Archive of Our Own ^beta

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spooder-man  @NYCWallCrawler

just waiting for the sweet release of death

“Hey, Karen? How far do you think I can shoot my webs?” Peter flipped off of the webbed tightrope he had been walking on and landed on a rooftop below him.

Karen, his ever-faithful AI, replied, “You have 576 web combinations, should we test each one, Peter?”

“Uh, maybe not right now.” Pacing back and forth on the edge of the roof, he glanced out at the New York skyline. “Is there any crime happening around here?”

Just then, a loud crash echoed through the city.

“Well, that was perfect timing. Almost like we’re in a movie.” At that, Peter leapt off of the roof and swung towards the source of the sound. Or rather, into it.

Slamming into something hard, Peter sang Mmm Whatcha Say.

“Peter, that is the 61st time you have sang that in the last week alone. Do you want me to show you the full statistics?”

“It’s obligatory, Karen. You wouldn’t understand. Unless Ned reprogrammed it, he’s hacked into the suit before… Maybe he could teach you memes! Oh my god, that would be great! You could-” Suddenly realizing that he was being lifted into the air, Peter cut himself off.

“Mr. Hulk, sir! Maybe you could, uh, put me down?” Peter glanced up at the Hulk, sighing when he showed no signs of heeding Peter’s request.

“BABY AVENGER SPEAKS!” The Hulk happily shook his fists, with Peter still clenched in one.

“I’m not a baby-”

“HULK PROTECT BABY!” He tightened his grip on Peter, who was trying to wriggle his way out of the Hulk’s fist. Unfortunately, he had only succeeded in getting one arm out. It seemed to just be Parker Luck™️ that the police decided to show up and shoot at the Hulk. A poor decision, really.

“Uh, Karen? What are the odds that I’m going to be hit by one of those bullets?”

“According to my calculations, right now you have a 27.9% chance of getting hit, with a 5.4% chance of the bullet hitting a major organ. Every minute you stay here, it seems that number will increase 7%.”

“Oh. Is there anything you can do? Y’know, the upgrades and all.”

“Of course, Peter. Activating instant kill mode.”

“Deactivate! Karen, I told you no instant kill mode. What would I even use it on in this case? The bullets?” Peter let out a breathy laugh.

“Of course not. You would use it on the Hulk.”

“What? That’s just as bad! The Hulk gets his power through gamma radiation, which is nearly infinite- and when he’s angry, he’ll continue to absorb it, gaining even more power! These bullets are just making him angrier, and he’s just absorbing more radiation, and it’s just- In this state, he’s pretty much invincible! He destroyed an entire planet, I’m pretty sure instant kill mode won’t do anything.”

“Peter. Aren’t you forgetting something?” Peter snapped out of his thoughts, and registered the fact that bullets were whizzing by him, barely missing.

“Oh crap. Karen, other than instant kill mode, what can I do?”

“You could web up his eyes, and he might drop you to get it off.”

“Perfect! Thanks, Karen. You’re the best!” Peter used his conveniently free arm to spray his webbing into the Hulk’s eyes.

Just as Karen said, the Hulk dropped Peter to wipe the webbing out of his eyes.

“BABY AVENGER BOTHER HULK! HULK NO PROTECT BABY AVENGER.”

With every bullet, the Hulk seemed to get more agitated, and used both of his now free arms to swipe at them. He had almost managed to hit a few of them before Peter figured out what he had to do.

“Hey, uh, Hulk! Come over here! I, um, hate radiation?” Needless to say, Peter’s lackluster attempt at diverting the Hulk’s attention failed.

“Karen! Got any good insults? I’m kinda running out of ammo here. I’m insulting gen Z culture everywhere. It’s embarrassing. I mean, MJ has some good ones. Like ‘If I wanted to kill myself, I’d climb up your ego and jump down to your IQ’ or ‘I’ve looked everywhere. I just can’t find where I asked for your opinion’. But I don’t think any of that works with this context?”

“It seems you are on your own for this one, Peter.” Karen chuckled.

“Darn you, Mr. Stark, for creating such an unhelpful AI. I’m alone in this world, even my AI has abandoned me. Why has God forsaken this timeline?” Peter shot a web at the Hulk’s arm, and started pulling with all of his strength.

“Come here, you big ugly oaf! I guess with all of your smashing, you crushed my expectations of your intelligence. It’s safe to say that bar isn’t set very high now. God, it’s like you’re just a big greenball of ignorance and assholeishness.” Peter’s attempt at moving the Hulk failed. Miserably. Although, he did succeed at directing the Hulk’s anger towards himself. It’s the small victories.

“HULK SMASH!” In a fit of rage, the Hulk ran straight at Peter, trying to bowl him over.

“Haha! Yes!” Peter pumped his fists in the air to celebrate before attempting phase two of his plan. He led the Hulk towards an empty park, taunting him all the way there. He came to a stop, and barely managed to avoid being crushed by the Hulk.

Peter muttered quietly to himself, “What to do, what to do…” Quite suddenly, Peter was slammed to the ground by a green fist.

“Not cool, dude. You hurt my feelings.” Peter peeled himself off the ground just in time to miss the impact that would have squished him like the half-spider he is. Dodging the Hulk’s increasing attacks with a decreasing amount of energy, Peter went to his last resort.

"Um, do you want to hear a chemistry joke?" To absolutely no one’s surprise, the Hulk did not respond. "Oh, I was hoping for a reaction."

The Hulk stared incredulously at Peter for a second before resuming his attack.

“Damn, all the good chemistry jokes argon. Uh, knock knock.” The Hulk just grunted. “I’m just gonna take that as ‘who’.” Peter chuckled before continuing.“To.” Once again, he was ignored by the Hulk, who had stopped his attack out of curiosity. In a poor imitation of the Hulk, Peter grunted “to who?” Returning back to his normal voice, he said, “It’s to whom.”

Incredibly, the Hulk began to shrink rapidly, skin changing from a green to a more flesh-like tone.

“I can’t believe it. A knock-knock joke.” Bruce Banner fell down, only saved from hitting the ground by Spider-Man.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got a million of ‘em. Should we go to the Tower, or...” Peter was inwardly fangirling, because oh mY GOD THAT’S BRUCE BANNER and he’s rIgHT nEXt tO yOU whAT THE HELL?

“The Tower should be fine. Oh my god, a knock-knock joke. I’m never going to hear the end of it.”

BONUS

“What the hell happened to you, kid?” Tony eyed the impressive bruises forming on Peter’s skin, brilliant shades of black and blue.

“Oh, it was really cool, Mr. Stark! I ran into the Hulk on patrol one day, and then I told him a knock-knock joke and he calmed down!”

“You ran into thE HULK?!”

“Yeah, but he was really cool! I mean, yeah, he slammed me into the ground, but that was it!”

“Let me get this straight. You met the Hulk, he slammed you into the ground, you told him a knock-knock joke to calm him down, and you didn’t feel the need to tell me any of this?”

“Yep!”

Chapter Text

spooder-man  @NYCWallCrawler

nothing beats having to do acting through hand gestures but picking a line where you literally cannot use hand gestures and ending up gesturing randomly with gestures that have no relation whatsoever to what you’re saying while talking faster and faster and reopening a cut on your hand out of nervousness and then bleeding randomly for an hour :))))))

“I’m going on a trip in my favourite rocket ship, soaring through the sky!” Swinging through an open window of the Tower, Peter landed in the common room.

“This is how I enter my house. What’s up, fuckers!” It was safe to say Peter thought he was alone. He was not.

Thor, a literal god, was sitting in the kitchen. Startled by the red-and-blue-clad vigilante bursting through a window, Thor threw his hammer at him. Which really should be an unfortunate situation, but as it was three in the morning, no one was really thinking all too clearly.

Never one to leave a vine unfinished, Peter continued, “Because fuck you, that’s why!” And caught Mjolnir. But, seeing as Peter hadn’t slept in several days and was running purely on coffee and energy drink, he didn’t exactly process the ‘only the worthy may wield it’ aspect of Mjolnir. Peter’s inner fangirl would be screaming at him right now had he been fully functioning.

Thor looked shocked, but that quickly faded to excitement. “Man of Spiders, you are worthy! This is a most joyous occasion, and thus we shall celebrate!” Thor was positively beaming at Peter, still in full Spider-Man costume.

“What- what do you mean, celebrate? Why is this a happy occasion? This is just a hamm- oh my gOD THIS IS MJOLNIR AND OH MY GOD YOU’RE THOR AND-“ Peter was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, probably about ten seconds away from passing out, and practically vibrating from all the caffeine.

“Man of Spiders, you have caught Mjolnir! Only the worthy may hold it, and you have proven yourself worthy! Now, we must celebrate!” Thor procured two glasses of Asgardian mead from seemingly nowhere, and proceeded to hand one to Peter.

“Ah, sorry Mr. Thor, but I don’t think Mr. Stark will let me drink alcohol. Sorry, gotta go!” Peter slowly backed away, sprinting to his room once he was out of eyesight.

“Karen, what do you think the chances are of Thor forgetting this by tomorrow?”

BONUS

“Who are you?”

“You see, I would ask you the same, but I sometimes know recent history. So, wouldn’t what happened in New York make you evil?”
Peter looked at the Asgardian seated on the couch with interest.

Loki looked back at Peter with a brief look of confusion before regaining his usual expression of disinterest. “I’ve changed.”

“Cool. So, like, on a scale of one to ten, how evil are you right now? One being something like ‘I’ll spit in your hot dog’ and ten being ‘I’ll murder all the puppies’?”

“A three.”

“Ok. Let me know if it gets above a six.”

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spooder-man  @NYCWallCrawler

all you tony stark antis can @ me

“Of course I’m the one cooking for the Avengers, those lazy shitheads.” Sam grumbled. “This is too damn early for any man to be awake.”

It was seven o’clock. And seemingly, the perfect time for Peter to come stumbling into the kitchen, half asleep.

Sam was confused, to say the least. If there’s one thing he knew, it was that Tony Stark hates children, and there is no way in hell that he would allow one in the private Avengers floor.

“Who are you?” Sam didn’t notice the fact that Peter was pretty much sleep walking, for how coherent he was at this point in time.

“My name’s Trey, I got a basketball game tomorrow.” Peter didn’t look up, just grabbed a carton of milk, a bowl and a box of cereal to make breakfast, pouring the cereal in before the milk because he’s not a monster.

Sam muttered quietly to himself, “What the fuck?” before focusing on the bacon and eggs that nearly burned.

“Yeah, what the fuck, Richard?”

“Okay, how the hell did you hear that? What’s your name, kid?”

“My name is Michael with a b, and I’ve been afraid of insects my whole life.” Peter continued to eat his breakfast, giving himself more food, because spider metabolism is a wondrous gift.

“What in fucking hell is going on here? And what do you mean, a b? Where’s the b?” Sam’s bewilderment levels were increasing with every word out of that kid’s mouth, and with it, his anxiety and stress levels. Which were already too high to begin with. The perks of being a superhero.

“tHerE’s a bEE?” Having finished his second bowl of cereal, Peter got up to grab a glass, before pouring milk into it. Sam swore he heard the kid mumble “he need some milk” before chugging it and throwing the empty glass across the room while yelling “this bitch empty, yEET!”

It was at this moment that Tony Stark decided to make his entrance.

Sam was sure the kid was in for it, there was a broken glass on the floor and a teenager mumbling nonsense. Both of which Tony hated.

But to his eternal surprise, Tony took in the scene and started laughing. Laughing, of all things.

“Again? I swear, kid, that’s the fifth time that’s happened this month. And please don’t tell me you had to do it ‘for the vine’, because you’ve given me that excuse the last ten times. C’mon, we gotta get you to school, and that hot aunt of yours probably wouldn’t like it if you were late.” Tony walked up to Peter and together they walked out of the room, Peter leaning on Tony for support with his head on Tony’s shoulder.

“What the everloving fuck?”

Chapter Text

spooder-man  @NYCWallCrawler

spider-man? more like bider-man, am i right?

                 meme overlord  @no

                 or spider-boy, really

“So, I gotta say, this isn’t exactly the way I imagined my day going, but who am I to complain?” Suspended from the ceiling, Peter stared down at the bank robbers. “You do realize that it’s one in the morning, right? I have homework and tests to study for, so could you just be a bit more considerate next time? Jesus, the criminals these days.” And with that, Peter dropped from the ceiling, flipping upright and shooting the gun out of an outstretched hand.

“Hey, Spidey! It’s knife to meet you!” One of the robbers lunged at Peter with a knife in his hand.

“Wait, that’s a pun! Oh my god, that’s amazing. Knife to meet you. I should have come up with that, why didn’t I come up with that?” Unfortunately, Peter didn’t notice the knife lodged in his stomach.

“Oh, crap. I’m bleeding again, aren’t I? Damn, that’s gonna stain.” Peter pulled the knife out of his stomach, which, in retrospect, was not a smart decision. Trying to prevent further staining of his suit, Peter webbed up the robbers before swinging back to the tower.

“Mr. Stark’s gonna kill me. That’s like the third time this month, and  I’m gonna have to clean the suit. Goddamnit, that takes forever.” Suddenly feeling quite dizzy, Peter nearly fell from the webs he was swinging on. “Uh, Karen. D’you know how much blood I’ve lost?”

“From my calculations, about five and a half pints.”

“That’s a lot, Karen. Isn’t that supposed to be inside me?” Peter was barely managing to hold onto his webs, let alone swing in a straight line.

“For a normal person, you would be unconscious right now. The knife seems to have pierced your abdominal aorta. I would say you have about ten minutes before you lose consciousness.”

It was nothing short of a miracle that Peter reached the Tower relatively unscathed. Other than the, you know, hole in his abdomen from the knife. He slammed into the window to Tony’s lab, shattering it, hitting the windowsill with his head and falling face-first onto the ground.

“Mothertrucker, dude. That hurt like a buttcheek on a stick.”

The only person currently in the room looked up, distracted from her work. “Oh, great. Another broken white boy for me to fix.”

With his face still in the floor, Peter responded, “you’re disrespecting a future US army soldier.” He sat up and covered the open wound with his hand, since the blood flow had increased after falling through the window. “Stupid blood. Can’t you just stay in my body for once? Now I’m going to have to clean my suit and the floor. You’re a goddamn bitch, you dumbass blood.” For the second time that week, Peter passed out.

“I’m going to have to fix him, aren’t I?”

*****

Peter groggily blinked open his eyes, adjusting them to the bright lights of the lab. There was a figure hovering over him, someone that seemed familiar, but who he couldn’t place.

“You almost died, colonizer. Your stupid radioactive blood made it impossible to do a blood transfusion, so I had to wait for your blood to regenerate. Apparently , I’m not allowed to synthesize blood anymore, not after last time.” Shuri scowled down at him.

Still loopy from the drugs Shuri had made for him and slightly slurring his words, Peter said, “’m a bad bitch, you can’t kill me.”

“Yes, well, you lost six pints of blood and you were unconscious for a while because I didn’t have my lab. For someone without any vibranium, Stark’s lab is decent, though.” Shuri moved back to the empty chair, and resumed the work that previously interrupted by a bleeding superhero.

“Tha’s so sad, Alexa play despacito.”

