Do not fear ladies and gents, for those wondering about the girl in the previous chapter, that was her one and only appearance. Anyway, on with the show!

Peter got home at around 3am. He completely forgot about all the security measures until Jarvis spoke.

"Good morning, sir." Jarvis said. "Windows locked and alarm engaged."

Peter grumbled a response, climbed out of his costume, and shoved any spider related objects back into the compartment he pulled them out of. Once that was all back in place he flopped onto his bed and was asleep before he even hit the pillow.

Peter had dealt with three bag snatchers, a pick pocket, two attempts to rob convenience stores and a few drunks attempting to swing a punch at a poor old man. For some reason, there were no guns, or at least real ones. The attempted robberies used fakes and only one bag snatcher had a weapon which was, incidentally, a small knife. Peter still loved teasing people about their choice in weapons.

Peter didn't sleep late that morning. He woke up around 8am feeling groggy and confused. It took him a moment to establish his surroundings and then even longer to get out of bed. He wasn't one for falling back to sleep. Peter got up, strolled to the bathroom and locked the door. He turned on the taps to run a bath and brushed his teeth. Once he was sure that they were clean enough and the bath was a decent height, he climbed in and allowed himself to sink into the tub. Only his nose was out of the water. It was so nice and relaxing just to lie there... but Peter knew he had to get up. It was the unfortunate fact of life. He just didn't think the others would like to greet him if he stank like alleyways, alcohol and sweat. Peter pulled himself up and began cleaning.

Within half an hour he was down in the kitchen with the others, the others being Pepper and Bruce. Apparently Tony was still in one of his labs. He had yet to leave.

"Good morning, Peter." Bruce greeted.

Peter mumbled something that sounded vaguely like hi. Bruce laughed.

"I thought you must be some strange teen to be up this early willingly but no, you're normal." Pepper said with a serious tone of voice yet a smile on her face.

Peter nodded, pretending his brain understood that long sentence this early in the morning. Peter then grabbed a bowl, milk and coco pops before plonking himself down on the table and focusing on his food. Once he was nearly done he looked up thoughtfully.

"Do either of you know what Steve does for work?" Peter asked. His brain was starting to function once again and all that he didn't question last night was flooding into his brain.

Pepper looked at Bruce and Bruce looked at Pepper. Should they tell him? Would Steve want Peter to know he worked for spies? Was he allowed to know?

"Well..." Bruce started. Just then Tony came in. He looked around and noticed the slightly awkward silence.

"Well, what's going on here?" He asked.

"I just wanted to know what Steve does." Peter stated. He may not have known these three for very long but he knew if anyone would tell him, it would be Tony.

"Steve works for the government. What he actually does is up to him to tell you." Tony shrugged. Pepper's eyes widened in surprise. Tony was being thoughtful?! Even Bruce was a little shocked. Maybe it was the lack of sleep.

"Okay." Peter said, trying not to sound too disappointed with the response. "Any idea when he'll be back?"

Tony paused for a second.

"We could ask Jarvis." Tony suggested.

"Already tried." Peter replied. Again, he was trying to hide his disappointment. For the worlds greatest heroes, they weren't very... hero-y.

"Well, I'll make a few calls to find out but otherwise, I have no clue." Tony stated before making his way to the nearest source of caffeine.

There was another silence.

"So," Pepper broke in, "What are you going to do about schooling?"

Peter looked up. He hadn't really thought about it.

"Um, well..." Peter stuttered, lost for words. Tony chuffed in the background.

"He doesn't need school! I'll teach him myself!" Tony announced. Bruce rolled his eyes and Pepper raised an eyebrow. Peter just looked around dumbfounded, unsure of how serious that comment was.

"Hey! Don't look at me like that, Pep." Tony cried "I'd be a great teacher."

"With your attention span, work hours and other commitments I have to disagree." Pepper said in a dry voice.

