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Tony is crouched over the toilet, white-faced, numb-knuckled, toes flat against the icy surface of the cornflower blue tiles, when his phone pings with a text.
Silly String Kid
So this probably sounds a little dumb but is there any chance at all you have any uh profound thoughts on King Lear
The man blinks at the message, the letters of the text blurring before his eyes, as his brow furrows in confusion. His brain is moving like sludge.
Silly String Kid
I’m sorry Mr. Stark I totally didn’t mean to be a bother.
It’s just that Ned is already asleep and MJ won’t help me with this for ethical reasons and um
I may have slightly procrastinated this reaction paper bc of my,,, ‘extracurriculars’
On any other day, the flurry of Peter’s follow-up texts would have been enough to bring a snort and smirk to Tony’s mood. But today--today, he is little more than a pit of emotions, so deep and endless he knows neither the beginning nor the end of where this started. He is a mass of flesh and bones with his cheek against a vanity cabinet, eyes watery and vision blurring. He’s pain, and unconsciousness, slipping to and from him like midnight waves. His stomach turns inside him.
Silly String Kid
Also please please don’t feel obligated to answer these
Actually forget I ever asked. This is my responsibility I know and also you’re probably sleeping
Or if not! You should be sleeping! Sleeeeep Mr. Stark
Tony’s hands feel disconnected as he brings the screen, trembling, closer to his field of vision so he can tap the call button under Peter’s contact name.
The kid picks up after not even a single ring. He’s all breathless, like he might have scrambled to answer the phone before whatever embarrassing ringtone he has on can wake anybody up in the apartment. Puppylike, panting, his voice filters through to Tony in a wash of chagrin and gratitude combined.
“I’m literally so, so sorry about this, Mr. Stark, I swear I did not mean to wake you up. Literally. Um. You can hang up now, if you want, it’s really not important. Or, uh, if you don’t mind, if you do have some--some opinions here and there--and I know you do, you’re like, the giving tree of opinions, um--then feel free to shoot. I’m, uh, I’m listening.”
Tony opens his mouth to speak. A breathless noise leaves him, high and inhuman. The phone shakes in his hand till he can’t hold it any longer. The device slips from his grasp, clatters to the tiles, cushioned only by the corner of the bath mat underneath him.
“...Mr. Stark?”
The man presses his hands deep against the skin of his face. It feels--disjointed. Like sand and oil, moving under the pads of his fingers, incomprehensible. By some cruel design of the universe his lungs still hitch and shudder for breath.
“Mr. Stark! What’s--what’s going on? Are you okay? Where are you--is there somebody with you?”
Tony doesn’t have the wherewithal to respond. All of a sudden the nausea slams into him again, and he scrambles onto his knees and falls forward on his forearms against the toilet seat less than a second before he hurls into the bowl again. It’s the third, fourth, fifth time? He’s lost count tonight. There’s nothing left inside him, no cushion, no meat, no more tears, only acid and bitterness and regret. His stomach knots and he groans from the ache so vague and profound it feels like a knife that’s been there for centuries.
“Mr. Stark--please answer me--”
“Kid,” Tony gasps out. Slow breaths, in, out, through his nostrils, in, out, everything smells like sickness and failure. His voice is wrecked. He’s wrecked.
“I’m good, I’m good,” he says, even though the whine and hiccup in his voice say anything but.
“Oh, thank God,” Peter breathes out. His words begin to stumble over each other, weightless and clipped. “I thought for a second back there you were, you were being held hostage or something. Although why you’d call me and not, like, Colonel Rhodey or Ms. Natasha or something, I dunno… Mr. Stark?”
Tony cuts him off in the middle of his ramble with another lurch and retch into the toilet bowl. He’s untethered, coming apart at the joints. Afloat with grief like daggers.
He braces himself with his forearms against the rim of the toilet seat and he has never felt weaker in his life. Not when he was being held down in a drum of icy water by iron hands, not when Pepper hurtled from heaven to the flames and beams below. Not even when he turned to look at Steve with horror in his eyes in the gloom of a bunker, frozen surveillance footage flickering in shadows across his face.
Peter’s voice is quieter now. Fearful, perhaps. Tinny from where it comes from Tony’s phone on the floor. The edge of panic in his tone bleeds away into something halfway to realization.
“Are you...drunk?”
The pill bottle on the corner of the sink rocks back and forth on its belly across the granite. Tony glances at it. The mere movement sends waves like sluggish currents of electricity through his skull.
“Yes,” he lies, in a whisper.
“Aww.” The sound that the kid makes is neither patronizing nor disappointed. There is, instead, a sadness there, a little shocking to the man in its genuineness.
Tony mutters an apology that dies just as quickly on his lips. He lets his head fall forward, and his forehead hits the cool underside of the toilet seat with a thunk.
“Mr. Stark...sorry...is Ms. Pepper there?”
The man tries to muster a reply, but none comes. Peter understands anyway.
