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He’s had this dream before, a few times over the years— woken up suddenly in a room he knows – in his old room, the one in Queens, in the apartment with the burning toast and Star Wars marathons and field trip permission slips – and listened to the achingly familiar voices filtering through the bedroom door, like the before-his-alarm morning light though the frosted window.
It’s never been like this though; startlingly clear, startlingly real. He can count the motes of dust in the sunbeams. Feel the worn quilt draped over his torso, his shoulders.
Slowly, like he’s afraid he’ll scare the vision away, Peter sits up and swings his legs off the bed.
Then he looks down and knows it’s a dream, because he’s still wearing his Spider suit. The new one he fabricated himself, four years ago, after the multiverse suddenly flipped inside out and he’d ruined everything. He looks over and sees the mask on his nightstand.
Suddenly, everything comes rushing back— the cat-and-mouse chase through the city, the mutations, the fear, the realization of how wrong he’d gotten it, the slog through DDC and the testing chamber—
His spidey sense flaring. A shot: flashing, ringing— Agony. Agony. Agony.
Peter gasps, pressing a hand to his chest, over the torn suit, because it’s second nature for him to put pressure on a bleeding wound, but the pain is an echo, already fading. When he hesitantly pulls his fingers away, there’s no blood.
Confusion, uncertainty, and the sort of paranoid wariness you only get from four years alone, holding the weight of a city on your shoulders, roils in his stomach.
It’s just instinct to go still and cock his head, to listen. The apartment hums with a tune of existence he’d almost forgotten – the AC in the vents, his still-running laptop, the rustle of neighbors. Outside his window, the city blooms with muffled life, an eternal backdrop.
Peter’s eyes snap open when he hears the rough, booming base of a man’s laugh beyond the closed bedroom door.
The light from the window paints it almost an ephemeral amber, like whatever is beyond it will be saturated and lovely. Nostalgia floods his chest, tingles in his shoulders as they hunch.
“Ben…?” He breathes, not willing to dare.
May’s chuckling voice is a bright answer, a reply to whatever Ben had just asked. Another voice, a familiar tenor, says something, and a fourth, a soft lilt, feminine and sweet, adds on. Peter’s heart hammers.
He knows those voices. He remembers—
There’s a sound like footsteps, like tiles being tread on and drawers and cabinets and the fridge being opened, cutlery moved, glass tinkling as it’s set on the kitchen table.
He doesn’t realize he’s gotten to his feet until he’s already at the door, one hand wavering over the handle, ear hovering over the wood.
If he strains, he can just barely make out their voices properly, make out the words of their conversation…
There’s a knock at his window just as his fingers brush the smooth metal of his doorknob.
Peter jerks his hands back, wrists up and aiming wildly, immediately on the defense.
His breath feels jagged, like glass in his mouth, as he narrows his eyes and carefully steps closer to the window. Beyond the condensation ghosting in intricate spirals along the screen, the world is a blur of brown stone and grey fog and morning oranges.
There’s a shadow, a silhouette he can’t quite make out, on the other side.
The knock comes again, this time with a voice, dulled through the window, that makes his throat close inexplicably.
“Hey! Hey, kid! I know you’re awake in there, you menace. C’mon, don’t leave me hanging out here. These rails are definitely not OSHA passing.”
Peter scrambles to unlock the window, throwing it open, and nearly falls back from the force of his surprise.
Leaning on the rusted rails of the fire escape, in oil-stained sweatpants and crocs and the dumbest Mickey Mouse patterned sweater Peter has never seen on him before, is Tony Stark.
“Well, Spidey. We gonna stand here all day, or are you coming out here so I can get a better look at you?”
Peter gapes, stunned. He feels like he’s been shot again; a punch to the chest that knocks him forward a step, but there’s no white-hot pain this time.
Tony waits, the picture of patience, a contradiction to Peter’s memory, as he carefully pulls himself through the window. The metal creaks beneath his feet as he looks up at his old mentor’s face.
