#arachnakid

“Wait.” Mr. Stark said, cutting throught the excited ramble - he was going to Germany! he was going to meet Captain America! - Tom had going. “Back up, Arachnakid. Did you say highschool?” He nodded and was cut off before he could say anything. “How old are you?”

Tom blinked, “Er, fifteen?”

“No, that’s impossible.” Mr. Stark said, “You’ve been going out since two-thousand and ten, you’d be nine. Spidey was definitely a teen in two-thousand ten.”

“Yeah, Spidey was fifteen in two-thousand ten.” Tom agreed.

Mr. Stark squinted at him. “…are you immotal or somthing? Is this a weird spider-power?”

“No?” he asked more then said.

“Right.” Mr. Stark sat back.“ "You’re gonna need to expand on this for me, Underoos.”

“I’m Spiderman,” Tom said. “The one who started in two-thousand ten is Spidey. Two different people.”

“And the one before…Spidey?” Mr. Stark asked slowly, in the same kind of voice Andrew got when he was just realizing how much trouble he was in.

Wade called it the ‘I done fucked up’ voice.

“Spider-Man, with a hyphen, and he started in ninteen ninety-two.” Tom answered. “He was eighteen when he started and retired in two-thousand twelve when Spidey took over.”

“Just how many spiderpeople are there?” Mr. Stark demanded.

He blinked, “Um. Three?

”How?“

Was that a challenge?

.

“Mr. Parker.” Andrew smiled placidly at the woman. She was small and petite, the lab coat making her look even younger then she was, but her eyes made him wary. “You’ve been cleared for a tour of the west wing, right through here first.” Her blank smile widened, as if inviting him to share a joke even though her eyes retained the same flat, cold gaze.

“Security checks.” he joked as he walked through the archway, carefully not tensing even as he readied himself for a fight. Tony might have said that the spy tech built into his glasses would pass any security checks, but Andrew didn’t want to be unprepared in case something did go wrong.

He passed through without incident.

“Indeed.” the woman agreed, warmer now that he’d made it through. It wasn’t much of an improvement. “Right this way, we’ll start with our deep-freeze project.”

“Oh?” Andrew asked, pushing up his glasses and activating them as they entered an elevator. “What is that about?”

“-and we’re in contact with Spidey. I got visual.” Tony’s voice whispered through the comm connected to the glasses.

“Son?” his dad demanded the same beat Wade said, “I knew you had this in the bag - shut up Yellow I was not worrying-”

“He can’t answer,” Tony cut in, “But he’s fine, he’s in an elevator.”

The tour passed in a whirlwind of horror - because human experimentation - and inappropriate humor - Wade saying the man part of the ‘deep-freeze’ had the world’s worst case of blue balls should in no way have been funny and Andrew might be spending a bit too much time with Wade if he did find it funny.

“And this is where we keep the cube that screams,” the woman said, pushing a button that lit up the room with electricity and immediately earned a scream.

Tom, Andrew thought. He broke her arm in his hurry to move her hand. He didn’t regret it, nor the force he used to knock her out.

“I found him.” he announced, stealing the woman’s keycard to open the door. “We’re five levels down.”

“Time to storm the castle.” Tony said immediately, voice flat. But then, Tony could see what Andre did and neither of them appreciated that Tom had been pinned in place by not manacles but large hooks. “Friday called for medical evac to move closer, they’ll be at point C.”

Which was only a mile away, just far enough to be deemed 'safe’ for non-supers to wait out a battle. “Understood.” Andrew answered.

“…an'rew?” Tom slurred, head tilting towards him. “..y'c'me fer me?”

There was so much Andrew wanted to say in that moment but settled with, “Always, little brother.”

Both.

Tom in trouble because of Andrew pulling him into whatever highjinks he - or his friends - caused himself is one thing, because Andrew knows his brother is inevitable going to be poking his nose into things as Spider-Man and dragging him along a few of the kinds of shenanigans the Red Team can get into can only help prepare him for when Tom’s facing things alone.

A kind of learn on the job mixed with simulation.

Tom running into danger because Andrew himself needs help or because he’s a hero and helping is what they do, that is a completely different thing that calls forth all kinds of Overprotective Big Brother urges.

“Alright, so the kitchen is clean. How is the living roo-” Andrew cut himself off abruptly as he exited the kitchen and entered the living room. “Why are you making a web hammock on the ceiling?!”

“The real question is,” Tom told him seriously, “Is why haven’t you?”

“I ha- no. Clean it up. Gwen will be here soon.” He ordered his brother. The eleven year old pulled a face, but did start tearing the web away from the walls so he counted that as a win.

Webbing flew past him as his dad used it to grab the broom from the other side of the room. “Really?” Andrew demanded and his dad smirked at him. “Can we just pretend like we’re normal for once? Just three hours while Gwen is here.”

A beat of silence where his dad and brother made eye contact before Tom dropped from the ceiling, “I say we go see a movie.”

“NO!”

Andrew winced at his younger brother’s shout, glancing back at Tom and their Dad to see their dad trying to get an Iron Man toy Tom had grabbed away from the six year old.

