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Peter waited for it, with his bare arms cold, huddled against his stomach, and with bare feet, hanging off the deck, just inches away from brushing the top of the water with his toes.
That morning, the breeze was light, but it kicked water up off the lake, and that was enough to make him shiver, to make his feet and legs just as cold as his arms.
He should’ve put on shoes, or at least socks, but he didn’t have any. Not any that wasn’t borrowed from someone else.
Still, even cold and underdressed, he waited for it, for that couple of seconds when the sun would rise up and hit the water at just the right angle. It was beautiful, and more importantly, it was the same.
A lot changed in the five years Peter Parker was dead, but he could still count on the sun to come up the same way it always had.
Tony’s cabin by the lake was beautiful too. He built a beautiful life with Pepper and Morgan, and occasionally Rhodey and Happy. They dropped by for visits a lot, even now, as well as other mismatched Avengers, just looking to say hello or thank Tony for his sacrifice.
It wasn’t lost on any of them that Tony could’ve lost more than his arm.
A stronger gust of wind blew off the lake, and Peter rubbed at his arms, trying to get warm. It didn’t help much. He needed a jacket. One of his jackets, but they were all gone. Looted after the snappening, like the rest of the items in May and Peter’s old apartment, like the rest of their old life.
Stolen from them. Gone. Everything was gone.
Peter took a deep breath, to remind himself that he could. That he had life, even if it wasn’t the same as the one he lost, and he should feel grateful to have it.
Some mornings being grateful was harder than others.
“Pete?”
He turned his head and saw Tony walking down the deck, towards him, with a cardinal red hoodie in his hands. He handed it over to Peter, and after he accepted it, sat down next to him. Peter looked at the hoodie in his hands.
White letters across the chest spelled out MIT, and now that it was closer, Peter noticed the red was slightly faded. He slipped it on before Tony could order him to do it. Warmth spread over his arms, and across his back, as Tony stretched his arm over him and pulled him closer.
That was another difference were life then and life now. A positive one.
He had died as Tony Stark’s intern, as Iron Man’s protégé, but came back as his child.
Evident by a hug that knocked the air from his lungs, by a kiss on the cheek in the middle of a battlefield, and by the way all that affection was so freely given once they were all home safe, under the roof of the cabin by the lake.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” said Peter. “I’m good.”
“Oh right, that’s believable,” said Tony. “You’re out here, barefoot and freezing to death this early, when you should be sleeping, because you’re good.”
Tony’s sarcasm, and his way of forcefully and accurately calling him out on bullshit, that was the same, just like the sunrise.
“I like watching the sun come up,” said Peter. “It’s the same every morning, when there’s no clouds, and I don’t sleep well at night, anyway.”
Tony sighed and squeezed Peter’s shoulder, brought him closer to his side.
“You know, it’s okay if you’re not good,” said Tony. “I’d understand. We’d all understand.”
Peter took another breath, a deep one in, then exhaled. Again, trying to remind himself he should feel grateful, but it didn’t work. Something about Tony’s presence, his arm around his shoulder, forced honesty. Another something that hadn’t change. Another good thing to add to his list to convince himself that this new life was good, and still held glimpses of the one that was dead.
“Everything’s so different now,” admitted Peter. “The world… just kept going, some of my friends are in college-“ he looked down at his hand, his fingers, where red and gold fingernail polish was chipped and starting to fade “-You have a daughter.”
“She’s amazing, isn’t she?”
“Yeah.”
She was a difference, and another good one. Peter had always known Tony wanted kids, but he sort of always thought that he’d be there in the hospital when they were born, that he would hold them as babies.
Morgan was four, and constantly reminding everyone that she wasn’t a baby.
And Peter wouldn’t change that. Not for anything. Morgan was perfect, and playing with her, letting her paint his nails red and gold, made Peter stop keeping track and making lists of all the things that were different and all the things that were the same. Peter just wished he wouldn’t have missed so much of her life.
Or so much life, in general.
“I know I shouldn’t feel sad,” said Peter. It felt wrong to even admit it out loud, especially to Tony, who’s sacrifice made his breath possible. “I know I should be happy to have another chance, but I just can’t. At least not all the time.”
“I get it,” said Tony. “And its okay. You’re allowed to grieve for your life before, for what you lost and still celebrate being alive. It’s okay to feel both, nobody’s mad at you, and no one wants you to feel guilty about it, alright?”
Peter looked at Tony, meeting his brown eyes, and nodded, slow and unsure, then turned his eyes back to the treetops. A breeze ran through the leaves as gold light peaked through the empty spaces it left. The sun was almost up.
