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Rhodey has finally reached the point in his life where he can expect to enjoy quiet, laid-back Sundays. He considers himself semi-retired, sticking mostly to consulting work and only suiting up for small-scale operations, leaving the truly world-ending threats to a younger, less breakable crowd of hero-types. It’s a little bittersweet, to be sure—leaving behind the high-flying, high-octane, heart-in-your-throat expeditions—but he won’t deny that there is a certain charm that comes with these quieter, lazier weekends. He feels like he’s earned it, at least.
He’s still a military man through-and-through and maintains a strict, if far less demanding, schedule for his Sundays: a morning run in the park, a long shower and a late breakfast, then spending the rest of his afternoon working on his memoirs, maybe catching a baseball game here and there.
This schedule does not include unannounced visits from Tony Stark before Rhodey’s had his first cup of coffee, although knowing Tony as well as he does, Rhodey supposes he should really pencil this potential scenario in.
“Unless you’re here to take me out to breakfast, the answer is no,” Rhodey tells him, getting a mug down from the cabinet over the coffee maker.
“I need you,” Tony says.
Rhodey pours himself a cup of coffee. “Is that a general statement about my importance in your life, or do you require my assistance for some specific purpose? ‘Cause I got a pretty busy day planned.”
“Both,” Tony replies, sitting down on a barstool at the kitchen island. “Something’s come up and I need your help.”
“You’re going to have to give me a better sales pitch than that if you want me going anywhere with you,” Rhodey says, turning around to face Tony. “The Phillies are playing this afternoon.”
“Alright—how’s this: Peter’s missing. We need to find him.”
Rhodey burns his tongue on his coffee. “Missing?”
“Yes. Since at least mid-morning on Friday,” Tony says, rapping his knuckles against the countertop. “Got a call about a half-hour ago from his buddy Ned. He told me him and some friends threw Pete a little birthday party at his place Thursday night. Next morning, Peter was supposed to take Ned to the train station, only he’s apparently disappeared off the face of the Earth. Left his phone and wallet at his apartment. No one’s seen or heard from him since the party. That good enough for you?”
Rhodey shakes his head. “I think you might be overreacting. He’s probably just sleeping off a hell of a hangover somewhere.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” Tony leans forward, staring pleadingly into Rhodey’ eyes. “But this is Peter—idiotic, self-sacrificing, completely-devoid-of-common-sense Peter. I have a small, vaguely paternal sense of responsibility for him. If he’s bleeding to death in some alley, I need to know. It’s going to drive me crazy if I don’t, and then I’m going to do questionable, desperate, potentially illegal things in my quest to find out, and you and Pepper will have to clean up the mess. You know this to be true.”
“Jesus, give me strength,” Rhodey mutters, closing his eyes and pressing his fingers to his temples. He takes a deep breath before looking at Tony, already feeling weary down to his very bones. “Fine. But I’m expecting tickets to the next Phillies’ game.”
Tony comes around the island and plants a wet kiss on Rhodey’s cheek. “My hero. Season tickets. Private luxury suite. Anything you want, buddy.”
Rhodey pushes him off, already regretting opening the door for him. “Let’s just go and get this done, alright?”
****************************
“So what’s the plan?” Rhodey asks as Tony deftly navigates the car through traffic. “I’m assuming you have a plan.”
“I have FRIDAY running facial recognition scans using security cameras around the city. Hopefully something will pop up,” Tony replies. “And Ned’s calling around to everyone in their social circle in case Peter turns up with someone.”
“That’s it? That’s the scope of your plan?” Rhodey asks, taking a long slug of coffee out of the thermos he’s brought along. He’s really trying to cut back on his caffeine, but he has a feeling he’s going to need this extra boost today.
“Well, that’s why I brought you along,” Tony explains. “You have more expertise in this area. The slumlord who owns Peter’s apartment building also owns the buildings on either side and across the street. The security cameras the cheap bastard put up are apparently for appearances only, because they haven’t recorded footage in years, so if someone nabbed Pete in front of his building and shoved him in the trunk of a car, we won’t know. And he doesn’t have his phone on him, so no tracking that way. This is gonna have to be low-tech, old school sleuthing mission.”
“Well, that doesn’t exactly sound promising. Have you thought about calling the police?”
“No police,” Tony says firmly. “I’m trying to keep this…covert. You know, on the off-chance it has something to do with his—alter ego. The Spidey suit’s been offline all weekend so it isn’t likely this is related to his extracurriculars, but the kid is very precious about his identity. Also, I would really prefer if his aunt doesn’t catch wind about this.”
Rhodey’s head whips around. “You haven’t told his aunt that her child is missing?”
“I don’t want to worry her prematurely, is all. She gets very worried very easily. It’s like you said—this is probably not a big deal.”
“You’re scared of her,” Rhodey corrects. “You’re not telling her because you’re scared of a tiny Italian widow.”
“Okay, yes, that is also true,” Tony admits. “But I don’t think that’s unreasonable. May can be very scary. Anyway, I’ve got Happy keeping her preoccupied. He can break the news, if it becomes necessary. She likes him better than me.”
Rhodey rolls his eyes. “Alright. Fine. You said the party was at Pete’s place, right? Let’s talk to the roommate first. And Tony?” he adds seriously. “Play nice.”
“Oooh-ho, you mean like a good cop, bad cop routine?”
“I mean like don’t be an asshole,” Rhodey says sharply. “I know how you feel about Johnny, but being a dick is not going to be helpful.”
“What do you mean?” Tony asks innocently. “I get along great with that moronic arsonist.”
****************************
Twenty minutes later, they’re standing inside Peter’s cramped apartment, which is still strewn with the remains of what had to have been quite a party, judging by the enormous number of empty beer cans littering the floor and the fact that Peter’s roommate is definitely still very hungover. It doesn’t bode well for their investigation, Rhodey thinks a little despairingly, but he keeps that to himself because he can tell Tony is already on edge despite the man's efforts to present a strong front.
“Do I need a lawyer or something?” Johnny asks warily from where they’ve sat him down on the beat-up sofa.
“Relax. We’re just trying to get some information that could help us figure out where Peter is,” Rhodey says.
“Lying to Iron Man and War Machine is, however, a very bad idea,” Tony adds, ignoring the glare Rhodey shoots his way. “Definitely criminal in spirit even if you’re technically not breaking any laws.”
“Just tell us everything you know, all right?” Rhodey says tiredly.
“Okay. Yeah…here’s the thing…this could possibly be—in a very teeny, tiny way—partially my fault,” Johnny admits.
“You’re gonna have to expound upon that,” Rhodey says, ignoring the dark muttering Tony is already doing under his breath.
Johnny grimaces briefly and then launches into it. “Right. Okay, so like this one time a few months back, me and Petey watched this YouTube video about spiders weaving crazy webs on LSD. So we got curious about what would happen if, you know, someone with weird spidery DNA were to take some acid. So we ran a little scientific experiment."
“What are you saying—that you dosed him with LSD?” Tony asks, horrified.
“One time. For science,” Johnny stresses. “And it’s not like I slipped it into his coffee MK-Ultra-style. He was a willing and enthusiastic participant. But the thing is—it barely did anything. He got really bad motion sickness for like ten minutes, then he puked a couple times and was completely back to normal. It was incredibly disappointing, actually.”
Tony turns to Rhodey. “Hold me back or I’m gonna commit a murder.”
Rhodey roll his eyes again. “What is the point of this story, exactly?”
“The point is—I wanted to make sure Pete had an awesome twenty-first birthday party, and I was pretty sure tequila shots weren’t gonna do the trick,” Johnny says. “So I pulled a few strings, asked some people in the know, promised my firstborn child, that sort of thing, and got my hands on some Asgardian mead. The real deal, straight from New Asgard—not any of that knock-off crap they make in Denmark.”
“Oh, that’s great,” Rhodey mutters.
“Let me guess,” Tony says flatly. “That did the trick.”
“Yeah, a little too well,” Johnny says. “Peter was completely trashed like an hour into the party. MJ ordered this big fancy cake, and the guy wasn’t even able to blow out the candles.”
