Chapter Text
Peter threw up twice more before he and Tony arrived at the airport.
Once on the car ride there, forcing the driver to pull over while he stuck his head out the door and Tony tried providing as much comfort as he could while the hand he placed on his back was still covered in metal, and then once more on the short walk between the car and the private Stark Industries Jet that waited for them.
At least there was that. At least the jet was Tony’s, and Peter didn’t have to worry about falling out of the sky.
When he was finished puking his guts out on the concrete, he wiped his mouth off with the bottom of his shirt, ignoring the sound of disgust Tony made. Tony gripped his arm and helped him up the steps, onto the jet, and down into a seat. He pressed a cold-water bottle into his hands and ordered him to drink it, leaving no time for Peter to argue about it before he disappeared into one of the back rooms.
Peter forced out a sigh and stared at the bottle in his hand. He pressed it up against his face, then tried to open it, growling a couple of times when his hand refused to cooperate with his mind. Eventually, he managed to twist off the cap, right in time for the jet to lurch forward on its wheels.
The bottle slipped from his hands, spilled out on his shorts, on the couch, and then, on over the floor, after Peter had gotten tired of messing with it and decided to toss it to the opposite side of the jet.
His head swam as the jet took off towards down the runaway, as it lifted into the air, and as it climbed high enough to not feel it moving. Tony reappeared sometime after that, wearing his regular clothes instead of the Iron Man armor.
It wasn’t until then, that moment, Peter realized he was angry. Beyond angry. He glared at Tony as he got another bottle of water from the mini fridge and attempted to hand it to him. Peter didn’t take it.
“Are you going to repay the resort for the hole you blasted through the wall?” asked Peter.
Tony sat the water bottle on a nearby table. “Oh, so you’re the one who gets to be angry, not me, who’s been panicking for the last several hours because you wouldn’t answer your phone.”
“You didn’t have to show up as Iron Man,” said Peter, hotly. “You couldn’t just been… normal, about it.”
Tony took a deep breath, then released, before speaking in a dangerously low voice. “I thought you were in trouble. I thought you’d been kidnapped. Here I was thinking my kid wouldn’t go to another country and ghost me unless there was an emergency.”
Peter ceased his face, wanting to ask Tony how he knew what ghosting meant, but deciding he was too angry to care. He knew it was ridiculous. Even with his hazy thoughts and impaired motor ability, he knew Tony’s explanation was perfectly logically, but he couldn’t stop himself.
“You just wanted to embarrass me in front of my friends.”
“Harry Osborn is not your friend.”
“Yes he is!”
“No he isn’t,” said Tony, only serving to make Peter’s anger spike when his voice was perfectly controlled, calm, cool. “And if you think you’re gonna be allowed to hang out with him again, after this, you got another thing coming.”
“Great,” said Peter. He let his back fall against the chair and crossed his arms. “Another person I’m not allowed to see, like my aunt.”
“I never said that. I said we’d talk about it.”
“Then let’s talk about it.”
“Peter,” said Tony, no longer calm or cool, just tired. “I think you know it would be better to wait.”
He did know. He was still felt sick, his head still spinning, slightly illogical anger still pumped through his veins. Knowing didn’t make it better, though, didn’t change that he seemed to always be waiting for someday and someday was never today.
“Just drink some water, okay?” asked Tony. Peter raised an eyebrow, had something quick to say on his lips, but Tony cut him off. “Please, kid. It’ll make you feel better.”
Peter picked up the water, unscrewing the cap on the first try, that time, and took a big drink, just to get Tony to stop staring at him. That’s what he told himself, anyway.
Tony straightened out in his seat and pulled his phone from his pocket. He scrolled it with his thumb, bring to Peter a sinking realization.
“Shit,” said Peter. They’d left in such a hurry, with Tony tugging him up and out of the room, while shouting at the other kids about calling parents, that he’d forgotten to grab his phone or his bag.
Come to think of it, Peter wasn’t sure the last time he saw his phone. Maybe that’s what Tony had meant about ghosting him.
“I need to text Harry.”
Tony looked up from his phone, a doubtful, unimpressed expression crossing his face.
“I just need to ask him to grab my stuff and bring it with him when he comes home.”
Tony stared a little bit longer, before giving in and tossing him his cellphone. Peter fumbled it in the air, and spent a few minutes trying to recover it from the couch cushions. When he did find it, it took a couple of seconds for him to recall Harry’s number. His fingers were clumsy against the touchpad, but he managed to type out a text and send it to Harry.
When he looked up, ready to throw the phone back Tony’s way, he saw Tony standing up and walking over to him. He sat down in the empty space next to him, immediately pulling him into a hug, a hug that Peter couldn’t help replicating.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” said Tony. “I thought, maybe, I’d be too late.”
