Chapter Text
June
group chat: 2 school 4 cool (11:39)
whiteboi: wish me luck guys im bout to take my drivers testttt
guyinthechair: ahhhhh good luck bro!!
myfriendscallmeMJ: don’t crash
guyinthechair: you just have to be as confident as possible
guyinthechair: like even if you’re running off the road you have to pretend its part of the plan
myfriendscallmeMJ: “remain calm, civilian, I am a trained assassin and that man was my target”
whiteboi: omg mj im not gonna run anyone over!
myfriendscallmeMJ: we hope
wakandanonsenseisthis: ha you americans are still driving your cars?? pfft
whiteboi: i hate all of you so much
guyinthechair: :’(
whiteboi: fine i don’t hate you ned but you’re on thin ice
- SY -
“I- I passed?”
The driving examiner adjusted his glasses, squinting at the clipboard resting on his lap as if searching earnestly for some error in his math that would prevent him from giving Peter his license, but eventually he nodded. “You did, congratulations, Peter.”
A weight lifted off Peter’s shoulders and he grinned. “Thank you, sir!”
“Yes, well,” the man blustered, waving off his gratitude and handing Peter the appropriate paperwork. He looked a little green at the gills.
Peter scrambled out onto the sidewalk, looking down the line of cars dropping off and picking up the teenagers taking their driver’s test. It didn’t take much effort to pick Happy’s town car out of the lineup. May and Happy were waiting nearby and Peter made a run for them, waving the papers in the air above his head as he hurtled toward them at a slightly inhuman speed to anyone paying attention.
“I passed!” he shouted, pulling back on his strength just enough so that he didn’t tackle May off her feet as he hugged her.
“I’m so proud of you, Peter!” May laughed, squeezing him back with all her might.
Happy’s hand clapped down on Peter’s shoulder. “It’s a miracle, kid.”
Peter pulled back from May’s embrace just long enough to scowl at Happy, but May dragged him back into her chest, rocking him back and forth. “You’re growing up too fast, Peter!” she bemoaned. “Next thing I know you’re going to be off at school and I’ll only hear from you when you need to figure out how to get a ketchup stain out of a white shirt!”
He let his aunt coddle him for a moment longer before he realized if he spent one more second with his face held hostage against her chest he might actually suffocate. He had to use a bit of his super strength, but he did manage to pry himself out of May’s grasp.
Happy took pity on him, and said, “Why don’t we go get burgers from that joint you like to celebrate?”
“Yeah!” Peter agreed readily. “But, we have to order something for Dad to take back. He’ll flip if he finds out we went to the Blazer without him and didn’t bring back a bacon cheeseburger.”
“So, is Peter going to drive?” May asked as she climbed into the passenger seat.
A weird croaking sound escaped Happy’s throat and his hand jerked, smacking against the mirror with a painful sounding thud. “That menace is not getting behind the wheel of my car,” he said quickly. “I just got it detailed!”
Peter would have taken offense, but he was grimacing too and added, “No way, the Blazer parking lot is a car accident waiting to happen!”
“Yeah, waiting for the kid to happen,” Happy stressed.
May put her hands up, glancing between the two of them with thinly concealed amusement. “Woah, just an idea, boys,” she said. “No need to get your panties in a twist.”
Peter crawled into the back, and Happy took his customary spot in the driver’s seat. Happy always drove Peter, even if he’d always complained about it good-naturedly. The thought of Peter driving Happy was too weird to comprehend. You just don’t mess with a good system.
They popped into the DMV to get Peter’s picture taken and deal with the paperwork before heading to the Blazer. The little burger joint was crowded, as was to be expected at lunchtime, but their favorite seat was open, and the hostess, Judy, waved them in with a welcoming smile.
“Hey, guys!” she said, not even bothering to give them menus. “No Tony today?”
“Boss had a meeting he couldn’t get out of,” Happy explained in a gruff tone that didn’t even phase the hostess.
She just nodded and said, “Your usual?”
“That would be lovely, thank you, Judy.” May smiled.
“And could you pack Dad’s order to go, please?” Peter requested.
“You got it!” Judy bustled off with a wink in his direction.
