Chapter Text
Peter doesn’t realize that something has gone terribly wrong until the last alien hits the ground.
At first he’s excited, body thrumming with adrenaline as he sidesteps over their victory. The fight had been, for lack of a better term, a satisfying study break. He takes a moment to stretch out the tightness in his back and shoulders, relishing in the cold air as his heart rate calms.
Satisfied, he sweeps his eyes across their small battlefield in search of a familiar flash of red and gold. Though the fight had started on the ground, they’ve ended up on the rooftop of some ritzy skyscraper, the city stretched far beneath them and painted gold in the dark light of the moon.
Aside from all the alien guts, it’s not a bad view.
“Tony?”
The man had called him just over an hour earlier asking for his help in scrambling up a couple of rouge aliens from their last big mission. Being close by and more than ready to assist his hero, Peter had been in his suit and by Tony’s side in a matter of minutes, hardly believing his luck. Somehow, despite everything they’ve been through, he still managed to get nervous every time he fought alongside his hero.
To his relief, however, the fight went off without a hitch. Unlike their normal brand, neither sustained any injuries, ‘finishing off the fight with flare’, as Tony would say.
But where is he now?
“Tony?” Peter calls again, slipping off his mask and looking around with enthusiasm. “Where’d you go?”
His voice carries and dies in silence.
“Hello?”
Confused and a little unnerved, Peter spins on his heels in a full 360 and debates putting his mask back on to ask Karen for Tony’s location. It’s out of character for Tony to vanish like this, and it makes his stomach tighten in worry.
“Mr. Stark!”
“Here.”
Peter jumps and turns towards the noise, feeling relief leak into his limbs. “Oh. H-hey man. There you are.”
Tony doesn’t say anything, stiff as a board and levitating a few feet off the ground. There’s a chunk of metal missing from his helmet, ripped clean through so his right eye and nose are showing.
“You’re mask-”
“Peter Parker?”
“What? Yeah Tony. Are- are you okay? You look a little off. Did one of the aliens hurt-”
But there is no ‘you’, because before Peter can finish his sentence, Tony is flying towards him at an alarming speed, repulsors glowing bright. Startled, Peter jumps out of the way and shouts in alarm. “Tony! What the-”
A fiery blast of hot energy hits the ground between his feet. Yelling out once more, Peter scrambles back, hands raised in frantic defense at the sudden rush of heat. “Tony! Stop! What are you doing?”
He doesn’t get an answer. As Tony progresses forward, Peter tries desperately to connect with the man, but his eyes are as blank and empty as the night sky behind him. It’s then that it all comes together, and Peter feels his heart stutter in his chest.
“Oh- oh no. Did you breathe in any gas? Oh God. You did, didn’t you?”
Another blast of energy is fired towards him. It barely misses his shoulder and the material of his suit begins to smoke. Not good. So not good. The aliens were known to produce an aerial toxin that triggers the brain to be particularly inclined to violence. Someone would kill their own family if exposed to it.
And right now, Peter is the only target.
Just his luck.
“Snap out of it Mr. Stark! Wake up!”
Peter feels his heel catch on uneven cement and he stumbles, falling hard on his butt and using the momentum to scramble backwards on his hands and feet. The fear hits him now. He feels it in the sharp sting on the back of his tongue and the inability to fully breathe, his spider-sense screaming and making his head spin. He moves to pull on his mask and realizes in detached wonder that he no longer has it in his hand.
“Peter Parker,” Tony says again, his voice monotonous and void of everything Peter is used to. It’s chilling, and Peter lifts a shaky hand in warning.
“D-don’t come any closer!”
But Tony does. Without blinking an eye, he closes the distance between them and encloses his gauntleted hand around Peter’s outstretched wrist. Before Peter can comprehend the pain, his web shooter sparks with electricity as the gadget breaks under pressure. He screams as his wrist snaps along with the mechanism and arcs his foot up in a reflexive kick. It hits Tony in the abdomen and succeeds in forcing the man to let go, pushing him back a couple steps.
Breathing heavily, Peter scrambles away, broken wrist pinned to his chest protectively. He can feel Tony following him closely and gasps when his metal fingers close around his shoulder, halting his escape.
Peter uses his remaining web shooter to fire a web at Tony’s oncoming fist, pulling the force of it off course so it slams into the concrete at their feet. It breaks like ice around the impact and the shock of knowing it had been directed at him leaves him weak.
“Tony please-”
Undeterred, Tony swings his arm with the web out to the side, throwing Peter off his balance. As he stumbles, Tony uses his other hand to throw a hard punch into the boy’s ribs. He hears them crack but hardly feels the pain, tears welling in his eyes.
“This- this isn’t you. Look at me-”
Peter gasps as his undamaged wrist is pinned against the roof, the metal crushed just like the first. As he screams, Tony finds his eyes, staring blankly and completely unaffected by Peter’s pain.
