You Found Me
Rhodey was in a hurry. He had two dozen things to do before he could leave, and less than an hour to do them in. He’d already packed his bags and knew Tony had taken those to the car along with several things they would need to service their suits. Tony was anxious to get to the airport, but he had things he had to prepare before they could leave as well.
The door to Tony’s lab opened and Steve came in, looking anxious himself. He should be, Rhodey thought, though he didn’t say it out loud. To be fair, there was no way Steve could have known about what was going on with Peter at home, but that was really his own fault. He’d made it clear to the kid early on that he wasn’t part of the team, and that he didn’t think much of Tony, and from that point forward Peter had made himself scarce whenever Steve was around.
“Did you need something?” Rhodey asked, fingers tapping away at a keyboard. Tony usually didn’t let anybody use his lab like this, but he had been in a rush the last two days to coordinate a search effort for Peter. The kid had been missing for a week, and it had taken them four days to figure out that he’d been sighted leaving the city. At least he wasn’t dead.
“I want to help… look for him,” Steve said. He looked like he was feeling awkward.
“Tony’s pretty sure Peter is headed for the West coast. He and I are heading to the airport in an hour.” He continued typing, trying to get things in order so he could get down to the parking garage. He had an update to the War Machine suit that needed to be implemented, and three forms he needed to finish filling out and send off via email so he could take an extended leave of absence to go and search for Peter. The coding update for the suit would have been better implemented by Tony, but Tony was busy and Rhodey was capable of doing it himself, even if it would take him longer. He wasn’t at Tony’s level of genius, but he’d still graduated MIT right alongside him.
“Great, I’ll round the team up.”
“The team?” Rhodey asked, not looking up from the holo screen he was working on.
“To go look for him on the West Coast.”
“The team is out Cap.”
“They are?”
Rhodey paused what he was working on for a few seconds, pulled up the map they’d been working off of, and threw it up to the larger holo screen against the glass wall separating the lab from the hallway. He pointed at it, and after Steve turned to look, Rhodey started typing again. Just a few more minutes and he’d be done with this update.
“Tony and I have the West Coast covered. Vision came back this morning from the mission he was on and he and Wanda headed south. They’re going down Interstate 95 just in case Peter went south towards Florida. They’re going to stop in the major cities and see if there’s been any sign of him. Clint and Nat left last night and are doing the same on the route towards the West Coast on Interstate 80. If you want to help, you can make sure he didn’t go up into New England. Pepper and Happy will be coordinating from here. We’re certain he’s left the tri-state area but they’re going to continue checking homeless shelters and hospitals, and keep up with his friends to see if he’s contacted them.”
Tony had even managed to rope agent Coulson into the search, citing the need to keep track of Spider Man and to make sure he didn’t start up in some other city where Tony couldn’t keep an eye on him. Coulson hadn’t bought that line for a second, but he had a soft spot for all Avengers (even unofficial 15 year old ones), and had agreed to help. Rhodey didn’t know what Coulson was contributing to the search, but SHIELD had offices across the country and agents all over the place. Sending out the word to agents to keep an eye out for Peter would be more than helpful. Searching an entire country for one kid felt like an overwhelming task, even with Tony’s technology and an entire team to help them. He could be anywhere.
“I’ve got New England then.”
“Great.” Rhodey wasn’t happy with Steve for a lot of reasons at the moment, but they couldn’t afford to brush off his offer to help. If by some miracle Steve was the one to find Peter, that would go a long way towards mending the bridge Steve had seemed intent on trying to burn for the last couple of months… or since Germany in any case.
“Word of advice?” Rhodey offered, and Steve turned away from the map up on the holo screen. There were already notations from everyone that was out, labeling towns and cities they had been through and what had been done there. Nat and Clint had worked their way through a city and several small towns along the highway in Pennsylvania, hacking into road cameras and security footage to see if they could spot Peter passing through or any signs of activity from Spider Man. Vision and Wanda were currently in New Jersey doing the same.
“Yeah?” Steve asked.
“If you find the kid, remember, he’s just a kid, and he’s been through a lot.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
Rhodey glanced up from his screen just long enough to see Steve give a nod, a sorry look on his face. He stared down at the floor, playing with something in his hands, though Rhodey’s view was blocked and he couldn’t see what.
“I didn’t, but I do now.”
