Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

‘But what about the guest rooms? Surely you have somewhere else he can stay?’ Peter whined.

Tony had just announced that Harley would come over for a week and that Peter and him had to share Peter’s room. Which wasn’t that great because Peter had a big enough crush on Harley without them having to share a room for a week on end.

‘I told you, the Bartons are coming over and they’ll all need their own rooms. Not to mention you promised to babysit Cassie while Scott had to go to Europe on that business trip with the Van Dynes,’ Tony said patiently. Somehow he knew that, even though his son was a brilliant young man who got the highest grades in class, he could also be very stubborn when it came to certain things. It had taken him weeks to even believe that Tony wouldn’t mind if he called him dad. The adoption had been finished a month before that.

‘Yes but can’t you find any other way to let me keep my privacy?’

‘No can do, kid. Sorry.’ Tony chuckled internally when his son’s ears turned bright red.

‘Fine, but I’m getting some sort of compensation. I take payment in the form of food,’ Peter sighed, wanting to go have his gay panic in the privacy of his room.

‘Fine. I’ll get Bucky to bake you a bunch, okay?’ Bucky’s baked goods were legendary in the Stark Tower.

‘Yes. Yes, you will,’ Peter said, glaring at his father with the best stare he was capable of. Which wasn’t much.

He retreated to his room. He sat down on his bed and put his head into his hands. These next few weeks very well could kill him.

–o0o–

After getting past the initial betrayal of his father, Peter began panicking. His brain ever so helpfully provided him with scenarios in which Harley somehow found out about Peter’s crush, and would be absolutely appalled. Peter just knew that he was going to have to act natural. And of course, he was trash at that.

First, he cleaned his room. He put everything in the drawers, threw out all of the old candy wrappers, pizza boxes, takeout bags, anything that was way overdue to leave his room.

Next was his laundry. At first, he didn’t know how it worked, but he just decided to throw everything that was lying on the ground into the hamper in the corner. Apparently, it was connected to the washing machine or something, because he heard a quick zooming noise coming from the corner, and when he looked in it everything was gone. Peter suspected it was his dad’s idea. Tony could create the ultimate lazy things if he wanted to, which apparently he did.

After he was finished cleaning his room he decided that wasn’t enough of a stressful vibe, so he spent most of his last free weekend in his room, stressing about literally everything that was going on. Which wasn’t good. That weekend, the second Harley was mentioned, he immediately went into panic mode.

The team probably already had a secret meeting, because Clint.

‘Psst. Hey, Spidey.’

Peter heard the voice, although he couldn’t place it immediately.

‘God?’

‘No you idiot, it’s me, Clint, I’m in the vents,’ Clint whisper-shouted. He was good with spy stuff, but not with his family. They simply knew him too well. ‘Although, if you see me as a god, that’s completely fine, you know. I sometimes forget that I’m human too.’

‘Ha ha. Now, what do you want?’ Peter was honestly already dead from his anxiety being closer to the roof these past few days.

‘I just wanted to say that our meeting has just finished, and we all laughed quite some at the fact that Friday told us you cleaned your room, which, I’m pretty sure you have never even seen a washing machine, so that says a lot. Tony said it was because Harley would be here in a couple of days, which means that you cleaned your room for him, and we all collectively decided that that was adorable. Bye!’

And before Peter could web Clint to the vent (he had done it before and so help him he’d do it again) Clint scurried away, probably to pelt the team with nerf darts.

Peter returned to his thoughts. He was probably going to either die, or murder someone, or preferably, both.

Him, Harley, Shuri and Loki were a little group. It was usually a lot of fun when they were all together, and as three geniuses and a Trickster god, they were pretty infamous in the Tower. They were even called the Tower Terrors, because apparently even among the employees they were notoriously known.

Loki had been staying in the Tower, as part of his “punishment” for trying to overtake New York (apparently Tony could give him punishments?) but they all knew it was because if Loki were to be separated from Peter, his adopted brother, he would probably throw a hissy fit that would destroy about half the earth. Which wasn’t good. So he stayed in the Tower.

Shuri often came by as well, claiming that it was important to establish connections everywhere, but Peter knew that Shuri didn’t go anywhere outside Wakanda besides SI. He was alright with that.

And then there was Harley. Tony had brought him in on a random day, telling Peter, ‘This is Potato Boy. Potato Boy, this is Peter, my adopted son.’ and that was about it.

They had bonded over being Tony Stark’s sons, even though only Peter had been adopted. Harley had been coming over for quite a while now, and Tony had decided that his own (not so) secret (the Avengers wouldn't know privacy if it kicked them in the face) ship of Potato Boy and his son was to be given one more try. After that, he’d give Harley his own room. But first, he wanted to see what would happen if they were forced to be in very close quarters for an extended period of time. It was a small experiment of his. Pepper felt bad for Peter, but the entire team had seen Harley flirting with Peter and him just being too oblivious to see it., which, obviously, made them all very annoyed at the Mini-Boss.

They suspected they needed just one more nudge in the right direction for Peter to accidentally spill the tea on liking Harley or Harley to just tell Peter that he’d been blatantly flirting with him since about day 1 of them meeting each other. And this weekend was the weekend that it was going to happen, they could all feel it.

Chapter Text

Peter moved through the following week in a daze. Before he knew it it was Friday. Harley would arrive today. He felt thankful for the slight reprieve of meeting his crush, even if it was just in school. And it didn’t help that he was absolutely dead, because he had pulled an all-nighter, too busy thinking about possible doom scenarios to even imagine getting any sleep.

What would Harley think about him acting weird? Would he find out about his crush and promptly distance himself from Peter?

Peter’s head had been swimming with these kinds of thoughts. He couldn’t handle anything like that happening. This next week was going to have to go perfectly. Otherwise Peter didn’t know what would happen.

Of course, he also allowed himself just a smidge of wishful thinking. Thinking about Harley finding out, but instead of rejecting him, actually liking him back. Them going on dates together, simply being in each other’s presence with the knowledge that was being a weight Peter’s shoulders finally divulged.

It was so bad that he dreamt and reevaluated everything that he had thought about the night prior all the way through his morning periods.

Suddenly, Peter’s head snapped up as he heard his name.

‘Wake up loser. C’mon, the lesson’s over.’

He grimaced, forgetting for a brief moment that he actually had to stand up today. He rubbed his eyes, and put his stuff away in his backpack. ‘Thanks, MJ. How long was I out for?’

‘Like, half of the lesson. Seriously dude, usually you are so on top of pre-calc that you’re the first to come in and last to leave and ask every question imaginable, So what’s up with you today?’ Ned answered from where he sat next to Peter.

‘And,’ MJ interrupted, grabbing a pencil that lay forgotten on Peter’s desk, holding it just out of Peter’s reach to ensure he was listening, ‘you never forget your stuff. So tell me, what the fuck is going on?’

‘Nothing. I just went to bed too late, I swear,’ Peter said, hands raised to placate her. The hand tactic didn’t work. He should’ve known better than to try to placate MJ. She could be as scary as Nat if she wanted to, and that was not a good thing. Nat killed things for a living. He really didn’t want to tell her about his dilemma.

‘Just try to get through the rest of today without drooling on your desk. And I’ll give you a few sips of my coffee during lunch if you promise to sleep tonight,’ she said quietly, throwing the pencil at his face, looking slightly concerned, but mostly curious. Peter caught it inches away from his face and nodded diligently, hoping it would be enough to get MJ off his back.

They headed to lunch, where they met up with the rest of the decathlon team, as they had a meeting after lunch. Flash was luckily situated far away from Peter, as he didn’t get enough sleep and had no idea if he could handle anything from his bully today.

‘But like, seriously, why are you so tired? Did you work on something with Mr. Stark again?’ Ned asked, his eyes hopeful. MJ silently handed Peter her thermos filled with black coffee. He had never seen her without it and he was afraid to ask. He took a few sips and promptly handed it back to MJ. Coffee made him very twitchy very fast, so Peter had to watch how much he actually drank. He felt a lot better after drinking only a bit, and figured that he should be okay for the rest of the school day.

‘You know I can’t discuss my work projects outside of, you know, work,’ Peter avoided the question expertly, ripping open his protein bar. Enhanced metabolism. ‘And anyways, I almost always stay up late. But it’s fine, I’ll just go to bed earl-’ he suddenly cut off his words, tips of his ears turning red as he put the entire protein bar in his mouth to stop his word-vomit. Harley'd be there tonight. Sleeping in the same room. He had somehow forgotten about that.

Before Ned could react, the bell went off and everyone stood up to go to the decathlon meeting room. They took their seats, and Mr. Harrington was practically bouncing on his chair.

'Class, please sit down and be quiet. I’m absolutely thrilled to tell you all that we’ve been invited for a 3 day long field trip to Stark Industries!' Mr. Harrington stopped for a moment, allowing the students to let it sink in, and so he could freak out about it some more.

The students cheered and started shouting to each other about all the cool stuff they’d see at SI. Peter, however, was staring at his desk as if it had personally done something to him. His first instinct was to tell his dad, but he couldn’t just whip out his phone and start texting a multimillionaire like crazy without being judged, or at least looked at, so he had to stick it out for at least a little while longer.

While Peter was handling his most recent mental breakdown quite graciously, thank-you-very-much-MJ, the rest of the decathlon team was freaking out. Ned was talking at lightning speed to Peter and MJ, but they didn’t listen. The former was too busy trying to lower his heartbeats to prevent a heart attack, and the latter was too busy drawing Peter’s face -which probably looked quite comical- to care about what Ned was rambling about.

‘Peter? You do know that we’re going to go to the freaking Stark Tower? This is huge!’ Ned said, shaking Peter’s arm roughly.

‘Ned. I live there. You go at least twice a week. You beat Clint at Mario Kart on wednesday,’ Peter said, only managing short sentences as his brain was apparently deep-fried at the moment.

‘Yes, but it’s still huge! I’ve never even seen the labs before!’ Ned exclaimed, still seemingly trying to dislocate Peter’s arm.

‘That reminds me, we need to visit the labs sometimes,’ Peter smirked. Ned grinned right back, and MJ interrupted their extreme nerd vibes with, ‘well, I’m hoping I’ll get to meet Pepper Potts.’

‘MJ, you do know that I talk to her on a daily basis? She is literally my mom at this point?’

‘Yes, but I can’t really go up to my best friend’s mom and say, “Hello, I’m MJ and even though we have met before, I wanted to say that you are my hero and that I’d love to hear your life story” without sounding like a creep who infiltrated her son’s life to get close to her.’

‘Hey Penis!’ Flash yelled. Peter didn’t react, because his name was Peter and he didn’t feel addressed by Flash.

‘Penis Parker! Are you afraid of going to that place you say you work at but don’t really and now we’ll all see that you have never even seen the Avengers before? Because I would if I were you!’ Flash announced loudly.

Peter grumbled. ‘I really do work there, and I don’t care what you would or wouldn’t do if you were even remotely like me,’ he yelled right back.

Mr. Harrington cleared his throat, still looking like he could faint at any second -Peter could relate-, and waited patiently for the class to quiet down.

‘We’ll be going there in a week, on Friday. We will be staying there until Sunday, to get more of an idea what life in the Tower is really like on the inside.

‘On Friday, I expect you to be at school at 7 am,’ he said, and continued a little louder to rise above the groans at the prospect of getting up that early, ‘and there’ll be a bus ready to take us on the hour long trip to Stark Industries. Please be reminded that you’ll require a signed permission form, which I’ll hand out in a moment, and that you will have to sign multiple NDAs, to keep SI safe.’

Mr. Harrington started handing out permission slips. When he got to Peter’s desk, he asked quietly, ‘Can I see you after class, Peter?’

Peter looked at his teacher with a look of utmost confusion as he replied, ‘Uh, sure?’

When the bell rang, Peter sent out a quick text to Happy saying he was going to be a few minutes late.

He walked up to Mr. Harrington’s desk and said, ‘You wanted to see me, sir?’

Mr. Harrington sighed wearily and nodded. ‘Peter, I just wanted to ask you something. Are you okay? Lately I’ve been hearing rumors about you having an internship at Stark Industries? I’ve heard Mr. Thompson try to goad you into saying otherwise too much this month.

‘Now, I trust you, but you do know that if you are lying about this, it will all be over at the field trip, right? Because if you are lying about the internship, then you won’t be able to pretend anymore after Friday. I just wanted to make sure that you know what you’re in for if you are lying. So is it true? Do you actually have an internship at Stark Industries?’

Peter nodded mutely. ‘I’ve been trying to tell Flash otherwise since he first found out about it. I guess he just didn’t want to believe me. But it is the truth. I have an internship at SI. I’m really grateful that you believe me, sir. Thank you.’

Mr. Harrington waved his hand airily. ‘I never knew you to be a liar, Peter. I just hope that Mr. Thompson doesn’t try anything funny on the field trip. God knows I need it to go well,’ he mused, remembering the trip to DC.

‘Was that it, sir?’

‘Yes, I believe it was. Oh, and make sure that Ms. Jones doesn’t push you too hard. I know she can be a little demanding of the AcaDec team.’

Peter smiled. ‘I’ll try, but there is a very good chance that I won’t succeed. Have a nice weekend, sir.’

Mr. Harrington waved his hand toward the pot of candy on the corner of his desk, and without words Peter knew he was allowed to take one. He immediately retrieved a sherbet lemon and popped it in his mouth with a smile toward his favorite teacher, and with that he grabbed his bag, hoisted it over his shoulder, and left the room.

Waiting outside was a sleek black car, and Peter slid into the backseat, smiling at the driver.

'Hi Happy, we're going on a field trip to SI next week Friday so I'm just hoping you'll come to my funeral. Oh and Cass is coming over today, I've agreed to babysit her for a few days while Scott goes to Europe with the Van Dynes. Last time she was here we persuaded Steve and Bucky to teach us how to make ice cream, so we're probably gonna do that again. We made too much, and although it was the prettiest green ever and Cas really seemed to like it, I'd rather have blue ice cream.'

Happy blocked the babbling kid out completely and practically stomped his foot onto the gas. The sooner he'd get the kid to SI, the better.

Chapter Text

After he got dropped off by Happy, he went in with the private entrance. Usually, Peter loved going through the front, to talk with the receptionists. They were really nice, and Peter liked talking to people. They were almost the only ones who were able to listen to him and do their job simultaneously. That was incredibly helpful. But today he didn't have time for chats.

‘Hello Mini-Boss. Boss is in the labs on 44. Would you like to go there?’ Friday’s voice came from the speakers in the ceiling as the teenager entered the elevator.

‘No, that’s okay, thanks Fri. I need to go to 57. Could you alert him that I’ve arrived though?'

‘Of course, Mini-Boss,’ Friday replied.

‘And can you stop calling me Mini-Boss?’ Peter groaned. His dad was apparently really determined to keep the nickname an intern had accidentally given Peter when they couldn’t remember his name. Tony was laughing about it for ages. Clint still brought it up if he wanted to embarrass Peter, the bitch.

‘No can do, Mini-Boss. Boss told me that only he could change someone’s nickname in my database.’

Peter, very generously decided to let that slide. ‘Oh, by the way, has Harley arrived yet?’ Peter questioned, faking nonchalance.

‘Yes. Potato Boy is with Boss on level 44.’

Peter sighed. Damnit.

‘Fri, could you maybe take me to level 44 after all?’

‘Of course, Mini-Boss,’ said Friday, and the elevator started moving.

A short while later, the elevator doors opened and he entered floor 44.

It was an absolute mess. Takeout bags, cans of energy drinks, tools, material, were all scattered over the floor. As were his dad and his friends.

Tony looked like he was about to pass out as Harley, Shuri and Loki were trying to make snow angels in the mess on the floor.

Peter cleared his throat.

Harley looked up and the smile froze on his face.

‘Goddamn. You know, darlin',' He said, 'I was kinda hoping it’d take you longer to get here. We were busy trying to bury Tony in a pile of,’ he gestured to everything around him, ‘this, but then he retaliated by throwing cans at us, and then he just kind of decided to lie down here for a bit. And then we joined him so that when someone came in, it wouldn’t seem like one person being depressed on the floor, but rather, a cool lie-down-on-the-floor-party that you weren’t invited to.’

Peter willed his ears not to heat up as he heard Harley’s soft southern drawl. He walked over to his dad. ‘Dad, how many hours have you been up now? You know mom will get absolutely furious if she finds out you’ve been hiding in the labs again to avoid doing the dishes. It’s your turn this week, simple as that.’

Tony reached out and grabbed an empty bag which previously held chinese takeout. He started hugging it furiously as he replied, his voice somewhat muffled by the bag, ‘I stopped counting after a while. Might be like… 50 or something. It feels like it’s 50.’

Peter grabbed his father’s arm and pulled him on his feet. Tony sagged against him. ‘Jesus Christmas, what did you guys do to him?’ Peter said, surprised at the fact that Tony was literally a sack of potatoes in his arms.

‘Ah, yes. Well, I made things out of magic, like this,’ Loki said, pointing to a corner in the room, where there suddenly stood a cow that seemed to be bopping its head to a nonexistent beat. Loki smirked and took a sip of his Monster can, looking like he was lying down pretty comfortably for a god in a green shirt that said “Low-Key”.

‘He’d been awake for quite some time now, since a day ago, at like 6 am or something. We couldn’t pass up the opportunity, what can I say,’ Shuri grinned. “It was totally worth it to do this and also get no sleep.”

‘Shuri coded Friday into quoting vines like-’

Friday interrupted with, ‘This is why mom doesn’t fucking love you!’

‘And when I arrived, he was about to leave, so I’ve been ordering takeout whenever he wanted to walk out of the doors. And that’s how we’ve been keeping him up since,’ Harley checked his watch, ‘yesterday 6:37 am.’

‘Loki? Please take down all of the enchantments, I don’t want him to go even more insane than he probably already has.’

Loki nodded and said, ‘How have you been? Am I correct to assume you’ve horrible news, Spiderling? From the way you have been frowning the entire time, I can only deduce that you have something absolutely awful to tell us. So what is it?’ Loki looked vaguely curious but already had a mischievous glint in his eyes.’

‘After I get dad to bed, okay?’ Peter sighed.

Peter pulled out his phone, with some difficulty, due to one Tony practically drooling on his shoulder, and wrote a quick text. One minute later, an angry looking Pepper walked out of the elevator.

‘And who has kept Tony from sleeping? You guys know that he has problems sleeping, and you had no right to do this to him. Do it to literally anyone but him. Like Clint. Clint couldn’t care less about his sleep schedule, you know that. Peter is going to get him to bed and you guys are going to clean this lab until it’s sterile. Understood?’ Pepper said. She looked quite angry, but above all, concerned.

Harley, Shuri and Loki looked sufficiently sheepish at being caught by Pepper, and started stuffing everything into the empty takeout bags.

Her eyes met Peter’s. He nodded and continued on, scooping up his dad bridal style and walking toward the elevators with Pepper by his side.

‘Fri? Could you take us to 57, please?’

‘Of course, Mini-Boss. Don’t you want to go to the medbay? Boss doesn’t seem to be doing so well.’ Even the AI sounded concerned for Tony.

‘No, that’s okay. I’ll keep an eye on him for a while.’

While the elevator was going up, Peter was so overwhelmed at seeing his crush again, who looked unfairly handsome lying down between piles of actual trash. That, together with his dad apparently getting no sleep, the field trip to SI, and Harley being here, his head felt like it was about to explode. He grimaced as he felt the beginnings of an Autistic Attack™, as he liked to call it, coming on, which was basically a headache caused by too much that happened.

The elevator stopped and they stepped out, and Peter walked towards his dad’s room.

‘Dad, I’m going to put you to bed, okay? You really need sleep,’ Peter said, sitting Tony down on his bed, where he promptly fell over.

