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Right, okay. His homecoming date’s dad is kind of actively trying to kill him. Cool, cool. (It’s not cool, really, not at all. What are the chances that the one girl Peter ever worked up the nerve to ask out had a dad who liked to do totally illegal things in his spare time, who he’d been pursuing for weeks now? It’s pure Parker luck, he swears.)
Peter’s neck twinges horribly with whiplash from that whole Flash’s-Dad’s-Car-Meet-Asphalt incident. On one hand, he should probably feel bad about that. On the other hand, Flash is kind of an ass and Peter has bigger problems tonight than a totaled car that probably costs more than his and May’s rent. Their yearly rent. It’s a nice car. Broken car, now.
Not the point. Homecoming date—Toomes. Right.
He stumbles away from the crumpled car, blinking hard at the way the street swirls in front of him. He has a terrible feeling things are only going to get worse, at least if his last few interactions with Toomes are any indication. Peter shakes his head once and breaks into a run, steadily ignoring the twinge and the whiplash. He heals fast. It’ll be fine. He webs onto the roof of a warehouse, the one Ned told him Toomes stopped in, and it kind of looks like something straight out of those sci-fi movies May likes to watch on Sunday nights. It’s eerie and empty and smells like burning metal and cobwebs even through the thick material of Spider-Man Mark I, the sweatsuit version of Spider-Man. Peter likes to think it’s like Iron Man Mark I, which Mr. Stark made in that cave in Afghanistan (he doesn’t like to talk about that, Peter knows), but like a little less cool. Mr. Stark’s suit probably didn’t smell so much like sweat. Actually, it was made in a cave so maybe it did.
Damn, this whiplash is crazy . He doesn’t want to say concussion just yet because Toomes hasn’t really touched him and getting hurt because he can’t drive before going against this final boss level guy is lame. Spider-Man isn’t lame.
The goggles on this suit make everything a little darker, so Peter squints as he lowers himself into the creepy-sci-fi warehouse from one of the big skylights, the hairs at the nape of his neck prickling and standing on end. Static ripples down his spine and to the tips of his fingers, and he holds his breath like that’ll help him pinpoint where, exactly, his spider sense is trying to get him to look right now. He glances around but can’t find the telling glow of Toomes’ creepy helmet eyes through the mess of his weirdly high-tech warehouse. And what’s up with those eyes, anyway? They’re, like, a weird green for no reason, and—
Toomes’ wings sit, empty and strangely frozen in front of him. They aren’t a threat unless Toomes is in them, and right now, Peter hears the only other heartbeat in here other than his own down one of the many concrete hallways. Still, the sight of the wings makes him shiver like he’s just been thrown into the Hudson again. He glances at them once more before jogging down the hallway.
The room it opens into is big, barren, and echoing. Toomes stands at the other end, hunched over a table like some sort of movie villain. Peter would make fun of him for being melodramatic, but it is kind of cool. Just a little.
“Hey!” he shouts, and his voice bounces around the walls, getting fainter and fainter. Toomes drops his tools onto the table and turns slowly. “Surprised?”
Toomes wipes his hands together and sounds no different from when they spoke in Liz’s kitchen when he says, “Oh. Hey, Pete. I didn’t hear you come in.” Peter creeps forward, shoulders so tense they ache. Part of him wants to freeze up and freak out at the mention of his own name—Toomes is dangerous enough as it was, but now he knows —but Mr. Stark’s words come back to him.
Previously on Peter Parker screws the pooch. Well, this is one pooch that won’t get screwed, not by Peter Parker. Sweat makes his suit stick to the insides of his elbows as he takes another step towards Toomes. His own breathing is loud in his ears, and he misses the sound of Ned chattering away on the phone and rolling around the computer lab. It’s fine; Peter doesn’t want him to hear this, anyway. It’s bad enough he had to web-shooter the taser fist guy in the parking lot.
“It’s over!” Peter tries, but it ends up coming out of his mouth sounding childish and naive. “I’ve got you.” Yeah, that’s not much better. That Aaron Davis guy might be right about Peter needing to get better at the intimidation aspect of this job, as much as he hates to admit that a criminal is right.
“You know, I gotta tell you, Pete,” Toomes continues, not sounding at all put off, “I really admire your grit. I see why Liz likes you. I do. When you first came to the house, I thought, ‘Really?’ But I get it now.” Toomes drags his coat off the work bench and leans against it. Peter’s neck prickles again, this time with instinct rather than his radiated-spider-induced sense, at his casual tone and body language. He doesn’t want to get any closer, but these homemade web shooters don’t work as well as the ones Mr. Stark made for him. He needs to be sure he gets Toomes here and now, before he can get to the plane of all of Mr. Stark’s stuff.
Mr. Stark told him to keep Happy’s stress levels down. Well, he imagines a stolen plane might be bad for his cardiograms.
Mr. Stark told him to be better. Peter is trying. He takes another tentative step closer.
“How could you do this to her?” He thinks of Liz in her pink dress—did he remember to tell her she looked nice? She did, she looked really nice. He hopes he remembered to tell her. He hopes she’s not too upset about him leaving her at the dance.
“To her?” Toomes asks, sounding almost offended. “I’m not doing anything to her, Pete, I’m doing this for her.” He waves his hands around like that will get his point across. Peter stops in the middle of the big room, the door behind him and Toomes in front of him.
Sounds like bullshit to him if he’s ever heard it, excuse his language.
