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“You’re not my father! You’re Morgan’s father. Go console her.”
The sentence hangs between them. Dark and stifling and heavy, it sucks everything but pain from their hearts and souls.
Tony is the first one to speak, voice quiet, “Morgan is fine. I want to talk to you.”
“I don’t care,” Peter hisses, “I don’t care about any of you. Just leave me alone.”
“Peter –“
“Go!”
“Peter!” Tony matches his raised voice but immediately tries to reel it back in. “I just want to help you. Talk to me, please.” There’s no reply, no movement from the boy curled up on the bed, back to the door and to Tony. Tony isn’t even sure if he’s breathing. “I know this isn’t like you.”
“You don’t know anything! And you know nothing about me!”
“That’s not true, Peter,” Tony brings out between gritted teeth. And it’s not the anger he’s trying to control, it’s the god-forsaken helpness that he is desperately trying to stop from bleeding into his voice. And it’s fear. Fear of – after all these years and all his hard trying – to still turn into his father. “I know you.”
“No,” Peter snorts coldly, “you don’t.” He takes in a deep, shaky breath, getting ready to deliver the words he hopes would get him what he’s asking for. “If you did, you’d leave me alone.”
Tony is surprised when silence follows. He was so sure that his heart shattering into a million pieces would echo through the room, boom through the entire house and shake the ground on the other side of the earth. It doesn’t, however. His heart breaks in silence and it’s all the more painful for it.
Without saying a word, he gets up from where he was crouching next to Peter’s bed and, out of habit, reaches out to ruffle his hair but stops deadtrack when Peter tenses in anticipation. His arm falls listlessly to his side, joining the one on the other side, that he hasn’t quite gotten used to, in its uselessness.
If he can’t touch his child, why is he able to touch at all?
“Let me know if you want me to call May to take you home.”
When he leaves, he tries to be as quiet as possible. Hell, he barely even breathes. The creaking of his joints and the shuffling of fabric and the soft click of the door are the only sounds in the eerily quiet room full of unsaid words.
The second the door closes behind Tony, Peter lets out a stuttering breath. His body is shaking with barely suppressed sobs, his heart is heavy with everything he hasn’t said and his stomach is boiling with anger. The worst thing by far, though, is the loneliness in his chest that takes his breath away. As if the lack of people – people who loved him – makes his ribcage collapse and keep his lungs from expanding. He can’t breathe.
He sobs.
He presses the pillow onto his face and bites down on his lip and squeezes his eyes shut but it does him no good. He’s shaking and before long he’s sobbing and wailing and mourning, curled in on himself to provide the cruel outside world with as little a target as possible.
On the other side of the door, Tony has helplessly sunken to the floor, head held in both hands, grabbing at his hair just a little too strongly. Whereas Peter suffers loudly and violently, he cries quietly. There is the tiniest drip of the first tear hitting the cold metal of his hand as the only indication that he’s crying at all.
He presses the heel of his hand into his eye socket as if he could force the tears back where they came from with sheer power of will. Unsuprisingly, not even the vibranium in his prosthetic is strong enough to conquer true emotion. So, he pulls up his knees, hugs them to his body, rests his head on his knees and succumbs to his silent pain. And he waits.
After a while Peter’s wailing quietens and eventually stops and Tony’s tears have dried out and they’re both breathing more freely.
Peter has turned on his back and rubs at the itching dried tear streaks on his cheeks. He is still clutching the pillow to his chest as if to fill up the hole he so blatantly feels. But maybe that’s not what’s helping him breathe. Maybe it’s the steady heartbeat right outside his door that never once left.
“I don’t want you to call May,” he croaks into the empty room.
It’s quiet for a short moment but the sound of hair brushing against wood reveals that Tony has heard him.
“Can I come in?”
He nods into the dark. “Yeah.”
The door opens and, without getting up from the floor, Tony crawls in, closes the door behind him and leans against the wall next to it. “Thank you for letting me in.”
Peter shakes his head. “It’s your house.”
“It’s your room.”
“I know,” Peter exhales and carefully climbs down from the bed until his back is propped up against the wooden frame. “I’m sorry.” He looks over to Tony who can barely make out his shape in the dark and crawls a little closer until they’re almost in touching distance and Tony can make out his features.
“You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“I don’t want you to call May because she doesn’t have to bring me home. I am home.” He evades Tony’s gaze and he’s not sure how to go from there. How to put the anger and loneliness and shame and guilt he feels into words. But Tony gives him time and space and just like when he was sitting outside the door motionless, his nonobligatory presence quells his solitude.
“I don’t know why I did it. I never meant to hurt anyone. Especially not you. Or Morgan.” He looks up, imploring Tony to believe him, to forgive him.
Tony leans forward, elbows on his knees and face almost in touching distance to Peter but trying not to be the one to bridge the last few inches. “We’re okay,” he reassures him and, because it sounds like he needs to hear it, he adds, “We forgive you.”
Grateful Peter’s eyes fly up to his and he reaches out for the first time since he has stormed into his room and rests his hand on Tony’s shin who puts his own hand on top of it.
“Everything has gone so … so good, since I’ve been back, you know?” he starts, “I’ve been happy with May and you and Pepper and Morgan and everyone. Every since … everything happened… I’ve been content and I’ve never felt like I didn’t belong and I never thought about those 5 years where I wasn’t… Or,” he wrings his hands, frustrated when the words just don’t seem to match the experience, “I mean, of course I’ve thought about them. I guess? Just… not really. I never thought about what your life was like without me. I didn’t really think about how we lost our old apartement because we got a new one, you know? I was just so glad that everyone got out of that battle alive. I was just so relieved when you… when you woke up and,” he turns his hand and squeezes Tony’s, lowering his voice in hope of hiding the shame in his next words, “I think I never really mourned everything else. I haven’t had time to be terrified and angry and… I lashed out and I’m so sorry. But I’m still terrified and angry and grieving and I don’t know how to handle it. I don’t know what to do.”
“Oh, kid.”
Tony slides forward and from the cold floor onto the loosely woven rug. In a swift motion he pulls Peter into an embrace and feels the kid immediately tense trying not to cry. Gently, he fully circles his arms around his back and starts slowly rocking them both back and forth as he does Morgan whenever she’s upset.
Finally, Peter loosen up in his arms and just as soon the tears start rolling again. Though, they’re different this time. Less powerless and more cathartic. A weight is being lifted off his chest. Not fully, no, not even close. But even that little piece of shame, that wasn’t solely on his shoulders anymore, helps him breathe.
“You’re going to be okay, buddy,” Tony whispers into his ear, so certain and confident that it must be true. He never stops the rocking motion. “You’ve been through literal hell and back and I don’t know how you’ve kept it together this long in the first place.” He laughs quietly, “Must’ve been that damn stubbornness of yours.”
“’as just glad you’re alright,” Peter mumbles into his shirt, then turns and wiggles around until he’s laying flat on the ground, head in Tony’s lap who immediately starts carding through his curls.
“I’m so glad you’re alright,” Tony echoes back at him, “And we’ll get you through the rest, alright? No therapist is too expansive, no comfort food too unhealthy and no talk too uncomfortable. You’ll deal with all the feelings like I’ve never done and everything will be okay. Though, I must warn you,” he chuckles, “this family is as crazy as they come, so normal might never really be an option again.
Peter smiles and yawns. “’s okay. Not normal ‘s ‘kay.”
Maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t a horrible person after all. He turns his face into Tony’s stomach. For now, though, he was just so unbelievably tired and Tony was warm and caring and…