Peter just sighed, pulled off his shoes, and covered him with the blanket before giving him a quick hug and stepping out of the room. He really needed to vent to someone.

Chapter Text

He was walking aimlessly through the level, until he ended up in the living room. There, he saw Bucky, Steve, Nat, and Wanda. Wanda was halfheartedly reading a book while also listening in on the easy conversation Bucky, Steve, and Nat were having.

He stood in the doorway for a moment before walking toward them and falling onto the couch between Nat and Steve.

‘You okay, little spider?’ Natasha asked, using her Russian nickname for him, which he really appreciated, looking slightly concerned at her nephew, who was currently snuggling up to Steve, who was snuggled up to Bucky.

‘Ha ha, my brain is on fire and god is dead,’ Peter mumbled, reaching out to grab his aunt’s hand and ignoring the now pounding headache as he started drawing the lines on her palm.

‘Well, maybe it’d help if you were to tell anyone what is going on? It might help relieve some of the stress. You know the entire team is wrapped around your finger, don’t you? We’re all here for you,’ Steve said, curling an arm around Peter. Bucky snorted. ‘Yeah right, Sam is part of the team, no way that’s true.’

‘Well, Harley, Loki and Shuri played another prank on dad, without me, might I add, so he didn’t get any sleep for the last 2 days, and I’ve got a too long field trip here in a week, and I’m gonna be spending 3 days in my home with my AcaDec team and pretend this is not, in fact, my home, which sucks because not only do they not believe I have an internship here, I also have to find a way to convince literally everyone here that they need to pretend like they know me but don’t embarrass me, which is going to fail because Clint exists,’ an outraged “Hey!” came from the vents, ‘and I am constantly worrying about Harley being here when the school trip happens because I don’t want him to find out I have a huge crush on him,’ Peter rambled, pausing afterward to take a breath as the people around him were looking various degrees of surprised. But somehow, they seemed more shocked at the field trip rather than the crush thing.

‘That is a lot to unpack right now,’ Bucky said, letting out a breath. ‘How about we resume this conversation with some hot chocolate? I’ll even give you some cake if you want. God knows you need it.’

Peter nodded vigorously. Bucky’s baked goods were well-known in the Tower, but only Bucky and Steve knew where they got stored. Peter was convinced they had enlisted Loki’s help to store them away through magic.

Bucky stood up, and both Steve and Peter fell over, Steve full-on lying down on the couch while Peter fell off. Bucky lifted an eyebrow as he stared down at them impassively. ‘Really?’

‘What? I was comfortable until you stood up, that’s not my fault,’ Steve pouted, and Peter had to laugh at a 105 old man pouting at his 106 year old boyfriend. It was truly a sight to behold. Peter stood up and dusted off, feeling better already.

Wanda floated her adopted sibling to the kitchen island, knowing he’d giggle at it like a little child. He did. She held out a hand and all of the sudden, mugs were gathered, chocolate milk was poured in them, and at the click of her fingers, they were steaming. As they flew gently toward the kitchen island, marshmallows floating over from the pantry, and Bucky came back from the vague direction of his and Steve’s room -there were a lot of rooms okay-, and they all sat down.

‘So, Peter. Your AcaDec team is going to go here next week on a 3 day field trip? How did that even happen?’ Wanda said, as Peter absentmindedly stuffed his face with the cake Bucky had given him.

‘I honestly have no idea. I think dad definitely has something to do with it, but he’s asleep right now, and I want to keep it that way.’

‘I’ll talk to the team. Clint’ll have to behave, otherwise he’ll have to say goodbye to his favorite bow,’ Natasha said. Peter decided he didn’t want to know.

‘And you’ve finally told us about your crush! Took you damn long enough,’ Steve joked, ruffling Peter’s hair. Peter spluttered and batted the hand away, fixing his hair as he replied, ‘You mean you knew? Since when? How? I mean I know you’re all incapable of understanding the simple concept of privacy, but I didn’t expect this!’

Wanda snorted. ‘Peter, you go red the second you hear the name Harley.’ She laughed again as the tips of Peter’s ears went red. His hand stopped mid-comb of his hair.

‘See?’ Wanda laughed.

‘It’s honestly disappointing that Harley hasn’t realised it yet,’ Bucky agreed, taking a sip of his cocoa. ‘Not surprising or anything, the way you’re oblivious to his flirting you’d miss a plane taking off next to you.’

‘Uncle Steve, get your boyfriend in line or I’m going to web him to the ceiling again,’ Peter threatened, still trying to get his ears to go normal, tugging on his hair in exasperation. Bucky snorted. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’

Now Peter wouldn’t say that he was a bad person. In fact, he thought of himself as a surprisingly good person. But Uncle Bucky deserved it. Everyone in the room promised to tell anyone that asked that Bucky was already webbed to the ceiling when they found him.

'But anyways,' Peter said, webbing Bucky's mouth shut when he started talking about how he was going to "make you regret it, mean little spider". 'Now I don't know what to do because it's all gonna happen in a week and I don't know how to do anything about it and my class, the entire team, and Harley will be in SI at the same time and I don't see any way that's not going to end badly for me.'

'Peter, it's gonna work out, trust me. Yes, we'll go and see you a bit, but that's because you won't go upstairs every night, being stuck with the rest of the class in the guest rooms, and we're clingy, to say the least,' Steve said, grinning a bit at the last part.

'But,' Wanda interrupted, 'We won’t expose you as Spider-Man, will we?' she asked menacingly at Steve, who shook his head.

'Yes but then they'll know I know the Avengers and then I'll never hear the end of it. And I'll have to worry about all of that while rooming with my crush, who doesn't know jack shit about my feelings, and probably doesn't even reciprocate them.' Peter crammed the rest of his cake in his mouth and downed it with a mouthful of cocoa, which was too hot for him, and made him run around like a headless chicken and frantically waving his hands to his mouth, hoping to cool down again. Wanda laughed, and gave him a little side hug.

'Only you could make this sound like the end of the world. If they know you know the Avengers, they'll just think you're cool. The only issue might be with them asking you if you can introduce them to the team, to which you can simply reply no. And we all know that Harley likes you. A lot. We've all seen you crush on him while he was unabashedly flirting with you, so what's the big deal? Not to mention that you have a full program with the field trip and most likely won't see him a lot. Trust us, it’ll be fine.’

Wanda's words calmed Peter down, and even though his mouth was still smoking from the cocoa, he sat back down. His headache was still prominent, but he felt reassured nonetheless.

After a bit more talking and laughing at Bucky with everyone in the kitchen, Peter’s metabolism was in need of some chocolate, and as he had a never-ending stash of it in his room, he put his empty cocoa cup in the sink and ran off to get some chocolate.

When he entered the room, he saw Harley and Shuri chilling in one of the beanbags. It was a little odd seeing Harley in his room, and Peter was secretly glad that he cleaned it so well.

'Hi, we were done cleaning really fast because Loki has magic, so when he went off to annoy his brother, we went to wait for you. Speaking of, where were you?'

'Well, first of all, the fact that Loki has magic should never leave your mind, Shuri, because the sheer number of pranks you could pull with magic is insane, and I was in the kitchen with Uncle Bucky and Steve, and Aunt Nat and Wanda. We had cocoa.' he said the last part excitedly, because cocoa was a very reasonable thing to be excited about.

'The only problem is that we didn't know where to find a spare bed in this place so we just kinda did nothing here. Until you walked in, that is,' said Harley, seeming intent on solving a rubiks cube that Peter had messed up a while ago and had been too lazy to try and solve.

'I'll just ask someone later, but I did want to mention that Cass is also coming, and I have school every day, not to mention I have homework…' Peter said, trailing off as he stared at his wall in guilt.

'It's okay. We love playing with Cassie and we can help you do your homework faster. It's all easy anyway,' Shuri said.

Peter's eyebrows shot into his hairline and promptly forgot about the topic as he started rambling about another. 'Ooh, what if we make a pillow fort in the living room! That way Loki will be able to join us. It'll be fun! And we can watch movies and play videogames on the tv. What do you say?'

'That is a very good idea, darlin'. We'll make it happen at some point in time. But now, I am in the mood to play Mario Kart,' Harley announced, jumping up from his beanbag and strolling to the door. Shuri followed, and Peter took advantage of the fact that they had their backs turned to grab some chocolate and shove it in his mouth before joining them in the living room.

Chapter Text

After a Mario Kart tournament (which Harley won, to the outrage of Shuri and Peter), they were setting up the pillow fort, when Peter suddenly got attacked by four small blurs of what looked like little gremlins. The Bartons and Cassie had arrived.

Laura looked at her kids with a fake deep suffering look, while Scott looked more inclined to join them and run toward Peter at full speed.

Peter noticed it and said, ‘Scott, if you dare do the same as these little kids,’ He ignored the shouts of indignance from said little kids, ‘I'm going to steal the suit and put glitter in it.'

Scott backed away somewhat uncertainly. 'You wouldn't dare.' He turned to Laura. 'He wouldn't dare, would he?'

Laura snorted. 'I wouldn't count on him being a little angel all the time, Clint learned that the hard way.'

Pete felt a bunch of tiny hands grabbing his hands and he even felt one of them climbing him like a monkey, so he yelled "Time out!', after which Cassie jumped off of his back and fell onto Harley, who was lying on the couch, staring at Peter, which Peter pretended not to notice because even though he noticed everything, some things were better left unnoticed. Harley gasped a bit and pushed Cassie onto the floor, attacking her with the dangerous Tickle Spiders. Cassie giggled while climbing back on the couch and trying to get to Harley’s back, where she knew he was ticklish.

Peter picked up Nathaniel and swung him around like a sack of potatoes, the little boy screaming, 'Wheeeee!' as he went.

Then, it was Lila's turn. He turned to her, went into a fighting stance, and began attacking her with soft blows and little tickles. She did the same, and they played around a little until Peter flicked her earlobe. Peter was really proud that she was really starting to show skill in the little fake-fights they had.

'You owe me Ben and Jerry's now,' he grinned triumphantly. Whoever won got to demand a prize, which was usually candy. but they agreed that it couldn't be over 20 dollars after Lila asked for a Spider-Man suit so she could flip around the farm pretending she was Spidergirl (Peter had reluctantly said no, because Laura had threatened to throw up in his mask).

Last, it was Cooper's turn. Peter got really close to his face, and the stare off began.

It was quite intense to see, a teen and an 11 year old boy staring at each other furiously, trying not to blink.

Peter's eyes pricked and after what felt like years, he admitted defeat and blinked. Cooper pumped a fist in the air, 'Yeah!' and then pulled his fist back and promptly gave Peter's stomach a mean right hook.

'Oomph-' Peter fake-groaned, rubbing the actually-sort-of-sore spot, collapsing half onto Harley on the couch (his ears didn't flush, no matter what Shuri might say when recounting the story okay), pretending to die on the couch from Cooper's punch. Cooper giggled, and the three ran off to go find their dad and start tormenting him.

Cassie jumped onto Harley's chest, sitting right next to Peter.

'Guess what Petey?' she asked excitedly.

'Uhm, let me think for a moment. You've decided it was time you allowed yourself to get tickled by me?'

'No Petey, my tooth came out!' Cassie proudly showed him the gap in her mouth.

'Oh, that's really cool! Did the Tooth Fairy come yet?' Peter asked, happy to indulge in Cassie's seemingly never ending need for his attention.

'Yeah! I got a very ugly grizzly bear stuffed animal this time. He's already married to Mr Pickle, the talking sea lion.'

'that's very sweet! Wish them a happy marriage for me!'

Cassie nodded solemnly and ran toward Shuri, who caught her when Cassie jumped up.

Peter stood up, blushing at the sight of Harley lying on the couch, still staring at him with an unreadable face, and even though Peter still pretended not to see, he secretly hoped and believed that there was love in that face.

Peter shook his head a bit as he approached Laura and Scott, who were talking calmly, or as calmly as they could with Scott involved.

'Hi Scottish Language! Cassie's gonna have the best time, I promise,' Peter said, attacking his uncle with a hug before doing the same to Laura.

'How dare you! I’ll let you l know that even though it’s completely accurate, I'm still offended. My name is Scott Lang, not Scottish Language. That's an awful name for a person. And I know she will. I do actually have to go now, though. But don't worry. I'll reply to every text she wants to send me, and don't hesitate to call me, I'll pick up,' Scott said, looking at Cassie with a smile on his face.

'I will.'

Scott beckoned Cassie, and she ran -once more- full speed at her dad, who picked her up and hugged so tight that Cassie giggled and squeezed back with every bit of strength contained in that tiny body. Which was a lot, judging by the not entirely faked “oomph” that Scott let out.

'I have to go now, but you can text or call me on Peter's phone, and I'll be back before you know it, okay Peanut?'

'Okay dad. Love you!' and with that and one more squeeze, she was off once more, probably going to wreak more havoc than this Tower was truly ready for.

--o0o--

After Peter, Harley, Loki and Shuri deemed the coast clear enough for the making of the pillow fort, they’d started on it quickly. They were almost finished (quicker than Peter thought, though having Loki there definitely made things easier) and were just draping the last blanket over it when Steve yelled, 'Dinner's ready!' after which Bucky shouted, 'Come here you little fucks.' Then, they could hear Clint screaming 'Language!' from where he was running after his kids, trying to tag them, and the sound of Steve giving up on life.

Eventually, with a lot of bad words (the amount of times the word "language" had been said was appalling), Loki conjuring knives which Thor promptly took away, and Bucky shit-talking Sam to Natasha in Russian, they were finally seated around the dinner table.

Peter sat next to Harley and Tony, which from the looks Tony and Pepper gave them wasn’t an accident. The Bartons all sat next to each other, a parent between 2 children each, and Cassie looked perfectly content to sit between Loki and Shuri, and didn't seem at all concerned when Loki waved yet another knife (Natasha grabbed it before bad things happened).

Steve and Bucky had cooked today, and Peter thought that Bucky seemed to have an affinity for food, because holy burning hell this food was amazing. Bucky's lasagna was always perfect.

While they were eating, several topics came up, including the topic a smirking Shuri asked the entire table. ‘I am still confused as to what the ships are in the Avengers, anyone care to explain?’ to which Harley snorted into his food, Nat almost choked on her vodka, Loki laughed while pointing at Thor (with a knife, which Peter took from him), and Bucky bonked his head on the table while Steve held his hair back to avoid it getting into the lasagna.

After explaining to the table (read: Tony) what ships meant, Peter said 'Shuri, why did you have to ask them that? I see enough PDA on the daily already, I wasn't ready for this kind of mental torture,' Peter teased. Everyone turned to look at him, waiting for him to continue.

'Okay fine,' Peter groaned with fake annoyance. 'For starters, Steve and Bucky are together, which makes sense because they're both old men.' Steve made an outraged sound, which made the table laugh even harder (including Bucky, who then got slapped on the back of his head by Steve).

'Then you have Thor and Bruce.'

Bruce spoke up, blushing slightly. 'But we're not really… on the paparazzi's radar yet, so we'd appreciate it if this could remain under wraps?'

Shuri nodded solemnly. She understood.

'And, of course, mom and dad,' Peter smirked, knowing that Pepper and Tony still got a little teary-eyed whenever their son called them that. They did.

‘So Barnes & Noble, the Science after the Storm, and Pepperony. Got it,’ Shuri said, causing looks of shock around the table. She shrugged. ‘I’m smarter than you all put together.’

After dinner, everyone piled into the living room, where they had to laugh as all the teens crept into the -somehow still standing, albeit precariously, which Loki definitely had something to do with- pillow fort.

Bucky lunged forward and grabbed the remote, after which he immediately danced out of Clint’s reach, laughing as Laura held Clint back.

‘Come on guys, not again. Please. Clint, you chose last week, and the week before that because Bruce is nice like that and favored lab binging. So stop being a little kid about this if you ever want to see your favorite hoodie the color it is right now. And Bucky,’ Peter turned to the old man in question, ‘You will give the remote to one of the guests because you choose often enough.’

Bucky grumbled but gave the remote to Harley, who was surprised at getting the power of choosing a movie, but smirking as he immediately knew which one to pick.

‘Moana!?’ Sam’s eyes couldn't've comically widened more.

‘What? I really like it.’ Harley’s face was the definition of faking innocence.

‘And anyway, the kids will probably enjoy this too,’ he continued, laughing as he heard Clint groaning from where he sat next to Laura on one of the couches. The children were absolutely ecstatic, and they took turns to give Harley a big hug. Only Cassie seemed slightly miffed at not being allowed to watch Star Wars (she was a huge stinkin’ fan okay), but seemed to like it good enough.

This was made evident by the fact that he started singing along the second that Where You Are started playing, and was doing an intense karaoke thing that had Peter smiling up adorably at him, with Shuri pushing Loki to sing along with him. The children joined in and eventually everyone was singing along (some -Tony- very off key).

The biggest surprise was when You’re Welcome started, because Bucky had jumped up from the couch where he was snuggling with Steve to do the most theatrical sing along yet. After the song was finished everyone clapped and, after giving a mock bow he sat back down.

After the movie was finished, Peter took Cassie to her room while the young Bartons were also being tucked into bed.

‘But Petey! I’m not tired yet. I want to stay with the grownups! Please? I won’t tell dad if you won’t,’ she pouted.

‘No can do, padawan, I’m sorry. Your father will know anyway, the team will tell on you. But I’ll tell you a little secret.’ He beckoned her closer.

‘The sooner you go to bed, the sooner it’ll be morning, which means the sooner you’ll be able to beg Clint for pancakes. He makes them better than Bucky, which says a lot because Bucky is the best cook,’ Peter whispered. Cassie grinned. Everyone loved pancakes.

‘Okay, Petey. I’ll go to sleep, but only if you read for me.’

Peter nodded, and Cassie leaned past him, to grab the book in question. It was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

‘Daddy says that it's important to grow a big vocabulary,' Cassie said, the word being with no problem, ’and you do that by reading. I really love Harry Potter!' she said happily, hugging the book to her chest.

‘Well then let’s read it!’ Peter said. As a big fan of the books, he felt it was important to make sure that the future generation became just as obsessed with them as he was.

After reading a chapter (or three), Cassie fell asleep, and Peter closed the book and gently put it on the nightstand.

When he re-entered the living room, the adults were sitting on the floor, playing what looked like never have I ever. The other teens, who were not allowed to drink yet, were sitting in the middle of the circle, asking questions to the adults, except for Loki, who seemed tipsy, sitting next to Natasha, grinning like a madman.

Harley saw Peter standing in the doorway, looking confused as shit, and beckoned him closer. The second Peter was in grabbing range, Harley grabbed his hand and pulled him down next to him, with his back to Harley’s chest.

‘Is this okay, darlin’?’ Harley said, praying that he read Peter’s interest in him correctly.

‘Yes!’ Peter said, a touch too loud and a touch too fast, making his ears go red as he quickly looked away, yet snuggling into Harley’s chest.

Harley smiled to himself, draping an arm around Peter’s shoulder.

‘Okay, here’s another one,’ Harley said, and the room became a bit more quiet. ‘Never have I ever gotten so tired that I downed an entire pot of coffee in the hopes of staying awake.’

Tony said, 'I feel a little personally attacked here.' But immediately lifted his cup of water to his mouth and took a mouthful. The team looked at him with a mixture of disappointment, awe, and disgust.

‘What?’ Tony snorted. ‘Have you all never done that? I’ve done it a lot.’ He purposefully looked away as Pepper glared daggers at him.

‘Tony, you know that’s extremely bad for your health?’ Steve snorted, one arm around Bucky and absentmindedly playing with his hair, the other holding his glass.

‘Yeah, Tony,’ Bucky interjected, sniggering at him, snuggled up into Steve’s side.

