Chapter 1: magazine crime scenes
Chapter Text
It's on nights like this that Peter's not sure he has anybody left after all.
Pressing an old bleach-stained towel to his bloody lips with one hand, the other desperately trying to hold the wrenching doorknob still with red fingers slipping against the metal. He knows blood as well as he knows water, knows this routine as well as he knows how to brush his teeth—absent mindedly and practiced. He swallows, drowning out the screaming with the sound of the drip drip drip of the tap that no one had ever gotten around to fixing. If he listens really closely, he can hear the neighbours turning up their TV, whispering indecipherably to each other. It makes him feel a little dejected, a little sympathetic, a little bit of something that feels like nothing at all.
"Open this fucking door, Peter!" Ben's whaling on the door so hard Peter worries the wood will split, screaming in a voice May didn't live to hear. "Since you're so grown, since you're such a man now, come out and face me like one, huh? I'll wait! Come on out and tell me how shit I am, and—and you wished it was me, I know you wish it were me—say it to my god damned face—!"
Peter squeezes his eyes shut, wishing away the images of May and wet concrete and what his uncle would have looked like if he had been the one wearing his aunt's dying expression and he'd torn himself to bits many nights imagining everything he could have done differently but no matter how many times he woke up crying May never tiptoed through his door to curl up beside him while he slept and neither would Ben because he came home that night without a scratch but he had died holding May's hand and woke up the next day a dead man walking. Peter hadn't felt very alive since then either.
He'd screamed back at Ben only once, mourning sharp and fresh on both their breaths against each others faces, only inches from each other, desperate for him to understand that Peter wished it had been himself on that pavement divinely punished for an argument he could hardly even remember but would gladly die for if it meant May would have walked and how he still wished he were dead day after day because to see her empty shoes untouched upon the doorstep was worse than dying and he'd kill himself a thousand times to bring her back but how dare he suggest that Peter would be happier any other way than with them both.
And Ben had slapped him, then—and Peter thinks for the first time that perhaps he had lost them both after all.
The grief of losing both his parents all over again doesn't hit him in the middle of the night like it did when he was small, curled up in a too-big guest room bed with only the lingering smell of the cologne that made his nose wrinkle on a teddy bear he'd told his daddy he was too grown up for left of his parents. He'd loved his auntie May and uncle Ben but their apartment wasn't his and although he'd made it home with years of paint and posters and notches on the doorframe once again he felt the same indifference towards this space that kept him sheltered and imprisoned in a past everyone else had outgrown.
This grief had evolved into near sentience, a sensation he could look in the eye, and it didn't wait for night to come around. He never felt the loss quite like he did when he would look Ben in the face and see a corpse looking back at him.
"Tell me I should kill myself, come out and say it— say it! You think you could do what I do? My shoes, wear my shoes, work your damn life away and—and for what? You're just as doomed as me, kid. Just a—just some bum and some brat acting like something worth bein’ alive.” He coughs out a sound similar to a laugh. “Welcome to the big boy world, Pete! Where no one gives a shit about you and then—and then you die in the streets like a rat!”
The enhanced senses never felt like more of a curse than when he could hear the screaming with all the intensity of a blender from the inside, words like blades beating against him. He could hear every tiny fibre of wood splintering in the door with each flailing hit, he could hear the erratic beating of Ben’s manic heart with frightening accuracy, and he could hear the way he gasped for air like a drowning man, voice cracking and giving out with the force of his anger. And when it all became too much, when the words began to bleed into each other, it was akin to the struggling sounds of someone being mauled to death by a bear.
Peter knew better than to push his luck with curfew. He knew all too well the spirals Ben would talk himself into when left alone. It was stupid and naive to hope for a second that this time would be any different than the rest.
“Do you believe, Peter? Do you believe there's a little heaven up there for you?" The banging kicks up for a few seconds, before stopping altogether. Peter's eyes squeeze shut, sending tears down his raw skin. “I'm the only kind of God you're ever gonna get, kid! And guess—guess what?”
His voice is light and quick, a hysteria speaking through him. It’s the sound of a gas leak kind of man that he’s both never met and knows as easily as he does himself.
“What's dead is gone, Pete, and what lives is dead anyhow.” He hums like he’s thinking, like he’s singing, like Peter’s seven and can’t sleep—like he’s not even there at all. “Dead man, dead wife, dead life—nothing but you and nothing else to lose.”
There's a guttural sob from his uncle, an animalistic cry punctuated with a kick to the door frame that makes dust fall from the drywall, and Peter’s shoulders jump to his ears. His mouth tastes of chalk and copper. The man falls against the door, and Peter winces at the jolt to his sore body, heart still fluttering in his chest as the sound of quiet crying sinks down to his feet, a body laying outside on the hallway floor. Peter finds himself following suit, knees shaking far too much to hold his weight any longer. He doesn’t feel sad, but when he reaches up to wipe his face, his hand is wet with pinkish tears.
With very delicate movements, he curls up on the threadbare mat in front of the sink and allows himself to cry, even as he feels nothing at all. Whispered apologies slither through the gap under the door in a babbling stream, and Peter accepts them easily, unthinkingly. There’s always tenderness after the torrents, and it’s that gentle guilt that Peter accepts as what remains of his real uncle instead of the 6 foot stranger that takes his place from time to time, the illness that wears his face.
It isn’t his fault. Peter repeats it over and over in his head and pretends it makes it hurt less.
Eventually, he either falls asleep or simply passes out, but when he’s roused sometime later he can tell that time has passed. He wakes to the creak of the old door slowly opening on strained hinges, and even with his eyes closed Peter can feel the gaze raking over his body, can hear the way his breath catches and curls into something despondent even more clearly. He pretends to be asleep while Ben cries into his hand, only his heavy eyelids keeping his own tears at bay. He keeps his eyes closed and breathing even, listening to poorly stifled sobs and rummaging in the medicine cabinet until knees are dropping down on the floor next to him. A weathered hand pushes the bangs back from his face, trembling terribly but touching him as gently as if he were made of porcelain, the softest touch Peter has felt in a long time. It takes all that is in him not to burst into tears.
He does his best not to flinch as his wounds are gingerly tended to, and doesn’t open his eyes when a kiss is pressed to his forehead with the same ferocity as a plea. When his skin is cleaned of blood and the cuts are all bandaged, Ben lays down beside him, pulling his broken body to his chest. Peter burns the feeling of being held into his memory.
Uncle Ben chokes, sweeping the hair from his face once more.
"Monster." He breathes to himself, and Peter wants to hold him back, tell him that he still loves the dog even when it bites.
He falls asleep for real with Ben cradling him like a lifeline, and he wakes up the next day alone, tucked neatly into his bed. At school, he tells anyone who asks an elaborate story about a pigeon and a staircase and when they laugh he counts it as a victory.
"Dude, don't tell me you're bailing on me again."
Peter stops in his tracks, turning to see his best friend jogging to catch up with him on the sidewalk. It had only been a few minutes since the last bell, but Peter’s brain was so full of everything everywhere all at once that it behaved as if it were empty, and looking now at Ned, he realizes quite abruptly what he’s forgotten this time. He scrapes the sides of his brain for an excuse and winces, offering Ned the most apologetic look he can muster. Guilt fills the void inside his skull.
"Shit, Ned, I'm so sorry," he says honestly, pulling the earbuds from his ears. "I completely forgot we were supposed to hang out today." Peter rubs his face, and he can hardly tell the feelings of hunger, nausea, and guilt apart from each other anymore. He supposes it’s a little of all three.
Ned visibly deflates, and the guilt steps forward in his stomach. It seems his life as of late has become little more than a long line of explaining himself, and his teeth hurt from how hard he presses them together.
"It's been really crazy lately, and Ben—" Ben sent me a text earlier asking if I fed the cat and we haven't had one for years. Ben took up smoking again for the first time since I was diagnosed with asthma. Ben showered four times in one day last week and hasn't showered since. "—I don't like to leave him alone for too long." He says, and it's true, but it leaves the same bitter taste in his mouth as a lie. Last night’s consequences throb and the back of his legs itch every long second he’s still when he wants to be running home.
Ned doesn’t hide his disappointment, but his face softens in understanding and a well-intended sympathy that Peter’s grown to resent. All of the tenderness he craves yet can't accept without flinching because every gentle look only seems to emphasize the fact that he's been damaged. Every day he feels less human and more like a shaken soda bottle to be handled with caution.
He looks away, sheepish, ashamed, embarrassed—scuffing his shoe against the pavement. His patchwork converse have deteriorated to a point where he isn’t sure he can mend them any longer and he wonders how long it will take for him to become unfixable himself.
"I know, man. I get it. Just—don't be a stranger, okay? I'm here for you." Ned sighs, smiling sadly, and Peter is suddenly overwhelmed with the urge to cry. There isn’t a single soul who knows his life beyond what he’s able to fake and it’s exhausting and exactly how he likes it.
"I know, Ned." He squeezes out, throat sore and tight with unshed tears. "I'm sorry."
"Hey, don't be," He says easily, clapping Peter on the shoulder and pulling him into a side hug. "Just promise me you'll be there on Friday for our Star Wars marathon, my lola has been baking in preparation all week, it'll kill her if you don't show. I think she likes you more than me."
Peter laughs wetly, smiling despite himself.
"I wouldn't miss it for the world," He replies and hopes he means it. Ned smiles and Peter wants to stare at the kind face forever.
"Good." A car honks from down the road, and Ned turns towards it, waving at the driver. "Crap, that's my mom,” He looks back and Peter has to stop himself from reaching out to tug at his sleeve like an infant and beg him not to go. “I gotta go. Text me, okay?”
Peter watches as he goes, an emotion he can’t name burning a hole in his stomach. He doesn't stay to figure it out, just starts walking again, popping his earbuds back in and hoping to forget he ever felt it. They haven’t worked for weeks but he still wears them, both for the comfort of the habit and any small relief he can get from his far too sensitive ears. His life is loud and he takes quiet wherever he can get it.
The whole walk back to his apartment, he keeps his head down and crosses the street without looking.
When he turns the corner onto his street, a strange car greets him from his driveway, and an odd sense of foreboding washes over him. It’s a sleek, black model he doesn’t recognize, clearly more expensive than anything he or anyone he knows could ever hope to afford. Luxury like this is unfamiliar to him, makes him tense up the same way he would in a shop full of fine china. This end of the city wasn't any place for the rich, and there isn’t any explanation he can come up with that doesn't make him itch.
Anxiety and cafeteria coffee have his heart fluttering like a bird but he picks up the pace, tripping up the front steps in his effort to get to the door, not stopping to take his shoes off or drop his backpack like he usually does.
“Ben?” He calls out, eyes darting around for any sign of his uncle as he paces down the hall. He doesn’t have any idea what to think, but he’s not a lucky person and at times it seems that Ben up and runs from any sign of good fortune. “Uncle Ben? There’s a really nice car parked outside, and I uh—” He hooks his head into the living room, and the wind is knocked right out of him. For a second he just stares, half-convinced his mind has reached its breaking point.
Ben stares him down, dishevelled in a way that made it obvious he'd quickly tried to make himself appear presentable. His hair had been finger combed and the buttons on his shirt were askew by one. Even the coffee table had been hastily tidied, sticky rings still spotting the surface, but free from the many empty cans that had decorated it for weeks. Later, he'd find them all thrown behind the couch.
The sudden uptick in cleanliness might have been a great milestone, but there was a clear explanation for Ben's sudden change of ways, and it was sitting in the armchair across from him.
Perched on the very edge of his seat sat Tony Stark, as clean-shaven and sharp-suited as if he'd been plucked straight off the cover of a magazine.
Peter's mind had never been quite as blank as it was in that moment, and suddenly, he was very, very lightheaded.
He swallows, blinks, mouth filled with static and vision with sparks.
He doesn't remember the fall, but with a blink he’s staring at the ceiling, arms flailing out on instinct at the blurred figures that appear in the edges of his vision.
"Woah, easy, kid. Same side." Someone says, a light touch guiding his arms back to his sides.
Peter recognizes the voice in the same way he can quote any scene from any Star Wars, memories that are close to heart but much bigger than him alone. It stirs up a sharp, urgent feeling in his lower stomach like he's just missed a step on the staircase, but the world around him is too indistinct and distant for him to determine what his body is trying to tell him. Shaking his head is like shaking a snow globe instead of the etch-a-sketch effect he'd been hoping for. Snow falls in torrents in his vision and behind his eyes.
A hand settles on his forehead as if to stop a spinning top, but even while he knows his head is still he feels like he is moving. Unthinkingly, he throws his hands out for some kind of purchase, trying to sit himself up. Again, he’s halted by a gentle touch unlike anything he’d felt for a long time.
"You’re okay, kid. Relax, you smacked your noggin pretty good, just trying to stop the bleeding, okay?"
Whoever's speaking sounds like a brilliant shade of red, like elegance and red carpet and wine he can't pronounce, like the late nights he'd stayed up sneaking peeks at the TV after his aunt and uncle had put him to bed. Reminders of a time when red was anything more to him than the image of his aunt's life soaking his hands and the knees of his jeans. Red used to be his favourite colour. He hadn't gotten around to deciding a new one yet.
Sensation returns to him first in his fingertips, thorns and barbs climbing up his arms and suddenly appearing in his feet, all coming together to collect in a wicked tangle on his forehead. The pain is sudden and urgent, and he groans, awareness coming back to him in one quick spark. He forces his eyes open, met with watercolour eyesight that takes several seconds to dissipate.
The figure leaning over him comes slowly into focus, and upon seeing the pinched expression of one Tony Stark, Peter very nearly passes right out again.
“Hey there, space cadet,” The man greets, yellow lensed sunglasses perched low on his nose, eyes wrinkled in the corners but blessedly stable and sure of themselves. Peter doesn’t hesitate to grab hold of that confidence and hold onto it for dear life, grateful for the chance to be the unsure one, to simply lay there without the need to fawn or soothe. What a feral, skittish animal he’d become for such a small kindness to reduce him to this baby bird of a creature. “Back down on Earth with us?”
Peter blinked, feeling so light he didn’t realise his staring until clocking the expectant look from Mr. Stark, and in an instant, he’s right back to explaining himself away again.
“Oh—! Um, yeah, yes—I’m uh, I’m okay, Mr. Stark,” He babbles, eyes wide and unmoving from the billionaire's face. Pieces struggle to fall together in his mind, but when they do, Peter is shooting upright so quickly he nearly headbutts his idol square in the nose. “Mr.---Mr. Stark, oh my god, what—what, uh, what are you doing here?” The change in orientation leaves the room spinning with a new fervour, dizziness filling his head and overflowing into his sinuses. Any control he’d previously felt he’d had is slipping through his fingers like fine sand and his heart is leaping in its cage as he scrambles to drag the messy remains of himself into some semblance of a human being. “Not that I’m like, I don’t mean—It’s great that you’re uh–you’re here, but I—”
“Woah,” Stark breathes out, still appearing a bit caught off guard by the whole ordeal. “Take a breather, kid." He sneaks a glance sideways at Ben, who is hovering over his shoulder like a lost dog. When he looks back, there's an unsaid implication in his eyes that Peter can't decipher. "How about I’ll explain everything as soon as you don’t look like a ghost on stilts. Why don't you come back to the tower with me? Frankly, I can't in good conscience leave without taking you to get looked over. I don't want to be the reason for a teenager's brain falling out his ears." He winks like they've just shared an inside joke, but the nonchalance is only surface level. Peter hasn't even processed what the man was saying before Ben was speaking up.
"He's fine," He interjects, voice firm. He clears his throat, blinking unsteadily in a tell-tale sign that he's struggling to keep up his normal facade. All the years Peter had spent wanting nothing more than to meet his idol and now only inches away from his hero and all he can think about is how much he wants him to leave. "Kid's fine. Tough, uh—tough skull. Right Pete?"
Peter agrees immediately, scrutinising every miniscule detail of his Uncle's expression. Tony Stark and Uncle Ben are both staring him down and Peter's frozen like they're headlights and he's an unlucky deer. He wonders if they'd bury him or leave him on the shoulder to rot.
"I insist," Stark presses, replacing the hand he had over the handkerchief with Peter's own, instructing him to keep the pressure. "I have a med team on call 24/7, but they don't get out much. They'll be grateful for the chance to stretch their legs." A few parts of him snap as he gets to his feet, and he grumbles under his breath about getting old but doesn't hesitate to hook his hands under Peter's arms and take most of his weight helping him up. Standing is like being hit with a wave, white specks rushing down in front of his eyes and fluid sloshing around inside him and roaring in his ears. Mr. Stark steadies him when he stumbles and even as his brain argues that he trusts too quickly and loves too hard the touch is the most stable thing he's had in a good long time and Peter doesn't ever want him to let go.
He blinks up at the man he'd only ever seen on screens and articles, positively overwhelmed in more ways than one. It's as if his brain had given up even trying to process the heaps of information being thrown at him in a last ditch effort to protect itself from burning up completely, leaving him gaping, a little awed, a little apathetic. There's so many things he would like to say, to scream—but they're lost to him now. A lot of things are.
He glances at his uncle, standing there tightened up completely, hands clenching and releasing to quell his nervous energy. Ben is a defensive, fickle thing, seeking control wherever he can find it in attempts to make up for the very little he has. He finds much of his stability through Peter, using discipline and punishment he wishes he could show himself through Peter as a surrogate. He's staring the billionaire down like a bull to a red flag, and Peter wonders absently when he became more of a handler than a nephew.
"I don't want a bunch of strangers poking at my kid," Ben argues, tone ever sharp and untrusting. It's more possessive than protective, but Peter's heart still swells at his uncle calling him his.
"I get it," Stark says complacently, carefully—he's lived a life in the limelight, and as proven through countless public appearances, the man can talk himself in and out of anything. The media calls it sly, but it's just strategic. One of the reasons Peter finds himself drawn to him is his ability to find patterns in everything, but now, watching him analyse and break Ben down in his head, the quality is frightening instead of fascinating. "Tell you what," Mr. Stark begins, expression guarded in a way that Peter can't read. "Let me take the kid to the tower, and I'll have a close friend of mine look him over instead. No poking, no medbay, just a quick check-up for some peace of mind. We'll discuss the details of the September foundation while we're there, and I'll have him back in one piece for dinner."
The spark of excitement that appears in his chest surprises him. It was a feeling he hadn’t noticed was missing until that moment, and he paws at his ribs as if to hold it there. God, how reviving it was to want for anything other than silence. Living had become a piercing cacophony of static and sharp voices, and he’d learned to crave the quiet. He’d narrowed himself down to either noise or the absence of it, and in doing so, he’d forgotten about the music.
He looked at Ben, looked at Tony Stark, and swallowed stiffly, heart like a metronome.
“Uncle Ben,” He said quietly, hopefully. Two sets of eyes turned to him, and he tucked his shoulders in at the sudden attention. The room is silent and expectant, and Peter struggles to continue, acutely aware of how reckless it is to press or even speak at all when he can predict a reaction about as well as he can predict a game of russian roulette. It takes a second to force the word out, blood pressure spiking, cold sweat beading on his forehead. “Please.”
For a horribly long moment they're frozen in time, the world slowing down to a standstill. The lively streets of New York seem to pause with them, and he can't hear the neighbours arguing or the lady across the hall vacuuming, even the constant nagging noises of road rage that he can never seem to tune out all fade easily. He locks eyes with his uncle, and for a split second, it was just him and Ben against the world like it was meant to be.
There's a flicker in the man's stiffness, eyes softer around the edges, hands unclenching at his sides as he takes Peter in as if he's truly seeing him. It's rare to see a genuine emotion on Ben's face anymore, but each time without fail it's a sadness like nothing he's ever seen before. He wishes things were different.
"Dinner is at 6," Ben declares, looking at Tony Stark in a whole new light. Where there was trepidation now resides only a sincere protectiveness, and Peter loves him always and in any form. He loves him like a father, he loves him like an old sweater, he loves him like a hypocrite and he loves him like a liar. He loves him even when loving him feels imprisoning. "He better be on my doorstep by 5:59, Stark."
A jumpy, flickering pulse of emotion lights up his ribcage like a floating lantern, something a little hysterical and afraid—a joyful sort of panic. He's confused as all hell and his head swims and bobs through waves of pain but there's a chance for something good here and he sees it clear as day through double vision. Chaos isn't new to him but this warmth within him is, as the bedlam always bit at him and froze him to the bone and now it's like a summer storm and he and Ben sit on the porch to watch the lightning. His uncle was always the one who taught him not to be afraid.
"Scout's honour," Stark promises, holding three fingers up with a smirk. There's a small release of tension as Ben finally relents, it's minute but Peter has adapted to be observant. He loops his arm over Peter's shoulders and hooks his hand under his armpit to support him. Peter hopes he doesn't appear too eager to lean into the embrace, feeling much like a freshly born lamb; weak, wet, and so very unsure. "Here, I'll even leave you a number you can reach me at, just to ease your mind. How's that?"
Ben accepted the business card the man had dug out of a pocket inside his coat, staring at it a second too long as if to question its authenticity, as if to question his reality. Briefly, Peter thinks maybe he should be asking himself similar questions, but brushes it aside. He's alright with being a dream.
"Alright, let's get to it," Tony says with a deep breath, clapping Peter on the shoulder and gently steering them towards the front room with Ben trailing behind them like a puppy. "If we don't get that hole plugged up soon you're gonna turn into a raisin."
Peter goes easily along with him, letting himself be guided without hesitation. He isn't worried about getting into a car alone with a stranger, or maybe just not any more afraid than he always is.
They pause at the door, Stark keeping a hand on his back as he turns to address Ben one last time.
"I'll take care of him," He says, and Ben nods, a short, silent conversation happening between the two men that in his current state of mind, Peter doesn't understand.
He blinks and they're walking down the driveway, rests his eyes for a split second and he's seated in the passenger seat of a car he's far too dirty to be sitting in, looking on dumbly as a weathered hand reaches over him to buckle his seatbelt.
Another lapse in time has Mr. Stark behind the wheel, pulling something up on his phone. There's a barely there smirk on his face that brings to mind the image of a cat about to bat something off the counter. Before he can even begin to decide what that might mean for him, the answer comes along in red and blue flashes of a shaky YouTube video and an icy cold realization creeping over him from head to toe. Several puzzle pieces click into place, but the picture forming in them isn't anything like what he'd anticipated, isn't anything he knows what to do with.
"That's you, right?" Stark asks, but judging by the look on his face, it isn't much of a question.
If Peter hadn't been sitting, he'd have collapsed all over again.
Chapter 2: to the point of invention
Summary:
i did not proof read. could say im busy but it would be lies. im just. lazy! :) hope it isn't awful lmk
Chapter Text
Tony likes to think he's good at improvising, but this isn't like a business deal or PR mistake that can be mopped up with clean words and fake laughter, this is a living, breathing human being he's suddenly responsible for and the situation he's found himself in is incalculable and real.
Pepper insists he's impulsive while he argues he's spontaneous but there's no softer synonym to disguise the fact that he hasn't got a clue what he's meant to do next. It was only either luck or straight up divine intervention that he'd gotten this far, and even in the little time he'd been around the kid he'd already managed to put a hole in him then nearly kill him via heart attack minutes later—there was undoubtedly a gentler approach to the whole 'I know you're Spider-Man thing' but subtlety had never been his strong suit and clearly still isn't.
Either way, he'd gotten the kid to medical attention and he counted that as a win, even if it seemed Peter only agreed to be seen by a doctor because he was sort of afraid of Tony. It wasn't ideal, but if it got that dreadful gash closed up then for now he'd take what he could get. They could work on it.
The harsh lights of the medbay only worsen the headache that's been looming over him for the past hour, and as he looks at the Spider-Kid laid out on the cot, all gangly limbs and youthful features, he has a sinking feeling that headaches are going to be a recurring issue from now on.
"Looks like one more'll do it, buddy," Banner says, tying off the fifth out of a soon to be total of six stitches on the boy's forehead. "Sorry, I know this has to be less than comfortable, I doubt that lidocaine is doing very much for you."
Peter is as pale as the sheet beneath him, laying down on a medbay cot while Bruce mends him like a stuffed bear. He doesn't move or flinch as the needle pierces and pulls the raw edges of his skin, but his lips wobble silently and that's enough to know that it certainly hurts, enough to fill Tony with a strange restlessness that wants to urge Banner to be gentler.
"I'm okay, it's okay," Peter quickly assures, eyes wide and lips parted in a way that makes it clear he's not as present as he'd like them to think he is. There was a dreamlike glaze over him, and Tony imagines after a good night's sleep the kid is going to wake up very confused.
"There we go, all set." Banner announces, smoothing a bandage over the wound. He slips off his gloves before offering Peter a hand, slowly easing him to sit up. "How's that feel?"
Peter blinks, nodding his head carefully. Tony had hoped the kid would look better after being cleaned up, and while the lack of blood was undoubtedly an improvement, he still appeared sickly and miserable, and Tony wasn't satisfied. A thin spear of guilt poked him in the ribs, the question of whether or not he was doing the right thing ever present and ever unanswered.
"Your blood sugar is still sitting quite a bit lower than what I'd like it to be," Bruce muses aloud, pushing himself across the room on his stool to a mini fridge in the corner, grabbing two oranges and a juice box. "I'm gonna have you load up on some sugar before I let you up and about, then be sure to have a big meal for dinner, alright?"
Peter's hands shake as he takes the oranges and juice, weakly picking away the peel and gathering the scraps in his palm. His eyes track him and Banner warily, keeping the two of them in his sight. Not quite afraid, but certainly not comfortable—certainly not trusting. As much as Tony hated to admit it, he didn't blame the kid. He wasn't exactly batting a thousand in the first impressions department, and an introduction ending in the medbay was not what he would consider a success.
"Very sorry about your great fall, Humpty Dumpty," He says, clasping his hands together. "So glad we could put you back together again. If you're feeling steady do you think we could start over, or should I go grab you a helmet first?"
The kid, bless him, curls in a little on himself, red dusting the tops of his ears. It's the most colour Tony's seen in him all day.
"I am so sorry Mr. Stark," Peter apologizes, taking a sip of apple juice. "I'm not sure what happened, I guess I haven't been eating as much as I should. I hate to be a bother to you and Dr. Banner, I know you guys must be insanely busy, I really appreciate you helping me out like this—and for the oranges, Dr. Banner. Seriously, great fruit—and a great colour too! Two for one, what a steal, I mean—"
The sugar seems to be doing wonders for the kid's speech, more than he can keep up with. The words are practically falling out of his mouth now, thoughts tripping over each other like they'd been piling up inside him this whole time. Unfortunately, the boost to his system seems to have awoken his nerves as well, and he goes from a shell of a person to a jittery mess in what feels like seconds. It happens quickly enough that Tony doesn't even have enough pause to feel relieved before the anxiety pouring off the kid is rubbing off on him as well.
"Is this really happening right now? I have a biology test tomorrow, I should really be studying—not that you're not like, super important Mr. Stark, sir, I just really want to get a good grade in this class and I'd have to get my studying done before 7 because that's when I go down to Delmar's to help him out sometimes because well college isn't too far away, you know? I want to get as much as I can saved early on and—wait, do I owe you for this doctor's visit?" All colour he'd regained seeps away in an instant, and Tony holds his hands out in front of the kid cautiously. "Sir, I'm so sorry, I didn't even think of that, I'm not sure I was really thinking about much of anything at all to be honest—"
"Kid," Tony sighs, feeling exhausted in a way that was brand new to him.
