Chapter Text
The funniest part of it all, in retrospect, was that the blast wasn’t actually meant for him this time. He couldn’t even blame it all on Parker luck.
But Peter knew the second it lit up the air, with the snap and crackle of something designed to tear through armor, all of it aimed square at Tony’s chestplate, that it was meant to hurt him regardless. Whether that meant physically or emotionally was just a matter of outcome.
It was in these moments that time slowed down. Not in the “wow, that mile really lasted a year” way, although he’d certainly experienced that plenty as a kid, with his accompanying truly pathetic PE mile time. When he’d been bit by the spider, the phrase took on a more literal meaning, though he knew that time didn’t really slow; he was just fast. Faster than anyone else around him.
But he didn’t truly understand it, not until the night Ben got shot, between the second the bullet discharged and the moment it hit. Just enough time to see it, to fully process what was about to happen and that nothing would ever be the same, but not enough time to stop it. For all his patrols afterward, for all the hours spent as Spider-Man and all the mistakes he made, he never felt anything quite like that again.
As such, he knew the resurgence of this particular feeling had nothing to do with his powers or the fact that they were in the middle of a fight, and everything to do with the person involved. Well, perhaps that wasn’t strictly true; the only real difference between Ben and Tony, the only one that mattered, was that Peter was actually equipped to use his powers properly this time.
He allowed instinct to take over instead of thought, lunging forward to slam both hands against Tony’s shoulder plates hard enough to knock him sideways, rather than sparing a second to think about the potential consequences. He felt the vibration of impact through both the suit and his forearms before the shockwave hit.
The air between the shot and the impact was only a handful of seconds, but he saw it all with perfect clarity. The flare of light that turned the dust gold for a heartbeat, followed by the splatter of red that Peter knew, instinctively, was blood. Iron Man colors. How ironic.
The sound hit him next, with a deep, concussive punch that shoved his entire world sideways. Peter went down with the wall behind him, concrete and rebar folding in on themselves until there was no telling where his body ended and the wreckage began. Dust filled his mouth, thick enough to choke on, and the taste of iron followed fast after.
For a while — seconds, maybe longer — there was nothing but weight, and a tightness he initially attributed to dust in his mask. A pressure that pinned him so thoroughly he couldn’t tell if it was the debris or his own body refusing to move. Somewhere beyond the ringing in his ears, the fight kept going, muffled and far away.
When he managed a shallow breath, it came with a wet, dragging pull low in his chest. The angle of it was wrong. Deeply wrong. He didn’t need to look to know something had gone straight through him. He wasn’t sure he could, anyways, since he was pinned so thoroughly he could barely twist his head to the side to peer out through the narrow gap between the rocks.
Well, shit. Second time he’d gotten a building collapsed on top of him. No less pleasant than the first, although this time he was pinned on his back instead of his stomach. Really going for the full range of experiences here.
On the plus side — if there could be a plus side when squashed under a building — he’d been with his team when the debris fell, so he didn’t have to worry about flipping onto his stomach to somehow lift all of this off of him. He instinctively knew that he’d be a lost cause, if that were the case.
“Spider-Man?” That was Steve, ever-professional over the comms. “Status.”
Peter swallowed, the motion awkward under the mask. “Fine,” he rasped, but the word came out shredded and wet.
“Doesn’t sound fine,” Sam pitched in, voice tinny with distance.
“FRI, location and status,” Tony demanded in the background. His tone was clipped, like he already hated the answer he was about to get. That was pretty common with him, actually. Peter would have laughed if he had the breath for it.
“Fifty-three meters from your current position,” the AI answered. “Buried under significant debris load. Limited telemetry. Suit functions compromised. Respiratory rate elevated, oxygen saturation dropping. There appears to be an intrusion in his lower abdomen.”
Someone cursed; Peter was pretty sure it was Tony or Clint, since they were the usual suspects. Although Steve really did have a deceptively foul mouth sometimes…
“‘Fine,’ my ass.” That was definitely Tony.
“On our way,” Steve’s voice broke in. “Hang on, Queens.”
Peter tried to keep up with the chatter — tried to answer when someone called his name again — but his chest felt tighter with every minute. He tried to shift to relieve it, but the weight over his torso didn’t budge. His mask felt hot and damp, clinging uncomfortably to his skin, and Peter blinked, confused. Maybe a sprinkler line broke? Except… there wasn’t any water dripping nearby. And the wetness seemed to be inside the mask, each breath pulling a faint, coppery tang deeper into his lungs.
He fumbled for the edge of the mask, pulling it off with more effort than it should’ve taken. It hit the rubble beside him with a hollow thunk. What should have felt like a breath of fresh air — albeit tinged with concrete dust — instead felt just as low in oxygen. Peter would seriously almost think he was having an asthma attack, with how breathing got increasingly more difficult, but his mouth kept filling with something irritatingly thick and warm, which definitely wasn’t a byproduct of asthma. He tilted his head to the side to let it drain out of the corner of his mouth instead of wasting the effort to swallow it back down.
“Almost there,” Steve’s voice was closer now, enough that Peter could hear it even without his mask on.
The next few minutes blurred into a strangely comforting conglomeration of familiar sounds: grinding metal somewhere above him, the deep hum of repulsors moving rubble, the scrape of stone against stone. Peter drifted in and out, blinking lazily against the beams of sunlight.
Then, abruptly, there came movement at the narrow gap in the rubble. A familiar gold-red faceplate ducked into view, then peeled back with a hiss. Tony’s eyes locked on him immediately, scanning him in a way that was too fast to be casual, too thorough to be anything but worried. The set of his mouth was all wrong, tight at the corners, like he was holding words in behind his teeth and not trusting himself to let them out yet.
Behind him, Natasha stood in the opening, motionless enough to look carved from the wall itself, were it not for the splash of color her hair provided against the gray backdrop. She didn’t so much as blink, but there was a faint blanch to her skin that stole the usual warmth from it, and her eyes didn’t move from the line of Peter’s body. She wore the same expression she might in a briefing before bad news — composed, but stripped down to essentials, as though anything extra would just get in the way.
Well, shit. Doubly so. Peter’s head was getting fuzzy, but he was pretty sure that expression on both of them spelled out trouble. For him in particular. Which really wasn’t anything new, but this felt different.
Tony said something over his shoulder, his voice pitched low and quick, and Peter caught the barest flicker of Natasha’s gaze shifting toward him in answer. Then the suit began to disengage in overlapping plates, folding away until Tony was crouched in front of him without the armor.
Up close, there was no mistaking it — Tony was trying to keep his face neutral and failing in the smallest ways. Despite the clusterfuck he was currently in, Peter always found that comforting; the knowledge that he could read his mentor better than nearly anyone else. Somewhere behind Tony, something was still cutting — a steady, high-pitched whine of heat against metal — but it might as well have been a mile away.
Tony tilted his head, filling his field of vision so that Peter had no choice but to meet his gaze. “You were supposed to be on citizen-saving duty, kid,” he said, his tone light enough to pass for casual if one didn’t hear the tightness under it. “What’d we say about following orders?”
Normally, Peter would’ve had something locked and loaded — technically, you’re a citizen, so I wasn’t really disobeying orders — maybe even a crack about senior citizen discounts. But the words caught somewhere in his throat, and all he managed was a shallow breath.
Tony’s eyes flickered just for a second, down to his stomach then back up to his face again. “Hey. That’s your cue, kid. You’re missing the part where you tell me I’m old.”
Peter thought he may have made a sound at that, but he let his gaze drift and his eyelids lower. That was all it took for the forced levity to drop from Tony’s tone, and he tapped at Peter’s cheek with two fingers.
“Don’t —” Tony’s breath came out fast and rough. That was odd; usually the suit took the brunt of the effort, and he was staying still now, hovering right over Peter. He shouldn’t be feeling much exertion. Come to think of it, Peter couldn’t really remember what they’d been doing before they got here. “Don’t you dare pass out. You hear me?”
Peter swallowed around the thick, hot warmth pooling in his mouth. “M’fine,” he rasped reflexively, though it was hard to tell if he was actually lying when he couldn’t feel his legs properly.
Tony’s breathing was still hard and fast and heavy, and — was he panicking? Peter wasn’t quite sure. His brain wasn’t moving as fast as it usually did, and his focus kept snagging on small, irrelevant details: the tiny whir of servos behind Tony’s shoulder, the faint crackle of comm chatter he couldn’t quite make out. But the sight of Tony panicking — if that’s what it was — felt wrong.
