Work Text:
Her lips taste like strawberries.
“What’s your name again?” Tony mumbles against her mouth, and the unnamed (she told him her name a few minutes ago, but the vodka sitting comfortably in his stomach is not helping his memory whatsoever) brunette giggles attractively, one manicured hand gripping the collar of his shirt.
“Kristen.” She tells him, paper white teeth digging into his bottom lip. It stings, so he pulls away a little to get a better look at her face. Her hair is coiffed and swaying just passed her sharp collarbones, framing her face in the dim light of his living room. The party is merging into its third hour and shows no signs of slowing down now. “Do you have somewhere more private that we can go?”
Tony nods, taking Kristen by the hand and guiding her into the hallway. He is pleasantly drunk, buzzed with the euphoria of a cabinet of liquor in his system and the dozens of people gathered across his waterfront house to celebrate his twenty-eighth birthday, like he’s a rich little kid with an attention problem.
They make it to one of the guest bedrooms (his own bedroom is on the other side of the mansion and his patience is running thin), stumbling across the threshold as Kristen presses her body all over him once more. Tony closes the door with his back as he stumbles into it, closing his eyes and breathing in the scent of expensive liquor and the distinct smell of vanilla that clings to her elaborate curls. Kristen’s dress is shimmied halfway off of her toned body when he hears a thump and a gasp coming from the other side of the room.
Kristen freezes, her lustful expression falling to confusion as she quickly glances over at the general area that the noise came from. There is only thick, endless silence in its wake, and the lamplit corner next to the guest bed seems infinitely more troubling than mere moments ago. “What was that?”
“I don’t...” Tony peeks around her head, trying to get a better look at the area. He is just about to write it off as nothing and finish undressing alongside Kristen, when he catches an unmistakable glimpse of a head of brown hair hiding behind the bed. “The fuck?”
A pair of huge, terrified eyes stare back at him when he gets close enough, attached to the head of a teenage boy.
“Oh my God!” Kristen screeches, one hand clasped over her mouth. She stretches an arm over her front to hide her exposed chest, frantically pulling her dress back up her torso. “Fucking creep! Were you hiding in here?”
“No, no, I swear-” The kid is practically shouting, throwing himself onto his feet and holding his hands up in surrender as he uselessly tries to explain himself. “It’s not like that, please, this is all just- this is a misunderstanding-”
Tony has been in the party scene since the ripe age of fifteen. He knows all about ending up at places he shouldn’t be when he’s far too young for it, but there’s something undeniably disturbing about seeing a kid who can’t be more than fourteen or fifteen sitting in his guest bedroom, in a house full of drunk twentysomethings.
“You’ve gotta’ get out of here.” Tony slurs, rubbing one knuckle against his eye as if he could smear away the drunkenness that still lies there. Kristen finally has her dress wrestled back to its proper position, glaring at the kid from across the room. “Come on, kid. Up and out, or I’ll have someone throw you out.”
The teenager shakes his head adamantly, curls swinging from side to side. He’s wearing an awfully tattered-looking T-shirt with Bill Nye’s face on it and writing that Tony can’t make out in his impaired state, mud-soaked jeans stuck to his legs. “Mr. Stark, you don’t- it’s an emergency- I'll explain if you just- if you give me a chance...”
“Are you a fan, or something, kid?” Tony is completely, utterly finished with this situation. He stumbled in here for a good night, a perfect end to his birthday, and now his date is pissed off and the bewildered kid shows no signs of leaving. “It’s time to leave.”
“Screw this.” Kristen mumbles, reaching around Tony to get to the door. He tries to stop her, but she slaps his hand off of her arm and stomps off without another word, the sound of her heels clicking against the marble floors echoing down the quiet hallway. He hears the front door open and then slam just as she disappears from view.
He turns to face the kid once more, a sort of quiet, drowned out fury rearing its head in his chest. “If you’re not out of here in the next ten seconds...”
“I can’t leave, Mr. Stark, please. You just have to- you just have to listen.”
