Chapter 3
Peter leaped to his feet, grabbing his phone and bag. "I'm- I'm over here! Sorry, Happy, sorry-" Peter came over, holding his eye but when he saw the man he dropped it, not trying to alert anything and hoping Happy would just brush it off, like normal.
"Kid, what the fuck are you doing?" Happy asked, going towards him. "What happened to you?" Shit. So, he noticed I guess. Peter wished he hadn't so he could just leave and it wasn't a big deal. The spiderling quickly changed the subject.
"I'm okay, sorry I was late." Peter pulled on his bag.
"What happened to your face?" Happy repeated, more insistent this time. Well, insistent at all.
"I'm fine, Happy." Peter started toward the car.
"I'm telling the boss about this."
Why does Happy still refer to Tony as the boss? Hasn't he worked for him for like, forever? But Tony does still tease him like it's nothing, but that's just Tony. "Okay." Peter got in the backseat, putting on music and pulling out his homework to catch up on. The ride wasn't lengthy, but it was enough that he could be productive during it. Peter worked on science homework, needing to ready his brain. His eye throbbed in pain and he tried his best to ignore it. It'd go away sooner or later. Preferably sooner.
They pulled up at Peter's apartment. He had to go get his clothes. Last time he had forgotten them and worn Tony's sweats and t-shirt for the night. Mortifying, if you could minimize it to that. Peter mumbled a thank you to the driver and got out, rushing up to his stairs to not inconvenience Happy. He ran into his room and grabbed some pajama pants, three pairs and shoving them in his bag. He grabbed hoodies to wear to sleep and clothes during the day. He ran downstairs with his two bags: his backpack, and duffel, and got into the car. Thankfully, they didn't exchange any words. Happy just went back to driving.
The tower was always nice. If Peter hadn't been procrastinating on working on his science homework, he wouldn't have noticed it. It had the iconic look the last one had and Peter adored that. It was so recognizable, like the Empire State Building. Peter fumbled with his bag, trying to shove his folder back in but a paper fell out, so he just crammed it back into the folder, shoving it between his notebooks hazily and zipping it up. He climbed out with his bag on his back. He was supposed to spend the weekend there, but in all honesty, Tony was probably going to take away the suit. Kick him out, erase the newly real internship-
"Kid, are you coming?" Happy asked. Peter had been walking like a snail, apparently. Clearing his head of the clouds that had gotten stuck in it, Peter rushed after him.
"Sorry, sorry," Peter said quickly as they got into the elevator. Happy shot him a look, of both confusion and frustration with a slight hint of worry and clicked the button. The elevator ride up with Happy was so awkward. It was too short to make a full conversation of small talk, but still long enough for there to be an uncomfortable silence. Peter gripped his bag tightly. He always hated a dull in a conversation, like he needed to keep saying something or there would be silence and he'd get his negasonic anxiety about every single little thing.
Peter stepped off the elevator and walked down to the lab. Slower than usual, Peter trudged The halls were so nice. He wished he lived somewhere half as nice as this.
"FRIDAY, can you open the lab?" Peter asked in a small voice. She didn't hear him so he said it louder. "FRIDAY, can you open the door please?"
"Of course." She hummed, opening the big glass doors. Peter walked in and set his duffel on one of the back, vacant tables. Vacancy was a rare term to use to describe the lab. Every single table was cluttered with some kind of robotic tool, blueprint, or scrap. Tony was nowhere to be seen, which had Peter confused. He sat down, pulling out the homework he had a single question left on. That had to be the most annoying thing about homework. When you have one question left to do, and it pissed Peter off so much.
"Ah, Spider-Baby." A voice erupted, making the teen jump and drop his books with a thud as he erupted a scream. Papers flew out of his folder like it was freedom and a few pens rolled out of his open pencil bag that he swore he had shut. Peter clambered to get his papers that he didn't want Tony to see- he didn't need to know all his grades. If he could save himself some embarrassment of Tony being... dadlike, he would. Not that he didn't appreciate it, just it was embarrassing when people commented on his grades. Whether it was about him being in the smart school or if he got anything lower than a B. "Oh, wow, kid, I didn't mean to scare ya! Don't you have some sort of... future sense?"
