Archive of Our Own

“Have we considered,” Tony paused, flipping through some documents with a sigh. “Getting rid of governments entirely?” 

Peter snorted. The collection of people in the conference room were all staring at Tony slightly bemusedly. Pepper was looking with an expression that read why did I agree to marry you. The Head of SI’s Legal Department Andrew Maguire was blinking in shock and all of the other lawyers were just staring. 

They were midway through prepping Tony to take the stand in the UN and talk about why he believed the Accords were necessary — with some adaptations, of course. They’d been sat in the room for the last three days, pretty much, taking shifts as Tony scoured over countless pages of documents relating to the Accords. The lawyers would rotate, coming and going, taking naps in the nearby guest rooms and then coming back once they’d recharged. Peter had fought off sleep for as long as possible before conceding and crashing out the previous day. Tony, on the other hand, had been awake for the last 72 hours and had become slightly delirious. Anytime anyone attempted to suggest that he should go to bed, he became about 5% more insane. It was a dangerous game to play, and all of them were losing.

“Um,” Andrew mumbled, clearly mentally reassessing whether the countless years of law school followed by a difficult legal career had been, in fact, worth it. “We haven’t, but—”

But alas, Tony was back on his bullshit and still whip-smart with his response time, despite the lack of sleep. “Well, I think we should at least consider it. We’ve explored all of the other options at this point, let’s just get rid of them. And then let anarchy take over. I think it’s the best solution!”

Pepper stared at him, then shifted her attention to the other lawyers who all seemed to be about three steps behind in the conversation. One of them was having to drink a red bull to stay awake. Peter was, himself, rather confused at the direction the conversation had gone, but decided not to question it too much. Peter was around and helping because he felt it was his duty as the heir, and it was his winter break so he was kind of bored to just be sitting in the apartment all day. Pepper and Tony had refused his help at first but then Peter had made the case that he was a superhero so technically he got to be present when they were discussing the Accords, and they'd conceded. 

As Tony Stark went on a spiel about how social anarchy was more beneficial for the world than collective governments, dismissing the ideas of about two thousand years of political philosophers, Peter started to regret his choice to help prepare Tony for his time in court. 

“Not a word of this leaves this room,” Pepper sighed, instructing the others. “I really don’t have the energy to deal with a lawsuit right now, especially one saying that Tony Stark claimed that he was going to abolish governments.” 

Peter grinned. Yeah, the media would really have a field day with that declaration. Stark Tower would probably be bombed by about seventeen different countries within the hour. It was lucky that the SI Legal Team were all overwhelmingly loyal and would definitely not leak anything like that — mainly in fear of Pepper Potts’ wrath, because she would 100% hunt them down and blacklist them from ever being employed again. 

God, Peter loved Pepper. 

“No, but guys, let’s think about this logically—” Tony proposed, slamming down the chunk of documents he’d been holding onto the desk. One of the lawyers who had been nodding off jumped awake with a start. 

Tony’s rant was interrupted by Peter, who was feeling particularly brave and wanted to take on the insomniac who had, it seemed, gone entirely crazy. Pepper shot Peter a look as though he had a death wish as he opened his mouth to speak. 

“Tony, we have six hours before you have to go up in court, none of us have had a decent night’s sleep in about a week, you haven’t had any sleep in seventy two hours and I’m ninety percent sure that that’s your thirty fourth cup of coffee in as many hours.” Peter informed him. 

“And your point is?” Tony asked, staring him down. Peter did not allow fear to set in. No, he would not be scared of Sleep-Deprived Tony Stark, despite how absolutely fucking terrifying he was, especially with that stare. 

“We need to focus.” Peter clarified. 

“But Peter,” Tony stared at him rather scarily, seeming to ignore the use of his first name (which normally made Tony extremely happy) as well as the facts. “Here me out. Anarchy.” 

“Yes, I love it, and I agree wholeheartedly,” Peter nodded. “But first, Accords. Legal mumbo-jumbo. Clauses. The UN. Let's keep the restructuring of the global political system until after this meeting, yeah?” 

Tony took a solid minute to respond, enacting a staring match with Peter for a whole minute until Tony eventually blinked and Peter won. “Fine.” The sleep-deprived man concurred, and slumped back in his chair, leaving Maguire to restart his discussion of Clause 31A, as they had been talking about before Tony had devolved into his dismantling governments idea. 

They made it about another hour before Tony fell asleep at his desk, his words starting to slur. No-one made any noise, no talking, no breathing, no thinking, as Tony slowly put his head down on the stacks of paper, his eyes fluttering shut.

Silence. 

It was beautiful. 

