Chapter Text
It’s by the very skin of his teeth, but Peter manages to survive the full thirty-six hours of his sentence without breaking the existing rules or doing anything that required the creation of additional rules. That doesn’t mean the time passed without wheedling or whining. Testing boundaries is apparently his preset, but thankfully he doesn’t seem inclined towards outright defiance.
As a reward, Erik tosses the last two Moon Pies into Peter’s lunch kit, one more than he usually allows at any given meal. The unnatural, nuclear yellow color is wholly unappealing to Erik, but Peter swears by the banana-flavored monstrosities. Throwing the empty box in the trash, Erik adds the treat/ bargaining chip to the growing grocery list. Hilariously, and slightly concerning budget-wise, Pietro actually eats more than Erik does. They’re quickly running out of everything edible not even a week after their last shopping trip. Bulk clubs never made sense financially before since Erik lived alone, but he might seriously have to consider joining one since Peter’s appetite will likely only increase as he enters his teen years.
Erik puts the shark-faced lunch kit in the fridge for now to keep everything cool until it’s time to leave for school. He’d usually sleep an hour more, but he’s up early to try to tackle a problem that seems to already be brewing. Peter’s been enrolled in school for three whole days. It only took two days for Peter’s folder to come back with yellow stoplight behavior stickers and notes that he’s out of his seat and off-task far too often. When asked about it, Peter says he simply can’t sit still that long. Given his similar behavior at home, Erik is inclined to believe it’s not intentional disobedience but rather something they need to formulate a plan for. To help Peter to put his best foot forward with his new teacher, Erik decides a trip to the park, letting the kid burn off some energy first thing in the morning before school could help.
“Up and at ‘em,” Erik says, flipping on the light as he enters Peter’s room.
The boy doesn’t respond. He’s buried under the blankets, only a few tuffs of his hair sticking out from underneath. Using his powers, Erik gives the mattress springs a firm shake. Groggy and confused, Peter finally cracks an eye open.
“Whaaa?”
“Get up and get dressed. Shorts, t-shirt, tennis shoes.”
With a yawn, Peter looks slowly towards the window and then equally slowly back at Erik. “But it’s still nighttime?”
“It’s 5:45 a.m.”
He stares dully at Erik who can barely suppress his laugh. Clearly that information means less than nothing to the kid this early in the morning.
“Up, dressed, downstairs. ASAP.”
With a sharp tug, Erik pulls the blanket completely off the bed on his way out.
“Hey!”
Erik doesn’t bother to smother his laugh this time.
Twenty long minutes later, Peter is at the kitchen table, dressed but still quite droopy-eyed. For someone so energetic during the day, he’s almost comically pokey before sunrise.
“School doesn’t start until 8:15. Why are we up so early?” Peter mumbles, his chin pillowed on his folded arms which rest impolitely on the table.
Erik slides a plate of eggs and a glass of orange juice in front of him. “Since you told me you feel like you have too much energy at school, I figured I’d let you get some out at the park trail before school. Hopefully, that’ll help you focus and stay out of trouble.”
The idea had come to Erik the night before. Between the doctor, school, and DCFS, they’ve spent an awful lot of time sitting and waiting, in one office or the other, all of which required Peter to be seen and not heard. Between that, school, and being confined to his room due to behavior, he’s probably getting pretty antsy. A boy his age should have some kind of outlet to stay out of trouble. If Peter doesn’t like, they’ll try something else.
Erik sips his coffee as Peter devours his breakfast, eating everything but the plate and cutlery. By the time, he’s done and they leave the house, he’s showing signs of perking up. Once the park breaks the horizon line, he’s actually excited.
“Why didn’t you bring me here before?” he asks, skip walking to get there more quickly.
“We’ve been busy.”
“Ooh!” Peter hoots, ignoring Erik’s answer, his eyes going wide with excitement.
The park features a complete, brightly-colored playground: a swing set, teeter totters, a metal climbing fort with slides and monkey bars attached, rocking horses, and a merry-go-round, all plopped in the middle of a gigantic sandbox. Surrounding it is about a mile and half looping concrete walkway, allowing parents to walk or jog while simultaneously keeping an eye on their kid playing in the center.
“Can I play on the swings?”
“We won’t have time,” Erik says. He checks his watch again. “We’re going to do three laps and we have to be back home in time for you to shower and dress for school.”