"—I don't know anything about insurance, or if we even have insurance, and oh god, Ben is going to flip —"
“Hey woah, woah, hold the presses!” He says a little louder, hands held out in a placating manner. The kid’s mouth snaps shut, whole body flinching. The poor thing is more skittish than a field mouse, and Tony is content for now to blame it on several different logical temporary explanations. “You’re fine, kid. Don’t work yourself up too much. Of course you don’t owe me for anything, Brucey here owed me a favour anyway.”
Bruce lifts his eyebrows in his direction, rolling his eyes and turning to the kid. Tony’s the one indebted to the man many times over, but for the kid’s sake, he doesn’t say a word. Tony adds a mental tick to the long tally of favours he needs to make up to the guy.
“I’m more than happy to help you out, Peter. It’s no trouble at all.” He tells him, laying a hand on the kid's skin and bone shoulder. The touch was only in passing, but Peter’s eyes are glued to the spot where Bruce's hand had been for a long few seconds afterward with a strange, absent look on his face. “It’s a treat to have a patient that sits still and listens to me for once.” He smiles, sending a nod in Tony’s direction.
He gasps in mock offense, hand over his chest, and is relieved when it gets a small laugh from the kid, his shoulders loosening up ever so slightly. It’s a light, musical kind of sound—and the pleasant feeling it elicits within him catches him off guard. He wonders if he gets to laugh enough, wonders if he can make him laugh again.
“Feeling better, spider monkey?”
Peter’s attention snaps to him, a moment of unease in his eyes at the moniker before it settles into recognition. An unfortunate inkling in his gut tells him he and Banner might be the only ones he’s ever shared the weight of Spider-Man with, the memories of cars slamming into small hands and knives nicking at the fleece armour of a hoodie turn into the image of the kid all alone, tending to his wounds, blood against his baby skin and baby face and little teeny tiny shaking fingertips—he stops, blinks, breathes—bulletproof blueprints fill his anxious mind.
“Much better, Mr. Stark, thank you.” He replies, nodding. “Sorry, again.” He adds as an afterthought, wincing slightly as he darts his eyes between him and Bruce. The apologies have been tumbling out of him like nervous tics ever since he’d picked him up, and Tony wonders where he learned it and why.
“Hey, what did I say about the ‘sorry’ thing, huh? The sentiment gives me hives.” He leans back in his chair, flipping his hand dismissively. The little smirk from the kid feels like winning. “Seeing as we’ve gotten your third eye taken care of, I no longer feel guilty when I ask you what the hell you think you’re doing bungee jumping all over New York in your pajamas looking for cats in trees and—what else was it?” He hums, resting his chin on his finger and thumb. “Oh! Men with guns and twitchy fingers, that’s right.”
Peter stills like a deer that knows it’s been spotted, and it gives him a very uncomfortable feeling right in front of his spine. He doesn’t regret the question, even as he watches the kid swallow down a bite of orange with the same grace as if it had been a rock. The discomfort doesn’t seem to be limited to himself either, and he can see Bruce toying with a pen out of the corner of his eye.
He wants the kid to trust him, wants him to scoff and call him a hypocrite, wants him to say anything at all, wants him to breathe.
“I have to,” Peter says after a long moment, looking down at his hands, jittery fingers picking at the strings hanging off of his half-eaten orange. “I have to, Mr. Stark, please, I—” He breathes in sharply and lets it out just as fast, worrying his lip between his teeth. Even from several feet away, Tony can make out the patches of raw skin that reveal he does it often. “You don’t understand.” He says finally, words not much more than a breath.
And he’s right, he doesn’t understand.
Looking at the kid now, he doesn’t have a clue why he does what he does, finds it hard to picture his gentle features and fingernails chewed to quick standing steadfast in a gunfight or facing down the headlights of a speeding semi, finds it hard to the point of absent nausea. It’s easy to rationalize Iron Man to himself, easy to throw himself into battle with himself inside the armour. It began as a half-assed effort to repent, a sick form of self-destruction that gave him the freedom to punish himself without feeling guilty—maybe it still was. For him, it was about having nothing left to lose, and deciding to do something with the lack that at least had the potential to produce something good.
So if he ended up dead, crushed into the dirt like a can of sardines under a car tire, it wouldn’t be suicide. It would be sacrifice. Bravery instead of cowardice.
And it had been a long time ago, and evidently he had much more now to lose, but what had inspired him into remaining Iron Man after Afghanistan would always be there. It was morbid and selfish but it made sense, and so did the origins of most other heroes he could think of. Taking something bad and making it good. But Peter? He’d looked into Peter, and Peter did not make sense. It had been gnawing at him ever since he saw the clumsy school portrait smile FRIDAY had pulled up next to his name.
He didn’t understand him at all, and Tony Stark was not a fan of not understanding.
“Try me,” Is all he says, and he has no idea if it’s at all the right thing to say.
Peter peeks up at him, and he feels like his own kind of Spider-Man, cajoling frightened cats down from trees. It takes a few long seconds for him to come up with an answer, and Tony uses the time to think about how much he’d pay to know exactly what the kid was thinking. He’s still chewing on the tender skin of his lip although it has begun to bleed, and he thinks then of how much he’d pay to make sure the kid would never bleed again.
Peter sighs, and Tony can’t make out whether it’s one of defeat or one of new beginnings. He thinks it might be both.
“When you can do the things that I can, and you don’t, and then the bad things happen?” Peter looks up and stares into him, and when he stares back, he feels like he’s staring at an open wound. “They happen because of you.”
There’s an atmospheric sigh then, like the room itself was breathing. Still, Tony doesn’t understand, and he doesn’t think the kid is right. There isn’t enough of him to sweep up every dirty street in New York, and there aren’t enough years under this kid’s belt to make the weight he’s carrying break even. He’s got a burden he doesn’t deserve heaved up onto the shoulders of his lanky frame, fingernails digging into the sides in a vice-like grip that Tony knew better than to pry at.
There was no debt for him to repay, no horrible past or terrible mistake or shitty personality to make up for. It was abundantly clear that Peter had not been unkind to the world, but rather that the world had been very unkind to him. He had every reason to let the earth burn around him—Hell, he had every reason to start the fire. But he didn’t.
And to Tony Stark, that didn’t make sense. But to Peter, it was everything—and for now, well, that was enough of an answer for him to know that the only way Spider-Man would ever be given up was by taking Peter Parker with it.
Tony sighed, long and heavy and resigned. Peter watched him warily, face pinched for a moment before he was stiffening it, sending him a tentatively daring glare that betrayed the fact that he was terrified. Still, there was an odd sense of pride welling up inside him at the sight of the shaky defiance, and he wondered not for the first time what had taught the kid to be so afraid in the first place and how he could drum that fear out of him.
Peter sat with the breaths and heartbeat of a field mouse, Bruce flicked his eyes between the two of them like a sudoku puzzle, and Tony tried to figure out what the hell made the kid sticky.
He pulled his lips into a thin line, crossed his arms and hoped to God he could manage to do something right.
“You’re gonna need one hell of a suit upgrade.”
The smile he got in return was the best thing he’d seen in a long time.
Chapter 3: outside cats and frozen lasagna
Notes:
hello! i did not proof read this one either :P its midnight and i wanna play monopoly go
Chapter Text
There were a lot of things that Peter didn’t understand, and conversely, plenty of things he understood quite well—lately, however, he’d been forced to create a new category to put everything he could only figure out halfway.
That one equation he kept tripping up on in physics class. The Lord of the Flies, which they were reading in English. May’s bread recipe that would rise without an issue only to collapse the second it was taken out of the oven—he decided to pretend he didn’t notice how baking powder was absent from the ingredients jotted down in the margins of a cookbook, because it wasn’t May’s bread otherwise. The movie The Breakfast Club, which MJ had once mentioned she liked and Peter had watched that same night the second he had gotten home from school.
Now, Tony Stark. A black and white, brutally honest, two plus two kind of person that in all the years Peter had idolized him had always made sense. Eccentric, sure—impulsive and reckless, absolutely—it was what kept him in the public eye time and time again. The magazines would call him thoughtless, and Ben would mutter under his breath when reading about him in the newspaper, and the world would say what a waste, what a waste—and when he would end up on top like always, it was called coincidence. But it wasn’t. It never was.
There was a grander scheme at play all along, every breath, every public statement, every investment was a calculated move. It was a game of chess to him, each movement a rung in a ladder, each person around him a pawn.
And now Peter was on the board, and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what piece he was supposed to be.
It’s all he can think about ever since the second he arrived home to find a billionaire sitting in his living room, uncomfortably poised on the edge of the sofa littered with burn holes and beer stains like a hundred dollar bill lost on the side of the road. Like a terrible mistake, like a hilarious irony that doesn’t ever happen on purpose. But Peter knew better. Tony Stark never did anything by accident.
He rubbed at his head, just above where the stitches in his forehead had already begun to scab over and knit together thanks to the copious amounts of Chinese takeout Mr. Stark had practically shovelled into him after Dr. Banner had advised he eat a big meal—or 7, apparently. In fact, he felt better than he had in weeks, mind clearer and body less hollow, and old injuries finally settling down into something almost normal. It was a mercy he was grateful for beyond words but a favour he was more than uneasy about receiving, especially when it was followed up by the proposal of suit designs that made it hard for Peter to close his gaping mouth, theoretical blueprints and millions of dollars in materials laid out in a beautiful rendition of the stitched together rags that made the face of Spider-Man.
Mr. Stark had called it a gift, and Peter had nodded but in his head he called it a lie.
Tony Stark was a businessman, and businessmen never give out what they can’t expect in return. Partnerships, new inventions, stock market investments—even donations and charity were rewarded with positive press. Profit was essential for growth. There was no such thing as a gift in the corporate world, it would be illogical, counterproductive, even quarters in vending machines weren’t to be given up without first being tied to a string. Tony Stark always gets back what he gives away one way or another and he had given something to Peter Parker, who had nothing to give.
Nausea swirled in his stomach, and all the food he’d eaten the night prior now sat heavy like the paper of bills. He’d dug himself into a debt he had no idea how he’d ever repay, and the question of what Mr. Stark could possibly want from him burned under his skin like an itch.
Peter had nothing. Nothing but the moth eaten clothes on his back and a box full of beer cans he trades in for 10 cents each.
“Dude, are you gonna tell me what really happened to your face?” Ned mumbles through a mouthful of cafeteria bread sticks. He points to his forehead, swallowing and clearing his throat. “Cause I know you didn’t fall down the stairs again. It’s like, statistically impossible. Even for you, man.”
Peter blinks, realizing he’s been staring at his half-eaten tray for quite a while, judging by the fact that Ned has almost finished his. It takes a second for his preoccupied brain to catch up to what his friend has said, and his heart falls a little in his chest the way it always does when he has to lie. He’s managed to get away with it being mostly believable at this point, but he is at his core a terrible liar. May used to tell him his ears went bright purple whenever he tried to fib as a kid. It hadn’t occurred to him that she was kidding until an embarrassing age when he finally realized she had known he wasn’t telling the truth because he would try to hide his ears. Even now that he’s older, the habit still lingers, and he has to fight the urge to throw up his hood to cover them.
“I stepped on a lego and fell into the china cabinet,” He replies defeatedly, an easy scenario to posit. He looks down at his soggy lunch and hopes it sounds true. “I’m still picking glass out of my hair—Ned! Don’t laugh, it’s embarrassing!” Ned tries and fails to hide his amusement, and Peter finds himself smiling as well. There’s a knot inside his chest that pulls tighter when his friend buys his story, but he buries it down deep. It feels like fresh air to smile involuntarily. The laughter makes the lie feel like a good thing, and the levity makes him feel alive instead of like a corpse pretending.
“Peter, you need to see a doctor, or like an exorcist or something.” Ned grins, shaking his head at him with all the lightness he always has. He’s one of the only people who still talks to him like he’s real, who speaks with him instead of speaking at him. Peter tries to let it make him feel better instead of worse. “You’ve either got crazy vertigo or the ghost of an old lady on roller skates possessing you.”
Peter allows himself to laugh over the hum of activity in the cafeteria, and pretends for a moment that nothing else exists. No dead parents, no murdered aunt, no unhinged uncle, and no billionaires sitting on his couch. Just him, his best friend, and a little white lie to smile about.
He stabs at his food with his fork, aware of the dwindling lunch break and the empty cupboards at home. Usually he’d have scraped his plate clean by now, but his wandering mind had been costing him time all day. Work that should be finished still sat half-completed in his binder, his shirt was tossed on backwards under his hoodie, and now he was shoving cold french fries into his mouth as fast as he could without choking. It was an absence he knew that Ned had noticed.
Across from him, he shifts, looking at him with that face that Peter’s found himself at the end of more and more. They knew each other like verses of a song, could recite each other like lyrics and follow one another like the tempo of a drum. Peter’s always loved how observant he was, but it drives him insane now that he has so much to hide. He feels loved. He feels understood. He feels stripped down naked.
“You’d tell me if something was wrong,” Ned says, and it isn’t a question. He’s looking at him now like he can see right through him, and Peter has to stop himself from shrinking down in his place. It hurts more to keep a secret from someone who trusts him so sincerely that he doesn’t even feel the need to ask him for the truth, just accepts the answers straight from his mouth as honesty.
One day he’ll find out. One day he’ll find out, and Peter wonders if he’ll ever forgive him.
“Of course, man.” The words are sour, and he struggles to say them with a straight face.
Ned nods like he believes him, or at least like it’s the answer he wants to hear, like he thinks he knows that Peter would never lie to him because they’d made a pinky promise once when they were eight—and under the table Peter crosses his fingers, because he’s childish and wants the comfort of following some kind of rule, wants to cancel out the guilt that swims inside him day and night and eats the lining of his stomach worse than the hunger does. He has the decency to feel bad but is selfish enough to not do anything about it for the fear of losing one of the only good things left in his life if he knew that Peter was a liar liar liar.
The sound of students' voices overlapping is the taunting of laughter, and there are eyes from every angle.
“We should finish up the death star, it’s only half done but it already looks so cool, and it’s huge, man. I mean—”
Ned’s voice fades to a low buzz in his ears, and the rest of the school day passes in a similar daze. He doesn’t end up finishing his lunch.
Peter arrives home to an empty apartment.
It isn’t unusual, and neither is the pang of guilt he feels when he finds himself relieved that Ben isn’t home. The sigh he breathes as he closes the apartment door behind him is half rigid and half release.
Peter worries about Ben about as much as he would worry for an outdoor cat. After the first few times they turn up missing, you learn to stop searching. They always find their way back home, and you try not to wonder about where they’ve been. Peter has found it best not to ask questions he doesn’t want the answers to.
He leaves the lock untouched for when his uncle wanders home, knowing from experience that the man had likely left without his keys and would be pounding on the door in the middle of the night to be let in otherwise. The old woman who lived one apartment over still hadn’t quite gotten over that particular incident, and Peter was eager to keep all attention-drawing behaviour to a minimum. Besides, he’d long gotten over the worry of intruders. There wasn’t anything worth stealing, and Peter himself wasn’t planning on letting the absence of peeking eyes go to waste.
He kicks off his shoes by the door, careful not to pull too hard on the wearing stitches keeping the sneaker from becoming a flip flop, and places them inside the closet out of the way of clumsy feet before making his way to his bedroom and tossing his backpack behind the door.
When he lies down on his unmade bed he does so very gingerly, and still several joints pop and twinge as he settles onto his stomach. He groans into his pillow and thinks about how long it’s been since he could put pressure on his ribs like this without pain, thinks about the rust coloured stains on the sheets beneath him that he’s washed again and again, thinks about how his stomach doesn’t ache with hunger and thinks about why. He thinks and thinks and then he thinks about how much he hates thinking.
He wants to sleep, wants to cry, wants to scream and wants to never speak again.
It’s just as much of a struggle to shimmy his way out of bed as it was to ease himself into it, and again he’s grunting and stretching kinks out of his back. Sometimes it feels like his body has up and aged without him, other times he feels like he’s still six years old. It isn’t very often that he feels 15, doesn’t even really know what it feels like in the first place.
He shakes his arms out of the zip-up sweater he’d been wearing and glances at the time on his alarm clock, tossing the sweater over the back of his desk chair. There was still plenty of time before he needed to be home, even longer until he expected Ben to wander back, and nothing in the empty apartment worth thinking about besides the crumpled up homework in his backpack he still only half intended to do. So, he did what he always did when he felt like forgetting he existed. He dug around in his closet, pulled out a shoe box hidden in the far corner beneath a pile of clothes, and covered up what was left of Peter Parker in swathes of red and blue.
When he steps out onto the window sill, he feels more alive than he has in a long time. Spider-Man leaves the old zip up sweater that is Peter behind.
He stays out far later than he meant to.
Now, sitting on the edge of a building he didn’t particularly recognize, he asks himself how much he really wants to go back and doesn’t come up with much of anything as an answer. These are the nights that remind him of peace, these are the sights that make everything stop.
The moon is high over the streets of New York, and the sky is clear and still. In a city of lights it’s hard to see the stars most of the time, but tonight they’re everywhere. It makes him feel very small, very unimportant—like a field mouse in a box, holes poked through the cardboard lid. The world needed a lot from him, sometimes. He gives away two lives worth of himself from one unwilling body, and he loves to see the stars, loves to see the endless, loves to feel like no one needs a single thing from him and everything is small.
There’s a cool breeze in the air, and he tucks his gloved hands inside his sleeves and takes a big, gulping breath of it. Lets it out. Does it again.
He’s been awfully tired for a long, long time. There’s an old lasagna in the freezer May had made and he doesn’t think he’ll ever throw it out. He loves Ben. He loves Ben. He hates coming home to him. He loves Ben.
He wishes Tony Stark never showed up on his sofa. Just a year or two ago he would shake himself by the shoulders if he ever even considered turning down meeting Tony freaking Stark, but he’s been awfully tired for a long long time and he has old lasagnas to worry about.
He hates lying, he hates secrets, he hates wondering which version of the man he once knew as well as he knew himself is waiting for him each night. He loves Ben. He doesn’t even like lasagna.
The sun set quite a while ago, all residual heat the concrete held onto has dissipated, and he has no idea what time it is. He rubs at his eye through the mask, sniffing at the cold. It’s late enough now that expects Ben home, likely asleep on the couch. Peter can only hope he never realized he wasn’t in his room, or at least that he’ll forget it all by morning.
The warmth of four walls is pretty much the only thing that has him swinging home, alongside the constant fear that comes along with loving an outside cat.
Climbing back through the window is always harder than climbing out. It feels a lot like crawling back to jail after an escape, it feels like a wasted chance and it feels like punishment. He pulls it softly shut behind him and realizes he too is an outside cat. He wonders if Ben worries about where Peter is when he isn’t home, but decides not to ask questions he doesn’t want the answers to.
Once he’s properly inside, he stops and listens. It’s become a reflex at this point, and he doesn’t even need to think about it anymore. He’s always aware of his surroundings. He needs to be. Through the closed door, he can hear Ben snoring on the couch as he’d predicted, the babble of a random TV show playing in the background. His heart slows a few paces at the sound, relieved to hear the life in the living room. Most of Peter’s time is spent in the cycle of fear and relief, fear and relief, fear and relief—but the relief was just as sweet every single time.
Through a daze that tell him it really is late, he strips off the fleece armour and throws it all back into the shoe box, burying it once again inside his closet. He puts the Peter Parker sweater on again and pretends he doesn’t feel like a hermit crab wearing a shell.
He avoids looking at the time on his alarm clock and opts to just crawl into bed, blood stained sheets and all.
He isn’t there for longer than a minute before he’s shooting straight up in place, half-asleep and half-convinced he’s a dream. Just outside his window, over the sound of snoring neighbours and uncles and cars playing highways like bows to violins, there’s a whirring he doesn’t recognize. Peter tenses, chewing the inside of his cheek and listening closely. There’s no warning from his spider side, but he doesn’t need it to be afraid, it doesn’t take much of anything anymore to turn him into a skittish possum of a person.
There’s a series of taps on the glass that make him jump so harshly an embarrassing squeak escapes him that he slaps his hand over his mouth to stifle, palms sweaty against his face. He swallows thickly, takes a shaky breath and leans forward in bed to look outside the window. He expects a pigeon, or maybe a tree branch in the wind, expects to feel really silly for being scared about a noise in the night like a little kid—what he’s not expecting to see is a drone, moving backwards and forwards to hit against his window like it’s asking to be let in.
And maybe it’s because he’s still a little bit asleep, or maybe he’s just actually lost the ability to care, but Peter gets himself out of bed, walks over to the window, and lets it in.
The little aircraft buzzes its way into the room as soon as he pushes up the sash, and it’s only after there’s a drone with unknown origins flying around his bedroom that Peter thinks that maybe he shouldn’t let in anything just because it knocks.
Luckily, it seems to come in peace, dropping a white box it was towing onto his bed before zipping back out the way it came like a bird that had come in accidentally.
Peter blinks and gives his head a good shake just to make sure none of the gears in his brain had come loose and induced strange lucid dreams, but blinks again to see the box still there and the window still wide open. He shuts it without taking his eyes off the package lest it disappear if he looked away, crossed the room and sat down next to it. It was a simple, sleek white box like the one Ben kept his watch in, a matching white ribbon tied around it. After another moment of hesitation, he pulled the ends of the bow, picked up the box by the lid, and shook the bottom of it out into his hand.
Inside was a sticky note, and underneath it, the newest Stark phone that had only been teased in commercials and wasn’t expected to be released for another month, according to Flash who had been bragging about having it on pre-order to the entire history class.
Was going to go for cup phones, but Pepper says I can’t run a string across the city.
-T.S.
Peter didn’t think he could react even if he wanted to. He loves it. He hates what it implies. He’s the luckiest person on earth in that moment and he can’t help but wish it were someone else.
He’s got lasagnas and now unreleased smartphones and drone delivery debts to think about, and he’s still tired.
He wishes Tony Stark never showed up on his couch.
Chapter 4: empty boxes and what they're filled with
Notes:
hello ! it's very cold in canada right now :( It was so warm for a while!
If the ending feels rushed thats because it most certainly is :) I struggled a little bit with the second half of this chapter and by the end I just wanted to get it out there so we can move on to bigger and better things >:D
here it is! hope its alright. thanks for reading! xxxEDIT/04/13---I couldn't do it!! Leaving this chap the way it was made me itch. I didn't add very much, just a few little bits here and there towards the end to hopefully help it read smoother than before ;)
Chapter Text
“When are you planning on telling them?”
In the silence of the otherwise empty lab, Bruce’s sudden interruption has Tony jumping hard enough to smash a few random keys into the line of code he was working on, the screen highlighting the area in confusion. Heart in his ears, he turns around to glare at the intruder, the man leaning up against the doorway with the smugness of someone who had most definitely done that on purpose.
Tony rubs his eyes, burning at the switch between the light of the holograms and the unlit room. Only the glow of the city came through the windows that had been flooded with sunlight what had felt like moments ago, and he cleared his throat, trying to gather his bearings. His coffee had gone cold, the half-eaten slice of toast sitting next to it was stiff, and his phone was laying face down on the desk—he didn't need to turn it over to know the onslaught of texts waited for him there, nor did he need to see the contact photo of his fiancee to feel guilty.
Bruce raised his eyebrows in question, and Tony shook himself back to reality.
“Since when do I have to tell them anything?” He replies finally, spinning back around to face his work, scans of lanky teenage suit models cast into the air in front of him. Sensors. Parachutes. Communications. Shock absorption to protect growing skulls. Young bones that bend before they break and how to keep them stable. A blood sugar monitor. A pocket for a cellphone. A million ways a child could die and a million and one ways to save them.
Bruce drops his arms to his sides with a sigh that has Tony rolling his eyes, still facing away from him. A mesh for sticky fingers. A flexible armour for delicate skin. “Tony, you're playing with fire and you know it.”
A filter for smoke. A heat resistant layer.
“Perfect, I've been craving s'mores. I was talking about s'mores the other day, wasn’t I, FRIDAY?” He continues typing, still only half entertaining the conversation. He was killing the kid over and over in his head and he was bringing him bringing him bringing him back to life again and then again and until he was one step ahead it wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t good enough.
“I have no recorded incidents of you mentioning the term ‘smores’ in my recent events folder.” FRIDAY dutifully responds, all too satisfied with herself. Tony had never taught her to lie. He makes a note to rectify that later.
“See? I told you she doesn't listen to me.” He lies instead, gesturing to the ceiling with a wave. He doesn’t move his eyes from what’s in front of him. Zooms in, zooms out. Adds another line of communication. Hesitates. Enters his personal phone number as well.
Bruce doesn’t say a word, hardly even breathes, but Tony can feel his eyes still on him, can feel the disapproval seeping out of him like an oil spill and soaking over the floor of the lab. Ever the judge, never the jury. Always the ‘Tony Stark screws it all up again’ headline man they’d all invented of him. Never the friend or the teammate. Always the liability.
And Bruce was the easy one, the letting him explain one, the one who understood the math and science part of Tony but not the people part. He was the benefit of the doubt one, but always doubt nonetheless. It was letting the kid ride without training wheels but running behind them with outstretched hands, pocket full of bandaids of various sizes. It was expecting him to fall. To fail. To miss a letter of code and sentence a kid to death.
A backup power source. A GPS. A live location on his desktop. The cost of engraving 19 letters of a name into a slab of granite subtracted from his bank account. Another backup. Another failsafe.
“We brought up Spider-Man as a team, Tony. They’re not going to forget just because you don’t mention it to them,” Bruce cautions, giving in and stepping into the room, confirming the threat of a lengthy conversation Tony didn’t have the time or patience for that had been looming over him the whole time the man had been standing there. “You agreed to look into it. What are you going to say to them when they ask what you found?”
The reminder does nothing to quell the itch he’s been doing his best to ignore.
Spider-Man had been a topic of interest during their team meetings for a while now. His skillset, his technique, his identity—the potential he possessed and how Earth’s mightiest heroes could harness it.
He likes the team, always has. The team thinks he is exactly what he wants them to think he is and he still resents them for it.
There’s an unwelcome but not unfamiliar restlessness inside him, the kind that keeps him from being added to group chats, keeps him from being invited to weddings, keeps him from eating and sleeping and breathing, keeps Howard Stark from ever truly dying in how he finds himself puppeteering himself around like his father’s only son in every way he’d swore he’d never be.
He’s got everything to lose and everyone’s a thief. It makes him build walls around everything, bricks of protocols and formal speech and iron suits because he’d learned the hard way it was easier to be alone than to be betrayed.
And now he feels like a bird with an egg, something delicate and alive in his hands—and he wants to build a wall.
“I’m not dragging the kid into Avengers bullshit,” He says adamantly, and it isn’t a lie. “New York is his pasture, junkies and pickpockets are his cows, and he’s a humble cattle farmer. He doesn’t have a pitchfork big enough to pick up after aliens and Nazis and I’m sure as hell not going to give him one.”
Bruce looked at him the same way he often looked at his work. Like he was trying to figure it out and like he knew it front back and sideways in the sense that he knew the alphabet but still had to sing it to remember what comes next sometimes. The man leaned up against the desk beside him, locking his fingers together in front of him and studying the schematics scattered over the holodesk.
“Hm. Why is that, then?” He asked, lips pressed together like he knew the answer. It was like reliving every therapist appointment he’d ever been to and every reason why he never went back.
“Same reason you don’t give a kid a sports car—because it’s cool as fuck, and they’re going to kill themselves with it.” Tony answers simply. A dozen ways to implement airbag features into a suit flood through his head.
“What makes you think the team is going to come to any different conclusions than you are?” You have to trust them eventually.”
