Chapter 16
Peter was trying very hard to ignore the shame attempting to crawl up his neck as he walked. He didn’t think he’d come back-much less with Happy, and now he was wandering around in pain.
What a proud moment for Spider-man.
He had hoped he’d come back of course. He didn’t want him to see him like this though. He didn’t want to be waddling along next to Mister Stark and Happy. It wasn’t really pleasant to see him after all this time. The last time he’d seen him was after May’s…..nevermind. It just wasn’t very pleasant to see him when looking at his face made his throat feel like ripping itself out.
He wasn’t going to cry in front of Mister Stark again though. He’d already embarrassed himself once. He was just going to pretend that he didn’t cry like a baby in his ex-mentors car about his own selfish wants and desires, before forcing himself to go back out into the cold, and getting the snot beat out of him.
Nope. He was just walking with two men he had thought he’d never and hoped never to see again, wishing the sidewalk would come alive, and swallow him whole before he spent the last of his money on a glass of water he didn’t even really want .
He was starving.
He was hungry- yes , but not hungry enough to spend the few bucks he had on something he couldn’t afford. Right now he couldn’t afford to breathe the air in his apartment, much less spend his last cents on a frivolous meal he didn’t really need. He wasn’t even dizzy.
He was beyond fine.
Because people who are fine have finger bones, and bruises that won’t heal. Sure.
That was normal now. He probably just grew out of his old-super-healing. It happens.
No it doesn’t. No one just ages out of their abilities-that’s not how this works.
It could be. He wouldn’t know. There were only two other Spider-people he’d ever met, and they had been too busy trying to cure those super-villains to really get into the down and gritty of their powers. Fuck-they hadn’t even gotten the chance to talk about the whole ‘I fought an alien goo’ thing. He hadn’t really gotten to know them-he didn’t know what was normal . No one really did. It was just him. Alone.
Just like it had been for the last year.
Peter’s Spider-sense started screaming at him, another round of burning, sensless whispered thoughts he couldn’t decipher. Sometimes he thought some part of his brain could only speak in Spider-and that’s why he could never seem to figure out what was wrong until it was hitting him. Either way, it burned between his ears, and refused to tell him straight out what was wrong. He had a faint idea. Either the heavy clouds hanging over the city-the ice patch about three feet in front of them, or Mister Stark, or Happy-or the sleet running into the storm drain-or the cold wind.
Spider-sense was great in a fight, but right now this was about as helpful as a emergency phone that only hosted calls if they got four hundred people on the line first. It was far too busy to help when there wasn’t nine-hundred things he needed to be aware of.
Mister Stark clapped him on the shoulder-his bad one, because he neglected to refer to it as such, sending a nice ache into his bones. He just hoped Mister Stark didn’t see him wince. He didn’t need him-or… Happy asking him about it.
“You alright bud?”
No.
“Yeah-I’m just….I’m just… really tired.” They had no reason to question him about that. He had been up all night. Maybe if he tries to sleep in a restaurant, Mr. Stark’ll be so ashamed of him he’ll send him home to bed, and never come back.
Even if it was a long shot, it didn’t hurt to hope. If Mr. Stark left him alone, he could stop obsessing over what he said last night. He could stop fussing over what he wanted, and what he wasn’t allowed to have-and just…keep going. Forever. And Ever.
And die doing what no one expects of him. He’s barely eighteen. No one expects any other teenager to die saving New York.
Well, he wasn’t a normal teenager, was he?
No. He wasn’t, and there was no going back to what he used to be. He’d never really had normal to cling onto-but his normal was long gone, and it wasn’t coming back. Even if sometimes he thought it would, it wasn’t. This was normal now, and he had to be happy with that.
“Long night?” Right. Happy. He was here. He existed, and if Peter was lucky he knew nothing about how long it had been.
“Uh-yeah. Kind of.” He hadn’t had enough time to so much as sleep for more than two hours. It had definitely been long, even if it’d been his own fault he couldn’t rest. He shouldn’t have been stressing out over something like that. Just because Mister Stark thought they should ‘talk about it’, didn’t mean that it was going to change his mind. Peter was going to be stupidly stubborn, and Stark was going to realize that Peter was a lost cause. He’d be alone again, just like before, and he’d have nothing again.
The restaurant he was being sheep dogged into was nice, nicer than the restaurant he’d chosen-and the dollar store he’d been buying his groceries at. So far, his hopes for anything bigger than a small glass of water were being crushed.
At least it was warmer in there. Despite the fact that he was constantly being burnt by the coldness of the outdoors-sometimes because of his own stupidity-or because of his very own spider-genes-anyway-despite him constantly freezing, he had yet to get used to being cold. A whole evenly-heated restaurant tore right through where the cold had invaded his coat, and replaced it entirely.
It was a nice, momentary distraction that somewhat soothed his newly found pains. Alright not really, but being able to feel his skin was an upside that felt a little more important than his need to cradle one of his hands.
This restaurant, apparently hoping to make Peter spend his whole necessity fund on a glass of water, was well off enough to have a host.
They ended up in a booth, Peter trapped between the unbelievably cold glass on one side, and Mister Stark on the other. This, of course, meant he was stuck facing Happy. Not that there was anything wrong with that. No. Happy was great.
He totally didn’t feel nauseous when he saw his face, almost identical to what he saw right before he had to leave May there. Alone, before she died, and he lost everything. Forever. No. He definitely didn’t feel like that at all. Happy sparing him unusually frequent looks was fine. Perfectly fine.
