pepper’s doing. He stepped over some of Morgan’s toys that were spread on the floor and joined Harley in the kitchen.

Pepper was stirring something in a pot with her hair thrown up in a bun, while Morgan chatted her ear off from where she was sitting on her knees at the counter. There was music playing softly from the speakers in the ceiling.

“Peter!!” Morgan yelled when she saw him, “Look at my new doll! Daddy got her for me because I got 100% on my book report for school! I’m a really good reader!”

Peter smiled as Morgan practically shoved her doll in his face, “Oh that’s so cool Morg.”

Pepper smiled, “Hi Peter. I can’t believe Tony left you all alone down there, he should have told you to come join us up here.”

“It’s alright, I don’t mind,” He said, acting as if he wasn’t about to die of boredom five minutes ago.

“Pete, come help me with dessert. We’re making brownies,” Harley said, leading him where a bunch of ingredients lay on the counter.

Peter looked around as Harley pulled measuring cups and mixing bowls from various cupboards.

He smiled, looking at a wall near the hallway that was full of family pictures. He didn’t even notice that he had walked closer to it until Pepper spoke up next to him, causing him to jump. Thankfully she didn’t say anything.

“This one is from mine and Tony’s wedding day,” she said, pointing to a picture of a younger version of the two of them, grinning happily at the camera.

She smiled and continued pointing out pictures.

“This is Harley and Morgan after Morgs’ first dance recital, this is Tony and ten year old Harley with a potato gun that they made together, that quickly became an outside toy. That one is me, Morgan and Harley at an amusement park, me and Tony took turns riding roller coasters with them. That’s Tony and Morgan at a petting zoo, a baby goat spat up on Tony that day, hilarious. This is the four of us last Christmas, Steve took this picture.”

Peter smiled, looking at all of the pictures. His whole life he didn’t think he was missing out on much by not having a family, but looking at all of these pictures, he wondered what it would be like to have parents and siblings, not that he’d even know, but it was nice to imagine.

“Is that Harley?” Peter asked, pointing to a picture of a baby wearing a red t-shirt with blue denim overalls. A pair of Tony’s sunglasses were balanced on his head, resulting in the huge gummy grin on his face.

“No,” Pepper said softly, “That was James. It’s the last picture we have of him, he was taken about a week after this.”

Peter bit his lip, feeling bad, “oh, I’m sorry.”

Pepper shook her head, “Don’t be. It’s nice talking about him. Tony gets upset when we talk about him, he still feels guilty for what happened.”

Peter nodded, not sure what to say.

“Pete, come help me with these brownies. We’re dealing with a bunch of post training, enhanced heros with huge stomachs, we’re gonna need a lot.”

“I get to lick out the bowl when you’re done!” Morgan exclaimed excitedly as Peter and Pepper joined Harley back in the kitchen.

*******

They had just finished bringing the last dishes down to the Avenger’s floor when the elevator dinged open and everyone stumbled out tiredly. Peter spotted a few people he didn’t know, he guessed these were the other people Harley said would be spending a night or two.

“Pep, that smells delicious, you have no idea how starving I am,” Tony said, greeting her with a kiss.

Steve scoffed, “Please, at least you don’t have a crazy fast metabolism.”

Peter smiled at their bickering as he took a seat next to Harley.

Tony sat down and introduced him to the others, Thor (a literal god, how cool was that?) Stephen Strange, Scott Lang and his girlfriend Hope Van Dyne, and king T’challa (Peter had bowed when he was told T’challa was a king, causing everyone to laugh.)

“I’m sure you’ll meet the others later but these are the stragglers we brought home this time,” Nat teased.

Dinner was loud and chaotic, more so than usual with the addition of five more people, especially Thor who didn’t seem to understand what an inside voice was. They devoured the food they had made in record time before all moving to the living room to watch a movie, (tonight's choice was star wars).

They had made it about half way through when the movie paused and Friday interrupted.

Tony groaned from his spot on the couch, “Fri, not now, we’ve been training all day, let someone else handle this one.”

“This isn’t about a mission, sir,” Friday replied.

“Then it can’t be important enough to interrupt our movie,” Tony snarked, causing Pepper to slap him on the chest.

“What is it, Fri?” Steve asked instead.

“Sir, the baby James protocol has been triggered,” Friday said, causing the entire room to go still.

“What?” Tony asked, sitting up straight.

Peter tilted his head from his spot on the floor, looking up at the ceiling where the AI’s voice was coming from. Harley had told him about that protocol, in case James was ever found. In whatever condition that may be.

“What do you mean Friday? What triggered it? Where?...” Pepper asked breathlessly, clutching onto Tony’s hand.

“A blood sample from Doctor Banner’s lab that just finished uploading to my systems has come up with a 99.4% match for one James Stark,” She said smoothly.

“Bruce what?” Tony asked, looking at Bruce who now looked slightly pale.

“Tony…” Bruce started, speaking slowly, “The only blood sample in my lab right now is Peter’s.”

Chapter Text

Peter felt like his blood was ice running through his veins as everyone in the room turned towards him and he let Bruce’s words sink in.

It felt like an hour before he finally dragged his wide-eyed gaze from the floor to meet Tony’s eyes from where he was sitting on the edge of the couch. He was pale and his eyes were as big as Peter’s; he would have laughed at his face if it was any other circumstance.

“I- I don’t… that can’t…” Peter started. His throat felt like sandpaper and talking seemed impossible.

“There’s no way Peter is James,” Natasha said, looking between Peter and Tony with narrowed eyes.

“We have all been saying how similar Peter looked to Harley and Tony…” Sam started quietly.

Peter felt sick. There was no way. Something had gotten messed up in Bruce’s lab, someone had hacked Friday and was pranking them, this had to be something else.

“Bruce,” Tony started, his voice quiet, “Are you sure it was only his in there?”

Bruce nodded slowly, “I’ve only just recently started using the lab here again. Peter’s blood test was the first one I’ve done in months, there’s no one else’s it could be.”

“James…” Tony started, looking intensely at Peter.

Everyone else in the room were talking to each other, emotions ranging from confused to excited.

‘Oh, that’s crazy, the way the room is spinning slowly’ Peter thought to himself. Until he realized that no one else was reacting to the spinning, and oh. It was just him.

Peter quickly stood, causing everyone to stop talking and look back at him. He didn’t say a word as he turned around and ran off to his room, ignoring the voices calling out for him. He closed and locked the door before leaning against the wall and slowly letting himself slide down to the floor. He felt his hands shaking as he buried his head in his arms.

It was days like this that he cursed his enhancements. He wanted to get away, but instead he could still hear everyone in the living room as if he were still there with them.

“Tony…” Pepper murmured quietly, “Is Peter really our James?”

Peter took a deep breath as he, like everyone else in the room, waited for Tony’s answer.

“I… yeah. I think he is.”

Peter took a deep breath; he hadn’t even noticed the tears that had formed in his eyes until they were dripping down his face and onto his jeans.

“Like Bruce said, his is the only blood sample in there, it has to be him, but also… I think I knew. I didn’t know but I-” Tony took a breath before continuing, “Since we first saw him at the bunker, I felt connected to him for some reason that I couldn’t explain. Multiple of you have pointed out how similar he looks to me or Harley or Pep, I even found myself telling him that his freckles reminded me of the ones James had on his face. Not to mention, we’ve somehow managed to bring James up in conversation more in the few weeks that Peter has been here than we have for over a decade before. It’s like the universe was trying to tell us that he was right here. He’s home.”

The room was silent, except for a few sniffles from Pepper.

“I just can’t believe that Peter is James.” Steve said, sounding shocked but excited.

From all the way down the hall Peter could feel as the mood in the room shifted from confused and wary to excited and hopeful. It did nothing to help the nausea.

“Holy shit. I can’t believe James has been home with us for two weeks and we didn’t even know it!” Harley was saying with a shocked laugh.

“Our baby is home,” Tony was muttering in disbelief.

“He was with Hydra this whole time. That makes actually a lot of sense, of course they were the ones who took him. I can’t believe we found him like this,” Clint said.

“I’m really happy for you and your whole family Tony,” Wanda said.

“We all are,” Natasha added, “I can’t wait for us to get to know James even better.”

Peter slammed his hands over his ears as he tried his best to steady his breathing. They couldn’t wait to get to know James better? He wasn’t James. Or maybe he was, but he wasn’t James, he was Peter. Were they going to make him change his name? Peter may just have been the temporary name that Hydra gave him, but he had grown very fond of it. It was the piece of humanity that he clung to while undergoing inhumane tests and experiments. It’s who he had spent the past couple of weeks at this tower becoming.

A more logical part of his brain tried to reason with him that there was no reason to be freaking out. Ok so maybe being Tony Stark’s son who had been missing for 14 years was a little crazy. Very crazy. But it’s not like it was a bad thing, right? He was already living in the same building as the Stark family, Tony had been at every medical checkup he had been to, like a parent. He had cooked dinner with Pepper and played dolls with Morgan and argued over video games with Harley. He liked the Starks. A lot. So why was he freaking out about being related to them. Anybody else would be overjoyed.

Unfortunately for Peter, his panic was drowning out this logical part of his brain, so instead of calming down, his panic got worse. He didn’t know how long it had been that he’d been sitting here with his knees to his chest and his hands over his ears before there was a small knock at the door.

“Peter? Are you ok?”

It was Bucky. Peter wondered if this was the last time someone would call him Peter before the Starks made him change his name to James. He sniffed as tears continued soaking his face.

“Listen I know this is a lot, ok? But it’s ok. Just, take some deep breaths and come out when you’re ready.”

Peter listened as Bucky walked away. He tried to listen to what Bucky said, he really did, but for every deep breath he took he had four breaths that seemingly couldn’t get any air.

Hours passed. Or maybe it was just a few minutes. Peter was far past being able to tell. In the time that had passed, Bruce, Natasha, Harley and Pepper had come to his door, speaking in soft voices, trying to get him to open the door, or at least say something to them. He couldn’t tell exactly what they were saying, the blood rushing through his ears was too loud.

He thought that spending time alone in his room would give him a chance to calm himself down and come to terms with the fact that he was apparently Tony’s Stark’s son and he was kidnapped and hidden away for basically his entire life. Alas, it only made things worse. He was alone with no one to stop his mind from wandering to the worst possible scenarios.

What if they made him use the name James again? What if they expected him to start going to all of the family activities that Peter saw from the wall of pictures on their floor? Peter (James?) didn’t like people, or crowds, he wouldn’t be able to do it. How was he supposed to make up for 14 years of missing everyone’s birthdays and Christmases? Worse, what if they didn’t want him? What if once their joy of finally finding their lost child wore off, they were disappointed that it was him? He had spent his life learning and training with the people - the organization - that they hated the most. They had spent decades trying to take down Hydra, while everything Peter knows, he learned from them. They may have been welcoming to him before, wanting to help a poor orphan kid get help, but there’s no way they would want him to rejoin their family now. What if they made him leave? He had no money, he didn’t know New York at all.

Tony was just about to get up from the couch and see if he could get Peter to talk to him when Friday interrupted the excited chatter in the room.

“Sir, it seems Peter is having a severe panic attack,” she said with a sense of urgency.

Tony was on his feet in seconds, running to Peter’s door. He knocked, feeling panicked himself.

“Peter? Kid, please open the door,” Tony was saying, “Pete, please, let me help you. Breathe, ok?”

Very faintly at the back of his mind, Peter knew that Tony was outside his door and saying something to him, but he couldn’t hear him. The room was spinning, and he could feel his heartbeat, too fast and hard and he felt sick, and he couldn’t breathe.

After a few seconds of no response, Tony took matters into his own hands.

“Sorry kid,” he muttered, “Friday, unlock the door.”

Peter stopped his frantic pacing for just a minute, confused at seeing Tony quickly coming towards him. He thought he had locked the door, how was he here? His mouth was moving and he looked worried, but Peter couldn’t hear him. The room kept spinning and there was a blackness that was slowly taking over his vision and oh look, the floor was coming towards him really fast. He felt a pair of arms wrap around him before he could hit the floor, and that was the last thing he felt before the world went black.

*******

Peter was greeted with bright lights once he had finally gathered the strength to open his eyes. He realized that he was in the med bay at the same time that Tony entered his line of sight.
“How are you feeling kiddo?” He asked softly.

He was wondering why Tony was the only person in here and not Helen or Bruce when he suddenly remembered everything that had happened. Before he could work himself up again, Tony was setting a firm hand on his shoulder.

“Hey it’s ok. You had a pretty bad panic attack earlier and you passed out. Everything is ok, Helen suggested we bring you in here and do a quick check to make sure that’s all that was going on, and in case you needed anything.”

Peter nodded. His mind wanted to start running through all of the scary thoughts he was having earlier but he was so tired. It was hard to believe that it was today that he was upstairs on the Stark’s floor helping make dinner for everyone.

Tony moved to sit in a chair that was pushed as close to the bed Peter was in as possible. The two of them sat in silence for a while, both of them lost in their own minds. Like father, like son.

“I’m sorry,” Peter finally said after a while.

Tony tilted his head with furrowed eyebrows, “What are you sorry for? It’s not your fault you passed out.”

Peter gnawed on his lip for a minute before letting the word vomit take over.

“No but it’s my fault that you’re here so late at night… or early in the morning… I don’t know what time it is. And I’m sorry for freaking out and running away and hiding in my room. I don’t even know what I’m freaking out about. I just- It’s a lot. I don’t know anything about having a family and I don’t know what happens now. And now you’re just going to call me James, which yeah, I guess that’s my name, but Peter is just who I am. This name is all that I’ve had for 14 years. And I feel guilty that I’m your- James, even though he- I couldn’t help being kidnapped as a baby I still feel bad. You were really excited that you could get your son back, and I feel bad that he ended up being me. I mean I’ve spent the whole time working with the bad guys who you guys hate, so I’m kind of a bad guy by association, and I have all of my enhancements that make me all weird and freaky and I know that someone like you doesn’t want someone like me to be your son. So, I’m sorry, I wish it could have been someone else, and if you want me to leave and go live somewhere else, I can find somewhere.”

Tony sat silently for a minute, looking at Peter with an almost hurt look in his eye.

“Peter…” He stopped to sigh and run a hand through his already messy hair before starting again.

“Peter, you have no reason to be sorry. I’m sorry that you felt that way, we should have tried to be a little calmer instead of immediately getting so excited, we didn’t mean to freak you out. You’re wrong by the way. You’re not a bad guy, not even by association. I’ve spent decades breaking into Hydra bunkers and running into all sorts of people and trust me when I say that the second I saw you, I could tell you were different. It was obvious to all of us that you have a good heart, Peter. I’m so glad that we got you out of there. And you aren’t moving out, you’re not going anywhere, no matter what happens next. You will always have a place here no matter what.”

Tony gently grabbed his arm, causing him to look up from where he was staring at his hands.

“Don’t ever feel guilty about what they did to you. Peter, there’s no one else in the world who I would be happier to find out was my son. You aren’t weird, or freaky - well ok maybe a little but we all are. My job is flying around in a metal suit and fighting aliens, and then I come home to eat dinner with gods, Russian spies, witches, robots, kings and boy scouts who were frozen for 70 years. James or not, you fit here perfectly. You always have and you always will. I’ll forever hate Hydra for taking you from me, but that is never your fault. Like it or not, they made you into who you are today, and even after knowing you for only two weeks, I can already say that I love who you are. You spent over a decade in Hydra and yet you’re still so sweet and kind with a good heart, you’re so much smarter than you give yourself credit for, and you’ve somehow inherited my sense of humor even though you escaped 14 years of bad dad jokes.”

Peter didn’t realize that he had started crying until Tony was gently wiping the tears from his face.

“Peter, you're perfect the way you are. Of course we want you to be part of our family again. You aren’t going anywhere. We’ll take everything slowly though, ok? Nothing has to change right now, we’re just happy that we have you here, safe with us. We’ll figure out the rest later, at your pace, ok? Also, I like the name Peter better than James anyway.”

Peter let out a wet laugh before surprising both Tony and himself by flinging himself into Tony, wrapping his arms around him tight. Tony held him back tighter.

The two of them sat like that for a few minutes before slowly pulling apart.

