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“Mr. Stark?”
Tony’s eyes blinked open as he let out a groan. He’d designed these lab chairs to be ergonomic for when he slept down here, but somehow they still didn’t quite work for the accidental naps, which, as of late, had been increasing in frequency. He slowly straightened himself up and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.
“Kid?”
His voice came out gravelly. Tony silently wished he didn’t seem as exhausted as he felt. “Kid. what time’sit?”
“Only like 11:30,” Peter said as his socked feet padded into the lab. He began to talk almost immediately, a slight nervous tone governing his speech. “I was planning on going patrolling tonight, but then I remembered that I was gonna help Michelle make her D&D character, and then she disappeared off of the face of the earth and stopped responding to my texts-”
Peter stopped mid-sentence, eyes wide as he saw his bleary-eyed mentor for the first time. Tony saw the guilt wash over his face. “Shit- sorry Mr. Stark, I didn’t mean to wake you- I uh, I didn’t know-”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Wasn’t out that long.” Tony waved him off, running a hand through his admittedly greasy hair. How long had he been down here?
“You have the imprint of a wrench in the side of your face.”
Tony blinked and looked to his desk. Sure enough, staring up at him was a wrench he’d been using hours prior. “I did that on purpose,” Tony deadpanned and slid it away to join the sizable clutter on his desk. This earned a chuckle from the teenager.
“What do you need, spider-punk?”
Peter’s eyes immediately went wide, followed by the calm expression he’d seen him fake millions of times. He hadn’t gotten any better at it. “Oh.” He turned bright red. “Oh, it’s really nothing, it’s dumb, I’m fine, you can go back to your regularly scheduled activities, I’ll just go. I’m going. I’ll see you tomorrow-”
“Kid.” Tony cocked an eyebrow at him. After spending enough time with Tony, he knew better than to argue. He took a deep breath and eyed the hard floor of Tony’s laboratory. “You’re gonna laugh,” he mumbled, sneaking a glance at Tony.
“Can neither confirm nor deny. Spill it.”
Peter somehow flushed more and mumbled something too quiet to be coherent.
“Pete. for the whole class to hear. C’mon.”
Truthfully, since giving his suit back, Tony had begun to feel bad about hounding Peter. However, with a character like Peter, it’s what you had to do to prevent him from bleeding out in an alley when you aren’t looking. Which absolutely didn’t pain Tony to think about.
“Well uh..” Peter swallowed. “Basically, I was getting ready to sleep, because you know, Michelle is pretty much off the grid and who knows when she’ll get back to me. One time over summer she didn’t text me back for three weeks and then replied to me ‘hey, I was sleeping’ with no apology-”
Tony could feel his eyes start to glaze over.
“So I decided to go to bed early and I was all cozy and I was about to go to sleep, and then I opened my eyes, and I don’t know if that was a mistake or not, because I could still be comfy in bed, but at what cost-”
“Pete…”
“-because there was this giant spider right next to me on the wall, I mean giant, and it was so big, like so so so big, so I ran out of bed, and I didn’t even know there were spiders like that in New York, I mean, are you kidding me? So uh, Ineedyoutocometakecareofit.”
There was a moment of silence while Tony absorbed Peter’s ramblings. Which was normal with most people. Peter was a rambler, and an particularly fast one, so it wasn’t uncommon for people around him to take a second to process what he says. That being said, Peter counted all the way up to 56 before Tony spoke again.
“You’re serious. You’re being completely serious right now.”
“Trust me, the irony is not lost on me.”
“You’re really afraid of spiders.”
“Yes.”
“You.”
Peter huffed. “They’re gross. They’re disgusting! And the way they scuttle around! Oh my god, don’t even get me started on the fast ones. Or the ones that can jump.” Peter shivered. “And by the way, we’re running out of time, every second it goes unmonitored is more time for it to get away.”
Tony didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Peter had fought enormous monsters, seen horrible things, been so brave, and performed so well under circumstances of extreme stress. The kid could lift a bus with his bare hands. And he was terrified of a bug. A bug that had severely altered his DNA. He was basically half bug. And he was still terrified of them.
“Jesus Christ,” Tony sighed, even though Peter could see the ghost of a smile on his lips. “Lead the way, webs.”
“Thank you, Mr. Stark.”
Tony stretched his unused arms, closely following Peter. “You know I‘m never going to let you live this down, right?” Peter let out a half-sigh half-laugh and nodded.
