Work Text:
Tony feels like an asshole.
Which to be fair, he is. He tends towards mild assholery on even his best days. He just typically doesn’t care about being an asshole.
This time it’s different. And he’s finding that he cares. A lot.
He sighs deeply, dropping the caliper in his hand back to the desk. Working in the lab usually distracts him, purges his mind of thoughts he’d rather not think, but tonight is an entirely different beast.
Seeing the kid’s desk in the corner, one discarded web shooter laying atop it, probably isn’t helping.
It was such a stupid fight.
“I put those protocols in there for a reason, Parker-”
“You put them in there because you don’t trust me to have a handle on it! But I do!”
“Yeah, cause you have a real good history of handling things, huh-”
He’d been referencing the Ferry incident- already a low blow considering how ancient history it was, how capable Peter had proven himself to be since then- but from the way the kid had faltered away, eyes blown huge with hurt, it was obvious he’d been thinking of a different failure altogether.
A self conceived one. One that started with Uncle and ended with Ben.
Tony groans miserably, scrubbing his hands across his face. His brain keeps replaying it, over and over again, on an endless, nauseating loop. The more Tony thinks about it, the worse he feels.
He shouldn’t have said any of that shit he said to the kid.
What if Peter never wants to see him again? The responsible part of him knows it would be for the best. Peter is a good kid, protocol tampering notwithstanding, and it’s only a matter of time before Tony mucks him up with all his general assholery.
The other part of him is sinking into a deep, black hole, thinking about never seeing Peter Parker again.
“Boss,” Friday says, yanking him from the mental abyss.
“I’m a little busy, baby,” he mutters, “Depths of despair and all that-”
“Peter Parker is attempting to enter the tower through a window on the 83 floor.”
Tony’s mouth slams immediately shut, his mind rotating a million miles a minute. The kid is back? Here?
“He didn’t think to use the door?” he asks dumbly.
“He has shattered the window,” Friday helpfully adds.
“Again, we have a door-”
“And my biometric diagnostics are showing two gunshot wounds,” she tacks on.
Tony falls promptly out of his chair, knocking the caliper off the table on his way down. It bounces somewhere off to the left, completely forgotten.
“What?!”
“One to the abdomen and one to the upper shoulder.”
“Why didn’t you lead with that?” Tony cries, struggling to rise. His feet find no traction at first, running him in place like a goddamn looney tunes cartoon, before he finally manages to sprint towards the elevator.
“I have alerted the medbay of your arrival,” Friday tells him.
“Jesus Christ," Tony mutters, stumbling into the lift. He can feel panic clogging up his arteries, slowing down his mental faculties. It’s hard to think, hard to exist, knowing Peter is hurt. He hops impatiently in place as the elevator springs to life, watching the numbers slowly, slowly tick down, down down-
The second Friday opens the lift doors, he books it down the hallway. The entire floor is cordoned off for future construction, thankfully empty of any prying eyes, but empty also means empty of Peter, and Tony isn’t seeing the kid anywhere, and his blood is starting to feel like mud, thick with worry and sluggish in his veins-
“Fri, where…Which-?”
“Ninth door down on the right side.”
He bursts through the door, heart momentarily stopping at the sight that awaits him.
Peter is there, half-propped against the wall, shattered glass scattered all over the floor. There are bloody handprints traveling across the unfinished drywall from Peter shuffling himself forward, his entire front section covered in deep, horrifying red. And he’s wearing plainclothes, not his Spider-Man suit, so Tony’s getting a good fucking eye full of all that red against the white backdrop of the kid’s ruined shirt.
“Jesus Christ," Tony all but yells, tripping across the floor to the teenager. He slings Peter’s least bloodied arm across his own shoulder, immediately taking on the kid’s weight as Peter all but collapses into him.
Peter gives him a weak, sheepish smile. “Okay, to be fair. I told Friday not to bother you.”
