Tony sighed.
He wondered what his therapist would've said about this new development. Wondered what it said about him. Though perhaps it said enough about him that he hadn't scheduled an appointment with his therapist for so long that she might as well be dead and buried at this point and yet he still wasted his time wondering what she might've thought of his life choices.
"Remind me again why we're doing this?" He asked one more time, allowing himself a wistful glance back at the house. Where his custom-made bed and self-made coffee machine waited for him, softly calling out his name.
"It will be fun!" Peter assured, with the sort of certainty that he had no business having, seeing as he had, in fact, no way of knowing if this outing would be any sort of fun whatsoever.
Over his shoulders, Tony met Wanda's eyes. His incredulity was perfectly mirrored in her face, making it clear that she too had no expectations of this horrible idea turning out to be in any way a pleasant experience.
Neither of them said anything, though. Not a single word of discouragement, despite having plenty of time to do so.
No. They met eyes and shared their unsaid reticence, but nevertheless grabbed their backpacks and stepped out of the house. The harsh sun hit their faces and not even Tony's Prada sunglasses were enough to shield his eyes.
This truly was a terrible idea.
Tony never enjoyed hiking. He wasn't a nature kind of man. Camping in the middle of nowhere, climbing shit, going deep into the woods to connect with the trees or whatever... it had never seemed attractive enough to risk the mosquito bites and the bears and the rocks and the fucking nature.
But Peter.
Peter fucking Parker wanted to go hiking, and Tony apparently did not have a backbone anymore wherever Peter was concerned, so there they were, about to embark on a long-ass journey to get to the other side of the lake. Which for sure was just the same as the side of the lake they were on, in Tony's opinion.
Not that Peter asked or anything.
The kid was bursting with excitement and unrestrained joy, barely being able to remain in place for more than a few seconds, far too eager to get going, and that was more than enough to keep Tony's mouth closed.
It wasn't as though they had lots to do, anyway.
Between him and Wanda, they had a good chance of keeping Peter away from dangerous situations, so it was also a fairly harmless outing.
"If this turns out to be a long-ass hike, you're carrying me the rest of the way, Spider-Boy," Tony informed, closing the door behind him. He's unsure whether he meant it or not. "Let's go."
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"You know, if you keep rejecting bacon," Tony said, pointing at her with the dirty spatula in his hands. "I might start to think there's something truly wrong with you."
Wanda blinked, surprised. "I'm a vegetarian, actually."
"You are?" Tony asked, re-evaluating. Weird. That hadn't been in her files. "Why would you do that to yourself?"
She shrugged. "I didn't have much of an option on what I ate when I lived in Sokovia," she explained, very casually. As if speaking about her deeply traumatic childhood story wasn't a big deal. Tony silently wondered how she did it. "First in the streets and then at the lab… I had to eat what I could. Most of it was disgusting, to be honest. So when I moved here — let's put it that way, shall we? — I decided to allow myself the privilege to be very selective."
"I get that." Sort of. A little bit. But not really. "But why meat? Meat is fucking delicious."
"It can be," Wanda agreed, although she didn't look particularly impressed. "When it's bought from a supermarket. When it's cooked right. When you have no attachment to the animal. When you see only the final product. Sure. Not so much when it's a dead rat you killed on the streets, though."
Tony winced. "Shit. Yeah, I guess that memory must linger."
She met his eyes, a brief shadow of seriousness flashing quickly across her face before fading back into the same calm from before. "It does. Many memories linger more than I wished they did."
"Preach, sister," Tony agreed. Damn, he could probably write a book — many books — on how some memories refused to fucking go away, no matter how hard you tried to get rid of them. "So, no meat then?"
She nodded. "No meat."
"What do you eat then?"
"Everything else."
Now, that hardly explained anything, did it?
"What else?" He pressed. "You can't eat burgers, hot dogs, pizza, meatballs, steaks…"
Wanda smiled, amused. A touch condescending as well, he can tell, which is a bit vexing, if not exactly unprecedented. For some reason, a lot of people thought they could get condescending when talking to him. "I do eat pizza, Tony. And burgers, for that matter. Soy patties are very much like actual meat."
"Wow. That just sounds very depressing."
"They are!"
Tony blinked. "Oh my god, you are serious."
"Have you tried—"
"Have I eaten mud? No. Of course not. Doesn't mean I believe it tastes great."
She threw her hands up. "How are the two even comparable?"
"How are they not?" Tony said.
