Chapter Text
Peter stands stunned for a moment too long. He's sure he's hallucinating. He must be. Blink and wake up and it's all a lie. Nothing has been real for a long time, just a copy of itself scanned too many times, not quite clear enough to be the original anymore.
“I...” He tries to bring moisture back to his mouth. He blinks and he's still here. “Am I dead?”
A big grin takes over Ben's face. He looks exactly the same as the last night Peter saw him. Same clothes, same haircut, same loving glint in his eye.
“No, I'm fairly sure you're not dead,” he says.
“Then how – what is – how're you here? Is it really – how is this happening?”
“It's odd,” says Ben. “I don't quite know. I was just coming back to May and I heard … well, it doesn't matter now, does it? What matters is you're here.” He takes a step forward, reaches out like he's about to grab Peter's arms and then stops. “Oh. What happened to your hands?”
“What?” Peter barely glances down at his bandaged palms. His heart pounds loudly in his ears. “I … just … just, uh, just an accident. It's not … it's not that bad.”
Ben's fingers wrap around his biceps and Peter holds his breath. He expects it to hurt, excepts the hole inside him to swell in response, to finally swallow him up like he's been waiting for it to do. Every mistake, every accident, every scar. Take him whole and leave nothing behind.
But Ben's grip is firm and warm and steadying, grounding, real. When Peter's eyes sting this time, it's not with the same ache and exhaustion he's felt for the last few weeks. It's with a strange sense of relief.
He throws his arms around Ben and holds onto him like a lifeline, wasting their precious time trying to find words.
“I'm … god, Ben, I'm so glad to see you,” he says.
“I'm glad to see you too, Pete.”
“I don't – I don't know where to begin. There's so much I want to say. So many things I want to apologize for. I –”
“Apologize?” Ben asks, pushing him back at arm's length. “You have nothing to apologize to me for.”
Peter bites his lip. “But … what happened. I wasn't there for you. I could have –”
“Pete, we all make mistakes. It's part of life. It's a really important part of life.” Ben gives him a soft smile. “You know I've never blamed you for anything. We're all just trying here. It's never easy, but it isn't your fault.”
“But you don't understand,” Peter says. “I have these … I have these abilities now. And I can do amazing things. And I could have – I should have protected you – I should have been there and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”
“It's okay,” says Ben. “I want you to know it's okay, Pete. Whatever you think you've done that's so bad, it's not your fault. You want to know how I know that?”
“How?”
Ben taps Peter's chest with his finger. “Because of this. This is the heart of a good man, of a good son. I know you, and I know you'd never do anything on purpose to hurt someone. You know that too, right? Do you know how proud I am of the person you've become?”
Guilt pinches something in Peter right below Ben's touch. This is it. He should tell him the truth. He didn't tell May and he didn't tell Bruce or Tony or even Ned. They've all been too far away. He has been too far away. But he's here now, if only for this moment, if only as a copy, and this is it. This is everything.
He looks to where the box has fallen, sees it glowing blue, and says, “I miss you, Ben. Sometimes … sometimes I miss you so much I feel like I'm drowning. I feel like I'm doing everything wrong.”
“The only way you could be doing everything wrong is if you didn't reach for the kind of life you deserve. If you settled for less because you were afraid of reaching for more. If you walked away from what you believe in your heart. Have you done that?”
Peter shakes his head.
“Then you're doing everything I ever could have wanted from you,” Ben says. “I am so, so proud of you. I want you to know that, Peter. I always have been.”
An overload of emotion clutches Peter's throat, makes his eyes burn even worse. He can't find anything to say, so he just nods again. On the ground below him, the box turns red. A warning, an alert. Time is counting down.
“I've almost forgotten,” says Ben cheerfully. “Your birthday! It's soon. Do you have any plans?”
Peter lets out a watery laugh and runs his hand over his mouth. “Uh, Ned wants to have a luau.”
“Where would you even have a luau?”
“That's what I said!”
Ben smiles again. “Well, whatever you do, I'm sure it will be great. Just promise you'll make it big and way too extravagant. And promise you'll have fun. For me.”
“I will,” Peter says, his words catching. “I wish you could be there.”
“I'll be there,” Ben says. “I'm always there, one way or another. I'm always with you. Don't ever forget that, okay?”
“Okay.”
Ben opens his arms wide and pulls Peter into another embrace. It's warm and right. Not a copy, the original. The real Ben, the real Peter. And right now, it's enough.
