Chapter Text
It all starts with an email.
When Tony told Steve ‘mi tower es su tower, please make yourself at home’, he had expected the man would hang a picture or two, maybe add some board games to the collection.
Instead, Steve had creatively interpreted that phrase as ‘please go home-deco-ing your heart out, put new curtains everywhere, turn an old unused office into a full-on library, and ensure an alarming increase in the number of roommates’. Illustrated perfectly by the email Tony received just now, subject: Notice of Incoming Resident.
Dear Tony. Peter Parker will be moving into the bedroom next to Bruce as per tomorrow morning. Please extend your welcome and refrain (for at least one week) from traumatizing him. Kind regards, Steve Rogers.
Who the hell is Peter Parker.
This is the fourth email of this kind Tony has received. The first one was when Steve got Bruce Banner to move in, almost half a year ago by now. Great call, no complaints there. Sam Wilson followed a few months later. He is generous and easy-going, but other than that, not a bad person. And recently, Natasha Romanoff. Pepper was happy with that one, which is surprising because Steve was already the girlfriend she never had: the two of them went shopping for tablecloths last weekend and Pepper keeps asking his opinion about baby names.
Tony is not giving his firstborn some Captain-Rogers-approved name. “FRIDAY, where’s Steve?”
“Library.”
Of course he is.
-
The new library-room has floor-to-ceiling shelves, a thick Persian rug and a deep red couch where Steve is sitting and — insult to injury — reading What to expect when you’re expecting. He may as well be reading a book called I’m gonna be a better dad than the actual dad.
Tony crosses his arms and slouches against the doorpost. “Look who remembered to put on his smarty pants and goodie-two-shoes this morning.”
“Good morning, Tony.”
Tony glances up and down the nearest shelves. “Baby books and the holocaust. What a combo.”
“There’s still empty shelves,” Steve says mildly, nodding his head towards a corner. “If you tell me a topic you’re interested in, I can have some books brought in.”
“And I liked this place just fine the way it was.”
“The unused office? Three empty filing cabinets and a broken chair?”
“Well, I know you’ve lived a life of luxury, but I’ve always been a simple man.”
Sometimes he misses the good old days, when these sorts of remarks made Steve bristle or frown in confusion. Nowadays, Steve just smiles. “Tony,” he says. “I need FRIDAY to add Peter Parker to her clearance, Pepper already arranged for a badge.”
Oh, right. That’s what he came here for. “Who the hell is Peter Parker?”
“He’s Spider-Man.”
“He’s… Spider-Man.”
Steve gives a nod.
“Huh,” Tony says.
“I assigned him a mission, to find our Shadow Chaser. And bring him in.”
“Find the… We care about that shrimp? You could have told me, I can probably find him for you like that.” He snaps his fingers.
“I need your focus on our improved communication network, those portable mesh nodes. Spider-Man is the best person for the job, Nick Fury agreed.” Steve slides one finger along the edge of his book, his expression turning to something more unreadable. “Listen, he’s— Just a head’s up. I think he’s a good kid, but he’s got ah… rough edges.”
Tony tilts his head and squints. “Doesn’t everyone have rough edges compared to Steven Grant Rogers?”
“I’m picking him up from a juvenile detention center.”
That’s—a red alert. Tony just spent yesterday evening babyproofing the kitchen, and Steve wants to bring some knife-wielding maniac in here? “When were you planning on telling me?”
“Just now.” Steve says slowly. “When I told you.”
“What did he do?”
“He didn’t do anything. He wasn’t supposed to be in there.”
Tony rolls his eyes. “Sure. Yeah. Sure. He was framed. Miscarriage of justice is what he told you, right? Shawshank stuff.”
Steve looks faintly amused again. “You can’t be telling me that you’re worried about this, Tony. Of all people.”
“Why would I be worried? Why would I be worried about an enhanced criminal moving in? It’s not as if we have state secrets and billion-dollar technology up for grabs around here.”
“And an AI that’s always watching.”
