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Tony nearly dropped his full cup of coffee in the kitchen when FRIDAY informed him that Peter was in distress. The tower was relatively empty so it was just him and the kid, the presence of his AI was startling to say the least.
Ever since the reverse of the snap Peter spent more and more time at the tower, not that Tony minded, in fact he preferred Peter close by. He had been staying at least three nights out of the week or whenever May was working overtime.
Tonight was one of those nights.
“What kind of distress, Fri?”
“Mr. Parker seems to be having a night terror.”
Okay, that was like nightmare on speed. He hardly had the cup down onto the granite counter before he was hurriedly making his way down the hallways to Peter’s room. He was both surprised and not surprised that the kid had left the door open a crack, almost as if hoping that Tony would stop in. But he’d come home from school, his first patrol in weeks, gave Tony a weak, floppy wave and an exhausted smile and crashed hardcore.
When he hadn’t emerged from his room at even the prospect of pizza, Tony began to get worried, he tried to chalk it up to stress. Peter had only been back for a little over a month and still didn’t want to talk about it. Any of it.
He pushed the door to the bedroom open and Peter was anything but still, the sheets wrapped around his torso, his legs no doubt tangled, and he had his back to the door. He whined and whimpered in his sleep, his curls, always unruly, were stuck with perspiration to his forehead.
It wasn’t his first bad night, but this was the first time Tony was seeing it first hand, until now Peter had always awoken looking haggard, too haggard for a teenager and said ‘bad night’ and that was it.
Tony knew all about nightmares and panic attacks.
He approached the bed carefully, sitting on the edge, one hand hovering over the kid’s shoulder with uncertainty on whether he should touch or not. “Peter, hey, Pete, wake up, you need to wake up.”
“N-No, no, c-come back…please come back…” he whimpered, the sheets had expertly trapped him giving him little room to move, Tony wondered just how long he’d been tossing and turning.
Tony took a bold step and placed a hand to the top of Peter’s head. Peter gasped, loudly, sitting bolt right up in bed, almost hitting his head on the base board, his eyes painting the room. As soon as Peter locked eyes with Tony, he completely fell apart, as in, besides Titan, no way Tony had ever seen.
“Whoa, Peter, hey kiddo you’re alright, it’s okay,” he took Peter’s face in both hands to steady him as his brown eyes blew wide. What he wasn’t expecting was for Peter to fall against him, wrap his arms tight around his waist and hold on. A little taken aback it took Tony a second to register what was happening before he returned the embrace, “Shhh, just a bad dream, that’s all, just a bad dream.”
“Not just a bad dream, s’too real…” he sobbed muffled into Tony’s chest, he’d slumped down, not hitting the shoulder mark is what Tony had gathered, the way he just fell against him.
Tony scooted a little farther onto the bed, running a hand up and down Peter’s heaving back, “Yes, just a bad dream, I know it must’ve seemed real, but it wasn’t.”
“Don’t leave me…please don’t ever leave me…” Peter cried, loud and messy and muted, holding on for dear life.
Tony’s eyes went wide with that statement, a trill of fear eating it’s way over his flesh in goosebumps. “Not going anywhere Pete, where would you get a silly idea like that?” he found himself shushing Peter again like a small child as he cried and cried.
“In the dark place…s’always in the dark place…” he hiccupped, still not giving up his iron grip on Tony’s waist.
Tony felt his heart drop, “Jesus kid,” he pressed his lips into his sweaty curls, “I’m so sorry…”
Five years. It had taken five years to get them all back and Tony felt as though he’d aged twenty. He still held a sixteen-year-old in his arms, not a twenty-one-year-old. Time didn’t move in the place where Thanos sent half the population.
The nightmare, or night terror, was aptly turning into a full-blown panic attack. Tony could feel it vibrating in Peter’s limbs.
“What if he comes back…w-what if he takes you too, he’ll take you too I saw it!” the hysteria was returning full force, it seemed no amount of crying could exhaust him, even though he knew Peter hadn’t been sleeping. And so very much like himself, Peter denied it and covered it up with too much caffeine and late nights filled with work.
“Hey, look at me, you need to breathe,” he managed to pry Peter’s fingers out of his shirt and place them on his chest. “Breathe, sweetheart, breathe with me. I need you to focus, look at me.” Thankfully Peter did as told and Tony wondered if he could even see him through the blurring of tears which prompted Tony to scoop them away with one hand and pressing and keeping Peter’s hands to his chest with the other, right over where the arc reactor used to be, “You feel my heartbeat? Feel my breathing?”
Peter gulped and it sounded like another hiccup, but he nodded.
“Now count with me, come on, out loud, count, 1,2,3,4, Peter, come on,” he coaxed, giving his hands a firm tap.
Peter stuttered out the numbers, closing his eyes, his breathing slowly but surely beginning to level off. But the tears kept coming and coming until Peter’s face was red and blotchy and Tony’s hands were damp.
“There we go, good boy, that’s it.” He felt it was safe now to pull Peter close as his own panic began to wane. He’d never been on the other side of a panic attack and goddamn if it wasn’t frightening, how Pepper had done it all these years he’d never know. And something told him she would be in here as well if she wasn’t in Memphis on SI business.
Peter was shaking in waves, long bouts of trembling from the rush of adrenaline.
