Work Text:
Peter makes the joke without thinking about it first. That's the problem. It's muscle memory, not a choice.
It's something dumb. Something sideways. A little self-deprecating in a way that's supposed to read as charming if you don't look too closely.
“I’m starving. Hey, at least if I'd died, it would've been efficient," he says, staring out the window. "Like, multitasking. Save the city and cut down on your grocery bills."
He grins at the reflection in the glass, already moving on, already lining up the next thing to say. He doesn't look at Pepper when he says it. He rarely does, with jokes like that.
The car hums along the highway. Tyres on wet asphalt. The city smeared into streaks of white and red lights through the rain. The lane dividers tick past like a metronome.
Pepper keeps driving.
She doesn't laugh. She doesn't sigh, either, which is somehow louder. Her hands stay steady on the wheel, posture relaxed, eyes forward. The dashboard lights glow soft blue across her knuckles.
"Mm," she says, after a beat. Not agreement. Just acknowledgement.
Peter takes that as his cue and keeps going.
"I mean, don't worry, I'm kidding. And also very alive. So. Win-win."
Still nothing.
The silence stretches. Not sharp, not heavy, just there. Pepper doesn't fill it. She never rushes to. It's one of the things that makes people nervous around her, when they're not used to it. Tony talks over quiet. Pepper lets it sit and waits to see what surfaces.
Peter shifts in his seat. The seatbelt cuts a little into his shoulder where the bruise is blooming underneath his hoodie. He adjusts it, then taps his fingers against his thigh, restless.
Okay, fine. New topic.
"So, uh, the thing with the drone swarm. I really don’t think that was actually in the briefing. And I feel like that should've been a slide. Or at least a footnote."
"Peter," Pepper says gently.
He stops mid-sentence and finally glances over.
She still hasn't looked at him. Her voice is calm, level, threaded with something deliberate.
"What made that funny?" she asks.
The question lands soft. No edge. No accusation. Just true.
Peter's mouth opens. Nothing comes out.
"Oh," he says, after a second, like he's just realised he's missed a step. “I… I didn't mean it like. I mean, it was just a joke. You know. Gallows humour. Very healthy. Doctors recommend it."
Pepper nods, once, like she's heard him. Like she's not done.
"I know," she says. "I'm not upset."
That almost makes it worse.
She signals, changes lanes smoothly, the city opening up in front of them. The radio is off. Pepper always turns it off when she wants to think.
"I'm just asking," she continues, still watching the road, "what made that the thing you reached for."
Peter laughs, too fast. "I dunno. I reach for a lot of things. That's kind of my brand."
She hums again. Neutral. Patient.
"Okay," she says. "Then let me ask it a different way."
He braces without meaning to. His shoulders tighten, imperceptible but there.
"When you imagine not being here," Pepper says quietly, "does that feel abstract to you? Or practical?"
The car doesn't slow. Traffic keeps flowing. Somewhere to their left, a siren wails and fades.
Peter stares at his hands. They look normal. Long fingers, faint scars, a smear of dried something dark under one nail he didn't quite scrub out when someone had thrown him some wipes post battle. He rubs at it with his thumb until it flakes away.
"That's kind of a weird question," he says lightly.
Pepper finally looks at him. Not sharply. Not with alarm. Just with that steady, full attention she gives boardrooms and negotiations and people she refuses to underestimate.
"I'm good at weird questions," she says. "You don't have to answer if you don't want to."
Peter swallows.
He doesn't answer. He turns back to the window and watches the city blur past, willing the subject to die on its own.
It doesn't.
Pepper doesn't repeat herself. She doesn't push. She just lets the question sit between them like something physical, taking up space in the car alongside the hum of the engine and the soft rhythm of rain against the windshield.
Peter lasts maybe ninety seconds before the quiet becomes unbearable.
"I don't sit around thinking about it," he says. "Like, for the record. It's not some whole thing."
"Okay," Pepper says.
"It's just words. Like, it just comes out."
"Okay."
He hates the way she says okay. It sounds like she's making room for whatever comes next, and he doesn't know what comes next, and that's the problem.
"Can we just." He gestures vaguely at the windshield. "Go home?"
Pepper glances at the road ahead, then back. "We are going home."
Peter frowns. He looks out the window again, and something snags. They passed the exit for the Tower about two minutes ago. He's sure of it. The overpass with the graffiti on the concrete barrier, the one that says TONY STANK in faded green spray paint that nobody's bothered to remove because, honestly, it's kind of funny.
They passed it.
"Pepper," he says slowly. "We missed the turn."
"Did we?" she says, completely unbothered.
"Yeah. Like, definitely. The exit was back there."
Pepper adjusts her grip on the wheel. "There's more than one way home."
Peter stares at her.
"You're doing this on purpose," he says.
She doesn't deny it. Her mouth curves, just barely, and it's not unkind, but it's unmistakable. She is absolutely, deliberately, keeping this car on the highway.
