11

Chapter Text

His gaze drifted away from the dull explanation his teacher was giving about landform formation to the amber leaves on the trees outside, watching one drift to the ground before Michelle tapped his arm and he turned back to the board. She had promised to make sure he was paying attention in lesson after they had called a couple of days ago and they had briefly complained about how they had to make dozens of notes about things they had already learned.

She knew about his tendency to zone out in lesson and make up for everything later despite knowing it would stress him out even more than he needed to be, so she helped him with paying attention to whatever they were learning. It wasn't as if he didn't want to learn, especially since this was basically revision and he would be able to ace his tests if he did things right, but he had a lot of things to keep track of and school work had slipped down the rankings of the priority list.

His thigh rapidly moved up and down as he watched the clock tick down to 3 PM. Happy had texted him to meet him by the front gate so he could drive him to the Compound for his first internship day. He technically hadn't seen Tony in the Compound for around 2 years and he was acting like it was his first visit!

Anxiety thrummed under his skin as he scribbled down a diagram from the board, his mind barely on the task as he wondered how everything would go when he went to the Compound. Theoretically he had no reason to panic. He was comfortable around Tony and the billionaire had texted him yesterday and had instructed him to bring some comfortable clothes he would wear to the gym.

They were probably going to find out the extent of his skills – something they had taken months to get around to in the other timeline. His first few months at the Compound had been spent in the lab after Tony had found out he tinkered with anything he could get his hands on, whether it was for fun or for improving his suit.

This time Tony had probably moved it forwards to satisfy May and hopefully prove to her that Peter was capable of protecting himself in most cases and that Tony would keep his promise. They were both on thin ice after revealing Peter was Spider-Man for about a year and that Tony had brought him to Germany before basically letting him run loose with little supervision.

He startled when Michelle placed her hand on his knee; a gentle reminder to calm down and that he was worrying over nothing. You've lived through this before and done well. If you can do it once, you can do it again.

Glancing at his watch, he blew out a breath when he realised there were a couple of minutes left of the lesson. As much as he liked geography, the idea of drawing another diagram of a beach made him want to disappear.

"Okay, class dismissed. I want those diagrams annotated for Tuesday and you have a test on Thursday." He slumped at the teacher's words as he packed his things into his bad. He would revise for the test with Michelle at some point. He smiled at the thought of a study date.

"What are you thinking?" She asked as they walked to their lockers, loosely holding his hand in the way she knew he liked. The gesture was grounding and comforting all in one, but not too much that they both became flustered and ended up floundering for words.

"Maybe we can have a study date at mine? It'd be good so we can ace the test because I know I didn't last time." She huffed amusedly at that as she let go of his hand so he could access his locker and stuffed a notebook in his bag. "Plus I think May should find out we're dating." He grabbed a bag filled with his clothes before shutting his locker.

"You don't think it'll be too rushed?" She asked, absentmindedly tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

He chuckled. "I doubt that considering last time was very impromptu."

"Nothing can beat that." He smiled. "So…Monday after school?"

"That sounds good."

Ned was staying after school to finish a robotics project so they quickly walked out of school and he realised Happy had parked just outside of the school and was waiting for him. He looked fine standing in front of the car but he could see his foot tapping and knew he couldn't leave the awkward security guard there much longer.

"I'll see you later," he said, smiling before raising himself on his tiptoes and pressing a kiss to her cheek. A light blush dusted Michelle's cheek and she raised her hand to her side and waved before he turned around and jogged down the steps to Happy.

"Hey Happy," he said as the bodyguard opened the door and nodded in response, quickly sitting in the driver's seat once Peter was in the car. It was fairly luxurious, with black leather seats and tinted windows. The divider wasn't up yet and he wondered how long he could talk before Happy decided to put it up.

"Did you bring everything?" He asked as Peter placed his bags on the floor before opening his school bag and taking out the notebook and a pencil to complete an explanation of a practical he did in chemistry.

"Yep," he replied as he put on his seatbelt and Happy started the engine. The car had no problem driving smoothly on the pothole filled roads as Happy drove away from Midtown, skilfully evading the students messing around on the pavement. "How was your day?"

"My day?" His heart leaped into his throat at the surprise in Happy's voice as he remembered this wasn't the Happy he was used to. This Happy had only started talking to him recently and hadn't started dating May -he hadn't even met her yet- and so wasn't used to him asking personal questions.