“Oh, I think she mentioned she was in Ireland this week. Right. I remember. She and May were talking about it, they started getting real excited about those places where they sell authentic local wool and--you know what. Sorry. I’m getting off topic. Um. Are you at the Tower?”
Tony--a fool, he’s a fool--gives the air a thumbs up. A beat later, he remembers where he is and he coughs out, “Yeah, Pete...yeah.”
“You definitely don’t sound too good. I’m coming down there, okay? Um. May’s on the night shift, so...I’ll just shoot her a text, I guess, maybe ask her for care tips if that’s okay? Or--or would you not want to--actually, never mind. I’ll grab a ride and I’ll be right over. Stay right there, Mr. Stark. Don’t move.”
Tony wants to say he couldn’t even if he tried. His tongue is a block of cement.
--
He remains motionless for what feels like a second in the vortex. It must have been an eternity.
The soles of Peter’s sneakers track across the carpet. They turn, squeak, stop and tilt on the threshold of the blue tiles.
The light around the kid’s frame in the doorway is like marigolds. Beautiful, and hurting.
Neither of them say anything. Tony, for lack of strength and breath--Peter, for lack of anything to say. The man can feel the kid’s gaze flit to the sink, see the empty pill bottle there. Rocking back and forth, even now, like a morbid see-saw. And he can feel the gears clicking into place, surely but horribly, as Peter puts two and two together.
There’s a single intake of breath, and then Peter slowly reawakens into action. Heavy. Wordless.
The boy stumbles forward, but he’s methodical. He grabs one of the Dixie cups from the dispenser and fills it with water from the tap. It sloshes over the rim, splashes against the fiberglass of the sink. He gets down on his knees--there’s rustling and shifting, it turns out Peter brought a backpack, too--and he taps Tony’s bicep to get the man to lift his head and accept the drink.
Tony shakes his head infinitesimally. If he lets go of his grip on the toilet now, he thinks, wildly, wildly, he might be gone forever.
And then Peter’s hand comes up to the back of Tony’s hair, in the middle of the patch of sweat there, and with his other hand he tips the cup back to let the water dribble past Tony’s lips. The kid’s brow is lined with trenches.
Tony makes it almost to the bottom of the cup when he chokes and sputters. Peter sets aside the cup and tears off a length of toilet paper, scrubs it across Tony’s mouth to clean him up there. Tony closes his eyes and submits himself to the care. He burns inside, from fear, from shame, from loathing that is intimate and relentless.
“Hi,” he hears himself say, from behind closed lids.
The massaging of Peter’s hands in his hair stills. Tony blinks and shifts to look at him, and almost immediately regrets it, because tragedy greater than any imagination of Shakespeare is written there like dying stars.
Peter opens his mouth, breathes in. Nothing comes out. He tries again, and as he does, his eyelid twitches with the sudden need to beat back the sheen of wetness over his eyes. “I love you,” he whispers, almost involuntary, almost an accident. A greeting--an apology, a plea. A promise.
--
Tony absolutely refuses to be seen at the hospital.
He lies on the scratchy carpet of the small in-suite living room, just a few steps from the bathroom where he was a beat away from dying. He said, “Just a minute, kid,” and crumpled there on the floor, refusing to clamber onto the couch where Peter wants him, making the kid think it’s from the tiredness in his bones but knowing it’s because he doesn’t deserve the comfort of that soft surface.
Peter, for his part, has unrolled a ratty fleece blanket from his backpack--teal, faded at the hems, re-stitched by May’s unsteady hand where the threads came loose--and laid it over in pools of blue over Tony’s inert figure. He squeezes the man’s hand before promising to return with ginger ale and crackers and whatever generic home remedies he can find to settle Tony’s stomach.
Tony’s almost asleep when he hears the padding of Peter’s bare feet coming back in his direction. Peter hurries to drop down on his knees at Tony’s head. The man can smell the fear on him, the unspoken anxiety that every time Tony shuts his eyes, it will be last time Peter sees them again.
And, God, if Tony isn’t a monster for putting Peter through this--again and again, losing his father figures, from six, to fourteen, to now. His guilt clenches around his throat.
And so for Peter’s sake, and his alone, Tony drags his eyelids open and takes the first cracker from the sleeve. He nibbles at a corner.
“Thank you,” he grates out. They both know it’s for this, yes, for--for Peter dropping everything, swinging over, pouring water down his throat, cleaning the sick from his face. But they also know his words reach into the expanse of the everything that Peter has done for him from the day they met. For the laughs and the silly midnight texts, the loyalty beyond reason. For saying I love you when it doesn’t make sense to Tony and yet he needs it the most.
Peter inhales sharply. And then, in a warble: “I don’t know what I would have done if I walked in and you weren’t breathing anymore.”
