Chapter Text
Tony finds Spider-Man on the roof of his favorite coffee shop.
There are a couple of things annoying about this scenario. For one, he doesn’t want to talk to anyone. His face is currently busted as hell, which means moving it for things like speaking really fucking hurts. Then there’s the fact that he’s been eating on this roof for the better part of a year, so where does this dude get off stealing his digs?
Unfortunately for him, the guy glances up at him as he approaches and doesn’t look like he’s planning on moving, though Tony doesn’t miss the way his hands clench at his sides. “Hey, man,” he says, and that? That right there? Is exactly what Tony didn’t want to have to deal with, but what is he supposed to say? Get your own roof?
Contrary to what some in his life might think, he’s not a child, and he touches down lightly. “Hey,” he replies rather graciously, ignoring the throbbing of his lip at the movement it requires. He glances around, looking for someplace else he could go, but nowhere is what he truly wants, which is to stay right where he is. He’ll just have to deal with it, he guesses. If he’s lucky, maybe Spider-Man will move.
He’s been on Tony’s radar, sure, but he hasn’t looked too much into him. He’s had his hands full as of late, and the less he does to draw Ross’s attention to people who he doubts are worth bringing in, the better.
His coffee steams in his hand, and if he doesn’t hurry up, it’s going to get cold in the New York winter. Spider-Man’s still staring, his expression unreadable behind the thin, cotton-looking mask he wears.
“So, is there, like, a reason you’re here, or—” he trails off, and Tony thinks about how he can kindly say it was mine first, pal.
“I like seeing the city, and the drinks aren’t bad,” he tells him instead of voicing his irritation, and it might be the first thing he’s said since Siberia—just a few days ago, though it feels like a lifetime—that comes out without sounding bitter, no matter how irked he is.
Spider-Man’s just doing his part for the city. It’s not his fault that Tony is a well-shaken bag of glass.
“Drinks?” Spider-Man asks, head tilting in a surprisingly expressive motion.
Tony lifts a brow, not that it’s visible behind the faceplate. “We’re on top of a coffee shop,” he provides.
“Oh.” Spider-Man shifts, and for the first time, Tony notices his back is to a vent. “Cool.”
His coffee is almost definitely lukewarm by now, but Tony’s curious—just a little.
“Why are you up here, then?”
Spider-Man shrugs, leaning back. “It’s warm,” he admits, and Tony allows himself to look, for the first time, at his suit. It’s not much more than sweats, really, and dirty ones at that. The Iron Man suit adjusts to keep him comfortable, but he supposes that yeah—it probably is cold for someone making the most of things. It makes sense that he’d stop to warm up a little, and the rest of his irritation flakes away with little fanfare.
He has more to occupy his mind with than someone taking a breather from helping their city.
“Fair enough,” Tony replies and lets the conversation die out as he lifts his faceplate and his drink.
He pretends not to hear the gasp Spider-Man makes at the patchwork of cuts and bruises coloring his face and takes a sip.
//
A few weeks later, Tony expects some alone time the next time he decides to bother leaving the Tower for his caffeine fix, but like before, there’s a bundle of red and blue fabric curled up against the heater vent.
Huh.
“Spider-Man,” he greets him, faceplate already up. His bruises are mostly faded by now, and though Helen technically told him he shouldn’t be in the suit for at least a month yet, he chooses to interpret that bit of advice as being told not to fight in the suit. Coffee runs are barely something to sniff at, and if he’s emboldened by the fact that, by now, newspapers have stopped mentioning when he takes a suit out for a spin around the city, well, it’s not like he’s going to be the one to tell her. “How’ve you been?”
Spider-Man waves, but Tony thinks the motion’s a little weary.
Not his business, a voice in his head snaps, and Tony actually pays it mind.
Tony learned the consequence of sticking his nose where it isn’t wanted the second he made his way to Siberia, and its impression hasn’t healed nearly as much as his injuries.
As he sits, Spider-Man responds. “Oh, you know, same old. Saving the city one grand theft bicycle at a time. Got a churro for giving this one lady directions the other day.” He pauses, and when he clears his throat, Tony realizes he’s embarrassed by what he just said. “What about you?” he asks, a touch too fast.
