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"So, there's a train," Peter begins, shoving a fistful of sour gummy worms into his mouth.
Tony glances at the kid out of the corner of his eye, watching him inhale the worms with a kind of grotesque ferocity that could have rivaled Steve Rogers.
"A train," he repeats wryly, letting his gaze reluctantly slide back to the rolling road in front of them. An unfortunate side effect of driving a rental car over one of his own; no FRIDAY, no autopilot. He has to actively participate in the steering of this one, much to his chagrin.
"Yes. A train. And this train is hurtling wildly down the track, like, completely out of control-"
"Seems dangerous," Tony agrees.
Peter nods empathically. "-And you're there, standing in front of the track, and there's a switch in front of you that can change the direction of the train-”
He dives back into the gummy worms and Tony mentally tacks another gas station stop onto their roadtrip. Keeping up with the kid’s overactive appetite is a job unto itself, a job Tony has learned to take very seriously. The kid has a tendency to faint like a damsel in distress whenever he skips a meal, and Tony has a tendency towards mild hysteria whenever Peter goes lights out.
So eating. Obviously a big fucking deal.
"I have to decide where to send the train?" Tony surmises easily.
"You got it," Peter tells him, grinning, and only this kid could make the idea of an out of control train endearing, somehow.
Tony can’t keep his eyes from wandering off the road again, to Peter’s carefree smile, his cheeks still flushed from singing along to the car radio. At the sour dust on his fingertips and the setting sun on his face.
And Tony is thinking, with the kind of fondness he'd never admit to, about how much he cares for the kid.
He smiles back.
"One track has five strangers on it," Peter continues. "People you don't know. And the other track only has one person, but this is a person you do know. You have to decide which direction to send the train, and who to save."
Tony hums noncommittally, drumming his fingers across the steering wheel. "This is what you and your little nerdy friends discuss at lunch? Philosophical questions?"
Peter shrugs. "Sometimes. Occasionally. MJ's been pretty into the study of normative ethics these days-"
"MJ?" Tony interrupts, just a touch gleeful. He's heard all about the enigmatic MJ from May during their biweekly touch-base phone calls. Now he has a chance to hear about her from the lovestruck teen himself. "Who's MJ? Tell me about this mysterious MJ, kid."
He has the privilege of watching a blush spring to life on the kid’s face. May, it seems, did not exaggerate the stage five crush Peter is harboring.
"That's- you're stalling," Peter sputters, the tips of his ears going pink, too.
"Me? Stalling? Never." He flashes the kid his most shit eating grin. "Let me hear all about this normative ethic MJ. What's she like?"
"We’re talking about trains-" Peter insists, a little helplessly.
Tony laughs, deciding to take pity on the kid. “Alright, alright. Give me a second to think.”
And he does think. He thinks about the seemingly arbitrary events that led him to this singular moment, driving down some random backroad in rural Tennessee. He thinks about the fact that Peter wanted to accompany him at all, just to watch him give some boring commencement speech at some boring college. He thinks about May entrusting him with taking her kid out of state. He thinks about Peter sitting next to him, munching contentedly on sour gummy worms and posing deep philosophical questions while Tony ribs him about the girl he likes.
He thinks about trains, about a certain someone lying on the philosophical tracks.
"I'm Iron Man," he announces after a pause. "I save everyone."
"Nope," Peter argues immediately, crinkling up his empty gummy worm bag to toss it at his feet. He shakes his head. "You're not Iron Man, not in this scenario. You're a regular person, an average joe, a mere mortal-"
Tony gasps theatrically. "Not a mere mortal. Anything but that."
The kid nods. "A mere mortal."
"At least tell me I'm rich," Tony begs.
Peter seems to mull the notion over, idly licking the lingering sour dust from his fingertips. The action strikes another unexpected cord of fondness in Tony's chest.
"Yes," Peter allows, before immediately changing his mind. "Wait- no. Not rich. Sorry."
"Am I still devilishly handsome?"
The kid cuts his eyes in Tony's direction. "How exactly does that save anyone on the tracks?"
"It's integral to my character," Tony insists.
Peter sighs. "Fine. Sure. You look exactly like you do right now-"
"And I'm still the smartest man in the world?"
Peter shakes his head, mildly exasperated. "Mr. Stark. You have to act within the parameters I gave you, all you have to do is flip the switch, that's it, that's the whole point of the moral dilemma, it doesn't matter if you're a genius or not-"
"Okay, Aristotle." Tony snorts. "Obviously, in this impossible, hypothetical scenario, there's only one course of action."
