Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The thing about life is, although it can be unpredictable at times, it can easily fall into a predictable pattern. Routines are so easily maintained, especially when a big part of your day-to-day life is repetitive. A lot of times weeks get by without a ripple on the surface of a well-practiced flow of tasks. That naturally, days start to blend into one another, then weeks, and then you blink and it’s suddenly June when you could’ve sworn it was just new years yesterday. And it can be dull, for time to lose its shape and measure, but mostly, it’s easy to find comfort in the known.

Peter misses that comfort.

He misses the way the dishwasher hummed faintly in the background as he scribbled homework, the rhythmic clatter of May's spoon against her mug, the quiet certainty that nothing unexpected was coming.

As of late, his days feel cramped with life-changing events. Every moment is an earth-shattering, ground breaking, erupting transformation of himself. Each day is different, each day is a challenge. He’s shed more skin than his body is capable of forming. In a single day, he's been reborn at least ten times. 

If he’s not learning something new at school, he’s learning something new about his abilities through experience. He’s discovering new sides of New York every time he goes out to patrol, the good and the bad, the pretty and the ugly, and most importantly the horrors some humans are capable of committing. 

Every day is a lesson, every day is proof that the world is lacking humanity and why it’s so important for him to not lose his. People are jaded, concerned only about themselves and their gains. Stuck in an unfair world, they become unfair themselves.

It’s overwhelming trying to keep up with all these constant changes, constant realizations. He’s a student at daytime, struggling to maintain his previous levels of enthusiasm and eagerness to learn when his fairly sheltered life was brutally shattered the day he became a not so “normal” teenage boy. 

He’s a loving nephew for an hour or two after that, coming home to get some chores done, desperate to be of use to aunt May in any way. He tidies up a little, does the dishes if there are some left, and does his homework because apparently being a student doesn’t stop the moment you leave school. 

Then he’s off swinging across the city memorizing it building by building, street by street, brick by brick until Queens feels like an extension of himself. He feels it in his bones: the danger that lurks in the streets, the calm that falls on quiet days, and all that is sinister, brewing beneath the ground. 

It’s draining living all these lives, maintaining these lies for three different versions of him throughout a single day.

There are times his almost predictable unpredictable days stumble off the routine that’s not quite a routine he desperately crafted for himself. Those happen to be the days he’s scheduled to be at the tower with Mr Stark learning how to take care of his spider suite, coming up with new formulas for his web fluid, or on rare days, working on Mr Stark’s nano Iron suite.

Days like these are at peak unpredictability. 

Dodging bullets and swerving daggers, although not a situation he’d been in previously to the spider bite, are arguably expected challenges of his vigilante gig. If he’s off fighting criminals and stopping robberies, it is kind of inevitable for him to be shot at. 

What’s unpredictable, truly, truly unpredictable, the kind that is so out of the question impossible that it didn’t cross his mind, is his weekly visits to Stark Tower. Which actually started off as a monthly check up and maintenance for his suite that accidently turned into a weekly thing and is no doubt on the way of becoming a biweekly meeting.

Who would’ve ever thought that him, Peter Parker, orphaned nobody Parker, with his hand me down clothes and knock off shoes, his childlike excitement and enthusiasm over almost everything, and terribly nerdy jokes that match his terribly nerdy shirts could ever be in the presence of someone as brilliant, and intelligent and charismatic, and important as Tony Stark? 

It never crossed his mind, not even in dreams where the impossible is certainly possible. 

Yet now he has a working desk right next to Mr. Stark’s, just as messy and chaotic as the mechanic’s. His unreadable handwriting cramped in the margins of Mr. Stark’s notes, adding his own insight— his insight! Now, when Mr. Stark gets stumped he turns to Peter and asks “What do you think, underoos? Want to give it a go?” As if it’s not far off for him to be able to solve something he couldn’t crack himself. 

Now, polite inquiries about his day turn into genuine curiosity and continuations of previous conversations. Now there are snack breaks and dinner times, tables to set and old— timeless, in Mr. Stark’s words— movies to watch because “you haven’t lived if you haven’t watched it kid.” Now Stark Tower feels as close as a home could ever feel like and it’s the most terrifying thing in the world.

When did he start calling Mr Stark with the certainty that his calls would be answered? When did he start ranting to him with the expectancy of being heard? When did it fall onto Mr Stark’s duties to help him study during his exams weeks, make sure he’s consuming his healthy calorie intake per day, or taking attendance every night to make sure he’s actually at home, preferably in bed, and not breaking curfew?

These quiet almost undetectable changes that happen so painstakingly slowly are the most dangerous ones. Because you never realize they’ve happened unless you get slapped in the face with their consequences. Unsurprisingly, that’s exactly how Peter realizes how rooted Mr. Stark is in his day-to-day life. With a very straight to the point short text only two hours before school is out.

Can’t make it today

See you Friday

His stomach drops at being cancelled on. Then drops some more once he notices just how much he looks forward to their scheduled lab sessions. His thumb lingers over the message, rereading it, like a bruise he can’t stop pressing. 

To be fair, after the whole Vulture fiasco, Mr Stark hadn’t really done anything to prompt his next line of thought. On the contrary, other than slight awkwardness and a rather sloppy start, he’d done a good job at being more involved and present in Peter’s life. Granted, all the while keeping him at an arms length. But nevertheless, present. And yet still, like some kind of default reaction, he can’t help but think that he sat himself up for heartbreak.

The default trajectory of a human life, from the moment they take their first breath to their last, is a rhythmic flow of ups and downs that map out a fairly balanced existence. It’s a well-planned recipe for the good and the bad mixed in with all the right kicks of miracles and curses. 

Yet when Peter compares this formula to that of his own life and its crazy events he finds that once again, he’s the odd one out—the exception. If he is to put into words the logic behind the way his life operates, he’ll ironically use Newton’s laws of motion to explain it. The third, to be more accurate. 

There is no rhythm to his life, no scale to balance. He’s either soaring through cloud nine living the ups or plummeting full force living the downs. It’s a constant motion towards one of the two directions until a matching or greater force than his collides with him, sending him into the opposite direction.

So when Mr. Stark cancels on him, the programming of his brain expects nothing but a series of other cancellations until he’s out of the billionaire's life just as quietly as he’d warmed his way into it. The thought alone is enough to send him spiraling and whether true or not, it unfolds a sequence of sloppy and stupid mistakes that starts with him flunking his Spanish test.

He groans when Mrs. Alonso hands him his graded paper with a giant C- and a frowny face drawn in red in the corner.

“Come talk to me after class, Mr. Parker” she says, more sympathetic than disappointed and for the first time, Peter reaps the privilege of being embarrassingly underprivileged in a rich kids' school.

He nods at her in agreement, too embarrassed to form words. He’s not worried about his grade. He knows that a C- is out of the ordinary for him enough to warrant attention. Paired with his family situation, which is for some reason widely known amongst students and staff alike, will most certainly grant him a merciful retake of the test. One he’ll hopefully ace and erase the shame of the C- blinking tauntingly at him. But the comfort of knowing that doesn’t even register to him. Not when alarm bells are blaring in his mind signaling the grade as a bad omen and preparing for hitting rock bottom.

“Dude,” it was a hiss disguised as a whisper, sharp with urgency. Peter glances to his side, meeting Ned’s accusing eyes. “What happened?” he asks. A hint of disbelief shadows his words. He can’t fathom Peter getting anything below a B+, at worst. And that’s only because of his tendencies to skip school to fight crime and nothing to do with his intelligence.

“Later,” he replies, the disbelief he is feeling is for an entirely different reason. What Peter can’t fathom is how he’s supposed to focus on anything when he has a more pressing matter at hand.

Ned doesn’t seem satisfied with his answer and frankly, Peter doesn’t care. He drops it though, sensing that now is not the time to nag him about his terrible grade or simply realizing it’s none of his business. Whichever one of the two it is, Peter is just grateful for being left alone to stare into the abyss. Reminiscing on all his happy memories with Mr. Stark as if they were his last. 

His brain plays a sad montage paired with an equally sad song— the notorious dead character video. It’s all made up of course, an eternal torture session. Nothing but teenage hormones intensifying normal healthy emotions. Turning a pang of disappointment into a monstrous feeling of abandonment.

The heart truly wants what it wants, no amount of intelligence can ever convince a heart to think or believe anything other than what it already does. It’s a hopeless cause, an impossible task. All the logical conclusions are there, he knows. Deep in the folds of his brains, carved on each brain cell— he knows. 

He realizes he’s being dramatic, that he took a small tiny feeling and ran with it all the way onto monstrous lands. It’s all just happening in his head, in his heart. Yet none of that stops his pulse from quickening or squishes down the funny feeling in his heart— the one he long ago associated with anxiety.

Time passes differently when you’re wallowing in self pity. Mrs. Alonso talks, Peter hears none of it, only sees her lips moving. MJ glances at him a couple of times, shifting her attention between him and her notebook, no doubt making him the subject of her next masterpiece. Ned tries to get his attention at some point, too impatient to wait for later and ends up getting increasingly more frustrated by being ignored. 

Peter, in his own little world, reacts to nothing and thinks of nothing. There are little fires starting in his mind and alarms blaring in his ears. Chaos comes alive inside of him and the singular shining light within all this madness is a single thought. 

Get back onto Mr.Stark’s good grace.

Happy is waiting for him once school is over.

The moment he steps out of the door, his eyes land on the familiar sleek black car making itself at home amongst the other expensive looking cars lined up to pick up privileged spoiled kids. It glistens under the sunlight, streaks of pure reflective white appear on its black surface where the sun hits just right.

It looks almost angelic– holy.

Peter stares at it in disbelief, mortified that his grief had manifested itself into the first stage– denial.

Or, in his case, actual delusion.

But Ned is looking at the car too, just as confused as Peter feels. So it must be real and that must be Happy here to pick him up and take him to the Tower where Mr.Stark must be waiting for him.

The relief he feels almost crushes him. The urge to laugh-cry is almost too overwhelming to resist. However, his newfound joy manages to tone it down to a choked up chuckle.

“Wait,” Ned says, frowning at the Audie. “I thought he cancelled.”

Next to him, Peter shrieks, clumsily trying to cover his friend's mouth and failing a few times. “Don’t jinx it!” he hisses then winces when he accidentally shoves his pinky up Ned’s nostril.

“Ahhh,” he yelps, his face scrunching up in disgust as Ned's contracts in pain. He blindlessly wipes his fingers on the other’s shirt, unable to tear his eyes away from the Audi. 

He doesn't say anything as he steps forward, stumbling over his own two feet in his haste. As he does so, he hears Ned’s groaning voice saying something along the lines of: “I’ve been violated.” 

Peter doesn't look back— he doesn't look at all.

He's practically sprinting across the street to the parked car. The urgency he feels overpowers any sense of logic he once had. Like a wild animal, he claws his way through the crowd. Peter pushes past students and gets nasty looks in return along with echoing yells of ‘ watch it ’ — nothing registers to him. Not the shoulders he shoves as he rushes through, not the cries of protest that follow him. 

And neither do the cars.

It's almost comical how his spider senses don't pick up on the car heading his way. Considering he once felt a storm brewing two days before it hit, felt the impending rain deep within his bones. But his senses are not to be blamed. In the face of the threatening danger of being cast out of Mr. Stark's life as easily as he's warmed his way in it, getting hit by a car is insignificant. 

He’s halfway across the road when the sound of tires screeching and the smell of burnt rubber snap him out of his drunken haze. Peter freezes, everything in him halts. The breath he was taking lodges in his throat as his heart all but stops beating. His entire body stings, adrenaline lighting a fire under his skin.

He watches, wide-eyed as the smoke clears to reveal a car brought to an angry abrupt stop mere inches from his frozen body.

There is a split second where the entire world feels like it’s collectively holding its breath.

Nobody moves or brinks.

Then…

The driver, a father of a girl on the volleyball team, presses on the horn even well after the moment passes. His shock seemingly delaying his reaction. His lips move, forming words drowned out by the loud beep. Peter winces, having no doubt what's being said is not appropriate enough to be spoken within a ten mile radius of a school.

“Sorry,” he says, shoulders up to his ears and face burning. “Sorry,” Peter repeats, to the poor man then the crowd whispering around them. 

“Watch where you're going,” a voice yells, gruff and angry. 

As Peter repeats ‘ Sorry ’ again like a prayer he realizes that this isn’t directed at him.

“This is a school area,” Happy barks, giving the driver a dirty look. He yanks Peter out of the way, albeit a bit roughly, and continues to glare at the car as it drives away. He mutters a series of rants under his breath, his grip tight on Peter's wrist.

Most of what Happy says goes unheard by Peter, who's deafened by his own heartbeat pulsing loudly in his ears.

Once satisfied with glaring unblinkingly at the disappearing car, Happy turns to him. “And you,” he hisses, pointing an accusing finger at the teen. “What the hell were you thinking?” he asks, redirecting the force of his glare at Peter who shrinks under the weight of it.

He's too out of breath to answer. His legs feel like jelly underneath him. As if one step forward is enough to send him tumbling to the hard gravel. He swallows, blinking up at Happy wordlessly. 

Peter feels the gaze of a thousand eyes on him. 

Curious kids linger to catch a glimpse of what happened, no doubt weaving exaggerated tales to add a bit of excitement to their day tomorrow. Worried teachers follow him with their eyes, waiting for him to leave before he gets hurt under their watch. And helicopter parents saving the incident deep in their memory, planning to use it to set new safety rules. 

But the one gaze that burns the biggest hole in his skin is Ned’s

Peter can see him in the corner of his eyes. He's still standing where Peter had left him by the door. Ned is squinting worriedly in his direction, brows furrowed together into a tight line. His eyes glance from Peter to Happy, then right back to Peter. The gears in his brain are turning, calculating the situation, debating whether or not to intervene.

He doesn't.

