Archive of Our Own

Still I’m pinned under the weight

Of what I believed would keep me safe

So show me where my armor ends

Show me where my skin begins

Like a final puzzle piece

It all makes perfect sense to me

The heaviness that I hold in my heart belongs to gravity

The heaviness that I hold in my heart’s been crushing me 

-Sleeping At Last, Pluto

The building collapses.

The building collapses, and Peter goes on a field trip, and he can't breathe, and there are months between these two things, but there are still so many threads connecting them, spiderwebs strung between Peter’s lungs and the graze in his thigh flaring hot and heavy beneath the Stark Industry lab lights and he wants to go home.

God, he just wants to go home, but he doesn’t remember what that feels like anymore. He doesn’t remember what it feels like for the floor not to feel like it’s constantly about to collapse beneath his feet, like the ceiling is about to collapse over his head, like he’s not about to end up buried beneath the weight again.

---

The building collapses, and Spiderman disappears. Stops showing up—or, at least, not as often.

The Vulture is taken out, but Spiderman doesn't get his suit back, because Peter and Mr. Stark aren't talking, because Mr. Stark doesn’t trust Peter, and Peter knows it, and Peter doesn't know how to stop the world from collapsing around him, but he can't stop being Spiderman, because with great power comes great responsibility, but—

God. Peter's so alone. No one close to him knows the truth. May doesn't know the truth. MJ doesn't know the truth. Ned knows the truth, but when Iron Man doesn't think that Peter is worthy of a superhero suit, it's almost enough to stop him from being Spiderman.

But not quite, though.

---

There’s a field trip. A fucking field trip, to fucking Stark Industries, where Peter has had a fake internship for half a year now, and everything that Peter has been telling people is about to go up in smoke, because Mr. Stark hasn’t been speaking to him for ages—

Ned is ecstatic. “We’re gonna get to see your internship,” he crows, excitement brighter than Sirius in the sky.

Flash is laughing. “We’re gonna get to watch Penis Parker faceplant when we all see, once and for all, that he’s lying about that internship of his."

MJ is flipping Flash the bird, and Betty is scribbling away in her notebook marking down the news about the field trip for the newspaper, and Mr. Harrington is pulling Peter aside when the bell rings to say that he’s heard the rumors, Peter, and it doesn’t do good to the school’s reputation to lie about an internship when they’re in Stark Industries, and the building is collapsing again, concrete dust filling Peter’s lungs, and he can’t do this. Not this afternoon. Not the blindingly yellow field trip permission slip in his hand, not talking to Aunt May about getting permission to go to a building that he's supposed to have been going to for months, not the possibility of happening to cross paths with the superhero that took away his suit.

Peter needs to breathe before the field trip so he tells May he’s heading for his internship—despite the fact that Mr. Stark hasn’t spoken to him in months, despite the fact that he knows that he won’t be allowed to step foot inside of Stark Industries, he’s sure of it, despite the fact that his life is shredding apart at the seams—and he heads out as Spiderman.

It’s been a bit harder, going out swinging without the suit lately, without Karen, but he started out this whole gig without a guy in the chair, without a voice in his ears, and there is nothing that will stop him from taking care of the people of his neighborhood.

Sure, he doesn't have a proper suit, doesn’t have the Baby Monitor Protocol or the Instant Kill Mode, but he does have the hoodie, does have the goggles, does have the things that made him Spider-Man before Tony Stark came along, and that’s enough for him, for right now.

And for the first ten minutes of patrol, it’s almost— 

Soothing, in a way.

Sure, his senses are dialed up to a hundred, even with him this tired, but there’s something about Queens and the atmosphere that sings through his veins.

This place is home, in all of the life that bustles beneath skyscrapers and scaffolding and the like.

Everything about it is home. Peter can taste the smog on his tongue, can hear the traffic ringing in his ears, can even feel the wind against his skin, through the fabric of the suit in a way that he couldn’t when he was wearing the Iron-Spider.

And yeah, sure, the Iron-Spider suit was much nicer for muffling the overstimulation. Much better for focus.

But there is something about this. About the wind. About the bustle. About the fact that he can feel Queens around him, beating like the heart within his chest.

It blankets his senses. Reassures him. Calls him home, even beneath his exhaustion over the last few months, even over the grumble of his stomach between his ribs—

Peter's Spidey sense doesn't go off, but he does see, out of the corner of his eye, a shoplifter running out of the corner store a street over, a knife in one hand and a knife in the other, and so Peter swings over to grab it—

But maybe Peter didn’t get enough sleep last night. Maybe running off of the last dregs of sleep and food and the churn of panic over the whole Stark Industries field trip thing isn't the best idea in the world.

Peter doesn’t even feel it at first. He doesn’t feel it as he webs the guy backwards, as he pulls the bag out of his hands, as he sees—

It’s not a little old lady’s purse. It’s not someone else’s backpack. It's nothing that would cost a lot of money.

It’s full of groceries. Bread. Some meat. Cans. Baby formula. Things that can be snuck quickly, but can fill up a stomach, and can't all be found on EBT—the warm rotisserie chicken at the bottom case in point.

And Peter’s stomach growls at him, his metabolism roaring its protest at the small feast in front of him, and the guy shouldn’t be stealing, not from a corner store run by some small business just scraping their way by in the sky-high prices of New York City, but he also needs to live, and Peter gets that, he gets that so much, he understands better than most what it’s like to have a stomach that threatens to eat you alive, and he can't—

Iron Man has already taken away his suit for throwing himself into the big stuff too quickly. He can't stop Peter from doing what he needs to in order to deal with the little things, too.

So Peter goes to hand the guy back the bag, but then he finally feels his thigh spike in pain, and he looks down and—

There is a small, dark red stain on his jeans, and fuck. Fuck. He doesn’t have very many pairs of clean jeans, much less ones that fit, and if May sees that these ones are torn, she’ll feel guilty, she’ll feel like she needs to replace them, and May’s guilt is the absolute last thing that Peter needs, and shit, fuck, why did he let this happen?

Peter looks back up and the guy’s eyes are wide. “Spiderman, dude, I didn’t mean to—” He squeaks, and his voice is young, painfully young, almost as young as Peter, even, and he’s supposed to look out for the little guy, and with great power comes great responsibility, yeah, sure, but Peter never asked for this. Never asked to be sliced up like the bread that this guy desperately just wanted to get home, so desperate he was willing to steal it.

“Don’t do it again, Mr. Criminal,” Peter says, and he tries to keep a joking tone in his voice, something cheery, as if he isn’t bleeding, as if he hasn't been stabbed, holy shit, but hey, he's dealt with bigger wounds before, right? What is a little knife compared to having a building collapse on top of you and crush your ribs, right?

The boy is saying something, but Peter is swinging away as he says, “The webbing will dissolve in an hour. Think about what you've done."

Peter doesn’t say he’s not going to call the police, but he won’t. He knows that. He couldn’t, anymore than he could call the police on May if she had to shoplift—

(And maybe Peter should do something similar, to feed himself, so that she doesn’t have to worry, so that no one ever has to worry about him, but he thinks about Ben, thinks about burglaries, thinks about great responsibility, and he can’t do it. He’d rather let his stomach cave in on itself, carve him up into bloody strips, than do that to Ben’s memory.)

And besides—he left the bag in the guy's hands, even if he also left him webbed up in that alley. He's not going to steal the guy's food, even if the guy stole it in the first place, and maybe that should make Peter feel guilty, letting someone get away with a crime, but he can't find it in himself to feel ashamed for it.

Rather, there are bigger things to deal with, so Peter swallows and swings home and grits his teeth as he peels back the denim of his jeans and he thanks his lucky stars that Aunt May has been pulling double shifts lately because she’s not there to see the shade of green that his face turns in the mirror as he can’t help the hiss that squeezes between his teeth at the feeling of the denim rubbing against the knife wound.

Because that’s what it is: a wound. A knife carved through his skin, and yeah, it was shallow, but the gash is at a weird angle that has left a small flap of skin hanging, dried blood jacketing the skin, and Peter knows that his skin isn’t supposed to do that.

Shit. If he was someone normal, he knows that he would need stitches. He would need someone to suture skin together that shouldn't be hanging around a laceration in that way.

But Peter's not just anyone. He should heal tomorrow, right? He should be just fine. Nothing will go wrong, because Spider-Man heals, and the shoplifter will get a second chance, and he won’t feel bad about letting them go, giving them that food, because they don’t deserve to starve, because this world is fucked and Peter is supposed to make it better and maybe he deserves not to have the suit, to have taken this knife wound, because he’s been failing, and— 

And Peter can take care of this.

Peter doesn’t have the luxury of panic or squeamishness anymore. Not when he’s a superhero. Not when he has to deal with the consequences of things on his own.

And hey—it’s just a graze, right? Shallow. He’ll be—he has to be fine, with his healing factor, and all that jazz. He's been through far worse, right, and he survived that.

So who does Peter call?

Peter's not wearing Karen so he doesn't need to bother Mr. Stark. He wants to talk to Karen, of course. He wants someone on his side. He wants her reassuring voice.

He wants to talk to Aunt May, and to MJ, and maybe he could call Ned—

But he's not going to do all of that, because he doesn't want to put them in danger, he doesn't want to drag them into his mess, and most of all, he needs to prove—

Not that he's worthy of the suit, that's not it, but at least—

It's him being responsible, right? Taking care of things himself until they heal on his own.

Happy stopped taking his calls ages ago, said not to call him if it wasn’t an emergency, and if Peter survived having a building dropped on him, then he can survive anything, right? Especially a tiny little graze, especially when the cut was shallow, especially when Peter can handle this.

So Peter grits his teeth, tries to turn the showerhead on the gentlest setting possible to rinse out as much blood as he can, and then pulls out the first aid kit and gets to work.

Peter Parker isn’t a nurse, it must be said. He’s never been good with needles, nearly fainted when Ned was talking with someone else at school about getting tattoos, hates the idea of getting his blood drawn.