Maybe it was the enclosed space around them; Peter couldn’t see much, and couldn’t move his head enough to change that. Dust clogged his nose and throat, the taste of powdered concrete bitter against the copper in his mouth. The rocks under his back dug in at awkward angles, some edges warm from where energy had scorched them.
He tried to lift his arm, aiming to press it against Tony’s chest in a kind of wordless reassurance — steady breaths, you’re okay, I’m okay — but it refused to obey him. The movement fizzled out into a twitch that looked and felt more like a minor seizure, his hand flopping limply back to the dirt.
Peter felt, vaguely, that he should be more concerned about all of this. Somewhere deep in the corner of his mind, the small, stubborn instinct for self-preservation hammered alarms, frantic and high-pitched. But he couldn’t act on it — couldn’t feed that panic. Both of them couldn’t panic. That was simply not pragmatic. Besides, he’d had plenty of practice ignoring that instinct.
Peter’s eyelids drooped; it would have been so easy to close them, only for a second. He didn’t need to sleep, per se, just rest for a moment. The sounds around him blurred together anyway: the dull, rhythmic grind of metal cutting through stone somewhere over his head, the muffled grunts of effort from voices he couldn’t quite place despite their familiarity, and Tony’s breathing.
“You with me, Parker?” Tony snapped. When Peter didn’t answer right away, there was a sharp squeeze of pressure at his side. He winced, the pain delayed but bright enough to jolt him, and gave a garbled groan in protest.
“Eyes open. Now.”
“I’m tired,” he murmured before he could stop himself. It came out a little more pathetic than intended, but embarrassment seemed like something that belonged to a different reality entirely. He cracked open his eyes a bit to half-heartedly glare at the man hovering in his vision, wavy and hazy at the edges like a shitty heat mirage.
“Then I’ll buy you a damn bed,” Tony shot back instantly, voice low and fierce, eyes locked on his. “Custom mattress, Star Wars sheets, whatever you want — but you keep your eyes open until we get you out of here.”
Out of where? Peter didn’t know. Were they stuck somewhere? Tony didn’t seem to be, and Peter didn’t think he was trapped, either. He couldn’t feel much at all, so maybe that meant he wasn’t. Someone should check Tony for hallucinations; it was probably a result of all those all nighters he pulled. Wasn’t healthy for a man of his age.
“Peter!” Tony snapped again. Peter’s eyes opened halfway, surprised by the sudden alarm in it. Huh. He hadn’t realized he’d closed them again.
Tony’s breathing had picked up again, uneven in a way Peter had never heard from him — not in the lab, not mid-battle, not even after that one flight test where the repulsor failed midair and Peter had to catch him upside-down. Something about it prickled at the back of his mind, unsettling in a way he couldn’t name.
He wanted to ask what was wrong, but the words got stuck somewhere in his throat. It felt like something was lodged there — not intrusive enough to make him choke, but enough to remind him of its presence.
“Stay with me, kid,” Tony said again, quieter this time. It didn’t sound much like an order anymore, but Peter couldn’t identify the tone. “Just a little while longer.”
Peter frowned — or thought he did — though his face felt slack and uncooperative; it didn’t seem to be listening any better than his arm had. Tony didn’t usually talk like that in the field. Not to him, anyway. Usually there was bite in his voice, some kind of sarcastic edge even when he was giving instructions. He tried to shift, to look around, but the attempt only brought a dull throb somewhere in his side.
Tony’s eyes tracked the movement immediately. “Easy. Don’t move. Eyes on me, Pete. Right here.”
Peter obeyed, though it took more effort than it should have. “Why?”
“Because I said so,” Tony replied automatically, but there was no heat behind it, none of the same bite that it’d had in previous instances. He adjusted his grip on whatever he was pressing into Peter’s side, and Peter felt a fresh flare of pressure that should’ve hurt more than it did. Numbness seeped outward from it, and he wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. Bad, probably bad. That was a pretty consistent theme in his life.
Somewhere above the narrow slit of light, someone shouted something — maybe Steve, maybe Sam — but it was swallowed under the grind of shifting debris. Tony glanced up briefly, answering with a clipped nod, then his attention was back on Peter.
The pressure at his side eased just enough for the warmth there to start leaking outward again, slow but steady, and Peter thought maybe that was bad, too. His body couldn’t seem to decide if it wanted to shiver or go slack.
“Stay with me, kid,” Tony said again, and Peter tried — he really did — but his eyes kept dragging shut like the air itself was pressing them closed. He felt movement then, sudden and close, the shift of Tony crowding even further into his limited view. A hand left his side, and before Peter could miss the pressure, it was there again — not on the wound this time, but cupping the side of his face, thumb brushing the grit from his cheek. Tony’s hand was… on his cheek.
Peter blinked up at him hazily, because that couldn’t be right. This was like how May cradled his face, except Tony’s hands were larger and rougher and wet with something tacky and kind of gross. But the sensation was the same, and Peter let himself loll into it, resting his head in the offered palm. It was nice; this was nice. Why hadn’t they done this before?
“Pete. Look at me.”
It wasn’t the clipped, irritated look at me that usually meant you’re missing the point, kid. It wasn’t even the sharp, commanding one that came out mid-battle when Tony needed his orders followed without question. No — this was ragged and desperate, stripped down to something raw and unmoored.
Peter wanted to obey. He really did, if only because of the sheer desperation of the tone. But his eyelids felt like they’d been weighed down with lead, dragging lower each time he tried to lift them. Everything was heavy — his limbs, his thoughts, the air itself pressing in from all sides. And there was a deep, molten warmth seeping from his middle outward, coaxing him toward stillness. Rest, it goaded. Peter knew he shouldn’t, in that vague sense that he knew he shouldn’t hit snooze and sleep those extra fifteen minutes, or else he’d be late for school. But it was just so warm and comfortable, and he was only so strong.
“Please.”
That was wrong. Peter knew that was wrong. Tony Stark didn’t beg. Not for parts, not for mercy, and definitely not for him.
Peter had the vague sense that his body was somewhere a few steps behind his mind, sluggish and uncooperative, like a phone trying to load something on a bad connection. His thoughts still worked — sort of — but whatever signal they were sending out wasn’t reaching far. He told his eyes to open wider, to fix on Tony, to show he was listening, but the command sank somewhere between his skull and his skin and never quite arrived.
He heard the word again — please — and something in it pounded on the walls of his skull like a feral animal begging to be let loose. Nobody had ever said it to him like that before. Not even May, not when he’d overslept and missed the bus, or when she’d needed him to run an errand before dinner. People asked him for things, sure, but no one had needed him in a way that made the word sound like it had been dragged raw out of them.
And Tony — Tony had never asked him for anything at all. Tony gave. He gave lab access and a suit and time and advice and a steady undercurrent of care that Peter had never been entirely sure how to hold, almost as much as Tony himself didn’t know how to give it. The man built things for him, thought ahead for him, looked out for him in ways Peter hadn’t known how to expect from anyone. It had all been offered freely, without asking for anything in return. Except for maybe that he listen to orders every once in a while.
So if Tony was asking now — if Tony was pleading — Peter should be able to manage this one thing. He should be able to keep his eyes open. He should be able to look.
But the effort felt like trying to swim through a sea of syrup, each movement met with resistance that grew heavier the harder he fought it. Or perhaps quicksand. He’d been warned a lot about quicksand as a kid; this was probably what they meant, with how impossible it felt. He tried, though. God, he tried — forced what strength he had left toward his eyes, toward his hands, toward anything that could tell Tony he was listening. The result was pitiful: a small, uncoordinated twitch of his fingers, a flicker of eyelashes like he was already halfway to sleep.
Tony’s hand was still on his cheek — warm and steady despite the tremor in his touch. The sensation of it anchored him in place, kept him from sliding all the way under. Peter let his head tilt fractionally more into the contact, felt the edge of Tony’s palm against his temple, the faint scrape of calluses where his jaw met his neck. No matter how wrong the situation was — no matter the heat bleeding out of him, no matter how the world seemed to be slipping away — it was still… nice.
Nice, in the way that made Peter think it was maybe worth the effort to try again.
