Chapter Text
Tony talks with Rhodey at least once a week, whether on a call or over a meal or video chatting as he tinkers with something in his lab. He’s been hanging out with Spider-Man for a month or two by the time Rhodey notices something is up, but the question, when it comes, is off the mark.
“Have you been talking with Pepper again?”
Tony blinks, and his mouth snaps shut halfway through explaining why he should be paying his private PR team more. “What?” he asks, eyeing Rhodey’s image in the screen of the tablet he’s using.
Rhodey rolls his eyes, taking a bite of some oatmeal that’s probably delicious because Rhodey is a miracle worker in and out of the kitchen. “You’re suspiciously upbeat today.”
“Suspiciously upbeat? What is this, an interrogation? I’m perfectly normal.”
“You’re adding fuel to my fire, here.”
Tony scoffs, but he makes a point of not looking away. Rhodey will really think he’s right if he does something that obvious. “I have not been talking to Pepper,” he insists, shaking his head and letting out a tired sigh. “I haven’t done anything with that clusterfuck, actually.”
Rhodey’s eyes narrow, and he jabs his spoon threateningly at the camera. “Tony—”
“I know, okay? I’ve just had a lot going on. I’m working on it.”
He is definitely not working on it—he has no desire to see another person who currently hates him, after all—but maybe Rhodey won’t call him out on it.
A beat.
Rhodey doesn’t, in fact, say anything, but the look he levels Tony with is almost worse, curse his decades of practice. “Whatever you say,” he says, the words uncomfortably crisp before softening as he continues, “but I’m glad you’re feeling better. I worry about you.”
Tony rubs a hand over his mouth, shaking his head. “Don’t be. I’ve got it under control. Everything’s going to work out in the—uh—the long run, you know?”
He smiles, and Rhodey smiles back, even if he’s lifting his brows in disbelief.
“Take care of yourself. If you aren’t already, seriously, try talking to Pepper. She misses you. And tell whoever it is that I say hi.”
“There’s not—”
Rhodey ends the call, and even exposed, Tony can’t stop his smile from morphing into a grin.
//
“You know my friend Rhodey, right?”
Spider-Man sighs, curling into his vent. “I can’t believe you call War Machine that.”
“I’ve known him for thirty years, kid; that’s the least embarrassing name I have for him. Anyway, he says hi.”
Spider-Man nearly drops his hot chocolate, which is just about the only thing he likes from their coffee shop. It’s a little embarrassing, but Tony’s working on it.
“Colonel Rhodes knows I exist?”
“Don’t get a big head about it. He knows that the idea of you exists, and hey—why are you more impressed by that than when we first started talking?”
Spider-Man turns his head and looks at him like he’s insane for even asking. “Come on, Mr. Stark. He’s War Machine. You’re cool and all, but full bird colonel, rocket scientist, superhero is objectively way cooler than genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. You’re not even that much of a playboy anymore, now that you’re with Ms. Potts.”
Tony shoves his side. “I told you that once, and you’re using it against me? Cold.” He breathes in, out. “And Pepper and I aren’t together right now, so.”
Tony watches Spider-Man stiffen. “Oh,” he breathes in sympathy. “I didn’t realize. Sorry, then. Didn’t mean to bring up a touchy subject.”
God, who fucking raised the kid? He’s a little shit half the time, but when he’s not, he’s so earnest it makes Tony’s chest ache where the arc reactor used to sit.
(Was he ever like that? Was he ever capable of showing compassion so easily, or has he always been like this, mangled and dilapidated and just—exhausted, all the time?)
If the world so much as dares to look at that quirk of his, to try and pry it out of him like it does with the soft parts of so many other people, Tony will burn it down.
He clears his throat, runs his hands down his face with just enough pressure to hurt. “Nah, it’s okay. We’ve kept it pretty private because, well—shit, kid, you don’t want to hear about my relationship issues. It’s no fun to hear about what a mess a hero actually is.”
But Spider-Man fixes him with his mask’s huge, pupil-less stare and doesn’t let him hide: “You don’t have to be perfect, Mr. Stark.”
Fuck. Rhodey tells him that, sometimes. Pepper used to, too, but coming from the kid in that high, honest voice?
It’s painfully clear that he’s not joking, and while Tony’s blocked out most memories of his heart surgeries, he feels like this is what it might’ve been like, being ripped open and having someone stare at the core of him.
