Peter's shrink is Captain America.
He can't quite decide if that's amazing or awkward. Most of the time it fits somewhere squarely between the two, which is a lot like healing, he learns.
Tony had mentioned therapy a couple of times, but he insists after Peter wakes up the whole house screaming bloody murder from the ceiling. Tony has to poke him with a broom handle to wake him up from the nightmare. "I'm not equipped to deal with this," he mutters under his breath, but Peter hears, and the last thing he wants is for Tony to give up on him. So he agrees to talk to someone.
Trouble is just thinking of telling anyone else that Peter Parker and Spider-Man are one and the same sends him into a panic attack. It doesn't matter how ironclad Tony swears the NDA will be. Peter thinks of his face plastered across every screen in Times Square and he breaks down. He just can't.
And then Sam Wilson waltzes through the lake house door.
"This is the squirt that stole Steve's shield?" the newly minted Captain America says, arms crossed and head tilted, looking thoroughly un-impressed.
(Peter has seen the youtube video of Mr. Wilson's speech about believing everyone can be better, and he's more than a little impressed.)
"That's me," Peter squeaks, feeling a little betrayed, but Tony is nowhere to be seen.
"You've got some moves, kid. And a big mouth."
The Falcon had never known who Spider-Man was, so nothing's missing. Peter warms at the praise, but it's the shared experience that really buoys him.
"Congrats on the promotion, sir. I think it's really cool that Captain American can fly now."
Sam stares at him for a second, as if he's trying to figure out if that's a joke or an insult, when really Peter was just trying to be sincere. "I'm not actually a therapist. I want to make that clear. But I know a thing or two about PTSD, and this superhero life, and Stark sounded really desperate on the phone so I said I'd help him out."
"I appreciate that, sir."
"Drop the sir, kid. The name's Sam."
Peter holds out his hand. "Peter."
Sam's grip is firm. His eyes are weary. But his smile, when Peter can drag it out of him, is kind.
Sam is easy to talk to. He asks all the right questions, and even though some of his responses sting, they are always fair. It's easier to tell Sam about the panic attacks. About the nightmares he had long before the spell, of everyone leaving, everyone dying, half the universe turning to dust and it is all his fault.
Tony takes everything personally. That makes him overreact. He paces and swears and sometimes he tears up, which is the absolute worst. Peter hates to see Tony upset, so he keeps things to himself, except in his bi-weekly sessions with Sam, who is always calm and impartial and full of good advice about what things he should tell Tony anyway, and which are okay not to mention.
In their third session Peter tells Sam about the dark thoughts. All the times he plummeted a bit too far and contemplated not releasing a web to catch himself. The time he held a whole bottle of aspirin and wondered if it would kill him if he took them all. How he was going to let himself die impaled on a rusty pole if Rhino hadn't been such an asshole. How he'd been bleeding out, moments before Tony found him, and all he'd felt was relief.
How sometimes even at the lake house, when everything is so extraordinarily better than it once was, he wakes up and the thoughts are still there. When all he can think is that he doesn't deserve to be here, ruining Tony's life, when he killed May and almost killed his friends and broke reality and he shouldn't steal Morgan's father and put her whole family at risk. It would be so much better for the Starks if he just filled his pockets with rocks and walked out into the lake.
Peter thinks telling Tony about those thoughts would be worse than actually acting on them. But Sam stays neutral as he listens. He says these thoughts are understandable, given everything Peter's been through. That overcoming depression is a process. It's not like flipping a switch, where one day he's sad and the next day he's happy. It's like climbing out of a pit, and sometimes he might slide down a few rungs, but that's okay as long as he just keeps climbing.
Peter's not going to let go of that rope. Because his days are more good than bad now, and every day he does feel a bit more like his old self. Sam's helping him see that it's okay to want that. That it's healthy to be a little selfish sometimes.
