Dedication:

For anyone who ever spent a portion of their lives teaching, this story is for you. Even if it wasn't for long, even if you quit before you hit the five-year mark, even if you stumbled into it as a second career, whether it was half a year or half a lifetime, this is my way of saying thank you. I am and always will be proud to count myself among you.

Notes:

I love field trip fics, but as a middle and high school English teacher with 8 years of experience, I am often struck by how unrealistic many of them are. It was the same when I watch the Spider-Man movies; I kept wanting to throw things at the screen because the teachers kept losing kids and didn't do headcounts. So this is my attempt to write a realistic field trip and identity reveal story, one which also looks beyond the field trip to what the long-term consequences would be for a teacher who found out their student was Spider-Man. Roger Harrington is the central character and the story is told from his perspective, but this is just as much about Peter and Tony and their relationship. After all, where would we all be without some Iron-dad and Spider-son goodness? This is set during and post Spider-Man Homecoming and is not compliant with any of the subsequent movies.

Also, I started writing this way back in June because I wanted to wait until I finished it before posting. I am therefore conveniently ignoring coronavirus, even for the parts of the story set in 2019 and 2020. If only we could all do that IRL, am I right?

Finally, a thank you to my beta-reader Warriora for helping me to edit and proof-read this, but also for helping me not get bogged down by my 'teacher' perspective and telling me to delete things which wouldn't be interesting to a general audience.

Trigger Warning:

This fic is not just a field trip story, it's also a story about living with the fear of gun violence in America. There are multiple descriptions of school shootings, ALICE training sessions, and active shooter drills. There is also some pretty strong criticism of the NRA and of American gun control laws. Some chapters have specific, real-life details from shootings in Parkland, Sandy Hook, and others. I will give chapter-specific trigger warnings when necessary. This first chapter includes a flashback describing a fictional mass shooting at The Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

Title: Everyday Superhero

Chapter 1: Disciplinarian

"Uh, hey, Mr. Harrington? Do you have a second? It's just, we're trying to do a feature on what happened in Washington D.C., I mean with Spider-Man and stuff. Could you say a few words for the Midtown Daily Newscast?"

Roger Harrington had a million things racing through his mind as he hurried into school that morning. It had taken him hours to fall asleep, and then he'd somehow missed the first three alarms on his phone before he'd finally woken up. Now, he had 90 copies to make and very little hope of beating the morning rush to the copier, but still, the nervously worded question from Betty Brant made him stop in his tracks.

He studied the teen in front of him, her blonde hair and bright blue eyes and nervous energy reminding him of another student on another field trip to Washington D.C. It had happened ten years ago, in a time when superheroes still belonged in comic books and Tony Stark was still the rich asshole who got drunk on national television and manufactured weapons of mass destruction. Back then, there had been no superheroes to save his kids when a young man in his early thirties had opened fire on them in The Museum of Natural History.

The memory still made his breathing pick up and his chest tighten even a decade later. Blood and screaming and gut-wrenching, blinding fear. A seventeen-year-old girl lying dead and bleeding on the ground, her sightless eyes meeting his. He blinked away the nightmarish images and focused again on the girl in front of him. When he answered her question, it was with a gravity that clearly caught her by surprise.

"As you know, we made it out alive, and that's the important thing. I couldn't bear to lose a student on a school trip. Not again."

Betty stilled, shocked that he'd gone there, her eyes flickering up towards the memorial plaque which stood prominently near the high school entrance. He wasn't surprised that she'd made the connection; some histories would never be forgotten no matter how many years had passed.

Ashley Priest had been a senior like Liz Toomes in 2007. She'd opened a Facebook account only a few months before that field trip. He remembered that because Facebook had still been new then, and all the kids had been obsessed with it. He remembered her as being popular, brimming with joy and potential, with plenty of friends who would later be devastated by her death, just as he had been as her teacher. The dates bookending her cruelly short life, 1990-2007, were etched in harsh, indelible black.

Now, fresh off another field trip to D.C. that could have cost him six more of his kids, Harrington could only feel profound gratitude that he'd been spared that pain a second time. "I could have lost all of my students if it hadn't been for Spider-Man. I know you'll probably never hear this, whoever you are, but thank you. Thank you so much for saving my kids."