“That’s..." Peter lets out a disbelieving huff. "That's basically kidnapping."
"I'll add it to my résumé."
"I'm serious. This is hostage negotiation but with, like, leather seats."
Pepper's expression doesn't shift. "Comfortable hostage situation, then."
Peter almost laughs, genuinely, but it dies somewhere in his throat because Pepper takes the next junction and merges onto a stretch of road that curves along the river, and the city opens up wide and dark to their right, and it's clear they're not going home any time soon.
He sinks lower in his seat.
"I don't know what you want me to say," he tells her, and he means it.
"I don't want you to say anything specific," Pepper replies, calm as ever. "I just want you to stop performing."
Peter's stomach flips.
"I'm not performing."
Pepper's silence is its own answer.
Peter picks at a thread on the cuff of his hoodie. He wraps it around his finger, pulls, lets it unravel a little. The fabric is soft from too many washes and it smells faintly of the Tower's laundry detergent.
"Look," Peter says, carefully, like he's negotiating, "I just say stuff sometimes. It doesn't mean anything. People say stuff."
"They do," Pepper agrees.
"So."
"So, I'm curious about the stuff you say."
"Why?"
Pepper's eyes stay on the road. The lights of the bridge ahead reflect in the wet asphalt like scattered coins.
“Because when someone I love makes a joke about not being alive, I notice."
The word love lands somewhere in Peter's ribcage and he doesn't know what to do with it. He never does. It always feels like something given to him by accident, something that belongs to a version of him that's easier to care about.
He doesn't say any of that.
"You're reading too much into it," he says instead.
Pepper nods. "Maybe."
Peter waits for the but. It doesn't come.
That's worse.
They drive in silence for another few minutes. The river runs dark and flat beside them, the occasional light from a barge sliding past. Peter watches the water and tries to think of literally anything else to talk about.
"How's the Stark Foundation thing going?" he tries.
"Peter."
"What? I'm asking. It's a real question."
"It is," Pepper says, "and I'll answer it later. Right now, I'd like to stay with this."
Peter's jaw tightens. "There's no this. There's nothing to stay with."
"Okay."
"Stop saying okay like that."
Pepper glances at him. "Like what?"
"Like you're just waiting for me to crack."
Something shifts in Pepper's expression. It's subtle. A softening around her eyes, or maybe a steadying, like she's recalibrating.
"I'm not waiting for you to crack," she says quietly. "I'm waiting for you to be honest."
Peter's chest tightens.
He stares straight ahead. The wipers sweep across the windshield in a slow, even rhythm. Back and forth. Back and forth.
"I am being honest," he says. "I made a dumb joke. That's it. That's the whole thing."
Pepper is quiet for a long moment.
Then she says, "You make a lot of those jokes, Peter."
He opens his mouth to argue, and stops. Because she's right, and they both know it, and the specific list of examples is probably longer than he'd like to think about.
"So I have a dark sense of humour," he says. "So what. Tony does too."
"He does," Pepper agrees. "And I've had the same conversation with him."
Peter doesn't know what to say to that. He picks at the thread on his cuff again, harder this time, until it snaps.
"The difference," Pepper continues, "is that Tony knows why he does it. He might not like admitting it, but he knows."
Peter goes quiet.
Not the performative quiet of someone waiting for their turn to deflect. A real quiet. The kind that settles in when something lands too close.
"I know why I do it," he says, but it sounds thin.
"Then tell me," Pepper says. Simple as that.
Peter swallows. His throat feels tight, like he's coming down with something.
"Because it's funny," he says.
Pepper waits.
"Because, I don't know. It makes it smaller."
"Makes what smaller?"
Peter's fingers curl against his thighs. "I don't know. The... feeling. The whatever."
He can hear how stupid that sounds. The whatever. Real articulate. But the truth is, he doesn't have a better word for it. It's not something he's ever sat with long enough to name. It's just a thing that shows up sometimes, like weather. Like a headache. Like something in the background that he's learned to talk around.
Pepper takes a slow breath. "What feeling, Peter?"
"I told you, I don't know."
"You don't know, or you don't want to say?"
Peter's knee starts bouncing. "Can we please just go home?"
"We are going home," Pepper says again, and this time it almost sounds like a promise. "I just want to understand what you meant. In the car earlier."
"I told you what I meant. It was a joke."
"About dying."
The word hangs in the air like a struck bell.
Peter flinches. Actually flinches, like someone's touched a bruise he forgot he had.
"Don't say it like that," he mutters.
"Like what?"
"Like it's a thing. Like it's. I don't know. Significant."
Pepper's grip shifts on the wheel. "Is it not?"
Peter doesn't answer.
The city keeps sliding past. A row of buildings with lit windows. A parking structure. A neon sign for a bodega, blurring pink and white through the rain.
"It's just something my brain does," he says, eventually, very quietly. "It's not. It's not a big deal."