It’s not a new thing, exactly, people being nervous around him, but it usually doesn’t startle him these days. Granted, Spider-Man said all of five sentences to him the last time they met, but somehow, he struck Tony as somebody too practical to be caught up worrying about what other people think of him.
Tony shrugs. “Oh, you know—playing nice with Mr. Secretary, trying to smooth over the whole Accords fiasco. Typical day in the life.” The fact that the Avengers are kaput now is common knowledge, as are the Accords, and Tony’s too tired to bother glossing over it.
Except, like last time they met, Spider-Man’s head tips just so, a perfectly expressionless demonstration of his confusion.
Tony blinks. “You’re kidding, right?”
Spider-Man’s someone who the Accords directly impact, for Christ’s sake. He should be keeping up with them, but he merely shrugs. “I’m a busy dude. Not a lot of time for the news,” he replies, and there it is, that grounding nonchalance that’s not confidence, exactly, but a skeleton of it—a tone that lacks shame and is frank, simple. This is just the way it is, he says without verbalizing anything of the sort, and Tony nearly drops his coffee. It’s almost unfathomable, the idea that a mound of legislation that tore his whole life apart is a blip on the horizon to this man on the roof.
“Yeah, alright, we’ve gotta’ fix that,” he says, and that seems to gather Spider-Man’s attention.
“Wait, what?” He pushes himself up on his palms, and Tony doesn’t miss the way he leans onto one side—an injury on the other, most likely. “Mr. Stark—”
“Nuh-uh, none of that,” he mutters. “Look, are you going to be here tomorrow, same time?” He has some meetings, but he can move them around. It’s not like anyone cares, especially not Pepper, who came to visit him in the med wing but Tony hasn’t seen since, though not for lack of trying on her part.
“I mean, I can be—”
“Great,” Tony replies, knowing FRIDAY is listening from the suit and will mark it on his agenda. “See you then,” he adds on, and then he blasts off from the roof, thinking about how he’s going to go about explaining to Spider-Man just how much of a mess he’s gotten himself right in the middle of.
//
“You guys just aren’t together anymore?”
“Basically.”
“And the government lost Captain America?”
“You could say that.”
“And War Machine is paralyzed?”
“Look, do you have anything you have to ask that isn’t repeating what I just said?” he snaps. He almost feels bad, but Rhodey is a touchy subject on the best of days, nevermind when he’s taken the liberty of laying out what haunts him every time he closes his eyes as of late so that Spider-Man doesn’t get himself into any tight situations with Ross’s people.
Spider-Man at least has the decency to look bashful. “Sorry,” he mutters. “And—uh—thanks for this. I had no idea.”
“You don’t get out much?”
There’s not a lot to read on the guy’s face other than the slight widening and narrowing of his eyes, as reflected in the shuttering white of his suit’s goggles, but his body language says plenty. Spider-Man never stops moving, and he twiddles his fingers as he looks away. “Nah. Just—I’m in kind of a tight spot. Not a lot of extra money, so I don’t have a phone. Or another way to get on the internet. Makes it kind of hard to keep up with things.”
Tony, dressed head to toe in designer with the suit suit standing a few feet away because he has a presentation after this, feels like an asshole.
Remember what Natasha told you, something venomous hisses, and he clears his throat. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he says as smoothly as he can manage. “If there’s anything I can do, let me know when you see me.”
That prompts a short laugh from Spider-Man, and Tony notes that it’s more than a little sad. “Don’t worry about me, Mr. Stark. I’m good at taking care of myself,” he promises.
Tony supposes that’s probably true, but that name—
His nose crinkles in distaste. “Call me Tony.”
Spider-Man blinks, and for someone who Tony can’t fully see, it’s strangely unnerving to hold his stare. He looks away for a second, and then he leans back, favoring, as Tony noticed yesterday, one side over the other. “I actually do have another question,” he says, and Tony nods.
He’s tried to be impartial in his explanation, told him the Rogues’—that’s what the media is calling them now, Rogues—side of things.
(No matter how the thought of them stings, the guy deserves to make his own choice, even if it’s all Tony can do to bite back memories of a cold so fierce it aches and the sight of Steve dragging Bucky away.)
