cypress
Cypress is powerful imagery of life and death. The deep roots of the tree connect the two worlds, immortality, and hope for thriving intertwined in the strong branches. Commonly seen in graveyards and cemeteries, it’s the perfect amalgamation of human mourning for the living and the dead.
The next time Peter is in the Tower, he isn’t really sure how he goes from popping by to have a check-up in the Medbay to having a tea party with Morgan Stark in her obnoxiously colorful room, fully dressed in his Spiderman suit with a little plastic teacup between his fingers.
Mr. Stark sits at the plastic stool right across from him and looks at his empty teacup with bewilderment. “Maguna, what if we put-”
“Mommy says no coffee for you,” Morgan says in a sing-song manner, “because you are very old now.”
Just as Mr. Stark gives an exaggerated “ouch”, clutching his chest dramatically, Peter leans forward to give Morgan a cheer with his tiny teacup. “He is really old,” he confirms with a nod.
“I’m barely thirty-five,” Mr. Stark interjects with mock anger, and adds quickly, “in looks, I mean.”
“I would say at least forty-six,” Peter decides.
“That’s so old,” Morgan says incredulously, “I will never get that old.”
“Miss, with your mother’s genes you will probably see two hundred.”
Morgan shrieks with fear. “I will not.” She looks at her father with a glare. “Drink your tea.”
After a little while, Morgan grows tired of managing the two men. As soon as she starts yawning, Mr. Stark lures her into taking a nap with the promise that Spider-man will be back in a little while.
Peter decides it’s safe to stay for a little longer and lets Tony take him to Medbay to check the bandages. As he takes out his sweatshirt, the older man points at him nonchalantly. “The mask will stay on, I presume.”
“Hmm,” Peter agrees carefully, not letting his voice sound so conflicted.
“Is it because you like the warmth? Maybe we fought before and you are trying to not get convicted. Wait, are you a secret serial killer in real life and a vigilante at night?”
“You are babbling,” Peter says sternly, making the man chuckle. He can see that the words are not enough to stop the man from asking more questions, but he tries nonetheless.
“I’m joking, kid. I promised I wouldn’t make you take that out. I just wonder whether I know you,” Mr. Stark shrugs as he starts unwrapping the bandages.
“You don’t,” Peter retorts confidently, and it’s not even a lie. The mask doesn’t carry the weight of separating their history, not anymore, but it’s rather merely a barrier between Peter’s two identities. In this reality, there isn’t a Peter Parker who is a Spider-man anymore. There is only Spider-man, and far, far away, there is a completely different man called Peter. In this reality, Peter cannot let the two merge and blur anymore, so the mask simply stays on.
Oddly enough it helps him differentiate between the very hard line of the past versus now. Past Tony Stark is sterner. A little stricter. He smiles less and doesn’t really laugh. He isn’t as kind, surely not rude, but not as generous in the way he gifts people with tenderness. It’s mostly sarcastic, and the generosity and warmth are concealed behind a layer of arrogance and pointy jabs.
Past Peter is different. He babbles and is scared and embarrassingly shy of being close to the one and only Iron Man. He has steady hands and smiles and is concerned about going back home at 8 pm sharp because May gets anxious otherwise.
But now, Peter is snarky and shaken, not too afraid of Mr. Stark and surely not as chippy where Tony is all profound concern and fatherly jokes. Where the balances are so insanely shifted yet blurred together, it’s nice to have the mask be the only thing that divides those subtle lines. The mask keeps Mr. Stark safe. It keeps Morgan safe. It lets Peter breathe without the crushing responsibility of knowing the little red fabric was perhaps the thing that killed Aunt May.
The mask keeps Peter safe because he knows if he lets Mr. Stark look him in the eyes without the barrier he will spill all his lies and beg for help. So, the mask stays on.
“Okay,” Mr. Stark decides as he re-wraps his shoulder. “The infection looks good. Don’t strain it too much.”