Happy, growing impatient, opens the car door for him. He lets go of Peter's wrist in favor of gesturing for him to get in. He watches him expectedly, his annoyance with Peter increasing with each car that passes them by. The hustle and bustle of students filtering out of the school first, then the street, starts to die out, leaving nothing but silence to fill the air between them. 

When Peter makes no move to get in, Happy finally takes a second to look at the boy.

Really look at him. 

There is a wild frantic look in his eyes, that of a cornered wolf. His grip on the strap of his backpack, casually hooked to one shoulder, is tight. To the point that his entire hand is ghost white, cutting off blood circulation. The breath that he lets out is shallow and every time he inhales, a wheezing sound follows.

Something is amiss.

“Are you okay, kid?” Happy questions, his glare softening into a concerned look. He, not so subtly, makes a silent check over Peter. His eyes seek out each limb, as if taking count in case he's missing any. 

Peter opens his mouth to reassure him but what comes out is something entirely different. 

“What are you doing here?”

Happy’s brows rise, pulled back by his surprise. “I always pick you up on Wednesdays.” He says with a hint of confused hesitance lingering in his voice. He eyes Peter suspiciously, his looks bordering between genuine concern and fond annoyance. Happy gestures for him to get into the car once more. He’s been glancing around every other beat, uncomfortable with their position out in the open dangerously close to each passing car.

He wants to get off the street.

Peter feels rooted in his place.

“I thought Mr. Stark couldn't make it today,” his voice is tentative when he speaks, low and slow. A glimmer of hope raises amidst all the little fires burning his insides. Peter grabs it with a vice-like grip, refusing to let it go. A part of his brain feeds this newfound hope. Coming up with possible reasons as to why Happy is actually here. And all of them end up with Peter spending his day with Mr. Stark, like he always does on Wednesdays.

“That's right,” Happy confirms, shattering Peter's fragile hope into tiny irreversible pieces. “But he wanted me to drive you home. Pick up lunch for you on the way.”

“Oh,” is all that comes out of his mouth. His voice is small, disappointed. He looks down to his sneakers, dirty and well worn out. His face burns with shame and his eyes sting a little.

And oh god, he feels so stupid.

If Happy catches the hurt in his voice he doesn't comment on it. “Yeah,” he says instead, back to being impatient. “Get in.” 

Peter finally does as he's told, thankful for the opportunity to wallow in self-pity in relative privacy instead of giving New York’s subway riders a front row seat to his pity party. He pulls the door closed with slightly trembling fingers.

For the first time since their new arrangement of Happy picking up and driving him to the tower, Peter is the one to shut the partition separating them. Happy’s grunt of surprise is the last thing he hears before engulfing himself in his own miserable bubble.

At first, Peter tries to reason with himself. The voice that argues back is that of his 6-year-old self—timid, wide-eyed, still waiting at the door for someone who isn’t coming. They go back and forth. Peter presenting facts and using logic to prove that Mr. Stark is not cutting him off. His younger self, that scared little boy he carries with him, uses his history as hard evidence. In comparison to a string of gut-wrenching losses—his parents, Ben—lab time and movie nights seem almost laughable.

He loses the debate.

Thus resurfacing his hypothesis of being cursed.

Happy allows him ten minutes to sort out his teenage angst before pulling the partition open and glancing at him curiously through the rearview mirror.

“So,” he starts, feigning the casualness in his voice. “What are we thinking for lunch?”

Peter sighs. It sounds dramatic even to his own ears. “Just take me home, Happy. I don’t have much of an appetite,” he says, watching the city blur past the window, the reflections slipping over his face like rain.

“I do,” Happy responds, “and I’m feeling like pizza.”

Peter doesn’t argue with him, drained from arguing with himself.

The rest of the car drive is silent. Neither one of them speaks, but Happy steals worried glances at Peter.

It’s only when he’s standing outside his apartment with three boxes of pizza and a family-sized Pepsi does Peter realize Happy hadn’t gotten himself any.

And suddenly, that matters.

Chapter Text

Leading up to Friday, Peter and his younger self reach a truce on the edge of a fifth-life crisis. They both hold their breath, suspended in quiet anticipation, each silently wagering on which one of them Mr. Stark will prove right. Neither speaks now, but both are listening. One believes. The other braces.

The spiraling doesn’t stop. But the soft, nervous commentary that used to narrate it—the voice of the boy still waiting at the door—falls silent. In its absence, doubt bleeds in like ink dropped into water. At first, a thread. Then a cloud. Then everything.

Newton would’ve said something about inertia. About motion persisting unless interrupted. But no force comes, and Peter keeps spinning.

The ink stains his world in shades of gray.

He becomes sloppier, distracted. His movements lose their sharpness, his rhythm frays at the edges. A misplaced step on the staircase. A lab partner’s question answered a beat too late. A dropped beaker that cracks—not enough to shatter, just enough to be noticed. Small things. Forgettable things. But they stack like unstable scaffolding, and he feels each one sway.

When Ned brings up Mr. Stark in passing, Peter approaches the topic with quiet caution. He tiptoes through the conversation with the care of a soldier crossing a minefield. He nods, smiles in the right places, but doesn’t offer anything in return. No complaints, no updates. Nothing that might betray the tension in his chest.

He shoves the fear and shame deep down, where no one can see it.

So when Friday comes, and Happy pulls up outside Midtown just like always, Peter crushes the hope rising in his throat before it can take shape.

Happy is already leaning across the sleek black car, arms crossed over his chest like a silent barrier. He tracks Peter with sharp, unreadable eyes as the boy approaches—more slowly this time, more measured, as if walking into judgment.

Once Peter is safely in front of him, Happy moves to open the car door for him. But like last time he makes no move to get in. Instead he looks up at Happy through his lashes, wide innocent eyes looking up at him expectantly. Peter stands with his hands at his sides, motionless.

A defendant awaiting his verdict.

Happy doesn’t catch on immediately. There’s a flicker of irritation first—just a flash of it. He’s close to fed up with Peter’s irksome hormonal behaviour, silently wondering if he had ever been this bad in his youth. But then his shoulders shift and something akin to understanding settles in him.

Something gentle.

“He’s waiting for you at the Tower,” he says, his gruff voice warm in the quiet way it always is around the people he cares about.

Peter feels like he can breathe again.

It occurs to Peter, as the tower grows larger in the distance, that his thoughts haven’t slowed—they’ve just gone quiet.

And somehow, that’s worse.

The car rolls forward, smooth and silent in a way that makes his chest ache. The usual noise of the city—honking, shouting, music bleeding from open windows—is muffled by the luxury insulation of the Stark Industries vehicle, yet Peter still hears it. Not with his ears, with his body. The world is ever loud, but his thoughts are louder—and meaner— inside his head.

He doesn’t know what Happy told Mr. Stark. Or if he told him anything at all.

He doesn’t ask.

The man hasn’t said a word since Peter got in, and Peter didn’t push. It was easier to sit in silence than risk tipping the fragile truce he'd reached with himself—the quiet, heavy kind of silence that follows a storm, a lingering promise for more.

Outside, the light is fading. Not gone yet, but slipping. Late afternoon creeping into early evening, casting the buildings in long shadows and syrupy gold. It makes the city look older somehow, like it’s holding its breath.

Peter rests his forehead lightly against the window. The glass is cool and aching contrast to his warmer skin. It’s not cold enough to sting, but enough to keep him grounded— tethered to the world.

His thoughts spiral, carefully.

With the younger voice inside him finally silent—no frantic commentary, no childish fear narrating every moment—he has room to think. Really think. And what fills that space isn’t clarity.

It’s recognition.

The way he reacted to a single canceled session. The way it flattened him, crushed him. It hadn’t been reasonable. It hadn’t even been proportional. It had been... something else. Something he doesn’t want to name.

A dependency, maybe. Or worse.

A need.

His fingers curl in his lap.

He tries to rationalize it. Enhanced hormones. Anxiety. The spider bite. All those things make him weird, sure, but they don’t explain the way his entire body felt like it was shutting down. They don’t explain why he hadn’t eaten. Why he couldn’t sleep. They don’t explain the way his brain short-circuits at the idea of being left. How his body reacts like it’s bracing for an impact that hasn’t come yet.

It’s not the first time he’s felt this way.

Not even close.

He was young when he lost his parents—so young the memories feel like borrowed stories instead of his own. And yet he remembers the aftermath perfectly. The ache in his chest. The hollow space in every room. The grown-ups with too many questions and not enough answers.

That was the first time he made the promise.

He never spoke it out loud, but it was carved deep within his soul: Never again. Never get attached to someone like that again. Never need anyone that much. Never depend on anyone else.

Naturally, May and Ben hadn’t been included in that rule. They were already a part of him, permanent fixtures. But when Ben died... God, when Ben died—it cracked something open in him that never fully closed. A gaping wound that never fully healed.

That pain had been different. Worse, somehow. Losing his parents was confusion. Losing Ben was devastation.

Because Ben had been his anchor. His map. His proof that love didn’t always leave. That it was unconditional and permanent— given and not earned.

And yet, it did leave anyway.

So now, every time someone starts to matter, really matter, there’s a part of Peter—small, shaking, ancient—that starts calculating the odds of loss, anticipating the damage and bracing for the destruction.

It doesn’t matter how smart he is, or how many times he ties to logicize the situation. Somewhere deep down, that promise still whispers:

Don’t get too close.

It never lasts.

Which is why this thing with Mr. Stark—this closeness, this rhythm, this impossible gravity—it terrifies him. Because it feels like everything. And that’s exactly how you lose it. It’s a slippery thing and the moment you acknowledge it, it slides right off your fingers.

He keeps thinking about that session. The one that never happened. About how his mind immediately jumped to the worst possible conclusion. About how the absence of a simple meeting spiraled into a full-blown collapse.

That isn’t normal.

He knows that.

But it makes sense, in a twisted kind of way. Because when Mr. Stark shows up, it flips a switch in Peter that says safe. And when he doesn’t… he stays adrift, waiting for the man to come back, pull him into existence.

His chest tightens, just slightly. He tries to take a breath, but it’s the kind that sticks halfway down, like his lungs are resisting it.

What scares him isn’t that he fell apart. It’s how easily he put himself back together the moment he thought Mr. Stark might still care. Like his presence flipped the setting in his brain from collapse to stabilize.

That’s not good. That’s not safe. That’s—

You’re too attached.

You need him more than he needs you.

The thought lands heavy in his chest. Not sharp. Just deep. Like someone dropped a stone into a well and he’s still waiting for the sound of it hitting the bottom.

Happy changes lanes. The city turns a different angle through the window, and for a second, Peter sees their reflection—two figures cut into the dark interior of a car neither of them really belong in.

He looks tired. Not just under his eyes, but in the way his mouth sits, in the slump of his shoulders. He hasn’t spoken in twenty minutes and he’s still exhausted. There is a heaviness inside of him, set deep in his bones, and he’s so tired of caring it.

The Tower rises ahead of them now, sharp against the skyline. Silver and glass. A monument to progress. A beacon for gods and geniuses and soldiers who never lose.

Peter wonders where that leaves him.

He wonders—quietly, always quietly—if he was only allowed in because Mr. Stark had the room to spare. Because helping him felt like a second chance at something Mr. Stark couldn’t fix the first time. And maybe, just maybe, Peter let himself believe it was something it wasn’t because the alternative would destroy him.

The car rolls into the private garage beneath the Tower. Security scanners sweep over the frame in a slow, soft pulse. The elevator light glows green.

Peter doesn’t move right away. He takes one last look at his reflection in the window. His face looks too pale in the golden light. Too quiet. Like a photo that hasn’t finished developing.

Then, he opens the door.

The elevator doors sigh open, ushering Peter into the golden hush of the penthouse. Everything is still. Not abandoned—just paused. The kind of quiet that belongs to someone who was just here a moment ago.

It smells faintly like espresso and ozone. A used mug rests on the kitchen counter, tiny rings of light on the marble from where condensation dried. A half-folded jacket hangs off the arm of the couch, caught mid-movement. FRIDAY’s ambient lights glow low and warm.

Peter steps lightly. His shoulders dip an inch. It’s involuntary, a small, reverent motion—as if the apartment might notice him if he breathes too loud.

He heads toward the back, where the narrow staircase waits behind a flush panel. The private passage to the lab below. The only way in is through Mr. Stark’s space, and that means something. Even now, Peter’s chest tightens slightly with the weight of it.

He descends the stairs, heart thudding, not fast—just aware.

The lab greets him with soft blues and oranges, the hum of idle machines and slow-cycling lights.

Mr. Stark’s already inside, hunched over a workbench stacked with layered projection panels and half-built nanobot housings. He’s dressed like he didn’t plan to be seen—black undershirt, dark jeans, sleeves shoved high, arc reactor glowing low under the fabric. His hair’s a little chaotic. There's grease on his jaw. His foot taps an unconscious rhythm against the table leg.

Peter pauses, watching from the threshold.

Then:

“Underoos,” Mr. Stark calls, not looking up. “Glad you finally made it. Thought maybe Happy forgot where he parked the kid.”

Peter exhales a laugh—short, relieved.

“You sound worried,” he says, stepping into the light.

Mr. Stark glances at him. “Not worried. Just emotionally prepared to never see my prototype again.”

Peter slides into his seat with practiced ease. “Relax. I brought it back in one piece.”

Mr. Stark levels a dry look at him. “Define ‘piece.’”

“Look,” Peter says, raising his hands, “if it powers up and doesn’t explode, that’s basically a success.”

“That’s barely a pass.”

Peter grins, “then curve my grade.”

Mr. Stark’s eyes narrow, but not in irritation. There’s amusement there. Hidden, but traceable. The corners of his mouth tug, just faintly.

They fall into rhythm.

The lab begins to hum with more than just machines—with movement, with sound, with a shared language only they seem fluent in. The light feels warmer here, golden even in the artificial blue. Jazz hums like a heartbeat under their voices, and the faint smell of coffee and soldered wires hangs in the air like comfort. It’s not just a lab. It’s a cocoon. Familiar. Safe. Proof he belongs—here, with Mr. Stark, in this moment.

