Peter finds the longer he's laying in a bed, the more he's discomforted by it — not only because he's sore but because it feels so utterly foreign after two years not needing that comfort. Tony offers him some top of the line mattress stuff while he's bedridden for another two nights, but he doesn't have the energy or heart to explain that he's used to resting on a grassy hill. It wasn't even physical, and with no body then he wonders why it's bothering him even now. He feels himself grow a little anxious, too, when he looks out his window in the late night and finds that even the few twinkling stars on the city line is enough to put him on edge; Bruce kindly closes the curtains, and he gets a few hours rest.
A few, though. He's restless, wanting out of this place. He'd spent so much time wandering in his uncooperative body, he really just wants to start walking the whole place again with no destination in mind. Every time he dreams, he dreams of orange skies and cartwheels and ziborthhogs. He knows that he's not connected anymore, feels it in the very pit of his soul, but the other world still lingers over him, relentless. He knows Mr. Stark worries about it a lot; he's forced away so much during the first day thanks to rebuilding efforts, he hardly gets to see him, but he always finds time to rush in — and in that goofy little arm sling, with a goofy overly bulky cast. Peter stops him on one of his rampages through Peter's side of the medical wing, ushering him to take a minute before he has a stroke or something.
"Lemme see," he says, chipper, and Tony rolls his eyes to the heavens.
"I was afraid you'd say that," he says, which is enough to pull Peter out of his confused funk and plant a real grin on his face.
"Now I really gotta see it."
The signs of a real team is there, scribbled in sharpie all over Tony's cast: a bunch of inky ants skittering in a line, some completely lame science joke on the palm by Bruce, a really nice Iron Man mask (probably by Steve, since he's so good at drawing), and Rhodes very clearly has labeled the forearm TONY STANK in big, bold letters that are too hard to miss. Peter laughs a pained laugh, his ribs trembling at him in displeasure, but it's worth it for the way Mr. Stark smirks back at him — though not without looking kind of surprised first. "Oh, yeah, laugh it up, kid."
"Sorry, Mr. Stank, really sorry." To that, Tony shoves lightly at Peter's forehead.
"Good to see you're laughing again, you little troll," he huffs, and Peter stops, looking at him with teary eyes that soften a fraction. Tony takes note of his confusion, and instead switches to brush his fingers teasingly through the youth's wild, curling hair. "You were worrying the attractive aunt and me for a while there; between the quiet spells and the awkward yearbook smiles, we weren't sure how you were doing."
Oh. He feels a little guilty, looking down to his fidgeting hands. "I didn't realize."
Time passes so differently, and he doesn't really feel very aware of his body — if he had been his usual self, he probably would have done a better job at putting up a front. But despite the apologetic sag of his shoulders, Tony just waves a dismissive hand. "Don't start with the guilt stuff, kid. We're just happy to have you here with us, okay? I've — we've been waiting way too long. Doesn't matter what you're like now that you're on the other side, as long as you're asking for help when you need it."
A quiet falls over them, and Tony sits patiently on the edge of Peter's bed. There's a fondness in his eyes that burns right through Peter's defenses, like Mr. Stark's really happy; it's ridiculous, because they totally all got hurt less than 48 hours ago, and there's, like, billions of dollars worth of damages, and he had to deal with aliens again when everyone had thought Thanos' horrible will was squashed—
"Do you need it, Pete?" Peter looks up, and Tony clarifies with a softness he isn't used to, "Help. Someone to talk to. You know, I've been talking to someone, myself; sometimes it's good to just get it all out there, and feel a little less crazy. Or sad. Or whatever you're, uh. Dealing with. There's nothing wrong with asking for help if you want it or need it."
Peter looks at his feet, feeling conflicted — conflicted as ever, honestly. He says, "I need to think about it."
And Tony nods, leans in, and hugs him in a way he's not used to him ever doing before. But he finds that he doesn't much mind it, and that maybe hugs from the people he loves will become more and more of a normality. Mr. Stark smells like cologne and hand sanitizer, and he tries not to grin at the thought of him worried about spreading germs around his hospital bed. He closes his eyes and enjoys the moment among the living, no longer a zombie forced to wander through a haze. "... I'm proud of you, Peter. You did good, okay? On Titan, and here, you did really great."
"Thank you, Mr. Stark," he whispers softly.
Tony scoffs, pulling away. "That's Mr. Stank to you."
