A/N: This is meant to take place after Homecoming. I put in a quick line about this, but in this story, Tony chose to remain in the tower after the Moving Day fiasco, which is why part of this story takes place there. As far as I know, that's the only change I made from canon. Enjoy!

Ned was good at many things. He was an excellent student, for the most part. He was a great son, had a good sense of humor, and he knew more about Star Wars than pretty much anyone on the planet. But above all else, he prided himself on being a great friend. Or really, a great brother, when it came to Peter. Because honestly, Peter may as well have been blood related at this point. The two of them had been friends since elementary school; they were practically raised together.

As a result, Ned could chart every event that happened in his life, but not in a creepy way. Definitely not. In a nice way. A best friends kind of way. And Peter, Ned had thought on a particularly introspective day, had had quite the evolution over the years. He privately liked to call it "The Three Stages of Peter Parker." Before the event-that-shall-not-be-named (he knew Peter couldn't stand to talk about what had happened to Ben, and Ned had learned long ago not to try and ask him), Peter was confident, outgoing, and sometimes a little rebellious. After Ben, he'd become reserved, quiet, sullen. He could still joke with the best of them, but only bothered when it was just the two of them, when he didn't have the option of fading into the background.

And stage three, well, stage three was after Tony Stark. Peter really dove into his life as Spider-Man after he met Iron Man. And for the most part, it was a good thing. He'd come back out of his shell a bit, especially in the suit. He'd been a lot quicker to laugh, and seemed to check back into conversations, even when he didn't have to. And after Ned found out what Peter'd really been up to at the "Stark Internship," he'd seen a whole new side of his friend. Peter had never talked about anything the way he talked about his work in the lab with Mr. Stark, or his time as a friendly neighborhood superhero.

Unfortunately, stage three came with a downside, and it was a big one. Peter had started hiding things from him, namely the more dangerous parts of his missions. Like injuries. And even more concerning, he was hiding them from Mr. Stark, too, and Ned couldn't fathom why. If anyone was going to be able to help him deal with the occupational hazards of being a superhero, it was Iron Man. But Peter'd been quick to shut him down whenever Ned brought up the idea of calling for help when he was hurt, regardless of the severity of the injury. And the last thing he wanted to do was to push Peter away. After all, that was the whole point of being the guy in the chair. Helping out when things got rough, even when he didn't agree with Spider-Man's choices.

Ned rolled over to his other side in his small bed. The thought made him uncomfortable. After all, wouldn't it be better if Peter never talked to him again until they were both wasting away in hospital beds than if they were best friends until Peter's tragic death at the ripe age of sixteen?

He prayed to whoever was holy that he would get a few hours of sleep. Even one hour. Just one would be enough.

Suddenly, Ned's phone started ringing, a jaunty tune blaring from the speakers. At 3 AM. Speak of the devil… it was Peter.

Ned brought the phone to his ear and whispered, "Hey, Peter."

"Hey, Ned!" Peter's voice sounded a shade off his usual bright tone. Ned heard the distinct thwip sound of a webshooter going off, then a pause. "Um, what's up?"

"Uh, I'm in bed… do you know what time it is?"

"Yeah. I just got caught up… with Spider-Man stuff."

"What'd you do? Did you stop any bad guys? Was it dangerous? Did you-"

"Ned!" Peter interrupted. Ned heard a shuddering breath from the other end of the line. "I need your help. Do you still have the biggest first aid kit known to man?"

Ned's heart rate picked up. He sat up. "Yeah. Why? Peter, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, I just... I got lightly shot."

"WHAT?" Ned yelled, then mouthed a particularly bad word to himself. He held his breath, listening for movement from his parents' bedroom. Hearing only the blessed sound of silence, he repeated in a whisper, "What? Peter-"

"Ned, it's not a big deal, I swear. It was only a little bit. And I have super healing, remember? I just don't want May to notice a whole roll of gauze going missing or something."

"Okay, yeah, I'll have it ready. Just be careful, okay?"

"Yeah, I'll see you soon."

Ned ended the call. His breath was stuck in his throat. Lightly shot? How the hell does someone get lightly shot? He carefully made his way to the linen closet in their small apartment, locating the extremely well-stocked first aid kid. He pulled out a roll of gauze and some medical tape. What else would you even need for a gunshot wound? Sighing in defeat, he grabbed the whole thing by its very durable strap. Thank God for overprotective parents.

He stepped back into his room at the same time that his window began to open. Ned rushed toward his friend (were his hands shaking? No, they definitely weren't. Of course not), who ungracefully crashed through the window. "Oh my god, Peter."