"You're impossible," Wanda said, shaking her head in frustration, but her smile betrayed a hint of amusement and she made no attempts to flee the scene, so Tony still counted the whole interaction as a success.
There, see? He could do this.
Let it be known to the entire multiverse that Tony Stark could, indeed, allow some bygones to be bygones.
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Tony knew it had only been a matter of time before the inevitable questions rose to the surface. He had been mentally preparing himself for the confrontation — going over hundreds of possible ways the conversation could go and doing his best to fortify himself against the inevitable accusations that were bound to be thrown around.
And yet, it still caught him by surprise when Peter walked into his lab and demanded, "Tell me about it." No preamble, no niceties. Nothing.
And he seemed so confident that he would get his answers, with his arms crossed in a stubborn way that reminded Tony terribly of Steve. Unsurprisingly, that didn't help matters.
"No," Tony refused, the word leaving his lips before he could even think about an answer. He knew the questions would come — which didn't mean he had to answer them. Absolutely not.
Peter tilted his chin up, defiance etched onto his every pore. Tony wished the expression didn't make him look so young. "I deserve to know."
Tony was tired of hearing people tell him about everything they felt they deserved.
"Do you? Said who?"
"Me. Gods, I don't know," Peter said, quickly getting worked up. "Why won't you tell me?"
"I have told you. You just won't listen. You died, people died. It was a fucking mess. A horrible ordeal, actually. What else do you want?"
Peter huffed, incredulous. "Are you for real?" He asked. "Seriously? That's all you're giving me? Five years of me being dead and all you have to say about it is that it was horrible?"
"What else is there to say?" Tony said, shifting his eyes, trying to remain in the moment and not be dragged into the bottomless pit that was his own memories. "You didn't exactly lose any nice parties, kid."
"Stop!" Peter snapped, angrily shoving a few strands of hair away from his face. "God, Tony, stop. Stop calling me kid and treating me like I'm an idiot."
"I'm not," Tony said, and it was the truth. "I don't think you're an idiot, Peter."
He didn't. Of course he didn't. Not Peter.
Which changed absolutely nothing.
"Then start acting like it," Peter demanded, eyes burning into Tony's. "Give me something."
Give him something?
For some reason, those words invoked a wave of deep-seated anger inside of Tony that he had not allowed himself to feel in a long fucking time. It penetrated his skin, his cells, and every molecule of Tony's body until his entire being reverberated it over and over.
Give him something.
As if Tony hadn't already given him everything that he could possibly have to give. As if he had anything else stored in his old, exhausted self to offer. As if there was any inch still available of Tony Stark that Peter Parker hadn't claimed and possessed yet.
As if.
How could it not be clear how much Tony didn't have anything else to give? How Peter's wellbeing was the only concern Tony carried with him at all times — a boulder he, much like Sisyphus, pushed up the mountain with the mere strength of his will, only to watch it roll back to the ground every single day, without fault, in a helpless, neverending toxic cycle.
Give him something.
Fuck that.
Tony was giving.
Had not stopped giving ever since Peter snapped back into existence like a fucking miracle, appearing in front of Tony in a way that he had only ever allowed himself to believe possible in his wildest dreams, as he lay in bed, ruminating about his gigantic, cosmic-proportionate mistakes.
Tony had promised himself that he would do better.
Be better.
He would take the miracle he had been offered and run with it.
He would protect Peter at all costs, Christ knew he would, and he was. He was protecting him. From the truth, the ugly, the mess, the chaos, the years and years of the collapse of humanity, the fine tread that had managed to keep them alive. Standing.
None of those resolutions made it easier to deny him, however.
"I don't think so, Parker," Tony said, turning on his heel and quickly leaving the room. "Not today."
A strategic exit, he told himself.
Right.
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As it often did, the need came out of nowhere.
Tony was halfway done with washing his body, doing his best to be careful with his still-healing arm, all eight of his shower heads turned on high, when the intrusive thoughts began to consume his mind, quickly souring his previous good mood. With absolutely no prompt or reason, Tony's brain started to convince him that Peter was not safe — that none of them were safe.
Wanda wasn't safe, and Tony had promised himself that he was done putting her through life-threatening situations.
It didn't matter, 'cause his cabin could easily be invaded. And by easily, Tony meant it was nearly impossible, but still… never say never, and all that. It could be done — somehow, it could be done.
And Tony was too busy taking a fucking long shower, luxuriating under the pressurized water, blissfully unaware of the dangers surrounding his home — which was not only his now, once more.