Days before, when they’d just discovered that Peter was missing, Rhodey had still been in DC, but he’d heard everything from Tony in a frantic call later that night. Tony had gone to Peter’s apartment and demanded answers from May. She’d been reluctant to answer at first, but she ended up telling him everything that had happened that morning, including giving Peter a couple hundred dollars in cash and telling him to leave. That money was one of the reasons Tony thought Peter was headed out of the state. A $200 bus ticket would get Peter just about from New York City to the border of Wyoming. According to Tony, he had told Peter a lot of stories about California, including living in Malibu, and Peter had expressed an interest several times in visiting the West Coast someday. It was the only place he’d expressed interest in visiting. Tony had tried to convince Peter to plan a trip with him to Italy or various tropical islands, but Peter had never been interested in those places.
“Good,” Rhodey said.
“There’s something I don’t understand though.”
Rhodey hit enter on the keyboard and breathed a sigh of relief that the update to his suit was finally done. He still had 40 minutes left, and if he hurried with his forms he might have a few minutes left to throw some food in a bag so they could eat on the plane. He hadn’t had anything to eat since early that morning.
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know why Tony is doing this. With the kid I mean… I understand why he’s searching for him, but I don’t know how it got to this point. I uh… I just never saw him as the type to get involved in a teenager’s life like this.”
“You mean spending time with him?” Rhodey asked.
“Yeah.” Cap was still playing with something, and Rhodey realized now that it was his mask. He wasn’t suited up, he was just in everyday clothes, but for some reason he had his mask in his hands.
Rhodey wasn’t sure what to tell him at first. He’d been surprised to find out that Tony had become so attached to Peter too. Tony liked to keep everybody at arms length, and it was hard to move past that. It had taken Rhodey months to get Tony to warm up to him at MIT. The few people he let in, he kept close, but Rhodey had also wondered how Peter had worked his way through Tony’s barriers so quickly. After Germany and Siberia, Rhodey had it on good authority (from Pepper) that Tony had done his best to not get involved in Peter’s life, but that that hadn’t lasted long.
“Being an Avenger doesn’t end the moment you take the suit off,” is what Rhodey ended up telling him. It was something he himself firmly believed. He’d never discussed it with Tony, but he knew he believed it too. There was a reason Tony and Pepper ran more than a dozen charity organizations. “It’s not always about the big things… aliens and Hydra and world ending events. If you really knew Tony, you’d know that.”
Steve looked like he still didn’t understand, though Rhodey didn’t have a desire to explain it to him. Instead he swiped through a few web pages and threw up a list of charitable organizations connected to Tony and Pepper onto the large holo screen. Then he tapped out of the system and stood up to go find food, leaving Steve to mull over what had been said.
* * *
The sky was gray. It was always gray here, or at least that’s what it felt like to Peter. He stared up at the gray blanket of clouds that was always present, and then blinked as several cold raindrops fell from the sky and hit his face. He shivered, adjusted the worn backpack strap on his shoulder and put his head down as he walked down the broken sidewalk.
It was days like this that made Peter wish he hadn’t left his suit behind, because the suit had a heater in it. Mr. Stark had been good like that… always thinking about Peter’s needs and implementing new things into his suit. Without it, Peter was always cold, especially since it was November, and November in this part of the country apparently meant rain and wind followed by more rain.
As he thought about it, the clouds opened up, and the light sprinkling turned to a steady drizzle. He pulled his hood up over his head, though he knew it wouldn’t do much to help. It had been raining off and on all morning and his dark gray hoodie was damp. Everything was damp here. He hadn’t been properly warm in weeks… not since he’d stayed a couple nights at a homeless shelter and his clothes had had a chance to dry out. Now all of his damp clothes were wadded up in his backpack and smelled of mildew. He should really wash them soon, but he had a hard time justifying going to a laundromat and spending $5 to wash them when he only had $20 to his name.
Peter had spent May’s money right away on a bus ticket. That had taken him halfway to the West Coast, and then from there he’d walked and hitchhiked. Those were the early days when he’d still felt sad and desperate and hurt and angry about May and Derek. It had taken him two weeks to make his way cross country, and he’d spent the entire time feeling miserable. Not that he wasn’t miserable now, because he was. He was miserably cold and damp and uncomfortable, but he was here, and he was alive. He was also numb. You could only cry for so long before you ran out of tears and emotions, he thought.
