Chapter Text
When Peter woke up, it was to a splitting headache, the uncomfortable familiarity of a hospital bed, and a slightly overwhelming amount of alters hanging out in the headspace.
He rubbed his forehead, groaning loudly to announce his presence to anyone who was in the room [hoping it was May or Tony and one of the other Avengers or some random nurse]. Seconds later, he was being propped up, and a cool cloth was pressed to his forehead while a plastic cup was held up to his lips. He drank a few sips, then turned his head away, choking a little on the water.
“Gah, how long was I out for this time?” he asked, rubbing the back of his head.
“Not sure,” came May’s familiar voice, and Peter felt himself relax, “depends on what your definition of ‘out for’ is. What’s the last thing you remember?”
He thought back, furrowing his brow. “Not sure… I think… I think I was doing Spanish homework. I was on call with Ned, MJ had a game she had to go to I think.”
He looked up, seeing May’s familiar face. She looked exhausted though- like she hadn’t slept properly in weeks. She had the same look every time she pulled several all-nighters in a row at the hospital, or every time another family tragedy struck, so it didn’t take long for him to deduce that he had missed a good chunk of time.
This realization of course led him to lean back on the bed, groaning miserably. “God, what happened? I can already tell something’s up.”
“This is… you’re Peter, right?” May asked hesitantly, sitting forward in her chair a bit.
“Yep.”
“No other splits we need to know about?”
“Not that I know of,” Peter frowned, “why? Did someone else split off?”
“Yeah,” she sighed, rubbing a hand over her face, “he… got a little confused.”
“...Define ‘a little confused.’”
“He bolted the minute he woke up and ran around Manhattan for hours.”
“Yeesh.”
“Yeah. Cap of all people found him and brought him back.”
“So it’s a guy then? Do you know anything about him?”
“He’s an… introject, I think is the word? Can’t remember the specifics. He’s based on some guy named Wilbur… shoot, what’s his last name? Snoot? Something like that.”
Peter snorted. “Wilbur Snoot, okay. Go on.”
May laughed as well, though it was weaker and had more of an airiness to it. “I didn’t get to meet him all too well- Tony and Pepper gave me the low-down. I was busy with an emergency shift when it all happened. Anyways. Apparently he’s twenty-four, British, snarky, and has a little brother and a twin.”
“Oh, fantastic, another sarcastic one,” Peter groaned. May pinched his cheek.
“You’re one to talk, Mister!”
“Yeah yeah,” he playfully rolled his eyes, “if you wanna ask about splits you should ask Keagan, he’d probably know. Though he did a real great job telling you all about him the first time around.”
”Hey, give me a break! Will was frontstuck for like a week! Not a lot I can do about that, asshole.”
“Speak of the devil, there he is- the gremlin himself.”
Peter inwardly groaned as the metaphorical reins were ripped from his hands, partial control transferring over to the gatekeeper as he shoved Peter back to co-fronting. “Hey! Don’t talk shit about me when I can’t say shit back in front of your aunt.”
“Good to see you, Keagan,” May chuckled, ruffling his hair. Keagan backed away a little from the touch, still averse to it even after the three months he’d had to get used to it, but after a moment he seemed to subject himself to his fate. “Is Peter still there?”
Keagan paused, taking a moment to shove Peter back from co-fronting to co-consciousness. “Now he’s not.”
”Asshole!”
Keagan snorted, then burst out into loud, wheezing cackles.
“So he is, then?”
“Yeah, just playin’ around. He says hi in the nicest way.”
”Oi!”
”Eyy, Pete! Nice to see ya again, bud!”
Peter turned his attention to Iron Man, who was somewhere to his left. If he could see him, he would have wrapped the man in a giant hug, but unfortunately, he hadn’t figured out how to physically interact with the others yet, so that was out of the question.
”Hey, nice to see you too! Been a while, ey?”
”Yeah, I don’t think any of us have been out for a couple weeks,” the protector sighed.
”Oh hey! Peter’s here! Finally, thank god- Keagan and Spiderman have been singing sea shanties on loop for an hour now, I was about to force Spidey out of the front and rip the body’s hair out.”
Peter’s metaphorical grin only widened at the sound of Alex’s voice. ”Eyy! Alex!”
