Peter stepped out of May's hospital room and raised an eyebrow at Nat. "Fury's got you escorting the prisoners now?"
"I volunteered. Thought you could use a familiar face," she said. She grabbed Peter's arm and pushed him further down the hallway, in the direction of the terminal. They fell into a rushed, but easy pace, with two nameless SHIELD agents following close behind him. "And I would hardly call you a prisoner. More like a petulant child."
"Maybe don't manhandle me like a prisoner, then," said Peter. He pretended to pout as he rubbed his arm and broke out into a grin only after Nat rolled her eyes and sped up her pace.
They had a long flight ahead of them, but at least he had company, someone to troll besides the SHIELD agents. They didn't have a sense of humor. They didn't know his language the way Nat did. Their words, if they even bothered to reply, never had any bite to them, and Peter needed the snarky banter to distract himself.
From their destination. From the conversation he'd have with Tony once he got there.
A plane waited for them, just like Fury had told him, and after Peter climbed on board and collapsed into one of the seats, he looked out the window at the compound. He watched it as the plane sped down the runway, as it got smaller and smaller, then disappeared completely as the plane lifted off the ground and into the sky.
They climbed higher and higher, and once they reached their cruising altitude and straightened out, Nat appeared somewhere from behind and sat down in the seat across from him. Peter opened his mouth, but quickly clamped it shut again when he saw a new ankle monitor in her hand. His disgust must've reached his face, because it was her turn to be amused.
"We can do this now or later," she said, holding up the tracking device.
"Later."
The less time he had it locked around the ankle, the better. A sense of dread came with the idea of having it on him again. Depending on how his talk with Tony went, the three months the ankle bracelet represented would either be a vacation with family or walking through wreckage in a stranger's home.
Peter looked away from Nat, and back out at the clouds. He couldn't really see anything. It was too dark, and they were up too high.
"I did try to warn you," said Nat, tossing the monitor on the empty seat beside her. She did. He remembered. He just didn't care. "I'm supposed to threaten Tony, so he doesn't take this one off."
"He only did that because there was an emergency."
Nat rolled her eyes again. "Or because he loves you too much to say no. He knew you would hate him if he didn't let you go and be a part of the rescue team. Tony knows he could've easily me or anyone else and we would've taken care of it just the same."
Peter knew that. He knew Tony loved him like a son. He knew Tony altered space and time to bring him back from dust, but even that knowledge couldn't erase his dread. It couldn't erase the unknown loomed in the distance.
For everything he did know, there was something he didn't.
He didn't know how Tony was going to react to being told Peter didn't want to be his heir. He didn't know if telling him that would be the same as telling him he didn't want to be his son, a second time. That wasn't true. It hadn't been the first time he said it out of anger and frustration, and it never would be. Most of all, Peter didn't know if they would still be a family, if there would be anything left to tether them all together, if he backed out of Tony's will.
"He's not going to love me so much after tonight," said Peter. He didn't know what compelled him to give a voice to his fears. Maybe practice. Maybe he needed to practice saying it out loud, before he could say it to Tony. "I'm going to tell him that I don't want SI."
"Really?" asked Nat. She tilted her head at him, genuinely surprised. "You don't?"
"Well, maybe," said Peter. Then shook his head. "I – I guess I don't know. I'm just not really cut out to be a CEO or a business owner or whatever he wants me to be."
He wasn't. He was Peter Parker from Queens, who collected spare parts out of dumpsters and rescued kittens from trees, but even as he thought it, there was a part that rang untrue. If he was honest with himself, he knew he hadn't been that person for a long time. That teenage version of himself, that got lost in time.
Now he was just Peter Parker, MIT dropout and that one Avenger who screwed up every mission he went on.
"I'm not really cut out to be Avenger, either," said Peter.
"Neither was I."
Just three words was all it took to shake his worldview. That if Nat Romanoff, Black Widow, the Avenger who took out an entire army of traffickers by herself, once felt like she wasn't enough to be an Avenger, maybe everyone did.
He wondered if Tony used to sit around and think about how he wasn't enough to be Iron Man. Peter shook his head and stared back out the window. He couldn't imagine it. He couldn't picture him or anyone else he looked up to thinking that way, and supposed it was more likely he'd just caught a rare moment of pity from Nat.
