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The lake house was quiet when Peter's car rolled to a stop, the engine's rumble giving way to cricket chirps and rustled leaves. That warm, musky scent of nature was a familiar comfort, and he inhaled it deeply. The porch and deck lights were on. Normally, he would take that to mean somebody was still awake, but Tony liked to leave them on when he knew Peter would be in late lest he trip over something and break his neck.
I have a sixth sense for that exact type of scenario, Peter had said in exasperation the first time he drove himself to the lake house after dark, back on Labor Day weekend. Tony had replied, I’m sure you’d find a way.
Neither of them came right out and called the precaution what it was – a case of mother-henning, through and through – but Peter didn’t mind nearly as much as he pretended to. It was…kind of nice, in a way, to know Tony thought so often of his safety. It felt like family.
Which was, Peter supposed, exactly what they were. A weird, mismatched, jagged-edged family thrown together by unfortunate circumstance, just like him and May. But a family nonetheless.
It especially felt like family when he entered the darkened house to the lingering scent of that sandalwood incense Pepper loved so much, when he knew by heart which two consecutive steps on the staircase creaked and took them in slow motion, when he set his suitcase down in a bedroom that was wholly his.
Morgan, like her father, also took a habitual precaution whenever she was told Peter would arrive past her bedtime. She always left a stuffed toy propped up against his pillows – just in case you get lonely, ‘cause I won’t be awake to play! It was Stitch this time. Peter grinned as he ran a hand over its fuzzy blue head.
He strained his ears and listened. Three heartbeats, slow and steady; three sets of deep, rhythmic breath. Everyone was asleep.
Peter was tempted to crawl into bed fully clothed, exhausted as he was from a full day of classes and the subsequent five-hour drive. His stomach disagreed. It churned and howled its protest at being left empty for so long. If he were smart, he would have stopped at a drive-through (or two, his metabolism taken into consideration) on the way. His intelligence, apparently, didn’t apply to life outside of tech labs and textbooks.
He made his way back downstairs and turned the exterior lights off – a signal to Tony, who frequently woke in the night, that he’d gotten in safely – before rifling as quietly as a hungry teenage boy possibly could through the fridge and cabinets.
A pack of Pop-Tarts was his first conquest, followed by two apples, a bowl of leftover pasta, and a glass of Morgan’s grape juice. He took care to wash his dishes and wipe the counters when he was done so he wouldn’t incur the wrath of a pre-coffee Pepper in the morning, then made his way back to his bedroom.
Peter locked his door, grabbed his toothbrush from his suitcase, and went into the little en-suite bathroom.
In the bathroom, he knelt in front of the porcelain throne he’d come to worship as of late, turned the toothbrush wrong side up, and shoved it down his throat.
“Petey…psst. Peeeteeey!”
Tiny fingers tugged at his eyelids, and intrusive sunlight burned his corneas. Peter halfheartedly swatted her hands away.
“Maguna,” he whined back mockingly, and grinned into his pillow when she made an affronted noise.
“Get up!”
“Can’t hear you, I’m asleep.”
Morgan huffed and pulled on his arm. “No, you’re not. You can’t talk when you’re asleep.”
“It’s called sleep-talking.”
“Petey! I want to watch a movie with you!”
“It’s spring break.” With a groan, Peter reluctantly rolled onto his back and blinked at her. Her pout was awfully convincing. If he didn’t know her so well, he might have fallen for it. “We have a whole week to watch movies. I wanna sleep first.”
“You’ve been asleep for three thousand hours! I’m gonna take Stitch back if you don’t get up.”
After a moment of internalized grumbling at the realization that she wasn’t going to leave him be any time soon, Peter gasped in false horror and pulled the stuffed toy into his arms. “You wouldn’t.”
“I will!” She giggled, though it looked like she was trying very hard to take herself seriously. “Get up!”
Peter swung his feet over the side of the bed and rubbed his eyes. “Fine. But I get to pick the movie.”