“There wasn’t a second you were gone I didn’t miss you, or that I didn’t feel awful for not being able to save you, but still, I couldn’t regret the way things turned out, because if they didn’t turn out that way, maybe I wouldn’t have Morgan.”
And yet, when given the chance, Tony put his beautiful new life on the line so he could have them both. Peter didn’t know if he’d ever be able to repay Tony for his gamble.
Life was pretty complicated and messy, filled with contradictions and emotions that contradicted themselves but somehow never cancelled each other out. It was more complicated now, after the snaps, but the sun still came up over the trees in that just right angle to cast a goldish, greenish, turquoise light out onto the lake, just the way it did every morning, when there weren’t any clouds.
Peter and Tony sat on the end of the dock, huddled close together, and watched the array of colors that were reflected on the lake, and once the light show was over, they went back inside. Peter fell back asleep on the couch, with nothing but Tony’s hoodie keeping him warm. Hours later, he woke up to the sound of Tony and May laughing together in the kitchen, and to Pepper and Morgan playing outside on the porch.
A couple of days later, when boxes of clothes arrived for Peter and May, he held onto Tony’s hoodie, stashed it away and plotted to never give it back. Weeks after that, when it was time for them to move back to Queens, Peter stuffed the red, MIT hoodie into the very bottom of his suitcase.
He needed to take a little bit of home with him.
*
“Hey Pete,” said Tony. He was under a car as Peter rounded the corner and entered the garage. His greeting stopped him dead in his tracks and made him wonder how Tony knew it was him. “How was Europe?”
“Uh. It was okay.”
Peter walked further into the garage, and as he did, his eyes got caught on a blue hoodie that had been tossed over the back a chair by the worktable. He inched towards it, while Tony was preoccupied under the car.
“Just okay?” There was skepticism in his voice already, as if Tony sensed out his lie just as accurately as he sensed his arrival.
“I mean, it was fun,” said Peter. “But it was still for school, you know, so we had chaperones watching our every move.”
“Good.”
Tony didn’t need to know by chaperones Peter meant Nick Fury and his SHEILD friends. He didn’t need to know about the mission Fury had given him, or about Mysterio and their impromptu fight, which resulted not only in a very defeated illusionist, but also, in the destruction of the MIT hoodie he’d brought into battle with him.
Peter slid a hand over the blue hoodie on the chair and picked it up reading the Stark Industries logo printed across the front. He looked at Tony again, making sure he was still under the car, then slipped it on over his head and inhaled its scent. Home. It smelled like home. Like Tony.
“How’s MJ?”
That was another secret he needed to keep from Tony. Peter didn’t need him or anyone else in his family knowing someone else had figured out his secret identity. Tony worried about him enough already. Besides that, MJ was harmless. She wouldn’t out him, and she knew how to keep a secret, unlike Peter.
“She’s good.”
Tony rolled out from under the car, sudden and abrupt, and from the look on his face, Peter knew he was caught in something.
“I saw the strangest thing on the news,” said Tony. He grabbed a cloth from the worktable and began wiping grease and dirt off his hands as he advanced towards Peter. “Something about out of the ordinary weather occurrences, and oh yeah, what was it? A molten lava man terrorizing cities?”
“Oh,” said Peter. He played with the strings of the hoodie he was in the process of stealing. “That’s weird. The media’s really taking this whole fake news thing too far.”
“I suppose all those pictures of Spidey fighting the lave monster are photoshopped, then.”
“Yep. Has to be.”
Tony stared him down, with dead, no nonsense eyes that communicated to Peter that there was no use pretending. He gave a defeated sigh, and took a seat on the chair, wishing he had MJ’s sense of secrecy.
“So, I might have run into just a little bit of trouble in Europe.”
Tony continued to stare at him. “Normally you can’t wait to come and babble to me all your Spider-Man hijinks, never mind the heart attack they give me, so you wanna try explaining to me why this is a secret?”
There were too many reasons, and he didn’t want to share any of them with Tony. There was the multiverse the Avengers accidentally created by screwing around in the past, there was the very real need to protect Nick Fury from Tony’s wrath, and then there was Mysterio.
He’d tricked him, betrayed him, tried to kill him.
It wasn’t something he was ready to talk about, and if he were still keeping track of all the things that were different now, and all the things that were the same, he’d added betrayal to the lists of things that were true on both sides of the snap.
“What happened, Peter?” asked Tony, again, and this time, his arms were crossed.
The words flew from Peter’s mouth without his permission. Rambling was a second nature and spilling his guts while trying to protect a secret continued to be one of his deepest flaws. It didn’t help he was trying to hide it from Tony. He hated lying to him. Stealing his sweatshirts was fine, but lying, that hurt too much. It crossed a line.
