Chapter Text
It had been a few days since Tony had last shaven, a five o'clock shadow covering his cheeks, blending in with his usually (well, usual as could be, the man had an empire to oversee) well-trimmed goatee, the paleness of his skin and the bags under his eyes only made more discreet by the bluish hue the multiple holographic tabs floating in the air were casting.
While a few of the screens displayed snippets of Spider-Man's short but successful vigilante career, the majority of them replayed the last bits of Iron-Man's latest fight, and Spider-Man's impromptu intervention.
The billionaire was sitting in front of his desk, resting his chin on his crossed hands as he lazily spun around in his chair. His face was scrunched up in thought, his teeth worrying at his chapped lower lip. He was spending too much time in the lab. His greasy hair flopped over his forehead, unpleasantly tickling his eyebrows, and his nails were too long. He swallowed. His mouth was dry.
"FRI, cut the footages of the attack, please."
He had already identified and fixed the issue (a blind spot in his sensors caused by a screw shaken loose) two hours ago.
Then, he had updated his mask, to make sure such an issue would not happen again.
Then, he had brought out the old, dirty cups littering the lab (lab safety could go fuck itself, he'd be more at risk of drinking battery fuel without his cup of coffee, or any sort of caffeine-filled drink, for that matter) into the kitchen, and had set them into the sink, under the running tap, and he had watched as the dried-up coffee rings at the bottom of the cups had diluted into the water.
Then, he had turned on the coffee machine, only managing to put up with the brewing sound for a handful of seconds before he marched to the fridge and grabbed two cans of blue raspberry flavored energy drinks, holding them by the very top of the cans to avoid feeling the cold biting into his palm. (It was a new brand, one Tony had seen on a couple of billboards in town. They were okay. New, which was good.)
The blind spot wasn't the problem, and neither were the new suit updates, nor the dirty coffee cups, and the way the tap water had taken a yellowish tint once it was poured in, nor the noisy coffee machine, nor the overpriced energy drinks, always cold and sugary enough to hurt his teeth, and so he had went back to his lab.
He was now staring at a slightly blurry picture of a mid-backflip Spider-Man.
His right hand blindly groped for his soda can. It was empty, and the metal had warmed up in contact with his hand.
He zoomed in on the tab displaying the unofficial YouTube channel dedicated to Spider-Man's sightings, the last video featuring his guest starring in the earlier fight.
Tony hit replay.
"And Spider-Man makes three !"
He rubbed a hand across his face, his few days old facial hair scratching the skin of his palm.
One thing about Tony Stark, was that he didn't like being handed things.
The very moments that had come before Anthony Howard Stark's birth, before the midwife could hand over the wailing and flushed little baby to his mother, rushing a fellow nurse to burst into the waiting room to proudly announce "it's a boy !" to his father, and perhaps even long before that, the air had been filled with electric-like tension.
To everyone in the room then, it had been obvious that it was crucial for the baby to be a boy. A son. An heir, for Howard Stark to hand over Stark Industries. His legacy.
Anything but would have been a failure. A disappointment.
(A title Tony had later on earned from his father regardless.)
On May the 29th, 1975, at precisely 04:23AM, Tony Stark, as the sole heir to Stark Industries, was born indebted to his father.
He had then spent the next eighteen-something years paying up for that gift, with his blood, tears, and sweat.
Mostly his blood.
A couple of baby teeth, too, along with his soft baby skin, already calloused and scarred years before Afghanistan and Iron-Man.
Afterwards, when his father had finished beating him into a worthy heir, he would leave his room, his knuckles red with his son's blood, and he would turn to him, and the hallway's light would project his shadow over Tony's limp form, and he would remind him : "I made you, Anthony."
The words, at the time, would burn harder than the tears tearing their way out of his eyes, and they would taste worse in his mouth than the cold rage and hatred, and the salty and thick blood he was choking on.
So because his father had tried to break both his spine -and had failed- and his heart -and for this one Tony still wasn't quite sure- as he had handed over Stark Industries to him, Tony didn't like being handed things.
If he ever felt he owed someone, he made sure the debt was very generously settled before someone could hold that threat over his head, either with a big, fat check, the obscene amount of zeroes practically dripping off the paper, or the kind of thinly veiled threat he tended to seal with a carnivorous smile, not unlike the blood-dripping one he'd flash to his father when he was younger, along with a slightly too-firm handshake, the ache of the pressure gone as quickly as it had come.