"Fri, start running a perimeter check," he ordered, hands still curled around the bottle of shampoo. "Double-check for weak spots. I want a list of every possible way a person could try to break into the cabin — most likely to least likely."
"Yes, Boss," F.R.I.D.A.Y. responded right away. "Checking the perimeter as we speak. My sensors aren't picking up any unusual activity, Boss. Is there a reason to believe we might be under attack?"
"Isn't there always a reason?"
There was an embarrassingly long pause.
"I don't believe so, Boss."
"Better safe than sorry," Tony said darkly, putting the unopened bottle back in place and stepping out of his shower. "Give me Peter. And Wanda — give me her, too."
Wordlessly, she complied, putting up two screens to his right.
Tony went to the workshop. He had work to do.
Who needed sleep, anyway?
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Two confrontations in the same week seemed a bit excessive, in Tony's mind, and yet somehow Peter and Wanda hadn't received the memo.
Tony sighed. "I said they would come for you after Lagos."
"You also said that I would be safe at the Compound!" Wanda yelled, already so incensed and for no good reason.
"And you were," Tony said, trying to keep the bitterness away from his voice. "You were fucking safe there — and you still decided to leave; to follow Clint on his suicide mission."
"I couldn't hide and wait forever. If I did that, then I would have to hide my whole life."
"No, you wouldn't!" Tony corrected, frustrated with having to deal with those same arguments all over again. "I know it may sound that way when you are a teenager, but things don't need to have an immediate result to be worthwhile. Believe it or not, I know how the media and the public work better than Cap or Clint."
"I killed people," Wanda pointed out, crossing her arms in front of her chest. She was always on the defensive around Tony. "Time doesn't change that."
"Time gives people a chance to forget, to put things in perspective. That's how it works — don't be naive."
Wanda paused. She eyed him, visibly gathering the courage to utter whatever she was about to say, and Tony could do little else but to breathe in deeply and hope it wasn't about to be about—
"The Raft…"
That.
Tony turned his head away. "What about it?" He asked past the lump starting to form in his throat, even though the last thing he wanted was to talk about the fucked-up mess that the Raft had been. The image of her in a straitjacket would haunt him forever.
"I know you helped Steve," she accused, acting as though she was some sort of Natasha-level spy for figuring that out on her own.
"Well, seeing as I was responsible for putting you all there in the first place, it seemed like the least I could do."
"Ross—"
"Ross is an idiot. An idiot with a lot of power, yes, but an idiot nevertheless. If I hadn't helped him- if I hadn't…" Tony shrugged, looking away. "Well, that's on me."
"It seems that you think a lot of things are on you," Wanda said after a long pause, and she sounded calmer for some weird reason.
"Are they not?" Tony countered, looking at her again. "Apparently, I don't know the difference between saving the world and destroying it. Isn't that what you said?"
Wanda closed her eyes, a pained line forming on her forehead. "I was wrong," she admitted, her voice strained. "We do not have time for me to apologise for all the things I was wrong about in the past. There are far too many…"
"I'm not expecting apologies." And he wasn't. Tony had learned the hard way to never expect that which was not coming.
She smiled sadly. "Doesn't mean you don't deserve one."
"In this case, I don't." And he's not lying. The last thing he wanted was for her to apologize to him. Not when he was guilty of so much of the shit that happened to her. "Not from you. If anything, you're the one owed an apology."
"I know you believe you are the monster of my nightmares, Tony, but you're not," Wanda said gently, her green eyes sad and distant. All the fire seemed to have drained from her body. "Hydra has a way of... turning your insides out, in a sense. Growing up in a cage, at a dirty lab… being used as an experiment for their twisted visions… that's what will haunt me to my dying breath. Feeling the empty space where my brother was supposed to be, where Vision…"
"Not what you expected, hun?" Tony quietly asked when she ran out of words, knowing all too well about the feelings she was expressing. Sometimes you went to someone looking for answers and found only a dark path in its place.
It was a harsh lesson.
She gave him a half smile, shaking her head. "You could say that, yes."
Tony looked up at the ceiling, remembering another day and another awkward conversation. "Some kid once told me that with great power comes great responsibility."
Wanda huffed beside him. "Some kid, hun?" There was a touch of humor wrapped around her words.
Tony's mouth curled up despite his better sense. "Yup. He's a good kid. Has his days, really."
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Peter all but shoved the StarkPad into his hands, eager to show him whatever it was that he had come up with. Instinctively, Tony held it so it wouldn't fall to the floor.
