This first little oneshot takes place about a month or so after Belong's epilogue. Enjoy!

How to Have the House to Yourself

At thirteen, Peter became the man of the house. It was a responsibility that was suddenly thrust upon him, and he heroically—

"Well, you'd hardly be the man of the house," Charles corrected him while Erik continued on chopping vegetables. "Your father and I will only be gone for the night. And Hank and Raven will still be here at the mansion with you."

Peter rolled his eyes and slumped against the island. "You're totally killing my Batman origin story here, man."

Erik threw his son a look from where he was sautéing stir fry. "That last thing your life needs is more drama, Pietro."

Peter gave him a knowing look and a point. "If that isn't dramatic foreshadowing, I don't know what is."

Charles smiled proudly at the fact that Peter recognized and applied literary terms out of his classroom.

Erik simply rolled his eyes and returned to preparing dinner.

So when the sun had set and Cherik had spieled their whole "rules of the house while we're gone" monologue, Peter envisioned his life as if it had been written as a comic book. And when Charles called him out from daydreaming about graphic novels, Peter smiled and ensured them that he was, in fact, the angelic child that had always wished and prayed for.

Cherik exchanged a look at that.

But they left all the same. Apparently, Charles was still bitter eight years later that they'd never truly celebrated his second doctorate degree. And with all of their enemies (mostly) vanquished, Erik felt comfortable leaving their teenage son home alone for an evening so they could celebrate together.

Peter grinned and looked around the silent mansion. He'd never had the mansion to himself before. Granted, he didn't really now either, since Raven and Hank were around here somewhere. But still.

So Peter found a piece of paper from Charles's study, a pen off the floor of his bedroom, and the bucket of red licorice Cherik had "hidden" in Erik's closet. Peter sat on the center of the kitchen island and began scrawling a to-do list, all while gnawing on licorice after licorice. The list read:

1. Write Batman origin story—Peter style.

Peter checked that off.

2. Dramatically deliver this story to whoever will listen.

Peter grinned and added a few more items to his list. He then rolled the pen away, making it topple off the counter to the floor. Peter looked at his list in satisfaction and then took off to fulfill it.

Peter dashed down to the basement, figuring it'd be easier to find one half of (Rank or Haven. Peter was still debating) than the other.

Sure enough, Nerd McCoy was intently staring at a machine on his desk and delicately adjusting wires with tweezers.

Peter sped in front of Hank, smiled, and opened his mouth to deliver the monologue.

"Stop," Hank said, holding up a finger but never taking his eyes off his work. "Before you do whatever you decided to do, know that I am adjusting the connective fueling on a highly powerful weapon."

Peter wrinkled his nose at that. "Well, will we die if I mess with it?"

"Probably."

Hmm. Tempting. But Peter cleared his throat and continued on with his checklist. "Lucky for you, I've come here to hold you as my captive audience. All you have to do is sit back and listen to brilliance."

Hank glanced up doubtfully before refocusing on his work. "Make it fast."

Peter grinned; he could do fast. "Peter Lehnsherr was happy. He was living his dream: a crazy awesome mansion to live in, pretty OK parental guardians, and a love for Twinkies that could never be tainted. Even better—he had kickass superpowers."

"When did you become baby Hamlet?" Raven asked, striding into the room. In her blonde form, she looked the two over before plopping her butt up onto Hank's worktable. Hank clenched the tweezers and froze while the table was jostled, his eyes focused fearfully on the reactive weapon. He relaxed when the table settled without incident.

"This isn't Hamlet," Peter disputed in an insulted voice. "This is a Peter original. And you came just in time; I was just starting out on my origin story."

Raven raised an eyebrow and looked to Hank. Hank shrugged and carefully separated wires with his tweezers.

Peter cleared his throat. "So, as I was saying, Peter Lehnsherr was happy, and… He was great and the rest doesn't matter because he had superpowers. Yes, he could run very, very, very, very, very…"

Raven leaned forwards and pressed a kiss to Hank's cheek. And then his jaw. And then his chin. And then his throat. And then the side of his neck.

"Very fast. UNTIL!"

Hank jumped and then glared hard at the dangerous machinery. Raven simply kept on kissing his neck.

"The day it all changed," Peter continued with a dark smile. "The day his parental guardians—died!" He paused for dramatic tension. Neither Hank nor Raven looked up from their tasks. "Peter became the man of the house. It was a responsibility that was suddenly thrust upon him, and he heroically had no choice but to accept it."