Bucky and Steve couldn’t get drunk off of normal alcohol, so Loki got them, herself (she had changed her body to a female one), and Thor some Asgardian mead. So far, Bucky and Steve had been caught making out with each other, making everyone else throw empty beer cans at them, Thor had asked Bruce if he had a partner, to which Bruce replied, ‘yes, I do.’ making Thor bawl his eyes out until Bruce rolled his eyes and said, ‘it’s you.’ muttering, ‘idiot.’ under his breath, Loki had turned her hair into the same color as Natasha, after which she claimed that, ‘Natasha is my sister because we both like knives!’ to which Natasha agreed to be Loki’s sister.

‘Come on people, let’s continue,’ Shuri cheered.

‘Never have I ever… kissed a guy,’ Steve slurred, taking a huge sip, kissing Bucky sloppily on his cheek.

‘This isn’t fair! Most everyone here is attracted to guys!’ Tony said, but took a sip nonetheless.

‘Tony! How didn’t I know about this?’ Pepper said jokingly, after downing her own mouthful.

'Pepper,' Tony said, faking seriousness. 'I have to tell you something. I'm pan. And that doesn't mean I'm any different, I'm still the same Tony you've always known.'

Pepper just snorted.

Loki took a sip, as did Nat, and then Clint too, and Wanda, who held her alcohol very well for a 20 year old, took one as well.

‘Am I seriously the only one?’ Sam exclaimed, looking at the team incredulously. The others nodded, laughing.

Steve and Bucky had already downed the rest of their glasses and were literally sitting in each other’s laps, laughing at something no one understood.

Bruce and Thor had also finished their glasses and were sitting close to each other, with Thor examining Bruce’s small hands with a look of wonder on his face while Bruce was trying not to laugh at his boyfriend being so drunk that hands were a miracle. Then failing in his discretion as Thor noticed he had hands of his own.

The teens were trying not to laugh at seeing a team of revered superheroes being drunk as shit, which didn’t work, and now they were giggling like crazy, and whenever they thought the laughing was about to die down, one of them would look at another, and start the cycle all over again.

Tony was content to just look around at his thing vaguely resembling a family, head on Pepper’s shoulder, snorting at whatever someone had just done, while she was trying to contain her squeals when she caught sight of Peter and Harley. It failed, and she accidentally hit Tony’s ear with her shoulder, making him sit up, looking in the direction she was looking at, and promptly began squealing too, which triggered everyone to first look at Tony, and then at Peter and Harley, and then start squealing like crazy.

Peter blushed and buried his head in Harley’s shoulder, wishing for this moment to end. His wish didn’t come true, because after ten seconds, the team still hadn’t stopped, and even the other teens were looking at them, laughing their heads off, still laughing their heads off, but then at Peter being the center of attention, which they knew embarrassed him a lot.

Harley was laughing too, and Peter, ears still red as a tomato, punched him gently on the chest as if to say, ‘traitor’, after which Harley just started laughing more.

‘So you finally realized you guys are adorable together, huh?’ Tony said loudly, shushing Pepper as she halfheartedly tried to stop him.

‘Wh- what? Why? Dad!’ Peter exclaimed, head shooting up from where it was still lying on Harley’s shoulder.

‘Well I’m sorry kid, but a blind fucking bird,’ Bucky shot a smirk at Sam, who glared, ‘could see that you two are practically a couple already,’ he honest to the gods giggled. ‘I’ll give you each a batch of cookies if you stop dancing around the truth.’

‘Yeah!’ Loki said, looking only slightly tipsy. ‘I knew from the beginning that you liked each other,’ she said, making exaggerated jabs at the both of them with her hands, sloshing her mead around in her glass before knocking it all back.

‘Peter, the amount of times you’ve whined about your crush to us has made me half deaf, I swear,’ Natasha smirked.

‘And Potato Boy, the amount of whining you’ve done to me has made it clear that I never should’ve introduced you two,’ Tony sniggered, making dramatic swooning noises.

‘Alright, I think that’s enough of that. This is our business, not yours. Now watch out before I wake all of you up in the middle of the night with an airhorn positioned directly next to your ear. Don't test me on this.' Harley actually sounded heavily annoyed, uncomfortable, and actually angry enough to do what he'd threatened to.

Peter stood up, and stormed out of the room, ears burning.

Chapter Text

After the rather dramatic way he stormed off, Peter went to his room to lowkey have a mental breakdown. Very lowkey though, nothing to see here. He just felt very much betrayed at not having the chance to tell Harley what he felt in his own time, on his own terms. He loved his family, but they had no sense of boundaries, and they had crossed several lines.

While barely having had the time to contemplate how betrayed he felt by his family, let alone having the time to think about how disgusted Harley probably felt, he heard the door to his room open, and, rather than see who it was, he stayed on the ceiling in the corner, having practically rolled himself into a weighted blanket, to help with the mental breakdown.

‘Tony, I don’t wanna talk about it. You weren’t even drunk and you couldn’t hold your tongue,’ Peter sniffed.

‘Sweetheart, I’m hopin’ I don’t sound or look that much like the old man yet,’ Harley joked tentatively. ‘I wanted to see if you were okay, and since you’re probably not, I wanted to talk it through with you so you’d at least stop freaking out about it. Also I have a plan for tomorrow to get everyone back, but you need to be calm enough to pitch in with more evil schemes or I’m not telling you.’

Peter turned around, face burning as he looked at Harley. ‘I’m really sorry for this all,’ he said, the sobs becoming more prominent again. ‘I mean, I’m thrilled that you like me, because I really like you and I wanted to tell you this weekend but they just said it for me and now you probably think I’m weak for not being able to tell you myself even though I’m Spider-Man and I came out to the team so I should be strong enough and-’

Peter jumped off the ceiling, landing on the ground and promptly sagging over because of the sobs wracking his body. Harley caught him and took him to sit down on his bed, letting Peter cry into his chest. After a while the sobs subsided and Peter sniffed, wiping his nose on his sleeve, then promptly wiping it on a tissue from the tissue box on his nightstand. He leaned into Harley, feeling tired, thirsty, angry, embarrassed, and a whole range of other things he didn’t even know he could feel.

‘Darlin’, I am so, so sorry for how this all went. I’m upset at them too. I promise you, I could never think of you as weak. You went through hell and back, mentally and physically, and you’re still here. You’re still the strongest person I know, and just because you can’t always be strong doesn’t mean you aren’t. It’s okay to not be okay, you do know that, right?’ Harley gave Peter a little squeeze.

‘I know, but sometimes I just get these doubts, you know? Like, I know it’s the anxiety, and don’t worry I still go to therapy every week, but I can’t seem to get rid of the doubts. Whenever I start to spiral they show up, and I’m sick of it. I just wanna be able to think normally, to not think like the worst thing is always going to happen. I’m done!’ Peter stood up abruptly and started pacing the entirety of the room, walls and ceiling included.

‘I asked them not to do this! They know I am specific about boundaries, and they could’ve guessed how I felt about this, but no! You open your mouth about someone’s feelings claiming it was for their own good and suddenly they’re supposed to be okay with it! I’m gonna ignore them for a week. Ooh, or I’ll simply use all the dirt I have on everyone and tell the others. They shouldn’t mind, they did it to me first!’

In a few sentences, Peter had gone through ranting about how he was done with his anxiety, how inconsiderate the team had been, and how to get them back, without stopping for breath.

‘Pete, I’m gonna have to remind you to keep breathing through this rant, aren’t I?’ Harley asked, starting to feel better as he saw Peter working himself up about the entire situation, feeling glad that he at least had Peter’s evil genius in his corner for when they got to the scheming part of their evening.

‘Maybe,’ Peter said petulantly, sitting down on the bed again. Harley stood up and walked straight to one of the Secret Chocolate Hiding Places, grabbed a bar of chocolate, and sat back down on the bed. He broke off a piece and gave it to Peter, who took it and started taking small bites.

‘Peter, I know that they didn’t mean to do this. They did, but they didn’t mean to. But I also know that they’ve crossed a line, and I think I have a great way of getting back at them, but before we do that, I think we have to address the rainbow colored elephant in the room,’ Harley said, clasping his hands over his knees, staring resolutely at the ground.

‘As you’re still calming down and eating chocolate, I wanna go first. Pete, I really, really like you. And if I’m being honest, I wanna start seeing you. And I’m not sure if you’re ready for that, but even if you aren’t, I’ll be here as a friend. I’ll always be here as a friend.’

Peter swallowed the last of his chocolate, which, true to the undying words of Remus Lupin, made him feel better.

‘Harls, I really, really like you too. And I am sorry that you had to find out like this, even though you probably already knew because of the team having no sense of boundaries. And I wanna start seeing you too. Actually, I was so nervous about you coming to stay over and having to sleep here too that I panic-cleaned. Not sure if that’s an accurate term for stressing out to the point of chaotic cleaning, but it’s what I did. And I’m really not sure about how we’re gonna do any of this, but I do know that I want to. So, will you go out with me sometime?’ Peter’s heart was beating way too loudly and he thought that, even with Harley’s normal hearing compared to Peter’s enhanced hearing, Harley could hear it beating in his chest.

Harley smiled, looking up from the ground to stare into Peter’s eyes. ‘I’d love that.’

Peter didn’t really know who initiated it, but suddenly he was hugging Harley tightly, and even if the weighted blanket hadn’t been able to calm him down, this did.

Through unconscious conversation powers that they suddenly got by becoming a couple, they shifted until they were lying down, Peter’s ear resting on Harley’s chest, hearing the faint thumping of Harley’s heart, which seemed to be going faster than usual. After a few moments of silence, Peter scratched his throat, the sound bouncing around in the room.

‘So. the plan to get the team back. Does it involve waking them up at ungodly hours, through any means like airhorns, screaming children, and the fire alarm?’

Harley smirked. ‘Oh definitely. In fact, I think we can even enlist Friday’s help, Friday?’

‘Yes Potato-Boy?’ the AI sounded amused as if she’d heard the beginnings of their evil scheme. Or, as evil as Spider-Man was ever going to get.

‘Can you help us with something please?’

‘Oh definitely.’ And Peter could hear the smirk in the AI’s voice.

‘Splendid.’

The teens untangled themselves and relocated to Peter’s desk, which had a lot of organizational baskets which were completely empty, in contradiction to the desk itself, which was cluttered beyond belief. Peter pulled out a StarkPad from under a stack of papers that looked concernedly important, but he ignored them in favor of looking at the StarkPad and starting tapping away at it. After opening his notes, which had about 14 different folders called “to-do” and opening a new one, he started typing at the speed of light.

1. Set alarm for when the kids wake up so we wake up too
2. Find air horns
3. Get Friday to dampen the sounds of the air horns in different rooms.
4. Figure out how to set off the fire alarm (in case of emergency, start a fire)
5. Let The Chaos Ensue

‘Anything I forgot?’ Peter looked at Harley, who had positioned himself on the stack of important papers.

‘Not that I’m aware of. Now, send a text to someone from the gang to say that we’re going to sleep, and to not wake us up. And Friday?’ Harley looked up at the ceiling. ‘Can you make sure no one can enter this room until around noon tomorrow?’

‘Yes Potato-Boy.’

‘And now we get ready for bed, because I can tell you want to sleep. Oh, is it okay for you if we sleep in the same bed?’ Harley looked vaguely panicky. ‘I mean, I do like you in that way,’ he glanced at Peter, cheeks reddening, ‘but your bed is gigantic, and it’s not like we can go outside to ask for another mattress. Also, it’s funny to think of Tony going crazy about us doing it already. Let’s just be intentionally vague about this, okay?’

Peter laughed, making Harley chuckle in response. ‘Yeah of course, my bed is very big anyways.’

They got ready for bed, brushing their teeth, changing to their pajamas (they both turned around until they were both done with changing, with equally huge amounts of blushing) and falling onto the bed from either side, quickly crawling under the covers against the cold from the room.

Peter thought about it for a while, and then, in a bold moment, shoved himself to Harley’s side, lifting Harley’s arm, that had gone limp with surprise, and tucked himself into Harley’s chest, letting his arm fall again and snuggling to his chest.

Harley’s surprise quickly turned into a soft smile, and he pressed a kiss to Peter’s temple as he whispered, ‘good night, Pete.’

Peter smiled and returned the words through a big yawn, and before he knew it, the warmth radiating off of Harley sent him straight into a wonderful dream.

Chapter Text

Peter woke up with a start, hearing the alarm go off. He sat up in bed, snorting at Harley, who was lying next to him with his arms somehow under and over the pillow with his mouth wide open and snoring like a chainsaw.

He shook his new partner -romantically and in crime- awake, who just muttered, ‘a few more minutes, mom.’ and went straight back to snoring.

‘Harls? Dude, wake up, I can’t even hear myself losing the will to live with this noise,’ Peter said loudly, making Harley glare at Peter through his eyelashes.

‘Somehow I feel like this is not gonna be the only time I’m shaken awake by a pretty boy who needs me to get up immediately,’ he whined dramatically, squinting angrily at the light that Peter turned on.

‘You look like an angry kitten.’ Came the response by said pretty boy.

Peter picked up a bundle of clothes from the chair he dumped them on the night before and went into the bathroom. Not even five minutes later he came out, dressed and freshened up to face the day and the hellions that he was going to make regret their life decisions.

Harley was still lying in bed though, seemingly having gone back to sleep during the time Peter was in the bathroom.

Peter strode over and yanked Harley’s pillow out from under his head. Harley’s head hit the mattress with an audible oomph and Harley sat up, rolling up the blanket and hugging it to his chest for the moral support Peter wasn’t giving him through his difficult times, which he told Peter, who just snorted at him.

‘Harley we have to make some people regret the fact they were ever born as such little bitches, I have no time for the mess you call your hair or your moodiness in the morning,’ he said cheerfully, going to his StarkPad and checking everything he had to get ready.

‘Okay, I’ll go to Uncle Steve and Uncle Bucky’s room, Auntie Nat’s room, Thor and Bruce’s room, and mom and dad’s room with an airhorn and silly string. You’ll go to Loki’s room, Sam’s room, and Wanda’s room with your airhorn and silly string, and you’ll recruit the kids to help with kidnapping Clint and putting him in the spare room of which we’ll make sure to close the vents properly, lock the door, and play the rickroll on repeat through Friday’s generous help. Then, we all lock them in their rooms and only let them out when we set the fire alarm off on this floor and make them go to the place where we’ll start the fire, which is the living room in case you forgot, and lock them in there to tell them off about their behavior. Clint’ll probably show up late, but that’s because he really does not hold his alcohol at all. Oh and do try to let Laura sleep, she went to bed at the same time as the kids and I don’t want her to be angry at me, she’s much nicer than Clint.’

Harley seemed much more awake, and after pulling his shirt over his incredibly messy hair he nodded solemnly.

‘Fri, where’re the kids? Tell them to come to the living room and that I need their help for compensation in the form of food,’ Harley told the ceiling.

‘Of course. Would you like me to lock the doors of the rooms you’ve been in with your airhorns and silly string?’

‘Thanks Fri, that’s very thoughtful of you,’ Peter grinned.

Harley turned to the desk, grabbed his airhorn and silly string cans, of which there were more than strictly necessary for a teenager’s room (the appropriate amount was 3 to 4, and Peter had about 16).

Peter grabbed his too and they set off through the dark tower, smirking. They entered the living room and the children were already there, fighting on the couch for a spot in the corner. They looked up as Peter and Harley entered and immediately stopped, except for Lila, who pushed Nathaniel one last time and claimed the corner of the couch with a victorious smile. Harley shot her a smile, and she settled down.

‘Alright, listen up kids, I have something important you need to help me with. I want you to help me kidnap Clint and put him in the spare room so that he’s forced to listen to anything you want him to listen to.’

Cooper raised his hand politely. ‘Do you mean our dad?’

Harley nodded.

‘Cool! I‘m in! Don’t know how much help Little Nat will be, but I’ll do my best. How will we do it?’

Nathaniel crossed his arms at being called Little Nat -he always wanted to just be Nat but he knew that that was a title reserved for his godmother- and frowned.

‘Well, it’s probably best that you do it quickly and quietly, to make sure that your mother doesn’t wake up, and then all you need to do is make sure he can’t make noise and duct tape him to a chair in the spare room. Harley will help though, so it can’t be too hard, can it?’

The kids nodded enthusiastically, after which they went back to fighting over the corner of the couch.

Peter turned to Harley. ‘I’m gonna start, will you take the kids with you and start the plan? Hopefully we’ll have everyone woken up around the same time, that way, when we start the fire, they’ll all be awake. And don’t worry, I’ve got the fire stuff. It’s just gonna burn enough to make the alarm go off and then it’ll go out leaving behind zero residue,’ Peter smiled.

Harley nodded. ‘I’m gonna take the kids to steal Clint now, good luck.’ Harley kissed Peter’s cheek and turned to the kids.

Peter felt his ears heat up once more, and turned on his heel to leave the room, only hearing a bit of Harley’s conversation to the kids, ‘okay guys, we have to steal your dad, but to do that we have to play the quiet game, ‘kay?’

Peter thought of who to annoy first, and decided on Bruce and Thor. They were probably sleeping quite deeply, and if he played it right, at least one of them would fall off the bed. He walked towards their room, never having been as thankful for the soft carpet under his feet than right now.

He opened the door quietly, now also being thankful for the doors that never squeaked in the penthouse, and saw the couple sleeping on the bed, still in their clothes of yesterday evening, with Thor apparently only thinking of putting Mjölnir on the bedside table before falling into bed.

Peter crept into the room, shutting the door behind him, and walked over to the wall that the bed stood against, stepping onto it, positioning himself directly above Thor’s ear. He blew the airhorn, and both Bruce and Thor’s eyes shot open and immediately caught sight of Peter grinning devilishly down at them before spraying them both in the face with silly string. The two sat up in bed, massaging their heads and getting the silly string out of their faces. Bruce looked at the clock on the wall and saw that it was only 5 am, and flopped back down, glaring at Peter, who was still smirking.

‘Why,’ Bruce groaned, making Thor shush him loudly, hands on his temples.

Peter just walked to the door via the ceiling and jumped down, making sure to land extra hard on his feet, making Bruce and Thor wince.

One down, three to go.

He crept through the hall, going straight for his Uncles Bucky and Steve. They had both been completely wasted, so here was to hoping they hadn’t done anything… untoward. He wasn’t planning on seeing anything that would make him want to bleach his eyes. Doing a speedy little prayer for good luck, he opened the door quietly, sneaking inside and immediately scanning if they still had their clothes on and if there were any weapons near them. Luckily and sadly, the answer to both of those questions was a yes.

Steve was lying sideways on the bed, while Bucky had curled up on the corner closest to Steve’s chest, which he was using as a pillow. As a result, the knife and gun that were under their actual pillows, were relatively easy to grab and tuck into his pockets. The last thing he wanted was for a relatively harmless prank to go as horribly sideways as it would probably go if they had any weapons near them. They also didn’t have any on them, he realized. Probably because they didn’t go anywhere yesterday.

Peter walked onto the ceiling, standing upside down on the ceiling, arm stretched out to position the airhorn directly between the two old men’s ears. He blew it, and immediately, they both shot out of bed, looking around for the source of the sound. Bucky looked at the ceiling and huffed, clutching his head with both arms and gingerly lying back down.

‘What do you want you filthy son of a-’

‘Uh-uh, Uncle Buck, c’mon now, language. I thought, since you’re Language Man’s husband, you’d have a better vocabulary than that.’

‘Kid, I agree with Buck. what the fuck do you want, you filthy son of a bitch,’ Steve deadpanned, making him blow the airhorn again.

