Chapter Text
Tony, 2015
“Boss, Peter is on his way up.”
“Thanks, FRI.”
Thankfully, the paperwork spread across Tony’s desk wasn’t particularly urgent. He gladly threw down his pen and instead headed up to the penthouse’s kitchen, already busy planning what he was going to cook to satiate Peter’s growing appetite.
Today wasn’t a tutoring day, but rather a day when May and Ben’s shifts coincided, so Peter come to the Tower to be babysat. The kid, of course, hated that phrase.
“You’re not babysitting me. I’m fourteen! And you’re my soulmate! We’re just… hanging out.”
“We’ve been ordered to hang out by May because she doesn’t trust you to be home alone. That sounds like babysitting to me.”
“Well in that case you need to step up your game or else I’ll hire myself a real babysitter who can, like, make me snacks and stuff.”
Which Tony had taken as a hint. He now made sure to prepare Peter a snack whenever he came over to the Tower, and Peter always pretended to be grateful, even though most of the time the delicacies Tony served up were mildly charred.
Faint footsteps padded into the kitchen behind him, then a bag was dropped on the island.
“Hey, Tony,” Peter said softly.
“There’s my little secret agent,” said Tony, struggling with a pan of scrambled eggs. “In the drawer to your left you will find a notebook. In it I want you to write all the trade secrets you stole from Norman Osborn while you were undercover.”
Prolonged silence. “…What?”
“Are you telling me you didn’t uncover anything scandalous happening at Oscorp while you were there? What the hell was the point of me giving you permission to go, then?”
Tony winced as, inevitably, the scrambled eggs began to burn, and quickly took them off the heat to plate up.
“Um,” said Peter. “I’m sorry… we were mostly just in the labs, but… they didn’t really show us anything very interesting. Yeah. Nothing—nothing interesting happened. At all.”
“Well, you were at Oscorp. They can’t help that.”
Finally, Tony turned around, a plate of scrambled eggs on toast in either hand. He frowned. Peter was slumped over the kitchen island, resting his chin on his hands. He looked pale and his eyes were half-lidded.
Gently, Tony set the plates down and slid one across to Peter.
“We feeling alright, Pete?”
Peter blinked as Tony handed him a fork. “Um… yeah, I’m okay. I’m fine.”
“You sure? I can get one of the nurses in the medbay to check on you. You don’t look great.”
Normally, Peter would have responded with something sarcastic, but today he merely poked at his food with his fork and said, “I’m just tired.”
Keeping a watchful eye on the kid, Tony dug into his own eggs. “I’m not surprised. I can’t last more than an hour within a five-block radius of Norman Osborn, so I don’t blame you. I should have made a stronger case to May about how sending you there is likely child abuse. Why doesn’t your school do a trip to Stark Industries?”
“You said you didn’t want to risk people making the connection between us,” Peter mumbled.
“Right.” Dammit. “Still. I need to get your school some better funding. Is there not literally anywhere else in the whole of New York City you could go other than Oscorp?”
“Hmm.”
Taking the hint, Tony lapsed into silence. They quietly ate together, Tony watching worriedly as Peter stared down at his plate but didn’t actually touch the food that much. Eventually, Peter pushed his mostly still full plate to the side and staggered to his feet.
“I… I think I’m gonna go lie down.”
Peter still looked pretty pale, and he clearly wasn’t hungry. Worriedly, Tony nodded. Maybe a nap was exactly what he needed.
“Alright. I’ll get your plate. Tell FRIDAY when you wake up, okay?”
Peter nodded and shuffled off. He stumbled when he reached the doorway, and one hand shot out to brace himself against the wall.
“Peter?”
“Tony,” Peter said, a slight note of panic in his voice. “I don’t… I don’t feel so good.”
And then he collapsed.
Tony threw himself to his feet with a cry. He lunged forward and only just managed to catch Peter before his head collided with the island. Tony sank to his knees as he struggled to support the kid’s dead weight.
“Peter?” Tony’s voice was tight. “Peter, can you hear me?”
Peter’s face was pale and clammy, but his cheeks were flushed bright red. Gently, Tony propped Peter’s head up with one arm and used his other hand to stroke Peter’s bangs out of his face. His forehead was burning hot and sticky with sweat. Definitely a fever.
“Shit!”
Goddammit, he’d known something was wrong with Peter. Why the hell didn’t he press and ask him to clarify how he was feeling? Seeing him just drop like that was terrifying.
Tony swallowed, choking on his panic.
“FRIDAY, what’s—what’s wrong with him?”
Her voice was gentle and soothing, but it did nothing for Tony’s heart rate.