“Huh, yeah.” As fast as he can with the bruises from that taser fist guy throwing him through a bus (seriously: ouch ), Peter jerks out one arm and shoots a web, sticking Toomes to the work table. He knocks over the drink next to his hand in the process and considers, briefly, apologizing for it. There’s an article somewhere out there that has him ranked for the politest superhero in New York, and he’d like to keep that title, thanks. Politest Avenger. Has a nice ring to it.
Toomes looks at his stuck hand and doesn’t even try to pull away. He sighs like it’s something minor. Peter has known he’s been in over his head since Ned pointed out that the weapons they were using, the ones that destroyed Delmar’s and that bank, could have very well killed him during that robbery, but here and now, with Toomes in front of him and no way to throw in the towel, he thinks he should’ve maybe stayed in his own lane like Mr. Stark told him to.
This is bad. Like catastrophic levels of bad. Broke-Ben’s-coffee-machine-in-fifth-grade level bad. But he has to be better, and he can’t back down or a lot of people will die, and it’ll be his fault.
“Peter, you’re young. You don’t understand how the world works.” The lamp behind Toomes’ head is making it hard to make out the features of his face, casting shadows in the crevices of his eyes and cheeks. Toomes sounds almost fatherly, scolding. Peter huffs.
“Yeah, but I understand that selling weapons to criminals is wrong.” Toomes, where he’s stuck to his table, bristles.
“How do you think your buddy Stark paid for that tower? Or any of his little toys?” Peter turns away. Mr. Stark is nothing like Toomes and his guys. Mr. Stark is good (And I wanted you to be better) and hasn’t sold weapons since before Peter was in like second grade. People need to get over that already, really. “Those people, Pete, those people up there, the rich and the powerful, they do whatever they want. Guys like us, like you and me, they don’t care about us. We build their roads and we fight all their wars and everything, but they don’t care about us. We have to pick up after ‘em. We have to eat their table scraps. That’s how it is. I know you know what I’m talking about, Peter.”
Peter isn’t quite sure who this ‘we’ he’s talking about is. He doesn’t bring that up, not really in the mood for a lengthy sob story. If he makes this fast, maybe he can make it back to the dance, apologize to Liz, make sure he tells her how nice she looks just like May told him to. But not too many times, or it’ll be weird.
Still, he can’t help his curious nature, “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I want you to understand. And,” the shadows stretch over his face and there’s a whirring sound in the other room that Peter knows all too well from his other encounters with Toomes, “I needed a little time to get her airborne.”
Too many things happen at once: Toomes takes a thick-bladed knife from his back pocket, and the wall of the warehouse explodes behind him in a mess of soot and heat and concrete, and the empty pair of metal wings nearly cut his head off his shoulders. Peter flips over them and watches as Toomes cuts at the webs. The wings take another swoop, and Peter’s too busy trying to get away from the razor-sharp edges to try to web Toomes down again.
Static buzzes down his spine so much he feels like he’s been struck by lightning. It’s seriously distracting, and he wishes he could turn it off or something. Toomes watches with a sadistic grin; how this man had any part in raising Liz, Peter can’t figure out. He dodges the wings again and watches as they crash into the wall. He’s sweating horribly and thinking how he should’ve picked something more lightweight than a hoodie onesie for his homemade suit.
“I’m sorry, Peter,” Toomes says. He doesn’t sound sorry; if he really was, he would call off the suit. He ducks as it swoops over him.
“What are you talking about? That thing hasn’t even touched me yet.” The wings circle around the empty warehouse. The air is thick with dust.
“True,” Toomes shrugs, looking smug. “Then again, wasn’t really trying to.”
Peter turns and realizes what’s going to happen a split second before it does. The wings bulldoze the last supports.
For a second before the ceiling comes down, Peter’s spider sense goes blissfully silent.
—
“How the hell do you lose a plane ?” Tony hisses, glancing at the hologram hovering over his watch face which shows his plane’s course. Or lack thereof. There’s a thin red line just around the tower in New York, then nothing. The damn thing could be anywhere by now. Tony rubs a hand over his face and thinks maybe this is all a sign for something.
He’s never been a believer of fate (see: his entire Iron Man career, taking life by the balls and all that), but he’d been a little hesitant to move everything upstate even before the whole missing plane thing.
“Well, Boss, it’s an invisible plane, and—” Happy tries. Tony can practically hear him pacing nervously over the phone.
“Yes, my invisible plane with my stuff on it.” There are only so many suits he’s managed to move into the Compound already, and it’s not like Pepper lets him keep fifty marks in one place at a time anymore (something about his obsessive personality? Whatever), so he lets Mark 47 wrap around him. The call transfers from his watch to his suit as he glances through all his diagnostic checks that FRIDAY runs by his face on the hologram UI.
“Listen, the guy said—”
“Guy? What guy?”
“I don’t know, the plane guy. He said the plane was on course, he left.”
“Right, Hogan. If I don’t manage to get this plane back, you’ll be happy to know, I think, that I just filled the Forehead of Security position again. Some guy named Harold, you might know him.” Snarky, yes, but that invisible plane has some dangerous shit on it—Avengers’ weapons level dangerous.
If he really, seriously loses that stuff…Ross is going to be up his ass . Which is exactly what he doesn’t want.
“Boss, wait—”
“FRIDAY, end call,” Tony bites before Happy can protest. The call drops, and his boot thrusters engage. He’s halfway across the state, the city appearing on the dark horizon, flying aimlessly, before FRIDAY manages to locate his plane. “Thank God ,” he mutters to himself and diverts more of the suit’s energy toward all of his thrusters; the plane is halfway to Pennsylvania already, and he’s really not looking to make his way down the entire East Coast tonight. He hears Georgia is nice this time of year, but Pepper would kill him.