Instead of running, as is his instinctual reaction to vulnerability, Tony laughs, ignoring how papery the sound is and willing Spider-Man to do the same. “Tell that to everybody else, kid.” Tony drops his head, and his breath fogs in the air before he continues, lower. “She wanted me to step further back from Iron Man, the Avengers, all of it, and I couldn’t. We’ve been over it before.” Tony swallows. “But seriously, don’t bother yourself thinking about it. It’s my problem, and I’ll fix it, eventually.”
(Hopefully.)
Spider-Man nods. “I’m sorry,” he says again, and Tony doesn’t have the energy to tell him he doesn’t have anything to apologize for.
“It’s alright,” he replies instead and takes a sip of his coffee. “Thanks for listening.”
“Anytime,” Spider-Man swears in return, “but Mr. Stark?”
“Yeah, kid?”
“I’m not so great with romance, but you have to start somewhere, don’t you?”
//
Two weeks later, Tony texts Pepper.
Tony: Want to grab dinner sometime?
He gets a response ten minutes later, much faster than expected.
(Much faster than he deserves, after ignoring her for months.)
Pepper: Took you long enough.
Tony smiles.
//
It’s not fancy, when it happens. Tony suggests something nicer—their favorite Italian place, maybe, or that one steakhouse they kept meaning to get to while they were still together.
Instead, Pepper says she wants breakfast food, and they end up jammed in a corner booth of a rundown diner, having slipped the staff a generous tip to encourage discretion and waiting for the plates of pancakes they both ordered to arrive.
“If you were any other ex-boyfriend, I’d appreciate the distance,” Pepper says, and Tony grimaces.
“But—”
“But you’re not, and I’ve been a little anxious to see you since the Avengers imploded. So, if it’s not too much trouble, could you explain why exactly you’ve been avoiding me this long?”
Tony blames his current project and that it’s had him awake for twenty-two hours and counting on how stupidly candid his answer is.
“It seemed better to keep you at arm’s length than risk having another friend go ahead and fuck off.”
(He knows it’s partly his fault, knows he could’ve done things differently, but it still hurts.)
Pepper’s mouth twists, and the blue of her eyes reminds him of a glacier, foreboding in the way that things bigger than oneself inherently are. “We’re better than that,” she hisses, after a long, weighted second. “We’ve been through too much. I’m never going to abandon you, even though we’re broken up, or if we were fighting—or—or anything else. You know that, don’t you?”
Her voice is thick with disbelief, as if she can’t even fathom what he suggested, and it warms him all the way down to his stomach, though outwardly he shrugs, offers a crooked smile, tells her, “Mostly.”
“Tony—”
“It’s nothing you did, Pepp. I just—I thought the rest of them felt that way, too, but I guess not. And I’m sorry for blowing you off. I shouldn’t have, and it was immature, not to mention not the most thought-out thing I’ve ever done, so yeah. Sorry. It won’t happen again.”
It’s a shitty apology, probably. Tony knows he fucked up, despite everything, that he doesn’t just get to drop off the face of the earth when it comes to someone who’s seen him through the worst times of his life, but he’s never been good at gauging these things, much less controlling them.
So he just sits. Waits. Hopes it goes over well enough to where he gets to eat his pancakes with her.
Pepper blinks, and the glacier shifts, leaves ground worn smooth in its wake. “It better not,” she says and manages to make four syllables into a threat before she sighs, smooths her hands across the table like she always does when she’s nervous. “I missed you, you know. You’re important to me.”
(That warms him, too.)
Tony’s smile straightens out a little, then, and though it’s awkward hitting their stride again with more blank space between them than there’s been in the better part of a decade, it’s nice.
//
They stay at the diner until close, and even though it’s one in the morning by the time Tony starts driving back to the Tower, he makes a detour towards the coffee shop and calls a suit—just to see if Spidey’s around.
It was his advice, after all, that got his head out of his ass, and Tony parks on the street that’s as quiet as the city ever gets before flying up to the roof. Unsurprisingly, the costumed shape he’s accustomed to seeing isn’t there, but as he walks to the edge of the roof with the intent to leave, FRIDAY echoes through the suit. “Boss, there’s a heat signature in the alley to the left.”
Tony raises a brow. “Are we talking a kitten or a person-sized signature, girl?”
“It seems to have the same proportions as Spider-Man.”
In a second, Tony’s heart plummets into his feet, and in the next, he’s all but leaping off the edge of the building, landing in the alley with an uncharacteristically loud thunk as he looks for the kid.
(Because everything was going too well, because of course it would be the kid, because Tony ruins everything he touches.)
Tony wants to be wrong. For possibly the first time in his life, he wants his state-of-the-art, infallible technology to disappoint him, to be so incredibly off the mark he’ll be laughing about this for days.
