Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was insulting, plain and simple.

The kid might as well have looked him in the eye and called him a fool. Tony had never taken kindly to anyone audacious enough to call his intelligence into question—actually, he didn’t think it had ever happened before, but he is sure he wouldn’t have taken kindly to it—but the fact that it was the kid doing so made it a hundred times worse.

Tony sat at the breakfast table, scowling at the StarkPad in front of him and feeling insulted.

He didn’t realize he’d been tapping his foot in agitation until Happy appeared in the kitchen, came straight at him, and “accidentally” stepped on it, earning a murderous glare for his trouble.

“Hey boss, where’s Pete? I’ve been waiting to drive him to school for ten minutes; he’s gonna be late.”

“He’s not going.”

“Why not? Also, thanks for the heads-up.”

Tony spared another glare. “Because he’s hurt, and this is your heads-up.”  

Frowning, Happy sat down across the table from Tony. “Hurt how? How hurt?”

“I don’t know, to both of those questions.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? We talking sprained ankle, skinned knee … concussion?” He paused, his brain whirring through an endless montage of potential injuries that could befall the spider kid, then his eyes widened. “Are all of his appendages still attached to his body?”  

Tony rolled his eyes. “For now. Ask again after I’ve grilled him.”

“So he didn’t tell you that he’s hurt.”

“He did not.”

“And you’re … assuming.”

Tony’s eyes flashed. “Assuming is for amateurs. I’m a scientist. I’m drawing the correct conclusion based on objective, concrete evidence.”

Happy nodded. “That being?”

“See for yourself,” Tony said, nodding over Happy’s shoulder. “Parker, get in here.”

The boy of the hour caught sight of the two men as he reached the foot of the main staircase and did a clumsy last-moment course correction to join them in the kitchen. “Sorry, Mr. Hogan, I’m running late, I was about to text you back but then I realized I couldn’t find my history report and it’s due today and it’s part of a group project so if I didn’t bring it, I’d screw it up for everyone else. Then again, Flash is in my group so I wouldn’t mind messing up HIS grade, but there are two other kids in our group who aren’t total jerks, so I guess I need to pull my weight. So anyway. Sorry. I’m ready now. Can we go?”

At the silence that met his words—Happy looking expectantly in Tony’s direction to see what the man would do—Peter looked confused. “Um. Did I interrupt something?”

“You’re not going to school today,” Tony said.

“I’m … not?”

“You’re not.”

“Why not?”

“You tell me.”

Peter gave his guardian a look of utter incomprehension. “Are you … kidding?”

Tony’s eyebrow shot up. “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

“No, sir. But I don’t understand. Why do you not want me to go to school? I thought that was one of your big ‘things,’ ya know? You’re always like ‘Don’t make Spider-Man your whole identity, get good grades, sleep at least eight hours a night, do normal stuff kids like you are supposed to do, blah blah blah.’”

Tony looked purely affronted. “ ‘Blah…’”

Happy smirked. “Blah blah blah. I believe that was the direct quote.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Stark, but if we don’t leave now I’m gonna be super late and I’m only one more tardy away from detention, I don’t know if I told you that but trust me that it’s really not my fault. So can we go now? Please?”

“You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what I need to know. What you should have told me last night.”

Peter bit his lip, his thoughts racing back over the previous evening in a vain effort to retrieve any relevant information Tony might be looking for. He came up empty and was practically bouncing on his toes when he said, “I really don’t know, sir, can you give me a hint?”

Silence met that request. Happy leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest and appearing to actually be enjoying this exchange.

“No hints. I’ll give you a choice, though. You tell me now, or we bring Nat down here and see how fast she gets it out of you.”

Peter’s eyes went comically wide at the threat of involving Natasha in what Tony seemed to be implying would be her official capacity as a human lie detector. “Oh my gosh, Mr. Stark, what did I do?”

Tony waited, eyes locked on the kid as he apparently reviewed the entirety of his fifteen years of existence in a wild search for some sort of confession that might appease the man.

“Did I like … break something in the suit? Did I mess up something in the lab? Did I forget your birthday, Mr. Stark, I don’t know what you want me to say and I really don’t want detention, so please, a little help here? I’ll tell you whatever you want!”

“Dammit kid, you’re hurt!” Tony thundered.

Peter flinched and then froze, his brow furrowing. “Huh? I – I am?”

“Yes! It’s obvious. You’re terrible at hiding these things so it is utterly nonsensical for you to even try. Happy, tell him.”

Happy shot an appraising look at the kid, scanning observantly from his battered sneakers to his mop of curls. “Looks fine to me. Pete, you good?”

“I mean, yeah! I’m completely fine!”

“Peter Parker,” Tony snapped. “I am not a fool.”

“Of course you’re not, sir! You’re like the smartest man in the world.”

“Ah. No. Do not try to deflect, Peter, you’re done. Busted. Now out with it. Let’s see the damage.” Tony waved his hand in Peter’s general direction, gesturing impatiently for him to show his cards.

Peter shot a helpless look at Happy, who shrugged.

The tension held even when Natasha entered, heading straight for the coffeepot. “We need to set a ground rule around here—no yelling until at least noon.”

“Natasha, look at Peter and tell me what you see.”

She poured her coffee first, then turned around to study the wide-eyed kid as she took her first sip. “I see a kid who is going to be late for school if his overprotective dad-shaped figure doesn’t stand down and stop making up nonexistent problems to fix. He’s not injured, Tony.”

Tony shot her a look of pure betrayal. “How could you possibly –”

“Petey, look at me for a sec.” When Peter complied, Natasha said slowly and deliberately, “Are you in any physical distress right now?”

“No! No ma’am. I swear.”

“No secret injuries you neglected to share with the class?”

“No way. Not after last time!” Peter looked horrified by the mere thought of “last time.”

Nat and Happy both huffed out a little laugh while Tony’s stormy expression only darkened.

“Is that so,” he said, his tone flat and hard. “Then why. Pray tell. Are you limping?”

…

…

…

“OH!”

A light burst on in Peter’s eyes, and he grasped the closest thing to him, which happened to be Happy’s shoulder. Using the man for balance, the teen picked up his sneaker-clad left foot and held it up and out toward Tony. And Tony saw that the rubber sole of the shoe had separated completely from the leather upper, the kid’s ridiculous purple and yellow sock peeking out from between the flaps of material.

Natasha snorted into her coffee.

Happy shook his head mournfully.

Tony’s expression morphed slowly into one of pure disbelief. “Jesus, kid,” he breathed out.

“Yeah, I totally forgot about it until I went to put them on this morning and by then I was already running late so I figured maybe I can rig something up with duct tape once I get to school, ya know, just to get me through the day? I know you keep saying you wanna buy me new shoes, Mr. Stark, but I love these ones and they’re broken in just the way I like. I guess now they’re more broken than broken in, but hey.”

The hyper rambling ceased and Tony seemed to be grasping for the appropriate response, some way to get out of this with the remainder of his dignity intact. “You’re not hurt.”

“No sir. Swear!”

Tony nodded toward Happy, whose smirk seemed to have taken up permanent residence on his face. 

“Get this spider brat to school.”

Chapter Text

There was trouble in the city. What else was new?

The Avengers were having a laid-back Sunday night in when the alert came through. The sudden shift from an impromptu Who Can Shove the Most Pizza Into Their Mouth at Once Without Gagging contest to a suit-up situation was somewhat disorienting, to say the least. There was even some mild grumbling about work-life balance and an only-half-joking proposal that they could test the theory that if they didn’t keep saving New York, some vigilante B-Team would emerge from the ether and become a convenient backup for times like these.

But in the end, of course, that was never an option.

During the somewhat testy scramble for battle attire and accoutrements, Tony’s iron-clad hand caught Peter by the elbow and tugged him to the side. “You’re sitting this one out, bud,” he said.

“What? Why?” Peter just barely managed to keep the whine from coloring his tone. (That never worked in his favor, he’d found.) “What’d I do this time?”

Tony looked surprised. “Nothing—that I know of.” An appraising eyebrow raised. “Have you done something?”

“No! So why are you benching me?”

“It’s not a punishment, kiddo. You’ve been patrolling late nights all week and you have a Spanish test tomorrow. I want you to stay here, study, get to bed at a decent hour for a change. We’ll be back before you know it.”

“Mr. Stark. It’s not like I’m gonna be able to concentrate while you guys are out there fighting without me! If it’s going to be such a quick fix, then what’s the—”

“Ah-ah. Sin argumentos. Quédate aquí y estudia, niño araña.”

“HUH?”

“Exactly.” Tony had the audacity to boop Peter’s nose with the tip of an iron finger. “Hit the books.”

To his credit, Peter waited until the team had cleared out before giving in to his urge to pout. And while he did almost immediately proceed to clean up the dinner mess they’d left in the kitchen, he did it with much stomping of feet while bitterly muttering things like “Don’t expect me to clean up after you, either. Just because you save the world a few times doesn’t give you the right to be such a bunch of slobs.” And while he carefully wrapped up the leftovers and stashed them in the fridge, he couldn’t resist a single act of petty protest—finishing off the remaining three of Tony’s favorite slices, even though he wasn’t hungry.

Vindication.

Taking down a high-rise-size sentient slime monster wasn’t on the Avengers’ Sunday night bingo card, but here they were. It was while they were regrouping and debating post-victory shawarma that Tony realized he didn’t have any missed calls or texts from Peter. Usually when the kid was forced to keep out of the action, he spent the entire battle spamming them all for details and updates, offering unsolicited advice or theories, begging to be called in from the bench. For a while it got so bad that Cap forbade Peter to use any means whatsoever to contact any Avenger whosoever during battle outside of legitimate, provable emergencies until they got in touch with him to provide the all-clear. (Tony objected to leaving the kid in the dark like that; he knew he would be beside himself if the shoe were on the other foot, so he argued Peter’s case for him and won a grudging victory.)

Now, after checking with the others and confirming that no one had received any word from their youngest member, Tony was edging grudgingly toward concern. He stepped outside the restaurant to make his call, not wanting to deal with the “papa bear” taunts from the group that always came his way whenever he forgot to school the parental instincts the boy brought out in him.