Raven took her lips off of Hank's neck to turn and give Peter a dead stare. "This monologue better be wrapping itself up."

Peter didn't acknowledge the critic, but he cut to the chase. "So then, Peter used his powers to run the house, and he did other cool stuff, and it was awesome. The end." He bowed low.

No one applauded.

Peter titled his head up to see Raven kissing Hank and Hank setting his tweezers down to kiss her back.

Ugh. Neither were true patrons of the arts. Stiffly, Peter erected himself and sped out of the basement. He fished his list out of his pocket and ticked off the second item. He looked to the third:

3. Sugar run.

Peter grinned, snapped his goggles over his eyes, and took off for 7/11. He figured he had about twenty minutes before Rank/Haven came to check that he was still alive and present.

Twenty minutes was a lifetime to Peter Lehnsherr. In that time, he was able to grab an entire grocery bag full of Twinkies and Ding Dongs, four extra-large slurpees (each of Peter's arms could hold two to his chest), and another full grocery bag of candy. All of it was paid for with Hank's (didn't-know-it-was-missing-yet) wallet, and then Peter hauled it all home.

Peter set his haul on the kitchen island and then checked off the third item on his to-do list. Which left the final fourth:

4. Sugar high.

Peter smiled demonically. Ever since that one day in January when Peter had (barely) overdosed on sweets, he'd had his Hostess privileges revoked. And ever since Peter had inhaled that stack of candy necklaces from the county fair, Cherik had severely limited Peter's sugar intake. (Even though Peter repeatedly pled that he'd only tried swinging from the chandelier once.)

That should be considered child abuse, in Peter's opinion.

So Peter was making up for it. While guzzling down the second slurpee (he'd finished off the first one on the run over), he began tearing open wrapper after wrapper of Hostess sweets and candies. That way, when he was done with the slurpees, he'd be able to create a continuous stream of sugary sweets.

The cup made a hollow sound, and Peter started in on the third drink.

By the time Raven and Hank's escalated "kissing" had ended, it still took them a solid twenty minutes before they realized that they hadn't seen Peter in about an hour.

Raven rolled her eyes while Hank frantically shoved his pants back on. "Don't be such a worry wart. Peter's thirteen; he can take care of himself."

With his pants half zipped, Hank whirled on her with a punctuating chop of the hand. "It's Peter."

Raven grudgingly pulled her dress back on.

And by the time Raven and Hank stepped back onto the main level, they couldn't see Peter. That is, their eyes couldn't physically track the silver blur that seemed to be everywhere at once.

"He found sugar," Hank realized in a small, slightly terrified voice. "He ODed on sugar."

"WOOOOOOOOOOOOH!" Peter shrieked, his voice echoing all around the couple.

When Raven looked to Hank, Hank swallowed in fear. "His dad's gonna kill me. Charles is gonna kill me."

"OK, Erik might be a little flustered," Raven downplayed, "but Charles will be totally fine with all of this."

Even though the stream of silver continued wavering in front of their eyes, a loud crash sounded upstairs.

"Whoops!" Peter said all around them.

Hank's desperate eyes locked onto his girlfriend.

"OK, our only option is to make him burn all this crap off before his parents get back," Raven reasoned firmly.

Hank ran a distraught hand through his hair and nodded too many times.

"Peter!" Raven called out. "You wanna go run outside?"

"Nah, it's dark!" the echoing teen's voice answered.

"Oh, that's too bad," she pressed. "I was just thinking that it'd be cool to see how fast you could run if you weren't confined to these tight corners."

Peter appeared before them, vibrating intensely and smiling. "You're totally trying to play me, and it's totally working!" The teen burst away from them, and the door opened and closed within the same second.

Raven and Hank followed after him.

It took a solid hour and a half for the teen to burn through all of his energy. But after Hank's encouragement to move faster and Raven's dares to run up trees and across the pond, Peter had managed to wear himself out.

He toppled into the house with a dazed grin and trashed sneakers.

"That was awesome," Peter mumbled as he walking into the sitting room and collapsed back onto the couch. He kicked what was left of his shoes onto the floor and closed his eyes in content tiredness.

"Yeah, let's maybe wait until your dad's around the next time you try to put yourself in a sugar coma, alright?" Hank suggested with a nervous smile.

