Chapter Text
Tony
Tony had been awake for 72 hours. Not his personal record by any means, but he had started a new project and, as usual, had a hard time remembering to do basic tasks like eating, drinking water, and, of course, sleeping. Soon, FRIDAY would attempt to initiate the go to sleep now, or I will make you go to board meetings protocol – named by Pepper, not him.
The traitorous AI liked her better than him. Probably due to some psychobabble nonsense of being the replacement child after Jarvis was murdered by Ultron. He was just so close to finishing his suit upgrades, and quickly running out of time before Pepper was contacted, and he was sent off to bed. Which was why when he snuck out of his labs to go get another cup of coffee from the kitchen, he was extra irritated to be stopped by Steve.
“I met with Fury this morning; he has a mission for us.” Steve started, all business, placing himself between Tony and the coffeemaker. Tony sidestepped him. “Gonna stop you right there, Cap, and let you know that this is an after-coffee conversation,” and started preparing a fresh pot of coffee to take with him to the lab to avoid any more distractions. Why didn’t he have a coffeemaker in his lab again? He would have to remedy that.
“Jeez, Tony, what is this your third pot of coffee today?” Rogers remarked, “That can’t be healthy.” His eyes scanned over Tony’s disheveled state, filled with concern.
“Well, it’s better than booze,” Tony replied lightly, causing Steve to stiffen, uncomfortable with Tony’s reference to his drinking issues. Didn’t matter if Tony had been clean and sober since before Ultron, having quit drinking once he started getting his PTSD treated following the Battle of New York. Rogers seemed to think he was always teetering over the edge for a slip-up. He also seemed to think his opinion was welcome. And maybe a year ago it was, but Cap had lost the privilege of worrying about Tony when he turned the whole team against him and left him to clean up the mess of the Accords and Ross alone.
“And what did the pirate want? Did he lose his treasure again and need us to find it?” he responded to change the subject, staring at the coffeemaker as it began to brew.
“There's a new vigilante in Queens who calls himself Spider-Man. Fury wants us to check him out, assess his threat level, and bring him in for questioning about his tech and abilities.”
Steve continued, ignoring Tony’s pirate remark and making his way over to the fridge to prepare his food.
“What sort of tech?” Tech was way more interesting than helping Fury out.
“Oh, you’ll have to do your own research there. Fury was going on about webs and sticking, and you know how useless I am when it comes to that stuff. I was thinking you could compile some research on the guy and brief the team on him tomorrow”
“You think we’ll need the whole team for this?” Tony asked incredulously, “For one untrained spider-guy? Were you all not training while you galivanted around the globe?”
“Well, I wanted to have all the information first, but I was thinking it could be a good exercise for our newer members, like Wanda, Sam, and…Bucky.” Cap said a bit sheepishly.
The grin on Tony’s face tightened into a thin line. He honestly was still getting used to the Capsicle’s parent-murdering, brainwashed boytoy living at his tower. He helped Cap out in Siberia and with everything afterwards because he knew that Barnes hadn’t been in control of his actions. But Rogers couldn’t seem to comprehend that living with the man whose hand ended the life of your mother might take more than a couple of months to adjust to. He was trying, but he and Barnes were a long way off from being friends, or speaking at all, in fact.
The timer on the coffeemaker beeped, offering a perfect escape from the tense energy that had befallen the kitchen. Tucking the coffeepot under his arm, he grabbed a mug from the dishrack and headed back toward his lab. At the kitchen’s entrance, he stopped to say,
“I’ll have Friday start compiling data on the guy, should be able to have his identity cracked pretty quickly.” There. That was mature; that was civil even. Just pretend that the mere mention of Barnes doesn’t send you into a spiral, he thought to himself.
“See you tomorrow then, at the briefing,” Cap said as he began to chop his vegetables. “Tony, you should join us for lunch after,” he added absently, “Sam’s cooking, and the team would all love to see you outside of official Avengers meetings”.
Tony highly doubted that. He wasn’t exactly the most likable person and had personally pissed off almost everyone on the team during the fallout from the Accords. The only people who seemed to tolerate him right now were Rhodey, Bruce, and Thor. Both Banner and Thor had been absent on an alien world or something during the Accords’ fiasco, but Bruce agreed with Tony’s position, after the fact (take that Steve), and Thor was…well, he was Thor, and either truly didn’t, or pretended not to understand anything about Midgardian politics, making him Switzerland in the whole ordeal.
