Chapter Text
“Mr. Stark, we won. You did it, sir. You did it…” Peter’s voice is unsteady, too shaky and too loud in his own ears. Time has come to a standstill. “I’m sorry, Tony.”
Pepper’s hand is on his shoulder, pulling him away, and he can feel Colonel Rhodes next to him, but all he can focus on is trying to hear Tony’s heart.
He can hear his own heartbeat.
Pepper’s heartbeat.
Colonel Rhodes’ heartbeat.
F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s voice, too clear. Too sure. Life functions critical.
The faint sound of an exhale, whispering in the still, cool air.
But he can’t hear Tony’s heartbeat.
When Tony’s hand falls limply to his side, Peter is vaguely aware of Colonel Rhodes using every last bit of strength his War Machine armor gives him to hold him back, to keep him from rushing forward. To keep him away from Tony. The words spilling from his lips sound like they’re coming from someone else.
I’m sorry-I’m sorry-I’m sorry-I’m–
Peter gasps awake, completely drenched in sweat and shaking hard. He fumbles for his phone in the dark, frantically tapping the screen until he pulls up the most recent text thread in his phone.
Yesterday ● 11:49 PM
Get some sleep. See you tomorrow afternoon.
He lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. His fingers tremble when he swipes the screen to check the time. It’s just after three o’clock in the morning. He drags a hand down his face, closing his eyes and blowing out a slow, shuddering breath as he tries to shake the nightmare. He can count the number of nights in the past three months he hasn’t woken up in a cold sweat on one hand. Looking back down at his phone, he checks the date and sighs in relief when he sees that it’s Friday, which means just a little over twelve hours until he’s at the Tower for lab time with his mentor.
After a quick shower and a granola bar for breakfast, Peter decides to squeeze in a couple of hours of patrol, so he pulls on his suit and climbs out his window into the cool, chilly Fall morning. As he swings through the city, he uses up a little more web fluid than usual, immersing himself in the adrenaline and trying to keep the echo of his own voice from his dreams out of his head.
–- 🕷 –- –- 🕷 –- –- 🕷 –-
“Have you been sleeping?” MJ asks him at lunch. Her eyebrows knit together just slightly, giving away her concern, but Peter misses it. He shrugs and stares at his sandwich. He’s embarrassed, not because she knows he isn’t sleeping, but because there’s no reason he shouldn’t be sleeping. They defeated Thanos, and saved the world, and survived doing it. How can he admit to his girlfriend that he has nightmares that make him afraid to sleep when everything is so fucking fine on the outside?
Peter tries to listen when Ned tells him about a new Lego set he got, but the words buzz in his ears, sounding muffled, and his mind drifts until he hears a sharp huff of breath.
“Peter!”
Peter’s head snaps up. Ned is staring at him.
“So?”
“What?”
Ned raises an eyebrow. “Do you want to?”
Peter has no idea what the question is about. He nods vaguely.
The bell rings. MJ and Ned both stand, but Peter doesn’t move, his gaze focused on a small, dried drop of milk on the table. Behind his back, his friends exchange worried glances.
–- 🕷 –- –- 🕷 –- –- 🕷 –-
Most Fridays after lab day, Peter spends the night at the Tower. Tonight will be no different, but Peter feels a twist in his gut as the evening approaches, remembering last week when he’d woken up in the middle of the night screaming.
He doesn’t exactly want a repeat of Tony running into his room. He hadn’t been able to hide the tears. Tony hadn’t been able to hide the pity in his eyes.
When Peter goes to his room for the night, he sits cross legged on his bed, staring at the lamp on his nightstand and running through math problems in his head. At some point, he lies down. His eyelids droop. He tries not to fall asleep, but he’s so, so fucking tired, and when he closes his eyes, he has the sensation of tilting sideways.
It starts as a feeling, like a heavy weight on his chest. There are voices, just to his right, but he can’t see anything in the darkness.
“Peter!”
“Peter, move!”
“Peter!”
“Peter, get out of there!”
“Peter!”
He tries to move. He can’t. Two familiar voices, repeating their pleas, echo in his ears.