Tony hates himself. He hates, he hates, he hates, he twists up in--
“Sorry,” Peter tacks on. “Sorry, sorry. This is--this is not about me. I didn’t mean to guilt trip you.” His fingers return to Tony's hair, smoothing it back from his brow and rubbing circles there frantically like it can erase the weight of his outburst.
But--but Peter is just a kid. He is a kid. If the droplets of his grief patter hotly onto Tony’s cheek without his meaning to, all is already forgiven. He’s sixteen and small and human and the last thing he deserves is to see this.
“I’m glad you walked in,” Tony says. Low and shaky. “I--I’m glad you texted when you did.” His throat is wrecked.
Peter cries quietly. Tony wishes he didn’t have to.
“You are so loved,” the kid says. “Me, Pepper, Rhodey, Happy...May...everybody. You are--we love you.”
“I know,” Tony says, tortured. “My brain--my brain knows that.”
“Who is it, then?”
Tony blinks at him in slow confusion.
Peter’s hand curls into a fist on top of his jean-clad thigh. Veins and corded muscles run there, but nothing can belie the aching youth of his skin.
“Who is it--who made you feel this way.”
It takes Tony a second. And then--“I did. I made myself feel this way. I--I messed up, big time, and it’s just--another fuck-up in a whole laundry list of fuck-ups. I lost the deal when she specifically told me everything I could do to improve the--they didn’t...and then last week I failed when all I had to was--and last month--and. I failed you. The team, it’s--all broken and weird and I let myself get in the way, and he’s right, he’s right, my father’s right, there’s nothing I do right. I got the brain and the--resources, but all I ever do is fuck up with whatever life handed me. I don’t deserve any of this. I--”
Peter shifts. Tony looks up to see the boy has pressed the sleeve of his hoodie against his mouth to quiet the sounds of his crying.
“I’m sorry,” Tony ends in a whisper.
“No, no, no,” Peter mumbles against his own arm. “No. Don’t. No sorry.”
“I’m--” Tony stops. “I didn’t mean to die.” Maybe a half-lie, but in the stillness of the night it enters the realm where truth in irony is possible. “I didn’t. I just...I was hoping I didn’t have to exist.”
“Fuck your dad,” Peter bursts out in a gasp. “Fuck the--I’m sorry. I’m sorry. But I mean it. Fuck him. It doesn’t matter what you think you messed up, look, I’ve messed up real bad too, I’ve messed up loads of times, but you’re there for me and you show me it gets better. So does May. So did--so did Ben. And Ms. Pepper, oh my God, oh my God, Mr. Stark, she loves you. She would never hold it against you. Look at you, you’re--you’re Iron Man.”
“Because I couldn’t see what a fucking mess Stark Industries was until I got half-blown up with one of my own missiles and went and got myself kidnapped,” Tony seethes quietly.
Peter stares at him. “Exactly. Do you not--don’t you hear what that sounds like? You’re describing a hero, Tony.”
On his last syllable, the boy’s voice breaks.
“Buddy,” Tony breathes from the very depths of himself. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” And now the fire of waterfalls is blinding him, too.
Peter reaches forward and pulls Tony into his lap, awkward and fast, but it’s the best feeling in the world as he takes his mentor’s limp arms in his hands and wraps one around his own torso. And then the boy himself crumples over Tony, spreads himself on top of him, as if the threads that barely hold him together could stitch Tony up again and cover him completely. Like the quaking of his shoulders could stop the void spilling out of Tony from every side.
“I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you,” the boy mumbles into his cheek. “I love you. I love you.”
Over and over. And over and over again, till it’s a litany, a babble, a string of words in a tongueless cry at the sky.
Tony curls the one hand that he has around Peter’s middle so his fingers brush over the boy’s back. Uncertainly, because he doesn’t deserve this. He doesn’t deserve love--he doesn’t deserve him. But he wants it--God, he wants it, because he’s ferocious, selfish, falling, undone. He wants it anyway.
“You are good enough,” Peter hiccups. “You are, you are so good. Like. You don’t even understand.”
Tony tries to laugh. It won’t come to him, but maybe tomorrow it will again.
“Not like King Lear?” he rasps out, with a touch of irony. He tries a smile on his wooden lips. He doesn’t know anymore where he stands.
The kid hiccups again. “Honestly--pardon--but fuck King Lear. He had to make his kids put on a, put on a show to prove they loved him. You’re not. You’re not. You don’t--you don’t do that. You’re just you and--I’m just me.”
And it’s that, of all things, it’s that one little phrase spoken incoherently by a child, that breaks the dam for Tony. The flood comes forth and it drenches the front of Peter’s shirt entirely. But Tony doesn’t let go--he raises his other trembling arm to hug Peter back with every last splinter he’s got inside him. Because he’s the driftwood and Peter is the imperfect wave that pulls him back to sea with the ebb of the tide. He’s the sun as it burns and falls in the west, and Peter, Peter--Peter--is the moonlight that rises in quiet and love to avenge him.