Chapter Text
The flight back to the Tower was surprisingly pleasant, considering how much he usually loathed air travel. Peter sat with his eyes glued to the expansive view beyond the reinforced glass of the cockpit, several days’ worth of tension (the accumulation of endless hours of frustration at his confinement in Medical) seeping from his muscles as they neared New York. It was gratifying to be able to stare at something other than the same bland four walls of his isolation room – the Medbay hadn’t even had frickin’ windows, for God’s sake – although he’d be making good use of Clint’s sunglasses once they reached the landing pad on the roof of the Tower; he still had a niggling headache behind his eyes, and his retinas weren’t ready to contend with the mid-June sunshine just yet.
He was so relieved to be free of his confinement (albeit it temporarily before the team grounded him to the Tower for another week in order to fully recuperate) that he hadn’t even thought to voice a protest at the Ensure Plus shake Bruce had forced on him just before they’d set off from the Helicarrier. Even though the drink tasted foul and normally Peter would’ve happily tossed it into the Atlantic rather than forcing it down.
He took another careful sip and tried not to pull a face. He knew they were a necessary evil; that until he regained his normal appetite, he’d need to keep supplementing his pathetically small meals with high-calorie drinks and protein bars. He couldn’t afford to lose any more weight. The SHIELD medical team had threatened to keep him in for another few days on that basis alone, but thankfully Bruce had managed to convince them that he and the rest of the team were perfectly capable of monitoring Peter’s dietary intake without their assistance. The shakes had been a compromise – it had either been that, or another forty-eight hours stuck in isolation, dying of boredom.
It hadn’t been a difficult choice.
“If the wind blows, it’ll stick that way,” Steve warned from his seat nearby, one arm wrapped around the modified helmet-tank in his lap to keep it from sliding off. That wasn’t something you saw every day; Captain America hugging a goldfish. Although Leonardo da Fishy remained calmly oblivious as to whose patriotic abdominal muscles he was pressed against.
Peter lowered the Ensure Plus bottle and tried to smooth out his grimace (it was a genuine struggle; the calorie shakes were seriously gross). “You try drinking this stuff,” he protested, but it lacked any real heat, “see if you can keep a straight face.”
Steve laughed and shook his head. “I’m sure I’ve tasted worse. Bet your aunt never made you swallow cod-liver oil every other night. If you’re curious, I’m sure I could find a chemist that’ll sell me a bottle?”
“No, that’s okay,” Peter was quick to assure. “I’ll just stick with my yummy, yummy shake, thanks.” He gave the bottle another dubious glance, then turned to give Bruce a morose look. “How many of these am I gonna have to take, anyway?”
Bruce gave him a grim, sympathetic smile. “Three or four a day, depending on how well you manage meals and snacks.”
Peter took another, larger gulp of the thick, overly sweet drink (better to get it down as quickly as possible rather than prolonging the torture), and mulled the words over carefully. Then he tilted his head a little to one side.
“So if I ate, like, a whole cheesecake or something…?”
“Then I guess you could skip one of your shakes,” Bruce allowed, fiddling with the settings on the Quinjet’s inbuilt cardiac monitor. “But I wouldn’t recommend it. I don’t think your body’s ready for that kind of sugar overload after the week it’s had.”
The teenager shrugged, wrinkling his nose at another swig of the beverage. “I’d take a cheesecake over this stuff any day.”
Steve gave him a look. “Peter. You’re not eating a whole cheesecake on your own, you’ll be sick.”
The captain had a point. He’d barely even managed half of his pudding cup at dinner last night before the familiar curl of nausea had forced him to set the rest of it aside with a grimace. The likelihood of him being able to eat a whole slice of dessert, let alone the entire cheesecake, was pretty poor. But a guy could dream, right?
“Buckle up, boys,” Natasha called from the co-pilot’s seat as Clint’s hand came up to tap at the overhead control panel, lowering the landing gear. “We’re almost home.”
Bracing himself, Peter took a steeling breath and downed the rest of the Ensure Plus shake in several large, awful gulps, forcing himself to swallow the last of it before setting the empty bottle aside on the floor of the Quinjet and strapping himself in.
The Avengers Tower loomed closer, hundreds of windows gleaming in the midday sun, and Peter had never seen a more beautiful sight in his life.
o~O~o
“Welcome back, Captain Rogers, Doctor Banner,” Jarvis greeted them as soon as they stepped into the elevator from the landing pad. “Mr Parker, my scans indicate that your respiratory rate and cardiac output are now functioning within normal parameters. I trust you are feeling better?”
“Much better, thanks J,” Peter said with a brief smile towards the camera on the ceiling, squinting a little against the glare of the overhead lighting. Steve didn’t miss his wince, nor the way the teenager fumbled for the sunglasses in the front pocket of his hoody.
“Jarvis, think you could turn down the lights a little?” he prompted, sliding his hand from Peter’s shoulder to rest on the back of the boy’s neck instead, squeezing the tensing muscles there.
“Of course, Captain.”
The lighting dimmed significantly and Peter released a long, weary sigh of relief, shoving the shades back into his pocket again and sending Steve a grateful look. “Thanks, Cap.”
“Where to, gentlemen?”
