Chapter Text
Peter eyed his phone contemplatively, slowly tapping the pads of his fingers against its side.
Biting his lip, he glanced to the side from where he was sitting at his desk and peaked at the corner of his mattress, under which he still had his burner phone stored.
He shouldn’t. He really, really shouldn’t.
He had a feeling that he’d come pretty close to getting caught the last time, after all. But...
He’d tried explaining to Ned why going to a meet and greet with the freaking Avengers was a bad idea, but his friend just didn’t get it. Not fully, at least.
“But Peter, it’s the Avengers.” Ned pointed out, eyes wide and beseeching.
Peter groaned, glaring weakly at the permission slip in his hands as if he could magic it out of existence through sheer force of will. “That’s the problem, Ned.”
Ned just waved him off, shaking his head in stubborn insistence. “It’s not like they’re gonna figure you out just cause you’re there, Peter,” he entreated, like the poor, obliviously innocent little lamb he clearly was.
Peter stared blankly at his friend. It was almost like now that the Avengers were involved, Ned had completely forgotten about this itty bitty teeny weeny key little feature about Peter that the other had become intimately aware of over the past ten years of their lives having known one another: Parker. Luck.
Peter thunked his head against his desk, abruptly resigned to facing his doom alone.
So. Ned unfortunately wasn’t any help, since he ‘kindly’ but adamantly refused to help Peter weasel out of meeting the Avengers - “the Avengers, Peter!” - no matter how much Peter wanted to. Not that 'wanted' was the right word, exactly, but he really didn't have much of a choice in his very wise and completely logical opinion.
And it wasn’t like Peter could tell May, either, since she definitely wouldn’t understand without the context that Peter still wasn’t willing to give her, as much as he beat himself up about it. It’d be mighty suspicious if he asked her to sign a denial on the form instead of an acceptance, considering that she knew how much of a fan he was of the heroes. Nor could he just hide the slip from her either, since Midtown would be sending out emails with all the specific information to both students and their guardians by seven o’clock tonight.
Unfortunately, Peter’s hacking skills were nowhere close to par to reroute the message to May, and without Ned’s support, he was stuck.
Unless … Well. Unless he asked the other hacker he knew for help.
Of course, that was just a crazy idea. Completely insane and not something Peter would ever do. Heck, he still had no idea who the guy on the phone even was. There was no way Peter would just trust a random stranger with his personal information to intercept an email to his Aunt so Peter could get out of attending a meeting with the Avengers where his Parker Luck would with one hundred percent certainty throw him to the wolves.
No.
…
Well.
It wasn’t… that bad of an idea, if he really thought about it.
Oh, of course he wouldn’t actually give this guy his name or other private information, but if the phone-dude ended up being willing to hack for him either way, Peter could request that he prevent all emails to parents being sent off instead of just ones to a single guardian. That way, sure, the man would know Peter’s school, but he wouldn’t know which student was Peter out of the hundreds who attended.
Peter blinked, and a proud little feeling wormed its way into his chest as he leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind him to rest the back of his head against. He smiled victoriously at his ceiling, abruptly sitting back up and rubbing his hands together in anticipation.
Ohhhh yeah, it was aaaallll coming together.
The emails would be sent out by tonight, so he’d make the call now.
If everything worked out, hacker-phone-dude would help him out but wouldn't figure out who, exactly, Peter was, Peter wouldn't have to risk getting his identity exposed to the Avengers, and everything would be fine and dandy as the panel meeting blissfully passed him by while he holed up in his closet and mourned the lost opportunity despite fully accepting that there was no dang way he would subject himself to it with how aware he was over the fact that he would somehow, someway, manage to out himself to the superheroes and end up getting sent to juvie or even jail for being a vigilante. Yep.
-
All cards on the table, Tony missed jabbing the soldering iron into his fingers by the skin of his teeth, his hand jerking hard in shock as his phone belted out on full blast ‘Call Me Maybe.’
He - carefully - tossed the tool to the side and very much did not lunge over to the device, swiping it off the counter and clicking accept in the same second, bringing it up to his ear. Habit nearly had him introducing himself as ‘Tony Stark,’ but he managed to cut it off and smoothly turn it into, “T- oday too, kid? Wow, I’m flattered.”
He swiftly made his way over to his monitor as the teen spluttered on the other end of the line. Tony could practically picture the way his hands would be waving around himself in denial. He smirked, easily pulling up the tracing map of Queens (this time set to tracking outgoing signals instead) as the kid finally seemed to gather his words. “I- no, it’s just, you - okay. You’re a hacker, right?” they garbled out, sounding like a question but more likely a redundant confirmation, words rushed and awkward.
