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1.
The first time it happened, it was a fluke… maybe. Peter and Tony had been working together in the lab. Well it was more like Tony worked and Peter watched, Tony had said that the project was too important to risk ‘little hands’ getting in the way. Peter had found that rude.
“Hey kid, could you grab me the papers with the calculations for this part? I wanna make sure I get it exactly. They should be on that desk where I left them.”
Peter jumped up, headed in the direction of where Mr Stark had pointed. He found a stack of papers sat underneath a very large and intricately designed paper weight in the shape of a hammer. He had never seen it before but Tony forever bought random things he didn’t need. So Peter thought nothing of it when he lifted the hammer to retrieve the papers. The thunder outside must’ve meant there was a storm incoming. Filing that information away for his later patrol, Peter put the hammer back down and handed the papers to Mr Stark. Their work continued as if Peter hadn’t accidentally discovered that he had lifted the mighty mjönir.
It was much later in the night, after Peter had gone to bed and Tony was still working in the lab when it finally happened. Tony turned toward the desk that he believed he had directed his protege to earlier and paused- well stilled, really. He looked at the papers on his desk, completely trapped under the incredible, and also seemingly annoyingly inconvenient, hammer belonging to none other than their own resident god of thunder. That did not make sense, because Tony was so sure that that was exactly where he had left those papers, but that would then mean that his own intern had managed to lift what people would argue was one of the most powerful weapons in the universe. Tony shook that terrifying thought out of his head and decided that he must have left the papers somewhere else. The man would rather not think about the implications of what that would have meant. He didn’t know how Thor managed to get that godforsaken hammer in his lab but he decided that he would just get him to collect the hammer and never do that again and everything would move on and he would never think of this possibility again.
2.
Unfortunately, that was not how these things worked in the world of Peter Parker. Though, thankfully Tony Stark was not present the next time it happened. Peter had been running so late. He got stuck on the subway, after it broke down on his way to the tower, which meant he had to walk the last two miles it took to get there. Now, normally Happy picked him up from school but he had been in Japan with Miss Potts at some kind of conference.
So yeah, he’d been running late to the lab and Tony had already been waiting for him. He really wanted to finish his project before he had to patrol that night and the clock was ticking. The elevator doors opened to the penthouse and Peter ran in. He’d barely even had a chance to say hello to all the Avengers that had been sitting on the couch as he rushed through.
In his haste, he, in fact, had not seen the hammer that had been carelessly left in the middle of the floor. Thor really needed to pay more mind to where he left these things. You would think that for something as precious as the mighty mjölnir, he would have taken better care of it. But alas, mistakes were made and Peter’s toe was the victim. And boy did it hurt.
“Mother fucker!- stupid ass thing- what the fuck was- owwwww- this bitch- shit- fuck- that huuurts dude- holy shit…”
Even Captain America himself couldn’t fault the kid’s colourful language. He winced in sympathy as he watched the kid hop along. That could have very easily broken his toe since the hammer wouldn’t have even mov-...
Hold on a second. Steve had had a view of the incident and it couldn’t be true. His eyes must have deceived him because the kid can’t- Steve can’t- no the freaking hulk, himself couldn’t move that hammer and yet a fifteen year old kid maybe did? Except now Steve couldn’t remember if the hammer had been placed flush against the couch before the incident or if maybe his eyes were really playing tricks on him.
“Mother trucker dude that hurt like a buttcheek on a stick. Fuck fuck fuck fuck shit fuck…”
The Avengers sat silently and watched as fifteen year old Peter Parker hopped across the penthouse lounge, shouted his obscenities and disappeared from view. The silence remained long enough for the avengers to take turns exchanging looks with one another. Then, chaos ensued.
All of them jumped up and began shouting. Thor was adamant that that was exactly where he had left the hammer, Bruce believed that if Thor didn't think it had moved, then it can’t have moved. Natasha, naturally, stayed silent, observing. Steve defended what he was so sure he witnessed, Clint believed he was no longer surprised by anything that the kid did. Sam and Bucky refused to believe that the kid was worthy, but that was probably because they were still mad about Germany.
Steve Rogers had been about two seconds away from grabbing a tape measure when they decided that it was a useless argument and they would find a way to know for sure later.
Not one of Earth’s mightiest heroes thought to just ask the A.I in the building that had cameras everywhere.
3.