“No, you don’t!” Morgan said, and promptly bolted. Presumably to hide the remote before he could get his hands on it.
Peter sighed and said to the empty room, “No, I don’t.”
Sure enough, Morgan was stuffing the remote beneath a couch cushion when he shuffled down the stairs. She caught sight of him and sat innocently atop it.
Pepper and Tony stood in the kitchen. Tony was in sweatpants and a T-shirt, hair mussed from sleep, but Pepper was fully dressed, laptop bag in one hand and travel mug of coffee in the other.
“Hi, sweetheart.” She smiled and kissed Peter’s temple. “I have to go to some meetings in the city today, but I’ll be back in time for dinner. Keep these two out of trouble, would you?”
“No promises.” He yawned and pulled a mug down from the cabinets.
“You’re right – you’re just as bad as them. What was I thinking?”
Peter only grinned at that. Tony said, “I’ll have you know, I’m a very responsible parent.”
“Yes,” Pepper said, “when I’m here.”
Tony inclined his head toward her and amended, “…when you’re here.”
Pepper was right, and all four of them knew it. She dubbed it ‘dangerous’ how very aware Morgan and Peter were that they both had Tony wrapped around their fingers. Personally, Peter thought the awareness came in handy. He specifically waited until Pepper said her goodbyes and left before he filled his mug with coffee. Tony glanced at him as he did so and rolled his eyes, but unlike his wife, he didn’t protest on account of the fact that Peter was still growing.
As it turned out, Morgan was on a Lilo & Stitch kick. She already had the movie queued up by the time Tony and Peter begrudgingly joined her – Peter with a plate of bacon, eggs, and fruit pressed into his hand by Tony.
Once Morgan was thoroughly transfixed by the movie, Tony nudged Peter in the ribs to get his attention and asked, “How’s MIT been? Meet any cute girls yet?”
“I’m ready for summer,” Peter said wistfully around a mouthful of cantaloupe.
Tony wrinkled his nose. “Geez. You could have swallowed before you answered me. Were you raised by wolves?”
“Yes.”
“I’m telling May you said that.”
Morgan glared daggers at them. “Shhh!”
Once he was done eating, Peter excused himself to the bathroom to empty himself of his perceived sin. He waited until the red had left his eyes before he returned to the couch and leaned into Tony’s side. He soaked up comfort Tony probably didn’t even know he was offering – probably didn’t even know Peter needed, at that – from the warm weight of an arm around his shoulders.
The credits had barely started to roll when Morgan tugged them both off the couch, insistent upon a swim in the lake. Tony agreed with the caveat, much to Morgan’s chagrin, that she would wear copious amounts of sunscreen.
“If Mommy gets home and you’re sunburnt, she’ll put me in grown-up timeout,” Tony said dryly as he sprayed her down on the deck, Morgan’s arms outstretched, eyes closed, and face scrunched.
“Grown-ups don’t go to timeout,” she said when he was done.
“Wanna bet?”
Peter, trying very hard not to think of the implications behind the term ‘grown-up timeout,’ flailed to catch the spray can when it was tossed at him. Tony frowned, head tilted.
“So much for your sixth sense,” Tony said with a forced lightness, though his eyes were narrowed in a genre of concern that verged on suspicion. “Isn’t catching things one of your shticks?”
Peter said easily, “I was distracted. And I don’t need sunscreen – I won’t get burnt. Super healing, remember?”
“Humor me.”
Peter heaved a sigh, overdramatic and childish, with the intention of drawing a smile from Tony. It worked, though the man tried to hide his smirk by turning to adjust the straps on Morgan’s swimsuit. Once both Morgan and Peter were thoroughly coated, plus Tony at Peter’s insistence (humor me, Peter echoed in a mocking way, which earned him a halfhearted swat to the back of his head) they got in the water.
