Chapter Text
Peter stood alone in the familiar room, looking around at his dimly lit surroundings. A small night-light cast soft light on the stuffed toys and child-friendly furniture in the room, as well as the animal caricatures painted on the white walls. The room filled Peter with an inner comforting warmth.
In the corner of the room by the darkened window stood a crib, and as Peter moved closer, he saw a small baby boy swaddled in blankets and cuddling a teddy bear tightly in his chubby arms. Peter looked down at the sleeping babe and smiled as the small boy opened his deep brown eyes and looked up at him.
As soon as the baby’s huge, innocent eye’s locked onto Peter’s, the child’s face fell and he let out a pitiful cry.
“Shhh, shh, it’s okay,” Peter said gently, trying to quieten the baby. But the boy’s cries simply got louder and louder, and Peter had to cover his ears.
The bedroom door behind Peter opened with a bang, startling Peter as he whipped around to find Tony Stark striding through the room towards him.
“I didn’t mean to, he just-” Peter began, but cut himself off as Tony brushed past him and lifted the child carefully into his arms. The cries quietened down to whimpers as Tony cradled the boy tightly.
A gentle hand landed on Peter’s shoulder and he turned around to find his mother smiling at him sadly.
“Peter?” she asked. “What are you doing here?”
“I… I-” Peter stuttered.
“Aww, my baby,” his mother cooed, tugging Peter into a tight hug and stroking his hair.
Peter melted into the embrace, felling warm and safe, until his mother sagged in his arms.
“Mum? What?”
He pulled away, and his mother fell to the floor, limp and lifeless. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, trailing across her cold, pale skin.
Peter was shaking, bringing wobbling hands to his mother’s face.
“Mum? I don’t know… I don’t-”
A strong hand wrenched Peter away from his mother’s body. Tony towered over him, seething with anger and rage. The baby in his arms was gone, and instead he clutched a bottle of booze in his right hand like it was a lifeline.
“Wha’ did you do?” Tony drunkenly slurred, stumbling forwards as Peter shuffled further away. “You killed them! You ru’ned my life!”
“No, please!” Peter protested, tears streaming down his face. “I didn’t mean to! I’m sorry!”
Tony welled in fury. “Sorry doesn’t bring them back! You killed them! You killed them! You ruined my life!” he shouted, lifting his arm and throwing the beer bottle at Peter’s head.
Peter woke with a violent thrash as he tried to dodge the beer bottle that wasn’t actually there. Yet again, he sat up in bed panting and with cold sweat dripping from him, making his bedding cling uncomfortably to his body. He hastily pushed the duvet off himself and switched on his bedside lamp. To his relief, the lamp light illuminated the familiar surroundings of his bedroom in Queens, in all of its nerdy glory, and assured him that his dream was in fact that; a dream.
Unfortunately, he was no stranger to nightmares, but he hadn’t had them this badly since Uncle Ben died. It had been three months since he got back from his time in the year two-thousand, and he’d been having nightmares ever since. They usually consisted of him watching his loved-ones die and it being his fault. Usually it was his parents (Mary and Richard) and Uncle Ben, but sometimes he dreamed that he saw Tony fall to the floor in a dead Iron Man suit, or watch May get killed before his eyes.
Peter eventually calmed his breathing back to a regular tempo and pushed his sweaty bangs out of his face as he looked around the room for a distraction. Of course, his gaze fell on where he’d flung his Spider-man suit on his desk chair when he got back from patrol earlier that evening.
Glancing at his phone, he found the time to be only four in the morning, so he’d gotten about three hours of sleep after his late-night study session for the English test he had today. Well, beggars can’t be choosers, at least he got some sleep that night, and it was more than most nights.
With a resigned and tired sigh, Peter got up from his bed quietly and swapped his Star Wars pyjamas for his suit and clambered less than majestically out of his bedroom window.
“Good morning, Peter,” Karen’s life-like voice greeted. “It seems as though you have received a less than adequate amount of sleep tonight, which added to the regular lack of sleep you’ve been getting recently, could effect your reflexes and assertiveness as well as your overall health.”
“Yeah, yeah, Karen, you say that every day,” Peter grumbled as he swung between buildings and ran over rooftops.
“Maybe one day you’ll listen to me,” Karen replied in a tone as close to sarcastic as an AI could get.
Peter laughed. “I really need to talk to Tony about him making you so sassy.”
Talk to Tony.
Now that would be something. He hadn’t spoken to the man in about two weeks apart from a few sparse texts now and then. You’d think that finding out that your (almost) father figure was your actual father would strengthen a relationship. But Peter was actually making a conscious effort to see his father less than he would ordinarily.
Speaking of the devil.
“Incoming call from Tony Stark,” Karen informed him as he landed on a nearby building, spotting a mugging going on in the street below.
