“-so yeah, the multiverse is a thing but we don’t have Tony Stark. I have no clue who you are but you’re pretty cute,” Miles says and Tony feels skeevy for having been subjected to a child deciding he’s attractive.
Peter wrinkles his nose. “Ew Miles, that’s my dad,” he mumbles.
“What about your aunt May? Because the other two Peter Parker’s had aunt Mays,” Miles says.
“Oh yeah, she’s still around. I go to her place on the weekends!” he says excitedly.
Miles considers this for a moment and then nods. “Cool. Can you turn invisible?” he asks and Peter gives him an upset look.
“What? No. Can you?” he asks and Miles gives him an awkward look.
“Haha, no, I can’t do that,” he says and promptly turns invisible. “This isn’t what it looks like,” he adds when he seems to realize somewhat late that he’s not visible anymore.
“It doesn’t look like anything,” Tony says, “so basically its exactly what it looks like.”
“This is the worst power ever honestly, its not even that cool and it only does this stuff when its inconvenient. Like I’m in the locker room getting changed for gym and bam, invisible and now I’m holding shorts and the whole grade of guys is looking over at me and I gotta pretend to be a ghost to keep from blowing my cover and now the whole school thinks I have a poltergeist attached to me because the ghost only ever touches my stuff,” he says.
Peter turns to him with wide eyes, “he’s adorable, can we keep him?”
Tony sighs, “well, he’s fucking fifteen. I can’t throw him in the street with a note pinned to his chest so I guess.”
“Wait, do I exist in this universe? I could just call my parents,” Miles suggests and yes, great idea because Tony is getting his child’s obvious crush all over him and he would rather not.
*
“Aw, my parents don’t exist in this universe? Stupid. Okay, so what are we doing today?” Miles asks Peter, moving past the parents thing fast. That’s, Tony figures, when he figures out that this isn’t the first time Miles has landed in another universe. No kid is that calm about their parents flat out not existing, which leads Tony to believe that he’ll be likely to run into other spider people soon.
“I don’t know, probably class. Can I skip class? Miles can sting people! Without webs!” he adds given that he has webs with a similar function.
Tony sighs. “Fine. but don’t let me catch you two doing dumb shit. A villain shows up and I’ll deal with it. Especially if its a Doom bot, those things are hard to take out and your webs mostly only make them sticky,” he says, shaking his head. Then the fucking things stick together, and then they have a hoard of Doom bots rolling down the street causing mass destruction as they shoot at everything and also each other in an attempt to free themselves.
“But Doom bots are fun,” Peter says and Tony gives him a look. He sighs, “okay fine. Can we go see a movie?” he asks and Tony shrugs.
“Knock yourself out. Don’t let aunt May catch you either,” he adds. Fuck that, he gets enough parenting lectures as it is and when he first got Peter that made sense. She’d spent more time with him at that point and knew his habits, but after a few months Tony pretty much got the hang of it. Also, that was when Peter was an actual baby so he thinks that after fourteen and a half years he’s figured it out mostly.
As soon as the boys leave he gets a call about a disturbance down town and of course.
*
Miles swings in because yeah okay, he got told not to interfere but Peter said Tony wouldn’t even be that mad and Doc Ock is kind of his villain so you know. Makes sense to go deal with her. Also Tony’s suit is really cool and colorful, which is probably why he gets smacked in the head- he’s looking at the shiny suit- but then Peter swings in and saves his ass so its all good.
“I told you two to stay out- Miles, you better be sticking around to listen to me lecture- Jesus lady I’m trying to parent a fifteen year old can you not swing your poorly designed and ugly tentacles at me!” Tony snaps, blasting one of Olivia’s tentacles away from him as he looks around. Miles swings himself up onto a building and watches as Tony starts lecturing nothing.
“He’s gunna be pissed when he realizes he’s not even talking to you,” Peter says.
“Yeah, probably, but Doc Ock is from my universe so like. I feel compelled to sort this out,” he says. And also show off because he has powers this Peter Parker doesn’t and this Peter Parker is adorable and also age appropriate. And he also doesn’t have a dad bod like his older and significantly more beat up predecessor. Does the other older Peter count as a predecessor? He doesn’t know, point is he’s got people to show off to and his uncle’s advice was no good so he needs to figure out something better than ‘hey’ in a weird tone of voice and fast before he’s sucked into another universe. Or back to his own, its a toss up lately and Miguel needs to calm it with his jumping around. Every time he shuffles they all shuffle and that’s annoying. His parents are probably mad that he’s behind on homework.
He tracks Ock’s movements for a bit before making his move, going visible just before he runs into one of her tentacles. He’s done this like three times before, he’s totally got this. If he moves right those stupid little tentacles end up tied together and its kind of funny to watch them struggle to free themselves. He’s half way through The Tangle Method when Iron Man, that’s what Tony’s hero name is, comes in and blasts a couple tentacles. “Oh come on, they were almost tangled!” he says.
“Kid, that third tentacle was going straight for your head you are not good at this,” Tony tells him and okay that’s just rude.
“I think I was doing okay,” he says in his defense.
“You make a good distraction. Do that,” he tells Miles and fine, okay, he can do that. He swings himself up to a building, sticking to the side of it and Peter can do that too so that’s cool. He assesses the situation for a moment before swinging back into things and letting a few webs fly. Only one lands where he wanted it to but it does mean one of the prong ends of a tentacle is out of business for at least five minutes and that’s good news. He webs that tentacle in particular to a building and Iron Man immediately blasts it free. “Oh come on! What’s that for?” he asks.
