Chapter Text
“How’re you doing, Peter?” Aunt May asked, the concern in her voice almost concealed by the crackly static-like quality of the Skype connection.
Peter smiled at the laggy video of his aunt, and then at his laptop’s camera, so it would actually be directed at his aunt from her point of view. “I’m doing ok.”
She gave him a look.
“I am,” he insisted. “School is fine. I aced my Spanish test, and the physics mid-term, and I got a solid B minus in English, but so did everyone else.” Aunt May’s eyebrow rose in a single, judgmentally fluid motion. “Don’t judge me,” he said, “We’re reading Ethan Frome. It’s a horrible book with horrible characters and no one likes it! The only saving grace, I swear to Thor, is that it’s short.”
Aunt May pursed her lips. “Still,” she said, “try to keep it on the higher end of the B’s please. If your grade in English dips to a C then—”
“Then the school may ask for a parent-teacher conference thing,” Peter said, sighing, and very manfully holding back a full eye roll. “I know. Don’t worry. I’m not that bad.”
“Uh huh,” Aunt May said, sounding very much like she didn’t believe him. “I trust you to keep your grades up, Peter, but you’re also, ah, juggling several extracurriculars,” her code for the fact that he liked to dress up in spandex and punch bank robbers in the face, “and I don’t want it to get to be too much for you without you noticing, and then Bam you have all C’s, or even D’s, and the teacher calls me for a parent-teacher conference and I have to tell them that I can’t come, because I’m in Paris.”
“How is Paris?” Peter asked. “I hear the Eiffel tower is very nice this time of year. How are the baguettes? Have you had any fancy crepes yet?”
“Don’t change the subject on me, Peter Benjamin Parker,” Aunt May said with a very stern expression on her face, and just the tiniest hint of humor in the corner of her lips, that it looked like she was trying to hide. “If I tell them I’m in Paris, they’re going to ask who’s your acting guardian—”
“And you would lie to them,” Peter said, “because you love me very much and wouldn’t want to totally ruin my life.”
Aunt May smiled, and her expression was just a tad too vindictive for Peter’s taste. “No. I’m going to have to tell them that your acting guardian is Tony Stark, and that he’d love to come in for a parent-teacher conference, and then you’d have to admit to Tony that you’re not doing so well in classes and he might restrict your lab time or your, ehem, other extracurriculars, and he’d go to that parent-teacher conference and be very Tony about it.” She raised both eyebrows this time. “Does that sound like a good time to you?”
Peter groaned and dropped his head into his hands. “No, Aunt May,” he said.
She laughed at him, just a little. “That’s what I thought you’d say,” she said, “so keep your grades up.”
“You’re so mean to me,” Peter whined. “You know if Tony thinks I’m doing bad in school he’d, like, stage an intervention or something for me, and, like, invite everybody and it’d be so embarrassing! May, I would literally not survive!”
She did laugh at him then. “Peter, I’m just teasing you. I know you’d never let your grades dip badly enough to force your poor teachers into having a meeting with Tony. You aren’t that cruel. To your teachers.”
Peter sighed. “I know you’re joking, but the fear… the fear is real, Aunt May. I mean, just living here with everybody,” he gestured around his bed room, a temporary bedroom that seemed more and more like home every day, filled with posters and lego sets and furniture Tony had picked out for him, special, right in the middle of the residential area of the Avengers Compound in upstate New York, “it’s kind of amazing? And terrifying. At the same time. I mean I get to know, like all the Avengers. All of them, Aunt May.”
“Wow,” she said, and she was definitely making fun of him now. “Getting to live with superheroes. I wonder what that’s like.”
"Ha ha,” Peter said. “You didn’t seem super enthused about it when you found out you’d been living with a super.”
May’s eyes widened and she looked around the room, behind Peter.
“It’s fine,” Peter said, hoping he sounded exasperated and not touched by her concern. “I asked FRIDAY to lock the room from outside entry. I kind of live that way now?” He shrugged. “It’s amazing how little respect for personal space there is in this superhero dorm. I had Hawkeye spying on me from the vents for a whole week before I told Mr. Stark about it and he installed, like, a laser grid up there or something.”
