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There were two irrefutable truths in James Rhodes’s life.
One: He knew Tony Stark far better than anyone else on the planet. Better than Tony Stark himself (though that, in and of itself, was not a particularly impressive feat). Better than any of his AIs, and certainly better than the Avengers. Better than Pepper Potts, too, he would venture to say (in more recent years, she’d been catching up to him, but Rhodey still thought he held strong at the #1 spot).
After all, who else had stuck with Tony through the awkward time when he got drunk and buzzed off all his hair? In fact, Rhodey was positive nobody else on the planet knew or remembered that, because his best friend had paid off everyone who could have potentially seen it, and didn’t go outside for weeks until it had somewhat grown out. (To this day, the media still suspected that those few weeks were due to Tony contracting a deadly disease and being airlifted to some super-rich-person hospital. Rhodey was the only person on this planet that knew differently.)
And two: James Rhodes did not keep secrets from Tony Stark. (Unless he counted the one singular polaroid picture of the buzzcut era that remained, tucked inside his sock drawer; one of his most prized possessions. Tony hadn’t remembered him taking it, too drunk out of his mind and lamenting his poor hair choices— but he was grinning lopsidedly at the camera in the bright, unabashed way that only Rhodey had been allowed to see). And, for the most part, Tony didn’t keep secrets from Rhodey. Not big ones, at least. Discounting the time he’d almost died from palladium poisoning. But he’d gotten better at it.
Enter: Peter Parker. And suddenly, Rhodey's two irrefutable truths did not look so irrefutable anymore. Because when the fuck did his best friend acquire a child and why the fuck hadn’t Rhodey been alerted? He had reserved the ‘uncle’ status well over four decades ago.
Worse, Tony seemed to be entirely unaware of this fact.
Rhodey had been pouring cereal into a bowl in the common room, half-asleep and bleary-eyed, with Tony tapping away at his tablet next to him. The man looked far too awake to have just woken up, so he was likely still awake from one of his all-nighters instead. Before Rhodey could so much as form a single coherent string of words, a blur of color and windswept hair rushed into the room, and he almost dropped his bowl in surprise. When his eyes registered what they were seeing, he was pretty sure he was in some sort of weird fever dream, or maybe just hallucinating.
Because in front of him was a teenage boy . In the Tower’s common room. At 7:30 in the morning. On a Tuesday.
“Oh, hey kid,” Tony greeted, looking up from his tablet as if having a teenager in the tower was a normal occurrence, even disregarding the other parameters.
“Can’t talk, Mr. Stark— school! Late!” the child yelped, while Tony arched a single eyebrow.
“You know FRIDAY has many purposes, one of which being an alarm clock?” he responded dryly, tossing a granola bar— a fucking granola bar— at the teen, who caught it without even glancing up.
“I got up!” he sounded affronted as he tugged his shoes on haphazardly. “And then I fell back asleep.” He glanced at the clock. “ Ohmygod Happy is going to kill me,” he got out, all in one big breath, before he was running out of the common room and in the direction of the garage.
Tony shook his head, looking mildly exasperated, before he continued on with his work as though Rhodey weren’t having an aneurysm beside him.
“Tony,” Rhodey started slowly, regaining control of his tongue and looking in between his best friend and the doorway that the teenager had just darted out of. “Who was that?”
Tony glanced back up momentarily, eyebrows raised slightly. “Huh?” he asked, before his brain caught up to the question. “Oh, yeah, that’s Peter,” he dismissed.
“And… Why is Peter at Avengers Tower on the personal floors at 7:30 in the morning?” Rhodey continued, in a drawn-out tone.
“He’s Spider-Man,” Tony replied easily. Rhodey dropped his face into one hand and rubbed at his eyes. He didn’t even know how to deal with the fact that that gangly teenager was apparently the wall-crawling vigilante, so he pushed that thought into the back of his mind to address at a later date.
That was not the primary factor he was concerned about here.
“That still doesn’t answer why he was here,” Rhodey pointed out. Or why you’re parenting him .