The rain made him numb too in this world of gray. Mr. Stark had talked about California a lot, and about how it was always sunny and warm… a land of palm trees and beaches and opportunity. That had sounded great to Peter who had never been in a place like that. Once he’d made it to the West Coast though, he hadn’t made an effort to hitchhike south to California. He’d spent the last month and a half in Portland. Portland was a big city, nothing like New York, but there were a few skyscrapers here, and city life was familiar to Peter, and comfortable. He’d passed through small towns and smaller cities on his way across the states, and that had been interesting, but he’d decided fairly quickly that he didn’t want to live in a small town. He wanted to be in a big city where he could get lost in the crowd, and as far as he was concerned, he’d done that.
He shivered as he walked, feet splashing through puddles that reflected the gray sky above. The rain let up a little now that it had thoroughly soaked his hoodie and his hair and backpack. It was impossible to stay dry here and he had stopped trying a long time ago. That was another reason he’d decided not to go to one of the dozen laundromats in the small rundown neighborhood he’d been staying in for the last week. He could go and wash and dry his clothes and be dry for a couple hours, but as soon as he had to leave, all of his things would get wet again. What he needed was to find a dry place to stay the night. There were warehouses here, and he’d been looking for an abandoned one, but for the most part he ended up sleeping under overpasses and taking the little shelter they gave from the elements. He always found a spot for the night, but it was hard because there were a lot of homeless people here that were seeking shelter in the same places that Peter was.
Something he was surprised to find when he got to Portland was that there was a large population of homeless enhanced people. Enhanced people didn’t seem to hide on the West Coast like they did in New York, and he couldn’t figure out why. Keeping his identity as Spider Man had been so important to him back home. Here, he frequently encountered homeless people that had abilities and they didn’t care who knew. There was one old man Peter had stayed with because he could start a fire with his hands. That had been one of the rare nights Peter had been warm while he slept.
Maybe people didn’t hide their powers here because there weren’t many heroes and vigilantes with powers. New York was full of them. Aside from the Avengers and Spider Man there was Deadpool, Daredevil, and at least a dozen others Peter could think of right off the top of his head. And those were just the good guys. There were also dozens of enhanced people that used their abilities to rob banks, or in other criminal pursuits. That didn’t seem to be the case here, and Peter felt like life here was just… boring. Boring and gray and damp, but alive. That was all his life was now, just trying to stay alive. He had focused all of his efforts on just finding food and shelter after he’d made it here.
He thought that he hadn’t done half bad for himself. Every few days he’d found someone who would give him odd jobs so he could get $20 or $30 for food. He was strong (even though he always felt weak now that he wasn’t eating three meals a day), so he could do things like lift and carry wood or heavy bags of concrete or soil for people doing yardwork. A couple times he was hired to paint a shed. He mowed a few lawns, spread a pile of rocks for one old lady who was too old to re-landscape the front of her yard herself, and pulled weeds. That was another thing that was different from New York City: most of the neighborhoods here were full of houses rather than apartment blocks, and most people had a yard, even if it was a small one. That meant there was yard work to be done. Those odd jobs kept Peter afloat. He’d have to wait another year until he was old enough to get a job without parental consent. He’d learned that he had to be 16 in Oregon from other homeless teens he’d encountered. That would only be one hurdle to employment because at some point he’d have to figure out how to get a copy of his birth certificate and social security card too if he wanted to work. He had a while until he had to worry about that though. For now he’d just continue on as he was.
Peter turned up a walkway in the dingy neighborhood he was in and went to the front door of a house. He’d been out all morning trying to find work to do and hadn’t been having any luck. He knocked on the door and a minute later a man answered.
“Yeah?” he asked warily, eyes taking in Peter’s soaked hair and dingy clothes. Peter knew he looked pitiful, though that had sometimes worked out in his favor when people agreed to let him work or gave him food because they felt sorry for him.
“Do you have anything I could do for work? I can do yardwork or paint or clean.”
“In the rain?” the guy asked. He had a tiny front yard that was barely more than dirt with some patches of dead grass.
Peter stuffed his cold hands in the wet front pocket of his hoodie. “I can pull weeds. I can sweep your porch.”
The guy sighed. “I’m sorry. I don’t have anything for you to do right now. I don’t have any money either.” His eyes raked over Peter again. “I’ve got food though. You want something to eat?”