“I’m sorry,” Aunt May said, sounding suddenly very serious, “a grown man was spying on my sixteen-year-old nephew? In his bedroom?”
“Not like that,” Peter was quick to explain. “It was only during my self-imposed homework sessions, and half the time he’d talk to me from the vents, to let me know he was there. I, uh, already knew, of course.” He tapped his ear.
“Supersonic heightened magical hearing,” Aunt May said, “of course.”
“And Steve, uh, I mean, Captain America, he likes to barge in to announce that dinner’s ready, and sometimes Mr. Stark does the same to announce, like, science-time. And, it’s not just me, don’t worry. They all do it to each other all the time. It’s kind of like what I imagine a college dorm to be like. But, I need, well, personal time.”
Aunt May raised her eyebrows and turned to look at him from out of the corner of her eyes.
And, great, now he was blushing. He could feel his cheeks heating as he rewound his own words inside his head.
“Not like that!” he said, maybe a little too loudly. “Just, I— Aunt May, you know— Homework! Ok? I just want time to study in peace without anyone barging in! And— and, and— My, you know, Spidermaning! I— I’m still trying to keep a lid on that, and so far no one’s figured it out—”
“Except for Tony,” Aunt May pointed out.
Peter sighed. “Tony is the exception. But he’s known forever! I’m better at hiding now. I just like some privacy May. Everyone’s very nice, but I grew up with it just being you, me, and, and Ben. And then just you and me. Not Tony and Pepper and Rhodey and Steve and Bucky and Natasha and Clint and Bruce and Sam and Thor and Wanda and Vision and Me. Not counting if any other freelance hero teams up with the Avengers for a fight and then comes back to the compound afterward to hang. I like hanging with them, honest, they’re all very cool people, but I just want some me time, sometimes. I need to, like, um, decompress. So I set up a thing with FRIDAY where I get to lock my room, and she’ll make sure there’s no eavesdroppers or anything, and I get some, um, privacy.”
Aunt May’s expression looked complicated for a moment, but then she smiled (and Peter thought maybe her expression hadn’t been complicated, maybe it had just been the laggy skype call) and said, “You make me wonder if maybe I shouldn’t have left you with Tony after all.”
“No,” Peter said quickly. “No, I like it here. I really do. And it’s only till summer. Where else would I have stayed anyway? It’s not like you were going to leave me alone in the apartment.”
“No,” Aunt May said, “but I didn’t have to go.”
Peter scoffed. “Are you kidding? You get offered the chance to do a year-long world tour, and you turn it down? No way, Aunt May. You deserve that.”
She smiled at him. “But you’re my precious nephew! How could I have left you for a full year?”
“Because it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Peter said, the same words he’d said to her every time she’d waffled on going since she was notified that she’d won. Peter had wondered at first if Tony had pulled some strings to get her to win the drawing she’d entered on a whim over a year ago now, but when Aunt May had called Tony and asked if he could watch Peter for the year (after many, many hours of Peter trying to convince her that he’d be fine and that she deserved a vacation and that everything was going to be great) he’d seemed so shocked that Peter had abandoned the thought at once.
The surprise had been genuine.
And then they’d both had to convince Tony that he could take care of Peter, that raising a teenager wasn’t as stressful as raising an infant or a dog or even a goldfish. Peter would tell Tony when he was hungry, and Peter didn’t need someone to remind him to bathe himself or do his homework (he did need someone to remind him to sleep, but so did Tony, so they matched). Peter was pretty self-sufficient. And it’d even be better in some ways, because Peter would still be Spidermaning around, and with Tony being a hero himself, he could have extra support in that capacity.