“It’s me. It’s- It’s Peter. This isn’t you! Fight it!”
The panic and fear in his body has made him numb. When Tony closes his hand around Peter’s throat, he can barely blink, let alone fight it away. The very real possibility that he’s about to die races through him like lightning.
“T-Tony. Mr. Stark.”
The pressure on his throat increases as the man lifts him off the ground. Peter manages to lift his hands to the vice grip, fingers curling around Tony’s in an attempt to relieve the strain. It makes his wrists shoot in pain and for a moment, all he can see are stars.
When his vision clears, he’s hanging by Tony’s hand over a 100 story drop. The city swarms like an anthill beneath them and Peter tightens his hold against Tony’s. His web shooters are shattered.
If Tony drops him, he will die.
“Tony,” Peter chokes. With every ounce of being he can muster, he searches Tony’s eyes. Just as before, they hold no resemblance to the man Peter knows. His hero. His friend.
His family.
“Don’t drop me.”
The grip tightens so dramatically that Peter thinks his neck will be crushed before he even gets the chance to fall. Despite the pain, he refuses to break his eye contact with his mentor. They glimmer against Peter’s reflection, glassy and distant.
“Not your fault,” he chokes. It’s hard to speak around the vice grip and nearly impossible to pull together sentences through the thick fog in his head. But he tries, even when his vision tunnels. It’s important. “I- I- forgive you. Don’t- don’t blame yourself, okay?”
He needs Tony to understand. This could be his last chance, and more than ever, despite hanging above certain death, he knows it to be true.
“I l-love you.”
There’s a flicker of recognition in Tony’s eyes. A glimmer of himself that almost has Peter believing that it’s over, that they’ll be okay.
But then Tony drops him.
He doesn’t have the breath to scream.
Though Tony disappears quickly from his view, Peter keeps the man’s face in his mind as the ground races up to meet him. It fills his eyes with tears, the injustice of it all.
Tony will never forgive himself.
And Peter is going to die.
The wind rips through him viciously as he plummets. He’s fallen through this same skyline countless times and can hardly believe it’s his last.
He closes his eyes and sees May’s face beside Tony’s. Ned and MJ’s, too.
Though he’s never prayed before in his life, the words come to him now.
Help them be safe. Help them be okay.
He wants to be brave. He wants it more than anything.
Eyelids dark, it’s impossible to tell how close he is to the ground. The sounds of traffic draw closer, he thinks he hears a scream.
The impact is jarring.
It hits him all at once, stealing his air and lighting every broken bone on fire. For one soul wrenching second, he thinks the pain of it is his last conscious thought. That just like that, his short sixteen years have expired into dust.
Then he feels metal arms under his shoulders and thighs, hears through the static the distant roar of repulsors. Swears and sobs echo through it all in a delirious cocktail of grief, and Peter comes to the realization quite slowly that he hasn’t died after all.
“Tony?” It’s weak and breathless, like he’s just hopped off the world’s fastest roller coaster. With the last of his energy, his eyelids separate and he sees Tony’s face, covered in tears and unmistakable horror.
He had caught him.
“Tony-”
They crescent their journey on the top of a different, much shorter building. Peter feels himself being laid on his back and for some reason beyond his current comprehension, can’t find the strength to move from it.
Above him, Tony has his head in his hands. He’s shaking and Peter tries to reach out towards him, to show him he’s alright, but all he can do is twitch his fingers.
“Nice- nice catch.”
Tony’s shoulders still, going dangerously quiet. Peter watches with blurred vision as his face appears from behind his hands, the eye Peter can see bloodshot and brimming with an emotion he’s too tired to fully recognize.
“Pete-”
“Not your fault,” Peter breathes, exhausted. He closes his eyes and almost can’t find the strength to open them again. His body feels like the plane he had crashed in Coney Island.
“It is my fault,” Tony says. There’s tension and remorse coloring his voice, which tremors violently. “Christ, Peter. I hurt you.”
“You- you saved me.”
“No!”
“You always save me.”
“Peter-”
“S’okay.” He tries for a smile, but it must look like a grimace because Tony stifles another noise of regret. “I’m okay. I promise.”
“Oh kid-”
With a rush of vertigo, Peter feels himself being pulled up into Tony’s arms. It’s only until he feels the warmth of Tony’s skin that he realizes he’s removed himself from his suit. It’s nice, familiar, and the last of Peter’s resolve vanishes like smoke.
His hero.
His friend.
And in some ways, his father.
If he hadn’t known it before, he sure as hell knows it now.
“I love you too, kiddo,” Tony whispers, and Peter feels their hug tighten, as if it’s the man’s sole intention of never letting go.
And maybe, Peter thinks, it is.