Chapter Text
The first time Tony'd seen the kid, he was smitten. He’d been... excited, to say the least, to meet the mind behind the truly innovative web fluid biomechanical design. Antsy to see if the kid really would be able to make it work given the time, the equipment, and the materials. Tony probably wouldn’t have been there to meet him when he came in to interview, but he’d been working on the suit, and the nanotech equipment and the biotech equipment were in the same lab.
Then there he was.
He looked expensive. That was the bizarre initial thought that Tony had about him, and later he’d wonder if it was that he was expensive like champagne is expensive or if it was that he was expensive like crashing a car is expensive. Expensive like designer clothes or expensive like designer drugs.
He was beautiful. Like blown glass. Like a Chihuly. Something Tony would like to put in a glass case at a charity ball to show his rivals that he’s operating at a different level from them. His eyes were exactly the blue-grey of where ocean meets sky in the west when the sun is still mostly hidden in the east. The texture and color of his skin made Tony think of the the early winter roses in the Paseo el Rosedal in June in Buenos Aires and the employee who yelled at him for touching one that had just been such a delicate cream-pink color he had to touch it—that was the color of the kid’s cheeks exactly the first time Tony looked him in the eye. The hair—it was the kind of perfect shiny curls he’d seen women pay thousands of dollars in stylists, products, and equipment for and still not achieve. Tony noticed the beautiful bones, the structure of his face, the sweetness of nose and lips and slenderness of neck and waist. And because Tony was a bad man, he noticed the backpack’s rips and tears, the unraveling sleeves of the worn, too-big sweater, the threadbare jeans and the duct tape on the sneakers and the hinge of his glasses. He saw the shame and the shy and the hero-worship in the kid’s eyes and thought I could work with that.
“Got real dressed up to meet me, huh, kid?” Tony had said, winking to communicate that he didn’t mind the kid’s odd style.
Pepper had touched the kid on the middle of his back when he froze, eyes wide and starry, staring at Tony with pinkness on his cheeks. “It’s okay, Peter. He doesn’t usually bite.” Then, to Tony, “He’s brilliant, Tony. Go ahead, ask him your question.”
Tony had stood up a little straighter, wiped his forehead with the dirty Kimwipe he’d been using to mop up extra oil from the nanotech implant he’d been working on, looked at the kid and asked away. “What are you going to do if you make this project of yours work? The web fluid?”
Tony had found that this was the litmus test that would predict whether a shiny new intern was going to be something, going to make it, going to be more than a one-hit wonder. It was just open enough that kids could reveal themselves in their answer. Some talked about what they’d do with the money. Some talked about where they saw their invention fitting into other Stark tech. Some talked about using it to get into school, into the work force, into positions of power. One notable candidate had told Tony point blank, “Honestly, sir, I never thought I’d get this far. I have no idea.”
None of those are necessarily bad answers. But Peter’s answer was just what Tony was looking for.
“I’m... I’m not sure, yet, Mr. Stark, but according to the analyses I’ve been able to run without having the final formula, I was thinking that the hardness and the lifespan of the fluid could be altered to suit other purposes. It’s... biodegradable, gone after an hour, but if we could alter that at will, it could function as a catch-all environmentally friendly alternative to plastic. I think I could make it last anywhere between ten minutes and four years. It could be used for... packaging, maybe.”
Tony had smirked at the kid, causing his blush to darken. “Just by changing the length of the polymers, or..?”
Peter had shaken his head instantly, then seemed to realize who he was correcting. His voice came out very soft. “No, sir. Not just that. I think that by altering, uh, the structure, the methylation, I could give it a sort of... artificial half-life before the peptide bonds start to break down. And treating it differently I could alter the relative hardness. But some of it might call for gene-cloning biomaterial production techniques, which are—”
“Time-consuming.”
“Yes, sir. ... But that’s just another obstacle, isn’t it?”
Tony had met Pepper’s eye over the kid’s head, her eyebrow cocked like Told you. He’s just like you. “Excuse us a moment, kid. Peter, right? Yeah, excuse us a moment, Peter. Feel free to look around.”
They’d watched him from the other side of the glass. He moved like a kid in a candy shop, too excited by everything to turn his attention fully to anything. But the way he interacted with the equipment—there was no confusion, no look of overwhelmed unfamiliarity. It was the body language of a talented self-taught chef setting foot in a professional kitchen for the first time. Peter’s eyes said home and his body said safe and the way his hands fluttered over the equipment said I know how to use this but I’m not sure if I should. It was gorgeous to watch.