“Stop calling me that.” Tony’s head spins, stomach clenching violently like it always does in the exact moment before everything he’s had to drink in the last few hours catches up to him. He gags into his fist before he practically throws himself at the small garbage bin next to the bed, retching violently before vomit soaks the front of his shirt.
After a moment, there’s an indistinguishable murmur from the kid and then a hand is squeezing his shoulder gently, as if trying to comfort him. “Are you okay?”
Tony rips his shoulder away, pushing his cheek against the bin and closing his eyes against the second wave of nausea that washes over him in a tidal wave. Either Obadiah or Rhodey will be the one to find him when someone at the party (naturally) notices that the guest of honor seems to have vanished.
“Out. Get out.” He mumbles, eyelids growing heavier by the second. The last thing he sees before he is taken over by blissful, drunken unconsciousness is the kid staring down at him with an expression that can only be described as painfully, horribly sad.
And it makes Tony feel inexplicably similar.
-
Tony is starting to get tired of waking up on the floor.
His neck is absolutely killing him, for one thing, after hours and hours of being bent at a bizarre angle. He is wedged in between the guest bed and the wall, curled up in the fetal position as if he spent the night hiding from a raging battle.
He pulls himself up, using the bed for support as he attempts to steady himself. The early morning Malibu sunshine is beating through the open windows, the quiet roar of the ocean below serving as endless white noise.
“JARVIS,” The billionaire yawns, slowly padding down the hallway and into the living room, which is a mess of solo cups and sticky liquid (he doesn’t want to know) and the melted ice sculpture he had wheeled in during the heat of the party. “What’s the report for today?”
“Today is Saturday, May 30 th , nineteen ninety-eight.” The A.I answers smoothly, automatically opening the doors to the fridge as Tony reaches for it. “It is currently ten in the morning, and seventy-seven degrees outside. Ideal surfing time will be in approximately eighty-two minutes.”
“Make a new pot of coffee for me, will you?” Tony wipes a mountain of crumbs off of the kitchen island, rubbing the exhaustion out of his eyes with a knuckle. Although he’s not entirely immune to a bad hangover, even after all these years, he has discovered in the last few years that it can easily be cured with a couple cups of coffee and at least half-a-day in the lab.
“No breakfast for your houseguest, sir?” JARVIS asks, the barest hint of amusement in his tone.
Tony blinks up at the ceiling. It wouldn’t be the first time that a semi-stranger had crawled their way into one of his many guestrooms after a party, but he has enough protocols in place for it now that JARVIS usually has them off of the property hours before Tony ever wakes up, “What are you talking about?”
“In the guestroom attached to your private quarters, sir.”
With most of his exhaustion forgotten to make way for a sharp spray of adrenaline in his chest, Tony bounds down the hallway (which reeks of alcohol) until he reaches the room that JARVIS described, throwing the door open unceremoniously. There, fast asleep in the queen-sized bed that sits in all of the extra rooms across the mansion, is the kid from last night.
Tony feels his mouth drop open, eye twitching. He strides over and kicks the bedpost harshly, which startles the kid enough for him to gasp awake, eyes wide and full of fear until he catches Tony’s furious stare.
“You’re not sick anymore?” The kid asks, as if he hasn’t just broken into Tony’s house and is now sleeping in one of the guest bedrooms. “I didn’t want to just leave you in there in case you, you know, choked on your vomit, or something- but everyone kept coming in and out and-”
He can only stare at the teenager for the longest time, mouth agape, wondering how delusional this kid has to be for him to think that this plan would ever, in a million years, even begin to work. He’s got guts though; Tony will give him that. “What’s your angle here, kid?”
The boy stops talking mid-sentence after Tony cuts him off, blinking slowly in response. “Um... what?”
“You want an autograph? A story to sell to TMZ?” Tony asks, arms crossed over his chest. A hangover rages behind his eyes, beating against his head like a drum. “I’m genuinely curious.”