He tries to move. He can’t. He’s flat on his stomach, cold concrete underneath him and a hard, crushing weight against his back. His vision comes into focus. He turns his head and sees Ned and MJ, reaching out but too far away to touch him. Their faces are twisted in fear, but his sight blurs until they’re gone, and it’s just him, under a building and unable to move.
He struggles for what feels like hours. He tries to lift his head, but it’s held against the ground by a strong, unseen force. His arms are pinned beneath his body.
He tries to move. He can’t.
He opens his mouth. He screams, but nothing comes out, and–
“ Help !” The word lurches out of his mouth, his voice cracking halfway through. He slaps a hand over his mouth and prays no one hears him. The digital clock’s red numbers stare at him. Two hours. Just two hours of sleep, for what felt like ten hours worth of a nightmare.
Dragging himself out of bed, Peter stands. His chest feels heavy. He’s still exhausted, but he digs his fingernails into his palms and paces back and forth across the room until the sun rises.
–- 🕷 –- –- 🕷 –- –- 🕷 –-
The weekend passes by quickly, and the next week is like a rerun of the one before, and eventually the lack of sleep catches up to him. Peter wakes up the following Saturday morning in his room at the Tower with a pounding headache, a sore throat, and fresh tears on his cheeks.
Family breakfast with the Avengers on Saturday mornings is something he usually looks forward to all week, but today he’s dreading it and the attention he always gets from everyone. He pretends not to notice the worried glances they exchange with each other, just like he pretends that he’s totally fine.
When it’s time for him to go back home on Saturday afternoon, Happy’s the first one to clock the fact that he’s sick.
“Keep your germs in the backseat,” he tells Peter as they pull out of the garage, and Peter freezes, locking eyes with Happy in the rearview mirror. “Whatever you have…I do not want it.”
“I don’t have anything,” Peter chokes out. Happy just shakes his head and turns his gaze to the road, but Peter knows he’s fucked if he tells Tony.
Back at his apartment, he pauses outside of the door, listening to May’s worried voice as she talks on the phone with someone.
“This is not my Peter,” she whispers into the phone, and he realizes she’s talking to Tony.
She hangs up quickly when she hears him open the door, and he makes a beeline for his room before she can greet him. He takes his math book up to the ceiling, solving equations upside down until his headache gets too bad and ignoring May when she knocks on his door for dinnertime.
May hates it when he patrols late at night, but Tony actually forbids it, and Peter’s smart enough to know he checks Karen’s footage. On those nights that he goes out past curfew, he wears his old suit, the one Tony calls a onesie, despite the flimsy, definitely-not-waterproof fabric and the absence of a built-in heater. The temperatures are dropping, and the chill seeps through the thin suit and makes his teeth chatter. When it starts to rain, he’s soaked to the bone within minutes, and when he climbs back in his window at 2:00 AM he’s numb and dripping wet.
He strips off his clothes and hopes his numb, stinging skin will help him stay awake, but he ends up curled up at the foot of his bed and falls asleep anyway.
–- 🕷 –- –- 🕷 –- –- 🕷 –-
When he wakes up on Sunday morning, the headache is still present, as is the sore throat, but now there’s an ache in his muscles and fogginess to his senses and a weird, irritating feeling deep in his chest. It makes him feel sluggish and tired, and the day passes by in a blur. May is at work most of the day, so he tries to focus on his homework, but he finds it hard to concentrate.
Sunday evening, he falls asleep despite his best effort not to, and he dreams he’s swinging through the city, chasing after a sound that keeps growing quieter, a steady thumping noise that reminds him of a beating heart.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
When he lands on a rooftop, he’s surprised to see Colonel Rhodes standing in front of him. Peter takes a step forward, but he’s looking just past Peter, over his shoulder. Peter turns around. Tony, on his knees, grasps at his throat, mouth open in a silent scream.
“Life functions critical,” he hears Karen say.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
A final hum of an exhale whistles in his ears.
“I’m sorry, Tony,” he tries to say, but his voice doesn’t make it past his Spider-Man mask. He reaches up to pull it off, but he can’t.
Tony collapses against the concrete.
Colonel Rhodes grabs his shoulder to hold him back with such force that Peter feels white, hot pain erupt. He claws at his mask. He can’t get it off. He reaches an arm out toward Tony, but he can’t move forward.