Bruce is always the voice of reason. Reason is only appealing when it argues in your favour.
“Spangles was begging for a gun in his hand before he met the height requirement for bumper cars, Clint was pinning flies to walls before he could walk, and Nat came out of the womb holding a stun gun. What the hell else should I think?”
“Look, I hate to poke the bear,” Bruce pushes himself upright, face twisting uncomfortably as he begins pacing under Tony’s expectant stare. “But in the interest of some…healthy perspective, you weren’t exactly straight-laced and square-toed back then either.”
“Thank you, mister gold star sticker, it’s like I’m seeing through new eyes,” He snarks, probably a little harsher than the doctor deserved, but telling of how long he’d been without sleep. “Yes, I crashed a sports car into a light pole, because it was cool as fuck, and I was an idiot teenager who nearly scrambled my brain before it had to chance to develop a prefrontal cortex.” He takes a swig of coffee from his mug, swallowing it down with a suppressed shiver at the reminder that it had been there quite a while.
“Sure,” Bruce nods, looking at his feet while he paces. “Don’t give a kid an expensive, powerful tool before they’ve learned responsibility, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.” He hums, stopping in his tracks and pretending to think for a moment. “What, uh—what do you call that, then?” He gestures his head towards the blueprints Tony is currently fidgeting with, looking all too pleased with himself.
Tony scoffs. “What do I call this?” He throws his thumb to point, eyes wide and stiff as they adjust yet again to look into the dark. “I call this me sleeping at night, because our resident spider likes to jump in front of swatting newspapers and stray bullets, and if he’s brave enough to do the shit he's doing wearing a sweatsuit, he's brave enough to do it wearing tighty whities and a paper bag with eye holes cut into it.”
Tony rubs at his face like he’s trying to wipe it off, breathing a sigh that feels like fanning burning coals.
“This is not me giving him a lamborghini, this is me giving him a bus pass, because right now he’s hitchhiking and it’s giving me ulcers.”
“You’re scared,” Bruce says simply, with all the nonchalance of someone just repeating what was said to him. And Tony doesn’t flinch, he goes still—everything around him following suit like the bubble of silence surrounding a deer that knows it’s been spotted.
Until then it hadn’t been true, because he hadn’t let it be. It was a fictional series of events that happened to Spider-Man, and then Spider-Man happening to him. Problems and solutions. Obstacles and detours. Theoretical deaths and their real world implications. Hypothetical bad things that were his hypothetical fault because he could have placed a failsafe where he didn’t and as a result he was choosing hypothetical colours of pocket squares to match the suit he’d had specially made to dress Peter Parker’s corpse for his funeral. 15 white long stemmed roses.
It wouldn’t be his fault, just like how the death of a man shot in the dead of night wouldn’t be Spider-Man’s fault, or how the fate of roadkill wasn’t the fault of the shoelace that had come untied and caused you to leave 30 seconds later than you meant to. But it wouldn’t matter. There’s a part of the human psyche that craves to be the reason, so it can either prevent or so it can be punished, so it can have a cause and effect and every variation in between to feel any sense of authority over a life it wasn’t built to understand—because the only thing scarier than the idea of causing a death is the idea of having no control over it at all.
Sometimes people die in tragic accidents. Sometimes people drop dead for no reason at all. And there isn’t prediction or protection, only waiting.
He must sit there staring for longer than he realizes, because all of a sudden Bruce is directly beside him, resting his hand on his shoulder.
“Tony,” He drops his shoulders, tone softening out into something understanding and tired. “You’re not a bad person, and bad things don’t hurt less just because you pretend to be.”
He blinks and Bruce’s hand is Obie’s, blinks again and it’s his fathers, blinks once more and there isn’t anyone there at all.
“You spend so much time thinking about the what if’s that you’re missing out on what is,” He tells him, shaking his shoulder gently. “At the end of your life, when all of the scenarios you’ve thought up have played out, you’ll realize you’ve spent so much time making sure they happened that you were never really there at all. I know you care about the kid. So be there. You might find there’s a lot of people who care about you too, if you let them.”
He pats him on the back, giving him a small smile.
“Good night, Tony,” Bruce turns to leave with a casual wave, leaving him to sit in a pile of rubble, walls demolished at his feet like sandcastles. “Oh, your shirt’s on backwards, by the way.”
He leaves the room laughing, the lab suddenly very empty as the door slides shut behind him. Tony peels back the neck of his shirt to see the tag, scratching absentmindedly at the pattern it had pressed into his skin.
In front of him, the first signs of sunrise peek through the windows. He doesn’t sleep.
The next morning is a blur of apology breakfasts, catch-up naps, and squinting at himself in the mirror.
He feels like a tightly pulled knot that had been picked apart into strings, having to pause and gather up all his loose ends to carry with him every time he moves. He’s a chewed up piece of gum, a well-worn stuffed animal with a limp neck and limbs. He’s something he doesn't know how to be.
And maybe it was a lack of sleep, maybe it was the few days he’d missed his multivitamin, or maybe it was the out of body realization that he was tired. Truly, deeply, bone tired without even knowing it.
He’d had his hands pressed against a red hot burner for as long as he could remember, and the whole time he couldn’t figure out why it all hurt until someone had come along and gently pulled him back from the heat.
You’re burning your hands.
And it was stupid, and it was obvious, and maybe he had known about the stove all along. Maybe he liked the fire. Maybe he felt like he deserved it. Maybe he’d been burning for so long he lost the ability to feel it, or was at least too used to the smell of smoke to give it up.
All the cruelty that had come from him. How much of it was character? How much of it was just crying out in pain? How much of him belonged to him? How much had he borrowed from his father?
Questions. Answers. Pouring another cold coffee down the sink. Power. Where it comes from. What it means. Boiling the kettle again.
Destruction is always the example of strength. The power to change, to take something big and force it to be small. The people always wanted to talk about the taking away. It was what Stark Industries had been about, when it had been handed to him—back when he felt like a toddler holding an assault rifle, back when it didn’t matter where he fired it because he couldn’t see what he was shooting at.
Then he was thrown into the line of fire, and it mattered, and he hated his father a little more, and power was more to him than numbers and income and growth because death was just a statistic until he looked it in the eye.
All the weaponry had come from his hand, every death from every bullet of every gun had Tony Stark pulling the trigger, and every success he’d been congratulated for, every business measure he’d been told to take, every sound of glasses clinking, the hearty laugh of men in suits—it was never gain. It was loss. A corpse handing him a dollar bill.
He’d never really stopped feeling sick after that. Didn’t think he ever would.
Three months in a cave he’d spent building himself a new person, using that new person to say new things, make new lives—anything to replace. To repent. To reform. He never wanted to destroy. He never wanted to take away. He wanted to be something his father could stand to look at. He wanted to dance on the fucker’s grave. He wanted to hold him tightly. He wanted to be nothing like him.
He sees it every time he looks at himself. There's so much hatred inside him he can’t make out where it comes from. Can’t make out where it’s going.
He’s placed everything he doesn’t understand inside a box, then tucked those boxes away to forget about. Last night Bruce had come and pulled them all out from under the bed. It’s time he sorted through them.
Standing there now, rocking on his heels outside the doors of a meeting room, he wishes he would have done so a long time ago. He breathes in deeply through his gritted teeth, places a hand on the door handle, and opens one of the boxes.
He’s met with a variety of different looks from around the table. Steve checks his watch. Bruce smiles to himself. Natasha stares him down. He wonders if it’s obvious how uncomfortable he is, and tries to loosen up his posture as he takes a seat at the head opposite from Steve. There’s only six of them in the room, Tony as the seventh. Wanda and Vision were off canoodling somewhere in Vienna, Rhodey, the lucky shit, was doing a training exercise far, far away from here, and Thor—well, none of them are quite sure what it is Thor gets up to, and none of them are stupid enough to ask.
“You’re…” Steve starts, eyes still darting between Tony and the time. “...on time.”
There’s an awkward pause after that, Clint’s poorly stifled snicker the only sound. Steve clears his throat, trying to straighten out his squinting face and refocus himself on the stack of paper in his hands like the disciplinarian he is. Tony doesn’t roll his eyes, but he feels twitch with the urge to. It’s like living with a god damned principal, they might as well stick the guy in an ugly suit and loafers already.
“Full of piss and vinegar today, soldier boy.” He grins, leaning back in his chair and crossing his ankle over his knee. “Did a line of blow before I got here.”
The series of blank faces and concern he gets in response to the joke is both undeniably hilarious and a little bit of a dig at his backbone. Hell of a lot of faith they had in him.
“Oh, Jesus Christ, I’m joking!” This time, he does roll his eyes, even throws his head back a little for dramatic effect. It was a stupid thing to be hurt over, so he wouldn’t be. Move on, Stark. Get over it. Don’t dwell on the fact that your team thinks so highly of you they’d expect you to do hard drugs at all let alone before a meeting. Definitely don’t think about why.
He really was planning on leaving it at that, but seeing their pompous faces relax like they’d truly believed it was pissing him off again. “It was adderall.” He cut back in, a little bit sharper than before. The boost he’d gotten from Bruce’s little heart to heart was waning rapidly. Not even two minutes in and it was already a harsh reminder of why he avoids these sessions every chance he can get.
Tony chews the inside of his cheek. The box was already open. Sort it out.
Steve sighs through his nose. “Alright, can we get into what we came here for?” He asks the room, laying out his documents in a neat stack on the table. Tony bites his tongue to keep from offering him a damn pocket protector.
“Oh! Pick me, teach! I know the answer!” Clint waves his hand in the air, spinning around in his chair. He’s got his legs all curled up, sitting on his feet. The man has a habit of sitting like an eight year old in a way that makes Tony ache just looking at him. “Show and tell,” He says, grabbing the table to stop the chair and point directly at him. “Tony’s turn.”
The familiar knot in the middle of his spine is back at the reminder of what he’s here to say. The other box he’s meant to open. The pieces of his ribcage he’s supposed to pull apart to expose every bit of vulnerable flesh to the open.
All eyes are on him again, and in the mess he finds Bruce, smiling softly like a lighthouse in the fog. Like a touchpoint. Like a lifeline.
“Thank you, Clint. Close enough.” Steve relents, thumbing through until he finds the paper he’s looking for and pulls it free from the pile. “During our last gathering we discussed the topic of Spider-Man, one of New York's most recent vigilantes.” He hums, scanning through whatever bullshit he has written on his stupid files. “Enhanced, unidentified, and unchecked. Tony, you were to look into the subject and determine whether or not Spider-Man poses a potential threat or benefit for the Avengers. What do you have to report?”
Everything in him wants to keep his mouth shut. Keep it safe. Keep it safe. Keep it quiet. Old habits die hard and he’s an old dog trying to learn new tricks.
It was never that he didn’t trust them, they’d saved his ass enough times now to prove themselves a few times over. There’s just something about Peter Parker. Something that makes his teeth sore when he wakes up in the morning. Something that makes him want to whisper. To keep the lights dim. To close the curtains. Something that keeps him up at night thinking.
Where are you going? What do you want? Who are you? Why does looking at you feel like looking in the mirror?
“I’ve found Spider-Man,” He admits. It feels like pulling out his organs. “He's nothing we need to be concerned about. That’s all you’re getting out of me for now.”
He crosses his arms over his chest tightly. Outwardly a show of finality, inwardly a pitiful attempt to self-soothe. The third coffee he probably shouldn’t have had rolls over in his stomach, his heart flashing like the check engine light of an old car. Speaking feels like guesswork, feels like Russian roulette, like crossing his fingers and hoping the words come out holding the meaning he wants them to. It feels like making no sense to even his own ears, still begging to be understood.
A few of his teammates exchange glances. Natasha looks at him like a puzzle. Bruce is swiping through something on his watch. Steve furrows his brows. The rest just look bored.
“Tony—” Steve begins. He doesn’t give him the chance to say anything else. Words are forced out of him like dry heaving.
“Listen, I’m trying to give this whole not keeping secrets thing a shot, but it’s seriously making my skin crawl,” He confesses, holding up his hands in exasperation. “This is me throwing you a bone. Spider-Man is a special case. We need him to trust us, which means he needs to trust me, which means you need to trust me, okay?” He sighs deeply. It doesn’t relieve him of any tension. “Do you trust me?”
He doesn’t know what he expects as a response. A round of laughter. A squeamish hesitation. No response at all. What he doesn’t expect is simple acceptance.
“Of course,” Steve says. Like it’s obvious. Like it’s a fact. Like it’s something he didn’t have to think about. Everyone around him nods just as easily.
And oh. Oh. The box was empty.
He’d been fighting shadows. Himself. Times gone by. Things that have already died that he keeps reviving to fight over again.
All the anxious energy he’d been buzzing around with all day dissipates in the matter of a second. He goes from a wound up rubber band to a wrung out dish cloth. Empty, but not void. Like a cloud that had expelled all its rainwater. Like he didn’t need to be anything except exactly how he was right then. Like he really needed to go back to sleep.
“Whatever, as long as that little pest comes around eventually,” Sam speaks up, eyes narrowed. “I’ve got a bone to pick with that guy.”
Next to him, Bucky groans. “Oh, would you get over it already, you big baby?”
Sam drops his mouth open, appalled at the mere suggestion. “Get over—no! He threw my freaking car! I will not ‘get over it’.”
“It was covered by insurance and you live with a billionaire.” Natasha points out in amusement.
“I had a full pizza waiting for me in that car! Insurance doesn’t give a shit about stuffed crust, but I do! I value it very deeply!”
There’s an air of lightness he hadn’t felt around them all for a long time. Even he can’t keep the smirk from growing on his face.
Trust feels like skinning himself alive. It feels like a deep wound. It feels like letting go of something heavy he should have put down a long time ago.
It feels like life, and it feels like being there to see it.
Chapter 5: knocking on doors
Notes:
i thought it had only been like four days but it's been 12??? i don't have any concept of time. it gets me in trouble quite frequently.
it's been very cloudy and rainy here which is prime writing time so we have a slightly longer chapter hope it doesn't disappoint I try so hard to plan things but im absolutely useless at planning so i tend to make it all up as i go so if there are mistakes or plot holes please i am just a girl and my brain is moldy !!
enjoy :)
Chapter Text
Peter bites at his nail, glancing at the phone he’s holding under the desk.
The messages send spirals and tangents and mile-long scenarios through his head in a matter of seconds. Tony Stark on the phone with Ben, the things he said, the things he got in response—the carton of eggs he was going to pick up on his way home, the fridge that was empty aside from an assortment of expired condiments—the black stain on the ceiling from the fire his uncle had set when he’d left an oven mitt on the stove, the edge of Peter’s eyebrow that hadn’t ever grown back—every action, every consequence, every fault. Every excuse he could make to get out of it. Every reason he could leave early. Every guilty desire he had to stay out as long as he could. Every shameful urge to not come back.
Emotions don't pass through him anymore, they build up inside him. Everything forcing itself into a too small place and making it fit like an overinflated balloon until eventually he feels so much of it at once it all just—stops.
Nothing.
It's as if he had so much filling up his body that there was no more room for him anymore, pushing him up and behind himself to watch. It isn't a solution, but it's as close to one as he's going to get, so he takes advantage of the reprieve every chance he gets.
The dismissal bell isn't as jarring as it usually is when it rings, prompting him to shove the phone and all its implications into his pocket to be dealt with later. Gathering up his work takes no time at all, he hadn't exactly been getting any of it done anyway. He shoves it all down into his backpack, slinging it over his shoulder and scurrying into the buzzing crowd in the hallway.
There's nothing he needs from his locker, so he doesn't stop, just gives an awkward wave to Ned as he walks past, doing a texting motion with his thumbs and mouthing that he'll explain later when he gets a confused look from his friend. Ned shoots him a thumbs up like he doesn't mind at all. Peter smiles, and feels it in the hollow of his ribcage. It's almost worse that he's so accepting. Peter feels like he's pushing his luck. He's never properly punished, wonders when he will be—wonders if it will be a final blow when the branch he's pulling back pulling back pulling back finally gives way.
The sun is bright and blinding when he pushes through the front double doors, blowing on the embers of a headache he hadn't realized was there. He scanned his eyes around the parking lot, having no idea what he's looking for, feeling stupid and feeling tired. Mr. Stark was certainly one for ambiguity. He had a life of certainty, so he craved the mystery. Peter had a life of mystery, so he craved the certainty. Each of them looked for balance. Neither of them would find it.
A car tucked into the far corner of the lot appeared to be his best bet. It was a beacon of luxury amidst the minivans, clean and black with windows certainly tinted past the legal limit. Standing on guard in front of the passenger door was a large suited figure, sunglasses pushed up against his face, arms crossed over his wide chest. The whole image was just outlandish enough to be what Peter would expect Mr. Stark to send to pick up a teenager from school.
Peter twists his foot inside his shoe, goes to bring the raw skin around his nails to his mouth on impulse and forces himself to keep his arms by his sides, tucking his hands inside his sleeves. He’s present enough to realize he’s terrified, but absent enough to walk around it, far enough away from himself to save the fear for later when he had time for it.
For good measure, he tosses up his hood, weaving through all of the cars just slow enough to not be running, just fast enough to make it there before he chickens out.
The man beside the car is tall enough that as Peter stands in front of him, he’s having to look up. His heart flutters in his chest like a firefly in a jar, frantic and trapped and unsure of its surroundings. With his hand hidden in his sweater, he crosses his fingers, prays for anything other than a mistake.
Raising his eyebrows, the driver looms over him.
“Parker?” He asks gruffly, face not betraying any emotion in particular, aside from maybe annoyance. Carting Peter around was probably a little under his pay grade.
The man clears his throat, and Peter realizes he hasn’t replied.
“Oh! Yes—I uh, yes, sir.” He stammers out, heat rising to the tips of his ears. “I’m Peter. Uh, Parker. Peter Parker.”
He smiles awkwardly, rubbing his thumbs across his nails.
The man uncrosses his arms, nodding stiffly.
“Happy Hogan,” He greets, gesturing to the rear passenger door. “Get in.”
Peter falters for a moment before hurrying to correct himself, scrambling into the vehicle and buckling himself in, backpack on his lap.
The whole ride to the tower is silent, save for Happy’s occasionally muttering about other drivers on the road. From what he’s seen so far, Peter thinks the name is almost hilariously ironic. He doesn’t mind the quiet, though—is grateful for it, even. He tries to keep his head from talking too. Tries not to think about the ritzy leather seats, tries not to think about every inch of himself touching the material despite how he’s sitting up straight, fighting the urge to hover his threadbare sneakers above the car’s pristine mats like he’s filthy with poverty—a wad of gum stuck to the sole of a designer shoe.
When they arrive, it’s through an entrance Peter’s never seen before, a garage door that Happy needs to swipe a card to get into. It opens up to a well-lit, grey box just large enough that they can drive into it. Happy puts the car in park, and after a few seconds of pause, Peter’s mounting confusion going out the window when the floor begins to move.
Embarrassingly, Peter reacts like a cat on a balcony, swiping his arms out to the sides to latch onto anything tangible with a gasping breath at the unexpected movement.
Through the rearview mirror, Peter can see Happy’s face lift in amusement.
“Just going up a few floors, kid. I don’t have my rocket license so space is off limits just yet.”
In a city of apartment buildings and skyscrapers, car elevators should not be new to him. It wasn’t until that moment that he even realized he’d never been in one before. After making sense of his surroundings once again, Peter pulls his arms back to clutch his bag, clearing his throat. The shade of red his face turns has to be record breaking.
They come to a stop in the center of a huge parking garage, each space filled with a car more expensive than the last. He can’t help but gawk at the sight. There are vehicles Peter doesn’t even recognize, parked neatly in rows, the floor shiny enough to mirror the image back up at them. For a few fleeting seconds, Peter’s five years old, face pressed against the window.
Happy parks the car next to 4 others that are identical to the one they’re in, the last number in each license plate the only difference between them. The thought of how much money surrounds him makes him break out into a cold sweat.
“Follow me,” Happy says curtly, climbing out of the car before ducking his head back in to look in the back seat. “Don’t touch anything.” He adds with a point.
Internally, Peter scoffs. He certainly did not need to be told twice. He throws his backpack over his shoulder, hurrying to catch up, shutting the car door gently behind him.
He trails behind Happy like a duckling until they reach another much smaller elevator, Peter stepping in beside him, curling into himself as if it could make him smaller too.
“Lab, please, FRIDAY.” Happy says into the empty air, and Peter knows all about people who speak to walls and open space but they don’t typically wear ties and cufflinks. He’s not so much concerned as he is confused, then he’s a little bit of both when the man gets an answer.
“Certainly, Mr. Hogan.” A woman’s voice replies, the elevator beginning to ascend. “Boss is expecting your arrival.”
There must be something on his face that gives away how far out of his league Peter feels, because when Happy looks over to him, he’s quick to explain.
“Oh, that’s FRIDAY, Tony’s AI. She sort of runs the tower, does her best to keep Tony from burning it to the ground, and all.” He waves to the ceiling. “Say hello, FRI.”
“Hello again, Peter Parker,” FRIDAY greets kindly. “Welcome back.”
Peter doesn’t know what to do with himself. There are many conflicting feelings inside him, but they’re all pushed to the side by the pure, delirious excitement that washes over him at how freaking awesome his life is for the time being.
“Hello,” He nearly squeals, looking up as if to see her. “Holy shit, holy shit…” He says to himself, keeping the swearing just on the edge of his breath. A fully functional artificial intelligence. Something he’d never expected to encounter in his lifetime. It was like living a dream he hadn’t thought about in quite some time.
Ned was going to shit his pants.
The lift slows to a stop, doors opening up to the same workshop he’d been in last time, Mr. Stark in the center of it all, teetering back in a chair with his feet up on the dash of his workbench. The sound of the elevator has him turning around, planting his feet safely back onto the floor.
“Mr. Parker,” He calls, turning to face them. “Lovely of you to drop in, much to discuss, much to discuss,” He crosses the room in a few large strides, slinging an arm around Peter’s shoulders. “All of it very top secret, I’m afraid.” He looks behind him, waving his hand dismissively. “Thanks, Hap. Bye bye, now.”
Happy huffs, but complies, the door shutting behind him. Peter didn’t need to be facing him to see his expression in perfect clarity. The man’s eye roll was burned into the back of his head.
Mr. Stark leads him back to where he’d been sitting, arm still around him. Peter can’t tell if it feels like a blanket or like a crushing weight, but either way he wishes he wasn’t wound up like a fishing pole caught on a snag—either way he thinks he never wants it to go away.
He sits down on a mechanics stool Mr. Stark drags out from under a nearby table with his foot, in front of millions of dollars of machinery Peter could never even dream up. It’s so many levels of too good to be true. It’s every line of a sick joke. It’s lighting up parts of himself he’d all but forgotten about like Christmas day. It’s breathtaking.
Mr. Stark drops into his chair with a sigh, leaving behind a chill over Peter’s spine where his arm used to be.
“Alright, good to see you, clumsy smurf.” He says, clapping Peter on the arm and looking him over. “No more miscalculated cartwheels, I trust?” Gently, he guides Peter’s face down, brushing his thumb over the mostly-healed pink line where stitches had been only a few days prior. The way he’s looking at him now makes Peter’s throat hurt with the urge to cry, because he closes his eyes and it’s Ben and Peter’s scraped his little knobby knees and it matters. He matters. Mr. Stark whistles as if seeing something extraordinary, and Peter blinks one, two, three times. “Wow, that spider-side’s no joke, huh? That’s looking a hell of a lot better.”
The man turns back to face the holoscreen, but Peter commits the feeling of a warm hand holding his face to memory. It’s silly and awfully childish, but he thinks he’d like to remember it.
“Seeing as you’re back in one piece, I’d say there’s no better time to introduce you to what will hopefully keep it that way.” He swipes away at the floating blue lights that make images and words in midair as easily as if he’s flipping through the pages of a book. Peter watches him and it’s like watching the constellations—infinite, incomprehensible, light years away. Mr. Stark taps open a file, pulling the contents out into the open with a wave of his hands like he’s parting the curtains, letting in the sunlight. “These are just the blueprints, but I thought I’d go through them with you anyway just for shits n’ giggles. There’s a few things I’d like to explain anyway.”
He’s so casual about the way he speaks, so collected about what he’s created, but Peter isn’t either of those things and never will be.
Even in its holographic form it’s the most amazing thing he’s ever seen, the image of the Spider-suit spinning around in empty space in front of him like something out of a music box. It looks more like him than anything he could ever get from a mirror, it’s him as everything he’d like to be, it’s a childhood daydream.
“What do you think?” Mr. Stark asks with a smirk, lounging back in his place like he’s asking him if he should wear blue jeans or black. Like it isn’t anything special. Like it isn’t a big deal. “This baby’s got everything—you’ve got your HUD in stunning resolution, customizable sensory input, environmental regulation, made from materials with enhanced strength and durability—without sacrificing flexibility or those suction cups you call hands and feet, you’re welcome—integrated communication, emergency SOS systems, a one of a kind AI assistant courtesy of yours truly, and my personal favorite, a god damn parachute. ” He reveals, counting off the features on his fingers like items on a grocery list. “There’s a ton of other little details in there, but we’d be here all day if I got into it. I believe in learning through experience and I also believe that shit’s boring.”
Mr. Stark sighs, looking over the blueprints one last time before turning to him, raising his eyebrows in question.
“So? Are we clear for landing? Can I get a ‘hell yeah’ or what?”
Peter looks at him, looks back at the screen and back at him again. He wonders if a scream is still a scream without the air to make a sound, wonders if there are any words in any language to express what runs through him now. Things this good were not meant to happen to Peter Parker—it was as sure as any law, so he didn’t cry about it or try to change it. What goes up comes down. What’s in motion remains in motion until stopped. It feels like forcing two magnets together backwards to accept what he’s facing as truth. How could he ever believe this was anything more than a dream?
There’s a lump in his throat, his mouth bobbing open and closed in an effort to speak around it. He feels like a movie scene.
“Sir, I—” He swallows, the back of his mouth drawn tight. “It’s incredible, but—”
“No buts!” The man quickly interjects, jumping up to grab a silver briefcase sitting on a nearby table. “So many words, such little time. Let’s skip to the good part, shall we?”
Mr. Stark sits back down across from him, a knowing, antsy look on his face as he places the metal case in Peter’s sweaty hands. He stares down at it, not daring to move, not daring to breathe—the idea of what he’s sure is inside making the case sit heavily in his lap. This is his greatest dream materializing in the palms of his hands and he must be truly sick in the head because he finds himself praying it isn’t what he thinks it is. He hopes it’s a cruel joke, an empty briefcase, a lie of any kind because he knows how to take a punch as easily as he knows how to shake someone’s hand but he can’t take this. It’s wrong. It’s not how it’s supposed to be. It goes against the law of Peter Parker and he can’t cry about it or change it.
And it isn’t that he doesn’t want it—he’s never wanted much of anything so badly, but it’s supposed to be a pipe dream. He’s supposed to have nothing. He likes having nothing. It means having less to carry.
He doesn’t have any idea what he’s meant to do, and it makes him curl up and freeze like a possum waiting to be fatally struck on a highway.
“Mr. Stark,” He warbles, closing his eyes tightly. It sounds like pleading, even to him. His heart and stomach jump circles around each other.
“Just open it, kid.” Mr. Stark encourages, smiling. Peter can’t stand to look at him. There are so many levels to what he’s given him that he doesn’t deserve, what he can’t give back—it hurts all the more when he offers them so kindly, so easily.