"And?" Peter prompts, leaning anticipatedly in Tony's direction.
"I, by sheer force of will, become Iron Man. And then I save everyone." He smiles brilliantly.
Peter harumpfs, leaning back in his seat. "You're betraying the spirit of the question."
"Well, what about you, huh? Me or five strangers, who's Spider-Man saving?"
Peter visibly cringes at the turnabout. "Jeez," he mutters.
Tony chuckles. "Hey, you started this."
Finally, after a long minute of Tony staring at the road, scanning each passing sign for a potential snack restock station, Peter speaks again.
"Well, I'd just have to throw myself in front of the train."
Tony blinks, his stomach curling unpleasantly at the mental image of it. Peter being a little bug splattered on the windshield of some runaway train. "What the hell, kid. How is that your solution?"
"I've stopped cars with my bare hands," Peter posits, glancing down at them. "I could probably stop a train."
"What about your whole betraying-the-spirit-of-the-question thing?" Tony argues, trying to quell the tide of his surging emotions. He feels his hands tightening on the steering wheel without even meaning to. "You're just a mere mortal in the situation, kid."
Peter shrugs. "Well. I'd still have to try."
Tony hates that implication wholeheartedly. Peter pulling some sacrificial hero shit and ending up anything less than living and breathing and singing pop songs under his breath and sour dust fingertips-
His heart shudders violently in his chest, a preemptive warning for what awaits him if anything ever happens to the kid sitting next to him.
"Pete," he says fondly, anxiously, because how can he keep this kid alive forever? How can he make sure Peter never finds a way to sacrifice himself for the greater good?
Tony latches quickly onto the saving grace sign that whirls past them, desperate for a conversational shift. "Hey, looky there. A gas station in 15 miles.”
Peter follows the sign with his entire body, twisting backwards in his seat as it disappears in the rearview mirror.
"Fancy some more of those gelatinous worms of yours?" Tony asks, a little breathless.
Peter smiles up at him. “Duh.”
⎯⎯⎯
"Grab your snacks," he orders, trailing the kid into the small, rundown gas station. He squints at the harsh, flickering fluorescents. "Before this place burns my retinas to a crisp.”
Peter chuckles softly, muttering a quiet, "Yeah, okay," before breaking immediately for the sweets section.
Tony rolls his eyes at it. If he were the more responsible one in this unexpected co-parenting thing happening with May, he'd redirect the kid to the fucking salad-to-go section. As it is, he's still too in awe of the kid actually wanting to hang out with him to risk screwing it up with healthy food.
He moseys his way over to the chip section, careful to keep Peter in his line of sight. He's watching the kid silently debate the merits of both sour and berry gummy worms when it hits him.
The sensation of being watched.
He turns slowly, a bag of Lays Barbeque Chips in his hands. There, standing slack-jawed and wide-eyed at the checkout desk, is the convenience store clerk.
Tony cringes. He knows what's coming before the man even opens his mouth.
"You're- you're-" The clerk stammers, his eyes flicking briefly to Tony’s side where Peter has appeared. Tony wonders if his heart is doing funny shit, beating out of rhythm. That always seems to call the kid to him, like some fucked up homing beacon.
"A weary traveler?" He tries nonchalantly. "An incredibly attractive and intelligent man?”
"Tony Stark!" The man blurts, googly eyed. His nametag, which declares Craig in bold blue, heaves with his excited breathing.
Tony winces. He feels Peter shift even closer into him. "That, too."
"Oh my god- is this like Avengers stuff?" Craig's gaze shifts out towards the parking lot like he might find the quinjet itself parked there instead of Tony's rented BMW.
"Not quite," Tony chuckles.
"Could I get your autograph?" Craig asks, not even waiting for an answer before fumbling almost desperately across the desk for a pen. "This is- wow, Tony Stark here, the guys'll never believe this-"
Tony's focus automatically drifts to Peter, looking for a flash of irritation on the kid's face. One day, he knows, Peter will get tired of this. Tired of him.
Today isn't that day, though. Peter merely cocks his head, silently questioning what Tony wants to do.
And there’s so much Tony wants to do. He wants to buy the kid all the flavors of gummy worms that exist. He wants to include Peter in every single cross country trip he takes so he has an excuse to sing Single Ladies under his breath, too.
He wants to dismantle all the metaphorical train tracks standing in Peter’s way.
Tony sighs, waving a hand towards Craig. "Absolutely. Anything for my adoring fans."
