Chapter Text
Reaching out for Tony is second nature to Peter.
They’ve come a long way since The Homecoming Incident, as they’ve not-so-fondly dubbed it. It was a rocky start, but all things considered, Peter likes to think that finding their footing wasn’t nearly as painful as it could’ve been. Trust doesn’t come easily, after all, especially for someone who has suffered as much as Tony Stark has, but they got there eventually.
(Peter wonders if the five years dangling between them will be the thing that sends them backsliding.
But no. The first thing Tony did when they reunited - five years, five years, five years - was hug him tight, and the look in his eyes said it all.)
Reaching out for Tony is easy. Reaching out is instinctive. Impulsive. Automatic. Reaching out is something he doesn’t have to think twice about, hasn’t had to think twice about for months now, because he knows that Tony will always reach for him in return.
It happens really fast, but it feels like forever to Peter. Like everything has been running on fast forward since the moment he woke up on Titan, but as soon as the Infinity Stones are in Tony’s hands, Peter’s brain starts processing in slow-motion.
His world narrows to a point, and in this moment he cares about nothing but Tony.
He doesn’t know why he does it. It’s not like he actually expects to help anything, to change anything, to solve anything. It’s reflex, he supposes, to search for his mentor when he’s clearly out of his depth. When he’s beyond the point of scared that he feels he can handle on his own. And, watching Tony stare down Thanos with the six most dangerous objects in the universe on his gauntlet, he thinks this is the most terrified he’s ever been.
They say hindsight is 20/20 and tunnel vision is blinding, but in this case, nothing and no one could ever make him regret what he does.
If he had to go back and live through the final moments of the battle against Thanos and his army over, he’d do the exact same thing. Again and again and again.
Because reaching out for Tony Stark in the seconds before he snaps his fingers and saves the universe yet again just so happens to be the thing that saves Tony Stark’s life.
His fingers graze Tony’s arm and the energy from the Stones instantly redistributes itself. Flows into Peter like a faucet, except there’s no way to turn it off. There’s no way to make the pure power stop flooding his veins, no way to make his skin stop burning , no way to make it stop feeling like he’s crackling with electricity all the way down to his bones.
It hurts. It hurts worse than anything Peter has ever felt, the pain so intense that it’s almost all he can even register. Nothing else is real. Nothing else is comprehensible through the sheer agony of possessing a level of power than no one being was ever meant to have.
Even through the pain, he sees the exact second in which Tony realizes. But by then, it’s too late.
Tony snaps his fingers with fear in his eyes and the potential to destroy the universe pumping through his blood.
Thanos’s army slowly begins to disappear, and Peter thinks this will be a pretty respectable way to die.
Then Thanos himself fades into nothing and the universe goes dark.
Sliding back into consciousness is quite possibly the least graceful thing Tony has ever done.
As soon as he even starts to blink his eyes open, he can feel... something fluttering in his chest, a sensation that’s horrifyingly akin to the palladium poisoning of years past.
Alarm bells. Immediate, deafening alarm bells go off in his head, and before he can even think, he jerks upright. His hands fly to his chest, an inexplicable pain shooting up his right arm, and he presses, hard, into the spot where his arc reactor would be. He’s shaking, all the way down to the tips of his fingers, and then he’s scrambling, his instincts screaming at him to escape escape escape, even though he has no idea what he’s trying to escape from.
He very nearly face-plants on the tile floor. Can’t quite figure out why he hasn’t until a voice he’d recognize anywhere says, “Jesus, Tones, again?”
He doesn’t know what that means. He doesn’t know what’s happening.
But Rhodey is here. Rhodey is here, and he sounds exasperated but not panicked so Tony must be safe.
He’s safe.
He’s on the edge of a panic attack and apparently he yanked a needle out of his arm (again), but he’s safe.
“Tony, come on, breathe.” One of Rhodey’s hands has settled on the small of Tony’s back and the other is wrapped around his forearm both to hold him up and to stem the trickle of blood from his ripped-out IV. “You’re okay. It’s over, Tones. Everything’s alright.”
He knows this. In theory, at least, he does.
It’s not computing. Something is off - his stomach is twisted in knots and something in his head is yelling for him to listen, to pay attention, but he can’t hear a word of whatever that part of him is trying to say.
He’s still trembling under Rhodey’s hands, leaning into him as best he can from his awkward position between the bed and the floor. Rhodey moves his hand from Tony’s back to his waist and starts to gently shift him back onto the bed properly. Tony doesn’t resist, wouldn’t have the strength even if he wanted to. He lets Rhodey coax him down until his head hits the pillow and the fight almost instantly drains out of him.