‘Kid! Stop that will you, I’ve gotten this far without considerable hearing damage and I’m not gonna start now,’ Bucky whined, grabbing the two pillows, throwing one at Peter that missed the Spider-Child with a wide arc, and putting the other one over his head.

‘If you don’t keep Capsicle in line I’ll have no option than to do that again,’ Peter warned. ‘Also, I don’t owe you an explanation for anything.’ Then he remembered he also had the silly string.

He jumped down loudly, making the oldest of couples wince again, and sprayed Steve in the face with the silly string, turned around, and attacked Bucky with it too. He then ran toward the door, wrenched it open, flung himself into the hallway, and closed the door with the quietest snap he could manage.

Only two left. He briefly considered going to his parents’ room, but then decided that, since they were the start of all the cooing over him and Harley yesterday, they deserved to be last, and worst. So he started walking towards Aunt Nat.

He decided to listen at the door first, because Aunt Nat was notorious for not having a sleep schedule. It was part of why she was so hard to catch. But, since she’d also consumed the spicy juice, she would probably still be sleeping it off. He didn’t hear anything, so he took that as a good sign. He did a quick prayer though, because for all he knew, Aunt Nat was just stretching quietly or something, and then he’d have to deal with her anger for trying to sneak into her room.

He opened her door and she was lying in her bed, looking like she managed to get into bed after actually changing to her sleeping attire, which was impressive considering all of the others so far had been sleeping in their clothes from the night before.

He walked onto the ceiling, keeping to the side, so that if Nat woke up she wouldn’t immediately notice him. He stretched to position the airhorn next to her ear, and wishing for the best, he blew it. She shot up and looked around trying to locate the source of the noise. When her eyes fell on Peter she groaned, flopping back onto the bed.

‘I am so incredibly tired and headachy that I won’t yell at you for this, because I know I did bad shit but fuck, little spider, I was expecting it to happen after I got a respectable amount of sleep so I could be functioning in the day, but now it seems like I can’t do anything productive and have no other option than to spend a day with my favorite nephew in order to try and earn his forgiveness. And, of course, if he could tell me what happened after him and his crush went to his room and stayed there the entire night, I might give him some of Bucky’s triple chocolate cookies that I know are his favorite,’ she grinned up at him, equal parts apologizing smile and smirk because he was gonna have to spill the tea about him and Harley, and mischievous smirk (which was definitely a different type of smirk) for bribing him in the same breath as her apology was.

Peter dropped down from the ceiling and shook her hand. ‘Deal on all accounts. But, you must also know that I have been holding a can of silly string and, I’m reasonably sure, that you also know it’s just not right to leave without using it on you too. The others got it too, don’t worry.’

She nodded with a, ‘do your worst.’ and closed her eyes, accepting her fate. Peter pointed the can at her and sprayed it at her until it was empty. She grinned through the silly string, giving him a thumbs up, and after hurriedly saying bye to her he left.

Luckily, he had another can of silly string in the front pocket of hoodie, and he was definitely planning on emptying it on his parents, because out of everyone that hurt him, them being part of that stung the most.

He was leisurely strolling to the last room when he saw Harley crossing the hall from what seemed to be Loki’s room to Sam’s with a shit-eating grin on his face, which turned more sweet and sincere when Harley caught sight of Peter, redirecting to the little shit that you’d probably only vaguely expect to concoct an evil plan like this.

‘Hi darlin’. Clint was so shocked that he didn’t really do much except say that all of his kids were disowned and that their dog was the sole heir of his fortune? Which I’m pretty sure they don’t have, but don’t tell the kids that. And then as I left I gave the kids the tv remote and I saw them starting to force Clint to watch vines, so I can only assume Clint has been crying through the vines for a long while now. Wanda fell out of her bed after I sounded the airhorn next to her ear, and then told me her headache was too big for magic and that I should run while I still could, for which I sprayed her in the face with silly string and ran. And Loki was so wasted that they actually slept through the airhorn. But when I started spraying them with silly string they sprung up like a kitten in water, it was amazing. I hope Friday took pictures. How did it go with you?’

Peter smiled at Harley, leaning against the wall now that they were apparently going to talk for a bit before going to the last rooms.

‘It went incredibly well, no one bothered to get up out of bed because they were so tired, but Aunt Nat did say that she was going to spend today with me, partly so I could dish about you and me,’ Peter’s ears turned red, which was the biggest form of betrayal those stupid organic hearing aids could ever do, ‘and partly because she wanted to deserve my forgiveness rather than just get it, and I’m getting chocolate chip cookies from Uncle Bucky out of it, so I should be okay.’

‘Okay, after we’ve both done the last rooms we’re gonna meet up in the living room, alright? If it all works out we’ll have enough time to make the fire.’ they both looked at each other with equally evil arson-hell-yeah smiles before they set off.

Peter opened the door of his parents’ bedroom and closed it quietly behind him, then quickly turned around and debated on how he should get this all done. As he walked onto the ceiling, he grabbed the new can of silly string and the airhorn, walking over to where Tony and Pepper’s ears were closest to each other before sounding the airhorn, making Tony only vaguely go ‘whuzzit?’ while Pepper opened her eyes immediately, scouring the dark room for signs of danger. When her eyes locked on Peter’s, he noticed hers were an attractive shade of shame with a few drops of anger for the lack of peaceful sleep.

‘Peter, I get why you’re doing this, but really?’

Peter just smirked. ‘Yes.’

Then he dropped down and released the hell of silly string into his dad’s face, while opting to go for the top of the head for Pepper, which both worked wonders, as his dad was now unable to breathe through his nose and woke up rather quickly because of it, and Pepper just grumbled over how she’d have to wash her hair again, and Peter didn’t stop until the last bits of silly string were sitting daintily upon his dads chin, from where he was still lying down, only considerably more awake.

‘That is for embarrassing me and Harley and making me run off and feel even more embarrassed and humiliated than before. Also, I’ve always wanted to do that, and now I have. Bye.’

And before Pepper or Tony could say another word, he ran out of the room, accidentally slamming it behind him as he didn’t break his stride toward the living room.

Chapter Text

When he entered the living room, Harley was already there with a grin on his face.

‘Hiya Petey-Pie, you gonna set something on fire now? I bet you look hot committing arson.’

‘Hi Harls,’ Peter said, definitely not blushing, ‘I am in fact, going to set something on fire, and I am going to look damn hot doing it.’

Harley sat down and pulled out his phone, putting his feet on the couch as he replied, ‘damn right you are. I’ll be here if you need anything.’

Peter snorted and rolled his eyes simultaneously, saying, ‘Gee thanks, mom. Really needed that.’ before turning back around and grabbing his lighter. It was a Spider-Man one, which Ned had given to him as a joke.

He put on a special glove made for handling extreme temperatures, which he got after trying to make flammable webs without gloves and nearly burned his hands off, grabbed the tiny block of wood he was going to set on fire, put his hands near the smoke detector for ultimate smoke detection, and lit the wood aflame.

He wafted it around under the smoke detector, and after a few seconds, the alarm started beeping. Wincing slightly at the sound, he continued to waft the smoke towards the smoke detector before the little block was gone and the fire and smoke stopped.

‘Friday?’ Peter asked the ceiling as he deposited the ash in the trash can, pulling his glove off and cleaning it the best he could.. ‘Can you let Clint go and send him to us? Just tell him we’re the ones that orchestrated his “abduction” and he‘ll come here as fast as his legs can carry him.’

‘Of course, Peter.’

‘And now we wait,’ Harley said, grin evident in his voice. He sat back, slouching on the couch as Peter petulantly sat on the table, waiting for the “adults” to come in and try to give them a talking to.

It didn’t take long for Steve to rush into the room, and although he had his shield with him, the fact that he’d changed out of the clothes that probably smelled like booze and was now wearing Captain America sweatpants with a hoodie that had the left arm look like Bucky’s, he looked rather ridiculous, and Peter and Harley wasted no time laughing at him while he crossed his arms and tried to do his best Serious Face.

Just as they thought they were done laughing, Thor, Sam and Wanda walked in with confused faces as they heard both the smoke alarm and Harley and Peter dying of laughter. Sam gave a little chuckle at Steve’s outfit but looked around the room to see if there was anything on fire. Peter stopped laughing as the rest of the team trickled in. He stood up, motioned for Harley to do so as well, and turned to the team, face becoming uncharacteristically serious.

Before he could start his speech, Clint burst into the room, exuding maximum levels of manic energy as his eyes locked onto Harley and Peter and he strode up to them. Peter had temporarily forgotten that Clint used to be a spy and could be quite terrifying when he wanted to be.

He grabbed a shoulder from both Peter and Harley, squishing them together as he shook them back and forth.

‘WHY DID YOU DO THAT TO ME.’

Harley snorted. ‘Why? What happened to you, old man.’

‘I GOT SHOWN VINES AND WHEN THEY FINALLY STOPPED THEY MADE ME LISTEN TO NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP ON LOOP AND NOW I HAVE BEEN TRAUMATIZED. I AM HORRIFIED AND I REFUSE TO GET MY KIDS ELECTRONICS EVER AGAIN.’

Natasha walked up to Clint, grabbing him by the shoulders, and pulling him away from the two teenagers, who were busy laughing because he still had his hands stretched out to them, probably wishing he could’ve been shaking them more until their brains finally shifted enough to make them regret what they had done to him.

‘Clint, we would like you to know that we have no regrets,’ Harley said, looking at Clint with an innocent look in his eyes. Peter snorted and nodded his agreement. ‘And Petey-Pie? Maybe you should start before everyone leaves again.’

‘Good point Harls. So. You must all wonder why I’ve gathered you here today.’

The team burst out in noises of annoyance and shock at Peter’s willingness to commit arson, and Peter continued over the noises of disapproval (or, in Loki’s case, approval).

‘Something happened yesterday that caused me to have a panic attack. And while I was very lucky that Harley was there to comfort me,’ Peter blindly grabbed Harley’s hand for support, a movement that did not go unnoticed by many of the eyes fixed on Peter, ‘I was still very much distressed, and I know you all know what I’m talking about, because it was wholly and entirely your fault.’

He turned to Harley. ‘Except for you, Harley, you’re an angel and we’re all thrilled you’re here. Also you already apologized and the rest didn’t so you don’t have to feel my wrath.’

Turning back to the team, he opened his mouth to continue his speech, but was interrupted by Tony.

‘Kid,’ he sighed, ‘did you just commit arson because you wanted to lecture us?’

Peter didn’t look chastised, and instead looked his adoptive annoyance defiantly in his eyes and replied, ‘yes.’

Nat cracked up, which made Tony turn his chastising stare at her, while she just continued to laugh.

‘Oh come on, Tony, this just further proves he’s your kid,’ she said, laughing again as Peter sputtered an objection, ‘and it was kind of justified here, what with us being dickheads about everything that happened yesterday.’ she looked apologetically at Peter, which he appreciated.

‘Thank you, Nat. Now, jokes aside, the reason I wanted to speak to you all was that I was genuinely hurt. Harley and I have gotten together,’ he said, to wolf-whistling from Sam and Bucky, ‘but, I really hate that we got together while I was emotionally exhausted, having a panic attack, and thinking he and everyone here hates me, so I’m expecting a 500 word essay on how sorry you are, how you’ll never do it again, and ways I can be expecting the love Harley tried to tell me you all feel for me,’ he sniffed a bit, trying and failing to keep his eyes from watering, through the light joke he tried to make, ‘and maybe something like chocolate or something, because I really like chocolate.’

The room was quiet, realizing just now how badly this had actually affected Peter, and hearing how bad his anxiety really was made everyone take a step closer, as if to give him a group hug (he’d had one exactly once before, and still had sudden cringe attacks when he thought of it).

Steve was, expectedly, the first one who spoke up. ‘Peter, I’m so sorry we didn’t realize how bad this was for you. We all thought it was just a funny joke, but I can see that we were terribly off. I’m sorry. If you really want me to write you an essay I would, and I didn’t do essays when I was in school, so that says a lot,’ Steve said, giving Peter the most sheepish and ashamed puppy eyes Peter had ever seen.

Bucky followed up. ‘Yeah kid, we didn’t know your anxiety was so bad. We should’ve realized it was a shitty prank anyways. I promise we really do love you, even if it might take you a while to believe it. We’ll be waiting. Also I am absolutely getting the play-by-play on how you two finally got together. I get dibs on the first recounting.’

Peter giggled. ‘Okay, I’ll trade you the dibs for some baked goods, how’s that, Uncle Bucky?’

‘I accept your deal, Spider-Boy,’ Bucky smiled.

‘I’m sorry Pete, I’ll make my famous pancakes tonight, as a sorry for what happened. Also, I will have nightmares over getting abducted by my own kids and being forced to watch vines. Lucky the Pizza Dog gets my entire fortune when I die, no regrets.’

‘I’m sorry, Peter. I was far more wasted than I thought possible before, though I wholly deny that it has anything to do with me. It’s the bloody game we played yesterday evening, not my fault this entire bunch thinks of rather tame things to say like “never have I ever stolen something” and “never have I ever thought of overthrowing a government” and think I would not be incredibly intoxicated at the end of it,’ Loki said to Peter, walking over and giving him a quick hug that the rest pretended not to see and then walking straight out the door.

‘Love you too, Loki,’ Peter yelled after them.

The rest of the team started to disperse, most probably going back to sleep or grabbing breakfast.

‘Peter?’

Peter turned to Tony. While he did know Tony hadn’t left the room with the others, Peter had assumed that he was going to stay in the living room doing… something, but apparently he wanted to talk to Peter.

‘Yeah? What is it, dad?’

Tony had an expression on his face Peter knew all too well. Guilt. He had seen it on Tony’s face when he first told Peter they were going to house the Avengers once more. The guilt of having broken up the team in the first place, while Peter knew he did his utmost best to keep it together, still gnawed at him sometimes.

'Can we talk?'

Peter nodded. Tony sat down on the couch and motioned for Peter to do the same.

'Kiddo, I'm really sorry for what happened. I should've known that even though Harley ran after you, you should've gotten an apology that night. I wasn't even drunk, but somehow I didn't realize that I should've gone after you like Harley did. He's already done better by you than I have in my entire time knowing you,' Tony said, bowing his head.

Peter stopped to think. He hadn't really felt like he needed Tony when it happened, but now that he actually tried to go through his thoughts and feelings -something his therapist had taught him- he realized that he did miss Tony there that night, even though he would never have wanted what happened with Harley to ever be reversed.

'Tony?'

Tony's head shot up. It had been a while since Peter called him Tony, and it was usually reserved for serious conversation, or to reprimand him, which happened way more often than Tony would've liked. Peter had definitely grown close with Pepper.

'I really wanted you there that evening. And it did hurt that you didn't show up. I get that it was a mistake, and that everyone makes mistakes, but I thought you'd know me better than that,' Peter rushed out, eyes trained on a magazine on the table, reading the same word over and over again.

Tony nodded, eyes watering ever so slightly. ‘Kid, I’m really sorry that I wasn’t there. I know saying I’m sorry won’t change a lot, but I really mean it. I know that I’ll need to earn your forgiveness and I’ll do whatever you want for it. How can I fix it?’

Peter’s eyes filled with tears. He never meant to make Tony feel like shit, but he supposed that Tony never meant to make Peter feel like shit. He turned to Tony and gave him a bone crushing hug. It probably was, what with Peter’s superstrength, but Tony didn’t complain. Instead, Tony just wrapped his arms around his son, hands rubbing calming circles on his back.

Maybe it was a good thing that Peter couldn’t see his face, Tony mused vaguely, because Peter would probably look very shocked at the tears on his face. As it was, Peter’s body was already lightly racking with sobs, and Tony thought that those tears were enough for Peter to handle.

'I just want you to be there for me, dad. I don't need you to do anything special, just… be there for me, okay?'

Tony nodded, the lump in his throat leaving him unable to speak.

Tony held Peter until his sobs had turned to sniffles. Tony cleared his throat, drawing back just far enough to look Peter in the eyes.

'What do you say to some food, huh? I can whip up a smoothie if you'd like?'

Peter's head shot up. Tony wasn't trusted to cook an egg, but his smoothies were to die for. Peter nodded, a small smile appearing on his face.

'Jolly good!' Tony exclaimed in his best British accent. He got up from the couch and offered his hand to Peter, bowing like a butler. Peter giggled and took his hand. Tony smiled softly, and they took off to the kitchen to put all of their fruit in their abomination of a smoothie.

Chapter Text

After the best smoothie he had ever had, Peter went to Natasha and Bucky and asked them if they wanted to spar. Knowing that he was going to spill about Harley, Nat quickly got up from where she had been sitting on the couch scrolling through her phone, poking Bucky in the shoulder from where he was draped over another couch with his head on Steve’s shoulder and reading the Hobbit over his partner’s shoulder.

They went down to the training room, which Peter always joked was more of a gymnasium on steroids than an actual training room. The reason he said that was because the floor had bumps on it, making it a rougher terrain. There were climbing routes all over the walls, and even over the ceiling. Those were mostly for Peter, but sometimes Steve or Thor would try to get as far as they could with them.

But that wasn’t all. There were also multiple racks with different arrays of weapons, some made with different materials to prepare for lighter or heavier weapons they may come across in battle, and on the wall next to the elevator doors was an array of buttons neatly labeled with stuff like “moving terrain, walls and floor” and “flying weapons, arrows only”. The buttons couldn’t get accidentally pressed though, as the elevator doors and the buttons were protected by a wall of thick glass, so anyone who came into the room didn’t immediately get knocked out by flying projectiles or heroes (Thor and the Hulk sometimes threw people around the room, but that usually only happened as a last resort when they were severely losing).

Next to the elevator there were doors leading to the changing room, where each hero had their own locker, and where there was another mysterious hamper that zoomed when you threw some clothes in there, as well as a drink fountain.

They were just done changing into their workout clothes (Peter eternally grateful for MJ’s idea of wearing tight shorts and a tank top under his regular clothes for when he had to do an impromptu fight to prepare for) when Bucky began.

‘So, Pete. We know you want to talk about you and Harley more than really work out. But you’re here now. So let’s make this a three person fight. You okay with that?’

Peter nodded, and Natasha, Bucky and him quickly got into position in the middle of the room. As no one else was currently training they decided to make it an all out fight, training to use the terrain and all the weapons they could fight.

‘Three, two, one, go!’ Peter shouted, and immediately he got punched in the side by Bucky.

‘So, after I dramatically stormed off, I was sitting in the corner of the ceiling with my weighted blanket and I heard the door open. I thought that it was Tony, so I said something about being hurt by him and you all bla bla bla, and then Harley made a joke about how he hoped he didn’t sound that much like the “old man” yet,’ Peter said as he ducked two blows from Natasha and landed one on Bucky.

‘We were right, it is adorable,’ Natasha said, grunting when Peter swung at her side and immediately webbed away.

‘Anyway, I told him that I thought he must’ve thought I was weak because you guys told him that I liked him for me so then I came down from the ceiling and started crying on my bed while Harley hugged me.’ Peter swung around a kick from Bucky and landed on the ceiling to give himself a slight reprieve and, more importantly, web some of the weapons to him, and let others stick to the carts they were on.

Bucky kicked Natasha in the stomach, throwing her several feet away. He mock-fainted at Peter, making Peter smile mischievously and web his hand to his face, to which Bucky groaned in complaint.

‘After I stopped crying too much to breathe properly, I started talking about the Doubts, the anxiety induced ones, that make me think I’m in the me version of the Truman Show and you all are actors and there’s a camera on me always and everything I do is recorded and laughed at because I’m an idiot who couldn’t even see a foot in front of my face before I got stabbed by a spider’s teeth!’

At that, both Bucky and Natasha looked up at where he was still situated on the ceiling above them. He pulled his mask away from his face so Bucky and Nat could see the weak smile he gave them. All of the sudden, he webbed them up. He did it so quickly that they couldn’t do much else other than just gape at him in shock as they were stuck to each other.

