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Peter had been ignoring Tony a little bit more than what could be passed off as normal. His excuses of homework and Academic Decathlon and Ned just got back from vacation, Mister Stark! We have to bingewatch all of Star Wars again! Obviously! It’s tradition, I swear! Couldn’t hold up forever. Tony was already suspicious after Peter skipped six weeks, twelve lab nights, in a row.
In all honesty, Peter just doesn’t want Tony to see through the façade he’s built himself. Things have been… tough, lately, to say the least.
They passed the anniversary of Ben’s death and Peter didn’t remember. He totally forgot. He’d done his homework, gone out as Spider-Man, got home late, and was eating leftover dinner when May had shuffled in.
“Hey, honey, how are you feeling?” She’d asked, face all drawn up in sympathy. She hadn’t been crying, no evidence left behind on her face of old tears, but she looked like she expected him to.
“I’m… I’m fine,” he had said, more than a little confused.
And then she’d reminded him of the date, even more sympathy washing over her features.
It had led into a pretty incredible downward spiral.
He was just… angry. Really, really angry. At himself.
He couldn’t believe he’d forgotten the date. He couldn’t believe he had just lived out another year, barely thinking about his late uncle. So, simply, he stopped everything. He put a pause on Spider-Man, he dropped out of Academic Decathlon until further notice, he declined every lab night that came up.
The big question was why. He wasn’t even sure himself. Why was this going to help anything? Why was he choosing to isolate himself once again? He understood the guilt at least, the guilt that he was no longer grieving that he feels like he should be. But otherwise?
Otherwise, he doesn’t know.
He’s just angry. He never found Ben’s killer. He gave up when Mister Stark invited him to Germany. He put that on hold, except he never tried again.
And not only that, there’s more he had forgotten in living his life in the Fastlane. Skip’s getting out of prison in a few months, May’s work is having budget cuts again like they do every five years like he should’ve remembered, the anniversary of his parents’ death has come and gone so many times with no recognition on his part.
And he’s been spending all of his time hanging out with a billionaire, and carelessly swinging around the city.
He’s just angry.
He needs everything to stop for just a second.
And then it does.
*
Peter was working on homework at the dining room table, he’d closed his eyes for just a second, and when he’d opened them, he was wherever here is.
He’s alone, standing in the center of what looks like a millionaire’s mansion, unused plush couches, the biggest sparkling chandelier he’s ever seen, a huge spiral staircase across from him.
The room is mostly bare, going for the whole I’m too rich to need to buy décor vibe, even with white walls.
There’s a flash of orange light and then Tony’s landing on the ground across from Peter, eyes wild.
Peter’s too focused on reaching out for Tony that he doesn’t realize the new people in the room until it’s too late.
He’s grabbed from behind, elbows pulled behind his back, gloved hands gripping him tight. There’s another arm pulling him into a headlock, and another person kicking him hard in the back of his knees so he falls against the hold on him.
Only one guard grabs Tony, lifting the billionaire to his feet and holding his elbows behind his back as well.
The fifth and final stranger in the room stalks between them, a little too carelessly for Peter’s liking.
“Peter!” Tony gasps, struggling against the guard holding him.
Peter tries to get out of the grip on him, but it’s useless which scares Peter. He has super-strength. He should be able to escape without breaking a sweat, but he can’t. Which probably means these soldiers are either mutants or have super-strength to rival Peter’s.
“Settle down, settle down,” the obvious leader tsks, stopping in front of Peter. He’s wearing what looks like what Diego from The Umbrella Academy wears, like he thinks he’s some sort of assassin or spy.
“What do you want?” Peter demands, throwing on a façade of confidence. He pretends he has the upper hand in the situation. “Let us go!”
“What I want is simple, Mister Parker,” the man drawls, a hint of an English accent in his voice. “I’m not going to bother with a monlogue. All I want is for you to tell the truth.”
Peter rolls his eyes, blowing his hair away from his eyes. “Yeah, that’s not really working for me, dude, I have no idea what you’re-”
He doesn’t expect the punch that lands on his cheek, snapping his head to the side. This dude must be enhanced too with how much it hurt.
Blood fills his mouth and as gross as it tastes, he lets it accumulate for a second before he winks at the stranger and spits the blood in his face.
It works exactly as he thought it would, the man jumps back in surprise with a shout of annoyance, gloved hands flying up to get it off his face as Peter grins.
Tony’s shouting, but it doesn’t seem to register to anybody as the leader throws another few punches at Peter, even landing a few to Peter’s ribs which snap under the strength.
Eventually, when even Peter’s about to call it quits, he takes a step back, wiping his hands on his pants.
“Alright, now that you understand that I am not a joke, let’s move along, shall we?” he says, still as calm and even as ever. Peter gags on the blood in his mouth and throws up onto the guard’s shoes and all down the front of his t-shirt.