Bruce glanced up from his phone, adjusting his grip on the strap of the portable oxygen cylinder that he’d slung over one shoulder. “The infirmary, please. And could you let the others know we’re back? Thanks.”
“My pleasure, doctor. Sir will be most pleased to hear of your safe return.”
“Where is he, anyway?” Steve asked, keeping his arm around Peter as the elevator whirred into motion and began a rapid descent.
“Mr Stark and Thor are currently putting the finishing touches on Project 23.”
Peter perked up at that, a grin flitting across his face briefly before being eclipsed by an oh-so-innocent expression that Steve had become all too familiar with over the course of the past six months.
“Jarvis? What’s Project 23?”
“Unfortunately, Mr Parker, you lack the necessary authorisation codes to access that information.”
Steve sent him an amused look. “Nice try, son.”
The teenager shrugged resignedly. “Ah well. It was worth a shot.” He paused briefly before glancing at Bruce. “Hey, do we have to go to the infirmary right away? I wanna say ‘hi’ to the bots first. It won’t take long, I promise.”
The elevator slowed to a halt, the doors sliding open to reveal the Tower’s tech-heavy medical floor, and Steve didn’t miss the way that Peter subconsciously leaned further away from it. Bruce stepped out of the elevator, smiling back at them.
“Fifteen minutes,” he granted, sliding his phone back into his top pocket. “Then I want you back here for your check-up. Agreed?”
“Agreed.” Peter beamed and slapped his hand with excessive enthusiasm against the button that would close the doors again. “Thanks, Doc!”
The kid’s grin was infectious, and Steve found himself returning it. “You know you’re just prolonging the inevitable, right?”
“I know, I know.” Peter scrubbed a hand through his hair and sighed. “I just wanted another few minutes of freedom before I got stuck in another medical facility. Jarvis? The workshop, please.”
Steve sent him a curious glance. Surely Peter didn’t think that they intended to isolate him to the infirmary? The whole point of them bringing him home was that he’d be able to continue his recuperation from the comfort and familiarity of his own apartment. Sure, they’d be checking up on him a lot more closely, and one of them would be sleeping in the spare bedroom along the hallway from the teenager for the first few nights at least, but they certainly weren’t going to confine him to the medical floor.
“You won’t have to stay there, you know,” he said aloud, seeking to clarify the point. “It’s just a check-up. Bruce is only doing it in the infirmary because the equipment’s already there.”
Peter’s head snapped sharply to the left to look at him, eyes wide. “You mean I don’t have to stay in bed? I can, like, move around the Tower and stuff?”
“You’ll need to take it easy for the first few days,” Steve reminded him gently. “But yes, you’re free to roam the Tower as much as you’re able to.” He held up a hand to forestall any immediate celebration and added, a little more firmly, “That being said, you’re also under orders to avoid physical exertion for at least another week, so consider yourself grounded if you so much as think about setting foot in the gym.”
The teenager grinned, opening his mouth to reply, but at that moment the elevator doors slid open and a mechanical arm shot through the widening gap, snagging Peter by the front of his hoodie and tugging almost hard enough to topple him.
“Dummy, disengage at once and allow Mr Parker to exit the elevator,” Jarvis scolded.
“No, it’s alright,” Peter said around a laugh, one hand coming up to rest over the claw that still fisted his top and grinning into the camera along the metal arm. “Hey, buddy. Didja miss me?”
Dummy whirred the affirmative, tugging again, and Peter stumbled along behind him with another laugh as he was led across the workshop floor towards the couch on the far side of the room. You and Butterfingers rolled out of their charging stations with greeting whirs of their own, and Steve watched from the sidelines with a smile as the teenager suddenly found himself the centre of attention, poked and nudged and petted by three mechanical claws.
“Sorry I’ve been away so long,” Peter was saying, one arm looped casually around Dummy’s support strut as the bot made several unsuccessful attempts to tug his hood up over the teen’s head. “Came down with a nasty chest infection, had to spend a few days in bed.”
Butterfingers prodded Peter’s midriff and whirred again; a low, curious sound. Peter passed a hand over the bot’s claw, arching an eyebrow. “What?”
After a moment of silence, You’s arm lowered alongside the larger bot’s, the ‘eye’ in the centre of its claw whirring as the focus shifted, before lifting again to stare directly into Peter’s face. The teenager blinked under the sudden scrutiny, shooting Steve a puzzled sideways glance. The soldier, who assumed he’d been subjected to all of the bots’ curiosities, could only shrug by way of an answer.
“What’s gotten into you guys, huh?” Peter murmured, lifting his arm obligingly when Dummy’s claw nudged it up to poke at his side, whirring in what almost sounded like disgruntlement. “You mad at me or something?”
“I believe they are merely perplexed by your altered physical state, Mr Parker,” Jarvis supplied softly. “They reacted in a similar fashion when Mr Stark first returned from captivity.”
“Oh.” The teenager lowered his arm, gently pushing the claws away. “I lost weight because I was sick, guys. Don’t worry, it happens. I’ll be back to normal in a couple of weeks.” He touched Dummy’s claw when it inched closer again. “Jarvis, do they understand?”
A brief pause, then, “To a certain extent, yes. They are…unsatisfied that the error cannot be rectified immediately, but they have stopped asking questions.”
