Chapter Text
So, Peter and Tony have A Thing.
And it’s weird and confusing, but it’s Their Thing so they don’t say anything about it. It’s comfortable and familiar, uniquely them.
It starts off a few months after Tony first invites Peter to the workshop. May was working an overnight shift and had offered to take in Peter for the night, seeing as it was the weekend. It’s nothing special, just a passing question as they were nearing one AM in their work marathon.
Tony’s fingers don’t stop moving as he opens his mouth. “[Hey, kid. You need food?]”
“[No, I think I’m fine.]” Peter responds, bringing the Widow Bite closer to his face as he tinkers with a joint.
“[If you’re sure.]”
The two of them don’t remember it the next morning, so it’s forgotten, remembered only by the bots and Friday.
---
“{Fuck, I stripped the screw,}” Tony curses a week later during his and Peter’s workshop session of the week.
Peter comes up behind him, his smart sweaters switched out for an oil stained T-shirt. “Here, lemme see.” He bends down over the counter to peer at the layed out hoverboard. The screw was a quarter of an inch out of the hole.
“Do you want this in or out?” Peter asks.
“Out.” Tony tells him, pushing his chair back to let Peter work. He furrows his brow. “{Do you speak Italian?}”
It’s small, but Peter’s back seems to tense up slightly. “{May and Ben taught me.}”
“That’s interesting.” Tony hums out, leaning back.
Peter straightens up again and turns, holding the screw in his fingers. “Here you go.” He drops it into Tony’s open palm.
“{How did you do it?}” He calls out as Peter walks back to his work counter.
“{I just… twisted the screw? With my fingers?}”
Tony chuckles, “That Spider-Strength sure is something.”
“Mr. Stark, you can’t just put ‘Spider’ in front of everything I do and call it a talent.” Peter sighs.
“{I can and I will.}”
Peter sighs again.
---
“[How do you say ‘play structure’ in Spanish?]” Peter pipes up on the following Sunday. He was working on his Spanish homework before he started patrol.
“[Play structure],” Tony says.
Peter throws his hands up. “[Play structure! Of course!]”
Tony rolls his eyes. “[Peter, you speak Spanish]”
“[Please Mr. Stark, I have Small Brain Energy.]”
This time, Tony turns around. “[And what does that mean?]”
---
“Peter, can you pass me the,” Tony groans and clicks his tongue twice. He gestures with his hands, pulling his fingers apart into a “tube” and twisting one hand.
“This?” Peter asks, holding up an Allen head screwdriver.
“No.”
“What about this one?” A slotted head.
“Nope.”
“This one?” A Tri-wing.
“Nada.”
“Um,” Peter shuffles the different screwdrivers around and Tony watches with an amused smile. “How ‘bout this?” He pulls out a Pozidriv head and Tony snaps up.
“There we go! Thanks, kid.”
“No problem, Mr. Stark.”
---
“[How are Ted and Michael Jackson?]”
Peter rolls his eyes. “{ Ned and MJ , Mr. Stark.}”
“[Ah, yes,]” Tony over exaggerates his nod. “[Fred and Mick Jagger.]”
“{You’re rediculous, Mr. Stark. And they’re fine.}”
---
Tony taps three times on the work counter. “Hey, Petey, could you come over and look a this for me?”
“Me? Double check something for the great Tony Stark?” Peter jokes, finishing up on what he was working on. “The genius Tony Stark? Are we talking about the same person?”
Tony rolls his eyes. “Get your ass over here, Underoos.”
---
“Hey, Mr. Stark?” Peter looks up from the web formulas he was scrubbing out onto his notebook.
“Yeah, kid?”
Peter rambles out the formula he was working on, which would allow his webs to fan out more when he shot them as a grenade.
Tony thinks for a moment, hands paused where he was polishing Bucky’s new, upgraded arm. “Yeah, it sounds like it world work.”
Peter beams. “Thank you, Mr. Stark.”
“No problem, kid.” Tony tells him.
---
Tony downs the rest of his coffee and makes a face at the empty mug as he sets it down onto the countertop. He ponders over getting up and making another cup, absentmindedly running his fingers over the ceramic rim and getting lost in the tapping noise.
“Here you go, Mr. Stark.” Peter pops up to to his right and no, Tony didn’t flinch.
“What?” Tony asks as Peter placed a new mug of coffee down next to the old one, picking the latter up and walking away. “Thanks.”
“No problem, Mr. Stark!” Peter laughs a bit. “Look at me, doing actual intern stuff.”
Tony rolls his eyes.
---
“{You still going strong?}” Tony asks as he checks the time. The “3:47” happily blinks back at him.
“[I’m good. You?]” Peter yawns.
Tony laughs. “{Don’t worry about me, bambino.}”
“[Mr. Stark, your rest is important, too.]” Peter looks up at the older man.
“{Sure, sure.}”
---
The hairs on the back of his neck raise as he hears the familiar three taps on the countertop.
“I’m coming in a sec, Mr. Stark.” Peter bites his lip, looking into the crevice of Sam’s wings.
“I didn’t even say anything?” Tony’s response floated over.
Peter grins and adds oil onto a joint. “You didn’t have to.”
---
Peter clicks his tongue twice and Tony looks over at his gesturing hands. He nods and throws over the right screwdriver.
His hand snaps up and catches it perfectly. “Thanks, Mr. Stark.”
---
Tony stares down at his tablet and then back up at the floating screens of numbers. “What if…” He mumbles out another string of equations.