The three settled into a comfortable silence for a moment, and Peter pulled out his phone to check his texts. MJ, Ned, and Shuri were all offering him congratulations amidst some good-natured ribbing. With the road trip he, Ned, and MJ were taking coming up in July, he’d really needed to get his license.
“-isn’t that right, Peter?”
Peter snapped his head up. “Sorry, what was that, May?”
His aunt shook her head, smiling despite her exasperation. “I was telling Happy how Midtown celebrates the graduating class.”
“Oh, yeah,” Peter said. “We’ve got this, like, tradition, on the last day of classes. The seniors get out of morning classes and we can decorate a white shirt however we want, but usually people put their college logo on it and stuff, and then we get to wear them on the Senior Run.”
“What’s the Senior Run?” Happy asked, his nose wrinkled slightly like he already didn’t like whatever it was.
Peter laughed because Happy would hate the Senior Run. “We start at one end of the school and run through the hallways screaming while everyone else is in class and out onto the field where there will be food trucks and music and activies!”
“That sounds horrible,” Happy said decisively.
“Oh, hush, Harold, it’s great fun for the kids,” May chastised, lightly slapping him on the arm.
“We’re not kids, May!”
“Maybe we’ll take you seriously if you can say that without whining,” Happy told him.
And Peter rolled his eyes, but didn’t deny he’d been whining because upon mentally reviewing the interaction, maybe he had. Just a bit. Judy brought them their burgers, and the conversation moved on. Peter listened to Happy and May chat with a small smile.
He hadn’t seen May this type of relaxed since Ben. And maybe it should have hurt. Maybe it should have felt like May was replacing Ben, but it didn’t. It’d been weird at first. Really weird. But, as Peter watched Happy give May the extra pickle on his plate because it would make her happy despite the fact that Peter knew Happy loved pickles, he couldn’t help the warm feeling that spread throughout his chest.
They left forty minutes later. Happy held the door for May, clutching the bag with an extra burger and fries for Tony.
“We should go for lunch just the three of us more often,” Peter decided.
Happy jolted and glanced back at Peter with a rare flash of vulnerability reflected in his eyes. It occurred to Peter that maybe Happy had been nervous about Peter’s opinion of his relationship. They’d been dating openly in front of Peter since February, but they hadn’t really talked about it, about what it meant the more serious their relationship got.
“Yeah?” May asked softly, reaching out and squeezing Peter’s hand.
“Definitely,” he said.
- SY -
On the last day of classes the art room was overrun with students scrambling for art supplies with which to decorate their shirts. MJ had to glare down a couple of boys for rights to the last bin of markers while Ned and Peter guarded their table, but it was worth it. Their once white shirts were now a riot of colors and they were beautiful.
MJ, the only one of the three of them with a modicum of artistic talent, was carefully copying a number of sketches from her ‘distressed people’ art collection onto her shirt. She’d given the Harvard logo a miss and was relishing rendering her classmates at their low moments with too much glee to not be vaguely scary.
“That one is my favorite of yours,” Ned said, pointing to her original sketch of Flash looking like he’d been slapped with a fish from back in September when Peter’s identity had been all but outed on the field trip.
MJ nodded sagely. “That was truly a blessed moment,” she agreed.
“Pass me the red marker, Ned?” Peter asked, making grabby hands.
Ned flicked it over, and then returned to his own monstrosity. He and Peter were sticking to tradition (or mindlessly following the crowd if you asked MJ) and drawing representations of their favorite moments of the year to surround the MIT logo. Peter needed the red marker for the Iron Man armor he was drawing. Flying in it, even for five seconds, was still one of the coolest things to happen to him.
“What the heck is that, Leeds?” MJ demanded, pointing to the stick figures he was working on with intense concentration.
“It’s when we went skating with Shuri!” Ned said defensively. “See, those are our skates, and that’s Peter falling on his ass.”
“Hey!” Peter complained.
Ned just shrugged. “Sorry, bro, but it’s not every day Spider-Man loses his balance and falls on his ass like that. It needs to be commemorated.”
MJ nodded in agreement before she reached over with a black marker and drew an arrow very clearly labelling the stick figure on its butt as ‘Peter B. Parker-Stark falling on his ass 12/8/19’.