“Good.” Peter smiled and fist-bumped each bot’s claw in turn. “Hey Dummy, is the fridge stocked? I’m kinda thirsty.”
The bot immediately straightened, whirring enthusiastically, and spun around on the spot to head back across the workshop towards the smoothie-making station that Tony had built in the far corner of the room, away from the more delicate creations on the main ‘shop floor. Steve smiled, moving to sit down on the couch beside the teenager and arching an eyebrow when Peter looked at him.
“Pretty sure you’re going to go over that fifteen-minute mark, sport.”
“Maybe. But smoothies, Cap.” Peter gave an easy shrug and a winning smile. “Besides, I’ll be eating stuff – Bruce can’t rat me out for that.”
o~O~o
“Few inches higher, buddy…yeah that’s gr- whoa, whoa, Jesus, stop!”
Tony reached down to blindly swat at the Asgardian upon whose shoulders he was precariously perched, going near cross-eyed at the alarming proximity between his nose and the live electrical circuitry dangling down from the open panel in the ceiling.
“A step too high, perhaps,” Thor mused beneath him, and descended a rung on the ladder.
Exhaling a sigh of relief, Tony raised his soldering tools again. “Not all of us are impervious to the effects of high-voltage electricity like you are, pal. And if the media found out that Tony Stark had fried his brains doing the technical equivalent of changing a lightbulb, I’d never live it down.”
“Pardon my candour, friend,” the Asgardian spoke, and his smile was audible, “but had your brains truly been ‘fried’, I doubt you would remain amongst the living at all.”
“Oh my god, Thor,” Tony groaned, “that’s like the fifth Dad joke you’ve made this afternoon. You’re killing me here.”
“You require medical assistance?” Thor reiterated, because he was an ass who enjoyed taking ‘unnecessarily dramatic Midgardian phrases’ as literal statements of fact. “Perhaps I ought to contact a physician?”
“You know, L'Oréal, it really isn’t smart to antagonise a guy when he’s holding a soldering iron.”
“Indeed. But you’re worth it.”
“Argh!”
“Let me guess,” came an amused voice from the far side of the expansive room. “This isn’t how it looks?”
Tony deactivated his tools and pushed his goggles up out of the way, craning his neck to shoot a toothy grin at Steve where the captain stood in the entranceway to the stairwell, a smile on his face and both arms crossed over his broad chest.
“Oh no,” the mechanic contradicted. “It’s exactly how it looks. I’m taking advantage of Thor’s superior height and strength and the size of his ego because I was too lazy to find a bigger step-ladder.”
Thor gave a short, amused huff. “A true talent, friend, that you can weave both complement and insult into a single sentence.”
Tony gave the golden head a consoling pat. “It only means I love you, buddy.” He tossed his tools haphazardly towards the bag a few feet away from the ladder and reached up to snap the ceiling panel back in place. “All done. Think you can put me down without dropping me?”
“Debatable,” Thor replied, in a tone that was deceptively bland (so that Tony genuinely couldn’t figure out whether he was being honest or sarcastic – he often had this problem with Thor).
“Just let go,” Steve suggested calmly, coming to stand at the foot of the ladder. “I’ll catch you.”
Tony gave the man an incredulous look. “What is this, some warped trust-building exercise? Like hell I’m letting you catch me, Rogers, I’m not a football. Thor, put me down.”
“Regrettably, I cannot,” the Asgardian lamented with false gravity. “Our good captain barricades the way.” Thor swivelled his upper body around to glance down at Steve, and Tony grabbed onto the man’s head with a yelp when the movement threatened to unseat him from the blond giant’s shoulders. “Your orders, Captain?”
Steve grinned, and Tony let go of Thor in favour of pointing a warning a finger at him. “No. No, Rogers. Don’t you dare-”
“Drop him.”
Thor cupped his hands around the soles of Tony’s shoes and boosted him upwards effortlessly, shrugging him off as one would a backpack. The mechanic gave an entirely masculine yelp of surprise as the world briefly turned upside-down, but he didn’t even have a chance to flail mid-air before unfairly strong arms were catching him around his shoulders and beneath his knees (that clichéd bastard). Steve smiled at him pleasantly.
“Hey, Tony. Nice of you to drop by.”
The mechanic let his head sag back with a dramatic groan. “Oh my god. The Dad jokes. They’re catching.” He half-heartedly smacked the back of his hand against Steve’s chest. “Put me down before you strain something, Grandpa.”
Steve obligingly lowered his feet to the floor so that he could right himself, then stepped back to glance around the room, turning slowly in a full circle to take it all in, giving a whistle of appreciation.
“It looks swell, Tony,” he enthused, with a smile in the other man’s direction, and the mechanic was hard-pressed to decide whether the pulse of warmth in his chest was fondness at the man’s adorably outdated use of the word ‘swell’, or pride at the fact that Steve was so obviously pleased with something that Tony had made.
“Yeah, I guess it could’ve turned out worse,” he agreed with as convincing a casual air as he could muster, shoving his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “It’ll be even better now that the UV lighting’s all wired up and ready to go.”
Thor hopped down off the stepladder and tugged on the hem of his rumpled t-shirt to straighten it, casting them both an easy smile. “If my assistance is no longer required, I think I’ll seek out our youngest comrade. I take it that your presence here implies his safe return, Captain?”