Craig juts out a pen and a crinkled receipt in Tony's direction, smiling sheepishly, and Tony's reaching for it when Peter stiffens next to him.
"Tony," the kid cautions, and nothing snags his attention quite like that, like his first name coming from Peter's mouth. He freezes immediately, hand held out halfway from his body. He's cursing himself because his suit is in the car, his suit is in the fucking car-
"Something's wrong-" Peter's eyes blow wide the same exact time the gas station door does, too.
"Everybody put your hands in the air!" The entering man yells, bloodshot eyes glaring out from behind a black ski mask. There’s a gun in his hands, and it jerks when he spots Tony. "Tony fucking Stark?" He demands. "What the fuck?”
"Want an autograph?" Tony offers.
"Just- hands up!" The masked man shouts, his voice warbling. "I want all the money in the drawer! Now!"
Craig makes a terrified, squeaking noise, his hands held pleadingly above his head. "I can't- please, the drawer doesn't open unless someone makes a payment-"
"Well ring something the fuck up!" The man growls.
Tony sees Peter take a single step out of his peripherals, maneuvering himself to stand in front of the quivering Craig. His stomach plummets as the gun shifts to rest on Peter's chest instead.
"Don't be a fucking hero, kid," the man spits, a worthless piece of advice since Peter doesn't know how to be anything but.
Tony tries to ignore the painful thumping of his heart in his chest, and he's trying to figure out how they fucking got here, Peter was just singing along to Beyonce in the car, he was just eating sour gummy worms and now the kid has the barrel of a shotgun pointed right at that hero heart of his-
"Listen, I've got $300 bucks in my pocket," Tony tries. He needs that gun off the kid. Right fucking now. "How about you take that and just go?"
The man swings the gun back Tony's way. He seems to consider. "$300?”
"You should take it, mister," Peter says slowly, the gunman whirling back on him. Tony could tear his fucking hair out.
"How about I take that and the drawer, huh? Double the money? You hear me?" He spins the gun around again, a terrifying game of unwanted russian roulette. This time, it lands on Craig. "Open it!"
The terrified clerk moans, his fingers trembling wildly as he lowers them down to the cash register.
Tony sees the decision on Craig's face a single moment before he executes it, his shaking fingers shooting past the register and towards what is undoubtedly a hidden panic button somewhere below the desk.
"FUCK!" The gun jerks wildly between Peter and Craig, Peter and Craig, before the man makes his choice-
Tony feels himself propelling forward, desperately reaching towards the kid who's placed himself directly in harm's way-
The man pulls the trigger.
Tony doesn't feel the bullet, not at first, but he feels the force of it. It hits him somewhere in the chest, like a shove, and he's sent careening to the floor.
The world statics out around him, like a radio station passing through too many frequencies. He catches nothing but snippets through the fuzz.
The clerk screaming. White noise roaring in his ears. Several loud, confusing thuds. A display case of chips seems to spontaneously combust by his head. The channel flickers out.
"Kid-" He calls out. It comes out more as a wheeze. "Pete-" He tries again, because between the static and the snow and the fuzzy synapsis misfiring in his head, he knows that the kid needs to be okay. No runaway trains today.
They were having fun. They were singing off-key Beyonce and discussing normative ethic questions.
He fuzzies back in and tries to lift himself from the floor. There are chips all around him, bursted bags, many of them soaking in red. His red. His blood.
He collapses back to the floor, groaning. The world snows out around him again, the pixels too convoluted and grainy to make sense.
"No, no, no-" Peter's voice reaches into the abyss where he's fallen and rips him right back to consciousness.
"Kid-" He tries, the word coming out garbled. He manages to peel one sticky glued shut eye open, finding the kid's terrified face above his.
"No, no, no-" Peter cries again, his voice pained and choked and wrong. Even half-dead on the floor of a gas station, Tony can see the teenager's terror. It's such a far cry from ten minutes ago that it makes Tony's head spin.
The kid roughly presses his hands against Tony’s bloodied chest, pulling a gasp from his lips. The pain of it threatens to fizzle Tony’s awareness away again, and he does his best to fight it off.
"Not again, not again-" Peter gasps.
"The bad guy-" Tony tries. He needs the threat to be neutralized. He needs all trains dismantled. There will be no chugga chugga choo choo here, not today, no sirree-
"Please don't," Peter begs, a faraway glaze taking hold in his eyes. "Please, no, no-"
"Bud," Tony tries one more time, and then the kid presses against his chest hard, trying to stave off the blood flow with everything he's got, and Tony's channels completely snow out.