“Which, uh, which program did he apply to again?” Tony had asked, distracted by the beautiful boy looking around his lab.
Pepper’s arms had been crossed over her chest, her calculating look fixed on the back of his head. “He didn’t.”
“What?”
“He just... emailed his design into the public fan-mail email we have set up for you.”
“Why the hell would he do that?”
Pepper had paused, considering her words. Tony hummed, looking at her as he waited for her to continue. There was a wrinkle around her nose that told Tony she was working off intuition instead of facts, which wasn’t her favorite thing to do. “I couldn’t tell you why I think this, but I think the kid thought he wasn’t going to be around to see what we did with his design.”
Tony had considered this briefly. “Well. Fuck it. Give him access to the lab, 24/5. As soon as you’ve confirmed he didn’t submit the design anywhere else.” Then he’d left to let Pepper get on with her job.
...
From then on, Peter would be around sometimes when Tony was. Mostly weeknight evenings and afternoons. The first time it happened was less than a week after they’d first met. Tony had strolled in, a latte in his hand and the nanotech suit on his mind, to find Peter standing near the table Pepper had cleared off for him, looking terrified with both hands flat on the tabletop, a beaker filled to the brim with something whitish equidistant between them. “Mr. Stark! I’m so—I’m so sorry, Mr. Stark, I didn’t know you were going to be here or I wouldn’t have—”
His face had been flushed and his beautiful eyes sparkling with panic, but he had stood his ground as Tony approached him, setting his latte down on his own desk and carelessly draping his suit jacket over his chair. “No, no, kid. Calm down. We haven’t been properly introduced. Call me Tony.”
Tony had stuck out his hand, watching Peter’s face alternate between pale and flushed until he settled on splotchy red cheeks and bloodless lips. But he didn’t shake Tony’s hand. Tony had blinked at the kid, baffled, trying to remember a time that a nobody kid from Queens thought he was too good to shake Tony Stark’s hand. He had looked like he was going to faint, though. Is he just too scared to shake my hand? That’s sort of cute. “You alright, kid? I don’t shake just anybody’s hand, you know.” Peter had mumbled something that Tony didn’t catch. “What was that?”
“I can’t. I’m stuck, Mr. Stark. I’m so sorry.” There had been tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. Tony had looked from his storm-on-the-high-seas eyes to his hands, which, upon second glance, did indeed appear to be stuck to the table. Concentrating, Tony had been able to see the sheen coating the sides of the beaker and a rough two foot in diameter circle of the work surface.
Tony’s words had escaped before he could think them through. “That’s adorable. How long will you be stuck for?”
The blush had darkened until Tony wondered if it was uncomfortable. “... 45 minutes more. I think. I’ve been here for a bit already. Sir.”
“How long, Jarvis?”
Peter’s jaw had dropped open in wonder when Jarvis had responded, “13 minutes and 23 seconds since Mr. Parker slapped his hands down on the table in frustration.” His eyes were wide and bright, looking around the room for speakers, cameras, and microphones he wouldn’t find, and then he looked at Tony like he hung the stars and had arranged them just for him. He had looked kissable, touchable, vulnerable.
But then they’d just chatted, because Tony Stark wasn’t going to fuck a high schooler, even if they were 18. The kid hadn’t exactly relaxed, but the terror eventually was taken over completely by the hero-worship, the color in his cheeks fading to a pleasing pink, and god, the kid was funny. Tony had found himself explaining the nanotech suit idea to him, how Tony thought he could store the whole thing in the arc reactor slot in his chest. And the kid, bless him, the little dork had quipped, “Most men try to make everything bigger, not smaller.” Then’d turned so red it looked like he was going to pass out.
Tony was wrapped by then, he knew it, knew that he had a weakness for people who were too good for him and who could tease him that way. Knew he had a weakness for pretty things and for hero-worship. He’d forced himself to laugh like everything was normal, wink, and say, “Yeah, well, kid, I don’t have anything to compensate for.” The kid had blushed even harder, pulling at his hands like he wanted to escape. It felt like a bad omen, but Tony just hadn’t let himself think about it too hard.
...
Over the next six months, they developed something like a friendship. Tony had told Jarvis to let him know when Peter was in the lab. To make sure he’s not overworking himself—he has to finish school, he’d told himself at first. Someone has to make sure he isn’t going to get himself hurt, when he’d started watching him over the security camera. Then, when he had started conveniently showing up to parallel-play with the kid, It’s less lonely when there’s someone else in the lab. Then Tony had started feeling more validated when Peter proved to be first an excellent target for rubber duck debugging, then a talented assistant—cheerleader, collaborator, and companion all in one. Peter had been there, watched as Tony installed the Mark 50 into his own chest.
