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“Happy birthday to you,” Happy says, raising his eyebrows at Peter as he brings his walkie talkie up to his mouth. “All clear. All clear. The foreign object has been disposed of. It did not explode or kill anyone. But it could have. Over.” His voice echoes off the walls of the garage.
Peter crosses his arms over his chest. “I mean. It isn’t my birthday. It’s July right now. It’s July, what is it—”
“The twenty third,” Tony says, clearing his throat.
“July 23rd,” Peter says, widening his eyes. “So, it’s—”
Happy’s eyes flash. “No, no, that’s not—the point of this isn’t—I don’t give a shit that it’s not your birthday, it’s not about that—all these lovely little gifts started showing up in April, at the latest, no matter when these people think Spider-Man’s birthday is—”
“And who hired the interns?” Tony asks, knocking Peter on the arm. “Hm, I think I know, I think I might—it’s on the tip of my tongue—”
“Listen,” Happy says, pointing at him. “Spider-Man was getting very popular. Tony, you were in bed. You were sleeping, you were recovering—”
Tony scoffs. “Yeah, you know, it takes a lot of energy out of you, saving the world, you should try it sometime—”
Peter tilts his head. “Well, he does save you—”
“He hasn’t once—there hasn’t been a single time—Pete, I’m standing up for you here—”
Peter scrambles, trying to get back on track. Defending himself against Happy. Happy, who is already walking away, the two of them following him.
“I mean,” Peter says, “yeah, right, what was, uh, I mean—I didn’t need the interns. You said you got me some interns, I didn’t actually—I didn’t need them. They were nice, they were, they were nice—”
“They were very nice,” Happy says, as they reach the far wall. He pushes the elevator button and waves haphazardly to the cleanup crew on the other end of the garage. Peter doesn’t look, because he knows his face is burning with embarrassment, whether they know this is all his fault or not.
And he tries to remind himself it isn’t his fault. Not really. Not exactly.
“Interns were fine,” Tony says, when the elevator dings. “Not top tier. We’ve seen top tier—”
Peter beams at him, and Tony beams back. They get on the elevator, and Happy starts punching the door close button over and over.
“Stop gassing him up,” Happy says, narrowing his eyes at them, and the doors close. “Interns were fine, but I gave you—I gave Spider-Man interns because you—because he was busier, with Iron Man languishing—”
Tony scoffs again. “Okay. I wasn’t languishing. You’re not supposed to make fun of a man who lost an arm.”
“Who’s making fun?” Happy says, widening his eyes again. “You always said the suit and you were one, well, we’re definitely closer to that, uh, situation, with the robot arm—but what we aren’t closer to is the problem at hand—”
“Happy,” Peter says, leaning against the wall next to Tony. “Come on. I didn’t tell them to make the twitter account—”
“I did that,” Happy says.
Tony makes an exaggerated grunting noise.
“But,” Happy says, pointing at him, “nobody told anybody to do this birthday shit. Giving Spider-Man a birthday—”
“Of course Spider-Man has a birthday,” Tony says, “he’s here, he was born, he exists—”
Happy keeps on like he can’t hear him, “—and it isn’t even Pete’s actual birthday—”
“Oh, you would have had them say August 10th?” Tony asks. “And then every villain in the world can use their little illegal hacking ways to find every kid in the right age range that was born on August 10th—”
“No,” Happy says, and the elevator dings. “No. And that doesn’t, that—that’s not even—that doesn’t even make any sense—” He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.
Tony nudges Peter’s arm, grinning at him, laughing silently.
Peter clears his throat, trying not to smile. He feels bad. He does. He has a penchant for feeling bad and this is directly connected to him so of course he feels bad, but he doesn’t know what to do with the whole thing. And Tony nagging Happy is always funny. He can imagine what it was like when they were younger.
“Both of you need to stop,” Happy says, looking at them again. “Smiling. You shouldn’t be smiling. This situation is dire.” He trudges out of the elevator as soon as the doors open, and his shoulders are sinking with the whole thing.
“It hasn’t reached dire yet,” Tony says, as they head down the hall to his main office. “I’d say right now it could be classified as a—minor inconvenience—”
“This is the third time this week we’ve had to evacuate the whole building,” Happy says, staring over at them. “Third time. This week. Ten times last month. That isn’t normal. That’s—that’s not even normal for us. The most abnormal group of people that there is. It’s abnormal for abnormal people.”