⎯⎯⎯
He’s dreaming about trains when the signature chugga chugga choo choo begins to sound like the beeping of a heart monitor.
He groans, peeling one eye open to find him himself in an all too familiar room. “Do not tell me I’m in the medbay.”
“Tony,” Rhodey gasps, all but stumbling off the sleeper sofa and to Tony’s side. “Hey, man. Hey. It’s good to see you awake.”
“Jailbreak me,” Tony deadpans. He gives the room a once-over, looking for a spider shaped lump laying somewhere around, but it’s only him and Rhodey. Something about that nags at him, worries him, but his thoughts are all mushy from the IV drip in his arm. “You know I hate these medbay beds.”
“You okay?” Rhodey insists. “Any pain? Need a nurse?”
“Not very ergonomic,” he explains. There’s a cannula in his nose that is very annoying, very distracting, and Tony is sure there’s something he needs to be remembering. He fights the urge to yank the cannula out to be able to focus.
Rhodey blinks at him.
“The beds,” Tony clarifies.
Rhodey barks out a laugh, shaking his head. “You know very well these beds are ergonomic as hell. You upgraded the medbay beds the same time you adopted Spider-Man.”
Spider-Man.
Peter.
The memories hit him all at once, radio channeling flicking back, back to the gas station, back to bleeding all over a dirty linoleum floor, back to Peter begging over him-
Tony inhales sharply, jackknifing up in bed. The action sends a flame of agony across his chest, but he can’t afford to feel it, not yet, not until he knows-
“Oh my god, the kid, where’s the kid, where the fuck is my kid-”
“Whoa, whoa,” Rhodey says in the tone of voice one might use when calming a wild animal. He pushes gently against Tony’s shoulder, keeping him in the bed. “He’s not hurt, he wasn’t shot or anything, okay?”
Tony allows himself to pushed down. He narrows his eyes at Rhodey. “That doesn’t tell me where he is.”
"Well, he's been lightly sedated," Rhodey says. Tony feels his eyes bulging out of his head. Rhodey hastens to add, "Pepper said I should really emphasize that- lightly. Barely sedated."
"Jesus christ. You tranqued my kid?”
“Lightly,” Rhodey mutters weakly.
“He’s Spider-Man,” Tony says. “I know how much morphine it takes to knock that kid out, and it certainly isn’t light.”
Rhodey sighs, perching himself on the edge of the bed. “It was for the best, Tones. The kid was- well, kinda inconsolable, to be honest. Really freaking out about you. It would’ve been sweet if it wasn’t so upsetting.”
Tony winces, picturing Peter above him as he bled out on the floor, the kid’s desperate not again ringing in his ears. It doesn’t take a genius to know what the teenager just relived. He sighs, guilt thrumming through him. "That bad, huh?"
Rhodey shrugs. "I mean- yeah. Pretty bad."
“And me?” He asks, because now he knows he needs to jailbreak, and soon. There’s an inconsolable Spider Kid somewhere in the building. “What’s my damage?”
“Gunshot wound to the chest, small bone fracture, slight damage to your nerves-”
“So my usual shit,” Tony summarizes. “What happened to the guy? Mr. Trigger Happy?”
"Peter handled it,” Rhodey says simply.
“Of course he did.” Pride blooms in Tony’s chest, thinking about how goddamn capable Peter is. That pride very quickly melts back to guilt, though, thinking about the kid looming over him with horror all over his face after handling business. He reaches up to pull the stupid cannula from his nose.
“Don’t even think about it,” Rhodey warns.
Tomy drops his hand, sighing. The drugs have him feeling more pliable than usual. “How long the kid gonna be in the Land Of Nod for?”
“Long enough for you to catch some more Zs yourself.” Rhodey shoots him a pointed look.
As much as Tony wants to fight against slumber, Rhodey’s words and the doctor’s drugs are already working against him. He feels sleep tugging at his eyelids. “Is that an order, Nurse Ratched?”
“If that’s the only way you’ll do it, yes.”
“I better not wake up lobotomized, honeybear,” he murmurs, and then sleep takes him.
⎯⎯⎯
The next time sleep releases him, there is a spider shaped lump laying around.
Laying half on Tony’s hospital bed, in fact, slumped over uncomfortably in a hospital chair. The mushiness in Tony’s brain has nothing to do with the doctor’s drugs this time and everything to do with the teenager snoring softly beside him.
Tony’s heart must do a sentimental little jump in his chest, because Peter’s brow furrows in sleep.
“That can’t be comfy, bud,” he murmurs softly, wondering if the kid is still, as Rhodey delicately put it, lightly sedated.
