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After the disaster of the award ceremony, Peter spent a significant amount of time trying to decide if he should be angry with Tony or not.
It seemed like just about everybody else was.
Pepper was all but boiling with rage by the time they dropped Peter home and frustration had been a noticeable weight upon Happy since Peter had seen him at the Facility the day before. He hadn’t quite noticed it at the time, but now it seemed impossible to ignore; which was something of a theme here. Hell, even May had a bone to pick with Tony now and she wasn’t even present to witness his night-ruining errors. Peter had been unable to hide his utter disappointment from her when he arrived home. Watching her nephew slink off sadly to bed after a night that should have been joyous for him was enough to get May riled.
So all in all, Tony probably had enough anger pointed his way already without Peter getting mad at him too. It was still difficult not to feel something about it though. Upset, probably. Because it had been easy to brush off Tony’s drunkenness the first time Peter had stumbled across him in that state, but now it meant something that Peter was entirely unprepared to deal with.
But what if it didn’t have to mean that? Maybe Peter had simply happened upon Tony at points of… celebration. He was being rewarded – Person of the Year, no less – and surely that was something to raise a glass to, right? Tony was working through a rough period. Peter knew that, whether he wanted him to or not. So maybe the indulgence was nothing more than a joyous escape from all of that while Tony revelled in his achievements rather than dwelling on his failures. A temporary thing.
That wouldn’t make sense of what Pepper had said in the car, or why Happy looked so thoroughly exhausted by it all, but Peter spent the rest of the night convincing himself to just be naïve for once.
---
By the morning, it was easier.
May asked tentatively how last night had been over breakfast and Peter just said it was fine. It simply wasn’t worth getting into, because it wasn’t an issue. He was itching to get into his suit anyway. Seeing that spring back in Peter’s step seemed to satisfy May, and she sent him on his way with a smile that he was glad to return.
Nothing helped to clear Peter’s mind quite like swinging through the city. Even after all this time, he had found no relief quite like the exhilaration of zipping through the smallest gaps between buildings, skimming the rooftops and racing the city birds just because he could. Peter had gotten so proficient with his swinging by now that he could even shoot a couple of texts to Ned on his way. Practically an expert, he thought.
And then right as he was about to hit send on a stupid message that certainly wasn’t worth the risk, Peter hit the side of a building he hadn’t been watching out for instead.
Note to self, he thought, don’t text and swing; we’re not there yet.
The descent started slowly. Peter groaned at the initial impact, of course thinking to check the state of his phone (which was surprisingly intact) before he even remembered just how high up he was, and more importantly, how far he was falling.
Naturally, he scrambled at first. Peter dropped and caught his phone three times in quick succession as he tumbled towards the ground, forgetting for some reason about anything that he could do to recover. Something about falling does that to a person. You’re losing height so fast that you forget how you got all the way up there in the first place.
Presence of mind finally kicked in. Peter remembered, and he hit his right web shooter like his life depended on it; which at this point it may well have.
And absolutely nothing happened.
There was no way he could be out of webs already, which could only mean one thing. The web shooter must have taken the brunt of impact with the building.
It was busted.
So now Peter had one last chance and he reached for it with a yell.
The left web shooter, the lifesaver, cooperated. Mere inches from making a nasty new stain on the sidewalk, Peter whooped with glee as he hoisted himself instead onto a nearby rooftop. He could hear some delighted hollering behind him, so he turned to give an enthusiastic thumbs-up to the New Yorkers who had witnessed his fall, which they returned and his duty was done. Crisis averted, crowd pleased, time to move on.
Except now he had some busted tech to deal with and only one web shooter in action. Could he even fix this at home? Sure, Peter still had a lot of electronic scraps laying around, which he messed with pretty regularly to see what kind of prototypes he could throw together for new Spidey gadgets, but none of that would be advanced enough to work in harmony with Tony’s tech.
So that meant Peter was going to have to head to the Avengers Facility to fix this. And for the first time in… probably ever, he wasn’t exactly jumping at the opportunity.
It wasn’t like he didn’t want to see Tony – Peter always wanted to spend as much time as possible shadowing his mentor, learning what he could and, a personal favourite, correcting him whenever he could. But Peter didn’t want to risk running into someone who definitely wasn’t Tony Stark again; at least, not as he knew him. It was an altogether uncomfortable experience. Peter wasn’t used to it. He never wanted to get used to it.
But it was just shy of ten a.m., so there was no way.
That’s what Peter kept telling himself as he made his way, one web shooter down, to the Avengers Facility.
---
To Peter’s surprise, getting into the Facility was going to be even easier than it was the last time he came here, on account of the fact that this time the doors were wide open.