But Tony spins with the night vision in his suit, and against the wall of the coffee shop, there’s what looks like a bundle of dirty rags, except—
“Spider-Man?” The fabric shifts, and Tony can pick out his limbs now as he races closer, frantic. “Spidey, pal, you’re scaring me. What’s—I thought your suit was bluer than this?”
He’s leaning over him now, meeting his eyes that are open but unfocused by the look of the white in his goggles, and he can’t make sense of it, the way the blue of his arms and legs is a different shade where they’re cradled to his chest.
Not until he puts a hand on his arm and the metal of the armor comes away crimson and wet.
“Fuck.”
He’s on his knees in an instant, a move that has a surprising amount of weight to it in the suit, moving the kid’s limbs to the side to find a bullet hole in his suit and blood flowing freely from the wound, viscous and dark and fucking everywhere.
He doesn’t know what the kid’s gotten himself into, exactly, but he’s not responding, his head lolling as Tony handles him to expose bruised skin where his mask rides up on his neck. If he were anyone else, he’d panic at the sight Spider-Man makes, but Tony has rushed more than one person to medical in his time.
(But this isn’t anyone—this is the kid.)
Tony swallows, stamping down his terror, and gathers him into his arms, but as he does—
“Ben?”
Tony has no idea what to do with that. “Not quite, bud,” he tries anyway, nestling Spider-Man’s head in the crook of the armor’s arm and chest. His repulsors flare as they rise into the night, and vaguely, Tony realizes he left the car behind, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except getting the kid the help he needs. “FRIDAY, get a med team prepped and waiting at the Tower,” he mutters.
“On it,” she confirms, and Spider-Man’s curling into Tony’s chest any way he can, the stains on his suit spreading farther before Tony’s eyes.
“Kid—”
“Ben, it hurts.”
If Tony wasn’t holding him, he’d flinch back.
Spider-Man’s never seemed like he has his shit together, exactly, what with his threadbare sweatsuit and lack of funds, but he’s never struck Tony like this—fragile, breakable. No matter what life threw at him behind the scenes, Tony assumed that he could pull through, and now he’s kicking himself for being so utterly stupid.
(If one fight could take Tony out of commission, why did he think Spider-Man would be different?)
“I know, bud,” he breathes.
He isn’t Ben, whoever that is, and while it seems wrong to pretend to be someone he’s not—someone who’s important to Spider-Man, too, if he’s calling deliriously for him—he can’t not reassure him, no matter how that lends to the kid’s imagination.
“I’m sorry,” Spidey whispers, then, and when Tony forces himself to look down, he finds tears seeping through the fabric of the kid’s mask. “I didn’t—” He breaks off, and his voice is quieter when it comes again. “I didn’t mean for you to die,” the kid whispers.
And if Tony didn’t already know he hadn’t been paying him enough attention, he does now.
“It’s not your fault,” Tony murmurs before he can stop himself, before he does any thinking beyond the intrinsic knowledge that Spider-Man couldn’t do what he’s blaming himself for.
It takes a second, but the cry comes again: “Ben.”
The name sounds smaller the third time, and Tony wishes he could fly faster.
//
At the Tower, Tony places the kid on a stretcher already laid out for him.
He’s not speaking at all by then, silent and seeping with scarlet, and Tony watches until the med team wheels him around a corner. Then, he rushes to the nearest trashcan and pukes so hard it leaves him gasping for breath and pressing a hand to his chest.
He wants a drink, but he can’t; he has to be present if anyone has questions, if there are any complications.
Tony has to exist in this god-fucking-awful moment, and the last time things called so urgently for that—
(His watch-gauntlet, cars falling on top of him, a hand clawing at the arc reactor—)
Tony sucks in air that grates his throat on the way down, shuts the lid on the smell trying to waft out of the trashcan, and gets a glass of water instead.
This isn’t about him or Steve or even the Accords. This is about Spider-Man, and this time, he’s going to do it right.
//
Tony finds a chair and sits. Waits. And waits. And waits, until—
“Mr. Stark?”
“Is he okay? Is he awake?” Tony asks the surgeon who’s come up to his private floor, not bothering with pleasantries, but she shakes her head.
“Not yet,” she clips, and Tony can’t pinpoint what it is, but something about her perfectly placid demeanor unsettles him. “Mr. Stark, have you seen this—ah—Spider-Man without his mask, previously?”
Tony shakes his head. “He’s pretty touchy about his secret identity, so I’ve left it alone. Did you have to—” he trails off, hoping she gets the gist.