“Mr. Parker’s symptoms and elevated temperature suggest that he is currently suffering from influenza. Might I recommend bed rest and a wet compress to help relieve his fever?”
Tony forced himself to calm down. Peter needed him.
“Right. Bed and a wet compress. I can do that.”
As gently as possible, Tony eased Peter up off the floor, careful to support his head.
It was as Tony was tucking the kid into bed that the kid finally stirred. He blinked up at the ceiling with screwed up eyebrows for a moment before his eyes met Tony’s and the creases in his forehead smoothed out.
“Tony?”
“I’m here, baby.” Tony brushed his hair back from his forehead. “Not feeling too hot, huh?”
Peter grimaced and shook his head, mussing up his hair at the back. “Too hot.”
That forced a stressed laugh out of Tony. “No, yeah, you’re right. Bad wording on my part.” He glanced around, trying to work out how to go about this. “FRI thinks you’ve got the flu. I’m going to get you feeling okay in no time, alright? Don’t you worry. You just lie there and focus on getting better.”
Peter sighed deeply and his eyes slipped shut again. “Mm’kay.”
And that was how the rest of the day passed; Peter drifting in and out of consciousness as Tony struggled to get his kid back to his normal self. He did the wet compress, encouraged when Peter sighed in relief at the cool fabric on his forehead, and forced Peter to drink plenty of fluids whenever he briefly rejoined him in the land of the living.
As the sky outside Peter’s window turned pink, then red, then purple, Tony abruptly remembered that Peter had hardly eaten anything all afternoon. He took it upon himself to make him soup. After a brief breakdown over the phone with Pepper—first about his failed soup, and then more generally about how he was probably going to fuck up nursing Peter back to health—Tony cracked open a can of chicken noodle soup leftover in the back of the cupboard from last year’s flu season.
It wasn’t exactly the homemade soup he’d been picturing, but Peter seemed to appreciate it.
Or at least until ten minutes later, when it all came straight back up again.
Eventually, as the sky turned black and lit up with an orange glow, Tony ran out of things to fuss over. Peter was safely tucked up in bed, fed and cared for, and sleeping as peacefully as could be expected given the virus currently going to town on his respiratory system.
May and Ben would be over as soon as their respective shifts were over, Pepper and Rhodey had been by as moral support, and the Avengers had sequestered their rowdiness to a different floor of the penthouse. Peter was asleep, and probably would stay asleep for a while. The penthouse was strangely still.
With one last fond squeeze of the kid’s clammy hand, Tony stood to go clean up the disaster he’d left in the kitchen after the soup incident.
Before he could go, however, his hand met resistance.
Tony glanced back at Peter. The kid, eyes still firmly shut, squeezed Tony’s hand and gave it a weak tug.
“Stay,” he croaked.
And, well, shit. Who was Tony to deny an order like that?
Peter, 2015
The pen was gently pried from Peter’s bloody grip.
“Is your soulmate on his way, sweetheart?”
Tony
Tony help me
They told me I need my guardian but I don’t wanna call May
Help me
Please
I don’t know what to do
Scratchy handwriting sinking into his skin between the bloodstains.
Peter? What’s going on? Are you hurt? Where are you?
Don’t worry. I tracked your phone. I’m on my way, okay? Just stay where you are. Don’t talk to any police officers until I get there, they’re vultures.
Weakly, Peter looked up and nodded. Tony was coming.
The woman crouched before him sighed, but she didn’t sound annoyed. She sounded sad.
“Alright, sweetheart. We’ll wait for him to get here.”
She stood and left, careful not to let the door to the interrogation room slam on her way out. Peter barely noticed. He stared down at his hands, tunnel vision leaving him blind to anything but the red stained across his palms and fingers. The blood was fast turning brown and flaky as every slow, agonizing second slipped by, leaving Ben behind.
There was so much blood.
It saturated the knees of Peter’s jeans where he had knelt on the sidewalk. It was streaked across his shirt where Ben had grabbed him, forcing him to pay attention as Ben had choked out his last words through bloodstained lips. It was even on Peter’s face, slowly drying tight and itchy, although he didn’t remember how it got there.
Peter didn’t know what to do.
Ben. Ben, Ben, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please come back—
Tony was coming. Tony would know what to do, would know how to get Peter back on track as he floundered, his consciousness floating somewhere above him, disconnected from his body.
When he arrived, Tony ripped through the precinct like a tornado. The quiet atmosphere of the night shift didn’t stand a chance against Tony’s fear and worry.
“Mr. Stark?” A voice Peter didn’t recognize. “Stop! You can’t just walk on in—”
“Looks like I just did, buddy. I’m here for Peter Parker.”
“I—I don’t—”
“Either show me where he is, or I’ll find him myself.”
