Peter didn't know what he was doing, exactly.

His hands were flying through his desk drawer, flipping through stacks of paper, but it was as if he was really hovering somewhere in the air, watching himself, silently judging himself for the stupid as hell decision he was in the process of making.

He slammed the drawer shut once it was clear his passport wasn't there, nearly losing his balance and toppling down into the carpet as he did. He straightened out, took a breath, and tried to make sense of his scrambled, racing thoughts.

That was just his life post adoption.

There was no anchor for his thoughts. Nowhere solid to stand. Nothing was certain, and it was as if he was constantly having to regain his footing and straighten himself out before he fell flat on his face in front of all the sharks with cameras, really giving a reason for Tony and Pepper's high society frenemies to talk about him.

"Friday," said Peter, finally. His last, and risky, resort. He was ninety-five percent sure he'd get caught anyway, so he might as well be honest with the AI.

"Yes Peter."

"Uh," he said. "Do you know where my passport is?"

"Boss stores your passport in the safe located in his home office," said Friday. "Should I alert him that you're looking for it?"

"NO!" yelled Peter, then quieted his voice. "I mean, no, that's not necessary, thanks Fri."

"Would you like me to open the safe for you?"

"You can do that?"

"Of course I can, Peter," said Friday. "You're one of four people with access to the family vault."

"Oh," said Peter. He shoved the guilt bubbling up in his stomach down deep. "Then, yes, please. Open it."

"Very well."

Peter paused, wondering if it were safe to ask Friday not to repeat it to Tony that he was taking his passport, or if that phrase in particular might set off some sort of alarm and alert him anyway. He decided against it as he marched off towards Tony's office, only to pause again once he opened the door.

It felt wrong, like an invasion of privacy, coming in here when Tony was in a whole other country. Peter walked inside anyway. Tony, Peter was learning from all the media attention, was probably used to having his privacy violated. Peter had only been a Stark for a couple of months, and he was getting used to it, too.

"This is so wrong, this is so wrong," Peter repeated, under his breath, as he crossed the office and collapsed down to his knees in front of the safe.

Just as Friday had said, it was popped open. He pulled open the lid of the rest of the way and saw his passport sitting up on top, ready to go. He stared at it, but still had no clue as to what he was actually doing or why he was doing it.

There were only a few things Peter knew and understood leading up to this moment.

He knew Ned cancelled their plans to hang out all day at the penthouse. He'd gotten the stomach flu, and while Peter had been sipping champagne with Harry Osborn and his friends, he'd been face first in the toilet, throwing up.

He knew couldn't spend the weekend alone in the penthouse, even with the prospect of unlimited and unmonitored time patrolling as Spider-Man. It'd be too empty, too lonely.

He knew Harry had called just minutes after Ned told him the bad news, asking him if he'd wanted to hang out. Peter had almost suggested they go to the arcade Tony had taken him too the day before, but the idea died before it had ever left his tongue. Something about it seemed childish in a way that Harry wasn't, in a way Peter was beginning to think he should adopt.

"Tony and Pepper are out of the country," Peter had offered, shakily. "I can have some people over."

"No offense, Pete," Harry had told him. "But house parties got a little played out and boring back in middle school."

"Oh." Peter was very happy he hadn't mentioned the arcade.

"I think I know the perfect place though. Got a passport, don't you?"

Peter blinked away the memory and shook the echoes of Harry's voice out of his head. His fingers closed around his passport, and he left Tony's office, with a feeling of dread, with a knowledge that he'd almost certainly regret this.

Or maybe he wouldn't.

It wasn't really a big deal, and yeah, there was no way he'd leave the country on the Osborn family jet without Tony finding out about it, but Peter wasn't sure that he cared if he found out, wasn't sure Tony or Pepper would even care when they did find out.

This was the world they lived in, the world they put Peter into when he became a Stark. It wasn't a big deal. Not really. He repeated the mantra to himself over and over again as he packed bag and called an uber.

Harry popped the cork off a champagne bottle, and Peter watched the fine, white mist escape and hover around the rim. He locked his hand around the end of the arm wrist, trying to focus on the music playing instead of the fact they were already at cruising altitude and barreling through the clouds towards a country that wasn't their own.