Thor was not happy. He could not find his hammer anywhere. Last he remembered, he had left it on one of the chairs in the dining room, but it was definitely not there now. He tried really hard not to panic but Thor was a pannicker. His breaths became erratic, his pacing more uncoordinated, his vision blurred. Wait, Vision… Thor stormed down the hallway toward Vision’s room. “Vision!” Thor boomed “If this is some kind of joke I am going to tear off your arms and shove them up your butt… except you’re a robot so maybe you don’t have a… just know that I’ll be very angry.”
A rather confused Vision, who would be terrified if he could feel terror, had most certainly not moved Thor’s hammer. “Has anybody seen my hammer!” There was a crackle of thunder outside as Thor stormed back to the main area of the penthouse. One more minute and this whole tower was going down, he was going to rein down the power of the mighty Thor and annihilate whoever was stupid enough to steal his hammer, he was going to make them rue the day they were born, he was- huh. Well, it looked like some kind soul had decided to move it out of the way. There it was, hanging neatly alongside the coats and jackets in the entranceway. Thor took a breath of relief and moved on, leaving his hammer hung up on the coat rack.
Later in the night, Thor asked around and discovered that Peter had set the table for dinner.
Maybe he had misjudged the young midgarian afterall, perhaps the child was worthy.
4.
After the missing hammer incident, Thor made it a habit to leave his hammer in places where it wasn’t likely to be moved. Most of the time, he left it hanging on the coat rack again. And that was where the hammer lay the next time, peacefully on a hook near the elevator along with the coats and jackets belonging to the tower’s residents. The last person to see the hammer’s position was one Natasha Romanoff, typically the most observant of all of the Avengers. This, of course, meant that when she awoke the next morning, she definitely noticed the discrepancy. Where the hammer had sat safely on the rack the night before, so had a jacket belonging to Peter Parker, trapped underneath. Except it wasn’t. Not anymore.
Now, Natasha absolutely already knew the answer to the question circling around the Avengers. She may not have seven PhDs, but she hadn’t been born that day. After the incident, Natasha had asked the A.I later in the evening once she was alone. Of course, she could’ve brought this up with the rest of the Avengers and put them out of their misery, but she found the whole situation entertaining and wanted to see how long it could go on for before one of the heroes of the universe finally decided to use their brain.
This coat rack incident gave her the perfect opportunity to test just how far they would go. She brought her evidence to the Avengers.
“And you’re sure that Peter’s jacket had 100 percent been underneath the hammer?”
“I am a professional spy and assassin, Steve. Of course I’m sure. I was literally trained to be this observant.”
“I believe her,” trust her best friend to have her back, “I say it’s time to come up with a plan.”
Natasha smirked as she sat back and watched the group of ‘adults’ plot ways to expose a teenager.
5.
The plan was simple, all of the Avengers were in on it except for Tony Stark. The team agreed that if they told Tony, then he would spoil it and just ask the kid. They wanted to catch the kid in the act. So with that, the trap was set and the plan had begun.
Peter was a creature of habit. Everyday after school, he would put his homework down on the coffee table in the living room before having dinner, so that he would remember to get it done. No surprise, that night had been no different. Thor was positioned on the couch, hammer at his side, ready and waiting. As soon as Peter’s homework was on the coffee table and the kid had disappeared from view, the hammer was placed on top of the papers. Plan executed, Thor sat back, triumphantly. Now, all they had to do was wait.
And wait they did. First was dinner, which always took so long since the team did not know how to sit peacefully and eat a meal together. It was a miracle that there wasn’t a full blown food fight every day. Then, Peter wanted to go to the lab with Tony before homework, because he was “so close to finishing this project I would rather eat my own hand than do anything else right now”. Following that, he decided that patrol must come before homework, which really, someone should bring up to Stark because that was a terrible way to prioritise his time. In the end, the longer Peter waited to do his homework, the more tired everyone else became. It got so late, they decided to take shifts. Clint was the last person on watch before Thor took over as the last shift of the night, and when the archer had left, the homework was exactly as it had been since Peter had first placed it there the night before.
The whole team agreed to wake up at the same time, after Peter had left for school, and gather in the living room to get the low down from Thor. Except, as they all entered the hallway, they could hear the booming, deep sound of Thor snoring. Everyone looked at each other in worry and sped up. Low and behold, Thor was laid across the couch, sleeping soundly. And the worst part: his hammer was tucked neatly against him, his arms wrapped around it like it was a freaking teddy bear. The group of grown ass adults took a collective sigh as they watched the god of thunder sleep soundly knowing that he ruined their entire mission.