Gasping for breath, Peter could barely choke out an answer. He clambered to get his things and pretended like the question didn't exist. What was he supposed to say, though? Ask if he knew about the fire? Act like it didn't happen? Talk about Flash? School? May? Driving? Getting a job? LEGOs? Star- "Woah, kid, what happened to your face?" Tony's face turned to worry and concern. Like a father would. Peter, shut up about father figures!
"Huh?" Peter asked. God, Peter, you're being an idiot! Your eye, stupid! Peter cringed at his stupid question. He clambered and shoved his supplies into the cheap backpack he swore would be the last one for the school year.
"You got a black eye, kid. Is patrol being bad to you? Was it the... you know what?" Oh, okay, Tony did know. Fuck. Fuck! Change the subject! Change the subject! Abort mission! Abort!!!
"No! No, not that, it's just... some kid got mad at school." Peter wanted to take back the words as soon as they left his mouth. He could have made up an excuse, but instead, he fucked up and told him the truth.
Tony didn't know the full truth about Flash. For all he knew, he just got hurt on patrol. Not getting bullied, like a kid. Though Peter was a kid, he wanted to be treated like an adult, so he usually made up some excuse that would've been blown off. But Peter was jumpy and just stupid. Peter sheepishly sat at the lab tables. Tony raised an eyebrow, knowing something was up. Tony grabbed some blueprints for Vision. "Some kid at school? Who's this kid? Did they hit you? I swear to god, who's hitting my intern?!" Not my kid, my intern.
"It's nothing, just some kid from decathlon got mad that I was getting some of the questions right." Peter tried to shrug it off like it was nothing and change the subject. "So, um-" But he couldn't get another syllable out, mostly because he didn't know what to say, but because Tony interrupted him.
"Some?" Tony always loved saying how Peter was getting his brains and brawn. Peter always told him he never had brawn before the spider, and unless Tony made a spider, it wasn't because of Tony. And Peter was smart by himself, thank you very much. He just didn't have an outlet to channel that smartness. Tony gave him one.
Peter frowned. No, no, he wasn't a brainiac like Tony was. He just was... a nerd. Geek, if you will. Flash might've been smart, but he was also a jock of some sort. He could hold his own strength, basically. "He just got mad. But it's better to happen to me than to anyone else. I heal fast, others can't. I'd rather have it happen to me, I'm serious."
"Kid, you need to stop all this. You can't put yourself at different standards than others!" Tony tapped his pen on the table.
"I am at different standards." Peter shrugged. He wanted to stop talking about this. This was stupid as fuck. Fuck fucks fuck. "Um, so what are you working on?"
Tony frowned at the changing of the subject. "Well, just thinking of getting a new assistant, a better arm for Buck- if he's nice, that is- and legs for Rhodey."
"Doesn't he already...?" Peter knew it was a touchy subject. Even more touchy than the fire. Tony had always beat himself up about what had happened to his friend and swore he could fix things, but deep down knew it wouldn't ever be the same.
"Well, things can always be upgraded, kiddo." Tony shrugged. "Is there anything you need to add to your suit? Linings? Bugs?" Bugs?! In Tony Stark's code?!
"No, Mr. Stark, it works perfectly." Maybe fire protection. That was a subject for a much, much later time. Weeks? No. Months? Depends. Years? Maybe. Never? Preferably.
"Kid, it's Tony now. We've gone over this for like, months. Okay, I've got an idea that I need your okay on first." Oh, shit. Peter didn't like the sound of that. A good or bad idea? A thousand thoughts ran through Peter's anxious mind. He couldn't relax. Nothing about Peter was relaxed right now, and he knew Tony could tell.
"Uh, yeah?" Oh, fuck fuck fuck.
"How about we bring all the Avengers over for pizza night?"
Peter blinked, utterly befuddled. Pizza night? With the Avengers? Peter still had yet to meet them all in person- and on friendly terms! Captain America still freaked Peter out. It was badass that he stole his shield from the American boy wonder, but if he knew Peter = Spider-Man, he would not walk out of the compound in one piece- or alive.
"Uh, yeah, Mr. Stark, that sounds... cool. Do they all, uh, know about me?"
"Bruce does, Natasha at this point probably knows every single thing about you-" That made Peter gulp. "And I'm sure the rest vaguely know you exist from her gossip."
"Good things, I hope."
Tony dove his hand through Peter's curls, shaking them up. "There are no bad things to say about you, kid."
Peter had brought his bag up to the guest room that was basically his by this point. He put his clothes in the closet and his backpack under the bed. Heaving a heavy sigh, Peter toed off his well-worn sneakers.
