InsaneJournal

Who: Tony and Peter Parker
What: Endgame fallout.
When: recently
Rating/Warning: green, spoilers

This was important. He even told Pepper that before he kissed her on the cheek and Morgan on top of her fuzzy little head. Then he was out the glass doors to the observation deck and suited up in seconds.

Tony wasted no time flying over to Queens, probably a little faster than he should have. The FAA was going to get a few complaints, he'd pay a fine, everything would be golden again.

Upon arrival, he did the polite thing and didn't knock on Peter's window. He knocked on the apartment door instead. Aunt May called him, so he felt like he should at least say hi. She kind of gave him a look but let him in.

"I got this," he assured her, talking while walking. "We're good. It's probably teenage...hormones. Don't worry, he's not going all Thirteen Reasons Why in there. Give me an hour to talk him out of his tree."

Tony knocked on the door and he could feel May in hover mode behind him.

"Hey, Peter. It's me. Let me in," he mumbled with his lips practically smushed against the crack between the doorway and the frame. "Your aunt's going to get laser eyes any second and punch two holes through me and stuff walnut date brick stuff in the holes. I swear. Open the door."

Peter hadn’t meant to worry May, but she knew him better than anyone. So when she’d come home from work to find that he hadn’t moved much far beyond his bedroom - not even to raid the fridge or to sneak out to do some spidering - she was concerned. And Peter knew she had a right to be.

Honey, you haven’t looked like this since… May had pushed his hair back from his forehead and went quiet after that, the unspoken name lingering between them. Ben. That made all the stupid sense in the world, because that was what the loss of Tony in the other universe had felt like. Again.

Any other day, he would have thrown on the suit and searched for someone needing help so he could feel like he was pushing out some good into a world that sorely needed it. He would have swung out to the Stark penthouse, too, if he trusted himself enough not to spill the burden of his grief onto Tony when he had his own mountain of trauma to grapple with.

By the time Tony had reached out to him, Peter knew he couldn't avoid seeing him much longer - mostly because he didn't want to. He wanted to see he was in one piece, he wanted to say he was sorry, he wanted to promise that he wouldn't ever let Morgan grow up without a dad. His nerves were raw and his senses were too, still piqued and primed to danger even if the battle had been a whole timeline away.

He was so distracted by it that he didn't hear the knock on his door until Tony's voice came along with it.

"It's okay, May," Peter said as he opened his door a creak, enough to let Tony in. He heard her retreat into the kitchen to give them privacy, and once the door shut behind them, he couldn't do much to hold himself back. His arms wrapped around Tony in a tight hug - they were way past pretending they weren't there yet.

They were there now. Tony didn't utter a word, only hugged Peter back with the same force Peter lobbed on him. It was one of the few times that he wasn't actively trying to talk over someone trying to talk over him.

After that dream? The kid was right. This was nice. He closed his eyes for a long moment, not letting go, and reassuring them both that they were both in the same place and time, and that this hug wasn't a rushed one in the middle of a battlefield.

It was hard to tell how long it was that passed. It could have only been a couple of minutes. It could have been fifteen. But Tony thought it was ok to speak, without sounding like a frog was caught in his throat.

He lightly patted Peter on the back, clearing his throat a little to shift the imaginary frog around before saying anything.

"I'm not going anywhere," he reassured Peter. "I know. This sucks. Seeing that stuff going forward is going to be rough. If you ever need to unload and you can't tell May? You got me. And if May asks, I'll tell her it's that Flash kid being a prick again. I got you covered."

Tony was still holding on. Even if he was the least touchy-feely person ever, this was what Peter needed and he was going to let him decide when to let go.

Peter didn’t say anything as his grip tightened, his face buried in Tony's shoulder. For once, he couldn’t speak at all. Where he’d spilled out anything he could in that other world - because he’d known it was his last chance, the last words he'd ever get to say to him - everything now seemed to get stuck in his throat. It was hard to stop seeing the memories of the other world that had been cruelly twisted into a reflection of one of his worst nightmares. Tony had died and Peter? He hadn't been able to do a thing about it.

But the longer he held on, the more the facts of this reality at least began to sink in. There had been no catastrophic battle, no service by the lake. May was okay; Ned, too, judging from all the missed calls on his phone. He hadn't even left the apartment since yesterday, even if his brain had taken him on a trip to Titan and back.

"Are Pepper and Morgan doing okay?" Or as okay as they could be. He didn't know if babies could dream like that, but he really, really hoped Morgan hadn't.

By the time Peter finally pulled away, he wiped off his wet cheeks, taking a steadying breath. He could pull himself together for the moment, but he knew what Tony said was right. It did suck. It would suck for a while. It was going to be difficult to not think of all the ways things could have went differently if Peter just tried a little harder - if he'd done a better job at keeping the gauntlet away from Thanos. No matter what Dr. Strange had said, he would never believe the cost of Tony's life had been the only way.

"Hey, um." Peter lowered himself to sit on his bed, running his thumb almost nervously across his palm. "Do you remember that expo? The one the Hammer drones attacked?" As random as the question seemed, Peter was leading somewhere with it.