Tony remained at the edge of the dock with only his legs dipped into the lake. His mechanical arm was, of course, his own creation, so the water wouldn’t have done anything so drastic as electrocute him, but Tony always insisted the thing didn’t work as well for days afterwards when liquid got into the joints. He seemed content enough to sit there and watch Peter teach Morgan a more efficient way to doggy paddle, to hear Morgan giggle and Peter gasp in false offense as she splashed water into his eyes.
Every time Peter looked over, Tony had that same soft, fond smile on his face. He didn’t seem to realize himself that it was there. Something about the sight warmed Peter’s chest. He never used to smile like that before the first snap, before Iron Man’s retirement – before he was a father. There was a contentedness in it, like there was no place in the world Tony would rather be than right where he was at that moment.
Peter, in spite of himself, agreed wholeheartedly. Apart from curled into May’s side on her and Happy’s couch with Star Wars on the television, the lake house was undoubtedly his favorite place.
It was certainly a hell of a lot better than school had been as of late.
“I’m hungry.” Morgan pouted as she flung herself theatrically through the water and into Peter’s arms. “I want to eat lunch now.”
“Me, too,” Peter said. It was more true than she could possibly know. His insides twisted, begged to receive nourishment and to keep it for once, torn up by acid and emptiness.
“Me three.” Tony climbed to his feet on the dock. He winced as his bad shoulder gave an audible pop, but waved away Peter’s worried frown. “We have to eat outside, though. Lake water on the kitchen floor would be almost as bad as sunburnt kids.”
Tony used the leftover bacon from breakfast to make a platter of BLT sandwiches while Peter toweled Morgan dry, surprise-tickling her neck and underarms as he went to wipe the hangry look from her face.
When Tony carried the platter outside and told them to dig in, Peter ate with fervor. He endured jokes at his expense about the metabolisms of eight-legged teenage menaces, smiled through the deep ache that settled in his chest, then excused himself to the bathroom, leaving the two Starks alone to finish their meal.
Bread was always the worst. It came back up in globs that choked him, if it came back up at all. As a general rule, he tried not to eat it, but he had a feeling picking the bacon and vegetables out of his sandwiches would not have gone unnoticed or unquestioned by Tony, so he’d eaten his lunch whole against his better judgement.
Now, as he choked, gagged, and strained red-faced around the handle of his toothbrush, he regretted that decision immensely.
He could have – should have – found a way out of it. He’d gotten so good at lying over the past few weeks. He should have put that newfound skill to use. Now he was stuck with this fullness inside that he couldn’t get rid of, all because he was too much of a wimp to lie to Tony’s face.
“Petey?”
Ice-cold fear washed over him from head to toe. Peter dropped the toothbrush and turned.
Morgan stood in the doorway. She already looked scared, uncertain, but at the sight of him, she flinched and took a slow step backwards. He knew he had to look like hell. He always did right afterwards; face red and blotchy, eyes puffy, hands shaky.
“Morgan,” he croaked, throat afire, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Hey – hey, it’s okay, I’m just…”
“You’re sick.” She mustered up something like bravery, using it to straighten her back and plaster a very grown-up look on her face. “I’ll get Daddy!”
“No!” Morgan jumped, eyes wide. Peter fought to calm his voice. He offered her a smile that couldn’t have been convincing, not even to a five year old. “No, you don’t have to. I feel better now. You don’t have to tell him.”
Morgan’s lips wobbled. Peter knew what her fake pout looked like well enough to know this wasn’t it. “Petey…”
Peter had a lot of reasons to feel guilty. He felt guilty for scaring her. He felt guilty for forgetting to lock his bedroom door, for making scaring her a possibility. He kind of, in a way, felt guilty for doing it in the first place, though not nearly enough to stop.
But more than anything, he felt guilty for this: “Morgan, promise me you won’t tell him. He…he won’t let us swim anymore if you do. And I’m not sick, my tummy just hurt a little bit, but I’m all better now. Promise me you won’t tell him, okay?”
