Chapter Text
The Tesseract has awakened.
It is on a little world. A human world.
They would wield its power, but our ally knows its workings as they never will.
He is ready to lead.
And our force-- our Chitauri-- will follow.
A world will be his. The universe yours.
And the humans, what can they do but burn?
***
“Okay, here’s how it’s gonna go.”
“Is this going to be different than the last time you told me how it was going to go?” Ned asked, laying down flat on his back on the couch while Peter paced in front of the television. “Or can we skip ahead to the part where I tell you you’re overthinking this?”
Peter paused his pacing to look down and scowl at him.
“This is how it’s gonna go,” he repeated a bit more insistently.
“Okay, okay, okay,” Ned waved his hands up in the air as a sign for him to continue.
“So you know that movie theater over by the fancy once-a-year Thai place?” Peter asked.
“Yeah.”
“They’re having a mini Agnes Varda film festival next week,” he continued, sweating under his arms more than was normal just discussing this plan and hoping that wasn’t a bad sign for what it would be like to enact said plan. “And you know how much she likes Agnes Varda--”
“She’s a film major, of course she loves Agnes Varda.”
“So I’m gonna buy tickets for us to go,” Peter ignored the snark. “Because movies are romantic as shit, especially when you’re trying to convince a literal filmmaker that you’re worth dating, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“And I know what you’re thinking,” Peter switched his voice to a painfully inaccurate imitation of Ned. “Peter, you and MJ do stuff on your own all the time-- how’s she’s supposed to know it’s a date--”
“What kind of muppet voice--”
“Well, thank you so much for asking,” Peter cut him off and began ticking off items on his fingers. “I’m going to wear a whole outfit of clean clothes; I’m gonna pick her up from her apartment and walk her to the theater; I’m gonna buy her whatever concessions she wants-- to a limit, because I’m romantic but also very poor; I’m gonna hold her hand during the movie; I’m gonna walk her to her door at the end of the night--”
“Did you get this off of a listicle?” Ned asked as he sat up. “It sounds kinda like you got it off a listicle. Buzzfeed or something, but from 1953.”
“Ned,” Peter whined, slumping down to sit on the coffee table so he was closer to eye-level with his friend.
“Okay, alright,” Ned sat all the way up. “Dude. Peter. This all sounds great, but you have got to chill out.”
Peter sighed and dropped his elbows to his knees, let his face fall into his hands where he mumbled a barely comprehensible, “I know.”
“It’s just MJ!” Ned laughed. “You know how to talk to MJ.”
Peter lifted his face and shot him a look as if to say do I, though? and Ned just shrugged.
“Most of the time you know how to talk to MJ,” he corrected himself.
Face back in his hands, Peter groaned as Ned laughed brightly and shoved at his shoulder gently.
“The movie thing is a good idea!” he assured. “Just don’t be too much of a weirdo-- Y’know, she likes weird, but don’t be the creepy kind of weird?”
“I’m gonna drop you in the Hudson,” Peter said flatly.
“You’ve got this, Spidey,” Ned ignored the comment.
“Right,” Peter nodded to himself, kept nodding, got a little bit stuck with the nodding. “I got this, I totally got this. Just gotta be myself!” he lifted his hands in an awkward sort of shrug.
Ned made a face. “Well…”
“The Hudson, Ned!”
***
He went into Midtown as Peter Parker to buy two movie tickets, tucked them away safely in his backpack, and then swung away from Midtown as Spider-Man.
The knowledge that he had feelings that were maybe a bit more than friendship-centric about Michelle Jones wasn’t new to him, but that was part of the problem. Peter had gotten so accustomed to pining after her from a distance, that he had gotten comfortable in that spot, and the idea of risking it by bringing his relationship-incompetence into the picture was terrifying.
But he was going to do it, and he was going to do right by her, and it was going to be fine.
Fine? Fine. Probably. Right?
“MJ! Hi, how are you--” he paced, walking the narrow lip of the roof he’d claimed that afternoon as he talked to himself. “Great-- I’m glad and-- I’m also--” he sighed. “A big fat idiot.”