“Why don’t you get some sleep?” Tony said gently, brushing Peter’s hair out of his eyes, “It’s like 4 am, and as your hypocritical dad, I’m saying that it’s way too late for you to be awake.”

Peter laughed again as he lay down on his pillows while Tony had Friday dim the lights.

The many, many emotions of the day hit Peter like a freight train, and he could feel himself immediately slipping into sleep as he closed his eyes.

“Will you stay here?” He asked sleepily.

“I’m never leaving you again, Bambino.”

That was the last thing he heard before slipping into a dreamless sleep.

Chapter Text

Apparently, Peter’s panic had worn his body out more than he had realized, seeing as he spent the entire following morning flitting in and out of sleep in the medbay. True to his word, Tony was there the entire day.

By the time he was finally awake enough for his brain to process information, Tony was handing him a bagel.

“You need to eat up,” he said, sliding a bottle of water closer to him as well.

Peter nodded, realizing how hungry he was as he quickly tore into the warm bagel, barely concealing a content sigh.

Tony cleared his throat slightly to get his attention once he had moved on to sipping his water.

“Your mo- Pepper wants to know if you’re ok with her coming to see you. We don’t want to overwhelm you, and we want to move slowly, but she’s really happy you’re home and would love to be here if you want.” He said.

Peter was nodding almost immediately. After his talk with Tony last night, he had gotten his eyes opened to realize how wrong he had been to let himself panic yesterday. Now that he wasn’t imagining every awful scenario that could happen, he was just starting to let himself have a little hope for rejoining his family. He was still worried, but for the first time since Friday dropped the news, he was more excited by the prospect than scared.

Tony smiled wide, “Perfect, I’ll text her to head down. She’s been worried about you all night, even though I’ve been sending frequent updates to everyone she wouldn’t believe me until she sees you with her own eyes.”

Pepper must have been waiting for a text, because it took about 30 seconds between Tony sending her a text and her gently knocking on the medbay door as she walked in.

“Oh Peter, I’m so glad you’re ok. I was so worried,” she said, hurrying over but being mindful not to get too close and overwhelm him.

Peter smiled, it felt nice having people care about you enough to worry when something was wrong. “I’m ok. I’m sorry I worried you.”

Pepper shook her head, “Don’t apologize, silly. It’s not your fault. I’m sorry that we overwhelmed you last night. I know Tony’s already talked to you about it, but we don’t want to stress you out at all. We’re just glad you’re home. We’ve missed you. We’ve waited a long time for you to be home.” The faint sheen of tears in Pepper’s eyes was matched with that of Peter’s.

Tony stood up, guiding Pepper gently to take his chair. “I’m going to head upstairs for a few minutes and let everyone know what’s going on, and that Pete’s okay,” He glanced over at Peter, “There’s a lot of people who are worried about you.”

The two of them sat in a comfortable silence for a while after Tony left. Pepper fixed the blanket around him a few times too many, but Peter liked being cared for, so he let her do it.

“Y’know,” She started, absentmindedly adjusting the items on the side table, “I’ve spent the past 14 years feeling so guilty.” Peter blinked up at her, not sure where this was going.

“I was the last person to see you before you were taken. I was the one who trusted that man to watch you and keep you safe. I shouldn’t have left you with him, and I’ve blamed myself for what happened since the moment we realized you were gone. I wasn’t handling it well at all, no one was. A year after you were taken, I started going to therapy sessions twice a week, my therapist's face will be priceless once I tell her you’re back. You’re all she’s been hearing about for 14 years. Every session for years, I would say that if someway, James somehow came home, that I would tell him how sorry I was that he got taken, and that I knew it was my fault. That the guilt and regret has been eating away at me nonstop since he was taken. These past few years I was starting to think that I would never get the chance, but now here we are. I’m sorry, it’s a lot, I don’t want to stress you or anything, but I just need you to know how sorry I am.”

Peter watched as she wiped away her own tears before sitting up a little better and taking her hand in his own. Peter wasn’t very good with emotions, since he had spent his entire life being told to not let them show, but man, 3 weeks here and he was getting plenty of practice.

“Pepper…” he began softly, “I understand why you’ve been blaming yourself, I do, I would have been doing the same thing if I was in your position, but I found out last night that I’m James and that my whole life turned out the way it did because I was kidnapped by Hydra, and not once did it ever even cross my mind to blame you. You didn’t know. You and I, and everyone else all know that Hydra spends years planning missions, that guy had spent years gaining your trust, no one could have known what would happen. It isn’t your fault. It never has been.”

Pepper squeezed his hand tighter as she began to cry more. Peter panicked, thinking he said the wrong thing and made things worse.

“I’m sorry! Please don’t cry, I didn’t mean to make you more upset…” He squeezed her hand back.

Pepper shook her head, quickly wiping her tears. “No, no, you didn’t make me more upset. You could never,” She sniffled, “I just can’t believe you’re here, and how good you are. You spent so long in such an awful place and yet you still came out with such a good heart. I’m so proud of you.”

Peter smiled bashfully, giving a slight shrug.

“Can I give you a hug?” She asked, “And it’s ok if you don’t want to. You can always say no to anything.”

Peter nodded, “That would be nice.”

Pepper moved closer, pulling him into a firm hug which Peter immediately melted into. Man, he had been missing out. Hugs were great. They stayed like that for a few minutes.

“Thank you, Peter,” she said softly before pulling away. Peter gave her a grin, “I’m glad you and Tony are my mom and dad,” he said quietly.

Pepper smiled back, “and we’re so glad that you’re our son.”

A knock at the door interrupted them. Tony peeked his head in slightly.

“I hope I’m not interrupting,” He said, “Pete, would you mind a couple more visitors?”

Peter shook his head, “That’s fine.”

“Good,” Tony said, pushing open the door, “Because it was getting really hard to hold them back.”

Peter held back a laugh as Harley and Morgan fell forward as Tony opened the door they were both leaning against.

“Petey,” Morgan said, quickly getting to her feet and running over as fast as her little legs could take her. Pepper lifted her up into her lap, but Morgan shimmied out her arms and crawled onto the bed to sit next to Peter instead. Peter smiled at her. “Hi Morgs.”

“Daddy told me that you’re my brother! He used to tell me stories about you when you were a baby, but now you’re all big and you’re actually here! And now I have two big brothers to play with me!”

Peter laughed, “Yeah, you do.”

Harley joined them, leaning against the side of Peter’s bed and ruffling Morgan’s hair.

“I’m still so in shock that you’re James. No wonder we got along so quickly, you’re literally my brother! We have so many sibling arguments to catch up on.”

Peter laughed. The deep talks with Tony and Pepper had been really nice and really necessary, but he was very glad that Harley was keeping it lighthearted.

“You’re lucky, I’m the best big brother ever, Morgan can vouch for me, right Morgs?” Harley asked.

“Hmmm. I like Petey better now,” she said, cuddling up to Peter’s side.

Harley stuck his tongue out at her before continuing with a sly smile, “Imagine how badly we can annoy mom and dad now that there’s three of us!”

“Pete, you’ve turned out so good, don’t let Harley be a bad influence on you,” Tony said with mock seriousness.

“Now, how did this turn into a bully Harley moment?” Harley asked, rolling his eyes.

Tony shoved his shoulder lightly, to which Harley dramatically fell over both Peter and Morgan with an exaggerated groan which caused the room to fill with laughter.

His family’s laughter. Peter liked that.

*******

It wasn’t until the next day at around lunch time that Helen had come in and deemed Peter well enough to go back upstairs.

He and Tony were in the elevator going back up to the Avenger’s floor. Harley and Morgan had school, and Pepper had just left for a meeting right before Helen came in.

“You can go to your room if you want. Have some alone time, I know you must need it,” Tony said as they stepped out of the elevator, “Anytime you want alone time or need any of us to back off, you can go to your room, and we’ll leave you alone.”

Peter gave him a smile, “Thanks.”

Tony ruffled his hair, “Also, uhm,” He looked a little nervous all of a sudden, “We were thinking- if you want- feel free to say no- but uhm” He paused to collect himself, “If you’re comfortable with it, we were thinking that we could set up your old room on our floor and have you move in with us again? It’ll take a few days at least, we haven’t touched it since the day you were taken… but if you want...”

Peter hadn’t seen Tony look this nervous before, he wanted to laugh, but all he could think right now was how nice the feeling of being wanted felt.

He nodded, “Yeah. I think I’d like that a lot.”

Chapter Text

It had been a few weeks now since Peter had left the med bay. He had spent the past weeks meticulously decorating his new (old?) bedroom on the Stark family (his family’s) floor. The first couple of days were full of Peter trying to convince Tony that he was honestly fine with just a bed. He really didn’t need anything more. Tony had convinced him to add a desk and some bookshelves so that his new room resembled the one he had been staying in on the Avenger’s floor.

He was now standing in his room which held those three things along with a big dark red rug, a way to big flatscreen tv mounted on the wall, a record player that sat on one of the shelves with some records that Tony gave him (“I have to teach you what good music is”), and an almost overflowing closet (Pepper went a little overboard when she went shopping to get him his own clothes). On top of the bed were two stuffed animals. One of a cute looking spider, and another which was a teddy bear wearing an ironman suit. Peter rolled his eyes when Tony gave it to him, but secretly he loved it.

“What do you think, kid? Do you like your room?” Tony asked, standing behind him.

Peter nodded, moving towards the bed and flopping onto it. It was so big and soft and it made him want to curl up and take a nap right now.

“It’s perfect! Really, I didn’t need this much…” He started. He knew he wouldn’t win this argument, he had tried and failed multiple times already.

Tony waved his hand dismissively, “Nonsense. You deserve all of this and more. Once you start discovering more things that you like you can add things to make it feel more like you. We can get you some posters or artwork for the walls, maybe figurines? I bet you’d like Legos too.”

Peter smiled, “Harley said that too.”

Tony grinned before addressing the ceiling, “Friday, place an order for some Lego sets Peter may like.”

“Lego sets have been ordered, boss,” Friday replied after a minute.

Peter flushed, “You didn’t have to...”

“Pete,” Tony started, “You’re going to have to get over your hatred for being spoiled. You're my son, you’ll never escape it.”

Peter huffed, “Yeah, I can tell.”

Tony laughed, before ruffling his hair, “C’mon, Pepper and Harley should be done with dinner soon, let’s not keep them waiting.”

The two of them joined right as dinner was being set around the table. Peter took his spot next to Morgan, per her request, and immediately dug into his food. He was still trying to get used to the fact that he now had regular full meals. He knows it’s stupid but his brain still keeps thinking that they’ll take away his food if he does something wrong, so he tends to eat fast whenever he gets his food. Tony used to tease him for it, but once Peter shyly told him his reasoning Tony assured him they would never withhold food from him, and he hasn’t teased him about it since.

When dinner was done, the five of them got settled on the oversized couch in the living room and pressed play on the movie they had prepared. Tonight was Peter’s night to choose and he chose Revenge of the Sith. He was very quickly becoming a little obsessed with Star Wars which Tony and Pepper both found extremely endearing.

Harley teasingly groaned, “You haven’t seen, like, any movies, you have unlimited options to choose from and yet somehow we’re once again rewatching a Star Wars film.”

Peter laughed a little, shoving Harley’s shoulder, “Hey these are my favorite. You said you rewatch your favorite movies all the time. Plus I watch a new movie every time it’s someone else’s night to pick.”

Harley grinned, “Using my own words against me. Fine, fine, we’ll watch Star Wars again.”

Both boys missed the way Pepper and Tony were watching them interact with soft eyes and warm smiles. It was everything they dreamed of for the past 14 years.

Once the movie ended, everyone slowly got up and shuffled their way to bed. Pepper gently lifted Morgan (who had fallen asleep ten minutes in) and took her to her room after bidding Peter and Harley a goodnight. Harley groaned in response, rubbing his eyes and heading to his own room. Tony ruffled his hair on his way past, before heading over to do the same to Peter.

“G’night, bambino,” he said sleepily.

Peter made his way to his own room and quickly ran through his night routine. By the time he collapsed into his bed he had a big smile on his face. He was happy. Like, really happy. He had a family who loved him, he got three nice meals a day and unlimited access to the kitchen for snacks, he spent every night watching a movie with either his family or the Avengers and he ended every night safe in his big warm bed. He wished life would stay this nice forever. He finally drifted to sleep while thinking of different Star Wars posters he was going to hang on his walls sometime soon.

*******

The next day seemed to fly by for Peter. He had woken up late to start, and once he finished his breakfast of an overly sugary cereal, he and Harley spent hours building the Lego sets that Tony had ordered yesterday. They were right, Peter loved Legos. They built the millennium falcon, some race cars and the knight bus from Harry Potter. By the time they finished the last one, the sun was beginning to set.

Harley smiled as he placed the Lego bus next to the other completed sets on Peter’s bookshelf, “There! Your room is looking better already!”

Peter grinned, “Yeah it is.”

“I say tomorrow we work on the Avengers tower set,” Harley said, getting up and stretching out his limbs.

Peter nodded, “Yeah! That’ll be fun.”

He looked out of the window at the cityscape that was doused in a soft orange glow from the sunset.

“Harls,” He started, “Do you think it would be ok if I went on a walk? Even though it's later?”

About a week and a half ago, Tony brought up the suggestion of Peter going on a walk each day. Nothing big, just around the block once or twice so that he could get some fresh air and experience New York a bit. Peter was nervous at first at the prospect of even leaving the tower at all, but Tony had convinced him that it would be good for him to leave just for a little bit each day. The first few days he was always joined by someone, normally Tony or Pepper but occasionally they were joined by Steve or Sam as well. It wasn’t until this week that he started going on his own. Right after breakfast he’d go and walk a lap around the block and he actually started enjoying it.

Harley shrugged, “Yeah, I don’t see why not. Mom and Dad normally just tell me to let them know if I leave the house after like 10 so I’m sure they won’t mind if you just go for your walk real quick. I can go with you though if you want?”

Peter shook his head, “Nah it’s ok, I’ll be fine. It’s just a lap around the block; I’ll be back really soon.”

“Mkay, be safe, try to get home before it’s too dark. I’m gonna go shower but call if you need anything.”

Peter nodded before slipping on his shoes and heading out toward the elevator. He felt a little bad about leaving Harley. Tony and some of the other Avengers were out on a mission, Pepper had meetings all evening, and Morgan was at a sleepover, so Harley would be home alone until Peter got back. But Harley had also told him a few days ago that he really liked his alone time sometimes, and Peter had been spending a lot of time with Harley lately, so maybe this would be nice for Harley.

The elevator took Peter down to the lobby and he made his way through and out onto the streets of New York. He turned right and started down his usual path. The first day that Tony had shown him around, Peter was extremely overwhelmed. His spidey sense was going haywire with so many people near him, and his enhanced senses were awful to deal with around so many people and smells and sounds, but he was proud to say that he had gotten used to the New York atmosphere fairly quickly.

He made his way down the street, walking a little faster considering the sun was setting fast. It was already dusky out. He made his way down the busy street, squeezing between groups of people, and took the next turn onto a slightly less crowded street. He focused on his hearing, wondering if he’d still be able to hear anyone in the tower from out here, but he didn’t have time to check, because as soon as he focused on what he could hear he froze in his steps.

“Help!!!”

There was a girl, two- no, three streets over, and she was yelling for help. Something was wrong. Peter bit his lip, wondering what he should do. Should he call Tony? No… he was still out on his mission, he wouldn’t be able to get here in time to help. In a split minute decision, Peter turned and started sprinting to where he could hear the girl still yelling for someone to help her.

He had absolutely no idea what he was planning on doing once he got to her, but he couldn’t just ignore her. He was going to help.

Chapter Text

Peter, reluctantly, mentally thanked Hydra for giving him his enhancements, if for no other reason than to help him get to this girl faster. He reached into his hoodie pocket as he ran, pulling out the black facemask that Tony had given him last week. He thought it may help Peter’s enhanced sense of smell when he was around so many people on the streets. It didn’t do much for that, but Peter was grateful to have it now.

What if the person this girl was yelling about was someone working for Hydra and what if they recognized Peter and tried to take him back? Peter wasn’t going to let that happen. He slid the mask on and threw up his hood as he got to the alley where the yells were coming from.

He stopped and viewed the scene in front of him. There was a girl who looked to be around his age holding a backpack tightly and glaring daggers at the man who was cornering her against the wall. If looks could kill, she would have had this handled.