It wasn't foreign countries that made Peter nervous, though, it was the jet. He'd never been on one that wasn't Stark Industries, and he'd never been that far away from home without Tony or Pepper or May.

"So, Stark," said Emmy, one of Harry's friends, and Peter guessed, after this trip, one of his friends, too. She sat on the couch across from the one Peter sat on. Harry handed her a glass of champagne. "What's the story with you?"

"What she means is," said Andrew. He sat next to her, looking relaxed and bored, as if this were just a normal weekend getaway, as if they did this all the time. "Are the stories true? Did your aunt really sell you to Tony Stark for three million dollars and an apartment in Brooklyn?"

"Don't be idiotic, Drew," said Charlotte, cutting in, and walking over from the other side of the jet. "Why would Tony Stark pay for a teenager from Queens?"

"Because he's a super genius, that's why. Didn't you read the article?"

"No I try not to read garbage."

"Enough of that," said Harry. He handed Peter a glass of champagne and Peter accepted it, just as he had the night before. "It's boring me."

Harry sat down next to Peter and watched the bubbles dance and pop in his glass, while the others continued staring at Peter. Despite Harry's wish to move away from that particular conversation, it was clear that wouldn't be happening.

"She didn't get paid," said Peter. "She just gave me up."

The jet went quiet, besides the music playing through the speakers. His new circle of peers all seemed a little stunned, and at first, Peter didn't understand why. That was his reality, had been his reality for a long time, a long enough time for him to have accepted it as normal, no matter how painful it'd been.

"It's really okay," added Peter, quickly. "I mean, it happened a while ago."

Still, everyone stayed silent, until Emmy tipped the glass of champagne into the air, chugging every last drop. She let the empty glass fall to the floor.

"I wish my mother would give me up," she said.

"Really, Petey." Harry looked at him. "You're in the right place."

"True," said Charlotte. "We're like the lost kids of the upper east side, or at least, our parents wish we'd get lost."

"Until the cameras come around," said Harry.

"I'll toast to that," said Emmy. She stood up, already wobbly on her legs, stumbled over to the fridge and pulled out a few cans of beer.

Peter took a long sip of his champagne, feeling like he needed to catch up with the others, who were already almost done with their first drinks. Despite what Harry said about him being in the right place, Peter wasn't so sure. He didn't feel lost. He had, a long time ago, but lost wasn't quite where he was anymore.

Maybe confused, uncertain. Maybe still grieving that his life was forever changed, maybe still grappling that he now had a few things in common with a jet filled with bored, rich kids.

He wondered if this was what Tony's life was like when he was young. He'd heard the stories from Rhodey, and he wondered if that's what everyone expected him to be. A Tony 2.0, or another Harry Osborn, disinterested and happy to drown out the dull with one glass of alcohol after another.

Peter drained his glass and the jet blurred as he looked around. He didn't belong here, not really.

He wasn't some lost kid of the upper east side. Tony and Pepper didn't want him gone. May had, but he'd found since then. At the same time, he wasn't a nobody from Queens. Not anymore. He was Peter Stark, once Parker, who belonged nowhere, or at least so it seemed.

Still, he thought, as he cracked open a can of beer Emmy had tossed to him, one he'd accepted with a quiet smile, he could pretend. Better to be an imposter than to not have a place at all.

"It really bothers you," said Harry. "I can tell."

Peter's eyes were closed under his sunglasses. He even didn't have a guess as to what Harry was talking about.

They had been on the island for a couple of hours. Just long enough to ditch their bags in a resort room suite and stumble outside to the pool, where Peter and Harry found lounge chairs and the others found the diving board.

He ignored Harry and reached his hand out for the tall glass on the table between their two chairs. He sipped, through a straw, a drink that tasted both like a chocolate-banana milkshake and rum. Harry had called it an ugly monkey. He'd ordered one for each of them.

Peter didn't really care what it was called or what it tasted like. It was doing exactly what it was meant to be doing, keeping his buzz alive. He was hovering somewhere between drunk enough not to think so hard, but not drunk enough to be sick.

He wondered, idly, if this was the sort of drunk Tony had once referred to as the fun the kind. Tony would be proud. Tony was somewhere in Japan, somewhere stuck in some boring meeting, and he'd be proud Peter was living it up for the both of them.