“You know, I came out here to have a good time and I’m honestly feeling attacked right now. But at least I’m not stupid enough to pull out the only thing stopping me from bleeding out. ”

Peter tried to remember what had happened before being in the lab, but was drawing a blank. At least he could sort of speak properly now. It was probably the healing factor. “See, you’d think I’d remember bleeding out. So please tell me, why was I bleeding out?”

“I dunno, it might have been the stab wound .” Shuri continued on with her work, unbothered.

Again, trying to remember seemed to be his mortal enemy. “I was stabbed? Why?”

“I don’t know, why does anyone get stabbed?”

“To get closer to the sweet release of death and escape the hell that is existence.” Shuri glanced back at Peter, unamused.

“While I don’t deny that existence is hell, could you next time try to not interrupt my work with your stab wounds? I have to fix my brother’s suit, he somehow managed to break a vibranium suit that can absorb kinetic energy.”

“He probably just absorbed too much energy and when he released it, it overloaded the suit.” Peter was slowly metabolizing the drugs, and at this point, they were nearly gone. If only he had been more coherent throughout the conversation, maybe future Peter wouldn’t regret his actions.

Shuri’s words were dripping with sarcasm. “Yeah, thanks, genius. I figured that out for myself. It’s not like I made the suit, or anything.”

Peter was suddenly aware that he was in the lab, with stitches in his side, and drugged with something that somehow worked with his metabolism. He felt his face to check if his mask was still there, and to his eternal relief, it was.

“Why am I here?”

“Must I go over this again? You were stabbed, and you have a concussion.” Shuri whirled around to face him. “And I have work to do, colonizer, so please just remember next time.” She turned back to face the desk.

“I was stabbed?” He received no answer. Peter realized that he was almost out of web fluid and decided that he needed to make some more, and so he sat down at his chair. It was a shared lab between him and Tony, after all. He got out the materials for his web solution, and started mass-producing it. It was a miracle that he hadn’t run out of solution while swinging, and he wasn’t about to test his luck. He was about halfway through making the solution when Shuri noticed what he was doing.

“What the fuck are you doing, colonizer?”

Peter looked up from his mix of chemicals to stare quizzically at Shuri. “I’m making my web solution.”

“And you have a concussion. Now, I might be wrong, but normally, it’s not a good idea to mix a brain injury with chemicals that can easily injure you.”

Cheerful as ever, Peter said, “Don’t worry, it’s not like that time I was shot and the bullet didn’t go all the way through so I had to dig it out and stitch up the hole before I passed out.”

Shuri raised an eyebrow at that, and responded, “If I wanted to hear about your near death experiences, I’d just watch your youtube channel.”

“You- you watch my youtube channel?” Despite having millions of followers on most of his social media accounts, it still seemed a bit surreal that people actually paid attention to him. Yeah, he was a superhero and an almost Avenger, but his fame really only extended to Queens.

“Yeah, and your instagram and snapchat. I do know superheroes outside of my brother.”

And with that one sentence, Peter finally realized why she seemed so familiar.

“ Crap, ” He muttered. And a little louder, “You’re Princess Shuri of Wakanda.”

“Yes, and you’re Spider-Man.” Shuri turned her chair around to face Peter, noticing that he was already done with his web fluid and had taken out some old, mangled web-shooters and was currently trying to fix them.”What are those made out of? It’s not vibranium, and probably not the gold-titanium alloy that Stark uses for his suits.”

“Oh. These are my old web-shooters, the ones that I made out of scrap metal. Mr. Stark gave me some new ones made out of the titanium alloy, but I have these just in case.” Peter smiled a bit, not that Shuri could tell through his mask.

“Okay.” Shuri was already trying to figure out how they worked so she could make him new vibranium web-shooters. “Completely unrelated question, when’s your birthday?”

Peter scoffed a bit at that, knowing what Shuri was up to. “August 10th. You don’t need to make me anything, though.”

“Of course not. It’s just for research purposes.” Shuri turned away from Peter, focusing on her work once more. But it was not ten minutes before she looked up again to see Peter still fixing the web-shooters, humming something that sounded suspiciously like a Hamilton song.  “Need some help?”

“I thought you were fixing the Black Panther suit?”

“My brother can wait. He was the one who broke the suit, after all. I have some vibranium, so do you want to make some new web-shooters?”

Peter bounced up and down a bit in his chair. “That would be great!” Shuri moved her chair over to Peter’s desk, and they started to work on those web-shooters.

B O N U S

“Shuri? The meeting’s over, so you can stop complaining about being in New York and not seeing any Broadway musicals.” T’Challa walked into the room to find his sister and Spider-Man, the one from the airport all those months ago, dueling with lightsabers while Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down) blasted in the background. T’Challa took in the scene and chuckled, before turning around and leaving.

Chapter Text

spooder-man  @NYCWallCrawler

all this discourse in the avengers fandom about team iron man or team cap. i say team bug. [me, black widow, ant-man]

                ant-man  @ScottLang

                BUG BROS FOR LIFE

“Hey, Karen? Do you think that I could get extra credit for being a superhero? Like just swing up to my teachers, say ‘I’ve saved the world and literally died while doing it, could I please get some extra credit?’ Peter sat on the edge of a building, trying to figure out how to waste his time.

“If you wanted to improve your grades, I would not recommend revealing your identity. Maybe doing the essay that’s worth 55% of your grade would be a good use of your time?”

“As much as I despise your answer, Karen, you’re right. Words aren’t going to analyze themselves.” Peter flipped off of the building and fell for a few seconds before shooting a web at a nearby skyscraper.

Peter was well on his way to Stark Tower to work on his essay (what? Mr. Stark has good WiFi.) when he heard a little girl crying. Peter let go of his web and did a backflip to land in the iconic superhero pose.

Peter muttered, “You know, Deadpool was right. That is hard on the knees. But, you know, it looks cool.” He knelt in front of the girl and put his hands on her shoulders. “Hey, are you okay? Where are your parents?”

The girl sniffled and said, “My dad said not to worry, but he’s been gone for too long.” She looked up at Peter with wide eyes, before quietly saying, “can I tell you a secret?”

Peter nodded, and the girl replied, “my dad’s a superhero, just like you! He said he met you in Germany, and that you fought. But everything’s okay now, so can you help me find him?”

“Of course! What’s your name? Maybe I know where he is.” Peter smiled reassuringly, not that she could see it through the mask. He tended to do that a lot.

The girl brightened a bit, before responding, “My name’s Cassie. My dad is Ant-Man.”

Peter tilted his head, he hadn’t really heard of an Ant-Man, though he did consider himself to be a big superhero fan. “Is that the tiny dude? And then he was normal, and one time he was giant?”

Cassie smiled for the first time since Peter had met her, and nodded enthusiastically. “He said he’d be back in a few days, but it’s been a week.”

Peter grabbed Cassie’s hand, and said, “Let’s go to Stark Tower. I don’t know if Mr. Stark is there, but we can wait there for him. He can find your dad.” He tugged on her hand, and she walked with him to the building looming over New York.

“Does your suit give you superpowers? My dad’s suit gives him superpowers.”

“No, I was bitten by a radioactive spider a couple years ago. It actually gave me arachnophobia, which is a bit ironic. Mr. Stark never lets me live that one down.”

“Do your webs come out of you?”

“No, I made them in chemistry class when I was bored one day. I mean, I might as well stick to the spider theme.”

“Why did you make your suit spider-themed? You didn’t have to, no one knows how you got your powers.”

“Well, you see, there was this vine-- Oh, we’re here!” Peter and Cassie walked into the massive lobby of Stark Tower, Cassie gawking at the room. To be fair, it was pretty difficult to get used to, what with it being worth several million dollars and probably one-of-a-kind.

“Do you live here?” Cassie looked at Peter with wide eyes.

Peter chuckled before responding, “Sometimes. I mostly live with my aunt, but when she isn’t home, I have a room over here. Other times, I sleep over because I stayed in the lab too long.” Cassie’s eyes got even wider, and she bounced up and down.

“Do you have a room here?” When Peter nodded, she asked, “Can we go up?”

“Sure!” Peter grabbed her hand, and together, they ran to the elevator. “Hey, FRIDAY? Can we go to level 97?”

“Of course.” FRIDAY responded. The elevator doors shut, and they were whisked up to Tony’s private level. When the doors opened, Peter and Cassie ran out into the hallway, and Peter led her to his room.

Peter’s room is fairly tall, with a web hammock suspended from the ceiling. There’s a bunk bed for whenever Ned comes for a sleepover, a desk for homework, a flat-screen TV, and pretty much anything Peter could ever need. There was even an ensuite, and altogether his room was as big as his apartment. The walls were painted red and blue to match his suit, and it somehow didn’t look garish. His bedsheets were Star Wars themed, and posters from various fandoms covered an entire wall. Which was saying a lot, since the walls were huge. Peter had lego sculptures on a shelf, and photos on another. While Cassie was distracted, he turned the pictures with his friends and family around, leaving only pictures of the Avengers and some landscapes.

Once Cassie had seen the web hammock, she had barely taken her eyes off of it. “Can we go up to the hammock?”

“I don’t see why not. I mean, as long as we don’t fall off we should be fine. I guess we should see if anyone is available to fix us if we get hurt. FRIDAY, is anyone here? Like, Ms. Potts or Dr. Banner?”

“They are currently busy, though Boss should be back soon.”

Peter shrugged, that was good enough for him. He grabbed Cassie, and put her on his back before he walked up the wall to get to the hammock. He put her down onto the webs, and she beamed back at him.

“You have a ceiling voice in your room? That’s so cool!” Cassie looked up at the ceiling, probably looking for some speakers.

“That’s FRIDAY. She’s Mr. Stark’s AI. Well, his second one. I have an AI too, her name’s Karen.”

“Like in Spongebob?”

“Yeah, that’s what I named her for. I kept calling her suit lady, so when I was trapped in a high-security warehouse for a night, I named her. And then I had to climb the Washington Monument to stop a falling elevator that my decathlon team was in because there was an alien bomb in my friend’s backpack and it exploded. But that’s not the point.”

“You stopped a falling elevator? But you’re so... small.” Cassie gestured to Peter’s arms.

Peter mocked a hurt expression. “That’s rude. I’ve lifted a building off of me because I was stuck under it, thank you very much .”

“You can lift a building?”

“Jean Valjean can lift a heavy cart, and he doesn’t have superpowers. So since I have super strength, yes, I can lift a building. I mean, I don’t get why I can’t just have the exoskeletons that spiders have instead of a stupid bone skeleton, because it’s a pain to deal with broken bones. Then I could do all the superhero landings that I want, instead of having to worry about breaking my legs when I land. I did that once, and it wasn’t really fun. Deadpool lectured me on how superhero landings were bad for your legs, and demonstrated by jumping off of a skyscraper to do the landing, and shattered his legs. Then he cut his legs off because he said it was ‘too annoying to deal with resetting bones.’”

Cassie winced at that, and said, “But wouldn’t your bones be stronger? With superpowers?”

“Eh, I wouldn’t know. I don’t really know how to compare the amount of force needed to break my bones before and after the bite. I guess Dr. Banner could figure it out, but I don’t really want to bother him with that.”

Suddenly, FRIDAY spoke up, and Cassie jerked her head up to look at the ceiling again. “Cassie, your dad is coming up the elevator with Boss. It seems the Avengers were on a mission, and Boss went to the debriefing. I have alerted them to your location, and they are on their way.”

“Cool.” Looking back at Peter, she asked, “Can I have a ceiling voice?”

“You’d have to ask Mr. Stark for one, he hasn’t taught me how to code an AI yet.”

“D’you think he’d let me have one?”

Peter started to answer, but he was cut off by the door opening. “Cassie?” A man walked in, wearing the Ant-Man suit sans the helmet, which he was holding. From his excellent deduction skills, Peter figured that he was Cassie’s dad. Yeah, Peter could be the next Sherlock Holmes. All he needs is the hat.

Peter grabbed Cassie, and once again put her on his back, walking down the wall to reach the floor. He then put her back down on the ground, and she ran up to her dad.

He mouthed ‘thank you’ at Peter, and once Cassie waved goodbye, they walked out of the door.

B O N U S

After a surprisingly easy battle, Scott walked up to Peter, who was still in the Spider-Man suit.

“Hey, I never got to thank you for taking care of Cassie. I left her with her mom, since she had just moved here, but I guess she got tired of waiting, and wanted to try and find me. The streets aren’t a forgiving place, so thanks for finding her when you did.” Scott smiled at Peter.

“It’s no problem. She was really nice, I wouldn’t mind watching her if no one else can.”

Scott looked at him gratefully, saying, “That would be great, thanks. Cassie’s been begging to see you, and keeps going on about the ceiling lady? She keeps asking about having a web hammock, but we don’t have any room, which I’ve told her, but it just goes in one ear and out the other. Maybe I can text you the next time I have a mission?”

Peter nodded, and they gave each other their phone numbers. Scott thanked Peter again, and left. Once Scott was out of earshot, Peter pumped his fist in the air. “Yes! I have two superheros’ phone numbers. Take that, Flash.”

Chapter Text

spooder-man  @NYCWallCrawler

what are you supposed to do when you’re writing fanfiction, have seven tabs open of fanfiction for several fandoms, a spreadsheet for uncomplete fanfictions, and two windows open on your computer, sized accordingly so that you can watch netflix while doing something else?

              i’m in  @NedLeeds

               idk dude you’re on your own for this one

              meme overlord  @no

               well when you find out lmk so we can suffer together

“Well, Viz, now that we can use the kitchen in the Tower, I can teach you how to cook.” Wanda and Vision walked into the common room of Stark Tower, since they had just been pardoned. The UN ruled that the Rogues would be cleared of their charges if they signed the Accords and were under house arrest for six months. Of course, it turned out that house arrest meant staying at Stark Tower, so if nothing else, Tony has another source of anxiety and a very high chance of worsening his PTSD. Fun.

“I know how to cook, Wanda, but the cinnamon looks so much like paprika that it’s impossible to not mix them up.”

“Let’s just get on with--” Wanda cut off suddenly as she heard the sounds of fighting in the common room. Her eyes glowed red as she activated her magic, and she gestured for Vision to follow her. They slowly creeped into the living room, unveiling the scene in front of them.

There were three teenagers, two boys and a girl, sword fighting with what seemed to be long sticks made out of light, in front of a TV playing the exact scene they were reenacting. Their sticks were all different colors- one was blue, one was green, and one was red but seemed to be double the size of the others. She noticed that the kids with the green and blue sticks were teaming up against the kid with the red stick.

Wanda’s eyes widened as the girl with the red stick did a flip (or aerial, really) away from the other two, and then seamlessly resumed fighting. Meanwhile, Vision had already figured out that they were following the fight scene where Qui-gon and Obi-Wan were fighting Darth Maul. But Wanda had completely forgotten about the TV playing in the background, and instead decided to focus on the teens, where they continued to fight.

The girl with the red stick had kicked away the one with the blue stick, and jumped unnaturally high, and landed about ten feet away with seemingly no effort. Did they have superpowers? Was that why they were there, because Tony Stark would never allow normal children to be around him. It was then that she noticed the small, metal contraptions on their backs, reminiscent of a jetpack, albeit smaller. The others followed her, and resumed their fighting.

Wanda watched them intently, each blow matched, all of them blending together perfectly, their fight riddled with flips. This continued on, until suddenly, walls made out of red energy formed between the three. Did they have that set up? How did anyone allow this to go on? Especially Tony, he hates people messing with his things.

