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“You have to be more careful! What if someone died, huh?” Tony is pacing his kitchen, gripping his hair in frustration. He had the whole thing handled. If Peter would just stop being so fucking reckless all the time.
“You know just as well as me that the FBI wasn’t equipped to deal with that shit, Tony! I can’t just sit by and watch when I know I can help!” Peter’s arms fly out out in exasperation, wide eyes filled with fury as they follow Tony’s movements back and forth on the hardwood floor.
“This isn’t your responsibility, Peter!” He looks almost pleading over at him, trying to teleport all the worries and feelings he doesn’t dare to voice out loud.
“Of course it is! I have the ability to help. We’ve been over this, Tony. These are my people. Everything would have been a hundred times worse if I hadn’t been there!”
Tony wants to shake him. Wants to scream at him. It won’t help, of course. He knows there’s nothing he can do to make Peter consider his own wellbeing before literally everyone else. But he’s scared. He won’t admit it, but he loves the stubborn, annoying, selfless asshole.
Is this how Pepper felt? He wonders, as he watches the defiant brown eyes. Not a single sign telling him he’s about to win this fight. Well… He’s not about to lose this man, so he just has to up his game a little.
“Well, you’re obviously not responsible enough to do this, so I’m gonna need the suit back.” There. Without the suit, there’s no way for him to put himself in danger.
Peter takes a step back, and it looks like Tony just destroyed his whole world. He hates it, and it takes everything in him to not walk over there and wrap him up in his arms. It’s for his own good. Peter will understand that.
“What? You’re punishing me now?” His chin wobbles dangerously, but he doesn’t cry. Thank God for that. Tony’s not sure he’d be able to stand his ground if there were tears involved.
“It’s not punishment. But I can’t have you running around taking on stuff you’re not equipped to deal with.” Peter huffs a humorless laugh and shakes his head. His hand hits the spider emblem so hard, Tony is sure it would have destroyed the chest cavity of any normal person. The suit pools around him and he stomps off to Tony’s bedroom. He’s not too mad then. It’s gonna be fine.
Except — Peter comes back out, fully dressed, with a duffle bag over his shoulder. “Where are you going?” Panic flares in his chest for a second when Peter doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even look at him, and doesn’t stop until he’s by the elevator, and he can’t get any further.
“This isn’t how relationships work, Tony. You’re not my dad. I’m going home,” he steps into the metal box, and before the doors close between them he says “I wonder what you thought I would be doing if I agreed to join the Avengers.”
Tony spends the next few days in his lab. It’s not like they haven’t fought before. Peter just needs some time cooling off, and then everything will go back to normal. Peter will come to his senses and understand. He’s a smart guy.
In the meantime, Tony busies himself with upgrading Peter’s suit. Or making him a brand new one. One that’ll be a little safer to wear.
He’s interrupted by a text from Happy, telling him the plane is loaded and on its way up to the compound. And then fifteen minutes later he’s interrupted again by FRIDAY telling him the plane has shifted course.
It’s that pesky vulture guy. He’s not a match for Iron Man, obviously, but he’s wearing a very unnerving grin even in handcuffs, locked in a cell, and he looks like he just won an award for something.
“I’m guessing even Pete isn’t invincible, then,” he says, and Tony pauses on his way out of the room and cocks an eyebrow at him. But then the machinery in his brain starts working and that evil smile makes him want to puke.
This guy knows who Peter is. Goddammit. Of course Peter wouldn’t leave this alone. Of course taking the suit wouldn’t stop him. Tony should have known better. Peter isn’t a normal human being who needs tech to be a hero. He was already an established crime fighting idiot when Tony tried to recruit him.
He steps up the man, fists an iron clad hand in his leather jacket and hauls him up so he can look him in the eyes. The metal restraints clatter and echo in the room around them, still the sickening grin is glued to his disgusting face. He retracts his faceplate and glares at him. No one messes with his spider.
“What did you do to him?” He keeps his voice even. He’s learned a few things from a certain spy over the years. Getting agitated won’t get him anywhere.
The birdman shrugs, like it doesn’t matter to him that Tony is two sentences away from blasting him out of the room. “I didn’t touch him. Nice costume though. Newest Stark design?”
Tony readies the repulsor in his palm, hand still firmly wrapped against the guy’s jacket. He tells FRIDAY to locate Peter’s phone, and glares even more intently at his prisoner.
“What happened to him?” he spits. He’ll probably find out soon enough, and is already planning out his apology. And then a new speech to make sure Peter knows exactly why he took the suit in the first place. But he wants this asshole to know just how screwed he is.
“Boss, I located Peter’s phone at a construction site in Brooklyn.” FRIDAY chirps in his ear. The Vulture drops to the floor of his holding cell with a dull thud. Still wearing that ugly, toothy grin. When this is over those teeth will fly.
“Lead the way, Fri” he mutters and lets the faceplate form around his head. Peter is going to regret this when Tony is done patching him back up.
