InsaneJournal

Who: Peter Parker and Tony Stark
What: Tony Stark, in the library, with the candlestick a disguise and answers
When: 26 Feb, afternoon [backdated]
Rating/Warnings: Green

Queen’s central library was quiet at 3:45pm. After all, the public libraries weren’t as popular as they used to be but it was perfect for what Peter needed. The librarian had managed to order him in some books on alternate universe theory from the larger NY Public library and so Peter had a stack of them on the table in front of him, headphones in his ears and he was working his way slowly through some of the more interesting ones. He knew that maybe he shouldn’t be reading too much into everything that had happened, but at the same time he just wanted to know without a shadow of a doubt that Aunt May in the other timeline was okay. The one here was, and the one here was still mad at him for being Spiderman. She’d called him three times and he’d agreed - after much deliberation - to turn on the ‘find my iphone’ function so that she could track him.

When his phone had pinged at the library, she texted to say thank you and then she hadn’t bothered him since.

He chewed on the edge of his thumb, ignoring the swirling guilt around the fact that whilst he might have been exactly where she thought he was, he wasn’t studying, he was getting ready to meet Tony Stark. And that was a whole conundrum in itself. That meeting in the Avengers base hadn’t been a test. It hadn’t been a test and Peter had turned it down like an idiot. He hadn’t stopped thinking about it since Tony had let it slip.

He pushed his hands through his hair and rested his face in his palms for a moment, just breathing. If Mr Stark was coming here, he needed to play it cool. He needed to just play it cool. Yeah, play it cool.

Rubbing the back of his neck, Peter glanced around trying to see if Tony had arrived yet. Though… he wasn’t entirely sure how Tony would turn up. After all, he was a fugitive- it had been all over the news and google. In fact, there was an entire Reddit subthread dedicated purely to current conspiracy theories as to what exactly had happened to Tony Stark after Sharknado. Not that Peter had spent all night falling deep down the Reddit rabbit hole or anything… Nope. Definitely not.

He cleared his throat, breaking his own thought train and looking around again, this time a little more obviously. Though there was still no sign of anyone that looked even remotely like Mr Stark. Was Peter about to get stood up?

God, he hoped not.

The reigning king of face-diving down rabbit holes, Tony Stark, walked into the library like he owned the place. He didn't own it nor did he look like he owned it. Instead of one of the suits he favored, Tony was wearing a very much incognito black hoodie (hood up!) and baggy running pants with sneakers, with tinted sunglasses slipping halfway down his nose. To everyone else, though, who did NOT know Tony Stark, he resembled a geeky teen girl wearing goth clothes that were three sizes too small. He grinned at a librarian who was staring at him and kept walking, his eyes skimming the room for a familiar face.

Thankfully, it wasn't long before he spied Peter and a mountain of books. He walked over, grabbing a chair and noisily pulling it along with him, so he could settle down by Peter's side.

"Hi," Tony said as he snatched a book from the top of a stack, flipping it open and quickly skim reading a couple of page. "None of these are gonna tell you how much deep doggy doo we're all in. More power to you for trying. But I don't think any physics books cover wizards with time magic."

He snapped the book shut and turned sideways in the chair, hooking an elbow up onto the edge of the table so he could lean on it. He appeared to be studying Peter closely, doing a visual check to make sure the kid was holding up after finding out time was broken.

"...how're you doing?" he asked Peter, finally, awkwardly, resting one hand on Peter's shoulder and giving him a friendly - almost fatherly - shake.

Peter blinked a little bit as Tony appeared. Having realised that someone was in front of him he spotted the way that the librarian was tutting and tsking at just the amount of noise that he was making as he dragged the chair from an unnecessarily far away table. A few other people had lifted their heads, too, at the sheer amount of noise that was being made and Peter found it remarkable that no one had yelled out Hey look, it’s Tony Stark.

Because it was Tony Stark, and it was quite obviously Tony Stark. Peter had no idea how everyone was just looking right at him and not seeing this. Tony Stark had a very memorable face.

