Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six
Read here on AO3.
Warnings: homelessness, poor!peter. Adult!Peter. Mean!Avengers. Not Steve Rogers friendly. Also, in this AU I’ve taken it upon myself to change some aspects of Spider-Man (not too many, no worries). Enjoy.
-
The first time he meets the spider-kid, it is after hours on the eighty-second floor of the main building of Stark Tower.
But the kid is on the wrong side of the glass.
“FRIDAY, run that by me again,” Tony says. He’s in his pajamas—a pair of hastily pulled on pants with not even boxers underneath, donned only when FRI sounded the alarm. The holographic video plays in front of him, but what it shows him makes no sense. It isn’t even possible. “What exactly am I seeing?”
“Fifteen minutes ago sensors on the first floor were triggered, suggesting a human presence. On closer examination, the intruder seems to be scaling the side of the building using grip enhancements that I can’t identify.”
“Okay, but is he doing what I think he’s doing?”
“Do you think he appears to be washing the windows, boss? Because all signs point to such.”
As they speak, the figure (barefoot—barefoot and more than eighty floors above Manhattan) dressed head-to-toe in black including a dark balaclava that obscures their features, pulls a squeegee from where it is secured to a multi-purpose belt around their waist. They wipe the glass clean in long, smooth strokes, flicking the water and soap off behind them. The way they move across the glass gives him goosebumps, makes him shiver with terror and awe.
He takes the elevator down from the Penthouse, passing the Avengers’ floor where the others are sleeping peacefully (God knows he doesn’t want to wake any of them up). There’s no indication that this person is a threat—and if they were a threat, this is hardly a dastardly plan.
The eighty-third floor is dark and quiet. It’s an accounting floor where they work to manage his assets and the company’s assets. He passes cubicles on his left and right, and though he visits this floor maybe once a month or less, he feels at home here. The entire building is home to him, and he knows it the way Steve and Bucky knew their tiny homes in Brooklyn, the way Clint knows the farm his wife maintains.
The south wall is entirely glass. Tony stands back in the shadows to watch as the dark figure crawls from east to west. They become preoccupied when they realize that their bare feet are leaving smudges on the glass, and their floundering is—well, it’s almost cute.
Tony approaches that glass cautiously, unwilling to startle person and send them plummeting to their death. When they pass by, squeegee pressed to the glass, the freeze with their face just inches from Tony’s. The balaclava has goggles on over it to obscure the person’s eyes, but Tony doesn’t need to see those eyes to know they are wide with alarm.
Grabbing a paper and pen from a nearby cubicle, he writes a quick message and presses it to the glass.
MEET ME ON THE ROOF.
They stare at the paper for so long that Tony begins to question their literacy. But then they attach the squeegee back to their belt and lift the bottom half of the balaclava. They reveal a cut, angular jaw and thin lips. Leaning in, they come so close to the glass that Tony thinks they’re going to kiss right where Tony’s mouth is—but instead they heave a silent breath, and in the fog of it, write with one bare finger: NO.
“Are you kidding me, right now?” Tony mutters. He uncaps the pen again, holding it in his teeth, and writes on the other side of the paper. TRESPASSING!
They breathe again, write: BUSY. Then they squeegee over the words and continue on like they aren’t dangling 1200 feet above Manhattan.
“Boss?” FRIDAY says. “I believe I’ve pegged the identity of our intruder. It wasn’t until he wrote on the glass that I was able to get a decent map of his fingerprints; all other readings keep coming back inconclusive. His name is Peter Parker. He was hired by Stark Industries in early August as a member of the maintenance department. Twenty years old, native of Queens, emergency contact is one May Parker, also of Queens—”
“Thank you for solving the mystery, Velma, any ideas on why he’s acting like an oversized microfiber cloth on my building’s glass at the devil’s hour?
“Jinkies, Shaggy, I’m an intelligent digital assistant, not a mind reader.”
“Shaggy? You’re grounded, baby. I’m a Fred guy all the way.”
“If anything, boss, you’re most similar to Daphne. But according to Mr. Parker’s recently opened emails, the maintenance department was mandated just yesterday to wash the windows on the main, north, and south towers. It appears Mr. Parker is getting a head—and unorthodox—start.”