That's what he told himself, anyway.

"The press and all those nonsense articles," said Harry, elaborating. "They really bother you."

"Hmmm," said Peter, too relaxed to even want to talk. "Are you a therapist now?"

"Might as well be."

Over in the pool, he heard Emmy and the others laughing and splashing each other, reminding Peter of the time he skipped out on swimming with friends in favor of trying to prove himself as Spider-Man. Yeah, Tony would be proud.

"Listen," said Harry. "They're always going to be talking about you now. If you don't want them putting out articles about your aunt, you have to do something to distract them from it. Get them talking about something different.

"Like this?"

"Dude. This is nothing. Not enough to make the tabloids at least. You'll need something a little bigger."

A house party in Iron Man's penthouse might have done it, Peter thought, mournfully, wishing now that they'd stuck around in New York, where being followed by cameras was getting just as common as breathing. Then again, maybe he didn't. The sun was warmer where they were. There was a light breeze and comfortable chairs and Peter didn't think he'd ever get up.

He did though, eventually, when they all decided they'd had enough of the pool and the sun, and headed back up to the suite, where the party continued.

Peter wasn't sure how long they were there. He was beginning to lose all concept of time, his world was getting fuzzier, with each and every drink, and his stomach felt queasy, like he was crossing over from the fun kind of drunk into the miserable kind.

Peter was laid out on the couch, head turned towards the ceiling, with an empty bottle of he didn't remember what hanging out of his hand. Music was playing, but it seemed to stop when the door to the suite flew open with a blast. Peter sat up slow, blinked. The smoke cleared, and after it did, Iron Man's armor became visible.

He stepped into the suite with an audible clank. Peter, and his new friends, froze in place, watching Iron Man watch them. Harry paused the music. It seemed like an hours before Tony let down his faceplate, revealing a tight jaw and narrow eyes that landed directly on Peter.

"You gotta be fucking kidding me," said Tony. His voice didn't sound very proud.

"H-hi Tony," said Peter.

"Oh hey, Pete, having fun?"

"Umm, yeah actually." He paused. He wasn't really having fun anymore. Fun left when Iron Man arrived. His eye trailed over a coffee table near him and spotting, for the first time, a bag of weed on the table. "That isn't mine."

Peter watched in horror as Tony surveyed the scene. His eyes went to the bag of weed, the empty bottles laying all about, to Harry Osborn, who still looked rather relaxed and bored by the entire situation, then finally back at Peter.

"I would have preferred you throwing a house party," Tony told him.

"You know me," said Peter, although he pleaded with himself to remain silent. "Above and beyond."

So, Tony was pissed.

Any trace of pride he might have had about Peter doing normal kid stuff instead of dangerous superhero stuff was overshadowed by his anger, made obvious by the way he pulled him up off the couch, the way his entire metal hand locked around his arm as he helped him towards the hole Iron Man blasted into the suite's wall, and by the way he shouted a threating promise to all Peter's new friends that he'd be calling their parents.

"It won't matter," said Peter, as Tony continued tugging him towards the elevator, and as he tried to ignore the way his stomach revolted and his head spun at the fast motion. "They're lost."

Tony made a confused face but didn't ask any questions, and for that, Peter was thankful. He didn't know he was capable of standing in elevator and talking at the same time. Not without losing whatever food he'd eaten that day. He couldn't remember, but he supposed he'd find out if it came back up before they reached the car Tony had called for them.

They were outside, standing on the sidewalk and about to get into the car, when Peter dropped to his knees and threw up all over the resort's front entrance. Tony's hand stayed on his shoulder until he finished, until he realized it was tacos and he'd never be eating those again.

"You done?"

All Peter could do was nod his head.

Tony helped him into the backseat of the car, and in a few seconds, joined him on the other side. Silence settled over the car as the driver pulled out from the resort's parking lot. Peter couldn't take it.

"'m sorry," he said.

Tony didn't look at him. He kept his hard gaze looking out the window and only grunted in response.

Peter let his head fall back against the leather seat. He was done for. His game was over, his lights were out. He shut his eyes, and wished he was somewhere else, anywhere else, than in the backseat with an angry Tony Stark still wearing his Iron Man armor.