“Shoot.”
“What happened to you?”
Tony would’ve thought he’d forgotten about that first day, but the dude really loves poking at sore spots, huh?
To what Tony feels is his credit, he just hums, picking a piece of lint off his jacket. “It wasn’t a clean break. The fight got a little nasty here and there, and my face got a good chunk of that. Don’t worry about it.”
He’s faking calm, but while the business at the airport is something he’s had to debrief more times than he can count, Spider-Man’s toeing a little close to things he doesn’t want disturbed and hasn’t told anybody—not Pepper, not Rhodey.
The moment he thought Steve Rogers was going to kill him isn’t something he’s willing to give up just yet, and it’s time to turn the conversation away from himself.
“What about you? You get into a bad fight?”
Spider-Man seems to be taken back by that. “Oh—what, me?” he asks, and his surprise at being asked after sparks something Tony thought he was past after everything—concern, unfounded and likely unwanted.
Not his fucking business, the same something adds with a little more of a leer, but Tony can’t seem to stop himself.
“Yeah, you. You’re sitting weird. Something happen to your side?”
Spider-Man sits with his legs crossed in front of Tony, rocking a little. It’s part of his constant activity, sure, but it also comes across as a little childish, not that Tony comments on it. It makes his reply all the more worrisome.
“Oh, that? Yeah, I got stabbed a few nights ago.”
“You what?”
“It’s healing up fine though! I put some Neosporin on it and stitched it up and everything, so it’s all good, just a little touchy.”
First the Accords, then financial issues, now a stab wound—it’s the universe putting a horrible conglomeration of problems Tony knows he can fix in front of him and slapping his hands away to remind him that it’s not his place, that he’s not wanted, not by people he’s known for years, and certainly not by someone he’s seen all of three times.
Tony never does know when to stop when he’s ahead.
”Jesus,” he breathes. “Come back to the Tower with me, kid.”
He doesn’t know where the epithet comes from, except he does, because yes, as he’s discovered with a quick YouTube search, Spider-Man can stop a speeding SUV with his bare hands and come off without a scratch, but his voice is too high to belong to a man, no matter what alias he’s decided to give himself. Young adult, sure, he’ll accept that. College-aged sounds reasonable, but he calls him Mr. Stark for Christ’s sake—how old can he be?
“Mr. Stark, I couldn’t—”
“I’m not just going to leave you here with an injury like that. Either you come with me, or I bring what you need to you, and it’s a lot easier to redo stitches without having to worry about your fingers freezing off.”
Spider-Man looks at him like a deer caught in the headlights, but slowly, carefully, he responds. “The mask stays on,” he ventures.
The request isn’t surprising. What with the Accords, even if he did just learn about them, and the enemies he’s sure Spider-Man’s made from his time—however brief—fighting crime, it’s a smart thing to do, making sure nobody knows his face.
(Tony’s wondered more than once if things might’ve turned out better for himself if he never opened his mouth at that press conference.)
“The mask stays on,” Tony agrees.
Then, sounding a little miffed, “How did you know my stitches were bad?”
Yeah, the kid’s coming with him.
//
Spider-Man refuses to go to the med wing—“Mr. Stark, I’m okay, really.”—but Tony’s efforts are still better than the sloppy, almost cartoonish zig zags the thread he used makes across his side.
“Where’d you learn how to do that?” he asks, moving to poke at the fruit of Tony’s labor until he swats his hand away.
“Paws off,” he instructs him, smearing some stuff that’s a little stronger than Neosporin over the area. “And I’ve gotten into a lot of scrapes over the years. There’s not always somebody around to patch you up.” And there sure as hell isn’t anymore, he thinks but doesn’t say. “Were you paying attention to the stitch I did?”
Spider-Man looks off to the side, twiddling his fingers. “I—uh—”
Tony sighs and begins to rethread his needle. “Well, watch this time,” he says and makes Spider-Man try again and again until he’s passable, all of his work done on a napkin, of all things.
Tony has no interest in finding his coffee date keeled over because of an infection.
“If you ever need help, you know how to get up here,” he mutters, pretending not to notice the stiffening of Spider-Man’s limbs and the alarm blaring in his head that says not to let anyone back in, especially not vigilantes he barely knows in the first place.