As he turned to leave, he noticed Peter Parker frozen a few feet away watching him with a very strange expression on his face. When their eyes met, the kid turned a deep shade of red and hurried away quickly. Harrington frowned, reminded that he needed to have a serious talk with Peter for sneaking out of his hotel room and blowing off Academic Decathlon. It would have to wait until later, though. Harrington needed to make his copies before the bell rang, or his classes would be an unmitigated disaster today.

He hurried down the hallway, thoughts of Peter forgotten, at least for now.

"Breaking News! We have reports that an armed and dangerous gunman has opened fire at the Museum of Natural History..."

Blood sprayed warm and wet on Harrington's face as a stranger went down in front of him, screaming. The deafening crack of bullets rang in his ears. The blare of proximity alarms added to the confusion as people panicked and jumped past the protective glass barriers to take cover behind towering dinosaur fossils.

"Ashley! Reva!" Harrington shouted wildly. "Where are you?"

The rest of his students were hiding behind a gigantic allosaurus dinosaur, but Reva had asked for permission to go to the bathroom and he'd told her yes, as long as she didn't go alone. Ashley had volunteered, and now he couldn't see either of them. He crawled, dodging behind fossil displays, shaking and cringing every time the gun went off.

"MR. HARRINGTON! What…"

"Roger, what the hell are you doing? Get back here!"

He ignored the voices of his students and his co-chaperone Monica Warren, his entire being focused on Ashely and Reva. As he ran and crawled and stumbled towards the door, he was certain he was going to die, that a bullet would hit him in the back or the stomach and that he'd collapse right here and bleed out in a room full of dinosaurs like an extra from Jurassic Park. Somehow, though, he made it out of the room uninjured and ran down an empty, blood-splattered hallway, headed for the bathrooms. For as long as he lived, he would never forget the sight that met his eyes when he rounded the corner.

Ashley lay spread-eagled on the floor outside the women's bathroom. Reva was on her knees beside her, sobbing, her hands covered with blood. He ran to them and nearly vomited when Ashley's blank eyes met his, the expression in them vaguely accusing. She was gone, killed in the blink of an eye for the crime of volunteering to wait outside the bathroom for her friend. The horror of it overwhelmed him for a long, awful moment, but then he gathered himself and focused on Reva, who was still alive. "Hey," he croaked. "Come on. We gotta get outta here. The shooter could be heading right back here; we can't stay out in the open."

She stared at him with tears trailing down her cheeks, refusing to get up.

Suddenly the bloodstained hallway faded away and Harrington found himself on one of the top floors of the Washington Monument, standing outside a broken down elevator staring down at her as she stood in an elevator. He held his hand out to her as the entire structure creaked ominously, threatening to give beneath her feet. She looked up at him and suddenly she wasn't Reva anymore but Liz. He reached out to grab her hand and missed by inches.

The elevator fell and she screamed; an awful, bloodcurdling sound that seemed to go on forever. Harrington screamed with her, loud and desperate and completely terrified because he couldn't lose another student, not like this, not ever again-

With a choking gasp, Harrington shot up in bed, panting harshly and soaked in sweat. His heart was pounding in his chest, and his bedsheets were twisted around his limbs like a vice. He fought to kick them off, blinking several times to clear his eyes of the moisture welling in them.

Safe, he told himself desperately, burying his face in his hands and focusing on his breathing. Just a dream. Reva's still alive. You ran into her three months ago with her son at the grocery store. She's fine, and so is Liz. You didn't lose anyone. You didn't lose anyone. He repeated the mantra to himself for several minutes before his breathing finally evened out, and then he flopped back onto his soaked sheets with a despairing groan.

"Jesus Fucking Christ," he muttered under his breath.

Still shaking a little, he reached for his phone and checked the time. 4:00 am. Still early, but it was only two hours before he usually woke up, and it wasn't like he didn't have work to do. Sighing, he got up and headed for the kitchen to make some coffee.

Later that day, at the end of 10th Grade Advanced Chemistry, Harrington paused by Peter Parker's desk. "Peter, can you stay after class for a quick word? I can write you a pass for Ms. Warren if you're late."