But then again, he had only ever been so strong. Even as a kid, there had always been a point where the pull toward rest outweighed the noise telling him to get up. This felt the same — the heaviness pressing in, the slow creep of warmth that dulled everything else until it was just easier to stay still. He could feel himself teetering at the edge, awareness thinning and unraveling. The weight in his limbs was no longer something to fight against — it was simply gravity, and gravity always won.
Somewhere, in the narrowing space between thought and nothing, he realized he was going to fail this last request. He wasn’t going to open his eyes again, not now. The thought should have stung; one more task he couldn’t see through. But even in failure, Tony’s hand stayed, steady and certain, a point of contact that held him up even when he slipped. Comfort, Peter thought dimly, wasn’t something he had to earn here.
And with that, he let the dark take him.
—
The next time he became aware enough to form cohesive thought, the first thing he noticed was a steady beep-beep-beep, blaring out at him from the darkness. Too loud and then too far away, like someone kept turning the volume knob back and forth just to mess with him and maximally irritate his sensitive hearing. Peter tried to frown at it, but all of a sudden he had no idea how to frown at all, and any memory of the sensation completely evacuated his conscious recollection.
The sound dipped out, surged back in. He had the vague impression that if he concentrated hard enough, he could probably make it stop. He decided not to try. Whatever part of him was in charge of effort had apparently clocked out early.
—
Someone was crying.
This would be distressing, he thought, if he could feel much of anything at all.
As it were, Peter floated there — though, actually, he couldn’t really tell if he was floating. There was a strange sensation of being so heavy that he couldn’t move a muscle, yet so light that he was practically intangible, going up, up, up like a detached helium balloon released into the sky.
He’d never been high before, or even drunk, but he assumed this kind of wavy weightlessness might be indicative of the same kind of sensation. Wait, had he ingested something? He didn’t remember what had gotten him here, but he was pretty sure that couldn’t have been the case, for reasons he couldn’t grasp at the present moment.
His thoughts stretched thin as he drifted — kinda like the slime he and Ned made in freshman year, before Peter forgot about it in his backpack and managed to slime his entire Spider-Man suit. Just like that, it was impossible to get out of.
The person didn’t speak, but they were still crying when he slipped away again.
—
Something warm pressed around his fingers next. Warm, but dry, skin on skin — a hand, he was pretty sure. Someone else’s hand on his, fingers threaded together. His own fingers stayed slack and unresponsive, despite his efforts to twitch them, but he could feel the steady brush back-and-forth of a thumb against his knuckles.
“Oh, honey,” a woman murmured. Peter waited for her to say something else, but she cut herself off with a small sniff. Up until now, he hadn’t been able to stay aware long enough to place names to the voices floating around him. But this one stuck. Peter knew it was May; her voice always felt like being wrapped in a warm blanket.
They co-existed together for a long moment, or two, or three, broken only by the sound of the machines around him and a periodic sniff. If he could’ve spoken, he would’ve said sorry. He was very good at being sorry; it was one of his most well-practiced skills. But the word stayed lodged somewhere behind his teeth, down his throat, and all he could do was float there and let her hold his hand.
—
Someone else cried.
It wasn’t May, this time. Peter thought it might have been a man, but it was hard to tell; crying wasn’t exactly gender differentiated. Nor was speaking, sometimes, but at least it was usually easier. He wasn’t even sure he’d have been able to tell that the person was crying, were it not for his enhanced senses — he could smell the tang of salty tears, and hear a periodic hitch in someone’s chest, in time with the skip of their heart beat. If they were making any sort of actual crying sound, it was so quiet that the monitors around him drowned it out, even with his enhanced hearing.
Either way, he drifted back off before he could figure out who it may be.
—
“No, don’t —” Someone spoke, clearly agitated. Peter felt equal parts like he wanted to reassure the voice and shrink away from it. Like when he used to pretend he couldn’t hear May crying in the nights after Ben’s death, or when he turned his face away from people crying at funerals to give them the illusion of privacy. He didn’t like to intrude on people’s emotions unless he was invited in, and something told him he wasn’t supposed to be aware right now. The voice continued. “— he jumped in front of it, Steve.”
“Tony, we don’t—”
“Yes, we do,” the voice he’d now identified as Tony spoke again. “I rewatched the footage. It wasn’t an explosion that knocked me off course, it was him. He didn’t even hesitate.”
“He made a call,” the other voice — Steve — replied. “Same as the rest of us.”
There was a pause. A longer one than usual.
“He’s sixteen,” Tony snapped back.
That stuck, too, though Peter wasn’t entirely sure why. Sixteen felt like a strange, abstract number right now. Too big to be a kid, too small to be anything else.
—
Voices came and went without warning. They talked around him, above him, as if he were furniture or a particularly fragile piece of equipment. He supposed, in fairness, that he kind of was. He had about as much function as the bed he was laying in right now. Except that the bed could move, and he couldn’t.
Damn. Outperformed by a bed.
“He’s still healing,” someone said. “Still faster than a normal person.”
“But not predictably,” another voice responded, sounding defeated. Peter, absurdly, had the briefest thought of the color green. “We don’t know what this looks like long-term. His healing factor complicates things, and he’s never been in a coma before.”
He didn’t really consciously know what a coma was, exactly, but judging by the voices, it sounded bad. Permanent, maybe. Something people didn’t come back from.
That thought should have scared him, but it mostly just made him tired. Waiting sounded exhausting. Peter hoped they’d let him sleep through most of it.
—
“I brought his backpack. With some of the homework he’s missed.” A pause. “Not that — I mean, of course he shouldn’t be worrying about homework, he’s not even — I just —”
“Ned, it’s okay,” a voice he knew to be May soothed. “He’d appreciate it. Thank you.”
There was a long moment of silence.
“He’s gonna be okay, right?” A second voice asked, in almost a whisper.
Peter slipped away before he could hear the answer.
—
May again, later. Or earlier. It was hard to tell.
“You don’t have to stay,” she said quietly. “You’ve been here for hours.”
“I know,” Tony replied.
Nobody spoke after that, but Peter never heard the telltale sounds of someone getting up to leave, either.
—
Tony didn’t come back for a while after that, and when he did, he didn't talk.
Peter only knew he was there because the room felt charged and restless, the same kind of energy he’d always felt before a thunderstorm, minus the smell of rain. Followed by the sound of metal tools and tapping on a datapad.
Fixing things.
That was familiar. Comforting, in its own way.
If Tony was fixing things, then everything must be fine.
—
Sometimes there were voices. Sometimes there was only the beeping. Sometimes there was warmth at his hand, or a presence at his side, or multiple of them.
The words they spoke in hushed tones felt important. Peter thought he should grab onto them, but they slid past instead.
—
Peter awoke to the sound of his 6 AM alarm.
He groaned in protest, swinging out his arm to try and find his phone to turn the annoyingly incessant beeping off.
Someone gasped — why the hell were there people in his room watching him sleep? That was kinda creepy — and two pairs of footsteps hurried in his direction.
“Peter? Peter, can you hear me?”
Oh. This… wasn’t his bed. That wasn’t his phone. And that was —
“May?” he croaked, struggling to open his eyes. It took a moment, blinking one, two, three, four times, before her face swam into focus. Well, not entirely; it was still hazy around the edges, but distinct enough. Her eyes were tinged red under the rims of her glasses, but she smiled at him when their eyes met.
“Hey,” he tried to speak again, and managed to be just barely louder than before.
“Hey, yourself,” May got out, accompanied by a sound that was maybe an attempt at a laugh. “Hi, honey.”
He managed a weak smile, or something that felt like one. It was more than a little disorienting, trying to control his muscles with all the grace of an amateur puppeteer. Though a more apt comparison would be when he swung around for too long and tried to reacquaint himself with regular walking. This felt like that, the same kind of awkward disorientation.
“How are you feeling?” A new voice asked, albeit a familiar one. He turned his neck slightly to see Dr. Cho at the foot of his bed. He tried to give a little wave, but only really succeeded in wiggling his fingers a bit. Still, she seemed to clock the motion, giving him a small smile and wave in return.
Peter considered her question. His body felt like it had been hit by a truck, backed over, and then hit again just to be sure, like he was a victim in one of those true crime murder cases MJ listened to.
“Like I wish I wasn’t,” he mumbled, shifting a little in his bed and wincing when it worsened the ache in his abdomen.