“No, that wouldn’t work.” Peter says into the silence and few moments later, “You would be putting too much energy into your back thrusters. But, um,” He furrows his brows and thinks. “If you switch the three out with a nine in the first exponential fraction, you should be good.”
“Friday?” Tony asks, mentally running the numbers in his head.
“ Peter is correct. It would allow the energy to easily pass through from the back thrusters to the palm blasters. ”
“Good job, kid.”
“No problem.”
---
“I’m just saying, I was handling the fight perfectly by myself.”
Tony groans and pinches the bridge of his nose. “{Bambino, just because you can doesn't mean you should.}”
“{I had it handled!}” Peter throws his hands up, one still holding his mask.
“{What if they shot you? Then what?}” He grits back. “{I can’t believe I’m saying this, but thank god Deadpool was there.}”
Peter huffs out a laugh. “{Yeah, well, Wade shouldn’t have gotten involved.}”
“{How do you know who Deadpool is?!}”
“{Who doesn’t know who Deadpool is?}”
Tony can already feel his hairs go white
---
A drum on the counter and Peter’s already out of his seat.
“{Thanks, bambino.}” Tony smiles at him as Peter places the new mug of coffee down.
“[No problem, Mr. Stark.]”
---
"[Peter, get off the fucking ceiling!]"
“[You can't tell me what to do! You are not my dad!]” Peter yells back.
Tony digs his hands into his hair. “[Just let me do a blood test! Wade gave you brownies and I don't know what was in them!]”
Peter giggles and lets himself hang, arms waving and everything. “[But Mr. Stark. I feel great! As if I could do any co-WOAH!]”
He screeches. "Peter!"
---
“I’m going out on patrol for a few hours tonight, just giving you the heads up.” Peter says offhandedly as he nonchalauntly picks up a tire and carries it across the room to where Tony was.
“{Will Wade be there?}” Tony asks, grabbing another wrench.
Peter sets the tire down. “Well-”
“Nope.”
“But Daredevil’s gonna be there!” Peter protests. “It can’t be Team Red night if I’m not there!”
Tony stares up at his kid’s pouting face. “{What the hell is Team Red?}”
“Uh, well, you see…”
---
Peter bites his lip, peering at his math textbook, his fingers tapping his work counter.
“Lemme see,” Tony says, coming up behind him.
“I just can’t,” Peter groans, running a hand through his hair.
Tony flips Peter’s notebook and flips to a new page. “Hey, you can do this. Okay, let’s start from the beginning again and figure out where you went wrong, bambino.”
---
Steve walks down the stairs to Tony’s workshop and knocks on the window. Inside, Tony looks up and says something, allowing the door to slide open.
“ Welcome, Mr. Rogers. ” Friday says to him and he smiles.
“Good afternoon, Fri. Tony, Peter.” He nods at them. “How’s it going?”
“Wha’da ‘bout me, Stevie.” Bucky grins at him from where he was sitting, left arm splayed out and open on a countertop as Peter and Tony work on it. “What am I? Trash?”
Steve rolls his eyes as Peter snorts. “You wish.” He takes a seat next to Bucky, just watching.
“I really think this arm’s gonna be good this time,” Bucky was saying. “I mean, I can only hope, rite?”
“What was wrong with it? The joint, right?” Steve furrows his brows.
“We didn’t think he’d use it as a battering ram and then wait a whole month to tell us something felt off,” Toni pipes up. He holds a small screw out to Peter who takes it without even looking up.
“[Your turn],” Peter says after a minute, pushing away from the countertop.
“{Thanks},” Tony mumbles, taking his place.
Peter cracks his neck and bends over to touch his toes. “So what brings you down here, Cap?”
Steve laughs. “Oh, things just got too boring without Bucking above ground.”
“Aww, I knew ya’ missed me, Punk.” Bucky chuckles.
“Anyways,” He tilts his chin up at Peter. “How about you? How’s school? You’ve been coming around so often but spend all your time cooped up down here.”
“Oh, life is,” Peter tilts his head to the side and walks over to the coffee maker, still talking. “Life is okay. School has been good. Um, I have another tournament coming up.”
Steve tilts his head. “You do a sport?”
“Academic decathlon.” Tony pipes up, looking over as Peter sets down a steaming cup of coffee. “Thanks, bambino.”
“Makes sense,” Bucky says. “Kid’s smart as hell.”
“You got that right.” Tony grins at them before stepping away from the arm and picking up his tablet. He mumbles something under his breath, to soft for even Steve to hear with his super hearing, but he looks over expectantly at Peter.
“Four,” Peter blurts out, twenty seconds later and Tony gives him a thumbs up, typing the numbers in.
Peter turns to Bucky’s arm and makes quick work of closing up the different panels. Once he’s done, Bucky lifts his arm up and stretches it, the arm whirling as it calibrates and flexes.
“It feels good.”
"[Then our work here is done!]" Tony says. “[You were right, Steve, I keep him locked up too much. Let's go for ice cream!]”
Peter lights up. "[Let's go!]"
The two of them leave the lab and Steve is left staring at their backs before turning to Bucky.
“I can’t speak spanish.”
Bucky rolls his eyes. “They’re gonna go out to get ice cream.”
“But there’s ice cream in the freezer upstairs.” Steve frowns.
“What can ya’ do?” Bucky shrugs. “When ya’ rich, ya’ rich, you know what I mean?”
Steve shakes his head. “No, I don’t.”
Bucky stands up and they start making their way out. “They gotta a thing, though, haven’t you noticed?”
“Yeah,” He smiles, “They sure do.”
---
So, Peter and Tony have A Thing.
End of story.