Pepper doesn't respond right away, and in the space where her voice should be, Peter hears his own breathing, too fast, too shallow.
"Okay," she says, finally. "Can you tell me more about what your brain does?"
Peter lets out a long, shaky breath. "You're really not going to let this go, are you."
"No," Pepper says, gentle. "I'm not."
He tips his head back against the seat. Stares at the ceiling of the car. The interior light is off but there's enough glow from the city outside that he can see the faint texture of the fabric above him, and he focuses on that because it's easier than focusing on the thing growing in his chest.
"Sometimes," he says, and the word comes out rougher than he expected, "I just. Think about not being here. And it's not like, a plan, or whatever. It's more like. My brain just goes there. Like it's checking. Like it's reminding me that's an option."
The car is very quiet.
"And then I make a joke about it," Peter continues, "because then it's just a joke. It's not real. It's just. Words."
Pepper's voice is careful. "And does that work? Making it a joke?"
Peter's laugh is thin, barely there. "For like, five minutes."
Pepper is quiet for a while. The road curves and the headlights sweep across a retaining wall, catching graffiti and weeds and the wet gleam of concrete.
"Have you ever told anyone?" she asks. "About the thoughts."
Peter's jaw tightens. "There's nothing to tell."
"Peter."
"No. Okay? No. Because it's not. It's not the kind of thing you tell people. It's just brain stuff. Everyone has brain stuff."
Pepper nods, slow. "They do."
"So."
"So, not everyone's brain stuff involves imagining not being alive."
Peter's fingers dig into his thighs. "I didn't say that."
"You said your brain reminds you it's an option." Pepper's voice is steady, careful, like she's aware of how close they are to something and how easily he could bolt, emotionally if not physically. "That's not the same as everyone's brain stuff."
Peter doesn't answer. He watches the wipers move. Back and forth. Back and forth. The rhythm is hypnotic, and he lets himself fall into it because it's better than thinking about the look on Pepper's face right now. The one she's trying to keep neutral but can't, quite.
"I'm not broken," he says.
"I know you're not."
"So why does it feel like you're treating me like I am?"
Pepper takes a breath. Lets it out slowly.
"Because someone I love just told me that his brain gives him exit routes when he's tired," she says, "and I'd rather have an uncomfortable conversation now than a devastating one later."
The words hit Peter somewhere below his ribs. He folds forward slightly, elbows on his knees, and stares at the floor mat.
"That's not fair," he says, quiet.
"No," Pepper agrees. "It's not. None of this is fair. But I'd rather be unfair than silent."
Peter swallows. His throat aches. Everything aches, actually. The bruise on his shoulder, the scrape on his knuckles, the bone-deep tiredness that comes after a mission, and now this. This conversation that he didn't ask for and can't escape and doesn't know how to survive without giving away more than he wants to.
"Can I just." He stops. "Can I just have a minute?"
"Of course," Pepper says. Immediately. Without hesitation.
She drives.
The minute stretches into two, then three. The city scrolls past, familiar and indifferent, and Peter watches it and breathes and tries to put himself back together the way he always does. Pack the feelings down. Smooth the surface. Rebuild the wall.
It's harder this time. The bricks don't fit the way they used to.
"I don't want to talk about this at the Tower," he says eventually.
Pepper glances at him. "Okay."
"I don't want Tony to know."
A pause. Just long enough to be honest.
"I can't promise that," Pepper says.
Peter's head snaps toward her. "Why not?"
"Because Tony and I don't keep things like this from each other. And because this isn't the kind of thing that gets better by staying in a smaller and smaller box."
Peter's chest tightens. "So I told you something and now you're just going to. Tell him."
"I'm going to tell him that I'm worried about you," Pepper says, careful and clear. "That's not a betrayal, Peter. That's a family."
Peter turns back to the window. His eyes burn and he hates it. He hates that his body does this, that it leaks at the worst possible moments, that he can hold it together through collapsing buildings and drone swarms and the genuine possibility of death but not through a quiet conversation in a car with someone who loves him.
"I'm sorry," he says, automatic.
"Don't apologise," Pepper says. "Not for this."
They cross a bridge. The tyres thrum against the grating and the river opens up dark and wide below them, and Peter watches the lights of the far shore and doesn't say anything else because he's run out of ways to make this sound like nothing.
Pepper drives.
She takes the next exit, loops them back toward the Tower. Not abruptly. Not like she's rushing. Just like she knows they've reached the edge of what this car can hold, and it's time to bring him somewhere warmer.
Peter watches the familiar streets start to appear. The coffee shop on the corner. The newsstand. The scaffolding around the building two blocks east that's been there for months.
"Peter," Pepper says, as they pull into the Tower's underground parking.
He looks at her.
Her face is calm in the fluorescent light. Steady. Her eyes are clear and warm in a way that makes him want to look away.
"Thank you for telling me that," she says.
He shrugs, small and uncomfortable. "I didn't really tell you anything."