"You have to see this!" Peter grinned, pointing to the screen like a maniac. Excitement etched into every line of his face.
That was the moment, though, that Tony realised he had been handed something by someone and he had taken it. Without even pausing to think about it, he had grabbed the StarkPad from Peter's stretched-out hands, more curious about whatever it was that his protogeé was working on than worried about his own rules.
He just grabbed it.
In a flash, all the times his mom had handed him things came back with a vengeance. The memories drowned him — the thousand times they had worked together in the kitchen, or putting together last-minute arrangements for her charity parties, or carefully cleaning and rearranging her precious jewellery collection…
Countless hours he spent being handed and handing things, passing stuff from hand to hand, basking in the precious moments of having his mother's full and undivided attention, soaking in the only kind of love that he had ever received as a child.
Intimate.
It became so intimate for him. Such a guarded memory. An untainted part of his otherwise crappy childhood that he fought hard to preserve, even as the years passed and buckets full of trauma threatened to consume each corner of his mind, erasing all else in its path.
Somehow, however, his instinctive response to step back, to cross his arms, to wave the object away and reject whatever it was that was being handed to him, only kicked in when the StarkPad was already in his grasp. Peter's excitement, his wide smile and bright eyes, registered as more important than anything else in the precious few seconds he had had to process the situation.
And there he was — looking down at the screen, seeing Peter's new project glowing at him, a glorious mess of equations and compounds and titanium and jaw-dropping genius engineering.
He had been silent for too long. Peter's smiling was fading away, a worried look replacing his previous elation, and that just wouldn't do.
So, with an effort Tony hadn't known he possessed, he pushed the memories of his mother away, choosing to stay in the present instead of wallowing in the past. Consciously placing his priorities elsewhere. Allowing the vivid images to fade away, perhaps lost forever, only to give his attention to Peter.
Peter Parker, who, unlike his mother, was alive and breathing. Who he could still touch and hand things to and feel next to him. Who needed him and his attention and deserved better than to compete with his stupid, unresolved childhood traumas.
"This doesn't look bad," Tony joked, rolling down the screen to see the whole thing. "Maybe there's a chance for you still, kid."
And just like that, in a blink of an eye, happiness replaced nervousness — as it should — and Peter smiled again.
"You think?" He breathed out, almost jumping in place trying to contain his buzz. "I mean, it's just a prototype, really. I still need your help to figure out some details, to be honest, and I'm almost certain my math isn't one hundred per cent correct in some parts, and, yeah, like, maybe you should just look at the—"
"Hey, buddy, breathe. That's more like it. Alright," Tony said, lifting his eyes and looking at Peter. "This is great. Of course, I'll help you with whatever you need, but I don't see anything wrong yet." He paused. "I didn't know you were working on something for my suit, though."
Peter blushed a bit, which was surprising in itself. "Yeah. It came to me — the idea. I know that you have spent years perfecting the armor, and it's not like it's not amazing already, but I thought it might be nice to add some non-lethal aspects to it."
It would be nice.
Perhaps, in a faraway future, Spider-Man and Iron-Man could fight alongside and Tony would just catch petty criminals and leave them tied up for the police, doing nothing more than just his part for once, leaving the judgement and sentence to others.
"I would like that," Tony admitted, smiling back at Peter to show how much he appreciated the idea. "It will be the first part of my suit that I didn't build myself."
Peter quickly backtracked. "I wouldn't-Of course you can still be the—"
"Relax, kid. It wasn't a complaint," Tony explained. "How nice will it be to have Spider-Man make me something? If I'm lucky, you'll even sign the metal for me — a one-of-a-kind souvenir, hun?"
"Me?" Peter pointed at his own chest, confused. "Are you serious? Would you want that? For real?"
Well, it had been a joke, but Peter he seemed so astonished, so very stunned by the possibility of his signature having any value whatsoever, that now Tony simply had to have it.
"Yep," he confirmed, sending the work from the StarkPad to his work table with a couple of moves, ready to get to it. "Let's do this, kid."
Tony's fingers gripped the StarkPad even tighter.
Peter blinked. "Wait-now?"
"No time like the present, Peter! Stop lazing around! We have work to do!"
And just like that, there it was: the glowing, the happiness.
The fucking present... so much more satisfying than any of Tony's dark-tinged memories of a lost life.
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"Who would've thought, hun? Tony Stark hand-washing dishes," Wanda teased as she walked into the kitchen.