Besides-how would he know if Happy-Stop Doing That Peter-Hogan just did that now? He wouldn’t. He hadn’t seen him in a year at least . The last place he had seen him was at….nevermind. It’d been awhile.
Just because it’d been awhile didn’t mean that he had to feel so…off about it. It was fine. He was over it. It happened…and he did what May thought he should-and now everything was as it should be. He was alone, doing exactly what she thought he should. May used to say everyone should give what they can, and that’s exactly what he was doing.
He wasn’t upset over May anymore, much less upset over Happy-or Tony. This was fine.
At least he could look out the window. He might’ve just been very very tired, but the outside world, despite it’s lack of heating, seemed like a fair distraction.
“What have you….uh been up to?” He should’ve just pretended he wasn’t at home. If he’d managed that, he could still be sleeping. Sure , Mister Stark would realize he was being difficult, and get either really persistent, like last night, or leave him forever, and they’d both know , but neither would venture out to see each other because it had been what? Eight years in Mister Stark’s life-and three in Peter’s, and honestly they should both have stopped caring about each other a long time ago?
He’s not sure which one would be worse-but he’s ninety percent sure that those are the only ways that would go.
Not like it’ll happen now-it’s far too late for him to pretend not to be home now. Now he’s stuck here, being asked questions by someone who made it a bit too painful to look at.
“Not much.” Nothing really could be done when he was so busy. Not that he was complaining. It wasn’t fun, but he wasn’t complaining. In fact he wasn’t even going to think back to when he was complaining. “I’ve just been working.” Mister Stark made a noise as he shifted through his menu.
He chose to ignore it, even if he had to swallow the little lump that just seemed to keep coming back.
He was going to pretend that Tony was huffing about something on the menu being ridiculous, or gross-and not because of his semi-lie. It wasn’t really a lie anyway. He’d been working hard….not hard enough -but hard. Spider-manning and scrounging enough money together from selfie-meets, and Spider-man-views wasn’t easy-or fun, or whatever else everyone assumed disqualified it as a job.
He had no reason to have shame crawling up his neck. Just because he, Spider-man had spent the night whining about something he didn’t have a choice in to Ironman , just to run off and get himself hurt doing something he’d practically begged Ironman not to let him do anymore didn’t mean anything. It’s like it didn’t happen. At all. Nothing had changed, and it was all fine. Just because Mister Stark remembered the most embarrassing two weeks of his life all in great enough detail to scoff at one run off remark didn’t mean he should be feeling like this.
“Uh…what’ve you been up to?”
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Happy, like always, was more than happy to fill up the space between them with discussion about the DODC hounding him. Tony was grateful for it. Even if he was great at small talk-he managed to run out of non-inappropriate things to say around his kid.
Well, he had plenty of things he wanted to say to his kid-appropriate or not. The longer he sat next to him, and listened to him make hesitant conversation with Happy, the harder it became to prove that he could hold his tongue.
It was almost funny.
Almost.
What was most certainly not funny, was the hand he just couldn’t seem to stop cradling-or the still-too-dark bruises lingering around Peter’s face. He’s seen the kid heal in real time, and this is taking…suspiciously long. Alright-not suspiciously-worryingly , and Tony won’t stand for it. He’s not too sure how Peter’s powers work-they never really made it to powe-secret spilling- but he knows how Steve’s worked, and he knows how vital food is to the rest of it.
If Peter’s the same, and he’s been out there fighting criminals without enough nutrients in his system to allow him to heal , Tony’s getting out the damn bubble wrap.
“And I of course-I denied it-as far as they know that was a tanning bed I broke-” Not the Fabricator-Tanning-bed story. Not again. Tony’s spent two weeks listening to this story be told to several different people while he was too bed-bound to get up and move, and he would rather not hear him tell it again.
It gets less funny every time he tells it, and right now it’s about as funny as telling him sand is dry.
Not that he’s about to interrupt his time with Peter. Peter’s hardly looked at the man since they’d shown up this morning-opting instead to do anything but-and Happy, now that he’s been given a chance has hopped right to it. He wants Peter back, and in his life just as badly as Tony does. Who is Tony to take what he has now from him?
Sure-right now Tony would like to skip the inevitable calm, rational conversation they have to have so Tony can do his job as fifth-parent and decide death penalties-just so that he could wrap Peter in a thick towel-or blanket like a distressed kitten, and smuggle him upstate where he could ever be alone again. Maybe even shake the hazardous behaviors out of him.
But he’s not going to.
Yet.
Either way, he’s going to let Happy have his time to talk to Peter while Tony silently scours the pancake menu-and makes a plan of action. The next two steps are obvious- first he’s going to find out what Peter knows in a calm, peaceful-non-blaming manner, and then he’s going to make heads roll. His problem is what comes after that .
It’s not exactly like Peter will willingly let him hold onto him forever. Much less live in a bubble wrap ball. He can’t offer him chocolate milk, shove him in his car, and take him to his house. That’s kidnapping for starters-and has all kinds of gross images that come with it.
The point is that he can’t make Peter do anything-especially after being hit by him. No. He doesn’t want that to ever happen again. He can’t make Peter do anything-which means he’s going to need an awful lot of sweet-talking until this all feels…normal…er.
He can’t keep going like this, and Tony can’t say he cares about his kid if he lets him.
Maybe he should buy a glue-trap.