"When do I get to meet Morgan, anyways?" The heavy air fades a little, as he impatiently taps on an invisible wristwatch. "I wanna meet the terrible terror!"
"When she's not sneezing all over your bed, maybe," Tony huffs, and Peter returns the huff in full.
"C'mon, I'll be totally healed by the end of the week!"
"Doctor's orders, no can do, so sorry."
"But I get visitation now! Mr. Stark!"
"Calm down, calm down — Pepper and her are staying elsewhere until things are less hazardous for kids here. Tomorrow, promise. Now get some sleep and heal with your freaky spiderling powers." He almost complains, but ultimately accepts his fate. He lays back in what isn't grass, looks at lights that aren't orange, and wonders if he's even fully awake. Maybe he'll take Mr. Stark up on those offers for help.
Speaking of visitations: they come and go throughout the afternoon, and it all starts with Scott Lang — who is woefully missing Cassie Lang, though she's currently at school in California, making the grades and getting those AR reader points. Peter is admittedly a little sad to miss meeting his first real connection to the outside world face-to-face; he owes that kid a lot, because if she hadn't been there, who knows how he would have ended up? Who knows if the Guardians would have taken off earlier, and left them less defended in the final battle? Heck, who knows if anyone would have had any hope in his recovery. Months must've been a long time to wait for a miracle.
"By the way, super sorry about slapping you out of the air way back when," Scott says, clapping his hands together.
"It's all good, I'm the one who knocked you over. But if you really wanna make it even — you think you can sneak me some Taco Bell?"
"Ummm, I'm one of the coolest thieves in the building? As in, one of the only ones. So absolutely, can do. Just don't tell your scary aunt."
He pauses, and then points at Peter, more gravely.
"And stealing is wrong, don't do it."
"Are you putting terrible thoughts in this kid's head, tic-tac?" Sam slides into the room and announces his presence in that slick and teasing way he tends to, as if he were built for that set-up all his life. Perfected it, really. Scott turns and looks at him with a frown, before Sam shoulders by with arms crossed and a smile on his face. "Hey, kid. Don't you go trying to eat fast food when you've got someone with a kitchen here."
"You're turning into a cafeteria lady more and more by the day," Scott points out, very literally, and Sam pushes the finger away.
"Don't think I haven't noticed your gross ant army lingering around my stove, Lang. I will not hesitate to slap some paper towels down."
"Wha— you leave my pals alone!"
Peter just looks pleasantly between the two of them as they bicker, feeling like he's got a front row chair to some kind of comedy. It's a nice feeling to just watch, to find this sort of banter familiar; he had tried so hard to listen in on these sorts of fights before, but the fog had always been so much. Too much. And when Scott eventually vanishes to help with the efforts ("See, Giant-Man is totally useful for picking up heavy debris!") Sam stays behind and takes a seat. At first Peter's a little confused — he just starts handing him some pamphlets, his expression a little more serious.
"Listen, Peter, I know you were talking with Tony earlier; the help he offered? It's something I can provide. Just read through these and let me know if any of it resonates with you, alright?" Peter blinks up at him, and he continues, "I help soldiers who have been through the ringer. Soldiers who are dealing with post traumatic stress and need ways to handle it; I do it with Bucky, too — which he's cool with me telling you, by the way. So you can always chat with him, too."
"Wait, wait, Mr. Wilson — I'm not... I don't think that kind of thing applies to me..."
I'm not a soldier, I haven't faced war like they have.
"You don't need to have a rank in the military to have PTSD, kid. Survivors of sexual assault and natural disasters'll tell you as much; even if they're different circumstances, they're all something that can cause some pretty specific issues. What you went through? What everyone went through? That's a lot to take in. And your case is sensitive compared to people like me, even if you hate that fact; you said you remember everything from then. Two whole years of it, and then some." He gives pause when Peter seems a little anxious, as he rubs the skin of his palm until it reddens. His tone is just as light and compassionate when he says, "You've been having some trouble sleeping, like yesterday, right? And Bruce told me looking out the window at night messes with your heart monitor readings."
Looking at the window, gleaming with sunshine in the moment, Peter swallows hard. It was true, that things weren't... really as happy a fairy tale as he'd hoped. Part of him expected to just wake up his old self, ready to leap back into a life he'd missed so much of like — like being Spider-Man, the friendly neighborhood hero, but maybe that was naive and wishful thinking. The paper brochure crinkles a little under his thumb, and he smiles timidly.