“Thanks, Mr. Stark,” he says before he swings out of the window, and Tony realizes with a start that he’s not sure the last time someone said they were grateful to him.
He’s already headed across the skyline before Tony can think of his response, which he mumbles in an empty living room that used to house his family. “No problem, kid.”
He’s late for his meeting because he has to change his shirt to one without bloodstains, and he ignores Pepper’s message about it.
(Spider-Man never does show up of his own volition at the tower, but Tony’s not sure what he expected.)
//
It’s becoming a bit of a routine. At least once a week now, maybe twice if he’s not too busy, he grabs his coffee and shows up on the roof, where Spider-Man is inevitably waiting, and they talk.
Sometimes it’s about superhero things—the mugger Spider-Man’s caught three times now that just doesn’t know when to quit, Ross’s usual brand of assholery—and sometimes it’s just petty stuff.
(“Mr. Stark, you’re kidding me, you like the Yankees?”
“Better than the Mets!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah—whatever you say. At least I don’t root for the Skankees.”
“Did you just call them the—”
“The Skankees?”
“You’re lucky New York needs you.”)
It’s nice. Rhodey’s healing, but he has his own schedule that doesn’t involve the craziness of Tony’s life.
(It’s probably better that way, Tony thinks privately, late at night. His life is the one that knocked him out of the sky, but Rhodey hates it when he blames himself.)
Pepper and Happy are busy with SI, and Vision is neck-deep in the Accords just like Tony is. That leaves Spider-Man for someone to talk about nothing with, not that Tony ever plans on telling him as much.
Tony has had enough of letting people know what they mean to him, to be frank, but things are easier with the kid. Easy enough, in fact, that Tony bothers bringing some work with him one day.
He really shouldn’t have left his lab—he has a ridiculous amount of work to get done—but the tower’s empty, alright, and Tony can’t stand the silence. Spider-Man, once Tony gets him talking, never shuts up. If nothing else, he’ll be good background noise.
Tony lands on their roof with little ceremony, as he normally does nowadays, and steps out of the suit almost immediately, whipping out the equation he’s been wrestling all day.
“Hey, Mr. Stark,” Spider-Man greets him, propped up, as normal, against the heat vent.
“Hey,” he replies, grabbing a pen from his breast pocket to start over again, checking his work against what he’s already done as he goes. “Tell me a story or something. Who you walked home recently, maybe. I need something to think to.”
Spider-Man nods. “Sure thing. Uh—okay, so it wasn’t a walk home exactly, but—”
Just as Tony wanted, his words fade out until the simple noise is all that fills his ears. Still, he finds himself crossing things out and having to start over until the noise stops, prompting Tony to look up with a scowl.
He finds Spider-Man staring at the paper.
“Want a second pair of eyes on that?”
Tony raises a brow. He doesn’t doubt that Spider-Man’s smart—he’s taken a sample of his web fluid and still can’t figure out how he made it, though he’s offered to show him the formula—but he hasn’t had someone who can keep up with him in the lab since Bruce disappeared. At this rate though, he’s going to start tearing his hair out before he solves this thing. It’s worth a shot. “Have at it,” he offers, sliding the paper and pen to him.
Spider-Man studies it for a long time, and Tony is considering suggesting he rewrite the original equation in something other than the scrawl his handwriting devolves into when he’s in a rush, if not assuring him that it’s alright if he can’t crack it altogether.
Then, Spider-Man hums and circles a variable in his latest attempt. “You’re forgetting to carry this down,” the pen drifts up to an earlier part, “and you misplaced this exponent. Fix that, and it should be pretty straightforward.”
Tony blinks. He has a lot of questions, but he starts with the basics, which some might call blunt. And uncouth. “How can you read that?”
More than once, he’s sent his work to the lower levels of R&D only to forget to write it nicely for them on the final copy and have to do it over, but Spider-Man just shrugs. “My handwriting sucks too. You know I read somewhere that it’s because your body can’t keep up with your mind, so it gets super sloppy?”
That’s a relatively interesting fact, even if Tony isn’t sure it’s true, but he doesn’t comment on it. “Solve it for me,” he half suggests, half demands. He loves working with someone on his wavelength, and it’s taking quite a bit of discipline to not drag Spider-Man back to his lab just to be around someone who gets what’s going on in there.