Once Peter was finished not a detail of his trip was spared, and the garage got quiet. Tony simply blinked back at him, silent, and seemingly processing, until outrage twisted its way into every line on his face.
“Fury ruined your summer vacation.”
“It’s not like that – “
“-he put you in danger. You could’ve died.”
“I could die just walking to school in the morning.”
Tony’s expression turned harder, and Peter wondered what was wrong with him, wondered how he thought his latest statement would improve the situation. He shook his head, trying to snap himself out of saying all the wrong words.
“He needed me. The world was- “
“Is,” corrected Tony. “The world is always in danger. He could’ve found someone who’s not a teenage to help him.”
“Without you and Nat there really aren’t that many viable options.”
“Oh really? What about Thor?”
Peter shifted on his chair, feeling a sense of deja vu. “He’s still traveling around the galaxy with those dance-off guys.”
“Carol – “
“-probably has a more important crisis to solve,” said Peter. “Look, I’ve been through this whole list once before.”
The garage went quiet again, and Tony released a deep, loud breath. He pulled Peter off the chair by his arms, pulled him in for a hug, then kissed him on the forehead.
“I’m glad you’re okay.”
“You don’t have to worry about me so much,” said Peter. “I’m not that breakable.”
More wrong words, Peter knew, because Tony would never stop worrying. He’d literally broke apart into tiny dust particles in Tony’s arms.
Tony tightened his hug, then released. “Go play with your sisters.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Peter, but he had a feeling he knew. Tony already had his cellphone out of his pocket, and he imagined Nick Fury was about to get an earful. Part of Peter wanted to listen, and that he hadn’t just been order to go play with his – “Wait, what? Sisters? Did you adopt someone else?”
Tony didn’t answer. His phone was pressed up against his ear as he waved Peter away, telling him to get lost.
Peter left the garage, telling himself it had more to do with curiosity and his need to escape with his new hoodie unnoticed than it did the actual order.
He walked into the cabin through the front door and followed the noise to the living room, where Morgan and Nebula were sitting on the couch. Their eyes were glued to the screen, and Nintendo Switch controllers were locked in their hands. They were playing Mario Kart, and from the looks of it, Nebula was letting Morgan win.
She didn’t, however, let Peter win after he joined their game. They both battled hard. They both shouted at each other when the blue shells were deployed. A win by blue shell was a cheap win, and everyone knew that. They were in the middle of a close race when Tony walked into the living room and ordered FRIDAY to shut off the TV.
“I’ve been yelling that dinner is ready for ten minutes,” said Tony.
When they all sat around the dining room table, Peter had the nerve to look at Tony and ask, “How did your phone call go?”
“Very productive,” he told him, as he piled a mountain of broccoli on Morgan’s plate. She frowned at it, and at him. Tony moved on to slicing the ham at the center of the table. “Nick Fury isn’t allowed to talk to you unless he goes through me first.”
“Oh,” said Peter. Nebula capitalized the time Tony was distracted with the ham, and scrapped half of Morgan’s broccoli and dumped it onto her own plate. Morgan rewarded her with a grin. “Just until I’m eighteen, right?”
“Yeah, sure,” said Tony. “Until you’re eighteen.”
Somehow, Peter doubted he was being sincere.
*
Tony’s tennis shoes squeaked against the sparkling white floor of the new Avenger’s compound as he sped through the halls of the medical wing. The plastic bag he gripped was dripping drops of water everywhere, just like his hair dripped down the back of his neck onto the back of his shirt.
Outside, it was pouring. Inside, his kid was in a numbered room, hurt, lying on a hospital bed.
Tony needed to get to him.
He quickened his pace, separating himself further from Pepper and Morgan, who tried, only half-heartedly, to keep up with him.
“Tony, slow down,” said Pepper. Her voice was loud, echoed off the walls, even though her gritted teeth.
He kept going, at the same speed, and eventually his search led him to turn a corner, leaving Pepper and Morgan out of sight.
Tony watched the numbers on the closed doors get bigger and bigger as he continued through the halls, until he came to the door with numbers that matched the text message May had sent him.
The one that had Peter inside.
He paused with his hand on the doorknob, shut his eyes, and prepared himself for the awful sight of a broken kid, of his child bruised and bloody and unconscious, but when he finally willed himself to turn the knob and open his eyes, that wasn’t what he saw.
Peter was sitting up in his bed, smiling, surrounded by flowers and get well cards and presents. His arm was in a sling, his face was a little bit bruised and he had a bandage covering his forehead, but he was alert. He was fine. Better than fine, actually, by the looks of him.
“Oh, hey Tony,” said Peter, with a grin splitting his face.
