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So, it wasn’t as if Peter thought mentoring a prickly brand new superhero would be easy, but oy vey did Iron Man take the standard ‘must protect my identity’ paranoia and dial it up past eleven.
Case in point. The guy needed medical attention, but refused to get out of his armor.
“And this is why my mask is detachable from the rest of my suit,” Peter couldn’t help but mutter, as he helped haul a few hundred pounds of busted and sparking titanium-alloy up the side of the nearest building. “Somebody wants to give me a few stitches over my ribcage, that’s fine, need to dig a bullet out of my arm, no problem-”
“Shhut-kzzk-”
“I’m going to assume you just told me to shut up, which, first of all, rude. Second of all, thank you for proving my point, if this thing is glitching so bad you can’t even get two words out-” The helmet hanging over one shoulder twitched hard enough to knock into his skull. “-ow! Geez, no wonder folks call you Shellhead...”
They made it to the roof, at least. Which again left Peter with the problem of convincing Iron Man to trigger whatever mechanism he had in place to open up the suit, so the two of them could deal with the rather obvious blood leaking out of it. Another burst of static came from the voice modulator as he set the other hero down.
“Yeah, didn’t get that at all,” Peter flatly informed him. “Look. This is not great. I know it, you know it, half the city’s crooks are gonna know it the minute that last goon hits a bar and starts bragging about his lucky shot. So how about you quit the tantrum, let me patch you up, and then we’ll hide your suit so I can get you somewhere safe before the hunting parties start appearing. Okay?”
Silence.
Sighing, Peter stood. He slowly spun in place, checking their roof and surrounding buildings for any sign of security cameras or surveillance drones that might catch a glimpse of their little stand-off. When he figured the coast was clear, he crouched back down and leaned in right close to the scratched up red and gold helmet. “Kid. If this is about not letting me know you’re a high schooler, we’re way past that. If you’d rather, I can absolutely call up Stark Industries and have them send someone out.”
More silence. But then, miracle of miracles, Peter heard a faint clunk inside the suit. Panels began folding up and out of the way. The helmet’s facemask retracted. And a young, horrified face gaped up at him. “You knew?”
Well, he’d gotten down to a list of four or five suspects, with sixteen year old Anthony Edward Stark down as the very last option - but Peter knew teenagers, and that stubborn refusal to come out of the suit managed to convince him Iron ‘Man’ still had at least a couple years to go until adulthood. And hey, look at that, he’d guessed right.
“I suspected,” he decided to admit, hands already reaching for the kid’s shoulder and the jagged metal pressed partway into it. “You do a really good job of covering your tracks. But more importantly, I doubt anybody else in this city besides me would bother to think someone without a college degree in robotics could build tech like this.”
“Besides-” Stark hissed, face twisting up in a grimace as Peter slapped a couple of his tighter-knit webs over various cuts and punctures. “-you?”
“Heh. Well. Let’s just say, you are not the first kid to play hooky in favor of fighting crime around here.”
Wide eyes went that much wider. Peter finished stemming the worst of the bleeding, and started easing the teen up out of his padded compartment. Either the shock of revelation or the looming adrenaline crash made him more pliable than before, which Peter didn’t mind taking full advantage of. Moving quickly, he set Stark back down, then hefted up and carried his damaged suit over to wedge between some air conditioning units. Maybe not the best of hiding places, but it would do until he could get the injured kid to safety and then come back.
Ugh, his back already felt sore at the thought of lugging that chunk of gilded metal halfway across the city.
“Alright,” Peter said, returning to his sort-of-reluctant-mentee. “Your Friendly Neighborhood Web-slinging Taxi Service is making a one time offer to provide transportation to a safe destination of your choice, provided it’s within a reasonable distance. If you can’t come up with somewhere that’s within my range, then I’ll take you to my place, and bribe you into not telling anyone about it later. Okay?”
Stark blinked. His throat bobbed. And then, the cheeky little shit had the nerve to open his mouth and say, “Pretty sure you’re in way too low a tax bracket to be able to bribe me.”
Any other superhero Peter knew would scowl at that, or at least roll their eyes. He laughed, instead. “Yeah, well, good thing I was planning to use the best sandwiches in Queens instead of money. Think that’ll work?”
Even pale and in pain and still smeared with his own blood, Stark managed a small smile. “I guess.”
Peter smiled back.