The muffled shouting continued until, finally, the door to Peter’s room burst open.
Peter dragged his eyes away from the stains on his hands. Tony stood in the doorway, dressed in ill-fitting sweatpants and a greasy AC-DC t-shirt that were crumpled around his joints from the Iron Man suit. He looked so much like Home Tony, not Public Tony, that it was almost jarring. His jaw was set sternly, and anger burned behind his eyes. He didn’t—he didn’t understand, Peter realized. He thought Peter had been arrested.
And then Tony met Peter’s gaze, and the anger slipped as he realized that something far, far worse had happened.
Peter must have looked like a nightmare, streaked with tears and soaked in blood, and Tony’s face paled as terror flitted across his features.
He pushed his way into the room and collapsed in front of Peter. His hands darted over Peter’s arms and across his abdomen, checking for wounds.
“Peter? Talk to me, buddy. What’s happened? It’s alright. Whatever’s happened, I’m gonna make it okay.”
Weakly, Peter shook his head. He couldn’t. This was a problem even Tony Stark couldn’t fix.
Tony’s voice grew more desperate. “Peter? You’re scaring me just a little, bud. What’s happened?”
A voice interrupted—the woman from before. “Um, Mr. Stark? Are you—are you here for this young man?”
“Yes,” said Tony, hands gripping Peter’s shoulders. “I’m his soulmate. What’s happened to him? Is he hurt?”
“I’m afraid this young man was brought here after witnessing a homicide. We need to question him about what happened, but he’s struggling to calm down—”
“Uh—yeah, no. We’re leaving. Goodbye.”
“I—excuse me?”
“You’re not questioning him tonight. I’m taking him home. My secretary will get in contact with you once he’s ready to speak with you.”
The woman spluttered. “Mr. Stark, we need to question him as soon as possible. Memories can be unreliable, and the boy is our key witness—”
“Yeah, I don’t care. Fucking look at him. You can take it up with my lawyers.” His voice softened. “Pete? You think you can stand up, buddy?”
“With all due respect, Mr. Stark, we have no evidence you even know this boy. And even if you are his soulmate, we can’t release him into your care. He has to wait for his guardians. I can’t just let you leave with a vulnerable child, I don’t care who you are—”
“Tony,” Peter whispered.
His head hurt. He was tired, deep down to his bones, and the raised voices in front of him were making it worse. He—he just wanted them to stop—
Familiar calloused hands grabbed his own, mindless of the blood there.
“I’m here, Pete. Can you tell me what’s going on? Are you hurt?”
“Tony, I—I—”
“I’m here. Are you bleeding?” Tony’s thumbs rubbed over the stains across Peter’s knuckles. “Pete, whose blood is this?”
Emotion welled up in him, seizing his organs and twisting them, pulling them, sending physical pain coursing through his body. He didn’t know what to do.
“Tony.”
His skin was itching, clawing with disgust at the blood staining every inch of him. He wanted it off. He wanted it off.
“I’m here, I’m here. Please talk to me, Pete.”
“Ben. Ben, it’s Ben, it’s Ben, he…”
Abruptly, Tony went very still.
“Ben?” he whispered, squeezing Peter’s hands with a panicked urgency. “What—what’s happened to Ben? Where is he?”
“He’s—he—I couldn’t—I couldn’t help h-h—”
Understanding set in on Tony’s face; horror drained the color from his cheeks. His face twisted and he grabbed Peter’s shoulders and tugged him into his arms. It wasn’t really a hug. It was something… more desperate.
“Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Shit. Ben…”
Peter could feel Tony trembling.
“Fuck, Peter, I—”
Tony’s voice trailed off. There was nothing to say.
At his soulmate’s panic and grief, Peter’s final walls broke down. Ben was dead. Ben was dead, he was dead, he’d died in Peter’s arms and he’d done nothing. The tickling in his neck had warned him. He knew something was going to happen, had known even before the gun had gone off, and yet he hadn’t done anything. He’d done nothing, and now Ben was—Ben was—
Peter broke down and sobbed into Tony’s shoulder.
He continued to sob uncontrollably as Tony guided him from the chair, refusing to let the police officers interrogate him. As Tony explained that he’d have NDAs sent over from Stark Industries. As they waited outside, as Tony sent an Iron Man suit home, as they waited for Happy, white-faced and subdued, to arrive with a car.
The dam had burst, and Peter couldn’t stop the flood of tears.
Tony, however, held on, at least until they arrived back at the Tower. He left Peter on a couch, wrapped up in Happy’s arms, and, with an apology in his eyes, excused himself to go to the next room.
Peter could still hear him, thanks to his enhanced hearing. He wished he couldn’t. In painful clarity, he heard Tony making a call, heard when the person on the other end picked up.
