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Rhodey sends him the news article. It’s Peter, though the photo is blurry and wonky in the way all photos taken by someone trying to be surreptitious and struggling to get a snap from where they’re holding their phone at their side are. He’s in a liquor store in Ontario, according to the caption, and Tony drinks in the sight even though it says two things to him. The first being that he’s the son of a bitch who passed on his addictive personality. The second being that he’s the even lower son of a bitch who fucked his kid up so spectacularly that he drinks. 

It’s not the first time he’s thought that part. Of the thought. He’s sober two months, up from a prior 36 days from when he briefly indulged Peter’s requests when he was about fifteen. It’s actually fucking hilarious. The news and the general public is having a field day with it, since it all went down on the global stage a few months ago. That no matter how Howard had ground him into a dust so fine it could never reform, even that man had not fucked him up, apparently, in the way he’s done to Peter. 

Peter, who’s now sitting at 18 years and two months and 6 days old. Tony’s keeping track of each day, now, like he used to when he was a baby. 

He hates himself for the fact that it took this to get him on the wagon. 

Howard had fucked him up and Tony had responded in the ordinary rich-kid way of creating a spectacle out of himself. Smearing the family name, sex, drugs, alcohol. Classic. 

It’s a testament to his own parenting that at midnight on August 10th, Peter had taken himself, a few bags, and a handful of pictures and left behind only the vestiges of his old life and a note requesting that he be disinherited.

Tony doesn’t think any child of celebrity had been so failed by their parent that they did that. He’s always setting new goals, it seems.

Rhodey’s still pissed at him, but this is an olive branch. In this, the longest stint of sobriety he’s managed this millennium, he’s come to achieve a certain level of clarity that he owes Rhodey his soul, basically. Alongside a small country, and probably also his everlasting servitude. 

The entirety of his life has been a topsy turvy whirlwind, and the escape from his own subjection, his own childhood ground under Howard’s heel, had been to escape into company. Into substance. He loves the feeling of his mind slipping like fine salt. And he’d been the opposite of Howard, as a parent. Deliberately so. Permissive. Fun. 

It should’ve been apparent to him more than anyone that Howard’s parenting had been so terrible that even the opposite of every action he had taken would still have been truly and fundamentally wrong. 

He thought it was funny . That’s one of the worst things, here, in the barren land of hindsight. 

The first article about Peter that had blown up, disregarding the ones that were simply about his existence, was in 2002. 1 am on New Year’s Day and every person at his party had gotten a chance to hold him, a little bundle, still tiny as all hell, a few fresh months from the womb. It was a viral photo of Peter, clutched in the arms of some glitterati or another, with a huge band of equally famous people smiling and toasting for the camera. Tony himself, front and center. 

Rhodey and Pepper had done their best to be the voice of reason, enforcing bedtime, and time out, and picture books. Tony, he recalls, had found all of that unnecessary. His son, his son , of all people, would be welcome anywhere Tony went. Welcome to speak without being spoken to, welcome to tell whomever he wished to fuck off, just in the exact way Tony was never allowed such freedoms. Never under the lock and key that ordinary children would find themselves under. Parties weren’t parties without his baby making an appearance, without Tony getting to brush his hair from his forehead and brag about how goddamn smart he was to anyone who’d listen.

He’s keenly aware, now, that Rhodey and Pepper were trying to provide the only thing Peter had ever craved. Structure. A childhood. A parent. 

-

On Peter’s eighteenth birthday, Tony heads into his room in the morning around ten and finds a neatly made bed and a letter sitting on the pillow. 

Tony recalls sitting on the edge of the bed and reading the letter, stomach sinking lower and lower with each word, each anecdote of times Peter has begged him to sober up or to keep him out of the spotlight, or to stop destroying himself and asking Peter to watch, reads that he’s released from any obligation - obligation - in any financial capacity. Reads that Peter doesn’t want him to come after him. He wants a life of his own making, an iota of privacy. Tony lays on his son’s bed and cries until he’s nauseous, clutching the letter in a crumple against his heart.

A few hours later he’s dried up enough to cancel the soiree, the party he’d planned for tonight, and the many hundreds of people he invited all start trying to contact him and ask what the hell he’s doing but he sits on the floor of the kitchen and calls Rhodey.

“He’s gone,” Tony gasps it out. He’d had fears, for a long time, of saying those words in the sense that someone took him. Kidnapped him. Maybe if he’d had the sense to worry about this it wouldn’t have happened.

“Peter left. He’s taken off, I don’t know where the hell he is, he left me this, this,” he shakes the note, crumpling it further. “This goddamn note telling me to disinherit him. God, Rhodey. I fucked up, I fucked it, I messed up. Really bad, I just need your help, I need to find him. I need to find him, I need.” He can’t talk.

There’s a pregnant silence on the other end of the line, and for the first time that day, Tony feels anger settle cold in his veins. 

He sucks in a breath. “Did you know about this?”

He hears Rhodey take a deep breath on the other line, and leaves his body. He feels himself hang up the phone. For a moment, his finger hovers over Pepper’s contact, but he knows in his gut she’s the same as Rhodey. She knew, or she suspected, or she helped plan for his kid to leave him. 

Tony puts his head in his hands and makes a dying noise.

He’s left him.

It’s a scant three in the afternoon, but he lurches over to the bar, swipes a bottle of something 120 proof, and wakes up the next day in the hospital, which is something he’s been able to avoid since the nineties. His brain feels cottony like there’s still something floating around in his veins somewhere, and Rhodey’s leaning forward, elbows on his knees, watching him blink to awareness. 

He’s beyond shame, at this point, and Tony crumples the minute he looks at him. He feels like he’s being choked from the inside.

Rhodey holds his wrist, grounding him. 

-

Five months later, Tony sits in a booth in the dark back corner of a chain restaurant in Lake Placid, four months and three weeks sober. He sits and he looks at Peter, sat across from him. Peter’s letting Tony hold onto his wrist, which is more than Tony expected, and he’s clutching him like a lifeline. 

He’s wearing a burgundy sweater, a cableknit something that looks like it’s from a thrift store. There’ve been lots of photos of him, like that, with the wealth of his old life so easily shed it was like it was never there. Tony tries not to let it hurt, and fails.

There’s a million things he wants to lead with. That he misses him, that he’s sorry so goddamn sorry, that he should come home, and Tony swallows it all. He strokes his thumb over Peter’s wrist and asks, “Are you safe?”

It’s the right thing to say. Peter gives him a barely there smile and nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m safe. I have a place and I’m working.”

Tony nods. His head feels light. There’s a shine hitting him from the glossy veneer of the table.

“I heard you-,” Peter falters. “I heard you’re sober. Five months.”

“Next week,” Tony says. “Five months on Monday.” It should be eighteen years and five months, but that’s a self-hating sentence, which obliges Peter to comfort him, and he doesn’t want that. He doesn’t deserve it, either. 

Peter gives him another smile, a little brighter. “That’s really good.”

“I’m sorry. That it took this long.” Peter’s face falls, and Tony plows on before he can respond.

“You don’t need to say anything, either. I just want you to know that. And I read what you wrote and I know it’s all. It’s everything you’ve been asking for forever that I’ve been too in my head to give to you and I’m sorry, Pete, I’m,” he gasps quietly. “I’m so sorry.” He moves his hand from Peter’s wrist and grasps his hand. There’s a warmth where Peter squeezes back. 

“I know. And I know you’re serious, I’ve been seeing all the articles, I know you’re taking it seriously.”

“You don’t need to say it’s articles. I know Rhodey and Pepper talk to you.” 

Peter presses his lips together but doesn’t confirm or deny. Tony knows he feels like it’s a betrayal. 

“I’m glad they’ve been there for you.” 

The waiter comes by and Tony can tell that he recognizes them both, but he’s decent enough not to say anything. They’ll probably end up on Twitter, in a bit, but for now Peter’s in front of him and it’s all that matters. 