Peter bent his knees, tossed his body up into the air in a back flip, and landed heel-to-toe where he’d been standing once more.
“MJ, you look lovely this evening-- May I take your coat?” he tried again. “No-- You don’t-- You’re gonna walk, don’t take her coat on the way out of the apartment-- Idiot. Idiot, idiot.”
He pivoted, started walking back the other direction, arms out for balance even though he didn’t need them to be.
“Hi, MJ, it’s me Peter,” he continued glibly. “Do you find me completely unbearable or would you maybe wanna kiss sometime?”
“I think that’s the one.”
Peter’s head whipped around, and if he hadn’t been him he very well might have toppled over the edge with the force and momentum of it, but instead he just slumped his shoulders and hopped off the ledge.
“Jesus, Nat,” he clutched at his chest faux-dramatically. “Sometimes I think you’re trying to, like, hit a record for the number of heart attacks induced by one person.”
“Maybe I am,” she shrugged before crossing her arms and leaning her shoulder against the door that led into the building below them.
“So, what’s up?” he pulled his mask off and ruffled out his hair. “I want this to be a social visit, but that has not historically been the case and you always end up saying something that makes me never wanna talk to you again.”
“Something big is going on and we’re bringing Spider-Man in for a debrief.”
“Yeah!” Peter pointed at her. “Like that-- exactly!”
“I’ve got something for you,” she ignored his sarcasm and pushed off the door, stepping up closer to him.
“Like friendship bracelets?” Peter grinned at her. “Are they spider themed? Y’know what, doesn’t matter-- I know this girl in my biochem class that has a great Etsy shop for spooky charms and I can totally get us a discount--”
“Director Fury wants you to look at this,” Natasha pulled a flash drive out of her pocket and held it up to Peter, who immediately took a step back.
“I don’t work for Shield,” he shook his head.
“This is a bit bigger than Shield,” she told him evenly. “We’re bringing in some extra eyes.”
“And you need my eyes?” he grimaced. “Like, specifically?”
“Parker, you don’t get to run around spouting about responsibility and then duck out on this.”
“I’m a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man!” he fought back. “If this doesn’t involve my neighborhood, then I’m sorry--”
“This could potentially involve every neighborhood,” Natasha said, voice coming as close to exasperated as it ever did. “I mean every neighborhood.”
“I’ve got stuff going on,” Peter was very nearly whining but she had seen him at worse moments at this point so he didn’t particularly care. “Good stuff! For once in my fucking life.”
“And that doesn’t have to change,” another step closer to him, flash drive outstretched. “Just take a look--”
“Nope-- No-- Absolutely not,” Peter waved his hands and shook his head and laughed nervously.
“Spidey--”
“No, listen,” he cut her off. “The last time I got involved with you guys, I had to go undercover working for an arms dealer, build a bunch of weapons of mass destruction that I did not want to build, and basically play a game for which I did not have all the rules! So, no, Natasha. Not happening.”
“We’re bringing you in so we can give you all the rules,” she took a step forward, but Peter took a step back, now fully up on the ledge of the roof as he put his mask back on. Natasha saw what he was doing and lifted a hand. “Don’t you dare--”
“So, sorry--”
“Peter--”
“Spidey sense is going off--”
“You are the absolute bane of my--”
“Gotta jet!”
And with that he hopped backwards off the roof and swung away faster than she could have chased him.
***
“Coulson, he’s not budging,” she said, phone in hand as she slipped into the front seat of a nondescript car.
“That’s fine, focus on the big guy,” he replied on the other end.
Natasha snorted. “You know Stark trusts me about as far as he can throw me. Without the suit,” she said. “And he’s our best chance at getting the kid on board.”
“Yeah, I know,” Coulson said, smile in his voice. “I’ve got the tech boys. You get the other big guy.”
Natasha blanched.
“Ебать.”
***
Tony Stark was no longer dying.
