It takes a long time, after Mr. Stark leaves, for Peter to find his way back to the warehouse. Not just because he's still shaking with adrenaline and disbelief—he is—but because he wants to make sure Mr. Stark sticks to his word and doesn't try to follow him. He wanders for a while, therefore, too jittery to concentrate on crime-fighting but trying nonetheless, and only when he is sure the hum of the Iron Man suit has faded into memory does he make his way back to his makeshift home.
Once there, Peter rips off the mask but doesn't take off the suit. He goes to the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and takes out the burner phone, turns it on for the first time in months. It takes a few tries with the ancient interface to figure out how to check how many minutes he has available—seriously, how did people in the early 2000s survive?—but once he does he immediately enters the phone number Mr. Stark gave him, written on a napkin ("Oh, we're doing prehistoric now?" Mr. Stark had said as he wrote it down), and sends a text:
Ready for pickup tmrrw at place we discussed. C u there?
There is a moment's pause, during which Peter holds his breath—he's still not totally convinced this afternoon wasn't a weird dream—but then a response pings through:
Got it.
It's a little short, but Mr. Stark's not asking who this is or telling Peter never to contact him again, so Peter counts it as a plus. He snaps the phone shut, changes quickly into jeans and a tatty jacket, then stuffs the phone in one pocket and the mask in the other.
Now to take care of a few things.
Mr. Delmar is first on his list. Peter is nervous—he's never taken a day off before—but when he tells Mr. Delmar he and his uncle are going out of town for a few days, Mr. Delmar just grins and waves him off.
"It's about time I saw you take a break, kiddo. Have fun, the shelves will be waiting for you when you get back."
Peter thanks him profusely then, on a last-minute whim, stops to buy a fifteen-dollar phone card and a couple of cheap plastic horses on his way out, and has to work furiously to cover the waver in his voice when Mr. Delmar gives them to him for free.
His job secure, his funds untouched, Peter heads to his second destination.
This one is a little more complicated, so he walks slowly, hands in his pockets, hood drawn up, trying to give night some time to fall before he ducks into an alley and pulls the mask on. It's only dusk by then, but it'll have to do; his face covered, Peter makes his way around the back of the apartment building, checks several times to make sure no one is watching, then scales the fire escape to the top floor. The window he's aiming for is cracked slightly: Peter can hear three voices coming from within—two girls and one man—so upon reaching the uppermost landing he mounts the wall, crawls around to the top of the window and hangs upside down so he can peer through it. It's a difficult angle: he can only see the impressions of the people in the room as they move around if he wants to stay high enough to remain unseen, but he can hear them, and after a few minutes the man and one of the girls walk out.
Cautiously, Peter drops back onto the fire escape.
Inside, sitting on the bed and playing quietly with one of her stuffed animals, Emma faces away from the window. Peter waits until the sounds of Lily and Skip making dinner fill the kitchen, and then he taps on the glass.
"Psst."
Emma turns right away, a small smile on her face, and clutches her stuffed rabbit to her chest as she tiptoes over to the window to open it.
"You aren't supposed to come tonight," she says.
"I know." Peter crouches down so he can rest his chin on the window sill, putting him at Emma's eye level. "But something happened and I had to come early. Is that okay?"
Emma shrugs one shoulder.
"Daddy's here tonight."
Peter suppresses the squeamish feeling that arises at the mention of Skip and forces a smile, even though Emma can't see him behind the mask.
"Is he being nice to you?"
"You always ask that."
"I always want to know."
She shrugs again. "Daddy's always nice to us."
"Well, that's good. Daddies should be nice, you know."
"I know." She hesitates. "But I still shouldn't tell him about you, right?"
This is the part of Peter's weekly visits he's still unsure about.
When he first came back to the apartment, about two weeks after he left it, he'd really had no intention of speaking to anyone. Not the girls, and definitely not Skip—hence the mask. Truthfully, if it was just a matter of comfort he never would have come at all: ten weeks gone and he still gets a sick, tight feeling in the pit of his stomach every time he gets close to what used to be his bedroom, still has to force all of his focus on making sure his hands don't shake whenever he catches a hint of Skip's voice or his cologne from the fire escape.
But these visits aren't about comfort. They're about the fact that no matter how hard he tried, those first couple of weeks, he couldn't get the girls' faces out of his head. Couldn't stop wondering what Skip had told them about his disappearance. Couldn't stop rolling over all of the what ifs crowding each other for space in his brain:
What if Skip was hurting them and hiding it?