“But sometimes it’s—sometimes they send nice things,” Peter offers. “Like that whole kindergarten class and their paper flowers, or that guy from Jersey with his handmade Avengers card deck—or that giant Spider-Man painting—”
“Yeah, that's still in my office,” Happy says, disgusted. “It’s in there taking up space.”
“We gotta find a good place for that,” Tony says, scanning into the private hallway with his handprint. It approves him, and he pushes the glass door open. “I think I might commission that guy to do the rest of us too—”
Happy is waving his hands through the air. “You two aren’t—sometimes it’s nice things, or sometimes it’s a fake bomb, or a box full of cockroaches, or fucking anthrax—”
“Hap—”
“The twitter account said Spider-Man’s birthday was November 14th and it’s July and these gifts have been arriving since April! Did I say that already? April!”
They’ve reached Tony’s office, and Happy is yelling now. He looks all wild and crazy like he does when he gets really pissed off. And Peter stands there gritting his teeth, avoiding eye contact with him. Because he likes to be a problem solver but the only solution he can imagine here is tweeting hey guys stop sending Spider-Man birthday gifts because he’s dead but he’d have to hide and get a new suit or something and a new identity and then people would send sympathy gifts and like, the fake bombs and bad stuff would probably keep coming. That kind of stuff made its way here and the tower way before the birthday announcement, for sure, but it didn’t have as much—cover, as it does now, with all the other birthday arrivals.
Tony sighs, glances at Peter, and sighs again. “Listen,” he says, refocusing on Happy. “This is—we’ll hire a team to deal with this—”
“Great, hire a team to protect the superheroes, like the court jester who tasted the fig pudding for poison—”
“What kind of reference—Happy, relax. Relax. Don’t you have a massage appointment coming up? Didn’t I schedule that?”
“I can’t get a massage while I’m worrying about someone trying to blow up Spider-Man,” Happy says. “Contrary to popular belief, I care about that. I worry. And everything is coming here, to this building, this facility, so everybody else is—I know there’s no good solution. I know. We can’t change the address of the building, we can’t—pretend we’re not home.”
Peter clicks his tongue. “I haven’t really used the account since the interns left—”
“I saw those dog posts,” Tony says, smiling at him.
“Okay,” Peter says, holding his hands up. “I did post—the Spider Dog…day…photos…”
“Spider dog day,” Happy says, rolling his eyes. “Soon we’re gonna be celebrating that too, more gifts, dogs being shipped into the building—”
“You would have loved that corgi,” Tony says, looking through the papers stuffed into the mailbox on his door. “Or that little Australian shepherd, with the alien hat—oh hey, here’s one addressed to—happy birthday Spider-Man—”
Happy snatches it out of Tony’s hand before Peter can even blink. He’s shaking, his face a stony mask, and he’s scary. “This is another thing,” he says. “Everywhere, your little gifts, they’re just—teleporting around the building—we’ve got a pile of boxes in the garage, bag full of letters in R&D, more boxes in the damn living quarters—we have a mailroom. First line of defense, that’s where these things belong, the mail, but somehow everyone is just—we’re just transporting—”
“I’ll send out a memo,” Tony says, raising his voice, to talk over him. “Me. Myself. In red letters. Bold. A choice font. Everyone takes those seriously, especially after—saving the world, nearly dying, losing the arm business. I’m regarded with new reverence. New seriousness—”
Happy rolls his eyes again.
Tony keeps going. “We’re gonna—hire new team, maybe some of those B-list super-guys holed up in Greenwich, so you won’t have to worry about it—”
“Oh, I’ll worry—”
“—too much, so you won’t have to worry too much—”
“I’m sorry, Happy,” Peter says, sighing. “I, I mean—we could try to—we could try to come up with something, maybe say to hold off on the gifts, but like…I mean—I don’t know, I feel like…if someone wanted to send me a bomb, they’d like, do that anyway, without—an upcoming birthday as an excuse—”
“And then all the kindergartners would be sad, Happy,” Tony says, pushing his office door open. “They want—they’re celebrating Spider-Man’s birthday. For—months. They’re sending him gifts.”
