Chapter Text
Schultz walks toward Toomes in the shop when the murdering criminal with a mechanic, demonic suit voices his unwanted words, he's just gonna run?
"I'd run." Mr. Harrington says to his fellow workers that present knowledge to the youth.
"Any sane person would run." Ms. Warren comments.
Schultz responds with something that shows he may just have more brain cells than his boss, the FBI was waiting for them. Now they're on Iron Man’s radar? They should definitely run.
"You should." Liz tries to tell her dad, but he was a mere few however-many-pixels on a screen. She winces her eyes and frowns, heart squeezing.
Toomes ignores the fact that being a janitor exists, even if it might have a much smaller paycheck than his current… occupation.
"McDonalds could use a janitor." MJ voices, staring at the screen with a bored expression on her face, her arms crossed loosely across her torso.
"My room could use a janitor." Charles says.
"Damn, how many whoppers and mayo stains are there on your floor?" A student asks.
Charles gets a dramatically pained and embarrassed look on his face, "Oh… Too many, my chap." He shakes his head and scrunches up his face like he's holding back tears. "Too many…" He sniffs in an exaggerated manner. Abe rubs his shoulder and then shakes him.
"So now what?"
"I want chocolate."
Toomes looks to Mason. He asks if he can the high-altitude seal up and running in time.
Peter is still surprised by the fact that Toomes did not have the seal ready to use.
Mason gets a surprised look on his face. He wonders if he's serious. He can, and the man will not regret his decision.
Toomes turns back to Schultz. He asks the man if he's in. Schultz lets a small smiles cross his face and lifts his eyebrows.
"Oh, come on…" Betty throws her head back and looks disappointed.
Helicopters are still flying around the ferry.
"Oh, helicopters."
Flash decides to comment, "I've been on a helicopter once! It was scary, but fun. New York is kinda beautiful."
"I know! I love seeing the sun set and all the buildings from above!" Peter responds, thinking back to his favorite memories of Queens' scenery.
"You've been on a helicopter before?" Flash asks, his head tilted slightly in confusion.
Peter is silent.
"Oh." Flash is embarrassed.
"I'm Spider-Man." answers Peter.
Peter is kneeling on the edge of a tall building, mask hanging limply in his fingers, when Iron Man glides towards him.
"Oh no…" Peter puts his head in his hands. He had almost blocked this out of his memory, and then he is sent to this weird, magical theatre.
Tony puts on his sunglasses and crosses his arms and legs, putting on a faux indifferent expression with a near silent sigh. Rhodey sees all this and is nervous.
May is confused, tilting her head at the two's reactions, then the lightbulb hits and a look of understanding, then anger paints her face. She looks at Tony in disappointment and anger, Rhodey glancing back at her in confusion.
"Previously on Peter Screws the Pooch:"
"Asshole." May says.
Ned is suprised, and confused. Peter was vague to him when he told him what happened, so he wasn't expecting this reaction from the three. "I am so confused. Help?" Ned requests from Peter.
"No. Just watch."
Tony told Peter to stay away from this. Instead, the teen hacked a multimillion-dollar suit so he could sneak around his back doing the only thing he instructed him to not do. Tony lands behind the teen. His disappointment in the boy is audible.
"He was trying to stop a crime, he was doing what he does best. It ended horribly, but no one died." Mau defends Peter.
"Yeah but the ferry was cut in half." Peter's large grin is upside down.
"You tried your best against a criminal with alien weapons. You're human, and his weapons were strong enough to cut steel."
"Not to mention he had a freaking black hole grenade. Black hole. I don't know how but he did it." MJ adds on to May's defence.
"I was upset…" Tony takes a breath. "I was wrong to say and do what I did, but I was planning on giving the suit back either way. Um, I did not know all that Peter knew, big surprise, I know," Tony tries to joke. "And he proved himself in the end.
The room is silent in surprise, most stuck on the fact that Tony took Peter's suit away.
"Y'know that makes sense for Spidey's absence before homecoming."
"Remember when Buzzfeed said Spidey was dead?"
Peter swings his head to Betty. "They what?" His eyes were wide like a deer's in front of a car, suprise bright as neon lights in Vegas.
"Yeah, I'll send it to you when we get out of here."
Author snorts from his place on his bed, typing this out on his phone. He turns to the reader, "I'm sick, can you tell?" He coughs, then takes a sip of his water in misery, his back feeling like a 90-pound dog was standing on it.
"Okay." Peter replies, he and everyone else unaware of what took place a paragraph above. They are also unaware they are characters in our universe.
Peter asks if everyone was okay, desperate.
"No thanks to you."
Flash stands up in a fury and walks over to the billionaire.
