Tony sat in his workshop, alone and waiting, waiting for something he knew probably wouldn't happen, based on how the last couple of nights had gone. He should probably just join Pepper in bed. He probably should pour his glass of whiskey down the drain and go to sleep at a reasonable hour for once, but he couldn't stop waiting, even if there was a part of him that knew it was pointless.

Peter wouldn't be joining him in the workshop. He would stay in his bed, where Tony knew, courtesy of FRIDAY, he wasn't actually sleeping.

He tried not to take it personally. Tony learned from the books that getting offended by teenagers acting out, or in this case, distancing themselves, wasn't productive. Still, he had a hard time not letting it get under his skin that his child would rather toss and turn, blink at the ceiling and count sheep all night than spend time with him.

Part of the frustration came from thinking things had been getting better. Tony thought they had made up, that while Peter was still obviously unhappy about not being able to go out as Spider-Man during their short stay in LA, he at least accepted it without any more anger towards him and Pepper.

Tony thought their nights in the workshop were progress. He thought they were helping to successfully distract him and mend their relationship, at the same time.

But he'd been wrong.

Peter was as distant as ever, would barely talk to him or Pepper during meals, and during the evening, when they were home, they saw him and Ned only in passing. Tony could only barely take Pepper's advice and let it go, pretend like it wasn't getting to him, but of course it was getting to him.

It made him feel like Howard. Like he was doing something wrong. Like Peter hated him and it was somehow his fault. It had to be, didn't it? If he was a good father, his kid would be able to sleep at night, or at least feel like he was able to come to him when he wasn't.

Tony set his glass of whiskey down on the table and slid a finger over the condensation. The dim lights flickered as he heard it. Light, careful and planned footsteps coming down from the stairs. He perked up, straightened out in his chair for a split second, until he realized those weren't the sound footsteps made when they wanted to be heard.

He stayed completely still on his chair as he watched Peter enter the workshop, as he watched Peter sneak into the workshop. He wondered why Peter didn't notice him, didn't hear his heart hammering away in his chest, unless his own heart was doing the same, blocking out any other noise in the room.

Tony frowned as Peter practically tiptoed to the cabinet that held his bookbag, and inside of that, his suit, and he raised an eyebrow when Peter gave FRIDAY the correct password and the door came open with a click. He reached inside and pulled his bookbag out, looking truly miserable as he did it, and Tony's heart ached.

Tony wondered, wildly, if Peter wanted to be caught. If he wanted someone to stop him from this impulse he didn't understand, or if he was just looking to pick a fight with him, looking for an excuse to say more cruel words with the intention of pushing him away even further.

He wouldn't participate in that. He wouldn't give Peter a fight.

Instead, he cleared his throat.

Peter startled, his breath caught, and his eyes went wide when he zeroed in on Tony. His shoulders fell, and his bookbag went slack in his hands. He stared back at Tony, unreadable and miserable and uncharacteristically silent.

And Tony couldn't take it anymore. This battle back and forth, the wall of silence, the avoiding, the Peter constantly and persistently attempting to do the one thing Tony didn't want him to, and had good reason not allow him to do it. Really, it left him with just one choice, one to follow the advice Pepper had given him back when Peter was happy and cuddling with otters, when his only complaint was being smothered with sunscreen.

Tony had to do it. He had to let the kid get burnt.

"Go ahead," said Tony. He waved his hand towards the door, gesturing for him to leave with his bookbag, but Peter didn't move. "I'm serious. Get out of here, go be Spider-Man."

Peter stared. He still didn't move. "Is this another test?"

"No," said Tony, though his tone had some bit to it, he was at least trying to sound normal. "This is me, at the end of my patience. If you want to go, then go, I'm running out of ways to stop you, aren't I? But just because I'm letting you do this doesn't mean it isn't a mistake, and it sure as hell doesn't mean I approve."

Peter shifted on his feet as the room became still, as the air became thick with heavy silence. He looked down at the bookbag in his hand, then back up at Tony. For a split second, Tony thought he might make the right choice, but that second was over fast. Peter's eyes switched into a hard glare. He backed away towards the stairs, before turning around completely.

"Whatever you're looking for out there," said Tony, causing Peter to pause on the bottom step, with his hand on the railing. "You won't find it."

Tony reclaimed his whiskey as Peter continued to stomp up the stairs. He'd expected him to go, but he hadn't expected it to hurt that bad.