The call went straight to voicemail. Tony rolled his eyes. Patience was not his greatest virtue.

“Hey, kid. We’re done here, everyone’s safe. Heading your way in ten. Call me back.”

For good measure, Tony followed the message up with a text along the same lines.

He gave it five minutes before calling again. Voicemail.

“Hi there! Guess who? Yep, it’s your favorite Avenger, he who holds the key to your quality of life in the palm of his hand and doesn’t love being sent to voicemail. Think about it.”

Three minutes.

“You know better than to screen my calls, Spider-Boy. If I don’t hear from you in the next two minutes we’re going to have a problem.”

Two minutes.

“Peter. Call me.”

It might have been different if Peter didn’t have a very long history of doing exactly what he was expressly forbidden to do.

And of being where he wasn’t supposed to be.

And of giving Tony at least ten new gray hairs a week, sometimes more if he was feeling extra daring. Let it never be said that being a guardian-mentor-father-figure to an enhanced teenage vigilante was anything but a shortcut to the grave.

As it were, Tony had only to scroll through the news alerts he had set up on his phone long before he even knew Peter Parker—alerts for “Spider-Man” in all its punctuational variations—to shoot straight from mildly annoyed at being brushed off by his kid to PLOTTING ALL THE WAYS HE WAS GOING TO MAKE SAID KID SUFFER.

Because it was there in black and white—or red and blue, rather—woven into trending social media posts and peppering the comments sections of breaking news stories about the so-recent-the-paint-wasn’t-even-dry Avengers victory. Spider-Man sightings. Just moments ago, reported in the vicinity of Situation Slime.

“Damn that kid!” Tony shouted aloud, before activating his suit and blasting into the night sky.

“FRIDAY, where’s Peter?” he demanded the moment he set foot in the building.

“Peter is currently asleep in his bed, sir,” the AI said.

Tony’s eyes narrowed. Surely, SURELY the brat wouldn’t have dared to mess with the code again … right? The last come-to-Jesus they’d had over Peter messing with Tony’s protocols had been loud, emotionally exhausting, and tearful, and Tony was all but positive that he’d gotten his message across.

“Right. And just how long has he been asleep?” Tony demanded.

“Peter went to bed at nine-thirty-seven and has been asleep since ten-seventeen, sir.”

Tony was already en route to Peter’s bedroom. He flung open the door when he arrived, expecting to see signs of a mad dash just missed, a kid faking slumber with a pile of blankets thrown hastily over his Spider-Man suit to hide the evidence of his crime. He flipped the light switch and flooded the room with harsh brightness.

…and saw Peter. Wearing actual pajamas. Passed out on top of the covers, arms and legs sprawling every which way, face pressed into the pillow and forcing soft snores that sounded, well, pretty damn legit.

Tony came up short, staring at the boy. Peter stirred and slowly came around, squinting against the light and rubbing his eyes with his fists in a way that Tony would have found annoyingly adorable if he weren’t still in the midst of a crisis of cognitive dissonance.

“M’sser Stark?” Peter managed, voice gravelly and tone confused. “Whass happening?”

“Listen up, kid. I’m going to ask you this one time, and God help us both if you lie to me.”

That brought some alertness to those sleepy eyes, and Peter seemed to be taking a rather panicky mental stock of what he might have done to get himself in trouble this time.

“I won’t! What? I won’t!”

Tony’s voice could have cut through steel. “What did you do tonight?”

There was a long few beats of silence as Peter processed the question. “Um, I. Well. I cleaned the kitchen. You guys left a big mess. I watched TV. Texted Ned some. I swear I was gonna study for Spanish but I guess I kinda fell asleep before I could get very far.”

Tony fixed him with a look. “Is that all.”

“Yes sir!”

“Okay smart guy. Then how do you explain all the Spider-Man sightings in the city tonight?”

Silence. “Huh? I mean, that’s impossible. I was here all night, promise. Ask FRIDAY.”

“Peter was here all night, Boss,” the AI supplied helpfully.

Tony glared toward the ceiling. “Well that might bring me some measure of relief, FRI, except that you have been known to succumb to actual sweet-talking from this boy and I’m still trying to figure out how that’s even possible.” He turned his sharp gaze back to the kid in question, who was sitting up, still squinting against the light, his curls in utter disarray and his brows knit in confusion.

“I got the alerts, Peter. Spider-Man sightings all over the damn place.”

“It wasn’t me!” Peter’s voice cracked in indignation.

“There are photos. You can’t argue with photographic evidence.”

“I can if the photos say I was out Spider-Manning tonight!”

Tony scoffed. “So you want me to believe there’s some other shrimpy vigilante in red spandex swinging into the heart of danger on the very night I confine you to quarters? Sorry, Pete, certified genius here and you’re going to have to do better than that.”

Peter groaned, flopping back on his pillow with his hands over his eyes. “I don’t know what you want me to say!”

“Oh, I don’t know, how about you try the truth for a change?”

“Goddammit! I’m telling you the truth!”

“Watch your mouth!”

“Then stop accusing me of lying!”

“Then stop lying!”

“Boss, if I may…”

Tony and Peter both ceased their verbal fire, breathing heavily and waiting for FRIDAY to (make her point? Seriously, what even WAS this AI Tony had created?) continue.

“According to multiple local news outlets, police have apprehended a red-and-blue-clad Spider-Man impersonator who was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct in the aftermath of tonight’s Avengers battle. Would you like me to play the footage?”

Silence met the request, which FRIDAY seemed to take as a yes. Local news clips appeared before them, two police officers handcuffing a man wearing a skintight red and blue suit—dollar store black goggles strapped across his eyes and a crude drawing of a spider scrawled across his chest in what appeared to be Sharpie. Belligerent shouts of protest could be heard behind the news anchor who seemed mildly embarrassed as she closed out her broadcast: “…It is now believed that this man you see behind me was responsible for tonight’s mistaken eyewitness and social media reports of Spider-Man on the scene of a chaotic and, well, gooey—but fortunately casualty-free battle, as the Avengers once more took down a potentially catastrophic threat. And while it now seems that the real Spider-Man was not among our assembly of heroes tonight, we can take comfort in knowing that this version of him—whether copycat, cosplayer, or simply intoxicated uberfan, won’t be swinging around for a while.”

In the background, one of the officers successfully unmasked the deep-discount Spidey, revealing … well, someone who was decidedly NOT Peter Parker.

Click. The hologram shut off and a silence that felt weirdly smug descended over the room. Tony pinched the bridge of his nose while Peter stared at him.

“Um, Mr. Stark.”

“What, Peter?”

“That guy was like fifty-eight.”

“I know, Peter.”

…“He had a beer gut.”

“I saw that, Peter.”

“He drew that spider on his—”

“Clearly.”

A beat, a smirk that could almost be heard. “Did you really think that suit was one of yours?”

“Zip it, kid.”

Peter knew better than to continue to poke the bear anymore tonight—but he would be surprised if he didn’t get a pancake-shaped apology at breakfast in the morning. For now, he schooled his features so his mentor wouldn’t see the smile that was tugging at both corners of his mouth as the still-scowling man leaned over and landed a none-too-gentle kiss in Peter's mass of sleep-ruffled curls.

“Good night, Mr. Stark,” he said.

“Buenas noches, travieso.”

🕸️🕸️🕸️

Chapter Text

People don’t hurt Tony’s kid.

Rather, people don’t hurt Tony’s kid and get away with it. That’s just not something that happens.

Whatever the circumstances, regardless of any acts of God or man that may have set into motion the series of events that led to such an unthinkable outcome, Tony simply will not stand for it. He will avenge that boy with his dying breath. He will mete out swift justice—or retribution if it’s merited in his estimation—in whatever form he deems necessary. He will make the person responsible for hurting his kid wish they had taken any other conceivable course of action just to backtrack and spare themselves the ramifications destined to be heaped upon their shoulders.

But what about when the person hurting Tony’s kid is … Tony’s kid?

He finds the spandex-clad hero-child huddled in a tight corner of his favorite rooftop, a slightly rundown but clearly long-loved Queens apartment building that gives him a good vantage point from which to scope out the little guy he’s taken it upon his fragile conscience to look out for. But right now, he’s not doing any scoping. Right now, he’s simply wallowing in self-reproach. Tony senses this even without being able to make out much more than Peter’s hunched form—looking painfully small at the moment—and a vague suggestion of tousled curls silhouetted against the brick wall in a halo of dingy orange security lighting.

He doesn’t even raise his eyes to look as Tony lands two feet away from him with a remarkably gentle metallic clink, which is entirely unexpected. The kid knows damn well he’s out way past curfew, he knows he’s going to have to answer for that. On most any other occasion he would have been on his feet stuttering out excuses and apologies before the man had even touched the ground, tripping over his words like he was competing for a medal in the art of pacifying angry authority figures.

Tony’s not angry, though. Tony’s concerned. And when the moments stretch out and the boy still hasn’t looked at him, that concern begins to edge toward worry.

Ordinarily, Tony would open with a sarcastic jibe. “Fancy meeting you here at too-damn-late-o’clock on a school night,” or “Were you absent on the day your class learned how to tell time?” or “Hey, Pete, what’s your favorite way to be yanked out of your quiet night in? Mine has to be getting a phone call from a very distraught woman who seems to have misplaced her rogue spider baby.” Frankly, nursing some residual irritation from having missed out on what was shaping up to be a really very enjoyable evening with his beautiful wife, he might have forgone the preamble altogether in favor of sweeping the young Avenger securely into his iron arms and flying him straight back to his apartment, protests be damned. Let the boy’s aunt—Tony’s unlikely coparent—deal with this one.

But ordinarily, the energy coming off the kid doesn’t feel so … wrong. So Tony instead opts for the direct approach.

“Hey, kid.”

“Hey Mr. Stark.”

And okay, that’s something, that’s technically the right words, the right response, but Pete’s still not looking at him and it’s making Tony twitchy.

“You gonna make me ask?”

“Ask what?”

Tony huffs out an irritated breath. “Ask wh—Peter would you look at me, please?”

The kid obeys, cutting his gaze up to land on his mentor, and oh. Oh.