Spider-Man’s face is hidden beneath his mask, but from his tone, Tony gathers that he probably has some shit-eating expression on his punk face. “What, can’t do your own work?” he teases.
“Humour me?”
Spider-Man trades a few more barbs but eventually does as he asks, and when Tony looks at his work, which, to be fair, is exactly as gross-looking as Tony’s, he smiles.
“I think I owe you a check for that one, kid.”
Spider-Man ducks his head, the fabric of his sweatsuit rumpling as he rubs a hand on the back of his neck. “Well, I don’t know about that—”
“How about lunch?”
Tony isn’t an idiot. He hasn’t forgotten that Spider-Man’s in a, quote, tight spot, and he’s heard his stomach growl so loudly it has to be painful on more than one of their little hangouts. Normally, Spider-Man refuses his efforts to loan him some cash, if not just cover a meal, but now he has something to pay him back for.
“Honestly, Mr. Stark, I’m alright. That was just me helping out a—uh—friend.”
And while warmth blooms in Tony’s stomach at the term—he has too few friends these days, and somehow, Spider-Man has wormed his way in with the remaining lot—he isn’t budging on this one. He crosses his arms, dons the look that makes Pepper sigh, Rhodey groan. and Steve pissed off—his patented I’m-Tony-Stark-and-also-a-stubborn-ass-who-will-not-back-down-from-this-one look.
In further support of Tony’s stance, Spider-Man’s stomach rumbles with all the subtlety of a herd of elephants. He sighs. “I could go for some lunch,” he admits, hanging his head and probably blushing beneath his mask—he seems like the type, anyway—and Tony’s grin widens into something altogether too pleased.
“Your pick, kid,” he allows, and off they go.
//
“All the way to Queens?”
“It’s good!”
“All the way to Queens for a good sandwich?”
“You said I could pick!”
Tony blows out a breath. He’s not irritated, not really, but he is surprised. He’s not sure what he expected of Spider-Man, but an affinity for, as far as he can tell, relatively good sandwiches, is a quirk he wasn’t expecting. Regardless, he promised the kid lunch, so he takes his order—
“Have them squish it?”
“You’re being very judgy today.”
—and goes in to get it for the two of them. He would prefer to sit inside, honestly, but the two tables are occupied and, more pressingly, he’s not sure Spider-Man wants to have his name blow up in association with Iron Man, not with everything still settling down with the Accords, even if the news story would be pretty boring: two superheroes grabbing lunch at a random bodega. Delmar’s, Tony reads just before he walks inside.
To his credit, the man at the counter—Delmar himself, if Tony had to wager a guess—only looks marginally taken back by having him in his shop and recovers quickly with a smile. “What can I do for you, Mr. Stark?”
Tony tosses a hundred dollar bill on the counter. “Number five with pickles, squished—that last part’s important—and a—uh—” He squints at the menu, decides on the first thing he sees with roast beef. “—number eight if you could. Keep the change.”
If Spider-Man likes the place enough to hang off his boot for the flight over, they probably deserve it, and Tony ignores the way the man visibly stalls for a second after he speaks, his smile freezing on his face while his eyes do a quick sweep of the room before he shakes himself out of it and nods.
“It’ll be right out,” Delmar says, and Tony goes to stand on the back wall, except— “If you don’t mind me asking, you aren’t ordering for a kid, are you?”
Tony blinks. He doesn’t know what about him looks remotely fatherly, but he supposes that whatever reason Delmar has for asking, it’s not a big deal. He shakes his head. “Can’t say I am. Media would’ve picked that one up by now, besides.”
Delmar laughs at the joke, dips his head in concession. “Yeah, I guess they would’ve. You just placed the same order as a regular of mine I haven’t seen in a while—little guy, a smart ass. Sometimes you worry, you know?”
As a matter of fact, as someone who worries about everything, even things he doesn’t want to be worrying about, all the time, he does know.
An employee comes up and hands Delmar a sack he holds out for Tony to take. Tony does as much with a smile, a softer thing than the public normally sees. “I get it. Thanks for keeping an eye out—makes our job easier.”
