Tony's spiralling.
He knows it, Bruce knows it, Pepper knows it, everyone except the media knows it, which, he supposes, just means everyone in his close circle of people, which, most definitely, is way too many people, because if even his therapist knows it, then Tony's just done for. Stupid-o. Spiralled way out of control. Desisted. (There's a fancy word. He learned it from one of Peter's little friends, the one with the sharp tongue and the curious eyes.)
His hands shake when he goes to bed, trying to change out of his clothes with fumbling fingers and a deliberately slowed breath.
"You seem to be having some difficulty changing, sir," FRIDAY notes. There's no contempt in her voice, something akin to worry but mostly it's calm. Cool. Like she's rattling off some stat, simplifying Tony to numbers, statistics on a sheet of paper. It comforts him, a bit, thinking of himself this way, like numbers on a screen or a graph drawn by mechanical fingers, precise and objective.
"I'm fine," Tony's voice comes out weak, shaky, and he hates himself for it. He hates himself for a lot of things, it seems. "It's okay, FRIDAY." He's comforting himself, he knows, FRIDAY isn't worried, FRIDAY is an AI, he's the weak one, the one who worries and fears, he's the one whose hands shakes and whose breath rattles in his chest like a children's toy, heart against ribcage like beans against wood in a maraca.
"If you say so," and Tony doesn't really regret it, programming FRIDAY to have that sort of sarcasm, but the words make his shoulders hitch up all the same. Great. Even FRIDAY has gotten to the point where she's become sarcastic about his mess of... well, whatever it is.
He glances around.
His room, he supposes.
Tony's room is a complete mess, plates and cups and clothing and little bits of machinery everywhere. In one little corner is some lego, ripped apart in some fit of rage that Tony is too tired to remember.
It's seeped everywhere, through his bones and his skin and his blood, like a virus that he can't quite contain, an insect that he can hear but can't see. He's weary, a kind of weary that he doesn't remember having been before, where his hands shake but he's barely awake. Where his eyes are wide open, but he can barely register the fact that this is his room.
The shirt finally goes off, and his fingers don't quite seem to register that they're supposed to latch onto it, so the shirt just goes flying across the room and smashes against his dresser mirror and then it falls, perfectly, messily, horribly, onto a plate of watermelon juice.
Tony stares at it.
He kind of wants to cry.
He laughs instead because hey. This is hilarious.
Okay.
Fine.
Maybe it's not.
Maybe Tony's just finally lost it, maybe he's finally gone nuts, because he's doubled over, laughing, at his shirt falling into a platter of watermelon.
Then it hits him like a truck, that his shirt is now soggy and gross and has sticky juice all over it and his brain registers what a mess his room is, with plates and cups and clothing and machinery and those stupid, stupid legos (pointlessly sitting in his corner, mocking him) and...
He just...
It's just...
His hands, Tony thinks numbly, are shaking like a leaf.
Heck, he's probably shaking like a leaf.
Not that he'd know.
He's panicking.
"Ha," He laughs, a harsh, grating sound that sort of chokes out of his throat, sounding more forced than natural. "Ha, ha," and he's laughing, again, because he's kind of hysterical and maybe this is a thing? Laughing when he's supposed to be crying.
Dimly, he hears the door behind him click open and shut, and he turns around to see Pepper, immaculately dressed and looking heartbroken as she says, softly, "Tony."
"I'm a mess," He snickers.
She picks her way through his room, toeing over pieces of crumpled metal on the floor and a growing pile of books on physics, and eventually Pepper ends up in front of him, looking perfect even in that old Beatles shirt that he bought her (a cheesy yellow t-shirt with here comes the sun in bright red cursive, Tony joking that it was his colours and Pepper kissing him on the cheek as she asked am I your sun?) and checkered black and white pyjama pants.
"If you wanted to see me shirtless," Tony goes on autopilot, tilting his head to the side and offering Pepper a cocky smirk as he runs a hand along her bicep, "You could have just asked. We're in the bedroom anyway, though, so I guess that it's a moot point."
He doesn't leer, doesn't have the energy to, and maybe that's what tips Pepper off because she just runs her fingers along the back of her neck and gives him that sad, sober look again.
"What do you say?" Tony wiggles his eyebrows, but he feels distinctly uncomfortable as Pepper cups a hand against his cheek, "You, me, a nice bed? We could have a lot of fun together."
"Your hands are shaking," Pepper doesn't rise to the bait, taking her hand off of his neck to touch his hands. Her hands are a constant, firm against his twitchy fingers.