It was times like these where he wondered if he was starting to get too soft on the teenager. Tony was used to emotional detachment. He had a few good friends, like Rhodey and Happy, and a wonderful girlfriend like Pepper. God, Tony didn’t know how he got so lucky with Pepper. But Peter was something new entirely. He’d never wanted kids, not after what his dad had put him through, but somehow Peter was an exception. He hadn’t met a lot of the remaining legal Avengers, but the ones who knew Peter had agreed that he was good for Tony. That they ‘took care of each other’. Tony had been able to see that, but he still couldn’t ignore the clawing in his head that told him he was destined to ruin Peter like Howard ruined him. He’d been trying to do right. Maybe killing spiders at 11:30 was how you managed to do that.
Peter, as if sneaking up on a supervillain, silently stepped into his room. Tony remembered when he young and he took everything as seriously as Peter did now. It was exhausting.
“There is is! It’s still there!” Peter whisper-shouted across the room to where Tony was leaning against his door frame.
“Is the whispering really necessary?” Tony got closer, and, sure enough, a spider sat on the wall near Peter’s pillow. He had to give the kid credit, it was pretty big. Not as large as Peter had described it, but big enough to be considered a high risk job.
Peter scoffed in reply. “Uh, yeah. Spiders are extremely sensitive. They can hear your vibrations even if you’re all the way across the room.”
“Can you do that too? Hear through vibrations?”
Peter shrugged. “I mean, I guess my spider-sense kinda does that. Or maybe if I’m in sensory overload, I can. Haven’t really tested that out.”
Tony nodded and scanned the room around him for a weapon. “Kid, do you have one of your old textbooks or something I can kill this with?”
Peter stiffened and glanced around the room that Mr. Stark had provided him with. He remembered how he had received it: filled with books and an impressive amount of Star Wars Merchandise. Then, while it still looked homey and pleasing to the eye, it was simultaneously clean and refreshing. He remembered thanking Tony endlessly, but refusing to show him how the tears had begun to well up in his eyes. Now, It was just messy enough to be inconvenient.
He scanned along his bookshelf stacked with thick chemistry textbooks before darting across the room to grab an empty glass stolen from the kitchen that he had forgotten to return.
He handed it to Tony with a flush across his cheeks, nearly embarrassed. Which filled Tony with more emotions than he thought necessary for the present circumstance. Wordlessly, Tony grabbed the glass and picked up a packet of notes off of Peter’s desk.
The process was delicate; Tony was careful not to startle the spider enough that it ran, but effectively trap it. And he was paranoid that he’d accidentally get too close and hurt one of its legs (and boy, did this thing have a large wingspan).
Peter watched in awe as Tony slip the papers under the cup. He leaned against the wall farthest away from the bed and let out a soft “oh my god,” when the spider sprinted to the top of the cup.
“There you go kid.”
Tony stood for a moment, unsure of what was to come next as he held the covered glass. Peter stared up at him. A flush still covered his face, and he was beginning to show traces of an emotion that frankly, Tony was too tired to unpack.
“Thanks, Mr. Stark.”
Tony tossed a messy ‘night, kid’ over his shoulder and begun to round the corner when something stopped him in his tracks. He felt bad for just leaving him like that. Of course he did. Tony Stark had officially been replaced by a body snatcher.
He sighed and poked his head around Peter’s doorframe. Peter was peeking around his bed, looking for any more potential spiders in the area. He looked so small, wrapped in oversized Thor pajama pants and a worn police academy shirt. Tony knew he would still have a hard time sleeping tonight.
“You know, spiders are kinda creepy. I’ll give you a point for that one,”
Peter was startled by Tony’s voice, but agreed with a grin and a vigorous nod.
Tony started the walk to his lab, eager to avoid any real thought about what had just happened. He wasn’t ready to digest how unwonted he’d just acted, and most importantly, why. He wasn’t sure who he was becoming.
He still wasn’t even remotely disgusted by spiders, but he hoped that telling Peter that he was would give him some peace of mind.
But then, he felt himself yawn, and thought, fuck it, it probably won’t kill me, and turned towards his bedroom instead to get some rest. He’d deal with the spider in the morning. There was nowhere to safely set it free in city, but he refused to make Peter uncomfortable by killing it. Even though it would definitely be significantly easier to.
Tony slept like a baby, and the next day, printed out an article for Peter about how spiders in cities were definitively increasing in size.