“Don’t answer it,” Peter said in an off-handed voice as he jumped down to the street. “Hey,” Peter called to the man in dark clothes currently snatching a smaller man’s wallet from his hands. To be fair, it wasn’t hard to be smaller than the mugger; he had to be at least 6’5’’ and looked like he could bench press a truck. “There are better ways to get money, you know,” he said, almost lamely, too tired to think up one of his usual witty quips.
“Stay out of this, bug boy,” the man sneered, pointing a small knife in Peter’s direction.
Peter rolled his eyes. “Not a bug! Spiders are arachnids.” He quickly shot a web at the guy's knife and yanked it out of his hand, webbing the wallet with his other hand. Peter discarded the knife but threw the wallet back to the smaller guy, who was looking at Peter wide eyed. “Go,” Peter told the man, who quickly scampered down the road.
Peter turned around just in time to catch a punch the big guy had thrown at his face. Peter twisted the arm behind the man’s back and webbed it there. To Peter’s utter shock, the man merely spun around and punched Peter painfully hard in the gut with his free hand.
Had Peter not been sleep deprived, he might have been alert enough to block the punch. But for now, Peter merely doubled over in pain. The big guy roughly grabbed Peter by with one arm and lifted him up.
Peter thrashed wildly in the man’s grip, but it was useless as he felt himself being thrown through the air. He collided hard with something solid and slid down it to the floor, feeling a sharp pain and a trickle of blood on his right calf. He'd hit a dumpster and cut his leg on a piece of jagged metal protruding from it.
“Ouch,” Peter groaned as he rolled over and saw the mugger running fast down the street, and away from Peter.
“Peter,” Karen said softly in his ear. “You had sustained a wound to your right calf that requires medical attention, as well as a blow to the abdomen that will cause bruising. I think that your lack of sleep hindered your ability to defend yourself.”
“Yeah,” Peter bit out as he tried to get to his feet, stumbling slightly as he put weight on his right leg and pain flared through his lacerated calf muscle. “I think so, too.”
“Incoming call from Tony Star-”
“Decline,” Peter grumbled as he used a web to hoist himself to the top of the building next to him, stumbling once he got to the top from the pain in his leg. “Today is going to suck,” he sighed as he began carefully web-slinging his way home.
Peter made it home at about five-thirty, knowing he only had half an hour to patch himself up before May’s alarm went off, and May definitely couldn’t know that Peter patrolled late at night (early in the morning?). He pulled off his sweaty suit and grabbed the first-aid kit he kept hidden under his bed, trying his best to not drip blood on the floor.
He inwardly debated for a moment about what to do, but decided that for now he should stop the bleeding, then take an early morning shower to wash all the blood off and wrap his leg up after he washed.
With a small hiss, Peter hobbled to his closet and rummaged in his pile of too-small clothes at the back and found an old black t-shirt he could use to staunch the blood flow without the stain being noticeable. At ten-to six, Peter hid his suit in his backpack, under his school books, and quietly made his way to the bathroom.
The warmth of the water and steam was comforting, easing the aches in Peter’s fatigued muscles and lulled his mind into a sleepy stupor.
“Peter? You okay in there, honey?”
Peter was startled by Aunt May’s voice calling through the bathroom door. He slipped slightly as he struggled to straighten up from where he’d been leaning against the wall under the soft spray of warm water.
“Uh… yeah, I’m good,” Peter replied lazily.
“Okay, sweetie, I’ll make you some breakfast,” Aunt May replied.
Peter quickly turned off the water and grabbed his towel, using a wad of toilet roll to stop the renewed flow of blood from his leg getting on the towel. He wrapped the wound shoddily in the bandages from the first aid kit, before getting dressed and heading out to the kitchen. If he was lucky, the wound would be healed in a day or two.
“Why are you up so early today, Peter?” Aunt May asked as she bustled about the kitchen making scrambled eggs. “You look a bit pale. Are you sick?”
With small sigh Peter slumped down into a chair at the dining table and rested his head in his arms. “I’m fine, I just didn’t sleep well last night.”
May looked at him sadly. “I know it’s Friday, but maybe you should skip patrol tonight and get to bed early.”
Peter shook his head. “It’s fine, I’ll wake up a bit when I get to school anyway.”
If only that were true.
***
Peter spent most of his school day hiding his limp and reminding himself to pay attention to the teacher, as well as struggling to get his hand and his mind to cooperate to complete his work. He spent the hour the teacher had given them to complete their English essays staring blankly at the file paper in front of him before hurriedly scribbling down anything he could remember about images of nature in the poem they’d been studying in the last fifteen minutes of the lesson.
“Dude, what’s up with you today?” Ned asked as they sat down at their usual table for lunch. “You’re super quiet and you didn’t even get Mr Nelson's Star Wars reference in physics.”
“I’m just tired,” Peter mumbled around his mouthful of sandwich.