“No, no, of course not, Mr. Stark-”
“Right, I’m calling the police then-”
“No!” The kid shoots up from the bed and grabs his wrist in a panic. It’s painless, but the kid is still applying enough pressure for Tony to struggle for a moment as he rips his arm away from the stranger. “Please, you have to let me explain.”
“I don’t have to do anything.” There is a quiet rage boiling under the billionaire’s skin, threatening to swallow him whole. He’s so, so tired of this. Tired of being taken advantage of just because of his last name. Tired of being nothing more than a story to sell, a cautionary tale of wealth and privilege and squandered opportunities. “JARVIS, call the-”
The kid jumps out of bed entirely now, expression twisted in utter panic, before blurting quickly enough that it takes Tony a moment to decipher what he is saying exactly, “My name is Peter Parker and I’m from the future!”
There’s a pause.
Tony stares at the kid’s- Peter Parker’s frantic expression, at his old T-shirt, at his mud-soaked jeans. He looks horribly out of place in the pristine guest bedroom, surrounded by the finest furniture that money can buy, mere feet away from the richest man in the country.
“Right.” Tony breathes, taking a noticeable step backwards. “Alright, why don’t you just stay right there, and we’ll have you back to whatever psych ward you came from real soon-”
“I’m not lying!” Peter insists, throwing his arms out wide in frustration. “I’m from New York in November of twenty twenty-four, and I broke in here last night because you’re the only one who can get me back home because-”
Tony takes another big step backwards, reaching for the door handle. “JARVIS!”
“I can prove it!”
“JARVIS!” He shouts again, frantically now.
“Your favourite memory of your entire life is when your mother took you to Italy for the summer when you were twelve.” Peter’s voice is quick and breathless, cheeks pink as he waits for any kind of reaction. Tony freezes, staring again. “You said- you said you liked it so much because Howard wasn’t there. It was just you and her. It was in... you were visiting her hometown, in... Prato, I think. You want to go back someday.”
“How do you know that?” Tony asks, his voice a mere whisper.
“You told me.” Peter is twisting his hands together anxiously, bending his fingers and cracking his knuckles over and over. “Or, I guess, you tell me, about twenty years from now.”
Tony can physically feel his brain working overtime to try to find a rational explanation for this, a way to reason with himself that this kid is just an extremely nosey journalist, or a distant relative, but it’s impossible. “Tell me something else.”
Peter’s eyes light up with a flicker of hope. “Something else? Okay, uh... just- just give me a second to
think... um- you and Colonel Rhodes became friends when you were about to sleep with a girl who was- who was a lot older than you when you were a freshman at M.I.T, and he saved you and drug you back to the dorms and stayed with you when you puked everywhere because you were drunk out of your mind.”
Something in Tony’s chest stumbles, beating against his insides like a battering ram. Everything within him is arguing against it, trying to reason with everything he knows about the observable universe thus far, but there is no reasonable explanation for this kid knowing what he knows.
“So…” Tony clears his throat, feeling horribly awkward but too curious to pass this opportunity up. “You’re from… what is it, twenty-six years in the future?”
The kid lights up again, expression contorting into utter relief, as if Tony has held up the heavens just by believing the absolutely insane story leaving his lips. “Yeah, yeah, I am.”
“And you know me, obviously?” Now that he’s (mostly) certain that he is not about to be brutally murdered by this doe-eyes teenager, Tony is able to relax enough to step away from the door, lowering his hands and taking his first full breath in well over a minute.
Peter nods, folding his hands awkwardly in front of himself. “Yeah. You’re my Dad.”
Tony chokes on air, wheezing into his fist as he desperately tries to get his heart to start beating normally again. The nausea from last night comes back, ramming into him with the force of a spreading train.
Peter visibly cringes. “Sorry, I should’ve… I shouldn’t have even told you that, really. Oh my God, Dr. Strange is gonna’ kill me if I just messed up the space-time continuum, or the rules of the multiverse, or that one-”
“I’m your...” Tony is starting to feel lightheaded. “You’re my kid?”