But when you’re Spider-Man, you’ve gotta get used to violence. You’ve gotta get used to the fact that people want to hurt you, want to take you out, even if they don't mean to, because sometimes it's survival and Spider-Man is trying to grab for the food that you and your family need—

(It’s hard to cling to a faith in the inherent good of humanity, sometimes. To hold onto tight to the idea that everyone out there deserves to have their shot in court. That every deserves a second chance, even when you're the one who ends up a bit stabbed.

But Peter knows what it’s like to be poor. To be starving. To not see any way out of the way that your stomach carves away at your insides, turning the space between your ribs into a black hole seeking to devour all light and matter that enters it because that would be easier than handling the ache, the nausea, the wooziness, the emptiness.

Peter is always starving, nowadays. He needs so much more food than May can afford to buy. He can count more ribs by the day. Can feel his joints starting to weaken and twist.

And so—he understands the shoplifter, even if he doesn't want to. And so he can't feel that bad about letting him get away. Because when you're the friendly neighborhood Spider-man, well—you do what you can for the neighborhood, right?)

So Peter patches himself up with strips and bandages and a bit of antibiotic ointment, and it doesn’t all look entirely right by the time he’s done—he doesn’t exactly have Aunt May’s experience with medicine, after all, his speciality is way more engineering and physics than biology and anatomy, but he’s glad that Aunt May doesn’t know, because what she doesn’t know won’t stress her out—but it looks...better, right? The wound is bandaged. The denim isn't pressing at it anymore. He's not, like, actively bleeding anymore.

Peter will be fine by tomorrow, he knows it. He has to be. That’s how this works. He heals, because he’s Spider-man, because he has these great powers and he can handle these great responsibilities, and he’ll be fine.

So he carefully pulls pajama pants up over the bandages and hauls himself to bed and ignores the pain battering his insides that he can’t do shit to alleviate because of his body’s complete inability to take normal painkillers.

And he tries—and fails—to get some level of decent sleep before the field trip tomorrow.

---

The building collapses, and Peter is buried beneath the rubble, but in the split second that the spidey sense, the ‘Peter tingle,’ fires off as the concrete and rebar falls, he thinks—

Isaac Newton and the apple. The force of gravity, the weakest of the four main forces in the universe, but still strong enough to crush someone’s ribs.

Peter’s never seen his own bones before. Now he has. That does something to a person, he thinks, but he couldn’t tell you what, other than the fact that he dreams of concrete dust, now, he dreams of bone and ivory and the white dust filling his lungs and Karen’s voice fading in and out and the realization that no one is coming to save him if he doesn’t save himself.

Peter misses Karen.

He misses Happy and Mr. Stark.

But he knows better than to think that he’s going to get them back anytime soon. Hell—he’s probably never going to get them back, is he?

He will always be in that building, the apple bleeding red through his broken bones as he tries to shift the rubble on top of him, because he’s not getting out except on his own two feet so he better grit his teeth and get fucking moving.

---

(The building collapses, and Tony Stark hears about it.

Of course he hears about it.

Karen tells Tony about the building collapse after the fact. Long after Tony could swoop in and help, could look Peter Parker in the eye and tell him that he admires the fact that Peter protects the little guy, that he’s always there for those who need it most, that no matter how many world-ending threats Iron Man defeats, Tony smiles more at the news reports of Spiderman rescuing cats from trees than he does any news story about how the Avengers have been severed in half by in-fighting and are weaker than they ever were.

When Spiderman is in the air, that blur of red and blue and black streaking across the horizon, whooping his way through the night—it’s not just Queens that’s reassured. It’s Tony, too. Tony Stark, who is desperate to believe in anything these days, now that the Avengers are split, now that Rhodey is disabled due to Tony’s stupid decision to trust someone that he really shouldn’t have, that he should have known better about, now that he is looking for life in the smallest of places.

He’s looking for life in the places one can usually only find spiders.

But it’s not like Tony hasn’t also noticed how infrequent Spider-man sightings are nowadays. How they’ve gotten rarer, moving from at least two or three times a week to just once a week, if that.

And he knows it’s because the kid doesn’t have a proper suit. Or, at least—

Tony suspects that that’s why.

And Tony wants, more than anything, for the kid to take his suit back. For him to be protected from another roof collapse. If that happened, and the worst happened, if the kid died all because the kid didn’t have a suit—

Tony would never be able to forgive himself, he knows. 

For all of Tony’s mistakes, all of his regrets—and god if that list isn’t longer than anything that Tony could ever make up for, no matter how long he tried—that would be his blackest mark, snuffing out the brightest light that he’s ever met. To erase Peter Parker, the closest thing he’s ever met to a North Star in human form, from the world, just because Tony took away his suit—

He would never be able to forgive himself for that. He would live the rest of his days haunted by the worst decision he’s ever made.

But listen. Tony isn’t perfect. He might have pretended to be, once, might have worn his reputation like a suit of armor long before Iron Man, but he knows better than anyone nowadays that his presence is corrosive, as toxic as a hypergolic propellant, ready to go up in flames the moment that the wrong chemical so much as comes within his presence.

Or, rather—

When Tony comes into someone else’s presence. When his very existence becomes a spark for combustion, when he is the caesium lighting up the water, when he is a magnesium torch that refuses to be put out.

He can be so dangerous, in other people’s lives. As much as he has tried to be a better man, as much as he has tried to be good, to support the Sokovia Accords, to prepare the world for what he saw in that wormhole, the end of all things approaching from the far ends of the universe, the Avengers fell apart not just because of his inability to trust the right people, but also because of his inability to make people trust him. 

No one wants to put their faith in Tony. No one wants to believe in a man that has failed so many times.

No one wants to believe in a man that carries his bruises like ghosts. The man that has never been able to release himself from his scars.

Tony Stark is a man carved out of his wounds. Whether they were laid by Howard Stark or Obadiah Stane or helicopter crashes or arc reactors or palladium poisoning or flying into a wormhole with a suit not crafted to sustain itself in space, he is haunted by every failure that he’s ever made, every scar that everyone else has left, every chance he took and took wrong and was punished for it.

Tony remembers a father who left bruises staining skin for his mistakes. A father who punished a boy who failed to live up to the proper legacy that he wanted, a boy with a brain too big for his skull and a heart too big for his chest who could never settle down as he was supposed to, to live up to the expectations of a superhero who disappeared long before he was born.

Tony was born into the shadow of a man he would never live up to the legacy of, a man who he would one day clash with, stubborn edge against stubborn edge, in a helicarrier, on a battlefield, in an airport, because neither of them could ever give when they needed to.

And his father made him pay for his failure. Tony entered adulthood knowing that there was no way he could ever make the man who created him proud, so he might as well carve his own path in life.

Tony doesn’t want that for Peter. He doesn’t want Peter to feel like he’s a failure, when he’s reckless, sure, but he’s also the best kid that Tony has ever met. Certainly better than Tony himself has ever been.

Tony can’t do that to Peter. He can’t be the reason why Peter ends up hurt.

If Peter is avoiding Karen, avoiding the suit, avoiding him— 

Tony swallows. Hard. He has to give the kid some space. Give him a chance to not feel claustrophobic, trapped by an expectations and disappointment that he thinks that Tony has of him. Give him a chance to keep swinging without Tony reaching in again and stopping him.

Tony will only reach out if the kid approaches him. If the kid comes to Stark Industries, or to the Tower, or towards Iron Man. Then, he can give the suit back—if the kid even wants it.

It makes something ache inside of Tony, the idea that Peter doesn’t want the suit, that he doesn’t want Tony to help in the way he knows best, developing technology that can keep the people he cares about safe, but he can respect Peter’s autonomy and his decisions.

Still, though—that doesn’t mean that Tony can’t keep working on souping up the Spider-man suit for if—when—Peter ever reaches out to him. Ever decides that he wants to pick the suit back up and be protected again. To have Karen in his ear again.

To have Tony in his corner.)

---

The building collapses, and Peter can’t breathe.

Peter can’t breathe, because he’s all alone, and he’s buried along with all of his ghosts, and sometimes he wonders if he ever should have clawed his way out from underneath of the wreckage. Would the world honestly have been better off with him in it? Would he have honestly been better off then, dying alone, or here, living alone as a ghost of what he once was?

If a spider dies in the middle of a city, squished out of existence by a vulture, does he even make a sound?

Or does the ghost fade into the rest of the city noise, a star faded by light pollution, an ache swallowed up by the ocean, salt into the sea, blood into the harbor?

---

Peter wakes up the next morning, hot as the dickens, hot as fucking hell, fever cooking away inside of him.

When he goes to change the bandages, he finds the wound yellowed inside, weeping some sort of translucent yellow goo, the skin around it flaring red-hot, angry, angrier than Iron Man when he’d swooped down and told Peter that he wasn’t worth his suit, that he was taking it away—

Peter blinks away the burning in his eyes. What Tony Stark has to say doesn’t matter. Not right now. Not yet, until the moment that he enters the building and Mr. Stark’s AI picks up on the fact that Mr. Stark doesn’t want him there and never did, and—

The goo is probably yellow because the antibiotics are working, right? He probably feels hotter because his body is cooking up a fever to burn away the infection. He’ll be fine soon enough. He always is.

Peter grits his teeth, changes his bandages, and gets ready for school, because he can’t tell May what’s up without explaining what the fuck is happening.

He’ll be fine. He knows that he’s going to heal. He knows that the spider-enhanced-healing is going to kick in and that the infection will clear and he will be fine. He’s sure of it. He’ll make sure of it.

That’s how things go. That’s how things have always gone. He heals too quickly for the hurt to stick. He doesn’t scar. He doesn’t get to carry the evidence of the ache.

(His parents are dead. Ben is dead. There is nothing left of his ghosts.)

The wounds, the bruises, the broken bones from the building collapsing on him—they’re all gone. Where others get to feel their own hurt, get to live with the damage, Peter cannot calcify. He cannot live with those scars.

Peter Parker doesn’t even get to keep his glasses. He doesn’t get an option as to whether or not he is the scrawny nerd or the one who has to hide his muscles because it wouldn't be fair for Spider-man to go up against the bullies that Peter Parker was too cowardly to stand up to in the first place.

