2. the rabbit

The rumors wind down. They fade quickly, replaced by someone else's misfortune, and someone else's after that, forever propelling the cycle of gossip and scandal forward. Peter doesn't know the ends and outs of the newest tragedy. There's no space in his brain for something so petty, not when he's busy keeping himself on guard for the day when new rumors about him surface, for the day when Mr. Brewer or someone else discovers who Peter Stark is in reality and announces to the world.

He stays tense and alert and ready for that moment at all times, but until then, he can at least let himself feel grateful that not every day at school is as horrible as his first. Sometimes, mostly in those lucky classes he shares with Ned, life almost seems normal, like he's just any other kid going to school, and the rest of his first week slips away from him.

A routine is formed, and every day is nearly identical.

They start with a rush to get dressed and showered after hitting the snooze button on his phone too many times, then another rush to get out the door as him and Pepper trip over each other in the kitchen, both attempting to eat breakfast while they prepare their lunches. If they're talking, it's always about how they're jealous of Tony who's very flexible schedule allows him to stay sleeping for several more hours.

His car ride to school is quiet. Happy's perfectly fine to let Peter zone out in the backseat, while he mindlessly scrolls through his phone or attempts to finish his breakfast. He isn't fully awake until he's chatting with Ned by his lock, the whole three or four minutes he has extra until the warning bell sends them all scurrying to class.

His classes pass by a blur. He's playing catch up. Technically, he's still a semester behind on all the core subjects, and even with Tony bullying the school into letting him test out of a semester with full credits, even with him acing every single one of those tests, they're still gaps. It's a hustle to fill them. He doesn't mind it, though. It's a distraction from the worry his identity can be shattered at any second.

Well, at least most of his classes make him forget.

Sitting in Biology next to Flash serves the exact opposite. It's impossible to think about anything except his impending doom while Mr. Brewer stalks around the classroom, looking for an excuse to correct or bully. He hadn't been lying the first day. He does treat everyone as miserably as Peter, but he can't help noticing the side glances, the looking at Peter when he's talking about certain aspects of Biology. Puts him on edge. Makes him grip the edge of the black marble worktable.

He spends his evenings in the workshop with Tony. He sits at the desk quietly scribbling answers on his worksheets while Tony quietly tinkers around with Iron Man suit upgrades. If Tony thinks it's strange he's choosing to complete his homework down there instead of at his own desk in his bedroom, he has enough decency not to say so out loud.

It isn't until Peter brings up a certain topic that the man expresses any kind of annoyance at all.

"Hey Tony," he says, turning his pencil over in his hand, and waiting for Tony's attention to shift. "Did you know there's a bunch of dogs that get left behind on the coast when there's hurricanes?"

Tony raises an eyebrow at him, and there's suspicious written in every line of his face as he stares back at Peter. He doesn't say a word, and his silence propels Peter forward with his agenda.

"Their families can't evacuate with them for whatever reason, and they just abandon them."

"This is what you're learning about at your genius school?"

"No. It's on YouTube."

"We're not getting a dog, Pete."

Pete sighs, presses his pencil back down to his paper, and goes back to work.

When the second week of school rolls around, Tony stays true to his promise and lets him work Spider-Man into his schedule. Just on the three weeknights he doesn't have to visit Dr. Walters, just until eleven, and just because, as Tony says, he needs something cathartic to relieve his stress.

He hates hearing Tony saying things like that. He likes to believe he's better at hiding than that, but any illusion he has of playing it cool is wiped away on the morning of the field trip while him and Pepper are doing their usual dance around the kitchen. He's out of it. Completely wrapped up in his own head, playing out a nightmare scenario where every headline is an expose on him, on his biological father, on his status as a mutant.

Pepper's hand brushes his arm as she reaches for the bowl of chopped lettuce for her salad and Peter jumps, spins in place to find the threat. His heart jumps to his throat, there's a sharp intake of breath, until he releases, until he sees there's no threat. Just a very concerned Pepper looking back at him.

"Are you alright, Peter?"

"I'm good," he says, but his heart is still thrashing around in his chest. "Really. I promise. Just tired."

She accepts his answer with a creased face, and they go their separate ways for the day.

