Archive of Our Own

Sociopath . /ˈsōsēōˌpaTH/ Noun.
A person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience.

Pepper has never seen the boy cry. Not that she ever wants to live to see that day--not by a long shot--but considering just how much she and a certain man named Tony Stark have somehow accidentally become involved in Peter Parker’s life, she’s certain she is bound to witness the tears at one point or another.

Still, it’s been almost two years since Peter first stumbled headlong into Pepper and Tony’s orbit, and every time she and the boy meet, his eyes are dry.

Even that time when she was hunting down Tony in the medbay and found him hovering near a partially de-suited Spider-Man with a shoulder split open by what could only be described as a nasty gash from a sledgehammer. If it were possible, Pepper would have even sworn she saw Peter chuckling through the pain.

And so she finds herself rooted to the carpet in a justified bolt of shock when she pads into the sitting area of their hotel suite and finds Peter hunched over on the couch with his back to her, shoulders moving. Trembling. Shaking.

Pepper has two choices. Well, several, really, but she doesn’t like to overcomplicate things. She can continue on her original path into the living room and beeline for the boy--ask him in gentle but firm terms what is wrong and what can be done--or she can turn on her heel and slip out just as quietly as she came and pretend she never saw anything.

For a second she jests to herself that the latter choice sounds so very much like the famously emotionally constipated Tony. But then the next moment, she catches herself: no. Tony would be crossing that ridiculous fleur de lis rug with determined strides and pressing a hand to Peter’s shoulder in less than the amount of time it takes for a heart to beat in his chest.

Something like a mollified brand of shame bubbles up inside her. And then her choice becomes very, very clear.

“Peter? Is everything all right?”

She thought he would whirl in surprise, despite the softness of her tone, but Peter takes his time in raising his gaze to her.

His eyes are completely, utterly dry.

The irony with which Pepper makes this observation, however, in no way mitigates that fact that he is still shaking. It’s not just his shoulders--his arms, his hands, his knees, it seems even the flesh between his ribs.

“Hey, Ms. Potts.”

“What is it? Why are you still up? Are you okay?” The duffle bag in her hand now forgotten, Pepper sinks onto the couch at a respectful distance beside him. She ensures that she is near enough to touch him, should he give any indication he needs the grounding.

Peter trains every movement of hers with his eyes. They’re clear, alert. Questioning. “I’m...fine,” he replies, sounding almost disbelieving himself. His voice seems too steady.

“You sure? Is it a panic attack?”

“It’s--no. God, no. I wish this was.”

Well, that’s a first. Pepper furrows her brow. “You’re probably sleep-deprived. Did you get to doze a bit on the--”

“I did,” Peter interrupts her. “I did, Ms. Potts. Sleep, that is. On the--on the plane. This isn’t that. I don’t think. I just, I just, I just get like this, sometimes. Out of nowhere. Normally I keep it under control but there are days when, when I can’t. I don’t know why.”

“Keep...what under control?”

Peter’s breath hitches a little. A stutter in his lungs. If not from panic, then from sheer habit of nervousness. “This. The whole...not feeling anything sort of thing.” He attempts an airy wave of his hand, which is completely belied by the persistent tremor in his fingers.

Pepper’s eyes widen just the slightest. Her body has gone completely still. Deep within her she whispers a prayer that this is not what she thinks this is, but she has to ask. Has to be sure. “Just to clarify, you didn’t drink any caffeine in the last twelve hours?”

Peter scoffs. “Ms. Potts, you know May and Tony would never let me.”

“Well.” Pepper casts him a droll smile. “We both know not letting you do something doesn’t usually equate with you not doing that thing, don’t we?”

“I promise you, I’m completely caffeine-free. I’d dare you to do a test on me, but then I’d just flip out over the needles.”

She smiles through his ramble to let him know she believes him.

“Besides,” Peter goes on, “it’s not like I’m hyper. I know the kind of jitters that comes from coffee. Not being able to stop talking--I mean--I know I talk a lot regardless, but--you know what I mean. Always moving, too. Can’t focus on a conversation. That sort of, that sort of...thing. Um. This is different. Kind of like the opposite, actually? Like I don’t feel excited or anxious or hyper-focused or--or--like I don’t feel anything? But I’m still...shaking.”

“Right.” Pepper’s mouth is suddenly dry. She busies one of her hands with tracing the monogrammed luggage tag wrapped around the handle of the duffle bag.

“Actually--actually, that’s not really accurate. Because the shaking doesn’t happen all that often. Not really. Promise!” Peter tacks on, misinterpreting Pepper’s raised brow as disbelief. “But the...the not-feeling-anything thing. That. That happens quite a lot.”

Peter’s left hand has begun to quiver so relentlessly that Pepper simply grabs it and squeezes it, partly for the sake of her own sanity. Her tone is no louder than a murmur. “How long has it been happening, Peter?”

“A--a lot. All my life. For as long as I can remember.”

Pepper’s stomach knots.

“Ms. Potts, what do you know about sociopaths?”

“About--what?” For perhaps only the second time in her life, Pepper Potts is rendered speechless.

“Sociopathy.” Peter leans forward toward the coffee table to scoop up his StarkPhone, which is still open to some tab on the internet browser cascading with text. He goes to grip the phone and turn it toward Pepper to show her, but the device slips from between his fingers and tumbles over his knees onto the rug before he can get a handle on it. He stares at the phone lying face down against his shoe. Stares. And does nothing.

Pepper saves him further embarrassment by stooping to pick up the phone herself. She already has more than an inkling of what’s going on, but this new thread in the conversation has her intrigued and she won’t let it go until she is satisfied that Peter is not falling rapidly down the wrong rabbit hole.

“S-sorry,” Peter stammers. He shoves his right hand between his thighs with a kind of vengeance. “Sorry. That doesn’t happen too often. My reflexes--I don’t know what just happened.”

“It’s okay,” Pepper says. She means it. She gives his left hand another light squeeze and turns her attention to the webpage on the phone. As she scrolls through it, she catches sight of Peter from the corner of her eye, gripping the hair at the back of his head with a force that looks like it should be making his eyes water.

Symptoms of sociopathy. Antisocial behavior. Lack of empathy. Charming and smooth. A rule-breaker and a risk-taker. Unable or unwilling to learn from negative consequences. Incapable of giving or receiving love or of caring about others.

“Peter.”

The boy opens his eyes--when had he closed them in the first place?--and Pepper knows at that instant that her voice is too loud, too open to misinterpretation. Peter yanks his hand back from hers with as much politeness as he’s able to muster, but there’s no mistaking the fact that his eyes already harbor guilt. Perhaps not guilt, but something more vague and unnameable. An uneasiness he cannot put his finger on. In a state such as his, nothing in his brain is identifiable.

“Why exactly are you researching ‘symptoms of sociopathy’ in the middle of the night while we’re at Legoland?”

Peter doesn’t answer for a long moment. He tugs again at the hair at the back of his head.

Pepper moves as though to swat away his hand. He lowers it immediately with a grimace and mutters, “Sorry,” at the same time that she frowns and says, “Please stop that. You’re hurting yourself.”

She doesn’t tell him to stop apologizing. God knows Tony does that often enough to drive the boy up the wall. If Peter feels more at ease saying sorry even when it’s not necessary, she will not interfere.

Now Peter’s fingers are ghosting over the skin of his wrists where his web shooters should be strapped on. Tony had strictly forbidden him from any Spider-Manning while they’re on vacation. Still, Pepper is sure the web shooters are buried somewhere in some hidden pocket on Peter’s person.

“Peter? Any particular reason why you’re looking this stuff up?”

“No. It’s just--research. When I can’t sleep, I start Googling the weirdest stuff. Sorry.”

“Well, Peter, I’m not sure that using Google is such a reprehensible crime that you have to apologize about that, too,” the woman jests softly. She could almost believe his explanation, really--he’s even managed to maintain steady eye contact with her--if not for the telltale sign of rubbing his naked wrists.

Instead of rising to the bait of Pepper’s humor, Peter suddenly rounds on her with a quiet ferocity. “Ms. Potts, you know why I’m looking this stuff up. Please don’t play dumb.”

“I’m not. I just don’t want to make assumptions. So please explain...Peter. If you could.”