“We had to get him an oxygen mask, so yes,” she explains, and though Tony disliked how clinical she made her tone before, the halting, deliberate way she speaks next is worse. “Do you know how old Spider-Man is, Mr. Stark?”
Oh, God. Oh no—no.
“College-aged. A freshman or sophomore, maybe,” he says, but his mouth has gone dry. “Isn’t he?”
(He shouldn’t have to ask—this shouldn’t be a question—not if the world was fair, but it isn’t, never has been—)
“By the estimate of everyone who’s seen him, he can’t be out of high school yet.”
Tony’s lips part to speak, but he has nothing to say.
(Because nothing could make this okay.)
Tony sinks into his chair with a hand over his mouth, and a thousand pieces of Spider-Man’s puzzle come together and form a picture that makes him want to scream.
//
Only out of respect for his privacy, Tony doesn’t tell FRIDAY to run facial recognition. If the kid—
(The kid. The kid, who really is one, who took a bullet to the stomach, who barely made it out of surgery, who still hasn’t woken up, half a day after finding him in that alley.)
If Spider-Man is uncooperative, then he’ll push it, but he wants to give him a chance.
(To rest? To explain? Tony doesn’t know.)
“If anyone comes looking for me—” Not that anybody will. “—I’ll be in his room,” he tells FRIDAY.
They have a lot to talk about, when he wakes up, after all.
(Thekidthekidthekidthekidthekidthe—)
//
The chairs in the kid’s room are uncomfortable, but then again, Tony already knew that, from years of sitting with injured teammates. Some hard seats aren’t important, anyway.
Tony is far more occupied with Spider-Man.
He doesn’t know what he expected him to look like, exactly. It’s not like he ever remembers thinking about it, before. As long as Tony has known him, the kid has been a garish, patchworked suit, some freaky goggles, and a voice kinder than most Tony’s heard. He thought that had been sufficient, a true look at what makes Spider-Man himself.
But it didn’t capture the person under the hero.
It didn’t show that Spider-Man is rail-thin, not especially tall but seeming lanky with his scrawny limbs peeking out of his hospital gown, and Tony wonders how extra fat would soften his face, how it’d look not verging on sunken, his cheeks and jaw weathered to scratchy, unnerving angles.
It didn’t expose how, aside from his yellowing bruises, Spider-Man is pale, uncomfortably so, and Tony can see the blue of his veins through his eyelids, can’t see much color in his cheeks or lips.
It didn’t let his hair flop into his face like it is right now, light brown, a little shaggy, and Tony would grin at its unruliness if things were different.
It didn’t give anyone with a brain the vicious truth that a child has been fighting an entire city’s battles.
What Tony previously thought was enough only showed him the alias, not the kid, and Tony takes him in for as long as he can stand before turning his attention to the medical file sitting in his lap.
//
Gunshot wound to the abdomen, severe blood loss, assorted lacerations and contusions across the body, severe malnourishment, moderate dehydration—
//
The worst part, Tony thinks, is the note handwritten at the bottom, the one that makes him consider finding another trash can. Of everything, that’s what nearly sends him over the edge because how the fuck did the kid do it? How did he look at his shit lot in life and keep helping people? How did he laugh and offer advice and live like everything was fine?
(How did Tony let him do it? How could he not have seen?)
Tony sits in his stiff chair, hating that it’s better than anything Spider-Man has probably had for months, hating himself for not interfering sooner, and maybe most of all, hating the stupid, fucked up world he keeps trying to save for doing this to him.
Tony is three feet from a teenage superhero, and he could turn glass to dust between his teeth at the inference crashing through his head with the ruthless tenacity of tides.
With Spider-Man’s extralegal activities in mind, the most likely cause of several symptoms described above is homelessness, the kid’s doctor wrote, and Tony wishes more than anything that he’d realized as much sooner.
//
At some point, Tony falls asleep, and he dreams of heater vents and scarfed-down sandwiches.
//
Tony wakes to something crashing, and even that takes a second to rouse him.
However, then comes some cursing from a high, slightly panicked voice, and Tony’s eyes fly open to find Spider-Man with his feet tangled in his IV.
The words are out of him before he’s thought about them, garbled and made rougher by sleep: “What the hell are you doing?”
“I—” Tony watches his throat work around a swallow. “Going to the bathroom?”
Tony’s first thought is that wow—the kid is a terrible liar, and it’s a good thing he wears a mask most of the time because the eyes boring into Tony look so guilty it’s embarrassing.
The second is that the kid needs to sit down now.
“If it’s that bad, I’ll call a nurse to help you,” Tony bites. “You were shot less than twenty-four hours ago, and you don’t need to be moving.”