Peter wanted to cry. It was possibly the most incredible moment he’d experienced in the last week— or year, really. Seeing Tony Stark’s head hit the table as he drifted into unconciousness was like a blessing from God. Or Thor.

“C’mon, then,” Peter said quietly, getting out of his chair and lifting Tony up, the only one who was really strong enough to do so without cracking his spine. The man was light in his arms, having completely passed out due to exhaustion and they all continued to be silent, holding their breaths, as Peter carried him out of the room. Peter dumped him in one of the guest rooms and tucked his mentor into the bed. It didn’t look like Tony would be waking up any time soon. 

After that, he returned to the conference room.

“Is he…?” Pepper asked, on edge. Everyone was looking up at him expectantly. 

“He’s asleep,” Peter confirmed, and there was a collective sigh of relief across the room. Tony had been a terror for the last several hours, and the fact that he was gone meant they didn’t have to have inane conversations about the rise of anarchy or whatever. 

“Thank god,” Pepper sat back in her chair, rubbing her eyes with her hand as she did so. “That man will be the death of me. I thought he’d never sleep.” 

“I didn’t think it would take that long,” Maguire said, seemingly exhausted and slightly bewildered, and Peter made a mental note to give the man some extra holiday once the whole Accords business was over. The last thing they needed was for Andrew to quit. The whole company would probably fall apart. 

There was a general consensus to keep on working, but only after all of the lawyers had personally thanked Peter for being able to make Tony fall asleep.

“Team effort,” Peter shrugged, and then went right back to the various unfinished clauses. 

Of course, everything was pretty much done. They were all just tweaking various bits of the amended Accords that Tony was planning on distributing to the UN delegates. It had been months in the making, and felt like Peter’s baby due to the amount of work he’d personally put in. 

An hour before the meeting, Tony was still asleep and there was absolutely no-one who was going to try to wake him up. The last person who’d tried to wake Tony up when he was sleeping had been Clint Barton, and he’d been blasted through a wall because Tony wore his Iron Man gauntlets to sleep. After he’d been extricated from the wall, Clint had been shaky for several hours. No-one wanted to try it again. 

“It’s fine,” Peter said cavalierly. He was surprisingly calm. “I’ll do it.” 

“What do you mean?” Juliet, one of the lawyers, asked. She was more awake than most of them, having just come back on rotation after a good amount of sleep. She’d missed out on all of the fun of Tony being at his most insane level. 

“You can’t wake him up,” Another said, seemingly horrified. “Peter, it’s not safe.” 

“No,” Peter rolled his eyes, “I mean, I’ll do the speech, if he doesn’t wake up,” Peter said, and all of the lawyers’ eyebrows raised. 

Pepper had been apologetic, but about three hours ago she had also collapsed into one of the guest rooms, eyes bloodshot, just to get a little bit of rest. No-one was exactly thrilled about the idea of waking her up, either. 

Which meant that all power passed over to Peter, because he was third in command and both Tony and Pepper were out of action. So, hey, no one could technically disagree with him. 

Maguire coughed. “Are—are you sure?” 

“Yup,” Peter nodded. He had it down. He’d heard Tony practise the speech itself enough times that he’d accidentally memorised it, and he’d been sat in the room as long as everyone else to know the Accords thoroughly. He felt confident that if asked, he could probably cite any of the clauses on the document and tell the UN about them.  

So they spent the next hour prepping Peter to take the stand, and also glancing to the door at every sudden movement, probably hoping that either Pepper or Tony would wake. Peter was a lot less jittery than he’d expected to be, possibly because he was so sure that he knew the information. 

The minutes ticked down, and there was no sign of Tony or Pepper. So Peter gave himself the official go-ahead and changed into his nicest suit, courtesy of Tony’s tailor. Then he sighed, peeking into the room that Tony was asleep in, and wished for the last two seconds possible that Tony would miraculously wake up. 

But alas, it was not to be. 

“We can still wake him up, you know,” Maguire muttered to Peter quietly as they sat down in the UN’s chambers, shuffling with some papers. “You don’t have to do this.” 

It wasn’t his job, sure, and he wasn’t Tony Stark, but he was going to do a damn good job, and he had Maguire at his side as well just in case he did anything wrong. The UN members flooded in, and the important man who sat at the front (Peter mentally shrugged, he was probably a judge). coughed and looked at them.

“We had been informed that we were here to be addressed by Mr Stark. Counsel, can we ask you why Mr Anthony Stark is absent?” 

“My name is Peter Parker Stark, his legally adopted son, and the delegate of Tony Stark as well as the heir to his company,” Peter commenced. “I am authorised to give this speech as well as attend this meeting. Mr Anthony Stark is currently unable to attend for reasons I will not be disclosing.” 

