Chapter Text
Peter finds Tony downstairs in his workshop the next afternoon, hunched over something mechanical with a soldering iron. There’s old rock music blasting.
The music turns down as he walks in, and Tony doesn’t lift the protective mask he’s wearing as he says, “FRIDAY, stop messing with the music.”
“Peter is here,” FRIDAY says.
Tony sits up then, setting the soldering iron aside, and tilts the mask up on his forehead. “Hey kiddo.”
Peter hovers in the doorway. He’s only been in here a few times, and it always feels kind of daunting. It’s such a big space, full of expensive equipment. He feels like he’s going to break something if he looks at it wrong.
It also feels like the type of space he’s normally not allowed inside of. Like the foster home he’d lived at once that had a special room for the woman’s doll collection. She’d had some really rare and expensive ones, and she’d kept it locked up tight so that none of the kids could try to play with them. He still thinks the dolls were super weird, but the workshop has that same feeling; like it’s Tony’s space and Peter is intruding by even knocking on the door.
Which is probably stupid. Tony has told him to come inside before. It’s probably okay that he’s here.
Probably.
“What’s up?” Tony asks.
“Pepper took Morgan over to her friend’s house for a playdate.”
“Which friend?”
Peter shrugs. Morgan has quickly become very popular at her new kindergarten and he can’t keep up with all the names of other kids she mentions being friends with. “One of the E names,” he says.
“There are like five of those,” Tony says. He starts counting off on his fingers. “Emma, Eva, Emily, Emma Number Two, Ethan… or was it Evan?”
Peter blinks at him. “You remember all of those?”
“I remember everything,” Tony says. He taps his temple. “Steel trap.”
Peter’s not sure how to respond to that. He kind of suspects Tony made up half those names just now.
He takes a few steps closer to Tony’s workstation. “What’s that?” he asks.
Tony gestures for him to come closer. “New legs for Rhodey. Well, upgraded ones. I made one set already but these are going to be better.”
Tony has talked before about Rhodey’s injury, so Peter asks, “Is he still going to be on the Avengers?”
Tony looks away, back down at the mechanics in front of him. “Not much of a team to be on right now,” he mutters. “But yes. These will work with the suit upgrades I’m making, so he can still use it. Can’t have someone else as War Machine, can we?”
“I thought it was Iron Patriot?”
Tony looks affronted. “Blasphemy, from my own son. In my own house.”
Peter grins. But then he looks down at the mechanics as well, reaching out tentatively to trace a finger over them. “But if there’s not an Avengers team, then how’s he going to be War Machine? How are you going to be Iron Man?”
“Kid, I was Iron Man long before the Avengers were a thing. I can do that with or without the rest of the band. So can Rhodey. I might actually prefer it,” Tony says. “It’s kind of nice not having Captain Uptight telling me what to do all the time.”
“You haven’t gone out as Iron Man since last spring though,” Peter points out.
“Well, there hasn’t been anything that needed taking care of. No alien attacks, no super villains trying to take over.”
“What about all the stuff here in New York?”
“What stuff?”
“Like…”—Peter gestures, hand flailing through the air—“stuff.”
“No one’s attacked New York this year. For a change of pace,” Tony says.
Peter frowns. That isn’t what he meant. He didn’t mean big attacks really, because of course Tony would go out and help with those. He meant more like… helping people in general. People like the little girl at the arcade.
The Avengers had never done that though. Tony’s never done that. He’s always used all his power to fight against big stuff like alien invasions.
But maybe there needs to be someone helping regular people with smaller problems. Maybe if someone were doing that, they’d have helped him when he was little and lost.
“Penny for your thoughts, kid?” Tony says. He reaches up, poking Peter between the eyes, and Peter stumbles back a step. “You look like you’re thinking hard about something.”
“That’s just how my face looks,” Peter says. He hesitates, then asks, “What made you want to be Iron Man?”
Tony turns toward him more fully, giving him his full attention. He looks like he’s really considering it before answering. “I did it because it was a way to fix the mistakes I’d made,” he says. “You know about SI, right? And that we used to make weapons?”
Peter nods.
“I had to do what I could to get those out of the hands of the wrong people. And I needed the suit to do it. So that’s how it started.”
“Why do you do it now then?”
Tony’s eyes crinkle up a bit. “I mean, getting to fly around isn’t a bad gig,” he says. He smiles, before looking more serious. “Someone needs to do it. Someone needs to be here to handle the big threats that the government and military can’t. They don’t know what to do with aliens and shit like that. And I have the ability to do that, so why not me?”
Peter looks over at the Iron Man suits, lined up in a row along the wall. There are a couple of them, different prototypes Tony has said, improvements he’s working on. An extra in case one is damaged.
Tony follows his gaze. “I’m taking a step back though,” he says.
Peter looks at him, surprised.
“I was already doing it before, really, but after everything that went down in Europe, and the team kind of breaking up, it’s more for real. I’m only on call for something major. So you don’t need to worry about any ‘business trips’”—he uses air quotes—“or stuff like that. I’m gonna be here at home.”
Peter looks at him for a long moment. He wasn’t actually worried about Tony still being an Avenger. Sure, he’d been injured the last time he left on Avengers business, but Peter hadn’t thought it was bad enough to make Tony reconsider the entire job.
Or it hadn’t seemed that bad. He does still rub at his left wrist a lot, Peter’s noticed. Like it still hurts. So maybe it had been worse than it seemed. And Rhodey had been hurt very badly in that fight.