And it was Tony’s fault anyway that he was the best option to take up temporary guardianship of Peter while May was away. He’d come into Peter’s life so abruptly, had immediately provided him with a better, safer Spiderman suit, and a place to be as much himself as he could ever want. Not to mention a place to study science and technology and work on projects and build things! And do it with someone, someone who seemed to know everything on the subject and never shot Peter down when he had a new idea. He’d become a mentor and a friend, and someone Peter knew he could trust. So really, who else would May leave Peter with? Tony wasn’t the only option; he was merely the best one.
Introducing Peter to the rest of the Avengers had been fun. Tony, perpetually the worst at deciding what information was important to share and what information was unnecessary, had apparently told the other Avengers that he was, quote ‘Going to be taking in this kid from Queens because he’s going to be parentless for a while, and his, uh, guardian told me that I should “take responsibility” of him for once in my life.’
This had apparently implied to all of the Avengers, who all lived in the compound along with Tony and Pepper, that Tony had an illegitimate son, and that that son was moving in with Tony. And since Tony and the Avengers lived in the same… facility, that meant that that son would also be moving in with the Avengers.
(Pepper knew better, obviously. She’d met Peter very soon after Happy had, and, as far as Peter had known at the time, liked him. She, like, patted the top of his head in a non-patronizing sort of way sometimes, and gave him candy out of an ever refilling candy bowl if he passed by her office at SI. It was cool).
When Peter had first walked into the compound, two duffel bags and his backpack all hanging off him like he was a harried hotel bellboy instead of a new guest resident at the Avengers compound, the whole crew had been there to meet him. It had been intimidating, all of the Avengers lined up in what Peter would later learn was the formal living room (the one that photo shoots, interviews, and other Avengers PR stuff took place in. The informal living room was down a long corridor, through a metal door, and was perpetually a mess), with a big banner behind them that just said, “WELCOME!” But most of them had been smiling, and Steve (and Peter’s internal freak out at meeting not just all of the Avengers but The Captain America had been no less insane for being contained inside his own head) had come over and relieved Peter of his two duffels, and had introduced himself. And then everyone else had introduced themselves as well, and Peter had belatedly, awkwardly (with Tony grinning down at him in mischievous glee), said, “Nice to meet you all too. Uh, thanks for letting me stay in your house, I’m Peter.”
“Anything for Tony’s son,” Clint had said with such warmth and such confidence that Peter had nodded in agreement until his words fully pervaded Peter’s brain.
Tony got there first. The man’s mischievous expression dropped. His arms, previously crossed in front of him, fell to his sides. He sputtered. “My son?!” he said in a loud, incredulous voice.
“Yes,” Thor said with a sage nod. “I know not the circumstances of the separation between you and young Peter’s mother, and I am saddened that you have not had the chance to raise him as your own until now, but it fills me with joy that you will now have the chance to be a part of his young life.”
Peter’s eyes hurt from how wide they were and the lack of blinking. He gaped at Thor. It was his first time meeting the god, meeting any of the Avengers besides Tony, and— and this was the conversation they were having?
Holy moly.
“I’m not…” Peter started, and promptly lost a little steam as ten superheroes all focused their complete attention on him. He didn’t like talking in front of a crowd of his peers, he super didn’t like talking in front of a crowd of his heroes. But a quick glance at Tony showed that the man was opening and closing his mouth, soundlessly, like a fish out of water. He wasn’t going to be of any help. So Peter forced himself to buck up and said, “I’m not Tony’s son.”
There was a minimal amount of confusion, most of it quickly hidden away again.
“Oh thank god,” Rhodey said with audible relief, and Bruce nodded in agreement.
“What do you mean, ‘thank god?’” Tony demanded. “I could have a son! You don’t know. Peter could definitely be my son.”
“You’d be a crap dad, Tony,” Clint said with a laugh.
“I would not,” Tony huffed.
Peter had to agree. “I think Mr. Stark would make a great dad,” Peter said, and then shrank back a little as once again ten sets of eyes focused in on him.
“Thanks, son,” Tony said.
Peter’s eye twitched. “Please never call me that again. I will explode.”