Try and try and try.
To Ben, it's enough.
“I love you, you know,” Ben says.
“I love you too.”
The box strobes, sending out another, final warning. The minutes have passed without Peter realizing it. Ben tightens his grip.
“Goodbye, Pete. Take care of May for me.”
“I will,” Peter says. “I promise. I will.”
And then, just like that, it's over. The lid slams itself closed, the colors disappear, and Peter is left standing on a roof in the middle of Queens, alone.
Ben is gone.
- - -
“May?”
From where she's perched on the edge of the couch, May looks up, her face drawn in concern. Peter can hear the hoarseness in his voice. He tries to balance himself.
“Is it … is it too late to change my mind about the birthday thing? Maybe have that party after all?”
May says, “Of course it's not too late,” and everything Peter has been holding inside, all the anger, the frustration, the exhaustion and the sleepless nights and the lies and the fear, come boiling to the surface and overflow. Like a band stretching too far for too long, it snaps.
He bursts into tears. May doesn't ask any questions. She just holds him and tells him it will be okay.
"I love you so much," she says.
Band-aids and ointment and kisses. May can fix anything, because nothing is ever that bad. Stitch it up and joke about it later.
One day, they'll laugh about all their scars. Today, Peter will let them ache.
- - -
Bruce Banner:
I got your results back from the blood draw you did. I ran some tests and it turns out you do have a strange reaction to the repellent you were sprayed with. Tony would like you to bring the suit with you so he can run some upgrades. Do you mind if Happy picks you up a little earlier tomorrow? I know it's a Saturday, but I hope you won't mind. Don't worry about Tony either. I'll make sure to set some boundaries.
Peter:
That's fine. Not like I'll be sleeping in anyway. Ha. That was a joke. Get it? Okay, I'll stop.
Bruce Banner:
LOL. I'll see you tomorrow.
-Bruce
- - -
In the morning, Happy is waiting outside Peter's apartment with a cup of coffee and a tired scowl.
“Tell me you're getting your license soon so I don't have to keep waking up at the crack of dawn,” he says.
Peter slides into the back seat and closes the car door. “I don't really think you want me to have a license. I'm not exactly the best driver.”
“Hey, as long as you don't crash, what do I care?”
“Well, already beat you to that one.”
Happy meets his gaze in the rear-view mirror. “You've crashed a car? Seriously?”
“It was an accident.”
“No shit. Most people don't crash their cars on purpose.”
Peter shrugs. He glances out the window, watches the rain soak the sidewalk. He's tired, but it's different. It's an empty sort of exhaustion, the release of tense muscles and loose limbs, like someone has deflated all the air inside him.
“You all right, kid?”
The radio plays a quiet melody, a song unfamiliar to Peter. He listens for words he recognizes.
“I don't know,” he admits.
“I know we're not exactly close,” says Happy. “But if you need someone to talk to, I'm more than happy to find them for you.”
A delirious laughter bubbles from deep inside Peter's chest and doesn't stop until they're nearly at the compound.
Happy smirks.
- - -
“If you look here at this sample, you can see the antibodies reacting to the stimulate,” Bruce says, moving out of the way to let Peter peer into the microscope. “It's fascinating. I ran the sample against a common house spider to compare results. Obviously you have a stronger defense against the poison, but the way your blood reacts is very similar. In higher doses, it could probably make you quite ill. I don't think we'll need to worry about that though.”
“Never say never,” Peter says. He pushes away from the table and leans against the side of the bed. “What about my ears? Did you find out anything?”
Bruce slides his glasses off and folds them into his hand. “Dr. Lee said all your tests came back normal. There's no sign of any type of damage. Have you noticed a pattern to the ringing you're hearing? Does anyone else ever hear it?”
“I don't think so. It happened once with Ned and he said he didn't hear anything. Karen couldn't hear it either. But … I don't know. It just happens kind of randomly, you know?”
“Hmm.” Bruce twists his lips. “Tell me about this sense you have. The one that alerts you to danger? What does it feel like?”
“Um. I dunno, it's like, you ever feel like someone is standing behind you? All the hairs on your arms stand up and you feel kind of tingly? It's weird. I just know something is gonna happen. It's been really, uh, sharp lately though, the few times it actually works.”
“Sharp how?”
“More like electricity, I guess?”
“Does it ever hurt?”