Tony waved his hand dismissively. “Ah, we were doing emergency repairs on his suit and it went on for a little longer than expected. I told him to just crash upstairs instead of trying to swing back to Queens while half-asleep.”
“Repairs… on his suit.” Rhodey echoed. Tony shot him a bemused look.
“Yes,” he said. “He’s also technically my intern as a cover story, so he needs to be around for some things here and there.” Tony’s eyes drifted back to his work, then— as if that was all the explanation Rhodey needed.
Rhodey, for his part, just stood there— cereal bowl in hand but forgotten, staring straight at his best friend and wondering if he’d been kicked into some weird alternate reality. Tony was oblivious for a few moments before he seemed to catch onto Rhodey’s staring, and he lifted his head again, narrowing his eyes in suspicion.
“Seriously, Rhodes, why are you looking at me like that? You have a concussion or something?” He waggled his eyebrows enticingly. “Or are you hungover? Tsk tsk, honey bear, having a wild night out without me.”
You have a child in the Tower, Tony. A child. Willingly. Rhodey thought, not responding to Tony’s usual teasing.
Spider-Man or not, that could mean only one thing.
“So, when were you going to tell me I was an uncle?” Rhodey prompted.
Tony's face went blank for a moment— not from shock, but from complete and utter confusion.
“What?” he asked, in a bewildered tone of voice that Rhodey would normally revel in (it wasn’t often that the genius Tony Stark was thrown so off guard).
“Peter,” Rhodey prompted, by way of explanation, arching his eyebrows and crossing his arms. As if there were any other teenager they could be talking about. There was another beat of silence, before Tony tipped back his head and laughed, clapping Rhodey on the shoulder.
“Oh, good one, sour patch. You almost had me,” he said, grinning. Rhodey blinked. He hadn’t been joking, and now he was the one thrown. “He's just my intern. Nothing familial here,” Tony continued, like it explained everything.
“You… let your interns sleep here? Feed them? Willingly spend time with them?” Rhodey ticked the evidence off on his fingers— he could keep going.
“He’s my personal intern,” his best friend dismissed with a hand wave. “Plus, Spider-Man.”
Rhodey was positive at this moment that Tony was playing a very elaborate joke on him. (He was not going to fall for it— unlike his college prank days. He would hold steadfast.) He just continued giving his long-time friend a very unimpressed look, raising his eyebrows further in a ‘really?’ motion. Tony shot him a bemused side glance.
“Come on, Rhodes, really? The kid doesn’t even look like me!” he threw his hands up in exasperation. Rhodey almost broke into disbelieving laughter, because normally Tony was a better actor and liar than this— if he was trying to sell the whole ‘not-my-kid’ thing, he could at least pick better arguments. Besides, it wasn’t even the eerie physical resemblance that had him convinced on the matter, but Tony’s behavior.
“You gave him a granola bar, Tony,” Rhodey said flatly. Tony just raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, he’s got super-metabolism. Passes out if he doesn’t eat enough. I don’t need another call like that from his suit’s AI.” His tone was flippant.
“You made him an AI?” Rhodey asked, furrowing his brows. “You didn’t make me an AI.”
Tony rolled his eyes. “Jealous of Spider-Boy now, are we?” he asked in amusement. (No, Rhodey wasn’t jealous. Okay, maybe he was a little bit.) “You’ve got FRIDAY. Figured the kid might want an AI that is a little more…” he waved a hand uselessly in the air. “I don’t know. Nurturing.”
Before Rhodey could come up with an appropriate response to that , FRIDAY piped up. “Boss, Happy reports that Mr. Parker has successfully made it to the car and is en route to school. Traffic is light, so he should be on time," she interjected, tone dry and amused.
Rhodey was absolutely positive that she had timed the announcement of that delivery on purpose. If the AI had a physical form, he was sure they would both be exchanging exasperated glances over Tony’s hunched form.
As it was, Tony did not seem to pick up on what Rhodey or his AI was seeing in that statement, because he merely said “alright, thanks FRI,” before continuing his work.
Just as Rhodey was about to open his mouth to say something else, the AI piped up again.