"They're ok," he assured Peter, standing in the room with much more awkwardness than before. Normally he commanded the room, soaking up both positive and negative attention like it was limelight. At that moment he looked wide-eyed and unsure. Pepper and he were content to live things up as much as possible while trying not to talk about it. And Morgan was fussy for that one night, and then slept normally afterward. He was certain that fussing was due to their raised voices. Relatively certain, at least. It's not like a baby would remember dreams, or be able to tell them about them either.

He sat down on the bed by Peter's side, resting a hand on the teen's shoulder. Peter seemed like he had something to say and he wasn't about to stop him.

"Yeah, trust me, I remember that particular headache," Tony said, watching as Peter's hands fidgeted. From him meeting Nat to what went down with Pep and Rhodey, that was a pivotal life moment. And his Expo got trashed. "What about it?"

Peter could breathe a little easier knowing that Pepper and Morgan were here and all right. He was starting to realize that they had a chance here to make sure that Morgan didn't grow up like he did - without a father - and he knew he'd fight harder than he ever had to keep that reality. He owed it to the Tony he couldn't save in the other universe. Which was maybe a little too much unhealthy responsibility to take on, but this kind of guilt wasn't new to Peter.

"I was there. With my uncle," Peter began, his gaze finding the floor. "And when stuff went sideways, Ben and I got separated. I had this toy Iron Man helmet that I never took off - and I guess since I was wearing it, one of the drones locked on." He'd been eight years old and already getting himself into massive amounts of trouble to the surprise of no one. "I was lucky. You jumped in and blasted the drone before it could blast me."

Peter had just been one kid in a sea of many that night and didn't expect Tony to remember, but he'd never forgotten it. "What I mean is..." Peter looked back at Tony again, his smile watery but holding up well enough. "There's a lot I have to thank you for. For the expo, for the suit and tech, for - just you being you? Everything. I didn't want you not to know that."

And Peter being Peter, he couldn't help but to tack an apology onto all of it. "...Sorry. Sorry, I know that's crazy heavy, but-" He'd never been able to tell his dad or his uncle what they'd meant to him, and he didn't want that to happen a third time. "I'm really, really glad you're here."

Tony was staring at Peter with wide unblinking eyes, floored by the fact that this was the same kid that day. It was a little brain melting. No, it was more like the universe was bitch slapping his brain and not really stopping. Finally, everything clicked into place again and his head jittered to and fro, as though he was trying to make sure everything stayed in place. It was a lot to fathom, after all. That life moment got even more pivotal, it seemed.

"I know it now. That's...uhh...whew! That is heavy stuff," he admitted, patting Peter on the back even if that didn't feel right either. Losing Peter in that other universe messed him up. Massively. He pulled him in for another hug, which was a testament to how rattled he was. Normally he was leaning away from people holding their arms out to him. Unless they were Pep. Or Rhodey. He was going to have to add this kid onto the list. And Morgan, obviously. If he tried dousing the kid with Purell, he was sure that Pep was going to scream at him about drug resistant bacteria and toxic whatsits. And he'd yell back that it wasn't his fault that he couldn't put her through the UV sterilizers because UV. Duh.

He cleared his throat a little and said, "It's ok. I'm really glad you're here too. I'm gonna do everything I can to make sure we all stay in one piece. For as long as this whacked out universe lets us. I know you can't tell your aunt, but...."

He pulled away, putting his hands on Peter's shoulders in what he imagined father-esque mentor figures are supposed to do when making serious statements or grave promises.

"...if you need to have a meltdown? I'll be there for you. And now I've got the theme song from Friends stuck in my head. Great."

"Super heavy. Like Thor’s hammer-heavy," Peter agreed, glad that they'd hugged again because his eyes were getting a little misty. His grief felt raw and complicated, the kind that was finely tuned to poke at every prominent anxiety he had. It brought up old wounds that he'd never really gotten over, and if the dreams had showed him one thing, it was that he wouldn't even know where to begin in a world without Tony Stark. So if they had an actual chance here, Peter was more than ready to fight to keep it.

Keeping this from May was going to be hard, and keeping it from Ned would be even tougher, but Peter was far from alone in this. That reminder was what he'd needed since waking up in a cold sweat this morning. It'd be a two way street, though. Peter didn't even want to imagine what those dreams had felt like for Tony; maybe they both needed to feel as far away from that upstate battlefield as possible.

"...I don't know if you're still on the whole health food kick, but d'you want to get burgers? There's a good place down the block. I think May would let me out of her sight as long as I promised to bring her home some takeout." Peter wasn’t exactly ready to see Tony go just yet.

Raw and complicated was a good way to put it all into perspective. Everything was raw and complicated, and it was mashing buttons on his controller so he was reaching peak levels of anxiety. Not that all of it was bad? Morgan was here. They knew what happened over there, but things were tweaked here. They just needed to be on the lookout for things leaking over from the other side, while monitoring the weirdness of the here and now.

Food. Food would help. It was comforting and he could hit the gym in the penthouse and jog it off, once the bloat wore off.

"You know what? I'm working on my dad bod. Let's go say hi to May and eat cheeseburgers."

It might be a two cheeseburger and a two hour workout afterward, but it would be worth it. Not only for the comfort food, but for the time spent with those he cared about.