Everything that once tormented him is gone. Asthma, bad vision—it’s all missing. The boy that he once was is nothing more than a memory.

And yes, in plenty of ways, that’s a good thing, right? To have your disabilities stripped away. To have the things that once plagued you gone. You can’t get sick in a way that sticks. You can’t get hurt in a way that sticks.

You are a stranger to yourself. You don’t recognize your own face when you see it in the mirror, except for the fact that you have to recognize it, because it doesn’t scar, because it doesn’t change, because it’s you, and yet—it’s not yours.

And you don’t even deserve these things. These advantages.

Because Tony Stark was right, that night that he dropped you off in Hello Kitty pajamas and a scolding. You’re nothing without the suit.

Peter just catches May as she comes in from her shift, handing her the field trip slip and saying, “Mind signing this field trip form?"

May smiles, so proud, when she sees that it's from Stark Industries, and that was always going to be the easiest part of this.

He gets May to sign it, of course. That’s easy. She’s so proud of him and his internship. She’s so proud of everything he does, even when he doesn't deserve it, because he can still see the blood on his thigh, the blood on the stones behind Ben's head—

“Larb you lots,” May says, and she’s tired, so tired, and she’s working these shifts for both of them, and Peter's heart cracks as she says, “Make sure to grab something to eat,” as a yawn cracks her jaw open.

Peter nods. “Of course,” he says, forcing a smile to his lips, just to make her smile before she heads back to bed.

Then he leaves for school, and he doesn’t grab breakfast as he goes, just as he didn’t grab dinner last night, and he swallows hard against the hollow in his stomach, but they can only afford so much and Peter will make things stretch.

And hey—the nausea in his stomach is making it near impossible to even think about eating, anyway. He wouldn't want to waste Aunt May's hard-earned food, right?

---

Mr Harrington collects the field trip forms as they all get on the bus, and maybe his gaze lingers for a few seconds longer on Peter, as if to remind him to behave, but Peter doesn’t need the reminder. He knows what he’s doing. He knows what he needs to do. He knows that the internship doesn’t exist, because it was only ever a cover for Spider-Man, because he's nothing without Spider-man and Spider-man is nothing without the suit and no one cares about Peter Parker at all, do they?

(There is something inside of Peter that feels indignant, despite the fact that he knows he has no true basis to feel so. He is smart enough to have that internship. He is doing something impressive. He might have ended up with the enhancements on accident, but he designed the web fluid and the web shooters and the like. He’s the one who risks his life every night to make things right for other people.

He’s someone that cares. That does what he can to help, even when he fucks it all up in the process.)

Once they're all in their seats on the bus, it turns out that Ned packed him a protein bar that he hands Peter without even asking if Peter's had breakfast, because it seems as if his friends know him better than he knows himself, and Peter gratefully flashes him a smile.

Even if there is nausea churning in his gut—nerves, he’s sure, considering the fact that his life is about to blow up in his face and all he’ll have to show for it is a discount science-pun t-shirt and a nice inflamed wound—and he can barely stomach a few bites, he does eat at least a little bit, and that's what matters, right?

Peter's doing the best he can. To heal, to eat, to handle everything that's about to be thrown in his face this trip.

After all, there's not much that he can do about the actual Stark Industries part of things. He can’t call ahead to ask FRIDAY not to reveal anything. He doesn’t have Karen anymore. He doesn’t have any connection to Stark Industries anymore—not that he ever really did, now that he thinks about it. He never had anything more than the Iron Spider, and he lost that because he fucked up.

Across the aisle from him, out of the corner of his eye, Peter sees MJ sketching a half-portrait of—

“Hey,” Peter blurts, hoping that his cheeks aren’t as red-hot as they feel, “Are you sketching me?”

MJ gives him a look, that sort of side-eye that she does so well. “We’re about to enter the lobby of a Fortune 500 company that I would love to give the CEO a piece of my mind about the production of their lithium batteries—"

“They’re not lithium batteries,” Peter interrupts, even though interrupting MJ is something that is not exactly the safest thing in the world because he has a Starkphone—the only thing he got before Mr. Stark took away the suit and everything else, and he needs people to know the truth about Tony Stark, who was his hero long before he was Iron Man, “They’re partially solar powered—"

MJ continues as if she was never interrupted as she says, “And you’re the one who has the internship there, even if no one believes you. So I do believe that you qualify as a person in crisis, and thus a good subject for sketching.”

“Wait a minute,” Ned says, “You believe Peter?”

MJ rolls her eyes. “Of course I do. As if Peter Parker has a bone in his body that’s good at lying.”

Peter thinks it says something about her being right about him and integrity and his ability to lie that his instinct is immediately to say there are things I’m keeping secret that no one could ever predict, only barely kept tucked behind his teeth at the very last second.

So instead, he takes one last nauseating bite of the protein bar and settles into the seat to listen to Ned babbling about how excited he is for the trip, ignoring Flash's muttered, gleeful comments he can hear even above the nauseating, overstimulating din in the bus as to how much Peter is going to eat his words this trip.

---

Stark Tower—formerly Avengers Tower—is taller than Peter remembers from when he swung by it.

Maybe that’s it, really—Peter has always been seeing the Tower from the perspective of a superhero. Of someone with some power, if only a little bit.

Now, though, he isn’t Spiderman. He’s just Peter Parker, student, just another smart high schooler who should be ogling over the lobby of Stark Industries but is too tired, too distracted by the throbbing in his thigh, to do so.

Ned is in awe of everything, the high lobby ceilings, the giant holograms, all of it. Hell, even MJ seems mildly—impressed isn’t the word, not when it comes to her, but at least not entirely disapproving of the gargantuan scale model of the arc reactor.

Proof that Tony Stark has a heart, someone carved into the plaque beneath it, and Peter remembers the way that Mr. Stark’s voice had cracked when he said he didn’t want to repeat the cycle his father taught him and Peter doesn’t know Howard Stark from Adam but there is something in him that knows that Tony Stark’s voice doesn’t crack, doesn’t even waver, so for it to wither when speaking to Peter—

Peter would do anything to prevent that from happening again. From him hearing that again. Mr. Stark needs Peter to stay away.

Mr. Stark wanted Peter to stay away from super-heroing without the suit, but Peter couldn’t ignore the responsibility he had to save the day, the duty he has to protecting the little guy, he needed to help people, and he’d do it with or without the suit, and Mr. Stark should have known that—

Peter can’t blame Mr. Stark for the fact that he got a, um, little bit stabbed last night. He can’t blame Mr. Stark for the fact that his thigh is hot and throbbing beneath bandages and his jeans. He can only blame himself for all of that.

Well, blame himself and Parker luck. After all, with Peter's luck, something is bound to go wrong today. He's never known a time when it didn't. Where every field trip, every outing, wasn’t infected by his presence. By the fact that everyone he’s ever loved or cared about has been affected or died. Liz got out better than most—at least she’s not dead like his parents, or Uncle Ben, or—

It would have been Mr. Stark, Peter thinks, if he’d stuck around. So it’s a good thing that he didn’t. He brings misery wherever he goes, after all, and if Mr. Stark ever found out that Peter was in Stark Tower, after he made it clear how he feels about how dangerous and reckless Peter is—

Peter gulps.

"You okay, dude?" Ned asks, voice concerned, and Peter's throat is dry, he needs a drink of water, he needs to be anywhere but here—

But thankfully he's saved from answering by the tour guide showing up with a box of temporary name badges in her hands.

“Hey, y’all,” she says in a warm Southern accent that on any other day would set Peter’s spine at ease, but it’s a bit hard to concentrate on how friendly people are when you're tired and aching and on edge and you shouldn't be here. “I’m Caroline, your tour guide. I’m going to be handing out badges that will allow you through security. The colors mean different things, here at Stark Industries. Green for guests, purple for interns like me, blue for R&D staff, down the line to other things. Each color represents a certain security clearance, so you're going to need to stick with me if you hope to see as much as you can, because otherwise you'll be locked out of any room you try to enter other than the bathroom."

There's a round of laughter at that one as in the back of Peter's mind, he sees the red-edged badge poking out from under Happy's jacket the last time he saw him, what has to be top security clearance.

Then Caroline starts handing out the badges, easily identifiable as alphabetical order as she goes, and well, shit. Peter’s gonna get handed a green badge, and his excuses will be revealed as just that, and he’ll have to deal with the fallout with Flash's comments and bullying.

But apparently, Peter didn’t predict the worst possible outcome, because Caroline moves through Jones and Leeds and skips right past “P” for Parker and something in Peter’s chest sinks.

Has Mr. Stark made an executive order that he doesn’t get a badge? Did they bounce back his permission slip with May might have given you permission, but Mr. Stark doesn’t trust you in his building at all? 

Is Peter about to face the worst humiliation of his life, being escorted out of Stark Industries, the place he’s supposed to have an internship, because Tony Stark decided that Peter Parker was too dangerous, too reckless, to be trusted even near his labs?

Peter knows he’s catastrophizing, spiralling towards chaos, but what else is the answer? What other explanation could there be for Peter Parker not getting a badge?

Caroline finishes the badges and she opens her mouth to move on, clearly not having clocked the fact that she skipped a student, but Mr. Harrington clears his throat and Peter wants to sink into the ground as Mr. Harrington gestures to Peter and says, “One of my students is missing a badge, ma’am.”

Flash remarks under his breath, “Of course it’s Penis Parker that doesn’t have a badge. Tony Stark probably heard about him lying,” and it’s not fair, that it’s so far from the truth and yet likely so close to it as well, that Peter fell straight into the trouble that Mr. Harrington told him to avoid.

For a moment, Caroline’s gaze falls on Peter, brow furrowing in question, but the light on her bluetooth flares and her brow smooths. "Every student in your group has had their background check clear," Caroline says, "If one of them doesn't have a badge, the Head of Security must have decided that he didn't need one, for one reason or another."

Mr. Harrington is still staring at him with a question—and maybe even suspicion—in his eyes.