Tony made a face that Peter couldn’t help but consider a pout. “You’re no fun.”
“So who are you?” Bucky asked, arms crossed over his chest (the metal one glinting under the room’s fluorescent lights) and not-so-friendly expression on his face.
Peter tried not to be intimidated and failed pretty fantastically, but thankfully was able to keep any possible reaction to being intimidated off his face. “I, uh, I’m, well, I’m Peter. Uh, Peter Parker.”
“Yes,” Bucky said, “That’s your name. Why are you here?”
“Bucky!” Steve hissed, and slapped lightly at Bucky’s shoulder.
Bucky gave Steve a look that said, ‘What? What did I do?’
“Like I told you,” Tony said, intercepting the question, “Peter’s guardian is going to be out of town for a while, and she told me I should take responsibility for Peter and—”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Peter said, turning to Tony. “Is that what you told them before?”
“Yeah,” Tony snapped in exasperation.
Peter pinched the bridge of his nose. “No wonder they thought I was your kid, Mr. Stark! ‘Take responsibility!’ May did not say that to you, that sounds like you had me out of wedlock and refused to raise me for fifteen years.”
Tony hummed, and then nodded. “I can see that.”
“Tones,” Rhodey groaned, “why are you like this?”
“He’s a monster,” Natasha offered, but it looked like she was secretly laughing at him.
“Am not,” Tony whined.
“What Mr. Stark should have said,” Peter interjected, “was that my Aunt is going on a year-long world tour and needed someone to be a temporary guardian in the meanwhile. We are not related to Mr. Stark and he is not my dad.”
“He’s a babysitter!” Clint crowed.
“Nay,” Thor said. “Our glorious comrade-in-arms, Iron Man, would not sit on the newly born. He is not cruel, and he knows how devastating such an action would be. He is good, Clint. He would not slay children in such a way.”
“No, Thor,” Sam said with a sigh. “Babysitting is when someone looks after a kid who isn’t their own kid. Tony’s babysitting this, uh, Peter.”
Peter scowled at Sam, and at Clint. “I’m old enough not to need a babysitter.”
“Oh yeah?” Clint asked. “Then why does Tony have to watch over you? Why can’t you just live alone for a year?”
Peter scowled at him. “I’m not incompetent. It’s just, you know, illegal.”
“Stop teasing my new ward,” Tony chided loudly.
“Yes,” Steve agreed, “no more teasing.”
Clint sighed very dramatically. “Fine!” He sighed. “You never let me have any fun.”
“But why Stark?” Wanda asked. She’d stayed silent until now except for a quick introduction, but now she spoke up. “If, as you said, Tony is not related to you, why would your aunt leave you in his care? How do you know each other?”
Tony actually laughed at that. A light, breezy noise. “Oh! I never told you?” He wrapped an arm around Peter’s shoulders. “Peter here’s my intern!”
Which was technically true. When he wasn’t out Spidermaning, and he wasn’t staying in for the night with Aunt May, he was in the lab with Tony. It wasn’t really an internship in the classic sense. The internship thing had been a ruse for the Spider-man thing, and the need for that little make-believe had disappeared as soon as Aunt May found out, but still, Peter liked to help Tony out in the lab, he liked listening to the man’s explanations of tech, and he liked learning new things from the genius— because Tony was a certifiable genius. And Peter didn’t really know much about what constituted an internship, but he was under the impression that it involved more gophering and doing menial tasks (which he never did) and less helping Tony rebuild the Iron Man suit every time it got beat up (which he ended up doing three out of four times he swung by the lab).
The look the other Avengers gave the two of them, but mostly Tony, ranged from incredulous to scared.
“You have an intern?” Clint demanded, agog.
“Tony,” Rhodey sighed, “why would you need an intern? You’ve got U and Butterfingers to get you coffee or your wretched kale smoothies, FRIDAY reminds you when to eat and sleep and reads your emails for you. Your whole lab is automated, why would you need an intern?”