Tony’s uncooperative heart constricts at the way the jaundiced light catches the tear tracks on the kid’s cheeks, making them glisten even as fresh moisture wells in those deep, kind, soulful eyes. Without hesitation, Tony retracts his armor and slides down next to Peter on the cracked cement, his arm circling the boy’s shoulders and pulling him gently but firmly against his side.

The gesture has the instantaneous effect of making Peter start to cry in earnest, his body trembling with the force of sobs he’s barely containing. Tony presses his lips into Peter’s unruly hair, humming soft words of comfort and letting the kid do what he needs to do for a bit. But at a certain point he needs to ask the question he hates more than all other questions because the wrong answer has the power to undo him. He tries to maintain his soothing tone as he asks it.

“Pete, are you hurt?”

The pause is long enough to send a spike of anxiety down Tony’s spine, but before he can react to that Peter mumbles something into his shoulder. The words are muffled, the voice choked and miserable, and Tony eases back slightly, urging Peter to do the same so he can get a better look at his face.

“Sorry buddy, didn’t quite catch that.”

Peter gulps in a lungful of air and doesn’t look at Tony when he repeats himself. “I should be.”

And Tony doesn’t like that one little bit.

“Come again?”

“For all the good I am to anyone, I should be hurt. I should be more than hurt.”

“Yeah, well now that’s some bullshit I don’t want to hear come out of your mouth ever again, do you hear me?” So much for that soothing tone. “Look at me and tell me what’s going on in your head, Pete.”

Peter pulls away from Tony completely then, scrubbing viciously at his dripping nose, his red, weepy eyes even as the tears continue to well and stream, an unstoppable fountain of despair. He clears his throat, shoves dirty fingers through his hair, looks everywhere but at his mentor. “It’s nothing. It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

“I’ve seen fine. This ain’t it. Talk to me.”

“I don’t want to talk.”

“That’s too bad, because I do. And I don’t know if you’ve heard this about me, but I have a real problem with not getting what I want.”

Peter shoots to his feet with a grunt of frustration, Tony’s weak attempt at humor seeming only to further agitate him. “Mr. Stark, can you just not? Can you just go? I’ll head home now, I’ll apologize to May, I’ll go to bed and get up for school like a normal person, just—I don’t want to do this.”

“Do what? Tell me why you’re sitting up here in the middle of the night bawling your eyes out? Okay, I hear you. But you’re going to tell me anyway, because I can’t help you if I don’t know what happened.”

“I didn’t ask you to help me!”

Peter’s shout is ragged, angry, desperate, and the force behind it surprises him as much as it does Tony. He looks at the man with wide eyes, a hand rising to hover near his mouth as though he can capture the words and stuff them back inside himself. Tony resists his knee-jerk urge to snap back, bigger and badder like a streetwise mutt schooling a disobedient pup. Instead, he just holds a steady gaze, one eyebrow raised. Waiting.

“I – look, I’m sorry, Mr. Stark, I’m sorry for yelling, I shouldn’t yell at you, I know that, I’m just, I just want, it’s been, I’m so, I … argh!” The words die on his lips and he turns his back on Tony, his shoulders tense and his breathing labored. Tony inches toward him, using the measured care with which one would approach a wounded animal.

There’s no warning before what happens, happens. Tony is stretching out a hand to rest on the kid’s shoulder, steeling himself to try again to coerce some emotional honesty from him, when Peter turns and slams his fist into the brick wall next to them. Peter gives a strangled cry that’s drowned out by Tony’s own. Chunks and grains of crumbled brick and dust pour from the hole and pile at Peter’s feet as he wrenches his hand back and cradles it against himself.

“Peter, what the hell!” Tony’s furious shout strikes a strangely discordant note against the extreme gentleness he uses to lift Peter’s arm and tug it toward a pool of brighter orange light so he can better gauge the damage. Broken fingers. Shredded skin. Scarlet liquid welling and pattering onto the ground between them in half-dollar-sized drops.

“Jesus Christ, kid, why did you—you know, it doesn’t fucking matter right now. You’ve got a date with medbay. Come on, let’s go.”

Peter has the audacity to pull away then, stepping back from Tony and taking his ruined hand with him. “No.”

Tony’s look of utter disbelief might be comical in any other circumstance. “I’m sorry, no? Listen, Peter Parker, I don’t know what delusion you’re laboring under, but this? This is not a democracy. You don’t get a vote.”

“You don’t understand!”

“There’s nothing to understand except that you just drove your goddamn HAND into a goddamn WALL and I can see your goddamn BONES. Now you’re going to do as you’re told for a change because I promised your aunt I would bring you home in one piece and I don’t think she’s gonna give partial credit for a mangled appendage. Come here.” The Iron Man armor clinks together around him.

Peter backs up another step, throws a glance over his shoulder to gauge the distance between him and the edge of the roof, and Tony knows he’s about to flee. Engaging the faceplate, he charges forward and wraps an iron arm around Peter’s waist even as the kid shoots a web at an adjacent building in preparation for a one-armed escape. And then Tony blasts them both into the night sky, soaring toward the Tower with a metric ton of emotional baggage along for the ride.

The hand is a mess. Peter’s healing factor notwithstanding, it is going to require the resetting of bones. So when Dr. Cho pulls Tony aside in the hallway and tells him that Peter is trying to convince her to do it without implementing any of the supersoldier-caliber pain meds they keep on hand for Cap, and in fact without any painkiller whatsoever, he balks.

“That’s crazy. Give him the drugs,” Tony orders, sidestepping her and charging into Peter’s room, completely out of patience. “You,” he snaps, pointing a finger at Peter. “You’re going to stop being a little shit and making things harder for everyone, and I mean RIGHT THE HELL NOW. Helen’s going to dose you up and fix your fingers and you’re going to keep your mouth shut unless you have something to say that’s not absolute nonsense. Got it?”

Peter rolls his eyes—rolls his eyes!—but doesn’t protest as Dr. Cho approaches his IV with a vial and a syringe.

Tony considers it a small victory.

Footage from the Baby Monitor shows him what he needs to know, but that doesn’t mean Peter’s off the hook. He needs to talk about what happened tonight.

He needs to understand that he’s never going to be able to protect everyone from every threat, that he is—while extraordinary—at the end of the day a human teenager and as such is going to make the occasional mistake. Or even if he doesn’t, sometimes the bad things just happen, and it’s NOT because of any action taken (or not taken) by self-sacrificial little nerds with hearts of pure gold who put it all on the line every night to help their fellow man.

Tony doesn’t think Peter will be very receptive to this line of logic tonight. But if he can get him to listen to the words now—maybe he’ll actually hear them later.

“First of all,” Tony says without preamble as he shoulders open the medbay door and approaches Peter’s bedside. “Scooch,” he mutters, nudging Peter’s leg over slightly so he can perch himself on the edge of the cot. “First of all, you need to know that the woman is going to be fine.”

Peter’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise, as though he’s forgotten that Tony can access a complete catalog of footage of his entire Spider-Man existence any time he chooses. It usually annoys Peter when Tony does that; it feels like an invasion of privacy even though, as Tony so helpfully points out when Peter complains about it, “My tech. My spider kid. My business.” But this time, he’s so gripped with relief by Tony’s words that he’s okay with the use of the Baby Monitor (though he still takes grave issue with the name).

“She is? Are you sure? How do you know that?”

Tony smirks. “You forget who you’re talking to? I have connections, kid. So you can count on it when I tell you she’s going to be fine. She got to the hospital in time—thanks to one Spider-Man, I might add—she immediately underwent emergency surgery to remove the bullet and repair the internal damage, and she is currently stable.”

“Oh. Oh, wow. I-I wasn’t sure she was… I mean, there was so much… Um. What about…”

Tony tilts his head, studying Peter carefully. “Her son?”

Peter swallows hard before nodding, and it seems to confirm something for Tony, who runs a hand affectionately through Peter’s tangled curls.  

“The little boy’s grandparents were contacted and went straight to the hospital. I’m sure that kid will be spoiled rotten by the time his mom gets discharged.”

Peter heaves a shuddery breath, closing his eyes briefly. When he opens them, there’s a sheen of unshed tears. “Good, that’s good,” he says. “He was so … he … he’s just a little kid, I mean no little kid should have to see something like that.”

A soft, sad smile curves Tony’s lips and he takes Peter’s uninjured hand in his own, giving it a comforting, firm, knowing squeeze. “You’re right, Pete,” he says, his voice low and gruff. “No little kid should have to see something like that. No big kid either.”

Peter chews on his bottom lip. “I didn’t web him up fast enough, Mr. Stark. I saw him going for the gun and I … I just wasn’t fast enough.”

Tony nods that he’s listening and waits, watching as Peter worries the thin blanket in his hands and the thoughts in his head.

“And then, I mean after he … then I was so distracted by h-her there on the ground and all the bl-blood—and the little boy? He was begging me, Mr. Stark, begging Spider-Man to save his mommy and he was crying and looking at me like I could fix everything and the fuc- the guy got away. He got away and that’s on me.” Tony opens his mouth to protest because he’s not a fan of this road Pete’s headed down, not a bit, but then Peter sits up straight and pulls his hand from Tony’s and clenches a fist as his voice gains strength and an angry edge.

“That kid is going to have to live with the memory of his mom getting shot right in front of him, of her blood all over the ground, splashed on his SHOES, and of a so-called superhero standing there like a complete loser while the bad guy got away. I did that to him, Mr. Stark, me!” He raises his eyes up to meet Tony’s. “You once told me if I was nothing without the suit, then I shouldn’t have it. Well how does it feel to know that I’m nothing even with it?” His laugh is bitter as all hell and it hurts Tony deep inside.

So he’s pretty sure he’s going to mess this next part up. After all, one of his biggest triggers, the red flag to the bull, is someone saying bad things about Peter Parker. And apparently, that protective instinct, the desire to lash out at the one responsible, extends to Peter Parker himself. So Tony doesn’t speak for a while. He wants to get it right. Or, failing that, he wants to at the very least avoid the sudden urge he has to slap Peter upside the head for even thinking such things about his favorite kid.