"Me, personally, I like sleeping with girls at night," Tony continues, blithely, "I mean, I like having sex at any time, but at night is nice, too, I'm cool with any time, really. I'm hot, you're hot, it works out. And if you're up for it..."
"Did you take your medication?" Pepper wants to know.
Tony falls silent. He picks up her hand, kisses her fingers, light and chaste, and when she lowers her hand he doesn't resist. "I did," he shouldn't sound so whiny and childish, he hates that part of him, "It's not... it's not working."
"That's okay," Pepper says. Soft. Kind.
"I don't want to see my therapist," Tony says.
"Why?" Pepper asks patiently.
"I feel like I'm wasting my time," Tony mumbles.
Pepper tilts her head, "He's not helping you?"
"No. He is. I just." Tony shakes his head, frustrated, "I shouldn't need him. I shouldn't need a therapist. I should be okay by now, I should be better by now, I've been seeing therapists since Afghanistan, if someone was going to fix me, I'd be fixed by now, I must be doing something wrong, I'm just wasting his time, I can handle this by myself, I don't need to waste his time when he's got real people with real problems and..."
"Tony!" Pepper's voice is sharp, breaking into his tirade with a refusal to let him continue.
His breathing is harsh now, ugly and sharp and fast and he hates it, he hates that he's doing this, he feels manipulative and stupid, having a panic attack in front of her. Why can't you handle it? he thinks as he sinks to the floor.
Why can't you stop it? Why can't you deal with it? Aren't you just tricking her into thinking it's worse than it is? You just want to be coddled. You just want her to pity you. You're just a liar, tricking her and messing with Pepper and you're just a stupid...
He crumples up, knees drawn to the top of his head as he hides his face in his hands and tries to control his breath, trying to ignore the uncomfortable feeling of metal under his foot and the scrape of the edge of the bed against his spine as Pepper presses a hand against his back and silently stays beside him.
She's far too kind for him.
"Tony," Pepper says quietly. Firmly. "I need you to raise your foot for me."
He'd rather not listen. He'd rather not acknowledge her, rather not acknowledge the outside world, not when he's here, in his little bubble of darkness where he's numb and in between, where he doesn't have to think about the real world and waking to the mess and having to somehow clean it all, would rather not think of how it sweeps over him like a Tsunami and how it scares him and...
"Tony, the metal is cutting into your foot," Pepper's voice isn't alarmed in the way that Bruce's voice becomes, isn't panicked or fast, it's measured, careful, and Tony knows that this is her trying not to panic him.
It probably should work, except for the fact that Tony is working with a quiet panic, a soft storm that clouds his mind and numbs his thoughts.
"I need you to raise your feet for me," Her CEO voice, brisk, commanding, no-nonsense.
Tony raises his feet.
She pulls the metal away and puts a pillow where the metal was.
"Put your feet on this, bottoms up, legs straight."
Tony complies.
"I'll be back," Pepper promises with a kiss to Tony's forehead and Tony hates this a bit, how she babies him, he feels pathetic and stupid, like a child faking an illness for a parent's attention.
"Okay," he says instead of voicing his thoughts, voice small.
She comes back with a bowl of water, a towel, and some disinfectant, and she helps to wash off the blood with such care that Tony, for the third time, feels like crying all over again.
"I can do it," Tony says, leaning forward to take the towel from her hand, but Pepper jerks her hand away and frowns at him.
"So can I," she says.
Tony doesn't quite know what to say to that, doesn't know how to say but you don't need to or but I don't deserve it without making her sad, so he stays silent.
When she's finished and has bandaged up his feet, Tony offers her a soft, "Thank you."
She smiles at him. No kisses to the cheek, no intimate touch, just says, "Go to sleep," and somehow this, her cleaning his bleeding feet in the middle of the night and pointing at his bed, somehow that is far more intimate than anything Tony can think of.
I love you, Tony wants to say.
Instead, he says, "I haven't changed into my pyjamas."
She laughs a bit. Sort of sadly. "That's okay," she says.
It isn't. There's a buzzing in the back of Tony's head that wants to scream it's not no you don't understand it's not okay it's stupid and dumb and freakish and weird but Pepper loves him so much that she's willing to wash blood off of his feet and how can Tony not trust her on this when he trusts her with his life?
So he says okay.
Doesn't ask are you sure. Doesn't say you're wrong. Because he trusts Pepper, intimately, oddly, and so he thinks, I don't need pyjamas.