“Shit, man,” he slurs, wincing at the mess he made on the white carpet. “That was an accident, I swear.”
The Leader rolls his eyes. “Fine, whatever, but I need you to tell the truth.”
Peter slowly lifts his eyes, head spinning. That beating really did him bad. “Please elaborate. I literally don’t understand what you mean.”
“He’ll tell the truth!” Tony shouts. His eyes are fixed on Peter, watching the blood slide down his face, dripping onto the carpet. He’s pretty obviously panicking. “Just tell him what!”
Sighing, the Leader begins pacing the room. “I’m not allowed to elaborate. That’s against the rules of the game, you see. I’ve said as much as I’m allowed to say.”
“Just say something, kid,” Tony begs, still struggling to get free. It’s pointless.
“Um, well, the truth is, I cheated on my fourth grade Spelling Bee. May mouthed the letters to one of the really hard words to me,” Peter says. He has no idea why that was the first thing to come to mind, but he’s rolling with it.
Even though he expects the blow to his head, it doesn’t make it hurt any less.
He lets his head hang, holding the majority of his weight up by the guards’ hold on him. Taking deep breaths, ignoring the ache in his chest, he tries to think of a good answer.
In all honesty, there’s a lot of things that he’s kept a secret from Tony. A lot that he just chooses not to mention, but he doesn’t know what the man wants him to say.
“Let’s make this a little easier for you, hm?” the man drawls, pulling a handgun out of the back of his pants. “We don’t have all day, you must understand.”
“Don’t you dare fucking touch him!” Tony yells, pulling desperately against the guard holding him. “Don’t you fucking dare!”
But the man just chuckles and presses the barrel of the gun to Tony’s temple.
“Please,” Peter begs, panic suddenly filling his body. “I need- I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t understand. What truth am I supposed to tell?”
Tony seems way too perfectly content to have the gun on him as long as it’s off Peter, but Peter’s panicking and he thinks he might be crying, but he can’t tell through how much blood is already dripping down his face.
The man tsks again. “I’ve told you once before, Mister Parker, that’s not the game.”
It’s… It’s scary, yes, but more than that, it’s humiliating. He has to tell any secrets he can think of until he can guess the right one. He doesn’t even know where to start.
But there’s a gun on Tony’s head and Peter’s been beaten, and it’s not like he really has a choice but to start spilling truths.
“Um, I forgot Ben’s anniversary this year,” Peter starts. “I didn’t even realize the date until May reminded me and I felt- I guess I felt so guilty, so angry, that I started isolating myself from everyone. That’s why I skipped the last few weeks of lab nights.”
From the man’s unshifting expression, Peter can safely guess he got it wrong, so he keeps going.
“On the night of the Vulture, he dropped a warehouse on me.” He’s almost certain he’s crying and the words are falling out of his mouth faster than he can comprehend them, and he thinks he’s shaking violently in the guards’ hold. “He took down the support systems and he left when the building fell. I was suitless so I couldn’t get help. I was all by myself and I had to save your plane so I lifted the whole fucking thing off of me, and I still have nightmares about that night.”
The man rolls his eyes. “Try again, Mister Parker, I’m getting bored.”
“I’m sorry- I- I don’t know. I don’t know what you want me to say,” he pleads. “I- Skip? Is that what you want me to say? Is that my secret?”
Click of the safety being turned off when the man shakes his head. “Wrong again, Mister Parker. You should hurry up and continue guessing before I lose my patience.”
“I don’t know! Please- I- I don’t-” Peter cries, desperately pulling against the guards. “Please just- just shoot me instead. I don’t care. Please leave him out of it!”
“Mister Parker.”
“I see you as more than a mentor!” he blurts. Anything, he just needs to say anything. “I- I didn’t want to make things weird, but I kind of see you as more of a- of a dad, a- a father-figure.”
“Kid-”
“I- I keep having nightmares about Titan. I can barely sleep at night. I just toss and turn for hours, and when I do sleep, I have godawful nightmares about Titan and about the Vulture and you almost dying and Ben and I- I’m so tired all the time. But I… I never talked about it before, so I just- I just stopped talking about all of it.”
The Leader’s gun dips and he takes a few steps over to Peter, and for a split second he thinks he got it. That he told the truth he needed to tell, but instead, the Leader throws another punch.
Peter takes the round of punches, all while trying to think of a secret he’s kept, a truth to tell, but he’s all out of truths. He has no idea what else he can tell.
When the Leader gives up on beating the answer out of Peter, he moves back over to Tony, pushing the gun against the billionaire’s temple.
“You’ve got one minute, Parker.”
Peter sobs, spitting up blood and bile, shaking and crying and so desperate to just get this over with.
“I don’t know!” he cries out, knees giving out and leaving him dangling from the guards’ grip. “I don’t know! Please!”
