I don't think I know you.

“I-I’m sorry who?” Peter stared at him again, with that same-suspicious hint in his eyes. 

“Beck-he’s a bad guy who tried to kill me-he ruined my life.” Did-how did Tony even resemble that-more importantly-who the fuck was trying to kill his kid-and why? Peter was mild-meddling at most-he never did anything to deserve killing-It didn’t matter. Later. Even if Tony felt like scouring the whole world for answers, right now was not the time. 

“I can confidently say my name is not Beck.” Peter still looked hesitant about it. “C’mon. Let’s get you home before it starts to ice.” He wasn’t that good of a driver. He wouldn’t want to get caught out this far from home. Tony hauled himself into the driver's seat, waiting for Peter to climb in. It was a longer wait than he thought it would be.   

Mistrust is always fun.

Except it never was. It wasn’t fun to see in Wanda-much less anyone else. Peter-especially with the new memories that had come flooding back of his somewhat-over-confident, agent of chaos that somehow gained a name as calm as ‘Peter’. This is not the exact image of Peter Parker that had rushed back into his head not-too long ago. 

Peter fumbled with his seatbelt, nearly tearing it out of the holder. He gave him a very uncomfortably consistent side-eye. 

“You don’t have to give me a ride home.” But he was going to, now wasn’t he? 

“Trust me, I’d rather go out of my way to drop you off than have you walking home alone.” Just because he was Spider-Man didn’t mean Tony was going to let a child walk around New York alone. 

Okay and maybe he was getting him something on the way home. So what? 

He had bigger things to worry about, like the implications that some creep who Peter was pretty sure wanted him dead was around somewhere-and could possibly impersonate Tony. Or why he was so scared of him-well…he did say he tried to kill him-fuck-was he sill roaming around somewhere? Or was Peter just being paranoid?

That made him want to leave him in that ‘apartment’ even less.

He was almost sure he knew the name too. That was unsettling enough-and the whole ‘he tried to kill me’ and he ‘ruined my life’ thing made it sound a lot worse. Maybe Peter was being hyperbolic. Teenagers were probably hyperbolic all the time-even if that didn’t really wave away Peter’s whole obvious fear of being around him, it still made Tony feel a bit better. 

“Y’know, I was looking at some old news the other day kid-seems you’ve been busy.” It’s true. He’d seen the news for the past three years-fighting the elementals-or whatever that was-weird shaky video evidence of Spider-Man fighting an octopus-man, and several others-bank robberies, bike-theft, all kinds of things he’d been up to. He didn’t have time to look through it all before he’d gone to hunt him down-but there had been little glimpses of gore-and suffering on Peter’s part swimming amongst the insane amount of Spider-Man footage of him doing something trivial. 

He hadn’t stopped to look at the more daring acts for too long. Knowing it was a kid stopping that train-or elevator-or building from falling and crushing other people with his own body removed the filter of heroism for him. Had Peter always been trying to stop bigger disasters like that? The only one he can distinctly remember was that one boat-but he was angry-not worried after it. Wouldn’t he have been worried? He cared about Peter’s life back then too-he distinctly remembers saying something about him being in school-if he had been doing big things like that-not in isolated incidents he would have called him about it. 

He used to leave him so many voicemails-the only ones he had received in the last three years were sad. There weren’t any excited ‘I told churro lady directions again, and this time she bought me a sandwich!’ voicemails anymore. There were twelve of them in the first year Tony had been unable to see him. All of them somehow ended up with Peter crying-apart from the last two, where Peter-who apparently had assumed he was dead-seemed a bit happier. He told him he had a girlfriend, that he was trying very hard to be what everyone expected, and that he might have fixed his spider-sense for good. 

The last four over the next two years were not so good. Tony-who had been awake, but somehow unaware at the time had received four more voicemails over those two years, the first three had been about his aunt’s death-and about Peter apparently intending to kill someone for the murder. About his loss of everyone-and really just how much he missed people knowing him-and a voicemail dedicated to the ‘dead’ people that he hoped wouldn’t have forgotten him-since they were dead when it happened. 

His last message-the one from last year was an apology for calling, and a promise that he wouldn’t do it again-and he didn’t. It had almost been another year since that call, and so far he’d kept his promise. 

Tony kind of wished he hadn’t. If he had gotten a phone call in March-when he was deemed well off enough to speak to his friend’s and family-to let them know he’s alive, he would have liked to receive that call. 