And then, “Mr. Stark?”
Peter.
Tony shoots up again, vaguely registers something clattering to the floor and Rhodey swearing. Ignores both of these things in favor of swinging his legs off the bed and pushing up onto his feet.
(He’s pretty sure he’s going to give Rhodey a heart attack one of these days.)
He sways. Presses his palm against his still-bleeding forearm in place of Rhodey’s and just sways for what feels like hours before he feels just steady enough to stumble toward Peter’s voice.
His vision is too blurry to really see where he’s going, but all he can think is Peter and he figures he’ll find him eventually.
It’s all coming back to him. The time travel, the fight, the reunions. Using the Infinity Stones. Erasing Thanos and his army.
Peter.
Peter was there. He was there and he was alive and he was just as upbeat and talkative and bright as usual and he was alive.
They’re both alive. They’re both alive and it’s because of some ridiculous, half-cocked time heist, sheer dumb luck, and, if Tony has this part right, the fact that Peter happened to be touching him when he snapped.
It’s...on brand, if nothing else.
Frankly, Tony doesn’t have the energy to care how it all played out anyway. He’s got priorities - or, well, one priority, and right now it’s to hug a certain spider-kid.
It takes him a minute and his legs wobble all the while, but he finds his way to Peter’s hospital bed. The kid is sitting up, looking just the slightest bit more steady than Tony feels, and as soon as Tony gets close, he flings his arm out and opens and closes his hand in that grabby gesture that little kids make when they want their parent to come hold them. It’s quite possibly the youngest Tony has ever seen the kid look.
And God, Tony missed him. Five years, and all he could do was stare at framed pictures of the two of them and dream of alien planets and dust and Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so good.
But he got him back. The kid’s in a hospital bed with an IV in his arm that thankfully hasn’t been ripped out (yet) and that same glazed look in his eyes that he got when Bruce put him on specialized pain medication after he was shot on patrol, but he’s back.
It feels like a dream. Tony has had this dream before, too, the one where they figure out how to save everyone and Peter comes back and everything’s great until either the dream deteriorates into yet another nightmare or Tony wakes up and remembers. He doesn’t think he can handle either of those options right now.
Peter’s hand finds Tony’s shirt. His fingers twist into the fabric so tightly that his knuckles go white, and Tony thinks he might cry.
He doesn’t. Instead, he brings his free hand up to cover Peter’s and squeezes gently. Peter smiles loopily up at him and the fluttery feeling in Tony’s chest fades.
“Peter,” Tony says hoarsely. It’s all he can get out around the lump in his throat.
The kid feels real. Solid. Not like he’s going to fade away if Tony holds him too tight.
“Hi, Mr. Stark,” Peter says. His eyes go soft. “S’been a while, huh?”
The noise Tony makes is somewhere between a laugh and a dry sob. Still staring at Peter, he calls, “Rhodey?”
“Yeah, Tones?”
“You see him too, right?”
He hates to ask. He really does hate to ask, but the level of trust he has in his own mind at this point is...low, to say the least.
There’s a pause. Tony fixes his gaze on that one curl of Peter’s that always (still) hangs in his face and prays to a god he doesn’t believe in that this isn’t just another cruel joke.
“Yeah, Tones,” Rhodey says again, and it’s not a question this time. It’s a confirmation.
Real.
Real.
Peter tugs, lightly, on Tony’s shirt. “Mr. Stark. Come sit with me.”
The bed is very much not big enough for two people. Peter scoots over anyway, looks expectantly up at Tony.
This kid is going to be the death of him.
Tony sits carefully on the edge of the bed and it’s only then that he realizes that if he’d stayed standing much longer, he most definitely would have passed out. Huh. On the list of the most dangerous things Tony’s ever done, ripping out his IV is, admittedly, pretty low, but it’s still on the list. He thinks it’s worth it to see Peter’s smile.
“Are you okay?” Peter, by now, has let go of Tony’s shirt and instead threaded his fingers through Tony’s. Apparently, the kid has way fewer inhibitions when he’s high.
Fuck’s sake, though. Is Tony okay, Peter asks, when he’s the one who vanished from existence and only just came back.
“Are you? ” Tony shoots back, swinging his legs up onto the bed and scooting back to lean against the headboard. His head swims at the sharp movement and his legs end up half on top of Peter’s, but he ignores all of this.