He falls asleep in dress pants and without a shirt, and as the lights close and the door clicks shut, he might hear Pepper whisper I love you.
In the dark, at the moment between the closing of the door and when Pepper walks away, he might whisper back I love you, too.
"Mr. Stark!" The kid starts when Tony toes into the room, blinking as he quickly moves the pan forward to catch his falling pancake. "You should be asleep!"
"I smelled bacon?" Tony asks in lieu of answering. It doesn't come out quite so confident as he would want it to have been, but he supposes that it would have to do in way of greeting. "What are you doing here, kid?"
"Miss Potts said that it was okay," Peter blurts, which is both an answer and nowhere near an answer.
"Pepper did?" Tony grunts, "Just because Pepper lets weird little kids break into my tower doesn't mean that I want you in my kitchen making... what are those, pancakes?"
"Blueberry."
"Gimme," Tony sticks a bite in his mouth, and when he's finished chewing it, continues, "Don't think that you can win me over with my favourite pancakes."
Peter grins, and Tony internally groans because of course.
He's already been won over.
"I have bacon, too, in my attempts at seducing you," Peter says, "But no eggs, sorry."
"That's fine, eggs are gross anyway," Tony says dismissively, picking at his pancakes and being vaguely jealous that Peter can so easily make this anytime he wants while Tony is banned from his own kitchen.
(His. Own. Kitchen. He lights Peter's kitchen counter on fire one time and he's never trusted again! So unfair.)
Peter gasps dramatically, "You don't like eggs?" He asks, horrified.
"They're gross," Tony wrinkles his nose and makes a vague gesture, wiggling his fingers, "They're all greasy and oily and it's weird because it tastes like oil but it also tastes kind of like something else and it's confusing. And they're scrambled and stuff! It's so weird."
"Are you talking about scrambled eggs?" Peter demands, making a hissing sound. "Where did you eat them?"
"Rhodey made them for me in college," Tony says a bit proudly, because oh yeah, he got the full college ride. (Actually, come to think of it, maybe that's not something to be proud of, after all, considering that he spent half of that time blackout drunk...)
Peter wrinkled his nose, "And Mr. Rhodes is a good cook?"
"No, he's awful," Tony laughs, "The only good thing that he can make is an eggplant... casserole... okay, kid, you make a point, make me some eggs."
"No way, Mr. Stark," Peter finishes the last of his pancakes and moves to the sink to start washing the pan. As soon as the cold water hits the pan, it starts to sibilate and steam flies up in huge, rolling waves of gray clouds. It's powerful and elegant. "I just made some bacon and pancakes for you, give me a break."
"But then what do I pay you for?" Tony pouts.
"You don't pay me for anything," Peter pokes the pan and deems it cool enough to start scrubbing with the sponge and soap. "You pay me because you love me."
"Lies," Tony hisses, leaning back from the counter and making a three-clawed symbol over his heart.
"Deny it all you want," Peter laughs, "I know the truth."
"Don't kid yourself," Tony narrows his eyes and jabs his fork in Peter's general direction, "I only keep you around for the pancakes."
Peter slides a plate of pancakes onto the seat across from Tony and hops on, grinning as he reminds Tony, "And the bacon."
"And possibly the bacon," Tony concedes, reaching over to steal a bite of Peter's pancake.
Peter yelped. "You have your own!"
Tony hums a bit, pretending to think about it, "Well, yeah," he drawls, "but the stolen food tastes so much better."
Peter makes a scandalized noise and draws his plate closer to himself.
Tony laughs at him.
When they finish their breakfast, Tony remembers that he's just wearing his robe (eggplant purple, covered in Batman symbols, but don't be fooled, it's a Batgirl themed robe, it just so happens that there are around 10 Batpeople running around in the comics) and his fuzzy slippers. "I might need to change," he admits, and Peter laughs.
"Just maybe," Peter agrees, light and teasing.
"Brat," Tony ruffles the top of Peter's head fondly.
"Yes, yes I am," Peter agrees cheerfully, "But you love me."
"Don't make me say it," Tony grumbles.
"You love me."
"No."
"You adore me."
"No."
"So much love, you can hardly hold it all in."
"Lalala, can't hear you!"
"I love you too, Mr. Stark!"
"For Christ's sake, kid!" Tony grumbles as he closes his bedroom door and starts changing into his Star Wars themed pyjamas that Pepper bought for him as a joke gift, "I love you, too. Yeesh."
He can't see him, but Tony gets the distinct feeling that Peter is smirking at him.