I’m sorry-I’m sorry-I’m sorry-I’m–
Peter gulps for air, one hand instinctively coming up to his throat, fingers brushing against the skin on his neck as he sucks in a breath, then another. His third breath catches in his chest, rushing back out in a half-cough, half-grunt that makes him convulse, hacking and coughing until he feels like he’s just run a marathon.
Panting afterward, he reaches for his phone, almost knocking it off his nightstand and pulling the charging cord out of the wall. His thumbnail clicks against the screen. He squints, eyes searching frantically until the screen comes into focus.
Yesterday ● 5:27 PM
Sure. Be right there.
Tony gives him so much shit for texting him when he’s at the Tower, instead of using F.R.I.D.A.Y. or, heaven forbid, actually getting up and physically finding him, but fuck, Peter still does it as often as he can get away with. That little time stamp is worth far too much not to.
He checks the current time, relief flooding his veins. It’s just after midnight. His limbs feel heavy. He wouldn’t be lying down if they didn’t feel so fucking heavy . But the weight of them makes him feel like he’s being pulled underwater, and before he can stop it his eyes are sliding shut and a cloud of foreboding darkness closes in, and with it, sleep.
–- 🕷 –- –- 🕷 –- –- 🕷 –-
Monday morning starts bright and way too fucking early when Peter wakes up coughing at 3:00 AM. He cups both hands over his mouth to muffle the sound, but he still hears May stirring in her room. He stumbles out to the kitchen to get a glass of water, gulping it down quickly until the sharp pain in his throat dies down to more of an ache, the soreness entirely coating the back of his throat and making him wince when he swallows. He fills the glass again, sipping at the water as he shuffles back to his room.
For two hours, he lies awake, fighting sleep and stifling coughs into his pillow, until a sharp knock at his door has him flying upright.
“ Fuck ,” he hisses, digging his knuckles into his temple when the action makes his head pound.
“Morning,” May says as she opens the door. “You’re up early…” She trails off, watching him rub his forehead. “You doing okay?”
Peter drops his hand and nods slightly. His throat is on fire, and his voice comes out raspy when he opens his mouth to reply. “Yep.”
“You look tired, baby. Another nightmare?”
He clears his throat and shrugs. He can hide the fact that he’s getting sick from May, at least for today, but he knows he can’t hide the nightmares from her.
“Do you want me to call you in to school today? You can stay home and get some rest?”
Sitting around at home, with nothing to distract him from his own thoughts, sounds like a…well, almost as bad as a nightmare. Peter shakes his head, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
“Nope. I’m good.”
May tilts her head to the side, narrowing her eyes and his hoarse response. She stares for a moment, then presses her lips together, watching him as he stands and starts to gather a change of clothes.
“Okay. Have a good day at school. I’ll see you tonight.” She looks like she wants to say more. She doesn’t have to. Peter can see everything in her eyes.
“Thanks, May. Larb you,” he says, and her gaze softens.
“Larb you too.”
–- 🕷 –- –- 🕷 –- –- 🕷 –-
Peter barely makes it through the school day. When the bell finally rings, he makes a beeline for the exit. Before he even steps outside, he senses a familiar presence, and sure enough, Tony Stark himself is parked right out front, leaning up against his car with his arms crossed and a smirk on his face.
“What are– why are–?” Peter blinks rapidly, confusion making his forehead wrinkle. He doesn’t even care about how many people are staring at them and whispering.
“Good to see you too, kid,” Tony quips. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m– What? I’m fine.”
“Well, you’re running a fever.”
Peter claps his palm to his forehead and frowns. “No I’m not,” he scoffs, even though his skin does feel a little warm, because the rest of him is freezing cold. Thinking about it makes him shiver, and Tony narrows his eyes at him.
“You usually run somewhere between, I dunno, 96 to 96.5 degrees.” Tony tries to say it casually, as if he doesn’t fucking keep track. “And today, your watch is saying you’re at 99.7. That’s high, for you.” He tilts his head to the side. “Also, you look like shit.”
“Rude.”
“I’ve been called worse.” Tony raps his knuckles on the top of his car. “I already talked to your aunt. You’re staying with me tonight. Hop in.”