Mr. Stark’s working on a shell for modular nanobots. The issues with the neural threading—synaptic lag, filament drift. Peter leans forward, frowning at the schematic.

“You reversed the polarity again,” he says quietly.

Mr. Stark doesn’t even glance at the screen. “No, I didn’t.”

“You did.”

“I didn’t.”

Peter tilts his head. “Okay, but if I rerun the loop and it stutters—”

Mr. Stark holds up a finger. “No stuttering.”

“—you owe me an apology.”

“You’re fifteen. You don’t get apologies.”

“I’m sixteen.”

“Barely.”

Peter smiles to himself and adjusts the schematic interface. His fingers move quick, confident. He doesn’t even hesitate anymore.

Mr. Stark watches him. Not openly. But his hands pause. His eyes flicker.

Peter doesn’t notice right away. But when he does—when he catches the weight of that quiet glance—his heart pulls taut like a tripwire.

Mr. Stark doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t offer praise. But his posture shifts slightly, the way it does when he’s impressed but pretending not to be.

Then he does something even worse.

He walks over and rests a hand on Peter’s shoulder.

It’s a casual touch. Brief. But grounding.

Peter goes still. His breath catches. His brain catalogs everything—the warmth, the weight, the gentle pressure. He wants to press pause. Wants to remember this for the nights when silence presses in too close. For the moments when Mr. Stark forgets to look at him at all.

The warmth from Mr. Stark’s palm seeps straight through his hoodie and down to something he can’t name.

He doesn’t look up. Can’t. His skin prickles, ears hot, and the edges of his mouth twitch upward despite every effort to stay cool.

Mr. Stark’s voice is quieter when he speaks again. “What did I tell you about making me look bad?”

“That I’m not allowed to do it in front of Pepper,” Peter mumbles.

Mr. Stark pats his shoulder once, then moves back to his table. The touch lingers like a promise Peter can’t cash. Here, then gone—like so much of Mr. Stark.

Peter’s smile blooms behind his hand.

They work like that for a while.

Mr. Stark’s movements are deliberate, occasionally erratic. He talks with his hands more than necessary. When he gets excited, he talks faster. When he gets annoyed, he cuts himself off and gestures aggressively at things instead of explaining them.

Peter adapts easily. He babbles when nervous, over-explains when uncertain, but today he’s sharper. Grounded. He’s sharp today. Efficient. And Mr. Stark’s in a good mood. That’s probably not a coincidence. Peter’s learned—quietly, over time—that being useful keeps him close. That if he’s impressive enough, needed enough, Mr. Stark won’t drift. He teases back without thinking. Corrects numbers in Mr. Stark’s formulas. Swipes tools before Mr. Stark asks for them.

“I swear to God,” Mr. Stark mutters when Peter passes him the splicer unprompted, “if you start finishing my sentences, I’m installing a mute chip in your molars.”

Peter beams. “You wouldn’t dare. You’d miss me.”

Mr. Stark doesn’t answer.

But his smirk lingers a beat longer than necessary.

“You’re not bad at this, you know,” Mr. Stark says quietly. “Makes me forget how old you actually are. Or how not-old, I guess.”

Peter doesn’t think about how the lab looks different without the fear. Doesn’t think about how his brain finally feels like his again—how it’s not racing, or pulsing, or stuck in a loop of questions with no answers.

He doesn’t notice how long it’s been since he last ate. Or drank. Or thought about anything except staying in this moment a little longer. He doesn’t think about the session that never happened. Maybe if he pretends it never mattered, it won’t hurt when it happens again.

Because Mr. Stark is here. And Peter feels... real again.

He finds himself staring.

At Mr. Stark’s hands. The little scars on his knuckles. The way his fingers move when he’s measuring conductivity across a joint sleeve. At the way Mr. Stark’s jaw tightens when he’s concentrating, then loosens when something works. At the crinkle in the corner of his eyes when he grins—so rare, so fast, but so honest when it’s there.

And Peter thinks—I broke my promise, didn’t I?

He remembers being nine years old and telling himself he’d never let anyone matter like that again. Not after his parents. Not after Ben. Not again.

Mr. Stark?

Mr. Stark snuck in.

Mr. Stark got under the door.

Mr. Stark became the exception without Peter even noticing.

And now he’s here. Watching Mr. Stark talk to FRIDAY, his fingers dancing over the interface, the blue light framing him like something out of a dream—and Peter knows, knows deep in his chest, that if he loses this, it’ll hurt more than anything.

Even Ben.

Especially Ben.

He doesn’t want to think that. It feels wrong.

But it also feels true.

Mr. Stark's phone buzzes.

The sound is minor. Background. But the change is instant.

Mr. Stark glances at the screen. His expression shutters—quick, practiced, like a man who’s had to hide too many things from people who cared.

Peter doesn’t look up right away. He’s adjusting a micro-wire array, trying not to fumble.

“I need to take this,” Mr. Stark says, already moving. His voice is low, controlled, the way it always is when he's annoyed at something but doesn’t want Peter to notice.

Peter nods without looking. “Okay.”

Mr. Stark hesitates at the door. Then steps back and ruffles Peter’s hair—an affectionate swipe more practiced than conscious—and disappears.

The glass door slides shut.

And the silence that follows is not the kind Peter likes.

It’s the kind that remembers too much.

The glass door seals shut behind Mr. Stark with a sound far too soft for the weight it carries.

The jazz doesn’t stop. Neither does the faint espresso scent or the pulse of the ambient lights. But now they feel wrong. The music is too bright, the lights too warm—it’s all still here, but twisted slightly. Like a hologram glitching out of sync. Like the shell of something that used to mean something.

Peter stares at the schematic hovering in front of him, blinking slowly.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Just sits.

The micro-filament loop he was adjusting flickers on the display, waiting for input. The soft ambient jazz continues to play through the lab speakers, cheerful and cruelly unaware.

The silence isn't total. Not really.

The machines are still whirring. Lights still blink and cycle. Somewhere in the background, a low-energy calibrator hums to itself, rhythmic and steady.

But Mr. Stark is gone.

And with him goes the gravity holding the room together.

Peter exhales through his nose. It doesn’t feel like breathing. 

He blinks again, slow this time. Like his brain is buffering.

He’d known the moment couldn’t last. Had even told himself—don’t get used to it, it’s temporary, it’s just one good afternoon. But the warmth had crept in anyway. Had wrapped around his ribs and burrowed deep.

And now?

Now there’s only air.

He taps the interface, not because he knows what he’s doing anymore, but because his hands need something to do.

Nothing responds.

He doesn’t try again.

The space that had once felt alive, glowing and kinetic, now feels... staged. Like a room built for someone else and abandoned in a hurry. Even the hum of the machines feels more mechanical now—less like a heartbeat, more like a timer counting down to something inevitable.

He thinks about the touch on his shoulder. The warmth of it. The weight. How it had made him feel real.

That same shoulder feels cold now. Like the warmth had been wiped away with the sound of a ringtone.

FRIDAY speaks softly, almost like she’s trying not to startle him.

“Mr. Stark has been delayed. He asked that you make yourself comfortable and eat something before heading out. Dinner is waiting upstairs.”

Peter doesn’t respond.

Not with a nod. Not with a word.

He stares forward, fingers loosely curled in his lap.

His stomach growls quietly, but the sound feels separate—like it’s happening to someone else. He can recognize the discomfort intellectually, but it doesn’t spark any urgency. Doesn’t connect.

He remembers the kitchen upstairs. Remembers thinking earlier how warm the apartment had felt. But now the idea of sitting alone at Mr. Stark’s table, with a plate of food he didn’t ask for, feels unbearable.

He can already see it: the overhead lights casting a too-bright glow, the silence pressing in on all sides, the empty seat across from him.

He swallows, but his throat is dry.

He reaches for his backpack.

He doesn’t bother powering down the interface or clearing the schematics.

He just walks out.

The car ride home is silent.

Not heavy. Not loud. Just... absent.

Happy drives like he always does—smooth, steady, just under the speed limit—but Peter doesn’t feel the motion. Everything outside flashes too fast, like a reel spinning on broken film. Neon signs blur, street lights flicker in erratic rhythm. None of it fits the way he feels—like the world is speeding up just as he’s slowing down. The world feels too loud for how numb he feels, like static at full volume under his skin. He watches the city move around them and feels like he’s not inside his body at all.

The window is cold where his head rests against it. His breath clouds faintly on the glass and vanishes before it can leave a mark.

Outside, Manhattan glows in passing fragments. A river of headlights and blinking crosswalks. People talking, laughing, moving in pairs.

Peter’s alone in the back seat. He doesn’t turn on the radio. Doesn’t reach for his phone. His hands stay where they are, limp and forgotten in his lap.

Happy glances at him in the rearview mirror once. Then again. Still, he says nothing. His hands tighten on the wheel for a second. He doesn’t like silence that stretches. Not from Peter.

Peter’s grateful for the quiet. For a while.

He’s still replaying the lab. The shift. The ruffle of his hair, the soft click of the door sliding shut, the way the air changed as soon as Mr. Stark was gone.

It happened so fast. It always happens so fast.

One minute, he’s whole. The next, he’s background noise again.

He tells himself—it was a work call, not personal. But logic can’t hold the ache in his chest.

Because his brain remembers the warmth of Mr. Stark’s hand on his shoulder. He hates that he misses it already. Hates that a single touch could undo him this badly. God, get it together, he urges himself. It was a call, he reassures. A stupid work call.

But the logic doesn’t reach his chest. Doesn’t untie the knot under his ribs.

And his body remembers the cold that came after.

His stomach aches now—sharp and hollow. He knows it’s hunger, but it feels like punishment.

He pulls his knees up into the seat, hoodie bunching around him, and presses his face closer to the glass.

He doesn’t want to be seen. Not even by Happy.

The world outside keeps moving. People laugh on sidewalks. Headlights flash. Life continues as if he hadn’t spent the past two hours convincing himself he mattered.

He closes his eyes.

For every action,

An equal and opposite reaction.

Joy had rushed in earlier. Fast. Real.

Now it’s receding.

Leaving emptiness in its place.

He pulls his sleeves over his hands and doesn’t notice he’s holding his breath.

Happy’s voice breaks the quiet. Gentle. Rough around the edges like someone trying not to step too hard.

“You okay, kid?”

Peter blinks.

The words are so simple they almost undo him.

He swallows before answering. “Yeah.”

Too fast.

Too automatic.

Happy hums like he doesn’t buy it.

They stop at a red light. The glow from the streetlamps spills over the dashboard and the side of Happy’s face. He drums his fingers once on the wheel, then says, more carefully:

“You want me to pick something up? Food or... I don’t know, bubble tea? You kids like bubble tea, right?”

Peter doesn’t laugh. But he almost does.

He shakes his head. “No, I’m good. Thanks.”

Happy watches him in the mirror a second longer, like he’s trying to read past the words.

Then he nods. Doesn’t push.

“All right,” he says. “Just let me know if you change your mind.”

Peter doesn’t answer. Not because he doesn’t want to. Just because anything he says might come out wrong.

He rests his forehead against the window again and lets the silence settle.

This time, it doesn’t feel empty.

Just quiet.

Still heavy. Still aching.

But not ignored.

Fear of abandonment, Peter decides, is a one way ticket to helpless desperation.

Suddenly, he’s fourteen again. Head pressed violently into his pillow so as to muffle his murderous screams of pain and feet pushed sharply into his mattress with enough force to rip holes into his sheets— scared, alone, and coming into his powers.

He had been so sure back then that he was going to die.

The pain had been unbearable. He felt as if he was being split open, molecule by molecule. Then atom by atom. And just when he had thought that he had been completely undone— free to rest in peace. He had been forcefully put back together, atom by atom, then molecule by molecule. Reshaping his small scrawny body into hard muscle and superhuman strength all in the span of a single fateful night.

God, it was painful.

But this?

This is never ending cruel hellish torture.

The realization that the all-consuming fear of losing Mr. Stark hurts in a way that makes the pain of coming into his powers surface level raises alarm bells in his mind. They paint his world in a flashing tint of red, blaring and loud.

A warning.

Peter is no genius, just an objectively intelligent person with enough sense to understand the implication of his irrational fear. It’s hard to miss it when he’s practically drowning in red. If he were a genius though, he’d have the sense to do something about it— break his fall before he shatters into tiny unfixable pieces.

But he’s mildly intelligent, even bordering on idiocy.

All he does is build the momentum.

His helpless desperation reaches the point of self-destruction on a school night. It manifests in the most out of character way it possibly can— rule breaking.

Not accidental or unconscious.

But deliberate rule breaking.

Peter is three blocks away from home, perched on the highest building on the street staring into nothingness when Karen speaks up for the second time this night.

“Peter, it is thirty minutes past your curfew.”

She doesn’t add more, just a reminder spoken in a gentle human-like voice. The sound of it is almost maternal, kind and full of artificially generated emotions. It speaks to the parentless child in him. Peter leans into it, nearly allowing her to talk him out of his poorly thought out plan.

He doesn’t reply and neither does he make an effort to go back. He remains crouched in place, dangerously balanced on the edge of the roof, pensively overlooking Queens. Peter is utterly detached from himself to the point the view looks foreign to his eyes. There is no sense of belonging stirring inside of him. Just a numb feeling of indifference.

It’s unclear to him if it’s the view that’s unfamiliar or it’s himself that he has grown not to recognize. He doesn’t allow himself to contemplate either option, stubbornly choosing blissful denial over the hard uncomfortable truth.

Once an hour has passed, Peter reaps the first outcome of his plan.

“May Parker is calling,” Karen informs him needlessly. “Would you like me to patch her through?”

“No,” is all he says.

