Chapter Text
When Tony swung open the door to Peter’s bedroom the next morning, he’d been prepared for the worse.
He’d been expecting a fury of teenage angst and attitude. He’d prepped himself, mentally, for one last fit. He’d even put on his gauntlet watch, as he suspected Peter might only go to his surgery kicking and screaming, and Tony wasn’t a match for Spiderling without his tech, but as it turned out, he didn’t need it.
Peter sat on his bed, waiting, and already changed out of his pajamas and into the comfortable sweats and t-shirt he’d been instructed to wear.
“S’time to go?” he asked. The attitude from yesterday was completely drained from his voice, replaced with defeat. Tony decided he rather deal with a display of defiance. Those were easily squished, but sad eyes and a hopeless slump of the shoulders? He couldn’t deal. It was a weakness, so much so that Morgan already understood this, and used it against him. Often.
“Yep,” said Tony, from the doorway, watching as Peter stood up and slipped something into his pocket. Peter looked at the floor as he walked closer, and when he tried to push past and into the hallway, Tony stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “You okay? You’re more, uh, docile than usual.”
“Yeah, fine,” said Peter. “Can we just get this over with?”
“You’re not really afraid, you are? It’s not bad if you are, I’m just telling you, there’s really not anything for you to be afraid of. There’s no butcher knives, just the best sleep you’ve ever had.”
Peter’s eyes darted around in different directions, never meeting Tony’s. “You’re not going to – you won’t let me do anything stupid when I’m on drugs?”
“I promise,” said Tony, steering Peter, by his shoulder down the hallway and towards the elevator. “I’ll put you right back in your bed.”
“And you won’t film me?”
“What? Film you? Of course not, why would you think- “Tony started his questions, then stopped. He learned with Morgan it didn’t matter why. Oftentimes there was no why. Peter was worried about it and that was all that mattered. “I promise. No cameras. Just your bed and lots of ice cream.”
Peter gave him a small shaky smile as they left the suite and got into the elevator, leading Tony to believe ice cream was the ultimate secret weapon against teenagers and children, no matter how moody or sacred they happened to be.
*
Tony’s leg bounced. He watched it bounce, but he was supposed to be watching his tablet, going over some numbers for SI while he waited for Peter’s surgery to be complete. He couldn’t concentrate on it, though. Despite telling Peter he didn’t have anything to worry about, Tony was worried.
About so many things, but mainly, that he had leapt before he looked, and now he had a spider-kid and no clue how to take care of him, emotionally or otherwise. Clearly he hadn’t been doing a good job so far. Peter hated him. He stayed in his room and built Lego models and only talked to him to voice his complaints.
He didn’t count the short talk and smile before surgery, that had been the result of fear and ice cream.
“Mr. Stark?” An assistant popped her head out a door and into the waiting room. “Peter’s all finished. You can come and see him now.”
When he got back to the post-op room, Peter was huddled up on a bed, under a thin blanket and squinting up at the ceiling lights. He looked a lot like a lost puppy. He was small and pale and helpless, and the sight of him, like that, made Tony remember why he’d leapt without looking in the first place.
Still, he wished he knew what to do to get Peter to stop scowling at him like he was a prison guard.
He sunk down in the seat beside his bed. “How’re you feeling, Pete?”
Peter looked away from the lights, and squinted in Tony’s direction, struggling to sit-up, to see him better.
“Floaty.” He collapsed back down. “The lights are racing.”
“Do me a favor and keep an eye on them for me,” said Tony, as the oral surgeon walked in. “Tell me who wins.”
“Okay.”
The surgeon, Dr. Miller, fixed them both with a smile, before nodding at Tony and launching into his rundown.
“He did really well in surgery,” he told Tony. Peter kept staring at the lights, seemingly unaware. “Looks like his gums have already started healing nicely and stopped bleeding, I’m assuming that’s his – “
“-healing factor,” finished Tony, as Miller nodded.