And Peter is just—

God. He’s just so tired. His leg aches, and the longer he stands here the hotter and tighter his jeans feel, and he just wants to lay down and not wake up for a week.

(Thank god for Ned’s protein bar. Peter doesn’t know if he’d be standing otherwise.)

But Caroline says, "If that's all settled—time to head through security, and onto the tour!" Her tone is chipper, bright as anything, and Peter has a feeling that if his head wasn't soup he'd really appreciate her attitude.

Then they head for security checks, and Happy isn't there—of course he isn't, he's gotta be with Mr. Stark or Pepper or the like—but a certain AI is.

FRIDAY greets the first person through—Ned Leeds, who Peter can't help but smile just a bit as he jumps and giddily grins at FRIDAY saying, "Edward Leeds. Guest. Welcome to Stark Industries."

There's some whispering about the AI that people weren't expecting, but Peter doesn't jump, of course. He knows FRIDAY. He knows that she's more advanced than Karen, that she runs through Iron Man suits and Stark Industries alike, that if her creator hates him, it's likely that she will too—

“Peter Parker. Welcome back.”

If Peter didn’t know better, he’d almost think that there’s a bit of warmth in the AI’s voice.

He does know better, though. He knows that Mr. Stark hates him, has never given back the suit, and for good reason, and there is no welcome home because Mr. Stark has made it very clear that Peter is a terrible influence, and an idiot for going out without the suit, and he was right, he was so right, because Peter went out without the suit and got stabbed, and— 

And when FRIDAY greeted him, there was no employee designation attached, nor a secret identity, nor a command to vacate the premises immediately, so Flash will still have plenty of ammo to work with, but at least it’s not get out of here, Mr. Stark hates you, so Peter will take what he can get, even if something in him aches at the fact that Mr. Stark clearly has no approval for him anymore, if he ever did in the first place.

But then he sees Betty scribbling in her notebook behind him, and Peter swallows hard as his spine begins to itch. Something is going to be written about all of this in the school newspaper soon enough, he’s sure of it, and he’s dreading finding out what.

But he can't do anything about that right now, so he steps through the security clearance and into the first section of the tour.

---

(An alert pings on Tony’s desk.

“Peter Parker has entered the building,” FRIDAY informs him, and she almost sounds fond. Excited. Like she misses the kid, despite the fact that the kid has never stepped foot inside of Stark Industries.

(Huh. Maybe Tony should have done something about that. He could have shown the kid around the place, private tour, shown him up to Tony’s personal lab.

And yeah, sure, he can hear Pepper’s voice saying that he’s never shown any strangers to that lab. Even Bruce Banner got shown to an Avengers-approved lab. That he is notorious for guarding his lab more than his bedroom, that his lab is sacred, that he only lets the people he trusts most in the world—Pepper, Rhodey, Happy, JARVIS, FRIDAY, the robots, end of story—into this space.

And the thing is—she’s not wrong. That he sees something of himself in Peter Parker—but only the good parts. The parts that are tarnished and warped inside of Tony’s iron heart, but that gleam inside of Peter Parker.)

Maybe FRIDAY’s gotten to talk to Karen. Maybe she’s listened to Tony babbling on about how fond he is of the kid too many times. Maybe she and Vision talk about their humans sometimes. Maybe she’s influenced by the humans around her just as much as any AI is.

…Or maybe she’s tired of Tony muttering under his breath about how much he fucked things up and is just happy to have Peter Parker finally in the building to finally let the two of them connect, because if Peter is here maybe he will be willing to hear Tony out, maybe Tony can finally apologize, maybe Tony can make things right—

Except, there’s something off, here. The timing—Peter’s not patrolling. It’s not a weekend. It’s not even a weeknight.

Despite a few too many all-nighters or almost all-nighters in a row, Tony is aware enough of the days of the week to register the fact that today is the middle of the week and the sun is bright and high in the sky outside of the window, so it can’t be after school. (Okay, maybe Tony’s cheating, because he remembers that in a few hours, Pepper has a meeting scheduled between the heads of R&D in New York and Japan that he just had to attend, but still. He’s gotta get some points.)

“Why the hell is the kid here in the middle of the school day?” Tony asks FRIDAY.

If the kid is hurt, he’ll go down there in a minute, but he doesn’t want to overreact. To crowd him out. To ruin whatever small amount of trust could have led the kid to come here when he’s clearly ditching school.

If the kid is just screwing around, Tony can deal with that, but he knows a thing or two about troubled teens. He knows a thing or two about how teenagers will react, will rebel, if it just means getting a reaction out of the adults that don’t understand them. That don’t respect them.

Tony isn’t a good parent or a mentor or whatever, and he knows that he never will be. But he can—

God, at least he can try. At least he can make an effort, because maybe he’s not good, but Peter Parker can be. And Tony owes it to him to at least try not to fuck it all up.

“It appears as if he’s here on a school trip, boss,” FRIDAY says, and no shit. Tony remembers Pepper mentioning that sort of thing going on, all of those pipsqueak straight-A students and Academic Decathalon kids that always seemed a bit too clean cut for Tony’s liking. For all the gleaming windows of the tower, all of the shining holograms, he has always done better with a bit of grit, the sand of the desert, the oil of a car engine pieced back together and staining the underside of his nails. 

But from what Tony knows about Peter, about his mind for his web shooters and web fluid, about the fact that his Aunt had automatically believed the scholarship excuse, from the grades that he got a glimpse at when he first found Spider-not-so-Man in a fourteen-year-old boy with bright eyes and a brighter smile, Peter is that clean-cut gifted kid with the entire world at his fingers, if he’s just given the right resources.

(Resources that Tony has taken away from him, some guilty part of his heart tightens around the realization.)

So, alright then. Peter might not be here because he wants to see Tony, but because his school is taking him to Stark Industries, and any self-respecting nerd—and god if Peter isn’t the biggest nerd that Tony has ever met, and he went to MIT, so he knows what he’s talking about—would jump at a chance to see the headquarters of one of the biggest and most innovative tech companies in the world, if Tony does say so himself.

“Keep an eye on him, Fri,” Tony instructs, “Lemme know if anything is bothering him. But otherwise—let him have a good time. He deserves a day off.”)

---

The building collapses. The building collapses, and a gunshot goes off, and Peter finds himself in a graveyard with his ghosts, one, two, three, mother, father, uncle, all in a row, himself at the end of it all, himself staring at what he might have so easily have become for Aunt May had he have died alone, grunting, groaning, screaming, a disappointment—

Mr. Stark took away the suit. He took away the suit because Peter couldn’t be trusted, because he didn’t deserve it, because Peter’s been staring at this axis trying to plot hyperbolae for so long that he doesn’t remember where the axises even are.

But he doesn’t see a life in which he and Mr. Stark aren’t two tangent lines, meeting at only one point where everything falls the same for both of them and then never meet again.

Except, even that might be too generous.

So—maybe not tangent lines. Asymptotes. Doomed to never meet at all. Doomed to always slide right past each other, never understanding each other, never meeting eye to eye, because of course a genius billionaire philanthropist hero wouldn’t be able to connect with the kid who keeps fucking everything up, who can’t find a way to stand up for himself, who can’t find a way to 

---

Caroline brings them to the intern labs where, of course, no one here knows Peter. Because why would they?

Peter Parker means nothing to Stark Industries and never has. Spider-man is the only asset, and even that has been stripped away from him in all ways but name. The last person he encountered on the patrol he ended up doing more harm than good to.

And of course Flash raises his hand and smirks and asks a fucking question about Stark Industries and the age of interns that are accepted, and of course Caroline doesn’t know anything about what’s going on, has no idea what Peter Parker deals with in the school hallways and now teacher’s offices, and so she helpfully smiles and says, "Stark Industries is actually rather accommodating to young, brilliant minds, considering where Tony Stark himself began. So as long as you've been accepted into college, regardless of age, you can apply to be an intern here as long as you've got the ideas to back you up."

Now, Flash can’t keep his fucking mouth shut.

This is no surprise. Not really. Peter has known Flash long enough to know what he’s like. What he’s always been.

Flash Thompson is a bundle of his worst insecurities with nothing to filter the way that they fly out, striking anyone who happens to be the path of the shrapnel, and Peter has always known that this is the case. That's why he has always been kinder than he should be. More accommodating than he should be.

(More cowardly than he should be.)

Peter just doesn’t know why Flash always picks him, other than the fact that he’s convenient, because he’s not like MJ, he doesn’t stand up for himself, he just stands and takes it as they walk through yet another lab and Flash snidely remarks, “See? No high schoolers are allowed to be interns. No one recognized Penis here. He's a liar."

Peter knows that for all of Flash’s bravado, his parents are likely like the parents of most kids at Midtown. They expect their son to succeed. And when Peter outpaces him in the class rankings, in the Decathalon, in this Stark ‘internship’—

Flash seeks to find any way in so that he can tear down what he thinks Peter clings to. So that he can prove that Peter’s not better than him.

But the fact of the matter is that Peter isn’t better than him. That just because he can score a bit higher on a test doesn’t mean jackshit in the question of who is worth what.

Flash is rich. He has never once wondered where his next meal will come from. He wears clothes that would cost an entire month’s rent for Aunt May.

And yet—

MJ rolls her eyes and says, “At least Peter is smart enough to have an internship here. What will you ever get without dear Daddy giving it to you? The rest of us don’t get to be Daddy’s little boy to get us where we want in life.”

And Flash—

He flinches. At the word Daddy, specifically, not at the little boy part, not at the real insult, and it rings something dull in Peter’s taxed, exhausted Spidey senses. 

And sure, he immediately comments, “At least I have a father, unlike Parker,” nose upturned, but there is something about that movement that rings a bit too true to Peter. A bit too tight to the chest.

(Peter thinks of Tony Stark, the way his gaze grows distant in old news clips when asked about taking over his father’s company, the way the smile never quite reached his eyes when he had to talk about how proud he was to be Howard Stark’s son, the way that he started wearing sunglasses after some of those clips, the way that you could never tell how the man felt about his father.