Peter nods firmly, then promptly pitches over and buries his face in the juncture between Tony’s shoulder and his neck. Tony has to bite down on his bottom lip to keep from hissing in pain when Peter jostles him - Tony doesn’t know exactly how the stones affected him (or Peter. He’s a lot more concerned about Peter), but it hurts. Peter’s clearly too out of it to feel much of anything, but Tony’s whole body doesn’t seem ready to stop aching any time soon.
He kind of doesn’t care. Because he hasn’t gotten his hug yet - a proper hug that’s not in the middle of the fight for the universe - and he still really needs it.
There’s a lot of shifting he has to do, including letting go of Peter’s hand (he thinks he hears Peter whine into his sleeve - he wouldn’t be surprised if he actually was imagining it this time, though), but he manages to twist a little and wrap his arms around the kid’s waist. He’s careful to avoid the arm with the IV in it. Peter follows suit easily, free hand settling between Tony’s shoulder blades.
Tony breathes in.
(Peter smells like sweat and smoke and something so authentically Peter .
He’s not going to cry. He’s not.)
He breathes out.
Peter gives a quiet hum. “I like this. Can we keep the hugging?”
Tony laughs, brings a hand up to rustle Peter’s hair for the sole sake of making him squirm. “Sure, Pete. Whatever you want.”
Tony doesn’t normally like hugging. He doesn’t normally like being touched all that much in general, unless it’s Pepper, but maybe Peter’s tactileness is rubbing off on him.
He feels like the tables have turned and he’s the kid who needs to be held now. It’s not an entirely foreign feeling, but it is...a bit uncanny.
He doesn’t get the chance to dissect it, because Rhodey, who apparently made it across the room without Tony noticing, rests a hand on Tony’s shoulder and says, “As much as I hate to break up the reunion, guys, I’m gonna need Tony to come back to his bed so I can put his IV back in.”
Peter definitely does whine this time as Tony pulls back and turns to glance at Rhodey. “Do you even know how to do that?”
He knows the answer. Rhodey has done this for him and other Avengers more than once before, and the military man always has a really steady hand. He’s only asking to be annoying.
Rhodey shoots him a look.
“Okay, okay, honeybear,” Tony relents, still half-chuckling. “No need to give me that look.”
Except maybe there is, because Tony really doesn’t want to move. He likes it here, with Peter, on this tiny hospital bed (vaguely, he wonders what hospital they’re in. It’s definitely not one of his own medbays), and besides, he’s not entirely sure he could make it back to his own bed.
“Does the bed roll?”
Rhodey furrows his brow. “What?”
“The bed,” Tony repeats. “And all the machines. Can they move?”
“Um…” He gives Tony’s shoulder one last gentle squeeze, then turns and crosses the room. The bed doesn’t budge at first when Rhodey pushes at it, but a little investigating turns up a stopper that flips to let the the wheels roll. The IV machine moves without protest. “That, they can.”
In short order, the other bed is pushed up against Peter’s and Rhodey has Tony’s arm cleaned up and a new line drawn for the IV. He looks away as Rhodey finds a vein in his right arm and expertly slides the needle through his skin, busies himself with twisting a lock of Peter’s hair around his finger, right behind his ear, to make him giggle.
After everything’s set, there’s a long moment where Rhodey just stands at the foot of the bed and stares at them. He’s been a fair bit less emotional than Tony up to this point, but now he’s looking back and forth between the two of them with more relief in his eyes than Tony has seen since Afghanistan.
“I’m really glad you two are okay.” He looks specifically to Peter, then, and while Tony knew that Peter’s death affected Rhodey and Pepper too, it’s not until he watches Rhodey start to extend a hand toward Peter, hesitate, then try to hide his smile in Peter’s shoulder when the kid reaches up to drag him into a one-armed hug that Tony realizes just how much it did. “We, uh - we all really missed you, Pete.”
“It was all…” Peter pulls away, glances at Tony before looking back to Rhodey. He’s uncomfortable, Tony can tell, probably with all the attention right after the shock of coming back to life five years in the future. Tony can’t blame him, he’s uncomfortable just thinking about it. Peter’s voice is quiet, almost apologetic when he says, “Everything happened in the blink of an eye for me. I wasn’t - I didn’t have time to miss anyone. But if I had, I would have missed you all too.”
In a way, Tony thinks it might be worse. Having no concept of the passage of time for five years, then waking up to a world that moved on without you. Not because it wanted to, no, but because it had to.
This is all so fucked up.
And where is everyone, anyway? Pepper and Morgan, the other Avengers, why are they not all crowded at Tony and Peter’s bedsides like the family of a coma patient in those corny drama movies?