“I--I--It’s just--well, it’s dumb. I guess. Or not. Actually, it’s probably not, but I can’t help but call it dumb because, because it should probably terrify me, if not for the fact that eighty percent of the time I can’t actually feel a, a--a f-fucking thing--”

Strangely, Pepper tells herself, it’s not the curse word that strikes her. It’s the fact that Peter Parker has just openly admitted fear.

“Ms. Potts, do you think I’m a sociopath?”

And that right there is the second thing tonight that strikes her. She’s been waiting almost with bated breath this entire time, though she never realized it until just now, and she’s been expecting that exact question, really, ever since she picked up the phone and glimpsed the first few words on the screen. So why can’t she process the fact that those very words have left Peter’s mouth?

The flatness and finality of it, she supposes. The fact that it’s phrased not so much as a question, but as a tentative statement.

He already believes it. All he needs is the confirmation.

Pepper doesn’t say no right away. Tony would, but she’s not Tony. She doesn’t want to talk at the kid; she wants him to talk to her. “What makes you think you’re a sociopath?”

“Well, um.” A shrug. “The main characteristic of sociopaths is their lack of empathy, right? Like, in essence, a lack of emotions. Or at least, positive ones. And it--and you read it there. Inability to love or care about others, follow rules, bypass risks, learn their lessons…”

“Sociopaths are also characterized as manipulative, using their charm and highly developed social skills to get what they want,” says Pepper. “Does that sound remotely like you?”

“I mean--I know I’m not exactly charming--”

“May and Tony and practically anyone else in your life would probably beg to differ, but no, the point still stands. Your brand of charm is definitely not what these articles are talking about.”

“The manipulation, though. I don’t know. I wouldn’t rule it out so fast.”

“Using your puppy dog eyes to get Tony to let you stay another hour in the lab counts more as teenage shenanigans.”

Peter actually has the grace to give a full eye-roll at her jab. “What I meant was...these--these things called emotions. I don’t--I don’t know if I actually know what they’re like at all. And, and, if that’s the case, who’s to say I haven’t just been mirroring people’s emotions and, I don’t know, using them to get what I want?”

“Hm.” Pepper crosses her legs and smooths the silk of her pajama pants. “I think I have a response to that, but let me understand it better first. Like, what do you mean you don’t know what emotions are like at all?”

“I...I haven’t felt anything in a long, long time. Maybe I did, once. It’s almost like I can’t remember. And if I can’t remember, maybe that means I never knew them at all. Emotions, I mean. And like...I know I just pretend to be happy when the situation calls for being happy. I know I’m supposed to smile, or I’m supposed to roll my eyes or make my voice sound higher pitched when I want people to think I’m funny. Or, or I know that making my body sag a certain way and sounding sadder means I care. It means I’m just as sad as the person who’s sad and talking to me for comfort. I know that touching them usually helps, especially if they ask for it. They usually like my hugs, so...so I don’t see any harm in giving them.”

“You’ve just gone and described yourself as if you’re an android.”

“Which I’m not! Honest!”

Pepper admits, she has to laugh at that. Circumstances considered. “Are you sure? It wouldn’t surprise me that the one person in this country who seems to be smarter than Tony Stark is actually a robot.”

“Which begs the question--can the creation surpass the creator--”

“Okay, enough philosophy for one night,” Pepper chides him gently. “But I want you to know that...I’m very glad you opened up about this.”

“About basically having no emotions and therefore probably no moral compass? Yeah, that’s--that’s something to be real thankful for.”

Pepper frowns. She recognizes the same form of snark that Tony unfailingly uses to cover up his vulnerability. She hates it with a passion, and she loathes even more for the boy to pick it up, but something in her tells her this might be a habit that was long formed even before boy genius met genius mentor.

“Frankly, it boggles my mind a little how you jumped from ‘lack of emotions’ to ‘lack of moral compass’.”

“Because. If I can’t feel anything for other people, then who’s to say I’ll keep on helping them? When does ‘not being able to save some people’ turn into ‘just being plain selfish and unfeeling’? And then where does that--”

“I’m going to stop you right there. Please. I’m sorry. For your sake, mostly, but also mine, we can’t have you getting an aneurysm on vacation. Your aunt would kill me.”

“Eh.” Peter shrugs. “She’ll probably go for Mr. Stark’s throat first, but point taken. Sorry.”

Don’t apologize. Again Pepper bites it back. Instead, what comes out is: “Peter, have you ever heard of dissociation?”

“Dis--um. What?” The flicker of recognition in his eyes relieves Pepper a little, because she would have so hated to resort to using the phrase dissociative disorder. Despite the innocuous scientific terminology, she figures the boy could do without the added implication that there’s something broken with him.

God knows how much of that train of thought already loops around his brain on a daily basis.

Pepper points to his hands. He quickly shoves them back between his thighs and jiggles one knee, overcompensating for the fingers that are surely still shaking. Pepper says, “That’s one of the more common manifestations. Feeling like you’re losing control of your own body, particularly your limbs and extremities--”

“--Feeling numb and kind of not remembering how you got from one place to the next?”

She didn’t realize her lungs have been holding so much tension until they release a low breath at Peter’s interruption. He’s always been smart. Fast. Brain kicked into overdrive. “Yes, kind of exactly like that.”

“Spacing out on conversations,” Peter goes on musing. It’s almost like he’s speaking to his knees. “Or, like, hearing the conversations and somehow participating in them but--also-- not? Like, not feeling invested in the conversation or not caring enough to remember all of it...and then getting it all jumbled up when you try to remember it later…”

“Not feeling pain or shock, mostly,” Pepper continues softly. “And getting practically all your emotions shut off all at once. For a period of time you can’t predict.”

“I guess.” The gears are whirring in Peter’s brain. Pepper wonders which incident he’s thinking of, that he’s connecting the symptoms to--his parents’ death or his Uncle Ben’s.

“That’s called a dissociative episode, Peter. It’s commonly seen as a coping mechanism, especially in times of high stress. The length of each episode is unpredictable. Sometimes hours or even days.”

Peter meets her last statement with a frown. “But what if the… ‘episode’ lasts for...well, what if the episode seems longer than your ‘normal time’ ever does?” He fumbles on: “Like, what if the amount of time you spend not having emotions is like three, or, uh, eight times as much as the amount of time you do have emotions?”

For the moment, Pepper pretends she doesn’t suddenly twist the handle of the duffle bag a little harder in her fist. Still, despite her attempt to convince herself, something sharp and burning manages a twinge through her chest. The kid always has to have the shortest end of all the sticks. Dissociative episode? More like dissociative life.

“That’s...I’m not going to lie, Peter. That does sound slightly concerning.”

His mouth quirks up in a sad little smile. “Slightly?”

“Yeah, just slightly.” She returns the ironic smirk. “This coming from an expert.”

Peter tears his gaze from his knees to affix it with a startling alertness on her. For what feels to Pepper like one of the longest seconds in history, he does nothing but stare, slack-jawed, his mind speeding through all the possible permutations of her statement before settling on one explanation. The realization doesn’t go off like a light bulb in his eyes; it’s slow and hesitant, just on the edge of heart-wrenching in its quivering optimism.

“You too?”

Pepper knows this is the first time he’s dared--he is daring--to hope that something, something will be okay. That not everything in his bones is broken.

“Me too.”

“H-how…?”

She already knows the question before it stumbles half-formed from his lips. “How much do you know about Obadiah Stane?”

The boy’s visage darkens. “Not much, but enough to know he’s one of the memories that still bothers Mr. Stark to this day.” An awkward shrug. “I--uh, didn’t mean to imply that I interrogated him about anything. B-because it’s not good to force people to talk about sh--stuff they’d rather not, y’know? And I--”

“I know. Just assessing if you needed a quick background story or not.” Pepper takes a chance this time and reaches forward to squeeze the space between Peter’s shoulder and his bicep. Thankfully, he doesn’t tense. In fact, she could almost swear he leans a little into the touch. “S-so…” For the first time, she almost stutters. Just a bit. “I’d say my dissociation started around that time. You know how much Tony trusted Obi, and how that trust was betrayed, and a little bit of just how much Obi just--just fu--”

Pepper catches herself in time. She likes to think she is a highly civil, poised woman at all times, but this has been an unexpected picking at a scab that has lain dormant for so long. No: more akin to the point of a knife needling open a wound through the pink flesh of a still-tender scar. She hates the unexpected. She hates being unprepared. She is the master of press conferences, of planned announcements, of cue cards and scripted interview answers and the art of schooling her facial expression into the mask of friendly yet distant professionalism at every hour.