Pretty soothing words that weren't really pretty or soothing, because deep down Peter knew they weren't true.
By the time the plane landed, after turning those words around in his head over and over again, he was fully convinced they were lies. The dread switched back on as him and Nat walked through the trees, towards the cabin, and kicked up in intensity when Peter's eyes landed on the porch.
Tony sat in his usual chair, only this time he wasn't alone. Morgan sat up on his lap, clinging onto his neck, until she noticed Peter and Nat walking closer. She jumped away from Tony, flew down the porch stairs and darted at them.
"Pete," she said, as she hugged his legs. Peter picked up so they could hug properly. "You left without saying goodbye."
"I'm sorry," said Peter. "Never again."
His answer must've been enough for her, because her arms clung around his neck tighter as Peter walked up the steps of the porch. He put her down, and she raced inside the house, leaving the front door wide open and expecting them to follow.
Peter didn't make it in the house right away. He was swept away by another hug. It caught him off guard, made him stumble and almost fall, but Tony's arms pulled him closer and steadied him. When he finally pulled away, Tony messed with his hair and Peter's hand automatically went up to fix it.
"Thanks for bringing him back in one piece," Tony told him, and Peter frowned. Like he wasn't capable of bring himself back in one piece.
Sometimes Peter forgot how much Tony worried. Sometimes he forgot that once he died in Tony's arms, but Tony wasn't gifted with that same ability to forget. Not that day, or the hours and the days he was dead.
They all headed into the living room, where Peter sunk into the couch next to Tony and allowed Nat to lock the monitor back around his ankle. It wasn't too tight, or too loose, not this time, but it was still heavy with dread. If his confession to Tony didn't go well, it'd be the anchor tying down him in the middle of a storm.
Nat left them by wishing Peter good luck and was met by goodbye and a raised eyebrow from Tony, who was, no doubt trying to figure out what she meant by it.
After she was gone, it was just Peter and Morgan and Tony in the living room, in the middle of the night. They decided to camp out there. For Morgan's sake, Tony claimed, because she had woken up with a bad dream and found Peter's bed empty, but Peter wondered if it also wasn't for Tony's sake. He still liked to keep Peter close after missions.
He didn't mind either way. They piled up blankets and pillows and made makeshift beds. Tony ordered FRIDAY to turn on Moana, for the thousandth time. It was in vain. Morgan was out cold before the first song started.
The living room was dark, lit up only by the soft glow of TV, and when Peter looked over at Tony, he figured it was now or never. He crossed his fingers and hoped May and Happy wouldn't take very long getting out to the cabin. He might need them for backup.
"Um hey Tony," said Peter. His voice came out soft, and unsure, but he meant it to come out strong and commanding, like the way Tony's used to when yelling at the other Avengers or when speaking in a press conference.
"Hmm?" Tony's cellphone was in his hand, and it took him a few seconds to look away from the screen.
"Uh I was just," said Peter. "Just thinking we could talk."
Peter's eyes flickered towards Morgan. Only her head was visible from beneath the blankets as she slept. It was a good time. Tony couldn't shout without waking her.
"Of course, we can always talk," said Tony. He left his arm chair and sat down on the coffee table across from him, and Peter sat up, pulling the blankets around his arms for support. "I'm always listening, to whatever you have to say."
"Well," said Peter, then paused. He didn't know how to start this conversation. "… do you remember when we had that argument at dinner?"
"You were feeling pressured," said Tony. "Are you still feeling that way?"
"Yeah," said Peter. He picked at a loose thread on his blanket. "I was just thinking… what if I don't want Stark Industries… what if I want something else?"
Peter waited for the world to shift. He was sure it would, after saying those words out loud to Tony, after rejecting him and his plans, but nothing happened. Cartoon characters sang a song on the TV, the wind hit the house, Morgan shifted in her sleep. Tony stayed unchanged, unbothered, as if Peter had just recited tomorrow's weather forecast.
"What else?"
"I- I don't know."
Tony scooted back on the coffee table. "You don't know what you want. I never gave you time to figure it out."