Peter hesitates.
“Can I still go to school tomorrow?”
Tony sniffles, the way he always does when he’s gathering his thoughts or when he’s about to give Peter an earful, and Peter’s not really sure which one it’s going to be this time. He’s surprised when Tony just taps the car again and then wordlessly walks around to get in. Peter frowns. He looks over his shoulder, back at the front of the school, then pulls the hood of his sweatshirt up and opens the car door.
The anxiety coming off of Tony is palpable, and it makes Peter feel on edge, the hair on the back of his neck prickling uncomfortably. Peter can understand the worry, but not the intensity with which Tony is scrutinizing him in the rearview mirror, like he’s afraid he’s going to look back and Peter’s going to be gone.
He slides down in his seat and pulls his hood further down over his forehead. He can see that the dial on the heater is turned up, but it feels so fucking cold in the car, and he’s grateful when they finally arrive at the Tower. When he steps out of the car, a wave of dizziness hits him like a slap, and if not for his grip on the door handle he’s sure he’d fall right over. When it passes, Tony is watching him. Peter slams the car door and walks past him, thankful that another wave of dizziness doesn’t hit him but feeling like the way Tony looks at him is somehow worse.
On Fridays, he always eats a snack after school, so he finds himself automatically heading toward the kitchen, Tony right on his heels. They find Bruce there, pouring himself a cup of coffee. Peter walks to the refrigerator, pulling it open and staring blankly at the shelves. He doesn’t feel the least bit hungry.
“Coffee?” Bruce asks Tony, reaching into the cabinet for a mug. He pauses when he gets a good look at the other man. “Jesus, Tony, you look like you’re about to have a panic attack,” he murmurs, his voice so soft that Peter would never be able to make out what he’s saying if not for his enhanced hearing.
“I’d love some,” Tony answers, voice too loud. Peter closes the refrigerator.
“Can I have some?” He asks.
“No,” Bruce and Tony reply at the same time. Bruce turns to Peter.
“You’re not looking too hot there, Pete.”
“Why not?” Peter furrows his brow, gesturing at the coffee pot when they both stare at him blankly.
“We are not adding caffeine to all of…” Tony waves his hand in Peter’s direction. “That.”
“Fine. I’m going to go do my homework.”
“Peter, you’re running a fever. No homework.”
“You’re not going to let me do my homework?” Peter asks incredulously. “Fine! Can we work in the lab?”
Tony shakes his head. Bruce ducks out of the kitchen, heading to the dining room table, where he tucks himself into a chair and hides his face behind a newspaper.
Peter crosses his arms. “Well, what can I do?”
“Just lie down on the couch or something.” Tony says, his voice growing soft. “Please? Just rest for a bit?”
He stares at Tony, his mouth dropping open, but there’s something in Tony’s eyes that makes him swallow his response. He trudges over to the couch, plopping down right in the middle of it and kicking his shoes off before pulling his knees to his chest.
The next thing he knows, he’s flailing awake, a shout dying on his lips. He sits up, looking around in confusion. It’s dark, which means he slept through the rest of the afternoon, and through dinner. Tony is nowhere to be seen.
Shivering violently, he wraps his arms around himself. His shirt is completely soaked through with sweat, and now there is absolutely no doubt in his mind that he’s running a fever. Even his eyes feel hot. He strips his shirt off, shuddering when his bare skin is exposed. There’s a blanket, folded neatly on the coffee table, that wasn’t there before. He takes it and unfolds it with trembling hands, then drapes it around his shoulders like a cape.
Someone pads down the hall, and Peter can tell it’s Bruce by the sound of the footsteps. Bruce stops short when he sees Peter sitting up, shivering on the couch. He goes to the kitchen and returns shortly with a pill bottle and a glass of water. He sets the water on the coffee table and unscrews the cap off the bottle.
“I synthesized these for Steve,” Bruce tells him, shaking two pills into his palm. He drops them into Peter’s hand, and Peter dry swallows them both at the same time, wincing at the way his throat burns as they go down.
It takes two hundred and one seconds for the medicine to kick in, or at least that’s the last number Peter can remember counting to before everything goes dark.