He had spoken quietly, but it didn't stop a few students sitting nearby from hearing. He watched as Ned shot Peter a panicked look and MJ eyed him with a speculative expression. Flash Thompson looked positively gleeful. Harrington leveled the kid with a ferocious glare just as he opened his mouth to voice whatever cutting taunt had just come into his head. Showing that he wasn't a complete idiot, the kid snapped his mouth shut and deflated.

When the room was clear of students, Harrington walked over to Peter and sat down at a desk across from him, watching him carefully. The kid looked downright miserable, his shoulders slumped and his mouth downturned. Harrington was worried about him. He had a heart of gold and was genius level smart, but lately, Harrington got the feeling that there was something else going on with him, something that was making his grades dip and his attendance fall. Harrington had been teaching Peter since he was a freshman. He had watched him mourn his uncle without letting his academic performance suffer in the slightest, so this was completely out of character. Harrington was determined to get to the bottom of it.

"We need to talk about what happened on the field trip," he said. "I didn't get a chance to bring it up earlier because of the crisis at the Monument and the whole Spider-Man situation, but let me be frank, Peter. If this had been any other situation, you'd be in massive trouble. As it stands now, I can only be happy you blew off the competition, not because we didn't need you, but because Spider-Man wouldn't have had time to save one more person before that elevator fell. So despite the situation, I can only be glad you weren't there. That doesn't change the fact that you broke some pretty major rules."

Harrington paused, wondering if Peter would bring up the fact that MJ hadn't been in the elevator either. He had broken protocol by granting her permission to read outside on her own, but it had seemed like the right thing to do. A student like Flash Thompson would have brought that up, but Peter didn't try to argue with him.

"I know," he said, "I messed up. I'm sorry."

"I left you in that hotel room without asking questions when you said you were sick," Harrington reminded him. "I thought, there's no way Peter Parker would blow off Nationals for Academic Decathlon if he wasn't sick. I called your aunt and she said I could trust you to be on your own, that you were a responsible kid. That was what I thought too, but then I got back to the hotel after almost losing my entire Decathlon team in a freak elevator accident, and you weren't in your room. Can you imagine what that was like for me, Peter?"

The teenager was staring at him with an expression of guilty dismay. "I was back like ten minutes after that," he said weakly. "I was fine."

"Yeah, that's why I didn't make a big deal out of it then. Everyone was shaken up enough without me reaming you out in the middle of all that, but Peter? You can't just vanish without a trace from your hotel room during a field trip, not when I'm responsible for you. If anything had happened to you, that would have been on me."

"I'm so sorry, Mr. Harrington," Peter whispered, miserable. "I really am."

"What were you even doing outside?" Harrington asked him. "Come on, level with me here. This is just not making sense to me. Why would you lie about being sick and blow off a competition this important? It doesn't make sense."

"I uh, didn't lie?" Peter rambled nervously. "I really did have a stomach bug and then I felt better and then I, uh, decided I wanted to go sightseeing, so I headed to…to…Lincoln Memorial."

"Lincoln Memorial," said Harrington flatly. "A building which is five minutes away from Washington Monument. Yeah, because that makes perfect sense."

"I'm not making this up, I swear," Peter protested, even less convincingly than before.

Harrington stared at him, completely incredulous. "So you're really telling me that, what, at first you were too sick to go to Academic Decathlon, then you miraculously got better, and then you snuck out to go sightseeing to a place five minutes away from us? That's seriously the story you're sticking with?"

"Um." Peter looked like a deer caught in headlights. "I, yeah. I really was sick."

Harrington just watched him, letting the silence stretch until it became more and more uncomfortable and tense. Peter squirmed where he was sitting, eyes darting around the room to land on desks and bulletin boards and lab supplies, but he didn't 's patience evaporated, replaced by real anger now. He hated it when kids lied to him.

"I can't force you to tell me the truth, but I also can't let this pass," he said sharply. "I am booking you for a week's worth of after school detentions and I'm logging this incident on the Online Discipline Tracker, which as you know will include a full, detailed report of your actions that will be emailed to Principal Morita and your aunt-"

"What? Mr. Harrington, please, that'll go on my record!" Peter leapt to his feet, his eyes panicked. "I can't have people finding out about this; my aunt will kill me! Please, please can we just do the detentions without the ODT?"

"Peter, you lied to me, blew off your classmates, snuck off during a field trip, and even now, you're still not being straight with me," Harrington said in exasperation. "You're lucky I'm not pushing for a suspension here."