“But…”
“Morgan. Promise.”
He was a terrible big brother. The absolute worst in the entire universe, ever – but he’d rather be a bad brother this one time than risk Tony finding out about his little habit.
Tony wouldn’t let him continue purging. No chance in hell. Tony would try to take this away from him if he knew, but Peter needed needed needed this, more than he could even begin to put into words, more than he’d ever needed anything. It had become an essential part of him. In that moment, the freedom to purge felt as crucial to Peter’s survival as oxygen.
“I promise,” Morgan whispered, looking about two seconds away from tears.
She waited there, hesitant, while Peter flushed the toilet and washed his hands. When he pulled her into a hug, she embraced him like she was afraid she might break him.
“See?” He said lightly. “I’m all better now, Mo. Totally fine. Did you need something?”
“I was getting Stitch.” Her voice sounded much more steady. Peter took that as a win. “He wants to swim with us.”
He forced a laugh that sounded robotic, unnatural. “Stitch can’t swim with us. He’ll get all soggy and gross.”
“I can dry him with Mommy’s hair dryer.”
“I don’t think Mommy wants blue fuzz in her hair dryer.” Peter lifted Morgan up and propped her on his hip, then grabbed Stitch from his bed. “But maybe he can sit on the dock and keep an eye on Daddy. Deal?”
Morgan’s eyes lit up, her brother’s ailment all but forgotten in an instant. “Deal!”
Peter pressed a kiss to her head, pushed down the panic that fluttered in his chest, and thanked whatever deity might have been listening for the oblivious innocence of children.
He’d taken up running in January.
It started with a prod from his obnoxious roommate, Keaton. “Come on, man, it can be our New Year’s resolution! Besides, you eat way too damn much. That’s gonna catch up with you if you don’t do something about it. Freshman fifteen, you know?”
Peter’s first thought, which he bit back in the name of kindness, had been, ‘our' resolution? Since when are we friends?
His second thought: shit.
Of all the many attributes that came with being an enhanced individual and an Avenger, Peter would never have thought his metabolism would be the most difficult to hide. It had been easy enough in high school to eat a normally portioned lunch in the cafeteria and make up for his extra caloric needs later.
At MIT, there was no such privacy. He had to eat either in his dorm, where Keaton would see the packaging from his excess consumption in the trash even if he wasn’t around when Peter ate, or in the dining hall, or a restaurant – both of which being places where strangers stared in idle curiosity.
Peter really, really didn’t want to take up running. It sounded boring as hell. But for the sake of having an at least slightly feasible cover story when people asked how he ate so much, he did.
He also made a point of not eating nearly as much in places where people could see him – which was, unfortunately, just about everywhere. Still, the commentary continued. Other classmates joined in on Keaton’s harmless teasing.
Damn, Parker, eating for two?
Forget freshman fifteen, you’re gonna have a freshman fifty.
How do you not weigh three hundred pounds?
It wasn’t like Peter was insecure about his body. He was insecure about the side-eyes, the jokes, the snickering, the attention.
From the insecurity came guilt, nonsensical and baseless, but insurmountable all the same.
From the guilt came purging – a way to ease the stone-heavy weight in his stomach, to convince himself that Keaton and the others were wrong.
Before long, purging became the answer not just to his guilt but to every other overwhelming emotion that dug its claws into him. If it could appease guilt, then why couldn’t it appease anger, sadness, and stress?
Keaton quit running two and a half weeks into the semester, claiming that resolutions were for losers, anyway. Peter continued. Running took the place of purging to assuage his panic and shame when he ate something that wouldn’t come back up, when he couldn’t throw up without someone else hearing, when everything just felt too strong, too intense, too much.
So when he woke on the second day of spring break and swore he could still feel that bread from the day before heavy in his stomach, Peter made himself feel better in the only way he knew how: he laced up, found the start of a little dirt trail that looped around the lake, and ran.
