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The steel door swings open with a high-pitched squeal and Tony knows what’s gonna happen. Again.
His heart leaps into his throat and he can’t fucking do this, not again, not with these assholes. Not with any assholes, really, but these in particular are getting on his last fucking nerve. He and Peter just have to hold out a little bit longer, because Tony knows somebody is coming for them, he knows they have to be. Both Sam and Thor saw them get snatched, and leaving the savior of the fucking universe and Spider-Man himself with some enhanced thugs for more than twenty four hours isn’t really a good luck.
But these guys know Peter is Spider-Man now. They captured him as Spider-Man, took off his mask and looked at his face, and Tony hates them and calls them morons when they’re around, but he figures their higher ups have enough technology to run facial recognition through a couple databases. That puts May in danger, that puts the kid’s girlfriend in danger and all of his friends. That’s the kinda shit Tony’s been striving to avoid since day one.
But, at the current fucking moment, they only seem to be using the fact that Peter is Spider-Man to knock him around a shit ton.
Which, of course, isn’t cool with Tony.
“It’s okay,” Peter says, looking at him when the door opens, the two of them huddling in the corner. “Tony, it’s fine.” There are still open wounds on his face and neck. A broken blood vessel in his eye. The assholes ripped off his webshooters and took his mask, and the suit is tattered and torn.
Tony has to protect him. That’s all he’s good for and he has to be good for that.
“It’s not fucking fine,” Tony says, as the two dickheads that have been giving them problems step inside their cell. “It’s not goddamn fine.”
He had only been flying the fucking quinjet—he didn’t have a suit. He had the nano housing unit but not on him, and he feels like he makes more mistakes nowadays, after the snap and the near death and all that bullshit. He’s made up of mistakes and missed opportunities and a constant ringing in his ears. He’s all broken things, mismatched. He’s not Iron Man anymore. Not really. He’s an old man, by superhero standards, but sometimes he goes along on missions when he knows Peter will be in danger. But then he’s a distraction because Peter’s worried about him. He should always wear a suit, always, no matter what the fuck he’s doing. This proves it. Quinjets crash, people get fucking kidnapped. Always wear a suit.
“Tony, it’s okay—”
Both guys are wearing masks, one red and one black, and they loom over them.
“No, it’s not,” Tony hisses, and he throws his arm out across Peter’s chest, like that’s gonna fucking do something. He grits his teeth. “If you’re gonna hurt one of us, hurt me! Say you beat the shit out of Iron Man, that’ll do something for your reputation—”
Black mask laughs. “Spider-Man’s more our speed—”
“Beating up on a goddamn child, that’s cute, that’s real cute.” He doesn’t say he could kill you if you didn’t restrain him because he doesn’t want to give them any ideas about how strong Peter is. He has visions of experiments and torture and he doesn’t even know what this is, but he needs it done, now.
Tony tries to keep shielding him, but it doesn’t take much for them to reach around him and grab Peter up. Peter barely fights, just lets himself get dragged away.
“Tony, it’s fine! It’s fine, I promise!”
“No, goddamnit,” Tony growls, feeling sick and dizzy, and he throws a punch that connects with red mask’s jaw. He tries to retaliate but Tony slips under it and hits him again, trying to rush after black mask pulling Peter out of the room. “Kid! Kid!”
Red mask punches Tony once while he’s distracted, knocks him back against the wall. “Stop your bullshit or we’ll kill him and leave his body in here with you. How d’you like that, huh?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer, just quickly runs out the door and pulls it shut behind him. Tony rushes it, and slams on it hard, over and over, wishing he’d let the doctors take his arm now, wishing they hadn’t left him so weak and scarred and fucking useless. He could have figured out a prosthetic, he could have made something strong, he could have choked those two assholes out before they even touched his kid. Mistakes, missteps. Wrong, wrong, wrong. He saved the world but it keeps turning, and guys like this keep getting the upper hand.
Tony doesn’t want to yell Peter’s name, because he doesn’t want to give them any more clues to who he is in case they haven’t figured it out yet, but he continues to slam on the door until he feels like his arm is going to break off, until he feels like he did after he snapped, torn in half and burned and broken, being rushed off the battlefield by everyone he’d ever met and then some, carrying him like some cardboard cut-out Christ figure.
He remembers Peter’s tears. He remembers him whispering hold on, Tony, hold on. They were reverent with him. His kid, his team, his wife. That’s the last thing he remembers before the darkness, before everything changed. He didn’t have any thoughts in his head, couldn’t think about anything even if he wanted to.
This helplessness feels like that. It’s almost been a year and he’s still struggling. He wants to explode.