Peter flinched. This was probably the first time he'd ever been in this much trouble at school, and Harrington knew that for a student like Peter, an entry on the ODT was probably soul-crushing. He looked upset, almost near tears, and Harrington was almost tempted to say something to soften the blow. But the second tardy bell had just rung, and Peter had a class he needed to get to.

"That'll be all, unless you actually want to give me an honest answer about what really happened." He paused to give Peter one last chance to own up, but the kid just looked away. "Here's your pass for Physics. Tell Ms. Warren I'm sorry I kept you. And Peter?" he said as the teen reached the door. "I expect to see you at Decathlon practice today, okay? Don't be late."

"Really?" Peter looked back at him in shock. "I'm still on the team?"

"Yeah, really." Harrington had briefly considered kicking him off the team after this debacle, but he wasn't quite angry enough to take Academic Decathlon away from him.

"Thanks, Mr. Harrington!" Peter flashed him a smile, leaving the room with more of a spring in his step than previously, though he was still much more subdued than usual.

Harrington shook his head wryly. He admitted to himself that Peter Parker's puppy dog expression was hard to resist, even for a veteran like himself.

The next few weeks only increased Harrington's concerns. Peter blew off his first detention, earning himself another week's worth, a phone call from the principal to his aunt, and a second entry in the ODT. Harrington didn't try to lecture him again, even though he was very tempted. It hadn't happened on his watch, and he privately thought Coach Wilson deserved most of the blame for just letting a kid walk out of detention without trying to stop him. Seriously, which teacher did that?

After that small stumble, though, Peter seemed more invested in school than ever. His grades and attendance rose again- still not as good as he was capable of, but better than before. Still, his smiles seemed strained and he occasionally stared into space with an expression of sorrow and disappointment, as if he'd lost something that was important to him. Worried, Harrington tried to talk to him about it a few times, but he was irritatingly secretive, babbling nervously and saying a lot without really revealing anything.

Then, Peter disappeared yet again on the night of Homecoming, leaving Liz Toomes without a date. As students whispered and stared in her direction, she stood off to the side looking upset and embarrassed, surrounded by a small, fiercely protective group of friends.

Harrington wanted more than anything to call Peter's aunt and find out where he was, but this wasn't a school mandated event. Students could come and go as they pleased. Most had driven themselves or been driven by their parents. The teachers weren't actually responsible for anyone who chose not to attend, and there could technically be no consequences for someone who left early.

"Holy shit!"

Harrington's head whipped up in alarm, and he saw that a large group of kids had gathered at the entrance of the gym, murmuring excitedly and snapping pictures on their phones. Harrington hurried towards them immediately, wondering if someone had been hurt.

"Are those webs? Seriously? Like what the actual fuck, dude."

"I cannot believe I was in here wasting time dancing with random guys I don't even like, when Spider-Man was out there fighting a bad guy. I mean, oh my God…"

He pushed past the students and gaped in horror when he got an unobstructed view of the parking lot. There were destroyed school buses littering the parking lot and strands of Spider-Man's webs everywhere. Thoughts of Peter Parker flew from his mind he grabbed his phone to dial Jim Morita. The principal was going to have an aneurism when he saw this.

By the next day, the story was all over the news. Spider-Man had taken down yet another dangerous villain with a crazy, overly dramatic codename. Normally, Harrington would have just rolled his eyes and moved on. It wasn't like it was anything out of the ordinary for New York these days. This time, though, the bad guy happened to be none other than Liz Toomes' dad, who had apparently been moonlighting as a supervillain and calling himself The Vulture. Apparently, this was just the world they lived in now.

Liz was the biggest casualty of the entire debacle, suddenly forced to relocate to Oregon in her senior year. Harrington had been her teacher through her freshman and sophomore years and had been coaching her in Academic Decathlon for even longer than that. He still remembered the glowing pride in her eyes when he'd announced her captaincy the year before.

To see her leaving this way, under a cloud of disgrace and shame which she'd done nothing to deserve, was too awful for words. Harrington had witnessed kids go through some truly awful experiences; unexpected pregnancies that turned their lives upside down, homelessness, abuse, prolonged custody battles, even, sometimes, parents being suddenly deported by ICE. Even with all that, a student turning out to have a supervillain for a father seemed a little excessive. For a moment he wondered if it had been worth it at all, if he should have stayed in academia or worked at a private research facility where he could have been making two or three times what he was making now.