Peter spluttered. “We aren’t supposed to write any profanity on the shirts!” he protested.
She stared at him unblinkingly as she underlined the word ass twice with bold strokes. “Whoops.”
He stuck his tongue out at her because he was mature, but let it go otherwise. He finished the Iron Man armor and then scrounged in the box for a green marker. Ned had given him an idea and he wanted to draw the Christmas tree he’d decorated with the Avengers that year.
“Do you have an orange marker?”
Peter glanced up to see Flash standing in front of them, holding his own t-shirt. The Caltech logo dead center was only partially colored in.
“Yeah, here!” Ned said brightly, pushing the orange marker that had been by his elbow over towards Flash.
“Thanks, Ned,” Flash said with a nod and a smile before returning to his table.
The interaction was over in a second, but had Peter smiling down at his shirt as he colored in his Christmas tree. A lot had changed this year.
“Okay, seniors! Finish up what you’re working on! The Senior Run will start in ten minutes, don’t be late!” Mr. Harington called into the art room.
Peter hastily finished his Christmas scene, fondly remembering how the whole team had laid on the floor in the dark to watch the lights twinkle for a good twenty minutes. MJ and Ned put the finishing touches on their t-shirts too, and then they followed the streaming crowd of their classmates out of the art room and to the starting location.
The hallway was full of excited chattering, everyone complimenting each other’s shirts, and pulling out their phones for pre-run photos. Peter, Ned, and MJ managed to squeeze in for selfie, and the next thing Peter knew, Principal Morita was calling for their attention.
“On the count of three, you may commence running!” Morita said. “Remember, no pushing or shoving. One… Two… THREE!”
Morita had to leap out of the way and cover his ears, because as soon as he’d said three their entire class of 117 students was screaming like a pack of hyenas and thundering down the halls like the stampede that had killed Mufasa. Even with his headphones in to dampen the noise, Peter was blown away. Still, he was yelling too, so loud he knew his throat would be sore later.
The doors to every classroom were thrown open and the underclassman were piled up at the threshold, cheering and clapping, being almost as loud as the seniors. Their teachers were shouting out encouragements too, even if some of them were desperately covering their ears as they did so.
As Peter ran alongside his classmates and they passed all his old hang-out spots, the places where he’d laughed and stressed and lived, he realized this was good-bye. It was really good-bye. Part of him wanted to stop. Why were they running? It was all passing by too fast. His locker from freshman year was gone in a flash. The trophy case that held the championship trophies the AcaDec team had won was there and then gone in a blink.
He almost stumbled, but then Ned and MJ were there, each grabbing one of his hands. They pulled him along and Peter shook off his melancholy. Was he really leaving anything behind? The physical places, sure, but everything that made his time at Midtown special was coming with him to Massachusetts.
They burst out into daylight, somehow still screaming just as loud as they’d started. Neither Ned or MJ let go.
- SY -
MJ’s valedictorian speech had been short, but impactful. To be honest, Peter had been surprised she’d accepted doing one at all, let alone that she’d taken it as seriously as she had. When Peter had looked up at the podium while she’d spoken, he’d expected to see Pepper Potts reflected in her every movement. But MJ was her own person, and she’d captured him in a way entirely her own as she started, “I know that we all think we’re immortal…”
The applause when she’d finished had been raucous.
After that, Peter barely remembered walking across the stage. Barely remembered accepting his diploma and shaking Principal Morita’s hand. When he’d paused for his picture to be taken, though, he gotten a complete view of the crowd, and of his large cheering section.
The Avengers hadn’t even attempted to be discrete. They were there in all their glory, cheering and wolf-whistling. But no one was louder than his Dad and May. If they could have brought signs lit up with neon and covered in glitter declaring their pride for him, Peter was sure they would have. When Tony saw him looking, he grinned and flashed a peace sign.
They had to rent out an entire restaurant for dinner. There weren’t that many of them, but no culinary crew would have been able to handle cooking for a family full of enhanced metabolisms and the normal dinner rush on top of that.
