Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It had been a few days since Tony had last shaven, a five o'clock shadow covering his cheeks, blending in with his usually (well, usual as could be, the man had an empire to oversee) well-trimmed goatee, the paleness of his skin and the bags under his eyes only made more discreet by the bluish hue the multiple holographic tabs floating in the air were casting. 

While a few of the screens displayed snippets of Spider-Man's short but successful vigilante career, the majority of them replayed the last bits of Iron-Man's latest fight, and Spider-Man's impromptu intervention. 

The billionaire was sitting in front of his desk, resting his chin on his crossed hands as he lazily spun around in his chair. His face was scrunched up in thought, his teeth worrying at his chapped lower lip. He was spending too much time in the lab. His greasy hair flopped over his forehead, unpleasantly tickling his eyebrows, and his nails were too long. He swallowed. His mouth was dry. 

"FRI, cut the footages of the attack, please."

He had already identified and fixed the issue (a blind spot in his sensors caused by a screw shaken loose) two hours ago. 

Then, he had updated his mask, to make sure such an issue would not happen again. 

Then, he had brought out the old, dirty cups littering the lab (lab safety could go fuck itself, he'd be more at risk of drinking battery fuel without his cup of coffee, or any sort of caffeine-filled drink, for that matter) into the kitchen, and had set them into the sink, under the running tap, and he had watched as the dried-up coffee rings at the bottom of the cups had diluted into the water.

Then, he had turned on the coffee machine, only managing to put up with the brewing sound for a handful of seconds before he marched to the fridge and grabbed two cans of blue raspberry flavored energy drinks, holding them by the very top of the cans to avoid feeling the cold biting into his palm. (It was a new brand, one Tony had seen on a couple of billboards in town. They were okay. New, which was good.)

The blind spot wasn't the problem, and neither were the new suit updates, nor the dirty coffee cups, and the way the tap water had taken a yellowish tint once it was poured in, nor the noisy coffee machine, nor the overpriced energy drinks, always cold and sugary enough to hurt his teeth, and so he had went back to his lab.

He was now staring at a slightly blurry picture of a mid-backflip Spider-Man.

His right hand blindly groped for his soda can. It was empty, and the metal had warmed up in contact with his hand.

He zoomed in on the tab displaying the unofficial YouTube channel dedicated to Spider-Man's sightings, the last video featuring his guest starring in the earlier fight.

Tony hit replay.

"And Spider-Man makes three !"

He rubbed a hand across his face, his few days old facial hair scratching the skin of his palm.

One thing about Tony Stark, was that he didn't like being handed things. 

The very moments that had come before Anthony Howard Stark's birth, before the midwife could hand over the wailing and flushed little baby to his mother, rushing a fellow nurse to burst into the waiting room to proudly announce "it's a boy !" to his father, and perhaps even long before that, the air had been filled with electric-like tension. 

To everyone in the room then, it had been obvious that it was crucial for the baby to be a boy. A son. An heir, for Howard Stark to hand over Stark Industries. His legacy.

Anything but would have been a failure. A disappointment. 

(A title Tony had later on earned from his father regardless.)

On May the 29th, 1970, at precisely 04:23AM, Tony Stark, as the sole heir to Stark Industries, was born indebted to his father. 

He had then spent the next eighteen-something years paying up for that gift, with his blood, tears, and sweat. 

Mostly his blood. 

A couple of baby teeth, too, along with his soft baby skin, already calloused and scarred years before Afghanistan and Iron-Man.

Afterwards, when his father had finished beating him into a worthy heir, he would leave his room, his knuckles red with his son's blood, and he would turn to him, and the hallway's light would project his shadow over Tony's limp form, and he would remind him : "I made you, Anthony."

The words, at the time, would burn harder than the tears tearing their way out of his eyes, and they would taste worse in his mouth than the cold rage and hatred, and the salty and thick blood he was choking on.

So because his father had tried to break both his spine -and had failed- and his heart -and for this one Tony still wasn't quite sure- as he had handed over Stark Industries to him, Tony didn't like being handed things. 

If he ever felt he owed someone, he made sure the debt was very generously settled before someone could hold that threat over his head, either with a big, fat check, the obscene amount of zeroes practically dripping off the paper, or the kind of thinly veiled threat he tended to seal with a carnivorous smile, not unlike the blood-dripping one he'd flash to his father when he was younger, along with a slightly too-firm handshake, the ache of the pressure gone as quickly as it had come.

Although, with his businessman day (mostly if you asked Pepper, completely if you asked him) behind him, such situations arose less and less, his gorgeous, genius, overtly competent fiancée handling most (meaning each and every) trades, her smiles warm and her tongue sharp and venom-tipped, tearing her way through briefing rooms in a way one (Tony) could argue made him a little hot under the collar. 

Problem was, he wasn't exactly sure what to offer the spider vigilante in order to settle his debt, if it could even be considered as one, leaving him unsure on how to thread around this whole mess.

And, God, Tony had tried, really really fucking hard to convince himself he didn't owe the Spider-Guy shit, only to come to the conclusion that yes, he really fucking did, and he would have stormed out of his bedroom and into the lab, were his soon-to-be wife not sleeping soundly next to him. (As it was, he had regretfully torn himself out of her embrace and quietly walked out, closing their bedroom's door behind him.)

He had considered taking fifteen minutes to find out Spider-Man's identity, and sending him a big, fat check, but he had quickly discarded that idea because somehow it felt wrong. 

Not only because he would actually be going against the guy's wish for anonymity, which would be an asshole move, even by Tony's standard, but also because it would mean attributing the two kids' lives an amount of money, which frankly, Tony would rather not do, thank you very much.

(That it had probably already been done, families compensated for their loss with the smallest amount of money possible by his team of shady lawyers, and thus, by him, back when he was still the Merchant of Death was a matter for Sleepless-Nights Tony to consider.)

He figured he could offer the guy a suit update, that always seemed to work with his teammates, he had yet to hear any complaints from the lot of them, -and God knew the vigilante could use one, as joggings and spandex were definitely not stab-proof-, but the guy had definitely not asked Tony for his opinion, and so that felt a little rude. And, to be fair, it was very unlike Tony to actually give a flying fuck, (there wasn't any point in being a billionaire if you couldn't be a dick about it), but. Tony didn't want to be a bitch to Spider-Man. He liked the guy, or whatever.

So far, the only thing that had felt like a fair reciprocation would have been Tony dedicating his next good deed to the vigilante, but going "this one's for you, Spider-Man !", whilst flying a little old grandma to safety seemed odd at best, and quite frankly a least a little insulting for every party involved, but, well. Tony wasn't considering it per se, but, hey. If that was what it came to...

He sighed, and hunched over, thumping his forehead on his desk.

And perhaps if Tony had grown up with a kind father, one that wasn't cruel, one that would have taught him how to ride a bike, or how to fix a flat tire, instead of how to cry silently, breathing in through his nose, and biting his tongue to swallow back the hurt whimpers, or how to lie down as painlessly as possible with cracked ribs, he would have put down Spider-Man's intervention as pure, dumb luck, a gift from the Universe, had he been the man to believe in such things.

He had learned, however, the knowledge engraved into his bones, that the days where his father would cross the threshold of their house, brightly colored paper bags in his hands, filled with toys and gifts Tony had neither asked nor wished for, tended to go hand in hand with an especially cruel version of his father, always overeager to beat the ungratefulness out of his son.

Unasked for gifts and favors had always turned out to be the most expensive.

That saving civilians from -increasingly- dangerous situations seemed to be Spider-Man's (fairly successful, mind you) part-time job meant, quite frankly, shit to Tony. 

(Hell, it had been his father's job to take care of him. Feed him and put some clothes on his back. Hadn't made him any kinder.)

The vigilante looked out for the little guy in his neighborhood, and that was very nice of him. He took care of Queens' folks, who were seemingly no one's responsibility, and until then more or less left to their own devices, which was good.

But. The kids Spider-Man had saved the other day ? Tony's responsibility, just like every civilian was once Tony landed on an attack site.

Spider-Man had taken on Tony's responsibility. He owed him one. Simple as that. And fuck if people didn't love it when Tony Stark owed them.

He sighed, and got up to leave the lab. He was spiraling, and he could very well do that in his bedroom, next to his girlfriend.  

"FRI, would you monitor Spider-Man's activity, and notify me of anything important ? Thanks babe."

Chapter Text

Peter felt, more than he heard or saw, the swish of a knife coming his way, and he quickly ducked, the life-saving instinct crackling in his bones and burning along his skin like a live wire.

The silver of the blade glistened in the dim moonlight at the edge of his vision as he sent out his right foot to collide with one of the thieves' tibia.

"Hey, come on, that's–" Peter cut himself off, grabbing the lid of a trash can to stop the blow one of the,quite frankly, pissed-off looking guys tried to throw his way. The loud, metallic noise bounced off of the walls of the alley they were fighting in, before Peter flung the lid to the head of his third assailant. "That's rude!"

Peter was in elbow-deep shit. 

Sorry ‘bout the cursing, May, he distantly thought, because she had raised him well, but really, no other way of putting it.