“The life that you want,” Tony starts. “I know you don’t want to be in the spotlight or be. Going to the parties, or to have anything like that. And I can do that for you. You won’t be bothered. You can work, or go to school, anything you want. Just, just. Come home.” His voice breaks. “Please.”

Peter slowly pulls his hand back and settles back in his seat, both hands under the table. Tony’s left palm-up on the table, missing the warmth. 

“I think you’re doing really good. I do.” He breathes. “I’m not ready to come home. I missed you and I wanted to talk to you, but I’m not coming home.” 

Tony feels the world fall from under his feet.

“I - I won’t fall off the wagon. When you come back. I’m done, for good. No parties. No alcohol. I can help you get registered under a fake name, you can go to college on campus, and I’ll make sure - security, and no one will bother you, Peter, I can make sure-,” he cuts himself off when Peter drops his elbows on the table and covers his face with his hands. It rattles their glasses and Tony goes mute. 

Peter shakes his head behind his hands. 

“That’s not it. That’s not -,” Peter shakes his head. 

“What else can I do? Peter, just. Anything you say, I’ll do it.” 

Peter lets out a sharp breath. “God. I just. Just let me be mad. I’m fucking mad. And I love you and I’m proud that you’re doing what you’re doing but.” His eyes are shining. Tony wants to take his face in his hands. He’s always hated it when Peter cried. It was how he got sober, for a month, when Peter was fifteen. Peter had cried and it’d whipped Tony into shape. For a few weeks. If he’d taken it more seriously then, maybe they’d be better, maybe he’d be three years sober and his son wouldn’t have fled the city the moment he was able.

“Christ. Why wasn’t it worth it to you to do it until now?” he asks. “I asked you a million times. Why didn’t you take it serious until now?” Peter asks, staring at the table. 

-

When Peter’s fifteen, he’s invited to a gala where he’s shifted about the room, talking with a million people, and then it gets dark in the room, and there’s a silent live auction, where everyone has a weird pair of headphones and submit bids electronically for eight days at so-and-so’s summer home in Malta, or Jackie Kennedy’s pink blood-stained jacket. 

There’s a gentleman at the party who holds onto his bicep and tells Peter about his sexual history and Peter’s normally good at dispatching unwanted attention - you have to be, in this world - but the man makes him uneasy and he’s unable to leave the conversation until the man loses interest, at which point he feels dirty. He moves through the crowd, so acutely aware that there’s no one in his immediate vicinity that cares about him at all, and he looks for his dad. He finds him in a room off the main hallway with a few other main rotation invitees and they’re smoking. Peter actually quite likes the smell of cigars, and he breathes it in as he looks around. 

Tony hollers happily when he sees Peter, and he staggers to his feet - gone, absolutely gone and happy to have left - and he drags him around the room and brags about him to everyone. Tony brings him out of the room and back into the main ballroom, and drags him around and has another drink - clear - and doesn’t partake but also doesn’t react to a number of people with tiny little spoons of white powder. 

Peter knows he’s lucky - there’s a lot of children whose parents are far more taken to harder things than liquor. But he and his dad have an understanding, they have a good relationship, like a lot of people don’t with their parents, and he tries. Peter knows he tries.

Tony starts to steer him towards the man who had bared his whole sexual history, his likes and dislikes in blunt detail, and Peter digs his feet in. His dad asks what’s wrong, and Peter makes the mistake of telling him. It was humiliating enough to have been on the receiving end of it, and hard to share. Tony’s drunk enough that there’s not much further he can go, and when Peter tells him what the man did, his dad drags him by the hand and starts screaming at the man in the middle of the room. One hand holds Peter’s shoulder, the other he points into the man’s chest as he screams. It makes the news the next morning, all the details, laid excruciatingly bare for every TMZ reader to look over again and again. 

The next day Peter sits in Pepper’s office and confesses to her and Rhodey that he feels like anything his father knows about him is publicly available. Anything is free reign, like the crush he’d had on a girl in eighth grade that his dad had told an interviewer was adorable. He tells them that he knows Tony was defending him as best as he knew how but he’d asked to just leave and before that he’d asked not to have to come in the first place and if he’d had his way, no one would have known except the people he told. 

There’s already articles, he’s seen. The journalists love to speculate, to make things bigger than they are, and he hates it. He hates people thinking about him and talking about him, and he hates the way every little bit of him is up for sale. He ends up crying on the couch in Pepper’s office and Tony walks in with him crying, sandwiched in between Pepper and Rhodey. And despite the fact that everything he shares with his father is, inevitably, made public, he spills. 

He talks about how humiliating it was, last night, and how he knows Tony’s uninhibited when he drinks, but if he can just stop having to come to those events, if he can just. Be left alone. And Tony shakes his head, tells him, I love that you get to come with me, and I love telling people about you, but he’ll not drink. He’ll stop, it’s gonna make it better, he won’t be so loose-lipped, won’t share every iota of their life together with the world. And he tells Peter an anecdote about how he did the same thing to Rhodey, in college, and told his mother about the tattoo he got and it ruined their family Thanksgiving. It makes them all laugh, a collective weight sliding from their shoulders. Tony pulls him from the couch into a hug and drags him to the bar and Peter watches him pour every bottle out. 

It lasts a month and five days.

-

There’s a few folks passing around a joint, and Tony waves it off. They’re sat around a table up on a balcony area of the venue, a live band on the stage below them. It’s less of a club and more… a music venue. He takes a sip of his drink and sets it back down, a careful hand on Peter’s head where he’s sleeping against his shoulder. He typically falls asleep around eight or nine at night, but whenever Tony brings him to events, he can usually manage to keep awake for most of the evening. It’s been a while since Tony’s stayed out this late with him, and the woman across the table from him keeps sneaking glances at Peter and smiling. 

“How old is he now?” she leans across the table and asks over the band.

“Huh?”

She points at Peter. “How old?” 

“Six last month!” Tony says back. 

“Awful late for him,” the woman’s husband says. Tony puts his hand on Peter’s head again.

“Asleep at home is the same as sleeping here,” Tony tells him. At least here he can keep an eye on him. He’s still not found a babysitter or a nanny he trusts. They all give him a bad feeling, and he lets Pepper and Happy and Rhodey look after him, but he knew he’d be out late and he’s shit out of favors with all of them. He’s probably going to catch hell for bringing Peter with him, but it’s true. Asleep is asleep, no matter where it is. 

The group stubs out the joint and everyone starts to stand and one or two people fall back into their seats before managing to get on their feet. They all shuffle out. Tony knocks into the woman’s husband - for the life of him he can’t remember their names, but the man just repositions him upright. He hoists Peter a little higher in his arms and stumbles out the door. It’s still dark but there’s the contrast in the clouds a little navy blue that tells him it’s almost sunup. 

When the car brings them home, he drops Peter on the loveseat and throws a blanket over him - the stairs to his room are a little wavy and he’s not up to trying his luck. He pushes Peter’s hair back and then goes over to the couch and promptly falls asleep.

It’s a really unrestful sleep and it’s interrupted far too early for his liking. He snorts awake to Pepper and Rhodey in the room. Peter’s sat up rubbing his eyes and Pepper is giving him a death glare. Rhodey just looks tired. 

Tony kind of sits and dozes eyes-open for a little, as Pepper gets Pete up and leads him up to his room.

“We’re going to talk about this,” she says mildly. The two of them disappear up the stairs and Rhodey rounds on him. 

He pulls out his phone and there’s a photo of him from that morning walking out of a club with Peter passed out in his arms. 

“What the hell, man?” Rhodey asks, and it just sounds tired. Defeated. 

“I already made you watch him twice this week.”

“Christ, Tony. I’d watch him every night if it meant you didn’t pull this kind of shit. He is six years old. There’s no reason he should ever be inside of a club.” 

When Tony doesn’t say anything, he keeps talking. “He’s a baby. He needs to go to bed at a decent hour. He needs structure. You need to do better.” 

“I didn’t want to leave him alone or dump him on you or Pep again. I don’t like those babysitters Obie keeps sending.” 

Rhodey stares at him. 

“You could have stayed in.” 