He fought to keep his embarrassed flush down and prayed he didn't look like an idiot as he waited for Happy's response. He couldn't believe he had forgotten he wasn't as close to Happy as he was before and had absentmindedly asked a question – 20 minutes ago he had been freaking out about hanging out with Tony again but he hadn't thought about Happy!

"Uh…my day was fine. A bit busy dealing with the paperwork from Toomes but otherwise it was okay," Happy replied, glancing into the rear-view mirror at the same time Peter did.

"Yeah, I'm sorry about the mess…"

"You're apologising for making a mess after a plane crash…? You're really something else," Happy murmured in shock, unaware that Peter's super senses picked it up like he was speaking normally. "No need to apologise for something that should have been prevented by me." He waved it off before placing both his hands on the wheel to turn onto a main road, stopping when the light turned red just as he reached it.

Peter's gaze drifted away from his notebook and to the random people passing by and his eyebrow furrowed when he saw a buff man wearing a leather jacket and had a weird parting in his hair…did he know him?

Recognition lingered in the back of his mind and he frowned as he tried to remember where he had seen the guy but the traffic light turned green and Happy turned around the corner, leaving him to work out whether he had met the leather-clad guy before.

He shrugged his bag onto his shoulder and picked up his other bag before exiting the car and entering the lift that went from the private car park to the living quarters of the Compound, rolling from the balls of his feet to his tiptoes to act excited.

Truthfully, he felt more nervous than anything. He breathed in deeply to calm down his fluttering heart, ignoring the look Happy gave him as he started fidgeting. He hadn't visited his living quarters in the Compound after the final battle against Thanos and seeing everything intact after such devastating destruction would be a bit of a reset for him.

Pepper had invited him to the lake house a few times after Tony's death, giving him a warm invitation to visit whenever he wanted to pay his respects or simply talk to someone. He had thanked her for the offer but hadn't gone back, especially after the first six months. Going there meant acknowledging a major part of his life was gone and pairing that with adjusting to being back after being dusted…it was overwhelming.

The world had demanded to know who the next Iron Man would be and his closeness as Spider-Man with Tony had somehow been leaked during the Blip, so he had been the next candidate even though he wasn't ready for anything. His penultimate year in Midtown had been spent grieving and catching up with everything he had missed.

Going back to the Compound had been the last thing on his mind when it was completely destroyed and he had found out Pepper had only finalised the plans to reconstruct it 3 months after he had picked up his Spider-Man suit and gone on his first patrol post-Blip.

None of the things he had owned existed anymore. Not the Star Wars bedcovers Tony had bought after they had spent the whole of a Saturday binge watching Star Wars, not the various robots they had built out of scrap metal and buried schematics and definitely not any of the dorky t-shirts they had bought that one afternoon Peter had forgotten some spare clothes and Tony had ordered them from Amazon like it was nothing.

The only thing he could tell himself to calm down was that if he had bonded with Tony once, he could do it again.

He wanted to cherish the limited amount of time he had with his mentor before Thanos arrived and he had to fight for half the universe's lives.

He blinked when the lift dinged and they arrived on the floor where the living quarters were and Happy lead him down the naturally lit corridor with cream walls -he had forgotten how pretty the view was from the living quarters- before turning left and stopping by a door.

"This is where you'll stay whenever you're here," he said as Peter opened the door to reveal his room.

He feigned excitement and astonishment as he took in the room, smiling when he saw the rich red throw with blue tassels on the end. He hadn't seen it since 2017 in the other timeline but it had always brought a sense of comfort to him.

The room was as grand as the rest of the Compound was. The large windows on the opposite side of the room let light stream in and overlooked the courtyard where the hangar and training buildings were on the other side of. A black chandelier hung from the ceiling and as he walked into the room he turned to look at the desk in his peripheral vision, relaxing when the saw that everything was the same as before.

He hadn't wanted May's harsh treatment of Tony to make him change too drastically but from the look of his room, everything would be fine.

"There's a bathroom in the room to your right if you need to do anything there. Get changed and I'll be back in 15 minutes to bring you to the training area," Happy said before closing the door and leaving him to his devices.