The plane’s cloaking system is still up and running, which is nice to see, except it means Tony has to fumble for the invisible emergency latch while hurtling through the clouds at 600 miles-per-hour.
Not exactly how he imagined his Thursday night going, really, but who is Tony to ever expect a normal day off? He huffs and rolls his eyes as he finally gets the plane door open.
“There is one life form detected on board, Boss,” FRIDAY mentions without him having to ask. Inside the plane, all of his boxes look to be in place still, other than a few that have been unlocked here and there. There’s a stray Iron Man faceplate rolling around as the plane bumps and rumbles over some minor turbulence. Tony scowls at it. “My scans indicate it is a white male in his late forties, currently sitting in the cockpit. If his heartbeat, temperature, and stature are anything to go by, he is not enhanced. I cannot know for sure without a blood sample, but—”
“Got it, Fri. Thanks.”
His metal boots clank against the floor as he weaves around the many boxes—seriously, does he need this much shit? Apparently, seeing as he’s here to get it all back instead of enjoying a night in at the new Compound with Pepper—and the plane is dead quiet save for the sound of air rushing by, the engines humming, and his own breathing. It’s ominous as hell, honestly. Where’s the hot stewardess to offer him a package of peanuts, huh?
“I have also hacked into the plane’s systems,” FRIDAY says, and a blueprint of the plane appears on his display with both his and the hijacker’s forms outlined in orange and red. “Would you like me to plot a course for the plane to return to the New Avengers Facility?”
“Yeah, get this thing on track, would you?”
“Estimated time of arrival: 33 minutes and 47 seconds.” Tony opens his mouth to give his thanks again—how people survived in the days of old without an AI, he’ll never know—as the plane swoops to the side in a sharp U-turn, and a man emerges from behind a stack of boxes that might house the Hulkbuster armour with how big they are. The man’s eyes glow green, and a pair of big, metal wings unfold from behind him like a bird about to take flight.
“Take it you’re not a fan,” Tony says, jerking his head toward the abandoned Iron Man faceplate he’d noticed earlier.
Without answering, the man flies at Tony. Both of them grunt on impact, and Tony stumbles backwards, closer to the emergency hatch he came in from. He’d much rather they take this fight outside. From Tony’s years of living the party lifestyle and an entire 47 years of being an unlikeable asshole, he knows better than to keep a brewing fight indoors, and where better to duke it out than in some random field in Pennsylvania, of all places?
He fumbles for the latch again, and the wind nearly sucks him out into the sky, but his metal-covered fingers dig indentations into the frame of the plane before that can happen. A few stray papers are swept out into the night sky, fluttering in the wind. The green-eyed bird guy roars and takes another lunge for Tony, sending the both of them sprawling into a free fall out the latch. His hands wrap around the biceps of Tony’s suit as the metal wings fail to catch in the wind. Tony squints at the guy through the haze of clouds; he’s never been one for faces, but this guy looks oddly familiar. Tony mulls it over, feeling like there’s something he’s forgetting. He taps his chin, the metal of the suit making an almost cartoonish clanking noise as he does, and the bird guy folds and unfolds the wings fruitlessly. They’re falling fast but not any faster by now than a second ago; they’ll die if Tony doesn’t catch them before hitting the ground, especially since they’ll hit it at terminal velocity, but damn does he just want to figure out what he’s missing here.
He’s a genius. He doesn’t like missing things.
Right, this is the guy he called the FBI on. The Vulture guy with all the weird tech. Remembering that much makes him feel much better, and just in time, too, because he rolls the two of them over in mid-air and finds the ground isn’t too far away. Close call, that was.
Tony’s thrusters stop their descent fast enough that the Vulture groans as he’s jerked around in Tony’s hold. The green lights in his helmet flicker once before glowing again, and the big fans in his wingsuit whir loudly in the dead quiet of this field. There isn’t a house in sight, which is nice. Tony’s thinking he’ll keep this on the down low.
“Fri, make a reminder for me to look over the security systems on—everything,” he mutters as the Vulture gets himself situated, hovering over the ground as the wings calibrate. He’s got a few questions before he beats the snot out of him, that’s all. And Tony’s itching for a good fight that doesn’t involve any sort of mutiny or total betrayal after the whole Germany-Siberia thing.
Sue him.
“Mercy’s a terrible look on you, Stark,” Vulture mutters as the fans in the wings of his suit tilt and lift him off the ground. The grass under him flutters wildly with the artificial wind. The engineer in Tony marvels at the wingsuit.
“Everything’s a good look on me,” Tony scoffs. “It’s all designer.”
“It’s fake .” The Vulture’s wing takes a swipe at Tony, which he dodges. An odd cloud of dust plumes off of the metal feathers, almost like crumbled concrete. Tony waves the cloud away.
“Well, you’re not dead, are you? Seems pretty real to me.”
“You and all your money,” the Vulture mutters, shaking his head. “I don’t want your mercy.” He spits at Tony’s shoes, which Tony glances at for a second before his red and silver fist connects with the Vulture’s face. He grunts and staggers but doesn’t back down. He shoots into the air, the moonlight glinting off of the wings, and Tony starts to follow, but the guy swoops in the air and attacks him with his weird…talons? The sharp edges dig into the suit and probably tear a few small holes in the t-shirt he’s wearing underneath, but he doesn’t even manage to draw any blood before Tony rips him off with a hand wrapped around one of his calves.
