The day FRIDAY informs him that there is a call from May Parker on his personal line, Tony gets a sense of dejavu. It feels like the wormhole and Ultron and every other shit that has happened to him felt like it was coming at him all over again. He’d been in the middle of a meeting with the financial department, kill him please, when his phone had begun blasting the Stones. Pepper’s eye had twitched, but she’d merely resorted to glaring at him. He’d apologized, and was ready to get back on the meeting when May’s picture had popped up in his phone.
The picture hadn’t been his idea, he hopes everyone knows that, but Peter had gotten a hold of his phone on one of his trips to the facility and decided to update all of his contacts. It was, admittedly, a nice picture. It was May and Peter, big grins on their faces, standing in front of a vendor in what looked like Coney Island. Peter looked a little younger, more baby fat and a softer look about him, but they looked really happy together. Like a family should be. He’d rolled his eyes at the kid at the time, but had made sure that Fry saved it in his personal files.
When he’d stared at his phone for too long, Pepper had cleared her throat pointedly. He didn’t know what she’d seen on his face, but she had immediately excused him from the meeting. Something something Avengers business, and he’d been springing from his chair and down the hall towards her office. He’d walked towards the panoramic windows, and after a long breath, he’d answered the phones.
“Hello?” He’d hated the way his voice sounded, but he hadn’t been able to help it. Every time he had a call from or about Peter, he’d had a flashback to the stories the kid had told him about fighting the Vulture. Every time he got a call, though most of them were about sweet old ladies buying him treats or to complain about his friends, Tony still had that quick moment of panic.
“Is this Mr. Stark?” May’s voice had that tone of forced politeness she always adopted when talking to him. He knew she only tolerated him around Peter because she thought he could give the kid more opportunities. Little did she know that if she decided to take him and move across the globe to get him away from Tony, the mechanic would track them down and make sure they had everything they needed from New York. She… didn’t need to know that, though, just in case she was really considering it.
“Yes, Ms. Parker, how may I help you?” He winced at the business tone of his voice. He’d been spending far too much time with a certain African monarch, it seemed.
There was a long silence on the other side of the line. When May didn’t say anything else, Tony’s unease increased. “May? Is everything—is Peter all right?” he braced a hand against the window and told himself not to panic. He would do no good to the kid or his aunt if he lost his shit. He willed the memories away as he waited for May to continue.
“Mr. Stark, I’m so sorry to bother you. I didn’t know if you were in a meeting and—“
“May,” he interrupted. He could feel the disapproval from the other end of the line at the snappish tone of his voice, but he couldn’t apologize. He needed to know if Peter was all right. May never spoke to him out of her own volition. “It’s fine. I excused myself from my meeting; it was nothing urgent. Now, please, I need to know if Peter is all right.”
“He’s—he says he’s fine,” she stressed the word. Tony rolled his eyes and exhaled a relieved breath. Yeah, this was easier to deal with than another potential supervillain. “But the truth is that I’m not sure. He’s been—well, he hasn’t done any of his code work in a few weeks. It’s been a while since he’s talked about his projects. Ned doesn’t know what’s going on, and MJ hasn’t been by in a couple weeks. I know you’re busy but—“
“He gets out of school at six thirty today, yes?” he interrupts yet again. He taps his eyeglasses and instructs FRIDAY to pull up his schedule for the day. He grimaces when he notices he has yet another meeting with the UN reps about the Accords. He sends an apologetic message to them, and a more sincere one to T’Challa about missing the meeting, and continues to move his meetings around. Shit, there’s a meeting with R&D about the new line of prosthetics that needs to get done, but if he pushes it until tomorrow he could—
“Mr. Stark!” May’s voice pulls him from his frantic rearranging.
“Yes, I’m here. Sorry, I’m just trying to work through my schedule,” he says, still distracted.
“It’s all right if you can’t make it today. I know how important the word you do is,” she says, and now she sounds as if she’s unsure of calling him. He tends to have that effect on people once he gets going. He supposes it’s the good thing about mystery, people don’t know how manic he can get until they get too close and then it stops being as quirky or charming.
“No, it’s fine. I can make this work. I won’t be missing anything important,” he winces as he cancels his late lunch with Rhodey and Viz. They both send back concerned messages, but are understanding that he is needed elsewhere. “I can drop by at around seven.”
“Actually,” May says and Tony can hear her biting her lip. She tends to do that when she’s nervous. “He’s not staying after school anymore.”
