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“Pete? You okay?” Tony asks as Peter walks into the kitchen, massaging his forehead with his eyes closed tight.
“Yeah,” Peter gasps out, shaking his head before looking at Tony. “just a headache.”
“Didn’t think you could get sick with all your super freaky spider powers.” Tony teases, ruffling Peter’s hair.
“Stop it,” Peter laughs, playfully swatting his hand away. “and they are not super freaky.”
“Are too.”
“Are not.”
“You are a child.”
“Legally, yes.” Peter says. “Doesn’t make my powers freaky. Because they’re not .”
“Yes. They are.”
“No, they are not.”
“Yes.”
“Whatever. We can finish this argument later– I’m about to go patrolling.”
“With a headache?” Tony asks, demeanor changing from playful to concerned in a split second. “I don’t think that’s such a great idea.” he frowns.
“The city doesn’t sleep, Mister Stark.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t either.”
Peter laughs. “Can I just have one of my very super cool tylenols please? I’ll let you know if I need anything or figure out why I have a random headache.”
“Sure,” Tony replies, fetching Peter’s medicine. “but I’m going to be monitoring you more than usual tonight.”
“Lovely. You already hover.”
“I do not hover .”
“You do too.”
“Do not.”
“Why are you like this?”
“Because I’m Tony Stark and I can be,” Tony says, handing Peter the super-strength pills. “here. Let me–”
“Thanks.” Peter says, flipping his head upward and plopping the pills into his mouth.
“Did you actually swallow those?” Tony asks, looking mildly horrified.
“Um . . . yes?” Peter says, looking confused.
“How?”
“How did I dry swallow them?” Peter asks, and Tony nods. “Oh. Well, I guess over the past few years I kind of had to get good at it. I had to improvise with what I had.”
Oh. Oh.
“Oh,” Tony says. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Peter says. “really. You, uh, you’re the one that saved me from having to do all that. There’s no reason for you to be apologizing.”
“I’m not apologizing,” Tony says. “I’m just . . . sorry you had to go through that.”
“It’s in the past.” Peter says. “Well, I’m off to patrol. I’ll see you later!”
Tony watches Peter bound off, and his anxiety never fails to make him do a tiny jump whenever the kid would just . . . jump out of a window like he does.
It’s a couple hours later when Tony gets a call while in his lab. He assumes it’s Pepper, so he sets his things down and picks up the phone, spinning in his rolling chair as he hits the green answer button.
“Miss me already?”
“Mister Stark?”
Crap.
“Peter?” Tony says. “Is everything okay?”
“Well, uh . . . my headache went away for a while– honest! But now it’s back and I’m not sticking as well. I don’t know . . . something’s wrong with my powers, I think.”
“Okay, we’ll figure that out later. I’m coming to get you now.”
“. . . okay.” Peter says, and Tony hears the complete trust laced with utter pain in his voice. “ I know you have to take your time, what with the suit and all, but–”
“The suit’s been through worse, kid, but that’s not what I’m worried about.” Tony says. This kid. “I’m tracking you. I’ll be there in less than fifteen minutes.”
“ Okay.” Peter replies, and Tony wants to keep him talking but he can tell, even through Peter’s tough facade, that the kid is clearly in pain and his voice is hoarse. So he’s content with just listening to the kid breathe, like he had when they had first brought Peter home and Tony had barely left his side for longer than ten minutes.
“About ten minutes, kid.” Tony says, like an afterthought, and Peter groans in an attempt to let him know that he heard him.
Tony goes back to his thoughts, then, as Peter’s breathing sounds in his ears and his vitals hold steady in front of his face. How had he, Tony Stark, genius billionaire former playboy philanthropist, become so quickly attached to Peter Parker, a fifteen year old kid from Queens? One he met on the street, no less?
Tony sometimes forgets that Peter hasn’t been with him his whole life, that he didn’t get to see a precious toddler called Peter Parker take his first steps, or didn’t take an ecstatic four-year-old Peter to his first day of preschool, or a timid and shy five year old into his first day of kindergarten. He didn’t help him learn to tie his shoes, or his bowtie for the sixth grade Valentine’s Day dance, or whatever it was that they did. He had Richard and Mary Parker and Ben and May Parker to thank for all of those things. Without those four, although May and Ben had a bigger part in Peter’s life by stepping up to the plate after the deaths of Peter’s parents, he wouldn’t have the Peter Parker he has today. And he swore to all four of them right there, to May and Ben, to Richard and Mary, that he would be with Peter every step of the way.
It was funny to him. He never wanted kids because he thought he’d be bad at it and end up like his father, but Pepper had seen him with Peter a good bit now and said that parenting just came naturally to him, and he had just laughed it off and told her that it didn’t. But he was starting to understand where she was coming from when he thought about how he would be in Peter’s wedding, would send him off on his first date, take him prom suit shopping–things mundane teenagers with no superpowers would do. But he would also be there for the superhero part of his life as well. Maybe Pepper was right when she said that Tony would be a good parent because of how much incentive he had to never be like Howard Stark.