He wet his lower lip, eyeing the hand on his shoulder for a moment before he just shrugged and rested his elbows on the table, pushing the book out of the way. Honestly? He had no idea how he felt about the fact that he was in an alternate timeline, an alternate reality. That was only ever supposed to be theoretically possible. And now there was magic? Real magic? The manipulation of mystical energies that meant someone was powerful enough to have literally broken the whole world and split the timeline in two?

He kind of felt like he hadn’t watched enough Dr Who to be able to wrap his head around it all.

He raked a hand through his hair and shrugged again, well aware seconds later that the repeated action definitely didn’t make him look like he was okay. And he sort of wasn’t okay, because honestly Mr Stark had just turned up and told him that they were in massive trouble - almost saying those words but not quite - so really everything sucked and he was still technically grounded on top of it all.

“I’m okay,” he said, voice a hushed whisper, “but Mr Stark, how come no one’s called you in yet? You just walked in here all loud and no one stopped you.”

Tony gave Peter an appraising look, watching and waiting for a reply that took a while coming. The final assessment was that Peter outwardly showed what Tony felt inside, and that's why he patted that hand on the teenager's shoulder one more time. It was meant as a comfort and a consolation, because he wasn't about to mince words about...anything.

He hadn't before, and he wasn't about to start, now. If he couldn't mince words around a kid that loaned him a Dora the Explorer watch - limited edition - then there was little hope of that changing.

His eyes looked around the room, to see if anyone was looking in his direction and because he really wanted a sandwich all of a sudden.

"Magic," he blurted out, before focusing back on Peter again. He was keeping his voice down to a low murmur, but it wasn't all whisper whisper in the back of a library. "Illusion thing from Loki. Fully expecting that gravy train to derail someday. That's the way it usually goes with trickster gods...which? Not gods. They're right out of one of those Ancient Aliens shows. Did that guy get a haircut? I think he did. The amount of product he used in his hair was epic."

This - and many other trains of thought - somehow helped Tony process the fact that their universe was the red-headed stepchild of another universe, that the dead roamed the earth, planets could blow up, and hey, he's in a library with a teenager while wearing a disguise that he actually hasn't even seen yet because he was so busy trying to brain other things. And trying to mend fences with Pepper.

At this point, Tony took out his phone and snapped a selfie. What he was looking at was a frumpy sixteen year old who looked like she hadn't crossed that line into bucktoothed. Treading close though.

"Sonuvabitch," groused Tony, practically fumbling as he tried to put the phone back in his pocket. His gaze was darting around in every which direction. "Whatever. It's a disguise. Get over it."

“Well, I’d kind of figured that Thor wasn’t a god in the traditional sense,” he replied, watching with some bemusement as Tony snapped a selfie and grimaced at the image. He leaned over and was surprised to see a face that definitely wasn’t Tony Stark’s looking at the camera.

Magic. More magic. Illusions. Was the magic that Loki cast the same that Dr Strange used? Was it different magic? Were there different branches of magic like in RPGs? It made his head hurt thinking about it. Was magic just science that humanity didn’t understand?

Humanity. Humanity on a global stage where they definitely weren’t ready to be rubbing shoulders with aliens and other scary carnivorous aliens, or more things like the Chitauri that fell from the sky and blew stuff up. He rubbed his hand over his face again and then pushed it through his hair. The action didn’t really help make him feel any better.

“So what happens now?” he asked, “I mean… do you- is there anything that I can do? ‘Cause I wanna help.” And if it was to save the universe, he could take getting yelled at a bit more by Aunt May. Maybe. A little bit.

The same set of questions kept Tony awake at night. When he wasn't awake, it slithered like a snake into his dreams, so he woke up in a cold sweat more often than not. It was only when he was truly worn out that he slept without dreaming at all, and those times were few and far between. Space was a scary place. It wasn't all sexy green ladies like on Star Trek.

