Chapter 8
“Heya, Ms. Potts.”
“Tony? Where are you?”
“At the moment we’re in the second worst motel in the third smallest town in Nebraska. Rogers went out for a walk after the rain stopped, needed to stretch his legs...”
“Are you two getting along? Wait. What is it?”
Tony rolls his eyes at the cracks in the ceiling, she could always tell by a simple drop in his voice when something was up.
“There was this kid, by the side of the road.”
“Kid, meaning…?”
Tony looks over at Peter snoring on the bed and considers for a moment. “Guess he’s about 16, could be 17, eats like he’s that age, anyway. Thing is, he’s, hell, honey, he’s like Rogers kinda, and from what I can tell he’s on his own, and I know there’s things I should do, or have Jarvis do, but -”
“What’s his name?”
“Peter Parker. Pepper -”
“I’m just going to take a look at the missing kids database, maybe he got lost during the attack…”
Tony sighs as Peter starts tossing and turning. Nightmare. He knows the signs all too well. “I gotta go, let me know if you find out anything, yeah? I love you, Ms. Potts.”
“Love you, Mr. Stark, get some sleep, hmm?”
“Yeah, I’ll try.” He ends the call and waits to see what the kid will do; it’s obvious he’s been through something or multiple things, and he’s not sure what it is about him, but over dinner, he was asking the kinds of questions he would have asked his father, if he’d been Peter’s age now and if -
“May!” Peter yells out, making Tony jump, then his voice fades into a sob and he curls into himself, as if he’s gone back to sleep, but Tony can hear the slight change in his breathing, and decides to take a chance. He gets up and silently walks the chair over to the bed, then sits down and lays his hand on the bed next to Peter without touching him and watches as his eyes focus on the scrapes on his knuckles that are finally beginning to heal.
“You know, you really should strengthen the armor around your hands, they are your weakness, all they have to do is -”
Tony is surprised when Peter reaches out to lay his trembling fingers lightly over his for a moment, then quickly withdraws. “Who is May?”
“May? She was my aunt. The last family I had -”
“The Chitauri?” Tony whispers, hoping with everything he has that he wasn’t partly responsible for making Peter an orphan.
Peter sits up and rests against against the headboard, then looks back at him and shakes his head. “She had been sick for a long time. She died a couple months before the attack, I was already on the road when I saw the news flashes. You do know, that was crazy, what you did, flying that nuke up there. Crazy or just stupid brave, though I’m not sure they aren’t one and the same sometimes.”
“Me either, Pete. Tell me what happened to you. We know -”
“Yeah, I figured.” He offers Tony a sheepish smile, and runs his fingers through his hair. “I forgot, it’s been so long since I’ve been around other people.” He looks down at his hands and blows out a breath. “If you can believe... a spider?”
“A spider?”
“Yeah, dunno. Last year, I was in chemistry lab after school, trying to catch up, and this spider bit me, and things got weird. I’m 16 by the way, if you were wondering. I finished high school before she died, wanted to do that for her.” He glances over at Tony and asks, “what’s it like to fly in armor like that?”
“Scary as hell,” Tony admitted with a grin. “And the most freeing thing I’ve ever done, as long as no one or nothing, as the case may be, is flying after me, trying to kill me.”
Peter snickers, then covers his mouth with his hand and shakes his head. “Sorry. That’s so uncool. I mean you’re you - and I -”
“You said things got weird?” Tony asks quietly.
“I, uhm, ever since it happened, I feel things, sense things, everything, just too much input, from everywhere, don’t know if you know what I mean? You know how spiders know when an insect has landed on its web?” Tony nods. “I just - my reflexes - everything is just more, I dunno, turned up, like the volume? Then on the day I left, I stopped a bus, with my bare hands. Thought it was a good time to leave town before anything weirder happened. I was working on this webbing solution before I left school, you know, the spider thing? Had this silly idea, I could do some good, don’t know why.” He stops and looks down at his hands. “Thank you for everything, but you can drop me in the next big town -”
“Kid. Pete. Look at me. I know Cap would be the better person for you to talk to, I’m just a -”
“‘Man in a can’, yeah, I heard you in an interview. You know, that’s a load of, well, you know. Without you doing what you and the rest of the Avengers did, I wouldn’t have a home to go back to if I ever get back there. I don’t really have any reason to go back, but if I did, it’s still there because of you.” He shakes his head and whispers, “I’ll never be as brave as you…”
“Or as crazy?” Tony grins at him again. “Try to go back to sleep.”
Peter nods and settles back down onto the pillow. “You won’t -”
Tony shakes his head and watches as he closes his eyes again. “I’m not going anywhere, not anywhere without you, I promise.”