So he was being serious... and since when were these two talking. Peter was sure they were fighting last time he saw them together, then again, someone did say they got over things quick. Was it Steve or Bruce? Oh wait, they were talking again!

"... so little faith in me!" Tony complained.

"No, I have realistic faith." Pepper countered. Peter decided to butt in.

"Well, my old school isn't too far away. I was just expecting to go back there I guess, if that's alright." Peter interrupted.

Tony and Pepper turned, just realising their little argument had been defused.

"Oh, yeah, that's a great plan." Pepper announced after getting her bearings.

"So," Bruce said after another silent pause. "when will you go back."

Peter thought about it. He had already missed a week of work, he didn't want to miss any more.

"Tomorrow I guess. I'll figure out my route tonight and set an alarm." Peter suggested.

"Sounds good." Tony agreed. "But why don't I drive you?"

It was an honest suggestion from a man wanting to do a friends great grandson a favour but Peter still disliked the idea.

"Well, um..." he stumbled over the words. How do you say no to a lift from Tony Stark?

"Why don't we let Peter make his own way there tomorrow, see how it is in case he has to make the trip when you're unavailable and then we can go from there?" Pepper suggested after noticing Peter's discomfort. Tony just shrugged, not noticing any problem with that and focused on his freshly made coffee.

The rest of the day was uneventful. Peter watched Tony and Bruce in the labs, he dared not join in case he broke something. When he got excited, the spider power allowing him to stick to things got a bit out of hand. Right now, Peter would probably stick to non friction paint if given the equipment.

Pepper interrupted once to get some details from Peter so she could phone the school and arrange the change of address and contacts. His classmates would be informed of some of his situation so that they wouldn't tease him for missing school or whatever they might be planning. They would know about May's untimely death and that he now lived with a long lost relative which was true. He had been lost for about seventy years give or take.

Apparently Tony's phone call about when Steve would be back came to a blank. Peter wasn't really listening but he caught part of the conversation.

"But Nicky," it went. "the kid wants to know."

"..."

"No, I think I'm being reasonable."

"..."

"Oh come on, I did that, not Peter!"

"..."

"Fine, I won't hack in next time, I'll ask and then hack in."

"..."

"I just want an estimate for him."

After a few more minutes of what sounded like unrelated banter, Tony put down the phone.

"Well, sorry kiddo, the grumpy pirates not giving anything away." Tony huffed before walking out the room. Peter raised an eyebrow but decided to just drop it.

He went out as Spiderman a little earlier so that he wouldn't be back so late. Unfortunately, some villains weren't as thoughtful and decided to attempt a robbery with hostages at around midnight which lasted until one in the morning. On his way back he encountered several muggings, an attempted rape and a fight. He got back at four in the morning.

Peter's first Monday back at school was uneventful. He found a quick route using the bus and his skateboard and arrived with three minutes till the bell rang. People stared. Some were sympathetic, others were just stares, slightly unnerving stares. Peter ignored them and found Gwen whom he greeted and then departed from to attend lessons. They didn't have everything together so he would have to wait until lunch to talk to her.

Peter went around his teachers and asked for any work he could catch up on. Some, like his chemistry teacher who liked him, were kind and gave only the minimum. Others, like his English teacher piled him with books to analyse, essays to write and a few other documents which seemed like they weren't homework, rather, torture assignments for being absent during class. They couldn't have gone through all of this in one week!

When Peter got home he didn't look for the others, he went straight up to his and Steve's shared floor. Steve still wasn't back so Peter dumped his loaded bag on the settee and sat on the floor so that he could use the coffee table to write all his work on. There was an insane amount. Peter wanted to go out as Spiderman tonight but after the late night/morning last time and the insane amount of work, Peter went to bed early with the attitude of 'I'll do it tomorrow' hoping he would be more awake then.

Peter couldn't sleep with all the over due work and all the stuff he got that day. Maths questions buzzed around his head until his brain became merciful at around one in the morning.