Tony was still standing at the door, staring at him. “They said you were in a serious car accident.”
“I was.”
“They said you had a major surgery.”
“I did,” said Peter, with a shrug. “It’s over now.”
Over. Just like that. As if Tony didn’t just almost have his entire world yanked out from under him, again.
He took a breath and tried to let the panic leave his chest.
“I heal fast, remember? It’s a spider thing,” he told him. He grabbed the glass of apple juice from his bedside table and sipped on it through a straw. He looked up at Tony, then cringed. The smile left his lips. “The car’s totaled. I’m sorry, Tony, I know you worked really hard on it.”
“I don’t care about the stupid car,” he said, with an exhale. He left his panic and his anxiety by the door and walked over to sit in the chair next to Peter’s bed, holding up the wet, plastic bag as he went. “I brought you something.”
Hesitantly, Peter took the bag and looked inside. His smile came back, like a light in the dark, as he pulled a red, Iron Man hoodie away from the plastic.
“This is awesome,” said Peter. The plastic bag fell, forgotten, to the floor, while Peter struggled to put on the hoodie with his one good arm. When he had no success, he looked at Tony. “How… did you know to bring me this?”
“Kid,” said Tony. He knew Peter well enough to know what he was really asking, to know he was really asking if Tony knew about all the hoodies of his that had seemingly walked out of his home since Peter came back from dust. “You’re not sneaky.”
First, it’d been his MIT hoodie that never returned, then the SI hoodie that disappeared from the garage. It had become a pattern after that. Hoodies left out whenever Peter was around would inevitably become Peter’s. Once or twice, Tony left out a few on purpose.
“Sorry,” said Peter, but he didn’t sound very apologetic. “They just remind me of home. When I’m not there and I’m wearing one, it’s like I’m carrying a piece of home with me.” He paused, then looked away. “I know it’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid,” said Tony.
If only Peter knew how much he lived for those words, those words that confirmed to him that he thought of the cabin by lake as home, and if only he knew how much he loved him, it’d be impossible for him to believe for a second Tony thought anything he had to say was stupid.
Peter offed Tony another, small, shaky smile. “Help me put it on.”
“Nope. Absolutely not.”
“Why?”
“You’ll hurt your arm,” said Tony, as he gestured to his cast.
“I won’t. I promise,” said Peter. He gave him puppy dog eyes. “Please?”
Tony gave in and helped pull the hoodie over his head and down over the rest of his body. His casted arm stayed under the fabric, but he managed to get his good arm in the sleeve.
“Thanks, Tony.”
“Petey!”
Morgan zoomed into the room, leaving Pepper behind at the door, and jumped up onto Peter’s hospital bed. She tackle-hugged him.
“Be careful,” Pepper told her, but she wasn’t listening. She clung onto Peter, who hugged her back with his functional arm.
“It’s okay, Pep,” said Tony. “He seems to be the one made of iron.”
“And now I’ve got the hoodie to prove it.”
“Peter,” said Morgan. She let go of him, scooted backward and sat at the end of his bed. “Dad was so worried about you, then I was too, but mom said everything would be okay, because spiders have nine lives.”
Nine wasn’t enough. Three thousand wouldn’t be, either. Not for his kids. He didn’t say so out loud. If tonight taught him anything, it was that he could stand not to worry so much, especially it if was affecting Morgan.
They stayed with Peter for hours. It was long enough for him to tell them multiple different Spider-Man stories that made Morgan laugh, and that made Tony’s heart jump to his throat. It was long enough for Peter to wear himself out talking, and for Tony to discover that was, indeed, possible, and long enough for Peter to admit his arm was getting achy again.
Tony alerted a nurse, who gave Peter more pain meds, and ten minutes later, he was out cold, just like Tony knew he would be. Morgan was cuddled up next to him, also asleep. It was a miracle. Tony’s entire world fit just on that one, small hospital bed.
He brushed the hair back off Peter’s forehead. “I love you, kid.”
“Mmhmm,” said Peter, quiet, with his eyes closed, mostly asleep, but not as far gone as Tony had thought he was. “Like the sun.”
“The sun?”
“Sun’s the same, every morning,” said Peter.
On both sides of the snap.
Tony finished it for him, because he was sure that’s what he meant.
Peter and his lists of all the things that were different and everything that was the same. His search for everything and anything that could tether him to his life before Thanos snapped his fingers and took five years from him. Tony could be that for Peter. His anchor, and his home.
Tony watched Peter’s chest move up and down, watched breath moving out and in, to remind himself that Peter could breathe. He dabbed his eyes with his thumb, then spread a blanket over his kids, so they wouldn’t get cold.