Title: Your Friendly Neighborhood Babysitter

Paring: None??? It's just Reader as an 8 year old kid

Warnings: None??? It's just Reader as an 8 Year Old Kid

Spoilers: NONE??? IT'S JUST - maybe a few, make sure you've seen Captain America: Civil War. 

Requested By: someone on AO3 

Sequel to: Weekend At Happy's

Authors Note: Also, I haven't seen Spider-Man: Homecoming so please do not post spoilers in the comments! I was too busy to see it in the cinemas and I am bummed! Spare me from spoilers chidlers!

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When Mommy picked you up from school instead of Dad, you wondered if he was too busy with his superhero things for you. But then you realised that if that was true, that Uncle Happy would be standing at the door instead. But still, you were happy to see your Mom, and you have her the biggest hug you could muster, and were about to tell her all about the trigonometry textbook you found in the library. But that was until you realised she had her sad eyes. Your Mommy had a thing with her eyes. Even when her mouth didn't say it, her eyes told you exactly what she was thinking, even without her wanting to say it. You remember back when you were smaller and the house had two parents, her eyes were always happy, or at least, you thought they were. It was hard to tell, sometimes.

"Something's wrong, isn't it?" you ask her, disheartened.

Your Mom sighs, and kneels before you, reaching your height. She brushes back strands of her yellow-red hair, and reveals some of those sad eyes in her smile. "It's not wrong, ________, Baby...I've just so much work I've got to do tonight at the office."

You nod. "I know. You're always busy."

"Yeah, sorry about that," she kisses your forehead, and taking your hand, walks you to the car that's waiting outside behind the bus area. "But this time I'm not going to leave you with Ms Hill," she hints, smiling down to you, "I've found a new person."

Inside, you feel better. Even though Ms Hill is good, she's very busy too, and you were often left sitting on the carpet knocking down towers of Duplo annoyed, watching again as the adults went around ignoring you.

"Who is it?" You ask, jumping into the car, and buckling up. You wave hello to the driver, and smile when they wave back. "Is it Uncle Rhodey?" You ask.

She shakes her head, and buckles up. "No, honey...Uncle Rhodey isn't ready for childcare just yet. He's still working on...other things," she ruffles your hair, and says an address to the driver you can't quite understand. "I'll tell you in a sec, okay? How was school today? Did you learn anything new?"

"Not since yesterday...but I think I know how to use imaginary numbers in trigonometry now. I borrowed a textbook from the library." You blink, and remember, "Did Dad tell you that I'm on the school science project for the science fair?" You beam, thrilled.

"No, he hasn't told me anything," Your Mom shakes her head, and whispers, only for you to hear her words, "You're so smart, and you're seven?"

You poke your tongue out. "I turned eight a week ago, Mom."

Your Mom's eyes are wide, and she pulls a face. "What? Did I just hear you're eight?" You laugh at her funny voice, and she adds, "I can't believe it. Nope." She grins.

"Yeah, I'm eight," you laugh, and glance out the window, seeing the car take the route over the bridge, and for the first time in a while, don't recognise the area's architecture. "Are we going out of the city?"

She chuckles at that. "I hope not," she glances out her window, and points at a sign that reads 10 Miles, Queens. "Just the other end of it."

When you reach Queen's, you've eaten your afternoon tea (what food you hadn't already eaten from your packed lunch), and are practically bouncing in the seat, wondering who it is who will be with you until they kick you out of their place. You wonder if it will be a super-secret agent like Ms Hill says she was (but you think she still is), or maybe a superhero? It can't be someone normal. Your family doesn't know anyone who isn't special in any way.

When the car pulls up, it stops in a quiet neighbourhood of townhouses, some on top of shops, some underneath them. You haven't been to this end of the city before, and excited, you thank the driver, and bound out before your mom can stop you.

"________, don't run off!" Your Mom calls out, and huffing, you turn, and see her climb out of the car, walking slowly to you with her heels on the uneven cement. She walks alongside you in your trainers, toward a door of a house. "I'll pick you up after, at either eight, or nine depending on a call from Wakanda...be nice, okay?"

You frown. "You haven't told me who I'm staying with, Mom."

As she knocks on the door, she looks down to you, almost as if to say how silly of me to forget, sorry about that! but those words don't come out, and instead, her eyes look sad again. You're not sure if you're the reason behind those sad eyes, but you don't ask that too.

"His name is Peter, he works...with your father." She tells you. "If you have any trouble, his Aunt will be around –," The door opens, revealing a lady with brown hair, and happy eyes. "May! I hope I'm not late."

The lady shakes her head. "No, right on time, Pepper." She looks to you, and her smile widens from her eyes into her mouth, all teeth, and crinkles around her eyes. "You must be ________! Peter's just up in his room, wait a second," she turns around, and yells out his name into the house. You remember when your Mommy and Daddy lived in a house together, back when you'd have your name shouted out from places in the house like a magic spell to make you appear. There was a lot more shouting before they split up. You don't like thinking about that part. "He won't be too long."