Peter has to pay for it, one way or another. He has to. It’s harder to feel guilty for having something good when you’ve earned it. When you’ve given something up. This is so big, so heavy—and he knows. He knows he can’t carry it. He knows his knees are going to buckle, and he can’t put any of what he’s already carrying down.
He takes a shuddering breath in, holds it, lets it out. With weak and trembling hands, he flips up the latches and opens the box.
Putting away what he’d rather not face in bottles and corks had been working for him so far. He hadn’t considered what might happen if they were shaken. And looking at the suit was like falling. In love. Off a ladder. Down the stairs. It was like falling and stacks of glass bottles were toppling over with him and smashing and fizzing over and blowing their tops off and before he can even realize what’s happening everything is overflowing.
A drop falls into his lap. Then another. Then two more. He looks up to find the leak and something hot rolls down his face.
And oh. Oh. How humiliating.
“Whoa, okay, alright,” Mr. Stark's eyes blow wide, hands reaching out to help but ending up hovering in the air, at a loss. Shame comes over him so violently he could almost gag with the feeling. “It’s okay, kid. C’mon, you’re killing me.”
Peter opens his mouth to apologize, to compose himself, to do anything other than what he’s doing right now but the second he parts his lips to speak, a high-pitched squeal of a sob breaks free that makes him reel back in shock, plastering his hand over his face. It’s as if he’s lost all control over his body. The sound of blood rushing through his ears is deafening, and everything is big and loud and urgent and he never should have let it get this far. He was doomed to ruin it from the start. Everything good dissolves in his hands, and sure the bad is bad but at least it’s something he can dig his nails into.
Everything is big. Everything is big and he has no where left to put it. The tower he’s been keeping balanced for so long comes crashing down, and he’s being crushed underneath everything he was naive enough to think he could hold.
He buries his face in his hands, hot and sweating and sick with himself. It’s not even crying anymore so much as it is turning inside out, sobbing like he’s dry heaving and he can’t stop to even breathe. He can’t stop.
The cold metal of the briefcase is lifted away from his lap, and while Peter can’t bear to show his face or even peek through a gap in his fingers he can hear it being set gently on the ground by his feet. This feeling isn’t human, it’s become something of its own. It’s unending incoherent inconsolable and it has teeth and a beating heart. It’s so loud it forces Peter silent, sound becoming vessel breaking pressure and trembling jaw.
“Peter, breathe!” Mr. Stark’s voice is far away and unimportant over the ringing in his ears. There are strong hands gripping his shoulders and he thinks they might be the only thing keeping him from toppling over entirely. “Come on, kid. Take a breath, take a breath, it’s okay,”
He can’t. He can’t. Static fills his hands and feet and his lips are going numb but it feels like throwing up expelling overflowing and there’s no more room for air. Strength leaves him like a setting sun, leaving a chill over his skin. Everything is heavy and he is weak weak weak.
“Okay, okay,” The hands leave his shoulders, and he’s falling forward, face pressing against fabric as he’s scooped up underneath his arms and pulled down onto the floor, the concrete cold beneath his knees. The gentle touch is becoming impatient, a palm between his shoulder blades rubbing hard against his spine. “Please,” The rubbing turns to patting, then to pounding and it hurts but it works, knocking sense back into his diaphragm and leaving him choking in a gasping breath like that of a dying animal, setting fire to his senses.
And Peter’s wailing like an infant, like that breath had been his first, like he was new and terrified and cold and not adjusted to the light.
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Mr. Stark exhales shakily, voice much closer than Peter had expected. “There you go, buddy. Easy, easy,”
And there’s warmth around him now that he has enough oxygen in his blood to notice it, the very human kind, Peter’s head cradled against a billionaire’s shoulder. His face is wet against the lapel of a suit that probably costs more than everything he owns but Mr. Stark still rubs his back like he’s stroking a nervous dog and it feels so good to be held that Peter forces himself not to think about it so he doesn’t pull away.
The papers call him heartless. Peter thinks how lucky they are to have no idea what heartless truly means.
“Sorry,” He squeaks out. “Sorry, ‘m sorry—”
“Kid,” Mr. Stark laughs humorlessly, voice tender and quiet. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…If there’s something you want to change or—”
Peter’s breath hitches in his throat, skin raw against the fabric of the jacket as he shakes his head vehemently.
“It’s perfect—” He cries, and he sounds pathetic because he is but it doesn’t matter because Mr. Stark doesn’t let go and he wants to listen to the heartbeat of another human being up close for as long as he can before he goes back to being the sheet of paper person he always is. “It’s too much, it’s too much, I can’t— ”
“Oh,” Mr. Stark says, like he’s pleasantly surprised, like he had no idea. He has no idea. No idea. “Oh, kiddo, that’s—It’s yours, Pete. It won’t respond to anyone other than Peter B. Parker, so you’re stuck with it, I’m afraid.” He’s smiling. Peter can hear it in his voice. He’s giving him pocket change to buy ice cream and Peter’s entire world is spinning on its axis.
“Mr. Stark, I—I have nothing, I—I could never,” He can’t make his words come out as solid as he wants them to be. He speaks with the cadence of an injured lamb. “I could never repay you.”
There’s a pause, a break in the tension, a sigh that Peter moves up and down with.
“You’re one of a kind, aren’t you?”
The arms around him cinch him a little closer, and Peter takes the fond words out of Mr. Stark’s mouth and transmutes them in his head to sound like someone who loves him. This kind of embrace is far and few between, and Peter’s learned to paint faces and sentiment on replacement figures, assigned warmth and beating heart to pillows sprayed with familiar perfume and gotten very good at setting up a scene of dolls and mannequins and calling it a happy family. Most days he calls it enough, but all it takes is a taste of something real to remind him how ravenous he is and then he’s digging his teeth in and he can’t get enough.
“Stay safe out there, Spider-Man,” Mr. Stark tells him, hands on his shoulders, gently pushing him back so he can look at his face—red and sticky, hair pressed in swirls against his skin. The gap between them leaves Peter cold. “Stay safe, do backflips, and look after New York. That’s what I want in return. Got it? Don’t let me down here, Parker.”
He smiles, and it’s so much different than everything he’s seen from the man in interviews and tabloids, even the way he speaks and walks and holds himself is milder and more alive than the version of him he’d crafted in his head and he realizes he’s done it again.
He wants black and white yes and no right and wrong so badly he forces it onto everything he can. Peter wants to know. He wants to be sure and undeniable and irreproachable in every way because he’s sick of walking blindly and stumbling over himself and improvising. But even iron men are flesh and bone and Peter’s vision is pitch black again but there’s a calloused hand guiding him this time and he thinks that maybe not knowing doesn’t always have to be a death sentence.
He has no idea what he’s doing, but he never does and maybe no one else does either. He’s so terrified of what could go wrong that he’d all but forgotten the possibility of something going right. It feels like something might be finally going right.
He scrubs his face with his sleeves, exhausted and humiliated and uncaring in that moment.
“What happens if I don’t do backflips?” He asks wetly, a smile curling up his face.
Mr. Stark smiles back, the kind that makes your skin wrinkle, the kind that isn’t black and white but shades of orange and yellow and a little bit of everything else. Peter thinks the colour isn’t so bad when it comes from him.
“Oh, you don’t wanna know,” He warns, any air of a threat extinguished by the light in his voice. “Just say we’ve got a deal and I’ll make sure you never have to find out. Deal?”
Peter sniffs, throws caution to the wind, and doesn’t look back. There’s nothing there for him anymore.
“Deal.”
He could be signing himself up for disaster, but hey, he’s already knee deep in disaster. It’s going to rain anyway. He might as well dance.
Chapter 6: something confused and ungovernable
Notes:
hey ! I think my brain got built wrong so here I am 4 months later :D SORRY
I keep trying to write this out in a planned and coherent way but it's impossible I fear !! every time I write I have a general idea of what I'm trying to do sort of and then I go from there. What I really mean by that is I have an image from a split second of a scene halfway through the story and another one from the very end in my head and then I just kind of keep shoving stuff in there as I go to fill the gap in some way that makes a little bit of sense. So if things don't make sense don't worry they probably don't make sense to me either im improvising and im terrible at improvising!hope you enjoy anyway xxx
Chapter Text
Happy drops Peter off around sundown, a silver briefcase tucked in his backpack under his homework and a welcome feeling of warmth in the hollow of his chest. Conversations are scattered near and far around him but the voices aren’t grating like they usually are, and he listens to the sounds of people and life and distant birdsong and it’s like music instead of raucous noise and he feels closer to human for a little while.
He stands outside the door for longer than he needs to, like taking a deep breath before diving, biting his tongue before peeling off a bandaid, closing his eyes before a vaccine—relishing the empty air a few extra moments until he has the spine to open the door and step inside.
It’s quiet at first, while he takes off his shoes. A quick scan reveals every light in the apartment to be on, Ben not anywhere in his immediate vision. Not occupying the dent in the couch or reorganizing the stack of DVD’s to be in numerical order of their barcodes or placing sticky notes over everywhere the paint was chipped on the walls or otherwise idling as he usually would. Peter sighs, inhaling a heavy, settling breath through his nose. The air carries only the scent of age now. May's apple cinnamon plug-in sat dried up in its socket.
“Uncle Ben?” He calls out tentatively. Ben was untrusting at the best of times and downright combative at the worst, and Peter had no doubt he'd be prying at the seams of it within the hour if he caught sight of it.
He swings the backpack off his shoulder, deciding it better to run the bag into his room before going looking for trouble.
He dropped the bag next to his bed before walking quietly down the hallway, peering into each door as he passed. As he approached the end, a faint muttering began to trickle across the baseboards, getting clearer the closer he got to the cracked doorway of Ben and May's room.
There's a tugging feeling at the base of his collarbones his hand hovers over the handle. It’s the same hesitance that keeps him coming back, the same that begs him to leave—It's the call of ignorance, the still of helplessness, the hand on his shoulder gently pulling him away from whatever dead body he's desperately crushing the ribcage of because he can't give up on what's as good as gone and he wears socks until they look like shoelaces and then sews them up again. And his arms are tired of the resuscitation, his hands are stripped of skin from holding on.
He wants to leave Ben to his own devices. He wants to go to bed and pretend the rustling in the other room is Ben and May on Christmas eve, hushing each other's laughter as Ben wraps wrinkly presents and writes ‘Santa' on the tag.
But it wouldn't make a difference, not really. The cat's been quiet for far too long, and he loves the cat, so he goes looking for it.
Peter rubs at his face, feels the pull of the pink skin on his forehead, feels the weight of reality, feels the gust of stale air as he pushes the bedroom door open far enough to see inside.
Ben sits in the center of the room, on the floor at the end of the bed, a halo of torn pages set out around him. Whatever's printed on them is just a blur from where he's standing, but he can see many lines that have been crossed out and scribbled over in black ink, feather-light murmurings falling mindlessly out of a steady moving mouth. In his hands is an empty book cover, torn remnants of margins still clinging to the spine.
It takes him only a second to realize what it is, and another second for him to feel the sharp tear of loss like a fish hook reeling down through him.
Peter was never really religious—raised by the hand of science, never comforted by what he could not see or prove—but he could listen to the word of God for hours if it came from the mouth of May. She would read him passage after passage from that old leather-bound Bible passed down for generations through her catholic-hearted family, and it never felt like preaching, it just felt like May. The words within that book were mass produced, he could find the same arrangement pretty much anywhere—but it wasn't the book he cherished, it was every hand that gently turned the pages, every careful touch that brought it there to him.
And the horror bled through to grief, and then that grief to rage, a resentment he didn't have anywhere to put. The kind of bitterness you hold toward a rabid dog. It's the sickness that taught them to bite, but you taught them how to sit and shake hands and now you're bleeding and you could never be enough to save them from this fate. The wound still hurts. The dog still dies.
“What are you doing?" Peter cries, voice like broken glass. His heart beats up into his head, blood hot as it's pushing and pulling through him.
Ben's fitful gaze snaps up to meet his, pupils blown large enough it makes his whole face appear darker. His face pinches at the sight of him, as if he's a grave interruption to whatever the hell it is he's doing.
“I'm rewriting the story in the way it was intended to be. Fixing, fixing–” Ben mutters, continuing to scribble chicken scratch over the page in his lap. “I don't have time to explain to you what you were never meant to understand. God speaks and I am the receiver. I am the truth, and you are a mere lamb in the grand scheme. Small and tender-necked, the bloodied youth—” He inhales, shallow and blank. “Worthy, then. Revelation, 5:12.”
Peter can't help but scoff, head tilting towards the ceiling as it to force the welling tears back where they came from. He can't be mad at a rabid dog. But the anger doesn't leave.
“Are you even hearing yourself right now?” He blurts out, voice rising despite him. “Do you have any idea what you've done?” Peter drops to his knees, ignoring his uncle's bark of ‘don't touch that’ as he picks up a tattered page from the circle. Tears spill over, blurring the nonsensical ramblings before clearing up again. “God, May would be heartbroken—”
“Don't speak about what you don't understand,” Ben cuts him off sharply, the energy between them building up like pressure in a bottle. He sounds unlike himself. This version of him is acute and cutting and obstinate and untrue but the words still come from his face and it's hard to tell the difference, hard to tell if there even is one anymore.
“What I don't understand?” Peter shakes his head, tongue pressing against his teeth. Ben is tense in the peripherals of his vision, coiled up like a cat with its hair on end, stiff and still and staring. Resentment and frustration and other kinds of sadness bubble over inside him. “Don't talk to me about what I don't understand! This was everything to her, how—how could you?” The anger doesn't protect his voice from breaking, nor does it keep him from breathing out a choked sob. “You're supposed to love her, do you even—”
There's a small gap in which seconds clip into nothing, and Peter is seeing the room horizontally, a cold tear falling sideways from his eye over the bridge of his nose. Paper clings to his wet cheek, black ink bleeding out in blots over the page. The skin over his right cheekbone is hot and frozen, stinging and numb.
“You don't know what love is!” Ben is kneeling over him, hands in shaking fists, spit flinging through bared teeth. “What is any one feeling in the face of omneity? You are too ignorant to see anything beyond what you've been told is there.”
Peter pushes himself onto his elbows, arms shaking and head sinking. The connection between his skull and spine feels loose and swollen. Outside, the sun is now totally absent. New York life carries on without him.
Over the ringing in his ears, he hears the heavy footsteps of Ben stumbling to his feet, his shadow over the carpet moving with him. Peter hasn't yet gathered his bearings when they're turned over again by two hands hooking underneath his arms, hauling him bodily to his feet. His blood is thick like syrup and can't find its way to the right places.
The body behind him presses forward, forcing him to stagger along with it. Ben's practically carrying him as he guides him out the door. Peter imagines he's just fallen asleep on the couch sandwiched between his aunt and uncle, Star Wars playing softly in the living room, waking up in the arms of someone he used to know as he's laid gently into bed.
“You are so poisoned by the light of day that you are blind in the night. Sunset leaves you lost. I am the beacon. Pray that morning redeems you.”
He hardly sounded human anymore, just a robotic recollection of fantasies filtered through flesh and bone. Ben is a corpse that believes it's alive and Peter is alive and believes he's a corpse.
Ben walks him all the way to his room and doesn't let go until he's sitting Peter down on the edge. Now face to face, Peter looks into his eyes and sees only his own face and the reflection of his Iron Man posters on the wall behind him.
His uncle's face is vacant, staring wide-eyed right through him. He holds each of Peter's shoulders in his hands, bowed over to be at his level, inches from each other. Peter swallows and holds his breath, rearing back as far as Ben's grip allows. Heat still blooms in the hollow under his eye and in the skin over his temple. Blearily, he places a hand over his face in a protective claw.
“God is everywhere, little lamb. Can you hear him?”
His expression is unchanging as he straightens up and leaves the room, closing the door behind him softly as if he truly had simply carried him to bed.
Peter sits in silence for a few minutes. Cries. Throws a pillow at the wall. Pulls at his hair. Picks the pillow back up and screams into it. Sits down again. Sets his alarm. Wraps the blanket around himself. Pretends nothing ever happened at all. Closes his eyes until he falls asleep.
He wakes the next morning with his head pounding and a mouth so dry his lips are sticking to his teeth.
He goes to school like he always does. Ned asks and Peter lies like he always does. He waits all day for the end bell and walks home in a near-jog like he always does, tries to jump and catch the helium balloon that is his uncle like he always does and misses like he always does. Trying to convince Ben that God isn't feeding him with sunlight like a houseplant earns him a harder hit to the same spot as the night before, turning the subtle blues into deep purples and making the hard to explain even harder. He scribbles through most of his homework but the questions don't make much sense and the answers are likely worse. The gel ice pack he's leaning his face against has been around for so long the printed image of a bear has begun to rub off in spots and Peter empathizes greatly with the wearing away.
It isn't the bear he's crying for.
“Does that kid make you itch or am I just allergic to youth?”
Tony stares at the ceiling of the lab, tossing up a hacky sack and catching it again. He doesn't even remember where it came from, but it's been sitting in the corner of one of the desks for so long that in the light he can see plumes of dust come off of it every time it lands in his hand. Tinkering is usually all he needs to dispel his anxious energy, but there's something about that damn kid that just eats and eats and eats at a part of him he hasn't dealt with in a long time. A part of him that he doesn’t have a name for, only a stiffness, only an air of dread.
Across the room, Bruce hums, not taking his eyes away from the computer he's typing away at.
“He's definitely been on my mind,” He agrees, pausing for a moment. He doesn’t sound nearly as concerned as Tony had wanted him to be, not nearly enough to quell the pinching feeling that tries to tell him he’s delusional—nor the part that can’t decide if it’d be better if he were. “He seems like a really good kid.”
Tony huffs, tossing the hacky sack high enough that when it comes back down it lands on the floor a few feet away from him. Staring at it does not make it magically reappear in his hand, so he leans back in his chair to stare at the ceiling instead, spinning himself in lazy circles with his feet.
“He's too good,” He counters, squinting. “It's unsettling. He's like one of those little circus monkeys that they beat to shit whips. I feel like he's gonna snap and rip my face off one day.”
He says it as a joke, but it doesn't feel like one coming out of his mouth. The kid's behaviour is strikingly similar to that of a kicked dog, skittish and jumpy and obedient to a fault. Every move he makes is with his palms up in surrender and Tony wants to know what he's begging for forgiveness for, wants to know what gave him the need to be so sorry.
“Nah, not a chance.” Bruce smiles. “He practically worships the ground you walk on, Iron Man.”
Tony doesn't say anything, just chews the inside of his cheek. He wants the reassurance to make him feel better, but for some reason it makes him feel something like guilty, something like remorse. Something like swallowing down what's been buried for a while. A few seconds of silence has Bruce peeking over his shoulder, smile sobering when he sees the troubled expression on his face.
“Why?” Bruce probes gently, eyebrows drawn together like he’s about to ask him how that makes him feel and Tony might just barf because it’ll never make him cry the way he thinks it’s supposed to. He’s not sure he could even if he wanted to. “Do you think something’s wrong?”
“No,” He answers quickly. “I don’t—no. I just,” He lets out a heavy breath, a weight that doesn’t lift pressing down into him. “I don’t know. I must be getting paranoid in my old age, Brucie. You think it’s time I start taking a multivitamin?”
Bruce’s expression morphs into something resigned, a little disappointed. The odd pinching guilty guilty guilty feeling makes itself known again.
He sighs. “Look, if you're really worried about it, why don't you set something up with him?” He suggests, watching Tony's face screw up in thought. “Sam's got experience with kids' behaviour, Natasha can tell you everything about a person with one look, but —” He cuts Tony off before he can get a chance to voice his hesitance, his mouth pausing halfway open. “Since you're clearly not up to sharing the kid yet, just get to know him. He probably just needs a chance to warm up to you.”
Tony pulls his lips into a thin line, considering. He expects the idea to make his skin crawl, the proposition of spending any amount of time with anyone under 30 has never much appealed to him. He's the kind of person that holds babies wrong and makes small children hide away behind their mother's leg and he can't speak slowly or clearly in any way appealing to anyone who isn't at least a little bit of a cynic. It's hard to soften himself down to something digestible. The years it took to beat his spine into something straight are still dormant in his bones and every time his shoulders drop he still feels his father's hand.
Peter's different, and he has no idea why.
“Maybe I will,” He surprises himself by saying, appearing to catch Bruce just as much off guard when his lab partner stiffens, blinking owlishly. “What, didn't take me for the soccer mom type? I’ll have you know I set up a mean playdate.”
Tony allows the tension to dissipate, forcing down the last tendrils of unease back down where they belong; coiled underneath the heavy years of built exterior. He's never been the type to worry over strangers and he's not interested in starting now.
“Besides, he's repping my brand now,” He reasons, forcibly relaxed in his posture. “Can't have the poor kid shivering about like a chihuahua on adderall with my name on the line—makes me look like a puppy-kicker, you know?”
“Right.” Bruce says like he believes him, or is at least pretending to.
Silently, he huffs, the urge to prove his indifference working against him. The list of bigger fish he has to fry is nearly endless and yet the image of a lanky, curly-haired teenager still sticks to the forefront of his mind. It doesn't make any sense. He can't make it go away and he can't make it make sense and he can't cover it up with something else. He's getting too old to be throwing himself into burning buildings like this, and he's definitely too old to keep pretending he's going to stop.
Bruce turns back to his work, and he swivels back to his own, trying to remember what it was he was even doing in the first place.
“Pepper's always saying how much I would benefit from an intern,” He smirks, plans already unfolding in his head. “She never went into specifics, though. She always regrets not going into specifics.”
May's old concealer is beginning to dry up around the lip of the tube, hidden away in the medicine cabinet just the way it had been left—tucked into a small, unzipped makeup bag like it was still waiting for her next Monday morning ritual before work. It made Peter hesitant to touch it, knowing it was right where she'd left it. It felt almost like disturbing a crime scene, the last pieces proof that someone had been there.
Peter pulls the bag out from the corner and feels like a murderer. Like he's killing her again.
The olive shade is stark against his pale skin, but still less of an eyesore than the pools of maroon it's covering up. Blending it as thinly as he can all over his face seems to make it a little less obvious, though. He steps back from the mirror to take a look.
The thin layer of makeup is just enough to bring the bruising back to about as mild as it had been before, or at least as close as he's going to get. It's becoming very exhausting always having to guess—what people will ask about and what they'll just assume, what's too many teeth to smile with and what's not enough, how many times he can fall down the stairs and if people will really buy that maintenance keeps leaving the floor wet after mopping and that's why it makes sense he keeps slipping and if the joke he makes about wet floor signs makes people laugh or makes them uncomfortable.
Ben was gentle. Even in his outbursts, he would often be shocked back to reality by his own aggression, the bruises a reminder of what he'd done, his wounds serving as his protection. The sight of Peter hurt made his lips curl up sourly, promising a couple weeks or so of guilty distance from the man. It was at times like these where Peter has countless memories of him shaking, wild-eyed and somewhere between terrified and completely detached, hands gripping Peter's shoulders just past too tight and pleading with him to swear. Swear you'll give me up. Swear that you'll survive me. Swear that I won't hurt you. Promise me you'll run or scream or fight back.
And Peter had nodded but didn't dare speak. Because he was good at nodding and terrible at lying.
Ben doesn't even seem to register he's truly hurting him anymore, or at least can't see clearly enough the true consequences of himself. Ben was gentle. Ben had hit him hard enough to bruise his own hand. And he didn't feel sorry. And he'd done it again.
Hiding injuries is much harder when they refuse to heal. When they move around. When they're yellow one day and blue again the next. When the split in his skin seems to fit the cut of a wedding ring.
When you're trying to hide them with makeup.
The combination of the swelling misshaping his face and the poorly applied concealer makes him look a little bit inhuman, and the image he sees of himself unsettles something old and tired in his chest. He ignores it and shakes his hair out, pulls it as far down over the sides of his face as he can and pulls the hood of his sweater up over it. He isn't sure if it makes any difference.
Ben is still in his room when Peter leaves for school. He knows he's been up all night and knows he probably will be for a few days, up to something Peter won't ask about again. There's no answer, anyway. None worth anything. The phrase ignorance is bliss has never meant more to him than it does now.
He arrives at school a good few minutes earlier than he usually does, early enough that Ned's bus has dropped him off and the hallways are sparse. A collection of pink late slips thick enough to be a novel shoved into the back of his locker had sort of earned him a reputation, and Peter clocked a few confused glances from some of his peers as he hurried to his locker, tucking his head down. He hadn't bothered to check the time before he left this morning, so eager to get out of the apartment as soon as he could that he never considered how much he'd miss the cover of a crowded hallway. He feels like a spot, a weed in a manicured lawn as opposed to the unkempt field the school would be in just a few minutes. He thinks being normal shouldn't be this hard to figure out. He thinks maybe normal people don't have to figure it out at all.
The cover his locker door provides isn't much but it's a welcome shield as he shoves his backpack onto the hook and starts digging through the mess of wrinkled paper.
Peter pauses, throat falling with a growing sense of dread as he flits his eyes over his schoolwork and realizes even in their disarray that the worksheets are not as he had left them.
He doesn't even want to look. He wants to pretend like he has a dog and imagine them strewn across the living room floor in shreds. He wants to zip up the bag and throw it in a dumpster behind a sketchy bar where no one would look for it again and tell everyone he'd been mugged and he'd laugh with them as he told the story because how silly is it to steal a student's backpack, right? And Flash would roll his eyes and ask what kind of an idiot would think to rob him when even his wallet with a bus pass and no money in it was duct taped on the seam. The laughter would lighten a bit, then—people glancing awkwardly at Peter like they didn't know if he would laugh or cry. He'd have to suck it up and break into the piggy bank he shoved his every cent into to buy a new backpack. He wants to tell everyone he left it on the bus. He wants to think of anything to reasonably and logically and believably explain why there's no evidence this backpack and its contents ever even existed and then another anything to reasonably and logically and believably explain why he keeps his new backpack tucked inside the attic.
Peter is growing very tired of explaining.
Resigned to what’s already been done, he reaches into his bag, pulling out a stack of crumpled papers written over top to bottom with something chalky and black, his homework illegible behind the sharp lettering.
IN THEIR GREED, THESE FALSE TEACHERS WILL EXPLOIT YOU WITH DECEPTIVE WORDS. THE LONGSTANDING VERDICT AGAINST THEM REMAINS IN FORCE, AND THEIR DESTRUCTION DOES NOT SLEEP.
2 PETER 2:3
Seeing his name taken straight from the bible feels almost cruelly ironic.
Flipping through the rest of the loose papers he had in his bag revealed similar scribblings ruining what must have been hours of work altogether, and Peter feels nothing. It isn’t anyone’s fault and being angry is awfully pointless when there’s nowhere to put it. He puts the papers back where he found them and zips his backpack up tightly. He takes out his textbook and a binder missing half its pages and hopes the teacher doesn’t ask to collect the homework today.
He closes up his locker, flinching hard enough to pull air through his teeth when it reveals MJ standing directly next to him.
“You missed decathlon practice, Parker. I—What the hell is all over your face?” She cuts herself off, her straight face quickly pulling into something unreadable, eyes darting across his face.
“I, uh—W-What?” He replies eloquently, hand pressed over his slamming heart as if to keep it inside his chest. He hasn’t even properly processed her words before she’s pulling him by his wrist down the hallway, Peter stumbling to keep up with her with a yelp. “Woah! MJ, wait—what?”