Tony knew that Peter-and the people he continuously stopped had been busy. Both as Spider-Man, and as Peter. 

He just kind of wished he’d known who he was at the time so he could help him out. 

“Not really.” Lies. This time he knew what Peter had been up to, and it had indeed been enough to keep him busy. “I-I had enough time to sleep, and eat and stuff sometimes y’know, so I wasn’t as busy as I could’ve been.” Tony glanced at him. Right…cause being able to do the things he absolutely had to do was indicative of free-time….except it wasn’t? Okay-Tony can’t exactly lecture Peter on good eating-and sleeping schedules, but he did do it now-he didn’t let himself get too wrapped up to eat-and ‘rest his eyes’ for a few minutes. Okay most if not all of that was Pepper-but it still happened. Peter wasn’t even saying that sometimes he had to fight a battle and push those things aside-he was saying that he consistently was unable to eat-and sleep because he was getting involved with criminals instead. 

Somehow that didn’t sit right with Tony. How could it sit right with him that Peter considered having enough time to eat-and sleep normally meant he wasn’t having full days-and nights as Spider-Man. 

Maybe he was blowing it out of proportion. Maybe Peter misspoke. 

“Sometimes? What about the other times?” Peter didn’t say anything-and Tony’s short, hurried glance told him absolutely nothing he wanted to know. Peter was staring down at his hands, that was it. No recognition of Tony’s question-just exhaustion, and a staring contest with his own hands. “Pete?”

“Sometimes, being the friendly neighborhood hero, means things have to be forgone. I can’t just let bad things happen.” Except not food-and sleep to stop a bike theft-or other stupid little city-misdemenors-not everything was a bus falling off a road-or a building collapsing on innocent people-somethings were not hero-worthy. Tony thought that Peter had been messing in the smallest-least important little disputes because he was bored. Not because he thought he had to do it-they were little things-there were the large crimes-and disasters that he’d seen him (on the news) deal with-and those couldn’t be avoided-but avoiding doing the bare minimum to take care of himself because someone might need fucking directions-or someone’s bike might get lifted-or cat trapped in a tree did not make sense. 

Maybe later could wait a minute. 

“Now-no, hold on, how are you supposed to keep bad things from happening if you’re all lethargic?” Going hungry with a high metabolism couldn’t have been very nice. “I mean, it’s got to be hard to do.” Peter shrugged, starting to pick at his fingers. “I mean, when are you supposed to take a break?” 

Tony’s prompt remained unanswered, and Peter remained unresponsive. It took Tony passing a turn towards his apartment-and towards the hot-beverage he was craving to fix that. 

“I thought you said you were taking me home.” Tony glanced at him, finding his eyes for the first time since they’d started speaking. God, he looked exhausted. Like Tony-in-the-lab-for-a-week exhausted. Like he’d been holding up the world so long he’d just gotten used to it tired. Tony didn’t want to think about how good-hearted-Peter got so tired. 

“I-We are. I just wanted to stop and get something to eat first-I’m not really in the mood to drive home on an empty stomach.” Peter didn’t look happy about it. “I was thinking I could get us both something to warm us up a little.” 

“I’m alright.” 

“Yeah-I know, but I’m gonna get you something anyway.” Peter went back to quiet. “I heard this place is supposed to be good-it’s new too-something Party I think-have you tried it?” Peter shrugged. 

“I don’t really have the time.” Except he could. He’s Spider-Man yeah, but that’s not a round the clock job. He should have plenty of time for almost anything he wants to do-he didn’t have to push himself to be Spider-Man for so long he had no personal time except to occasionally sleep and eat. That wasn’t good for him-he was what? Seventeen? Eighteen? He should have a life-not a tiny apartment, next door neighbors, and saving people who didn’t really need his saving. 

Why would he even want to do that? Having absolutely no life outside of being Spider-Man was unhealthy at best-damaging at worst. He couldn’t really be happy coming back to nothing-and no one when he finally decided that he needed a break-why-when did he stop trying to have a regular life? 

Peter always insisted before that he was Peter Parker first. He told Tony he had to do homework when he asked him to be on his side during their little…fight-which Tony shouldn’t have gotten him involved in-he chose to go home almost every night at his curfew-he worked to make sure that Spider-Man and Peter’s lives were separate-and that there was always more Peter than Spider-Man. 

When did he decide being Peter Parker wasn’t important anymore-sure whatever, he was Benjamin Parker-but when did a personal life become less important than saving cats from trees-and toy theft? 