Rhodey pinches the bridge of his nose. “Alright. Then what?”
“Then nothing,” Johnny says, shrugging. “We got him undressed, put him in bed, and carried on celebrating in his name. Everyone left by around two in the morning. Pete was fine, just sleeping it off, so I went out to grab a bite with a friend, and then I went to her place after. Peter was gone when I came home later that morning, and I just assumed he’d gone to see Ned off at the train station and then went to hang out with MJ or study or something. I didn’t know anything had gone wrong until Ned called me from Boston this morning asking if I knew where he was.”
“Alright, the total idiocy of leaving your drunk, unconscious friend alone and unattended aside—nothing was out of place here in the apartment when you got back?” Tony asks, eyeing the scorch marks marring the carpet and the ceiling and the broken lock on the door.
Johnny shakes his head. “Nope. Everything was exactly how I left it.”
“Alright, so—if Peter’s not with any of his friends, and he’s not out as Spider-Man, where would he be?” Rhodey asks.
“The library at ESU,” Johnny answers immediately. “Dude is a huge nerd with no social life. He spends hours there.”
Rhodey looks over at Tony. “Guess that’s our next stop, then.”
Johnny hops up. “I’m coming with you.”
“Absolutely not,” Tony says firmly.
“How are you going to get into the library if I don’t come along?” Johnny says stubbornly. “You have to have a student ID to get in.”
“Uh, I’m Tony Stark. I can get in anywhere. You’re a very minor celebrity—you must enjoy some of those perks.”
“Minor,” Johnny splutters indignantly. “Hey, last time I checked I had as many Twitter followers as you, and I haven’t been building my brand nearly as long as you have.”
“Can we quit the dick measuring contest and go find Peter before we lose any more time and I lose any more brain cells?” Rhodey cuts in. “The two of you are exhausting together.”
“I’m coming,” Johnny insists. “You need me. I know all the places he hangs out.”
“He has a point,” Rhodey says to Tony. “Let him come.”
Tony rolls his eyes. “Fine, kid, you can come. But you’re not riding with us. I don’t want you accidentally spontaneously combusting in the back of my favorite Audi. I heard you had a little issue with that. Hair trigger and all.”
Johnny flushes. “I—no, not anymore, I mean, very rarely—”
“Tony, quit antagonizing that child,” Rhodey says.
“He started it,” Tony protests.
Rhodey sighs, massaging the growing ache in his forehead before turning to Johnny. “Just meet us there, alright?”
Johnny gives a sloppy salute. “Yes, sir. By the way, I’ve always thought War Machine was a million times more badass than Iron Man.”
Tony jabs a finger at Johnny as Rhodey pushes him towards the door. “Just keep digging that grave, pal. I’m keeping tabs on all of this.”
Tony is unusually silent on the drive over to the library, gripping the steering wheel so tightly the whole time that his knuckles turn white. Rhodey casts concerned glances his way, but Tony takes no notice, clearly lost in some kind of internal turmoil.
“What are you thinking, Tones?” Rhodey finally asks as they pull into a parking spot near the library. “You’ve been very quiet.”
“I’m just feeling a little shell-shocked right now,” Tony says, clutching at his chest. “I can’t believe some of the things we heard in there. It’s like Peter is complete stranger to me. I mean, LSD? What else is he getting up to—BDSM sex dungeons?”
“He’s in college, Tony. This is the time when kids get to experiment,” Rhodey soothes. “Don’t you remember our college days?”
“Some of them.”
“Exactly. That kid has a lot more responsibilities than the average twenty-one-year-old. Let him have a little fun.”
Tony squints over at Rhodey as he turns the car off. “You know, I always thought you’d be the stern, strict dad, and I’d be the laidback chill one who buys our kids beer on the weekend.”
Rhodey shakes his head. “Nah, man, I’ve always been the chill one. You’re the boozy neurotic housewife.”
“Thanks, darling, I’ve always appreciated how good you are at destroying my cherished illusions about myself. Keeps me humble,” Tony says, rubbing his sternum. “God, I’m getting heartburn. Do you think I’m gonna have to do this again with Morgan?”
“Let’s just say Morgan has more common sense at three than Pete does at twenty-one. She takes after her mother, thank god.”
“Amen to that,” Tony agrees, blowing a kiss heavenward as he gets out of the car.
****************************
Peter has never, not once, been hungover before, and he’s pretty sure it’s the absolute worst he has ever felt in his entire life—worse than that time he had a building dropped on him as a teenager, worse than that time that rhinoceros guy fractured his skull during a fight, maybe even worse than that time he died. In fact, death seems almost like it would be a sweet relief given how absolutely, totally, unbearably awful Peter currently feels.
And if the brain-melting headache, gut-rearranging nausea, and general overwhelming sense of ickiness were not already terrible enough on their own, he’s also woken up to find that his hands are cuffed behind his back, he’s wearing nothing but a pair of boxers, and he’s riding in the passenger seat of an unfamiliar car being driven by an unfamiliar person.
Peter spends several minutes blinking groggily at the strange woman sitting next to him in the driver’s seat, trying to remember how to form coherent words. His mouth is dry and tastes unpleasantly like puke, even though he can’t remember throwing up.
The woman finally glances over and notices that he’s awake. She flashes him a smile. “Well, hey there, sleepyhead. I was starting to think you’d be out the whole trip.”
“Am I being kidnapped right now?” Peter asks.
“Only if you don’t want to be here,” Stranger Lady cheerfully replies.
Peter peers out the car windows at the scrubby, terra-cotta colored terrain that stretches off all around them, terminating on the distant horizon in huge pastel-hued mountains.
“Um. Where exactly is here? Is this like—” he takes a wild stab in the dark—“Indiana?”
Stranger Lady giggles. “Indiana. You’re too funny.”
“Thanks, I tend to use humor to cope with stress,” Peter says as he flexes against the handcuffs, which alarmingly refuse to break. “And I gotta say, I’m a little stressed right now. The whole waking up handcuffed in my underwear in a stranger’s car doesn’t exactly feel like a consensual situation. I’m a very vanilla person.”
“Oh yeah, wearing skin-tight red spandex and tying people up every night definitely sounds very vanilla,” Stranger Lady says with an exaggerated, conspiratorial wink.
The nausea Peter’s been experiencing gets suddenly, impossibly worse. “Excuse me?” he squeaks out, fighting his gag reflex. “I’m—really not sure what you’re talking about. I don’t—what?”
Stranger Lady giggles again. “Oh, you want to play dumb. I love it when smart boys play dumb. So charming. Don’t take this the wrong way, sweetheart,” she adds, looking Peter up and down. “But you’re really not what I expected.”
“Probably because I’m definitely not who you think I am,” Peter insists, squirming in the seat as he tries to break his restraints again. “I’m just—just a college student—and—jeez, are these cuffs vibranium by any chance?”
“Adamantium, actually.”
“Wow, okay,” Peter says, trying to quell a rising sense of panic. “Doesn’t that seem kinda overkill?”
“Not for someone who can throw a taxi cab the length of a city block the way ordinary people toss frisbees.”
“Listen, lady, you seem pretty nice and all so maybe we can just—just talk about this,” Peter babbles. “I really think there’s been some kind of terrible misunderstanding, and—”
Stranger Lady whips an arm out and jams something under Peter’s collarbone, and Peter realizes that he was absolutely dead wrong about the hangover being the worst he’s ever felt, because what he is now experiencing is like some torture out of the deepest pits of hell. His entire body is seizing up like it’s trying to twist itself apart and his lungs are being squeezed so tightly he can’t breathe.
“Oh, fuck,” Peter says, or at least he intends to. What comes out instead is a sort of garbled, wheezy squeaking. The agony continues for what feels like an eternity, until blackness is starting to cloud the edges of his vision, and then he is abruptly released.
“Holy shit,” he mumbles once he’s caught his breath a little, his tongue and mouth and lungs finally all cooperating more or less together. He can smell something like ozone. “Did you...did you just tase me?”