This continued through Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Peter decided to say 'screw you' to work at around seven in the evening on all three nights and went out as Spiderman. Although, on Wednesday he gave up at five. There was lots of flying about, a gun trade and a few police who decided they didn't like him and so shot at him. Peter was finished by one in the morning on Tuesday and Wednesday and two on Thursday. On Thursday he didn't get to sleep until three due to having to sow up his suit because of a knife cut. Thankfully the wound was only a scratch and due to enhanced abilities, it should be gone by the morning but the suit wasn't so lucky. Peter woke an hour early on Friday because of an alarm sounding through Avengers Tower. Peter yawned as he watched the latest model of the iron man suit fly into the distance. Apparently Hulk wasn't needed this time. After the rude awakening Peter couldn't get back to sleep. He got up, did his usual routine and then went down for breakfast where Bruce was reading the morning paper. It was the science section. Once Peter had filled his body with enough caffeine to get him till lunch, Bruce and Peter talked about one of the topics. Was technology becoming to important in this day and age, could we live without it?

They both agreed that they could survive twenty four hours without tech. Steve would be able to too. Tony was a whole other situation.

School was boring but at least Flash wasn't being a pain. Gwen was interesting to talk with although, at the moment is was more of a Q&A session on what Tony and Bruce were like, their latest inventions and all things science. It was great having someone who could talk in the language of science and wouldn't blank at the term 'splitting atoms' or 'gamma radiation'.

Even Peter's kindest teachers decided to give him extra homework so that he hadn't missed out on too much the previous week. Peter was doing a terrible job at catching up. At least he had gotten through English! It was a great achievement for him.

Finally, on Friday night, Peter decided he couldn't go out. He had to get through this work or he'd never be done by Monday morning. Steve still hadn't come back and for some reason that was making Peter paranoid. As well as having the different ways to combat CO2 running through his brain, Peter started having questions like 'why hasn't he come back yet?', 'is he hurt?' ' does he not want to see me? Is it my fault he's gone?'.

All of these questions, combined with over working his brain, lack of sleep and lack of eating due to constantly working, it was understandable that Peter fell asleep over his history text book. It was focusing on different trends throughout the years, Peter was to out of it to understand a work of it yet he had kept reading until the words started dancing across the page and jumping around. Peter had blinked to focus himself. On the third blink his eyes didn't open. Peter was sat on the floor of his shared living room, books and papers surrounding him and a history book on the table.

And that is exactly how Steve found him at five in the morning. Steve had been on what was supposed to be a two day mission. It had started with a phone call from SHIELD on Saturday morning during his run. Apparently Fury just wanted him to come in, discuss an upcoming mission and then he'd prepare for whenever he had to leave. Fury didn't care about the hygiene so he was picked up from the closest road. He had arrived and been briefed on a terrorist group that somehow got their hands on very high-tech weapons which was concerning. Apparently Clint (Hawkeye) and Natasha (Black Widow) were already near where the mission would take place so they would be his back up and according to the latest intel that had come during his drive over, Steve didn't have a chance to go back home and grab anything. Anything and everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. One of the crew he was flying out with had switched sides due to a hefty sum of money. This had caused Steve to have to jump out of the plane earlier than planned. It took him over a day to get to the actual designated drop point. He had lost his communicator so he was practically stranded with no way of calling anyone. Along with that, he noticed that he had forgotten to tell Peter he was leaving. He wasn't used to having someone around who would probably want to know if he was going away.

Once he got to the drop point he was ambushed by a rivalling terrorist group who wanted the other groups weapons. The mission had gotten so out of hand, somehow he had got in touch with Clint and Natasha so they came to help out. Natasha had finally asked for more help on the sixth day. Tony was sent over to help. A highly weaponised gang joined in the fight and it was a blood bath!

