Chapter Text
“Mr. Stark, I-I don’t- I don’t know what’s happening-,”
Tony was mortified. This was his kid, the one he fought so hard to protect, stumbling across a dusty planet a million miles from his home into his arms.
“You’re okay.”
(He wasn’t)
“You’re okay,” He repeated. He did not know if he was saying it to Peter or himself.
He tried to look into Peter’s eyes, but they were too busy being pressed into his aching shoulder. Tony carefully cupped the back of the kid’s head and brought them both to the ground.
Peter’s gaze was now unobstructed, and Tony noted how much fear he could see in them. Too much for a fifteen year old. He knew he had made a mistake recruiting a kid.
(He knew he had made a mistake getting attached.)
The last time he had noticed how much emotion the kid’s eyes could betray, the feeling had been joy. Peter had aced his driving test, and May was working a double shift, so Tony took the kid out to get frozen yogurt. He had taken the largest cup the store had, and put a pump of every flavor in it, finishing it off with every type of chocolate topping the shop had.
His eyes had been gleaming with joy as he quickly announced that he had had the best day he had had in a long time.
Now they were shiny with something else. They were glazed with the weary resignation akin to the one Tony had felt when Cap chose not to rekindle their friendship after Civil War, effectively ending any hope he or the public may have had for the Avengers to reassemble. It was too much for him. His only worries should be about failing tests, but Tony had gone and thrust him into a reality where death was real and now Peter, after so many brushes with it, could not find it within himself to look shocked that it was catching up with him.
“I’m sorry.”
Tony fell a bit forward as the chest his hand had been resting on disappeared, and his wrist collided painfully with the sand beneath him.
He slowly turned his back to where his kid had been and clutched his now-dusty hands closer to himself. He rested his mouth against his fingers. The silence was deafening. It had been a while since he had heard it. It had never been silent with Peter.
“And if you died?” He pursed his lips and brought his hands up in a ‘what the hell would I do’ motion, “I feel like that’s on me.”