“Hey!! Leave her alone!” Peter yelled, his voice slightly muffled by the mask. He stood up straight with a false confidence that he could only wish was believable.

The man turned his body slightly to look at him and Peter saw that he was holding a knife up to the girl’s stomach. He swallowed hard. This just got more serious.

“Get out of here, kid, this doesn’t concern you,” The man growled.

Peter slowly moved closer. The man was at least twice his size, but Peter was confident… Okay he wasn’t, but he had to do something.

“Dude, I’m a broke teenager walking home. There’s nothing in this bag that you want, unless you’re after chemistry textbooks and a pack of gum,” the girl said angrily.

The man turned back to her, lifting the knife and pointing it toward her throat, “Watch your tone with me.”

Peter took a breath as the man moved the knife closer to her throat, before throwing out his arm and firing a web at the knife. He swiftly yanked it away, catching it in his own hand and holding it out in front of him protectively.

“What the fuck was that?” The man said, staring at him with wide eyes.

Peter moved closer, brandishing the knife.

“Get out of here and leave her alone. Don’t make me use this,” He said in the most threatening tone he could manage.

The man suddenly lunged at Peter, but Peter’s tingle saw that coming and he smoothly ducked out of the way.

“Listen man, I really don’t want to hurt you, just get out of here,” Peter said.

The man scoffed, “You couldn’t hurt me if you tried.”

He threw a punch at the side of his head, but Peter turned and caught his wrist, twisting his arm down, causing the man to stumble. Peter used that to his advantage, kicking the back of his leg, making him fall to his knees. He held the knife at the man’s neck, internally praying that he wouldn’t have to use it. He really didn’t want to hurt him.

“What the hell…” The man mumbled.

Peter looked over at the girl who was still leaning against the wall and looking at him with a shocked expression.

“I’ve got him, miss, you can leave if you’d-”

Peter was cut off by the man snatching the knife out of his hand. Peter should have known from his tingle, but it hadn’t calmed down since he first stepped into the alley.

The man turned, managing to get a pretty decent slice through Peter’s arm, causing him to let out a pained hiss. The man laughed, jumping back to his feet and moving once again toward the girl.

Peter used his uninjured arm to fire some webs at the man’s feet, promptly stopping him from getting to her.

“What the hell is this stuff, you freak?!” The man yelled.

Ouch. Peter once again used a web to yank the knife away from the man before webbing it against the opposite wall. He shot a few more webs at the man, trapping his arms to the wall behind him.

“Let me go!!” He yelled, struggling to no avail.

“You can explain to the police that you got beat up by a kid,” Peter grinned before shooting a final web at the man’s mouth, promptly shutting him up.

He turned to the girl.

“Would… uhm, would you like me to walk you home?” He asked, a little shy.

The girl tilted her head, looking curious, “Yeah… that would be nice.”

Peter nodded before leading her out of the alley. She turned and shot the still struggling man a middle finger before they turned and made their way down the street.

The two of them walked in silence for a while before Peter cleared his throat, “Are you ok?”

The girl nodded, “Yeah, thanks to you. Are you ok? How’s your arm?”

Peter waved his hand, “Oh it’s fine, it’s not super deep or anything. Just needs a band aid.” In reality, his healing would have it fixed by tomorrow morning, but she didn’t need to know about that.

“Well, thank you. I really appreciate it," she said.

Peter smiled, forgetting that she couldn’t see it behind his mask.

“My name is MJ by the way,” the girl said after they walked in silence for a few minutes, “But I’m guessing from the fact that you’re hiding your face that you don’t want to tell me your name?”

Peter highly doubted that this girl was working for Hydra, but then again that’s what people would say when they saw him too. What if this was all a ploy?

He must have hesitated a minute too long because the girl spoke up again, “It’s ok. You just saved me, I won’t make you tell me your name. But I’ll probably figure it out soon enough, I’m pretty good at that.”

Peter let out a nervous laugh as the girl came to a stop outside a cozy looking house.

“This is my house,” She said, “Thank you again, I appreciate it.”

“Oh yeah, no worries at all, I’m happy to help,” Peter replied.

He waited until MJ was at the door before turning and starting back the way he came.

“Goodnight Spiderman,” She yelled.

Peter turned and watched as she laughed at his confused expression before she went inside.

Spiderman… that had a nice ring.

*******

Peter was lost. In his defense, his mind was wandering while walking Mj home and he didn’t pay attention to when they turned and what streets they were on. He thought about turning back around and asking her for help, but he couldn’t do that. He just saved her and acted like, super cool, it would be embarrassing to tell her that he was lost.

He wandered down the street for a few minutes, hoping that he was heading in the right direction and he would soon find a street that he recognized. He thought he would be feeling bad after getting into a fight, but instead he was elated. He had just saved someone from getting hurt, he felt like he was floating. He lived in the same building as earth’s mightiest heroes, his dad was ironman, he spent all of his time listening as they recalled stories of the missions they went on and the people they saved, constantly wondering what it would be like to live like that. To use his powers that he never wanted to help people who needed it. To be a hero.

For the first time since he could remember, he was grateful for his powers. Even as he walked down the street, lost, cold, and with a bleeding gash on his arm, he couldn’t wipe the grin off of his face. His thoughts of possibly becoming a hero like the avengers were cut short by the ringing of his phone. He pulled it out of his pocket and tilted his head in confusion at the contact displayed on the screen.

Why was his dad calling him? Wasn’t he still out on a mission? He glanced up at the time, his eyes widening. It was already 9:30. Peter guessed he lost track of time, fighting that man and then walking Mj all the way home. He quickly answered the call, holding his phone up to his ear.

“Heyyyy dad,” he said nervously. He knew Tony would never hurt him, but he was still scared of getting into trouble. He didn’t think he would ever shake that.

“Pete?? Where are you kid? I just got home, Harley said that you left for a walk two hours ago? Are you ok?” Tony replied in quick succession.

“I’m fine! I uhm… I just... Something happened- I’m fine, there was this guy, and he was- never mind- but I ended up walking this girl home and I didn’t pay attention to where I was going and now I uhm… I don’t really know where I am or how to get back home so…” he finished lamely.

Tony was quiet for a minute before replying, sounding worried, “Okay, don’t move from where you are. I’m going to track your phone and come get you, and then you’re going to explain what happened ok?”

Peter nodded before remembering that Tony couldn’t see him. “Yeah, ok… thank you.”

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll be there in less than five minutes ok?”

“Okay,” Peter replied before hanging up.

He sighed and sat on the curb, waiting for Tony to show up. He had no idea how he was supposed to tell Tony what happened. He didn’t know how he would react. Would he be proud that he had stepped in and helped someone in need, or would he be mad at him for fighting, using the skills and powers that he was given by Hydra? What if he yells at him and tells him not to do anything like that again? Peter had just started fantasizing about becoming a hero himself…

His spiraling was stopped by the sound of squealing tires as a sleek black sports car pulled to a stop just in front of him. The window rolled down, revealing Tony, as he pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head and gave Peter a once over.

“Get in bambino, the heater is on for you,” He said.

Peter stood up and made his way to the passenger side of the door, sliding in and immediately relaxing into the seat. He didn’t realize just how cold he was until he was in the warm car, he always forgets that he can’t thermoregulate. He opened his eyes (when did he close them?) once he realized that the car hadn’t moved. He looked over at Tony who was already looking at him with a creased brow.

“Are you ok?” He asked. Peter could hear the worry in his voice, no matter how hard he tried to cover it. In his defense he had been trained to know how to do exactly that.

“I’m fine! Really, I am. I’m just tired and colder than I thought I was... Spider things y’know?” He replied, trying to lighten the mood.

Tony’s lips twitched into a semblance of a smile before his face turned stoic again.

“What happened? Don’t skip the details.”

Peter sighed, knowing there was no getting out of this. He took a steadying breath before explaining what happened to Tony, trying his best to make it sound like it wasn’t a big deal.

“And then after I walked her home, I realized that my mind was kind of busy and I didn’t pay attention to how we got there, and I’ve never been to this neighborhood before, so…” he finished with a shrug.

He glanced up from where he was fidgeting with his hands and watched as Tony tried, and failed, to keep a calm face.

“Are you mad?” Peter asked quietly, worried.

Tony’s face immediately softened, hearing his worry, “No, not at you, never at you. I’m mad at that asshole though. You shouldn’t have been in that position at all, I just want you to keep out of trouble and stay safe,” he sighed, “But, I’m proud of you. Who knows what would have happened if you didn’t step in to help.”

Peter beamed as Tony ruffled his hair.

“You did good, kiddo. Do we need to get your arm looked at by Helen?” Tony asked, holding his hand out for Peter’s arm.

Peter shook his head, rolling up his hoodie sleeve and showing Tony his arm. The long gash was now a smaller, scabbed over cut. It’ll be gone by tomorrow.

“I’m fine. Spidey powers already took care of that,” he smiled.

“Alright Spiderman,” Tony laughed, “No need to brag.”

Peter bit his lip, “Mj called me that tonight too.”

“The girl you helped?” Tony asked, raising an eyebrow.

Peter nodded, “I had my face covered and I didn’t want to tell her my name, just in case, y’know? But, when I was leaving she called me Spiderman.”

“Looks like it’s sticking. No pun intended,” Tony teased.

Peter cracked his knuckles before deciding to test the waters, “Sounds like it could be a superhero name…”

Tony gave him an intense, unreadable look, staying silent for a minute. Peter fought the urge to curl into a ball to try and avoid his gaze. Tony pointed a finger at him, shaking his head.

“Not having this conversation tonight. Maybe if you’re good we’ll circle back on it in let’s say… five to ten years.”

Peter suppressed a smile as Tony began driving them home. He wasn’t waiting five years, he was already mentally designing a suit.

Chapter Text

Peter woke the next morning with a tired groan. He spent a few minutes in that weird space of not quite being awake, but not being asleep either, letting his mind wander. He had dreamt last night, of saving a girl his age from some creepy guy in an alleyway.

It took him about 20 seconds after fully waking to realize that that wasn’t a dream at all, he really had saved a girl last night. It could possibly be Spiderman’s first save (if he could convince his parents to let him be a hero that is.) He lay on his back, looking up at the ceiling with a big grin on his face. It felt nice to do something good. Ever since Hydra had given him these abilities, they had trained him for different scenarios, but even when he was a child, he knew he was the bad guy in every situation. He spent years cursing Hydra and wishing these spider powers would just disappear. He hated being used as a weapon.

But now… now maybe instead of wishing them away, he could learn how to use them to his advantage, and use them to help people who were in need. He could finally take back a part of himself that Hydra had spent years destroying and shoving away, and use it for good. He could be a paradox of everything Hydra had spent so long trying to make him be.

Peter sat up, suddenly feeling invigorated. He was going to be a hero, but not quite like his family. The Avengers could handle the world ending, alien, robot type of fights. Peter could be more so like a vigilante. Helping the little people, making sure they get home safe, and getting cats out of trees, and reuniting lost kids with their parents. He could still be Spiderman, but more like… a friendly neighborhood Spiderman. The person who helps the average New Yorkers while the Avengers are off in space.

Peter quickly ran through his morning routine, eager to pitch his vigilante idea to his dad. Maybe he would help Peter design some sort of a suit. Something with a mask, just in case he ran into anyone working for Hydra who was still looking for him. Maybe he would let him use the practice rooms to practice fighting with his powers. Ideally Peter would like to avoid violence, but as shown last night, that may not always be possible, he would need to know how to defend himself.

He walked into the kitchen, running a hand through his curls, trying (and failing) to tame them.

“Petey!” Morgan squealed once he slid into the seat next to her at the counter.

Morning Morgs,” he smiled.

“Surprised you’re up before 10 after all the lifesaving you did last night,” Harley teased him from his spot on Morgan’s other side. He was already part way through a plate of french toast.

Pepper waved Harley’s teasing off with her hand before turning towards Peter, “Peter sweetheart, how are you feeling? Are you hurt? We can call Helen if we need.”

By the time Peter and Tony got home last night, Pepper had finished her meeting and was at home waiting for them to get back. It took about 10 minutes of her fussing over him for Peter to convince her that he was really ok. She then proceeded to lightly scold him for jumping into danger and also praise him for helping someone in need, in the same breath. Peter went to bed confused, after promising her that he would go to the med bay in the morning if he was still hurting.

He shook his head, giving Tony a quick thank you as he slid a plate of french toast towards him. “I’m fine, really. Nothing hurts and my arm is completely better, see?”

He held out his arm to show everyone his completely healed skin. Not even a cut, you’d never know that he had a gash from a knife there last night.

“Must be nice,” Tony teased, “I don’t think I’ve had a period of not hurting somewhere since I started this whole Ironman gig.”

Peter internally debated bringing up his vigilante idea as he started eating his breakfast. He half listened as his family talked around him. Harley complained about some classes he was taking, and Morgan successfully convinced Tony that he just needed~ to buy her a new doll. Peter finished eating and cleared his throat to get their attention.

“So… I was thinking,” he started timidly, “Like just an idea, like just seeing, y’know, like what you guys think…” Nice start.

Tony raised an eyebrow as he folded his arms and leaned back against the countertop. “I think I know where this is going.”

Before Peter could continue, the elevator dinged open and the room was suddenly full of chatter.

“Oh wonderful, you’re all here,” Tony sighed dramatically as some of the Avengers joined them in the kitchen, “I need to start implementing an ‘unwanted guests protocol’”.

“Please, you’d miss us within the hour,” Clint said, snatching a piece of fruit off of Morgan’s plate, making her giggle.

“Peter, how are you after last night?” Bruce asked, sounding worried.

Peter turned to look at Tony with wide eyes, “You told them?”

Tony shrugged, taking a sip of his coffee, “I was late to the mission debrief because I had to go and get you, I needed to explain why I was late.”

“We’re proud of you, Peter. Not a lot of people would have thrown themselves into danger like that to protect someone they don’t know. You truly acted like a hero,” Steve said, giving him a nod.

Peter took a breath, sitting up a little straighter in his chair, “Thanks. That’s uhm, that’s what I actually wanted to talk to you about…” He focused on Pepper and Tony, but watched in his peripheral as the others listened in on what he was saying.

“I uhm, I just, well… I really liked how I felt after helping Mj last night. I didn’t think I would but it made me feel good, I guess. It felt like I was actually doing something good with my powers, and it was nice. So, y’know, I was just thinking, maybe, that I could like, do this more often.”

The room was quiet for a few seconds, but it felt like hours to Peter. Then finally. Natasha spoke up.

“You want to be an Avenger?” Her voice gave nothing away on how she felt about that idea.

Peter quickly shook his head, “No! No, more like a vigilante, I guess. Y’know, like more chill. Just to help people out here when you guys are off doing Avenger stuff…” He trailed off, watching as the adults in the rooms shared silent conversations through glances.

“Absolutely not,” Pepper said firmly, followed by Tony’s “well hold on Pep.”

Steve raised an eyebrow at Tony’s objection, “Tony, he’s only fourteen.”

“A fourteen year old who can climb walls and lift buses,” Harley chimed in.

“Have you already forgotten that he was cut with a knife last night?? You want him to do that every night?” Pepper exclaimed, glaring at Tony.

“Not that I necessarily agree with letting a kid be a vigilante,” Bruce started, “but I think he got cut because he wasn’t prepared. I’m sure with some practice, he’d be able to avoid things like that easily.”

Clint nodded, “There’s plenty of people here with the skill to train him.”

“Clint,” Pepper turned to him, “I don’t care if he’s trained, he’s fourteen. Would you let your kids run around New York at night being vigilantes?”

Clint shook his head, a small smile on his face, “No, but my kids don’t have superpowers. Pete’s different.”

“I don’t know, Pepper’s right, he’s only a child,” Steve chimed in, frowning.

“This ‘child’ survived being Hydra’s lab rat for over a decade, I don’t think anyone is more qualified than him to be a superpowered vigilante actually,” Clint replied.

Peter sat silently for a few minutes, watching with wide eyes as everyone argued with each other. He really didn’t mean to start fights, this went a lot smoother in his head.

“You think I’m not worried about him getting hurt?” Tony scoffed, “Of course I am. I wouldn’t let him do anything until he had gone through at least a couple months of training, and I’ll make him a suit that can protect him, with a built-in panic button to alert us if he needs backup. I’ll be able to view his vitals and location any time, I’ve already been planning it out.”