“Pepper is two months pregnant. I was working on making this tower a kid-friendly space, Steve, and you’re putting an ex-con down the hall!”
“Peter is a kid.”
“I meant actual kids. Teenagers are devils. I’m skipping that stage. My child is going to stay a toddler for 20 years and then switch straight to self-sufficient adult. I’m still working out the right DNA-coding for it, but I’ll get it done.”
Steve’s smile cranks up a fraction. “That’s disturbing.”
Tony slaps a hand over his eyes and huffs loudly, then points at Steve. “Some books on actinobiology would be good.”
-
The Shadow Chaser. A far too cool nickname for an altogether very lame enhanced individual who keeps turning up at cold crime scenes in the middle of the night. He’s… vaguely on Tony’s radar. People on social media seem quite obsessed with figuring out why this guy is skulking around the streets at night in a black ski-mask. Someone posted a video of him easily lifting up an entire dumpster to retrieve some broken parts of Spider-Man’s web shooters, so he is definitely enhanced. And he does seem to have a particular interest in those back-alleys where Spider-Man was active during the day. Spider-Stalker. Not worthy of being called an Avenger’s level threat.
So sure, all in all, Tony can imagine why Steve made the call that Spider-Man would be the best person for this particular mission. Still, though. Something doesn’t add up.
“Pe-ter Par-ker,” he sing-songs to himself as he hops down the wide set of stairs. The Avengers’ living quarters are sort of awkwardly spread across two floors. Upstairs is his workshop, lab, a gym, and the office-now-library, all with sloped ceilings and a view on the helipad from every angle. Downstairs are the bedrooms and bathrooms, and a kitchen that bleeds into a long but weirdly narrow living room.
As he hoped, there’s people down here that he can complain to. Sam and Pepper are fixing lunch, laughing about something, some kind of tropical music playing down the speakers like they are on a beach in the Bahamas—Sam is even wearing flipflops. “Hide the silverware,” Tony says. “Steve is having a criminal move in.”
“I’ll set out another plate,” Pepper says.
“No, but really.”
“I assume you’re referring to Peter Parker.” And then she says something long-winded about non-offender detention that he doesn’t fully register. “Something doesn’t add up,” she says.
“My thoughts. My thoughts exactly.” He sits, curls his ankles around the legs and drums his fingers against the tabletop.
“I know that look,” Sam points at him with a bread knife. “Is this going to be another one of your obsessions?”
Pepper hides a smile behind her hand. “Sam. It will work out,” she says.
It’s outrageous how much they all get along, like one big hallmark movie. That’ll be their critical thinking error. They probably think bringing a teenager in is fine, like a bunch of roommates deciding to adopt a puppy. And then no one remembers to walk it and it’ll keeps chewing up the carpet and shitting in a corner of the hallway.
It’s an analogy that works, if you think about it.
-
Natasha lives at the gym. She probably sleeps under a squat rack like it’s a canopy bed.
She slings one arm around the punching bag and gives him a look. “Tony. Be an adult.”
“I am an adult. I got the certificates to prove it.”
Natasha reaches out and taps Tony’s forehead with one boxing glove. “Why don’t you hold all these complaints until he’s actually here?”
“Why is no one ever on my side?”
“You don’t like people on your side,” she says. “In fact, if I agreed with you, you’d probably change your opinion by morning.”
-
Bruce lives in the lab, probably sleeps propped up against the chromatography station as if it’s a lounge chair.
Unfortunately, he has nothing sensible to say either. Doesn’t even look up from his book. “Tony. Many Avengers have a past with mistakes, you included. Me included. I’d like to think we have compassion for that sort of thing.”
“Oh, he can sow his wild oats all he wants. Just not anywhere around my prospective newborn, thank you.”
“I doubt he is a greater threat than anyone else at this tower.”
“What do you think about this Shadow Chaser guy?”
“I wouldn’t put him very high on the list of threats, but I’ve also learned to never underestimate.”