"Here we go." Natasha leans back.
"Bitch!" Tony's responding expression was priceless. "No thanks to him? No thanks to him? Then help him. He shoots webs and is probably stronger than Captain America. He doesn't have the tech you have because he's in highschool. Don't act disappointed that he tried to save people and almost failed because a whole ass ferry was falling apart. That teenager saved a ferry full of hundreds of people! He knew more than you did about the situation, he saves people every day."
Crossed, Peter slides off the edge and approaches Tony, face irate and his stride riled. Those weapons were out there, and he had tried to tell him about it, but he didn’t listen. The ferry wouldn't have been destroyed if he would have just listened. "If you even cared, you’d actually be here."
"What are you to him?" Natasha asks.
"His mentor?" Tony replies, confused.
"Then gain his trust back and teach him."
The Iron Man suit opens, revealing Tony inside. He steps down from the suit and marches toward Peter, who backs off.
"Oh shit."
"Run, Peter."
"You dramatic piece of shit." Snorts Rhodey, raising an eyebrow at Tony.
Tony walked towards the boy. He did listen. He had called the FBI. He asks if Peter knew he was the only one who believed in him, everyone else had said he was crazy to recruit a 12-year old kid..
Peter corrects Tony, he was 15.
"I can see how you can get that confused." Clint speaks up after a period of silence.
Tony zips his lips angrily. What if someone died, then it would be different because that death would be on Peter. But if Peter died, it was on him. Tony points to himself. He didn't need Peter's death on his conscience.
Peter looks down, feeling bad. "Yes, sir." He apologizes. But sorry wasn't enough.
Tony sighs, he was being a little harsh on the kid. Peter needed to understand the repercussions of his actions, a beam from one of the weapons could have sliced through and killed someone, sure it was probably unlikely but one death could have thousands of people rising against people.
Peter understands what Tony was saying, he only wanted to be like him. But Tony wanted him to be better. He asks for the suit back.
The students start shouting, angry. "You don't know what you're doing!" They stand up and point at Tony, faces twisted in anger.
"He's a hero, he saves people everyday!" The crowd's collective voice blend together into a loud blob of unintelligible vocal anger.
"Yeah! Without his suit he can't go out and save people!"
The principal stands up, arms outstretched as he tries to calm them. "Settle down, settle down." Nobody listens and some students start shouting at him, it seems that their anger at the 'Capitalist Pig' - as some called Tony - was contagion.
Bucky, seeing the man's struggles stands up to help him. "Quiet!" The single word draws on for the few seconds it takes for the teenagers to sit down and be quiet.
"I get my suit back." Peter says to help. He was very shocked by their response. He only saw this kind of anger on a few occasions, mostly online.
Peter looks up at Tony, shocked, but he doesn't retaliate, he merely asks how long he won't have his suit.
Tony stares at Peter, face blank, he won't get his suit back, it will be gone forever.
Peter shakes his head, jaw dropping. What does he mean 'forever?' He starts pleading No, no, no... Please...
"What?" MJ yells in outrage. "Are you May Parker?" May looks at MJ but the girl is looking at Tony, who was looking at her out of the corner of his glasses, clearly intimidated.
"No…" Tony mumbles, feeling bad for breathing near the teen. Natasha smiles at the girl.
"Then what the hell are you doing talking to Peter like that?" MJ asks the man. Tony looks down, apologizing with his body.
Tony extends his hand, asking him to hand over the suit.
No, he was nothing without the suit, it was all he had. Peter feels tears well up, he feels like Sponge-Bob in that one episode where Squidward made him go as long as he could without crying, so he wells up with tears like a balloon.
"Look what you did! He's crying!" Ned yells at the billionaire. How dare he make his friend cry, only sad movies and animals were allowed to do that.
Rhodey looks at Tony in disappointment. "Tony." Tony panics at the lack of nickname. "He idolises you. Besides, did you even know the whole story?"
Bruce pipes in, "He was fighting a whole group of people with alien weapons on a ferry of, what, over one hundred civilians. He didn't have any training other than experience and is a teenager."
Tony knows he fucked up.
"His opponent could fly and he had webs. His opponent had a weapon that shot alien beams which could cut steel and he had webs and wit." Bucky joins in, solidifying the shit Tony was in.
Tony gets all wise and tells him he shouldn't have a suit if he was nothing without it. Tony scolds himself for sounding like his dad.
Peter tries to extend his time with his suit by telling Tony he didn't have any other clothes.
"He needs his suit, he's too poor to have clothes." Flash tries to help.
Tony nods, he can sort that out.
"This is where I got my new pajamas." Peter tells Ned.
