A/N: I literally know nothing about Miles Morales. Zip. Zero. Zilch. I'm sorry, it just happened. I tried to avoid it by my brain was like we're doing this and it just… happened…
There is an old woman in front of the convenience store, reading.
Peter is getting eggs, rice and tomato because May is out tonight, working (it's a habit, she confesses to her manager, who has an endearing habit of worrying over all of her workers, getting work done early. I want time to look it over, make sure I've done it right and the manager sighs, knowing that May is stubborn, just know that you don't have to, I don't want you to push yourself over the edge) and the grocery store is further away so he has decided that he will allow himself to be lazy, just this once to buy supplies for dinner.
He is fumbling with his coins at the cashier while the teenager there throws twitchy glances at his phone, clearly wanting Peter to leave so that he can get back to scrolling, when the old lady comes behind him in line and says in a creaking voice, "How nice of you to buy groceries for your parents."
Peter drops a few coins, surprised, and she says oh dear while Peter bends down to pick them up, stammering apologies while the cashier watches with an unimpressed stare and says it's fine in a voice that clearly indicates that it is not.
"Oh, I'm," his voice is high pitched so he clears it a bit, "I'm not."
She is not so old that she would be senile, wrinkles on her cheeks but she has no cane in hand, meaning that she is well enough in health.
"No?" She raises her eyebrows, "Those look like they can be used for a few meals."
"Oh, yes, um," Peter blinks a few times, "I, ah, my aunt is out working so, um."
She understands, well enough, by the nod she gives, "You're alone tonight?"
The area isn't the best and it isn't uncommon for kids to be home alone while their guardian works. Tony offered them a better place, May had observed that she travelled a lot more and Peter spent many nights at Tony's place anyways.
(Later, when they are alone, Tony admits to Peter softly that though it's small, he has learned to love their apartment the same way that Peter and May do. Peter smiles and says it's something about family. Tony drops his gaze, but there is an embarrassed smile on his lips.)
Peter shifts, "Ah, yes."
"Ah, then," the old woman hesitates, "If it's not too much to ask, would you mind helping me with my groceries?"
And because Peter is Spider-man and figures that he can handle it if this is like an ambush or something (and if he can't, he knows that he's got at least three different trackers on him somewhere), he says, "Sure."
He finishes paying and puts his groceries into his backpack, which frees his hands to carry some groceries.
The old woman hands him two bags and keeps three to herself, saying huffily, "I can't exactly leave all the hard work to you, now can I?" when Peter tries to protest.
He laughs a bit at her and she smiles a bit, looking triumphant.
Her apartment is a few blocks from his, not too far, and when they reach her floor there is a boy around Peter's age (maybe a bit younger) sketching what looks like the margins of his math homework while a man around May's age watches over the edge of his phone.
He turns around and waves, surprised, "Mrs. Joyce? Is that your grandson?"
"I already told you," the old lady, presumably Mrs. Joyce, huffs, "all of my grandsons are ungrateful brats who I don't associate with. This young man decided to help me with the groceries, is all." She turns to Peter, who is ashen white, "You're staying for dinner, aren't you?"
It's criminal guy.
In front of him. With the phone.
Ice cream, informer criminal guy who said that his voice sounded like a girl's and laughed at his interrogation voice.
"I, um, couldn't," Peter squeaks.
"Nonsense," Mrs. Joyce pats his arm, "You're home alone tonight, right? Stay for dinner. My treat. I'm making vegetable timbale."
"You should just go along with it," the sketching boy says, smiling a bit at Mrs. Joyce, "She won't accept no for an answer. A week after we moved it, she started trying to get us to eat with her, and two weeks later, we gave up on acting like we didn't eat dinner at her place every night. You should, too."
"I don't want to impose," Peter mumbles.
"You're not," Criminal guy offers Peter an amused smile, which is very worrisome, "Mrs. Joyce has a habit of adopting anyone and everyone in her radius."
He dallies some more, they cajole him, somehow it ends up with him slipping off his shoes as he goes into her apartment, mumbling pardon the intrusion as she huffs behind him it isn't one.
"Seriously, don't worry about it," Sketching boy introduces himself as Miles, patting Peter on the back, "As soon as you decided to help with the groceries, you condemned yourself to this fate."
"Good to know," Peter laughs a bit, "How did it happen for you?"