“You sure about that?” he asks, smirking inside the suit, before aiming a repulsor and firing. He lets go of his leg in time for the blast to send the guy flying toward a nearby tree. Before he can collide with it, his wings catch him, and this time, Tony has enough time to follow the Vulture into the air.
“Are you HYDRA?” Tony calls as the guy flies in dizzying circles around him. Only the sound of his wings moving and clacking against each other comes as a reply. So much for Tony’s questioning, not that he could see it going much better, but the New Accords require an attempt at negotiation before attack. They’re not yet ratified, but he has to be the first to set an example, considering half of the world’s superheroes won’t.
So, let the record show he tried to talk it out.
The Vulture lashes out with a kick aimed at Tony’s chest, where the arc reactor glows from deep within the suit. He dodges and catches the man around the middle, jerking and grunting as he and his wingsuit flail and struggle to escape the tightening hold of the Iron Man suit. One of the wings gets a good hit across Tony’s face, which sends both of them spinning through the air in opposite directions. The horizon is above him, below him, above him again, before he rights himself.
It’s a good thing he conquered his childhood motion sickness, really, otherwise he’d need to put this whole fight on pause to go blow chunks. Not exactly dignified, but when has he ever cared about his pride before? The internet is full of gifs, clips, and entire compilations of him throwing up in public.
This time, he makes the first move toward the Vulture. He aims another repulsor blast, stronger this time, and shoots off three shots in rapid succession, but the wings deflect most of the damage as the Vulture wraps one around himself in a pseudo-shield. The wing sparks an odd blue color near the big fan keeping the guy in the air, but the Vulture ignores it in favor of nose diving toward Tony like a maniac.
Tony swerves to the side to avoid him, not really feeling like spinning out again, especially after the disorienting free fall from the plane and the swipe to the face. Somehow, acting on pure instinct, Tony manages to get a good hold on one of the wings, stopping the Vulture in his tracks. He tries to turn over to punch or kick at the suit, but the wing creaks dangerously at that. Tony tightens his grip and glances once at the ground, then at the junction where the metal wings meet in the center of the Vulture’s back. He wraps his free hand around the junction and tugs at the wing; with less resistance than he expected, the wing breaks away in a shower of sparks.
The Vulture roars and struggles harder against his hold now that his suit is broken, the other wing jerking robotically and letting off a shower of sparks every few seconds.
“You—you heroes! ” he yells, grunting as Tony pulls off his other wing like a kid and a butterfly. Maybe not butterfly, seeing as this guy’s as ugly as they come. “You’re all the same. Stepping on the little guy, ruining us to make yourselves look better.” Tony lets both wings fall to the ground, where they embed themselves upright in the soft soil.
He turns the Vulture around in his grip so he can get a look at his face. Tony flicks away the helmet with the green glowing eyes and squints at the man before him.
“Running facial recognition, sir,” FRIDAY confirms. She pauses for a second before pulling up a picture and an information card on his display. “Adrian Toomes, New York resident. Married to Doris Toomes, father of Elizabeth Toomes. He is the former owner of Bestman Salvage. Elizabeth attends Midtown School of Science and Technology and is the president of the Decathlon Team. She was involved in the incident at the Washington Monument a few weeks ago.” Tony scans the information as he holds Toomes’ face between his fingers.
“Call SHIELD to pick this guy up, would you, Fri?” He touches down a little ways away from the broken wings, and Toomes kicks out at him, grunting.
“Already done, sir. ETA is two minutes and thirty seconds.”
“Tell ‘em to step on it,” he mutters, his fingers tightening around Toomes’ jaw in a way that will no doubt leave finger-shaped bruises. He lets the suit dissolve from around him, leaving a single boot to hold Toomes down if he’s still feeling a little frisky. Toomes stills, finally, and squints at Tony with dark, dangerous eyes. His chest heaves under Tony’s body weight.
“You’ll put me away,” he hisses, both of his hands gripping Tony’s forearm, “but he won’t forget me. I made sure of that—taught your kid a lesson for you, Stark.”
“What?” Last time Tony checked, he didn’t have a kid. He hears the distant crackle of gravel under wheels, and a SHIELD van rumbles toward them. “What the hell are you talking about, asshole?”
“Don’t think I didn’t notice that Stark Tech suit you made little Pedro,” Toomes continues, and Tony goes cold all over, so cold that he loses his grip on Toomes’ face. He blames it on the coolness of the East Coast this time of year. Toomes jerks away, leaving Tony kneeling on the damp, dewy grass. “You took it away, didn’t you? Grounded him?”
As far as Tony knows, Peter hasn’t been active in the weeks since he took the suit. He would know—he has a news alert set for Spider-Man, and it’s been almost dead quiet since the aftermath of the ferry. There were a few articles pondering the kid’s disappearance, but nothing since. So how could this son of a bitch know about the suit?
“I get it, I do. I’m a father myself. They need a little punishment doled out sometimes—but that doesn’t ever make you regret it any less, does it?” Toomes’ face stretches into a sick grin, his eyes shining. Tony growls and pounces on him again, exhaling with each blow he deals to Toomes’ face. The leaves rustle over them, and Toomes grunts and chokes on his own spit, spluttering. Blood pours from various points on his face: a cut on his forehead, his nose, a split lip. Tony’s knuckles are split and stinging, but he doesn’t care.
The SHIELD van’s door opens, closes. Rapid footsteps get closer as Tony’s heartbeat slows to a normal pace again.