–- 🕷 –- –- 🕷 –- –- 🕷 –-
Sunlight floods the living room on Tuesday morning. Peter opens his eyes, squinting against the brightness. He feels too weak to sit up. Where his senses had been heightened even more so than usual yesterday, they’re dampened today, leaving him feeling foggy and lethargic. It’s hard to make out who’s voices he can hear in the adjoining room.
After a breakfast of three sips of water and two more of Steve’s magical pills, Tony has F.R.I.D.A.Y. run a diagnostic scan on him, but all Peter really catches from it is that he has some kind of virus and his temperature is at 102.2 degrees.
He lounges on the couch for the entire day. Bruce makes him hot tea and Tony orders soup but he can barely swallow anything with the pain in his throat and he’s not hungry anyway. He drifts between being shivery and cold to feeling like he’s under a heating lamp, but he stays awake, always awake, too miserable to fall asleep even if he wanted to.
Fuck, he really should try to sleep.
In the evening, his fever climbs again, and Tony’s panicked pacing makes Peter’s head spin.
“ Shit ,” Tony hisses, checking the number on the digital thermometer again. “Shit, shit, shit .”
Peter lifts his head to see the number. 103.6 degrees.
He pulls the blanket up to his chin and rolls onto his back. Maybe if he closes his eyes, everything will stop spinning.
“Are you going to sleep?” Tony asks him, and he opens his eyes to see Tony hovering over him.
“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to be trying to do?” Peter asks. His voice is nearly gone, barely a whisper. His body wants the sleep, and Tony wants him to sleep, so he feels like now might be a good time to finally give in.
“Yeah,” Tony finally says, his expression unreadable. “I’ll be right here if…”
It suddenly dawns on him. The look in Tony’s eyes is fear– he’s scared, scared that the fever is going to make Peter’s nightmares worse.
He barks out a cough that isn’t very loud but is extremely painful, one that makes him cough again, the sounds rattling from deep within his chest. He coughs and coughs, barely registering Tony’s hands behind his back, lifting him until he’s sitting up. Peter squeezes his eyes shut and sucks in air, and when he catches his breath he feels a warm palm pressing into his back, rubbing back and forth between his shoulder blades.
Peter turns to look at Tony. “I haven’t…I haven’t had any nightmares since after school yesterday,” he finally says, swallowing thickly. “Didn’t have any last night.” He watches Tony think. Tony’s hand never stops rubbing Peter’s back. “I’m not sure if it’s the fever, or what. Or maybe it was the pills Bruce gave me.”
Tony shrugs and Peter’s never seen him so unsure.
“We’ll figure it out,” he says. His hand stills on Peter’s back, then pulls away. “Well…you should get some sleep, I guess.”
Peter opens his mouth to respond, but his voice is gone, so he lies down instead, pulling the blanket back up over his shoulders. He picks at a corner of the blanket where a thread is loose and waits until his eyelids are so heavy he can’t keep them open any longer to close his eyes and let the exhaustion sever his last grasp on consciousness.
–- 🕷 –- –- 🕷 –- –- 🕷 –-
On Tuesday evening, Peter dozes off on the couch and dreams that May is eating dinner with Tony. He’s not entirely sure what time it is when he wakes up, but it could be either dawn or dusk for all he can tell. He pauses in rubbing at gritty eyes to listen to someone talking in the kitchen, and realizes that he can actually hear May’s voice, here, in the Tower.
“May?” He tries to croak out, but it comes out as a soft squeak. He feels so weak and so feverish that he struggles to sit up, and when he finally gets himself upright he’s panting, sucking in air greedily and swallowing hard against a dry, sore throat. He lifts a hand to the side of his neck, tenderly pressing his fingertips against swollen lymph nodes and clearing his throat as carefully as he can.
The clear, cheerful sound of F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s voice rings out in the kitchen, announcing that he’s awake, and he hears two chairs scrape against the floor.
“Peter?” May’s voice is soft.
Peter lets himself slump back onto his back, too tired to hold himself up for much longer. He smiles when he sees May’s face above him.
“Hey, baby,” she whispers. “How are you feeling?”
Tony appears next to her. Peter clears his throat and winces.