He stares at May’s smiling face in his hud vision, indicating the incoming call from her. Peter lets it ring out, clearly envisioning her pacing in their living room. Her brows are no doubt brought together by worry. Each holding on to the other for comfort. He can see her picking at her chapped lips, absentmindedly pulling at the dead skin as she convinces herself that Peter is fine.

A pang of guilt hits him.

But the anticipation softens the blow.

Peter is not entirely heartless, or remotely heartless to begin with, to let her drive herself crazy sick with worry. The moment the ringing stops, he instructs Karen to send her a text.

“Something along the lines of ‘ I’m safe ’ but don’t make it look like I’m unoccupied,” he says. “Make me sound busy.”

Karen quietly does as told, sending May a text mimicking Peter’s style and texting pattern to appear believable and authentic. He doesn’t ask to review it before she sends it. He doesn’t have it in him to care at the moment.

May doesn’t understand.

No one does.

Peter doesn’t need Mr. Stark because he wants to. He needs him because somehow, through painstakingly slow moments, Mr. Stark’s presence has turned into a necessity— an essential component of Peter’s entire being.

It’s unexplainable, impossible to put into words.

Nothing, Peter thinks, can ever come close to describing the feelings he has for Mr. Stark. It’s unlike anything he has ever felt towards any other human being before. No one has ever evoked an undoubted sense of safety in him before— an absolute belonging.

People usually refer to the person that brings them such feelings of utmost familiarity and being at home as their other half. Be it romantically or platonically. It’s a feeling of becoming whole, as if a two piece puzzle, only complete together.

But what Peter feels for Mr. Stark is beyond that.

They’re not two halves brought together to create a singular cohesive picture. Instead of two, they are one in the same. Heads and tails, two sides of the same coin. A unicellular organism that miraculously managed to split. Having two bodies but sharing the same mind. Mr. Stark is the mother cell while Peter is an extension of him. A smaller, less intelligent, and awkward clone of the original.

The two of them are a well oiled machine.

A beautifully choreographed dance engraved into muscle memory.

Like light and shadow, neither one exists without the other.

May doesn’t understand that.

She doesn’t understand that he wants to cut Mr. Stark’s chest open and nestle into a corner next to his heart. That he wants to engulf it like a protective barrier. Keep it as safe as Mr. Stark keeps him safe.

She doesn’t understand that he wants to spend every waking moment with him. That he wants to breathe the same air as him at every given moment. Or otherwise it doesn’t feel like he’s breathing at all.

Nobody will ever understand how Peter’s thoughts don’t feel like his own unless Mr. Stark says them out loud. Unless he peers inside his brain, takes a look at Peter’s jumbled thoughts, and shapes them into something that makes sense.

Nobody will ever understand how Peter’s heart doesn’t feel full unless Mr. Stark is in the room where he can see him. Unless he can touch him and feel his existence like a solid concrete fact.

How is he expected to put all of that into words?

How can he expect anyone to understand?

A quiet almost soundless sigh escapes him— defeated.

Below him, Roosevelt Avenue sprawls out in both directions—cars crawling beneath flickering streetlamps, the red taillights casting long reflections in rain-slicked asphalt.

Somewhere near 74th Street, a vendor's metal shutter clatters closed, followed by the low murmur of voices echoing up from the subway stairwell. A siren wails faintly in the distance, cutting through the evening like a warning no one’s paying attention to.

The city buzzes, indifferent. A blur of yellow cabs, corner delis, rusted fire escapes. Life stacked in layers, always shifting, always spilling over.

Peter watches it all without blinking. He doesn’t feel a part of it. Doesn’t feel a part of anything at all.

This time it’s FRIDAY’s mechanical voice, tilted with an Irish accent, that pulls him out of his brooding.

She overrode Karen.

Like he’d expected her to.

“Peter,” she says, cool and calculated like her maker. “Mr. Stark requests that you head home now. It is past your curfew.”

“I’m not done yet,” Peter replies, voice gruff from disuse. He’s spent the better half of his patrol doing nothing but wallow in self pity. He clears his throat then adds with a hint of defiance in his tone, “I’ll go back when I go back.”

FRIDAY doesn’t miss a beat, unaffected by his dismissal. “I advise against ignoring Mr. Stark’s req—”

Peter doesn’t allow her to finish.

He shuts the suit down, rendering the electronic automated part of it useless. Without power, the suit is nothing but an overpriced version of his original homemade suit or ‘ onesies ’ as Mr. Stark likes to call it.

He holds his breath, half expecting FRIDAY to drone on unstirred by his attempt. But his coding holds, and after several moments of waiting for it to fail— Peter relaxes when it doesn’t.

Hacking into his suit for the second time wasn’t easy. Mr. Stark made sure of it. Hacking it for the second time without Ned was even harder. It was sheer luck (or was it sheer misfortune?) That he managed to do it after several attempts of trial and error. The code is experimental and Peter was not confident enough with his programming skills to expect it to work.

But it did.

And Peter waits in painful anticipation.

He’d ignored the call, deflected the guilt. But the silence that followed—FRIDAY’s voice, the weight of the building under his feet, the dry wind licking at his neck—left only one thing to think about.

Tony Stark.

It has been a little over a week since Mr. Stark’s disappearance mid lab session without an explanation. The morning after Peter had to find out with the rest of the world that he’s in Vienna attending a UN meeting. As if that hadn’t hurt enough. His only communication with the man since then consisted of short dry texts separated by days. 

He is not back yet and Peter is beyond desperate for a second of his attention.

He remembers two nights ago, just as he was about to wrap up his patrol for the evening, he’d spotted a robbery in the making. A man, not much older than he is, with crazed eyes and shaking hands was attempting to break into a closed pharmacy. It hadn’t taken much after confronting him for Peter to discover what was wrong with him. 

He was an addict going through withdrawal.

After webbing him to the front door of a free rehabilitation center, Peter hadn’t given the man a second thought.

He thinks of him now, one miscalculated step from falling off the edge, and a feeling of bitter understanding washes over him. It’s the same desperation that led the man to break the law that’s leading Peter to break the rules.

This willingness to do anything for a hit— a high, terrifies him. The end has never justified the means, not for him. But in the wake of Mr. Stark’s absence Peter finds that his moral compass no longer points North. Rather, it points to where the man is. Leading Peter to him through any way possible.

It’s exactly at the midnight mark that Peter hears what he’s been waiting for.

The mechanical whir of the Iron Man suit is quiet, a small hiss of sound in a noisy blend of the city below. It rings loud in Peter’s ears. He’s been straining his hearing since the moment he went off the grid, waiting to catch the familiar sound of the repulsors. Peter doesn’t move, but tears his eyes from the city underneath to stare at the endless sky.

There are no signs of stars, not in the polluted lights of the city.

Peter sighs again.

He wishes, albeit childishly, to go to space and swim in a sea of celestial objects— stars and planets. He wants to get lost in its vastness, sucked in a near-perfect vacuum. Maybe out in the endless openness, floating, he won’t feel half as empty as he does now. Maybe with a new gravitational pull he won’t feel as heavy as he does now.

The Iron Man suit lands somewhere behind him. There is a soft click sound that echoes quietly at the moment of touch down. It’s low and light— empty .

“You’re not here,” Peter says and instantly hates the accusing harshness to his voice. Shame sears his skin red— hot and angry. He immediately feels stupid for expecting him to be here. To drop everything and come bully Peter into his nightly routine. To use his snark as a lullaby and his wit as a weighted blanket, tuck him into bed.

“You’re not here,” Peter repeats in a whisper, talking more to himself than the suit and the man haunting it. His eyes are still fixed on the horizon, searching it for answers. When he speaks again it’s louder, meant for Mr. Stark’s ears. “You’re not actually here.”

The silence that follows confirms it. A silence too perfect, too static. Not the kind that sits between breaths or between people, but the kind that lives in an empty room. Artificial. Engineered.

Then the suit moves.

Not a full step—just the subtle tilt of its head, the faint shift of weight from one foot to the other. Hydraulic and measured. Simulated.

Peter doesn’t flinch, but the shame floods him anyway. He feels stupid. Small. Like a kid caught trying to sneak into a grown-up conversation. Like someone begging into a void and pretending the echo means he’s been heard.

The voice comes a moment later. Filtered, flattened through the metal speakers.

“Peter.”

It’s Mr. Stark’s voice, unmistakable. Calm. Controlled. A few layers removed from human.

Peter swallows.

There’s a delay—just a second too long—before Mr. Stark speaks again.

“You need to go home. Now. It’s late.”

He doesn’t turn around. Doesn’t want to see the chest-plate pulse with words that aren’t accompanied by breath. Doesn’t want to picture Mr. Stark in some marble-floored room a continent away, half-listening with one hand over the mic.

“You sent the suit,” Peter says flatly. “Right. Of course you did.”

There’s another pause. Then static clicks again, and Mr. Stark’s voice returns—this time overlapping faintly with another voice in the background, deeper and gruffer, saying something Peter can’t quite make out. Governmental, maybe. Someone official.

Mr. Stark says something off-mic—muffled—and then returns to Peter like someone flipping back to the wrong tab.

“Sorry. I’m still in Vienna. Meetings ran late,” a pause, then to someone else “This’ll only take a second.”

Peter’s heart stutters. His throat tightens.

It shouldn’t hurt.

He knew . Of course he knew. He saw the press. Heard the reports. Watched the livestream of Tony Stark standing behind a UN podium in Vienna, jaw set, fingers twitching in irritation.

Still, it hurts.

“You didn’t have to come,” Peter mumbles. “But you could’ve… not done this either.”

The suit tilts again, that uncanny shift of weight like it’s mimicking empathy. It doesn’t move closer.

“You hacked your own suit. Shut out FRIDAY. That’s not nothing, kid. May called me.”

Mr. Stark sounds tired. Not angry—just… stretched thin.

Peter wants to scream. Wants to tear the suit open and make sure it’s really empty , because some part of him is still stupid enough to hope he’s wrong.

“I was fine,” he says instead. “You didn’t need to interrupt your Very Important Meetings to check in. I’m not twelve.”

There’s a longer silence now. Mr. Stark’s voice, when it comes back, is gentler—but more distant than ever.

“It’s not about your age, Peter.”

He could leave it at that. But of course he doesn’t.

“It’s about you putting yourself in danger when I’m not there to stop it. It’s about the fact that you’ve been off your game lately, and I don’t know why, because you won’t talk to me.”

Peter closes his eyes. The wind brushes cold across his ears.

“I can’t talk to you,” he says, barely audible. “You’re not here.”

“I’m doing what I can.”

“That’s not enough,” Peter snaps, and the words cut sharper than he expects them to. “I don’t need the suit. I don’t need tech or protocols or reminders. I needed you .”

The rooftop holds its breath.

Below, the city goes on—oblivious. A couple argues on the sidewalk. A train rumbles past. Somewhere, a bottle breaks.

“Peter…” Mr. Stark says, quieter now. Something in the voice cracks—not fully, but enough to bleed.

But Peter is already backing away. Slowly. Deliberately. The ledge is only a few feet behind him.

“I thought maybe if I waited long enough, you’d come in person,” he says, blinking hard against the sting behind his eyes. “That you’d get it. But I was wrong.”

The suit steps forward. Not fast—measured. Careful.

“Kid—don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

Peter smiles bitterly. “Already did.”

Then he steps off the roof.

The wind hits him like a slap as he drops. A clean fall—controlled. His eyes sting from cold and guilt and nothing at all.

The suit doesn’t follow.

It can’t.

Mr. Stark’s voice echoes into the open night, tinny and useless.

“Peter—”

But he’s already plummeting to the ground, waiting recklessly for the last possible second before shooting a web to break his fall. His feet graze the sidewalk as he pulls back up. He narrowly avoids breaking every bone in both of his legs. The impact sends a sting up his ankles and Peter welcomes the hiss of pain with open arms.

The arguing couple yell at his sudden appearance. The man pulls the woman protectively behind him and she clings to him for dear life— argument forgotten. They both relax once they realize it’s only Spider-Man passing them in a blur of red and blue.

Peter doesn’t apologize.

He shoots web after web, splitting the cold night air open like a bullet, as he pulls his entire body tut. Peter throws himself between buildings with reckless force, misjudging the distance on purpose. A shoulder clips a fire escape. A shin scrapes brick.

He doesn’t slow down. He wants to feel it.

Hopes that with his body sore and bruised his heart won’t hurt as much.

May waits for him when he finally gets home. Her eyes are red-rimmed and her hands shake around her cup of tea— she looks utterly wrecked with worry. One look at her and Peter can taste the sourness of her disappointment in him on his tongue and at the back of his throat— choking him.

May doesn’t say anything, just sighs in relief at the sight of him unharmed. Before she can think to tell him just how worried and scared she was, Peter storms to his room like a coward. The loud boom of the door slamming shut behind him echoes like a cry for help.

And in the safety of his own room, wrapped in silence and cloaked in darkness, Peter allows the tears to finally fall.

Chapter Text

The next morning, Peter wakes up uncomfortably sore and utterly mortified.

It's the pain that wakes him up. He stirs in his sleep, lazily turning to chase after a blissful dream. But the movement sends shocks of electricity up his spine and his entire body tenses up from the pain. 

He groans, wide awake now.

He’s aching all around, bruised too. Peter doesn't need to look at his skin to see the blue and purple marks, he feels them. It feels like he stopped a bullet train with his body, absorbing the entirety of its g-force. Or swallowed a grenade and had it explode inside of him, containing the blast within the walls of his body.

It hurts.

It's agony.

He welcomes it.

The aching rings louder than the feeling of outright humiliation.

The events of the previous night flash before his eyes. It’s a blur of colours and sound painted with a sinking feeling of desperation.

Peter groans again and this time, it’s a little sound of despair.

Ordinarily, for surface level injuries like these, a good two hour nap is enough to get him back on his feet. Not completely healed, of course. Just on the edge of the good kind of soreness. Where he can function normally with but a hint of pain hissing under his skin.

Now?

Peter dreads moving.