Although, with his businessman day (mostly if you asked Pepper, completely if you asked him) behind him, such situations arose less and less, his gorgeous, genius, overtly competent fiancée handling most (meaning each and every) trades, her smiles warm and her tongue sharp and venom-tipped, tearing her way through briefing rooms in a way one (Tony) could argue made him a little hot under the collar.
Problem was, he wasn't exactly sure what to offer the spider vigilante in order to settle his debt, if it could even be considered as one, leaving him unsure on how to thread around this whole mess.
And, God, Tony had tried, really really fucking hard to convince himself he didn't owe the Spider-Guy shit, only to come to the conclusion that yes, he really fucking did, and he would have stormed out of his bedroom and into the lab, were his soon-to-be wife not sleeping soundly next to him. (As it was, he had regretfully torn himself out of her embrace and quietly walked out, closing their bedroom's door behind him.)
He had considered taking fifteen minutes to find out Spider-Man's identity, and sending him a big, fat check, but he had quickly discarded that idea because somehow it felt wrong.
Not only because he would actually be going against the guy's wish for anonymity, which would be an asshole move, even by Tony's standard, but also because it would mean attributing the two kids' lives an amount of money, which frankly, Tony would rather not do, thank you very much.
(That it had probably already been done, families compensated for their loss with the smallest amount of money possible by his team of shady lawyers, and thus, by him, back when he was still the Merchant of Death was a matter for Sleepless-Nights Tony to consider.)
He figured he could offer the guy a suit update, that always seemed to work with his teammates, he had yet to hear any complaints from the lot of them, -and God knew the vigilante could use one, as joggings and spandex were definitely not stab-proof-, but the guy had definitely not asked Tony for his opinion, and so that felt a little rude. And, to be fair, it was very unlike Tony to actually give a flying fuck, (there wasn't any point in being a billionaire if you couldn't be a dick about it), but. Tony didn't want to be a bitch to Spider-Man. He liked the guy, or whatever.
So far, the only thing that had felt like a fair reciprocation would have been Tony dedicating his next good deed to the vigilante, but going "this one's for you, Spider-Man !", whilst flying a little old grandma to safety seemed odd at best, and quite frankly a least a little insulting for every party involved, but, well. Tony wasn't considering it per se, but, hey. If that was what it came to...
He sighed, and hunched over, thumping his forehead on his desk.
And perhaps if Tony had grown up with a kind father, one that wasn't cruel, one that would have taught him how to ride a bike, or how to fix a flat tire, instead of how to cry silently, breathing in through his nose, and biting his tongue to swallow back the hurt whimpers, or how to lie down as painlessly as possible with cracked ribs, he would have put down Spider-Man's intervention as pure, dumb luck, a gift from the Universe, had he been the man to believe in such things.
He had learned, however, the knowledge engraved into his bones, that the days where his father would cross the threshold of their house, brightly colored paper bags in his hands, filled with toys and gifts Tony had neither asked nor wished for, tended to go hand in hand with an especially cruel version of his father, always overeager to beat the ungratefulness out of his son.
Unasked for gifts and favors had always turned out to be the most expensive.
That saving civilians from -increasingly- dangerous situations seemed to be Spider-Man's (fairly successful, mind you) part-time job meant, quite frankly, shit to Tony.
(Hell, it had been his father's job to take care of him. Feed him and put some clothes on his back. Hadn't made him any kinder.)
The vigilante looked out for the little guy in his neighborhood, and that was very nice of him. He took care of Queens' folks, who were seemingly no one's responsibility, and until then more or less left to their own devices, which was good.
But. The kids Spider-Man had saved the other day ? Tony's responsibility, just like every civilian was once Tony landed on an attack site.
Spider-Man had taken on Tony's responsibility. He owed him one. Simple as that. And fuck if people didn't love it when Tony Stark owed them.
He sighed, and got up to leave the lab. He was spiraling, and he could very well do that in his bedroom, next to his girlfriend.
"FRI, would you monitor Spider-Man's activity, and notify me of anything important ? Thanks babe."