Tony didn't laugh, though. "It's a manual task. I'm not exactly a stranger to getting my hands dirty, Maximoff. This was just… something I had to be taught to do."
His words landed quite heavily on the room, and Wanda's teasing smile fell from her face to be replaced with a look of concern. "Taught? Aren't we all taught to do all things in life?"
"No," Tony rebutted. "Not really. At least I wasn't. Most of the stuff I do, I learned on my own. House chores — washing the fucking dishes? Who would've taught me that? My mother? She never got her hands dirty in her life."
"Isn't it easier that way? To have your robots do this sort of thing for you?"
"Sure. But it's not the same. It wasn't to Pepper, at least." Tony inhaled deeply and tried his best not to get caught up in memories. Why was he talking about Pepper, anyway? Why wasn't he stopping? "When she came to live here… We had time. Too much time, really. It didn't make sense to delegate tasks."
"Five years is a long time," Wanda agreed, only they weren't talking about the same thing.
"Two," he corrected, the words leaving his mouth before he could stop them. Unbidden. "She only stayed here — with me — for the first two years. Plenty of time to learn how to clean some plates, however."
Wanda hesitated — as if she wanted to speak, to poke and prod, but was afraid of his response. And it was fair enough, only she had already got him talking about it in the first place, so she might as well ask her damn questions and be done with it.
"Spit it out, Funny-Hands. I'm not getting any younger here."
That got a smile out of her. "Neither am I. Very well, then. What happened? As I understand it, you and Virginia had been together for many years."
Tony shrugged. "She has been working for me for decades now — that's true. Relationship-wise, though… It wasn't so easy. I was never a relationship person, to begin with, and Pepper knew far too much about my bullshit years to fall for any of my crap. In the end, we would've never worked out. Every time I got called out, every time I put the suit on, she wanted to leave."
"I'm sorry," Wanda said. And she seemed sincere enough, he supposed.
"Not your fault." According to Pepper, it was nobody's fault. "It's just how things are, I suppose."
"I don't think I could ever be with someone who didn't understand-who wasn't a part—" Wanda began, struggling for words to explain a feeling that Tony knew oh too well.
"Someone who had never lived through the shit that it takes to become an Avenger," he completed for her, having had enough time to come up with the words to describe it.
"Yes. This," she said, sending a grateful smile his way. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me, kid. Not like I'm doing you any favors."
"You gave me a place to stay," she said, taking a few steps closer. Tony wished she would stop. That's close enough, he wanted to say. No need to invade my personal space with your freaky, little fingers. "You saved my life — more than once. I have plenty to thank you for, have I not?"
"No," Tony said with certainty. "Don't. This is the least I could do. Nothing compared to what happened to you."
"My past is my past, Anthony. I cannot change it and neither can you, although I tried very hard to do so for many years. I've allowed it to rest where it belongs — in the past. I can only go forward from now on."
"Wow! Ten out of ten for the optimism there. Really impressive and all that. Not sure I believe it, though — you'll have to forgive my reticence."
Wanda rose an unimpressed brow. "Are you always this deflective when uncomfortable?"
If only she knew...
"Pretty much," he agreed. "It's a talent."
"If you say so," she said, not sounding very convinced. She allowed it to stand though, and wordlessly started to take the dripping wet plates and cups and forks and knives from his hands, taking her time to carefully dry each one of them. When Tony had convinced himself that the heart-to-heart had peacefully ended, she added, "It's possible. You do know that, right?"
"What?" Tony asked, almost regretting the curiosity when her eyes got impossibly sharper.
"To move on," Wanda explained, and for a moment her hand wrapped around his wrist instead of around the glass in his hand, squeezing lightly in compass with her words. Tony forced himself to stay put, to not flinch away. "To heal."
He had no answers, no questions, no amount of faith left to give her at that moment, and so, doing the only thing he could possibly do in such a situation, Tony nodded, letting her know that he heard her. That her words had reached him.
Tony nodded and stayed put for the long moment it took her to be satisfied with his responding expression, with whatever she was searching for in his eyes. When she released his arm, taking the glass as if that had been her intention all along, Tony went back to scrubbing without a word of comment.
He had said enough.
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"Give me Peter, Fri," Tony ordered absentmindedly as he worked, then paused for a second before adding. "And Wanda, too."
"To your left, boss," Friday answered, and two screens popped up to his left showing the other two integrants of the cabin. Peter, spread over his bed, reading something in his StarkPad, and Wanda, cooking what looked to be the foulest soup Tony had ever laid eyes on.