“He slept just fine,” Tony says. “What does it matter if he sleeps here or not?”

Rhodey leaves. Tony sits on the couch and watches him get up and walk out, dumbfounded. He visualizes pressing his hands to his knees and getting up and following him, and it ends up that he falls asleep and then wakes up close to two in the afternoon and it’s just about then that he starts to think what he did wasn’t the best idea. 

He goes to find Peter and Pepper and Rhodey and he tells Peter that he shouldn’t have kept him out so late and Peter tells him it’s okay, and then when it’s just Pepper and Rhodey, he makes an ass out of himself with how over the top the apology is. Just completely self-flaggelating, and there’s a part of him that recognizes he’s being disingenuous and by calling himself the worst father on the fucking planet he’s kind of putting them in the position to tell him, no not the worst, it was a mistake, don’t do it again. And they do. And they drop it.

-

Peter’s got a little duplex in Lake Placid that he lives and works out of. There’s articles that pop up all the time on the little Windows notification on his computer, and he looks at schools to apply to, when things have died down some. He’s got a decent job doing copy editing, of all boring, white bread things he could be doing. It’s actually kind of thrilling to work, and get a paycheck, and go by his mother’s maiden name. He’s finally tasting an exotic world. 

He scrolls through the news feed that came pre-installed on his computer and sees a picture of himself. He’s about nine, at a party standing next to his dad and they’re both holding a cocktail and looking off to the left of the camera. They have the same body language, like an uppercase and a lowercase letter. It went viral, back then, because people thought it was really cute. It’s going viral, again, now because the world got wind that he ran away to a life of working class anonymity, and people are looking at it in a new light. He’s about nine and he’s holding a drink. He remembers it was weak, but it still made his head fuzzy. He remembers kind of liking it. He also remembers someone else at the party giving him a shot, which he didn’t like as much, and which also made his head fuzzy. 

When he got a little older, he asked Ned and MJ both, if their parents ever gave them alcohol. He took to that a lot, when he started high school and got to be around a lot of people who lived really different lives from him - asking those questions to figure out if he was normal. They both had a different answer. MJ tells him that her dad lets her sip his beers. From when she was 13 or 14 or so, she got to take a swig or two. Ned tells him his family’s Catholic, so they’re all partial to wine, and he started getting cups at Sunday dinner around middle school. Peter asks for a general estimate of how much and Ned tells him like, maybe an inch or two. Not a lot. He’s never really felt anything from it, probably because he usually has it with a meal.

He asks Abe, too. To widen the net of responses. Abe tells him his brother once gave him a drink, for his fifteenth birthday. Flash tells him similar to Ned, a little bit of wine is allowed in his family. Cindy’s never been allowed a drop of alcohol, and she’s a little terrified of it. Betty’s got a beer-swig thing like MJ. Charles isn’t allowed alcohol but he once accidentally got a drink with an umbrella in it on a family vacation and didn’t tell anybody. 

Peter thinks he and Cindy are each on the far ends of the spectrum. It’s not abnormal, he gathers, but it’s not normal for it to be liquor, and in general, 12 seems to be the youngest most of his survey respondents were permitted a drink. 

People are kind of tearing Tony up about the picture, now that it’s come back into the light. He feels guilty about it. Like this whole thing he’s done, it’s brought a lot of badness down on his dad’s head. 

He’s interrupted by his phone vibrating off the side table. He picks up. 

“Hi, Rhodey.”

“Hi, kiddo. Now a good time ?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Peter says, tucking the phone against his ear and grabbing a folder from the opposite couch cushion and pulling out a sheet of paper and turning it over to the blank opposite side. 

“Okay.”

“ It’s Grant’s, it’s a few miles out of town - I’ll send you the address. But he’s the guy Happy recommended. He’ll get you a good deal, and he’s good on repairs, too.”

“ Grant’s, okay. And, like. Is it a guy named Grant?” Peter asks. It’ll be a hike to get out there, but he’s scraped together a couple thousand bucks and he actually is a little excited. He’s gonna buy his own car, with his own money, from his own job.  

“ Yeah, it’s- well his kid, actually, I think the guy’s retired, but drop Happy’s name . You’re not drinking, are you?”

Peter frowns at the abrupt shift in topic. “Of course not.”

There’s a pause on the end of the line. Peter puts the phone to the other ear. “Why?”

“ You got papped at that liquor store, over the border. ”

Oh. Peter laughs a little. “Oh, no. The lady who moved out of here told me before she left that the landlord likes this special brandy, and since it was between me and that other guy that were up for this place, I sucked up a little and got him a bottle. Not for me.”

“ Oh, ” Rhodey breathes out with a little laugh of his own. “ I got worried. You’re all by yourself out there. ”

Peter grins. “I’m liking it.”

“ You sound happy.” He sounds happy about it.

“I am. I feel guilty, too.”

Rhodey makes a sound like a hockey buzzer on the other end. “ You had it right the first time .”

Peter sighs and glances back at the photo of the two of them still open on his computer. “Everyone’s kind of tearing him apart. And then, you know, I. I think maybe I handled it badly. By just leaving.”

“You would’ve stayed if you didn’t do it like that. I know him and I know you, and he would’ve begged you to stay, and you would’ve done it. Pepper and I both think it’s good you’re doing this. You gotta call, Hap, though - he misses you.”

Peter hums. There’s a sound like tapping on the line. “What are you doing?”

“ The attorney general is pissing me off. This man responds to emails without having read them. Do you think they’ll ruin my career if I send him this?”

On the text screen, a link pops up to a brightly colored book with an elephant and big bubble letters that read ‘Fun Time Reading Comprehension Workbook.’ Peter laughs. 

“I’ll remember this moment in 15 years when they call me for the documentary about you, and the shocking espionage plot the attorney general put you away for.”

“ Ah, I don’t want them to make one of those documentaries. I’ll just go through his assistant.”

“Good. I’d miss you if they put you away for treasonous activities.” There’s quiet on the end of the line again, and Peter hears the AC kick on. Rhodey does that, lets his silences do a lot of talking for him. 

“ I’m proud of you. We all are.”

Peter blinks very quickly. 

“Thank you.”

Rhodey breathes in like he’s going to say something else, but it turns into a groan. “ God. This guy’s calling me. Call Happy - he might go with you to buy the car. Bye, Pete.”

“Bye, Rhodey.”

Peter hangs up and sits back on his couch. There’s not a lot in the house, yet, just some furniture, and the now very wilted flowers Pepper gave him as a housewarming gift. He thinks about getting some art for the walls. Maybe he’ll stop by the city once he has a car and ask MJ to come shopping with him. 

-

The ‘90 candy red convertible is one of his dad’s favorites, which is why Peter’s a touch surprised that he’s okay with Peter learning how to drive stick on it. It’s really not the most attractive car, but his dad says there’s a lot of memories with it. Which also makes it a little intimidating.

They’re on one of the properties upstate and there’s a lot of country roads between the handful of houses that are built up here. Tony keeps his hand on Peter’s shoulder and squeezes every time he misses a gear shift. 

“It’s easier if you can listen to it. You’ll get the hang of knowing by feel, but until it’s muscle memory, just listen to the engine.” 

Peter makes a slow turn onto the main road, and there’s two miles that run straight from the edge of the property to the main house, and he’s allowed to get up to speed. He climbs to 55 and doesn’t miss the gear changes. 

“You’re doing great.” He’s grinning in the passenger seat, one hand on Peter’s shoulder, the other hanging out the side of the car, palming the breeze. 

Tony’s a good teacher, objectively. Always has been. The house peeks over the edge of the hill they’re on, and Peter’s looking at it when two deer run across the road. He slams the brakes and his dad flings an arm across his chest as they lurch in their seats and the car stalls. The deer run off. 

“Oh, shit,” Peter says, tapping the gas. “Shit.”

“Okay,” Tony says, “You’re alright. If you ever have to hit the brakes, you want to just hit ‘em. You can stall but if you avoid an accident it’s fine. When you hit the brakes, you hit the clutch too, it’ll help keep you from stalling. Now - and don’t worry if anyone ever honks at you, either - foot on the brake, clutch all the way in.”