Peter clumsily got to his feet, leaving a bright red handprint on the desk he was using as support. He ripped off the mask, and good lord, he was pale. "What the hell happened to you, man?" His eyes darted to a noticeably darkened area of the suit.

Peter pressed the button that loosened the suit and revealed what was unmistakably a bullet wound on his right bicep. It was bleeding sluggishly, carving red trails down the lines of his muscles and pooling on the desk around his fingers.

"Oh my god, what happened to you?"

"It's not that big a deal. Gauze, please?"

Ned handed it to him shakily. "Come on, man, don't do that. What happened?" There was a pause. "Guy in the chair, remember?"

Peter pressed a wad of gauze to his arm and let out a pained hiss. "Sorry Ned, I just… I just got unlucky, I swear. Some lady was getting mugged so I had to help, but it turns out the guy was better prepared than I thought, and he had a knife, so I was like 'whatever, I'll just web him up,' but then he pulled out a gun, and well…" He shrugged and glanced down to his arm. "At least she got away."

"Dude." Ned couldn't take his eyes off the once white gauze, red leaking quickly through it. "That's insane."

"I know, I know, it wasn't even that cool, I was just stupid."

"No, it was, everything Spider-Man does is cool, man, so cool." Still, he couldn't stop looking at the glaring red. Someone had hurt his friend. Someone had shot his friend. And he was just standing in his bedroom like nothing was the matter. "I don't think this counts as a little bit shot, Peter. You got like, 100% shot."

His friend resolutely ignored him. He paused for a second, and Ned hoped he was rethinking this whole home healthcare thing. "Do you have tweezers?" Peter finally asked in a pale imitation of casual.

"Why?" Ned asked. The pit stuck in his throat dropped deep into his stomach.

Peter removed the gauze, and Jesus Christ that was a lot of blood. "Well, the bullet's still in there, and I gotta dig it out. I think it may have fractured my arm too, I don't know."

"What? No way, man, I can't just watch you dig a hole in your arm in the middle of my bedroom! You gotta call Mr. Stark."

"No way! I can't! He might take the suit away again, and I really can't deal with that."

"I don't think he-"

"I can do it myself, Ned. It doesn't even hurt that bad!" Peter's carefully taut muscles and his tightly clenched jaw told a completely different story. As if to disguise his pain, Peter sat down in Ned's desk chair. "Please, Ned. You're my guy in the chair, come on."

Ned let out a noise of frustration. "Don't do that." He dug through the bag and pulled out a pair of tweezers (for splinters, not bullets!). "It's not fair."

Peter took them and twirled them around in his fingers. He took a shaky breath and moved the tool closer to the slowly closing hole in his arm.

Ned gripped the blankets because he sure as hell wasn't going to let Peter go through this alone but oh my god, self surgery was not on his list of things to watch. "I really think you should tell-"

He was cut off by the shrill sound of a phone ringing.

"Ah, shit," Peter stated. He set the tweezers aside and Ned let out a sigh of relief. Peter fished the phone out of a hidden pocket of the suit that was still gathered around his waist. When he looked at the caller ID, he threw his head back in frustration. "It's Mr. Stark. Just… be quiet, he'll kill me if I don't answer him." Peter picked up the phone. "Hey, Mr. Stark!"

Ned mouthed "speaker, speaker," at him frantically. Peter shot him a warning look which Ned fully ignored, but he pressed the button anyway.

"Hey, kid. What the hell is going on?"

"What do you mean, Mr. Stark? Everything's fine, I mean I know it's late, but I'm headed home now, I swear."

"How about you tell me what your AI - I'm not going to call her Karen - is refusing to tell me."

"What?" Peter replied with a smirk, then a wince when he went to cross his arms.

"I got a medical alert, kid. But your AI wouldn't tell me what it was about, which shouldn't even be possible, by the way. What have you been telling her?" Mr. Stark paused. Peter didn't answer, but Ned saw the anxiety all over his face. "So, you're alive? You're fine? You'd better tell me what's going on, or I'm gonna make sure your Aunt May knows what you've been up to, I swear-"

"Mr. Stark! I'm fine, I promise."

And Ned knew, this was his moment. Because this was clearly not something either of them could deal with on their own, no matter how hard Peter tried. Ned couldn't just watch his friend's blood drip onto the carpet anymore, and he swore, if he had to watch Peter literally dig a bullet out of his own arm at 3AM on a Thursday morning, he would lose his shit. And possibly his dinner. So quickly, before he could second guess himself, he blurted, "Peter, you should tell him."

"Who is that? Tell me what? Parker, do you have me on speaker right now?"

"Uhhhh," Peter stalled. He glared at Ned. Dude, he mouthed.