Tony paces back and forth in this goddamn steel box room and knows he doesn’t deserve the reverence they treated him with. He doesn’t deserve praise and billboards and national prayer. He doesn’t deserve that subreddit with all the morons talking about their favorite Iron Man memory. He doesn’t, because that should be him out there dealing with these assholes, Not Peter, Not Peter. Peter deserves ice cream sundaes with too much caramel, he deserves his favorite spot on the couch and dance parties Morgan initiates where they both make Tony dance. Tony doesn’t fucking dance anymore but whenever they drag him out onto the carpet he’ll do it because they’re his kids. He’ll dance to Whitney Houston for his kids. He’ll do whatever his kids want and then some.
Anything.
“Goddamnit,” he whispers, voice breaking somewhere in his throat. “God fucking dammit.”
This was Peter’s mission. He’d finally figured out where the Sinister Six were planning their next attack and those assholes are Spider-Man’s villains and nothing scared Tony more than looking at their rap sheets and knowing they were after his kid.
But then it went wrong, as these things often do, and Tony hates the idea of guilt swirling around in Peter’s head along with each crack across his cheek.
The waiting is agony. Agony. Seconds, minutes, hours, years, millennia. Tony paces until his feet hurt. He wears a path in the ground.
Tony, it’s fine. It’s fine, I promise.
“It’s not fine,” he whispers to himself, getting angry all over again, and wondering why Peter was so sure. Peter is strong, yes. He’s very strong. Out of this world, the best superhero Tony knows. The kid always thinks he’s larger than life but he’s still breakable, he can still be taken, and Tony knows that firsthand. Remembers the spot where he once was, a howling void next to him wherever he went, wherever he didn’t go, louder in the silence. Peter can still be killed, no matter how many hits he can take.
Tony stomps back over towards the door and resumes the banging.
“Fuck you, morons! Come get me, I’ll give you a run for your fucking money. I’m an old man now, sure, but I’m the reason you’re alive so you owe me. Gimme a good fight. I bet some of you were dust. I could have left you that way! My decision, pricks, all mine, get it fucking straight. Let’s go, cowards, come on, I’m ready for you! I’ll rip you a—”
The door starts to open and Tony takes a couple steps back. “Yeah, alright, good. I’m fucking ready, are you—”
Peter steps inside. He’s got a few more cuts and bruises on his face and he’s holding a set of keys. “Wow, that was—that was a lot of cursing. You’re really mad.”
Tony’s brain glitches for a couple seconds before he’s able to latch back on to reality, and he strides back over to Peter, taking his arm. “What’s going on? How much time do we have?”
“Probably a good amount of time,” Peter says, swallowing hard. He opens the door wider and looks back over his shoulder, and Tony follows his gaze—there are about six or seven dudes out there, splayed out on the ground, most of them webbed together. Some are webbed to the ceiling.
“Jesus,” Tony says, feeling a little guilty that he didn’t immediately imagine Peter getting the upper hand. “I couldn’t hear anything. None of this.”
“I could definitely hear you,” Peter says. He clears his throat and cracks his neck. “I wanted them to keep taking me out because I was getting a good look at where everything was—the computers, my webshooters, the keys—they’ve literally got a map on the wall. I just wanted to be—prepared for when I actually broke us out. And now I know where Steve and Clint are being held so we can grab them too on our way out. I think Thor is coming, that’s the only thing I’m not sure about. They’re tracking something approaching and it’s not one of theirs. But it’s still a good ways out.”
Tony sighs, staring at him for a second. “You’re too reckless with your own wellbeing.”
“But now we’re out, yeah?” Peter asks, blinking at him. “So. All good. Good things.
“You’re hurt,” Tony says. He takes Peter’s chin gently and turns his face, and he can tell they were hitting him with brass knuckles. It makes his own cheeks burn with rage. “Not a good thing. A bad thing.”
“I’m okay,” Peter says, reaching up and covering Tony’s hand, pulling it down and squeezing it. “And now we can get out, we’re prepared, we can go chase down Electro and the others and finish what I started. Finally. Get them sent to the Raft, keep everybody safe.”
Tony nods at him, trying to breathe. “I wanna back you up, but I don’t have—”
“Oh,” Peter says. He tugs Tony out into the main atrium and drops the keys on a table, picking up the nano housing unit. “I found it too. I don’t even think they knew what it was.”
“Morons,” Tony says. Peter holds it out to him and Tony takes it, blowing out a breath. “Alright,” he says. “I’m gonna do better out there than I did in here. Swear. I’m not gonna let anything happen to you—”
“And right back at you,” Peter says, smiling. “Because we’ve got Morgan’s recital this weekend and then Pepper is making the scalloped potatoes and neither one of us are missing either one of those things.”
Tony nods at him, feeling particularly emotional right here in the middle of this fucking enemy lair. He nods, swallowing over the lump in his throat, and brushes some of Peter’s hair out of his eyes. He hopes they can reclaim the quinjet or steal another vehicle so he can tend to some of the kid’s wounds.
“Alright, bud,” Tony says, too proud for words almost all of the time, when it comes to Peter. “Lead the way.”