Nobody else was up when he left, sun just barely risen and the air still cool, but he caught sight of Tony on his eleventh lap as he passed the house. The man had settled into a rocking chair on the front porch, a book in his lap and a steaming cup of coffee clenched in his mechanical hand. He did a double-take when Peter passed. Peter offered a wave and a lopsided grin, to which Tony smirked, rolled his eyes, and turned his attention back to his book.
On his twenty-third lap, Tony flagged him down.
“Not that I want to discourage my kids from exercising,” he said as Peter climbed the porch steps, “but I think thirteen laps is plenty.”
Peter didn’t correct him. Mostly for obvious reasons, but also, partially, because his tongue suddenly felt fuzzy. The porch spun around him and his legs shook. “Yeah…uh.”
Tony rose, frowning, and set his coffee mug down in the chair. “Pete? You alright?”
“Uh. Yeah.”
“Can you say something besides ‘uh’ or ‘yeah’? It’s kind of unnerving.”
Peter tried. He really did. But his vision went all grey and fuzzy around the edges, and it was all he could do just to remain mostly upright. He threw out a hand to grab the porch railing. It caught one of Tony’s outstretched arms instead.
“Shit,” Tony hissed. Peter’s knees touched the porch, an impact too soft to have been a fall, and he at least had enough wits left to gather that Tony had lowered him there. The only thing that kept him from faceplanting was two hands beneath his arms, one flesh and one prosthetic. “Kid? You with me?”
Peter lifted his head. It felt heavy as a bowling ball.
“Come on, bud. I’m old. I can’t carry you inside if you conk out.”
It was the blatant panic in Tony’s voice, and the guilt Peter was flooded with in response to it, that inspired him to swim upstream when every cell in his body longed to sleep. “’M okay. Just…gimme a minute.”
“Okay.” Tony exhaled, long and deep. Peter could feel the shakiness of the breath as it gusted his neck. “Alright. That’s okay. I’m right here.”
By the time Peter regained control of his motor functions, his face was flushed red with shame. It seemed like he was incapable of spending any extended period of time with the Starks without fucking something up and upsetting them. Maybe that was a sign.
Once he was capable of holding himself upright without too much struggle, Tony released his arms and shuffled around him so that they sat face to face. He cupped Peter’s jaw in one hand and looked at him intently, eyes bright with worry.
“Hi,” Peter whispered, swallowing around a lump of emotion in his throat. It didn’t escape him the way Tony’s gaze roamed over his body, as if he was just now noticing Peter looked a little frailer than he had during his last visit.
Tony tried for a smile. It was fleeting, and it looked more like a grimace than anything. “Hi yourself. How do you feel?”
“Woozy,” Peter said honestly. He shook from head to toe and his face was clammy with cold sweat. “Can I go lie down?”
“Not yet. You need to rehydrate and eat something first. How long were you out there?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t check the time before I left.”
“Do you not have your phone on you?” Tony’s eyes narrowed. Peter shook his head sheepishly. “How many laps did you do?”
“…twenty-three?”
Tony sucked in a sharp breath. “Jesus fuck, kid. Are you seriously telling me you just ran a solo marathon without any way of communicating to the rest of the world? Or water?”
Peter nodded toward the lake. “There’s water right there.”
He meant it as a joke, but needless to say, it fell horribly flat. The mood was anything but lightened. Tony seethed. Peter ducked his head as that familiar guilt pulsed through him.
“Kitchen,” Tony said. “Now.”
He hooked his real arm around Peter’s shoulders and hauled him to his feet. Peter, unsteady but strong enough to make the trip inside, complied without a word.
Tony seated him at the table and handed him a tall glass of water. Peter didn’t realize until the first droplets touched his lips just how damn thirsty he was. He gulped half of it in seconds before he came up for a gasping breath.
“Slow sips,” Tony said over his shoulder as he dug around in a cabinet. “You’ll make yourself sick.”