”Eyy! Peter!” She mimicked, a grin clear in her own voice.
”Things have been hectic, huh?”
”That’s putting it lightly,” she scoffed, ”the system’s been in shambles, trying to rework basically our entire dynamic. Keagan found a subsystem the other day, so we’ve been trying to identify who all’s a part of that. For the most part we think they’re recent splits, but we can’t tell right now.”
”Oh, yikes,” he muttered, ”who’s subsystem is it?”
”We think it belongs to Wilbur, but Wilbur might be a split from somebody else, so if he is, then it’s that person’s subsystem,” Spiderman said, joining the little group in co-consciousness.
”I take it this Wilbur guy’s causing a fair amount of chaos,” Peter chuckled dryly.
”You could say that,” Iron Man muttered.
“Oi- everyone in co-con- kindly shut up? I’m trying to talk to Tony Bologna out here but it’s hard when you guys are screaming like toddlers every three seconds,” came Keagan’s irritated voice from the front, clearly fed up with their chat.
Peter flinched a little at the sudden hostile presence beside him, and suddenly, he and the others were pushed forward, him being placed awkwardly back into the body while Keagan’s control was revoked.
“The fuck?!” the gatekeeper sputtered, reeling from the rapid switch. Peter swayed, trying to come to his senses as he looked around. He hadn’t bothered to pay attention to what Keagan was doing during his conversation with the others, so it was a little disorienting to suddenly be thrust into a completely different location. He was still clearly in the tower, though he was now in a hallway, being pushed in a wheelchair by someone who he assumed was Tony, May following close beside him, keeping a steady, even pace with the chair.
“You good, kid?” Tony asked after he’d regained his senses and taken a look around at his location.
“Yeah, I think Alex just yanked Keagan back,” he shook his head, “don’t know if she’s ever done that before.”
Tony chuckled, continuing to push him. “We were just having a little chat about college, nothing too special, so don’t you worry your little head over it.”
He blinked, tilting his head a little at the weird, childish notation to his words, when Pepper chimed in, “Wilbur doesn’t like to be infantilized, so Tony’s had to hold off on the nicknames. Prepare yourself.”
“Oh, hey Pepper,” Peter grinned, turning a little to peer over his shoulder at the woman, “didn’t realize you were here.”
The woman smiled back at him, waving a little. “Nice to see you, Peter.”
He turned, thinking nothing of it, then paused.
“Wait- since when- how-” he looked up at May, then back at Tony. “Did you tell her-?”
Tony sighed, pausing his pushing for a moment. “Yeah, about that kiddo… sorry to say, but we… kind of had to tell some people what was up. Wil really caused a scene and was pretty confused by it, and it wouldn’t have been fair to everyone else to not explain anything.”
“How…” he gulped. “How many people did you tell? And how much did you share?”
“Not much, and not many,” Tony answered sincerely, gazing directly into his eyes in the way that told Peter that he was telling the whole, absolute truth. “I just explained that you had DID, and that Wilbur was a new alter. I explained that it came from severe childhood trauma, but I didn’t say any of what that trauma was. He talked about his memories a little bit, but there was nothing really traumatic there, and it was all his memories, nothing about yours at all.”
Peter felt himself let out tension that he hadn’t known had been building up in his shoulders. Pepper rubbed his back through his hospital gown, easing the soreness that lingered there.
“As for the people I told, just the crew and Pepper knows about it. So that just includes Nat, Bruce, Cap, Bucky, Clint, and Sam. No one else, not even the doctors, knows about it. I made sure they signed confidentiality contracts and everything.”
“Thank you, Mr. Stark,” Peter smiled weakly, “that really means a lot.”
“Of course, Underoos.”
“Wrong guy.”
“Both of you can be Underoos.”
Peter snorted. Tony started pushing the wheelchair again.
”Well that certainly was touching,” Keagan snarked, surprisingly somewhat genuine for once, ”anyways, we need to have a discussion about this, and now. This can’t happen again. And Wilbur’s an introject, which means that something must have happened to cause him and the subsystem to split.”
”Wow, you actually have a good idea for once,” Spiderman teased.
”Can it, Spider-Boy.”
”Pete? Wanna find a quiet spot?” Alex suggested, interrupting the impending argument before it could start.