“No can do,” Peter says with a grin that earns him a flick on the forehead. Before he can let himself indulge more in this fantasy of life, this dream, Peter thanks the man and excuses himself to spend the rest of the night swinging around Queens. The night ends fast and so does the next day as he hangs on the tight line between saving the world and wallowing in self-pity, but nonetheless, he feels better.
In retrospect, Peter should have guessed that things wouldn’t be so sweet for much longer when he had two good days in a row. Nevertheless, he didn’t expect every single thing to go downhill so damn fast.
The second he showed up at work on his next shift, he was welcomed with a new guy in his cramped little desk and no one even bothered to explain what happened to him. He promised himself it would be okay, he still had enough money to carry him for a few weeks until he found a new job and-
Except he cannot find a new job, and the money is draining a little too fast and he’s getting more and more cramped each day and the mold in the ceiling of the room seems to be growing too fast and he feels cold all the time and he is so, so, so damn alone and-
“Peter,” Karen’s calm voice echoes in his mind and it feels like a dagger stabbed right through his eyes, “you seem to be hyperventilating.”
“Am I?” he squeals maniacally as he rolls on top of a roof to catch his breath.
“Would you like me to alert someone?”
“Who exactly did you have in mind?” Peter says in between his shallow breaths.
“Mr. Stark-”
“Nope,” Peter interjects quickly, “we-” for a second, his lungs become too constricted to talk, “didn’t we already argue about this?”
“Unfortunately, I’m not sentient so it’s not possible for me to argue, Peter. As per Friday’s request, I’m instructed to remind you that Mr. Stark has called you four times in the last two days, and wanted me to remind you that he will not hesitate to track your suit if you keep discarding his calls.”
“Okay, first of all, I’d say you are at least, like, half-sentient,” Peter starts but the effort makes his vision go black. “What’s happening?” he croaks out after a second.
“You are most likely experiencing a panic attack,” Karen says, sounding almost annoyed.
“I mean, I’m pretty sure,” he stops to take a shaky breath in, “pretty sure we are kind of arguing right now.”
“Would you like me to assist you through the attack?”
“What is there to do?”
“You can try breathing exercises, calming sounds, black-out mode, songs, or videos.”
Peter wants to ask what exactly are videos, but he cannot let out more than a choked out, “video.” A second later, Ned’s smiling face flashes in front of him.
“Look,” video-Ned shouts excitedly, “it’s done. We finished it!” The shaky camera focuses on the ground where Peter lays in exhaustion next to the complete Death Star lego. “We did it,” he encourages Ned with a weak fist in the air.
“Man, are you going delirious?” Ned says with almost too much energy, “ ‘cause I’m like, feeling a little too energized. Like, how could it be three in the morning? I have never been more alive.”
“We divided a single can of energy drink,” Peter says incredulously.
“Well, it’s easy for you to say with all the spider-metabolism. Oh my god, how could we never think about this? Do you think you can get drunk? How many gallons would it require? I don’t think Mr. Captain America can get drunk. Did you ever ask?”
“No, Ned,” Peter asks in mock surprise, “I never thought to ask Cap about how much alcohol gets him drunk.”
“You should have,” Ned says incredulously, “for science.” He looks back at the camera, and looks at it with wide eyes. “I think I see two of myself. Why do I see two of myself? Peter, would you tell me if I went mad?”
“No,” Peter discards.
“MJ would tell me,” Ned says and zooms on Peter’s face where he abruptly goes very, very red. “Ned!”
“I think I’m gonna faint,” he says seriously, before falling graciously on the ground and taking the Death Star along with him with a flick of his finger. The video cuts shortly as both of them start screaming with agony as if someone has cut their arm. As the phone falls to the ground next to the toppled lego ship, Ned shouts dramatically. “What have I done?”
“Would you like me to keep playing videos?” Karen says quietly. Peter’s mask is wet with tears.