“Not biologically.”
“Adopted?”
“Not officially or, uh, legally.”
“I just… raised you, then?”
Peter starts fidgeting again, twisting his hands together uncomfortably. “Uh… not really, actually. We only met when I was fourteen. You’re here for me all the time now, though! So, you made up for it. Not that there was anything to make up for, mind you-”
Tony shakes his head, as if bouncing his brain around inside of his skull will help him make sense of the situation. It doesn’t work. He made a decision a long, long time ago (back when he had two living parents and hadn’t even started at M.I.T) that he would never have kids. He has never had any example for what a father should be, for how to comfort a kid without destroying them from the inside. How did he end up with a non-biological, not-even-legal kid? Does Peter even like him, in the future? Does he think that he’s a good father?
“I feel like I’m having a stroke.” The billionaire says simply, rubbing his temples and praying to a higher power that he doesn’t believe in that this is all some horrible dream that he can laugh about with Obie later over a cold beer.
Peter laughs quietly and disingenuously, brows pulling him sympathy. “I know. It’s all sort of hard to wrap your head around at first. You’ll get used to it. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t really, really need your help, Mr. Stark.”
“With what?”
The kid reaches into his pockets and fishes something out, holding up a sleek, silver watch after a moment. The front of the watch is destroyed, cracked right down the middle. It’s only held together by a flimsy strip of tape and sheer force of will, it seems.
“This is how I got stuck here.” Peter explains, letting Tony take the broken watch from his hands and examine it. “That’s how we travel back and forth. At home, we use a landing dock, but we can’t just tug it across time and space, so we use the watch to get back.”
“And you broke it?” Tony presses his thumb against one of the shattered bits, hissing as a sharp stinging sensation blooms across his finger.
“It was an accident.” The kid responds.
Tony hands the watch back to him, crossing his arms over his chest and hoping that it hides the budding emotions in his heart from this kid. His kid. Jesus, he’s a father in the future. Nothing in the universe makes sense today. “And what makes you think that I can fix it?”
Peter is chewing on his bottom lip, looking like he’s contemplating something hard. Then, after a considerable silence, he answers, “Because you’re the one who invented it.”
-
Tony very quickly decides that this is a problem that would be handled best in the lab, so he directs the kid downstairs and makes him sit at the workbench he never uses while he inspects the watch. He can hardly concentrate with the feeling of Peter’s eyes on the back of his head, watching his every move with rapt interest.
“Do you mind?” Tony hisses after a few minutes, glaring back at the kid, who leans away from him noticeably.
“Sorry.” He whispers. “I just... I’m not trying to rush you or anything, because you’re already doing me a huge favour, but do you think... will you be able to get it fixed soon? Because I ended up here on Wednesday night, so it’s already been, like, over two days, and my Tony is definitely freaking out by now.”
“Just give me-” Tony starts, but he’s quickly cut off by Peter’s panicked, continuous rambling.
“Plus, I’m in my senior year, and I’ve already missed two days of school this week, and even if I’m probably not going to M.I.T, I still want to graduate with Ned and MJ-”
“Are you always like this?”
Peter blinks at the question. “Like what?”
“On the verge of a panic attack.”
Oddly enough, the kid smiles a little, something comparable to nostalgia flickering in his huge eyes. “It’s sort of a recent development. I have a lot of shit going on back home.”
Tony glances back down at the watch, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Most of the material that it seems to be comprised of is foreign to him, but he’s never been one to back away from a challenge, and he’s not going to start now, especially when his future-pseudo-kid is on the line. “I think I can fix it, but it’ll take it least a day or two. I don’t think half of this stuff has even been invented yet.”
“That’s okay.” Peter nods, appearing to be mostly pleased with the answer. “I’ll catch up on my homework.”
