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“One more stop,” Tony tells Peter as they climb back into the car. They’re running errands, which seems so mundane it’s almost disorienting.
Peter just shrugs and doesn’t ask what it is, which is all the incentive Tony needs to turn right instead of the left they usually take to go home.
Peter is lonely, Tony had confessed to Rhodey a few days before. The compound is big and empty and quieter than any New Yorker has ever experienced, and Peter isn’t handling the transition well.
“Get a pet?” Rhodey had suggested, almost joking. Tony had blinked at him.
“Like, a dog?”
“Yeah, sure. Kid likes dogs, doesn’t he?”
Tony thinks back to two months before, when Peter had crossed paths with a dog walker and insisted on petting every one of them—‘so it’s fair,’ he’d explained—while Tony stood by and watched him with raised eyebrows.
“Yeah,” Tony had said.
“Ok, get him a dog. Man’s best friend, and all that.”
And so, here they are, pulling up outside the local animal shelter. (Tony would have gotten Peter any kind of dog he asked for, even some absurdly expensive purebred, but he knows Peter would rather adopt one. The kid is just that perfect.)
Peter blinks at the sign, eyebrows furrowing. He turns to Tony.
“You should know, I’m strongly against experimentation on animals,” he says bluntly.
“Geez, kid, you think I’m not?” Tony asks, affronted. He scoffs and gets out of the car. “That’s not why we’re here. C’mon.”
Peter follows, his face back to the completely blank mask he usually wore.
The girl at the desk balks when Tony walks in, dropping the papers she’s organizing as she stares at him and Peter.
“Um. Hi. How can I help you?” She asks, which is a fairly graceful recovery.
Tony looks straight at Peter as he says, “We were looking to adopt a dog.”
Peter blinks again, surprised, but there’s something almost impressed in his expression that tells Tony that this was a good idea.
“Great,” The girl smiles, looking between Peter and Tony like she understands something Tony doesn’t. “Do you have a specific one in mind?”
“Whichever one he wants,” Tony answers, nodding over at Peter.
The worker leads them to the back, where the dogs are kept, and begins introducing Peter to every one, telling him their names and personalities. Tony keeps a few feet back and watches Peter dutifully absorb the information. He keeps his face neutral, because he knows if Peter looks back and sees him with any sort of unhappy expression, he’ll change his mind and possibly back out of the whole thing, afraid of upsetting Tony.
They walk along the row of kennels, Peter spending a moment at each one, before pursing his lips and moving on to the next. They’re almost to the last of the dogs when Peter stops, peering into a large kennel.
“This is Maggie,” the worker informs. “She’s part Scottish Deerhound, and… we don’t know what else, really. But she’s the smartest dog you’ll ever meet.”
Peter’s mouth twitches into a smile. “She’ll fit right in,” he murmurs. The worker seems to take his reaction as a good sign, because she opens the cage and calls Maggie out. Tony’s jaw drops a little when the dog steps out. She’s a very big dog. But Peter immediately crouches down and begins scratching at her ears and grizzled nose, and Tony knows she’s the one.
“She’s perfect,” Tony tells the girl.
He’s filling out paperwork when he innocuously asks, “What are you going to name her?”
Peter looks up at him, puzzled. “She already has a name.”
“Yeah, but… Maggie?” Tony pulls a face. Peter shrugs, and looks back down to where he’s methodically petting Maggie, who’s looking at him with the canine equivalent of love at first sight.
“It’s her name. Even if the people who named her that aren’t around anymore.”
Tony swallows hard and looks away, meeting eyes with the employee and feeling uncomfortably exposed. She gazes at Tony with wide eyes before looking back at Peter.
“She’ll need a lot of space to run around,” she warns.
“That’s ok, we have plenty.” Peter probably means the nine acres of land that the compound sits on, but it makes Tony think of empty rooms.
Tony wakes up to a truncated scream. He’s out of bed and stumbling for the door practically before he registers it.
Peter’s door is ajar, the room beyond dark. Tony shoulders his way in, only to stop when the beam of light from the hallway faintly illuminates the room.
Peter is curled on the bed with Maggie laying next to him, almost concealing him, her snout buried against his sternum. Her whines are so loud they almost drown out Peter’s ragged gasping. His hands are fisted in her fur.
