It was common knowledge to all of everybody that Norman Osborn and Tony Stark hated each other with a passion only their eyes could conceive. They refused to work together, they refused to be in a ten foot vicinity of each other (unless it was to clutch each others hands so tightly they shook and to stare into each others eyes with such passion you could hardly tell if they were about to ignite the other on fire or start rolling on the floor trading punches), and they refused to talk in anything other than passive aggressive stares and sneers- or perhaps the occasional clipped, singular words they shared in desperate times.
Now, nobody really knew why they hated each other, but it was like the unspoken scripture of New York that they didn’t, like a piece of knowledge that had descended upon the city and nobody knew how. There were only five people in the history of existence to know the one time they had worked together.
And oh-so-sadly, Peter Parker was one of them.
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It was a late february evening when peter had been arrested for trying to break into Oscorp Industries. The security team had been new and nobody- despite peters protests- decided to call up to higher levels to see if peter really was allowed in the building, but what they did do was call the police to come and plop Peter in the holding cell of the police station for the next hour and a half.
God Peter was so done. Seriously, all he was going to do was have a homework\pizza\crappy movie night with Harry, he was starting to think that Parker luck had it out for him worse than normal. Maybe it was as poor as Peter and was working overtime to make sure his life slowly got worse and worse (with the way his week was going Peter wouldn’t doubt that), But seriously, the police.
Peter waited in the holding cell for an hour and forty-six minutes before the two men who were in the station at the time came over, The older, more pudgy of the two swung the door of the cell open and aggressively pulled Peter out by his arm, pushing him towards an old, battered chrome phone mounted on the wall. In a gruff voice the man said,
“One phone call, make it worthwhile, kid.”
Now, it’s not like Peter really had many choices here, you know, dead parents, dead uncle, aunt who may or may not skin him alive if she got this call, basically no friends. Yeah, his choices were looking pretty bad here. Well, there was one person who could bail him out who literally couldn’t say a single thing about it due to his unethical life choices at Peter's age…
Fuck it, he rang Tony Stark.
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Now, Tony Stark would say that he’d been having a pretty tame day, no world saving, no huge meetings; Just a nice lab day working leisurely on iron suit number 547-ish, that was- at least- until he got a call from the police department. His first thought: god what the fuck did i do this time. He picked the phone up with a ‘hello?’ and was immediately ignored, the man- who had a nasally, gruff voice- announced,
“Are you the guardian of a Peter Parker?” Now Tony was confused,
”Yes, why, who are you?” He asked, even though he wasn’t technically Peter's guardian, he figured he was in at least enough trouble that he needed someone to pick him up, and he would rather lie to police than make Peter think he couldn’t ask to help him get out of trouble. (Tony still recalls the first time he got roofied at a party at thirteen, and was too afraid to call his father to pick him up and ended up walking thirteen miles that night until he got pulled over by the police, he would never want to put peter in a position where he thought he couldn’t call tony in the same way).
“I’m an officer, your child has been arrested for attempting to break and enter into Oscorp Industries. We need you to come to the station as fast as possible, thank you.”
”...Break into Oscorp…?”
"Yes sir.”
"I’ll be on my way.”
And for the first time in his life, Tony called Norman Osborn.
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Norman Osborn answered the phone almost immediately, looking at the contact as his posture slipped in disappointment, Peter- Harry’s friend- was late. Now this in and of itself wasn’t crazy, Norman and Harry had gotten used to Peters erratic schedule changes and his ability to get nowhere on time, but peter had never been this late before, and the Osborn’s were starting to freak out a tad. He answered the phone with a defeated tone,
“Hello?”
"Hi, Osborn. This is Tony Stark.”
”Anthony. To what do I owe this… pleasure.”
”Did you happen to know that Peter was arrested for breaking and entering into Oscorp today?”
”...Excuse me.”
”Get your ass down to the station, Norman.”
”Be right there.”
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Tony and Norman met up outside the doors to the station and swiftly ignored anyone who tried to stop them as they went to the back of the station. The second that Norman saw Peter in the holding cell the boy waved, showing him a bright smile,
“Hi, Mr. Osborn! Sorry I couldn’t make it on time, could you text Harry and tell him that’s my bad?”
Tony turned to the skinnier, taller officer and held out his palm. “Keys.” He barked, the man was practically shaking, mouth dropped open as he reached back to the counter and patted around for the keys to the cell, handing them to Tony with shaking hands. Peter turned to Tony now,
“Oh, there you are Mr. Stark,” Peter said as Tony fumbled around with the keys, unlocking the cell door with a click.
“Hey, kid,” Tony said, hand on peters back as he escorted him out of the cell before stepping in front of him to have his turn at the older of the officers, Norman was already chewing him out, talking about how they didn’t confirm before taking him off the premises and how they should’ve checked his, “fucking ID” because, “He has it for a goddamn reason”, Before Tony took his turn, hand on his hip and sunglasses propped on his head as he stood directly next to Norman, finger pointing accusatorily at the man, voice becoming more and more aggressive after every point made, stepping closer after each decibel in his voice went lower, finger hovering just centimeters away from the man's chest as he spoke. His voice never went higher, he never yelled, he didn’t need to to get the point across.
While Tony took the man apart word by word Norman stood just a foot behind him, arms crossed in a way very unlike him as he looked down at the man. Peter- who was still stood about four feet behind them awkwardly- just waited for tony to be done, swiping his phone from the counter near him and quickly texting that he might be a little more late than intended due to being arrested to Harry, who quickly replied with a ‘what the fuck do you mean arrested’ and peter just typed back, ’you’ll hear about it later trust me’ and after a second of consideration, ’you should probs re-heat our pizza’ only glancing at the: 'On it’ that Harry texted back before shoving his phone in his pocket and watching the show.
He supposed the day could’ve gone worse.