Hours later, the panic set in, and Tony was beginning to regret his decision. He sat at the bar in the kitchen, with his laptop open, and his eyes glued to the dot on the map that was Spider-Man. His son. The vigilante. Fighting crime in a city he knew nothing about, and that knew nothing about him.

Tony scrutinized the dot as it moved through the city. Once or twice, when the dot stopped moving for long periods of times, Tony considered suiting up and bringing him home immediately. His mind with wild with admittedly paranoid thoughts.

Peter was strong and smart and resourceful and it'd take a lot more than a petty street criminal to cause him any serious damage.

But then came the less paranoid thoughts, like people with cameras and too much free time and over active imaginations. People who would connect the dots. People who could make a video or share a post, and get everyone questioning whether or not the orphan Tony Stark took in was Spider-Man.

Tony didn't want Peter's life to turn into more of a nightmare than it already was.

His anxious, paranoia kept his eyes on the computer screen, even when he heard Pepper enter the kitchen. Her feet moved across the kitchen floor, her arm slipped across his back, and her hair hit his face as she leaned over to get a closer look at the screen.

After just a few seconds, she straightened up and rearranged her hand on his shoulder. "Please tell this isn't what I think it is."

"You're the one who said we've got to let him make his own mistakes."

"I meant let him get sunburnt," said Pepper. "Or let him stay up too late before finals, or drink caffeine before bedtime, or literally anything else that doesn't involve our child running around in the middle of the night hunting down car thieves."

Our child. Tony grinned at that, but it was short lived. The rest of the sentence caught up with him, and they fell quiet while they both processed what had been said. It had nothing to do with LA, but everything to do with Spider-Man. When they got back to New York, they were going to have to deal with Peter being Spider-Man again. Somehow.

Tony figured Pepper had it easier. She had practice, and it wasn't until Peter that Tony truly knew what she felt when she worried about him coming home.

As if on cue, as if to confirm their fears were reality, a distress alarm sounded from the laptop.

"Talk to me, Fri. Tell me what's happening," said Tony.

"Peter's heartrate has increased, boss."

Tony and Pepper exchanged worried looks.

"Is he hurt?"

"He appears to be in emotional distress," said FRIDAY.

"Connect us."

"Very well," said FRIDAY. Seconds later she came back with, "Peter has declined the call."

Tony let out a frustrated breath. "Then tell him I said to get back here."

There was silence, and Tony was about to order a threat through the AIs, but then he saw Peter's dot on the laptop screen. It moved in the right direction, advancing slowly, but still advancing, closer and closer to home.

"Well at least he still listens," said Tony.

"Yeah," said Pepper. "Through commands via AI." Pepper put her hand in his hair and kissed his forehead. "I'm going back to bed. Somehow I think you got this one covered."

Tony watched her go, knowing she was right, but still wished he had her as backup. He didn't know which version of Peter was going to walk through the door. Defiant, unreasonable, or the version of him that didn't care enough to be either. Panicky Peter, or maybe an apologetic one.

His emotions were up and down and everywhere in between, and though Tony didn't know exactly what was going on in his head, he couldn't really blame him for being moody. Tony knew what it was like to feel abandoned, and it wasn't something that went away after a couple good nights with a new family, wasn't a feeling Tony could fix, no matter how hard he tried.

He gave an order to FRIDAY, one to replay the baby-monitor protocol footage. At least that way he'd have some idea of what was coming his way.

Peter stood outside the Malibu mansion.

His mansion.

He supposed that's how it worked. Once he was adopted, everything that was Tony's was his too. Not that it wasn't before, but adoption made it legally his. Adoption would make him an heir, would amend his birth certificate, and erase the family he had before.

The parents he lost to the sky. The uncle he lost to a bullet, and the aunt who left him because that bullet had been Peter's fault, because he was Spider-Man and should've been able to stop it.

He ripped off his mask and wiped tears from his eyes with his forearm. He blinked through wet eyes back up at the mansion. There were lights on in the lower level of the house. No doubt, it was Tony waiting up for him. He rubbed at his eyes some more, trying to erase the evidence of tears.

Peter needed to pull himself together. At least enough to make it past Tony, so he could go up into his room and cry silently into his pillow, hoping not to wake up Ned.

He took a shaky breath, willed the tears to stay behind his eyes, and marched up to the door. Everything was fine. He held it together just fine as he walked through the foyer, but it all crashed when he passed the kitchen, when he looked over and saw Tony hunched over his laptop.