Peter does. “Car in neutral, right?”

“Yeah. Then restart and you’ll be good.”

Peter follows, and after a second, the car comes back to life and they’re headed down the road again. He lets out a breath.

“Sorry.”

“You’re alright, honey. Just keep it steady.”

They drive for a minute. It’s brisk, but not too cold for the top to be down. Just enough to redden the cheeks.

“It’s not damaging to the car, is it?” 

“No. Trust me, there’s nothing you’re gonna do to this car I haven’t already done to it. And it’s yours to bust, anyways.”

Peter startles, a little. “What do you mean, mine?”

Instead of answering, his dad sticks his pinky in Peter’s ear. Peter yelps and the car swerves into the grass as he smacks the hand away. “You’ve got cotton in there or something.”

“But it’s your favorite.”

“Yeah,” he says, patting the side of the door. “That’s why it’s yours .” 

Peter doesn’t fight the grin, at that. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.” Tony presses his knuckles to Peter’s jaw. “You look good in it, kiddo.”

-

There’s a woman on his floor. She’s got a pretty black dress on that looks like it’s slippery, and her hair’s all spread out around her head. Her face is a little crazy, her eyes have big dark smudges and she looks like she wiped her lipstick around. 

Peter rolls over in bed and reaches down to poke her.

“Miss?”

She doesn’t stir. He reaches over and turns on the bedside lamp and sits up. She’s all splayed out over his solar system rug. 

“Miss?” he asks again, louder. She hums in her sleep but doesn’t otherwise respond. She doesn’t wake up. 

He walks out into the hallway. There’s still some music thumping through the floor - his dad tries to keep the stuff away, when it’s in the house, like away from the rooms, but they’re still in the house and he can feel the music in his feet.

Peter walks down the hall. There’s a room Pepper stays in, usually, when she stays over and he thinks she’s staying over because when his dad throws a party she tends to stick around. They both get to go with his dad, and then Pepper will usually get tired early and she’ll take him with her when she leaves and she’ll put him to bed. 

He knocks on her door. He does it too softly, since she’s probably not awake, it’s still dark outside all the windows. He taps on the door a little louder.

“Pepper? Pepper,” he sing songs. 

After a minute, she comes out. She’s soft looking whenever she stays over. Her hair gets wispy and floats all over, and she wears fuzzy socks even in summer. 

“Honeybun,” she says, squatting down to look at him. “Bad dream?”

He shakes his head and points down the hall. “Someone’s in my room.”

Her face goes angry. “Who is?”

“A lady. I woke up and she was there,” Peter tells her. He doesn’t want that woman to get in trouble but Pepper looks mad. 

“What was she doing?” Pepper asks him. 

“She’s sleeping. On the floor.” Pepper frowns and walks hand in hand with him back to his room. Her shoulders relax a touch. 

“Oh. She got lost, I think.” Pepper pushes him gently towards the kitchen. “Why don’t you get a glass of water and I’ll help her find a different room?” 

Peter yawns as he walks into the living room and there’s a man leaning back on their couch and a woman sitting on top of him. They’re talking very close in each other’s face and then they both turn their heads to look at him when he walks in. 

The two of them don’t say anything, so Peter doesn’t either. He walks around the island to the kitchen and gets a water, and he’s walking past the two people again towards his room when Pepper comes back. For whatever reason she makes an ugh kind of sound and puts her hands on his face and walks him out of the living room. 

“It’s like a house of horrors in here,” she mutters. She takes him back to his room and the lady’s not sleeping on his carpet anymore. Pepper pushes her fingers through his hair. 

“Will you lock your door tonight?” she asks him. 

He shuffles. “It’s bad if a fire happens.” 

“Well Jarvis will unlock it if that happens. It’ll keep anyone else from trying to sleep on your rug.” She’s teasing, in her tone, and Peter half laughs and it turns into a yawn. 

She walks him in and tucks the blanket around him. “Way too late for you, honeybun.” She grasps his chin. 

“Come get me if you need me.” He nods, and she clicks the lock before she closes the door behind her. Peter hears her give it a jiggle and then the steps steps steps until it’s quiet. 

-

It’s 31 hours since Tony has had a drink and he’s sitting on the floor of the kitchen on top of his hands. It’s easy enough to get. You can order anything, any time in this city. He’s shaking. His stomach hurts. He’s shaking. He’s - 

“- shaking, Christ, Tony. Look at me,” Pepper’s tapping his face. One cheek is pressed into the floor, which he doesn’t remember happening. “What are you doing?”

“Stop.”

She furrows her brows. “Stop what?”

“He’ll come home,” Tony says. There’s his brain that’s in control right now, and there’s the brain that knows he’s not making sense. She grabs his wrist and pressed two fingers into his pulse. 

“You’re not cold turkey?”

He nods. 

“Fuck, Tony!” She’s yelling at him. He kinda tunes it out and she goes away and then he rolls his cheek into the cool floor, back and forth, and then she’s back. Her phone is pressed between her cheek and her shoulder and she tries to press a small cup of wine into his hands and he knocks it over. 

“I don’t want that,” he mumbles, lips against the floor. 

Pepper pushes his face up and makes him look at her. “You are going to give yourself a seizure and die. You will try again under medical supervision. Drink.”

She refills the cup and presses it to his lips. It spills over his cheek and neck. 

Six days after Peter leaves, he’s back in the hospital tremoring. 

-

In February, Peter takes his new car, which is only about four years younger than he is, and rigs it with some chains and drives into the city. 

The first day, he hangs around with Ned and MJ. They’re both in the city still, having finished up their first real semesters at college. Ned’s at NYU and MJ’s at ESU, and they sit down in the morning and demolish some bagels and then Peter is dragged to every store in the city, it seems like, and the two of them help pack his car with decorations for his place and pictures to hang on the wall. MJ makes him buy a bookshelf he thinks might be for a kid, and gives him a few different novels and a nonfiction book about sweatshop labor and the modern society that she swears he has to read. 

Then, he goes with Ned and crashes in the one-bedroom he’s in, and they sit on the ground and they build a Rube Goldberg style conveyor belt that does a truly awful job at chopping onions and folding clothes. Ned’s neighbor knocks on the door at 3 am to tell them to shut the fuck up because they’re laughing too loud. 

They sleep in the next day, and Peter ends up almost being late to meet Harry for lunch. It’s cold as hell out and they end up in a booth in a sandwich spot near the bridge. Harry is a funny case, because their dads were rivals for so long, and then their sons were the same age, and Tony and Norman put it into their heads that each other was the one to beat. And they both took it seriously for a while until Peter hit his teen years and started on the path of disillusionment about his life and his up-for-grabs world. Harry could sense it on him, and by the time Peter had one foot out the door, Harry was feeling secure enough in his own spot that he stopped being an ass and started being his friend. Peter’s first wobbling steps into the world that spins under penthouse lofts kind of helped Harry find his own rebellion, too, because even though Tony’s always been normal about the world without trust funds, Norman never was. So Harry and Peter get to see each other and Harry gets to piss his dad off by, like, eating a sandwich with his hands. 

And he does, and then he orders another sandwich and a bowl of soup and scrapes it out of the bowl with the crust like he’s waging war. 

“So what do you even do all day?” Harry asks him, mouth full.

It feels guilty, but Peter can’t really stop the smile on his face. “I work. I buy groceries. There’s a used electronics store in town and I’ve like,” he scratches his head. “I kind of started an eBay store.”

“No shit?”

“No shit. Radios, mostly. Like, vintage, 50’s and 60’s midcentury ones.” 

“You’re so real for that,” Harry says. “My dad thinks -,”

“Do I want to know?”

“He thinks I’m gonna follow you in your footsteps so he’s trying to be less of a tight ass. Like the other day, the hem of my pants came out and he didn’t even say anything.”