“Oh,” Bruce said (and Peter tried to keep his fanboy screaming internal— Dr. Bruce Banner!!!) “so this is the kid who’s always in your lab?” Bruce tilted his head to the side. “I thought he was part of some mentoring program or something. You always seem to be having him work on your tech.”
“Well, it is more like a mentor-thingy,” Tony admitted, at the same time that Rhodey said:
“Hey! How do you know the kid?!” He turned from Bruce to Tony. “How long have you had an Intern?!”
Tony blinked at Rhodey. “Honeybear, are you jealous?”
“No,” Rhodey snapped. “I just don’t know why you hid the fact that you had an intern from literally everyone but Bruce.”
“In his defense,” Bruce said, “he didn’t tell me either, I just happen to pass by his lab more often than anyone else since it’s on the way to my lab.”
“That doesn’t seem like a good defense at all,” Natasha said. She still looked like she was silently laughing at all of them. Peter got the feeling he didn’t want to be on her bad side.
“Ms. Potts knows,” Peter said. “And Happy drives me home sometimes.”
Rhodey sighed, and in a monotone said, “Of course he does.”
“I’m confused,” Vision said. He’d been as quiet as Wanda, and she looked surprised to see him speaking up. “The definition of intern, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is: an advanced student or graduate usually in a professional field such as medicine or teaching, gaining supervised practical experience, as in a hospital or classroom. I would not think that the employer of the intern would offer to house said intern for a full calendar year. Is the definition wrong?”
“No, that sounds about right,” Bruce said.
“Why is your intern living with us now?” Sam asked, and then turning to Peter, he said, “No offence.”
“None taken,” Peter said with a shrug.
Tony squinted into the middle distance. “Why… is Peter living with us? I’m pretty sure I’ve covered that several times now, but ok. His guardian is going abroad and he needs a place to stay.”
“We get that,” Rhodey said, sounding frustrated. “The question is, why would his mom or whoever—”
“Aunt,” Peter offered.
“Ok,” Rhodey said, “aunt. Why would his aunt go to you? How are you, his boss, the person who would have guardianship over him? Do you understand what I’m asking you Tony? We get how you know him, we get that he’s your intern. But why would a woman who’s going out of town think to herself, ‘I need a place for my nephew to stay for a year. I’m going to ask his employer.’”
Put like that, Peter could understand the confusion. It was just, well, Tony was… this sounded hokey even in his own head, but Tony was there for him. Tony reached out and offered help when Tony didn’t even know him, and continued to help him, and be there for him, and just… be a good person. Peter loved hanging out with the man, in the lab and at the dinner table. Conversations were never stilted, Tony always wanted to hear what Peter had to say, and Tony respected Peter’s opinions, and there was just so much that made Tony a perfect… mentor. A perfect friend. In the deep recesses of his mind he could admit that Tony reminded him of Ben. Not personality-wise. Uncle Ben’s personality was nothing like Tony’s but Tony was there for Peter in the same way Ben and May were, and, and, and… what else was there to say?
It wasn’t even that Tony was the last option. He was the best one. Peter’s favorite choice.
Peter looked at Tony and Tony looked back with eyes that were wider than normal, and Peter realized that Tony was coming to the same conclusion. Never had Tony thought it was weird that May would ask him to take care of Peter. He’d objected at first because he didn’t want to ‘do parenting wrong’ (his words), and he wasn’t sure if he’d make a good guardian, not because he thought it was weird, or not appropriate, for Tony, as Peter’s boss, to become his guardian.
They stared at each other, neither of them knowing how to answer that in a way that would make the other people in the room understand.
Tony wasn’t usually at a loss for words, and the oddness of this scenario was obviously weighing on the other Avengers. Clint started fidgeting and Natasha went completely still. Wanda stepped slightly in front of Vision. Sam squinted at the two of them. And most telling, perhaps, was Rhodey, who groaned loudly and said, “Whatever it is, man, just spit it out. I don’t like it when you go all zipped lips on me.”