“Yeah, good idea,” he said, then spoke to the adults, louder this time, “Alex and the others wanna have a group discussion, is it okay if I go somewhere a little quieter for a minute?”
“Of course,” May agreed, stepping forward when Tony stopped the wheelchair so she could pull the blanket resting over his legs further up into his lap, “how long do you guys think you’ll need?”
“Not sure. Alex?”
”Maybe an hour or so,” the caregiver guessed, ”give or take.”
”Sounds about right,” Iron Man chipped in.
“They’re saying about an hour,” Peter answered, looking up at his aunt, who turned to look at the other two adults.
“An hour works. Wanna head back to the room, or do you wanna head somewhere a little more private?” Tony asked, settling a hand on his shoulder.
“Definitely somewhere more private,” he answered, his response becoming a bit more snippy as Keagan inched forward and his personality blended in with his. “Back off a bit,” he muttered. Keagan huffed but did as he was told, backing up a little so that he wasn’t as close to the front. “Thank you.”
“How about your bedroom?” Tony suggested, already turning the wheelchair around in the direction of the elevator.
“Sounds okay,” Peter nodded.
“Alright then,” Tony smiled, “Pep? May? I’ll meet you guys in the lobby, we can get some lunch while they talk, how’s that sound?”
“Like a good plan to me,” May nodded, then turned to her nephew. “You gonna be okay, Pete?”
“We’ll be okay, don’t worry,” he assured her, knowing how nervous she could get about these types of things, especially since- well, it was hard to know that your only living family member who you were still close with was suffering through a mental illness- or in the system’s case, several. “We’ve just gotta get the whole situation figured out. Apparently someone split off a subsystem and we need to figure out why it happened so it doesn’t happen again.”
“I have a feeling that Alex is gonna have a few words for Spider-Man as soon as you guys start talking,” May huffed, satisfied with the answer.
Peter’s smile widened in return, focusing for just a moment on the internal bickering happening between the alters that he’d been tuning out [he was a professional at it at this point, really] until then. “Probably,” he snickered, “they’ve been fighting for like, at least ten minutes now.”
“Well,” Pepper smiled, interrupting their little conversation, “we should probably get going- I don’t wanna hold you up too long.” She pressed a kiss to his forehead, ruffling his hair as she passed by.
“Good idea,” May giggled when his face inevitably flushed, and even though he’d tuned them out, Peter knew for a fact that more than one of the others were laughing at him too. He sank down in the chair a bit as May kissed his cheek, pinching his ear playfully, and followed Pepper out like they were old friends and hadn’t known each other for only a few months.
The trip up to the Stark’s and the system’s shared floor was oddly quiet, though Peter found he didn’t mind, seeing as the others were still very talkative. Normally he would have asked them to quiet down, but from what he could gather, they weren’t doing their normal friendly bickering- it sounded like they were actually discussing something somewhat important, even if they weren’t close enough to the front for him to know what they were saying. Whatever it was, he thought it would be better if he didn’t interrupt them and instead focused his attention to the tiles passing by on the floor below him as Tony pushed him along towards the elevator.
“Is everyone else doing okay, Spiderling?” Tony asked as soon as they were alone in the elevator and the doors had shut behind them.
Peter snapped out of his quiet musings and shrugged. “Not sure,” he answered truthfully, “it sounds like they’re arguing? I dunno. Even Keagan seems concerned, and that’s saying something.”
“Yeesh,” the man grunted, “well, from what I could see, he was definitely a little stressed.”
“Oh yeah, Alex mentioned something about him fronting earlier. How long was he out for?”
“Not long, just an hour or so. Wilbur went back a little after lunch- nobody was in the body for a little while, that was certainly something.”
“Oh,” he nervously laughed, “yeah, May’s told me all about when that happens. Is Wilbur nice?”
“He’s a little… intense,” Tony said, clearly struggling to find kind words to describe the alter, “he swears more than me and Keagan combined.”
“Oh wow, is that even possible?” Peter giggled.
“Apparently so.”
The elevator came to a stop and Tony pushed the wheelchair out, wheeling him slowly down the hall and depositing him in his bedroom.
“Wanna sit somewhere else, Underoos?” the man asked, kicking the brakes down so the chair wouldn’t roll away.