“No,” he says quietly. “I think I will go find Mr. Stark now.”
He gets up and feels inhumanely exhausted, but forces himself to swing to the Tower, making sure Karen is muted. No matter how fast he swings and how loud the wind becomes, he can’t get Ned’s laughter and smiling face out of his mind.
He has such a knot in his stomach that he doesn’t think clearly as he rolls into Mr. Stark’s workshop without alerting him. Usually, at this exact moment, the man jumps unceremoniously and tries to shoot the intruder with a gauntlet, but this time he doesn’t even budge from his seat where he is staring at the wall intently.
Peter waits for a second to see whether the man will see him, but he keeps looking straight without a blink. “Mr. Stark?” he urges gently, too hesitant to touch the man.
As if waking up from sleep, Mr. Stark blinks slowly and looks up to Peter with bloodshot eyes. Besides the usual exhaustion and anxiety, he looks… Devastated. Torn apart. Like how his eyes broke down in Titan, looking like pools of pure and uninterrupted fire, falling down in chunks, the type of destruction in one’s eyes that simply overflows. “Mr. Stark,” he says one more time, this time a plea more than a question.
“Pete,” he says quietly, and shuts his eyes down, rubbing his face furiously before looking back at Peter with a watered-down version of the same anguish. “I wondered if I’d have to drag you here again.
Peter shrugs wordlessly. “Are you okay?”
“I am, in fact,” Mr. Stark says as he gets up and shakes himself, “always okay.”
“That’s a lie,” Peter quips easily, “you look, in fact,” he mimics the man, “really not okay.”
“Oh, do I now?” he asks incredulously, a slight smile tugging at the corner of his lips, “then how are you, Mr. I never need help?”
“Awesome,” Peter says indignantly, “never been better. Living the life.”
“One more word about how awesome it is, and I’ll call for a psychiatric evaluation.”
“I won’t tell if you don’t,” Peter says with a shrug.
Mr. Stark looks at it with disbelief for a second, but his shoulders sag after a second. “Okay, I have a proposition. Eat with me and I’ll tell you.”
“I’m not hungry,” Peter says, although he is indeed very hungry and has absolutely nothing to eat in his room.
“Then just sit with me,” Mr. Stark offers instead, “Pepper would kill me if she knew I still haven’t had dinner at this hour and I hate eating alone.”
“Okay,” Peter decides after a second. He acts like he doesn’t hear the man order four large pizzas, supposedly for himself.
They sit on one of the empty workbenches and Peter agrees to eat if the man turns his back to him so he can lift his mask to eat. Turns out, talking about emotions is much easier when they don’t face each other as well.
“What’s wrong?” Peter asks after downing one of the pizzas in mere minutes, and Mr. Stark nudges another one in front of him without looking.
“You sure you want to hear?”
Peter hums in agreement as he keeps eating.
“You know the story, right? How I was injured and was hiding after the Snap, and all that.”
“I know it’s not true,” Peter says without thinking.
Tony pauses for a second, then slightly chuckles. “Well, I guess I should have known you were smarter than that.”
Another knot coils tightly around Peter’s gut. “Is it about that? The snap?”
“No,” the older man says, “maybe a little. It’s about what happened after.”
“And what happened?” Peter urges, stopping eating altogether. His body feels too tense and his jaw aches too much to keep chewing. Instead, he focuses on the words that leave the man’s thoughts.
“Pete,” he exhales loudly, “I don’t know how to explain it, and there is no way of sugarcoating it so I’ll just say it. When I snapped, I died.”
“Then,” Peter croaks, “then how are you here?”
“That’s the part I don’t know, kid,” Mr. Stark says, rubbing his face with a rough hand, “one second I was there, and then suddenly, I was here. I don’t know what happened and it feels like a chunk of my brain is missing.”