“Hey, Tony!” May. “Sorry, I can’t talk long—busy shift.”
Tony didn’t break down until May did.
Tony, 2016
Seabirds called and helicopter blades thrummed as Tony hovered in the air, staring down at Peter’s hunched figure. He was still wearing the suit—that damned suit Tony had had so much fun designing. The one Peter had hacked so he could bypass all the safety features Tony had ever so meticulously included.
“Is everyone okay?”
“No thanks to you.”
“No thanks to me?” Peter hopped down from the wall he was sat on, anger and hurt staining his features. “I tried to tell you those weapons were out there, and you didn’t listen to me. You don’t take me seriously. None of you take me seriously! This wouldn’t have happened if you’d just listened to me!” He scoffed and turned away, eyes already searching for a route to swing away. “You know what? I’m not talking to your empty suit again, Tony. You wanna talk, you’re gonna talk to me in person.”
Alright, the kid asked for it. The suit opened up around Tony and he stepped out, fixing Peter with an unimpressed stare.
Regret and panic flashed across Peter’s face.
“I did listen, kid.” Of course he’d listened. He always listened to his kid. It was Peter who hadn’t listened, sneaking around behind everyone’s backs when he knew Spider-Man as a concept was on thin ice.
Peter hadn’t been there to witness May’s stress as she paced back and forth across the penthouse living room for the entirety of Peter’s first patrol. Peter wasn’t there when May had called Tony after Peter’s first serious injury, terrified she was a bad mother and she was going to lose Peter so soon after losing Ben.
Peter wasn’t there when Tony had to convince May, again, that Spider-Man was a good idea. That the Avengers were looking out for Peter, and that they would never let anything happen to him.
Tony fought to keep his growing anger under control. “I told you to leave the Vulture guy alone. Who do you think called the FBI, huh?
“Do you even know how hard I had to fight for you, for you to be out here in that suit? Everyone else said I was crazy to send you out into danger like that. And you know what? I’m starting to think they were right.”
“You all go out into danger all the time! I can handle it!”
“No, this is where you zip it, Peter! What if somebody had died tonight? Different story, right, cause that’s on you.” Tony’s heart pounded against the scar tissue in his sternum, sending bursts of pain throughout his chest. “And if you died, I feel like that’s on me. How would I tell May if something happened to you, Peter? What could I possibly say to her?”
Peter’s face fell as though he hadn’t considered that. Of course he hadn’t. The kid didn’t think.
“And what about May, huh? If you died, what do you think May’s going to do? You know she’s not happy with you putting yourself in danger every day. How do you think she’s going to feel if you end up proving her right?”
“I—” Peter’s voice cracked. “I don’t… I didn’t… I just wanted to be like you.”
And oh if seeing Peter on the brink of crying didn’t pull at Tony’s heartstrings as it always did, didn’t spark that parental affection inside him that told him to pull Peter close, to stop his tears, to make everything right for the kid. But Tony forced it down.
“And I wanted you to be better.”
He’d always wanted Peter to be better. For his life to be better, for him to have every opportunity he could have ever dreamed of, for him not to make the same mistakes Tony did. For him not to grow up thinking his safety was worth putting on the line to ensure to the wellbeing of others like Tony did.
“Being a superhero isn’t a joke, Peter. If we tell you to stop chasing a bad guy, you stop.” Tony sighed. “Okay, it’s not working. I’m gonna need the suit back.”
Peter’s face paled. “For how long?”
“Forever, Peter.”
Peter’s eyes went wide and shiny, and Tony forced himself to break eye contact.
“No no no, please—”
“Yes. This is how it works, Peter.”
“No, please. I need this suit, I need to be helping people. I’m nothing without this suit!”
“If you’re nothing without this suit, then you shouldn’t have it.”
Peter was everything without that suit. Bright, intelligent, kind, and the one patch of sunshine in Tony’s life he could always rely on to be there, to make the world seem okay when everything was falling to pieces around him. And most importantly, without the suit Peter would be safe.
Taking away the suit was going to make Peter miserable, yes. But even more than Tony wanted Peter to be happy, he wanted him to be safe.
Peter finally broke eye contact, his jaw clenched as he stared down at the floor. “I don’t have any other clothes.”
“Swing back to the Tower and leave it in the lab. Then go home. And head straight back. Karen will tell me if you take a detour.”
Peter stared down at the ground as the suit reassembled around Tony. Without a further word, Tony jetted off towards the New York skyline, his heartrate flashing red across his HUD.
Images flashed across his vision of Peter, strung up between two slowly sinking halves of a ferry. He just knew horrific visions of the worst-case scenario would be haunting his sleep that night.