True to her word, not half a minute later, a boy a little older than you come into sight, and stands beside his Aunt. He's got a shirt with checks on it open over a blue t-shirt that reads 'physics might theoretical but the fun isn't' on it, and has a little smile until he sees your Mom. Then he just looks like he saw the sun without sunglasses on.

"Oh, – hi! I'm Peter!" He greets, holding his hand out for her to shake. "I – wow!"

His aunt frowns, "Peter," she warns. "This is ________."

You wave hello. He waves back.

"I'll come back for you later tonight, okay?" Your Mom promises, and turning, blows a kiss to you before going back to the car. It drove away before you could think of an excuse not to be there, and you were left with two strangers with brown hair.

His Aunt May waved you inside, and you followed them in. It looked nice, like an ordinary person's house. Once when you went over to America's house to work on a project, it looked something like this. Pictures hung on the walls, some art by famous dead people, too.

"Do you want to drink juice, or water?" His Aunt asked you, once the walk up the stairs was done. You were in a living room, with a kitchen too. It looked nice. When you didn't answer, she added, opening the fridge, and staring into it, "We have apple, and orange, and I think maybe blackcurrant."

Peter shook his head. "No, we ran out of blackcurrant."

May raised an eyebrow. "Okay, so no blackcurrant." You don't realise you've got sad eyes until she notices something, perhaps the eyes, when she adds, "Are you okay, sweetie?"

You nod. "Yeah. I've got some homework I should start on, Mrs –,"

She shakes her head. "Please. Call me Aunt May." She closes the fridge, and gestures to Peter. "Why don't you help ________ with her homework? You can set up here in the lounge room."

When your things are set out on the carpet, you see that Peter's reading the back of the textbook you brought with you from the library. Well, actually it was America who borrowed it from her library at the high school, and you were going to give it back. You swore you'd give it back. You were halfway through it, anyways, and she'd given it to you two days ago.

"It's about calculus," you tell him.

Peter nods. "Yeah, I use this kind of textbook in class," he tells you. "Wh – do they teach this in third grade now?"

You shake your head, and start on the spelling words you didn't manage to get done earlier in the week. "No, I'm just reading it."

"You read it for fun?" Incredulous, Peter raises his eyebrows, and adds, "Wow...that's pretty impressive."

You smile, "You're reading it," you muse, and go back to your spelling words. You've just done the words zucchini and mountain easily, and were tackling your choice word of the week, antidisestablishmentarianism well. On the third go, you didn't even make any mistakes. "You're impressive too." Peter laughs at that, but you don't look up from your spelling words to see what he's doing.

When you do look up, he's glancing around the room as if to make sure that nobody is listening, even though you're both alone and Aunt May is probably watching Stranger Things on her phone in her bedroom. But having made sure you're alone, he whispers. "Can you keep a secret?"

Mutely, you nod.

You've very good at secrets. Like how you don't say anything about how Fun Wanda would steal bits of food from Dr Banner's plate when he wasn't looking, or what Steve does after training with his buddy Bucky. You liked Bucky. You never told anyone that Bucky would sneak you handfuls of plums, even when they weren't in season. Yes, you're very good at secrets.

"I'm not just an ordinary person, ________," he tells you, those brown eyes staring into your eyes like melted bits of chocolate stuck to fingers in the summertime. "I'm a superhero."

The pencil in your hand falls to the carpet. "Like Dad?"

Peter nods. "Yeah, kind of." He scoots over from his perch, and pulls the collar of his shirt down. Underneath the blue shirt, is a red shirt that looks just like the suit you've seen on the news when your parents weren't looking. "I'm Spider –,"

"Boy!" you cry out, and realising your voice was too loud, whisper, "You're Spider-Boy!"

He grins at that, and lets his t-shirt go to cover up his costume. "Yeah, I'm Spider-Boy." He points to your homework, "Need a hand? I'm your friendly neighbourhood babysitter tonight, and with great power, comes – hey, have you watched Steven Universe? I've got it on disc if you want to see it!"

By the time nine o'clock rolls around, you're fast asleep on the lounge, surrounded by two half-empty bowls of popcorn, snuggled up beside a snoozing Peter. When your Mom arrives, she and May take a moment to see their sleeping kids, and quietly, move you to the car where your Dad waits, ready to take you home with his ex-wife together to patch up what they can for you. Aunt May is left standing over the couch, looking down at her nephew. He's tired, and has patches of skin healing from bruising, and sometimes, she swears that he takes on too much for a kid his age. But when he sleeps, he looks just like a child, innocent as ever. She takes a deep breath, and places a blanket over him, and goes to clean up the mess and turn off the TV before her returning to her online classes.

All is good.