“But once I’m done, any time leftover I can spend on the swings,” Peter rephrases, seemingly unphased by Erik’s explanation.
Erik sighs and then relents. It wouldn’t hurt to let him swing for a few minutes. “Sure. Feeling fast?”
“Faster than you!” Peter says with a cocky smirk.
“Oh yeah?” Erik laughs as they reach the concrete trail. “Race you then. Ready, steady, go!”
Peter takes off. And disappears.
Erik stumbles to a stop.
What the hell?
His heart is racing and panic starts to build until he suddenly turns and sees Pietro about three feet behind where he’d started from just seconds ago.
“Can I swing now?” Peter asks with an exhilarated grin.
Erik blinks, his mind completely blank with astonishment.
“I told ya I was really fast!” the boy crows, clearly enjoying Erik’s confusion.
Finally, Erik forms a thought. He pulls a quarter out of his pocket and hands it to Peter. “Hold this and do one more lap.”
“Now?” Peter asks, not pleased with having his swing time delayed.
“Yes, now. Please,” Erik asks.
“Fine.”
And the boy disappears again only to reappear once more, a foot or so behind Erik. Almost faster than Erik’s brain can process the metal of the coin being near, then far, then near again.
“You… you have a power,” Erik says softly.
“Umm… yeah?” Peter says hesitantly, like he’s only now realizing that maybe it’s a secret he shouldn’t have revealed. “But I don’t… I don’t have to use it if you don’t want me to.”
He shyly holds the coin back out to Erik.
Erik mentally floats the coin back to his own grip. “No. It’s fine.”
Peter gasps. “Holy shit!”
“Language.”
“Sorry! I just… I’ve never met anybody else who had powers! Well, physical powers anyway,” he corrects. “You know mom had the emotional hoodoo going on, but… wow!”
Erik leads him over to the swings. No need for him to get all sweaty when Peter has already put in nearly eight miles in about two minutes. They both take a seat.
“You can’t tell anybody,” Erik tells him quietly.
Peter pushes off and starts swinging, slow and easy. “What happened to ‘tell the truth’?”
“This is different.”
“How?” the boy asks.
“It’s important to tell the truth because the adults around you need the right information to take care of you,” Erik says. “But sometimes the truth might put you in danger. Like if your teacher asks who’s going to pick you up after school, they’re making sure you’re taken care of. But if a stranger asks who picks you up after school, they might be asking because they want to do something bad to you.”
Peter nods slowly. “That makes sense, I guess.”
“Not a lot of people can do what we can do. We’re special,” Erik adds. “It’s a good thing, but you won’t be able to tell everybody about it. People don’t understand and they might want to take you or hurt you. To keep you safe, I need you to swear you won’t tell anyone without my say so. Promise?”
Peter nods again, uncharacteristically solemn. “Promise.”
“Alright. Swing your heart out then,” Erik says, taking advantage of the metal chains of his own swing to do an easy back and forth.
Peter swings, quickly building up speed. Not so fast as to go invisible, but more than enough to loop over the top of the swing set, nearly giving Erik a heart attack. After about twenty minutes of death-defying swinging, Erik carefully brings the metal chains of Peter’s swing to a gradual halt as he senses the first hint of metal about three minutes out.
“We gotta go, kid.”
“Aww,” Peter moans. “Can we come back tomorrow?”
“Absolutely.”
Peter cheers and jumps off the swing seat. “Race you home!”
“Slow down!” Erik yells.
School goes better. Peter receives two yellows and two greens for behavior, a vast improvement from yesterday’s two yellows and two reds and the likely overly-generous all yellows of the day before.
“Look!” Peter beams proudly. “Running this morning really helped. I felt wiggly but not as much.”
“Great job,” Erik cheers enthusiastically.
“So, that means I get two Moon Pies, right?” Peter asks, with a look in his eyes saying he can already taste the sugary goodness.
“Not right now,” Erik says. In addition to being out, he’s already had two today, and it’s probably not a great idea to train the kid to expect immediate gratification for every little thing he does.
“But I did something good!” Peter argues.
“And I’m proud of you,” Erik reassures him. He thinks for a moment.
“How about this: for each green sticker you get, I’ll add five minutes to your TV time for that day. If you make it a whole week without any red stickers, we’ll go to Marble Slab for ice cream Friday on the way home from school.”