Tony couldn’t handle this. He couldn’t. He couldn’t let his soulmate continue to put himself in danger. Why he’d ever thought it was a good idea to let Peter go out in a bright red and blue suit that just screamed look at me, I’m a target was beyond him. It wasn’t working. And it definitely wasn’t doing anything admirable for Tony’s chronic heart condition.
He didn’t want to take Spider-Man away, but he had no other choice.
The hurt in Peter’s eyes still pained Tony either way.
Peter, 2016
Peter swayed back and forth as the elevator made its slow ascent. His whole face hurt, and he refused to look in the mirror. The harsh overhead lighting threw the shadows beneath his eyes into sharp relief and emphasized the blood pouring from his nose, lip, and cheek and the bruise beneath his eye. He looked like death warmed up, and felt about the same.
Tony was going to lose it.
He glanced at the floor numbers as they slowly went up and tried to suppress a shudder. Even if he hadn’t been hurt, Tony was going to be furious.
Peter and Tony had never really argued before, not until Peter had screwed up with the Staten Island ferry at least, but Peter was terrified of the idea. He’d seen the worst of Tony’s temper. Just a few months ago he’d walked in on an argument between the Avengers about the Sokovia Accords that had seemed pretty serious, but thankfully had all been worked out in the end. He’d also seen the fury burning behind Tony’s eyes in the wake of his kidnapping, as much as Tony had tried to hide it around him.
As much as he was used to seeing Tony’s anger, Peter really wasn’t used to it being directed at him.
And now Tony was going to be so mad.
Peter had disobeyed him. He’d left Liz on the dancefloor, confronted her dad, and then got into a fight on a Quinjet which he then crashed into Coney Island beach, all after Tony had specifically told him to forget about the Vulture.
So, yeah. He was a little scared of Tony’s temper.
But Peter needed to be here, at the Tower. He’d been crushed by a building, crashed a plane, and then barely survived being beaten senseless by the Vulture. How’d he’d stayed conscious as he swung his way through Brooklyn, beneath Manhattan bridge, and then all the way to Midtown, when right now just stood in the elevator it was a struggle to stay conscious, was beyond him.
He needed the medbay, to tend to the cuts and burns and broken bones he could feel knitting themselves back together all across his body. And he had no choice but to face Tony’s wrath to get there.
The elevator arrived, and Peter stepped out into the penthouse. Raised voices hit Peter like a wall, although they quickly trailed off as Peter stepped into view of the Avengers gathered by the living room window.
Heads snapped towards him; Peter’s eyes immediately met Tony’s. His soulmate’s face was flushed, his eyes dark in the dim lighting of the penthouse, and a jolt of apprehension shot through Peter.
Behind him, the majority of the rest of the Avengers turned to look at Peter too. Their bodies were tense, and the hostile atmosphere in the room raised goosebumps down Peter’s arms. The city was lit up beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, and in the far distance, Peter could just make out the glow of fires burning on Coney Island.
Tony broke away from the group. Peter flinched.
“Tony, I’m sorry,” he blurted. “I had to go after him—I had to stop him, and I’m really sorry, but I couldn’t just leave it—”
His words broke off as Tony reached him and pulled him tight against his chest.
Peter stiffened. He… hadn’t been expecting that, and he was still a little scared, but he wrapped his arms around his soulmate without a second thought. He’d never turn down a hug from Tony, even if he was kinda… confused.
“Tony?” he said warily.
Tony tightened his grip.
“Peter,” he breathed. “Thank… thank fuck. Christ. Thank god you’re here. Shit…”
While Peter was still busy trying to work out what the hell was going on, Tony abruptly pulled back and leaned down to examine Peter’s face. His eyes danced from Peter’s broken nose, to his split lip, to the cut across his cheekbone. Guilt settled in Peter’s stomach at the pain in Tony’s eyes as he took in each and every wound on his face.
Before Peter could speak, however, Tony did.
“Where the hell have you been?” Tony shook his head. “No, you know what, I don’t wanna know. Do you have any idea of the hell you’ve just put us all through?”
“I—I’m sorry, Tony.”
Tony barreled on as if Peter hadn’t even spoken. “You left Homecoming—real charming move there, Pete, you’re gonna be a real hit with the ladies—and you know how we found out? Do you know how we first heard you’d left Homecoming?”
The heat in Tony’s words made Peter sink into himself. “I—no—”
“We find out when Karen sends a distress signal from your phone to tell me she thinks you’re in immediate mortal peril.”