He shook off the dark thought with practiced ease. Sighing, he grabbed his phone and quickly booked an appointment with his therapist for later the same day, barely wincing at the $70 charge. Apparently, this was just the price of doing business in New York these days.

By October, school had fallen back into a semblance of normalcy. There were no further reports of supervillains hanging around Queens, no more kids going missing from detentions, and the annual freshmen field trip to Oscorp went off without a hitch.

After everything that had happened, Harrington found himself appreciating the familiar rhythms of the school year far more than usual. On Halloween, he decided to go all out, wearing a fluffy Winnie the Pooh costume which had the students laughing till they cried and sneaking pictures of him all day. He knew he was going to end up in at least a dozen memes and only hoped that none of them went viral. He was gratified when no one laughed harder than Peter. The kid seemed to be in better spirits lately. His attendance was still erratic and his grades were still not quite where they should have been, but he seemed happier and had found a new friend in MJ.

In early November, the school received word that they had won a STEM Field Research Award from the New York City Department of Education. Apparently, it was being given to them both because of the school's excellent test scores and because of the recent Academic Decathlon win. The entire sophomore class was getting free tickets for a field trip to the Stark Industries Technology Museum, which was an amazing opportunity. SI Tech Museum tours were exorbitantly priced. There were digital lotteries to give the average Joe a chance, but the likelihood of actually scoring one was low. Harrington knew his students would be ecstatic about this.

"I have some great news, guys," he announced at the end of class. "Thanks to the performance of our amazing Decathlon Team, the city has given us free tickets for a field trip…" he paused for dramatic effect- "-to the Stark Industries Science and Technology Museum!"

"What?!"

"No way, Mr. Harrington. That's awesome! We get to go to Stark Tower; are you serious right now?"

Harrington smiled at the excited clamor, soaking in the fever pitch of their joy. It wasn't every day he got to deliver news like this.

"So when exactly are we going?"

"Next Wednesday," Harrington answered, "We don't have a lot of time, so I need you all to get your parents to sign permission slips and get them to me as soon as you can, okay? By the end of this week at the latest."

He handed out the permission slips, pausing briefly in surprise when he reached Peter's desk. The kid was staring down at the floor with a glum look on his face, barely responding to Ned's enthusiastic rambling about getting to see a replica of the Arc Reactor.

"Peter, is everything okay?"

Flash Thompson scoffed loudly from a few desks away. "Pe- uh, Parker's probably just worried we'll find out he was faking his internship."

Peter wilted in his chair and Harrington turned and gave Flash a flat look, almost wishing he'd actually slipped up and said "Penis." Then, he would have had an excuse to ream the kid out for his language. "Peter isn't faking the internship, Flash," he said sharply. "His aunt sent an official permission slip signed by the people at SI months ago. Why do you think I let him have that many days off?"

He glanced at Peter, who was looking at him with stunned gratitude, ignoring the murmured whispers of "wait, so he really does work there? Seriously?" and "Maybe this means he actually knows Spider-Man, too."

Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, Harrington placed the permission slip on Peter's desk and leaned forward, making sure to speak in a whisper because he really didn't want to be overheard again. "Stay back for a second after class, okay? You're not in trouble, I just want to check in."

Peter tensed despite the reassurance. Harrington frowned, sensing that something was off here. Peter idolized Tony Stark. For him to have such an underwhelming reaction to this opportunity was completely out of character. After everyone had left, Harrington gave him his kindest, most reassuring smile.

"You can relax, you know. I really did mean it when I said you weren't in trouble. I'm just surprised, because I thought you'd be super excited about this field trip, but you seem really low. Is it because of the internship? Have you already been on the museum tour?"

"No, I haven't," Peter said unhappily.

"Then what's the problem?"

Peter stared at him with a disquieted air, fidgeting with his shirt sleeves. Harrington waited patiently.

"It's just, uh. I work there, so I already have the ID to get in," the kid said finally. "FRIDAY- that's the AI who runs the building- will scan everyone when we enter and announce our clearance levels."