Peter tilts his head, considering. “So, I get ten extra minutes of TV time today?”
“Yep.”
“Deal!”
Of course, Peter almost immediately makes Erik regret it. He chooses a ten-minute GoNoodle video that can be streamed on the TV from the gaming console and makes Erik dance along. Erik will begrudgingly admit the indoor recess activity video is fun, but he also uses the metal in the curtain rods to make sure no one can see into the living room.
After a reasonable afternoon snack of tuna fish sandwiches, grapes, and fruit juice, they’re settled at the kitchen table and Peter’s working his way through a language arts assignment. The instructions are to circle the subject, box the verb, and end the sentence with the appropriate punctuation. They’d worked through the three examples together and then Erik had allotted him twenty minutes to complete the remaining sentences before he checked the boy’s work.
They don’t make it the full twenty minutes.
“What’re you doing?
Erik looks up from his computer. Peter is sitting sideways in his chair, twirling his neon-colored pencil through his fingers. A quick glance down shows the boy completed four more problems before veering into doodling in the margins and then apparently completely losing the thread.
“I’m working. Like you should be,” Erik says with a pointed look at the abandoned worksheet.
Peter sighs and straightens up, putting his pencil point back to paper.
Five minutes and two sentences later, Erik looks up to see Peter staring back at the ceiling fan rotating in the living room.
Erik taps the table with his finger. Peter’s head snaps forward and he glances at Erik guiltily before looking back at his paper.
The third time, no additional sentences have been completed and Peter is tracing an outline of his writing hand with his non-dominant hand. Across the front of his homework.
“Peter!”
The boy startles so hard, the pencil lead audibly snaps.
“Sorry!”
Erik sighs. Apparently, the yellow stickers have all been hard-earned and well-deserved.
“You’re never going to finish if you don’t focus.”
“I’m trying!” Peter insists. “It’s just… it’s boring!”
“With your speed, you could’ve been done ten minutes ago.”
“The pencil would just break and the paper would tear,” Peter grumbles.
Erik lets a surprise bark of laughter slip out. Of course he's tried it.
“What are you doing?” Peter asks as he pulls his feet up onto the cushion of the chair. At least he’s not wearing shoes this time.
“I’m doing homework. Just like you.”
Erik spins his laptop around to show the online module he’s working through.
“You have homework? How?” Peter asks, amazed of the idea of adults having to dredge through boring home assignments.
“I work during the day and I take classes online at night,” Erik explains. “I’m working on my bachelor’s degree. I’m little behind, though, because of all that’s been going on.”
“Bachelor’s,” Peter sounds out slowly, parsing the syllables. “That’s college, right?”
“Yep.”
“I don’t think I want to go to college,” he says staring over his knees at his incomplete school work.
“You don’t have to. It’s not for everybody,” Erik says with a shrug. “If you still feel the same when you’re older, we can look into trade school or something.”
Peter looks up and raises a brow.
“What if I don’t want to go to school at all?”
“You mean quitting and not graduating high school?” Erik asks in clarification.
“Yeah!” he says, his voice going high with excitement and his face brightening.
Erik shakes his head. “No. Sorry, bud. That’s non-negotiable”
The excitement is replaced by a storm cloud.
“Why? You just school’s not for everybody.”
“College is not for everyone. But you have to at least finish high school. It’s important.”
“Why? I don’t any of this stuff,” Peter exclaims, apparently ready to dig in.
“Yes, you do,” Erik says softly, not wanting to turn this into a battle of wills. “I’m not saying you have to graduate, go to Harvard, and become a fancy doctor. But you definitely have to finish the fifth grade.”
Peter looks unconvinced.
“School is hard. I get it,” Erik says. “But even your lowest level jobs want at least a high school diploma. Without that you’re locked out. And that’s when trouble comes looking for you. Next thing you know, you’re in jail sewing luxury polos for fifteen cents a day.”
Peter tilts his head, his eyes narrowing. “So, are you gonna tell me now how you know so much about jail?”
Erik sighs and closes his laptop. Fine.
“I told you my parents died a long time ago, right?”
Peter nods.
“Well, when it happened I was sent to foster care just like you.”
“Were the foster people bad?” the boy asks, his brow wrinkling with concern.
