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Today marked the end of exam season, and Tony had expected his intern back to his usual self, a bouncing ball of energy that let every possible detail of the last week of testing flood out of his mouth. Instead, he’d been met with a puppet dangling by a single string that frayed under his weight. He answered with a word or two, using most of his brain power to make sure he was standing upright rather than giving thoughtful responses.
It took a minute or two of trying to pry any sort of conversation from the teenager before Tony made the executive decision to let him crash on the couch. He did try to steer him in the direction of the bedrooms that had never been broken into, but Peter insisted he didn’t need to sleep for that long.
“Just need fift…m’no thirty. Thirty momentos,” he said as he crawled onto the couch, his words slurred and eyes already half-closed. He flopped down onto the cushions, using his backpack as a pillow. Tony offered to get him something better, but it’d already been lights out before he got the chance.
Tony knew burnout like the back of his hand, but he still fervently googled every symptom Peter displayed, fueling his anxiety further with every disease with a death rate. He knew it was coming, although that did nothing to soothe the concern at seeing Peter completely and utterly exhausted, his voice croaky and his eyebrows knitted together, presumably from a headache.
Peter wanted to have his cake and eat it too, keeping up with Spider-Man on top of his internship and on top of securing the grades he needed to keep his scholarship. Tony had offered in the past to cover the fees, even just a semester, until he learned to balance all the responsibilities he had, but Peter protested the idea entirely. The billionaire wouldn’t be surprised if he studied himself to death just to ensure it never became an option to consider. If it really came down to it, Tony could always put the money elsewhere to keep the scholarship in place. The best he could do was keep the internship work to a minimum, but even then, Peter filled the free time with studying. He’d almost forgotten what the kid’s face looked like without his nose buried in a textbook.
Tony wasn’t sure if Peter expected to wake him up in thirty minutes, but he had no intention of doing so. Sleep was probably the only luxury he could provide that wouldn’t be outright rejected on his first attempt, so he wasn’t about to cut it short for the sake of soldering chips or messing around with code. He got working on his own projects, keeping it to coding so he didn’t wake Peter up with drills or the hum of his welding. Dum-E tried to trundle over to where Peter slept, but he nipped that in the bud before it could use its arm to prod the boy awake.
“Leave him alone,” he chided. Dum-E made a disappointed whir, its arm making an aborted attempt to try again. “I’ll recycle you, I swear to God.” It jerked forward on its wheels in defiance. “He’ll wake up later. You can play then.” It reversed back to settle by one of Peter’s feet that had fallen off the couch, determined to wait. Tony gave it ten minutes before it gave up and went looking for something else to do.
He looked up to see if Dum-E had actually managed to stay put. It wasn’t there. Neither was Peter. He did a quick headcount of the lab but found he was alone. He raised an eyebrow and got to his feet just in case Peter had somehow fallen off the couch without him noticing and rolled under one of the benches, but alas, there was no sign of him. He frowned and checked the time to make sure he hadn’t accidentally worked deep into the night. Peter decided to try his hand at an Irish goodbye for once, but only an hour had passed.
“Fri, where’s the kid?” he asked slowly. It wasn’t like someone could just come in and kidnap him right from under his nose.
“He appears to be in the kitchen with Dum-E.”
Huh. Peter never fixed himself food unless Tony all but demanded that he get something before he passed out. Unless Peter had woken up and asked, but he was too deep in his work to really register the question and gave a permissive wave. Whatever, he’d better go make sure Dum-E wasn’t bothering him too much. That, and keep an eye on how many energy drinks Peter was actually consuming. Food he actually needed? That’s too much, Mr Stark, I could never take that much from you! Caffeine in any form? No inhibition there. He’d have to figure out a way to use that to his advantage one of these days.
As he got closer to the kitchen, he could hear dull thudding and eventually caught sight of Dum-E sitting by the cabinets, hitting one with a screwdriver. Tony wasn’t particularly married to the kitchen; he was an engineer, not an interior designer, but he still cringed when he saw the dents and chipped paint.
“What’re you doing?” He didn’t keep anything important in there, and he doubted Peter would task it with getting supplies, knowing the robot struggled to understand what humans could and couldn’t ingest. Unless Peter thought he did really badly in his exams. Best not think about it, or he’d over-engineer a spidey-proof lock for all his chemicals, including dish soap, just to cover all his bases.
Dum-E startled back and handed the screwdriver over, motioning between Tony and the cabinet door.
“It doesn’t belong in there.” It whirred angrily, running into his leg. “Ow! Hey, no hitting! How did you even sneak this out of the lab?” It hit his foot again and then the cabinet, but he paid the action no mind. He guessed the cabinet where he kept his toolbox looked similar enough, but it should’ve been able to leave the lab with a tool in the first place. He’d learned that lesson enough times. “Fri, you wanna explain how you let this happen?”
“I believed it would be right to breach protocol given the circumstances.”
“Which are?”