Tony released him, took his phone back, but stayed seated next to him.
Peter laid his head back against the seat, feeling guilty, feeling like an asshole, even if he was still angry and drunk.
He knew Tony was just worried. He knew that he had made him panic and jump to conclusions, no matter how logical those conclusions were. He knew that Tony did his best, and that was loads more than May was willing to do, but knowing and feeling were different, and sometimes, Peter just needed someone to blame.
*
Peter and Tony went home to an empty penthouse that night.
Pepper, Tony had explained, had opted to stay in Japan and handle business by herself. It sent a wave of guilt through Peter. He’d ruined the weekend. For all of them.
The more sober he became, the more his anger shifted away from Tony and towards his own dumb decision to leave the country instead of just throwing a house party like a normal teenager. He was pissed, at himself, and his sense of relief that Pepper wasn’t home, and he wouldn’t have to face her just yet.
Tony sent him to bed with a bottle of water and a bottle of extra strength Tylenol, but Peter didn’t do much sleeping and the little he had was filled with dreams of unrest.
They were really just twisted versions of reality.
He saw Ben die, laying there on the sidewalk, bleeding out. He saw his Aunt May, sitting across a large oak table a government building, signing dotted lines on papers wherever Tony’s lawyers told her too. He saw shellfish, broken phones, stolen watches, and Tony’s worried frown.
He was always so worried, and it was always Peter’s fault.
He saw everything disappear. All at once. It was just him in the darkness, standing on the edge of a room filled with glitter and glam and faceless people dressed in fine clothes, holding chutes of champagne. That room was the only thing left. That was all there was left in the world, at least Peter’s world.
He woke suddenly. Jolted awake by a gentle hand, shaking his shoulder. Tony was sitting on the edge of his bed, hovering above him.
“Fri said you were having a nightmare,” Tony told him, in a low voice.
Peter groaned, reality hitting him fast and hard. His eyes ached. His head hurt. He was pretty sure there was something growing on his tongue. “Never drinking again.”
“I don’t believe it, but it’s still nice to hear,” hummed out Tony.
Peter responded with another groan, shifting around under his covers. He tried to find that comfortable spot, to maybe go back to sleep, but he knew it was pointless. His mind wouldn’t let him rest, even now that he was sober.
“Do you wanna talk about it?”
“Not really,” said Peter. He didn’t know how to describe the jumbled images in any coherent way, and he didn’t have the energy to try.
“Almost time to wake up anyway.” Tony patted his knee. “I’ll make you some breakfast.”
Peter nodded, sending Tony back up to his feet and out of his bedroom, apparently eager to start breakfast and get some food into him. Peter didn’t feel like he had any ground to tell him no. That he didn’t feel like eating, that he wasn’t sure if he’d ever feel like eating again, and by the time Tony was putting a plate full of scrambled eggs and avocado toast in front of him, he was happy he hadn’t.
It was odd, a little jarring, how quickly things could change. Even if it was the unwanted feeling of nauseous.
Tony sat down on the stool next to him at the kitchen table, watched him shovel scramble eggs into his mouth with a fixed stare. Peter knew it was coming. It was inevitable.
“What were you thinking?”
Peter rested his wrist against the kitchen counter, twirled his fork through his fingers. “I don’t know, really.”
“Dig a little deeper than I don’t know.”
“I guess,” said Peter. “I guess I just thought that was what I was supposed to do.”
“…you were supposed to flee the country and give me a heart attack?”
“No, I mean, this is what people expect from me now, right? For me to be like Harry and his friends, like you were.”
“But you’re not like Harry or his friends.” Tony pointed out. He hadn’t meant it in a bad way. He was just stating a fact. Tony couldn’t help it that it sliced through him, hit him in a way that Peter couldn’t even fully understand.
“Yeah I know,” said Peter. He looked down at his plate of half eaten food. “That’s the problem, though, right? I’m not a Parker anymore, but I’m not really a Stark, either and everyone expects me to be. It’s just, I’m nobody, I guess – I guess I just wanted to fit in, to belong somewhere again.”
“You’re not nobody,” said Tony, offended. “You’re Peter. That’s all I expect you to be.”
That was the trouble, though. Who was Peter, if he wasn’t Peter from Queens? Peter who rode the bus to school, who liked his normal life in his old neighborhood, filled with people he loved to connect with. Peter, who never asked to be a billionaire or heir to Stark Industries or live in a spotlight but had somehow gotten all three anyway.
“The magazines – “
“Who cares about the damn magazines,” said Tony. “They’ll be moved on to something else in a couple of weeks.”
“Harry says – “
“Alright, I’m gonna stop you right there. Whatever Harry said go ahead and don’t do that, okay? Do that opposite of that.” Tony paused, then kept going. “Do you wanna know why I know whatever Harry said is wrong?”