Dr. Cho nodded and wrote something quickly on her clipboard. “To be expected; we’ll bump up your pain meds.” May leaned in closer, brushing Peter’s hair back the way she had since he was little, as Dr. Cho continued speaking. “Do you remember what happened?”
“Uh…” Peter hedged, trying his best to think back. His brain felt like a lump of overcooked mashed potatoes, and the lights in the Medbay made the backs of his eyes ache painfully. He tried valiantly to line his thoughts up in a row, but they refused to behave, scattering instead like dropped marbles. All he managed to dredge up was the memory of the taste of dust, a sharp pain in his abdomen, and a hand on his cheek, but he couldn’t even decipher whether he hallucinated any of that or not. “Not really, no.”
“You were injured by an energy blast during a fight in the city.” She glanced down at her clipboard, then back up to him. “It knocked you back into a building, which collapsed, causing a large piece of rebar to penetrate your abdomen and causing significant internal bleeding, as well as trauma to your lungs. You were without adequate oxygen for a short period of time, which is why you’ve been unconscious. Your healing factor helped — a lot — but it also made things unpredictable, when mixed with the coma and the unknown damage from the weapon in the first place. We had to monitor you very closely.”
“How long?” Peter asked, hesitant. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t like the answer.
Dr. Cho glanced briefly at May before answering. “Just under two weeks.”
Two weeks.
“Two — two weeks?” he squeaked incredulously.
Two weeks meant a lot of things. It meant missed classes, missed patrols, missed everything. It meant May sleeping in an uncomfortable chair and Ned and MJ sitting at the lunch table without him and crimes in a city going unstopped.
It also meant —
“Mr. Stark,” he managed, half-pushing himself up on the hospital bed, despite the way it exacerbated his already-present vertigo. He wasn’t even sure what he was asking for — the man himself, whether he was okay, or something else entirely.
“Whoa,” May pushed back on his shoulder with the flat of her palm. “Easy there.” She turned to look over her shoulder. “Tony, get over here.”
In his initial confusion and disorientation, Peter hadn’t noticed that there was anyone else in the room. Before he had the opportunity to look, Tony moved into his line of sight immediately — had he just been standing in the corner this entire time? One moment the space beside the bed was empty; the next, he was there, a few paces back but still in Peter’s field of vision.
“Hey, kid,” he greeted, hands jammed firmly in his pockets in a manner that put him in a strangely uncharacteristic defensive posture.
“Hey,” Peter echoed, hoarse. He swallowed, throat dry. “Uh. Sorry about — y’know. The… thing.” He didn’t even remember what the thing was, but judging by the way Tony was acting, he figured he’d done something to upset the man. And generally when they did the whole Peter-ends-up-in-a-hospital-bed routine, there was something he should probably apologize for. At least in Tony’s eyes.
May shot him a look, and Dr. Cho snorted quietly, fiddling with one of the machines on his other side. Tony, meanwhile, went very still.
“Don’t,” he rebutted. Peter probably would have recoiled at the immediacy of the command if he had room to do so, and Tony sighed, scrubbed a hand over his face, then tried again. “Don’t apologize.”
“O…kay,” Peter said. He hesitated, then added, because this was semi-familiar territory at least, “Okay. Then — sorry for apologizing?”
That earned him the barest twitch of Tony’s mouth. Certainly not a smile; he could barely classify it as the ghost of one, there and gone so fast Peter almost wondered if he’d imagined it.
“I’m gonna give you some time,” Dr. Cho broke in briskly, clearly sensing the strange, fragile tension that had settled over the room. “I’ll be back shortly to reassess.” She took two steps towards the door, then paused, turning to shoot Tony a significant look. “Stark,” she said pointedly, “Peter needs rest. Emotional stimulation should be kept minimal for now.”
“Yep. Absolutely. I’m being very unstimulating.” Tony held up two fingers in something like a promise, then a half-hearted salute. “Zen. Practically a monk.”
Peter huffed weakly, and May snorted, clearly skeptical. Dr. Cho raised a disbelieving eyebrow, but didn’t provide an argument, opting to nod once to May, then to Tony, before slipping out. The door slid shut behind her, leaving the three of them — and then two, once May squeezed Peter’s hand and murmured something about getting coffee and fresh air and being right outside.
The room immediately felt too quiet without her. Peter shifted, then winced, biting back a hiss when pain flared hot and sharp in his abdomen. Tony stepped forward instantly, even though he was pretty sure he hadn’t actually let out any sound.
“Don’t move,” he instructed, stopping himself just short of the bed, hands digging further into his pockets. “You — just… stay still.”
“I’m okay,” Peter said, going for reassurance. Tony’s jaw clenched. Okay, maybe not the best thing to say while he was freshly awoken from a coma and still laying prone in a hospital bed. Not very convincing on his part.
“I mean,” he amended, fumbling, “not okay-okay. Just — y’know. Alive. Which is good. Big fan of that.”
Another almost-smile. Another miss.
Silence stretched between them, awkward and unfamiliar. Peter’s fingers twisted in the sheets, wishing he had something to fidget with. He glanced at Tony, then away, then back again.
“Are you…” he started, then stopped. He wanted to ask are you mad, but he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer to that. “I mean, what happened? With the energy blast?”
Peter watched as Tony’s jaw clicked once, then twice. “Don’t worry about it, kid,” he said, in a manner that made Peter immediately worry about it. “We’ll talk later.”
“Nobody else is hurt, right?” he checked. That, at least, made Tony soften a bit, shoulders slumping fractionally.
“No, kid, nobody else is hurt.”
Tony checked his watch — an unconscious habit, Peter thought, since there was no way he had anywhere else he needed to be — then glanced back at the monitors beside the bed. His gaze tracked the IV line running into Peter’s arm, the bandages wrapped around his middle, and the way Peter kept breathing shallowly, so as not to aggravate his ribs.
“I’m gonna… step out,” Tony said, after his unnervingly thorough evaluation. “Let you rest.”
Peter’s heart dropped, fast and hard. “Oh. Already?”
Tony froze, already halfway turned towards the door.
“I mean —” Peter rushed, mortified. Why the fuck had he just said that? “Not that you have to. I just — you don’t have to leave because of me.”
Tony turned back, and his expression softened, but there was still something unusually guarded in it. “I’m not leaving because of you,” he corrected. “But you heard Cho. You need rest.”
Peter nodded. Again. “Right. Right.”
Tony hesitated, then reached out. For a moment, Peter thought he might ruffle his hair — something familiar — but his hand settled on Peter’s shoulder instead, giving it a quick squeeze. Close enough to be there without crossing whatever boundary he’d drawn for himself.
“Get some rest, kid,” he repeated quietly. “We’ll talk later.”
Later, later, later.
“Later,” he agreed weakly. It felt more like a premonition than a promise.
—
Peter often wondered about the atomic bomb.
More than most teenagers should, probably. Though most teenagers weren’t vigilantes either. In any event, his wonderings had nothing to do with his extracurriculars. Well. Not really. It was only tangentially related, in the way he seemed to be able to detonate his entire life in seconds, in an exorbitantly bright and colorful manner.
The thing was, an atomic bomb didn’t start with the explosion, although everyone always focused on that bit. Peter could understand why, with the blinding flash, the shockwave, the towering mushroom cloud, and miles upon miles of damage and resulting radiation fallout. Humans always did have a fascination with things that killed them, and from a humanitarian perspective, the damage was what was important. But coming from a more chemical perspective — or, well, a physics one; he always mixed those up — the explosion was almost incidental.
The real danger was in the preparation, in the way two things that were stable on their own could be forced together under exactly the right — or wrong, depending on which side you were on — conditions. Not inherently volatile, nor doomed from the start, but close enough and aligned just so, until a reaction became inevitable. Critical mass; the self-sustaining tipping point of any reaction.
The blast and the building collapse were obvious; that was the explosion and the mushroom cloud, if he were assigning analogies. Everyone could see it, and everyone knew that was bad.
The reactants, on the other hand… well. Peter still couldn’t remember much, but he’d seen the video. Peter had shoved Tony out of the way. That was the first reactant. The second was everything that followed — the rebar, the injuries, the coma. Put together, under the worst possible conditions, they’d produced something catastrophic. Peter shoving Tony out of the way plus nearly dying equaled their own personal atomic bomb.