This time, she highly doubts her body has even had the wherewithal to fling up any semblance of a mask. A certain boy named Peter Parker tends to have that effect on people. She finds herself momentarily reflecting on whether the realization upsets her or not. The self-evaluation can’t have taken more than a few seconds--an excusable lapse in what is obviously a tense subject in the conversation--but Pepper immediately reprimands herself to snap it together. She’ll continue re-assessing her tangible emotions, or lack thereof, when she’s alone.

“It’s okay, Ms. Potts. I know this stuff is hard to talk about.”

“Well, that’s just it,” Pepper rejoins. She herself is mildly surprised by the dryness of her tone. “It’s not, actually. I could tell you about all the sick things Stane did behind Tony’s back--to Tony--without so much as as a tear. Does that make me a cold and emotionless person? It certainly took me a long time to realize, no. No, it doesn’t. It just means I...process differently.”

“I--I...sorry. I guess I’m not really following.”

“No, I’m sorry. Faulty wording on my part.” She pats Peter’s knee. An unwanted image thrusts itself upon her--a memory, of Stane leering down at her from his perch at the office desk, lips curling around the rim of his glass of scotch as he drawls out slowly: You are a very rare woman. Tony’s lucky to have you. The double meaning behind his gravelly voice sounds just as vivid today as it was then. The kind that made Virginia Potts, a very rare kind of woman, feel a very rare constricting in her throat and a thump at the base of her skull. Danger, danger. A flash of an image of Tony, pale and coated in a sickly sheen of sweat, his veins running so blue they’re almost black, his eyes glazed over from the effort of fighting to stay alive. Hands--fingers--clawing at the arc reactor in his chest, the only glow of hope and life left in him. Pepper slamming her hand down on the red button with all the force left in her trembling body.

Tony’s eyes, sparkling with something so suddenly and painfully pure, as he marvels at her from across the venue. As his gaze flits down momentarily to the blue silk that drapes over all her curves, but ultimately comes to rest on her fiery red waves and that goddamn nervous blush over her cheekbones.

Tony’s lips twitching in a smile he’s trying poorly to control as they dance, they whirl into oblivion of the guests around them.

Flames. Falling. Shards of glass.

The clamp of the metal gauntlet around her right hand and arm that threatens to crush her with its unexpected weight, and yet the hideous, addicting rush of power that sweeps through her as she raises her armor-clad fist and blasts away at the Mandarin. Flames around her, flames on her skin, flames in her eyes and her hair and her very lungs.

The violent spike of victory that shoots through her chest at seeing Tony’s tormentor motionless on the ground.

And still flames. And falling.

Pepper wrenches the duffle bag closer to her knees and slams the iron curtain shut on the deluge of emotions. This is not what she needs right now. Mental health be damned.

A quiet gasp at her side is enough to ground Pepper again and make her turn. Peter is--for lack of a more eloquent term--gaping.

“Oh my--oh my God, Ms. Potts. You did that. That--that thing. You did the thing. I totally saw it in your face. Oh my God, is that what it looks like on the outside?”

“What?”

“I could literally see all the emotions in your eyes. Kind of. And then it all just went sort of...dead. As in snuffed out. Like, if I’d’ve blinked I would have missed it.”

“Yes, Peter. That’s...that’s correct.” Now Pepper’s mouth is moving of its own accord. She will never grow to appreciate the feeling, but she is accustomed to it. “That was, unfortunately, what you could call the beginnings of a dissociative episode.”

Peter opens his mouth and then closes it, unsure of how to tackle Pepper’s eerily frank admission.

But Pepper understands. “I still consult with my therapist for this, you know,” she says lightly. “My schedule may always be brimming, but I make time for it. I’ve lived with this for--for so long, now, it would take an imbecile not to figure out how unhealthy it is. I don’t want these dissociative episodes. Yes, talking freely about them is a good reminder that it isn’t permanent, but--”

“...But for a moment, it feels pretty darn good to feel nothing,” Peter finishes quietly for her.

She nods. “Yes, actually.”

“Hey, Ms. Potts?”

“Mm?”

“You know that thing Mr. Stark always used to tell me?”

Pepper does know, but she decides humor isn’t exactly unwanted right now. Especially with the kid internally freaking out over witnessing a fully grown adult flip off her emotions like a switch as a makeshift coping mechanism. “Let me guess, either ‘keep it on the lowdown and help the little guy’? Or ‘never, ever, ever get into the god-forsaken habit of black coffee in the morning’?”

Peter rolls his eyes. “Both good pieces of advice in theory, but in practice--”

Pepper cuts him off with a laugh out of the blue. Maybe it’s practiced, perhaps it’s forced, but it feels right, and it feels like the right thing to do.

“As I was saying,” Peter huffs, yanking his hands out from between his thighs to lean back into the couch with his arms crossed. “You know the thing. Don’t do anything I would do. And definitely don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“Ah, yes. The original. Classic.”

“I have a feeling you’re about to give me a mini lecture on how I shouldn’t do anything you would do, or wouldn’t do, at least as far as this...emotions thing goes.”

“Well, Peter, I have a feeling you’re about to be disappointed.”

That earns her a raised brow and an inquisitive noise in the back of Peter’s throat.

“I won’t tell you not to do that. The clinical recommendation is not to do it, of course, but...I understand there may be, no, there will be circumstances when you feel you have absolutely no choice but to force an episode. It’s not ideal, but it’s not the end of the world. It doesn’t count as a slip-up. Okay, Peter? It--it counts as surviving.”

“Surviving,” Peter mutters, gaze back on the glass coffee table. It sounds almost as if he doesn’t realize he is repeating the word aloud, trying it on for size.

Trying it on to taste how the persona of Pepper Potts has touched the concept.

“I--” Peter scrubs at his face and leans forward again, elbows on his knees. His wide brown eyes stare up again at Pepper from over his fingertips. “Ms. Potts, first off, I’m so sorry.”

Don’t apologize. “Why is that?”

“Because I was here being an idiot researching sociopathy of all things on a vacation night in Legoland, and making you come over and talk to me about my stupid paranoia, and then essentially forcing you t-to--to relive stuff you obviously have had enough of remembering--and then as a result just shoving you into another episode which God only knows will last how long.” Peter gulps. “So I’m sorry.”

There’s nothing to be sorry about. This one’s all mine. “It’s okay, Peter. You know I’ve already forgiven you for whatever it is you ever feel you should be apologizing for. Besides, would you rather go on thinking you’re a sociopath who completely lacks compassion and a moral compass?”

“A bit harsh when you put it that way,” Peter mumbles into the fist he’s now laid his chin on. “I’m, like, a stuttering sociopath that can’t tell the difference between cats and raccoons in trees when it’s nighttime. And who, like, constantly worries about forgetting to pull his punches.”

Pepper’s lips stretch in a tight smile. “See? I told you. Not a sociopath.”

Peter’s eyes narrow. “Are you one hundred percent--”

“No, I’m one hundred twelve percent sure. Not a sociopath. You, lacking a moral compass? Please, Parker.”

At least Peter has the decency to cast her a sheepish look in reply.

A beat of silence, and then Peter’s voice cracks just a little on the next question. “Ms. Potts, how do you get rid of them?”

“The emotions? Or the episodes?”

“Oh, I know how to get rid of the emotions,” Peter assures her ironically. “That’s kind of the problem, actually.”

“Controlling the episodes, then? There’s not a whole lot, but there’s a few things you can do. I used to wait it out, but that’s not reliable. Or healthy, I suspect. You could try to watch a dramatic TV show. In the milder cases, being able to cry does tend to yank everything else right out again. Or you could keep a buddy system with somebody close to you. Your Aunt May, maybe? Ned? One of your friends? They can touch you and ground you when you start to get that floating feeling. Or--or…”

“Yeah?”

“You could try yoga.”

“Try--try yoga. Like, yoga yoga.”

“There are many kinds, but that certainly isn’t one of them,” Pepper deadpans. “It helped me, though--far more than I could have predicted. Yoga isn’t all about the lotus and the meditation, you know, although those can come in handy. Even a non-religious person could seriously benefit from the channels it opens up with you’re going through the yoga moves.”