“You don’t know anything, Toomes.” He stands to his full height and lets the suit envelope him again.
“I know that you might want to do a little house check on your spider-nuisance.” Toomes grins again, this time bloody, as the SHIELD agents converge onto him in a flurry of guns and handcuffs. “I really thought he would’ve followed me, maybe brought the plane down himself, but here we are, aren’t we?” He jerks his head around at the field.
“FRIDAY, plot a course to get me to Queens yesterday. ” The problem is, Tony thinks as the suit rattles around him (all energy diverted to thrusters, none left for stabilizers), Toomes is right. Peter is not the sort to give up, throw in the towel, go home. He would’ve brought that plane down in his stupid, flimsy sweatsuit even though it’s quite literally several million dollars above his paygrade.
Still, stupidly hopeful, Tony lands on the roof of the apartment building in Queens, most likely waking the entire building with how hard he touches down. He steps out of the suit and all but crashes through the stairwell door, which is propped open by a concrete brick—safety hazard, maybe, but definitely convenient right about now.
He touches probably three of the stairs in the four floors between the roof and the Parker apartment, and he has to stand in the hallway for almost a minute to catch his breath before knocking on the door. He’s not sure how much May knows, but he’s already in the kid’s bad graces. He doesn’t need to screw it up even more.
Tony closes his eyes and lets his head fall back against the wall with a dull thump. He really screwed up after that whole ferry thing. Damn it.
May answers his knock before he can start to wonder if she’s home or not. She opens it a crack and sticks her head out, but there’s wisps of smoke escaping too. It smells like charcoal in the hallway, suddenly, and her face breaks out into a wide grin.
“Tony!” she greets, and he nods, thin-lipped.
“May, hey. Uh—is Peter in?” He crosses his fingers behind his back like a little kid. May opens the door a little wider and leans against the frame with her arms crossed over her chest.
“No,” she draws out, squinting at him through her thick glasses. “He’s at a dance. Homecoming, actually.”
“Ah, yeah. Teenager things.” He forces a laugh but can hear how brittle and thin it sounds. “Best not to bother him tonight, then, but when he comes home, tell him to, uh, give me a call. Hit me up. Shoot me a message, whatever he does on his phone.” Tony’s rambling because he can only imagine where Peter is now.
He could be at that dance. Kids go to dances all the time and stay until they get kicked out.
Peter’s probably not at the dance. Tony glances down the hallway and taps on his watch behind his back, asking FRIDAY to track Peter’s phone without saying as much.
“He should be home soon,” May tells him, looking at her skinny watch. “His curfew’s in a bit. You can come in and wait for him if you want—I think he’d be thrilled to see you, Tony.” He suppresses a wince at that. He hadn’t thought about the fact that Peter’s hero worship of him would make Tony’s screw up after the ferry sting all that much more. It was an overreaction on his part, maybe, but the kid’s just a—he’s a kid.
“No, no. I just want to…”
“He told me about the internship, Tony.” She sighs. “He’s a good kid.”
“He’s the best.” More than she knows, he thinks. His watch buzzes, and he resists the urge to glance at it in front of her. “Goodnight, May.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to come in to wait, have something to eat? I’m making lasagna.” Another plume of smoke spills into the hallway from her apartment. He wonders how many times the fire department got called before she and Peter spent a day taking all the batteries out of their smoke detectors.
“Yeah, no. I’m sure,” he winces, “but thanks for the offer. Really.” He offers her a smile and a wave before forcing himself to walk calmly to the stairwell again. The moment he’s out of sight, he sprints back up the stairs, surprising himself with how spry he can be when he wants, and examines the results of FRIDAY’s tracking.
“Peter’s phone appears to be located outside of a warehouse in Brooklyn. Notably, this warehouse is fifteen minutes away from Midtown School of Science and Technology, and a recent scan of social media platforms indicates that the homecoming dance ended seven minutes ago. Probability that he is at homecoming is 0.7%.”
“Yeah, Fri. Didn’t expect him to be at the dance.” He steps back into the suit, and it’s barely closed around him before he shoots into the air again, this time pointed towards Brooklyn.
“I did not take Peter’s personality into account during my scans. Probability that Peter attended homecoming is now 05.” Tony closes his eyes, sighing; Peter is just a kid. He should’ve been at that dance, not at some warehouse.
During the short flight across the city, Tony can only imagine what Peter’s gone through tonight. The whole time, he prays that the kid’s dorky contact photo will show up on his suit’s display; he can almost hear his voice, his rambling apologies, his awed retelling of dancing with a girl for the first time in his life. He hasn’t talked to the kid since the ferry, but he surprises himself with how much he misses the voicemails on slow, dark nights.
The warehouse rests on the edge of a lighted street, and he catches sight of a wrecked car—a really nice car, too, but totaled—and hovers over it for a long moment.
“FRIDAY, set a reminder to never let Peter touch any of my nice cars.”
“Sure, Boss.” He turns around again and examines the sprawling warehouse, brows furrowed.
“This is where his phone is?”
“Yes. It is located in a car that is parked inside of the warehouse, towards the northern entrance. But I am detecting structural irregularities and weaknesses.” When she doesn’t continue, Tony grunts, more anxious than irritated.
“What are they, Fri?”
“There are traces of Chitauri tech—”
“Thought Damage Control was on that?”
“They are, but before that program was implemented, various salvage yards around New York were working on cleaning the city following the 2012 attack.” She pulls up a number of articles outlining clean-up in New York. “It is likely that Damage Control failed to recover some of this tech.”