Tony opened his mouth, obviously ran through the scenarios again in his head, and shrugged. “I mean, he’s my intern.”
“Yeah?” Bruce asked gently, his voice a judgementless prompt to continue.
Peter and Tony exchanged glances again. Peter shrugged at Tony. Tony shrugged back.
“That’s, like, literally it though,” Peter said. “I’m his intern. I spend a lot of after-school time in his lab. I help him fix stuff.”
“Kid’s a genius,” Tony bragged.
“Shut up,” Peter said, used to brushing off the gentle teasing by now. “We just, I don’t know, my aunt trusts Mr. Stark enough to let me wield a soldering gun and a blow torch under his supervision. Why wouldn’t she trust him enough to just, like, keep me fed and make sure I wake up in time to go to school.”
“Which reminds me,” Tony said, “FRIDAY, set an alarm for Peter. Every weekday, nine A-M.”
“Yes Boss,” Friday said, just as Peter was saying, “Belay that order, FRIDAY. That’s much too late.” He turned to Tony. “You know school starts at, like, 8:15. And it takes, what, two hours to get there from here?” The sudden realization at how early Peter was going to have to wake up hit him and he groaned, and dramatically dropped his head in his hands.
“I’d give it at least two and a half hours,” Tony said cheerfully, “considering the morning rush hour. Preferably three.”
“So I’d have to leave here at 5:15?” Peter asked, dread pulling in his gut. How was he going to deal with that? How could he possibly leave every morning at 5:15? He’d have to quit being Spiderman. He couldn’t possibly go out saving the day, and then, what, web all the way back to the compound? And do homework and get enough sleep to wake up at, fuck, 4 in the morning??? Really? He was going to die!
Peter groaned again.
“There, there, Pete,” Tony said jovially, and ruffled the boy’s hair. “4 AM’s not horrible.”
“You only think you know that,” Peter said, “because you’re still up at that point.” He chewed on his bottom lip. “Is Happy going to kill me if I ask him to drive me to school that early?”
Tony laughed, and then very boisterously said, “Yes!”
Peter checked his watch. “Well, um, can you show me my room? I think if I have to get up at 4 in the morning I should probably get to bed now, so I can get enough sleep.”
“It is only an hour past noon,” Thor said.
“I know,” Peter said drearily.
“And a Saturday,” Rhodey pointed out.
“I know,” Peter said again.
“What if I fly you there every morning?” Tony offered. “Wouldn’t you be the coolest kid in school if Iron Man dropped you off every morning?”
“Please don’t,” Peter said.
“So you don’t want a ride?” Tony asked, making his face into something very dramatically confused just to mess with Peter.
“I’d almost rather have to get up at 4 every morning just to avoid having to deal with the fallout of anyone at school figuring out I live with and/or know Tony Stark.”
“You wound me,” Tony said, laying a hand against the arc reactor in his chest, which glowed a pleasant electric blue through the man’s thin Led Zeppelin t-shirt.
“Listen, Mr. Stark,” Peter said, “we’ve been over this. I want zero, and I mean, zero, attention. I don’t want kids coming after me asking for your autograph, I don’t want to have to explain to anyone that I somehow got an internship with you even though I’m hella young.”
“Language,” Tony teased.
Peter rolled his eyes.
“I don’t want my high school life to get any more complicated than it already is,” he said. “You must remember high school, right Mr. Stark? You’re not that old.”
“Watch it,” Tony warned in a stern voice, though he couldn’t hide the twitch of a smile at his lips.
“The best way to survive high school is to not stand out,” Peter said, “and the worst way to not stand out is to have a superhero deliver you to school every morning. I would stand out very badly. And that, Mr. Stark,” he said with far too much drama, “would ruin me.”
Tony laughed at him again.
“Fine,” Tony said, mirth still evident in his voice. “What if I fly you there very stealthily and no one will know you actually live with the coolest person in the world.”
Peter made his eyes very big and tried to look as innocent as possible as he asked Tony, “Do you mean Dr. Banner?”