About the fact that sure, yeah, both Mr. Stark and Flash were arrogant and rich and had every privilege the world gave them, but that doesn’t mean that something didn’t ache, beneath the surface.)

Peter grits his teeth, because that's what he does. That's who he is. He is Spiderman, and he can't use his powers, because Flash is a dick but he's also a kid with problems at home and Peter Parker was a coward and Spiderman can't hurt kids who are already hurt and Peter sees the boy with the bread and—

And the tour guide is making a joke, and everyone is laughing, so Peter laughs with them, and the note is flat, the fizz gone from his lungs, but he doesn't know how to find the normal bubbly part of him beneath all the exhaustion and the leech on his leg, the overtaxed parietal lobe working overdrive to interpret the lance of pain that is starting to overwhelm every part of him.

Mr. Harrington sighs as they move from room to room, lab to lab, and in the moment in between the next lab and lunch, he pulls Peter aside and tells him, some sympathy in his tone, some pity in his tone, as if he thinks that Peter is acting out because of grief or teenage angst or something, that "This is your final warning, Peter. If I have to hear about this internship lie one more time, then I'll have no choice but to send you to the principal's office."

Peter is barely holding himself together. His skin is on fire. Flash’s taunts are ringing in his ears. He can barely piece together the Pythagorean Theorem, much less Riemann or Bolzano–Weierstrass theorem and his feelings about convergence in a finite-dimensional Euclidean space.

His head feels like soup.

He wants May. He wants his suit. He wants to tell Mr. Harrington that it wasn't his fault. He wants to talk to Mr. Stark, and explain— 

But what is there to explain that he hasn’t already said? What is there to say that he hasn’t already tried to say?

Peter wants everything that he cannot have, and so he bites his tongue and holds back the tears burning at the backs of his eyes—but just barely, because he's almost too tired to filter anything—and nods. "Yes, sir," he says, and Mr. Harrington offers him a sympathetic smile and they both move back to the group and Peter just wants all of this to be fucking over.

---

(And that’s it. That’s fucking it.

Tony didn’t mean to interfere with Peter and his teacher. He’s not the kid’s father. He’s not even an uncle. He knows that he fucked up their relationship beyond repair and he’s not someone that has the authority to tell off a teacher for accusing a kid of lying, and yet—

This is still his building. Even if the Avengers have gone bust, even if he’s wrecked everything he ever cared about, he still has authority here. Sure, he’s not the CEO, but his name is still on the building, and everyone treats him like he’s in charge, and he can do this small thing.

No one is going to mess with his kid in his building. Full stop.)

---

Lunch isn't that bad. Flash mostly hangs with his own friends in the cafeteria, and Peter picks at his food while letting Ned and MJ's conversation wash over him, and then they move to the last lab of the day—

Just in time for a familiar set of loafers to echo across the tempered glass floors.

At first, Peter can't believe his ears. He has to be hallucinating. There is no way that he's hearing what he thinks he is, suits and cufflinks and loafers, because if he's hearing Tony Stark, then he's in trouble, he's about to get kicked out, he's about to meet his fucking maker—

And yet, to the echoing gasps and shrieks of excitement from the classmates around Peter, there he is, sunglasses perched high on his nose, that brilliant smirk on his lips, larger than life, looking nothing like the last time Peter saw him, lips twisted in disapproval, in disappointment.

But why?

Why is Mr. Stark smiling? Why does he seem confident, happy even? He should be pissed that Peter showed up where he’s not wanted. That he dragged his Parker Luck inside of Stark Industries. 

And yet—Mr. Stark is likely just here, smirking, because they’re inside of Stark Industries. They’re on his home turf. Under his roof. 

So...maybe Mr. Stark somehow hasn't clocked that Peter is here? Any moment now, Mr. Stark will notice Peter in his space and kick him out. Surely he will.

But then Mr. Stark’s head moves around and his gaze seems to catch on Peter's, even behind his sunglasses, and Peter can’t see Mr. Stark's eyes but it almost seems like—

His expression softens.

And it feels—

Wrong. 

Like Peter’s feverish gaze must be imagining things. Like he must have put the pieces together wrong.

Because there’s no way that, behind the sunglasses, Mr. Stark actually cares. That he could in any way feel anything but disappointment in Peter.

Peter remembers all too well what it felt like that night, when Mr. Stark took the suit away, when Mr. Stark made it all too clear how much Peter wasn’t worthy of the Iron Spider suit. He can still see the way that Mr. Stark’s eyes were shadowed beneath the Iron Man helmet. The way that his eyes looked when the sun hit them as he said everyone said I was crazy for recruiting a fourteen-year-old.

And Peter doesn't think he could bear to see that again. To see his hero look at him like he will never be anything more than the let down to his parents’ and Ben's legacy.

But Peter doesn't have to say a word about that, because Flash says it for him, a snide comment under his breath as to the fact that: "Tony Stark must be here to call out Parker for lying about him."

Mr. Stark’s gaze instantly whips over to Flash, and Peter doesn’t even need to be able to see past his sunglasses to know that his eyes are narrowing on a target, and shit, everyone knows that Tony Stark’s tongue is as sharp and deadly as the Iron Man blasters, that Tony Stark had a reputation before he was ever Iron Man, that Peter might not be anything without the suit but Mr. Stark definitely is.

“I am sure I didn’t hear you right, kid,” Mr. Stark says, and his tone is breezy, but Peter knows him well enough to know that he’s about to wield his words like fucking weapons. “Because it sounded like you were insulting your classmate, and Stark Industries has an absolutely zero-tolerance harassment policy.”

Flash flinches—the same flinch as earlier, Peter registers, though his brain is sluggish and having a hard time piecing it all together—but he still looks Mr. Stark right in the eyes as he says, “I wasn’t harassing him, sir. I was just pointing out that he was lying about being an intern here.”

Mr. Harrington looks like he’s about to suck on a lemon, gaze absolutely disappointed in Peter, still, and there's that final warning going up in smoke, Peter's going to the principal's office, and May's gonna get called in, and he's gonna have to explain to her that he doesn't have an internship and never did, and there's nothing he can do about that—

“Well,” Mr. Stark says, and his voice is as cold as a snowflake—deceptively easy to deal with, but still just as cold as any blast of winter against the skin, “Then you might want to take up with my AI, FRIDAY, about your behavior, because she has been cataloguing all of your interactions with my favorite intern, and you are in deep trouble, Eugene Thompson."

Flash looks like he’s about to start shaking like a leaf. “I’m sorry, sir—your favorite intern?”

Mr. Stark smiles, this almost punishingly bright thing. “Who else would I pick for the position other than the smartest kid I’ve ever met?”

“But—Caroline said Stark Industries doesn’t have high school interns—”

Now Mr. Harrington has turned an interesting shade of paper-white as Mr. Stark says, “We do when kids are as brilliant as Peter is. Hell—I’d say that the kid is smarter than I was at his age, and that’s saying something, because I’m a goddamn genius. I’ve never met anyone as smart as him—"

Peter can’t believe his ears. He can’t believe this, can’t believe that Mr. Stark is in front of him, can’t believe that Mr. Stark is doing this for him, can’t believe that Mr. Stark is doing a good thing. Mr. Stark is doing the right thing, some might say, stopping a bully, preventing torment—

But why here? Why now? Why only now, when the world is shivering, when Peter is withering, when everything is hot and aching and falling apart, and not ages ago?

In the corner, Mr. Harrington almost seems to be shaking in his shoes, and he certainly doesn’t look much better when Mr. Stark turns to him and says, “And you. Why didn’t you reach out to me to confirm that the internship was real? My AI has made me plenty aware of the fact that you didn’t believe Peter when he said that it was real—"

And Peter feels like he’s swimming through iceberg-filled waters as Mr. Stark continues and the blood continues to drain from Mr. Harrington’s face and the world is getting harder and harder to paddle through as his brain clogs, but he knows that the internship isn’t real and Mr. Stark knows that the internship isn’t real, and yet Mr. Stark says, “Our legal division sent over the necessary paperwork to your Principal Morita the moment that the internship began. If neither you nor the Principal believed it, then we are going to have some legal problems on our hands—Mr. Harrington, right?"

Mr. Harrington looks on the verge of passing out, but Peter can't focus on that, because—

“They did what?” Peter interjects, and Mr. Stark immediately stops in the middle of his tirade to turn back to look at Peter, his face doing that softening thing again, and he doesn’t get it, he doesn’t get it at all.

Peter has an official internship? But he's—he's not here, he's never here, he would have been here if he'd known he could be allowed to be here, he would have killed to be able to work in an actual lab, but it was never about him being smart, right? Never about him having the qualifications, no matter how much his chest grew almost too hot to touch when he heard Mr. Stark say that he was smart. That he was—brilliant.

Because Mr. Stark clearly only filed that paperwork to cover up for Spiderman. For Germany. For the dream that Peter once had of getting to fight by Iron Man's side, of being useful, of being a hero.

Peter's eyes are burning and his tongue feels like cotton in his mouth and his insides are boiling and he just wants to be done with all of this.

So Peter Parker finally crashes.

The train careens off the tracks as he finally breaks.

“Are you kidding me?” Peter snaps, and every eye in the room goes to him as he bites out: “You swan in here to say that? Where were you when I—"

Peter's entire world is burning up in the flash-bang of the fire that is consuming his limbs, but he is able to just barely correct the trolley tracks, to divert the train at the last second into rolling over not a secret identity, but rather any sort of relationship he might have once had with Tony Stark as he demands, “Why the hell do you care now," his words flying like shrapnel, digging in tight and bloody wherever they might hit.

Mr. Stark's brow furrows. “Kid,” he says, and his voice is wounded, but he's not the one that had his suit taken away. He's not the one that is wounded, is never scarred, is flickering in and out of the light—

Peter's hand goes to his head.

He doesn't—

He can't—

Everything seems so far away, at the far end of an ocean, on the far side of a supernova.

His legs are jelly. His bones are—

Peter sees, out of the corner of his eye, a bloom of red, on the thigh of his jeans, on the stones beneath Ben's head, a wound that has opened up, as his legs go out from under him.