“Maybe it’s the trauma,” Peter suggests quietly, and his mind starts screaming at him. Get out get out get out getoutgetoutGETOUT-
“Maybe,” he shrugs, “I don’t really care. Look, one second, I was dead and now I am alive with my wife and kid and I don’t care how or why it happened. This- this is my second chance in life where I finally make things right. Actually, you are the first step, kid. But sometimes I try to think about what happened in that exact moment and what I was doing and who was there, and it feels like my mind will explode.”
“Maybe you should stop stressing about it,” Peter says and imagines this is the second Karen would calmly say ``You seem to be hyperventilating, Peter” if she wasn’t muted.
“You okay there, kid? You sound a little out of breath.”
“Too much pizza,” Peter retorts easily, shoveling an entire slice into his mouth.
“You think you have enhanced metabolism like Cap? That would explain why you are on the skinnier side.”
With the words Peter almost giggles. The skinnier side is a lot sweeter than a lot of the times Mr. Stark has commented on his weight before the Snap even though his frame looks much more daunt right now. “I guess so,” he says easily.
“Well, we should take a look at it sometime. Maybe I could ask Bruce. Hulk. Whatever he goes by these days,” he exhales tiredly.
Even though Peter smiles, he can’t shake the awful feeling in his gut. The secret he is so keen on keeping seems to be getting heavier and heavier each day, and to keep his mouth shut when Mr. Stark tells him that something feels wrong feels much more agonizing than the twinging pain on his shoulder. “I think I should go now,” he says, getting up from the stool fast enough to knock it over. Mr. Stark jolts back around with the noise.
“You okay, Pete?”
He nods hastily, feeling more queasy each second. “I should go back to swinging around, make sure everything’s in place. Thanks for the pizza,” he says as he walks to the window.
“Are you sure your arm is okay too?”
“Yes,” he says quickly.
“Drop by in a few days when I’m not in such a shitty mood,” Mr. Stark says, walking behind him, “Morgan wants to see you as well.”
“You should go to sleep,” Peter says instead of answering.
“Does this mean I’m going to be ghosted again?”
“Bye, Mr. Stark,” Peter says as he climbs onto the window ledge.
“Kid, why does this feel like you are running away?”
Because I am, Peter thinks, but he stays quiet. For some reason he can’t figure, he can’t take his hands from the window to jump into the night. “You know,” he says quickly, “I think you are making things right. Second chance and all. Don’t sweat it too much.”
After he jumps, he vaguely hears the man murmur, “Thanks.” Then he swings and swings and swings until the wind is so sharp it suppresses the sound of May in his ears and he is so high up in the sky the city lights become too faded to light the night sky.
Then, it gets worse.
The day he knows MJ is back from her online orientation, to stop himself from going to see her he punches a robber over and over so hard that the man passes out cold. The next night, he hospitalizes a man who tried to corner a little kid on the street, and he makes the headlines on Daily Bugle with something atrocious like, Should Spider-man even be allowed on the streets?
Peter doesn’t even care. He doesn’t care that people hate him and he doesn’t care that Mr. Stark just won’t stop calling him and trying to infiltrate Karen to speak to him and he simply does-
not-
care-
At some point I just… I stopped pulling my punches. I got rageful. I got bitter. I just don’t want you to end up like me.
He assumes it’s too awfully convenient for him to relate so painfully to Peter’s lines, after all, Peter is him in another reality. Still, when he hears those words on the rooftop they all feel too real and warm and brotherly, and Peter thinks to himself I should do something to stop this degeneration and this rage.
Now, though, right now, all he feels is rage and bitterness and hatred for himself and the rest of the world. At Ben and May and his parents for going too soon. For Strange for fucking up the magic. At the other Peter who is now happy and content with his life and his MJ in another universe. At himself for trying to do too much and succeeding in none, finding himself in a deeper hole than he could have ever thought to dig, all alone and cold and shivering.
I don’t want you to end up like me.
“Peter,” Karen interjects, “Mr. Stark is on the line again. Would you like me to connect to his call?”