Natasha finally spoke up, her voice steady, “I think it’s a good idea. We know Tony will do everything in his power to keep Peter safe, and we have more than enough people here to train him well, both in hand to hand combat, and teaching him how to use his powers to his advantage. Plus, this is the first time since we brought Peter here that I’ve actually seen him not hating his abilities. Everyone in this room knows what it’s like to despise something about yourself, and right now I’m finally seeing Peter start to break out of that. Pepper, you were just saying that you hoped he would get more comfortable and open up more, and now he is. And Steve,” she turned towards Steve, “We were literally speaking about this on the quinjet on the way home last night. You were saying that you didn’t like having to leave for missions because leaving New York with no protection makes you uneasy. Peter would be here to help, and he would have a direct line to us if anything bigger than a vigilante crime occurred.”

Peter felt his face flush as the room went silent. Natasha was sometimes unnerving with the way she could just look at you and know how you were feeling, but it was also oddly comforting knowing that she understood where he was coming from.

Pepper sighed, “Peter is too much like Tony, and I’ve known Tony far too long to hope that this will just be dropped. I’d rather Peter do this as safely as possible, and I know that you guys will make sure he’s trained...”

Peter couldn’t help the grin sliding onto his face.

Pepper pointed a finger at him, “But I swear. If you try to take on anything bigger than what you alone can handle, I’m pulling the plug on this whole vigilante thing, understand?”

Peter nodded quickly, “Got it. I’ll stick to being a friendly neighborhood Spiderman. No dealing with Avengers business.”

Pepper nodded, looking worried, as Clint laughed, “Spiderman. That’s very fitting.”

“Alright then Spiderman,” Steve sighed, looking resigned, “Be in the training room upstairs by 6am tomorrow. If you’re serious about this, we’ll start training for a few hours each day.”

Tony stood up straighter and clapped his hands together, “Alright well. Good talk,” he gave Pepper a quick kiss as he headed towards the elevator, “I have a suit to start designing.”

Peter leaned back in his chair as the rest of the Avengers started to clear out of the room. He mentally cheered himself on with which would quickly become a common mantra. ‘Way to go Spidey.’

Chapter Text

The first week of training with the Avengers was simple enough. He would go up to the training rooms every morning to meet with Steve or Natasha, where they would then run through some basic fighting positions. Natasha would gently correct his posture while Steve gave him pointers on how to angle his body better in order to see more of his surroundings. Peter had taken quite a few fighting classes during his time with Hyrda but he was a little rusty.

They would do some light practice punches, mostly focusing on how to duck and dodge the opposite person’s hits, per Peter’s request. After the first week, Natasha told him to take the weekend off, and they would start practicing the actual fighting next Monday.

Monday arrived and Peter woke up excited. He really planned to try and avoid violence as much as possible, but he knew he would have to fight someone at some point. Learning how to fight meant that this was serious, he was really doing this. He quickly got ready for the day and made his way to the training room feeling excited and hopeful. That didn’t last long.

Peter ran through his warmup exercises with both Nat and Steve and was finishing his final lap around the room when Tony strutted in with a Starkpad in hand.

“Do you need something?” Natasha asked him with a raised eyebrow as the three of them came to a stop in front of him.

“Nope,” Tony said, “I just thought that I would come in and get a front row seat to Pete’s first fight training. I want to see him defeat capsicle with his eyes closed.”

Steve rolled his eyes as Peter let out a small laugh.

Nat nodded toward a cushioned bench against the wall. “You can sit over there, but only if you don’t interrupt us.”

Tony held his hands up in a mock surrender, giving Peter a wink before getting comfortable on the bench.

Nat left the room to grab something, while Steve and Peter did a quick run through of everything they went over last week to make sure that Peter remembered it.

By the time they finished running through it all, she had returned and was now laying a box on the floor. Peter and Steve joined her and she flipped the lid open. Peter blinked as he looked inside the box that was full of knives. There was a wide variety, from long to short, thick to thin, dull and sharp.

“Figured this was a good start,” Natasha said, “Lesson one. We’re learning how to both avoid knife attacks and how to use them if necessary.”

Peter nodded, biting his lip. He took a deep breath as Steve and Nat carefully selected which knives they would be using today. He knew what he was getting into with this training, but now that he was standing in a training room while being shown weapons to use for the day, he was suddenly getting flashbacks to his time at Hydra.

“Pete you good?” Steve asked.

Peter quickly lifted his head to see Nat, Steve and Tony all looking at him.

“We’ve been asking if you were ready to start?” Nat asked gently.

“Oh! Yeah, sorry guys, I’m good,” he said. He avoided Tony’s eyes as he replied. He didn’t want Tony to think that he wasn’t ready and to change his mind on letting Peter be a vigilante. “Let’s start.”

Natasha looked at him with an unreadable expression for a moment longer before nodding once and walking back over to the training mats on the floor. Peter took another subtle breath before joining her.

They spent a while using everything Peter had been learning to avoid Natasha’s jabs with the knife. Every once in a while his mind would so kindly supply him with a memory of his Hydra training. Both from when they would have him avoid other’s attacks, and when they would restrain him and allow others to attack him as much as they wanted to test out his healing factor. He subtly shook out his head a few times to clear his thoughts, but other than that he thought the training was going well.

Nat gave him a nod and called a pause.

“Good. You’re remembering everything well, I barely grazed you a couple times, you’re doing well,” she praised.

Peter beamed, “Thanks. You guys are just good teachers I guess.”

Tony stifled a laugh from his seat, earring a glare from Steve.

“Here. Let’s switch,” Nat said, holding the knife out to Peter, “I dodge, you attack.”

“You! Attack!!” The Hydra agent screamed, pointing his gun at Peter, “Now”

Peter tried to calm his breathing as he tightened the knife in his hand and looked at the man tied to the chair in front of him. He must have only been a few years older than Peter. According to his handler, this man had been caught trying to snitch on where their base was, and now he had to pay. And Peter had to oversee that.

“Peter!!”

Peter blinked, coming back to the present. Tony was in front of him, holding onto his shoulders with a worried look.

“There you are. Are you ok? Take a deep breath ok?” Tony said, giving his shoulders a slight squeeze.

Peter didn’t realize that he was breathing heavily and he quickly tried to settle himself.

“S-sorry. I’m fine I just… I was…”

Tony shook his head, “It’s ok. Just breathe first.”

It was only after a few minutes of sitting in silence, matching his breathing to Tony’s, that he realized they were sitting on the floor. He looked up to where Natasha and Steve were looking at him with concern.

“Are you ok?” Steve asked.

Peter nodded, biting his lip, “Yeah. I’m ok. Sorry, I didn’t mean to…” he trailed off.

Natasha shook her head, “It’s alright, don’t apologize. We can call it for today, we’ll-”

Peter cut her off by quickly clambering to his feet, “No! No, I want to keep going.” He didn’t want them to think that he wasn’t ready for this just because he got caught up in one memory. He was fine now. “Please.”

The three adults shared looks among themselves before Steve nodded slowly, “If you’re sure…”

Peter nodded enthusiastically, “I am.”

Steve and Nat went back to the box and began picking out knives again, speaking to each other in whispers.

Tony ran a gentle hand through Peter’s curls. “Are you sure? You can call it for the day and come back tomorrow if it’s too much for you bambino. Noone will judge you for that.”

Peter appreciated the sentiment, but he was still embarrassed by that little episode, and now he was more determined than ever to prove himself today.

“I’m ok, really.” Peter stated with a false confidence that he hoped Tony couldn’t see through.

Tony stared at him for a minute before nodding slowly, “Okay. But really if you need a break, call for one. No one will be upset, ok?”

Peter nodded before joining Steve and Natasha on the mats again.

The next 45 minutes went by smoothly. They eased back into the practice and Peter was doing well. He hadn’t had another flashback and everyone finally seemed comfortable again. So, of course that had to come to an abrupt end.

It was simple. Peter was holding a knife and was moving from foot to foot while sending jabs at a training dummy in front of him. Nat and Steve were watching and taking notes on what needed to be practiced more.

“No, Peter, you’re doing it wrong,” Steve said hastily, “You were about to hurt yourself.”

Peter immediately froze up, his mind blocking out the second part of Steve’s sentence. The words ‘No, Peter, you’re doing it wrong’ were replaying over and over in his head. He furrowed his eyebrows as he looked from Steve to the knife in his hand.

He bit down hard on his lip. He knew what he needed to do in this situation, but that didn’t mean he wanted to. Peter sighed before deciding to get it over with. He smoothly flipped the knife around in his hand before taking it to his forearm and slicing a long line down the length of his arm.

The knife was quickly snatched out of his hand by a wide-eyed Natasha while Steve let out a yell and Tony came running over.

“Peter what the fuck are you doing?!” Tony yelled, grabbing his wrist and staring at the laceration on his arm.

“Peter, why would you do that!?” Steve asked incredulously, looking at him with a pale face.

Peter looked between them with knitted brows; he was genuinely confused why they didn’t know why he did what he did.

“You said I did it wrong,” he said matter of factly.

“Okay....” Steve started, “I said that because you were about to slice your hand on the blade. I was trying to stop you from hurting yourself, but…”

Peter tilted his head, “Okay? But I did it wrong. I needed to learn from my mistake so I…” he gestured to his arm.

Tony’s face fell. “Peter… No. No, kid, you don’t-”

Natasha set her arm on Tony’s shoulder, “Peter, you don’t need to punish yourself for making a mistake. That’s why we’re training you, you’re supposed to make mistakes here and learn from them. I promise you, correcting your mistakes is enough.”

Peter blinked up at her as his arm slowly dripped blood onto the mats, “But-”

“No buts,” Tony cut him off firmly as Steve came back to his side with gauze, “I’m serious, kid, never do that again. You have never and will never need to be punished like that for anything.”

Peter watched silently as Steve and Tony worked on cleaning his arm and wrapping gauze around it. He knew the slash on his arm would be healed within the next day but he chose to stay quiet.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered after a minute, “I didn’t mean to make you upset.”

Tony sighed, pressing his palms down on Peter’s shoulders, “I am upset that you did that, I never want you to purposely harm yourself ever again ok? But, I know that you didn’t know better, so I’m not upset with you ok?”

Peter nodded, willing tears not to well up in his eyes.

He glanced away from Tony and realized that Steve and Natasha had left the room.

“Are they-” he started, before Tony cut him off again, “No, they’re not mad at you either.”

Peter nodded, cracking his knuckles in a nervous habit.

Tony let out another long sigh before pulling Peter into his chest and wrapping his arms tight around him.

“That’s enough for today, ok? Let’s go upstairs and work on some Lego sets or bother Harley, ok?”

Peter let out a wet laugh, muffled by Tony’s chest, “‘kay.”

“And promise me that you’ll never purposely hurt yourself again. Next time you think about using any punishment that Hydra taught you I want you to just talk to me about it first alright?” Tony asked.

Peter nodded.

“Ok,” Tony sighed, kissing the top of his head, “Let’s head upstairs. We’ll start practice again tomorrow.”

Chapter Text

The next month of training passed rather easily after some boundaries being set and lengthy conversations about proper communication. Peter learned to tell people before executing any punishment that he was taught by Hydra, and also learned that their punishments were almost always unethical. Although Tony used more… colorful words.

It was eight p.m. on the first Monday of November when Friday told Peter that Tony would like him to come down to the lab. Peter paused the movie he was watching and stood up, stretching. He had no idea why Tony needed him down in the lab. It’s not that he wasn’t welcome, Tony had made it very clear that Peter was one of the few people who was allowed to interrupt his lab time, but he hadn’t ever called him to come down there before.

Peter took the elevator down to the lab’s floor and bit his lip as he neared the door. He had no reason to be nervous, but he couldn’t help it. Was he in trouble? Why was Tony calling him down here?

He glanced through the glass door and spotted Tony hunched over a desk with his back turned. Peter raised his fist to knock but the door slid open before he had the chance, he winced slightly as rock music started blaring.

Tony must have heard the door (how, over the music, Peter didn’t know) as he spun in his chair to face Peter, calling for Friday to pause the music.

“Pete! Hey kiddo,” He smiled, grabbing a rag to wipe off his oily hands.

“Hey,” Peter smiled, hoping it wasn’t super obvious that he was nervous about being down here.

“You don’t have anything to be nervous about,” Tony said immediately. Well, so much for that.

“Is it that obvious?” Peter asked with a small lopsided grin.

Tony tossed the rag back on his desk and motioned for Peter to follow him to the other side of the lab, “You’re not very good at hiding it.”

Peter laughed as he followed Tony over to the other side of the lab. “Nothing’s wrong,” Tony said, “If anything, I think you might be excited for this.”

Peter tilted his head as he looked at the table in front of them.

“I finally finished your Spiderman suit,” Tony said excitedly, pulling back a protective tarp to show off a pile of red and blue fabric to Peter, who’s jaw had dropped.

“Oh my gosh!! Really?? This is mine?? Oh my gosh, Tony thank you so much, this is so cool!!” Peter rambled.

Tony laughed, holding up the suit to show Peter.

“I’m glad you like it, kiddo. It’s got everything that you need.” He handed the suit to Peter before grabbing the mask off the desk. “The mask has Friday integrated into it, she will be able to get you into contact with anyone who’s in your phone contacts, as well as keeping track of your vitals, and sending them straight to me and Pepper if anything spikes unnaturally. The suit is flame resistant, it has heaters in it since you can’t thermoregulate, it’s interlined with some material that should make it a little more difficult for you to get stabbed or shot, but not impossible, so that doesn’t mean let your guard down.”

Peter nodded, staring wide eyed at his suit. Spiderman’s suit. This was really happening.

“I know you said you wanted something bright so you didn’t scare anyone,” Tony said, looking fond, “So I hope you like the red and blue. And touching the spider on your chest will retract the suit to make it easier to get on and off. There are a few more little things, but I’ll let you discover those yourself. What do you think?”

Peter didn’t reply with words, he couldn’t think of any that worked well enough to express how he was feeling right now. Instead, he threw himself forward into Tony’s arms.

Tony caught him with an exaggerated groan, holding him tight. He rested his chin on top of Peter’s curls as the two of them sat in silence for a minute.

“Thank you. Really, thank you so much. I don’t even know what to say,” He mumbled into Tony’s chest.

Tony squeezed him tight for a minute before slowly pulling away. “Anytime kiddo. I’d make anything you wanted. And this way I know you’ll be as safe as possible.”

Peter grinned wide, quickly blinking away any remaining tears. He reached back out and picked up his new suit and mask.

“So… Can I finally go out and patrol now?? I have to test it out, y’know? Make sure it works.”

Tony laughed, “I’m pretty sure it works, but I suppose you can go out for a while.” He glanced at his watch, “It’s 8:30. Make sure you’re home by ten, ok? And please be safe. Stick to your friendly neighborhood Spiderman schtick, don’t try taking on anything bigger.”

Peter nodded eagerly, his curls falling into his face, “Ok!! I will, I’ll be safe, and I’ll be home soon. Thank you!!” He gave Tony another quick hug before running off upstairs to change. Tony sighed to himself, he hoped he wouldn’t regret this.

*******

Spiderman’s first patrol went better than Peter had hoped. Once he changed into his new suit, which was surprisingly comfortable, he asked Friday to open his window, and he climbed out, activating his stickiness and scaling the wall. He made it to the roof, taking a breath before adjusting his mask one more time and jumping off. He let himself fall for a few seconds before shooting out a web and swinging through the city.

He found a nice roof in the heart of the city, not too low that he’d be spotted, but not too high that it would take him a while to come down. He crouched on the edge and listened closely to the sounds of the nightlife, waiting until he was needed.

By the time he was swinging home, he had helped an old man carry groceries into his apartment, walked a drunk girl home, prevented a fight from happening due to a fender bender, helped a boy chase down his dog, and stopped a thief from taking someone's wallet in line for a club.

He crawled into the living room through the window, and took his mask off, revealing his flushed, excited face.

“I take it Spiderman’s first patrol went well?” Tony asked, looking over from where he and Pepper were cuddled on the couch.

Peter nodded enthusiastically, “So well!! I helped a bunch of different people, and I didn’t have to fight or anything.”

