Work Text:
The call comes in at 7:31pm. Tony’s down in the tower lab with AC/DC blasting, working on repairing the significant damage to Peter’s suit.
“Pause it, FRI," he says, the music cutting off. Tony presses the answer button.
“Hey May."
“Hey Tony, listen… do you think you could come over tonight?”
Tony’s brow furrows. “Sure, no problem. Everything alright?”
“It’s Peter. He’s just been so distant this last week, ever since-- you know. He won’t talk to me about it but I can tell it’s really affecting him. If he’s not at school he’s in his room, and Ned told me he won’t talk to him either. I’m starting to get worried he’s suppressing it all, and you know what happens when he does that.”
Tony nods, even though May can’t see him. “It just explodes some other way. No worries, May, I can be there in thirty.”
“Thank you, Tony.”
May answers the door not three seconds after Tony’s knock, as if she was hovering nearby, waiting for him.
“He’s in his room.”
Tony gives her a small hug, one fervently returned, before stepping past her and down the hallway toward Peter’s bedroom. He taps two short knocks.
“I told you I was working,” Peter sneers through the door.
“It’s Tony, kid.”
There’s some shuffling before Tony hears the door unlock. But the kid doesn’t open it. After ten seconds he sighs and turns the knob.
Peter is back at his desk, head turned away from Tony. He seems to be frantically writing out formulas, his handwriting more illegible than normal, but Tony doesn’t see any of his usual textbooks laid out.
“Hey Pete, how you doing?”
“Busy. Stressed. Annoyed. Why are you here?”
Tony ignores the sting he feels at Peter’s dismissive tone, instead moving to sit on the kid’s bed, just a few feet away from him.
“Think you can spare a few minutes to talk to an old man, underoos?”
Peter closes his eyes and lets out a deep sigh of annoyance, before setting his pen down and turning to face the man.
“If I must. What do you want to talk about, Tony?"
Tony bites down the retort on the tip of his tongue from how bitter the kid managed to sound. Peter was a lot of things when he was trying to bottle his emotions, but being cruel was not usually one of them. Yet the casual way with which he was displaying clear disgust at Tony’s intrusion was bordering on outright vicious. Not to mention that Peter’s never once in the nine months the man’s known the kid called Tony by his first name.
May was right. Something is seriously wrong.
“I want to talk about the fact that your aunt called me over here because of the way you’ve been acting this past week. She said you’ve been distant, refusing to talk to her or your friends, only to spend all your time cooped up in here. And kid? I’ve only been here two minutes, and she’s right - you don’t seem like yourself tonight. But this snarky asshole bullshit you’re trying to sell right now? It’s not going to push me away. So talk to me, kid. What’s going on in that head of yours?”
Peter stares at Tony in stony silence as he talks, his face warping into an expression of anger for a split second at the snarky asshole comment before he looks down at the ground, rubbing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Look, I’m sorry. I’m just really tired, and I am actually very busy, and it came out wrong. But I’m fine, alright?”
Tony shakes his head. “No way, kid. I know you, and that display just now shows me that it’s more than being tired and busy. I’m just going to lay it out there– is this about what happened to Doc Ock?”
Peter’s head shoots up, a look of fear in his eyes before he hides it away, so quickly Tony isn’t sure how he caught it. But he did, and it tells Tony all he needs to know. “Ah, so it is.”
Peter gives him a hard look, lips pressed thin. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Tony leans forward and puts his hand on Peter’s knee. He tries not to feel hurt at the way Peter tenses up at the touch, staring down at Tony’s hand with disdain before looking back up at his mentor, eyes wary.
“Listen, Peter. You don’t have to act like you’re okay, alright? What happened with Octavius, well, that would mess anyone up, me included. But I need you to hear me when I say that his death? It isn’t on you. You were just trying to defend yourself from the actions of a crazed madman.”
Peter’s mouth twists at Tony’s last words but he says nothing, just stands and walks over to his closet, back turned to Tony, head down and arms crossed as if thinking. When he turns around ten seconds later, there are tears in his eyes, and he pins Tony with an expression of utter devastation.