Tony looked back at Peter. His biology was truly remarkable. He didn’t like admitting that, and he didn’t even want to fathom what was going on inside Oscorp that produced a spider-boy. That was another mystery, another mission, for a different day.
Miller continued on his post-op speech, instructing Tony how to take care of Peter, then left the room. An assistant returned with a wheelchair and a bag full of specially engineered pain relievers, designed specifically for Peter.
“Well,” said Tony, standing from his chair and hovering above Peter. “Give me the play by play. Who won?”
“Can’t remember.”
“That’s alright, let’s just get you into your own bed, yeah? Just like I promised.”
Tony gently pulled Peter up by his arm and into a sitting position, then helped him into the wheelchair and rolled him out of the room. By the time they made it up the elevator and back into the suite, Tony had one hand on the wheelchair handle and another supporting the back of Peter’s head, since Pete was happy to let it lull around as they wheeled about the compound.
He parked the wheelchair in front of Peter’s bed and once again, helped him make the final transfer. As Peter moved onto his bed, a piece of paper fell from his pocket, slid off the covers and floated down to the floor.
“Can we go outside?” asked Peter. His head was now on the pillow, but he was still tangled in his blankets, looking pathetic as ever, asking the same old questions. “I wanna see if I can fly.”
“I’m just gonna clear that one up for you,” said Tony, taking the bottle of pills from the bag he’d been given. “You can’t.”
“But you can fly.”
“I’m Iron Man, that’s part of the gig.”
Peter frowned. “I wanted to be Iron Man.”
“Well I called it first,” said Tony. “Next time be faster about it.”
Tony unscrewed the cap of the pill bottle and took out two, before grabbing the half empty water bottle on Peter’s nightstand. When he looked back at Peter, he was still pouting, still upset he wasn’t Iron Man. Tony couldn’t blame him. He was the best Avenger.
“Hey, everyone knows Spider-Man is much cooler, anyway,” Tony told him, sitting down on the edge of his bed. Peter smiled. A half smile. Even drugged up, it looked like he was warring with his own facial expressions. “Alright, ready for more drugs?”
Tony gave him the pain killers, watched him pop them into his mouth, then held the water bottle for him as he washed them down. Peter sunk back down to his pillow once finished, and Tony pocketed the pill bottle and placed the water bottle back on the nightstand, watching Peter as he did.
He was relaxed. Completely and totally relaxed, and it felt good seeing him that way, even knowing it had everything to do with the drugs and not at all a reflection on how Peter was really feeling.
“Can we go outside now?”
Tony sighed. He would never be free from this question. He wouldn’t ever be free for being the bad guy, forced to say no.
“What’s outside, Pete? What’s the first thing you’d do?”
“Go back for my friends,” he answered, turning in the bed, trying, and failing, to untangle his legs.
“I didn’t know you had any friends.”
“They’re made out of metal,” said Peter. “They don’t talk back, but they listen. Do you think they’ll forgive me for abandoning them?”
“Yeah, yeah of course they will.” Tony took off Peter’s shoes, then helped him untangle from the blankets and brought the covers up to his chin. “Get some sleep, okay?”
Peter’s eyes fluttered shut instantly and Tony carefully scooted off his bed, the piece of paper that fell to the floor earlier catching his eye as he did. He picked it up, unfolded it and was greeted by Morgan’s drawing. A token of bravery. That’s what she had called it while she sat at her art table and colored it, and from the looks of it, exactly what Peter had used it for, whether he’d admitted it later or not.
Tony folded it back up and placed it on the nightstand, before quietly slipping out of his room
*
The building Peter had once used as his home was empty, lonely, depressed. As Tony and Cap climbed their way up the staircases, searching for any trace of Peter’s belongings, they saw nothing. No one. No signs of life anywhere, not a rat, not even a spider, and it reminded Tony of his childhood mansion, when his mother and Jarvis weren’t around.