Thanks to his dead father and a tenaciously observant NYU film major from Queens, he had a working arc reactor in his chest and a brand new lease on life.
“Good to go on this end,” he said, after he had breached the water and was zipping back through the sky towards the Tower-- the place that had been becoming more and more of a permanent residence despite his continued love for Malibu, for no reason other than convenience. “The rest is up to you.”
“You disconnected the transmission lines?” Pepper asked in his ear, because somehow, nearly a year later, she was still putting up with him. “Are we officially off the grid?”
“Stark Tower is about to become a beacon of self-sustaining clean energy,” Tony said. “The kid’s gonna get this, right?”
“He said he would, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, but he’s not always entirely reliable,” Tony deadpanned. “What with the lack of time management skills and all.”
“Oh, come on,” Pepper laughed. “When has he ever let you down, huh?”
“Many, many times,” he responded, unable to keep himself from smiling softly at the sound of her joy, even filtering through the speakers of his helmet.
“Well, assuming the arc reactor takes over and this actually works,” she continued. “I’m sure he’ll get it for you just like you asked.”
“Assuming it works,” Tony scoffed as he rounded a building and could finally see his destination towering before him. “Come on, go ahead and light her up.”
“Okay, here we go,” she said, as it began to do just that, shining one floor at a time from the bottom up until right there at the top, STARK stood tall in blue-white lettering. “How does it look?”
“I’ll tell you what,” Tony said, a warm sense of pride growing in his chest. “The kid really better be getting a good shot of this.”
“If he does we can use it on the public awareness campaign,” Pepper’s voice was getting excited in that way it did when she was making plans-- specifically plans for something she cared deeply about. “You need to do some press for this, it’s going to be a major deal.”
“You think?” he teased. “I can’t wait to take it to the DC guys tomorrow,” she continued, unbothered. “I’m starting zoning on the next three buildings that are gonna do this.”
“This kind of talk really doesn’t kill the moment for you, huh?” he laughed, coming up on the Tower itself and landing gracefully on the launch pad outside the penthouse.
“Not really,” she said, but he could hear her smirking.
“But the moment, Pep,” he groused as he stepped out of his suit and strode towards the door. “Live in the moment.”
“Get in here and I will.”
Tony turned the corner to find her, just as Jarvis told him:
“Sir, Agent Coulson of Shield is on the line.”
“I’m not in.”
“I’m afraid he’s insisting,” Jarvis insisted, as much as he could insist as a disembodied voice.
“Grow a spine, Jay,” Tony grinned at Pepper as she stood from the couch and set down her tablet, smiling right back at him all the while. “I’ve got a date.”
“Levels are holding steady, I think,” she walked towards him, motioning to the hologram of the Tower that was up on one of the nearby desks.
“Of course they are,” he met her halfway and looked up at the readings, casually wrapping an arm around her waist as he did because he was allowed to do that now. “I’m directly involved.”
The blue light reflected off her skin, her hair, in such a way that made her look otherworldly-- completely and utterly beautiful from here all the way to the other side of the galaxy, and he kissed her temple to stave off the bubble of feeling it caused in his chest. Right next to the hunk of metal.
“So,” he spoke up. “How does it feel to be a genius?”
“Me?” she chuckled, turning her face to look him in the eye. “Are you offering me a compliment, Mister Stark?”
“What do you mean? Of course I am,” he responded, glint in his eye. “All of this came from you.”
“No,” she turned to face him, hip leaning up against the desk. “All of this came from that,” she tapped gently on the reactor in his chest with one finger.
Almost dying and falling in love were two things that could pretty reliably make a guy feel like a new man, but Tony was pretty sure neither of them were anything compared with being smiled at by Pepper Potts like that.
“You can still give yourself some credit,” he teased. “How does twelve percent sound?”
She quirked a brow at him. “Are we negotiating how much credit I’m owed here?” she asked. “And is twelve percent really your starting offer?”
“An argument could be made for fifteen,” he shrugged as she rolled her eyes and stepped away from him, back towards the couch on the other end of the space.