‘Peter, this is very mean and very good and I’m not sure whether to give you a hug or ruffle your hair in the way that you annoy so much,’ Nat said, ‘and I’m pretty sure I’m gonna do both because you deserve both in equal amounts.’

‘Peter, next time something bad happens to you I don’t wanna hear the full story anymore. This shit was too sad and I’m not crying, there’s just something in my eye,’ Bucky sniffled, trying to mask the pain in his voice at the realization of what they’d done to his favorite nephew. ‘Also good job on beating us. I’m never gonna fight you when you’re telling a sad story again.’

Peter jumped down from the ceiling. He grabbed a spray bottle that was in his locker, and cleaned the webs off of his aunt and uncle. Since he accidentally got Tony stuck to his door Tony had ordered him to keep some web cleaning stuff in his locker and in his room, so no one would have to experience “the most ungodly amount of time stuck to something in Peter’s room”. Peter had sprayed him in the face for that.

Natasha, true to her word, gave Peter a hug and ruffled his hair at the same time, to which Peter gave an undignified squawk. Bucky gave Peter a really tight hug, making it temporarily difficult to breathe for Peter, and slung his arm over Peter’s shoulder to guide him to the changing room.

They washed up and changed back into their regular clothes. Peter threw water at Natasha to which Bucky started laughing so Natasha threw Bucky on the ground and poured her water bottle out on his head. He shook out his head.

‘Aw man, I was planning on showering tonight, you idiot, not now,’ he complained, shaking out his long hair into Natasha’s face.

‘It’s better if you shower now, I can smell you from across the room,’ she replied easily, drying off her face. She grabbed Peter and sprinted away with him. She opened the lift as quickly as she could and hurried Peter and herself inside. From where Peter stood in the lift he could just see Bucky in the reflection of the protective glass, who was still on the floor, mouth opening just in time to shout ‘hey!’ before the doors closed and Nat jammed her thumb on the button, letting out a victorious whoop before leaning against the wall.

‘Well Pete, I’m gonna grab a smoothie and see how my favorite CEO is doing on this spectacularly bad morning,’ she said. Natasha often went to see if Pepper needed any help with anything or anyone (which was usually Tony).

Peter nodded, selecting a button on the wall. ‘I think I’m gonna go to the Garden. It’s been a while since I’ve been there, and maybe Harley wants to come with me,’ he mused. Natasha gave a smirk and wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.

‘Oh come on, it’s not like that. We need to talk about this morning so we can improve our pranking skills. And I’m pretty sure Loki wants to give me a gift for the prank, so they can come along too. Beware our pranking potential,’ Peter warned, waving goodbye as the doors opened on his floor and he stepped out. Pepper’s office was way up in the -ew- administration part of the building, so he knew Nat had some time left before the lift arrived at her destination.

Peter sent a text to the Tower Terrors group chat, which was, rather appropriately called Queervengers Assemble, to meet him in the Garden.

The Garden was a huge, well, garden. It was in the corner of the building, but it was several storeys high, from the first to 4th floor (because it was easier with the watering of the plants and keeping the aquarium well). It was beautifully made, with a big spiral staircase in the middle, winding around a circular aquarium. The idea that Tony had for the Garden was that when people needed someplace to calm down and take their mind off of their work, they’d go there, since it was scientifically proven that being around plants calmed one down and decreased levels of anxiety, which Tony definitely wanted for his employees.

The Garden was absolutely huge, with vines hanging everywhere, climbing plants winding through the staircase’s railing, intertwining and growing flowers, and small paths winding through the sea of plants. It looked sort of like a big plant explosion happened there, which Peter really liked.

Peter had always felt a natural pull towards the place, and he’d been spending a lot of time there, sitting on the benches, staring at the plants, or even trying to draw them with Steve or MJ, which he definitely sucked at, but at least Steve had the decency to pretend like he was getting better, whereas MJ just told him to practice more if he wanted to get better, to which he would always give a shitty excuse for having too much other, more interesting stuff to do instead.

Peter walked down one of his favorite parts of the Garden. It was the part with the most flowers, and despite not being able to draw them as well as he would like, he did always take some more pictures. Sometimes they ended up on his instagram, but more often than not he just made collages for on his bedroom walls.

Just as Peter had found the prettiest of the Arabian jasmine flowers and was trying to decide the best angle to take the picture on to show off the open petals the best he got scared by Loki, who had turned themself invisible to sneak up on Peter. While he was trying to make his heart rate calm down a bit, he mentally made a note to research why his spidey sense didn’t work when it wasn’t an enemy sneaking up on him.

‘Hello Peter, I saw your text and wanted to congratulate you on successfully pranking the entirety of the Avengers with nothing but air horns, silly strings and a minor, yet excellently executed, misdemeanor with arson. But, next time you’re planning on pranking anyone, I want to help you,’ they said as they moved aside to allow Peter to take a picture of the flower.

‘Thanks Loki, I really appreciate it. Also, please don’t prank people without at least one other person knowing about it, you know how Sam reacted last time you did something in complete secrecy. The entirety of the 31st floor still freaks out when they hear Take On Me, which hurts because it's a great song. Also Sam was so offended that he didn’t speak with you for a week. Which, admittedly, was very funny, but also annoyed the rest of the team very much since he refused to speak when you had that battle and he didn’t wanna talk over the comms because you were on the same line. He almost got captured.’

Loki straightened, smiling at someone behind Peter, hissing at Peter as they walked past him, “I have done it and I will do it again.” before smiling charmingly at Harley, who absentmindedly smiled back, visibly distracted by a very pretty bunch of yellow roses, and Peter walked over as well, giving Harley a half wave.

Before Peter could say another word, someone yelled out “Hey you weird white people!”, to which Peter grinned and turned around just in time to see Shuri walking down the stairs with Cass in tow.

‘So, Cassie and I were thinking, maybe we should do something fun in the lab? Peter, you’ve always wanted to do a science-off? Maybe now’s the time to prove that you’re the second best sciencer in the entire tower. After me, of course,’ she winked at Cassie, who giggled.

‘Of course. I’m glad to show you how it’s done, princess. But we do have to distract the kids. I’m positive Clint will need some time off to process this morning properly. I was thinking we’d make them robots? Or maybe we can do hide and seek and then go to the lab until we’re done with the science-off?’

‘No, we’ll take the kids with us. We can make them robots and afterwards do the science-off. Sound good?’ Harley butted in, having finished admiring the flowers.

‘Good idea. I’ll be the judge,’ Loki said, smiling evilly. Peter hit their arm.

‘No you won’t, you absolute dingleberry. We’ll let the kids decide with you. I won’t lose this science-off just because you want to see me suffer.’

‘Let’s go then,’ Shuri said, ‘but, I wanna see you two lovebirds do a science-off first. Also, I wanna hear all about the prank on our way up. Loki told me some of it, but they stubbornly refused to elaborate any further than the bare minimum, so I am ordering you to tell me everything. I hope you didn’t try to wake me up too, because it wouldn’t have worked anyways. I programmed Friday to ignore every prank order for me, and I locked the door because I had a feeling you two would pull a Shenanigan.’

Peter looked at Harley, shocked that they completely forgot to exact their revenge on Shuri.

Harley was much quicker to react, plastering on a charming smile.’Well, we didn’t want the Wakandan princess upset with us, now did we? We might need that alliance to get a quick getaway if we pull a too big prank.’

As Cassie excitedly began pulling them out of the Garden and into the elevator, Harley shot Peter look that clearly said “we’ll talk about this major mishap later” and immediately continued his conversation with Cassie.

Chapter Text

'Scared, Parker? I'm so gonna win this, because Honey, you've got a big storm comin’.'

'You wish, Keener. You forget that I'm a superhero, I beat guys up on the daily. I can do this with ease.'

'And… start!'

Both boys jumped into movement, haphazardly grabbing things from a wall in Peter's lab that was completely covered in cabinets full of material and tools.

The lab was very big, even coming close to the amount of space Tony reserved for all his suits (which were down in the basement where no one except for Tony could go). It had 3 big tables set out across the room, with numerous rolling chairs around them so Peter didn’t have to take one chair with him to all the different tables (which he still did because he was attached to it, okay). The windowsills were covered in plants of different shapes and sizes, all put in geometrically designed flower pots that Peter loved. Every plant had a little sticker on its pot with a name on it, that Peter carefully chose for each new addition to the plant family.

There was one cabinet that very neatly sorted all the folders of important projects, which were mostly about Avengers stuff. Then there was an entire wall dedicated to things like a 3d printer, boxes and boxes full of material, more tools. There was one box dedicated to bullets, while 2 others were solely dedicated to the equipment of the Avengers, which wasn't quite expected of a 15 year old.

The tabletops were covered with anything ranging from scraps, to half-finished projects, to a pile of empty spray paint bottles, which had been used for a scientific experiment, no matter how much Shuri tried saying otherwise. Blueprints were scattered on the floor of the entire lab, some even lying around the garbage can folded into paper airplanes that Peter didn’t land.

Crowded around one of the tables sat all the kids. Nathaniel was playing with his blue robot, clicking buttons and laughing at all the funny dance moves the robot did, but the rest was intently looking at the science-off between Peter and Harley.

Harley had immediately grabbed an armful of material, and kept piling things on the precariously swaying pile. He grabbed everything he could think of that he'd need and then went back to his table, most of the materials he needed in front of him.

Peter went about it differently. He decided to grab a couple of things at a time and then bring them back to his table. He was assembling his project as he went along, running, in his typical enhanced and teenage self, back to the wall full speed to grab more. It looked like he was assembling a lego kit and had the instructions written in his head.

The entire time Harley and Peter were busy Shuri kept up a stream of commentary, making the kids laugh by saying stuff like “Peter forgets where he left his screwdriver, not knowing it’s in his hand” and “Harley has seemingly stopped doing anything productive in favor of simply staring at his project in vague distress”.

After a very intense science-off, Peter at last set down his screwdriver (Harley had been done for a while by then), and Shuri motioned for everyone to quiet down.

‘Now then,’ she began, ‘on the left here we have contestant Harley. Harley, what have you made for us today?’

‘Well, Shuri,’ Harley said, getting into the theatrics, ‘I have made a little device that you can put in a flowerpot and it regularly checks how the plant is doing, if it needs more sunlight, shade, water, et cetera. Let me demonstrate.’

He walked over to the windowsill, and put the device into the soil of a plant pot that held a pink succulent named Terence, which was one of Peter’s favorites, and clicked a button to start the scan of the plant.

‘This plant needs some more water,’ the device rang out, the voice a little tinny, but very impressive to have made in such a short period of time.

Harley smirked at Peter as he took a watering can from the windowsill and added some water.

‘We ask the jury to judge this device however they prefer, and write down the number they give this project, 1 for really terribly bad, and 10 for absolutely perfect and amazing.’

The kids all looked at the device and a hopeful looking Harley and wrote down their numbers one by one.

‘Now we go over to the other contestant, Peter. Peter, what have you made for us today?’

‘Uh, I. I have made a, uh, a box?’ Peter said, looking really forlorn.

‘You what?’ Shuri asked, perplexed.

‘Well,’ Peter said, ears turning red, eyes cast on the floor, ‘I took one glance at Harley and forgot everything that has ever been in my brain, so now I have a dope box. It lights up, look.’

As Peter pressed a button on the side of the box and it lit up, making the room light up in different colors, he vaguely registered the sound of Harley spluttering as Peter’s sentence came through in his head. Peter pressed another button and the box started hovering.

‘I wanna make it float around, but I haven’t gotten that far with the programming, and I kinda want to make it a really intricate puzzle box that you can open by solving puzzles on different sides of the box, only for there to be something small and stupid inside,’ Peter said, awkwardly scratching his head, trying to keep his eyes on the floor.

Loki was laughing at this point, so Peter stuck out his tongue at them and kept his eyes on the floor. Shuri took the box out of the air, turning it this way and that, nodding approvingly and muttering improvements to herself.

‘I think this has a lot of potential, Peter,’ she said, smiling at him in a way that he knew was supposed to make him feel better about almost definitely losing the contest.

‘Now, fellow members of the jury,’ she went on, ‘please write down the number you give this project.’

They did, and Peter felt a sinking feeling in his stomach at losing this ridiculous little game.

‘Now, please reveal your scores.’

They all turned around their pieces of paper. The mark on the top of the paper was for Harley, the one on the lower half of the paper for Peter.

Loki’s paper said 7 for Harley and 2 for Peter, which Peter was not surprised about at all. Lila’s paper said a 9 for Harley and a 5 for Peter, what -he suspected- was to make him feel better, while Cooper’s paper said 6 for Harley and 6 for Peter, something that made it clear for Peter that Cooper was also secretly looking at Nathaniel’s robot. Nathaniel didn’t even bother writing scores and instead wrote Harlie and Peetr all over the page.

Shuri held up her own paper that said a 7 for Harley and a 6 for Peter. Again, not surprising to Peter, but slightly stinging nonetheless. He glanced at Harley and to his surprise, Harley wasn’t even looking at the scores, and was instead looking at Peter with a face as red as a tomato.

Shuri cleared her throat with a smirk, and said, ‘The winner of today’s science-off! The second, and last, place, goes to Peter. Give them a round of applause!’

Peter walked over to Harley, and gave him a congratulatory handshake, looking up at Harley and laughing at the redness on his face.

‘Now then, who wants to build something of their own?’ Shuri said excitedly, turning to the kids and rubbing her hands with excitement.

–o0o–

That night dinner was a quiet affair. Which meant it was quieter than usual, which overall didn’t say much, but Peter knew it was because of the prank that morning. He snickered into Harley’s shoulder when he looked over to Steve only to see the old man nod off and shoot upright again, only to sag against Bucky and keep his eyes only slightly open.

The kids, however, were having a great time.

Nathaniel was sitting in between his godmother Nat and his mother, and only mostly missed his mouth with his spoon.

Lila, sitting next to Sam and her father, was calmly eating her veggies and snickering at everyone looking even worse for wear than usual.

Cooper was trying to catapult his veggies at Thor, cheering if he hit Thor’s face. Thor wasn’t even noticing, too busy trying to get his fork near enough to his mouth to not end up like Nathaniel, who was currently sitting in what looked like a warzone, with no peas on his plate, which were instead scattered around it like they got hit in some crossfire.

Cassie was eating with her hands, smearing sauce all over her face, and even managing to get it in her hair, which Peter was silently very impressed by.

After dinner, mostly everyone went straight to bed, grumbling at Peter and ruffling his hair, to Peter’s dismay.

Even though the pillow fort was still standing in the living room, Peter wanted to have another quiet night, as he was still dealing with all the events of yesterday and the prank of today, so he gave everyone a hug goodnight, making sure to give Tony an extra long one, a quick one for Loki, which everyone but Shuri and Harley was too tired to notice that Loki hugged him back for, and then tugged on Harley’s hand until he went with Peter to his room.

Peter entered the room and immediately closed the door, leaning against it and sighing in relief.

‘You okay darlin’?’ Harley asked concernedly. Peter nodded, rubbing his eyes.

‘I’m okay. Everything was just kinda a lot today, you know? I’m more than ready to fall asleep watching a movie.’

Harley smiled. ‘I was thinkin’ the exact same thing. But what movie did you have in mind?’

‘I don’t really know. Surprise me,’ Peter said, grabbing his stuff and walking to the bathroom to change.

When he got back Harley was already in his pajamas, sitting cross legged on the bed as he clicked through movie options on Peter’s tv.

‘Hiya darlin’, I was thinkin’ we could watch a chill movie. I was debating whether or not to put on Star Wars, but that’s not really a quiet movie to fall asleep to. I’m currently trying to wrack my brain trying to think of a calm or chill movie and I’m comin’ up with zilch. You?’

Peter sat down on the bed, taking the remote from Harley as he went to the bathroom to brush his teeth.

When Harley came back, Peter was already building a wall of pillows at the head of his bed so they could watch the tv at a more comfortable angle.

‘So? What’re we watchin’ then?’ Harley asked, crawling under the covers and falling against the mountain of pillows with a soft “oomph”.

‘I decided on The Intern. It’s always been one of my favorite movies to watch when I’m tired, and I definitely think now qualifies as one of those times, and I can almost guarantee that you’ve never seen it,’ Peter said, giggling at the offended look on Harley’s face.

‘I’ll have you know that while I’ve never seen this I most definitely could’ve, and then you’d be swallowing your words, mister,’ Harley said, lifting his arm as Peter prodded it in a silent request, letting Peter snuggle up to Harley as he turned the movie on.

As it turns out, Harley enjoyed the movie immensely. Even without a sleeping Peter at his side he would’ve enjoyed it, but the sleeping Peter did make things even better. As the end credits rolled on screen, Harley asked Friday to turn off the tv and shifted to a more lying down position. He closed his eyes and, surprisingly enough, he almost instantly fell asleep.

Chapter Text

The following day was the epitome of a lounge day. Peter woke early in the morning, and even though he did not particularly feel like it, he decided to go on a run with Uncle Steve and Uncle Sam.

He left a note on the bedside table letting Harley know where he went, and got changed for the run.

A couple of minutes into the run he felt considerably more awake than he had before that. Uncle Steve and him had been running alongside Uncle Sam as their warm up, while Sam was already beginning to look a bit red in the face. Now, they had left Sam in the dust, Steve saying the obligatory “On your left!” that had Sam yelling after them.

‘So, kid. I wanted to apologize about the whole making fun of you and Harley thing. I should’ve known better,’ Steve said, and tapped Peter’s shoulder twice to let him know that they were gonna increase their speed a bit.

‘It’s alright, Uncle Steve. I wasn’t really planning on staying mad at anyone. I think I stopped being angry at any of you after waking you all up with an airhorn and silly string.’

‘Yeah, we deserved that,’ Steve said sheepishly, tapping Peter’s shoulder again.

After they got back Bucky gave them a good breakfast consisting of pancakes with apples, he showered, got dressed, and decided to go see what Tony was up to. A quick question about Tony’s whereabouts to Friday later, he was dragging Harley into the lift and pushing the button to take him to Tony’s lab.

The lift doors opened and they saw Tony sitting on a table, nodding along to his classic rock, holding a piece of armor and checking the wires in it, looking up as the volume automatically turned down as Peter walked toward him.

‘Hi dad, I was just wondering if you had anything we could work on,’ Peter said, spreading his arms as if to give Tony a hug only to notice the oil stains on his shirt and immediately stepping back, deciding that he really did not feel like showering again today.

‘Hiya kid. I’m sure I’ve got something you can work on. You finish those widow bites yet? Nat said they work wonders after you’ve worked your magic on ‘em. Can’t seem to get her to understand that I’m Iron Man, I’m a genius, yet she’d rather have a little kid work on them than me. Can you believe it?’ Tony prattled on, walking toward a big box labeled “stuff” and starting to root around in it.

‘Aha! I’m sure you can do something fun with this,’ he said, pulling out an old Iron Man helmet and tossing it to Harley. ‘Don’t destroy my lab please,’ he called out after the two, who had run off to the other side of the lab where the soldering machines were.

‘No promises, old man,’ Harley said, immediately donning the safety wear. But before he could start working on the helmet, Peter started whispering something to Harley that made him laugh so hard he had to take the helmet back off to breathe. They nodded secretively to each other and Peter stepped back to let Harley work, walking back to Tony and asking where the widow bites were.

They all fell into a comfortable silence, Tony’s music still playing filling up the room. At some point Peter started walking around while working on the widow bites and started doing laps of the room, which included the walls and ceiling.