Tony feels incredibly out of place, and thinks he should probably leave. Any duty that he is meant to fulfil here, Maggie has beat him to, which is probably for the best.
He takes one back-peddling step before Peter lifts a hand, holding it out to Tony. Almost as if magnetically pulled, Tony crosses the room and grasps the boy’s cold fingers. He has yet to lift his face from where it’s hidden, half in his pillow and half in the dog’s bulk.
When Peter does not relent his hand, Tony sits on the edge of the bed, sinking toward the weight of the other two. They stay, the three of them, in a quasi-knot of limbs and shared heat, until Peter’s breaths even out and longer.
Peter’s eating with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, the silence nearly suffocating as it stretches on between them. Tony is poking uncomfortably at his baked potato when he sees Peter’s hand sneak under the table, where Maggie always situates herself at dinner time. Tony smirks.
“Did you just give a piece of thirty dollar steak to the dog?” He asks blandly, raising an eyebrow.
Peter freezes, snapping his head up to look at Tony, who triple checks his expression so Peter knows he’s teasing.
“Um. No, I di—wait, this cost thirty dollars?!” Peter’s jaw drops. “Oh… my gosh. Who pays that much—” He cuts himself off again, the realization that talking about spending habits to a billionaire is probably rude, or at least very ungrateful, making him blush. “I mean,” he tries instead, “thank you for dinner, Tony. This is very good.”
He’s closing in on himself again, Tony can literally see it happening, the silence creeping back up around them like shadows.
Tony shrugs in a very practiced, nonchalant manner. “We have an anniversary to celebrate.”
Peter stills, his eyes narrowing in confusion as he tries to recall what Tony is talking about.
“A year ago today,” Tony explains, not looking at Peter, “I met you.”
“Oh,” the kid says quietly. “I didn’t realize it was today.” He doesn’t say that a lot has changed, but it’s written all over his face. Tony almost regrets bringing it up, but he’s spent enough time bottling everything up to know that ignoring the past doesn’t make it easier to live with. They couldn’t just pretend that May had never existed, that there had never been a time when the two of them didn’t sit down to awkward family dinners every night.
“Yeah, well. It was an important day for me,” Tony finally admits. Maggie’s tail gently thwacks against his ankle as she wags it contentedly.
Peter looks up at him and his eyes are dark with memories of the past year, but he is almost unbearably earnest as he replies, “Me, too.” Then he applies himself to finishing his steak, occasionally slipping pieces of carrot underneath the table. The ensuing silence is full, but not heavy.
“Peter?” Tony calls, knocking on Peter’s bedroom. There is no answer, so Tony walks down the hallway toward the living room. “Peter?” Still no reply. “Fri, where’s Peter?”
“He is on the south lawn,” the AI answers. Curious, Tony makes his way outside, where he sees Peter playing fetch with Maggie. Tony stands in the shade of the porch for a few minutes, watching as Peter throws the tennis ball progressively farther. Maggie dutifully lopes after it and bounds eagerly back, depositing the ball into Peter’s hand to throw again until finally Peter throws it so far Tony completely loses sight of it. Maggie takes a few running steps, then stops, wheels around, and glares at Peter.
Peter holds his hands out innocently. Maggie is obviously not appeased, because she charges at Peter, knocking him to ground as she energetically licks his face. Tony can hear his laughter from here, echoing back across the lawn.
“Stop!” Peter giggles, pushing at Maggie’s considerable weight as she pins him. After a moment of struggle, he finally gives up and goes limp. It’s then that Tony decides to announce his presence.
“Peter,” he calls, and sees Peter tilt his head back so he can see Tony. “We’ve got to go or we’ll be late.”
“Ok,” Peter answers, and then looks back at Maggie, who’s still laying prostrate across his stomach, panting happily. “Go to Tony, girl,” he tells her in his upbeat ‘dog’ voice. Eager to obey her favorite human, Maggie stands and dashes across the grass to Tony, who kneels down and scratches her ears as Peter pulls himself up and jogs over.
“You’re covered in grass,” Tony points out, smiling up at him.
“Oops,” Peter says, looking down at himself. “Give me a minute, I’ll go change.” He disappears inside, a faint smile still on his face.
Tony looks at Maggie, who’s watching Tony with much less affection than she usually looks at Peter with, but she’s sitting still while Tony pets her, her tongue lolling past her teeth.