Tony hummed in agreement. There was no point in denying it at this point, and he doubted the kid would call to confirm that much just to hang up. His fingers flew over the holographic keyboard while he zoomed in on the map. It was less than thirty seconds into the call, and he already had to bite back a petulant groan at the snail crawl of a pace of the progress the red circle encasing most of the city was making in narrowing down the search. He had to figure out a way to get the kid to stay on the line. Verbally, he ever so demurely replied, “I dabble.”
There was a very unimpressed silence on the other end of the line. “...Uhuh,” the kid remarked. Tony wasn’t given a chance to defend his honor before he was steamrolled over. “Okay, so, I - kinda need a favor,” they admitted, hesitation heavily coloring their words.
Tony’s brows raised. That was certainly unexpected. For all the kid’d used him as a distraction the other day, Tony hadn’t seen a request for a favor coming, especially since it sounded like it’d be more than something as simple as running his mouth had been last time. And most people waited until after they knew he was Tony Stark to start asking for things from him.
Given, most people knew who he was as soon as they met him, so perhaps that statistic was slightly skewed.
Regardless! A favor. This could be good, he mused to himself, humming contemplatively to give himself another few seconds to respond. First and foremost, he could keep the kid on the line longer by hemming and hawing his way to what would probably be an acceptance to whatever they were going to be asking for unless it was too illegal, which meant he’d have a decent chance at finally tracking the wily little bugger down once and for all. And secondly, if he didn’t manage that first objective of his, he could at least get the kid to think they owed him one, so there’d be more opportunities in the future of finding them out instead. Tony hoped he wouldn't have to wait any longer, though. The impatience was damn near killing him already.
“Alright, so what’s this big old favor of yours?” he finally asked, tapping his fingers against his counter and placing the phone back down against the surface, setting it on speaker mode.
There was a crackle over the line, like someone exhaling too close to a microphone, then, hesitantly, “Okay, it’s - uh. It’s kind of… like, personal?”
Tony’s brows raised, one more than the other. “Girl troubles?” he sympathized with obviously very genuine sincerity, not at all silently huffing with laughter.
“No!” came the quick, scandalized reply, deepening his grin. The kid muttered something else that sounded like ‘why’s everyone keep…’ but it was too far from the phone for Tony to be sure.
“‘No?’” he echoed dubiously, biting back his smile.
“No.” the kid repeated firmly. “It’s - about school.”
Tony blinked. Well, that could be promising. “Oh?” he prodded encouragingly. Knowing the kid’s school was a route he hadn’t even considered for finding out their identity, but apparently it'd be an opportunity that might be opening up for him to explore.
Almost like the kid'd heard Tony’s thoughts, they suddenly said, “You gotta promise you won’t try to find out who I am.”
Well that was just unfair. Tony hmmed noncommittally. “But how can I help you if I don’t know that much, teenybop?” he pointed out guilelessly.
Wisely, the kid didn't touch on the nickname. “I’ll tell you my school, just not who I am,” they insisted instead.
Tony sniffed haughtily, crossing his arms over his chest and finally dropping himself back onto his chair, the frame protestingly creaking. “What? You don’t trust me?” he huffed in mock offense.
“Uh.” Wow. “...No.” Wow.
“Wow.” Tony stared at his phone, genuinely feeling miffed about that response. This kid really had a way of endearing people to him, didn't he. “I’m hurt. Deeply offended. The disrespect. The audacity.”
“It’s not like that!” the kid rushed to say, his hands flapping around a practically audible thing. “I - it’s just that I still don’t know you! Dude, you could, like, secretly be some kind of like creepy old man, or something!”
“‘Creepy old man.’” Tony echoed flatly. “You know, I’m struggling to think if I’ve ever been called worse,” he mused. This was a blatant lie, because he’d definitely been called worse on a wide plethora of occasions, but the point still stood. Did the saying ‘respect your elders’ just have no meaning these days? He'd look into doing something about that. Later. Maybe he'd ask Pep.
There was a faint, reedy whining noise on the other end of the line that was abruptly muffled. Ah, the woes of teenage hormonal embarrassment; ye hath not been missed.
Which, of course, meant that Tony obviously had to dig it in further by doubtfully adding, “You sure you want the help of this ‘creepy old man’ over here for anything?”
There was a sudden scrambling over the phone, then, “No - wait yes! I mean - I didn’t mean it like that, I swear!” the kid pleaded hurriedly, and Tony sniffed again, not yet deigning to give a reply.