He was pretty sure he understood far more why Tony had been avoiding him now; he was mad, and ignoring Peter just like he’d done after the Staten Island Ferry incident. Granted, they were closer this time around, so Tony couldn’t go full-ghost mode like he’d done back then, but Peter was pretty sure this was his version of that. Trying to teach him a lesson, or something. Peter wasn’t even sure what the lesson was meant to be, because he’d never have made the decision not to jump in front of the blast. It wasn’t as though he expected a “thanks for saving my life” or anything, but Tony being mad that he did it was stupid. If anything, it only made him more annoyed. If Tony was waiting for him to apologize by giving him the cold shoulder, then he was out of luck — Peter would be doing no such thing.
And that was the fallout, if he was still going with the atomic bomb analogy. Though, frankly, the regular English usage of the word worked just as well.
At least Tony didn’t take away the suit this time.
By day four, he’d made it out of the Medbay, though not without strict warnings and rehab instructions. Peter hadn’t seen much of Tony since he’d woken up. Or — well, that wasn’t strictly true. He usually showed up in the periphery, to drop by under the pretense of some task that Peter couldn’t tell whether was entirely fabricated or not. In all fairness, everyone knew Tony only went to the things he wanted to go to. So even if the meetings or deadlines weren’t fake, he was certainly using them to keep away from Peter. He had filled those logic gaps on his own; that was, unfortunately, a skill he had in abundance.
By day twelve, Peter had stopped asking FRIDAY if Tony was available. By day fourteen, he’d stopped trying to catch him in common areas altogether, or even trying to get the man to admit he was mad, so that Peter could defend his case. He told himself it was mutual — that he could outwait it, that this was better for both of them until they could have a discussion about it, because Peter really didn’t regret jumping in front of the blast, and he wasn’t going to apologize for it.
He told himself a lot of things.
On day sixteen, Clint Barton kidnapped him.
“Well, ‘kidnapped’ is a strong word,” Clint said, steering Peter toward the elevator with one hand on his shoulders. Peter tried, valiantly, to ignore the way it felt like Tony’s hand around his shoulders. “I prefer ‘liberated.’”
“I’m pretty sure this violates at least three medical advisories,” Peter muttered, clutching his jacket tighter around himself as they descended down to the garage.
“Pfft. As if you care about that. But relax. I cleared it with Cho. Tony would have my head otherwise.”
Peter squinted, pointedly ignoring the tail end of that statement. “You asked Dr. Cho?”
“God, no. I asked FRIDAY. Same thing.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“Technically she’s got access to the same knowledge.”
Peter shot him an unimpressed look, just as the elevator doors slid open. “I dare you to say that to Dr. Cho,” he challenged, despite the fact that he knew the man was being obstinate just for the hell of it.
Clint shuddered, spinning on his heel to walk backwards towards one of the lines of cars, all while still facing Peter. “Yeah, no. Don’t piss off the woman who has access to a scalpel while you’re unconscious. Learned that lesson from Nat.” He shook his head solemnly and patted his side. “My left fourth rib has never been the same.”
Peter decided it was better if he didn’t ask. Clint took his silence as complacency, and prodded his shoulder until he ducked into the passenger side of a shiny purple sports car. He craned his head to skeptically peer into the perfectly maintained back row of seats as the archer practically skipped around the front bumper to jump into the driver’s side.
“Does Mr. Stark know you’re stealing one of his cars?” Peter asked, as Clint started the car with far more enthusiasm than was warranted for the situation.
“Hey,” Clint sounded offended. “How do you know it's not mine?”
“Too clean,” Peter responded simply, unable to keep the corners of his mouth from twitching. Clint grumbled something like ungrateful teenagers, which — unfortunately — served only to dredge up Tony’s voice saying the exact same thing. He shook his head to banish the thought, just as Clint reached one arm over the console to flatten a hand against his chest.
“Instead of slandering me for my cleaning habits, put your seatbelt on. Last thing I need is getting my ass handed to me because you turned into a projectile.” He paused. “Wait, can you just stick to the seat? Or is it just your hands? Gross, can you make your whole body sticky through your clothes?”
Peter wrinkled his nose, though complied with the order so that Clint would start driving. “First of all, I don’t think Mr. Stark would come after you for that. Second, yes, it’s my whole body, but it’s not — like — secretions or whatever. It’s just dipole moments and London dispersion forces of my hair follicles interacting with—”
“Stop,” Clint said immediately. “Nope. I’m invoking my right not to hear that.”
“I wasn’t even done.”
“I don’t care.” He raised one finger in the air, the other hand on the steering wheel as they pulled into the tunnel that would deposit them out on the streets of the city. “Also, I wasn’t talking about him; though you’re wrong, by the way — he would totally come for me if I got you hurt. But I was talking about Nat. I could handle shellhead, but she scares me.”
“Yeah, whatever," Peter muttered, trying not to think about any mentions of his mentor or about what he would apparently do for his sake.
“And for the record,” Clint added haughtily, because he did not get the memo, “Tony does know I use this car. I believe his exact words were that he would never drive a car of such an undignified color. Which he’s wrong about, obviously, but I’m not going to bother to try to change his mind when I get a free car out of it.”
“I mean, Romans used purple as a sign of wealth,” Peter agreed mildly, “but they’re all dead, so.”
Clint barked a laugh. “Morbid. I dig it.”
Peter wrinkled his nose. “Nobody says I dig it anymore.”
He got a huff from the archer for his efforts. “Well, I do. And I will keep saying it no matter what the new trends are. Frankly, in this line of business, it’s a miracle I’ve even survived long enough for new trends to develop.”
“We’re in the same profession,” Peter pointed out wryly.
“Yep,” Clint popped the ‘p.’ “Your recent stunt doesn’t exactly disprove my point there, junior.”
Peter couldn’t help the half-snort, half-laugh he let out. Despite the way Clint was often annoying and called him stupid things like junior and pipsqueak and other childish names, he never actually babied Peter. Not in the way of trying to tiptoe around his injuries or sugarcoat a recent event that got him injured or something.
Neither did Natasha, for that matter, but she was kind of scary with it. Clint was a lot less intimidating when using jokes to speak about it.
For a moment, they lapsed into a semi-comfortable silence, and Peter took the opportunity to look out the window. The city blurred past in streaks of gray and gold, late afternoon light catching on glass and turning everything briefly incandescent before letting it fall back into ordinary again. Peter watched it happen over and over — flare, fade, flare, fade — burning afterimages into his retinas.
He hadn’t realized how long it had been since he’d left the Tower until now; there was something grounding about the sheer noise of the city, the constant churn of people who had no idea he’d nearly died a few weeks ago and didn’t particularly care.
It was nice. In a weird way.
He drifted in and out for a while, only coming back to awareness when he felt the car slow down nearly to a stop in the middle of a side street. They began maneuvering into a spot that was, objectively, not large enough for the car, and Peter braced against the dashboard as the vehicle lurched, stopped, lurched again.
Somewhere behind them, a horn blared.
Then another.
Peter winced as the multitude of cars behind them honked impatiently at Clint’s admittedly shoddy attempt at parallel parking.
“Damn New Yorkers,” Clint grumbled, flipping someone off as they finally sped by. “Can’t wait for anything.”
“It’s usually the taxi drivers,” Peter commented noncommittally, before finally looking up to see their destination. “…is this McDonald’s?”
Clint beamed, as though Peter hadn’t just asked the stupidest question, when faced with the unmistakable golden arches and floor-to-celing windows plastered with pictures of burgers. “Doctor’s orders.”
“I’m almost positive Dr. Cho did not prescribe McNuggets.”
“She didn’t not prescribe them,” Clint countered, turning the engine off and hopping out. “Plus, you’ve been in a coma. That earns you junk food privileges for, like. Minimum a month.”
“Where are you even getting all these rules from?” Peter asked, opening the passenger’s side and hurriedly making his way around the front of the car.
“I made them up,” Clint responded shamelessly. “Duh.”
“Right,” Peter muttered as they entered and approached the counter, trudging a good three steps behind the other man.
“One kiddie meal,” Clint announced. Before Peter could even think to glare at him, the man added: “and fifteen double burgers.”
If the store cashier was at all surprised by two people ordering that many burgers, she didn’t show it. The joys of a minimum wage job.