“Good girl,” Tony tells her. “You made him laugh.” Maggie beats her tail against the ground in acknowledgement of the praise.
It’s their first real fight, and if Tony was any calmer he would realize that this moment matters. But he’s too caught up in the previous five hours in which Peter had been unreachable.
“Dang it, Peter!” Tony snaps, slamming his hand down on the counter. Peter jumps. “You need to bloody communicate with me!” Peter opens his mouth, but Tony plows over him, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s just me and you, kid. And if we can’t freaking talk to each other, I don’t know how we’re going to make this work. You can’t just—” he looks up, his voice dies in his throat. Peter is staring at him with tear-filled eyes set wide in his pale face.
Oh, no. Had he yelled? He had. Tony had just yelled at his traumatized and emotionally scarred kid, who’s now starting to back away slowly, as if retreating from a wild animal.
“Peter,” Tony says, quietly, forcing the sound through his tight throat. Peter shakes his head wildly, and turns and runs. “Oh, shoot. Peter!” He follows him, because he can’t think clearly over the claxon sound of fix this running through his head.
He rounds the corner Peter has turned down in time to see the kid stagger into the wall, barely putting a hand out in time to catch himself. He starts sinking down, clutching at the frame of the door he didn’t quite reach as he collapses to the floor.
Tony trips haltingly forward, but Peter jerks backward, shoving himself further into the wall, nearly denting it in his frenzy to get away.
Tony stops dead, his own breathing so loud in his ears he almost doesn’t hear Peter’s quiet, “Don’t, don’t.” Slowly, his legs numb, Tony lowers himself to the ground a dozen feet away from the kid.
There’s a clatter of claws and then Maggie hurtles around the corner. She seems to take in the scene with her dark, intelligent eyes, and then she places herself like a shield in front of Peter and growls at Tony.
It’s almost relieving, really, to have someone blame him, to have someone look at him and acknowledge that he’s the worst possible thing that could have happened to a kid who deserves everything good in this world and has been orphaned twice over instead. Even if that someone is a dog.
After establishing her dominance over Tony, Maggie turns and begins whuffling at Peter, pressing her nose into his hair. Tony thinks that’s probably his cue to leave—the dog will calm Peter down, and having Tony, his trigger, there certainly isn’t helping—but then Peter’s gasping out, “No, no,” and shoving his hands into Maggie’s flank, pushing her away.
Maggie backs away, her wide eyes sad. Then she pads slowly over to Tony, who reaches out and holds on to her collar, just in case, and they both sit and wait.
It takes Peter forty-seven uneven breaths to finally pry one hand from the fabric of his own sweater and hold it out, shaking and limply curled, toward Maggie.
She bolts forward, tugging away from Tony’s loose grip without a second’s hesitation. Peter unfurls just enough to let her into his space, a messy clash of over-eager, worried hound and panic-shaken limbs, and Peter’s burying his fingers into her fur, pressing his face into her side and amidst his quiet repetitions of “Good girl” Tony can hear choked sobs.
Tony turns tail and flees.
He’s still in the lab—under one of his cars, holding his hand out impatiently, waiting for Dum-E to hand him the pliers he’d asked for nearly a minute ago—three hours later, and half hoping the car-jack holding the antique sports car up will spontaneously give out and crush him in a more physical sense than his guilt is currently doing. The cold metal of the pliers finally hits his palm, but with it comes the brush of warm skin, the pads of fingers not yet calloused over from years of work.
Tony lets the weight of the pliers slide from Peter’s hand straight to the floor, too detached from his own body to grasp at it. He slowly pushes himself out from under the car, sitting up and leaning against the undercarriage. Peter’s perched on a stool just in front of him, his face surprisingly free of evidence of tears.
They make eye contact, and all of the apologies Tony has been working on in his head for the past three hours suddenly evaporate, leaving only the myriad of self-recriminations he hasn’t bothered to silence.
“I’m sorry,” Peter says.