“We need- medbay- now,” Tony mutters, half dragging Peter towards the hall.
“I had a whole plan,” Peter says, sounding breathless. “First off, I wasn’t going to be shot.”
“I do- prefer you- unshot,” Tony says, trying to ignore the feel of Peter’s warm, wet blood seeping into his clothes. He helps Peter into the lift, the kid nearly dead weight against him.
“And I wasn’t going to- y’know, break your window.”
“We do have a door,” Tony agrees, feeling insane, feeling like crying or throwing up or maybe both.
“I just, I couldn’t use the door like this-”
“You can always use the door, Pete, it’s always open to you, mi casa es su casa-”
“No shoes, no shirt, no bleeding all over Mr. Stark’s marble lobby-”
Tony makes a choked noise in the back of his throat, watching the lift numbers crawl at a snail’s pace. Why is this elevator so goddamn slow? He needs to reprogram it, completely overhaul it-
He feels Peter draw in a staggered, uneven breath before slumping even more so into his side.
“Hey, no, no, Peter, don’t you dare-”
“I totally messed up,” Peter murmurs, sounding not only exhausted but also heartbroken. Tony can’t handle a Peter who is injured and sad. Each of those things are debilitating in their own right and together they’re world shattering. He feels tears springing to his own eyes.
“Come on, kid, don’t-”
“I’ll fix the window, Mr. Stark-”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about the window, to be frank-”
Finally, finally, the elevator dings to a stop, the doors opening to an entire army of nurses and doctors waiting. This is the protocol whenever Spider-Man arrives at the medbay, Tony has Spider-Man listed with the highest priority, and everyone knows that-
“Help,” he says weakly, and they all descend.
It’s a flurry of activity. Someone takes Peter from his arms, lowering the nearly unconscious teen to a gurney. There’s blood all over the marbled floor of the elevator, Peter’s apparent worst nightmare, blood all over the sterile white of the medbay, drip drip dripping as a nurse wheels Peter down the hallway towards Spider-Man’s personal surgical suite.
Tony makes to follow, his heart tugging him along, calling the shots-
“You know how this goes, Tony.” He turns towards the voice, finding Helen Cho’s eyes. She gives him a gentle, but firm, smile. “We’ll be able to help Peter better with you out here.”
Tony sighs, giving a jerky nod, before trudging his way to the medbay’s waiting room. He stares and stares at his hands, covered in blood that is quickly oxidizing, going brown, thinking of Peter, their stupid fight, what if the last thing they ever do is yell at each other? He never wants there to be a last thing, but he definitely doesn’t want their last thing to be you have a real good history of handling things, huh-
He drops his head into blood stained hands.
⎯⎯⎯
The second those OR doors open, Tony leaps to his feet.
Helen makes her way towards him, her face inscrutable. He squints at her, trying to discern something, anything-
She exhales softly when she gets to him, meeting his eyes-
“He made it through the surgery,” she says.
Tony’s knees wobble at the news, his relief so palpable he can feel it dispersing into the air around them. “Oh, thank fucking god-”
“Both bullets missed anything viral,” Helen continues, “But he’s going to be sore, probably on bedrest until his advanced healing kicks in.”
Tony nods eagerly. Bed rest he can handle. “Can I see him?”
“He’s sedated, for the time being, but I can take you back to his room.”
“I can manage.” Tony knows the way by heart. They’ve spent entirely too much time in the medbay, him and this kid, too many bloodied, wounded nights by each other’s bedsides.
The room is quiet when Tony enters, the lights dimmed to Peter’s preferred 20% opacity. The semi-darkness makes it harder to see the kid, but Tony gleams enough; IV tubing tucked in and around Peter’s body, white gauze peeking from beneath his fresh hospital shirt, Peter’s face furrowed uncomfortably even in sleep.
The kid’s enhanced spider drugs usually knock him out flat. They’re strong enough that the kid shouldn’t be feeling any pain at all.
