The kid was late.
Happy swiveled in the leather of the driver's seat for the fourth time in five minutes, scanning the school's front steps for any sign of Peter. The stream of teenagers that poured out of the double doors at 2:45 had long since dwindled down to scattered stragglers and clusters of kids loitering along the walls, but Peter was nowhere to be found.
Happy scowled. It wasn't like him. Short of lizard beasts invading the halls or some other spandex-y emergency, the kid was never late to the lab dates that made up his official internship. Never. If anything, he was usually bouncing on his heels at the edge of the curb by the time Happy inched through the pick-up line to collect him. His absence was ominous enough to make even a seasoned superhero babysitter (Pepper's words, not his) like Happy a little uneasy.
After checking his phone for the barrages of texts or voicemails the kid liked to leave, but finding none, Happy heaved a sigh. He shut off the Audi, shoved his sunglasses a bit higher on the bridge of his nose, and stepped out into the blinding afternoon sun, inwardly grumbling all the way. When these little outings began, he had spent plenty of time grousing to Tony about how this business of ferrying a far-too-cheerful child around the city was far, far below his paygrade. He still stood by that argument, even if it wasn't a job he minded too much three months in.
Still, being forced to venture inside the grungy halls of a high school-even one as smart and stuffy as Midtown-was pushing it.
One half of the double doors flung open half a second before Happy reached it, nearly catching him in the stomach as he reached for it. He let out a curse, and caught the door on the backswing, ready to unleash his aggravation on whatever idiot had tried to clothesline him with a grimy piece of school architecture...only to freeze at the sight of the figures shuffling through the portal.
"What's wrong with you?"
"Shhh!" Happy blinked, then glowered as Peter's friend—Fred? Ted? Ned—Ned gave him a reproachful shake of the head and tightened the arm he was apparently using to keep a boneless Peter from toppling over.
"Did you just shush me? What's going o-"
"Shhhh." The hissing was more urgent then, as the pair of them staggered over the threshold and into the light. Peter let out a muffled groan, silencing Happy a lot faster than any shush ever would, if only because the kid never complained about anything physical. Whining about Tony's dumb protocol names? Sure. Joining him in heckling the inconsiderate drivers they shared Queens Boulevard with? All the time. But there was never a peep about the bruises he saw after hard nights on the street or the tell-tale scrapes and scratches left by webslinging wipeouts. If Peter couldn't hold in his discomfort, something was truly, horribly wrong. "You have to whisper; it's his ears."
Not just his ears, if the way Peter screwed his eyes shut against the afternoon glare and wobbled to and fro in Ned's grip were any indication. Happy felt the familiar panic of stumbling into something absurd and unreal and way beyond his job description; he pursed his lips. Story of his life, at this point.
"It happens sometimes, when he gets stressed out or beat up or something and his senses get all wonky," Ned kept whispering as he towed Peter gently outside with the practiced ease of a kid who'd probably seen it all in the way of weird spider things by this point. Happy could sympathize. "Says it's like a migraine dialed up to eleven."
"Huh." Happy sighed and whipped off his sunglasses to settle them on Peter's face, eliciting a flinch from the sudden touch, but a marked slump of his tense shoulders at the respite from the light. It wasn't a perfect fix—and heaven help the kid if he didn't return the shades in one piece—but it would help until Happy could deliver him to Tony for a more high-tech solution. Ned had apparently had the same idea since Peter was already wearing a set of bulky headphones perched over his ears, on top of the earbud wires that snaked down to his collar. Between the sunglasses, two sets of headphones, and the soft ride and tinted windows of a well-maintained Audi, Happy hoped the kid would look less peaked by the time he made that delivery...Tony would have a conniption if he dropped off the pale, shaky kid he was currently looking at. Nor, frankly, was it good for Happy's heart condition, either.