Happy just stares at them for a long moment, and then he walks away.
“Hap!” Tony yells after him. “Hey!”
They watch him go.
“He’s not coming back,” Peter says. “He’s not turning around.”
Tony scoffs, and Peter follows him into the office. “He just forgets how many bombs and shit were sent to me in the early days,” Tony says. “A lot. It was a whole thing, and there wasn’t really…a way to make it stop, it just tapered off.”
“I was thinking about that,” Peter says. He sinks down into the chair in front of the desk. “He’s probably just mad he’s gotta go through it again—maybe we can like, get a new building where we can…we can have this stuff sent…” He trails off, looking at Tony’s desk. “Are these—are these also…Spider-Man gifts?” There’s a big pile of letters, a rainbow of different colored envelopes, and two boxes, one slightly bigger than the other.
“Oh hey,” Tony says. “Look at that.” He pats one of the boxes, and Peter stares at it, his stomach turning. “He is right, I don’t know how the hell these are…winding up everywhere…why do you have that look on your face—”
Peter keeps staring at the box. Its beat-up corners, the scribbled address, the stains on the cardboard. He doesn’t know if he’s anxious because Happy was so pissed off, or if he’s actually getting that ding-ding-ding in his head that he gets when—
“Peter—”
He stares at it—
“It’s not a bomb, right—”
No yeah that’s the ding-ding-ding—
“Pete—what—”
Peter leaps out of his seat, has no idea what the hell he’s doing, but he tackles Tony just as the box explodes, blowing out the window. Peter grabs onto Tony and thank God he was wearing one of his webshooters because he shoots a web and swings them over to the nearest tree, and thank God this is the compound and not a taller building and thank God pretty much everybody was still out of the building from the last evacuation—
And Peter lands, and they’re half perched in the tree, and Peter feels precarious, and he’s gotta make sure Tony doesn’t fall—
“Oh shit, the cardinal nest—”
“We didn’t hit it,” Peter breathes, his heart booming in his ears.
Tony stares over at the building, and he clicks his tongue. “Oh that’s—that was a baby bomb, look, it barely even got my office—”
“Maybe we shouldn’t brush it off—”
“I just don’t want you to feel bad—”
“I mean I didn’t do it—”
“I know, I know, but I know how you are—”
Both of them go quiet. Tony sighs, patting Peter’s shoulder with the new iron hand, wincing a little as he looks over at the fire. “Listen, this is—I have to fire Friday, I need to—completely rework her, that’s the real problem here, this shit shouldn’t even be getting into the building, let alone all the way to my damn desk—wait, you good? Pete? You alright?” Tony turns back towards him, staring at him, like he’s trying to suss out any injuries.
“I’m fine,” Peter says, with a huge sigh. “Are you—”
“Good, good—thanks for the quick thinking, big brain—like you said, you didn’t—this isn’t you—and listen, yes, there have been bombs, there was—that was definitely a bomb, but there have been way more nice things—way more—like one hundred times more—and this is actually a me problem, a Tony security problem, which I will—absolutely resolve by your actual—not the fake Spider-Man birthday, but the real Peter birthday—”
Peter keeps staring at the fire. “Maybe we should tell Happy we blew up your office on purpose.”
“Yeah, actually, I was thinking that, just so we don’t have to deal with his shit—”
“We can say we were working on—”
“Anything, literally anything—”
Peter can’t help it, and he laughs, hanging his head. “Okay, let’s—not be in a tree—”
“Okay, careful, I know you grabbed me real quick but that was under threat of explosion, I had three donuts at lunch, I know you only saw two—”
Peter grabs him easily, shoots another web, and swings them down to the ground. Peter feels his phone ringing in his pocket, and he can hear Tony’s ringing too. They settle back on their feet.
“He can’t be calling us both at the same time, right?”
“Uh, yeah, he probably can,” Tony says, but…neither of them move to answer.
