and I'm dying to figure out what she's hiding

[spideyguy]

Alright, so maybe this wasn't his best idea.

It's just that Peter has been chasing this crime ring for a while now - the Devil chased them out of the Kitchen and when they scattered to the wind, they ended up all over the city. Their strength is less so than it was now that they're not centralized, breaking off into factions, but it makes the whole thing that much harder to track down and totally eliminate, especially when there are so many different spokes of the beast now - in short, it's a fucking mess. DD has been helping him a bit with intel and the occasional backup call, but he doesn't venture much out of the kitchen on his own, so Peter has taken point.

He ended Tuesday night of last week with three broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder, but it gave him a massive break in the whole thing - a location where some of the main operators would be. Surveillance for the next few days helped him figure out that it was a nightclub - a very exclusive one, from the everything about it; the clientele, the guards at the door, the blacked out windows on the cars. Friday night, he tried getting close enough to hear something - but if he gets too close in the Spidey outfit, he knows they'll scatter again. This might be his one shot to blow this whole thing wide open, and he can't be hasty about it.

So he waits. Peter watches, and tries to figure out what to do.

Like he said, he never claimed this was a great idea. It was just an idea.

Peter knew Tony decently enough. Iron Man had bigger things to worry about than street crime, but when hoards of aliens or robots or whatever-the-fuck flood the streets, they were bound to cross paths. They'd even shared pizza on a rooftop once, Peter sure got a kick out of that one. When you fight doomsday threats with someone, you just have a certain kind of rapport kind of...built in. This crazy fucking plan he's hatched is definitely stretching the limit of their relationship, insofar as they have one at all, but Tony is the only person in Peter's dinky little burner phone that could possibly stand a chance of getting him in there.

So he calls him, and nervously explains what he's trying to do into Tony's answering machine. Peter's left wondering if it's really his phone at all, but given that he didn't ask for it, Tony gave it to him and told him to call it if he ever ran into any trouble above his pay-grade, Peter's holding out hope that it was valid.

The plan is simple: it's an exclusive, elite club where you have to know someone who knows someone who knows - whatever, you get the picture. Peter's reasonably confident Tony can either bluff his way in, or find an invite. He's been watching for a few days now, and he doesn't think anyone will look twice at him if he's...well, if he's hanging off Tony's arm, some little plaything of the week.

"I know how it sounds," Peter tries not to plead into the phone; he's trying to sound confident, not embarrassed that this is the brilliant solution he's come up with. "But I think it's the only way to get in there and figure this out. I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important."

He takes a deep breath - he's also exposing his secret identity for this, only to Tony, but still. It's that important. "I hope you'll be able to help me, Mr. Stark. I'm planning to try Saturday. Just...let me know."

And if he's going it alone, attempting to flirt his way in the door (he has no idea how he's possibly going to do that), well, then, he's going it alone.

Comments

[engineous]

When Tony sees that he has a missed call from the one and only Spider-Man, he has a mild heart attack and immediately excuses himself from a very boring meeting to listen to the message. For someone so young—he's assuming, based on his voice and pop culture references alone—he is remarkably self-sufficient. Sure, he's known to team up with other heroes for bigger issues or provide backup when he's swinging through the neighborhood outside of Queens, but he's kept to himself with relative success. Tony's heard through the grapevine, both super and not very, about what he's done to clean up the mess left over from Daredevil cleaning up the mess of Hell's Kitchen. Unfortunately, if a criminal isn't caught and incarcerated, they tend to just move their crimes to new locations, and Tony admires the way that Spider-Man has taken that in stride.

Tony also knows that he's starting to graduate from just petty neighborhood crimes to bigger bad guys with vendettas, the kind of whackos that think Spider-Man personally ruined their lives just like there have always been whackos blaming Tony Stark for their downfalls. It makes him feel surprisingly protective of the kid, and he can't help thinking he could use a bit of backup himself. That's what the pizza on the roof had been all about, nothing more. When Spidey got sauce on his chin and couldn't lick it off or risk smearing it with his gloves, Tony had fought the urge to clean it for him because this was not going to turn into a misplaced sense of mentorship or fatherhood. Giving him his personal cell number also hadn't been about any of that, just wanting to extend an offer of help if things got really rough for good ol' Spider-Man. It also meant that Tony had another pair of eyes on the ground, or in this case, eight swinging above the streets.