“So we’re playing a rousing game of piss on Peter Parker tonight, huh? Can anyone join in or is it a one-man match? Scratch that. I’m getting in on this round. You know I never wanted to give a shit about you?”

Peter’s eyes dart up to meet Tony’s, clearly not expecting that. And then he freezes, transfixed, as Tony continues.

“It’s true. I mean, you’ve heard the stories, you’ve met the man, the myth, the legend. He cares about nothing and no one, right? I mean, sure, toss in a beautiful blonde and a couple of loyal sidekicks, he’s okay with that, he’s not a total loner after all. But a kid? A hyperactive fourteen-year-old kid with a hero complex and a really annoying tendency to expect good from people? Even when the world has shown this kid at every damn juncture in his short life that most people don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. Even when his whole existence has been a series of tragedies that would turn most people cold and hard and mean. Yeah, Tony Stark should have been completely immune to that kid. I didn’t want to care about you because caring is hard. It’s risky and it’s hard and I didn’t think I was in any danger of it with some random chatterbox of a kid who happened to have abilities I needed to borrow for a minute. Ah, yeah, that one still stings quite a lot, actually.” Tony pauses to press two fingertips to his forehead as if trying to stave off a headache or a bitter, guilt-filled memory, before he continues. “But you see, Peter, I underestimated you. I thought you were just naïve, that this ridiculous sunny disposition of yours was just immaturity and you’d outgrow it and harden up like the rest of us. You’d realize that sometimes the bad things happen and there’s nothing we can do to stop them. That you should guard your heart and your feelings because you don’t want to risk anyone being able to weaponize it against you. That you should hold everyone at arm’s length, the way good emotionally stunted men like myself do. But I failed to account for YOU, Pete. For how magical you are. Enough to melt this old man’s heart, enough to become the metric by which I judge the whole of humankind’s capacity for good, and you know what? No one has ever even come close. You are an original, Peter. You did the impossible. You blasted down all my defenses and skittered your little arachnoid self into my soul. And I hate to tell ya, but once you’re in there, there’s no getting out. Ask Pep, Rhodey, Happy most of the time but don’t tell him. Cap. Nat. Bruce. Clint, that sonofabitch. A punk kid out in Tennessee. Just … it’s not a big crowd, is what I’m saying, and there’s no easy access. Except for you. You just swung right in, no invitation, and made yourself at home. So, the first thing I need you to know is this. I love you. I love you without qualifiers, without conditions, without abandon, without a final chapter. Loving you is hands-down the easiest thing I’ve ever done—and may I remind you that most everything comes easy to me, as I am a genius.”

Peter’s face is flushed now, and a couple of tears have tracked down his cheeks and soaked into his hospital gown. “What’s the second?” he mutters when Tony stops speaking to watch him carefully.

“Ah, the second. The second thing is that you’re not just priceless to me. You’re priceless to the world. Queens won the fucking lottery when that spider bit you, and they’re not the only ones. You’re the real deal, bud. You care so much it hurts, and then you keep caring even when it’s tearing you apart on the inside. But as kind as you are, as generous and brave and GOOD, there’s one place you fall really, really short. So much so that it’s a crime, really, and it pisses me off, and we all know what a bad idea that is. Do you know what I’m talking about? What your failing is?”

Peter frowns “I think I know what you’re going to say, but-“

“Ah ah, no interrupting until I’m finished.”

“You asked!”

“It was rhetorical. I’m going to tell you what your failing is, the only real one I can see and sure I’m biased but still. You fail to see Peter Parker for the miracle that he is. You fail to acknowledge and celebrate your wins because you let them get swallowed up by those times I just mentioned, times when the bad things happen—and no, bud, they don’t happen because of you. Never, ever, ever because of you.”

“I—”

“If you’re going to object to either of the two things I’ve just laid out, then I feel it’s only fair to warn you that you might find yourself on the wrong end of Stark wrath, patent pending. And I don’t recommend that, at all, and not just because I’m the one who foots your medical bills. You see, Pete, one of the most foolproof ways to make me absolutely lose my shit? Is to hurt you. That goes for bad guys with guns, bullies with too much time on their hands, aliens with plans, teachers with unfair grading scales, whatever. That goes for you, too, kiddo. So what I’m saying is: You don’t hurt you and then I won’t have to retaliate. Capiche?”

“Capiche,” Peter mutters, an almost-smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“Now I want you to get some shut-eye. Let that healing factor of yours kick in so you can get out of that cast faster, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, and heads up, I’ve informed your aunt about most of the events that transpired this evening, minus some of the details and context that I think you should share with her. I can’t force you to, but I can strongly encourage it. And I will. Incessantly. Night and day. Until you’re so sick of my campaign that you will agree to do anything at all just to get me off your back. Because it’s important, Pete. Talking about these things. It’s important that you know you can share that burden with May, with your friends Ted and Scary Girl. With me.” He pauses there, a gentle smile softening his features. “Thanks for trusting me enough to open up, buddy. That means a lot to me, you know.” He hesitates before tossing a quick wink Peter’s way. “Granted, your initial instinct was to play Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots with a brick wall and then try to get the good Doctor Cho to rebreak your fingers without any pain management … but opening up wasn’t too far behind.”

Peter’s sleepy smile lights up something wonderful inside Tony, and the one he returns is his real one, not the camera-ready grin but the gentle smile that radiates warmth and affection and uncomplicated love. The one reserved for family.

“FRI, get the lights, please.” Tony settles back in the bedside chair and stretches, joints popping like they didn’t used to do, not so long ago. This superhero business may be accelerating the aging process, but he knows for damn sure that the parenting business is taking its toll a hell of a lot faster.

“Oh, Mr. Stark, no,” Peter objects as Tony props his feet on the edge of the cot and fidgets a bit to get situated. “Don’t you want to go up and sleep in your actual bed? I’m sure Ms. Potts misses you and I’ll be fine down here; you don’t have to stay here all night…”

Tony hums sleepily, allowing his eyes to drift shut as he answers. “You know better than that, kid. I don’t do anything I don’t want to do. And right now, what I want to do is catch a few Z’s in this remarkably ergonomic hospital chair next to my favorite spider child.”

“Well, if I can’t convince you…”

“You can’t.”

“Then there’s just one more thing, okay? I want to say something about that first thing of the two things you told me, and I don’t want to make it weird or anything and I know you don’t always love the mushy stuff so I’m just gonna say it fast and then we don’t ever have to talk about it again if you don’t want to. Because—”

Tony savors the familiar sound of the boy’s rambling, but knows if he lets him spin out they are never going to get any sleep EVER. So he interjects softly: “Kid. Out with it.”

“Okay, um. I hope you know this already because it’s not like it’s a new thing, you know, it’s just not something that’s ever been like expressly—”

“Peter, I swear to god.”

“It’s just … I just wanted to say that … I love you too, Tony. G’night.”

Tony’s eyes remain shut, but a smile spreads across his face and warmth floods his heart.

No question about it, this kid is gonna be the death of him.

But what a way to go. 

Chapter Text

“So, Peter. I talked to your Aunt May, and she agreed that you will stay here with Tony this week while she’s away at her nursing conference and I’m in Tokyo. What do you say?”

“Um, no offense, Miss Potts, but I don’t need a babysitter.”

“I know, sweetheart. You don’t.” Pepper drained the last of her orange juice, rinsed the glass, and placed it in the dishwasher before turning to grip Peter’s shoulders and fix him with a pleading gaze. “But Tony does.” At Peter’s smirk, she continued. “All I’m asking is that you keep an eye on him. Make sure he sleeps at least a couple of hours a night, eats actual food—coffee doesn’t count—and maybe try to pull him out of the lab a few times.”

“Miss Potts, have you ever tried to pull Mr. Stark out of the lab when he’s in the zone?”

“Yes, honey. Many times. Over many years, and with many failures. You have my express permission to use your super strength if he refuses to cooperate.”

Peter smiled at that.

“I am right here, you horrible, shameless traitors. Listening to every word, storing this conversation away to nurture the retribution that will be visited upon you both at a later date.” From his perch at the kitchen bar, clutching a coffee mug emblazoned with the words I’m a Genius. What’s Your Super Power?, Tony glared at the two of them.

“Aww, honey,” Pepper cooed in mock sympathy, striding over to plant a playfully condescending kiss on Tony’s cheek. “If I could trust you do the bare minimum to keep yourself alive and functioning like a human being when I’m away for a week, then I wouldn’t have to ask a fifteen-year-old to help. But here we are. So, Peter, do we have a deal?”

“Sure, I’ll be glad to stay here and keep Mr. Stark out of trouble.”

Tony leveled the boy with a look. “Says the spiderling whose middle name is Trouble? I think not.”

“My middle name is Benjamin, which I know you know because you’re even worse than May with the full-name-dropping,” Peter sassed before glancing back at Pepper and asking with barely contained glee, “So like, does he have a bedtime that I should enforce?”

“Mr. Stark, how many cups of coffee does that make for today?”

“Mr. Parker, how many weeks would you like to be grounded from Spider-Man patrol?”

Peter lifted his head up from where he was sprawled on the couch so he could gauge his mentor’s level of seriousness before dismissing it as the grouchy jibing that it was. “Ah, come on, Mr. Stark. I can’t let Miss Potts down, can I? She’s trusting me to take good care of you.”

“Okay, junior genius. You are aware that this whole farce was your aunt’s way of ensuring you wouldn’t be unsupervised all week without having to deal with your insufferable whining about how you’re too old to need supervision?”

That met with silence as Peter chewed thoughtfully on his pencil eraser. “Nah. She knows I wouldn’t fall for that. Besides, she trusts me to be responsible. Remember last month when she met up with that friend from college and they ended up staying out later than she was expecting so she spent the night? She didn’t worry at all about letting me fend for myself.”

Tony barked out a laugh. “First of all, that was just one night, not an entire week. Secondly, she explicitly asked me to check up on you three times in as many hours and THIRDLY. That outing with her ‘friend from college?’” The man smirked, took a large sip of coffee, smacked his lips together in satisfaction, and continued, “was actually grownup time with one Happy Hogan.”

“… No.”