Peter smiles at him. Where his dad had gone to extremes to treat Peter with wild lawlessness, Harry had spent most of his childhood being made to be mute and brilliant, like a piece of finery for Norman to display and store as he pleased. Harry didn’t pull a him and run away about it, even though Peter thinks it’s worse than what his dad did. At least he never had to doubt that his dad loved him. 

They chitchat about their families and their lives for a bit and then they’re interrupted by some guy pulling a seat up to their booth and sitting down. They both stare at him. He doesn’t even introduce himself or ask if they have a minute, he just sits down like he owns the world and puts a little grey box on the table, clicks it on, turns to Peter and asks, 

“Is it true your father allowed you cocaine growing up?” 

Peter physically recoils. Harry makes an objecting sound across the table, and years of media training fly out the window at the audacity of this guy. 

“Of course not, Jesus,” Peter says. He shouldn’t engage this man. “Can you leave?”

“In a minute,” the guy says. “So the cocaine was behind his back then? Knowing how open he was about you with parties and alcohol, I find it hard to believe he had a line at all?”

Harry taps the guy on the shoulder. “Who the hell are you?” 

“Paul Coil, Free Press Brooklyn , the best independent online news source for the decay of the bourgeoisie.” He sticks a hand out for Harry to shake, which Harry only looks at.

“Can you go away?” Peter asks him. 

“I will, I will,” Paul says dismissively. “There are a lot of people who think that the fact that you renounced your old life of wealth is playing into the Marie Antoinette playing peasant archetype. Why do you feel it’s acceptable to act like you’re middle class when your family has more money than almost 30% of Americans combined?”

“Bye!” Harry yells. “Goodbye!”

The man ignores him and pushes the recorder closer to Peter. “Can you answer that, Peter?”

“You’re being really obnoxious. And you’re bothering us. And you’re sitting here representing Free Press Brooklyn , which is a socialist magazine, but I know your mom is Miranda Coil, who has major ties to CompleteEnergies. She was the COO, right? And they’re the ones who lobbied with Stark Industries in the early 2000s in support of the war in Iraq because of their own business interests. So, it looks like you and me both came from blood money, but only one of us is pretending they’re not.”

After a stunned beat, the man picks up his tape recorder and leaves. As abruptly as he came, he just goes away without another word. Peter takes a bite of his sandwich. 

“God,” Harry breathes. “I love the way you just scalp them. It’s hot. I can’t even lie, it’s hot as hell.” He puts his head in his hands and gazes at Peter. “Can we marry in the south of France?”

“So I actually have a pact with Ned that if neither of us is married by 30 we’ll marry each other. But if he gets married and I don’t, and you’re also not married by 30, we can get married.”

Harry sighs and pushes his plate away. “I don’t know how I feel about being sloppy seconds.”

Peter shrugs. “Should’ve thought about that earlier. If you stopped hating me when we were younger maybe you would’ve beaten him to the punch.”

Harry doesn’t say anything in response, just makes obnoxious kissing noises at him, and Peter laughs.

-

He doesn’t go home. He doesn’t feel ready for it, and honestly it makes him feel like a dick, because objectively his dad’s far from the worst. A lot of other people would’ve been able to handle being his kid. It’s just hard. After they met on Peter’s turf last month, he thought it’d be fair to meet again back in the city. He leaves his lunch with Harry and kills some time at MJ’s. She’s back at her parent’s apartment, having hated the dorms last semester, and she puts a documentary on in the background and works on some air dry clay while he reads the book she gave him on her bed. 

“Can I sound stupid for a minute?”

“You’ve never asked permission before,” she says. 

“Mean. I can’t figure out who Theodora is,” Peter says, flipping back to the first chapter where they introduced her. “She’s the main character’s cousin, right, but she’s also. There’s a vibe between her and the dad and that can’t be right. And the vibe is there, I’m not mistaken about that, so is she not the cousin?”

MJ looks at him. “You’ll get there. Does this look real?” she asks, showing him the clay she’s been messing with. She’s shaped it into a mouth with teeth. Each tooth has little ridges and there’s texture on the lips like they’re chapping. 

It’s terrifying. “God,” he says. “That’s terrifying.”

“Thanks,” she chirps. “Do you mind looking at my headphones before you leave? The right side is sounding wobbly.” 

“Sure,” he puts the book off to the side. “You’re kind of making it seem like there’s going to be an uncle-niece thing happening in this book and I get that it’s like “art,’” he says, making air quotes around it, “but also.”

“Don’t make air quotes around art just because you don’t get it. It’s a meditation on the nature of selfishness and the destruction of innocence.”

Peter rolls his eyes and then rolls off the bed and lands on all fours like a cat. “Like she’s so special for that.”

He fixes her headphones, then chats with her mom and fixes their garbage disposal and then he’s meant to meet his dad in twenty minutes. MJ has to shove him out the door. 

“You’ll be fine,” she tells him at the elevator. “It’s just your dad.”

They meet at Pepper’s house, and she lets them go in there even though she’s traveling because she’s good like that and knows that Peter’s not ready to go back to the house. He beats his dad there and paces around nervously until he comes in. Tony beelines for him and wraps his arms around him and Peter leans into it. The months of no contact were hard but he thinks they needed it, in a way. It makes it better. It gives the distance of then and now, where there was always just that before. 

He looks good. Really good. There’s a lot more weight in his face, and it makes him look younger, and he’s got a calm energy he never had before. He just seems steadier. And they sit down and his dad touches his face like he can’t believe Peter’s still here and has to keep making sure. 

They don’t talk about anything heavy. Tony tells him he’s been in the labs again, for fun, which is something he hadn’t done in a while. And he tells him about Happy and the project that’s got Pepper out of the country. He doesn’t mention Rhodey a lot and that’s a stab of guilt, too, because Rhodey was always the one Peter went to about them, who helped him figure out all his housing and told him he wasn’t bad for wanting to leave. 

And Tony runs out of things to say that aren’t heavy in about twenty minutes and Peter wonders if that’s a symptom, too. You have this thing that you do as a hobby, almost, and it’s addictive and it closes up the world around you. Then when you decide you’re done with it you walk back out into your life and find it’s so much smaller than it used to be. 

Peter tells him about Harry and MJ and Ned, and he avoids talking about Rhodey, too, even though they’ve been in contact a lot. They do good. It’s good. No heavy talk, just good things, and even though the bad things are a hole they’re tiptoeing around, it’s still good. Peter feels better, at the end, and he guesses that he’s a terrible person because he really misses his dad for the first time now six months down the line and hadn’t before that. Not the same way he does right now, and when they decide both to head out, Peter’s the one who initiates. 

They stand there for a minute. His dad holds him tight, one hand on his head, and Peter presses his mouth into the shoulder of his jacket. It’s a long hug, and at the end his dad presses a kiss to his hair and it makes Peter feel more like eight than eighteen. 

-

He starts high school and loves it. He’s got a lot of people he’s never met before and whose families he doesn’t know. It took a little convincing for his dad to let him attend a magnet school instead of some hoity toity private academy where all the kids he went to elementary and middle with are going.

Peter has a friend. It’s a real friendship, too, because Ned was talking to him and texting him and hanging out with him and only saw his student ID and recognized him after they’d already been friends for a month. So Peter knows he’s not faking. 

They have a project due, for social studies. So Peter gets up early to meet him in the library and work on their Kiribati culture and cuisine presentation. He’s just wandering into the living room and there’s puke on the ground and there’s puke on the wall, and over the side of the couch. His dad’s tucked up between the couch and the wall. There’s a bottle of water that ended up poured all over his chest - he’s passed out breathing slow, not responding when Peter smacks him in the chest, smack a little soft and then harder when he’s not waking up. 

Peter’s panicking, fingers and toes and lips numb, and he grabs a pot and fills it with ice and water and pours it over Tony’s face. He stirs, kind of, and mumbles, waving a hand at Peter like he’s interrupting a nap. Which he sort of is. 

Peter starts screaming in his ear. He’s let go of what he should be doing and pushes his dad onto his side and makes him curl up like a fetus, then leans over and screams in his ear. Like a release.