Peter kept his eyes closed as he grunted an acknowledgement.

"Kid's out," Raven said aloud and pulled up Hank's wrist to look at his watch. "And it's only eleven. Let's go celebrate with a bottle of champagne."

Hank rose his eyebrows in agreement.

Raven grabbed onto the collar of his shirt and pulled him closer to clarify, "And only a bottle of champagne."

Hank hesitated with a smile. "I'm assuming you mean naked, but—"

Raven gripped the back of his head and shoved his mouth down to hers. She hiked her legs around his waist, and Hank easily carried her to the kitchen for champagne and then their bedroom to spend the night.

Keys noisily clattered onto the porch step.

"Shh!" Charles advised with a curved finger to his smiling lips.

Erik grinned and floundered to pick the keys back up. He searched through them, but—"They're all the same!"

Charles stabbed his finger into them. "That's the one."

Erik wasn't sure which one it was because the man was pointing at all of them.

"Wait," Charles said with suddenly sober eyes as he grabbed Erik's arms. "You're a mutant, Erik. You have powers."

Erik gave a slow blink. "Well, you don't because you think have a leg is cooler than mind control, um… things."

Charles let go of Erik's arms to haphazardly wave around his hands. "Your powers! The metal and the door can unlock it!"

Erik's eyes widened at the clarity of that idea. He turned to the door and dashed a hand through the air.

The door unlocked and opened.

The two wobbled inside, snickering like children.

Charles turned and pointed down the hall. "Take me to bed, Erik."

"Wait," Erik said. "We wanted to go for something in the kitchen."

"Bah!" Charles threw a hand into the air. "Who cares!"

But Erik led the way to Expedition: Kitchen on wobbly legs. Charles groaned and followed.

Once there, Erik began looking around, not sure what he was supposed to be doing there. Something about medicine and water and probably tomorrow, but that was all the way in tomorrow.

"Ah!" Charles dropped to the floor so suddenly that Erik thought he'd fallen. But then Charles popped back up with fretting face and a pen in his hands. "It's a pen! It was alone on the ground by itself!"

But Erik was staring at the many, many candy bar and Hostess wrappers littering the island. He grabbed fistfuls of them and held them up in confusion. "I ate a candy bar?"

Charles used the pen to point to all of the wrappers in astonishment. "You did!"

Erik began pulling armfuls of the wrappers towards him, still confused. "How did I eat so many?"

Charles leaned against the counter as the room swayed. "You're extro'nary."

Erik blinked at all of the wrappers.

Charles stumbled out of the kitchen and then called out, "Oh, Erik! Look 't'im!"

Erik wobbled after him until the two were in the sitting room.

"He's asleep!" Charles pointed to Peter's sleeping form as if it was the most astounding thing in the world.

Erik's knees sank to the carpet, and he held up the tattered remains of a shoe. "I just bought these…?"

Charles followed suit and laid down on the carpet. "You keep finding rubbish, and I found Peter."

Erik looked at their son and dropped the shoe. He stared around in confusion. "'s this Pietro's room?"

"Must be," Charles answered sleepily, closing his eyes.

Erik reached out and held the teen's jean-clad leg. His face scrunched as tears overwhelmed him. "He's so good."

"I'm a big fan of his work," Charles slowly replied, keeping his eyes closed.

Erik looked to Charles in confusion, saw how he'd sprawled himself, and decided to follow suit.

Once Erik was lying on the floor beside him, Charles reached up and patted Erik's cheek sloppily and lovingly. "You're my favorite Erik out of all the Eriks."

Erik grunted.

"And I…" Charles yawned. "Sleep."

"Mmm."

When Peter awoke in the morning, his head was hurting. And he wasn't in his bed. He was on the couch…?

Right. Because sugar. It was then and there that Peter decided maybe he shouldn't ever be the man of the house.

As he grunted and went to flip over, he realized something was tethering his ankle. He looked down and realized it was a hand. Peter followed the arm to see his father and Charles side-by-side, sprawled across the carpet. Both sported disheveled hair, sloppy clothes, and gaping mouths.

With a fond smile, Peter gently moved his dad's hand off the couch to lay across Charles's chest.

Yeah, the man of the house could eat it, Peter realized. And Batman probably could too. Because Peter didn't need an origin story or to be burdened under the responsibilities of adulthood.

He was perfectly happy exactly where he was.