Natasha was the only other person who had sought him out upon returning, and he was still choosing to be the smaller person and refused to talk to her unless he had to. So, he’d been very purposefully avoiding team dinners since Barnes and the others arrived at the compound and had no intention of stopping now. He actually wouldn’t even be attending the briefing, as Friday would have strict instructions to have him sleep in the next 24 hours and would lock his bedroom door to everyone but Pepper. But Rogers didn’t need to know that. Instead of responding, Tony gave Steve a light shrug and hightailed it out of there with his coffee.
…
Spider-Man was definitely a misnomer. While the kid was an adult for sure, he was on the young side, always throwing in silly quips and unnecessary acrobatics as he stopped muggers, walked grandmas across the street, and rescued cats from trees. Spider-young-adult would be a more apt name.
Tony’s other project sat abandoned on his workstation as he dove further into his Spider-Man research. He appeared a little over a year ago, right before the whole mess with the Accords got started, which is probably why Fury was just now having them look into him. He wasn’t sure why Fury was so concerned about the guy until he saw him stop a car with his bare hands without breaking a sweat. “Enhanced or just supplied with decent tech?” he wondered aloud.
Spider-Man could also stick to walls, and his preferred form of transportation was swinging through the city on webs. Did they come out of him? The guy’s suit was also disastrously homemade, and Fury or not, Tony had to help with that. Even if the guy didn’t get to use it, he could not let anyone run around in nothing but their pajama onesie. “Friday, can you gather all footage of Spider-Man’s comings and goings to see if we can pinpoint where the guy lives?”
“Of course, boss,” she replied cheerfully. While he waited, he continued to scroll through all the videos of Spider-Man on the internet and doodle out some designs for a new and improved spider-suit. He had to be at least college age. If the tech was homemade, he was a genius, or he was someone who knew a genius.
“Start looking through the rosters of the local universities too, see if any of the grads or PhD students’ research is comparable to this guy’s tech,” he added as Friday’s report on Spider-Man's movements was completed. “Tell me what you found,” he asked the AI.
“Analysis complete: ‘Spider-Man’s’ movements do not follow any discernible patterns. He patrols at random intervals, sometimes for only a few hours and sometimes for seemingly days at a time with little rest. When he does disappear from surveillance, he can avoid all cameras and never disappears from the same place twice. With the information I gathered, there is no possibility of using his movements to trace his identity. It should be noted that while in the first months he was active, he focused purely on helping people; there is some recent evidence through CCTV that he is stealing from chain grocery stores, which is a change from his usual behavior. His time active on the streets has also increased dramatically in the last few months, which will help in identifying him once there is more information available.”
Now Tony was invested. This was proving to be a more challenging puzzle than he initially thought it would be. A man who helps little old ladies cross the street but also has a habit of stealing from grocery stores. Was he low on cash? Or was he just satisfying his need to steal without harming the local businesses? It just didn’t make sense. Hours later, Tony had seen every video of Spider-Man that existed on the internet, combed through hundreds of graduate and PHD students’ research topics, and was no closer to finding an identity for the guy.
He was a little bit shocked. The guy was a total ghost. Tony had so many questions for him once he found him.
“Set an alert for when Spider-Man starts a patrol and keep tracking all his movements to add to the analysis. I imagine Cap will be wanting to confront the guy sooner rather than later, and that’s pretty much all the information I’ll be able to provide.” Tony asked, pausing as Friday replied,
“Sure thing, boss. I must alert you that the go to sleep now, or I will make you go to board meetings protocol has been activated. The power to the lab will be cut off in ten minutes, and Miss Potts will be contacted if you don’t make your way to your bedroom before then.” Tony sighed and began saving his files before making his way up to his room in the penthouse. He was on thin ice with Pepper, who was not even currently living with him, so he really shouldn’t push his luck, no matter how badly he wanted to keep working.
Besides, when Steve came to grab him for the meeting tomorrow, he would be denied entrance until he went and bothered Pepper about it, which brought him a lot of joy at how irritated he would be that they weren't immediately getting to work on their mission from Fury. He wasn’t sure if his petty behavior toward Steve was worth how upset Pepper would be when she had to come drag him out of bed, but the door to his room had already been locked by Friday, so there really wasn’t anything he could do about it now
As he lay down in his bed, the clock read 5:16 AM. Steve and the others would be up soon, ready for a day of spider hunting. Tony almost felt bad about delaying the meeting but shook it off. The guy couldn’t be that hard to catch, anyway. They were the Avengers, and even if their teamwork as of late left a lot to be desired, they had fought aliens and evil AI robots together. Spider-Man was just a twenty-something with some enhanced strength and a pajama set. They’d confront the guy and have their report ready for Fury in a week, at most; he was sure of it.