Tony rolled his eyes. “You’re such a troll, kid. Do you want the ride or not?”
“Only if you don’t mind having to get up at early o’clock in the morning.”
“With me flying we can be there in twenty minutes, and I don’t have to be that awake to pilot the suit. I can just roll out of bed at 7:30 and still get you there in time for homeroom.”
“I would really like it,” Steve said, “if you were very awake while flying a massive suit of armor across the state of New York, especially with a teenager on board.”
“I’m not worried,” Peter said. “He’d probably still be awake from the night before.”
“What can I say?” Tony asked, “I’m a night owl.”
“I’d be a night owl too,” Peter complained, “if I didn’t have school at stupid o’clock AM.”
“Are you sure,” Rhodey interjected, looking at Tony with a very serious expression on his face, “that he is not your kid?”
“If I pretend he is,” Tony retorted, “would you all stop haranguing me about it?”
“Yes,” Wanda said, her voice cautiously sly, like she was getting back in the habit of being a little mischievous.
Tony waved his hands very grandly about his person and said, with much pomp and circumstance, “Then I’d like to introduce you all to my son, Peter Stark.”
“Huzzah!” Thor boomed.
Wanda cheered a little, cheekily, and Clint jumped forward to give Peter a high-five, which Peter returned very awkwardly.
From there it devolved pretty heavily into a big joke fest, and Peter ended up not getting his bags to his new room for several more hours. But before he went to bed that night he realized, laying in this new room, with its large desk and large bed and undecorated walls, left bare for him to add his mark to them, that he felt way more comfortable with this situation than he’d expected. As much as he’d tried to convince Aunt May that he was fine with her leaving, and that she deserved a vacation, and that Tony could take care of him for a year, he’d still worried. Not that he’d start to hate living with Tony, or start hating Tony himself (that, he was absolutely certain, would never happen), or that he wouldn't be able to live without Aunt May (he’d miss her— of course he would, but she was always going to be only a skype call away). No, he’d worried that it would be awkward living with the other Avengers. He knew Tony, and trusted him, and he knew and trusted Pepper as well, and Happy, but he’d never met any of the other heroes, (except for when he was out in his Spiderman suit, and even then, any interactions had been short and fleeting), and he didn’t know if he’d like them, or get along with them. He didn’t know if his own— he wouldn’t call it hero-worship, because it wasn’t, but, uh, his own admiration of the heroes would be proven wrong. He just didn’t know.
Or, he hadn’t known. Now he did. Spending the afternoon with the other heroes, his— Hah!—his new roommates had shown that they were all pretty likable, and pretty cool, and pretty funny. He was confident they’d get along.
And he was right. Living at the compound was easy. It didn’t take long for Peter to get into the swing of things at the compound. Tony took him to school every morning in the Iron Man suit (dropping him off secretly, and out of sight from any bystanders and fellow classmates), and then when Tony couldn’t do it a few times (SI travel reasons and then destroying HYDRA cell reason) Rhodey stepped up, and then it became normal for all of the flying heroes to decide the night before who was going to take Peter the next day. (Peter tried, at first, to say he didn’t want to impose, but literally no one took that at all).
After school, and after the after-school Academic Decathlon meet-ups, half the time Peter went out as Spiderman and Tony met him in the city later that night (or earlier if Tony thought Peter was going too hard that week in particular), and the other half of the time Peter made his way to the tower in the city that Tony still owned, where Stark Industries was located (either by web, by subway, or by Happy’s chauffeuring), and split his time between doing his homework in Tony’s lab as Tony worked, or helping Tony with whatever the man was working on. And then somehow that devolved into Tony giving Peter his own projects to work on ( Stark Industries R&D projects mostly, as Avengers tech was usually kept at the compound’s lab, but sometimes Tony bought something with him to the tower to work on. Honestly, it didn’t seem to matter to Tony what kind of project he gave Peter to work on. Tony gave him anything), and then Peter proposing new ideas himself. When Tony Stark had knocked on his door and admitted he knew Peter was Spiderman, and created the cover of Peter being Tony’s intern, Peter had never expected to really, truly be working with the man in an internship-like capacity.