“No,” Tony’s immediately blurting out. “Peter, don’t apo-“
“You sounded like May.” Peter’s interruption is so unexpected and so blunt that it sucks the air out of the room, leaving Tony gaping. “Just for a second,” he continues, absently picking up a tiny screwdriver and flipping it into the air. “’It’s just me and you’… she used to say that, when we were having a hard time. And I wasn’t expecting it and hearing you say it was like…” Peter flounders for words and Tony desperately wants to interrupt but still can’t find the air to do so, because Peter’s never talked about May like this before. “It was like she was still… for just a second. And then you weren’t her and—I’m sorry.”
Tony tips his head back against the car. “Geez, kid,” he sighs, closing his eyes briefly. What is he supposed to say to that? He opens his eyes again to see Peter looking away, a resigned, shuttered grief evident in his eyes. “Come here,” Tony orders, scooting over so that Peter can sit on the floor next to him, which he does hesitantly, leaving a good foot of space between them. This will be easier, Tony thinks, if he doesn’t have to look at the kid.
“Listen, Peter… you don’t need to feel guilty for needing time. Or for having moments… like before.” Peter shifts, swallowing hard as Tony skirts around the subject of his panic attack. “And I’m sorry. For freaking you out. I didn’t… I shouldn’t have yelled.” He scoffs, rubbing at his hair fiercely for a second. “I acted just like my dad, which, as you know, is… the worst. So I’m sorry.”
Peter pulls his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them. “Tony, you’re allowed to tell me off when I do something wrong. I mean that’s… that’s your job now, right?” Peter isn’t looking at him, but Tony nods anyway, watching as Peter sniffs and rubs his nose with his sleeve. It’s such a childish act, it looks strange juxtaposed with the guarded, steady way Peter is staring ahead.
“I won’t yell anymore,” Tony vows, and it doesn’t matter, really, because that wasn’t the problem, but he promises it, just like he promised to stop drinking, just like he’d looked over at Peter, asleep in the passenger seat, on the drive home from the hospital and promised himself that he would do right by this kid.
“Ok,” Peter says, shrugging. He finally looks over at Tony and offers a lopsided smile. Peter doesn’t say that he’ll always answer his phone or come home on time every day, but Tony would prefer he doesn’t say anything rather than lie. Instead, he finally looks at the car they’re both leaning against. “Need help?”
They spend the next hour working on the car, until Peter starts handing Tony the wrong tools as he yawns. Maggie is waiting at the lab door as they leave, and she lopes excited circles around them as they climb the stairs, head-butting Tony’s palm until he scratches behind her ears. She follows Peter as they part ways to go to bed. Tony watches until Peter closes his door before entering his own room.
Tony hears banging from down the hall. “Peter?” he asks, but the only response he gets is another loud bang and a small yelp. “Kid?” He goes toward the sound, getting a little worried about what he’ll find.
“Hey, stop!” He hears Peter say. Now thoroughly confused, Tony approaches the hall bathroom where the sounds are coming from.
“Peter?” He calls, knocking on the door. Another thud and the distinctive noise of Peter hissing in pain.
“Ok, I’m coming in,” Tony announces, then opens the door half a second before Peter shouts “No, don’t!” Immediately their damp, soapy deerhound streaks past Tony and down the hall.
“Shoot!” Peter exclaims while attempting to lever himself out of the tub. He almost slips and Tony makes to dash forward in a vain attempt to catch him, but his sticky hand saves him before he brains himself on the faucet.
Peter finally emerges, dripping wet with soap bubbles all over his clothes and smelling like wet dog.
“I thought you had super strength. How’d she get away from you?” Tony teases, rooting through the cabinet and pulling out a couple towels, which he tosses to Peter.
“She has four legs,” Peter defends, vigorously toweling down his hair.
“Aren’t you supposed to have eight?” Tony asks blandly, raising an eyebrow.
Peter rolls his eyes as he passes. “I’ll get to work on remedying that defect in my radioactive mutation,” he deadpans before making his way down the hall, calling for Maggie and promising treats if she comes back. Tony chuckles under his breath, feeling absurdly fond considering the kid had just drenched his entire bathroom and left watery footprints all the way down the hall.
Early afternoon sunlight is pouring through the huge windows, and Maggie is stretched lazily out in one of the beams. Tony’s working on some designs while Peter reads a book for English, neither talking much, but it’s nice, being together, clean white light illuminating the large penthouse. Peaceful, even.
The wailing of an alarm cuts through the silence, making Peter cringe at the volume. Maggie jumps to her feet and starts barking at the ceiling.