He stopped for a moment next to Harley, who was still working on the helmet, which was now looking much better than the beat up way it looked when he started. Peter and Harley held a quick whispered conversation -something that concerned Tony somewhat, as he didn’t feel like having to act like a grown-up and telling them they couldn’t experiment with ridiculous ideas- and Peter continued walking.

After a while he got bored of the widow bites, and instead grabbed a bunch of small parts and got started with making a metal bird from old metal plates and circuit boards. It was only when Harley called Peter back to him and they started walking back to the elevator with the helmet that Tony began to be actually worried. He snapped a quick picture of the two with the helmet and sent it to the group chat of the Avengers without Peter. It was -rather accurately named- DONT ADD PETER.

Tony: guys I’m a bit concerned about this
Tony: if you see them
Tony: stay vigilant
Tony: I think they might be planning world domination with that old helmet

Steve: Why didn’t you take away the helmet then?

Tony: cause I wanted to see what would happen
Tony: I’m curious like that

Nat: I think we’d all be better off if we just let them take over the world. Who knows, they’d probably do a better job than the morons currently in charge.

Clint: vote peter and harley for rulers of the earth

Sam: there is no way im voting peter

–o0o–

The week went on to have a vibe of a slow-motion car crash. Honestly? It wasn’t because it was that bad. It was just that he could feel the impending doom of the field trip looming over him like the Duolingo owl when you lost your streak, which made him feel nauseous on a number of occasions.

School sucked. Not only because it was just ridiculously easy to Peter despite it being a school for nerds, but also because his thoughts kept returning to Harley, who got to just chill at the Tower and spend hours in the lab. On top of being kept away from Harley because of school, he had to study for an upcoming test and he had a practical assignment to mentally prepare for, because he had gotten partnered with Flash. The entirety of the assignment was done at school, which meant he had to suffer through a couple of hours of Flash muttering derogatory terms at him. The only reason he hadn’t said anything back was because if he opened his mouth he wasn’t sure what would come out. He didn’t really wanna spend more time in school than strictly necessary, and if he talked back to Flash he was sure to get detention.

After school he immediately went back to the Tower, sometimes with Ned or MJ, but as he stated it, ‘I want to spend time with Harley.’ which was something that did not surprise them in the least, but did disappoint them.

Sometimes he went around to the other labs, either Tony’s lab or SI labs, where they all knew him as “the kid” which everyone took great pleasure in telling any new employees. After all, it wasn’t very common for a kid to randomly show up out of nowhere to ask if they needed help. If a kid was even going to just show up at SI, it would be to ask them for help, not the other way around.

But mostly he spent time with Harley. They stayed up for ages, talking about everything under the sun. He found out that Harley liked horses, hated tomatoes (Peter temporarily thought Harley was clinically insane), and couldn’t stand the color orange. Harley hated reading because he couldn’t keep his attention with it and lost interest after only a couple pages. Peter loved reading, but was very specific in what kind of books he liked. He mostly read children’s fantasy books, because those were awesome and had epic fights in them. Harley didn’t see the point in reading if there were movies instead, to which Peter grabbed a book and began reading to Harley. After a while Harley conceded that books could be fun too, which Peter saw as an absolute win.

They went on their first date. It was at an ice cream shop a couple of streets from SI. Harley and Peter walked there holding hands, Peter blushing like crazy and Harley chuckling at him. They shared a huge sundae, eventually starting a spoon fight over the little chocolate that was on top. And then, just as Peter was about to win the fight, Harley leaned over and, after hesitating a bit to silently ask Peter if it was okay, Harley kissed him.

It was short and sweet. Literally, as they had just eaten ice cream. When they broke apart Peter’s eyes immediately shot open in realization. As Harley started grinning, so did Peter. And then he snatched up the little chocolate and popped it into his mouth with a triumphant laugh. Harley just rolled his eyes and kissed Peter again.

Then, suddenly, Harley and him started spending their time together kissing instead of talking. Peter didn’t mind that.

They also put the Iron Man helmet in a glass cabinet in the living room. They had fixed it up entirely, and it now looked brand new, but with Spider-Man colors instead of Iron Man ones. When asked about it they answered very simply.

‘We think it looks kinda neat. Also it doubles as a disco ball, which will make our dance parties even more legendary.’

And then they’d share secret smiles, as if they knew something about the helmet that the others didn’t. Harley did program it to alert them if anyone (read: Tony) picked it up to see what made it tick, just to be safe. And now the plan was set in motion.

Then, all of a sudden, before Peter really knew it, the field trip had arrived.

Chapter Text

The night before the field trip was great, if one didn’t count the feelings of complete and utter doom that Peter felt periodically. Dinner was quiet, or as quiet as it could get with the Avengers. After dinner, Cassie was picked up by an annoyingly happy Scott, and after promising Cassie he’d come over sometime and bring a robot over, he went out on patrol, and didn’t come back until 11. He needed the rush that swinging across the city at night gave him, and helping people always made him feel better. He fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

Peter woke up around 5 am, dazed and confused but so nervous that it was impossible to go back to sleep. Carefully climbing out of bed to let Harley sleep, he started packing his bag. He packed a hoodie from Tony, a shirt from Harley that was oversized on him (which Harley found adorable), a pair of jeans, and some toiletries before deeming it enough. If he forgot anything he’d just text Harley and he’d drop it off at some point.

Peter had asked Tony and Pepper the day before what to expect on the field trip. Pepper explained that it was just the decathlon team touring the Tower and getting to see the different parts of the company, as well as potential jobs they might be interested in. They were going to be staying in a sort of big dormitory, which Peter had then demanded to see. Pepper and Tony agreed, as they were willing to do anything to lessen Peter’s anxiety.

After Peter was done packing, he got dressed and went to the kitchen to find something to eat. He found Natasha, Pepper, and Steve already having breakfast, talking quietly about something or other.

‘Hi mom, uncle Steve, auntie Nat. I’m so tired but also dead inside and I wanna drink bleach to make the suffering stop.’

Steve choked on his coffee, spluttering out a horrified ‘what?!’ while Pepper just wrapped Peter up in a hug.

Natasha ruffled Peter’s hair. ‘It’s going to be fine, little spider, don’t worry. You’ll have fun!’

‘Yeah, It’ll be alright, you’ll see,’ Pepper added.

Peter sighed. ‘I know it might be alright, but I’m just really scared of the decathlon team finding out I live here, or that I’m Spider-Man, or that I’ve been adopted by Tony Stark! I just don’t see a way this doesn’t end in a see no way this is not gonna go horribly wrong and I hate it. And on top of that I can’t sleep anymore so now I’m awake, which sucks cause I’ll be sleep deprived on top of being anxious as fuck and I feel like crying.’ He heaved in a couple of deep breaths and grabbed Natasha’s hand, letting her squeeze his hand slightly and help him stay grounded.

‘Listen, Peter. I know it’s not usual, to live here while no one knows you do, but if it’s too much I can call ahead and tell Mr. Harrington that you’re not up to going and you’ll be able to stay up here or be in your lab and not have to bother with coming across your team. It’s your call, but just know that if you decide to go, you can still tell Ned or MJ that you’re leaving and come right back upstairs. They’ll tell Mr. Harrington and you’ll be alright, okay?’

Peter rubbed at his eyes furiously. He hated that he wanted to cry about all of this, but his therapist had taught him that even if he didn’t understand his feelings, they were there for a reason, and he was allowed to feel them. Taking some more deep breaths he nodded.

‘Thanks mom, but I think I’m gonna try to go at least. If I’m coming back I’ll let you know, okay?’

Steve grinned at him. ‘I’m proud of you, kid. Now have some breakfast and do something fun until it’s time to go to school.”

Peter ate one apple and stared at the counter for an undetermined amount of time until Pepper told him it was time to go.

They had decided that it would be best that Peter went to SI with the rest of the Decathlon team in the bus. They didn’t want to arouse suspicion if Peter just hung around the entrance when they arrived.

The car ride to school was quiet. Happy wasn’t one for talk, but Peter was, except he was currently staring out of the window quietly and yawning every now and then.

Peter shot upright the second he saw his school coming up. He really wanted to be back home in bed snuggled up to Harley.

Happy parked the car on the side of the road.

“Well, kid, good luck with this whole thing,” Happy said, never one for many words, but feeling for him all the same.

“I don’t think I have good luck, but thanks anyway,” Peter said, grabbing his overnight bag and stepping out of the car.

“Peter!” Ned and MJ came up to him just as he slammed the car door with a bit more force than necessary, and then held up a sheepish hand as Happy drove off.

“Hi guys, you excited for my impending doom?”

“I definitely am. I’ll get so much new drawing material,” MJ smirked.

“I’m so excited!” Ned exclaimed, quite literally bouncing with energy while dragging Peter over to the bus, where most of the other Decathlon team members had already gathered. “Although,” he hastened to add, “not about your impending doom, of course.”

“Hello, Peter,” Mr. Harrington said, crossing off Peter’s name on a clipboard.

After a couple of minutes the last stragglers arrived, and they were allowed to get onto the bus. Flash, to no one’s surprise, rushed to get there first and grabbed the entire back row of the bus. Peter rolled his eyes and sat down in the front of the bus. Ned was sitting next to him, at the window side because he liked watching through it, and MJ was sitting on the other side of the aisle.

Peter was already not doing very well, and he wasn’t sure he could be trusted to keep quiet if Flash started something.

It seemed Flash didn’t get that memo. The second the bus started moving, Flash said, “We’re driving to your impending doom, Penis! I hope you’ve packed enough tissues!”

Peter groaned and put his face on Ned’s shoulder. MJ took the liberty of yelling “Hey, Flash!” and giving him the finger.

“Wake me up when the nightmare ends,” Peter said, politely ignoring the way he saw MJ grabbing her notebook and starting to sketch him.

“You wanna sleep until we get there? MJ and I will defend you so you can get some more sleep,” Ned said, shifting in his seat so he was leaning backwards a little more so Peter could fully lean against him, eyes already closing.

“Yeah, thanks,” Peter mumbled, and he was out like a light.

He woke up again when Mr. Harrington stood up in the front of the bus and asked for their attention. Ned noticed he was awake and smiled at him. Somehow, that alone made Peter feel better. At least he had his best friends with him when his life fell apart.

“So guys, as you can see, we’re coming up on Stark Industries,” he paused as the team cheered in excitement, “now, I want to go over the rules one last time. We will listen to our tour guides, we will be respectful of the people working there, and we will learn a whole lot!”

MJ snorted and leaned over to Peter. “How about “we lock Flash in the dorms for the duration of the trip”? Sounds like it’d definitely make it easier for those rules to be followed.”

Peter grinned, happy that MJ was very outspoken against Flash and his idiocy.

The bus stopped and everyone got out with the usual amount of pushing and pulling to get their bags first.

Mr. Harrington did a check to see if all his students were there, and then led them inside with a last warning that it was a workplace and that they needed to be quiet.

Once inside the lobby, Mr. Harrington went to the reception while the Decathlon team looked around with excitement and interest.

“Hey, Penis! Why aren’t you looking around here, y’know, since it’s definitely the first time you’ve come here,” Flash jeered, not even slightly understanding how badly Peter was trying not to shake at his impending doom.

Ned looked over at Flash with a scathing look. “Just shut up, Flash, you’re making this room dumber just by being in it, don’t make my IQ drop even further.”

Flash spluttered, looking for a retort. Meanwhile, MJ looked up with wide eyes. “Ned. Oh my god, Ned. That was badass. What the fuck.”

“Ned, please tell me MJ just said that and not you,” Peter grinned. “Because if you did just say that, I’m gonna freak out.”

Ned grinned sheepishly. “He was being mean to you, so I wanted to stand up to him.”

Mr. Harrington walked back over with his hands full with cards.

‘These are your guest badges. You need these to go anywhere in the building, so if you don’t have it on you at all times you’ll be seen as an intruder and security will be alarmed. They adhere to your clothes with a sticky substance that doesn’t leave any residue on your clothes when you take them off. They’ve all got your own names on them, so no trading them with anyone else.’

Mr. Harrington began calling out each name on the badges and students came forward to collect them. While he was busy, Peter suddenly felt a presence next to him, and he looked up to see the smiling face of his stupid boyfriend.

‘Harley?!’ Peter said, only barely remembering to not shout, lest he draw the attention of the others.

‘Hiya darlin’. Turns out, I’ll be your tour guide.’ With those words, Harley sneakily gave Peter a quick kiss on his cheek before turning to stroll right up to Mr. Harrington, who had just finished giving the last student a badge. Peter turned to look at Harley holding out a hand to Mr. Harrington, talking to him and probably explaining his presence there. He didn’t even realize he didn’t get a badge until Flash yelled, ‘Hey Penis! Why don’t you have a badge, huh? Have you been banned from Stark Industries for pretending you work here?’

Harley and Mr. Harrington both turned to look at Flash and Peter, but with very different looks in their eyes. Harley was looking positively murderous and like he really wanted to ask Friday to get him an Iron Man suit so he could obliterate Flash with it, while Mr. Harrington had a look on his face that could only be described as the specific type of exasperated and suffering that only a seasoned teacher could have.

Mr. Harrington spoke up first, probably because Harley was too busy shooting Flash murderous looks and grinding his teeth to talk. ‘Flash. You are not going to be calling Peter that again or yelling that loudly, or you’ll be sent away from this field trip immediately.’

Flash only looked mildly chastised, but did stop talking, which gave Harley the opportunity to speak up. ‘Hi, y’all. My name is Harley Keener and I’ll be your tour guide this weekend. I see that you’ve already received your badges, which means I can dive right into explaining a couple of simple rules to keep you safe here in this chaotic building. Number one, if you’re visiting a lab, stay outside of the tape markings on the floor, those are to keep a healthy distance between you and anything that can blow up. Two, you are not to touch anything without explicit permission from either me or the people that work here. Three, you are not allowed to take pictures of anything inside the labs, as that is a part of the agreements your parents and you have signed. If you do take pictures, our AI, Friday, will notice and alert me. Don’t try her, she’s very sneaky. Say hi Friday.’

‘Hello Decathlon Team.’

‘Any questions so far?’ Harley said, and immediately there were several hands that shot up into the air.

‘Yes, you over there with the dark blue hair.’

‘How are you already working here? You look our age,’ said Eva, a girl who was always nice and often said hi to Peter in passing.

‘I am sorta a special case. I know Tony Stark and the Avengers personally. I helped him out when he was having a hard time. And don’t worry, I know a lot about the stuff that’s being researched in the labs, so it’s not as if I’m here without knowing things about what they do in this place,’ Harley said, grinning. He pointed at another person.

‘I don’t see you wearing a badge, why is that?’

‘Oh that’s an easy answer. I’m here so often and I need to be able to go pretty much anywhere that Tony can go to, so I’m in Friday’s system. Makes it easier to go in and out of here. I’m surprisingly forgetful sometimes, and I don’t wanna be stopped by Fri just ‘cause I don’t have my badge on me. Okay, your turn,’ he said, and pointed at yet another person.

‘What do the different badge colors mean? I see the receptionist wearing another color than ours. I can only assume there’s a reason for that?’

‘Oh, that’s another really easy answer. Y’all’s badges are red and gold, cause Tony is a vain dude, but employees are allowed to choose whatever color their badge is. The only thing they’re not allowed to choose on their badges is the strip on the top there. Yours is white, meaning you’re not allowed to just go everywhere you want, but as long as you’re with a tour group, you’re okay. The scientists also have different colors for example, but even they are divided by what kind of lab they work in, and what kind of thing they’re researching. The physics ones have a blue strip, while the chemical ones have a red one. The ones focused on biology have a green one, and if they’re working on two of those fields, like the biochemical scientists, they have a half red and half green strip. But I don’t wanna bore you about the colors of people’s badges. If you come across another one, you can probably ask that person what the color of their badge means. They’re aware that there are tours that go around sometimes, so they’ve gotten kind of used to answering these types of questions. Okay and now the last one, because we have got to get this show on the road. You,’ Harley said, and tried to keep from grimacing when he pointed right at Flash.

‘So you don’t have a badge because you’re in the AI’s system, right?’ Flash asked, and Peter felt his stomach tie a knot as he realized where Flash was going with this. ‘So how come Peter Parker over there doesn’t have a badge?’

Harley looked at Peter, and pretended to only just notice that he was there. ‘Oh, hiya Peter!’

Peter weakly held up his hand in greeting. ‘Hi Harley.’

‘Peter doesn’t have a badge for the same reason as me. He’s Tony Stark’s personal assistant,’ Harley said, giving Peter a subtle wink, ‘which means he needs to be able to go anywhere Tony does, so he’s in Friday’s system. Seemed easier than asking him to bring his badge with him every day.’

‘Well, I believe that y’all are now officially ready to begin this field trip! If you would just form a couple of lines, you need to scan your badge at these gates here before you can go inside.’

Everyone listened obediently, taking off their badges to run them over the scanner, waiting until the scanner flashed green before going through the gates.

‘First stop is your room, so you can dibs your beds and dump your bags before we go on with the general tour. Tomorrow you’ll get to see all the special places that normal tours don’t pass, as you’re part of a decathlon team that has done rather well in the national competitions, I believe,’ Harley grinned. He turned to lead the group to the elevator.

‘Come on everyone, don’t worry this elevator is fuckin’ huge, everyone will be able to fit.’

After everyone got on the elevator and the doors closed, Harley said loudly, ‘Fri, to the guest rooms please.’ which got the elevator moving.

Through pure coincidence (and some careful maneuvering) Peter ended up standing next to Harley. ‘So the cover story now is that I’m da- Tony’s personal assistant?’ Peter whispered in Harley’s ear. ‘I thought of it this morning, and the others agreed that it was the best way to explain your general existence in this building.’

‘And why in the everloving fuck are you of all people our tour guide?’ Peter said, trying to keep his voice low. ‘Do you know how difficult it is to be here and pretend like we’re just friends? I would’ve really loved it to be able to hold your hand and kiss you when things got too much. This whole thing is already so taxing,’ Peter said, suddenly trying to keep himself from crying.

‘Oh darlin’. I’m so sorry. If it helps, I’m rather certain you can pretend to fall asleep in the guest rooms and then come up to sleep in your own room.’

‘No, no, I just know that someone will find out somehow. It’s only a weekend, I can manage,’ Peter said, trying to be braver than he felt. Harley gave him a sympathetic smile as the elevator slowed to a stop.

‘Come on in everyone,’ Harley said, walking into the guest rooms.

It was a pretty spacious room, filled with bunk beds and bedside tables that stretched from the floor to the top bunk bed, which meant they could fit two people’s overnight bags with ease. There were curtains that could be hung between the bunk beds for some privacy, and there were multiple bathrooms complete with showers and cubicles for those who wanted to change in private. Then there were a couple of rooms with only one or two beds in them, one of which Mr. Harrington immediately claimed as his.

The Decathlon team dispersed, choosing their beds immediately and dumping their bags on their beds, talking excitedly with each other about that they’d finally arrived and that it would be so much fun.

‘C’mon Peter! I claim the top bunk!’ Ned said, almost shaking Peter’s arm out of its socket. Peter grinned, and put his bag down on the lower bunk as Ned excitedly swung his on the top one.

‘If you’re all ready to go, we can let this field trip begin!’ Harley said, and the team cheered.

Chapter Text

‘Our first stop, the legal side of the office. I know y’all aren’t very keen on this and are probably looking forward to the labs way more than this, but this is a very important part of the company. I am talking very quietly, because the people here not only work hard, but because it’s supposed to be quiet here, to ensure that everyone can focus the best that they can. If they want to listen to music, they’re allowed to do that, but only in the break rooms are they allowed to talk normally. We will now go to our top lady in this department, so if you’ll please follow me, we can go to her office and she’ll explain more about what her department does.’

