Close my eyes
He didn’t know how long he had been there, laying with his forehead pressed to the ground, his knees tucked under his stomach, rocking back and forth. It could’ve been seconds, or hours, or years. He tried to calm himself down, tried to walk himself through the despair, just as he always did, but it was too much.
He didn’t know where the hurt began, and he couldn’t comprehend the end of it. He couldn’t get the voice out of his head, sounding like Dr. Strange, telling him it no longer exists. He no longer exists. The two versions of him delivered similar news, that night and all those months ago at the Statue of Liberty. He couldn’t tell them apart, their words, the sound of them—it all blended together.
He heard the echo of metal clunking to his far left, a creaking, grating noise as it hit the rooftop. He knew Tony had found him. He wasn’t surprised, he’d half expected the sound of repulsors to be firing the moment he hit the fire escape.
There was the hiss of air and then the clap of shoes on cement, indicating the sharp approach of the man. “Peter?” He called, tentative, and he could hear him just a few steps away.
“Just—just give me a minute,” He garbled, through panting breaths, pressing his skin into the hard ground and scraping it as he shuddered. It was comforting, in a twisted sort of way, that he could feel it. He tried to plead another reassurance, but all that came out of his mouth was a choked sort of hiccup.
He heard Tony kneel, then felt his hands on his shoulder blades, coaxing him to sit up. He kept mumbling, begging for just a little more time, just a few more seconds, just another minute where he can bang his head against the ground and lose himself in the impossibility of inhaling clean.
“It’s okay,” Tony was saying, helping him unfold from where he had wound himself. “You’re going to be okay,”
Peter coughed, mucus and spit and tears splattering along the concrete floor, tearing up his insides and making him gag. Nothing was okay. He wasn’t okay. The world wasn’t okay. It didn’t exist. He didn’t exist. He didn’t exist. He didn’t exist. He didn’t…
“It’s alright,” The man soothed, his own voice splintering with a worry he didn’t understand. He felt himself give in, just a little, his resolve crumbling and his body going slack. Tony eased him back, and he pressed himself into the man's side, gripping his shirt, letting out a wet, breathy noise from his mouth as he moved. “Oh, Pete,”
He sobbed, and it shook his lungs and wrung out his bones and left him empty, hungry for any sort of grief that might overwhelm him again, keeping him full and tensed. “Mr. Stark,” There was a rasp in the back of his throat making it so much quieter than he needed it to be.
He wanted to scream it, to yell and rip at his vocal cords until there was nothing left. Until he was nothing at all. “I want to go home,” He pressed his nose into the folds of fabric bunched between his fingers, hiding his face for just a moment. It was so much softer than the rough grind of the roof. It sickened him.
“Okay,” Tony said, his arms wrapped so tightly around him, cradling his head and rubbing up and down his back. “We can go home. I’ll carry you,” He offered, and Peter felt something build within him. It was unrecognizable, the tightness of fury that grasped at him.
“I can’t,” He whispered. “I can’t go home. Mr. Stark, I can’t go back. Didn’t you hear him?” He disentangled himself, slowly, feeling the pressure build in his head, making his ears pop and his cheeks get warm. It disappeared just as quickly, a rush of senselessness flowing through him. He felt cold; the tears on his face bearing the breeze. “There’s nothing there.” He told him, and his voice nearly caught in his throat.
He crawled to the edge of the roof, aware distantly that Tony was scrambling to his feet, following right behind him. He pressed his back against the wall, pulling his knees to his chest and feeling the air rattle through him. He felt so cold; the thin shirt he had pulled over the morning before sticky against his back with sweat.
Tony crouched next to him, steadying himself with a hand against the ledge, and Peter could do nothing but stare right past him. Everything was blurred, spinning beneath the wetness clinging to his eyelashes.
“Breathe,” Tony reminded him gently, his hand finding Peter’s shoulder again.