“Yes,” he says at the spur of the moment, the knuckles still bloody from the punches he landed on the guy. From far away, he hears the blaring sirens of a cop car, probably coming to arrest the guy hanging from a wall with webs covering his shocked face and skin.
“Underoos, I think we already discussed this. When I call, you answer.”
“Don’t call,” Peter says distractedly. “You shouldn’t be calling me. Don’t call.”
“Pete, what is this, some sort of teenage angst? You promised when you left the tower that you would be back for check-ups-”
“Don’t call me again,” Peter repeats, voice drained of any emotion. He leisurely keeps swinging to a rooftop where he can see MJ leave her work as Mr. Stark exhales loudly at the other end of the line.
“What’s wrong? Do you need help?”
“Don’t,” Peter says, almost sounding hysterical, “don’t ask. Don’t call. This isn’t a joke. I’m sorry for ever coming to your tower. Forget I ever existed.” It won’t even be the first time.
“Well, too damn bad because it’s not a fucking switch,” the man snaps, “now tell me what’s wrong.”
“Morgan,” Peter says quietly, “you love your daughter, right? You would want to be with her as she grows up. You said it yourself, you already gave up on her once.” His words feel like glass shards as he spits them out.
Tony sounds more rageful and incredulous than Peter has ever heard him, “Are you giving me an fucking ultimatum-”
“No, I’m trying to help you,” Peter says flatly, his eyes focused on the candy shop, “when you get close to me, you get hurt, and you shouldn’t. For Morgan. For Pepper.”
“Kid, I think you forget I’m the damn Iron Man.”
“No,” Peter says quietly, “but that didn’t stop you from dying once.”
“Pete,” the man croaks.
“Please,” Peter says like a plea, “I will be okay. Goodbye.”
“Don’t you hang up-”
Peter hangs up, and then immediately blocks the number. When he gets to his room, he will make sure to erase Friday’s traces from Karen’s programming. On the adrenaline rush and feeling too much like he’s drunk, he decides on a whim that today is the last day he will see MJ in person.
He enters the shop with a forced smile on his face and sagged shoulders. There, in front of him, stands MJ leaning on the counter to speak with Ned.
Ned.
This is the first time he sees him in a long while and his face still looks awfully similar to the video Karen played for him the other day.
“Hi,” he says quietly, and both of them look at him.
“Parker,” Michelle greets flatly, “I thought you found one of the two thousand other coffee shops in the block.”
“Did you miss me?” Peter says with half of a grin, trying so hard to not cry as he takes in the lines of her face for the last time. Michelle flips him off as she turns around to prepare his usual order.
“Nice shirt,” Ned quips with a grin, pointing at his faded Return of the Jedi t-shirt, gifted by himself. Peter feels so uneasy he thinks he will puke. The universe surely has its ways to mock him.
“Thanks,” he says with a smile, and the words flow so easily.
After Michelle gives him his cup, she walks around the counter to sit next to Ned on the empty stool. However, as soon as she steps forward her foot gets tangled in Ned’s backpack on the ground. As she falls forward, the time slows for Peter and he lunges forward to catch her before she falls.
A little hysterically, he helps her get to her feet and looks over to make sure nothing is hurt, “Are you okay?”
Ned, who got up at an odd angle in an effort to catch the girl pats him on the shoulder, “Good reflexes, man.”
“I’m okay, loser,” Michelle says even though her eyes are perched on Peter, “hands-off.”
“Oh,” he says stupidly, “yeah, sorry. Sorry, Michelle.”
They stand there, motionless, staring into each other’s eyes, unable to move or say a word, simply staring. Staring. Staring.
“No need to be sorry,” Michelle says, her voice uncharacteristically soft. “And it’s MJ. It’s what my friends call me.”
There, right that second, Peter’s world collapses so quickly he thinks he will be buried underneath it. He jumps back as if his hands have been scorched. “I need to go,” he says abruptly, swinging his backpack on his shoulder and pacing towards the door. “It was nice seeing you, MJ,” he adds quickly through the stones in his throat.