“Yeah, I get the message, Fri!” Tony shouts. The alarm dies and Peter blinks at the sudden, ringing quiet. Maggie pads over and sits protectively by Peter.
“Colonel Rhodes has called for help with a situation,” FRIDAY says, sounding slightly defensive. Tony meets Peter’s eyes where he’s curled up in the armchair, in his pajamas with his hair in disarray and Star Wars socks, and feels his stomach twist. It doesn’t matter that Peter has been sticking to the ground since May died, taking on nothing more dangerous than a bodega holdup on any given day; he’ll go if Tony asks. There isn’t a question in Tony’s mind about that.
“What, um. What’s the situation exactly?” Tony asks, his voice weaker than he would have liked.
“There are several coordinated hostage situations, the assailants appear to be using alien technology—” Tony’s blood turns to ice. Peter would never forgive him if Tony benched him and someone ended up dying because they were short handed, but he can’t drag Peter into a planned hostage situation with weapons like that, he can’t. He feels sick, and the way Peter is sitting up, staring at him with a partly hopeful, partly uncertain expression isn’t helping. “—currently taking place in Washington D.C.”
The dread is so all-encompassing, it takes a moment for the relief to cut through it. “Oh,” Tony says, surprised. “Well, D.C is…”
“Oh,” Peter echoes, sinking back into the chair a little. “I mean, I could…”
“There’s nowhere to swing around,” Tony offers, feeling a little lightheaded. “And people would wonder...”
“So, I probably shouldn’t…” Peter trails off, like he wants Tony to give him permission to be scared of taking on something this big.
“Spidey should probably sit this one out,” Tony agrees. Peter looks like he might argue, simply for the sake of arguing, but after a moment he just nods. The lack of fight in him is so unexpected it’s almost as concerning as the mission. But then again, Peter’s been more level-headed, more reserved since May died, like he was perpetually exhausted. Tony isn’t sure he’ll ever go back to the overeager, reckless kid he was before. He shakes his head and tells himself to focus.
“Fri, tell Rhodey I’ll be there in 30,” Tony says, standing. Peter stands with him, wringing his hands a little. A suit assembles itself a few feet away, open and waiting for Tony. He pauses, though, looking back at Peter.
“Um… be careful,” Peter mutters lamely.
“Yeah,” Tony says. “I’ll see you in a couple hours.” Peter nods again and backs up. The last Tony sees of him as he flies off is Peter, looking small and slightly lost in the too big living room with Maggie standing at his side.
The mission takes longer than a couple hours, and by the time he’s flying home, all Tony really wants to do is shower and sleep. He slips through the floor-to-ceiling window FRIDAY opens for him and lands with a heavy thud. Half a second later, before he even has time to fully step out of the suit, Peter’s skidding around the corner, Maggie at his heels.
Tony blinks as the kid comes to a dead stop on the other side of the room. Maggie stops too, orbiting Peter like a rather large moon. It occurs to Tony suddenly that he should have called when he was done, let Peter know he was ok. Peter’s intently looking him up and down, the familiar crease between his eyebrows easing slightly when he sees no visible damage.
“Hey, kiddo,” Tony breathes, feeling uncomfortable with the attention like he hasn’t in years. Peter blinks like he’s coming back to himself, and the strained atmosphere eases slightly.
“How’d it go?” Peter asks, as if he hadn’t watched all the news coverage. Tony had considered, as he flew to D.C., ordering FRIDAY to prevent Peter from watching it, on the off chance something went wrong, but he knew Peter would have just hacked through his security, and been pissed about it, if he had.
“Fine. We caught them all, only a few minor injuries,” Tony reports, meandering further into the room.
“Oh, good,” Peter says. They lapse into silence, and it’s awkward like it hasn’t been in weeks. Tony’s about to excuse himself to go to bed when Peter blurts out, “I made dinner. If you’re hungry.”
He really isn’t, but something about the thought of Peter bustling around the kitchen, preparing a meal for when Tony got back from his mission makes him say, “Starving,” before he can think about it.
Peter smiles and begins leading the way to the kitchen. Maggie follows at his heels, and Tony amends his mental picture of Peter cooking to add the huge dog, dutifully tailing him the entire time Tony was gone.