“Apologies, Boss, but it appears that Miss Potts is requesting your assistance on those papers she has been reminding you about for the past two weeks.”
“Ah, sorry platypus.” Tony winced, standing up and clapping a hand on Rhodey’s shoulder. “Duty calls.”
Rhodey was left alone in the kitchen with a bowl of soggy cereal and far more questions than he’d woken up with.
~ ~ ~
In the weeks that passed, things had only gotten more confusing, not clearer. Rhodey had even consulted the rest of the Avengers, desperate to know that he wasn’t losing his mind.
They’d all been gathered in the common room when Tony and Peter had passed through, chattering about something regarding the Spider-Man suit, before heading in the direction of Tony’s personal lab. Rhodey’s eyes tracked them carefully as they left, and the second they were gone, he turned to the rest of the team and spoke.
“So we’re all in agreement that Peter is Tony’s kid?” he asked, half-expecting them to look at him like he was crazy, as Tony had done. They looked nonplussed and utterly unsurprised at the question, though Clint was the first to speak.
The archer scoffed. “Oh, yeah, there’s no question about it. He feeds him—”
“—actually enjoys spending time with him—” Sam said.
“—talks about him all the time—” Natasha listed wryly.
“—knows what’s going on at his school—” Steve said.
“—and his patrols—” Bucky interjected.
“—not to mention, you should see him whenever the kid gets injured,” Clint piped up. “Disaster strikes. He’s even worse than me.”
“He freaked out and called me in a panic the first time Lila scraped her knee,” Natasha filled in flatly.
“I did not freak out ,” Clint protested. “I was having a very reasonable evolutionary paternal reaction to my child screaming and crying.”
Natasha raised an eyebrow, clearly not buying it. "Reasonable? You were a mess, Barton. Admit it."
Clint opened his mouth to argue but then shut it, conceding with a shrug. "Fine, maybe a little. But the point stands: pot, meet kettle."
—
Despite their collective agreement on the topic— which was a feat in and of itself— Tony remained ever stubborn, even when they pushed later the same day. Rhodey was almost impressed at how long Mr. I-can’t-keep-secrets was keeping a secret. Not well, mind you, but he was sticking to his story for far longer than Rhodey thought he would have.
“He’s not my kid,” Tony protested, loudly. “I’m telling you, he’s literally a random teenager I found on youtube because he was swinging around in his underoos stopping buses.”
Clint rolled his eyes. Sam snorted. Even Steve looked exasperated.
“Sure, Tony,” Natasha interjected smoothly, in a tone that could pass as agreement. The glint in her eye told a different story.
“See?” Tony gestured in her direction, preoccupied with the coffee maker and not catching the look on her face. “Someone has common sense around here for once.”
Rhodey dropped his head into his hands and sighed.
~ ~ ~
Peter was not having a very good day. Regrettably, that was the norm for him most of the time, so he wasn’t too let down by it.
However, the giant alien cat rampaging through the Upper East Side definitely qualified as out of the usual.
Peter hopped up and crouched on the side of a building, not entirely sure at first that his eyes weren’t playing some very elaborate tricks on him. That was, before he saw a floating person, dressed in dark robes, staring down at the cat with what Peter could only describe as a pleased expression. Peter almost mistook him for Dr. Strange at first— the robes were near-identical, except this guy gave off a decidedly creepy aura and also just looked like a supervillain.
“HEY!” Peter shouted, firing a web and swinging in the direction of the cat and its presumed handler.
“Ah, Spider-Man,” the floating villain of the day announced, looking more pleased at his presence than most of Peter’s usual villains were.
“Who the hell are you?” he thought. Regrettably, his brain-to-mouth filter had never been particularly adept, and the words jumbled out regardless.
It was not, he thinks, his finest introduction. Though to be fair, he was never the best with introductions, even on his best days. And given that this morning had already started with him fighting a mechanized rhino on 82nd street, he didn’t think today was in the running for one of his best days anyways. (The Upper East Side was having some serious bad luck with supervillains, apparently.)
He was also already late to dinner— and really, if the rest of the city weren’t at risk, Peter might have just given up and accepted his demise, because May was going to kill him.