He had been ambushed. Although, he supposed that maybe that wasn't exactly true. His attackers seemed just as surprised by the late night's turn of events as he was, which was understandable. The odds he'd bump into one very drunk, very vindictive thief he had left webbed up in front of the police station two weeks ago, along with two of his equally drunk friends thirty-three minutes before the end of his patrol had been pretty slim —which never did much for him and his Parker Luck.

(Which was really unbelievably unfair, by the way; he was tired, and his day had sucked, and he would have loved to just go home and sleep everything off, thank you very much.) 

At least, Peter assumed they were drunk off their asses, his knowledge on alcohol limited to the one time May had let him dip his lips in her glass of red wine, his face scrunching up at the earthy, bitter taste. For all he knew, they could have just as well been either doing cocaine, or drinking an insane amount of apple juice.

And Peter had assumed he'd have no issue fighting off the three men, as he had managed to do merely two weeks ago, and while they didn't have a drop of alcohol in their system. 

(It had turned out to be, in fact, alcohol, the smell of it potent in their breaths as they moved closer to him, gaze unfocused and movements clumsy). 

Unfortunately being intoxicated only seemed to have turned them more resistant, seeing as the guy whose head he had just smashed into a wall (although that wasn't his preferred way to deal with disagreements) had practically walked it off, his bloodied-gums peeking out as he snarled at Peter, sending dribbles of reddish spit flowing from his lips and down his chin.

Peter's head snapped to the man who had just grabbed his sleeve in a vice-like grip and he frantically ripped the hand off of him, his Spider-Sense prompting him to turn over to shove away his second assailant, a breath away from slicing up Peter's back to ribbons in a way that would have been very difficult to explain to May.

But Peter's breaths were turning ragged, each of them bringing a taste of iron to his mouth, and his blows were growing clumsy, seldom hitting their targets. Panic was rising inside him, as his human instincts overtook the spider ones, the predator part of his mind tuned out by the need to run, hide and shove away.

He blindly sent his left leg backwards, hitting one of the men —who was seconds away from getting up from where he was half-crouching on the floor and rejoining the fight— in the chin.

But his assailants kept coming back in waves, the three of them working in a graceless dance, briefly moving away before crashing back into him like an unrelenting tidal wave.

His Spider-Sense was turning frantic, if such a thing were possible, buzzing and crackling under his skin like lightning, but the warning it sent slicing through his skull and tearing at the seams of his mind came too late for him to do much more than brace himself for the impact as he was slammed into the alleyway's grime-covered wall. 

His head 'thunked 'against the concrete, and he swore he could taste the iron-like taste of the pins and needles it sent through his tongue and jaw, buzzing and twisting in his cheeks as he ran his tongue along his molars. No loose tooth, which was good, albeit surprising : the blunt noise of his teeth clashing together was still echoing in his ears.

He blinked, twice, as he struggled to think past the blinding pain emanating from the back of his skull and reaching its sharp tendrils to the back of his stinging eyes. He could feel warmth seeping from the back of his skull to the fabric of his mask, the strong and potent scent of blood almost covering the typical, albeit faint, stench of urine and rotting garbage present in most of Queens' shady alleys.

His eyes flicked down to the shine of a blade, splattered in little spots of rust —and how long was it since he'd had his last tetanus shot ?— flickering in the yellowish halo of the street lamps, whose poles were covered in various stickers, —ranging from ads for tacos to less than tasteful choices of words regarding a girl whose name had been crossed out, and what she supposedly did in the school's bathroom for twenty dollars— and whose light did little more than project dirty gleams of light on the pavement. 

His hand flew towards the weapon at the same time as it was being shoved in his face, his wrist colliding with his attacker's, the force of the impact rippling up his bones before dying off in his elbow, the tingling sensation not unlike the one he'd feel when hitting his funny bone.

The man practically growled in his face, his thin, dried lips uncovering his bloody teeth in a snarl, looking a lot more pissed-off than Peter figured he had any right to be : from the looks of it, since the man was freely roaming the streets a little less than two weeks after Peter had dropped him off in front of the police station, it was very likely the mad had done little else than spend the night in jail.

The man's eyes and Peter's own locked for a second, sending a zap of electricity coursing through Peter's body, turning the blood running through his veins scalding as an animalistic sort of understanding dawned on him. The man was driven by the instincts to hurt, to wound. If Peter didn't do anything, fast, he was going to die.

Holy shit.

The man and him grappled for the knife, strong, bony fingers painfully digging into Peter's wrist as he struggled against the hand trying to force the knife's way into his soft, unguarded belly. 

He tried to pry his attacker's fingers open, and the way he was twisting the man's fingers would have surely been painful, had it been enough to cut through his cottony, alcohol-induced haze.

Peter frantically kicked at the man's legs, landing blows on his shins, knees and ankles, tugging so hard on the man's fingers he figured he must've had at least dislocated some of the assailant's fingers by then.

There was bile rising in his throat, thick and acidic, and he wondered, faintly, exactly how much violence the public opinion was willing to endorse coming from Spider-Man.

(Only this rabid, animal-like fighting wasn't Spider-Man-like at all, this was all Peter, just like it had been all Peter when the first responders at the scene of Ben's murder had found him, crimson red dripping down his chin, the blood from his Uncle's killer flowing down his throat, where a growl had stayed stuck, his blunt teeth aching with the strain. 

That night, May had brushed his teeth for him, just like when he was a little kid, holding his chin in her warm palm and swiping at the corner of his mouth with her thumb for any stray toothpaste.

To this day, the only way Peter knew he hadn't managed to bite the killer's fingers clean off was because the police officer in charge of the case had said no one had come to any hospital with severed fingers in the following days.)

The man twisted Peter's wrist in a way that sent prickly, burning needles of pain down his fingers and punched a shaky exhale out of his chest, the duller pain of his web-shooter digging into his skin going almost unnoticed.

Peter struggled against the man's hold on him, his blood smudging with the criminal's as his fingernails blindly dug into skin and flesh, his legs flailing and kicking at the thief's ankle before he managed to lend a frankly nasty kick to the man's stomach, his knee colliding with soft, warm flesh and hard, chalky ribs.

Whether that had finally done it, or whether the alcohol poisoning was finally catching up, Peter didn't know, but either way he found himself thrown into the alleyway's wall by the momentum when his assailant suddenly stopped struggling, staggered back and dropped his knife to the ground in a clatter before emptying his stomach's content on the ground.

Warmth blossomed in Peter's wrist, its petals blooming and growing until they brushed against his skin, frost-tipped and stinging like little cuts littering his skin, the pain exacerbated by the rhythmic, mechanical huffs of cooled air hitting his skin, the intervals separating each of them growing shorter and shorter until they died off in a hiss.

Peter raised his right arm to his eyes, and decided the moment his gaze landed on the crushed web-shooter that he was well and truly fucked, although arguably he had been ever since he'd been cornered into that shitty alley, a little over seventeen minutes earlier.

He mindlessly allowed his fingers to pick at one of the shards planted in his flesh, drawing warm trickles of blood down the sharp bones of his wrist, down the curve of his forearm, and down his elbow, where it dripped onto the ground, shiny, sleek and almost black wildflowers blossoming at his feet each time a droplet collided with the ground in a plick.

As Peter aimlessly dragged his gaze, heavy and blurred by unshed tears, across his surroundings, he noted that, of the three men, only two remained. Huh. Peter hadn't heard the third man make a run for it —an odd choice, really, if Peter had to be honest he was sort of getting his ass kicked—, but Peter didn't make a habit of looking a gift horse in the mouth.

The knife had laid, forgotten and drenched in crimson, where it had fallen from a loose hold, until trembling fingers reached for its handle.

Peter stood, half-slumped against the alleyway's wall, greedily breathing in mouthfuls of air through the fabric of his mask as he cradled his right arm to his chest.

The tip of the knife’s blade scratched against the pavement as someone clumsily took the knife into their sweaty palm. The noise went unheard by Peter, overpowered as it was by the sounds of Peter’s own jagged breathing, and of his blood spilling freely on the ground. 

His body thrummed along the shrill cry of his Spidey-Sense, each nerve alight with the buzzing energy his pounding heart sent coursing through his body. Peter breathed in through his mouth, sucking the air between his teeth. He was dizzy with it, his senses dulled by the onslaught of sensation.

There was, however, nothing dull about the sharp-edged, white hot spear of pain that lodged its way deep, a little to the left of his hip, just inches away from his thigh —and femoral artery. The pain tore its way through his muscles and tendons, seeping, dripping through his flesh, before curling around his hip bone.

Peter’s gaze slid along his own body, and saliva flooded his mouth as bile rose in his throat when his eyes landed upon the wooden handle of the pocket knife buried in his warm flesh—although not to the hilt, the handle just a few centimeters shy of touching his skin.

What the fuck.

"What the fuck ?", he heard himself say out loud. His voice was thick with unshed tears, and he punctuated each word with a shaky exhale.

"Wh't th'fuck ?" The man that had stabbed him seemed just as shocked as Peter; his gaze was fixated on the place where Peter and the knife were conjoined, and the steady stream of blood bubbling out of the wound and down Peter’s leg, dipping in the crook of his knee before pooling down at his feet.

"Damn, man, that's-" the first man, the one vomiting, paused to retch again. He spat, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "That's fucked up." He was giggling now.