That’s how it begins. Tony spends the next few hours hunched over his workbench, picking apart each busted piece of the watch and examining it meticulously. Peter, bless him, seems to be trying his absolute best to help, informing Tony of the exact function of the parts that haven't been invented yet and trying to explain everything he knows about how the watch works. They make a good team, oddly enough. It’s not hard to figure out why future-Tony took this kid under his wing.
It’s nearly time for dinner when Tony finally allows his curiosity to get the best of him. “How did you end up here, anyway?”
He already tried to ask about what circumstances led to him creating time travel, but the kid refused to answer (something about not wanting to destroy the timeline any more than he already has, whatever that means), dancing around the question until Tony gave up. This is the next best thing.
“It’s a long story.”
Tony raises an eyebrow, setting down the watch and stretching. His stomach started growling an hour ago, but he’s gone for much longer stretches with nothing in his system except for Advil and coffee, so he’s not worried. “You owe me something here, kid.”
Peter stares at him for a few seconds, eyes boring into his very soul, before he sighs heavily, shifting on his bench. “I was just trying to go back a few months; just back to June. I sort of... I can’t explain everything, but I made a really dumb mistake at the beginning of summer and kind of... destroyed my entire life.”
“Sounds dramatic.” Tony comments.
Peter smiles weakly. “I don’t know what happened, but the watch must have malfunctioned because instead of ending up in New York, I landed in this year in Sacramento-”
“Hold on.” Tony cuts him off. “Sacramento? How did you end up in Malibu if you landed in Sacramento on, what did you say, Wednesday night?”
“It’s a long-”
“I swear to God, Peter, if you say that one more time...” The billionaire seethes quietly. A brief look of amusement crosses the kid’s expression before he plunges forward in his story.
“I posed as a beggar for the night and got a few bucks.” He explains somewhat sheepishly. “They have a train that runs from Sacramento to San Francisco, so I took that on Thursday morning and then hitchhiked once I got to the coast. There was this really nice old lady named Donna who was going to visit her grandchildren in Fresno, so we got that far before I managed to find a trucker that was passing through L.A and was willing to make a detour to Malibu for me.”
Tony hardly knows the kid, yet he finds himself on the edge of his seat as he listens to the story.
“Everything was fine until we stopped for gas in Thousand Oaks, and he started acting like a complete creep. I got away and... just walked for a couple of hours until I found a house that looked sort of familiar, I guess. You don’t live here anymore in the future, so I just took a guess, and I was right.”
By the end of it, there is this strange feeling twisting in Tony’s chest. It’s like a hand, grabbing ahold of his aching heart and squeezing like it never has before. He tries to picture this startlingly sweet, wide-eyed kid escaping some pervert and proceeding to walk miles and miles in hopes of finding his father, only to find an alcoholic sex-addict that must be nothing like the man that Peter has described.
“But you’re... you’re okay now though?” Tony asks, feeling foolishly concerned. This is his child after all, and he has a feeling that his future self would gut him like a fish if he knew that he let anything bad happen to this kid. “You’re not hurt, or anything?”
“I’m okay.” Peter insists whole-heartedly, curls swinging as he nods. “I’ve had worse days.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
The teenager laughs a little, eyes sparkling with mischief, like he knows something that Tony doesn’t. “You have no idea.”
There is a meaningful silence between them, a moment of mutual understanding that Tony cannot even beginning to comprehend, when the billionaire is reminded that the kid has not eaten in at least twelve hours, and he should seriously start practicing the responsibility of fatherhood, even if he is about two decades too early.
“You must be hungry.” Tony pulls himself from his bench, and the kid hesitantly follows as he starts making his way towards the stairs that lead back up to the main level of the mansion. “You like pizza? They have a good place just around the corner- delivery never takes more than twenty minutes because I tip so good.”
-
They are halfway through their pizzas, washing each bite down with sips of the lemonade that Tony found in the fridge (the only non-alcoholic beverage in his entire kitchen, embarrassingly), when JARVIS informs him that they have an unexpected guest. Before Tony can swallow down enough pizza to ask who it is, a familiar voice booms down the hallway and quickly comes into view. “Tony!”