Since it's a field trip day, Peter skips meeting Ned by his locker and instead goes directly to the cafeteria, joining him and MJ at a corner table. The break in routine of a typical day is refreshing, even if it is with the Biology department and it means spending most the day with Mr. Brewer instead of the usual fifty-two minutes. It's not too worrying. He'll be easily avoidable with the other students, teachers and chaperones around.

Peter uses the time waiting to text Harry and scroll YouTube for a sad dog video to send Pepper. The funny ones he's sent her in the past haven't achieved his goal, so he's switching it up.

The warning bell rings and prompts MJ to sling her bag over her shoulder and stand, leaving both Peter and Ned to question her with their eyes.

"I'm not going," she tells them. "I would rather sit through an extra study hall than celebrate animal testing."

She turns and marches through the throng of fellow ninth graders gathering in the cafeteria for the field trip while both boys watch her as she leaves. The thought of animal testing makes Peter's stomach turn, but he shakes it off. Choosing not to dwell. He doesn't want the room to start spinning, and he doesn't think the tour they'll be receiving of Lily Research will include the backrooms where experimentation takes place.

He's wrong.

The tour is a series of boring rooms and explanations. They pass through hallway after hallway, every single one looking exactly the same, with stark white walls and a shiny yellow-ish floor. There's a sterile smell in the air they never seem to escape from, no matter which turns they take, and Peter supposes it's fine. A pharmaceutical research center should be clean, after all, but the blech smell stretches even into the next room they visit. It's only there where it starts to make him feel sick.

Ten or so students, led by Mr. Brewer and behind him, Flash, file into a room with cages lining the left wall. It figures he and Ned would get stuck with both the worse chaperone and the worse company. The tour guide begins to explain what happens in this room, but Peter doesn't need any explanations. He blocks out everything being said as his eyes wonder over the cages, neatly stacked on top of each other and white rabbits poking their heads out near the bars, locked up on the inside.

He gets stuck on one rabbit in particular. A smaller one. Not quite a baby, but not really an adult. It's black eyes stare holes into Peter, and he clenches his fist. Not from anger. He's trying to hold it off, or maybe brace himself for the rush to his head, the sudden tilting of the earth he can't even prevent with his superpowers.

These white walls might as well be grey, and this building might as well be a prison.

Peter might as well be a rabbit.

And he's very young again. Lying on a metal table. There's a spider crawling around on his arm, looking for a place to bite down while more than a few scientists with clipboards and whitecoats watch. There's no sympathy in their eyes. Even as Peter begs for it. They're only lit with fascination about what comes next. After the bite.

"Stark?"

Peter's pulled to reality, and he whips his head around in all directions, looking for Tony, until he's all the way back, remembering with a sense of dread where exactly he is and who's speaking to him. Mr. Brewer stands closer than he had been before. Too close to be comfortable, but despite the closeness, he still can't read his expression. Sympathetic fascination. A combination Peter isn't comfortable with.

"Do you need to take a break?" he asks him.

"I'm fine."

"Are you sure? It's understandable… not everyone is equipped to handle the reality of sacrifices these animals provide for our improvement."

"I said I'm fine."

Mr. Brewer frowns and narrows his eyes at the tone but walks back to the other side of the room without another word, back towards Flash.

Ned elbows him.

"Dude, are you really okay?"

"Yeah – I just, maybe we should've skipped with MJ."

He nods his agreement, and Mr. Tour Guide takes questions about the sort of testing the rabbits undergo, all for the betterment of overpriced pharmaceuticals. Peter's eyes drift back over to the cages. That same rabbit is still staring at him, and it compels him to inch over to it. He's not planning on using his spider strength to break the lock on the cage, but when surveys the room and finds nobody is paying attention to him, he slips the small lock between his finger and his thumb.

He crushes it.

He sticks his hand in the cage and has the rabbit in his grasp when he twists his neck backwards locking eyes with Flash. He's watching him, and all Peter can do is freeze as he's watching Mr. Brewer's head start to turn, his attention begins to shift away from the tour guide. Flash looks at the teacher next to him, taps him on the shoulder and points at something in Peter's opposite direction.