“This maniac works for me?” Tony mutters. He follows along the window while the kid cleans, though he loses him when Parker crosses around the corner of the building and disappears onto the west side. “How the hell is he sticking to the window, FRI?”
“I can’t tell, boss. Diagnostics can’t find anything between his hands and the windows, but whenever he is sticking, the characteristics of his fingerprints change. It appears he grows scopulae.”
“Scopulae? As in, spider hair?” Tony stands at the window for several long minutes, lost in thought. At last, he heads back towards the elevator, shivering in the air conditioning. Instead of asking FRIDAY to take him to the floor Parker is currently cleaning (Floor 69, as of now), he tells her to take him back up to the penthouse. If the kid’s enhanced, then he’s safer on climbing the walls than anyone else Tony knows.
Not to mention, the windows are fucking spotless.
-
Peter is up to his eyes in the HVAC unit of zone 3 in the Stark Tower main building when his ears pick up the sound of the elevator door opening on the other side of the floor. With a building as tall as Stark Tower, heating and cooling takes division of the building into several zones with their own separate units. Zone three is for floors twenty-four through thirty-six—and twenty-four in particular, where the HVAC home base is, is a marketing floor. People here come and go without noticing him, walking briskly and talking on their phones. The elevators open and close all day long, but something about this particular incoming occupant has the office going silent.
The hairs raise all over Peter’s arms and legs. Danger? he wonders. But then he hears the murmuring of voices, a name said over and over in reverence: Mr. Stark. Tony Stark.
Tony Stark. The man who had caught Peter scaling the side of his supertall last night. Emblazoned in Peter’s memory is the image of the man coming out of the darkness on the other side of the glass, wearing nothing but some low-slung pajama pants. And who knew that Tony Stark, forty-plus years old still had the remnants of a six pack? Peter had been distracted for the rest of the night, even almost losing his grip around floor 21. Which wouldn’t have killed him (probably) but would have been very shocking to anyone walking down below on the street.
And now the man is on Peter’s floor? Well. It doesn’t take a genius to know what’s coming.
“Fuck,” Peter mutters. He immediately starts packing away his tools, tucking his hat down lower on his forehead to obscure his brow. His senses activate accidentally and suddenly a wrench is stuck to his hand and he shakes and shakes but for the life of him, it won’t come off—
“Well, hello.”
The wrench goes flying out of Peter’s hand, and Tony Stark barely manages to dodge it as it careens by him, hitting the wall and denting the plaster. They stare at each other, eyes wide, neither of them expecting such a thing to have happened and not being entirely sure how to proceed. The man is even more handsome in the light, eyes like the whiskey he drinks, hair immaculate and threaded with grays around the temples, lips full and curving into a smile. Fuck, Peter has had a crush on this guy since his Uncle Ben took him to a Stark Expo more than a decade ago. Seeing him in the flesh is almost too much to handle.
“Sorry,” Peter mutters, going to pick up the wrench.
“Don’t be. You’d be surprised how often I get that reaction.” He sticks out a hand, and Peter’s got no fucking clue what Tony wants him to do with it until the older man wiggles his fingers. For a business guy by day (and a suited superhero by night), Stark’s hands are calloused and strong. He looks Peter in the eye, gaze soft and unassuming, like he isn’t the most powerful man in the business world, like Peter isn’t some gum he’s tracked in on his shoe.
“I’m sorry for the wall, too,” Peter says. “I’ll fix that.”
“No, you won’t.”
Peter’s shoulders hunch. Of course, he won’t. Stark’s going to fire him. Peter will be back to shelter hopping and picking pockets until he finds another job. At least now he might have some references from coworkers who all seem to have taken to Peter, the youngest of their troop. The quiet woman Sam saves him a seat every lunch hour in the breakroom, and Carlito has started asking his wife to pack him two sandwiches so he can give one to Peter. Everyone has been so nice.
Peter should have known it wouldn’t last.
“You’ll be much too busy, I imagine,” Stark says. He takes the toolbox from Peter, like Peter is some dainty girl who can’t carry her own books to class, or something. Like a gentleman might. Peter is keenly aware of everyone’s gaze on them while the older man escorts him to the elevator. It must look ridiculous: Peter in his dirty work clothes, sneakers taped together, walking beside Tony Stark.