Peter felt the blood drain from his cheeks. He’d slipped his phone into his pocket before he’d gone in to confront the Vulture, and then completely forgotten about it. He hadn’t even considered Karen—
Tony wasn’t done. “So immediate, in fact, that Karen didn’t even successfully finish sending the signal before FRIDAY lost all contact with her.”
Sheepishly, Peter pulled his phone out of his back pocket. It was smashed beyond all repair.
Tony’s eyes flashed with pain—he tried his best to hide it, but Peter knew him well enough to know how badly he’d fucked up.
“So all we know is that you’re out there somewhere, hurt and possibly bleeding out if not dead, and we have no fucking idea where you are.”
Peter shrunk in on himself. He hadn’t—he hadn’t realized—
“So we’re in code red, right, cause for a hot hour there we think you’re dead, and what’s the next we hear from you? When Happy goes to deal with a Quinjet that just crashed, and we find out that you were on the Quinjet when it went down but that no-one can fucking find you.”
“I’m sorry,” Peter whispered. His excuse seemed ridiculously pathetic now, but— “I had to deal with the Vulture. I got him.”
Tony worked his jaw. “I know, Pete. You did—you did good. But you can’t do anything like that ever again. This isn’t working out.”
Peter’s eyes snapped up to meet Tony’s. “What?”
Tony continued, seemingly missing Peter’s panic. “Things can’t carry on like this. You don’t know how fucking terrified we were, Pete, and I’m not going through that again.”
“No, no—Tony, I’m sorry. Please. Please don’t take this away from me, I need to do this—you can’t—”
“Woah, woah.” Tony held out his hands. “I think you’re getting ahead of yourself, Pete.”
“What?”
Tony sighed. “We’ve been going about this wrong, Peter. We’ve been giving you too much independence, been letting you run amok. Taking a hands-off approach, if you will. And that’s gonna have to change in future.”
“Tony, please—please, don’t—”
“Pete,” Tony said softly, silencing Peter. “I’m not taking this away from you. I’m saying that we messed up. That we’re at fault. You were doing the best you could with the situation we’d set up for you. You told us you needed to help, and we thought you’d—you’d just stop because it’s the smarter thing to do. I still really fucking wish you would, but we don’t even hold ourselves to that standard. What I did with the suit? That wasn’t fair.”
Peter was still just confused.
“Of course you screwed up, Pete. You’re a kid. A kid with way more power than you reasonably should have, and we shouldn’t have trusted you with the freedom we gave you. Not because you don’t deserve it—but because you’re not ready for it. But you will be, one day, and it’s our job to get you there. And that includes keeping you on a tight leash so what happens tonight doesn’t happen again.”
Peter glanced from Tony to the rest of the team, where they still stood by the windows, listening in. “So… so what do you…?”
Tony gave Peter’s shoulder a squeeze. “We’re gonna be training you, Pete. The full SHIELD-sponsored Avengers deal. We’re gonna teach you how to fight, how to negotiate and de-escalate, how to help yourself when things go wrong—the whole shebang. Natasha’s even gonna teach you reconnaissance techniques, although you will not be going undercover until you’re at least twenty-five. And that’s not negotiable. That’s not May’s rule. That’s mine.”
Peter held on to Tony’s arm for support. “I… I get to be Spider-Man still?”
“Yeah, kid.” Tony’s voice was soft and fond. “I know you messed up. And you… you really scared us tonight, pal. But we set you up to fail. We sent you out with nothing but your powers, which we haven’t even taught you to use properly yet. So here’s your second chance. No—not even your second chance. This is… this is the chance you deserved in the first place.”
Peter sniffed. “I’m—I’m sorry I scared you. I didn’t mean to, I’d never mean to, I just—I needed to get the Vulture, and I did, I got him, I stopped him—”
“Peter. Peter, shh. It’s okay. We’ll talk about it later, alright?”
Tony pulled Peter back into a hug, his hand cradling the back of Peter’s head.
“Now let’s get you to the medbay, because if I don’t get written confirmation within the next ten minutes that you’re not dying, I think I’m going to pass out.”
Tony, 2019
A banging on the lab windows drew Tony out of his hyperfocused state. He glanced up and smiled fondly at the sight of their resident teenaged menace—or as the public knew him, Spider-Man—clinging to the outside of the windows and waving obnoxiously.
Tony snorted. “FRIDAY, please open the window for the birthday boy.”
The window opened with a click, and Peter crawled through. He yanked his mask off and discarded it on the workbench, revealing a bright smile and cheeks flushed with exertion. Knowing the kid, he’d probably foiled a few muggings and bicycle thefts on his way over from Queens, even though they were due to the briefing for tomorrow’s mission with the rest of the Avengers in about ten minutes.
“Hey, Tony!”