Peter pulled at the collar of his dress shirt grumpily. He wasn’t sure who this formal farce was for. He would have been equally as graduated if they’d decided to eat at the Blazer in t-shirts and jeans. Still, it made his whole family happy to make this meal feel more special than any other, so he went along with it.
Besides, Tony had apparently bribed the restaurant owner to let Bear in, and watching his huge newfie lumber around in a black bowtie was worth suffocating in his own tie. Bear at least seemed to like the addition to his collar and trotted from table to table to receive love and attention with pride.
The sharp sound of a spoon clinking against a glass caught Peter’s attention, and he glanced to his left to see Tony standing up to make a speech. A mixture of excitement and trepidation, which had been the predominant combination of emotions he’d been experiencing all day, bubbled up in his stomach once again.
“Hello,” Tony said when he was certain everyone’s eyes were on him. “We all know why we’re gathered here today, and that’s to celebrate our Peter.”
A few cheers went up at the tables housing the Avengers. Peter felt the tips of his ears burn, but instead of sinking into his chair, he sat up straighter, not bothering to hide his small smile. Our Peter.
“I have a confession to make. I was going to begin my humble, little speech by saying ‘my son, Peter’.” Tony glanced at Peter with soft eyes, as if to convey that he’d never get tired of saying those words, before turning back to the rest of the room. “But then I realized I’d be doing him and all of you a disservice.
“Because Peter is not just my son. Or Pepper’s or May’s. He’s not just Ben’s or Richard’s or Mary’s- who would all be so proud of him if they could see him today- but he’s all of ours. Our son, nephew, cousin, friend. Our Peter. Who we will have to share with the world even more than we already are the older he gets. Here is a kid- man, that’s going to change the world. Who already has changed the world. Who I knew was going to change the world the second he had the audacity to web Tony Stark to his bedroom door.”
At that, Peter groaned audibly and put his head in his hands. Tony waited for the chuckles to die down before continuing. “But, in all seriousness, before we tuck into our meal, I just wanted to say how proud I am of Peter. And I wanted to say, that even getting a fraction of him is worth more than all the money in my bank account- which, by the way, is a sizable sum. So, I’d like for us now to all raise our glasses. To Peter!”
“To Peter!” the room chorused.
And Peter looked out at the room to all the people who’d come to celebrate him. More people than he ever could have imagined a few years ago. To May and Tony and Pepper. To Rhodey and Happy. To Steve and Bucky, Bruce and Thor and Loki, Natasha, Sam, Wanda. To the Wakandan Royal family, the Bartons and Langs and Harley. To wizards and gods and superheroes.
With his senses, he could hear all their hearts beating, all the people who he loved and was loved by in return. It almost knocked the breath of his lungs.
Everyone raised their glasses and then went to take a sip of their drinks. Out of the corner of his eye, Peter saw Pepper put her glass of red wine to her lips, and without thinking, his hand shot out and caught hers in a vice grip.
His mom startled, almost spilling her drink. “What’s wrong Peter?” she asked in concern.
Everyone had frozen and was staring at him. It took Peter’s brain a second to catch up with what his ears had heard, but when he realized, a wide grin split his features. “The heartbeats,” he said, which wasn’t much of an explanation. He pressed on, feeling his own heart rate pick up. “There’s one too many.”
“I don’t understand,” Pepper said, shaking her head.
“Peter…” came May’s cautious voice.
And Pepper was still staring at him in confusion, so he said, “Pregnant women shouldn’t drink alcohol, right? It’s bad for the baby.”
She gasped. Her hand flew to cover her stomach. To his left, something shattered, and then there was a thud. Peter didn’t have to turn to know Tony had dropped his glass before his knees had given out and he’d collapsed in the chair.
He saw Pepper swallow. “Are you sure?” she whispered.
Peter nodded. It was dead silent for a long moment.
And then, Rhodey’s voice rang out, “To Peter! And to Tony and Pepper’s second kid!”
The room erupted in cheers. A hand grabbed his, and Peter turned to see Tony gaping at him, mouth moving on silent words, before he was being pulled into a hug. It was brief, but Peter didn’t mind, because then Tony and Pepper were locked in an embrace, laughing and crying in pure joy.
Peter grinned. Yeah. Life was good. And it was only going to get better as his family grew.