“Twelve percent-- You’re something else, Tony Stark,” she laughed and he followed her at a nonchalant pace, relishing in the banter of it.
“I did do all the heavy lifting,” he said. “You know, by lifting all the heavy things.”
Pepper rolled her eyes as she kneeled down by the coffee table, pulling a very nice bottle of champagne out of its ice bucket.
“Yes, you did,” she said mockingly. “Big, strong man that you are.”
“Exactly, yeah,” Tony crouched down facing her, watching as she unwrapped the foil from the top of the bottle, readied the cork for popping. “Thank you so much for understanding that.”
Pepper popped the cork, loud and punctuating as she shot him an exasperated, but still amused, look.
Tony just took her in for a moment, as she began to pour two glasses, coping with the inconsolable urge to buy her things she didn’t need-- like three new cars. Or an island.
“I’m gonna pay for that comment about percentages, aren’t I?” he asked. “In some subtle way that I won’t be able to predict?”
Pepper handed him a glass and lifted her own to clink against it.
“It’s not gonna be all that subtle,” she smirked.
“Sir,” Jarvis spoke up. “You have a visitor on the launch pad.”
Tony turned his head just as the sound of knocking on the glass door filled the room. He groaned as he pushed himself up off the ground and Pepper chuckled at him.
“Oh, I wonder who that could be,” he said flatly as he crossed the room. “At the top of my Tower, on the outside of the building.”
“Maybe it’s your conscience,” Pepper called out after him, still sitting there like a masterpiece, sipping her champagne in her denim shorts. “Coming back to haunt you over that twelve percent comment.”
“Oh, Pep,” Tony said over his shoulder as he reached the door, ignoring the wildly waving Spider-Man with a camera around his neck on the other side of the glass until he’d finished his quip. “You know I don’t have one of those.”
And then he opened the door, just a crack, but even still the whirlwind arrived.
“Tony! Hey-- That looked so cool,” Peter began immediately, already pushing past Tony into the penthouse without invitation. “You were back in time to see it right? The way the whole thing lit up-- and it’s self-sustainable?! Fucking dope as hell, dude-- Hi, Miss Potts!”
“Hi, Peter,” she smiled fondly at him.
“Tony, seriously, I gotta show you this,” Peter pulled off his mask and lifted his camera, beginning to thumb through the menu screen. “I got some great shots of it all lit up.”
“How about you email them to me,” Tony suggested, a hand on Peter’s shoulder to try and subtly push him back out the door.
“No, no, no,” Peter wasn’t swayed, and Tony really couldn’t tell if he was being intentionally obstinate or not because sometimes he was just like this for fun. Because apparently being a twenty-year-old superhero with direct access to Stark Tower whenever he felt like it wasn’t fun enough. “I’ve got it right here, it’ll only take a second… Ah-ha!”
Peter held out his camera, LCD screen pointed at Tony for a fraction of a second before he turned it back to look at it himself, frowned, and muttered, “Wait, no…”
“Underoos…” Tony sighed.
“Sorry, I’m borrowing MJ’s camera and the menus are all different… Here we go!” he beamed and showed Tony the screen again, but Tony just leveled the kid with a flat expression. “What?” Peter frowned.
“I’d love to see your pictures, Peter,” Pepper caught his attention from the other side of the room, and immediately Tony was watching him vault over the couch to land in a crouch beside her and show her the camera. “Oh, these are wonderful,” she gushed as she took the offered camera and began to scroll through.
“Don’t encourage this,” Tony pleaded as he trudged over to them.
“Not many people getting that angle,” Peter grinned as he pointed at one photo in particular, ignoring Tony and making Pepper laugh.
“Annie Liebowitz, I swear to--”
“Sir, I’m sorry to interrupt,” Jarvis chimed in. “But Agent Coulson is calling again.”
“Yeah, that’s still a no.”
“I’m afraid my protocols are being overridden--”
“Not me,” Peter put up his hands defensively.