Like admitting how much he enjoys the time he gets to spend with Tony, just the two of them. He adores Morgan, and Pepper's great and very tolerant of the fact her husband has just emotionally adopted a teenager she cannot remember—and legally wants to adopt one that does not legally exist. But Peter loves the hours he and Tony spend in the lab, when Morgan's at school and Pepper's at work and it's like the old days, after the internship became real, except with more casual pats on the back, and more … feelings. More validation and fond looks and less worry that Mister Stark is going to get tired of him. They make him a new suit, one that incorporates his brothers' designs but also will, you know, stop bullets cause Mister Stark thinks that's important. But they also work on a new coating for Tony's bionic arm – one that looks and feels and acts more like skin. Tony admits he's been putting it off but Peter has so many ideas and even though they haven't quite figured it out yet they are getting close.
Peter likes the idea of giving Tony back a piece of himself. Not that he's any less-than with the metal arm. It feels different, yes, a little cold and strange, but it's so much better than no arm at all and he can do everything he used to before and also he's alive, so those are clearly more important. But if Peter can help him, even in this little way. Well, that feels like payback for everything the man has done for him. Which Tony insists isn't necessary. But he has spent several million dollars on Peter with all the Spider-Manning, and that total is about to go way up with four years at MIT.
Peter also likes those rare nights when Morgan goes to bed at a reasonable hour and Pepper excuses herself to do CEO things and Tony asks Peter what he wants to watch. The second time it happens he can't make up his mind but then Tony suggests Star Wars and stretches his arm along the back of the couch. And Peter nods, and before long he's tucked into Tony's side, a soft, bright red blanket draped around them both. Peter knows Tony tolerates Star Wars, but doesn't love it, because they'd worked their way through all the movies together before the Blip. But he still discusses the physics of light sabers and the politics of the Empire without even once making Peter feel silly or stupid. Just like he hadn't, all those years ago, when Peter had been so self-conscious and desperate to please. Peter thinks that might have been when things started to shift between them, all those popcorn and movie filled Friday nights.
Though they'd never been this close, literally curled up together. Tony had always made it clear that he preferred his space. Now he's constantly inviting Peter into it. And Peter is drawn like a magnet, despite Sam's warnings of things like co-dependence. Despite the knowledge that in five months he may be in Boston, hundreds of miles away from a man who has far better things to do than to coddle him.
But for now, when he offers, Peter can't help but take him up on it. Because when he's this close to Tony, all the frantic voices in his head just … quiet. He stops worrying about what came before or what comes next or how much of a burden he is or how he's not supposed to feel that way anymore. He listens to Tony's heartbeat and just breathes.
And he's okay. For at least a little while, he's absolutely, 100% okay.
"You're a really good dad, Tony," Peter says as the credits roll. He doesn't let himself add, "To Morgan" even though something inside him wants to, because that's true but it isn't what he means.
He's working on calling him Tony, because the man is insistent. It's still a little awkward, but Peter is trying. He's pretty sure by the time he gets the hang of it he'll be ready to call him something else. He's already on the precipice, just waiting for the nerve to jump.
"I try," Tony answers, a little bit flippant, like it's a joke, because humor is his default response to vulnerability. But then he pauses, and he looks down at Peter, and there is something raw and open in his gaze. "Thanks."
There are a million things Peter wants to say, and Tony deserves to hear them all. But tonight he just presses himself a little closer, their breathing and hearts in sync. "Anytime."
"How was your session today?" Tony asks a few days later.
He used to ask, "Are you okay?" each and every time, until Sam made Peter explain that question itself set unhelpful expectations. Because okay is a spectrum, and not being okay didn't mean failure. Peter had stammered through the entire explanation, absolutely mortified, but Tony's been much more careful since.
"Sam thinks it would be good for me to have a funeral for May."
Tony drops the pot of water he'd been filling into the sink, where it clangs and splatters. "There wasn't a funeral for May?" he asks, his voice a whole octave too high.
"There was a funeral." Peter thinks of that day, the church half full of all the people May had helped, and no one giving a second glance to the boy silently losing it in the back row.
It had been the day he'd considered taking the whole bottle of aspirin.
"Happy was there. He gave a nice speech. But no one knew who I was. So I couldn't say anything."
"Christ, Pete. I'm so sorry."
