Peter had been sent to bed not long after dinner. Stephen told him he could stay up a bit after, but he didn't think that applied to five hours after.
He'd spent most of that time trying to fall asleep, but the threat of horrors filling his mind while unconscious kept him unnervingly still.
Somewhere around 2am, he'd given up, laying awake on his phone, trying to find something to occupy his wasted time. All of the usual content seemed dry though, and he didn't dare open a fanfiction app until he could confirm FRIDAY would not rat him out again.
Another hour or so of that, and he'd officially given up.
"Hey Friday?" He whispered, tossing his phone across the room to his bed.
Peter laid with his back flat against the wall, one of his legs barley brushing the ceiling from the odd diagonal angle.
"Yes, mr Parker?" She kept the similar whisper tone, the name Tony had forced her to call him really biting him in the back in revenge of the constant 'mr Stark'.
"Is anyone awake?" He let his arms fall limp downwards, gravity doings it's part and dangling them towards the floor from his semi-upside down position.
"There are 4 members of 'the dream team' awake currently, however there is only 1 from the 'quirked up white boy' gang" she informed, Peter snorting at Tony's latest label of Peter, Tony, Stephen, and Harley's little circle.
"Where is he?" Peter didn't bother being concerned at the fact that it was probably still Tony up, as he'd heard and seen evidence of the man's strange sleeping hours.
There was silence from her for a moment.
"Boss has been informed of your situation".
"What?? Why?!" He slipped from his position when he moved to sit up, dropping to the floor like a Sticky Man toy, but sped up.
"Protocol 'Sleeping Ugly' is set to inform boss of anyone past the hours of 10pm to 4am asking for his whereabouts. He mentioned it makes askers uncomfortable when they're aware he's spying on them, so they are inclined to do it less. The same action is applied at every hour of the day regardless, but he has set for me to inform the asker that he's aware at these times".
Peter, now on the floor, started scrambling for his ladder to his bed like a cat.
"Tell him I'm asleep!" He hissed, gliding up it effortlessly and throwing himself onto the mattress.
"I'm afraid you're too late for that, mr Parker" she replied solidly.
His adrenaline now spiked, he didn't doubt if Tony walked in right now he could tell Peter was awake from his audible heartbeat alone. It certainly felt that way, with how noisily it drummed in his chest.
The ominous knock came moments of guilty panic later, Peter just pulling the blanket up a little more and shutting his eyes.
"Pete, you there?" He heard a muffled call. When Peter didn't reply, their was a faint command to Friday before the door popped open.
"You awake, bud?".
Peter remained still, imagining Tony standing idly in the room with no view on wether or not Peter's fake sleeping act would actually mean something.
"Friday told me you asked for me" he continued through the forced silence.
That lying rat.
When there still came no reply, Peter's breath hitched when he heard his ladder creaking. It was almost as audible as Tony's old man bones creaking, or at least you'd think that with how much he complained about them on his way up.
Peter was lucky he was facing towards the wall, but the blood pumping through his ears made it hard to appreciate.
"You okay?" Tony's voice was soft as he reached over to shake Peter's shoulder.
It seemed the ruse had to be up either way. Even if Peter was asleep, there was no doubt that action would've woken him. Darn subtle genius.
"Hmm?" Peter rolled over a bit, hoping to hold onto the lie that he had, in fact, been asleep that whole time.
"You heard what I said, what's up kiddo?" Tony didn't lose the soft tone like Peter thought he would. If anything, it'd gone even more cautious.
"I was just— it's not anything bad! I was awake and I thought.. I uh.. I don't know. I just asked who was awake in the tower" he shrugged, tripping over his words a bit.
Tony let out a breath.
"Scared to sleep?".
He caught that fast.
Peter didn't even try to deny it, just nodding quietly as his shoulders slumped in defeat. He knew he was about to get some weird sleep advice, but he honestly didn't want it right now. He just wasn't ready to close his eyes.
Tony let him simmer for a moment in thought, leaving him a gap to either sleep or give some half-assed assurance and wave Tony off, two things that would've been so easy to do. Peter did neither though, just giving a deep and shaky sigh.
"Want to head down with me to the lab?" Tony proposed, gesturing to the floor as an invitation.
"Really!?" Peter exclaimed before he could catch himself, buried excitement from his exile from said lab boiling after the last accident.