And all of it happened in quick enough succession that Tony didn’t have a chance to do anything about it before Phil Coulson himself was talking out of Tony’s phone on the coffee table.
“Mister Stark, we need to talk.”
Tony snatched the phone up with a heavy sigh before replying with a snarky, “You have reached the life model decoy of Tony Stark, please leave a message.”
“This is urgent.”
Tony hung up and stuffed the phone in his pocket.
“They’re bothering you too?” Peter asked, grabbing the bottle of champagne off the table and taking a swig straight out of it like the germy little goblin he was.
“You want a glass for that?” Tony asked flatly. “Oh, underage boy in my home?”
“I had a run-in with Nat just this morning,” Peter continued on his own tangent, not letting Tony derail him. “You know, she is so cool and I wanna be her friend so bad-- but all she wants me for is my wacky DNA and my-- big, smart brain.”
“I’m sure the brain has very little to do with it,” Tony took the bottle out of his hands and wiped the lip of it off with his sleeve before setting it aside.
“Sir, I’m deeply sorry,” Jarvis spoke up again. “But my protocols are being tampered with and I cannot stop the elevator--”
Tony noticed the quick instinct with which Peter slipped his mask back on and stood up, just in time for the elevator doors to slide open and reveal Agent Coulson, unamused and carrying a thick, leather file folder in one hand.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me with the security breaches,” Tony deadpanned, just as Pepper stood up, seemingly unbothered by the whole situation.
“Phil, come on in,” she offered with a nod of her head.
“Miss Potts,” he nodded politely in return as he stepped into the penthouse.
Out of the corner of his eye, Tony could see Peter slowly backing up and wondered, not for the first time, just how messed up the kid was by his stint as a superspy. He knew Peter hadn’t exactly enjoyed it, and Tony knew him well enough at this point to understand his aversion to firearms, but maybe it was the trust thing that they’d fucked around with the most. Maybe that’s why he looked about ready to sprint in the opposite direction just at the sight of a Shield agent.
“Mister Stark-- and Spider-Man,” Coulson continued. “It’s good that you’re both here for this.”
“Nope,” Peter shook his head with a nervous laugh. “Not actually here. Just on my way out actually--”
“It’ll only take a minute,” Coulson said in about as inviting and gentle a voice as Tony ever heard from the man.
“Sorry! Places to be, things to do,” Peter rambled as he approached the door to the balcony-- closer than the door to the launch pad that he had originally come through. “You understand. Life of a superhero and all that-- the city never sleeps!”
And with that he was out the door and over the railing without so much as a goodbye, leaving Tony to deal with whatever Shield nonsense was being brought to his doorstep this time on his own.
“Well,” Pepper brought them all back to the moment after having watched a guy just jump off the side of a building to avoid a conversation. “Phil, we’re celebrating-- Champagne?”
“No, thank you,” he lifted a hand politely. “I really can’t stay long.”
“Phil,” Tony tried the word out in his mouth and grimaced. “Phil. No, I don’t like it. Are you sure your first name isn’t Agent?”
Coulson gave him an amused look. “Pretty sure, Mister Stark,” he said, before holding out the folder in his hands. “We need you to look this over as soon as possible.”
“I don’t--”
“I’ll take that,” Pepper accepted the folder from Coulson’s grip, placed it in Tony’s hands instead, and took a sip of her champagne, all without making Tony explain that he had a stubborn mental block against being handed things.
“If you could also get Spider-Man’s eyes on this, that would be a great help,” Coulson requested easily.
“Why?” Tony furrowed his brow, almost surprised by his own sudden protective streak and doing everything in his power to properly ignore it.
“Agent Romanoff seems to think that he’s a helpful asset to your scientific process,” Coulson smiled, almost teasing, Tony would’ve thought, if he didn’t know better. “That he helps keep you on track.”
“The guy that just jumped out of a window? He keeps me on track?” Tony pointed over his shoulder with a disbelieving lift of his eyebrows. “You know what it’s like to work with that guy?”