Peter knows a well-placed distraction when he sees one. He's quick about removing the rabbit from the cage and carefully putting him in the front pocket of his hoodie. By the time Mr. Brewer finally levels his look of suspicious at him, he's standing innocently next to Ned, pretending to soak up everything the tour guide is saying.

On their way out of the room, Peter and Flash exchange looks again.

The rest of the tour Peter keeps one hand in his pocket to keep the rabbit from hopping around, the whole time imagining he looks as if he's about to rob a convenience store. No one seems to notice, or care, and he makes it until lunch without anyone finding out about his new friend.

"You stole one of the rabbits?" Ned's question is framed in a high-pitched fast voice, and his eyes dart around the cafeteria, making sure no is watching them and see's the rabbit Peter holds under the table.

"Rescued," says Peter. He picks a piece of lettuce off his sandwich with his free hand and offers it the rabbit.

Ned stumbles over some words, but once he's done, he sighs.

"I guess it's better than the alternative."

"We need to think of a name."

"Dude," says Ned. "Don't get attached. You know your dad won't let you keep him."

Peter covers a sneeze with his arm, and let's himself feel relieved for the first time in a long time. There's no anticipation about Tony's reaction to sharing his living space with a rabbit, but reassurance, that at least Ned still thinks the lie is true, that he's still Tony's son in somebody's eyes even if there are people who see through him.

When it's time to leave the cafeteria and load back onto the buses to go back to school, Peter stashes the still unnamed rabbit in his lunch box, taking special care to leave some lettuce behind and not zip it up on the way. Instead of looking like he's hiding a gun, he fears he's looking like he's a bit crazy, holding his supposedly empty lunch box as it's a bomb that might go off if it's handled incorrectly.


Peter sets his lunch box down on the kitchen count and unzips it all the way. He's met with an unpleasant smell, so he scoops the rabbit up and out of the container before tossing it into the trash can. He's never using that again. He puts the rabbit down where his discard lunch box used to be and takes a couple steps backwards. He shakes his ears, wiggles his nose and tilts his head, all while staring at Peter with blank and black eyes.

"I guess I should feed you," says Peter. He waits a couple of seconds, as if he's expecting the animal to respond, but eventually he sticks his head in the fridge, searching for something green and fresh while he stifles back a sneeze.

He settles for the container of cucumbers, and he's feeding a slice to the rabbit as Pepper steps out of the elevator. She sees him standing in the kitchen, approaches, then stops when her gaze drops a fraction.

"Peter…" she says. "Why is there a rabbit on my kitchen counter?"

He searches for the best explanation but finds none that doesn't allude to him having stolen property, even if said property is actually a living and breathing animal. He's also doesn't want to admit out loud taking the rabbit hadn't been a conscience decision, but one bred from trying to curb his anxiety before he got completely lost in it.

"Because I couldn't have a dog?"

The rabbit hops down the counter, closer to where Peter stands, and Tony is summoned via FRIDAY.

It's quiet for several seconds as Tony takes in what he's walked into. Pepper looking a cross between amused and irritated, and Peter holding a rabbit and trying to get it to eat a slice of cucumber.

Tony crosses his arms.

"Explain."

"I had to bring him back here," says Peter. "They were going to run experiments on him."

"Did you – did you take this… this thing from that research place you went to today?"

"Rescued."

There's a dramatic, over exaggerated sigh as Tony puts a hand through his hair. He meets Peter's eyes. "You better hope they don't have security cameras, or that you weren't caught on one."

Peter hasn't yet considered that, but the thought is troubling. He doesn't want to make the headlines again. He's talked about enough without another news story circulating about him, even if it is for something most people would consider noble. Tony continues his sharp look, so Peter takes a couple of steps towards him and outstretches his hands, offering him a good look at the bunny.

"Look at him," he says, and as if on cue, the rabbit wiggles his nose, twitches his ears. "I couldn't just leave him there."

Tony takes a breath, then says with no real conviction, "Get it out of my face."

"Are you afraid of him?"

"No. I just don't want to develop any diseases carried by rodents."

Pepper chuckles, and Tony turns his indignation on her.

"Is this funny to you? There's a pest in our home and our son is a thief."

"Rescuer, and technically rabbits don't fall into the rodent category," says Peter, and before he can stop it or catch it with his arm, he sneezes. "… I think I'm allergic to him."