Pepper turns the car off. The engine dies and the silence is sudden and full.
"You told me enough," she says.
Peter's throat aches.
He unbuckles his seatbelt because it gives him something to do with his hands, and he reaches for the door handle, and then Pepper's voice stops him.
"And Peter?"
He pauses.
"We're not done," she says. Not a threat. Just a fact, laid down gently, the way she lays down everything. "But we don't have to do it all tonight."
Peter nods, once, without looking at her.
"Okay," he says.
He opens the door and the parking garage swallows the quiet of the car, replacing it with concrete echo and the distant hum of the building's systems. His trainers squeak on the polished floor.
Pepper falls into step beside him, close enough that he can feel the warmth of her through his sleeve if he shifts, but she doesn't touch.
It's worse, somehow. The not-touching. The trust that he'll stay anyway.
---
The Tower looks the way it always does from the outside. All glass and money and careful angles. Like it hasn't ever held a scared kid on a couch at three in the morning, or a billionaire who doesn't sleep unless someone tells him to.
The lobby doors slide open with that soft, expensive hush, and the warmth hits Peter in the face like a hand.
He follows Pepper inside without really thinking about it. Like he's still on a lead, only the lead is made of her steady silence and the fact she didn't let him get away with it.
The security guard gives Pepper a nod and smiles at Peter with the usual, fond expression that's been permanently assigned to him since the Tower collectively decided he's theirs.
Peter keeps his hands shoved in the pocket of his hoodie. His knuckles are scraped and he can feel the sting if he flexes his fingers, so he doesn't.
The elevator doors close behind them. Quiet. Soft lighting. A faint reflection of his own face in the brushed steel.
He looks terrible. Not injured-terrible, just hollowed-out. The mission dirt is still faintly visible on his neck, and his hair is flat on one side from the helmet, and his eyes have that glassy, too-bright look that means he's running on fumes and willpower.
He's still thinking about Pepper's question. When you imagine not being here, does that feel abstract to you? Or practical?
The answer he didn't give her sits in his stomach like a stone.
He also can't stop thinking about the fact that she's going to tell Tony. That by the time they walk through that door, the scope of this thing will have doubled. Two people carrying it instead of one and a half. Two people watching him. Two people calibrating their voices and their faces and their questions, trying to figure out how broken he is.
He's not broken. He's just tired. There's a difference.
Isn't there?
Pepper presses the button for the penthouse levels then pulls out her phone and begins tapping out a message. The elevator begins its smooth climb, and Peter's stomach does that little tilt it always does when he's about to be seen.
He tries anyway.
"So," he says, too bright. "Fun fact: I'm never telling you jokes in a car again. This is like being trapped in a therapeutic podcast with no skip button. And I’ll probably just walk back after the next mission instead of letting you ‘save me the bother’.”
Pepper's mouth twitches. Not a smile exactly, but close.
"Noted," she says.
The elevator dings. The doors slide open.
FRIDAY's voice fills the penthouse, calm and bright. "Welcome home, Ms Potts. Welcome home, Peter."
"Thanks, FRI," he calls automatically.
The living area is dim, mostly lit by the city outside and a single lamp someone's left on near the sofa. The place smells faintly like coffee and Tony's stupid expensive candle that's supposed to smell like cedar and ambition or whatever.
There's sound from deeper inside. A faint clattering, the unmistakeable noise of the espresso machine whirring. Someone's awake.
Of course someone's awake.
Pepper's heels don't make much noise on the floor. Peter's trainers squeak a little. He winces and steps lighter.
Then Tony appears, like he's been hovering around the kitchen doorway pretending he isn't waiting.
He's in sweatpants and an old Stark Industries hoodie that's been washed enough times to be soft, which is somehow the most disarming version of him. Hair a mess. Glasses on. A mug in his hand like a prop.
His eyes track to Peter first. Always.
"Kid," he says, voice casual, like he hasn't been listening for the elevator.
Peter gives him the usual grin. Practised and flimsy. "Hey."
Tony's gaze flicks down. Hoodie, posture, the way Peter's holding himself like he's fine. Then back up again, sharper around the edges.
"You bleeding?" he asks, like it's a normal greeting.
"No," Peter says, too fast. "No, just. Vibes."
Tony huffs out a laugh that doesn't quite make it to his eyes.
Pepper steps into the space between them without making it feel like a barrier. She just arrives. Her hand rests briefly on Tony's forearm, a quiet anchor.
"Hi," Tony says to her, softer. Then, "Everything okay?"
Pepper holds his gaze for a beat.
"Peter and I had a conversation," she says.
Peter's stomach drops through the floor.
---
Tony's expression shifts. Not anger, not really. More like the moment he clocks danger and doesn't know where it's coming from yet.
His eyes move between them, reading the room the way he reads schematics. Fast. Thorough. Looking for the thing that doesn't fit.
"A conversation about what?" he asks, carefully.