“I could find him, and we wouldn’t need to bring in some stranger.”
“Do you think that maybe you might really be panicking about something else, but you’re projecting it onto this?” Bruce asks gently.
“Everyone in this tower is an idiot,” Tony complains.
-
And then, the next morning, he walks in on a teenager standing by the kitchen island. The teenager has a bulky sweatshirt and messy hair, and very sharp eyes. And he is holding a banana.
“Aha!” Tony says and points, though he isn’t even sure why.
The teenager— Peter looks back at him, one eyebrow climbing up.
“Where’d you get that banana?”
Peter looks at the fruit bowl right in front of him, then back at Tony. “Ecuador, dumbass.”
“Did they not feed you enough in prison?”
“I’m sorry,” Peter drawls. “Who are you and what the hell is your problem?”
Tony’s problem is that he found out two months ago that he is going to be a father, and bananas are supposed to be healthy for pregnant women which is why he bought them in the first place, and he’s about to be a dad, meaning he is supposed to—what, instill values in another human being? Set boundaries? Pay compliments that aren’t even disguised as sarcastic insults?
“Seriously.” Peter says, bringing him back to the present. The kid has peeled open his banana, is chewing, and adds: “Bananas are scientifically berries, you know.”
“That can’t be right. And don’t talk with a full mouth.”
“Yes, dad.”
Tony chokes on his own breath. “Don’t. Do not go there. That word is a trigger for me right now.”
“Okay,” Peter makes a sort of circular motion with his banana, the peel flapping against his hand. “I can see that you’re going through some sort of—probably midlife crisis,”
“I’m thirty-eight!”
“..so it’ll probably better for both of us if you kindly fuck off and don’t talk to me for—let’s say the entire duration of my stay here. Which is until I’ve found the guy you all want me to find, you’re welcome.”
“It wasn’t my choice to have you around.”
“Great,” Peter says. “I love people who didn’t choose to have me around, they’re my favorite type of people.”
He finishes the banana, chucks the peel in the general direction of the sink, holds up a piece sign, then rotates it into a middle finger and leaves.
The first words Spider-Man ever said to him: ‘Ecuador, dumbass’.
-
Peter doesn’t join them for lunch.
“He has arrived, though?” Natasha asks.
“Peter wanted to take lunch in his own room,” Steve says. “It’s a bit overwhelming, meeting everyone at once.”
“Oh yeah,” Tony says, smushing a potato under his spoon. “He sure seemed very overwhelmed when I talked to him.”
Nat narrows her eyes, pointing at Steve with her fork. “I want to assess him.”
“That’s… not necessary Natasha.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“He ate Pepper’s bananas,” Tony says.
“This tower is full of insane people,” Sam laments.
-
It’s not just lunch. It’s dinner, and breakfast. A day goes by and another, and another, and Tony never even catches a glimpse of the new tenant. He complains to Steve about it when they’re painting the nursery together.
“Shouldn’t you be happy about that?” Steve says. “Considering you seem to have a phobia of teenagers?”
Tony is on a stepladder, but he forgot why. He’s just sort of standing there. Meanwhile, Steve is rolling primer onto the walls in neat V-motions, exactly the way the home depot people did it in the video. It’s still annoying, how the guy is always immediately good at everything.
“It’s not kosher. FRIDAY told me the kid leaves the tower each morning and doesn’t return until late afternoon, but there have been no Spider-Man sightings. So what is he up to all day?”
“He goes to school.”
“Ah,” Tony says. “Well. Okay. That checks out.”
Steve smiles.
“But he’s been in this tower for days and I haven’t seen him. It’s creepy. Did we recruit Spider-Man or Sasquatch?”
“You can pick him up from school if you want. Pepper and I have been taking shifts.”
“Is that right.” Pepper hasn’t mentioned anything.
“He’s not very talkative, though. Not to me at least. He just puts in headphones and listens to music the whole way.”
Ah. So the kid isn’t fond of Steve. That means he has good taste, at least.
