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Something about spending most of your day concerned about the ins and outs of a teenager’s mind had taught Tony one important thing: he knew nothing, he would never know any of what was going on, what the hell is wrong with teenagers.
Especially his mentee, a teenager Tony was particularly fond of. Every waking moment: confusion. Horror. Bafflement. He was a genius, an unrelated-chip-off-Tony’s-Billionaire-Playboy-Genius-Philanthropist’s block. There were days that Peter delighted and astounded Tony with his maturity and wit, and there were days that Tony had to seek deities he’d never considered before becoming a mentor.
Peter could solve any problem sent his way, would defy any odds and worry the shit out of Tony to accomplish any goal set before him. And in the next breath, he would shut down, convinced he couldn’t do anything right, and that obviously DUM-E actually hated him, and oh my god, Mr. Stark I’m the worst neighborhood Spider-Man ever!
What was he supposed to do with that?
So Tony would do his best, try and think of any encouragements he’d gotten from his mentors (Obediah? Maybe not. Pepper was usually a better source), and he’d spin these--in his opinion--excellent anecdotes and stories.
And then Peter would focus in on one singular detail. One detail that made the anecdote maybe not excellent advice. And that’s what he’d learn. The kid didn’t sleep for a week because Tony accidentally kept in a detail about a time in college he hadn’t let himself rest until he’d finished his fusion engine for a final (and to impress a certain Helen Brooks…). He’d meant it in a sense of he didn’t drink for a while, not parties, that sort of thing.
And the “no drinking” detail was also a disaster, in case that was a question. Super-powered teenagers dehydrate incredibly quickly. That was a particularly bad day.
The craziest part of all of it, though, was that it was seemingly random. Sometimes, Tony would give Peter sage advice and the kid would expand on it! He would not only understand, but immediately understand how to apply it and consider ways to improve the impact! Other times, they’d end up in the medbay with an injured or sick or dying Peter glumly admitting “but you said” and then Tony would have to say “I know what I said” and they’d have to restart all over again.
The rest of the team remained mostly unaware of this sick and twisted torment Tony was experiencing day in and day out with his protege. They only knew Spider-Man, and they knew he was always up for anything, and they knew that Tony was always watching him like a hawk.
Or a mother hen, in Clint’s words.
They also knew of Peter, but to a lesser extent. Bruce had a definite soft spot for the kid, personally delighted by Peter’s knowledge of his research. The super spies seemed to like him well enough, Sam appreciated that he would literally eat anything, Steve said he seemed like a “responsible young man”--maybe the oldest he’s ever sounded ever--and Bucky had once smiled at the kid, so that was probably a positive review.
No one on the team had to deal with an introspective, self-destructive, super-mutated, emotional, genius teenager who decided to reinvent himself at least four times a day in various unhealthy ways.
It was a rare occurrence, therefore, for one of these mishaps to not be Tony’s fault! It didn’t make it any more fun, but Tony was taking the win where he could.
***
The Incident
If Godzilla invades New York, you call for a nuke. If Godzilla Eats Las Vegas, you call Eric Whitaker. If you see a dinosaur, you get a camera. If Jurassic Park has a breakout, you make a weird movie franchise. If a collection of several heavily armed mid-sized kaiju-dinosaur-monster things with very sharp weapons suddenly descend upon the streets of New York, you get the Avengers.
No, they didn’t know who was behind it. No, they weren’t in charge of caring about that. That was SHIELD’s (and Banner’s) job to figure out and sort. Their job was to contain and control the nonsense running around the streets at that moment.
“This might be the best day of my life,” Peter solemnly said into the comm link. Sam laughed.
“You a fan?”
“Am I a fan? A FAN? Mr. Wilson, this is every five-year-old’s dream. What do you mean ‘am I a fan’ when we get to fight Dinosaurs with Swords?”
“I was more a fire truck kid, myself.”
“Ooh,” Clint joined, considering. “No, no, I’m with Spidey. Dinosaurs all the way, man.”
“I liked horses,” Natasha offered. “When I was very young.”
“Guys, can we focus?” Steve tried.
“Don’t be like that, Spangles!” Tony chuckled. “We all know your answer is Lincoln Logs and mud pies.”
Bucky started laughing a little too hard for Steve to even try denying the joke. “Let’s hear yours, then,” Steve redirected instead.