Tony frequently thought about that moment. The feeling of the suit forming around himself, the thrill of breakthrough, the rush of power. The testosterone and adrenaline that thrummed in his veins when he looked down at his sweet little intern through the mask, the kid staring right back with a blush on his face and awe in his eyes. Jarvis in his ear, saying, “Sir, your pulse is alarmingly elevated.”
...
With the benefit of hindsight, Tony could see the red flags. The trembling hands, the seemingly very narrow wardrobe—four shirts only, each more ill-fitting than the last, not a single pair of shoes other than the duct-taped ones he’d shown up in for his interview—the jutting bones of his wrist, the odd injuries, the times that Tony had turned on the security cam at odd hours of the night to see Peter asleep under his work station with his head on his backpack... The lack of jacket, gloves, hat, scarf, or anything else for winter when it came. He’d thought Peter was eccentric, not...
“Homeless,” Tony repeated, voice cold as he accepted the thin folder proffered to him by Pepper. She nodded, looking upset, sitting down next to him by the little cot they had Peter laid out in, hooked up to an IV and a steadily beeping heart monitor. Tony opened it and read the summary whatever employee had been charged with putting the folder together had written for him. Peter Benjamin Parker. Age 19. Graduate of Midtown high, freshman at LaGuardia Community College, major undeclared. Orphaned at age 6 by a car accident, lived with aunt and uncle May and Benjamin Parker until age 16, when they were killed in a B&E that, according to police records, Peter slept through. Entered the foster system, recorded as a runaway six months later. No record of a place of residence of any kind, including a dorm room, since then. Began Stark Industries internship in the spring of his senior year of high school.
“I should have—” They both stopped, having spoken at the same time, and instantly know that neither of them would win the who’s-fault game they had almost begun to play. Pepper sighed. “He just... collapsed?”
Tony scrubbed the palms of his hands over his eyes until he saw stars. “Yeah. Doc said it was hypoglycemia. He was acting kind of weird. ... He looked at me and looked down at the calculations on the table and said, ‘I’m not done with my test, Mr. Nelson.’ Then he hit the floor.” Pepper winced at the imagery.
They sat in silence for a moment. “I’m gonna set him up in the Tower,” he decided out loud.
Pepper’s eyes squeezed shut, long suffering. “You’re going to put a teenaged civilian in Stark Tower, which is your house and also where the Avengers all live and hang out.”
“... You have a point, Pep?”
“It’s not gonna look awesome when the media catches wind, Tony. He’s going to look like a live-in gold digger.”
Tony rolled his eyes at that. “So? He’s of age. He’s been of age since before I met him. We don’t pay him as an intern and since he didn’t win anything through any of our grants, scholarships, or fellowships, so no one can claim favoritism. It’s on the record that he was homeless. Even if I announce that he’s my new live-in catamite, I’m going to look charitable at best and predatory at worst.”
“And you’re going to do it anyway.”
Tony grinned at her. “Of course. Make the arrangements. Send him over when he wakes up and eats something. I’ll tell the team.”
...
Tony knew then, of course, that he’d already made an unhealthy decision. He saw how he was bringing the kid closer at the same time he was sealing off the exits. But the kid needed a place to stay, food, clothing, affection. And Tony wanted nothing more in the world than to give him that and everything else.
...
“Tony, you can’t—” But Tony could, and Rhodey knew it, so they both paused, staring each other down. “Well, you shouldn’t,” he tried instead. “That’s not appropriate. That kid is twenty years younger than you.”
Tony shook his head, wagging his finger condescendingly. “Only 18. And he has nowhere else to go.”
“Are you fucking— Steve! Steve, get in here, I need back up.”
Once Steve understood the situation, he took Rhodey’s side immediately. “Tony, this is the Avengers headquarters—”
Tony cut him off. “I trust this kid, Steve, he’s a good—”
“Do you trust him with your life? Do you trust him with ours?”
“Yes,” Tony answered, realizing as he did so that he knew almost nothing about Peter. But. You can’t fake adoration or respect, not really. Peter had both for Tony in spades. And Tony knew he was almost as starry-eyed for the other Avengers. “You’ll love him, Steve, trust me, he—”
Jarvis interrupted him. “Peter Parker is on his way up to the penthouse, sir.”