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Peter sat with his hands clenched around the plastic armrests, his knuckles turning white as the plane shook. His entire focus was on breathing and not breaking the chair.
He was terrified. And he was angry. And he was dangerously close to crying.
His own voice floated back to him, strained and furious. “Despite what you seem to think, Tony, I don’t need you.” He could see the man’s face as Peter turned his back on him, his eyes failing to hide the pain Peter was causing him.
Peter sniffed hard, rubbing at his eyes. He was not going to cry right now. He’d chosen this.
That’s when the lights started flickering.
And then the plane started falling.
Tony would fully admit that he was sulking. He was in his office, a room he rarely used, but he’d tried to go to the lab and could only see the afterimages of Peter, standing braced for a fight, his face red as they argued.
He knew, the second the red alert sounded, that it was Peter. He’d had a sick feeling in his stomach all day.
He was in a suit and flying before FRIDAY had said the words “plane crash.”
It didn’t matter. It would take him too long to get there. He couldn’t save him.
Oh, lord. The kid was going to visit colleges. He’d gotten a full-ride to Northwestern, and they offered to fly him out to look at the campus. Tony had tried to convince him to go in Tony’s jet instead, but the kid had refused. He’d never been one to take advantage of Tony’s money, no matter how much Tony insisted he wanted to spend it on him.
He’s only seventeen, he repeated like some kind of prayer. He’s only seventeen and the last time I saw him we argued. He can’t die. He can’t.
He’d never wanted Strange’s teleportation abilities so badly in his life. Why was it taking so long to get there?
Finally he could see the plane in the distance. It looked surprisingly undamaged. There were emergency crews already there, and people milling about. Tony was scanning for Peter before he’d even landed.
The nanotech suit retracted the second he’d touched ground. He started jogging through the swarm of people, twisting this way and that to try to catch a glimpse of his kid.
“Peter!” He shouted, raising his hands to him mouth to amplify the sound. “Peter!”
A police officer came running up to him.
“Mr. Stark, I don’t know why you’re here, but there’s nothing Iron Man can do right now and it would—”
“No, no,” Tony started saying frantically. “My kid was on this flight. I need to find him.”
An EMT ran up as well. Both their faces were grim.
“Please, his name is Peter, brown hair, brown eyes, idiotically self-sacrificing.”
The fact that it was the last description that had the EMT’s eyes lighting up with recognition wasn’t a good sign.
“This way,” he said, immediately turning back the way he’d come. Tony followed him, feeling like if he opened his mouth his heart would leap right out of his throat.
The EMT led them toward an ambulance. As they approached, Tony’s pace slowed.
People died in plane crashes. Peter’s parents died in a plane crash. And the way they’d known who Peter was from Tony’s quip about sacrificing himself...
His knees almost buckled. What if he looked in that ambulance, and Peter was there covered in a white sheet?
He was going to be sick.
The EMT noticed Tony lagging behind and turned.
“He’s right over here, Mr. Stark,” he said quietly, waving Tony forward.
Steeling himself, preparing for life as he knew it to end the moment he looked around the open door of the ambulance, Tony walked forward.
The inside of the ambulance was a disaster, first aid equipment strewn about. There were two other medics in it, both looking harried and tired. And there, sitting on one of the gurneys, was Peter.
Even with his legs feeling like jelly, Tony was in the ambulance in a heartbeat.
Peter turned and saw him, his eyes brimming with tears. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Tony was holding him in the next second, clutching Peter to his chest with a desperation he’d only felt once before; standing on Titan with the gauntlet at his feet.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Peter hiccupped, his hands scrabbling at Tony’s jacket.
“Don’t apologize,” Tony said, his voice wrecked as he tried to pull Peter closer. “Don’t apologize. It was my fault too.”
“I just kept thinking that that was the last thing I’d ever say to you,” Peter sobbed. Tony closed his eyes, pressed his face into Peter’s smoke-smelling hair.
“I know.” He’d thought the same thing, had relived their argument over and over on the way here. “I know. But I’m here now. I’m here, Pete, it’s ok.”