They were fine. Safe.
It was enough.
For now, at least, it was enough to alleviate his worries.
"Tell me if anything changes," he said, knowing his A.I understood exactly what he was asking for. If they needed him, Tony would know.
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There were rules to intimacy. An entire book of them, in fact. A whole damn list of circumstances, experiences, moments, and a bunch of other things that people needed to go through together in order to truly be intimate.
It's a thing.
It really was.
And Tony knew the book better than anyone else — mostly because he liked to be aware of where not to step with the people around him, less they started to believe they were something they could never be.
Tony Stark didn't do friendships or romances or love or anything of the sort. Forget it. Been there, done that, had multiple scars to show for it. No. He would rather keep his distance than pretend he could ever forge meaningful bonds again.
He had tried. Tried with Steve, tried with the Avengers, tried with Pepper, tried with Rhodey, tried with Vision, tried with Obie, tried with his mother, tried with Jarvis, tried with his father.
Tony had a life-long list of tries, and they all went down the same path, given him the same lesson, and taught him the same goddamn thing: that he was better off alone. That Tony Stark had been born alone and he would die alone as well. The less he mucked it up during the trajectory from one point to the other, the better.
Some brilliant idiot once said that insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. It was true. It had to be insanity to keep fighting a losing battle when you were perfectly aware that it was, indeed, a losing batter. And fuck, the whole world knew that Tony was a selfish prick who had no space and time in his life for anyone else other than his own damn self.
It was alright, though. Tony had made peace with it — he had. 'Course, first there had been anger and disbelief and frustration and sadness and guilt and an endless pool of self-hatred. And for the longest time, Tony had swum, dived headfirst, and drowned in it, hopelessly swallowing and vomiting that acid hate, perhaps waiting, hoping that it would be the thing to finally kill him once and for all.
But it hadn't. The anxiety, the PTSD, the panic attacks, the loathing he felt for himself, for his past, for everything that he had done and the still ongoing repercussions of it, none of it managed to keep him down. To finish him. To put an end to his misery.
Somehow, despite the logical reasonings of life, Tony had survived past all the crap that should've killed him.
It was only fair, then, that he had learned a few things along the way — as useless as they had proven to be when it truly mattered.
He had learned stuff, and most of it was about learning to let go.
To let go of his bigger-than-life ego, which had served only to get thousands murdered. To let go of his control and his greed, both of which had almost got S.I buried into the ground under his terrible leadership… Christ, to let go of any pretences that he would ever have any chance at a normal life — with a 9-to-5 job, a cosy house, a wife and kids, and all those ideals that Disney insisted were the foundations upon which a fulfilling life was built on.
So, alright, Tony Stark didn't get to have people. Oh boo-hoo, big fucking deal. There was a whole big-ass universe out there, filled with terrifying crap and even more terrifying aliens, and his small, personal problems had long stopped being a priority even in his own self-oriented mind.
Half of the universe had vanished. Died. Disappeared with a snap of fingers into a cloud of dust. If nothing else, it served to give everyone perspective on the priorities of life.
Tony spent three years on his own, living at the cabin, pacing around the place, building useless crap for no one only to dismantle everything once it was done, getting up in the mornings and lying back down god only knows when once exhaustion caught up to him. In that time, he had garnered a newfound respect for medically-induced sleep, and it showed.
He slept — for hours on end. Sure, he had nightmares — or worse yet, memories brought back to the surface — but at that point that was a given. Something he had gotten used to. Humans, it turned out, could get used to everything given enough time and no other option. So Tony embraced it — the nightmares, the terrors, the dreams... if one could call them that.
It was far better than the alternative, which was to stay awake, staring at his own hands and seeing nothing but the cold, ashy remains of Peter that clung to the skin there, no matter how many times he washed them, or scrubbed them raw, or covered them with grease, with car-oil, with gloves, with tape, with bandages. No, sleep was indefinitely better than whatever alternative he had. Mostly because, in his dreams, Peter was still there.
The point was: there were rules to intimacy. There were rules, and Tony respected all of them. Followed them to the letter almost like a personal sort of religion, and it fucking worked. With one small, tiny little problem.
Peter.
Peter Fucking Parker.
He was a problem, a huge damn problem, and each day it became more and more of an inescapable mess. Mainly because it was no one else's fault but his own, and thus, there's not much to be done about it — except perhaps that lobotomy that Pepper had once suggested in the middle of a screaming match.