Was it after Tony…pretty much abandoned him? He didn’t mean to-he thought-well somehow he thought Pepper would think to let all of his contacts know instead of just his immediate family-even though she said she was trying to save them false hope-it would have been better if she had just shared it. 

Was it because of May? His Aunt wouldn’t have let him get sucked in like that-regardless of the increased charity-and types of actual meetings, Peter still had a life outside of it. 

“When did you stop being Peter to be Spider-Man?”

===========================================================

Peter blinked. He didn't trust this. Not a single bit of it. He wanted to. Oh he wanted to. He wanted Mister Stark to be alive-and to convince him that there was people he could have-and hold onto without losing. That he could keep regular people on his side-and that he didn’t need to keep his relationships to a minimum to keep them safe. He wanted him to be back. 

But Mister Stark being there-and alive-and real was too good to be true. It didn’t make sense, even though he didn’t know who Beck was, and he didn’t disperse like an illusion should, it didn’t make sense. There wasn’t a way back from the dead. Not one that worked-and Peter had looked into it in his late-sleepless nights before guilt had crept back in, and forced him back out onto the streets. There wasn’t anway for that to rightfully be Tony-and the thought of getting into a probably strange vehicle wasn’t assuring. He didn’t want to do it. 

He did it anyway. He shouldn’t have, but he did. He just had to remind himself that EDITH said he was dead. He had to remind himself that if Beck was this close to him, he’d already be dead. Maybe he was an alien or something, come to eat people. 

Peter kept a finger on the window-button just in case. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d jumped out of a moving vehicle. 

He hadn’t planned on talking to him. He had been trying to somehow rationalize this-even though he was clinging to his hope that there was a way for this to actually be Tony-no matter how far off that was-and keep an eye on him. 

He ended up talking to him. It didn’t really make sense for him to do so-it’s not like he couldn’t keep an eye on him-and where he was going without speaking-much less thinking-but there he was, just opening his mouth to someone he was still convinced somehow was lying. 

He really wanted this to be real. 

It was too normal to be real. If Mister Stark was really there he’d be mad at him. Angrier than he was already-he would have been angry when he tried to explain that being Spider-Man was much more important than being Peter-or Benjamin, or whoever he was supposed to be when he was out of the mask. People needed Spider-Man-he helped people-it was important for him to be there-living out the legacy he was afforded. He’s lucky he has any expectations to live up to-even if they’re big shoes to fill. People expect things of him, and he needs to live up to it. 

He knows what happens when he doesn’t live up to them. 

He wasn’t going to let bad things happen to innocent people. 

He also wasn’t going to answer the questions of someone who just lied to him. He thought he’d at least have the pleasure of locking himself in his apartment, and being anxious in there-where things were familiar. He was apparently wrong. 

Now he was being questioned by someone he had decided was either a figment-a very well made illusion, or an alien impersonating an innocent dead man. 

Worst of all, Peter didn’t have another vague answer to feed him to get him to leave him alone. He just wanted to go home, where he could be anxious, and ignore that any of this is going on. Where-hopefully he could pretend he was never in this car-or this stressed out. 

He was still trying to reason this out. 

Even though he could just ask like a normal person.

Peter wasn’t normal. He was a hero, and that meant he was a constant target of all kinds of violence. Bad things happen when Spider-Man lets his guard down. He didn’t know what exactly he was dealing with yet, and no matter how much he hoped it was Tony, and wished for that-him suddenly living again didn’t make any sense in the slightest. 

“Pete, I know that’s-I’m not trying-I don’t want you to take that the wrong way. I just mean-you’re a kid-and you’re acting like the whole world’s depending on you when you can't even take care of yourself. I know you weren’t always so…sacrificially motivated-I-I just wanted to know if-if it was something to do with your Aunt-”

No. No. No. No. 

This wasn’t something he could just bring up-he wasn’t even supposed to be alive-if he even was truly-he didn’t get to bring up his aunt. Peter was over it. He could think about her without crying now. He wasn’t doing this for her. 

Even though he wasn’t good enough to save her. 

“People need me to save them. I’m who they want to protect them, and I don’t want to let them down-”

“Pete-I don’t think people need you to save them as badly as you think they do. If they didn’t need him to save them, he wouldn’t be saving them night and day without so much as a break. 

That’s not how it would go. 

“I don’t want to talk about it.” 

“Kid-”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”