Work Text:
Peter closed his eyes. Opened them. Closed them again. Scrunched them as tightly shut as he could, hoping it would send a signal to his brain to let him to sleep. Because he was desperate to sleep. To shut his brain off. So he could stop reliving what had happened a few days ago. Or what had almost happened...
His eyes snapped open again. Shit. Don’t think about it. Think about anything else. Think about…Ned. Ok that was good. A neutral thought. His best friend. Who he hasn’t seen since he almost… Dammit. That hadn’t even worked for a few seconds.
He stared at the darkened ceiling, having it practically memorized by now. He didn’t understand how he could be exhausted down to his very marrow, yet still be wide awake as if he’d drank ten Monster energy drinks, which he definitely hadn’t.
The rabbiting of his heart in his chest annoyed him almost as much as the blank ceiling. Screw it. There was no way he was going to be able to fall asleep. He kicked the covers off with a silent growl and padded out of his room, down the hallway, and downstairs to the couch in the cabin’s living room.
Ever since ‘the incident’, Tony had wanted to keep him close, and since it was summer break, it hadn’t been a problem, and May hadn’t minded because neither of them had actually told her about ‘the incident’ since Peter hadn’t wanted to freak her out after the fact. Tony hadn’t loved it, but he’d caved after Peter had wielded his most pitiful puppy eyes on him. Peter sighed. And to be honest, being in close proximity to Tony was probably the only reason he hadn’t completely lost it yet. As cliché as it was, Tony made him feel safe. And that was the one thing he needed more than anything after he’d almost…
Peter shook his head roughly as if he could dislodge the unwanted thoughts. Last night he’d spent the entire night tossing and turning and staring at the ceiling, and he knew if had to repeat that, he might have a breakdown. He clicked the TV on and tried to distract his brain with mindless television instead. The burning of his eyes was hard to ignore, so he rubbed at them and slumped further into the couch.
He didn’t understand why this was bothering him so much. Coming back from being dusted hadn’t caused nights of insomnia. And when that had happened, he’d actually died. This time he’d just…almost died. During a fight with a new weird green goblin guy, Peter had been too close when one of his bombs had gone off, and the blast had thrown him off the bridge and into the Hudson river. While he fell, he hadn’t even been scared. He’d figured he’d hit the water, then swim back to surface and web back up to the bridge to continue the fight. He’d hit the water hard just like he’d predicted, but then things had gone all wrong. He closed his eyes as he remembered.
Peter sunk faster than he’d thought he would. He tried to swim but kept getting struck by debris, the chunks of concrete and steel from the bridge pushing him back down. Before he knew it, he hit the bottom of the river and all the debris rained down around him. And on him. When he tried to push off the riverbed to start swimming back to the surface, his chest rose but he couldn’t free his bottom half. He was pinned. He tried pushing the debris off, but he couldn’t get enough leverage in his position with the decreased gravity underwater. Shit shit shit.
Oh god. This was bad. He was going to die. This wasn’t how he wanted it to end. He’d managed to take a deep breath before he’d slammed into the river but he could feel it wouldn’t last much longer. Air hunger was starting to set in. His hands sank into the muddy river floor and he tried to propel backward to yank his legs out from under the mass of concrete but he still couldn’t get the leverage he needed for it to work. Ideas flew through his brain, trying to come up with a solution to his predicament, but he couldn’t think of anything that would work. He was stuck. At the bottom of the river. And he really needed to breathe. He was going to drown. This wasn’t how Spiderman was supposed to die. Not after everything he’d survived.
He desperately thrashed, reason having fled as panic set in, but he didn’t gain so much as an inch of freedom. His chest burned and it took every ounce of willpower not to breathe. It didn’t matter that his mind knew that giving in to the instinct wouldn’t help, his body still pleaded for it. He’d read somewhere that drowning was supposed to be a good way to die. Peaceful. But that didn’t seem to be the case for him. His heart thudded with desperate fear.
And then in the midst of everything, he saw a blue light below two smaller yellow lights floating towards him. Maybe this was it. The beginning of the end as the lack of oxygen caused him to hallucinate. If his brain hadn’t been deprived of oxygen and he’d been more with it, he probably would’ve recognized what they meant right away, but it wasn’t until Ironman landed at his side that it dawned on him that Tony had come to save him.
Tony grabbed under his armpits and pulled. But Peter didn’t budge. No! He was still stuck. He was still going to die. He needed to breathe. Tony abandoned that approach and switched positions, trying to lift the concrete off of him instead. With the appropriate leverage, which Peter couldn’t get with the way he was stuck, Tony managed to lift it a couple inches. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Bubbles erupted from his mouth as Peter used the last of his strength to pry his lower body out. He was free! But he couldn’t hold his breath anymore. Not after he’d exhaled. His body demanded he complete the process and inhale, and he could hold it back any longer. He breathed in.