Peter, wearing pink pajamas with little Hello Kitty faces decorated over it and an oversized NYC shirt,
"Look at that pathetic ball of teenage angst!" A student shouts at Tony, finger aiming at the screen. "I blame you!"
Peter is offended, only Ned, MJ, and May can call him a pathetic ball of teenage angst.
He walks down the hallway of the apartment. He knocks on a door, which May answers, wearing well fitting clothes unlike her nephew.
Peter whispers a greeting.
May storms inside, angry at him but also worried. Peter shuffles towards May then stands behind her. Five police stations. Then she called five of his friends.
Sam snorts, "You're dead."
"In his defense, he was busy saving a boat." Wanda tries to save Peter.
"He was outside the boat, he could have watched and talked to me." May shuts Wanda down, who is unable to continue with her defense of Peter. Peter almost whimpers when May looks back at him.
May takes a deep breath, trying to calm down, but now that she knows who he is, what he does, the worry she felt back then is back and increased twice-fold. She also now knows why he smelt like a sewer. She laughs, the sound choked. She rubs her face. "You didn't call me back." She tries to joke, push down her worry.
Peter smiles, a guilty one. "Sorry, I was busy smelling like a sewer." His joke helps, just barely, to ease the tension that grew with each passing second of silence before May's attempt to deflect her issue with all that happened.
May completely ignores her earlier decision of this not being the place to deal with this stuff.
Her voice is sad when she rants: "I didn't know where you were, you skipped out of detention and no one knew where you were. For all I know you could have been kidnapped. Not to mention all the people I called: five police stations,"
Everyone's eyes widen. Bruce turns to Peter, impressed by his aunt. "Five of your friends. You didn't answer any of my calls…" She slaps her knee, body buzzing uncomfortably with energy, the sound barely heard in the room. "I understand why you didn't answer my call but… I was so worried."
He was busy trying to stop a weapons deal, the weapons of which were alien. Something could have gone wrong. But maybe he could have texted her instead? Although, 'Sorry, can't talk right now, call you later.' would far from ease her worries, since she didn't know he was Spider-Man then. It was a situation where no one would be helped. Maybe if he had told her he was Spider-Man she wouldn't be so worried and wouldn't have called so many people.
She sighs. All this is in the past, she knows he is Spider-Man, they agreed that instead of ignoring her calls he would text 'Sorry, can't talk right now, call you later.' or some variant. She has no energy to continue and just decides to end it with, "It's in the past, we've already dealt with this."
Peter nods and they both go back to watching the movie.
Peter tries to reassure her, he was fine! Physically, not emotionally fine though.
"Were you really?" MJ raises an eyebrow at him.
"Of course not."
May had called Ned's mother, who said that Peter left early. Peter tells May to relax, he was fine, he was alive.
May quietens and faces Peter, she orders him to cut the bullshit. She knows he left detention, she knows he left the hotel room in Washington. "I know you sneak out of this house every night. That’s not fine, Peter, you have to tell me what’s going on." It's just the two of them.
A beat lies between them, then Peter's eyes light up with tears. He tells her he lost the Internship. May is surprised, what could he have done? What happened?
He screwed up, he believed he could work hard enough and Tony could… Peter sits down, May comes over to him and wraps her arms around him, she strokes her hands through his hair. She whispers in his ears, it was okay.
Steve turns to face Tony, he looks tired and disappointed. He didn't need words, his expression enough to convey his emotions. This kid just wanted to be like his hero.
Peter apologises for making her worry, eyes reddening and stinging.
"You know I’m not trying to ruin your life. I used to sneak out too." May's nose twitches, then dips down to sniff Peter's hair. She recoils, and tells him to go to the bathroom and wash himself, he smells like a dumpster.
Ned laughs. "Shut up." Peter tells Ned in embarrassment. His face blushes, red blooming on his cheeks like flowers.
"Peter, you’re a good kid and you’re a smart kid. So just try to keep your head straight, okay?" Principal Morita tells the teen.
"Did he smell like trash?" A student asks their principal.
Morita is silent as he contemplates telling the teen, he smelled like Axe body spray, way too much, so yes. "Yeah, he smelled like way too much Axe body spray."
Peter was embarrassed but at least he didn't smell like the dumpster next to his apartment building.
Peter nods, he'll try.
Principal Morita nods, then dismisses him.
Peter leaves his principal’s office. Ned, who was waiting for him, bombards him with questions. Was he expelled? Does he have to go to the school on 46th with the crossbow-weilding principal?
"The what?" Clint asks. "What is the school called? I need to meet this guy."
"Clint you don't need to meet every person who's an archer." Natasha tells the man.
"Yes I do!" Clint yells, he plays distraught, pointing a finger at Natasha.