Sorry, Ned mouthed back, secretly not sorry at all. This was definitely a call-in-Iron-Man type of situation.

"Kid, if you don't tell me what's going on-"

"It's fine, Mr. Stark! I'm fine! I just got… a little bit hurt? Not a lot though. Just a little shot. Not even majorly."

"I'm sorry, did you say shot? As in, bullets?" There was a distinctive sound of metal on skin that Peter recognized as Tony putting on the Iron Man suit.

I hate you, he mouthed at Ned. "It was one bullet actually, and I'm fine," he spoke into the phone.

"Shut up, kid, I'm on my way."

Peter ended the call and pulled his suit back on, gingerly yanking the sleeve over his injured arm. He winced as the fabric touched his skin, and Ned reached out in sympathy. "Ned, what the hell?"

"Dude, sorry, what was I supposed to say?"

"Um, I don't know, how about nothing?"

"This isn't nothing, Peter, you got shot. Like with a gun. You're bleeding on my carpet!"

"Agh, sorry."

"It's fine. I just… I want to make sure you're okay. Because you don't look okay. I- I didn't mean to say it that loud. But I- I don't know, I don't exactly regret it, alright?"

Peter stared at him, and Ned could tell something clicked. He opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, a technology-affected voice sounded outside the still open window. "Hey, Spider-Man."

Ned's jaw dropped. Iron Man was right there. Outside his window. "So awesome," he commented.

Peter threw his head back and groaned.

"The least you could've done is let me swing here. You didn't have to carry me across the whole city," Peter complained. The amount of effort it had taken to get the kid into the tower had aged Tony 50 years, and by the time Peter had finally changed and agreed to an X-ray, the man may as well have been on his deathbed. For once, he was grateful he'd delayed the sale of the tower after the fiasco on moving day.

"I wasn't going to let you bleed all over New York. I've spent the last ten years trying to convince people I'm not a heartless asshole. One injured spider making a blood trail to the tower wasn't going to undo all my progress." He tried for his usual sarcasm, but he knew it wasn't convincing. The image of Peter standing resolutely in his friend's small bedroom, dripping blood onto the cheap carpet and onto a supposedly innocuous pair of tweezers (his heart definitely didn't threaten to stop altogether when Peter had explained those, not at all) was probably going to be burned into his brain forever.

"Well, Peter, it's good you came in," Dr. Cho said, her mouth a thin line. Tony couldn't help but notice how she refused to meet his eyes. "The bullet fractured the bone in your arm as you suspected, but considering your healing factor, that's not my main concern. Did I hear correctly that you were planning on extracting it yourself?"

Peter had the decency to look ashamed while he nodded.

"I cannot express to you enough how dangerous that would've been. The bullet ended up less than an inch from your brachial artery. If you had been even a little bit off and pierced it, even your abilities couldn't have saved you."

Peter looked stricken, and Tony felt sick. Normally, he appreciated Helen's no nonsense attitude, but when the image of the kid standing, exasperated, morphed into that of a glassy-eyed Peter in a pool of blood on his friend's messy floor, he briefly wished he'd never met her, or at a minimum, that he'd been spared this conversation.

"Oh," Peter said guiltily. His face was pale as he watched Dr. Cho set up what could only be surgical supplies. Tony knew Bruce was working his hardest on synthesizing a fast-acting pain medication that he wouldn't immediately metabolize, but it hadn't been completed yet. Peter was a strong kid, but he could see the fear on his face plain as day.

Regardless, Tony saw red. "Oh? That's all you have to say for yourself?"

Peter's scared brown eyes turned cold, and he opened his mouth to reply.

"Boys!" Dr. Cho snapped. "I'd really prefer to remove the bullet before I have to re-open the wound to do so, so can you save whatever this is for later?"

Tony eyed the scalpel in Helen's now gloved hand. He clenched his fists to hide how they were trembling and gave a curt nod.

"Now, Peter," her tone was apologetic, soft. "You know how this works. I'm going to give you the maximum dosage of Mr. Rogers' old anesthetic, and it should work for a couple of minutes. I'm going to go as quickly as I can, but considering the location and severity of the wound, you're going to end up feeling at least some of it."

Peter paled even more and nodded resolutely. Tony felt his anger drain away as he watched his kid stare down the sharp end of a scalpel. He vowed to have a few terse words with Bruce later if making Spider-Man's medication wasn't his top and only priority. For now, though, he took a step closer to Peter, who subconsciously leaned toward him.

"You ready?" Helen asked.

Peter cleared his throat. "Yeah." Tony watched him wince at the way his voice shook, as if it was something to be ashamed of.