Peter felt like vomiting too 

He was shaking; he knew he was because he could hear his broken web-shooter click along each of his full-body tremors. His teeth were shattering, too. It felt odd, now, the shivering. Foreign. Was he cold ? He didn't feel cold, was the thing. He felt… Well, he felt stabbed, for starters, but he also felt warm. Hot. Feverish.

He looked down at the slow trickle of thick, warm blood gently dripping down his leg and onto the concrete. Maybe he was a little cold after all.

Peter swallowed past the bile rising in his throat, and past the pain constricting his airway. His tongue felt weighted down to the bottom of his mouth. 

He breathed, in through his nose, and out through his mouth. 

He choked on his saliva. It tasted faintly of iron.

A hand landed on the knife's handle, jostling the blade enough for a raspy cry to tear its way out of Peter's throat as the sharp pain, along with the knife, dug their claws deeper, further aggravating the tears into his flesh.

Peter's gaze locked with his assailant’s, before flicking down to the man’s left hand, resting on handle of the knife protruding from Peter’s hip.

The man seemed to be sobering up; Peter couldn't find any signs of his friend’s hilarity on his face. He and Peter both were panting, and the man’s nostrils flared at each ‘plick’ of Peter’s blood against the ground.

The man closed his hand around the wooden handle of the knife. His hands were shaking; each of his tremors rattled Peter’s core and nudged the tip of the blade a few millimeters deeper into his wounded flesh.

Peter let out a strained gasp as the man started to pry the knife out, awakening fresh pain in Peter’s torn muscles as the sharp edges of the blade butchered his flesh on their way out.

“No, don't-” Peter pleaded in a wobbly, pain-heavy voice. Peter knew the knife was currently keeping most of his blood where it belonged (in his body), and that removing it was a big no-no, and yet he couldn't bring himself to stop the man's hand, the idea of getting his hands anywhere near the knife, of risking jostling the blade and aggravating his pain was nausea-inducing.

Blood —along with jaw-clenching pain— came rushing when the man finally tore the knife from Peter’s body, crimson poppies blooming on his suit and sticking the fabric to his clammy skin with each of Peter’s erratic heartbeats.

The back of Peter’s head left behind a bloody trail as his body slid down along the wall, until he was sat down on the pavement. 

He brought his left hand to his face, his movements frantic as he tried to push his mask over his nose. The blood covering his fingers made his grip on the fabric slippery, and he had both hit himself in the nose, and accidentally clawed at his neck’s skin, digging red, angry indents where he had tried to grip his mask, before he managed to free his mouth from the fabric, letting out desperate, wheezing breaths.

The man wiped the knife’s blood-stained blade on his sleeve, and his hands were shaking so badly the tip of the blade caught into the fabric twice. He then shoved the knife’s handle in the waistband of his jeans —which seemed like a safety hazard—, and stepped over Peter’s hunched form to stumble to his crouched friend, kicking his ankles to urge him to get up, occasionally throwing frantic looks at Peter over his shoulder.

Don't you worry about me, not gonna go anywhere soon, Peter grimly thought.

He watched the two men slip out of the alley, and stared at the puddle of vomit they narrowly avoided. Empty water bottles and wrappers littered the ground, overflowing from the few garbage cans. He was pretty sure he had spotted a can of a long-since discontinued soda.

Two rats were fighting over a stale pizza crust. The smaller one bit the other’s tail, and scrambled away with its meal as the other nursed its wound. The larger one then shot a nasty glare Peter’s way, and the teenager offered him a half-shrug. 

Peter was pretty hungry, too. Maybe not that hungry just yet.

He lifted his hand from his injured side with a pained hiss. 

“Ow ow ow”

The rat looked up at the noise, and scurried away with a small squeak, his claws clicking on the cold pavement. 

(Peter was starting to believe May was right when she had refused to get him a pet rat. That one seemed like an asshole.)

The wound was starting to scab over, and it seemed to be healing nicely, albeit a little slowly. Peter just hoped the man hadn't nicked at any important organ —any organ, really—, but he supposed there was no way for him to know for sure. 

He ran his fingertips through the slowly growing puddle of cooling blood, and lifted his hand to look at it under the moonlight.

He rested his head against the dirty wall, even though it hurt a little bit and

it craned his neck at an awkward angle. He was starting to feel a little colder, now.

He wondered if he would be able to tell if he was dying.

Chapter Text

Tony was, for the first time in a hot minute, outside the lab and up and about. (If you asked him. Pepper would argue, but he had been batting away all kinds of fucked-up bugs since he had come up on the helipad of the Tower, so yeah. Outside.)

On an unrelated side note, he was also both so hungover he was considering quitting drinking all together, and nursing a nasty headache. He was holding to his temple an obscenely expensive crystal whiskey glass, filled with what he was pretty sure were Mount Fiji’s water ice cubes or some shit. (Which was ridiculous, by the way, but predictably enough, Tony did not make either his own ice cubes, nor his grocery shopping so, whatever.)

Fuck, his head hurt. He was aware he was using way too much strength to press the glass to his temple in his attempt to shove the cool, soothing feeling through his skull and in his brain. He’d probably be able to feel the glass’ —probably hand carved, if that was a thing— patterns imprinting on his skin if it didn't feel so pleasantly numb. 

Condensation inched its way down his glass, and Tony watched as a droplet formed and disappeared into the night as gravity tore it away from the glass and hurled it onto the concrete laying 93 stories below.

Tony’s feet were dangling at the edge of the Tower, and he felt it too, the way gravity pulled at his core, attempting to draw him to the ground. 

Pepper didn't like it when he went on the roof, and Tony disliked worrying her just as much, but there was no way for him to explain to her that it was fine. He hadn't felt mortal in a long time.

Tony's head was thankfully starting to clear of its painful headache, and some of the pressure behind his eyes had already faded off thanks to the cold wind whipping at his face; although the billboards’ neon-bright lights —so bright they outshone the stars, a guy’s gotta love the light pollution—  and the way they reflected off of his suit, standing guard a few feet behind him, still made him squint his eyes underneath his sunglasses.

He sighed. He swore to fuck his next suit was going to be spray-painted in a dull, matte color. Even his arc reactor’s blue light, always pulsating at the edge of his vision, was painful. (It usually was, one way or another.)

The lights were so fucking bright they felt loud, somehow, like a raspy shrill curling behind his eyes, and his forehead was beginning to cramp with the way he’d scrunched up his face.

He wondered how much it would cost him to buy all of the buildings surrounding the Tower to get rid of those neon signs di merda . Probably an eye of the head , as his Mamma used to say, but Tony found as long as money was a part of the equation, he always got what he wanted. 

It did also happen, occasionally , that Tony got what he wanted, graciously offered from the pitying forces of the Universe, free of charge, or at least as close to it as it got.

The latest case in point for that being FRIDAY’s impending alert notification, and her voice had never sounded sweeter —even as it were, piercing through the painful haze shrouding his mind to drill into his skull— than when she served him the wonderful opportunity to settle his debt to the spider-vigilante, in the shape of an unfortunate stabbing session in a back alley. (Which was, admittedly, a bit of a downer. They did say something about beggars and choosers though, so Tony didn't linger on that for too long.)

Tony wasted no time to roughly set down his glass, and step into the suit, ignoring FRIDAY’s inebriated pop-up warning as he took off into the night.

The night had reached its peak in the short time it had taken him to reach the coordinates FRIDAY had displayed on the screen, which was unfortunate for Tony’s little impromptu search and rescue mission. (Well, obviously he still had both a night vision and a thermal camera in his mask, he wasn't an animal , but still.) Plus, he was freezing his nuts off, neither the light t-shirt he was wearing nor the suit’s heater enough to keep the (if FRIDAY’s approximation was to be trusted) 44.6 degrees air from seeping in through the suit’s hinges and chilling his skin.

The shadows were dark and thick in a way neither the glints of moonlight nor the flickering street lamps could pierce through. ( Jesus, though, what a crappy neighborhood. Were Tony a regular billionaire, he'd be clutching his pearls to his chest. Anyway. )

Tony did a first swipe of the area with his thermal lenses, and a shudder raked his body at the sight of the small and yellow-ish rat-shaped lumps scurrying away to the back of the alley, probably spooked by Tony’s thrusters. (Good. Ratatouille —or whatever that godforsaken rat’s name was— seemed like a slimy motherfucker.)

There weren't many sources of heat in the alleyway, as Tony found out once the rats had emptied out : the street lamps’ lightbulbs —which surely were not up to date— exuding bright yellow, warm light, and the surrounding buildings’ space heaters’ warmth seeping through the walls.  

His gaze mechanically swiped over a small hunched over form, its shades of red and purple surely way too dark for it to be a human being. 

Or a live one, at least , he thought grimly as he hummed to himself. Wait, shit.

He backtracked, and, sure enough, he could make out reddish, blue-tipped fingers clutching —what he hoped to be, or this was bound to get real awkward real soon— Spider-Man’s side, as a steady trickle of liquid gold-like —warm— liquid slipped through the fingers, coating both the ground and a good part of the limp body in cooling shades of oranges and red. Fan-fucking-tastic .