-
It comes up when he heads to bed that evening and Pepper is still up, sitting up against the headboard, slowly flipping through a notepad. “We decided on green for the nursery,” Tony says as he toes off his shoes.
“Steve told me.”
“Isn’t he a champ. Love how much you two get along.”
“I like green. The most natural color.” And then she says something about going to Long Island tomorrow, and something else about solar panels.
Tony slides into bed and pulls the covers up to his chin. “What are you reading?”
“I wrote down conversation topics for when I pick Peter up from school tomorrow.”
Tony stares at her.
“I want him to like me. Is that pathetic?”
“Yes, very,” Tony says. “Show me that.” He takes the notepad from her and starts flipping through it. “Ice cream flavors,” he reads out loud. “Pufferfish. Pufferfish?”
“I saw a documentary on them, they’re interesting.” She snatches the notepad back and roots around in the bed sheets for her pen. “Teenagers never liked me, even when I was one myself. And now we’re going to have a baby who will be a teenager one day.”
“I’m actually working on that. I’m gonna code that puberty right out of its DNA.”
“I just need to know that my own child isn’t going to hate me.”
“Of course our kid is going to hate us,” Tony says. “That’s what normal kids do. You need to relax, hon.”
“You just said you want to genetically modify our child, Tony, I don’t think it’s me who should relax.”
“Point taken.”
-
The shadow chaser. He hasn’t been sighted in a while, but Tony only needs a few prompts to FRIDAY to get himself a holographic grid of the city, streets rendered in lines of cobalt blue, red dots marking every sighting of the enhanced. Rooftops, subway tunnels, back alleys.
Outside, rain is beating down against the helipad. Tony leans back in his chair, hands wrapped around a coffee mug. “FRIDAY, what is the most concerning thing anyone has seen the Shadow Chaser do?”
Friday pauses a moment. “I have several instances of him ignoring ‘do not cross’-tape,” she then says.
Why would Nick Fury care about this guy? And if he does care about this guy, why would he leave the case to some delinquent teenager? Something is not adding up.
“Temporal gradient, FRI, color-code the sightings by time.”
The map shifts as the red dots flicker into a rainbow spectrum. Older sightings now light up orange in the south of Queens, south of Forest Park, while the freshest data points towards the northeast, around Long Island City.
“Boss. I’ll go ahead and remind you that you promised Mr. Rogers to have the portable mesh nodes deployed into the Quinjet and every armored van by this weekend.”
“Boring,” Tony mutters.
“Possibly life-saving, boss. Communication is key to any relationship.”
Tony waves a hand and the holographic map disappears. “FRIDAY. Are bananas actually berries?”
“Botanically, yes.”
“Hmm,” Tony says, and spins in his chair. “Is Pepper picking the kid up from school today?”
“Ms. Potts is in Long Island City all day.”
“She didn’t even tell me!”
“Actually—"
“What have we got on Peter Parker, anyway?”
“Boss. The portable mesh nodes.”
“Just give me the headlines.”
“If I could sigh, I would,” FRIDAY says. “Shall I begin with the information I can legally access, or jump straight into breaking state and federal privacy laws?”
“Thank you for checking, let’s take the unusual route and start with the vanilla stuff.”
“I found some social media accounts that are fairly inactive and a few mentions of his academic achievements.” She brings up a scatter of blue holographic images above his desk. “The school newspapers mention, amongst other things, a project where Mr. Parker repurposed a toaster into a model for a closed spacetime loop-stabilizer.
Tony waves his hand to expand the file. His brow furrows as he reads. “What the hell is—This kid rewrote the laws of physics for a science fair? Did he invent time travelling toast?” There is a picture of a younger Peter Parker, no older than fourteen, his hair still messy but his eyes a whole lot less sharp.
“Boss,” FRIDAY says. “Seriously. The portable mesh nodes.”
Tony raps his knuckles against the table. “Tell Rogers I’m picking the kid up. Send the address to my phone.”
