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I'm sorry about your parents, they sound like bad people,
your daddy sounds like a jerk,
I guess your mama didn't know the gift she got when she got you."
-Icon for Hire
"Boss?" FRIDAY's voice asks, the tone almost apprehensive.
Tony doesn't look up from the computer, focused instead on reading through the layers of text that he's been putting off for the better part of a week. Emails are one of his biggest weaknesses with SI. He rarely has the motivation to answer the dozens and dozens of them.
"Mm?" Tony intones, attaching an automatic reply to one of the messages. Something about funding. He's not really sure. A send me more details is probably fitting in this circumstance.
"It's part of my protocols to let you know when Mr. Parker's heart rate is elevated for a long period of time." FRIDAY begins, and this time Tony does stop, looking toward her camera, lips pressing together. The kid? Tony glances at the clock, and sees that it's just after three in the morning.
What is he doing up at this hour?
May has a curfew. It was something that they'd both agreed on while over six months ago, and beyond a handful of times, Peter hasn't broken it. Elevated heart rate could mean two things: anxiety or an injury. Tony swears, if Peter coerced Karen into helping him hide another bullet or stab wound, he's going to do a massive system reset for her. It shouldn't be this easy for Peter to bend around the coding.
Tony turns toward a different monitor, pulling up the GPS on the suit. The system wavers for a moment before loading, and streams of recent activity pour down the side. Tony scrolls briefly through the automatic updates that occur every five minutes, noting that Peter hasn't moved that much in the last fifteen.
He slides his gaze toward the monitor and sees that the kid's GPS is sitting on the top of some building in the Upper East Side. When he looks, Tony can't see any evidence of some sort of crime going down. Tony purses his lips together, feeling a brief stab of guilt that he really doesn't want to deal with this tonight. Peter isn't the only one up because of anxiety, and Tony's barely managed to get himself calmed down.
The nightmares have been persistent as of late, stalking his dreams like a ghost.
It doesn't matter that Tony knows it isn't real. The feeling of Steve slamming the shield into his sternum hard enough that it bruised bone is something he's bitterly familiar with.
Distantly, Tony wonders what ghosts are keeping Peter up tonight.
Tony sighs, rubbing his fingers across his lips, debating, then pushes back in the chair. "FRI, call the kid for me?"
"Of course, Boss." FRIDAY responds immediately, and Tony makes a half-hearted attempt to locate his phone before realizing it's probably still upstairs with Pepper on the dresser, charging. Thankfully, he's not limited by this.
The dial tone rings from FRIDAY, the low buzz not helping his building tension headache, then the phone gives up and starts to play an automatic message for voicemail. Tony pauses, brow furrowing. That's weird. Peter usually answers immediately if he can when it's past two in the morning. It could be panic, but Tony's beginning to get the sense that it's something more.
"Call again?"
It's the same answer. A third time proves no more helpful. Something raw eating through the insides of his stomach, Tony rolls the chair toward the monitor with Karen's feed pulled up. He pulls up his connection to the AI and types with hesitant fingers:
Kid okay?
Karen doesn't answer for long minutes.
He should just go see for himself. Part of him wants to, but he understands that if Peter is already out there this late, Tony showing up is likely the last thing that he wants. He might just make it worse, because Tony's track record is pretty consistent in that outcome. Tony can just...ease his concerns. From afar.
Helicopter parent, comes the snide accusation.
Tony slumps with defeat and admittance. This is ridiculous. Peter hasn't made any indication that he wants help, nor that he needs it. Karen has to update FRIDAY of Peter's pulse. That doesn't necessarily mean anything is wrong.
But Peter didn't pick up the phone.
Three times.
And the GPS hasn't moved once since Tony started watching it.
Karen has to automatically give an injury call if Peter's BP drops below a certain level, but she didn't. Peter may not be exactly fine, but he's made it pretty clear that he doesn't want Tony's help. Which stings on some level, ridiculous as that is.