His lungs spasmed. The water shredded his chest like knives. He didn’t even notice Tony had grabbed him until they breached the surface and he could finally suck in air. The air competed with the water already taking up residence in his lungs, so he coughed and heaved, practically spasming in Ironman’s grip, but Tony didn’t drop him.
They landed on a nearby rooftop and Peter fell to all fours, tearing off his mask before gagging and throwing up an abundance of dirty river water onto the concrete.
“You’re all right kid. You’re all right. Just breathe. Breathe” Tony said with a hand on his back in support.
He was trying to, but it hurt. His chest felt like he’d gotten hit by a truck, and it wasn’t an exaggeration because he knew exactly what that felt like.
“Oh my god.” He gasped out as soon as he had enough breath to speak. “Oh my god.”
He hacked up another bout of disgusting water.
“I almost just drowned.” He croaked through his tattered throat.
“You kind of did a little bit.” Tony said, rubbing his back.
“Oh my god. I almost just died.” It seemed to be the only thing he could say. Or think.
“You’re ok.” Tony tried to reassure him. “You’re fine.”
Thank god Tony had come, even though he was supposed to be retired or whatever, or Peter would’ve been toast.
“How did you—” His question got interrupted by another coughing fit.
Tony didn’t need to hear the rest of the words to know what Peter had been trying to ask. “Karen sent an emergency alert to me. Thank god I was in the city today. I don’t know if I would’ve made it in time from the cabin.”
Peter nodded. He tried not to dwell on it, but holy shit, if Tony hadn’t happened to be nearby, he’d probably be dead right now. Floating at the bottom of the river, still trapped under all that debris. He took in a few short gasps and straightened up, feeling like he couldn’t catch his breath, and not knowing if it was from all the water he’d inhaled or his panic. His hands shook where they rested on his thighs. Ok good. Probably just panic then. He tried to slow down his breathing but it wasn’t working. He felt sick. And lightheaded.
“I don’t feel so good.” He muttered.
“Jesus kid.” Tony said and Peter heard the man’s heart skip. It took him a couple long seconds to figure out why.
“Sorry.” He apologized.
“No. It’s…ok. Let’s just get you to Cho.” Tony squeezed his shoulder. “Make sure your dip in that nasty water isn’t going to have any side effects. Do have any idea how dirty that river is? We don’t want you catching pneumonia or growing a third ear or something.”
He coughed again and nodded, still feeling short of breath and not up for talking anymore unless he had to. Tony helped him put his mask back on and Peter clung to him as they blasted off toward the compound.
Peter opened his eyes and blinked a few times, trying to extract himself from the memory and root his mind back in reality. The TV droned on softly in the background, but Peter didn’t even register the show he’d settled on. Remembering the whole event had left him feeling weak and shaky. He raised his hands to his face. Fine tremors ran through them. That had been happening on and off the past few days too, along with the inability to sleep. He clasped them into tight fists and tried to will the shaking to stop.
“Kid?” He jumped at the noise, annoyed that he hadn’t noticed Tony’s approach.
“Yeah?” His voice came out as shaky as his hands. He crossed his arms over his chest, hoping Tony wouldn’t notice.
“Can’t sleep?”
Peter shook his head and watched as Tony approached and plopped down on the couch next to him.
“You seemed tired today.” Of course Tony had noticed. “I don’t think this is your first bad night.”
He shrugged, not wanting to lie but not wanting to give Tony what he was looking for either.
“Bad dreams?”
He shook his head, looking down at his lap.
“Just can’t sleep?”
He shrugged again.
“I’m not surprised. It’s been a rough week.” Tony said, no judgement in his tone. “Want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
Tony hummed but didn’t push, and even though a second ago he really hadn’t wanted to talk about it, now in the face of Tony’s patience, he almost wanted to talk about it. He played with a loose string on the sleeve of his sweatshirt, considering.
“I just—” He paused, wrapped the string around his finger, unwrapped it, tugged on it. He didn’t know how to explain without sounding like a baby.
“You just…” Tony prompted gently after several long seconds of silence.
“I don’t even know why this is bothering me so much. I mean, I got dusted, and sure, that sucked, but I never couldn’t sleep because it.” Peter chanced a glance at Tony’s face and saw only patient openness there with maybe a hint of sadness.
“But this… I just can’t stop thinking about it. Every time I close my eyes I’m back at the bottom of that river, afraid I’m about to drown. It’s making it impossible to sleep.” He rubbed at his eyes.