“One Happy meal and fifteen double quarter pounders. Would you like to turn those into a meal?” she asked, voice nearly monotone; she’d probably asked this question dozens of times today. Peter could sympathize with the feeling. Well, not literally, because he’d never worked at McDonalds. But he had his fair share of experiences on patrol.
“Eh, sure,” Clint agreed. “But only for two of them.”
“Two including the Happy meal or not?” the worker droned, tapping on her screen.
“Not including," Clint decided. He nudged Peter’s side with his elbow, somehow still mindful of his injuries. “You want anything else?”
“Uh…” Peter said unintelligibly, staring up at the massive menu with far too many choices. “Uh, no, I’m good.”
“Your total will be $140.74. Cash or card?”
“Card,” Clint wiggled the silver rectangle in the air. The worker barely glanced up, clearly not impressed, gesturing loosely to the scanner.
“Tap or swipe.” She pulled the receipt out of the machine a moment after Clint obliged. “Your order number is 312. Have a good day.”
“You too,” Peter gave her an awkward little wave before turning to scurry after the archer. He propped himself up on a nearby wall, listening idly to the sounds of the kitchen as they waited for their order. He couldn’t tell whether the workers prepared it abnormally fast, or whether he had zoned out for longer than he thought, but he only regained his conscious stream of thought when he saw Clint sidle up to the counter to pick up a rather hefty bag.
“I don’t even know that I need fifteen burgers,” Peter commented, once they’d slid into a booth with their haul. Clint shrugged.
“I’ve learned with you all to just order more and save the leftovers. Besides, Tony’s paying, so I have no qualms about loading as much as we can carry.”
Peter wanted to sigh at the revelation — he couldn’t seem to get away from mentions of his mentor, or things he was doing. It made him… well, he had no idea how to feel, was the problem. Because he was doing all these nice things for Peter, but only from a distance. But how could he justify being upset that he couldn’t see the man? Even if he was being ignored primarily out of anger, it was Tony Stark; what right did Peter have to monopolize his time?
Clint seemed to notice his souring mood, because he nudged two wrapped burgers in his direction.
“Eat,” he ordered. “You look like a haunted Victorian orphan.”
“I do not.”
“You absolutely do. You’re one well-timed cough away from being sent to a sanatorium.”
“Trust me,” Peter grumbled. “There was a time where I did actually resemble a sickly Victorian orphan. This is not that.”
“Coulda fooled me,” Clint commented, taking a large bite of one of the burgers.
Peter made a disgruntled face and slid down in his seat, arms crossed against his chest. The motion made his side ache in protest, but he valiantly resisted the urge to wince, opting to morph into a scowl instead.
“Why are we even here?” he grumbled, even as he reluctantly picked up one of the burgers and took a bite. Probably should have asked that before he got here, but whatever. He had a hunch, though. “And don’t tell me it was just to get food.”
“Because you,” Clint waved a fry at him. “Are moping. And I was apparently deemed most on par with a teenager, so you’re stuck with me.” He pointed a finger to Peter’s own tray, where he’d dumped his fries and scooted them to the side. “You gonna eat those?”
Peter gave a half-hearted shrug in response, which was apparently enough of an answer for Clint to lean over and swipe the majority of the fries from Peter’s tray onto his own. “I’m not moping,” he refuted.
Clint raised an eyebrow pointedly at Peter’s crossed arms, and he uncrossed them with a huff. “Fine. Whatever. You’d be grumpy too if you were benched.”
“Oh, yes,” Clint agreed easily, mouth still half-full of fries. “But you’re not usually like… this.”
Peter turned his head towards the window under the pretense of watching the pedestrians on the sidewalk outside, and resisted the urge to sigh. So Clint had noticed. Well, probably all of the Avengers had noticed. Peter and Tony had barely been in the same room for the past week or two.
“So this is what, an intervention? Why am I getting it? You should talk to him.” He didn’t bother to specify who the him was. Clint snorted.
“Oh, don’t worry, Natasha is tag teaming him right now. Be lucky you got me.”
Peter grimaced, and for a moment, he really did feel a pang of sympathy for his mentor. He certainly did not want to be cornered by Natasha while he was in this mood. The sympathy dissolved pretty quickly when he remembered that they were only in this position because Tony was ignoring him in the first place.
“Soooo,” Clint drawled when Peter’s scowl only deepened. “You wanna tell me what’s going on with you and Tin Man, or do you want me to keep guessing until I accidentally hit something sensitive?” He munched on another handful of fries. “I’ve been told I’m good at getting on peoples’ nerves.”
“Yeah, welcome to the club,” Peter grumbled. “That’s kinda Spider-Man’s whole schtick.”
“Eh, yeah,” Clint allowed. “But it doesn’t make you immune. If you don’t tell me, I’m just gonna guess wildly until something sticks to that freaky London-whatever skin of yours.”
Peter scoffed at the terrible joke. “London dispersion forces and dipole moments. And you’re gonna guess wildly anyway.”
“True,” Clint conceded again. “But I like to give people the illusion of choice.”
Peter finally let out a sigh of defeat. “He’s trying to make me regret it. I don’t, and I’m not going to pretend like I do.”
“Hm,” Clint hummed noncommittally. “Not so sure you’ve interpreted that right.”
Peter wasn’t able to withhold his second scoff. “You’re acting like you know what he’s thinking.”
Clint snorted. “Kid, I barely know what I’m thinking half the time.” He leaned back, balancing his chair on two legs for a moment before letting it drop again. “But I’m a dad too, y’know.”
“I don’t — I’m not —” Peter sputtered, blindsided by the comparison. “Mr. Stark isn’t — we’re not —”
“Relax,” Clint gestured loosely in his direction. “Don’t rupture a blood vessel thinking too hard. I got you out of the Tower to stop your brooding, but it wouldn’t go well for me if I gave you some kind of stress-induced side effect.”
“I haven’t been brooding,” Peter protested, offended.
“Kid, if this were a movie, it’d be raining right now.” Clint grinned as Peter gawked at him. “Now hush, I would be your wise beacon of advice in this hypothetical movie. Anyways. As I was saying: I’m a dad too. A couple years ago,” Clint went on, “Cooper decided he wanted to help me fix a busted hinge in the barn. Real determined about it, too. Wouldn’t take no for an answer.” A faint, crooked smile tugged at his mouth. “I figured there wouldn’t be much harm — it was a basic construction fix, with adult supervision. Let him dip his toes into the water before we took off his training wheels.”
“I think you’re mixing analogies there,” Peter mumbled.
“Occupational hazard,” Clint dismissed easily. He glanced down at his hands for a second, the pads of his thumbs rubbing together. “Point is, he’s holding the flashlight, I’m lining things up, everything’s fine until it’s not.”
Peter didn’t move, feeling simultaneously like he wanted to flee the conversation and stay to listen to how the story ended.
“Barn tools are sharp,” Clint went on, tone rather casual for the topic at hand. “And kids are fast. At some point, I turn my back for — I don’t know — thirty seconds? Maybe less. One wrong move, one slip —” He made a small chopping motion with his hand, stopped it short. “Next thing I know, there’s blood everywhere and two of his fingers are barely still attached to his hand.”
Peter gawped at him, jaw half-ajar.
“I’ve seen far bloodier battlefields, but that one freaked me out the most,” Clint continued calmly. “We had to take a trip to the ER — which was not anywhere near our farm, by the way. Surgery, stitches, reattachment, rehab, the whole nine yards. He was fine, in the end. Kids bounce.” He shrugged one shoulder. “But for about eight hours there, I was real convinced I’d let my kid get maimed because I thought he’d be perfectly safe with me there to watch him.”
Peter swallowed. “That’s… not the same,” he offered weakly.
“No,” Clint agreed easily. “It’s not. You jumped in front of a detonating blast. Cooper grabbed a tool. Different situations.” He popped another fry into his mouth. “Same feeling, though.”
Peter didn’t respond, staring down at the table.
“You know what I did after?” Clint added, waiting for Peter to glance up, wary, before cocking a wry smile. “Not even a few days after, I went off on another SHIELD assignment. Didn’t tell Laura or the kids that I had requested one — anything, as long as it got me out in the field — but she knew. Pretty sure she called Nat, because she showed up on the mission unannounced too. Or Fury sent her. Or she just knew. I don’t know, she’s creepy that way sometimes.”