“Not really,” says Peter. “One time it did, but that was back around when I first got bit.”
Bruce sets his glasses aside, fumbles through the supplies he's set out. “Interesting,” he says. “Have you considered that maybe with your lack of sleep, your senses are overreacting? You said it hasn't been detecting danger very well lately. What if maybe you've overwhelmed it and it's causing your body to react in odd ways?”
“Is that possible?”
“With your amount of insomnia, I'd say a lot is possible. Could be the largest factor to explain why you've been throwing up too. That, and stress. It's a scary combination.”
“Okay, so, yay, I'm a mess. But we can fix it, right?”
“You're not a mess," Bruce says. "But fixing is the goal. We just gotta help you get some sleep first.”
Peter rubs the inside of his elbow. Already he feels like he could fall asleep, but he knows even if he does, he won't stay that way for long. There's something else still. Something he's missing. Something unfinished.
“You haven't injected the kid yet, have you?” Happy asks, making Peter jolt and spin around to face the doorway.
Bruce looks his way. “Not yet,” he says.
“Tony wants to see him.”
“I told him –”
“Don't shoot the messenger,” says Happy. “He said it's important.”
Bruce sighs and sets his tools down. “It's up to you, Pete.”
Peter thinks back to yesterday. It feels like a million years ago now, like an entire lifetime has come and gone. Blink and you wake up. None of it is real.
“I'm trying to keep you from carrying your own missile, kid.”
He can't carry this anymore.
“Uh, yeah, okay,” he says. “It's … it's fine. We didn't really leave off in the best place anyway. I guess there's always room to make it worse.”
He follows Happy to the second floor and past the quarters of the Avengers who still live in the compound. Once upon a time, he dreamed of living here. Dreamed of being part of this team, of going on missions and saving the world with the very people he admires. But then, somewhere along the way, he grew up. He realized nothing is ever that clean and easy. Half the team is gone. And maybe Tony is right. Maybe there are things he doesn't understand yet.
“He's in there,” Happy says, bringing him to a doorway. He types in a code on the small monitor to his right and pushes open the door. “Try not to kill each other. It's a lot of paperwork I don't want to fill out.”
Peter steps inside. He's never been in this room before, but he's seen pictures of one like it. It looks like the workspace from Tony's old home, the one in Malibu. Peter saw it on the news when it was blown up. “Reports are saying Tony Stark is dead,” announcers told the world. Before and after photos showed the place for what it once was, what it became. Peter always remembered how beautiful it was.
“Kid,” Tony greets from where he's hunched over a bench.
“Mr. Stark.”
“You can come in, you know. I don't bite.”
Peter takes a few more steps and glances around. Despite his lack of energy, despite the anger he wants to feel, he finds himself distracted by the technology around him. Broken pieces of Iron Man suits, prototypes of shields and blasters.
“Cool, huh?” Tony asks. He wipes his hands on a rag and stands up, cracking his neck. “Wanna see the original design of your suit?” He pulls it up on a screen before Peter can answer. Peter steps closer to look at the image.
“Whoa.”
“I had to adjust a few things,” Tony says. “Tinker around a bit. First drafts are a bitch.”
“Yeah.” Peter fidgets with one of his bandages. “Um, Mr. Stark, did you … did you want to talk to me about something?”
“Are you eager to get out of here? I didn't know if Bruce would even let you come see me. You guys have like a weird pact thing going on now. Like a secret club I'm not invited to.”
"That's not – " Peter doesn't want to do this. He doesn't have the willpower to fight anymore.
Shaking his head, he mumbles, "I'll see you later, Mr. Stark," and makes his way back toward the door.
“Okay, wait,” Tony says. “Kid – come on – hold up – Peter.”
Peter comes to a halt, closes his eyes and takes in a breath before turning around.
Tony sinks back against his desk. “Look, my bad, all right?” he says. “I messed up. I know that. But kid, I don't know what you want from me. I'm not good at this – whatever this is. My dad was never there for me and I'm trying to break the cycle, but I don't have a lot of experience to work from. It's kind of a catch-22.”
“I –” Peter presses his fingers into his temples and exhales slowly. This is it, the space between them, the open portal, the endless possibilities. One wrong move and everything is gone. “Mr. Stark, I don't want you to be my dad. I just …”
“You just what?”