Ok, so there were some sexy green ladies, since one of those was actually there now.

"What happens now," Tony said, squinting as he thought about it, "is that we're going to go about doing our things. Like normal. And you're going to go to school and stay out of trouble. Like normal. And when something weird happens, then yeah. You're gonna get a text about it. Because until this Accords situation is taken care of, you're left on call. For backup duty."

That text would be from him. Not from Happy. After what happened with Ross, though, Tony was wary of dragging the Spider-kid (or whatever he called himself) into a situation where incarceration was involved.

"Keep your nose clean," he told Peter, drumming the fingers of one hand against the table top. "Just do the neighborhood watch thing. If Aunt Hottie ever lets you outside again. Okay?"

Peter barely stopped himself from scowling when he was put on the bench. He was ready to take part and get more involved - just the way that Mr Stark had wanted him to be - and he was being told he just had to sit it out like before? Sit it out and wait? And not get involved in the bigger things? What if he’d been here for Sharknado, would he have been told he had to sit that one out too?

He was ready, but Peter had enough pride not to say that outloud. So he just pressed his lips together and nodded. Swallowed the words back to where they belonged in the pit of his stomach not to be spoken because he couldn’t be rude to Mr Stark.

“What do you mean the Accords situation? I thought you had them signed and sorted? Why are they a problem for you?”

Tony caught that look and almost pointed a finger at it, as well as pointing out that the disappointment was unnecessary. If they needed backup in a catastrophe, he was calling in the Spider-kid from Queens. In the meantime, neighborhood watch seemed like the safest bet. More so when the kid knew the best way to get away, if he landed on the fed's radar. That was a thought that Tony desperately wanted to prevent happening, at all costs.

"I thought they were," was Tony's terse reply, and he leaned away a little bit to one side, almost as though he was trying to get the bigger picture by looking at Peter with intense scrutiny. "That's why I got arrested. Because I went off the reservation. And yeah, I know that's not P.C. or whatever, but that's how the federal government saw it. Last thing I want is to have to organize a prison break for you."

He sat up straight again, slapping a hand down on top of a book and sliding it over the table toward him.

"It's getting worked out," he grumbled, opening the book and flipping through the pages like he was looking for anything that might make sense. Nothing did, so it was only a token minute later that the book snapped shut and he announced, "If there's another Sharknado type thing, I'm gonna text you."

Peter was a mature sixteen year old, so he wasn’t about to play the blame game or point the finger or petulantly point out that if he wanted to be involved without being texted he could probably do that because Sharknado was pretty big and pretty damn obvious so in reality he could just swing outside. Instead, he watched Mr Stark flip through a book and snap it shut again in a manner that seemed more frustrated and petulant than Peter felt which was quite impressive.

He rested his elbow on the table and rested his temple in his upturned palm, wrinkling his nose. “But if I’m out doing the neighbourhood watch thing,” he started, wiggling the fingers of his other hand demonstratively, “am I at risk of getting arrested too under the Accords?” He hadn’t thought about that before, it hadn’t really come up. But now he was thinking about it, was it all vigilantism or was it just the Captain-America type of vigilantism that was being rigorously frowned upon?

Peter realised at that moment that he really didn’t understand the Accords at all and probably should have looked into them a little more closely and paid attention in class when they were talking about them. At that time, though, when he’d been learning about the Accords, he’d been focused on getting out of school to ask Happy for a new mission. He’d been… distracted. Which he still kind of was but in a different way, now. Or… before now it was a different way. Now now it was an even more complex and puzzling different way because of the whole timeline thing that he was still trying to wrap his head around.

And he had Math homework that he needed to finish before tomorrow, that he should have been doing at the weekend but he was busy. With his neighbourhood watch brand of vigilantism.

“So when it gets worked out, you’ll not be a fugitive anymore and I can help without getting arrested? Wait- Why would I need a prison break?”