Pepper smiled, “The city is already a safer place because of you.”

Tony nodded, “You’re doing good, bambino. Now go shower and go to bed, superheroes still have bedtimes.”

Peter laughed before bidding them goodnight and heading to his room.

That night as he lay in bed he couldn’t help but look forward to tomorrow night. It felt so good to be good. He was being the help that he never had.

*******

A week had now passed, and not to brag, but Peter had this vigilante thing down. He had helped more people this week than he ever thought he would, and he felt so good doing it. That feeling alone was more than enough for Peter, but people were adamant on thanking him. One man gave him a crumpled five dollar bill after Peter pushed him out of the way of an out-of-control car, (and then proceeded to turn the driver into the police for drunk driving), and last night a sweet older lady bought him a churro for helping her get across the busy street.

Tonight was going just as well. It was barely 9pm and Peter had already put out a small trash can fire and broke up a fight between two drunk men. He had been on the receiving end of a punch from one of the men, but not even his throbbing jaw could bring down his mood.

He was sitting on the edge of a rooftop, letting his legs dangle down as he listened to the noises of the city, waiting to hear anyone who needed help, when suddenly he sat up rigidly. His spider sense had started to go off. Peter slowly turned around, scanning the rooftop for any signs of movement. Why would anyone else even be up here? He was about to turn away and survey the street below instead, when a shadow caught his eye. Something was moving behind the large ac unit.

Peter stood slowly, holding his breath. The shadow was too big to be an animal. There was a person up here, hiding from him.

“Hello?” Peter called out, trying to keep his voice steady. “Who are you?”

No reply. Peter mustered up his courage, moving closer to the ac unit. His fists were clenched as his sides, ready to use his self-defense lessons if he needed.

What he was met with had him frozen, his jaw falling open. There was a man sprawled on the floor, his back against the ac unit, but not just any man.

“You’re Daredevil!” Peter exclaimed, trying to mask his excitement.

Harley had given Peter a lesson on the heroes and vigilantes of New York. He told him all he knew about Daredevil, which wasn’t a lot, because no one knew that much about him, but he had stopped some serious crimes. Peter, like Harley, quickly became a big fan.

The man looked up at Peter with a grimace, “Yeah, I am. Who are you?”

“Oh, I’m uhm- I’m Spiderman. I’m new, I guess.”

Daredevil nodded, wincing. It was only then that Peter realized the man was bleeding heavily from his leg.

“Oh! Oh my god, are you ok??” He asked, crouching down to get a closer look, “What happened?”

Daredevil waved him off, pushing himself up, “I got shot. Caught in crossfire.”

Peter furrowed his eyebrows, “Do you need help? I-I can go get a first aid kit, or I can call someone, or if you need a hospital-”

Daredevil cut him off with a shake of his head, “I’m fine, I just need to get home, I have someone who can patch me up there.”

Peter took a hold of the man’s arm as he pushed himself to a standing position.

“Okay, but at least let me help you home. Trust me, I know the pain of a bullet, I know you’re hurting.”

Daredevil tilted his head, examining Peter closely, “Aren’t you a little young to know what it’s like to be shot?”

Peter blinked. How could he tell Peter was young? He was wearing a mask, and his voice changer was still intact. Maybe it was just a lucky guess?

“Yeah well, we’ve all been through stuff. I’m walking you home.” He said, not leaving room for an argument. He held out his arm.

Daredevil looked at him silently for a moment longer before nodding once and taking Peter’s arm.

Peter took on most of his weight as the two of them made their way to the edge of the roof. He silently thanked his super strength for making it easier than it would have been.

“Ok, it’s going to hurt, but get on my back,” Peter told him once they reached the edge.

“What??” Daredevil asked, bewildered.

“Trust me, I can get us off the roof way easier. You were shot in the leg and you’re dealing with blood loss, I don’t think you should be trying to climb down the fire escape. I- it’s weird but I’m… sticky, I can get us down and get you to help way faster.”

Daredevil stared intensely at Peter for a minute as Peter tried not to squirm under his gaze. He couldn’t help but feel like Daredevil was reading his mind or something.

“Please, you can trust me. I just want to get you home before this gets any more serious,” He pleaded, willing the man to listen.

After another moment, Daredevil slowly nodded. “Ok… If you’re sure.”

Peter nodded before crouching slightly, letting the man climb onto his back. Once he was on, he stood easily, making his way to the edge.

“Hold on tight,” he told the man.

Once he felt Daredevil’s grip tighten, he hoisted the two of them over the edge, setting his hands and feet against the brick wall and swiftly carrying the two of them down to the alleyway beneath.

“C’mon,” Peter mumbled as Daredevil climbed off his back, “We’ll take alleyways, so we’re not seen. Just tell me which way to go.”

Daredevil once again leaned most of his weight across Peter’s shoulders as the two of them made their way through the backstreets of Manhattan.

It was about a seven-minute trek before they reached their destination.

Peter looked up at the apartment, “Are you sure you’ll be ok?”

Daredevil nodded, “I’m sure. I’ll be fine, this isn’t my first time being shot either. Though it was my first time being carried down the side of a building by a sticky kid.”

Peter huffed, “Not a kid.”

Daredevil grinned, “Head home Spiderman, it’s getting late. But thank you, I really appreciate your help. I owe you one.”

Peter watched to make sure Daredevil got into the apartment safely before starting his swing home. He couldn’t wait to tell Harley about this. He was going to be so jealous.

By the time he was crawling in through the living room window, it was just after 10. He hoped Tony and Pepper wouldn’t be too mad that he was late, but he figured that helping Hell’s Kitchen’s best vigilante get home safe was a good excuse.

He pulled off his mask and looked around in confusion upon not seeing Tony and Pepper on the couch. They had been waiting there for him to get home from patrol every night.

He made his way down the hall, hearing their muffled voices coming from their bedroom. He was excited to tell them about his night, but paused with his hand on the doorknob when he heard his own name. He listened closer, curious to know what they were saying about him.

“Don’t you think it’s a little too soon? I don’t want to put too much change on him too fast,” Tony was saying, keeping his voice low.

“Tony,” Pepper replied, sounding like they had been over this already, “I think if he’s ready to go out patrolling as a masked vigilante every night, he’s ready for this. Plus it’s not like he’ll be alone, Harley will be there too.”

Peter tilted his head. What were they on about?

Tony sighed, “Yeah, I know you’re right. I’m just worried is all.”

Peter heard the bed creak slightly as he assumed Pepper took a seat next to Tony.

“He’s strong. Stronger than we are, and he’s smart. He’ll have nothing to worry about, and you know Harley won’t let anything happen. He was adamant about that when we brought it up earlier.”

So Harley was in on whatever they were planning too?

“This might help him fit in more. He’s fourteen, what’s more normal than going to school with everyone else your age?”

School??? Peter leaned in closer. They wanted Peter to go to school? He rested his ear against the door, not hearing any reply. After a minute of silence, he heard movement. He was trying to focus in more, when suddenly the door swung open, causing Peter to fall forward onto the carpet. He looked up and met Tony’s amused gaze looking down at him.

“Eavesdropping, are we Spiderman?” He raised a brow.

Peter gulped.

Chapter Text

Pepper and Tony had told Peter to go and change and then meet them in the living room in ten minutes. That was fifteen minutes ago. Peter had changed into a baggy t-shirt and a pair of Ironman pajama pants, he had combed through his hair, brushed his teeth twice and reorganized his desk. He had nothing else to stall with, so he stifled a groan, deciding he needed to just get this conversation over with, there was no avoiding it.

He took a breath before swinging open his door, flinching backward when he was immediately met with a figure standing right outside of his door.

“Sorry,” Harley apologized with a sheepish grin, “I heard mom and dad telling you to meet them in the living room for a talk and thought I’d join. Uninvited of course.”

Peter’s lips quirked up slightly. Harley had a special way of making Peter feel better without even having to try.

“C’mon,” Harley said, leading the way down the hallway, “It won’t be that bad.”

Sooner than Peter would have liked, he found himself sitting on the couch, next to Harley, facing their parents who sat on the other couch to their right. A late night family meeting, bar Morgan, who was sleeping.

“How was patrol tonight?” Tony started. Peter knew what he was doing. He could tell Peter was nervous and was trying to ease him into the conversation by starting with something Peter enjoyed talking about.

“It uhm, it was good I guess,” Peter said blandly.

Pepper sighed slightly, making Peter immediately feel bad.

“Sorry,” he started, cracking his knuckles subconsciously, “I’m just a little nervous I guess, but patrol was good. I helped a lot of people, and I actually met Daredevil! He was hurt but I helped him get home safe, and he said he’d be ok there.” He finished his sentence with some excitement creeping back into his voice.

Harley whipped around to face him, “What?!! Really?? You actually met Daredevil?? Like you talked to him?”

Peter nodded, grinning, “Yeah! I actually gave him a piggyback to get off of the roof we were on.”

Tony cleared his throat, “You guys live with the Avengers, why are you so excited about Daredevil?”

“We don’t live with Daredevil though,” Harley said, like it was obvious, “He’s so cool and even you guys don’t know him.”

Tony rolled his eyes dramatically, “Yeah yeah, as long as Ironman stays your favorite.”

Harley laughed and Peter smiled. He had almost forgotten what he was so nervous about. Almost.

“Ok, enough hero talk, we need to talk about our actual topic, it’s getting late, you guys need to go to bed soon,” Pepper steered them back on track.

Tony took a breath, sitting up a little straighter and getting straight to the point, “Pete, we think that it would be good if you enrolled in school.”

Peter cracked his knuckles again, avoiding eye contact and staying quiet.

Pepper took over, speaking gently, “We think that it would be really good for you. It would be helpful in helping you adjust better to normal life, it would get you out of the tower, more than just your walks and patrols, you would meet people your age and make some friends, and it would give you some purpose.”

Peter had a purpose with Spiderman. What more did he need?

“You said you liked to learn right kiddo?” Tony asked, leaning in to try and catch Peter’s eye, “And we know you’re smart. There’s not a lot of adults who can understand what science Bruce and I are discussing like you can. You’ll be fine.”

Peter stayed silent.

“You’d be in 9th grade, that’s your first year of highschool, so you’d be going to the same school as me,” Harley added.

“Say something bambino, what are you thinking?” Tony asked after another moment of silence.

Peter shrugged slightly, “I…” He paused, contemplating whether he wanted to just agree so he could go to bed, or if he wanted to actually talk to them about what he was feeling.

A few months ago he would have agreed quietly, gone to his room and panicked by himself. Now, he glanced up at where Tony and Pepper were watching him closely and decided to be honest.

“I’m scared.”

“What are you scared of?” Pepper asked softly.

Peter dug his nails into his thighs, trying to ground himself as his mind gave him a speedrun of every possible thing that could go wrong.

“I’m not good with people. I’m only just starting to not be awkward around you guys and the others. I’m going to mess something up. What if someone tries to talk to me and I don’t understand what they’re talking about or what they’re referencing? They’re going to think I’m really weird, because I am.” He rambled.

“Hey, calm down. You aren’t weird.” Tony said firmly.

Peter bit down on his lip until he could taste blood.

“I am. I’m not going to fit in, and even if I’m alright at science, I don’t think I’ll be good at anything else,” He mumbled.

“Peter, as someone who’s gone to school with these kids since elementary, trust me, you’ll be fine. You’re smart, you’ll catch up fast, and if you need any help you know we’ll all help you,” Harley said, nudging him with his shoulder, “And if anyone gives you trouble, I’ll beat them up.” That earned a look from Pepper.

“What if I say or do something wrong? I’ve never been to a normal school before…” He worried.

“Peter, I promise you’ll be fine. You’ll do an online entrance exam, which I know you’ll be able to pass, and then once you start school we can talk to the principal about making sure you’re accommodated,” Pepper said comfortingly.

Tony nodded in agreement, “It’s just for a few hours a day, and Harley will be there too. And if it gets too much at any point, you can call me, or Pepper or anyone and someone will come and get you, ok?”

Peter nodded slowly, knowing that it was going to happen no matter what. He was clearly still nervous, so Pepper spoke up, leaning forward to set a comforting hand on his knee.

“Ok how about this: you go for a week, starting next monday, you can get a feel for it and try it out, and we’ll reconvene at the end of the week, see how it was, and we’ll go from there. How does that sound?”

Peter nodded again, more confidently this time. Ok, he could do that. That was only five days, and if it really went awfully, then he could convince Tony and Pepper not to make him go back.

“Ok,” He said, “I can do that I guess.”

Tony smiled, clapping his hands together as he stood, “Perfect. You’ll do just fine, Pete, I know it. But if you really, really hate it by the end of the week, then we’ll figure something else out, ok?”

Peter nodded, letting a small smile slip onto his face, “Ok”

Everyone else stood, stretching out and stifling yawns.

“Ok everyone, it’s past all of our bedtimes. Go to sleep,” Tony teased.

After his hectic patrol and the stressful school talk, Peter was too tired to even stay awake staring at his ceiling in worry. The second his head hit his pillow, he was asleep.

*******

Monday came around way too fast. Peter had taken his Midtown High entrance exam last week, and he had passed with flying colors, which was how he now found himself standing in the kitchen with a brand new backpack slung over his shoulder.

“You look great Peter, you don’t need to worry,” Pepper comforted him for probably the tenth time that morning.

“Trust me Pete, no one is going to pay attention to your outfit. Kids come to school wearing sweatpants or pajamas all the time,” Harley said, shoveling cereal into his mouth.

Peter sighed, slipping into his seat next to Harley and taking a bite of his own cereal. It felt like sand in his mouth and made his stomach turn. However, he kept eating, knowing that he would be worse off later on if he didn’t eat now. Thanks metabolism.

It felt like Peter blinked, but suddenly he was in the car, staring out of the window as it slowly pulled up in front of Midtown High. He gulped as Tony turned around to face Peter and Harley.

Tony had told Peter this morning that Happy will usually be the one to drive Peter and Harley to school, but in honor of Peter’s first day, Tony was driving them himself.

“You good?” He asked Peter with a raised brow.

Peter nodded, “I guess.”

“You’ll be fine, kiddo. Promise,” Tony said, giving him a smile, “Harley will show you where the principal’s office is, and then someone will show you how to get to all of your classes. Then you just go wherever your schedule says ok?”

They had gone over this five times since Peter woke up, yet he was still worried he would mess up somehow. He closed his eyes, took a breath and remembered what Bucky had told him this morning before he left on his run.

You survived being a Hydra experiment for over a decade. You’ll make it through a day of high school.

He had a small smile on his face as he nodded more firmly.

“Go get ‘em. You’ll do great, and I’ll be here to pick you up at 3,” Tony smiled, “Now get outta here.”

Peter forced himself to stand up straight with a false confidence as he got out of the car with Harley, following the older boy as he led them up the stairs and towards the main entrance.

“It’ll be fine,” Harley reassured him once more, “And if you need anything at all, text me, ok?”

The boys stopped outside of the principal’s office.

“I’ll meet you in the lunchroom at lunchtime. The office aides will show you where it is on the tour,” Harley said, “You’ll have fun, and you’re a Stark so the work will be a breeze for you.”

Peter gave him a small grin. “I got this.” He didn’t know who he was trying to convince more, Harley or himself.

Harley gave him a quick hug before leaving him to go to his locker. Peter took a breath and pushed open the door to the office.

Peter went through a whirlwind of emotions as he met the principal and vice principal, got his schedule and was quickly whisked away by one of the office aides on a tour of the school. There was a map on the back of his schedule too ‘just in case’.

“And this is the lunchroom,” The girl finished the tour with a smile. Peter already forgot her name. Liv? Liz?

“It seems like a lot, but I promise it gets easier. I was overwhelmed my freshman year too,” she said.

“Classes started about ten minutes ago, but your teachers know you’re new and they’re expecting you, so you won’t be in trouble for being late today. You should head to your first class,” She explained.

“Oh y-yeah, uhm ok,” Peter stuttered.

He said goodbye and started walking down the hall, unfolding his schedule.

His first class was chem 101. He had remembered walking through the science hall just a minute ago, and was proud of himself when he found his classroom for the first time.

Peter took a final steadying breath before knocking slightly and pushing the door open.

“Um… I’m... this is my class? I’m new,” He mumbled. Nice start.