The kid winces. “But I have—”
“We aren’t talking about anything until you get back in bed.”
Tony tries to make his tone as unforgiving as possible, and it must work if the way the kid hangs his head and slinks back to where he came from is any indication. Tony lifts the sheets so he can get in, but even that is strained, their camaraderie built over months dissolved into sideways glances and Spider-Man’s shuffling as he gets comfortable again.
The kid breaks the silence first, hands clenched in the fabric of his covers. “How did you find me?”
Tony lets out a snort, can’t help himself. “I was coming back from dinner with Pepper, and I thought I’d check our spot, see if you were there and, if you were, tell you thank you for helping me with all of that.”
Spider-Man smiles for a second, and even on his gaunt face, it’s a soft expression, the sort that would make Tony smile back if he saw him on the street. However, he sobers quickly. “But I wasn’t on the roof. I—uh—remember getting to the alley, but I was too tired to pull myself up.”
Tony nods. “FRIDAY spotted a heat signature, so I headed down to check it out and—” he peters out.
And he found Spider-Man, beaten and bloody and a few more minutes away from fucking dying of blood loss.
Tony clenches his fist in his lap and tries not to think about how terrified he was that he would land at the Tower with a corpse. “You scared the shit out of me, kid,” he breathes.
“I didn’t mean to,” Spider-Man swears. “I didn’t think it was going to get that bad when I dropped in. I just—these guys were harassing this lady—”
“How old are you?” Tony cuts him off, and almost immediately, Spider-Man clams up, lips pressing together, eyes hardening.
He doesn’t say anything, just tips his chin up and meets Tony’s gaze—a challenge.
Fine. Tony can play that way too.
Mustering his best impression of himself when he’s dealing with a particularly shitty businessman, he drains any emotion from his features, leaving a stony, calculating cast behind. “Kid, I’d like to think that we’re cool, at this point, so I’m giving you a chance. You can tell me this stuff and defend yourself as we go, or I can look it up for myself and get the facts without context. Which do you want it to be?”
Spider-Man’s voice gets louder, rough around the edges—“You can’t—”
“I can,” Tony corrects him. “I left you alone before because I thought you were an adult. I can’t ignore the same things, now. That’s how you got shot, in case you forgot.”
“I’m okay,” Spider-Man growls, and logically, Tony knew he had grit to him, that NYC’s streets shred anything that doesn’t have the backbone to withstand them, but it’s strange to see his hackles go up because of him.
(It happens with everyone, eventually, with Tony being like he is. He pretends it’s fine.)
“Okay?” Tony spits back, and his mask cracks. “I realize we haven’t gotten that far yet, but if you think it’s okay that I found you bleeding out in an alley, we have more problems than I realized.”
“I heal fast!” he shouts, hands flying up to emphasize his point.
“Not fast enough!” Tony replies, and he hates the way his voice sounds—too shrill, affected by it all. This isn’t how he wants it to go. Despite everything, Spider-Man’s been nice to have around. He’s been a friend where Tony had very few, and this isn’t how he’s supposed to be repaying that.
Tony closes his eyes and takes a breath to calm down, then looks at Spider-Man again. “Look, I don’t want to argue with you. I know this complicates things, but you’ve helped me out a lot. I want to give you a hand, too, but to do that, I need to know more about you.”
Spider-Man is glaring now, dark eyes just as pained as Tony feels. He tells himself not to take it personally, that teenagers aren’t known for responding logically to these sorts of things, but he does have to issue another reprimand when the kid starts eyeing the door.
“And no escaping. You’re injured, and even if you weren’t, I could catch you. Let’s talk, okay? That’s all I’ll ask, right now.”
Spider-Man takes a breath of his own, and Tony doesn’t know how calming it is—he still looks angry, with his stiff limbs and clenched jaw—but he nods, agrees: “Fine.”
“Great,” Tony says, flashing a smile that pulls his cheeks too tight. “Let’s start this over, then. How old are you?”
“Almost fifteen.”
Jesus Christ.
Tony coughs into his hand and does his best to smother the fluttery, protective panic trapped in the hollow of his throat. Not now. Not now. He’s got the kid to cooperate, and he needs to push that for as long as he can.
“Alright, almost fifteen.” That means fourteen— “What’s your name?”
“Spider-Man.”
Tony’s head jerks up, and his mouth twists. “Kid.”
“Can you ask something else?”
Tony’s been mostly focused on the questions he scrawled on the back of his file, but now, he sees how hard Spidey’s gripping his sheets, the moisture in his eyes he’s trying to blink away.