“Uh, yeah. Yes. Please. Are you sure you don’t want me to work for it?” His eyes roved around the dingy little covered porch. It needed to be painted and the rotting railing needed to be replaced, but the guy was right, there wasn’t a lot he could do when it was this wet and cold out.
“Just stay there. I’ll be right back.” He shut the door and Peter turned to look out at the neighborhood. There were no more houses on this street he could stop at. The next several lots were empty spaces filled with dirt, gravel and weeds. They were on the edge of a warehouse district. The next several streets were warehouses and workshops, and then the sprawling city picked up beyond that. Peter really loved being in the center of the city. Portland was busy and full of interesting museums, coffee shops, quirky stores and food trucks. He hadn’t spent too much time there though because he didn’t have any money to spend at those places.
The front door opened again and the man handed him a plastic grocery bag. “There you go. You live around here? Your mom send you out looking for work?”
“Uh, yeah, yup,” Peter lied. He held up the bag and said, “Thank you so much.”
“No problem. You’ll have better luck finding work in the summer.”
“Yeah, yeah. Uh, thanks again.”
The man nodded and shut the door. Peter walked down the few steps off the porch and continued on his way down the street towards the empty grass and gravel lots, looking through the bag. There was a box of granola bars, a box of cheese crackers, and three cans of soup. This was great. This would keep him going for several days at least. Maybe he’d go to a laundromat after all. He could warm up and eat and then stick his freshly laundered clothes in the plastic bag and then put them back in his backpack. They might actually stay dry that way.
“Whatcha got there?”
Peter looked up to see who was talking to him. There was a group of five boys that had rounded a corner from the next street and were coming towards him. He could tell by the clothes they wore and the way they looked that they were homeless just like he was. Several of them had ratty backpacks like he did, and one boy didn’t have a hoodie or a coat. His bare arms were slick with rain.
“Uh, that guy up there gave me some food,” Peter said, pointing behind him to the house he’d just left.
“Yeah? Think he’ll have any more?” one of the boys asked.
Peter shrugged. “I went all the way up and down this street asking for work. No one had any for me to do. He gave me this though.”
“You wanna share?” one of them asked. His hard tone made Peter pause. He tried to detect if there was danger, but like his waning strength, a lack of food and the constant cold from the numbing rain had numbed his spider sense. It came and went randomly.
Peter hadn’t had too much trouble with other homeless people so far though, so he tried to push his worry at the boy’s tone down. For the most part people here just wanted to be left alone, just like Peter, and went out of their way to leave others alone. He’d seen a few fights break out, but hadn’t taken part in any of them.
“Do you want some granola bars?” he asked. He’d rather keep everything to himself, but he was still Spider Man inside and hated to not help others if he had the ability to.
“Yeah, let’s have ‘em.”
Peter set the bag down and stooped down to open the box of granola bars to start handing them out but as soon as he did so his spider sense kicked in and flared red hot, sending panic through him. The boys had surrounded him and were on him before he could do anything about it.
Peter didn’t like to use his strength to fight off bullies because he hadn’t been able to before the spider bite, so why should he now? This was a matter of survival though, so Peter lashed out and punched the boy closest to him in the face.
“Damn! He hits hard!” the boy said after he stumbled back. “I think he’s enhanced!”
“So?” A pair of strong arms gripped him from behind and while he struggled, Peter couldn’t get free. This wasn’t a lack of strength on his part, Peter realized. Some of these boys (or maybe all of them) were enhanced like Peter was.
“Stop struggling,” the guy holding him said. “We just want your stuff.”
“No!”
“Zach grab his legs!”
Peter kicked out but another guy threw himself on top of his legs and held him down. His backpack was pulled off his shoulders and thrown to the one boy who had stayed back, and then two boys wrestled his damp hoodie over his head and pulled that away from him too.
While they hadn’t been trying to beat him up, the scuffle had left him aching, bruised and breathless. At some point he’d taken an elbow to the face and a knee to the ribs. His arms hurt from being held and so did his legs. Just as quickly as they’d fallen on him, they were gone, running down the street with his stuff.
Peter yelled out in frustration as he pulled himself up to sit on his hind end on the cracked sidewalk next to the empty lot. The boys were gone though, and Peter was left with just the clothes on his back (minus his hoodie). They’d taken the bag of food too.