He said it as if he were having a big revelation, as if he'd been working out a problem and had finally, after years, accidentally stumbled on the solution. Disappointment flashed across Tony's face and Peter's mind whirled, trying to figure out how he could make it go way. Peter knew it wasn't aimed at him. Tony's disappointment was focused on himself, and somehow, that made Peter feel even worse.
"Why didn't you tell me this sooner?"
"I didn't want to disappoint you," said Peter. He motioned to the living room, to Morgan, to everything around them that made them a family. "I – didn't want this to go away."
"That would never happen," said Tony. "I don't care what you do. As long as your happy, I don't care, and I hate to break to you, pal, but you're stuck with me and this family forever."
Peter offered a shaky smile and released a breath. That's all he really wanted to hear, and after hearing it, he didn't understand why he ever thought anything different. Pressure. Anxiety. It made people, including Peter, forget to see what was right in front of them, made them think stupid and ridiculous things.
Tony leaned over and ruffled Peter's hair a second time that evening. "I love you, kid."
The morning after their living room campout, Peter woke up to the smell of Tony making chocolate chip pancakes in the kitchen and a stomach ache that didn't mix well. He threw his blankets off him. He ran to the nearest bathroom, shoved his knees on the floor next to the toilet and threw up.
As it turned out, nearly drowning in a freezing river somewhere in Russia was too much even for Peter's spidey immune system.
Once he was done, once his stomach was empty and he'd stopped gagging up acid, Tony peeled him up off the floor and guided him to his bedroom, where he'd be quarantined for the next several days with a fever.
No one wanted Morgan catching his germs, so Tony was Peter's only visitor. He'd come in and out of his room with water bottles, with Gatorade, with soup, with medicine and with anything else Tony decided he needed. If Peter had any doubt before about Tony's declaration that he was stuck with him, they were cleared up by his excessive mother-henning.
He thought he wanted May and Happy to hurry to the cabin to meditate an argument, but the way it turned out, he needed them there to chill Tony out. It was just a fever, just a stomach bug, and the man, the grown man, was acting like he would wilt away any second.
"If you don't start rehydrating yourself," said Tony, beckoning to the unopened bottle of Gatorade and untouched bowl of soul, "I'm knocking you out and hooking you up to an IV."
Peter glared at him as he unscrewed the cap off the Gatorade and didn't look away as he took a big gulp of it. Tony wasn't bothered. He simply rechecked Peter's temperature with a hand on his forehead and left the room. Once he was gone, and Peter heard he was at the bottom of the stairs, he set the Gatorade back on the nightstand and collapsed into his pillows with a groan.
On his third day of the virus, his door creaked open slowly and he watched, a bit dazed, as the top of Morgan's head got closer and closer, until her face was visible, and she was standing just inches away.
"Hi Pete," she said.
"Hey Morgan," said Peter. "You're not supposed to be in here. You know dad will freak out if he finds out."
If Tony was this bad when Peter, who was technically an adult, was sick, he didn't want to imagine Tony if Morgan happened to come down with the same bug.
"Mmhm," she said, like she not only knew, but didn't care much about it. "I had to make sure you were really in here and you didn't escape again."
"I'm not going to escape," Peter tried to reassure. He didn't bother explaining he hadn't actually tried to escape the first time. It would've been all the same to Morgan. She woke up, sought him out after a nightmare, and he hadn't been there.
"No lies?"
"No lies," said Peter. "I don't want to escape."
He still didn't know what he wanted for his future, but at least he knew what he wanted from the next three months. He wanted his family. He wanted to hang out with Morgan and help Tony in the workshop and just… relax. No pressure. Just vacation.
"But you have to get out of here, before you get my germs."
Morgan didn't move. "Did you throw up?"
"Yeah," said Peter. "I threw up 3000."
Everyone knew that was the most. At least in Morgan's terms, but they didn't pretend at the cabin. Morgan's terms were everyone's terms.
Her eyes went wide, her face crinkled, and she backed away from his bed. She told him bye, then ran out of his room, leaving Peter to once again fall back down into his bed and bury his head under the cool pillows. That was all there was. Just him and his bed and his pillows, then finally, rest.
A/N: Just one more chapter of this left! I plan to have it out by this time next week, if life doesn't get too crazy! Thanks so much for following along with this story!