The teacher didn’t seem upset by his mumbling, instead he gave Peter a smile before walking over. The man looked to be in his late 40s, early 50s. He had kind eyes, a warm smile, and a hairline that was beginning to recede.

“You must be Peter, come on in,” the man said, ushering Peter further into the room and pulling the door closed behind him.

“I’m Mr. Bowman,” the man said, shaking Peter’s hand, “I’ll be your chem 101 teacher this year. Why don’t you introduce yourself to the class? Give us your name and a fun fact about yourself.”

Peter turned to face the classroom, feeling his nerves come back some with everyone’s attention on him.

“H-hi. Uhm, I’m Peter and uhhh I was homeschooled my whole life before coming here. So… this is my first time doing… this.” He motioned slightly at the classroom as he finished his sentence.

Harley and Tony had come up with the idea for Peter to tell people that he had been homeschooled his whole life. They figured that was a more reasonable excuse for not being the most socially adept, rather than saying he had been held prisoner by Hydra since he was a baby.

Mr. Bowman smiled, “Well we’re really glad you’re here Peter, you’ll fit right in. Why don’t you take a seat beside Ned, we were just learning about Heterogeneous mixtures.”

Peter made his way to the empty desk near the kind looking boy who was waving his hand with a smile. Once he took his seat, the boy turned to him and started to introduce himself in a whisper.

“Hi! I’m Ned! You’ve been homeschooled your whole life? That’s so cool! Did you get to like, watch TV and stuff while working? I’m jealous. Why did you decide to come here for highschool? Not that I’m not glad you’re here, you seem really cool, we should be friends.”

Peter blinked at the boy. That was a lot.

Ned smiled sheepishly, “Sorry, that was a lot. People tell me I ramble too much sometimes.”

Peter felt his mouth turn up in a small smile.

“That’s ok. I ramble a lot too. But I’d like to be friends, I’m Peter.”

Ned beamed at him and Peter felt some of his nerves melt away. Ned seemed really nice, and everyone at home would be happy to know that Peter had already made a friend so fast.

Mr. Bowman cleared his throat, shooting Ned and Peter a look, before turning back to the smartboard.

“We’ll talk after class,” Ned whispered.

Peter hated to admit it, but everyone was right. His first day went well. Really well. After chemistry, Ned walked Peter to his locker, which he found out was right next to Ned’s, and after checking Peter’s schedule, Ned informed him that they also had English, history, Gym and Spanish together.

His classes weren’t that hard, his teachers seemed nice enough, and he didn’t even get lost on his way to the lunchroom, where he ate the lunch Pepper had packed for him while seated in between Ned and Harley. Harley had given him a proud smile when Peter introduced Ned as his new friend.

His afternoon went just about the same. During Spanish class, Ned had told Peter to do his best to avoid a kid named ‘Flash’ who sat a few desks away from them. Peter recognized him from some of his other classes. Apparently he was a bully who thought he was better than everyone else in their grade. Apart from a slightly judgemental look when Peter first introduced himself, Flash hadn’t given Peter any trouble, and Peter hoped it stayed that way.

After all of the day's classes, he met up with Harley and left school with a backpack full of homework, a new number in his phone, and a hopefulness that maybe school wouldn’t be as bad as he feared.

Chapter Text

Peter’s first week of school came and went. Pepper and Tony had sat him down on Sunday and asked him how it was going, and if he still wanted to keep going, and Peter begrudgingly admitted that they were right and he was, in fact, enjoying himself. His only complaint was that most of the content they were learning was too easy, and he had nothing to do in class once he finished his assignments. That only made Tony laugh and mumble something about the Stark gene.

They were halfway through Peter’s third week at school, when Ned ran up to him at their lockers at lunch.

“Peter,” He blurted out, setting a hand on Peter’s shoulder and turning him around.

“Yes?” Peter laughed at his friend’s enthusiasm.

“Do you remember the Acadec team that I told you about?” Ned started, shoving some books into his locker before the two of them began making their way through the crowded hallway towards the lunchroom.

Ned talked about the academic decathlon team probably twice a day. Normally it was once to talk about how excited he was for whatever they were doing that day, and once to complain about having to spend an extra hour with Flash three times a week.

“Yeah, I think you’ve mentioned it once or twice,” Peter teased, causing Ned to roll his eyes at him.

“Well guess what!” Ned all but shouted, immediately carrying on and not giving Peter a chance to guess, “There was this one kid who was in our grade, his name was Logan, but he just moved, I think they’re going to California? Or maybe it was Nevada- never mind, that doesn’t matter, point is, there’s an opening on the team. I told them I knew someone who might be interested. Are you?”

Peter blinked at him. He had told Ned that the Acadec team sounded fun. They got to tackle subjects that were more difficult than what they normally handled in class, and they got to go on extra field trips, and do competitions.

“No offense to him, but you’re definitely smarter than Logan was,” Ned began, “Plus it would give us even more time to hang out, and we would get to room together on trips and stuff! The team is really nice too, well, except for Flash, but nobody really likes him so…”

Peter grinned, “Yeah, I guess that sounds kind of fun. What do I have to do?”

Ned fist pumped the air, “Yes!! Well, today we meet after school, so you can just show up. Liz might quiz you a little on some of the basic things we learn, but you’ll be fine, and then they’ll go over what we’re learning and you just show up to all the meetings! Liz is our team captain, so she’ll handle telling principal Morita that you joined and everything.”

Peter nodded, “Sounds good, I’m in.”

He couldn’t wait to tell Tony and Pepper that by week three, he was voluntarily joining extracurricular clubs. They were going to be happy. He also knew that the Acadec team sometimes worked closely with the robotics team, which Harley was a part of. Maybe this would be more fun than he thought.

Peter and Ned made their way to the lunchroom, searching the sea of students for a familiar mop of dirty blonde hair. They spotted Harley sitting at one of the round tables in the far corner of the room, seated in between his two best friends. They made their way through the crowded room to join them.

Harley had been friends with Harry and Gwen since the three of them were in elementary school. Peter liked them, he thought they were cool. They both knew all about Peter and were excited to finally meet him once Harley suggested they all sit together during Peter’s second week of school. Apparently, Harley had been talking about Peter for as long as the three of them had been friends, and it warmed Peter to know that Harley cared about him so much as to tell his friends about him even when everyone was almost certain he was dead. Ned also enjoyed sitting with the three of them, seeing as Flash tended to steer clear of making fun of Ned and Peter whenever they were sitting with the upperclassmen.

“Hey guys,” Harley grinned, already halfway through his sandwich.

Harry gave them a nod and Gwen gave them a smile and a wave.

“How were your mornings?” Gwen asked, stabbing her fork into the Tupperware container of leftovers in front of her.

Gwen was really nice. She reminded Peter of Kate and Wanda at home, silly and fun, but also protective and comforting. Harry was a lot quieter and more reserved, not saying much and often having a tired expression on his face, but he reminded Peter a lot of Bucky, who also had a bad case of RBF (thank you Kate for teaching him what that meant) but was actually really sweet if you got to know him. He was glad that Harley had such good friends, and he was happy that they wanted to be Peter’s friends too.

“It was good,” Ned began, pulling out his lunch and setting it on the table, “I convinced Peter to join the academic decathlon team! His first practice is after school today.”

“Pete, that’s great!” Harley beamed at him, “You’re going to be so good at that, the team will be thanking you.”

Peter felt himself turning red as Ned eagerly nodded along with what Harley was saying.

“I’ll text Happy and tell him not to come at normal pickup time. Robotics club has our meetings the same days as Acadec, just as long too, so he can just pick us both up after.”

Peter nodded. He was glad about the schedule line up; he would have felt bad if Happy had to make multiple trips because of him, even if it was technically his job.

“Harry used to be on the Acadec team,” Gwen teased, waggling her eyebrows at Harry, causing a small grin to appear on his normally stoic face.

“Really?” Ned asked, eyebrows furrowed in thought.

Harry nodded, “Yeah. I quit after last year to join the robotics team with Harls and Gwen instead. They made it sound fun, and I wanted in.”

“Bad case of fomo, I get it,” Ned said sympathetically, causing Harry to laugh a little.

“Harry is better at robotics than he was at Acadec anyway,” Harley teased around a mouthful of his sandwich, “I bet Liz Allen cheered when she didn’t see your name on the member list this year.”

Harry scoffed, giving Harley a shove, “Alright let’s not get too ahead of ourselves, I wasn’t that bad.”

“Didn’t you sleep through three alarms on the morning of the championship freshman year?” Gwen raised an eyebrow.

“Ok, maybe I was that bad,” He admitted, causing their table to erupt into laughter.

Peter felt lighter than he had in… well ever. He felt normal sitting here, in a high school cafeteria, surrounded by people his age, laughing with a table full of his friends. It was almost enough for him to forget that he was an ex-hydra radioactive lab rat who patrolled the New York streets at night fighting crime. Almost.

*******

Peter followed Ned down the hall to one of the science labs where they had their Acadec meetings. He shoved his Spanish homework into his backpack, choosing to worry about that later, as Ned pushed open the door.

“Hey guys,” Ned announced happily to the room, “This is Peter! Our new member.”

Peter gave the room an awkward smile and wave, “That is uh, if you want me to be.”

A girl Peter vaguely recognized stood up and made her way over to him, “Of course. Ned has been telling us about you, we’re happy to have you on the team. It’s good to see you again.”

Liz. That was her name. She was the office aide who showed Peter around on his first day. No wonder her name sounded familiar. He smiled, “Yeah, you too. Thanks for having me.”

Liz nodded, walking back to her chair, “Let’s introduce everyone before we start.”

Peter hesitantly took a seat next to Ned at one of the tables as Liz pointed to everyone in the room and told Peter their names. He had no idea how he was supposed to remember them all.

“That’s Flash,” Liz said, pointing to the boy Peter knew all too well.

He hadn’t necessarily been that mean to Peter, but he did throw mocking comments after him in the hallways, or shove into his desk when walking out of a classroom. Ned had apologized the first few times, saying it was his fault, because Flash has always made fun of him, so since Peter was now his friend, he was getting it too. Peter quickly put a stop to Ned’s apologies. He really didn’t mind a little teasing; he had heard a lot worse in his life.

Peter gave Flash a polite nod, causing the other boy to roll his eyes and look away.

Liz sighed slightly before pointing to the last person on the team.

“And this is Mj.”

Peter froze once he heard the name. Mj wasn’t that rare of a name right… New York was a big place, surely this wasn’t who he thought it was. He slowly tore his eyes away from Flash and forced himself to look at Mj.

Of course, it was the same Mj that he had saved that night. Peter swallowed hard, trying to put on a normal facade so that she didn’t catch on. The last thing he needed right now was his new teammate finding out that he was Spiderman.

“Hey,” she said, raising her head from the sketch book she was leaning over.

“H-hi,” Peter stuttered.

Mj raised a confused eyebrow at him but didn’t say anything else. Liz clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention.

“Ok guys, our introductions counted as today’s break,” she smirked at everyone’s groans, “Let’s work on some trigonometry practice equations to warm up.”

Peter made it his mission to avoid eye contact with both Flash and Mj for the entire hour that he spent in the room with them. He felt relieved when Liz finally announced that they were done for the day, and he started packing up his stuff.

“I’ll tell principal Morita that you’re on the team Peter,” Liz said as they filed out of the room, “You’re smart, you’re going to be a great addition to the team. We’re really glad you’re here.”

Peter smiled, “Thanks, Liz, I’m glad to be here too.”

Flash scoffed, muttering under his breath but still loud enough to be heard, “Speak for yourself.”

Liz rolled her eyes as Flash turned the corner. “Ignore him, he’s jealous that you got more questions right than he did on the mock test.”

Peter gave her another small smile, “Yeah.”

“Practices are Monday, Wednesday and Friday for an hour after school, try not to be late, ‘kay?” She added over her shoulder as she waved and walked out of the school’s front doors.

“Hey Pete, how was practice?” Harley asked, as Peter and Ned joined him where he was leaning against the steps.

“It was pretty good,” Peter said, smiling when Harley casually tossed an arm around his shoulders, leading them to where Happy’s car was parked.

“He did amazing, he’s already one of the smartest on the team,” Ned added.

Harley laughed as Peter turned red.

“Of course he is.” Harley ruffled Peter’s hair, the same way Tony does, “Ned, do you need a ride home? Happy can drop you if you want.”

Ned shook his head, “Nah, my grandma is picking me up. But I will totally take you up on that offer someday.”

Peter and Harley both laughed as they waved goodbye to Ned and climbed into the back seat of the car.

Harley chatted Happy’s ear off - much to the older man’s dislike - as they drove home through the city traffic. Peter rested his head against the seat and closed his eyes as he mentally planned the rest of his night. Once he got home he needed to finish up his homework, and then dinner, then he promised Morgan that he would do a puzzle with her tonight, Tony had also asked him to swing by the lab (“no pun intended”) and check out some suit updates he was working on, and then he needed to go out and patrol.

He remembered promising Pepper and Tony that he would take a break from his Spiderman duties if his schedule got too hectic with school, but he was fine. Sure, he was a little busy and he was beginning to feel like he didn’t have enough time in the day to do everything he needed to do, but it was fine. He had this handled, not a problem.

Not yet anyways, and for now that was good enough for Peter.

Chapter Text

Peter’s head was elsewhere, when really he should have been paying attention to the thief he was currently fighting. He had stopped the man from breaking into a parked car and was now fighting off the guy’s attempts to stab him, and all the while Peter’s head was full of the flashcards he really needed to study.

So maybe trying to juggle being a masked vigilante, an honors student and a member of the Academic Decathlon team was a little harder than Peter had originally anticipated.

Peter ducked as the man threw a punch at his head.

“Careful buddy, you almost tripped,” he quipped, causing the man to grunt and send another punch his way.

He stepped back. The man readjusted his grip on his knife and swung it at Peter. The angle of the trajectory of the man’s knife suddenly reminded Peter that he really needed to get started on his physics project when he got home. He’s had a week to get it done, but he’s been so busy that he hasn’t even started.

While Peter was distracted with trying to mentally fit his physics project into his schedule, the man was able to slice a decent cut through Peter’s forearm. He winced, snapping back into the present.

“Ok, that was just rude, man,” he rolled his eyes, even though it couldn’t be seen under his mask.

He shot out his arm, firing a web at the knife still clutched in the man’s hand, yanking it away and throwing it behind him, out of reach. The man’s eyes widened slightly as Peter actually focused in on the fight happening in front of him.

He swiftly ducked another punch and stepped away to avoid a kick in the shin. Once Peter actually focused on the fight he was in, it only took a few minutes for him to web the guy up to the wall. He left a note for the police and scaled the wall behind him.

Once he was crouched safely on the rooftop, he was able to examine his arm. The cut wasn’t that bad, it would be gone within a day or two, nothing to worry about. But before he could swing off to find other trouble, Friday interrupted.

“Incoming call from boss, would you like me to accept?”

Why was his dad calling? It wasn’t past his curfew, and he couldn’t think of anything that he might have done wrong.

“Yeah, answer please, Fri,” He responded.

“Pete?” his dad’s voice rang out, “are you ok?”

Peter furrowed his eyebrow, “Yeah, I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Friday let me know that you got a cut on your forearm, fighting a thief in the alley by Delmar’s. She said it isn’t bad, but I just wanted to make sure.”

Peter sat silently for a minute before speaking around his shock, “What- why would she inform you of all that? It’s just a little cut, not a big deal.”

Peter could hear Tony’s smile through the phone, and it only made him more annoyed, “Friday has your suit set on the ‘Baby Monitor Protocol’. I would get a notification even if you stubbed your toe.”

If it was any other day, Peter probably would have brushed it off, because rationally he knew that this wasn’t that big of a deal. He was out at night fighting crime, and he had only just come home, of course Tony wanted to make sure he was safe. But that rational part of his brain was nowhere to be found lately. Sue him, he had been stressed for the past week, and all of a sudden everything was making him mad, this included.

“Baby monitor protocol?” He asked incredulously, “I’m not a baby, you don’t need to keep tabs on me like that.”

“I think I do,” Tony said firmly, “Pete it’s dangerous what you’re doing out there, I need to know what’s happening and when you get hurt.”

Peter glared at the building across the street as he tried and failed to contain his anger.