MJ shouts something behind him, but he can’t focus on her voice. Instead, he starts running towards somewhere he doesn’t know, hands shaking and tears falling down in big round drops. Youfuckedupyoufuckedupyoufuckedup-
He fucked up so bad indeed.
He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know where to go. This wasn’t supposed to happen, he wasn’t supposed to get close to her again. Doesn’t he remember what happened the last time? Doesn’t he remember the weight of May’s dead body in his arms and how he watched MJ fall, unable to catch her? He has been stupid, so utterly and indescribably stupid to let himself indulge in small pleasures like seeing MJ and getting coffee and talking to Mr. Stark. Now, the cycle continues and MJ will die because of Peter just like how May died and Mr. Stark died and Ben died and everybody else-
Peter can’t breathe.
He steps behind a trash can and puts his suit on in a haste, webbing his backpack behind the can. He crawls on the wall until he is on the rooftop and starts swinging. His breath is so constricted his vision goes black as he swings around, aimlessly but so fast as if he’s running away from his biggest nightmare.
“Peter,” Karen’s voice echoes in his ear, “you seem to be in serious distress, which entails a signal to be sent to Mr. Stark.”
“Why the fuck would it entail that?” Peter screams in shock.
“In the last hour, through Friday, my programming has been updated to include new additions called the Training Wheels Protocol and the Baby Monitor Protocol.”
No, Peter thinks, no no no no no. This can’t be happening again. “Cancel,” he chokes out, “cancel them.”
“I’m afraid you don’t have the authority to cancel the protocols.”
Peter simply screams. It feels like a dagger is running right through his gut, so it’s easy to let out a blood-curdling, god-awful scream.
“There is an incoming call from Mr. Stark.”
“Decline,” he shouts, and adds quickly, “mute.” Peter swings and swings and swings until his blurry eyes see nothing. He instinctively holds onto rooftops and window ledges, jumps on top of cars, and runs like there is an army behind him. No matter what happens, he doesn’t stop.
Until suddenly he finds himself ledged on the shallow wall surrounding a graveyard, looking directly into the pink flowers blooming from a fresh grave. If this had happened two months ago with May to call, Peter assumes this is what he would have done. He would find May and hug her and maybe they would watch a movie together. May would tell him what to do and how to fix things. Now, there is no May to solve his problems, and yet as if waking from a nightmare he keeps finding himself at her grave, desperately clutching to a sense of familiarity.
He stands there concealed behind a thick bush and dugs his palms into his eyes. May. May. May. MJ. Ned. Mr. Stark. Help. Help. May. HELP-
The lack of air reaching his lungs makes him dizzy but he can’t get himself to inhale freely when his entire chest aches so deeply. The graveyard is calm and quiet except for the humming in his ears. The sense of absolute desperation is what wears him down, the fear of not knowing what is coming next and what to do to fix it because that’s what Peter does. He fixes things and makes things right but lately, each and every move feels too sudden and abrupt and each time it’s too late to fix things. He is blindsided. Startled.
Startled. A hand lands on his shoulder and the warmth of the skin feels like fire.
“Pete,” a voice hums quietly. “You are getting soaked.”
Is it raining? Peter isn’t sure. It doesn’t smell like wet soil and the roaring in his ears is too loud to hear the water touch the ground. Peter wants to ask how he found him, but he knows it should be Karen. He asks, “Why?” instead. Why is he here? Why does he care? Why is this happening?
“You sounded like shit on the phone,” the man says calmly and extends his arm so the big black umbrella covers Peter as well, “you are not looking very bright now either. I was worried, kid.”