"C'mon, let's get you in the car." Happy rested one hand on the back of Peter's neck and the other on the arm Ned hadn't already claimed to steer him expertly down the walk. And if he whispered like a nanny at naptime, well...how he did his job was no one's business but his.
It was...a process...bundling the kid into the backseat. Even with both Happy and Ned doing all the heavy lifting (not that the kid was heavy-if anything, he was too scrawny for someone who did so much running around on rooftops), it took a solid five minutes and a lot of exasperated whisper-shouts to make sure all the gangly limbs were pointing the right direction. Happy jammed the seatbelt into its buckle with a resounding click. Ned settled Peter's backpack of the week gently between his feet, and stepped back with a relieved sigh when his friend flashed him a wobbly farewell smile.
"Thanks, Mr. Hogan," Ned said as Happy eased the door shut as quietly as he could manage. "Can you...uh...can you text me when Peter's okay?"
Happy shot the kid a look as he rounded the car. What was he, a secretary as well as a chauffeur? Ned grimaced.
"Yeah, you're right, Peter'll do it when he can."
"Bingo." Happy paused with his hand on the door handle and ground his teeth. Tony was right. He was going soft in his old age. "You…uh…you did good lookin' after him."
Ned beamed, straightening like he'd been handed a medal and launching into a stream of chatter that Happy would've been forced to endure if he hadn't slid in and pulled the door shut behind him. He supposed superhero babysitters did have to stick together to a point—it was a pretty small field, after all—but Happy had his limits.
"Hey, Happy?"
Happy startled at the weak voice from the backseat, but he didn't chance a peek in the rearview mirror until he had fired off a heads-up to Tony and pulled safely out into the afternoon traffic. He winced when he did. Peter was listing sideways, held up by the pull of his seatbelt across his chest while Happy's too-large sunglasses slid precariously down his nose. Not for the first time, Happy found himself grateful he wasn't one of the poor saps stuck with superhuman anything. It was just a shame the kid was.
"Yeah, kid?" He kept his voice soft and his hands well-off the horn that was usually his best friend in Queens traffic.
"Thanks," Peter rasped. He grinned shakily as he pushed the sunglasses back up to their proper place. He looked a little better here, away from the pervasive stink of locker rooms and chem labs and shielded from as much light and sound as possible, but Happy still didn't like the gray tint of his face or the forced quality of his smile. "The glasses are cool."
"Yeah, they are, and I want 'em back without a scratch. You hear me, Parker?"
"That's kinda the problem..." Peter snickered, cutting off abruptly with a soft "ow." Happy rolled his eyes and turned back to the road.
"Shut your mouth and rest up. I'm gonna sic Tony on you when we get there; he'll get you fixed up."
He always did. There wasn't much that man couldn't solve with enough time and tech. Happy would bet that dampening a set of overzealous senses would take twenty minutes on the outside. Particularly since his kid was the one suffering in the meantime.
Peter let out a resigned groan—it wasn't his first time having Tony sicced on him for one thing or another—but tipped his head back to rest against the soft leather all the same. Happy gave a satisfied nod to no one in particular and turned back to the road again. He considered raising the partition between front and back seats to block out more of the engine noise, but decided against it. Keeping a watchful eye on the kid would be easier without it. And what was his job, if not keeping a watchful eye out for his people?
Soft snores carried up front twenty minutes into the ride, and Happy felt his own shoulders relax a little with the sound. If the kid was sleeping, things had to be at least a little better. Of course, that raised the issue of whether or not Happy would be able to wake him up when they got to the compound—kid slept like the dead—or whether he would have to be carried inside. If so, Happy was tapping out. Tony could do it. Babysitting was one thing, but kid-carrying was another, and Happy wasn't paid enough.
He snuck another glance at the backseat, at Peter's small form curled into a defensive ball of too many curls and headphones and badly hidden patrol bruises. It was his turn to let out a resigned sigh. He wasn't paid enough to share his shades, either, and here he was. Such was his life.
…Not that he would trade it.
Not for anything.