He’s out of options. He doesn’t know any secrets he has. None that he’s been intentionally holding from Tony.
“Peter, kiddo, it’s okay,” Tony says. His voice is shaking though, and he looks on the verge of tears. “It’s okay. Just close your eyes and breathe, okay?”
Chin dropping to his chest, head heavy and cloudy, he keeps going. “I love you! I love you, is that a secret? Is that what you want? Please, I can’t-”
His knees hit the floor and he pitches forward, off-balance and crying and trembling from head to toe.
It registers much to slow that the guards didn’t just let go of him, he’s not even in the mansion anymore.
“You did it,” Tony breathes. He falls to his knees across from Peter, quickly drawing his kid into a hug. “It’s okay, kid, it’s okay. I’ve got you. It’s over now. You’ve gotta breathe.”
Peter sobs, hands scrabbling to grab Tony’s shirt, clinging onto him like he’s a lifeline. The adrenaline is crashing much too quickly and he’s in so much pain that he can’t even pinpoint a location on him that hurts more than the others.
And his brain, his head, is on loop. Tony didn’t say it back.
He knows it’s not the most important thing to think about, but the humiliation is blooming in his chest and he wants to hide away so he doesn’t have to face Tony ever again. He hates this. He hates, more than anything, that he was forced to give out his secrets.
Not only does Tony know that Peter thinks of him as a father-figure and that he loves him, but he also knows about Ben and about the nightmares and about the warehouse. He knows all of Peter’s deep dark secrets he’s been trying to hide from everybody for years.
He can’t. Hide away, that is. Because before he can even think about pulling away from Tony, he passes out.
*
When he comes to, he’s in Tony’s bed, tucked underneath the covers.
His first thought is how warm and safe he feels.
And then he remembers what happened.
He jolts up, frantically pulling at the covers that are much too carefully tucked around him, but then Tony appears at the doorway.
“Woah, kid, stop for a second. Relax. You went through a hell of day yesterday,” he says, pushing Peter’s shoulders until he’s laying back against the pillows again.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, tears springing to his eyes as a hot blush rises on his cheeks. He’s so embarrassed. Humiliated after yesterday. “I didn’t want to-”
But Tony has a warm smile on his face and he sits up on the bed beside Peter, gently pushing back the kid’s messy curls.
“You did everything right, Underoos,” Tony soothes softly. “I’m sorry you were ever put in that position, but you got us both out of there alive. And other than a few broken bones of yours, relatively unharmed. Speaking of, I have to show you the X-rays. I think they’re the coolest ones we’ve gotten yet. I didn’t even know you could break your cheekbone.”
Peter lets himself laugh, allows himself the luxury of curling his fingers into the sleeve of Tony’s sweater.
It’s easy enough to ignore the burning shame of his truths when Tony’s smiling beside him.
“We have a lot to talk about, kid, you know that.”
Peter nods silently. He doesn’t want to, but he knows he doesn’t really have a choice. Just like he didn’t have a choice of whether or not he wanted to admit those things in the first place.
“But we don’t have to talk about any of it until you’re ready,” Tony continues. There’s a sadness shining in his eyes and his hands are still kind of shaking where they’re bunching up the blankets. “Just please, for the love of god, don’t bottle this up. Isolating yourself wasn’t the way to do it. It’s not going to solve anything. So please just come to me or to May or to somebody. We can’t help you if you don’t let us, okay?”
He nods again. “Course… Yeah, of course, I just- I’m sorry.”
Tony offers a tentative smile and lifts his arm out, like extending an olive branch to Peter. And Peter, because he’s weak and desperate and hopelessly in need of comfort, immediately curls up under Tony’s arm, tucking himself against his mentor’s chest.
“You don’t have to be sorry, kid,” Tony murmurs, pressing a kiss to the crown of Peter’s head. “Strange said they were from the weird Sorcerer’s Club he has and they decided to start forcing the world to bend to their will, to get the outcome they wanted. I guess this is what they wanted, huh?”
“They wanted me to humiliate myself?” Peter can’t help but demand, voice bitter and biting with anger.
Tony immediately soothes Peter by running his fingers through his curls and rubbing circles into his back. “You don’t have to… You know I’m not good at the whole emotional conversations, but I don’t want you to beat yourself up over this. It’s okay. I promise you. There’s nothing you could say or do that would make me hate you.”
The three words don’t have to be said to be understood.
“But get some sleep, kid, you deserve it. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
Peter, still groggy from the beating he took the day before, still in the throes of healing, doesn’t need to be told twice, curling up tight against Tony’s chest gratefully.
“Night, Mister Stark.”
And just as he’s falling asleep, on the brink of unconsciousness, he hears Tony speak again.
“For the record, kid,” he whispers, “I love you too.”