Chapter Text
Tony’s lab is too bright.
It always is, cold light bouncing off metal and glass and a thousand half-finished ideas. Tonight it feels like an interrogation room with a budget.
Peter sits on a stool in the middle of it, mask off, hands twisted in his hoodie. His legs swing just enough to broadcast “teenager” and “guilty” in equal measure.
On the workbench beside him: one bacon wrapped apple dressing stuffed pork tenderloin, sitting on a Stark Industries tray like it’s evidence.
“Okay,” Tony says, pacing in front of him. “Let’s try this again. Slowly. With nouns.”
“I told you what happened,” Peter says. “Mostly.”
“Yeah, see, ‘mostly’ is not comforting.” Tony stops, turns, and points a screwdriver at him like it’s a gavel. “Because my ‘mostly’ includes you doing seventy-eight in a school zone with a man who thinks traffic laws are a suggestion and another man who, and I cannot stress this enough, is legally blind.”
Peter winces. “Technically I wasn’t the one driving.”
“That’s worse,” Tony says. “Somehow that’s worse.”
“Sir,” FRIDAY cuts in, voice smooth as glass, “for the record, the vehicle reached a maximum speed of eighty-two miles per hour. In a thirty.”
Peter’s shoulders hunch. “I was going to round down.”
“Of course you were,” Tony mutters.
A beat of silence. The smell of pork and apple and herbs sits heavy in the air, like guilt with grill marks.
Peter glances at the tenderloin. “So, um. About that…”
“Yes,” Tony says tightly. “Let’s talk about the mystery meat offering on my doorstep.” He jabs the screwdriver at it. “Why did Deadpool think he needed to send my tower a bacon-wrapped apology?”
Peter looks at the ground and refuses to look back up.
“You tell me,” Tony prompts. “Start from the beginning. No fast-forward, no creative editing, no ‘and then stuff happened.’ Go.”
Peter takes a breath like he’s about to jump off a building. “Okay. So. I was on patrol. Being responsible—”
“Correction,” Karen says cheerfully in his ear, only audible to him. “You were attempting a triple backflip over a hot dog cart while humming the Avengers theme.”
Peter’s eye twitches.
Tony narrows his eyes. “Do I want to know why your face just did the Windows error thing?”
“Nothing,” Peter lies. “That was… unrelated. I was on patrol. Mostly responsibly.”
Karen helpfully continues, “You stuck the landing with a forty-three percent success rate.”
“Shh,” Peter hisses under his breath.
Tony folds his arms. “We’re starting strong.”
“Right, so, patrol,” Peter barrels on. “Everything was normal, nobody was kidnapped, zero raccoons—”
FRIDAY chimes in, blandly polite. “Audio logs from ten minutes later indicate Deadpool saying, quote, ‘I liberated a raccoon,’ end quote.”
Peter squeezes his eyes shut. “Okay, but in my defense, I did not know about the raccoon yet.”
Tony stares at him. “Why is there a sentence where ‘in my defense’ and ‘raccoon’ go together?”
“It was emotionally neglected,” Peter mutters.
Tony pinches the bridge of his nose. “Of course it was.” He waves the screwdriver in a circle. “Fast-forward to the part where you get into a car with Team Walking Liability and Echo-Location Esquire.”
Peter’s stomach twists. “It wasn’t— I didn’t mean to… get into a car. With them. It just sort of… happened.”
“How,” Tony says flatly, “does a car chase ‘just sort of happen.’”
Peter swallows. “So there were sirens, and Deadpool was running, and Daredevil was doing the broody stride thing, and there was a car that was… kind of… there.”
“That’s not a sequence of events,” Tony says. “That’s a stroke.”
“Deadpool called it a ‘possibility,’” Peter says, helpless. “The engine was already on!”
“Sir,” FRIDAY adds, “the engine was on, the doors were unlocked, and the keys were in the ignition. Probability of the vehicle being stolen within ten minutes was ninety-nine point four percent.”
Tony gives the ceiling a look. “Fantastic. Grand theft auto by inevitability.”
Peter’s leg bounces faster.
He keeps talking, words spilling before his brain can vet them. “And then we were just— in. Deadpool went for shotgun, Daredevil sat behind the wheel, and I got in the back, because there were sirens and explosions and I thought adult supervision was happening.”
Tony stares. “You thought adult supervision was happening.” He repeats, incredulously.
“They both are technically like adults!”
“They are both wanted criminals!”
“I didn’t know that at the time!” Peter practically wails.
“The blood-soaked red leather outfits didn’t give it away?” Tony retorts.
“Daredevil’s a lawyer!” Peter blurts. “That’s like… legally safe?”
“A. You didn’t know that at the time. And two, fun fact,” Tony says. “Having a law degree does not make you safe. It makes you dangerous with paperwork.”
“Noted,” Peter whispers.
“Do you want to know,” FRIDAY says, perfectly composed, “at what point Mr. Murdock volunteered to drive?”
“No,” Tony says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “No, I really don’t.”
“Thirty-two seconds after entering the vehicle,” FRIDAY continues mercilessly. “At which time the following exchange occurred—”
Tony cuts her off, holding up a hand. “Nope. We are not doing a dramatic reading of ‘Blind Guy Offers To Drive: A Tragedy in Three Acts.’ The kid’s already traumatized.”
Peter stares at the floor. “I wasn’t… that traumatized.”
Karen gently pipes up, “You stated, quote: ‘I think I aged five years,’ end quote.”
Peter’s shoulders curl inward. “Okay, that’s—mildly traumatized.”
Tony watches him for a long moment, something in his expression shifting from exasperated to… sharper. Quieter.
“Walk me through this part,” he says, voice dropping. “You’re in the car. You realize Matt’s blind. You realize Wade is driving. What, exactly, possessed you to stay in the vehicle?”