It’s stir fry and rice, and it’s still warm, to the point where Peter must have asked FRIDAY when he would be home. They stand at the island instead of sitting at the table as they eat, Maggie circling them both, nudging at their legs in hopes of food. They don’t talk much, just quietly chewing in the low overhead lights of the kitchen, the rest of the apartment dark. It gives Tony time to look around the kitchen, which has, since he left this afternoon, been thoroughly scrubbed.
Tony glances back at Peter, who keeps leaving his meal for a moment to put away the leftovers or scrub the pan. It’s not surprising; Peter’s a nervous fidgeter, and a nervous talker, and a nervous pacer. It makes sense that May would have harnessed all that excess energy and channeled it into nervous cleaning too. It makes him feel guilty though, thinking about Peter mopping to distract himself from the fact that Tony, the only… guardian he had left was away on a potentially dangerous mission.
“Thanks for dinner, Pete,” Tony says, breaking the quiet. Peter looks up from his almost empty bowl and shrugs.
“I’m always starving when I get done Spider-Manning, so I thought you would be, too.”
Tony smiles at him, which he returns, a full smile rather than one of his little half-grimace things he tries to pass off as smiles. Tony finishes his portion, surprised at how hungry he actually had been. When he does finally make it to bed, he falls asleep almost instantly.
“Peter wanted me to inform you that he went on a run,” FRIDAY tells Tony as he steps out of the shower. Tony frowns, because it’s 7:30 on a Sunday morning and the kid should, ideally, still be asleep. He’s pretty sure Peter has had insomnia since he moved in, but he never answers honestly when Tony asks him about it.
Tony dresses and goes into the kitchen, preparing an actual breakfast this morning, figuring a super metabolism plus exercise would mean one very hungry teenager when Peter came back. Sure enough, just as Tony’s taking the fried eggs off the stove, Peter enters, Maggie at his heels.
“Good morning,” Tony greets, a little wary, but Peter seems to have outrun whatever demon woke him so early, because he echoes the salutation brightly.
“That smells amazing,” Peter says, collapsing onto a chair at the table, still a little out of breath and sweaty.
“Well, luckily for you, I made enough to feed the most ravenous of spider-mutants,” Tony jokes, setting a full plate in front of the teen, who thanks him before tucking in. Tony also refills Maggie’s water bowl and gets a face full of dog saliva in return.
“Good run?” Tony asks, taking his designated seat across from Peter.
Peter nods and swallows. “Yeah, I went about four miles.” Tony blinks, a little surprised at how low the number is. Peter must notice his confusion, because he adds, “I had to slow down for the senior citizen over there.” He gestures at Maggie, who’s practically passed out on the kitchen rug, and then grins.
Peter still smiles, not as often as he used to, and they’re usually soft, reserved things with no teeth, but he still smiles. He doesn’t grin anymore, not since May died. This wide, honest, teasing expression is a new phenomenon in the Stark-Parker household, and while Tony doesn’t like to wax poetic, he thinks that it is honestly more beautiful than the sunrise after a hurricane.
Tony smiles back without deciding to do so, helpless in the face of Peter’s honest happiness.
Peter’s sick. He’d spent the night coughing and feverish, and when he’d stumbled out of his room that morning, Tony had pressed his palm to Peter’s forehead and immediately declared that he wasn’t going to school. Peter hadn’t even tried to argue, which told Tony all he needed to know about how terrible he was feeling.
Now, after Tony had practically force fed him toast and orange juice, Peter’s shuffling toward the couch, fresh from a steam shower to clear out his lungs and dosed up with nearly three-times the recommended amount of cold medicine to counteract his metabolism. He’ll be asleep in the next fifteen minutes, guaranteed, but Tony still humors him when Peter blearily asks him to turn on a movie, sounding like a much younger kid.
Tony plops down on the couch next to where Peter is sitting, staring listlessly ahead, and basically turns on the first movie he sees. Sure enough, by the time the title is flashing up on the screen, Peter’s chin is dipping toward his chest, his eyes fluttering as he half-heartedly tries to stay awake.
Tony watches him for another minute as Peter finally drifts off, and he really should lay the kid down on the couch and then go work on one of the myriad things he needs to do. But he thinks of Peter waking up alone and ill and groggy and how his neck will ache if he’s stays like that, and instead reaches out and tugs the kid against his side, so his head is pillowed on Tony’s shoulder.