It kind of blew his mind, even now, to think about it. But he never spoke that thought aloud, or the thought that really he didn’t deserve to be there, that it should be someone smarter helping Tony out, working with the genius, and that the only reason Peter was even there was because circumstances worked out in his favor. He never told Tony that he thought his internship wasn’t fair— not to him, but to any of the other kids out there who should be there instead of him, who deserved it more. Peter never spoke any of these thoughts aloud. Part of it was because he knew Tony would start going off about how Peter was a genius, and a great scientist, and that Peter did deserve it, blah blah blah. But a smaller part, way down deep, buried in the back of Peter’s brain, worried that Tony wouldn’t disagree with Peter, and that thought— that, that possibility, was so much worse. So Peter kept those thoughts locked up tight, and focused, whenever those thoughts intruded, in working harder, working smarter, on whatever project was in front of him to prove, if only to himself, that he could belong here.
In the evenings, after one of Peter’s extracurricular activities (either his actual internship, or the reason the internship idea was invented in the first place) Tony drove Peter back to the compound, and they had dinner with the Avengers, or whatever Avengers were available, in a big family-style setting that warmed Peter each time they all sat down together. And afterwards, well, afterwards he was at home, and sometimes they had big Avengers movie nights all circled around the TV, and sometimes they’d all just sit in the same room, spread out on couches and tables and chairs and on the carpet, each doing separate activities, and Peter would do his homework or read or fiddle with whatever gadget Tony had let him bring home from the lab that day or play on his phone, and sometimes him and Tony would go down to the lab that Tony had at the compound (because Tony needed a lab in any building he had to spend more than three hours a day in) and they’d work on more projects, and joke around, and sometimes one or more Avengers would stop by and hang out and occupy themselves in the same space as Tony and Peter, and it was nice.
It was home.
Not that Peter didn’t miss Aunt May. He missed her every day, and he did miss their apartment, and he missed being able to invite Ned over (an unspoken rule: when Ned and Peter hung out after school or on weekends they either went to Ned’s place or some external place, like a coffee shop or a museum). But still, the compound was home, and funnily enough, the Avengers were all almost more like an extended family than just people he had to live with.
But even with family sometimes he wanted some alone time. To do homework in his room, or just have the space to think, to breathe, and to work on projects that no one but Tony knew about— projects that had to do with a certain Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman’s tech upgrades. Thus the agreement with FRIDAY.
He focused once more on Aunt May, who was still looking concerned through the laggy skype connection. “I’m fine,” he told her. “You don’t have to worry about leaving me here. Focus on having a fun time in Paris. I’m fine here. I’m— I’m happy,” he said, and smiled when he realized that that was the pure, unadulterated truth.
May’s expression softened. “Okay. If you say so. But you have to let me know if anything happens.”
Peter nodded. “Of course.”
“I mean it,” May said.
“I know,” Peter said with a laugh, “but really, it’s fine. It’s good. I like it here. Now that Clint knows to leave me alone when the door’s closed I feel right at home.”
May smiled. “Good. Now, about school—”
“What about school?” Peter nearly whined. “I already promised I’d get my grade in English up. I’m doing great in Physics and Chemistry and Spanish.”
“Did I ever tell you how humble you are?” May asked cheekily.
“Ha ha,” Peter said.
“But what about the Decathlon?” May asked.
“Oh,” Peter said, “that’s fine. MJ’s a taskmaster, but she’s good at what she’s doing. She says because next year’s our senior year we have to start trying even harder, but like, we keep acing our practice meets. I don’t know how much better we can be.”
May laughed. “Well that’s good to hear. Keep up the good work.”
“Yes, yes,” Peter said, “now stop stringing me along! What’s Paris like?”
“Oh!” May said, a notable excitement in her voice, “It’s amazing! Peter, you’d love it!”