But he can hear the soft tapping of May’s feet against the hard wooden floors as she paces the living room. The sound comes and goes, though the tapping remains consistent. With the consequences of last night's actions looming over his head, the quiet ‘ tap tap ’ morphed into an echoing ‘ tick tick ’— a bomb waiting to detonate.

With a sigh, Peter sits up and hisses. He tries to maneuver his body in a way that hurts the least. Except halfway through his trouble he remembers he deserves the pain, wants it even. So he grits his teeth and gets up.

A quick glance to his bedside clock tells him that he still has thirty minutes before he has to be up. But there is no point in delaying the inevitable. May will not let him step foot outside the apartment without having said her piece first. Therefore Peter shuffles through his room, forcing his limbs to move despite their stiffness— welcoming the repetition, trying to memorize how the pain fits into his skin.

It’s only once he’s sure he won’t grimace in pain in front of May that he leaves his room.

She’s going to ask questions he doesn’t have answers to. Not ones he can say out loud, anyway. He knows the look she’ll give him—the tight press of her mouth, the worry she won’t say, the disappointment she will.

Time to face the music.

Peter steps out of his room, already bracing. He moves stiffly down the hallway, every step controlled, careful. His limbs ache, deep and throbbing, but he keeps his spine straight and his face blank.

The apartment is quiet. Dim morning light bleeds through the blinds in streaks, slanting across the floor like it’s watching him too.

May is at the counter—still in the same hoodie from last night, hair pulled up messily, a mug of tea between her hands. She doesn’t turn right away, but he can feel her awareness prick like static in the air.

“You’re up,” she says after a beat. Her voice is calm. Too calm.

“Yeah,” Peter mumbles, heading to the fridge.

“You sleep okay?”

He nods, avoiding eye contact. Opens the fridge and grabs a water bottle, lingering behind the door a second too long. He grips the handle like it’s grounding him.

“I, uh… I didn’t sleep much,” May continues, trying to make it sound casual. “Kind of hard to, after the whole dramatic rooftop reentry.”

Peter closes the fridge. The soft click is loud in the still apartment.

“I used the door,” he says, almost defensively.

“I know,” she replies. “You just… you didn’t say anything. Walked in like a ghost.”

He leans against the counter, shifts his weight to his right leg, trying not to wince. The muscles in his left thigh still burn when he puts pressure on them.

“I wasn’t gonna say anything at first,” May says, still watching her tea. “Figured maybe you needed space. But then you didn’t say anything . And I kept thinking, what if he’s not okay? What if something happened? What if—”

She cuts herself off, biting down on the panic trying to escape. The tea ripples slightly in her hands.

Peter stares at the counter. His fingers twitch.

“You scared me,” she says.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters, throat tight.

“I know.”

Silence settles between them again. The hum of the refrigerator fills the space like static.

“You didn’t look like that when you left yesterday,” she finally says.

Peter keeps his face still.

“I know it’s none of my business, not really,” she goes on. “You’ve got your whole secret superhero schedule, and I’m just the lady who makes your sandwiches and keeps your cover story straight—”

“May…”

“—but I need you to talk to me, Pete. Just a little. You don’t have to give me classified SHIELD intel or whatever, I just…” She hesitates. “I just need to know you’re okay.”

Peter tightens his grip on the bottle. The condensation slicks his fingers.

“I’m fine,” he says again.

May doesn’t push immediately. She just exhales, steadying herself.

“You’ve been off for weeks,” she says. “I thought maybe it was school. Or hormones. Or maybe—”
She glances at him.
“—maybe it’s Ben. Again.”

Peter jerks back a little like she’d smacked him. His expression flashes—hurt, guilt, something sharp—before he shuts it down.

“It’s not Ben,” he says, too fast, too defensive.

May’s mouth tightens. “Okay. Okay.”

“I’m not ten.”

“I know that.”

“Then stop acting like I’m going to fall apart just because you said his name.”

May blinks, caught off guard. The hurt in her face is immediate—and unhidden.

Peter looks away. The guilt curls low in his gut, tight and hot.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he says. Quiet.

“I know,” she answers, just as soft.

A car honks distantly outside. Somewhere upstairs, pipes creak. The apartment feels too big for the two of them, like the walls are listening.

“I know I’m not cut out for all of this,” May says. “The superhero thing. The late nights. The pretending I don’t notice when you limp down the hallway.”

Peter shifts again, subtly favoring his right leg.

“I’m not trying to control you. I’m not trying to trap you in a guilt trip. I just… I need to know you’re not self-destructing.”

Peter doesn’t answer. His throat works around a response that never forms.

May’s voice breaks a little: “Because if something happened to you and I wasn’t paying attention—if you were hurting right in front of me and I missed it—”

“You didn’t,” he says suddenly, cutting her off. “Okay? You didn’t miss it. I just… didn’t want to talk.”

May nods slowly. The silence between them stretches again.

She rises from her stool and moves to the fridge, pulling out a brown paper bag and setting it on the counter. The bag is heavier than usual.

“I packed your lunch. There’s extra snacks. Like, real ones.”

“I’m not hungry,” Peter says, almost automatically.

“You will be.”

He picks it up, slings his backpack on one shoulder with a slow, awkward motion.

At the door, he hesitates.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says again, this time quieter.

May smiles gently, though her eyes are tired. “Don’t make a habit of it.”

“I’ll try.”

He reaches for the door.

“Love you, Pete.”

He doesn’t turn. “Love you too.”

The door shuts behind him with a soft click.

As his life crashes and burns around him, Peter comes to the conclusion that his theory regarding the existence of ‘ middle ground ’ is in fact unsound.

Once, he had attempted to explain this to Ned. His hypothesis that there was no such thing as neutrality or gray areas in relation to situations or matters regarding feelings and opinions.

For instance, love and hate, one cannot claim to walk the thin line separating the two emotions without leaning towards one more than the other. You either love something— someone, or you hate it— them . Of course this does not mean one cannot change their mind or feel differently. There are coefficients and variables at play, as every well formed equation has, and they determine which side is greater. External factors may well enhance and reinforce an existing feeling or opinion as likely as they are to change said feeling or opinion.

One thing for sure, however, both sides of the equation are not and will not be equals— ever.

The young and naive version of Peter that came up with the theory viewed everything through the lens of this perspective. In his mind, you are either good or evil, kind or cruel, loving or hateful. It is possible to have strong feelings and opinions of both opposing sides. However, one will always be stronger, more dominant. As such, claiming neutrality is incorrect and false. There is no gray area to revert to in such claims because in the end, as Peter sees it, the world is black and white.

At least, it used to be.

Now?

Peter isn’t so sure.

Students pass by, laughing and shoving, their movements blurred and fast. Peter’s barely moved since he sat down. Even blinking feels like a decision.

The sandwich May packed is still sealed. He stares at the plastic wrap like it might unwrap itself, like it might decide for him. Around him, the cafeteria buzzes—shoes squeaking, trays scraping, someone shouting something about gym class. It all feels like background radiation, indistinct and too bright.

He looks intently at his untouched lunch, mentally retracing his steps in order to pinpoint the exact moment his black and white world exploded into shades of gray.

He finds that all his trail of thoughts eventually lead him to Tony Stark. It’s no surprise, for the man himself is the biggest and grayest area of all. It’s his sudden arrival in Peter’s life that disproves his theory. Mr. Stark is a living and breathing contradiction and he falsifies Peter’s core beliefs by merely existing.

He’s obsessive, consumed by a need to be in control. Compulsively planning for every worst-case scenario he can predict. Yet, constantly improvises and creates new tech without fully thinking through consequences— reckless . 

Egotistical, constantly seeking validation to feed his pride and self-worth. Whilst also being consumed by guilt, loathing himself for the harm he has caused. Mr. Stark is narcissistic, flippant and indulgent— painfully selfish at times. But somehow he is also a self-sacrificing hero, viewing himself as insignificant in the face of the greater good or the safety of others. 

The paradox of wanting to live while willing to die is what drives him, what makes him Iron Man.

These are the contradictions known to the world. The more intimate ones that Peter gathers from his own observations during their interactions are an entirely different story. What he sees when he looks at Mr. Stark goes beyond the facade— the performance. 

Tony Stark hungers for deep meaningful connections, craves them even. He wants to be loved, trusted, needed. Yet is terrified of being vulnerable. He builds relationships only to sabotage them, always keeping anyone who starts to mean something at arm’s length.

Forever charming.

Often an asshole.

Mr. Stark is fiercely protective of the people he cares about— a silent caregiver. In spite of that, he is emotionally unavailable. He faces difficulties expressing affection without sarcasm, guilt, or distraction. No matter the effort he puts in, his attempts are more often than not awkward, stilted, or emotionally overwhelming. His poor communication skills makes him seem cold or selfish— the deflection, sarcasm and arrogance. It’s only natural that the majority of the people that interact with him end up misreading him. Time and time again he is written up as aloof or manipulative.

But what lies ahead, under thick layers of skin is overwhelming feelings. He’s scared and overloaded— desperate to be seen. Unfamiliar with human softness or a constant presence.

He’s scared and alone.

And Peter sees him.

It’s precisely that that makes Peter question his theory.

Which, in turn, means he questions himself.

His chest tightens. Not in panic, not sharp—just heavy. Like his body’s trying to hold itself together with too few supports, and something is going to snap if he shifts the wrong way.

How can he distinguish right from wrong in a world that is no longer black or white but rather made of endless shades of gray?

“Dude,” Ned starts, plucking him out of his internal spiral. “You’re being so weird right now, it’s not even funny.”

Peter blinks, as if realizing for the first time that he’s not alone. He sighs and leans back, the plastic bench creaking under his weight.

There’s no point in trying to explain his ever-growing dilemma. Not to Ned. Not now.

“Are you, like…” Ned continues, mouth half-full of grilled cheese and spam, “still hung up on Liz or something?”

Peter rolls his eyes. “No, Ned. I’m not hung up on Liz.”

He wishes he were. Life would be easier if his biggest problem was a broken heart. He pushes the majority of his lunch across the table—half a sandwich, a bruised apple, a granola bar. He keeps the baby carrots for himself. His stomach feels like a pit, but the thought of filling it makes him nauseous.

Ned blinks at the offering, but takes it. “Okay, so then what is it?”

Peter doesn’t answer.

Ned squints. “Because, dude, you’re giving serious Mr. Harrington vibes. Like when he’s mad the school board didn’t approve his debate club funding, but pretends he’s chill, then sighs super loud waiting for someone to ask.”

Peter lets out a breath—something like a laugh, thin and dry.

“That’s a dark place to be, man,” Ned adds, peeling open the granola bar like it’s evidence.

Peter half-smiles. Just the corner of his mouth. Tired. Hollow.

“I don’t want to be asked about it,” he says finally.

Ned quiets. He nods slowly, not hurt—just thoughtful.

“Okay,” he says. “I won’t ask.”

They fall into a lull. Around them, the cafeteria pulses with normalcy: trays clatter, someone swears too loudly, a basketball rolls out from under a table. Peter picks at a carrot. Ned eats like nothing’s wrong, even though everything is.

“I mean,” Ned offers lightly, “I could just guess random stuff and see what makes you flinch.”

Peter raises a brow, amused despite himself.

“Like—” Ned raises a finger. “Your Sokovia Accords essay got flagged by the FBI.”

Peter blinks.

Ned grins. “No? Okay, new theory: you finally found out Mr. Delmar’s sandwich cat died and now you feel responsible because you never said goodbye.”

Peter snorts.

“Still no? Wow. Brutal crowd.”

Before Peter can come up with a comeback, a familiar voice cuts through the noise like a dull blade.

“Hey losers.”

MJ slides into the seat across from them, dropping her tray with a calculated thud. She doesn’t look at Peter right away. Just pops open her yogurt and starts stirring like it insulted her family.

She glances up mid-stir. “Why does Parker look like a Reddit mod who just got banned from his own forum?”

Peter groans.

“Don’t,” he says. “Not today.”

MJ raises an eyebrow. “You’re giving ‘existential crisis in homeroom’ energy. I figured I should say something before you start reciting Nietzsche in gym class.”

“He’s going through a tragic origin arc,” Ned supplies helpfully.

MJ tilts her head. “Didn’t he already have one?”

Peter bangs his head on the table. It makes a satisfyingly dull thunk .

“I hate both of you,” he mumbles into the laminate.

Ned pats his back. “Don’t worry, man. Pain builds character.”

MJ nods solemnly. “And characters build lore.”

He should laugh. He should play along. But all he can think is how none of it—MJ’s teasing, Ned’s concern—can fill the hollow ache building behind his ribs.

At night, Peter dreams of him.

Ben.

He's laying on the pavement, body stiff and rigid—bones and muscles locked in place. His skin is white as a sheet, lips a cold shade of blue. There’s frost along his jaw, like death arrived early and brought winter with it. Blood spills out of a gaping hole in his chest and through his small fingers, as Peter pushes down hard to stop the bleeding. The wound pulses wet and open under his hands. His ribs crack under the pressure, bones groaning in protest. Yet the blood doesn't slow down. It flows, a running stream with no beginning or end. No amount of desperate pressure slows it down.

It smells like rust and pennies. Like every accident Peter’s ever walked away from.

It floods the streets.

Thick, syrupy, almost sentient—like it wants to swallow the world.

The thick sticky liquid, uncharacteristically cold, paints the city in red.

There is so much of it, it reaches just above Peter's navel. It clings to his clothes, seeps into his socks, smears under his nails. It’s endless, pours and pours out of Ben’s lifeless body. Until he's submerged in his own blood, sinking further into a place Peter can't reach him. The heaviness of the years not yet lived out pulls him away from Peter.

His eyes never close. Just fade.

He kicks and screams, thrashing his arms and legs around—trying to save him. But the harder Peter tries to get to Ben, the greater is the force that pulls him away.
So he pleads and begs, suddenly fourteen again, praying for an ambulance to come and save his uncle.