Tony torn his gaze away from the screen, and looked at Peter, haunted and concerned. He was out of his chair with a hand on his shoulder before Peter could even think about blinking away unbidden tears.

"That wasn't your fault," said Tony. "You're fast, but you're not that fast."

"What?" asked Peter. "How did – how do you know?"

"Baby-monitor protocol."

Oh, right. Even when Tony wasn't there in person, his eyes were still with him through technology. It hit him in a weird way. He wasn't angry about being spied on. Maybe on a different night he would be, but then, right there, the helicoptering was sort of nice, sort of comforting.

But even that couldn't completely take away the nightmare of seeing a man gunned down on the streets of LA or having to deal with the truth that he failed to prevent it. He failed just like he failed his uncle Ben, and maybe that made May justified. Maybe she was right to cut Peter out of her life.

He insisted on being Spider-Man, but Spider-Man couldn't save Ben, couldn't bring him back after he died or rewrite his ending by saving others. Even if he could, the only person he had anything to prove to wasn't around. Not her body. Not even her eyes.

Tony's hand on his shoulder kept him pinned to ground as he realized, not for the first time, that he'd been running after May when he should've been paying attention to what was right in front of him. He wondered, with panic, how many times he'd forget, how many times he'd have to come to the bittersweet revelation that May didn't care, but at least he had a few solid people who did.

Peter stepped forward, locked his arms around Tony and bury his head in his chest. "I'm sorry."

"You've never had anything to be sorry about, bud," said Tony. His arm wrapped around the top of his back.

"F-for the way I've been acting. I- "

"Stop it."

Peter clamped his jaw shut. He really wasn't in any position to argue with Tony, so he just let him hug him and hugged him back and quietly appreciated how Tony seemed to understand he didn't need words to fix the void left by May. They couldn't. They wouldn't, and maybe nothing would.

Maybe that last thread was something unbreakable, something that could never be cut, or maybe -

"I saw the adoption papers," Peter admitted. He kept his voice low and quiet, thinking maybe Tony wouldn't hear him, but when the man shifted his feet, he knew he definitely had.

Tony stepped out of their hug, to make eye-contact, but held onto his arms. "You weren't supposed to. We were gonna to talk to you about it first, we were gonna wait until – "

"-I want you to," said Peter.

Tony frowned, and Peter knew him well enough to know what this frown meant. It meant confusion. It meant he was trying to put together a puzzle but couldn't see how all the pieces connected. It didn't happen often, and when it did, it was usually Pepper or Peter related. Tony understood robots but didn't always understand people.

"You do?"

"Yeah," said Peter. "Soon."

"Soon?" asked Tony.

Peter nodded his head.

"Okay," said Tony, but his voice didn't sound very convincing. "Uh, I'll make a call to my lawyers." He studied Peter again, with the same frown, then seemed to shake it off. He moved his hands up and down Peter's arms, as if he were trying to warm him up or dry him off. "Hey, let's do something."

"I don't really feel like going down to the workshop."

"Doesn't have to be the workshop," said Tony. "How about a movie? You've barely been in our theater all summer. I thought you and Ned would live in there."

Peter nodded, then went upstairs to change out of his suit and into his pajamas. He'd let Tony talk him into watching a movie, even though he knew what was really happening, even though he knew both Tony and Pepper knew the fastest way to get him to go to sleep when he was miserable was to turn on a movie.

When he got back downstairs to the theater, his theory was confirmed by the sight of Tony laying out a blanket over the recliners in the center of the room. With a sigh, he sat down on the recliner next to Tony's and got under the covers.

Tony put his arm around him, and he wondered if this was it. He wondered if an amended birth certificate and new legal status would be what finally cut all ties to May. If it would make her absence hurt any less. If it would erase her just like she erased him. He hoped so. He pinned all his hope to that, to being a Stark, because being a Parker meant not being good enough and it meant swinging around the streets in the middle of the night, looking for chances to prove that he was.

He shut his eyes, not even pretending to be interested in the movie, leaned his head against Tony, and fell asleep listening to his heart thundering away.

A/N: So that's it for the LA part of this story! Hope you guys have enjoyed it! The next part is just one chapter, but then I have one more multi-chaptered angst fest before they all become just single chapter - or really more like short stories set in this AU - type thing.

It might be a couple of weeks before I get the next chapter of this one uploaded. I'm going to finish my other story as well as work on another story I have coming before I start in on the next arc of this, but it'll back!

Anyways, thanks so much for reading and commenting and favoriting and following! You guys really are the best!