“Who am I?” the villain mused, almost as if the question delighted him. He hovered in the air creepily, his dark robes billowing despite the distinct lack of wind. “You may call me Lord Nyx.”
Peter couldn’t help it. He laughed.
“Lord Nyx,” Peter drawled, trying to keep his voice steady even as his shoulders shook slightly. “Like the makeup brand? You have an evil plan to go along with the name?”
Nyx's eyes narrowed, and he cocked his head. “Impertinent as always, Spider-Man,” he sighed in a put-upon tone, as if Peter were causing him some great inconvenience with his mere existence. “Very well. If you wish to know, I am harnessing the powers of an ancient artifact. With it, I shall plunge this city into eternal night.”
Peter blinked, momentarily taken aback. “Eternal night? Really? That’s your big plan?”
Nyx’s expression darkened. (Ha ha. No pun intended.) “You underestimate the power of the shadows. In the darkness, fear thrives. People will be too scared to resist, too fearful to fight back.”
“Ooooo-kay, Dracula wannabe,” Peter said slowly. “What’s with the giant cat?”
“He is no cat,” he got a snarl in return. “He is my child.”
“Huh,” Peter commented, cocking his head. That was a first. “Did you tell him he’s adopted yet?” he questioned lightly. “‘Cause, y’know, biologically speaking—”
The cat swiped at him, and Peter dodged easily.
“Who’s your daddy, Spider-Man?” the villain sneered, as Peter hopped up and perched on the side of the wall.
“Okay, first of all— not really into all that kinky stuff. You so could have phrased that better,” he commented. “Second of all, funny story, you’re actually not the first to question my paternity lately. I mean, they asked in different words, but—” he cut himself short and leapt off the wall in one fluid motion, just as giant claws sliced right where he had been sitting.
“Y’know, it’s rude to cut someone short when they’re telling a story,” he complained. “Anyways, did you know daddy kinks actually psychologically arise from—” he was cut off once more as he narrowly avoided being decapitated. “ Again ? Did your mother never teach you manners?” he paused, eyes widening comically and he pointed a finger at the villain. “Wait, don’t tell me you also have mommy issues? That’s rough, man.”
Nyx evidently had enough of the ‘chatting’ part, and had decided to commence his evil harbinger-of-darkness plan. This part, at least, Peter was familiar with, and he quickly fell into a rhythm. It seemed that Nyx himself wasn’t too keen on actually fighting; rather, he stood back (hovered back?) and watched as his cat-child did the work for him.
“Why—” Peter jumped out of the way. “— do aliens always want to attack New York? I mean I know, it’s a great city, everyone wants to visit the big apple, but really? Do we have, like, a big neon sign saying ‘attack me’ or—?”
His eyes caught on Avengers Tower, and the big, blazing blue ‘A’. “Huh. Guess we do.” Crawling up a wall, he observed the cat from above. “Hey Karen, just out of curiosity— how receptive do you think Mr. Stark would be to remodeling the Tower?”
“Likely unreceptive, Peter.”
“Yeah, thought so,” he muttered. Though, speaking of which—
“Where is Mr. Stark, anyways?”
“I believe Mr. Stark is in a Stark Industries board meeting about stocks,” Karen responded cheerfully. “Would you like me to notify him?”
“Nah. Stocks are way more interesting than alien cats. Wouldn’t want to ruin his fun,” Peter replied. Besides, he totally had this handled.
—
He did not totally have this handled.
The cat’s claws were poisonous .
One of them managed to nick his arm, and he hissed at the unnatural burning feeling.
“Foreign toxins detected,” Karen warned him, as if Peter couldn’t figure that out for himself.
“ Thank you , Karen, I would never have known,” he got out through gritted teeth, splaying his fingers over the stinging wound.
“You’re welcome, Peter. I am always here to assist,” Karen replied cheerfully, in what could only be described as a shit-eating tone. Peter didn’t have the opportunity to come up with an equally snarky comeback before he was up and moving again. He did not want to be nicked by those claws again.