In his dream, it didn't come.

The sirens are silent. Time slows to a crawl. Each breath Peter takes feels like breathing in tar.

When his throat is raw from yelling and his lungs are filled with crimson poison—it stops.

The flood recedes. Not gradually, but violently—jerking backward like it had never existed. Ben’s body absorbs the blood, the street, the sky, the buildings. The world folds in on itself until all that remains is a flat, black vacuum.

No sky. No ground. Just Ben’s outline, glowing faintly in the void, and Peter—floating. Weightless and gut-punched.

Peter is completely and utterly alone.

When he wakes up, soaked in sweat and covered in his own tears, eyes burning and throat split open from swallowing his screams—the bitter taste of metal lingers in his mouth.

His chest lurches. He sits up too fast, the world spinning in wet, pulsing color. The sheets tangle around his legs like restraints.

Peter barely makes it to the bathroom in time to spill his insides in the toilet.

The tile is freezing. The fluorescent light burns. The sound of retching echoes louder than it should.

When he’s done, he slumps back against the bathtub. Peter wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. His fingers tremble.

Somewhere deep inside, the dream lingers—too vivid, too real.

When Friday comes around and Peter spots the familiar Audi across the street from his school, the correlation between it and getting to see Mr. Stark is gone. Now, his chest tightens uncomfortably at the sight of it, his stomach twisting painfully. When he starts to walk towards it, his feet drag under him— wanting to take him anywhere but the car and its isolating bubble of loneliness.

As he approaches, Peter readies himself for disappointment, anticipating the now familiar sting of abandonment. It weighs him down, making his limbs heavy and his heart heavier— Peter almost forgets who he is under all that added weight.

He steels himself for the emptiness inside—just the leather seats and a texted excuse. As he opens the car door, he says, “Just take me home Happy. I don’t feel like–” Peter stops, vowels and consonants scattering across his tongue, leaving him speechless in his shock.

Sitting there, legs crossed and a picture of cool casualness, is Tony Stark. 

“Well this is awkward,” the man says, peering at Peter over his yellow tinted sunglasses. There is a hint of amusement hiding in his eyes, making it shine with mirth. It is the only thing that gives him away, the rest of his features maintain his usual aloofness. “This is what? The third time you've blown me off for homework. I'm starting to look desperate,” there is a tilt to his voice, a familiar tone that draws out his words— laziness. He pulls off his glasses to better look at Peter, his eyebrows raised into a playful curve. “I don't do desperate, kid. Not really my, what do you kids call it? Vibe? Yeah, not really my vibe.” 

Peter wants to scoff, to roll his eyes and say something like ‘glad you remembered I existed’ or something harsh and equally as snarky. He wants to voice his inner turmoil and crippling fears. 

Instead, his body betrays him. 

The corners of his mouth twitch before he even gives them permission. His heart hammers with warmth that feels both welcome and traitorous. His lips curve upwards, a smile slowly forming. Just the look of him, the sound of his voice, and the warmth of his body makes Peter feel more like himself— whole and alive. 

“I don't know Mr. Stark,” he replies, taking a seat next to the man and breathing in his scent. “Starting to think this too cool for….” He trails off, considering. “Well, anything, is just an act,” Peter teases, every cell in his body humming in contentment. Every broken piece of him slots back into place, restored by Mr. Stark's mere presence. 

Cracks appear on Mr. Stark's facade, and through them Peter glimpses a flash of relief— fast enough for him to question its existence. 

“Watch it Parker,” he says, pointing a finger at the teenager in mock threat. “Keep decoding me like that and I’ll have to call in a cleanup crew.” 

He says it casually, playfully— in his own dry sense of humor. It's a nod to a previous conversation they've had before, an inside joke. Peter had once asked, jokingly and a little terrified, if he should expect a visit from Black Widow now that he knew the inside and outs of the Iron Man suit. Finding the thought rather hilarious, Mr. Stark since made it a point to threaten to eliminate him every time Peter gave away how much he knew about Stark Industries, Avenger related technology, and the Iron suits. But most importantly, each time he gets the slightest bit touched or overwhelmed by Peter's rich perception of him. 

Normally, it makes Peter laugh.

This time, it makes his blood run cold. It’s not the joke that hits him—it’s the way it lands now. Like Tony’s half-smiling confession that Peter could still be erased if he got too close. It’s a blunt reminder that he is disposable.

The breath catches in his throat. Just for a second.

A chill, cold and fast, shoots down his spine—uninvited.

He realizes that Mr. Stark had not intended for it to mean as such, nevertheless, it still feeds his insecurities and the dread of being left behind returns worse than it once was. As if each time it fades it builds momentum, coming back to hit him harder every time.

Peter swallows, shoving saliva and bile back down his throat. He forces out a laugh, a quiet and fickle sound. As it echoes and fades, his heart breaks a little. Suddenly, the full extent of his mistake dawns on him. 

He had built a home on quicksand. And now the floor is giving way, inch by inch. The warmth that used to keep him safe now pulls him under.

He laughs again, tight and forced— broken in a way he never was before.

“Maybe you should,” he whispers in a voice so quiet, so small, it barely registers to his own ears. He blinks, surprised his lips moved when he hadn’t intended for them to.

“Hmm?” Mr. Stark questions, already distracted. He’s busy typing on his phone, writing and erasing words— brows furrowed. The yellow tinted glasses are back on, carefully placed on the bridge of his nose. Like the tinted glass separating them from Happy, the lenses feel like another pane between them—one Peter can see through, but never get past.

Tony Stark’s attention, Peter discovered long ago, is that of a flickering candle— here and there. One moment you’re illuminated by the warmth of his awareness and recognition of you. The next you’re engulfed in its absence, his attention passes over you as if you do not even register to him.

“Say, underoos,” he starts, not bothering to look up from his phone. He scratches absentmindedly at his chin as he speaks, pulling at the short hairs of his perfectly trimmed goatee. “Have you ever thought about integrating a dual-phase coil for the neural thread housing? I was messing with the simulations and it might reduce the drift rate—at least theoretically.”

“Actually, yeah, I was thinking—what if we reroute the filament through a secondary lattice? Like, if we weave a micro-flex grid beneath the main channel, it could stabilize the neural signals and cut the lag by—” the enthusiasm in his voice gradually decreases until he comes to a full stop mid sentence.

“Uh huh,” the older hums passively. The sound that escapes his throat is more of a practiced response than an active one.

He glances at Mr. Stark. The man’s still typing, barely nodding, sunglasses hiding his eyes. Peter understands then— he’s nothing but background noise. A soothing ramble, a continuous stream of white noise half registering to him.

“—uh… never mind,” Peter says, hurt and embarrassed. Then he adds, consoling himself more than anything, “It probably wouldn’t work anyway.”

The car ride continues that way. Mr. Stark says off handed comments, voices half formed thoughts, and makes pitiful attempts at small talk he doesn’t commit to. Through it all, Peter only occasionally hums, biting down the urge to fill the empty silence in between. His uncharacteristic quietness doesn’t seem to register to Mr. Stark and the fact leaves a bitter taste in Peter’s mouth. It settles on his tongue like copper—familiar, metallic, and impossible to swallow.

The car ride back is quiet. Not peaceful. Not companionable. Just… quiet.

The kind that fills your ears until they ring.

Peter sits with his backpack clutched in his lap, staring straight ahead. Outside the window, the city peels past in smeared streaks of neon and concrete. He doesn’t follow the blur. Doesn’t speak. His hands twitch, then still again. His smile, the one that had cracked across his face just minutes ago, has already dissolved into nothing.

Mr. Stark types on his phone. The screen lights his face in fractured white and blue. He doesn’t look over. Doesn’t say anything.

Peter doesn’t either.

The silence stretches. Too long. Like old gum between teeth—sticky, thin, ready to snap.

He swallows around the dryness in his throat, the ghost of bile still clinging at the back of his tongue. His thoughts churn loud and fast—things he should say, could say. But nothing makes it out. His jaw locks tight. A white-knuckled grip on composure.

They don’t speak again.

When they reach the Tower, FRIDAY opens the gate like always, her voice pleasant, practiced. Peter follows Mr. Stark out of the car and into the elevator, steps echoing faintly against the polished floors. The ambient light inside the lift catches on Tony’s lenses, turning them opaque.

He doesn’t take them off this time.

The ride is smooth. Too smooth.

Peter shifts his weight from one foot to the other. Mr. Stark pockets his phone at last, but says nothing. The silence between them feels more final now. Like a conversation that never happened.

The elevator doors open onto the penthouse. It’s dimly lit, cast in gold from the dying sun bleeding through the tall windows. For a moment, Peter wonders if Tony will stop here. If he’ll make an excuse and disappear upstairs—into a meeting, a call, a room Peter can’t follow him into.

But he walks toward the lab instead.

So Peter follows.

Down the private staircase, the hum of machinery grows louder. Familiar.

But not comforting.

Not this time.

“Let’s start with the…” Mr. Stark trails off as soon as they step foot into his personal lab. He snaps his fingers as he points to the far left corner of the space. He doesn’t look at what he’s pointing at, instead fishes his buzzing phone from his pocket. The vague gesture gives nothing away, and Peter stands still by the door, trying to decipher its meaning.

He looks at the left corner.

There’s the unfinished phase-shift shielding array — the one Tony specifically told him not to touch unless he wanted to destabilize the molecular alignment of his own fingers. Next to it is the holo-integrated neurolink — a prototype meant to sync with FRIDAY’s core and still in its dangerous infancy. And behind that, shoved half under a tarp, is the quantum disruptor housing from their dimensional interference fail-safes. All of them are too advanced, too sensitive, or too dangerous.

All of them things Peter’s not supposed to touch.

His brows knit. “Uh… which one, exactly?”

But Tony doesn’t answer.

He’s already halfway across the room, phone to his ear, murmuring something low and clipped.

Peter just stands there.

Peter has never believed in the myth of fifty/fifty relationships. That idea—that effort can be cleanly measured and split like a check—has always struck him as naive. That both halves should contribute equal amounts of time, effort, and dedication to maintain a sacred balance. He has always thought that their mistake— the people who thought that way— is assuming relationships resemble a scale. Insinuating that healthy, strong, and meaningful relationships are acquired through keeping the scale balanced.

In true Peter Parker fashion, Peter has always thought that relationships are best represented by an equation. Instead of having each person contributing equal amounts, both parties strive to achieve an accumulated hundred percent of joint effort. It doesn’t matter, if at times, both parts do not equal each other as long as the end result is the desired hundred percent.

This belief is brought forth by The Scale Theory, as he likes to call it, not accounting for outside factors that come into play and affect the amounts contributed to the relationship. Whereas equations, flexible and adaptable, have room to accommodate each factor.

Yes, in an ideal world, relationships could and should be fifty/fifty. That is if they are maintained in a controlled environment without outside influences or affects. Theoretically, if you remove stress, build up from responsibilities outside of the relationships, and commitments to other relationships, then yes fifty/fifty is the way to go.

In practice, however, the fifty/fifty approach is impossible to retain. Isolating environments are hard to come by. Which means, in the real world, relationships are affected by external factors. Those external factors can lead one part of the relationship not being able to contribute their desired target of supplying half of the required effort needed to keep the bond alive and well. In which case, the other person must increase their input to achieve the hypothetical end result preferred— a hundred percent.

This means, according to Peter, that relationships are fluid and forgiving. They adapt and adjust to the environment around them. People in a relationship should not aim to balance the supposed scale that is the relationship but instead balance each other out to create harmony. Person A puts more effort than person B at times, then person B puts more effort than person A, sometimes they put equal effort, sometimes they put almost equal effort— this is how a true relationship should be.

Almost like a lazy tide, pushing and pulling in a perfect rhythm.

Now, Peter is hit with a bitter sense of deja vu as he questions yet again another core belief because of Tony Stark.

Where is the line, if there is one? To what extent and period should one part of the relationship increase their input until they realize that it’s hopeless? Because if he thinks about it, really thinks about it, Mr. Stark’s effort during the entirety of their relationship up to this very moment does not amass a total amount of thirty percent of the collective effort put into the relationship. Since the very beginning, Peter has always been compensating for the man’s shortcomings.

He feels it the strongest now, standing on the edge of the lab. Looking into Mr. Stark’s space: his frustrated movement, the curt ring to his voice, and the rigidness of his muscles— there is no space for him there.

“Tell Ross if he wants cooperation, he needs to stop using the word containment like we’re talking about weapons,” he says into the phone as he shrugs off his suit’s blazer. Once freed from it, he tosses it carelessly to the nearest surface— a workbench. The blazer barely grazes the sleek surface before slipping to the floor with a soundless thud. It sits in a sad pile by Mr. Stark’s feet, discarded and ignored.

Peter nearly whimpers when Mr. Stark rolls his chair back, the wheels catching and dragging across the fallen blazer. A sense of kinship washes over him, a kindred understanding of the blazer’s discarded and ignored state. Pitying the no doubt expensive piece of clothing, and in turn pitying himself, Peter approaches it cautiously. He shouldn’t care. It’s just a blazer. But the way it lies there—forgotten, in the way, run over without thought—makes something in his chest twist tight.

The man’s only acknowledgment of his closeness is a raised eyebrow and a quick glance in his direction as he speaks once more into the phone, “no, that language won’t hold—Article Five still implies UN oversight. I told them that’s a dealbreaker.”

He crouches by Mr. Stark’s feet, carefully prying the fabric free from the wheels, then pulls it to his chest with quiet protectiveness. He smoothes the wrinkled patch in gentle consoling strokes before folding it and setting it neatly on the workbench.

“Thanks kid,” Mr. Stark says, covering the speakers with his hand so that whoever is on the other side doesn’t hear. Then, not giving Peter a chance to respond, adds, to the person on the phone, “No, it’s not about vengeance. It’s about liability. If they’re back on U.S. soil, I’m not shouldering the blowback,” he sighs, listening to whatever the person has to say in response. His frustration visibly grows with each word said to him. When he speaks next, his voice is tight— sharp, “I’ve got half a team scattered across three jurisdictions. You want them unified? Amend the jurisdictional enforcement clause.”