“Are you calling the cops on me?” Peter asks when the elevator door closes. He can tell that it’s moving upwards and not downwards, though—
“Why would I do that?” Stark asks. He’s wearing tinted glasses, and it’s a crime, because he’s so fucking pretty Peter would kill to see his face without them.
“Because of last night.”
Stark’s face smooths out. “I wasn’t sure if we were going to pretend like I didn’t know it was you—but I guess this makes it all a lot easier on my part. No, I’m not calling the cops on you.”
The elevator opens on the most lux penthouse Peter has ever seen: modern decore with glass tables and marble countertops and windows that show Manhattan below them like a toy city that Peter could step out and crush if he so felt like. The wood floors are polished and gleaming under Peter’s disgusting tennis shoes, and he’s never felt more out of place and more at home all at once.
“Thirsty? Hungry? I’ve got leftovers, if you don’t mind my germs. If you do mind my germs, I can order in for you. What do you like? Any food allergies?” Stark’s head pops up from where it had disappeared into the refrigerator. With narrowed eyes, he assesses Peter’s silence.
“Water would be—that’d be cool.”
“Sparkling? Distilled? Alkaline?”
“Uh—tap?”
“Excuse me, tap?” Stark shuts the door with a thud. “Now I am calling the cops. Seriously. You? Sit.”
Peter sits at the stool tucked beneath the island countertop. The marble cools his heated palms when he presses them against it. Despite his words, the man does not make any move to call anyone. He moves a Styrofoam dish to the microwave and heats up something that smells lovely, like marinara and basil. He cracks open a bottle of water and places it in front of Peter. It’s the crispest, most tasteless water he’s ever had. Probably harvested from mountainous glaciers or something.
At last Stark joins him on the other side of the island, sitting the dish of—yes, pasta—between them. He hands Peter a fork. “Dig in, kid,” he says. “I don’t have cooties.”
What the fuck, Peter thinks as he shares pasta with Tony Stark. Unbidden to his mind comes a scene from some Disney movie, when the two dogs share the piece of spaghetti and it makes them kiss. Just the idea of it has Peter staring resolutely at the wall of cabinets, chewing mechanically, hoping his face isn’t as red as it feels.
“Shall we talk shop while we eat?” Stark asks, dabbing at his mouth with a napkin.
Peter shrugs. He has no idea why he’s here. No idea what shop this man could possibly have to talk about with the likes of him.
“You’ve got mad skills,” he says at last. Stark lays his phone flat on the table and from it comes a holographic projection. Peter watches himself in 3-D scale the side of Stark Tower. Yeah, he looks pretty cool—except for the squeegee. That’s kind of dorky. “How are you doing that?”
“It’s—a long story,” Peter says, rubbing his thumb against the prongs of his fork. Society has made a lot of advancements regarding its treatment of enhanced humans, but there’s still a minority of people who are afraid in their ignorance. It was on the news last week when Peter was killing time in a McDonalds before he could arrive at work to Stark Tower: an enhanced teenager was murdered by some concerned townsfolk who believed she was destroying the crops with her weather-controlling capabilities.
He can feel Stark’s gaze on him. It makes him bristle, makes his shoulders hunch. Peter doesn’t do well with authority—that is, most authority seems to just use and abuse Peter. He’s suddenly keenly aware of how vulnerable he is right now: a twenty-year-old with no family, no friends to come looking for him, in the penthouse of the most powerful man in the world who has perfect blackmail material on him. Peter’s palms start to sweat, and he wipes them on his pants.
“Are you going to hurt me?” Peter asks, voice low and quiet. He can’t look. But he has to know—has to prepare himself.
Stark stands, abruptly. “No—Parker. Peter. Look at me.”
Peter does, his jaw clenched and eyes flat. He might be scared, but he’s no coward. Only, Stark doesn’t look anything like a man who is about to hurt him. His mouth is downturned in the softest expression of tragedy that Peter’s ever seen. “I’ve just realized,” Stark says. “This won’t do. I need Burger King.”
“Sorry, what?”
“Burger King. Don’t you know that I’m an eccentric billionaire, doomed to give in to my every whim? And my whims want a Whopper. Come on. Grab your metaphorical coat—or your literal coat. Should we stop by the maintenance floor?” Stark strolls to a closet and rifles through it, pulling out a long, dark, very expensive looking coat. Peter can almost feel it under his fingers, it must be so soft. “Kid? Are you hearing me?”