-
Midtown tech. A school for nerds. And ex-cons, apparently. Smart ex-cons, though. Tony knocks sharply against the window when he spots Peter.
Peter opens the door and slides into the passenger seat. He scowls. “Where’s Pepper?”
“Long Island City.”
The scowl turns into a grimace and Peter says, “I hate Long Island City.”
Tony wants to ask what Long Island City has ever done wrong, but he thinks Peter is probably just speaking out of principle, because teenagers always hate everything.
The kid dumps his bag at his feet. He takes a pair of earbuds from his pocket and starts untangling them.
“So you’ve been talking to Pepper, huh?”
Peter says nothing.
“I’ll give you a hundred bucks to tell her she’s going to make a great mom.”
“Every single one of you is insane,” Peter says. “Start the damn car.”
“You know, there’s a whole science behind why your earphones spontaneously get tangled.”
“I knooow, Brownian motion in the elastomers,” Peter says with much irritation, as if this is a topic Tony has been nagging him about for a week.
“Is that how you made that bio-inspired intergalactic sling-shot for AP physics?”
Peter yanks at the earbuds. “What the fuck, stalker?”
“It was in the school paper. You also use elastomers in your web fluid?”
Peter says nothing.
“I’ll give you another hundred bucks for a sample of that stuff.”
Peter says nothing.
“Want to come up to my workshop when we get back, I’ll give you a tour? Give you a hand finding that Shadow Chaser?”
“No. Fuck off,” Peter says. And puts in the earbuds.
Tony will wear him down eventually.
-
“Can’t believe he didn’t even want a tour. That’s a sign of some sort of psychopathy, I’m sure. You know, early signs.” He counts them on his fingers: “Hurting animals, having no friends, refusing to visit Tony Stark’s workshop.”
“He’s busy,” Steve says as he clears the plates away. “He’s working on a case. And he isn’t hurting animals. If anything, Spider-Man seems to be strangely preoccupied with saving cats, dogs and pigeons, lately.”
“Peter Parker’s Paw Patrol,” Sam says. “Ooh. Movie night, anyone?”
Peter was once again conspicuously absent during dinner. “Does the kid even eat?” Tony asks.
“I’ve seen him sneaking granola bars,” Natasha says.
Tony throws Steve an incredulous look. “Rogers. Who is looking out for this kid, exactly?”
“Sorry,” Steve says. “What happened to the ‘how dare you let an ex-con move in’-speech?”
“Well,” Tony says, and falters. Then scowls when he catches a slow smile creeping across Pepper’s face. He huffs. “What happened is, he made a multidimensional toaster.”
“He….” Steve starts, eyeing their toaster dubiously.
“Not here, genius. When he was in his first year of high school.”
Steve perks up. “He told you? He never talks to me.”
“Of course he doesn’t. You’re the one holding something over him. What’s gonna happen to him once he finds this Shadow Chaser, back to prison?”
Steve purses his lips. “I’m sure I can find another mission for him.”
“So he’s here as long as he’s useful, huh?”
“Stay out of this, Tony,” Steve says, sounding unusually stiff. “I’m handling it.”
“I’m going over there. You guys pick a movie without me.”
He tosses his napkin in the direction of the sink and heads to the hallway. Steve calls something after him, but Tony has gotten very good at not listening to him. He passes the elevator. He knows Peter’s room is next to Bruce’s, but there’s no way he could have guessed: no doorhanger, no creative door mat, no magnets or stickers, nothing that indicates anyone is living here. To be fair, the kid hasn’t been here long. But even Natasha hung up a nameplate.
Tony knocks and the door swings open. Peter scowls at him, no surprised there. Behind him, his bedroom doesn’t look any different from the unused guestrooms further down this hallway. Bare walls, a curtainless window, beige blankets.
“I like your style,” Tony says. “It breathes juvie jail cell. You got any hobbies?”
Peter leans one shoulder against the doorframe. “Sleeping, staring at walls, avoiding human interaction.”