Peter opens his mouth.
Closes it.
He thinks of sirens and explosions and seatbelts trying to hold his soul inside his body. Of Deadpool laughing like consequences are a suggestion. Of Daredevil’s hand on his shoulder, steady and calm, like a human brake pedal.
“I… I thought getting out would be worse,” he says finally. “On a highway. With cops. And… I thought… staying was the safest unsafe option.”
The words sound worse out loud.
Tony’s jaw works.
FRIDAY cuts in softly. “Sir, heart rate rising. Cortisol levels elevated. Recommendation: reduce interrogation intensity.”
Peter flushes. “I’m fine.”
“It’s not your heart that is the problem.” FRIDAY says with a hint of judgement.
“You’re not in trouble,” Tony says, ignoring FRIDAY completely. He winces. “Okay, that’s a lie. You are in so much trouble. But I’m not—”
“Mad?” Peter offers, hopeful.
“—only mad?” Tony echoes. “No. I am not only mad. I am also horrified, sleep-deprived, and rethinking my life choices that led to me being the sole moderator of the ‘Please Don’t Die, Spider-Man’ group chat.”
“That’s not true,” Peter says quickly. “Daredevil was… responsible-ish.”
Tony squints at him. “You mean the same guy who threatened legal action over my mentoring skills while you were doing seventy-eight in a school zone? That Daredevil?”
“Eighty-two.” Karen corrects.
Peter winces. “Yes?”
There’s a beat.
Tony tips his head back, addressing the ceiling. “FRIDAY, confirm that Matt Murdock actually tried to serve me a lawsuit in the middle of a car chase that he was actively participating in.”
“Audio records indicate he did, in fact, state his intention to pursue legal action. No filing has been made yet,” FRIDAY replies.
Tony drags a hand down his face. “Great. I get heckled by a man in devil horns and he’s the responsible one.”
Karen chimes in, just a little too cheerful, “From a liability standpoint, Mr. Murdock’s argument is compelling.”
Peter groans. “Please don’t go to court because of me. Aunt May will find out and then I’ll be extra-dead.”
“Relax, Underoos,” Tony says. “If horn-boy wants to play lawyer chicken, I’ll throw money at it. Or just make a new protocol. Something like: ‘No unsupervised minors in motor vehicles operated by raccoon-thieving mercenaries.’”
He gestures at the tenderloin. “And that brings us,” he says, “to the meat-based bribe.”
“Sir,” FRIDAY says, “door camera footage shows Deadpool placing the item and then giving the tower a thumbs-up. He mouthed the words, ‘Don’t sue me, Daddy Warbucks.’”
Tony stares at the tenderloin like it personally offended him.
“Daddy Warbucks,” he repeats.
“He said it wasn’t a bribe,” Peter says weakly. “It’s… an apology? A peace offering? An… edible confession?”
Tony points a fork at him. “That implies you are still talking to him. You are NOT still talking to him, capiche?”
“Capiche.” Peter mumbles.
Tony lifts the tenderloin, and eyes it like it’s a lab sample. “All right. For the record: this is evidence. I’m only eating the evidence so it doesn’t go bad.”
He slices into it. The smell hits like a small, delicious explosion. Bacon, apple, herby stuffing. He takes a bite, chews, and glares at the empty air where Wade surely is in spirit.
“I hate that this is incredible,” he says.
Peter lets out a tiny, exhausted laugh.
Tony swallows, sets the fork down, and looks at him properly.
“Okay, here’s how this is gonna go,” he says. “One: you are never getting into an unvetted car again. If it doesn’t have plates I own, a driver I pay, or windows that roll down at normal speeds, you call me. Or Happy. Or literally anyone who can pass a DMV exam without committing a felony mid-test.”
Peter nods, throat tight. “Got it.”
“B,” Tony continues, “Team Red is now on my radar. Daredevil wants to threaten me with a lawsuit? Great. We’ll have lunch. I’ll countersue.”
“And three…” He pauses, eyes flicking to the tenderloin. “If Deadpool sends more of these, you tell him I do not accept bribes.”
Peter blinks. “I thought I wasn't talking to him.”
Tony picks up another bite, points at Peter with his fork. “ Don't get cute."
"Sorry, Mr. Stark."
"Anyways," Tony continues, taking a bite. "I accept ongoing restitution. Man almost turned you into road salsa. He can pay tithes.”
Peter snorts, sudden and helpless.
“And while we’re at it,” Tony continues, warming up, “I'll let the walking chimichanga know that if he ever puts you in a car again without my sign-off, I am going to personally install a shock collar in his suit. Every time he says ‘maximum effort,’ zap.”
Peter chokes on a laugh. “You can’t do that.”
“I can do so many things,” Tony says. “Shock collar, GPS ankle monitor, blacklist from every taco truck in a fifty-mile radius—believe me, I know where it hurts.”
FRIDAY adds, dry, “Logging new protocol: when Spider-Man’s vitals spike and he is in a moving vehicle with Deadpool, notify Mr. Stark immediately and preheat the oven.”
Tony points his fork at the ceiling. “Good. Great. We’re turning trauma into a standing order. Love that for us.”
He looks back at Peter, softer now.
“You did…okay,” he says. “Bad choices, worse instincts. But you’re alive. Next time, you call me before you get in the car with the murder Muppets.”
Peter swallows around the lump in his throat. “Yes, Mr. Stark.”
“And kid?”
“Yeah?”
Tony nudges the tray toward him. “Take a piece. You earned dinner. Wade can foot the metaphysical bill.”
Peter hesitates, then reaches out, fingers brushing the edge of the tray.
He’s still shaking a little.
But his hands smell like bacon instead of burning rubber, and for the first time since the sirens started, he can breathe.