“Yep, most definitely.”

“Mr. Stark! Ew! No! Why would you…?”

“You’re welcome, kid, you can send the therapy bill to my office.”

As Peter groaned behind his hands, the tips of his ears glowing red, Tony chugged the last of his liquid caffeine and nudged the boy with one foot. “I’m going to the lab. Care to join me or are you going to sit here and wrack your brain to recall all the times Aunt May and Happy have been MIA at the same time?”

“Stop! I’m coming!”

Three food deliveries, blaring classic rock, and two genius brains fueled some good progress on upgrades to Tony’s latest suit as well as some repairs to Peter’s—but then progress devolved into tinkering, as it does, and tinkering led to experimenting, which was just a stone’s throw from junk-food-and-exhaustion-fueled bad decisions disguised as science.

Meaning that by the time the wee hours rolled around, the lab was in shambles, Tony was nursing a minor burn on his forearm, and Peter was helplessly nodding off into one of the mostly empty pizza boxes scattered across their workbenches.

“Hey. Hey, kid.”

Peter snorted and grumped in his half-asleep state, trying to dislodge the hand that was so rudely shaking his shoulder.

“Pete. Time to wake up and go to bed.”

“ ’m good here.”

“You’re not good there, buddy, you’ve got pineapple stuck in your hair.”

Grumbling, Peter sat up, rubbing at his eyes. A squashed chunk of pineapple fell from his sleep-matted curls and landed on the floor amid the glass and bits of wire and napkins and crumbs and scraps of discarded hand-drawn diagrams. “What time is it?”

“Bedtime for spiderlings. C’mon. You have school in…” Tony squinted at his watch. “Shit, soon. Your aunt is going to kill me.”

Happy stood gawking at the scene before him. He’d come in guns blazing, fully prepared to read the kid the riot act for keeping him waiting when he knew how much Happy hated (a) waiting and (b) not being among the first ten cars in the morning drop-off line (it was a thing, okay, he didn’t need a reason). But apparently what it took for Happy to lose his desire to yell at anyone was just this: Tony Stark, fast asleep on one end of the cushy white leather couch, his head pillowed on the armrest. Peter Parker, also dead to the world, mirroring his mentor at the other end. Sock-clad teenage boy-feet perched comfortably in the lap of the Genius billionaire playboy philanthropist DAD.

Happy chuckled fondly to himself before pulling out his phone to snap a quick picture.

“I can’t believe I slept through almost an entire school day. Mr. Stark, this is not good. I missed a history test, I had … oh god, AcaDec! MJ’s gonna kill me.”

“Forget MJ, kid, it’s May we need to focus on. What are we going to tell May?”

“Oh, right. Um … I was sick? Yeah, I could be sick!” He gave a theatrical little cough for good measure.

“That won’t work, you’re terrible at lying.”

“I am not!”

“Worst I’ve ever seen, truly, it’s appalling.”

“Oh yeah? Then how come I’ve gotten away with lying to you tons of times and you never had a clue!”  

“Not to mention, you don’t get sick since the bite. She’ll never buy it. Wait a minute, what do you mean tons of times?” Tony fixed Peter with a look. “I think I’d like to hear more about this.”

“I’m sorry, what? I mean obviously I’m joking, I would never—” Peter felt the blush creep into his cheeks as he desperately backpedaled under Tony’s heavy stare. “Anyway, I think you should call the school.”

“And tell them what?”

“I don’t know, something that will keep them from calling Aunt May and getting us in trouble! You’re on my list of guardians; if you call in an excuse they won’t need to contact her too.”

“Well how was I supposed to know they would contact her too?!”

Tony needed a drink. He always needed a drink after the kid’s aunt laid into him, and this had been one for the books. His ears were still ringing.

“You go to that school, you should have at least a glancing familiarity with their attendance policies.”

“It’s so not fair for you to try to pin this on me! Aren’t you supposed to be the responsible adult?”

“You know, Peter, it’s funny how you fight tooth and nail to NOT be seen as a child until the shit hits the fan and then you’re looking for the nearest set of grownup legs to hide behind!”

Peter pouted in Tony’s direction. “Whatever. All she did was yell at you. She yelled at me AND said I’m grounded until I’m thirty-two. THIRTY-TWO, Mr. Stark!”

“Eh, she’s being hyperbolic. We’ll spring you before the year is out.”

“The year?!”

“And it’s not like I’m off the hook either. I’m sure her next call was to Pepper.”

“What, are you scared Miss Potts is going to ground you?” Peter asked sarcastically.

Tony grimaced. “Something like that.”

Tony looked slightly cowed when he got off the phone with Pepper. But it didn’t last long. When he caught Peter’s smug expression he instantly forgot the earful he’d just received.

“This is all your fault, you know,” he said, watching as Peter’s mouth fell open in indignation. “Yeah, it is. You’re the one who said you’d be able to take care of things around here. Next thing you know, I’m on my ninth espresso, the lab is a disaster, you’re passed out in a pizza box, and you let us both sleep through an entire Monday? Tsk. I’d be surprised if Pepper ever entrusts you with my care again.”

“That is absolutely, categorically—”

“Excuse me, Boss. Several of the Avengers have arrived at the tower and are on their way up in the elevator.”

Tony and Peter frowned at FRIDAY’s announcement.

“Why?” Tony demanded.

“They are acting on Miss Potts’ recently established Tony and Peter Cannot Be Trusted to Keep Themselves or Each Other Alive and Functioning Protocol.”

“That is a ridiculous name for a protocol. Cancel it.”

“I’m afraid Miss Potts has claimed sole override privileges on this particular programming.”

Moments later, Steve, Nat, Bucky, Rhodey, Bruce, Sam, and Clint paraded out of the elevator on a mission, wearing serious expressions and bearing the makings of a real, nutritious meal—salad and all.

And when Natasha plucked the coffee mug straight from Tony’s hands and replaced it with a bottle of water, he didn’t even argue.

Chapter Text

If Peter thought Mr. Stark had been overprotective before the Snap, then he was proven tragically wrong in the months after its reversal. Because now? Now the man had achieved nuclear levels of protectiveness. And it was driving Peter absolutely crazy.

It’s not like he didn’t understand, at least from an intellectual standpoint. Sure, for him, the lost time may have felt like stepping away to grab a soda from the fridge or bending down to tie his shoelace. But for the others, those who were “spared” … it was FIVE YEARS. Five years of utter hell, of soul-crushing shock and bottomless, inconceivable grief with a heaping side of survivors guilt.

So a steady stream of admonishments, of “Don’t be late” and “Stay out of trouble” and “Call me when you get there,” and even “Where have you been, Pete, do you know what time it is?” could be overlooked, even understood, as residual effects of that trauma. It’s not like Tony Stark had been the most laid-back guy in the world before the Snap had decimated half the population and dragged his most haunting nightmares into screaming reality—so there was no real reason to expect that he would have mellowed.

But, in many ways, he had. Fatherhood had smoothed out his rough edges and cooled his temper a bit, and he was free and generous with his affection in a way he’d never quite managed before. Peter, always tactile with those he loved, relished this cuddlier version of the man, a Tony Stark who was quick with hugs and hair ruffles, with arms casually slung over shoulders and goodnight kisses planted atop tousled curls. These were good changes.

But there were others, too—changes that could be described, at best, as unsettling. Their dynamic, once so easy and predictable, complete with quick-witted banter and well-worn arguments, had shifted. For instance, Tony was now strangely careful where Peter was concerned. It seemed like he was constantly suppressing any reaction or response that ventured too far into negative terrain, swallowing his trademark sarcastic quips and biting back even well-deserved scoldings—sometimes going so far as to apologize when he crossed some invisible line Peter didn’t know existed.

Case in point: Recently, after a disagreement that wouldn’t even have registered on their admittedly overactive pre-Snap conflict barometer, the man had knocked gently on Peter’s door and sat on the edge of his bed to tell him he was sorry he’d snapped at him. Which had left Peter utterly baffled because Tony Stark telling Peter Parker to watch his mouth was HARDLY apology-worthy, especially since Peter knew that he actually was being mouthy and disrespectful at the time.

This new caution wasn’t the worst thing in the world, Peter assured himself every time that creeping sense of discomfort came over him. It was just odd, particularly in light of Mr. Stark’s new openness with physical affection and—oh yeah—his less welcome but no less notable off-the-charts overprotectiveness.

The latter seemed a much safer issue to explore, so that was where Peter aimed his focus: Wondering why Mr. Stark seemed to have lost any modicum of trust he’d ever placed in Peter and had decided to deal with it by clocking his every step, every breath, every heartbeat.

“I can’t even go to the bathroom without him grilling me about how long I’ll be gone,” he complained to Pepper one night after he’d been subjected to the third degree over being twelve minutes late for his curfew. TWELVE minutes—and he hadn’t even been out as Spider-Man! “I swear, Ms. Potts, I feel like I have a stalker! I’m afraid to stop walking too suddenly or he’ll crash into me from behind! If he has to go full-on helicopter parent with someone, why doesn’t he do it with the actual child in this house? He gives Morgan more space than me, and she’s FIVE.”

Pepper sighed, her head tilting slightly as she gave the ranting teen at her kitchen table a little smile that held more sadness than amusement.

Peter groaned and planted his face in his hands. “Ugh! I know, I know what you’re thinking. You’re right! I’m a horrible person, I suck.”

That surprised a laugh out of the woman. “Wow. Yeah, that’s actually not at all what I was thinking, believe it or not. What I was going to say is…”

“I’m being unfair. Heartless and ungrateful and selfish and unfair.” Peter’s words were muffled as he spoke into the palms pressed flat against his face, but Pepper had no problem hearing them.

“Those aren’t words I would ever use to describe you, honey. Pretty much the opposite of all that, in fact.” Pepper reached across to tug at Peter’s wrist until he lowered his hands and met her steady, kind gaze. “What I was going to say is … I hear you. You’re frustrated. You’re annoyed. You’re feeling smothered. And you’re still figuring out a world that, for you, shifted off its axis in the blink of an eye six months ago and will never be the same again.” She smiled gently. “You know what else I hear? I hear him. He’s frustrated, too. He feels like you’re dismissing him and his rules just because you think you know better and that it’s going to get you hurt. And that’s the one thing, the one thing he can’t even let himself imagine. But you know what’s underneath all of that, Peter. I know you do.”