“Hmm,” Tony cocks his head, gives the kid a measuring look. “How about hanging a dartboard? They let you play darts in prison?”
“Oh yeah. They’re really big on handing out sharp, stabby objects to all the prisoners. Sorry, residents. Is there a point to you being here?”
“We’re getting ready for movie night. Want to join?”
“I’m busy,” Peter says. “Working that case.”
“Kid. You’re not just here for some mission. Is that what Steve told you when he plucked you out of that jail cell?”
Peter snorts and pushes off the doorframe. “Steve didn’t tell me shit,” he says. “And even if he did, I do what I want. So if I wanted to sit around with all you people and play Settlers of Catan while eating homemade pretzels, I would. But I don’t, so I don’t. You are a roof over my head and food on my plate. Other than that, you can all leave me the hell alone.” He turns and the bedroom door slams.
“Is that right,” Tony tells the closed door, setting his hands on his hips. “Oh, we’ll see about that.”
Mission. Freaking. Acquired.
Also, homemade pretzels sounds like a great idea.
-
The thing is. Tony can probably find out who this Shadow Chaser is in just a few days if he puts his mind to it. And then Peter can move on to spending his time doing something that actually interests him. In Tony’s workshop, building a coffeepot that ages backwards or something like that. Steve won’t even need to know. Peter can just pretend like he’s still working this case. Tony will cover for him. They’ll drag it out for as long as they need to—
“Tony?” Steve says. He has appeared in the middle of the workshop and is looking at the holographic map of Shadow-Chaser-sightings. “Is this for those portable mesh nodes?” Bless him for being as dense as led when it comes to technology.
“In a way,” Tony says, and makes the hologram disappear with a hand wave. “Rogers, I’ll have the first updates done — soon. Question.” He leans back in his chair and steeples his fingers. “Why does Fury care so much about this Shadow Chaser?”
“It isn’t your concern, Tony, Peter is working on it.”
“What aren’t you telling me? Is that enhanced more dangerous than he seems?”
“He is precisely dangerous enough,” Steve says very evenly, “to be the right job for Spider-Man to handle. Let him handle it.”
“What if he needs help?”
“Then I will be the one helping him. You have enough work to do.”
Tony leans an elbow on the table and points. “Oh really. You’ll be helping him? You knew the kid had been in jail for weeks, and only got him out of there once you had a use for him. He’s fifteen!”
“Your attitude about this whole thing is giving me whiplash.”
“I’m two months pregnant, hormones are kicking in.”
“Send me a confirmation when the updates are… updated. An electronic mail will suffice.” Steve leaves.
Tony squints at the glass doors hissing shut and brings the holographic map back up with a flick of his wrist. He leans back and studies the pattern of dots. “FRIDAY, get me a compilation of the least unwatchable footage we have of this enhanced.”
“Compiling. Stand by.”
It’s still fuzzy and grainy, what she ends up showing him. Not to mention boring. Very, very boring. Just some person-like shape, walking around poorly lit alleyways, standing on poorly lit corners, climbing up poorly lit walls—
Hang on. Tony sits up straighter. “Rewind that.”
FRIDAY does.
“Is he… climbing up that wall?”
“If that black blob is indeed a person, then yes, it would appear that way.”
Tony leans back, his mind racing. “That’s a very specific superpower, wouldn’t you say?”
“Only one other enhanced is known to have it,” FRIDAY agrees.
So perhaps they are dealing with Spider-Man’s evil twin. Or perhaps Spider-Man, for some unfathomable reason, likes to spend some evenings running around in black rather than his own red-and-blue onesie. Meaning, Peter Parker is both Spider-Man and the Shadow Chaser.
In which case, this kid just got himself a get-out-of-jail-free-card by pretending to chase down his own alter ego.
In which case, unsurprisingly, Nick Fury and Captain America are a pair of oblivious dumbasses.
“Tell Rogers I’m picking the kid up from school.”