Pepper's voice stays level. "About something Peter said in the car."
Peter's whole body goes tight. "It was nothing. Pepper, come on, it was literally nothing."
He hears himself say it and knows how it sounds. It sounds exactly like someone who knows it's not nothing, trying very hard to shove it back into the box it crawled out of.
Pepper turns her head toward him. Not harsh. Just enough.
Peter's voice dies in his throat.
She looks back at Tony. "He made a joke about dying."
The air in the room changes.
It's not something Peter can see, exactly. It's more like a pressure shift. Like the moment before a storm breaks, when everything goes still and electric at the same time.
Tony's face goes blank.
Peter's hands curl into fists inside his pockets.
"It was a joke," he says, quick, defensive. "It was just. You know, I was trying to."
Tony sets his mug down on the counter. The sound is quiet, but deliberate.
Peter's mouth keeps moving, panicking into noise. "It was gallows humour, it's, like, a thing, people do it, you do it. In fact-“
"Hey," Tony says.
One word. Flat. Not loud.
Peter stops.
Tony's eyes are on him, laser-focused. His voice stays steady, but there's something in it that feels like standing at the edge of something very high.
"Don't," he says. "Don't do that thing where you talk fast so nobody can get a handhold."
Peter's throat tightens.
Pepper's hand is still on Tony's arm. She rubs once, small, like she's telling him I've got you, too.
She looks back at Peter.
"I'm not interested in punishing you," she says. "Neither is Tony."
Peter gives a brittle laugh. "Okay, great. So can we just. Move on?"
Tony doesn't answer. He picks up his mug again, takes a sip like they've got all the time in the world, and leans against the counter. The gesture is so deliberately casual that it circles right back around to intense.
"I already talked about it in the car," Peter says, directing it at Pepper. "You asked, I answered. It's done."
Pepper shakes her head, gently. "I asked. You gave me pieces."
"I gave you the whole thing."
"You gave me what you thought would make me stop asking."
Peter stares at her. His heart is hammering. He hates this. He hates that she's right. He hates that she's right and he can't even figure out what she's right about, because the truth is he doesn't really understand what's happening inside him well enough to know what he's holding back.
It's just. Stuff. Feelings. Brain noise. It doesn't have a shape.
"I don't know what else you want," he says, and his voice comes out smaller than he intended.
Tony sets the mug down again. This time he leaves it.
"Okay," he says, quieter. "Come sit down."
Peter doesn't move.
"Kid. Please."
It's the please that does it. Tony doesn't say please like that unless he means it, and Peter's too tired to fight two of them at once.
He walks to the sofa and sits down, stiff and careful, like he's perching on the edge of something he might need to leave quickly. His hands stay in his pockets. His shoulders are up near his ears. The leather is cool against the backs of his legs and he can smell the candle from here, that stupid cedar and ambition one, and the coffee Tony was drinking, and underneath all of it the familiar clean warmth that means home, which is a word he still has trouble using without feeling like he's stealing it.
Tony watches him for a second, then sits on the other end of the couch. Close, but not crowding. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and clasps his hands together, and Peter recognises the posture. It's Tony's I'm not going to yell but I need you to hear me stance. He's seen it in the lab after blown experiments. In the med bay after bad missions. Always the same careful lean, like Tony's trying to make himself smaller so Peter doesn't bolt.
Pepper squeezes Tony's arm once, then steps back. "I'll make tea," she says, quiet, and disappears into the kitchen.
The sounds of a kettle and cupboards fill the silence, grounding the room in something domestic, and Peter is grateful for it because it means there's still a normal world happening somewhere behind this conversation.
Tony doesn't speak right away. He just sits there, present, and the quiet between them isn't hostile but it isn't comfortable either. It's loaded. It's the kind of quiet that means someone is choosing their words very carefully.
Peter can't stand it.
"Are you mad?" he asks.
Tony's jaw works. "No."
"You look mad."
"I look scared," Tony says. "There's a difference."
Peter blinks. He wasn't expecting that.
Tony rubs the back of his neck, then drops his hand. "Pepper messaged me, in the elevator.”
Peter's stomach drops. "She texted you?"
“She didn’t exactly give me a full briefing." Tony's voice is dry, but the humour doesn't reach his face. "She just said ‘I’m bringing Peter to talk to you. He’s making the jokes again.’ So I've been standing in that kitchen for three minutes reading the same article about renewable energy and not processing a single word of it."
Peter doesn't know what to say.
Tony leans back slightly. The lamp casts warm light across one side of his face and leaves the other in shadow, and his eyes are tired behind his glasses.
"So," Tony says. "Tell me."
"Tell you what?"
"The joke."
Peter's heart stutters. "Why?"
"Because I want to hear it from you. Not secondhand."
Peter swallows. His fingers find the frayed thread on his hoodie cuff again, the one that's already broken. He wraps the stub of it around his finger anyway, just for something to hold onto.