“So who’s going to handle the other stuff?” Peter asks.
“Honestly, there are new guys popping out of the woodwork everyday. For every one of us that leaves the team there’s three more ready to go. Seems like all anyone needs to be a superhero these days is a mask and a gimmick. They had a guy who’s thing was ants with them in Germany.”
“Ants?”
“He controls ants. And shrinks down to the size of one.”
Peter wonders if he could control spiders.
He hasn’t given a ton of thought to powers that he got after being bitten by that spider on a field trip last year, because aside from the increased strength and ability to eat whatever he wants without gaining any weight they seem a bit useless. Why does he need to be sticky and able to climb things? What’s he going to use that for?
But what use is controlling ants? Evidently ant guy found a use for it in a fight.
“You’re thinking again,” Tony says.
“Am I supposed to not think?” Peter asks.
“No, but let’s put it to use. Want to help me with Rhodey’s new legs?”
Peter looks down at the complicated mess of machinery on Tony’s workbench. “Really?”
“Really,” Tony says. “Grab a mask and pull up a stool.”
Peter dons the protective gear and settles in beside Tony, leaning in close to him as he starts working again so that he can see what he’s doing.
Tony doesn’t turn his music back up, instead he talks through everything, explaining where things go and why he’s welding certain pieces together. How to fit things to get the maximum amount of movement, how to place the delicate circuit boards and wires.
Peter absorbs it all like a sponge.
- - -
A mask and a gimmick.
The gimmick is actually easier to come by than the mask. He’s able to work on it during lab time at school, sitting hunched over his notebook trying to work out the formula and then mixing everything up in a beaker in the drawer by his desk. The first few attempts just result in a sticky mess, but finally he gets it right on the third try.
Web Fluid.
Spiders have webs, and it’s one extra power the bite didn’t give him. He’s going to have to manufacture something to shoot them with, but then he should be able to use them for everything from tying someone up to rappelling off a building.
Maybe he can swing between buildings with them.
The mask and the rest of the costume is harder. There’s nothing in his closet at home that he can use, and getting out on his own is still difficult.
He has to lie to Pepper.
But if he’s going to do this, he’s going to be lying to her a bunch anyway, right? It’s for a good cause. She’d understand, if she knew the reason behind it.
It’s not like he can tell her “Hey Mom, I’ve actually been hiding my superpowers from you and I’ve decided to use them to become a vigilante. Don’t worry, I’ll be home before midnight and instead of doing drugs I’m going to try to help people. I feel like this is what my therapist would call really healthy growth wouldn’t you agree?”
She would not agree. Well, maybe with the helping people instead of doing drugs part. But she’d flip out about the superpowers he’s been hiding from her. And then she’d tell Tony, who would also flip out. And the last thing he needs is the two of them flipping out, homeschooling him again, and having Happy follow him around everywhere. They’ve only recently relaxed on the whole bodyguard thing.
Plus he really wants to go to Midtown for sophomore year. He’s got a good feeling about it.
She lets him go to Ned’s after school, with plans for Happy to pick him up there later that evening. They’ve eased up a lot on the bodyguard thing over the past couple months. Happy still drives Peter around, but he doesn’t follow him inside places anymore, watching his every move.
Instead of going to Ned’s, Peter heads to the nearest thrift store. Stepping inside is like stepping back into his life before. He used to shop at thrift stores all the time. Now Pepper buys all of his clothes and everything he’s wearing has price tags that still make him uncomfortable to look at. T-shirts shouldn’t cost that much, honestly.
The stuff at the thrift store is cheap. And he finds what he needs pretty quickly. Which leaves him with some free time before he has to go stand in front of Ned’s apartment building and make it look like he’s been there this whole time.
The last time he was in this neighborhood on his own was when he wound up at that party.
He should probably just go to Ned’s early.
- - -
It’s another two weeks before Peter gets the chance to try out the whole thing. He’s got a costume, he’s got a mask—he chose red and blue for the colors, partly because that was what he’d found at the store and partly because he’d thought they went well together—he’s got devices that he’d mentally dubbed ‘webshooters’ that let him shoot out a string of the web fluid with just a press of his finger, he’s got a police scanner app on his phone. He’s ready. He’s going to do this.
He lies about having a project to work on with Ned after school at the library, and about being offered dinner at Ned’s house, which buys him until at least 8 PM before Happy’s going to be looking for where to pick him up. Then he finds an empty alley to change into his costume, uses the web fluid to stick his backpack high up enough on the brick wall that it won’t get stolen, and scales the side of the building.
He surveys everything from the roof, at least fifteen stories up, and checks in on the police scanner app. There’s not much going on, so he practices with the web fluid for a while, and jumps from one building to the next, using a string of fluid to slow his fall to shorter buildings.
It holds his weight easily.
There’s really just one other thing he really wants to try with it.
He stands on the edge of a roof, bouncing on his toes, gathering his nerves, and shoots out a string of fluid to the building across the street. It latches on and is like a firm rope in his hands, but with elasticity. There’s just a bit of give.
The first drop is terrifying, but also exciting. He swings across to the other building, sticking to the wall, and then shoots another string towards a building a bit further down the street. It only takes a few times before he gets some momentum going, and the next thing he knows he’s flying between buildings, high above the cars on the street below, the webs more of a guideline than anything else.
He could fall at any moment, but he won’t. He’s got this. His stomach swoops with every swing. He feels high on the adrenaline.
He feels free.