“I don’t want you monitoring me. It’s invasive, leave me alone,” he snapped.

Tony was quiet for a moment. Peter started to feel guilty about snapping at him, getting ready to apologize, before Tony spoke up and washed away all his feelings of guilt.

“Ok. If you don’t want me knowing where you are, or what’s happening with you, then I’ll just take the suit back. No Spiderman, no worry.”

Peter stood up quickly, “What?! You can’t do that.”

“I can too, kiddo. My kid, my suit, my rules.”

Peter stomped his foot like a child, “That isn’t fair.”

“Life isn’t fair, Pete,” Tony replied smoothly, “I think it’s time you come home for the night, you’ve been out long enough.”

Peter wanted to argue that he had only been out on patrol for about 30 minutes, but he couldn’t tell how serious Tony was about taking away his suit and he didn’t want to push it. Besides, he did have a lot of homework that he needed to catch up on.

“Fine,” he huffed, hanging up the call without saying goodbye.

Peter grumbled to himself his entire swing back to the tower, not knowing or caring if Tony was listening in through Friday. By the time he landed on the balcony and ripped off his mask, the sight of Tony sprawled out on the couch with Pepper just made him all the more frustrated.

“How was patrol today?” Tony asked, raising an eyebrow.

Once again, the rational part of Peter’s brain that had been getting ignored for weeks knew that this was Tony trying to be nice and trying to put their argument behind them by acting normal. Unfortunately for him, Peter was still mad.

“I’m sure you already know,” He muttered, before storming off down the hall and to his room, making sure to slam the door behind him.

Thanks to his enhancements, even from his room he could hear Tony’s tired sigh, and Pepper asking him ‘what was that about’. He did his best to block out Tony’s response, not wanting to hear him anymore.

*******

After showering off the grime of the city and trying to no avail to melt away his frustrations under the shower’s hot water, Peter was now dressed in some pajama pants and a baggy t-shirt, sitting at his desk. His physics project sat untouched in front of him.

Peter groaned, leaning his elbows against his desk and running his hands through his damp curls. He needed to get this project done before he fell behind anymore. The last thing he needed was his school getting concerned and calling Pepper and Tony. He had promised them he could handle everything; he wasn’t about to give them any more reasons to take away his suit.

The suit that was all Peter’s mind could focus on. He spun around in his chair to face the suit which lay discarded on his bed.

He understood why Tony wanted to keep tabs on him, he really did, but why did Tony not realize that this was too far? It was somewhat comforting knowing that Tony knew his whereabouts, especially considering the fear - that Peter tried to keep buried - that someone working for Hydra would recognize him and try to bring him back. But even so, knowing every little bump and scratch Peter sustained was not necessary.

Peter spun his pencil around in his fingers as he mulled over a bad idea that had been forming in his head for the last 20 minutes.

Peter was good at coding. Especially since Tony had taught him a few things during their newly established ‘lab time’. He had even taught Peter how Friday worked, which meant…

Peter leaned forward, snatching up his suit as he made his decision. If he couldn’t convince Tony to back off a little, then he would just adjust Friday’s database to stop sending him updates. Aka: dismantle baby monitor protocol.

He shoved his physics project to the side as he lay his suit on the desk in front of him, turning his mask inside out to examine the wires with awe. He paused his reaching for the mask and glanced over his shoulder at the ceiling. He liked Friday, but she would definitely rat him out to Tony if he started messing with his suit where she could see.

Looked like this was a project to be done in the bathroom.

*******

After an hour of sitting hunched over on the hard tile floor of the bathroom, Peter was finally finished. He had successfully removed the ‘baby monitor protocol’ out of his suit. Tony would no longer be notified about the state Peter was in. He felt bad about halfway through and considered putting it back, but this would be better for both of them. Peter wouldn’t have to stop his patrolling because Tony was worried about a papercut, and Tony wouldn’t have to stress so much about him getting hurt. This would benefit them both.

Plus, he installed an emergency override button that would turn the system back on and send all updated vitals straight to Tony, just in case.

He was folding his suit back up when there was a knock at his door. His eyes widened as he shoved the suit back where it went and sat at his desk in front of his (still unfinished) physics project.

“Come in?” he called, turning towards the door.

Tony peeked his head in, furrowing his brow when he saw Peter still at his desk.

“Hey kiddo, you’re still awake? It’s late,” he said quietly, seeing as everyone else on their floor was probably asleep.

“Oh uhm, yeah, I just have to finish up my project. I’m almost done though,” Peter lied.

Tony nodded, believing him easily, before taking a seat on the edge of the bed. Peter spun his chair fully around to face him.

“Listen,” Tony started, running a hand across his face and looking tired, “I just wanted to apologize for earlier. I got mad and I shouldn’t have. I’m just worried about you is all, I want to make sure you’re ok, and I know that I’ve gone a little overboard, but I’m just…” he trailed off.

Peter bit his lip, starting holes into the floor.

“I want to keep you safe,” he continued, “I already messed up once and that’s over a decade of your life that I wasn’t there for, I’m never going to forgive myself for that. I’m not going to let anything happen to you again, I need you to understand that.”

Peter swallowed down his guilt before meeting Tony’s eyes with a hopefully believable smile.

“I get it, I do. I’m sorry too, I overreacted. I’ve just been kind of stressed lately - nothing I can’t handle, promise - I’m just kind of adjusting to normal people life still I guess,” he shrugged, “I’ll try to be more careful.”

Tony nodded, standing from the bed and holding his arms open in an invitation.

Peter quickly threw himself into the hug, closing his eyes when he felt Tony’s arms wrap around him tightly. He had really learned to love hugs since he got here.

“I’m going to be more aware of my surroundings, you won’t get any notifications about any bumps because I won’t be getting them,” Peter said, his voice muffled in Tony’s shoulder.

That was technically only half a lie.

Tony gave him one last squeeze before pulling away.

“Sounds good bambino, I’m sorry again for getting upset.”

Peter gave him another smile.

“Head to bed ‘kay? I’ll help you with this project this weekend, for now get some sleep.”

Peter stifled a yawn. Who knew that sneaking behind your extremely watchful dad’s back to secretly rewire his ai system could be so tiring.

“Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.”

Tony grinned, ruffling his hair before walking back to the door.

“Sleep well kiddo, I’ll see you in the morning. Love you.”

“Love you too,” Peter replied as Tony closed his door.

He took a deep breath, flopping onto his bed. He needed to get rid of the guilty feeling lingering in his chest. Tony had enough stress on him; Peter was doing him a favor by taking this off his plate.

That’s what Peter repeated in his mind as he drifted off to sleep on top of his sheets.

Chapter Text

The classroom was spinning. At least it was for Peter. He had no idea why either… ok well maybe he had an idea…

“Peter!” Mr. Bowman’s voice rang through the classroom, “Are you paying attention?”

Peter quickly sat up from where he was slouched over his desk with his head resting on his arms, which only made the spinning worse.

“Yes sir, sorry,” he replied, but even he could hear the grogginess in his own voice.

Peter had had a rough week, and it was only Thursday. On Sunday night, the Avengers were called to deal with a threat in California. Peter had followed Tony around the tower as he quickly got everything he needed ready.

“Why can’t I go with you??” he asked for the tenth time as Tony tied his shoes.

“Kid. You aren’t an Avenger. You’re lucky I let you go out in New York. I know you’ve been more vigilant lately, I haven’t gotten any notifications about you getting hurt, but that doesn’t mean you can go deal with an Avenger’s level threat.”

Peter huffed, resisting stomping his foot like Morgan did when she was angry, “But I could help you guys a lot!’

Tony stood up, grabbing his bag before turning towards Peter and sighing.

“Pete, listen to me. I’m not saying that I don’t think you could help, I know you’re good at what you do. But I will not risk you getting hurt, and I know you think you won’t get hurt but I can’t guarantee that, so it’s a no. Let’s talk again in four years when you’re an adult.”

Peter glared at him, but before he could reply Steve’s frantic voice rang from down the hall.

“Tony, we need to go now, the police are having trouble evacuating the city!”

Tony glanced from the door back to Peter.

“Maybe one day when you’re older. For now you need to stay here ok? Who’s going to look after New York while we’re gone? Keep everyone here safe alright?”

Peter nodded. Tony had a point, what if something bad happened here? Then Peter would have no choice but to prove himself helpful to the Avengers.

Tony ruffled his hair, “Love you Bambino, we’ll be home soon.”

“Be careful,” Peter had called out after him.

They were still in California. It had taken a few days to get the threat fully under control, and now they were helping with cleanup, seeing as LA had quite a few damages after they were done.

On Monday, Peter, Harley, Morgan and Pepper were in the living room watching a movie, when Pepper’s phone rang.

She went to the kitchen to answer it, telling the kids to continue the movie.

When she came back ten minutes later, her face had a grim look to it, causing Harley to pause the movie (to which Morgan complained).

“Mom, what’s wrong? Is everyone ok?” he asked.

Pepper nodded, typing quickly on her phone.

“Everyone is fine, sweetheart. It’s just people in LA are trying to sue the Avengers for property damage. Which, looking from these pictures your father sent… it’s going to be hard to get them to drop this, even though the Avengers did save their lives.”

Peter furrowed his brow as Pepper moved to pick up Morgan from the couch.

“Alright listen,” she started, running a hand through Morgan’s hair and turning to the boys, “I’m going to head to LA and try to help get this under control. The team really cannot afford to have a lawsuit scandal right now. I’m going to drop Morgs off with Laura on the way there, can I trust that you two will behave here? I’ll be gone a few days tops.”

Harley and Peter shared a look before nodding. Pepper raised an eyebrow.

“I’m serious, don’t do anything you aren’t normally allowed to do. Friday will be watching, and I’ve asked Happy and Rhodey to check in whenever they can.”

“We’ll be fine, mom” Harley said with a smirk, “you can go fix dad’s mess.”

Pepper laughed before shaking her head.

“Ok, why don’t you two get ready for bed, this doesn’t get you out of going to school tomorrow.”

Peter was suddenly back in his spinning-not-spinning classroom as Mr. Bowman called his name again, this time sounding more concerned than angry.

“Peter? Are you ok?” Mr. Bowman was in front of his desk now.

Since his parents had been in California all week, Peter had maybe, perhaps, not been taking care of himself as much as he should. Happy and Rhodey had come to check on them a few times, but since they were also both busy they mostly just made sure the boys were alive before leaving again. Harley had been spending most of his week messing around in Tony’s lab, playing video games until 4 am and living off of meals of cereal and grilled cheese.

Peter on the other hand… he was maybe taking Tony’s ‘you need to look after New York while we’re gone’ advice a little too seriously. Once Happy dropped the boys at home, Peter would ditch his backpack in his room, slip into his suit and go patrol. Normally, when Tony and Pepper were home, they would make him do his homework and eat dinner before he could patrol, and then he had a strict curfew of 10 pm.

But while they were busy, Peter was leaving to patrol right after school and he wasn’t coming home until two or three in the morning. And then he would work on his homework until about four a.m until he passed out. While part of him was tired, another part of him thought that this was what he needed to do. New York wasn’t only dangerous after Peter ate dinner and before he went to bed, he had to take this week to stop as much crime as he could, even if it meant overworking himself. New York needed Spiderman more than Peter needed sleep.

He was worried about Friday tattling to Tony or Pepper that he wasn’t coming home at his curfew, but either she didn’t tell them, or they were too busy to care, because he didn’t receive a single angry text. Or any texts at all for that matter. Not even a reply to his ‘is everything ok?’ text. Or the ten others he sent after that, trying to get a reply.

The only downside of Peter having unsupervised patrol time, is that he hadn’t been making much time for meals in his schedule. He was too tired in the mornings to make a lunch, so he would just grab something easy like an apple or a granola bar before heading out to the car, and by the time he got home from patrol he was too exhausted to even think about cooking a meal. A week of barley eating was bad for anyone, but with Peter’s enhanced metabolism it made things a whole lot worse.

He kept telling himself that he was fine, when he was with Hydra, they withheld food from him for longer than a week and he always somehow lived through that. However, he had spent the past few months getting used to eating full and regular meals. And if Mr. Bowman’s face was anything to go off of, he wasn’t looking as fine as he pretended to be.

Peter subtly shook his head, “I’m fine, sir. Just didn’t sleep well.”

His teacher furrowed his brow before shaking his head. He walked back to his desk, scribbling something on a green piece of paper before coming back to Peter’s desk.

“Go to the nurse, Peter, you don’t look so well, and I’m not in the mood to clean up vomit today,” he said, setting the hall pass in front of Peter.

Peter didn’t argue, any excuse he could take to leave this tilt-a-whirl of a classroom he would. He grabbed the paper slip, swung his backpack over his shoulder and left the room, mouthing an ‘I’m ok’ to Ned, who looked at him with worry.

He was fine, honestly. He’ll go to the nurse's office, and she'll send him home and he'll be fine. He could make a sandwich and make sure he was caught up on his homework and feel better.

He knocked hesitantly on the door of the nurse's office, backing up slightly when the door swung open to reveal the nurse, looking annoyed.

“What now? What’s wrong with you?” She huffed.

“Um…” Peter started, not knowing how to respond to the attitude.

“Be a little nicer maybe?” a familiar voice grumbled from inside the office, “If he’s here he’s obviously sick or hurt and could do without the attitude. It isn’t our fault you hate your job.”

The nurse sent a glare over her shoulder before ushering Peter inside.

Peter entered the room hesitantly and was immediately met with the sight of Mj sitting on one of the beds. The nurse went into the back room to grab something, leaving the two of them alone.

“Thanks,” Peter mumbled, giving her a once over, “Are you ok?”

Mj waved him off, “I’m fine. I got a paper cut during my biology lab and Ms. Johnson sent me here ‘just to be safe’” she rolled her eyes.

Peter gave her the best smile he could manage, “I hope you’ll pull through.”

Mj scoffed, wearing a small smile of her own as the nurse came back in, handing Mj a band aid.

“There. Put that on and get back to class.”

Mj hopped off the table, making a face in Peter’s direction before walking out, closing the door behind her.

Peter turned back to the nurse, handing her his paper. The nurse read it with a crease in her brow before glancing back up at Peter.

“You do look very pale. Have you been experiencing any dizziness?” She asked.

Peter almost laughed at the question, he felt like he needed to hold onto the wall to maintain his balance.

“A little bit,” he replied.

She hummed, turning back to her desk, “Alright Peter, I’m going to send you home. I’ll inform your teachers, do you have anyone I should call to pick you up?”

Peter thought about calling Happy for a minute before deciding against it. He had been on edge since Tony and Pepper left and Peter didn’t want to bother him more than necessary. Plus he would definitely tell his parents if he had to pick Peter up from school for being sick, and Peter didn’t need that, he was fine. A meal and a nap and it would be like nothing was wrong.

“No, uhm, my parents are out of town right now, but I’ll just walk home, I live close by,” he replied.

Not true, the tower was quite a way away from Midtown High, but if Peter swung home, it wouldn’t take long to get there.

The nurse narrowed her eyes at him, but must have eventually decided to believe him, because after a minute she sighed and ushered him back to the door.

“Go straight home, make some soup and go to bed. Got it?”

Peter nodded, slugging his backpack higher on his shoulder, “Got it. Thanks.”

As he made his way out of the front door and down the steps, Peter sent Harley a quick text, trying to make it sound as nonchalant as possible.

Hey, no need to wait for me when Hap picks you up later, I’m going home early. I’m fine, just haven’t been eating the healthiest this week and made myself a little sick lol

He hoped that Harley wouldn’t freak out, seeing as he had been living off of junk food, and staying up playing video games all week. He wouldn’t have to worry about Harley’s reply for a while, anyway, seeing as he was in class right now.

Peter slowed on his way home as he neared the alleyway he usually changed in. He should go home and eat and nap, he knew that. But also…

He bit his lip, glancing over his shoulder before heading into the alley. It would be quicker to swing home anyway, but if he was already going to be in the suit he may as well do a little patrolling on his way home. He wasn’t that dizzy, and he felt guilty about wearing the suit and not stopping to help anyone.

After quickly changing, and only stumbling twice thank you very much, Peter adjusted his mask, webbed his backpack to the top of the alley wall - he’d grab it before school tomorrow - and began his swing through Midtown.