It had none of the elegance or wealth the Stark mansion held, but the ache, the aches Tony felt in his heart were the same as he crept through the abandoned building, and he knew, without a doubt, that Peter must have felt it too, living there day after day, just as Tony had felt in his childhood home.
Alone. Peter felt alone. Looking around the old office building, it was obvious and far from just an assumption.
They searched a few hours, than happened across the room that served as Peter’s bedroom. It was even more depressing than the rest of the building.
Just a single sleeping bag sat off to the side of the room. Near the makeshift bed, were two, small bots made from metal scraps and bottle caps, standing guard. Peter’s friends, Tony knew, just by looking. His friends who listened but could never say anything back.
“You’re doing a good thing, Tony,” said Steve, as they gathered up Peter’s few possessions and put them into a box, so they could bring them back to the compound. “Giving Peter a home.”
“Yeah, well, let’s hope so.”
Tony still had his doubts. Not that Peter needed a home that wasn’t with SHIELD, that was obvious, but that he was the right person to give it to him. Most of the time he just felt like shouting at him or throwing him out the suite’s window, like turning off his ears and letting the constant complaining go ignored. Sometimes, he did just that.
He had to admit though, even if it were only to himself, it was nice of Steve to lie to him.
Tony took extra care with Peter’s robots, examining them as he put them in a separate box from the rest of his things. They were well made. Put together with trash others no longer wanted, and Tony could tell, just by looking at them, they would work. That they probably did whatever it was Peter had programmed them to do.
He stared at them, jostling around inside the box, while he and Steve made the climb down. Looked at them, the bots Peter had made to listen, and decided, maybe, maybe he did know what Peter needed, or rather, his childhood self knew.
*
“Daddy.”
Tony looked up from his laptop. “Yeah, princess?”
“Where’s Peter’s box?” asked Morgan, standing still in the middle of the kitchen, with a superhero cape tied around her neck.
“His what?”
“You know, his box,” she said. She walked further into the kitchen and climbed up on the chair next to where Tony sat with his laptop in front of him, trying, hopelessly to get some work done while he waited for Peter to wake up. It wasn’t working. He was still distracted. “The box he came in. We need to put him back in and take him back to Target.”
“Sorry honey, there’s a strict no return policy on brothers.”
“Not even if he’s defective?”
“Not even then,” said Tony. “And he’s not defective.”
“Yeah huh,” said Morgan, as if it were the most obvious truth in the universe. “He doesn’t play or leave his room. He’s always grumpy. Plus, he hates us.”
She wasn’t wrong. As far as Tony knew, Peter did hate them, or pretended to, and what was the difference to a four-year-old? He shut his laptop and put his whole attention on Morgan, quickly thinking up what he could say to convince her they needed to keep Peter.
“Do you wanna hear a secret?” said Tony, in a low voice, leaning his head down and forward.
Morgan smirked, and looked around, wanting to protect the secret she didn’t yet know. “Yeah.”
“You know that drawing you made?”
Morgan nodded.
“He took it with him. To surgery. It made him brave three thousand.”
“It did?”
“Yep.”
Morgan smiled, but pulled another frown back on soon after. “But I still wish he played. Why doesn’t he like us?”
“He does like us, princess,” said Tony. He hoped it was true. He hoped he wasn’t lying. “It’s just been a really long time since he’s had a family. He doesn’t know how. You have to show him.”
“Peter doesn’t have a mom or a dad,” said Morgan, and Tony could see the gears turning behind her eyes and imagined that she was realizing, for the first time, what coming from Target really meant and that it didn’t necessary mean he’d come out of a box.
“No,” said Tony. “But he’s got us.”
Tony hoped that was enough. That he could be enough.
She heaved a dramatic, heavy sigh, and let her back rest against the chair. “Okay fine, I guess he can stay.”