Peter
Peter looked out through his goggles at the city. Perched on top of the Queensboro Bridge, Spider-Man had had an easy night. On his way over to the bridge, he had stopped a handful of muggers, walked some women home from a bar after scaring away a group of douches who were harassing them, and had given some directions to a handful of very lost tourists. The Bridge was one of his favorite spots to hang out when he wasn’t actively fighting crime. As a sixteen-year-old high school dropout, he had a lot of time on his hands, and when he was feeling especially mopey, he would climb up the side of the bridge and stare out at the skyline.
The Avengers Tower stood shining in the distance in Manhattan, and he entertained foolish daydreams of one day being recognized by the Avengers as a hero like them. The Avengers were a thing again, right? When all the shit with the Accords was going down, Peter had bigger things to worry about than the international politics of superhero-ing, so he was not sure what all went down. He did know from stealing newspapers that Captain America and his supporters had recently been pardoned and were back living in Tony Stark’s tower, and that the Accords had been scrapped so long as the new shield, which wasn’t Hydra anymore in case you were confused, kept them in check.
While he definitely admired the Avengers, they had saved the world after all; he figured he could do more good sticking to Queens as a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. It was still fun to dream about someday fighting alongside them though, especially since Peter’s real life left a lot to be desired. Whether he wanted it or not, it would never really happen. Parker Luck had a way of making sure anything remotely good in Peter’s life imploded.
First, his parents died in a plane crash when he was six. He barely remembered anything about them. He was sent to live with his Aunt May and Uncle Ben, who had never wanted kids, but welcomed him with open arms. Those years after moving in with them were good. He went to a private STEM school on scholarship, found a best friend in Ned Leeds, and was hopelessly crushing on their friend MJ.
Then, when he was fourteen, he was bitten by a radioactive spider on a school field trip and woke up the next day with superpowers. Awesome right? No. Because even with superpowers, Peter would fail to save his uncle Ben from a gunman in a local market robbery gone wrong. Ben was only in that market because he was looking for Peter, who had been breaking curfew to mess around with his new spider-powers. So, he became a vigilante and spent every night after school trying to make up for his failure. But he couldn’t save his aunt from that drunk driver either.
With the last of his family gone, Peter was put into foster care. He bounced around a lot, as family after family could not keep him from sneaking out at night. His social worker had asked him after the third time he was moved why he couldn’t give himself a shot at having a family. He shrugged her off, but the answer was because of the last thing his uncle Ben said to him before he died: with great power comes great responsibility. He could not ignore his uncle's dying wish.
Peter could take the beatings from his foster parents when they realized he was gone every night; surely, he deserved it for all the pain he had caused. But then, the incident happened, and his foster father ended up in the hospital beaten to a pulp. Peter Parker had done that, and even though he maintained that the man deserved what he got, he was still ashamed of it. The police hadn’t listened. They said he was lying and charged him with assault.
While sitting in the holding cell waiting for his arraignment hearing the next day, he realized that Peter Parker was the problem. So, he used his powers to escape from the station and had just stopped being Peter Parker from that moment on. Spider-Man helped people; Peter Parker just got people killed and made everything worse.
He was rarely out of his spider suit now. And sure, he missed going to school at Midtown, hanging out with Ned and MJ, but they were better off without him there to put them in danger. The police seemed to have given up searching for him months ago, leaving Ned and MJ as the only ones looking for him. He checked on them sometimes at first, but the temptation to go talk to them started to get too great so he stopped. They kept showing up at Ben and May’s graves, so he had to stop visiting them as often, too.
He still went to Midtown sometimes, always at night, only to use the chem lab to stock up on his web fluid. He felt guilty about it, just like he felt guilty about stealing food from the grocery stores. He didn’t take much, but as a homeless enhanced teenager, he needed a lot of calories to keep up with his hero work and his healing factor. He was already noticing that it was taking longer and longer for the many wounds he sustained on patrols to heal. His 15th birthday had just passed, and he was starting to wonder what he would do when the weather got cold. Spiders apparently couldn’t thermoregulate, and while that hadn’t mattered when he had a bed to sleep in each night, it would matter when winter came, and he was sleeping in an abandoned building with no heat.
Peter couldn’t bring himself to worry too much about it; all that mattered was if he was helping people. If he couldn’t do that when it was cold out, then maybe it didn’t matter if he froze to death. His spider-sense snapped him out of his spiral
DANGER! STREET! KNIFE!
He heard the murmur of a man’s cold voice and smelled the salt of a woman’s tears a few blocks away. It didn’t matter that Peter Parker was cold and tired. Peter Parker couldn’t help that woman, but Spider-Man could. So, he got up, shot a web in the direction his senses were pointing him, and swung off into the night.