“Easy. Gold coins.”
And the day was going pretty excellently, all things considered. SHIELD eventually figured out who was behind the dinoswords (Peter’s name, genius) and apprehended the individual. Without the looming threat of possibly more problems coming, all they had to do was finish sedating (or beating the brakes of off) the prehistoric problems so that SHIELD could decide how to/if they should contain them.
However, as previously stated, there was already a pretty extensive movie franchise dedicated to why maybe containment wasn’t the answer. Tony did though send a quick call to Strange to ask his thoughts. Just in case SHIELD was feeling cinematic on that specific occasion. The Doctor said he’d be there soon to consult with Fury.
They had eleven dinoswords left to deal with. Peter had already done a great job with clearing civilians, and the area was free for the Avengers to Do What They Do. DWTD, trademark pending.
“Ok, team,” Steve started as he swung the former twelfth dinosword over his head and into the pavement. “Split up. Avoid the blades, take them out as quick and as humanely as you can, got it? If you need back up, though, say something. Let’s put that teamwork to good use today.”
“Hell yeah, Steve,” Clint chuckled, watching a bomb arrow explode in a dinosword’s face as it roared in fury. “This is so fucking fun.”
“Can we try and have a little decorum?” Steve snapped, mostly kidding.
Tony barked a laugh. “Yeah, Clint! Mom says no swearing.”
That got a chuckle out of America’s Sweetheart. “You know as well as I do that we’ve been getting more and more complaints about certain word choices around younger ears. It wouldn’t kill us to work on our presentation a little.”
Sam clapped his hands, veering in the sky towards his targeted dinosword. “Yes, Mom. We’re on it!”
***
No matter what anyone might have thought or worried, Peter loved fighting alongside the Avengers. He loved that they trusted him with civilian duty--what a perfect use for his powers! He loved that he got to come along on missions, and damn if he didn’t love that he got to fight dinosaurs today.
Darn. Darn if he didn’t love that he got to fight dinosaurs today.
As Peter swung around a city block, honing in on his next target, he did take a moment to consider Mr. Roger’s words. It was a pretty bad habit to fall into, and Peter had gotten pretty lax about his language. Mr. Stark was definitely a bad influence there, but wasn’t it Peter’s responsibility as someone who fought alongside the Avengers to at least try and act up to snuff? What if a kid heard him say a bad word, and that was their introduction? And then that kid said it in school, got expelled, and was suddenly on a path to becoming a career criminal? All because Peter said fuck near them once without thinking?
Dangerous stuff.
So dangerous, in fact, that Peter forgot to pay attention to what he was doing and slammed right into a dinosword, notably bigger than he’d gauged from afar. “Oh--
Shit, fuck, damn it, or…
“--no!” Peter decided on, the yelp luckily unnoticed by the others. He dodged a quick hit from the enraged dinosword, and slammed his foot into it’s armor plated chest. The terrible lizard skidded back several feet, and in the time it took to charge back towards Peter, he discovered an awful sound.
Sniffles.
Oh my god there’s a kid. He’d forgotten someone. A child had slipped his notice. How could he have let this happen? What was he supposed to do now? He had a charging dinosword and a terrified child trapped somewhere nearby? He couldn’t just leave them and risk them being injured in the scuffle with the creature!
What did he do?
What to do?
Peter settled on doing his best. And his best meant getting that kid out of there. After the split second conversation with himself, Peter decided to sling a few webs the dinosword’s way, whipping around to locate the source of the sniffles. Under a felled restaurant canopy… there! It was a little boy with a stegosaurus on his shirt. Dark hair and teary eyes, Peter’s heart soared a bit at how the kid lit up in a smile at the sight of him.
“Spider-Man!”
“Hey, buddy! Whatcha up to?” Somewhere in the back of Peter’s mind, he recognized a certain need for haste. But he didn’t want to scare the kid. That was not an option.
“Scary out there.”
“I agree. But I see you too have excellent taste in dinosaurs. Is that a stegosaurus?” The kid nodded eagerly, delighted that Spider-Man liked the same dinosaurs as him. “How do we feel about t-rex?” The boy’s face fell fearfully.
“Scary.”
“You’re so right, buddy. How about I get you out of here, and you’ll never have to see one again?” His new friend nodded, hesitantly at first, then braver as he realized who he was talking to. Peter’s heart swelled with pride. He was doing it!