Walking past cubicles on cubicles on cubicles they only saw focused people. Ned whispered in Peter’s ear, ‘it feels like a study hall before a big test.’ to which Peter snorted. They got to an office door, on which Harley knocked politely before being called inside. He opened the door for the team and as they entered the room their jaws all collectively dropped.

The office was a big one. It seemed to double as a conference hall and a filing room, with filing cabinets lining the wall and a big table in the middle of the room. At the far end, in front of a big floor to ceiling window, was a big old looking desk, with extravagant curls and details carved into the legs and sides. Sitting at the desk, reading through a large pile of files, while simultaneously taking notes on the computer in front of her without taking her eyes off of the files, was an older woman, her hair neatly pinned to her head in an older looking hairstyle, reading glasses perched on her nose, and comfortable yet classy looking clothes on in dark colors. She finished typing and looked up, smiling as she saw Harley.

‘Ah, young Mr. Keener. I haven’t seen you here in quite a while. Another tour?’

Harley nodded, smiling at the lady. ‘Hiya, Miss Agnes. Everyone, meet Miss Agnes. She’s the head of the legal department and a true force of nature. She’s gonna shortly explain what the legal department roughly entails and what kind of things she’s dealt with in her extensive career. So if you could all take a seat around this table, she can begin her little talk. It won’t be long, because Miss Agnes has a lot of work, so she can’t spend too much time away from that desk.’

Everyone grabbed a seat and turned attentively to Miss Agnes. She took the seat at the head of the table and began speaking. Even though she was older, her voice was strong and carried without her needing to speak loudly.

‘Hello everyone, I am Miss Agnes Livingston, and I have been working at SI in the legal department for close to 30 years now. I know that you all are much more interested in what goes on in the labs, but without us, those labs would not work at all. This department is the one who deals with every accident that has ever taken place in those labs. We are the ones who deal with people trying to sue SI for so-called “stealing” concepts or plans of theirs. I am glad to know that in all of my time here at SI, we have only had a handful of cases in which it turned out that our scientists had actually been treating others’ work as their own. Our hiring process is rather strict on fraud, as SI feels that only those who have actually done the work and research for a product or idea should be allowed to work here.

‘It has been a most fulfilling job to do, and one I am proud to do. I am happy to say that both Pepper Potts and Tony Stark have come to rely on me to handle any legal issues coming the company’s way, and I do everything in my power to make sure that I handle those issues quickly and succinctly.’

The decathlon team listened quietly to Miss Agnes, even though it wasn’t as interesting as the labs they had yet to see. Still, the whole experience of being in SI and listening to a head of a department explaining how they work and what they do was amazing.

Miss Agnes didn’t get a lot of questions, but that was simply because she explained everything about which someone could have a question, which proved that she was very good at giving such talks to groups like them.

Peter tried to focus from where he sat close to Harley, probably closer than strictly necessary or logical, but didn’t get very far as he felt his hunger become more apparent. He whispered quietly in Harley’s ear ‘hey Harls, when are we going to grab some food? I am about to starve and then it’s your fault.’ which made Harley snicker quietly. He checked his watch and realized it was close to 10 am, which definitely meant that a quick look around in the cafeteria definitely wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Luckily, the final question had just been answered. ‘Alright gang, thank Miss Agnes, and then quietly walk out of the room and back to the elevator for our next stop. We wouldn’t wanna disturb the people working here.’

In a chorus of ‘Thanks, Miss Agnes.’ The Decathlon team filed out of the room and quickly walked back towards the big elevator doors.

Once the elevator doors closed, Harley spoke up. ‘Now, I know that you’re all probably hungry, so our next stop is the lower cafeteria. Fri, if you please.’

While the elevator started moving, Harley explained, ‘there are multiple cafeterias in SI. The one we’re going to is, as the name quite obviously implies, the lowest of them. All of them contain small businesses, so sadly there won’t be a Starbucks or McDonalds for y’all to get food from, but all of the restaurants in the cafeteria are organic, have amazing tastes, and include all kinds of different cuisines. We’ll be going to all three cafeterias during our stay, but since this one is closest to Legal, this is the one where we’re heading.’

The elevator came to a stop, and the doors opened. Immediately Peter heard the strangely comforting din of people working in the kitchens. The sound of pans on stoves, ingredients being chopped, and people laughing and conversing while they ate their meals all fell on Peter like a comforting blanket. He let out a sigh and only just heard Harley say, ‘Go nuts, SI is covering the costs of your meals. Go, be free, eat whatever you want!’ before he walked off to his favorite breakfast restaurant in the lower cafeteria. He heard MJ, Ned, and Harley walk after him and they came to a stop with him in the small line that had formed in front of the restaurant.

‘Hiya darlin’,’ Harley said, quickly looking around to see if anyone of the Decathlon team could see before giving Peter a quick kiss on the cheek.

‘Hi Harley,’ Peter said, letting out a sigh and leaning backwards against Harley, fully relaxing for the first time that day.

‘So,’ Ned interrupted the relative quiet, ‘what’s the best thing on this menu? I am starving.’

Peter laughed. ‘This restaurant is called The Fix To Monday Mornings and it’s my favorite in this cafeteria. They’ve got all kinds of stuff, but I especially love the eggs and bacon on toast. Not to mention their chocolate milk is to die for. And their small cheese pancakes are delicious. And, I can’t lie, their fresh juice is so good, I don’t even know what goes in those and I love all of them,’ Peter said, realizing just how hungry he really was. This time it was Ned’s turn to laugh.

‘Okay so, basically, their entire menu is fire and you can’t really go wrong?’ Ned said hopefully. When Peter nodded his agreement Ned grinned and looked over at MJ, who was silently staring at the menu. ‘I want a full English breakfast,’ she decided, looking back at the boys to realize that they had gone slack jawed.

‘What?’ MJ said defensively, crossing her arms.

‘Nothing. It’s just that I’d never expected you to willingly eat beans,’ Ned said, making Peter laugh.

‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Ned,’ MJ said, sticking out her tongue at him.

Before long, the line had dwindled away and it was their turn. MJ was true to her word and asked for a full English, while Ned chose the cheese and bacon pancakes, and Peter chose everything he had talked about earlier. When the server noticed that it was Peter making the order, she started making small talk with him while their group waited for their food.

‘Hi Peter! How have you been? I haven’t seen you here in a while, I thought for a second there you’d gone and used your big brain to plan for world domination. Glad to see you haven’t put your plan into motion,’ she laughed.

Peter grinned right back. ‘Well, you know what they say, the stars aren’t yet aligned for my plans to be successful. But it’ll happen one day, don’t worry. And how has it been with you, Aisha? How was your little sister’s ballet performance?’

‘Oh, it was amazing. She was definitely the most talented of her group. It was actually maddening. I wasn’t half as good as her when I was her age. Maybe I made the right choice when I decided to stop trying to become a professional ballet dancer and instead chose to pursue a degree in psychology,’ Aisha said, shaking her head.

‘It can’t have been that bad, can it? And besides, I think that psychology pays better than being a ballet dancer.’

Aisha brought over MJ and Ned’s trays of food while replying, ‘Oh I know it does. That’s partially why I’m currently studying psychology. Oh, and I don’t know how long your tray will be. Will you be okay with waiting a bit longer?’

Peter nodded, happy to just wait and chat with Aisha. Turns out, her cat had once more destroyed a huge part of her couch, so she’d been spending her free time embroidering the holes closed. Peter thought that’d look amazing, but didn’t get a chance to say so because at that moment Aisha returned from the kitchen balancing two trays, both of which were for Peter. Harley, who hadn’t ordered anything because he had breakfast before he picked up the decathlon team, carried one of the trays while Peter carried the other, which made him fall even more in love.

The four of them found a table in a corner of the cafeteria, next to the windows. Peter always loved watching New York through the floor to ceiling windows, and was glad to find a spot mostly obscured from view so he could finally kiss Harley. Which he did. Probably for way too long if MJ’s long suffering sigh was anything to go on.

It also meant that he was sitting with his back to the rest of the cafeteria, which he liked doing a lot so he didn’t get overwhelmed by the movement happening in it. Sadly, him sitting with his back to the cafeteria as well as him kissing Harley meant that he did not have many senses left to sense three dipshits walking up to him with shit-eating grins.

‘Hi Peter!’

Peter froze, trying to use the force to make the three Avengers behind him disappear, who had attracted the attention of the entire Decathlon team, who would no doubt run over to meet them. Damnit. He turned around, glaring at the three grown adults who had come to terrorize his breakfast.

‘Hello Sam, Bucky, Steve. Please fuck off before you get chairs thrown at you.’

Bucky laughed, stepping up next to Peter and giving him a very painful looking side hug with his metal arm. ‘Oh Peter, you oughta watch your language around Steve. He’ll have you pay for a new bike if you’re not careful.’

Peter heard the Decathlon team rush over to meet the three douchebags that made Peter lose his appetite. As Peter was too busy lamenting them, he was completely unaware of the way they subtly blocked Peter and Harley from sight, as Harley had pulled Peter’s chair next to his and was rubbing soothing circles into his back while Peter put his head on Harley’s shoulder.

‘Hey kids,’ Steve said, drawing himself up to his full height. ‘I’m guessing you already know who we are?’

The Decathlon team nodded at the same time, eyes growing so big they were dangerously close to falling out. MJ sarcastically made the same face, making Peter grin. He’d make it through this weekend without the Avengers giving away his secret identity. He’d have his best friends and boyfriend there to support him through it all.

‘Don’t mind us, we were just dropping off some cookies for Peter,’ Bucky said, turning around towards Peter, still unused to being looked at in awe rather than fear.

Bucky leaned in to whisper to Peter, ‘These are my apology cookies. I made ‘em fresh this morning,’ before turning back around and immediately grabbing Steve’s hand to settle his heartbeat as the entire Decathlon team burst into noise after finding out that the Avengers knew Peter.

‘Wait, you guys know Peter?’

‘Since when do you know a teenager?’

‘Does that mean he really works here?’

‘How did you guys meet?’

‘Why would you wanna know Penis Par- I mean Peter Parker?’

That last one was, unsurprisingly, Flash. Peter turned around to see that the demeanor of Steve had changed completely. A quick glance at Bucky and Sam told him that they saw it too, and they immediately got a hold of Steve, just for Flash’s safety.

‘Listen here, young man,’ Steve said, having gone dangerously quiet. The Decathlon team noticed it, and glanced anxiously from Steve to Flash, the latter of which seemed to have gone white as a sheet. ‘I don’t know what your problem with Peter is, but I can assure you that it’s going to stop. Either you stop it, or I will.’

Then, as if flicking a switch, he leaned back from where he had unconsciously leaned into Flash’s space. He turned around, walked up to Peter, and gave him a side hug. ‘You okay, kid?’ he asked.

Peter nodded, leaning into the hug. ‘Thanks, Steve,’ he said, purposefully leaving out the “uncle” he was used to saying together with Steve’s name. He had enough of a headache with having to explain him knowing the Avengers to his classmates later, and he really didn’t feel like explaining how he was calling Captain America his uncle.

‘So uh,’ said Henry, an easygoing classmate of Peter’s, ‘I guess what Harley said at the beginning of the field trip is true, Peter? You’re Tony Stark’s assistant?’

Harley snorted, making Peter glare at him half-heartedly. ‘What gave ya that idea? Surely not the fact that he’s on first name terms with the Avengers?’

Peter elbowed Harley with all the subtlety of a bull in a china shop. ‘Yes guys I am, but please don’t ask me about this cause I can’t talk about work to anyone, not even Ned.’

Immediately, whispers broke out amongst his classmates. They were seemingly impressed at Peter keeping his job a secret from them, which almost none of them would’ve done had they been in the same position.

Flash was the notable exception however; he stood off to the side glaring at nothing in particular, his mouth in a thin line which bordered on a sneer. Peter could sense that that particular problem wouldn’t be resolved soon. Not because he had his Peter-tingle, but because he had carefully cultivated his social skills because of the frightfully large amount of social mishaps that had happened due to his autism not picking up on social cues. His life was wonderful. Just a freakin picnic.

Bucky clapped a hand on Peter’s shoulder, shaking him out of his reverie. ‘Alright, we’ll be going now. Kids, don’t do anything we wouldn’t do.’

Lisa, a girl in Peter’s homeroom who was really nice but surprisingly shy, raised her hand before speaking up. ‘Um, weren’t you a convicted felon? And I’m pretty sure I’ve seen videos of Cap throwing cars around. Does that mean we get to throw cars around too?’

Bucky coughed, shoving Steve in front of him and turning around to grab a snack from Peter’s tray, earning him an annoyed grumble from Peter, to whom Bucky simply winked, which made Peter grumble even more.

‘Just, don’t misbehave, okay?’ Steve said, sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose. He turned to Peter and gave him another side hug. ‘See ya soon, Pete.’

‘See ya. Oh and Bucky, we had plans to recalibrate your other arm so it had finer motor function, but is it alright if we reschedule that? you don’t use that arm a lot anymore and I have a big test the day after that,’ Peter said. Bucky gave him thumbs up and then did finger guns before grabbing Steve’s hand and leaving.

Sam didn’t notice that, as he was too busy regaling epic tales of his exploits, which were greatly over-exaggerated. He was in the midst of telling everyone how he kicked Bucky’s ass when they first met but then Steve grabbed the neck of his sweater and dragged him away while he was spluttering to try and convince Steve to let him go.

After they’d gotten into the elevator the entire Decathlon team rounded on Peter and everyone opened their mouths to say something. Harley saw this and quickly intervened with, ‘I know y’all probably have a lot of questions for Peter, but I’m askin’ y’all to keep those questions to yourself. He doesn’t wanna make a big deal about this, so just leave him alone please.’

He stood in front of Peter like a guard dog and watched the entire team like a hawk until they dispersed and went back to their tables. Sitting back down next to Peter he put an arm around his shoulder and started telling him the plans he had for defeating Natasha during their next game night.

Chapter Text

After breakfast, Harley gathered the Decathlon team in the elevator. ‘Alright guys, after that interesting breakfast, we’re off to the PR and HR part of the company. This part takes care of the people who work here, as well as SI’s image. This requires a lot of work, so be sure to at least look interested and always be polite, even if you’d rather be in the labs. I do too, but we’re here to learn about an entire company, not just the parts y’all like the most. Alright Fri, take us to PR and HR please!’

Without further words, the elevator started up, and everyone started conversing quietly.

‘Will we see Ms. Potts here?’ MJ asked Harley. He shrugged, grinning apologetically as MJ looked disappointed. ‘Not sure. Pepper is kinda everywhere, cause she’s the CEO and all. She’s probably in her office, and I’m not sure if we’ll go there. But who knows, maybe if Peter asks her really nicely she’ll make an exception?’

MJ immediately rounded on Peter, who was leaning against the wall of the elevator, who looked at her with abject horror as MJ grinned at him with a look that promised pain if he didn’t try to sway Pepper into meeting the Decathlon team. ‘MJ I can try, but before you get mad or something, she is really busy, and it could very well be that she’s got a busy schedule and can’t meet us.’

Before MJ could respond, the elevator came to a stop, and Peter was the first out of the door, evading MJ as best he could. They got to what looked like a big conference room. Unlike Legal, this department was full of noise. People taking phone calls, discussing things with others, leaving voicemails. Harley stepped out in front of the group to address them.

‘This here is PR & HR. As you can tell, it’s a lot louder than Legal, because a big part of these departments is smoothing things over, which works best over the phone. Some people are strategizing or analyzing things with their coworkers, while others are busy securing the silence of tabloids, or planning interviews or photo ops. This is important work, because without them, people would’ve never gotten to trust Tony when he first stopped producing weapons. PR helped out a lot with that.

‘HR is here to make sure that the people who work here treat each other with respect, and that the workspace environment is pleasant and comfortable for everyone. They have a special email that workers can send things to if they want to express if the workspace is good as is, or if it can be improved. This is vital, as without these emails, they wouldn’t know what to fix. Through such emails we’ve gotten things such as good and working coffee machines in every break room, the Garden, and sleeping halls where people can get some rest if they had to work late. Conflicts between coworkers are very uncommon, but sadly they do happen. When HR is contacted they help sort it all out and clear the air between the coworkers, to ensure that they have a good working relationship before continuing with their jobs. That’s not to say that they have to like each other, just to be professional and civil in the workplace.

‘Now, here you actually are allowed to ask questions, but there are some rules. If the person you want to ask things seems busy, they are. Let them work. If you walk around and see some people taking a little break, you can approach them and politely ask questions. If they say they can’t answer a question of yours, respect that. And don’t look over people’s shoulders to try and find out anyway, because Fri will find out. This is your time to find out what is going on in the non-lab parts of the company, and trust me, it’s equally interesting. Now go, shoo, be nerds and ask questions!’

Henry and Lisa immediately seemed to make a beeline towards a couple of people who were busy with a game of chess, while Flash went for someone who looked like they were playing Solitaire while simultaneously on the phone, and the rest of the students quickly followed their example. Ned, MJ, Peter, and Harley were standing in front of the elevator, until Peter spotted someone and immediately declared, ‘Guys you have to meet this person.’ and then dragged everyone with him.

The person in question was someone with long straight dark hair, blunt bangs almost falling into their eyes, which were done up in a very elegant smokey eye, black eyeliner in the waterline, dark grey eyeshadow blended out, and incredibly symmetrical wings with dots under them. Their black makeup somehow offset their freckles, and in their ears were lots of piercings, all silver.

Their outfit was equally stunning. Pitch black pressed pants, a silk black dress shirt on top, and a beautiful black corset over that. As they came closer, Peter noticed that the corset was embroidered with black thread, which he thought looked very beautiful and suited them well, and they were wearing stompy boots with a thick sole.

Peter approached first, greeting them with a ‘Hey!’, and they held up a slender hand with neatly painted black nails and lots of silver statement rings as they finished typing up an email. After they sent it they turned to Peter, black painted lips widening into a smile as they drew Peter into a tight hug.

‘Petey! I didn’t think you’d be here so soon!’ Their voice sounded deep and soulful, melodic somehow. They would’ve been very much suited to sing Hozier songs. They had a hint of a foreign accent, but Peter never asked and now he knew them too long to ask.

Peter drew back and waved a hand at his friends. ‘Guys, this is Albert-Evangeline, aka Allie, aka Al, aka Bert, aka Eva, aka Lina, aka Elina, aka Angel. They’re literally the coolest person in this entire department and they were the first person I asked anything about this department and then I realised that they’re the literal coolest so I’ve always come to them with my questions.’

Ned raised his hand. Angel laughed and said, “Relax, kid. You’re not at school, you don’t have to raise your hand. What is it?’

Ned quickly lowered his hand again. ‘Okay I have to ask; how did you get your name?’

They laughed again. ‘Well, I’ve always liked both masculine and very feminine names, and then I figured, why not? Might as well go for something that doesn’t sound androgynous as much as confusingly masculine and feminine. Albert was my grandfather’s name, and since he was the person I told first about my gender, and because I was generally closer to him than my own parents, I named myself after him. Evangeline was my second name given to me at birth, but unlike my deadname I actually really loved it.’

‘Which of the 7 nicknames Peter just named is your favorite?’ MJ asked.

‘Well, that’s a difficult one. I like all of them, but I like Angel the most. I’m pretty sure I have more nicknames, but Peter probably couldn’t be bothered to mention all of them.’

‘What would you say is your aesthetic? I’m leaning towards like, corp goth?’ MJ said, sitting down across from Angel.

Angel nodded. ‘Yes, that just about sums it up. Do you like the corset? I embroidered it myself.’ MJ nodded rapidly, and seemed to be sketching out various ideas for outfits similar to Angel’s.

Peter cleared his throat. ‘Angel, I know this is a weird kinda place for Ned and MJ, so could you maybe explain more about this department and what you do from day to day?’