“Can’t say I do.”
“I’ll tell you what it’s like,” Tony said. “It’s like having a stray dog around that keeps coming back because you fed it that one time.”
“Nevertheless,” Coulson seemed unperturbed by this statement, as though he trusted Romanoff more than him. Which was, quite frankly, unfathomable. “We’d like to see if he has any valuable input, so do what you can.”
“What is this about, exactly?” Pepper asked, in that way that sounded more curious than demanding, and also was particularly effective in getting people to tell her what she wanted to know.
“Good question, because, you know, consultation hours are actually between eight and eight-thirty every other Thursday,” Tony shrugged.
“This isn’t a consultation.”
“Is it about the Avengers?” and Pepper lost a little of her high-ground with this next part. “Which I know… nothing about.”
Tony pulled a tablet out of the folder’s sleeve and began to make his way back over to the holodesk, scoffing as he went. “Can’t be about the Avengers-- I didn’t qualify for the Avengers. Not to mention, I’m pretty sure it was scrapped?”
He rattled these facts off as if he wasn’t sure of them, as if he didn’t care all that much, when in reality he would never forget sitting down in front of Fury and having to read all about how he was volatile and self-obsessed and didn’t know how to play well with others. It had been something of a hit to his ego, if he was being entirely honest, especially when he thought he had been getting better at some of those things.
Tony was self-aware enough to know all about his own flaws, but he let a kid superhero hang out in his lab out of the goodness of his heart, so could they really site volatile anymore?
“This isn’t about personality profiles anymore,” Coulson explained seriously as Tony tapped at the tablet a few times before swiping up and letting the holodesk take over. “As you can see.”
As he could see, alright.
Video files and Shield files and reports and write ups and photos popped up all at once as Pepper appeared at his shoulder, gaping at the flood of information stood in a semicircle around them just the same as Tony already was.
“That’s…”
“Yeah,” Tony exhaled.
“I’m taking the jet to DC tonight,” Pepper told him quietly but certainly.
“You don’t leave ‘til tomorrow?” he frowned at her.
“Tonight,” she shook her head. “You have a lot of homework.”
“Maybe I don’t,” he fought back, although not with his full chest, not with the way every time he looked up his father’s pet project was staring back at him. “Maybe I give it to the kid, huh? You know, he told me sometimes he takes cash to do lab reports for his classmates-- this isn’t all that different from that.”
“He does what?” Pepper questioned.
“Yeah, I’m realizing I maybe should’ve been less encouraging of that,” Tony brushed her off. “It was just the first instance of business awareness I’d ever seen him have.”
“You have to do your homework yourself,” she leveled him with a look, and Tony just sighed.
“Yeah,” he took her hand in his. “Fly safe.”
She kissed him on the cheek and then once on the lips, pulling away with a small smile.
“Work hard,” she told him, before leading Coulson back into the elevator and leaving him alone to the infodump of a lifetime.
Time to go to work.
***
The following morning, Peter Parker knew it was time to enact step one of his plan.
He had been preparing for this and he was ready and he just had to do it before Ned made good on his continuing threats to change the locks on the windows if Peter didn’t stop going on about it already.
“Okay, Parker,” he murmured to himself as he skipped up the steps to the front door of Michelle’s apartment building. “Polite. Charming. Not creepy. You got this.”
He bounced on the balls of his feet a couple of times, breathing deep so as to not accidentally squeeze the two cups in his hands too hard (one coffee with milk, one earl grey tea black), and then he pressed down the buzzer for her apartment with his elbow.
“I’m on my way out, whoever you are.”
“It’s me-- Pete-- Peter,” he replied to her hurried statement. “Parker,” he winced, even as he heard her snort out a laugh.
“What are you-- Nevermind,” she said. “I’ll be down in, like, ninety seconds.”
Now, contrary to popular belief and his general and expected tardiness, Peter actually had a pretty good internal clock, so he knew that Michelle was almost exactly right in her estimate of how long it would take her to get downstairs and be standing directly in front of him.