Breaths heaving, Peter leaned forward, elbows on his knees and head hanging down. His entire body was shaking. He could feel that his back was scraped up from where his shirt had come up during the scuffle and his back had scraped the rough concrete. The longer he sat there, the more his body screamed at him that he was hurt. He didn’t mean for the tears to come, but he was surprised when they did. He hadn’t cried in over a month. He’d been too numb to cry. But now the hot salty tears were falling and he couldn’t stop them. He hadn’t expected to get ganged up on by a group of enhanced kids. It was like being in the 8th grade again and getting bullied in school, back when he was weak and asthmatic and had no way to protect himself.
“Holy shit, are you ok?”
Peter heaved another shaky breath, not looking up to see who was talking to him. If she was here to take things from him too, there was nothing left but the clothes on his back.
“I don’t have anything,” Peter cried. “I don’t have anything else for you to take.”
“No honey, geez. I don’t want anything from you. That was scary watching those guys jump you like that. They took everything didn’t they?”
Peter nodded and swiped his wet dirty hands across his eyes.
“Are you hurt? Do you have someone I can call?”
“I- I don’t,” Peter said.
“Are you homeless?”
He nodded.
“You want me to call the police?”
He finally looked up at her, eyes still watery. The rain had picked up again and water was dripping down into his face from his hair.
“No. No police.”
She sighed. “You don’t sound like you’re from around here. You a runaway? You kind of sound like you’re from New York.”
He shrugged. He couldn’t stop shivering because he was cold and wet.
“Honey, you sure you don’t have anyone you can call? I’d rather not call the police, but if you don’t have anyone else, they can help you. They can take you somewhere… a shelter or something.”
“My- I- I have someone I can call.”
She pulled out her phone and unlocked it before handing it down to him. With shaky fingers Peter dialed Mr. Stark’s number. Peter had memorized it right after Mr. Stark had given it to him after the Vulture incident. He’d thought often about calling him, especially on nights when he was shivering from cold, or his stomach was empty and he hadn’t eaten in days.
The phone started to ring, and Peter wondered what he would say to the man. He didn’t know. After the third ring Mr. Stark picked up, and said, “Hello?”
Peter supposed he didn’t have to know what to say because just hearing his voice after this long was enough to make the tears start afresh. He choked on a sob and gripped the cell phone tightly as he cried.
“Peter? Peter is that you?”
He didn’t answer, because he couldn’t. Hearing Mr. Stark’s voice just brought all of the sadness from what had happened in New York back to him in a rush of feelings that was too strong to handle after feeling numb for this long.
“Pete, where are you buddy? Just give me a location and I’ll come get you.”
“Here honey, hand me the phone.” The woman reached down and took it from him, and he let her, continuing to cry, warm tears feeling hot against his chilled face.
"Sir,” she said into the phone, “your son is here. Some enhanced kids jumped him and took all of his things." She paused for a second, listening to whatever Mr. Stark was saying on the other end of the line, and then said, “Portland- Oregon, yeah- how do you- ok, hold on.” She put the phone on speaker and held it out towards Peter so he could hear.
“Pete, hang tight, I’m coming to get you buddy. We’ve been looking for you for so long. Rhodey is up in Washington and I’m down south. One of us will be there as soon as we can. Just sit tight.”
When Peter didn’t answer, Mr. Stark asked, “Did he hear me?”
“Yeah, he heard you,” the woman said.
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
Peter didn’t know if she had ended the call or if he had, but she put the phone back in her pocket and crouched down next to him.
“I don’t know how he knew our exact location, but he wants you to stay here, otherwise I’d take you back to my house a few streets over.”
Peter nodded, sucking in deep breaths as he tried to calm down. After a few minutes, she said, “They must have already been in the city looking for you if your dad is only 20 minutes away.”
Peter didn’t correct her when she called him his dad. He wondered if Mr. Stark had when she’d said that to him on the phone.
The rain let up and stopped completely though it didn’t help Peter warm up any because he was already soaked. At least the woman had stayed mostly dry while she waited because she had a raincoat on.
Peter heard the repulsers of the Iron Man suit before she did. By the time she heard them and looked up into the sky with a frown on her face, trying to find the source of the sound, Iron Man was coming in fast to land in front of them.
“What- is that Iron Man?”