“Webs are strong, they tend to result in a lot of damage to public buildings when people get stuck to them and then rip themselves off. Try sticking her to stuff people don’t care about. Like billboards and McDonald’s advertisements,” Peter explains before webbing himself out again.
Miles kind of cares about McDonald’s advertisements, they’re funny. Or at least that’s what he thinks until he runs into one and okay never mind, in this universe McDonald’s looks like it sells chicken flavored bricks and also isn’t funny at all so he sticks Ock to that and she immediately pulls herself free.
“The infrastructure in this universe is not good,” he comments as Peter swings by.
“Yeah, we need to work on that as a country,” Tony says as he blasts another tentacle away from him. He swears those things reproduce super fast or something. Take one out and two more grow back and all that.
By the time they manage to secure Doc Ock another spider person has shown up and Miles doesn’t know this one.
*
Jessica Drew doesn’t look impressed, but looks especially less impressed with the knowledge that in this universe she exists, but only as a famous spider with an inexplicable last name. “What the hell is with me jumping around all the time?” she asks, glaring at him for some reason and like Tony knows.
“Okay, so here’s what happened,” Miles says. “There’s this guy, right, Kingpin. And he wanted his dead family back so he built this thing to access the multiverse so he could pick up some other versions of his wife and kid. And then Peter Parker- not you,” he adds to Peter. “Got killed but this other Peter came through and also Gwen, who’s really pretty but she’s kind of upset because her Peter Parker died too, right in front of her and-”
“Get to the point, kid,” Tony tells him at the same time Peter says, “why do I die so much?”
“Right. So the other Peter Parker was all ‘I’m not training you, I’m just going to shut down Kingpin’s stuff’ but then he trained me anyway and I think he wants kids. Also, he got dumped by his wife but he said he handled it real good so I think he’s mostly okay. Anyway, so he trained me a little, and Gwen gave me some tips, but then there are all these other spider people. Spider ham is the weirdest, he’s a pig and he can talk. Apparently all animals can talk in his universe or that’s what he implied-”
“Kid, the point,” Jessica says and Miles nods.
“Yeah, I’m getting there. So all the spider people eat Kingpin’s ass but not in a sexy way, like in a violent way. There were trains flying around, it was wild in there. But we shut it down and we were like hey cool, the universe is back to normal, all the spider people are where they belong, its good. But then my favorite dumbass spider person Miguel made a jump autonomously, he’s got a goober, but when he shuffles we all shuffle and that’s how I ended up here,” he finishes with a flourish.
“How do we get back?” Jessica asks.
Miles shrugs, “wait for Miguel to make another jump. Oh and also if you stay in the wrong universe too long your atoms will rip themselves apart and you’ll die so don’t stay here too long,” he adds like that’s a small caveat.
Tony is going to die of stress.
*
When Miguel makes another jump the all know it because Jessica gets sucked into somewhere new and Miles feels the sensation coming on so he knows he’s going places too but Peter looks freaked out. “Its cool, you’re just going to a new universe its all good,” he tells him.
‘He’s going to a what!” Tony shrieks just as he and Peter disappear. They land in New York, Miles’ New York, he knows right away.
“Oh cool, home,” he says. “Come on, my parents will probably be worried,” he says to Peter, who’s looking down at his hands.
“Why am I animated?” he asks.
“Oh yeah, that’s just how we look here. Your world looks like my world’s video games so technically I was animate in your universe! Come on, there’s probably at least one other spider person hanging around here,” he says.
Peter follows him along and they don’t run into any spider people but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any here. Miles will feel them out eventually. When he gets home though his parents run to him and hug him, going on in English and Spanish about how worried they were. He tries to reassure them both at the same time, which results in some ugly spanglish, but that’s okay because they get the point.
“This is Peter, in his universe its animated!” he says excitedly. This results in his parents giving Peter weird looks but that’s rude, he can’t help being cartoon sometimes. Apparently Miles is a cartoon here so no one should judge. Multiverse is weird.
*
Peter can’t get used to having lines around his body. Its just weird and he doesn’t like it. “So um. This is my room,” Miles says and Peter thinks its unfair to look cute in cartoon.
Does this make him a brony? He hopes not.
“Uh, cool,” he says, looking around. Miles as a lot of drawing stuff around, and a lot of posters of what Peter thinks are musicians but none look immediately familiar to him.
Peter tries to get a grasp on being animated while Miles inches a little closer to him, probably also trying to make sense of his weird animated body and wait, what’s his junk look like? Is that animated too?! Oh god, he can’t handle animated-
“Hey,” Miles says, settling a hand on his shoulder. He looks vaguely pained and a little confused.
“Um. Hey. Are you okay?” he asks.
“Miles just ask him out like a normal person, Aaron was am awful pick up artist,” Miles’ dad, Jeff, says from the doorway.
Miles looks immediately horrified. “Dad what the hell, you can’t just say totally untrue things like that!” he says.
Jeff looks nonplussed, “you want to go to dinner with him or no?” he asks Peter.
He shrugs, “yeah okay.” Might as well see what animated food taste like. He hopes it tastes like the way Ghibli movie food looks.