"It was dumb," he says. "I just said I was hungry. And like, if I'd died on the mission, at least it would've been efficient. Multitasking. Save the city and cut down on grocery bills."
He delivers it flat, stripped of the grin and the timing, and it sounds different like that. It sounds worse.
Tony is quiet for a long time.
"That's not funny," he says eventually.
"It was in the moment."
"No," Tony says, and his voice has an edge now, not anger exactly but something close to it, something that Peter recognises as fear wearing a different coat. "It wasn't funny in the moment either. That's why Pepper drove past the exit."
Peter's eyes widen slightly. "She told you that too?"
"She didn't have to. I know her. It took you ages to get back here and when Pepper takes the long way home, it's not because she likes the scenery. She likes the car for tough conversations, people will usually engage if the only alternative option is to jump from a moving vehicle.”
Peter's knee starts bouncing. He presses his hand down on it to make it stop.
"Look," he says. "I know it was a bad joke. I know. I'm not going to say it again. Can we just leave it there?"
Tony studies him. "You said something like it two weeks ago."
Peter blinks. "What?"
"On the roof. After the building collapse in Midtown. You told Clint that if you'd been stuck under there, one of them could have a bedroom upgrade to the Penthouse level.”
Peter's face heats. "That was just… Clint was right there. We were blowing off steam."
"Clint laughed," Tony says. "You didn't."
"I laughed."
"You smiled. It's different." Tony's voice stays patient, but there's a relentlessness underneath it that Peter recognises from lab sessions and mission debriefs. The same dogged focus Tony brings to everything that matters to him. "And before that, in the lab, you made a crack about how your healing factor was a waste of resources on someone who'd probably walk into traffic reading a textbook."
Peter's stomach churns.
"And before that," Tony continues, "after the thing with the train, you told Nat not to bother learning your coffee order because you probably wouldn't be around long enough for it to matter."
Hearing them listed like that, one after another, stripped of context and timing and the tone that made them land as jokes instead of something else, Peter feels exposed in a way that makes his skin crawl.
"You wrote those down?" he asks, trying for light.
Tony's expression doesn't shift. "I didn't need to."
Peter's knee starts bouncing again. He doesn't try to stop it this time.
"It's just how I talk," he says. "Some people are sarcastic. Some people do self-deprecating humour. It's a style."
"It's a pattern," Tony corrects, quiet.
"Same thing."
"It's really not." Tony pauses, then adds, more gently, "And you know it's not, because you never make those jokes when you think someone might actually listen."
Peter goes still. Something cold moves through his chest.
"That's not true," he says, but it sounds unconvincing even to him.
Tony studies him. And there's something in his expression that Peter can't quite read. It's not the usual parental concern or the I'm trying to be patient face. It's something older and more personal, like Peter's accidentally stumbled into a room Tony keeps locked.
"I used to do the same thing," Tony says.
Peter looks up.
"The jokes. The throwaway lines. Making it sound casual so nobody would look too close." Tony's voice is careful, like he's picking his way through something sharp. "I did it for years. Decades, probably. Pepper was the first person who didn't let me get away with it."
Peter doesn't know what to do with this. It feels too big, too personal, and part of him wants to file it away and another part wants to ask more and a third part, the loudest part, wants to change the subject entirely.
"That's different," he says. “You’re... You."
"What does that mean?"
"It means you've got actual stuff to deal with. I'm just… I'm fine. I just say dumb things sometimes."
Tony's expression tightens. "You keep saying you're fine."
"Because I am."
"Peter." Tony's voice drops, quiet and sure, the way it goes when he's done negotiating. "You're sitting in my living room with scraped knuckles and a bruised shoulder and you just told Pep that you think about not existing, and you're telling me you're fine."
"I didn't say I think about not existing," Peter mutters. "I said my brain does this thing."
"Tell me about the thing."
"I already told Pepper."
"Tell me."
Peter's fingers tighten in the fabric of his hoodie.
"It's just. When I get tired. Or when stuff goes wrong. My brain kind of. Goes to this place where it's like, you know. It'd be simpler. If things were different."
Tony waits.
"If I was different," Peter says, barely above a whisper. And then, because that's too close to something real, he adds quickly, "But it's not like I'm thinking about it seriously. It's just background noise."
"Background noise," Tony repeats.
"Yeah."
"Like elevator music."
"Yeah. Like, annoying but not. Not a thing."
Tony nods slowly. He's quiet for a moment, and Peter can see him working through something, the way his jaw tightens and releases, the way his fingers lace tighter together.
"Can I tell you something?" Tony says.
Peter shrugs.
"The background noise. I know exactly what you're talking about. And I spent about fifteen years calling it nothing." Tony's eyes are steady on his. "It wasn't nothing."
Peter's chest constricts. "That's. I mean. Your stuff is way worse than mine."
"It's not a competition." Tony's voice is flat, final. "And that's exactly the kind of thinking that lets it get louder. You tell yourself it's not bad enough to count, so you don't deal with it, and then one day it's not background noise anymore. It's the only thing you can hear."