“Why can’t anyone have normal hobbies anymore?” Peter lamented as he swung from the top of a building. “Like knitting! I hear it’s very therapeutic.” He leapt out of the way once more. “Speaking of therapy— have you tried pet therapy? I have a feeling it’d be right up your alley.”
The villain and villain-cat snarled in tandem.
“I’m going to take that as a no.”
Nyx had evidently decided that his cat was taking too long to catch Peter, because he waved an arm and shot some sort of wizard-y spell thing at him. (He’d have to ask Dr. Strange later about it.) Peter’s Spidey-sense blared and he dodged… and swung right into the giant cat’s tail, which whipped forcefully and catapulted him into the air.
“Man, do you even know how expensive dental work is in the city these days?” Peter complained as he felt a tooth crack from the force of his skull making an unfortunate acquaintance with the nearest brick wall.
He got no verbal response, and didn’t have time to recover before the next onslaught. The claws swiped across his midsection, and Peter felt the sharp burning pain as they ripped through his suit and skin far more easily than should be reasonable. He stumbled slightly, moving away from the location as he tried to right himself through the pain. The poison must have been affecting the wound, because his vision was going hazy around the edges, even though he knew he’d lasted far longer before bleeding out in other instances.
Going out as a giant cat toy. Not exactly included in my many imagined death scenarios. He had the thought just as he faded out of consciousness.
—
Peter knew New Yorkers were nosy. Hell, he was a New Yorker, and he could count on one hand the number of times he had minded his own business.
Both of these factors contributed to him laying in a NYC street, losing far too much blood to the pavement below.
“Ouch.” Understatement of the century . “I hope none of you want a photo and autograph,” he slurred to the hovering faces above him. “I'm having a bad hair day.”
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been out for, but considering he could still hear the rampaging of the cat and its owner, it couldn’t have been for more than a few minutes. It didn’t appear as though the cat— or Nyx— had tried to finish him off, so either they thought he was already dead or didn’t care to bother to actually go through with it. He wasn’t sure which was a more comforting thought.
Ignoring the civilians’ murmurs of concern, he stumbled to his feet and sprayed webbing all over his midsection to hold himself together, before swinging back to the location of the battle.
“Here, kitty kitty!” Peter shouted, waving his arms as much as he could manage with his injuries.
“Peter, I am not sure it is a wise idea to antagonize the alien cat in your current state,” Karen warned calmly.
“Relax, K, I have a plan,” Peter replied easily, hopping onto a billboard. “I just need Nyx Jr. to follow me.”
His plan worked. Well, at least part A— get the cat to follow him— did. Not a difficult feat, considering Peter was small, brightly colored, and probably smelled like a delicious spider-sized snack to a giant alien cat. Now he only had to hope part B worked.
Rapidly, he swung his way to a tall building, where he knew there was a rusty water tower. He used to practice with his web-shooters there, so he knew it was relatively abandoned with not a lot of civilians around. He reached the tower and shot his strands of webbing at the base of the metal, waiting for the cat to catch up with its owner in tow.
In three… two… one…
“Bath time!” Peter shouted, before yanking at the web attached to the water tower and sending it tumbling down onto the cat. It sputtered and hissed and yelped at the sudden downpour, and Peter half-grinned under the suit as he used the surprise to rapidly cocoon it in his webbing. Turns out even alien cats hate water just as much as normal ones.
With his pet taken care of, the wizard-alien-guy proved much easier to handle, and he soon found himself incapacitated as well.
Of course, the second Peter successfully webbed them up and saved the day, Dr. Strange decided to show his face.
“Showing up a bit late to the party, yeah?” Peter asked, mildly annoyed at his sudden appearance. “Where have you even been?”
“Closing an inter-dimensional rift created by another sorcerer,” the wizard deadpanned.
“Ugh. We get it, you’re cooler than all of us,” Peter grumbled, because well, how the hell was he supposed to argue with that?
His head was getting more and more woozy, and his words came out like his mouth was filled with cotton. He could feel wetness seeping through his makeshift webbing bandage, and Dr. Strange's eyes flickered to his stomach before he frowned.