There’s grey at the man’s temples that he’d never seen before the Battle.
His dreams of Mr. Stark, the Tony from the after, were rare and scattered and had always featured him on the ruined field of the Compound. His nanobot helm, even with the face plate retracted, always covered his head.
Peter hadn’t got a good look at the post-Blip Tony, at the changes fives years of fatherhood and survivors’ guilt had wrought in him, until after the man had died.
With every passing year, it became harder and harder to picture his face – the way his smirks turned lopsided when Peter had done something he found amusing. Even just the color of his eyes.
Peter hasn't had a dream of his Tony in nearly three years, much less this one; lichtenberg scars and grey-haired and softened edges in ways that he'd never gotten know, never had the chance too.
“Good gosh, kid.” Tony says mildly, the corners of his eyes crinkling in open fondness. The morning light colors the espresso of his irises a faint gold.
“Look how much you’ve grown.”
Peter promptly bursts into tears.
“Woah, okay, hey, hey,” There’s a faint note of alarm in Tony’s voice that he can just pick out as he swipes angrily at his cheeks, dismayed at his own reaction. The Spider suit frankly sucks at being a tissue; he just ends up smearing saltwater over his face.
“H-How-How are y-you h-here?” Peter wails, desperately confused. “You-you, you died. Y-you’re– you’re dead. It’s not-n-not fair!”
He wants to take off flying over the railing, wants to crawl back into his bedroom and hide, wants to rage at the universe and his stupid subconscious for having the worst timing ever.
His hands clench and unclench at his sides, and he does none of these things.
Peter feels more than sees Tony step closer, just a touch out of reach. The warmth of his palm, hovering just a breath above his shoulder, is a promise he expects to be broken but desperately wants fulfilled anyway.
"Peter." The man offers, solemn and kind, "Peter, can I hug you?”
Peter jerks his head, after a moment. It’s a semblance of a nod in the way a poorly stringed puppet might move, but it must work, because in the next moment Tony is pulling him into his chest.
He feels the scratchy rasp of the man’s stubble past his own cheek, the way Tony’s head presses against his, a rock in the rapids, and stutters out a sob. It feels so real.
Peter screws his eyes shut, shakily grips at the back of his sweater, and curls a little more into him. Distantly, a part of him realizes he’s too tall now to tuck under the man’s chin like he might've wanted to, once. Tony hums; a nonsensical tune he can feel reverberating in his own chest. It soothes the achy staccato in his lungs.
“I missed you,” Peter confesses hoarsely, and swallows past the burning coal clogging his throat.
“When you hugged me on the field. It had only been minutes for me, and I didn’t understand why, but I missed you then. And then y–you left. And I didn’t– I never got to—” He chokes on the embers in his mouth.
Tony’s arms tighten ever so slightly, and he rocks them both. Back and forth.
His tone is light, like when they used to banter over nothing, lifetimes ago in a workshop far, far away.
“Well, you know me. Always one for dramatic exits.”
“That’s not funny. That’s not even close to funny!” Peter huffs, almost a chuckle, high-pitched and upset. He’s both somehow livid and amused and his emotions are piling into a frustrating mess that he has no idea how to even begin dealing with.
“This is sad. This is a sad, sad moment and you’re supposed to give it the tragic weight it deserves. At least some tasteful blubbering.”
“Oh, kid,” Tony says, immeasurably soft, “I think you’ve had enough sad moments for a lifetime.”
Peter buries his face in the man’s neck, snot and tears and unspoken apologies all pressed into the collar of that stupid, stupid sweater.
He feels a hand slip past his curls, cup the back of his head – a steady pressure that settles something that had been jangling loosely inside him. It takes the gasping, rolling whimpers to sullen tears, heavy and silent.
Peter suddenly realizes he hasn’t been hugged like this since May passed. In at least half a decade.
He is so, so tired.
“Mr. Stark,” He whispers, raw and breathless and unsure of exactly what he’s asking for. Permission? Approval?