She guides him into an empty bathroom Peter’s never been in before, letting go of his arm once they’re both inside. She stays silent as she swings her backpack onto the counter next to the sink and begins to dig through it. Peter blinks, feeling almost as if he’d teleported with how quickly the series of events had unfolded, questions stuck in his throat his brain hadn’t caught up to yet.
“Is, is this the—isn’t this the girls bathroom?” He asks, heat rising to his face. Anything he had left resembling a brain seemed to have been scrambled in the confusion, and the fact that it was MJ whose feather-light fingertips Peter could still feel the ghost of certainly didn't help straighten out his train of thought. “Um, why are we in a bathroom?”
He hopes he doesn't sound as stupid to her as he does to his own ears.
MJ doesn’t look at him, but Peter can see her smirking to herself, only making his red face and racing heart worse because Peter had never been alone with her before and this feels like a terrible way to start hanging out one on one.
“Relax, loser.” She rolls her eyes, placing the small zippered bag she'd apparently been digging for onto the counter. “No one'll be in here for a while. People with second period history are pretty much the only ones who use this bathroom. There's no first period history class and the other classrooms have bathrooms closer than this one.” She assures him, and Peter relaxes a bit. He keeps watch of the door in the corner of his sight just in case.
Still confused and vaguely dizzy, he opens his mouth to ask again what exactly it is they're doing but closes it when MJ continues speaking.
“You look like you got into a fight with a mud puddle and lost, numb nuts.” She explains, shaking her head. Peter’s heart is hopping, jumping and skipping and he knew he should have just ditched and picked up some work at Delmar’s but there isn’t any way to win because avoiding the answer just makes people ask more questions. Lying is hard, unrewarding work. Normal kids go to school and don’t think about it. He wants to be a normal kid that goes to school and doesn’t think about it. All he ever does is think.
“MJ–” He deflates, rushing to explain what he doesn’t have a reasonable explanation for and willing himself not to even think about crying because people who tell the truth don’t have anything to cry about and innocence is light like laughter—people will take what you say as it is if you’re happy enough to be saying it.
He can’t figure out how to fake it right now. It’s like his face has forgotten entirely.
“Save it,” She cuts him off, lithe hand held up to stop him. She is firm, but not unkind in her demeanor, pulling out a few makeup wipes and holding them in the palm of her hand. “You’re not gonna tell me what’s going on, are you?”
She pulls a wipe gently across his jaw, close enough to him that she rests her forearm against his chest. She meets his eyes for a moment, and Peter burns with shame and other things.
“It doesn’t matter,” He replies, weak but untrembling. The guilt never grows or shrinks, only turns over, only reminds him that it’s there.
MJ only hums in response. Peter can tell she’s disappointed. What’s worse is that she isn't surprised. She knows that he’s a liar.
“You’re lucky I used to walk around looking like a ghost before someone finally had the balls to tell me.” She gets the last of the makeup off by his temple, apologizing under her breath when he winces. “I still carry around that old shade, and I happen to be very good at the old ‘I have a black eye and I don’t want to talk about it’ shtick,” She explains, tossing the dirtied wipes into the trash in exchange for a light-coloured tube of something similar to what he’d used earlier. “Or, in your case, the ‘blending a fresh bruise into the old one I already have an excuse for’ special.”
Peter swallowed. Her ability to see right through him was a little heartwarming as well as deeply troubling. It forced him to wonder just how much she knew, how much she was guessing at, how much she would leave alone—how much she wouldn’t. All the variables and possibilities he couldn’t confirm or deny, all the different outcomes and everything they’d mean for Peter. Everything they’d mean for Ben.
Peter didn’t expect anyone to understand that there is no way for this to be resolved cleanly. People know right and they know wrong and they know the line between and they don’t leave room for the give of human circumstance—they see what crosses the line and what doesn’t and they cannot answer for what dances in between.
He knows that he is the only one with the ability to see that Ben isn’t right and he isn’t wrong, he just isn’t. Ben isn’t anything at all, just a vessel on autopilot with grief, seeking meaning in a universe that simply doesn’t have any. So, he patches together what he thinks looks similar to reason, taking good and bad and mashing them into something confused and ungovernable.
Peter sees what others cannot. This is both his greatest gift and his heaviest burden.
MJ dusts something over his face and Peter closes his eyes, startled back to the present. A glance at the clock mounted over the doorway shows that more time has passed than he’d realized. He thinks he might need to get more sleep at night.
He opens his eyes to MJ stepping back and cocking her head, appraising her work. Peter shifts uncomfortably under the scrutiny. It tends to be best if he's not looked at too closely.
She's so beautiful. Even in the fluorescence of a high school bathroom, one shoe nearly untied, eyes squinted like she's looking at an art piece and not him, not him—
“Well, while I think this look would pair stunningly with a red lip, I think we're done here.” MJ's lips quirk up in a small smile, and Peter can't resist a smile back. How could he not smile at her?
She pushes him lightly on the shoulder to turn him to face the mirror, keeping her hand there as he looks himself over.
The reality of how badly he'd looked before wasn't fully clear to him until he saw how much better it was now.
“Wow,” He breathed, fingers dragging lightly over his face. “How did you—?”
She laughs somewhere halfway to a scoff, hurriedly putting all of what she'd unpacked onto the sink back into her bag.
“Lots of practice, Parker.” She says, slinging the strap over her shoulder.
Peter frowns, an unease settling familiarly under his skin when her words and the comment she'd made earlier begin to rub him up the wrong way.
“I've got to get to class,” She tells him, turning to leave. “And God, get out of the ladies room, Parker. What are you, a perv?”
She's grinning widely, then—truly, head turned over her shoulder back at him. He still feels where her hand had cradled his jaw in vivid outlines and he doesn’t think he’s ever going to forget the feeling. She laughs and it’s like birdsong and he can’t focus on anything.
MJ gets a few steps from the door before Peter is rushing to catch up with her, urgency fizzling up from his stomach to his chest. There's a question he's never been on the other side of sitting sourly between his teeth.
“MJ, wait! Um—” He calls, head heavy and useless. Words get harder and harder to come by as each day passes and he doesn’t know how to say what he means. He isn’t even sure what he means. “What—What did you mean when you said—Do you do this often? Cover up bruises?”
He doesn't know what he's implying. He hopes the answer is that she's part of a hardcore roller derby team. He hopes she's an aspiring makeup artist. He hopes she's anything other than what his mind jumps to and that it’s silly to ask her.
She stops, studying him for a moment. A few seconds pass in silence. Peter wishes he could know what she’s thinking. He prays that she isn’t anything like him at all.
“Doesn't matter.”
This time, the guilt does grow. It was hard to be the one asking the question, but being the one to get the answer is much, much worse.
The bell rings, and Peter blinks and she’s gone. It feels like a mirage. It feels like a dream. It feels like neither of them had ever been there at all.
He gets to his locker in a thick haze, struggling to remember what it is he’s even doing.
All day he thinks about questions. All day he thinks about answers. By the time night falls, nothing has been resolved.
Chapter 7: mirrors
Notes:
hello ! sorry for the longer than intended gap between chapters. I have a hard time keeping my head on straight on the best of days :P I've been trying more than anything to get a job but it's proved basically impossible where I live and I'm a little a lot stressed out about it because we're really REALLY hard up for money right now and I feel guilty doing anything other than spending my days on indeed even though I've already applied to every single job on there !!! I want nothing more than to get a job and be able to go to school because I turned 20 in july and I STILL haven't applied because I need one more university course to enroll and I completed one online but the school got my email lost and didn't send me the link for the final test until after the course expired. I had a 98 in that stupid class!! All i needed was the final test to pass!! I had already sent out all my university applications which cost me almost $300 on top of the $40 the online class costed which was quite literally every cent I had and without that credit the applications are useless and the money is gone forever !! Also, I'm like dying of a chest and sinus infection right now because the universe likes to watch me squirm but it is what it is ig ദ്ദി ༎ຶ‿༎ຶ )
anyways hope you enjoy this chapter pls cross your fingers I get a job soon so I don't have to live in a box and I can get to university before I die of old age or get struck by lightning with my unfailing luck !!
thanks for reading I love you all !!! xxx
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Chapter Text
The week passes more easily than most.
Ben doesn't seem to have as many periods of awareness as time goes on, and it leaves the apartment tense and stale. Peter tries to reason that perhaps it's something like a bad cold, one that gets worse and worse and worse before the fever finally breaks. He keeps waiting for the fever to break.
It isn't all bad, though. Under the foreboding feeling that seems to grow by the day and push all other emotion away with it, there's a little bit of calm, a little bit of relief. The delusions if nothing else are good at keeping Ben occupied. It feels almost like when a toddler goes quiet, and you know they're up to something somewhere and you know it's nothing good—but the silence is such a grace that you can only count your losses, can only pick your battles. He'd scrub crayon off the wall if it meant a moment's peace, the same way he'll keep sliding grilled cheese sandwiches under the door if it means the chance for purple to fade to yellow.
So by Saturday morning, after a late night Star Wars and eating empanadas by the truckload, he feels almost new. The second he realizes he's gotten out of bed without needing to lean on his side table for support, he's practically diving for his closet.
The excitement that rides up his spine gives him pause, more present in his own body now than he has been in some time. Recent events feel like dreams, especially with his hair still mussed up from sleep, eyes still sensitive to the sunlight. Touching his fingertips to the edge of something metallic as he rifles through his dirty clothes hamper
But Peter's looking at it and it's real. it's real and life might be kind sometimes if he stops to think.
A quick stop to listen reveals Ben skittering about in his room just as he had been the night before. He doesn't worry about whether or not he's slept. He knows the answer as well as he knows there's nothing he can do about it.
He doesn't dwell, instead allowing himself a small burst of joy as he swipes away the sleeve of a sweater and pulls the briefcase out of his basket. Stashing a multimillion dollar piece of tech in his laundry does have him feeling a little guilty and more than a little embarrassed, but it's one place he expects to be safe from sight in an apartment with eyes everywhere.
He flips open the clasps on the case, and watching it unfold into a display of blue holograms and technology advanced enough to make his head spin for a second time is just as amazing and absurd as it had been the first time. This time, he doesn't cry, bites his cheek hard enough to make sure. He's given so many tears to mourning that he's not going to let them dampen the little true happiness he gets.
In order to do anything at all he has to breathe very pointedly, in through his nose and out through his teeth. As he pulls the suit up by the fabric of its shoulders, he's struck with how singed the inner workings of himself must be that he must handle thrill with the same care he does panic. It brings to mind the image of a power line struck by lightning—too much of even a good thing can cut the lights from a whole city block in one flash of light and resulting tremor of sound.
The difference between a firework and an explosion is visual. Both burn just as hot.
He breathes as steadily as he can when he takes off his pajamas and steps into the suit, every feeling he can think of underneath his skin like ants. He's elated. He's terrified. He's unsure if he can tell the two apart.
He squeezes his eyes shut when he tugs on the mask, and he's almost too worked up to open them.
When he does, it's to a world much bigger than the one he closed them to.
He's out the window in an instant and the falling feels like freedom.
He's out patrolling long enough to feel the temperature rise and fall with the sun, stopping only to eat churros offered to him by older ladies he'd carried groceries for and the free hotdogs he'd earned for catching a hotdog cart two teenagers had tried to tip over in some weird douchey bid to be funny. The man had been so grateful he just kept handing him one fully loaded hotdog after the other even after Peter tried to tell him he didn't need anything in return. The guilt he felt for taking free hotdogs was lessened however when the vendor explained that a few hotdogs were nothing in comparison to the hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise Peter had saved from the filthy New York sidewalk. Either way Peter knew he was in no position to deny free food, and he couldn't deny how much better it felt to patrol with a full stomach.
“Okay, suit lady. What's 112 minus 56 plus 82 times 9 divided by 7 plus 41?” Peter challenges, laying on his back on the roof of an apartment building somewhere in the middle of Queens. He'd hit a dry spell in terms of crime about an hour before sunset, long before he was ready to head home.
“Following the rules of BEDMAS, the answer would be 202.428571429.” His suit dutifully responds, showing its work in the corner of the HUD.
“Sick,” Peter grins to himself. “Do you know everything or what?”
The amazement only grows the longer he's in the suit, this unreal piece of genius few people on Earth have seen the likes of and he feels alien wearing something of such value when he still wears the same winter jacket he's been wearing for years even though he can't get it to zip up anymore. It's hard not to feel guilty, unqualified, unlucrative–like he's stolen something or is at least keeping it from someone who could do more with this resource than ask it silly questions.
“I know a lot. It appears ‘everything’ is not a reasonable quantifying term for knowledge. I would say instead that my understanding is vast.” The AI counters, voice feminine and humanlike enough to rub at what's still a raw wound within him.
He smiles, still. There are times he hears the influence Mr. Stark has had on his creation and it makes him feel warm and a little bit like he does when he has a particularly tugging memory of his life before. He isn't sure how to interpret the feeling—chooses not to altogether.
“Hey, suit lady?” Peter rolls over, pushing himself up into a sitting position on the roof, knees pulled up to his chest to rest his head upon. “I feel kinda weird calling you ‘suit lady’. Do you think I could give you a name?”
They settle on the name Karen after a little trial and error. He considers calling her May but quickly decides against it when he realizes how empty it would feel to call her name and hear a voice that isn't hers respond. He doesn't know anyone named Karen. There's no body attached to it. It saves him from the smell of rot every time he speaks it.
“Okay, Karen. It’s nice to properly meet you.” He says, and he feels like the moniker will stick. It's almost like making a new friend, pathetic as it may be—he'd be lying if he said it wasn't nice to speak to someone who didn't probe or pry or worry.
“Likewise.” She replies, and her voice is fond and kind and almost hardly artificial.
He lays there talking with her and going over functions of the suit for a little while longer, their conversation cut short with a cry from a growing commotion Peter picks up on from several blocks away.
“Alright, Karen.” He grunts, jumping to his feet. “Seems like things just got interesting. Let’s see how well we work together against new York after sundown. Ready?”
“I am always at the ready.”
He gets a running start off the roof, swinging off in the direction of the sounds of muffled argument. The air against him is noticeably cooler with the lack of sunlight even through the thick material of his suit, but it doesn’t bother him—the chill keeps his mind from drifting and his body awake.
Where he ends up is somewhere surprisingly residential, two erratic figures in a small stretch of alleyway between two small, homely apartment buildings. It’s a scene that’s unfamiliar to both Spider-Man and Peter Parker. This is a side of the city wealthy enough for people to own lawn mowers and he thinks he’s the only one there who knows the easiest way to climb into a dumpster. The idea of the kind of criminal activity that warrants the presence of Spider-Man in a place like this feels so wrong he wonders for a moment if he’s misread the situation between what he can see now is a man and a woman. The thought is dismissed the second the man lays hands on her, shoving her back just rough enough to make Peter's stomach jump.
He drops down from the rooftop, peeking around the mouth of the alley to gauge the situation.
“Jesse, stop.” The woman begged gently, cautiously—dressed in only pajamas and a tank top, dirty blonde hair tied back loosely. A pair of socks is her only protection from the pavement. It’s obvious this isn’t the night she’d had in mind. Peter knows the disappointment, sees it in her inching movements, stepping back and forth between him and the door like she’s luring a frightened animal out of a corner, like she just wants to take him by the hand and bring him home.
“Sh-Shut up,” The man sways, pushing the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Don’t make it like that, don’t make it like that. I can’t always be the bad guy.”
He doesn’t yell. The low, guttural tone is worse, and it brings tears down her face. She doesn’t make a sound, only wipes them away with the back of her hand like they’d never been there at all.
“You’re not a bad guy. I know you’re not a bad guy.” Her voice is level, even in its struggle. Peter knows it hurts, knows she wants to sob. “It’s okay, let’s just go to bed. Please?”
Peter watches, struck by something that feels like deja vu, like sharing eye contact, like he wants the man to just go to bed—just go to bed.
The man is soaked in sweat and stumbling. The poor girl is wrapped around herself and trembling. Peter is a bystander.
“No, you—you don’t know anything!” He whips around, doesn’t hit her but it’s so close, so close—she falters back as if he had and Peter knows it hurts. Peter knows it hurts.
“Hey!” He yells, the sound pulling two startled faces towards him. Then he’s moving, and he doesn’t stop until the man is staring him down, until the shaking is standing behind him instead of the shaking being him. “Don’t you know a one-sided fight’s a bore? You don’t know a good scrap until you’re watching a guy named Boulder pulling your teeth out of his knuckles. Boy, what a rush! I can hook you up if you’re looking to really feel alive.”
Peter could take him down in seconds. He isn’t afraid of the 5’10 collection of thick limbs and unkempt beard. Still, he feels like he’s just gotten over an illness, wet and shaking with freshly broken fever. For the first time ever the mask is not enough to make him into a different person, and he doesn’t feel like Spider-Man. He feels like Peter Parker.
The man rears back on his heels, wobbling. His eyes are glassy and dark under the light of a distant lamp post.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” He growls, at the same time the woman rests her hand upon Peter’s shoulder. Her fingers are dreadfully cold.
“Please, I’m okay, it’s okay,” She hurries to explain, and Peter feels a flash of regret ignite and smother in his stomach like a faulty match when he sees how wide her eyes have gotten. “He’s my fiance. It’s—he doesn’t mean it. He’s just had a little too much to drink, and he has PTSD so he’s worked up—”
“Oh, for fucks sake, Ashley!” The drunken man barked, digging his fingers into fists in his already mussed up hair.
The girl, Ashley, flinches. Peter stands his ground in front of her and he doesn’t waver but his heart is light and fluttering, beating fast enough to sing and his eyes are cruel and plaster the wrong faces on the wrong people and put up walls of familiar wallpaper in the corners of his vision.
“There–There it is again, it’s always— ” He turns, his figure going dark in the light shift. Flecks of spit are flying with every erratic breath he forces through his teeth. “I’m just s-so fucked up in the head, right? Cause, because, there’s therapy for people like y-you who aren’t managing th-their best—” He sobs, rubbing his hands against his face harshly. “Because I found pieces of–of him in my hair f-for days and—and I should probably t-talk to someone about that, right?”
A flash of queasy sympathy for the man fits itself around the barrage of other emotions Peter’s reigning in. Bits and pieces of the past come leaking through for him at times as well, the memory of hot, squirming organs underneath his younger fingers and he’s pushing down down down like he’s trying to hold them still—a bubbling, guttural groan that isn’t human isn’t human isn’t living—
Ashley breaths out, a choke, a scoff, a sob.
“Babe, please. I’m sorry. I love you.” She tells him. “We’re both tired and not making any sense. L-let’s just go to bed, and in the morning—”
In the pit of Peter’s stomach, a warning—then there are hands that are moving and it’s a trick of the light or the late hour but Peter’s seeing something he’s seen before and for half a second he hesitates but it’s enough for a fist to cast a breeze against his face, landing squarely with a sharp, wounded cry behind him.
And something tears inside him. The dog had never lunged at someone else before. He’d never wrestled with the rabid dog but now he’s pinning it against the asphalt, hands clamping down around pulling wrists because he can’t look at the dog and see wagging tail anymore. All he sees is blood and teeth and the panting fight for more.
“You don't touch her!” Peter nearly shrieks, because he’s sure the dog has been friendly before and probably will be again but in that moment he has bruising knuckles and even if he didn’t mean it the woman still has blood dripping down her face.
The man is a growling, feral creature beneath him, ratcheting against his hold. The crying behind them is shrill and insistent but she still cries out don’t hurt him, don’t hurt him and Peter loosens his grip because he’s sure the dog has been friendly before and probably will be again.
“I’ve alerted authorities of the situation.” Karen alerts, her voice welcome and grounding over the cacophony of noise coming at him from all angles.
Peter breathes, lightheaded and shaky and not entirely there. The police and Spider-Man still have a relationship that’s somewhat on the rocks, and he doesn’t expect his presence in such a nice part of the city will be much appreciated by them. He probably shouldn’t be here when they arrive.
He releases his hold on one of the man’s hands, who in his flailing state manages to hook Peter pretty good across the face before he seals it to the pavement with webbing. He webs up the other arm just below the elbow so he doesn’t need to let go first and webs his feet together too when he nearly gets a kick to the groin as he stands up.
The man writhes despite his bindings like a true spider’s prey, screaming obscenities all the while. Peter steps back, glancing between the two of them, the woman now sitting with her back against the bricks, tears falling steadily down her face alongside twin blood trails from her nose. This isn’t how his patrols usually go. Peter doesn’t feel like he’s helped.
“Are you okay?” He asks, swallowing. She looks up at him and she’s a mirror because she doesn’t look grateful for his intervention, only tired. Bone deep tired.
“I had it handled,” She croaks, averting her eyes. “He didn’t mean to hurt me.”
And Peter knows. He knows.
Another thick drop of blood runs down her upper lip.
“But he did.” Peter says, reeling with the weight of three syllables because sometimes circumstance is what it is and it isn’t clean or coherent and it isn’t fair and he isn’t so much saying those words as he is swallowing them down, bitter and heavy.
Her lip wobbles and she shakes her head, but she doesn’t have anything else to say and neither does Peter.
Distantly, sirens head towards them. The sound is nearly enough to push him over the edge when it collides with the chaos of his immediate surroundings, then the hum of traffic, the blurry conversations of a thousand people and apartment buildings filled with TVs and microwaves and chewing mouths and crying babies all overlapping into something like the buzz of an angry swarm of bees—
“I’m sorry.”
Is what Peter leaves her with, casting a web onto the roof of the building they were next to and continuing across a few streets and alleys before settling on top of a nearby business, one of the taller structures in the area. He’s far enough away to be out of the turmoil but close enough to be able to listen in on the scene, breathing in and tamping down all other sound the best he could.
So, he heard the police arrive. Heard them slicing through his webs and then the rapid clicks of tightening handcuffs, the slurred apologies and promises of a man Peter was sure would do it again and the desperate, practiced bargaining of a bloodied woman who could paint the devil as a saint through telling of his time as an angel. He heard the deputy sigh that domestic abuse was a mandatory arrest as she tried to posit a scenario in which she’d broken her nose by tripping against a wall. He heard her say their wedding was in three days. He heard her say it wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t his fault—then, he didn’t hear her say anything, just cry as a female officer guided her back inside to wait for an ambulance while the other unit carted the man she loved off to jail.
And Peter didn’t feel like he’d saved anyone, only broke a woman’s nose, only ruined a wedding.
He closes his eyes, cheekbone smarting as he lays down against the concrete in reminder of the hit he’d taken in the struggle.
“Karen,” He sighs. “That sucked.”
“My sensors identified an impact in the zygomatic region capable of producing mild to moderate contusions,” She responds, highlighting his right cheekbone on a body diagram she brings up in the side of his HUD. “Are you experiencing significant pain?”
Peter huffs, shaking his head before offering the AI a solemn ‘no’.
“Nah, I don't even feel it,” He lies. Perhaps it's just muscle memory. “I mean, it's just—” He sighs, letting his eyes fall closed. “Sometimes crime fighting isn't as simple as it seems, I guess.”
Karen pauses, processing a few seconds longer than usual. Peter squints.
“Karen?”
“My apologies, Peter. I have just received a message from FRIDAY asking that I inform you Mr. Stark will be arriving momentarily.”
Peter's blood stops moving, pooling in the back half of his body. The announcement comes out of nowhere, and Peter truly isn't sure what to make of it.
“What? Why?” His brow furrowed, a weary sliver of unrest managing to work itself under his skin despite his exhaustion. Alongside it, a smaller, inexplicable sort of relief.
“Mr. Stark states that he'd like to get photos of you in your new outfit for this year's Christmas card.”
Peter's mouth curves into a smile, apprehension dissipating. The sort of relief turns into a sort of warmth.
“Tell him we'll have to reschedule, I'm having a bad hair day.”
Karen says she will relay the message.
Peter stargazes as he waits, pretending the hum of traffic covers up the sound of EMS trying to coax their heartbroken patient to let them bring her in for a head CT, like he can't hear her sniffle, like he doesn't think about how it must smell of blood. He tries so hard not to think that it becomes all he thinks about, until the familiar drone of approaching repulsors is enough to break the cycle.
Watching the Iron Man suit descend with the confidence it always has is so beyond cool. He's met Mr. Stark, even humiliatingly cried into his designer blazer. Still, despite the suit being only an extension of the man, he feels the excitement of meeting his childhood hero all over again as the machine lands gently a few feet away from him.
The faceplate lifts first to reveal Mr. Stark smirking down at him, the rest of the suit creaking and shifting to allow him to step out towards Peter. The man hardly looks himself, dressed down in a t-shirt and jeans, hair sticking up, sneakers on his feet—under only the moonlight, Peter can almost mistake this milder, late night version of him for someone else.
He likes the change.
“Look how cute you look in your Sunday best,” The man coos, crossing his arms as he stands over him. After an embarrassing amount of time , Peter realizes he’s still laying like he’s trying to make a concrete snow angel and scrambles himself up, brushing dust off of the multi-million dollar piece of equipment he’s been put in charge of.
“I’m so sorry, sir!” He blurts out, all exhaustion gone from his body in an instant. “I’m so used to wearing things that can go in a washing machine, I—”
“Woah, not even thirty seconds and you’re already apologizing,” Mr. Stark cuts him off, not unkindly. “That can’t be healthy, kid. You say sorry more than a Justin Bieber album.”
Peter is grateful for the mask, feeling heat spread across his face and ears. He opens his mouth, words stopping in his throat when a finger is thrust in front of him.
“Ah! Don’t say what I think you’re gonna say,” He says, and Peter dutifully presses his lips together. “And don’t doubt my expertise, including my frighteningly impressive foresight whilst creating, resulting in the invaluable asset of impermeability.” Mr. Stark grins, interlacing his fingers. “Rain can therefore no longer wash the spider out, and the spider can spray it off with the hose if he gets shit on by a pigeon. I mean, give me some credit here.”
He says it smiling, but Peter still feels his shoulder blades drawing together.
“I didn’t mean to—I’m not trying to imply that you’re, like, incompetent or something, sir, because you aren’t! The opposite in fact, I—” His legs are not solid underneath him, everything is fear and uncertainty and flight and the destruction of Peter’s ability to stand for himself even in the silliest of circumstances.
“Underoos,” Mr. Stark cuts him off again, voice louder but somehow softer. “I’m pulling your leg, kid.”
The man’s eyes are soft, evaluating—if Peter didn’t know any better he’d say he sounded almost sad.
Peter clears his throat. “Right.”
A tense silence blankets over the rooftop. Peter wished he could remember how to understand without an explanation.
“How was patrol, then?” It was a blatant change to the conversation and they both knew it. Peter didn’t mind in the slightest. “A little birdy told me you got socked pretty good, huh?” He grimaced, clapping a hand on Peter’s shoulder. “Let’s see, then.”
Peter hesitates, a little caught off guard by the creases lining the man’s face.
It's like sitting on the bathroom counter, bandages carefully placed over scuffed knees like it was important, like he was important—like sitting in the passenger seat when the driver slams on the breaks and even in their moment of panic their arm goes immediately to brace you against the seat, all over a rabbit jumping into the road.
It’s just a rabbit. It's just a bruise.
“C’mon, kid,” He smiles, crooked and a little sheepish, like he's been caught. “Ease the mind of an old man. FRIDAY's watching your back, it's just you and me.”
Peter tugs at the mask, pulling on sore skin and standing his hair on end, the night air bright and alive against the heat of a forming bruise.
“It's really nothing, Mr. Stark,” He says honestly, feeling a little silly and a little young presenting an injury that's probably barely visible in the low light.
The hums, tilting Peter's head gently. Peter feels a spark of something between his collarbones.