“Spidey—” he started, but Peter shook his head forcefully. He totally had this handled, he didn’t need to be coddled by the sorcerer with the cool sentient cloak.
“Well, I'll leave Jon and Garfield to you, then,” Peter said, and by this point he was definitely slurring. “Watch out for Garfie, though. Sharp claws. Toodles!”
Before the sorcerer could get a word in, he swung away with about as much grace as a drunk elephant. Or a superhero who had lost a third of his blood volume.
“Peter, you’re bleeding out at an alarming rate,” Karen warned. “I recommend informing Mr. Stark.”
“I’ve got this handled, Karen,” Peter replied. Or at least he thought he said it— his tongue didn’t seem to be cooperating well to his brain’s demands. “Jus’ make sure FRI opens one of the common room windows for me, yeah?”
He was sure Karen said something in response to that, in what sounded like a heavily disapproving tone, but his ears had elected to join the category of “parts of Peter’s body that no longer wanted to work properly.”
His eyes were very nearly about to join the ever-growing list as well, when he spotted the Tower ahead of him, and thought he saw a window opening on the upper floors of the penthouse. He wasn’t quite sure at this point, though— everything was growing rather hazy and dark around the edges.
He aimed for the maybe-open window and swung in, stumbling as his feet hit the floor; his legs had now also joined the non-functional body parts category.
There was silence, and he realized that the room was not as empty as it should have been, with the entire Avengers team frozen in shock at his sudden entrance.
Peter stood there, dripping blood onto Pepper’s perfectly manicured gray-and-white carpets (it was okay— they’d been kind of ugly anyways. Sorry, Pepper).
Plop. plop.
The Avengers stared at him. He stared back, fingers splayed over the massive wounds on his midsection.
Plop. plop.
“I think I need medical attention,” he slurred, before promptly passing the fuck out.
~ ~ ~
Rhodey had been anticipating a quiet afternoon. He should have known to never expect such a thing. Especially not where Peter Parker and Tony Stark were involved.
After Peter— dressed as Spider-Man— had made a dramatic and rather bloody entrance into the common room, FRIDAY had alerted Tony, who had promptly left his shareholders meeting. Peter was rushed to the MedBay, his AI warning them about something involving alien cats and poisons and a bunch of different terms that Rhodey couldn’t quite keep up with. Cho didn’t seem overly concerned, though, so Rhodey took that to mean that she assumed it wouldn’t be fatal. Not to mention, Rhodey got the impression that Peter landing himself in the MedBay was a rather common occurrence.
Not that Tony seemed any less stressed by that fact.
If this was an attempt to make Rhodey waver in his beliefs, it wasn’t working. Rhodey was pretty sure his best friend had aged thirty years in the last fifteen minutes. He was pacing back and forth, running his hands roughly through his hair, and looking exactly like the picture of a frazzled parent. Rhodey would know: he still remembered in third grade when Samantha Holman broke her arm on the playground and he had seen the entire scene play out, including the part when her father rushed in. Tony was doing a rather good impression of that at the moment.
Rhodey made a quick trip up to his personal quarters in order to grab a box of cookies, because he intended to make a good impression on the kid when he woke up in the MedBay. He was still working the favorite uncle angle, even if Tony was steadfast in his opposition to the fact.
He made it back downstairs just in time for the doors to sweep open, and Cho strolled out. Rhodey arched an eyebrow in surprise; that was quicker than he’d expected. Tony whirled around, evidently thinking the same thing; though as usual, he defaulted to thinking something had gone wrong. Before Tony could so much as open his mouth, Cho interrupted him.
“He’s fine,” she prefaced bluntly. “His metabolism had already washed out whatever toxins were in the claws, and he just needed some stitches and bandages. He’s already awake.” At that, she sounded amused. “You can go in and see him.”
Rhodey glanced over to his best friend, whose eyes were dark and his expression was stormy. Uh oh . Rhodey thought. It was probably best for him to go into the room, too, for damage control. Definitely not because he wanted more ammo to prove his point. Definitely not that.
—
Rhodey certainly got his wish.