“Please, sir. I want to… I just want to go— I want to go home.”
I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home—
I want to be with May. With Ben, and my parents.
He can still hear them if he listens, if he tunes in. Setting up breakfast.
Tony’s voice rumbles beneath his cheek.
“I’m not gonna stop you, if that’s what you really want.”
Tony’s other hand becomes a soothing sweep along his spine. Back and forth. He shudders beneath it, melts; lets it ground him.
“It’s not a trick either, bud. You can climb right back through that window if you want. Go tripping past that bedroom door and see what May’s planning to burn in the kitchen.”
Peter’s breath hitches with the implications, with want. God, he wants.
“I could—“ He tries, almost pleadingly, “I could change clothes. Put away the suit and go back to bed. Wait for Uncle– for Uncle Ben to wake me up…”
“Yeah, you could.” Tony agrees. His hand stills, a light weight between his shoulders.
"But would you actually get any sleep if you did?”
Would he?
Peter winces, pulling back a step, ducking his head away from the man’s searching look.
The sounds of the city below them are a discordant, eddying symphony of chaos more familiar than his own heartbeat.
It tugs on his chest like a lullaby, like a favorite song, and instantly Peter knows his answer. It cracks his heart in half.
“Ned and MJ don’t remember me, but… they still aren’t safe, it turns out.”
He murmurs, fingers curling at his sides.
“Then there’s Frank— God, he’s probably freaking out right now. And Jean…“ She just lost everything, and now she’s somewhere out there in the city, all alone.
A familiar, calloused palm brushes over his jaw, cups his cheek.
The touch is so unbelievably tender and parental and contradictory to what he remembers about his mentor, in those blissful few months before waking up on a dead planet, that he can’t help the faint keen that comes from deep in his chest.
“Just so you know, we’re not going anywhere.”
Tony thumbs away the last of the salt tracks clinging to his face, beneath his closed eyes.
“There’s really no rush. You made me wait five years, so, y’know, it’s only fair you pay it back. With interest, obviously.”
The laugh is a startled bird, bursting from his throat and winging away in an instant.
“It’s already been six years for me, Mr. Stark.”
“Well, you know me. Always one for capitalism. I charge mad interest. If I have things my way, you’ll still be paying it off when you’re 90.”
Peter feels Tony’s thumb trace the edge of his smile and reaches up to press shaking fingers against the back of the man’s hand.
“Hey, Pete?”
Peter hums inquisitively.
“I’m proud of you.”
His eyes blink open.
Tony’s grin is a blurry mess and his crows-feet eyes are bright with that familiar mischievous wit and his hands are so steady, steady, steady—
“I didn’t tell you that enough, because obviously you’re an arrogant little shit with an ego the size of Kentucky without me adding fuel. But I am so. Damn. Proud.”
Peter grips his wrist, a loose anchor, and this time the laughter is soft and enduring where it bubbles from his chest.
“So basically you're saying I'm definitely at ‘better than you’, now, right?”
“Ha, kid.” Tony’s other hand comes up to cradle his face. “You’re gonna be just fine.”
There’s a rope around his belly, pulling him away. He can feel the world fading at the edges; Ben’s joking and May’s laughter and the two voices he can’t quite name falling away slowly.
“I- I think I’m waking up.” Peter feels a tendril of frantic energy, squeezes his grip a fraction. There’s so much he still has to say, has to ask, but there’s not enough time.
“May and Ben and– and my parents… Can you—? Will you tell them I love them? That I miss them?”
“Oh, kiddo, they already know.”
“Okay. Okay,” He breathes, hand slipping from Tony’s wrist.
There’s white light creeping up the edges of his vision; a film roll burning.
“Um. For the record, uh— that message includes you too. Just in case you didn’t know.”
Tony just tips Peter’s head forward and presses a firm kiss to his hairline, smiling.
“See you later, Underoos.”
The rope is painfully tight now, a leash dragging him back to reality.
The light eclipses everything, everything—
And Peter wakes up in a room he doesn’t know.