“He loves the decathlon,” Tony say and feels like an anvil has been dropped on him. Peter complained about that little asshole Flash sometimes, but he loved the team. He had gotten quite close to Michelle as well in the last few months, and knows he wouldn’t miss it for the world. Especially because that girl was terrifying and she would most likely stab him with a dull pencil, and then track Tony down for good measure. He doesn’t know what it says about him and Peter that they’re attracted to terrifying women. “He’s cancelled training for his meetings.”
“I know!” May explodes, and then huffs a breath. “I’m sorry, I just—I don’t know what to do. Ned has tried talking to him, but he’s shut himself in his room for three days right after he comes from school. He’s not eating well and—“
“Hey,” Tony says softly. “It’s all right, May. We’ll figure it out. He’s a good kid; whatever this is… we’ll figure it out.”
***
So that’s how he found himself here, at four thirty seven in the afternoon, at the door of Peter and May’s apartment. He fiddled with the glasses in his hand and shifted his weight from one foot to another. May had said that she would be out running errands until six when Peter was supposed to have come back from school so Tony has about an hour and a half of privacy with his young friend. He swallows thickly as he feels the tension coil around his body.
God, what was he doing here? He’s quite possibly the least qualified person to be doing this. Peter needed someone dependable; someone who could keep level headed when it mattered. Rhodey would have been his first choice, honestly, and he still has half a mind to—
“Tony?” Peter blinks up at him from inside the apartment. God, he had gotten so caught up in his panic that he hadn’t even noticed the kid getting the door. He was dressed in a plain gray tshirt and the ridiculous hello kitty pajama pants Tony had gotten him after—no, NO, he was not thinking about that. Not when Peter needed him. “What are you doing here?”
“Hey, P,” he says, softly. He could see the minute Peter understood why he was there. The kid was bright, far too bright, and like Tony, he didn’t respond well to be treated with kid gloves. Like Tony, he didn’t take it well when people treated him as though he didn’t understand simple emotions. When people thought he wasn’t mature enough. Tony found himself shoving his foot between the door and the frame before the boy could shut it in his face.
That, in itself, sent the alarms ringing louder in his head. Peter’s enhancements allowed him to be faster than this. His instincts should have let him beat Tony out of the suit at anything. He narrowed his eyes at the kid and noticed his red rimmed eyes and the bruises under them. He looked tired as all hell. But more than that, he looked like he was barely holding it together. Tony felt his eyes widening as he stared at the younger hero.
“Let me in?” he asks tentatively. Peter looks at him defiantly before letting him in. He follows behind the slow shuffling teenager until they reach the kid’s room. The place is messy as all hell, and Tony begins to feel his worry increasing. Last time he had been here, the room wasn’t exactly organized, but it was nowhere near this level of regret. Not to mention that there’s web fluid ingredients all over the place. Peter throws himself on the bed, and stares up at the glow in the dark stars he’s got stuck to the bottom of the top bunker.
Tony stands awkwardly in the middle of the room. He doesn’t know how to begin or where to place himself. He shuffles from one foot to another and messes with his watch. Peter refuses to say anything, and stubbornly stares at the bottom of the bunk above his head. Ironically, this makes Tony’s lip quirk. It reminds him of all the times DUM-E has gotten cranky and sulked in his charging station.
“Are you just gonna stand there all night?” Peter blurts out after a long while of awkward silence.
“Depends,” Tony says and approaches slowly, “Can you move your leg so I can sit?” Peter stares up defiantly at him, and Tony quirks an eyebrow. After a long while, the kid gives a put upon sigh and reluctantly sits up. Tony takes a seat next to him and leans back on his hands. “So, your aunt called.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” the kid says sarcastically. Though he’s not looking at him, Tony can hear his eyeroll.
“She’s worried about you,” Tony says. Peter still refuses to look at him. Tony sighs and bumps him with his shoulder. “I’m worried about you.”
“I’m fine,” Peter says stubbornly.
“Yeah?” Tony says as nonchalantly as he can. He stares straight ahead to the open doorway. “Is that why you’re having nightmares?”
Peter jolts next to him, and whips around to stare at him. Tony doesn’t look at him, but he can feel the kid moving away. And though he was expecting it, it still hurts. Still, Tony is intimately aware of how this works. He’s never had to be the one to confront other people about their issues; has never gotten close enough to ask whether or not other people had night terrors that woke them up screaming and tumbled them down the neck of a bottle. Rhodes has always been too far away, Happy had never stayed the night since Iron Man had been born, and despite how much Pepper had tried Tony had always insisted he was fine. They hadn’t gotten far when it came to helping him sleep.