“You’re going to say worry, and that’s part of the problem, because—”

She cut in over him easily. “I’d like for you to stop trying to anticipate what you think I’m going to say and listen, Peter.”

Peter’s mouth shut with a snap. Pepper Potts didn’t have to raise her voice to command authority.

“First of all, this isn’t about trust. I’m sure it feels that way to you, but that’s not it at all. Worry? Absolutely. Tony worries on a galactic level. All parents worry about their kids—and yes you’re our kid so don’t even think about arguing with me on that one, young man—but worry isn’t what’s driving this. It isn’t even totally about fear, although there’s plenty of that to go around. You know what’s driving his overbearing posturing, his over-the-top rules, his need to know what you’re doing and where you’re going and when you’ll be back and what you’re thinking and if you’re being safe and all those things that are making you want to scream at him to back off.” She shrugged. “Honey, he—we—grieved you for five years. We felt your loss like an open wound every single day. But Tony? He lived it in ways I’m not sure I’ll ever even comprehend. And of course he blamed himself, because he’s Tony, and you were his to protect, and that cocktail of grief and guilt practically killed him.” She broke off as if reliving something, pressing her fingers firmly into the space between her eyebrows for several long moments before continuing, her eyes shimmering in the overhead light. “And then. Then, suddenly, we got you back. You were back, Peter, and it was the … Jesus, it was just the most incredible gift. That’s what you are to us, sweetie. You’re our gift, and, well. I know he holds on too tight sometimes. He’s always been that way. But with you? With a second chance? Yeah, I don’t think he could loosen his grip even if he wanted to.”

If Peter’s being twelve minutes late was worthy of the third degree, then his being an hour late was enough to send Tony all the way over the edge. Add to that the fact that Peter had apparently disabled the tracker on his suit AND had the audacity to decline Tony’s multiple calls (and also must have revoked override privileges, which shouldn’t even be POSSIBLE), and Tony was positively livid when the kid finally arrived home.

(Not that he could express that, anymore.)

Instead of opening with “What the hell do you think you’re doing, kid?” or something equally antagonistic, Tony somehow managed to grit out a reasonably casual-sounding “You’re just in time, Pete. I was about to send out the cavalry.”

Peter froze half in and half out of the window, looking more resolved than surprised to see Tony sitting on his bed, braced for what he likely expected to be a shouting match.

(Not that they did that, anymore.)

“I’m sorry, Mr. Stark, it was one of those nights. Every time I started to head back something else went down that needed Spider-Man’s attention.”

“Ah, I see. Is that why you didn’t answer my calls? Too busy?”

Peter flinched a bit at that. “I, uh. Yeah, sorry about that.”

“And the tracker?”

The kid didn’t even try to offer up an excuse for that, clearly well aware that there wasn’t one that would be good enough. Tony had to make a conscious effort to unclench his jaw and ease his hands out of the tight fists they’d formed of their own volition.

“Are you hurt?” It was the question he had always dreaded asking.

Peter shook his head as he climbed the rest of the way into the room, Tony’s eyes scanning him from head to toe for visible signs of injury. “No, all good.” It came out sounding dismissive in a way that made Tony’s blood pressure rise.

All good, huh? Just wait until I’m done with you. (No, nope, easy does it.)

“I thought we had a deal, Pete. I don’t have many rules for you. The ones I do have are there for your safety and my sanity. All I ask is that you don’t fully ignore them.”

“I know. It’s not like I break your rules on purpose.”

Tony raised an eyebrow at that, and Peter had the decency to look slightly ashamed.

“Not without a good reason,” he tacked on.

“Oh, well that’s different, isn’t it? Tell me then, Pete, what was your reason this time? For disabling your tracker, for declining my calls, for not reporting in that you were just running late and not, I don’t know, bleeding out in an alley somewhere. I’d love to know what constitutes a good reason. You know, for future reference.”

Thin ice. You are treading thin ice, Stark. Tone down the sarcasm.

“I … don’t know.”

“I’m sorry? You said you don’t break the rules without good reason, but you can’t come up with the reason?”

“I told you. It was a busy night. I had to prioritize.”

“Prioritize.”

Peter took a deep breath. “Prioritize people who needed help over your overprotectiveness.”

“You know, I wouldn’t have to be so overprotective if you would keep me informed.”

“I do keep you informed! I tell you what you need to know.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes!”

Without warning, Tony closed the space between them before Peter could even react, his hand making contact with Peter’s side and pulling back just as suddenly, dripping scarlet into the plush cream carpet.

“Medbay. Now.” Tony’s features were schooled into indifference, but his tone brooked no argument as he gripped Peter’s elbow and steered him toward the elevator.

Shit.

During his time as Spider-Man, Peter had gotten disturbingly good at administering his own first aid. He could wrap bruised ribs with one hand, apply webbing to an open wound without breaking stride while chasing down the perpetrator, and even sew decent stitches—although that one was always a nuclear option.

His current wound was a little more than he was able to handle on the fly, a pocketknife having carved a deep gash into his side, the blood flowing faster and thicker than Peter’s makeshift web bandage could contain.

The medbay doctor on call stitched him up like it was nothing, though, and left the room before Peter was altogether ready to face Tony. He didn’t want to deal with it now, the careful words he would use, the eggshell-delicacy with which he would treat a situation that, before the Lost Years, would have sent Tony into a tailspin that, while somewhat alarming, would have reestablished for Peter exactly how much the man cared.

The post-Snap distance was far more painful than the gash in his side.

So he wasn’t in the least prepared for what happened next. For Tony to open his mouth and unleash a tirade worthy of the Tony Stark who commanded awe and fear and admiration in equal measure across a lifetime of hero-worship.

He wasn’t calm. He wasn’t measured. He wasn’t careful.

He was pissed.

He was punishing.

He was paternal.

And even as Peter’s ears rang with words like “irresponsible, self-sacrificial, stubborn, short-sighted, and childish,” his heart swelled at the sudden sweeping rightness of it all, his erstwhile father’s rant striking a chord in his heart that translated those harsh admonitions to “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Peter didn’t even realize he’d started crying until Tony’s fire fizzled as suddenly as if it had been doused with a bucketful of water. And as Peter was swept up and crushed within arms of iron—flesh and bone, but unmistakably iron—five years’ worth of grief began to heal between them both.

🕸️🕸️🕸️

Chapter Text

"Hey Mo, how's my favorite Stark?" Peter asked the child sitting with her back to him in the middle of the stairwell, not breaking stride as he easily leapt over her head, clearing her by at least three feet and landing neatly several risers below. Turning with a grin to look at her, he was expecting a giggle. Then he saw the expression on her face. "Uh oh, what happened?" he asked, tossing his backpack aside and sitting down on the steps to fix her with his patented big-brother look. 

"Daddy's mean," she said, putting every ounce of five-year-old bitterness into the words. 

Peter glanced behind himself to make sure the man in question wasn't within earshot before whispering to the little girl, "Um, he can be, yeah. What makes you say that?”  

The stormy little face tightened further, Morgan's fists clenching in her lap. "He yelled at me for no reason." 

Now that caught Peter off guard. Sure, Tony could teach a masterclass in yelling. His outbursts were the stuff of legend. Hell, he could make someone cower where they stood without so much as opening his mouth. He had seen the man reduce actual superheroes to the likes of penitent children—himself very much included. But yelling at Morgan? That would be a first. 

"What did he yell about, exactly?" Peter asked, careful not to make it sound like he was implying she wasn't telling the truth simply because it seemed more likely that Captain Rogers would suddenly turn to a life of petty crime.

Morgan crossed her arms more tightly around herself and allowed her bottom lip to protrude a bit more. Peter got the message. She drew the line at talking about what she'd actually done to incur the wrath of her father. 

“So he’s just being a meanie, then?” Peter asked sympathetically.

“A super meanie. I hafta sit here for fifteen minutes and then we’re gonna have a talk about the rules and then he’s gonna tell Mommy when she gets back from Tokyo.”

Peter winced in understanding. “And since you didn’t do anything bad, you think he’s probably just going to make up something that will make her mad at you too, huh?” At the child’s mournful nod, Peter winced understandingly. “Well, you’re right, Mo. That’s super-meanie stuff for sure. Want me to talk to him for you? Try to cut you a deal?”

Tony suddenly appeared from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dishtowel. "Hey kid—stop conspiring with the inmate. There’s room for one more on that Naughty Step."

“Yes sir, no more conspiring.” Peter gave Morgan a quick wink out of Tony’s eyeline.

The man pointed a lectury finger at his daughter. "You have ten minutes left on the clock, Miss Morgan. Instead of trying to garner sympathy from your spider brother, I suggest you spend this time thinking about what put you there." 

Peter didn't think it was possible for Morgan to look any more pissed off, but somehow she managed, her little fists clenching tightly on top of her knees. "You put me here," she said plainly. Peter's eyes widened at the unadulterated sass. (Then he remembered who her parents were, and that sassiness was imprinted into her DNA from both sides.)

Tony, to his credit, didn't miss a beat. "Only technically. Your own actions were the catalyst. But if you want to continue arguing semantics, I'm happy to have FRIDAY add some time to your sentence." 

"No!" Morgan objected. 

"Then zip it. I'll tell you when your time is up. Peter, come with me." 

Peter stood and reached down to gently ruffle Morgan’s dark locks. “Hang in there, Morgs. And a little advice? Try to keep a lid on the backtalk until he chills out, okay?”

"What's she in for?" Peter asked, following Tony into the kitchen. 

Tony sighed as he took a plate out of the cabinet and started piling it high with scrambled eggs and bacon. "Sit. Eat," he said to Peter, who wasn't hungry but didn't feel like pushing his luck with the man in his current mood. He perched on a barstool and accepted the plate. 

"I found her playing in my lab at five o’clock this morning," Tony said, and Peter's mouth actually fell open because that? That was the big time, and she knew it. 

"Whoa. How did she get in?" 