Frowning, Tony reaches down to smooth the furrows from Peter’s forehead. The kid makes a gentle exhaling sound, face softening. And Tony knows then that Peter’s slumbering discontent has nothing at all to do with bullets.
It’s about him. Their fight. Even in drug induced sleep, Peter is still thinking about what Tony said.
Tony fights off a wave of self loathing so strong it has him wanting to book it from the room, away from Peter before he can do anymore damage. Instead he grabs one of the nearby chairs and drags it to Pete’s bedside, ready to take up his vigil.
There will be plenty of time for self-flagellation later.
Right now, he just needs to be here for the kid.
⎯⎯⎯
Tony’s vigil lasts deep into the night.
He spends a solid hour simply staring at the kid, reassuring himself with each breath Peter takes, he calls a frantic May to inform her of the situation, he watches intently when Helen comes in to swap IV bags, and when all other busy work eludes him he has Friday bring up the surveillance footage of Peter’s arrival.
He watches the kid scale the tower walls, his heart stuttering at how floppy and uncertain the kid’s movements are. He really needs to reiterate the importance of doors to the teenager, especially after being shot.
“Lordy, Pete,” he murmurs, glancing at the kid laying unconscious in his bed. And then something on the holoscreen catches his eye, something clutched tightly in the kid’s hand as he shimmies up the tower wall.
Tony frowns, squinting at Peter’s mystery object. “Fri, zoom in. Up the res.”
She complies, something recognizable forming out of the blurry white.
“A shopping bag?” He asks aloud, brow quirking. Friday enhances the footage well enough to read the red lettering on the side of the plastic bag. “Nancy’s Nicknacks.”
“It appears to be a small shop located only a few blocks from the Parker residence.”
“What were you doing there, bud?” Tony questions softly. He looks at the kid again, searching for any sign of waking. The last thing he wants is for Peter to wake up to an empty room. Seeing none, he pushes the holoscreen aside and rises to his feet.
“I’ll be right back,” he promises the sleeping teenager. “Don’t you dare wake up before I’m back.”
⎯⎯⎯
The room is worse than Tony remembered.
It’s not the shattered glass or the splintered wood from the window pane, either. It’s the blood stains. Peter’s blood left all over the walls and floor.
He tries and fails to suppress a shiver. “Get in, get out,” he mutters quietly, forcing his eyes away from the blood.
Peter’s mystery parcel is to the left, trapped underneath a shard of broken glass. Tony can see the bright red Nancy’s Nicknacks from where he’s standing.
Reaching out, he carefully snags the plastic from its sharp prison. The bag is nearly weightless. He’d almost think it empty, if not for watching Peter pointedly struggle to climb it up the tower walls.
He wonders if it’s a breach of privacy to go snooping through the kid’s stuff. Decides very promptly he doesn’t care. He’s not known for his discretion, after all.
He’s known for being an asshole.
“Whatcha got, Pete?” He murmurs softly to himself, peering inside.
It’s a card.
He frowns, pulling it out for a better look, and then he goes very still.
There’s a couple small fingerprints of blood on the cardstock, but surprisingly it’s not that which catches Tony attention.
It’s got an artist's rendition of Spider-Man on the front, mid-swing, with the red and blue words Just Wanted to Swing By and Say-
Tony opens the card, his heart in his throat, and reads the rest. I’m sorry.
Tony doesn’t get apology cards. Ever. By definition of his character, he gives them. His general assholery makes sure of that.
And Tony doesn’t deserve this card in his hands, doesn’t deserve Peter’s apology, doesn’t deserve Peter, but he can’t stop looking at it. He can’t stop the affection in his chest from going nuclear, exploding into something far more debilitating.
He loves this kid.
He doesn’t know exactly when it happened, if Peter wormed his way in during one of their late night lab sessions, if it happened over shawarma, or Star Wars, or randomly gifted Iron Man merchandise just-because, just-because, Mr. Stark, it made me think of you-
It doesn’t matter, Tony knows. Doesn’t matter when or how or why, because it was inevitable. Peter being Peter made this a foregone conclusion.