When Thor awoke later, he had no memory of whether the papers had been under the hammer when he had grabbed it from the coffee table. He claimed to have had a bad dream in which his hammer had been destroyed by a black haired woman who claimed she was his sister. He had grabbed the hammer in a panic before he fell back to sleep.
+1
After the last failure, the Avengers gave up on subtlety and decided that they would find out for sure at the next movie night, when everyone was there.
It only took about a week before all of the Avengers could do another movie night but they finally managed to gather together. Steve made the popcorn; Sam and Bucky went to the store for the candy; Thor, naturally, brought pop tarts; Clint and Natasha set up the blankets; Tony and Peter spent a while picking the first movie and everyone else joined the team on the couches once everything was ready. Peter left to use the bathroom before they hit play on their first movie and the Avengers decided that was the perfect time.
As the kid was walking back into the room, Thor called to him. “Young Peter!” Peter stopped mid step, listening. “Would you do me the honours of grabbing me my hammer?”
A look of confusion crossed over the kid’s face but he agreed regardless. Why the god needed his hammer just to watch a movie, he didn’t know but Thor was weird like that. He grabbed the hammer off of its hook, and turned back to the living room. He didn’t even make it halfway across the room before he was swept off of his feet by a very loudly cheering Thor. Peter was trapped inside of Thor’s embrace as he lifted the young boy up and began spinning and jumping and cheering “He is worthy! He is worthy! The man of spiders is worthy!”
“Uh - what?”
“I knew it!” Tony cheered “If anybody should be worthy to lift Thor’s hammer it would be you kiddo.” Tony clapped Peter on the shoulder while the kid still laid limp in Thor’s arms, his own trapped under the embrace.
“What is happening right now?” Peter asked “What do you mean worthy? I didn’t even do anything.”
“Dude.” Clint replied “You lifted Thor’s hammer.”
“Yeah, so? Was I not supposed to? He literally asked me to get it.”
“Pete, nobody else can lift the hammer. It’s something about, only people worthy of ruling asgard can lift it or some other bull. If you were any other person you would not have been able to do that.”
Peter’s jaw dropped. “Wait, what?!” He exclaimed, turning his head to look over at Thor, whose face was way in his personal space from the fact that he had still not let Peter out of the embrace. “But it doesn’t feel heavy at all, that makes no sense.”
“Stark is right, spider. Only those worthy of ruling Asgard should so wield the mighty hammer.” Finally, Thor let Peter down, patting the kid on the head affectionately. “We must visit Asgard together one day, I will show you where I grew up.”
Peter’s face lit up, “Wait, seriously?!”
“No!” Tony cut in, “absolutely not, no space journeys for young spiders, my old man heart couldn’t take the stress.”
“Wha- Mr Stark! Come on, when else would we ever get an opportunity to go to space? Please! Please please please!”
God those eyes will be the death of him. “I’ll think about it. But absolutely not before you turn 18, that’s non-negotiable.” Peter cheered.
“Hold on, is no one else uncomfortable with this?” Sam asked, Bucky raised his hand in agreement.
“Oh shut it you two, you’ve held a grudge ever since the airport. That’s exactly why you didn’t believe the trap would work with the kid’s homework.”
Peter did a double take “Woah wait. Trap? What trap?”
Steve explained that they had all witnessed the kid trip over the hammer, to which Peter flushed bright red, and admitted that they had set the trap with the homework to find out for real after the incident caused a huge debate between the team.
“Wait so you set a trap to catch Peter in the act?” Every single Avenger, sans Nathasha, all nodded their heads. “Why didn’t you just ask FRIDAY to tell you? She would have seen the whole thing.”
Several pairs of eyes stared blankly for several seconds, silent.
“Son of a bitch!”
“Language.”
“Are you kidding me?!”
“This is all your fault Steve”
“What, how is this my fault, you’re the one…”
Absolute chaos erupted amongst the Avengers as it dawned on them how stupid they had been. Natasha sat back and watched the whole thing unfold. Peter and Tony sat down on the couch next to each other, a bowl of popcorn between them as they spent their evening watching the team argue over who had been the stupidest. This was far better entertainment than any movie could grant.
Laughing and fighting together felt unbelievably domestic and Peter stopped for a moment to wonder how his life had turned out the way it had. But as he sat there, watching the arguments continue, he could not be more grateful to be a part of this dysfunctional family.