Title: Love & Misadventure (It Do Be Like That Sometimes)
Genre: Romance / Adventure
Rating: T
Pairing: Peter Parker x OC
Spoilers: MCU through Avengers Endgame and all of Spider-Man: Far From Home minus the end credits scene
Summary: Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.
Word Count: 2,270
Warnings: NaNo competitor

Disclaimer: Marvel and its characters do not belong to me. The summary is a quote from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.

A/N: The only reason I chose not to make the end credits scene cannon is because it didn't fit with the plan I had for this story.

Later, when he thinks back on their fight, he doesn't remember much of it. He remembers moments. The sting of emotion rasping in his throat. The glistening of tears in Callie's eyes. The heat of flames. What he remembers most of all, though, is the unclenching in his chest the moment she said, "I can try." That was all he ever really wanted from her anyway. Because Peter knew, like he knew that Tony was proud of him and like he knew the school science fair was rigged, he knew that if he could only get Callie to try, she would see the error of her ways. Bucky was proof of that wasn't he? I mean, Peter was pretty sure he'd killed JFK, but just last week he'd helped Peter with some Russian homework. People changed.

Callie would see how much good was in the world, how much good she herself could put into the world, if only she tried.

He knew that Samantha and Eric, her friends, would trust her change of heart implicitly and he knew that Ned would trust his own judgment about her. But the people of New York would be harder to convince, he knew that. But he'd seen Natasha turn from Soviet spy to a martyr for the galaxy. Bucky turn from World War II war criminal to cherished Avenger. He knew that, eventually, they would grow to care for her the way he had. That her true self, with its quiet strength and mind-blowing intelligence, would wow them and endear her to them. All she had to do was try. And all he had to do was convince her the struggle at the beginning was going to be worth the outcome at the end.

"Peter, I told you this wasn't going to work." Her voice is wavering, thick with emotion, as she rips off her mask and throws it in a crumbled heap to the floor.

He frowns sadly at her, taking off his own mask once he's safely inside his apartment. "I know, Callie – it's just – "

"No, you don't know!" She crumbles onto his bed in an exasperated heap, her arms crossed under her chin. "They hate me, Peter. And I don't blame them – I'm terrible."

"No! You're just… misunderstood!" He takes a seat at his desk, still facing her, trying to cheer her up.

She snorts. "Calculus is misunderstood, spider-boy. I stole from people, destroyed things, set things on fire. Face it – I'm terrible."

"I mean, the newspaper calls me a menace all the time and I don't give up."

"Peter, who the hell reads the newspaper anymore? Honestly?"

He blinked at her. Okay, she had him there. "Jameson is on the news, too."

She rolled her eyes at him. "Well until he makes a TikTok of you with devil horns and photoshopped to where it looks like you kicked a puppy that goes viral, then I think I have you beat." She sighed and they fell into silence for several long moments. "I just… I don't know what to do."

"What do you want to do? Do you want to be a criminal?"

"No!" She paused, lips pursed. "Setting things on fire is kind of fun though." She breaks into laughter – finally – when he throws a book at her. "But no, I never did. All I want is to go to MIT, get a degree, and come out with a degree that makes people take me seriously, and make the world a better place."

"Do you want to be a hero?"

"I – " She rolls over to stare at him, eyebrows crinkled with thought. Her tawny eyes are wide. "I… don't know. I didn't really think about that either. It just… seemed like a better option than the… well, then the villainy."

Peter feel's his stomach fall at the admission, but he had kind of expected that. He knew it was hard to hear people boo-ing you every time they saw you. He definitely went through phases where people seemed to listen to Jameson more than usually and suddenly he was hated and abhorred by everyone who saw him. Then the Avengers would kick some alien's ass and he'd be back to being a "friendly neighborhood Spider-Man" and teenagers would ask him to dance in their TikToks or give a shout out on their Insta story.

Callie hadn't yet gotten to see that side of New York. She was still Inferno – who stole books or broke car windows or burned gouges in the roads. They didn't care that she helped Peter foil a plot with some up-and-comer named Plot Twist (plot twist: he sucked). They didn't care that she helped Daredevil catch a group of human traffickers down by the docks last week. They didn't care that she was the reason a group of them had finally managed to take down Red Queen when Callie herself set a trap for her. They didn't care that sometimes when she took off her mask, Peter could see the tracks of tears she tried to hide, they didn't care at the way her hands trembled when the booed her. They didn't care.

"Some people – you and Captain America and Daredevil – you all do this because you love your city or your country and it isn't in you to do otherwise. Iron Man – " Peter flinched, " – I think he liked to be the center of attention. He wanted to be a hero because he wanted a new level of fame." A part of Peter wants to stand up for a man that was part mentor, part father, but she's probably right. That didn't make him any less of a hero because he wanted to be a hero. "But I just…" She shrugged. "I just needed money. Does that make me a terrible person?"

"Well… you wanted to do something good with the money so… no?"

She laughed. "Okay, I'm only sort of a terrible person, I'll take it. It's better than what people think of me now."

And Peter doesn't really have anything to say to that.