Rhodey is just turning to go, surely to give them some space to talk, when Tony asks, “Hey, where are Pepper and Morgan? And everyone else, they’re all okay, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” Rhodey assures, glancing back over his shoulder at him. “Everyone’s fine, just a little banged up. Pepper had some legal stuff to take care of, with Avengers Tower and the press and all. Morgan’s with her.”
“Wait, Pep’s - how long has it been?”
Rhodey’s lips press into a tight line. “Nine days. It - it was a little touch and go for a while, but things levelled out around day four. Pepper all but refused to leave your side until a couple days ago.”
Well. That explains the bags under Rhodey’s eyes.
“I’m gonna go tell everyone you’re awake,” he continues, slipping his hands into his jean pockets and rocking back and forth on his heels. It’s a habit Tony recognizes as one that only appears when Rhodey’s stressed. “I’ll tell them to leave you alone for now, but I don’t know how long Bruce and Nat will be willing to wait. If you need anything, just...have FRIDAY call me.”
“Is May okay?”
“What?”
“My aunt,” Peter says loudly, too loudly, as if he’s trying to drown out his own thoughts. His teeth worry at his bottom lip, and it’s the most lucid he’s sounded since waking. “Is she - did she...turn to dust or…”
“Yes. She did, Pete.” It had been a relief, finding out that May had vanished along with Peter. He’s hated himself for it, felt horribly selfish for a long time about being so relieved that he wouldn’t have to find a way to look May Parker in the eyes and tell her that the nephew she’d taken in as her own son was gone. Eventually, he’d realized that, between the two of them, May had gotten the better end of the deal.
To Rhodey, he asks, “Did you guys get in contact with her yet?”
Please say yes. Please let this kid have one good thing.
For once in his life, he gets what he asked for. Rhodey nods, says, “She’s been staying here - this is a SHIELD facility, by the way - so she should be around somewhere. If you want me to bring her in now, I can, but the kid looks like he’s about to pass out.”
Tony feels like he’s about to pass out.
“S’okay,” Peter murmurs, his fingers finding their way to the pulse point in Tony’s wrist. “I think I, uh...need a nap first.”
Again, Rhodey nods. Touches Tony’s shoulder one last time, then goes.
And then it’s just Peter and Tony.
Tony barely even has a second to fret over what the hell he’s supposed to say before Peter gives him a confused, vaguely disconcerted look and asks quietly, “Who’s Morgan?”
Oh.
Oh.
Five years. Five years in which Tony got married (a bittersweet affair) and had a daughter. Five years that Peter now has to catch up on.
Somehow, he keeps forgetting.
Tony can’t look Peter in the eyes when he tells him, “Morgan is my daughter. She’s - she’s four.”
For a long moment, Peter doesn’t react. Just sits there and, slowly but surely, processes.
Tony doesn’t know what he’s expecting, but Peter’s face lighting up isn’t it.
And yet, the kid’s smiling. Bright and glinting and happy. “That’s amazing! I always knew you’d make a great dad, Mr. Stark.”
He’s not mad. Peter’s not mad at him for moving on.
Not only that, Peter’s happy for him.
He doesn’t deserve this kid. Nobody deserves this kid.
“I - I’ll introduce you to her. Whenever she gets back with Pep, I can - you can meet her.”
As quick as it came, Peter’s smile fades (Tony’s going to get whiplash, Jesus Christ). He’s just about to backpedal, even though he has no clue what he said wrong, but Peter beats him to it. “Does she know? About...about what happened and - and about me?”
Mr. Stark, I don’t wanna go.
There was no way Morgan could have not known. With the pictures around the house and on his phone, the nightmares, all of it, there was really no getting around telling her, even if he’d wanted to.
“I gave her the - the child-friendly version,” Tony says, voice cracking, “but yeah, she knows.”
Should he tell him?
He has to tell him.
“I kind of -” He stops, mouth twisting, fixes his gaze at the spot where Peter’s fingers touch his wrist, starts again. Steadier this time. “She thinks you’re her older brother who - passed away. It felt like the easiest way to explain to a little kid why this teenage boy she’d never met was so...important to me. So just - fair warning before you have an armful of four year old.”
He’s met with silence. But he still can’t look at the kid to try to gauge his expression, so he’s stuck waiting.
Something tells him Peter doesn’t mind, though.
“That’s…really sweet, Mr. Stark.” There’s way too much affection in Peter’s voice for Tony’s liking, undercut by the teasing lilt in his time. “I didn’t know you cared so much.”
Of course I care, Tony thinks.
“Go to sleep, Underoos,” Tony says, pulling his arm out of Peter’s grip to flick him lightly on the nose. “Spider-baby needs his nap.”