“Underoos is in the cabinet.”
He stared at the robot, then at the ceiling, then at the cabinet. It wasn’t a tiny cabinet but he wouldn't call it spacious either. Most of them were empty nowadays since he didn’t cook, and he was the only one using the space. The most used appliance was the coffee maker. He did intend to fill the cabinets with pots and pans, but… well, the less said about that, the better. Not that any of that mattered because Peter was somehow in the damn thing.
“He’s in there?” he asked, pointing to the dented door. “What? Is he searching for a spin-off of Narnia?”
“I am unsure, Boss.”
“Is he trapped in there?”
“Dum-E appeared to think so.” He can hear the mischief rife in her tone. Why did all his robots come out little shits? Was it divine punishment or something?
“You didn’t think to say you can’t screw the hinges off when they’re on the inside of the door?” Her silence was deafening. If she had a face, it would be turning away from him with a massive grin she couldn’t begin to conceal. “So he’s not trapped in there?”
“No, Boss.”
“...so why’s he not coming out?”
“He’s asleep.” Of course he was. Why wouldn’t he be? Obviously he’d woken up and thought the only way to get an even better sleep was to find a dark, dusty cabinet. Tony didn’t look at cabinets and think what great places they’d be to sleep, but perhaps he was missing out on the eye-opening experience.
“So he’s moved from a perfectly fine couch to a kitchen cabinet?”
“If I may, Boss, I believe this may be a case of arachnid attributes presenting themselves in Underoos’ behaviour. Spiders tend to be attracted to small, dark places to remain safe from predators. It may be a biological quirk he’s developed recently.”
“He can’t stay in that cabinet.”
“May I suggest an alternative?”
“I swear if you say a closet-”
“A pillow fort would presumably create the same sensation of safety without risking injury.”
“Alright, draw up some plans, and I’ll get the supplies.”
Peter blinked awake, his eyes slowly adjusting to the dark space. Did Tony turn out the lights? How long had he been asleep? He lazily brought his arm up to glance at his watch. The light from the display brought about more questions than it did answers. He wasn’t on the couch. He sniffled, his nose stuffy from dust, as he dragged his hands along the…walls? It felt like wood, so it couldn’t be walls, and when his hand pressed a bit harder so he could sit himself upright, the wall gave way. He squinted as more light bled through what was definitely a door and not a wall. Where the hell was he?
He crawled out of the tiny space and looked back to find it’d been a cabinet. He wished he could say this was the first time he crawled out of a cabinet, but that would be a lie. He’d done the same thing after a particularly hard night of studying and luckily managed to get himself out before May could question why all the soup pots were sitting on the floor. It should come as a concern, but he shrugged it off. A childhood habit of sleepwalking made these sorts of incidents much less interesting to find yourself in. The ache of his joints from being compressed into small spaces was almost nostalgic.
Peter turned around, finding he’d somehow made his way to the kitchen and napped in there instead of the couch that’d been a lot more comfortable and wouldn’t have made his ass numb. His legs tingled with pins and needles as he dragged himself to his feet, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
“Look who finally decided to wake up,” Tony announced. His face flushed as he found his mentor standing in the opposing common room with a bemused smile. “I was starting to consider how much rent I should ask for. You’re from New York, so I think a thousand a month should work?”
“I think you could add another five hundred if you take out the shelves from the one next to it.”
“Since you’re done touring the cabinet, you can check out another hot property.”
He gestured to two large bed sheets stretched over the couch and two chairs from the dining table. There was a faint blue glow Peter had learned to associate with his mentor that illuminated a mass of thick pillows and cushions. In the back of his mind, he felt something finally relax. His body was already signalling that he needed to nap right this second or he’d fall asleep on his feet.
Peter walked around the pillow fort, assessing its stability and handiwork. He nodded here and there as if he was making mental notes, when all he could think was to climb in and sleep till New Year. He crawled in when he couldn’t resist the urge anymore and hummed.
“I think it could be satisfactory.”
“Satisfactory?” Tony repeated with offence. “Did you want me to put a mini fridge or something in there?”
“It could do with a ramp.”
“Oh, because the ADA is gonna be on my ass?”
“For Dum-E.”
“Dum-E doesn’t need to get in there. It’d probably make the whole thing collapse.”
“You’re so mean to him.”
“I’m realistic.” He sighed as the robot sadly trilled at once again being left out of naptime. That wouldn’t do, so he wrapped his arms around its body and hoisted it onto the pillows. Its wheels struggled to find traction, but it seemed overall content to just exist in there with him. “You’re a soft touch.”
“He’s just a wittle guy.”
“It’s a bucket of bolts I haven’t gotten around to dismantling.” Peter gasped dramatically, clutching his chest, scandalised.
“Just for that, you’re not allowed in.”
“I built the damn thing!”
“Then I’m invoking squatters' rights. This is my pillow fort, and you’re denied entry.”
“You’re a brat, you know that?"