Kid. That’s what Peter feels like. Going to his job would make him feel better in his adult persona, almost like a costume. When he forced himself to do something so different from his previous life, the line that differentiates Pete-the-child who likes playing legos and is scared of her aunt and Peter Parker who works at a mildly illegal underground pharmacy and sleeps on a cot on the ground and cries quietly like an adult would become clearer. Now, when he stands next to Mr. Stark, who he had seen for the last time when he was barely 16, he feels like Pete. Young. Ready to be reprimanded on a rooftop about how to not be a superhero. Ready to take his suit off and give it away.
“Mr. Stark,” he says tiredly, “I fucked up.”
He doesn’t say it’s okay and doesn’t coddle him. “How badly?” he says simply. Like Peter, he is a builder. A fixer.
“So badly,” he decides after a second.
“You wanna tell?” the older man says as he sits on the ground next to him.
“The mask stays on for a reason,” Peter tells in a haze, thinking this is what being drunk must feel like, “because when people know who I am, they get hurt. Today I almost forgot that.”
“Did you tell someone?”
“No,” Peter shakes his head, “but I let myself get too close. You know how you told me you died once, right? Even though it doesn’t make sense. I did this once, Mr. Stark and it ended badly. It ended-” he runs out of breath as he tries to suppress a sob, “it ended too badly. Now, this is my second chance to make this right and I almost ruined it, again. Again.” He repeats, a little louder as if he can’t believe what’s coming out of his mouth.
“But you didn’t,” Mr. Stark reasons.
“But I want to,” Peter whines like a child, and that’s the problem. He wants to ruin everything again because he simply cannot take it anymore all on his own. He cannot handle all of Atlas’s weight, he needs someone to hold his hand or at least tell him it will be alright even if they both know it won’t. Someone has to see him before he completely perishes away. “And if I do, they will get hurt. Now you are here and you will get hurt. I can’t get out of this cycle.”
“Peter,” the man says sternly, “I announced to the world I was a superhero on a whim during a press conference. They bombed my house and they tried to kill Pepper and they tried to kill me. Guess what? They also tried to kill me when I was a regular man on the street and they also tried it when I retired. That’s not on me kid, and that’s certainly not on you, never is.”
“Just because I don’t pull the trigger doesn’t mean I didn’t put the gun in there.”
“No,” Mr. Stark says, “but if you can’t help yourself you can’t help others either. Believe me, I tried. You are wasting away, kid, and I can tell this without even seeing your face. You are giving up on life. No superheroing and no fight is ever worth that. You can’t save the world if you can’t save yourself.”
“But I can’t let it happen again,” Peter insists, “I can’t let someone else get hurt again.”
“If you don’t want your civilian friends to know, that’s okay, but if you really want to share some of that weight I’m right here. I can handle whatever will come to me. Look, kid, I know what it feels like. I do. I know how it feels like freefalling and you think it will hurt less if you act like you don’t care either, but guess what? It doesn’t. You know you need help better than I do. If you don’t want it from me, at least let me help you find someone you’d trust. Who would watch your back. But do not,” he enunciates each syllable, “do not expect me to delete your number and act as if I have never seen you. You deserve better than that, Pete. And I’m better than that. I’m better than just ignoring you because you insist you don’t need help.”
They sit in silence for a while. Peter can finally hear the rain falling on the asphalt. Cars honking. Someone crying at the far end of the cemetery. Mr. Stark’s beating heart.
“Okay,” his mouth says dreamily and he yanks his mask off. “You know what? Okay.” A few drops of water fall on his bare cheeks and the cold makes him alert. Peter looks at Mr. Stark just for a second before the man takes him in his arms, just for the briefest second. “You did good, kid.”
“What was that for?” Peter asks incredulously.
Mr. Stark flicks him on the forehead, a weird look of awe on his face, perhaps surprised about how drained or how unexpected the move was. “Felt like it.”
Peter nods as he lets the man lead him to a car waiting on the side of the street and for the entire night he can’t stop himself from thinking even if he felt it for the shortest of times, Mr. Stark’s hug was just like how he remembered. Strong. Rough.
Safe.