There were a couple of cars parked outside, some men and women he didn’t recognise ferrying bags and boxes between the building and the trunks, and the air was so busy with the hustle and bustle that Peter felt awfully out of place. He certainly wasn’t keen to interrupt. Even more so when he saw Pepper amidst the madness.
Honestly if you had asked him before today, Peter would probably have told you that Pepper Potts wore formal attire to bed. He had never seen her without a pristine suit, business dress or, on a few more special occasions, elegant gown fit for royalty. No matter the situation, Pepper was professional and prepared for business.
Not today, it seemed.
Her hair was un-brushed and tugged messily into a ponytail behind her head. She wore sweatpants paired with a long sleeved sports top that didn’t match. When she spotted Peter, Pepper turned bright red – or maybe she had already been red because as she approached him, he couldn’t help but to notice her puffy eyes and immediately discerned that Pepper had been crying. Well, if Peter had felt out of place here before he noticed that…
“Miss Potts, I’m sorry,” Peter was saying before she had even reached him. “I can come back later, I– “
“Hey kid,” she said as though he had never opened his mouth, and Pepper’s smile was so forced that Peter’s itch to escape spread to every inch of his body. “Whatever it is that you need, let me know now. We’ll figure it out.”
“Just, uh… web shooter’s busted.” It seemed so trivial now, in the face of all this. Peter held out his arm to show her but Pepper didn’t look. She just sighed.
One of the black suited men who had been transporting boxes of belongings (Pepper’s belongings Peter realised) from the Facility approached them then. “Car’s ready Miss Potts,” he told her, and she waved him off with a hurried thanks.
“Okay, uh, Peter…” Pepper frowned. As she always had, Pepper looked at Peter like he was a lost puppy and she didn’t have the space in her apartment or the time to commit to looking after him. Right now, he was starting to feel a little like a lost thing too. “I can get you a ride home. And you call Happy before you come back here again okay?”
So now Peter had to decide if he wanted to ask the looming question. If he wanted to hear the answer. In the end though, he already knew it would eat him up inside if he left here without knowing.
“Where’s Mr Stark?” Peter asked it like he already knew the answer; which he didn’t, but would bet that the answer was bad.
For a moment, Pepper looked like she wasn’t going to give him an answer. Then, she signalled with a solemn nod of her head over Peter’s shoulder. “You should go home kid,” she said before she was gone.
Peter was half expecting a horror movie jump scare moment when he turned to see what Pepper had meant, but what he found was actually much… sadder than that. The Avengers Facility was surrounded by greenery, and Tony had found himself a spot beneath a tree just a short walk away. A nice spot to admire the view from, for sure, but certainly not a worthy spot for Tony Stark.
Before he could reconsider the decision, Peter was trudging his way over. As he drew closer, he could see that Tony was still wearing his suit from the award ceremony last night, though it was an awful lot less pristine now, and there was a discarded bottle beside him. That particular detail definitely put Peter on edge, but he pressed on. He had to. None of this was easy. Might as well asses the damage now rather than allowing it to fester and grow any further.
One thing was certain, Peter wouldn’t be able to convince himself to stay naïve to this anymore.
“Mr Stark,” he said, cursing himself for sounding just as uncertain about being here as he truly felt. In reality, Peter had no plan here. He didn’t know what angle he was approaching this from at all. If Tony didn’t answer him, he had no idea what he was going to do.
Luckily though, while he didn’t budge from his spot slumped against the tree (or even so much as raise his head to acknowledge Peter for that matter), Tony did at least offer him a response.
And his words were not slurred.
“Hey Pete. Sorry about last night. Celebrations got a little out of hand, huh?”
Tony wasn’t drunk; but boy did he sound drained. Judging by the state Pepper had been in, this suffering was more than just a hangover. Though Peter didn’t doubt that had a lot to do with it as well. Still, seeing him sober… well, Peter almost wanted to rejoice in being wrong about this. He wanted, quite desperately, to leave his worries in the dust and help Tony through the fallout of whatever had happened with Pepper without sparing a thought to overcoming some kind of an addiction, something Peter didn’t know the first thing about, but it was okay because he had been wrong and –
But Tony didn’t allow it. Within seconds, he was reaching for that champagne bottle that Peter had presumed to be empty. Clearly, ‘empty’ was exactly what Tony intended for it to become.
Peter was already reaching to stop him by the time he noticed the tears in Tony’s eyes, which he was honestly glad for because that would have doubtlessly made him hesitate.
“Mr Stark,” Peter said, more sternly now. “You should come inside.”