“I got the bad guys,” Peter said stubbornly after Tony had gone on his tangent. The teenager’s eyes were alight with the very same fire Rhodey had seen reflected in his best friend’s face at that same age— and every year since. Tony ran his hands across his face, into his hair, tugging at his roots, and groaned in exasperation.
“You lost forty percent of your blood and decided to swing to the tower instead of calling for help,” Tony said, in a near-hysterical tone. Well, hysterical for him.
“How glass half-empty of you, Mr. Stark. That means I still had sixty percent of my blood left in me,” Peter chirped. Tony fell silent and narrowed his eyes dangerously at the teenager. Rhodey glanced in between the two, like he was watching a particularly interesting tennis match.
“It’s supposed to be one-hundred percent, Peter,” Tony ground out, before dropping his head into his hands again. “God, I can’t even believe I’m having this conversation,” he grumbled, near-inaudibly. Rhodey would have felt more sympathetic, except that Peter was clearly going to be fine, so he felt morally okay enjoying his best friend’s struggle.
“Karma, Tony,” he spoke up, and the gazes of the two snapped to him, blinking like they’d forgotten he was even here. “You have to settle for dealing with a mini-you.”
“Really—” Tony cut himself off, expression pinched. “Right now? You’re still going with that?”
Rhodey just arched his eyebrows meaningfully, glancing in between the two of them. He received blank looks from both, and he threw up his hands slightly.
“Come on, Tones,” he said flatly, waving his hands from Tony to Peter and back again. “Are you even hearing yourself?”
Tony’s brow furrowed in a confused manner. “You mean berating Spider-twerp for turning my living room floors into a monochrome Jackson Pollock painting?” At that, Peter did flush slightly– go figure, he looked more apologetic about messing up a carpet than losing half of his blood volume and nearly dying. Tony caught the look, and he raised his finger and waved it slightly. “Nuh-uh, zip it. No apologies for that , of all things. Apologize for being a dumbass first.”
Rhodey felt like he was about to go insane, before something shifted in Tony’s expression– some sort of realization, revelation, what have you. Perhaps he finally registered his own words and tone from an outsider’s point of view.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, no.” he turned to Rhodey, and his eyes were wide. It was in that moment that Rhodey realized Tony had not been playing an elaborate joke on him this entire time— he was just a colossal, massive fucking idiot. “Rhodey, tell me it’s not true,” he near-begged. Rhodey just shook his head.
“Nope,” he replied cheerfully. “I’ve been trying to tell you since the start.”
“Um,” Peter interjected, watching the two of them like they’d suddenly started speaking a foreign language. “Would somebody like to tell me what’s going on?”
Tony turned his attention back to the teenager, and Rhodey could see the wide range of expressions that somehow managed to pass over his face in the span of ten seconds. Relief, exasperation, horror, concern— he could keep going.
“Nope,” Tony deadpanned. “This is your fault.”
Peter sputtered. “I don’t— me ? What did I do?” he complained.
Rhodey clapped Tony on the shoulder and grinned at Peter.
“Welcome to the family, kid,” he said, because Tony looked about three seconds from having an aneurysm. Peter blinked owlishly at him.
“Oh. Is this the parent thing again?” he asked. “Because I swear Mr. Stark isn’t actually my dad. I can show you my birth certificate and everything.”
Tony choked. “Hold up— what the hell do you mean, ‘ actually ?’”
“What the hell do you mean ‘again ?’” Rhodey asked at the same time. As far as he was aware, Peter had been just as mutually oblivious this entire time as Tony had been.
Peter just shrugged. “I mean…” he trailed off, raising his eyebrows slightly, gesturing at Tony’s frazzled figure as if he were wary of actually causing his mentor to have an aneurysm. “Even Aunt May doesn’t go quite this overboard when I get injured. It was kind of a logical conclusion on their part, really. I thought it was funny, so I played clueless,” he said, like he hadn’t just exploded both Rhodey’s and Tony’s minds with that statement.
Go figure— while the Avengers, Rhodey, and Tony had all been squabbling about their respective points, Peter Parker had been one step ahead of the game and was messing with both sides.