He could be an example to the youth!
“Awesome! Let’s do this!”
Only, he’d run out of time. He’d taken too long working to soothe the little boy, and Peter had completely ignored the alarm bells his Spidey Sense had been slamming against his skull. Obviously there was danger: they were fighting armed t-rexes.
Just as Peter had the boy scooped up in his arms, ready to swing out of there, the dinosword was upon them, sword glinting as it arced through the air. Peter bellowed something angry, shielding the little boy with his body. Pain lanced down his back, the sword slicing through his suit.
Roars. Another dinosword had heard the commotion and come sprinting towards it. Peter yelped as it lashed out, armored tail studded with wicked spikes drawing down his hip to his knee. The leg buckled, and Peter barely had the wherewithal to web it up and throw it stone-in-sling style as far as he could. If anyone had been around, he knew he would have gotten a 10/10 rating from Clint at least for the throw.
The kid was crying, terrified. Peter had to fix this. He swung blindly, clocking the first dinosword across the jaw and firing a web up to the nearest building, launching him and his friend into the air and away from the threat. Peter would have to go back and face it eventually.
“Woah!” he gasped, trying to act like everything was fine. Everything was fine. He was fine. “Almost got me there!” It had got him there. Peter was in a lot of pain right there. His back was on fire. “You ready to go now, or what?” he joked instead. Tears clearing, the little boy nodded slowly. “What’s your name, kiddo?”
“Charles.”
“Oh that’s a sick name, Charles. I’m Spider-Man,” Charles giggled that he knew that already. “Where are your adults, Charles?” Luckily, Charles knew the name of the restaurant they’d been in. He’d gotten excited when he heard the other adults tell his mom about the dinosaurs in Times Square, and he’d snuck out in the confusion to see for himself. His mother was nearly inconsolable by the time she caught sight of Peter swinging down with her boy in his arms. She thanked him profusely, and startled when she caught sight of the blood leaking through his suit.
“Are you--” she started, something very maternal and bossy to her words. Peter’s heart ached a little.
“It’s all good,” he soothed. “Charles kept me brave, didn’t he?” And Peter held a fist down to the kid for a fist bump, and then he was on his way. Charles’s mom made him promise to be careful as he swung away.
Fighting dinoswords was starting to suck.
***
Peter was quiet. Tony hated that. Quiet was never a good thing with a super powered teen. They were wrapping up quickly, though, so he’d be able to check on the kid soon enough.
“Just a few more, then we’re out of here!” Steve announced. Somewhere across Time Square, Tony caught sight of his patriotic frisbee clocking a particularly angry dinosword across the jaw.
“Damn, Spidey. This you?” Clint asked, referencing the out cold dinosword encased in webbing half cratered in the pavement. “How hard did you throw the fucker?”
“I don’t fu-- ah, I don’t know,” Peter answered, the catch entertaining Tony for some reason. “I just really needed it out of my way.”
“Ooh, hey, watch your six, Spider-Man,” Wilson warned from above, seeing a Dinosword approaching at ridiculous speed.
“Oh, shoot!” Okay, Tony was right. Peter was censoring himself.
This was an amazing day.
It wasn’t even like the kid swore very often. If anything, he really hadn’t until he started working with Tony in the lab and on the battle field. The law of coincidence and causation did decree that that was therefore obviously Tony’s fault, but he didn’t vote for that law and didn’t see reason to practice it.
“Underoos,” Tony said slowly, firing a repulser beam and downing the last dinosword in his area.
“What’s up?”
“Are you censoring yourself?”
Peter grunted as he no doubt felled his own final dinosword. “What?”
Clint chuckled. “You wouldn’t say fuck earlier, and just now you said ‘shoot’.”
“Was he silent or silenced?” Bucky mused, no doubt having learned that from Peter. It gets a delighted, if not a little tired, laugh from the teenager.
“I’m just happy that someone around here listens to me,” Steve grinned.
“Oh boo-fucking-hoo, Spangles,” Tony griped with a smile. “Can we go home now?”
“Looks like it, yeah. Let’s pack up, team.”
“Oh he-- hooray. Hooray,” Peter settled, and Tony was delighted and amused all over again.