“Hey,” she gave him a quizzical smile. “Good morning?”
“Good morning,” he replied, a touch past too eager. “I-- Uh-- Here.”
He thrust out the cup of tea in his hand and held it in front of her, watching as a delighted little smile played at the corners of her mouth.
“Thanks,” she accepted the cup and took a sip with a contented hum.
“You have class now, right?” Peter asked.
“Yeah,” she made a face. “I oughta really get going if I don’t wanna miss my bus.”
“I can walk with you?” he suggested, and to his faint surprise, she barely even considered it before she said, “Okay.”
Soon enough, it became easy again, walking with her and talking with her without all the extra nerves he’d been building up for himself. Michelle told him about the class on documentary filmmaking that she was taking, recommended him one about modern textiles that had reminded her of when he was sixteen and still trying to make the absolute most efficient web fluid he could.
(He jotted the name of it down in the notes app on his phone. He was definitely going to watch it.)
She made him laugh and he made her roll her eyes and it felt like it always did when it was just the two of them-- good. Really, unbelievably good.
It had only been fifteen minutes, however, when his phone rang. And then when he ignored it, rang a second time, seemingly louder somehow.
“Sounds like maybe you should get that,” Michelle nodded towards his hand in his pocket where he gripped his vibrating cell phone, willing it to shut up.
He was having a good day, was he not allowed to have a good day? A good day with Michelle without any interruptions? A good day where he could ask her out and drop her off at class and just-- be?
But the phone kept ringing, and so Peter let out a breath and reluctantly agreed.
“I was going to stop and buy a paper anyway,” she motioned to the newsstand just up ahead that Peter knew she did often frequent. He was pretty sure it had more to do with the couple that owned it-- two women named Nora and Jin who loved to debate the day’s headlines with the likes of a young woman like Michelle-- than it did with the paper itself, but he took out his phone and nodded.
Peter waited until she was properly out of earshot, braced himself at the sight of Tony’s name lighting up the screen of his phone, and then took the plunge.
“You know I don’t work for you anymore, right?” he said upon answering. “Like, I’m not at your beck-and-call anymore?”
“You don’t?” Tony questioned glibly. “Huh. Seems like a weird decision for a kid who might want a recommendation letter from me one day.”
“Do you need something?” Peter pressed past what was an old argument at this point.
“You’re being very short with me this morning,” Tony observed with relative lightness, almost amusement. “Am I interrupting something?”
“Tony.”
“Am I interrupting something with Michelle?” he teased, bordering on giddy now.
“Tony,” Peter pinched the bridge of his nose as his ears went hot, glancing over at where Michelle was chatting with Nora to make sure she wasn’t paying attention to him.
“I need you to come in,” Tony cut to the chase. Finally.
“I can’t.”
“You have to.”
“I can’t, though,” Peter insisted.
“Pete,” and there was that tone of voice that instilled some deep seated sense of duty. Fuck that tone of voice. “I need Spider-Man.”
Peter sighed. “You’re sure?”
“Wouldn’t be pulling you away from your girlfriend if I wasn’t.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Peter mumbled under his breath, because she wasn’t, if only because every time he got up the nerve to talk to her about it someone, somewhere needed the goddamn Spider-Man.
Michelle finished her purchase and her conversation then and he could see in her eyes as she walked back towards him that she knew he had to leave. A part of his heart leapt at the fact that it looked a lot like disappointment, but that just got overshadowed by guilt in the long run.
“Twenty minutes,” Tony said in his ear and Peter sighed.
“Yeah, twenty minutes,” he said before hanging up.
“Does the city need you?” she smiled, if a little sadly, and Peter’s lips pursed sheepishly in return.
“Unfortunately,” he grumbled, but Michelle just rolled her eyes.
What she did next was something that would continue to play on repeat in Peter’s head for days if not weeks or months. She placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently as she leaned forward to press a kiss to his cheek.