Steve nodded. “He’s doing great. Bruce is kitting him out with a portable monitor in the infirmary, but they shouldn’t be long.”
“Then I’ll take my leave of you, friends.” Thor raised his hand in a parting wave and turned towards the exit, crossing towards the stairwell with long, powerful strides.
“Hey, thanks for your help, Goldilocks,” Tony called after him, receiving another wave in response. Then he glanced sideways at Steve and arched an eyebrow. “Finally broke the news to Munchkin, huh? Bet the kid just loves the idea of being monitored continuously for the next few days.”
“He wasn’t thrilled at the notion,” the captain acknowledged with a sigh, reaching out to tug the goggles from Tony’s head and tossing them into the toolkit nearby. “But when Bruce explained that the alternative was another couple of nights in a medical facility, he changed his mind.”
The mechanic bent down to grab the strap of the toolkit (really just a glorified duffel bag with a few extra pockets), hefting it up off the floor. “He manage to eat anything after I left this morning?”
“Half a sandwich and a handful of curly fries,” Steve answered, taking the toolkit off him and hefting the strap over his own shoulder. “Not enough to satisfy the docs. They almost didn’t let him come home, but Bruce managed to negotiate a compromise. Poor kid’s on a bunch of weight-gain shakes to supplement his diet.”
Tony pulled a face, folding up the step-ladder and moving to tuck it under one arm before Steve took that from him, too. He gave the super-soldier and amused look but didn’t complain. It was fucking awkward for a short guy to carry that ladder, anyway. Hence why he’d roped Thor into giving him a hand.
“We should do a team thing for dinner,” he suggested as they headed over to the elevator. “To celebrate. You know, throw a ‘Welcome Home’ party or something.”
Steve seemed to ponder that over for a moment, levering the ladder upright as they came to a halt in front of the sealed doors. “It’s been a long day,” he spoke eventually. “And the kid looked pretty drained when I left him with Bruce. This is the longest he’s been out of bed since he got sick, I don’t know if he’d be up for a party.”
“Mm,” Tony acknowledged, crossing his arms over his chest, and glanced towards the ceiling. “Jarvis, reinitialise elevator controls to floor twenty-three. But keep Peter away from it, capiche?”
“Indeed, Sir. The elevator car is on its way.”
“You think he has any idea?” Steve asked with a quiet smile.
Tony scoffed. “Oh please, the kid’s been whining at me for five days straight about how hush-hush we’ve kept things. I’m sure if he’d suspected anything, we’d know about it by now.”
o~O~o
Peter was in heaven. After five days and seven hours (give or take a few minutes) spent confined to his isolation bed in the Helicarrier’s medbay, star-fishing out on his two-thousand-dollar king sized bed with its one-thousand thread count Egyptian cotton sheets was like sinking into a hot bath at the end of a long day. Fan-fucking-tastic.
“Mmmm,” he moaned luxuriously, attempting to smother himself in the mound of pillows.
“Would you like me to leave the two of you alone?”
Rolling onto his side, Peter gave the archer his middle finger, ignoring Clint’s grin. “I’m just gonna sleep for a couple of months now, ‘kay?”
“I’m waking you for dinner,” Clint told him flatly. “But you can kip for a few hours, sure.” He gestured at the fishbowl (or, well, helmet) in his hands. “You left Leo on the Quinjet. Where d’you want him?”
Peter waved a lazy hand towards the desk near the floor-to-ceiling windows. “Over there. Thanks, man.”
He watched with eyes at half-mast as Clint set the modified helmet down, the metal supports (Tony had soldered them in place a couple of days ago to keep the helmet from rolling) clunking against the surface of the desk. The archer shoved his hands into his pockets and made his way back towards Peter at a casual stroll, pausing at the foot of the bed to arch an eyebrow at him.
“You gonna change into your PJ’s or what?”
“Nngh,” Peter replied intelligently, but kicked off his converses all the same, because sleeping in shoes was never comfortable. His hoody and sweatpants were fine as makeshift sleepwear. Good thing, too; he honestly didn’t have the energy to change.
Clint knocked the shoes off the mattress and onto the floor. “Want me to call your aunt, let her know you’re home safe?”
Peter shook his head, scrubbing the heel of his palm across his brow where a niggling headache was building. “Nah, s’okay. I’ll call her tonight.” He squinted at his bedside table, finding it empty, and glanced back at the archer. “Do you still have my cell phone?”
“Mm, after you left it in the Quinjet. Again.” Clint took the device from the pocket of his jeans and came around the side of the bed to slide it under the pillow beneath Peter’s head. “You need me, you call me. Okay?”
Peter grunted the affirmative, eyes closed, then whined in protest when Clint’s fingers messed up his hair at the front. Batting at the archer half-heartedly with the hand that wasn’t tucked beneath his pillow, cracking an eyelid open to glare at the man’s retreating back.
“Jerk,” he mumbled, but all Clint did in response was blow him a kiss from the door and disappear off with a dainty wave. Peter stuck his tongue out at the empty space where he had once been, because it seemed like the mature thing to do.
Bruce chose that moment returned from Peter’s kitchen, a glass of water and a granola bar in his hand. Arching an amused eyebrow at Peter’s expression, he set both on the bedside table and heaved the strap of the oxygen canister off his shoulder, setting it down on the floor to lean against the side of the bed.