*
“Tony,” said Peter, as Tony walked into his bedroom. He sounded and looked miserable, lying flat on his back, with the blankets tossed off his bed and thrown onto the floor. He sat up. He blinked at Tony, then collapsed back down into his pillows. “I feel weird.”
“Weird how?” asked Tony. He sat down on the edge of the bed. “How’s the mouth feel?”
“Aches.”
“You’re lucky you heal fast or it’d be more than just aches.”
Peter sat up again, using his elbows as support, and glared at him. As much as anyone could glare with glossy eyes and a pale face and brown, matted hair sticking up in wild angles.
“Do you need more pain meds?”
“No,” said Peter. “I don’t wanna sleep and I don’t want to forget that I’m mad at you. I still can’t believe you let them cut out my teeth.”
Tony resisted the very strong urge to reply with an eye roll and something sarcastic. He never thought a couple of teeth could be the root cause of so much dramatics, but maybe that was the problem. He hadn’t stopped to think.
“Yeah listen, Pete,” said Tony, looking through Peter’s glare. “I’m sorry about that.”
Peter looked like Tony had dropped a bucket of cold water on his head. “You’re what?”
“I’m apologizing, kid, this whole week I haven’t been very good at listening to you and in the future, I just want you to know that’s gonna change.”
“Y-you’re apologizing. To me?”
“Yep. I heard that’s what grown-ups do when they make mistakes. Decided to try it out,” said Tony. “And I got something for you. I’ll just – I’ll get them.”
Tony left Peter looking stunned on his bed and returned just a few minutes later with the box that had his bots inside. He laid it on the bed, in front of Peter, who looked inside as soon as Tony removed his hands from the cardboard.
Peter’s eyes got big, and then Tony couldn’t read his expression. Not exactly. At first it had seemed like Peter was happy, his face lit with something that made Tony want to grin with pride, but that vanished almost instantly and was replaced with something that caught him off guard.
Eventually, though, Tony’s dad instincts kicked in and he moved into action without stopping to think. He grabbed the trash can by Peter’s nightstand, pushed the cardboard box over to the other side bed and slid the trash under Peter’s face just in time for him to gag into it and empty his stomach.
His gagging sounded painful, so more dad reflexes activated. Tony scooted further onto his bed. He gently rubbed his back with one hand, while keeping the waste basket secure with his other.
“Finished?” asked Tony, when Peter lifted his head out from the trash can. He nodded his head slowly, then Tony took the trash can and put it back on the floor.
Peter stared at him but didn’t speak. He looked disoriented, stunned, and lost all at the same time, and several seconds passed before he started shifted around on his bed, trying to get up. Tony pushed him back down into his pillows with a gentle shove in his shoulder.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“I have to,” started Peter, titling his head over to the side of the bed where Tony had put the trashcan. “I have to take care of that.”
“No, you’re gonna keep your ass in that bed and rest. I’m gonna get rid of that.”
“But I can do it.” Peter’s voice snapped in sudden frustration that was all too familiar with Tony. Morgan got this way, whenever that was something new learn she wanted to learn and didn’t immediately grasp it.
“I know you can,” said Tony, softening his voice. “But you don’t have to. That’s what I’m here for. To take care of you.”
Peter opened his mouth and started to say something but closed it again before any words made it out. He diverted his eyes, down to the blankets he knocked on the floor, and didn’t look at Tony while he slid off the bed, picked up the trash can and carried it off to the bathroom.
When he brought it back out to him, it was cleaned, and without a fresh trash bag, in case Peter threw up again.
“Need anything else?” asked Tony, setting waste basket back down.
“Um,” said Peter, folding and unfolding his hands. Hesitantly, he looked up at Tony. “Maybe… just, something to drink?”
“To settle your stomach? Good idea.”
Tony zipped out of the room and came back with an icy glass of ginger ale, which Peter accepted with a timid look, a look that shattered something in Tony. It was the look of a kicked puppy or a scared cat. It was the look of someone who wasn’t used to other people bringing them drinks and rubbing their backs when they were sick.