Nothing new there, Peter wanted to say. He said instead, “Sorry.”
“Yeah, you should be. Bring your damn phone next time. And some fucking water.”
There was no real heat in the words. Tony’s voice was strained, but Peter knew it was pure concern. It somehow still managed to make him feel like a kicked puppy.
“I will,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Did you at least eat something before you left?” Tony asked. Peter opened his mouth, fully prepared to lie if that was what it took, but Tony sighed and answered himself, “No, of course you didn’t. Look who I’m talking to.”
Despite Tony’s instruction to take slow sips, the glass was empty by the time he placed a protein bar on the table.
“Let that settle first,” Tony said as he took the glass to refill it. “If you feel alright after that and the water, I’ll make you a real breakfast.”
Peter longed desperately to protest, but he couldn’t bring himself to. Not when Tony was already so stressed out by this entire incident. Not when he was already such a tremendous burden.
He ate the protein bar, drained another two glasses of water, and accepted the French toast and scrambled eggs Tony made for him when the bar didn’t inspire nausea. His head screamed about his weakness, his failure, and Peter internally shouted back, I know, I know, I know.
“I’m gonna go lie down,” he said when he was done, hand shaking as he pushed the empty plate away.
Tony eyed him warily. For a moment, Peter feared he would tell him to stay – or, worse, that he would ask questions. But Tony nodded. “Yeah. You probably should. Let me know if you need anything.”
Peter stood, but as he turned toward the staircase, Tony gripped his arm and pulled him into a hug, strong and all-encompassing.
“Oh,” Peter said weakly.
Tony squeezed him almost painfully tight. “You can talk to me. Okay? Even about dumb shit. I’m here.”
“I’m fine.” Peter clenched his jaw and blinked back tears. “Just overdid it.”
“I know.” Tony pressed a kiss to the crown of his head. “Love you, kid. Go get some rest.”
“Love you, too.”
And that – the truth, the love – made it so much harder to hold everything back as he trudged up the stairs, but Peter did. It was the very fact that he loved the Starks which made him lock up his hurt. He couldn’t let it all spill out onto them. They didn’t deserve to bear his pain.
Peter didn’t bother with the bathroom or the toothbrush. Bread never came up quite well enough to make it worth the effort. Instead, he laid down like he’d said he would, knees tucked to his chest and arms wrapped around his middle to hold the food and guilt inside.
On the third day of spring break, Tony invited him into the lab.
In theory, spending hours upon hours upgrading the Spider-Man suit and tinkering with nothing in particular sounded like fun. If there was one thing Peter missed from the pre-Thanos days, it was weekends spent at the Avengers Compound, losing track of time and staying up far later than May would have approved of as he and Tony tossed ideas back and forth. This mini reenactment felt nostalgic in the best way.
In practice, it was an objectively terrible idea.
Tony had never been one to remember for himself that breaks were a necessity. Peter had always taken the duty upon himself to remind him during those Compound visits. But now, Peter certainly wasn’t inclined to eat if nobody was going to force him – why bother? Why waste the food if it was all going to come right back up? If he could get away with it, he’d much prefer perpetual hunger over the cycle of empty-full-empty, anyway.
For better or worse, he did get away with it that day. Lunchtime passed, hours and hours passed, and Pepper never came to offer them a meal, and Tony never remembered, and Peter kept his damn mouth shut.
It figured that this decision would come back around to sucker-punch him. Most of his decisions did.
“…Pete? Come on, kid, eyes open…”
Tony’s voice came to him muffled, garbled beneath the ringing in Peter’s ears. Someone shifted him, moving his head from the cold floor onto something soft, warm. Fingers brushed his hair back. He groaned.
“There we go,” Tony said gently, sounding clearer now, as Peter fought to push his fluttering eyelids open. A calloused thumb tapped his jaw. “Come on, kiddo. Can you look at me?”