“I’m leaving the oxygen here, alright?” he said, perching on the edge of the mattress to fiddle with the dial. “I’ve set it to three litres. If your wrist-monitor starts alarming, Jarvis’ll let us know, but I need you to put the mask on until one of us gets here, okay?” There was a pause, then a gentle flick to the back of Peter’s hand. “Are you listening to me?”
Peter smiled sleepily at Bruce’s amused tone, but gave the doctor a thumbs-up and an unintelligible mumble of assent. Bruce patted his arm and stood from the bed.
“Jarvis, lights.”
The teenager didn’t even have the oomph to thank the AI as blinds rolled down to cover the floor-to-ceiling windows that made up half of one wall of his bedroom; he was already half asleep. Laying there in bed was like floating on a giant cloud after endless days of trying to get comfortable with tubes and wires snaking out of him on all sides, and he was fairly sure he’d be able to sleep straight through ‘til morning if the team let him. He wasn’t holding out much hope, mind. He still had to eat dinner and down another of those god-awful calorie shakes and take his meds, and he doubted Bruce would let him skip any of those stages. Ugh. He didn’t want to think about it. Especially since he was so damn comfortable…
It felt like an unfairly short period of time had passed before someone was shaking him awake again. He resisted at first, because his Spidey-senses weren’t ringing any alarm bells and that meant it was a Friendly. With a mumbled protest, he buried his head deeper into the pillow, legs curling up against the feeling of being pulled so unwillingly from the cosy warmth of sleep.
Somebody nearby chuckled, but it wasn’t the person shaking him – too far away for that. He contemplated prying his eyes open to peer at the intruders, but his eyelids were dry and heavy with sleep, so he dismissed that idea quickly enough.
“Peter,” a voice murmured from beside him, and the hand on his shoulder moved to squeeze the back of his neck. “Come on. It’s time to wake up, kiddo.”
The teenager turned his head to the side to squint up at the older man in the semi-darkness of his bedroom, a tired, disgruntled expression on his face. Steve smiled back at him with fond amusement, a look that brought a matching (albeit sleepy) smile to Peter’s lips.
“Hey,” he croaked, his throat dry. “Wha’ time issit?”
“Five-thirty,” Steve replied, reaching for the glass of water on Peter’s bedside table and flicking on the lamp there as the teenager struggled to sit up against the pillowed headboard. “Dinner’s almost ready.”
Peter downed half the glass in a few eager gulps, then stopped to catch his breath, feeling the tell-tale catch of mucus in his chest on every inhale. It had an annoying habit of collecting there whenever he was asleep, and he wasn’t looking forward to coughing it up, although over the past few days he’d found that it burned less and less as his body’s healing factor sped up the cell regeneration process. Still, it wasn’t exactly a pleasant activity.
“Can I eat up here?” he asked plaintively, meeting Steve’s gaze, hoping to sway the captain in his favour with a doe-eyed look.
“Whatever you want, kid,” came the casual reply from the doorway, and Peter glanced over Steve’s shoulder to see Tony leaning against the wall, studying one of Peter’s Ensure Plus bottles. “As long as you eat something, I couldn’t care less where you parked your scrawny ass.” He brought the bottle to his lips, taking an experimental sniff of the beverage before sipping it. Then he grimaced and held it away from himself, coughing. “Fuck, that’s repulsive.” He shot Steve an incredulous look. “Are we seriously making him drink these?”
Peter gave the captain a pleading look. “Hopefully not?”
“Doctor’s orders, son,” Steve replied, but not without sympathy. “You need the energy to get better.”
“How are these supposed to make him better?” Tony criticised, setting the bottle aside on a nearby dresser-top and wiping his hands on his jeans, even though he probably hadn’t spilled any on himself. “I thought we were meant to be plying him with snacks, not making him upchuck his dinner.”
Steve sighed. “Tony. That’s not helping.”
The mechanic held up his hands in surrender. “Fine, fine.” He moved over to the end of the bed, leaning down to grab Peter’s discarded converses and tossing them onto the mattress. “Lace up, sport. There’s something downstairs you gotta see.”
Setting his empty glass aside, Peter reached for the shoes, looking suspiciously from one man to the other when they shared a secretive glance. “Okay…” he agreed, drawing the word out slowly.
“Don’t look so worried,” Steve said with a chuckle. “It’s nothing malicious.”
Still suspicious, but no longer quite so apprehensive, Peter allowed himself to be helped out of bed (he needed the support – he still got dizzy pretty easily) and ushered down the corridor of his apartment towards the elevator. Jarvis had kindly dimmed the overhead lights so that Peter didn’t have to squint as they stepped inside, but his eyelids were still heavy enough with sleep that he had to grind the heels of his palms against them to wake himself up a little more.
“Where to, sir?”
Tony grinned shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans, bouncing on the balls of his feet in a way that was alarmingly familiar (it generally preceded an explosion of some kind in one of the labs). “Floor 23, Jarvis. Security override ‘Project SP-23’.”
“Command code approved. Security lock overridden.”
