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“You’re trying to kill me.”
Tony doesn’t respond to him, and there’s a dark moment when Peter thinks about taking an apple from the fruit bowl in front of him and chunking it at the man’s head.
This is what the lack of sleep is doing to him.
He shakes his head. No. That wasn’t right.
This is what Tony withholding the caffeine from him was doing to him.
“I don’t understand why I can’t just have one cup,” says Peter. He stares at the coffee maker. He smells that smell. That glorious smell. “This is torture. It’s cruel and unusual.”
Tony is unresponsive. He continues making the omelets, and Peter considers the fruit bowl a second time. He eyes an orange this time. Wonders if it is squishy, or if it’ll hit harder than the apple due to its larger size.
“Tonnnyyy,” says Peter. “I’m just so tired.”
“I know,” he tells him. “That’s what we’re trying to fix, remember?”
“Just a tiny cup won’t -”
“-Peter,” he said. “No.”
“This is so unfair,” he says. “I’m being punished for having insomnia.”
Finally, Tony turns and takes his attention off his breakfast making. “Chugging five energy drinks before bedtime isn’t insomnia, it’s stupidity, meaning it’s your own damn fault you’re banned from caffeine.”
“That happened one time .”
Tony goes back to ignoring him.
Peter growls at him, and hunches over to lay his head on the kitchen table. It’s too early to fall asleep, but now that it’s morning and Tony’s standing guard, his eyes are heavy and ready to shut. His brain is dazed and ready to turn off.
All of this is ruined when the sink faucet turns on and Tony begins flicking water at him.
“I thought you wanted me to sleep,” says Peter. He sits up in the chair, and glares at Tony.
“No,” he tells him. “I want you to sleep at nighttime, like a normal person, without any of your sleep avoiding behaviors sabotaging it.”
Peter growls again, just as Tony puts a plate with an omelet in front of him.
“Eat up. You’re gonna need the energy.”
He takes a bite, but he’s too resentful to admit that it’s good.
*
Tony parks the car as close to the entrance of the mall as he can, and that’s good, because Peter hardly feels like walking. Hardly feels like doing anything that’s not curling up and falling asleep in the backseat of the car, like a dog bathing in a sunbeam.
Peter really tries it, but Tony opens the back door and pulls him out before his eyes slid shut.
“Really don’t understand why we’re at the mall, Tony.”
“Told you about a million times on the way,” he says. “Pepper needs me to pick up her order.”
“Oh yeah, the one you screwed up.”
“I didn’t screw it up,” he snaps. “I just pushed the wrong button. Why would they even have the option to have it delivered to the store?”
“Let me rephrase,” says Peter. “I don’t understand why I’m at the mall.”
“It’s because you can’t be trusted. We’ve been over that, too.”
After Peter informs him that he absolutely can’t be seen at the mall in the presence of a parent, yes even if he does happen to be Iron Man, Tony confiscates his wallet.
“I’m not an idiot, Peter,” says Tony. “The first place you’d go is Starbucks.”
“I’m actually more of a Dunkin’ guy.”
“Not the point.”
So Peter wanders around the mall, alone, and without money, but he’s still very determined to find and secure coffee, or at least some caffeine. Something to wake him up, and keep him that way.
He’s so desperate he eyes a discarded Starbucks cup, sitting on top of a filled and overflowing trash can.
He approaches it. He shakes it around, but it’s empty. Not even a drop left.
“Parker, I understand you’re poor,” says the unmistakable voice of Flash Thompson. “But this seems low, even for you.”
“I wasn’t going to drink it,” says Peter. “I, uh, I was just making sure it was empty, so I could put it in the trash can.”
He attempts to put it in the overflowing trash can, but ends up making a bigger mess when even more trash falls out.
“Yeah,” says Flash. “I believe you.”
“Whatever, man,” says Peter, forgetting the mess, and the empty coffee cup. “Listen, I need your help.”
“Looks like you need sleep to me. You look like a zombie.”
“Forget sleep, okay? Please buy me some coffee. It’s an emergency.”
He must look desperate, because only a brief hint of disgust graces Flash’s features before he agrees.
“What kind?”
“Large.”
“Uh, okay,” he says. He turns, and walks towards Starbucks, but when he realizes Peter isn’t following him, he stops. “Aren’t you coming?”
“I can’t go in there,” says Peter. He imagines the smell, the residue, evidence Tony would sniff out like a bloodhound. “He would know.”
“Are you sure you shouldn’t just be taking a nap?”
Peter assures Flash he isn’t a zombie, and hesitantly, Flash steps inside the Starbucks and joins the line.
Peter finds a bench, sits, considers the possibility that Flash may have a point. And the bench is pretty comfortable. He could just rest his eyes, for a few seconds, and that he could get the best of both worlds without Tony ever finding out about it.
He’s hovering somewhere between foggy sleep and utter awareness that he’s sitting up, with his eyes closed, in a public mall, when Flash clears his throat.
Peter opens his eyes, and Flash is in front of him, holding out a large Starbucks cup.