"Really" Tony confirmed, a bit of a smile on his voice.
So that's what they did. The alluring Stark way. Just ignoring the problem by very healthily shoving it down and playing with toys. The toys happened to be technologically advanced by many generations, but that made no difference to them.
Once Peter's embarrassment faded out from the horrifying capture in a moment of weakness, he found himself unable to contain his pent up rambling energy he'd suppressed for so long, much to Tony's amusement.
"—yeah! And like, even a sunflower follows a Fibonacci sequence. Nature has got math tied around it's little finger. Oh—oh, and did you know that it's encoded in the number 1/89??" Peter was swaying in a low hammock, having webbed down two thick poles to the ground that he'd found, stringing up a mini bed for himself while he mixed together the solution for more.
"I did know that" Tony hummed absentmindedly as he rummaged elbows-deep underneath a car.
The room was echoey enough that they could hear each other just fine from across the room, super hearing or not.
"Okay, how about this one. The only number that can't be shown in Roman numerals is zero" he pulled the chopstick out of the container to check the consistency of the webbing, before resuming the idle stirring.
"I did not know that one. Not big on Roman numerals, believe it or not. Not a big use for them" he commented, a loud cluttering being heard as he dropped something on the concrete floor.
"Fiddlesticks!" He shouted, not bothering to hide his childish censoring.
Peter's cackling followed in pursuit, harsher than Tony had expected.
"What, is my concern for your upbringing some sort of joke?" He sounded accusatory, reaching for the tool he'd dropped above his head.
"It's not that—" Peter hiccuped to calm himself down, "it just reminded me of this one guy I had to break out of the house of—"
"When did you have to break out of someone's house??" Tony cut off.
"I've told you I've been kidnapped like.. 50 times now right?" Peter sounded genuinely perplexed at Tony's reaction.
"Excuse me???" Tony's eyes were as wide as saucers as he wheeled himself out from underneath the car.
Peter suddenly felt sheepish, cowering further into his little hammock as he kept stirring.
"Anyways" he ignored the concern, "this dude had kids upstairs or something, so every time he yelled he always made it child friendly. I was tied up in the closet, so I could hear his kids when they came in the room and asked for stuff like being tucked in or what was for dinner. That one wasn't so bad, he didn't really know what he was doing. May was on a trip out of town and we were on spring break so I didn't really have anywhere else to be, and he was kinda nice I'll admit. He let me listen to some podcasts and fed me more than my aunt did. I got bathroom breaks. He didn't even try to take off my mask. The dude just stuck me in his closet and told me to keep quiet. I think his name was Leo or something weird. Either that or that was his star sign, I don't remember—"
"Hold up hold on. This dude just kidnapped you, and treated you like a hidden houseguest? Why??" Tony stood up and made his way over to Peter, poking at the hammock to make it swing a bit more.
"I dunno. He made some killer rice balls though. He also had this Alexa he left unattended, so I played music and shit when he was out. He was a really nice dude now that I think about it. I've got no clue why he kidnapped me", Peter answered truthfully.
"And you didn't think of using the Alexa to call the police??"
"Dude, if you tried those home cooked meals, you'd be on my side here. Plus I was starving, his house was like an all you can eat gourmet—"
"Peter" Tony's voice was a bit stern, mostly out of concern.
"Sorry" Peter muttered.
"No—don't apologize. That's not what I meant. I'm just—how was your life so bad that being kidnapped was a better living situation than your own home?" Peter was quiet a moment, and Tony stressed that he might've accidentally struck a sensitive enough chord.
"I'm telling you man, even the carpet was softer than my bed. On day three he let me take of the cuffs and just sit there—"
"Oh my word" Tony rubbed his face tiredly, doing a 180 back to the car he'd been under moments before.
"Can you blame me?? I should've realized right then that something was up at home then," he sat up in the hammock, setting the webbing aside.
"I cannot believe this" Tony uttered, trying to get the oil that he'd wiped on his face off with his sleeve, "your life is like a sitcom gone dark, kid".
It was nice that Peter was comfortable enough to diss his aunt already, but the fact that it needed done at all still had him on edge.
"Don't I know it" the lack of enthusiasm in his voice really sold it.
"Well, now that you've got someone as awesome as me to help you through it all, you got nothing to worry about", Tony was a bit worried that the sentence might lead to some darker topics, but Peter's genuine smile shut that concern off real fast.