When it's obvious the voicemail isn't about an emergency or injury or death, Tony feels some of the tension melt out of his body. He's getting too old for this, and definitely too old to be going on some undercover honeypot operation with Spider-Man. The name of the club is familiar to him only because he used to be the kind of client it catered to, someone rich and powerful who didn't want to have conversations around walls that would talk to the wrong people the morning after. He's a little hesitant to believe that he can still walk in there with the same kind of welcome as he might have been greeted with before, though, especially if it's home to any level of criminal. Perhaps his fame and fortune would be enough to get them inside at the very least, even if they don't roll out the red carpet for Iron Man.

That leaves the question of Spider-Man and the impossibility of entering the club while wearing a mask. How was that even going to work? It would have to be as himself, his currently secret identity, but that meant trusting Tony Stark with knowing his face even if he feeds him a fake name. He has to know that one scan from Tony's glasses would run facial recognition and pin him in an instant, has to know that he could be followed to his home with an untraceable tracker Tony might slip onto his person at any time. That alone convinces Tony that the mission is important enough to take Spidey seriously and text him back.

Saturday 9PM. Meet me at this address. Attached is a map pin to a private residential building he owns where the top floor is fully his and, more importantly, free of bugs until Spider-Man arrives.

[spideyguy]

Peter’s honestly not sure that he’s expecting a response. Surely Tony has better things to do with his time than run down low level crime syndicates with Spiderman - he’s got like, terrorists and world-ending bullshit to contend with. He might not even be in New York! Peter berates himself for the stupid move until the text comes, later, and he nearly drops the damn phone in surprise.

thank you, Peter texts back, feeling both embarrassed and relieved that the answer was a yes. Now that he’s got a potential in, it means he’s got to figure out the rest of it. Shit, he’s gonna have to like, go get a costume?? Or something?? To be honest, he hadn’t thought that far ahead.

Peter still finds it…odd, the idea of other supers giving him the time of day. It took a while to break DD down, but at least he understands the secret identity thing. It was more than a few fights for Peter to even stick around long enough to get to the pizza situation - the Avengers are out there with their masks off, especially Tony. Iron Man opened the gateway for the modern superhero, and Peter knows he’s part of the argument stirring the news right now - masked vigilantes, taking the law into their own hands, etc etc etc. Peter wasn’t exactly equipped to touch any of that political stuff with a ten foot pole - he’s just a kid from Queens, trying to make his patch of sidewalk a little bit safer. Besides, what everyone so often forgets - if Peter’s not out there, risking his bacon, who’s going to stop the superpowered crazy of the week, who usually shows up wearing an animal-themed ensemble?

But he digresses - he’s betting his chips on red. They both know that by asking this favor, by exposing his identity, he’s trusting Tony with everything. Peter was never going to not, though, because how can he justify it? He could have done something to stop the suffering, but didn’t want to because his secret identity was more important? It’s not, and if it helps even one person - Peter’s willing to give it up.

But that’s a problem for after they get inside the club and figure this shit out - and that ball will be in Tony’s court after this, there’s nothing Peter can do about it once he takes off the mask - so he tries to make preparations for Saturday. Maybe that involves googling ‘club attire’ but that’s between him and his private search tab, alright?

The week passes by with another surveillance check on Thursday and a shopping trip on Friday that Peter hides the contents of in the loose floorboard by his bed (because jesus christ he doesn’t need questions from May), and on Saturday, he swings his way to the address Tony provided, with his backpack holding the stuff he bought.

With a bundle of nerves in his stomach that he tries to overshadow with determination, Peter takes a deep breath, and sends the text. He’s a little early, but he’s the one who asked for this, so that’s only polite, right?

on the roof 🕷

[engineous]

In another situation, another universe, Tony would have taken this information to the feds and left them to deal with it to the full extent of the law. He's gotten into trouble with acting first and asking Uncle Sam for forgiveness after the fact, and he'd just barely been able to keep the Avengers from falling apart during the fiasco with the Sokovia Accords. They'd dodged that bullet and kept their freedom, but that doesn't mean Tony is willing to risk it for a corner store thief. Sex trafficking, however, is a much bigger issue and one that he knows can easily slip through the fat fingers of the law when international borders are thrown into the mix. He also feels like that would be a betrayal of Spider-Man's trust, not only because Tony would be denying him the help he asked for, but it would be stealing the operation out from under his nose.