"It sucked. A lot," he acknowledges, cause Sam says it's important to own his pain. To name it so he can move on.
Tony lays a wet, metal hand on Peter's shoulder. "Do you want to have another funeral?"
Sam is always full of ideas, but Tony likes to hear what Peter thinks, and he appreciates that.
Peter's been mulling it over for a few hours now. He's worried about the dark thoughts and the lake and those moments when his body betrays him and all he can do is cry for hours. But it feels necessary. Feels … right. "Yeah, I think I do."
"We can do it by the lake," Tony suggests.
But Peter's nose wrinkles.
"Or … not."
The lake would be … fine. But the lake still reminds him of Tony's superfluous funeral, and he doesn't think staging another wake there will help him with those lingering thoughts of sinking to the bottom.
It's more than that, though. Tony hadn't been dead. It's like if Anna and Elsa had found their parents camped out somewhere by that boat, just waiting for their daughters to find them. Tony's current aliveness is a miracle. But it's not something that will be repeated. He can't have May's funeral at the lake because then there will always be a part of him wondering when the universe will take back her death. And it won't—it can't—so that's no way for him to live.
This funeral needs to be closure, not a way to hold on.
Because that's what she'd want.
According to Sam. And Tony.
Peter still thinks that she'd rather just be alive, but that ship has sailed.
"I was thinking we could have it—at her grave. In the city."
Peter's been putting it off for a long time, but he thinks that it's time to go back.
Tony nods once. "New York City it is." His hand tightens on Peter's shoulder. "I'm proud of you, kid."
Peter, Tony, and Happy gather at the cemetery on a Sunday afternoon. It's the kind of glorious spring day which means Central Park is probably full, but the graveyard is mostly empty. It's simply too beautiful a day to be sad.
Peter feels it though, itching at his neck like the brand new suit Tony insisted on buying him, which probably cost more than a year of rent for his crappy apartment.
But every other time he'd visited May it had felt like trying to hold that ferry together. Like the grief might literally tear him apart.
He can handle a little itch.
It certainly helps to have Tony and Happy by his side, each with a bracing hand on his shoulder. He's used to visiting May on his own. The time he'd run into Happy had been the worst—to witness the man's shared grief and yet be asked how he had known May.
He had tried to comfort Happy. When Peter had told him that what May stood for would live on he'd been talking about all the good Spider-Man could do. But that night he'd gotten shot up in a drug bust and he'd considered not digging the bullets out, laying collapsed in the alley for hours before he finally dragged himself home.
But today Morgan and Pepper are waiting for him back home, and Tony and Happy are here, and there is nothing in Peter that does not want to see tomorrow.
He pulls the notecard out of his pocket. This one is not as worn, though just as tear-stained as the one on which he's scrawled the speech he'd never been brave enough to give to Ned and MJ.
"May Parker was an extraordinary woman," he starts. Happy does a fine job trying to hide his sniffle, but Peter hears it anyway, just like he hears the way his heart goes out of rhythm. But Tony is steady, and Peter clears his throat. "She cared about everyone. Whether it was the homeless guy walking into a shelter for the first time or a new mother with a screaming baby in the emergency room or her six-year-old nephew that got dropped on her doorstep. She even cared about people who made mistakes, who society labeled as bad guys. She thought everyone deserved a second chance. That anyone could be saved."
He pauses, and he can't help but remember her in the lobby of Happy's apartment. He doesn't want to remember her that way, all dusty and bruised and dying.
Except –
She'd been so strong. Pulling herself to her feet. Joking about getting knocked on her ass. Making sure Peter was okay.
Telling him he'd done the right thing.
"We all have gifts. Powers, so to speak. May thought it was our responsibility to use them to help others. The more we had, the more we should give. She lived that way and she died that way. And if everyone who knew her remembers to live that way, then she won't really be gone. She'll just keep on helping people." He feels the tears then, burning his eyes, but he lets them fall. "That's what she wanted."