Tony does his best not to cringe.
(Fuck, he’s never been good with emotions—he’s going to fuck this up, fuck the kid up—)
“I was starting with the easy stuff,” he tries.
“Just give me the next question,” Spider-Man whispers, and his voice is tight, his hands dry and not especially gentle as one itches his cheek. At the look Tony gives him in response, raised brows and are you sure? asked without speaking a word, his mouth screws up with the barely suppressed anger thrumming through every line of his body. “We’re doing this, aren’t we? You won’t leave me alone, even though none of this is your fucking problem, so go for it. What do I have to lose, right?”
And the hysterical little giggle that follows the rush of words—crescendoed from a whisper to a barely-held-together hiss—drills a hole right into Tony’s heart.
“Alright, then,” he begins, against his better judgement, because the kid’s going to blow if he doesn’t. “Why are you homeless?” he asks, and the color drains out of Spider-Man’s face.
“I’m not,” he insists, too fast.
“You are.”
He’s sputtering, shaking his head and looking around the room as if in search of an answer. “No!” he shouts. “I’m just—just—”
But Tony is done indulging him.
“You are. There’s a reason I always find you by the heater vent of our coffee shop. There’s also a reason your stomach is always growling.” His words hold too much venom, he can tell, but he can’t make them stop, seething through his teeth that are helpless to contain them. “There’s a reason your suit is always dirty, and there’s a reason Delmar asked after you. I let you lie to me and almost saw you die because of it, so cut it out.”
The kid hunches into himself, mouth opening and closing but no words coming out, and Tony, breathing hard, softens, at last.
“Just tell me what’s wrong so I can help you, kid. Don’t you have a family? You’re too young for this, to be on your own.”
Tony looks at Spider-Man, willing him to say something, to give him an inkling of how the hell he ended up here, but all that comes, at last, is flat deflection.
“It doesn’t matter,” the kid mutters, so low Tony has to strain to hear it.
“It doesn’t matter?” Tony repeats, incredulous. “Kid—”
“Shut up—shut up.” Spider-Man’s chin juts up to meet Tony head-on, eyes dark and furious and brimming with tears. “Don’t,” he hisses. “You don’t know me—you don’t. Just because we talk sometimes doesn’t give you the right to tell me what to do because you happened to catch me after a bad fight.”
Bad fight doesn’t even begin to cover it. The kid barely had a pulse, but Spider-Man doesn’t care, doesn’t stop talking, words spewing from his mouth in a vicious, gnarled tumble, the verbal equivalent of a stray dog snapping at someone trying to bring it to the shelter. “You can’t make me go back.”
“I never said—”
“But you were going to!” He jabs a finger forward in a motion Tony didn’t know could be jagged but is. “You were going to, but you can’t, and if you try, I’ll run, and you won’t know anything about me at all, which is the way it was supposed to be, and then you ruined it.”
A spark of anger licks up Tony’s jugular, settling at the back of his tongue. He’s used to having no good deed go unpunished, but it fucking stings, coming from the kid. “I saved your life,” he growls, fists clenching. “You would’ve bled out in that alley, and nobody would’ve known. You want that, Spider-Man?” He should’ve known not getting a name was a red flag, but Tony was idiotic enough to think he could do better with him.
(He sees a shield raised above his head, remembers the hot-and-cold pins and needles settling over his skin when he realized he was standing next to a man who never actually cared in that base.)
Stupid, he thinks, but for all his fury, Spider-Man lashes back, the tears now spilling down his face contorted with all the rage only a teenager can feel and somehow so much more.
“Maybe I do!” he screams, and it’s only after it’s said and both of them realize it that his shoulders slacken, lips wobbling as his face crumples. “Maybe I deserve it,” he whispers, and the fire goes out of Tony in one rush, leaving him hollow and brittle.
“Kid,” he breathes, and when he nudges up to the bed to do something, though he’s unsure he knows what, he receives an armful of too-skinny limbs that shake as he begins to sob.
And Tony, shattered and haphazardly put back together with no one around to see the job done well, does the only thing he can think of.
He holds on and lets him.
//
A nurse comes in, eventually. She checks the kid’s vitals, ups his dose of medicine and has the decency not to ask about the tearstains on his face, and when she leaves, Spider-Man speaks, his voice thin, his eyelashes wet, his fingers finally loosened from their death grip on the sheets.
“Before I get into it, you have to know that this didn’t happen to me because of any bad family stuff, okay? Well, it did, but it’s not their fault. My—my family’s good,” he insists, and though his face is collapsing like the precursor to a sob, no more tears fall.