Weirdly enough, fifteen-something years of Iron-Man-ing around had yet to get Tony stabbed, as did, and this somehow was even more surprising, his lifetime as a rich, eccentric asshole. He had had the luck, however, to both get impaled ( twice ), and to perforate his lung on a broken rib, which he would assume were similarly unfortunate experiences.

Tony stepped out of the suit, leaving it to stand watch, headlights aimed at the limp form, as he walked the couple of steps separating him from the, well, from the body or man lying on the floor. (Or body and man, depending on the philosophical thought process he was going with.)

A gust of wind whistled in the alley, and Tony shivered as his shirt rode up and goosebumps pimpled on his skin. The guy didn't move, which either meant his suit was heated, or he was well on his way to being very, very dead.

Tony was aware that, were he still shitfaced, that train of thought may have felt somewhat less bitter in Tony’s throat, less of a diffuse, painful feeling making its way into the bottom of Tony’s stomach. As it stood, the feeling was still sharp enough to churn his stomach and Tony was reminded of why he had drunk himself off his ass yesterday. He really could do with more of that sweet buzz of intoxication flowing warmly in his veins right about now. 

As it stood, the acidic feeling was creeping down his limbs, mixing perfectly with his hangover to make him feel like absolute shit.

He sorta missed being dead, in the same way he did his father, meaning rather the possibility of it.

He crouched down next to the cooling body, raised his hand towards it. Thought better of it, and brought it back down.

“Hey, you alive ?” 

The blood was still slowly, albeit steadily, seeping through the Spiderguy’s finger, which was, from Tony’s standpoint, a goodish thing, because it meant the man’s heart was still beating. Although it unfortunately entailed, in this specific situation, (meaning, a hole in the guy's side), pumping his blood out of his veins and straight onto the pavement, but based on Tony’s —extensive practical — knowledge, a beating heart was always excellent news, even more so after a stabbing.

The Arachnid-Boy did not answer, although Tony now heard his faint, raspy breathing, humming along the buzzing moths flying tight circles in his helmet’s light beam. 

The billionaire frowned, and slapped a hand on the vigilante’s right shoulder, perhaps a bit more harshly than advised. 

He shook him, trying to- what ? Wake him up ? Maybe the guy was in a coma. Tony was pretty sure that was mostly a risk with head trauma, but the mutant might not even be a full-on human -person, and surely there were cases of people slash bug-people going comatose from blood loss, or shock, or something . God knew Tony would treat himself to a nice coma every once in a while, if he had a say in it. (Well technically, he could very well put himself into a coma, free will and all, but he suspected Pepper would have some choice words for him were he to slam his head on their imported italian marble counter.)

“C’mon Bug-Man ! Wake up !” He was shaking the smaller man again, and this time, he was rewarded with a flutter of his eyelids. (Supposedly. Hard to tell, what with the mask and all, but there was some movement.)

“That’s it, wakey-wakey”, he appraised as the vigilante groggily opened his eyes.

It took a few breaths for the man to get his bearings, but once he did, he was quick to bat at Tony’s hand, and send his feet flying before his injury reminded itself to him.

“ Guh” , Spider-Man said, very eloquently, sounding like the sound was punched out of him. The pain had turned his voice high-pitched, almost childish, and Tony frankly felt for the guy, although he was still faintly irritated as the vigilante kept blindly swinging both arms and legs at Tony’s face and knees. 

None of the kicks came even close to hitting Tony, which he was very thankful for when the ground cracked upon impact with the vigilante's left foot, and wasn't that something ?

Tony dodged a very sluggish blow, and grabbed the mutant’s arms —with very little effort on his part. 

“Easy there, champ, you're gonna end up hurting somebody”, himself, probably. “I'm here to help, yeah ?” He pointed his thumb at his suit to showcase his good intentions and tilted his head to the side to allow the vigilante to take a better look at it.

The kid squinted at the armor, his gaze cloudy and unrecognizing. Tony could tell the exact moment the Bug-Man recognized the red and gold plates : his jaw dropped low, and he immediately ceased all struggling, a comically loud yelp tumbling down from his lips, although the reddish spit dripping down his chin had a sobering effect. (On Tony. The guy still seemed just as awestruck, which was… not unheard of , exactly, but still odd enough.) 

Tony allowed Spider-Man’s arms to slip out of his grasp, and he watched them fall limply by the vigilante's side.

“Holy fucking shit ! Um, hello, Mister Iron-Man, sir !" 

The vigilante’s ‘s’ were slurred —his whole speech really; his sentence sounded more like one jumbled, disarticulated word, and he was breathing real heavy, but he seemed surprisingly alert (and ecstatic, much much more than a man in his condition should), considering how hard he had been to wake.

"You okay there kid ?" The billionaire asked, his gaze dipping towards the wound.

"Oh this ?” He gestured wildly at his side, his eyes still taking both Tony and the suit in. “Oh no, yeah, no 'm fine, this is, like, barely just a-, a um-” his eyes glazed over for a bit, and he let out a jagged breath. Tony furrowed his eyebrows. “A s’ra’ch !", he finished, looking strangely proud of himself for such a mutilated speech. He went as far as to throw Tony a toothy grin and an honest to god thumbs-up , the intended reassuring effect dimmed by the blood covering his teeth and the jagged pieces of shrapnel sticking out of his forearm.

“A scratch ?” Tony said, an unimpressed look on his face. “Sure seems to be bleeding a lot” he casually stated, gesturing to the crimson puddle pooling at Spider-Man’s hip.

“Yeah ! Yeah yeah !  S ssch- tab woo -nd bleed a lot I think—” he cut himself off, stretching his lips like his face was numb (which, Tony would guess it probably was). “‘ aab ‘oond . Why can't I say ‘hab ‘ound ?” 

Tony blinked at him, staying silent to refrain himself from explaining to the bleeding-out vigilante that he was surely feeling like shit because his blood, which was supposed to be inside of him, was currently dripping onto the pavement; which he assumed was just as bad for mutants than it was for him —and Tony should know, as he had gotten large amounts of his inside blood on the outside a few times in his life. 

“But I'm like, super-duper fine, I mean, I was- ah, ouch fuck, a little scared for, like, a minute”, the vigilante continued, before stopping to pant, looking overexerted. The potent smell of iron hit Ton’s nose. “but I'm all rested now, so you can, um, sorry, why are you here ?”

“To give you a hand ?” Tony said, his voice tilting up at the end of his sentence, because, duh . He felt the need to continue : “You helped me out, I help you out, yeah ? Then we can go our separate ways.” There. Now he could drag the guy to a hospital, drop a few hundred on the lap of whoever was wearing a lab coat and a stuck-up look on their highly-educated face, and they'd be even-steven.

It was the vigilante’s turn to blink owlishly at him.

“Oh.” He said. He sounded surprised, and the way his jaw hung uselessly in awe did something to Tony’s heart that felt a bit like an arc reactor malfunction, in the way it ached a little. “Well that's-” he paused and gasped for air for a few worrying seconds “That's cool. But I'm really all good now, I think, Mister Tony Stark sir. Do you think I could tell if he'd gotten my organs ? Are there any organs there ?” He poked his uninjured side, his fingertip digging into the soft flesh.

Tony chose to ignore the questions, both because his medical knowledge was limited to the pamphlets his cardiologists handed him at every check-up, which he then happily threw out (sue him, he paid doctors, and very handsomely at that, to be allowed not to know shit about these things), and because the vigilante seemed pretty out of it, and Tony wasn’t sure he’d even remember his own questions if Tony tried to answer them.

“Uh-huh. So, mind telling me exactly what you're still doing lying there ?” He asked, an eyebrow raised.

“Oh well yeah, sure ! I was just sleeping. But you didn't, like, wake me up or anything, or well, I mean you did, but it's no big deal !” He stared at Tony like that was answer enough.

“Sleeping.” Now Tony was stalling, worrying about the sensible way to ask the guy if he was homeless and/or clinically insane. 

“Mhm, yeah ! Cause my web-sh’ter’s broken”, he put his right arm right in Tony's face and wiggled it, “and I'm all out on the other side, so I can't swing home.” He said with what looked like a small pout, all the while miming what Tony assumed was the swinging he was referencing. “So I g’tta wait for a while to heal up, and then I can walk home ! Or I could take the bus. But I've only got…” he shoved his hand into a pocket Tony hadn't seen, and dug out a few coins. He let them slip between his fingers, a giggle tumbling from his lips as they fell to the ground with a clicking sound. “…Thirty-s’ven cents. So I'll just walk, I think.”

Tony… needed some time to process all that. So, the man had a house, but somehow had less than a dollar on his person ? The man seemed oddly irresponsible for a vigilante in charge of Queens' safety. Seriously, what self-respecting adult went out of the house with thirty-seven cents —and seemingly nothing else ? (Well, Tony did, but he usually had either Rhodey or Peppers with him, so case in point.)

The Bug-Boy interrupted Tony’s appalled silence.

“Can I get an autograph, please and thank you ?”

That had got to be Tony’s most off-script encounter, with both fans and injured civilians, and he had to fight against a —tiny !— amused tilt of his lips.

“You know what ? Yeah, sure. I get you looked at in a hospital, and then you get your autographed anything. Just- no underwear.” (An appalling number of people felt there was an appeal in asking him —a taken man !—to sign their undies.) “How does that sound ?”