Now, he wasn’t naive enough to not realize what the kid meant or what he was worried about, but that didn’t mean Tony couldn’t be offended about it since it was just patently untrue. Very, very reluctantly, he also felt the smallest grain of a smidgen of begrudging respect towards the kid for having the presence of mind to not fully trust strangers with his private information - even ones that very charitably kept you company over the phone while you pulled a bullet out of your side.
Alright. Sue him. Maybe Tony was more than a little offended. Barely.
Seeming to have realized that Tony wasn’t going to be adding anything else anytime soon (as a bonus in its favor, silence was a great way to keep the kid on the line for longer while the tracker kept up its agonizing pace), the kid finally seemed to accept that he couldn’t do much more to salvage the situation, since he finally proffered up his request with a simultaneously defeated and nervous air somehow imbued in his tone. “Could you - maybe - if, like, if it’s okay with you and you’re not, like, actually mad, hackintomyschoolanddeletealltheemailsthat’regonnabesentouttonight?”
Tony was absolutely positive that there was no way in hell that the second half of that sentence was intelligible with how mashed together into one string of an inarticulate word the kid managed to get it. “Wanna try that again, motor mouth?”
Another crackly inhale on the line, and then, with what Tony highly suspected to be a forced sense of calm, the kid stated, “I would really, really appreciate if you’d hack my school to stop a mass email from getting to the parents.”
Well, that was certainly an interesting request, and it wasn’t one Tony felt the need to automatically shoot down, either, which was a pleasant change from the norm of when most people asked him for things. “What email - no, better yet, what school?” he asked, very ungreedily. He honestly did not appreciate how much he felt like Gollum right now over getting little tidbits of information that'd bring him closer to figure out who his mystery kid was. It was an unfair and entirely inaccurate comparison that his brain should stop making.
There was another second’s hesitation, the kid undoubtedly realizing how much they were going to be giving away, before they finally caved and admitted, “Midtown.”
FRIDAY pulled up the name without Tony even having to ask, and he soundlessly blew her a kiss even as he read the file. Student population of four hundred - better than Tony had been expecting by far, since most public schools in the area were up in the thousands. “Midtown? School of Science and Technology?” He whistled lowly. The name itself sounded... vaguely familiar. “We got a smarty pants here, now do we?” he sing-songed.
Very teenager-angstily, the kid groaned, but, in a feat of self-restraint, didn’t rise to the bait.
To mitigate the small risk that they might hang up out of ‘emotions,’ though, Tony spurred on, “So what’s this fabled email I’ll be looking for?”
This time, the kid’s pause was even longer, and that really should’ve been telling. Tony somehow, someway, missed the cue, though, so he was entirely unprepared for the teen to reluctantly mumble out, “‘s about the Avengers visiting.”
Tony’s eyes practically bugged straight out of his head, and had he been drinking something, he would’ve done a spit take. As it was, he blinked rapidly in shock, rearing back from the phone on the counter like it'd distance him from the revelation. “The what?” he spluttered disbelievingly.
Audibly recalcitrant, the kid begrudgingly elaborated, “The Avengers - they’re doing this panel thing at my school.”
The Avengers were doing a panel at his kids school. Oh man, was Tony glad grins weren’t an audible thing or what, since if they were, his would now be veritably screaming itself over the line. As it was, it threatened to split his face in half with the pure, unadulterated glee that flooded through him in a rush to saturate every damn pore in his body.
“Is that so?” he questioned brightly. He already knew it was, though. As soon as the kid had said it, Tony had remembered. Pep had brought the event up to him last week, and he’d given a hand wavy non-answer of an answer that they both knew meant there was a roughly three percent chance of him going and a ninety-seven percent chance of him holing up under lockdown in his lab so nobody could drag him out to do just that, but now?
Boy oh boy did this change things or what.
Never before in his goddamn life had Tony had as strong of an urge to cackle maniacally like a C-rated movie villain as he did then, and it was with great, borderline pompous pride in himself that he managed to hold it in his chest.
Wrangling himself somewhat under control, he finally popped the big question with properly adulterated glee. “So, whatcha want me to do with the email then, kidsbop?”
-
Peter pulled his phone away from his ear, simultaneously frowning and squinting at the device.
Did this guy just really like the Avengers or something? Or maybe the idea of hacking? Both?
It was just, the guy sounded… weirdly… happy? Like, Peter wasn't sure if it was his super-hearing picking up on the subtle undertone, but there was a sort of almost-vibration to the guy's voice, kind of like when someone was trying to hold in a laugh. Or a sneeze.
Peter blinked, then shrugged, dismissing the train of thought. Whatever got the dude to be okay with helping him out, it was fine by him.
Anything to keep him from of being found out by the Avengers.