Peter side-eyed him, excitement beginning to stir in his chest at the command. Floor 23? Long days of waiting and trying to overhear conversations, and Project 23 was simply a project on the 23rd floor of the Tower? That sneaky bastard. He opened his mouth to voice the sentiment, but the elevator doors slid open again before he could think of something appropriately snarky to say. And at the sight that met him, he somewhat lost the ability to speak at all.
The lights were dimmed, but not enough that he couldn’t see the expansive room clear as day. See every perfectly smooth curve-ramp and expertly angled grinding rail; the way each piece of apparatus was spaced apart with care to allow the perfect build-up and recovery time. It was like someone had plucked a fantasy from the mind of every teenaged skater and lumped all the best bits together in one place.
There was a giant beanbag pit, too – separated from the rest of the floor by a slight incline and several large pillars, decorated in cool, mellow colours that matched the rest of the room. It looked so fucking comfortable. The beanbags were to one side, a squishy-looking couch resting against the adjacent wall, and a giant plasma-screen TV hung down from the ceiling. There was a fridge built into the wall beside the couch, its front panel made of glass to display a full stock of drinks and snacks, and Peter was already fantasising about pulling all-nighters down here with Clint and Thor as soon as he felt up to it.
He took several, slow steps forward, trying to drink it all in and once.
“You…you built this?” he asked, his voice a little faint as he gawked up at the ceiling, eying the various hand-bars and nets that hung down in random places. God, and he’d thought the construction site had been fun.
“Consider it a belated ‘get well soon’ present,” Tony replied, coming up behind him to sling a companionable arm around his shoulders. “Or a ‘congratulations on not dying’ gift.”
“Tony,” Steve chided, but Peter could hear the smile in his voice.
Peter took in a shaky breath, the warmth in his chest swelling fit to burst. “You built it for me?”
“You got wax in there or something? Yes, I built it for you.” Tony paused then and reconsidered, “Well, it wasn’t just me, mind. Steve handled the décor, obviously. The monkey-bar thing on the ceiling?” He gestured upwards at the impressive upside-down obstacle course. “Clint and Tasha. And Coulson gave the specs for a few holographic target simulations, if you ever feeling like skating your way to freedom from bad guys. They’re all programmed into Jarvis’s mainframe, and the holo-emitters are built into the walls, so you can turn the whole place into a computer game at the touch of a button. Thor helped with the physical construction of the whole thing, obviously, because I’m only a puny human. But yeah, the rest of it’s my design. Do you like- hngh!”
The hug was probably a touch too tight to be entirely comfortable, but Peter didn’t really have a lot of control over his limbs right now. Grinning like an idiot, he squeezed his arms around Tony’s midriff and chanted “thank you” and “oh my god” into the mechanic’s shoulder.
“I think he likes it,” Steve concluded calmly, but when Peter peeked over Tony’s shoulder, he could see the captain’s pleased smile.
Extracting himself before he broke one of Tony’s ribs, Peter gave into the renewal of excitement and affection in his chest and tackled Steve in a hug to match the mechanic’s. The soldier caught him with a laugh, returning the embrace with equal enthusiasm before lowering him to the floor and patting his back.
“It’s good to see you back to your old self again,” he said, and clucked Peter under the chin with a smile before stepping back and nodding towards the wall adjacent to the elevator. “See that control panel? Go fiddle with it.”
Unsure as to why this was important, but completely trusting the older man that it was going to be fucking awesome (judging by their recent track record), Peter moved over to the wall-mounted touch-screen, tapping his finger against the spinning Spidey symbol in the centre of the panel. Half a dozen boxes appeared, labelled with headings such as Disco, Night Vision and Whiteout, and with a sidebar titled ‘Playlists’. As curious as he was eager, Peter tapped the box for ‘Night Vision’, his face splitting into another grin as the lights dimmed until it was almost pitch-black. There was a brief pause, then the bars of Clint’s ceiling-mounted obstacle course came to life, hundreds of intricate UV-blue lines weaving their way around the poles and crawling across the support beams. Fluorescent spiderwebs appeared where the rope nets had previous hung, Spidey-symbols glowing from the walls and the bases of the ramps that had previously appeared to be a uniform colour.
“Oh my god,” Peter reiterated, the fingers of both hands clutching at his hair as he stared at his surroundings. “Oh my god, I love you both, this is the best. Can I use it? Can I use it right now? Please?”
“Not today, kiddo,” Tony denied, clapping his hands twice to return the floor to its previous level of illumination, banishing the spider-themed scenery. “Consider it an incentive to get better. Once Bruce thinks you’re well enough, you’ll get the second half of your present.”
Initially put-out at being told to wait (for days, potentially) before he could use the indoor skate park, Peter brightened anew at the promise of more.
“Second half?”
“Well, I did build you a skate park,” Tony elaborated, throwing an arm around his shoulders again and leading him back towards the elevator. “I wasn’t going to leave you without the proper equipment to use it, was I? Your new boards arrive in five days; put some meat on your bones and try not to overexert yourself between now and then, and you might actually be well enough to break them in when they get here.”
Well. That settled things, then.
Peter was going to need to get his hands on a cheesecake.
o~O~o
Rolling over to glare at the bright red numerals of his digital alarm clock, Peter levered himself up on one elbow to punch his pillow into a more comfortable level of plumpness. He knew he shouldn’t have taken that nap before dinner. He’d been doing some basic yoga exercises with Natasha, since the agent had blankly refused to spar with him until he’d been cleared for active duty, but she’d been willing to help him flex disused muscles so that he wouldn’t seize up mid-battle when they finally released him from medical leave.