“I wanted to check on you before I head to work,” May tells him, and Peter finds himself blinking back tears.
“I…” His voice cracks.
“Shh,” May shushes him. She adjusts the blanket over him and leans down to press a kiss to his warm forehead when he closes his eyes. “Rest your voice.”
–- 🕷 –- –- 🕷 –- –- 🕷 –-
Turns out, Tony’s fear isn’t totally unfounded, and Peter wakes up in the middle of the night, clammy and covered with sweat and sobbing hard.
The nightmare was an exceptionally bad one, and he flails around wildly, unable to shake it. Tony’s hands are on him in an instant, smoothing his hair back and rubbing firm, quick circles on his chest as Peter cries and coughs, but Peter isn’t aware of his presence in his feverish state. He whimpers, calling out for Tony hoarsely, choking on the congestion that his lungs try to expel and gasping for air afterward.
It takes him almost a half an hour to stop crying, and even then, he blinks at Tony in confusion when the man helps him sit up and take a sip of water. Tony keeps his hand on Peter’s back and frowns at the heat radiating off of him.
“F.R.I.D.A.Y.? Scan please? And get Bruce up here?”
When Bruce arrives, he takes one look at Peter and motions for Tony to have him stand. He helps Tony get Peter to the bathroom, where he turns on the water to fill the tub, keeping his hand under the stream to ensure it stays lukewarm. When they help Peter into the tepid water, he moans, shuddering at the discomfort as all of his muscles tense up.
“I’m going to go make up his bed for him,” Bruce says, grabbing a towel and leaving it on the closed toilet seat before he goes.
In the bathtub, Peter shivers violently and pulls his legs up to his chest. He presses his forehead to his knees, hot tears streaming hot his cheeks, and whispers something Tony can’t quite make out.
“What’s that, Roos?” Tony grabs the thermometer off the counter again.
Peter looks up and opens his mouth obediently when Tony holds it in front of his lips. He frowns, unable to repeat himself with the thermometer in his mouth, looking slightly confused as he stares at Tony.
“Okay, let’s check that temp, hm?” Tony says when the thermometer beeps. He’s sure it’ll say the exact same thing it did two minutes ago, the exact same temperature that F.R.I.D.A.Y. has already told him, but he can’t stop himself from checking.
“I said I wish you didn’t have to die,” Peter says softly.
“Good news,” Tony replies slowly. He reaches out and wipes a bead of sweat from Peter’s temple. “I don’t have to. And I didn’t. I’m here.”
Peter frowns like he doesn’t quite believe it. He’s shivering slightly less now, eyelids drooping as his body is able to slightly relax, and Tony checks his watch. Five more minutes pass in silence. Peter lets his forehead rest back onto his knees. When he looks like he’s about to fall asleep, Tony drains the tub, taking in Peter’s flushed skin and labored breathing and making a mental note to ask Bruce about more of those pills from earlier.
Once Peter is tucked into bed, Bruce starts to leave, turning back when Tony doesn’t immediately follow him.
“Tony?” He whispers, looking between the other man and Peter, who’s snoring softly.
“Should we really let him fall back asleep?” Tony asks. He bites his lip.
“He needs rest, Tony. Of course we should!”
“Bruce,” Tony sighs. “You didn’t– you didn’t see him.”
“He needs rest,” Bruce repeats.
Tony clenches his jaw, dragging a hand down his face, and when he leaves the room, he lingers in the doorway for a minute, watching Peter sleep before quietly pulling the door closed behind him with a soft click.
–- 🕷 –- –- 🕷 –- –- 🕷 –-
Peter sleeps for thirteen hours straight. When he wakes up, his mind is clear and he feels, for the first time in a long fucking time, like he actually got some rest. While his body is still a bit achy, the soreness in his throat is now more of a dry irritation and his head isn’t pounding.
Tony knocks on his door shortly after he sits up. He’s carrying two different thermometers in one hand and a glass of water in the other. Between F.R.I.D.A.Y. and his two thermometers, Tony takes his temperature three times. After the third, he checks the number, then aims the temporal thermometer at his own forehead until it beeps.