The sound of Tony’s voice causes Peter to blink blearily awake, looking around, before his gaze lands on Tony-
“Mr. Stark!” He squeaks, bolting upright. “You’re awake! Are you okay? Do you need anything? How’s your pain?”
“Mini Rhodey,” he says affectionately, giving the kid a smile. “Both of you. Fussing over little old me.”
Levity is apparently the wrong tack to take. The worry on Peter’s face morphs quickly to annoyance.
“It’s alright,” Tony says gently. Years of stupid, Stark-style stunts have gotten him used to waking up in hospital rooms and the reprimands that come after. “You can be mad. Let me see all that righteous teenage fury you have.”
Peter looks away, huffing out a breath. “I’m not- I’m not mad.”
Tony arches a brow. “So that’s joy I’m seeing on your face then?”
The not-mad expression on Peter’s face pinches even further off, his hands tightening to fists in his lap, and then, “You shouldn’t have done that!”
“Saved your life?” Tony asks mildly.
“You almost died!”
“And you would have prefered what? You almost dying?”
It’s a completely ludicrous idea, bordering on obscene. It makes his heart monitor skip a beep, makes his breathing sharp, makes his vision a little staticy. But Peter glances guiltily away, his silence answer enough.
“Peter Parker,” he admonishes quietly, struggling to keep his own anger in check. It’s the damn train dilemma all over again. Peter trying to pull some sacrificial hero bullshit that’s gonna end up splattering him.
“I heal fast!” Peter argues hotly, still not quite meeting Tony’s eyes. “I’m Spider-Man!”
“I’m Iron Man,” Tony counters evenly.
Peter sucks in a ragged breath. “Not when you’re out of the suit! Out of the suit you’re just- just….”
“A mere mortal?” He offers.
“You’re just Tony.” Peter scrubs a hand across his face, attempting to hide what is very clearly the onset of tears.
Guilt rears its ugly head back up. As much as Tony doesn’t regret taking a bullet for the kid, could never regret it, another part is deeply ashamed that it had to happen at all. That the kid had to witness it, experience it.
“Pete.” He waits patiently until Peter’s eyes meet his, lined in watery red. “I’m sorry, okay? Getting shot is not real high up on my list of favorite things, believe me. I like to avoid it when possible. And I’ll do everything, and I mean everything, in my power to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Peter shakes his head, opening his mouth to say something that will presumably piss Tony off. Tony bulldozes right over his stupid little benevolent arguments. “But you need to know this. I’m never, ever, going to let you take a bullet instead of me. No chance. You know why?”
The kid pauses before shaking his head again.
“Because you’re Peter, okay? I’m Just Tony and you’re my Just Peter and I’m not gonna let you get shot, ever.”
A faint smile cuts its way across Peter’s face. It’s an echo of that forever ago, singing Single Ladies in their rented BMW and eating sour gummy worms and talking about runaway trains. But it’s not tears, and Tony can work with that.
“I don’t want you to get shot either, Mr. Stark,” Peter all but whispers. “I thought- I really thought you were going to die.”
“And I’m gonna work on that,” Tony promises. “I’m gonna keep the suit on me at all times from now on. Probably gonna bring Happy next time for extra backup, too. I’m gonna do my best to stay bullet free, kid. You have my word.”
Peter seems to mull that over before acquiescing with a small, fragile nod. “Okay. Deal. You stay bullet free and I’ll keep you-”
“Yourself bullet free, too?” Tony interrupts, shooting the kid a disapproving glare for good measure.
Peter’s faint smile widens, all the way into a grin, and it looks so much like driving down a backroad in rural Tennessee that it makes Tony’s heart ache with something more acute than fondness. More akin to love.
“Okay. Fine.” Peter rolls his eyes like keeping himself alive is some massive inconvenience. “I’ll stay bullet free, too.”
Tony eyes him suspiciously. “No jumping in front of runaway trains, capiche?”
“I’m Spider-Man,” Peter insists, and Tony feels the oppressive melancholy between them finally floating up up and away, “I could totally stop a train with my bare hands.”
Tony snorts instead of answering. Because he already knows his answer, even if it’s one the kid won’t like. Jumping in front of a speeding train is the way to solve the moral dilemma, so long as it's him doing the jumping and not Peter Parker. Never Peter Parker.
“Uh huh. Sure, kid.” He gives Peter his most shit eating grin, ready to dive back into a very important conversation. “Now, let’s talk about more important things. Tell me about this MJ of yours-”