"I moved in to the apartment beside her," Miles scrunches up his nose, "And poof, that was that. I just happened to move in around the whole… you know, dust incident."
Thanos.
Peter's gut curls.
"…and my mom, you know, she just…" Miles huffs, wiggles his fingers, and Peter nods, understanding. "She and I didn't, so she decided to let me stay with her while the Avengers did…" he scrunches up his nose, "You know. Whatever they did to save the world."
"I know," Peter says, quietly. He rubs his nose, "I mean, I guess I don't. I was one of the people who…"
Miles' nod is understanding, "Yeah. Kind of crazy, huh? I know that it was a huge disaster and horrible, and this is going to sound ridiculous, but I'm glad that I got to meet Mrs. Joyce because of it."
"I understand," Peter's stomach does something funny, "I got to meet a lot of cool people after the incident because of what happened."
Miles nods again, "Sorry. You came for a meal and I ended up bringing up something messed up like this."
"It's fine," Peter waves a hand, smiling a bit, "It's all good. All the people that I've talked to about it kind of tip toe around it? Like, they don't want me to freak out."
Probably for good reason, but he won't say that out loud.
"No, I get it," Miles smiles, and leans back, "Hey, do you think that we'll have alien protocols soon? Like how Japan regularly practices for tsunamis and stuff, right?"
Peter brightens, "Oh, man, that would be so cool! What if…"
He stays for dinner, exchanges numbers with Miles, and it's overall nice.
Criminal dude is disturbingly polite at dinner, asking Peter about school and homework and that sort of stuff.
Peter responds with a great amount of enthusiasm when he finally gets used to it and stops thinking of criminal dude as criminal dude and his brain switches to Mr. Aaron (his compromise with both Aaron and Mr. Davis), and thankfully, the others accept it as him being shy.
Miles chatters excitedly, too, and at times Peter is content to just listen but the people are friendly and they insist on including him in the conversation so he doesn't feel like an outsider.
"Thank you," Peter nods at Mrs. Joyce.
She huffs at him, "Don't be a stranger. Come again."
Something odd and warm in his chest swells, and before he can stop it, Peter is smiling as he answers, "I will."
(And this, this is why he's Spider-man, because he loves the people in his city, because he has been shown kindness and he wants to give back, just a little.
He talks to May about it that night over peanut butter chocolate chip ice cream, and she smiles with a soft, fond look in her eyes, and she holds his hand and Peter cannot help but smile back.)
Peter is sitting in the lobby when Tony finishes his board meeting.
He looks nondescript, plain almost, against the cherry red lounge chairs and the shell white walls. A pastel purple shirt with white circles in the front and a jagged, scribbled black Hawkeye in the pack hangs baggy from his shoulders and he's in those skinny jeans that kids these days seem so fond of wearing, but which Peter has confessed feel weird on him, which means that he's likely been in contact with that politics girl that he seems so fond of hanging out with.
(Ugh. Between her and the hacking boy, Tony is pretty sure that Peter will have two pretty impressive people backing him up when he's older, but it disturbs him a bit, as well, that Peter only seems to befriend people who will grow into power like kids grow into tuxedos.)
A backpack is slung over his shoulder, which would make Tony a bit suspicious if it weren't for the fact that he knows Peter has been sitting here for a while, telling FRIDAY that he's "just trying to read in peace, 's all".
He holds a bright blue book in hand, seemingly a little before halfway through, and it's immediately bookmarked as soon as the kid catches sight of Tony.
"Kid," Tony greets Peter with a nod, and Peter beams back.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Stark," Peter answers brightly, and before he puts the book away Tony catches sight of the cover, You May Also Like. "Fun meeting?"
"Pepper tells me that we were very productive," Tony shrugs, "I just build things. All this talk about stocks is making me dizzy."
Just to prove his point, Tony rolls his eyes back in his head and Peter laughs. Tony grins a bit, smug at his achievement in making the kid laugh, and his head bobs back down.
"That book from Pepper?" he asks, squinting at the cover.
"Yeah!" Peter beams, "MJ recommended that I read it, so Mrs. Potts lent me her copy when she was finished with it."
Tony isn't much for books, they seem dry and dull to him, but talking about them makes the kid all light-uppy and cheerful, so he asks the dutiful, "What is it about?"