It was Clint’s turn to look out the window, now, gaze going a little distant. “For a while after, every time I looked at Cooper or saw him do his rehab exercises, all I could see was how close it came to being worse. Even though, like I said, he was fine. He healed. He’s got a scar he likes to show off now; thinks it makes him look tough during two truths and a lie.” A corner of his mouth twitched. “And after that, we just talked to all the kids about proper safety around tools,” Clint waved his hand in the air. “Hasn’t happened since.”
Peter glanced away defensively, not wanting to ponder too much on the clear parallels the archer had drawn. “But that’s the point. He won’t talk about it.”
“Yeah,” Clint conceded. “But neither will you.” He raised his hands placatingly, before Peter could argue. “Not saying it’s your job to start that conversation. I’m just saying it took me a little while to have that conversation with the kids, all while I kept thinking of all the different ways it could go wrong and all the things I could do to preemptively fix it.”
Peter pressed his lips firmly into a line, pushing his shoulders back more firmly into the booth and shrinking down, as though he could just melt right through the cushion and onto the floor.
“Trust me when I say this —” Clint tapped the table once, firmly. “When Tony’s mad at you, he makes it your problem. Or everybody’s problem, actually. When he’s mad at himself, he disappears. Usually into the workshop. But he knows you’re not going to stop doing the job. Just like I know Cooper will pick up another tool again — probably a much more dangerous one this time. And every time I will be reminded of the time he got hurt, and what I could have done to prevent it.”
Peter picked at the edge of the paper wrapper on his tray, peeling it back and pressing it flat again. Each time, it refused to flatten completely, curling up further and further the more he fiddled with it.
“So what,” he said quietly. “I’m just supposed to wait it out?”
Clint shrugged. “You’re good at waiting. Spiders do that, right? Sit in the corner until something walks into the web.”
Peter snorted despite himself. “That’s not how it works.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Clint waved him off. “Bad analogy. I already hit my quota for the day.” He leaned back again, chair legs creaking. “Look, I’m not saying you chase him down and force a heart-to-heart. That’d probably end with him deflecting and you getting pissed. Or vice versa. Or both. I don’t know, I don’t have a rulebook for you. If I did, I’d sell it and retire.”
He let Peter sit with that for all of a minute before he cleared his throat and shoved the Happy Meal box toward Peter. “Also, for the record, if this were a movie, this is the part where the wise mentor tells you to go talk to him.”
Peter snorted at that, but still didn’t move.
Clint sighed. “Or,” he added, reaching into the box and pulling out the wrapped plastic toy, wiggling it in Peter’s direction, “you could spiral dramatically for another week. Your choice. Personally, I recommend the talking option. Less brooding. Fewer rainstorms.” He glanced down at the plastic in his hands, face brightening. “Hey, it’s Avengers-themed! Ha.”
He tossed it across the table, essentially forcing Peter to move or else be smacked in the face. Peter caught it, staring down at the flimsy plastic wrapping. It was, indeed, Avengers-themed. He took minor insult to the fact that Spider-Man wasn’t included in the lineup of possible options, but he supposed that kind of made sense for a national food chain. Whatever.
Peter stared down at it for a long moment, feeling oddly like he was holding a bomb. With his luck, he’d get the Iron Man toy.
“C’mon, junior, field trip’s over. We should get back before anyone notices you’re gone and charges me with kidnapping.”
“I thought you cleared it with Dr. Cho,” Peter pointed out, arching an eyebrow.
“I did,” Clint herded him towards the car, dumping their trash on the way and taking their leftovers with them. “But I didn’t tell anyone else, and I swore FRIDAY to silence unless Tony specifically asked where you were. Mostly because I can’t get her to lie to him. Very inconvenient, by the way. Also, if we stay any longer, I’ll order another round and you’ll end up back in medical for sodium poisoning.”
“Pretty sure I can’t get sodium poisoning with my metabolism,” Peter commented. “At least not without, like, injecting pure dissolved salt into my veins.”
“Let’s not test that theory.” Clint climbed into the driver’s side and started the engine. Peter had to concede that he didn’t really want to test that theory either.
It wasn’t until they’d driven for a few minutes when Peter noticed he was still holding the wrapped Happy Meal toy. He hesitated, fingers pressing into the hard plastic, trying to discern its shape from feel alone. Given that the toy was disassembled, it didn’t give him much information. Eventually, though, curiosity won out over his hesitation.
He ripped open the packaging, and unmistakable red-and-gold pieces fell right into his lap. The Iron Man toy. Great.
Like he said:
Just his luck.
—
“You’re avoiding him.”
“Hello to you too, Romanoff,” Tony grumbled.
Natasha didn’t bother returning the greeting. She leaned one hip against the worktable, arms folded, eyes tracking the half-assembled gauntlet Tony had been pretending to recalibrate for the last forty minutes. It had not needed recalibrating forty minutes ago, and it definitely didn’t need it now.
“You know FRIDAY logs room occupancy,” she said mildly.
Tony didn’t look up, but he scoffed. “Should I be concerned about a hit to your head? I built FRIDAY, of course I know that.”
“And yet,” she went on, unbothered, “you’ve managed to miss Peter by an average of six minutes for the past twelve days. Elevators, hallways, kitchen, common room.” A beat. “Very impressive footwork.”
“I’m agile,” Tony deadpanned. “It’s the suit.”
“A pile of rocks is more agile than that suit,” Natasha retorted.
“Excuse you,” Tony finally looked up, offended on principle, “this pile of rocks can bank at eighty-seven degree turns while maintaining Mach 1.6 in atmosphere, compensate for crosswind shear at thirty knots, stabilize rotational drift within zero point three seconds —”
“Peter’s out with Clint.”
“With Clint,” Tony repeated slowly, swiveling to face her fully. “Why the hell is he out with Barton?”
“McDonald’s,” Natasha said simply. “And relax, he cleared it with Cho.”
Tony shot her a half-hearted glare, unwilling to admit that she knew exactly what to say to minimally calm his nerves. He reached for a different screwdriver he didn’t actually need, turning it between his fingers. “Guess he’s going to want gas money,” he snipped.
“You paid for the burgers.” Natasha, as usual, stayed cool and undeterred by his usual methods of deflection. It was really fucking annoying, in times like these.
“That too,” Tony muttered sarcastically. “I’m generous like that.” She reached out and plucked a tool off the table before Tony could grab it again, weighing it in her hand, and Tony crossed his arms against his chest and sniffed. “So, what, did Spangles send you? Is this a coordinated assault?”
Nat tilted her head. “Not Steve.”
Tony scoffed. “Of course not. He’s learned not to bother me while I’m working, not since that last incident.”
Natasha’s mouth twitched, and she gestured in the direction of his gauntlet. “You’re not working. You haven’t tightened a single screw.”
“That’s because I loosened them all earlier,” Tony shot back. “Among other wiring fixes. You wouldn’t understand. Very advanced engineering concept.”
Natasha arched a challenging eyebrow. “Good thing I don’t need to. I could get that information out of you just by listening to you ramble while sleep deprived. Or a variety of different ways.”
“Well aren’t you just Little Miss Buzzkill,” Tony grumbled. “So, what, you’re fishing for a heart-to-heart? You’re wasting your time. I don’t have anything to say.”
Natasha lifted an eyebrow. “That’s new.” She cocked her head. “Well, that’s not new. But you admitting it is.”
Tony glared at her in earnest and exhaled through his nose, turning back around to peer at his gauntlet. He knew it put his back to her, which objectively screamed danger, but when one was friends with Natasha Romanoff — if that was what they were — it was far more dangerous to show your face than your back. She would still be able to read him well — and it didn’t help that he was doing less than a stellar job of concealing it — but it took away one key thing for her to examine.
“Point is, you should skedaddle. I’ve been busy.”
“Mmm.”
“World-saving busy. These Iron Man suits don’t build themselves.”
“Mmm.”
“Calendar-blocked, tax-deductible busy.”
“Tony.”
Tony sighed and swiveled around to face her again at the first-name drop. It really was better to just let her get what she came for. He didn’t have the energy today to try and out-wait the Black Widow.
