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Boss, the ‘sulking on the ceiling’ protocol has been activated.
Tony, who had been fiddling with his pen and pretending to pay attention for the last hour, was startled out of his daydream by the words of his AI. He dropped his feet from their propped-up position on the chair next to him and leaned onto his knees. “What- again?” He closed his eyes and whined out his frustration to the group of Avengers sitting in front of him.
All eyes turned to the man when the AI’s announcement caused the last of the discussion they were having to die out. “The what protocol?” Steve was the first to ask, standing at the head of the table in the middle of his debrief.
Tony scrubbed a hand down his face and stood up. “It’s the kid…” he groaned, then turning his words back to the AI, “what’s he upset about this time FRI?”
He would not divulge that information to me. Would you like me to enact the ‘get your sticky fingers off my ceiling protocol?
Tony shook his head, eyeing the confused group staring at him, “No, it’s fine. Sorry guys, the kid’s upset, he’s on my ceiling , so I’ve got to go deal with that. We good here?” He turned to Steve.
“Will anything I say stop you anyway?” The Captain held his hands out in question, knowing by now that Tony Stark did what he wanted, especially when it pertained to the teenager in question.
“You know, Capsicule, I think you’re finally learning,” Tony grinned cheekily, getting up with a salute to the room and walking out the door without a second thought.
“God, I’m glad my kids can’t literally climb walls,” he heard Clint mutter as he turned the corner towards the elevator.
Tony tapped his foot impatiently as the elevator shot him where he needed to go. It had been a hot minute since they had had their last ‘ceiling incident.’ He still remembered the first time it had happened. It had been over a pack of cookies Peter had been saving in the cupboard that had somehow gotten eaten when Peter wasn’t there. Tony recalled the look of betrayal on the kid’s face as he stormed up off the couch and stomped over to the wall, unexpectedly sticking his grimy spider hands onto the surface and climbing his way to the far corner of the ceiling, crossing his arms and refusing to come down to hang out with a cookie thief (Tony may or may not have questioned who had actually bought the cookies, but somehow it didn’t help his case). It had taken the man thirty-five minutes, a broom handle, and the offering of the ice cream in the freezer, a far superior treat, to persuade him down that day.
Unfortunately, that was only the beginning of Tony’s days of trying to reason with a Spider-Boy on his ceiling. It seemed the upside-down position had become a comfort to the young mentee, at the same rate it had become an annoyance to his mentor.
“Kid!” Tony called out the moment he stepped foot in the penthouse, bee-lining it to the utility closet and grabbing the broom within before making his way down the hall toward the teenager’s bedroom.
He knocked twice on the door before letting himself through.
Ignoring the bed and chair completely, Tony instantly looked up, scanning each corner of the ceiling briefly before finally landing on his sulky teenage mess in the far right, still in full spidey gear, minus the mask he was fiddling with between his hands.
“Pete,” he sighed plainly, causing the boy to glance his way briefly before turning his back even more.
“Get down.” Another simple command, but again, met by silence.
“I told FRIDAY not to initiate the sprinklers, but that trick’s still on the table,” he tried for a joke even though they both knew he’d never actually do that. He had other ways of convincing his sticky kid back down on two feet.
“I’ve got the broom, and I’m not afraid to use it,” he threatened next, twirling the weapon in his hand for emphasis.
“Just leave me alone,” Peter groaned, not at all amused by the man’s antics.
Tony was shaking his head instantly. “No can do, Spider-Boy. You’re upset, and I’m not leaving until I find out what’s wrong and get all that blood rushing the right way again. So, we might as well skip all this in-between and you can just tell me what’s wrong, because I don’t think I ate any of the good treats since you’ve been gone, or met any cool people without you or- well you get the picture, my life has been utterly boring, no fun has been had. The mission I just went on caused more paperwork than anything else.” He held his hands out in question.
The kid remained silent.
“C’mon, Pete, it’s Christmas week. I didn’t expect to see you until Friday with that massive list of Christmas activities you and May had planned. So why are yo—”
“She got called in,” Peter muttered unhappily.
Yahtzee. So this wasn’t some trivial sulking. Tony sighed, he sort of wished it was. “I thought she had vacation days to use this week?”
“She did. So did a lot of other people. They were short-staffed, and you know May.” He let his words die off, brushing a curl out of his eye that was giving in to gravity.
“Never one to leave others drowning.”
“Exactly,” the boy confirmed, hugging his arms around his middle and huffing.
“What was the plan tonight? Caroling?” Tony smirked, remembering the kid talking excitedly about the impressive list of winter activities he had been planning for May’s week off.
“Gingerbread houses.” Peter corrected humorlessly.