It doesn’t end up that he needs the hospital, because he wakes up, mumbles, apologizes. Peter texts Ned that he can’t make it and they post up in the master bathroom. Peter pulls blankets and a pillow off the bed and Tony nests, basically, next to the toilet. He wakes up in the afternoon with Peter in his pj’s sitting with his back against the wall just watching. Just watching.

His dad’s able to sit up and talk in a full sentence so Peter forces him to shower and then puts him to bed in a guest room since all his bedding’s on the floor of the bathroom. It’s a Saturday, the next day when he comes down the stairs and sits in front of Peter at the island and grabs his hand. 

“Fuck, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that. God, I’m the worst father on the planet.”

Peter sits and listens. It’s almost 25 years, now, in the next month, that grandma and grandpa died and Tony tells him he’s handling it poorly. He’s in the middle of another apology when something tiny that binds Peter’s heart to all his other organs snaps. 

“Stop.” 

Tony does. He looks a little dumbfounded, because Peter’s always handled this sort of thing where it makes him sad. This is the first time he’s really felt angry and he does he feels angry, so fucking angry, and his dad can tell because he flinches when Peter looks at him. 

“You’re okay with me finding you dead one day,” Peter tells him, and his dad’s not expecting it because it makes him gasp, a little. Very quietly.

“Peter. Peter-,” 

“I don’t want to hear it. God,” Peter says, and he gets up out of his seat. “You don’t give a shit.” Peter throws a glass into the sink, and cuts his hand on the shards. 

“You know you just - you just do that and you drop wherever the hell and you wake up and you’re fine- your liver’s still working, so fuck it. No need to stop. You don’t give a shit about coming in the room like a horror house and it stinks because you puked on the walls, you’re in the corner, and Pepper or Rhodey or Happy or me gets you up. And to you you’re just up, but God. God. You’re so selfish.” His voice cracks, and it’s embarrassing because everyone else has their voice break and it’s embarrassing because they’re going through puberty or whatever but his voice cracks when he’s yelling at his dad to not die in front of him. 

Hands grab at his wrists, gentle, twisting the cuts up to the sky but Peter snatches them to his chest. “Stop it. Just stop. Just stop it.”

“Peter-”

“One day I’m going to find you choked on your own vomit in the labs and you’re okay with that. You’re okay with it. You don’t even care that it’s my biggest, most - the thing I worry about, and you think. You come in like, I’m a mess, I’m this I’m that. Just. You’re gonna do what you’re gonna do so just. Spare me, the, spare me apologies because they don’t mean anything. They mean you’re gonna try to pass out in front of someone else next time.” He breathes hard and then runs out of the room. 

He and Ned get a 97 on their Kiribati project. His dad doesn’t drink in front of him for a couple months. But he drinks. Just not in front of him. It’s the best he’s going to get, Peter thinks. He never tells Rhodey or Pepper about it. Never never. He cleaned and he washed and he screamed. He and his dad let it happen then never talk about it again. 

-

In February, six months before his birthday, he goes to Rhodey. He goes to his office even though he has to get through eight different security stops, but he gets in and sits down and tells him his plans. That he’s been collecting everything he’s gotten and it’s a sum, if only because rich people overvalue the sweet sixteen or the seventeen dancing queen and they all gave him a big thick card for each last birthday. Squirreled away. 

He tells Rhodey. It’s vindicating that he tells him and Rhodey doesn’t suggest talking to Tony about it. He knows. He’s done that same song and dance where they beg and plead and pretend it’s not falling on deaf ears. 

Together they gather. Social security card. Birth certificate. Rhodey shows him how to open a bank account, and how to balance a checkbook even though no one born after 1980 does that, and then tells him about interest and loans and what it means when something is good debt and when it’s bad debt. Everything that matters when you have a little bit of money but doesn’t mean much when you’ve got a lot. He helps him deposit his cash, and it’s a little scary to see it go away behind the bank desk because that’s. Money is everything and nothing, but he’s liked keeping it where he could see it. Like a reminder. 

But it gathers its little interest, which means something now, and Rhodey tells him that if he needs a cosigner for a lease just to put him down, no questions asked. Peter’s loved him forever but this unspoken thing that they both look at and acknowledge in silence really. Really drives home everything. All at once. 

It’s a hard letter to write. It spans the front and back, and he pours into it. And then he leaves.

He leaves.

-

Rhodey’s laughing at him. “Who the hell taught you how to dance?” 

“No one. Just osmosis,” Peter replies. Jumping, basically, back into the room. Along to the beat.

“No. No, absolutely not.”

Pepper tuts. “I should’ve fixed that,” she says and Peter stifles a laugh when Rhodey gives her a truly impressive side-eye. 

“What?” she asks. “Why are you laughing?”

“Nothing.”

Rhodey goes over to his phone next to the speaker. “This is crazy. You need to learn how to dance like a person. With a brain, not just a nervous system that’s being salted by the universe.” 

Peter laughs, and Pepper sits back on his couch. She looks over at the flowers she gave him that he’s got drying upside down by the wall of his kitchen and smiles. It’s homey. It’s feeling more like home, these days. The song that was playing before ends, and Rhodey sweeps up to him, and they bow to each other very dramatically. 

“So when you dance,” Rhodey says, taking him into a waltz, “don’t just think you can bounce around to the beat. That’s nothing. Anyone can do that.”

They do a little two step towards the kitchen, then towards Pepper, then a quarter turn and another double two step. 

“Are these walls thin? I’m not trying to get you a noise complaint,” Rhodey asks, but Peter shakes his head. 

“Thickums.”

“Shut up,” Rhodey laughs, and takes him into a spin. He’s put on something slow, vintage. After a minute it picks up the tempo, and Rhodey starts in on some footwork Peter’s struggling to copy. He can see Pepper filming from the couch.

“Step, step, step, turn, you always hurt ,” he starts belting, right in Peter’s face. “ The one you love! The one!” He’s getting silly and makes them do a twist-twist right on the beat. 

“ You love, the one badununun dunuuun, you shouldn’t hurt at all, oooooo,” he sings along. Pepper stands up and Rhodey twirls Peter into her arms and they start on a weird, slow waltz that doesn’t match the tempo, and Rhodey boos. It’s short lived.

“ You always take,” he sings, shoving Peter aside with his hip and taking Pepper into a dance. “ The sweetest rose. Crush it, uhn til the petals fall,” he sings, holding the note. 

He takes them through the song again and again, with him, then with each other, then with him again, and he gets loud with the belting, and after a few turns around his duplex, Peter picks up the melody and his dancing gets a little more aligned with what Rhodey expects, and he starts singing along, himself. 

He and Rhodey are back where they started, and the footwork’s easier to copy the fifth dance around, and he and Rhodey sing in each other’s faces.

“You always break,” they yell in each other’s face, “the kindest heart, with a hasty word you can’t recall!” Peter starts jumping up and down on the beat, just to tease him, and they finish the song. 

“If I broke, uhn uhn, your heart last night, it’s because,” they sing, holding the note, “I love you most of all!

“If I broke your heart last night, it’s because I love you most of all! ”

-

“ Bingus. ”

“Chungus.”

“ If I could only drink through a crazy straw would you still love me? ” Ned asks.

“How crazy are we talking?” Peter asks. He’s almost done with work, for the day. It feels exhilaratingly ordinary. 

“ Two loop minimum .”

Peter hums. “Yeah. I’d still love you.”

“ What if I was a vampire ?”

“Is this still the crazy straw scenario or a different scenario?”

Ned thinks for a moment. He’s got four labs on Fridays that go from seven in the morning til four in the afternoon and it tends to make him stir crazy. 

“ Crazy straw scenario. ”

“What would really be different?”

“ I think it would pose challenges. ”

Peter finishes his last item for the day and logs off at 4:56 on the dot. He walks over and flops face first into the couch and puts his phone next to his ear. “Well, I think the real question is whether or not you’d count the fangs as a crazy straw.” 

“No, they don’t count, ” Ned says. “ I said two loop minimum.” 

“That feels reductive,” Peter says, and Ned snorts on the other end. 

“ An MJ word.”