The Accords were a big thorn in Tony's side. Ross knew that all he had to do was kick that thorn in as a reminder, and hoo boy, point made. The last thing he needed was another pile of regret bogging him down if a sixteen year old kid with superpowers got busted. Not only busted, but potentially hurt with anything that had Hammer Industries printed on the side of it.

Not so surprisingly, recruiting a teenager really wasn't one of his best moves, in a long series of already questionable moves. It left a whole new level of responsibility that reminded him why the mere thought of having kids made him physically twitch.

Tony began rubbing a hand against the side of his neck. It was both a nervous habit while he was thinking, and also due to having a universe-sized pain in the neck. That hand dropped down onto the table when he realized what he was doing. The last thing he wanted to do was appear incompetent.

"If you're running around as an Avenger," Tony was saying, focusing in on Peter, "yeah, you have to follow the rules. You won't be able to go help whenever you want. You're gonna have to wait for clearance. They'll want your DNA, and they'll want you registered. And if you step outta line?"

He held up both hands and smiled as though it was a photo op.

"Cautionary tale," Tony clarified, in case it wasn't obvious. "I want you to be better than I am. So for right now? Just do your thing. Wait until it gets sorted out."

Peter frowned. “Wait for clearance? To help people who need helping right away?” That didn’t make any sense to him. He rubbed the back of his neck, trying not to think about the wider ramifications of having his DNA on file and someone else knowing his secret identity. Five people were enough, five people and those who were on the network when Peter decided to tell them, was more than enough. If anyone else found out, his aunt wasn’t safe. There was no way he could keep her safe if everyone knew his secret.

Not that he had villains coming after him or anything, not like Mr Stark did, but he still had someone to protect. And he wanted to do that.

He didn’t understand when Mr Stark said he wanted Peter to be better than he was. He’d said that before, but all Peter wanted to do was to make him proud and he didn’t know if he could do that right now, or ever maybe because when he tried before he messed up, and he didn’t want to sit on the bench.

But what he said instead of arguing was, “Okay.” Because even though it wasn’t, a library wasn’t the place to get into that kind of discussion. He rubbed a hand through his hair and nodded his head. “Okay, Mr Stark.”

Tony knew all too well that Peter wanted to argue the point and, under normal conditions, he would welcome a rousing debate on any number of topics. This couldn't be debated. He honestly, truly did want Peter to do better than him, to not make the same stupid mistakes or oversights. Maybe he could take all the advice about looking before leaping, and try to pass it on over to a sixteen year old that was sometimes a little too eager for his own good. Or a lot of the time.

Whatever. Tony knew he was the cautionary tale, something to learn from but not have anyone follow in his footsteps. Peter was inherently good too, so the last thing he wanted was to tarnish that somehow, with him being...him.

Damn it, he was starting to feel hyper-responsible again. The bottom line was he knew he should feel responsible, because he recruited this kid into a turf war that he had no business being in, and that lead him into further trouble. That was why Tony was trying to remind himself that he wasn't going to mess up and he could adult with the best of them. It's why he did things like invite people to a NBA playoff party at his place, just so they could watch him sitting courtside at the game.

See? Adulting. He's doing it semi-quasi-kinda right.

"Now you know why the Accords are a problem," he said, while pointing at Peter like he spotted the inherent problem with the entire scenario. "I know you want to help others. But if you signed on right now, you wouldn't be able to do that. Or keep your identity secret. That's why you're benched. Don't feel bad. You're not the only one."

Vision was also benched, indefinitely, because he was lab created using bio-organic material and had a computer consciousness loaded into him. They tended to view him as an A.I., which flew in the face of the Accords.

"Anyhoo. Glad we're on the same page," joked Tony, batting a hand at a book on the table. "Got any more questions or comments? Or do you wanna sit there stewing some more?"

Unsurprisingly, it didn’t make him feel any better to know that he wasn’t the only one benched. He just wanted to be involved; Mr Stark had called on him to help and now - again - he just had to wait? It wasn’t fair. It also wasn’t fair, though, that there was some overarching agency that wanted to know everyone’s secrets and have their DNA on file and stop them from helping just because they didn’t like the fact that they couldn’t control them because they were stronger than normal people.