Sighing, he dropped his façade and sagged, dropping his bags on the bed before flopping on the soft mattress. He struggled to grasp the concept that he was able to redo his life and change so many things. How could he be so lucky? He had been about to make everyone forget about him and become a nobody but Stephen had messed up the spell and he was 8 years in the past with unfathomable knowledge of the future.

He couldn't make the same mistakes. Not when it could kill people. Improving his skills was a definite priority and for that to happen then he would need to increase his fighting skills and add a few more protocols to his suit. Ah, he should have brought it with him!

He quickly changed into another nerdy t-shirt -this one read 'noble gases' with a bunch of cartoon kings and knights on it- and jogging bottoms. He had finished tying his shoe laces when Happy knocked on the door -he had picked up on the sound of Happy's footsteps a while ago and subconsciously relaxed- and walked him to the training centre.

He tried not to shiver as they briskly strolled across the courtyard, relaxing slightly when he entered the foyer of the training centre and practically walked into a wall of heat. He jogged up the stairs when Happy started walking up them, forcing himself not to automatically take the lead like he hadn't been there hundreds of times.

He widened his eyes when he opened the door to the training area, half-pretending to be impressed by how spacious the room was. He couldn't act like he had dangled from the ceiling beams with little regard to his safety or had swung from the suspended ropes like he did with his webs.

The training centre had a whole side where there were windows letting the golden sunlight stream down onto the row of treadmills and various lifting stations. There were a couple of climbing walls, once of which had a rotating mechanism which increased the difficulty, and a set of suspended ropes where a person could swing and climb, but there was a safety net because the last thing they needed was a serious injury.

He smiled nervously at Tony, the man in question wearing a more casual suit outfit when he had last seen him. He was wearing a casual black suit with a t-shirt underneath and had the EDITH glasses hanging around the collar and had a StarkPad in his hand as he strolled towards the entrance.

"Hey kid, how was the ride here?" He asked, watching as Peter slowly dropped his façade into something more manageable.

"It was good," he replied, fighting to keep the nervous quiver out of his voice. "I can't believe I'm gonna be training here!"

"It's pretty good, isn't it?" Tony turned to Happy, dismissing him before continuing. "So I was thinking we could do some tests to find the extent of your abilities. Sound good?"

"Y-yeah, sounds great!" Dammit, he was doing so well. His cheeks warmed at his voice crack but Tony didn't mention it, choosing to start walking towards where the lifting stations were.

"Go stretch and then we can see how much you can lift."

And so he started what he would actually call a workout. Tony had managed to increase how much the weights weighed so the super soldiers out of the Avengers, i.e.: Captain America and Bucky Barnes, could work out with something that helped them.

At first they started out with one ton because Tony had seen him stop a bus and stop a ferry from falling apart, so it wouldn't make sense to start with light weights. He hadn't started to strain until he reached 10 tons and had finally stopped at 11 but he knew that he was a lot stronger with his webs.

Tony whistled lowly as he handed him a towel to wipe the sweat from his neck. "Wow Peter, I knew you were strong but that's comparable to Cap's."

"Ah, um, thanks?" He replied, stretching after he stood up. "What are we moving onto next?"

"Treadmill. I've tried to track how fast you can swing and it's looking pretty good but I've never seen you run."

"How fast do I go with my webs?"

"About 51.4 metres per second, but that's based on videos from online. I bet you're much faster but we can test that when you bring your suit." Another reason why he should have brought it but somehow forgot. He would make sure to bring it tomorrow so that he could make a couple of upgrades and they could do some more testing, plus there were a couple of things he wanted to find out like how he could incorporate a Spidey-bot like with the suit he had made before facing Mysterio without changing the design too much…

"This one will test your stamina as well as your speed so here's a water bottle. Start wherever you're comfortable and we'll go up in intervals," Tony said as he handed him a cold bottle.

"Thank you," he replied before putting it in the bottle holder on the treadmill and starting it up, dialling the speed up to 12 miles per hour and staying there for a solid minute before upping it. This went on for a while -running without headphones made everything go slower- before he reached the high twenties and had to put effort into focusing.

Normally the roaring of his blood in his hears and thoughts about how to complete his task kept his body from fully registering the exertion of running away from his brain, but without much external stimuli to keep his thoughts at bay, he started phasing through his abstract thoughts like how long had he been running for?

