Lights Will Guide You Home (Ch. 1)
Story: AU in which Peter Parker, 16, is a homeless vigilante just trying to do his thing in Queens. Tony Stark is a rich superhero who flies onto the scene. Eventual IronDad will ensue.
A/N: Title from Coldplay’s “Fix You.” Sorry if this AU has been done like 10,000 times and if that song has been used like 15,000. Here’s another.
WARNINGS: Guns, gun violence, robbery, cussing, verbally abusive language
- - - - - - - - - -
It’s only midnight, but Peter’s already feeling the weight of exhaustion creeping into his bones. He stands on the Queens rooftop looking out over the city; the fading yellow streetlights give him a strange kind of warmth in his stomach, a stark contrast to the burn of hunger that usually lingers there. He sighs and leans his head against the post next to him; he pulls up his red ski mask above his nose and inhales deeply, allowing his eyes to slide closed, allowing his ears to absorb the familiar sounds of the city, unhindered as he just exists for a moment.
For a moment he feels like a normal person. Not a vigilante. Not a homeless teenager. Not a crime fighter. Not even a superhero, if he were to be so bold with such a title. For a moment he is just a human being, and that is all he could ask for after four straight nights packed full of activity. Nobody needs saving. Nobody’s chasing him down. Nobody’s crying, “Spider-Man! Help me!” For once Peter Parker can just exist, and for once that’s enough. It doesn’t feel like he has to earn his existence, like he owes the universe anything for allowing him to live when everything he loves has been stolen away from him.
But the moment doesn’t last. It never does.
Peter opens his eyes, blinking once before pulling his mask over his face. He crouches, carefully moving toward the edge of the building, and quiets his breathing as much as is possible, listening intently for what would follow the sound that he thinks is the tell-tale clicking of a lock-pick's handiwork.
There it is. The rattle of a doorknob, the shuffle of feet.
A break-in in his typical territory. These guys are getting bold.
Peter positions himself at the edge of the building, peering over but staying as inconspicuous as possible; they’re just a few buildings over in a store Peter has frequented. Had frequented with his Uncle Ben. Their last visit was a little over a year ago...before-
Peter snaps to attention when he hears the cash register shaking, the intruders trying to break it open with brute force. He can’t see them anymore from this building, so he tiptoes over the back edge and scales the back wall as quickly and quietly as he can. He comes around the left corner and listens, hearing nothing, and he comes out to the side, keeping to the shadows just in case. His tinted swim goggles, red ski mask and fingerless gloves, and blue sweatshirt and sweatpants aren’t exactly stealth material.
He can see the robbers more clearly now; one is carefully extracting something from what must be his back pocket, not paying attention to the other who has pulled a gun and is aiming at the cash register. A boom sounds through the open doorway, muted by the windows, and blinding emergency lights snap on. A screeching alarm blares throughout the shop and leaks out into the street.
“Are you shitting me?!” A rough voice cuts through the din. “We pick the lock and creep around with no detection, and you just had to-”
“I’m...I’m sorry, Man-...uh, maaan.” The second voice is deeper than the first but timid, and Peter can hear two pairs of lungs breathing: one deep and heavy, the other shallow and short. “I just-You were struggling with the drawer, so I thought-”
“To shoot the fucking thing? With your piece of shit gun? Are you serious? You don’t have a silencer!” The owner of the first voice opens what Peter now sees is a tan bag and begins to shovel in money from the register.
“Wh-what are you doing?! Shouldn’t we go?”
“We might as well get what we can and scram. The cops’ll take a few minutes anyway.”
“I was-Are you sure you could’ve gotten it open?”
“If can pick a fucking door lock, I sure as hell can pick a damn cash register lock!”
“I just-I didn’t think-”
“You’re right, you didn’t think!”
“Well, I mean it didn’t seem like his security was that good.”
“This is at least a semi-successful sandwich shop, idiot. Of course he has decent security, especially when you go around shooting shit. Why the hell do you think I’ve been staking the place out for months?”
“I’m-”
“Don’t say you’re sorry. Don’t you fucking dare.” The leader has finished stuffing his burlap sack, and he throws it at the obvious younger of the pair. “I swear to god, if we get caught-”
“What? You’ll pee your pants?” Peter winced. Come on, Parker, are you five?
“S-Spider-”
“Ah, yes, the Spider-Man.” The leader steps toward Peter with carefully measured steps, eyes gleaming beneath his own black ski mask. “The local superhero, here to save the-” He suddenly tries to bolt out the door, but Peter’s enhanced reflexes are too quick, and he easily stops him with a firm arm to the stomach.