“Did it...ground you?”

“You could say that. Yes.” A little shiver runs through Pepper like a tic, and she straightens. Suddenly the remembrance of why she was actually crossing the living room in the first place smacks her on the forehead. “Hey, Peter? I would love to show you a bit of the yoga I do in the morning. I mean, it’s quite late now and you do need your rest before we leave for Legoland at nine, but...if you’re interested, it’s an open offer. Also, this conversation is always open, okay? I...was originally coming in here to give you this.”

Without further ceremony, she hands the duffle bag to him. Peter furrows his brow. “My clothes? Thanks, but I--”

This time it’s Pepper’s long-deserved turn at an indulgent eye-roll. “They switched our bags again. I guess you didn’t realize you had my duffle in your room yet because somebody was up and busy worrying about being a sociopath.”

“Har, har.” Peter’s eyeing the monogrammed luggage tag affixed to the handle. PP. They really need to work out a better system with their shared initials if they don’t want to keep running into these accidental heart-to-hearts. He pads over to the doorway of his own room which he shares with May, slips a hand behind the wall, and grabs the almost identical navy blue duffle bag sitting on the carpet there to hand it over to Pepper.

Pepper takes her rightful bag with a nod of thanks. She’s just turning to leave, about to utter a final goodnight, when she catches sight of the half-exasperated, half-pensive look on the boy’s face. “What is it?”

“I wonder how many more superhero patches I need to iron on before the bellboys finally realize that was a kid’s bag, not a CEO’s.”

“Too subtle,” Pepper disagrees with a straight face. “If I were you, I’d just add a tag that says Property of Iron Man’s ward.”

“Ms. Potts.”

“See you in the morning? For yoga?”

“Fine. For yoga yoga.”

It’s amazing how synchronized their simultaneous eye-rolls are this time. “Good night, Peter,” Pepper says with exaggerated annoyance as she backs into her and Tony’s room and clicks the door shut.

“Implanting my favorite intern with anti-Iron Man propaganda again, honey?”

Pepper whirls. Tony is still sprawled in bed as she last left him--on top of the covers, exactly the way she hates it--and it looks like he hasn’t moved an inch since thirty minutes ago, save for the fact that he’s flipping through some e-mail threads projected in the hologram from his StarkWatch.

“You only have one intern,” Pepper responds with the patience of a tortoise.

“That’s not a no to the propaganda, then.”

Pepper yanks open the closet of their too-large hotel room with maybe a tad more force than necessary. She finds herself distracted plopping down the duffle bag on the floor of the closet and rifling through it for her phone charger before replying over her shoulder. “I probably should get a headstart on the propaganda. I could always use an insider to let me know when you’re Iron-Manning as a coping mechanism instead of eating and sleeping on schedule like a normal person.”

“I’m forty-seven, Pep.”

“And he’s sixteen and twice as mature as you,” she shoots back, though with little bite in her voice, if at all. “You must have been projecting pretty hard when you named the thing ‘Baby Monitor Protocol’.”

“He’s the one who was eating a chocolate granola bar while on patrol. No, let me rephrase that: inhaling a chocolate granola bar while swinging. Upside down. On patrol.”

Pepper barely suppresses a chuckle. “I said ‘twice as mature as you.’ I didn’t say how mature you were to begin with as a starting point of comparison.”

“Ouch. I think my self-esteem just plummeted by twelve percent.”

“Good. It’s been hovering at three hundred percent for too long.” From the doorway of the closet, Pepper’s gaze softens as she locks eyes with him. The banter about Tony’s public persona of cockiness and sarcasm is a comfort to them both, a safety blanket. Sometimes, it even serves as a way to check in: How are you really feeling about yourself today? Good enough to joke about it, thanks. I love you.

“So.” Tony makes a grabby hand motion to close the hologram on his watch and beckons her closer with a tired smile. Pepper obliges and slides onto the edge of her side of the bed, massaging her ankles. “What did you and the kid talk about?”

“Oh! Actually, we didn’t even mean to talk. I was just dropping off his bag. Because they switched up our luggage, again.”

Tony draws on some energy within himself to chuckle. Pepper’s lips quirk upward, and with the free hand that is not occupied with applying the lotion to her heel, she lays a palm against the side of her fiancé’s face. He hums appreciatively and leans into the touch. A second later, he reaches up to wrap his own hand on top of hers and his eyes drift closed--though the slight twitch behind his lids belie the fact that he is still awake.

“Glad to know my favorite intern won’t be running in here in the morning yelling about how he can try Spider-Manning in four-inch stilettos next time.”

Pepper shoots him one of her trademark looks. Tony’s eyes may be closed, but she knows he feels the withering stare. “Three and half. I’m professional, not suicidal.”

“Oh, that’s right. We leave that job up to me.”

“Tony.”

One eye cracks open to regard her half with amusement, half with a healthy dose of fear. “Sorry, honey. You were saying?”

“Well, we ended up talking about...things.”

Tony waits for her to go on. When she doesn’t, his other eye comes fully open. “And?”

“He’s not hiding any injuries from you, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“But he’s hurt.”

Pepper heaves a sigh. Leans back into the bed and into Tony’s lazy embrace. After a minute of thoughtful silence, she shifts so she is facing him. “Not hurt in the way we understand it. I don’t really know how to explain it without making you worry unnecessarily, but I have a feeling this isn’t something Peter would like you to know before he tells you himself.”

Tony regards her with an unreadable expression. “It’s not anxiety or nightmares, then.”

“Not exactly.” She huffs, wishing it were as simple as that. “How’d you figure that?”

“He would have either mentioned it offhand to me in that super-casual tone he uses when he thinks he can just get it off his chest without me noticing and interrogating him further, or he would have bottled it all up until he self-imploded. Like the time he wound up in the medbay with a sledgehammer shard in his shoulder. Or...the time he screamed at that Ted kid and then bought him, like, five ice cream cones and a limited-edition Spiderman Lego set to apologize.”

“Huh.” Pepper rolls back over until she’s lying flat. She gnaws at her lip.

A nudge at her hip brings her back to earth. Tony taps at her arm, the one draped over her stomach. “You’ve got that look on your face. It’s not--it’s not that, is it?”

The pregnant silence that follows is enough of an answer for him.

Tony lets out a low noise that both sounds and feels strangled, somewhere between a groan and a sigh. “Pep…”

“You better talk to him, Tony. Talk to him directly.”

“But we don’t want him to know I made you tell me.”

“No, but he’s...I have a feeling he’s bound to ask you some very weird questions sometime soon. Take that as an opportunity to talk about how he’s feeling.”

Tony scrubs a hand over his chin. “This kid,” he utters with what can only be described as worried fondness. “This kid.”

--

Peter will not lie--any sort of misconception he ever held about yoga was thrown out the window about two and half minutes into his session with Pepper.

The poses, by far, are not the most difficult aspect of the sport. They start out gently in a simple tree position, feet planted to the mat with shoulders square and hands locked toward the sky, practicing deep and even breathing. Even when they move on to one-legged stances and even the balancing stick position, Peter is able to follow through without wobbling on his toes. Pepper doesn’t speak except to guide him into a better form or alert him when his breathing is too quick. All around them, the tinkling synthesizer of Pepper’s workout playlist creates a comfortable hum through the speakers.

But Peter’s mind just won’t shut up.

He makes the mistake of trying to close his eyes on his first eagle pose and soon realizes just what he’s done wrong when the world seems to tilt upward at him in a rush behind the curtain of black. He snaps open his eyes again and catches himself just before he can faceplant into the mat. His right ear is pinging, almost as if an insect were buzzing there. He blinks at Pepper, who flashes him a thin smile.

“Soon you’ll be able to close your eyes. For now, though, you need to focus on a point ahead of you,” she explains. “Your sense of balance needs time to develop.”

Peter bites back a retort about how he doubts anyone is more balanced than Spider-Man himself. As the cello in the background crests, he thinks that maybe such banter feels sacrilegious at a time like this.