Finally, somehow, they won! It was Friday evening in America when they finished and they got in a quinjet and flew back to base to meet Fury. They arrived at a ridiculous time in the morning so the briefing was quite quick. Natasha and Clint agreed to come to the tower and Steve tried to find out about how Peter had been as inconspicuously as possible. He didn't want to look too desperate to find out but Tony's crap-eating grin told Steve that he failed. Apparently Peter had a lot of work to catch up on and was quite tired. Nothing eventful. He told Steve all he remembered while in his tired condition. After that, they had ended up at the tower and here Steve stood, staring at Peter's sleeping form. There was something in his face that reminded Steve of Peggy. That made him smile slightly.

He looked over at the still opened lift and saw Natasha and Clint looking out curiously. They were wondering what he was looking at and smiling at. Steve waved them off with a good night and waited for the doors to shut before deciding what to do. In the end, he lifted Peter's light body (a bit too light) towards the boy's room and tucked him in to bed. Once he was sure that Peter wasn't going to vanish from his bed, Steve went back to the living room and moved a few papers to clear the place up a bit. He didn't want to disrupt them too much in case Peter had them in a particular order.

Finally, after a long, soaking shower, Steve climbed into his own bed. Normally he didn't like his bed because it was too comfortable. Tonight/morning he didn't care. He was asleep very quickly.

Peter slept in until around eight in the morning before waking up and thinking that something was very odd. He wasn't sure what but it was incredibly weird.

Peter looked around the room, trying to decide what was causing his dead morning brain to go ballistic when it was hardly awake. That was it! He was in his room! Peter thought back to the night before and realised that he didn't remember getting into bed.

"Jarvis." Peter called.

"Yes, sir." the voice responded.

"How did I get into bed?" Peter questioned.

"Mister Rogers carried you." the AI answered.

Peter took a second to understand who Jarvis was talking about. He had only seen Steve for one day before the man had disappeared. Now he was back! He hadn't abandoned Peter! So Peter could spend the weekend getting to know the man, just like Pepper suggested.

Peter shot out of bed to do his morning needs so that he would be wide awake when Steve woke, unless the man wasn't awake already, then Peter would just have to get ready quickly!

Peter stepped out of his room to go to the bathroom when he noticed his homework strewn across the floor. He cringed. There would be no getting to know anyone until all that work was done!

Peter used the bathroom, less energetic then he had been two minutes ago, and did his morning business. Peter then went to the floor which had been his seat for the past week and picked off where he left off. Now he was actually awake, his history was pretty easy. He had to answer a few questions, draw a diagram and was finished in twenty minutes. He looked at the mountain of homework peaking out of his bag and surrounding him on the floor. It looked endless! So, Peter stood up and started organising it. Anything that was done or he didn't need for work was put to the left and the work he had to do was put to the right. Once that was sorted it didn't look so bad. Biology was alright, it took him about forty five minutes and that removed a large textbook from the pile of work in the to do section.

Peter trudged on through, ignoring the stomach pains begging for food and continued to write. At ten o'clock there was movement coming from Steve's room but Peter was too focused to notice. The door opened and Peter kept scribbling away. Steve walked over. He had his pyjama bottoms on but hadn't slept with a shirt so he would have felt slightly cold if not for his enhanced abilities.

"Please tell me that isn't the pile of work you have to do." Steve said. Peter jumped into the air, knocking over the tower of books and paper to his left.

Once he got over the initial shock he looked over at Steve.

"A little warning would be nice, I'm not accustomed to jumping out of my skin this early in the morning!" Peter said, terror still showing in his voice. Steve cracked a smile and raised his hands in a sign of defence.

"I'm sorry." he apologised. "Good morning."

Peter just nodded in response before sliding back down to correct his fallen paper/book tower. Steve knelt down to help.

"You still haven't answered my question." Steve acknowledged. Peter looked up at a smiling Steve. He realised the man was teasing him.