"Oh, it's fascinating," Peter says, and in that little way of his, actually manages to sell it enough that when he finishes talking, Tony asks if he can read it once Peter is done. "Definitely!" Peter agrees, and Tony smiles because he is a fool that has fallen way in too deep to realize that he just willingly asked to read a book.
A non-fiction book.
That was not related to science.
(It is official. He's going insane. Soon he'll be in a straight jacket, locked in a padded room.)
By the time that Peter has finished babbling about his book, they have reached the walnut cake place that they were heading to and Peter opens the door, bouncing ahead a few steps when he realizes that they've reached it just so that he can hold the door open for Tony, because Peter is disturbingly eager to help others like that.
Peter is allergic to walnuts, so Tony orders the red bean and green tea shaved ice for Peter and the fruit bowl with shaved ice for himself even though he knows that they'll end up sharing as they always do.
"Just a regular size," he says, because he has once made the mistake of ordering a large and he eventually had to share it with Pepper and Rhodey, and still ended up with a stomach ache from eating too much of it.
He hands over twenty dollars because these shops downtown are made to rob him and Peter huffs but does not argue over money matters because he has long since learned better.
They talk about idle, unimportant little things with each other before Peter asks, quietly, hesitance bleeding into the set of his shoulders and the way his eyes lower so that his eyelashes are all that Tony can see, "You've talked to Fengchi about Titan, right?"
His stomach churns and it's likely only the fact that it's Peter asking, Peter who most of his nightmares from Titan are about, that he does not immediately start hyperventilating.
Peter stares at his shaved ice, his little plastic spoon, and his shoulders ride up to the bottoms of his ears as he winces, "Sorry. Sorry. I shouldn't have… sorry, Mr. Stark. I didn't… I wasn't thinking."
"No, I," Tony's voice sounds tiny, distant in his ears, "Kid. It's important to talk about these things, even if it makes me a bit uncomfortable. The more I avoid it, the more power I give it, you know?"
He feels better, now, lighter, somehow.
"I just didn't want to talk about it with you because," because you still have nightmares about it. "I wasn't sure if you were ready. But if you want to, then we can."
Peter's smile is small, faint, as he answers, "I was talking to someone about it earlier, and it got me thinking, is all."
Tony raises an eyebrow, "Oh?"
"Yeah, it's just," Peter stirs his shaved ice, spoon folding his red bean sauce into the shaved ice in magenta swirls, "Everyone's been avoiding it, you know? It's gotten all political, but it's also super personal, and it just feels like the whole world is holding its breath and refusing to acknowledge what happened. But I think… I think that it's important to talk about it, you know?"
Tony stares at his shaved ice and thinks no, but his mouth says, soft, "It is when things are kept in the dark that they are feared, but the light chases away all darkness."
It's a quote, he can't quite remember where from, but it probably wasn't word for word anyway.
Peter's mouth twitches, a faint smile, "…Harry Potter?"
Tony's face burns, "Maybe." He honestly isn't quite sure.
Peter laughs at Tony, and Tony huffs at him, but it's alright somehow.
Peter talks about alien protocols, like how Japan has them for tsunamis, and Tony hos and hums as he thinks about it.
"It didn't stop the snap," he points out.
"The snap happened because Thanos had power over space/time/reality," Peter points out, unimpressed, "Although, I think it's also important to start discussing intergalactic politics. I know that we're barely put together on this planet, but that honestly isn't very good. I was talking to MJ about it, and she said that…"
Peter goes on, Tony pointing things out and making interjections, and when they are done, the shaved ice has long since been finished and Tony's stomach is growling for dinner.
They laugh at each other, and the conversation somehow ends up with them talking about that move Inside Out, and Peter talks about how it made him cry while Tony says that it wasn't as good as The Iron Giant and Peter throws his hands up in the air, you can't compare the two, Mr. Stark! The Iron Giant is incomparable to anything else… except maybe Treasure Planet and Lilo and Stitch.
Biased, Tony says, though he can't help but agree, what about Anastasia?
Peter asks if he's heard the musical, Tony says he hasn't, Peter shouts an indignant what!? And over burgers they talk about the pros and cons of adapting a book or movie into a musical.
And it is loud and Peter babbles and he accidentally hits Tony once when he's talking because his gestures have gotten so passionate (he apologizes profusely afterwards, to the point where it's a bit awkward) and it is somehow perfect, like this, Tony thinks.