“Ouch, gonna feel that in the morning, huh?” He says, and he looks like, he looks like—”Another bad guy behind bars, though. Right, Spidey?”
It's a light comment but Peter still flinches, guts churning and twisting themselves into places they don't belong and he should leave it, he should leave it—
“He's not,” He says hurriedly, defensive for more than just a war-harried groom, for something he can't let slide, for something he says even just to hear it out loud. “He's not, uh–a bad guy. He didn't mean it, sir.”
Mr. Stark opens his mouth, closes it. Shrinks in on himself a little when the wind picks up a bit because he probably didn't intend to be here very long but Peter can't leave it.
“Kid, I've thrown a lot of punches in my lifetime and all of them were very much on purpose.” He replies, a careful smile on his face like Peter is something delicate, like he's something confused when he's not . He's the only one who isn't confused and this is his burden.
“He has PTSD, Mr. Stark, and—” He hesitates, determined to defend the stranger to the point where he isn't sure if he should even mention the man's intoxication. Many people aren't as willing to excuse violence fueled by substance use as he is because no one understands like Peter does, and they don't even know him or what he's gone through and there's a reason, there's a reason — “He had a few too many drinks, sir. It wasn't his fault.”
Mr. Stark doesn't say anything, just tilts his head and tightens his lips in thought. Peter shifts his weight under the man's stare. He wants to know exactly what he's thinking. He doesn't want to hear it.
“You don't have to be a bad person to do a bad thing, kid.” Mr. Stark holds himself steadily, speaking to Peter like he's very young, very naive. Peter can't decide if he resents it or if he loves the gentle sentiment but either way he’s jealous of how surely the man speaks.
Peter swallows tersely, willing himself not to second guess what doesn’t need debating, not to open cans of worms better left sealed.
“I don't think he deserved to go to prison.” He says quietly, the familiar itch of conflict burrowing itself into his sternum. He means it. He thinks he means it.
Mr. Stark’s expression doesn’t change, but his eyes appear to soften as if Peter’s the one misunderstanding. Peter understands it, he’s held it and he’s talked it down and he’s looked it in the eye. Peter understands.
“Do you think she deserved to get her nose broken?” Mr. Stark asks him simply, and Peter suddenly feels every bit of the cooling air as if he were stripped down naked, feels the concrete seeping warmth out of him through his feet, feels every muscle ache with the wave of something that falls over him, something that has his chest stalling and his face heavy under the eyes of the man across from him. “Do you think this is the first time he’s hurt her? Do you think if you hadn’t intervened it would have been the last?”
Peter averts his eyes, a heat eclipsing over his eyes against his will. He doesn’t know what the tears are for, tries his very best not to figure it out.
“They're supposed to get married in three days.” He forces out, vocal cords tight around the words. He lets the wind hit him square in the face and doesn’t dare blink.
He doesn’t see Mr. Stark move, his eyes blurry and glued to something in the distance he can’t make out, but he hears him sigh, feels his footsteps breaching the gap between him. What he doesn’t see coming is the arm that drapes around his shoulders, pulling him against a delightfully warm side, a wonderfully close, calm heartbeat—he hadn’t been expecting the kind gesture at all, so he calls this the reason for the sharp, wounded sound that escapes from him, the reason his eyes slam shut to desperately keep the can of worms where it belongs.
Peter gulps, an immense pressure within him that has him trembling with the strain.
“We all wish it were black and white, kid.” The body beside him says, voice close enough to feel. “You’re not always going to be sure what the right thing to do is, and people aren’t always going to be appreciative of your help.” Mr. Stark sighs, and Peter’s eyes burn. “You—You’ve got a good heart, buddy. All you have to do is keep listening to it.”
Peter loathes to admit how much he loves to be held, how relieving it is to feel like he isn’t alone, how much he selfishly wishes he could stay in the arms of this ever-important figure forever, regardless of all the other more important things the man has to tend to.
Most of all, he hates how much he wants to be wanted, wants to be loved. It’s humiliating how readily he jumps after slivers of it wherever he can find them, frantic and toothy and will all the frenzy of a starved animal to scraps.
“They love each other.” Peter makes sure to say, even when he isn’t entirely sure who he’s referring to.
Mr. Stark pats him in between the shoulder blades, circling his hand over his spine. Peter melts into it like a stubborn cat that’s ashamed of how much it likes affection.
“Love isn’t always enough on its own,” The man tells him, and Peter feels the hand sweep up towards his neck and he thinks that sounds very untrue. “It’s, well—sometimes, if we care enough about other people, we have to learn to care about ourselves, yeah?”
He gives him one more squeeze before he’s letting go, and Peter watches as he walks away, feeling even colder than he’d been in the first place.
“It’s getting late, kid.” Mr. Stark says, tone brighter as he steps into the open suit. “We’re both at risk of being skewered if we don’t get back soon. There’s a whole lot of documents for me to sign without reading, and I best get them in soon so I don’t have to sleep in the lab again.” He smiles like it’s all easy, the suit beginning to close up around him. “Keep up the good work, webs. Don’t stay out too late!”
The faceplate falls shut, joints of the suit unlocking. He gets a wave from the man before he’s rocketing into the sky. Belatedly, Peter waves back, watching the suit get smaller and smaller before he can’t tell it apart from the stars and then staring a little longer.
It doesn’t feel like much time has passed until he looks at the clock. He decides to call it a night, even though he knows he could get away with a few more hours. Somehow, he gets home, though it feels as if he’s blinked, closing his eyes on the rooftop and opening them in front of his bedroom window.
There’s a weight in his stomach, and it’s new, and it’s different, and it’s worse.
sometimes, if we care enough about other people, we have to learn to care about ourselves
Mr. Stark’s words keep him up all night.
Chapter 8: what puts out the fire
Notes:
Hi!!!
I feel like every one of these is just me apologizing for how long I've been gone BUT !! I have a big girl reason this time!!
I FINALLY got a job 👍😭😭 I am a bingo lady now 🤪
I have no time for anything that brings me joy :)) but money is nice!!
Anyways hope you like this one and I hope it makes sense since its been so long since I wrote the last chapter lmaoooo
Chapter Text
“Our little spider's got his big boy pants on now, I see?”
Natasha slinks around the island, flipping the phone in her hand around to show him a news article pasted with a photo of Spider-Man mid-swing, clad in his new suit. Above the picture is the title Spider-Man: Avenger In The Making? which Tony guesses is what she really wants to talk about.
He rubs his hand up the side of his face, pushes the button on the coffee maker. It’s early enough in the morning that the floor is still cold to his feet. Natasha is dressed like she’s been up for hours. He’s known her for years and he doesn’t think he’ll ever fully understand her.
“Yeah, well. What can I say? I'm a fashion connoisseur, and his little onesie was oh-so adorable but terribly tacky and you know tacky gives me indigestion.” He says easily enough, ignoring the way he can see her eyes slacken like she’s unimpressed from the corner of his sight. Steam swirls up from the mug and he watches it intently.
Nat puts her phone face down on the counter, eyes dragging over him and lingering on his sweatpants, polka-dotted with scorch marks and grease stains evidencing his eventful session in the lab last night and probably a few other nights if he’s honest.
“God forbid anyone commit a faux pas in your presence, Mr. Ralph Lauren, sir.” She replies without a hint of humor in her voice. “We’d hate for the public to speculate that you have any other reason to makeover a vigilante apart from aesthetics.”
He sighs, gathering his mug in both hands before turning around to face her. She stares back at him, head tilting ever so slightly like she isn’t implying anything at all. Tony can practically feel the bags under his eyes pulling pulling pulling down. The coffee is hot enough to scald. He takes a sip.
“What is it exactly you’re looking for from me?” He asks, tired in more ways than one. There’s a lot keeping him up as of late. “I’ll be honest, I’ve never been one for charades in the first place but it’s definitely no fun to play with you because you always win.”
The spy shifts her weight. Her expression doesn’t change, but Tony thinks he may see a little bit of something falter in her eyes.
“I'm good at reading people,” She says, a stiffness to her. “Especially people like you, who try so hard to mask emotion it swings you in the opposite direction. You're extravagant by nature.” Tony feels his lips twist slightly at the blunt description but doesn't protest, doesn't know what'd he'd have to offer in defense anyway. Natasha runs her eyes up and down him like he's an anomaly. “Something about Spider-Man has made you quiet, and I can't figure out what it is.”
Breathing out steadily, she slides onto a barstool, tucking her foot up onto one of the rungs. Tony watches as she plucks an orange from the bowl in the center of the counter and rolls it around in her palms. She doesn't look back at him.
“Not worried about me, are you, Romanoff?” He asks, smirking when he earns an eye roll in response.
“Don't be absurd, I only fear I'm losing my touch.” She digs her fingernails into the peel, pausing. “Bug-boy's got you keeping secrets.”
Tony sighs, sipping too-hot coffee. There's a disapproval in her voice that has every uncertainty he'd felt before their last team meeting rearing its head and he pushes them all down, down. “Like I said, Spidey's a special case,” He reiterates, trying to sound some way that will make her quit looking at him like that. “I seem to recall asking you all to trust me and getting a thumbs up from the rat pack on that, so was that just a bit of good natured flattery, or?”
She pauses for a few moments, just staring. He hates the way it looks like she knows everything about him with just one look. He hates that no longer how long he holds eye contact he never understands anything about what she's thinking.
“I trust you with my life,” She says, and Tony's a little surprised to hear how sincerely she says it. “I have a harder time trusting you with your own.”
An odd, tight feeling starts in his chest and rises up to the base of his throat. Words won't fit around it, won't come out his open mouth.
“People get antsy when you keep things to yourself and you assume it's because they're waiting for you to screw up,” She glances up at him, tearing the peel off and letting it fall to the counter. “A lifetime of cameras in your face probably hasn't left you at ease, I get it, but—” Natasha sighs through her nose, shoulders dropping and head tilting up as if to think. “Tony, we're not trying to criticize you. We're trying to make sure you're not going to get yourself fucking killed.”
Tony rolls his tongue in his mouth, just watching. He can feel the muscles in front of his ears ball up with how hard his teeth are clenched together. The way he feels in that moment is somewhere between a chastised child and a rabbit that knows he's seen—still, spiteful, and desperately impassive.
Natasha huffs like he's being unreasonable, collecting the peel off of the counter and sliding off of the barstool.
“It's hard not to worry when you go quiet because it's like you're waiting to die like a sick dog, for God's sake.” She shifts her weight as she stands. Tony stares straight back at her unblinking. She breaks the eye contact first, relaxing minutely.
“Look, I'm just going to say it how it is. You know I'm not one for tip-toeing and neither are you,” The peel is thrown out, her posture unchanging. “You’re so afraid to trust anyone that you can turn it around and convince yourself that no one trusts you,” She looks down at the orange, splitting it into sections. “You keep everything to yourself like you're trying to prove to everyone else you can be trusted, but really you're trying to prove to yourself that you don't need anyone. You're making excuses as to why you're better off on your own.”
Tony hates the way she can tear him down to his finest threads and lay them out in neat, perfunctory lines. How she can see parts of him he hadn't even known were there and point them out like they're not secret. Like he's naked. Like he's ugly.
He watches as she goes to leave the room, popping a piece of fruit into her mouth. She speaks again before she's even finished chewing.
“You're not safer by yourself.” She steps through the door frame, stopping and turning to face him at the last second. “By the way, since I'm in the dark on this, I'm afraid I can't help you explain to the public that Spider-Boy's suit isn't some form of secret society propaganda. Have fun with that, I heard it's trending.” She leaves smiling, ever pleased with herself.
After a few moments of listening to her retreating footsteps, Tony takes a long drag from his cup of coffee, a light, spacey headache looming. He senses several long, uncomfortable conversations in his near future, and he forces his jaw to relax.
He doesn't want to think any deeper about what Natasha's said, rarely can, when it comes to her. It's hard to tell sometimes what she wants from the things she says, and Tony's exhausted himself before trying to give her the opposite of what she's hoping for. He opts nowadays to simply ignore it most of the time and doesn't wonder.
I've got a few ideas I want to bounce off you. No answer at Parker HQ, so I'm cutting out the middle man and letting you tell me when you're free from teenage undertakings. Let me know.
Peter nips at the peeling skin around his fingernails as he reads the message. Around him, Mr. Allister carries on about a physics theory Peter learned from a dusty textbook in his attic when he was nine. Beyond the quiet room, he can hear the chatter of students in the classrooms upstairs, the scratching of graphite, the clicking of pens—the ambient noise somehow both morphs into a distant drone and is increasingly impossible to ignore as the days go by.
The text has him feeling likewise contradicted, as it's on one hand entirely expected and on the other completely out of the blue. He can't be surprised that after seeking him out, gifting him a top of the line cell phone with his number, as well as a multi-million dollar piece of technology that the man would want to keep in touch, especially after the media outcry that had been plaguing him the past few days after everyone quickly deducted that Spider-Man's new suit was quite obviously Stark tech. However, Peter still can't bring himself to take Mr. Stark's words to heart no matter how many times he follows through.
The relationship between the two of them continues to feel like that of a cashier and customer, like you each ask each other how they are and answer with the same practiced reply, like you say things you don't mean and smile when you're supposed to in the name of being polite. Like the both of them are civil liars, or maybe like the best Peter ever thinks he's going to get is a calm understanding. Maybe like that's all he can afford.
Either way, Peter tries not to overthink when he taps out his reply.
Sounds good! I am available to meet up whenever best for you, Mr. Stark.
It's business-like. It's prompt. It's a selfish cry for more.
He tucks his phone back into the pocket of his hoodie as discreetly as he can, trying to trample any sprouting anxieties when he's caught off guard by a notification vibrating against his palm before he's even let go of it.
Okay. Meet Happy after school. Be quick, he's antsy.
P.S. Let your uncle know. I've made it this long without being thrown in prison, it'd be embarrassing to go down for something like kidnapping after all the stunts I've pulled.
Peter scratches at the back of his neck a little sharper than he probably should, realizing the man meant today. A lot less time to prepare than he had been ready for.
He slides his phone back into his pocket again, deciding not to think about it even when the night ahead of him sits over him like a heavy fog. He's not thinking about it.
All day he doesn't think about it. All day he scratches at his neck.
Classes come and go and Peter does too. He doesn't send a text to his uncle until minutes before the final bell and tells himself it's not because he's a coward. He repeats it as he sets his phone to silent.
Happy is waiting near the back, sharp and apparent even among the crowd of higher end vehicles of Midtown's parking lot, or maybe Peter's just grown paranoid. Either way, he doesn't think twice about tossing up his hood before quickly making his way there and into the backseat before anyone can see him do it.
The tinted windows are a luxury he's thankful for as he slouches into his seat, letting out a slow breath and scanning the lot to double check for prying eyes.
“Aw, don't tell me you're embarrassed of me already.”
The voice from the driver's seat has him snapping his head forward so fast that something pops. It isn't the blunt, evenly irritated sound of Happy he'd anticipated.
“Mr. Stark!” He gulps, mouth refusing to close. “What are you—I mean, I–I didn't—”
Peter rubs at his face, swallowing. He can't get anything to come out of his mouth the way he wants it to anymore.
Mr. Stark smiles at him in the rear view, putting the car in drive and pulling out into the stream of cars leaving the lot.
“Happy was tied up in something ‘important’.” He explained, albeit with finger quotations. “Which probably means he's setting up that new coffee maker in the main floor staff room, but who am I to question my beloved head of security? So, I figured I could venture out of the lab for a few minutes to retrieve my favorite teenager.”
They turn out of the parking lot, Peter grips the side of the door to keep from sliding across the seats. Mr. Stark must see him, because he's glancing over his shoulder once they're on the road, and Peter's mouth is awfully dry.
“Hey, buckle up, kid. What's the matter with you, huh? Seat belts save lives, you know.” He's teasing, and Peter knows he is. “I hope Happy doesn't drive around with you like that.”
Peter hurries to pull the belt down over him, hands feeling weak and fumbling. He tries to swallow and his throat sticks together.
“No! No, I–I'm so sorry, Mr. Stark, it just slipped my mind and—and I always wear it, even with Happy, I swear! I didn't—”
He can't get the belt in the buckle, and he's struggling like an idiot and it feels like eyes are everywhere watching him fail the simplest task. He can't get the belt in the buckle.
He knows Mr. Stark stiffens in the front seat, can hear the way his heartbeat changes.
“Hey, I know, kid. I'm just messing with you.” The man says softly, forcibly light. They can both feel each other's discomfort and Peter doesn't know why he always does this. “You and Happy are the two biggest safety sticklers I know.”
Peter inhales through his nose, guides the latch in with both hands until it clicks.
“I know. Sorry. Sorry.” He sits up straight, and smiles like he thinks he should. It doesn't do what he wants it to, and he can only see his eyes in the mirror but Mr. Stark is looking at him like he's looking at a dead baby bird again.
The man clears his throat. The air is so awkward it makes Peter want to crack a window.
The small talk is dry and sparse the whole way to the tower, and he doesn't feel like he can breathe again until he's stepping out of the car and following Mr. Stark to the elevator, arms crossed against himself.
“To the lab, FRIDAY.”
Peter smiles to himself as they start moving. Everything about this place will amaze him again and again. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Mr. Stark smiling too. It feels like he's done something right.
The doors part to reveal the lab, as vast and awe-inspiring as Peter remembers it to be. A few things have been moved around since he was here last, projects advancing and parts having been put away or installed, but it is familiar in a way it shouldn't be. Peter can't be making every safe place into his home. It isn't fair to either of them.
Mr. Stark sits down at his desk, gesturing beside him to a new addition that caught Peter's eye.
Next to the large holotable and work surface that Peter had worked on with him was a smaller desk, a more compact holotable to the left of it and a series of drawers filled with parts. An array of tools hung on the pegboard above it.
It hadn't been there last time, and it was shiny and new, screens free of fingerprints save for a few on the sides from installation.
“Woah,” Peter breathes out without even meaning to, taking in the tech and wondering how the man had even been able to manage the addition in less than two weeks.
“You like that, huh?” Mr. Stark grins, folding his arms and turning to look at his creation. “State of the art engineering, courtesy of yours truly, of course.”
Peter rakes his eyes over the setup. There was a curious and inventive side of himself that he had sort of inadvertently given up as of late, and it was flickering back to life somewhere within him.
To him, living with Ben was something like the relationship between two atoms. When one becomes unstable, the other gives up some of it's own electrons to make amends. Sometimes, Peter has to lose something in order to keep the two of them stable, and that's okay.
He never thought about looking for replacements until Mr. Stark had first helped him to his feet the day they met, feeling a spark that was almost like regaining something he'd lost. It was from that moment he felt as if he could borrow something for himself for once, even if he knew he'd lose it again. He'd take as close to whole as he could get for as long as he could.
Mr. Stark smirks, waving him closer. Peter steps carefully as if he's afraid to break the very floor he stands on.
Mr. Stark reaches up to him, taking his hand gently by the wrist and guiding it down to lay on the small tabletop screen.
“Press down firmly—that's it.” He has his own hand laid overtop of Peter's, keeping it flat against the surface. Peter stares at the man's hand, revels in the steady pressure.
Without warning, all of the displays light up like they're coming to life, and Peter jumps a little, pulling his hand back to his chest as if he'd touched a hot stove.
“Primary user set.” FRIDAY's voice announces from in front of him. “Welcome, Peter.”
“W-What—What does that mean?” Peter asks tentatively, the thought of having potentially altered something in one of the most sophisticated and advanced engineering labs on earth making his heart drop down into his toes. He would hesitate to touch a light switch in this building.
Beside him, Mr. Stark scratches the side of his face, almost sheepish. It's another reminder that the man before him is far different from the white lie he is when many people are looking.
“That means that from now on, FRIDAY will only allow access to this work surface to one Peter Parker.” He turns in his chair, clearing his throat quietly. “I figured if I was going to ask you to be my intern, I'd have to give you some incentive first.”
The proposal is so nonchalant that it almost slips right past him. When he finally registers it, Peter falters, taking a small step back in surprise.
“You built this for me?” He asks incredulously, face hot and mouth dry. It feels like an insult to even suggest it, and he waits for the billionaire to burst out in laughter at the very idea but it doesn't come. Tony Stark raises his eyebrows slightly, and Peter can't move. His heart is quick and light like that of a hummingbird.
“You think you can put up with me a few times a week, kid?” He asks, like he's asking him for the time, like he's commenting on the weather, not at all like he's making the big mistake Peter thinks he is.
How Peter wishes the man wouldn't look at him like that. It leaves a residue in his mouth that he refuses to taste. It would only give him something new to crave.
“I don't even know what to say.” He says after a few moments of silence, swallowing dryly and tucking his hands into his sleeves to hide the shaking. The idea of what's happening being real is so absurd that he's not sure he should allow himself to feel the thrill or even the guilt that comes with how eager he is to maybe get a few days a week away from Ben—to get a few days a week with a man who's a hair past a stranger, who Peter has no business missing at night when he hardly knows him.
Mr. Stark shifts uncomfortably, taking Peter's silence the wrong way.
“You don't have to say yes if—”
“No!—” Peter lurches with the force of the word, snapping his mouth shut. “I mean, yes, of course, Mr. Stark, it's—it would be the honour of a lifetime, I just—” He sits his head in the palm of his hand, his stomach full of words but his mouth empty. “All due respect, sir, there are people smarter than I could ever dream to be that would kill to even be in the same room as you, and I—” He hesitates, teeth finding the raw inside of his lip. “I haven't done anything to deserve this.”
There's a part of him that wants to kick himself, wants to accept blindly and not look a gift horse in the mouth. There's another part of him that needs to know.
“That,” He says, finger pointing to Peter. “Is why I want you working with me.” The man leans back in his chair, pressing his fingertips together. He looks at Peter like he's seeing through him, or maybe like he's seeing all of him, either way Peter feels exposed like a raw nerve. "You're the only one who would hesitate. Since the second I met you, you've been analysing, thinking, waiting—Intelligence is nothing without direction, kid. It's dangerous.” He says seriously, like he knows, and like he knows that Peter knows. Blue light glows across the highlights of the face he was only ever meant to see through a screen or a page, and Peter can only stare, awe and disbelief making him feel like he could dissipate into the very air around him. His fingernails carve crescents into his palm.
Taking a deep breath, he leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees, head turning up to look Peter in the eyes.
“You're something special, kid. You've got a true desire to help people, and that's something I can't teach. Not only do you deserve this, the world deserves to see what you are capable of if you're given space to grow.”
Mr. Stark looks him over, and Peter knows he's a genius but right now he thinks he must be stupid.
His jaw moves, but he doesn't have anything meaningful to say. It isn't that he doesn't want it. By god, it isn't that he doesn't want it.
But Peter isn't just Peter anymore. Everything that must be run through his head must be run through Ben's head, or at least as close to Ben's head as Peter could guess. It's a sickly attachment, but the fact that Ben needs him so much is love in some way, and how Peter carves his life to fit whatever shape his uncle ends up being that day is devotion and family the same way what you scrape off your dinner plate is food.
Peter's life is dirty, and it spreads and it sticks like a mold. Peter can fancy it up to look halfway decent to others but he can't hide the cause and effect. You can polish up a costume ring but it will always turn your finger green.
Tony Stark is offering him something that he doesn't deserve, calling him clean and smart and good and other thing he isn't anymore. Peter feels like he must have done something terribly manipulative and evil for the man to be so confused.
To accept would be like lying, would be like stealing—
“Come on, kid.” Mr. Stark says, breaking Peter's chain of thought. He stands from his chair, and Peter doesn't flinch but he can't help the tension when the man lays a hand on his shoulder. There are holes around the seams of his hoodie and he hopes the man doesn't notice. “Dum-e will be crushed if you say no.”
From the corner of the room, the bot beeps an affirmative, and for a blinding instant, Peter doesn't feel out of place.
Mr. Stark is looking down at him the way Ben never does anymore, and Peter is weak, weak, weak.
Maybe it's selfish. Or maybe it's stupid, or evil, or maybe it's just that Peter can't bear to deny himself something good when it's staring him in the face like this, but he says yes.
The look of approval he gets from Mr. Stark makes it hard to feel like a mistake.
Later, he knows it was a mistake.
He's stupid like a moth, headfirst into candlelight—feeling the heat from afar and letting himself burn up anyway if only because the light looked so inviting.
He's deluded like a freezing man, stripping bare because the temperature has a unique way of mimicking its own spectrum when it's persistent enough, and there's ice around him but he's burning, burning—
He's naïve like a kid, tugging on the pant leg of a stranger.
It only felt worth it while it lasted, like the time when he was 9 and he and Ned spent all of their allowance on junk food and gorged themselves all night long.
That night he learned that what goes down sweet comes up bitter. As he walks the hall to his apartment, something sour sits in the back of his mouth.
Peter's heart pulls in his chest as he twists his battered house key in the lock, the door creaking as he tries to creep inside, wondering in the jaundiced light if he could somehow go unnoticed, that maybe Ben's just peacefully asleep somewhere and there's a gentle lull of movie credits playing somewhere—
The breath is punched out of him before he can gasp, the neck of his hoodie pulled up tight under his chin, feet just grazing the floor. The shoe he'd begun to tug off at the door slips off completely.
His face is red hot and tight, windpipe folded in on itself. His eyes blur out the figure looming over him.
Peter scrabbles his hands at his neck, the hood of his sweater held tightly in his uncle's fist.
“B-Ben—”
“You have dabbled in false idols, digging in the garden that feeds you in seek of the root of all evil.” The man accuses, Peter writhing in his grip, and Peter's lost some weight but his uncle is a husk yet he's still held unwaveringly off the ground.
Panic crawls up the sides of his ribcage, his lungs peeling off the walls of his chest. Ben's mind has been long gone but Peter never stopped to consider his body could ever be anything but his own. In the blur of tears and flickering bulbs in dire need of replacement, he appears like a stop-motioned demon possessing the flesh of a vulnerable man.
He's grabbing at the fingers at the nape of his neck but Ben is stronger than usual or maybe Peter's getting weaker as he's dragged out of the entryway, feet desperately skimming for purchase as the sounds in his ears fade into the hum of cicadas and his pounding heartbeat.
Ben doesn't release him until his vision starts to go, until Peter starts to really worry he's going to die this time. He can make out the light of the bathroom flicking on before his feet leave the ground entirely for a split second, stomach dropping when his hood is finally released. He manages only a quick, stuttered gasp before his side hits the porcelain lip of the bathtub, knobby knees hitting second—and the air is cruelly torn away from him again.
His ribs take the fall, and the pain is instant and blinding. There's friction burn around his neck and a white light of agony in his side, the sensation filling him up to his teeth.
When he can finally get a proper breath in, the relief is hard to appreciate. The air goes down like hot smoke and the pressure is like a sledgehammer from the inside.
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Ben is bathed in shadow, the light peeking out from the edges of his silhouette. From where Peter lay, he appears reminiscent of a chalk outline—like a dead man on the pavement.
Peter pushes himself up the edges of the tub, the foot with only a sock on slipping around uselessly as he panics.
“Ben! What's wrong? I–I don't—”
Peter manages to mostly right himself, but its short lived when a heavy weight presses him down to lay, a foot planted in the centre of his aching chest. He squeezes his eyes shut, tears leaking down towards his ears. His hands are pulling up on Ben's ankle, breaths short and gasping, and he can't breathe, he can't move, it hurts—
“Confess your sins,” Ben yells over him, uncaring of the way Peter squirms, the way he begs. “Then I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean; from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.”
Peter is as fearful as he would be if Ben were a complete stranger, maybe even more so. He doesn't get to question what Ben even wants from him.