“Fri, turn the volume down please,” Tony murmurs, and the TV quiets to where Tony almost can’t hear it. Peter shifts until his too-warm nose is pressed into Tony’s pulse point, his shoulder digging into Tony’s bicep.
This is the closest they’ve been in months—four months and sixteen days to be exact, since Tony had spent the entirety of May’s funeral with his arm around Peter’s shoulders for fear that the boy’s knees would give out. Peter smells faintly of shampoo and fever sweat. Tony breathes slowly, focusing probably an absurd amount on not moving too much.
It occurs to him, all at once like an epiphany, that nothing is wrong. Tony’s arm is starting to fall asleep and Peter is sick, but for the first time in possibly years, Tony’s head is in this moment only and nothing is wrong.
Acting on some instinct that he’s been violently oppressing for an unknowable number of weeks, Tony ducks his head and presses a kiss to Peter’s damp hair. He rests his forehead against Peter for a long moment, eyes closed, before kissing him again and raising his head.
Peter is still asleep, and Tony looks forward, content with letting the moment pass unheeded, but as he glances toward where Maggie is sprawled on the rug, she meets his eye. She’s watching him with that unsettlingly intelligent look she sometimes gets, that gives Tony the impression that she understands everything that’s going on around her. She blinks at him.
“What?” Tony whispers at her, and then immediately feels ridiculous for doing so. Maggie doesn’t answer, of course, but she does clamber to her feet and pad over to the couch. Instead of going to Peter, as she always has before, the dog drapes herself on the cushion next to Tony. She lays her massive head on his knee in what feels startlingly like approval.
He scratches at her ears a few times and she nudges his wrist with her nose before closing her eyes. Peter’s slightly congested breathing is steady against Tony’s throat. There’s a swelling warmth in Tony’s chest. Nothing is wrong.
His bedroom door opens and Tony’s awake instantly, hand on his watch to call a suit. But he freezes when he sees Peter silhouetted against the dark, Maggie whining low in her throat as she tugs Peter into the room by his shirt hem.
Tony barely has time to sit up before Peter’s practically collapsing onto the bed. The lights come on, courtesy of FRIDAY, but Peter whimpers and Tony tells her to turn them off again.
“Peter, talk to me. What’s wrong?” Tony asks, his mind whirling while his heart pounds, fear increasing when Peter doesn’t immediately answer. He reaches out to grasp the kid’s shoulder, but he flinches back and Tony jerks his hands away. Maggie whines again where she’s pacing, distressed, by Tony’s bed.
“I can’t—” Peter coughs out. “I can’t breathe.” He’s gasping, clenching and unclenching his hands around Tony’s covers. That, combined with his desire to not be touched and the time of night is all Tony needs to put the pieces together.
“Ok,” Tony soothes. “Ok, Peter, you’re having a panic attack.” He tries to keep his voice steady, but honestly, seeing his kid like this is almost enough to send Tony into an anxiety attack of his own. But right now he has to help Peter, and he can’t do both.
“I know,” Peter says, his voice cracking before he’s bending over, nearly choking as he tries to pull in enough air.
“Fri, open the windows,” Tony orders. He reaches out again, but stops himself short of brushing Peter’s cheek. The windows slide open and a cool breeze swirls into the room. Peter gulps down lung-fulls of fresh air like he’d been suffocating.
“There you go.” Tony has to practically sit on his hands to keep from touching Peter. “You’re doing great, Pete. Now slow your breathing or you’ll pass out, alright?”
Peter’s eyes are trained on Tony through the dark. He sucks in a breath and holds it for the shortest count of three before he’s letting it out all at once and pulling in another. In the dim moonlight, Tony can see tears shimmering in Peter’s eyes. The next exhale sounds more like a sob than it should and then Peter’s dropping his forehead onto the covers, making a strangled noise of frustration or maybe fear.
“Hey, look at me,” Tony instructs softly, leaning forward. Peter raises his head, still panting heavily. “It’s alright. This is scary, I know. Just focus on breathing. Nothing else matters.”
It takes Peter a while to calm down, and by the time his breaths are deep enough that Tony isn’t worried about him losing consciousness, they’re both shivering from the cold air seeping through the still open windows. Maggie hasn’t stopped frantically patrolling around the bed, quiet growls and whines occasionally interrupting the sound of Peter’s breathing.