“You’re right, Mister Stark. I– I just feel like it’s my fault, you know? Because if I hadn’t activated Instant Kill th-then Dr. Octavius might still be alive. But I got so scared and I was in so much pain and I really thought he was about to kill me after the way he’d trapped me down in his lab…”
Peter walks across the room, sits down on the bed and wraps his arms around Tony and sobs into his shoulder.
“I just feel so awful about it.”
The sudden change in Peter’s demeanor is jarring, taking Tony totally off-guard. Usually the kid opened up more slowly, his moods less shifting and more evolving as he talked through whatever happened to be bothering him. The sobs were also new– Tony had never seen more than a pained red staining his eyes and maybe one or two fallen tears.
But Peter is clearly in a lot of distress, so he lets his confusion go, hugging the kid right back. They sit like that for a few minutes, Tony rubbing his back and whispering small words of comfort as the kid just lets it all out.
Once he’s all cried out, Peter pulls away, wiping at his eyes. “I’m sorry if I’ve ruined your shirt just now, Mister Stark.”
Tony shakes his head, a small laugh escaping him as he looks down at the old t-shirt he’s got on. “Do you not see all the grease and coffee stains on it, kid? Some tears and snot are the least of my concerns.”
His eyes go soft as Peter giggles. “And don’t apologize, Pete. It’s okay to cry.”
Peter gives him a tiny smile. “Thank you, Mister Stark. Sorry again for being a jerk before. I’ll be sure to apologize to May too.”
Tony ruffles the kid’s hair. “There’s the Peter Parker I’m used to. I knew he was somewhere under there.”
Peter huffs out a laugh before looking back at the notes on his desk, a look of anticipation on his face. He turns back to Tony.
“Uh, I know I just said I was done being a jerk, but I do so very much want to keep working on my project. Maybe I could come by the tower Saturday afternoon though?”
Tony’s brow furrows at that - the kid usually reserves Saturdays for hanging out with his buddy Ned - but decides not to comment on it.
“Pete, we’re definitely not done talking about this, but,” he begins, then pauses at the flicker of annoyance that moves across the kid’s face. "But I suppose we’ve made sufficient progress for one night.”
The annoyance is replaced with a pleased smile. “Great!”
Peter stands up and moves to his bedroom door, opening it wide before turning back to Tony expectantly. Tony looks him up and down a few times before slowly standing up and walking past him and out the door. He can’t help but feel like he’s being dismissed.
He turns back around. “So I’ll see you Saturday then?”
Peter is already shutting the door, and doesn’t even pause in his movements as he throws out a casual “uh-huh” just before Tony’s gaze is met once more with nothing but cheap faux-wood.
Tony hears the lock turn, frowning at the click. Something about his entire exchange with the kid just feels… off, somehow, in a way he can’t quite put his finger on.
But then he shrugs, walking back down the hallway. Teenagers.
May’s sitting at the kitchen table. “How’d it go?”
Tony smiles. “He has a lot to process still, but don’t worry, we talked. I’m sure Pete’ll be back to himself in no time.”
Otto shuts the door and locks it before letting out an annoyed huff as Peter’s consciousness brushes against his mind, begging for Stark to come back.
“Shush. He can’t hear you, child,” he says with no small amount of irritation, before settling back down at the desk and picking up his pen. After a few moments of looking over his formulas, he smirks to himself. “That was quite the performance though, would you not agree? I thought fooling him would be a challenge, but he clearly cares more for you than I realized. Which of course, makes him far easier to manipulate.”
It had been a miscalculation on Otto’s part that the boy was still in existence at all, but he wouldn’t be for much longer.
At least, as long as Otto could get his formulas reworked in time for Saturday. It wouldn’t be easy getting Stark and his pesky AI out of the way long enough to locate Otto’s stored tech in the tower and permanently remove the child from their shared body, but Otto was confident he would think of something workable by then.
He couldn’t kill Stark - at least not until he knew the status of the man’s will as regards the child - but there were many ways to put someone out of commission if need be. And Otto was nothing if not creative when he had need for it.
Thinking about harming Stark only causes the boy’s pleas to grow. With a roll of his eyes Otto mentally pushes the child to the back of his mind, the boy’s significant distress muted until it’s nothing more than a faint whisper.
“Ah, nice and quiet once more,” Otto says to himself with a smile, turning back to his formulas.
And soon, child, you will be silenced for good.