The walls disappeared as suddenly as they appeared, letting the girl with the red stick and the boy with the green stick out, leaving the one with the blue stick trapped. The two that were freed continued fighting, evenly matched until the one with the red stick hit the one with the green stick under the chin, exposing their stomach. Wanda gasped as the one with the red stick shoved their stick through the other’s stomach, and her eyes flared red with magic. She very nearly put an end to the fighting with her magic, but was stopped by Vision.

He pointed at the TV, where exactly the same thing had happened. She realized that they had been re-creating the movie scene, and looked back at the fallen teenager, who had no hole in his stomach. Were those swords not real? They made sounds when they hit each other, so that means that they must be. How were they harmless? Wanda was so lost in thought that she missed the walls disappearing again, letting the other kid out. The two teens left fought once more, jumping onto the couch so that the one with the red stick could shove the other one off, and throw their stick (which had seemingly turned off, since the glowing bit had vanished) off the couch as well, out of reach.

Wanda tuned back in just in time to see the kid hanging off of the couch vault over the top and manage to move the green stick into their hand without touching it. She was confused, to say the least. He then used the green stick to “stab” the other one, who then fell over.

With the fight over, Wanda moved to interrogate the teens, who had taken their sticks, deactivated them, and plopped down on the couch. “What are you doing here? And who are you?”

The kids looked up, startled, and upon recognizing her as the Scarlet Witch, two of them had a star-struck look on their face. The other wasn’t impressed, but seemed confused as to who she was.

The girl said, “I’m Shuri, that’s Peter,” She pointed to the kid who originally had the blue stick. “And that’s Ned.” She pointed to the other kid, the one with the green stick.

Vision chimed in, “Ah, yes. Peter, Mr. Stark has told me about you.” Peter squeaked a little, face flushing with the realization of the fact that Tony talks about him. He also recognized Vision as an Avenger, based on the stories Tony had told him. It seemed that Peter was the only one who could get through Tony’s walls.

“Uh, hi, Mr. Vision, sir! I thought you were coming tomorrow? And hi, Ms. Scarlet Witch, ma’am!” Wanda looked back at the other kids, Ned and Shuri, as Vision answered Peter’s endless questions. Ned still looked a bit star-struck, opening and closing his mouth and not once blinking.

The three teens asked Wanda a multitude of questions about her magic, and asked Vision even more about random facts that had to have been found in the furthest corners of the internet. This continued for about twenty minutes until Tony Stark walked in. He took one look at the three teens bombarding the two semi-adults with questions, and had to suppress a groan. As he walked into the living room, he completely missed Shuri’s snicker. That was unfortunate for him, really. Shuri activated the walls once more, trapping Tony inside.

Wanda was sure the kids were done for, which was unfortunate, seeing as she had quite come to like them. Shockingly, he didn’t seem to care, instead placing his hands to the walls, inspecting them. He looked around to find the source, and upon finding nothing, he turned back to the kids.

“You’re recreating that fight from Star Wars again, aren’t you?” Shuri, Peter, and Ned nodded, so Tony continued, “You’ve improved it from last time, then. How long were you working on this, an hour?” The teens nodded again, and as the walls disappeared a final time, Tony stepped out.

“C’mon, take your lightsabers and let’s go to the lab. You might as well be productive with your free time. And Peter, I know you have homework to do and a speech to write, so don’t tell me otherwise.” Tony walked out of the room, with the three teens lagging behind, talking amongst each other animatedly.

Wanda turned to Vision, confused as to Tony’s relationship with the kids. He seemed to be more familiar with Peter? But he was saying that he knew about the kid’s homework, so it seemed to be a parental relationship? Not very Tony-esque to have a kid, though, so she was suspicious.

Wanda asked, “How long were we gone? Not long enough for him to have a kid, right?”

“We were gone for one year, four months, and seventeen days. Unless he was adopted, that is not enough time.”

She was about to answer, but was interrupted by an explosion, coming from the general direction of Tony’s lab. It was quickly followed by Peter and Ned running out of the lab, completely covered in a sticky white substance? Tony came running after them, also covered in the substance, and Shuri, untouched by whatever was on the other three, was taping the whole thing.

B O N U S

“Peter?” Ned turned to Peter, eyes wide. “Do you know why our Tumblr suddenly has a million followers?”

Peter almost fell off the bed he was lying on, and made his way over to the computer. “No way, dude. It only had a couple thousand yesterday. Must be a glitch.”

Ignoring his newfound fame, Peter pulled out his phone, and almost groaned when he saw the notifications. It seemed that Shuri had tweeted, “just yeet yourselves over here” and linked it to Peter’s tumblr. He didn’t even tell her he had one.

Chapter Text

spooder-man  @NYCWallCrawler

one time i was really stressed about school so i stayed awake all night without drinking coffee to make myself sleep-deprived so that i could survive the school day

                i am iron man  @tonystark

                 same

“Hey, Peter?” Ned waited patiently for Peter to close his locker before continuing, “Why don’t you ever post anything about the Avengers? You literally live with them, what even is your life?”

“I don’t know, dude, but if you want it, you can have it. Please, take my anxiety and depression.”

“No can do. I already have those. Sorry.” Ned and Peter walked out of school and towards the sleek black car parked a couple blocks away. Peter had invited Ned over for the weekend, since they had a project due. Tomorrow. And they haven’t started it yet. Yay procrastination!

They both settled into the car, lapsing into an uncomfortable silence. Remembering the conversation from before, Ned asked, “But why don’t you post anything?”

“Privacy, I guess.” Peter shrugged, and took out his math homework.

“But they’re the Avengers. They have no privacy, they’re literally the most famous people in the world.” Having completed his homework, unlike Peter, Ned had nothing to do.

“Yeah, but it’s like me with Spider-Man. It’s fine to be sort of famous when I have the mask on, but I wouldn’t want to be bombarded with reporters without it. I’d like my privacy, and I’d think that the Avengers would like the same.” Peter hadn’t looked up from the math he was currently working on, but he had learned it several years ago. It was laughably easy.

“Fair point. D’you think there are any Avengers around? Maybe I can meet them!” Ned bounced in his seat a little, childlike in his glee.

“Yeah, Mr. Stark’s gonna be there. Probably Dr. Banner, maybe Mr. Thor? Ms. Natasha shows up sometimes, so I don’t really know. The others don’t really go to the common room all that much, so I wouldn’t really know.” With every mention of an Avenger, Ned brightened a bit more.

“You know, you have met them all before, right? You came over for my birthday, and everyone was there.” Had Peter been looking at Ned, he would have given him a look, but alas, he was not.

“Yeah, but it’s the Avengers. And I haven’t really talked to Thor or the Black Widow, or Captain America, or Doctor Strange! As your Guy in the Chair, I should get benefits. Like, say, coming over to the Tower every week to meet the Avengers. No biggie.” Ned looked pleadingly at Peter, semi-serious.

Peter chuckled before responding, “Sure. Tell your mother that you’re relinquishing all of your time with her to spend time with me. That’ll go over well.”

“It’s t he Avengers. She’ll understand.” Ned resumed his begging, and Peter was saved only by the fact that they had reached the Tower. The sight of the building never failed to excite Ned, who was bouncing in his seat even more, if that was possible. They walked through the doors, and into the elevators.

As speakers were somehow seamlessly embedded throughout the entire building, FRIDAY said, “Floor 98, I presume?” Peter nodded, and the elevator shot up, heading towards the common room. They reached the common room in just a few seconds, and Ned nearly ran out of the elevator in his haste to meet Avengers. Unfortunately for him, the room was empty.

“Ned, if you wanted to meet the Avengers, you could just ask FRIDAY. FRI?” Peter looked up at the ceiling despite knowing that it made no difference.

“Boss and Dr. Banner are in the lab.”

“Thanks, FRI! Ned?” Peter gestured to the elevator, and he and Ned walked back into the elevator, heading up to Tony’s lab, a floor above them. Inside, they found Tony hunched over his Iron Man armour, fixing it from the battle yesterday. Bruce was a couple feet away, coding something that they couldn’t make out. It was strangely cold in the room, but judging by the fact that everyone else was perfectly fine, it was probably the stupid spider DNA. It really was the most helpful thing, giving him super anxiety and a lack of thermoregulation when he lived in New York. He grabbed a sweatshirt off of his chair (that he had stolen from his father figure, but we don’t talk about that) and put it on, before joining Tony to help with the suit. He didn’t even notice that it was Tony’s MIT sweatshirt, and it had the word ‘STARK’ on the back of it. Thankfully, it wasn’t the one that Rhodey had changed to say ‘STANK’.

He was so engrossed with his task that he didn’t notice Tony taking a picture of him, posting it on instagram.

memeoverlord  b e t r a y a l   you didn’t invite me

       nedleeds  yeah the only problem is the ocean separating us and the seven hour flight

yeeeet  oml the fEELS

tonystarkstan  is that his kid?

       firebreathingbitchqueen  omg they actually kinda look alike

       perpetualpain  yeAH THEY DO

       deathbypoking  HEADCANON ACCEPTED

       nothanks  wait does this mean that tony ‘i am iron man’ stark kept a child a secret for however many years?

       crownofstars  oh shit ur right

      firebreathingbitchqueen  shush we’re accepting this headcanon whether it makes sense or not

      firebreathingbitchqueen  and is that aN IRON MAN SUIT HE’S WORKING ON

      tonystarkstan  oMG IT IS

      expelliarmus  are we just ignoring the fact that he’s wearing tony stark’s mit sweatshirt

      yeeeet  yes we are

      tonystarkstan  yes

bearsbeetsbattlestargalactica  that yeeted my heart right out of my chest

ironmanstan  why is there no cApTIoN I need CoNTeXt

      tonystarkstan  because he’s tony fucking stark, he doesn’t need captions

      ironmanstan  true true

      ironmanstan  also your username is wonderful

theyhadabondingmoment  my hEART

mischiefmanaged  did he tag @peterparkour ??

       bearsbeetsbattlestargalactica  oml he did

       yeeeet  who the fuck is @peterparkour

       yeeeet  update: he has an aunt that isn’t related to tony at all

       yeeeet  so he isn’t tony’s kid

       expelliarmus  nOOOOOO

Peter was suddenly distracted from the Iron Man suit when his phone started blowing up with notifications. He picked it up to see why it wouldn’t stop ringing, and saw that his Instagram follower count had jumped from several thousand to almost three million. He stared quizzically at his phone for a second, before looking around, and seeing Tony still on his phone.

Peter whispered, “Betrayal,” before scrolling through his camera roll to find some… not blackmail, not really. Just payback. He snickered to himself as he found the perfect picture, and posted it with the caption “payback”. Tony, apparently upon receiving the notification of Peter’s post, turned around to stick out his tongue (he did not stick his tongue out like a child, he is Tony fucking Stark, he is better than that) at Peter.

ironmanstan  why does he look so smol???

        mischiefmanaged  i think a better question is why does @peterparkour have a picture of tony stark wrapped in a blanket while watching star wars

        ironmanstan  valid point

beebo  aAaAAaaAh why is this so cute

mood  okay peter is tony’s child don’t @ me

        bearsbeetsbattlestargalactica  yeah no i agree

        firebreathingbitchqueen  i think it’s like pretty much confirmed by now

crownofstars aaHHH the fLUFF

shrutefarmsbeets  that’s honestly the purest thing i’ve seen

thatswhatshesaid  oml this has cleared my skin, watered my crops, and given me a will to live

“Thanks, Happy!” Peter jumped out of the car and closed the door, waving to Happy, who was already pulling away. Peter started walking towards school, having been dropped off a couple blocks away as to not bring attention to himself. He wasn’t really looking forward to going back to school after his rise to fame, since he figured most of the school would try to use him to become popular. Not exactly his idea of fun, but it is what it is.

As Peter walked through the entrance, the conversations around him hushed and almost every head turned to stare at him. He quickly scanned the crowds for Ned (he would include MJ in this, but he wasn’t sure if she would murder him for interrupting her reading), and as soon as Peter found him, he ran over, the crowd parting for him.

“Ned! Oh my god, this is crazy!” Ned didn’t respond, however, as he was staring at his phone, wide-eyed, and constantly refreshing a page. Peter glanced over at the screen, and saw he was refreshing his Instagram, which had gained nearly a million followers in the last day.

Ned continued to gape at the screen, before Peter distracted him by saying, “Yeah. It’s crazy. I have like three million followers now.”

“Five.”

“What?”

Ned pulled up another page on his phone, and showed it to Peter. “You have five million followers.” Sure enough, he did have almost five and a half million followers, and Peter nearly felt like fainting. Instead, he just gaped at the screen for a while, like Ned had earlier. He was interrupted by the bell, however, and had to get to class. Unfortunately for him, Flash was in that class.

*****

It was to Peter’s surprise that he made it through the first half of the class without incident. But, of course, that didn’t last.

It started with a ball of paper to his neck. He could sense it coming, of course, because that stupid Spidey sense never knew when to stop, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He was completely unathletic after all, and would probably trip over a soccer ball whilst trying to kick it.

“Hey, Penis.” Peter ignored Flash, and continued to work on his classwork. “How many dicks did you have to suck to get those pictures?”

Not looking up from her book, MJ interjected, “You know, you’re an exceptional example of the need for birth control.”

Flash spluttered for a while, at a loss for what to say. Meanwhile, MJ took out her sketchbook and started adding Flash’s face to her drawings of people in distress. It was at this moment that the bell rang, and Flash darted out of the class as fast as humanly possible.

“Thanks, MJ!” Peter beamed at her, but she just continued reading.

“Whatever, loser.”

*****

“Why the fuck would you want me to do that? Are you trying to get Tony fucking Stark to murder me?” Ned gaped at his friend, who seemed too nonchalant about what he was asking Ned to do.

“I’m telling you, it’s fine! Just hack into FRIDAY to get her to play Despacito whenever it makes sense! And Mmm Whatcha Say, if you want.” Peter closed his locker, and turned to face Ned, who was still staring at him incredulously.

“I can’t hack into Tony fucking Stark’s AI! I’m only sixteen, I’m too young to die!”

“You’ve already hacked into my suit to disable the Baby Monitor! How is this any different?”

“It’s completely different!”

“Fine, then I’ll hack into FRIDAY. I can’t believe you would betray me like this, Ned. I thought we were friends, and now you’re leaving me hanging after you promised that you’d help me get back at Mr. Stark because he changed my web fluid and didn’t tell me!”

Ned laughed, before responding, “You didn’t tell me you wanted me to hack into FRIDAY. And isn’t this a bit overkill?”

“Yeah, well after Mr. Stark changed my web fluid and made it last longer, I was in a fight and my clothes got zapped off. So then I webbed myself some underwear, but I didn’t know about the different web formula, so my pants were stuck to my butt for hours. And I had to pee. So no, it’s not overkill.”

“ Fine, I’ll do it. But this is the first and only time that I hack into a billionaire superhero’s AI because you’re still salty that he pranked you.” Ned held his hand out for Peter to shake, and once he did, they headed towards the Tower and certain death.

*****

“It’s fine, Ned, just hack into the most advanced and secure AI ever made, it’s simple!” Ned muttered to himself, while trying (and failing) to hack into FRIDAY. Luckily for him, the AI took pity on him, and let him in. Turns out, there’s a much simpler solution to hacking into an incredibly advanced AI-- being friends with one of the only people Tony Stark (and by extension, FRIDAY) trusts.