The knob of the shower squeaks sharply.
Cold water rains down upon him, cementing his clothes to his skin, his hair to his forehead, and his muscles to his bones. The instinctive gasp at the shock sends him into a coughing fit, water burning the sensitive flesh at the back of his nose and trailing fire all the way down his throat and through his chest, inside and out.
He doesn't know how long he lays there, sputtering and pleading, Ben spewing nonsense above him—but it's like he blinks, or like he's slept through something important when he ends up sitting at his desk chair, wrapped in a towel, still fully clothed. There's one sodden shoe on his foot.
He's so cold he can't even shiver, and his skin feels tight and frozen as he twists himself out of his wet clothing, whole body aching terribly. It takes him far too long to drag his warmest pajamas over his curling limbs, and his thoughts come only in jumbled bunches every now and then. Everything is slowing down for him like a pocketed phone in the wintertime.
He falls asleep cold. He wakes up cold. It's a Saturday morning and he misses the lab and he curses himself for the very thought.
He lays in bed all day, the sound of heavy footsteps every now and then enough for Peter to not worry about Ben.
His hair and lungs still feel wet.
He doesn't feel holy.
Chapter 9: ghosts in walls and what they whisper
Notes:
i was going to proofread this then I got too excited !! sorry for long wait so so much happening all the time (work >:( )
if you find a plothole no you didn't
if this is unrealistic employ your imagination pls im not that smart :P
hope you enjoy !! when I read a comment I get so excited I kick my feet and have to bite something so please comment so I can experience joy in capitalism hell that is crazier than anything I could ever think up lol
btw my n key and my b key are both broken so please appreciate the amount of copying and pasting this whole story has taken ;)
okay pls enjoy now for real thank you love you all !!!!!
Chapter Text
By Monday morning, Peter can hardly even remember what a deep breath feels like.
And it's starting to feel excessive, like he's being kicked when he's down again, and again, and again, and the bruises are shaped like the tread of the shoes Peter spent a full piggy bank on when he was 10. Ben had been so proud of the gift, wore them every Sunday to church—wore them to May's funeral.
They're in a closet around here somewhere.
Peter's joints have begun to set in place, stiff and aching from his time in bed. The only time he'd ventured out from underneath his comforter since Friday night was to guzzle water from the bathroom sink next to his room or shuffle into the kitchen whenever Ben went quiet enough that Peter felt the coast was clear. He only left for long enough to shovel anything edible he could find into his arms, quickly and silently squirreling it away to his bedroom.
He ate cans of peas, he ate saltine crackers that didn't crunch anymore, he shivered down sardines and he downed cold cans of soup, he ate anything and everything even over the nausea because he had school this morning and all he wanted was to heal.
All he wanted was to heal.
Even just enough to where he could steel his expression through it, just enough to where he could pass off his rigidity and pallid skin as a stomach ache because nobody worries if the truth and the lie lay over each other seamlessly enough to blend together. The past few months have been eventful to the point that he needs to space the explanations carefully and Peter just wants someone somewhere to give him a break.
But something else has settled into his chest, thick and heavy in the spaces where he's sure his ribs are cracked and sinking low into his lungs. Every breath is like blowing bubbles into a glass of milk, pulling and shallow and sharp.
He doesn't go to school, just finds Ben's phone and deletes the voicemail the school leaves before he can see it or even realize Peter's still home. There's still a childish, naïve hope that if he takes the rest of the day to rest he might be well by dinner—might be well enough to keep Mr. Stark from noticing that he isn't, because there's simply not any universe in which Peter Parker is invited to be Tony Stark's personal intern and then doesn't show up.
He'd crawl his way out of a grave to be there, apologize for the dirt underneath his nails and his unbecoming appearance.
All day, he lays in bed, pinching his nose shut to finish off the canned goods he'd thrown into his bedside drawer last night. He clamps a hand over his mouth and breathes steadily to keep the bottled peaches down, throwing his head back and drinking down the syrup when his stomach settles.
He doesn't like peaches. May could always trick him into eating it in a cobbler.
The day wastes away into patches of half-sleep and holding his breath whenever he can hear Ben's feet creaking over the floorboards, the alarm he set to vibrate shocking him into a coughing fit that he muffles into his pillow.
It's 4:30, and his body is on fire . A pile of cupboard scraps sits like a rock in his stomach and he doesn't feel any better.
It takes him too long to throw on the only pair of jeans he owns without holes and a t-shirt under a hoodie, arms shaking with exertion, side aching terribly.
He's too weak to swing, but he still exits the apartment via the window, making his way down the fire escape instead of climbing. He takes the subway for the first time in a long time and is reminded by the overwhelming atmosphere why he stopped taking the subway in the first place. Someone speaks to themselves under their breath in the corner and Peter doesn't think of Ben.
He makes it to the tower even though he's cold and the walk from the subway has him freezing in the October breeze.
He's on time and wide-eyed and ready. He's ready.
A bead of sweat rolls down behind his ear and he shivers.
____________________________________
“Pete, you've been holding that M1 screw for twenty minutes now.”
Peter's head snaps to the source of the voice. Mr. Stark sits back in his desk chair, arms crossed over his chest and eyes narrowed but expression carefully open.
It's an analytical look that sends unease up his spine like an ink spill crawling through the fibers of a paper, growing and inevitable. He swallows, steeling his face through the ache when he forces himself to sit up straighter.
A cough has been tapping urgently at the base of his throat for the entire hour he's been in the lab and the pressure in his chest seemed to migrate when it ran out of room, forcing its way up his throat and into his skull, trying to escape through his eyes and ears.
It takes everything in him to even think straight, but he needs nothing more now than to be normal. He needs everyone else to think he's normal and then it's easier to convince himself until it's true again.
“Sorry, Mr. Stark,” Peter says sincerely. “I'm just thinking, sir. I don't mean to waste your time.”
And Peter thinks he says it quite believably, but the straight look on the man's face sours into something Peter doesn't know. The ever present pit in his stomach reminds him of it's existence.
The man sighs, and Peter's already fluttering heart trips over itself.
“Kid, that's not—” He shakes his head, scratching at his chin. “That's not what I'm worried about.”
Peter's not so sure how eye contact works anymore, so instead he just casts his eyes down, rolling the tiny screw between his thumb and forefinger.
His head hurts. His chest is like thunder and he can't think.
“Sorry. I'm okay, I—I'm okay.”
Peter watches the man from the side of his vision, seeing his too quick too smart eyes roll over his form before darting between the screw in his hand and the matching set of screwdrivers Peter's been avoiding—hanging all the way at the top of his pegboard.
The man's face changes, and Peter curses himself.
“You can't reach the right screwdriver, can you? You can't lift your arms that high.”
Peter is so tired of lying. Even more so, he's tired of being found out. Nothing is certain and most everything is either made up completely or mashed together from all the different little pieces he can find.
He's not even ready to argue. His face is hot, hot, hot and its keeping him complacent or maybe he just doesn't care anymore.
Sour peach juice bubbles at the back of his throat.
His silence must be taken as an answer, because Mr. Stark deflates, uncrossing his arms with a sigh. He pulls his chair closer to Peter's desk with his feet.
“The suit never alerted me that you were hurt,” He remarks, words a slurry between confused and accusatory. “What happened?”
Peter shrinks, face heating past the fever. Mr. Stark's eyes on him don't falter, and it's harder to come up with a reasonable explanation when someone is this close, this persistent .
“No, it's—I wasn't in the suit, sir.” He begins, always content to sneak a half-truth in wherever he can. “I was just, uh—walking. Walking home. I—It's stupid, really.”
The man sighs, lips tight and brows drawn, but he seems to accept the fib thus far. Peter's heart is heavy with something other than guilt.
“I wish you'd quit that,” He mutters under his breath, hand rubbing over his face. “It's not stupid if you're hurt, underoos.”
And oh, boy. Peter can't keep it up if Mr. Stark keeps looking at him like that. He's so tired and he hurts and he's worn so thin that those eyes alone feel as if they'll burn right through his flimsy facade like a lighter to paper. He has to blink several times and look away.
“Well?” The genius probes gently, and Peter should have known that he wouldn't leave it as it is. “Go on, whose butt do I have to kick?”
Despite himself, Peter laughs. It's small and careful, but it makes the man's shoulders drop just a fraction.
“I took care of it, Mr. Stark. It was just a classic, unlucky New York encounter.” He shakes his head, hoping his voice comes across as calm as he's hoping. “He got a good jab in before I even realized what was happening. He probably just wanted money, I got him down before he explained himself. Tied his arms together with his shoelaces and went home. That's all, sir. I'm fine, really.”
A few seconds pass without a response, and Peter feels sweat bead up against the back of his neck.
“Some random guy got a hit in on Spider-Man bad enough to make him sit like that? ”
Peter sits up self-consciously, refusing to wince.
“It was late.” He defends quickly. Perhaps too quickly, given the look he gets.
Mr. Stark eyes him up and down, and Peter tries hard to remember what normal people look like and embody it as closely as he can.
The engineer's shoulders drop, and he claps his hands against his knees.
“Alright, then. Let's see.”
Peter freezes, arms unconsciously coming around himself to protect his sore side. He huffs through his nose, frustrated that no one can seem to leave good enough alone.
He's trying so hard to be something good, throwing dirt over all of the craters to cover them up but people keep digging, digging —
Mr. Stark frowns, head turning slightly and forcing himself to relax, holding his palms out placatingly. Peter swallows, steadying himself when he wobbles in his seat.
“Let me see, kid. Come on, now. You're shaking like a leaf, buddy. Let me see.”
Mr. Stark speaks to him like a memory, like a dream—and Peter, well his stomach simply rolls over like an obedient dog, because the pain is something else and Peter's not a fighter.
With a sigh, he parts his trembling arms and squeezes his eyes shut. It feels like surrender when he lets Mr. Stark pick up the hem of his shirt. It feels like laying out his shame.
The man sucks in air through his teeth when he lays eyes on the damage, and Peter shivers at the draft of cold air against his hot, hot ribs.
He knows it's bad, had seen it for himself getting dressed—he doesn't expect it to do to Mr. Stark what it does, though. He never wanted to be the reason for the face Mr. Stark is wearing.
“Damn it, kid. Why didn't you say something?” The calloused tips of his fingers glance along his skin, and Peter jumps like a live wire. “Shh…it's okay, it's okay—” It's so quiet, so soft spoken, and Peter is doomed because he would do anything he said if he asked it like that.
There's an unease ebbing off of the man, now. A flash of white, gritted teeth.
“Okay, I've gotta feel around a little, okay?”
Peter twists his face, curling into himself already at the thought. Something in his gut ducks and rolls, a pressure building behind his face.
“I know, I'll be quick, kiddo.” He promises, and Peter loses all objection. He thinks he'll be okay so long as Mr. Stark doesn't go anywhere.
A cool hand flattens around the curve of his side and he wants to back away from it before it even hurts. He hasn't let anyone touch him like this in a long, long while. Another hand scoops around his other side to keep him still when he flinches away on instinct, thumb gently rubbing up and down, a soft hushing sound falling over his ears.
The man is so close Peter can see the freckles in his eyes, the crease above the bridge of his nose—but he's not scared. He's not scared.
Fingers spread over the tender part of his ribcage, a steady pressure moving down, down, and Peter's shoulders pull together because it hurts and maybe he is scared because—
Something clicks , and Peter's vision whites out, a sharp cry pulled from deep within him, a fire started in his chest.
Everything sort of fuzzes out into a haze of pain and fever, but Peter can't remember moving when he blinks his eyes open to notice his head is now laying against Mr. Stark's chest, ear pressed to his heart.
“—orry, I'm sorry, honey,” A gentle voice vibrates against him, and he can feel a frantic hand rubbing lightly up and down his back. “You're okay, kid. Definitely broken there, huh?”
Peter's side is positively throbbing. The sigh he tries to breathe comes out as a whimper, and a tear trickles down the side of his cheek without his permission. He hopes the man doesn't notice when he turns his head into his shirt to hide it.
Beneath him, Tony Stark's chest rises with a deep breath, falling with a sigh that doesn't sound of any relief.
“You're a little trouble magnet, aren't you? What am I going to do with you, kid?”
Thick, weathered fingers comb through his hair. It makes the pain a little less important, and Peter doesn't object when a cool palm slides up under his bangs, a relief from the heat building up within him. The body he's slumped against stiffens.
“Jesus, Pete. You're burning up.”
All the fight had left him the moment he laid his head down, nervous energy sapped out of him. It leaves behind an empty, gnawing exhaustion despite the two days he'd spent in bed, and cradled the way he is, he's content to remain right there until he feels better again.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?” Mr. Stark asks hurriedly, hands patting him on his arms, down his legs– “Where's this fever coming from? Are you feeling sick?”
Somewhere, Peter can register that the change in tone and the uptick of a heartbeat in his ear means something to him, but he can't make the connection in his head—at least not in any way that matters.
He's heavy all over. His chest hurts.
“Yeah, okay.” Mr. Stark says decidedly. “You and me are going to pay Banner a visit.”
Peter can feel his arms being moved to loop around the man's neck, and he can muster only enough coherence to mutter a protest into his shoulder.
“Uh-huh,” Mr. Stark chuckles tightly in response to his mumble, scooping him up from his office chair. Peter's legs go quickly around his waist on instinct. “Christ, remind me to get a couple burgers in you later. You're not hurting my back nearly as much as you should be. FRI, where's big green hiding out?”
Peter feels each footstep as a jolt of his sore body, his head buried away from the light. The only hint as to where they are is the chime of the elevator doors behind him.
“Dr. Banner is currently in his biochemistry lab on level 87. Would you like me to take you to him?”
FRIDAY's voice comes from everywhere and nowhere, like she was the building itself or like a ghost in the walls—or maybe Peter's just inventing death where it has no business being. This is the only place he doesn't need to worry about dead things.
“Yes, dear. Make it snappy, would you?”
Peter feels like a dead thing, hanging in the arms of a stranger he's too attached to, like a starved dog guarding a pile of scraps. He thinks he should feel more of something, anything—but it's all evaporated in the heat.
He'd imagined death in every vivid possibility, waking him in a cold sweat, tearing out of his throat like something real—but never like this. Never so soft, never so easy.
He thinks if he dies like this it'd be okay. It doesn’t hurt. He's not homesick. He doesn't even feel the need to cry out and beg for life.
It's just like falling asleep. He can hear soft voices in the next room, and he's not afraid of the dark.
___________________________
“Do you think this is the universe punishing me for the shit I pulled in my youth?”
Tony's never had so many headaches in such a short span of time before. Every time he glances up at Peter, laid out in that bed like the first day they met, he feels another wave throb over his skull.
Bruce scoffs, eyes still focused on whatever he was typing on one of the medbay tablets.
“I hardly think this even makes a dent in it, buddy.”
Tony groans, rubbing harshly at his temples.
“Every time I see him I break him,” He says, and he thinks he means it as a joke, but it comes out much more subdued than he intends. Maybe he is serious, or at the very least afraid he is.
The ten calls he made to Ben Parker that went to voicemail aren't reassuring, either.
Bruce frowns, looking up at Tony over his glasses. It’s the same disapproving stare he’s been at the receiving end of many times before, and it makes him cringe just as hard every time.
“He’s going to be fine, Tony.” Bruce assures him, studying the monitor displaying the kid’s vitals before twisting something under the IV bag of sickly yellow fluid that makes the drip quicken. “It's a classic case of pneumonia. I'm guessing something got into his lungs that didn't belong there, and with the broken rib, he wasn't breathing deeply or coughing enough to clear it. I'm giving him plenty of antibiotics and fluids, hopefully his enhancements just need a little boost and they'll take over soon.”
The doctor looks over at Tony, shoulders slackenning at the look on the man's face.
“Seriously. You’ve done everything right with him. There’s going to be bumps in the road, and you know what you do then?”
Tony leans his elbow onto the armrest of the chair he’s in, right beside Peter's bed. Simultaneously feeling belittled by Banner’s little speech and desperate to hear the man’s advice, he relents.
“What?”
The doctor smirks, like he knows something Tony doesn't.
“Exactly what you're doing.”
Tony huffs, flustered. He takes to staring out at the city through the floor to ceiling windows that make up the left wall of the room. The city appears so much smaller when you're on top of it, yet the thought of spindly arms swinging between those rooftops is just as unnerving looking down as it is looking up.
“Jesus,” He mutters under his breath, head resting in his hand, covering his eyes. “What's the matter with me? I just met this kid, he's got no right to scare me to death like this.”
And looking at the kid how he is now, he feels his heart drop all over again. Laying there white as a ghost, his hair clumping together with sweat, an oxygen mask settled unnaturally over his face. IV lines cross over him like railway tracks, far too many for his stick thin arms. Bruises are already blooming where Bruce had tried to find a suitable vein several times over, explaining it as likely dehydration like that's supposed to make Tony feel better instead of worse.
“He's a sweetheart,” Bruce says thoughtfully. “The team is gonna love him, you know.”
Tony's eyes flick from Peter to Bruce and then back again. Something bitter and uneasy flutters underneath his ribs.
“You know why they wanted Spider-Man in the first place,” He reminds him firmly. “That's not something he's ready for, no matter how much he may think he is. If they—if they ask him? He'll say yes. I know he will.”
Tony swallows, a weight he's not sure the source of sitting over him.
“He's protective of his identity. He doesn't trust anybody, not really. But if the Avengers meet Spider-Man before they've met Peter Parker, everything is going to go to hell in a handbasket faster than I can say ‘I told you so’.”
He keeps his voice down, despite how Peter's still thoroughly asleep. A quick glance at the kid shows his stillness, unmoving apart from shaky eyes moving under closed eyelids.
“I need them to trust me on this. I'll prove it to them when the kid is ready, but—” He sighs, head turning to face the window once again. The sun is just beginning to dip below the skyline, casting the room in a haze of dusky blue. “He's not. He's not ready yet.”
Bruce stares at him for a few long seconds, tablet clasped between his hands at his waist.
“I know you want to protect him,” The man says carefully, a practiced pause between his words. “I just think that,” A sigh, a fidget of the fingers. “Perhaps they deserve a little more trust from you as well.”
Tony doesn't respond, doesn't know what he'd say in the first place.
The doctor takes a deep breath before turning to leave.
“His vitals are looking a little better than they were earlier, and those antibiotics are working to bring that fever down. His oxygen's back up to something closer to normal, too.” He relays, eyes scanning over statistics and monitors. “I don't expect him to be up until morning, though. He needs the rest to recover.” Bruce eyes him expectantly, hooking a hand around the door frame. “You should get some sleep too, Tony. He’ll be okay for the night, he’ll need you at your best tomorrow.”
The man offers him a ‘good night’ as he walks away, and Tony replies with the same.
Alone, the kid’s rasping breaths are only louder, and as much as he hates to admit it, he knows Bruce is right. Wasting away with worry isn’t going to do the kid any good, and there’s a beautiful wife waiting for him upstairs that he thinks he really needs right now.
Too many of his joints creak when he stands up, a low groan escaping him as he stretches. He takes one last look at the kid, heartbeat steady, sound asleep.
“FRIDAY, let me know if he needs anything.” He pats the kid gently on his ankle before leaving him for the night. “And call Ben Parker again, would you?”
—--------------
Peter wakes up laying on his back, arms evenly spaced out at his sides.
The noise of the city is quieter than usual—more distant, enough so that Peter considers dozing right back off again until something catches in his throat. His eyes blow wide open in the dark room as half-asleep panic falls over him and heaving, rattling coughs tear out of his chest, carving up his throat on their way.
It feels like drowning, it feels like smoke—it feels like he's wide awake, now.
It takes only a second for Peter to realize, when he looks down at his lap to white sheets instead of the plaid navy ones he's expecting. Hazy memories of needle pricks and orange peels come quickly to mind as he blinks the white room into focus, along with the cold realization that he is far, far past his curfew.
Adrenaline hits him like he's swallowed a hot coal, so hot that it feels like ice—burning down, down, down. A shiver rolls under his skin, a cold sweat breaking out over the apples of his cheeks.
Suddenly, the quiet is menacing instead of soothing, and he's met with the urgent need to leave.
He scrambles out from underneath the blankets, air biting cold as it hits his heaving lungs. The room is freezing, almost unbearable without the added warmth of the blanket. Still, sweat stings his eyes as it falls in droplets, the tremors doing nothing to help his bumbling fingers when he reaches for the tape over the back of his hand, missing the mark several times before simply tearing out the line in frustration. The blood that streams from the needle mark feels important, but he can only stare at it, his very breathing throwing him off balance.
The red is bright against the white of the room, everything blurring and ebbing like a watercolour painting. His swimming vision does little to settle the headache following his every heartbeat, the pain seeming to echo down through his teeth.
It's cold. Nothing makes sense except for the fact that he needs to get home. Nothing else seems to matter.
He wipes his bloodied hand half-heartedly on the sheets, body aching and burning in the empty room, stomach twisting and throat sinking with the unexpected urge to cry.
His head hurts. He wants to go home.
Silently, he takes stock of himself—he can't remember if he'd been wearing a shirt earlier, but his chest is bare now save for the heavy, tight bruising over his ribs and the circular stickers he's quick to tear off of himself. He's wearing only his nice pair of jeans and socks, and the chill seeps easily through them.
Each blink is like smothering a fire, fist reaching to rub at his eye knocking against something over his nose. Something snaps when he tears at that one, but it doesn't feel important. Hardly even feels like it happened.
He holds tightly onto the bed rail as he swings his feet onto the floor. The world tilts on its axis. He wants to go home.
Walking feels like floating, feels like crawling, feels like a stop motion movie. He bumps his knee into an armchair, but finds his zip up hoodie hanging over the back of it and wastes no time in throwing it on, zipping it up to his chin and tossing the hood over his icy ears.
The door to his room slides open as he approaches it, feet slipping and sliding against the flooring. It sends him stumbling into the wall of the hallway, grappling against the wall for purchase. The blurry sight of the elevator at the end of the hallway gives him the strength to move forward.
He blinks and he's there. He thinks a long while has passed.
The elevator doors open as soon as he stands in front of them, and Peter easily takes the invitation and steps inside. The lights are like headlights of oncoming cars and he closes his eyes but nothing hits him. Still, everything hurts, and he squints.
“Mr. Parker,” A faceless voice says, startling him like a stray cat. “I do not believe you are meant to be up. Do you need something? I can alert someone for you.”
Peter doesn't know the voice, but the idea of anyone knowing what he’s doing makes his stomach drop like he’s a criminal. He doesn’t think he’s breaking any rules. He feels like he’s in trouble, like he is trouble.
“No,” He croaks out, voice weak and cracking. “No, I—home. Home, please, I—I’m going.”
The voice is quiet for a moment, and Peter doesn’t do it on purpose but he's leaning heavily against the wall of the elevator.
“I can direct you to the nearest exit as per your request, I must however advise against you leaving in your current condition.” It scares Peter again to hear, head lolling to look up at the ceiling for the source of the sound. “Are you sure you would not like me to contact Mr. Stark or Dr. Banner?”
Peter shakes his head so hard it makes him list sideways, and he must respond because the elevator begins to move. Peter gives up on standing and simply sits on the floor, stomach turning at the motion.
The elevator opens up to a small area with a hallway stretching out on either side, a stairwell to the left and a metal door in the middle of it all. Above it there's a red sign lit up with the word ‘exit’.
“Here is one of the tower’s fire exits, it will lead you to the street on the south side of the building. The temperature in Manhattan is 59° Fahrenheit, and your current temperature is 104.7° Fahrenheit. Your attire is unfit for long term exposure in your condition. If you’d just allow me to—”
Peter’s up and stumbling through the door before the voice can finish.
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tony gives up on trying to get any more sleep at around 7 am. He waits for sunlight to creep underneath the blackout curtains before he quietly rolls out of bed, hand reaching for his lower back on autopilot when he stands.
He lets his eyes fall on Pepper, still sound asleep, strawberry hair strewn around her head like a halo, and silently apologizes for leaving her so soon.
He had known from the second his head hit the pillow that it was going to be a rough night, though not for the reasons it usually was.
The damn kid had his heart racing all night long. Despite knowing FRIDAY had watch over his vitals, there was an anxious string around him that kept yanking him awake whenever he began to drift off. However, he refused to give in to the urge to tear out of bed and check on the kid for himself no matter how many times the desire presented itself.
As much as he liked the kid, he couldn’t help the sliver of worry that he’d been overstepping with him.
The teenager was quick and sharp like a rabbit on its hind legs, always on alert, always waiting for something to come lunging at his throat. He flinches like a baby bird and is almost just as fragile, hollow-boned and flighty. It’s hard to do anything other than smother the poor thing, going against all expert advice to leave the animal in a shoebox with some holes in the lid and call for someone else who knows what they are doing.
Tony was terrified he’d kill the kid with a heart attack before they can truly understand each other.
So, he left the kid in a shoebox for the night. No matter how badly he wanted to watch him like a hawk all night long.
But, having successfully completed this task, he decides there’s no harm in checking in on the little bird now.
He’s as quiet as he can be putting on some clothes, careful not to wake Pepper who sleeps lighter than a feather and rarely gets a restful night. Guiltily, he thinks this is mostly due to him.
He doesn’t dare even lift his feet, only shuffles out of the closet and through the door, shutting it carefully behind him. As soon as he’s in the hallway, he needs to know.
“Hey FRI, how’d the kid make out last night?” He asks, hoping his voice doesn’t portray the desperation he feels waiting for her answer.
The response comes a few seconds later than he expects, the AI almost hesitant in her answer. Several scenarios run through his mind in those few moments, but admittedly, none of them can prepare him for what she says next.
“As of 4:57 am this morning, Peter Parker is no longer in the building."
Chapter 10: red like the devil, wet like a lamb of god
Notes:
i'm here !!!
having some trouble with plot lately. I feel like i suck at plot so so very bad. I know what I want to happen as a theory ?? but do i really ?? sometimes i feel like a genius sometimes i know i am an idiot so we're working with what we have guys i've said it before and ill say it again i'm not that smart :p
this chapter is kind of a building block for what's coming (i think) so we'll see where we end up
hope you all enjoy anyways thanks so much for reading !!!
Chapter Text
Peter doesn't know how he makes it home, only knows that he does. Through hazy pulses of clarity and the memory of quivering muscles he ends up staring at the crooked numbers on his apartment door, the 6 leaving a white shadow of itself where it had once sat just above the peephole.
He pats the pockets of his hoodie and his jeans on instinct alone, finding them empty. It doesn't hit him what he was looking for until he twists the knob only to find it stiff—locked.
He blinks. Sways in place. Blinks again.
His hand doesn't leave the doorknob, trying it again and again every time he forgets he's already tried that.
The hallway light buzzes at a frequency that sounds like the intro to a song he'd heard on the radio before. He thinks—he thinks it's the one that MJ likes, because—because he likes her, and he wants to like what she likes so he sort of pays attention.
He leans his weight on the door, cracked paint sharp and cold against his burning head. Time passes in nonsensical ebbs and waves, and he doesn't know how long he stands there before he's falling, stopping abruptly with a jolt after just an instant.
He opens his eyes to a chain across his vision, a blurry figure just behind the now slightly open door.
“Peter?” Someone says, and he knows the voice. It's what he's been looking for. It's been an exhausting search but he's finally found what he's looking for and—he doesn't feel the relief he'd been anticipating. He doesn't feel like he's found anything, or maybe he just has to look harder but he just feels like a hole has been carved right out of him and he's so tired and it hurts —
“What—What are—” The voice says, cutting itself off.