“Modified cattle prod,” Stranger Lady corrects. Her sunny demeanor is gone now, replaced by a cold professionalism. “Had you been a normal college student like you claim to be, you would be dead as a doornail right now. Hell, even if you were a two-thousand pound bull you’d be fried like an egg.”
“Jeez, that’s kind of a huge gamble,” Peter says faintly. His limbs are still making involuntary jerking motions. “What if I really was just a normal college student?”
“Collateral damage,” Stranger Lady replies coolly.
“Wow, I take it back—you are not a nice lady at all,” Peter slurs mournfully. He looks down at his lap. “I think I just peed myself.”
Stranger Lady pulls a pair of sunglasses off the sun visor and slips them on her face. “Don’t worry about it, honeybee. This is a rental. You’re probably not the first person to piss on the upholstery.”
“Can you at least tell me where we’re going?” Peter asks.
“And ruin your birthday surprise? I don’t think so,” Stranger Lady says, back to sounding chipper.
“I feel like this is going to be a really shitty surprise,” Peter mumbles, looking sadly out the window. He can see for what has to be hundreds of miles in every direction, and there isn’t a building or another car and even just a place to hide anywhere in sight. “Can I know how far away we are?”
“You’re cute, but you ask too many questions,” Stranger Lady says before sticking Peter with the cattle prod again, holding it in place this time until he’s violently hurled back into darkness.
****************************
Rhodey has been on college campuses numerous times over the years, but it was usually in the role of guest lecturer in some auditorium or classroom, or occasionally as the commencement speaker at a graduation. It definitely did not involve wandering through the school’s library accompanied by two other extremely recognizable superhero celebrities. It’s feeling a little more awkward than usual to be sure, and he counts it as a small blessing that the summer term means the number of students present and ogling is a little thinner than it would be during the fall semester.
“Hey—that dude over there,” Johnny says, pointing to a student hunched over a laptop at one of the tables along the wall. “He was at the party. He’s in one of me and Pete’s classes.”
“Let’s talk to him, then,” Rhodey says.
“Can I do the interrogation?” Johnny asks eagerly. “And you two can give me feedback? You know, so I can learn from the veterans?”
“No,” Tony says, at the same time Rhodey says, “Yes.”
“Tony, come on,” Rhodey says. “Give him a chance. This is a good learning opportunity.”
“I already have a charming idiot protege,” Tony protests. “I don’t need another. One is obviously more than I can handle.”
Rhodey thinks his eyes will fall out of his head if he rolls them again. “I swear to god, the two of you are gonna—fine. He can be my protege.”
“Holy shit, this is amazing,” Johnny breathes out, practically glowing with joy. “War Machine is my mentor.”
“Just get to it, kid,” Rhodey sighs, shoving Johnny towards the student.
“Right. I got this.” Johnny marches over to the table and waves a hand in the student’s face. The kid looks up with a scowl, taking his headphones off and hanging them around his neck.
“Hey, man,” Johnny says curtly. “You seen Peter Parker?”
“Well, that’s a good start,” Tony mutters. “Maybe a little too aggressive tonally.”
Rhodey shushes him.
The student looks up at Johnny blankly. “Who?”
“Peter Parker,” Johnny repeats. “You were just at his birthday party this past Thursday.”
The student shrugs. “Sorry, man. I don’t know him.” He looks over Johnny’s shoulder at Tony and Rhodey and gapes. “Holy shit, is that Tony Stark?”
“Dude—focus. Peter Parker. He’s in our biochem class,” Johnny presses. “Little guy, maybe a buck-forty soaking wet but has a bangin’ tight bod, wavy brown hair, big dumb Bambi eyes, likes Star Wars and old movies and corny science pun t-shirts—”
Tony makes an exasperated noise. “Jesus, are you providing a missing person description or are you making a Grindr profile for him?” He fishes his phone out of his pocket and scrolls through his photos for a picture of Peter. He holds it up in front of the student’s face. “This kid right here. Seen him in the past couple of days? Know anything about him or where he might be?”
The student squints at the picture for a second, then shrugs again. “Sorry, I really have no idea who that is.”
Johnny leans down and snaps his fingers under the student’s nose. “Dude, come on—Peter Parker. Always shows up to class like twenty-minutes late and then sleeps through the rest of the lecture? Fucks up the grading curve for everyone after every exam?”
“Oh, that asshole,” the student says darkly. “Yeah, haven’t seen him.” He turns his attention back to Tony. “Can I give you my resume? It’s been a dream of mine to work for SI since I was in elementary school, and I think I could bring a lot of innovative ideas—”
“Listen,” Tony interrupts, using his phone to hijack the printer at the end of the table and print off copies of Peter’s picture. “You pass that photo around campus and get some kind of useful information out of someone that can help us locate Peter Parker, and I’ll hand you an entry-level position in any department you want. Full-benefits package—medical, retirement, vacation, yada, yada—the whole shebang. Just help us find this kid. Please."
“Oh my god, yes, absolutely I can do that. Do I—how do I contact you if I get some info? Can I—can I have your email address? A phone number?” The student looks up at Tony with wide, hopeful eyes.
Tony motions to Rhodey. “Give the kid your number.”
“What? No. I’m not giving some kid my number,” Rhodey says firmly.
“Yes, you are. Part of mentoring young superheroes is getting annoying phone calls from random children at all hours of the day and night. Give it.”
“I hate you,” Rhodey tells Tony as he scribbles down his personal number on the student’s notebook. “Destroy that,” he tells the kid. “If you hand it out to anyone else, War Machine will bust down your door in the middle of the night and drop your ass in the East River, you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” the student replies, looking absolutely ecstatic at the mere thought of that happening.
They spend another couple of hours interrogating students and library staff and searching every nook and cranny of the library as well as several other buildings on campus without making any significant progress in their search. Rhodey checks his watch—the Phillies game is about to start. He sighs.
“Are we sure Peter actually attends this school?” he asks. “No one seems to have any idea who he is.”
“Well, I mean, he’s kind of a shy weirdo who doesn’t have a lot of time for a social life,” Johnny explains. “I think this birthday party was like the first big college party he’s ever been to, and look what happened to him. Poof—vanished without a trace. He could be dead for all we know.”
“Okay, let’s cool it with that kind of talk,” Rhodey says in a low voice, looking over at Tony, who’s rubbing at his sternum again and looking more than a little tense. “I think we need to regroup. We’re not finding anything here. Tony?”
Tony straightens up. “You’re right, we need to move on.” He turns to Johnny. “Okay, Pyro, think very hard. Can you remember anything unusual at the party? Anyone unusual?”
Johnny frowns, chewing his lip. “Well,” he says slowly. “Harry was there.”
“Harry who?”
“Osborn. I didn’t want to invite him, but Pete insisted. Petey’s always sticking up for him and blaming his garbage behavior on drugs and his crappy relationship with his dad, but Harry’s a total dick even when he’s sober if you ask me.”
“Wow, we actually agree on something,” Tony says.
“You know, Tones, I thought you of all people would be able to muster up an iota of compassion for a kid like Harry Osborn,” Rhodey admonishes.
Tony blows a raspberry. “Wrong—any similarities in our backgrounds means I get to judge his character failures harder. And speaking of sticks in the mud—tell us more about Harry,” he says to Johnny.
“Well, Pete and MJ got back together like a few months ago and they came to the party together. Harry was being a total pissy baby about it, just sitting alone and sulking like a jealous shit-head the whole time instead of taking his salty ass home.”
“So, okay,” Rhodey says, putting the picture together in his mind. “Harry has a thing for MJ, he’s jealous of Peter—you think maybe he would act on that?”
Johnny frowns. “A thing for MJ? No, dude—Harry’s got a thing for Peter. Really bad. He never got over the last time they broke up.”
Tony make a choking sound. “Peter. And Harry. Harry Osborn. The same Harry Osborn who’s been arrested on drug charges three times this past year alone and repeatedly kicked out of rehab for bad behavior.”