So now that Ned was in, it was pretty straightforward. Or, it would have been, were he not distracted by one of the folders FRIDAY had. Curious, he opened it, and what he found inside almost made him laugh. It was a folder that FRIDAY had saved of pictures of Peter and Tony, and it was named “Irondad and Spiderson”. It almost made this terrifying endeavor worth it. Naturally, Ned saved them all to his phone, and since it was Peter’s fault that he was going to live in fear of Tony Stark murdering him for the next year, he posted one to Instagram. Payback is a bitch, after all.

memeoverlord  ned did you hack friday?

         nedleeds  no comment

         memeoverlord  because this looks like one of friday’s pictures

         nedleeds  and how would you know that???? Hmmm???

         memeoverlord  because i hacked into friday

         memeoverlord  how do you not know? everyone knows. I do it a lot.

beebo  wait so @nedleeds hacked into tony stark’s ai and the first thing he does is post a picture of tony and peter cuddled up watching mulan??

         thatswhatshesaid  but how do we know this is the first thing he did???

         yeeeet  idk but we assume

mischiefmanaged  what did we do to deserve these posts ;u;

“I thought you were bae… turns out you’re just fam.” Peter looked up from his phone to glare at his friend.

Ned mockingly gasped. “Oh no. Whatever did I do?”

Narrowing his eyes, Peter said, “You know what you did.”

“No, really. What did I do?”

“You,” Peter poked Ned’s chest. “My bestest friend, my Guy in the Chair, betrayed me. Now no one’s going to leave me alone! The tag ‘irondad’ is apparently trending on Twitter and there are already seven thousand posts for the tag on Instagram! How do people even work so fast, anyways? I found a fanfiction that’s almost ten thousand words, it’s crazy!”

“I’m pretty sure they started that with the first post.”

“Right. That makes more sense. Anyways, where did you get the picture? You weren’t there when that happened.”

“Well, that’s a funny story. You see, one day, someone asked me to hack into Tony fucking Stark’s AI to meme-ify her, and-”

Peter cut Ned off, feeling slightly guilty. “Sorry about that, but did you have to post the picture?”

“Hey! You started it, posting the picture of Tony after he posted one of you.”

“That was retaliation! It’s completely different!”

“And you’re saying that this wasn’t retaliation for you making me hack FRIDAY? I’m going to be living in constant fear of having Iron Man burst into the room, threatening me for hacking his tech. Again!”

“If it makes you feel any better, he wasn’t really mad the last time. I think he was kind of proud? Anyways, I’d protect you from Mr. Stark.” Peter put a hand over his heart, perhaps sympathetically, or perhaps jokingly. We’ll never know.

“Thanks, dude. But shouldn’t we start studying for finals? I mean, they are in four days, so…”

“Eh. I could probably start later. Sleep is for the weak, after all.”

B O N U S

Those who followed Peter and Ned simply for more Irondad content would not be disappointed after the three posts that would later become legendary. Tony continued to post pictures of Peter working in the lab or watching movies, but Peter and Ned’s posts were a little… shall we say… different. The two most notable additions were:

The nature documentary. It opens with Tony being so engrossed in fixing the Spider-Man suit that he didn’t notice Peter walking into the lab, filming on his phone. In a completely terrible Australian accent, Peter said, “And here we can see a wild Tony Stark in its natural habitat. Sometimes going days without sleep or food, it will attack you. Be very careful, as it is very dangerous.” This is the moment that Tony decided to look up, which made Peter jump a little, because it was so sudden. Peter started running away, yelling, “Run for your life! It saw us!” The video cut off when the phone fell to the ground.

And secondly, Tony Stark apparently knowing Tumblr. This was another video, this time filmed by Ned. It starts with Peter arguing with Tony about something, the words were a bit muffled because Ned was a good distance away. The words only became clear as Peter shouted, “I beg to differ!” Tony then deadpanned, “Then beg.” And walked away. Peter stood still for a second, before doubling over in laughter, and Ned did too, the camera shaking as he laughed.

They definitely didn't break the internet with the Irondad content they posted. Definitely not.

Chapter Text

spooder-man   @NYCWallCrawler

[captain america psa] so,,, you’ve stayed up all night reading fanfiction

“--don’t understand! MEMS is one letter short of memes, and I had to write an entire two page paper about the nuances of Mirco-Electrical-Mechanical System manufacturing, and its application in nanotechnology and robotics. It was torture. I couldn’t make any meme references!”

Steve and Bucky walked into the Avengers common room, fully expecting it to be empty. Wanda, Sam, Vision and Nat were out on a mission, Scott and Clint were staying with their families, Thor and Loki were on Asgard with Bruce visiting them, T’Challa was in Wakanda with Shuri, and Doctor Strange was… somewhere. He never visited, anyways. Tony was never in the common room, preferring to stay in his private wing. There was the other superhero, the one they vaguely remembered to be Spider-Man. He didn’t show up in the Tower after what was dubbed the “Infinity War,” the only explanation being that he wanted to “ stick close to the ground.” So, yes, they fully expected the common room to be empty. But it wasn’t.

Tony was sitting on the couch, drinking something that was most likely black coffee, talking to someone else. A kid, judging by his voice. They couldn’t see him, since he was out of their line of sight, but they were pretty sure he was a teenager. Steve and Bucky knew full well that Tony hated kids, or if they were being honest, most people. So it was definitely a shock to see Tony Stark interacting with this kid as if it was perfectly normal.

The kid continued to blabber on about god knows what, and Steve and Bucky were fairly sure at this point that it was about technology, seeing as they couldn’t understand a word of it. This puzzling interaction continued on, Steve and Bucky watching in the shadows with interest. None of this made any sense whatsoever, and they were running out of explanations for whatever was going on there. The only solution that seemed to make sense was that the kid was actually Tony’s secret son, possibly hidden from the public since birth. Which, when it involved Tony “I am Iron Man” Stark keeping a secret for over a decade, didn’t seem very likely. Not wanting to disturb them, Steve and Bucky left to find the training room.

*****

They had shoved that interaction so far back in their minds that they completely forgot about it until it happened again. It was after a battle, and Steve’s shield was malfunctioning, so he asked FRIDAY if he could go up to Tony’s lab. He walked in expecting to find Tony working on his suit, but there was someone else there. A kid. Remembering the time Tony was talking with some random kid a couple weeks ago, Steve assumed it was the same person. He was working on the Iron Man suit, and Tony was nowhere to be seen.

“Hey, kid. Do you know where Tony is?”

“Getting coffee,” the kid said without looking up. It was weird, since Tony normally never let kids in his personal lab, let alone unsupervised. And working on his suit, no less. This was possibly the strangest thing Steve had seen, and he took drugs to get superpowers and defended the world from aliens and sometimes magic.

“Okay, then I’ll just leave my shield for him to fix. He’ll know what to do with it.”

Steve placed down the shield, and was walking back toward the door when he heard the kid say, “Wait. A shield?” Steve turned back around to see the kid glance down at the shield and, with his eyes widening, back at him. The kid’s mouth opened, and he just stared at Steve with a mixture of shock and awe for a while. Snapping out of his daze, he muttered to himself before holding out a hand to Steve and saying, “Hi, Mr. Captain America Steve Rogers, sir! I’m Peter.”

Steve shook his hand before responding, “Nice to meet you, Peter. Can you tell your dad—“ He was cut off by Tony entering the room, and so he missed the brief look of shock and surprise on Peter’s face.

“Having a party without me, kid?”

Peter shook his head, saying, “Mr. Captain America came in while I was fixing the suit. He had a shield for you to fix?” Peter gestured to said shield, and Tony walked over to grab it.

“Alright, I’ll probably be done with this in a couple hours, so you can come back up later. You know the drill, Steve.”

Satisfied with the answer, Steve nodded, and said, “Thanks, Tony,” before leaving. As he walked out, he didn’t notice Peter animatedly telling Tony about Dear Evan Hansen while working on the suit, Tony smiling genuinely for once, and the bots whirring excitedly around them.

*****

“Buck, don’t you understand? This kid was fixing Tony’s suit. His current one. I’m pretty sure Tony hasn’t even let anyone touch his old suits, let alone the one he wears in fights. The kid has to be his son!”

“But that means Tony “I am Iron Man” Stark would have to keep a child secret for however long it took them to get close! That doesn’t even make sense!”

“Well, he should be done with the shield by now, so you could go up and get it. See for yourself if this kid is Tony’s or not.”

“Maybe I will,” Bucky said mockingly. “But when I’m right, and I will be, don’t come begging for mercy.” And with that, Bucky made his way to the elevator. Steve merely took a sip of his coffee, waiting for Bucky to realize his mistake.

“Are you two ever going to stop fighting like an old married couple?”

Steve spit out the coffee he was drinking, and glared at Sam.

Bucky, however, had entered the lab to find Tony asleep on the couch, Peter playing with the bots, and Les Miserables playing softly in the background. Which, if he had to be perfectly honest, could only serve to convince him that Peter was Tony’s son. Peter had seemed to notice him when he entered, and he pointed to Steve’s shield, which Bucky took gratefully, sending a silent ‘thank you’ to Peter. Bucky left, not wanting to disturb Tony.

Chapter Text

spooder-man  @NYCWallCrawler

my spotify playlist is wild. like one minute i could be listening to empty chairs at empty tables, and be fucking sobbing, and the next waterloo is blasting full volume and i have no choice but to sing along. and then it goes from africa to guns and ships?? who knows what’s on this playlist? not me

“And then he was like, ‘Is that a knife or are you just happy to see me?’ and then thwipped--”

Clint cut Cooper off by saying, “I’m sorry, thwipped? What do you mean by thwipped?”

“Y’know, the noise it makes when he shoots webs? Anyways, he thwipped the knife right out of Doc. Ock’s hands--”

Cooper was once again cut off by his father with the question, “How do you know all of this, anyways?

“There was a special on Spider-Man last night. They had a ton of footage of his fights! It was really cool!” Cooper said excitedly.

Teasingly, Clint said, “It was cool, huh? Now what are you going to tell me? I’m not your favourite superhero anymore?”

“You aren’t.”

Clint raised an eyebrow, then said, “Who is it, then? Must be pretty cool to be better than me.”

“Spider-Man. And yes, he is.” Cooper laughed as Clint mocked hurt.

“But he’s, like, twelve!”

“So you’ve met him, then?” Cooper leaned forward in intrigue, hanging onto every word his father said next.

“Well, yeah, in the suit. I don’t know who he really is, but he referred to Star Wars as a really old movie, so he can’t be that old. And you’d have to be kidding yourself if you think he sounds older than a teenager.”

“But why would he be a superhero if he’s so young?”

“Maybe he has a tragic backstory? All good superheroes have one.”

“I guess that means you don’t have one, then.”

“I’ll have you know I had to run away to a circus—“ Clint was cut off by an explosion in the distance, and several seconds later, Spider-Man swung past the window of the restaurant Clint and Cooper were eating in.

“I suppose I should go see what caused that.”

Clint stood up and had taken a couple steps before he heard Cooper say, “Dad, wait!” Clint turned back around to look at his son, who continued, “Can you get Spider-Man to autograph something for me?” Cooper grinned at his father’s look of betrayal, and leaned back in his chair.

*****

By the time Clint had reached the scene of the explosion, Spider-Man was webbing a guy to a wall, several pipe bombs already webbed to the ground, just out of reach.

“You know, the worst part about this is that I can’t think of any bomb-related puns right now. What’s the point of being a superhero if you can’t make puns?” Spider-Man shook his head, and took a few steps before snapping his head up to stare at Clint, who was perched on a building. His eye-lenses widened in shock, and he gaped for a few seconds before saying, “Oh my god, you’re hAwKeYE!”

Clint chuckled, and responded, “And you’re Spider-Man. I’ve heard about you, my kid’s a fan.” Spider-Man continued to gape, and took awhile to recollect himself.

“Um, if it’s okay, I’d love to meet him. Her? Them? Pronouns are difficult.”

Clint twisted around to fall off the building, shooting a grappling hook arrow up at the ledge he was just on. Using the rope to slow his fall, he landed right in front of Spider-Man, who was once again gaping at him. Clint swore he heard the kid mumble “that’s so cool, oh my god.” Clint handed a slip of paper to Spider-Man, and said, “That’s my phone number, kid. Tell me when you’re free, and we can probably arrange something. Anyways, it was nice to meet you. See you around.”

And, of course, Clint used his years of spy training to disappear into the shadows ominously.

B O N U S

“This is so cool, dad! Thanks for setting this up!”

It had taken a couple weeks, but Clint had arranged for Spider-Man to meet his kids in the Tower. He had thought it was just going to be Cooper, but the minute Cooper had heard the news, he wouldn’t stop talking about it, and once Lila heard, she wanted to join too. Apparently, Spider-Man had found Cassie when she was lost, and waited with her until her dad came. Her dad being Scott Lang, or Ant-Man. They were all pretty close, and Cassie had told them all about Spider-Man saving her, and now they couldn’t wait to meet him.

“So do you know when Spider-Man will be comi—”

Suddenly, Spider-Man burst through an open window, and landed right in front of Cooper. “You called?” They could hear laughing from the other room, and before they could wonder who it was, Tony Stark walked through the door, still laughing.

“Did you seriously wait until they mentioned you to burst through the window? You were there for like ten minutes.”

Spider-Man glared at Tony, before responding, “Yeah, well I have to make a dramatic entrance. It’s a necessity for being a superhero. And you’re honestly worse than I am, you can’t even deny it.”

“True. Anyways, I’ll leave you to it, Legolas.” And with that, Tony left as quickly as he entered.

Spider-Man turned back to Cooper and Lila, and he smiled at them and said, “Hi, guys! It’s nice to meet you!”

“Uh, hi, I’m Cooper. I’m a big fan of your work!”

“And I’m Lila! Cassie told us about you!” Lila practically shoved Cooper out of the way to see Spider-Man, who gave a small smile at their antics.

“You guys know Cassie? Though, I suppose it’s likely, since your dads are both Avengers…” Spider-Man seemed to be lost in thought after saying this, but snapped his head up to stare at Clint, again, and said, “Wait! So if they hang out,” he gestured to Cooper and Lila, “with Cassie, does that mean that you,” he gestured to Clint, “hang out with Mr. Ant-Man?”

“...Yeah? Why?”

“So does that mean that you formed a Dadvengers squad?” Spider-Man was practically vibrating with excitement at the thought.

“Dadvengers?” Needless to say, Clint was very confused by the young vigilante/superhero.

“Y’know, you’re both Avengers and dads, so the Dadvengers! It’s too bad you’re the only dads on the team, though. It seems like it would be more fun with more people.”

“Isn’t Tony your dad, though?”

“Wait, whAT?”

Clint supposes this would be the perfect moment for a spit take, but, alas, Spider-Man had a mask on and there were no beverages to be seen. It really was unfortunate.

“What do you mean by Mr. Stark being my dad?”

“You’ve literally called him ‘dad’.” Noticing Spider-Man’s confusion, Clint continued, “One time when we were clearing up an alien invasion, you were knocked off of a building and got a concussion. Stark blasted over there as quickly as possible and when he got there, you said something along the lines of ‘thanks for saving me, dad.’ Do you not remember?”