Tony frowned, “Would that have really been a—”
“They were the store-bought kits,” he clarified, knowing where his mentor’s train of thought was going as he envisioned Peter’s aunt anywhere near a kitchen.
“Ah,” Tony nodded once, “you can’t really mess us squeezing icing out of a bag, huh?”
“Oh no, it’s still always a disaster,” Peter let a small smile play on his lips as he twisted his body slightly to look down, “it’s hard getting the sides to stay upright and not collapse under the roof.”
Tony nodded in understanding. “Well, they never give you enough icing to do the job.”
The two shared a smile before Peter sighed, “I’m not a baby you know,” he muttered, circling back to the main point.
Tony, not knowing exactly where the kid was going, merely nodded cautiously, “I know that, bud.”
“It’s just, this is the third time this week she’s had to cancel. Christmas is almost here.” He stuck his bottom lip out, pulling down a cobweb from the corner of the ceiling.
“I get it.” The kid had been looking forward to his aunt’s time off for weeks. “You know she’d rather be with you, right?”
“I know,” Peter brought his chin to his chest, “which is why I feel guilty for being upset. I know if Spider-Man was needed somewhere I’d be helping in a heartbeat too. And May is like the greatest superhero of them all.”
“She sure is,” Tony agreed. The Avengers couldn’t do half the things they did without nurses to patch them up at the end of the day.
“She even promised tomorrow’s movie night is on no matter what. I know she’s trying. I just miss how things used to be, when it was May and Ben and I doing all the Christmassy things.”
Tony nodded, regarding his young protege with thought. He knew how tough these types of holidays could be with grief a constant in the background. “Well, I know I’m no May, and I’m definitely no Ben, but I’ve made a gingerbread house or two in my time.” He shrugged at the kid with a raised eyebrow.
Peter remained quiet before jerking his head quickly in the negative, “You’re busy. FRIDAY told me you were in a debriefing with the Avengers.” He cast a wary glance down to his mentor and fidgeted with his web-shooter.
Tony flourished his hand casually, “we were wrapping up anyway. Cap gave me the green light. You know you’ve got the whole team wrapped around your finger. I bet we could even convince them to come up here and help us.”
Peter’s lip curled upward, “Really? Building gingerbread houses with the Avengers? That would be- amazing.”
Tony shrugged, “sure, call it a team-building exercise, Cap would eat that shit up.”
Peter gave the offer a moment's thought, “I mean, I did buy like seven kits. It would be a shame for them all to go to waste.”
The man let out a laugh. “What possessed you to buy seven kits?”
“I wanted to make a village,” the teen shrugged as if it was quite obvious.
Tony shook his head but was happy to see the kid was far from sulking anymore. “Aright, then how about you swing on back to your apartment and pick them up. I’ll start a pot of hot chocolate, make some extra icing, and round up the team.”
“Cool,” Peter grinned, still hanging upside down as if it was the most normal thing in the world, reminding Tony to get back to his initial task.
“Now would you get off my ceiling?!” He brandished the broom in his hand, using the weapon to nudge his teenager’s knee in an attempt to unstick it, “you know, I should ground you for leaving your spider tracks all over my walls, but I guess it’s a little hard to do that when you’re not on the ground.”
“You could ceiling me?” The boy suggested helpfully as he slowly uncurled his body, easing his limbs down slowly then finally allowing his fingertips to lose their grip as he made a smooth descent to the floor. “But I guess that kinda defeats the purpose of the punishment in the first place,” he sassed in return.
As soon as his feet were firmly on the ground, he launched himself at the man, wrapping his arms around his mentor’s middle tightly, and speaking into the soft fabric, “thanks, Tony.”
“Thanks?” Tony questioned in amusement, “for threatening to ground you or for wielding household cleaning utensils in your general direction?”
Peter turned his head, so he was looking up at the man, “for always knowing what to say.”
Tony sniffed once, rubbing under his nose and gently patting the kid’s back with his other hand, “you should get going if we want to complete the whole village before a certain Spider-Kid’s bedtime. It is still a school night you know, and May would—“
“Yeah, yeah, I know, the great Tony Stark is scared of my aunt.” Peter laughed as he walked away.
“You got that right,” Tony agreed without missing a beat, “see you in a few, kid.”
With that, Peter slid open the window, grinning as he pulled down his mask and leaped out into the crisp December air with a ‘whoop’. Tony watched the red and blue swing across the city until his tiny speck disappeared into the setting sun. He fiddled with the broom handle still in his hand and sighed, “Fri? Send one of the suits to come polish up this ceiling, would you?”
Got it, Boss. Initiating, ‘clean up after the Spider-baby’ protocol.