“The bed’s fine,” Peter responded.
Tony nodded, taking the blanket off and tossing it onto the bed. He scooped Peter out of the chair, grunting slightly at his weight, but carrying him the short distance nonetheless.
“I can walk, Mr. Stark,” Peter groaned, covering his quickly-reddening face.
“Uh-uh,” Tony shook his head, setting him down on the mattress, “no walking without the doctor here. You- er, Wilbur- messed up your legs when he pulled his little stunt, not to mention how much damage Spidey did to them before. No walking until the doctor says so.”
Peter groaned, laying back on his pillows as his legs were lifted onto the bed, but eventually accepted his fate of being carried by his mentor for the time being.
Tony huffed out a laugh and patted his knee. “I’ll be back to get you in an hour. Let me know if you need me before then.” With another leg pat, he was up, leaving the wheelchair where it was and closing the door behind him.
“Alright guys, he’s gone- stop your yapping and get up here,” Peter announced, crossing his arms over his chest, “who’s gonna be co-con and who’s co-fronting?”
Keagan was quick to start assigning roles to people, pointing everyone in the direction he wanted them to go in. “Spidey, you take the front with Peter. Iron Man, Alex, you stay back here. Where’s Wilbur? Is he here?”
”No, I haven’t seen him,” Alex answered, ”are you gonna be in co-con?”
”Yeah, I’m staying back here. The littles are all back, right?”
”Yeah, I booted them out. They don’t need to be here for this.”
”Good. Peter? Spidey? You guys set?”
Peter hummed, rubbing his forehead from the switch headache as Spiderman made his way to the front. “Yep,” he said as the alter got himself settled.
“Wow, haven’t been here in a while,” Spidey chuckled, taking partial control of the body to flex his fingers.
“Do you want the voice or the body?” Peter asked, “because I kinda want the voice.”
“Just the body’s fine with me,” Spidey shrugged his shoulders, then adjusted himself so he was only in control of the body and nothing else. Peter did the same, moving back so he could only control the body’s voice. It was a weird feeling that he’d probably never quite get over, but ever since figuring it out, it’d proven quite useful on a number of occasions.
”Alright, everyone ready?” Iron Man called out.
“Yeah, I think we’re good to go,” Peter answered. Spiderman uncrossed his arms and scratched an itch on the body’s nose. Peter sighed in relief- even though his senses were dulled, the itch had still been bothering him for a few minutes.
Spiderman took the opportunity to start the discussion. ”Good. Now- “ which one of you fuckers got into Minecraft YouTube? Take accountability or I’m going to start rioting”
All eyes [and by all eyes, Peter meant just Iron Man’s] settled on Keagan. “Don’t look at me! I barely use my phone aside from going on TikTok,” the college student sputtered. Attention then turned to Peter, who would have ducked down if he had control of the body.
“Don’t look at me either! I’ve never even heard of Wilbur Soot!. I remember like, Stampy though. Ah, the good old days.”
Iron Man snorted. “You are literally fifteen. Also, you can remember that but you can’t remember who Joseph Stalin is?”
“Hey, I just tinker with stuff.”
“...”
Keagan seemed to notice the odd silence from one particular member of the group. “Alex, do you have something to share with the class?”
“...okay so it might have been me..”
“What the hell.”
“I couldn’t help it! My brain just looked at it and ran with it!”
“We all technically have the same brain!”
“I don’t choose what I get attached to! I just live here!”
“Hold up hold up hold up- of all things, Minecraft YouTube? Lexi?? Really?!”
Alex groaned. ”It’s funny, okay?! And they talk about Hamilton! How could I not like it?!”
”Fuuuck, does that mean we’re gonna have another fucking person who won’t shut up about grown men cosplaying as the founding fathers?” Keagan moaned, probably figuratively banging his head against a wall at this point.
The “responsible” members of the system let out a collective groan as the gatekeeper brought up a decent point for once.
”Does that mean that the subsystem is yours, then?” Spiderman asked, though it came out as a sort of half-groan.
”I don’t know- it doesn’t make sense that Wilbur holds Spidey’s trauma but split off from me. Wilbur’s probably your split, but I think the others are mine.”
Peter suddenly sobered, a thought coming to his head. “Wait, Alex… why would you split off an entire subsystem?”