He practices more breathing. In, out. In, out. In, out. His mind races. Everything feels so open. Too slow. Can’t think. Shouldn’t think. Did I leave my mask at home? I know I brought it. I checked it last night before crashing. Or did I? Maybe I just dreamed it. I wish Tony would’ve let me just bring the whole suit itself. Who knows what might happen while we’re out here, far from home? I wish I woke up May before I came here. What if she doesn’t see the note in the bathroom and starts freaking out--then she’ll go knock on Tony’s door and they’re gonna freak out together and oh God--

Pepper’s chuckle breaks the violin solo. “Watch your stance. Thinking too much can also make you lose your balance. Here, turn a little toward me and watch. Don’t think too much. Just breathe and...exist.”

This is weird. I feel weird. Wait, am I actually feeling anything? Wow, my arms really are twisted around each other. Weeeeird...

Pepper calls out the directions to glide into a new position, something she calls the triangle, Peter thinks. As he reaches toward the ceiling with one arm and braces himself against the mat with the other, he’s suddenly, violently shocked by an onslaught of moisture in his eyes.

His chest is expanding. It’s opening, the ribs are moving in and out, his lungs are shuddering inside him with the influx of oxygen. It feels cool. Foreign. And so good and so real and so alive that everything in his brain short-circuits for a moment and he forgets that there’s such a thing as having a coherent train of thoughts. He’s tempted to close his eyes again, but a speck of dark dust on the ceiling becomes the point on which he fixes his gaze and, following Pepper’s instructions from earlier, he stares at it until he feels a kind of ripple of energy spread through his muscles. Little by little, from the tips of his outstretched fingers down through his shoulders and diffusing down his spine and thighs, until the springiness of the maroon mat beneath his palm and toes starts to crowd at the forefront of his mind.

Air has a taste. It’s fresh and different and dangerously comforting.

Alive. Alive.

He’s alive.

He can taste. He can hear. He can feel.

And then, with the velocity of a sledgehammer--a metaphor he can now appreciate the weight of--it all hits him square in the chest.

The rush of the wind against his mask-clad face as he swings from skyscraper to skyscraper. The burn of hauling air into his lungs after bearing a roundhouse kick to the abdomen. The sizzle and gasp in his chest from clawing at the parachute underwater, panic rising in the back of his throat. The punch of sorrow behind his eyes and between his shoulders at walking in on May cradling Ben’s favorite corduroy jacket to her chest. The fire alighting at the ends of his nerves as he stands frozen to the carpet, watching Skip Westcott approach him from the doorway of the bedroom with a sad smirk, a paradox of sardonic pain in his eyes. And that fire fizzling out and receding from his fingertips into a welcome numbness as he detaches from himself and sees Skip’s hands roam over Peter’s throat and shoulders and collarbones.

No. No no no no--

Peter collapses into the mat with something embarrassingly like a sob. He distantly registers the sharp intake of breath and the rustle behind him indicating that Pepper is crawling his way on her knees.

“Peter! Are you hurt? Did we do that too long--are you--what’s going on--”

Somehow the kid has the presence of mind to roll up into a sitting position and face her. He swipes hastily at the moisture on his face. “I’m fine! I’m fine. I’m sorry, I’m fine. I’m okay. Just, just--just lost my balance, is all.”

Pepper regards him with pursed lips. She undoes the velcro on one of her fingerless gloves and lays her bare hand on his cheek. “Do you feel that?”

He winces. Her fingers are like fire and ice on his skin. “Yeah.”

She withdraws the hand quickly. “Sorry. I just wanted to check.”

“Yeah, I felt that.” Peter clears his throat and pulls his legs inward so he can curl in on himself on the mat.

“Did your episode just end?”

“Something like that. I--I get sensory overload sometimes when that happens. I wasn’t, uh, expecting it to happen so suddenly or--or--so...all at once.” More moisture is leaking out from the corners of his eyes. He hates himself.

For the first time in a month, he feels something, and he hates himself.

This is why he was better off all along feeling nothing.

He sucks in a breath--deep and trembling--and he’s about to squeeze his eyes shut and shove the emotion back into the closet with a rabid ferocity, when Pepper grounds him again with a feather-light touch on his knee.

“I’m sorry,” she prefaces hastily. “I know I might be hurting you. I just don’t want you to do that. I know it feels like you’re better off that way, okay? I know you saw me do that last night. But for today, just for today, do you think you could hold off on that for a bit? For even a few more minutes? Think you can do that? It gets better, I promise.”

Water is still pouring down Peter’s face. He wants to throw something. Preferably himself, off the roof of something very high.

“It does,” Pepper repeats, at the kid’s apparent skepticism. “Keep breathing. Feel that air? It feels good, right? Everything must feel like--like shit right now and--that’s okay. That’s normal. Just focus on the air and how good it feels compared to everything else. Remember that you’re alive, and that that’s a good thing.”

A few heartbeats of ragged silence. “Okay,” Peter croaks out. “Okay.”

A quiet sigh of release. “Good. Okay.”

Three or four more minutes pass, punctuated by heaving breaths and the drip of the tears onto the mat between Peter’s knees which only he can hear. Pepper begins to place infinitesimally more pressure in her palm against his knee, checking his face and the throb of the vein in his neck which gallops with fright and life. He doesn’t seem to notice anymore how fiery her touch is to his skin, so she relaxes.

“Stay with me,” she murmurs.

“I am. I do. I--I mean, I’m here.”

“I know you are. Don’t go anywhere.”

“I won’t.”

A blink. The salt has begun to dry on his skin. “Did it feel like this the first time you did yoga?”

She shakes her head. “I think it was the third or fourth time. I hated it the other times because I was just copying the teacher’s poses but I couldn’t see the point of anything.”

He offers her a wet laugh. “I think I get that.” He seems to consider something for a second, and then unfurls his arms from around his knees and stretches himself out into a more relaxed sitting position. It appears to the woman that it’s taken every ounce of willpower in him to open up his neck and chest again to such vulnerability, and the effort does not go unappreciated.

“I think that’s enough testing boundaries for today, what d’you say?”

Peter takes her outstretched hand with a soundless laugh. The process of standing is welcome. It feels good. The mat bends and springs beneath the soles of his feet, and it doesn’t feel too overwhelming. “They’re probably looking for us for breakfast.”

“Yes, well, you need to eat the equivalent of an elephant’s breakfast for three days, so go, go take a shower and find your aunt so we can go down to eat together.”

“Mr. Stark’s probably already ordered room service because he’s extra.”

A long-suffering sigh. “I wish you were wrong.”

--

“Where is he? Where’s the kid?”

“Morning, Tony,” May greets him with a frosty smile through the toothpaste dribbling down her chin.

Only then does Tony take a second to regard her haphazard bun, her fuzzy robe draped over her thin shoulders, the hand on her hip and the toothbrush sticking out of the side of her mouth. Chagrined, he takes a step back from the door of the Parkers’ room.

With nothing else but a lift of her right eyebrow, May turns, leaving the door open, and pads into the adjacent bathroom to spit out her toothpaste. Tony hovers over the threshold to the sound of her gargling next door. When May returns, she’s slipped on her round gold-wire glasses and a billowing sundress of sorts.

“Peter’s gone down to the gym with Pepper,” May informs him as she struggles to free the hair tie from her bun. “Did you need him for something in particular, or…?”

Tony is speechless for a minute as he does his calculations. “Peter. In the gym. With Pepper. Is he doing yoga?”

“Apparently,” says May, shoving a sticky note into his hands. It bears Peter’s unmistakable scrawl. “Not that I can’t appreciate the helicopter parenting, but what made you panic so much?”

“Oh, uh.” Tony casts about the living room, as if he’ll find a more inspired answer than the truth in the fleur de lis pattern of the rug. “It’s not important.”

May whips a brush through her waves and lifts a brow at him again. “Right. Well, I’m going down to find them for breakfast, so you can tell me on the way.”

Tony knows that tone. It’s the tone that says you can, but you actually have no choice because I won’t let you not tell me now that you’ve riled my suspicions.

God, Tony really does have a knack for attracting strong, perceptive women into his circle.

“I noticed his shoes were gone.”

May pockets the keycard and simply gives him a look. So maybe lying doesn’t really work with May Parker. Tony is starting to see why Peter sneaking around as Spider-Man in her household never was bound to last very long.

“Okay, so maybe Pepper talked to me last night about how the kid needs more exercise.”

“So what does the crime-fighting gymnastics count as? A relaxing hobby?”