“You’re not goin’ anywhere. You didn’t even finish your-”
“Stop!” The younger voice is quivering, and Peter turns toward it, absorbing the gun barrel pointed in his direction. “Just-uh, just stand down, Spider-Man. Let us go, and you get to live!”
“My god, you idiot; you don’t announce you’re gonna shoot a guy! You just do it!”
“But that’s unsporting-”
“This isn’t a sport, asscrack! This is life or death, here! Shoot him!”
Peter’s hands are spread, palms facing each of the individuals in turn as he breathes, trying to sort out the best scenario for this situation. The one who has to be a teenager is too far for him to disarm without risking getting shot, and he can’t let the man on the floor get away either-
“Hands where I can see them.”
Peter glances down, and his blood runs cold. The leader has taken advantage of Peter’s predicament and drawn his own weapon, aiming at Peter’s head with a wicked gleam in his eye.
“You’re surrounded, Spider-Man. No hope of escape.” The man on the floor lets out a rough chuckle just the first pitches of police sirens peel through the air outside.
“Shit. You really kept us going this long, didn’t you? What a sneaky trick, but now-”
“Freeze!-” A plainclosthesman is in the doorway, his gun drawn. “Drop your weapons-”
“NO, YOU DROP YOUR WEAPON, OR SPIDER-MAN GETS IT!” The leader screams from his spot on the floor, shaking his gun in Peter’s direction. “WHERE WILL YOU PIGS BE WITHOUT YOUR SUPER-POWERED DOG TO DO YOUR WORK FOR YOU?”
“PUT IT DOWN, YOU PIECE OF SHIT-”
The cop and the robber go back and forth, spewing insults and threats as the sirens grow louder, but Peter tunes them out, facing the one chance he has left.
“Hey, dude. You don’t want to do this.” Peter inches forward, but freezes when the kid tightens his hold on the gun. “Please. I....I know what it’s like to struggle, okay? I’ve been there.”
“You have no idea what my life is like. Don’t try to relate to me.” The kid grinds out, his jaw quaking to match his shimmering eyes.
“Okay, you’re right. I don’t know your life. But I know mine.” Peter takes a steadying breath. “I know what it’s like to to be homeless. To pack up with whoever you can to up your chances of survival.” Peter nods his head toward the ground. “I use tape to hold my shoes together.” Peter gestures down to his bare feet. “Well, when I’m wearing shoes. Glad you found something thick that you could sew into it. That’s impressive. Did you know how to sew, or did they teach you?”
“Quit chatting!” The leader interrupts from the floor, eyeing the cop with the gun trained on him. “This isn’t a social gathering! Fly, stupid butterfly!”
The kid suddenly spins on his heel and takes off toward the other side of the store, vaulting over the counter and disappearing into the rooms behind. Peter shakes his head and sighs, turning back to the man sprawled on the floor.
“What are you laughing at, shithead? We got what we came for.”
“He’s gonna have a hard time navigating back there; Delmar keeps this place fully stocked, so much that it’s like a maze to get through to the back alley.”
“I know that, you idiot; I drew him a map of the place and made him memorize it.”
“A map? But how-”
Another boom sounds, and the masked man drops his gun, screaming in agony as blood pools around and out of the bullet now lodged in his upper arm.
Peter finally registers that a police vehicle has arrived. The driver enters first, shoving past the plainclothes cop toward the attempted thief. The cop yanks the ski mask off of the man’s head, and Peter holds back a gasp.
He, too, had been watching Delmar’s for a while now, and he really shouldn’t have been surprised to see that it was a recent hire under the mask. Likely in his 40s, the red-headed man is familiar to Peter; Delmar rarely took in people outside of his family, but the man has a soft spot for people who are down on their luck. He must have spun some kind of sob story to get Delmar to take him in.
“Huh, well I’ll be damned.” The plainclothesman speaks up first. “Manny the deli guy.”
The cop pulls the man to his feet and pushes him against the counter to book him, shaking his head as Manny continues to yell and the plainclothesman shakes his head. “Makes a damn good sandwich, too, Sucks ass for Delmar to lose this guy.”
The cops each take an arm and escort Manny to the cop car, somehow chatting casually amidst the animalistic howls emitting from their charge.
“What about the kid? Did Lenox find him?”
“Nah. Back door’s open, so the kid’s probably long gone with the money.”