Also—and this is a completely selfish motivation—but Tony is bored. Rightly so, and happily most of the time: there are no alien invasions, no killer robots armies partially of his own design, no cataclysmic events on the horizon. It's nice, but he also doesn't have much to do. Pepper runs his company, Steve runs the Avengers, and Tony sort of twiddles his thumbs and tinkers in his labs because he's put it in everyone's head that he doesn't do small crimes. So maybe the stars have perfectly aligned in some kind of superpowered kismet that Spidey is sending up the Iron Man signal when he's got nothing else going for him.

The proximity alert goes off before he gets the text message, and a word to FRIDAY has the balcony door sliding open to let in a draft and, eventually, the human spider himself. "Landing strip's all clear, kid," he calls to him rather than texting.

[spideyguy]

It's a crazy world they live in, and the right thing to do isn't always obvious. Still - Peter's made his bed, and at the end of the day, he'll lie in it. Today, this is more important. Drugs, weapons, sex trafficking - they've got their finger in it all, and Peter doesn't want to blow his shot here by storming in, webs ablaze. Tony can help with that and quite frankly, Peter's not sure what else he could do.

As for the boredom - well, roll with Peter for a few days and see if he can't cure that, too. Trouble has a way of finding him, even when he's not actively looking for it.

Peter tips his head up from where he's perched on the edge of the roof when he hears the door opening, and he's already peeking his head over the side by the time he hears Tony's voice. He flips down onto the balcony with ease, backpack still slung over one shoulder; it looks almost comical, the beaten up bag over the spidersuit. He'd probably fit right in with the makeshift lookalikes in Times Square.

"Nice place you got here." Peter gestures to the simple, fairly-barren penthouse space; it doesn't look like anyone lives here, at least not full time. A far cry from the crowded den Peter is used to, with all of the squashy furniture May and Ben have had since the beginning of time. "Is that eggshell? I always figured you for a frostine kind of guy."

And then, because Peter doesn't want it to be a bigger deal than it already is and he might as well do it while he's got the momentum, before he gets so anxious it breaks the whole plan apart, he reaches up to pull off the mask. It sweeps over his hair, sending it in all directions like it normally does, and Peter can't deny it makes him feel - well, naked is the only word for it. Mildly panicked is another. But he swallows and forces himself to meet Tony's eyes, for the first time without the barrier of his lenses. "...got a real good view of the Hudson from here."

[engineous]

For all the technology and engineering Tony surrounds himself with, all the innovative breakthroughs in scient he's eternally fascinated by the organic nature of Spider-Man. The grace he moves with, body fluid and limbs all working together like every motion is a dance, could be hypnotic if they weren't usually accompanied by gun muzzle flashes and sirens in the distance. It makes Tony wonder if the man who became the spider was always this coordinated, or maybe it was all to do with the superpowers driving him being condensed into moving four appendages rather than eight. What could someone with that power do on a dance floor? Or did it have to be instinctive movements rather than a rehearsed effort? They were questions he thought would never be answered, at least not where Tony could observe, until the mention of a nightclub.

"Thanks, it's my other, other penthouse." He's not even lying. The reason it doesn't look very lived in is that it isn't. There had been a time when he'd bring home beautiful men and women here, sometimes several of both at the same time, but he's too old and righteous for that these days. Not that he would ever admit to it out loud, but he's a realist first and foremost even if he tries to appear as much of an idealist as possible when the press is involved. So this place has become something of a secret hideout, one that only Pepper knows of in case of emergencies or not hearing from Tony for long enough to question his safety. "I didn't know Spider-Man was a connoisseur of paint. If you need a job, I've been meaning to repaint the kitchen."

Tony nearly chokes on his tongue when the mask comes off like it's nothing, like Spidey is breathing, like he's not showing off lovely thick eyebrows, a charmingly crooked smile, and more hair than Tony thought was possible to cram into a mask fitted that close to the skull. He must get it in his eyes and ears—hell, in its wildly tussled state, it looks long enough to choke him if he wasn't careful.

"Oh my god, you're—" Hot. Off to a great start, but Tony is truly stunned. Holding a hand out towards Spider-Man like, what, like he had been able to stop him from taking off the mask? Like his brain could even process it fast enough to compete with the enhanced speed and reflexes of a spider guy? Whatever the case, he's holding out his hand, then drops it to hang at his side as he tries so hard not to just drag it over his face. "I thought you were, what, like, fourteen or something. You're actually a man. Color me shocked."