Peter wishes he could say that he fights to stay awake. That he fights the cotton in his head and the world fracturing into broken fractals, Mr. Stark and Flash moving out of the corner of his eyes towards him, Mr. Stark's hands going towards his head—

The last thing that Peter hears is get out of the way of my kid, but he knows that he must be imagining. That there can’t be anyone there. When buildings collapse, when Atlas crumbles, the only person there to hold up the falling body is himself.

There is no one that would catch Peter. No one that has ever caught Peter. He has always been beneath the collapsing building, his uncle’s blood on his hands, the spider-bite fever taking hold of his body and sending his asthma into anxious overdrive. 

So Peter falls, and he doesn't feel his head hit the ground, because the oblivion that refused to come to him when he was trapped under the collapsing building finally swallows him up.

---

And yet—

The building collapses, but for the first time, there is someone there to cushion Peter's fall.

---

Peter wakes up in a hospital bed, hooked up to some sort of IV drip pinching his skin, and he has no idea how he even got here. All he can register at first is the absolute clear fact that his thigh isn’t in pain anymore. Nothing is. 

But—how? Pain meds don’t work on Peter anymore. Ibuprofen and Tylenol are nowhere near strong enough for his enhanced metabolism to stop churning through like fucking candy, and where even is he, that the needle is able to stay in his skin, what the hell happened—

“Yeah, took some effort to get the needle into your skin when it kept trying to close around it,” a familiar voice says, tone dry, and Peter nearly jumps five feet into the air. “But thankfully we had some of Captain Spangles’ old needles and hyper-drugs around so we were able to get antibiotics, a nutrient cocktail, and painkillers into you.”

Because Tony fucking Stark is sitting in the seat next to Peter, staring at him with dark circles beneath his eyes. He’s shed the sunglasses and the suit jacket he was wearing when he swanned into the room earlier, his button-up wrinkled, his sleeve cuffs rolled up. He looks like he's had a real fucking time of things, and shit, Peter did that, didn't he?

Peter’s cheeks flare hotter than the surface of the sun, because god, Peter yelled at him, didn’t he, god, that’s so embarrassing, he yelled at Tony Stark— 

“Why didn’t you fucking ask for help, kid?” Mr. Stark asks, and his voice is heavy. Aching. Desperate. 

And Peter wants to give him a good answer. He really does. He wants to tell Mr. Stark that he could handle it all on his own. That he could be relied upon. That he knew that nothing was going to go wrong. That he wouldn’t let anything go wrong, because if something went wrong, then it was his fault, wasn't it?

How do you ask for help when you’ve never had anyone to help you? When you’ve spent a lifetime learning that the people who you love, the people you trust, the people who you are supposed to rely on, can be snuffed out in an instant?

Except—

The door flies open to Aunt May, who strides forward, eyes wide and worried, to Peter's side, just barely pausing to exchange a look with Mr. Stark as she wryly says, "The nurse told me that someone finally woke up," but her tone is as tight as it is light.

And since when are those two friends?

Wait, does she know?

There’s no way that she knows. Mr. Stark gets how important it is not to tell anyone about who—about what—he is, right?

Except—Tony Stark is the man who famously blurted out his secret identity in the middle of a press conference, he is the absolute last person on earth who can be trusted not to just announce sensitive information that isn’t company-related.

This is—shit, did Mr. Stark tell her about the stab wound? That’s—shit, of course she’s going to freak out, he hopes that Mr. Stark didn’t bring that up, though it’s kind of hard to explain why he collapsed without mentioning the stab wound, but maybe he can just say that he was sick, and Mr. Stark happened to be there because of the internship, he can explain that, he doesn’t have to tell her that he’s— 

May steps forward and kisses Peter's forehead and it’s gentle, it’s tender, and it nearly cracks Peter open, especially when she pulls back, eyes narrowing. “So, sweetheart,” she says, and her voice is sharp, but there is something brittle in her voice beneath the edges. “When were you going to tell me that you were fucking Spiderman?”

Peter winces. Okay, then. Caesium and water. 2 Cs (s) + 2 H₂O (l) → 2 CsOH (aq) + H₂ (g). 

Aka: Explosion.

“I didn’t—I meant to tell you—"

“And you only decided to tell me after you collapsed in the Stark Industries lobby? Peter, I—" May’s eyes are wet, and shit, this isn’t what Peter wanted, he didn’t want her to ever panic like this, he never wanted her to worry, to be concerned, Peter could handle this on his own. “Peter, you were stabbed, and you could have died, baby—"

“It was just—just a graze, May, I swear it wasn’t that bad—"

“Peter Parker,” May says, eyes blazing, and whoops. “I am a nurse. I know what an infected wound looks like.”

Peter grimaces. “You saw it?”

“Of course Tony showed me the doctor's scans,” May says, and shit, Peter doesn’t want to imagine what things would be like if the two of them teamed up against him, that might be worse than them blaming him, understanding what a bad influence he is, having to have two people worried about him at all times—

(Except. There is some part of Peter that thinks that maybe, just maybe, it might warm something deep in his chest to know that he has this many people in his corner. Not just Ned as his guy in the chair, not just MJ glaring at Flash, but adults. Adults with power, and care, and maybe he doesn’t have to carry all of the weight himself, Atlas’ shoulders carrying the weight of the entire building, the entire universe, on his own.)

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Mr. Stark repeats, because he’s not letting himself get distracted from his priority, which is apparently the fact that Peter could stabbed. “If it wasn’t for that little asshole—Flick or Flash or whatever you call him—stopping us to let us know—"

"I'm sorry. Flash did what?

The story unfolds, quick as can be—Mr. Stark catching Peter on his way to the ground, rushing to carry Peter up to the medbay as he ordered FRIDAY to call Dr. Helen Cho, the superhero doctor, to whip up some of the "good stuff" ("Captain Spangles' antibiotics," Peter presumes, remembering what Mr. Stark told him as he woke up), and Ned and MJ were worried, wanting answers, but Flash, well—

Mr. Stark tells him that Flash of all people caught his sleeve and told him to make sure that Peter was okay, that even when Mr. Stark let Flash and Mr. Harrington have it and Mr. Harrington looked like he was going to melt in his shoes, but even when Flash was pale and blinking flint-strike eyes wide, he still stood his ground and made sure that Mr. Stark would make sure that no one at home was hurting Peter.

(“He's been getting skinnier, and showed up hurt, and—” Flash swallowed, throat tight. “No one deserves that.”

Tony needed to follow Peter up the elevator. “Don't you think that you contributed to the lack of sleep, you—" Tony choked off his words. He couldn't call a kid an asshole, no matter how much he deserved it.

And so he just nodded. "Peter's going to be fine," he promised, and he meant it with everything that he had.)

“And then I carried you up to the medbay," Mr. Stark finishes the tale to a shocked Peter. "And now we're here."

Peter’s jaw drops. “You carried me?”

“I’m stronger than I look,” Mr. Stark says, “Superhero, remember?”

“Yeah, but you’re, like—"

Mr. Stark arches an eyebrow. “What? Old?”

Peter’s cheeks flush. “That’s not—I just meant—unenhanced. And I’m, like—I’ve got a lot of muscles, and they’re dense, and—"

“And you’re skinny,” Mr. Stark says, “And adrenaline can do a lot, kid.”

“He also had me open up the doors for him and power up the elevator,” FRIDAY informs them all from the ceiling, and May jumps a bit in her seat, but Peter is used to her and Karen by now.

And honestly, Peter's more focused on the issue at hand. “I didn’t want to—" He swallows. “Listen, I heal fast. It should have been fine. Seriously, I would have been fine."

But his arguments aren't being heard as he wanted them to, apparently, if Mr. Stark and Aunt May's reactions are to be taken in.

“If it hadn’t been infected,” Mr. Stark says, voice sharp, firm, and it seems as if Tony Stark, the guy who swans about casually calling himself a genius playboy billionaire philanthropist, winking at every camera, with a reputation for partying and losing himself in the chaos, is capable of whipping out the “I was once a CEO and You Will Listen To Me” voice if needed. “If you weren’t severely malnourished, kid—"

Aunt May’s face crumples as she drops down into the chair next to Mr. Stark, looking like the world has fallen out from under her, and this is exactly why Peter didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to be a burden.

“Malnourished?” May asks, and for the first time in a year, since Ben died, Peter hears her voice small. 

And no, no, no, that isn’t what Peter wanted, he never wanted her to think—

This isn’t her fault. She’s been pulling doubles, doing everything she possibly can to help him, this is not now and never has been her fault—

“The malnourishment—that's not that important—I was sure I was gonna heal, and that's not the point, anyway. The point is that—" Peter swallows, hard and dry, against the knot in his throat. God, he must have been out for a bit, for this kind of desert to build up in his throat. "When you have these powers, when you have what I do—it’s my responsibility, to look out for the little guy—"

“You are the little guy, kid,” Mr. Stark says, voice firm, but also—almost pleading. “And besides—" Mr. Stark swallows. “This is why you should wear the suit, Underoos.”

There is something in Peter’s chest that blooms, warm as can be, at the nickname, at the fact that Tony Stark gave him a fucking nickname, that his childhood hero is fond enough of him to hand out that sort of thing, but he also knows that Tony Stark nicknames anything that moves, that it might just be something casual, and he can't wear that like it means more than he logically knows it does.

“I never should have let this happen,” Mr. Stark says, and there is something almost—guilty in his voice, and Peter doesn’t know why.

“You took the suit away because I didn’t deserve it,” Peter says, “Because if I’m nothing without it. Because I’m—" The words because I bring bad luck wherever I go sound like whining before he even says them, and also, on a selfish level, Peter doesn’t know if he can bear to say them out loud and have Mr. Stark agree with him.

It’s one thing to think them. To know them. It’s another to hear his hero say them, or, at least—agree with them. To acknowledge how true they are.