But Peter pulled away from Tony, staring him desperately in the face. “I was afraid you’d forget about me,” he blurted.
Tony blinked, already forming the denial on his tongue, but Peter kept going. “When I go to college you might find someone else to mentor and I’ll be away and you might forget about me and it would hurt so bad so I thought if I drove you away first it wouldn’t hurt as bad. It was so dumb, but I’m just—” Peter looked at a loss for words, his bottom lip trembling as he forced himself to confess this.
“Not dumb,” Tony said, cupping Peter’s face in his hands. “Know why?” Peter shook his head, displacing the tears gathered in the corners of his eyes. “I was afraid you’d forget me, too.”
Peter’s face turned serious. “I could never,” he promised. Tony wiped away a tear clinging to Peter’s chin with his thumb.
“Then what makes you think I could ever forget about you?”
“I’m nothing special,” Peter whispered, shrugging.
“Yes, you are. You’re you.”
Peter was about to protest when there was a clatter. Tony jumped. He’d forgotten they were sitting on a gurney in an ambulance.
Standing at the open door was another medic, cleaning his hands off after setting his heavy bag down. He looked up at Tony and Peter, seeming to assess them.
“Your boy saved everyone on that flight,” he told Tony. “Climbed out and activated all the drag flaps by hand, steered it by bending the tail. So I heard.”
Tony tightened his grip around Peter, both out of belated terror and pride.
“Yeah,” Tony said, looking back at Peter and smiling. “He does that.”
“Pretty special kid,” the EMT continued, raising his eyebrows like he’d heard their conversation and wanted to know that what Peter had said wasn’t true.
“You have no idea.”
Peter looked away from him, his cheeks pink and eyes downcast. Tony glanced at the EMT, who was watching with the tired sympathy of a fellow parent.
"Is he good to go?" Tony asked.
"As long as he takes it easy. He's got several strained muscles, bruised ribs, minor concussion. Miracle it wasn't worse." There was something in the man's voice that had Tony raising an eyebrow at him.
"Yes, a miracle," Tony agreed. The medic smiled.
"Don't worry, Mr. Stark. No one's going to rat out our guardian angel, here." He caught Peter's eye and nodded in thanks. Peter nodded back, offering a fleeting smile.
Tony gently squeezed the back of Peter's neck. "Thank you. We're going to get out of here."
He helped Peter stand and carefully climb down from the back of an ambulance. One of the officers on site offered to drive Tony and Peter to the nearest hotel, where Tony could order to have a car sent.
Tony didn’t hesitate for a second before climbing into the backseat with Peter. Peter was shaking too badly to do his seatbelt, so Tony did it for him.
“We’ll get you some food when we’re at the hotel, that’ll help with the adrenaline crash,” Tony muttered. Peter nodded, swallowing.
He caught Tony’s hand before he could pull it away.
Tony looked at him, eyebrows furrowing in concern.
“I was so scared,” Peter whispered. “I... I thought I was going to die. And that I wasn’t going to be able to save anyone. And you and May would have to bury me and—”
“Ok,” Tony interjected, quickly shedding his own seatbelt and scooting into the middle seat. “It’s alright, buddy. You’re ok.”
Peter latched onto Tony’s arm, tugging it around himself. He curled into Tony as best he could in the back of a police cruiser. Tony glanced up at the rear-view mirror, noticed the cop determinedly ignoring them. He tipped his head against Peter’s, determined to smell the boy’s familiar scent under the smoke and sweat.
“Pete?” Peter hummed in response, his breath hitching lightly. “I think we can all agree that you’re not allowed within a hundred yards of a plane ever again, so if you really want to go to Northwestern, you better get used to road trips.”
Peter huffed a laugh. “That’s ok. I wasn’t that interested anyway. I was just mad and knew you didn’t want me to go there. It was stupid.”
Tony tried to keep the hope out of his voice. “So... you’re going to stay nearby?” he asked. Peter looked up at him, his face grimy and bruised, tear-tracks carving through the dirt and blood.
“I’m staying wherever you are.”