By the time Mr. Stark is done tossing around clinical bureaucratic words Peter doesn’t understand, he’s drowning in the growing distance between them. Despite him being a literal arm’s length away, so close Peter can touch him if he just reaches out, Mr. Stark never felt so far away. Even as he sets his sleek Stark Industries phone on the equally sleek workbench and finally looks at Peter, he still feels unreachable.

“So,” Mr. Stark says, rubbing his hands together and flashing Peter a smile that’s all teeth and zero energy—tired and tight, like he’s holding the rest of himself together with it. “About that dual-phase coil, simulations suggest that it might reduce the drift rate—” his phone buzzes, the sound louder now that it’s vibrating against a solid object. He glances at it from the corner of his eyes, but makes no move to read the notification he just received. He crosses his arms instead, an obvious attempt at resisting picking the phone up. “In theory, of course,” he adds, “You said something about the filament, right? What were you thinking—stabilizing the neural signals or…?” his phone rings with another notification and he bites down on his lips hard, halting his words to an abrupt stop.

“You can go,” Peter hears himself suggesting. Voice quiet and uncertain— strange to his own ears. Mr. Stark looks at him curiously, one eyebrow arched, curved in challenge instead of surprise. “You’re busy,” he says, justifying his offer or the man’s blatant distraction— he’s not sure. Ultimately, it’s true. Mr. Stark is busy. In the grand schemes of his life, Peter is but a small insignificant part. A responsibility he didn’t ask for but ended up stuck with nevertheless.

A pesky bug crawling all over his highly important and valuable time, trying and failing to create a nest in stolen moments.

“Can I?” Mr. Stark repeats, eyebrow cocked, tone sharp enough to cut glass. It’s not curiosity—it’s a dare. “Because the way you’re looking at me, kid, makes me think you might actually cry if I do,” he says, his voice is serious but his eyes are soft— tired instead of compassionate. Undeterred by Peter’s shock, or the uncomfortable blush creeping up his neck and nervous energy moving his awkward limbs, he continues. “So let’s say I don’t give a damn. Let’s say I’m the selfish, absentee bastard you’ve got scribbled in the margins of your trauma journal—” He lifts a hand, cutting off Peter’s stammered protest before it starts. The words die on Peter’s tongue, premature and stillborn. “And I do leave to take care of this mess,” he gestures, rather frustrated at the phone vibrating continuously, buzzing from a stream of texts and unanswered calls. “What’s to say you’re not going to throw a tantrum and do something reckless and stupidly dangerous like go off the grid— Which reminds me, hand over the suit. I’ve gotta install a new protocol: ‘Keep Parker From Self-Destructing 3.0.’ Working title. Feedback welcome— like an angsty teenager? Contrary to popular belief, I haven’t unlocked that level of assholeness yet. I do care about that , at the very least.”

Peter’s lips press into a thin line. His heart is hammering, but his voice is cold. “Well, color me reassured,” he says flatly. He’s too tired to run. So he swings.“I feel so cared for.”

Tony freezes, just for a beat. The air between them tightens like a stretched cord, and Peter doesn’t stop—he can’t stop. The quiet dread that’s been simmering under his skin for weeks bubbles over, white-hot and blistering.

“Oh, look at that. Little Parker’s got bite,” Mr. Stark drawls, somewhere between impressed and offended. “And here I thought you were one of Mary’s wholesome little lambs. Turns out there’s a bit of wolf hiding under that fleece.”

“Maybe,” Peter says, jaw clenched. “Maybe I had to grow teeth.”

Tony raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. “You wanna say what you’re really thinking, or are we just gonna keep dancing around it like it’s prom night?”

The lab lights hum overhead, casting sterile white shadows on the concrete. Machines blink to themselves in the corners, silent witnesses to the unraveling.

Peter laughs, a low, joyless sound. “You want me to say it?” he asks, stepping forward. “Fine. You’re distracted. And half the time, I don’t even think you see me. I know you don’t even realize that you’re hurting me. And that’s what makes it worse.”

Tony’s face goes carefully blank, which only makes Peter angrier.

“I show up,” Peter says, louder now, voice cracking at the edges. “I always show up. I wait for you, I listen, I pay attention even when you think I’m not—because it matters to me. You matter to me.”

He swallows hard, the words catching like splinters in his throat.

“But the second your phone buzzes, or someone else pulls your attention, it’s like I never existed, like I was just something passing the time until something real came along,” He lets out a shaky breath, hands tightening at his sides. There is a slight wobble to his voice when he speaks next, “you do that a lot, you know—pull me close, just long enough for me to think I’m safe, then vanish like none of it meant anything. And maybe I’m not supposed to say anything, maybe I’m supposed to just… get it, and keep getting it, every time it happens, but it doesn’t make it easier.”

Tony exhales hard. “You really think I wanted it to be like this?”

Peter doesn’t answer right away. He shifts his weight, stares down at the floor.

Of course not , he thinks. But that doesn’t make it hurt less.

“It’s not about what you wanted,” he says finally, voice thin but steady. “It’s about what you chose,” he explains, earnestness overflowing his voice, engulfing the lab in raw emotions. He meets Tony’s eyes when he speaks again, wrecked and bitter. “And you didn’t choose me.”

Peter’s voice drops low, fragile and unsteady—surrendering. “I know I’m not your kid, okay? I know I’m not anything . I get it. I’m just some broken science project you took in on a whim.”

Tony doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe.

And then, something in his face twists. “You’re not the first to try, you know. People line up thinking they can fix me. And they all leave when they realize I’m still cracked underneath. I can’t be fixed.”

“I know that!” Peter snaps—louder than intended. The words rip out of him too fast. His own voice startles him, sharp and frayed at the edges. He winces, squeezing his eyes shut like he could shove the volume back in, bottle it up where it won’t break anything.

Tony’s eyebrows twitch downward, almost imperceptibly.

Peter’s chest heaves. His ribs feel too tight around his lungs. Too small for everything he’s been trying to hold inside.

“It’s not—” he swallows, eyes darting everywhere but Tony’s face. “It’s not fair.”

Tony shifts, almost like he’s going to speak—then doesn’t. His arms cross tighter over his chest.

“It’s not fair,” Peter says again, softer this time, hoarse. “How am I supposed to fix something that’s not even broken?”

He doesn’t wait. Can’t wait. The words just keep coming.

“You keep talking like you’re damaged goods or—or some busted prototype that people toss out when the upgrades don’t stick. Like I’m supposed to come in with a soldering iron and fix all the wiring. Recode you. Rewrite your software. Like you’re this… malfunction I was supposed to debug.”

Tony lets out a breath. Not loud. But sharp, through the nose. Defensive.

Peter flinches slightly at the sound—then barrels forward.

“But you’re not! You’re not broken! You’re just—” he flails, then clenches his fists tight. “You’re just someone who… who forgot that being better doesn’t mean being perfect. You keep acting like you’re stuck this way forever, like the best thing you can do is warn people off because you think you’re some kind of hazard.”

Tony’s gaze drops. Just a flicker. A rare tell. Then it’s gone again, hidden behind the flicker of the arc reactor glow.

Peter notices. His voice cracks.

“Yeah, okay, maybe you mess up sometimes. Maybe a lot. Maybe constantly . But don’t we all? That’s not failure. That’s—human. That’s what everyone does! You screw up and you learn and you try again and that’s it. That’s the deal.”

Tony turns slightly—like the impact of the words is just a bit too direct. He picks up a tool from the nearby workbench, then sets it back down without purpose. His fingers linger.

Peter’s throat tightens. He presses forward anyway.

“I wasn’t trying to fix you,” he says, and now his voice is shaking. “I was trying to hold space for you. I was trying to be there while you figured it out.”

Tony finally looks at him then. Fully. And Peter falters for half a breath under the weight of it—but keeps going. He sniffles once, hard, and swipes at his face like it betrayed him by crying.

“But I can’t keep doing this alone. I can’t keep… reaching for someone who keeps disappearing the second it gets hard.” Peter’s voice trembles with the effort it takes to stay grounded. “I’m not asking you to be perfect, or to have it all figured out. I just need you to show up. Even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.”

Tony doesn’t respond at first.

His expression is unreadable, arms still crossed tightly over his chest. The arc reactor hums faintly in the silence between them.

Peter waits—heart in his throat, lungs burning. There’s a moment where the air could shift, where something real could be said. But it never comes.

Instead, Tony exhales slowly through his nose and says—

“Great speech. Really. Add some violins and I might’ve cried.” He smirks, thin and hollow. “Hell, you should give that one at graduations—call it Reasons Not to Rely on Tony Stark 101 .”

The words hit like a punch to the chest.

Peter doesn’t move. 

He doesn’t blink.

The lab light seems suddenly too bright. The sound of a distant processor spinning up cuts into the silence like static.

“Wow,” he says softly, the word folding in on itself as it leaves his mouth. There’s no anger in his voice anymore. Just disbelief. And something greater— consequential. Disappointment. “I meant all of that,” he says. “Every word.”

Tony shifts, the smile slipping slightly—but he doesn’t speak.

Peter nods to himself, like that’s confirmation enough.

“You don’t have to mean it back,” he adds, more to the floor than to Tony. “But you didn’t have to throw it away like that.”

He wants Tony to call him back. To say something—anything—that makes this feel less final. But the silence stretches again. Familiar. Cold.

He turns.

His footsteps are soft on the concrete, almost swallowed by the ambient hum of the lab. The door hisses when it opens, spilling warm light from the corridor outside.

Peter pauses just once at the threshold, not turning around.

“You know,” he says quietly, “for a genius, you really suck at recognizing when someone cares about you.”

Then he walks out.

And this time, he doesn’t look back.

Chapter Text

In the aftermath of the confrontation, everything comes to a standstill. 

Peter floats away, adrift in a vast, endless vacuum. A vacancy bound by nothing—not gravity, not time. There isn’t a single thought or feeling weighing him down. He feels weightless in every sense of the word—hollowed, empty, and utterly blissful. Just a shapeless soul in a borderless body, filled and surrounded by nothingness.

The numbness is liberating. Freeing.

Drifting in nothingness becomes a euphoric experience.

In that cold, dark void, Peter flirts with consciousness and subconsciousness. He dances on the delicate line separating the two—it’s heaven. It’s hell. 

Time has no meaning in Peter’s new state of mind. It can’t be measured or tracked. It just loops—constant, directionless, without beginning or end. Infinite. Stretching so far into the darkness, it stops being a construct at all.

Peter doesn’t eat.

He doesn’t sleep.

He exists outside the scope of existence.

Like a particle at absolute zero—still, suspended, frozen in place. Nothing moves. Nothing changes.

He doesn’t know if the silence is peaceful, or just the absence of pain.

He only knows it doesn’t hurt here.

The sun is brutal, even through the gauzy clouds hanging over Midtown High’s football field. The air is thick with humidity, clinging to skin and fabric like wet gauze. Sneakers thud against the rubber track, a percussion line of teenage exertion. Laughter and groans cut through the air like background static—chaotic, messy, real.

Coach Wilson stands near the bleachers, sunglasses on, posture slouched like he’s two seconds away from checking out completely. A whistle hangs from his neck, swaying with every lazy shift of his weight. “Alright, let’s pick it up,” he calls out, monotone. “Two more laps. Channel your inner gazelle. Or don’t. Just move.”

Some kids groan. Others ignore him. Flash mutters something about cardiovascular propaganda. A few students are already slowing down to a walk, barely pretending to jog.

Peter keeps running.

He’s lost count of the laps. His body feels detached, like it's moving on autopilot. Breathing burns now, sharp and thin, like he’s inhaling steam. His legs are heavy. Each step sends a jolt up his spine. His shirt clings to him. His vision is dimming at the edges.

MJ glances sideways as she jogs past, earbuds in but not pressed all the way. She doesn’t say anything—yet—but her gaze lingers.

Ned’s trailing further behind, face flushed, arms pumping like he’s trying to outrun a final exam.

Peter tries to keep pace.

He doesn’t remember the last time he ate something. Breakfast was… nothing. Lunch was a bottle of water and a tight-lipped smile. His stomach cramps—not from hunger anymore, just emptiness—and his vision blurs at the edges.

No one notices when he stumbles the first time. Just a misstep. A skid on the edge of the lane line.

But MJ’s eyes flick toward him.

The second stumble is less subtle—he trips over his own foot, nearly twisting his ankle. He catches himself, barely. His hands tremble.

“Peter?” Ned calls from behind, uncertain.

The field tilts.

The sky seems… loud.

And then he’s not upright anymore.

Peter crumples mid-stride, collapsing like a puppet with cut strings—face first onto the track. He’s unconscious before he makes contact with the ground. Everything cuts to black, like someone unplugged the TV mid-movie. One moment, there were sounds and colors; the next, it’s silent darkness.

Fainting feels a lot like drowning.

Everything is muted, dulled—engulfed in water. His senses are muffled. Sounds jump octaves and warp in volume. Visions lag and blur. Sensations flicker in and out. Somewhere, distantly, he hears his name being said in an echo that loops back on itself—far away, but insistent.

Peter… Peter… Peter…

When his eyes finally blink open, lashes fluttering incessantly, the world is distorted and out of sync. Light stabs at his pupils. The track beneath him feels both hard and grounding, and somehow also jelly-like—liquid and unstable. His breath hiccups. Every inhale tastes like asphalt and iron.

He squints against the sunlight. There is a rhythmic pounding in his skull, like his heartbeat is trying to crack through his temples. Everything aches.

He blinks again, and someone’s shadow moves across his field of vision. A voice—maybe MJ’s?—filters in like radio static.

"Peter?"

