It’s 3AM. Like usual, Tony’s awake and working. There’s no time to sleep when the deadlines are running up to him. They’re racing ahead and if he slept there’s no way he’d be able to keep up. Sleep is for the weak, he always said anyway.
It’s cold outside. Tony can see the snow falling from the windows that spread out all over his lab. He takes a break from coding to just watch it. He takes a bite out of the cold burrito on his desk that Bruce had made him earlier. It tastes good, like most of his food did, and although it’s cold it makes his gut feel warm. The love in it, the way he’s used all of Tony’s favourite flavours, it makes him smile as he chews away. He may not join them with much, but they cared. It was nice.
He sees Spider-Man sat on a nearby roof. Tony doesn’t know who’s under the mask, but he can appreciate a man who’s willing to stay up at 3AM for something they enjoyed doing. Screw that, everyone else. He’d bet Spider-Man wouldn’t yell at him for doing his work now.
Tony liked Spider-Man. He was witty, strong, and he really had a heart of gold from Tony’s viewpoint. He did everything for this city, expecting nothing in return. He didn’t join the Avengers, so that meant he was sourcing his own weapons and protection himself. It couldn’t be cheap. Its why Steve’s theory was that he was a millionaire that hid away in a sort of ‘cave’, only coming out to strike the criminals at night. Yeah, like that would ever happen.
Tony liked to think he was just a normal guy. He worked for the general public and helped out the people the avengers couldn’t reach, so what’s to say he wasn’t just a normal guy himself? He’d bet he was about thirty years old. Maybe late twenties. He couldn’t see him with kids, but if he did, they’d be young, and he’d have two of them. Not one, or three, since he wouldn’t want them to be by themselves and he didn’t like odd numbers. Would he be married? Tony thinks so. His wife would know his secret. Tony wondered if she would help out, like his girl in the chair.
Turning his attention away from the window and Spider-Man, who was now swinging across the streets, he got back to work. Tony could only see the vigilante when he passed a streetlight, looking like a sprite or a fairy from the little bit of light.
He worked for another few hours. He blinked, trying to keep his hand steady. His hand slipped, meaning he started typing some nonsense in his word document that had already reached over twenty-five pages. He closed his eyes, and when he re-opened them, it was five minutes later, and his document now had forty pages. Although… the new additions were all the letter ‘P’. He must’ve fallen asleep on it.
Shaking his head, he decided that he should just go upstairs. He’d caught up enough, and Pepper would never torture him if he was late for a few things… Well, maybe she would but he’d survive it. She was never too cruel.
Walking upstairs, he stepped into the kitchen and got himself a glass of water before going up to bed. He flicked the light on and raised his eyebrow when he saw droplets of blood by his feet. He followed where it led, and then suddenly he saw a teenager curled up on his sofa with one of his cream Egyptian cotton towels draped over him.
What the fuck?!
“Excuse me?” Tony said, poking the child in the shoulder. That woke him up, his big doe-eyes widening as he took in Tony. He panicked, shoving the towel on the floor and jumping up but the pain must’ve stopped him from fleeing as he fell to his knees. Now that Tony can see what the towel was covering, he’s suddenly less annoyed about the home invasion and much more worried about why the hell this kid is bleeding. The bleeding isn’t heavy, and the blood loss isn’t happening too fast, but that isn’t enough to quell the many worries circulating his head right now. “Hey, woah. Calm down. I’m not going to shout; I’m just really confused right now. But that can wait. That looks bad.”
“It’s not, it’s fine,” the kid shook his head. “Sorry. I thought you’d be asleep. I didn’t- I didn’t think any of it through.”
Tony narrowed his eyes. First of all, how did he bypass Friday’s security measures? She should’ve alerted Tony to anyone who walked inside without access. Second of all, was he trying to say that amount of blood was ‘fine?’ Tony finally sympathised with his team. If this was what he was like when in obvious pain, he could see why it was so annoying.
“…Okaaay,” he said, “you’re weird, but you also look like you’re dying, and I don’t like that. So, talk me through what happened.”