"Thankfully, this is the completed tower." Peter replied in relief. Steve looked the tower up and down whistling as a sign of approval. "Trust me. If I still had this much to do I think I'd rather jump out the window."

Peter said it in a light tone with a look of relief so Steve just laughed.

"I hear you've been working all week." Steve mentioned. The both sat down; Peter sat on the floor where he had previously sat and Steve sat on a sofa facing him.

"Yeah, I think the teachers just decided to give me extra homework and catch up work because they either hate me or they're jealous of my skills." Peter joked. He was too tired and hungry to realise that he was having banter with Captain America (this whole thing still made him star struck to think about). Steve was incredibly happy that Peter seemed to have opened up since they had last seen each other.

"And what skills might they be?" Steve asked with amusement shining in his eyes.

"I'm not too sure..." Peter admitted jokily. "But I'm sure they're there, somewhere. And people are jealous."

Steve laughed and Peter woke from his hunger and tiredness stupor. He had made Captain America full out laugh. Captain America! Peter turned serious. He didn't know the captain very well but he wanted to, he was family after all. That thought made him upset, as amazing as this man was supposed to be, where had he been during the last week? Why had he left Peter without even a note? Okay, they weren't best buds or anything but still, if you agree to be someone's guardian you don't just dump them, do you?

"Where were you?" Peter asked seriously. Steve stopped grinning at looked at the boy. He saw real concern in the teens face as well as a hint of fear in his eyes. Steve guessed that Peter feared he had been forgotten. And in truth, he had been at the beginning.

"I was working." Steve said basically. He would elaborate but he might as well set the first layer down.

"I was told that part." Peter said blankly. Steve could see that that was the only part Peter knew about.

"I got called away during my run. I was to leave immediately to confront terrorist and with all the hustle and bustle I just forgot my first duty." Steve responded honestly.

"What's that?" Peter asked quietly, watching Steve intently.

"I'm your guardian now, Peter, my first duty is to you." Steve announced. "I'm sorry that I've already failed that, I'll do better next time."

Even though that was a very childish and soppy thing to say, they both felt better, Steve for admitting that he wanted to do right by Peter and put effort in to make it work and Peter because he needed to hear that. He needed to hear that Steve cared. Though neither of them would admit to the strong implications those two sentences meant to themselves.

Steve started telling Peter about his job with SHIELD and how it was them who tracked Peter down. He talked about the mission he just went on, leaving all the gruesome parts out and exaggerating other parts for Peter's enjoyment. Peter was a good listener and thoroughly enjoyed listening. After about two hours of mostly Steve talking and Peter listening Tony's voice came over the speakers.

"I hear you two are up." Tony's voice proclaimed.

"And?" Steve responded loudly for the microphones to pick up.

"And, it's nearly lunch. You two good with ordering pizza?" Tony asked. Steve looked at Peter for confirmation and the teen grinned and nodded. Just then, Peter's stomach gave a loud growl causing Steve to laugh.

"Yeah, pizza sounds good." Steve announced.

Tony mumbling came over the speakers.

"He was laughing. How the hell did the kid get him laughing?" The voice mumbled before cutting off.

"Right, I'm going to use the bathroom then we'll head down together. Sound good?" Steve asked.

"Yeah," Peter replied turning back to the table. "take your time. I still have about ten minutes of homework to get through before I'm free."

Steve smiled as he walked away. He didn't know Peter very well but if this morning and the Friday they had first met were anything to go by, he wanted to know a lot more about him. What he didn't know was that Peter was thinking exactly the same thing.

Did the Steve and Peter scene live up to expectations. Please tell me what you think! Was it crap, throw it in the bin, good or decent?

Also a massive thanks to those who reviewed so quickly! And look how many favourites there are and followers! That is an impressive amount and I thank all of you, even guest who's statistics aren't there, your support and actual want for this story is what makes there be updates. If you don't want it, it will not come! So thank you!