“Thanks for stopping in,” Delmar says, and then Tony’s out the door with a wave.
He doesn’t know about the sandwich quality yet, but at the very least, Tony can admit that Spider-Man picked a place with good staff.
He walks outside the bodega, squints up at the roof. “This better be the best sandwich I’ve ever had,” he shouts, and Spider-Man peeks his head over the edge and hoists Tony up with a surprisingly smooth maneuver of his webbing. The Iron Man suit is open and waiting a few feet away, parked somewhere slightly less conspicuous than a street corner.
“Delmar’s is amazing,” Spider-Man insists, and when Tony hands him his sandwich, he tears into it like a man receiving his last meal. Tony’s maybe a quarter of the way through his when the kid finishes, and though Tony’s gone out of his way for this, he knows that Spider-Man’s in a tight spot and, more importantly, remembers how fast Steve’s metabolism tore through anything he ate. He doesn’t know how similar Spider-Man is to a super soldier, but he can’t just sit there and eat in good conscience when he’s still hungry.
He swallows his bite, and then he holds the sandwich out. “Finish it off for me.”
It’s not a request.
Spider-Man’s eyes widen in surprise. “Whoa—what? Do you not like it? Because, I hate to tell you, Mr. Stark, but I think your tastebuds might be broken or someth—”
Tony shakes his head. “I’m not actually that hungry. Eat it.”
It takes a second, but eventually, Spider-Man reaches out, his gloved fingers hovering over the bread for a long moment, but slowly, cautiously he takes it, brings it to his lips with a sniff. Then, he devours it just as quickly as he did the first, and Tony is grateful he thought to offer.
“What neighborhood are you from?” he asks after giving Spider-Man a few seconds to eat, unable to help himself.
He freezes, looking up with roast beef trailing from his lips. “I—I don’t live here. I just—uh—know the place from a frien—”
Tony holds his hands up as if in surrender. “Hey, I’m not going to pry. The guy at the register knew your order, is all. Thought you might have some connections here.”
Tony knows he has some connections, from that reaction, but he doesn’t want to spook him. He can fake dumb for a little, even if Rhodey could see him, he’d laugh in his face at the idea of Tony pretending to be less smart than he is for anyone.
Spider-Man’s quiet for a beat, and then he takes another bite of his sandwich and draws his knees a little closer to himself, making him look smaller than usual.
(Not for the first time, something in Tony’s chest twinges with sympathy for a kid cleaning up messes bigger than himself.)
“Forest Hills,” he admits, voice softened to where it’s nearly inaudible in the clamor of the city. “I moved to Manhattan a little while back after a bad run-in. Wanted to put some—uh—distance between me and what happened, you know?”
Tony can’t see his face—and that used to unsettle him, not being able to read Spider-Man like he can most people—but there’s something that settles on his shoulders just then, something heavy, something cruel, something someone Spider-Man’s age shouldn’t have seen.
Tony didn’t get a burden of that caliber until much, much later in his life, and fuck, that’s just not fair that Spider-Man got his ass handed to him already.
Tony’s never been great with mushy-gushy stuff, but besides the fact that they’re not done with lunch, meaning he’s obligated to stick around for a little longer no matter how things go next, he can’t just let the kid sit with that without offering some help.
“Want to talk about it?”
The kid shifts, stares into where he’s bitten his sandwich like it’ll give him some kind of answer. “Nothing to talk about,” he clips, another obvious lie. “Mugging gone wrong. Happens, you know? I was there, but I couldn’t save him.”
A pause.
“Well, I’m sorry,” Tony offers. “Failure is a lot, sometimes.”
All the time, but that’s Tony thinking of the tarmac of an airport, a city levitating into the sky, of Charles Spencer and the computer engineering degree he held before the Avengers killed him. This is just Spider-Man, just lunch between friends—not even heroes, friends—on the roof of a bodega.
Spider-Man’s response is a croak, hoarse but resigned: “Yeah. It is.”
Then, they’re just sitting there, letting the wind and silence whisk over their wounds. Sitting there, anyway, until Tony catches sight of a woman muscling her way through a crowd the way any New Yorker learns to, making her way toward the bodega.