“Shit. Hate to have to break it to Delmar.”
“We got it from here, Spider-Man.” An officer Peter hadn’t noticed before, a woman with blonde hair and soft brown eyes was taping off the outside of the shop. “Thanks for your help, as always.”
“Oh, no-” Peter clears his throat. “No problem, ma’am. Happy to do my duty.”
She nods and sets about her work.
It takes everything Peter has not to jerk toward the shuffling his ears pick up from the back of the store. “Uh-Delmar has a, uh, a cat, so I better make sure he’s okay.”
“Oh, sure.” The lady cop gestures over her shoulder. “Make it quick, though. The other guys have to come in here soon to check the place over.”
“Right, yeah, of course, thanks!”
Peter hurdles himself over the counter and slips into the back rooms, ears peeled for the scuffle of plastic soles on linoleum. What he hears, instead, is heavy breathing, and he follows the sound to the walk-in refrigerator. Clenching his jaw, Peter carefully opens the door-
“Shit.” The kid is huddled on the ground, arms clinging to the bag desperately with his eyes closed, as if he’s bracing to be shot, too.
Peter puts his hands up in a show of peace. “Don’t shoot and neither will I.”
“You don’t have a gun.”
“It looks like you don’t either.”
The kid scoffs. “Dropped it when I was trying to get through this damn labyrinth of a backroom.”
Peter looks around quickly, and then slips through the opening and into the freezer, pulling it shut behind him and leaving them in darkness. “Look, the cops are still here scoping out the place. They saw the back door, so they think you’re long gone. They’re about to actually search the place, so you might want to get outta here like yesterday.”
“What the fuck? Why’re you helping me? Aren’t you like the police’s dog or something?”
It’s Peter’s turn to scoff. “No. I work by myself and for myself; they just kind of come with the territory.”
“Still. Why help me?”
“....I know you can hear my voice as much as I can hear yours.” Peter’s tone is soft, imploring. “I was in a spot like you for a little while, but it wasn’t worth it. I got out, and so can you.”
“...How’d you leave?”
“A raid I was thankfully absent for. No one turned me over, amazingly.”
“Pack loyalty.”
“Probably. Probably hoped I’d revive the group, too.”
“Yeah. Anyway, this is a nice pow-wow and all,” Peter can hear the other boy shifting. “But I gotta bounce.” The kid stands and carefully opens the freezer door.
“They’re all out front.” Peter quickly reassures him. He stares for a second then smiles when he takes in the face of his hiding place buddy. “Hiding in plain sight?”
“Exactly. Ski mask makes you stick out. Especially if you’re a black kid when there’s cops around.”
Peter nods. “Sorry I can’t return the favor.”
“It’s cool. Vigilante status and all that.” The kid pauses. “Here.” He reaches into the bag and hands Peter a handful of bills, 20s from what Peter can see.
Peter stares for a moment, and the kid shakes it toward him.
“Street kids gotta look out for each other, you feel? This was a small bust, anyway. A practice.”
Peter’s heart sinks at the implication but eyes the money, the empty pits of his stomach crying out from weeks of going with tiny portions compared to what he needs to eat.
“I can’t. It wouldn’t be right.”
“Spend it all here, and it evens out, right?” The kid quirks a smile. “Don’t over think it.” He shoves the stack into Peter’s lap before looking around one last time and stepping outside of the chilly room. “Take care of yourself, Spider-Man. I’ll see you around.” And he’s gone.
Peter sits for a moment with the money in his lap, his mind spinning as he wrestles with the ethical implications of his actions. He needs to eat. He’s running himself ragged being Spider-Man with so little food to squelch his metabolism. He used to shelter hop, staying at one place for a bit before switching to another for a decent flow of food, but after a while, he became a familiar, lonely face. They asked too many questions about him, his parents, and why his parents couldn’t ever come with him to stay. This would be his first real meal in weeks. The kid gave him the money, and if he doesn’t eat he can’t be Spider-Man...
Peter sighs, swallowing the guilt knotted in his throat before quickly organizing the bills and sliding them into his sweater for safe keeping.
He goes back through the front of the shop, waving to the cops out front before disappearing as is his M-O.
Peter decides to turn in early that night, thoroughly wiped now, so he carefully creeps up the side of a too familiar brick building. He finally makes it to the uppermost fire escape and pulls down the dufflebag he has stuffed there, removing the chemically produced webs he uses to hide his belongings where no one else can go.