He clears his throat, feeling the emotion swell, but he has to keep going because he isn't finished yet. It isn't enough. "May had a beautiful singing voice and she burned everything she tried to cook. Her whole life got upended when the world found out I was Spider-Man and she never once got annoyed with me for it. She stood up to federal agents and she went on my coffee runs so I didn't have to listen to people insult me when I stood in line. And she was such a good Mom even though I never called her that and she didn't let me fall apart when Ben died and I know they're together now so—" He sobs once, and then he blows as much of the pain out on the exhale as he can manage. He's never been religious but he believes in an afterlife. Maybe that's just because everyone leaves him. Because he can't function without telling himself that one day he will see all the people he loves again. But he knows May and Ben are together now, and it helps. It had been hard for her when Ben was gone, but she'd carried on the best she could.
Now Peter has to carry on.
"I loved her so much and I will never forget what she taught me. It isn't fair that she's gone. But she always used to say that life wasn't fair, life was what you made of it. So it's up to us now to make it a good life."
Then there's nothing left on the card. As it flutters to the ground Tony is there, wrapping him in a bear hug. "You did good, Pete. You did so good."
And Peter cries, because the grief has taken hold and he owes it to May to let it out. But he knows it too.
And then Happy is talking, and Peter misses half of it but he pulls out of Tony's embrace so he can grab Happy's shoulder and hang on. Tony gets the hint and grabs the other one, and they support Happy until he's said his piece.
Then Peter retrieves the flowers he'd picked out—sunflowers and tiger lilies—just as vibrant as May had always been. He sets them carefully in front of the grave and then drops down beside them—and maybe his knees give out or maybe he meant to do it, he isn't sure.
"I miss you so much and I'm sorry," he chokes. And it hurts and it hurts and it hurts but it's not killing him any longer. For a moment he can see them, May and Ben, hand and hand, looking down at him, and it's like pushing a parking garage off his chest. The lack of pressure is so foreign it almost hurts. He reaches out and traces the indentation on her headstone. She could get a little worked up at times, but she had always steadied him when it had really mattered. "I lost my way for a little while there, May. But I'm back on track now. I'm gonna take care of myself and I'm gonna let other people help me and I won't forget that helping other people isn't weakness, it's strength." His fingers drift down to the dates cut into the stone. "We saved them all, May. Even … even the Green Goblin. I didn't want to but I did and MJ and Ned helped and also … I met a couple of other Peters, from different universes. And they both lost people too but they kept on going and we cured everyone and sent them all home. You would have liked to meet them. They would have liked to meet you." He breathes deeply, trying to clear the gunk from this throat, and wipes the back of his hand across his face. "It was a crazy night. And I broke some promises but I'm going to fix that too."
He knows it's almost time. He is going to have to stand on his own two feet again, and keep on standing, no matter what. "Thank you, May. Thank you for teaching me right from wrong. Thanks for always being there. Thanks for loving me."
He takes it all in for one last time. He wishes he hadn't had to flee from the police. Wishes he could have held her just a little longer. They should have had so much time. But the only thing in his control, Sam says, is how you react to the cards you've been given.
"You don't have to worry about me, May. I'm going to be all right." He closes his eyes, and when he opens them he has a better answer. "Better than all right. Amazing even. I'm gonna soar." He shifts the flowers, pushing them just a little bit closer. "I'll come see you before I leave for Boston. Bye for now."
He goes to push himself up and sees movement in his peripheral vision. Tony is there, hand outstretched, and Peter grabs it and finds himself swept into Tony's arms. "You're incredible, kid," he whispers, and the kiss he drops on Peter's temple is almost fierce. "I am so damn proud of you, and I know May is too. She couldn't have asked for a more amazing son."
Then Tony pivots, Peter still clutched to his side.
"I'm going to take good care of our kid, May. I promise you that. Thank you for trusting me with him before I even trusted myself. I won't let you down."
They stand there for a while, until the tears dry, and Happy hands out handkerchiefs, and Peter hugs him tightly and whispers, "You really were a handsome couple."
Once they're all less of a mess Tony suggests they clean out Peter's apartment.
But Peter looks out towards the city, and then he looks back at May's grave. He knows what she'd want him to do.
"Actually, I could really use a cup of coffee."