He sighed and rolled over again onto his back to stare at the ceiling in the semi-darkness. Nope. Sleep just wasn’t gonna happen tonight. He supposed it was a good sign, in a way, that he wasn’t bone-weary like he’d been these past couple of weeks. He’d take insomnia over persistent exhaustion any day.
A week and a half into his recuperation period, and things were finally beginning to settle back down into a more familiar pattern. The team, while a little more attentive than Peter had known them to be prior to the whole almost-dying incident, had finally resumed their habitual daily activities; Steve and Clint went out running every morning, and the SHIELD agent had begun to spend hours at a time down in his private archery range rather than oh-so-casually babysitting Peter every minute of the day like he’d done at the beginning (usually with the offhand excuse that he had ‘nothing better to do’, a lie that Peter had never bought). Bruce had allowed him to remove his portable monitor with the understanding that the teenager would alert him immediately if he began to experience any unexpected symptoms, and the physicist spent most of the day down in his lab now as he’d done before, brainstorming new projects with Tony and helping the mechanic design new tech for both the team and Stark Industries.
Peter was always invited, of course, but he’d had to resign himself to the fact that both men had doctorate degrees and were experts in their fields of study, whereas all he had to rely on was a slightly-above-average high school science education and the tech-design capabilities that he’d honed over the past ten years of fiddling with everything and anything mechanical down in the basement of his old home. He was a quick study, sure, but even pouring over papers and listening avidly to Bruce and Tony banter back and forth about particle physics didn’t make up for the twenty-and-then-some years of experience that each scientist had a claim to.
He enjoyed being included in their little genius bubble, though. Bruce was always happy to set aside what he was doing and answer Peter’s barrage of questions whenever the teenager stopped by with a freshly brewed cup of tea (because a little bribery never hurt anyone, right?). And Tony, being Tony, used Peter’s tech-related queries as a chance to dissect or create (either literally or using his holographic imaging technology) an array of mechanical objects to illustrate his point, and one hour would quickly turn into six as the teenager became enthralled in the project, to the point where Steve had taken to parking himself on the couch in the workshop to sketch so that he could remind them to eat and drink at regular intervals, and nudge Peter into the elevator when he started to flag.
He’d even been allowed out of the tower to go and visit Aunt May a few days ago (he’d been calling her every night anyway, to reassure her that he hadn’t gotten sick again), although the team hadn’t quite trusted him to handle the long trek from the train station to his aunt’s house without keeling over in the street. So Phil had driven him there after breakfast (in Lola, at that) and Clint had picked him up later that afternoon when he’d fallen asleep on the couch, exhausted by the day’s events; even though all he’d really done was help his Aunt make cookies and clear out some junk from the attic while she fussed and tsk’d over how much weight he’d lost since his last visit.
And finally, finally, Tony had given him the access codes to the closet of skateboards on his new personalised floor, with the understanding that he wouldn’t be in there for more than an hour at a time and would stop the moment he grew breathless. Admittedly, the first couple of sessions had triggered coughing fits so bad that Jarvis had tattled on him to Bruce and Steve, but it had only been an exercise-induced tickle like the ones he’d always gotten before the Bite when he was recovering from a recent cold, the sort that could be triggered by going from warm air to cold air and vice versa. Although it had taken a considerably lengthier explanation of this to reassure the two adults that nothing else was wrong with him.
That aside, his recuperation period had been kind of awesome. With his appetite restored, he’d unashamedly stuffed himself with junk food between meals to try and fill out his clothes again, having found the once-pathetically-bare cupboards of the mini-kitchen on his floor stocked with a vast array of snacks, from protein bars and dried fruit (Bruce) to potato chips and M&M’s (Tony). Between Thor’s colossal club sandwiches and Steve’s hearty, home-cooked breakfasts, he’d be back to his previous build in no time.
He was feeling a bit peckish now, actually. Maybe he’d bump into Thor or Tony if he went to the team kitchen/dining area upstairs. He could use the company, and maybe a mug of hot milk and a bite of late supper would remind his body that it was supposed to be sleeping.
“Hey, Jarvis?” he called, voice hoarse from lack of use.
“Yes, Peter?” came the immediate reply, his tone hushed to match Peter’s volume.
The teenager smiled at the use of his first name (after lengthy persuasion, he’d finally managed to wheedle Tony into deleting the subroutine that prevented the AI from being informal with him, although he’d been warned that corrupting the computer into calling him ‘dude’ or ‘bro’ would result in him being fired from his kind-of-a-cover-up, not-actually-legitimate job as an intern at Stark Industries).
“Is Tony still up?” he asked, scrubbing a hand through his hair and yawning.
“I’m afraid Mr Stark has retired to bed,” the AI apologised. “But I’m certain he would be happy for me to wake him if needed. Do you require his assistance?”
Peter pushed himself upright in bed, leaning over to tap the base of his bedside lamp to turn it on at its lowest setting. “Nah, it’s okay. Is anyone else awake?”