“It’s okay, I swear. I’ve already patched it up. It wasn’t that deep of a stab, really. Like imagine the knife is my hand,” he pulls up one his blood covered hands. He puts it against his stomach and pushes against it gently with a little ‘woosh’ sound. Tony watches, in shock. Holly hell, this kid’s an idiot. “That’s what it looked like. Plus, I pulled it out and it was fine. I just needed to grab some bandages and pain killers from you guys, but then I felt so tired and had to nap. I didn’t even realise I was here this long. Sorry. I’ll go now.”
Sure enough, as Tony looks closer, the kid has tried to stop the bleeding by putting five plasters over it.
It hasn’t worked.
Tony shakes his head, coming to terms with what just happened. “Um, no. You’re not going. I’m taking you to a doctor, because you got stabbed and decided to pull the knife out yourself and then you thought ‘oh, hey, I’ll break into Stark Industries and put a little plaster on it, and it’ll be fine’. That’s not- okay, I’m talking too much. Come on, kid. I’ve got a high-class team of doctors on call.”
“Oh, no. I can’t afford that, Mr Stark. Thanks for the concern, but I’ll be okay.”
Tony watches him. Why the hell did he think he’d be paying for this? This kid was getting odder by the second, but weirdly Tony liked him. He was endearing. Sweet, too. But he’d be dead if Tony didn’t do anything, so he’d gush about him later when he wasn’t bleeding.
He pushed himself off the floor, swaying as he stood. His eyes were unfocused, lost. He takes a second to get balanced, using the arm of the sofa (which, thanks kid, was now covered in blood) to steady himself. His breathing is short, rapid, and too shallow. Tony’s sure that the blue tinge in his lips isn’t a good sign. “Thanks for not- not… uh-,” he trails off, looking as if he was about to throw up. “For not- you know- murdering me for being in your house.”
He tries to wave as he walks away but ends up falling backwards. Almost giving himself a concussion as well as a stab wound, Tony catches him just in time.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispers to himself, carrying him towards the med bay with urgency as he gets blood over his nice band shirt. Good thing he had more of them, otherwise this child would be getting sent over to the police. Not for breaking and entering but for destruction of property.
Tony places him on the nearest bed and is swarmed by all his doctors. They take his care out of his hands immediately, pushing the bed towards the operating room. Tony watches, concerned, when he realises that he’s still moving after they prescribed the anaesthesia. He crosses his arms, turning his head slightly as they rip open the t-shirt. His wound is large, but all Tony can see is blood.
It’s then that the situation actually catches up to him. This is a child. Nobody his age should have to go through this. It makes Tony feel sick. “God,” he whispers to himself. He bites his knuckle as he rests his hand to his mouth, not wanting to watch them operate but not being able to look away.
Eventually someone comes up to him and tells him he shouldn’t be here, and he has to leave the room and sit by himself as he waits on news about this kid that he didn’t even know ten minutes ago. His heart is too heavy in his stomach, his chest tightening whenever he thinks back to just how much blood there was coming out of such a small body.
Dr Cho walks out and up to Tony. “The wound luckily wasn’t too deep, so the blood loss wasn’t catastrophic. He did the right thing by applying pressure to it, it meant it was easier for us to treat,” she explains. Her eyes glance back to the door she just walked out of. Her face tightens, her eyes just as confused and worried as Tony was. “All we had to do was make sure the bleeding stopped completely, then we dressed the wounds with some proper bandages. I’m not sure if we even needed to take him into the operating room.”
Tony nods, thanks Helen, and watches as some nurses push ‘mystery’ (the kid’s new name) into one of the overnight rooms. He follows in, pulling up a chair and sitting beside his bed. The nurses give him some pills, which he pretends to take (Tony sees him hide them under his tongue), and then they give Tony some instructions on after care. They leave soon after, meaning it was only him and Tony in the room.
Which means Tony could finally asking his pressing questions.
“I told you it wasn’t that bad,” the kid says. “’His blood loss wasn’t catastrophic’ sounds positive to me.”
“…How did you even hear that?” Tony asks. He was in the other room when Cho told him that. Unless he was ear-to-wall, there’s no way he’d hear their conversation. Either she had already told him, or he’s been stabbed so many times that he knows the terminology.