Shit, was Peter, like, good at that? Or had he just watched too many legal shows? Or possibly spent too much time with Andrew?

“Very well then,” The judge nodded, allowing it. “You may begin.” 

And so Peter did. He was clear, concise, and made all of the points Tony had been planning on making, albeit with a lot less of the Tony Stark flare. As he handed out the copies of the amended Accords, many of the delegates nodded to him with a level of respect. Peter had turned on his CEO persona for the morning and was not planning on turning it off. He calmly went through all of the changes they’d made to the Accords, getting Maguire to back him up with various legal bits he didn’t entirely understand. 

Him and Andrew made a damn good team. 

By the end of the speech, there were people who looked like they had questions, rebuttals and various arguments. Peter was ready to answer them but the judge concluded that they all needed more time to think about the amendments and was about to announce that their meeting was over, but there was a disruption as the door opened. 

It was almost entirely what Peter expected. 

Peter had, after all, been expecting that Tony would somehow make his way to the meeting. He was Tony fucking Stark, of course he would. What he didn’t expect was that Tony would look as dishevelled as he did. 

“I’m here!” Tony shouted as he ran in, attracting the attention of everyone in the room. His suit had become rumpled, and his hair looked like he’d crawled out of bed and had immediately started running towards the meeting (he probably had). Pepper was in tow behind him, looking entirely put together. “I’m here! I’ve got this, I can do it.” 

The judge looked down at Tony as the less-insane-after-some-sleep billionaire approached Maguire and Peter, ready to give his speech to the UN. “Mr Stark—”

Peter smirked. Tony interjected, nodding and making various hand gestures. “Yeah, I know, I know, I’m late—”

“Mr Stark, there is no need for your speech.” The judge commanded. 

Tony looked affronted. “I know I’m late but really there’s no need for that kind of—”

Tony stopped talking as Peter poked him in the side and nodded up to the judge. Tony’s mouth fell shut and he glanced up at the judge with a curious face. Clearly no-one had thought to inform him that Peter had done the speech, and Peter certainly didn’t want to be the one to tell him. The judge, however, seemed very happy to take that role. 

“Thank you, Mr Parker-Stark,” The judge commanded him with a nod. “As I was saying, Mr Stark, there is no need for a speech because your son has already done it.” 

“What?” Tony said, outraged. He turned to look at Peter, his face completely shocked. “You gave the speech?”

“Yup,” Peter nodded, whispering his retort back. 

“You should have woken me up!” Tony complained.

“After what happened to Clint last time he tried?” Peter whisper-yelled back, well aware they were in a court and not wanting the entire court to hear the story. “Hell no. No-one had the balls to, so, I did the speech.” 

“You didn’t have to!” Tony protested, despite it already being done.  

“It’s done, dad, I did it already, just say thank you.” Peter rolled his eyes at his dad. Tony was always making things more complicated than they had to be. Peter was the heir, it was his job to sometimes step in and do stuff when Tony couldn’t. 

There was a pause, before Tony blurted out, “Thank you.” 

The judge seemed satisfied. “I declare this meeting officially ended. Mr Parker-Stark, it was lovely to have made your acquaintance. Mr Stark, I look forward to seeing you in this courtroom when we discuss the rebuttals to your amendments.” 

“There better not be too many rebuttals,” Tony grumbled quietly as they left the room along with the other delegates. “We’ve spent months trying to get those Accords perfect.” 

“It’s the UN,” Peter raised an eyebrow, keeping his voice low, and Maguire nodded absentmindedly. “Of course there’s going to be rebuttals.”  

“Well, Pete, I can’t believe you did a speech to the UN all because you were too scared to wake me up,” Tony sighed. 

“Eh, it was mostly because you were slightly scary last night,” Peter added, “I didn’t know what would happen if you tried to give the speech yourself.” 

“Slightly scary? He was downright terrifying,” Pepper amended. 

“What?” Tony seemed offended. “I was normal.” 

“You started arguing about dismantling governments,” Maguire corrected, the corner of his mouth tugging at a smile. It was kind of funny, thinking about it, Peter reflected, although he was certain that everyone who’d been in that conference room would rather drink one of DUMM-E’s smoothies before experiencing that level of chaos again.

“You know what?” Tony stopped walking. All of the others turned back to look at him. “I stand by that.”

They all burst into laughter and then started chatting about all of the counter-arguments they were going to have to draw up, bundling into the car to get back to the dreaded conference room. It wasn’t a fun job, dealing with superhero politics and the intricacies of the law, but it was rewarding when it went right. 

And hey, if, three months later after many more speeches and discussions, Peter was the favourite person of everyone at the UN, then he couldn’t help it. It was just his irrevocable charm.