“Go get ‘em, Tiger,” she grinned at his gobsmacked face as she pulled away and returned to her journey towards class. “And call me later!”
It took him a beat of processing his own awe, before he could wrap his tongue around any words again, so when he called out, “Will do, Jones!” it was awkwardly late.
She turned over her shoulder and smiled at him anyway.
Peter Parker was smitten.
***
“This better be good,” Peter said the minute Jarvis let him in through the window of Tony’s lab, tugging off his mask and striding across the room.
He was in a weird mood already, that much Tony could see by the clashing body language of frowning at Tony while carrying on with a bit of a skip in his step. Well, that was fine, they were only about to make the weird mood weirder.
“Come with me,” Tony replied without preempt, grabbing his tablet from a nearby workbench and moving towards the elevator without waiting for Peter’s response.
“What?” the kid chased after him. “I thought you needed help with something.”
“Yeah. Bit of a field trip though,” he said as they stepped through the doors that Jarvis had open and waiting for them. “Take us up, Jay.”
Peter just looked at him with plain confusion, clearly having a lot of questions but not having enough information to even know where to start. Good. That was the point.
“You might wanna put that back on,” Tony nodded at the mask in Peter’s fist as they got closer and closer to their destination.
“You gonna stop being cryptic soon?” Peter asked, but he put the mask on anyway, because if there was one thing the kid really did try not to be reckless about it was his identity. “Not a huge fan of Cryptic Tony.”
“Noted,” Tony snorted with amusement, but then the doors opened to the roof and they were hit with a blast of wind from the waiting helicopter. “Come on.”
“Tony…” Peter paused hesitantly.
“We gotta go,” he motioned to their mode of transportation.
There was a moment, staring down the Spider-Man mask instead of Peter’s easy-to-read face, when Tony thought he might actually bow out, not let Tony drag him into something without knowing what it was first. But the fact of the matter was, Peter Parker had an undying faith in people, even in Tony Stark, who was actively using that faith to manipulate him, so with a heave of his shoulders and a quiet this better be good, Peter got into the helicopter right alongside him.
It wasn’t until they were up in the air that Tony turned on his tablet and showed it to Peter.
“This is what we’re dealing with,” he said, as a picture of the glowing blue cube he’d been staring at all night appeared on the screen.
Peter studied it for a moment, genuinely curious, before something like realization filled the space.
“That’s a Shield file,” Peter said coolly.
“Yes, it is,” Tony replied, just as level, having had more time to prepare for this particular argument than his temporary adversary.
“I-- Are you fucking serious?” he snapped. “You know that I don’t want anything to do with this! I’ve been dodging them all week, I--”
“Kid, I’ve looked this over, I know what’s at stake,” Tony explained. “This isn’t something we get to dodge.”
“No, Tony! No!” Peter covered his eye lenses with the palms of his hands for a moment before he needed to drop them to really accentuate his point. “I don’t wanna know about it, okay? I’ve got a lot going for me right now-- I’m doing well in school, I’m getting better at managing money, May is doing really well, I’m gonna go on a date next week with the girl I really, really like, and I don’t have time for whatever--” he faltered, looking at the screen still pulled up on Tony’s tablet. “I don’t have time for… Is that an energy source of some kind? What is that?”
Inside, Tony was cackling over the utter predictability of Peter Parker when confronted with a new scientific puzzle, but he kept it covered on the outside so as to not startle the kid out of the moment. Sometimes dealing with the spider kid was a lot like dealing with an actual toddler-- you had to convince them that eating their vegetables was their idea.
“It’s called the Tesseract,” Tony explained. “Howard actually found it in the ocean decades ago when he was searching for Steve Rogers’ body.”
“What’s it do?” Peter took the tablet out of Tony’s hands entirely now, beginning to flip through the specs available there.
“Like you said,” Tony shrugged. “Self-sustaining clean energy source.”
Peter looked up. “But more complicated than that, right?”
“Yeah. A bit more complicated.”
A moment of consideration, a heavy breath, and then:
“Fuck you. Tell me about it.”