“Agents Coulson and Barton are currently in the Command Centre, and Thor is on the roo-”
“Wait, the Command Centre?” Peter interrupted, pausing with his legs halfway out of the bed. “What’s happening, is there a mission?”
“Not as far as I’m aware, Peter. There has been no call to assemble the Avengers.”
“Well, how long have they been up there?” the teenager demanded, snagging his hoody from the chair near the bed and dragging it over his head.
“Approximately thirteen minutes.”
Peter grabbed his web-slingers from the bottom shelf of his bedside cabinet, slipping them into the front pocket of his hoody (just in case – it never hurt to be prepared). “It’s not a classified SHIELD op., right? They’re not gonna, like, wipe my memory or something if I walk in and catch them doing secret spy stuff?”
There was a brief pause as the AI gathered this information, and Peter used it to stuff his feet into his converses, lacing them up loosely (if the Tower got attacked or some shit like that, he’d be kicking them off anyway and suiting up, medical leave be damned) and heading out into the corridor.
“Agent Coulson says you are welcome to join them,” Jarvis replied after a moment. “Agent Barton asked me to remind you that children require between eight to ten hours of uninterrupted sleep a night.”
“Jerk,” Peter muttered, but he was smiling as he stepped into the elevator. “Take me up, J.”
Clint was waiting for him directly in front of the elevator when the doors slid open again, arms crossed over his chest, lips kicking up at the corner.
“Either the fungal stuff in your lung has given you freakishly powerful telepathic abilities,” he mused, “or you haven’t actually gone to bed yet.”
“I went to bed,” Peter protested, ducking the hand that shot out to ruffle his hair. “Just couldn’t sleep.”
He made a beeline for the main control desk, a huge semi-circular thing that spanned half the room, comprised of touch-sensitive plating and holographic screens. Phil was sitting in one of the leather swivel-chairs, tapping away on the control panel with nimble fingers. Peter sidled up to lean against the side of his chair, glancing at the holo-screens, which showed a live helicopter-cam news feed of a smoking metallic-looking object sitting in the middle of a shallow crater in what had once been a wheat crop of some kind, judging by the burnt remains that surrounded the crash site.
“You should be in bed,” Phil told him calmly without glancing up from his work.
Peter squinted at the screen. “What is that? A spaceship?”
“That’s what SHIELD thought initially,” Clint disclosed, coming up beside him and bumping their shoulders together. “Sent out an 0-8-4 alert and gave us a nudge in case it turned out to be hostile.”
“Which it isn’t,” Phil reassured, pausing to send the teenager a brief smile before resuming his work. “It’s an automated research satellite that NASA lost contact with earlier today. Fell out of orbit and landed on a remote farm in west Yorkshire. Gave the locals a bit of a scare, but that’s as far as the damage goes.”
“So no need to Assemble?”
“Nope.” Clint slung his arm around Peter’s shoulders. “So you can go back to bed.”
“I’m not tired,” Peter protested, and it was the honest truth. The momentary surge of adrenaline at the prospect of a mission had banished any residual tendrils of fatigue.
The archer considered him for a moment, then grinned. “You know what? Neither am I. But a beanbag slumber party on your skate-floor sounds pretty appealing right now.”
Peter matched his grin, then pretended to consider the offer. “Well…I suppose there’ll be plenty of snacks. And I guess a sci-fi marathon wouldn’t be a total waste of time.”
“It’s a date,” Clint concluded, before leaning around Peter to tug on Phil’s tie. “You coming, sir?”
The agent glanced up at them both, amused, and swatted the archer’s hand away from his clothing. “I’ll need to finish up here first. But yes, I’ll join you once I’m done.”
“Awesome.” Steering Peter back over to the elevator, Clint pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and dialled a number quickly, pressing the device to his ear as the car began to descend. He sighed a few moments later and shoved his cell back into his pocket again. “He never has his phone on him. Hey, Jarvis? You mind letting Thor know that we’re crashing in Peter’s beanbag pit for the night? He’s welcome to join us if he wants company.”
“Certainly, Agent Barton.”
“So, what are you in the mood for?” Clint asked, turning to him. “Star wars? Star Trek? Random playlist lucky-dip?”
Peter smiled and gave an easy shrug, stepping out of the elevator when it reached his skate-floor, tapping the control panel to select Night Vision and plunging the room into a UV-tinted maze of florescent designs. He didn’t much care what they watched. Hell, he’d let Clint play Robin Hood on repeat if that was what the archer wanted. He was too preoccupied with the swell of warmth and gratitude in his chest, touched by how willingly Clint had abandoned his own chances of a good night’s sleep in favour of keeping him company.
Comfortably settled on impossibly deep beanbags fifteen minutes later, boxed in by Thor and Clint, a bowl of popcorn in his lap, he couldn’t imagine himself feeling more at ease anywhere else. With Thor’s rumbling laugh in one ear and Clint’s witty narrative whispered in the other, he felt a sense of belonging that he’d never quite had the guts to acknowledge before. But with his head resting on Thor’s shoulder and Clint legs half-tangled with his own, it was hard to deny the facts.
They’d been teammates and friends for a long while, and that had been enough to begin with; but it was more than that now. They were family. He was wanted and appreciated and cared for, and it had been a fucking long time since he’d allowed himself to believe that.
He was home.
And he was happy.