Tony didn't want to be close to Peter. He didn't want to get close, to talk about feelings, to open his heart and all that other crap that tended to come with intimacy.
What he did want was to make sure that Peter never again had as much as a single scratch on him, that's all. And if that meant glueing himself to the kid's side, well, that was just a downside he would have to deal with, 'cause there was absolutely no way that he was ever letting Peter get out of his line of sight again.
Not after the last time. Not after Thanos. Not after Titan.
Tony had lost Peter one time too many, and he dared the universe to try to pry that little spider from his grasp this time.
Which meant doing something Tony had promised to never again attempt to do: change the fucking rules.
Great, Tony thought.
In no way could that go wrong.
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"Give me Pe—" Tony began, caving to his desires without more than a moment of hesitation. And it seemed like his A.I was also attuned to his lack of self-control because before he managed to get the whole order out, a screen had already popped up in front of him.
Mere inches from his face.
Right there. So very close.
Suspiciously close.
"Why the lack of personal space?" He asked Fri even as his eyes danced across the large screen, taking in Peter's position on his bed.
"Would you prefer it in another position, Boss?" She responded, and Tony could swear there was a definite smug air about her.
Tony grunted. "Don't get too sassy. I can still turn you off." Yet the words were flat. Absentmindedly. With absolutely no weight to them whatsoever — and not just because they both knew better than to think him able of letting go of another one of his A.I, but also because his focus was someplace else.
Peter was shifting and tossing and turning in his sleep.
Mumbling little cries.
Tony was no stranger to nightmares. Damn, he had invented the school and anointed himself the fucking principal while he was at it. He knew a damn bad dream when he saw one.
They all had them. With good reason, too.
How could they not, after everything?
It wasn't the first time Tony had witnessed one of Peter's bad nights either, shameful as that was. It was, however, the first time that it left him unsettled. Anxious. As though he had some sort of duty to help. To get up from his comfortable bed and across the hallway and invade Peter's room and go over to his bed and place his hands on Peter's shoulder and shake him until—
Is it not your fault that he's in this situation in the first place? A deep, cutting voice whispered in the back of Tony's mind and it's too bad that it sounded suspiciously like his fucking father. Let the kid be. He doesn't need more of your brand of help.
It's the truth. Which, annoyingly, more and more seemed to be the case whenever his father was concerned. He had no business thinking he could — should — meddle any more with Peter's life. Not when his record was as abysmal as it goddamn was.
And yet…
His hands clenched, trapping the silk sheet in his fists. Tony wanted to. Wanted to go. Couldn't bear another second of watching that screen from a distance when he knew he could do something about it.
Anything.
He needed to. Tony needed to do something. He couldn't just watch as Peter's head went from side to side, searching for something that wasn't there.
Without giving himself time to change his mind, Tony got up, walked up to Peter's room and opened the door softly. Even from a distance, he could see Peter's frown and the way his mouth was slightly open.
"Pete," Tony whispered, stepping closer and shaking his shoulder lightly. He kept his touch loose and careful — it wouldn't do to touch more than he needed to. "Hey, buddy. Time to wake up."
Fat lot of good it did him. Peter showed no more signs of waking up than he had before — still restless and moving, but locked deep in his dream state.
Tony breathed. Held tighter. Curled his hand around Peter's bicep — all while trying to ignore the strong band of muscle coiled tight beneath his touch. The kid had no business having that sort of strength.
"Wake up, Baby-Spider," Tony said, hoping the hated nickname would be enough to bring Peter to conscience. And also to remind himself of what he was dealing with here. Peter is still so fucking young.
It's not the nickname that did it, though.
It was the grip Tony had on Peter's arm that triggered the younger man's self-defense mechanism, making his eyes snap open in a flash while he ripped his limb free and used it to grab a handful of Tony's shirt and pull him close.
So very close.
In a blink, they were staring into each other's eyes, almost crossed-eyed to do so, breathing the same air and equally shocked at the situation.
Peter was sweating and gasping for air and forcing his eyes impossibly wide and half lifting his upper body from the bed and holding Tony in place with a single hand and… he seemed beyond frightened.
It made it easier for Tony to speak over his pounding heartbeat. "Hey, buddy. It's me. Tony. It's okay; You're safe," he mumbled in a rush, trying to be both soothing and reassuring. "It was a dream. It's not real."