The room was far too bright and Tony’s worried face blurred in and out of focus above him, but Peter complied. He realized with a jolt that it was Tony’s lap his head rested on.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “’M sorry–“
Tony pressed him easily back down with a hand on his forehead when he made a weak attempt to sit up. “Nope. You’re staying right there. Nobody asked for an encore.”
Peter took a deep breath. His lungs felt heavy, weighted. “Did I pass out?”
“With spectacular precision. Nailed your head right on the corner of the table.”
“Oh.” That explained the trickle of liquid down his temple. He’d assumed it was sweat. “I’m sorry.”
“You know,” Tony huffed, voice taut with frustration, “’sorry’ doesn’t really mean much if you keep doing the stupid things you’re supposedly sorry for. Why didn’t you remind me about lunch?”
“Didn’t think about it.”
Tony clearly had more to say on the subject – he opened his mouth and sucked in one of his deep, pre-rant breaths – but he was interrupted when Morgan bounded into the lab with an armful of juice boxes, followed by Pepper with a damp cloth.
Morgan’s eyes were red-rimmed and glossy, like she’d just been crying. She looked like she might continue at any second. A wave of self-hatred crashed over Peter at the sight. He’d done that. He’d made her cry.
“Here’s all my juices,” Morgan said breathlessly as she dropped the pile onto the floor beside them. “Mommy says he needs sugar.”
Tony looked mildly amused. “Thanks, Maguna. Mommy’s right. I think one’s enough, though.”
“Fruit punch is the best.” Morgan took one of the boxes and unwrapped the straw. She had an aura of bravery plastered on her face, but if Peter looked close enough, he could see that her fingers trembled.
“Sorry if I scared you, Mo,” he said quietly as Pepper helped him sit up, maneuvering him so that his back was against Tony’s chest, and began to clean the blood from his temple. “I just forgot to eat lunch and got a little dizzy. I’m okay, promise.”
Morgan eyed him with caution as she handed the juice box over. “Are you really okay?”
“Really, really okay. I’ll feel better soon. Fruit punch is my favorite.”
His favorite was actually grape, but she didn’t need to know that.
Her lower lip wobbled. “But you said you already felt better. You lied.”
She said it like lying was the most atrocious thing a person could ever do. Peter shrunk back against Tony’s chest. He kept his eyes locked on Morgan, but he didn’t miss the knowing look Pepper gave Tony in his peripheral.
“I’m fine, Mo,” Peter said with a hint of warning.
She looked between her parents, brow creased, then stared at him. “But–“
“Morgan,” he said. “Really. It’s okay.”
Peter had seen Morgan throw temper tantrums before – she was only five, after all – but never directed toward him. For a moment, he wasn’t sure whether she was about to scream at him or cry again.
“You lied!” She yelled, which answered that question. “You threw up when we went swimming and you promised you felt all better, and now you’re lying to Mommy and Daddy! You’re a liar!”
Before any of them could figure out how to respond, she turned and bolted from the room. The dam Peter had constructed to hold back his own emotions cracked and shook.
Pepper rose with a sigh. “I’ll go talk to her.”
“I’m sorry,” Peter whispered. “I didn’t mean to…”
“I know you didn’t.” Pepper leaned down to kiss the unwounded side of his forehead and offer him a tired smile. “It’s okay. She’ll be fine. Finish that juice, alright?”
Peter drained the rest of the box. To be fair, it did help with the shakiness.
Once they were alone, Tony sighed, loud and pointed. “Seriously, kid? Why didn’t you just tell us you were sick? This self-sacrificial bullshit is getting really old.”
Peter, to his own horror, immediately burst into tears.
“I’m sorry,” he said between hitched breaths as Tony went stiff against him. “Please don’t be mad. I’m sorry.”
He half-expected, in all honesty, to be left alone on the lab floor and told to collect himself. Not because Tony had a history of abandoning him – just the opposite, in fact – but because it couldn’t be disputed that he deserved as much. Morgan needed comfort more than he did. She was the one who’d been scared half to death.