The others quieted, the teasing groaning coming to a complete halt as they pondered Peter’s question.
”Yeah, actually- Alex, that doesn’t make any sense,” Iron Man pointed out, ”Are- are you okay? Did something happen?”
Alex went quiet, seeming to think for a moment, then spoke up, softer this time: ”I’ve… been under a lot of stress,” she admitted, ”it’s a lot, trying to care for six littles and the rest of you, and I’m… co-con a lot of the time… when… less than pleasant things are happening. It’s just… a lot, y’know? I think… I dunno.”
”It makes sense for your brain to automatically latch onto the first positive influences you see,” Spiderman said, uncharacteristically sober, ”I’ve noticed how much you’ve been around, but I didn’t even think twice about it. Sorry for that, Lexi.”
“Yeah, I’m really sorry that we didn’t notice sooner,” Peter sighed, “I feel really bad- we should have noticed how bad it was getting for you.”
”Don’t feel bad about it, kiddo,” Alex soothed, ”I didn’t want anyone to know, y’know? I didn’t exactly tell anyone.”
”Which is what we’ve been trying to tell everyone else not to do for the last three months,” Keagan said, snippish, but not in a rude way- he was clearly concerned about the caretaker. ”We said before that we need to prevent this from happening again, because that could have been… insanely dangerous. If Cap hadn’t found Wilbur when he did, he easily could have gotten even more injured, or maybe even killed.”
”Yeah, I get that now. I’m sorry,” Alex sighed.
”Don’t apologize,” Iron Man said, firmness in his tone, ”you know what you have to do now, right? We don’t have a therapist for nothing.”
“Hey, the same thing goes for you,” Peter interrupted, “I know the rest of you barely talk to her. Keagan, Iron Man, you guys especially- Jax talks to her more than you guys do, and that’s saying something.”
”He really does,” Alex confirmed, ”if we’re changing, it’s a group effort. I’m not gonna be the only one to put in the effort.”
”So the plan is to, what, just talk to the therapist more? That’s gotta be way too vague for any of us to follow,” Keagan protested.
”Why don’t we talk to May or Tony about it?” Alex suggested, ”they could help us come up with a plan to follow. How’s that sound?”
The others voiced varying degrees of agreement, some more reluctant than others, but in the end, everyone agreed to it, and Spider-Man pulled out his phone to text Tony and let him know that they were ready to be picked up.
They had a conversation to get to.
.
.
.
“Alright, I’m listening, kiddo. What’s up?”
Peter hesitated- he had full control of the body back, the others still lingering in co-con. “Um, well- we came to the decision that we need a little bit more help from our therapist… but we’re not really sure how to go about it. We only get an hour a week, and usually our appointments are during my shifts.”
Tony hummed, turning to May, who shrugged. “I think it’s a good decision,” she said, giving her honest opinion, “though I’m not sure how you’d dedicate more time to each specific alter- unless you guys had something else in mind?”
“No,” Peter shook his head, “that’s about right. Alex and Iron Man wanted all of us to talk to the therapist more, and I’m guessing she meant for each alter to spend more time with her- right, Alex?”
”Yeah, that’s right kiddo.”
His heart warmed a little at the praise, and he turned back to his aunt and his mentor.
“Well,” May started, “why don’t you take turns? Each of you could take half of an appointment and alternate- like, Alex and Spidey could share one week, then the next week could be split between you and Keagan, and then Iron Man and maybe one of the others could take the third week? Something like that? You can work out the details later. And you alternate from there?”
“That sounds like a good plan,” Tony nodded, “whatcha think, Underoos?”
Peter shrugged. “Sounds good. What do you guys think?”
The others all chimed in with varying degrees of assent, all surprisingly going along with the plan. Keagan and Iron Man seemed a little less enthusiastic, but they agreed, which was the only thing that actually mattered.
“They all seem pretty okay with it,” he said after a moment or two, allowing them to quiet down a little.
Tony and May exchanged knowing glances with each other, and Peter’s stomach dropped. He couldn’t help but think that he was in trouble for something, even though he literally hadn’t fronted for weeks beforehand.
“What? Is something wrong?” he asked, brow furrowing.