Tony worries his lower lip between his teeth. His fingers drum across the top of the desk. His leg bounces. He thinks about the crushing sound that Steve's shield made against his chest and the way that the arc reactor cracked, and how everything tasted burnt and bloody for a week afterwards and how Steve dropped the shield because Sergeant Barnes always takes precedence and—
Tony gets up to his feet. Maybe a distraction wouldn't be so bad tonight after all. It's not like he's doing anything that important. And it's always better to be sure of these things than to guess. "FRI," he says, running a hand through his hair, "prepare the Mark XLVII."
If he didn't know better, he'd say that FRIDAY sounds almost relieved as she answers, "Right away, boss."
000o000
"Answer your phone, will you?" Tony demands sharply as he lands on the building less than ten minutes later, a little more than ten feet from where Peter is sitting against the side of the entrance to the rooftop. He's unmoving. He's upright, but it's too dark to tell if he's unconscious or not. Tony steps out of the suit with practiced ease into the warm night air, shoes crunching against the gravel.
He grimaces at the announcement of his presence, but Peter doesn't seem to care.
The kid doesn't shift or look up.
Tony frowns. He'd be lying to say that he's not relieved to see Peter, but this isn't helping to quell building anxiety.
Tony moves forward, "Kid?" he asks, pointedly. He doesn't get a response. As he draws closer, he can see that Peter's mask is sitting in his lap, legs splayed out in front of him. He looks like he just dropped there, and couldn't find the will to get back up again. His hands are in his lap, clenched around the mask, and it's this tension that reassures Tony that Peter is both alive and awake.
But something is obviously wrong.
Tony stops about a foot from Peter's knee, brushing stray gravel against the suit. At last, the teen's head raises slowly, but the shadows are too thick for Tony to get a good look at his expression. He feels Peter's gaze on him, however, and something in his throat tightens.
Tony squats down beside Peter, breathing in the musky air of New York City and the scent of alcohol and waste that settles on top of this building like a blanket. He bites on a gag. "You, uh, want to tell me why you're out here?"
Peter releases a heavy sigh, but remains mute.
"You do know it's past curfew, yeah? It's—" Tony stops, glancing at his watch to prove his point properly, "three forty-two. Your aunt's going to kill both of us." Because, somehow, Peter breaking curfew is Tony's fault. It always is. He can't follow the woman's mind sometimes.
"Good." Peter mumbles, drawing his legs up to his chest. His voice is congested. "Save me the trouble."
Save him the troub—?!
Oh.
Oh.
Something in Tony's chest catches, like a physical weight careening into his ribcage to blow him over—a shield, the edges round but the force a knife—and Tony stops for a moment. His breath doesn't escape, he doesn't blink, doesn't move. The only thing he can think for a long second is a heavy cuss in Russian. But the memory of Nat makes something else in his chest squeeze, until it feels like the compression will crush him.
Breathe, he reminds himself, and exhales in a gust. He feels sick.
His fingers jump anxiously, and Tony knows he has to say something, he has to do something, but what is he supposed to say to the fact that Peter just inadvertently admitted that he's suicidal? And if not suicidal, death idealizing. Tony's been here. The dark, crawling sensation of hopelessness leaches into every part of his bones until he wants nothing more than to escape them.
And Tony knows he should say something sympathetic, or at least concerned, but all that escapes him is a startled, "I'm sorry?"
Maybe he's reading too much into this. He does that. A lot. It drives people around him mad. (Until they're stuffing metal in your chest, changing the trajectory from your neck at the last second).
Peter sniffs, wiping at his nose. He's crying. Tony didn't notice that before, and feels both embarrassed and ashamed all at once. He should have noticed that and done something sooner, but instead he was—He's scrambling for focus tonight. He's going to make things worse. Panicking together is never helpful.
Tony exhales, carefully. Long and slow, like his therapist drilled into him.
"Peter?" Tony asks, his voice level. "What's going on, bud? Talk to me."
Peter sighs again, then shifts, and Tony sees the wince this time. And Tony realizes that Peter may not have just stopped because of emotional turmoil. He glances back at Mark XLVII, and lifts up a hand so the suit will turn toward them; something he probably should have done earlier. The light from the arc reactor jumps across the space, lighting up the shadows.
