Responsibility

So I always see fanfics where the Avengers reunite, whether permanently or just for one mission, where they find out Peter's age and scold Tony for drafting a kid into their fights. But I never see any where Tony explains to them the logic that justifies his decision. And yes, I know that it seemed he only drafted Spidey for the Civil War, but the suit was already built. I think Tony had plans for recruiting Peter before everything went to hell and decided, for reasons that will be explained in the story below, that that fight would be the perfect opportunity.

My math for Peter's age may not be entirely accurate, but this is how it is. Homecoming was 6 months after Civil War, and in Homecoming he said he was 15. So I think in Civil War he was probably 14. I read that Infinity War was three years after Homecoming, which puts Peter in senior year, or 18 years old. This takes place two years after Infinity War, so Peter is 20. However, with his babyface, the team will initially think he is much younger.

Also, I am not an engineer. Not even in a career adjacent to engineer-adjacent (yes, that word is there twice. Just to show just how little I know what I am talking about) but in this fic, Tony and Peter are talking about preferred metals for a project. I did some (probably shitty) googling, and just chose a type of metal that sounds good. So please don't bother correcting. I know if they used it they would probably die.

Six months after The Snap, the chaos had finally died down. The Avengers were back and better than ever, with more numbers than before. They now included the original six, Ant-Man, Black Panther, Bucky Barnes, Vision, Wanda Maximoff, War Machine, the Falcon, Doctor Strange, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and everybody's unofficial favorite, Spider-Man.

Most of the time, though, Doctor Strange preferred to pretend their partnership to defeat Thanos had never happened, saying he couldn't, and they quote, "deal with the utter morons that make up the group of over-grown children that somehow have garnered a reputation as the scariest fuckers you never want to go up against." The Guardians, too, were hardly ever seen with the main group, as they were always traveling the galaxy, deciding on a day by day basis whether they wanted to break the law or enforce it. T'challa and Thor had their people to rule and protect, and as such, could not afford to spend all their time with the rest, but would pop in on occasion.

So, for a long time, about a year and a half, in fact, only Tony Stark knew who Spider-Man was under the mask. The rest of the team tried not to let that sting. After all, for all that they didn't know his name or what he looked like, they still knew him. They knew he loved sandwiches from a deli called Delmar's, they knew he loved Star Wars, they knew he was crazy smart and had invented the original web shooters and formula by himself with almost no resources. They knew that he trusted them with his life, if not with his identity, and they tried to let that be good enough for them.

None of them expected it when his identity was revealed to them.

It started as a normal enough Saturday. They were, for the most part, doing their own thing. Steve was finishing up his morning jog with Bucky and Sam. Natasha and Clint were sparring in one of the lower level gyms. Scott was talking to Cassie on the phone, telling her how excited he was for her performance in the upcoming ballet recital she was going to be in. Rhodey was finishing up that days PT, with Bruce Banner supervising. As the day wore on into afternoon, though, they all wandered into the communal floor lounge area, where they, as always, found Vision and Wanda lounging on the couch waiting for them.

The team found, over the past two years since they reunited, that the best way to regain the mutually broken trust and prevent it from happening again, was to spend at least one day a week together. Whether watching movies, playing games, hitting the town, or just hanging out, they did their best to make that one day a week free for their teammates.