Peter's throat aches.
He wants to argue. He wants to say that's different, I'm different, mine really is just noise. But the words feel hollow even before they reach his mouth, and something about the way Tony is looking at him, not with pity but with recognition, makes it impossible to lie.
So he doesn't say anything. He just sits there, hands in his pockets, knee still trying to bounce, and stares at the floor.
Tony lets the silence hold.
The kettle clicks off in the kitchen. Cupboards open and close. The sounds are soft and rhythmic and they anchor the moment in something bearable.
"I'm not trying to scare you," Tony says eventually. "And I'm not trying to turn this into some big intervention. But I need you to know that we hear you. Even when you think you're being subtle."
Peter's laugh is weak. "I didn't think I was being subtle."
"No. You thought you were being funny. Which is worse, because funny is how you disappear."
The word disappear lands like a hand on his chest. Peter swallows hard.
"I'm right here," he says.
"Yeah." Tony's voice wavers, just barely. "You are. And I'd really like you to stay that way."
Peter's eyes sting. He blinks hard, furious at himself.
Pepper returns with two mugs. She hands one to Tony without looking, like she's done it a thousand times, then settles into the armchair across from Peter, legs tucked under her. She holds her mug in both hands, the steam curling up between her fingers.
She doesn't speak right away.
She just looks at Peter like he's someone worth waiting for.
Peter stares into the space between them.
"I don't want you to be scared of me," he whispers.
Pepper's voice is immediate, gentle. "I'm not scared of you."
He blinks, disbelieving.
"I'm scared for you," she clarifies. "There's a difference. And it doesn't make you dangerous. It makes you someone we want to protect."
Peter swipes at his eyes with the heel of his hand, hard.
Tony clears his throat. He sounds like he's trying not to let it show how much all of this is hitting him.
"We want the same thing you do," Tony says. "We just want you to be okay. Actually okay. Not performing okay."
Peter's stomach tightens. "I don't know how to tell the difference sometimes."
The admission falls out before he can catch it, and once it's there he can't take it back. It hangs in the lamplight between them, raw and true and smaller than he thought it would be.
Tony's expression cracks. Just for a moment, something crosses his face that looks like grief. Like recognition. Like I know exactly what you mean and I wish you didn't.
Pepper sets her mug down carefully.
"That's okay," she says. "That's something you can learn. But you can't learn it alone."
Peter knows what's coming.
"I'd like you to talk to someone," Pepper says, and her voice is the same voice she uses in meetings when she's about to say something that isn't a suggestion. "Not us. Someone whose job it is to help with this."
Peter's stomach drops. "Like therapy."
"Like therapy."
Peter shakes his head. "I don't need therapy. It's not… I'm not that bad."
"It's not about how bad it is," Pepper says. "It's about having someone in your corner who isn't us."
"Why can't it just be you?"
The question comes out more honestly than Peter intended, and he can see the way it lands on both of them. Tony's jaw tightens. Pepper's eyes soften.
"Because we love you too much to be objective," Pepper says. "And because you'll try to protect us from the hard parts. You're already doing it."
Peter's mouth opens to argue. He closes it again.
She's right. He knows she's right. Even tonight, even in the car, he was editing. Choosing which pieces to give her and which ones to swallow. Saying my brain does this thing instead of saying what the thing actually feels like, which is more like standing at the edge of something and not being sure if you'd step back.
He doesn't say any of that now, either.
Tony makes a face. "I know. I made the same face. She made me go anyway."
Pepper gives him a look. Tony raises both hands in surrender.
"And it helped?" Peter asks, sceptical.
Tony hesitates, which is more honest than a quick yes would have been. "It helped with some stuff. It didn't fix everything. But it gave me. I don't know. Language. For the things I couldn't name."
Peter thinks about the shapeless thing in his chest. The whatever. The noise. The lack of language for any of it. The way he can feel something wrong without being able to point at it, like a sound just below the threshold of hearing.
"I'll think about it," he says.
Pepper's expression doesn't change. "I'd like you to do more than think about it."
Peter's jaw tightens. "Okay. Fine. I'll do it."
Pepper's shoulders ease, just a fraction.
"And in the meantime," she says, "when the thoughts get loud. You tell one of us. You won’t ever be in trouble for being honest.”
Peter's instinct is to argue. He can feel it rising in him, the automatic push-back, the ‘I'm fine, I can handle it’ that's been running like background software for as long as he can remember.
But he's tired. God, he's tired. And fighting them both is like trying to swim upstream in a river that's warm and gentle and keeps pulling him toward something that looks a lot like safety, and he doesn't have the energy to resist it right now.
"Okay," he says again.
Tony watches him. "You're saying okay a lot."
"Because okay is the answer."
"It's an answer," Tony says carefully. "I'm not sure it's yours."