“Uh, no. I don’t, sorry.”

Lost in a train of thought, Spider-Man was completely dead to the world until he heard Lila say, “oh no! That’s so sad!”

Snickering to himself, Spider-Man said, “That’s so sad, FRIDAY play Despacito.”

The intro of the song, played at full volume through the speakers in the room, made everyone jump as Spider-Man frantically yelled, “Wait, no!”

Chapter Text

spooder-man  @NYCWallCrawler

it is wednesday, my dudes

             i’m in  @NedLeeds

              AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH

              meme overlord  @no

               aaAaAAaAaaAhHhHhhHHhhH

Peter was playing Mario Kart when a spaceship descended from the sky. It really was unfortunate timing, since while he was distracted, his car fell off of the track, causing him to respawn in sixth place. He had a seven game winning streak, too. At this point, Peter really felt that murder was a great option. Either he murders them for causing him to lose his streak, or they could murder him, and he wouldn’t have to deal with existence anymore. It was a perfect solution.

The ship landed rather haphazardly on the lawn in front of the Tower, skidding to a stop a couple hundred meters away from the doors. Peter, who had his web shooters on, threw open the nearest window and jumped out of it, flipping around in midair to face the top of the building. He shot a web at the last second, slowing his fall, and landing softly on the ground. He ran over to the landing sight, and watched as several people stumbled out. Or rather, several aliens. There was a living tree, a big gray dude with salmon markings, a smaller woman with antennae and solid black eyes, a green woman with hair dyed pink at the ends, a raccoon, a blue woman, and someone in a mask.

“Y’know, you guys seem familiar.” Peter stared at them for a couple seconds before it clicked. “Oh! You’re the people from Titan, right? The Protectors? The Guards of the Universe?” Peter shook his head at his own suggestion, and stared at the ground before looking back up, snapping and pointing back them. “You’re the Guardians of the Galaxy! How did it take me so long to remember that? Sorry, I still don’t really remember anyone’s names…”

The guy in the mask, the only human on the team, if Peter remembered correctly, stepped forward. “I’m Peter Quill, and this--”

He was cut off by Peter, whose eyes had widened after hearing his full name. “You’re Peter Quill?”

“Yeah, I must be pretty famous on Earth after saving the galaxy--”

Again, Peter interrupted with, “I saw the Buzzfeed Unsolved about you! Oh my god I can’t wait to tell them that I solved it!” Peter was beaming, and practically dragged the older Peter back to the Tower. “I gotta tell them that I solved it! And I’m assuming you haven’t seen the video, since you haven’t been back to Earth. I’ve gotta show you the video!”

Peter Quill’s teammates could only stand there in confusion as their comrade was dragged off by a vaguely familiar boy in a red and blue spandex suit.

*****

“So, if you’re the Guardians of the Galaxy, why are you here, and not, y’know, guarding the galaxy?” Peter Parker shut off the TV, and turned back to Peter Quill.

“Oh, well, we received a distress signal from the planet Apate, which is only a few hundred solar systems away from here, so I suggested that we come here because we were so close.” Quill shrugged and leaned back into the couch, trying to sneak an arm around Gamora. Unfortunately for him, Gamora either wasn’t in the mood for affection, or didn’t want to show it in front of the others, and shrugged off his arm. She instead looked at Peter, still wearing the Spider-Man costume, because secret identities are important, okay? It’s not like Peter was going to hold a press conference and announce to the entire world “I am Spider-Man,” because that isn’t a very smart decision.

“You’re Spider-Man, right?” Gamora was still looking at Peter, head tilted as if trying to remember something. When Peter nodded, she asked, “Aren’t you like twelve?”

“I’ll have you know I’m almost seventeen!” As if to demonstrate his young age, his voice cracked. Perfect timing as always, puberty. “But anyways, this is your first time on Earth! For most of you, anyways. Do you want to go on a sightseeing tour?”

For the first time since their arrival, Groot looked up from his video game. “I am Groot?”

Rocket responded to what must have been a question with, “What do you mean, are there any stores for your video games? This is Earth, they’re not going to have the technology for your game!”

Peter still didn’t understand how anyone could understand what Groot, who is apparently a living tree, said. But, they are aliens, so… plot holes? In real life? Anime logic? Well, whatever it was, Peter was just planning on ignoring it because it made no sense. After all, the only thing he’s learned from all the anime he’s watched is that you just need to ignore most of the dialogue and plot to enjoy a show.

“Okay, so we should probably do some touristy things, right? And what’s more touristy in New York than the Empire State Building?” Peter was not deterred in the slightest by the blank looks he was receiving, because he was determined to be as much of a generic tourist as he could. And that includes having a group of people that are completely lost and have no fucking clue what they’re doing in life. That’s just the way it goes.

“Alright, so we just have to get in the car, and I’m assuming you know what a car is, and drive for about twenty minutes to sit in traffic for three hours! Wonderful. You guys are getting the full introduction to New York!” Peter clapped his hands, and gestured for the Guardians to follow him as he practically skipped out the door.

The Guardians all somehow managed to squeeze into one of Tony’s less expensive trucks, and they started the nearly hour-long drive to the Empire State Building. At some point during the transition, Peter Parker had changed out of the Spider-Man suit and into regular clothes, because he realized they weren't going to be back for a while, and wearing the suit for long periods of time wasn't exactly the most fun thing to do. Like driving for hours on end. Fortunately, (or possibly unfortunately, depending on who you asked) the Guardians were a rowdy bunch and would definitely keep Peter entertained for the ride over. And it provided a great opportunity for Peter to practice his driving! So it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

For most of the ride, Mantis and Groot looked out the windows in wonder, while the older Peter was sleeping and trying to ignore Rocket and Drax’s arguments. Gamora would switch between staring out of the windows, lost in thought, and watching the rest of the people in the car. At one point, Mantis saw a bright orange sign, and read it aloud.

“Road work ahead?” Mantis tilted her head in confusion at the sign, and Peter had to suppress his urges to complete the vine. All of his years of training to know all vines suddenly amounted to nothing, as he figured that the Guardians wouldn’t need more confusion. He opened his mouth to explain road construction, but Drax spoke before he could.

“I would hope that the road works. Otherwise we would have to find one that does.”

At this, Peter burst out laughing. Like, full on laughing, tears coming out of his eyes, starting to cough and wheeze because he’s been laughing too long and oxygen is a thing that you need to survive.  After he had struggled so much to leave the vine unfinished, Drax, who has absolutely zero knowledge of vines, finished it unknowingly. The rest of the Guardians looked on in confusion and concern for the mental state of their new friend, though Rocket hid his concern well.

It seemed that the older Peter had woken up, because he was the one to ask,“Hey, tiny Peter, you okay?”

Finally coming to his senses, Peter’s laughter died out and he responded, “Yeah, I’m good.” Glancing back at the occupants of the car, he asked, “Do any of you know what a vine is, by any chance?”

“Do you mean the plant?” Mantis tilted her head at the younger Peter in confusion.

“Okay, so, no.”

*****

It was nearly one in the morning before they returned from their sightseeing trip, decked out in “I Heart NY” shirts that too many tourists wear. If there was one perk to having a billionaire mentor/father figure, it was that you could get VIP tickets to almost anywhere and speed through some sightseeing. Also, the food. The food was good.

“I still can’t believe you think Footloose is the greatest movie in history!” Both Peters were arguing now, the rest of the Guardians looking on in either amusement or irritation.

“I still can’t believe you don’t!”

“I am Groot!”  

Peter Parker high-fived the tree, laughing and saying, “Good one, Groot!”

Meanwhile, the other Peter placed a hand over his chest, mocking betrayal when he said, “I can’t believe you would insult the greatest movie in history like that! After all we’ve been through together… I thought we were friends!”

“I am Groot.”

The older Peter gasped, and said, “Language!” The younger Peter simply laughed some more before high-fiving Groot once again.

“I am Groot?”

“I think Mario Kart is still loaded on the TV in the living room. I don’t think we have Defender, though.” Peter Parker gestured for the rest of them to follow him before heading to the elevators. It was right at that moment that the elevator doors opened and Tony Stark walked out. The cup of coffee in his hand was still steaming when he looked up at Peter and the rest of the Guardians standing behind him, who seemed surprised at his sudden appearance.

“Hey, Pete. Didn’t think you’d be back so soon.” Tony took the lid off of the cup and chugged what little remained of his coffee and threw the empty cup over his shoulder, somehow managing to make it into the nearby trash can. It was extremely impressive, especially since Peter was pretty sure Tony was so sleep-deprived he was already seeing hallucinations.

“It’s not exactly soon if it’s one in the morning, Mr. Stark.”

“Huh. I didn’t notice that it was that late. Probably was just too wrapped up in fixing my suit… you wanna join me?”

“I am Groot!”

Peter sighed and responded, “I promised Groot I would play Mario Kart with him. Maybe next time?”

“Ignoring the fact that you just understood the talking tree, sure.”

“You know, you have met Groot before. I thought you would have remembered it. On Titan. With the genocidal grape.” Despite Peter’s clearly spectacular retelling of certain events, Tony still had a blank look on his face. It was probably the sleep deprivation.

Peter looked up at the ceiling and asked, “Uh, FRI? How long has it been since Mr. Stark’s slept?”

“Seven days, twenty-two hours, and thirty-nine minutes.”

Again, Peter sighed. “Mr. Stark, you were supposed to sleep last night. Ms. Potts told you that you couldn’t go more than a week without sleeping, and you don’t want to make her angry! I thought you remembered from last time.”

Tony shuddered at the memory before turning around and muttering, “Fine, I’ll try to sleep. But you or Pep can’t hold it to me if the coffee I just drank keeps me up.”

“I can put him to sleep, if you want.” Mantis took a step forward, and looked hopefully at Peter Parker. Peter glanced back at Tony, who practically threw himself at Mantis in his haste to get to her.

“Please, anything so that Pep isn’t mad at me again! She’s terrifying.”

Mantis put a hand to Tony’s forehead, and said, “Sleep.” Tony crumpled to the ground, unconscious, and Peter rushed to pick him up.

“Uh, when you put the grape to sleep back on Titan, didn’t you have to maintain contact?” Peter was glancing between Tony’s forehead and Mantis’s hand, which was indeed not touching Tony anymore.

“He was very tired, and only needed a push to fall asleep completely.”

“Alright then.” Peter looked back at the Guardians, who he had kinda sorta forgotten about until now. “Um, I should probably get Mr. Stark back to his room or something, so I’ll meet you in about ten minutes?”

“I am Groot!”

Peter mocked a gasp.“How dare you insinuate that I would forget about my bestest friends that I totally did not forget about like five minutes ago!”

“I am Groot.”

“You know, I came out here to have a good time and honestly I’m feeling so attacked right now.”

Groot gestured to Tony, still unconscious in Peter’s arms. “I am Groot!”

Peter glanced down at Tony and then back at Groot. “Riiiiight… Well, I’d better get going, because Mario Kart isn’t going to play its-- er, well, it mostly doesn’t play itself. Some of the characters aren’t actually player-controlled, but y’know, others are. So, yay, logic!” Peter attempted to wave, but failed completely, so instead he just smiled and walked away, sleeping mentor in his arms.

B O N U S

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!” Peter was sitting cross-legged on the ceiling, playing Mario Kart with Groot. Leaning forward to see the screen better, he hit the buttons on his controller aggressively until his character crossed the finish line in first place.

“Yes!” Peter threw his hands in the air in victory, and nearly dropped the controller he was holding on Groot.

“I am Groot! I am Groot.” Groot glared up at Peter, who shrugged apologetically back. Groot had just finished in second place, behind Peter by only a few seconds.

“I am Groot?”

“Sure.” Peter started a new round, and they were so engrossed in it that they didn’t notice Tony walk into the room, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and drinking out of his cup of coffee.

“Hey, Pete. What are you still doing up?”

Peter, despite his Spidey Sense, still shrieked and fell off of the ceiling. Luckily, Tony ran forward and caught him, although unfortunately sacrificing his cup of coffee to do so.

“Mr. Stark? Aren’t you supposed to be asleep? It’s only…” Peter glanced at the clock, “six o’clock. Oh.” Tony raised an eyebrow at the sheepish teenager.

“You need sleep, kiddo. You can come back to your game later.” Tony meant to walk away still holding Peter, but Peter wriggled out of his arms to glare pointedly at him.

“You’re supposed to be asleep, Mr. Stark. It’s only been like five hours, and you need more sleep than that. Y’know, sleep deprivation isn’t fun.”

“Oh yeah, and how would you know that?”

“Oh, one time I stayed up for like two weeks because of homework and projects and tests and band and patrols and it wasn’t exactly the most fun time.” Peter shrugged and tried to walk away, but was held back by Tony.

“So, first of all, we’re going to talk about you not sleeping for two weeks, and second, you’re going to bed now, because it’s six in the morning, and I know for a fact you didn’t sleep last night. Capisce?”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it.” Peter grabbed Tony’s arm and pretty much dragged him to the elevators. “But if I’m sleeping, you’re sleeping too.”

"Oh, and one more thing. When did you learn to understand... Groot, was it?" Tony looked to Peter for confirmation.

Peter shrugged and said, "The Guardians taught me! We had a lesson and all that. It's a surprisingly easy language." 

"So you learned a language that only consists of three words in one day?" 

"Y'know, when you put it that way, it sounds really easy."

"It's not easy when those three words are said in the exact same order and it means completely different things. It's just..." Tony gestured vaguely while trying to think of how to phrase it. "You know what I meant!" 

"It's all about the inflection, Mr. Stark." The elevator doors finally opened, and Peter said, "C'mon, Mr. Stark, we have to go."

“Alright fine. But we're continuing this later.” And with a happy “ding!”, the elevator doors closed.

If AIs could smirk, FRIDAY would be smirking as she saved the security footage from the last couple minutes to a file.

Chapter Text

spooder-man   @NYCWallCrawler

for real though, has anyone closed the goddamn door?

“Okay, so this says to add…” Aunt May squinted at the cookbook laying open in front of her in an attempt to decipher the tiny writing. “... two eggs? That’s right, right?” She glanced back at Peter for confirmation.

“Yeah, seems about right. It’s not like the times that you misread the recipe and added too many eggs. So it might actually be edible this time!”

“That was only one time!” said Aunt May defensively. Peter just stared at her and raised an eyebrow. “Okay, so maybe it was twice, but that time wasn’t my fault! I found that recipe online, and it had good reviews! How was I supposed to know it was a typo?”

“Common sense? Logic? You’re never gonna find a recipe that calls for twelve eggs, that’s just crazy!”

“Well I know that now. ” Aunt May walked over to the fridge, shuffling things around to try and find the eggs. After a couple minutes of increasingly frenzied searching, she shut the refrigerator doors harshly and sighed. “We’re all out of eggs. The party’s later tonight, so I should probably get some now. Need anything while I’m there?”

Peter deadpanned, “A will to live.”

“Ha ha. For real though, do you need anything? I don’t want you to tell me at midnight that you’re out of one thing or another and make me go out and get it.” She paused for a second, thinking. “Actually, it’s more likely that you wouldn’t tell me because you didn’t want to be a bother. Either way, just tell me now. It’s better for both of us.”

“Nah, I’m good. Just get your eggs and come back. I larb you!”

“I larb you too!” May smiled at waved goodbye to Peter, who did the same back. She shut the door, and Peter could hear the car start a couple seconds later. He waited until he could barely hear the car before getting up from the chair.