‘Sure Petey. Hey, this isn’t so you can sneak off and make out with your boyfriend, is it? Because if it is, I’ll make sure I’m extra thorough in my explanations,’ Angel winked. Peter’s ears went red and he just grabbed Harley’s hand and dragged him away, Harley laughing out loud.

‘Okay, so why did you just unceremoniously dump your friends with Angel?’ Harley asked. Peter shrugged. ‘I think I just wanted to go back upstairs for a bit actually. Unwind before I have to be stuck in the elevator with everyone again.’

‘Okay, but how are we gonna do that without your teacher noticing you missing?’

‘Maybe you can just say something about me being called away for some important stuff in a lab somewhere. Mr. Harrington is okay, he’ll believe me. Maybe you can come along too? Tell him you’ll be back in time to continue the tour,’ Peter said, hope creeping into his voice.

Harley smiled sweetly, understanding how Peter felt. ‘Petey, I can certainly give you some quiet time. I’ll be right back.’

As Peter was waiting by the elevator while Harley went to excuse Peter and himself Flash approached him. ‘Hey Penis,’ he said, grinning at Peter.

Peter sighed. ‘Yes, Flash, what do you want? I don’t have a lot of time, I’ve been called away for work.’

‘You’re a liar, you know that? I know you don’t work here, no way you could. You’re probably getting that tour guide to lie for you somehow. I’m gonna get to the bottom of this, Penis, I swear.’

Flash stalked away just as Harley approached, face morphing into one of confusion as he saw Flash walking away from Peter. ‘Are you okay, darlin’? That didn’t seem all too civil.’

Peter nodded wearily. ‘That’s typical for him. C’mon, I wanna anger the oldies as payback for breakfast before we have to go back.’

–o0o–

The elevator door closed and Harley asked Friday to go home. Without a second hesitation, Harley crossed over to Peter and hugged him close. Peter’s arms rose almost automatically, hugging back and putting his nose in Harley’s neck. This morning had been a lot more draining than he’d realised it’d be.

Together they sank to the floor of the elevator as it kept climbing up the huge building. Peter focused on Harley’s pulse, which he could feel as well as hear. This was exactly why he had those earbuds, he simply kept hearing too much.

They arrived at the floor with a soft ding, and they unwound their limbs from their embrace, dusting off and walking into the living room. Sam and Steve were playing a game of chess, while Loki was reading, sitting on a chair with his legs swung over an armrest, sneakily keeping tabs on the game of chess and sometimes subtly moving pieces in favor of neither of the actual parties playing. There were the telltale sounds of someone baking, which could only be Bucky. Nat was nowhere to be found, as she was probably helping Pepper with something or other, and Bruce and Thor weren’t around either, so they were probably in a lab making out. Tony was probably also in a lab, but not making out, just making crazy new inventions.

Harley and Peter sat down on the couch, and before long they were shouting annoying tips at Sam and Steve.

‘Kids, will you shut up, I gotta beat an old man at a game,’ Sam said, furrowing his brow while contemplating his next move. Peter could tell he was going to make a huge mistake. Which he did, as he moved his queen into a spot where Steve’s horse could easily take it. Instead of doing that, however, Steve moved a freaking pawn and let the queen continue on.

‘Harley,’ Peter asked, ‘I can’t watch this abomination of a chess game anymore, it’s so bad I can feel my IQ sinking. Can we make them play a game that’s a bit more their speed?’ Peter leaned forward and wiped the chess board clean, to outraged shouts by the two superheroes playing it.

‘Kid, what the fuck are you doing? I was about to beat this stupid bird,’ Steve exclaimed, starting to pick up the chess pieces that were now scattered on the rug.

‘This is payback for showing up at breakfast after I explicitly told you all not to. And now I want you to play a game with me to make up for it.’

‘And what do you suggest we play, little man?’ Sam snarked, leaning against the back of a chair, lacing his hands behind his head.

Peter looked at Sam, grinning evilly. ‘Uno.’

Sam grinned right back. He had a bit of a winning streak with Uno, and he clearly thought he’d be able to beat Peter too. ‘Bring it on.’

They set up the game and dealt out the cards. Before long, Peter was loudly arguing with Sam and Steve over if it was allowed to stack plus cards.

‘Kid, if it’s not in the rules it’s not allowed!’ Sam howled loudly, earning him an annoyed glance from Loki, who had sat down on the couch behind where Peter was sitting and he was quietly giving Peter a massage. Loki was Peter’s favorite Avenger, he decided.

‘It so is! The rules can’t dictate my choices in life, and I refuse to lose because you’re being an old whiny guy about this!’ Peter said, stubbornly putting down another yellow card, which made Sam let out a huff as he drew another card from the pile. ‘There can’t be any more yellow cards in this stupid deck,’ he said.

Harley chuckled and put down another yellow card. Steve, who had accepted his inevitable defeat, simply drew yet another card, laughing out loud at Sam’s distressed and outraged face. Peter quickly put down a red card, ‘fucking finally!’ Sam said, but he hadn’t even finished uttering those words before Peter elatedly screamed, ‘Uno!’

Sam punched the air as he finally got to put a card on the stack; a red 3. Peter’s eyes grew large as he threw his own last card, a red motherfucking three, and whooped victoriously.

‘Suck it old people! I have beaten Sam’s stupid winning streak!’ he jumped up and started dancing around Sam, laughing and pointing at the older superhero, who threw down his cards. ‘You used your stupid spidey sense to win, you sneaky little-’ Sam abruptly cut off his sentence as Pepper stepped out of the elevator. She raised her eyebrows at the chaotic scene unfolding in front of her.

‘Peter, why are you here? Did you decide to take a moment?’ she asked, nearing the teenager and grasping one of his hands with both of hers.

‘Yeah, but I think I’m gonna go back soon. Harley’s gotta be back too and I think that completely decimating Sam at Uno has given me enough energy to go back down and deal with the team again,’ Peter said, ignoring Sam’s shouted protests.

‘Okay, honey. Just know that you’re not any less if you decide you can’t handle it after all, okay? You’ve gotta be comfortable with it, that’s the most important thing in all of this,’ Pepper said, squeezing Peter’s hand and dropping a kiss on his forehead. With that, she made her way to the dining room, where she had left some papers on the table.

Harley cleared his throat, getting Peter’s attention.’Darlin’, not to rush ya, but we gotta get back to the Decathlon team or we’ll be too late at our next stop.’

‘What is our next stop?’ Peter asked as he and Harley waved goodbye to Steve and Sam and got back into the elevator.

‘Wait and see,’ Harley told him with a wink.

Chapter Text

The elevator doors dinged open and Peter and Harley stepped back into the PR and HR levels. They quickly located Mr. Harrington, who was sitting with a group of people who were excitedly explaining the inner workings of their departments, and asked him to gather the class in the elevator. Then they went off in search of Ned and MJ, who they found still talking to Angel.

‘Hey guys! Sorry that I left for a bit, things were becoming a bit much,’ Peter explained sheepishly. Ned waved a hand and said, ‘Peter, we get it. Honestly I’m surprised you came back at all.’

MJ had filled several pages of her sketchbook with more sketches for outfits that were all based on Angel. They had their instagram opened on their laptop and MJ was scrolling through it with wide eyes. Having them meet each other may have been a bad idea.

‘Heya Petey. You were gone for a suspiciously long amount of time,’ Angel smiled. ‘You have a good time?’ It was a genuine question as far as Peter could tell, and he gladly told Angel all about how he won a very intense game of Uno.

Before long they had to leave Angel to actually do some work (they waved away the concern, as if they didn’t really work to begin with) and gathered with the rest of the class in the elevator.

‘Okay y’all, I hope you had a good time. I know it’s not your favorite part of this building, but it’s interesting if you know where to look. And now, we’re going to go to floor 36. Fri, if you please.’

Peter knew what floor 36 was for. It was a workplace that focused mainly on mechanics; prosthetics and the like. And it was basically Shuri’s own little empire. The people working there were more loyal to her than to Tony. Which meant that Shuri was most likely there, and Harley probably put her up to it. Oh he was going to kill him.

The elevator ride seemed to go so much slower than normal, something that Peter hated immensely. He just wanted the inevitable attention on him to be over with as quickly as possible. Harley seemed to read this on his face and leaned in to whisper, ‘I know it’s a lot, but it’s gonna be fun, I promise!’

When the elevator finally came to a stop, Peter took a deep breath. Harley led the team out of the elevator and came to a stop before a large wall, with doors on either side leading into the workplace. ‘I’m guessing you all know a bit about mechanics, and you’ve probably wanted to take apart a computer at some point, right? Well today is your lucky day because that’s… not even slightly what they do here! In this workplace they’re researching things like prosthetics, how to produce more clean energy, and about a thousand other things to make everyday life easier. This is very important work. The person unofficially heading this workplace is none other than Wakandan princess Shuri! She’s most likely here right now, but please don’t hound her. She’s here doing research right alongside the engineers, so simply treat her as you treat everyone else here.

‘And now I’ll remind you to be careful in this workplace. They’re welding things, some even use blowtorches, and dangerous tools are all over the place. So once again, stay outside of the taped off zones, it’s for your own safety. We’re allowed to ask questions, but don’t startle people who are busy or limbs may be sawn off. On that happy note, please put your bags or coats in the coat rack, and then you can go in!’

Everyone all but threw their bags under the coat rack and ran inside, desperate to see what a real workplace was like. Peter hung back, opting to wait until everyone had run inside before slowly walking towards his impending doom.

The noise when he walked through the doors was oddly comforting. People were tinkering all over the place, some were sketching designs, and others were taking a break and building their own fun little projects to clear their minds and change their perspectives. He took a deep breath. He could do this.

He could definitely not fucking do this. Standing with a group of people at the far left end of the space, was none other than Shuri herself. He was aware that there’d be a big chance of her being here, but it didn’t make the fear any less bad. Steeling himself, he walked over to where a couple of classmates were talking with a guy who was holding a half put together robotic arm, explaining what the thought process behind it was.

‘Hi Steven!’ Peter said with a wave. Steven looked up, looked from Peter to his classmates in a very dramatic fashion, and let out the most fake guffaw Peter had ever heard.

‘Of course this would be your class! But don’t worry, Shuri already gave us the heads up when she knew y’all would be comin’ through here. She said to give you enough space so she could personally embarrass you in front of your friends,’ Steven said happily, setting down his arm and throwing an arm around Peter’s shoulder. Peter stiffened immediately, and Steven immediately noticed, withdrawing his arm and shooting Peter an apologetic look.

‘But… screw that! I mean, well, we can definitely show your classmates something cool instead of embarrassing you, huh?’ He said, beckoning Peter over the tape on the floor and unceremoniously dumping some tools into Peter’s arms. ‘We… are… gonna make… something… fun?’ Steven continued, trailing off slowly as he realised he had no idea what to make. Peter laughed, relaxing slightly. Maybe he could do this after all.

‘Who has any idea of what we could make?’ Peter asked. He felt like building something to get his heart rate under control.

‘Ooh!’ someone said, ‘Maybe you can make a dinosaur robot? I fucking love dinosaurs!’

Peter laughed. ‘I could certainly make that, but I’ll definitely upgrade it. Here, I’ll show you what I have in mind. Instead of a dinosaur robot, I’m thinking dragon robot instead.’

He quickly sketched out his idea on a notepad, thoughts going faster than the speed of light as he decided on things like the material and wiring. Showing his sketch to Steven they quickly gathered the materials, Peter getting started on the wiring while Steven went over to the part of the lab with the welding tools. At some point, Peter’s shoulders stopped being hunched, he slowed down his almost frantic movements and began explaining his thought process to his classmates, who had drawn as close as they were allowed to see Peter’s experienced and deft movements.

Just then, as Peter started thinking that this could happen relatively drama-free, he heard Flash’s dulcet tones drawing nearer and nearer. Setting down his current mess of wires, he looked up to see Flash all but dragging Mr. Harrington to where Peter was sitting, inside the lines drawn on the floor.

‘See! I knew Parker would do something against the rules. I knew it! Didn’t you listen to the tour guide, Peni- Peter? We’re not supposed to go inside the taped off areas.’

Flash got right up into Peter’s personal space, sneering down at him. Harley could see the anger in Peter’s face, but he also saw the hesitation of hitting Flash, probably in the fear of accidentally using his strength to knock Flash against the wall across the room.

Luckily, Harley had no such reservations. He marched right up to Flash, shoved him away from Peter, and punched him in the nose.

Immediately, cries of protest and shock rose up, from Mr. Harrington, the Decathlon team, the engineers in the workplace, and Peter himself.

Mr. Harrington walked over to Flash, checking his face and asking around for the nearest bathroom so Flash could stop the blood that was now flowing freely from his nose.

Harley turned to Peter, half ashamed and half proud of what he had just done. He’d been watching Flash torment Peter for less than a full day and he’d already snapped.

Peter was looking at Harley with a mix of emotions. Anger, surprise, shock, pride, with a hint of upcoming reprimanding.

“Harley,” Peter said quietly, stepping forward and looking at Harley’s hand, seeing the red knuckles and kissing them lightly. “You really shouldn’t have done that.”

He looked at Harley with a look of deep sadness. “With great power comes great responsibility,” he said quietly, gravely. Harley had never seen him look as serious as this. “Don’t abuse your power. Don’t you ever do that again.”

“Darlin’, you do understand why I did it, right? I will apologize if that’s what you want, but I don’t regret my actions. I only regret what it’s doing to you.”

Peter nodded, and opened his arms for a hug. Harley gladly gave him one, giving himself and Peter some comfort.

“I get it. You do have to apologize, though. To Flash, and maybe to Mr. Harrington for punching one of his students,” Peter said. And then he added a quiet, “Thank you.” which made Harley’s eyes well up with tears. How dare Flash hurt Peter like that. Peter, who didn’t deserve any of it in the slightest. Who was telling Harley to apologize to his bully for giving him a long overdue punch.

Shuri ran toward Peter. She hadn’t seen what happened, but she heard the gasps of shock and outrage from everyone in the room. ‘Peter!’ she said, almost crashing into him and Harley, who had seemingly fused together in their hug. She separated them and looked Peter over. ‘What happened?’ She asked, sounding uncharacteristically concerned.

She looked at Peter expectantly, but Harley took one look at Peter’s face and saw that there was no way he was going to talk right now.

‘Oh, uh. I kind of… punched Flash. In the face,’ Harley explained sheepishly. Shuri looked at him for a second, and then punched his shoulder. ‘I wanted to do that!’ she whined.

Peter grabbed Harley’s hand and held on to it like it was a lifeline. With his other hand he dug into his pocket and grabbed his phone, quickly dialling Pepper’s number and holding out the phone for Harley or Shuri to grab. Harley made the move and grabbed it just as Pepper picked up. They had a quiet conversation and then Harley hung up.

‘She’s coming over right now. She said it’d be best to calm everyone down and have this resolved in another less chaotic and noisy place. I think it might be best if we just handle it in the hallway. Shuri, you check on the engineers, I’ll keep the class quiet until Mr. Harrington and Flash are back and then we’ll wait for Pepper together.’

‘Peter? You up for a hug?’ Shuri asked, to which Peter nodded, allowing Shuri to step forward and draw Peter into her arms. He buried his face in her neck and she let him cling to him for a little while, drawing slow circles on his back while allowing him to match his breaths to each circle. While they were standing there, Harley was talking to the class, asking them to stay calm and saying that it’d be resolved shortly. When he got back to his boyfriend, Peter had calmed down significantly, and was engaging in light conversation with Shuri about their plans for their next game night.

Shuri left to go check on the engineers and Harley and Peter stood together, calmly waiting for Mr. Harrington, Flash, and Pepper. Pepper entered the workplace only a few minutes after Mr. Harrington and Flash, looking as calm and collected as ever, the rhythmic clicking of her heels across the tiled floor alerting Peter to her presence without him having to open his eyes from where he had leaned his head against Harley’s shoulder.

‘Hello everyone, I’m Pepper Potts,’ Pepper said, addressing the class and Mr. Harrington. ‘I would like to speak with everyone involved in the altercation, including Peter and Mr. Harrington. We can speak in the hallway. I expect the rest of you to be on your best behaviour while we sort this all out, okay?’

The class nodded, some of them -like MJ- with their mouths open as they stared at the CEO of the biggest company in the world. Pepper strode to the hallway, beckoning everyone she had asked for to follow her.

Harley had barely shut the door before Flash had opened his mouth. ‘Miss Potts,’ he began in an exaggeratedly hurt voice, ‘I have just been attacked by this tour guide. I was just pointing Parker here on a rule he had broken about the taped off areas when I was punched in the nose! I-’ he stopped immediately when Pepper held up her hand.

‘Let me hear Harley’s story first, please. Harley, did you punch this boy?’

Harley looked from Pepper to Flash and back, and sheepishly replied, ‘Uh… yeah. Yeah I did.’

‘And was it unprovoked?’ Pepper asked. Harley shook his head. ‘No ma’am. He was yellin’ at Peter about breakin’ the rules while he works here and is allowed inside the taped off areas, and then he got all up in Peter’s face about it, breaking those same rules.’

Mr. Harrington looked at the three boys in front of him, a thoughtful expression on his face. ‘Miss Potts? If I may? As I see it, Flash had no right to get in Peter’s personal space about rules that don’t apply to Peter, and Harley had no right to punch him for his actions. So I think we can agree that Harley needs to apologize to Flash, and that Flash needs to apologize to Peter. Otherwise I do not feel that it would be wise to let Harley continue to be the tour guide. Do you agree?’

‘Yes I do. And I hope I can count on this being the only incident of this trip,’ Pepper said sternly.

After a moment of indecision, Harley stepped forward and held out his hand to Flash. ‘I’m sorry for punchin’ you in the face, Flash. It was wrong of me.’

Flash grabbed Harley’s hand in a handshake and quickly let go again. He looked almost pained as he turned to Peter. ‘I’m sorry I yelled at you and got in your face. I’ll never do it again.’ and held out his hand to Peter, who almost timidly shook Flash’s hand.

‘And now I must get back to work, I’m afraid,’ Pepper said, looking at Peter with kind eyes, ‘But Peter, can I talk to you before I go?’

Peter nodded, so Mr. Harrington herded Flash out of the hallway, quickly closing the door after himself. Immediately, Peter rushed forward and hugged Pepper. ‘Thanks, mom,’ he whispered.

‘It’s nothing sweetheart, I hope you know that I would do anything for you.’

Peter stepped back and grabbed a hold of Harley’s hand again. ‘Mom, could I maybe introduce MJ to you? I know she really wants to talk to you about being a female CEO and all that kind of stuff.’

Pepper let out a soft laugh, smoothing Peter’s hair over. ‘Maybe another time, okay? I’m rather busy, and I don’t want to talk to her without being able to give her my full attention.’

Peter nodded in understanding, and waved as Pepper got back onto the elevator. When he turned to go back to the workplace, Harley held him back.

‘Peter I meant it when I said that I’m truly sorry for the consequences of my actions. But I’m not sorry for my actions themselves. I would punch that bitch in the face every chance I get if it means he stops harassing you. But I get that it’s not my place. It just sucks that I can’t protect you from him,’ Harley said, his breath hitching and tears forming in his eyes.

Peter grabbed Harley’s hands, looking at Harley with reproach in his eyes. ‘I know you want to punch him again, but I trust you to make the smart choice and let me handle it. If I need protecting I’ll ask for it, probably from someone with some authority over him.’

Harley pouted. ‘I’m the tour guide, that gives me authority!’

Peter giggled, knowing he was kidding, and stepped closer for a hug and a kiss. ‘Now let’s go back before they’re wondering what’s taking us this long.’