“Exercise that doesn’t threaten his life,” Tony clarifies.

“And this made you panic because…?”

“Because…” Tony sighs. He shoves his hands in the pockets of his shorts and decides on the truth. “Because I just wanted to make sure he’s safe.”

They’re at the elevator now. May swivels to face him as he watches the numbers flash overhead. “Tony, what are you not telling me?”

He grimaces. “It’s not my place to say, and even if it were, I actually don’t know. I haven’t even talked to him yet about this. Whatever ‘this’ is. Is it related to occupational hazards? Yep, probably related to occupational hazards. You know what I’m talking about, right? Peter’s come to you before about stuff like this? The kid can’t keep his own identity a secret but he sure does have a trap of steel around me when it comes to talking about his feelings--”

“He told me about it on a particularly rough night,” May interrupts him quietly. “That was about a month ago. I was staying up waiting for him. He doesn’t know I do it all the time, but I usually just sit by my door and listen for the sound of his window just to make sure he gets in okay. Honestly? I could almost care less about the curfew. What matters more to me is that there’s no blood in the bathroom in the morning. And no bruises hiding under his shirt. He--he came to me, though. Said he hadn’t even been patrolling. Just walking the rooftops.”

There’s a cold, cold lump in Tony’s throat that won’t go away. The elevator dings. They both step inside and he almost forgets to press the button for the first floor.

So Tony does what he does best. He sidesteps.

“I don’t think what Pepper described is exactly the same thing. I just...wanted to make sure.”

The smile May offers him is thin, too straight to really be called a smile. “I know my son. He wouldn’t leave a note if he weren’t safe. That’s just how he is.”

Tony never realized he was holding in so much breath. The sigh that escapes him surprises him. He coughs. “I’m glad he came to you.”

“So am I,” May says quickly. She doesn’t need to cough to cover her emotion the way Stark men always do. “There was a time I doubted he really trusted me. I’m glad to know I was wrong.”

Tony looks at her this time, as painful as it is to make eye contact with a woman who could probably see right through his quivering mask and cut down all his insecurities with a glance. But she deserves this. She deserves to be looked in the eye by the man who pretends every day he has the strength and character to protect her boy from the world she cannot control.

He wants to open his mouth. Ask her to tell him when something like that happens again. But he knows he doesn’t deserve it.

It isn’t his place.

“I think he wants to tell you about it, a lot of times,” May speaks again after a searching look at his face. “He just doesn’t know if he can or should. Ben was the only grown man he had the chance to confide in, and--well.”

“I can’t replace Ben,” says Tony, sounding surprisingly calm. He thinks back to the terror that laced his veins that night that Peter Parker came crawling through the glass door of his living room with a wound in his thigh and crying out: Uncle Ben, no! ...He touched me there. The terror of boundaries bleeding into one another, of falling into a role he has no business filling and no right to take on.

The elevator dings again, making them jump. Tony is the first one out. He holds up an arm to keep the doors ajar as May slides out after him.

“No one’s asking you to,” she says. “You don’t need to compare yourself. Sure, you’re different, but that doesn’t mean insufficient.”

“Different but not insufficient,” Tony murmurs. “Huh. I like that. I should get that screen printed in gold letters on a red t-shirt and wear it sometimes. Embarrass the hell outta the kid. I’ll make sure to get it in on the next family vacation photo.”

Tony Stark is not in the habit of saying honest thank you’s, but May Parker has enough emotional intelligence to recognize it when he does.

--

Tony pretends he doesn’t see the salty tracks dried on Peter’s face. Scratch that, he pretends he didn’t see the kid fall flat on his ass and Pepper crawl over to him with wide eyes. He pretends that he and May didn’t just walk in on his fiancée trying to calm down the boy from a mild attack of sensory overload.

All throughout breakfast, they don’t talk about it. Maybe they’re all waiting for Tony to start the conversation. Maybe he’s a coward, maybe he’s just fooling himself into thinking that now is not the right time. Maybe he’s too shaken by the sight of the boy who never cried in front of him--not when he had a literal shard of metal in his shoulder, not when he was being harangued for getting the ferry split in two, not when he he took a fall of almost ten stories or worked himself into a panic attack over the water bill or told Tony about Skip Westcott sexually abusing him.

The tension hanging invisibly in the air--or was Tony wrong, and is he only imagining it?--dissipates considerably as they wait in line for their admission tickets (because Pepper just had to side with the Parkers on this one and prevent Tony from using his ID to buy them the spot at the front of the queue, making them all wait together like “normal people” under the heat of the climbing sun). Peter quotes some god-awful meme (“This is so hot, Alexa, play Despacito”) and May chides him on the apparent “piss-poor quality” of his recreation. Tony points ahead at some geese waddling in a thick layer of feathers toward the retention pond, fully prepared to do battle by yelling “Look at all those chickens!” but the kid beats him to the punch.

“Don’t even try it, Mr. Stark. I don’t think you want your ass handed to you today.”

“I can be cool,” Tony insists.

From his other side, Pepper rolls her eyes. “I’m forty-seven, Pep. I’m mature,” she mimics him.

Tony rounds on her. “I’m sorry, did I mistakenly order a course of mockery with a side of betrayal?”

“That. That is--” Amazingly, May is spluttering. “That was Vine-worthy.”

“Vine’s dead, May. Just like my--”

“I know, I know, your will to live. I’m well versed in your generational vernacular now,” Tony cuts him off. He claps a hand around Peter’s shoulder as they move up the queue and it is finally, mercifully, their turn to purchase tickets.

Predictably, Pepper is the first to snag multiples copies of the park map and distribute them among the four of them. “They’ve got the water show going on around lunchtime,” she informs them. “The building stations are open all day, but most of the other activities seem to be clustered in the morning, so I suggest we check those out first and then wind down in the afternoon with the open workshops.”

“We have to end with the car race,” the kid pleads.

Tony narrows his eyes at him. “Right, after you’ve consumed bucketloads of sugar. Like that’ll end well.”

“Hey, we could always partner off as the Parkers versus the Starks,” says May. “I’ve dealt with sugar-overloaded Peter before. If it’s you two boys against us, on the other hand, I doubt you even have a chance against us.”

Pepper lifts her shades to the top of her head and smooths her ponytail. “I like your style of strategizing. Let’s do the maze together, then. Throw the boys to the wolves.”

“Holy sh--Sharpie markers! There’s a maze? When?”

“It’s straight ahead, over there,” May replies, after flipping the brochure and consulting the map for a moment. “It starts in half an hour. Actually, nothing else starts until half an hour from now, either, so why don’t we walk around the shops for a bit first?”

Tony squeezes Peter’s shoulder, and it’s only then that Peter realizes that the man has never removed his hand in the last five minutes. He doubts feelings are supposed to be described as fuzzy, but the haze of warmth spreading through his chest right now likely isn’t from the heat of the sun.

“I’m actually craving one of those cheap ice cream cones right now,” Tony says. A little loudly. Off-kilter. He shares a look with Pepper before turning back to Peter with a nod. “Kid, wanna come with?”

Peter’s not an idiot. Neither May nor Pepper-- especially not Pepper--would concede so easily to sugar at nine in the morning. He trudges after Tony and gnaws at his hangnail.

“Ms. Potts talked to you, didn’t she?”

Tony licks at his hazelnut ice cream a few times before pushing the shades up higher on the bridge of his nose and looking at Peter over the top of his rims. “I talked to her. She didn’t tell me anything.”

“Hngh.”

Something like pride swells inside Tony. A year and a half ago, Peter Parker would never have been so direct with him. Would never have addressed him without a stutter, without rubbing his wrists or beating around the bush or using one of those goddamn weird metaphors of his.

“Mr. Stark, do you think I’m a sociopath?”

“Christ.” Tony chokes on a nut. “Pep wasn’t exaggerating when she said you’d be asking weird ass questions. Kid, mind your ice cream. It’s getting all over your hands.”

Peter dutifully licks the melted mint off his fingers. This, for sure, is a sign of the deeply masked anxiety inside him today: on any other day, he would have polished off the cone in two minutes flat, with not a drop of stickiness anywhere on his person.

The kid crunches down on his cone before wrinkling his nose and speaking again with a half-full mouth. “You didn’t anfer the queftion, Mifter Thtark.”