"I need to think about it," he says, not for the first time.
Sam just nods, like he expected as much.
"... How's your cardiograms lately?" Peter asks innocently.
Sitting beside the bed, Happy looks particularly unamused by the question as he peers up from his newspaper, like Peter might have been the root cause of any anomalies in his diagnostics. "Eat your vegetables."
This reminds him of life before the snap.
It feels nice.
"Hello, Peter," Cho says, smiling as she handles his little folder of medical know-how. She's dressed up in scrubs and looks at his information with some measure of approval, as Bruce tap-tap-taps his pen against the edge of the bed. Cho's nice, and she genuinely seems like someone who just wants to help her fellow man — that kinda doctor. Peter's relieved to have her on call, and even if he's getting a little nervous, she seems patient and forthcoming on everything he wants to know about the g-tube removal thing. Or rather, she's very forthcoming about any information May wants to know, because lord knows his aunt won't be absent for a surgery, even if it's minor; she took the day off work for it, and sits patiently at Peter's side as he speaks.
"Sorry, I've never actually been, like — awake for surgeries. And I wasn't really there for putting this thing in..."
It's probably way too obvious he's nervous about it, by the way his eyes roam and his lip is gnawed on. "Don't worry about a thing," Cho says in that pleasant way of hers, "It's a very quick and easy procedure, and I'll have Dr. Banner here at my side as well."
Dr. Banner reaches and gives Peter's good shoulder a soft squeeze. "Sure am. Cho's a really phenomenal doctor, Peter."
"Alright, Peter. I see you've gotten the food dye down; nothing by mouth for four hours after the tube's removed, alright? And it will be very, very light eating, so don't let Mr. Wilson bully you into a sandwich, no matter how much he wants to hen you." Dr. Cho goes over the post-procedural instructions, and it's a good thing that May's here to listen with profound focus, because Peter feels like he's sort of losing bits and pieces of her lengthy explanation. It's not that he's — leaving to another world. There's no other world to go to. But he just... is having a hard time focusing. He swallows hard and realizes they're all looking at him expectantly, like one of them must have asked them a question.
May squeezes his hand. "Are you okay, Peter?"
"Always," he says. "Sorry, I spaced out a little. Um... I'm ready? I just wanna get this over with."
It's not really as bad as he thought it was gonna be, though. He gets to somehow stay awake for it, which is kind of freaky but also a blessing, 'cus he's not so sure he'll be okay with being forced back into darkness he can't wake up from. And really, it doesn't take any time, or it doesn't feel like it does, because by the time they're done with it, he's right back in his hospital room with a new gross thing to look at on him.
They're not super surprised when nothing oozes through the bandages, and they're also not surprised when the incision is just an angry pink scab the next morning. In fact, not only is his g-tube wound healing exponentially fast, all of the cuts on his arms and legs are all but gone now; the wound in his shoulder is still a throbbing, ugly pain deep in the muscle, but all it needs is a sling and an order not to over-work it. His ribs, um, they hurt. But they're just sore ribs, nothing more, nothing less.
Tony's a little jealous of the spider healing, and that does put a smile on Peter's face.
At any rate, it only takes three days for him to be able to hobble around again like he used to (though he didn't exactly tell anyone else he was going to, but he was going stir-crazy, s-so...). It's a little awkward, because the place is full of construction workers and everything's sort of screwed up on the front face of the building. He wanders over to the blocked off area where his old room used to be, and he frowns a little at the singed remained of what was once a place he loved sleeping over in. His posters, his stupid tech he left behind — man, it's all gone. He was just lucky that he left before he ended up another piece of the scene lost.
"Talk about a close call," he mumbles to himself, "Huh, Gamora?"
Sometimes he can't help but talk to her, like she'll hear him. He knows, deep down, that she doesn't.
As he walks back into the kitchen he'd been blindly walking into for a while now, he's not surprised to find it empty — lunch is way over and dinner isn't even close yet, and everyone has so much to do around the facility now that it's half-broken. What he doesn't expect is the stool in front of him, and the paper sign that hangs off the back of it, scribbled in what looks like Rhodes' nice bold handwriting:
"PETER PARKER'S STOOL, VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED."
Well... Peter's nothing if not devoted to bull-headed routine.
He huffs a chuckle, and takes a seat.