“I can hear a car alarm, six blocks away. It’s been going off for three minutes, twenty seconds, twenty one, twenty two…” He felt the air enter his lungs, felt the way it expanded his chest, stretching his skin and cracking his ribs. It was all so dulled. He looked to his mentor, helpless. “I…I don’t think it’s real.”
Tony slid further down the brick, pressing his hands on his knees and looking out over the city. “I can’t help you with that one, kid,” He admitted, a light fondness seeping into his tone, outweighed by the exhausted worry. “What else do you hear? Give me something closer, maybe I can help…help confirm,”
He pressed a hand to his mouth, trying to keep something in that he didn’t know was there. He inhaled through his nose, and his shoulders crackled with it. “I can…hear the tv. Just downstairs. The window it open,”
Tony stayed quiet for a long moment, then let out a quiet hum. “Yeah. I can hear it. It sounds like they’re playing…”
“SNL. They’re reruns. I think I’ve seen this bit before, I used to watch the show with Ben,”
“What else?” Tony prompted, and Peter felt his eyebrows furrow. To focus; to take a moment and step outside of himself, to listen and function and breathe normally. A weak, demanding effort.
“I can hear the fire escape creak. It’s windy, and someone put a…lawn chair out. It keeps slipping back and forth between the wall and the railing,” He wet his lips, and felt the other man nod, mutely, letting him sink into it. “I can hear you. You’re breathing lightly, but it’s forced. It’s like you’re out of breath, but you’re trying not to gasp,”
A rush of air, a bursting laugh. “Damn, kid, you caught me,” He placed a hand on Peter’s neck, carefully and slow, smoothing down the long pieces of hair that curled just before the hem of his shirt. “Anything else?”
Peter unfocused his gaze, staring at nothing in particular, nearly going cross-eyed. “I can hear…your heartbeat. It’s kind of mechanical. I don’t know how to…because the arc reactor, that buzzes, but it’s like your heart buzzes too…it’s racing. You’re scared.” He squeezed his eyes shut, forcing air through his nose and back in again. “Am I scaring you?” He asked, his voice more monotone than he’d realized.
There was a long moment, one where Peter kept his eyes shut, but felt the world move around him. Felt the humid air against his skin, the shift of fabric from his skin, from Tony’s jacket. He felt the ground, rough and stiff, beneath his palms. He felt the warmth of his mentors hand against his neck, so unsure and yet so determined to hold its place. He opened his eyes, blinking to the other, his face so achingly tight.
“Sometimes,” He began, quietly, as if afraid anything louder would scare him away again. “You look so happy. I see you with Harley, with Kate, with Cassie and Kamala. You were grinning and laughing and I thought, ‘that’s my kid right there’. And I’m so—” He broke off, choked up and still trying to pretend that he wasn’t. His voice was cracked, garbled and hoarse. “I’m so grateful that you’re back. In any capacity. But then there are these moments…”
Peter felt like he should be saying something, feeling something more than that rumble of nothing that was stuck to his insides, gooey and raw and inescapable. He knew he looked blank, he knew he looked empty.
Tony gripped his arm with a free hand. “Pete, there are these moments were you look so fucking sad, and I just…I don’t know why. I don’t know how to help. Is it because of me, or May, or something else?”
He pressed his thumb, gentle and calloused against the line of his brow, wiping away sweat or dirt or a mixture of both. It was such a soft gesture, something he could recognize came from a paternal instinct that had grown within him. It made his throat feel so much tighter as he staggered an inhale.
His mentor continued, “And you’re allowed to be sad, and angry, and scared, but please,” He leaned in further, just enough so that he could try and meet his eyes. “Please tell me why,”
Peter flexed his fingers, trying to bring some feeling back into his body, even through the black hole that threatened to consume him. “I only want to do this once,” He admitted softly, and Tony’s face tightened.
“Okay,” He said, quiet against the roaring storm in his head, and pulled Peter back into a desperate embrace. “Let’s go talk to the wizard.”