“I’ve already tried yelling at him before,” he sighed, not bothering to address who the him in question was. “Never works. He’s always going to be like that. He’s recovering from a goddamn coma, he doesn’t need my…” he trailed off, then cleared his throat. “He doesn’t need to be focusing on me instead of his recovery. Doctor’s orders, you know. I’ve been told Tony Stark and ‘stress free’ don’t mix. Besides, he doesn’t even remember the battle, so not much point in re-hashing things.”
“So…” Natasha drawled. “Your solution to not-yelling is just ignoring him for days on end?”
Tony huffed a laugh. “You’re really stuck on this one line, huh?” She stared back, unimpressed, and he spun back around to his work once more. “Sure,” he admitted as he jammed the screwdriver harder than necessary into the gap. “Can’t yell if I don’t see him.”
“I would have thought you’d have better self control than that.”
Tony snorted at the absurdity. “No, you wouldn’t. Look at who you’re talking to.”
“Not in the past, no.” She stared at the side of his head, strangely unblinking. “But you’ve changed. Become more… responsible.”
“Never accuse me of such things again, Romanoff,” Tony waved the screwdriver vaguely threateningly in her direction. She was, of course, unfazed. They both knew she was far more capable of removing the screwdriver from his possession and using it on him instead. Or using any of the other various sharp tools and chemical biohazards he kept in his workshop. Probably not a great idea, now that he was considering it.
Tony was many things — impulsive, arrogant, paranoid — but stupid was not one of them.
While it was true that Peter, in his nature, would have saved Tony irrespective of who he was, they both knew the core of the matter was different. Peter had saved Tony — had put himself in harm’s way — because he cared about Tony in the same way that he cared about everyone he loved. And that scared him more than anything else could have.
“I would have thought you, of all people, would understand the need not to be ignored for the sake of work, based on your childhood.”
Tony felt that familiar flare of anger light up his chest. “That’s not the same and you know it,” he got out through gritted teeth. “Don’t go there, Romanoff.”
“Why not?” She cocked her head, eyes glimmering in a way that was far from innocent. “Because from where I’m standing, you’re burying your head in your work, just like Howa—”
“Oh, for fuck’s — because I was helpless,” he bursted out, turning to glare at her. “Sure, I have learned to accept that he’s going to get hurt. I can’t stop him; the Vulture incident proved that much. But I didn’t even know he pushed me out of the way until I reviewed the footage. I thought the blast hit both of us. And then when we did find him, we couldn’t move fast enough. We didn’t have good enough tools or technology to get him out or stop the bleeding. I just had to fucking sit there and let him bleed out under my hands. I can’t exactly help that every time I see him right now I just see that.”
She stared at him for a long moment, gaze level, and he couldn’t even bring himself to care that he’d just fallen right into her trap — the one he knew about, where she pushed and pushed a weak point until it snapped. He didn’t have it in him to hold himself back, which was also precisely why he shouldn’t be around Peter right now.
“So you’re avoiding him,” Natasha filled in again, though she sounded far more understanding this time. Tony shot her a half-hearted glare.
“What the hell am I supposed to say?” He swallowed, turning his head away momentarily. “We almost lost him, Nat. He almost died. Again. On my watch. Again. Because of me. Again.”
Nat didn’t flinch, though she rarely did. “He didn’t,” she responded simply.
Tony laughed humorlessly. “Wow. Stellar argument. I’ll put that on the plaque.”
“I’m saying,” she continued evenly, “that he made the call and lived with the consequences. So did you. You can’t change that.”
“No, but I can make sure it won’t happen again.”
“It will happen again,” Natasha said, though not unkindly. She placed a gentle hand on the device clenched in his fist and lowered it back to the desk. Tony didn’t bother trying to fight her. “Maybe not like that, but you can’t prepare for everything.”
“I’m not called a futurist for nothing, Romanoff.”
She shrugged. “Perhaps not. But you’ll feel better interacting with him, seeing he’s okay, rather than sitting in here optimizing your 30th iteration of whatever this,” she knocked the device with her knuckles, “is.”
“It’s a medical device.” Tony picked it back up and flipped it around in his hands. “Stops hemorrhaging in the field more effectively than anything on the market right now.” He pointedly ignored the knowing look she sent his way. “I may not be able to predict everything, but I can be damn well sure I have the tools to respond better next time.”
Natasha sighed, but Tony knew he’d won this one. Inasmuch as one could win against Natasha Romanoff. It was more a momentary concession, but he’d take it.
“Besides,” he continued, “in case you hadn’t noticed, he’s avoiding me right back. Practically ducks his head down and scurries away the moment we so much as make eye contact.” The motion shouldn’t have stung as much as it did, really, because to say Tony had dealt with far worse was an understatement. Mariana trench levels of an understatement. But it did sting, because even when Tony and Peter had argued before, Peter had never quite outright avoided him like this.
In fact, he was more likely to argue right back than give in and run away. Running away probably wasn’t the right phrase to use here — didn’t seem fair to Peter — but without an argument, he didn’t really know how to fix it. He’d been trying so hard not to yell, since that had never once turned out well for them, but had somehow gone and fucked it up anyways. The indifference stung more than anger, because it felt like a step forward on his side, in holding himself back, but a step back on Peter’s side.
Natasha watched him for a beat longer, then straightened. “Okay,” she said. “Then stop.”
Tony arched an eyebrow. “Stop what, exactly?” he drawled. “Heard that phrase hundreds of times from Spangles alone, you’re gonna have to be more specific.”
“All of this,” she said, gesturing vaguely at the gauntlet, the tools, the room. “Trying to solve it like an engineering problem.”
“I’m not —”
“You are,” she cut in, not letting him finish. “You always do this. You take every problem and you try to engineer your way around it.” She nodded at the device in his hands. “You try to build something. Optimize something. Avoid the variable you can’t control. You can’t do that with you and Peter. You have to talk to him.”
Tony scoffed. “I just told you I’m trying not to make it worse.”
“And I’m telling you that you are anyways,” she replied evenly. “Congratulations. You’ve found a new way to mess it up.”
“Never apply for a TedTalk. You’re horrible at pep talks, if that’s what this sad attempt is meant to be.”
“I’m Russian. We don’t do those.”
“Right,” Tony drawled. “Any more psychoanalytic revelations you want to dump on me, or have you reached your quota?” He wasn’t so sure he actually wanted the answer to that, but ‘fuck around and find out’ had always been the cause of all of his major mistakes. He was fairly sure asking this question wasn’t Ultron-levels of fuck around and find out, though.
She cocked her head. “You’re afraid.”
Tony barked a short laugh. “Sure, a lot of things. Nuclear annihilation. Global network collapse. Decaf coffee being the only option available.”
She didn’t rise to the bait. “Not of those.”
He turned his head to the side, staring over to the lab doors and wishing he had the ability to teleport. He should get on that, actually. It would be incredibly useful if he could get his suits to teleport…
“You missed your calling,” he deflected. “Should’ve gone into invasive brain surgery. You’re already halfway there.”
“I go where I am needed,” she responded serenely.
“Lucky me,” he muttered.
“Talk to him, Tony.” Natasha pointed a finger towards his chest, finally seeming ready to back off. “You and I both know that these things have a way of coming back to bite you.”
Tony thought back to his parents, to the night they died, how he’d been angry the last time he’d seen them. As with most cases, though, thinking about his parents — or their deaths, for that matter — didn’t exactly improve his mood. Even more so when he was thinking about his parents and Peter, because that was a particular connection he staunchly refused to follow to its inevitable end.
“I’ll talk to him before he re-starts patrolling,” he grumbled. He needed more time to figure out what the hell to say, how to convey the fear he’d felt when he found Peter under that building, superceded only by the terror he felt when Peter had gone limp and unconscious. Or, more accurately, he needed a way to express to Peter just how much he should never jump in front of anything like that for Tony ever again, without having to put words to the actual emotions.
Realistically, he knew he couldn’t control that, knew that Peter would always jump — that was who Spider-Man was, and what he did. But telling Peter what he’d felt — showing his hand, his emotions, in a way they’d never done before — would be a far more effective tactic at getting the kid to hesitate, rather than a plain old argument. And Tony could swallow his pride down for a few moments if it meant there was a higher chance that he wouldn’t have to feel that abject terror again.
That moment was not now, though. He would tell Peter before he got cleared to go on patrol again, before he had the chance to find himself in another life-or-death situation and chose to step in front of the gun without at least knowing how much it would impact Tony.
He just needed a little more time.