Chapter Text
After Mr. Stark takes him on a part-unexcused vacation, part-kidnapping venture, part-crime-fighting escapade in Germany, Peter comes back with a seven step plan to make Mr. Stark adopt him as his Avenger mentee. Peter likes to say that this plan was seventy-three percent successful, considering that it concluded with Mr. Stark administering an Avenger-y test of heroic morals, which Peter definitely aced.
After that, Peter feels that he has a better grasp of how Mr. Stark works, so he upgrades to a twelve step plan to adopt Mr. Stark as his parental figure in the area of super-heroics and science. Aunt May, his parental figure in all other areas, does not approve, but she does acquiesce. Peter likes to attribute this acquiescence to May’s solid trust in his planning skills and definitely not to her resigned acceptance of how Peter will do whatever he wants if he thinks it’ll help someone he likes (or even someone he doesn’t like), regardless of the bounds of common sense, logic, and reality.
But it doesn’t really matter why May agrees, only that she does, so Peter can commence worming his way into Mr. Stark’s life. If Mr. Stark is too emotionally repressed to stealth-adopt Peter after helicopter-mentoring him for months, then, fine, Peter will do it himself. He can pull off sad orphan, cute kid, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, and any other look that’ll get Mr. Stark to relent to his attempts at adopting Mr. Stark as one of his people. Peter is at least thirty percent sure that Mr. Stark likes him, too, so he already has a basis to work off of. It’s gonna work out.
Anyway, that’s how Peter masterfully manipulates Mr. Stark into instituting Stark Internship Sundays, during which Mr. Stark brings Peter to the Avengers Compound so they can tinker with his suits and worship at the altar of science. Eventually, Peter also gets Mr. Stark to break out the Iron Man suit and train him to be a more functional superhero, which involves more high-speed dodgeball and less sparring than Peter had initially expected, but he isn’t complaining. Mr. Stark is great at superhero dodgeball, just like how he’s great at everything except emotional vulnerability. That’s okay, though. That’s what he has Peter for.
Peter loves Stark Internship Sundays. But, after hinting relentlessly at the inconvenience of making two trips between upstate and the city in a single day, Peter gets Mr. Stark to agree to Saturday Movie Night, too, and Peter has gotta say that those are almost better.
Take today, for instance. Peter is half-listening to The Empire Strikes Back while Mr. Stark provides a running commentary of how he would alternately evade Darth Vader and take over the Rebel Alliance and do it much better than those idiots on screen. Peter has his feet tucked under Mr. Stark’s thighs and is ruminating over what strategy to take if he wants Mr. Stark to upgrade his couch-sharing privileges to cuddling privileges. Mr. Stark has lots of struggles, and Peter is one hundred percent ready to give him lots of snuggles.
They’re not quite there yet, though.
But they are at the point where Peter can ask Mr. Stark semi-invasive questions about his personal life because Peter cares about Mr. Stark a lot and isn’t afraid to let him know it. Peter told him these exact words last week while implementing step ten of his twelve step plan. After dropping this metaphorical bomb, Peter immediately absconded to the safety a Happy-chauffeured drive back to NYC and spent the rest of the week half petrified with embarrassment and half terrified that he’d ruined his relationship with Mr. Stark forever, but Mr. Stark didn’t cancel this week’s Saturday Movie Night and Stark Internship Sunday, so everything seems to be okay.
Anyhow, Han and Leia are escaping on the Millennium Falcon when Peter decides that this is an appropriate moment to segue into the hotly debated and somewhat personal topic— “So, now that Captain America isn’t a fugitive anymore, are the Avengers gonna get back together?”
Captain America and company are back in town. Peter can confirm this because he helped negotiate an inter-vigilante-team extraction just two weeks ago, after Captain America 2.0: Darker, Broody-er, and Beardy-er had been kicked into a Hell’s Kitchen dumpster during a mob takedown gone wrong. Daredevil and Awesome Metal Arm Dude spent fourteen minutes competing over who could silently broadcast how pissed they were more intimidatingly from the darkness of the alleyway, but Peter had still managed to get everyone out of the trash and into their respective crime-fighting territories before anyone got punched in the throat. It was a feat that was, perhaps, not quite on par with how Mr. Stark danced around General Ross and the Sokovia Accords until the government allowed all the Avengers to come home, but Peter still considers it a win. If Peter survives his high school heroics and college admissions, he’s gonna triple major in chemistry, electrical engineering, and dumpster diplomacy. It’s clearly his true calling.
Mr. Stark suddenly looks very engrossed in the android antics on screen. Peter lets him be for thirty-three seconds before pushing his toes up into Mr. Stark’s left hamstring and repeating, “Are you guys gonna get back together?”
“Well, we weren’t exactly on a break,” says Mr. Stark, which is not exactly an answer, so Peter remains still and silent until Mr. Stark finally sighs, turns his head, and looks Peter in the eye. “The Avengers—The situation we’re in right now wasn’t just caused by the Accords, Pete. There were a lot of reasons—There are a lot of reasons why the team came apart, and many of them extend beyond what was reported to the public. So, we—,” Mr. Stark rubs his temple, “I don’t think it’d be— It’s probably not the best idea to integrate the others back into the team right now. You get it, right?”
“Sure.” Peter does not get it. He’d been asking less about the Avengers as a team and more about the Avengers as Mr. Stark’s friends and family. But the whole topic seems to make Mr. Stark sad, so Peter’s willing to nod and let Mr. Stark turn back to the movie and wait the twenty-six minutes it takes for the worry lines on his forehead to smooth out before carefully asking, “...So, is it okay if I start trying to bring the Avengers back together? You know, since I’m kind of an Avenge—er, Avenging Apprentice myself.”