“Well…” May started, looking down, refusing to meet his gaze. Her hand reached out to settle over his. “We were talking earlier, and… me and Tony think it might be a good thing if you guys go somewhere for a little while.”
“Go somewhere?” he scrunched his brow in confusion, “like… a summer camp or something?”
“Not exactly, Underoos,” Tony sighed, “more like inpatient.”
His heart nearly stopped. The color drained out of his face, breathing picking up, and he briefly heard someone shouting something that sounded like his name before he was shoved back, control being ripped from his hands as he was launched out of the front and into co-consciousness, almost far back enough to be considered nothing more than a passive influence. He floated there for what could have been seconds, minutes, hours, or even years, and when he came back to his senses, he was laying on someone’s lap, their hand running through his hair.
“Hey? Petey? You back with us?” Tony asked, gently shaking him and propping him up.
He blinked, looking around. The room was a little darker than it had been before, but the lighting was the same, signaling that it was significantly later than it had been before. There was a buzzing in his head that hadn’t been there before and couldn’t be explained by the others being there, as it was now oddly quiet. He furrowed his brow. There was clearly someone else there… or maybe multiple people? Everything was kind of blurry, and it was hard to tell what was going on.
“I guess not,” Tony sighed.
Peter blinked again, looking up at Tony. “I’m-” he cleared his throat, noticing that May was gone now. “I’m back, I think. Someone else’s still here. Can’t tell who.”
“Oh, that’s good,” Tony sighed, though this time it seemed it was more out of relief than exasperation.
“Who was out before?” he asked, rubbing his eyes furiously to try and get rid of the lingering switch headache.
“I don’t know,” Tony said, “it could have been one of the littles- they went completely silent and had a pretty bad panic attack.”
“Really? Over what?” Peter wracked his brain, but the memories were refusing to come back to him.
Tony seemed a little hesitant to share, but in the end he must have deemed it safe enough, as he spoke eventually, “May and I suggested that you go to see someone more trained than your therapist.”
“But my therapist specializes in dissociation and trauma?” Peter tilted his head, mind feeling fuzzier as the unknown presence crept forward a little.
“That’s true, but she can only do so much, and we don’t know how all of the new alters will act. There’s only so much we can do here. If you had people looking after you guys at all times, you wouldn’t have to worry about accidentally getting hurt.”
“I’ve heard bad things about inpatient though,” Peter mumbled, drawing his legs up to his chest and hugging his arms around them, “MJ said the one she went to was awful.”
“MJ also comes from a… not so favorable background,” Tony tried to explain, “her parents are divorced and they don’t have the funds to send her to a good hospital, and she’s talked about the racism she’s experienced before, remember?”
“Yeah, I guess so…”
“But we do have the funds to send you to a good one, and we’ll be able to visit every day. If I can’t come, then other people will be able to. And you won’t be trapped- if you really don’t want to be in there, we can get you out any time you want. And it doesn't even have to be inpatient- we can set you up with something else.”
Peter furrowed his brow, heart still beating quickly at the thought of going anywhere that involved a hospital, though he thought that had more to do with the slowly-creeping presence more than any fears he himself actually held. He tried to think of any alter he knew of that had a medical phobia, but other than his fear of needles, he couldn’t think of any.
”Wilbur…?”
”H-how do you… how’d you know it was me? And.. who are you?”
”I’m Peter, and I- I just guessed. No one else has a medical phobia. Are you… a hypochondriac or something?”
”Yes. You’re the host, then?”
”More or less. It’s nice to meet you! It’s been a while since I’ve met anyone new.”
”Oh- pleasure to meet you as well. Erm- I was actually just talking to Tommy- you don’t suppose you know how to get back to the… what’s it called?”
”Innerworld?”
”That.”
”No, sorry- I can’t access it yet. Keagan still doesn’t want me back there for whatever reason. Sorry. You can try waiting for someone else? You might just go back naturally after a while.”
”Alright, I suppose I’ll do that. Don’t let me get in the way of your conversation- just pretend I’m not here.”
”Sounds good- wait, did you say Tommy? Is he an NPC?”
”No, I think- he said he was… what was it? A protector? I’m not sure. It was something similar to that.”