“Yeah, okay. Explains the whole Vulture business. What else?”
“The roof of the main building has caved in. My analysis of previous imaging proves that this is a new development.” She outlines the original building in blue, and Tony squints at the schematics.
“Seems like a pretty big structural weakness to me.”
“I am detecting a life form within the building. The stature matches that of Peter Parker, but the heartbeat and temperature do not match what is normal for him.” Tony doesn’t bother replying to that, instead opting to swoop toward the heat signature as fast as he can get the suit to move, panicked. His breath is louder than FRIDAY’s warnings about the structure as he tears apart the layers of concrete and bricks and metal. He gets closer and closer to the heat signature, which is fading and fading fast—the kid runs cold, and FRIDAY’s external sensors are not always wholly accurate, but these readings…
Peter’s red suit would normally be a stark contrast to the dull concrete, but the back of the hoodie is a dusty gray when Tony finally reaches him. He lets the suit dissolve again and all but falls to his knees next to the kid. The concrete crumbles under his knees, and somewhere, a pipe drips water into a puddle.
“Kid,” Tony gasps, fumbling to remove the mask. Through it, he can’t tell if Peter’s breathing, can’t feel his heartbeat. The thought sends Tony nearly into hysterics, but he forces himself to keep a level head—for the kid’s sake.
The mask comes away, revealing the kid’s face. Part of Tony wishes he hadn’t let himself see this; Peter’s face is bruised, dirty, and wet with tears and blood. When he lifts the kid’s chest off the ground, the hoodie sticks to the concrete, the puddle of blood below him still wet and tacky and growing now that Tony moved him. The kid groans in his hands and pushes at him, whining.
“No, no,” Tony begs, “stop moving.” For the first time in his life, Peter listens, and only part of Tony is thankful. The other part hates how—pale he is. “FRIDAY, scan for injuries.” She pauses for a moment, leaving Tony in silence, besides the dripping of water nearby.
“Peter has sustained a number of contusions and abrasions on top of a major brain injury, a broken hip, large amounts of torn muscle tissue in both shoulders and arms, three broken and two fractured ribs, four deep lacerations across his chest that match in shape and size to the talons on Adrian Toomes’ suit. There is a piece of rebar staunching the bleeding in his left thigh, which I do not recommend removing due to its proximity to the femoral artery. My scanners cannot determine if he has suffered any spinal injuries, but due to the severity of his other injuries, medical attention is required as soon as possible.” FRIDAY pauses somberly as Tony’s fists tighten in the tattered material of Peter’s homemade suit—how could he have taken the suit, of all things, when the kid was so hellbent on stopping the Vulture and saving his neighbourhood? “Those on-call for the New Avengers Facility’s medbay have been alerted. I also sent an alert to Helen Cho.”
Tony brushes a hand over Peter’s cheek, the back of his head where his hair is matted to his scalp with his own blood, breathing through his nose and his mouth and trying not to look at the bar sticking out of his thigh or the blood that’s turning his clothes to the color of rust or any of the bruises he can make out around the torn edges of the fabric.
The kid was supposed to be at the dance, not here.
He picks the kid up as gingerly as he can, but Peter still whines, his face scrunched in obvious pain. One of his eyes cracks open into a dark slit, his brow furrowed as the suit wraps around Tony’s body for the last time that night.
“Nuh—Please, sir,” Peter slurs, head lolling. Tony holds his neck steady and ignores the way his stomach drops to his heels when the suit shoots into the air. Peter grows heavier in his arms, but the painful expression on his face sticks.
—
Tony has never been squeamish before. After so many years of his life spent being associated with war and death, he’s seen enough terrible imagery to last him a lifetime.
But seeing Peter in all of his damaged, bloody, bruised glory as Helen cuts the suit away, he thinks he’s got enough to last him until the world ends. A million lifetimes. More than that. He doesn’t know. He runs a hand through his hair and paces at the end of Peter’s bed, thinking he might throw up.
The kid is all sprawled out, an IV in the crook of his arm—Tony’s pretty sure the kid is afraid of needles, if his adamant refusal to get stitched up after the Germany airport fight is anything to go by. Tony hopes the kid doesn't freak out about it when he wakes up.
The rebar pole is still sticking straight up out of his thigh, braced by one of the nurses so it doesn’t move around too much while everything happens around them. Doctors and nurses flit around Tony’s peripheral vision in a blur of frantic movement. There’s a heart monitor blipping irregularly on a hologram against the wall, but the sound of it is drowned out by the talking and shouting and Helen telling Tony to leave the room.
“I-I,” he tries, but the word catches in his throat. He gapes, opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water. His lungs burn like he can’t get enough air.
“Tony,” she starts sharply, her hands pressed down on both sides of Peter’s head as if she’s holding him down despite his limpness.
“T’ny?” Peter slurs, eyes fluttering open. He jerks under Helen’s hold and sits up, wobbling despite the stability of his bed. His eyes scan the room, pupils two very different sizes. “Mister Stark?” He seems to look right through Tony despite his obvious searching, so Tony steps toward the bed and, after a moment of hesitation—more because of the sheer number of wires sticking out of the kid’s frail skin than any caution about physical affection—grabs Peter’s hand. Peter gives him a lopsided look.
“You gotta lay down still, bud,” Tony says. His voice comes out shaking.
“Huh?”
Tony puts a gentle pressure against the center of Peter’s chest, which makes the kid wince and Tony want to throw up even more as he feels ribs shifting under his hand, and presses him back into the bed. Peter doesn’t fight it.