Tony hovers over a collapsed warehouse. The rest of the area is eerily quiet, and the only sign anyone’s even been there is two cars right outside the fencing. Well. One and a half car. One of them is a complete wreck. Tony would bet his dignity that the ruined sports car is Peter’s doing. I live in New York. I don’t need to drive. Yeah right.
He can’t see Peter anywhere, though, which is a little concerning. He wouldn’t have let the bad guy get away unless he was physically unable to chase him.
He scans the two buildings on the property, looking for heat signatures. If the Vulture manages to trap him somehow, he should be able to pick up his figure.
“Boss, I detect heat to your left.”
To his left. There’s nothing there but rubble. Surely Peter wouldn’t be in there. He flies a little closer anyways, it’s not often his AI is wrong , after all. He made her, he doesn’t make mistakes. Yet, in this instance, searching the massive pile of concrete slabs, he prays to every deity he doesn’t believe in that it is indeed a fault in her system.
His heart stops when the HUD zooms in on a mop of brown curls peeking out from under several tons of building. No.
The suit lowers itself without him telling it to, and he stares at Peter’s limp form. Head hanging and arms out in front of him like he’s been reaching out for help.
There’s a faint dripping sound, and Tony zeroes in on it. Everything else fading into the background as he watches in horror. Thick, dark red droplets seeping out from between huge slabs of the ruined building, the sound of it hitting the muddy puddle underneath it deafening.
Velvet beads make tiny rings in the water, dissolving into thin, ruby smoke in slow motion.
Tony can’t breathe. Every attempt at inhaling fails as his chest tightens around every exhale. This can’t be happening. This isn’t real.
His vision blurs as he stares at the mud-spattered pool turning redder with every drop. Drip. Drip. Drip. Tony blinks.
“Pete?” It’s barely even a whisper, and the tiny voice he’s able to produce shatters like glass around the name.
He lifts a shaky hand, feels the suit retract from his trembling fingers. The beautiful curls are matted with dirt, sweat and debris, but he carefully cards his fingers through them anyway.
There’s tear tracks on his cheeks. Showing streaks of greying skin amongst the dust and blood covering his face.
He lets his thumb graze his cheekbone as he swallows down a sob, smearing around the dirt and grime.
Dark, wet eyelashes flutter open and a wheezing hitch escapes blue lips. Before Tony can fully comprehend what’s happening, he’s staring at a pair of wild, terrified set of brown eyes.
Tony wants to cry. The relief of seeing those beautiful orbs is washed away as soon as it appears with the dawning realization of reality.
Peter is still alive. He’s bleeding to death under a mountain of destroyed warehouse, crushing his organs and slowly suffocating him.
And there’s nothing Tony can do to stop it.
Any emergency team in range will still not be able to get him out of there in time to save him from the blood loss, and if Tony blasts the weight away he’ll die from the pressure relief.
Peter looks around, frantically, his arms waving around, grasping for purchase. His shallow breathing picks up and oh my god, no. Don’t panic.
“Pete. Hey. Honey. Look at me.” Tony doesn’t know where his voice is coming from, but it gets Peter’s attention and he stops moving. Looks at Tony with a desperate kind of hope.
His breath is coming out in tiny, sharp puffs, so Tony grabs his face as gently as he can and connects their foreheads.
He manages to keep his tears to himself, somehow, and wills his own breathing to slow down so Peter can follow.
“Tony?” He wouldn’t have been able to hear it if he wasn’t so close, and he wishes for a second that Peter hadn’t woken up. The raspy whisper tearing through the already shattered pieces of his soul.
“I’m here, sweetheart. I’m here.” he chokes on the words, swallows thickly, again. But doesn’t dare to close his eyes, even with how his entire being is screaming at him to turn away. To wake up from this nightmare.
A tear slides from Peter’s glassy eyes. Tony wants to reassure him that everything will be okay. He can’t do that, though. He doesn’t want his last moments with Peter to be filled with lies.
“Am I gonna die?” His words are so soft, so gentle, in a resigned way that Tony wishes he never had to hear.
It breaks him. Thinking it for himself is one thing, realising that Peter knows, and accepts it is something else entirely. He sobs and lets the tears fall. Blinks them away so he can keep a clear view of Peter. He needs to see him, memorize this moment, freeze time so they can stay like this. Go back and change the past so none of this would have happened.
“I am so sorry, Peter. I’m so sorry,” the words rush out of him in a steady flow as he cries. A mantra he can’t stop now that he’s given in to the harsh truth of it all.
“It’s okay. You’re here. I’m gonna be fine,” his voice fades away and his breathing slows even more and the only thing Tony can hear is that awful dripping and his own heartbeat. His words grow distant in his raspy throat and all he can do is look and lock away the sight of Peter’s eyes as they gloss over, leaving behind a dull void.
He kisses his forehead one last time and screams.