Peter looks at him, and for a second something flickers behind his eyes. Something tired and wary and very young. Then it's gone, tucked away behind the practiced steadiness he wears like a second skin.
"It's the best I've got right now," Peter says.
Tony holds his gaze for a long moment.
He looks like he wants to say more. Like there's a whole speech sitting behind his teeth, something about how saying okay isn't the same as meaning it, and saying the right words doesn't mean you believe them, and Tony knows, God he knows, because he's been the kid on that couch saying okay to someone's face and then going right back to the same patterns the second the conversation ended.
But he doesn't say any of it. Because pushing harder right now would break something, and the whole point is to keep this kid in one piece.
"Okay," Tony says. "That's enough for tonight."
The relief in Peter's shoulders is immediate and visible. His whole body loosens, just slightly, like someone's turned a dial down from nine to seven. Not relaxed. Just less braced.
Pepper's eyes move to Tony, a brief silent exchange that Peter catches but can't decode. Something passes between them. Agreement, maybe. Or patience. Or the shared understanding that this is day one of something that doesn't have a timeline, and the most important thing right now is that Peter is still sitting here, still talking, still in the room.
Tony reaches out and taps Peter's knee with two fingers. A tiny, careful touch. "For what it's worth," he says, "I'm proud of you for not climbing out the car window."
Peter huffs a sound that's almost a laugh. "I considered it."
"I know. You've got better survival instincts than me, though, so."
Pepper clears her throat.
"Right," Tony says. "Tea. Do you want tea, or do you want to shower first?"
Peter blinks, overwhelmed by the normality of the options.
“I… I don't know."
Tony nudges him gently. "Couch. You're bruised. You're running on adrenaline and bad coping mechanisms. You are one gust of air away from falling over."
Peter snorts. "I'm fine."
Pepper's brows lift.
Peter sighs. “I’m... Kind of not."
"Good," Pepper says. "Acknowledging that counts."
She stands and disappears down the hall, and Peter hears her quiet voice asking FRIDAY to keep the penthouse private tonight. No surprise visitors. No team stampede.
Tony's hand finds Peter's shoulder. Just rests there, warm and heavy and real.
Peter doesn't pull away. But he doesn't lean in, either. He just sits with it, like he's still deciding whether he's allowed to.
"For what it's worth," Tony says, voice low, "I'm glad she didn't let you get away with it."
Peter stares at the city through the window. All those lights. All those buildings and lives and noise.
"Yeah," he says. "I know."
Tony squeezes his shoulder once, then lets go.
Pepper comes back with a blanket and drapes it over Peter's legs without ceremony. The fabric is warm and heavy in a familiar way, and Peter's body responds to it before his brain does, his shoulders dropping half an inch.
"Get some rest," Pepper says softly.
Peter nods.
She touches his shoulder as she passes, light and brief, and then she's gone, her footsteps fading down the hallway.
Tony stays.
He leans back against the couch and puts his feet up on the coffee table, which Pepper would kill him for, and scrolls through something on his phone, the screen light catching the edge of his glasses. He doesn't ask anything else. He doesn't push. He just exists, solid and warm and deliberately ordinary, and Peter understands that this is its own kind of language. That Tony is saying, without words, I'm here. It's okay. You don't have to perform right now.
Peter's eyes drift half-closed.
His body aches. His chest aches. His brain is still turning over everything that was said and everything that wasn't, sorting it all into piles he doesn't know what to do with yet.
He said okay. He agreed. Therapy. Telling someone when it gets loud.
It sounded right when he said it. It sounded like the kind of thing a person says when two people they love are looking at them with that much quiet fear in their eyes. And part of him means it. He thinks. The part that's tired enough to stop fighting. The part that saw Tony's face crack open and decided it was easier to agree than to keep watching that happen.
But there's another part, the part that's been running things for longer than he'd like to admit, and that part is already filing the conversation away under handled. Already calculating how much he has to do, how often he has to check in, how convincingly he has to perform getting better so that they stop looking at him like something made of paper.
He knows that's not what they're asking for. He knows.
He just doesn't know how to do it differently yet.
The city hums outside the windows. The lamp casts warm light across the floor. Tony's breathing is slow and steady beside him, familiar and grounding in a way Peter has never figured out how to earn and has never quite believed he deserves.
He pulls the blanket a little higher.
He's here. He's home. He said the right things.
Somewhere far below, the city moves and breathes and doesn't notice him at all, and that should feel lonely but tonight it just feels like space. Room to exist without being watched.
He closes his eyes and lets the quiet hold him.
The noise is still there, underneath everything. Patient and shapeless. Not louder than before, but not quieter either. Just present, the way it always is, waiting for the room to empty and the lights to go out and the performance to end.
But Tony's shoulder is warm against his, and the blanket smells like home, and somewhere down the hall Pepper is moving through rooms with the quiet competence of someone who has decided that this family is hers to hold together.
Peter breathes.
It's not enough. But it's what he has.