He really needs to sneak back into the school again soon; his supply is running low. He lives in anticipation of summer when he might be able to get away with making and taking more of the webs to use for fighting and not just storage and survival purposes. He has often daydreamed of what it would be like to use the webs to swing around town, hang upside down, or even make a giant web like real spiders. They would definitely up his superhero status.
Sighing at such fantasies, Peter throws the duffel over his shoulder and hauls himself up to the top of the apartment complex.
“Home sweet home.” Peter mutters under his breath as he crosses the roof for the final jump onto the top of what once was a garden shed. The tenants gave up on a roof garden years ago, so the shed usually sits empty save for cobwebs and gardening equipment long forgotten, a perfect storage place for the items Peter doesn’t want to expose to the rain. The roof of the shed is set at such a small angle that it is nearly flat and therefore not conducive to ridding itself of rainwater, but Peter loves to sleep under the stars, the honks and hums of the city akin to a lullaby, and he has managed to patch critical spots with some moldy tarps, some nails, and a hammer left in the shed.
Now Peter sets his bag on the wearing shingles and stretches his back, his arms, his shoulders before pulling a warn fleece blanket out of his bag. He spreads the blanket and lays down, pulling off his mask and goggles which he stashes away before conceding to sleep in his Spider-Man costume just once. He’s too tired to change tonight, he decides as he allows himself to drift.
His heart stalls when he hears a low rumbling above his head, and his eyes snap open, searching the sky intently for something he knows he’ll never see. Every once in a while he’ll hear it. It’s never a stormy night, no clouds in the sky, no distant roar of thunder, no smell in the air, but he’ll hear a sound, a low rumbling akin to thunder but not quite the right timbre. Peter has never figured out what it is, but once he swore he saw a dark square floating in the sky on its own, like a ghostly apparition in the shape of a metal panel.
No such sight appears tonight, but as Peter stares at the sky, his own words drift back to him: hiding in plain sight. Definitely a government conspiracy Ned would believe.
Peter sighs and rolls his eyes before turning onto his side and curling into himself, now fully allowing himself to fall into a well-earned sleep.
- - - - - - - - - -
Tony Stark sits perched in the cockpit of his plane, gazing down at the city below him with little attachment or interest.
“You really didn’t have to come with us, Tony.” Happy Hogan speaks up from his seat beside Tony. “I could’ve handled the shipment on my own.”
“Yeah, no thanks.” Tony quips with a scowl, absently fiddling with the Iron Man gauntlet engaged over his right hand. “I spent way too long customizing these arc reactors to have the recipients bitching and calling me as soon as they don’t know how to use them. Might as well go and write everything off as a business expense.”
“Right, of course.” Happy rolls his eyes and turns his attention back in front of them. “I gotta say, though. I don’t think this plane needs any security from Iron Man himself.”
Tony throws him a look.
“The reflective plates are genius in their simplicity, Tony; no one even knows we’re up here.”
“Of course not, but I know about the plate incident from last year, Hogan.”
“Okay, we flew a little bit too low and bumped one of the panels on the new World Trade Center.”
“Hence why all of my planes are self-flying now.”
It’s Happy’s turn to dish out looks. “No one saw us or reported it. No harm; no foul.”
“Yeah because you left 5 hours late and no one was out to see you flying at 2am.”
“Hey, that delay was your-”
“Is that a kid?”
“What? Come on, Tony, I know you hate to have your past blunders brought up, but-”
“No, look, down there.” Tony points through the window and down toward a building Happy cannot distinguish.
“Tony, how can you even tell?”
Tony taps on his glasses frames. “Elementary zoom function, My Dear Happy. But, yeah, there’s definitely a kid sleeping on a roof down there.”
“Probably just had a fight with his parents or something.”
“He has a bag next to him.”
Happy scoffed. “Obviously threatened to run away from home and only made it to the roof. I remember someone else pulled shit like that when he was a kid.”
“You have no proof.”
“Rhodey told me.”
“Rhodey wasn’t there. We didn’t meet until college.”
Happy just rolls his eyes again and settles back into his seat. “See anything else with those glasses.”
“Just a bunch of cop sirens.”
“I’m gonna take a nap. Wake me if something interesting happens.”
“Gee, thanks, Forehead of Security. I feel so safe with you around.”
Happy just snorts, crosses his arms, and closes his eyes.
Tony rests an elbow on the window sill and puts his chin on his palm, languidly watching New York pass below, the lonely little figure soon left behind and forgotten for the moment.