“No, but a crazy straw can be a lot of things. Like if you were sucking down a capri sun with a lead pipe, I’d count that.”

“ I’d disagree ,” Ned says. “Allow me to explain. ”

Peter turns to look out the window and gasps. 

“Ned. Ned pause. There’s a big fat dog I’m gonna send you a picture of.” He runs over to the window and tries to get a photo of the old man walking a truly rotund dog without feeling like a total creep. It doesn’t work, but he gets a photo of the dog looking very bulbous. 

“ Wowwww, that’s a chonker ,” Ned says. “ Excellent. A5 wagyu dog right there. ”

“Wagyu,” Peter snorts. He hesitates for a second, and then sends the picture of the dog to Tony and sticks an emoji of a sumo guy on the text. 

“Okay, but yeah, if you had to siphon blood out to drink instead of using fangs, I guess that’d be hard.”

“ So you see my dilemma .”

His dad texts back, and calls the dog a unit, which he knows is his own influence, and then he texts to ask if he can call. 

On w Ned rn. In a bit?

He gets the scary devil emoji in response, but Tony just thinks it’s funny and uses it as an acknowledgement. He snorts. 

“ What’s funny?”

“The way my dad uses this emoji for everything,” Peter says, sending Ned the scary devil emoji. 

“ I like this one ,” Ned says and sends him three in a row of the cheese sitting under a box trap emojis. 

Peter spams him with rats and Ned spams him back with the pregnant guy and Nepalese flags. He’s got a little under five months left on his lease here but he’s starting seriously to think about going back to the city. He misses his friends. He misses being able to get a Korean hot dog at 3 in the morning. 

He’s missing home. 

-

The next time he visits the city, it’s for Ned’s birthday, and it’s his nineteenth, the old man, and they ping pong around the most random places in the city. They start at dinner at an Indo-Iranian-American fusion place where Peter orders lamb sliders and everyone steals them off his plate. Then they take the train to Brooklyn and there’s a guy on the train with a bunch of cockatoos on his arm who’s busking and they get to watch him for a while. Then they go to an after hours flea market and MJ buys a sword. When they’re walking between the flea market and their next destination, Ned buys them all wigs from a lady with a cart full of them and Peter’s suddenly finding himself having his photo taken with MJ, wielding a sword, Ned, who’s wearing a big, obnoxious orange life jacket that says BIRTH DAY BOY and they’re all wearing unnaturally colored wigs. 

They end up on the ferry going to Staten Island around three in the morning and hit up a disco. They all get their hands stamped at the door but the DJ plays great music and they’re in there until one of the security guards comes up and tells them that they have to leave, if they’ve got weapons. They end up back on the ferry and MJ demonstrates some sick swings, complete with light saber sounds because even though she tries to be an artsy fartsy so and so that’s too cool for them she’s just as much of a huge nerd as they all are.

They drop MJ off home and Peter falls asleep on Ned’s couch. The next day, there are quite a few pictures of them on Twitter, because even though it’s been months and the hype should have worn off, it hasn’t. It’s really not something he can blame them for, he’d probably have taken pictures, himself. 

It’s a good night. He thinks about how many more they’d all get if he lived in the city, again.

He brings it up to Pepper. She’s very diplomatic in her answer, but he can tell she kind of wants him to come back. 

Peter asks Rhodey, too, and he’s the same. Just tells him if it’s what he wants, he’ll support him. 

He asks Happy and Happy tells him he’s been waiting for him to come back. And then he says it doesn’t have to be the same. You can go live in whatever roach infested building you want. But you made your point.

Peter’s been thinking of this whole thing in terms of before and after, but with that, it kind of reframes the whole discussion. That there was a before, and the before is done, but there might still be an after. After this. 

-

Happy’s picked Tony up off a lot of floors. It’s less than it used to be, if only because his tolerance is higher and even he knows they’re all getting a little too old for it. 

So he’s well practiced. Happy’s the one he usually calls whenever he doesn’t want Rhodey or Pepper to chew him out about it. All that practice does not prepare him for the first time it’s Peter passed out on the floor. 

He’s thirteen and skinnier than normal because he’s just shot up another four inches since the beginning of the year. A smear of blood is on the corner of the counter and there’s the cut on his temple that it came from. Happy turns him onto his back and presses a hand to his cheek, feeling that there’s a fever. He taps Peter’s face a few times before grabbing a Dixie cup of water and pouring it over his eyes and head. 

It wakes him up. His eyes are rolling, rolling in his head and after a second his gaze lands on Happy and he goes,

“I feel like I’m gonna die.”

He knew the kid was sick, and after bringing Tony to the gala, he came back by the house to check on him, to see if he was sick or faking to get out of the event and it’s the first one, very much so. They drive to the hospital, Peter in the back just mumbling. 

They have to do a spinal tap, and Happy calls and calls and there’s not an answer, so after the spinal tap and the doctors diagnose him with meningitis and they start him on enough antibiotics to kill a horse, it’s still just Peter, sick, and Happy, playing parent for the night. After a while, they start streaming into the room, Pepper first, and then Rhodey. And no one’s gotten a hold of him yet, seeing as the night is still young. 

Peter wakes up with all them in his room, and they all watch him look around just once. He looks and doesn’t see him and his expression settles into something too old for him. Resigned. 

That’s how Happy lays it out for him, now, over Peter’s bed again. It really doesn’t take much to make Tony feel like the scum of the earth. The story is just another piece of the puzzle. At the very beginning, when Peter had first left, he remembers thinking he should’ve done better, he should’ve listened to everything that was asked of him, but really, really had he been that bad? So awful? And then it’s stories like that that reveal the decision making he has when he drinks, that to his sober mind are incomprehensible. 

Tony remembers him, pale and young. He still looks like that now, even though he’s a man. 

It’s a car accident, instead of sickness, this time around, and Tony’s sober eight months now and by his side. He was the one who sussed it out, in the first place, when Peter was ten and then twenty and then forty minutes late to meet him. When even at his angriest he never just did nothing, never just left him wondering. He always laid out his heart and told him what he planned and why he planned it. Tony doesn’t know where the hell he gets it, the vocabulary and the guts to sit down and speak it plainly. Tony can do it but he’s got to throttle himself, he’s always had to flog himself, basically, and that’s a selfish way to do it. 

Tony’s perched on the edge of the bed and tugs free a few locks of hair that are trapped under the bandage over his forehead. 

If this were a cliche movie, the other driver would’ve been a drunk, too. And Peter would’ve been the collateral damage, and it would make him feel so terrible that he’d never even think about drinking again. But it’s real life instead, so it’s no one’s fault that the car in the other lane’s tire popped and she skidded into Peter and Peter skidded into the railing. Since it’s no one’s fault and no one drunk drove to cause the accident and make Tony so ashamed that he swears it all off forever, it’s real life and he’s by his son’s hospital bed and he wants a drink so badly. 

It’s about then, during that line of thinking, that Peter starts stirring, and Happy goes into the hall to let them have a moment. Tony watches as his eyes move under his eyelids, and he takes a deep breath waking up, and then he’s looking at him. 

Tony puts his hand on Peter’s cheek and runs his thumb over a bruise. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Peter croaks. 

It’s never a desire to sip on a drink. It’s about feeling better, it’s the softening, in a way, of the brain that makes his son croaking from a hospital bed, and the visions of him dead in the road that make his hands shake a little, it’s about making those go away. Tony has to sit himself down in his mind and remember that it’s exactly that which tore them apart in the first place, exactly that which put him in the position in the first place to have to crawl on his belly back to his life. He basks in the calm sobriety affords him.

“How do you feel?”

Peter lolls his head to the side and looks around the room. 

“I got banged up?” he mumbles. 

“You’re okay. Gonna heal right up.” Tony discreetly pings the nurse. They said they wanted to check him out once he was awake. 

Peter blinks slowly at him, like a housecat and doesn’t say anything. 

“What was that?” he asks. Tony smiles. 

“Like what happened?” he clarifies. Peter nods. “You were driving. There was a car accident.”