Peter Parker might look up to Tony Stark, but Tony Stark looked up to Peter Parker. And Peter Parker came from a long line of good people, if the way he was turning out said anything about it. He certainly had a good upbringing from May and Ben before the rug was pulled out from under him, his life as he knew it shattering before his eyes. Peter Parker, a fifteen year old kid from Queens, homeless and on the run from CPS, still managed to look at the world through an optimistic glass.
And then, just because, Tony made a list of everything Peter Parker had been through:
- His parents died
- His aunt and uncle died
- Records show he didn’t talk for months after either
- Ran away from CPS and child care
- Homeless
- How long was he homeless before he met me?
- Kidnapped
- Possibly tortured
- Mental manipulation against me
- Muzzled
- Shot
. . . and the list went on.
“Stick to the wall.”
“Mister Stark, I’ve tried .” Peter says. “I just. Won’t. Stick!” Peter says, kicking the wall in between words.
“Woah, hey, chill out. We’ll fix it.”
“Yeah, I know.” Peter replies, kicking absently at nothing on the floor. “Sorry for losing it. I’m just . . . well . . .”
“Hey,” Tony starts, and Peter turns to look at him. “I know. I’ll look after Queens while you’re down.” Peter stays quiet, so Tony continues. “It’ll be okay. You’ll be back to giving me heart attacks in no time. Seriously. I always do a double take when you just . . . jump out of the window.”
“Don’t you jump out of windows?” Peter asks. “You fly.”
“The suit flies.” Tony corrects, grinning. “And I go up. You go down.”
“I gotta swing from somewhere, Mister Stark.”
“Yeah, as long as it’s not the clouds.” Tony says in fake annoyance. “Also, how many times do we have to go over this? It’s Tony, kid. Come on. I know you can say it. Toe. Knee.”
“Aw, cut it out, Mister Stark.”
“Never.” Tony teases, but notices Peter’s eyes are red and he’s trying to hide the fact that he’s absentmindedly rubbing his temple by leaning against the wall, head laid against it in his hand.
Tony wants to call him out on it, but decides not to. He figures, well, the kid already feels embarrassed enough from today. So he decides to take it out on himself.
“Alright, well, I need a break.” Tony announces suddenly, clapping his hands together.
“But–”
“I say we take a break, eat something and watch a movie, and then we’ll hop right back on it.”
“Mister Stark, I’m not sure–” Peter scoffs nervously.
“It’s okay to take a break every once and a while, kid.” Tony tells him with a hand on his shoulder, and it’s clear in both their faces that Tony is talking about more than one thing here.
Peter nods, understanding. “Okay.”
“So it never occurred to you that it might be important to tell me that you wore glasses before the spider?”
Peter shrugged. “Wasn’t important.”
“It really was.”
“But it also really wasn’t a problem until now.”
“Whatever you say.” Tony rolls his eyes. “But Bruce says that you should be back to normal soon. Your powers aren’t gone, just . . . dampened.”
“Cool.” Peter says.
Tony sighs. “You shouldn’t have patrolled today.” he says, eyeing the white bandage on a spot on Peter’s hairline and the tape on his nose.
“How was I supposed to know this would happen?” Peter says offensively.
“You had a headache.”
“The world doesn’t stop for a headache, Mister Stark. And Spider-Man does just fine.”
“Spider-Man has powers.” Tony argues. “Well, not right now, he doesn’t, but-”
“Okay, okay. I get it.” Peter says, softly laughing as he pushes his glasses back up to his nose. “I’ll take a break.”
“Good.” Tony says, content that he both won this argument and pleased that Peter had agreed so quickly. “You’ll be back to giving me heart attacks in no time, kid.”
“You sure you want that?” Peter asks, raising an eyebrow.
Tony opens an eye. “Well, the house is mostly quiet when you’re gone, so I get work done-”
“Hey!”
“- but I’d also, ideally, not have you fighting dangerous criminals that could potentially murder you at any given second. But you’re also just trying to do good in the world, kid. I’m torn.”
Peter just looks at him. Tony sighs.
“I like having you here, but my heart falters every dang time you jump out of that window and I can’t see you until you swing back up in the air.”
“But going out the front door to go be Spider-Man isn’t as cool. Or fun.”
“It’s less panicking for me.”
“You’d panic anyway.”
Tony goes to argue with that logic, but Peter was right. He spent every moment Peter wasn’t at home worrying about where he may be and what might be happening.
“Alright, you know what–” Tony argues teasingly, and Peter laughs. “I think . . . ice cream.”
“Ice cream?”
“Yes. No. Junk food.”
“Junk food?”
“. . . yes.”
“Where did that come from?”
“Can I not celebrate that you didn’t die today?”
“It’s not even that bad, Mister Stark, and my glasses are helping.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yes. Okay. Still, junk food. What kind of pizza do you want? And how many?”
Peter just stares at him, an are you serious right now look mixed with an incredulous shocked face and a grin. He scoffs.
“He’s . . . he’s serious. You’re serious.”
“Yes.”
Peter looks up at Tony. “I don’t even know how we got here.”
“Me either, kid. Me either.”
He did, in fact, know how they got here, but he wasn’t sure how they went from a small headache this morning to . . . junk food. Of all things.
Oh well. At least he knew the important things.