“T-thanks, Tony. Um, for my bringing my bots, too. Just, thank you.”
“Not a problem,” he told him. “Anything else?”
Peter eyes flickered to the box that held his bots, then back to Tony. “Maybe… can…” He started out slow, then said the last part of his sentence fast, all at once. “Canyoustay?”
“Yeah, kid, I’ll stay.”
As he sat down in the armchair on the other side of Peter’s bed, he felt like they’d crossed a bridge, reached a milestone, arrived at a checkpoint. Tony knew they still had a long way to go. At the end of the day, they were both just two people who knew what it was like to be lonely long enough that they learned to fear the alternative.
*
As it turned out, Peter didn’t need the trashcan anymore. He sounded better, looked better, sitting up on his bed across from where Tony sat on the opposite end. The Lego model car sat between them, and they took turns snapping pieces on.
“You know,” said Tony, clicking a piece into place. As Peter took a sip of his ginger ale, the throw blanket he wore like a cape slipped off one of his shoulders. He pushed it back on. “I think I have a car like this at my house in Malibu.”
“Shocking,” said Peter. His sarcasm had less bite than it normally did. Sounded more playful, less cutting and mean. “A billionaire has, like, a million fancy cars? Never would’ve guessed.”
“Maybe one day we’ll take a trip over there. I’ll teach you how to drive one.”
“I’m two years away from being allowed to drive,” said Peter. He clicked the final piece in place and looked up at Tony.
“It’ll fly by. We’ll be celebrating your sixteenth birthday in no time.”
Peter frowned and pulled a face. He opened his mouth to say something, but before he could get any words out, Morgan zoomed into the room.
“Dadddddd,” she said. “Come on. It’s time for family movie night.”
Right. Movie night. Tony had completely forgotten. He looked back at Peter, who now had the car in his hands and was examining their work, or at least, pretending to. Tony knew disappointment well enough to know when someone was trying to keep it hidden and off the lines of their faces.
“I’m sorry, Morgan. Peter and I – “
“Go ahead,” said Peter. “I’m good. I’ll just, go back to sleep.”
“You can’t go back to sleep,” Morgan told him, with a titled head and her hands on her hips. At four she had already mastered Pepper’s tone of authority and the skillful way she somehow got people, mainly Tony, to do whatever she wanted them to do. “It’s family movie night. Meaning everyone has to come. Including you. Besides, it’s your turn to pick.”
Tony grinned at his daughter and her generous lie. It was Morgan’s turn to pick the movie, and if she was sacrificing her chance to make them all watch Trolls for her third pick in a row, Tony figured Peter better jump at that opportunity. For all their sakes.
“Well now you have to come,” Tony told him. “Can’t pass up on your chance.”
“But- “
“We don’t bite,” said Morgan. “Promise.”
Peter looked from Tony to Morgan, then back at Tony again, before finally nodding his approval. He’d never really stood a chance after Morgan gave him the head tilt, but it adorable he’d thought he had a choice. Tony gave him a hand up off the bed and guided him through the hallway and into the living room, where Pepper was already waiting for them on the couch.
“So, what’ll it be, Pete?” asked Tony, as they all sunk down into the cushions. “Just tell Fri and she’ll turn it on for us.”
They ended up watching Star Wars. Really, it was just Tony and Pepper who ended up watching Star Wars. Morgan fell asleep across both their laps, and just a few minutes after Tony started hearing her little snores, a weight hit his shoulder.
Peter’s head was slumped up against him and Tony took that as a surefire sign the boy was dead asleep. Tony slung his arm around him, pulling him closer, feeling him lean into the touch and burrow his head against him in his sleep.
Tony still had his doubts, as he watched Star Wars, with two kids sleeping on him, but this, at least, felt like a start, felt like the ice was melting and that his family, that had felt incomplete just weeks ago, finally got its missing piece.