He was nearing the tower and hadn’t run into any trouble, when a scream caught his attention. He quickly adjusted his swing, making a slight U-turn and landing in a dirty back alley.

He noticed he wobbled slightly when he landed, but he brushed it off. Once he put a stop to this mugging, he’d head home and fix himself up - no biggie.

There were three men in black ski masks, corning another man wearing a pizza delivery shirt against the wall.

“Seriously I don’t have any money on me!” the man yelled, eyes wide with fear, “I’m just working!!”

One of the masked men shoved a gun up against his chin, “Oh I’m sure at least one of your customers paid with cash, give us what you got, and we’ll let you go.”

The man was shaking, “Really, they didn’t! Please, I’m not lying!”

Peter shot a web, yanking the gun away from the man’s chin and into the air, before firing a few more webs, sticking it to the wall above the mugger's reach.

“C’mon man, you think people pay with cash in this day and age?” he quipped. Man, it was getting kind of hard to breathe through his mask when he was already feeling lightheaded.

The muggers turned to look at him as he shot another web, swinging himself so he was situated in front of the shaking pizza delivery boy.

“Go, get out of here and call the police, I’ll finish up here,” he muttered, watching as the man ran away.

The masked man in front of Peter tried slamming him against the wall but Peter managed to duck under his arm.

“You’re going to pay for that,” he growled.

Peter blinked harshly before jumping behind the man, shoving him face first into the wall and webbing him there, swiftly turning around and facing the other two men. He shook a little, flipping around like that was not the best idea.

The men quickly snapped out of their frozen state, lunging at Peter. He grabbed the man closest to him’s wrist, bending it at an unnatural angle and causing him to lose his momentum.

One of the problems with his disregard of his metabolism was that it made his other enhancements dull as well. Including his Spidey sense. Which is probably why he didn’t notice the third man pulling a small pistol from inside his jacket as Peter wrestled with his friend.

He only did notice the gun, after he heard two loud bangs echo in the alleyway. Only after that did he feel the searing hot pain in his lower abdomen. The man he was previously wrestling with barked out a laugh, shoving Peter into the wall next to his webbed-up friend. Peter crumpled to the ground, bringing a shaking hand to his stomach as fuzzy blackness threatened to take over his vision.

“Let’s go,” one of the men yelled, running off with his friend, leaving Peter gasping for breath on the floor.

For the first time since he became Spiderman, Peter regretted going out on patrol. He should have just gone home like he meant to, then this wouldn’t have happened. He pulled his hand away from his stomach, gritting his teeth as blood soaked through his gloved hand.

The sky was spinning, and his line of vision was becoming darker and smaller the longer he sat crumpled on the ground. He noted that this was the first time since he left Hydra that he had felt this much pain, subsequently realizing that he wasn’t healing as he normally would be, thanks to his lack of food this week.

Peter lifted a shaking hand to rip his mask off, throwing it to the ground and gasping in breaths as he stared at the sky, in too much pain to care about someone coming into the alley and seeing his face. What was he supposed to do now? He wasn’t healing (his fault), no one knew he was out patrolling right now (his fault) and he had left his phone in his backpack that was webbed to a wall near his school (his fault).

He could no longer tell if the world was blurry from dizziness or the tears welled up in his eyes. His gasping breaths were turning into wheezes as a pool of his own blood was forming on the ground below him.

He quickly opened his eyes (when had he closed them) as he suddenly remembered the emergency override protocol past him had installed into his suit, in case he needed to turn his dad’s systems back online for some reason.

He used the last remaining bit of strength he could muster to grab his now bloodied mask, slipping it back on best he could.

He saw a notification from where his phone was connected to Friday in his mask. A text from his dad.

Sorry kiddo, we were too busy to reply to your texts earlier. We got everything sorted here, we’ll be home in about an hour. See you soon.

Peter gritted his teeth as he forced his voice out.

“Friday, turn… turn on baby mon… monitor protocol,” he hissed.

“Baby Monitor protocol has been reengaged. Sending vitals and location to boss,” Friday’s robotic voice echoed through his ears.

Peter sighed, slumping the rest of the way down the wall so that he was sprawled on the floor.

The last thing that he saw was three of four texts from Tony coming through his mask, followed by a phone call. Peter wanted to answer, he really did, but he didn’t have the energy to vocally ask Friday to answer.

He watched another call come through as the blackness that he had been fighting off finally claimed him.

Chapter Text

There was a soft beeping echoing through Peter’s head as he slowly gained consciousness. It took him longer than it should have to understand that the beeping was coming from outside of his head, not inside. He listened to the beeping, pondering what it was. Was it the intro of a song? Why is there music playing? Who put music on?

As he listened longer, he realized that no, it wasn’t music, it was just a consistent beeping.

He also belatedly realized that he wasn’t in a dark room, his eyes were just closed. He didn’t know if it had been a few minutes or an hour between when he started regaining consciousness and when he finally started attempting to pry them open.

It took a few attempts, after feeling like he was being blinded the first couple of times they opened. There was now some shuffling and incoherent murmuring to accompany the beeping.

The first thing he noticed was the bright fluorescent lights above him, before he averted his gaze downward and was met with two faces that he slowly realized were familiar.

His parents were sitting on either side of his bed, leaning in closely and staring at him worriedly. He could see their mouths moving, but it took another few minutes for him to actually hear what they were saying.

All of a sudden it was like all of his previously numbed senses decided to return full force all at once. His nose was flooded with the smell of disinfectant, blood, and Tony’s cologne, his mouth tasted like a wonderful combination of iron and morning breath, and the beeping in the room got louder, along with a faint hum from a machine by his bed and two slightly frantic voices.

“-eter can you hear us baby?” Pepper asked, as she squeezed his limp hand tight.

“You with us bambino?” Tony’s voice followed.

Peter blinked slowly, trying to remember how to make his mouth form words. He stared up at his parent’s worried faces, taking them in. His mom looked pale and her hand that was holding his felt clammy. His dad’s hair was sticking up in random angles like he had been running his hands through it a lot, and his beard was a little scruffy and overgrown. Weird, his dad never let himself get behind on shaving, what had them so worried?

He felt his stomach lurch as he thought about what could be wrong. Did something happen to Harley or Morgan? Neither of them were in the room they were in, which Peter was now realizing wasn’t his bedroom. He felt guilty for sleeping while everyone else was worrying about whatever was going on.

He closed his eyes and took a breath before trying to push himself into a sitting position.

Two things happened simultaneously as he did that. One, there was an immediate feeling of excruciating pain that shot through his lower abdomen, causing him to gasp as his vision went slightly blurry, and two, Tony stood up, his eyes widening as he pushed Peter back down onto the bed as softly as he could.

He heard Pepper curse under her breath as she pressed a button near his bed.

Peter grit his teeth as he settled back into the pillows. It was then that he recognized the room he was in. The bars on the sides of his bed, the sterile smell in the air, the beeping of machines. He was in the med bay.

He furrowed his brow slightly in thought. Why was he in the med bay and why did sitting up hurt so badly? And why- oh.

He blinked rapidly as his memories finally started returning. His parents in California, and patrol, and that non stop dizziness and… oh. Right.

He was shot.

He was in bad shape and he went patrolling before going home and he got shot in the stomach. He had pressed his emergency button and then… that was all he could remember. He closed his eyes in that dirty alleyway and now he was in the med bay.

Tony seemed to realize that Peter’s mind was quickly catching him up on what had happened. He moved closer, running a hand gently through Peter’s flattened curls.

“You back?” he asked softly.

Peter nodded against his pillow.

“What happened?” he winced at how horace his own voice sounded.

“Oh sweetheart here,” Pepper hushed, handing him a bottle of water with a straw peeking out of the top.

Peter drank it gratefully. Why did getting shot in the stomach make his throat so sore?

Pepper gently pulled the bottle away from him after he downed three fourths of it.

“Don’t drink too much, your stomach is going to be sensitive,” she mumbled, running a thumb of his cheek, “Dr Cho will be here soon, I just called to let her know you’re up.”

“Get used to drinking from a straw, kiddo, you’re going to be on a liquid diet for a while,” Tony joked humorlessly.

“How long was I asleep for?” Peter croaked.

He still didn’t feel fully awake. There was a dull throbbing behind his eyes, his throat was sore and his mouth felt dry even after drinking water. He had to have been out for hours. For all he knew it could even be the next day.

He watched as Pepper and Tony exchanged a glance before turning back to him. Tony set a gentle hand on his shoulder, as if preventing him from getting up.

“Pete, you’ve been out for three and a half days. It’s Monday.”

Peter felt his jaw go slack as he attempted to sit back up (quickly giving up, seeing as Tony had seen this coming and had held him down.)

He groaned as the pain in his stomach flared back up.

“What do you mean three and a half days?”

His voice sounded whiney, even to himself.

“Kiddo, you were shot in the stomach. Even if your healing abilities were at full force it would take you a week to heal from that, but you haven’t been eating?”

Tony’s sentence ended in a question and Peter closed his eyes to avoid having to answer him immediately. His parents didn’t say anything, so he didn’t open them again until he heard the door opening.

He watched as Dr Cho walked in, a gentle smile on her face but her eyes firm.

“Hi Peter, how are you feeling?”

Peter groaned in response.

Dr Cho grimaced, “Yeah, that’s about how I figured you’d be doing.”

She moved past where Pepper was sitting to read something on one of the machines by him, writing something down on the clipboard she held.

“Well, it’s good to see you awake, you gave us quite the scare. I’ll leave the conversation of why you were starving yourself between you and your parents, but I will be putting you on a strictly monitored diet if you can’t be trusted to feed yourself, do you understand?”

Peter nodded, feeling his face flush in embarrassment.

Dr Cho nodded, “Ok. I know you’re not going to like it, but I’m going to need you to stay here on bed rest for at least another week.” She gave him a minute to mourn his lack of freedom before continuing, “You were very lucky you got here when you did. This would have been a lot more serious if you had arrived any later.”

Peter nodded again, staring down at his fidgeting fingers.

“For now I just need you on bed rest. I’m monitoring your healing factor but seeing as it still isn’t back up and running, you’re on a liquid diet for a few more days at least. I’ll be back in to check up on you in a little bit, before dinner. If you need anything you can press that button near your head.”

“Thank you,” he replied quietly.

She adjusted a few more wires and machines before giving a nod to Tony and Pepper and leaving, closing the door behind her. The room was back to being silent, with only the soft beeping to interrupt.

After a minute, Pepper sighed, moving forward in her chair.

“Peter,” she began.

Peter debated pretending to pass out in order to put this conversation off for a while longer but ultimately decided he needed to just get it over with.

“Sweetheart what happened? Why haven’t you been eating, how did you get shot? Why didn’t you call us?”

Peter gnawed on his lip, choosing to ignore the first three questions, “You guys weren’t answering my texts, so I didn’t want to call and bother you.”

A tense silence filled the room for a minute before Tony spoke up, his voice cracking slightly.

“Oh kiddo. I’m sorry we didn’t answer your texts, we were just really busy trying to get everything under control so that we could get home as soon as possible, but I promise you, if you would have called we would have answered. You, Harley and Morgan are always our first priority.”

Peter stared at his hands as he messed with his blanket.

Pepper ran a gentle hand through his hair which made him feel a little more at ease.

“That still doesn’t explain why you weren’t eating?” she prompted.

Peter shrugged one shoulder, closing his eyes for a moment before opening them and deciding to just let his word vomit out.

“Well, I wasn’t not eating on purpose I swear. Well, I guess kind of- but not like that, I just… Well, Friday didn’t say anything about my curfew so I figured it wouldn’t really matter, and so I guess I kind of maybe went a little overboard with patrolling. I’d start after school ended and then I’d just get busy, y’know? So I wasn’t really getting home until uhm… like two ish am… but I always made sure that I got to school on time the next morning so it isn’t really a big deal right?”

He barely managed to take a breath before continuing.

“And I made sure to still do my homework when I got home, and my grades haven’t really slipped or anything, so it’s fine, really! But I just, y’know,” he shrugged casually, “By the time I got home from patrolling and did my homework I was too tired to make anything to eat so I just went to bed, and then in the morning I was still kind of sleepy so I didn’t want to make breakfast or a lunch to take to school so I just grabbed like a granola bar, but really it was fine.”

“Kid,” Tony started, but Peter kept rambling, cutting him off.

“Plus, I really couldn’t get what you told me out of my head. When you left, and I asked to come with you, you said that I needed to stay here because who else would protect New York while you were gone. You were right, so I had to patrol more since you guys weren’t here to do it. Every time I was going to go home and eat and go to bed, something else would happen and then I felt guilty for not being out protecting them, so I just stayed out…” he trailed off.

The room was quiet for a long moment. Long enough that Peter lifted his head from where he was staring at his fidgeting fingers. Pepper looked heartbroken while Tony looked guilty.

“Oh baby,” Pepper said in a wiper, taking his hand in hers again, holding it even tighter this time. As if he would disappear if she let go.

“Pete,” Tony said, his voice breaking, “That isn’t what I meant when I said you needed to protect the city in our absence.”

“But-” Peter started, but he was cut off by Tony.

“Kid, I mostly just said that to get you to stop asking to come with us to California. The patrolling that you already do is enough, I promise.”

Peter furrowed his eyebrow, “But it isn’t! This week when I went out at the times I normally don’t there was still so much I had to stop. Crime doesn’t stop just when I’m at home, they need me to help.”

Tony sighed, “Yes, the city does need Spiderman, you do really good work and you help a lot of people. But, I promise you it’ll be fine if you aren’t out 24/7. New York was fine without you before and they’ll be fine if you’re not out all the time. Bambino, I promise you, you’re doing more than enough in the time you do go out.”

When Peter didn’t say anything, Pepper spoke up.

“Besides, how is Spiderman supposed to take care of other people if he can’t take care of himself? If you’re not well fed and well rested, you won’t have full control to trust yourself to help other people. If you’re sick, then if anything you’re putting more people in danger by going out and starting fights in that condition.”

“You know that don’t you?” Tony asked.

Peter was trying, and failing miserably to blink away the tears in his eyes. He gave up trying to stop them after a minute, letting them fall down his cheeks and drip onto the blanket.

“Yeah I know. You’re right. I should have stopped but I just felt so guilty not being there. And you guys were all over the news for everything you were helping with in California, I felt like I should be doing more.”

Tony moved to sit on the side of Peter’s bed, gently pulling him into a hug.

“I promise, you’re doing plenty. You don’t need to do any more, and you don’t need to feel guilty for putting yourself first. You’re a kid, and you’ve already had so much of your life taken away from you. I know there’s no way you’re giving Spiderman up, but you deserve to live as normal of a life as you can.”

He ran his fingers through Peter’s curls as he continued, his voice softer.

“Yeah, go out and patrol and help people for a few hours each night. That’s fine, that’s more than enough. But you should be spending more time playing dolls with Morgan, and building Legos with Harley, and helping Kate think of pranks to pull on Clint. You should be sleeping ‘til noon on the weekends and sneaking junk food in between meals. You should be focused on getting your homework done and hanging out with your friends. We love Spiderman, but we love Peter more, you need to put Peter first too, ok?”

Peter was crying harder now. He nodded, burying his face into Tony’s shirt as Pepper rubbed his back.

“I-I’m sorry,” he cried, voice muffled by Tony’s shirt.

“Don’t apologize baby. We know you didn’t do it on purpose. We’re proud of you for all the good work you did while we were gone. But from now on we’re sticking to only a few hours each evening for patrol, got it?” Pepper said, voice kind but firm.

Peter nodded again, trying to reign in his tears.

After who knows how long of Peter crying softly while his parents comforted him, he finally ran out of tears. He slumped back against his pillow, his eyes feeling dry and hard to keep open.

Tony tucked the blanket up to his chin.

“Go to sleep kiddo, you’ve had a long day.”

“Harley and Morgan have been worried about you. They’ll want to come see you soon, so get some sleep now so you’re energized enough for them.” Pepper said, tucking a lock of hair behind his ear.

“Will you guys stay?” Peter murmured as his eyes fell closed. He couldn’t remember a time he’d ever been this tired. It must be a combination of the stomach wound and the fact that he had cried himself to exhaustion.

“Always, bambino,” Tony replied.

Peter fell asleep knowing that they’d be there when he woke up. For the first time in a week he felt content.