He does, however, come up with a plan in the middle of the night and it's only his Aunt May screaming at him to go back to bed when he scrambles out into the hall at 3 AM that keeps him from swinging right over to Stark Towers at that moment. He's a ball of restless energy until the first crack of light peeks through his window and then he's gone. He doesn't even bother with the door, just swings in through the upper balcony window. There's a beat of silence as Pepper, Steve, Bucky, and Natasha all turn to him, but then Peter is tackled to the ground by one of Stark Industries' home surveillance bots and all he can do is yelp in surprise.

"Stand down!" The bot slinks off of him at Pepper's voice.

Peter groans and struggles to his feet. Natasha is watching him with a raised brow, Steve is frozen with a spoonful of oatmeal halfway to his mouth, and Bucky is forcibly trying not to laugh. "Fucking ow." Steve looks visibly horrified at the expletive.

"Is there something we can help you with, Peter? I assume it's not a crisis since there are no explosions or screaming." Natasha, always right to the point.

"Uh, actually, I was wondering if Mrs. Potts could help me with something."

"I'm wondering when you'll start calling me Pepper like I asked, but let's hear it," she says, as she takes her seat after shooing the robot away with an exasperated look.

"Well, you know Callie – "

"The pyromaniac thief that you're trying to rehabilitate against our better judgment?"

Peter frowns at Natasha. "Yes, Russian spy, sitting next to the brainwashed Russian agent who assassinated a president, that's the one."

There's a pause. "Alright, you win this round, little spider."

"Thank you." He turns back to Pepper and continues. "- well she honestly doesn't really want to be a hero NOR – " he says loudly, holding up a hand to stave off what he's sure will be a slew of I told you so's from Natasha, "does she want to a criminal or a thief. She wants to go to MIT and she needs money and that was the only way to get it. But I thought if maybe you made a call and they looked at her research proposals they might offer her a place."

"Peter, I can't just get people into MIT. Why didn't they want her in the first place?"

"Well, her grades suck –" There's a wave of eye-rolling. "But only because she was focused on her research, here," he scrambles for the papers he'd brought, "I brought some to show you…"

She's taking them even as she's denying she can do anything. "Peter, I can't just-" Her eyes flicker down and she pauses, then lets the paper take her full attention. Bucky and Natasha, making no effort at all not to be nosy, stand and move to peer over her shoulder. "Well, this is actually fairly impressive." Her eyes flicker up to him. "She showed them this and they wouldn't accept her?"

"She said they were mad about a patent she had on it." Pepper snorted, her eyes still scanning the paperwork. "And they asked if she'd be willing to relinquish it to a male researcher since it seemed very technical for a female."

As he had hoped Pepper (and Natasha) both flare up like torches doused in gasoline. "What?!"

Peter and Bucky take a step back, Steve, frantically shoving oatmeal in his mouth, leans as far away as he can. "Yeah, I take it that's not what they're supposed to do?"

"No!" She seems overwrought. "Peter, this kind of research can change the world! Can you imagine every single automobile emitting no emissions? This could be applied to planes, trains, boats, military vehicles. It could be applied to any piece of machinery. It could almost completely wipe out carbon emissions within the next twenty years. This is… revolutionary, Peter."

"So… you'll call?"

"Hell yes I'll call! Stark Industries is known for the most up and coming high tech research out there. I want her here and if getting her into MIT is how I have to bribe her into my employ then I will!"

The next morning Peter is tackled again, this time as he leaves school. He groans as his robot-inflicted injuries roar to life at the harsh treatment. "Why God," he mumbles. "What did I do to deserve this?"

"Peter! You will never guess what happened!"

"Callie?" He cracks his eyes open to watch her scrambling off of him, her eyes as bright and her smile as wide as he had ever seen them. He had a pretty good idea what had happened, but he didn't want to spoil her fun. "What happened? What's wrong?"

"Wrong? Nothing's wrong, Peter MIT called me. MIT… called me! On the phone. Like they picked up and dialed my number on purpose to extend an invitation to join them in the fall! They said they're received the personal recommendation of Pepper Potts for my admission." She gapes at him. "A personal recommendation, Peter! How – how – "

"I showed her some of your research. I hope… I hope that was okay."

"She… she liked my research?"

"Yeah I think she might have used the word 'revolutionary,' but yeah." He shrugged, but he was smiling at her, pleased with her happiness. "She also kind of implied that it was a bribe in order to make sure you take a job exclusively with Stark Industries after you graduate, so… you know… be ready for that."

Her eyes are as wide as saucers. "Are you fucking kidding me?" He thinks she pissed at him for a moment, but then she hugs him tightly. He barely raises his arms to reciprocate before she pulls away. His arms feel empty. "That's… that's… awesome! Peter this is the best thing that's ever happened to me! I don't... I don't know how I could every thank you for this…"

Her eyes go all misty and he scrambles for something to say. "No, no, no – I wanted to!" He rubs a sheepish hand behind his head as he grins at her. "It's all part of being a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man."

Her eyes bore into his for a moment more and he fidgets under the gaze. "I wasn't a very good hero, Peter," she says finally, "and I know you really wanted me to be." She continues even when he would have interrupts. "But I promise I'm not going to fuck this up. I'm going to do my best and make the world a better place my own way… this way."

He smiles at her, even though his heart is breaking just a little that they'll never be a team again. "I don't doubt you at all, Callie."