"Okay. Sit still, and don't look." Helen looked at both of them in turn, making it clear that that advice wasn't just for Peter.

As efficiently and accurately as possible, Helen injected Peter with Steve's anesthetic and went to work.

Tony wasn't used to this kind of thing. The sit by someone's bedside as they have surgery, being a comforting presence kind of thing. At first, he didn't know what to do. But two minutes and 37 seconds later (was he counting? He didn't know he was counting), Peter grimaced and started to sweat, and Tony knew he was feeling the forceps slowly entering the bullet wound in his arm. Instinctively, he reached forward and grabbed Peter's hand.

Peter looked up at him, and Tony saw the flash of gratefulness under the fear and the dash of anger. Helen told Peter she was going to switch to forceps, and he gripped Tony's hand hard enough that his knuckles cracked.

"Um, you might not want to do that," Peter said, voice shaking. He started to pull away from his grip.

"What? Peter, it's okay."

"No, I know, I just-" Peter grimaced and held back a groan. "I might break your hand."

Oh. Super strength. Tony pulled his hand away; Peter tensed up. "You're going to be okay, kid." He moved his hand to Peter's shoulder in what he hoped was a comforting manner.

Helen said, "Peter, I need you to be still now. I have the bullet, but removing it is going to be the worst part. Do you understand?"

Peter nodded and gripped the edge of the chair. As Helen extracted the bullet, Peter held back a yell, burying his head in Mr. Stark's chest, much to Tony's surprise. He moved his hand to Peter's back, trying to resist looking at what the doctor was doing. His eyes briefly found the blood pouring from Peter's wound, the forceps sticking out unceremoniously. For some reason, that threatened to make his stomach turn.

"Almost there," Dr. Cho whispered.

Peter bit back another yell as she pulled harder on the metal in his arm. His grip dented the arm of the chair. He was crying into Tony's shirt, which he pretended not to notice. As mad as he still was that Peter had somehow convinced Karen not to tell him about this, and that it had taken his friend (what was his name, Ted?) whispering just a little too loudly to make him aware of his injury at all, he knew this kind of procedure was the worst thing you could wish on a person. Memories of Afghanistan still woke him up late at night - flashes of torture, of unmedicated procedures that were a little too similar to what Peter was facing now, facing silently. It was the least Tony could do to be unshakably there for him.

Once Peter had mangled the chair arm to the point of being unrecognizable, Helen at long last said, "Okay, I got it. You did great, Peter."

Peter flinched when the bullet hit the metal table with a hard ting.

"I'm just going to wrap this up and let your healing take care of the rest, okay?"

Peter nodded, muscles pulled tighter than a rope in tug-of-war.

Helen finished bandaging him as fast as she could and excused herself with little more than a glance in their direction. Tony knew this weighed hard on her too, doing surgery on someone when they were awake and feeling every cut she made, but at this moment, his priority was his kid. "It's okay, kid, it's over."

Peter leaned back, and Tony watched as he wiped the sweat off his brow and fought to force his expression back to neutrality. "I- I'm sorry, Mr. Stark."

And suddenly, Tony remembered why all of this happened in the first place. "You should be." Peter looked up at him. "You have to think, Peter. This could have ended so differently, and I would've - well, let's just say finding you dead on your friend's shitty carpet wouldn't have been a highlight of my week, alright?"

Peter's expression turned cold. "Don't talk about Ned like that. He was helping me."

Ned. That's what his friend's name was. "You were lucky he spoke up on that phone call, kid! You would've died and bled out in front of that friend of yours, and it would've been your fault!"

Guilt, then anger, flashed across Peter's face, and he looked away. "I already said I was sorry, Mr. Stark. What more do you want from me?"

If Tony was in a better mood, he would've seen that Peter had learned his lesson, that he had listened, for once. But dark hypotheticals assaulted his mind. Peter dead on the floor, his AI unwilling to talk even as he bled out after attacking himself with a pair of tweezers. "I want you to un-do whatever you did to your suit's AI-"

"Karen."

"Karen, whatever. I want you to un-say whatever you said that made her think that a bullet wound isn't something she has to share with me! Or I swear to god, I will reprogram her to record and report every single thing you say and do!"

When Peter looked back at him, his eyes were venomous. "You can't do that!"

"Watch me."

"You're acting like a stalker."

"You're deserving it." Tony fought back a wince the moment he finished saying it.

"I get it! I messed up! I already said I'm sorry, and I am! But you can't just record everything I do because of one mistake. I'm allowed to have privacy, you know!"

"Not when you use it to hide this shit from me! I have to know!"

"And I'll tell you, isn't that enough?"