He didn’t answer because the suit landed right in front of them, and then opened up. With how fast Tony stumbled out of the suit it looked like the suit had landed and then spit him out.
“Peter, shit I- we’ve been looking all over for you.” He was crouched on the ground, knee getting wet on the wet sidewalk and had Peter pulled forward and into a hug before Peter knew what was happening. He was holding onto Peter almost as hard as Peter was gripping him, fists clutched in the back of Tony’s sweater, like he’d disappear if Peter let go. Peter didn’t try to stop the tears this time. He wouldn’t have been able to anyway.
“I needed you and you weren’t there,” he cried into Tony’s chest.
“I know. I’m here now buddy,” he said, tone soothing. “I’m right here. I’ve got you.”
They stayed like that for long moments, before Tony said, “God, you’re shaking. You’re soaking wet.” He pulled back from Peter and pulled his dark gray pullover off over his head and then said, “Come here.” He worked it down over Peter’s head and then helped Peter get it on. Neither cared that the woman that had stopped to help Peter was still standing there watching.
Tony reached forward to Peter’s chin and gently turned his face to the side, examining the scrape up the right side of his face, and then the fresh bruise on the left.
“Where are they?” Tony asked, voice hard and angry. “Where are the guys that did this?”
Peter answered by reaching for him again and Tony pulled him back into a hug. Peter felt bad that Tony would be cold now without his sweater, because it was chilly out but just tried to focus on the warmth he was getting from Tony’s body heat. “They were just cold and hungry,” Peter mumbled.
“It doesn’t matter, they shouldn’t have-”
“They’re like me… homeless.”
Tony pressed a kiss down into the top of Peter’s wet hair and said, “You’re not homeless. You’re coming home with me.”
Peter didn’t question that. A few moments later he heard the sound of repulsors again, and War Machine came in and landed next to them. He didn’t step out of his suit like Tony had, but his helmet retracted to reveal Rhodey.
“Thank God,” he said. “I wasn’t sure you really had him when you sent the message.”
“He’s freezing Rhodey. Let’s get a hotel room and get him warm and cleaned up.”
“Right.”
Tony stood up and then pulled Peter to his feet before pulling him back into a hug again. “Just waiting for a taxi FRIDAY ordered,” Tony said down into his hair again.
While they waited, Rhodey talked to the woman, asking her for details about what had happened and then taking her name and address. Peter heard him say something about a reward, but she was refusing to accept anything, and was asking about Peter and who he was, though Rhodey didn’t answer.
After a few minutes, a taxi pulled up and Tony took Peter and got inside. The plan was for Rhodey to go with the empty Iron Man suit and then meet them at a hotel later.
Peter didn’t wait for Tony once they were both buckled in in the back seat of the taxi and curled into his side. Tony wrapped his arm around him and they were silent as the taxi took them to an expensive looking hotel in downtown Portland.
Tony got them checked into a large suite and they rode up to the tenth floor in a glass elevator in silence. “Rhodey’s just securing the suits, then he’ll be here. We’ll head back tomorrow,” he said as Peter’s eyes roved the expensive furniture in the room. There was a large window and he went to look out of it. It looked out over the river and the city. The city looked so different from up here… so clean. It was an entirely different city than the one he’d experienced living on the fringes.
“Hey,” Tony said quietly, coming to stand beside him. He put a hand on Peter’s shoulder and looked down at him. “You want to take a hot shower to warm up? I’ll order food and it’ll be here when you get out.”
“Ok,” Peter said quietly. He didn’t have any clean clothes to change into, but Tony was right, at least he’d be clean and warm.
Peter didn’t want to leave Tony’s side, but he went into the bathroom anyway and closed and locked the door. He stared into the mirror at the fresh scrapes and bruises. His hair was wet and stringy and too long, and his face and neck were dirty.
The hot water stung the scrape across his back and face, but otherwise felt good. He hadn’t been this warm in a long time.
When Peter got out of the shower he found that Mr. Stark had come up with clothes somewhere and left them in the bathroom. It was just black sweatpants and a t-shirt, but it was better than putting his damp clothes from earlier back on. The clothes were too big for him, but he didn’t care. He also pulled Mr. Stark’s pullover back on over his head because it smelled like him and made Peter feel like he was being hugged.