"That's what I want to ask you about." 

“No way, I would never give her the code!”

“I’m not saying you did, but she watches your every move. You can’t get anything past her. I’d be proud of that if it didn’t mean it was going to get me in a world of shit when Pepper finds out.”

“So you think she watched me put in the code and memorized it?”

“That’s my working theory. I’m going to find out.”

“And FRIDAY didn’t tell you because…”

“That’s the other thing. That’s why YOU are in trouble.”

Peter froze, egg-laden fork midway to his lips. “Ohhhhhh shit.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right. You disabled your lab access limitations? And enabled privacy mode? And forgot to reset the defaults once you were done breaking all the rules? That’s a pretty impressive list of oh shits, Peter.”

“I’m sorry. I really am. It was late, I hadn’t been sleeping, if I’d had any idea Morgan knew how to get in there I would never have—”

“Actively and purposefully gone against protocols put in place for your safety and wellbeing?”

Peter winced. “I wouldn’t put it that way.”

“No, I’m sure you wouldn’t. Tell me, Peter, how long ago did you tamper with my AI?”

“Mr. Stark…”

“Ah, I should be more specific. How long ago did you tamper with my AI on this most recent occasion?”

Peter stayed silent, stabbing at his rapidly cooling scrambled eggs and waiting to be read the riot act.

“I asked you a question, I expect an answer.”

“I thought it was rhetorical.”

“It wasn’t.”

Sighing heavily, Peter pushed his plate of unfinished food away and dragged his eyes up to meet the man’s penetrating stare. “A couple of weeks ago?”

“Are you asking me or telling me?”

“Well I figure you probably already know, so I’m trying not to be trapped in a lie.”

“Planning to lie, are you?”

“Mr. Stark, come on.”

“No, Peter, you come on. This is serious. Lab security has always been Priority-A-Number-One-No-Excuses and you know that. Access is a privilege, not a right, and if you’ve been abusing it, or if something is so wrong that you’re letting rudimentary safety measures slide, then I need to know about it.”

“Wow, you’re starting to preach like Cap.”

“Careful, Pete. I asked you when.”

“And I told you. It was two weeks ago. When you were on your last mission.”

“That wasn’t a mission, I’m retired. It was Avengers business.”

Peter scoffed.

“Do you need a tissue?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Stark, but if you think this is retirement, I’m pretty sure you’re doing it wrong. You don’t come home from a three-week-long business meeting with broken bones and a gunshot wound and having, what did Dr. Banner call it, ‘a mild cardiac event’?”

Tony swiped a hand through the air dismissively. “We’ll circle back to this. What does it have to do with the lab?”

“I told you. I couldn’t sleep. Being in there, tinkering … it helps.”

“With what? Anxiety? Were you worried about something?”

“You of all people should know.”

“So you couldn’t sleep and you knew if you spent all night in the lab FRIDAY would tell on you.”

“Basically, yeah. I didn’t want FRIDAY to nag me, or for you to be distracted in the field, or for Ms. Potts to worry. And I couldn’t get in there when I needed to without disabling those lab hours restrictions you set up for me, which are totally unnecessary, by the way.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Clearly.”

“I was going to reset defaults, I swear. I just…”

“Forgot.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How many nights in a row were you down there?”

“I mean, not all night every night, but I’d go down there around when Ms. Potts went to bed. I made sure to get ready for school on time,” he added with a touch of misguided pride.

“You didn’t sleep for three weeks?”

“I mean, I took some naps. Don’t make a big thing of it. It was fine.”

Tony scrubbed a hand down the side of his face. “Jesus, Peter.”

“I thought this was about me leaving the lab vulnerable and putting Mo in danger. Can we focus on that instead of my sleep habits, please? It’s fine, I’m fine.” Then, under his breath, “Can you say the same?”

“Hey,” Tony barked. “I’d like a little less attitude, kid, especially when you’re already in hot water. We’ve had this talk before. Sleep is non-negotiable. If you’re having trouble with it, you TELL someone. And if you’re sleep-deprived over a period of THREE WEEKS, you do NOT spend all your nights holed up in a room filled with chemicals and equipment that could kill you if you sneeze the wrong way. Were you patrolling, too, while this was going on?”

“Of course. Was I supposed to let the criminals take over the city just because I didn’t get a full eight hours of sleep the night before?”

“Damn it, Peter! You know better. If I had been here I never would have—”

“You weren’t though.”

Tony’s eyebrows shot up at that. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, words dripping ice-cold sarcasm. “Is the kid who’s spent literal years insisting that he’s not a kid saying he needs a babysitter to keep from self-destructing?”

Peter slid off the kitchen stool and went to dump the remainder of his breakfast in the garbage. “You’re one to talk about self-destructing,” he mumbled before turning to ask, “Can I go now, or do you need to yell at me some more?”

“You know what, yes, go. Go to your room and stay there until you’re ready to check the disrespect and have a civil conversation.”

Peter shot a glare at Tony, clearly biting back a smartass remark that would only make things worse, before stomping away.

Several moments later, his bedroom door slammed so hard it made Tony jump.

Then he jumped again when a little voice called out to him from the next room, “Daddy? FRIDAY says my time is up. Also Peter went past me on the stairs and he didn’t jump over me or even try to tickle. I think he’s reeeeeally mad. Can I go play now?”

More coffee. Tony needed much, much more coffee.

Peter knew he was being a jerk. He knew it and he couldn’t even really find it in himself to care. Which was, in itself, uncharacteristic.

But the thing was, since he’d unblipped, he needed eyes on his loved ones—Tony most of all—like all the time. When they weren’t with him and he had no easy way to reassure himself that they were okay, the anxiety pressed in on his chest like a cold thick block of metal. And with Tony away on some undisclosed mission that Peter wasn’t even allowed to ask about, Peter’s imagination turned cruel and terrifying.

It started with flashes, every time he closed his eyes to try to sleep. Tony (or May or Pepper or Morgan or Ned or MJ or Happy or Natasha or Cap or Rhodey or Clint or Wanda or Sam or or or) hurt, bleeding, broken, falling, drowning, hurting, dying… And he would shoot up in bed and struggle to regulate his heartbeat, calm his roiling stomach, stop his tears.

He would fight to breathe.

Sleep wasn’t worth that, nothing was worth that. So Peter stopped trying to sleep. He was enhanced, he probably didn’t need as much sleep as other people. (He didn’t listen to the voice of reason in his head that reminded him that his strength, speed, and healing factor all suffered when he wasn’t taking good care of himself.)

And then the nights stretched out before him in long, lonely hours that he had to fill with busywork. So he adjusted the lab protocols, gave FRIDAY a selective blind spot, and buried himself in wires and formulas, codes and tools and gadgets. Thus occupied, his brain gave him a blissful break from the relentless fear.

He really had meant to put everything back in place before Mr. Stark returned. The man was often in the lab late at night, and Peter didn’t want to risk crossing paths with him and getting busted that way. But his ability to sleep peacefully hadn’t magically restored itself just because his father-shaped person was back. Particularly considering that he came back damaged. The broken bones and gunshot wound were bad enough, but his heart? Peter buried his anger at the man for being so damn stubborn and self-sacrificing (not even getting the irony), and he kept the lab settings as they were, and it gave him peace to know he could go there if he needed to, when he needed to.

But he would never forgive himself if something had happened to Morgan.

Mr. Stark knocked on his door around lunchtime and entered when Peter grunted a half-hearted “Come in.”

“I made grilled cheese sandwiches,” he said. “Come down and eat something.”

“I’m not hungry,” Peter lied.

“Yes you are. You ate two sad little bites of scrambled eggs for breakfast. You’re going to have at least two sandwiches. Or have you been neglecting your metabolism for weeks, too?”

Peter groaned. “We’re still doing this?”

“We haven’t started. We just took a timeout because you were acting like an asshole.”

“Takes one to know one.”

“Pete.”

“What.”

Tony sat down on the edge of Peter’s bed and fixed him with an inquisitive look. “What’s going on with you, buddy? Talk to me. Please?”

“I don’t know what you want me to say. You asked about the lab security stuff. I told you what happened. I didn’t lie. I apologized for potentially putting Morgan in danger. You know I would never do anything to get her hurt.”

“I do know that, of course I do.”

“So what’s there to talk about? Am I grounded? Out of the will? You want me to head back to May’s now? What?”

Tony’s hopeful expression slowly faded as his eyes darkened. “Oh, Pete. Are you trying to break an old man’s heart? Hasn’t it been through enough for one month without my kids double-teaming to put me in an early grave?”

Peter shot up from the bed, his eyes suddenly blazing. “DON’T SAY THAT! YOU CAN’T JOKE ABOUT THAT, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? YOU THINK IT’S FUNNY THAT YOU COULD HAVE DIED? YOU THINK IT’S OKAY? WELL IT’S NOT! And if you keep living the way you do it’s going to stop being a joke and THEN what?”

Tony stood and came around the bed to stand in front of Peter, resisting the urge to put his hands on the kid’s shoulders to center him a bit, to help ease the sudden fury. “That’s it, isn’t it?” he asked gently as Peter took great gasps of air to try to calm himself. “Peter…”

“No! I’m not talking about this. I can’t talk to you right now. Please just leave me alone. Just go.”

“Peter…”

“Stop it, don’t touch me!”

Tony, who had been reaching out for the kid, froze and raised both hands in the air. The air between them was so charged. He had the sudden sinking knowledge that if he tried to hug Peter right now he would get shoved away, and neither of them needed to deal with the emotional baggage tangled up in that. So against every fatherly instinct he had that was screaming at him to comfort! reassure! help!—Tony began to back slowly toward the door.

“I hear you, buddy. I’m going. Please, just. Please come and talk to me when you’re feeling better. We need to talk about this. Look at me, Pete.”

Peter dragged his tear-filled eyes up to meet Tony’s.

“It’s going to be okay. You hear me?”

When he closed the door behind him, he heard Peter let out a soft sob that almost undid him.

Tony spent the next few hours with Morgan. Holding her while she watched two Disney movies back to back and played absentmindedly with his fingers where they were clasped around her middle.