“You’ve lived through more scary stuff than most people experience in their entire lives,” Tony said softly, “and you’re not even eighteen yet. It makes sense that this might've been what finally tipped the scales. Trauma can be like that. You subconsciously deal with one thing and then another and then another until it builds up so much that when the next thing comes along, you finally can’t deal with it anymore and it breaks free.”
Peter frowned and considered that explanation. It made sense.
“I survived Afghanistan.” Tony said, and Peter stiffened. In all the time Peter had known Tony, he’d never spoken about Afghanistan. He’d barely even alluded to it. “And I came back and tried to shrug it off. Threw myself into creating Ironman. And you know what?”
“What?” He whispered, as if talking too loudly might spook Tony and keep him from continuing.
Tony gave him a wry smile, “It worked. I moved on. Or I thought I did. And then later, the arc reactor was poisoning me, and I thought I was going to die—”
“What?” Peter interrupted, surprise making the question louder this time. He’d never heard that story before and it didn’t sound good.
“It’s not important.” Tony waved away the concern. “I figured it out. Fixed it and obviously didn’t die. But that’s not the point. I had been dying, but once I wasn’t anymore, I shrugged the whole thing off and tried to put it behind me. And again, it worked. Just like the time before.”
Peter nodded to show he was listening but made a mental note to ask more about the whole almost dying thing at some point in the future.
“And then Loki came along, and the Avengers came together, and the whole battle at New York happened. And I flew a nuke into space.” Tony paused to sigh and run a hand through his hair. “And I thought that was it. I was going to die for sure. Not a bad way to go, saving the world…” Tony paused, and Peter knew they were both thinking of the same thing. Steve on his knees snapping the gauntlet and dusting Thanos and his army but sacrificing himself in the process.
“But I really wanted to live.” Tony continued after a beat. “I didn’t want to leave Pepper.” Tony gave him a watery smile and Peter waited with bated breath for him to continue.
“But as we both know, I didn’t die. And I thought…great. Now this was just another thing I needed to shake off. Easy peasy. And then I’d be able to get on with everything. Like I always had.” Tony shook his head. “Except it didn’t work that time. I couldn’t close my eyes without reliving that moment. I couldn’t even look at the stars. Everything seemed to be a trigger. I threw myself into my work and tried to keep ignoring it. But I couldn’t. I started having panic attacks. It was bad kid.”
Peter had a feeling his eyes were the size of saucers, so he tried to reign in his expression. Tony had never bared his soul to him like this before and he didn’t quite know how to react.
Tony let out a long sigh, looking almost pained. “I guess what I’m trying to say, and maybe I’m doing a bad job of it, is that I’d managed to stuff all these previous experiences away, some pretty traumatic stuff, but then I just couldn’t anymore. Flying a nuke into space was my tipping point. And I think almost drowning in the Hudson this week was your tipping point.”
Huh. Peter blinked. Tony might be right. He nodded and gave him an appreciative half smile. Hearing his hero, a man he respected and viewed as a pseudo father, voice his traumas and weaknesses, made all the shame he’d felt before evaporate.
“So what do I do?” He asked.
“First, we need to get your mind off of it so you can get some sleep.” Tony said as if it were just that simple.
“I can’t.” He complained.
“Yes you can. Trust me.” Tony grabbed the remote and put Star Wars on.
“That’s a good idea, but I don’t think it’s going to work.” Peter huffed out a laugh.
“I’m not done yet.” Tony said, taking a throw pillow from behind him and placing it in his lap. “There.”
Peter’s brow furrowed in confusion.
Tony arched an eyebrow at him and patted the pillow invitingly. “Come on kid. Nap time.”
Peter’s cheeks heated but he didn’t protest. He sighed heavily as if complying was a big inconvenience, but it was all for show. And Tony probably knew it too. He laid his head on the pillow and willed himself to relax. Ever since the snap, Tony had been more physically demonstrative and affectionate toward him, treating him like his own kid, but never quite to this degree. Tony grabbed the blanket over the back of the couch and tossed it over him. Peter figured that’d be it, but then the man’s fingers brushed through his hair, toying with the strands.
Peter hummed, eyes closing.
“This always works for Morgan.” Tony said, voice soft, but with obvious amusement.
Peter twisted his head to glare up at him and Tony chuckled. “You’re about as intimidating as a bunny rabbit.”
Peter scoffed. He was not. If he really wanted to, he could be intimidating. He just wasn’t trying that hard.
“Watch your movie.” Tony said with a gentle tug on his strands.
Peter sighed but listened, turning back to watch the Rebels fight Darth Vader while R2D2 and C3PO escaped. He still didn’t think there was any way he’d be able to fall asleep no matter how heavy his eyelids felt.
Turned out he was wrong. Tony’s fingers running loosely through his locks was like his kryptonite.
He faded off into dreamland before Obi-Wan made his appearance.