“You should go home – “ Tony snapped, but then he actually looked at Peter for the first time since he had come over here to find him.
---
Things were pretty foggy in Tony’s head these days, even in the rare moments that he did spend in partial sobriety, but one thing was clear as day to him right now.
Peter was afraid.
Of him? For him? Somehow it didn’t matter at all. That was just never a look that he wanted to see faced his way.
And it was pretty difficult to escape the fact that currently, Tony was an adult man slumped on the floor with a teenager all but begging him to get up.
How had he reached a point where he could comfortably drink from the bottle right in front of Peter? Peter Parker, the kid who had once thought that Tony was the best thing since sliced bread; and then even when he had learned his lesson about that, still chose him as a mentor. Still admired him, still trusted him. Without even realising it had gotten that bad, Tony was throwing everything right back in Peter’s face, and that was the last thing he ever wanted to do to somebody. He knew the feeling, after all.
Pepper was gone. Peter was one of the only people that Tony had left.
And regardless of that, the kid deserved better.
So Tony dropped the bottle, let the drink pour away, and pulled himself up off of his ass; for Peter’s sake.
---
“All yours; for now, at least. Don’t go too crazy.”
Without another word about the alcohol (which Tony was noticeably grateful for), Peter had jumped right into the story of a wild street fight he had to break up at nine thirty in the morning resulting in one of his web shooters meeting a dramatic and untimely end. Tony had listened with bemused interest and he hadn’t bought a single word of it. Worth a shot at sounding cooler than slamming face first into a building, Peter thought. Especially in front of Tony Stark.
Instead of hounding Peter for the truth, which he doubtlessly would have told with very little persuasion anyway, Tony decided to spare him the lecture and instead brought him straight down to the workshop. And he was giving Peter free reign. Quite the reward for his obvious carelessness. Peter might have noticed that there was a guilty apology buried in this gesture if he hadn’t been so awestruck. It was his first time even seeing the workshop, let alone being granted unlimited access to the abundance of resources here, and it was frankly overwhelming.
“Mr Stark, I – “
“Have a lot of work to do? That you do, Mr Parker.”
Peter didn’t think he’d see the day where being interrupted and teased by Tony would make him beam from ear to ear, but here he was.
“Better get started,” Tony encouraged, giving Peter a friendly clap on the shoulder but making no move to join him. He had definitely picked up on how that made Peter hesitate. “What, you think I’m leaving you in here unsupervised all day long? Not a chance, kid,” as he spoke, Tony was making his way back to the elevator they had come down in. “I’ve got a steamy date with the shower right about now. And you’ve got about a half hour, tops.”
All that Peter really needed to hear was that Tony was coming back for his initial excitement to come rushing back. Leaving him to his own devices right now seemed… irresponsible, no matter how hard Peter tried to convince himself that his mentor certainly shouldn’t be considered as his responsibility. It certainly felt that way. But Peter didn’t begrudge it, and honestly with the excitement to get start boiling inside of him, his worries from the morning couldn’t feel further away.
“Good call on the whole showering thing, by the way,” Peter joked, right as the elevator doors were closing but he could still see Tony through the glass exterior. He seemed shocked, and just a little bit impressed, by the teasing jab.
“Next time you break it, you buy it,” he threatened on his way up. Peter turned his back and pretended he hadn’t heard.
He laughed, because it was starting to seem as though things might be okay.
---
Tony stuck to his word and came down as a far fresher version of himself a short while later. By that point, Peter had moved well past the issue of his broken web shooter and was experimenting with a Spider-Man ‘stealth suit’, an endeavour that Tony spent the better part of his time assisting with questioning the need for. Every time Tony thought he was the smartest, wittiest person in the room, Peter gave him a reason to work harder. It was refreshing in a way that he hadn’t expected. Working alongside Peter felt like breathing fresh air for the first time after an overnight flight.
When Peter got a call from May asking if he would be home for dinner, Tony realised this was the longest he had spent sober in weeks. For the couple of hours that he spent working on something he knew, alongside someone who knew him, Tony hadn’t even thought about reaching for the bottle.
Even as he sent Peter on his way, Tony’s mind was buzzing with plans, designs, ideas – thoughts that he didn’t want to burn away with whiskey. Instead of hitting the liquor cabinet, he was straight back in the workshop before he had even made the conscious decision to be there. Something had changed. The itch at the back of his throat for something fiery was numb tonight. Tony didn’t reach absently for a drink that wasn’t there all night long; not even once.
Maybe it was Pepper leaving that kicked him into shape enough to start picking up the pieces. Maybe it was all for Peter.
Either way, it really was starting to seem as though things might be okay.
But things often do get better before they get worse.