“You never, ever, were nothing without the suit, kid,” Mr. Stark says, and Peter’s lungs squeeze tight, because that’s not—how could that be—“If anyone is something without the suit, it’s me, not you, dear god—"

Peter’s jaw drops. “You’re Tony Stark,” Peter protests, unafraid of interrupting just this once, because there’s no way that Mr. Stark believes that, right? “You’re everything without the suit. Genius, philanthropist, innovator—"

The corner of Mr. Stark’s mouth turns upward, but May, it seems, doesn’t quite share Peter’s opinions on the subject.

“Wait one second,” May says, and shit, Peter knows that tone, that sharp edge to her voice. Last time he heard that, it was when she found out that the guy she’d been casually seeing had cheated on her, and Peter was ready to string the guy up himself, because it was the first time that May had put herself out there after Ben's death, but after she'd cursed him out and chucked his small box of stuff out onto the stairway outside of the apartment, she'd pulled him in tight and promised that it was just them from now on. That the two of them were all that mattered.

And Peter feels that, now, as May’s head whips around to look at Mr. Stark. To glare at him, eyes narrowed, gaze flaring as bright and blinding as the surface as the sun. 

(Peter almost grimaces in sympathy—he’s been the victim of such a look before, and even then, it was half-softened by love and fondness.)

“Are you telling me that you took away his suit?" May demands, "You’re the reason why Spiderman—my boy—has been swinging around without his big fancy hi-tech suit? Tony Stark, you and I shall have fucking words—"

As much as something in Peter is sewing itself back together at the knowledge that Aunt May is apparently ready to go to blows with a billionaire over his safety, something that Peter might have suspected, Peter shakes his head. “I earned it. That’s what I was trying to say. I—I couldn’t be trusted with the suit. I’m not—" He swallows, hard. The wounds have healed, just like he thought they would. They are gone. No scars remain. No infection lingers. He’s fine. He’s perfectly fine, because he’s always been fine, because he has this body that the spider gave him, despite the fact that he shouldn’t, because it’s his luck that he doesn’t, except—

Maybe it is his luck that he has this body. That he doesn’t get to hold onto anything. That any ghosts he carries no one has to see. That he has to grieve on his own. That he has to suffer on his own.

“It’s a good thing, that you took the suit away, sir—"

“No, it fucking wasn’t, and no, I’m not apologizing for the language. You didn’t deserve that, kid. You deserve to have people in your corner. People who you can trust to take care of you—"

“I’ve got my guy in the chair—" Peter protests.

But Mr. Stark shakes his head. “More than that. You need adults. People who can support you. People who can—break the cycle.”

Peter recognizes that last bit of it, he thinks, from a rooftop ages ago, and he wants to give Mr. Stark that. He wants to not be the disappointment.

“But you—how can you believe that I’m going to do that?” Peter asks, “That you can—believe in me to do something like that?” Something in Peter finally crumbles, the dam breaking to let the words flood out as he says: “I’m—I’m bad luck, Mr. Stark—"

Mr. Stark’s eyes go wide, and for a moment, Peter sees Mr. Stark’s brown eyes—some of the most distinctive eyes in the world, plastered across the front of tabloids and magazines and scientific journals alike since he was a kid wearing an Iron Man mask at a Stark Expo, just wanting to be like his scientific hero—get shiny. Almost wet, as if he’s—

Mr. Stark isn’t crying, is he? That’s impossible. There’s no way.

And yet, Mr. Stark’s dark eyes are crumpling at the edges as he reaches out a hand and cups Peter’s knuckles in his as he says, “You can’t believe that, kid. If anyone is bad luck, it’s me, making mistake after mistake with those I love, and the Avengers, and—"

“But my parents,” Peter says, and his voice is hushed, brittle, this close to breaking. “Uncle Ben. I—they all—"

May clears her throat. “Will you two both pull your heads out of your asses and stop throwing yourself on the altar and blaming yourself for the shit that the world threw at you? Neither of you is Jesus, Christ. Everyone could see from a mile away that every Avenger is the most stubborn and headstrong person in the world, Stark. You can’t have that many superheroes in one place and not expect some clash of egoes to take place. Everyone can be blamed a bit for what happened, but the guy who wanted to make up for the damage that was done is not exactly the first person I would blame for a team breakup—even if I will certainly blame you for dragging my nephew into things.” Mr. Stark goes pale at that, and Peter gets it, May’s anger is the sort of thing that only a nurse could pull off, the look of someone who knows exactly where each of your organs is and what weaknesses they each have.

“I wanted to, May—" Peter tries to protest, and May looks to him.

“And you, Peter. You’re fourteen. A child. And I know that you want to defend the little guy, and I know that you are as stubborn and headstrong as any superhero so I can’t stop you, but I need you to know—you can’t blame yourself for any losses. You can only count the addition, not the subtraction. The good, not the bad. Because one person can’t save everyone.”

“That doesn’t make sense, from a mathematical perspective,” Peter starts to protest, even though there is something wet in his throat, because it's hard to cling to the things that have made him for so long when they are both looking at him like this, when Aunt May is saying that, when Aunt May is reaching forward and cupping his cheek and there’s something about her tenderness and Mr. Stark’s alike that threatens to set his skin on fire.

Aunt May's voice is tender but firm as she says, “I’m your Aunt. I’m always right. You should know that by now."

And there is a smile pushing its way onto his lips as he swallows down a protest that that is objectively not true, because everyone is fallible, everyone can be wrong sometimes, even Mr. Stark, because the fact of the matter is that Peter wants to believe. He wants to believe her so badly. He wants her to be right, because if she's right, then he gets to lay down the weight of the building he's been carrying for so long.

“And as for you, sweetheart—I know you too well. I know that you are never going to give up being Spiderman, nor would I ask you to, but—you need to know that you don’t have to do this alone. That you don’t have to carry everything like Jesus or Atlas or whatever you prefer. The world is not yours to fix. You are fourteen. What you’re responsible, honey, is your grades. It’s your own happiness, and your friends, and the like. You’re not responsible for all the world’s ills. Not even Tony is, though he can definitely have a lot more influence than most people could.”

And on that note— 

Peter knows that he’s still a bit out of it. That whatever painkillers they’re piping through his veins might be affecting his brain and his ability to evaluate what’s going on. That they might be loosening a filter that he normally keeps so tight, those manners that he usually holds onto with all earnestness.

But he also thinks— 

Malnourished.

Peter has two people in his corner. Two adults that have made it their mission to care for him, even though neither of them has an obligation to. They both chose to stick by him, to make sure that he’s taken care of, he's starting to realize. He has two people in his corner.

So many people don’t have that. That guy he webbed up outside of the grocery store—he didn't have that. 

And maybe Peter can’t do much as Spiderman to help those people. 

But maybe there’s something that Peter can do.

And so Peter thinks he can be excused for the next words that come out of his mouth: “You're right. People shouldn’t have to shoplift.”

Mr. Stark’s eyes go wide, and Aunt May isn't much better. “Are you shoplifting, kid?”

“This isn’t about me, Mr. Stark,” Peter protests. “It’s about—I see people, all the time, as Spider-Man, around the neighborhood. And some of them are criminals because they want to be, or whatever, but so many more of them are just trying to get by. And you’re a billionaire, and you have all this money, and you can spend it on jets, or whatever, but you can also spend it on, like—" Peter isn't an economist. He's a STEM kid. Graphs and spider biology and technology is what makes sense to him, not money, beyond the way that it carves away at your stomach when you don't have it. "Food for people. Charities and stuff. Make the neighborhood friendly from both ends, y'know? Be both Bruce Wayne and Batman."

May’s eyes are shining with pride, and Mr. Stark isn't much better, his voice sounding a bit thick as he jokes: "I can't believe you're comparing me to a fictional comic book hero when I'm right in front of you."

You are my hero and always have been, is on the tip of Peter's tongue, because it's true, but Mr. Stark beats him to the punch. Both of you— 

“God, do you know that you’ve got a heart too big for your chest, Underoos?” Mr. Stark asks, and it could so easily sound like a dig, a disappointment, but Mr. Stark says it like it’s the best thing in the world. “You are a good kid. A really good kid.” There is something almost painfully sincere in Mr. Stark’s voice as he speaks, but Peter can’t help but giggle for the first time in days, if not weeks, when Mr. Stark says: “If I could be half as good as you when I grow up, I’ll have done something right.”

And it almost sounds like Mr. Stark is saying the same thing that Peter meant. You are my hero, kid, is what he's saying, and the organs inside of Peter's chest are blooming big and bright— 

But then Mr. Stark says, "I'll do all of that, take care of all of that, on one condition."

Peter’s heart cracks open, because he believes in Tony Stark, always has, but he’s tired and he doesn’t want there to be more conditions—

But then Mr. Stark smiles and says, “Just call me Tony, kid.”

And that, Peter thinks, he can do.

Because there’s some part of him that recognizes the intention behind the request. That recognizes that Mr. Stark—no, Tony—just wants to be close with him, Peter thinks, and for the first time, Peter doesn't think he minds, because he wants the same, he thinks. Because Tony clearly cares.

“Also,” Tony throws in, “No more getting stabbed. For the sake of my—" May glares at him and he amends quickly: “Our mental health. I’m too old to be getting heart attacks because my kid collapses with a fucking bloodstain on his leg. And once again, no, I’m not apologizing for my language, you scared the shit out of me.”

Peter grimaces. “That’s part of the crime-fighting, Mr—I mean, Tony.”

Tony grins at the name change, but Peter thinks he might be smiling just as wide, because he heard that one specific phrase, so casually used.

My kid.

As in—

In your corner. As in—Tony chose him.

“Then you need to eat better," Tony insists, "And get more sleep, and—"

“Okay, mom,” Peter says, rolling his eyes, and Aunt May grins at the way that Tony Stark’s eyes go wide, and maybe it’s not the best thing in the world that his filter is missing, Peter has to admit. 

Peter’s go wide, too, it must be said, because he didn’t mean to say it like that, but Tony is grinning, too, that sort of smirk that he wears when he’s genuinely amused, and Peter thinks— 

This might genuinely be something. This could be—

"And I want that internship to become something real," Aunt May adds on, "For him to get some time in the lab." When Peter goes to protest—he's already getting so much—Aunt May just barrels on. "Peter's smart enough to design the web shooters, or whatever they're called, and I know he finds a lot of his classes too easy, and clearly, you believe in him, don't you?"