Tony nods, pretending this is normal, and the kid closes his eyes for a second before continuing.
“My parents died when I was super young—plane crash, don’t really remember them, yadda yadda yah. You get it, I guess, so no pity, okay? Okay,” he sniffs, moving past any objection Tony might have before it can form. “My aunt and uncle are my guardians. Or were, anyway.”
“About six months ago, I went on a field trip with my school to Oscorp, and in the labs, they had these spiders they’d experimented on. I don’t know how one of them got loose, but I went home with a spider bite and, well—” He gestures down at himself, and Tony can’t help but snort.
“Radioactive spider bite? Can’t say I’ve heard that one before.”
“What can I say?” the kid says, looking to the ceiling with a tired laugh. “I live to impress. So yeah, the bite, and at some point, I realized I could do something with my powers. Make a difference. I started sneaking out, and my aunt, I don’t think she noticed. She’s a nurse, and she works a lot of night shifts, but my uncle’s usually home after work, and he did. One night he confronted me about it, and I don’t know, I just—just couldn’t take it? I don’t know. It was so stupid, but instead of talking to him, I ran. I had my suit in a backpack, and I took that with me. I didn’t—”
His voice cracks. Instead of acting embarrassed though, he turns his head into his pillow for a moment and does that same tearless shudder, and Tony knows it’s going to be bad.
“I didn’t know he would follow me,” he whispers, so strained the words must be scraping his mouth raw coming out. “I ran down this alley that I’ve been to before because I was planning on being Spider-Man, not—not me. And as Spider-Man, you know, a lot of average criminals won’t mess with me on purpose. They’re looking for a quick job, not a fight with someone with powers, but you—fuck.” He sniffs again, swiping at his eyes. “You can see why I look like an easy target without the costume.”
And Tony hates it, but he can. The kid, whatever his real name is, is deceivingly slight. He’s well-muscled, true, but a long shirt and pants could hide that easily, and Tony cringes.
“You two got attacked?” he guesses, verbalizing it so the kid doesn’t have to, and Spider-Man offers a wobbly nod.
“Yeah,” he manages. “Yeah, we did, and because he didn’t know, my uncle ended up taking a bullet for me.”
(“Mugging gone wrong. Happens, you know? I was there, but I couldn’t save him.”)
“Shit, kid—”
“He died, and I didn’t do anything to stop it.”
Tony can’t stand his tone, every word dropping from his lips with the weight of a rock, his eyes distant and voice tremulously detached, but interrupting him now would be rude, at best.
(Cruel, at worst.)
“I froze, and by the time I knelt to see him, he was too far gone. I held his hand, tried to be there for him, and he bled out on the concrete. He was the best uncle I could’ve had, and he had to die in some dirty alley, Mr. Stark.” The words verge on a snarl at the injustice of it all as he nears the end of his explanation, and Tony can’t decide if that’s an improvement from moments ago. Then, however, Spider-Man blows out a sigh. “And I panicked—‘cause I killed him—and I ran.”
There is some seriously flawed logic there, not to mention the confirmation of Tony’s suspicions that he’s a runaway. He tries to explain why he’s wrong—and he is, undoubtedly, which the kid could see if he wasn’t so clearly guilt-ridden about all of it.
“You didn’t—”
“If he hadn’t come after me, he’d still be alive.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“I killed him, Mr. Stark. And I figured if I had fucked up that bad, well—I don’t even like me, after that. Why would my aunt forgive me?”
Spider-Man looks at Tony, and past the red lingering in his eyes, the trembling of his lips, Tony sees insecurity cracked across his face like kintsugi, and below that, loneliness.
(What would it be like to be fourteen and out on the streets, completely and utterly on your own? No one to talk to, no place warm to go home to?)
“Because she loves you,” Tony says, and the kid flinches away, shaking his head, but Tony isn’t interested in hearing him explain more about why he deserves to huddle against heater vents, to hope for odd jobs to get by. “She should, if what you’re saying is true. She’s your parent, bud. Most of them—the good ones, like you say she is—don’t give up on their children. She’s probably worried out of her mind about you.”
Statistics flit through Tony’s head—how unlikely it is for missing people to turn up after months of being gone, NYC’s human trafficking numbers, the amount of missing person reports the NYPD deals with—but he doesn’t say any of what he comes up with. That’s not what the kid needs right now. Instead, he strikes where Spider-Man is weak.
“If the roles were reversed, if your uncle had followed your aunt, would you hold it against her?”