“Yeah, that Harry Osborn,” Johnny says. “They’ve dated on and off since freshman year.”
“Peter never told me that,” Tony says, looking like Johnny’s just slapped him across the face.
Johnny shrugs. “I dunno what to tell you. I mean, it wasn’t some secret. They were mentioned together in the tabloids and on celebrity gossip blogs all the time.”
“Yeah, and those same tabloids and blogs say me and Captain America have been having a decade long affair,” Tony says irritably. “It’s crass speculation. Peter’s never made it sound like they were anything more than friends.”
“No, man, they were definitely banging,” Johnny says. “Trust me—I live with the guy and our apartment has paper-thin walls. Couple of times things even got pretty serious, but they always break up eventually because Harry’s an even worse disaster than Pete, and Pete’s always been crazy about MJ. The second she was willing to try a relationship with him again, Pete dropped Harry hard and fast and hopefully permanently.”
“This sounds like a goddamn soap opera,” Rhodey says, holding his head in his hands again. “I seriously don’t have time to involve myself this deeply in the love lives of college students. Tony, let’s just go. Tony?”
“I just. I can’t believe this,” Tony says weakly, with something like abject horror on his face. “Peter. My Petey. And that—spoiled trust fund junkie with the bad attitude and mile-long rap sheet? He deserves better than that.”
Rhodey grabs Tony’s shoulder and gives him a little shake. “Tony, man, get a grip. Peter’s still missing. You can ground him when we get him back.”
“I mean, what is going on with that kid?” Tony continues forlornly, like he’s not even heard Rhodey at all. “How can he be so smart and yet so stupid at the same time?”
“You tell me. You seem like an expert at it,” Rhodey says drily, before summoning up his commanding officer persona. “Alright. You—” he jabs a finger at Johnny. “Go back to your apartment in case Peter comes home. No arguing. We’re going to pay a visit to this Osborn kid.”
****************************
Peter must have been out for some significant amount of time, because when he finally, painfully claws his way back to consciousness for the second time, the terrain outside the vehicle has changed. The landscape is still scrubby and dirt-colored, but it’s become more rugged and craggy, like they’ve left the valley and entered the foothills of the mountains.
The car has also gained another passenger. Peter’s been dumped in the cramped backseat, and a big man in a dark blazer has taken his previous spot in the passenger seat. The man and the woman are intently arguing together in a vaguely Germanic-sounding language.
Peter listens to them with a growing sense of unease. “Hey, is that Latverian? Are you speaking Latverian?” he finally pipes up, squirming in an attempt to peel his bare thighs off the sticky leather seat. “Oh god, are we in Latveria?”
The big man turns to look at him, scowling. “Not Latveria. Idiot,” he says in heavily accented English.
“Hey, alright—geography is not one of my strengths,” Peter admits, a little put out. “But in my defense, I’m dehydrated and starved and extremely hungover, and that crazy lady keeps electrocuting me.”
“Idiot,” the big man says again. “Stupid child. No more talking.”
“Okay, okay—just—that word you guys keep saying...Laboratórium. That means what it sounds like in English, right? Are you taking me to some evil laboratory in the middle of nowhere?” Peter asks anxiously. “Is that the plan here? What—are you gonna like, splice my DNA and make a bunch of spider-people clones or something?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Stranger Lady scoffs.
“Ridiculous? I’ve seen a lot weirder things than clones, believe me,” Peter replies, looking out the window at a deep ravine running alongside the road.
“Stupid. Shut up,” the big man barks.
Peter does as the man says, but only because he’s busy rapidly forming a plan—a dumb, desperate, barely half-baked plan, but he doesn’t exactly have a lot of time on his hands to revise, and he’s successfully winged plenty of plans on the spot based on nothing but blind optimism and sheer dumb luck.
Still, his hands are starting to sweat a little as he leans forward between the driver and passenger seats. “Hey, lady, just one more thing and I swear I’ll shut up for the rest of the trip…but can we make a quick pit stop? I really gotta take a leak.”
“No,” Stranger Lady replies. “We’re already running behind schedule. Hold it.”
“Please. It’s an emergency. I’m dying here.”
“No.”
“Seriously,” Peter begs. “I’m gonna pee in your car again, and the rental company is gonna charge you a huge cleaning fee.”
The big man starts grumbling. He digs around in the footwell and finds an empty Gatorade bottle, and tosses it into the backseat.
“Okay, are you forgetting that my hands are cuffed behind my back? What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” Peter complains. “Just pull over—it’ll only take a minute.”
The big man says something else to his companion. She makes an annoyed noise in response, but pulls the car over to stop on the narrow shoulder along the ravine.
Peter waits for them to get out, trying to calm his racing heart and still his nervous fidgeting. The big man opens Peter’s door and grabs him by the arm, hauling him roughly out. Peter staggers a little, his legs stiff from riding in the car for so long. He hobbles closer to the edge of the drop off, his knees bumping into the rusty steel crash barrier erected along the outside of the shoulder. He peers down into the ravine and does some quick mental calculations. The distance from the top of the ravine to the dry riverbed below looks reasonably survivable, as long as he avoids landing on any of the bigger, more jagged boulders liberally peppering the bottom. Easy, he thinks, his stomach churning.
“Hurry up,” Stranger Lady says, brandishing the cattle prod threateningly.
“Um, yeah, this is super awkward but can I like, get a little assistance from one of you here? I’m still kinda tied up,” Peter says, wiggling his fingers behind his back at the pair of them.
A short but tense argument in Latverian follows. Stranger Lady must win out—probably because she’s still holding the cattle prod—and big man stalks over to Peter, his face stormy and muttering threats under his breath.
“Look, dude, this is way more uncomfortable for me than you,” Peter tells him. “You don’t have to touch it. Just...pull my shorts down some so I can get a little clearance, alright?”
The big man just scowls. Peter waits with his heart hammering in his chest until the guy is standing right next to him.
“I’m really sorry about this,” Peter adds, before dropping a shoulder and tackling him. The big man stumbles backwards with a shout, his legs striking the metal barrier fence, and then he and Peter are tumbling over it together, rolling over and over down the steep side of the ravine and crashing violently into the bottom.
Peter lies sprawled out on his back gasping for air, the wind knocked out of him when they landed. He coughs and forces himself to roll over onto his belly, and from there awkwardly pushes himself up to sit on his knees.
The big man is writhing on the ground next to Peter and clutching at his leg, which sticks out at an odd angle at the knee. He’s howling and shouting curses in Latverian and English and several other languages, the words echoing against the walls of the ravine.
“Oh! Oh god—sorry! I’m so sorry—that was way more incapacitating than I meant it to be,” Peter tells him breathlessly, frozen between his conflicting need to flee and a sense of duty to help the man. “Dude, just...hold still..I’ll—”
There’s a tingling at the base of his neck. He lurches sideways just as he hears the sharp crack of a gun being fired. A little cloud of dust explodes right where he had been kneeling a second earlier, mere inches away from the big man’s head. The guy continues to scream and gesticulate wildly, this time directing his outrage towards the top of the ravine where Stranger Lady stands, a gun in her hand.
“Lady, what the hell? Stop shooting!” Peter shouts up at her.
She responds by raising her gun again. Peter scrambles up and starts running, all his senses jacked up to the extreme and screaming warnings at him. Another bullet whistles past his ear and he ducks and weaves clumsily, his balance hindered by having his hands cuffed behind his back. A third shot rings out, and this time the bullet cuts right through the meat above his hip, sending him sprawling painfully into the sharp rocks.
“Ow, god, what did I do to deserve this?” Peter moans, curling up and clamping an arm against his injured side in a feeble attempt to stop the bleeding. He flinches as a volley of gun fire breaks out, but he’s left miraculously untouched. He chances a look back and sees that the big man has somehow managed to get to his feet and has pulled out his own gun, and he and Stranger Lady are now taking shots at each other.
“And they called me stupid,” Peter mutters to himself. He curls up tighter and manages to work his cuffed hands forward under his rear and over his legs until they’re in front of his body. Then he takes advantage of his captors’ current preoccupation with murdering each other to climb up the other side of the ravine and continue his escape.
