faces
Tentatively, the next handful of days were better.
Tony hardly even recognised it was happening, but he was approaching his longest clean streak in weeks. He spent the day following Peter’s unexpected intrusion finalising their designs, and even making some of them a physical reality so that there wasn’t a spare second in the day to think about drinking. The day after that, Pepper came by. Tony was sober when she did. She said that Happy had told her he was finally trying, which wasn’t strictly true but he certainly wasn’t about to argue. Having her around made things easier, and gave him a reason to hold off when that familiar itch for alcohol did start seeping back into his mind. So even when it was hard, things were going well.
At first Pepper would only visit for a day, maybe sleep over for a night, but it only took around a week of Tony keeping off the bottle for her to make a more permanent move back to the facility with him. She stopped leaving, yet still, Pepper wouldn’t move all of her stuff back in. Tony saw that as a threat, looming over him as though she could pull the rug out from underneath him at any moment, for any reason. He found it patronising.
So they started to argue again.
And Tony couldn’t stand it sober.
Pepper had held him while he cried, tried to make sense of his drunken rambling and she had promised to stay with him, to try harder this time around. Happy had to help her get him into bed. Tony had fallen asleep surrounded by people who loved him, and for some reason things still just kept getting worse and worse.
Because getting drunk that night had dulled a pain he hadn’t even realised he was suffering from in his week long stint of sobriety. Drinking felt like exactly what Tony should have been doing all along. Finally, he remembered how it felt to forget.
And this time when he fell, he fell hard.
---
Peter hadn’t heard from Tony in weeks.
Wisely, he had begun to heed Pepper’s advice and always made sure to call ahead before paying a visit, but doing so had rendered him pretty much banned from the Avengers Facility all together. By now, the drone of Happy’s voicemail was an unpleasantly familiar sound played on repeat in Peter’s head. The first handful of times were disappointing. After about thirty dead phone calls though, it was becoming exhaustively discouraging. On the very rare occasions when Peter could get through to Happy, he could barely get a word in edgewise before being inevitably cut off with the words he had quickly grown to resent.
“Sorry kid, bad time. We’ll call you soon.”
Peter wasn’t entirely convinced that Happy understood the definition of the word ‘soon’, since the call never came. Just how long was he expected to wait? And why was the building anxiety to find out becoming so utterly unbearable?
The last time Peter had seen or heard from Tony, things had been fine. They had moved seamlessly around each other in the workshop, bounced clever ideas around the room and spent hours as the night sky bled into the daylight doing what they both knew best. They worked. They talked. They laughed. Everything was okay.
Except that wasn’t entirely true. Tony had been sluggish, having spent the entire night awake drinking and, presumably, arguing with Pepper; who had packed up her things and left mere hours earlier. In the silences, there was something incredibly urgent and uncomfortable floating in the air between them that was setting Peter’s senses alight. Occasionally, Tony would stop working all together and just watch Peter for so long that he had found it unsettling when he first noticed it. He hadn’t realised until later that Tony had been trying to tell him something. Whatever it was, he had never found the right words for it; or perhaps the right time to say them. Everything had been just a little bit off-kilter that day.
And Peter had left Tony like that, knowing all that he knew.
So the next couple of times he was met with Happy’s dull voicemail, Peter found himself wracked with impossible guilt.
---
Over the weeks, May managed to effectively distract Peter from the massive absence of Tony with a barrage of college applications. She too was somewhat incensed that Tony had bailed on him at such a significant stage in his life, but May had been mother, father, aunt, uncle and all in between to Peter for long enough now that she wouldn’t flinch away from doing it alone. Peter was eternally grateful for that. Without May, he didn’t doubt that he may well have accidentally left the idea of college on the backburner and missed out completely. But May had been there for him, and she was the first to celebrate when his acceptance letter arrived too.
Peter was still wrapped up in May’s congratulatory embrace when she insisted that he call Tony to relay the exciting news.
In truth, he was almost embarrassed to do so.
Peter’s chosen college was good, excellent in fact, and when May had driven him up to visit the campus together Peter hadn’t had a bad word to say about it. Being accepted left him overjoyed. He was genuinely excited to go.