“-don’t need it,” their dad was saying, “And there’s plenty of Spider-Man toys at home.”

“No.” Tom said with all the firmness of a six year old. “Iron Man is cooler.”

Their dad froze and Andrew ducked around the next isle, not wanting to be dragged into the argument he just knew was going to happen as their dad tried to convince Tom that Spider-Man was better than Iron Man.

It’s not the first time Tom sprun a question on him out of nowhere, but Andrew  was still startled when his brother asked, “When they came, why didn’t you fight?”

He broke off the web he’d been swinging on, launching himself at the nearest building and clinging - Andrew had a feeling that this conversation wasn’t one he wanted to have while swinging hundreds of stories up in the air. “What?”

“The Chitari,” Tom answered, landing higher up then him and opting to simply stick to the wall in a seated possition rather then his crouched one, and Andrew felt his stomach sink. “When they came, why didn’t you fight? Since I found out about, well, everything-”

His little brother shot him a glare - and Andrew was not in anyway jealous that the Oficially Tony Stark-approved Spider-Man suit had eyes that could emote - at that but he only shrugged. It wasn’t as if he didn’t find out about the whole Spider business until he was a teenager, less to do with him being old enough to keep a secret and more that his powers started coming in - puberty was weird.

“I’ve been looking into everything Spider-Man and Spidey have been up to-” Andrew mentally translated that as Tom and Ned looking up loads of videos on YouTube. “-and while Spider-Man was helping out during the invasion, Spidey was absent. So, why didn’t you fight?”

Why didn’t you help is what his brother is really asking, why did you let people die is what Andrew felt was being asked.

“When the Chitari came,” Andrew answered slowly, tilting his head to look up at the sky - a news copter had apparently taken interest in their sudden stop - instead of his brother. “I was faced with a choice. I-…I chose the one I could live with,” He swallowed then bit out the damning truth, “I chose to be selfish.”

“You…” Tom sounded horrified and he squeezed his eyes shut, knowing that the mask would make the action not matter. “You didn’t want to fight. You didn’t fight because you. Didn’t. Want. To.”

“You had a responsibility!” Tom shouted, going from horror to anger and from being seated to standing. He stayed where he was, now looking up at his younger brother. “‘With great power comes great responsibility’ we are told that again and again, from the moment we even got our powers! It’s a promise we make - to use our powers responsibly, to help people - when we put on the suit!”

“Why do you even wear that suit?” is the final thing Tom says to him before launching himself off the building and swinging away.

Somehow, Andrew is entirely unsuprised when the news’ headlines the next day read SPIDEY: NEGLIGENT OR A COWARD?

.

“When they came, why didn’t you fight?”

“I chose to be selfish.”

.

.

.

“NO!” Tom jerked at the multiple yells, wanting to look at the ones yelling to reassure them but unable to look away from the attack headed right for him as he was pinned.

‘I’m going to die,’ he thought, giving one last tug on the hook digging into his leg - hissing in pain - before curling up. It wouldn’t help, he’d seen Wade get hit by the same attack and even Deadpool’s famous healing factor was still trying to put him back together.

And Tom, well, Tom’s healing factor was nowhere near as good.He jerked as he was hit, but not the one he was expecting - what hit him wasn’t the burning fire of Thanos’ attack but cool metal. His eyes flew open and he saw the Iron Man’s metalic hands on either side of him.

“Mr. Stark- no-” Tom started, wanting to tell the man not to throw his life away for him, but couldn’t finish as the attack crashed into the armor with a boom and pulling a short - quickly bitten off - scream from Mr. Stark. It was only a few seconds, no more then a minute, but it -from the moment Tom had realized he couldn’t dodge this attack to Mr. Stark taking a hit meant for him- felt like an eternity.

Then he was being lifted, hook and all, and carried away.

For a moment, he thought everything was alright, that the Arc Reactor had dissipated the attack like it had did with Thor’s lightning or Loki’s mind-control, but he culdn’t forget the scream. Tom tried to lean up, to peak over the armor’s shoulder to judge the damage, but the arms tightened and kept him from looking.

That’s when he knew it was bad.

'Friday can pilot the Iron Man armor without Mr. Stark.’ He thought, hoping that it wasn’t what was happening.

“He’s alive.” His dad breathed, landing next to them the same moment the armor touched down - the others taking up the fight to allow them this respite. “You brought him back alive.” His dad said before taking him from Mr. Stark. “Thank you.”

Mr. Stark still hadn’t said anything, hadn’t moved since landing except to realese him, and despite the - really weird- rivally Dad had with Mr. Stark, he seemed to know something was wrong and handed him off to Andrew, who had been hovering near by.

“Iron Man, status?” Dad demanded.

Mr. Stark’s faceplate lifted, showing his face and letting Tom see the blood dripping from Mr. Stark’s mouth like the time Andrew had been a vampire for Halloween. He felt his heart sink even as Mr. Stark answered, “Well-…I’ve been better, Spiderking.”

“I’m sorry-” Tom blurted, “Tony, I’m sorry.”