Spider-Man’s eyes are fucking enormous—gaping and chocolate brown and as earnest as Tony has always known—where their gazes collide, and Tony knows he has him. “That’s different,” he whispers, and Tony presses harder.
“How? Why? You couldn’t have known you two were going to get attacked. You didn’t pull the trigger. You made some mistakes, yeah, but so does everyone, and I’m sorry somebody took advantage of that. You deserve more,” he finishes, and after debating if it’s okay, ends up taking the kid’s hand, squeezing.
Spider-Man doesn’t say anything for a long second, and Tony is grateful that when his tears come again, they’re controlled, slipping silently but purposefully down his cheeks and plinking onto the bed.
“So did he,” he manages eventually.
Tony can’t argue with that.
//
Just before the kid falls asleep, having cried himself out, he murmurs something that makes Tony stop short: “My name is Peter Parker, by the way.”
Huh.
It fits, somehow, though Tony never would’ve guessed it.
“Nice to meet you, Pete,” Tony replies, and the kid offers a small smile before he drifts off.
//
Tony wanders away once the kid is out, tells FRIDAY to alert him when he’s up again, and then he starts to research, plan for what to do next.
“FRI, pull up his missing person report.”
“Of course, boss.”
Tony has some loose ends to tie up, and whether Peter likes it or not, he’s getting the help to do the same. The commitment, the drive to do as much, is nice, a feeling strong enough to overpower the cloud of hurtangerexhaustion that’s dogged him since Leipzig.
(Maybe longer than that, actually.)
It’s still . . . rough to see the picture of Peter on a hologram, his face fuller and eyes brighter than they are now. The information he finds when he looks more, though, is worse because it tells him the name of Peter’s uncle, which in turn makes Tony think of the ramblings he heard flying him to the Tower.
(“Ben, it hurts.”)
Tony has to take a step back, after that, take a few laps around the lab and press his lips together so he doesn’t shout at the fucking tragedy of it all, at how much a fourteen-year-old has lost, but he calms himself down.
Eventually.
The bigger surprise is the image of Peter’s aunt, May Parker, because he’s seen her before, rushing down the streets of Queens with what he now realizes were likely missing posters for Peter.
(“Hey, kid, what’s up? You know her or something?”)
Tony takes another lap.
//
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Tony begins.
The kid’s up, has eaten a little bit and claims he’s able to walk, which Tony can’t outrule entirely because of his healing factor but will definitely be having a nurse confirm.
“Pretend this never happened?” Peter asks.
While Tony is glad to see his sense of humor has returned to him, the comment is not particularly appreciated.
“No,” he rebuffs him. “You’re going home, kid.”
“But—”
Tony glares, and he closes his mouth. “I’ll give you the night,” he permits. “You’re still banged up, and I want to give you time to collect your thoughts, but tomorrow, we’re going to Queens. If you want me to take you to your apartment door and leave, I can do that. If you want me to come inside, I can do that too, but you have to explain to her.”
“Everything?” Peter asks, and his voice is uncharacteristically meek. “Even Spider-Man?”
Tony nods and reminds himself as Peter deflates that it’s unavoidable. “Even Spider-Man. Your aunt’s going to be going through a lot, with you home, and you need more people looking out for you. Speaking of—” Tony clears his throat, hoping he doesn’t sound as stupid as he feels, even knowing this is the right thing to do. “—after you get home and get settled, you have an internship with Stark Industries. We can work out the details later, but that way, I can help you out with Spider-Man—keep you safe, give you some upgrades, the works.”
Peter’s looking at him like he just asked him to go to the moon and back, and Tony softens a little from his methodical list of demands.
“You can do it. It’s not going to be easy, but this’ll be better than being on the streets.”
Peter shakes his head, his brow rumpled with concern. “But I’m not ready,” he says, and though he hasn’t made a request, the words sound like a plea.
Tony shrugs. “No one ever is. I wasn’t, for Iron Man—for any of this. You have to learn to roll with the punches. Right now, especially, because I’m not budging on this. You’re done living like this, kid,” he swears.
And Peter bites his lip, but he doesn’t shrink back, holding himself instead with all the strength Tony has seen in him over the months they’ve known each other. “Will you stay?” he asks. “When I tell her what I did?”
(He’s strong, but he’s also a kid. Tony plans on never forgetting either of those facts again.)
“Anything you want,” he swears.
(Spider-Man would do the same for him, after all.)
And the next day, when he sees the world’s happiest tears fall down a woman’s face, when he sees May Parker wrap her kid in her arms and refuse to let him entertain the thought of leaving again, Tony decides that even if the rest of his life is burning, he can live just knowing he set this right.