He needs a drink, and he turns towards a small bar to pour himself one immediately. "Scotch? You're old enough for Scotch?"

[spideyguy]

That would be a very decisive no, he was definitely not always like this. He was both a safety hazard to others and himself. Some would argue that he still is. Now he did take ballet lessons until he was 10, because Ben tried to take him to the karate place next door but Peter was always too enthralled by the people dancing in the windows. He doesn't think any of it transferred over - it sure didn't when he was in high school - but everything comes so naturally now, like it was a muscle memory he didn't know he had. It also - feels like it switches on and off, sometimes. As Spiderman, he can do that - let go, to the fullest extent of his abilities. As Peter Parker, he has to reign it in - and sometimes he feels uncomfortable in his own skin. He already did, even before the superpowers. And as for the nightclub...well, shit, Peter really wants to pull this off, so he's just going to have to figure that part out as they go. Is he a failure of a college student if he's only ever been to a nightclub once...to take nightlife photos for a magazine?

"I have many skills. Jack of all trades." Peter pauses as Tony takes his face in, struggling not to shift his weight from foot to foot. This was all his stupid fucking idea anyway. God, he really stepped in it this time, didn't he? He smiles awkwardly, almost apologetically for springing it on him, but now that the cat's out of the bag, he really doesn't have anything left to lose, right?

"I can see that," Peter steps closer and dumps his backpack on the floor by the couch, tossing his mask on top of it. He can't remember the last time he was around somebody in the suit with his mask off this casually. "Casually", as if you can call it that. Well, kinda. No one's trying to kill them (yet). "Be careful, don't want your face to stick like that."

"Fourteen? Fourteen?" Peter snorts, carefully approaching the bar, spreading gloved hands on it when he reaches it. His fingers drum, unable to keep still, and his gaze keeps flickering from Tony's hands to his face, as if he can't decide whether he'd rather not make eye contact and watch what he's doing, or gauge Tony's expression. "I'd be insanely tall for fourteen. Could you imagine? 'That small child is built like a tree trunk.'"

"And yes, I am. Twenty-three." Peter enumerates, because he feels it bears repeating. He runs an anxious hand through his hair, mussing it up even further. Don't worry, he brought a comb, for whatever that will do for him (probably...not much). "Sure, why not. Tonight's the night I say fuck it, apparently."

[engineous]

Maybe someday they will bond over the fact that they both studied ballet, though probably to varying degrees of support from their father figures. Tony had been put through the gambit of cultural education at the hands of his mother and the squadron on tutors she'd hire every year, but ballet had been on that Tony actually enjoyed enough not to find ways to avoid it. Not that it lasted long when his father, cruel as ever, had decided that boys past a certain age shouldn't be doing girly things like dancing and so put a stop to the lessons.

Not that Tony is thinking about dancing anymore, not when he's got Spider-Man's face to drink in. It's always been something of a game to Tony, guessing what might be beneath the mask of superheroes and villains alike. It was becoming increasingly rare for the good guys to hide their faces, and secret identities didn't seem to be in vogue for most heroes, so Peter is something of a rarity. But instead of being scarred or old or ugly, he's truly and objectively handsome. Tony can't get over it even though he's managed to drag his eyes from Spidey's face and focus on some much-needed alcohol.

"Nineteen at the most," Tony counters, because yes fourteen had been dramatic, but that's the kind of bitch he is. "In my defense, it's not like you stand still long enough to get the full measurements. And yeah, I've got tech for that, but it would have started a rabbit hole towards your identity and I wanted to steer clear of that."

Not that it hadn't been tempting when Spider-Man had first come on the scene. Tony has still been more active in the immediate safety of New York at that time, so having someone appear out of nowhere in a costume and mask had been something of a red flag. Rather than dig into this Spider-Man's identity and possible motivations, however, Tony had stuck to a tight but distant observation of his activities until deeming him the 'hero' variety of super rather than the alternative.

Pouring them both a generous drink, he slides the glass towards Spidey, clinks his own against the rim, and then downs half of it. They're going to be drinking later anyways, and Tony knows that he'll make a more convincing nightclub patron if he's a little lubed up beforehand. Pushing himself back and up onto the counter behind him, he swirls his glass in one hand while leveling his gaze at the unusual guest.