He doesn’t think anything of her, other than noting a shift in the flow of foot traffic. She looks a little thin, sure, her glasses almost too big for her face and her hair long but a touch wild as it flows down her back.
At his side, Spider-Man is stiff as a fucking steel beam, and he’s looking at her like he’ll die if he doesn’t stop.
“Kid?” Tony ventures.
No response.
“Hey, kid, what’s up? You know her or something?”
That, at least, gives him a jolt, and Spider-Man shakes his head too fast. “No—no,” he rushes, and Tony wonders if the words hurt, dropping between them like they’re carved from ice. “I don’t—I just—”
He still won’t stop staring, and Tony also wonders if Spider-Man is ever scared to be holding himself up without any truths to stand on.
He decides to let it be. He’s learned a lesson about pushing, and Spider-Man is a friend, nothing more, nothing less. If it were someone else—someone on his team—the deception, as transparent as it is, would sting, but with the kid, there’s a note of desperation to it that just makes Tony hope he’s okay.
“You don’t have to say,” he offers, and when the woman disappears into Delmar’s, Spider-Man turns his head away, swallows.
“We should head back,” he rasps after a second of clenching his eyes shut, of breathing deep and nearly shaking with it, and Tony doesn’t comment on the plea belying the suggestion.
//
When Tony is going to bed that night, he realizes the woman Spider-Man couldn’t look away from had what looked like a pack of papers clutched to her chest.
As he rolls over and tries to get comfortable in his sheets that are too cold without Pepper, in his penthouse that’s hollow without his team, he tiredly speculates about what she might’ve been doing with them.
//
Ross keeps calling. Against his better judgment, Tony keeps answering, and when things are over, he flies to the coffee shop and bitches about it to Spider-Man, who usually has some kind of crack that makes the hours of negotiations a little bit worth it.
And if Tony notices Spider-Man’s shoulders hunching around certain topics, if his chatter is suspiciously loud, if the offer of more lunches in exchange for work doesn’t bring them anywhere close to Queens again, he doesn’t say anything.
Everyone’s entitled to their secrets.
He has Siberia, what really happened after he visited the Raft, and the kid has a burden Tony suspects Atlas wouldn’t envy.
It’s better not to ask, sometimes, and their relationship continues in the same way it always has, save for some extra meals and the pamphlet Tony slips the kid at one of them, a PTSD-for-dummies type thing. He doubts the guy who doesn’t have internet access has the money for therapy, but some of the pointers in it aren’t a bad start.
Besides, a few days later, they’re on the roof of their coffee shop—
(When did it become their coffee shop?)
—and Spidey offers him a handful of crumpled ones.
“For the trouble,” he says as an explanation and folds his hands behind his back when Tony protests. “I’ve got a lot going on, Mr. Stark,” he hums, and Tony doesn’t miss the sadness he tries to hide seeping into the admission. “It’d be less—uh—bearable without you. Let me cover a latte or something, okay?”
Not for the first time, Tony finds himself unexpectedly, tenderly grateful that the kid crashed his favorite hang out.
“You’re nicer than your city,” he replies but stops trying to return the money. “What do you do for work, anyway?”
Spider-Man does a flip from his place walking the edge of the roof and lands almost exactly where he pushed off. To what he feels is his credit, Tony’s heart doesn’t jump into his throat when he does that, these days. “Odd jobs, mostly.” A hop forward, then back again. “Tutoring, quick tech fixes. Next to anything someone will pay a one-time employee to do.”
Not exactly steady income, but Tony didn’t expect anything less.
“Makes sense, but if you ever get tired of bouncing around, SI would have a job for you. I know the boss—I’m pretty sure I could put in a good word.”
Spider-Man laughs, but he doesn’t accept.
Tony tries not to worry about it.
(But it’s getting hard to remember that interfering hasn’t worked out for him, as of late, when Spider-Man is so different than the team he thought he had.)
//
Tony’s mulled over selling the tower, here and there, considering there’s no reason to keep two bases of operations for the Avengers when they hardly exist anymore, but—
(“How did you know my stitches were bad?”)
Well, it’s not like he doesn’t have the money to maintain it.
Tony excuses the change of heart, and life goes on.