He tries to turn in the direction of the voice, and finds the person chanting his name like a prayer. But the slight movement of his head makes his vision swirl again. Dizziness and nausea hit him in a delayed warning. As if his body meant to send him the signal hours ago but his brain couldn’t decipher the message fast enough.

"Peter?" The voice says again and through the haze, Peter recognizes it as Ned. A shadow shifts across his face. Ned’s voice comes into focus. So does MJ’s shape hovering just behind him. “...hey. Peter?”

“Wha—” he mumbles. His tongue is thick, slurred around the word.

“Don’t move,” MJ says firmly, already crouched beside him, peeling his arm off the ground and checking his pulse like it’s not the first time she’s done this for someone. It probably isn’t.

Coach Wilson ambles over with a squint, looking vaguely annoyed.

“What happened now?” he asks, mostly to no one.

“He collapsed,” Ned says, alarm bleeding into every word.

Wilson leans forward, not bending, just peering. “Yeah. That’ll do it.”

“Do you—uh—want to get the nurse?” Ned ventures.

“I mean,” Wilson shrugs. “He’s breathing. He’s conscious. He’s fine.”

“Coach,” MJ says flatly.

“Okay, okay,” he sighs. “Fine. Walk him over. But if he pukes, I’m making you clean it up.”

As they help Peter sit up—slowly, carefully—Flash jogs by and tosses over his shoulder, “Someone get that guy a juice box.”

Betty, standing nearby with her phone half out of her pocket, frowns in vague concern. “He used to faint a lot. It’s probably nothing.”

Peter groans softly, letting his head hang as MJ and Ned each take an arm.

“Definitely not nothing,” Ned mutters, tightening his grip.

They lead him toward the building, slow and uneven. Peter’s legs are shaky. His breath comes in shallow draws. But he doesn’t complain.

The world tilts, but he walks anyway.

At home, May hovers—despite not having a reason to.

Well, not entirely. She has a reason. She doesn’t need one to hover, but still, she has one. Whatever it is, though, it isn’t Peter’s fainting spell in gym class. It’s not his skipped meals or the new way his clothes hang too loosely off his frame.

It can’t be—because no one called her.

Asthma attacks, nosebleeds, fainting spells—those were supposed to be a thing of the past. Residue from a childhood spent with inhalers tucked into his backpack and paper towels pressed to his bleeding nose. Before the spider bite rewrote his biology. Before he was supposed to be better. Invincible, even.

But reputation is a stubborn thing.

Peter may be Spider-Man now, but to Midtown High he’ll always be the scrawny, sickly kid who treated the nurse’s cot like a second home. So when he collapsed this morning, no one panicked. No one thought to worry.

No one thought to call her.

And yet—May hovers.

Peter’s sprawled out on the living room couch, hoodie half-zipped and socks mismatched. He hadn’t meant to crash there—but the stairs felt like Everest, and gravity was winning today. His head rests against the armrest, tilted just enough to keep May in his periphery.

She’s doing laps again.

Not frantic ones. She’s May. She doesn’t do frantic. No, this is her special brand of domestic reconnaissance—anxiously straightening things that are already straight, picking up objects only to set them down in the exact same spot. Every few minutes, she clears her throat like she’s about to say something… then doesn’t.

Peter stares at the ceiling fan, watching it spin slow and syrupy. His body feels ten sizes too heavy for his skin.

“Y’know,” May says eventually, arms crossed, tone light, “if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were trying to merge with that couch.”

Peter doesn’t look at her. “Comfy,” he mutters.

She hums, noncommittal. “You haven’t moved in, like, an hour.”

“Not true,” he mumbles. “I blinked. Twice.”

May snorts, but it’s soft. She’s standing just behind the couch now, eyes scanning him like she’s trying to x-ray through his sarcasm. “You hungry?”

“No.”

“Want me to put something on Netflix?”

“No.”

“Want to talk about whatever’s going on in that overly complicated brain of yours?”

Peter’s silence stretches.

May sighs through her nose. She walks around the couch this time, stands in front of him like she’s waiting for a confession. When he doesn’t give one, she lets her hands fall to her hips and narrows her eyes.

“Okay. Just so I’m clear—you’re not eating, not sleeping, and now you’re impersonating a haunted throw pillow. Should I be worried, or is this just the latest installment in the ‘Peter Parker Has A Weird Week’ series?”

Peter gives a huff of laughter, but it’s weak. His eyes are red-rimmed, his body language brittle.

“I’m fine.”

“Cool. So I should just… ignore the fact that you look like you went twelve rounds with a woodchipper and lost?” she says, cocking her head. “Because that’s definitely how ‘fine’ looks.”

Peter shifts, slowly pushing himself upright. Not all the way—just enough to sit with his back against the cushions and arms limp at his sides. “May,” he starts, voice strained, “I’m tired. Okay? Just… tired.”

She studies him, expression softening.

“Okay,” she says, quieter now. “Then just let me sit with you for a minute.”

She moves beside him, careful not to make a big deal out of it. For a second, Peter looks like he might lean away—but he doesn’t. Not when her arm wraps gently around his shoulders, not when she pulls him into her.

His body tenses.

Just for a second.

Then sinks.

He leans against her, head buried in the slope of her neck. It fits there perfectly, like they’re two pieces of a puzzle that belong together. Nose pressed to her skin, Peter breathes her in, pulls her into his lungs. He holds his breath, savors her warmths, and hopes she can ward off the numbing cold spreading inside him. His arms slither around her smaller frame, holding her tight, as tightly as he can without hurting her.

May reacts instantly. She holds him just as desperately. She pulls and pulls, even when it’s impossible for Peter to get any closer. As if she wants to wrap around him, to open herself up and hide him inside her. So nothing and no one can ever hurt him.

“You don’t have to talk,” she murmurs, her long dainty fingers brushing through his hair. She twirls strands between her fingers and lightly scratches his scalp in the way she knows he likes— finds soothing. “But you don’t have to be alone, either.”

Peter exhales, a fractured, aching sound. His shoulders shake once. Twice. His resolve splinters—fractured, jagged, beyond repair. A sad pitiful noise, between a sob and a gasp, escapes him. He’s crying— the tears come but they don’t stop. Peter is too exhausted to fight it, so he lets it happen, he lets go.

He cries like he’s six, shaped by absence before he even understood loss.

He cries like he’s fourteen, heart racing faster than his uncle’s fading pulse.

He cries like he’s trapped again—bones crushed, breath stolen, hope flickering.

He cries until he dissolves into the silence, small and salt-stained and still here.

A hushed silence falls over the city. A rare sort of stillness—more foreboding than reassuring. There’s something sinister in the way Queens holds its breath, like the whole borough is waiting for something to go wrong.

Above, the moon glows dull and hazy behind a curtain of smog. Down below, the streets simmer in sodium orange and flickering neon. Shadows stretch long and jagged across the pavement, warping under streetlights—twisting like otherworldly things creeping in from somewhere else. A plastic bag skitters down the sidewalk like it’s trying to flee. A cat bolts across an alley, startled by something Peter can’t see.

Around every corner, bad omens loom. Harbingers linger. Every flickering storefront sign is a warning. Every far-off siren or backfiring car sounds like a prelude to something worse.

Danger clings to the air like humidity—thick and metallic on the tongue.

Still, Peter doesn’t turn back.

He swings straight into the night. Lets go. Embraces gravity as it pulls him down to earth’s center like it’s trying to remind him where he belongs. The freefall is exhilarating. In the seconds before he catches himself—when it’s just the scream of wind in his ears and the skyline blurred by motion—the numbness gives way to sensation, and for a moment, Peter feels alive again.

Every cell in his body thrums with energy, every synapse firing like short-circuit sparks behind his eyes.

There’s something to be said here about probabilities and statistics. About odds and expectations. About the likelihood of him ever meaning anything to Mr. Stark.

Peter had known from the very beginning how slim his chances were. He had made peace with the fact that he was merely an afterthought, the end credits to a movie no one stays long enough to see. He had made every attempt to guard himself, to keep his heart safe and protected.

But the stolen moments between obligation and indulgence disarmed him. Where guilt-infused lab sessions blur into something softer—dinner, laughter, comfort. Where Tony Stark folds into just… Tony. These were the moments that gave him a sense of false security— a sense of belonging.

And for a little while, Peter had let himself believe he belonged.

Turns out, the only thing that ever truly claimed him was this city.

It calls him now.

A noise cuts through the quiet—a ripple in the stillness. There is a scuffle, a sharp “Hey!” followed by a female voice barking, “Let go of me!”

Peter’s head snaps up, body tensing. Adrenaline sparks cold in his veins.

He doesn’t hesitate.

He lands silently on a nearby rooftop, crouched low. Below, in the half-lit alleyway, a man in his late 30s—leaning too close, drunk on entitlement—is grabbing at a girl’s wrist. She can’t be more than seventeen, maybe nineteen at most, dressed in a Midtown U hoodie and panic.

Peter’s already moving.

“Now, now,” he calls out, flipping down with practiced flair, landing with a thud between them. “Didn’t your mom ever teach you not to put your greasy hands on people without asking? Or is that lesson scheduled after ‘basic human decency’?”

The man recoils, startled, but recovers fast. “The hell—what are you, a mascot?”

Peter tilts his head. “Only on weekends and bar mitzvahs.” He points a web-shooter at the guy’s shoes and fires. “Although, fair warning, my balloon animal game is... a little stabby .”

The webbing glues the man’s feet to the pavement. Peter tosses a quick glance at the girl.

“You okay?”

She nods quickly, wide-eyed, backing away. “Y-yeah, I—I think so.”

“Good. Go. Run home. And maybe invest in pepper spray. Or lasers. Lasers are cool.”

She’s already sprinting down the block when the guy lunges.

Peter sighs. “Always gotta do this the hard way.”

The man’s knife glints under the streetlight—Peter flips backward, webbing the blade and yanking it out of his grip before launching it into the nearest wall with a thunk .

“Wow,” Peter says, circling. “A knife? Really? Bit cliché, don’t you think? I mean, come on. At least pretend you’re not from the 1800s.”

The guy growls and charges again. Peter ducks low, sweeps his legs out, and rolls, body moving in practiced, fluid rhythm. His mind clicks into fight mode. He’s on autopilot now—acrobatics, taunts, webshots—classic Spider-Man chaos.

“You should know,” he pants between jabs, “my Yelp reviews are great—four and a half stars for style, five for general annoyance.”

A fist grazes his shoulder, but he counters with a kick to the chest. The guy stumbles, grabs a trash can lid, swings it like a shield. Peter web-zips above him, flipping over and planting a foot squarely in his back. The man crashes to the ground with a groan.

“See?” Peter grins, landing softly. “This is what happens when you mess with science students. We fight dirty and have physics on our side.”

But then—

The world tilts.

Just slightly.

But it’s enough.

Peter’s knees buckle for half a second, a flicker of imbalance that throws his next move off-center. He blinks hard—too hard. The alley sways left, then corrects itself like a camera struggling to refocus.

What…?

The man doesn’t notice the slip—yet.

Peter steadies his stance, faking the bounce in his step as he flips over a row of garbage bins. “Alright, buddy,” he quips, voice tight with effort, “we’re gonna need to work on your people skills. I’m thinking less knife-waving, more therapy.”

But his words feel delayed in his own mouth, like he’s speaking through cotton.

The mugger growls and lunges—shoulder down, blade forward—and Peter sidesteps, one beat too late.

For a split second, he sees the flash of steel, feels it slice past—no pain, just the hiss of air—and then the crack of his fist connecting squarely with the guy’s jaw. The impact knocks the man off balance, the knife clattering to the pavement.

Peter exhales through a grin. “That all you got?”

But something feels off.

Then the guy punches him—square in the gut.

It’s not a hard hit. Normally, Peter would shrug it off.

But this time it lands different. His legs wobble. His stomach lurches. For a second, he thinks it’s just the adrenaline.

Until he feels it.

Warm. Sticky.

Blooming under his ribs like spilled ink.

Peter stumbles back. A cold sweat breaks out along his hairline.

He glances down, expecting to see nothing. Expecting confirmation he deflected the blade, just like he thought.

Instead, he sees the dark stain spreading through the red of his suit. Slow. Seeping.

He lifts a trembling hand and presses it to his side.

Wet.

He pulls it away.

Bloody.

“Oh,” he breathes. A realization, not a reaction. “Oh no.”

“Peter,” Karen says softly in his ear, voice instantly grounded and calm in a way that makes it scarier.
“You’ve been stabbed. You need to sit down.”

“I…” He sways. “I thought—I knocked the knife out of his hand—”

“You did. But not before he got you. Deep laceration. Possibly a kidney. Peter, you need to sit down. You’re going into shock.”

“I can’t—” His breath hitches. “I can’t— Not now. I can patch it. I’ve done worse.”

He pushes himself upright, legs trembling beneath him. The alley blurs. The ground keeps tugging at him.

“Peter,” Karen says gently. “You are not okay. I’m calling Mr. Stark.”

“No.” His voice sharpens, breaking. “Don’t. Karen, don’t.”

“He needs to know.”

“No, he doesn’t. He’s—” Peter grits his teeth, clutching his side. “He’s just gonna come and be mad or—or disappointed or worse, and I can’t do that again tonight.”

“He won’t be mad.” Karen’s voice lowers, full of conviction. 

His fingers twitch against the suit’s palm sensors. His tongue feels like it’s made of rubber. His next step lands crooked—like his foot didn’t get the message from his brain. Peter’s vision starts to tunnel. The edges of the world close in, soft and black. He blinks fast, trying to clear it.

But his knees buckle again.

This time, he doesn’t catch himself.

The pavement rushes up to meet him—cold and unforgiving.

“Peter,” Karen says, voice distant now, like she’s calling through water. “Peter, stay with me. Help is on the way.”

He mumbles something—maybe her name, maybe Mr. Stark’s. He can’t tell. The pain finally registers, sharp and deep. His side is on fire.

Then the fire fizzles.

Then nothing at all.