The man had shook his head twice before Tony could finish, only stopping to press at his temple with a wounded sound.

“Nope, no, thank you. No hospitals. Hospitals are a no-go. Plus I don't know my insurance number, but I'm pretty sure it's pretty bad.” He sang-song that last part, and okay, Tony had no problem believing that, but who in their right mind would worry about something so trivial as hospital bills when getting a personal lift from the richest man alive ?

“Kid, it's fine. This is New-York. I'm sure they've seen plenty of-” he paused. Was ‘mutant’ offensive ? Was the kid even a mutant ? More importantly, since when did Tony care ? “Of people like you.” he finished lamely, and wow that sounded like something no human person should say aloud, ever .

“ ‘t’s fine, Mister.” The kid said as he nodded solemnly, seemingly understanding his struggle. “It's 2025. You can say bisexual.” Nevermind then.

Tony opened his mouth. He closed it. He let out a small sigh, and pinched his nose bridge. 

“That’s… good to know.” he answered, as though Tony Stark hadn’t been the Founding Father of bisexuality ever since realizing at the ripe age of sixteen there was nothing stopping him from sampling a bit of everything.

“Well, we gotta get you looked at, and I certainly don't have the qualifications, so.”

“Well…” the guy played with his fingers, hissing when it pulled at his wounds. He dropped his hands on his lap. “You could, like, I dunno. Maybe I could just, head home ?” He picked at the metal shards planted in his arm, flicking them to the ground as he hummed a little tune resembling that godforsaken kid’s song, “Shark Cub” or whatever, to himself.

What the fuck . Tony hoped someone held this guy’s hand whenever he crossed the road, because clearly the vigilante held no fear of death.

“No.”

Spider-Man spluttered for a bit, hands flailing as he let out little affronted noises.

“Wha- but- you can't do that, this is- I'm like an adult !” He ended up saying, as if it was the best argument he could've come across.

And okay. Tony had come, he had tried to get the guy medical attention, he had done his all-relative best.Nothing more he could do. He had no interest in forcing a grown man into a hospital, he told himself.

“Sure doesn't seem that way. You need a hospital ”, Tony said slowly, drawing out the syllables as he mustered all of his patience (so not very much at all) to not knock the vigilante out cold and drop him off to a doctor. Or at a vet’s. Even that would do, at this point.

( No interest my ass, bull shit , Anthony .)

The Bug-Dude pressed the heel of his palms into his eyes, and Tony could have sworn he heard something sounding a hell of a lot “dude, shut up , it's Iron-Man , what are you doing ? Ughhhhh ohmy god fuck fuck fuck.”

“Okay, okay, how about this ? I’ll wait-” Spider-Man glanced down at his wound, pulled a face. “an hour-ish. And then , if I'm not better, which I will be, better I mean, like I'll be better, then I’ll head to the hospital. Or like, a drug store, or something.”

Tony considered it. He had a feeling, although he had no experience to back it up (bite him, he usually didn't have to negotiate with the victims ) that this wasn't a situation that allowed negotiations; but, maybe because the guy was, after all, some sort of a colleague, or maybe because Tony had seen his face reflected in enough concerned citizens’ eyes to know the face of someone about to bolt, he felt inclined to hear the guy out. And he seemed… reasonable. Well, not reasonable -reasonable, but reasonable enough, especially considering the vigilante's former suggestions.

Tony sucked on his teeth, and sat down on the grime-covered floor.

“Thirty minutes. And if you're not fully healed by then, I’m hauling your ass to a doctor .”

Spider-Man glanced down at his wound, and looked about to protest. His eyes caught a glimpse of Tony's suit, and he deflated.

“Alright Mister Stark.” 

The vigilante then scooched down a bit, wriggling his hips so that he was less sitting against the wall and more or less curled up on the cold concrete, with his knees drawn up to his chin and his back turned to the wall.

Tony sent his foot colliding with the man’s shin in a light kick, jostling the vigilante.

“Wha’ ? May ? ‘m awake, I'm awake…” 

“If you're dying, deal's off.” He stated, matter of factly, his eyes fixated on the slowing trickle of blood, trying to gauge the amount of blood Spider-Man was losing per minute.

“‘m not dying , Mister Stark”, he said with what could be seen as a bit of an attitude , like Tony even checking in the first place was the craziest thing that had happened all night. “You don't have to worry about me. I'm just-” he gestured with his hand “sleeping it off, or something. Jus’ tryna speed things along, since I'm on a bit of a schedule .”

Tony scoffed at that last sentence, and leant against the wall.

“Sure champ, you do you, but I'm ” he pulled out his wildly expensive, fresh out of R&D StarkPhone, “setting up a chronometer.”

Silence had settled in for a few beats, Tony having to strain his ears to monitor the vigilante's slowing breathing, when a cold hand wrapped against Tony’s wrist, forcing a half-aborted flinch out of him.

“Promise you won't haul me to a hospital ? I'd wake up either way, y’know…” Now Tony strongly doubted that.

Spider-Man had propped himself on his uninjured arm, looking intently at Tony, his other arm extended towards the billionaire, pinky finger raised.

Something churned inside Tony at the childish gesture.

“Yes, sure, whatever, I promise. No need for whatever that is”, he said gruffly, batting the hand away.

The vigilante scrutinized Tony's face for a while, with a small pout on his lips. Seemingly satisfied, he nodded, once, and dropped his head again, cushioning it on his good arm while smacking his lips together.

Tony stared at him for a while, taking in the trusting way the vigilante had just laid back down, exposing his soft underbelly to a virtual stranger. How was he even still alive ?

Then, he unlocked his phone, and opened Google. He allowed his fingers to hover above the search bar for a while, and looked down again at the small figure curled up beside him.

He sighed, and started typing.

Blood loss symptoms 

Severe blood loss symptoms 

How much blood loss before death

Blood loss + unconscious 

Blood loss and mutants??

Hospitals near me

Upon several minutes of research spent browsing both medical blogs and hospital reviews, with his eyes occasionally darting back to the spiderling, Tony had become sure of two things : one, that while according to each and every article, agreeing to wait half an hour would kill slash severely endanger a regular person, they didn't seem to know shit about mutants; and two, that were he not Tony Stark, tech genius, he would have been bound to be subjected to concerningly specific targeted ads. He shoved his phone back into his pocket.

He glanced down at the vigilante's injured side, where the flow of fresh blood was steadily slowing and replaced by the old, clotting blood.

He slowly lifted the torn fabric covering the wound, his fingers carefully avoiding to brush against the inflamed skin.

He took a good look at the injury. It looked… well, it looked bloody, and quite frankly more than a little disgusting, but although he wasn't a medic —he did have, however, first-hand knowledge on most types of injuries—, he could tell it was healing nicely. He let go of the torn suit, allowing the fabric to cover the vigilante’s injured side once more.

(Maybe not nicely , what with it being a stab wound and all, but it was already well on the way to being entirely closed up, which was exactly what you wanted most artificially-made holes in your body to do.)

Tony’s attention was drawn back to the flimsy alley as he heard a small ‘clink’ , like something metallic falling onto the ground, and his gaze mechanically followed the direction of the noise, near the spider-vigilante’s body. 

There was nothing there but sharp and bloody shards of metal littering the ground.

He heard it again. A new jagged piece of shrapnel hit the ground, followed by a fat droplet of blood.

The mutant’s body was pushing out — rejecting —  the shards lodged into his flesh, the small wounds oozing small trickles of blood before sealing up, and it was easily one of the most equally revolting and fascinating things Tony had ever seen.

Tony did , however, feel bad for the guy’s metabolism, working overtime to get rid of the foreign objects, all the while healing a stab wound.

He hesitated for a moment, and his eyes flicked from the injured arm to the stab wound, both still steadily oozing blood.

He rubbed his palms on his jeans, and set to work plucking out the shards big enough for him not to have to shove his fingers into the wounds, which would have been a terrible idea —although just as good of a way as any to get a raging infection, he supposed.

He moved the vigilante's arm around as he worked, admiring how quickly the shallow cuts scabbed over. Some of them, the smaller ones, had already faded into a pinkish scar before their droplets of blood had even hit the ground. He whistled. Not bad.

He worked methodically, his fingers gradually inching towards Spider-Man’s hand as he picked at the metallic shards. He hummed to himself as his hands hovered above the sleek black device loosely clinging to the mutant's wrist —perhaps the aforementioned web-shooter, he mused, although it had been hard to make sense of the man’s frantic gestures and slurred speech. 

It was, unfortunately, damaged beyond recognition. A large crack ran along the length of it; but although it sort of pained Tony, the other web-shooter was tucked securely underneath Spider-Man’s chin, thus rendered inaccessible to his own scientifically inquisitive gaze.

The device seemed activated by a button, laid against the vigilante's palm —which was not what Tony would have done, but it was clever enough, and probably more fitting to the mutant's style. Tony assumed the webs were contained in the contraption, where he would have stored them along with some small, silver cartridges. Compressed CO₂, most likely,  which, what. The human body was basically a sack of soft, easily bruised tissues and surprisingly brittle bone, and so Tony would’ve definitely not done that , and, in all honesty, he really, really didn't feel like anyone should. Ever. 