“Oh,” Peter says. He’s looking at Tony’s beard and reaches up to grab a bit of it between two fingers. “Is everyone okay?” he asks after a moment. 

Tony looks at him. “Where’d you get to be so good?” he asks quietly. 

Peter’s zonked enough on the meds he’s just kind of blinking at him. The girl in the other car was fine. Minor concussion, he knows, the family told him. The worst part is she was sixteen, fresh behind the wheel and might be put off driving for the time being. He took care of the bills already, for them, and hopes she can get back behind the wheel. He’ll tell all that to Peter when he’s a little less out of it. 

The nurse comes in then and she looks him over and asks him what his name is, who the president is, what the year is. Peter answers. He’s gonna be just fine. Tony’s there. Peter’s there. They’re fine. He watches Peter answer for the nurse and puts his hand on his knee. They’re going to be fine. 

-

Hi, dad,

I really hope you don’t hate me for doing this. I also really wish I could’ve had this conversation with you in person, because this note feels like dead-beat son behavior. I want to let you know that I am leaving. Or, I’ve already left, I guess. It’s my birthday in a few days from when I’m writing this and I didn’t want to try to deal with the whole issue of doing this as a minor. But I should tell you I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. 

It’s kind of a few things. I know we’ve talked about the drinking, and everything, a lot, and I know you’ve tried to cut back, and I know you’ve tried getting sober in the past. I don’t really know what to say about it that I haven’t already said to your face. It’s scary. I think about you overdoing it at a party and I find out you died on Twitter or something. I think about how it literally pickles your insides, and I read that the life expectancy of someone who abuses alcohol is only like 55. Some days I don’t even see you eat.

I spent a lot of time over the last couple years reading about it. What your life expectancy can be when you drink excessively, what the quitting process is like. I’ve read a lot about addiction. I know it’s not something you can just stop because someone asks you to, you have to stop because you want it, and even then it’s one of the hardest things to do. I don’t know if I could do it, if I were you. I just wish you wanted to do it. I wish you were as freaked out for yourself as everyone else is. I remember once when I was little, like four or five, I think, I went into your room and you were facedown on the floor just laying there. I was pushing you but you weren’t responding and I got really scared because I thought you had died. So I sat in the room with you, thinking you were dead and I didn’t know what to do. You woke up, obviously, but it was scary. I still feel like that all the time.

I’m really not trying to use this letter as a way to lay into you about it but I want you to know about it. I can’t stay. I don’t want to watch you do this to yourself anymore. The thing is, you’ve always wanted me to watch, I’ve gone to all the parties with you from when I was little and up to now. I hate that world. It’s insane, being in there and not being part of it. I’m only ever one drink down and everyone is plastered and you’re plastered and you’re running around insane and I can barely understand you. You always want me there with you for it. The sound of ice in a glass makes me literally break out in a cold sweat. 

I hate that you’re fine with where you’re at. I asked you so many times to just try and you haven’t. You’re always like, I’d do anything for you but this is the only thing I ever asked you to do. And you just didn’t. I should really come back in a minute because I’m getting mad. 

Okay. I’m still mad but I feel like I can write it better now. I wanted you to try. And I hate to say for me, because it’s selfish. I know that’s not how any of it works. But you barely took me serious when I asked, and even though I figured out a few years ago that you probably aren’t ever going to be ready for it, I also asked you to let me not look at it. I feel like I’m always looking at you falling apart, and you’re looking at everyone else on the planet, and everyone else on the planet is looking at you falling apart and at me watching you do it. Like a big voyeur circle. And then any time I wanted it to be you and me, you make it us and them. When you got sober for a bit when I was in 10th grade, I feel like you took it seriously that there’s us as a family and then there’s the public facing part, and there are different parts of each that shouldn’t leave their own little spaces. Then you got back on it and those barriers broke down again. I really can’t do it anymore. 

You’re yourself, I’m never going to change it. And I can’t change to be okay with it, so that’s why I’m leaving. Or I left. I don’t want to watch it, I don’t want to be around it. I want to never go to a party again. 

I love you. I just don’t want this. You don’t have to do anything, this is basically me disowning myself, so there’s no obligation for anything. I didn’t take any money, I didn’t take the car, we’re square and settled. 

That’s it. I don’t have anything else to say. 

-

When he gets released from the hospital, he’s allowed three more days of medical leave before he has to go back to work, and he spends those days rotting. Well not rotting, but he doesn’t do much besides talk to his dad and Pepper who are both posted up in his duplex with him, and sitting in bed and reading all the books he’s been ignoring that MJ gave him, and then talking with everyone who’s not with him on the phone. 

He’s finishing the book with the uncle and the niece and it’s a really difficult read, but it’s. He’s getting what she said, where it’s this main character who watches her cousin basically fall apart and her own family is falling apart, and it’s all tied back to the very beginning when it was one thing. One thing that really tore every one of them apart, like just destroyed and they’re all there at the end but they’re all messed up beyond repair. 

Peter’s almost done with the book, and Theodora is telling her cousin about a painting called The Garden of Earthly Delights, which sounds nice and it’s kind of feverish-looking when Peter looks it up. But Theodora’s talking about it, and she’s talking about how if you look at the painting left to right it kind of goes from hope at the beginning, to despair at the end. And then in between them, it’s humanity engaging in moral depravity, and Peter’s zoomed in on the picture on his phone looking at a bunch of naked people eating big giant Willy Wonka fruits, and climbing into oysters, and riding fish with legs like horses. 

He calls MJ, and it rings twice before she picks up. 

“ Hi, Peter,” she says it very quietly. 

“Are the fruits supposed to be sex?” he asks.

There’s a shuffle sound. “ What? ”

“So the book you gave me, Theodora is talking about Garden of Earthly Delights and she’s like oh they’re sinners, and they’re eating Willy Wonka fruits. But are they supposed to be sex? I mean, there’s people actually having sex in the painting, so I don’t know why they’d have to make it fruit, but also did they think it was bad to eat fruit?”

“ I am in class. ”

Peter sniffles. “Oh. Is it gluttony?” She hangs up. 

He ends up watching a video about the painting and it talks about how the owls are witchcraft, and the fruits are sex, and then also original sin. Almost at the end of the video, his dad knocks on the door and pokes his head in and then brings him the most busted, destroyed radio Peter’s seen in a long time. 

He sits on the end of the bed, and they work on it together. 

“Do you think it’d be possible to tune into old radio broadcasts?” Peter asks as they work. “Like how you can use a powerful radio tower to tune into other parts of the world but you can get something far enough away that you can go year by year?”

“Huh,” Tony says. He’s detangling a bunch of wires from the back of the radio and is setting each one in the bowl next to his leg. 

“So that’s a question about the power grid.” 

Peter nods. “Yeah, I figured it would be one of those things that takes so much energy that it couldn’t be the same as a regular radio tower, but. If there was some kind of closed circuit renewable energy thing, it maybe wouldn’t destroy the entire power grid.”

“Like a renewable energy battery?”

Peter puts the radio off to the side. “I’ve been reading a lot about nuclear energy, and I was almost thinking that if you can just scale it down, I think there’s a lot of safety things to run into but, yeah. Like a uranium Duracell.”

Tony hums. “I’ve been going through some of the designs from back in the day. There’s a prototype your grandfather made that operates on a similar basis. Maybe when you’re feeling up to it, we can go to the labs and play around with the design.” He sounds hesitant saying it, like he’s scared Peter’s going to say no. 

Peter’s heart goes a little soft. “Yeah. I’d like that,” he says. 

He points over at the wires Tony’s been trying to untangle. “Are you still working on those?”

“All yours.” He sounds a little choked but happy. 

“Oh man,” Peter says when he kneels on the bed to reach them, and knocks over a cup of screws. They’re all on the mattress and poking him in the knee and Tony helps him up and over to his desk chair. Peter sits and watches his dad pick up all the screws and pat down the sheets. He shakes out the blanket and a few of them ding on the ground, and Peter watches him crawl around on the floor to pick them up one by one.

One by one, he picks it all up.