“I’m fine,” Peter bites out. He huddles himself at the corner of the bed and brings his knees up to his chest. Tony feels a twinge of kinship in his chest at the sight. Remembers the dirt under his palms and the sound of a ten year old trying to talk him down from one more panic attack.
“I’m gonna tell you a story,” Tony says. He doesn’t look at the kid. He knows full well that, at least for him, the minutest twitch on a person’s expression sent his fight or flight response going haywire. The mere sight of pity had always sent his hackles rising. “Of a stupid man who thought he could go at it alone. You see, this guy… he’d been alone most of his life. His best friend growing up had been his family’s butler, and when that butler died well… this man made himself another Jar—butler. So when he began to have people who saw him, he didn’t know what to do with it. One day, he got kidnapped and—and—“he blinks at the doorway and from his side Peter moves a little closer. “A lot of bad shit happened. When he got back home he found out that—he—well, not everyone is as they seemed. And so he got warier, he began to push everyone away because he didn’t know who to trust. His friends, God, but the lucky bastard had great friends. When got sick and thought he was going to die, they—they didn’t know, but they were worried. So worried about him, but he was too stubborn to see it. He thought he had to figure it out by himself, you know, it’s all he’d ever known. In the end, some random guy with an eyepatch saved him, but that’s not important,” he shook his head and tried to rearrange his thoughts. He didn’t exactly know where he was going with this story, but he felt like he had to finish. He had to say something. Peter had uncurled from his fetal position and had turned to look at him. “So this guy, this lucky son of bi—gun, was privileged enough to be put on a team. A team of actual heroes; he got to fight side by side with his childhood hero for a while. He—one day, he went into a wormhole and he saw—what was on the other side blew his mind. More than anything, he was scared shitless. He’d almost died before, more than once, but—“Tony blink down at his wringing hands and began to take deep breaths. His therapist had been helping, but there were days when the fear and panic got to be too much. Talking about it always made it much worse. “It was the first time he’d ever felt so alone. The other side—holy shit,” he breathed out, shaking his head. “Anyway, when he came back, he couldn’t sleep. He would wake up screaming; thinking he was trapped out there. There’s times when he goes out on missions, tries his best to keep people safe and prove that he deserves the spot he was given, but—he still—there are missions when he finds himself trapped in a memory. When he feels the fear and the cold spreading—“
“I dream of the building,” Peter’s voice interrupts. Tony shuts his mouth with a snap and barely dares to breathe. Peter shuffles again and Tony has to try his very best not to reach out and wrap an arm around him. “After Homecoming, when I went after Toomes, I got—I wasn’t paying attention. I got so caught up and I—I was so stupid—“
“Stop!” Tony all but hisses and turns to look at the kid. The boy has tears at the corners of his eyes now, and he’s hugging himself so tight. Trying to keep himself together somehow. Tony understands him. “Stop right there. Don’t do that. Don’t talk yourself into believing it was your fault. The guy was a psycho, Peter. He got caught up in his greed and his need to get revenge. You were doing what you thought was best. You are a hero, Peter Parker. Do you understand me? You saved a lot of people that day, myself included, and we will forever be in your debt. What happened to you? That wasn’t your fault.”
“It still feels like my fault!” Peter explodes. He springs from where he had been sitting and begins to pace around the room. “Don’t you get it?! Everything I became, my powers and the shooters and my suit, they were all for nothing! I still almost lost! He almost hurt a lot of people, and I was so stupid. If I had listened to you I would have still had my suit. I wouldn’t have been caught in his bullshit because Karen would have helped me; I would have been better.”
You could have saved us. Why didn’t you do more? The whisper soft voice creeps into the back of Tony’s mind and he jumps to his feet as though that’ll help. He gets up in Peter’s face and holds him by the shoulders. Maybe a little too tightly if the boy’s wide eyes are anything to go by.
“You are so much better than any suit I could ever give you, do you understand? The suit doesn’t make you a hero, Peter. The suit doesn’t make you my hero, you got that? Spider-Man isn’t the suit; every good thing you’ve done, you have done without all the gadgets I could ever give you. Don’t you ever tell yourself that you’re better with the suit.”