Peter winces, ducking his head at the unexpected light.
Tony, however, swears.
"What happened?" he demands, leaning forward to see the bruise blossoming up the side of Peter's cheekbone, rising toward his hairline. The faint swelling makes the skin look puffy and stretched uncomfortably. Tony can see that the suit is bloodstained in some areas, and imagines that the bruises don't stop at the kid's face.
But the thing is? Peter isn't helpless in hand-to-hand anymore. Rhodey and Tony have been putting in more effort to teach him, and Peter isn't half bad. He's unfocused and sometimes doesn't know when to pull punches, but he does know how to dodge them. And unless an entire mob decided to track down and beat up one friendly neighborhood Spider-Man last night, Peter let this happen.
And Tony is going to kill him.
Tony reaches out, fingers rough as he grips Peter's chin and turns his face toward the light. Peter shivers back from the contact, brown eyes blown wide and lips parted. His face is white, and there's a gash across cheek, dried blood smeared beneath his nose.
Irritation swims through him, and Tony hates himself for it. This is not the time or place for that.
"Peter." His tone is clipped.
Fresh tears spill from Peter's eyes before the kid shoves his hand away. "I'm fine. It's just a little blood."
Ha.
Tony's reply is without humor. "You're swelling like a balloon, and unless I'm mistaken, eyebrows shouldn't be purple."
Peter looks away from him, chin jutted. His hands clench around the mask, and Tony forces out a calming breath. Shouting isn't helping anything beyond making Peter less willing to talk. He has to control his anger, swallow it, where the only person it can hurt or affect is himself.
"What happened?" Tony repeats, softer.
Peter shrugs.
"Peter."
His eyes lift at that, but his expression is dead. Tony's lips push together. Whoever did this to him, made him crumple inside of himself like this—Tony's going to brutally maim them. They had no right to hurt him like this. How dare they think that they could hurt his kid and get away with it?
Peter's lips part several times, as if he's trying to figure out how to explain, but can't.
Tony lifts up a hand. "Wait. Firstly, is there anything that's in need of immediate medical attention? Karen should have let me know, but given that you're—" Tony gestures toward him, "—I don't think her system alerts are working."
Peter, if possible, looks even more miserable. "I disabled her for tonight." He whispers.
Tony stares at him. Peter has complained in the past of how Karen is a distraction after so long of doing it solo, but there have been few occasions where Peter has actually turned her off. Tony is just glad that he doesn't have the GPS attached to Karen's systems.
"Why?" Tony asks.
Peter pulls his leg closer, his eyes creasing at the edges. "She was so loud."
Tony nods. Enhanced senses. He gets that. Steve—
"But are you? Hurt that is? Because we can continue this conversation just as easily in an ER as we can on shady rooftop." He points out. He might make Peter go on principle alone once he knows what's going on. Once Peter feels...better.
"I'll heal." Peter sounds disappointed. "I always do."
"That doesn't mean you have to suffer in the meantime. You're not immortal, kid. None of us are." Tony points out.
Peter gives a hitched sigh. "It's okay. It's not bothering me that much." Which is probably a sign that things are worse rather than better, but Tony keeps this comment to himself. He does adjust his position, settling in for something more long-term.
"So?"
Peter wets his lips, looking away from Tony as if trying to delay the answer. His leg bounces. He exhales stiffly. His nails dig into his knee before he finally asks, voice neutral yet flat, "How much do you know about my parents?"
What?
Tony feels his expression shift. He remembers something about them being listed when he was looking into Peter, but the details escape him. The time was fleeting then and his thoughts even more so. "Uh," Tony intones, suddenly hesitant. "Not that much. They're dead, aren't they? Died when you were six?"
Peter closes his eyes, tipping his head back against the wall. Tony exhales the disgusting smell sharply, but he's growing numb to it.