"So. You got a plan?"

[spideyguy]

Peter's experience was quite the opposite. Hell, Ben and May were just happy he was taking an interest in something at that age - post-parental units departing from his life - it was, for obvious reasons, a difficult time to inherit a child. But the dancing made him smile, gave him a way to get comfortable with his body which - over the course of the years he took the classes - grew longer, lankier, like a newborn deer growing into its legs. He would have made a great football player, if it weren't for the debilitating asthma.

"Ha, ha," Peter snorts, though what Tony really dances around is the obvious math staring them in the face - that if Peter is twenty-three, and he was first active eight years ago...yeah, he's not far off base there. "I would appreciate that continued courtesy, but you know, cat, bag, etcetera."

His identity is now in Tony's hands, because no doubt this place has cameras, if there isn't a camera already on Tony's person. Maybe both. Still, Peter walked in here knowing all of that, knowing that it could have been SHIELD agents waiting for him and not a billionaire, and blindly trusting that it wouldn't be. Peter takes the glass in gloved hand, taking a measured sip as he watches Tony down half of his own. Not a bad idea, honestly, especially with how smooth the Scotch is - not that Peter should have expected it to be anything but - but he sets the glass down, manfully suppressing the nose wrinkle that tries to work it's way forth; alright, he doesn't much like the taste anyway, no matter how smooth it is. He's more of a wine coolers guy for sure, and yeah, mainly for the sugar.

"I've got a plan." Peter confirms with a quick nod of his head, meeting Tony's gaze head-on. "I can't promise it's a good one. I just - I can't see any other way of getting inside, and I know it's the hub."

Is his plan to perform a 40+ citizen's arrest and free anyone trapped there that he finds, ultimately, to the point of utter chaos? Yeah, maybe. Will it work? Therein lies the question.

"But - " Peter holds up a finger, leaning down to snag his backpack, which he upends on the bartop. There's a variety of items that come spilling out - the pile of fabric that is presumably his clubbing outfit, some sort of mesh something or other and hot pink shorts; a set of bulky cuffs that look like an attempt at stylish jewelry; a choker and an eyeliner pencil, clearly borrowed; a handful of printed out photographs in low-light detail; and a little packet of notes and sketches, covered in his chicken scratch. Peter reaches for the latter two first, brushing aside the other items to the edge of the bar, and starts setting out the photos for Tony to look at. "I've got our targets. Sid Rosthram is the highest name I know, but these three - "

Peter sets out three photos of hard-faced men in expensive suits, next to Sid. "They've gotta be the top dogs. I've heard their phone calls about moving the product - the cover is Mattel dolls, like, Barbies? The sex trafficking, anyway, pretty sure that's this guy, and he has a deal with this guy to use them as drug mules, too."

Brow furrowed - clearly, the whole thing bothers him, as it would any reasonable human being - but this is Peter's first real big bust, and his skin itches at the idea of people suffering while he's sitting here explaining the whole thing, even if it's stuff Tony needs to know. He lays out a few more photographs of the entrance to the club, the back alley, some empty and some with trucks and men.

"The number of guards on duty fluctuates. Saturday is, I think, the day with the most men there. Somewhere between twenty to thirty, from what I can tell. I want to catch as many as we can. There are only two entrances, but the back door doesn't have any cameras on it." Clearly, they don't want any evidence of what's being smuggled in and out of the back of the club. "The buildings on either side of this alley are owned by the gang, so they think it's airtight."

"What I propose," And here come the notes. Peter unfolds them, a taped together drawing of the building plan, which, even if the writing is not so, seems neatly put together - well, he copied it from the library archives, after digging for a while. Peter taps a finger at the entrance, dragging it through the dance floor to the private rooms at the back that skirt the entrance to the kitchen. "We enter through the front as patrons. We fake our way to a private room, insist on the one in the back for privacy, I don't know, a 'clean getaway', something. We take out the guys in the back, and then I can break the door, stop them from getting out or getting help that way; it's plated steel, they won't be able to bust it down."

"Then, we get to the lower level," Peter flips the page, which becomes a lot less clear on the space - clearly, a lot of it is guesswork. "The working bluff is that we're bored in the private room and want another - "

It takes some work for Peter to get the word out, anger coloring his tone. " - playmate. If that can get us downstairs we just - trap them, and take them all out before they have time to even think about running."