Rhodey had been wrong. Peter wasn’t the more respectful version of teenaged Tony— he was twice as much the little shit Tony had been. (Really, he should have seen that one coming from the way Spider-Man acted, but man , Peter Parker knew how to put on a show). The teenager in question was grinning, now, while both adults stared at him.
“I’m firing you, Parker,” Tony got out, recovering his tongue first. Peter just grinned wider.
“No, you’re not,” he said, and Tony sighed.
“No, I’m not,” he agreed.
“So do I get my honorary ‘uncle’ title now?” Rhodey interjected, recovering his own speech ability. Tony groaned loudly at the reminder and dropped his head back in his hands.
“I can’t believe you’ve assumed this whole time —”
“—hey, it was literally the first thing I asked you, man.”
“I thought you were joking !” Tony protested.
“I thought you were joking!” Rhodey retorted, gesturing at Peter, who was watching the whole exchange, looking distinctly amused. “Even Peter agrees with me,” he emphasized.
“In my personal opinion,” Peter interrupted helpfully. “You’re kind of acting more motherly than uncle-ly.”
Rhodey felt his mouth drop slightly ajar, and both he and Tony stared at the teenager.
“I mean,” Peter continued. “You brought me cookies . Which I appreciate, by the way, thank you—” he reached for one and took a large bite. “—but that’s on par with Cap cooking and bringing me a full meal. So maybe he’s the mom,” he sounded thoughtful, mouth still full of partially-chewed cookie. (Rhodey resisted the urge to tell him to chew his food first). “To Mr. Stark’s dad. In this instance.”
Tony scrunched up his nose at the thought. “Parker, I swear to god, if you ever so much as imply Rogers and I together again, I’m taking your suit back. Scrapping it for parts. Sending you back out in your footie pajamas.”
“Oh, I don’t need to imply it, the internet already does plenty of that.” Peter sounded all-too-cheerful, ignoring the blatantly false threat and shoving another cookie in his mouth. Rhodey let out a startled laugh at that, unable to stop himself at the ridiculousness of the situation. Here he was, arguing about honorary family titles with his best friend’s mentee-pseudo-son-figure after he got nearly sliced in half by a giant cat and lost most of his blood volume.
Tony just sputtered wordlessly— in disgust or amusement, Rhodey couldn’t particularly tell. He turned to Rhodey and opened his mouth to speak.
Before either of them could say another word, an object went hurtling in between them, smacking against the doorframe with a solid thud and falling to the ground. Tony and Rhodey jumped and turned to face Peter— who had thrown the object— in tandem.
“What the hell, kid?” Tony asked, looking affronted.
“There was an insect,” Peter said calmly, as if he hadn’t just thrown a shoe halfway across the room and squished a bug with perfect accuracy. Rhodey didn’t even know where he got the shoe. “I got it,” he tacked on, needlessly.
At the commotion, there was movement at the doorway, and Rhodey could tell that it was the Avengers being nosy and not minding their business.
“Gross. What the hell happened to that bug?” Clint asked, poking his head inside the room and wrinkling his nose at the smear of insect on the doorframe when he spotted it.
“The PSI applied to its exoskeleton exceeded the acceptable limit,” Peter said, very seriously. Clint blinked in confusion.
“It got squished,” Rhodey summarized flatly.
“Bingo,” Peter cheered, shooting him finger guns. Natasha poked her head into the doorway next to the archer and squinted at Peter in the hospital bed, eyes flickering to Tony and Rhodey next to him.
“I see you’re not bleeding out anymore, Parker,” she stated, tone calm. Rhodey could see through the comment well enough to know she was relieved. Peter snorted.
“I didn’t even lose half of my blood volume, everyone is being dramatic,” he complained.
Tony made a huffing sound. “You lost almost half your blood volume,” he grumbled.
“Semantics,” Peter waved away cheerily. Tony looked on the verge of an aneurysm. For the fourth time in this encounter.
Rhodey revised his mental list— there were now three irrefutable truths about his life. One and two remained the same, but he added the third: Peter Parker was Tony’s kid, and there was absolutely nothing either of them could say or do that would convince him otherwise.