He was delighted and amused, that is, until he caught sight of his protege. A bloody gash down his back, some horrid wound to the side of his thigh, why the hell hadn’t he been alerted by the suit?!
“What the hell happened?” he asks instead, rushing over. Peter is teetering, stumbling forward.
“Darn it,” Peter says slowly, collapsing into Tony’s arms.
Out cold.
“I need some help over here!” Tony yells into the comm. Instantly, Bucky and Steve have converged on him and Peter.
“What the hell happened?” Bucky grumbles. Tony just nods.
“That’s what I said.”
***
Peter awoke to darkness and a conversation.
“--od forbid I just want to have a nice fight with my team and my protege, no, no, we have to get injured. How the hell did you get injured when we were all so close? How is it that none of us saw?”
A one sided conversation, then.
Who was injured?
A dull ache in his… everything clued him in to that one pretty quickly.
“What did I do this time?” he mutters, forgetting to keep that one for his inside voice. The conversation (lecture) abruptly stops, and Peter recognizes Tony’s hand holding his.
“Peter?”
“Yo.”
“You wanna open your eyes or are we not facing our problems today?”
Oh yeah. Explains why everything was so dark.
It’s bright, opening his eyes. But soon Peter is able to blink enough that the brightness of the room stabilizes and he’s able to focus on a very sleepy and obviously very worried Mr. Stark.
“So…” Peter starts, fidgeting with the blanket. He remembers most of it. Just not how he got here.
“Upon watching your suit’s footage to figure out what exactly happened,” and there’s an angry glint to Tony’s words. Everything is carefully said.
He’s furious with Peter.
“Do you want to tell me what happened today?” Tony asks after a moment of contemplation. Peter tilts his head, confused. Obviously they both know by now.
“Uh--”
“Because I think we have a few things we need to discuss.”
“I didn’t want Charles to end up a career criminal!” Peter blurts out. It’s not quite what he meant to say, and Tony is stunned into silence for a moment.
“...what?”
“It’s just like Mr. Rogers said! We really need to work on our language around kids in battle because what if I, like, said the f-word near a kid and then he started saying it at school and got expelled and ended up a battle-hardened career criminal?! And it’d be all my fault!” He’s babbling now, but he can’t stop. “I can’t be responsible for something like that, Mr. Stark!”
“And I am thrilled by your need to take responsibility for the safety of children’s schooling,” Mr. Stark looks like he’s working very hard to fight a grin, “but what does this have to do with--”
“I was thinking about that, okay, about how serious that could be, and I got distracted. It was stupid, and I’m sorry. I got distracted, and I ran into the dinosword, and then I heard Charles and I got distracted all over again and a second one showed up, and I freaked out and I was trying to get him to safety.” The word vomit won’t stop. Peter can’t make himself stop spewing words almost incoherently. Mr. Stark’s eyebrows have nearly disappeared entirely.
“What about the rest of what Steve said, hm?”
Peter freezes. “What?” he asks. He tries to think back on it, but there’s nothing. “What else did he say?”
Tony deflates with a sigh, running a hand down his face. “He did, yes, say that we needed to keep things PG. And then he said to ask for help if you needed. What happened to that one out there?”
“Oh.”
“There were seven other people out there with you, Peter,” Tony says, trying to sound stern but Peter can tell he was just scared today. “You have to let us know when things like that happen. You had a civilian and two dinoswords: that sounds like reason enough to get back-up.”
Hearing it said that way, yeah, it feels like common sense. Peter hunches his shoulders in on himself. “Oh,” he says again.
“Yeah, ‘oh’,” Tony echoes. “You can’t keep doing this to me kid. I like life much more when you aren’t grievously injured--”
“It was hardly grievous, come on--”
“--it was plenty grievous and if you contradict me again I’m going to make DUM-E be your nurse.”
Peter laughs, and something in Tony’s face relaxes. “Next time, promise me you’ll ask for help. Even if you think you can probably handle it.”
“You were all busy,” Peter tries to defend himself, but even knows it’s a lame attempt.
“I’m never too busy to keep you safe, Pete. Never,” Tony gently admonished. “Now go the heck to sleep,” he chuckled.
Peter feigned a scandalized gasp. “You’ll be on thin fucking ice if Mr. Rogers hears you speaking like that.”
Tony roars with laughter, and Peter feels warm and safe as he drifts off to sleep.