Peter keeps staring at the fire, feeling a little…sinking…
“Hey,” Tony says, slinging his arm around Peter’s shoulders. “Way more nice gifts. Way way more. I’m not just saying that. You know our villains are relentless. This is like one guy, probably, mad because of some dumb shit—like Spider-Man got the last chopped cheese somewhere instead of him—and on August 10th we’re not coming anywhere near this building. May and I were talking about that pizza place in Harlem. Not here. Even though there are nice things here too—Christ, he’s calling again—”
Peter nods at him. He knows. He knows he’s loved. And also hated. But hated by bad guys, so…that’s…something… “Okay let’s—let’s go inside and pretend we took the back way to the lab and we weren’t even in the office—”
“He knows we were in there,” Tony says, shaking his head.
They start trudging back towards the building.
Peter winces. “Okay, so maybe—he doesn’t know for sure, he didn’t see us close the door—did he—”
“Shit, I don’t remember. He walked away. He’s always watching, even if we don’t think he’s watching—uh, okay, I—let’s, uh—what would he maybe even slightly believe—maybe something fell out of my arm, it’s been sort of acting up here and there, it could explode—”
Peter hurts his neck with how fast he looks at him.
Tony brushes him off, reaching to scan into the back door. “I’m lying, kid, come on, you know when I’m lying! It’s a Happy lie, a lie for Happy—”
The door whips open a lot faster than Peter expected, and he nearly chokes on his own breath.
“A lie for Happy?” Happy says, standing there, dead-eyed.
“Hey!” Tony yells. “Hap, I—”
“I jumped out the window, and it exploded,” Peter says, stupidly, his brain sludge and embers and oatmeal. “It just, I mean, the whole room—exploded, it exploded, on its own—”
“Completely on its own,” Tony says, and he brushes past Happy, tugging Peter along with him, and Peter tries to avoid Happy’s eyes.
“We need to—reboot Friday, because she’s rebelling,” Peter says, also stupidly.
“Hopefully not—hopefully just a playful rebel,” Tony says. “Not like, uh, past—situations—”
Peter continues to trail after him, and he doesn’t look back, even though he can hear Happy’s heart beating, can hear his angry huffing.
“Everybody’s fine, by the way!” Happy yells. “This time!”
“That’s great!” Tony yells, and Peter jogs a bit to catch up to him. Tony glances at him and starts whispering. “Okay, let’s uh, buy some property in Greenwich, hire some—low level super-powered guys, work up a nice tweet—what do you want for your birthday, huh? Real birthday. Better subject. Deflecting, but, necessary—a conversation I meant to have, explosion or no…explosion—”
“Not to explode,” Peter says, blinking at him. “I want to—not explode.”
“I can arrange that,” Tony says. “Easily.”
And Peter hears heels clicking around the corner. And Pepper comes out of nowhere, and she looks normal, not mad about explosions or evacuations or anything. She’s smiling, and she’s holding something pretty big.
And Peter’s got a million thoughts in his head, and he keeps telling himself way more people love Spider-Man than want to explode him.
“Everything okay?” Pepper yells. “I heard—”
“You didn’t hear anything, it’s all fine,” Tony yells, waving at her. “Everyone good?”
“Everyone’s good,” she yells back. “People were pretty much—heading out for the day when the evacuation started—Peter, honey, look at this, it’s from that middle school you—I mean, Spider-Man visited in December—”
And she scoots back a few steps and shakes out the thing she’s holding. It’s a big banner, with a bunch of kid handprints, and there are bunch of little Spider-Man figures all over it, in crayon and paint and colored pencil, and the big message is HAPPY BIRTHDAY SPIDER-MAN in red and blue letters.
“Wow,” Peter says, grinning, his chest going warm.
“Don’t show him anything nice!” Happy yells, rushing closer. “Pepper! Don’t show either one of them anything nice! They’re trying to allow this building to be blown to smithereens—”
“What is he saying?” Pepper asks, looking up at Tony.
“Nothing,” Tony says. “It’s fine. We’re gonna address it—look at this one, Pete, look at Spidey fly with these little web wings—”
“Way more people love me than wanna blow me up,” Peter says, to Pepper, like an idiot. And he nods at her, like an even bigger idiot. The explosion is still ringing in his ears, but HAPPY BIRTHDAY is dancing in glitter and gemstones.
“Of course,” Pepper says, narrowing her eyes at him.
“Okay good,” Peter says, watching Tony point out all the different versions of Spider-Man on the banner.