The man thrusts a wad of napkins his way. “No.” He clears his throat to clarify. “I mean, no, you’re not a sociopath. I could write a dissertation on all the evidence for why you’re not, but what interests me more right now is, why do you think you are? Is this some kind of complex where the beagle accidentally knocks over a vase and then starts thinking he’s a, he’s a Doberman Pinscher of all things--”

“Mr. Stark, you promised! No more comparing me to puppy breeds.”

“Capisce. Sorry, corgi.”

Apparently Peter decides to take the high road or something martyr-like along those lines because all he does is throw Tony a long-suffering sigh before going on. “But like, what if the beagle mistakenly thought he was a beagle all along, or maybe he’s like a half-breed after all, and everybody around him thought that because he was so cute and playful and didn’t do anything wrong, that--that when he knocked over the vase, they all overlooked it and that, that...that was bad, that was wrong, because it turns out the beagle is actually just a tiny Doberman Pinscher in the making. Like, a puppy Doberman Pinscher. Or a half-breed Doberman puppy. And he’s got it in him all this time to be vicious and selfish and any time he’s shown any kind of affection toward his owners, it’s really just him mirroring their display of love and, and, copying their nice attitude because he thinks that’s what’s appropriate--”

Good God, here we go again with the weird ass metaphors.

“To be fair, starting the dog conversation was kind of my fault,” says Tony.

Peter stares at him expectantly. He fidgets and shoves his hands between his thighs underneath the iron table.

“What surprises me is that the beagle’s already talked to his friend the golden retriever, and the golden retriever’s already told him that she had the same fear before but it turned out she’s just a harmless retriever that got hurt before. And yet here’s the beagle, at it again, still thinking he’s a Doberman.” Tony rubs his goatee, only to notice too late that his hand is coated in a hazelnut mess that is rapidly dripping down his wrist and onto his watch. He yelps under his breath and seizes the nearest napkin to wipe himself off.

Wordlessly Peter reaches across the table to unstrap the watch from Tony’s wrist. Holding a fresh napkin wadded up against the mouth of his water bottle, he flips the drink over to moisten the napkin and uses it to gingerly swipe the rivulets of brown from the finer crevices of the watch. He repeats the process and starts scrubbing at Tony’s chin.

“Ah-ah-ah! Let me do that, Underoos.” Tony grabs the napkin from him and finishes cleaning the rest of his face.

“The beagle’s still got anxiety,” Peter pipes up, as if they never dropped the thread of the conversation at all. “What if the golden retriever is just trying to help, but she’s--kinda wrong?”

At that moment, May’s holler interrupts them. She and Pepper are waving at them from across the boardwalk. “Peter! Tony! The maze tour is starting in two minutes!”

Peter stumbles to his feet in a comical parody of Spider-Man grace and chugs the rest of his water before tossing the bottle into the recycling receptacle. He rubs a thumb over the face of the watch--still drying in the sun on the table--and deposits it in the pocket of his chambray shirt while Tony hangs back a second longer to rearrange his hair and hand a tip to the young janitor that comes by.

The thread of the conversation picks up again for real several minutes later, after the four have strolled through the entrance of the cave maze and begun studying the life-size Lego pirate skeletons lining the walls. No one is even really sure if this is supposed to be a tour--there is decidedly no guide up ahead--but the flashing red timers that appear near the ceiling after every few turns would imply that it’s a friendly race to get to the end of the labyrinth first.

Tony trains his fingers along Peter’s shoulders again. “Hey, kiddo. Walk with me.”

They fall into step several paces ahead of May and Pepper. The two women don’t seem to mind.

“I’m gonna level with you, Parker. I am completely out of my element here. I don’t even know if I’m in my place talking to you about this. Pepper was--Pepper’s the right person to guide you on this one. But...I’m not going to stand by and let you be while you go off on a rant about how you think you’re incapable of feeling empathy and how you’re basically a fetus villain because of that. God, no. I’m probably overstepping, but I can’t. Can’t just let you go on thinking that, that is. Gosh, I probably already screwed the pooch bringing it up at a time like this--look, answer me one thing, kiddo. Is this related to Spider-Man?”

Peter stops walking and regards him with wide, somber eyes. “No.”

The man’s hand drifts down to the middle of Peter’s back to urge him to start strolling again. The eye contact is uncomfortable as ever. Tony clears his throat, sniffs. Swipes a hand under his nose. The sunglasses are starting to feel a little ridiculous in the rapidly dimming atmosphere, but he keeps them planted on his face.

“You sure?”

“Positive, Mr. Stark. I mean, I--” Peter shifts a little closer to Tony. “Obviously I don’t get out of some fights without a couple extra phobias here and there, but th-the--um--nightmares aren’t permanent. This is, this is more of a...Peter Parker kind of thing.”

“Peter Parker kind of thing, huh.”

“I think we should turn right here. There’s light under that doorway. Might be a way out.”

“Yep. Smart thinking.” Tony follows him into the cove that is lit with flickering Lego sconces on the roughly hewn walls. The dejá vù of an underground tunnel buried in the heat of the sands of the Afghanistan wilderness feels a little close for comfort. He shoves the memory away and swallows back the bile.

“There are Lego guards over there. Maybe that’s another entrance to something.”

Tony agrees silently. “So, when did this...Peter Parker thing start?”

Peter’s searching the walls meticulously with his hands. The activity of his fingers doesn’t pause at the question; if anything, they grow a tad more frenzied. “Uh, I don’t really know. Maybe when I was six? That’s a theory I had for a while? Because of--you know--m-my parents. But I was really sure about it when I was...when I was ten.”

Well, Tony may possess the emotional development of a twelve-year-old, but he’s not dumb. Skip Westcott.

“Kid. Did I ever tell you about Afghanistan?”

That, finally, has Peter’s hands slow to a halt. For some sudden, inexplicable reason, he can’t bring his head up to look at Tony. He doesn’t need to, anyway: the man gets down into a crouch beside the kid to share a glance at what he’s looking at in the wall. It’s nothing but a plastic treasure chest filled with Lego tokens. Eye candy, nothing more. Not a secret exit. Tony doubted they would make a maze targeted for kids so difficult, anyway. They should probably leave the cove and get a move on if they still hope to beat the rest of the gang to the end of the labyrinth. Still, he finds he’s lost all energy to move.

“Course I didn’t. That was a stupid question. I never told you because I never wanted to talk about it.”

“You mean, like--the hair thing?”

It’s a testament to the sheer development of the silent communication system that they have going on that Tony doesn’t need to clarify Peter’s question. He recalls the kid caught in a loop of anxiety, repeating the words I couldn’t talk about it, I didn’t, I didn’t, Ned asked me why I hated my hair being touched over and over underneath a coffee table.

“Yeah, kind of almost exactly like the hair thing.” Tony’s eyes dart up at the shadows dancing across the cave walls from the artificial sconces. “That was the start of me screwing everything up in my head. I mean, granted, I was probably already halfway screwed by my father, but. You know.”

Peter’s hand is hovering over Tony’s knee. The man neither nods nor shakes his head, and Peter withdraws the hand.

“Anxiety became my middle name, you know? I hate emotions. I’m Tony freaking Stark. I’m notorious for hating emotions. My whole brand is based on hating them. But whether I like it or not, my brain’s like, screw it, you’re gonna be an emotional person and you’re gonna be the most goddamn emotional person on this planet while you’re at it. So, anxiety, right? Anxiety and nightmares. The two make a pretty cute tandem. When I’m awake, I’m back there. When I’m asleep, I’m back there. I have so many emotions, Pepper sometimes jokes I should give some away to her. Point is, trauma hits people in different ways. It was hard on her...that time when nobody ever thought I’d come back. JARVIS calculated my chances of survival to be 0.25%. Point twenty-five.”

The kid nods.

“It feels shameful, I guess. I mean, I can’t exactly relate to what’s going on with you, Underoos, but you get what I mean, right? Like, you feel like you should be better than this. You feel like you shouldn’t be shutting down the way you have; I feel like I should be able to get my shit together. I tried to take the subway once for a--for a mission, kind of, I was undercover and--well, that’s not important--I ended up hauling ass out of there because I got a panic attack. Because it was underground, for crying out loud.”

Peter mouths something. Out of the corner of his eye, it looks to Tony something like fuck.