“No. Were the people you were staying with bad? Or mean to you?” Erik hopes not. If they were, social workers would be the least of their concerns.
“Nah. Jean and Paul were pretty nice,” Peter says. “I only left because I wanted to find you.”
Erik hums, not sure how to respond to that.
“Well, the family I was with was pretty nice, too,” he continues. “Not a lot of people take in teenagers.”
An image of Ruth and Gerald come to mind. He hasn’t thought about them in a really long time. He’d genuinely liked them. An older couple, they’d been very patient when he showed up, a devastated thirteen-year-old with nowhere to go. They’d fed and clothed him, took an interest in what he was into. It quickly became very easy to imagine staying with them if he couldn’t have his own parents back.
“I’d been with them for two years when one day…”
The memory is still freshly seared into his brain.
He’d been sitting at the kitchen table, across from Gerald. Ruth was in the kitchen making pancakes. When she brought the serving plate into the kitchen, the scent of perfume wafted into the small space.
‘Your perfume…’ he’d stuttered.
‘You like it?’ she’d said gaily, oblivious to his reaction. ‘I thought I’d try something new.’
He barely heard her. All he could smell was the scent of his mother.
Then in the next breath, 'Be My Baby' came onto the radio. Edie Lehnsherr had loved that song ever since she saw it in her favorite movie and sung it to him every night until he was old enough to be embarrassed by it.
His eyes started to sting and before he knew it, they’re overflowing and he’s so overcome with more grief than he could possibly contain, so much he’d surely explode.
And then the screaming started.
“What happened?” Peter asks, startlingly him back to the present.
Erik clears his throat. “I got my powers. And it frightened them. Frightened me, too. And then they started talking about getting me help. Maybe they truly meant it, with the best of intentions. But there’s no help for our powers. I'd’ve just ended up in a military lab somewhere. So, I ran away.”
“Where'd you go?” Peter asks, wrapping his arms around his legs.
“Anywhere I could,” Erik answers off-handedly. “But at fifteen, I was in trouble from the start. I couldn’t go to work, or go to school, or even stay in real shelters without an adult.”
It had been a pain in the ass, constantly pretending that his dad was going to pick him up any minute now, his mom was two shops over, his grandmother had sent him to pick up whatever he needed that day.
“I stole. A lot. And eventually, I got caught.”
Peter’s eyes widen like they’re at the most intense part of a campfire story.
“What did they do?”
“Once they realized I was a runaway ward of the state, they put me in juvenile detention until they could find a placement willing to take an offender. But nobody wants a seventeen-year-old, especially one in trouble with the law.”
“So, what happened?” Peter asks. “How did you end up here?”
“I got lucky,” Erik says. “I had a parole officer named Phil. Really nice guy. Genuinely wanted to help kids get out of jail and stay out.”
Erik remembers the man fondly. Mid-30s, blue eyes, brunette hair, bland with a sense of humor drier than the desert. But he always had a smile and a friendly word. They met for the first time following Erik’s release two days after his birthday. Phil sat him down and laid out the facts.
“This is a whole new ball game,” he’d said. “You’re 18 now and this is your one shot. No more slaps on the wrist, no more trying to help you straighten up and fly right. The next judge you land in front of isn’t going to see a bright boy with potential. You’ll be an adult offender with a long, pattern of delinquent behavior. And let me tell you, they don’t mind sending people straight to Big Boy jail for minor offenses. Do not pass go; do not collect $200. And not to be weird, but a pretty boy like you won’t do to well there. Or, more likely, you’ll do just fine, but in all the wrong ways, if you get my drift.”
Erik had.
“He helped me get into a transition program on the other side of the city, away from where I’d gotten in trouble before. I got my GED and then the program helped me get a job at a call center. Now, I’ve worked all the way up to Assistant Manager of Operations. I’m hoping this degree will help me get to full Manager.”
He takes Peter’s paper and the pencil he’s not abandoned. He carefully erased all the stray marks and drawings and then returns both.
“So, I’m doing college because I want to,” he says. “I see you speeding down the same path as I was on and I’m trying to keep you from making the same mistakes. Not everybody gets as lucky as I did. When I tell you to stay in school, it’s because I did the opposite and I want better for you. Got it?”
Peter nods, takes his feet down, and picks up his pencil.
It takes them another hour, but they eventually finish the sentences.