“She told me after putting my bandages on,” he shrugs.
“…Okay, so can you tell me who the hell you are now?”
“Peter.”
Tony squints. That was helpful. He didn’t even give him a last name. He thought ‘Peter’ was enough information for Tony to think ‘okay, everything’s fine. Peter was stabbed and broke into the tower without any alarms going off. That’s normal’. Yeah, try again, he thought. This was one of the weirdest things to happen to him. Part of him wondered if this was a hallucination from the sleep deprivation.
“Elaborate,” Tony says, waving his hand in front of Peter’s face. “I need to know more than that. I can call the police. You did break into the tower.”
“I didn’t break in. I have access,” Peter says. He looks at Tony, raises an eyebrow and then shifts in his bed. He grins, clearly having misunderstood something himself. He looks chuffed. It only makes Tony more confused, because he does not remember ever giving a teenage boy full access to his tower. He’d never do that. The only people with full access were avengers, avengers to be, Pepper, and Happy. Others needed confirmation if they were to go to certain floors, others had no right at all. “I’d never break in anywhere, I swear.”
“And I’m just meant to believe you because of those puppy dog eyes and the fact that you’re recovering from being stabbed?” Tony asks. Peter flashes said puppy dog eyes, his big brown eyes blinking up at Tony. Tony rolls his eyes, finding himself smiling at the teenager in front of him. “Okay, let’s say I do believe that you are a walking angel and that you’d never, ever, break in anywhere- how the hell did you even get in?”
“The window, it was left open,” Peter shrugged.
“… A window? On what is the 92nd floor of my 93-storey tower. One of those windows is the one you came through?”
Peter laughed, “Yeah, I guess it does sound crazy,” he says, acting like it’s not the craziest thing anybody has ever said to him. He sits up a little, wincing at he struggles against the wound. He tries to get up, but Tony stops him. “My aunt is going to be worried sick if I don’t get home, Mr Stark. So, uh, thanks for making sure I didn’t’ die- but I really have to go now.”
Tony shook his head. “Nope. You’re not leaving, not with any chance that the wound might start bleeding again.”
Peter looked at Tony as if he was stupid, which didn’t happen. Nobody thought Tony was an idiot because he was one of the smartest guys alive. He pushed Tony off, his strength surprising him. “I’ve been stabbed a lot of times, Mr Stark,” he said, which was not a comforting sentence to hear. “I’ll heal in a day or two, and then I’ll go outside to probably get stabbed again. That’s just life.”
“No, that’s not life.”
“How would you know? You don’t know my life. Maybe I like getting stabbed, ever think of that? I’m a thrill seeker, seeking little puncture wounds all over my body,” Peter said. He grabbed his backpack that Tony had placed at the foot of his bed, searching in it for a while. He pulls out a shirt and tugs it on. He had a spare shirt in his bag… that must mean he’s prepared for something like this. He really does get stabbed a lot. “Mr Stark, I don’t want to be the one that spells this out for you, as I imagine you’ll be mad at yourself. But why would I have access to your tower?”
Why Peter didn’t just say it, he didn’t know. Tony didn’t think he’d be annoyed at himself for not guessing. His number one option right now is that a dying Peter hacked into Friday and let himself in without alerting anybody. Friday was not easy to hack, however, especially if you’re close to bleeding out. So, Tony didn’t know what to think.
“Evil genius,” Tony blurted out.
“You think I’m an evil genius?” Peter said. He was up on his feet, colour regaining very quickly in his face. His breathing was normal again. He looked like a completely different kid from the one Tony met that morning. “God, you couldn’t be further from the truth.”
“You’re drawing this out now. I bet you think it’s funny how I can’t figure out why a person I’ve never met can go anywhere within my tower,” Tony said, getting a bit irritated.
The kid was funny. but he was damn annoying. He just needed to say it, but he was making it into a game. Tony was tired of it. He hadn’t slept in two days, and Peter had bled into his nice towel. It wasn’t surprising that he was testy.
“We have met before,” Peter said. “You call me underoos.”
…
No.
No! Surely not!