What if CPS takes them because I ran away?
What if me being there was the only thing keeping them safe in the first place?
He'd really only intended, that first time, to peek in on them—to get a glimpse and reassure himself that they were fine, then carry on with setting up his own life as far away from the place as possible. Peter had even picked a night he knew Skip would be out of the house: Thursdays, when Bea helped the girls with their homework while Skip was volunteering with his foster parent group.
But his senses were off that first time, muddled by nerves and uneasiness and doubt, and so when Peter had peered through the window of what he assumed to be the girls' empty bedroom, Emma, alone with her books on the floor, had spotted him almost immediately.
If it had been Lily it would have been a different story. Peter had never known Lily to keep quiet about even the littlest things, and if she had been the one to spot him he would have had to run for it—and, probably, never come back. But Emma hadn't opened her mouth. She had just frowned slightly and stood up, to walk over and open the window just a crack.
"Are you a burglar?" she'd said.
Peter was taken aback. This was an unexpected bold streak, a side of Emma he'd only seen glimpses of, and then only after he'd known her for weeks. The fact that she approached him—dressed in his Spider-Man suit and creeping on her bedroom window, no less—as easily as she did was disconcerting on a number of levels, but Peter didn't have time to think about it in the moment.
"No," he said. "I'm a good guy."
Emma considered this, frowning, while Peter held his breath.
"Are you a superhero?"
Taken aback, Peter said, "Um, I guess so. How did you know?"
"The only good guys who wear masks are superheroes," she said, as though this was the most obvious thing in the world. "So what are you doing here?"
"I'm just… making sure everything is okay," Peter had said. "Is that okay with you?"
Emma nodded.
"So… is everything okay?"
Slowly, Emma shook her head. Peter's stomach had dropped into his feet, until Emma said, "Our brother ran away."
Relief. Relief, and—inspiration.
"Yeah," Peter had said, swallowing. "Yeah, I know. Actually—can you keep a secret?"
Emma nodded again.
"I know him. Your brother. Peter. You can't tell anyone, but he's the one who sent me. He wanted me to make sure you were okay."
"Is he okay?"
Peter nodded. "He's fine. He told me to tell you and Lily he misses you a lot. But you can't tell anyone I talked to you about him, okay? He needs—he just needs to be alone for a while, does that make sense?"
"I guess so."
"Does that—does that make you upset?"
"No," said Emma calmly. "Sometimes it's nice to be alone." She glanced over her shoulder at her toys, her books. "But you can come visit me if you want. I won't tell anyone."
And, if the fact that Peter hasn't been caught—or even spotted, so far as he can tell—in the proceeding weeks are any indication, Emma has been true to her word.
Because Emma is so good at keeping secrets, Peter has been coming back to the apartment once a week. He knows the girls are fine now: there is nothing at all, either in the spying he's done on his own or the conversations he's had with Emma, to indicate that Skip has turned his attentions to the girls in the wake of Peter's disappearance. Apparently, Skip was telling the truth about just one thing: it really was only Peter.
Still, Peter returns, faithfully, every Thursday evening. Just to be sure.
And, if he's honest with himself, he does it because seeing Emma—and Lily, from afar—makes him feel a little bit less lonely. They were his sisters for a while, after all. He still loves them, even if he can't tell them the truth.
It doesn't make him feel any better about asking Emma to lie, though. He knows he's not exactly setting a good example, showing up at her window in a mask, telling her to keep secrets from her dad and her sister. If it weren't for the fact that Spider-Man seems to be the exception to Emma's own rule (never trust anyone), he'd really have to reconsider coming here at all.
But for now, Peter allows himself this one thing.
"If that's okay," Peter says now. "I really appreciate you keeping my secret. Hey, I brought you something."
He pulls out the two flimsy horse figurines Mr. Delmar gave him, sets them on the windowsill. Emma picks one up, smiling in that faint, hesitant way she does when she's pleased but doesn't want to show it, and turns it over in her hands a few times.
"Those are from Peter," he says. "The other one is for your sister, but you can't tell her where you got it, okay? Our secret."
"Okay," says Emma. She looks up. "Where are you going?"
"Um," says Peter, "I met a new friend who needs my help. I'm just gonna be gone a couple of days."
"A friend like Peter?"
"Kinda."
"Okay," says Emma again. "You should tell Peter we miss him."
Peter's eyes begin to prickle, so he blinks furiously and waits for the sensation to recede before he speaks.
