Chapter Text
Peter slowly opened his eyes to a very excited MJ shaking him awake. That probably meant that he had slept through FRIDAY’s alarm, again. But with MJ next to him he had slept more in the last month than he had in the last year. Her presence was enough to help him sleep. Pepper was not totally pleased with the fact that they were sleeping together but she was happy that Pete was at least sleeping through the night. She had decided there needed to be ground rules but the second she or Tony tried to talk to either Peter or MJ they both just said: “Can we please not have this conversation, at least now?” So, she and Tony decided that Dr. Sonya (Peter and MJ’s therapist) would talk with them both to set some protocols. After some solid protests from the teens, Bucky and Nat were put in charge of the protocols since ‘Kids don’t tell parents about everything, that’s what uncles and aunts are for. You’re parents now get used to it.’ as Nat put it. Tony and Pepper were currently Peter and MJ’s guardians but that didn’t stop them from dating, why should it? It wasn’t like they were related or anything. MJ had started training with Nat and interning with Pepper after the whole Vulture incident. That happened when they had met MJ a time she’d come to visit Peter and Nat and Pepper had taken a liking in the way she didn’t take any bullshit from Tony. Peter was interning with Tony and training with the Avengers, so they had grown closer over time. The funny thing about their internships was that they were both called Junior. This was a bit confusing when they were in the same place but another reason everyone had started calling them Juniors was because they were dating and their relationship was like Tony and Pepper’s, even though people didn’t know about Spider-man.
It was just another day and he was at the biotech labs when Olivia, or Liv for short, from legal burst in and shouted, “Has anyone seen Junior?!” Hope, who was currently working with Stark Junior AKA Peter shouted back “Which one?” The answer wasn’t one that he had even expected. “The scary one.” While Peter was giggling Hope turned to him and said, “Where is your girlfriend?” by this point he was laughing but managed to get a “Training with Nat” out.
How they started dating was also another story but to summarize it they had started to get closer at their car rides to the tower and “family” dinners. Then they had become an actual family. This happened when May died almost 2 years ago of pancreatic cancer and Peter started living with Pep and Tony. Pep and Tony had also taken MJ’s guardianship about half a year after that when they realized that after her mother had died MJ’s father had taken a job that resulted in him always traveling and MJ was basically always home alone. Pepper had been so angry to find out that her baby girl was always alone because the girl reminded the man too much of his late wife. Tony had almost flown out to bring the ‘bastard’ to New York and make him sign over custody papers to them. So they were currently a family. There was also Harley, he was like a big brother to both of them.
He finally fully woke up when he heard MJ,
“Pete are you OK? You kind of zoned out.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. Just thinking of May uhh… that it’s so close to being two years now. What’s got you so excited?” he tried to shrug her off. Normally it wouldn’t have worked but since she was excited, which was a rare occasion, she had probably just let it slip. “Pepper said that she had a surprise for us AND that Tony was making crêpes.”
“But Tony never cooks on weekdays, let alone wake up this early.” he thought out loud with a frown “I wonder what’s wrong”.
When Tony decides to make breakfast on a weekday it was either that there was a special occasion (which Peter knew for sure there wasn’t) or there was something wrong and Pepper was in her Protective-Mama-Pepper mode dragging Tony out of his room to make sure that he was there when she told the bad news. They had mood names for everyone, the most someone had was Steve. He had too many to count but Peter’s favorites were Dad-Steve, I’m-too-old-for-this-shit-Steve (or Grandpa- Steve), Lovesick-Steve (don’t get me wrong, Peter totally shipped Steve and Bucky and they were adorable- when they’re not too clingy, hence the nickname lovesick), Cap-Steve, Golden-Steve (let’s be honest, the man was literally a golden retriever, he even acted like a puppy sometimes). Pepper only had 4 so far No-Bullshit-Pepper, Protective-Mama-Pepper, Disappointed-Pepper, and Mad-because-you-were-dumb-Pepper (this one seemed to be reserved for only Peter and Tony).