“We match,” Tony says with an amused grin. He waves the digital screen in front of Peter’s face. “98.2 degrees. A tad on the high side for you, but I’ll take it.”
Peter smiles.
“You hungry yet?”
“Yeah,” Peter answers, voice gravelly but returning. “I could eat.”
Tony beams and goes to make him breakfast. When Peter makes his way out to the kitchen, Tony’s standing at the stove scrambling eggs. He looks over at Peter, reaching over to put a piece of bread into the toaster as Peter slides onto a stool at the counter.
“I would have brought it to you,” Tony tells him, turning back to the eggs.
Peter shakes his head. “I wanted to get up and stretch my legs.” He clears his throat, then yawns. Tony plates his breakfast and slides it across the counter. “Thank you.”
“Eat up.” Tony butters a piece of toast for himself. “If you’re feeling up for it, Happy can drive you home this afternoon.”
Peter pauses, fork halfway to his mouth.
“You’re more than welcome to stay another night,” he quickly adds. “But I think your aunt is missing you. Something about the apartment feeling empty without an annoying teenager taking up all the space?”
“Shut up,” Peter rolls his eyes. “Yeah. I’m up for that.”
When Happy pulls up to the curb in front of their apartment building later that afternoon, May is waiting on the sidewalk.
“Come here,” she says, gathering him into her arms and holding him close. “I’m so glad you’re feeling better.”
Peter returns the hug, letting himself close his eyes and sink into her embrace until she laughs softly, leaning back to study him.
“Missed you, too.”
May orders an optimistic dinner– Chinese takeout– and Peter is able to eat half of what he usually does before he has to stop. The air is light, like a weight has been lifted, and when he goes into his room that evening, he climbs into bed with the intention to sleep for the first time in a long time.
–- 🕷 –- –- 🕷 –- –- 🕷 –-
“Mr. Stark, we won. You did it, sir. You did it…” Peter’s voice is unsteady, too shaky and too loud in his own ears. Time has come to a standstill.
He’s been here before.
“I’m sorry, Tony.”
Pepper’s hand is on his shoulder, pulling him away, and he can feel Colonel Rhodes next to him, but all he can focus on is trying to hear Tony’s heart.
When he hears it, the relief washes over him like a wave. The, the hand on his shoulder tugs him backward and he stumbles, suddenly finding himself twenty feet away. Pepper looks him right in the eye. She’s blocking his view of Tony.
“Wake up,” she says, but he already is awake.
There’s a faint sound of an exhale, whispering in the still, cool air. Suddenly, he can’t hear Tony’s heartbeat anymore. He scrambles sideways until he can see him in the distance. Tony’s hand falls limply to his side. Peter tries to take a step towards him, but his feet are stuck like they’re part of the ground. The words he’s screaming sound like they’re coming from someone else.
I’m sorry-I’m sorry-I’m sorry-I’m–
I’m sorry.
His hands are clenched in fists when he starts awake. His phone is still on his chest, and when he picks it up the screen lights up, displaying a handful of notifications. He ignores them, opening his text messages instead.
Saturday ● 5:27 PM
Sure. Be right there.
Fuck. He’s been so sick, he and Tony haven’t texted each other since the weekend. Without a second thought, he taps the symbol of a phone and squeezes his eyes shut, trying to ignore the voice in his head that tells him no one is going to pick up.
Tony answers on the first ring, like he’s been sitting and waiting for a call.
“Peter?”
A sob catches in Peter’s throat. “Thank fuck ,” he whimpers. “I’m so sorry.”
He hears a long, deep sigh. “Nothing to be sorry for,” Tony replies.
They sit in silence for a moment, soft inhales and exhales coming from Tony’s end and wet sniffles on Peter’s. Finally, Tony clears his throat. “You want to try to go back to bed?”
Peter shakes his head, even though Tony can’t see him.
“Can you…can you talk? Until I fall back asleep?”
“Of course,” Tony says. “Get comfy, I’m going to bore the shit out of you.”
Peter huffs out a watery laugh. He rolls onto his side, setting the phone next to his pillow and putting it on speakerphone. As Tony talks, he lets his eyes drift closed, letting the sound envelop him like a hug.
“I’m here, Roos. I’m right here.”