He finds climbing up the jagged, loose rocks while handcuffed a much more difficult operation than scaling the smooth, sturdy surface of a Midtown high-rise, but eventually he makes it to the top. He army-crawls along the dusty ground until the sound of gunfire is a distant echo. Then he heaves himself back up to his feet, panting and shaking from exertion and adrenaline. He’s greeted on this side by a sweeping vista into the valley below. There isn’t a building or vehicle in sight. Peter’s heart sinks a little.
“Ok, Parker, this is...totally fine. You’ve watched every episode of Bear Grylls, you can handle wilderness survival,” he tells himself under his breath. “You’re handcuffed in your underwear, you’re bleeding and—wow—still hungover, and you have no idea where you are. But you can do this. Just...keep walking until you find something. You got this. You’re Spider-Man.”
He takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders, and starts limping forward.
****************************
Rhodey is seriously regretting every life decision he’s made dating back to the day he decided to befriend that scrawny little child-prodigy at MIT. Even at that tender age, Tony would display moments of manic recklessness, a tendency that has grown with age and is on full display now, with the man seemingly hellbent on breaking every single driving law on the books in the state of New York in the shortest time possible.
“Can you slow down a little?” Rhodey complains, gripping the roof handle for dear life as Tony speeds in and out of the traffic.
“You were just complaining about how much time we’ve wasted,” Tony replies, cutting across three lanes of traffic and blasting down an exit ramp, backed by a chorus of furious honking.
“We’ll waste even more time if you get pulled over for reckless driving,” Rhodey says, frowning. “Why are you going this way? I thought we were headed over to the Osborn kid’s place.”
“Yeah, but we’re gonna swing by the compound first,” Tony says. “So you can grab a suit.”
“A suit?” Rhodey shoots an incredulous look at Tony. “Intimidating the son of one of your competitors is not a proper and justified use of War Machine.”
“Who said anything about intimidating? And I’m a little insulted that you legitimately think Norman is one of my competitors. Oscorp did $3.1 billion in sales last year—that’s not even a drop in the bucket compared to what SI did.”
“Tony, I don’t care. I’m not doing this. Forget about it. There is no stadium box luxurious enough for me to throw away my entire career so you can live out your weird overprotective dad revenge fantasy.”
“I really thought you were ride or die with me,” Tony complains. “You don’t want to help me? Fine. Guess I’ll just have to bring Iron Man out of retirement.”
“And I’m gonna laugh when Pepper gets everything in the divorce,” Rhodey replies. He holds his arm up and taps his watch. “Seriously, Tones. The clock’s running and you’re starting to lose it.”
“God—you’re right,” Tony says, sucking his teeth and pulling a sharp u-turn. “We need to hurry up and find Peter alive so I can murder that little dumbass myself.”
“Sure you will,” Rhodey says, completely on empty at this point. With Tony back on track, Rhodey takes the opportunity to turn on the radio and find the broadcast of the Phillies’ game. He leans his head back against the headrest and shuts his eyes, feeling some of the tension in his shoulders and neck ease up as the gameplay rolls over him.
He gets to listen to the game for nearly thirty blissful minutes before Tony abruptly mutes the radio.
“It’s just, you know,” Tony says as if their earlier conversation never left off, ignoring Rhodey’s protesting groan. “I don’t get why he wouldn’t tell me.”
“Probably because he knew you’d act like a huge unhinged drama queen,” Rhodey mutters.
“I’ve worked very hard over the years to build a strong relationship with that kid, so he could feel like he can confide in me about anything,” Tony continues. “And I know we’ve stumbled here and there, and I screwed up more times with him than I can count—”
“Tony—”
“But I really felt like he trusted me. I want him to trust me, Rhodey, I want him to feel like I’m safe, I can’t tell you how important that is to me, and after today I’m not sure he does, which is just...just devastating to me—”
“Tony—”
“‘Cause the thing is—the thing that really keeps me up at night—is every time I fuck up with him, I just think—god, am I gonna fuck this up with Morgan, too? Is there some kind of—of error in my DNA that Howard passed down to me where I’m just never gonna get this thing right, no matter how hard I try to do it differently—”
“Tony,” Rhodey says, reaching out to grasp Tony’s shoulder. “You’re a good father. You know that you’re a good father. You’re just stressed and freaking out for no reason.”
Tony is finally quiet, staring ahead at the road and gripping the steering wheel tight in his hands.
“It’s just...it’s been a rough day for me,” he says quietly, after a long moment.
“I know,” Rhodey says, gently squeezing his shoulder. “It’s gonna be fine, though. You’re getting yourself all worked up over nothing. I still say Pete’s safe with one of his buddies. Hell, maybe he’s with that Osborn kid.”
Tony shudders. “God, I don’t know if I want that to be true or not.”
“Well, we’re gonna find out either way.” Rhodey points through the windshield. “That’s his building right there, isn’t it?”
“That’s the one,” Tony says a little darkly, accelerating down the street and sliding to a smooth stop in the loading zone in front of the building, ignoring the NO PARKING signs. He ducks his head a little to stare up at the building’s facade, grimacing and looking a little queasy.
“You good?” Rhodey asks.
“Absolutely,” Tony answers, unbuckling his seatbelt and opening his door.
“Alright. Let’s get this shit over with,” Rhodey mutters, stepping out of the car. He’s halfway up the stairs leading to the building’s entrance when he realizes Tony isn’t following. He turns around, annoyed that more time is being needlessly wasted, until he spots Tony hunched over the hood of the car, clutching his left arm and gasping for air.
It takes half a second for Rhodey to realize what’s happening, and then he’s galloping back down the stairs, his leg braces whirring noisily with the extra effort. “Jesus, Tony, that’s not heartburn—you’re having a heart attack.”
Tony dismissively bats a hand at the air. “I’m—fine,” he gasps out, his face white as a sheet and sweat beading along his temples.
Rhodey ignores him, yanking open the passenger door of the car and leaning inside. He slaps the dashboard. “Hey, FRIDAY, get an ambulance out here.”
He waits just long enough for the A.I. to confirm the command before rushing back to Tony, grabbing him by the arms and lowering him to sit propped up against the car before the man collapses.
“Listen,” Tony says, grabbing Rhodey’s wrist. “Tell Pepper—”
“Oh, hell no,” Rhodey spits out angrily. “Don’t you even start. If you think I’m gonna let you die like this, you’re out of your goddamn mind. Not after all the crazy shit we’ve been through, and certainly not after your idiotic ass dragged me on this wild goose chase and made me miss the Phillies game.”
Tony squeezes Rhodey’s wrist even tighter, his eyes shining. “I love you, too.”
“Don’t get all soppy on me, Tony. I hate melodrama.”
“Just—find Peter for me, alright?” Tony chokes out, his head lolling against the car. “Please. Do whatever you have to do. Make sure he’s safe, then beat his ass for me. Really put the hurt on him.”
Rhodey pats Tony’s chest comfortingly. “Sure, Tones.”
“And make sure he goes to MIT for grad school. I’ve never forgiven him for turning down his acceptance there and staying here in the city for his bachelors degree.”
“Will do.”
“Morgan, too. Actually, scratch that. Let her do whatever she wants. Just—make sure she’s happy. That’s all I want for her.”
“You got it, chief.”
“I really do love you, buddy,” Tony murmurs, closing his eyes.
“Yeah, yeah, alright, I love you, too,” Rhodey sighs, listening to the distant wail of approaching sirens.
****************************
Peter is pretty sure he’s going to die.
He’s managed to find a little two-lane road, which had felt like a huge triumph when he first stumbled onto it, but that was hours ago and he has yet to see a single car approaching in either direction. For someone who has lived their entire life surrounded by the constant noise and traffic of New York City, the absolute emptiness of the road and its surroundings feels incredibly eerie, and definitely isn’t mitigating Peter’s growing sense of despair.