“I don’t have a coat.”
“Alright, take one of mine. Let’s go. My stomach waits for no one.”
When Peter tries to step onto the elevator behind Stark without grabbing a coat, the man insists on going back in and finding one for him. The billionaire puts him in a half dozen coats made of the soften Italian wools and genuine cashmeres, before settling on one that’s very similar to Mr. Stark’s, only with a collar that Peter can pulls up around his throat to keep the wind away. It smells clean, but faintly of cologne, like the man has worn it out recently and put it away without washing it. Thank God the coat is thick enough to hide the semi he sports.
They end up hiding in a booth in the back of a Burger King two blocks away, both of them with Whoppers and Large Fries and Cokes. Peter inhales his—an enhanced appetite, not to mention the general lack of food he suffers from on a typical day’s basis—but Tony keeps up, holding his own. He takes out his phone and sits it on the table again, tapping several buttons, and suddenly Peter’s head throbs a little, senses spiking.
“Is that bothering you? I’m using it to scramble anything we say from being overheard by anyone around us, but we can do it the old-fashioned way if we must—you know. Whispering.”
“It’s fine—that’s, that’s amazing.”
Stark blinks. “I—thanks. I made it.”
“I figured—how does it work? Can you tell me?”
And the man humors him. Actually humors him, explaining in laymen’s terms even though he might be surprised at the level of conversation Peter could keep up with. When Peter asks a question, the other man grins showing neat, white teeth that Peter would give anything to run his tongue along.
“You’ve been really nice,” Peter says when their food is gone and cups nothing but ice. It’s an understatement, because this is the nicest anyone has treated Peter in a long, long time, and the way Stark talks and looks at him isn’t condescending or pitying. It’s like he sees Peter as a human. “But why am I here? So, you know. About me. What are you going to do?”
“Nothing,” Stark says. “It’s not illegal to be enhanced. And while it is illegal to trespass, mostly it’s very unsafe to do it more than a quarter mile above the ground, so I do ask that anymore night time adventures aren’t spent scaling my building.”
“Okay,” Peter agrees. “I just wanted to make it easier for the other guys. They really look out for me. I didn’t want to make them have to work so hard, when I could do it so easily.”
“That’s very generous of you, Peter. May I call you Peter?”
Peter shrugs.
“I’ll take that as a yes—and you can call me Tony, okay kid? I’m not here to call the cops or to fire you. As a matter of fact, I want to offer you a job. Tentatively.”
“You want to promote me?” Peter asks, brow furrowing.
“It’s hardly a promotion. The hours are longer. The pay is—well, under the table. There’s danger too. Potentially mortal peril.
“Tell me, Peter, what do you know about the Avengers?”
What would happen if Tony just suddenly reappeared at the Avengers compound and the first person to see him is Peter, who’s still haunted by Beck’s reality bending?
__________________________________________
Three years after the final snap, Tony suddenly appeared outside the Avengers Compound, disoriented and weak but alive. He wandered into the nearest building, having to stop every few steps to breathe and clear the white spots from his vision, chest heaving. When he’d regained his bearings enough to look around him, he realized he was in the common area for the Avengers.
He released a sigh of relief. “Fri, what the hell happened?” he rasped.
He frowned when nothing but silence met his inquiry. Something wasn’t right.
He scrutinized his surroundings closer. It was similar to the compound he knew but not quite the same.
He staggered, hands gripping the back of the couch tightly as he was bombarded with images of the smoking ruins of buildings surrounded by scorched earth.
Right. Thanos and his cronies ensured that a redesign would be necessary. And apparently whoever was in charge of the rebuild either scrapped his baby girl or couldn’t figure out how to coax her into running their buildings for them without Tony’s brilliance.
Well, it appeared that this was once again Avengers HQ so this should be as safe a place as any to be until he figured out what was going on. He hoped.
Right now, he was willing to risk just about anything for a glass of water and the sight of the refrigerator across the room was too tempting. He shuffled across the room, leaning heavily on furniture and walls along the way.
He reached for a cup from the cabinet, but his shaking hands couldn’t maintain a grip, sending two glasses plummeting to shatter on the floor at his feet. Falling forward, he rested his forehead against the cool metal of the fridge and tried to hold back the frustrated tears crowding behind his eyes.