But Tony didn’t leave. He instead wrapped his arms tight around Peter, rested his chin atop his head, and rocked them both slowly back and forth.
“Deep breaths,” he murmured into Peter’s hair. “Shhh. Nobody’s mad at you. We’re just worried, Pete. You have to tell us when you feel sick. We can’t help if we don’t know.”
We can’t help if we don’t know.
And how ironic was that? Because here Tony sat telling him as much, under the impression that he had the whole picture, but they still didn’t know.
“I need help.” Peter hated himself for his weakness, for the way he blubbered as if he had anything to cry about. As if he wasn’t the bad guy here. “I need – Tony. I think I need help.”
Tony’s rocking slowed only for a moment. He said carefully, “What kind of help, bud?”
“I threw up on purpose. When Morgan saw me. I did it on purpose. I do that. Like, kind of a lot.”
Tony inhaled sharply and tightened his grip. “Do you want to tell me why?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Okay, alright. Shhh. We can talk about it in a minute. Let’s calm down first, okay?”
That was easier said than done. Peter turned and pressed his face into Tony’s shirt in vain hope that it would muffle his pathetic cries, as if Tony couldn’t hear them anyway. It felt safer, somehow, to confine them. Emotions left out in the open were bait for people like Keaton.
“I’m sorry,” he said once he began to regain control of himself. “’M really sorry.”
“I know you are.” Tony pulled back and tried to meet his eyes. Peter reluctantly allowed it. “Hey – look at me. I’m not mad at you, Pete. We’re gonna figure this out. We’ll find someone for you to talk to. Okay?”
Peter swallowed hard and swiped his sleeves furiously beneath his eyes. “Y-yeah. This just…”
“It sucks.”
“Yeah. It’s…”
“I know.” Tony’s hand pressed against the back of his head, encouraging him to lean back into the embrace. Peter went willingly. “I know it does, kid. Believe me, I’ve had more than my fair share of mental health shitstorms. It’s not fun. But you’ve got a fuckton of people in your corner. You’re not alone.”
The loneliness that rattled in his very bones protested loudly at that. For the first time in months, Peter didn’t cave into it. He shoved it aside instead, laid his head against Tony’s warm chest, and counted his heartbeats. “Okay.”
“Pete?”
“Hm?”
“I’m proud of you.”
Peter laughed humorlessly. “For what?”
“Asking for help. And for being you.”
He sounded so sincere, so desperate for Peter to believe him, that Peter couldn’t bring himself to argue. He didn’t agree with the sentiment, not even a little. But it was the thought that counted.
“Oh,” he said. “Thanks.”
Tony cleared his throat. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but you need to eat something. And, you know – actually keep it down.”
“Tony…”
“I’m serious. You just passed out on the floor of my lab, Peter. I don’t want to have to drag you to the Compound for an IV line. You need to eat.”
Peter took one deep breath after another to will the panic down and squeezed his eyes shut. “Can you, uh. Can you stay with me? After? I feel, like, really guilty when I don’t throw up, so if I’m alone…”
“Of course. I’m not going anywhere, kid. We’ll figure this out.”
He kept saying that, we’ll figure it out, like Peter wasn’t the one who’d gotten them into this mess in the first place. It shouldn’t have been up to Tony to figure it out.
Peter accepted the help, anyway. It was selfishness in its purest form, but no longer having to bear the weight of such a heavy secret made the guilt feel almost worth it.
“Can we have pizza?” He asked, hesitant, and he could have sworn Tony’s relief was tangible.
“Yeah, Pete. We can have pizza.”
“With pepperoni?”
“Of course.”
“Pineapple?”
“Fuck no.” Tony blanched. “What the hell has May taught you? I’m personally offended.”
Peter smiled.
For the first time in a long time, it felt real.