But it wasn’t MIT.
It was childish to dwell on, but Peter couldn’t help it.
When May had placed some not so subtle MIT brochures on his bed a few weeks back, Peter had moved them straight to the trash without a second look. Just the sight of them made guilt burn heavy in his chest. Tony Stark and MIT were so fused in his mind that it was totally impossible to separate one from the other, and in turn, Peter found himself unable to detach his encompassing shame from either. Until he got the chance to offer a real apology to Tony, Peter couldn’t even consider bargaining for a place that he couldn’t claim to deserve at his mentor’s old college. And since contacting Tony had been entirely impossible, MIT had never even been a viable option.
It didn’t end up mattering much, since Tony didn’t answer the phone to hear Peter’s big college news anyway. Not even Happy picked up and this time, it stung. Peter simply couldn’t hide the hurt and May couldn’t bear to see it.
“Kitchen,” she insisted with a smile so forced that it only made Peter’s frown deepen. “We’ll bake a celebratory cake and Tony Stark won’t even get to lick the spoon.” May certainly wouldn’t be forgiving Tony anytime soon, but Peter just couldn’t help thinking how her anger would most definitely be pointed at him instead if she knew the sharp, bitter truth of their situation. How Peter had left him completely alone knowing that things were truly direr than ever, all because of his own selfish need to pretend that it might all be okay. May’s imagined disappointment was already so vivid for Peter that he could feel the cut and burn of it before she even knew a thing. When she reached over to gently cup his face, Peter very nearly flinched away from it. “Hey. Come on. You should be celebrating.”
Celebrating what? Peter was supposed to be a hero, but he couldn’t even save the people he cared for most. Couldn’t even try to. No, he left them to suffer alone, glossed over their pain to make his own life easier. Then when the guilt hit, he took the easy road. Couldn’t even apologise. Couldn’t find it in himself to make the reach and offer a hand.
And now he was upsetting May too, because he couldn’t even suck it up and bake a cake with her.
Anything he could do to stop May from worrying, Peter owed to her.
And honestly, it did make him feel just a little bit better to do so.
---
Graduation.
It still felt like such a colossal weight to Peter. Like something that was leaps and bounds away.
Yet here it was.
Coming up on one month without a word from Tony, and Peter still hadn’t managed to swallow his guilt.
May kept him grounded but sometimes, Peter still felt consumed by it. It was battering him inside and out like a rough sea against sand. Nothing could bring him peace while this loomed on his conscience.
At last though, he thought, graduation was here and he could be faced with Tony, confronted with spilling the apology that had been waiting on his lips whether he was really ready to do so or not. He might be able to breathe again then. Smile, and mean it.
But Peter’s graduation ceremony came and went, and Tony was nowhere to be seen.
---
‘Congratulations kid. – Tony’
Who knew three words scrawled on the back of a card could carry so much venom? So much bite. Happy may as well have strolled up and punched Peter square in the face. It would have been miles less insulting than this.
Though he was certainly spewing false apologies by now as to why Tony hadn’t turned up to deliver the message for himself, Peter hadn’t listened to a word Happy had to say. He was just glad to have already suited up for the night.
Because it was 11.30pm on Peter’s graduation night, and his so-called mentor hadn’t sent so much as a text in acknowledgement.
It had been easy enough to pretend for the day, for May’s sake, that he was perfectly happy. The sympathetic glances Peter kept on catching from both her and from Ned had definitely tested his composure, but he had managed. Peter Parker was no stranger to a white lie, after all. He had even managed to genuinely enjoy a couple hours of the graduation party too. May’s glee was utterly infectious and Peter didn’t often get to see her smile so honestly like that. Ned’s insistent positivity was more welcome now than ever. MJ looked gorgeous and every time Peter caught her eye, he was on top of the world. The Earth didn’t stop spinning because Tony Stark was too busy to remember his graduation.
But as soon as they got home, all of that hurt and abandonment rose to the surface and Peter was totally floored by it. By the time Happy came knocking bearing that lousy little card, all the solemn sadness in Peter had already evaporated. Now, the pain had boiled over into nothing but rage. Peter was midway through suiting up with one destination in mind when Happy added fuel to his fire. That little Stark Industries business card made for some fantastic kindling.