Peter was pretty sure that was a myth, but no, he's here to stay. Ned is very relieved. The two walk down the corridor..
Peter rests his head on his desk in detention. MJ gets his attention, he turns his head to find her holding a sketch of him with a sad look on his caricatures face.
"You're a good artist." Natasha compliments MJ with a nod, her expression holds appreciation.
MJ smiles, "Thank you."
Peter, now in Spanish class, raises his hand. Wrapped around his hand is a pen. The teacher calls on him, and he answers the unspoken question in Spanish. The Spanish teacher thanks him.
"Ah, Spider-Man, so cultured, we stan."
Peter and Ned were finishing up the Lego Death Star in a room. Once done, Ned gives Peter a Palpatine character, which is placed on the top of the orb. Ned and Peter smile towards each other then do their handshake.
Peter and Ned smile as they remember their pride at finishing the Death Star.
"You should glue the pieces so it doesn't break if you drop it." MJ recommends, turning her head to them as she speaks.
Peter tilts his head with a frown, "Why didn't we think of this before?"
"Small brain." Ned says with a nod. Peter agrees and nods with him.
Peter is walking in a hallway then stops when he sees Liz, he greets his crush with a blush.
Liz smiles and greets him.
Peter makes small talk, informing her that he thought she had calculus. Liz says she did, but she was busy with Homecoming preparations.
Peter apologises for what he did during the Decathlon championship.
"If you weren't Spider-Man, and you were present, you would have died because you and Liz wouldn't have been able to get out in time. And if Spider-Man was a different person, you would have died while Liz was saved by him." Mr. Harrington voices. Peter purses his lips in thought as he thinks over what his teacher said, he wasn't wrong.
"Have you thought this over?" Bucky asks the teacher.
"Many times." Mr. Harrington sounds depressed, and he probably is. Peter and the rest of the students taught by him have many theories on why he is depressed, one of them being that his wife took everything in the divorce. Him being married wasn't confirmed by the man himself but they are all convinced he was at one point.
Principal Morita pats his shoulder sympathetically, a sad look on his face. All the teachers that were present during the 2012 invasion get melancholic looks on their faces as they remember the losses.
Liz waves off his apology, Decathlon was no longer her top priority.
Peter tells her tentatively that what he did was not fine, since he liked her. Liz is blunt when she states that she knew about his feelings. Peter is thoroughly shocked.
According to her and everyone who ever knew him, he was terrible at keeping secrets.
"Well now we know that is not true." Charles says. He had never expected him to be Spider-Man, they all thought he was a mere twig.
They look at each other awkwardly.
Peter ducks out by saying he has class, he tells her he would like to hang out with her, but he has detention for the rest of eternity. "I guess you already have a date to homecoming."
Liz corrects that guess, she has been so busy that she never got around to it.
Peter, starstruck, asks if she wants to go out with him. Liz smiles, and agrees.
Peter keeps his excitement mostly contained as they make their way to their destinations.
"Aw, so cute." Tony chuckled, unable to not be fazed by Peter's puppy-like awkwardness and excitement.
Peter, now in his apartment, slides into the kitchen with nervousness on his face. " May, I need your help."
"I just looked up suits to wear to prom." Flash says, a bit jealous that Peter got help from his aunt.
Peter - wearing a button-up shirt and a black tie, his shoes polished - shakes his head in front of a mirror. May hands a corsage to him, he smiles as he takes it.
"You polished your shoes?" Liz lets out a small giggle, grinning.
"I wanted to look my best." Peter shrugs, smiling with her.
"It was homecoming." A student says with suprise in their voice. They just wore a button up and jeans.
"It was important!"
Peter wrinkles his nose at the scent of the perfume he sprayed.
A video of a tutorial on how to tie a Windsor knot is playing on a computer. Peter twirls around to show May his passable Windsor knot, his shirt collar a bit messed.
"Your collar is fucked." Charles informs Peter.
"It was for fashion." Peter lies.
"Well then your fashion is horrible." Charles replies, joking.
"And yours isn't?" Peter fires back, smiling at their banter.
Peter, decked out in his suit, is being taught how to dance.
May’s car pulls to a stop in front of Liz’s house. May and Peter do a run-down of their plan. Once done, Peter exits Mays car and leans down to the window, "Love you."
"Love you too." May replies back.
Peter comes up to the door, feet padding lightly on the rock below his feet. The night is quiet. Peter is nervous as he rings the door, the light rose corsage in hand. He waits with an anxious expression.
The door opens, Toomes on the other side. Peter’s smile fades and he is turned to the stone beneath his feet. Toomes grins at him.
"Oh shit!" Sam covers his mouth.