Tony had mentioned that Captain America had comfortably run 13 miles in 30 minutes which seemed reasonable for a super solider and he wanted to compare himself to that, but that task would be for another day.

He concentrated on his breathing, trying to keep it even and ignore the burning in his muscles as he upped the speed to 30 miles per hour and continued at that for another couple of minutes before he caught Tony's impressed gaze in his peripheral vision.

Shock and…something between a mix of nostalgia and sadness ran through his system and something caught in his throat before the burning in his muscles became too much and he tapped out. He slowed the treadmill to 15 miles per hour for another minute as a cooldown before he stopped the machine, his breaths heavy as he tried to combat the stitch in his side.

"Well done," Tony said, patting him on the back. He hadn't noticed while he was running, but the billionaire had taken his jacket off and hung it on the side of the weights and had the EDITH glasses on. He must have used them to track his vitals because they hadn't placed anything that could track his vitals on him.

Nodding as he used the towel from earlier to wipe his sweat away, he hoped he had beaten his record from before as he flopped onto the floor and started to stretch.

"What's t-the record?" He panted before drinking from the bottle, relishing the feeling of the cold water flowing down his dry throat.

"You basically have the stamina of a peak human which is very similar to a super solider, so you're as good as, if not better, than Capsicle. Your top speed was 30 miles per hour for about two and a half minutes."

'Better than last time,' he thought, smiling when Tony offered a hand to help him stand up. He took it, pushing himself up from the floor as his heart rate finally fell somewhere normal. Well, as normal as it could be for him.

"Do we have any more tests to do here?" He asked, raising his hands above his head to stretch.

"We have a few more concerning your Spider-Man skills like how fast you can swing, what's the highest you can jump, et cetera." Tony waved his hand in the gesture that was probably meant to mean the list was a lot longer than what he had said. "But that can wait. You went through the most strenuous tests today so tomorrow should be a breeze."

They cleared up anything they had left out before walking back to the living quarters as Peter rambled about how school had been, easily filling in the awkward silence that had been there the first time. Tony walked him to his room before telling him there were some toiletries on his bed and he could shower and do whatever he wanted until around 6:30.

"Dinner will be here around then. Do you want anything in particular?" Tony asked as he stood in the doorway.

"Wait, are you ordering?"

"Yep, so pick whatever you want."

"I, uh…is pepperoni pizza okay?"

"Kid, don't worry about it. It's my job to feed you otherwise your scary aunt will have another issue with me." Tony chuckled but Peter knew he was being serious. There had been an embarrassing incident where he had passed out at home because his blood sugar was too low after a patrol and May had found him passed out on the floor at 1 AM after thinking a burglar had entered their home.

Subsequently, Tony had been involved and had quickly taken some blood for tests before realising that his metabolism was faster than Captain America's and he had manufactured a dozen super protein bars for him to eat as a quick fix.

"Wow, thanks." He hesitated as Tony turned to leave before blurting out the only thought on his mind. "Thanks so much for everything Mr Stark." Tony turned to face him with a raised eyebrow. "Like for the suit and the internship and helping with May." And for all of the times you helped in the other timeline before saving the universe.

"No problem," Tony replied coolly before shutting the door gently and walking away.

He took a few seconds to breathe before groaning. How could he have nearly let himself slip like that? The whole day had been filled with close slip-ups! He couldn't be weird around Tony and mess everything up for himself.

Cursing in his head because he had to remind himself that FRIDAY was literally in the walls, he picked up his spare change of clothes, the toiletry bag filled with expensive soaps that he could only dream of buying and the fluffy navy towel on the bed, he made his way over to the bathroom and showered away the stress and sweat built up over the past few hours. The last thing he needed was an anxiety attack before dinner.

Notes:

I'm open to any IronDad or DoctorDad (Strange acting like a dad) scenarios anyone wants in this fic! There's a lot of time between now and 2018 and there'll need to be some character building.

EDIT: with how many people are coming at me with my incorrect stats for Peter, I'VE USED THESE FROM A FANDOM SITE AND THEY ARE BASELINE.

Peter rapidly improves over the story to the stats you guys put in the comments! When I made this chapter it was purely whatever I could find on the internet and Peter naturally discovers his strength over time.