Obadiah pauses as soon as he catches sight of Peter, freezing momentarily as his bushy eyebrows lower in confusion. Tony swallows his pizza along with a mouthful of panic. “Who’s your friend, Tony? I didn’t know that you started keeping them for more than one night.”
“Obie.” Tony hisses, tone a warning. Obie waves off the silent threat, gazing at Peter with interest. The kid, for his part, looks horrified when Tony says Obie’s name, eyes wide and unblinking as he stares up at him, mouth still full. There is the barest hint of recognition in the kid’s eyes, a glimmer of something that Tony doesn’t understand.
“Who’s this?” The older man repeats. Tony hesitantly tears his eyes away from Peter’s expression, something uncomfortable settling in his stomach.
“A family friend.” He lies seamlessly. “I’m babysitting.”
“The kid looks a little too old to be babysat.”
Shit. Tony should think of something before Obie realises that Peter doesn’t belong here, that there is a broken watch from a quarter of a century in the future in the lab downstairs, waiting for them to come back. He trusts Obie with his life, but he’s not the most open-minded when it comes to... well, when it comes to anything, really. Obie wouldn’t understand Peter’s situation even if it was explained to him a million times over. “He’s young enough. He just turned eleven.”
When Obie’s eyes slide back to the teenager, brows raised, Peter seems to catch on pretty quickly, voice pitched up ever-so-slightly from what it was mere moments ago. “I’m Peter.”
“Right.” Obie hesitates for a long moment before straightening, adjusting his tie and stalking over to the in-home bar set up in the kitchen, opening the cabinets with familiar movements and grabbing a bottle of scotch. “How was the party?”
“Oh, you know.” Tony flicks a dismissive hand, standing to keep Obie’s attention off of Peter for as long as possible. The sooner he forgets all about the mysterious kid’s presence, the better (especially when Tony has to figure out how to explain that this family friend has vanished out of his life completely, once they get the watch working). “It was a party. I don’t remember a whole lot of it, to be honest.”
Obie chuckles into the bottle. “You can say that again. Tell me why I got a call from an Insider at TMZ this afternoon, telling me that he has a good word from one of those city models that you’re a scumbag who only cares about getting into someone’s pants?”
Tony winces, glancing back at Peter, who is chewing on his lip worriedly and staring at Obadiah like he has personally offended him. “Why don’t you go let yourself into the lab, kid? I’ve got a few things to discuss with Obie, and then I’ll be down.”
Peter disappears down the hallway and then back towards the lab, eyes never leaving the side of Obie’s face, who doesn’t notice as he chugs down the last of his drink.
Later, after Tony has narrowly managed to shoo Obie out of the mansion for the next few days, at least (citing a mountain of work and babysitting as his excuse), the billionaire finds Peter asleep on the couch in the lab, snoring into the cushions and curled around himself like a makeshift blanket, and Tony’s heart does this strange, lurching this in response to the sight.
He searches the lab for a suitable blanket (AKA one that isn’t covered in grease) and drapes it over the kid’s unconscious form when he finally finds one. There, in the cold lab with nothing but a snoring teenager that he only met twenty-four hours earlier and a smashed watch that is said snoring teenager’s only hope of getting home, Tony thinks he understands why his future-self chose this kid to be his own, why he seems to have cleaned up his act and changed his life so entirely for one kid.
He understands because he is already enticed to do the same.
-
By the following afternoon, a few hours after the kid has woken up and they have both gotten back to work on the watch, a question at the very back of the billionaire’s mind starts nagging him, refusing to let him rest until he sighs and finally opens his mouth.
“I’m...” Tony begins, cringing when the kid lifts his head from where it was hunched over a part of the watch to meet his gaze. “I’m not like this when you know me, right?”
Peter looks confused. “Like what?”
He sighs again, irritated that the teenager can’t understand on context alone. Tony can’t look at him, feeling horribly pathetic as he screws on a loose part of the machine. “You know. I’m not... I’m different in the future, right? If you like me so much, I can’t still be... still be an asshole, you know?”