"Not exactly." Peter rubs his fingers into his kneecap, as if trying to work the bone out from under the skin. Tony watches, trying to decide if he should get Peter to stop.
"Tell me?" Tony offers quietly.
"My, uh. They're…" an exhale. "My dad's an engineer, y'know? Was best in his field. Robotics. He's. He was...very into his work, y'know?"
Tony nods.
"Right. Um. My mom. They didn't want kids. My mom was...So when I was born, there. It's." Peter lets out a mirthless, bitter laugh. "It's kind of amazing that I made it to year one." Something tight and panicky wraps around Tony's heart at the idea that Peter might not have made it past one if circumstances were different. Tony never would have met him. "But, uh," more anxious drumming, "Anyway. Uh. Long story short, they kind of had this tendency to put me in the basement and just...leave me there. For...a while."
"Oh, man," Tony breathes, realizing where this is going. Howard always wanted Tony out of the way, but he usually did it by brute force, not by physically throwing him in a room and leaving him there.
Another colorful, explicit Russian curse comes to mind.
Peter closes his eyes. "They lost custody of me when I was six. They both got ten years for child neglect and abuse, among a lot of other things the government dragged up about them. That's, uh, how my aunt and uncle got stuck with me."
Stuck with him. The phrasing is obviously laced with self hatred, but Tony doesn't even know where to begin to unpack that. Peter, however, doesn't give him a chance. He wipes hastily at his face. "They're not dead."
Kinda wish they were. The thought is instinctive, and Tony lets it sit in his mind for a moment like heavy, uncomfortable penance.
"Pity." Tony mutters.
Peter looks at him, and his expression is the mixture between horrified and sick. "Tony—"
Tony interrupts him before they can get into an argument about Tony's skewed sense of morals. He knows he's messed up. He forgets sometimes that Peter doesn't know that yet. Part of Tony is terrified of the day that the kid learns it. He knows that Peter won't want anything to do with him after that. It's only fair, of course, but Tony has grown fond of him.
"I assume that you've got a point to this? You didn't take a trip down memory lane just for the kick?"
Peter licks his lips, but nods, slowly withdrawing his phone from his pocket. One of his fingers is bent out of alignment. No. Two—three of them. Peter looks like he got into a fight with the Hulk, and despite giving it his best go, he still ended up pummeled.
"I, uh, got this today. During school." Peter unlocks the screen, searching for something, then hands the device over to Tony.
A knot of dread tightens painfully in Tony's stomach. Please don't let this be what I think it is. But there the text sits, brightly bolded in the blue background, as if this is something cheerful.
Unknown Number:
Hey, baby, it's Mom! We should meet up sometime. I'll let you know the time and place. I've been out for a few months. We've got so much to catch up on. I can't wait to be a part of your life again.
Sent yesterday 1:34PM
A mixture of hot and cold swirls through Tony's chest. His fingers tighten compulsively on the phone. He looks up and sees that Peter is beginning to cry again, sobs more ugly and harder than the simple tears they were before.
How on earth does Mrs. Parker even have Peter's number? How on earth is this not a violation of her parole to contact the son she abused and was sent to prison for doing so? And the bigger question here: if she didn't want to be a mother so badly, why would she bother to reach out at all?
"I-I just—" Peter gasps, "I can't do this—this again. All...all I c-can think about is that b-basement. I don't...I don't want...I don't want her…I'd rather die..."
Tony's heart breaks. He leans forward and gathers the kid into his arms, something that he's wanted to do since stepping onto this roof. Peter folds into him easily, sobbing. He grips at Tony's arms with desperation, fingers digging bruises into Tony's skin. Tony doesn't care. He'd shoulder any wound if it would help.
"Shh, shh," Tony soothes. He gently runs fingers through Peter's hair. "It's okay, I promise. I won't let anything happen to you." He whispers nonsense comforts, trying to make sure that Peter knows that he's here and he understands.
Peter's ragged sobs eventually turn into tears that fade into raspy breaths. Tony still doesn't let him go, and Peter doesn't try to be released. His body weight is slight against Tony's, his skin cool.