”Oh, we’ve got another one- or, I guess Alex has a protector now? If that’s how subsystems work. You’ll have to tell me about Tommy sometime- or get him up here. It’d be cool to talk to him.”
If he could see Wilbur, he would be sure that the man would be grinning from ear to ear. ”He is really cool! You’d be about the same age, I believe. You’d get along nicely, I think.”
“Yoohoo? Earth to Spiderling?” a gentle hand settled itself on his shoulder, snapping him out of his pleasant conversation with Wilbur and into the present.
“Oh, sorry,” he said, blinking up at the man, then looking over his shoulder to peer around the room. He brightened at the sight of his aunt and Pepper, who had come in sometime during his conversation. “I was talking to Wilbur.”
“He’s here right now?” Tony asked, surprise seeping its way onto his face.
He nodded. “Why, you wanna talk to him?”
“No, I was just surprised,” he said, shaking his head, “how’s he doing?”
“He seems okay I think,” he said, nodding when the alter confirmed his statement with a hum, “he’s a little nervous about the whole… inpatient thing. Apparently he’s a huge hypochondriac.”
“That would have been nice to know sooner,” Tony huffed, sitting back in his chair.
May smiled sympathetically. “Can’t say it’s surprising, though. Tell him I say hi.”
”Hi, May!”
“He says hi. Are you two close or something?”
“He’s interesting to talk to, even if he does sleep a lot and won’t shut up about Minecraft.”
”I heard that!”
Peter giggled, face falling a little when he realized that he’d probably have to talk about going to inpatient.
“So,” Tony said, continuing the conversation from earlier, “inpatient. How’s that sounding?”
“To me? A little scary to be honest, but… I think it’s something we could really benefit from. I’d have to run it by the others, and now that we have the subsystem, we’ll have to try and get in contact with them so we can talk to them about it too, but once we do, I’ll get back to you. Um… when would we have to go…?”
“Not for another few weeks,” May reassured, patting his knee, “they want you to heal up a bit before you go anywhere else.”
Peter nodded.
”Wilbur? How does that sound? Inpatient wouldn’t be that bad really, and you wouldn’t even have to front if you didn’t want to- you could hang in the innerworld with everyone else and let us take care of it.”
”Why… why are you asking me?”
”Because you’re a member of the system? We all get a say in what happens here. If someone’s uncomfortable with something, then we don’t do it, end of story.”
”Oh- that’s… actually really kind and reassuring, thank you… I suppose if I can stay with the others it wouldn’t be so bad.”
Peter smiled.
“Wilbur says he doesn’t mind,” Peter informed the adults, “I just have to wait for the others so I can ask them.”
“Sounds good kiddo,” Pepper smiled, stepping forward and looking out the window, “it’s getting pretty late- we should probably head out and let you rest.”
“Okay,” Peter agreed.
“Need anything before we go?” May asked, adjusting the sheets around him and pulling up the blanket from the end of the bed so he’d be warmer.
“I think I’m okay.”
“Okay,” she smiled, kissing his forehead, “goodnight then. Larb you.”
“Larb you too.”
Pepper was off not long after, leaving in a similar manner [with a forehead kiss and a bid goodnight], and before he knew it, Tony was bidding his goodbyes as well.
Before he could go though, Peter reached out, fingers latching onto Tony’s shirt in an attempt to stop the man from leaving.
“Hm? Something wrong?”
“Um… can- can you stay?”
Tony’s face softened, a warm smile spreading across his face, and he nodded, sitting down on the edge of the bed and helping Peter lay down, brushing his hair back and tucking him fully in.
“We’re gonna start trying to get you to walk again in the morning, but for now you should just get as much rest as you can. You had a busy day, kid.”
Peter smiled, closing his eyes as he let the feeling of Tony carding his fingers through his curls soothe him into a peaceful slumber- a darkness that he welcomed for once.
And in the background, Wilbur hummed a tune- something strange, something nostalgic, but something comforting nonetheless. If he listened closely, he could almost hear the strum of a guitar, gentle and soothing, and if he really listened, he could hear the hum of someone else- another teenager, perhaps- singing along softly with the music.
But he didn’t linger on those thoughts- for now, he let himself drift off to sleep, relaxed and happy for once, soothed by the melancholic tune. He felt a small smile slip onto his face, and then, everything went dark.