"No!" Tony actually stamped his foot like he was an angry toddler. "Not when you've never done that in your life! Not when you, I'm assuming, convinced Karen that for some reason, I didn't need to know when you've been hurt."
"I talked to Karen because you're acting like I'm five years old, and clearly, she agrees with me that you're being way too overbearing!"

"Well, better overbearing than not here at all!" Tony yelled, regretting it the moment it came out of his mouth. He liked to pride himself on being over what Howard had done to him, or more accurately, not done. He'd never been a real father, that was clear. But Tony did his best to never let that color the way he acted or talked to others. Until right now, he hadn't even alluded to Howard, not to the kid. He didn't want the names Howard and Peter anywhere close to each other in his brain, ever.

Unfortunately, Peter looked back at him like he'd been struck by lightning. He blinked owlishly, mouth slightly open. Tony watched the gears turn in his mind, saw the moment that the realization landed, that this was less about Peter Parker and more about Tony and Howard Stark.

"No. No epiphanies allowed on my watch, in my house." His tone was hollow.

"Mr. Stark-"

"Nuh-uh, kid, we aren't touching that one. You're going to go home and sleep off that broken arm, and if you even so much as touch that suit in the next three days, I will make sure Spider-Man never sees the light of day again."

Peter blinked away the realization and responded, "This will be healed in two days at most."

"I don't care, Parker. Actually, let's make it a week." A week would be a good middle ground, considering Tony would have grounded Peter forever if it meant nothing like this would ever happen again.

Tony watched as the teenager mulled this over in his mind, clearly disagreeing but unwilling to say it after Howard had just come up. Huh, I guess these conversations have plus sides after all. "Fine. A week. But after that I'm going back to normal."

"And you'll tell Karen to tell me what I need to know?"

Peter rolled his eyes, but the shuffle of his feet told Tony that he did understand at least a little bit about how much worse this could have been. "I'll tell her. But you're not going to get a report of every paper cut I get."

Tony forced a smile. "Good. That would be annoying." It was a lie. It wouldn't. He'd listen to any and every report Karen was willing to give.

Peter nodded. "Only the important stuff, then."

"Only the important stuff," he concurred. He sighed under Peter's still calculating gaze. "You'd better get home to your aunt, then. Wouldn't want her to get lonely." He winked, then laughed as Peter's face screwed up in disgust.

"Mr. Stark!" he whined. Good. At least the pressure's off.

Tony waved him out the door, already vowing to track him his whole way home. "Go home, kid, or your aunt will wake up before you get there, and I'll have to answer for it. And remember, no suit for a week!"

Peter rolled his eyes. "Bye, Mr. Stark. I'll let you know if I almost die again."

Tony couldn't help but wonder if Peter knew exactly what almost dying entailed, and if he would recognize it when he felt it. He knew Peter had absorbed a few too many of Tony's traits over their time together, one of them being his utter lack of self-preservation skills. Sometimes he wondered if he should have brought the kid into his life at all. "Yeah, feel free to tell me about this stuff regardless."

"Whatever," Peter responded good-naturedly but dismissively.

Tony paused for a minute, wondering whether or not to push the issue, but eventually decided against it. "Get out of here!" he laughed, then watched as the kid carefully opened the door to avoid jostling his healing arm. He refused to let himself feel how close he'd gotten to the kid, how much even the idea of him bleeding out made his heart race. It had been closer than he'd wanted it to be today, and it hadn't even been all that close. If only Peter had felt like he could have trusted him with this and not just his friend. No, if only he'd known he needed to trust Tony with this, he wouldn't have ended up feeling like he had to dig a bullet out of his arm with a pair of dull household tweezers. It was too bad Peter was sixteen and not five. Tony could have strapped him on a leash.

He sighed, feeling the weight of the day. It could have gone so differently, ending with the dark product of his imagination playing out for real. That would haunt him when he slept for many years to come, he was sure of it. He shuddered.

Tony poured himself a stiff drink, vowing that it would be his only one. With a quick order to FRIDAY, he pulled up traffic camera data to follow Peter, watching him make his way to the subway with barely a glance up to the now lightening sky. Good. He's not going to swing his way back to Queens. He let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. Tony shook his head. He wasn't certain often, but he was sure of one thing. He owed Ned Leeds a recommendation letter for whatever university he wanted to attend. Hell, he owed him tuition.

A/N: Thank you for reading; I hope you all liked it! I'm excited to give the 5+1 genre a shot. Feel free to review if you want!

I'll have the next chapter out as soon as I finish it, but I'm not good with sticking to update schedules, so I'm not going to give myself one. I do hope you stick around if you like it so far, though. I think the next chapters will be stronger than this one! :)