"I'm sorry." Peter mumbles. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't...I'm sorry that I made you worry."
"You don't have any reason to apologize." Tony assures. Except for getting yourself beaten half to death. But that's for another time. Another place. Somewhere that Peter can emotionally handle it. Not tonight.
"I'm...I'm not fun to deal with like this." Peter whispers.
"So?" Tony asks, honestly baffled. "Is it supposed to be fun when someone's in the middle of a breakdown?"
There's a beat. "No," Peter concedes.
"There you go."
"I just. I know. You're busy. And I'm not...important," Peter explains, his voice growing quieter at the end. And Tony feels something in him tense, because what the heck? Of course Peter's important. Who even—?!
"Yes, you are. You're important, kid," Tony says forcefully. He pulls Peter back so he can look him in his bloodshot, red-rimmed eyes. "You're important. I want to do this. I want to help you, okay? This is my choice. You didn't trick or guilt me into doing this. It's my decision. So let me."
Fresh tears spill down Peter's face, but he nods.
"Your mom didn't have any right to reach out to you, okay? She probably can't even do it legally. You won't have to meet with her, I promise." Tony forces as much sincerity into the words as he can. And hey, if his lawyers can't pull something together—unlikely—then an unfortunate accident isn't out of the question. It's not like Mrs. Parker wouldn't deserve it. Keeping his tone even, Tony asks, "Does May know about this?"
Peter shakes his head, chewing on his lower lip. "Ned does. I vomited. At school. He, um. Kept me grounded there."
Tony nods, sympathetic. "Does your aunt know where you are?"
"I said I was staying at Ned's." Peter's expression flickers with something like guilt. Tony wonders again, how Peter managed to keep Spider-Man a secret for so long. The kid is a terrible liar. He wears his emotions openly and freely across his body and his face, something that Tony has always privately envied him for.
"Okay. Why don't you come back with me? We'll get you patched up and give you a place to lay down for a bit. Does that sound okay?" Tony asks.
Peter nods after a moment. "Yeah," he says. He grimaces, "I, um, think that ice would be a good idea."
"Yeah." Tony agrees. He doesn't ask why about the bruises. He knows why. So does Peter. Sometimes self punishment is the only form of release for an anxiety attack that seems like it would help. It isn't the only option, it never is, but it feels like it. Often. Remembering earlier, Tony grips Peter's shoulder, "Hey, Pete?"
Peter makes a noncommittal sound.
"Are you alright? You seemed pretty...not there for a while." Tony wants to say you seemed suicidal, but the words are heavy and the tainted inside of his mouth. Even the thought of the syllables breaking open air makes him nauseous.
Peter shrugs. "I don't." He licks his lips, "I guess. Um. It's just. Hard. Tony?"
"Still listening, kid."
"I really just want to lay down. Is that okay?"
Tony nods. "Yeah. Yeah, of course. C'mon, ice first, then laying down. And try not to worry about your mom, okay? We'll handle it together."
Peter goes rigid. Wide brown eyes snap up to him. "We?"
"Of course we." Tony says, getting up to his feet. He braces himself before offering a hand out to Peter, who takes it. He's shaky on his feet and sways a fraction, but he stays upright. Tony watches him with careful eyes before he says, "You think I was going to leave this all on you? Seriously? I'm offended."
The kid's eyes drop. "Sorry."
Tony curses himself. "It's okay. Sorry. It's just...you're important to me. I want to help. And I want you to expect me to help. You've already been through hell, kid, you shouldn't have to do this by yourself. And you won't."
Not your psycho mom. That you won't deal with alone.
Peter's eyes fill with tears again, but this time, Tony can tell, they're in gratitude. "Thank you."
Tony nods tightly, but it only makes him feel awful in a distant, foggy sort of way, because Peter is grateful that he's not being dumped alone to deal with his crazy mom. Peter wasn't expecting that. Peter honestly thought he'd be doing this alone.
Tony knows the feeling well. And hates it.
He squeezes Peter's shoulder. "I'm here, kid. I promise."