He supposes dying of thirst and exposure is better than being sliced into tiny bits in some lab by a bunch of surly Latverian scientists, but it’s still a pretty shitty way to go, in his opinion. He’s walked bloody holes into the bottoms of his feet and his tongue is sticking to the roof of his mouth. There’s a painful sunburn across his shoulders and the back of his neck, and the bullet wound and burns where he was jabbed with the cattle prod throb in time with the beat of his heart, so excruciating that he would cry if he wasn’t too dehydrated to produce tears.
And to top it all off, he is still—incredibly, unbelievably, horribly—hungover.
So when he hears the sound of a far-off engine after limping several more miles down the road, his immediate thought is that he’s hallucinating. It’s followed by a moment of blind panic where he thinks his kidnappers have found him again, but when he whirls around he spies an old blue pickup approaching, not his captors’ rental car.
The truck slows as it comes closer, eventually crawling to a stop beside Peter. The driver, an older man with a deeply creased, sun-browned face, leans a little ways out the open window and looks at Peter for a long, uncomfortable moment.
“Son, are you in some kind of trouble?” the man asks finally.
Peter painfully clears his throat before answering. “Yes, sir, I think that’s a reasonable assessment.”
The man leans over and opens the passenger door of the truck, then motions to Peter. “Come around and get in. I’ll give you a ride back to civilization.”
“Thank you, thank you,” Peter says, reeling in relief. He staggers around the truck and climbs clumsily inside.
The man reaches into the glove box and pulls out a bottle of water, opening the cap before handing it to Peter, who gulps down about half of it in the time it takes the man to put the truck back into gear.
“You another escapee from that UFO sex cult out in White Mesa?” the man asks in a disturbingly casual manner, as if he regularly comes across nearly-naked sex cult escapees wandering down the road in the middle of nowhere.
“Am I—? No—god, no. Although I can understand why you would make that assumption, considering...all this,” Peter replies, looking down at himself. “No, I was at party. It was my twenty-first birthday, and somehow I went from celebrating in my apartment to being out here in this mess.”
“Must have been a hell of a party,” the man says, eyeing Peter again. “Where are you from?”
“New York City.”
“Ah,” the man grunts, nodding his head like that explains everything. “You’re a long way from home.”
“Yeah…I don’t actually know how far,” Peter says. “Is this like—Ohio?”
The man gives a creaky little laugh. “Son, you think Ohio got mountains like these?”
“Maybe? I don’t really travel very much. Last couple of times I left New York City things went really bad for me, and as you can see my luck hasn’t changed at all.”
“Well, this isn’t Ohio. You’re in New Mexico.”
Peter chokes on the water. “New Mexico?”
“Yessir. The land of enchantment.”
Peter gapes out the truck’s window at the passing peaks. “No offense, but I haven’t found it very enchanting,” he says faintly.
The man laughs again. “I’ll drop you at the police station in the next town over. They’ll get you home.”
“Thanks,” Peter says again, feeling another rush of relief as he leans his aching head against the window. The radio is playing a classical music station at low volume, and between that and the rocking motion of the truck, he feels himself finally starting to relax, his eyelids drooping.
Just as he’s cautiously starting to believe that this terrible nightmare has finally come to an end, he’s abruptly roused by a reporter cutting into the broadcast with breaking news about Tony Stark.
Peter jerks upright. “Can you please turn that up?”
The man fiddles with a knob on the dash, and Peter listens to the rest of the news report with growing alarm.
“—the billionaire philanthropist and retired Avenger was rushed to a nearby hospital by ambulance after collapsing in front of a residential building in Upper East Side, Manhattan early this afternoon. Initial reports—”
“Residential building in Upper East Side—oh my god! He found out about me and Harry,” Peter says, clutching his hair. “I’ve killed Mr. Stark.”
His rescuer gives him a sidelong glance. “I think you’ve been in the sun a little too long.”
“No—no, I know him. He’s—my boss. Sort of,” Peter explains lamely. “God, someone must have told him I’m missing. This is bad, really, really bad.”
“Must be some kind of a caring boss, if a missing employee puts him in the hospital,” the man replies doubtfully. “I don’t think you oughta blame yourself.”
“No, you don’t understand—I’m…a very integral part of the company. He’s always joking that he has a bad heart and I’m going to kill him one of these days, and now I’ve actually done it,” Peter gasps out, starting to hyperventilate. “This is—this is so, so bad. He has a daughter. She’s only three-years-old! She’s never gonna know her father because of me. Oh my god—what am I gonna say to Pepper?”
“Here,” the man says, pressing the water bottle back into Peter’s hand. “Drink some more of that and try not to get yourself worked up.”
Peter barely even hears him. All he can think about now is that Mr. Stark is dead and Peter is alone on the other side of the country, and how every time he thinks he feels the absolute worst he could ever possibly feel, something happens that proves him wrong.
“This has been a very terrible birthday,” he tells the man, who pats him kindly on the forearm, and then Peter does cry—painful, dry little sobs that shake his sunburned shoulders.
He spends the rest of the trip in a kind of grief-induced catatonia, only coming out of it when the truck parks in front of a small, nondescript building that serves as the police station in whatever little village they’ve arrived at.
Peter wanders inside after his rescuer, too tired and broken-hearted to even feel self-conscious about his bizarre state of undress. There’s only a couple of people inside—a slightly overweight man in a police uniform who barely looks up from his computer when they come in, and a pleasant, maternal-looking woman seated behind the dispatcher’s desk.
“Evening, Nanette,” Peter’s rescuer greets the woman. “Found another white boy wandering near the reservation.”
Nanette looks Peter up and down. “UFO sex cult escapee?”
“Nope. This one came from a birthday party in New York City. Needs to get back home.”
“Oh, alright. That’s a little easier, then,” Nanette says. She turns her attention to Peter. “What’s your name, honey?”
“Peter. Peter Parker.”
Nanette stands up and raises a partition arm on the desk. “You come on back with me, Mr. Parker, and we’ll find you some clothes. I’ll send for the locksmith to get those handcuffs off. Then we’ll see about getting you home.”
“Actually, can I make a call now, please?” Peter asks, wringing his cuffed hands together anxiously.
“Sure, sweetheart,” the woman says, guiding him over to one of the office phones.
Peter picks the phone up a little clumsily with his cuffed hands, and then he stares dumbly at the keypad. It might be the stress or the exhaustion, or just that he’s a little too reliant on modern technology to handle these things for him, but he can’t remember anyone’s number—not May’s, or Happy’s, or MJ’s. Not even Ned’s. The only number he can remember is one he memorized back in the third grade for a landline in Queens. It feels like it’s just about the most absurd number he could possibly remember for this situation, but it’s all he has.
He dials it.
****************************
Rhodey’s sitting on an uncomfortable plastic chair in one of the hospital’s waiting rooms drinking bad vending machine coffee and checking his emails when a tall, lanky girl steps through the doors. She stops briefly at the threshold to scan the room, zeroing in on Rhodey and then striding purposefully over to him.
“You’re here with Stark, right?” the girl asks. “This is the third hospital I’ve checked since I got the news alert and my feet are killing me.”
“Not willingly, but yes,” Rhodey answers, looking her over. “You must be the girlfriend.”
“I’m Michelle. MJ. Ned says you’re looking for Peter.”
“That’s right. You got any ideas where he might be?”
“No,” MJ says, sitting down in the chair next to Rhodey and pulling her phone out. “But I think I might know who he’s with.”
She shows Rhodey a picture on her phone, of a group of college-aged kids from what must be Peter’s birthday party, all grinning at the camera, looking a little sweaty and glassy-eyed.
“See that blonde woman?” MJ asks, pointing out a woman standing in the back.
“Yep. You think she has something to do with Peter going missing?”
“I think she’s pretty suspicious,” MJ replies. “I’ve never seen her around before. At first I thought she’d tagged along with someone, but she was really weird. Like, she was trying to pass herself off as an undergrad, but she was at least fifteen years older than any of us. Makeup can only do so much. And she wasn’t drinking, which is whatever, but she did keep going outside to smoke. Only, I never actually saw her with a cigarette. She’d just be texting someone. She took a ton of pictures, too, but mostly of the apartment rather than any of us. I was watching her because I thought maybe she was planning on coming back with someone later to rob the place.”