“I got buried under rubble,” Peter whispers after Tony has let go. Tony feels his knees give out from under him and he falls back in the bed. He stares up at Peter, feeling his heart pounding, and the boy hugs himself again. “I thought I wasn’t gonna make it out. I was—I was so scared. I didn’t—Tony, I wanted someone to help me.”
Sometimes, with all the amazing things the boy does and all the sass he doles out, Tony forgets just how young he is. He forgets that he still gets super excited about Star Wars and has glow in the dark constellations in his room. Then there are days like this. Where Peter needs something and doesn’t think he can ask directly, but his voice breaks and he looks his age. Days like today are always the hardest.
“But I did. You helped me,” Peter says and there’s a desperately earnest look on his face. “I kept telling myself that I was still Spider-Man. I had already been Spider-Man before I met you, Tony, and I—I did it. I got out, but sometimes—lately I’ve been—I keep thinking about that day and I—I’ve been dreaming and—“
“Come here,” Tony says gruffly, and pats the bed next to him. Peter does, and Tony gives in and wraps an arm around the kid’s shoulders. “People think we’re infallible,” Tony begins and for the first time in a while he feels like he’s choosing his words with great care. He needs to say the right thing and mean it. “They think that we’re not—that things don’t get to us. We’re—we’ve got powers, we’re heroes,” Tony mimics quotation marks with his fingers. “So we just—the shit that happens to us, we just bounce back, but that’s not true. What you’ve gone through, kiddo, you never should have been in that position. Scary shit like that—there’s so many things that run through your head during and after,” he feels Peter nod against his shoulder. “Most people won’t understand what it’s like. MJ, Ned, your Aunt May, they’ve never gone through those types of experiences and most likely they never will.” Hopefully, Tony doesn’t say but he knows there’s no guarantee. “But that doesn’t mean that you’re alone. You have a family that cares about you, so much. You don’t have to go looking for people who care about you. You have a family, Pete, and unlike the stubborn asshole in my story, you’re so goddamn smart. Smart enough to take comfort when you need it. But,” Tony swallows hard and squeezes the boy’s shoulders a little tighter. “But when it gets to be too much. When—when it gets to be too much. When—the memories are the worse, I know, and when they get to be too much. You’ll always have me, okay? You’ve got me and you’ve got Rhodey. He—the things my brother has seen, Peter, he understands better than anyone.”
Peter nods against his shoulder, and whispers a soft, “okay.”
“Okay,” Tony replies just as softly. He runs his fingers through the boy’s head until he feels him dropping against his side. “All right, well, you’ve got time for a small power nap. Go to sleep for a bit, kiddo.” Tony heaves himself off the bed and lets the boy get comfortable. He makes towards the door, but Peter’s hand grips at his forearm.
“Sorry, just—“
“May promised me dinner,” Tony says with a smirk, and Peter gives him a small smile in return. “I’m just gonna be out there and catch up on some work.”
“May shouldn’t have called you, I’m sorry I know you’re busy—“the kid begins to blabber but Tony raises a hand to stall him.
“Pete, bud, I meant it. Any time you need me, you can just call me; you don’t even have to go through the Forehead of Security anymore, okay? It’s just a few meetings, it’s okay. Now, get some sleep before dinner.”
Peter smirks and gets comfortable again. With his eyes closed, he says, “Careful. You sounded almost domestic for a second.”
“All right, underoos, go the fuck to sleep.”
The sound of Peter’s laughter follows him out into the living room. He sets himself on the couch and leans his head against the backrest tiredly. He pinches the bridge of his nose, and lets out a sigh. There’s a war of emotions swirling in his chest, but for the first time in a long time, he has a sense of contentment, too. He feels like he has finally managed to get something right.
He doesn’t realize he’d fallen into a doze until the sound of May’s keys on the doorknob wake him up. He has the watch gauntlet wrapped around his hand before he can blink, but thankfully, he snaps out of it quickly enough to not do anything stupid. His heart is pounding in his chest, but a look around the perimeter to make sure there’s no danger calms him down. May greets him in passing as she dumps the bags she was holding and goes to check up on their resident mini genius. When she comes back, she greets him with more warmth than ever before. He finds himself mustering a real smile for her in return.
It isn’t until Peter is animatedly chatting about Ned and MJ’s new Lego mix-matched creation, and he’s sharing a relieved look with May across the dining room table, that he realizes that both he and Peter had managed to sleep peacefully for a few minutes.