“I want you to listen to me,” Peter says. “No, no, I want to know you're listening to me. And not after the fact. Not after you come in and save the day. I get that you're busy and you have all these adult things to deal with and you can't always be there when I call – and maybe I call too much about unimportant stuff and I can work on that, but you can't … you can't just make me a suit and take me to Germany to fight with you and then bring me back here and pretend like I don't exist.”
Because that's it, isn't it? Tony is never there. Not when it matters, not even when it doesn't. And Peter needs him to be there. Needs to know he's not alone. Needs to know he's not doing everything wrong.
He needs to open the faceplate and know there's something inside.
“Okay,” Tony says.
Peter blinks. “Okay?”
“Would you like a better word? I hear you, kid. I've got your beta notes. It wasn't fair of me to do what I did. I should have communicated better. I get that. And I'll work on it. You just gotta hang in there with me. Even though I have more PhDs than Mr. Everyone-Look-At-My-Degrees-I'm-So-Smart out there, I don't know everything. I'm trying to figure it all out.”
And Peter gets it now. Hidden behind metal suits and fancy cars and designer clothes. Take it all away and there's nothing left. It's not that Tony isn't real, it's that Tony doesn't know how to be something people can see.
“I am sorry, kid,” Tony says. “For causing you this much stress.”
There was a time when Tony was dead. That week when the world mourned him, when the before and after pictures showed only rubble left behind. Carry the missile into space. Save the world and disappear.
Peter says, “It wasn't all you. It wasn't all your fault. I'm … I'm sorry too.”
“You don't have to apologize to me, Pete. I'm the one who screwed up here.”
“You know I've never blamed you for anything.”
Tears prickle at his eyes.
“You look like you're gonna tip over,” Tony says. “You wanna sit down? My reflexes aren't as fast as they used to be. I can't guarantee I'll catch you if you fall.”
But Peter doesn't need someone to catch him. He just needs someone to be there to help him get back up.
And this is it. Something settles between them, the portal closing, the suit opening. While Peter situates himself on the couch near the back wall, Tony rambles off information about new designs he's working on, about the man with the electric whip, about some of his more evil villains. At some point, the words morph together, merge into a gentle murmur, the sound making Peter sleepy, his eyelids too heavy to hold.
Open and close, open and close. It's time for him to set everything down.
He drifts. And, this time, when he falls asleep, he dreams. And hours and hours and hours go by. And Tony throws a blanket over him, stuffs a pillow under his head. In a daze, Peter hears him mutter, "FRI, let Banner know I've got him. You know what else to do," and the lights go dim. He sleeps. He sleeps like he's never slept before.
And it's not perfect, it's not a fix-all situation. There are still things to work on, still bridges Peter and Tony need to cross.
But right now, they're trying.
And it's enough.
- - -
“Hey, Karen, how are you liking the upgrades?”
“Good afternoon, Peter. They are great. Would you like to try some out? Mr. Stark has installed a lot of new features.”
“Maybe later,” Peter says, webbing himself to the side of a building. “Let's deal with whatever this thing is now. You got a read on it?”
“It appears to be the sibling of the robot you fought in Brooklyn. From what I can tell, someone was able to recreate the technology and build a new robot. Mr. Stark and company are on the scene now.”
“Awesome. Patch me through to the comm, will you?”
“Patching through.”
“Hey, kid,” Tony says.
“Hey, Mr. Stark.”
Peter sees the Iron Man suit up in the distance, Iron Patriot standing on the street next to him. Peter drops into place beside him, looks up at the towering robot.
“You recommend a Disney movie and I'm quitting,” Rhodey says.
“Pixar,” Tony corrects. "Christ, Rhodey. How many times do we have to go over this?"
Peter smiles.
It's not perfect. Not yet. It's just better.
(and this is what he won't tell Ned. Tony might not always be in the suit, but one way or another, he's always there. Peter is learning this.)
“You have a message,” Karen says. “From 'guy in the chair.' He wants you to know he's decided against the luau. He wants to rent out a theme park instead.”
“Of course he does.” Peter slides in a new web cartridge and stretches his arms. “Tell him Dr. Banner doesn't do theme parks. And let's put a break on the messages, okay? We've got work to do.”
Tony and Rhodey take off, thrusters engaging, weapons whirling.
And here they are again, fighting a one-story tall mechanical robot in the middle of Brooklyn when Peter shoots a web and swings over its head and says, “You guys know the second Incredibles movie is coming out soon?”
Through the comm system, Rhodey sighs.
They're trying.
It starts like this.