Peter swats his hand and rolls his eyes. “M’not a baby, Mr. Stark. And you look sleepier than me.”
He doesn’t even try to make it sound like he believes the last part.
Tony snorts. “Whatever you say, kiddo. Tell you what, we can both take a nap and then we’ll be good and rested for when all the other Avengers come storming in here like the barbarians they are.”
That’s all it takes to get Peter to drop the topic of Tony’s daughter and lie down. He immediately curls into Tony’s side, careful of the IV on his outside arm, making Tony tense automatically. Peter either doesn’t notice or just refuses to budge, and Tony has to force himself to relax, dammit.
His left hand finds a place in Peter’s hair. Peter’s right hand twists into Tony’s shirt.
It’s nice, once he gets used to it.
He’s only just gotten comfortable with it when Peter breaks the tranquility. Not even five minutes later, Peter pushes up on his elbow to look at Tony and says, “I’m sorry.”
He hates that he knows exactly what Peter means as soon as it comes out of his mouth. Hates that he knows exactly what the kid is apologizing for. He did it on Titan too, just as he was fading away, and Tony thinks he’ll never stop being angry with himself for not finding the words to comfort him.
There’s a level of sadness in Peter’s eyes, settled just behind the drug-induced glassiness, that makes Tony’s stomach twist. He never did get to a point where losing Peter stopped hurting, never really thought he would, and Peter’s guilt, however misplaced, is threatening to dig up even the pain that Tony did manage to bury.
“It wasn’t your fault, kiddo.” There’s something else there too. Some other emotion is tugging, rather relentlessly, at his heart, but he can’t put a finger on what it is.
Peter smiles sadly, knowingly. Almost ruefully. “It wasn’t yours, either.”
Oh. Guilt.
Makes sense. If they had a contest to determine which of them had a bigger guilt complex, Tony genuinely has no idea who would win.
“Pete -“
“No. No. The - the fight -“ Peter shakes his head, irritation rolling off of him in waves. Tony knows it’s more directed at his own disjointedness, though, than it is at Tony. “We lost. I know. But it was - if it wasn’t my fault, then it wasn’t yours, either.”
Peter flops back down on the bed, finally spent, as it seems. Tony’s starting to wonder if Peter’s haziness is contagious. The longer he’s awake and the more he tries to think, the blearier he feels.
He’s not going to fight Peter on this. It’s not like it would change anything or be beneficial to either of them. Peter’s always seen the best in people, never had an ounce of blame in his body for anyone but himself, and if he wants to pretend Tony isn’t at least partially responsible, then so be it.
“Okay, Petey,” he whispers. He wishes he could believe him, he really does, but he knows better. “Go to sleep.”
Peter tucks his head under Tony’s arm and is out like a light within second.
Tony drifts off ten minutes after Peter does, with his fingers in Peter’s hair and a feeling that’s almost, almost like contentment in his chest.
It takes him a good five minutes to find a bathroom.
His IV was removed while he was asleep, apparently. Surprising, since Tony’s always been a light sleeper and it’s just gradually spiraled since Afghanistan, though he does vaguely recall waking up at some point and slurring about...something or other.
The hallways are deserted. And dark. Tony can’t see shit as he wanders around, making at least four wrong turns on his roundabout trek - he wonders if they make SHIELD compounds so difficult to navigate on purpose. Probably.
Eventually, he finds himself staring at his reflection in the bathroom mirror.
Something’s wrong. He knows it. He has no clue what , exactly, is wrong, but he knows something is. It feels like every cell in his body is still vibrating with the energy of the stones and the strange, fluttery feeling has resurfaced with a vengeance.
The longer he’s up, the worse it gets. And no matter how hard he tries to write it off, he can’t get around it.
Something is so very, very wrong.
On his way back to the hospital room, he’s proven right.
He’s halfway there (he thinks) when his legs give out entirely. His vision blurs and he crumples to his knees - he thinks he blacks out, just for a moment, before coming to with his cheek pressed into the cold wood floor.
He feels sick. Weak. Lightheaded. A little bit nauseous.
Wrong.
When he tries to push himself up, his hand slips and he goes plummeting to the floor again. Shit.
“Help,” he croaks out, because as terrible as he is about asking for help, there’s always something to be said about extenuating circumstances. He’s trembling, ever so slightly. “Someone, I need - help!”
He doesn’t know how long he’s there, but he must fade in and out of consciousness all the while, because at some point, he comes to with Natasha hovering over him, more concern painted across her face than Tony thinks he’s ever seen on her.
“Call Doctor Strange,” is the last thing he manages to say before he passes out for real.