And Peter hopes August 10th is explosion free. And pizza filled. And hopefully by the time “Spider-Man’s birthday” rolls around, they’ll have some sort of system for this.
Happy is still yelling, still approaching them. “The tweet is gonna say stop sending Spider-Man gifts to the Avengers compound—”
“—and start to send them to our new Greenwich headquarters, address to be revealed shortly,” Tony finishes, glancing back at Peter, and grinning.
“Happy, don’t be mean to him,” Pepper says, glaring over at him and putting her hands on her hips. “It’s his birthday.”
“It’s not his birthday,” Happy yells, and he’s getting closer and closer. “It’s July. It’s July! It’s not even Spider-Man’s fake birthday.”
“It’s almost his birthday,” Pepper says. “He’s getting gifts.”
“He’s getting exploded,” Happy says, alongside Peter now. “And they’re lying to me about a second explosion.”
“There wasn’t a first explosion,” Peter says, fast, looking at him.
“And I don’t lie,” Tony says, standing up from his spot by the banner. “Ever. About anything. Happy. Look at the middle schoolers. They love Spider-Man, they love his birthday. I’ll rent out Russ and Daughters tomorrow, for us, just us. After I fix everything.”
Happy huffs at him but doesn’t say anything else.
“This is why we don’t have interns,” Tony says, raising his eyebrows.
“Well,” Peter says.
“No,” Tony says. “That was fake. You were always a member of the team.”
“Family, more like,” Pepper says, softly.
Happy huffs again. “I don’t want them to blow up, and I’m the bad guy—”
“Okay, I had him,” Peter blurts out, gesturing towards Tony, “I knew it was gonna blow up, and I swung us out of there, neither one of us exploded—”
“Explosion!” Happy yells. “Blow up! Exactly!”
“Pete,” Tony says, bending down again to roll up the banner. “Girls coming for dinner? May, MJ? Pep, I know you’re in—let’s find something good, let’s find a good Greek place, something like that, I’m not liking the vibes here—feels a little off—”
“Oh, he’s ignoring me now—”
“I think I hear a buzzing—”
“Vibes are off, maybe because this place is constantly under threat of blowing up because there is a consistent influx of gifts and false gifts—”
“No more interns!” Peter yells. “No more birthdays!”
Tony stands up, wrapping the banner into a smooth roll. “Oh,” he says, warmly. “A million more birthdays.”
And Peter can’t help but smile, caught between explosions and evacuations and drawings and hand-sewn Spider-Man plushies and if he knew what it meant to be a hero when he walked into Oscorp that day, well—
Who’s he kidding? He’d do it the same anyway. There’s bad, there’s real bad, but there’s always good too. He’s just gotta focus on that, and try to keep the bad at bay.
Maybe he’d do one thing different—just one thing, so someone would still be here—
“C’mon,” Tony says, snapping Peter back to reality. “Let’s find a good spot for this, do a little, uh—clean-up around here, before dinner—just a little nondescript generic clean-up—”
“Happy birthday, Pete!” Pepper says, sing-songy, completely in line with the way Tony’s been acting all along. Nonchalant. He knows she knows, but she trusts him. He hopes he and MJ are like that when they’re married. Wait a minute—
Peter clears his throat and smiles at her.
“Thank—”
“It’s not—” Happy starts, but he stops himself. He sounds like he’s about to boil over, but he doesn’t correct her. He doesn’t even try. “I could go for some Greek,” he says, through gritted teeth.
“There he is!” Tony yells, and he turns around and holds Happy’s face in his hands for a moment, while Happy stares at him. “We’ll have a nice birthday dinner for Peter,” Tony says, letting him go. “And Spider-Man both. And then do it again…on August tenth. And then November—”
“Fourteenth,” both Peter and Happy say, at the same time.
Peter grins, and Happy glares.
And Tony beams at them both.
“Sir,” a voice says, on Happy’s walkie talkie. “There’s another box down here in the mail room you might wanna check out.”
Peter grimaces at him, his face going hot.
“It’s right here next to this huge flower display of Spider-Man’s face.”
Happy digs his fingers into his eyes. “If it’s a bomb, I’m just letting it take me.”
“Ah, come on, you’ve got Spider-Man’s first and second birthdays to look forward to—”
Peter covers his face with his hand, laughing to keep from crying.