chapter three
Chapter 3
Peter had been with his dads now for eight years, and he couldn’t imagine living anywhere else now. The two didn’t always get along, especially in the beginning, Peter remembers walking in on several tense arguments, which had been set aside the minute he entered the room. Then it had made him nervous, like it was him that they were mad at, something that took him awhile to get past.
Peter sighed, he needed to get going, if he wasn’t home in time for dinner he would be grounded for a week. Since he had been allowed to start patrolling on his own a few weeks ago on his sixteenth birthday, he had been late for curfew more often than he had made it.
Shortly after coming to live with his dads, they had found out the modifications that HYDRA had made to his DNA, which included adding in radioactive spider DNA spliced in with Captain Americas and Tony Starks. This had given him some superpowers, and to help him control them he had trained with the Avengers since he was ten.
For his fourteenth birthday he had gotten the Spiderman suit, and had been allowed to go out and patrol with other Avengers, as long as it was in the city and he listened to what he was told. He had been grounded for a month when he had wandered away from Black Widow in pursuit of a purse snatcher and she hadn’t been able to find him for three hours when he swung into a lamp poll because he wasn’t watching where he was going.
Now most parents wouldn’t want their sixteen year old out there fighting supervillains or being shot at; but the way his dads saw it, If they forbade him from trying to be like them, he would go out and do it anyways and at least this way they knew that he was trained, and when to expect him home. It wasn’t like he was out all hours of the night and day looking for trouble. Part of the deal when he decided to be Spiderman, was that Spiderman would be no more if his grades started slipping.
Peter was currently a sophomore at Midtown High, and with his above average intelligence his classes were a walk in the park. He could have graduated around the time that he started living with Tony and Steve, but Steve had wanted him to socialize, make friends, and get the experience of going to school with normal kids. Tony had been all for enrolling him in MIT or any other college that he would have wanted to attend. That had been a huge fight between the two and ended with an all out yelling match.
Peter arrived at the tower, deciding that he wanted to enter through his bedroom window and not through the front door. Jarvis would alert his parents that he was home and on time for once. Opening the window with the password encoded lock, Peter dropped to the floor and started pulling his suit off and headed to the shower. He hadn’t had to do much today, but the suit tended to hold heat, something he enjoyed in the winter, but hated in the summer.
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Tony walked into the kitchen, knowing that it was dinner time and that Peter had just gotten home. Steve was already there and cooking something. Tony only cooked when Steve was on a mission, and then it was a takeout night. In the eight years since Steve had come to him with Peter, they had gotten closer. Really, how could they not with them having a child together and living together. Not saying that they didn’t argue or fight anymore, they did and some of them ended with Tony locking himself in his workshop for a few days to keep himself from throttling the larger blond man.
Seeing Steve facing the stove with his apron that Peter had gotten him a couple of years ago for Christmas, it said “Kiss the cook” on it, Tony thought about everything that they had been through. Before Steve had come back into his life with Peter, Tony had been all for forgetting that the great Captain America had ever existed, let alone been a onetime friend and teammate.
But after coming back that day with Peter, they had formed a makeshift family, neither man wanting to miss out on more of their only child’s life. Not saying that it had been easy, in the beginning Tony had been ready to just kick Steve out on his ass and keep Peter for himself, But realizing that Peter would most likely freak out, and not wanting to traumatize the kid more than he had already been, Tony knew that the good Captain would have to stay.
It hadn’t been long after that when Steve had broached the subject of letting the other rouges back on the team, which had been their first big fight. Wanting nothing less than to have Sgt. Barnes near his son, Tony had vehemently refused to allow the others back, knowing that with them would come the Winter Soldier.
It was actually Peter that had helped him to see reason, when the kid had had a nightmare the night after walking in on the two adults fighting. When Jarvis had alerted him to what was going on he had rushed to his son’s room and went to cuddle him close to protect him from his own mind, Peter had called out for Bucky, which had made Tony’s heart stop. Later Tony had asked Peter what his dream was about, to which the boy replied that it was a memory of his time with HYDRA, and after explaining the memory, that Bucky as the Winter Soldier had tried to help him, protect him from what HYDRA was trying to do to him, Tony had decided to let the rouges back on the team. Even Bucky Barnes, a man he thought he would never stop hating for the death of his parents, but could apparently forgive due to him trying to protect the son Tony hadn’t known he had.
With his mind occupied on the past, Tony didn’t notice Steve glance back at him where he was standing propped against the doorway. He also didn’t notice the appreciative once over the blond gave him either. However, the youngest member of the tower did, and got in his mind that he was going to try his hand at playing matchmaker, his dads deserved to be happy, and he was going to help them get there.