Peter moves with the door as it's closed, unlocked, opened again. He falls right into the blurry figure, the one he'd wanted so badly, yet apologizes like he's bumped into a stranger on the subway.
The man doesn't push him off, and Peter doesn't have the strength to move himself, so he just lays there—pretends this fills the hole, pretends it's what he wanted.
For a moment they're both still, like a wild animal that's seen its reflection, each waiting for the other to make a move.
And then, a clumsy hand makes its way onto Peter's forehead, ice cold and unsure. The action is like sleepwalking, like subconscious repetition of something that happened once before.
“You…” The voice croaks, like it hasn't spoken for a long while. “You were…at school? You shouldn't—are you sick?”
Peter keeps his head against this familiar chest, eyes closed like someone who is very good at pretending, very good at remembering.
His feet move automatically when the man—Ben, he foggily recalls—begins to shuffle further into the apartment. He stops when the back of his ankles collide with something solid, hands on his shoulders gently pressing him down to sit on the couch.
“You’re burning up,” Ben mutters under his breath, eyebrows drawn together like he has a headache, or like Peter is the headache. “Did we—do you want me to call Dr. Walker? Is he–-are they open on Saturdays?”
Peter smiles, shakes his head. Sitting down and taking in the familiar smell of the apartment has brought him a little closer to himself—at least enough to remember that Dr. Walker retired several years back and that today was not Saturday.
He doesn’t care what the voice says. It sounds like him for real. He hardly even takes in the words, only listens to the sound alone.
It’s like water, and Peter is dying of thirst. He doesn’t care if it’s warm or it’s old, he doesn’t even care if it’s clean. He drinks it down without control, knowing he’s bound to bring it all back up but just maybe he’ll die with a wet tongue.
Ben makes a noise then, one that has Peter’s head creaking over to look him in the face. He has his hand plastered over his mouth, a mysterious glint to his eyes that Peter hasn’t seen in a long while that makes his stomach lift with something like hope before it drops like a heavy stone and stays there.
Ben closes his eyes and Peter watches as he swipes his hand away from his face like he’s ashamed of the very appendage. Peter wonders the last time he made the man proud.
“Hey, kid.” He says it like an old friend, sounds like chewing broken glass, sounds like Peter’s father or at least the closest he can remember. “I—I haven’t been around much, have I?”
A hand brushes the wet hair up over his head, and Peter wants to relish in it, wants to shove the man’s hand away and swallow down the hot lump of coal that shows up in the bottom of his throat. He wants it to last forever, he never wants to see him again, he wants everything and anything to feel like it belongs to him or like it’s real or at least like it doesn’t hurt and he wants it to come easily.
Peter hates when people say that you never know what you have until it’s gone. Peter knows. He knows what’s gone before it goes, and he watches it tease him in pieces of fleeting presence, like a swinging rope just out of his reach.
He could have everything, yet know he has nothing. He has nothing—nothing to keep, anyway.
“It’s okay,” is all he says. Words build up in his chest with an unbearable pressure.
His uncle shakes his head, flattens his lips and squeezes his eyes like he’s going to cry, like he’s going to be sick—
Peter could never hate him for what he’s done.
“I’m,” A sigh, a tight swallow to keep something down. “I’m going down, bud.” The man admits, like he’s confessing to a cancer, to an impending doom, to something that sounds an awful lot like Peter’s going to be alone again sometime soon. “You can’t go down with me, baby.”
It’s Peter’s turn for denial, shaking his head like he could shoo the implication of what Ben is saying away—the roof of his mouth feeling like it’s sinking into his throat, cells tearing themselves apart from each other. For the first time, Peter wishes he would yell instead. Everybody wants the truth until it's time to swallow it, and you realize that a lie goes down like a shot of something smooth and the truth goes down like choking. His world keeps swaying until he opens his eyes to a room turned on its axis, head against the arm of the couch.
He feels 5 again, parents freshly torn from him, their loss a gaping open wound that will never go away but hurts a little less when caring, grieving hands tuck him gently into bed.
“I don’t—” He sucks in a hitching breath, body burning . “I don’t want you to go.”
Ben cracks at his words, curling in on himself like his very body's giving in. Peter feels like he’s killed him too.
“I love you. So much.” He tells him, tears barely clinging to his waterline. “But I can’t love you in the way you deserve. Not—not like this.”
None of it feels real. It feels like a dream, a nightmare, like something he can definitely wake up from. It doesn't feel like something that should be happening to him, never to him. It's a tragedy that belongs to movie characters and friends of friends but it doesn't belong to him and he refuses to accept it as his.
Peter sniffles, hot and sweating and head pounding something terrible.
“I don't want you to go.” Are still the only words he can manage to force out, the only thing he can say that he's sure makes any kind of sense.
Ben looks wearier than ever, the light overhead casting long shadows over his downturned face.
“I know, I know, buddy.” He drags his hand down his face, wrinkles like cracks in the pavement, deep and permanent. “I'm so sorry,” He says with a whisper, hand going back to Peter's hair in a way that has the boy letting his eyes flutter closed. “Jesus, you're hot, kiddo. Let me get you something, okay? I'll be right back.”
He lets out a groan as he stands, something Peter hadn't even realized he'd missed until tears begin to well over in his eyes at the sound. It was just a small thing that made Ben Ben instead of just someone that looked like him.
Time isn't as it should be for him, but he thinks the man is gone quite a while before he comes back. He brings with him a wet washcloth and a weight that Peter doesn't need to see to know it's there. His face is red and empty.
The cloth is laid gently on his forehead, sending a shiver down his spine but soothing the burning behind his eyelids a fraction. The hand that lays it there stays on his hair.
“You look taller,” Ben says softly. Peter can hear his breath and heart catch. Peter can hear everything.
Neither of them say anything for a while after that. Ben doesn't move his hand. Peter wonders if there's a way to write the feeling down and keep it forever.
It’s almost like before. The couch smells of unwashed clothes and fear. Ben jolts at things that aren't there and shakes things Peter will never understand out of his head, scrubs at his ear, tries to squirm quietly and nonchalantly but it’s almost like before. He lets the fever blur the line.
A cough tears out of him, feels like it takes parts of him with it when Ben jumps like Peter had never been there in the first place. The pat he gets to the chest is purposeful and unsure.
“Uncle Ben?” He squeaks out, throat raw and tired under the words. Ben leans in to listen, Peter sees his childhood in his eyes, sees his end, sees no difference. “I don’t know—I can’t,” Another cough makes his whole body shake with it. “I don’t know how to help you,”
The admission feels like confessing to a horrible crime. It makes his mouth sour and his spine want to curl into itself with shame he can’t quite determine the source of. Words come out of him like sleep talking.
Ben’s lower lip wobbles, and Peter thinks he must have said something wrong. Ben’s face is looser than he remembers, tighter in the brow and limp elsewhere.
“That’s not your job.” Is the response he gives Peter, sounding more like he’s said it with Ben’s voice instead of the default one in his throat.
A tear carves a cool path down Peter’s hot cheek, breath tight and bouncing. He’s not entirely sure what he’s crying for, but a trembling thumb wipes it away and he knows that he’s very, very sad for something.
A knock at the door breaks their silence, sends Ben’s hand to rub nervously at the back of his neck when he looks down the hallway. Ben smiles down at him the way he does when he’s hiding something he thinks Peter’s too young to understand, like the time the neighbors found their cat asleep in the road and Ben wouldn’t tell him why they were crying, why they picked him up with a shovel instead of under the belly how he’d seen them do it many times before. He’s smiling now like he did back then when he told Peter that they’d all be okay soon and changed the conversation any time he mentioned it from then on.
“I’ll see who it is, just—just rest, okay?”
When he walks away, he thinks he must look just like he did when he went to open the door to a slightly smaller Peter, shaking and red and sandwiched between two police officers.
Without the shadow of a man over him, the lights hit him harder than before, and Peter closes his eyes against the sharp pain it sends through his skull. He hears voices but he feels like a goldfish listening through a bowl, sounds muted and bubbling and nonsensical to a fish.
Two sets of footsteps reenter the room, Peter sees an image of double vision, a figure and a shadow, something old and something new and strange walking towards him.
“Hey there, young nomad,” A softer, cleaner voice says, and Peter opens his eyes to a face he knows but can’t quite name. “You know, you’ve got far too much potential to jump into the drifter lifestyle just yet, yeah?”
Peter’s eyes stick when he blinks, heart thread through a needle, fingers stiff and frozen. The world around him drips like watercolour.
Yet another hand pushes back his hair, skin like ice against him even though Peter already can’t quit shivering.
“Hm,” The new person hums, hand gaining some tension. “Well, that explains it, huh? You’re almost well-done there, buddy. Why don’t we get you back to some good old acetaminophen on tap, bring that pot down to a simmer?”
Peter has no idea what the man is talking about, but he continues to allow things to happen around him while he’s content to just drift, body still yet coming and going in waves.
Voices loom over him, low and meaningful in a way that forces him to wonder if maybe God does talk to those who listen like Ben always says, like maybe crazy is only crazy to those who don’t understand and maybe he finally understands.
Hands worm their way under his wet back, shirt clinging to his skin like wings, a force he doesn’t bother to open his eyes to see lifting him up, up—carrying him away like an angel in every sense of the word.
He wonders if God will tell him why. He wonders if there’s any answer that would make it feel fair.
“—take care of him—”
Shuffling, the latch of a door.
“—with my life—”
Peter hears the gates of heaven open like an ungreased hinge.
“—I’ve got you, I’ve got you—”
Death is like falling asleep on the couch, like an angel carrying you to bed. God sounds like Ben, back when Peter knew his laughter like the words to a song.
He thinks if this is heaven, hell must be earth, and maybe that’s the whole point.
—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter wakes like an angel fallen, a sudden and unforgiving return to his fragile corpse.
A gasp escapes him, paralyzing him when something sharp tugs at his breath. A chill goes through him, up into his sinuses and down across his skin. He’s soaking wet all over.
“Woah, easy, kid.” Somebody says nearby, Peter’s heart jumping at the sound. Although unwilling, he pulls his heavy eyes open, a sea of white blinding him for a few blinks before focusing in on a blurry figure sitting close enough that he can only see their upper half.
“God?” He rasps, half asleep and half out of his mind, mouth remembering something his head didn't. The second the words leave his mouth he snaps fully into awareness, rubbing his eyes to reveal the smirking face of Tony Stark, decidedly not God.
“Well, now you're just feeding my ego.” The man smiles, Peter feels his face turn every colour but purple. “Not quite, the whole parting the sea thing was always a bit over my head. The water to wine on the other hand, now that's a bit more up my alley.”
He thinks Mr. Stark is far too amused by the most embarrassing thing to ever leave Peter's mouth, straight to the face behind every magazine and textbook and bedroom poster. What's worse is when he looks down to see he's clad in nothing but a paper gown that's clinging to his skin with sweat, hair obviously likewise drenched considering the draft that freezes the top of his wet head.
Peter pitches upright in bed, a flood of hazy, nonsensical scenes that don't feel like they happened with his permission falling into place in his head. His body is stiff like a machine in need of oil.
“Oh my god,” He chokes out, hands coming up to cover his reddening face. “Mr. Stark, I am so sorry, it was my first time working with you and I totally screwed it up! I just—I didn't want to miss my first day because that's totally unprofessional but I didn't mean to, like, keel over in your lab, I—”
“Kid, stop.” Mr. Stark cuts him off, holding up his hand, face straight and unreadable.
A mixture of unpleasant feelings builds up in his chest, spreading over his shoulders, down his back, and through his stomach. There's a fear he's felt before boiling under it all, back when May and Ben had first taken him in, right after his short stint in foster care when Peter had still felt like he was in a probation period—like he had to prove himself worthy to stay. So, he'd made his bed every morning, kept his shoes parked neatly by the door, put away his toys as soon as he was done with them—then, just when he was sure he'd earned it, he stood up on his tippy toes to put away one of May's mugs that had been drying in the rack, and the cup had wavered on the edge of the cupboard before crashing down onto the unforgiving kitchen tile. Peter had packed his suitcase that night, positive there'd be a stranger to pick him up in the morning and take him somewhere he didn't want to be.
Now, he's there again. He's broken a mug and there's not a chance Mr. Stark will keep someone so careless around.
“I'm not mad at you for swooning like a Victorian damsel,” He reassures him, albeit with a slight smirk that Peter chooses not to dwell on. “I'm more concerned about why you didn't just tell me you were hurt in the first place. I thought we were a team now, huh? You’re my little spider sidekick who tells me when he's broken something and contracted pneumonia so I can take him to my fully stocked, multi-million dollar medical wing and get all eight legs kicking again.”
When Peter gains the courage to look up from his lap, he’s surprised to see the man looks genuinely a little hurt, and Peter is ashamed but a little confused, a lot conflicted.
Peter's not meant to tell anyone anything. That's just how it is. What's his is his and no one else's, and when he bleeds it's imperative that he not bleed all over anybody else, especially not someone wearing a suit that's more expensive than Peter's wildest guess.
He's a closed door and it’s for the best. There’s a hoard of mess behind it and every time he opens it he risks it all coming tumbling out.
“I, well—I didn’t want to bother you with that, Mr. Stark.” He says honestly, winding the sheet-like blanket between his fingers anxiously. It feels like lying even though it’s the truth, like back when he’d been cornered by his aunt and uncle about his sneaking out and he’d tried to tell them that he wasn’t using drugs or getting into trouble and then one thing had led to another and all of a sudden May was dead and Ben—Ben.
The IV in his hand feels more like a tether the more a cold realization falls over his goose-bumped skin.
“Oh my god, I didn’t—What time—How long have I been here?” The pain in his side is like an afterthought as he kicks at the blanket tying his legs down, trying to swing his feet over the side of the bed. “Ben’s going to kill me, I was supposed to be home and I never—”
His heart’s beating like the wings of a hummingbird, panic and dread overwhelming him when hands join the blanket in attempts to keep him down, a series of scraping, stabbing coughs pouring out of his chest in the struggle.
“Hey, hey, woah, woah!” Mr. Stark is standing over him, one hand attempting to keep him from kicking and the other planted on his shoulder. “It’s okay, your—Peter! Your uncle knows you’re here, buddy. Calm down, everything’s been sorted out.”
Peter squeezes his eyes shut, lungs peeling off the walls of his chest, a new panic taking precedence when he realizes he can’t breathe. He’s coughing so hard there’s pressure behind his eyes, lungs wringing themselves out and refusing to let up. White sparks take over his eyes.
“Okay, okay, it’s okay—” A finger curls around something trailing over his cheeks, pulling it out from under his nose and up over his head. In its place, something larger and louder is pressed over his face, digging in over the bridge of his nose and chin. He shakes his head in attempts to dislodge it, sending tears streaking down his face. Something catches him and forces his head still. “Don’t—kid, stop! You’re okay, you’ve gotta calm down, kiddo. Your levels are dropping.”
Every muscle in his body is shaking with exertion, hand fisted in the front of his gown with knuckles gone white. He manages to suck in a small breath, the air burning in his chest like hot embers, but enough to help bring the world around him a bit back into focus.
“There you go, just take it easy, okay?”
Peter lets the calm words soothe his raw nerves like a balm, trying hard to take slow, careful breaths until he builds up the strength to take a deeper, shuddering gasp for air. Everything hurts all over again, now—like he’s ripped off the scab of a healing wound. A low groan slips out from his lips when he has the oxygen to spare, fire licking up between his ribs and riding up his throat.
The feeling of something circling around the back of his head brings him back to reality, eyes snapping open when he remembers exactly where he is.
Mr. Stark is sitting on the edge of the bed, eyes crinkled with concern as he uses one hand to hold what Peter now recognizes as an oxygen mask to his face while the other adjusts the elastic around his head. The man’s face clears up when he notices Peter’s eyes open, sitting up straighter and letting the mask sit on its own.
“Well, then.” He says with a deep breath that has Peter jealous. “Guess that’s a topic I should have covered earlier on, huh? Sorry, kid. I’m new to this whole mentoring thing. There’s a reason why Pepper’s CEO.” He pats Peter on the knee, smile fragile but there.
Peter smiles back despite himself. He thinks they’re both something fragile right now.
“It’s okay, Mr. Stark.” He croaks, voice quiet and raw. The billionaire doesn’t look satisfied by Peter's squeak of a response, lips curling into a line, eyes studying him like he’s looking for something that perhaps Peter doesn’t want him to find. “Sorry.”
Mr. Stark relaxes a little, rubbing Peter's knee apologetically. Peter stares at the white line scars on the man’s fingers and wonders.
“Seriously though, that’s my bad. I should have figured you wouldn’t remember much.” He says, and Peter’s confused for a moment before he continues. “After you checked out in my lab I brought you here, and after Bruce got you all hooked up I left you to get some rest for the night.”
Peter blinks, a little unnerved at having missed so much without any recollection. His life only works because he knows and everyone else doesn’t—he’s at a loss of what to do when everyone else is in the know and Peter is the clueless one. It’s a loss of control that, in his current state, he can’t afford to dwell on.
Mr. Stark crosses his arms loosely, the bags under his eyes more obvious when he turns his head a certain way against the light. Peter feels a tight hand of guilt wrap itself around his stomach when he realizes he’s the reason behind them.
“Now at this point I’m thinking everything is hunky dory, until of course I discover in the morning that a little spider managed to crawl out from under the cup I put over him and proceeded to stumble around barefoot and out of his mind with fever all around the streets of New York City in the middle of the night.”
Peter’s eyes widen, stomach dropping so quickly that it almost takes him with it. There’s a cold sweat over his skin but underneath he’s on fire, burning alive because how can this possibly be happening to him right now?
He wished the bad things that happened to him were like the bad things that happened to other people. He wished he could just break his arm skiing on spring break. He wished his dog would eat his homework.
Apparently noticing his distress, the man drops his shoulders slightly, lips straightening into a thin line.
“I found you at your apartment, god only knows how you got there but for the sake of my blood pressure I’m not going to think about that too much.” Mr. Stark sighs, hand pushing back his hair. The way he is now, dressed down in a loose t-shirt thrown overtop of a long sleeve bunched up to his elbows, wearing a pair of jeans that have obviously seen many nights in the lab—he doesn’t look like a man from TV. He looks like something that belongs to Peter. “You scared your poor uncle half to death. He looked like he’d seen a ghost when I got there.”
An icicle of fear shows itself with the realization that the closest thing he had to normal had mingled with the untied shoelace, cracked sidewalk, tangled necklace chain part of his life that Peter kept neatly tucked away behind the door. However, the feeling doesn’t escalate how it normally would, a flash of memory quietens the worry that someone so clean has discovered that Peter is filthy underneath, that the smell has crept out from the cracks in the door jam, that Peter has sullied the pristine white expanse of the world he’s been invited into like someone’s mistaken a flea-riddled coyote for a stray dog.
Keeping Ben from destroying Peter's carefully constructed facade is a lot like trying to keep a toddler from telling a secret. Peter listens very carefully whenever Ben has to talk to anyone outside of their bubble, ready to steer conversation and redirect questions at the drop of a penny.
Ben without Peter is like a car without a steering wheel. He cannot go where Peter isn’t, and if he does? One can only pray there’s nothing in the way.
“Anyways,” Mr. Stark continues, clearing his throat, smoothing his hands over the wrinkles in his pants. He doesn’t look Peter in the eye. “Your internship has been upgraded to sleep-away camp! A nice, relaxing getaway where you get to curl up in your sleeping bag while Bruce and I try to find an antibiotic that works on spiders.”
Mr. Stark is smiling like he's trying not to freak him out and Peter thinks that it's not working. The kind of apprehension that belongs to him isn't the kind that can be reasoned with or quelled or talked down because he's not afraid of what might happen. He's waiting for what will.
“But my uncle—” He tries to argue, cut short by a hand on his knee.
“Has already given me the okay,” Mr. Stark reassures him, speaking calmly like he's just answered all of Peter's worries. “Signed all the permission slips and everything. Even the one that confirms you're not allergic to peanuts, so if you're good then maybe you can expect some s’mores in your future, huh?”
There's no reason for him to be frustrated with the man for not knowing what he's done. It's exactly what Peter wanted. He wants him to be clueless—but he's just signed them up for something neither of them are ready for and Peter can't even warn him.
“What about school?” He tries again, breath coming a little quicker despite his attempts to keep his cool. A hot flush creeps over his cheeks and up the back of his neck. “I can't miss it, I'm on a scholarship! If I have too many absences I'll lose it and I—”
“—Will have a doctor's note,” Mr. Stark interjects, sly smirk on his face like he's got it all figured out when really he doesn’t have a clue. “Which, according to the rules and expectations section of the Midtown School of Science and Technology website, will, quote: pardon students from any absence, tardiness, or participation related penalties .”
And Peter kind of wants to scream, kind of wants to cry, kind of wants to bolt out the window he's been eyeing and just keep running until he can't anymore, but he doesn't end up doing any of those things. He's a pleaser and a coward and perhaps they're one and the same.
“You read my school website?” Is what he ends up saying. He's tired of having to think about what he's going to say before he says it. It's exhausting and Peter is outmatched and he knows it.
“I did,” The billionaire says, appearing to relax at Peter's lack of fight. Peter’s not sure he has any left. “Well, FRIDAY did.” He relents. “She just gave me the rundown. I just can't get through the fine print like she can.” He nudges Peter gently on the shoulder, and he's smiling with all his teeth like it's convincing. Like he's a stranger and Peter's at a police station, a man in blue he's never met holding his face forward, asking him pointedly what his favorite subject is in school while two others in uniform silently scrub at the red on his hands.
It's a face that begs him not to think about the blood. Like he could ever forget about the blood.
“Mr. Stark, you don't need to do this.” He says. He means it like a reassurance but it comes out like a plea.
You can't protect me from what has already happened. I can feel it underneath my fingernails even when you're standing in front of it.
“Nonsense,” The man waves him off, standing up swiftly and poking at a few buttons on a monitor like it's nothing unusual. Like Peter's nothing unusual. “As a genius, billionaire, philanthropist, etcetera—it's my duty to protect and nurture the young minds of the future.” He stops, turning sharply to poke a finger in the center of Peter's forehead. “Which includes keeping those little eggheads from going hard-boiled.”
The action has Peter a little cross-eyed, which makes him a little nauseous, and therefore a little complacent. He brings a shaking hand to shield his eyes from the light, leaning back in bed. He's embarrassed, overwhelmed, and totally, totally screwed.
Even with his eyes closed, he can feel the shift of the man in front of him, can practically see his face changing.
“Look, kid.” The bedsheets pull as he moves, turning to better face Peter. “I know this is less than ideal, and I wish I had a better idea but, frankly? You're pretty damn sick, kid.”
Peter sighs as much as his chest allows, hand falling down to his side. Mr. Stark is frowning as he looks at him, but quickly smiles when he sees that Peter is watching.
“It's just until we find something to kick that infection, alright? You might even fight it off on your own, it's just, your enhancements—” The man grimaces, breathing through his teeth. “This is the best place for you right now, I promise. And well, I don't know if you've heard, but Bruce is a pretty smart cookie. He'll get you up and climbing that water spout again in no time.”
The warm, reassuring look he gives him only serves to turn the fear into guilt. Peter’s beginning to think they’re the only two emotions he has left.
“Mr. Stark,” He mutters, mouth twisted and wobbling. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, sir, I—It’s just—”
“I know,” Mr. Stark cuts in, dropping his hand onto his shoulder. “I know, Pete. It’s okay.”
The man rubs circles over his aching muscles, sounding so sure of himself it has Peter biting his cheek to keep from crying out. Nothing can ever go right for him and he’s so sick of it. He’s so tired. Everything hurts.
“Aw, c’mon, kid.” The man’s voice croaks, losing its earlier confidence and replacing it with something raw. Peter begs his quivering face not to fall. “I’ve got loads of campfire stories up my sleeve, you know.” He raises his eyebrows, grinning encouragingly, eyes so gentle that Peter has to look away.
He smiles back, but keeps his eyes closed. He’s sure if he opens them he would cry.
“There you go,” Mr. Stark laughs softly, hand still circling over his shoulder. “We’ll be alright, kid.”
Peter nods and smiles like he believes him.
Around them, the waning sunlight creeps in through the glass walls, the city lit up in bright orange slowly giving way to blue. The streets are as busy as they always are, lights dancing up and down the buildings in a way that has Peter burning with envy. Out there, covered head to toe in a skin that isn’t his and powers he was never meant to have, he never feels more like himself.
He lets his eyes wander over the skyline.
It isn’t that he doesn’t want this life, he thinks. Maybe he’d just like to live in it instead of puppeteering it from the outside. Maybe he’s just tired of holding it together at the seams. Maybe he’d like to be someone who sews.
“It’s getting late,” Mr. Stark says quietly, standing up from the end of Peter’s bed. The sheets where he’d been sitting are wrinkled, and the side of Peter’s leg is suddenly cold. The man rubs at the small of his back before bending over with a heavy breath. When he stands, he has Peter’s backpack in his hand, dropping it onto the bed next to him. “Your uncle packed you some stuff for your stay, but I’m not sure exactly what’s in there, so whatever you need, whatever time of day, you just ask, alright?”
Peter nods, glad to have something familiar with him, even if he’s not confident it’s not full of mittens from the bottom of the closet and dryer lint instead of outfits. He pulls the bag onto his lap and lays his arms on top of it. It smells like his room. It smells like sleeping in his own bed.
“Listen,” Mr. Stark begins, shifting on his feet. He’s standing at the bedside, looking down at Peter apprehensively. “I’ve got somewhere I need to be for a few hours, but I’ll be heading back down here as soon as I’ve got that out of the way, okay? They—I couldn’t get out of it.” The man rubs at the back of his neck, looking apologetic.
It feels silly that Peter doesn’t want him to go. They hardly know each other and Peter can’t keep forcing a persona onto anything warm and human-shaped.
Still, the room is cold, and the empty spot by Peter's legs reminds him.
He spends a good few minutes reassuring the man that he’d be alright on his own before Mr. Stark relents, but not before pulling an extra blanket out from the supply closet and tucking it tightly over him gently like Peter is something important. He leaves the tv remote on the rolling table next to him and instructs him that he can ask FRIDAY for anything he wants.
It’s silly that Peter doesn’t want him to go. It’s silly that he feels a tight lump in his throat watching the man walk away.
Alone, Peter sighs, looks out the window, thinks about Ben, unzips the bag—
He pulls it open to reveal a stack of perfectly folded outfits, his phone and his charger, his toothbrush in a small ziploc bag—it’s the same arrangement Ben would put together all those years ago when Peter would spend the night at Ned’s, and Ben would drop him off, but first he’d always take him to the corner store to rent a dvd and sneak some junk food that May wouldn’t like him eating into his backpack because it was their little secret and Ben wouldn’t tell if he didn’t.
And that’s not what gets him, because on top of all of that is a worn, matted fur teddy bear, one that May’d sewn up countless times because Peter loved it right through—because it was the only thing he had left of his parents and now the mended seams are all he has of May and he usually keeps it on the top bunk now because he’s too old to sleep with teddy bears but secretly he’d sleep with it when the nights got really bad and he hasn’t let Ben see him with it in a long, long time.
But here it is, carefully placed on top of his favorite hoodie like it was always meant to be there.
Peter pulls it out of the backpack, pulls it tightly to his chest, rolls over onto his unbroken side and cries.
When Mr. Stark returns a few hours later, Peter is fast asleep. The bear is buried under three shirts, a pair of sweatpants, and a toothbrush in a ziploc bag.
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