Tony set down the Widow Bite he had been working on. “You know we have a balcony in the living room, right? Perfect access-point for any airborne Avengers? I use it myself every now and then. And you know what the best part about the balcony is?”
Peter poked around at the partially gutted tech on Tony’s workbench, a habit he’d acquired that would have annoyed Tony if it were anyone else. “No, what?”
“The best part is that you don’t get footprints on the outside of my window.”
Peter scoffed. “You don’t even use these windows anyway. You put shelves in front of most of them! And the minute you come in here you just get, like, tunnel vision. Have you ever looked at the view from in here? I could be hanging by my ankles out there and it would take you a couple days to notice.”
“That’s not the point, Peter.” Tony couldn’t keep the amusement out of his voice.
“Like, do you even appreciate that you can see the Empire State Building from where you’re sitting? When you’re rich does that kind of thing just stop being cool?”
“I hate to tell you, Pete, but you’re also rich.”
Peter screwed up his face. “No? Spider-Man relies on the goodness of New Yorkers’ hearts to buy him dollar pizza.”
Tony shook his head to himself. Tomorrow, Peter was going to turn eighteen, and he would be acquiring access to a bank account Tony had had prepared for years now. It was part of a veritable lineup of gifts Tony had prepared in celebration of his favorite person in the world becoming an adult. The bank account was the main event—that, and a generous proportion of Stark Industries.
Tony had mentioned both the bank account and Peter inheriting Stark Industries to the kid before, although Tony could never quite tell if Peter thought he was being serious or not. He’d find out tomorrow that Tony had been dead serious, once they were back from their mission and could actually celebrate Peter’s birthday.
Speaking of—
“You sure you’re okay with going on a mission tomorrow? We can stay home if you’d rather. Order pizza, put on a movie. Or whatever else you want. It’s your day. I’m sure Cap, Sam and Natasha will be able to handle themselves out there just fine by themselves.”
“And Clint.”
“Yeah, Clint’ll be there too.”
Peter laughed, then shook his head. “No, it’s fine. Missions are fun. Like, how many people get to say they went on an Avengers mission on their birthday?”
“Even if it’s Hydra again?”
“Even if it’s Hydra again.”
Tony shrugged and put down his tools. “Well, it’s your loss. Personally, my eighteenth birthday was—”
Peter slapped a hand over his mouth. “Nope, I don’t wanna hear it! I know you. I’m still a child. Do not corrupt my poor, innocent mind. At least not for the next twenty-four hours.”
Tony pulled Peter’s hand away and gave it a squeeze. “Regrettably, I think you knowing me has already corrupted you.”
“Well, that’s your fault.”
Don’t I know it.
Peter squeezed Tony’s hand back and then let go. “C’mon, let’s go. We’re always late to pre-mission briefings. Steve’s gonna think we’re doing it on purpose to annoy him if we’re late again.”
“Aren’t we?”
Peter laughed brightly, one of Tony’s favorite sounds in the entire world, and scooped his mask up off Tony’s workbench. Tony watched him, fondness blossoming behind his sternum, and then they left, the lab falling into darkness behind them.
Peter, 2019
Nausea. Dizziness. Brief flashes of light, of faces, of memories—the Quinjet, the warehouse, the heat of an explosion. Tony. And then the pain.
The never-ending pain. Fractures in his bones, sprains in his muscles, burns across his face and shoulders. The scratch of a needle, puncturing the skin inside his elbow again and again and again. Scalpels and knives slicing through his torso and abdomen and the palms of his hands. Bone deep exhaustion where his healing factor had worked overtime for days and days on end. A gnawing in his stomach as days passed with no food. Pain in his wrists, his ankles, and his thighs and chest and neck where he struggled and thrashed. It was too much.
Voices. Unfamiliar ones, with a foreign accent. And then his own. Peter could hear himself screaming, could hear the way his voice cracked and grew more and more hoarse each time the pain dug hooks into his mind and dragged him back to consciousness.
Sometimes, the screaming led to a tugging at the IV in his wrist, and then a chill through his veins, and then nothing.
Most times, however, the disembodied hands that tortured him left him to scream. He’d get a gag to bite down on if he was lucky.
“Tony.”
The few times he wasn’t unconscious, or gagged, or screaming in agony, Peter begged. He fought past the throbbing pain throughout his whole body, the drugs that stole the last remnants of his energy, the fear that snatched his breath from his lungs, to weakly, desperately call for help.
“Tony… please…”
The voices laughed at that.
“The Avengers aren’t coming for you, little spider. You’re all ours now.”
Peter shook his head as best he could with the strap across his throat. Tony would never abandon him. Tony would move mountains and break the laws of physics to make sure Peter was safe.