Or something. Peter’s head hurt.

“I’m not stewing,” he protested with a scowl, “I just- I wanna do the right thing. And technically, I’m grounded until I’m thirty, which is like, forever away.”

Tony's head hurt too. Not because of Peter, but because he had an Accords and Broken Time migraine that Midol couldn't wipe out. Because that was for periods and not headaches.

"I'm the king of stewing. I know stew. I live in it. Don't try to tell me you aren't stewing, because you're making the face that screams stew. Now I'm hungry. I've never even had stew. I don't know what goes in it."

He took out his phone and looked it up, then went 'huh' and put his phone away.

"I could make stew." He couldn't. There is no universe in the multiverse where Tony Stark could make stew. It doesn't mean he's not going to try. "Anyway? I know you want to do the right thing. I do too. I want to be able to help out. I think the right thing, right now, is to wait it out. And when this Accord thing isn't hanging over our heads? Yep. I'm Avengering you. Because you've got a good head on your shoulders, and you're tough, too."

He meant every word, even offering up a smile and a pat on the shoulder to Peter. A pat that he didn't hesitate giving this time.

"Tell May you're legally free of groundings after you're eighteen. And that I'll look out for you. If you need me to wrangle with her, I will. But no way am I touching that walnut whatever bread again. Do you eat that? How do you do it? It's like baked stucco."

“Don’t make stew,” Peter blurted, because stew wasn’t the nicest of food and honestly he was kind of convinced that Mr Stark had never actually tried to cook anything in his whole life. People as rich as Mr Stark could eat out all the time or pay someone to cook for him. “It’s gross.”

He cleared his throat and listened, just nodding as Mr Stark talked about doing the right thing. He knew that Mr Stark was looking out for him, but it still didn’t seem right that he had to just sit and wait to be called on. At least he could still get on with what he’d been doing before; helping the little guy and all that.

“I’m grounded until I’m thirty, she said,” he grimaced. He knew that she was being dramatic, she couldn’t keep him grounded for that long and she was worried even more about him now she knew what the Stark Internship really was. “I just need to give her time to calm down and I’ll be okay, I think, but-” Really, all they had was each other, he understood the fear that gripped her.

When Mr Stark mentioned the walnut bread he couldn’t help himself and he laughed, ducking his head to try and hide it but it was too late. “May isn’t the best baker.” Or cook, but that was something she was working on. He glanced up at the time, looking at the large clock that was hanging on the wall above the door. “Speaking of May… I should probably head back so that she doesn’t start calling me again.”

Damn right he was looking out for Peter, because he couldn't live with himself if he didn't add in about a million more apps and precaution measures to the spider-suits, just so Peter could stay safe. The last thing he wanted was more guilt to lug around like emotional baggage through the airport of life.

"I can make stew," Tony Stark announced, like it was an irrefutable fact. He was glancing at the clock too, sure that the system checks he had running before he left Steve and Bucky's place were already done. "She's being dramatic. My mom said that once and I was only grounded for a week. Total bullshit. Avoid that bread and I'll text you if we need you. We good? We're good. I'll see you later."

He got up and took out his phone, grumbling about Uber and needing a germ killing lysol bomb in case someone had the flu and sneezed in there.

Peter didn't really have a change to answer the question because Mr Stark did it himself and then he was off grumbing about Ubers. Peter had never taken one; he used the train or bus when he couldn't just web-sling his way around. "We're good," he said to no one in particular, because they were. Sort of.

He pulled three of the large books off the table and slung his backpack over one shoulder as he clutched the books to his chest.

"Good luck getting home, Mr Stark," he said over his shoulder as he hurried to check out these books and head back home. Or at least, his intention was to head home. What he intended on doing and what actually happened more often than not didn't quite match.

But he could try.