Peter's breath catches in his throat as Tony doesn't even hesitate to respond. “The paperwork has already been filed with his school—and trust me, I’m going to have a word with them about believing that,” Tony assures Aunt May, and while Peter could do without Tony threatening Mr. Harrington, who he vaguely remembers trembling like a baby bunny as he passed out, he wouldn’t mind if it became official that he is an intern. That he gets to work in a Stark Industry lab, see what a real R&D lab is like, all of those tech innovations, and he might be at the bottom of the ladder, but it's everything he's ever dreamed about—"And I think he'll have a great time getting a glimpse into my personal lab up here."

Peter's jaw drops. Tony's personal lab? As in—working with Tony Stark himself? As more than just Iron Man and Spider-man, but as like—Peter Parker and Tony Stark?

But then again...

Hell—I’d say that the kid is smarter than I was at his age, and that’s saying something, because I’m a goddamn genius. I’ve never met anyone as smart as him.

There is something blooming in Peter's chest, the realization about how much Tony actually thinks of him—as if Tony catching him and apparently carrying him up to the medbay wouldn’t have done a lot to prove that Peter is exactly what he says he is. That people will realize that Tony Stark cares about the kid that no one cares about.

“With both of our eyes on the prize, he can’t get away with sneaking around with eating,” Tony says to May, who nods in response, in lock-step agreement, and it would be so easy to say it wrong, to make May feel like she wasn’t doing her best—and she was always doing her best, Peter knows it, he has always known it—but the way that Tony says it has the most tact of anything that Peter has ever heard from his mouth.

And Peter realizes that once upon a time, regardless of how much Tony didn’t use it after the fact, Tony might have actually have had some media training.

But more importantly, maybe, just maybe—

He cares. He really, really does care.

May nods. “You have both of us in your corner, sweetheart,” she says, and her voice is soft, tender, the sort of thing that Peter has so desperately ached for lately, and maybe Peter should be a bit wary of two overprotective yentas in his corner, but the part of him that has been alone for so long, haunted for so long, thinks—

I could really, really learn to live with this.

Peter sinks back into the pillow and the medbay bed beneath him, and he smiles at he watches Tony and May descend into bickering over lab hours and internship hours, hammering out Peter spending which afternoons and evenings in the lab with Tony—the days of the week when May pulls doubles, and spending time at the tower with a paid internship is going to alleviate the strain that his stomach puts on the family finances, and Peter knows he's not supposed to worry about that sort of thing, but from the way that Tony and May are discussing things, neither of them letting go of him, he doesn't think that he's going to need to.

---

They don’t let him go back to swinging until the knife wound is fully healed, when there is no evidence left of the stab wound that Peter let fester, but before Peter's even out of the medbay bed, Tony gives him back the suit, this time with “enhanced safety protocols,” and Peter does get to say hello to Karen again. Gets to reconnect with his friend.

“It’s nice to see you again, Peter,” Karen says, and Peter knows that she’s not actually smiling, but her voice is warm, and he thinks— 

God, I missed you. I didn’t realize how lonely fighting had gotten. Ned’s a lot, but he’s not everything.

And, well, there’s nothing stopping him from smiling when hearing her voice, right?

---

The day before Peter is set to go back to school, he walks back from the Tower past the store that he’d stopped the shoplifter at, and he sees signs for a new food bank. Posters for vouchers for food, similar to food stamps, to be used at local stores for more than just the limited guidelines that EBT cards provide, food that can warm people up, all provided by the Maria Stark and— 

Peter’s eyes burn when he sees the Maria Stark and Benjamin Parker Foundation for Food Insecurity.

And when he goes online, he sees the same news, all over the place. Tony Stark’s announcement that he’s making it his personal mission to get rid of any and all food deserts in New York City—starting with Queens.

And there, in the street, fingers gripping onto one of the flyers, something shining in his eyes as he stares at the flyer, is the shoplifter.

Peter never asked the guy’s name as Spiderman, and he certainly can’t ask as Peter. Hell; he doesn’t think he should. He knows the bite of starvation in the stomach, the way that the body twists in on itself when a person is too tired and too hungry to think through the pain, and he wouldn’t want someone to pry that out of him. That sort of private ache. That sort of personal plight.

And Peter isn’t going to pry that out of this other guy—this other teenager, because in the streetlight, the kid only looks a year or two older than Peter.

Rather, he can just hope that the guy takes up Tony’s offer. That Tony does as he promises.

---

When Peter goes back to school, people are all staring at him, and he guess that after everything Tony said and did, that's not that shocking.

Ned and MJ are as normal as always, though, checking on him after he collapsed, MJ ruffling his hair, Ned wrapping him in a tight hug.

“You look like you're feeling better, loser,” MJ says, something almost…nice in her tone.

"I'm so glad that Tony Stark was there to take you to checked up on, man," Ned says, and it means a lot that he only sounds like he is mildly losing his mind over Tony Stark coming to take care of Peter.

Across the hallway, the movement of one Flash Thompson through the corridors catches all three of their eyes, but Flash almost looks...contrite?

“Flash is eating his words,” MJ informs him with her usual nonchalance, but he thinks he hears at least a little bit of satisfaction in her tone—not that Peter can really blame her, he has to admit.

Sure enough, Flash comes up to Peter. “I guess you really are an intern after all,” Flash mutters under his breath, and he doesn’t call Peter “Penis,” and it’s not an apology, but Peter’s pretty sure that Flash Thompson doesn’t know how to give an apology. This is the closest he’s going to get from him. 

Except—

That doesn’t have to be the story, does it?

Because Peter thinks about Flash flinching at Daddy’s little boy, and he thinks about Tony talking about breaking the cycle, and yeah, he knows that May and Tony both told him that he doesn’t need to feel responsible for taking care of everyone around him, but he is going to keep an eye on Flash. The bullying wasn’t okay, Peter needs to remember, Flash shouldn’t have taken out on him whatever he was getting at home, but— 

I’ve gotta look out for the little guy, and Flash has never exactly been a jock, has he?

---

The building collapses, but the concrete is caught before it lands on Peter’s ribs, on his legs, before it crushes him.

Someone reaches out a hand to get him out, and he takes it, and raises his eyes to the stars.

And maybe, just maybe, he can reach that hand out to the people on the ground as well.

---

Happy’s car pulls up to Midtown after school that day to take him to his internship, and something in Peter’s chest leaps to have Happy here. He really missed the grump, getting to leave him voicemails, getting to occasionally hear his grumble—

But when the window rolls down, it’s not Happy’s scowling face.

It’s Tony himself. Designer sunglasses on, sure, bracelet with Iron Man nanotech on one wrist, but in a faded AC/DC t-shirt and oil-stained jeans as if he jetted here right from the lab, interrupting some sort of project.

“I think Step One in the multi-step process to make sure that the Spiderling gets proper nutrition is a crash course in junk food on the way to the internship,” Tony says, “I know a nice hole-in-the-wall diner that Rhodey and I found tucked away back in the day. How does a root beer float sound?”

“That sounds like something that people drank when there was black and white tv and when people rode dinosaurs to school,” Peter says, and it’s partially sincere, partially teasing, because he’s kind of in shock that Tony fucking Stark is in front of his school, in front of him, offering to take him for ice cream and soda, and yet—

Peter slides into the passenger seat, tucking his backpack between his feet, and he grins. "I think that can work."

---

Tony takes Peter to his personal lab, where Peter expects to work on the Iron Spider, expects to only do Spider-man stuff, but Tony directs Peter straight to what looks like a pile of half-finished projects, from prosthetic limbs to filtration systems to what looks like some cobbled-together generations of the Starkphones.

“Pick something,” Tony says, a hand on Peter’s shoulders.

“Water filtration systems?” Peter asks, unable to keep the giddiness from his voice.

Tony grins. "Good choice, kid."

Peter has his first lab day, his first official day of his internship, and he gets to develop a new solar-powered alternative to the pulley mechanism in the water filter while ping-ponging ideas off of Tony the entire afternoon, and he ends the day stuffed with pizza and root beer floats and not a single drop of infection, and he heads home tired—not from the exhaustion of starvation and infection and working too hard on his own, but rather because he's full and satiated and happy.

Peter gets home and Aunt May is waiting up for him. Well, she fell asleep on the sofa waiting for him, so he tucks the box of leftover pizza in the fridge and by the time that he goes to drape a blanket over her shoulders, she stirs and looks up at him with a soft, sleepy smile. "Have a good time, sweetheart?"

"It was awesome," Peter says, "I can't wait for next week."

"Good," May says, and her smile curves in pride. "I'm so proud of you, honey. You've always been such a good kid, but you're becoming a great young man, y'know?"

The backs of Peter's eyes burn, but this time, it's not in sorrow or pain—it's in happiness. "Thanks, May." He leans in and kisses her forehead. "Larb you."

"Larb you too, Pete," May says, and she falls back asleep just as quickly as she woke, but Peter doesn't mind. If anything, he's happy that she's comfortable with all of this, with lab days, with Spider-man, with everything that he once thought would be the end of everything.

But as Peter is now learning—it's the start of everything.

---

(Tony Stark puts his hand on Peter’s shoulders, and instead of making Peter repair a car and end the night more bruised than smiling, he lets Peter decide what they’re going to fix. What they’re going to innovate.

Because Tony thinks—

If there's one person that can end the cycle, it's this kid in front of him. Peter Parker. The North Star.)

---

The first time Peter goes out swinging in the new Iron Spider suit, Karen in his ears, the sunset glinting off of the metal, gold against red and blue, against warmth, against protection, against care—

The building stops collapsing. Peter Parker whoops as he flies through the air, as he gets to save the little guy, as he gets to be the friendly neighborhood Spiderman.

Sweetheart, you look a little tired

When did you last eat?

Come in and make yourself right at home

Stay as long as you need

Tell me, is something wrong?

If something's wrong, you can count on me 

—Sleeping At Last, Two