Mr. Stark pinches the bridge of his nose, which Peter takes as a signal to backtrack immediately.
“Sorry, I just— not to sound like— like an accidental child of divorce or anything— I mean, uh, it’s just that, like, if you wanted to, I had this plan where—“ At this point, Mr. Stark decides to add left-eyebrow-raising to his Peter-You’re-Stressing-Me-Out face (patented by Aunt May), so Peter decides that this is the perfect time to inject a movie reference into the conversation and lighten the mood, “a plan where I could— you know, I—“
Inspiration strikes.
“I could be like Tracy Turnblad,” Peter says thoughtfully, “from Hairspray .”
“ Hairspray ?” Mr. Stark’s face twitches like he’s trying really hard to hold in a sneeze. Or maybe a deluge of sarcastic comments. Either way, he lets himself be distracted, so Peter covertly sighs in relief. “I thought you were studying really old—” Mr. Stark makes little air quotes with his index and middle fingers “— sci-fi movies to maintain your precocious teenage-vigilante aesthetic. What, you diversifying into old rom-com musicals now, Pete?”
“ Hairspray isn’t that old, Mr. Stark,” Peter says, “I mean, Zefron was in it.”
“Zef— You mean Zac Efron? Kid, that’s—,” Mr. Stark shakes his head, lifts his hands as if he can ward off Peter’s words with his palms, stands up, and makes to leave the lounge. “You— Alright, movie night’s over. Get out of my house.”
Mr. Stark does not kick Peter out of his house. Instead, he comes back with a cocktail platter filled with gummy worms and M&Ms and caramel popcorn, and he lets Peter tuck his feet back under his legs without comment, and the next day, when they’re tinkering in the lab, he only makes fourteen snarky remarks about Peter including “The New Girl in Town” in their science time playlist. However, he doesn’t mention Captain America and the other Avengers again, not even when Peter does his epic Captain America PSA impression in a failed attempt to make him laugh.
——
“So, that’s definitely tacit permission, right?” Peter says.
“Oh, yeah, totally,” says MJ, in a tone that makes it entirely unclear whether or not she is being sarcastic.
“You owe me fifty dollars in rent,” says Ned. Peter grudgingly hands him a strip of lined paper that MJ has written “50” on with a sparkly blue gel pen.
Peter, MJ, and Ned are supposed to be critiquing each others’ rhetorical analyses of The Grapes of Wrath . Instead, they’re playing Monopoly with a board and pieces that MJ made using lined paper torn out of Peter’s notebook. They’re investigating the adverse effects of capitalism on the personal bonds between intimates. It’s both on topic and educational.
MJ taps Ned’s phone, rolling the dice in the dice-rolling app Ned downloaded, and says, “It’s cute that you think you’ll be able to bridge the ideological, moral and ethical divide between two high profile cultural-political leaders with a bit of teenage spirit and an ill-fitting movie analogy.” She tries to convince Ned into selling her Reading Railroad. Ned fans himself with his rent money and refuses.
“It’s not ill-fitting,” Peter says, “The situation is exactly like Hairspray , except without race relations or beauty pageants or singing or dancing.”
Peter had come up with the Hairspray reference on the fly to distract Mr. Stark, but as it left his mouth, he did momentarily consider Hairspray as a viable model for reuniting the Avengers. The more he thinks about it, the more viable his Hairspray analogy becomes.
“It’ll work out,” Peter insists. MJ rolls her eyes. Ned rolls the dice. “You agree with me, right, Ned?” Peter asks.
“I don’t know, Peter,” Ned worries at a paper hotel before adding it to his stack of two at Park Place. “I love the Avengers, but they aren’t exactly ‘The Nicest Kids in Town.’ I don’t think you should get too tangled up in their drama. But if you do do your plan—“
“—Ha, you said doodoo—“
“—You better tell me all about it, so I can live vicariously through your superhero—uh, superhero-adjacent adventures.” Ned finishes shakily. Peter side-eyes him. Despite MJ’s recent omnipresence, they still haven’t figured out if she has figured out that Peter’s Spider-Man. Every conversation that involves the Stark Internship is a minefield. Peter’s life is filled with constant terror.
“Yeah, me too,” MJ says. She grins like a shark. “I would give up my copy of The New Jim Crow to see Captain America perform ‘Big, Blonde and Beautiful.’”
“MJ!” Peter gasps, pressing his right hand to his chest in shock. “I can’t believe you! Obviously, Mr. Stark would be Velma. He’s just as glamorous.”
“No, no, no,” Ned says, “Velma’s evil. The only true Velma here is Thaddeus Ross.”
Peter thinks about it. Nods. He can handle the truth.
“Then who’s Mr. Stark?” Both Ned and MJ pause to think about this very important question. Peter rolls the dice.
“Well, if you’re Tracy...then he has to be Edna, right?”
Peter hesitates in the middle of moving his paper dog to imagine himself and Mr. Stark in matching pink hairbands and sequined gowns, dancing in powder pink heels to “Welcome to the 60’s.”
Peter snorts so loudly and with such force that he half-flips the Monopoly board and effectively ends the game, much to the dismay of Ned and MJ. It’s okay. Peter was gonna have to mortgage his soul anyway, if he’d wanted another chance to pass GO.