“Nice work,” Rhodey says, impressed. “We should have talked to you first.”
“Yeah, you should have,” the girl agrees, with a look that reminds Rhodey eerily of Pepper.
“Anything else you can tell me?” he asks.
“Yeah, she had this sort of Southern accent, but it was definitely fake. I’m minoring in theater and I’ve worked with dialect coaches. I’m pretty good at picking out fake accents.”
“Can you send me that photo?” Rhodey requests, feeling a growing sense of foreboding. “And then do me a favor—get in touch with the rest of your friends and see if any of them know anything else about this woman.”
“Sure,” MJ says, exchanging the necessary information with him. She stand up, sliding her phone back into her pocket. “Is he gonna be alright?”
“We’ll find Peter, don’t worry,” Rhodey assures her.
“Not Peter. Stark,” MJ clarifies. “I try not to worry about Peter. He gets into weird shit all the time and always pulls through. But he’s gonna be really wrecked if anything bad happens to Stark. He has some serious abandonment issues and like, the biggest guilt complex in the world. He’s not gonna handle this well.”
“Yeah, he and Tony are two peas in a pod,” Rhodey says drily. “But Tony’s gonna be fine, too.”
MJ nods as she turns to leave. “Cool. I’ll send good vibes or whatever.”
Rhodey watches her go, then opens a new message on his phone. He attaches the picture and types out a message:
Nat—need a favor...
He finishes up the message and hits send right as Pepper steps into the waiting room. He rises quickly to meet her.
“How is he?” he asks in a low voice.
“He’ll live,” she replies a little curtly, her lips pressed into a thin line. “He’s asking for you.”
“You want me to kick his ass? ‘Cause I’d be happy to do it.”
“I think he’s been sufficiently chastened,” Pepper says, a smile twitching at her mouth. She squeezes Rhodey’s arm. “Whatever crazy thing he’s dragged you into, please keep it under control. I don’t want the media circus around this getting any bigger. I know I can rely on you, James.”
“Always,” Rhodey promises, kissing her cheek before heading down to Tony’s room, where he finds the man lying propped up in bed looking wan but alert.
“Sounds like you’re gonna pull through,” Rhodey says as he sits down on the chair beside the bed.
Tony shrugs. “Oh, you know me. I’m a survivor.”
“I just met Pete’s girlfriend out in the waiting room. He needs to hurry up and get his shit together and lock that down fast.”
“I know, right?” Tony agrees. “She’s brilliant and terrifying and doesn’t put up with any bullshit. Exactly what that little disaster needs. It’s good to know he at least has some standards when it comes to his romantic life.” He pauses a moment, his expression almost painfully hopeful. “She give you anything useful?”
“Possibly. But don’t get worked up,” Rhodey warns. He shows Tony the picture and shares what MJ told him.
“I sent it to Nat so she can run it through SHIELD’s systems. Maybe something will pop up, we can get a name.”
“You got Nat involved?” Tony shakes his head against the pillows. “Jesus, what happened to keeping this covert?”
“Tony, Peter’s been missing for almost three days now. This is getting serious,” Rhodey says. “And Nat is the very best at covert.”
His phone buzzes in his pocket, as if the mention of her name has summoned Natasha up. Rhodey reads the text she’s sent and scrolls through the files she’s attached, the crease between his brows deepening the more he reads.
“What’s that?” Tony prompts.
“Nothing,” Rhodey lies, putting his phone away.
“Bullshit. That was Natasha. What’d she give you?”
Rhodey breathes out slowly, rubbing his forehead. “Mystery lady’s name is Lidija Agaltsova. She’s a former Russian spy. Does shady international business operations these days, mainly for Latveria and a couple other Eastern European dictatorships. Mostly facilitating arms deals and some other less savory things.”
“Such as?”
Rhodey grimaces. “Let’s call it weird science. The sort of human experimentation that wouldn’t make it passed an ethics board. Hate to say it, but this is really looking more like an abduction.”
“Jesus,” Tony says, pressing his hands against his eyes. “What do we do now?”
“We don’t do anything,” Rhodey says firmly. “You’re gonna stay here and rest, and let me and Nat handle it from here.”
Tony drops his hands and glares at him. “If you think I’m just going to—”
“Tony, I swear if you try to—”
Tony’s phone buzzes from where it sits on a rolling tray pushed to the side of the room, interrupting their argument. Rhodey goes over and picks it up, frowning at the caller ID displayed on the screen.
“You’re getting a call from ‘#2 Fanboy,’” he tells Tony.
“That’s Ned. Put it on speaker.”
Rhodey brings the phone over near the bed and accepts the call.
“I just almost died, Ned,” Tony says by way of greeting. “Give me some good news or you might finish the job.”
He’s answered by a long silence followed by nervous spluttering on the other end of the call.
Rhodey rolls his eye. “Tony, quit exaggerating—Ned? Ned, this is James Rhodes. What do you got for us?”
“Oh my god, War Machine—hello, Colonel Rhodes, sir. Um...this is going to sound really strange, but my grandma just called me?”
Rhodey has to fight to keep the frustration out of his voice. “...okay? And?”
“And, well, she says Peter called her. He told her he’s safe, and he's at a police station in...hang on a sec, I wrote it down...uh, Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico.”
Tony and Rhodey exchange shocked looks.
“Ned, buddy, how old is Granny Leeds?” Tony asks quickly. “Is she...still in possession of all her faculties?”
“Yeah—Yes, sir. I mean, she can get a little loopy but she doesn’t make things up.”
“Ned, tell your grandma to expect a big, fat kiss on the mouth from me, and an even bigger, fatter check in the mail,” Tony says, pulling out the IV line in his arm. “I’ll be in touch in a few hours.”
“Tony, what are you doing?” Rhodey asks as Tony swings his legs over the side of the bed.
“I’m getting on my jet and going to New Mexico, obviously. Toss me my shirt, will you?”
Rhodey shakes his head. “No. Absolutely not. You’re not going anywhere. You just had a heart attack.”
“No, I had a myocardial infarction,” Tony says, walking over and getting his shirt himself. “A very mild one.”
Rhodey makes an exasperated noise. “That’s the same thing. You know that. Just stay here and rest. I’ll go get Peter.”
“I can rest on the jet,” Tony says, collecting his phone and wallet. “Come on. You can babysit me if you’re so worried.”
“Tony,” Rhodey starts.
Tony turns to him and cuts him off. “Listen, you’re not gonna win this. So either come or let me go, but save your breath.”
Rhodey clenches his jaw, then releases a pent-up breath, defeated. “Fine. But if this goes belly-up for some reason, I’m not explaining anything to Pepper or May.”
Tony claps him on the shoulder. “Knew I can count on you, buddy.”
****************************
For the second time that Sunday, Rhodey finds himself sitting in the passenger seat of a car gripping the roof handle with all his strength. This time, he’s somehow been convinced to allow a man who suffered a heart attack mere hours earlier to get behind the wheel of their rental car, and this man is now navigating a winding mountain road in the dark at unholy speeds.
“You know Peter’s not going to disappear if we drive the speed limit, right?” Rhodey asks through clenched teeth.
“Do I? Do I really know that?” Tony replies. “Think of my track record with that kid.”
“He’s fine, Tony.”
“He’s not gonna be after I get my hands on him,” Tony mutters, gunning the engine into another hairpin turn.
They miraculously avoid driving off into any ravines and make it to the police station in record time. Rhodey has to resist the urge to get out of the car and kiss the ground once they park.
“Alright, let’s collect our kid and go home before a meteor hits or something,” Tony says, unbuckling his seatbelt. “I don’t trust this good luck to last.”
They head inside and find the small office empty save for a plump little woman who is sleepily thumbing through a magazine at the dispatcher’s desk.
Tony walks over and leans against the counter, taking his glasses off and sliding them into the breast pocket of his jacket. “You must be Nanette. We spoke on the phone a few hours ago. I believe you have my missing intern.”