There was no way that Spider-Man, his colleague, and a respected team-mate, was actually a teenage boy. It didn’t make sense. A fourteen-year-old, or fifteen (he didn’t know), was introduced into the Avengers-To-Be programme. Tony taught him how to fight, how to make sure civilians were safe. This life was burden to anybody’s shoulders, never mind someone his age. Tony is suddenly the one who can’t control his breathing, looking at the precious cargo stood up beside his hospital bed.
“Please don’t suddenly hate Spider-Man,” Peter- AKA Spider-Man himself, said. He looked at Tony with a want, a want to be someone else when he puts on the mask. He didn’t want anyone to know, because he wanted to make sure they still took him seriously. If Tony really took time to look for Spider-Man, then he’s not sure he would’ve figured it out by now. Because he was looking for someone completely different than this teenage boy who looks far too innocent to be out fighting crime daily. “I love helping people, it’s- it’s amazing, and I need to do it. Just because you know me and how young I am, that doesn’t mean you can stop me from doing it.”
“Of course,” Tony said. “I’m not going to stop you.”
“Thank you!” Peter said, in a hurry to leave the room.
“Hang on! Just because I said I’m not going to stop you, that doesn’t mean I’m not going to help. We’ll make you a new suit, because the one you have on now is the reason why your body is more pin board than human. Honestly, kid. I’ve never seen so many stab wounds,” Tony said.
“Really?” Peter whispered, like he can barely believe his luck, or maybe he was happy to get the ‘gold’ medal for the amount of wounds.
“Yeah, we’ll be a team.”
He takes Peter’s hand, seeing the glint of someone with a passion for science in his eyes. He can’t wait to build something with Tony. He’s a man out for Tony’s ‘I’ll never be a dad’ title. When big brown eyes look at him, there’s not much he can do. He builds and builds for Peter over the next week, making sure Peter’s safe from any more stabbings.
Two months later.
Peter comes busting into the living room, walking right into Steve. He’s holding his hand over his chest; blood is easily poking out through his fingers. Tony sees him and knows what’s up right away. The rest of them time take some time to comprehend that Tony has let a kid in, then they see the blood.
Steve’s quick to offer his help, but Tony just shakes his head and gets the first aid kit. He doesn’t seem phased at all.
“It’s okay, Steve. This is a weekly occurrence with Peter.”
“Just a stab wound, Mr America,” Peter mutters, collapsing into Tony’s arms.
This time Tony lets him sit there as he watches TV and applies pressure to the wound, making sure it stops. He bandages Peter up once that’s done and wakes up him up with a flick to the head. “You know the drill, no sleeping until we’re sure the blood has stopped.”
“Fine,” Peter groaned, as if Tony had asked him to go and do the dishes. He sits in Tony’s lap and rests his head on the soft light emitting from the arc reactor. He doesn’t sleep, but he does let Tony ruffle his hair… which he’s normally not that keen on.
“What happened to the new suit? It was meant to be stab proof,” Tony said, poking Peter in the part of his stomach that hasn’t been stabbed.
Peter groans, “It worked, but then it got ruined because I went in a house fire. So, yeah, it’s charred so I put my old suit on and bam- someone managed to stab me. I missed it at first, but he was adamant that he was the one that would kill Spider-Man.”
“They always are,” Tony laughs.
He doesn’t miss the team’s reaction to finding out Tony’s stabbed pseudo-son was actually the same person they’ve been working alongside for almost a year. Tony’s been there, done that, for the whole ‘identity reveal’, so he doesn’t bother in gossiping about how he’s so young. Tony knows that, but Peter’s going to do it no matter what, so he might as well try and make it safer for him.
It’s the way that the team looks at him, after digesting the news, which makes him finally aware that the ‘I’ll never be a dad’ card can never be used again. Because Tony is one already. To a chaotic, selfless, spider-kid that probably has a thing for being stabbed. He’s a lot like Tony at times. His affinity for being stabbed is not matched, however.
He’s the perfect mix of ‘don’t do something I wouldn’t do, or something I would do’. Peter’s the perfect little grey area.
Sometimes the apple falls just the right distance from the tree.