“Ah, being home alone… I could do so many things, like throw a party or do something illegal! I’m absolutely a genius! Great ideas me, I love doing illegal things and a party would be absolutely wonderful and very, very fun with the grand total of two friends that I have! Especially since I absolutely despise parties, and would rather die than go to one! So that means I’m doing homework. But! I can play music out loud now! Truly only quality ideas that I’m having right now.”

After Peter’s monologue, he sat down on the couch and started doing his homework, playing his music, get this, out loud instead of through his headphones. Halfway through his chemistry homework, however, he started getting a weird feeling that he didn’t quite understand. It was his Spidey Sense, but not in the normal “hey look at that, there’s a bullet and it’s gonna go through your fucking arm!!! :))))” way, it was more of a “i get that you’re finally alone and would love to be relaxed right now because social interaction is very difficult, but fuck you, so here’s some general discomfort and unease! :D”. Although, it might have been the fact that he left a chemistry equation unbalanced. It was probably that.

So Peter just continued on with his homework, balancing that one equation that he had left because there was literally just three whole pages of balancing equations, and sometimes he just needs to maintain his sanity, okay? Unfortunately, the feeling persisted. So it wasn’t the equation. That left Peter with no other explanation, so he just ignored it. After all, he still had several pages left of his Chemistry homework. And math homework. And civics. And spanish. You know, he was almost on the verge of a mental breakdown. So, naturally, when there was a knock on the door, Peter groaned in frustration.

“I just want, like, twenty more minutes of peace! Is that too much to ask?” Sighing, Peter begrudgingly got up from the couch to open the door. To his surprise, Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, was standing in his doorway.

“Uh, Ms. Romanoff Black Widow Natasha ma’am, what are you doing here?” Peter was fangirling internally, but when was he not?

“I know you’re Spider-Man.”

Peter’s eyes widened, and he spluttered out a response. “Sp- Spider-Man? I don’t even know who that is! Er, I mean, I’ve never met him, but I know of him, because he protects Queens and all, and I live in Queens, so I’ve heard of him but I couldn’t possibly be him! I’m very unathletic, I would probably get stabbed in the first, like, two minutes of trying to be a superhero, but I have homework to do and all, I wouldn’t have the time to even consider doing that! You must have the wrong person.” He was slightly more composed at the end of his rant, but Natasha was still looking at him knowingly.

“I don’t get how you kept this a secret from the rest of the team. You’re awful at lying.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a little different when there’s a trained assassin that’s also a superhero staring you down, and you’re a very intimidating person, Ms. Romanoff Black Widow Natasha ma’am.” Peter looked nervously at Natasha, only relaxing slightly when she didn’t move to take out a knife to murder him.

“So you’re telling me that if Steve asked you if you were Spider-Man, you would be able to lie to him?”

“Well, no, but I can’t lie to Captain America! You just… can’t do that. It’s not possible. He’ll know. ”

“Is there anyone on the team you could lie to?”

“Uh, no? But they’re the Avengers . They’re superheroes. They could probably kill me with a look.” Peter glanced at Natasha and laughed nervously. “Please don’t kill me?”

Natasha rolled her eyes. “God, it’s a miracle nobody’s confronted you yet. And also, you’re a superhero too. I think you could withstand more than a look when you can lift a building.”

“How’d you know about that? Uh, I mean, no, a building’s never fallen on me so I’ve never had to lift one. Your facts must be off.”

“I have my ways. So, moving on, if you want to keep your secret identity, we’ll need to work on your lying abilities. I was thinking Saturdays at the Compound?”

“You know, I would very much like to not be murdered on a perfectly good day. Saturdays are honestly the best day of the week, the epitome of--”

“Alright then, see you next Saturday. And while we’re there, we might as well work on your fighting. Your technique is absolutely abysmal. I could also teach you Russian, if we have the time. I’ll text you the details.” And with that, Natasha pretty much disappeared into thin air, leaving Peter very confused and slightly scared for his life.

It took a couple minutes, but Peter finally snapped out of his stupor, and took out his phone.

To: guy in the chair™     |     3:48 PM

peter parkour: ned

peter parkour: buddy

peter parkour: you’re never gonna believe what happened

B O N U S

“So, uh, Pete. Care to explain why “Subscribe to PewDiePie” was written in webs on the Empire State Building?”

Peter looked up at Tony innocently. “Nat hadn’t heard of T-Series and PewDiePie, so I had to tell her about it. I didn’t do anything.”

Tony sighed and said, “I swear you’re gonna be the death of me, kid. Also, remind me to not let you meet any more of the Avengers. You’ve already given me enough grey hairs as it is.”

“But daaaad, I wanna meet the Avengers!” Peter looked pleadingly at Tony, who caved after a few seconds.

“Fine. But don’t do anything illegal or dangerous or something that will make your aunt mad at me.” Tony started to walk away, but paused when he finally processed what Peter said. “Did you call me dad?”

“I have no clue what you’re talking about, Mr. Stark. You must’ve imagined it in your old age.” Peter smirked as Tony gaped at him.

“You little sh--”

“You know, you really shouldn’t curse in front of small children.” Peter glanced up at a nearby clock and stood up. “I’m gonna be late for training. See you ‘round, Mr. Stark!”

Chapter Text

spooder-man  @NYCWallCrawler

why am i cursed with existence

       meme overlord   @no

        i could always… kill you

                spooder-man   @NYCWallCrawler

                 yeah but i don’t want to die

                spooder-man   @NYCWallCrawler

                 just to not exist

                          meme overlord   @no

                           that could be arranged

Sprawled upside-down on the couch, Peter was watching a compilation of the best cold opens in The Office with Ned. They were going to ask MJ if she wanted to come, but before they asked, she said that she “had better things to do than hang out with you losers” and walked away.

“Okay, but he isn’t actually smoking. It’s just the cigarette, so technically smoking isn’t saving lives, cigarettes are,” Ned pointed out. Peter just slowly turned his head to stare at him, raising one brow pointedly. Ned grinned sheepishly before saying, “Okay, okay, I get it. Don’t overthink a comedy show from the late 2000s.” Satisfied, Peter went back to watching the TV.

“Y’know, it’s kinda peaceful right now. Like really peaceful.” Peter suddenly sat upright on the couch. “It’s too peaceful. Something’s gonna happen, I’m sure of it.”

“Pete. Buddy. Sometimes, there are these things called breaks. Your “Parker Luck ™ ”   isn’t always trying to murder you.” Ned looked reassuringly at Peter, who smiled weakly back.

“Yeah, that would be nice.” Peter sighed wistfully. “But, y’know, my Spidey Sense seems to be going off, so I don’t think it’s gonna happen.”

Ned paused the video and scrambled off the couch. “Why didn’t you tell me? I’m gonna go be your guy in the chair.” Peter started to protest, but Ned had already taken off.

“But I don’t know when it’ll happen!” Peter called out after Ned, who was somehow already out of earshot. Sighing, Peter changed into his suit before he climbed onto the ceiling and texted Ned.

peter parkour: hey ned

peter parkour: i still don’t know when anything is going down

peter parkour: so you might as well come back

guy in the chair: uhhh

guy in the chair: gimme a minute

guy in the chair: gotta take a break

peter parkour: i’m watching the office

guy in the chair: hoW DARE YOU

guy in the chair: i tHOuGHt wE wERe fRiEndS

Peter grinned and unpaused the video, hearing crashes in the distance as Ned was desperately trying to get back.

It was then that a glowing orange ring appeared in the middle of the room, and Stephen Strange stepped out of it.

“Oh, come on! I love Stress Relief! Can’t I be left alone for just one hour so I can watch my favourite episode?”

“You do realize that you’re watching a compilation, right?” Strange pointed to the TV, which, sure enough, had just switched to a different cold open.

“Oh. Right. That’s unfortunate, really. D’you wanna watch Stress Relief with me?”

“No. There’s a reason why I’m here, it’s not just to enjoy your sparkling personality.”

“Oof. Well, there was no need to attack me like that, I was just offering. You’re clearly missing out if you don’t want to watch Stress Relief. Or Dinner Party. Or Stairmageddon. Or-- there’s a lot of good episodes, why don’t we just watch them all?” Peter fell from the ceiling so he could flip over and land on the couch, while pressing the button to load Netflix.

“That,” Peter gestured vaguely to what he had just done, “was completely on purpose. I’m just very athletic and was 100% sure that was going to work. Now, what episode are we watching?”

Stephen just watched that entire thing happen while looking confused and slightly impressed and very much annoyed at the same time. “We’re not watching anything. I came here because there’s a bunch of aliens outside of the Sanctum, and I don’t feel like dealing with it alone. This whole alien invasion thing seems to be an Avengers thing, so now I’m here, dealing with you.”

“Oh! That’s why my Spidey Sense was going off! That makes sense.”

“I’m sorry, your Spidey Sense?”

“Uh, yeah. I’m Spider-Man,” Peter gestured to the emblem on his chest, “and I have something like a sixth sense. So my Spidey Sense.”

“No, I got it the first time. It’s just, who names a superpower their ‘Spidey Sense’? That’s an awful name.” Stephen shuddered.

“Who names their base a ‘Sanctum Sanctorum’? That’s just as bad!” Peter countered.

“ I didn’t name it that. That’s just what it was called when I got there. Anyways, there’s an alien invasion happening right now, and we don’t need to waste time arguing about terrible names. Is there anyone else here?”

“Nope, just me and Ned.” Seeing Stephen’s blank look, he added, “My Guy In The Chair. My best friend. The light of my life. The one who brings me food. I told you about him in the soul stone!”

“Well, I’m sorry that I’ve suppressed all my memories of conversations with you because they’re too scarring. That time in the soul stone was hell, and I’ve had to put up with Wong lecturing me on using magic properly! You just kept going on about Jesus and your ‘Guy in the Chair’ and singing that god-awful song and how you were going to have to catch up on the memes and something about Alexa and despacito and how you didn’t even know if it was Wednesday.”

“Well I can’t quote the vine if it isn’t Wednesday! And, you know what? Some of y’all haven’t caught up on meme culture after being dusted by Thanos and it shows. And also , so what if I sang 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall eighty-seven times? It’s not like it’s going to kill you.”

“I think death would have been a better alternative to that monstrosity. And stop getting off topic! Are you coming or not?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming.” Peter shut off the TV and walked over to the counter. “Just gonna leave a note for Ned and Mr. Stark. I don’t want what happened last time to happen again any time soon.” Peter scribbled something on a Post-It note and stuck it to the fridge. “Alright, that should be good! So, um, where’s the aliens and how do I get there?”

Stephen sighed and opened a portal. “Just go through here, we’ve already wasted enough time as it is.”

Practically vibrating with excitement, Peter stepped through the portal. “This is magic, right? That’s so cool! Weren’t you human, like before? I mean, I read some of your papers when I was younger, because being a neurosurgeon sounded fun, but then I did some research, and it seemed kinda hard. But I’m pretty sure you were famous, because you were good at it, and then you crashed and then you kinda disappeared? I dunno what really happened, but it was on the news for awhile, y’know? But anyways, I’m pretty sure you were human. So are you still human or not? I don’t want to assume, because mutants and all.” Peter looked expectantly at Stephen, who had just closed the portal behind them.

“You do realize that you’ve been through these portals before, right?”

“I mean, yes, but that was so long ago! Six months is a very long time, y’know? And I’ve been through a bunch of traumatic things like dying so I think I deserve some leeway.” Peter smiled at Stephen, who merely sighed and resigned himself to his fate.

“Yes, I’m still human. I learned how to do all of this,” he gestured vaguely to the portal that had long since been closed, “after I injured my hands—“

“Wait, you learned magic? Ooh, can I learn magic?”

“No. It isn’t something that can be learned overnight. It requires immense focus, a deep connection to—“ Stephen glanced at Peter, who was staring vacantly at something in the distance. “And you’ve stopped listening. Great.”

Peter snapped out of his blank stare and looked back at Stephen apologetically. “I was listening, but my Spidey Sense was going off and it kinda felt like it was in that direction.” He pointed to where he had been staring previously.

“Yeah, it’s probably the aliens that I told you about .” Stephen huffed and walked towards the area Peter was pointing to. A few seconds later, Peter followed.

“This isn’t exactly how I saw my day off going, but who am I to complain?” Peter swung in overhead, webbing up a group of aliens in the middle of a cluster.

“Do you really have to do that? It’s not efficient at all and distracting me from actually stopping this invasion.” Stephen took out another cluster of aliens.

Scoffing, Peter punched an alien that was right in front of him in the face. “Well, I think it’s pretty efficient. But why would you listen to me when you could listen to Karen? Karen, would you do the honours?”

“By my calculations, you have incapacitated twenty-seven aliens, and Doctor Strange has incapacitated thirty-nine.”

Peter gasped in outrage. “How dare you betray me, Karen? You’re my first AI, my second bestest friend, named after a wonderful character in what is probably the greatest cartoon to ever exist! And you pick some random wizard over me? I don’t know who to trust anymore.”

“Certainly shouldn’t trust me if I decided bringing you here would be at all helpful,” Stephen muttered under his breath.

“Hey! I have super hearing! You don’t have to be rude about me being more likeable than you!”

Stephen raised an eyebrow. “If you could focus on doing what you’re supposed to, maybe I wouldn’t be rude.”

“Okay, two things. One, I have been doing things. Karen was scanning for civilians, and I haven’t exactly had the time to fix the suit since the last time I broke it, so I didn’t want to overload the suit by doing a bunch of things at once. And second, you’re also not doing anything. Wait, not also, because I’m doing things. You’re not doing anything. By yourself. I’m not included in this.”

“I suppose that’s a valid excuse. Just go, I work better alone anyways.”

“If you work better alone, why did you come and get me?”

“I told you already, I didn’t want to deal with this at all. But there was no one at the Compound and I figured having someone to help would be better than having to do it by myself. Now, you were supposed to be getting civilians out, were you not?”

Peter shot a web to a nearby building and swung away, grinning. “Goodbye, Dr. Wizard!”

“I told you already, I’m a master of the mystic arts, not a wizard!”

B O N U S

“Strange! Why the fuck did FRIDAY tell me that the kid’s injured?” Tony Stark landed on the ground in all his glory, helmet disassembling so he could glare properly at Stephen, who was holding Peter.

“Aliens. He was hit in the head, and now he’s concussed. There isn’t much I can do now, so you might as well take him back to the Compound.” Stephen glanced worriedly at Peter before continuing, “I suppose I could open a portal to take you both back.”

“Uh, thanks but no thanks. I’ll just fly him back.” Tony gestured for Strange to hand Peter to him, and frowned when Strange hesitated.

“Wouldn’t it be faster to just open a portal?“

“As I said before, thanks but no thanks. Portals don’t exactly agree with me. Now can I have my kid back or not?”

“Sure. It's not like I was planning on keeping him, I'd lose my sanity.” Stephen transferred Peter into Tony’s waiting arms, and watched as they flew into the distance.

He could have sworn he heard the kid mumble, “thanks, dad” to Tony before falling asleep.