"Okay," said Harrington, confused. "And this a problem because…?" Again, Peter hesitated, his expression conflicted. "Hey, you know whatever you tell me right now, I'll keep it to myself, right? You can trust me."

Peter let out a gusty sigh, some of the tension finally bleeding out of him at the reassurance."It's just that my clearance level is a lot higher than most people know," he explained. "I'm, uh, not just a regular intern there, I'm Mr. Stark's personal intern. He's kind of like, mentoring me, I guess? But yeah, you can't tell anyone. We're keeping it on the down low because he doesn't want the press to find out, which is also why I stopped talking about it every five seconds to the Academic Decathlon team. I've been working with him in R&D on some projects."

Harrington's face broke into a delighted grin. "That's amazing, Peter," he said, genuinely thrilled for the kid. "That sounds like such a great opportunity. I have no doubt you're going to design some really innovative projects for that company, maybe even change the world someday."

"Wow, really?" Peter looked startled at the praise.

"Of course." Harrington smiled at the kid warmly. "Come on, let's be real, here. This is a school for high-performing students, but even here, we both know you aren't always challenged as you should be. I try, and so do your other teachers; that's why you're in the Gifted and Talented track. Still, there's only so much we can do to differentiate the curriculum properly for kids like you." Harrington didn't mention the recent dip in Peter's grades. Hopefully hearing such effusive phrase would motivate him to do better more effectively than another lecture. "I'm happy Mr. Stark saw the potential in you," he continued. "A recommendation letter from him would probably look amazing on your college applications."

"Wow, um, thank you, Mr. Harrington," said Peter, flushing with pleasure. "For the record, your classes have always been pretty challenging. In like a good way, I mean."

"That's good to hear." Harrington returned his smile. "Now, about your problem. If you really don't want anyone to know your clearance level, I see two possible solutions. The first is for you to talk to Mr. Stark before the field trip and ask him to have his AI announce a lower clearance level on that day-"

"No, no way, I don't want Mr. Stark to know I'm going to be there on the field trip," Peter interrupted immediately. "He'll, like, want to drop by and see me- he already complains I don't come by enough during the week. Then Flash will say something really stupid because he's Flash, and then Mr. Stark will either yell at him or try to show off something I made, and oh God, it would just be an embarrassing mess, and like, not good at all, especially since we're supposed to be keeping it a secret that I know him."

Wow, thought Harrington. Peter had called Tony Stark his mentor, but Harrington had only ever heard teenagers talk about their fathers in that tone of voice. It was all he could do to contain his surprise.

"Well, your second option is to go straight to SI in the morning. Instead of coming to school and riding the bus with us, we can just meet with you inside the building. The school would need written permission from your aunt, of course, but you could get there early, pass through the scanners and wait for us. No one would be around to hear the announcement."

"Yeah, that sounds like it could work," Peter said, relieved. "Thank you. I was low-key considering not going before this."

"No problem," Harrington said warmly. Then a worrying thought occurred to him. "Just one thing, though. You probably know Stark Industries really well if your clearance is that high. You go there every week, so you probably know the people who work there. Am I right?"

"Yeah, but they won't be at the museum," said Peter. "I work in the labs. We probably won't run into anyone I know. There aren't that many of them, because Mr. Stark really is trying not to have too many people find out about me."

Harrington wondered why, if that was the case, Peter was so worried that Stark would gatecrash their field trip and embarrass him. It seemed a little illogical, but he decided not to touch that for now. "I want you to remember that while you're with me, I'm responsible for you," he told the kid firmly. "You can't skip off to the labs or go wandering somewhere I can't follow. You need to stick with the rest of your classmates and be present throughout, okay? Mentally and physically."

"Yeah I get it," said Peter, looking a little abashed. "You don't have to worry. This will be, like, the most uneventful trip ever, I promise."

Peter looked so earnest and sincere when he said this that it didn't even occur to Harrington that the kid had basically jinxed the entire thing by being that naively optimistic. Later, he would look back on it, and realize that this was the moment when he really should have known that everything was doomed to spiral out of control.

TBC…

Up Next:

The sheer enormity of the situation suddenly overwhelmed Harrington, and he put out a hand shakily, feeling as if the ground had fallen out from under his feet. "Jesus Christ, Peter," he choked out, echoingly loud in the silent hallway. "You're just a kid! How could you possibly be Spider-Man?"