A compromise is made. That the rabbit can stay, but only as long as it takes for Peter to find him a good home. Pepper serves as the negotiator, and she seals the deal with Tony by observing, out loud, that Peter is finally back to acting normal. This observation brings Peter's good mood to a screeching and devasting halt. Makes him aware his life is always under a microscope, whether it's Tony or Pepper or the media that finds Starks so interesting.

And also, it returns his thoughts to a familiar track. He imagines how much more interesting a fake, mutant Stark would be to the world's press, and he remembers Mr. Brewer somehow knowing, somehow breaking him out of his living nightmare earlier in the rabbit room. If the man knows about Peter's past, he brought him to that place looking for a reaction, and it turns the fear, the pressure, into something else. Fuel for the fire building behind his eyes.


Never, in a million years, did Tony think he'd ever be standing in his spare room, in the middle of the day, assembling a large cage for his rabbit boarder. Its tiny eyes are staring up at him from the smaller, temporary cage he spent the night in. There aren't any witnesses around when he transfers him to his new home, so he strokes him a couple of times between the ears. He stands in front of the cage, watching the rabbit hop around haplessly, sending bedding up in every direction as he does.

Tony is fortunate Peter is allergic to the dumb thing, or he might be tempted to keep it around.

His life lately is one unprecedented event after another.

First, it's the bunny and its cage, then it's getting a call from Peter's school telling him to come pick him up. He's suspended. Next is sitting in the Principal's office listening as he explains why Peter is getting suspended for two days, and it's a silent drive home. Peter stares out the window, looking anywhere but at him, and Tony's trying to figure out how to handle a kid who got suspended from school for yelling at his teacher.

Days like these he's sure the magazines and the talk shows are right about him. Tony Stark has no idea how to be a parent, but at least, by the time they're getting off the elevator, he's made up his mind about something. Enough with the mystery. They're going to have a conversation, and Peter is going to tell him what's bothering him.

Predictably, he tries to go straight to his bedroom, but Tony redirects him to the couch. Peter sinks into the cushions, and it reminds him every bit of their first time they ever talked this way, talked to resolve a problem and compromise. Peter looks every bit as angry now as he did back then.

Tony sits across from him on the coffee table. "What's going on?"

"Nothing."

"Yeah, no. Not buying it," says Tony. "Something's been off with you lately and we've all noticed."

"Nothing is going on," says Peter. His words are fast and frantic and obviously a lie. It worries Tony even more. Peter usually at least tries to make his lies believable. "Mr. Brewer is just… out to get me."

"Out to get you?" Tony repeats. This is for Peter's benefit. So he can hear how ridiculous it sounds. "Your Biology teacher is out to get you, so you yelled at him and walked out of class?"

"If you're not going to believe me why even ask?"

Tony shifts his position on the table and continues staring at Peter, as if he'll eventually be able to read his mind. It's a childish accusation that's completely beneath him, and it continues his recent trend of acting outside of himself.

Peter breaks eye contact and looks at his knees.

"Am I in trouble?"

"You were suspended from school, Peter."

"I mean with you."

"No," says Tony.

He's not interested in punishing him. Peter doesn't need to be grounded or have his Xbox taken away or yelled at. He needs something Tony has yet to grasp, something he would give away in a heartbeat if he could just figure out what's wrong.

"I just want to know what's bothering you," says Tony. "So I can fix it."

"You can't."

The absolute confidence in Peter's voice cuts into Tony. There aren't many things in this life he can't fix, either with his wealth or intellect, but it figures one of them has to do with his son. Stark men aren't cut out to be fathers.

"Can I go to my room now?"

Tony nods. He watches him disappear into the hallway without ever getting up from the coffee table. So much for solving the mystery. He's in the same place he started, except this time he's sure he's failed somewhere in the past couple of days. It's the only explanation about why he can't figure out what the hell is wrong with his kid.


A/N: I know this one is a little bit late, but life in december... ugh. Anyways, thanks so much to everyone reading, those have favorited and are getting alerts, and of course everyone who left a review (Fan02, Applsd, Lastine, Guest, waves, Krishnaa, and Guest!)

Guest: Thanks!

waves: Thanks so much! Glad you'll be sticking around.

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