He removed and flicked away the last piece of shrapnel, and, as he laid —dropped— the limp arm back down, the momentum had Spider-Man's head rolling from where it previously laid and settling on the hand Tony was keeping on the floor for balance. He twitched minutely at the warm, solid weight of another body on his, and his muscles tensed and locked up in the effort it took him not to shove the vigilante away.

“Aww, man, come on, let's not- let's not do any of that”, Tony sighed out in an all-suffering tone.

He rubbed a hand down his face and looked down at the sleeping vigilante, all the while trying his best not to rip off his own skin each time a warm exhale met his skin.

“Alright, lemme just…” he slid his other hand behind Spider-Man’s skull, flinching when his fingers came back coated in a sticky, clumping matter. Dried-up blood. Well, hopefully , he thought. Brain matter would have been a very unlikely, although still very bad thing for the mutant’s skull to be losing right now. Or any time, he supposed.

He prodded at the vigilante's scalp, his hand stiff in the effort gentleness took him, and his hand went still when he felt a tear in the mask’s fabric underneath his fingertips. A breath before Tony could get anywhere near the supposed wound, however, the vigilante awoke with a start, and his hand shot out to grab Tony’s wrist in an iron-like grip.

“ Excuse you, what the fuck !” 

“Ohmygod Mister Stark ? I'm so sorry ! Um, have you been here the whole time ? You really didn't have to stay !” He looked down at his hand, pulled a face. “Um, yeah, I- sorry, it's just, it does that, sometimes ? I mean uh- I ? I do that sometimes. I'm sorry, I'll just, I'll uh- yeah, I'll let go of your… arm… Um, just, try not to pull . Please. Uh, just in case ?” His voice had grown strained and high-pitched before he trailed off. 

The mutant scooted back to a seated position, his back leaned against the wall, pulling Tony's hand with him. He looked at his own hand for a hot minute, an intense look on his face as he repeated a little mantra of “c’mon c’mon c’mon” under his breath, supposedly to himself. Finally, he lifted his index finger from Tony's skin. He seemed to deflate in relief at the sight, which was, as Tony had started to expect from the guy, a little odd. The other fingers followed, and soon Tony was freed from the vice-like grip, although small, red imprints were left behind on his skin. 

“Um, there. Sorry”, the mutant breathed out. 

Spider-Man’s hands were curled up on his lap —which was probably best, at the very least for Tony— and his fingers were mindlessly toying with a bit of shrapnel he had picked up on the ground.

They stayed quiet for a while, Tony rubbing at the raw skin of his arm, and the vigilante throwing looks his way, a guilty-looking pout on his face.

“I think your alarm’s about to go off, Mister Stark” had been an unusual way to break an awkward silence, but at least someone had said something, so sure.

Tony humored the other man, and pulled out his phone in time to feel it buzz to life in his hand, the shrill sound of his alarm following suit soon after.

“ Huh . Well, alright kid, what's it gonna be ? Hospital, or statistically unlikely recovery ?”

“Well, I mean I feel fine, but…”, he trailed off, throwing a sideway glance at Tony.

The other man sat up a little straighter, and twisted his torso so he could take a look at his side.

“ Aww, man … My suit … ‘t’s all torn up” the vigilante said in an upset tone. He hooked his thumb in the tear in the fabric and pulled it away from his hip. “ Yeesh , that's a lot of blood.” He scrunched up his face and looked away. His throat clicked as he swallowed thickly. “Um…” Spider-Man’s eyes flicked between Tony and the wound, his sharp teeth worrying at his lower lip. He took a deep breath. “Alright. I'll just… take a look, and see if I'm healed-up”, the mutant said.

And maybe his miserable tone had brought up a —both unwanted and unexpected— surge of sympathy in Tony, or maybe it was the hesitant look on his face as he had considered asking Tony for help, the same one civilians wore in Iron-Man’s beginning, but Tony let out an aggravated sigh and made a shooing motion at the vigilante.

“Alright, can I ? I'd rather you didn't barf on me, thank you very much.” 

At Spider-Man’s nod, Tony scooted a little closer, and looked down. There was, in fact, quite a bit of blood, the brown, dried-up tracks disappearing past the hip bone and probably continuing further down the leg. 

Tony did note, however, a distinct absence of fresh blood, and, after receiving another affirmative sign from the mutant, the billionaire’s thumb gingerly rubbed away some of the caked-up flaking blood covering the wound’s approximate placement. 

“Well fuck me”, Tony breathed out, his hand falling away.

“What ?! What, is it, like, bad ? What's going on ?” The other man sounded manic, and his breathy voice broke Tony out of his stupor-induced trance.

“No, no, man, this is good, this is… this is great. I mean, it might leave a scar, if you even get those, but other than that, you're fine .”

“Wait, what really ?” Spider-Man quickly glanced down. “Wow. That's so fucking cool” , he said, dragging out the o’s. “Does it look cool ?” he asked, looking at Tony expectingly, an almost imploring look on his face.

The billionaire looked down at the patch of skin marred by the scarring. The scar in itself was only a few inches long, starting above the pointiest part of the hip bone and slightly curving upwards. It still looked a bit raw, and the raised scar tissue still had a shiny, pinkish tint to it. The skin around the jagged cut hadn’t been set properly during the healing process —something a nurse would probably have done perfectly, had they gone to the ER— and looked a bit crooked and tight, causing little wrinkles to form around the scar each time the vigilante moved his torso . Overall, Tony found it just looked like a scar, and he told the vigilante that much.

The vigilante pouted and muttered something that sounded awfully like but that's so lame under his breath.

“D’you think it'll hold if I walk home ?” Tony swatted away the hand the vigilante had used to experimentally poke at his side to punctuate his question.

Yeah, probably , the billionaire thought. “No”, he answered.

“Well, do you think I could ride the bus for free if I crouched on the roof ? I mean, I should at least get a discount, ‘cause I'm not using the seats, or the AC, and they won't even know I'm here, so-” Tony cut him off.

“You're not…” he trailed off. 

Tony let out a forlorn sigh, and rubbed away the frown settling between his eyebrows. He'd really, really love to get himself home, but for some reason he couldn't possibly even begin to fathom, he couldn't bring himself to leave the other —grown ass— man to his own demise in that shitty alley, with no viable way to drag his sorry ass home.

He'd suggest the vigilante hitch a ride on his suit if he felt like the other man would accept it, but even so, there was no way for the billionaire to safely and painlessly hold the mutant, who, as stitched-up as he seemed, surely still felt pretty sore and bruised —and hungover as Tony was, the flight was bound to get bumpy either way.

“Y’know what ? Here. Take-” Tony scrounged his jeans pockets, his fingers wrapping around crumpled-up bills and a few loose crumbs. “fifty… nine dollars, and get yourself home. I feel like that should cover a bus ticket, right ?”

“What the hell, uh no, no, Mister Stark, I really, really can't accept your money ! That would be- I just can't, you- I mean you already came all this way, and waited on me, which I mean, you didn't have to do- not that I'm trying to tell you what to do ! ‘Cause I'm- I'm not ! That's very generous, but I really… can't take it.” 

Spider-Man had physically recoiled at Tony’s offer, shaking his head so fast it was a wonder he didn't get dizzy, his hands clenched into fists tensely resting on his thighs.

“Sure you can. Look.” 

Tony grabbed the vigilante's left arm, and pried his hand open; the mutant was putting up a small fight, but Tony could tell by the lack of tension in his muscles and the slack look on his face that he was pulling his strength, be it voluntarily, or purely from the shock of Tony reverse-mugging him. He shoved the bills into the arachnid’s half-opened hand, and closed the other man’s fingers around them. 

“There.” 

He shook the mutant's limp arm around like a lifeless muppet. “Gee whiz, thank you Mister Stark !” He said in a high-pitched voice. 

“You're welcome Bug-Man.” He let go of the vigilante’s arm, who allowed it to heavily fall on his lap, and he roughly patted his shoulder. “There. You did it. I feel like this is big for us.”

The mutant opened his mouth to protest, baring his sharp teeth to the light, his hands flailing as he desperately tried to shove the money back at Tony.

“Kid. It is sixty dollars. I am a billionaire ”, he drawled out, overenunciating each word. “So take the money-” he raised his palm up to interrupt the words of protest stumbling out of Spider-Man’s mouth. “-and consider this as you playing your part in fucking the capitalistic ideology over, or whatever you kids say these days, yeah ?” 

He wiped his hands on his jeans and heaved himself off the floor, stifling a groan as he stretched his stiff joints out.

The other man opened and closed his mouth for a while, all the while absentmindedly smoothing out the bills’ wrinkled paper.

“But I just-” Tony cut him off with a tutting sound. 

“Are you trying to tell me how to live my life, kid ?”

It was, admittedly, a bit of a low blow, considering the bit of a hero-worship thing the younger man seemed to have going on, but it had seemed efficient regardless, seeing as the vigilante closed his mouth and finally dropped his cash-filled hands on his lap.

“I just- it might take a while before I’m able to be able to pay you back…”

“Come on, kid.” Tony slipped his sunglasses back on. “Now you're just insulting me.”