"Thanks Emma, I'll tell him. He misses you too. See you next week?"
"Sounds good. Can you do a handstand?"
That gets Peter smiling for real. He obliges, rising on two hands first, then one, then onto a single finger, eliciting a rare delighted laugh from Emma.
"Emma, dinner!"
At the sound of Skip's voice from the other room, Peter drops back into a crouch. Emma glances over her shoulder, shouts, "Coming, Daddy!" and turns back to Peter.
"Okay, have fun," she says. "See you later."
"You too Emma. Uh—" Halfway to leaping off the fire escape, Peter turns back. "You know you shouldn't take toys from strangers, right? Only—"
"Only superheroes," says Emma. "I know."
And, with a little wave, Emma leaves the room.
One last stop before he can head back to the warehouse, but Peter can't go right away: it's still just past dusk, and this one he can only go to under cover of night. His fullness from Mr. Stark's sandwich has long since dissipated, so he uses his would-be lunch money to buy a carton of pad thai and sits in a corner booth of the tiny restaurant, waiting for darkness and watching the news on the restaurant's tiny TV. There's something about a bomb at a peace summit—Peter is aware, sort of laterally, that there is a conflict surrounding the Avengers, but ever since he left his StarkPhone behind at Skip's, the news has felt as surreal and distant as a fairy tale. Nothing like trying to survive a New York winter on the streets to pull your focus away from the outside world. In fact, besides the muggings and robberies happening on street corners in Queens, Peter hasn't really kept up-to-date with any of the bad stuff happening beyond the top floor of his warehouse.
To be honest, not thinking about it has been kind of a relief. The fantasies that got him through the hot, heavy nights in the halfway house are distant memories now; the Avengers never came then, and they definitely never came after. The fact that when Iron Man finally did show up it was only after Peter was finally okay, finally able to take care of himself, is an irony not lost on Peter. The surreality of the day is intensified by the fact that he didn't really think of the Avengers as real anymore; just a distant, heat-hazed dream.
A dream that, tomorrow, he's flying to Germany to fight. Whatever the conflict surrounding them is, Peter is part of it now.
It occurs to Peter, as the news switches to a story about a twelve-year-old who won some singing competition before he can get the full gist of the bomb piece, that he probably should have pressed Mr. Stark for more information about what he was actually setting off to do. That Captain America had gone "bonkers" — Mr. Stark's word—sounded… suspicious at best, a little treasonous at worst (Peter loved Steve Rogers almost as much as he loved Iron Man, in the time before the fantasies of them were washed away by (bad things) Skip and the halfway house), and the confusing jumble about "thinking he was right but actually being wrong" that followed did very little to clarify.
But… and maybe Peter is foolish for thinking it… is it so bad if he doesn't really care? He should, he knows—global conflict and saving the world and all that—but right now, full of pad thai and nervous anticipation, Peter isn't thinking about the world. He's thinking of what it would have been like if a superhero had burst through the door on one of those nights when he and Felipe were lying in bed, exhausted but in too much pain to sleep.
He's thinking what it would be like if he could be that superhero.
Working with Iron Man means resources. Maybe not money, not in Peter's current circumstances, but recognition, at least. Not that he's going for fame: it would just be nice if little old ladies didn't try to beat him up for trying to help them cross the street, or stop the people who were actually mugging them. With a little pull behind his name, Spider-Man could start making a real difference. Bring some attention to the things no one is looking at, to the kids no one sees. Maybe even burst through a few doors of his own, without having to be afraid that the people behind those doors will call the cops, turn him in, send him back to Skip—like he is now.
And if he has to beat up Captain America to do that, well, that seems like a fair price to Peter.
Peter finishes his dinner, and heads back out into the night.
Mr. Delmar was wrong—there are still a couple weeks left until summer break. But by eight pm, Midtown High School is completely abandoned. The cleaning staff is gone, the doors locked, the hallways dark except for the low emergency lights on at intervals between the classrooms. At this time of night, the only person who's ever inside is Peter.
Tonight, he slips through the second-story chem lab window—left open at night to air out the fumes of the day's chemical mishaps—just as he always does. On a normal night, Peter would head straight for the gym: tonight, he makes a pit stop in the back of this very classroom. That he should still have access to the school's rather eclectic collection of chemicals is his good fortune: he's been "borrowing" the necessary ingredients for his webs the entire time he's been living on the streets.