“When I’m back there...it’s not really what they did to me that gets me. It’s--it’s more of the anticipation, you know? The environment. It reminds me of what’s about to come, you know? Flickering lights and all that stuff. Cave walls. A certain kind of smell. Like rust and vomit, probably. That would make the most sense.”

Tony’s voice is not flat. In all the time Peter has known him, it never has been. It’s riddled with feeling and gravelly with the need to yank the secrets from his lungs. His chest is lined with the darkness of fears kept under wraps, a black kind of glue that won’t let go of these words, and yet he manages. Somehow.

“S-sorry, Mr. Stark, but--keep talking--uh, we should probably get you out of here.”

“I’m fine,” Tony says dismissively, but even as he does so he tries to stand up and ends up wobbling on his feet and sucking in a ragged breath. Peter’s eyes widen and this time he doesn’t hesitate to latch onto his mentor’s arm.

“I’ve got you,” Peter mutters. “Don’t worry, Mr. Stark. I’ve got you. I, uh--probably not gonna do the count-five-things-around-you thing--wouldn’t work--this freaking cave, God, I’m such an idiot--”

They’re already brisk walking back to the door they came through. It’s closed.

Temporarily, Tony is shocked enough to come out of his panic attack a little. “Wasn’t this open when we came in?”

“Yes.” Great. Now Peter’s tense. Monosyllabic. He’s already ten steps ahead of Tony and figured out what’s going on but he’s hiding how bad the situation is.

Tony gulps in more air. It’s all right, it’s okay, he repeats to himself. He’s okay. He’s okay. The air here is fresh and clear and it definitely doesn’t smell like the death that reeked in the caves of Afghanistan. He’ll be fine in just a minute.

Yinsen’s not here.

Nobody’s dying.

Not yet.

“It’s locked,” Peter speaks again. He’s already skipped past the confusion, fear and denial and hopped right onto rage. Tony has to admit it’s a peculiar look on the kid.

“Can’t be that locked,” says Tony. The boy shoots him a look, and yeah, okay, so maybe he’s not making much sense. He forces his hand to stop trembling and places it on Peter’s arm to tell him to step away so he can try the knob himself. “Huh. It is locked.”

“Ay, pendejo.”

Tony clucks his tongue. “Language, kid.”

“How’d--”

“Doesn’t matter, I can tell you’re swearing. Hello? Hello!” He raises his voice through the door, hoping that on a fine summer morning such as this, someone’s bound to be coming their way. “Hey! Yoohoo! We’re trapped in here! Guys? Anyone?”

“Mr. Stark! Do you know how to pick a lock?”

“Do I know how to pick a lock,” Tony scoffs. “Of course I know how to pick a lock. I just need--ah, fuck.”

“What? What! What is it?” The kid’s tone escalates quickly in alarm.

“My watch. Didn’t we leave it at the ice cream place?”

Peter sighs in relief. “Nope, I got it. I was just cleaning it so I put it--” He pats himself. Under any other circumstances, the rapidness with which his face loses color would be comical. “Oh my God. It was in my shirt.”

“You have a shirt…”

“My--my--whatchamacallit, my overshirt. The denim one. May took it, she said I was gonna die of heatstroke. I remember now. She was tying it around her waist. I was gonna get it back from her--but then Ms. Potts said something about the timer and then me and you started walking ahead…”

“Okay. Okay.” Tony scrubs his face. “That’s fine. This is totally fine. Just--Jesus, kid. That was my personal StarkWatch. Collapsible gauntlet and everything with a lockpicking setting.”

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Stark. I really am. I am such an idiot, oh my God, I’m sorry.”

“Hey. Hey, hey, kid. Don’t you go hyperventilating on me, too. One of us panicking is enough. This isn’t the end of the world, right? We’re on vacation. We’re in Legoland. There’s loads of people around. Just shout loud enough and somebody’s bound to pass by and hear us.”

“Well, May and Ms. Potts are probably gonna be looking for us soon."

Tony even manages a chuckle. “Yeah, considering that Pep knows I can only last about fifteen seconds into a heart-to-heart talk, she’ll come swooping to my rescue in no time. Oh! Text them. Or call them.”

“Right! What about you?”

Tony gives him a droll look. “My watch, kid. That was my phone.”

Peter still can’t wipe the chagrin from his face as he dials May. Even without superhearing, Tony can make out May’s cheery voicemail greeting a second later. Peter hangs up with a groan. “I swear, she never charges her phone. Hey, if I call you, it’ll go straight through to the watch, right?” He tries again, and on the other end of the line it rings eight times.

Tony bites his lip. Peter starts running his hand through his waves, making them stick up every which way.

“Why is nobody picking up?”

“Oh. Oh, frick.”

“What?!” The kid’s definitely too harried now to even tack on ‘Mr. Stark.’

“It’s on mute.”

“You freaking muted me?!”

“In my defense, you called seven times about the Iron Man patch!”

“That was yesterday! Before the flight!”

“Yeah, and I didn’t turn your ringer back on. Because we were already together on the plane.”

“Oh my God.” Peter’s pacing. “Do you know Ms. Pott’s phone number?”

Tony takes the phone from him and dials. In the middle of the second ring, the line goes dead. “No bars? This is preposterous. I gave you the top-of-the-line StarkPhone prototype.”

“We’re gonna die.”

“Shush. No, we’re not. You’re not allowed to panic.” A glance to his side tells Tony that no, the kid isn’t panicking. His voice is alarmingly monotone. “Hey!” Tony mutters. His voice lacks the bite it would normally have. “No dissociating now, okay? Can’t deal with multiple unhealthy coping mechanisms at once. This is just a locked door, for Pete’s sake.”

“I could probably just kick it down.”

Tony doesn’t respond at first. He tests the door with a kick of his own, one of normal human strength. It doesn’t even budge. He’s left swearing under his breath about needing to design his own stub-proof loafers.

“Have at it, then. Don’t go too superhero on it. The whole thing might cave on us.”

“Um.” Peter hesitates. At that precise moment, he picks up on a whirring sound from the other side, and he seizes Tony by the forearm and leaps backward, practically tackling his mentor to the ground. Tony has no time to react before a flash of light and a blast of heat rip through the air above them.

Peter doubles over in a coughing fit and Tony sits up quickly to pound him on the back. As he glances up, Pepper steps through with her impeccable ponytail and designer sandals. The unmistakable crimson and gold gauntlet is still glowing with heat around her forearm.

“Sorry, boys,” Pepper says calmly. “I’m still mastering the settings on this thing.”

Tony squints accusatorily at her. “You could have just picked up the phone and let us know you were on your way.”

May pokes her head around the smoking doorway just then. “This, coming from you.”

“Yeah, Mr. Stark,” the kid’s voice croaks to his right. “You’re, like, the king of extra.”

“Shut it. You don’t get to talk, Mr. ‘Oh My God We’re Gonna Die’.”

“I did not say it like that!”

“Well,” comes Pepper’s breezy interjection, “at least you’ll have one thing to throw your money at during this trip, Tony. Property damage.”

“Fricking classic.”

“This probably calls for an early lunch. Baby, you want ice cream afterward?” May addresses Peter.

Both Tony and the kid shudder involuntarily at the suggestion. “No,” they say at practically the same time, far too emphatically.

“Where the hell even are the employees around here?” Tony grumbles, helping Peter to his feet and through the doorway. “I’m gonna have a serious talk with the manager--”

“Suburban white mom,” Peter mutters under his breath.

“One more peep out of you and we’re getting your favorite quote screen printed on a t-shirt to take home. In classic Spider-Man colors, too. How ’bout that? Oh My God, We’re Gonna Die. Big and bold.”

May chooses this moment to swoop in to her nephew’s rescue. “And what about the matching Different But Not Insufficient one for you?”

Peter raises his wide chocolate eyes at his mentor, questioning.

“That,” says Tony, “is a serious talk which we need to continue later. Along with...all the other stuff we still need to address. ’Kay?”

“No complaints from me. Every time we start talking about feelings, we end up getting trapped in an underground treasure cave.”

“You mean you end up yelling ‘Oh my God, we’re gonna die.”

“Mr. Stark, shut up.”

Behind them, Pepper and May share a look.

“Let’s team up for the race track,” Pepper tells her decisively. “We’ll take them down and they won’t even know what hit ’em.”