Spider-Man was still staring down at his lap, where the bunched up bills laid, with an hesitant, almost frightful look on his face. 

He glanced back up at Tony, looking vaguely distrustful for the first time during their encounter.

Tony softened up.

“Just take it, kid”, he casually threw over his shoulder as he stepped into his suit.

“Get home safe, Spider-Man”, he told the vigilante as he slid the suit’s faceplate over his face.

Chapter Text

The night air had chilled the pavement, and the cold had already settled under Peter’s skin; and yet the young man was still sitting down on the cool stone, intently staring a hole into the bills resting on his lap, the sixty fucking dollars the only tangible thing proving he hadn't just hallucinated the past hour or so. (Although it was still very much possible that he had actually been desperately clinging to rumpled, oil-stained flyers for the better part of fifteen minutes.)

He was as unwilling to use up any of that money —he was still halfway convinced that someone would come back to take it out of his shaky hands— as he was to drag himself up and resign himself to the walk to May’s and his apartment. The blinding memory of his earlier pain, so bright it had sent zaps of electricity coursing through the tips of his fingers, was still a daunting enough prospect for him to dread getting up, although he barely felt more that a tingling sensation in his skin and the sore feeling of a blooming bruise nestled underneath his hip bone anymore.

He knew, however, that he'd feel even more shitty in the morning if he spent the night in that dingy alley, surrounded by garbage in various stages of decay and the cold, probably murky water dripping to the floor from the drain hanging atop his head. 

In the end, it was a rat that did it, hurrying its way towards Peter’s body in a clatter of claws to sniff at his feet, emboldened by Peter’s motionlessness, in turn causing him to jump to his feet and press himself to the wall, the motion thankfully sending the rodent scurrying away.

Peter stood frozen for a while, and he allowed one plaintive, whiny sound to rip its way out of his throat before shoving down with a sniffle the body-wreaking sobs bubbling up in his chest; because somehow the stabbing pain had relocated from his side to his diaphragm, and Peter suddenly found himself feeling very lonely, and terribly aching for all sorts of things he had no recollection of ever having.

He took a deep breath, and urged himself to be brave, because he was slowly working up to feeling very dizzy, static fogging up his vision and buzzing in his ears, and he suspected it might have meant he didn't have all night. 

It was probably just because of all the blood he had lost —and that was now crusting through his suit and at his feet— as each of his heartbeat had sent more and more blood flowing.

He kicked a few loose pamphlets and empty food wrappers —he really could do with some sour gummy worms right about now— over the very red, very large puddle laying at his feet, hoping to keep it covered long enough for the rain to wash it away.

Then, the bills still held tightly in his fist, he pushed himself off the wall he'd been leaning on, and his arms flayed as he tried to keep himself upwards. He stumbled down the alley, uncaring as to where exactly it was that he was heading. New-York had plenty of bus stops anyway, he reasoned.

He came to a slow stop in front of the place where the Iron-suit had been standing earlier, and stood there, body gently swaying with each wave of dizziness and nausea —which had been quick to come, as he'd found out, once he had lost his momentum. 

He stared at the ground, and he could have sworn his eyes were as wide open as they went, and yet he didn't see much aside dark spots dancing across his retinas.

He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the loud, chatter-like buzzing in his ears, only managing to further root in the depths of his stomach the queasy, seasick-like feeling as the world spun on its axis.

There were no burn marks on the pavement from where the thrusters had fired up, nor any metal-boot imprint in the brittle cement, which– it didn't necessarily mean anything.

He brought the bills he'd been clinging to under the dim light of a street lamp, and admired the fuzzy, pocket-worn edges of the green paper. They looked real to him, which, in his current situation —fast past 1AM, and standing in a suit soaked through with his own blood— was good enough. He got back to blindly stumbling through the ill-frequented streets of Queens.

Whether he had his Spider-Sense to thank, or just pure, dumb luck —ha, as if—, Peter ended up stumbling upon a bus stop just a couple of streets down from the alleyway he had to practically crawl out off; although he also did have his doubts over spiders' supposed sense of orientation. He'd have to look it up. Or have Ned look it up, he amended. His phone was… it was fine, and it served its main purpose (he could both text and call), but it was pretty slow. 

He'd been mentally listing the evolutionary advantages for spiders to be able to find their way back home —a bit distractedly, admittedly, seeing as it would be so fucking cool had made its way on the list twice— when a bus came to a halt in front of him.

Peter blinked blearily at the vehicle, half-blinded by the headlights. He'd been trying to force his eyelids to stay open long enough for him to decipher the blinking orange text on the bus, but he just kept nodding off; and so when the doors opened with a hiss, the driver shooting him an expectant look, he found himself hauling himself into the bus, his feet dragging against the two steps leading to the driver as he kept his right arm tightly held against his now healed-up side in an attempt to cover up the blood.

The driver looked Peter up and down before he held out his hand to accept the five dollars held in Peter’s outreached hand. He allowed the bill to be picked out of his hand, and he willed his hand to stay as unsticky as could be humanly expected. 

His eyes trailed the driver’s fingers' movements, mentally counting the cents he was supposed to be handed back, an antsy look on his face as he anxiously rocked back and forth on his heels. Something in Peter was always left a little hungry and wanting, no matter how hard his aunt worked to prevent it, and so he eagerly accepted his change, and tucked his hand close to his chest.

The driver seemingly paid no mind to the bloody, spandex-clad vigilante, merely throwing Peter a “Like your costume !” as the teenager walked past his booth with a grateful smile. 

Peter stumbled to the back of the bus, where he slumped into one of the seats, his head lolling back on the headrest. He rested his face against the cold, slightly dusty window, and watched the streets for the familiar silhouette of an assailant as the bus' engine purred back to life. 

He waited for the bus to depart before uncurling the hand still clenched to his chest. He folded the bills, twice, and tucked them into his sleeve, before securing them with his glove.

Peter relaxed bit by bit as time went on, the warm air gently soaking through his suit and skin along with the all-relative safety of the bus lulling him into a half doze, while he still somehow stayed awake enough to practically crawl out of the bus at the right-ish stop as he thanked the driver with a tired mumble.

The chilled air immediately woke him up, whipping at his face and biting at his exposed side. The cold shocked a shaky breath out through his clenched teeth, and the inhale that followed burned its way through his nose and into his sinuses. 

He forced himself to wait for the bus to depart before he could make the short trip to May’s and his apartment, and adjusted his feet into a wider stance, shifting his weight on one leg after the other so he wouldn't topple over. 

The dizziness hadn't left him, even after the power nap he had just taken in the bus, turning the extra distance between the shabby alley where he had hidden his bag and the apartment into a Ninja Warrior-level nightmare.

Peter briefly considered leaving his stuff out on the streets for the night, but quickly dismissed that idea, as it contained his only clean, hole-free hoodie. Plus, on the off chance it got stolen —he had hidden it very well, webbing it up in a recess in a wall, but many people (and a few racoons, most likely) walked past that building every day— May would have to buy him his fifth backpack of the year, which would have meant an entire week of overtime for her to cover the extra cost.

By the time he had gotten back to his bag, the webs holding it up had mostly disintegrated after almost an entire night out, and his backpack was only held up by a few loose threads that easily came apart when he tugged at them.

He patted his bag to get rid of the webs still clinging to it, and flicked his wrist to shake loose the threads sticking to his fingers, watching as they quickly turned to dust on the ground. 

He quickly swung the bag over his shoulder, before he could give pulling on his mostly-clean hoodie on his bloody, grimy suit too much thought. 

Trying to remember the trip to May’s and his apartment building was like trying to swim through cotton, and he quickly found the effort to be both fruitless and exhausting.

He tilted his head up, his neck adapting smoothly to the strain in a way it didn't before Peter had gotten bitten, and looked at May’s and his apartment’s windows on the fourth floor. All the lights inside the apartment were out, save for the gentle, neon green glow of the peel-and-stick glow in the dark stars adorning his bedroom’s ceiling. His window was just as he'd left it, propped open with his Spanish vocabulary, seemingly taunting him (the fourth floor’s window, that was, although Spanish was usually an equally daunting prospect). 

Although Peter crawled his way into his bedroom almost every night, the mere idea of doing so at that moment had his injured side throb menacingly and his stomach lurch in a way that had nothing to do with vertigo (spider bite had taken care of that, too, which, sure).

Peter only registered that his feet had carried him away when he disorientatedly crashed into the building’s hall, and its warmth was so sudden it felt like he was choking on it. It was all a little surprising, actually, because May and the other neighbors fought the landlord every winter for him to dial up the heater; and yet, at that moment, the heat felt all-incompassing, scorching and bright in the way it brought tingles back to Peter’s skin, buzzing alive in his fingertips and toes in a way that was bordering on painful.

He shuffled on his feet to alleviate the feeling as his numb fingers struggled with his backpack’s zipper, so cold under his fingertips it felt like the metal was melting through his skin, to find his keys, usually conveniently stashed in his hoodie’s sleeve during the day.

Whether it was his almost frozen-through fingers, or that the cheap zipper’s metal had gotten stuck after its night out, he ended up having to force his backpack open, and elbowing himself in the face when the zipper did give way.