When he came out of the bathroom, it was to find that Rhodey was there as well. He had a duffle bag with him and Peter realized he was probably wearing some of Rhodey’s clothes. Wherever Mr. Stark had come from when he’d come for Peter, he either didn’t have extra clothes with him or hadn’t gone back for them yet.
“Erm… thanks for the clothes.”
“No problem,” Rhodey said. Both men were staring at him as if looking for injuries. Peter knew he was right when Mr. Stark called him over to where he was sitting on a couch a moment later.
“Come here and let me see. Where are you hurt?”
“It’s- it’s not so bad,” Peter said, voice quiet, but Mr. Stark was holding out his hands towards him like he wanted a hug and Peter couldn’t resist that after being alone for the last two months. He walked over to him and stood in front of him. He lifted up the back of the t-shirt and Mr. Stark’s pullover to show them the big scrape across his back.
“This hasn’t healed at all,” he said. Peter knew it hadn’t. He was sure there were probably other previous injuries visible there too. His body couldn’t heal when he’d lost so much weight. Any food he did get went to just keeping him alive.
Mr. Stark examined Peter’s face again and a moment later there was a knock on the door. Rhodey opened it to reveal an employee delivering food. The smell of the hot food hit Peter full force and caused his stomach to grumble unhappily. He thought back to the boys from earlier and wondered if they’d been able to fill their stomach with the cans of soup, crackers and granola bars.
“Pete?” Tony asked, and Peter blinked and looked at him.
“Huh?”
Mr. Stark looked sad and Peter wondered if he’d been talking to him and he just hadn’t heard. “C’mon buddy. I ordered just about everything.” He motioned to the food he and Rhodey had set on the expensive looking glass coffee table and Peter sat down right up against Mr. Stark’s side and reached for a plate with a cheeseburger and fries.
“Thanks.”
Tony opened a can of soda and set it in front of him too, and then Rhodey pulled up a chair and he and Tony started to eat as well.
Peter finished off his burger and fries and before he could ask if he could have more, Tony had set a slice of pizza on his plate along with a bowl of sliced fruit and a piece of toast.
“When was the last time you ate?” Tony asked. His baggy pullover hid Peter’s thin frame and all the weight he’d lost, but Tony had already seen him on the street in just a t-shirt, and Rhodey and Tony had both seen his ribs when he’d lifted his shirt up to show them the scrape.
“Yesterday I guess,” he mumbled. “I had a big bag of food, but they took it.”
Tony clamped his mouth shut at that, and Peter tried to ignore his look of anger. He really didn’t want Tony to track down the group of boys that had taken his stuff.
A moment later, Tony wrapped his arm around Peter and left it there while Peter ate until his stomach was uncomfortably full. He knew from experience that this one big meal wouldn’t help his new bruises start to fade. He’d probably be stuck with them until they healed on their own or he put some weight back on.
He expected Tony and Rhodey to start asking him questions about where he’d been and why he’d left, but they didn’t. Instead Tony turned on a movie and they sat in silence watching it, Peter pressed against Tony’s side as it grew dark outside.
They ordered more food for dinner at six thirty and Peter ate again despite that he was tired and not feeling well, and then they decided to call it a night early. Rhodey disappeared to another room attached to the suite, and Tony pulled down the covers on one of the two large beds and told Peter that they’d be leaving early in the morning so he should try to sleep now.
Peter just stood there and stared at the empty bed though as Tony pulled down the covers on the other bed next to it and sat on the edge. When he realized Peter hadn’t moved to get in bed, Tony turned and looked at him. He looked as exhausted as Peter felt. He didn’t ask Peter why he wasn’t doing as he was told, he just looked at him for long moments. Then he said, “C’mon Underoos,” and turned and pulled back the covers on the other side of the bed.
Peter climbed into the bed next to Tony and after a moment said, “I didn’t know you were looking for me.”
“I started looking the moment I realized you were gone.”
“Are you turning me in to CPS?” Whenever Peter ran into other runaway kids on the streets and got a chance to stop and talk to them, this was usually one of their main concerns. A lot of kids lied and said they were 18, even if they didn’t look it. Peter had never been asked his age since he’d left New York, so he’d never had to lie about it.
“No, you’re coming back to the tower with me.”
“But… the Avengers-”
“Have all been out looking for you,” Tony finished
Peter stared at him. “Why would they do that?” he asked, voice barely above a whisper. “They hate me.”