Only one thing matters now.
Tony’s got to stop being such an asshole. Immediately. Full stop. He doesn’t want to be an asshole to the kid. Not ever again.
He carries the card with him, all the way back to Peter’s bedside. He’ll probably carry it a lot longer than that, nestled deep within his ribcage, right beside his heart.
⎯⎯⎯
It takes another five endless hours before Peter begins to rouse.
He sees the moment it starts to happen because he’s hardly been able to glance away from the kid the entire time. There’s nothing like realizing you love someone to make you utterly terrified of looking away.
“Pete,” he says, watching the kid blink a few unfocused times. “Bud. Hey.”
Peter’s eyes snap towards him, dazed. He blinks again. “Mr. Stark?”
“The one and only,” Tony agrees.
“Um. Drink? Maybe?”
Tony grabs the cup of ice water from the bedside table, placing the straw against Peter’s lips. The teenager drinks half of it before finally pulling back, looking around with eyes much more alert.
He groans audibly when he realizes where he is. “Not the medbay.”
“If you could stop getting hurt, we could stop meeting like this.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Peter argues weakly, looking away, looking ashamed.
Tony sighs. “Wanna tell me what happened?”
Peter fiddles with the hem of his hospital sheet, his gaze pinned downwards. It takes him a long moment to gather his words. “I was heading to the bodega on 12th, and no, before you ask, I wasn’t Spider-Manning, I know I’m grounded-”
He takes a deep, fortifying breath and Tony’s heart pangs with equal parts guilt and adoration.
“-I was doing some shopping, there’s a really nice store there that I like-”
“Mhmm hmmm,” Tony agrees easily, because he has a good inkling on what the kid was shopping for, he knows exactly what the kid wanted to Swing By and say.
“-And I had just paid, about to walk out the door, when three US presidents barged in-”
Tony’s brain shutters at that. He glances at the IV drip hanging above Peter’s head, analyzing. There shouldn’t be that much leftover from the Spider-Man knock out drugs. “Come again?”
Peter nods sagely. “Barack Obama, Abraham Lincoln, and Richard Nixon. They start waving guns around-”
“Guns?” Tony asks incredulously.
Peter continues on like he never heard Tony at all. “They’re telling Nancy to put the money in the bag or else, and I like Nancy, she’s always so nice to me, so obviously or else can’t happen-”
“Obviously,” Tony says, brain still shuttering at the image of POTUS packing firepower.
“And, well, it turned into a big fight obviously-”
“Obviously,” Tony agrees again.
“And I subdued them and saved Nancy- she’s the store owner, did I mention that?”
“It was implied.”
“But not before Lincoln managed to shoot me. Twice.” Peter sighs, fiddles with his hospital sheet. Doesn’t quite meet Tony’s eyes.
“That’s too bad,” Tony says gently. “Lincoln used to be my favorite president.”
That finally prompts Peter to look his way, some of the worry and the shame melting off his face. “He can still be your favorite, Mr. Stark. These guys, I don’t think they have any affiliation to the US government. Just the masks. Is all.”
“Masks,” Tony says, smiling despite it all. “Masks make a lot more sense, bud.”
“Oh.” Peter frowns slightly. “Did I not say masks?”
“Semantics,” Tony assures.
Peter hesitates, squinting at Tony’s face. “Are you- are you mad?”
“No,” Tony says, meaning it. Expecting Peter to stay away from a robbery happening right in front of him is expecting the impossible. It’s another inevitably about the kid. He’ll do whatever it takes to save the day. “You weren’t out there looking for trouble, kid. It just so happened to find you.”
“Parker luck.” Peter nods like that explains it all. And knowing the kid, it kinda does.
“And you came right here, no trying to hide it-”
Peter blushes and looks away. “Well, I mean. To be honest. I was coming here anyway. Before the whole robbery thing.”