There is a long moment of silence. He risks a glance at Peter, who’s expression is something that can only be described as sad. Embarrassment fills his chest. “I don’t think you’re an asshole.”
“You don’t know me. This me, I mean; who I am right now.”
“That doesn’t make a difference.” Peter says, sounding mature beyond his years. “I- I love you either way.”
I love you. Tony’s heart lifts at the three little words, a foreign emotion clenching in his stomach. I love you. He’s not just a father in the future; he’s a good one. Peter has deemed him worthy of love, of affection, of reverence. He’s not unlovable.
“Thanks, kid.” He says quietly, sniffing and biting the inside of his cheek to keep from doing something even more humiliating, like weeping.
There is another silence as Tony accepts the glass covering of the watch from Peter’s hands and screws it onto the surface. They are just a few steps away from being finished completely, ready to send Peter back home to his Tony. In that silence, the kid seems to take it as another opportunity to sing Tony’s (undeserved) praises.
“You’re, like, super emotionally intelligent in the future, too.”
Tony snorts. “Emotionally intelligent, huh?”
When the kid speaks again, his voice has taken on an oddly serious tone. “Something... something bad happened a few years ago, and you got all- got all wise when it was... happening, I guess, and when it got fixed, you were just... different. A good different! You’re just really- you talk about your feelings a lot now and you hug me like six times a day when I go over and it’s just... it’s nice. It takes you awhile to get there, but you do change, if it makes you feel better.”
Tony struggles to imagine himself as anything but this, as the walking example of why you should pay attention to your kids before it’s too late, but he likes the thought of being different for Peter’s sake. The emotions of it all nearly overwhelm him, until he looks down at the watch and realises that it’s done.
“You ready, kid?” Tony asks him, holding out the watch for Peter to see. Peter’s eyes light up as he gratefully accepts the now repaired watch and slides it onto his wrist.
“I’m ready.” The kid slides off of his workbench and stands, tapping the watch until it lights up, then quickly types the coordinates and time of where he wants to go, before catching Tony’s eye again. “Thank you so much, Mr. Stark. You saved my life.”
“It’s nothing.” The billionaire responds quietly.
Peter’s stare is meaningful, and his eyes are sad. When he speaks, Tony holds his breath, physically restraining himself from selfishly asking the kid to stay with him. “Things are going to get better, Mr. Stark. I promise.”
And then he’s gone.
-
Tony is knee-deep in wires, fighting with the chest plate of the Iron Man suit as he tries to rewire a faulty part just under the reactor, when FRIDAY’s voice scares the shit out of him. “Boss, there is a new development in the Queens’ case.”
He peeks an eye out from under the suit, towards the main screen, before turning back to the chest plate. “And?”
“Security cameras in Forest Hills picked up footage of the vigilante crawling out of what appears to be a bedroom window in an apartment on Queens Boulevard.”
“Then find out who lives there.”
Tony’s attention is half on the suit and half on the search, twisting and pulling at the plate until it finally pops off. He smiles in triumph and mumbles the lyrics to Shoot to Thrill under his breath as he waits for a response. “The apartment that the window belongs to is currently rented by May Parker, a recently widowed nurse at Queens Memorial Hospital. The only other resident listed since her husband died is a minor.”
“Eh.” The billionaire glances up at the screen again. “The web-slinger is a little too clunky to be a widowed nurse, if you know what I mean. What’s her kid’s name?”
“Peter Parker, age fourteen, currently attends Midtown High School of Science and Technology in-”
Tony stops breathing, smashing his skull against the suit in his haste to stand. He quickly, frantically demands that FRIDAY pull up the kid’s school photo. When she does, an achingly familiar face stares back at him. His heart stumbles, eyes filling with relieved tears as he stares back at Peter Parker’s shy, somewhat awkward smile.
After two decades, things are finally going to get better, just like Peter promised all those years ago.