Peter’s gaze has been locked onto Tony’s for the past several minutes, like an anchor. Because of that, Tony can see the second Peter’s expression shifts from panic to heartbreak. Tony doesn’t know what sparked Peter’s panic attack, but he’s sure it has to do with May or Ben, or maybe even his parents, because his eyes are suddenly filling with tears and he looks so utterly lost.
When Peter had first moved in with Tony, Tony had been… not ready, but completely and utterly willing to be anything the kid needed. Tony’s sudden thrust into the role of Peter’s guardian had been unexpected and terrifying and raised a lot of doubts in Tony’s mind about whether he could do it, but not unwelcome. He had expected to be there for the sleepless nights and heart-wrenching breakdowns and misdirected anger and unfounded guilt, and eventually for the driving lessons and awkward first dates and last-minute study sessions. After Tony had spent the night May died sleeping on the bathroom floor with Peter, who had made himself sick with crying, he’d thought that Peter had understood that Tony was all in, nothing held back, ready to stumble his way through the adoption and everything after it.
But the morning after May’s funeral, when Tony had cautiously let himself into Peter’s room to wake him up and gently drag him out of bed, he had found Peter sitting at his desk, working diligently on the homework he’d missed. From that moment on, Peter did a pretty good job of making it clear that Tony was there to be a provider and… not much more. When Tony would pat his shoulder, Peter would give him a small smile and then step away. When Tony heard him moving around in the middle of the night and would go to check on him, he would find the door locked and FRIDAY informing him that Peter didn’t want to be disturbed. He was still kind and compassionate and emotive, just… from a distance. So Tony had done his best to respect that and took a metaphorical half-step back and watched Peter live his life as if he was Tony’s roommate, rather than his adopted son.
Tonight though, tonight when Peter has come to him for help for the first time, when Peter is looking up at him with his eyes brimming with tears while they both tremble from cold and fading adrenaline, Tony looks at this kid that he has been prepared to love from day one and thinks: Screw that.
He reaches out and touches Peter’s shoulder. He doesn’t flinch back, just stares at Tony with that same helpless expression. There’s a heartbeat, where Tony watches the first tear finally spill over, and then Peter crumples. In the next second, he’s in Tony’s arms, his forehead pressed hard against Tony’s sternum while Tony clutches at him, burying one hand in his sleep-mussed hair and wrapping the other around his shaking shoulders like a lifeline.
Peter’s weeping, and it’s the first time Tony’s really seen him cry since the funeral and it’s staggering how much it hurts. He tightens his arms to the point where it would be painful for anyone else and bows his head over Peter’s, trying to shrink the world to just the two of them, even shutting out Maggie’s concerned headbutts and nudges.
“I’ve got you,” Tony whispers. Peter’s sobs rip from his throat, shaking both of them. “I’ve got you.”
Peter eventually loosens his hold on Tony’s t-shirt, slowly going limp against his chest, utterly spent. Tony’s just figuring out how to gently shift Peter to the other side of the bed when the kid sucks in a sudden breath and tries to sit up, Tony’s arms falling away from him as he does. He’s a mess, covered in tears with his hair sticking up at odd angles.
“Um, I should…” Peter mumbles, making to back away, but he’s half asleep and exhausted, and he only succeeds in tangling himself in the covers and almost falling off the bed.
“Woah, kid,” Tony says, steadying him. Peter looks back at him shyly, and Tony takes the chance to brush away some of the tears still clinging to his cheeks. Peter’s eyebrows beetle, as if he wants to melt into the touch but won’t let himself. “You can stay here,” Tony offers, because if he knows one thing about parenting, it’s that when your kid has a nightmare (or panic attack/emotional breakdown), you let them sleep in your bed.
Peter bites his lip and almost says no, but then Maggie jumps on the bed and nearly bowls him over. Amidst watery chuckles as Peter vigorously scratches her back, he quietly murmurs, “Ok.”
Tony pulls the covers back and Peter crawls to the far side of the bed, settling in on his stomach with his face toward Tony. Maggie plops down between the two of them, half on top of Tony who groans out a wheezing laugh and shoves her off. Peter slings an arm over the dog and Tony listens as they both drift off before he, too, falls back asleep, completely at peace.