He heard footsteps padding into the kitchen but didn’t have the energy to turn around. If it was an enemy, they could just kill him at this point for all he cared.
That resolve was quickly tested when he heard the footsteps stop abruptly before he was suddenly hauled into the air and thrown against the wall next to him, an iron grip around his neck.
His eyes wide and heart about to leap out of his throat, it took him a minute to recognize who had him captured. Peter.
His muscles relaxed as much as was possible with adrenaline overflowing his system while still being pinned down by a superhuman.
If he was expecting the same reaction from Peter, he was gravely mistaken.
“Who the fuck are you?” Peter snarled, eyes flinty and mouth a tight line.
Tony’s hands were coming up, open-palmed in the universal sign of ‘I’m not a threat’ but they were webbed in place before they moved more than a couple inches.
“Well this brings back fond memories,” Tony joked weakly. Fight or flight brought out either life-saving genius or the stupid and snarky in him. Obviously this was a case of the latter.
Peter’s face twisted, grasp tightening around Tony’s neck. “What do you mean?”
Tony wheezed, wishing he could tap on Peter’s arm, something like real fear creeping through his veins. He’d always known Peter was among the most powerful of all of them, but his sweet temperament, even in the worst situations, made that easy to forget. There was nothing sweet about this hard creature in front of him, all rough edges, bared teeth, and corded muscle.
When it was obvious that Peter expected an answer, Tony let out a few pointed coughs, eyes darting down to the hand nearly cutting off his air supply.
When it loosened, infinitesimally but enough that he could speak, he answered, “When we met the first time, you webbed my hand to the door when I tried to leave,” he croaked.
Peter pulled him away from the wall just to slam him against it again. “How do you know that?” He growled, eyes wild.
“What do you mean how do I know? I was there, you idiot! I had that stupid webbing stuck on my hand for two hours!” Tony babbled, hysteria building.
Peter’s grip slackened but didn’t completely release. Tony could feel the fine tremors traveling from Peter’s hands into the thin skin behind his jaw.
“Something else. Tell me something else only you would know,” Peter commanded.
“What? There’s a lot that I know that no one else does. One particular item apparently seems to be how to get my AI integrated into this building.”
Peter wasn’t amused. “I’m not playing around, asshole. You have thirty seconds to tell me something to prove your identity or I’m gonna snap your neck.”
Okay. There was some motivation. Tony’s mind was racing, but mostly in useless circles, everything still cloudy and sluggish. He continued to latch on to their early interactions. “After we got back from Berlin, I did a video to show to your aunt and in one of the outtakes I made a comment about her wearing something skimpy. You didn’t think it was near as funny as I did,” Tony said quickly.
“That was on video. Easily hacked and found by someone else,” Peter dismissed immediately.
“I-I don’t,” Tony stuttered, panic setting in.
“I’m losing patience,” Peter warned, eyes narrowed.
“Just wait! I-I’m trying to-“ Peter’s finger brushed against Tony’s carotid. “Titan!” he shouted.
Peter’s whole body froze. “We were on Titan and you were the last one to disappear. You begged me not to let you go, to make it stop, but I couldn’t, I failed, and you-you died in my arms and I was left there alone and I never got to tell you how fucking sorry I am for dragging you into all this bullshit, for not protecting you and-“ Tony hoped that was enough because he physically couldn’t push any more words past the familiar mass of guilt that took the place of Peter’s suddenly absent hand in stealing his ability to breathe.
“Mr. Stark,” Peter breathed. Tony looked up to see Peter staring at him cautiously. Seeing him with eyes wide and hair rumpled, looking so suddenly, vulnerably young was jarring after the cold-blooded killer act.
“Hey, kid,” Tony responded hoarsely, knees buckling as he crashed to the floor, hands still stuck to the wall.
__________________________________________
Bruh. This was again supposed to be a start of a prompt that I wanted to just fill in a quick one shot, but this initial intro part keeps coming out much more involved than the single paragraph I plan for. 🤷🏻♀️ At least this version is much less intense/angsty than what I came up with a few days ago.
Hoping to continue this though and finally get into my original idea
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
“Guess it’s my turn to be captured now, don’t worry guys, I got this?” Gamora cleared her throat and clarified, "That’s what Peter said before he got kidnapped."
“I do not see how that could be a clue.”
It's Peter who got kidnapped this time. Time for a rescue mission.