With still stinging eyes —it hadn't even hurt that bad, although it felt like his nose was still vibrating with the impact—, he took a dejected look at his —yep, torn-up— bag. A nice, even tear ran along the outer side of the zipper, which was now uselessly clinging by a few threads to the fabric, and one of his hoodie’s sleeves was now limply hanging through the hole.

Jesus fucking Christ, he thought, fighting back the —childish, uncalled for— tears he could feel brimming in his eyes. It's okay. I'm cool, I'm calm. I can be cool about this. 

He had two Iron-Man iron-on patches, tucked neatly in the corner of his desk’s drawer since his last birthday. He had, admittedly, hoped to use them for something a bit cooler than stitching up a torn bag, but maybe this was good, too. At least they'd be useful, and Ned would be glad to see he'd finally used them.

He did manage to find his keys, his Iron-Man keyring laying sadly face down on the first step of the stairs where they’d been thrown, a few feet away from where he stood.

He had, admittedly, been half-expecting to turn up empty ended, as he usually emptied up his backpack of his personal items before each patrol, but it seemed tonight had been the exception —which might have been a courtesy of his Spider-Sense, but seeing as his algebra textbook was also present, he felt it was more likely he had forgotten.

He picked his keys up, and tried to ignore the sharp zap that ran through his fingers when his fingertips brushed against the cold stone as he checked the red and gold keyring for any scratches. A small plastic chip was missing from the left eye, making Iron-Man’s face look a little wonky, but it had, admittedly, been missing for quite some time —although Peter had managed to carefully glue it back for a bit with nail polish, and could not account for as to when it had fallen down for the second time.

He wiped the red and gold oval with the least bloody of his sleeves, before running his thumb over the design. Most of the finer details engraved into the plastic had been smoothed over as time went on, along with Peter's painstakingly accurate, marker-drawn updates following each of the suit’s improvements.

Peter let the keyring slip from between his fingers and ‘clink’ against his keys, which were now looped around his fingers, and attempted to balance his backpack in his arms (its straps now rendered useless) without pulling on his injured side too much.

He sluggishly climbed up the stairs, his side pressed against the staircase’s wall as he chose to take the steps one at a time. More tiring, but less chance of faceplanting, which was good, he figured, as he was bound to pass out the very moment his body was laid down in a somewhat horizontal position.

Time seemed to slide past him, slipping through his fingers with every longer-than-the-last blink, and he soon found himself heavily leaning against his apartment’s door, mindlessly toying with his keyring. He had, apparently, either set his backpack on the floor, or allowed it to slip from his grasp, as it now laid on the doormat, all torn-up like a dying thing. Ha, same, he thought distantly.

He blinked owlishly at the three keys rhythmically swaying from the keyring. 

Three keys seemed like a lot, but maybe it was all right. No one mentioned how many keys they had, which was too bad, because now Peter had no means of comparison, he mused, his gaze roaming over the ceiling.

It took Peter a few tries before he could open the door, as he struggled to both pick the right key (which, what the fuck ?) and insert it into the lock.

Around the time he had started considering curling up on the doormat as the next best thing, the door suddenly gave in. 

Peter tripped on his backpack, sending it flying somewhere into the apartment, and he suspected his brand new reflexes had been the only thing keeping him from tasting the ground.

He froze for a little under a minute, listening for any signs of May waking up, all the while balancing himself on one foot, arms still flailing in his effort to stay upright.

He waited until his ears picked up on May's snoring (alleged snoring, if she was to be believed, and she wasn't) to softly set his other foot on the ground. His ears were still twitching with the rumbling sound as he blindly patted the ground to sweep up all of the stuff he had just sent flying all over the floor, assisted by the light of the building’s hallway filtering through the ajar door.

Once all of his things (namely, his sweater, algebra notebook, and what was either chapstick or a battery) had been securely tucked against his torso with his left arm, he plucked his keys out of the lock, and closed the door behind him. He waited for the soft clicking sound of the door locking up, and threw his keys down on the dresser, before he walked to his bedroom, just at the end of the hallway.

With his bedroom door closed behind him, Peter took the fifty five and something dollars out of his sleeve, and laid them on his bed, before he wriggled out of his suit, carefully pulling it away on the places it'd been stuck to his skin with dried-up blood.

He shoved the fabric past his thighs, tears frustratingly, stupidly welling up in his eyes at the ripping sounds it made as he inadvertently aggravated the tear in the fabric. 

“What the hell’s wrong with me”, he choked out, voice a little whiny as he forcibly rubbed at his eyes.

He wiped his nose on the collar of his suit’s undershirt in the way that usually made May wince and wordlessly offer him a tissue.

He pulled the suit all the way off, bunched it up and shoved it under his bed, fully aware that the dry blood would have become a bitch to get rid of by the time the next day rolled up, the angry, self-destructive show of frustration not easing the burning feeling breathing on his skin in the slightest.

He ripped off his undershirt next, stashing it with his suit, just short of fast enough for him not to notice the long tear in the side, mirroring his suit’s. It wasn't a big deal either way, since he only used that shirt to go under his suit, he reasoned with himself. He's gotten better at sewing, too. He scoffed at the stinging in his eyes.

Peter grabbed the bills resting atop his comforter, and, after the five seconds of reflection he was willing to grant the matter, he stashed them into one of his desk’s drawers. He'd like to slip at least some of it to May, he mused. (He'd have to think of something, though, because she always seemed aware of how much money she had left at any given time, to the dollar.)

He slipped on his pajama shirt, a long sleeved, worn soft shirt that had belonged to Ben, but hadn't stayed his for very long once Peter had grown tall enough to reach the higher drawers of Ben and May’s dresser. (These days, Peter sometimes wished he hadn't stolen it from his uncle. Maybe then some of his cologne would still be clinging to the fabric.)

Only when he picked his pants up from the floor, where he had hastily thrown them that morning, did Peter notice the dried rivulets of maroon blood that had crawled its way from his side down to the bony part of his ankle (the lateral malleolus, May’s voice helpfully supplied in his head). 

The sight forced a gag out of him, and he stumbled to the bathroom on weak legs, the shaking in his hands the only thing that kept him from slamming the door behind him.

He tore the hand towel from its hook and turned on the faucet, the droplets of warm water that reached his face sticking to his skin just like warm blood.

He ran the towel under the water, and didn't bother wringing it out before he started frantically wiping himself off. He left the tap running, and the steam curling up from the sink carried strong notes of iron each time he rinsed out the hand towel.

Once he had forcibly rubbed away the blood from his legs, and carefully cleaned his fresh scar, half expecting fresh pain to blossom again, he thoroughly rinsed the towel, wrung it out, and set it back on its hook.

He then haphazardly dried himself off with his usual towel before finally pulling on his pajama pants, and the soft, well worn fabric quickly brought warmth back to his chilled skin. He pulled on his pants’ drawstrings and tied them in a “bunny ears” knot (as named by Ned’s first grade teacher) to keep them on his hips. Ben had bought them two sizes up, in preparation for Peter’s growth spurt, which was bound to settle in any day now.

Peter flicked the bathroom light off, and walked down the hallway to May’s bedroom, the short trip familiar to him even with the lights off.

He only opened May's door a few inches to avoid triggering the whining hinges, and slipped into her room. He carefully stepped over where she'd most definitely had thrown down her scrubs and tiptoed to her bed.

He climbed onto her bed, pulling a face as it dipped underneath his weight, prompting May to shuffle in her sleep. He crawled to her, and slotted himself in her arms, crowding into her space. He’d left Ben’s side empty, for the same reason his uncle's cologne still sat on his dresser, and his clothes still hung on his side of the closet —May and him were still learning how to tiptoe around their grief.

His aunt unconsciously tightened her left arm around him, and buried her nose into his hair, letting out a soft sigh that tickled the crown of Peter's head.

He tentatively reached out, and placed both his pointer and middle fingers on the inside of her right wrist, feeling where her blood was still steadily, warmly pulsing through her veins. He curled a little closer to her warmth like a lost child.

He took a deep breath for the first time that day.

Since May was a nurse, she couldn't wear any perfume, and the only scents Peter was picking up on her was the faint smell of their cheap laundry detergent —a sweet, oddly fruity fragrance— the powdery smell of her deodorant, and the flowery hand cream she applied after her shifts so her hands wouldn't crack from all the washing. He sighed contentedly.

“Peter ?”

He frowned a bit.

“Yeah”, he whispered, voice so low it was almost a sigh. “Sorry I woke you”

“It's okay, honey. God I missed you today” she buried her face deeper into his hair and breathed him in. He hoped she wouldn't pick up on the still present smell of blood.

“Me too”, he answered, his voice wavering.

May pulled back a bit, and brushed his hair out of his eyes. 

“Are you okay baby ? You look a little… down.” Her voice was careful, a forced lightness to it. Her thumb was still lightly brushing against his temple.

“M’okay. A little tired, I think.”

She stayed silent for a bit, breathed in.

“You know you can talk to me, Peter ?” 

He nodded. He did. “I'm good, really. Promise.” 

She seemed satisfied enough with his answer, and she tucked his face back under her chin.

“I larb you sweetie”, she said, mumbling the words against his hair, pressing a kiss to his head each time her lips pressed against it.

“I larb you too.”