It's not really stealing—Peter knows for a fact Skip had paid his tuition through the next semester, and since he's not actually attending anymore, a few lost chemicals can't add up to more than what he's already put in—right?
No time to worry too much about the morals of the thing: Mr. Stark had hinted that he might have some upgrades for Peter's suit—a possibility Peter is trying desperately not to get too excited about—but that he should come ready with plenty of webs. Peter is also trying not to get too big-headed about the fact that Mr. Stark couldn't replicate his formula without a sample to work off of, so he purses his lips to stop the little smile that has been tugging at them all afternoon and forces his concentration as he mixes a beaker of fluid at one of the chemistry countertops, then takes the vial down to the shop to use the compressor, dodging the security cameras—whose layout he has memorized by now—as he goes.
When he's finished with the fluid, Peter heads for the gym.
As with the girls, Peter didn't have any intention of coming back here at first. He's aware of the risk he takes, probably unnecessarily, by frequenting one of the few places where Peter Parker could be recognized. For a month he had even paid the ten-dollar dues at the YMCA so he could use their showers, and occasionally pass the time on the colder days by shooting hoops in their gym. But the Y had turned out to be mostly an exercise in pointlessness, and a waste of money: whenever Peter got close to the men's locker room he would start to feel shivery and weak; the thought of climbing into the shower, with nothing but a thin plastic curtain separating him from the rest of the gym-goers, made him want to vomit.
Filth, unfortunately, was also not an option. He'd spent a week foregoing bathing after his first attempt at the YMCA locker rooms, by the end of which the Spider-Man suit was so crusty with sweat and dirt and blood Peter couldn't even feel resentful when a gaggle of highschool girls called the cops on him for trying to return a dropped wallet. Homelessness might allow for some leeway when it comes to personal hygiene, but hero-ing is a different story.
He got the idea to try Midtown from those few weeks he spent here with Ned, back at the Arlingtons, back when Peter's idea of a bad day was when Mrs. Arlington would smack him for blocking the television. There's no Ned now, of course, and he can't come in the afternoon, lose himself amidst the students and their extracurriculars… and yet, the school remains a refuge. Maybe even more than the warehouse; big and warm and empty, Midtown might not feel like home , precisely, but it's something close. Like visiting a park or a museum he'd loved as a child; the magic might not be as strong as it once was, but the impression of it still lingers.
Peter showers. He scrubs the day's sweat off the mask in the sink, holds it under the hand dryers until it's ready to stuff back in his pocket. Spares himself just a glance in the mirror before he leaves.
The Peter he sees is not the Peter of three months ago. His hair is longer, limp curls spilling out in every direction, and his cheeks are a little hollower. He's not exactly thin —Peter's been thin before, and thin doesn't include layers of wiry muscle, courtesy of a radioactive spider bite—but he's definitely lost some baby fat since he left Skip's, and started watching his food intake more carefully. Small price to pay, though Peter's aware it's turned his face into a weird conundrum: he looks older and younger at the same time. More than once strangers—mostly women, many of them with young kids—have approached him on the street or at the library to ask if he's okay, then walked away frowning when Peter insists he's fine, like they can't decide if they should believe him.
It puts Peter on edge more than anything that happens when he's wearing the mask. Spider-Man's age never gets questioned. Spider-Man's abilities never get questioned. Spider-Man can stop a speeding car. Spider-Man gets recruited by Tony Stark to fight alongside the Avengers. Spider-Man is strong.
Peter Parker, on the other hand….
Peter blinks, tears his eyes away from the mirror. There's a reason he doesn't like to linger in the bathroom, even when he's alone. It seems like no matter how far he runs or how much time passes, the Peter from that last night at Skip's is always waiting for him in mirrors.
For good measure, Peter tugs the mask over his face as he heads back out into the hall.
He passes Ned's locker on the way out, just as he always does. Just as he always does, Peter hesitates, thinking about what would happen if he didn't just walk by this time. If he left a note. The temptation, tonight, is especially strong: what would Ned say if he knew Peter had just eaten lunch with Tony Stark?
Ned's imagined excitement gives Peter a flare of warmth in the pit of his stomach, but he quickly swallows it. Ned is in the past now. Ned is still better off without him. Maybe more so than ever.
Instead of a note, Peter raps his knuckles on the locker twice, and then he heads home.
"Are you freaking serious with this?"