Chapter Text

spooder-man   @NYCWallCrawler

it’s honestly a wonder that i manage to finish homework on time bc i have an essay due in a couple hours and i’ve barely finished the outline

             spooder-man   @NYCWallCrawler

              and i have to do a lab, whoops

“My dudes. It’s a bit past my curfew, so if we could just wrap this up quickly, I can make it back before my aunt murders me without witnesses!” Peter snickered to himself before jumping down from the balcony he was perched on to land in front of a couple muggers. At Peter’s interruption, they turned away from a girl that they had been cornering, giving her the opportunity to hide behind a nearby dumpster.

He webbed one’s hand to the wall, which was still holding their gun, and punched the other in the face, effectively incapacitating them both. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to notice the third. Fortunately, he did notice the stray mugger when he felt a blinding pain in his arm, courtesy of a bullet.

“Hey, Spidey Sense, you useless fuck, what’s the point of having extreme anxiety all the fucking time if you’re not even going to warn me of the fucking danger when it actually exists? ” Peter sighed and webbed up the last mugger, making sure that there weren’t any other things that his Spidey Sense forgot to warn him about.

He turned back to the girl, who had poked her head meekly out from behind the dumpster. “Um, you wanna call the police? I would, but y’know, secret identities and all.”

“I’ve already called them, while you were saving me. Thanks for doing that, by the way. I don’t know what I would have done without you.” She smiled at Peter, and after a moment, added, “I’d better get going, I guess. I wouldn’t want you to miss your curfew.”

She started to walk away, but Peter called out after her, “I could walk you home, if you want.” At this, she paused, and looked back at him.

“You’ve already done so much for me, I wouldn’t want to trouble you more. And anyways, you’re shot. You should be getting to a hospital instead of walking me home. Thanks for saving me.” She smiled apologetically, and continued walking.

“Right. The hole in my arm. You’d think I’d remember that. So am I just going to swing home with one arm or suck it up and use both? I could walk, I guess. That’d take a while though and blood loss isn’t the greatest… Karen, any thoughts?”

“You could call Mr. Stark, and he could fly you to the Compound to treat your arm. You wouldn’t have to use either of your arms, and it would be much faster than walking, so you wouldn’t have to deal with as much blood loss.”

“Okay, so, no. You don’t need to attack me like this, you know Mr. Stark told me to not get shot for the next week and it’s after curfew, so I’ll get lectured on ‘time management’ and ‘responsibility’ and ‘you need some fucking sleep so stop patrolling after eleven on a school night’ and ‘you should have alerted me that you were bleeding out, you know what happened last time’ and that’s not exactly how I want to spend my evening. Any other suggestions? Rational, maybe?”

“The most rational approach is to call Mr. Stark--”

“Karen, you know I can’t do that! I’m not at all prepared for that speech, it’s only been like a week, and I need at least several years. So if you’re not gonna be reasonable, I guess I’m just gonna have to swing home. I can stitch it up there. Don’t tell Mr. Stark what I’m doing, though. I’ll never hear the end of it, and he’ll give me the ‘don’t hide your injuries until you’re literally dying, you dumb fuck’ speech on top of all the others!” After trying (and failing) to mentally prepare himself for what he had to do, Peter pressed down on his web shooters. And nothing came out.

Peter let out a groan of frustration. “Karen, what are you doing? I know I still had half the canister left, so why isn’t it working?”  

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Well, it had to be you! There isn’t anyone else that could-- oh. Oh no.” Peter turned around to face Shuri, who was smiling innocently at him.

“I didn’t think you were serious about installing that in my suit!”

“Of course I was serious about it! You’re an idiot and you’ve worsened your wounds before by doing what you were just about to do and I’m not really in the mood to fix another broken white boy.” Shuri grabbed Peter’s good arm and started dragging him away.

“Uh, where are you taking me? I kinda don’t feel like getting kidnapped right now, I’ve got some homework due and I’d really like the time to do it. Also, why are you here? You live in Wakanda which, the last time I checked, was very far away and doesn’t seem like the kind of trip you could make in the time that I had injured my shoulder.”

“I’m not kidnapping you, it’s just a vacation. I know you have a four-day weekend, so you’re coming with me. I’m surrounded by idiots and I’m fairly sure I’m losing brain cells, so in an effort to protect my sanity, you’re coming with me .”

All of a sudden, Shuri stopped, nearly causing Peter to crash into her. Luckily, his Spidey Sense seemed to warn him of the completely inconsequential danger.

“Oh, now you want to work. It’s not like it would have been helpful, I don’t know, about ten minutes ago when I was getting shot in the arm,” Peter muttered angrily to himself. He glanced up at Shuri, who was looking at him quizzically.

“Do you always talk to yourself? Or is it like a Klaus situation or whatever Five does or something else entirely?”

“I don’t hallucinate the dead and I haven’t made up a personality for a mannequin, so I’d say no. But I do need a way to fill the empty void in my life, and this is the only solution that doesn’t make me seem completely insane. Also, Karen exists. So, wrong on all counts. And, um, hate to ask this, but why are we stopped here? I’m kinda, y’know, bleeding out?” Peter gestured to his arm before looking at Shuri.

“Yeah, yeah, I was getting to that.” Shuri pressed something on her kimoyo beads, which caused the cloaking mechanism on the plane right in front of them to disengage. Right. There was a plane directly in front of them, in plain sight. Helpful. Especially since he still seems to be bleeding out of a gunshot wound.

“There’s a plane. Right in front of us. Which was cloaked. And I didn’t even notice.”

“Didn’t you tell me that you chased your girlfriend’s dad onto a plane that was cloaked during Homecoming? So this isn’t the first time that you’ve seen cloaking on planes. Why are you still surprised by it?”

“Must you constantly bring that up? I only told you because I was high on pain medication, not because I trusted you in any way, shape, or form. Clearly I was right, if you’re trying to use it against me.”

Shuri let out a long, suffering sigh. “You’re currently bleeding out, could we not have this discussion right now?”

“Hold on, you didn’t seem to care about that a minute ago, when I brought up the subject of me bleeding out and you completely brushed me off. I thought you cared about my well-being, my safety, me not bleeding out in an alleyway right in front of a really cool plane that is seamlessly integrated with cloaking technology that I’m pretty sure is surpassing whatever Mr. Stark had on that plane last year. I’m going to find Ned, he cares about me, he loves me, he’ll be nicer than you.” Peter huffed and turned around, leaving Shuri to let out another sigh.

“Come on, Spider-boy. Stop stalling and get on the damn plane.” Shuri walked onto the plane, Peter following a few steps behind her.

“It’s Spider- Man, there’s a capital in there that I heard you leave out.”

*****

“Are we there yet?”

“Are you no longer a petulant child?”

“Okay, so that’s the wrong use for petulant, but we’re not opening that can of worms. I’m just gonna take that as a no and move on with my life.” Peter slumped on his chair, staring at the ceiling in anticipation.

“Great, because we’re here. Also, did you just pass up an opportunity to quote John Mulaney?”

“Wait, what?” Peter jumped off of the chair, nearly running into Shuri for the second time that day.

Shuri gave him a scathing look. “You absolute idiot, it’s only been an hour since I fixed you, don’t injure yourself again! I don’t have the patience to deal with this, ” Shuri gestured to Peter’s injured arm, “again. And yes, we’re here. I was about to tell you, but you had to ask that stupid question again, for the third time in ten minutes!”

“That’s only once every three minutes and ten seconds, so I don’t see why you’re so annoyed. It’s perfectly reasonable.”

“Well, I don’t see why I’m friends with you. I can do so much better than you, I’m a princess and I could also be a superhero if I wanted to, but that’s kinda a lot of work and I’m not sure I want to dedicate my very important time to doing that.” Shuri huffed and crossed her arms.

Peter slung an arm around Shuri, smiling brightly at her. “Because you love me. And also, literally ten minutes ago you were complaining about how you were literally the worst and God would hate you so much he just yeeted you out of the afterlife because Satan didn’t want you either. Your words, not mine.”

Shuri shrugged him off, lightly glaring at him. “Stop exposing me. Anyways, we should go, my brother’s waiting.”

“Wait, you mean your brother, T’Challa, the king of Wakanda? He’s waiting? Because of me?” Peter’s voice cracked on the last sentence.

“Yes, you moron, now follow me.” Peter followed Shuri off of the plane, staring in wonderment at the technological marvel of a city he was currently walking through. It was beautiful. Indescribable, really, as some things are.

“Could we, uh, slow down a bit? I’ve never been here before and I kinda want to, y’know, see the sights. Sightsee, as tourists do.” Peter glanced at Shuri hopefully, but she just waved a hand dismissively.

“There’s time for that later. You’re here for a couple more days, remember?” Shuri glanced down at her kimoyo beads, pressing a couple of them and projecting something that Peter couldn’t see.

She spoke to the hologram, which was presumably a person. “Hey, dickhead, get the fuck down here. The spider-boy’s here, I’ve only kidnapped him for the next few days and he doesn’t need to waste more of his time on the likes of you.” Shuri tapped a few more times on the beads, and the hologram disappeared.

“Um, what? Who were you talking to?”

“My brother.”

“Your-- your brother. The king. Of Wakanda. Black Panther. The cat dude. Would probably murder me without hesitation. That brother?” Peter laughed nervously.

“Yep. And he’s gonna be here in about,” She glanced at her beads, “a minute, so I guess my only question is, are you ready to fucking die?”

“I’m a bad bitch, you can’t kill me.”

It really was quite unfortunate that T’Challa chose this exact moment to make his appearance. He was almost a minute early, and he regretted every second of it. He remembered when Peter and Shuri had met, but he didn’t think that Peter was exactly the same as Shuri.

“I can’t deal with two of them,” he muttered under his breath, as Peter looked at him in mounting horror. “I have to go.” And with that, as suddenly as he appeared, T’Challa was gone.

Peter pressed his hands to his face in embarrassment. “I can’t believe I said that in front of the king.”

Meanwhile, Shuri was cackling gleefully. “The look on his face! Oh my god, this is amazing. I want to frame this moment and keep it forever. It’s really too bad that I don’t have any footage, though I suppose I could ask Stark if I could borrow BARF… Can I keep you? I have so many ideas, and four days isn’t enough.”

“Uh, no? I’ve got homework?”

“You know what? Fuck you too. I thought we were friends, we bonded over memes. You even finished my vine! How dare you insult me like this?”

“So where’s your lab?”

“First of all, how dare you change the subject? And second, just follow me. It’s easier that way.”

“You still have the lightsabers, right?”

Chapter Text

spooder-man  @NYCWallCrawler

just bought a harry potter card game. the only issue is that it’s for two to four people and i have no friends

        spooder-man  @NYCWallCrawler

         update: i’m gonna play all four characters by myself because i’m aLONE in life

                i’m in  @NedLeeds

                 am i a joke to you?

Peter groaned and groggily blinked open his eyes to reveal... complete darkness. Fun times.

“Karen, where’d the sun go? Did you steal it?” He tried to sit up, but instead hit his head on something metal. Right. Metal. As in the dumpster he was currently sitting in. Perfect.

“What happened?”

“It seems that two hours ago, you were in the midst of a fight when you were drugged. You webbed them up, and promptly fell in this dumpster, where you have remained since,” Karen responded.

“Great. Absolutely wonderful. Love that for me.” Peter sighed and glanced around at the contents of the dumpster, which were… not so nice. Nor clean. Though, he supposed, what else should he expect? “I should probably get out of here, right? I mean, I don’t really want to tell Mr. Stark that I broke his rule already. But then again, how was I supposed to know that I’d fall into three dumpsters this month?”

Karen chuckled. “I suppose it is unusual. Though I should warn you that Mr. Stark programmed me to alert him should you fall into another dumpster.”

“Oh shit. Fuck. Shit. ” Peter muttered to himself for a while before coming to the realization that it would be a great idea to actually get out of the dumpster instead of panicking inside it. Or panicking! at the disco.

“Welcome to bible study, we’re all children of Jesus.” Bursting out of the dumpster, Peter shouted, “Kumbaya!”

In his haste to get out of the dumpster, Peter almost missed the high-pitched screech coming from the leather-clad person sitting on the ground, eating a chimichanga.

Trying to maintain the composure of someone that had not just burst out of a dumpster, Peter said, “I’d ask who you are, but unfortunately I already know.”

“You know, of all the ways I imagined I’d meet you, this was never one of them. I always thought you’d come up to me like, ‘Hey, Deadpool, I’m a huge fan,’ and ask for my autograph then I’d say, ‘Oh of course, Spidey, anything for you,’ and then we’d become best friends forever and we’d go on adventures together as partners in crime. Or in stopping crime.”

“Why exactly are you eating a chimichanga while sitting on the ground next to a dumpster?”

Deadpool took another bite. “Why aren’t you ?”

Peter gently closed the dumpster lid before backing away slowly. “Valid. Fair point. I’m just gonna, y’know, yeet myself out of here before Mr. Stark feels the need to come down here, so good luck with that!”  

See, Peter wanted to leave. He really did. It wasn’t his plan to hang out with a mercenary that decided the best use of his time was to eat a chimichanga on the ground near a dumpster, but things happen. Things like Karen alerting Peter to the fact that Tony was waiting for Peter and that he “wasn’t mad, just wanted to talk”. And his Spidey Sense wasn’t going off around Deadpool, so he felt he’d be okay. After all, who better to shield him from the wrath of Iron Man than someone that can’t die? So yes, Peter decided that it would be in the best interests of his safety that he should stay.

“Hey, so I’m just gonna stay here, if you could refrain from murdering people while I’m around, that would be great.” Peter walked back to sit down next to Deadpool.

“You know, I went through a whole character arc in my second movie that showed me murdering isn’t always the answer. I don’t get why people don’t remember that. I sacrificed myself! Twice! I even had that dramatic speech on my deathbed.”

“Uh, what?”

“Deadpool 2? A cinematic masterpiece? Although you’re probably too young to see it, so I suppose I can’t blame you for not knowing.” Deadpool took the last bite of his chimichanga and pulled his mask back down over his mouth.

He suddenly sat straight up and held up a finger. “Oh! I should probably mention that I’m leaving soon. Part of the job.”

Peter muttered under his breath, “Gotta gain this grain. Yeet this wheat. Bag this baguette.”

“Ooh, are you referencing a me-me?”

Peter stared at Deadpool in horror. “Ed, it’s pronounced ‘meem’! The second e is silent.”

“Uh, my name isn’t Ed. See, I have the superhero thing where you have the same first letter for your first and last names, and I just so happen to share a last name with an actual superhero. You might have heard of him, he’s bird-themed, flies around with robotic wings that he didn’t steal from the government, has a drone that I’m not sure he realizes is inanimate, and in the comics he had this really nice suit where the top was just a V and really did wonders to his muscles.”

“I’m sorry, where were you going with that?”

“Many places, Spidey, many places. And I need your answer. Will you, as the kids say, “yeet” yourself to the meeting place with me?”

Peter, absolutely mortified at the realization that he is willingly staying with this heathen , this thing that barely qualifies as a human being, just continued to stare at Deadpool. If it was at all possible for him to become more dead inside than he already was, he just accomplished that.

“What. the. actual. fuck. I’d rather yeet myself out of this life, but go off I guess.” Peter was seriously contemplating going back to face the wrath of Tony Stark, who was possibly the second-most intimidating Avenger, literal genius and has a gold-titanium alloy suit that is very scary, which Peter can confirm firsthand. Anything was better than being here, with Deadpool.