Warmth blooms and blossoms in Tony’s chest. “Just Wanted to Swing By, Mr. Parker?”
Peter gives him a puzzled look before finally spotting the apology card, peeking out of the corner of Tony’s jacket pocket. Recognition, and a touch of embarrassment, sparks in his eyes. “You found my card.”
“I did.”
“They were out of Iron Man cards,” Peter explains, eying him uncertainly.
“That’s okay,” Tony says. “I prefer Spider-Man anyway.”
Silence reigns for a minute, before both their mouths open at the exact same time.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Stark-”
“Kid, look, I didn’t mean-”
They both pause, looking at each other. Peter is the first to speak again.
“I’m just, I’m really sorry. I was wrong to change the protocols in my suit. Okay, some of them are overbearing, but I know you’re just trying to keep me safe. And I didn’t mean anything I said. Any of it. I was acting stupid and childish and ungrateful and irresponsible-”
“Stop,” Tony says, shaking his head. “Stop saying mean things about my favorite kid.”
Peter bites his lip. “I’m sorry.”
Tony nods. “I didn’t mean any of that shit I said either. That whole handling things thing, it wasn’t, it wasn’t fair, but it also wasn’t about- about-”
He struggles to find the words.
“I know,” Peter says quietly. “After I left, and I thought about it, I knew you didn’t mean….that was me, just superimposing my own stupid thoughts-”
“Insulting my favorite kid again-”
“Well, they were stupid thoughts, but I realized that I was wrong, and I wanted to apologize, and do it properly, hence the card-” He grimaces at it, “-Although the card is kinda…ruined, too-”
“The card is perfect,” Tony insists.
“It has blood on it,” Peter points out.
Tony nods. “Spider-Man blood. That stuff is pretty valuable, you know.”
Peter rolls his eyes but his face breaks into a grin. And Tony loves that. He loves this insane kid and he loves being able to make him happy in some, in any, capacity.
Just as quickly as that grin appears, though, it disappears, leaving behind such sudden and complete panic that it has Tony all but leaping to his feet. “Ohmygod,” Peter says, all fast, all one sentence, “Itotallybrokeyourwindow-”
Tony’s heart flips violently in his chest, trying to settle, trying to calm itself. He releases a breath of air that is nearly painful. That’s the thing about loving an insane, superhero teenager- it’s bound to hurt. “Jesus, kid, it’s fine, don’t- you can’t scare me like that, I have a heart condition-”
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Stark,” Peter beseeches, on an apologetic tirade now. “Now I owe you another card-”
“Pete, no-”
“And maybe some flowers, too.” He finally pauses. “Does Iron Man even like flowers?”
“Iron Man likes any gift from Spider-Man," Tony says, hearing it, hearing how mushy it sounds and immediately going red, but he doesn’t take it back. He lets it sit between them, this small declaration of affection. That’s his Step One To Stopping Assholery. Letting love exist, even in its small ways.
Peter stares at him, understanding in that way the kid does. It’s uncanny sometimes, having all the best parts of Tony outside his body like this.
“Thanks, Mr. Stark,” Peter says softly, cheeks aflame. “Me- me, too.”
Tony’s first instinct is to pull back, withdraw, retreat. A part of him is still convinced he should, that he needs to spare this kid before he ruins him. But Peter glances up at him, still unsure, and Tony knows he can’t.
Maybe he never really could. Some things are inevitable like that.
“We make a pretty good team, huh?” he says gently, reaching out to ruffle the kid’s hair. Peter leans into him, subtle, but Tony catches it all the same. There isn’t much Peter does that Tony doesn’t catch. “Arguments aside.”
“Probably the best,” Peter agrees. “Arguements aside.”
“Our next mission?” Tony says, envisioning a lifetime of them. Spider-Man and Iron man, side by side. “Teaching Spider-Man about this wonderful new invention called a door-”