"I—" Peter gasped before taking another, deeper breath. "You're here. I—I'm here and-a dream." He babbled, clearly still processing his surroundings.
Tony nodded, ignoring the uncomfortable position and the multitude of feelings it rose within him. Later — Tony could freak out later. Peter needed him now.
So he nodded slowly, making no brusque movements. "You're alright, Pete. You're just fine," Tony confronted, holding his hands up in a classic surrender move. "I won't hurt you."
Peter blinked. "Tony," he breathed right into the space between them. Hot and throaty. "Why are you—" The words died in his mouth as he took in their position. His hand — still pulling Tony in.
It was impossible not to follow Peter's gaze to his own chest. "Thinking about letting me go, buddy?" Tony joked, his voice tight and strained. Eyes flickering back and forth between Peter's face and his hand.
Peter shook his head. "I don't think I can." He exhaled shakily. "I—I- My hand won't move." There was a line in Peter's usual smooth forehead. A frown. "Why did you come?" He asked.
"Should I have left you to your nightmare?"
"You never cared before."
And that's such a huge lie that Tony couldn't even manage to suppress his huff of disbelief.
The line deepened. "What does that mean?"
"Just because I never came to your room personally, it doesn't mean that I wasn't monitoring your sleep, Peter," Tony tried to explain, only it came out in the weirdest way possible and instead of sounding caring, Tony sounded like a possessive creep. Which wasn't far from the truth, but he tended to hide it better than that.
"Monitoring?" Peter repeated, somehow making the word sound even worse when uttered a second time.
Tony winced. "Let's just go back to sleep, hun?" He suggested, patting Peter's hand and hoping the boy would have some mercy on him. "We'll talk in the morning."
It's clearly not Tony's lucky night, though. "Since when?" Peter demanded, ignoring everything Tony had just said.
"You're gonna have to be more specific than that, buddy."
"Since we got here?" Peter guessed, pressed, and it was the perfect excuse. Tony would just need to say yes, to confirm Peter's guess and they could both forget this horrible incident.
It's not what came out of his mouth. Not even close.
Tony shook his head. "Before. Germany," he admitted, the words crossing his lips without his consent for some reason, and it sounded every bit as disturbing out loud as he had imagined it would.
The whole thing was a horrifying round two of the security conversation he had had with Pepper a few years ago. Tony knew exactly how it would go — what he would hear — and it baffled his considerable brain that he would put himself in a situation like that again. On purpose.
And yet...
There were no gasps.
No scream. No shocked, aghast look of betrayal.
No two, three, or four steps back.
Instead, Peter seemed to be calculating.
"The suit?" He asked. Guessed. Weirdly calm about it.
"That as well," Tony agreed, like a fucking idiot. "Your phone. Your friend Ted."
"Ned," Peter corrected, and shit, was that the important part?
"Sure. Whatever. Ned. Yeah, him." Tony breathed. "Look, Peter, I'm sor—"
"I don't mind," Peter cut him off, easily speaking over him. "Don't apologize."
What? "Hun?"
"It's alright, I guess. I figured you had that kind of access to me anyway — with how Happy always had no trouble finding me. You're Tony Stark. Tech is kind of your middle name."
"Peter, that's not- Why didn't you say anything?"
A strange look crossed his face. "You really are clueless, aren't you?" He said, sort of sadly. "I didn't say anything because it wasn't a problem. The opposite, in fact. I wanted so badly for you to notice me, Tony."
"I did notice you."
"You noticed Spider-Man. You noticed a superhero. A help. Not Peter Parker."
"How can you say that?" Tony said, and now he was angry. Pissed off at the audacity of that fucking kid. "After the ferry, after Titan, after—"
"You never called," Peter whispered, a wild, vulnerable look in his eyes.
Tony took the opportunity to bat Peter's hand away and step away from the bed, putting distance between them. As he should.
"The best thing I could've ever done for you would've been to have never called you in the first place," he said, admitted. The words burned on their way out. "Every time I managed to not call you was a small blessing in your life. Trust me."
And it killed Tony that it was true. That Peter had once been occupied with small thefts and stolen bikes, jumping from building to building in his little onesie, without any sort of intervention from the Avengers.
From Tony.
When Peter opened his mouth to respond, still slow and recovering from his nightmare, Tony raised a hand to stop him, taking another step back.
"Go back to sleep, Peter. It's late," he said, regretting his decision to come, to meddle, to once more try to make things better without any sort of clue on what he was doing.
With those words, Tony walked away.
He wished he could say he never looked back.