“You’re a lifesaver,” says Peter, taking the cup.
“And you need help.”
Peter ignores him, and brings the beloved coffee closer to his lips.
“PETER PARKER!”
Both he and Flash jump, and watch as Tony marches towards them. The coffee gets snatched away from Peter, handed back to Flash.
“Just a little tip, Thompson, we don’t feed the gremlins.”
Tony pulls Peter up from the bench, and Peter wobbles a little on his feet, realizing just how drained he is as the mall around him spins. He has to steady himself by leaning on Tony.
“Yeah, coffee would’ve been a great plan right now,” says Tony, struggling a bit to support him while carrying Pepper’s bags.
Tony reimburses Flash for the coffee, and they leave the mall, without Peter having a chance to fix his caffeine problem.
*
It’s 6:39 PM, and the lake house is being attacked by a monsoon.
Peter can hear everything.
Hard, fast rain pelts the lake, the roof of the house, and in the distance, Gerald’s shed. Rain drops splashed into mud puddles, they collected in the gutters and rushed out at the bottom of the house, creating small streams in the grass Morgan would later stomp in wearing her yellow boots.
And it isn’t sensory overload, all these sounds. This is a lullaby, and Peter resents it.
“This is your fault. You had this planned,” says Peter. He’s in bed. He’s wearing his pajamas, because Tony insisted.
“I know ever since the whole saving the universe thing the god metaphors have gotten a little out of hand,” says Tony. “But you do know, I can’t actually control the weather.”
“It’s too early to go to bed.”
“Do you need a recap of all the places you almost fell asleep today?” asks Tony. “The breakfast table, a mall bench, the car, on the bathroom floor -”
“Please stop.”
“As long as you get the point.”
“Well I’m not tired anymore,” says Peter.
“Bullshit.”
Peter blinks at Tony, and before he can stop himself, yawns.
“Ok, kid,” says Tony. He sits on the edge of the bed. “Why are you all of the sudden resisting sleep? Nightmares? The boogeyman? Monster under the bed? I’ve still got my Anti-Monster spray bottle from when Morgan’s imaginary friend went to the darkside.”
“I miss Finnigan.”
“Don’t change the subject, I’m still waiting to hear why sleep has become your worst enemy.”
“You mentioned Finnigan first,” he points out. “And it’s not my enemy. I just -”
He pauses, and listens to the rain some more, as he tries to find the right words. There isn’t anymore avoiding the truth, because Tony’s determined to get to the bottom of it. Peter has pushed Tony past the point of the man letting him deal with this on his own, and Peter knows it.
And maybe, he’s done that on purpose. It’s a less brave, less intimidating way of asking for help.
“My thoughts are too loud,” says Peter. “And I don’t really wanna go to sleep, cause who knows when I’m gonna wake up -”
“-When your alarm goes off,” says Tony. The words are so simple if they were said in any other tone, Peter would’ve thought he was being made fun of, but Tony’s words are firm and gentle all at once. “Or if you’re me, when Morgan starts jumping on your bed and demanding breakfast.”
“I don’t want to miss another five years,” says Peter.
It’s not apparent that’s what he’s afraid of until the words are out of his mouth. But it’s the truth. He’s afraid of the nothingness he’d been sucked into. It’s the idea of missing out, on everything, of the world marching on without him while he drifts around in his dreams.
“That’s not going to happen.”
“I know that,” says Peter, a little frustrated, though he knows Tony doesn’t mean to sound condescending. “I know, I just I’m still -”
“Afraid,” he finishes. “That’s normal, Pete. I’m not gonna sit here and pretend I know what it's like to stop existing, but I know it can’t be easy.”
Peter muses over Tony’s words. They’re not life shattering, but there’s comfort and empathy in them, and Peter feels it, allows himself to feel overwhelmingly exhausted, the type he knows can’t be fixed with caffeine.
“I’m so tired,” he admits, the exhaustion leaking into his voice, desperate.
“I know,” says Tony. “Uh, hey, how about this. We’ll just dim the lights, and watch a movie. You don’t have to think about sleep.”
“Okay,” says Peter, and as Tony pushes the armchair closer to Peter’s bed and, once he’s seated, scrolls through Netflix, neither of them acknowledge that watching a movie is very much about tricking his brain into falling asleep.
Tony props his feet up on Peter’s bed, and Peter sinks into his pillow, under his comforter and listens to the screaming on his TV. A slasher might not be everyone’s idea of a lullaby, but it does go nicely with the rain.
And maybe that’s what does it, in the end.
Maybe it’s the screaming from the movie, or maybe it’s the rain colliding with the lake.
Maybe it’s all come down to Tony slapping the coffee and caffeine out of his hands, or a combination of all these things, that finally lets Peter slip into sleep.
But when Peter wakes up to the sound of the alarm on his phone, and he’s properly rested for the first time, in a long time, he looks at the empty armchair next to his bed and he’s pretty sure he owes his rest to Tony’s comforting presence.