Peter, who has been sitting awkwardly in his suit on the steps of the main branch of the New York Public Library for the past half hour, startles and scrambles to his feet. Happy Hogan, famous former bodyguard for Tony Stark, is leaning out the window of a town car, scowling at him.
"Uh," says Peter, "hi."
"I thought Tony was joking about the mask. Are you for real?"
Peter shrugs. He's blushing, but that's not new; he's been blushing since he arrived at the library this morning, an hour before he was supposed to be there, too giddy with excitement to sleep. The suit is great for crime fighting; lingering—not so much. He's been drawing stares from the moment he arrived.
Happy gives an exasperated sigh. "Fine. Whatever. Where's your stuff?"
Peter gestures to his person.
"Really? You do know Germany is another country, right? No pajamas? Not even a neck pillow?"
"Uh…"
Happy groans. "Just get in the car. Unbelievable."
"Mr. Stark just said—"
"Yeah, he's the unbelievable one. I swear, my life gets more like Loony Toons every day. What's with the library? Apparently I'm a chauffeur again, I could have picked you up at home."
"Just… seemed more convenient."
In truth, Peter picked the library because of its proximity to Columbia University. He knows how he looks under the mask, even without the reminder the glimpse in the mirror last night gave him. If Mr. Stark catches sight of him without the mask for any reason, Peter's best defense is a good cover story—he can't go too old (lord willing his voice will get deeper someday, but for now he'll work with what he has), but he figures college is a safe bet. He can drop a few hints, like the library, that he's an undergraduate, and hopefully in doing so throw off any suspicion about his real identity. It's actually kind of a perfect cover: pretending to be a college student also explains his erratic Spider-Man activities, which he probably couldn't pull off as either a high school student or an adult with a job.
Happy opens the back door of the town car, and Peter is surprised to find that it's empty, save for a minibar in the middle console. He swallows disappointment as he climbs inside, and Happy shuts the door behind him.
"Is Mr. Stark meeting us?" he asks as Happy climbs in front. "He said—"
"He didn't say anything," says Happy. "I'm the one you've been texting. Happy Hogan."
He sticks his hand through the divider and Peter shakes it once, lets go quickly.
"I'm, um, Spider-Man. Nice to meet you."
"Yeah, I'm definitely not calling you that. Tony's meeting us there. So. You all good, kid? Ready to go?"
Peter nods.
"Then let's get this over with," says Happy, and he veers off the curb and into New York City traffic.
"What is that? What are you saying?"
Peter jumps. Watching the city pass by from the window of what is by far the nicest car he's ever been in is different from anything Peter has ever experienced, having mostly taken the bus and the subway throughout his life; it's different even from web-slinging. The people roll by in faceless blurs, anonymous and innumerable.
He doesn't realize he's been mumbling to himself until Happy snaps at him.
"Are you narrating? Is that what's going on back there? Do you have some sort of recorder in that dumb mask thing? Because you know you can't tell anyone about this."
"I know," says Peter, the back of his neck hot. "I'm not recording. It's just, um, fun."
(Shut up, you idiot, or why don't you just rip the mask off and paint I'm fourteen on your forehead while you're at it?)
The appearance of the ghoul, who never leaves but is generally quieter these days, is unpleasant but not unexpected. Peter's chest has felt increasingly tighter the longer he's been in the car, the close quarters seeming to press in on him more and more the longer they drive. Talking to himself is a compensation mechanism. He does it when he's on patrol, too, and on the nights he can't sleep.
Still, he shuts up now.
It's a relief when Happy finally pulls onto the tarmac, though. Peter gets out of the car before Happy can make it around to the door, trying to convince himself that the way the tightness eases as soon as he's in the open air is just because they are out of the smog of Manhattan.
Irrational. He knows it is. (It wasn't last time.) But even though he knows this, the shakiness still prevents him from fully marveling at the private jet that is waiting for them on the asphalt, even as Happy ushers him aboard.
"Don't I have to go through security?" he says as he climbs the steps.
"Really? You think security would let you through looking like that? And I'm guessing you don't have a passport tucked into those sweatpants. Tony pulled some major strings to get you on our side, guy. All I'm saying is you'd better be worth it."
This, more than the deep breaths he is taking or the steady internal monologue that is coaxing the ghoul back into the shadows, gets Peter to pull it together.
You're Spider-Man, he reminds himself, even as he takes the seat in the corner of the plane, as far away from Happy as possible (Happy grunts at this and nods shortly, which Peter takes to mean he approves). And this time, you're going to prove it.