Tony found himself rocking the young man, just minutely as he carded his fingers through his thick hair, coming across a snag, untangling it carefully before resuming his stroking. They stayed silent for a few minutes, the only sound being the fish tank that Peter kept in his room, fish Tony fed when Peter wasn’t here. It acted doubly as a night light and a white noise. Tony wasn’t an idiot, Peter couldn’t sleep in the dark anymore and total silence caused him mountain’s worth of anxiety. He realized that when Peter stopped complaining about his music when they worked together in the lab, the louder the better.
“Pete…” he began softly, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “You with me now?”
“Yeah,” he replied, watery and broken, his finger clenching and unclenching Tony’s MIT sweatshirt, “Think so…sorry…m’sorry…”
“Stop it, don’t start with me,” he scolded lightly, “You wanna tell me what you dreamt?”
Peter snuffled loudly, pulling away just enough to wipe furiously at his face, his eyes were downcast and shy. He looked younger than usual in this moment and small. So, so small.
“Pete…you don’t have to if you don’t want to but kid, you’ve been pretty bottled up since you got back. I’m not the poster child for sharing but I know when enough is enough.” he took his chin in his hand, still idly wiping the tears from his cheeks.
“I-I dream the same thing…all the time…” he shivered.
“The place you went?” Tony tested the waters and Peter nodded, eyes filling up once more.
“But it’s not just that…” he trembled, lower lip quivering, “I’m back a-and then you die…you’re there when I come through the portal and so is Thanos…you sacrifice yourself for me…a-and I don’t even get a chance to tell you…to tell you all the things…”
Tony scooted a little closer, frowning and feeling sick with guilt, “I’m right here, not going anywhere I promise.” he tried for a smile, anything to make light of this heavy situation, “Who’s gonna look out for you and make sure you don’t do something stupid, huh?”
He wasn’t sure if it was a try for a laugh but it came out more like a sob, stuttering and almost sounding stuck in his chest.
“Oh kiddo,” Tony sighed, pulling him close once more, Peter had snuck his arms back around Tony’s waist, holding tight and burying his face in the space between his neck and shoulder. “Everything’s okay, we’re both here.”
“I know,” he sobbed harder, at this point Tony’s shirt was soaked, “It’s stupid…sorry…”
Tony waited a few more measured seconds before patting him on the back, “You wanna camp out here? Plug in a movie, pretty sure you need to eat something…” he paused and then tilted Peter up by the chin, “Did you eat today?”
“No, I kinda forgot” he sniffled, his voice sounding more than spent.
“Well, it’s not even late, you know it’s not even midnight? I was only on my fifth cup of coffee so it’s still early. How about a pizza? We can get anything you want, even that gross pineapple crap you swear by.”
He was rewarded with a wobbly smile but it was better than nothing, “Y-Yeah, I didn’t realize how hungry I was until now.”
“Well, we’re fixing that now,” he said tapping Peter on the nose, “Or May will have my head and we both know she will do it.”
That finally garnered him a slight giggle, the kind that assured him that Peter was finally fully coming out of the panicky haze.
“You go wash your face and how about pajamas? How you fall asleep in jeans I’ll never know.” Tony smiled, shaking his head.
Peter finally relquneshed his iron grip and nodded, “Kay…” he hopped off the bed and went into his bathroom.
Peter had decided he didn’t want to stay in the space where he’d had the vivid nightmare so Tony wrapped a blanket around his still vaguely trembling shoulders and led him into the living room where the television was bigger anyway. Tony was glad they’d decided to stay at the tower instead of the compound because well, that was the nice thing about the city that never sleeps, he had two large pizzas delivered within the hour.
Tony would never admit it out loud, or hell, yeah, now he would that Peter was a missing part of his life that he hadn’t been fully aware had been missing all this time. But now it was shining loud and clear, even more so than when Peter had been gone.
Like an over-sized toddler, Peter had gone through nearly an entire large pizza all by himself, his stomach no longer growling and then finished it off with chocolate milk, per his request.
“You doing okay? Better?” Tony asked softly as he watched Peter’s eyes droop, only to pop back open over and over.
“Y-Yeah, just still kinda freaked out,” he sighed, leaning into Tony’s space without thought.
“You haven’t been sleeping kiddo, you probably need some more of that,” and as he said it, he snaked an arm around him and tugged him into his side.
Peter only sighed more deeply and snuggled in, like a kitten nuzzling against Tony’s chest before getting more comfortable.
“Will you quit fighting to keep your eyes open? Come on,” he tapped his forehead, “Close them peepers, I’m not going anywhere.”
With that said Peter completely melted against him, his arm coming up again to rest around Tony’s waist. Tony pulled the blanket that had fallen around his legs up and over his torso. He lowered the volume of the TV and it was in no time that Peter was off to dreamland again, preferably just that, dreams.
He shimmied backwards on the couch in slow intervals of movement as to not startle the teen, until they were both laying across the couch lengthwise. With more room available, Peter flopped nearly on top of him and he was glad he had resituated him cause he had a feeling Peter was out for the count. And if he was? So was Tony.
As Tony dozed he remembered the dream he’d told Pepper about years before, the one where he had a kid, little did he know his kid had been right here all along.