The silence that stretched on was one of occupation. Tony had rolled back under the car, and Peter had finished with that batch and moved on to another. Not long after, they'd settled back into their silent conversations, passing tools back and fourth wordlessly. Occasionally there was a back-and fourth; usually one-sided banter, but other than that it was a peaceful experience.
Having spent so many hours in the lab already, they'd managed to fall back into routine so easily. If Peter wanted to show Tony something, he'd just start tapping on something until Tony noticed the kid's boredom and strolled over. The other way around, Tony would just sigh loudly and throw something to get Peter's attention.
The place was a mess after just a few hours, Tony being caked in oil. There was a trail leading up to a stack of lazily thrown blue oil rags from when Tony had wiped his hands of to touch something delicate or help Peter with something, and on Peter's end, there was an ever growing pile of dust from the hammocks that had disintegrated beneath him.
The first two were spread out all over from when he'd fallen through the webs and sent dust flying once they started disappearing, but he'd learned since then. He'd gotten Friday to set a timer.
There was no end in sight. Tony had even given Peter one of the new coffee prototypes, having him launching another stream of ideas soon after. Tony almost found it shocking that he didn't mind his usually quiet lab time to be filled with the ramblings of an excited teen again. But it made sense. This was Tony's teen.
"Did you know that in Thailand, sometimes they just say '555' or something instead of 'hahaha' because they pronounce their 5's as 'ha?" Peter had migrated to the ceiling at one point, shooting out a random fact out of the blue.
Tony shut off the blowtorch he'd been using, pulling up his mask to give Peter the proper 'wtf' face he deserved.
Oblivious, Peter shot out another.
"The word hundredth actually came from the word 'hundrath', which actually meant 120, not 100".
"Kid—"
"The letter zero was discovered at different times throughout history. I'm pretty sure the first one was in India or something. The dude's name started with a B. He was like an astronomer and mathematician. I just remember I thought his name was close to Buckingham. Kinda like the Buckingham palace. I don't remember what it actually was," he let a web hold him up, spinning idly as Tony stared at him.
"Did—"
"Blackjacks didn't always end at 21" he added, as if he was reading from a list, "the original game ended at thirty-one, and it was back in the 15th century I'm pretty sure".
"Oh are you now? Do you have some kind of math book open up there or something? What is going on in that head of yours?" Tony finally got space to breathe out some words, grabbing a broom stick (that happened to be missing the actual broom), and poking Peter from where he hung, "some of those are hardly even math related".
Peter shrugged. He offered no explication.
Tony just rolled his eyes.
As of reminding him of something, Tony side stepped to one of the hologram projectors and turned it on. He manually opened up the clock app, which was only not on general display because of how annoyed he got when it seemed as if the numbers were mocking him on late nights.
"Damn, we missed breakfast already" Tony muttered, waving out the hologram.
"Wait we did??" Peter cried out, leaping from us web onto the floor, "there's no way it's been that long".
"Time flies when you're in the presence of greatness" Tony idly mentioned.
"What time is it??" Peter slid over to the desk, despite there being nothing up there for him to read.
"Almost 11" Tony's brows furrowed as he said that.
"Oh dang"
"Oh dang is right. Did we eat anything?" Tony asked. Pulling off the welding mask entirely and tossing it aside, tugging off his thick heat gloves and sending it off in a similar direction.
"I found a bag of goldfish, and those oatmeal cookies from Walmart" Peter shrugged.
"Stephen's gonna kill me" Tony shook his head, looking around for the oil soap so he could at least get his hands cleaned before they went to their kitchen.
Never mind the hair that shot up in every direction for the both of them, nor the no longer unstained clothing. Tony had a blister on his hand, and Peter's were a bit sore from holding himself up on the ceiling so long. Keeping them in the same position so long caused them to cramp a bit, weight or no weight.
"Better now than never" Peter admitted, as if just them realizing how hungry he was.
"Preach" Tony muttered dryly, headed to the elevator.
The two of them stepped in quietly. All it took was one look at one another, and it had them giggling at their entirely unapproachable appearances.
It had been a good day.
—
Bada bang bada boom
Another one bites the dust
Anywhoosies, I hope you're having a totally tubular day, otherwise there will be no tolerance of you staying up late any longer. I will be sleeping with your mothers if you try
Love you all 💛💛💛
Sincerely, a totally radical individual