“Hurts bad, M— mmmm Star’.”
“I know. We’re gonna—Helen’s gonna get you fixed up.” Behind him, Helen is fumbling with Cap’s meds. They hadn’t been sure about Peter’s metabolism, but seeing as they pumped him up with anesthesia the moment Tony set him in the bed just about two minutes ago, that’s one mystery of tonight that seems to be solved.
“Gotta…May?” Peter’s head lolls toward Tony again, and his mouth moves around soundless words. Tony holds his head steady in Helen’s absence.
“I’ll call her after you fall asleep, kiddo. Don’t worry your little spider head about that, Mister Stark’s got it covered.” Peter tries to nod and doesn’t seem to notice that the motion is aborted before it can happen. He’s silent for another moment before his eyes shoot open again, and he gasps, struggling against the many hands holding him down.
Even so many doctors and nurses are no match for Peter’s enhanced flailing. He takes one man down with a well-aimed knee to the chest, and Peter screams so loud it fills the room.
“Toomes—I…buh-ird,” he chokes out as Helen makes it to the IV port with a syringe labeled ‘CAP’ in Bruce’s unruly handwriting. “Pl-pl-plah…”
“The plane?” Tony asks desperately.
“Pl—T’ny?”
“Yeah, bud?”
“May?”
“No, she’s—she’s at home, Peter.” Tony bites his lip hard enough to taste blood. Peter’s limbs still jerk unevenly against the bed. Blood bubbles around the pole in his leg, staining the sheets and the mattress and dripping off the frame and pooling on the floor underneath the bed.
“ Sss …Y’c-call May?” His eyes flutter closed as the anesthesia finally takes effect. One of the doctors all but shoulders Tony away. He stumbles out of the room, breathing hard, and FRIDAY counts with him until he slumps against the wall, drained.
—
Peter’s eyes are open. He doesn’t remember opening them, but there’s a ceiling and a hell of a lot of bright lights that he’s squinting against. His mouth is forming a word he doesn’t remember the rest of, and he lets it trail off in a slur of syllables.
“Pete?”
Peter sits up, and— ow. His whole body twinges, and he cradles his ribs but pays them little more mind. He has places to be, and none of them are here. Wherever here is, with its bright lights. Last he remembers, there was…he was tying a tie? And a bus and heavy dust. He swings his legs over the edge of the bed, choking on a sharp gasp at the pain.
“No, no, hey—”
There are hands on his shoulder and the middle of his chest, and he groans at them. He needs to get up. His entire body buzzes with static electricity, from the nape of his neck to the tips of all of his fingers, and something in him is screaming.
“You have to lay back down, come on—”
Peter shakes his head, which makes the world blur into an incoherent blur around him. He blinks three times and tries to work his mouth into a sentence, a word, a syllable, but his tongue sticks to the insides of his cheeks.
“ Nnnno ,” he manages.
“Yes.” The hands push at him, and Peter sways on the bed but doesn’t lay back down. The figure before him is leaning over the bed and dressed in dark clothes, and Peter wraps his shaking hand around the wrist attached to the hand resting on his shoulder. That’s how things generally go, he thinks. Hand, wrist, arm. Shoulder.
“Need’a—have’ta,” Peter shakes his head and tightens his fingers on the wrist, “Need’a be better.” There’s a sharp hiss of air through someone’s teeth. Peter lists forward, almost toppling off the bed. “Warehouse?”
“You’re not there anymore, Underoos. I got you out.” This voice sounds pained, now. He hopes no one else got caught wherever he got caught because God does this suck. It sucks so bad, hurts like hell. He might be dead—not quite 100% on that part yet, honestly.
“Wings?”
“Toomes—” Peter gasps, cutting off the rest of the sentence beyond that name, and there’s a beeping that’s getting faster and faster and faster, and the man grunts with the force of his fingers on his wrist. “No, no, hey—I put him away. I fixed it—Iron Man fixed it, Pete.” But Peter needs to stop Toomes before it’s too late, so he pushes himself off the edge of the bed.
His legs buckle under his weight, and he cries out. His vision gets brighter, then darker, and the hands catch him under his armpits with a grunt.
“Please,” he sobs, clawing at the figure.
He blinks.
Peter’s eyes are open. He doesn’t remember opening them, but there’s a man and hands wrapped around him so tightly it’s almost suffocating.
—
Dr. Cho says his enhanced healing is the only reason he’s alive, but it’s also the reason for all the complications. Peter is still confused, sometimes, because of the whole traumatic brain injury thing he has going on; he has to ask Mr. Stark to repeat things once, twice, four times before he seems to remember them, and he’s pretty sure Mr. Stark doesn’t mind, but Peter figures he’s already on thin ice with him.
After the ferry and losing his plane and all that, it only makes sense. Peter’s trying not to make too much trouble, but they’re talking about physical therapy. His ears are ringing. He’s going to have to ask Tony to repeat this conversation for him later. Right now, he stares at the side of Dr. Cho’s face as her hands wave around and her mouth moves, her expression serious. Maybe this conversation is important. She’s looking at Mr. Stark and not at him, but he’s glad for it because his eyes sting.
Mr. Stark is looking at him , though. For all the confusion and lost time, Peter can still feel the heaviness of his eyes on the side of his face for hours at a time. Mr. Stark almost never looks away from him, but then again, not even the Baby Monitor Protocol kept Peter from doing something stupid enough to land himself with brain damage, so it’s not all too surprising that Mr. Stark wants to keep an eye on him. For now, Peter doesn’t let himself cry. He’s trying to be better.