“I don’t know! Now get up before we are running late so we can go and eat and find out what’s going on.” then she gave him a soft kiss and left. He had a fast shower, put on one of Tony’s MIT sweatshirts and black pants then made his way to the kitchen where he saw MJ stuffing herself with strawberries, Nutella, and crêpes. He took a seat next to her and waited for Pepper to tell them the big announcement. Right on cue, she started speaking, “Pete, MJ today I have a board meeting,” and before she could continue Tony had interrupted her, saying
“That you are dragging me to.” Pepper scowled then continued “that Tony will come to and we would like you two to also come.” This had caused a moment of shock between the teens, so it wasn’t surprising that the one to make the first comment was MJ, “Mom, you know that today is a school day, right?”
“Don’t worry honey, we will write you a permission slip. We can say that it was a family matter. Wouldn’t exactly be a lie.” With the mention of bringing anything to the teachers at school, anything that was signed by their parents made Peter stop as he was cutting his food and just still immediately. He hated being ‘mocked’ by Flash more when Mr. Harrington called him out for lying. It wasn’t even that they affected him that much, he was just…, he didn’t want to deal with this again.
Tony, who must have realized the change in the teen’s behavior, made his way next to Peter, drawing everyone’s attention to the duo. Peter’s face was pale and his hands had started to tremble. They were used to Peter having an anxiety attack and they had already developed a system. Tony made him sit, huh, when had he gotten up, while MJ started holding his hands and Pepper talking to him softly. ‘Such a great time for an anxiety attack’ he thought, not that he could help it. Things always got worse when they were nearing the death anniversaries of May and Ben. At least his pain lasted only about a week since May and Ben’s death anniversaries were 3 days apart. After he had calmed down Pepper started to talk again, careful not to mention anything about SI, (little did she know she couldn’t be farther from the truth) even though she wasn’t sure if SI was the problem. Tony looked like he had an idea. She made a mental note to talk with him.
“Sorry,” Peter mumbled instinctively, feeling guilty for interrupting their conversation.
“Nah-uh. What did we talk about?” Tony looked at Peter expecting an answer but didn’t get a response continued “there is nothing to be sorry about, Ok? We don’t apologize for things that are not our fault. We talked about this didn’t we that was an actual conversation?” he got a nod from Peter “Repeat after me class: we don’t apologize for things that are not our fault.” silence “Why aren’t you repeating after me class?”
“I’m sorry,” Peter said again. It was really astonishing how he lost all his happy and witty self and become self-deprecating. Tony palm smacked his forehead in defeat and started to mumble something in Italian but Peter was too unfocused to hear or listen. Instead, he directed his attention to Pepper who had started talking.
“OK honey, you know maybe you should stay home today and have a break. Is that alright?” “N-no I have to… I have to go.” was all that he could manage to get out, but it wasn’t like they were going to let him go. Tony decided that he should feed the kid and MJ saw this opportunity to pull Pep aside to talk to her where Peter’s spidey-ears couldn’t hear her.
If this had gotten far enough to cause him to have an anxiety attack, there was a need for serious talk. So, she just dived into the topic,
“Mom, no one believes his internship let alone that you two are Peter’s guardians. When he brings anything that either of you signed, teachers accuse him of forgery, and they get mad for lying in class if he ever mentions his internship during class.”
“But some kids or teachers saying that they don’t believe him wouldn’t affect him much. Do you think that’s what caused the attack?”
“Well, they are just taunting him a little and he thinks that he can handle it. If it were another kid they might actually make him believe the things they are saying driving them to suicide or something. I mean he at least knows how bad it is, but knowing that if we weren’t here to support him he would be in a place where he wanted to kill himself isn’t really healthy, so I’m pretty sure that’s why."
“We knew about the physical things; he thinks because we aren’t always here we don’t realize it but we have been waiting for him to talk to us and not push him. That obviously hasn’t worked. I just wanted to believe that it was some harmless banter but I should have thought that anything that ends up physical couldn’t be harmless.” she felt like a terrible mom. She was so thankful that Pete and MJ had each other.
“He thinks better him than someone else because he can take it. If he stops bullying Peter, he will bully someone else.”
“And knowing Peter he doesn’t want that on his conscience.”
“So please don’t intervene. You know he wouldn’t want that.”
“I know. I will move the board meeting to Monday. If you want to come that is.”
“Yes, I’d love to come. I’ll talk to Pete about it tonight, OK?” little did she know by the time night came the board meeting would be the least of their worries.
“Sure. Now, if you finished your breakfast, let's get to the office.” she extended her arm toward her
“Shall we?”