“He’ll find me,” he sobbed. “Tony…”
He trusted Tony. Tony would help him. Peter wished, wished that he could save himself, but he wasn’t strong enough.
But that didn’t matter. He had Tony.
The voices gloated. “Tony Stark isn’t looking for you. The Avengers are not looking for you. They believe you are dead, little spider, and they are not coming.”
No. They had to be looking for him. Tony would never give up on him.
But in the brief moments of clarity, Peter never felt a tickling across his wrist. There was no phantom writing scratching its way into his skin to reassure him, to let him know that Tony was out there, somewhere, searching to bring him home.
Tony’s going to find me, Peter whispered to himself, even as everything around him told him otherwise.
Peter faded in and out of consciousness, sometimes waking to pain, sometimes to stillness. But always to fear, to straps holding him down to a cold metal table, to yet another day where the Avengers hadn’t yet found him.
Until one day, everything changed.
Peter woke to neither torture nor stillness. Instead, an alarm sliced through his eardrums like a knife, pain shooting through his ears and gathering across his forehead. He groaned and struggled against his restraints, but even if he hadn’t been tied down, his limbs were weakened by drugs, a lack of food, and his burnout from his healing factor. He couldn’t move. He could barely even open his eyes.
Faint sounds reached him from beneath the blaring alarm, too faint for Peter to make them out. But they almost—he didn’t dare hope, but—they almost sounded like—
The door to Peter’s prison was kicked open with a crash.
A long moment where the alarms were the only sound, and then—
“Peter!”
Steve. Steve, Steve, that was Steve—that was—
A hand on Peter’s shoulder, but it was gentle. It didn’t try to hurt him.
“Oh my God…” The hand shook him slightly, then moved up to brush Peter’s hair away from his eyes. “Peter? It’s Steve.”
Peter wished he had the energy to speak, to lean into the friendly touch, to just let Steve know he was okay, but he couldn’t move.
Two fingers pressed into Peter’s pulse point in his neck, followed by a sigh of relief. A gentle brush of a hand over Peter’s cheekbone, comforting, before the hand moved to free him from the straps holding him down.
“It’s alright, kid. I’ve got you.” When Steve next spoke, it wasn’t directed at Peter. “I’ve got him. I—I’ve got him, but he’s in bad shape. I’m gonna need an assist to get him out of here.”
The last of the straps broke free, then the warm, gentle touch disappeared. If he could move, Peter would have cried out at being abandoned, but within moments, the touch returned. Something in a rough, scratchy fabric was wrapped around his shoulders—he hadn’t even realized he’d been shivering—and then he was lifted from the table by strong arms and cradled close against a warm chest.
In his delirious state, it was the scent of the person’s cologne that bled through and made sense. Safe.
Steve took off running, jostling Peter. Alarms blared around him even more loudly now, and flashing lights assaulted his senses even through his closed eyes.
Even though Peter was certain he was safe, trusted that this was safe—he wanted to know for sure. He wanted to see it.
So even though it hurt, and even though it aggravated the pounding in his head and caused nausea to rise in his throat, Peter forced his eyes open a crack. Red lights illuminated Steve’s tense face above him and cast dark shadows where his jaw was clenched. He wasn’t looking at Peter—his face was set in concentration and his eyes alert as he scanned their rapidly changing surroundings. His shield, where it was strapped to his arm, was carefully positioned to keep Peter’s head and torso protected.
Safe. He was safe. The Avengers had found him—they hadn’t given up on him. Peter’s captors had lied.
Peter relaxed into Steve’s secure hold. His eyes fell shut again, and when darkness called to him, he didn’t bother to resist. The darkness wasn’t scary when his team was here to protect him until he found the light once more.
Then, in the distance, came the faint sound of repulsors.
Tony…
The repulsors grew louder, and Peter fought to stay conscious just a minute longer. Tony was coming, Tony had found him, he needed to fight the darkness long enough to see Tony—
A loud clank nearby, and the whirring of a helmet receding, and then—
“Shit, Cap.”
That… wasn’t Tony’s voice.
“Is he…”
That was Rhodey. Where… where was Tony?
The grip on Peter tightened slightly. “He’s alive. I’ve got him. But we need to get him to the Quinjet, now. He needs medical attention. Think you can take care of any hostiles for me?”
Rhodey’s voice was grim. “With pleasure.”
Why wasn’t Tony here?
The darkness called his name, stronger than before. Peter’s precarious grip on consciousness was beginning to slip.
A hand on his forehead, this one cool and metallic.
“You just hang in there, okay, kid? We’re gonna get you home to Tony.”
And Peter let the darkness pull him under, safe under the assurance that when he woke, the weeks of hell would be over and Tony would finally, finally be at his side.