“You know, according to the comics you’re supposed to be my best friend forever! BFFs for life! Well, for your life at least, since I might possibly live forever, but that’s not the point! You can’t disregard the source material!”

“What are you prattling on about?”

“The comics! You see, when I met Clint, I spoke to him in ASL, because when I read the comics, he was deaf. So I wanted to be prepared! But, as it turns out, he isn’t deaf, and I put in all that effort for nothing.”

“What?”

“We must go to different websites.”

Peter sighed. “I’m going. Might as well face Mr. Stark now. Best to get it over with quickly so I don’t build it up in my head and make a fool of myself.” He swung off into the distance, hoping against all hope that Tony wouldn’t prolong his murder too much.

B O N U S

tony: where the fuck have you been?

peter: uh, with cap?

steve, swiveling around on a chair: nice try

peter: captain marvel

deadpool, breaking through the ceiling, wearing captain marvel’s suit over his own with a wig on: I’ve been fighting with one arm tied behind my back, but what happens when I’m finally set free?

Chapter Text

spooder-man  @NYCWallCrawler

i’ve done something v embarrassing and i was trying to console myself by reminding myself that i’d forget what happened in a while but then i remembered that the Fifth Grade Incident™ is forever engraved into my memory and now i’m v stressed

“Hey Karen, do you think Thor’s new axe has the “only the worthy may wield it” thing too, or was it just his hammer? And if someone else was worthy of it, and they could wield it, would they be able to do the lightning thing as well? And would they technically be controlling Thor’s lightning? What if they used the hammer to attack Thor? Would he be hurt by his own lightning? Because I think Thor mentioned that his hammer just allowed him to have more control over his lightning, but how would that even work? Like does it control his lightning for him, and he only has to be worthy enough to use it, or does it just make it easier? Also, can you be worthy only in certain circumstances, or is it a lifetime thing? Like you’d always have to be worthy at every second, or does your worthiness switch on and off?”

Karen chuckled. “That’s a lot of questions, Peter. Unfortunately, I don’t know the answers, but you can ask Thor. Or, you could focus on web slinging instead of asking questions about your celebrity crush.”

“He- he isn’t my celebrity crush, Karen,”   Peter spluttered out. “And I am focusing on web slinging, I just have a lot of questions. And I can’t very well go up to a fricking Norse god ; I’d probably spontaneously combust and I don’t really want Thor to remember me like that. I’d be eternally embarrassed and I don’t think I could ever move on, even in death. So, no. I’m not going to ask Thor. That would not be good for my mental health.” Peter shuddered at the thought.

Swinging through the open window of Tony’s lab, Peter landed precariously in one of the only empty spaces on the floor. The lab was… messy, to say the least. It was a miracle that Tony managed to find anything in that lab, much less invent things. One of Tony’s cars was in the lab today, for some reason, and Tony was underneath it, fixing something. Peter can’t claim to know what it was, since despite being arguably a genius, he wasn’t well-versed in cars.  

“Uh, Mr. Stark, what’re we working on today? And why do you have a car up here? I thought you didn’t want me near your cars because of what happened last time.” Peter almost took his mask off, but paused when Tony rolled out from under the car to reveal that he wasn’t, in fact, Tony. It was some random kid, and Peter was very, very glad that he didn’t take his mask off.

“You’re not Mr. Stark.”

“Obviously. I’m Black Widow, couldn’t you tell?” The kid stood up and held out a hand. “I’m Harley, nice to meet you, Spidey.”

Peter shook Harley’s extended hand. “Uh, why are you here? And am I supposed to know you?”

“Tony and I are connected. And I would assume that Tony would tell you who I am, we are connected after all.”

“Well, you see, Mr. Stark hasn’t mentioned a “Harley” to me, so…”

“Typical. You save a superhero as a kid and they don’t even mention you. It’s not like I fixed his suit when he broke into my garage or anything. I mean, I almost gave one of my potato guns to him! I can’t believe it.”

“Wait, you’re potato gun kid?”

Harley raised an eyebrow at Peter. “Yes. As I told you, Tony and I are connected. He broke into my garage and I almost shot him with a potato gun. I saved his life and he gave me better equipment. I was in New York and decided to visit him.”

“Yes, but you mentioned literally none of that. You just said you and Mr. Stark are ‘connected’. What was I supposed to get out of that?”

“I don’t know, you were supposed to go ‘oh my god, that’s Harley Keener, Tony told me all about him! He saved Tony’s life when he was a kid, is a brilliant mechanic, probably smarter than him now’ and be completely amazed to be in my presence. Something like that.”

“I’m completely amazed at how large your ego is,” Peter muttered.

“Ah fuck, I can’t believe you’ve done this.”

“You watch vines?”

Harley squinted at Peter. “What kind of Gen Z would I be if I didn’t?”

“Accurate. Well, you seem fun enough. Wanna be in a video with me? I need content.”

Harley paused for a moment. “Yes?”

*****

[the video opens in a lab, fluorescent lights glowing overhead. Spider-Man is sitting to the left of a guy with a name tag reading “potato gun kid” on his forehead. Spidey (presumably) grins at the camera and says, “Hey guys! I’ve dragged Harley into this video, we just met like ten minutes ago but we’ve banded together to expose Tony Stark, so this’ll be fun for you guys. And us. Pretty much everyone but Mr. Stark. Sorry, I need content.”

The words “number one” are edited over a gif of Tony flying the Iron Man suit face-first into a wall.

Spidey claps his hands. “Okay, so a couple months back, the Avengers were in the middle of a prank war.”

Next to him, Harley has a look of betrayal on his face. “Tony didn’t invite me to the prank war?”

Spidey laughed. “He was probably too scared of your power. Anyways, Mr. Stark had said that he was going to stay neutral, because he ‘didn’t want to partake in such childish things’. So obviously, we trusted him, because he’s Tony Stark, y’know? Therefore, we didn’t pay much attention to him because we really wanted to win, and things can get really stressful when you have half of the Avengers hellbent on pranking you. And that was a mistake. On April fucking first, glitter bombs went off everywhere. Red and gold glitter bombs. And I do mean everywhere. There wasn’t a single place on all of the Avengers floors that was glitter-bomb free. Legend says that to this day, there’s still glitter bombs lurking in the shadows, waiting to be revealed.”

A red and gold glitter bomb goes off over Spidey’s head, Harley having gotten up while Spidey was talking and pressed a button, far enough away from the glitter bomb to be unaffected. Harley laughs in the background whilst Spidey sits there, staring directly into the camera with a deadpan look on his face.

This time, the words “number two” are edited over a gif of Tony endlessly tapping the arc reactor, trying to get the nanotech suit to form. Needless to say, it doesn’t form.

When the transition fades, Spider-Man is in a different suit, which seems to be made of metal and have gold accents on it. Harley is still next to him, looking slightly more proud of himself.

“Since Harley has decided to betray me and set a glitter bomb off, I’ve had to change into the Iron Spider suit. Mr. Stark doesn’t know I have access to it, so we’re just gonna keep that on the DL.”

Harley turned his head to face Spidey. “Did you really just say “DL” out loud?”

“Yes. You have a problem with that?” Spidey responded.

“Yes.”

“Okay, well, we’ve gotta move on. We have a lot of stories to tell and not a lot of time. You wanna go?”

“Tony Stark broke into my garage.  I threatened him with a potato gun. I saved his life. I was like eight at the time?”

Spidey glanced at Harley. “Is that it?”

“I live in Tennessee. Not much happens.”

“Valid.”

“Okay, well we have less stories than I thought. But I might as well go. I live in New York. A lot happens.”

The words "number three" popped up, with an image of Tony webbed to the ceiling, fast asleep. 

Spidey tried to crack his knuckles, but failed. Instead, he looked at the camera and said, “So, one time, Mr. Stark went around to the Avengers, telling them that he was going to die. He gave them parting gifts, said his goodbyes, the whole shtick. Everyone thought that he was doomed or something, and we were all concerned and tried to help. As it turns out, he missed an important meeting, and thought Pepper was going to kill him.”

“He’s an overdramatic shit.”

Spider-Man looked back at Harley. “Did anyone ever claim otherwise? I think we all knew that already.”

“Well, actually--”

Harley was cut off by a robotic-sounding voice.

“Boss is entering the elevator.”

Spidey and Harley looked at each other in panic.

“Oh shit.”

“Thanks, FRI. Harley, we should end the video here.” Harley nods at Spidey, and waves at the camera before grabbing it and shutting it off.]

*****

ironmanstan  are we just gonna ignore the fact that they met like ten minutes ago and have already reached Best Friends™ status?

owo  tony is a wholeass mood

      whoops  true

carryonsimon  we stan two (2) legends

theworldwillknow  uh spidey literally missed the best opportunity for the “are you from tennessee? ‘cause you’re the only ten I see” joke and i’m still not over that

literal trash  this is so pure T^T

Chapter Text

spooder-man   @NYCWallCrawler

someone murder me before i have to deal with giving that speech

       mj   @michellejones

       you could just jump off the building

             meme overlord   @no

              do a flip

                   i’m in   @NedLeeds

                    i’ve got bleach if you want it

                         we’re connected   @potatogun

                          steal some of tony’s weapons, he has a lot

                         we’re connected   @potatogun

                          i would offer my potato gun but eh

                         we’re connected   @potatogun

                          it kinda makes a mess

“Sorry honeybear, but I’m gonna have to cancel.” Putting down his phone, Tony looked at Rhodey apologetically.

“You mean to tell me that you’re cancelling something that we’ve had planned for months? I went to Pepper to ask for your schedule, and she’s terrifying. So I know for a fact you’re free.”

“Well, something just came up. I’ve gotta go, see you later.” Tony got up and walked out of the room, vanishing from sight. Sighing, Rhodey got up to chase after him.

“Tones, you can’t just run off to avoid confrontation--” Rhodey’s sentence trailed off when he caught sight of Tony talking to a kid. A kid with curly brown hair and doe eyes and who seemed practically dead on his feet.

Rhodey couldn’t hear much of the conversation but he decided it would be best to give them their privacy, even if he’s going to hold the fact that Tony has a kid over him for the rest of his life. Though, on his way out, Rhodey did catch a glimpse of Tony wrapping a blanket around the kid, and heard the faintest whisper of a “dad?” (and some mumbled words from Tony about “stupid kids” with “106 degree fevers” that “don’t tell anyone until their amino acids are being denatured” but that isn’t the point)

“Hey, FRI, who’s the kid?”

“I’m afraid that’s not my secret to tell.”

Rhodey sighed. “I figured as much. Do you have a file at least?”

“No comment.”

“Aha! So you do! Do I have access?”

“No comment.”

Rhodey grinned conspiratorially. “This’ll be fun.”

*****

Rhodey, like anyone who just found out their best friend had a secret son and hid it from them for who knows how long, waited in the living room to confront Tony. Tony, who had the gall to walk into the room like nothing had happened.

“So, Tony, have anything you want to tell me?”

“Of course not, honeybear. I tell you everything. Like that time I was flying around in a tin can and you and your army buddies were trying to shoot me down.”

Rhodey leaned back in his chair. “So you don’t have a secret kid or anything? Nothing of the sort?”

Tony inhaled sharply and looked at Rhodey. “I don’t have a kid. I don’t know what you think you saw but I only have an intern.”

“Last I checked, you don’t do interns.”

“Well obviously I do, since I have one.”

“A fourteen year-old intern?”

“He’s sixteen.”

Rhodey clapped his hands together and smiled evilly at Tony. “And, pray tell, why do you know your intern’s age?”

“Can’t I be a good boss and know the age of one of my employees?”

“No.”

“I feel… attacked, was it?” Tony glanced up at the ceiling, likely to get confirmation from FRIDAY. After the metaphorical thumbs up from the AI, Tony continued. “Why am I not allowed to know my intern’s age?”

“Because you barely know your own age, let alone other people’s.”

After a moment of silence, Tony said, “Moving on, why exactly were you spying on me?”

“Hey! You can’t just change the subject when you don’t have anything to say.”

“I’m not changing the subject, why would you think I’m changing the subject?”

“You’re an idiot if you think I’m falling for that. Tell me why you won’t admit you’re close to the kid.”

“I never said I wasn’t close to the kid, I just said he wasn’t my son.”

“But you think of him like a son.”

Tony hesitated a beat before saying, “No.”

“You hesitated! That was a hesitation. You know, you could’ve told me earlier. We would’ve thrown a baby shower, gotten the “It’s a boy!” decorations, the whole shtick. We could still do that now. FRI, you getting this?”

“Yes, I’ve saved it to the file.”

Tony glanced up at the ceiling to ask, “What file?”

FRIDAY at least sounded a bit guilty as she responded, “No comment.”

“I’ve been betrayed by my own creations. To think I had faith in your code. And you!” Tony pointed at Rhodey accusingly. “How dare you corrupt her like that? I’ll leave you to Pepper’s mercy.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“I won’t hesitate, bitch.” Tony paused before muttering, “That’s what Peter keeps saying, right? ‘I won’t hesitate bitch?’”

“So his name is Peter?”

“No?”

“It is, then.”

“This has been fun, honeybear, but I have to go.” Tony got up, leaving behind a confused and slightly alarmed Rhodey.

“Why do you keep leaving when I’m right?” He called out after Tony. “And also, didn’t you say the kid has a 106 degree fever earlier? Shouldn’t he be in the hospital?”

Alas, Tony ignored his questions.

*****

Despite his curiosity, Rhodey didn’t go looking for Peter. He knew that Tony didn’t want to admit that he was practically the kid’s father, and he didn’t want to intrude on the kid’s privacy until he was ready. But, he can’t really blame himself if it was an accident. At least, that’s what he’s going to tell Tony.

About a month after he found out about Peter, Rhodey happened to walk into the living room whilst a kid was playing Minecraft on the TV. Based on how he looked exactly the same as the first time Rhodey saw him, Rhodey was fairly certain that the kid was Peter.

“Goddamnit, you stupid villagers! Just go in the fucking hole and don’t be motherfucking idiots! I would’ve murdered your asses a long while ago, but apparently you don’t like murder and you’ll jack up your already overpriced prices! Just give me the fucking enderpearls so I can stab that overgrown lizard flying around in a void!”

Correction, he was wondering if Tony had adopted two kids, completely identical to each other.

“Are you Peter?”

Possibly Peter spun around with an innocent look on his face, reminiscent of the first time Rhodey saw him. “Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. You’ll never know.” And with that, he turned back to trying to shove a villager into a small hole in the ground; a task that, unfortunately, didn’t seem to be going well for him.

“So I’m just supposed to believe that Tony adopted identical twins?”

“Yes.” Probably Not Peter thought for a second before saying, “wait, no. I’m not his kid.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“From Mr. Stark? At least, that’s what I’d guess from you knowing my name.”

“So your name is Peter.”

Peter hesitated before saying, “no?”

“Are you sure you’re not his kid? You just did the exact same thing as him when I asked him about you.”

“Pretty sure, yeah.”

“You know, family doesn’t end in blood. You can make it whatever you want, it’s strange like that.”

“Normally I’d be all for sentimental things like that, but there are villagers to be killed, so…”

Rhodey smiled. “Alright then. See you ‘round, Peter.” He turned around to walk out of the room

“Wait, Mr. Col. Rhodes War Machine, sir!” Peter called out after him. Smiling softly at Rhodey, he said, “Thanks.”

“Any time, kid. Any time.”