Peter gave a shrug. Tony was going to tell him whether he wanted to hear it or not.
“Because I was Harry once, and I was an idiot,” said Tony. “But you’re different. You’re a good kid, Pete, who’s growing up into a great man. It’d be a damn shame for you to lose sight of that just because I got you mixed up into all this.”
All of this, Peter thought, was the world he was thrust into when Tony adopted him and gave him his last name. The celebrity, the wealth, the obligatory fancy parties. He supposed enduring all those things was worth having Tony and Pepper as his family. He supposed he could manage being a black sheep if it meant Tony wouldn’t carry guilt for turning him into a Harry Osborn clone, one of the bored and rich.
It sounded ridiculous to think about in hindsight. Peter would never truly be one of them, and he didn’t want to be.
A smile crept up on his face. “I’m still a good kid after all this?”
“Uh, sure, but you’re also a grounded one.”
Peter’s grin folded into a frown. He’d been expecting it, but that didn’t mean he had to be happy about saying goodbye to his patrols and his hanging out with Ned. All the best parties, and all the booze wasn’t worth losing either of those things.
Thinking their conversation was over, Peter shoveled another fork full of scrambled eggs into his mouth, but as he chewed, he noticed Tony’s intense stare was on him. Tony hadn’t moved from the stool, and Peter remembered they had something else to discuss.
“We need to talk about your aunt,” said Tony.
“I know you’re worried,” said Peter, with his mouth still full. He hurried his chewing, then swallowed. “You’re just trying to make sure I don’t get hurt, but it’s different this time.”
“Different how?”
“I’m not staying at her house. We’re just eating together, like, once a week.”
“That’s… actually a major difference,” said Tony.
“Yeah. And,” started Peter. He took a breath. “I feel like it’s a good thing, Tony. She’s the last connection I have to my uncle Ben.”
Tony looked a lot like he did that time Pepper splashed cold water in his face. Shocked and stunned and snapping out of a haze.
“Alright,” said Tony, after a few beats of silence. “I’ll allow it, but just give me a heads up, before you do, okay? No more secrets.”
Peter nodded his head. His whole body filled with warmth and relief. He breathed easier, lighter, only just than realizing how troubled he’d been by the possibility of Tony banning his diner visits with May.
“What about Harry?” asked Peter.
“Don’t push your luck.”
But Peter did push his luck.
While he no longer wished to fit in perfectly with Harry and the rest of the bored rich kids, he did want to be their friend. They were all neighbors now, in a way, and it’d be nice have a few more friends, people to talk to whenever he got dragged along to a gala.
By the end of their discussion, Peter was still grounded, but had convinced Tony to let him hang around Harry, so long as they kept their adventures within the confides of New York City.
*
Harry stumbled into Peter’s bedroom on Sunday evening, holding Peter’s overnight bag in one hand and his cellphone in the other. It was a brave thing, Peter had to admit, showing up at the Stark penthouse after seeing Iron Man and all his rage busting into the hotel room just a day earlier.
It didn’t seem to affect him, though. He looked as calm, jaded, and put together as he always did.
He dropped Peter’s stuff on his bed. “Look, I’m sorry if I got you in trouble.”
“It’s not your fault.” Peter sat up from his relaxed position on the bed. “I’m sorry Tony blasted a hole through the suite wall.”
“That was pretty awesome,” said Harry, with a laugh. “He’s pretty dramatic. Just like seeing him on the news.”
“You have no idea,” said Peter. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “He thought I was kidnapped.”
Harry grinned, but it was short lived, replaced by a solemn, troubled expression. “Norman doesn’t really care what I do, sometimes it’s hard to imagine some fathers might.”
Peter recognized it for what it was, another version of his first apology, and something real, something that wasn’t brought about by a buzz.
“Well, I should get going,” said Harry. “Mr. Stark told me to keep it quick.”
“Wait,” said Peter, once Harry got to the door. Harry turned back around and looked. “We should hang out again, you know, when I’m ungrounded. There’s this arcade that’s really fun.
Harry frowned, like he was either allergic to the word grounded or arcade, then shook his head. “Yeah, that’d be fun.”
He left through the open door, and Peter collapsed back down into his pillows, wishing the next two weeks would fly by and he’d have his freedom back. As much as he hated the very idea of being grounded, he was still strangely thankful for Tony and his dramatics and his hard questions.
That he cared, even when he didn’t have to, even when Peter made it difficult for him.
That his world was still uncertain, fresh and new, but he could always count on Iron Man to bust down a door for him when he really needed him to. That Tony’s love was a weighty, unmovable anchor, the one thing Peter could count on being the same when the rest of his world was unknowable.