“You certainly got here fast,” Nanette says, setting her magazine aside. “I’m gonna need to see some ID first before I can let you go through.”
“Nanette, you are charming,” Tony says, fishing his ID out of his wallet. “I can’t remember the last time someone asked for my ID. It’s refreshing.”
“We do things by the book here,” Nanette replies, examining the ID carefully before making a copy of it and handing it back. “I have to say, we all thought that poor boy was having some kind of drug-induced break with reality when he said he knew you.”
“It is shocking, I agree. He’s something of a charity case,” Tony says, ignoring the way Rhodey scoffs.
“You’re a very kind man,” Nanette says sincerely, standing up and unlocking the little partition door separating the front of the office from the back. “You can come on through with me.”
She leads them down a narrow hallway. “He doesn’t know you’re coming. He fell asleep right before you called, and I didn’t have the heart to wake him up. You’ll be a nice surprise for him.”
“Oh, I bet,” Tony says as they follow her down the hall. “You have kids, Nanette?”
“I have two boys in high school.”
“Tell me, parent-to-parent,” Tony says, “do your kids ever drive you so crazy that you could wring their little necks?”
Nanette turns to look back at him with wide eyes.
“Hyperbole, of course,” Tony clarifies while Rhodey quietly groans. “I would never condone actual violence against a child.”
“Well, yes, they do drive me to the end of my rope sometimes,” Nanette says mildly.
She opens another door and points them through. “He’s right through there in the break room on the right. You all take as long as you need to get yourselves sorted out.”
“Thank you,” Rhodey tells her, before following after Tony.
They find Peter in the break room as promised, curled up asleep on a low cot next to a row of lockers and wearing an odd assortment of mismatched clothes.
“Hey, Pete,” Tony calls from the doorway. “How was the birthday party, bud?”
The kid startles and sits up so fast he nearly falls off of the cot. He blinks at the pair of them for a long moment, all wide-eyed shock, like he doesn’t quite believe what he sees. And then he’s completely crumpling, sobbing messily into the sleeves of the borrowed police-issue windbreaker he’s wearing.
Rhodey knows Tony very well. He sees the exact moment where Tony’s emotional fault-line shifts and all his earlier bluster predictably and catastrophically fails, but Rhodey can’t even feel too smug about it since the kid really is an absolutely pathetic sight.
“Hey, what’s all this?” Tony asks weakly. “Come on, Petey. Jesus, you're breaking my heart. You don’t have to—just get over here, kid. Why are you crying?”
“I thought you were dead,” Peter manages in between hiccuping sobs as he staggers over and practically collapses against Tony’s chest, clinging tightly to him.
“You thought I was dead?” Tony asks. “You’re the one who’s been missing all weekend. Do you have any idea how worried I was? What the hell happened?”
“It was so horrible,” Peter moans. “The worst birthday of my life. I woke up handcuffed in my underwear in a car being driven by this crazy lady—”
“Uh-huh. I’ve been there.”
“—and she kept shocking me with a cattle prod for no reason. Like, what did I ever do to her? I’ve never seen her before in my life. And later on she shot me with an actual gun.”
“Oh, kid.”
“And there was this big Latverian guy who called me stupid because I didn’t know we were in New Mexico. I’ve never been to New Mexico—how am I supposed to know it looks like this?”
“Are you getting this?” Tony asks Rhodey.
“Yep. Two individuals, likely our female ex-spy traveling with a male companion, possibly Latverian, heading northwest via car through New Mexico,” Rhodey says, typing on his phone. “Texting Nat now.”
“And I had to jump into this ravine to escape,” Peter continues, sniffling, “and the two of them went completely nuts and started shooting at each other, and I walked like a million miles alone in the desert and I was definitely going to die until this guy picked me up—”
“It’s okay now, you’re okay—”
“And on the radio they were saying you were dead,” the kid says, crying harder again.
“But I’m not dead. I'm right here. Peter, Pete—buddy, stop crying,” Tony pleads. “You gotta stop crying.”
“I will not stop crying. I am very upset and overwhelmed and still hungover, and I peed myself, too,” Peter says, sniffing wetly. “Not now. Earlier in the car with the crazy lady.”
“Don’t sweat it—I peed myself on my twenty-first birthday, too,” Tony says. “Ask Rhodey.”
“He did,” Rhodey confirms, patting Peter’s back comfortingly. “And it was not the last time he ruined a couch cushion, believe me.”
“See?” Tony tells Peter. “Happens to the best of us, bud. Nothing to be ashamed about. Do you know where these two were taking you?”
“I dunno. I think they said something about a laboratory,” Peter says, wiping his streaming nose on the front of Tony’s shirt. “I’m assuming they were planning on chopping me down to my molecules to try to use my DNA to like, engineer an army of spider-people-super-soldier clones or something.”
“That sounds...implausible. But wilder things have happened, I suppose.”
“Can we please just go home now?” Peter begs. “I wanna go home.”
“Absolutely,” Tony says, putting an arm around Peter’s shoulders and steering him towards the exit. “We’re gonna let Rhodey deal with the police, and then we’re going home. Hey, I’ll even throw you another birthday party when we get back, since this one was such a spectacular disaster.”
“No,” Peter replies, looking haunted. “No more parties. Ever.”
****************************
Rhodey finishes up dealing with various law enforcement agencies over the phone while aboard the jet somewhere in the air above St. Louis. He heads back into the cabin to find Tony sitting with his bare feet propped up on the seat opposite him, a steaming mug balanced on the arm of his chair.
“Where’s Peter?” Rhodey asks.
“In the back sleeping. Kid’s exhausted after his little field trip through hell,” Tony says, sipping at his mug.
“Should you be drinking coffee?” Rhodey asks, removing Tony’s feet from the seat and sitting down.
“It’s tea. Decaf. Don’t give me that look.”
“I’ll look at you any way I want,” Rhodey retorts, leaning back in the seat. “I’ve just been tying up all our loose ends.”
Tony raises his eyebrows. “And?”
“Local law enforcement nabbed the abductors. They’re in the FBI’s hands now. The Latverian guy broke down pretty fast under questioning. That lead to a raid on a secret laboratory outside of Los Alamos. Found tons of evidence of illegal chemical weapons manufacturing and bizarro experiments with genetic engineering. Whole thing has links to a big-name pharmaceutical company. There’s gonna be a hell of scandal when the press gets wind of it.”
“Huh. Maybe Pete’s whacko theory about spider-people clones wasn’t so far off,” Tony says casually, taking another sip of his tea. Rhodey watches him, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Tony eventually notices. “What’s that?”
“Nothing. You’re just looking very...” Rhodey considers for a moment, trying to find the right word. “Settled.”
“Well. Now that we got the kid back...All might not be well in the world, but all is well in my little world, so yes,” Tony agrees, “I’m feeling rather dandy.”
Rhodey smiles. “Listen to you. You should’ve gotten married and had kids years ago. It hasn’t made you any more relaxed, maybe even the opposite, but it’s narrowed your perspective, let’s say. In a good way, you know—simplified things. You got your priorities straight now.”
Tony returns his smile. “Bet you thought that would never happen.”
“Let’s say I had hope,” Rhodey says. “I had a lot of hopes for you, Tones. Still do.”
Tony leans forward and claps a hand on Rhodey’s knee. “I couldn’t have done this without you, buddy.”
“Yes, you could have. It just would’ve been a hundred times sloppier and required a hell of a lot more paperwork.”
“No, I mean, all of this,” Tony says, his eyes serious. “You’ve always stuck by me.”
Rhodey drops his head back and groans. “Oh god, don’t start with this sappy shit again, I swear...Just tell me you recorded the Phillies game, and I’ll know how much you care without you having to say another word.”
“Of course I did,” Tony says, sitting back and swiveling his chair towards the TV screen affixed to the bulkhead. “You got my back, and I got yours, honeybear. FRI, play the game.”
“Finally,” Rhodey sighs, settling into his seat as the screen comes to life.