Sensing that Peter didn’t want to talk about it anymore, Ned quickly changed the subject. “Hey, finally saved up enough money to get that Lego set I wanted.”
“The Millennium Falcon one?” Peter asked suddenly much more interested.
Ned nodded with a knowing smile. “Want to help me build it this weekend?”
“Of course, I do, that’s amazing.”
Just then, Peter’s phone buzzed in his pocket. Pulling it out, Peter saw that it was a text from Tony.
Tony: I’m picking you up after school today. Already spoken to May, she says you can stay over this weekend. No excuses.
“What’s up?” Ned asked from beside him, leaning over to read the text on Peter’s phone. “Oh, cool! You haven’t seen Tony in ages.”
Peter sighed, slipping the phone back in his pocket without replying to Tony.
“I don’t understand how you’re able to keep it a secret that he’s your dad, I’d tell everyone that would listen,” Ned rambled, unaware of Peter’s discomfort.
“Shh, keep it down,” Peter hissed.
He’d told Ned everything what had happened when he travelled back in time the day after he got back. Well, everything apart from the fact that he’d visited an alternative future with Fred Murray. But no-one else knew that Tony was his biological father besides himself, Ned, May and Tony. They’d agreed that the public never needed to know that Tony had a long-lost son, and they certainly didn’t need to know that said son was Tony’s "personal intern”.
“Oh, right… sorry,” Ned said sheepishly, before squinting at Peter suspiciously. “You used to get super excited when Tony picked you up.”
“I am excited, Ned,” Peter insisted. “I’m just…”
“Tired?” Ned supplied with a raised eyebrow.
Peter sighed. “Yeah.”
***
After struggling to concentrate through the rest of the day, Peter did not struggle to spot the brightly coloured Audi parked outside the school that undoubtedly belonged to Tony Stark. However, Peter did not manage to spot Flash’s foot protruding, quite deliberately, in front of Peter. Consequently, Peter fell forward completely missing the couple of steps in front of him and smacked his face on the concrete ground hard.
Thankfully, Peter had been a let out of class little late, so barely anyone was around to witness his dramatic fall.
Peter got to his feet and wiped the blood from his chin and cheek, where he’d grazed the pavement. He turned around just in time to watch MJ, who'd been nearby, kick Flash perfectly in the balls. He doubled over clutching the sensitive area as MJ quickly marched towards Peter and inspected him with a half worried, half curious glare.
“You okay, loser?” she asked.
Peter nodded, feeling himself blush. “Thank you.”
“No problem, I’ve been wanting an excuse to kick him in the balls for years,” MJ said with a small smirk.
“If a teacher saw, you would’ve gotten detention for, like, a week.”
“I know,” she shrugged. “You saying I shouldn’t have done it?”
Peter shrugged. “I’m saying you didn’t have to.”
“I did,” MJ assured him before walking away and leaving him standing there on his own.
With a sigh, Peter turned back around and began walking to the car, only to see Tony half way across the car park and heading towards him.
“I saw you go down, are you okay?” Tony asked, not waiting for a reply before gently tilting Peter’s head back to inspect the damage to his face.
“I’m fine,” Peter said, before pulling out of Tony’s hold and heading towards the car. “I fell.”
“If you fell, why did your friend kick that guy in the nuts?” Tony challenged, as he caught up to Peter and climbed in the driver’s seat.
Peter merely shrugged as he slouched into the passenger seat. Tony started the car and they travelled in silence for a few long minutes.
“Are you being bullied?” Tony asked suddenly, glancing at Peter.
“No.”
“Then why did that ass-hat trip you up, huh?” Tony couldn’t control his anger anymore and he gripped the steering wheel tightly.
The silence in the car was deafening as Peter looked determindly out of the window, not trusting himself to speak around the sudden lump in his throat and prickle of tears in his eyes.
Tony sighed loudly but spoke in the same gritty tone. “Is that why you’ve been ignoring me? You keep blowing me off when we’re meant to spend time together! You’re my son, Pete, but I never see you anymore!”
“No. No, I’m not… it’s just…” Peter trailed off, desperate to save Tony’s feelings, but unable to speak without letting his hidden tears show.
The waver in his voice didn’t go unnoticed by Tony as he quickly softened his expression and moved one hand from the wheel to gently squeeze Peter’s knee.
“I’m sorry, kiddo, I didn’t mean to upset you,” he almost whispered. “It’s okay. I know you haven’t been sleeping, and I know that you got hurt last night.” Peter looked up at him sharply. “I get a notification whenever you get hurt,” Tony explained. “So, why don’t we get your face and leg fixed up, then we can talk about everything tomorrow while we’re fixing the hole in you suit?”
Peter nodded solemnly and rested his head glumly against the window, silently cursing the loud engine and vibrations of the car passing swiftly over tarmac. Despite the noise and uncomfortable position, Peter slowly drifted off into a deep sleep.