“Got it,” Mr. Stark says next to him, his rumbling voice breaking through the ringing in Peter’s head. “No screens, get him some nice, thick shades. I can do that.” Peter chances a look at Mr. Stark and finds him nodding, brows furrowed as if he’s taking a mental note of everything Dr. Cho told him just now while Peter wasn’t listening. “Thanks, Helen. Really.”
She nods and smiles kindly, placing one hand on Peter’s shoulder. It’s very motherly. He wonders, first, if she has any kids of her own, then where May is and how much she’s been told. Maybe she knows he’s Spider-Man now. Or was Spider-Man.
“Keep doing what you’re doing, Peter, and you’ll be up and around again in no time at all, I’m sure.” With one final pat to his shoulder, she turns on her heel and leaves him and Mr. Stark alone in the room together.
“Helen said she’d like to start on a physical therapy schedule soon, bud,” Mr. Stark tells him like he knows, already, without Peter saying anything, that he got lost in the middle of their conversation. “It’ll get you up ‘n moving again, so that’s good. Out of this bed, into a different room—still in the medbay, but once your hip starts healing a little better, I’m sure you and I can take walks around the Compound.”
“Exciting,” Peter rasps, eyes caught on the corner of the doorframe.
“Very exciting.” Mr. Stark forces a laugh that ends in a heaving sigh.
“Y’tell May? Call May?” His mouth is still clumsy and fumbling, but Mr. Stark has been around it long enough to understand the current Peter-Speak.
“Yeah, told Aunt Hottie it was another internship excursion like when I took you to Germany. She didn’t believe me, but I’m taking care of that.” Mr. Stark pauses. “I’m having Pepper and FRIDAY take care of it. FRIDAY learned your, like, texting language and is checking in with your aunt for you, so don’t worry about that, and Pepper is just generally better at lying than I am.” Another forced laugh. Peter drags his gaze away from the doorframe.
“Thanks,” he murmurs.
“Least I could do, really.” Mr. Stark sighs again, and Peter listens to the rustling as he settles into the chair next to his bed. “Listen, kid—”
“Don’ need to take th’ other suit, Mis’er Stark,” Peter insists before he can continue because he’s not sure if he can hear this speech again without losing it, “‘s shredded.” He shakes his head back and forth on his pillow.
“What?”
“The—the suit. My suit. Goggles ‘n hood.”
“No, no— kid .” Mr. Stark rubs his hand over his face tiredly. Peter bites the side of his tongue. “I’m not…listen, I’m not trying to take the suit from you again. That’s the whole reason we’re in this situation—yeah, my fault.”
“My fault.” Peter fumbles and manages, barely, to jab his own index finger into his sternum. The jerking motion makes his ribs ache and pulls at his skin where it’s still stitched together. “ My fault.”
“Ah, ah. No, you don’t get to blame yourself for this. If I had just listened to you or trained you instead of sending—you’re sixteen —I just sent you off to do your own thing, figured the footage and tracker was enough, and that’s on me. I should’ve been a better mentor to you, kid.”
“Y’were good,” Peter insists. Maybe he’s confused again, but he hadn’t expected this conversation to go this way. In his head, it went a little bit more like after the ferry. “Best I ever had.”
“You’ve never had any other superhero mentors,” Tony points out, but there’s laughter in his voice. Peter’s lips pull into a grin.
“‘Xactly. No standards.”
“If you weren’t laid up in a hospital bed, you’d be sorry for that one, you little shit head.” Mr. Stark ruffles his hair gently, and Peter’s smile sticks on his face for the moment of silence before Mr. Stark continues. “But, I really am sorry.”
“Huh?”
“You better have caught that the first time, or you’re outta luck. I don’t just throw out apologies—they’re not special that way, Pete. Keep that in mind.” Mr. Stark taps his temple with one finger, and Peter shrugs innocently.
“‘M confused again, Mister Stark. Repeat?”
“Nuh-uh, no you’re not. I know your confused face by now, and that’s not it. You heard me the first time, and unless you want me to shred Spider-Man Mark III, you better live with that.” Mr. Stark crosses his arms over his chest with a smirk and leans back in his chair again as Peter gasps and leans over the side of the bed, hands gripping the bed rail with all of his (admittedly reduced) strength.
“Mark III?”
“What do you think I’ve been working on this whole time I’ve been at your side, kid? Can’t just do nothing—the engineer in me won’t allow it. Thus, Spider-Man Mark III.”
“ Cool ,” Peter breathes and settles back onto his pillow, eyes drooping. His jaw cracks around a wide yawn.
“Go to sleep, Underoos. I’ll keep working on some of the new suit’s kinks, get some feedback when you come back to the land of the living in, like, fifteen hours, probably.”
Peter cracks an eye to look at Mr. Stark’s face again. “‘M healin’, you can’t be mean t’me.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Mr. Stark waves a hand through the air and pulls up one of his hologram screens, on which Peter can make out the bright blue outline of another Spider-Man suit. “You get better, and we’ll see how your city feels about the return of Spider-Kid.”
“It’s Spider- Man .”
“What’s that, kid? Couldn’t hear you over the sound of you sleeping.” Yeah, would’ve been funnier if his only audience wasn’t actually asleep already, but whatever. Tony glances first at the schematics of the new suit, then switches over to the official SI internship paperwork, half filled-out already, with Peter’s name at the top.