"OH, GO AHEAD AND KILL ME WHILE YOU'RE AT IT, ROGERS!" A voice Peter had never heard of before bellowed. It scared the living shit out of him- though it shouldn't have, it was the tower, everyone was in and out and, in all honesty, half the time nobody would have noticed if a random person had entered.
The shoeless teenager (he kept his socks- he wasn't an animal) ran out to see a group of men labeled nothing other than as the Avengers. The scraggly, long-haired man stood enraged, assumably he was the one that had outbursted. He had a metal arm and Peter bit back the words he'd uttered to him only months before, 'Woah, you have a metal arm?'. The cyborg(?) stood to stare at none other than the American Boy Wonder himself, Steve Rogers. Tony stood between Peter and the couple, who immediately shielded him in a way.
"What are they yelling about?"
"Oh, Bucky's mad because he can't drink beer." 'Bucky' shot a mean glare at Tony for uttering the words.
"Why not?"
"Because they both had steroids from the Nazi time, and that enhanced their metabolism to shit, therefore they can't get wasted. It'd just be a bitter drink for the two."
"Wait, like, their metabolism is faster than a normal human's?"
"Like, double as fast." Tony put his arms out, palms facing each other in a box formation for emphasis.
"So I can't, either?" Peter frowned.
"Woah, kid! You shouldn't be worrying about that for a few years now, buckaroo!" Tony dropped his hands. Bucky grabbed a side table as if he would throw it and Tony quickly pushed Peter out into the hall. No crash emitted from the room the two had been in, so that was a good sign. "Sorry, kid. I wanted to talk to you before those two showed up and broke my tower and half, but they got here earlier than I anticipated." Tony walked him to Peter's 'bedroom'. "Uh, you don't have to say anything, but... the whole fire thing. How are you holding up?"
Peter was at a loss for words. The two entered the room, the door sliding open upon their arrival. Quickly picking up his shoes and putting them by his bed, Peter formulated a sentence. "So, you uh... saw that?"
"It was on the news, kid." Tony sat on the bed, Peter sitting next to him, his knee against the nightstand uncomfortably but not enough for him to move and put too little space between him and his mentor.
"Mm." Peter didn't look at him. Just his fingers in his lap, twisting them. "I wish it wasn't."
"I'm happy it was, or you wouldn't have told me, huh?" Peter deflated a bit. He was right, but Peter hated the fact that he was. "Like your eye. You weren't gonna tell me. Happy had to."
"Well, you could see it," Peter said quickly. "And I would've told you!"
"Mmmhmm." Tony nodded. There was a slight pause. "So, the kid?"
"Lewis's his last name," Peter said nearly immediately. Peter felt like shit again just thinking about it. "It's my fault."
"No, kid, it's not," Tony said near immediately. He always told Peter how he was a hero. A superhero. Soon-to-be-Avenger. Okay, he never officially said that part.
"I could have saved him, Mr. Stark. And I failed. I have these powers, I should be using them. And I didn't. I worried more about myself than who I should've been saving. And... I don't know what to do about it. Nobody's ever died because of me before." Peter was rambling and he knew it. His eyes were blurred with tears that he kept trying to keep back but he knew they'd eventually fall. "I shouldn't be Spider-Man. If you want the suit back, tell me, I'm sorry-" Tears hung on his eyelashes, two falling down his face.
"Woah, kid, kid, hey, I'm not taking away the suit. Calm down, all right? I'm not mad at you, okay? I'm gonna be honest with you. I haven't saved everyone either- in fact, people have lost their lives because of the Avengers. That's what the Accords were about. To put us in place. Cap and his friends threw a bomb into a building to keep people in the town safe and a mom came up to me about her son. He was in the building, and he didn't make it."
Peter nodded, his heartbreaking. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." More tears dripped down his face.
"Kid, Bambi, don't be sorry. If you want, we can talk to the family on Monday." Tony wiped Peter's face with the pads of his thumbs, but he wasn't cupping his face. Just holding his thumb up to Peter's face to wipe them.
"We can?" Peter looked up at him. A thousand ideas ran through his head. Mask? No mask? What would he say? Apologize, definitely. Would Tony be there with him? What if they hated him? He'd apologize, for sure. He just felt so bad. And he wanted to do anything he could.
"Of course."
"ROGERS SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Bucky bellowed.