“They don’t hate you. Clint, Nat and Wanda were concerned when you showed up bruised and in clothes you’d been wearing the day before. Apparently Nat and Clint had been trying to contact me all day to let me know something was going on with you, but I didn’t get the messages until I got back to the tower.”
Peter shook his head. That didn’t sound right. They’d all stared at him when he’d gone to the tower. He thought they’d all agreed with Steve that he should just leave.
“Th- the team… they’re more important than me. Because they’re the Avengers and the world needs them.”
“Did Cap say that to you?” Tony asked, angry.
He shook his head. “No- I just… I thought that’s the way it was.”
“I told you Peter… whatever you need, I’m here. You just have to let me help you. And for the record, I don’t care what the team wants or thinks. While they were off in Europe hiding out and running secret ops that were against the law, you were helping me in the lab and-” Tony paused, looked like he was thinking about whether he wanted to say whatever he had to say, and then looked at Peter with a look so sincere that it startled him. “Kid, what happened in Siberia with Steve and Bucky was messed up. I pretty much just wanted to lock myself away in the lab after that and never come out again. You didn’t let me.”
Peter wasn’t sure what exactly he was saying, but a moment later he finished with, “I’m never going to choose them over you. You’re my kid, all right?”
“But I don’t have… I don’t have May now. I’m just going to end up in foster care.”
Tony shook his head. “After you left I went to your apartment and talked to May. I threatened to have the police come and press charges for child abandonment and she agreed to sign over custody of you to me. You’re stuck with me now.”
Peter’s eyes welled up with tears and made his vision blurry. He scooted over towards where Tony was still sitting on the edge of the bed and let himself be pulled into a hug. “What about Miss Pepper?” he mumbled into Tony’s shirt.
“Pepper and Happy have been searching high and low for you too. I talked to her while you were in the shower. She can’t wait for us to get home, ok? She loves you. So do Happy and Rhodey.” Tony didn’t say he loved him, but Peter knew.
The next morning Rhodey came in at five thirty and found Tony and Peter asleep. Tony was under the covers snoring softly and Peter was sprawled across Tony and the bed, arms and legs stretched out like an octopus attempting to take over the entire space. His hair was a mess and he looked small swamped in Tony’s pullover and Rhodey’s clothes. Rhodey pulled out his phone and snapped a photo and sent it to both Pepper and Happy before waking the two of them up.
The three of them ate in silence and then went down to the lobby and to a waiting taxi. Peter wondered if they were going to go to the airport, but was surprised to find that they were headed out to an empty field where there was a black Quinjet waiting as the sun came up. Clint was waiting on the lowered ramp for them.
“We picked up your stuff early this morning from California,” Clint said to Tony as they came up the ramp. “And we’ve got both suits too.”
“Great,” Rhodey said.
“Couple more days and we would have found him,” Clint said with a nudge to Rhodey’s side as he passed. Clint hit the button to raise the ramp and close up the back of the Quinjet. “We were on our last stop in Idaho. We were headed towards Portland next.”
“Beat you to it,” Tony said. He still looked worn, but Peter noted that Tony looked less anxious than the day before as he gave Clint a small smile.
Peter waited until he saw where Tony was sitting and buckling in before he took a seat next to him and buckled in as well. Rhodey and Clint sat down on the other side of the wide aisle. Nat called to them from the front to be sure they were ready, and then the Quinjet lifted off.
Peter wanted to squirm under the assessing look Clint was giving him from across the aisle. It was the same one Tony and Rhodey had given him the day before. Clint took in the way the large clothes hung from his frame, his long messy hair, the bruises and scrapes, and the bags under his eyes that Peter knew were there. He’d been surviving, but that was all.
“You had us worried kid,” Clint said from across the aisle.
“M’sorry. I didn’t know anyone would come looking for me.”
“You’re one of us, of course we’d come for you.” Clint smiled at him and Peter’s face heated up. Tony leaned towards him slightly and Peter leaned into the warmth of his side. “Tony tell you yet? You’re coming back to the tower. You belong to us now.”
“Us?” Tony scoffed. “Forget it Katniss. This one’s mine. Get your own spider kid.” He wrapped both arms around Peter and pressed a kiss into Peter’s hair.
Mine, and home. Those were things Peter never thought he’d have again. “Told you,” Tony said softly, “whatever you need, I’m there.”