Urgent voices yelled after him as he swung away, but Peter didn’t care.
Tony always signed his cards ‘T.S’.
---
The silence and solitude surrounding the Avengers Facility was so horribly oppressive tonight that it had Peter wondering if things were always this quiet here, or if there really was something awful hanging in the air. It was way too dark to concentrate and he couldn’t hear a damn thing over the pounding of his heart. Peter had made it here on autopilot, but now that he was faced with it the panic had really started to set in.
Because honestly, what was he even going to say?
Tony had always been distant. Maybe it was Peter’s own stupid fault for ever working up the expectation that he wold come to his graduation in the first place. Was it irrational to be so angry about losing something that had never been promised to begin with? Never even mentioned?
Then again, none of that really seemed to matter once Peter started to worry not about what he would say to Tony, but rather about what state he might find him in.
Instead of actually going inside, Peter figured he would have much better chances of finding Tony by scaling the outside of the facility and checking the windows. He didn’t doubt that the staff inside would be quick to turn him away, and he didn’t feel much like fighting. Hesitant as he was, Peter was also certain that Happy would be hot on his heels in the car by now. Ready or not, it was time to face this; and he knew exactly where to start looking. After all, what better place to find Tony than the very last place Peter had seen him?
Sneaking his way up the side of the building, Peter silently prayed that he would find Tony in the workshop, totally consumed in something too urgent to ignore. Something undeniably worthy of skipping Peter’s graduation for. Something so important that Tony couldn’t possibly step away from it, not even for a moment.
In a way, Peter got exactly what he was asking for. He cursed himself for it.
Tony was in the workshop, totally surrounded by holograms. They detailed his intricate and varying designs, everything from new Iron Man suits to what looked like some type of weaponised drones. It would have almost been something of a beautiful sight if it weren’t for one strikingly prominent feature amongst it all.
The Captain America shield was an instantly recognisable staple. Other things, taser guns and winged suits, took Peter a moment longer to notice. Once he had rationalised it, made the connections, they were all as obvious as they were heart-breaking.
Tony Stark sat alone in his workshop, surrounded by upgrades for old friends. People who, as far as Peter was concerned, Tony had not seen or heard from in months. People who had fought him before they left him for good measure. These were not old designs. They were fresh, highly detailed and ready to be built. The only thing that they lacked was the presence of their intended owners. And crushingly, Peter could spot a couple of images glaring of his own Spider-Man suit too. Just a design among the many for people who had shamelessly abandoned their maker. It was a shot to the heart for Peter to see himself grouped alongside them like that, and it cut too deep to ignore.
Peter knew in that moment that it was high time he stopped turning a blind eye. Maybe it wasn’t up to him to save Tony, but he knew he had the power to help him. That, more than anything, meant that he was responsible. Power and responsibility go hand in hand. Peter wouldn’t be who he was if he didn’t believe that, and act upon it.
Poignantly, in the exact moment that he was coming to this conclusion, Tony was reaching for a bottle. It was empty, as Peter had already observed, but it hardly mattered because Tony never made it to the damn thing anyway. In his lean to retrieve it, he fell from his chair and landed uncomfortably on the concrete floor. He didn’t pick himself up, or even bother to move at all. Tony either passed out, or decided he would sleep there. It was the single most desolate, hopeless thing that Peter had ever seen.
For what felt like an eternity after that, Peter stayed there clinging to the window, watching the uneven rise and fall of Tony’s chest. Several times, he asked Karen if there was some way of checking his vitals from here. She could only confirm to him that Tony was still breathing. It helped, and he relaxed, until he felt compelled to ask her again.
At some point, Happy came back. He and Pepper worked together to half carry, half drag Tony out of the workshop and presumably to bed, but Peter still stayed a little while longer.
He watched the holograms flicker against the dark and made himself a promise. Peter would not become just another face among the many who gave up and abandoned Tony Stark when he needed them most. Peter was going to help him, and he was going to start now.
He wouldn’t lose Tony. He wouldn’t allow it.