In the ads between the two films, Morgan looked up at him earnestly. “Am I still in trouble?” she asked.

Tony frowned thoughtfully, pretending to think it over. The truth was, he no longer had it in him to teach lessons or dole out consequences. He just wanted his kids to be happy. So he settled for this and told himself he wasn’t folding like a cheap suit. “Are you ever going to go into Daddy’s lab again without me or Mommy or Petey again?”

Morgan shook her head, eyes wide and serious. “Never. Sitting on the steps is so boring.”

Tony smirked a little, rolling his eyes. “It was fifteen minutes, honey. I hope you never have to do hard time. But okay then. You’re not in trouble anymore.”

“And you’re not gonna tell Mommy?” she asked, a little hesitantly as though this might still be on the table.

“What, are you kidding? I’d be in as much trouble as you if we told her. It’s our little secret.”

“And Petey’s?”

Tony kissed the wispy, baby-fine hair next to his daughter’s ear, making her giggle. “And Petey’s,” he agreed. “Now hush so I can follow this movie. I’m emotionally invested in these talking toys now.”

He checked on Peter several more times throughout the day, bringing him plates of food and bottles of water and reiterating that he was ready to talk whenever Peter was up for it. No dice.

He briefly considered calling May, telling her their kid was … he didn’t even know what to tell her. Upset didn’t seem to cover it. He also considered—and quickly rejected—the idea of seeing if Peter wanted him to take him back to the apartment. If the distance would be a good thing. But even if Peter wanted that, Tony wasn’t sure he could take it right now. At least not without some resolution. So he let it lie, and was knee-bucklingly relieved to find empty plates and water bottles when he went to collect them, because he knew the kid had to be starving.

Late that evening, after putting Morgan to bed and before he headed down for some lab time himself, Tony opened Peter’s door to find the kid passed out asleep, arms and legs flung in all directions as usual. He smiled to himself as he pulled a lightweight fleece blanket (Ironman, of course) from the storage ottoman at the foot of the bed and draped it over Peter’s sleeping form. His hand hovered above Pete’s forehead for a moment of hesitation before settling in the slightly damp curls and giving them the gentlest of rufflings.

“I love you, Peter Parker,” he whispered, mindful of the kid’s superhearing and the fact that sleep was a precious gift these days. “Don’t you EVER forget that.”

Speaking of sleep, Tony might have underestimated how much of the stuff he was in need of, too. He realized this as he woke from where he’d drifted off on his workbench, cheek pressed against the Spider suit he’d been making a few long-overdue modifications on. And then, as if he had a Spidey-Sense of his own, he felt the boy’s presence behind him.

He barely had time to turn around before he found himself with two arms full of Peter Parker, the kid’s face pressed hard into his shoulder and his grip strong enough to steal Tony’s breath—not that he was complaining.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Peter was saying, the words muffled against Tony’s threadbare ACDC tee-shirt.

Words Tony hated to hear coming from those lips. They would always be vestiges of confusion and grief, fear and hopelessness and dust in the air, in his fingers, in his lungs. A five-year lifetime of dust and devastation.

“Please don’t say that, Pete,” Tony said. My heart can’t take it, he did not say.

So the two settled for silence after all. The iron strength of their embrace was enough for them to hear each other’s hearts, and to understand what couldn’t be explained with words.  

Chapter Text

Usually, after a big victory—or, frankly, even a small one, they weren’t picky—the flight home was celebratory. Barring major injury or post-battle tactical disagreements, the Avengers were pretty much always ready to pat themselves and one another on the back for a job well done.

Not this time.

The quiet, underneath the sound of the engines, was tense and heavy, and no one was really looking at each other.

Peter, for his part, was curled so tightly in a chair, arms wrapped around legs and chin tucked into chest, that had they hit a pocket of turbulence, he would likely have rolled off the seat and bounced off the opposite cabin wall like a bowling ball. But this was the best he could do in the way of privacy at the moment, and it was better than risking making eye contact with anyone—especially the two who were currently having a whole-ass conversation with their eyes just three feet away from him.

He needed to get off this jet and away from these people before he did something he couldn’t come back from.

Like cry.

Like punch someone in the face out of sheer frustration.

That person almost became Clint (which would have been one of the absolute worst choices, tied with every single other person on this aircraft) when the man suddenly knelt down next to Peter’s chair and planted a heavy hand on top of his head, ruffling his curls a bit as if this were any time for curl ruffling Clint, GOD.

Peter raised his face up from the dark abyss between his knees to pin Hawkeye with what felt like a murderous glare but must have fallen short because instead of looking alarmed, Clint had the audacity to smile, a little.

“Yeah, I know,” Clint said, rightly assuming no context at all was needed. “Believe me, kid, I know. But you’re all right, you hear me?”

Puzzled but also pretty sure he got the message somehow? Peter let his scowl ease up. He didn’t quite manage a smile, but he nodded once, firmly, acknowledging his understanding that Clint was trying to be supportive. And when one is marinating in the murky depths of their own epic fuckup, even weird support is welcome.

They would be landing soon, and Peter knew the drill. Those who needed to be checked over would head to medbay, the others would change, shower, and meet back up to devour an army’s worth of food (fighting was hungry work) and proceed to put a sizeable dent in Tony’s obscenely expensive liquor stash. Peter was pretty sure at least a couple of his ribs were bruised if not fractured, and there was a superficial cut on his upper left thigh, but he didn’t think anyone but him was aware of these things so he would probably not be sent to medbay. Which meant he could make his hasty escape the moment the doors opened on the landing pad at the top of the Tower.

Cap had other ideas.

As soon as the quinjet touched the ground he materialized in Peter’s space, wrapping an absurdly large hand around Peter’s bicep—not hard, just restraining—as if sensing that Peter was planning to make a run for it. “Hang back a minute, Peter,” Steve said quietly. “I just want a word.”

“And I’m going to need quite a bit more than one, so you should probably go first, Cap.”  

Peter flinched as Tony came up behind him and he found himself sandwiched between the two men he’d most wanted to avoid, possibly for the rest of his life.

The remaining Avengers filed out of the jet, random hands reaching out to squeeze Peter’s arm, pat his shoulder, ruffle his hair (dammit, Clint!), until just the three of them remained.

Peter suddenly found the floor of the cabin extremely interesting.

“Eyes up here, son,” Cap said, not unkindly. Peter dragged his gaze up from the floor to meet Steve’s. “First things first. Are you hurt? Do you need to go to the medbay?”

“No sir, I’m fine.”

Tony scoffed. “You wouldn’t know the meaning of that word if it were all that stood between you and a perfect score on the SATs.”

Peter tossed an annoyed glare at his mentor, who seemed determined to make this whole situation even more uncomfortable than it already was.

Cap sighed in Tony’s direction. “You’re not helping.”

“Hello, have we met? Helping is not exactly my MO.”

Steve rolled his eyes, annoyed. “Then maybe you should head inside and let me have a quick word with Peter alone.”

“If you’re going to tear my intern a new one, I’d like to be here to witness it and quite likely throw some fuel on that fire. But before that happens the kid needs to get medical attention.”

“What? I’m fine,” Peter objected.

Steve shrugged. “He says he’s fine, Tony.”

“Oh, I know that’s what he says.” Without warning, Tony reached out lightning-quick and poked Peter medium-lightly in the side.

“Ow!” Peter clutched himself defensively and tried not to double over.

Tony had the audacity to look smug. “At least two bruised ribs, possibly three, maybe a fracture on one of them. Annnnd, oh yeah, an ugly slice on his upper thigh there that he thinks is no big deal even though the blade that got him could very well have been crawling with some nasty interstellar flesh-eating virus. I’d say medbay would be wise.”

Steve frowned at Peter. “You weren’t going to tell anyone you were hurt?” he asked, disapproval dripping from his tone.

Tony was almost grinning now, the complete sadist. “Oh, you see, Cap, being honest and forthcoming about injuries? That’s not exactly his MO.”

Peter could feel his ears burning. Turning bodily to put Tony out of sight behind him and direct his full focus to the Captain, Peter grasped for some remnants of dignity before his traitorous mentor could do any further damage.

“It’s really not that bad, sir,” he said. “Usually I can tell, after an hour or so, if something’s going to heal up on its own. You know, accelerated healing? So I was planning to go change and shower and, you know, like assess the damage first. That way the doctors could focus on the others since I probably don’t even need first aid.”

“Ha!” Tony barked over Peter’s shoulder, and it took an incredible amount of self-control not to fling his arm backward and swat blindly at the man like he was an impeccably groomed fly.

Cap, to his credit, also ignored the interjection, keeping his steady gaze on Peter. “We don’t take chances with injuries on this team, Peter, enhanced healing or not. I believe you’re aware of that?”

“Yes, sir,” Peter muttered.

“And yet your plan was to…”

“Assess the damage,” Tony supplied unhelpfully. “And let me tell ya, Cap, I’ve seen enough of the injuries this boy has ‘self-assessed’ to know that he’s really not good at it.”  

“Mr. Stark, will you please just stop?!” Peter snapped, surprising himself as he spun around to fix Tony with a fierce glare. “I know you’re mad at me, I know you’re both mad at me—but I can only handle one of you at a time and Cap got here first.”  

Tony laughed without humor. “So you expect us to take turns telling you how utterly stupid your actions on that field were, how your unearned confidence and complete disregard for authority in favor of your own misguided impulses could very easily have gotten you killed?”

“Tony, that’s enough,” Cap cut in.

“That’s enough? Are you kidding me? Did you witness the same bullshit I did out there, or have you just mellowed out in your second century, enough to let a sixteen-year-old child give you and your orders the figurative middle finger and risk his own ass and the asses of everyone on your team?”

“Tony, I said stand down. Peter, get down to the medbay, now.”

Peter didn’t need to be told twice. With one glance between the two men, who were now glaring daggers at one another instead of him (which seems like it should have been an improvement, but didn’t feel like one), he mumbled a “Yes sir, on my way” and ignored the jabbing pain from his ribs as he jogged down the ramp and toward the relative safety of the Tower.

He could only hope they’d expend their energy arguing with each other and have little left over for him when they were done.

It didn’t seem likely.  

TBC